The Bone Clocks

Elijah D’Arnoq is still pretending: “What are you talking about?” He even smiles. “We’ve won! The Blind Cathar’s dead. Without him to maintain the Chapel fabric, where we’re standing will all be Dunes and Dusk within six hours.”

I look at what, in spy-novel terms, is an old-fashioned double agent. I don’t even need scansion to be sure. Elijah D’Arnoq isn’t as skillful a liar as he believes. For part one of the deception, at my house outside Toronto, he had indeed been “turned” into a genuine penitento, but at some point in the last few days, Pfenninger or Constantin turned him back to the Shaded Way.

“May I, Marinus?” asks Фshima. “Please?”

“As if mypermission ever mattered to you. But yes. Hard.”

Фshima fakes a sneeze and suckerkinetics D’Arnoq along the table, clean off the end. He comes to a halt only at the Umber Arch.

Xi Lo did the same to Constantin, I subremark, though he only managed to bowl her about halfway down the table.

“D’Arnoq’s more of a lightweight,” says Фshima. “It’s an obvious play: long, smooth, table; annoying person. Who could resist?”

“I … guess this means he’s not one of us,” says Holly.

“You,” Elijah D’Arnoq picks himself up and is shouting from the far end of the Chapel, “you,” he points, “will smoulderand shrivelin the heat!” Nine men and a woman melt from the air around him.

“GUESTS, GUESTS, GUESTS!” Baptiste Pfenninger claps his hands and smiles. The First Anchorite is a tall man, utterly at ease in his well-toned, well-dressed body. He sports a fastidiously trimmed, silver-tinged beard. “How the old place loves guests, and so many!” I’d forgotten his bass, actorly voice. “One per quarter is the usual quota, so today’s a very special occasion. Our second very special occasion.” All the men are wearing dinner jackets of various cuts and fashions. Pfenninger’s looks Edwardian. “Marinus, Marinus, welcome. Our only repeat visitor in the Chapel of the Dusk’s history, though, of course, last time you’d left your body back on earth. Фshima, you’re looking old, burned, tired, and in need of a resurrection. It won’t occur. Thank you for killing Brzycki, by the by; he was showing signs of vegetarianism. Who else? ‘Unalaq’—do I pronounce it correctly? It sounds awfully like a brand of superglue, however one says it. Arkady, Arkady, you’ve got taller since I last sawed your feet off. Remember the rats? Dictators really were dictators in the days of Salazar’s Lisbon. Seventy-two hours you took to die. I’ll see if I can’t beat it with Inez, eh?” Pfenninger clicks his tongue. “A pity L’Ohkna and Roho can’t be here, but Mr. D’Arnoq,” the First Anchorite turns to his double agent, “netted the fattest fish. Good boy. Oh! Last and least, Holly Sykes, mystic lady author turned Irish egg farmer. We’ve never met. I’m Baptiste Pfenninger, interlocutor of this miraculous”—he gestures at the walls and dome—“engine, and, oh, titles, titles, they drag behind one like Marley’s chains, Jacob’s not Bob’s. Two of our number are even more thrilled than I to see you here at last, Holly …”

Dressed in a black velvet gown and gratuitous webs of diamonds, Immaculйe Constantin steps forwards. “My singular young lady is all grown-up … menopausal, cancerous, and fallen in with quite the wrong sort. So. Do I match my voice?”

Holly looks at this faceless girlhood figure, speechless.

Constantin’s smile fades, though it was never sincere. “Jacko could carry a dialogue. Only he wasn’t really Jacko by then, was he? Tell me, Holly, did you believe Marinus when she claimed your brother just happened to die of natural causes while Xi Lo was hovering nearby, mmm?”

Seconds pass. Holly’s voice is dry. “What are you saying?”

“Oh, my.” Constantin’s smile fades into pity. “You didbelieve them? Forget everything I said, I beg you. Gossip is the devil’s radio, and I shan’t be a broadcaster, but … try to put two and two together before you die. I’ll take care of Aoife, too. Just so, you know, she won’t miss you. In fact, why not go the whole hog and kill Sharon and Brendan and collect the full Sykes family set? As it were.”

Esther’s had about three minutes. The Sadaqat denouement should take five, if Pfenninger’s feeling voluble. I calculate our chances for when the psychoduel begins. The newest three Anchorites shouldn’t cause us too much trouble, but the Chapel is devoid of projectiles to kinetic and eleven against four is still eleven against four. We’ll need to buy Esther about seven minutes. Can we hold them off that long?

“You willregret threatening my family,” Holly’s saying. “I swear. I swear to God.”