“Apparently my reputation precedes me,” Dr. Clevenger said.
“Everywhere you go,” Rhyme said, eyeing the doctor’s chest from her position on the stretcher.
“It was my recommendation that you be brought in on this project,” the doctor said. “I made some progress early on, but I quickly reached the limits of what I could accomplish… and thus, logically, the limits of what conventional science would allow for.”
“You must keep your modesty in your other bra,” Rhyme said. “Science, schmience… it’s all in how you look at things.”
“You have ways of looking at things that nobody else has been able to make sense of,” Clevenger said. “For instance, the explosion of the Vintage Rubber blimp.”
“That was just a simple pastiche on the Hindenburg, really.”
“Yes, but the Hindenburg was full of hydrogen,” Clevenger said. “The blimp you torched was full of helium.”
“A noble gas if ever I met one,” Rhyme said.
“It shouldn’t have burned like that,” Clevenger said. “It defied every law of chemistry, of physics… of empirical reality.”
“And yet, I was the one who was arrested,” Rhyme said. “I ask you, where is the justice?”
“I’ve heard theories ranging from the utterly outlandish… that you created some kind of micro-fusion device… to the obvious mundane one,” Clevenger said. “But nobody has ever been able to adequately explain it.”
“What is the obvious mundane explanation?”
“That you switched out the helium in advance,” Clevenger said.
“Well, maybe that’s what I did, then,” Rhyme said.
“No,” Clevenger said. “Hydrogen is appreciably more buoyant than helium. They have differing densities. It would have been noticed by the blimp crew.”
“Are you asking the magician to reveal her secrets?”
“I believe you have an unorthodox approach to things, but I don’t believe you are a magician,” Clevenger said.
“More the fool you. It’s very simple, actually. I just used a jar of alchemical fire,” Rhyme said.
“That is some primitive concoction, like the ‘Greek fire’ of history and myth?”
“No, it’s a jar with fire in it,” Rhyme said. “But fire that operates along principles of combustion based on an alternate ordering of the universe.”
“If you don’t want to explain…”
“Oh, I spent a good portion of my life wanting to explain things, but I realized long ago that most people weren’t capable of understanding them,” Rhyme said. “Strangely, I almost expected you to. You see, I’ve actually met your… daughter? Sister?”
“My unending disappointment,” Clevenger said.
“Wait, your daughter is your sister?” Markham asked.
“It’s nothing so sordid as what you are thinking,” the doctor said. “She’s a parthenogenetic clone. It was cutting edge stuff, eighteen years ago.”
“If you say so,” Rhyme said. “Where I come from, we call that ‘doing it the old-fashioned way’. You know, I always did wonder where exactly you got your tech from.”
“I was aware of the Atlantean biotech, of course,” Clevenger said. “Being able to prove that it was viable made it easier to secure funding, but I had to engineer the process from the ground up.”
“Of course,” Rhyme said. “The only alternative would be to dissect an Amazon, and I’m sure you didn’t do that. Not that I’d care if you had… and not that I even care if your little sproglet was conceived using antedeluvian biotechnology stolen from my bitch of a mother’s lost tribe.” She laughed. “Hey, is there any chance you’re going to let me out of this before we get wherever we’re going?”
“I’m afraid not,” Clevenger said. “Doctor’s orders.”
“Oh, you’re not actually going to pretend that you’re in charge of this little operation, are you?” Rhyme asked. “I do know your reputation, doctor, and you’re not a people-person. You’ll hire lab techs and muscle, but you wouldn’t think to hire somebody like Andrea Markham, and you certainly wouldn’t work alongside her.”
“Why not?” Markham asked.
“Because people like you are useless to her, and she cannot stand useless people,” Rhyme said. “Right, Doc?”
“Hey, just because I’m not a mad scientist doesn’t mean I’m some kind of idiot,” Markham said. “I went to college, too.”
“Oh? In what discipline was your degree?” Clevenger asked.
“Communication,” Markham and Rhyme said at the same time. Markham glanced down at the supine supervillainess. “What exactly are you trying to say?” she asked.
“You’re the communication major,” Rhyme said with a grin. “You tell me.”
A loud hum filled the back of the ambulance, emanating from every metal surface. Rhyme felt a frisson of electricity passing through her body.
“This isn’t a real 4B black van, is it?” she said. “My, my, my… this is getting more and more interesting yet. I can only think of one…”
An intercom crackle interrupted her.
“Ladies and Dr. Clevenger, stealth mode has been engaged and we are now officially off the grid,” a woman’s voice said. “We should be at the rendezvous point in thirty minutes, well within the cloak’s forty-five minute time limit, so just sit tight.”
“Oh my gars and starters, is that Jane? Little Janie Liebowitz?” Rhyme said as the intercom clicked off. “I haven’t seen her since she was lackeying for Opal Song. Hey, hit the button… I wanna have some girl-talk.”
