West wasn’t fooled.
“Number Zero wanted power,” he said. “I tried to warn him of the consequences of it, but he wouldn’t listen. And now here he dwells until the end of this universe. And quite possibly until the end of the next one after that.”
She nodded again.
West’s hairy eyebrows furrowed, and he snarled. For the first time, she saw his teeth. They were pointy. Like a shark’s teeth.
“Don’t just nod, Number Five. Listen.”
“I am listening,” she replied. “I just don’t get what you’re trying to tell me.”
“They never listen. Why do I bother?” He shook his head. “They never listen.”
“I’m sick of this,” she said. “Everybody is so goddamn mysterious all the time. Nobody just comes out and tells me anything. They always just hint and warn and say cryptic nonsense. Why can’t anyone just tell me straight out what they mean?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe you’re just trying to make it more complicated.”
This time West nodded.
“It’s not easy, Number Five. Not easy for me to remember. Remember the way it used to be. Remember the way you see the world. It’s been a long time. A long, long time…”
His gaze drifted across the room, fixed on some far-off place.
“Number Zero was like you,” he said. “He thought he could accumulate all the power in the universe without anyone noticing. He thought there would be no consequences.”
West frowned. His beard writhed ever so slightly. “There are always consequences, Number Five.”
“Uh-huh.” Diana nodded politely. “With all due respect, what the hell are you going on about? I’m not accumulating power. I’m just trying to avoid getting eaten by the unholy menagerie you’ve stuck me with. I took an apartment and had my life turned upside down. I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“Didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t. And don’t try to feed me any of that karma or subconscious-desire bull. If life worked like that I’d have gotten a winged unicorn when I was six, and I’d be an astronaut who hunts vampires in her spare time.”
West said, “You are not an ordinary person anymore.”
“Maybe not, but I’m going to stay as ordinary as I can despite all the strange monsters and supernatural bizarreness your universe is throwing my way. Now can we go? This place is giving me the creeps.”
The thing in the chair (she couldn’t think of it as a person or as ever having been a person) gurgled at her.
“No offense,” she said.
West smiled. “I think there’s hope for you, Number Five.”
“Damn right,” she said. “I can beat this thing.”
He chuckled drily.
“Nobody beats it. The crushing weight of madness is a burden no human mind can carry without strain. All victories are temporary, all defeats inevitable.”
“That’s a cheery thought.”
“Just calling it like I see it.”
“Well, if I can’t avoid it, why bother warning me at all?”
“Because I like you, Number Five. I see something in you that I don’t see in many.”
“And that something is?”
He shrugged. “Something. If I could’ve given it a better label, I would’ve.”
They left Apartment Zero behind. The journey back wasn’t nearly as unsettling.
“I never said you’d be trapped in the apartment. I wouldn’t imagine you will suffer the same fate. There are too many possible dooms in these worlds that I doubt either of us could suspect or imagine the one that will come for you.”
“Great,” she replied. “Because I’d hate for it to be something predictable and avoidable.”
“Be careful, Number Five,” West said. “But not too careful.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You do that.” He smiled at her, and she was so taken aback by the expression that by the time she recovered her senses he’d already shuffled back into his apartment.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Diana hesitated before knocking on the door. This was a weird building, and everyone who called it home was chained to that weirdness. She’d met only a handful of the residents. They’d all seemed nice, but having all of them crowded into one apartment was perhaps more abnormality than her mind could take. She knew she was going to go mad someday. West had practically guaranteed that, but if she was going to lose her mind, she’d rather put it off for as long as possible. At least one more night.
She pondered what horrors awaited her on the other side of that threshold. Alien beasts? Time warps? Smooth jazz? She couldn’t begin to guess. Except for the jazz. She could hear the muffled tones of easy-listening sax. That alone was almost enough to convince her to turn around and forget the whole thing.
Her monsters changed her mind. They were all so eager to party. She couldn’t pull the plug on the evening. Even eternal other-dimensional entities could get bored. Hanging around the apartment, playing cards and watching TV all day had to get old. And a gaggle of monsters in desperate need of a good time would probably be trouble in the long run.
She knocked. Stacey answered the door. She was hosting the horrid bat creature at the moment, and Diana was surprised at how readily she accepted this and annoyed at how unthreatening she found the misshapen hulking woman. Stacey-thing smiled as widely and friendlily as a mouthful of four-inch fangs would allow.
“Diana come to mixer,” she said in a guttural growl. “Diana bring friends.”
“Yes, I hope that’s okay.”
A hacking, wheezing racket shook Stacey-thing from deep within her spasming torso. It sounded painful and looked agonizing, and Diana assumed it was a convulsion before she figured out Stacey-thing was chortling with delight.
“More fun, more merry.”
“See? I told you they’d be cool with it.” Vom sniffed the air, even though he had no visible nostrils that Diana could see. But he didn’t have eyes either, and that never seemed to bother him. “Do I smell snickerdoodles?”
“Baked fresh,” said Stacey.
Murmuring approval and excitement, the monsters went inside.
Diana held up a loaf of misshapen banana bread. “I don’t have much baking experience,” she said by way of explanation and apology.
Stacey seized the offering and gobbled it down. “Banana bread good,” she said, spewing crumbs. “You come in now.”
Diana had expected the apartment to be a remnant from the fifties to fit with the Ozzie-and-Harriet style of harmless congeniality that Stacey and Peter so effortlessly embodied, but it was remarkably functional and modern. Everything was straight out of the upper end of a Pottery Barn catalogue. Except for the bizarre masquerade masks hanging all over the walls. They were all different shapes and colors, many with twisted and odd designs. S heof them had eyes in them that stared at her, following the action around the room. She pretended that was normal, and maybe it was at this point.
The party was dead. The only guests were Diana’s monsters, and they were crowded in the kitchen, devouring cookies and probably baking tins, silverware, and whatever else they could stuff in their mouths. Although Zap didn’t have a mouth, so how he was eating anything was a mystery she left unsolved.
“Guys, be careful,” she said.
