Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9) (7 page)

In the bustle of the casino floor, the sudden cessation of movement drew the eye more than movement itself, so when a woman stopped dead in the middle of the carpet, looked up at the camera, and waved, Rondeau noticed. People mugged for the cameras, sometimes—and sometimes they even did it to distract from confederates who were doing more subtle things in the background—but in this case, Rondeau recognized the woman: bright red hair, white dress patterned with red diamonds, shark-eating smile.

“Get eyes on that woman, and watch where she goes,” Rondeau said, and one of his security guards relayed the instructions to the employees on the floor. Rondeau hurried out of the security room, down the unglamorous corridors that supported the dream of glitter and loss in the public areas of the casino, and emerged through a door tucked away behind a potted plant near a double line of slot machines. He wished for a super-spy radio earpiece, but settled for calling the security room on his phone. They told him the woman had walked to one of the hotel’s restaurants, the cheap one that looked like a ‘50s diner, and taken a booth in the back. Rondeau walked calmly—running in a casino didn’t create a good impression—toward the diner, pushing in through the chromed door. The hostess and servers recognized him—he had a weakness for the mint chocolate milkshakes here and stopped by a couple times a week—and he gave an affable nod. Everybody tried to look busier now that the boss was present, which wasn’t hard, as they were plenty busy anyway. After you’d just lost a lot of money, settling into a red vinyl booth and digging into an order of cheese fries and imaginary nostalgia could be a great comfort.

He went to the booth in the back, where the redhead sat stirring a spoon in a cup of coffee with the deliberation and focus of a monk spinning a prayer wheel. He slid into the booth across from her. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” he said.

She took the spoon out of the coffee, put it in her mouth, looked him in the eyes, then drew the spoon out slowly and set it on the table beside her cup. “I got bored waiting for you all to do something. I get bored easily. It’s an occupational hazard. So I went and did some things myself, and came back, and found out you all did... nothing much at all while I was gone.”

“Lady, who even
are
you? And what are you talking about? And why were you everywhere I looked a few months ago?”

“I’m hurt you don’t remember me, I’m talking about finding your missing friend, and because I was watching you, dumb-dumb.” She leaned over and patted his cheek. “Sure, I had a different face the last time we met, and I’m sure my voice sounded different, but the hair was the same, more or less. This is my real look, by the way.” She made a face and stuck out her tongue. “Or, at least, the way I looked right before I stopped being human. The first time. My biography is a little complicated.”

Rondeau stared, and something clicked in his mind, and he tried not to whimper. “You’re dead. Marla killed you.”

The redhead sipped her coffee. “No, Marla killed the
body
I was inhabiting. And then she dispersed my disembodied consciousness into the sea, diluting me throughout a pretty large portion of the ocean. She neutralized me. I don’t die that easily.” She leaned forward, showing some freckled cleavage. “Go on. Say my name.”

“You’re Elsie Jarrow.” Rondeau closed his eyes, but then he was sitting across from Elsie Jarrow with his
eyes closed
, which did not seem like a smart idea, so he opened them again. Jarrow was the most powerful and notorious chaos magician in recorded history. During her active years she’d been a cross between a fairy godmother and a wicked witch: you never knew if she’d curse you, kill you, or make your wishes come true. She was a creature of whim and whimsy, a bearer of black swans and bad tidings, a reverser of fortunes. She’d eventually become such a potent force of disorder that anyone who came near her developed cancer, their cells driven mad by her proximity, and then Jarrow’s
own
body succumbed to the emperor of maladies, and she left the flesh behind to become a creature of pure will, bodiless. Unfortunately, giving up your body had documented negative effects on the mind, and it hadn’t improved her disposition. It wasn’t so much that Jarrow was malevolent, any more than radiation was motivated by malice, but her very presence meant death, and being untethered from her body made her even more unpredictable than she had been before: and even then she’d been a sorcerer who took power from the unexpected, disorder, and disaster. Eventually Jarrow had been captured and imprisoned in a special cell at the Blackwing Institute, wrapped so tightly with spells of binding and order that she was barely even conscious most of the time... until Marla’s enemies made a bargain with her, providing her with a body that could stand up to the carcinogenic properties of her consciousness and setting her free in exchange for killing Marla.