Markham glanced at Clevenger, who just rolled her eyes, then pressed the two-way talk button.
“Uh, Spinnerette? Our guest would like to talk to you,” she said.
“I’m driving,” Spinnerette said.
“Janie! Janie! Hey, Janie! Hey, Janie!” Rhyme yelled, craning her neck backwards towards the speaker. “HEY, JANIE!”
“WHAT?” Spinnerette shouted.
“Hey, Janie… do you remember… oh my God… do you remember… when we were both… we were working for Opal, and she told you that you were the only one she could trust… and then she leaned in to whisper in your ear because she wanted you to take me out… and you thought she was leaning in for a kiss?”
“Go to hell, freak,” Spinnerette said.
“And she was so mad that you tried to kiss her, she had your hands chained and then chained your feet to that safe we stole, and then she put the keys to the chains inside the safe and threw it overboard? Do you remember that, Janie?”
“Do either of you have a gun back there?” Spinnerette asked.
“No,” Markham said.
“Of course not,” Clevenger said.
The standing women lurched forward into the front of the compartment as the ambulance screeched to a halt.
“Why is she stopping? We’re on a schedule!” Dr. Clevenger said.
“The blur field loses effectiveness when the vehicle isn’t moving,” Markham said. “Is she crazy?”
“Not ye-et,” Rhyme said in a singsong voice.
The back doors flew open. Spinnerette, dressed in black 4B body armor with her own face mask, hopped up inside.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing?” Clevenger demanded. “You are jeopardizing the entire…”
“Hey, Janie! Hey, Janie!” Rhyme taunted. “Do you remember…?”
Spinnerette shot her twice in the head, then stomped out and slammed the door. A few moments later, the ambulance started moving again. A minute after that, Rhyme came around.
“Mother’s perfume,” she said.
“What?” Markham said.
“Nothing,” Rhyme said. “Babbling. Hit the button for me.”
“I don’t think we can afford another stop like that,” Clevenger said.
“That’s why she won’t do it again,” Rhyme said. “Hit the button.”
Markham stood there, frozen with indecision.
“Andi,” Rhyme said, looking up at her with her biggest smile and two bloody splotches on her forehead where there had used to be holes. “Andrea. Darling. At some point in this little enterprise, somebody is going to have to let me out of this rig… when that time comes, would you rather be on the doctor’s shit list… or on mine?”
“Oh, do as you please,” Clevenger said. “I’m an independent contractor, not part of the organization. If you two fuck this up, it’s on your heads.”
Markham pressed the button again.
“Hey, Janie!” Rhyme said. “If I told Webmistress I’d do whatever she wanted as long as she paid me with your skin, do you think she’d haggle? At all?”
There was nothing but static in reply.
“You can let go of the button now,” Rhyme said, wiggling her shoulders and getting herself as comfortable as she could on the stretcher. “So, am I going to get to see the inside of the famous Web of Shadows?”
“You aren’t actually… you wouldn’t…” Markham said.
“I might,” Rhyme said. “I might not. You did stop and notice, at some point, which side it is you’re working on, didn’t you?”
“I…”
“Let’s talk payment, though,” Rhyme said. “Webmistress is too smart to try to coerce me, and in fact, her code of honor won’t allow her to cheat another woman. You’re the people-person, Andi… you’re obviously here to handle the preliminary negotiations. You’ve already let yourself go off script. Why don’t we get down to business?”
“Alright, let’s,” Markham said. “What do you want, Ms. Henderson? What can we do for you?”
“I want cookie dough,” Rhyme said.
“You want to be paid in cookie dough?”
“No, but I want access to it and a working oven for the length of this project,” Rhyme said. “And I want the encyclopedia volumes E, G, and V. Those are the accommodations I require. Now let’s talk payment.”
“I’m prepared to…”
“You’re about to say a number,” Rhyme said. “Don’t. I want to be paid in trade. There is a sealed amphorisko containing fragrant oil, lost at sea circa seven hundred BCE and dredged up from the bottom of the Mediterranean in 1983. It is currently housed among the Greek pottery collection of the British Museum, one of over one hundred thousand objects from the Greco-Roman world in their catalogue. I want Janie to retrieve it for me, intact… and if she fails, or breaks it, then I’ll have to go back to my other idea.”
“I… I’ll have to run that by Webmistress,” Markham said. “I can’t commit to that sort of…”
“Of course you can’t, and of course you will, and of course she’ll agree,” Rhyme said. “She knows I can’t be coerced, and that’s what I want.”
“Honestly, Ms. Henderson, do you do anything that isn’t a calculated feint to convince all and sundry that you’re as crazy as they say you are?” Clevenger asked. “Cookies. Ancient pottery. The number Ms. Markham was going to mention was twelve million, if you’re curious… and of course you are. You need money the same as the rest of us do.”
“There are some things money can’t buy, dear Sandy,” Rhyme said. “For everything else, there’s stealing.”
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