Existentially Challenged, page 29
Adam coughed. “Well. Um. We’re pretty sure she was actually.”
“No,” said Miracle Mum, shaking her head lightly.
An awkward pause followed, until everyone jumped at the sound of a sarcastic clap of hands. From the shadows at the far end of the room came the figure of Doctor Diablerie, marching into the center of the conversation with a slow, leisurely pace.
“That,” he declared, “was pathetic.”
“Doctor?” said Alison, bewildered.
“In all my voyages in the mindspace, my struggles with the demons of falsehood, Diablerie has never witnessed a poorer excuse for a parlor scene.” He turned dramatically to Adam, snapping his cloak around himself. “Where is the gathering of the suspects? The buildup? This is the detective’s moment to shine, boy! You don’t leap straight to accusations like a dog glimpsing an unsmelled behind!”
Adam was struggling to pull his thoughts back onto the rails. “Doctor, I’m trying to . . . to . . .”
“You didn’t even open with the seemingly irrelevant question!” He spun on his heel, making his cloak fly up around his chest, and pointed at Miracle Mum, who dropped her gaze immediately. “My lady. Enlighten us. Does Miracle Dad still insist that visitors to his home remove their shoes before entering?”
Miracle Mum looked up, confused. “What? Yes!”
“A seemingly innocent, common-enough request,” said Diablerie smugly, making a slow circuit of the room. “A perfectly proper peccadillo for a patriarch proud of his personal palace.” He paused to make eye contact with Alison. “Who could have dreamed that it would be the key to the sinister truth at the black heart of this villainous scheme?”
“Um, this is my case,” said Adam weakly.
“On the contrary!” cried Diablerie, leaning into his personal space. “I represent the Office of Skepticism! The deliberate peddling of false magics falls within the mighty remit of Diablerie. Even if the illusion requires real magic to succeed.”
“Okay, seriously, what the hell is going on?” asked Rana. “What’s he trying to say?”
Diablerie responded by sharply pointing a gloved index finger upwards. “Only this. That the little girl who walks the stage above our heads, promising to dole out a goddess’s touch like a fishwife peddling jellied eels, has no more magic inside her than does a crab paste sandwich.”
Rana looked up at the boards above them. “Miracle Meg? But . . . I’ve seen her heal people. In the Modern Miracle house. She’s the only one in the room.”
“Ah! But what is a room?” Diablerie looked from baffled face to baffled face, enjoying himself immensely. “Four walls and a floor, yes? But sometimes these matters are not so straightforward. Girl! You remember that floor, don’t you? You were sitting upon it as you received the bounty of our lady El-Yetch. I’m sure you remember every detail of it as if ’twere carved into your ample buttocks.”
“There was a drain,” said Alison impatiently. “It was a tile floor with a little circular metal drain that I was sitting on.”
“When is a floor not a floor?” crowed Diablerie, looming over Miracle Mum, who was cringing harder than ever. “When it’s also a ceiling. The ceiling of a certain underground chamber accessible via hidden tunnel in the forest? A ceiling adorned with a painting of El-Yetch’s most benevolent face? With a mouth suspiciously round and bathroom drain shaped?” Diablerie turned from Miracle Mum with a little scoffing noise. “As any scholar of the mystical arts knows, magical healing requires physical contact but can still work through clothing. Or indeed a thin metal drain full of holes. Probably the ‘holiest’ aspect of this whole sordid affair, hah. The sole of a shoe is far taller an order, of course. Hence the house rule for stockinged feet.”
“No,” whimpered Miracle Mum, shaking her head and staring at the floor.
Alison was thinking back to her experience of being healed in the Modern Miracle house. She recalled how she had felt the power rising up within her from the pit of her stomach. In retrospect, she should have thought more about that. After all, why would the sensation be coming from below when Miracle Meg had been touching her forehead?
“My god,” said Rana, eyes wide. “Someone was under the bathroom? Doing the real healing? Who?”
