Maxie’s Demon (28 page)

‘Big fun, huh? Big yocks! An’ you can do that any time you
like!’

‘Dat or anyt’ing!’

‘Scatter yer foes, win yer friends, sweep aside all as stands in yer path!’

The women whooped suddenly. ‘Oh! See! Here’s one you would be free of, would you not?’

‘A millstone! An ass!’

‘No, an ox with horns!’ She made the two-handed Latin gesture. ‘Make an ox of this one,
senor!’

The men laughed
raucously and they stepped aside with mocking bows to show me Dee,
skullcap askew, clambering laboriously out of the manhole. He blinked around at them, astonished. I didn’t blame him. They were sounding less and less like angels. And if they were false, then what else might be? But I could guess he wasn’t ready to face that, not yet – maybe never.

And meanwhile he’d go on doing Kelley’s work for him, till it was just too late. Innocent he might be, but he was
deadly dangerous. And for the first time I had a way to deal with dangers. And if he disappeared, and Kelley, there was Jane Dee …

I raised my hands, palm out, and felt the light boil down my arms. Dee’s jaw dropped as a corona of fire leaped between them.

‘If I can do something like that,’ I grated, ‘then I can send you bastards hopping first!’ I swung round at the bandits, expecting some kind
of counterblast. But the light blazed again in a shimmering film, like an iridescent soap bubble mirroring a fire, and they stepped back from me, one step, two. I gasped with relief and excitement, and poured out more power. Their green uniforms shone suddenly luminous, tingeing their faces with the colour. It grew into a misty, muddy green glow, and they threw their arms wide as if enjoying a
shower.

The dark women
giggled. ‘Play with it as you will,
caro mio Maxie!
You do but return to us what is ours!’

‘What is ourselves! What can be you! What cannot hurt us!’

The moustachioed man nodded. ‘Feels good, huh, Maxie? Go on – use it, enjoy it, get the feel of it!’

‘Get to like it!’

‘And when ye be a-ready, my lad—’

‘We’ll be there!’

For a minute the red glow and the green seemed
to meet and merge like whirling oil films, then blackness bulged up through them. The shadows were drained of presence. They’d buggered off.

I felt – I didn’t know what. Uncomfortable. Itchy. Weak. For a minute there I’d been eight feet tall – no, twenty. And untouchable. God, it
was
just like dope, the best, the purest. And now the rush had set in. Only dope’s never much use for making you really
do anything; you just think you’re doing it. That makes keeping off the stuff a lot easier, for me. A freaked-out hijack driver’s a self-solving problem. But this was something else. Frightening when I couldn’t control it – but maybe now I was learning …

I hadn’t needed Dee, this time, anyhow. There he stood, alone under the streetlamps, weirdly out of place against the made-up face looking down
on him. And he was between me and the manhole.

‘Shift, Doc,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘Why must you forever flee me?’ the old man demanded. He looked anxious but stern. ‘Ever and again you have agreed to let us assist you, and we mean you naught but good!’

‘Oh yeah.
You
mean, you mean! But who’s asking you?’

He stepped back,
affronted. ‘I know not what you say! But if you will not
confide in me, at least respect the angelic forces that also pursue you! The hounds of Heaven in quest of a human soul!’

‘Hounds, yes! But Heaven’s?’

He blinked. ‘But whose else?’

‘You tell me. Or go ask Brother Edward. If he isn’t half breaking somebody’s arm, the way he got me to agree to the ceremony. Ask him why the power they give me just let me turn a man into something horrible. Ask
him why they stood around and laughed!’

‘Laughed? I find that hard to credit.’

I sighed. ‘Yes, you do, don’t you? And that’s why I’m not sticking around with you. So stop tailing me, or … I raised my hands, and the red glare grew in them. It danced on the old man’s beard, but he didn’t move a step. Breathing hard, I forced them down again. I
really
didn’t like this. ‘See that? That’s the angelic
power. That’s what Brother Edward wants to pick up at this ceremony. It scares me, it really fucking scares me. But what scares me most is the feeling that
he’d
be right at home—Are you going to move?’

He
just stood there, obstinately. I took a step towards him, ready to rush. He stood fast, lifted his staff slightly. Fear and anger bubbled up together. Red and green sparks crackled at my fingertips.
Enough of this shit! I’d never need to run from anyone, ever again.

