The Edge of Ruin (15 page)

“What do you mean, like you?” Sam asked belligerently. Grenier wondered if she was reacting against her attraction to Richard. “How are you any different from the rest of us?”

No, not rejected passion, Grenier decided; the young FBI agent just hated not being the most gifted, most talented, toughest person in the room. And she was still smarting under the knowledge that the gate had driven her mad.

The flush washed up into Richard’s pale cheeks as he reacted to the hostility, but embarrassment was also a component of his discomfort.
Yes, little man, you are different and you hate it. You also invited it; the East Coast blue blood walking a cop’s beat.
Grenier longed to say the words out loud, but Cross broke in.

“He’s an ‘empty one,’ born without a scrap of magic.”

“A magic spell per se has no effect on me. I can be hurt by the results of the spell—if you pull electricity from a wall socket the electricity can hurt me, for example—but you can’t put a glamour on me, or use a spell to convince me I’m in love with somebody.”

“We also can’t feed on him,” Cross said. “He’s a cipher to us.”

“The real importance of my genetic makeup is that I can use this.” Richard again lifted the hilt of the sword. “I can draw it.”

“Yeah, but you removed my magic, so I ought to be able to use it now, too,” Sam said. The challenge hung in the air.

Angela jumped in. “It doesn’t work that way. You’ve had your magic negated, but you still carry the genetic code. You can’t use the sword.”

It was clear from the young agent’s expression that she neither liked the answer nor believed it. Richard proved again he could read nuance. “If you don’t believe us, you’re welcome to try.”

Richard tossed the hilt to Sam, who caught it with the grace and quickness of a cat seizing a bird out of the air. She studied the hilt, then laced her fingers through the curves and looked inquiringly at Richard.

“Place your free hand against the base of the hilt. Pull the hilt away as if you’re drawing a sword from a scabbard,” he instructed.

“I’ll cut my hand.”

“You won’t get that far,” Richard said. “Even if you could draw it you wouldn’t get cut. It doesn’t cut me. And don’t ask me why because I don’t know.”

“So it is because of this … this thing … that Kenntnis has left you his entire business?” Dagmar asked while Sam swept the hilt over and over away from her hand to no result.

“Yes. I guess.” The tag once again diluted the effect of a man in charge.

“
Mein Gott
,” the German repeated again.

It took Sam another few minutes of trying before she accepted the truth of Richard’s statement.
So
, thought Grenier,
she’s quick
,
coordinated, and very stubborn.
Finally, she admitted defeat and returned the hilt to Richard.

“Well, this kind of sucks,” Sam said.

“On the plus side, you’re not finger-licking good anymore,” Cross said.

“What!?” Sam said. It emerged as an incredulous squeak.

“We can’t feed on you after you’ve been touched. Well, when you die you can feed us. Death sort of trumps all the other emotions,” Cross said. “Speaking of … is there anything to eat in this joint?”

Richard pointed toward the kitchen, and Cross left.

“So now you have a general idea of the state of things,” Richard said. “My biggest fear is what happens to the world with Kenntnis out of it. Cross said something once that made me think that Kenntnis might be like a platonic ideal, or the rationality. And it does seem that since his capture people are having a harder and harder time keeping a grip on reality.”

“So what you’re saying is that people are going to start living in their own private David Lynch movies,” Sam said.

Grenier entered the conversation again. “They won’t be just private delusions. Before Richard sheared away my power”—he held up his stump, and was pleased when Richard flushed—“I could feel the power rushing past me like flowing water. It wasn’t hard to dip in, and have the power to do almost any kind of spell. That’s a big change. Before Kenntnis was bound I had to engineer the appropriate fear, pain, grief, or hate; I would feed, and then cast the spell. You’re going to see a lot of strange and inexplicable things happening, and each time they happen it will weaken the fabric of our reality.”

“Yes, but don’t you have to learn how to do these spells?” Pamela asked. “I can’t believe I just said that,” she added. She pressed a hand against her forehead (it seemed to be a learned and shared gesture of the Oorts) and shook her head.

“Before the loss of Kenntnis, yes,” Grenier answered. “But now I rather suspect that a supreme act of personal will will suffice.”