“Who indeed?” Diablerie suddenly spun around and addressed Adam, notching the dramatic tone of his voice down. “I hope you’re taking notes, boy. This is how one does a parlor scene. Behold the captivation in their eyes. The room is primed for the next explosive reveal.” He spun back around. “Who indeed! There are no conduits here, no divine blessings of the Mother Goddess. Only mundane healers, suffering in darkness as their very lives are traded for Miracle Dad’s likes and subscribers. Is that not true, Megan Arkwright?” He inhaled sharply, making a little hissing sound to punctuate the reveal.
“Yeah, we figured that out,” said Adam sulkily.
“What?!” said Rana, addressing Miracle Mum.
Alison coughed. “She’s the original Miracle Meg. The one with the real healing powers.”
Rana frowned. “So she was the one under the floor?”
“No!” said Adam urgently. “Maybe at first. But they’ve been luring in other people with healing powers and making them do it. Like the first vampire victim, William Shaw. Last night I found an entry for him in the school records. He had healing powers too. He—”
“No, no, no, no, no, no!” roared Diablerie. “It’s far too soon for another reveal! You’re supposed to prevaricate. Prevaricate!” He slapped his own face. “By all the damned spirits of the Otherworld, this is a farce.”
“Oh my god,” said Rana, backing away from Miracle Mum, who was madly shaking her head at the floor. “You were going to . . . you were going to make me . . .”
“Yes, well,” said Diablerie, straightening his suit. “With the facts clumsily established, the whole sorry saga unfolds. A father of the gutter class, his ambition outweighing his scruples, discovers to his infinite glee that his daughter is possessed of miraculous healing powers and wastes no time attempting to exploit her. Until the first of many inconveniences comes knocking at the door of the Arkwright home. The Ministry of Occultism, taking Megan away to teach her the downsides of her extraordinary gift. The premature aging. The ever-present sword of Damocles of demonic possession.”
“Dual consciousness,” mumbled Alison quickly.
Diablerie made a slow circuit of the room as he spoke. “Not that it stopped your father’s ambitions right away, did it, Miracle Meg?” He spat the words. “Just gave him a new angle for the con. The Cult of El-Yetch, the Mother Goddess, with a smile and a lollipop for every child of Adam. In truth, El-Yetch is as any other Ancient. Far away in their own cold, unreachable dimension, with as much concern for humanity as an oak tree has for an ant upon its leaves.”
He paused to stare down his nose at Megan, the merest trace amount of pity in his usual permanent sneer. “What did he tell you, that a little heal now and then to gull the masses couldn’t hurt? But it did. And bit by bit, daddy’s girl doesn’t look quite so girlish anymore. Was that when your mother left? Or perhaps she never left at all? Perhaps more skeletons than we know haunt the crannies of your father’s house?”
Megan finally looked up, eyes wet and upper lip running freely with mucus. “He didn’t!”
Diablerie put two fingers to his lips, gauging her reaction. “Perhaps even a man of such low breeding balks at some levels of depravity. After all, he eventually shied from the thought of aging his own eldest daughter to death. Perhaps he would have shelved the Cult of El-Yetch notion altogether. Until one fateful day.”
Rana, by now, had backed all the way over to Adam’s side, and the way she had fearfully taken hold of his elbow gave him a shot of courage. He stepped forward, resolving to wrest back control of the parlor scene. “It was when magic got declassified,” he said. “Suddenly lots of people want to know more about magic and still don’t trust what the government tells them. That’s when Modern Miracle started really taking off.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Diablerie, making a single stomp toward him like a gorilla trying to scare off a rival alpha male. “A fresh batch of gullible plebeians, including many harboring the ethereal taint themselves, seeking a place to belong. And that’s when the new scheme strikes Miracle Dad. One evil enough to chill even Diablerie’s blood.”
“William Shaw,” interjected Adam. “He posted on Modern Miracle. And he was a healer. He probably wanted to know the secret of healing without draining himself, just like you did.” He looked to Rana, and the look she gave him back addled his thoughts enough that Diablerie was able to seize control again.
