Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9) Read online

  Bradley had gradually come to believe in the other theory, though: that oracle generators lent their psychic strength to real supernatural creatures that otherwise hovered below the level of perception, giving them depth and heft and, sometimes, a terrible autonomy. Rondeau was right to be afraid of his power. It could conjure up dangerous things.

  Ghosts weren’t usually dangerous, though. They were sometimes fragmentary, stubborn remnants of a deceased individual’s strong emotion—not the soul itself, but the soul’s fingernail clippings, its blood stains, or the echoes of its last screams, retaining the shrapnel of a personality. Other ghosts were the remnants of people strong-willed (or unhinged) enough to avoid entering the underworld at all, stuck dwelling in an Earthbound purgatory of their own making, and generally driven mad by the experience. Still others were like shadows cast from the underworld into the material world, projections of larger-than-life figures who’d passed on: those ghosts belonged to sorcerers of extraordinary power, mostly. This ghost felt like the latter sort to Bradley. Emperor Norton was in the underworld, but his connection to the city he’d loved was still powerful, and his attention could be drawn at the site of his death. B thought the emperor could project his form here, with the proper encouragement.

  “Your majesty,” Bradley said. “Could I have a word?”

  The air before Bradley flickered. Rondeau grunted, but Pelly didn’t react. Whatever was happening was below the level of non-psychic perception, apparently, at least so far. That was good. Bradley sitting down on the sidewalk hadn’t drawn so much as a glance from passers-by, but a truly visible ghost would. Something inside his head tugged, like a fishhook was embedded in his frontal lobes, and Bradley exercised mental discipline to grab that line and pull it. Slowly, slowly –

  The shimmer in the air snapped into focus. Emperor Norton, a dignified old man in a uniform of his own making (something between that of a drum major and a doorman) and wearing a battered top hat, stood on the sidewalk, looking down at Bradley. He had a doleful and distracted air. Bradley rose shakily to his feet, beads of sweat popping up on his brow. Calling up oracles was purely mental work, but it took a physical toll.

  “I am always happy to hear the entreaties of my subjects.” The Emperor’s voice seemed to come from a long way off, filled with echoes and sonic tribulations.

  “Your majesty, I seek news of the underworld.”

  The Emperor shook his head slowly. “That is a realm where my rule does not reach, young man.”

  “I need only knowledge, not action, sir. Can you tell me the whereabouts of the Bride of Death?” Marla always seemed more amused than irritated by the name her cultists had chosen to give her. It was accurate, after all: she was a god by marriage.

  “The Dread Queen,” the Emperor murmured. “I –” He turned his head, frowning. “The walls of my palace tremble, young man. This is not information to be lightly given.”

  “Then name your price.” Bradley had learned long ago to never give an oracle carte blanche, but to always define the terms of the bargain up front. Usually the oracles didn’t want anything too difficult: things that took time and effort, actions to honor or soothe, or to make small changes in the physical world that the oracles couldn’t manage themselves.

  “I—there is a power greater than myself here, you understand. I am an emperor, but I serve at the pleasure of the sovereign of Hell.”

  “You deny me?” Bradley felt the hook in his mind wriggle, and almost pull free, but he held it tight. Sometimes oracles couldn’t do as he asked—their levels of knowledge and power varied—but he’d never encountered one that wouldn’t: usually they just set a terribly high price if they were reluctant, and then it was a question of how much Bradley was willing to pay.

  “It is not I who deny –”

  A hand appeared, skin the color of bronze, resting on the emperor’s shoulder. There was a wrist attached, but that was all—the limb was cut off beyond that, like it belonged to someone else, reaching into the frame of a shot in a film. The emperor turned his head, looking at the unseen figure, and the stricken expression of terror on his face was so total and bleak that Bradley shrank back in sympathetic fear. The emperor nodded, as if agreeing with some unheard comment or command, then turned his face back to Bradley. “You must accept my apol –”

  Bradley screamed and fell to his knees as the hook was ripped from his mind, and Norton vanished. Bradley thought, Shit, am I lobotomized, would I even know if I was lobotomized, does wondering about it mean I’m not –

  Rondeau helped him up, and Pelham pressed a handkerchief against his forehead. There was some healing magic soaked in the cloth—Pelly was full of little tokens like that—and a soothing wave of relief washed through Bradley’s head, taking the pain away. He leaned against the wall of the cathedral. A couple of concerned passers-by were asking if Bradley was all right, and Rondeau said, “Just a migraine, he’ll be okay, we’ll take him home.”

