“This is all working under the assumption that there’ll be anything to inherit. People who’ve had a peek at the future say it all goes dark sometime in the spring. That’s not far off.”
Glaeken nodded gravely. “Yes. If Rasalom gets his way, if he succeeds in bringing about the Change, this conversation becomes moot. Ironic in a way. He’s wanted me dead for all these millennia. But now that he has the upper hand, now that he’s so close to succeeding, he wants me to live-so he can rub my nose in the Change before he destroys me. And in a way, I will deserve that.”
That startled Jack. “Deserve? How?”
“Because I could have ended the One back in the fifteenth century when I trapped him in the Keep. But I didn’t. I thought our existences were linked, and if I destroyed him, the Ally would have no further use for me, and would destroy me in turn. So I locked him away for what I thought was forever. Well, not forever, just until I tired of the world. I wanted the decision to make my exit to be my own, and to choose the time of that exit. When I was ready I would return to the Keep and end him. But the German Army ruined that plan.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
He shook his head. “Pure selfishness on my part. I’d lived for thousands of years. I could have risked it. So now, if we lose, I deserve whatever happens to me.”
Jack found the thought intolerable.
“Not if I find him first.”
“But should I die before anything happens, promise me you’ll use some of the inheritance to keep Magda comfortable.”
“Of course. Absolutely. Anything and everything she needs.”
He clapped Jack on the shoulder. “Good. Good.”
Glaeken headed for the hall and the elevator, leaving Jack alone with the Lady.
“I have sensed you undergoing a change for a while,” she said.
She hadn’t moved from her place at the table. Her gaze was serene, her voice low.
“Really? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I know you do not want it. The realization has caused you only pain. What purpose would telling you serve?”
Good point. He was glad he hadn’t known. He cocked his head toward the door where Glaeken had exited.
“And him? Any idea how long he’s got?”
“Not long. His heart is failing-not his will to live on and fight. Those will never fail in that one. But the pump itself is old and it is tired. He will not see midsummer’s eve.”
“When’s that?”
“In the latter half of June.”
Shaken, Jack pulled out a chair and dropped into it. One thing to say he hasn’t got much time left, but to hear it narrowed down like that. Early March now… that meant…
“Glaeken’s got less than four months to live?”
The Lady nodded. “I cannot say the exact day, but the way his light is fading, it cannot last too long.”
Jack felt his throat constrict. He’d bumped into Glaeken-as Mr. Foster-once as a kid, but had come to know him only last May, not even a year ago. Yet he felt as if he’d known him all his life.
“I’m going to miss him.”
“ You’re going to miss him!” the Lady said. “He’s been my friend since the First Age. We’ve been the only constants in each other’s lives over these many millennia.” She pointed at Jack. “It rests in your hands to see that his few remaining days are not reduced to even fewer by the One.”
Right. Eliminate Rasalom first.
“Any sense of where he might be?”
She shook her head. “I sense him most often to the east, but he seems ever on the move.”
“To the east… Monroe?”
“Where he was conceived… perhaps. Perhaps farther. Perhaps Europe.”
This was no help.
“Well, tonight I’m going to meet with someone who might know the One’s whereabouts.”
“Someone who knows is not likely to tell you.”
“Oh, if he knows, he’ll tell me.”
6
“Are you really going to eat that?” Weezy said, eyeing Eddie’s thick pastrami on rye. “All of it?”
He smiled. “Every freakin’ bite.”
Weezy shook her head. If the meat wasn’t stacked a full two inches, it was close. She looked around at the Lower East Side kosher deli Eddie had chosen-Moishe’s on Second Avenue.
“How’d you find this place?” she said as he took a great-white bite. He had a sublet in the West Village, on the opposite side of the island.
He chewed, swallowed, and sipped his Pepsi One.
“I wander the city most of the day. I mean, nothing else to do. I wandered in here for breakfast once and liked it.”
“Youse folks okay here?” said a high-pitched, cigarette-scorched voice with an aggressive Brooklyn accent.
Weezy studied their waitress. She looked seventy and was built like Olive Oyl, but with a widow’s hump and hair the color of a caution light. She seemed to have a pot of coffee grafted to her hand. Her name tag read Sally and her eye makeup was a wonder-a rainbow of blue hues applied like spackle.
“We’re doing great,” Weezy told her.
“You ain’t touched your lox. Eat up. You never know when you’re gonna get to eat again.”
As Sally wandered away in search of needy coffee cups, Weezy forked a piece of the salmon into her mouth. She wasn’t particularly hungry. Not after seeing the Lady pierce herself with that sword.
She nodded at Eddie who’d just taken another huge bite. “I don’t think you’ll have to eat again for a week.”
She noticed he’d gained some weight since she’d last seen him, though nothing like the Pugsley pudginess of his teen years. He was either letting his sandy hair grow longer or hadn’t bothered to get it cut.
“Still working out?”
He shrugged. “What’s the point?”
“Same point as before, I guess.”
“For what?” he said with some heat. “I played by all the rules, Weez. I slimmed down, I got in shape, I worked hard, gave good value to my clients. And where did it get me? I had to abandon my business, I’m afraid to go back to my house, I’m subletting a roach-infested apartment. What went wrong?”
He’d never been the type to feel sorry for himself. Maybe he was simply bored and frustrated. Either way, she would let him answer his own question.
“I think you know what went wrong.”
He sighed. “Yeah. I joined the Order.”
Bull’s-eye.
They’d discussed this before but she’d never gotten a satisfactory answer.
“Why, Eddie?”
He shrugged. “At the time it was, ‘Why not?’” He raised a hand as she opened her mouth to reply. “I know, I know. You always categorized it as one of the sinister forces in the world, one of the powers guiding the Secret History. But do you know how that sounds to the average person?”
“Yeah. Crazy. Plus I did have my emotional problems, and I was diagnosed as manic-depressive, so I don’t blame you one bit for dismissing what I said.”
“It went beyond dismissing, you know. I got to the point where if you said something was black, I’d assume it was white.”
She felt her throat tighten and her eyes fill. She blinked back tears.
Eddie reached across and covered her hand. “I’m sorry, Weez. I didn’t mean-”
“No-no. It’s okay. It wasn’t just you. Mom and Dad were the same, and the kids in school. Every time I opened my mouth, eyes would roll. Finally I simply shut up. And now…”
“Now you know you were right all along.”
“And wish I weren’t. I wish this were all the product of a mind careening out of control due to a screwed-up soup of neurotransmitters.” She squeezed his hand. “But Eddie, it’s worse and more fantastic than I ever suspected.”
He frowned. “More fantastic? How-?”
“Trust me?” She squeezed his hand harder. “I’m saying it’s black.”
He hesitated a heartbeat, then nodded. “Then black it is. How black?”
Weezy closed her eyes and swallowed a sob of joy. Breakthrough. Her brother believed her… finally believed her.
“Black-hole black.”
He shook his head. “That book of yours-”