Page 44 of Smoke & Ashes
She tsked as only a granny can. “Such anger, and still so young—relatively speaking. You stand at a crossroads.” The two of spades. “Your lady will live or die, rise or fall, ascend or perish according to what you do next.”
“She seems to want me to kill her.”
Vera King smiled. “So kill her. And good riddance.”
“But then she’ll be dead.”
“Death is a transition, child.”
“Yes. To being dead.”
She gathered her cards and stood, shaking her head. “My Arty should have killed you all. Then we would never have had this bother. Kill her or heal her. But don’t do nothing. Doing nothing invites chaos.”
“Why are you helping me? If you are helping me.”
She threw a card face down at my feet. “I got no choice, dear. You’re the one who killed me, after all. And I take some pleasure in watching you fail.”
I wasn’t sure if she was worse dead or alive. I stooped and turned over the card. The ace of hearts. Before I could pick it up, a hand closed around mine and plucked the card from my fingers.
Looking up, I saw that Vera King had gone, and in her place was a girl, passing fair and young, her golden hair unbound and a faint smile on her lips.
* * *
The sunlight through the curtains woke me at last—oh right, I didn’t have other people’s alarm clocks or actual fucking cockerels getting me up this time. Checking my phone, I found a text from Nicola Bright.Will be at your office circa 1.30 if convenient.
It wasn’t hugely. It was nearly noon already because seriously man, fuck sleep patterns. Still, an hour and a bit was just about enough time to get into the office and if I didn’t catch up with the professor now she might decide I was too unreliable to be worth it. And they said sleeping in your clothes never paid off.
To be honest, I was glad of the distraction. Having made the very mature and positive decision to do something about Nimue if I possibly could, only to wind up chasing a sodding giraffe and playing three moves of chess against my ex, I was feeling a bit symbolismed out for the day.
Vision quests could officially go fuck themselves.
There was a bus direct from my flat to my office—it had been one of the things that appealed when I’d first been looking at it—and so I managed to get in without having to risk the Tube. I’d been down there once without incident but there was no sense in pushing it, especially since this whole vision quest seemed about to go full descent-into-the-underworld. I arrived with a whole eight minutes to spare, pleased to discover that the door-fixing-person had been in my absence, and used the time productively getting the worst of the mess cleaned up, hiding the more obvious stashes of empty bottles, and making sure I definitely had the fucking book that I was supposed to be showing her.
I fired off a brief text to Eve.Professor coming to office, if you’ve found anything out about her, now would be a good time to tell me.She’d been curious about the mysterious Professor Bright ever since I’d mentioned her during my last check in.
It came as precisely zero surprise to me when the professor emeritus arrived bang on half one. People who put the wordcircain their texts were far too anal to ever be circa about anything.
She looked younger than I expected given her title, I’d have put her as fifties rather than sixties, and well-preserved fifties at that, her hair barely greying and her eyes carrying a kind of wicked brightness that I’d fallen for way too many times from way too many women. There was something about her that weirdly reminded me of Corin Black, the doe-eyed femme fatale who’d killed Archer and come close to killing me on multiple occasions. Assuming, of couse, she managed to make it to that age which, honestly, I thought she probably would—Corin lived a dangerous life, but it was mostly dangerous for other people.
“Nicola Bright,” she said, extending a hand.
I shook it. “Kate Kane. You’re here about the book?”
“That’s right. Look, I know it’s not exactly the done thing anymore but do you mind if I smoke?”
I thought it might technically have been illegal but since I now had zero employees I doubted how much that mattered. “Sure.”
She drew a packet of filterless cigarettes from the pocket of her tastefully selected jacket. “Want one?”
“Sure.”
Before I knew what was going on she was lighting it for me, making the type of eye contact that usually meant trouble. I could see two tiny little flames dancing in her pupils.Oh come ona little voice seemed to be saying in the back of my mind.You’ve been good for two whole days, if you get a chance with this one you should definitely go for it.
“So how did you come by it?” she asked. “The book, I mean.”
“Long story.”
“And not one you’d care to go into?” She blew out an actual smoke ring. I knew it killed you, I knew it smelled awful, but I defied anybody to sit for five minutes in a room with Nicola Bright and not admit that, when you got right down to it, smoking was cool.
