Poison Sleep Read online

  “Hey,” he said, holding up a slim book with a red cover. “Can I borrow this?”

  Husch raised an eyebrow. “That is a facsimile edition of the handwritten pornography Anaïs Nin produced for her patron. It is incalculably rare.” She plucked it from his fingers. “No, you can’t borrow it. Use the Internet. There should be enough pornography there even for you.”

  Rondeau grinned. “That time we went out, you told me I should be more intellectual. I’m just trying to improve myself.”

  “I believe I actually said, ‘You’re an idiot,’” Husch replied. “It’s not quite the same thing.”

  “I’ve got high hopes for you crazy kids,” Marla said. “Now let’s go.”

  2

  R ondeau drove back to Felport at a more sedate pace, seeming to take some delight in the wintry landscapes unrolling past them—the bare snowy fields, the icy ponds, the trees sparkling with frost. The main road back to the city was mostly plowed, with mountains of snow piled up on either side, much cleaner than the snow heaps that lined the streets in Marla’s city—those were the ugly brown of car exhaust, when they weren’t the black of a thousand tromping snow boots. God, she missed Felport, and she’d been gone only for the morning. Being out here under this open sky triggered Marla’s agoraphobia. She missed the comfort of buildings and brick walls and chain-link fences. The morning hadn’t been a waste of time, exactly, but it was annoying, and she had things to do. Better get her head back in the game.

  “Rondeau, I need you to call Langford when we get back home. Maybe he can come up with a way to sniff out Genevieve.”

  “Why not call Gregor?” Rondeau said. “He’s Mr. Omens-and-auguries, right? Couldn’t he just swing a razor on a string over a map or something and find her?”

  “Fuck Gregor. He hasn’t returned my calls in a week. He’s been a pain in my ass for years, and I don’t want to owe him any favors. He’s supposed to meet with me and the rest of the muckety-mucks about disbursing Susan Wellstone’s property. If I ask him for help today, I might have to give him something good next week. I know he’s had his eye on Susan’s penthouse, and the apartment building under it.” Susan had been one of Felport’s most prominent sorcerers, but she’d relocated last month to take a leading role in San Francisco’s magical underworld. She’d taken her personal possessions with her, but her property and business interests in the city were to be distributed among the other important sorcerers. And, as first among equals, Marla was in charge of doing the distributing, which meant she could have a lot of people owing her favors in a few days…and a lot of people seriously pissed about not getting what they wanted. Susan was probably laughing her ass off on the West Coast. She’d never liked Marla much.

  “I’d look good in Susan’s penthouse,” Rondeau said.

  Marla snorted. “The building’s full of booby traps. I doubt she deactivated all of them, either. Leaving a few would be her idea of a joke. You’d wind up splattered on the ceiling. Besides, you’re more in the way of a family retainer than a big bad sorcerer. I’d never hear the end of it if I gave you something prime.”

  Rondeau didn’t seem to take offense, but then, he’d often said sidekicks got the best view of the action. “Okay, so you’ll call Langford when you get back.”

  She sighed. “No, you’ll call Langford, and then you’ll drive me over to meet this new guy, Joshua Kindler—”

  “No can do. The ladies’ toilets in my club are all clogged, and I need to get them fixed before we open tonight.”

  “Rondeau. What’s more important? Your toilets, or the fate of the world?”

  He scowled. “Don’t give me that. Every little thing you need doesn’t involve the fate of the world. You tried that line on me last week when you needed your laundry done. You can catch a cab to see this Joshua guy, you know.”

  Marla slouched down in the passenger seat. She had been leaning on Rondeau a lot lately, sometimes for rather trivial shit. But she couldn’t help it. This upcoming disbursement of Susan’s property had taken a lot of her attention. Some of the sorcerers were resorting to sweet talk, while others were making subtle threats. They all knew Marla wasn’t to be trifled with, but she’d been chief sorcerer of Felport for only three years, very much a late arrival to the corridors of power. Most of the other sorcerers had been squabbling among themselves and running things in Felport for decades. There were a lot of complicated relationships to consider, and handing out Susan’s holdings without setting off feuds was going to be delicate. Marla had risen to her position through her willingness to do dirty jobs, her talent for making quick decisions, and her unrivaled ability to flatten those who opposed her—not because she was good at negotiating or making people happy. Diplomacy was alien to her, and though her consiglieri, Hamil, was trying to teach her, the lessons, combined with her usual responsibilities, didn’t leave much time to deal with minor problems. “Fuck, Rondeau, what am I supposed to do? I forgot to eat yesterday, you know? I need help.”

