I open one eye a crack. There's half a bottle of rum settling uneasily in my stomach. I'd fallen asleep again. Well, I don't know if you could call it sleep, but I was definitely unconscious.
My mobile phone's ringing.
The clock radio gives out a hard red light: 2:30 in the am. Bloody hell. Lissa nudges me with an elbow, soft, then not so. When did I come back to bed?
'Going to answer that?' Her voice is a late-night mumble, with just a hint of edge to it.
It's the first night in two months that I've actually fallen asleep – totally by accident, Lissa's head on my chest – and someone calls.
At least they dragged me from that cackling nightmare. The swinging scythe, though in this version it was in time to Queen's 'We Will Rock You'. Maybe I was awake before the phone started ringing, just trying to pretend I was asleep. Either way, I'm awake now.
If this is Tim calling, drunk and doleful, from the Regatta in Toowong, there are going to be serious words. Particularly after his and Lissa's intervention.
Another elbow nudge. She's going to crack a rib at this rate. 'Well?' Lissa says.
The sheets tangle as I try and get up. Lissa grabs a handful, tugs, and I'm free enough of the sheetly bonds to move. I scramble for the phone on the bedside table. It's the brightest (loudest) light source in the room, so it's easy to find. Still, 2:30! And it keeps on ringing. Who'd have thought a Queen medley ring tone could get annoying?
Not Tim. Caller ID sets me straight on that.
Suzanne Whitman.
Mortmax Industries' North American Regional Manager. What the hell is the US Death doing calling me now?
'Hello,' I croak.
'I'm sorry, did I wake you?' She sounds surprised. Sleep is hardly de rigueur in the RM crowd.
I pause, long enough to get my game voice on – sort of. 'Not at all. Just came back from a run.'
'At 2:30 in the morning?'
'My personal trainer's a bloody bastard. What can I do for you?'
Lissa sits up next to me and mouths, 'Who is it?' I shake my head at her. She frowns. If there's one thing that Lissa hates, it's secrets. She'll have to wait.
'It's not what you can do for me, Mr de Selby, but what I can do for you – and it's quite a lot,' Suzanne says, somehow sounding both threatening and sexy at once. 'Meet me in the Deepest Dark in an hour.'
'An hour?'
'I assume you're going to need a shower after your run.' She hangs up.
I drop my phone back on the bedside table, and pull myself completely out from under the sheets. Lissa's bedside light switches on.
She looks at me intently. 'So… who was that?'
'Suzanne Whitman.'
Lissa's face tightens. 'Her. Why now?'
'She wants to see me in an hour, in the Deepest Dark.'
'Death Moot?'
'What else would it be?' The ceremony has set more than just the Caterers in motion.
'You want me to come?' Lissa asks.
'You know you can't go there. There's no air, for one, none that you can breathe, anyway.' I drop back down next to her, rest my chin on my hand. 'Are you concerned about me spending the wee small hours of the morning with another woman?'
Lissa purses her lips. 'No, of course not, but the Deepest Dark's a bloody odd choice.'
Lissa's been there. She wasn't alive at the time. I don't know how much she remembers, but she certainly doesn't look too keen to return.
I shrug. 'It was her decision.'
'Don't let Suzanne Whitman make your decisions for you.'
'I won't. No one makes decisions for me but me. You're starting to sound like you don't like her.'
'I don't.'
'And why's that?'
Lissa rolls away and pulls the sheets over her head. Then reaches out and switches off the light. 'I need to sleep,' she says. The shift to the Deepest Dark is a blazing supernova of agony in my skull.
It's really that bad.
I arrive bent over and coughing. Desperate as I am not to show any weakness, it's as good as I can do.
It's a moment until I'm aware of my surroundings.
The creaking of the One Tree permeates everything because, in a way, the One Tree is everything in the Underworld and the Deepest Dark. The sound rises to us through the dark soil beneath our feet, it builds in my bones. To say that it is loud is to emphasise one aspect of it to the detriment of everything else. It is a sound against which every other sound is registered.
