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  Meanwhile she'd wait for Laura and Jamie to get home, make sure they ate the food she'd brought, make sure they were all right.

  They were all the family she had.

  * * *

  She must have dozed off, because she woke up with a start to the sounds of the kids in the other room coming in, all three together, higher than anything. Joe and Tonio were all over each other, and Honi kept telling them to hush in a voice louder than their giggles. Tania didn't know if Honi was a boy or a girl; Honi had awfully big hands and feet for a girl, and a prominent Adam's apple, but she never wore anything but tight black skirts and pumps and fishnet hose out on the street—and this grubby old bathrobe with tatty marabou trim at home.

  Joe and Tonio were, according to Jamie, "queer as football bats." Odd that Jamie and her father used the same expression. They said they were lovers, but whenever they got drunk—as opposed to high—they beat each other up something awful. Laura and Jamie ignored them, but Tania always stayed hidden in bed when they started on each other that way.

  She glanced over at the other bed, almost by reflex, and saw one lump in it, with long, fire-red hair. Laura.

  "Jeezus, ah wish the hail them queers'd take it outside," came a loud groan from the lump. Laura had deliberately made it loud enough for the others to hear, and Tonio just giggled harder.

  "But baaaby it's cooold outside," Joe shrieked, and by the thump, fell onto the sleeping-bags he shared with Tonio. The overhead bulb went out in the other room, leaving the harsh light from the cracked ceramic lamp in the corner of their room as the only source of illumination.

  Laura sat up, shaking her hair out of her eyes, and peered through the doorway into the other room. "Weahll, theah goes the rent," she said glumly. Tania pulled her blankets back and sat up too, her heart sinking.

  But then Laura took a second look. The trio in the other room were already snoring. "Or mebbe not," she said thoughtfully, and slipped out of her bed to creep quietly into the other room.

  She came back with a handful of something. "Damnfools didn't spend it all, this tayhme," she said grimly. "Got thutty from Tonio's pants, foahty from Honi, an' twenny from Joe. I got foahty put by. How 'bout you?"

  Tania dug into her purse and came up with Tannim's five twenties, handing them over without a qualm. After all, she didn't have to worry about eating for a while.

  Laura looked at her with a dumbstruck expression on her face. "Whut in hail did y'all do, gal?" she asked. "Ah found the sammiches. You go to a pahty, or didja get a delivery kid?"

  Tania giggled, and shook her head. "No," she said, and the story of the strange guy in the bar spilled out under Laura's prodding. But to her surprise, Laura wasn't pleased.

  "Jee-zus!" the girl finally exploded, tossing her tangled hair over her shoulders. "Whut in hail didja thank you was doin'? This ain't no fairy tale, girl! Man don' give away money foah nothin'! You ain't gonna go back theah, are you?"

  "Not while he's there," she replied, resentfully. "But the tab's real, Laura; I saw the charge slip. I think we oughta eat it up before he changes his mind—"

  Laura wasn't convinced, and she scowled, then interrupted her. "That's 'nother thang, now ah'm glad I didn' eat them sammiches—he prolly put dope in there. First taste is free, but—"

  "Laura, they came straight out of the kitchen. He didn't touch them! Kevin Barry's is straight-edge, you dummy, they wouldn't do anything like that!" At Laura's continued scowl, she added, "Besides, I already ate one, and it was okay."

  "Jeezus," the older girl said explosively. Then, "I reckon it's all right. But don' go near him agin, you heah me? He's prolly a pimp, all that crap 'bout dreams and do-good bull. Only dreams man like that has come in white powdah, or lil' brown rocks. He jest wantsta get you off, get you stoned, an then he's got you."

  Tania sighed, and bowed her head in acquiescence. It would have been nice to have somewhere to go for help. She had vague memories of a dream, where Tannim was some kind of warrior, in leather and blue jeans, and he fought monsters to protect her. . . .

  But this wasn't a fairy tale or a movie; Laura was right. Nobody gave money away for free, and dreams had a way of vanishing when the rent needed to be paid. Laura was nibbling tentatively at a corner of one of the sandwiches, as if she expected to bite into something dangerous.

