“So why would Berenbaum want to harm his own muse?”
“I dunno. Maybe he’s ready to retire and Rivenholt’s making a thing of it. Berenbaum is the Project’s biggest donor; maybe that ties in somehow. Or maybe it has something to do with Rivenholt fading.”
“Fading?”
“When you spend too much time in the wrong world, your body starts to change. The stuff in fey blood that makes them fey—norium, London calls it—it gets replaced with iron and their magic quits working, or humans who spend too long over there get norium in their blood and either go insane or turn into wizards or both. Either way we call it fading.”
“So what happens when Rivenholt can’t do magic anymore?”
“It’s already starting,” said Teo. “Did you see Accolade?”
I didn’t like to admit it, but I knew what he meant. Berenbaum’s recent work was all right, but “all right” was pretty disappointing from Berenbaum. Black Powder was supposed to be an unofficial fourth part of the Cotton trilogy, but people in the business were already doubtful that it was going to be worthy of comparison.
I shook my head, unconvinced. “Let’s not slap a black hat on Berenbaum until we know for sure that Rivenholt’s not shacking up somewhere with a supermodel or getting a seaweed wrap at Elysienne. Or both.”
It wasn’t time for dinner yet when we got back to the resi-dence, so Teo excused himself to make some phone calls. At my request he directed me to Song’s room, which was off to the east of the living room, around a corner on the first floor. The door, marked with an A, was partly open, but I knocked anyway.
“You can come in,” said Song.
The room had no window, but was well lit and decorated in a homey fashion with undyed fabrics and natural woods. Song had her eyes closed, bending her knees and waving her arms in what I could only assume was some sort of hippie ritual, baby seated comfortably in the wrap that was crisscrossed over her chest. Her serene expression and the freckles across her nose made her look too young to have a child.
“Abbada,” said the baby when it saw me, and peed. I could tell, because a wet stain appeared at the bottom of the wrap.
Song, smiling, made a gentle sssssssssss sound at the baby as she opened her small, dark eyes and began to lift it out of the wrap. I said a prayer to whoever was listening that I would never become the kind of person who was happy being peed on.
“Hi, Millie,” she said as she moved to hold the undiapered baby over a small bowl to catch the last of his dribbles. I could now add the fact that the baby was uncircumcised to the list of things I didn’t need to know.
“Hey,” I said, trying to unwrinkle my nose. “Is everything okay with Gloria and um . . . the guy with the beard?”
“Phil?” she said with a smile. “Oh, everything’s fine now. Sorry if you caught their little lovers’ quarrel.”
“Lovers’—okay. Uh, also, I was wondering, where is the house phone?”
“There is no house phone,” Song said, dabbing the baby’s doodad dry with a towel and then setting him on the changing pad as she began to unwind her wet wrap. And here I’d thought I would make it an entire day without seeing my landlord’s breasts.
“No phone?” I echoed stupidly.
“Once Caryl gives the go-ahead, you’ll get added to our mobile plan. But this house doesn’t have a landline.”
“Because of the wards?” I still had no idea what “wards” meant, but sometimes you can get people to tell you a lot if you pretend you know most of it already.
Song just gave me an odd look. “No,” she said. “A landline just makes it harder to keep track of who’s calling who. This way it’s all nice and separate, and if anyone starts abusing phone privileges, it’s easier to deal with.”
“Phone . . . privileges.” I could feel myself climbing the rungs of anger. “I’ve just spent six months in a psychiatric hospital, and I was really looking forward to being done with that kind of crap.”
Song smiled gently, tickling her son’s feet as he tried to stuff them in his mouth. “I know it’s hard. But sometimes the Project works with people who are very ill, and it seems cruel to treat them a certain way based on a diagnosis. So Caryl doesn’t tell me the diagnosis. I just start everyone at nothing and then give privileges based on behavior.”
It sounded fair, to what Dr. Davis would call my Reason Mind, but my Emotion Mind was digging my nails into my palms. Borderlines are not good at patiently earning things; we tend to take any “no” as a personal insult and feel driven to turn it into a “yes” on the spot.
“Was there someone you needed to call?” she asked me.
I thought of Dr. Davis—I was allowed to use her for phone coaching any day other than Sunday—but I shook my head. “Not really.”