The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [59]
The woman took one of the pills between thumb and finger and slowly, as if it were something delectable, took it between her lips. She nudged the other pill. “Now you, sweetie.”
“I don’t touch Electria.”
The woman frowned at Deirdre’s empty glass. “What? You’ll drink that nasty old shit, but you won’t take something new and clean? What’s wrong with you?”
Where should I start? However, at that moment a gigantic, bald-headed man clad in tight black-leather pants made an angry gesture at the woman.
“Get back over here, Glinda.”
The orange-haired woman flicked her eyes at the man. The muscles of his arms were hugely swollen, and his clean-shaven chest was shirtless and massive beneath an open leather vest. A goatee framed a thin, angry mouth.
“I said get over here.”
“But I want her, Leo,” the woman said.
The man bared silver teeth. “I’ll tell you what you want.” He shook a small, plastic bottle. “Now come on.”
The woman hesitated. She started to rise from the bench. Then, in what seemed a furtive motion, she leaned close and licked Deirdre’s ear, probing with a warm, moist tongue.
“Save me,” the woman whispered.
Before Deirdre could respond, the woman gripped her hand, then slid from the booth and sauntered over to the bald man. She leaned her head on the expansive slope of his shoulder and ran her hands over the mountains and valleys of his chest. Yet the entire time her eyes were on Deirdre. The man grimaced, adjusting his crotch, then led Glinda away, into the back of the pub and darkness.
Deirdre almost considered going after them. Save me, Glinda had said. But from what? That hulk of a man? The Electria? However, as she started to rise, she realized there was something in her hand—the hand the woman had squeezed. At first she thought it was simply a British pound coin. But it was silver and too large, about the size of three American quarters stacked together. The drawings on it were unrecognizable in the gloom. She started to bend closer to make them out.
“So they were right,” said a smooth, masculine voice. “You are here. I had thought surely they must be mistaken.”
Deirdre closed her hand on the coin, then looked up. “What? You’re actually admitting the Seekers can make mistakes?”
Hadrian Farr sat across from her and folded his hands on the table. “All the time, I’m afraid,” he said with a crooked-toothed smile.
Deirdre winced. Farr’s smile was so damned charming; she hated it. It was that smile that had lured her into his bed the night they met in Glasgow three years ago. It was that smile that had enchanted her the next morning over tea as he spoke of the mysteries the Seekers sought to understand. The expression was so secret, so inviting, like he was just about to tell you the deepest wonders of the universe. Only he never did.
“What do you want?” she said.
“I think you can rather imagine.”
Deirdre did not answer. Farr leaned across the table, darkly handsome as always: square jaw clean-shaven, lips full, eyes deep-set and well spaced. His faded jeans and black T-shirt accented his slender but muscular frame. She wondered when he found the time to work out. Wasn’t he always busy harassing otherworldly travelers?
“You’ve not come to a Charterhouse in over a month, Deirdre. You have not responded to our missives, you have ignored our summons. Have you forgotten the Vow?”
Deirdre fingered her empty glass. “No, but let’s give it a few more minutes and see.”
Farr frowned. “I would have thought better of you, Deirdre. You know there’s no magic in absinthe. It’s just a cheap trick. And, until recently, quite illegal.”
Deirdre laughed, a sound every bit as bitter as the absinthe had been. “So is bugging people.”
She tucked the odd coin into the pocket of her jeans, pulled out something else, and shoved it across the table toward Farr. It was a small transistor, smashed, glittering in a stray beam of light.
Farr grimaced. So he was capable of a real reaction.
“That was hardly my idea,” he said. “I think you know me well enough to see