The fact that Jarrow had failed to carry out the murder-for-hire was testament to Marla’s pure stubbornness and ingenuity, but the victory hadn’t been without cost. In order to stop Jarrow, Marla had been forced to make a bargain with Death himself, becoming a part-time goddess who spent half her year serving in the underworld as co-regent of Hell.

Now, it seemed, the bargain had proven insufficient, because Jarrow was back.

“What do you want?” Rondeau said.

“I want you mopes to find Marla and restore her to her glory, such as it was,” Elsie said.

Rondeau shook his head. “Okay.
Why
?”

“Professional courtesy. There aren’t that many gods who started out as ordinary humans, so I figure we should stick together.”

Rondeau leaned back in the booth. “You always had a high opinion of yourself, Elsie, but—a god?”

“Oh, yes. I used to say I was like unto a god, and at my mortal peak I think I could have gone toe-to-toe with middling divinities like Reva and Ch’ang Hao, though probably not against Death or some of the other heavy hitters. But I’ve changed. I got upgraded. I’m a deity, now, all uplifted. My own nature used to be poisonous to me, my devotion to chaos destroyed my body and, I’ll admit it, thoroughly deranged my mind—but now I’m hooked into the superstructure of reality. Look: I made this body from memory, and I don’t have even one tiny tumor, not a speck of melanoma. Magic I could just barely do before, with all the power at my disposal, is now trivial. Oh, there are new constraints on me, sure—I can’t act against my nature, and if I make bargains I have to stick with them... or at least find clever loopholes to wriggle out of, which is more my style. But, all in all? Godhood agrees with me.”

Rondeau licked his lips. “What are you a god
of
?” He was terribly afraid the answer was “cancer,” that she was seeding his marrow with little engines of death just by sitting there.

She laughed. “I’m a trickster god, Rondeau. There are lots of us, waxing and waning in power, but I have to say, I’m feeling pretty ascendant these days. Coyote and Kokopeli and Loki are all still around, but they’re shaped and tethered by some old ideas, and I’m the trickster of the moment. I’m the god of layoffs and winning lottery tickets, of finding your soulmate on an online dating site and getting murdered by internet trolls, of sentient algorithms and disruptive technologies. I’m the god of the singularity, the unevenly distributed future, climate change and private space flight. I’m the god of the edge, Rondeau, where everything teeters and everything bleeds.”

“But—
how
?” Rondeau had known two other humans who became gods: Bradley, who was uplifted to fill a vacuum when the old overseer of the multiverse broke her own laws and ceased to exist, and Marla, who married into godhood. “Did you, like, kill and eat the old trickster god?”

“Strangely enough, Marla helped me become what I am today—but how about we let
her
tell you that story. Your curiosity about my ascension will give you an extra incentive to find her.”

“Last time you and Marla crossed paths, you were trying to murder each other. Why should I help you find her? How do I know you don’t just want to finish the job?”

“You are the dumbest of all possible dumb-dumbs, sweetie. I don’t want to hurt Marla. I could say I feel gratitude to her, because of how she helped elevate me, but the truth is, the world is just more interesting with her in it, stomping around trying to fix everything and making stuff worse half the time in the process. Anyway, I already
know
where Marla is, and why she hasn’t reached out to you. I could just tell you... but that’s not very tricksterish, now, is it? I will give you a little hint, though. It won’t help
you
, but if you tell your friends, one of them might figure it out. Here’s how I found Marla, despite the new god of Death’s best attempts to hide her: first, I found Marla’s brother.” She drained her coffee cup and stood up. “I’ll see you soon.”

“I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.”

Elsie left the diner, and a few moments later, Rondeau followed. She was already out of sight, but he could see the path she’d followed, because every slot machine she’d passed was flashing jackpot lights and dumping torrents of coins. A little farther along he passed a blackjack table where everyone stared, dumbfounded, at their hands: every one of them had 21, including the dealer, which counted a win for the house, at least. Then his phone began to ring, and he had to run around dealing with the consequences of Elsie’s presence, and outraged or elated customers: a roulette wheel where only red numbers had come up for the past half hour, a poker table where four players had all been dealt pat royal flushes, a craps table where nothing but snake eyes appeared no matter how many fresh dice were broken out, and more.