That’s what I did, though. The last Derby favourite should have left the tape that fast. I liked the old bugger, couldn’t help it, angry or not; and one giant cockroach was enough for one night, and more. Better just to find another manhole cover.

Only there didn’t seem to be any. Not one. Maybe I was just looking down the wrong
streets, or maybe there was something more to it. I wandered around those winding little streets for what felt like hours, trying to orient myself by the shadow of the castle. Then drizzle came on and I lost that, too. There were plenty of people about, some of them spoke German, but you try to ask your way after you’ve been strolling around in the sewers for a few hours. Everywhere I showed
up, conversations faltered, folk suddenly crossed the street and back again, when I did too.

It made me almost glad of the rain. When I found myself back at the river, I felt like taking a swim; I couldn’t have been much wetter. There was another bridge here, and across on the far bank a huge ritzy building, brightly lit and hung about with those gaudy posters, with folk in penguin suits and
long dresses streaming out into waiting limos and horse-drawn carriages. Old World elegance, before the First World War blew it away; and I could have modelled for the other side of that particular coin. I felt fit for the gutter; hell, I felt
like
the gutter, with water coming down my neck and out my trouser leg.

Then a
deeper chill took the same route in reverse, and it wasn’t the water. I
started across the bridge, staring, ignoring the hurrying figures with umbrellas who swerved suddenly out of my way. The same posters, the same face staring out of them; and behind the Art Deco convention and the pseudo-Chinese make-up, I knew it only too well.

There was a stage door round the side, surrounded by a whole load of exquisites with wilted flowers. When I pushed through them, though,
they stepped aside with silent respect, brushing hastily at their tailcoats. Inside the door was guarded by the usual crusty old oaf behind a little window, who leaned out with moustache bristling, then jerked back hastily as I grinned at him, and hit his head. By the time he got out I was past him and scuttling down the backstage corridors. What I was after should be easy to find, made to be.
It was. It was all the red velvet around the door, and the neat little name card.
Mme Marty
.

I went straight in, without knocking. There was a squeak of horror as a startled maid sprang up; but it wasn’t her I was looking at. ‘You owe me a cloak,’ I said.

She stood up, slowly. She was wearing about the same as when I last saw her, or maybe less. But it was a lot fancier, all silk and lace and
La Vie Parisienne;
and she was used to being looked at that way, you could tell. But outwardly, at least, she hadn’t changed. Not one bit.

‘Do
I know you?’ she demanded. The maid was staring in terror, with her handkerchief to her nose. She must have thought I was some kind of maniac.

‘You said you sang well, Elina. Got to admit, you had it right.’

‘My name is Em …’ She stopped, and stared,
and nodded, quite calmly. ‘So, wizard. You too?’

‘No. I came by a different route. We met just this morning.’

She nodded at that, too. Completely cold, completely unsurprised. ‘The cloak was useful –
shut up that whimpering, girl!
So what do you want? Blackmail? You’re welcome to see who would believe you.’

‘No. Just help. Nothing very much.’ She shrugged, and reached for her purse on the dressing
table. ‘Not money,’ I said.

‘Well, what then? I am expecting a gentleman caller soon.’

‘I want—’ I paused. What would they have, in these times? ‘I want a change of clothes, dry ones, decent ones. I want a pair of rubber boots, and some kind of lantern or flashlight. I want some food, something I can carry. And I suppose this theatre’s got some sort of connections to the sewer systems. I want
to know where those are.’

She let out a sudden raucous laugh – pure Melina Mercouri, very Greek. I got the idea it wasn’t something she did very often. Her face was smooth and unlined, except for little dimples of bad temper flanking her mouth. ‘
Christos Soter!
Well, each to their own. Marie –
Marie!
Telephone down to wardrobe for a good suit and overcoat to fit this … gentleman. Something practical,
a hunting outfit, perhaps? Very good. And to the bar for some sandwiches. Then ask Josef to bring up boots, not too large, and a lantern, at once. And tell the Baron he must wait. And before you go – open a window. Well, wizard?’

