First Interlude Gwen, Underfoot #9
“Why would you rave cruel secrets to make us hate you? So we could justify holding a pillow over your face, you old bastard.” And as she said it, she clinked her glass to his and sipped. It burned going down, a delicious swallow of heat.
Colin made a choked sound from the open French windows.
“Why you are crying, m’boy?” Llewellyn asked, lifting his head querulously, his clouded eyes brightening.
Colin said, “I—” and choked again and turned his face away.
Gwen said, “I know you want it to be done, Llewellyn. I know you’re exhausted. And embarrassed by the way your body has started
to betray you, although Lord knows you’ve no reason to be. I know this isn’t how you want Colin to remember you. I love you,
old man. We all do. And if you’re ready, there’s a glass of something harder for you after you finish your whiskey.”
“No,” he whispered. “You mustn’t. Not like that. A poison will be discovered.”
“Not this poison.”
Llewellyn tilted his head to one side, lips parted slightly, his lean Sherlockian visage alive with interest. “Oh? What bitter
concoction have you discovered, Gwen Underfoot? I never took you for a mistress of poisons.”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” she said. “So you’ll just have to trust me instead.”
“The dragon,” Llewellyn whispered.
She hadn’t seen that one coming and needed a moment to process it.
“You know about King Sorrow.”
“Yes.” It was Colin who spoke, not Llewellyn. Colin’s voice was hoarse with emotion, but he took one step toward them now.
“I told him most of it, over the last few months. I only left out the part about King Sorrow’s return, that we have to kill
again. I didn’t want him to worry about us.” And then, to Llewellyn, he said: “You had enough to deal with. It turns out we
have to pick someone every Easter. Not just last Easter. It’s not a one-and-done. It goes on and on.”
“Until?”
“We’ve had enough, I guess.”
“Ah,” Llewellyn said. “And you chose me. Well. You couldn’t have chosen better. And he gave you . . . a poison to finish me off? He isn’t going to visit me like
he visited Ms. Nighswander and her confederate? He isn’t going to fall on me in a crash of claws and f-f-flame?” He began
to cough then, a dry, splintering sound that doubled him over. He set the cigar on the edge of the table with a shaking hand.
Gwen got up to pat and stroke his back while he gasped. Before she sat back down, she reached over the table and moved the
decanter aside. The goblet was behind it: a dusky gold chalice studded with ancient emeralds and rubies. There was a comical
sheet of Saran Wrap over the top to keep the contents from spilling. It was very full. There was enough there to poison an
army. King Sorrow told her the last person to drink from it was Ivan IV. Keep it when you’re done, King Sorrow told her. On the house.
“No. We had a riddling contest. After I stumped him, he had to make some concessions.” She sat back down with the chalice
in one hand. “I’m told it won’t hurt. But you have to drink it tonight, before midnight.”
“Or . . .” Llewellyn asked, cocking one eyebrow.
“Or Gwen will have to drink it for you,” Colin answered.
“Ah,” Llewellyn said. “Well, we shan’t let that come to pass.”
“Do you . . . have anything you want to do first?” Gwen asked. “Anyone you want to call? Anything that needs finishing?”
“Besides this whiskey? No. It was all done ages ago. I’ve been in hell’s waiting room for months. Maybe I didn’t drown children.
But I wrote a guide that said threatening a man’s loved ones would be a most effective application of pressure. That was true.
The work I did for the Shop in the seventies and eighties—that was true too. This is lovely whiskey—the loveliest thing I
have had in months.” He drank off the last of it and closed his eyes to savor it. “Lovely. Colin, will you hold my hand? I
am not afraid. But I would like you with me. You were the best thing in my life.”
Colin sank to one knee and took Llewellyn’s right hand like a drowning man grabbing for someone who could pull him out of the current. Gwen had never seen Colin crying before, and never saw him cry again.
“Do you want another whiskey?” Gwen asked him. “We still have a quarter of the decanter.”
“No. I might get too attached to my own life again. I’ve had my shot. Where’s my chaser?”
Her hand shook when she handed him the goblet. He put his slender nose to the rim and inhaled.
“Smells like the sea,” he said. “Is it . . . venom?”
“Tears.”
“Dragon tears?” He seemed pleased by the idea. “You’re a good girl, Gwen. I hope you will give my regards and my thanks to
Mrs. Underfoot for decades of excellent service.” He squeezed Colin’s hand with his right, holding the goblet in his left.
“Look after all of this money for me, Colin. And look after your friends.”
Colin couldn’t reply. He pressed his wet face to the old man’s hand.
