And she went off into a tirade about the last days, leaving me sitting there with my mouth open, remembering the smell in the chapel at Westfaire. It had been the smell of magic. The same smell as in Faery.
Something she was ranting about caught my attention. “What was that, Janice?” I asked.
“We never finished it,” she said. “We never finished that documentary. We tried, later, but they wouldn’t let us.”
LATER
Our conversation was interrupted by a phone call. It was someone in the comeback network, and Janice talked to them for quite some time. I went in my room and took a nap. When I woke up, hours later, it was evening. She was waiting for me when I went into the kitchen.
“I’ve had some news of Jaybee,” she said.
“Oh?”
“He’s blind. Blind and crazy. He can’t see anything, but he thinks he does.”
I shook my head at her, saying nothing. Janice drew her face into the expression I call her holy martyr look.
“At least we can take this opportunity to cleanse ourselves of hate,” she said, staring me straight in the eye. “We are being given a chance to forgive. We must figure out some way to take care of him.”
“We? Take care of him!”
“We comebacks must care for him. He is one of us and we can’t afford to have him talking about us.”
“Talking about what?” I laughed, a little hysterically, certainly not amused. “If he’s crazy, surely no one is going to believe him.”
“We’d rather he doesn’t talk about us at all,” she said. She gave me a sidelong look, that judging, weighing look. “When they called this afternoon, I told them we’ll take him in for the time being.”
I couldn’t believe her. “He killed Bill! He raped Dorothy. You can’t be serious!”
She pursed her mouth and folded her hands. That pious, martyred, holier-than-anybody pose. “It’s just for the time being. We have Bill’s room downstairs that he can stay in. You’ll be working evenings and I’m working days. The network will pay you to look after him while I’m at work. If you’re going to pay your share of the expenses here, you’ll need more pay than the part-time work the library will give you.”
“I can’t be party to this,” I said. “I saw what he did, and I can’t be party to it.”
Janice wrung her hands, rolled her eyes, became St. Janice facing the lions. “Either someone has to take charge of him or we have to get rid of him. I can’t even consider that! I’m a religious woman. I couldn’t kill him. We have to forgive him. If he was crazy, he wasn’t really responsible for what he did.”
“What makes you think I could control him,” I said. “He’s a hell of a lot bigger than I am.”
“They have him on drugs,” she admitted. “Enough to keep him quiet. He can take care of himself. It won’t be like nursing him, or anything like that.”
“I see,” I said, sickened. I couldn’t stay in this place if Jaybee were here. I’d end up killing him. Maybe that’s what she wanted. I gave her a look, almost understanding her in that instant. Did she know what she was doing? “Give me a few days to think about it.”
“No time,” she commented. “I think they just drove up outside.”
They had, indeed, just driven up outside, two men I had met when I was young Beauty, friends of Janice’s and Bill’s, with Jaybee between them, being dragged along. I was reminded of the way he had hauled Bill’s body away, carelessly, dumping it in his car, driving off. I had been huddled on the floor, my clothes in shreds around me, blood on my face, blood on my hands, blood leaking between my legs, still able to see him out of the corner of the window. So I saw him now, out of the corner of the window, being dragged along. There was a bandage over his eyes.
I went to my room and got my robe on. I put Grumpkin in the pocket. Poor old cat. He was almost used to it. I put my things in the other pocket, the ones I needed. I put the boots on my feet. I heard Janice open the front door, heard her speaking in her pious, all-forgiving voice. “Poor man. Bring him in.”
He came in. I went out.
Puck found me in the hotel where I had taken a room. He was panting, and he looked pale.
I asked him what was the matter.
He rubbed his face with his hands. “It’s getting harder to get here. Harder every time. When are you coming home? Carabosse wants to know, Beauty. This is getting serious.”
“Does she think I’m in danger here?” I asked. I couldn’t get interested in Carabosse, for some reason. “Can I still get back from here?”
“You’re not in danger. Not immediately. And you can still get back, for a little while.”
“Tell her soon.”
April 1993
It is easy to get on a board of directors. All one has to do is give money. Of course, getting the money out of a warrant over six hundred years old is another matter.
The House of Levi still exists, strangely enough, though under quite another name, and it still exists where I found it first, in London. Getting there from here was my first overseas flight in a plane. I chose to do it that way, remembering how thin the magic is in current time. Using the boots to go back, it gets stronger as I go. Going from place to place in the twentieth, the boots might work, but they might drop me off in mid-ocean, as well. I didn’t want to risk it.
When I showed the investment house
