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andom destruction. He’s been working for me for a few years, and we get along well
despite the fact that I ripped his jaw off when he was a little kid. That is, the body he
possessed was a little kid. At the time. There’s no telling how long the real-trueessential
Rondeau has been alive, if ‘alive’ is even the right term.”
“Huh,” B said. “I was going to ask if he ever dated men, but now I’m not so sure I want
to know.”
Marla waved her hand. “Rondeau’s a good person, even if he’s not exactly a person.
And, while I’ve never inquired too deeply into his sexual orientation, I’d characterize
him as primarily heterosexual but adventurous.”
“Are you a real human being?” B asked.
Marla shrugged. “Born of man and woman, raised by man and woman. Woman
anyway. The man was never around much. I grew up in the Midwest, dropped out of
high school, and moved to the big city. I worked in strip clubs for a while, mostly as a
waitress. That’s where I met Artie Mann, a pretty big-time sorcerer back then. He saw
something in me and took me on as his apprentice. I worked for him for a while, then
went freelance. Got in good with a man named Sauvage, who ran the city in those days.
Then he got murdered, and I tracked down and killed his murderer.” Marla didn’t like to
remember that time. She’d almost died at the hands of Sauvage’s killer, Somerset.
“Almost by accident, I found myself taking Sauvage’s place. I’ve been in charge of my
city ever since.”
“The way that guy Dalton was in charge of San Francisco?”
Marla shook her head. “It’s a little different. Here there’s a ruling council of sorcerers,
and they pass the highest position around among themselves. Finch was the one in
charge yesterday. After him there was a woman in North Beach, and after her, Dalton.
After Dalton, Bethany, and after her, it’s the Chinese guy, who’s still alive and at large,
and thus, technically, still in charge. Though, really, Mutex is the one running things
now, for all intents and purposes.”
“What does it mean, that you’re in charge?”
“It’s complicated,” Marla said. “I work with civic authorities to some extent, as
necessary, but I rarely take a hand in the city’s mundane, day-to-day operations.
I…protect my city, mostly, against outside sorcerers moving in, against magical
dangers, against tyrants, monsters, shit like that.”
“Does that sort of thing come up a lot? Monsters?”
Marla thought about Todd Sweeney, and the pale dog that had pursued him; about the
not-quite-dead sorcerer Somerset and his flocks of pigeons; about the mad chaos
magician Elsie Jarrow and her bloody smile; about a dozen other dangers that had
appeared during her relatively brief tenure as chief-of-chiefs. “Sure. Monsters, and other
things. Other things is why I’m in San Francisco now, actually. There’s someone,
another sorcerer, who wants to take my job. And in the pursuit of that goal, she’s going
to doom my city. I came here to get something I need to stop her.”