“Bad idea,” another said. “Unless you wanna explain everything the next day when we’re all over the goddamn screens everywhere.”
I heard the Old Bat back at the house: Hiding, like insects. Don’t cast in public! Don’t be noticed!
Housedress stared at the TVs, then looked at her peers again, sighing and making a note. “All right, kid. You got the scratch to cover that?”
To my amazement, my hand went to my pocket and produced a thick wad of cash, easily enough to keep Mags in hot dogs for years to come. I’d never seen so much money in one place. The Broker stared, and then one by one her peers all looked up, catching the scent, and they stared, too. Tricksters like me didn’t usually wander in with actual money. Usually idimustari wanted charity, the kindness of strangers.
“That why you’re here, kid?” Housedress asked. “Buying Bleeders for your gasam and his pals, gonna save the city?”
Lugal didn’t know how to respond to that, so my body just stood there, proffering the cash. After a moment she turned and had a whispered consultation with everyone. Then she turned back to me, looking down at her notebook.
“We got fifteen you can have right now, standard rates, triple kill penalties. We can get ten more in—” She glanced back, and signals were passed forward from the Brokers. “In two hours.” She looked up at me, expectant.
Lugal pushed the money toward her and repeated its favorite word: “All.”
7.
AS WE ALL WAITED for the saddest assholes in the world to arrive, Lugal managed to maneuver me to sitting at the bar. The televisions continued to disgorge new calamities: murders, bombings, buses crashing into buildings. The Old Bat was getting busy, trying to tear down the modern world until everyone was huddled around fires and ready to worship the old gods—which she obviously thought were the ustari.
As a Trickster, I knew that was hilarious. Ustari had caused so many of the world’s disasters, pulling a string and bleeding out a tribe, a village, a city, an entire population in order to cast their spells. We weren’t gods. We were an infection, an infestation, and we fed on the people who hadn’t discovered the Words, the power of sacrifice. And we worked hard—like the cowards we were—to keep everyone ignorant. If everyone knew the Words, even enustari would have to start working with their hands, like suckers.
Outside, police and ambulances raced by every little while, filling the air with strident panic. I found myself waiting, trapped inside my own body, for the lights to flicker and fail. That would be the next step, the power going off.
An intelligence like Lugal wasn’t well versed in acting appropriately in social situations, so it had me sitting very still, staring straight ahead. The Brokers buzzed and whispered, both about me and about the disasters that were spilling out of the TV sets. I was crushed into a tiny corner of my own consciousness, paralyzed and mute, and panic kept nipping at my heels.
I realized with a start that my body was taking deep breaths. I was hyperventilating.
In the mirror across from my body, I looked calm and steady. Creepily steady. I thought about the complexity of running a living human body like a puppet—a living body with a resident consciousness, namely me. The instruction set had to be huge. As opposed to Balahul and the corpse of Mr. Landry, which just required inhabiting an empty vessel, Lugal had to deal with a nervous system if it wanted to appear alive, if it wanted to pass all the smell tests. Lugal wasn’t sending me on a murder spree, like Balahul had Landry doing. It was trying to use me as a Trojan horse. Get some Bleeders, then pick my brain and force me to cast something ugly, contribute to the attack, undermine the world.
I wondered if the Old Bat was planning to ride in on a broomstick and save the world with a seriously bloody biludha—a major ritual of some sort. Maybe that was her plan—kill the world, then become its hero?
I concentrated on slowing my breathing. Told myself to relax. Pictured Mags sleeping, his face going through a complex series of expressions as he dreamed amazing things.
And my breathing slowed down.
Not much, but it was a little control, a tiny corner of my wiring that Lugal hadn’t been able to take over.
Reflected in the mirror across the bar, a dilapidated old yellow school bus pulled up outside, belching black smoke and sagging in the middle in a way I was pretty sure buses weren’t supposed to sag. The door opened, and it began disgorging the saddest motherfuckers I’d ever seen in my life: our Bleeders.