Shrike thought for a moment, then reached into the pocket of her coat. “I don’t know exactly what you call one of these. It was a present from my niece.” She held out a blue plastic rabbit that fit snuggly in the palm of her hand. Shrike wound the rabbit up with a silver key in its side and the toy started to vibrate while a little bell jangled inside. “I suppose this could get stuck in an enemy’s throat and choke him, so it’s a one. You’re a bit bigger and a little smarter, though. I rate around a two.” The toy wound down and Shrike dropped it back into her pocket.
“You’re Death Valley. You know that? Beautiful, but harsh,” said Spyder. He sat down on a sand dune and Shrike sat beside him. “I never got to ask, if you’re blind how did you kill that demon?”
“I’ve trained for this all my life. My father taught me. Then a friend, before he turned out to be exactly the bastard I’d been told he was. Besides,” she said, “there’s blind and there’s blind.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“My head is spinning. I have this magic juju sight and’ve seen such demented shit in the last twenty-four hours. I wouldn’t mind being blind for a while.”
“It’s not really magic sight, you know,” Shrike said.
“Then what is it?”
“Memory,” she replied. “When that demon had you, some part of it—saliva, a fragment of tooth, a fingernail—infected your blood. Everything you’re seeing now you’ve seen all your life only you’ve chosen to forget it an instant later. If you remembered anything of this part of the world, it was in your dreams and nightmares.” Shrike pulled up Spyder and started walking. “Don’t feel bad. Forgetting is the way it is with almost every living thing in this Sphere. But now you can’t look away and you can’t forget.”
“Poisoned with memory. And you can’t help me.”
“That’s right.”
“Can you at least point the way back to civilization?”
Shrike pointed back at the market with her cane. “Follow the stalls to the right until you come to a café in an old railroad car. You’ll see streetcar tracks just beyond. Follow them along the waterfront and they’ll take you all the way to more familiar territory.”
“Thanks,” said Spyder. “Good luck with your client.”
“Take care. You know, I forgot to ask you. Are you Spider Clan?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Which is probably the perfect way for us to say goodbye.”
“Take care, pony boy.”
Spyder walked slowly back to the market, following the route Shrike had described to him. He passed horse traders and what looked like a kind of sidewalk surgery, with a hand-lettered cardboard sign describing procedures, from amputations to nose jobs, along with prices. Spyder found the train car café a few minutes later. He was colder now. His body ached from his injuries and his shoulders were knotted with tension. Somewhere in the dim back of his brain he knew he should be worried about the Clerks and what he was going to do with Lulu and how he was going to open up the shop tomorrow, but none of it got through the fog of exhaustion that was narrowing the universe to thoughts of walking and sleep.
At the edge of the market, by the last big dune, some teenagers were juggling fire without moving their hands. They stared silently and the balls of flame moved through the air all by themselves. Spyder started walking up the dune, when he heard someone call his name.
“Spyder, are you there? It’s me!”
He turned and saw Shrike running after him through the sand.
“I’m here,” he said quietly, and she hurried toward his voice, to the base of the dune.
“I’ve been thinking about it and I have a proposition for you,” Shrike said, a little out of breath. “This client I’m meeting, she’s expecting me to have a partner. But my partner isn’t here. Stand in for him and I’ll pay you.”
“My rent’s covered. I want my life back.”
“I can’t give you that. But some of the people I work with have power. If this client is who I think it is, she might be able to help you.”
“Might?”
“It’s the best I can do.”
“What would I be? Your bodyguard? Your windup rabbit?”
“Your job will be to stand next to me and say absolutely nothing,” said Shrike. “I’ll do all the talking.”
“I’m a mute?”
“People interpret silence as strength. In your case, the less you say, the better you get. I need you to look more dangerous than you really are.”
“And maybe she can help me.”
“No guarantees.”
Spyder walked down the dune to where Shrike was waiting. He stood a little above her in the sand. “I’ll help you get your bags from the hotel,” he said.
“That’s not necessary,” Shrike said. She removed a battered leather book from an inside pocket of her coat. “Everything I need is right here.” She opened it and little paper shapes stood up from the pages. Horses. Swords. Things that might have been exotic fruits or vegetables. To Spyder, it looked like a kid’s pop-up book.
Shrike put the book away and led Spyder over the dune in the opposite direction. “Jean-Philippe, the bird-man, told me about a lovely deserted warehouse where we can spend the night.”
“Feel that fog? We’ll be ice pops by morning,” said Spyder.
“Don’t worry. I’ll read to you,” said Shrike. “A good book will always keep you warm.”
THIRTEEN
Journey Into Fear
Shrike led Spyder over the dunes toward North Beach, the old Barbary Coast, for two hundred years the traditional haunt of pirates, thieves and the kind of regular citizens who want to vanish into oblivion or into newly invented lives.
Behind an abandoned furniture warehouse under the Bay Bridge, they ducked through a hole in the hurricane fence and stomped through weeds and smashed glass to the back of the building.
Spyder, who had broken into more than his share of warehouses, spotted a smashed window near a rusting fire escape on the second floor. “Looks like we can get in through an upstairs window,” he said to Shrike.
Shrike was feeling her way along the back wall of the warehouse. When she came to a door, she jiggled the knob, but the door was locked.
“Hey, there’s an open window,” said Spyder.
Shrike kicked in the door with her big boots. Her cane had already flicked up and transformed into a sword. She held it in striking position as she strode into the warehouse. Spyder was impressed, but kept quiet.
“Stay behind me,” she whispered.
“Hear anything?”
“Rats. People. Shh.”
The interior of the warehouse was a black hole decorated with a few grimed windows inlaid with chicken wire and decorated with graffiti. Shrike moved cautiously, but quickly, seemingly sensing where the trash and broken furniture lay and avoiding it. Spyder stumbled along behind her trying to keep up.
“Is it all open down here or are there any rooms?” Shrike asked him.
Spyder tried to see as deeply as possible into the dark. “I can’t see much, but it looks all open down here. I think I can see some offices upstairs.”
“Show me.”
Spyder led Shrike upstairs and she checked all the rooms until she found one that was still locked.
“Move back,” she told Spyder.
Faster than his eye could register, Shrike brought her sword arcing down and sliced the padlock off the door. The lock clattered to the floor noisily. Half of it skipped way and rattled down the stairs. Spyder heard low voices as doors leading to some of the other rooms opened.
Shrike turned toward the darkness, holding her sword at waist-level. “You’re all welcome to stay here, but anyone stupid enough to come through this door will end up like that lock.”