  “You saying you’re in over your head?”

  “I can handle the important stuff. It’s just…”

  “The less important stuff. Laundry. Phone calls. Making sure you eat. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “You need a personal assistant,” Rondeau said. “Why waste a man of my talents on things like that?”

  “Huh.” She’d never considered hiring a p.a., but it wasn’t like she couldn’t afford to pay someone to keep her shit straight. Money wasn’t an issue these days, but she’d spent too many years sleeping rough and living cheap to remember that. “That’s not a bad idea. We just have to find somebody. And quick. I’m only going to get busier in the next few days.”

  Rondeau scratched his chin. “There’s some loose apprentices rolling around who haven’t joined up with the Honeyed Knots or the Four Tree Gang. I could ask—”

  “No, I don’t want some little cantrip-throwing climber who wants to improve his own status by standing next to me. Constantly bugging me for pointers and trying to steal my magical talismans, which he’ll refuse to believe I don’t even use. I need somebody who doesn’t care about this business at all.”

  Rondeau groaned. “You want an ordinary? And how do we explain it to her when, like, blood starts dripping from the ceiling, or some out-of-towner crackling with eldritch energies comes around looking for trouble?”

  Marla shrugged. “It’s not like that stuff happens daily. We’ll deal with it when it happens. You’d rather have a wannabe sorcerer in your club, who knows just enough to be dangerous? The place could wind up a smoking crater in the ground because some ex-apprentice tried to light a cigarette with magic instead of a match.”

  “Fine, okay, hire an ordinary. But don’t expect me to nurse her through her rude awakening when she realizes the world is full of mysterious horrors and et cetera.”

  “Great. Line up some interviews.”

  Rondeau swore. “I thought this was supposed to make less work for me. What, do I just put a notice in the classifieds? Take out an ad on Craigslist?”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Marla said.

  “Maybe an ad that says something like ‘Attractive eighteen-to twenty-two-year-old woman sought for demanding position—’”

  “No,” Marla said. “Get a man. I don’t need you sexually harassing my assistant.” She paused. “Better make it an ugly man. I know you.”

  “You just took all the fun out of this.”

  She grinned. “At least this way you can concentrate on unclogging your toilet instead of doing my laundry.”

  “You do have a way of putting things in perspective.”

  An hour later they reached the outskirts of Felport, its ungainly skyline filling the horizon. Marla relaxed, tension in her shoulders bleeding away. This was her city. She was bound to it, sworn to protect it, and leaving it even for a morning made her antsy. Her trip to San Francisco the month before on life-or-death business had only intensified her desire to stay close to home. She’d found her l
ife’s purpose in the decaying rust-belt grandeur of Felport, and she loved every dank alley and dirty rooftop of the place.

  “Maybe you forget to eat, but I could go for a burger,” Rondeau said. “Want to stop by Smitty’s for a bite before we head back in?”

  Marla glanced skyward. It was a bright clear cold day, and the sun stood just past noon. She had a little time before she was supposed to meet the beautiful boy Hamil had found. “Sure.”

  Rondeau pulled into the parking lot at Smitty’s, an old-school diner that had once served a busy railroad crowd, back when Felport was more of a hub for trains. Now the tracks were mostly torn up, and only old-timers came to Smitty’s. Marla took her leather shoulder bag with her. She hated lugging the thing, but it contained her cloak, her dagger of office, the sense-annihilating stones, and miscellaneous bits of personal ordnance. Not stuff she could leave in the Bentley. Any thieves who tried to boost the car would have an unpleasant experience ahead of them, but better safe, especially in this part of town.