“I doubt Shaw was the first victim ensnared by the honeyed tentacles of Modern Miracle’s promises, but he may well have been the first to escape them.” Diablerie rounded on Megan again with a maniacal smile. “If only for long enough to breathe his last upon a stranger’s doorstep. What was the lie, girl, when you brought them to that shrine you and your family decorated so crassly? Reach up, wretched sinner, lay thine hands upon the mouth of El-Yetch, pour thy power upwards, and know at last the embrace of the Goddess? Or were they not all so naive? Was that your task, down there in the tunnels? To coerce, by force, if all lies failed?”
Alison had been watching Megan Arkwright with growing concern. She had spent much of the parlor scene staring at the floor, trembling or silently crying, but was now resentfully staring Diablerie down, sitting dangerously still like a trapdoor spider. The tension hung by a thread for a silent moment, then she rapidly threw a hand into her coat and pulled out a revolver.
“Yes, possibly using that!” said Diablerie, impressed.
Megan shot him.
51
Victor didn’t know where he was. He was finding it difficult to piece together his recent memories. He knew that he had come to some theater to help Leslie-Ifrig with some bodyguarding job—or, wait, wasn’t this a DEDA job? Wasn’t he here with Adam? When he thought back, all he could remember was pain. A lot of pain. It hadn’t lasted long, but now it seemed to be obscuring a lot of his memory, like a large ink stain in a book.
So he remembered pain. He also remembered that at one point he had been able to move his arms and see out of both eyes. That didn’t seem to be the case anymore. He also seemed to remember weighing a lot more than he currently did.
At least his legs were functioning. He was upright, tottering forwards, letting himself be guided by the walls he was bumping against. Eventually, he stopped bumping into walls and sensed, dully, that he was bumping into hanging curtains instead, and his one remaining eye was seeing a lot of red.
Red curtains. So he was still at the theater. Things were starting to make more sense. Encouraged, he kept pushing forward. The curtain resisted, but eventually he felt it fall away, to be replaced with bright lights.
Bright lights and noise. And people. There were people all around, all of them yelling. He was hearing it as if he had cushions pressed against his ears, but it gradually became clear that most of the yelling was directed at him.
Realizing that, he began to feel quite overwhelmed. It was all quite tiring, having to stand up and get yelled at. That was another thing he remembered: that remaining upright used to be a lot less exhausting. It was probably about time for him to get some sleep anyway.
Victor promptly collapsed in the middle of the Pelican Theatre’s main stage. His head hit the floorboards with a worryingly hard impact, but at that point, it was the least of his problems.
Richard Danvers hurried back onto stage and knelt beside him. He could only recognize him from the roughly one-quarter of his face that wasn’t completely charred. “Mr. Casin? Victor?!” he yelled. “Dear god. Medics! Medics, now!”
Two of the paramedics ran onto the stage, clutching whatever equipment they could grab in an instant, and fell to their knees either side of the smoking ruin that was, for the moment, still Victor Casin. “Still getting a pulse,” said one. “I think. Erm.” He stopped himself from saying that it was difficult to find a spot where there was enough unburnt flesh to read a pulse. He called back to the wings. “Get an ambulance ready! And get some wet towels!”
“Wet towels?!” said Miracle Dad, taking a step toward the center of the unfolding drama. “He’s not at the sodding hairdresser! He needs help!”
Richard Danvers, trying to get a reaction from Victor’s one fluttering eyelid, flashed a hateful look. “This is not the time for—”
“For what?” Miracle Dad was addressing both him and the hushed audience equally. “I’d say it’s time to drop all your both-sides bullshit, because you know damn well there’s only one thing here that’s going to save that poor bugger now. A touch from my Miracle Meg.”
Danvers locked eyes with him. Miracle Dad had set his mouth and eyebrows into an expression of grim seriousness, but there was a smugness to his bearing that left Danvers instinctively repulsed. Nevertheless, he was a pragmatist and always did his best thinking under pressure, and all of his thoughts were pointing the same way.
“All right,” he said. “Do it.”
“Come on, get him on the prayer mat,” said Miracle Dad. As he supervised the two sweating paramedics trying to lift Victor gingerly enough that nothing significant flaked off, he tapped his foot on the floor once, twice, three times. Very few people noticed it, and those that did took it for either impatience or a discreet attempt to knock something nasty off his shoe.