And this place is hardly silent. The dead whisper here, a breathy, scratchy, continuous whispering. They release their last secrets before ascending into a greater secret above.
Up and down are relative in the Deepest Dark. Around us, through dust and soil that comes directly from the Underworld, wend the root tips of the One Tree: each is the width of my thigh. In the Deepest Dark we are beneath Hell itself. The air smells of blood, ash and humus. It's a back of the throat kind of bouquet. Not the best thing when you're already gagging.
Suzanne doesn't speak until I'm standing straight, and I've wiped a hand across my mouth. 'You're late.'
I make a show of peering at the green glowing dial of my watch. 'I'd hardly call thirty seconds late.' I'm being deliberately provocative. I find it helps when people think you're stupider than you are. It's about the only advantage I have.
Suzanne smiles thinly. Her dark eyes regard me impassively.
Suzanne's got a Severe – yes, with a capital S – sort of Southern Gothic thing going on. Her hair is cut into a bob. A black dress follows sharp lines down her lean body. Pale and muscular limbs jut from the sleeves. It's certainly not sensible garb for the cold fringes of the Underworld. She could be going out for the night, or about to chair a meeting. If she could get away with it in the Deepest Dark, if it wasn't so dark, I guess she'd be wearing black sunglasses. She glances at the tracksuit pants and tatty old jumper I'm wearing beneath my dad's old duffel coat, and sniffs.
'So, Suzanne, just what is it that you can do for me?'
She smiles condescendingly. 'I chose this place because it is important to you.'
Above us the sky is luminous with souls, glowing faintly red, heading out through the ether to wherever souls go once life and the Underworld is done with them. It should be peaceful except there's a great spiralling void, like a photo negative of a galaxy, eating up one corner of the sky, and it's getting bigger. The Stirrer god.
In the distance, maybe a kilometre away, is Devour, the Stirrer city. Its high walls glow a colour very similar to my watch. I rode a bike through there a few months ago, fleeing for my life and for the life of the woman I love.
That Stirrer god, though, is hard to ignore. It's a sinister dark stain on the pants front of Hell and it's getting bigger. Sometimes it's a great eye, as I remember it, sometimes a million eyes, staring down. Leering at the Underworld.
I've felt the weight of the god's vast and angry gaze upon me, and I've stared back at it. So I've a personal stake in all of this, but then when that god arrives, life itself, from bacteria up, will be under threat. It's amazing, though, just how much people are pretending that it isn't going to happen. RMs, my colleagues. People who should know better.
'You chose this place because you knew it gives you an advantage over me,' I say.
'What a cynic.'
'I prefer to call it realism.' I point towards the dark god in the sky. 'Maybe it's just too big. Maybe it's something that we can't do anything about at all. But we have to try.'
'What do you know about that thing up there?' she asks.
'That the Stirrers worship it and that it's drawing closer. What else is there?'
Suzanne waves her hand dismissively, as though the Stirrer god was nothing more than a buzzing insect. 'Look, I want to offer you a deal. Think about all the resources you would have at your disposal. My offices, my staff – they're much bigger than yours. And that difference in staffing is even larger now after your little problem.'
The 'little' problem she's referring to, the one that led to my promotion, wiped out Mortmax's Australian offices and, almost, due to a minor Regional Apocalypse, Australia's living population. Workplace politics can be genocidal in my line of business. And when things get that way they have a tendency to spill out into the world. The Spanish Flu, the Black Death – they were both preceded by 'problems' in my industry.
'You let that happen, too.' I glare at her. None of the RMs stepped in to help. In the end it had been left up to me. 'All of you are guilty of that.'
Suzanne's eyes narrow just enough that I know I've got to her. 'You know the rules,' she says, 'our hands were tied. Morrigan manipulated us.'
Morrigan manipulated me more than anyone. But I'm not going to let Suzanne get away with her comment. 'Excuses aren't going to save the world. Morrigan was small time compared to that.' I point at the Stirrer god amassing on the horizon.
Suzanne raises her hands placatingly. 'I have my best people working on it,' she says. I open my mouth to speak but she jumps in first. 'But that's not why I'm here. You need me.'
