Barker, Clive – Imajica 01 – The Fifth Dominion. Part 4

“You wore green,” he said as he escorted her in to the lounge. “I told Taylor you’d do that. Green eyes, green dress.”

“Do you approve?”

“Of course! We’re having a pagan Christmas this year. Dies natalis soils invictus.”

“What’s that?”

“The Birth of the Unconquered Sun,” he said. “The Light of the World. We need a little of that right now.”

“Do I know many people here?” she said, before they stepped into the hub of the party.

“Everybody knows you, darling,” he said fondly. “Even the people who’ve never met you.”

There were many faces she knew awaiting them, and it took her five minutes to get across to where Taylor was sitting, lord of all he surveyed, in a well-cushioned chair close to the roaring fire. She tried not to register the shock she felt at the sight of him. He’d lost almost all of what had once been a leonine head of hair, and every spare ounce of substance from the face beneath. His eyes, which had always been his most penetrating feature (one of the many things they’d had in common), seemed enormous now, as though to devour in the time he had left the sights his demise would deny him. He opened his arms to her.

“Oh, my sweet,” he said. “Give me a hug. Excuse me if I don’t get up.”

She bent and hugged him. He was skin and bone; and cold, despite the fire close by.

“Has Clem got you some punch?”

“I’m on my way,” Clem said.

“Get me another vodka while you’re at it” Taylor said, imperious as ever.

“I thought we’d agreed—” Clem said.

“I know it’s bad for me. But staying sober’s worse.”

“It’s your funeral,” Clem said, with a bluntness Jude found shocking. But he and Taylo* eyed each other with a kind of adoring ferocity, and she saw in the look how Clem’s cruelty was part of their mechanism for dealing with this tragedy.

“You wish,” Taylor said. “I’ll have an orange juice. No, make that a Virgin Mary. Let’s be seasonal about it.”

“1 thought you were having a pagan celebration,” Jude said as Clem headed away to fetch the drinks.

“I don’t see why the Christians should have the Holy Mother,” Taylor said. “They don’t know what to do with her when they’ve got her. Pull up a chair, sweetie. I heard a rumor you were in foreign climes.”

“I was. But I came back at the last minute. I had some problems in New York.”

“Whose heart did you break this time?”

“It wasn’t that kind of problem.”

“Well?” he said. “Be a telltale. Tell Taylor.”

This was a bad joke from way back, and it brought a smile to Judith’s lips. It also brought the story, which she’d come here swearing she’d keep to herself.

“Somebody tried to murder me,” she said.

“You’re jesting,” he replied.

“I wish I was.”

“What happened?” he said. “Spill the beans. I like hearing other people’s bad news just at the moment. The worse, the better.”

She slid her palm over Taylor’s bony hand. “Tell me how you are first.”

“Grotesque,” he said. “Clem’s wonderful, of course, but all the tender loving care in the world won’t make me healthy. I have bad days and good days. Mostly bad lately. I am, as my ma used to say, not long for this world.” He glanced up. “Look out, here comes Saint Clemence of the Bedpan. Change the subject. Clem, did Judy tell you somebody tried to kill her?”

“No. Where was this?”

“In Manhattan.”

“A mugger?”

“No.”

“Not someone you knew?” Taylor said.

Now she was on the point of telling the whole thing, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. But Taylor had an anticipatory gleam in his eye, and she couldn’t bear to disappoint him. She began, her account punctuated by exclamations of delighted incredulity from Taylor, and she found herself rising to her audience as though this story were not the grim truth but a preposterous fiction. Only once did she lose her momentum, when she mentioned Gentle’s name, and Clem broke in to say that he’d been invited tonight. Her heart tripped and took a beat to get back into.its rhythm.

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