Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [46]
Radziwill was clearly the adept, for he immediately recognized what Magnus was becoming. He shouted a word of power that had no effect whatsoever and ran for the door, only to be shot in the head by Susan. She stood on the chair with her back pressed to the wall, the glowing necklace on her breast and a lady’s purse revolver in her hand, the barrel smoking.
Magnus’s screams quickly became no longer human, many more tentacles manifested out of what had once been his body, and within a minute at the most, there were no more living barber-illuminati.
The thing that Magnus had become slid across the floor of the shop, squelching through blood and torn flesh towards the front door and the street.
Susan put her revolver away, took a twisted paper packet from her bag, and stepped off the chair. The monster paid her no attention. One long tentacle began to caress the door, feeling for how it might be opened.
Susan lifted off the necklace with her left hand. Instantly the creature swung about. Two tentacles shot towards her, sucker-rings protruding, all the teeth out. She calmly ducked aside and threw the contents of the paper across the tentacles, creating a cloud of blue dust that very slowly twisted and danced about on its slow way to the floor.
It took a few minutes for Magnus to become human again. Susan spent the time preparing a slow match to the store of hair oil in the cellar, being careful not to disturb the daffodil brew that was bubbling on the iron stove in one corner, though she did pocket the comb that was on a worn marble plinth next to the stove. It was a very fine ivory comb engraved with a crest that she recognized at once, though it was not a royal one.
When she came back up, Magnus had managed to get most of the blood and matter off himself and was wearing a clean robe with a towel wrapped around his head. He had not managed to completely clean the vomit from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were wild.
“He . . . the adept . . . put a s-s-s-ilence charm and interrupt-me-not on the d-d-door,” he said, teeth chattering. “It will break when you pull it open. N-n-n-ice of them, don’t you think?”
“Very handy,” agreed Susan. She took him by the arm and pulled the door open, putting two fingers in her mouth to whistle for Carstairs. The cab was just down the street and it came smartly up, so that Susan and Magnus could jump inside and be away at least thirty seconds before smoke began to billow from the underparts of the barbershop.
“What was I this time?” asked Magnus, as they sped away.
“I don’t know,” replied Susan. “Something with tentacles. A lot of tentacles.”
Magnus was silent for a while. He looked out the window at the city and all the people and the life beyond. Susan watched him. Finally he turned to her and spoke.
“Sometimes I think you are too ready to employ the blue pill.”
“No!” protested Susan. “I really didn’t expect to need you to transform. I never thought they’d all be in it, or that they would suspect us and be ready. I mean, how could they know we were coming . . . oh, I see.”
“Yes,” agreed Magnus. “Much more convenient for Mycroft if all the barbers were eliminated. He, too, finds feeding me blue pills useful. Especially when I can be directed against enemies of the state. Sometimes I wonder if he has told Dadd to tell me they are helpful, when I fear that in fact they prolong my condition.”
Susan nodded and reached out to pull him down, so that his head was on her lap. Magnus resisted for a moment, then relented. Susan took off the towel and lightly scratched his head through his hair.
“I’ll get better,” whispered Magnus. “No blue pill then, and my nights will be my own.”
“Yes,” said Susan. “You will get better.”
She did not look at her bag, and its box of Krongeitz pills, the blue . . . and the yellow. Magnus did not know about the yellow pills.
Susan hoped he never would.
Afterword to “The Curious Case of the
Moondawn Daffodils