“Monsters from the id,” Angela muttered.

“So our most pressing issue is freeing Kenntnis,” Richard said.

The judge entered the conversation. “I believe we had this conversation before. On Christmas Eve you said we needed a physicist to advise us since Kenntnis is trapped by this slow glass. Do we have a physicist?” The words were pointed.

The blood rushed into the young man’s face, and he hung his head. “No, sir. I’m sorry, I should have done that.”

Well, damn
, thought Grenier.
I wish I had known about this little family dynamic before. I could have brought Richard to his knees in no time. I applied pressure at all the wrong points.

Of course, now that Grenier was in New Mexico and had thrown in his lot with the Lumina, he badly needed Richard to be strong and tough and decisive. Which meant he was going to have to find a way to buffer the young man from the Right Honorable Robert Oort.

Dagmar suddenly stood and walked over to Richard. “That’s for another day. Right now it is more important that you have the loyalty and support of all your people.” Grenier couldn’t be sure, but he thought she glanced briefly at the judge.

The German continued. “Allow me to be the first of your employees to accept your condition of employment, sir,” and she leaned down so Richard, from his seated position, could more easily touch her with the sword.

R
ICHARD

“
T
hink of it as a drug test,” Dagmar said.

The man—I risked a surreptitious glance down at the employee list: Fred Mickelson—blinked rapidly as if processing the words. Mickelson was tall, with a sunken chest and an incongruous little kettle belly. He had been sitting in the high-backed leather chair that faced the desk, but then rose jerkily to his feet and stood, shaking his head.

“No, this is too weird.”

For an instant I thought about saying this had been in the instructions Kenntnis left for me, but I was a terrible liar, and it would only make a bad situation worse. I hadn’t lost that many employees with my strange request. I could afford to lose Fred. But Dagmar wasn’t giving up without a fight.

“Look, I’ll go first,” Dagmar offered. “Just to show you it’s fine.”

I shifted my grip on the hilt of the sword, picked up my cane with my right hand, and pushed to my feet. After some discussion we had all agreed that the appearance of a blade out of nowhere would rattle even the most loyal and unflappable of employees. So the sword had been drawn before Fred entered the office, on the theory that coping with only one weird thing—a boss asking to touch them with a sword—would be less upsetting than dealing with the whole strange package.

Now they just have to cope with the fact that I seem to be a total nut job
, I thought as I limped up to Dagmar and laid the blade of the sword on her shoulder.

Since Dagmar had already experienced the sword, she was able to bear the touch with equanimity. That had been another debate, about whether Dagmar should react as if she were in pain when we put on the little show. We decided she shouldn’t.

“Better to cut the puppy’s tail off all at once instead of by inches,”
had been Weber’s opinion, while Pamela’s attitude had been, “
Better to receive forgiveness than ask permission.
”

However it was phrased, I was starting my tenure as head of the Lumina by lying to my people. Somehow I bet that was not in a Tony Robbins video.

I pivoted on my cane and cocked an inquiring eyebrow at Mickelson. The only thing that had made this even remotely bearable was that the pain experienced by the employees who had allowed themselves to be touched by the sword had been much less than Angela’s and Weber’s. Which suggested that Kenntnis had used Cross’s ability to “see” magic, and deliberately hired people who had a low quotient of magical aptitude. I reminded myself to ask the homeless god if that was true the next time he wandered through.

I wish Cross had found a different paladin, too. Why did I ever go down that alley that night? If I’d just called for backup.

You couldn’t, the radio didn’t work.

I could have driven away.

Couldn’t, the car had died.

And once I had heard Rhiana’s scream of terror there was no question about whether I was going down that access alley between the buildings. But why couldn’t it have been a rapist? No, it had to be monsters.

Mickelson’s voice drew me back to my surroundings. “I have to do this if I’m going to keep my job?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. But if you wish to leave you’ll receive a generous severance package,” I said.

“Okay. I’ll do that. I’ve enjoyed working here, and Mr. Kenntnis had his odd quirks, but this is too strange.”