  That much was real, anyway. Food today, and food for the next week or so, and just twenty more dollars from Jamie and the rent would be paid up.

  "Where's Jamie?" she asked, and Laura stopped chewing. Her scowl turned to a frown of worry.

  "Ah don' know—" she began, and then they heard the rattle of a key in the lock. From the sound of it, Jamie was having a hard time finding the lock.

  When he stumbled through the darkened outer room, it was obvious why. He was even higher than the others had been. But this was a manic kind of high that made Tania sick inside. There was booze on his breath, but that wasn't all.

  Crack. He's been smoking crack.

  She sat in dumb silence, while Laura scolded him out of his clothes and into bed, holding out one of the remaining sandwiches. But even she went silent at the sight of rope burns on his wrists.

  "Whut happened?" she asked, after a long pause. Jamie laughed and snorted.

  "I did a party, baby. There was a birthday, and I was the favor. They got a little rough, but they made it up to me." He snatched at the sandwich she held, and devoured it before she could say anything; dove into the bag and got the cookies and ate them, then the second sandwich.

  How? With dope and booze? Or did he get that after?

  "How many?" Laura asked, finally, flatly. He gave her an owl-like stare, as the food made him sleepy.

  "I don' know," he replied, his words slurring. "Four. Five. I wanta sleep."

  "Did you make 'em use rubbers?" she snarled, as he lay down. When he didn't respond, she shook him. "Answer me, dammit! Did you?"

  "Yeah. Sure. I'm gonna sleep now." And he pushed her away. He didn't so much fall asleep as pass out.

  Frantic now, Laura scrabbled through his pockets, turning them out on the cargo-blanket and pawing through them. A pocket-knife, a butterfly-knife, assorted change. Keys. Three crumpled twenties. Gum wrappers and half a pack of gum.

  Three condoms.

  "He went out with six," Laura whispered, her voice tight with fear. "He had six."

  Six; three gone—but Jamie had said there were four or five johns. And he had been at a party; no telling how many times each.

  Laura started to cry, tears streaking her face with cheap mascara, rent money lying forgotten on the bed.

  Tania went to her, hugged her, and held her, rocking, not able to say anything, only able to be there.

  "It's all right," she said, meaninglessly. "It's all right. We'll take care of him in the morning, okay? It'll be all right. This isn't the first time this has happened, and he was all right before."

  "Yeah," Laura sobbed, "but—"

  "If they had the Plague, they wouldn't have partied together, right?" she said, trying come up with something that could soothe Laura's fears—and not mentioning her own.

  Like, what if they had it and didn't know yet. Or what if they all had it and didn't care?

  "But—" Laura couldn't get the rest out through her tears.

  "Look. Whatever happens, we'll take care of it," she said, holding Laura and rocking her. "We will. We'll take care of it together."

  CHAPTER SIX

  George Beecher sighed, pulled his raincoat a little tighter against the damp chill, and lit another cigarette. He moved out of the shadows, walking a little farther along the riverfront, and leaned on one of the cutesy gaslights, staring out at the river as if he was watching for something.

  He was, but it wasn't out on the river—which you really couldn't see much of because of the creeping fog. What he wanted was inside that building behind him, in warmth and laughter and candlelight.

  Well, the only way he was going to earn some of that for himself was
to park out here, in the dark, fog and cold. And wait.

  A lot of what a P.I. did was wait, although for the life of him, he couldn't imagine why the gal who'd hired him had wanted her hubby followed. Or what she figured he was doing on his nights out. He hadn't done anything at all this whole evening. He'd thought she was a little odd when the boss first talked to her; now he was sure of it.

  The guy had shown up at the Irish bar, like she'd said he would—but it wasn't with a chippie, like he'd expected; it was with an old man, a guy that had that "white-collar worker" look about him. Retired white-collar. Nothing untoward there, either, the old guy was as straight as they came; George had a knack for picking out the bent ones no matter how far in the closet they'd buried themselves. The young guy just had an odd friend, that was all. No big deal. Plenty of guys were buddies with old guys—maybe this was somebody he'd worked with before the old man retired.