Llewellyn lifted the goblet in Gwen’s general direction. “Here’s to pornography, whiskey, long walks, and good books. Make
sure you get plenty of all four.” He shut his eyes and drank swiftly, one swallow and then another.
When he set the goblet back down, it was still three-quarters full. But his eyes had widened in surprise. He put his free
hand to his breastbone.
“Fascinating,” he said, and smoke seethed out of his lips.
“It tastes like the power and the glory. I almost mean that literally.” He let out a short, hard, panting breath, and sparks flew from his mouth.
“I think my soul is burning. Who knew it would feel so good? Makes the whiskey seem like weak tea.” He exhaled again: a lick of blue fire.
Gwen nearly leapt up in surprise, stayed in her chair only by a great force of will.
“Who knew the soul could burn so hot, Gwendolyn? Who knew . . . that we were made to burn eternal? Who.” Only this last word was not a word at all, only a sound, as he blew a smoke ring into the gathering darkness.
He sat very still, head cocked to one side, his eyes open. Colin made little choked sounds, his head pressed into Llewellyn’s
forearm. The ocean went boom-sssissssh.
After a while, Gwen poured out what was left of the whiskey. She used the decanter to keep what was left of the dragon tears,
and she put it in her car before she called emergency services.
18.
The memorial was on Friday, in the Rackham College chapel—piles of hothouse orchids in front of the altar and World War II–era
swing music from the college jazz orchestra—and then a reception at The Briars. One would’ve thought Donna and Gwen were hosting
the reception. Colin couldn’t stand to be there, couldn’t smile, shake hands, and chuckle at anecdotes about Llewellyn’s years
as a teacher, his sexual adventures, his psychological studies, his thousand small acts of kindness and generosity.
“They stayed away while he suffered and died,” Colin told Gwen, in a voice that ever so slightly shook with disgust. “All
of them. As if they could catch AIDS just by looking at him, or by sitting with him while he watched Sherlock Holmes. I hope to God I never get sick, never get weak, never get old. That’s not how I want to find out how few people really love
me.”
Donna had held Colin for a while, put her head to his, and said, “Fuck ’em, fuck all of ’em. We got this. You go.”
He helped himself to four Excedrin out of the plastic cube on Llewellyn’s desk and got out of there, left in the cherry Caddy, sliding out past the line of parked cars running up the mile-long drive. No one saw him again for days.
Gwen did her social duty until the last of the mourners were gone, then stayed another hour to clean with her mother. It was
going on five in the afternoon when she finally climbed back into her Honda. She told her mother she was off to watch Jett,
which was kind of true. But when she got to Gogan, Tana emerged carrying the baby car seat in one hand and a brown paper bag
from Ace Hardware in the other. The two women were a few minutes locking the baby seat into Gwen’s car and buckling Jett into
it, then Tana dropped herself into the passenger seat, paper bag between her legs. In the bag was a putty knife, a can of
quick-release agent that would undo almost any epoxy, a suction cup, and latex gloves.
“This is a first,” Tana said.
“You’ve never done this before? A little B and E?”
“Oh, I’ve stolen shit before,” Tana said. “But this is the first time I brought a baby to a felony.”
“You can really use that stuff to pull out a windowpane and get us in? What if she has an alarm?”
“I’m not scairt of her alarm. I wouldn’t look forward to meeting her over a twelve-gauge, though. I get my ass blown away
tonight, try and make sure Jett eats his vegimals.”
“She’s in London for a book fair. That’s why we’re doing this now.”
“You sure of that?”
“Pretty sure,” Gwen said. “But just in case, I’ll go in first. I know what I’m looking for and Jett needs his mother.”
But as they approached the Bunker Hill Memorial, through the gathering dark, Gwen heard the piercing shriek and wail of first
one siren and then another. Tana gave her a nervous sidelong look.
“Shit,” Tana said. “They can’t arrest us, we ain’t done no crimes yet.”
Gwen didn’t reply. She had a sudden bad feeling, a clammy, crawling sensation at the nape of her neck. She put the window down a few inches and breathed in the warm spring air. She smelled smoke, wondered if someone had a bonfire going.
They got to Bridget Fleming’s town house ahead of the first fire trucks, but by then the blaze was all the way to the third
floor. Lurid tongues of red fire spurted through windows that had exploded outward from the heat. A black tower of smoke boiled
up from the roof. Neighbors had come out on their steps to stare, their faces lit in shades of yellow and crimson by the glow
of the flames. Someone was dancing in the street in front of Fleming’s, jigging about in untied work boots and flailing his
arms like he was in the mosh pit at a Jane’s Addiction show.