Chapter #80Finger Puppets by: Seuzz   Rob—Joe—is very quiet when you finish gasping out your confession. It's a minute or so before he speaks. "Well," he finally says, "it's a hell of a thing to find out."
"How mad are you at me?"
"I'm not mad," he says. "Perturbed, I suppose. Surprised and shocked. Rather aghast—"
"Is that you talking, or Rob?"
"Me. Rob would murder you." Abruptly he wipes his hand across his face. Joe Durras is sitting there when he drops his hand again. He takes a deep breath.
"Well, that is better. I don't have to fight Rob down. I'm still surprised and perturbed and shocked and aghast though. And I'll say it again, it's a hell of a thing to find out about someone you know."
"You can bring Rob back if he'll help you be righteously angry," you say. You don't like Joe's calm demeanor. It feels like a hot crust over a boiling lake of lava. "I'm righteously angry at myself for doing it."
"Oh, you deserve to have your head broken for what you did. Everyone here thinks and feels that. Obviously we can't do anything about it, though." Then he grunts. "And, well, the girl you did it to isn't exactly real. Still, if you wouldn't do it to a dog, I don't think you should do it to a golem.
"But I'm trying to concentrate on what it says about Hal," he continues. "Like you say, it does make a kind of sense." He falls silent again, and you bite your tongue. "You say it ambushed you, huh? The lust?"
"Right."
"Think that you can control it?"
"Now that I know what to watch out for, yes."
Again, he falls silent. Then he snorts. "You know, we wouldn't have had this problem if we'd inserted some of your essentia into her golem."
"How's that?"
"You could have talked her into it instead of taking it from her."
It sounds like a wry sort of observation, but you see no humor in it.
"Go home, Hal," Joe says at last. He sounds tired. "I can talk Paige around. I can try to make her forget it happened. Literally. Let's try to erase the evening. Pretend it happened in some alternate universe, and we discovered something about Hal Swann, and then we put up protections to make sure it doesn't happen again."
"That's really generous of you, Joe." Your heart is very heavy as you say it, for it seems like a lot more than you deserve.
Perhaps he agrees, for he stresses the pragmatics of it. "I have to be, don't I? We all have to be generous with each other. It's the three of us against the world. And when you get down to it, the stuff we've already done, the stuff we did to Paige even before you, uh— And to Rob and to and those people back in Saratoga Falls—"
And to Joe and Frank and Hal and Rick and Aparjita ...
... and to Aubrey Blackwell, which is when the whole mess started when you backed him into a corner where something ate him ...
"—is technically a hell of a lot worse than this thing we're pretending to be shocked by now."
You're both silent for a very long time. A few soft flakes of snow drift over the hood of the car.
Then Joe fumbles his hand into yours, and you squeeze it back. "I'll call you tomorrow, before I come see you," you tell him. "Whether I'm looking like Hal or looking like this."
"Pardon me if I don't kiss you goodnight," he says. You smile ruefully, put your head back, and let go of the golem.
* * * * *
"I will explain it again, dear, and this time do try to pay attention."
I was paying attention, you Valkyrie, you think, and you don't bother trying to shadow the threat of murder you feel forming in your eye. You only think you explained it before.
It's Tuesday afternoon. You inserted yourself into Paige a little after eleven after giving Joe a warning text. Paige was already on her way to class, and you lurched slightly as you fell in behind her eyes.
Before you did that, though, after locking yourself inside Hal's bedsit, you took the precaution of switching your imago and anima back to Will Prescott's. Maybe the change makes a difference, for you don't feel the same claw-like lust as you did yesterday when you landed in the golem. Or maybe you're still so mortified about last night that you've given yourself a psychological complex against it.
Anyway, now you are in the main office of the Cambridge bioengineering program and are trying to get the financial director to explain how to apply for the advanced scholarship.
You listen sullenly and take notes, but you're distracted by her face and form. Her dark hair is cut in a straight bob that falls to her neck; her face is lean and aggressive and constructed around the strong nose. Her makeup barely softens the leathery skin, and the crow's feet around her eyes and mouth signify that her age is closer to forty-three than the thirty-three that her hour-glass figure—flaunted by the poison-green jacket that snugly fits her curves—is meant to suggest.
