Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga (34 page)

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"Our campaign is
not
windin' up the way it should be now, fellow
devils," the Chairdevil said to his board. "Even without that,
that
instrument
, those
blessed warblers are a pain in the tail. Every time they open their
mouths, another passel of undead songs start lumberin' out of their
graves and havin' baby songs. Pretty soon it's gonna be worse than
it was when we started all of this. I tell you, those songs are
worse than blackberry brambles for springing up out of nothin' no
matter how you kill 'em. By the time we're able to locate the perps
from the noise they're making, they've spread songs to another
group of people who go away whistlin' and singin' like they didn't
have better sense. We never had trouble trackin' them before.
What's goin' on here?"

"Maybe you're just used to it being too
easy," the Expediency Devil said. "That banjo acted like an antenna
so we could find them anyplace. Now you just have to pick them out
from all the other cattle out there."

"Some of my best trackers are hot on the
trail, sir," the Doom and Destruction Devil said. "The mole I
planted in that Martin girl's life almost had her, but there was a
little interference from another one of those maverick dead people
who keep popping up."

"Hmph," the Chairdevil said. "I want
your trackers to see to it that the Martin girl and all her
friends
join
their dead
buddies soon, Threedee. Without Hawthorne's magic twanger, there's
nothin' to stop our people from finishin' them off."

"I've still got the all-points bulletin out
on them among my people," Threedee answered soothingly. "And one of
my worst has a group of them pinpointed someplace in Kansas
City."

The Chairdevil nodded absently and turned to
the Debauchery Devil, who as usual hid her red eyes behind
high-tech sunglasses and smoked like—well, like a fiend—throughout
the meeting. "You're awfully quiet, DD."

"Well, boss," DD said, "I was just thinkin'.
I wonder how much of your problem was the banjo and how much of it
was the personality that guided it."

"You mean Hawthorne?"

"Nope. I mean Willie MacKai. It seems to me
that whether he's doing music or not, MacKai manages to gum up the
works. You know, I did us all a big favor back in Scotland when I
messed up the songs the singers could go back and live through.
Because even though they learned about ballad lives, none of them
learned about their own, and of them all, MacKai is the most
archetypal minstrel. If I'd let him connect with his true strength
and then he'd come back here with the banjo, there'd have been no
stopping him. But I've controlled him right along, though y’all
have made it pretty blessed hard for me sometimes, and I've
disarmed him now too. Still, I think I could suggest a little swap
that might be to our mutual benefit."

"DD, do I have to remind you that for a
devil to try to make a deal with the devil is just a
little—unorthodox?" the Chairdevil said.

"I made this deal a long time ago," she
reminded him. "And I'm a teeny bit late keeping my end, it's true.
But then, it was never a fair deal anyway, not like I had any
choice. What I propose is fair enough, though. I can tell you that
in this whole mess, MacKai is the biggest thorn in your side. With
him gone the others will be easy to pick off. Especially if he
comes over to our side."

"We tried to get him before," the Chairdevil
said. "The man picks the strangest times to sprout principles."

"Well, like I said. I can control him. I can
get him to volunteer to come to you as my tithe, somewhat belated.
If you forget the interest on my mortgage, I guarantee MacKai will
more than make up the difference in quantity with the quality of
service he'll provide in his presence with us and his absence
elsewhere. He's a catalytic type of man. He may not do much himself
sometimes, but wherever he goes, things start poppin', and those
things are usually the kind you don't want to happen. People
discover their talent, discover their own drama, when Willie's
around. They want to be what they think he is, though he never
quite becomes that himself. He could be even more dangerous to
you—us—than he is, but like a lot of important people, he isn't
real happy with the world, isn't real connected to it. I could get
him to defect without much problem, but in exchange I want my
freedom."

"Your kingdom doesn't exist anymore,
queenie-pie," the Stupidity and Ignorance Devil pointed out
nastily.

"Gee whiz, Stu, I hadn't noticed," she
drawled in a Lubbock accent. "I really do thank you so much for
pointin' that out to me."