I propped my cane against the side of the desk and held out my hand. “I quite understand.” We shook, and Mickelson’s palm was slick with sweat. I guess this was a real Hobson’s choice—do something nuts or lose your job. I actually respected Mickelson. Telling me to piss up a rope had taken some guts.

“Jeannette will arrange all the financial details,” Dagmar said.

Mickelson headed for the door.

In addition to money I felt I owed the man some warning. “Fred.” He looked back at me while his fingers nervously explored his shirt buttons. “Look, be careful. Outside these walls things are …” I mentally picked up, considered, and discarded a number of words.
Crazy, dangerous, perilous, threatening.
I decided on “… unsettled.”

The accountant nodded and left.

Dagmar pulled her Palm out of a pocket and checked the screen, then her watch. “Shall I set up the call with Kenzo?”

It took me a moment to place “Kenzo” in the bewildering array of people who now seemed to work for me. Kenzo Fujasaki, Lumina’s CFO. Right. Check. Oh, no, I so didn’t want to talk to him. I shook my head, set the hilt on the desk, and watched the blade vanish. I still found it unnerving, and I wondered where it went.

“Put him off for another day.”

Dagmar had a mouth like a strawberry, full and soft, but now those lips compressed into a tight line. It felt like people got that expression a lot when dealing with me. “Sir, events are streaming past us. We’ve got bank closures in the Far East, price controls being set by the EU, borders being sealed. Every market is fluctuating wildly. We need to transfer and stabilize assets.”

Uncertainty became a fluttering deep in my gut. If Lumina Enterprises collapsed financially I wouldn’t have the resources to combat the Old Ones. But what I
really
needed for this fight was Kenntnis, not money.

I said as much and then added, “I’ve got to get him out of this slow-glass stuff if we’re going to have a snowball’s chance.”

Dagmar’s disapproval became contrition. She grabbed a handful of her hair and shoved it back. “Oh, shit, the physicist. I haven’t done that. I’m sorry, sir, I keep getting distracted by some new …” She paused, searching for a word.

“Crisis? Catastrophe? Disaster? Cluster fuck?” I suggested.

The COO sighed. “All of the above, sir. I’ll get on it now. Or at least I’ll try,” she said and left.

The high-backed leather chair beckoned to me. It was a lot more comfortable than the executive chair behind the desk, and the reasons weren’t all physical. I sat down, sighed, and closed my eyes, but it didn’t keep my mind from whirling like a pinwheel.
Breathe, relax. Breathe, relax.

Jeannette’s voice came over the intercom. “Sir, your brother-in-law is on line two.”

“Did he say what he wants?”

“He says he has an investment opportunity for you.”

I sighed, drummed my fingers on my knee, and considered my eldest sister’s husband. Ever since Amelia had brought him home, Brent van Gelder had some get-rich-quick-scheme. None of them had ever panned out, and it had made him resentful. I resented him because it was Amelia’s work as a surgeon at Mass General that kept the family afloat, and I thought he was a burden to my sister.

“Tell him I’m in a meeting and I’ll call him back.”

“Yes, sir.”

Since the discreet announcement that I was the new CEO of Lumina Enterprises had appeared in the
Wall Street Journal
, I’d been getting calls from old college chums and high school buddies. Funny thing was I never remembered any of these people being particularly friendly to me. Then I became Bill Gates and suddenly they had a very different memory of all the good times back in the day.

My gaze fell on the morning’s
New York Times
. It had been inexpertly refolded and left on the edge of the granite desk. I pulled it over, and then rubbed the tips of my fingers together, trying to remove the sticky aftermath of a jelly smear. Coffee stains had set the words to weeping. Someone had started the crossword, and given up with a scrawl of red ink across the puzzle. Probably Sam. Patience wasn’t her strong suit, and she didn’t look like the type who could do the
Times
crossword.

I started scanning the
Times
. Papers have always been filled with news of tragedy, but now there were so many stories there was no longer room for lighter news about actors’ relationships, movie reviews, and heartwarming features about
dog saves owner
. It was a deluge of death, and the numbers were staggering.
Bombs and mortars in Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city, kill two thousand.

My eyes skipped away to another story and I read—