It's far from a handsome face, and her strong, white teeth flash cruelly as she walks you through the battery of tests you will have to submit to and pay for before you will be considered for the advanced classes and augmented moneys that come with them.
But mostly you're concentrating on the fact that you've seen this face before.
Well, Hal Swann has. It was attached to the skull of a solicitor, Lenke Crayson, who works for one of the Fane companies, and who came within a whisker of getting him jailed for malicious trespass.
Maybe this is her twin sister. Or maybe she is just one of those freakish doppelgangers that pop up with a non-occult explanation.
The trouble is that "Lenke" is a very unusual name. And this woman, who looks exactly like Lenke Crayson, and who also works for a Fane entity, is also named "Lenke." LENKE VARGA, it says on the nameplate on her desk.
"Pardon me," you interrupt her. "Are you a solicitor?"
"What?" She rears back, as though you had just asked if she's a whore. "No, I am not solicitor!"
"Did you used to be one?"
"Of course not! If you cannot refrain from impudent questions, Miss Knotts, I see no point—"
"Just wondering. Jesus," you mutter. "Go on. Three hundred and fifty pounds you were saying."
You're finally gathering up your notes and thanking Ms. Varga for her help—such as it was—when there's a gentle knock at the open door behind you. "Ah, Miss Knotts," a fatherly voice coos as you turn around. "So good to see you." Professor Hyde-White splays a bony white hand across his chest. "I trust there are no complications with your scholarship?" He raises white eyebrows as he turns pale blue eyes on Lenke Varga.
Everything about him is pale. His thick hair is snowy white, and there's a chalkiness to his skin. But he is tall, lean and aristocratic, and also—it would appear—one of those fellows who becomes handsome with age, when they have money and prestige and position to back it up. Though there are signs that Professor Hyde-White—who teaches one of Paige's classes and, as the Fane Professor of Bioengineering, is an object of intense suspicion to Hal Swann—has already peaked and is just beginning a slide down the further slope toward toothless senility.
"Just trying out for another scholarship and more classes. The advanced ones," you tell him.
"Indeed." He looks pleased and impressed. "I do hope we have obliged," he says to Lenke. She doesn't reply, and her smile is pinched.
"Not sure I can swing the financials," you continue. "Can I get an advance on the scholarships I'll have coming if I get them, to pay for these tests I'll have to take?"
Miss Varga turns pink, but the professor bubbles over with laughter. "Ingenious. Show such wit on the tests and you and I will be taking private tutorials before Christmas. I think we can manage an advance on your present scholarships."
"Yes, Professor," Miss Varga says through gritted teeth.
The professor asks her a few small questions about a stipend that one of his other students is having trouble getting, then with a white smile wishes you a good day. "Let's try to have that advance for Miss Knotts by the end of the day," are his parting words to Miss Varga. She stares daggers at you, but nods.
* * * * *
You've no idea why she hates Paige so much, but you put it from your mind afterwards. With classes over, you walk back to Rob's, where after giving a cursory report to your boyfriend, you release Paige for the day. And yet Rob will call you a little later to suggest that you all—him, Paige, yourself, and Jacob—go out to eat together. You agree, though not without trepidation.
It goes off well, and no allusions are made to last night's disaster. Still, you are conscious of being more reticent than is Hal Swann's usual wont and let the others carry the conversation. Rob generously agrees to pick up the check—
—And right about then the topic of money slides in from an unexpected direction when Paige's cell dings. "Oh, Christ," she mutters. "It's that impossible woman!"
"Which one?" Rob asks.
"The one I told you about. Lenke Varga. At least she's got money for me."
"That advance?" you say.
"Yes." Her eyebrows have shot up. "She wants to bring around to my rooms."
That gives you a sudden idea. Miss Varga is in the belly of the departmental beast, with direct access to Hyde-White. With her as a finger puppet, you wouldn't have to maneuver Paige into a better position. Varga could get you the same place.
And maybe you could also discover why she bears such an eerie resemblance the solicitor in Kensington that you were considering as another avenue into Fane.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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