  They'd listened to the band—along with the rest of the bar. The guy—kid, almost—hadn't even had anything to drink; it had looked to George like he'd stuck to cola the whole time.

  Then a chippie had shown up, a free-lancer, and way out of place for the bar. For a little bit, it had looked like he was going to get a bite; the guy'd come real close to getting into a fight over the underage hooker.

  But the fight never materialized. The rest of the patrons bounced the drunk, and the guy George was following had taken the kid back to his table. The old guy left them alone.

  Once again, it started to look like pay-dirt, but he'd just talked to the kid; then got the girl some food, maybe passed her some money, then turned her loose. And when he and the old guy left, it wasn't to go party with the chick—it was to this second-floor restaurant.

  They'd been there for hours. The girl had evaporated.

  Nobody in his right mind would give a hooker cash and expect her to be waiting for him after dinner. Either the guy was really crazy, or—

  Or the guy was a pushover for a sob story. Stupid, but nothing you could prosecute in a court of law. Unless wifey was planning on getting him committed. . . .

  You'd need a lot more than giving a panhandling kid some dough to get a guy committed. He hadn't even started the fight in the bar back there—and he'd hardly laid a finger on the drunk. You'd need some serious shit to lock a guy up; some evidence that he was being more than just a pushover for a sob story, something really crazy. So far the guy hadn't obliged at all.

  What was more, he didn't look as if he had enough money to make locking him up a profitable deal. He had a nice classic car, yeah, but nothing wildly spectacular, no Ferrarri, no fancy clothes, and he wasn't parading around with high-class types.

  On the other hand, he had flashed a Gold Card. And he was eating in a gourmet place. A lot of millionaires didn't look or act the part. Maybe—

  Well, it wasn't George's business what she did with the information he got her. All he had to do was follow the dude around, and make his report, take his pictures. He'd gotten one of the guy with the old guy, and one going into the restaurant. Funny thing had happened; every time he wanted to get a pic of the guy with the hooker, somebody had gotten in the way. He had only his verbal report, and a picture of the kid as she came out of the bar.

  No matter. Wifey would have what he'd gotten. Whatever she did with the full report after he turned it in was her own affair.

  He dropped the cigarette on the cobblestones, ground it under his heel, and lit another. It was going to be a two-box night from the looks of it.

  * * *

  Aurilia nic Morrigan leaned over her stark ebony desk and flipped through the pages of the last detective agency's report one more time, frowning. This perusal, like the last, yielded nothing she could use. Bruning Incorporated certainly hadn't come up with much in three weeks of following Tannim around; hopefully the new agency she had hired would be a little more resourceful.

  She slapped the folder closed, petulantly, and stared at her perfectly manicured nails. Aurilia wanted Keighvin Silverhair shredded, scattered over at least a continent, preferably by those same perfectly manicured nails. But Keighvin had formidable protections, and at least the grudging backing of Elfhame Fairgrove. She and Vidal Dhu were the only Folk of the local Unseleighe Court who wanted Keighvin's skin; they had no backing if it came to an all-out war instead of minor skirmishing. So she and Vidal were reduced to hide-in-corner strategies; one thing she had never been particularly good at. Right now, the only way to get Keighvin, at least so far as she could tell, was through this "Tannim" character. The problem was, she had discovered that beneath a veneer of commonly known information, there wasn't anything to give her a clue to the human's nature.

  She sighed, tossed the bound folder onto the filing cabinet, and stretched her arms over her head, slowly. The beige suede screens that walled her off from the rest of the room were hardly more than a few feet away, just barely out of reach. There was very little in her tiny office-cubicle besides the desk, the filing-cabinet and the black leather chair she sat in—but unlike humans, she and her associates didn't need much in the way of paper records. The single three-drawer filing-cabinet served all their needs for storage, and all of one and a half drawers was taken up with reports on Fairgrove and the personnel there. The records for Adder's Fork Studios filled barely half of the bottom drawer.