  Though the pain of having the oracle ripped away was gone, Bradley was still terribly unsteady on his feet. Rondeau and Pelham supported him, one on either side, like he was a drunken guest of honor at the end of a bachelor party. A woman stopped in the middle of the sidewalk: a tall redhead in oversized sunglasses, a form-fitting dark blue dress, and heels so high the sight of them gave Bradley vertigo. “You look like a mess!” she exclaimed. “You poor dear. Isn’t it a little early to be quite that drunk?”

  “It’s only early if you didn’t start last night,” Rondeau said. “Didn’t I see you in a bookstore yesterday?”

  “Who reads books anymore?” She patted Rondeau’s cheek. “It’s too early to try and pick up women on the street, too, sweetie.” She glanced at the cathedral. “Oh, good old Emperor Norton. He was really my kind of guy. One of my people, you know?”

  Bradley lifted his head, with some effort, and looked at the woman, hard, with his full-spectrum vision... but she just seemed like an ordinary woman, on the near side of middle-aged, with a grin that wanted to eat the world. Which meant she either was an ordinary person, just one who’d made an improbably well-timed non-sequitur... or she was something so powerful she was able to hide her power even from a psychic as perceptive as Bradley.

  “Wait,” Rondeau said. “How did you –”

  “Toodles, gents.” She sauntered off.

  “Should I follow her?” Pelly said.

  “Yeah. Though don’t worry much if you lose her.” Rondeau’s voice was grim. “I think she’s following us. I’m ninety-eight percent sure that’s the woman I saw sunbathing in Death Valley, and a hundred percent sure she was in the bookshop yesterday.”

  Pelly frowned, nodded, and set off after the woman. It was hard to imagine the small man as a capable operative when it came to tailing someone, but from what Bradley had heard, Pelham was a man of many talents, and came from a long line of people trained from birth to be perfect assistants and helpmeets to sorcerers.

  Bradley straightened away from Rondeau’s support, testing his ability to hold his own weight. He was wobbly, but not so unstable he expected to fall over.

  Rondeau looked down the street, watching Pelham disappear around a corner. “We should ask Cole about local redheaded sorcerers, because she’s clearly taken an interest in us.”

  “Yes,” Bradley said. “But first take me someplace where I can eat a hundred eggs. Calling up that ghost took a lot out of me, and we didn’t get much at all in return.”

  “Sure we did,” Rondeau said. “You didn’t notice? You’re supposed to be the perceptive one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, who in the underworld can tell a dead soul to shut up, and actually pull him out of your summoning spell?”

  “I don’t really have a complete understanding of the underworld—I’ve only been there once—but... Death could, I guess, or Marla.”

  Rondeau nodded. “That sure wasn’t Marla’s hand on the emperor’s shoulder. And it wasn’t Death’s, either. Every time I’
ve seen that guy, he’s had a ring on every single finger, flashing a different gemstone in each one. That means there’s someone else down there bossing people around. I think something’s rotten in the state of Hades, B.”

  “I don’t know. They’re gods, they can look like whatever they want.”

  Rondeau shrugged. “Yeah, sure. I could be crazy wrong. But I’m curious. Summoning up an oracle didn’t work. Maybe it’s time to appeal to a higher power.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like your boss, or brother, or dad, or other self, or whatever,” Rondeau said. “The all-seeing Big B.”

  A Terrible Tipper

  Matt leaned on the counter, looking at the sun shimmer on the lack of cars in the parking lot. The diner was in a deeper-than-usual mid-afternoon lull, with no customers in the place at all excepting a redhead in a back booth who hadn’t taken off her sunglasses.

