Jokers Wild Page 0,134

in the rear mirror, saw a strange expression fall upon his features. He smiled with pleasure, but no humor, as if he recognized the name, as if he were glad to hear the man's voice.

"Listen carefully. Demise is coming with the book. I repeat. Demise has the book. Call off your search and escort him in. Do you understand?"

Brennan's smile was savage. "I do," he said quietly. "You're not Wyrm."

"No," Brennan said. "Who is this?"

"The past, spook. And I'm coming for you." He hung up the phone.

The din, as they walked crosstown, was deafening. The crowds were virtually tidal in their power to ebb and flow, carrying most unanchored passersby with them.

"I'm trying," Bagabond said to Jack, eyes tightly closed as she leaned up against the brick pillar at an alley entrance off 9th Street. "The creatures of the city have never had to deal with this kind of human commotion before. They're terrified."

"I'm sorry," said Jack. The urgency in his voice belied the apology. "Just try. Please try."

"I am." She continued to concentrate. "Nothing. I'm sorry." She opened her eyes and Jack found himself staring into their apparently infinite black depths. "There are eight million humans in this city. Probably there are ten times as many creatures, not even counting the roaches. Be patient."

Jack impulsively hugged her. "I'm sorry. Do what you can do. Let's keep heading downtown." His voice had turned weary now. Bagabond held the embrace a second more than necessary. Jack didn't object.

Bagabond suddenly cocked her head. "Listen."

"Are you picking up something?" Jack said.

"I'm hearing someone. Aren't you?" She started to walk rapidly down the block.

Jack heard it too. The music was familiar, the voice doubly so.

Blood and bones Take me home People there I owe People there gonna go Down with me to Hell Down with me to Hell

"I'll be damned," said Jack. "It sounds like C.C."

"It is C.C. Ryder," Bagabond said. C.C, had been one of Rosemary's oldest and closest friends in the city. But triggered by acute trauma, her grotesque wild card talent had kept her under close care in Dr. Tachyon's clinic for more than a decade. They stopped with several other onlookers, pressed up against the glass front of a Crazy Eddie's. There were several large video monitors set up in the display window. Overhead speakers piped the music out to the street. On the screens, sharp-edged geometric solids rolled and collided in black and white.

"Is she performing again?" Bagabond said. "Rosemary's said nothing."

"Not in person." Jack squinted through the glass. "Just in performance videos like this. I also heard she's been writing a lot of new stuff lately, songs for Nick Cave, Jim Carroll, people like that. I read in the Voice that Lou Reed's even considering one of her songs for a new album-and he never does covers."

"I wish she was doing concerts again," Bagabond said, voice almost wistful.

Jack shrugged. "Maybe. I guess she can't deal with more than maybe two people at one time. I think she's finally getting better."

"If she's recording now," said Bagabond, "then she's getting better."

"I bet Cordelia'd like to meet her," said Jack.

Bagabond smiled. "Cordelia's sixteen. Maybe C.C. knows Bryan Adams."

"Who?" said Jack.

"Come on." She took his arm and led him away from the display window. The lyrics followed them.

You can sing about pain You can sing about sorrow But nothing will bring a new tomorrow Or take away yesterday

In the neighboring cubicle, screened only by a thin cloth curtain, someone was puking. Noisily, energetically, vigorously, a real tour de force of puking.

"So I sez to him, I sez, I'm gonna smear your ugly nat face all over-"

But where the beery-voiced joker had been going to smear the face was lost in the lonely cry of sirens and a loud aggrieved "Ow!" from Tachyon.

"Stop sniveling," ordered Dr. Victoria Queen, who looked as if thirty-six years of living with her improbable name had permanently soured her disposition. The frowning expression was at odds with her lovely face and lush body. She took another stitch in the alien's forehead.

"What are you using? A knitting needle?"

"Where's all this Takisian stoicism? To bear pain without flinching, to laugh in the face of vicissitude."

"You have a terrible bedside manner."

"I see you found him," the doctor said, ignoring Tachyon. Roulette felt a stab of anxiety. "Was he in a bar?"

Tachyon, rightly reading an insult, seized upon the remark without realizing its import. "I am not always in a bar. I wish you would stop telling people that."

There was the sound