I kiss her again, and then I shift to Number Four.
It's another body punch of a shift. I miss my office by about fifteen metres. End up at the reception desk. Lundwall blinks at me.
Number Four. This is Australia's Pomp Central, and the major node in the southern hemisphere's Underworld-living world interface, which makes the architecture interesting in a multi-dimensional kind of way. Outside one part of the building, Brisbane is in the middle of a boiling, sweating summer. And outside another part, Hell is going through a rather mild spring. The seasons rarely correspond. In here, the air is loud with the hum of air-conditioners and the creaking of the One Tree.
Phones ring throughout the office. People are working busily and trying hard to ignore me and my clumsy entrance. I get the feeling that Tim has been doing a fair bit of storming around this morning. Tim is great at his job, but you don't want to get him mad. He says it doesn't help that I'm so casual about the whole thing. Well, I think we balance each other out perfectly.
But I would think that.
I stumble over to Tim's office and open the door without knocking. He's stubbing out a cigarette when I appear and looks guilty.
'Gotcha,' I say.
'What if I was having a wank or something here?'
I smirk. 'Hardly. If you had to choose between smokes and masturbation there's no contest.'
'Ah, your deductive capabilities astound me, Holmes.'
Other than the ashtray heaped with cigarettes, Tim's room is as neat as an anally retentive pin. I'm more than a little envious of his work ethic. His inbox and out are emptied throughout the day and there's a well-marked year-planner on one wall. Seven days from now, on the 28th of December, the Death Moot begins. He's circled that day, and the two that follow it, in thick red marker. I've a year-planner somewhere under the mess on my desk.
This was once Morrigan's office. Tim hasn't changed it that much, apart from the photo of Sally and the kids next to his keyboard – I bought him the frame. He's even using the same daily desk calendar, the one with the inspirational quotes. Everything from Dorothy Parker to Sun Tzu is in there. He and Morrigan shared a deep commitment to work, a fastidiousness about everything in their life, and a love of beer, though Tim has never tried to kill me. But the way he's looking at me, maybe that's all about to change.
Then the pain of the shift hits me in a residual wave.
Tim waits politely until I finish dry heaving before he starts taking strips off me. 'Jesus, mate! Could you at least have a shower before coming to work?'
I shrug. No point telling him how hard it was to leave Lissa this morning. Then I see the bandage on his left hand. 'Not like you to be out with the Stirrers. Was it a hard stir?' Sometimes a Stirrer will require more blood than usual to stall it.
Tim shakes his head. 'I wish, it'd mean I was out of the office more. No, the door's being particularly demanding today.' Number Four may be the only place that demands – well, not so much demands, but takes – a blood sacrifice of its staff on entry. RMs are exempt, most of the time, something I'm pleased about. For me, it's usually only a tiny pricking of the thumb, and weeks may go past where it asks for nothing. I wonder if the ferocity of Tim's sacrifice has anything to do with the massive portent I spent part of last night cleaning from the bathroom.
Tim throws me a small spray can of deodorant. I manage to catch it before it hits my head. Then he hurls a pack of breath mints. Not so lucky with those, they skitter all over the desk. I scoop up a few of them.
'I'm guessing you didn't clean your teeth before you headed over here,' Tim says.
'You guessed wrong. Anything else?' I pop a handful of mints into my mouth, regardless.
'Oh, I haven't started yet.' His hands rest on his hips. 'You cut it this fine again, and you can find yourself another Ankou.'
'Where am I going to find one as good as you?'
'Exactly. Which is why you are never going to do this again. Now, I've been thinking about this Death Moot -'
'Is Cerbo here?' I interrupt.
'Not yet. Wonder of wonders, we've actually got five minutes.'
'Good. I had a meeting with Suzanne Whitman last night.'
'And you have only told me this now because…?'
'Look, it was late. I didn't want to wake you. At least you can sleep.'
'Still having trouble, eh?'
'Shit, Tim, I've been whingeing about this for a month.'
'Pardon me if I've been too busy to notice.' And as if to prove his point, his mobile starts ringing.
He looks at it. 'It's only mildly urgent,' he says. 'I'll call them back.'
Tim slips his phone into his pocket and smiles at me. 'Now, this is interesting, really interesting. If the US RM is so keen to negotiate, the others can't be too far behind. What did she want?'
'She said she wanted to help.'
Neither of us successfully choke down the laugh that follows.
'Said I could do with an ally.'
Another snort.
Tim checks his watch. 'We'd better get to your office. Cerbo will be there in a minute.' We walk past the desks of Pomps and the hallway that sits in the middle of the office, the one that leads directly to Aunt Neti's parlour. She's baking scones or muffins or biscuits; the smell drifts down the hall. Probably expecting a visitor. I can't help wondering who.
My office is a bit stuffy. I switch on the lights and the aircon. It's your basic sort of corner office, except for Brueghel's painting, 'The Triumph of Death' against one wall (not a copy, the real thing, all those skeletons bringing on the apocalypse, herding the living to Hell) and the throne, of course.
I drop into the throne, and my region immediately grows more vital around me. The beating hearts, the creaking tree.
Sitting in my throne I feel what Tim's reports can only tell me. We're stretched painfully thin. My Pomps are struggling out there. It might be a picture of industry in the offices, but it's little more than a veneer painted over chaos. I've been ignoring this for far too long.
'We need more staff,' I say to Tim.
'Lissa's doing the best she can,' he says irritably. 'It's not exactly easy to advertise for Pomps. There's a whole bunch of stages that we have to steer people through. I think it's remarkable that we have as many staff as we do.'
'We've got to do better.'
'You could take a more active role. That might help,' Tim says sharply.
'I'm doing the best I can,' I say, mimicking his tone.
Tim groans, shakes his head. 'How about a unified front?'
'Yeah, how about it?'
'Sometimes you piss me off, de Selby.'
I grin at him. 'That's what family is for.'
'Maybe that's why I decided to become a Black Sheep.'
'Nah, you can't escape it no matter what you do. As long -' and I stop myself there. I was going to say as long as there is family left, but there isn't that much family remaining. There are some things neither of us are ready to joke about.
I'm almost relieved that Faber Cerbo shifts into the foyer at that moment. Apparently Ankous can do that, if their RM is sufficiently skilled. Morrigan could, and it didn't seem to hurt him, either, the prick. Cerbo's appearance is presaged by a slight pressure in my skull. His heartbeat, a sudden addition to my region, is loud – like you'd expect from an Ankou – even louder than Tim's, and at a steady sixty beats per minute.
I glance at my watch. He is exactly thirty seconds late, and I can't help feeling that Suzanne is making a point. Lundwall – heartbeat ninety-three bpm, up from seventy, now that Cerbo has appeared at his desk – leads him into the room.