  But Adder's Fork didn't need much in the way of paper-trails and record-keeping. Customers came to find them, not the other way around. There was no need to go to any effort to keep track of accounting; payment was always in advance, cash only. And if the IRS or any other busy-body agency came looking for them, their agents would find—nothing.

  Customers, on the other hand, could always reach them. Vidal saw to that.

  Supply and demand, Aurilia mused, a little smile playing about her lips. A small market, but a loyal one. And one with few options to go elsewhere. . . .

  She stood up, walking around the discreet beige partition to the space taken up by the studio. It was a good thing they didn't need to hire outside secretarial help. A mundane secretary would never be able to handle the environment.

  Nearest to the office was the newest sound-stage. Tiny, by Hollywood standards, but quite adequate for the job, it looked very much like an old-fashioned doctor's office. Aurilia looked the new set over again, and decided it wasn't quite menacing enough. There was a definite overall impression of threat, but the customers weren't terribly bright sometimes; they needed things pointed out.

  Circles, arrows, and underlings.

  She considered the doctor's examining table. The next film would be a period piece, of the 1800s, re-enacting a series of incidents that had taken place during the Chicago World's Fair. With liberal embellishments. The kind their customers really appreciated.

  The lead character—one could hardly call him a "hero"—in this movie was a physician who had used the activity and bustle caused by the Fair to cover his own activities. He had lured in young women new to the city by advertising for secretaries, and offering a room above his office as an added incentive. With the Fair in full swing, rooms had been at a premium and were very expensive even in the poorest parts of town. Doctors were respected professionals—and in any case, he (supposedly) did not actually live in the same building as his office. Many young women applied whenever he posted his advertisement.

  He only chose select individuals, however. Pretty girls, but ones with no family, or very far from home. Girls with no friends, and especially, no boyfriends. Girls with quiet, submissive natures.

  He would scientifically discover their weaknesses, play upon them, and eventually, lure them down into his "special office," with the hidden door. Among other things, he had performed hack-abortions before he had hit on the secretarial scheme. Some of those secret patients had been his victims. It had been no problem to have any number of surprises concealed within the building; it had been constructed from his own plans. Once hidden behind the soundproof walls, he would overpower his girls with chlorofor
m, then strap them to a special examining table—

  And once he was finished with them—or even at the climax of his pleasures—he would behead them, with a special device he mounted onto the table.

  The bodies he disposed of in various ways, none traceable at the time. Aurilia reflected that he had really been very clever, for a human. His downfall had come when he overestimated his invulnerability and grew careless, choosing a girl he thought fit the profile—who didn't.

  But that was not what concerned the studio. They would use only the barest bones of the original story—and it certainly would not end in the doctor's capture.

  Indeed, they were going to take extreme liberties in the matter of the victims' ages. None would be over the age of sixteen. Most would be nine to thirteen, or at least, would look that young. Vidal already had several girls in mind, and there would, of course, be many constructs used to fill out the cast. Aurilia was considering a second version, employing young boys instead of girls, and a female "doctor"—or even a third and fourth with same-sex pairings. After all, why waste a perfectly good set?

  But right now that set still needed a few modifications. Aurilia considered the examining table carefully. She couldn't make the restraints any more obvious. Perhaps—

  Perhaps a change of color.

  She reached out with her magic, and touching the aluminum with the hand of a lover, stroked the surface of the table, darkening, it, dulling the shiny, stainless surface and changing its substance, until the table top had become a slab of dark gray marble.

  That did it. That was exactly the touch the set had needed. Now the table called up images of ancient sacrificial altars, without the mind quite realizing it, or wondering why.

  Of course, after the first victim, the audience would know what the table was for, and would simply be waiting for the "doctor" to lure another victim to his lair.

  But the little touches and attention to detail was what had made Adder's Fork the leading producers of S and M, kiddie-porn, and snuf-films in the business. There was true artistry involved, and centuries of expertise.