They were hunted. They heard the wolves and erinyes, the seductive words of sirens, but they closed their cars and flew through the air, over the rustling trees, across meadows stalked by enraged guardians, past gates and barriers. As they flew toward the exit to the Isles of the Sun, a great fireball came down at them from the heavens, and as they soared over the sea the fire engulfed them in a flash that blinded and disorientated them.
Yet they soared still, and their forms came home at last to the blessed place. Viviane carried with her a tattered bag, the spoils of their foray into the deadly castle. They landed amid a copse that smelled sweetly of lavender and apple blossom, and instantly jacked out.
“Oh, God.” Geraint was coming down from the boosters. It seemed that Edward had significantly downplayed the drugs’ after-effects. It was four in the afternoon and he had dark circles under his eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a week.
Francesca, however, was jubilant, alive with energy. “I’m not going to download this lot yet. Maybe that lady you were so engrossed in got a fix on your magical home, my Welsh bard. We’ve got to get out of here fast. They may have our location.”
Geraint was seeing double, but they managed to pack their decks, adding them to their other luggage, and made it to the parking garage in seven minutes flat. He couldn’t even remember the faked identity he’d used to check in.
“Mr. and Mrs. John Smith,” Francesca sniggered as they closed the car doors. “The traditional alias of furtive lovers. But we’ve been doing something much better than that.”
It was true, he reflected. Francesca really got off on a good run in a way that she never really did with sex. Perhaps I should have used Edward’s little recipe after all, he thought idly.
“Now, you’ve got dinner tonight. I think we should drive to, um, let’s see.” She ruffled the pages of the road atlas. “Banbury. That’s nice. Those old fakes, the druids, have got some stuff out there. Let’s check in there. Ooh, and they’ve got a Holiday Inn too. Aren’t we lucky?” She turned the key in the ignition and pulled away quickly.
“We did it. We got something. The spirits were smiling. Tonight I can get a good look-see at what Transys has got on us.”
28
Arriving home, Rani had to face far stronger opposition than she had expected. Imran had shaken Sanjay out of his usual self-indulgence, and the two brothers confronted her angrily. She’d been out all night, she’d been seen on the street, bilking to strange men-none of which she should be doing if she had any respect for the family’s good name. She belonged in the safety of the home. They were worried about her. The streets were not safe. All the old arguments came pouring out. Finally. lmran forbade her to leave the house without his permission for the following week.
“Oh, so you can take care of business? And what have you been doing about our vengeance?” she spat out defiantly.
They argued long and hard, yelling at the tops of their voices until the old people trying to sleep upstairs started hammering on the floor. Even then, they ignored the complaint and just went on arguing.
When they finally sank into sullen silence, having reached no agreement. Rani felt only contempt for her brother. He was trying to compensate for his own inadequacy by belittling her, using every shred of emotional blackmail he could dig up. Anand, their father, would not have wished her to do what she was doing, he said. The family would be ashamed of her, being out all night and up to no good. Such conduct would be shameless from any Indian girl, but from an ork it could destroy any hope of a satisfactory arranged marriage. She had deserted her brothers and failed in her duties in the house. She was a Bad Girl.
When the argument flared again after midnight, Rani was in no mood for further antagonism. She turned on her heel, told Imran to rakk off and die, and stomped up the stairs to her room. When he banged on the door. demanding an apology, she jammed a chair underneath the door handle and merely told him again to rakk off.
In the morning she didn’t bother with breakfast, but simply headed straight down the stairs with the bag shed packed. She had a wad of notes, people to see, and business to conduct. She could eat on the hoof. When she got downstairs Sanjay was waiting for her.
“You heard Imran last night,” he said, sorrowful eyes averted, but with his body determinedly barring her way to the front door. “You stay here.”
“If you don’t get out of my sodding way, I’ll kick you so hard you’ll never be able to rub any white trash again,” she yelled. She advanced upon him. He just managed to avoid her knee striking home, but the kick numbed his leg enough to prevent him from stopping her from scrambling out the door.
Monday morning was freezing fog and a shopping list of missions. Precious hours were spent putting the word out for Mohinder, dispensing small change to get some local street kids to earn what they could by scurrying around Fenchurch Street, and then visiting the first Mary Kelly on her list.
The nobleman had found only four women by that name in Rani’s patch, so the figured she could check them out personally. This one lived just off Brick Lane itself-or at least she once had, The squinting, rat-faced landlord told Rani that Mary Kelly didn’t live here anymore, and his toothless grin said she’d have to dispense some money to learn anything else.
A handful of notes got her access to Mary Kelly’s old room in this rancid dump ol’ a flophouse, hut the chamber yielded no sign of its former tenant, A vacant-eyed, anorexic trancer stared unseeingly at Rani from the single rickety chair in the almost lightless shoebox of a room. What she finally learned was that Mary Kelly Number One had died on the streets a couple of months back, choked on her own vomit most likely. She had been a wino so hopeless that even this landlord had kicked her out onto the streets.
Rani got her first break in the middle of the afternoon, while sipping her coffee at Beigel’s Bake. An ork contact who looked at her with the respect money brings told her quietly that the pimps had cleaned up a mess at their place and dumped some unidentified stuff into the river. One of them had bought enough disinfectant to swab down the public baths. Since Rani hadn’t told the ork about the murder, she thought it very likely he was telling her the truth. As expected, the pimps had gotten rid of the evidence and virtually no one knew about the cruel midnight slaying. Life was cheap hereabouts, and nobody wanted the baggies knocking at their door. Especially if it was the door to a brothel.
The ork was eager in the way he talked, hoping for a good payoff. She looked at his disintegrating plastic shoes, the trousers with more patches than original cloth, and she remembered having seen him out shivering in the cold in his thin jacket and dirty, discolored vest. She gave him two hundred and fifty and he looked at her like she was some Indian goddess sent down from the heavens.
“This buys silence, right?’ Rani said sternly. “Don’t tell anyone about it. I’ve got others on the payroll who’ll know who to box if you get so much as a touch of the gators about this. You know what I mean?” He shrank back in fear, pleading his trustworthiness over and over. She looked at him more kindly.
“Okay, Merreck, I’ll trust you. Maybe I’ll have something else you might be interested in a week or two from now. I’ll know where to find you?”
He was pathetically eager, promising anything she could possibly want. Two-fifty was more than he’d see in a month. He shuffled out the door and dreamed of real American jeans. First, though, he’d get some hot food into his grumbling belly. A really fat, juicy burger stuffed full of onions and chemicals. The kids would also be getting their first decent meal in a week, so it wouldn’t hurt if they had to wait a bit longer.