Rondeau smoothed feathers and talked people down, using a few persuasion spells when reason failed, and normal odds and order soon reasserted themselves. He briefly worried that he’d take a financial hit from the trickster’s passage, but in the final analysis, the outrageous and impossible wins had been balanced by staggering losses, and the accountants had informed him, dumbfounded, that the day was a perfect push: the house had lost
exactly
as much as it had won.

“Right on the edge,” he muttered, and went to call Bradley.

•

Bradley was with with Cole, Marzi, and Marzi’s boyfriend Jonathan on the grass in Dolores Park, on a hill up above the children’s playground. Cole like the view of the city and the bay, and the vibrancy of the young people drinking, smoking, sunbathing, dancing, and making out in the grass, so he often took lunch here. They all sprawled on a big red-and-black checked blanket, eating from the enchanted wicker picnic basket Cole called his “cornucopia,” which held a seemingly inexhaustible supply of fruits, meats, cheeses, and assorted beers and wines, all at the perfect temperature. Bradley didn’t know if the basket connected to a pantry somewhere, or if it contained its own pocket dimension, but Cole assured him the food was real, and not just conjured; food produced my magic might taste delicious and make your belly feel full, but it was no more nutritious than eating lumps of salt clay.

Cole delicately smeared pate on toasted slices of baguette while Marzi and Jonathan snuggled and murmured together in low voices. Bradley was thinking of giving Marzi the night off for some R&R; he’d noticed she was much easier to teach if she’d gotten laid recently, but then, that was probably true of almost everyone.

His phone rang, and the screen said “Rondeau.” He grunted. He hadn’t heard from his friend since he headed home to Vegas. Had he gotten word from Marla? “Hey, man, what’s the word?”

Rondeau was never the most linear thinker, and his account rambled a bit, but eventually Bradley got it all straight. After about three seconds of silence, during which Bradley tried to synthesize some pretty surprising facts, Rondeau said, “Well? What was Elsie talking about? Do you think Marla’s brother Jason knows where she is?”

“I can’t imagine why he would. They’re not exactly close, what with all the murdering and scamming he’s done, right?”

“Sure, but they made peace, sort of, when we were all in Hawaii—or at least decided to call things even and stop trying to kill each other. She said she might send him a Christmas card sometime, and I think they talked when their mom died. I know Marla had Pelham send flowers to her funeral, anyway. It’s worth a try, talking to him.”

“I’ll see if I can track him down,” Bradley said.

Through the Mirror

“He doesn’t have a phone?” Marzi asked.

Bradley shook his head, then adjusted the angle of the full-length folding triple mirror minutely. “Nope. Jason’s off the grid, and changing locations every day or two, doing his best to be a ghost. According to Cole’s divinations, tonight he’s in a derelict farmhouse in western Pennsylvania. The place doesn’t even have running water, as far as we can tell, or electricity, or any other amenities beyond a roof and walls, and those probably have holes in them. I’d fly in to find him, but there’s no reason to think he’ll be there even a few hours from now, and I’d rather not chase him all over the countryside. The direct approach is best. Besides, I’ve been wanting to try this for months.” He glanced toward the corner, where Pelham sat, hands folded in his lap, expression alert. The small man was dressed impeccably as always, in a suit with a waistcoat, and not a strand of his thinning hair was out of place, but Bradley was perceptive, and he could see Pelham was wound as tightly as the innards of his own antique pocketwatch.

“I thought Jason was some kind of smooth operator?” Marzi arranged small white candles on the carpet, referring often to a diagram Cole had drawn. “Shouldn’t he be living in a penthouse and scamming old ladies?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say he’s probably hiding out from the consequences of a recent job.”

“He is no gentleman,” Pelham murmured.

“Right. You guys think maybe he’s hiding out with Marla?” Marzi took a box of wooden fireplace matches, struck one, and began to light the candles.

“The thought has crossed my mind. Hard to imagine the two of them being all buddy-buddy, but I have it on good authority that families are weird.” Bradley stepped back, cocked his head, and nodded in satisfaction. The candles, arranged in a complex asymmetrical pattern, were all reflected in the central mirror, and the mirrors on either side were angled to double, triple, and quadruple those lights in their own reflections, creating the illusion of an infinite series of corridors. An illusion that could be turned into reality, if he did this right.