52
Megan Arkwright, still pointing the gun, flinched and glanced up at the floorboards. “It’s time,” she said, flustered. “Dad says you have to do it now.”
She took aim at Rana, who was trying to hide behind one of Adam’s raised arms. “I’m not doing anything for you! Adam, tell her!”
Adam wrestled his gaze away from the terrifying metal object in Megan’s hands and focused on meeting her gaze. “Megan. Think about this. Are you really gonna shoot all of us?”
“She’s set the precedent, boy,” slurred Diablerie, from the floor. “Diablerie might suggest directing the conversation elsewhere.”
“Stop talking!” wailed Alison, who was by his side, applying pressure to the ugly wound in his stomach with both hands.
Another three impatient knocks came from above. Megan jumped and redoubled her grip on the gun. “You, you have to do it now,” she stammered, trying to sound intimidating as the muzzle of her gun shivered like an orphan in the snow. “They’re on the trapdoor. Come on. You have to do it or . . .”
“Or what?” asked Rana as Megan struggled to find the words. “You’ll shoot me? You’ll shoot me if I don’t kill myself? That doesn’t make sense!”
“She’s right! It doesn’t make sense!” said Adam as Megan looked away in uncertainty. “Because . . . because this entire building is full of DEDA agents! You really think we’re the only ones who figured this out?”
“Dad knows,” said Megan, lips quivering. “Dad will know . . .”
“It’s over, Megan,” said Adam, suddenly remembering that that line had proved effective in a Harrison Ford movie he had seen once. “Rana isn’t going to heal whoever’s up there. Miracle Dad’s going to be exposed. Even if he isn’t, that shrine under your house has been burnt to a crisp, hasn’t it? You really think you’re going to keep finding healers? How long before he’s making you do your part again?”
“We can help you,” pleaded Alison. “Just come with us. Tell everyone what Miracle Dad was doing. You won’t be in trouble. You won’t have to hurt yourself for him anymore.”
Megan was now staring at nothing, every part of her face moist and trembling as she fought the urge to break down. Her gun arm continued to waver until, inch by inch, she was aiming at the floor.
“Now!” cried Diablerie, trying to sit up in a burst of effort. “Overpower the harlot!” Blood squirted from between Alison’s fingers, and he fell back down with a grunt.
The surprise broke Megan from her reverie, and she pointed the gun at Diablerie. “Get away from him.”
Alison was desperately slapping Diablerie’s suddenly unresponsive face in an attempt to provoke a reaction. “He’s dying!”
With a small movement, the gun was pointing to her. Megan wasn’t trembling anymore. “I said, get away from him,” she barked, clearly and decisively.
Alison threw her arms up so quickly that she sprinkled Adam and Rana with droplets of wet blood from her hands. Diablerie’s wound began to freely vomit blood all over the floor like a broken chocolate fountain.
“Please,” said Alison, meeting Megan’s determined stare. “He—”
Another three knocks on the floor above silenced her, louder and more impatient. This time, Megan didn’t flinch. She looked up once, smiled philosophically, and returned her gaze to Alison. “You know,” she said, with a faint quaver. “You were wrong about one thing. None of them ever needed much coercion. Neither did I.”
Then, in a single, fluid action that no one was prepared to stop, she fell forward, threw aside the gun, and slapped both hands around Diablerie’s ankles.
Adam clutched his head as a violent burst of magic overloaded his senses. Even Alison felt she could detect something—a sudden heaviness in the air that made all the hairs on her body prick up. There was a glow around Megan’s hands as if she was trying to cover the end of a flashlight.
The flow of blood from Diablerie’s wound stopped. His entire body convulsed, throwing his head forwards, and each time, when he settled back down, his bullet wound was a little smaller. The blood remained, but within seconds, there was nothing beneath it but a small cross-shaped scar in Diablerie’s gut that could have been years old.
At the same time, Megan Arkwright’s skin faded from pale to sepulchral, tightening around her bones like shrink-wrap and making her rapidly graying hair stand on end. In the matter of seconds it took Alison to wrestle with her conscience and try to shove her away, Megan must have aged at least sixty years. She made no resistance and fell back as lightly as a cardboard cutout.