"He's right for a change," the Chairdevil
said. "If I give you your freedom, what will you do with it? A few
of your people are still hanging out in the old country, a few in
Canada, but by and large I don't think they'd take to you again.
They've gone in for a bit more democracy than in the old days. What
would you do?"

"I don't know. I'll think of something.
Start a new religion maybe. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Throw in
a little more chaos."

"I'll think it over. But if you do make the
rent, the sacrifice must be done in the traditional manner, you
know. Company protocol demands the Ride with attendants, the whole
bit. And I'd like to remind you, DD, that this particular tithe is
long overdue, so I'm afraid I can't give you until Halloween, as is
traditional. MacKai has to be delivered at midnight on Summer
Solstice, in the usual way—"

"But there's not much darkness to make the
Ride in," Torchy protested, playing for time.

"You're a clever little devil. Figure
something out. Otherwise, not only no deal, sweetcakes, but no more
executive position. You'll have to work your way back up from the
bottom, and I'm sure you have a little insight into how painful
entry-level positions can be for someone as overqualified as
yourself. You've made a few enemies, DD. There's a lot of our
people who would be willing to make things hot for you."

She snapped her fingers, and from her
fingertips she popped a red silk Chinese fan with a gilt dragon
that moved slowly across the spokes of the fan. She fanned herself
rapidly, a breath of ammonia cutting through the sulfur-perfumed
air as she slumped in her chair with her eyes closed and her mouth
half-open. "Mercy me, boss, but ah declare ah feel quite
faint
from fright." Opening one eye
so that she was winking at him, she smirked and said in a throaty
voice, "Don't you worry 'bout a thing, hotshot. I tell you I'll
deliver MacKai, and you can bet your ass I'll deliver him. Trust
me."

The Chairdevil couldn't help smiling back.
She was so attractive when she sneered at him.

"Now then, Threedee. You need to get
somebody else into Oklahoma, particularly Tulsa. There's an
epicenter of cheery, merry music radiating from there like bleeding
rays of sunshine, and I want it stopped."

"I'll get my people on it," Threedee
promised. "I'll pull some of my mercenaries from the West African
conflict."

"Oh, goody," the Debauchery Devil yawned.
"How original. We just use psychotic killers for everything."

"You think the police are going to notice?"
the Chairdevil asked. "We have our people there."

"No," she said. "I'm sure you can pull it
off. It just doesn't seem to me as if it's a very interesting
solution. Not really in the spirit of things. What I'd prefer to
see happen is something with a little more inventiveness."

"Some of my boys can kill in very inventive
ways," Threedee said defensively.

"I'm sure," she said.

"We've about exhausted our options in our
initial onslaught," the Chairdevil reminded her. "Our opponents
have no press, except for that publicity-hound Martin bitch and her
girl ghost-detective antics, no distribution, no powerful allies,
and now, thanks to you, no banjo. We can use the police, Threedee's
boys, or something from the Plague and Pestilence Department.
What's your pleasure?"

"It all sounds boring, boring, boring," she
said. "I want to see something with more pizzazz. Something
dramatic with fire and explosions and walls of water."

The Chairdevil's little red eyes grew misty.
"Ah, yes," he sighed. His penchant for loud explosions and large,
flamboyant disasters was well-known to his subordinates.

"See what you can dream up in the Acts of Us
Department," he said to what we might call the Weather Devil, but
who was actually a recycled Norse god and came fully equipped with
hammer and many runic names, among which were God of Thunder, Lord
of Lightning, the Destroyer who Dispenses Draught, Warden of the
Winds and Waters, Earl of Earthquakes, Vizier of Volcanoes, and
Purge of Picnics.

Before the Weather Devil could reply in the
affirmative, however, the new Pollution and Waste Devil, also known
as Peepee, spoke up. "We'll get right on it, CD." He was rewarded
by a baleful stare from His Multiply Tempestuous Lordship. "Heh
heh, sorry if I spoke out of turn. No need to get thore about it,"
Peepee said, polluting the atmosphere with his pun and then
laughing so hard at his own joke that he had to wipe his running
nose and eyes on a mile of nonbiodegradable pink toilet tissue
patterned with anemic little blue flowers.