  Marla and Rondeau sat at the worn counter and ordered from the surprisingly sprightly waitress, who kept the coffee coming without prompting. By the end of the meal Marla was almost content. Sure, there was a crazy psychic fugitive on the loose, but Marla could track her down. She’d recruit the beautiful boy, who would help with delicate negotiations, and hire a personal assistant to ease some of the pressure on her. Things would work out.

  When they returned to the mostly empty parking lot, Marla eased into the passenger side of the Bentley. The door had already clicked closed by the time she realized there was someone sitting in the backseat. Before she could turn, she felt the prick of a blade at the back of her neck, just below the base of her skull. “Crap,” she said. “And I was having such a good day.” She cut her eyes to the left, and saw Rondeau sitting stiffly, hands on the wheel, eyes wide. Probably a knife at his neck, too, which meant the guy in the backseat—how had she not seen him?—was sitting awkwardly, with both arms outstretched. If she could signal Rondeau, and time it right—

  “Do not move. My name is Albertus Kardec. I am a slow assassin.”

  Marla exhaled. No point trying to surprise this guy. If he was telling the truth, she was dead already. Slow assassins didn’t fail. But…the whole point of a slow assassin was to create dread in the victim, and make their last days—or months or years—haunted and miserable. If the victim didn’t know there was a slow assassin after them, they wouldn’t be looking over their shoulder constantly, wondering when the inevitable strike would come, trying fruitlessly to escape their fate. Nobody had ever let Marla know she was marked. “You aren’t here for me,” she said. “What, then, for Rondeau? Are you shitting me? I can’t believe he’s ever pissed off anyone who could afford to hire you.”

  Kardec chuckled. “I am not here for either of you. We have received…inquiries…about you, Ms. Mason, but the price we set has so far been too high for any would-be clients to accept.”

  Marla didn’t know whether to be flattered that the most accomplished group of hired killers in the world apparently had such respect for her, or annoyed that more than one person had contacted them about putting a hit out on her. Actually, that was kind of flattering, too. “So if you aren’t here for murder most foul, what do you want?”

  The knife withdrew. He’d made his point, she supposed. She turned in her seat to face him. Kardec was a mild-looking man of middle years, with thinning hair, dressed all in black. She expected the residue of a look-away spell to sparkle around his edges, but there was nothing. He’d avoided being seen just by sitting very still and being one with the shadows. Any doubt Marla had about his identity dissolved. You had to be pretty badass to do a trick like that without magic, and it was the kind of thing the slow assassins taught. “I am the outreach coordinator for my organization,” Kardec said. “I’ve come to you, in your capacity as a civic leader, to inform you of some activity in your city. I am here with a few of my colleagues to apprehend a criminal.”

  “Since when do you guys do law enforcement?”

  He smiled, showing small, perfect teeth. “We enforce the laws of our organization, of course.”

  The light dawned. “Ohhh. You’ve got a deserter, huh?” She’d heard stories of men and women who went into the slow assassins, learned some tricks of the trade, and then tried to freelance. Marla had never heard of a deserter living more than a few months. The slow assassins didn’t bother drawing things out when settling such internal…disagreements.

  “Yes. He calls himself Zealand.”

  Marla frowned. “I’ve heard of him. He’s been working as a freelance hitter for a long time, Mr. Kardec. He’s one of yours?”

  “Oh, yes,” Kardec said. “He is not some initiate who broke under the stress of the patience we require. He completed our whole course with great aplomb, and took a twenty-year contract as his first.”

  Marla whistled. The slow assassins would stalk their victims for as long as the customer wanted, though of course the victim never knew how long they had. Six-month contracts weren’t too expensive—more than a normal contract killing, but nothing mortgaging a nice house wouldn’t cover—but the longer the term, the pricier it got. She couldn’t imagine how much money it would take to hire a slow assassin to stalk a victim for twenty years. Even she probably couldn’t afford it.

