Part 12 (1/2)

'Isn't it? Sonja, if I stay with you, I'm in danger of losing my soul. I'll end up just like one of Morgan's renfields. Is that what you want for me? Is it?'

Don't bother answering the jerk, just reach into his head and snap his will off at the faucet, hissed the Other. By the way, I liked the bit about killing his girlfriend and making him forget her, then relive her death whenever you feel like a chuckle.

Not bad. Not bad at all. You're getting the hang of this stuff, Girlfriend.

Sonja balled her fists and looked down at her boots. 'No.

Of course not.'

The Other hissed and spat obscenities no one else could hear.

'Then give me my freedom.'

She jerked her head up, moonlight flaring across the mirrored lenses of her gla.s.ses. 'You've always had it!'

'Have I?'

Sonja opened her mouth as if to answer, then turned her back on Palmer and his lover.

'Go.'

Her voice felt tight and sharp, like a piano-wire garrote had been slipped around her throat. She could hear Palmer s.h.i.+ft his weight, trying to decide whether to stay or flee.

'Sonja--' There was a hesitancy in his voice.

'I said go! Before I change my mind!'

Palmer grabbed Concha by the hand and hurried from the ruins into the surrounding jungle. Just before he disappeared into the tangled shadows, he turned and called out to her with his mind one last time.

I did love you.

Then he was gone.

Sonja tossed her head back and shrieked like a cornered jaguar. Yowling obscenities, she kicked and pummeled the ancient limestone ruins, obliterating friezes depicting the rule of Mayan wizard-kings a thousand years dead. With a yell that swelled her throat like a bull ape's, she bashed her shoulder against the remaining wall until it collapsed in an explosion of yellowish-white powder.

When it was over, she stood in the middle of her handiwork, trembling like a winded stallion, her face and clothes limned with the dust of centuries.

I loved you too, she thought.

But there was no one there to hear her.

When she got back to the house Sonja was too tired to hate or even feel sorry for herself. The house seemed horribly empty. Lethe was gone. Now Palmer was, too. Within the span of a few days, the little nest she'd built for her family had turned into a tomb.

A featureless black papier-mache mask sat atop a small pile of mail heaped on the kitchen table. As she picked up the mask, a thick business envelope slid off the heap and fell onto the floor. She noticed, with a rash of excitement, that it was addressed to Sonja Blue.

Inside the envelope were several clippings from the New York City/Triborough papers, the oldest dating back six months, the most recent clipping dated two weeks previously.

Most of them were brief, taciturn accounts of the deaths of nameless prost.i.tutes, none of the columns garnering more than an inch. As she placed them on the table where she could read them, she immediately noticed the one item that linked them: 'the deceased was found dressed in a black leather jacket, wearing mirrored sungla.s.ses.'

Sonja picked up the envelope and searched for a letter.

Nothing. The postmark told her it had been mailed in New York City from the Cooper Postal Station. The West Village.

Already the gears were engaged, the wheels in her head turning.

Palmer and Lethe might no longer be a part of her life.

But there was still Morgan.

London, England: Mavis Bannister was a charwoman. Oh, they had a fancy name for it nowadays - 'maintenance engineer', she thought it was. Just like they had a fancy name for the women's toilet: 'the ladies' lounge'. But, in essence, her job was to swab down the loos at Farquier & Sons.

Farquier & Sons was one of the more prestigious department stores in London. It began by catering to the carriage trade over a century ago. The store's reputation rested on a royal commission it had landed during the Edwardian era and had yet to be updated - something involving spats. In any case, its clientele included movie stars and rock musicians, not to mention stockbrokers and MPs. Still, if anyone was to ask Mavis, she would tell them that the rich and famous treat public lavatories just like the hoi polloi. You'd be surprised how many couldn't bother to flush.

Still, mopping the jakes of the overprivileged had its definite perks. Like the time she found a pair of mink-lined gloves left next to the sink. Or the time she found close to twenty quid lying on the floor next to the second stall - no doubt it fell out of some rich twit's pocketbook. Most of them were so well off they'd never notice it was gone, or, if they did, would a.s.sume they'd dropped it while getting in or out of a taxi, not while they were taking a squat in a public bog.

Mavis wasn't really thinking about anything much that day except whether to warm up a tin of stew when she got home or pop for some takeout vindaloo, as she wheeled her mop and bucket into the ladies' lounge. It was towards the end of the business day and time for the third of the four scheduled daily cleanings. Farquier & Sons prided itself on the cleanliness of its 'lounges'.

At first she thought she was hearing things. It sounded like a baby crying, only m.u.f.fled. No doubt a child was crying out on the floor. Then she realized that the sound was coming from the litter bin next to the sinks.

Mavis flipped back the little metal hood and stared down into the cylinder. There, nestled amidst wadded-up brown paper towels and discarded tampons was a newborn infant, wrapped in a swaddling of newspaper, just like an order of fish and chips. The baby stopped crying and looked up at Mavis with eyes the color of marigolds and smiled at her.

'Merciful G.o.d!' Mavis gasped. 'You poor thing!' She set aside her mop and bucket and removed the top of the litter bin, reaching in to retrieve the child. There was a sound from behind her as the Home Secretary's wife entered the ladies' lounge.

'Go and get the shopwalker!' Mavis barked.

The Home Secretary's wife looked first startled, then indignant, that she was being ordered about by a simple charwoman. 'I beg your pardon--?' she began to huff.

'I said, go and fetch the shopwalker! Someone's gone an' left a baby in the bleedin' litter bin!'

The Home Secretary's wife blinked, her face going blank for a moment. 'Oh. Oh dear. Of course. I'll go and find him.'

Mavis chuckled to herself, taking a moment's pleasure in the role reversal, then looked down at the baby she held cradled in her arms. It had been a long time since she'd held a child that small. The baby's dark hair was still damp with birth fluids and his skin was smeared with tacky blood. It was a boy and apparently healthy, although the umbilical cord looked like it had been chewed off. Whoever the mother was, she must have given birth in one of the stalls. Mavis opened each and every one of the doors, looking for signs of blood and placenta. To her surprise, the toilets and the floors were spotless. But that was impossible ...

The shopwalker, an elderly man with a neatly clipped salt and-pepper mustache, opened the door to the ladies' lounge and peered in, mustache twitching. 'What's all this nonsense about there being a baby left in here? And have you gone mad? That was the Home Secretary's wife you yelled at!'

Mavis held up the baby, still wrapped in its receiving blanket of newsprint. 'You call this nonsense, sir?'

The shopwalker's eyes widened at the sight of the child.

'Good Lord!'

'Did you see a pregnant woman come in here in the last ten or fifteen minutes? The poor thing can't be more than five minutes old himself!'

The shopwalker looked genuinely perplexed. 'I don't understand! There hasn't been a woman in such a condition on this floor since noon! I could swear it! I'm sure I would have noticed...'

'So where'd this poor tad come from, eh?' Mavis sighed, running her work-roughened hand against the baby's cheek.

'His mum must have been in the store. Surely the fairies didn't leave him. Too bad he can't tell us who he belongs to.'