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increasingly sure that B was something more, perhaps much more, than a man
unfortunate enough to be born a seer. She couldn’t be sure he had other powers—some
people just happened to encounter the numinous, that was the nature of the truly
unknowable. But other people, a few so rare as to be statistically nonexistent, drew the
numinous to themselves, or, as some sorcerers speculated, actually generated such
fundamentally unknowable Mysteries by their very acts and movements, the way you
could build up a charge of static electricity by shuffling across a shag carpet in your
stocking feet. If B was one of those, an oracle-generator, he was lucky to still be alive,
and as relatively sane as he seemed. Big magic affected people, and B’s relative
ignorance could only protect him for so long.
“Yeah,” B said. “That makes sense to me. If I just think about it, it’s clear, but as soon
as I try to put it into words, it goes all hazy. Anyway, I guess I’m just worried that I’m
going to see that bone train again. I get the feeling I was only supposed to ride on it
once, and if I got on board again, I don’t know what would happen. Nothing good, I
don’t think.”
Just then the unmistakable sound of an approaching train—the rumble, the whine, the
sound of air in the tunnel being shoved along by the approaching mass—began.
Rondeau stood by B, giving him some support just by his proximity. Marla took up a
similar position on his other side.
“If it’s your train, you don’t have to get on,” Marla said. “I wouldn’t ask that of you.
But I don’t think it’s going to be the bone train. If Bethany had a train to the
underworld—any underworld—at her command, she wouldn’t be waiting her turn to
run San Francisco. If she had easy access to the Land of the Dead, she’d have much
more power than that.”
“Hope you’re right,” B said, almost inaudibly.
The train barreled out of the tunnel, and at a glance B visibly relaxed. This was no
giant’s thighbone, but a high-tech train worthy of a technofetishist’s fantasy, gleaming
black metal with accents of sterling silver and surgical steel, with an engine, and several
passenger cars, of smoked glass and reflective gleam. Marla thought again that Bethany
must be a fabricator. Marla herself had never given a damn about appearances, happy to
live in a crumbling brownstone or ride on a filthy city bus so long as all her needs were
served. But Bethany clearly reveled in the glamour of surfaces, and so might be good at
illusions, and, of course, telling lies.
“All aboard,” Rondeau said, as a shining black door in the first passenger car slid open
with a whuff of compressed air. Marla got on the train first. The interior matched the
outside, black leather seats, and silver handrails overhead, and Marla sat down and
crossed her legs. B and Rondeau sat as well.
“This is a lot nicer than the train I took to Hell,” B said.
“High praise,” Rondeau said. “I wonder who’s driving this thing?”