‘Very
well, El … Emilia.’ She shrugged again, sprawled inelegantly on a couch, lit up a long black cigarette and exhaled the smoke around her face. In that graceless
pose she exposed about as much as the peepshow girls, and clearly cared even less. She didn’t seem to have any more questions. She adapted fast; but then I guessed she’d had plenty of practice.

I felt weirdly alone. It was like sharing a room with a Martian.

‘Well, Emilia,’ I said conversationally, ‘how’s it feel to have been – what? fifteen? – for three hundred years?’

And I wished I hadn’t
asked, because she told me, all in the same quietly unemotional tone. Just as well the maid came back when she did, with Moustache Josef in tow. I might have been ready to leap out of the window otherwise, into the river.

Josef bristled when he saw me. Evidently he’d have quite cheerfully built a flight of steps for the sheer pleasure of throwing me down them. But he took his orders from Elina/Emilia
without so much as a word, evidently as enthralled by her icy magnetism as the maid. It was beginning to get to me, too. It was almost purely sexual, but refined to a point as sharp and cold as a needle. You had the idea she’d do almost anything, and do it superbly, and with the same vast indifference as anything else. If she could project that off a stage, no wonder she was so big around
here.

She watched while
I changed, with the unblinking interest of a crocodile, but said nothing – not until I was tying an extraordinary string tie. Then she said suddenly, ‘I gave one or two people the formula. Most did not survive it. Do you want it?’

That really made me hesitate. Even if I didn’t want it myself … If she still had the recipe for that stuff, we could clean up the health-store
business, for a start. They’d go nuts.

But five minutes of listening to her had had its effect. And there’d be all those lawsuits for the ones that didn’t survive. ‘N … no. No thanks!’

‘As you please. A friend has it for now, anyway. Or rather his heirs. Are you ready now?’

I surveyed myself in her mirrors. Loden coat and leather plus fours, tucked into stiff rubber-coated riding boots, a trace
large. ‘Fine. Thanks, Emilia.’

‘Hardly worth it. Josef will see you out. But before you go—’

I heard a new note in her voice, almost like interest. ‘Yes?’

‘You are from a time to come, it seems. Am I still famous, then?’

‘In opera? You could be, for all I know. Not my thing. But I’ll look out for you, if I ever get back. Maybe come and see you.’

She shrugged. ‘Of course. Come by a different
route, though.’

‘OK, OK. And thanks.’

That was as emotional
as the leavetaking got. It was almost a relief to encounter the warm human hatred of Josef, as he took me down endless stairs into the bowels of the building. No vacancies for phantoms here; this was quite a new building, and very well planned. Josef was absolutely fanatical about every detail; clearly he thought he owned it, as these
college-porter types commonly do. And he turned out to be a positive enthusiast about the sewers, and warmed to my evident interest.

‘Yes, yes, we’ve had them here since the house was built, in 1881 – it burned down before opening, you know, and we rebuilt it! The sewers, yes – we were the first in this quarter to get them, though they’re extending them out to the east of the New Town, where
I live.’ He puffed out his beard. ‘Eventually. In about fifty years, maybe. Or a hundred!’

‘Sounds about right – can you show me which way the latest stuff is? Out that way and along?’

I congratulated myself on the idea, as I plished and ploshed along, turning my nice new electric lamp at the ceiling to avoid seeing what squished underfoot. I’d let myself be thrown by the Spiral, but now I was
determined to sort this crap out logically. I’d go and find the latest, the very latest stretch of sewer open today; and then look for a still newer extension. One, you see, that wasn’t built today; and so that would be bound to come up a lot nearer my time. And, strange as it may seem, that’s exactly what I found. It was newish brickwork, leading off from about where Josef said the sewers ended;
and it had arrows and numbers painted on the walls, and –
yes! –
great chunky masses of cables sprouting out of the walls here and there, as one system crossed another. If I didn’t go grabbing at the first spot of light, but took this as far as it went – and surfaced very, very carefully …

I was so
delighted I took one incautious step. What I stood on you don’t want to know, but one foot skidded
sharply out from under me on the newer, slimier surface. I staggered, waved my arms wildly, desperate not to lose my footing and fall – anything but fall. In those stiff boots it wasn’t easy. I suppose it must have looked like one of the wilder folk dances – the Sewerman’s Reel, the Shitkickers, or whatever.