Dead Mans Hand

5:00 P.M.

Jennifer was awake when Brennan returned to Father Squid's. She and the priest were playing chess. When she saw him, she stood and threw her arms around him and kissed him, then held him at arms' length. "Why did you let me sleep through all the excitement? You almost got yourself killed without me!"

"Almost," Brennan agreed. He threw himself down on the sofa and sighed deeply.

"What's the matter?" Jennifer asked.

Brennan shook his head. "It's all gone. I've used up all the possible clues. There's nothing left to investigate. Bludgeon, Oddity, Wyrm, Morkle, Quasiman. None of them did it. Her journal was no help. Her… files… have been burned. Everything and everyone else has vanished into thin air. Sascha, Ezili, her master…"

Jennifer sat down beside him and laid her hand on his cheek.

"Is there no one else to question?" Father Squid asked. Brennan shook his head wearily. "I don't think so, Father."

"There's me," a small voice peeped.

Everyone turned to see one of the homunculi come out shyly from behind the couch.

"How long have you been there?" Father Squid asked. "Awhile. I was watching. There is nothing else I can do."

"Can you help?" Brennan asked, desperate for any information. "Have you heard of any of those names?"

"Ezili," the homunculus said. "I've heard that name."

"Yeah," Brennan said. "A lot of people have. Only no one knows where she is."

"Perhaps she's at the loft."

"Loft?" Brennan said, suddenly sitting upright on the sofa.

"Yes. When Sascha started acting strange, the Lady wanted to know about this woman he was seen with. We followed her to a loft near the East River. Two of my brothers went there, but they never came back."

"Do you remember this address?" Brennan asked in a low voice.

"I think so," the homunculus said.

Jennifer looked at Brennan. "You're not going alone this time," she said.

Brennan nodded. It was only a few hours until dark.

"I'll make it get up and do a little dance," Blaise had said when he'd first seen Charm in Piedmont Park. The memory had still been there, in the back of the boy's mind, and his master had found it and been amused.

Charm had been dancing for almost forty minutes now. One of the pairs of legs, attached to the female body in the middle, had stopped moving twenty minutes ago, but the rest of the joker continued its grotesque shuffle.

When Charm finally collapsed in exhaustion, the huge body slumped against the couch, jolting it sideways almost a foot. The silence that followed was profound and frightening.

Sascha and the centipede man entered the room. "Does it please you?" Sascha asked.

"Very much," Ti Malice replied through Blaise. "It feels intensely, and when its mind takes hold of another's, it feels the other's emotions as well as the physical sensations… so much to savor, all at once… flavors, colors… the textures of two or three bodies… exquisite…"

"A treasure," Ezili said. She sat on the mattress, one arm coiled around the boy's skinny leg. Both of them were still naked.

"His powers will be useful, master," Sascha pointed out. "Any mount you might desire is yours now, even the most powerful of aces. The boy can bring them to you, and hold them still, helpless, while you take them."

"Yes," the creature had Blaise say. "You've done well. You shall have the kiss soon, my dear one."

Sascha looked like a dog who'd just been thrown a SlimJim.

"This mount has known death in a way I have never tasted," Blaise said for his master. "It has joined with the minds of the dying… tasted the sweet with the bitter, the killing with the dying… sipped at the darkness itself… yes… " Blaise turned slowly, studying the others in the basement. The thing that rode him opened its own pale, weak eyes.

"Him," the centipede man said eagerly. He pointed at Jay with half a dozen knives. "Kill him. He sent all your other mounts away, master. He's dangerous."

Eyes fixed on Jay; Blaise's violet and strangely wide, his master's vague and frightening. Jay stared right back at him. Until Hiram stepped in the way. "No," he said. "Not Jay. He's an ace."

"Ackroyd is powerful," Sascha agreed. "A projecting teleport. When he is yours, you can never be threatened again. He can point a finger and move you to safety whenever an enemy threatens."

"That is good." The eyes began to move again.

They stopped on the centipede man.

It took the joker a long moment to realize what was happening. "No, master," he said. "Not me. I'm… I'm useful, too…"

"Only a joker," Ezili said. "He wanted to kill them both. Your new treasures."

"I was afraid," the centipede said. "They were aces, dangerous, I didn't want you hurt. No, please… I just didn't want you hurt, master."

"He wanted to keep your kiss for himself," Ezili said. "In a moment he's going to attack you with his knives," Sascha reported matter-of-factly.

Blaise's eyes narrowed slightly; the knives clattered against the stone floor as they fell from limp fingers.

"Hiram, do something," Jay said. Hiram turned away.

The human centipede stood immobile, his body frozen by the power of Blaise's mind. But the boy must have left him his mouth, because he was still begging. "No, please, take one of the others," he cried in that high, sharp voice. "Take the woman… or the girl. Yes, take her. Or Charm, take Charm, he can't even talk, he's stupid, take him. Please don't hurt me, master. I love you."

"Blaise!" Jay screamed. "Let him go!" The boy didn't even turn his head.

The centipede man reached over with a half dozen of his right hands and seized the uppermost of his left arms. " I love you, master," he whimpered. " I love you, I love you." Then the words turned into a high, thin shriek of pain as he ripped the arm right off his body. Blood spurted.

"He loves you," Ezili said, smiling, as the man's bloodsoaked hands dropped the severed arm to the floor and seized the one below it. The second arm didn't come off quite so cleanly. The man began to use his fingernails, tearing at his own flesh with all the strength left in him.

Hiram walked to a corner of the cellar and threw up. Jay couldn't watch. He looked at Blaise. There was a look in those dark eyes that Jay had never seen on a human face before. The boy's penis stirred slightly and began to rise, until a monstrous erection was growing from the tangle of coppery red pubic hair. Ezili noticed it, too, and covered it with her mouth.

But when the joker's second arm came off, she took her lips away from him just long enough to say, "He loves you not."