The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [55]
Eventually I work out a compromise. I sit up, slowly pulling my arm out from under her: “How do you take your coffee?”
“Uh?” She opens her eyes. “Oh . . . hi.” She looks puzzled. “Where am I . . . oh.” Mild annoyance: “I take it black. And strong.” She yawns, then rolls over and begins to sit up. Yawns again. “I need to use your bathroom.” She looks displeased, and it’s not just her eyeliner running: somehow she looks older, less inhumanly perfect. The glamour’s still there, masking her physical shape, but what I’m seeing now is unfogged by implanted emotional bias.
“Be my guest.” I walk over to the filter machine and start prodding at it, trying to figure out where the sachet of coffee goes. My head’s spinning—“How did you get in here?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“No.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” she says as she closes the door. A moment later I hear the sound of running water and realize too late that I need to use the bathroom, too.
Oh, great. There was the, whatever the fuck you call it, with the predator, Marc—and she needed me to—I try not to think too closely about it. I remember that much. How the hell did she get in here? I ask myself.
I get the coffee maker loaded and go prod my tablet PC. It’s sitting where I left it last night, with a clear line of sight on the door and window, and it’s still up and running. I look too closely and the ward tries to bite me between the eyes but misses. Good. So then I go and inspect the other wards I put on the door by opening it and gingerly pulling in the DO NOT DISTURB sign. The silver diagram, sketched on the sign using a conductive pencil and a drop of blood, shimmers at me. It’s still live: anyone other than me who tries to get past it is going to get a very unpleasant surprise. Finally, as the coffee maker begins to spit and burble, I check the seal on the window. My mobile phone (the real one, the Treo with the Java countermeasure suite and the keyboard and all the trimmings, not the bullet-firing fake) is still propped up against it.
I glance up and down, then shake my head. There are no holes in the walls and ceiling, which means Ramona can’t be here—the place is about as secure as a hotel room can be, stitched up tighter than Angleton’s ass.
“I don’t want to hurry you or anything, but I need the toilet, too,” I call through the door.
“Okay, okay! I’m nearly ready.” She sounds annoyed.
“Are you sure you don’t remember how you got in here?” I add.
The door opens. She’s repaired her glamour and is every bit the air-brushed, drop-dead gorgeous model she was when I first saw her in the Laguna Bar: only the eyes are different. Old and tired.
“How much of what happened last night do you remember?” she asks.
“I—” I stop. “What, do you mean after we met Billington? Or after I left the casino?”
“Did we leave together?” She frowns.
“You don’t—” I bite my tongue and stare at her. How did you get into my room? Maybe it’s a side effect of destiny entanglement—my wards can’t tell us apart. “I had some really weird dreams,” I say, then hold out a coffee cup for her.
“Well, that’s a surprise.” She snorts then takes the cup. “But it doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“It doesn’t—” I stop dead. “I dreamed about you,” I say reluctantly. I find it really hard to pick the right words. “You were with some guy you’d picked up who worked at the casino.”
She looks me in the eye calmly. “You dreamed about me, Bob. Things happen in dreams that don’t always happen in real life.”
“But he died while you were in bed with—”
“Bob?” Her eyes are greenish blue, flecks of gold floating in them, rimmed in expensive eyeliner that makes them look wide and innocent—but somehow they’re deeper than an arctic lake, and much colder. “For once in your life, shut up and listen to me. Okay?”
She’s got the Voice of Command. I find myself leaning against the wall with no definite memory of how I got here. “What?”
“Primus, we’re destiny-entangled. I can’t do anything about that. You stub your