'Like a coronary.' My turn for a condescending grin.
Suzanne grimaces, though I can see that I've amused her, which makes me a little grumpier. 'Try not to be so aggressive. Yes, this is scary for you, Steven, I understand that. You're a newly negotiated RM, in the process of building up your Pomps. It's going to be years before you're at full strength. You're vulnerable. You can barely shift without throwing up.'
Fair assessment so far. But I can't let it lie. 'I'll get better.'
'Of course you will,' she says, 'but I can help you. I can ease the transition. I can lend you more Pomps, for one thing.' She reaches out, squeezes my hand. Her fingers are warm. I pull away, and Suzanne frowns, but not with anger. She dips her head, even manages a smile. 'I understand exactly what you're going through. I can guide you.'
'I've already got Mr D for that.'
Suzanne's face tightens, her smile attenuates, whatever humour there was in her eyes leaves with it. I'm familiar with that expression – I tend to bring it out in people, and Mr D was even better at it than me.
'Mr D was never one of us,' she says. 'You want a second-rate mentor? You stick with that idiot. I'm giving you a chance.' She bends down, grabs a handful of the dust which coats everything here, and lets it fall. Only it doesn't. The dust drifts around her lazily, glowing in all the colours of a particularly luminous acid trip. It spirals around her head creating a halo, and beneath it she's all shadows, sharp angles and full lips. The darkest points of her face are her eyes. When she smiles, her teeth are white and straight. 'No one understands this place, this job, like I do. Just consider it. That's all I'm asking.'
'And what do you get out of it?'
'I get an ally, Mr de Selby, and one who is aware of his powers and limits, one who doesn't go off rushing madly into things, making it difficult for everyone. Mr D isolated himself. He never really bothered with us. Sometimes I think he delighted in making enemies. When you think about all the people who died – all that you've lost – remember who let it happen. Morrigan had the schemes, but Mr D allowed him to flourish in your branch.'
She has a point.
'Steven, I liked your family. Michael and Annie were good people. The things your father did for Mortmax… He even lifted our profits in the States.'
I can imagine Dad rolling in his grave at that. He'd always been slightly embarrassed by his business acumen. All he'd really wanted was to be a Pomp. Now Dad, if pressed, would have made a great RM. Mum, too. I wish they were here. I wish I knew what they would do.
Suzanne shivers. It's cold here, and I doubt she would ever show such vulnerability willingly, but my father raised me this way: I shrug out of my coat and put it around her shoulders. She's wearing Chanel No. 5, my mother's favourite perfume. I remember coming home, after my parents had died. The house had smelled of it and it was the first time the reality of their deaths really hit me. It was also the first time that I wondered if moving into their place was a mistake.
I pull away. Suzanne doesn't notice, or pretends not to, though she does look at me oddly. 'You are a gentleman, Mr de Selby.'
I open my mouth to speak, but she's already gone. 'Hey! What about my coat?'
All I have to answer me is dust falling to the ground again. I crouch down and scoop up my own handful. In my palms it's just dust, gritty and grey. I open my fingers and it drops. Only the souls in the sky, and the nearby city of Stirrers, offer any light.
My right biceps tingles, then burns. Ah, finally. Wal crawls out from under my shirt and stares up at me.
'I don't trust her,' Wal says. No surprise there, that's Wal's standard response, though it's been proven remarkably accurate.
'Where were you?' I ask.
'Stuck to your arm,' he says, looking more than a little chagrined. 'She stopped me, I don't know how. But she did it well.'
I grin at him cruelly. 'Ah, so there are things, very useful things, she could teach me.'
Wal slaps me across the face with all the force of a handful of tissues. 'You shut your mouth.'
He actually looks hurt.
A dim hooting comes from the city of Devour – like a parliament of malevolent and fractious owls. Bells ring and, all around us, the dead whisper their brittle, final whispers before drifting out of hearing and further into the Deepest Dark.
The air chills. Both of us feel it. I don't have my coat anymore, but Wal is the only one who is naked.
He shivers. 'I don't like this place.'
He's not the only one.