  The new waitress, Mel, was keeping busy anyway, marrying ketchups and refilling napkin dispensers. He wasn’t sure what to make of her. She had some kind of trouble behind her, that was for sure—probably on the run from an abusive husband, if he had to guess—but she was tough as hell, no-nonsense, and a hard worker. He was pretty sure she’d work out. She was in her early thirties at the outside, so still plenty young enough to make a new life out of the ashes of whatever she’d left behind. A little too severe to be called pretty, but she was hardly homely, and she could catch a better man than the one she’d run away from, Matt figured, if that was her inclination. Though she didn’t much seem like she needed a man, or anyone at all, for that matter.

  The redhead lifted a hand, and Mel headed over to her booth. “You need anything else?”

  “Not at all.” The redhead dabbed at her lips with a napkin. A plate of fluffy scrambled eggs and link sausages sweating grease sat nearly untouched on her plate, though she’d eaten about half the toast. “I am delighted with your service. You remind me very much of a woman I used to know. Have you ever been to Hawaii?”

  “Waiting tables doesn’t pay quite that well,” Mel said. “Besides, who needs Hawaii? I don’t like swimming, and when it comes to sand, there’s plenty of that right here in Arizona.”

  “Mmm. The woman you remind me of... I owe a lot to her. I owe my life to her, if I’m entirely honest.”

  “Honesty’s the best policy, so I’m told.”

  “I wouldn’t go quite that far—Mel, is it? Here. Take this. You can start saving up for a trip to the islands.” The redhead passed something to Mel, then rose and sashayed out of the diner like she was walking on a fashion-show runway someplace. Now she could get any man she set her sights on, Matt reckoned, even if she was pushing forty. Hell, age was no drawback in this case. You couldn’t sway like that without years of practice.

  “That’s a woman who could make you forget your vows,” Matt said. “I don’t believe I can even remember my wife’s name right now.”

  “You’re a sexist pig, Matt.” Mel didn’t put much acid into the comment, though. She was looking down into her hand. “She left me a hundred dollar tip on a twelve-dollar check.”

  Matt whistled. “That makes up a bit for how slow it’s been today, I reckon.”

  “There’s that. Something funny about her, though.”

  “Anybody who drops a hundred dollar bill on the table in a place like this is funny somehow.”

  Mel tucked the tip unselfconsciously into her bra and went to greet a handful of customers who rushed in all at once, and the next half hour was pretty busy, with Matt back behind the grill and Mel running around hard enough that he considered calling in one of the other girls to pick up the end of a shift.

  When a lull came, and Mel stepped into the back to take a slug from a bottle of water, she suddenly gasped and reached into her bra. “What the hell?” she said. She held out a handful of wet, torn leaves. “The money’s gone, and there’s this mess instead!”

  Matt blinked. “That,” he said after a moment, “is just about the shittiest magic trick I ever saw in my life.”

  The Limits of Omniscience

  Rondeau sat sipping espresso on the edge of the bed in his hotel room, even though caffeine always made him too jittery. Bradley was at the table, sticking sensibly with decaf, and Pelham sat on an armchair in the corner, fretting. He’d followed the redhead for a while the day before, but had lost track of her when she went into a shop and never came out, at least as far as he could determine. On several occasions Pelham opened his mouth, as if to say something, and then didn’t. Pelham had a way of radiating his anxiety but keeping other feelings to himself. Rondeau knew if whatever Pelham was mulling over mattered, he’d come out with it eventually, once he’d examined it from every direction first.

  “So do we light black candles and chant?” Rondeau said. “Or burn DVDs of your old movies?”

  B shook his head. “It shouldn’t come to that. Those kind of rituals are ways for mortals to get the attention of larger forces that aren’t usually aware of them on the individual level. Big B is already aware of me, the way you’re aware of your little toe, anyway, which is to say, you probably don’t think about it much unless you stub it on something.” He sighed, rolled up his right sleeve, and extended his hand over the table. Then he carefully tipped the cup of decaf coffee over, spilling a scalding stream onto the flesh of his forearm. B hissed at the pain, and the television clicked on: “Whoa, hey, self-mutilation is a really rare characteristic among us Bradleys, what’s the big idea?”