"Well, whichever of you do this, I want the
plan to include the Curtises and the Randolphs and as many of those
scribblers and music-mongers as we can hit," the Chairdevil
said.

"Right, boss."

"And, Accounting?"

The Accounting Devil looked up from his
notes and graphs. "Boss?"

"Don't forget to cancel their insurance
policies before all of this comes up. I don't care how you do it,
but if they survive this, make sure they've lost everything."

"Sure, boss," the Accounting Devil grinned,
with teeth like a mouth full of cash-register keys. "I think I know
how I can lose their payments in the mail. I'll get my inefficiency
experts on it right away."

"Thor, you and Peepee make sure you include
the hospitals and the banks in your swath of destruction. Also any
charitable agencies that might help."

"No need for that, boss,” the Accounting
Devil said. "Hospitals won't admit anyone with no insurance, we've
closed the charitable institutions down a long time ago, and I can
get my embezzlers going on the banks so that any possible funds
will be missing or tied up in litigation for the next hundred
years. The Inefficiency Department has been in charge of the FDIC
for the last seven years as well, and the head of the Tulsa
department is due for a nervous breakdown any minute now."

CHAPTER 22

The metamorphosis of the banjo's remains
into a new instrument was not a short or an easy process. It took a
lot of thought, a lot of time, a lot of inspiration, and no little
pain to even decide what the remains were to become in their next
life.

There were certain compensations, however,
if a person was superstitious enough to connect certain facts. The
first thing the luthiers noticed was that they had no more car
trouble of any kind all the way home from the convention. The
second thing—and this could have been attributed to hearing the
tail end of a couple of the songs Faron and Ellie and the others
were singing at the convention—was that for the first time in
years, long-forgotten tunes and song lyrics started wisping across
their minds at odd hours or poking through their dreams.

They let the pieces linger in their bag on
the shelf above Callie's table saw for several weeks, while they
went to work and came home again, ate, drank, slept, and read.
Finally the time came, and Aldin took the pieces up one evening and
spread them on what was left of the kitchen table aside from the
part where freshly sealed, newly hewn bits of
instruments-in-progress were drying.

"The obvious thing," Aldin said, spreading
out the skin from the head of the banjo, "is to make another banjo.
But this piece is cracked around the edges and split."

Callie touched it. "It's gotten stiff and
hard too—leathery, and it's curling around the edges. Seems to me
it's a lot darker than it was when we picked it up."

Aldin smiled. "Maybe it got a suntan sitting
near the window on your table saw.

"Yeah, well, I think we need to do something
with these things soon."

She uncurled the strings from the bracelet
Ellie had twined of them. They unwound, and unwound, and unwound.
And unwound. They stretched across the table and draped over both
sides and across the floor.

Callie was silent for a long time. Aldin was
silent too.

"They grew," Callie said finally.

"Ellie did say they were from a
magic
banjo," Aldin reminded
her.

Callie stroked them with a fingertip. "This
is the strangest stuff I ever tried to work with. It's like hair,
only each one is stronger. I hope it will work in my string-winding
machine. Whatever we make, we're going to have to change the tuning
of each string."

"Faron said these strings were always in
tune," Aldin remembered, fingering one himself. "And Ellie
mentioned dreaming the story of the 'Two Sisters' ballad. Do you
suppose this really is what remains of the harp the minstrel made
from that dead girl's body?"

"Ooh, gross," Callie said. "But intriguing.
If it wasn't for this stuff, I'd wonder a little if the trip abroad
wasn't—you know—a little hard on Faron and Ellie. I mean, I know
they're creative, but this stuff is all a little. . ."

"I know what you mean. Beyond the ken of
those of us who are stuck in the States with regular jobs and can
only be weekend weirdos. Speaking of which. . ."