  “At first,” Kardec went on, “we thought he was engaged in his duty. He introduced himself to his victim, and pursued at a reasonable pace as the victim attempted to flee. But at some point Zealand…got bored. He began taking other contracts, secretly. Simple murders and assassinations. We don’t approve of such moonlighting. Eventually his actions came to light, and we sent a crew to apprehend him.” He frowned. “They were all killed. At that point, some dozen years ago, Zealand went completely rogue, abandoning his first target.” Kardec shook his head. “If we’d started him on something easier, a two-year contract, perhaps…but who knows. Zealand likes killing, and has made a nice living doing so. We’ve been after him for years, but he is a hard man to catch, and, of course, he is very familiar with our techniques. But we have finally had some good fortune. He was seen here in Felport by one of our operatives, an assassin who studied with him years ago. We don’t know what he’s doing, who his target is, or who has employed him, but we’ll find out.”

  “You want me to get in touch if I hear anything?”

  Kardec produced a business card and handed it over. “My cell number. Please do. But don’t spread the word too far—we don’t want to spook Zealand. I was more concerned with you…overreacting…if you noticed the presence of several dangerous individuals in your city.” He smiled thinly. “It is true that we value contracts above all other considerations, but we don’t wish to cause any unnecessary trouble.”

  “Understood,” Marla said. “Thanks for the heads-up. And next time you try to touch me, with a knife or anything else, you’ll have a spurting stump where your hand used to be. And I’m not speaking metaphorically.”

  Kardec slipped out of the Bentley, walking swiftly away to disappear among the derelict train cars.

  “This has been a crappy morning,” Rondeau said, starting the car. “It’s not fair that I’ve got a clogged toilet in my future and you’ve got a beautiful man in yours.”

  Marla snorted. “I’m not going to see Joshua because he’s pretty, Rondeau.”

  “Oh? I thought being pretty was the only thing he had to offer.”

  “Touché.”

  3

  M arla mistrusted cabdrivers—they all reported to somebody, even if they didn’t realize it—so she waited for a bus on the corner near Rondeau’s club. He owned the place, having inherited it from the previous owner, a troubled pharmacomancer named Juliana, but Marla kept an office upstairs in a spare bedroom of Rondeau’s apartment, and did a lot of business there.

  The bus arrived almost twenty minutes late. It was mid-afternoon on a weekday, so there weren’t many people on board, aside from a few street p
eople trying to keep warm, most of whom she recognized. One, in the very back, was an unfamiliar face—middle-aged, slumped, glassy-eyed, wrapped in a beaten camouflage coat. Marla wasn’t dressed all that differently, having changed in her office, trading her cloak for an old brown overcoat. The cloak and her dagger of office were locked up in a secure safe, protected by all sorts of nasty anti-personnel magic. Marla had a special fondness for martial magic in all forms, and collected destructive spells whenever she could. She dropped into a seat near the stranger, curious. There was the briefest of pauses before she glanced at the guy and commented, “You smell.”

  He cocked his head and smiled, showing coffee-stained teeth. There was whiskey on his breath. He’d probably been handsome once, but now his face was lined and he looked exhausted. Marla expected a perfunctory “Fuck you,” but instead he said, “I can take a shower and get the stink off, but you’ll still be a bitch.”

  Marla wrinkled her nose. “I’ve never smelled you on this bus before. You new in town?”

  “Been here a few days. What’re you, the world’s rudest social worker?”

  She shrugged. “None of my business if you freeze to death. Not many people come to Felport in the winter. There are nicer places to sit out the end of the year.”

  “There are colder places, too. Some places, they make Felport look like a tropical paradise in comparison.”

  “So, what, you used to stink up Siberia or something?”

  “Been everywhere, done everything, don’t need to explain myself to you.”

  “Amen to that,” Marla said amiably. She always enjoyed a little impromptu back-and-forth. The slight bristle of hostility reaffirmed her faith in human nature. “Got a place to stay?”

  “I’ll get by.”

  “I bet you will.”

  “Why, you offering to share your bed?”

  “There’s not enough soap in the world, Stinky. You might check out the Marlo Street underpass though, down by the docks. Some good people there, they won’t steal your shit, and there’s enough of them all together to keep the punks and crackheads on good behavior.”