If Jenny hadn’t taken the cell phone, Spyder thought, he could call 911. Of course, he wasn’t sure exactly where he was. Still, all he’d have to tell them is that there was a burning building on the pier. The fire trucks would be able to see it from all the way down at Fisherman’s Wharf. In fact, someone had probably already called the fire in, which was both good and bad. It was good in that the fire department would put it out. It was bad in that it bought Spyder back to the fact that he had no idea what he would do if Shrike was inside the burning building. He didn’t want to think about it. Spyder turned around one more time to see if anyone in the market was forming a bucket brigade. The market went on as if it had all evening—oblivious, a world unto itself.
Then Spyder saw someone at the edge of the crowd. She was talking to a man wearing an enormous, jeweled bird mask, one that covered his entire head (or actually was his head, Spyder later thought). The woman wore her shades, and moved her white cane from one hand to the other so she could shake the bird man’s feathered mitt. Spyder ran to her through the smoke of the smoldering Coma Gardens.
“Shrike!” he yelled. The woman turned her head toward him as the bird man walked away. Spyder ran up and grabbed her happily by the shoulders. “It’s me, Spyder. You saved my life the other night.”
The blind woman gave him a crooked smile. “Oh yes. The pretty pony boy. How are you?”
“I’m…” He started to answer, but realized he had no idea what to say. He felt giddy at having found her, but there was the accumulating wreckage of the rest of his life. “I’m fine,” he said. “I can see things now. The real world. That’s how I found the market. And you.”
“Good for you,” she said. “Maybe you’re more clever than I thought. A trick pony. Me, I’m off to find new lodgings.”
“I can see why,” said Spyder.
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Look! Your hotel is an in-fucking-ferno.”
“No, it’s not. I would be able to feel the heat.”
“Of course it is. I can see it burning from here.”
“Really? Because the Coma Gardens isn’t going to be built for another fifty years,” she said. “And it’s not going to burn for another twenty after that.”
“Then how were you staying in there?”
Shrike breathed deeply and nodded. “You can see things now. And it’s all brand new and you don’t know what to think of it, do you? Take a walk with me.” Shrike reached out and took one of his hands and led him through the crowded market, swinging her white cane gently in front of her feet. The effect of that cane was less that of a blind person feeling her way along than her warning people that she was coming, Spyder thought. Everyone and everything got out of her way.
“People are afraid of you,” said Spyder when they reached a less crowded part of the market.
“They’re afraid of rumors and tall tales. And I let them be afraid. It makes my job easier.”
“What is your job?”
Shrike sniffed the air as they passed a perfumer’s stall. “Smell that? Raw ambergris. There’s nothing else that smells like that. It’s one of those magical substances that makes everyone—humans, demons, angels, ghosts and your little dog Toto—all swoon. There are merchants whose entire trade is delivering ambergris to the markets in Purgatory.”
“A couple of days ago, I would have considered that a very odd thing to say.”
Shrike nodded. “Yes. Your little vision problem,” she said. “First of all, that burning hotel you saw… I’m sure by now you’ve noticed that the world is a much more flexible place than you’re used to. Time isn’t the same everywhere you go. And space can change depending on what time it is. Understand?”
“Hello. My name is Spyder and I’m five years old. Have you seen my mommy?”
Shrike smiled and looped her arm around his. Spyder liked how she felt. “Listen,” she said, “the waterfront is one of the places where the edges of all the Spheres, the planes of existence in which we live, meet. It’s why the market’s here. I was able to stay at a hotel that hasn’t been built yet in this Sphere of existence because it’s already been built in another Sphere. Unfortunately, time being a slippery and relative thing here, the hotel has already burned down in another Sphere. That’s what you saw. For me, though, it hadn’t burned down. I was booted for an exorcism trade show.”
“You went into the future, but you went into the wrong future?”
“Close enough. I was already in the future and the future I didn’t want, the one with exorcists in party hats, drifted close enough to make my room reservation disappear. I have to find another place to sleep.”
“You can crash at my place,” Spyder said.
“No, thanks.”
“I’m not coming on to you. My girlfriend’s moved out. There’s plenty of room.”
Shrike removed her arm from his and leaned over to retie one of her boots. “I’m sorry about your girlfriend, but my client isn’t expecting to find me in some cozy Victorian flat. Don’t take it personally. This is a work-related rejection.”
“What the hell is that?” said Spyder. They were at the back of the market, walking back in the direction Spyder had come earlier that night. San Francisco was white and chilly with fog. Looming out of the mist exactly where it shouldn’t be was a gigantic stone archway sporting Roman columns. On top was a tarnished copper chariot being pulled by four enormous horses. Shrike sniffed the air, turning her head this way and that.
“It smells like Berlin,” she said. “Near the Brandenburg Gate.”
“Berlin? Like, the real Berlin?” asked Spyder. “That’s more than a Greyhound ride away, you know.”
“Here’s another secret for your scrapbook. There is no difference between San Francisco and Berlin. In all the world, there is only one city. Because of how mortals perceive things, the one city appears as different cities, broken up and scattered all over the globe. But if you know the right doors to open, the right turns to make, the right tunnels and rocks to look behind, even mortals can find their way from one city to every other city. There are maps and trackers, ancient, hidden smuggling routes that only a few in the thieving guilds know.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better? I almost had enough frequent flyer miles to take Jenny to Prague. Now, she’s gone and we could have walked there all along.” Spyder stood in the quiet beyond the market, looking up at the gate. When he looked down again, mist was beading on his jacket and he was growing cold. “I can’t do this,” he said. “I need help. Can you put me back the way I was?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Can anyone?”
“Maybe.”
It might have been better if that thing had gutted me at the club, Spyder thought. He said, “Why did you help me the other night?”
“I don’t know. I just had to. You were so clueless.”
“Why can’t you help me now?”
“I’m on my way to meet a client.”
“You didn’t answer me when I asked you earlier. What exactly do you do?”
“You’ve seen what I do. I kill things,” Shrike said. “People. Beasts. Demons. Whatever a client wants dead.”
“The Black Clerks?”
“No one kills the Black Clerks. They’re elemental forces. Just a notch or two below gods. Killing them is like trying to kill wind or light. Why do you want to know?”
Spyder pushed up his jacket sleeve and put her hand on the scar on his arm.
“Damn,” she said. “By the pike, you’re a fool.”
“There’s nothing to be done about this?”
“Not by me. When they come for you, offer the Clerks a better deal.”