  Rondeau rose and approached the TV screen. Big B’s face was too close to the camera—though surely he wasn’t actually using a literal camera?—and they mostly had a view of him from the eyes down to just above his chin, filling the screen. “Sorry, big man,” Rondeau said. “Just wanted to get your attention.”

  B wrapped a napkin around his forearm and nodded. “I yelled at the mirror for ten minutes this morning but you never appeared.”

  Big B snorted. “Yeah, well, busy, here, and there, and everywhere, and since there are no looming existential threats in your branch of the multiverse, you’ll forgive me for not popping in for a chat.”

  “We’re worried about Mrs. Mason,” Pelham said. “She’s vanished, and we fear some terrible fate has befallen her.”

  “Or else she’s just pissed off at us and doesn’t want to hang out,” Rondeau added. “We’d like to know which one it is for sure, though.”

  “What do you say?” B asked. “Want to take a peek into our universe and let us know if you see Marla? Believe me when I say we’ve exhausted the other obvious avenues of research.”

  “I’m flattered you guys think so highly of my capabilities,” Big B said. “But it’s not that easy.”

  B frowned. “Dude, you’re omniscient and omnicognizant. Right? You’re all-seeing, as long as you bother to look?”

  Big B sighed. “How soon they forget. And by ‘they’ I mean ‘autonomous buds of my overarching consciousness,’ by which I mean, you, Little B. Yes, I can look through the multiverse, and see what’s happening anywhere in any given universe. I can even get a sense of probable futures in any particular universe, though that’s mostly a case of looking into adjacent universes where events proceeded more quickly, and seeing how things turned out there. But you have to think about the scale of what I’m talking about here, guys. It’s really, really hard for me to focus on the micro level and look for a specific person in a specific universe. You’re asking a park ranger to locate one very particular leaf in a vast wilderness area, you know? Sure, I can do it, in theory, but what a pain in the ass, especially when there are other things to deal with, like bear attacks and lost hikers and parts of the forest being on fire.”

  “You’re talking to us right now without any trouble,” Rondeau pointed out.

  “Ha. What do you know about me and my trouble? I can focus on Little B pretty easily, because he’s part of me. Likewise, Rondeau, you’ve had some success calling my attention in the past, but that’s because you’re present
ly inhabiting a body that used to belong to me—we’ve got a serious sympathetic connection going there, you know? Me and Marla have history, sure, but I’m not, like, magnetized to her in that way. But, total truth time, sure, I probably could task a non-trivial fraction of my consciousness to looking for an individual person in a specific branch of the multiverse, and locate them. But Marla’s not a person. She’s a god. She plays at being mortal every other month, but she’s still a god.”

  “So?” Rondeau said. “Marla told me you outrank gods. That you are to Earthly gods as gods are to humans.”

  Big B chewed his lip for a moment, then spoke. “That’s true, as far as it goes, but it’s not so much about ‘rank’ as it is about ‘power and responsibility.’ I have a much bigger chunk of reality to look after than your terrestrial gods do. Even the gods of death, and they’re major players, are just in charge of everything that can live and die. I have to be in charge of everything, in an ever-expanding multiverse. And, yes, I have a lot of power... but I’m only supposed to use that power to do my job. You remember the last Possible Witch?”

  Rondeau nodded. She’d been a creepy creature that looked like a woman except for her glittering, faceted eyes. Marla, in typical Marla fashion, had once threatened to beat her up.

  Big B said, “Right. The reason she got fired, by which I mean, ceased to exist, is because she strayed past the boundaries of her job description. She opened a portal to another reality, and then pretty promptly disintegrated, because instead of protecting the integrity of reality, she damaged it instead.” Big B stared at them each, hard, in turn. “The laws I’m bound by are laws of nature, guys. The realms of gods—and, I admit, the private pocket dimensions of two or three sorcerers of sufficient power—are not clearly visible to me, not the way mundane reality is. Think of me like a cop. I can absolutely kick down the doors to any godly realm or wizardly pocket dimension... but only if I have a good reason to do so. Until Marla or her husband Death do something to mess up the fabric of reality, I can’t barge in and ask them what’s going on, you know?”