The Woman Who Died a Lot

“ Ooo-kay,” said Phoebe doubtfully. “You can do the talking. I brought you this . . . and this.”

She handed me a navy blue ballistic vest with LIBRARIAN written on the back in white letters. The other item was a revolver. I stared at it stupidly. I hadn’t used anything but an automatic in over two decades.

“They never jam,” said Phoebe, pulling out her own weapon, a Webley Break-Top that looked as though her grandfather might have bequeathed it to her. “A dodgy Walther gave me this.” She pointed at the ragged remnants of her ear. “Ready?”

“Ready—but help me off this chair. This vest is heavy.”

Phoebe heaved me to my feet, and we paced down the corridor to the Dyson Suite. But before we could knock on the door, it was opened—by Jack Schitt himself, dressed in an Adelphi-monogrammed bathrobe. As soon as he saw that we were armed, he put his hands in the air, and we all stared at one another. I could feel my finger tight upon the trigger. If he’d twitched, I would have fired.

But he didn’t.

“Hello, Thursday,” he said. “How have you been?”

“Is he real?” asked Phoebe.

“Easy way to tell,” I replied. “Day Players are budget humans— anything not required for a simple twenty-four-hour existence is eliminated. He won’t have an alimentary canal or genitals.”

“Show us,” said Phoebe.

“I’m sorry?” said Jack.

“Open the bathrobe,” I said, “and slowly. Phoebe—you look. I’m covering him for any tricky business.”

He stared at us both and very gently complied.

“Well,” said Phoebe, “that looks a lot like a penis to me.”

I looked then.

“Yes,” I conceded, “I think you’re right. His Day Player, who just killed my Day Player, must have just killed himself—and Jack is back.”

“You’re making no sense,” said Jack. “Can I cover myself up now?”

“Yes.”

“What’s going on?” came a voice, and a woman’s face hove into view behind Jack. She was also wearing a bathrobe and covered a bare shoulder when she saw us.

“Keep your hands where I can see them!” yelled Phoebe, and the woman wearily complied, as if this sort of thing happened to her a lot, which I knew for a fact it did.

“Is that you, Thursday?” she said.

“Hello, Flossie,” I replied. “Anyone else in the suite?”

“No. And why are you calling him Jack?”

“It’s complicated.”

I told Schitt to step back, and while I kept the two of them covered, Phoebe checked the rest of the suite. It was quite large, so this took more than just a cursory glance.

“Day Players on the mainland?” said Jack with a creditable pretense of shock and outrage in his voice. “How irresponsible do you think we are?”

“How long have you been back inside this body?” I asked. “Five minutes?”

“We’ve been together all morning,” said Flossie, “and I can assure you that the only body he’s been inside during that time is—”

“Thank you, yes, I get the picture, Miss Buxton.”

“Nothing here,” said Phoebe as she returned. “Just a suitcase and a Gravitube ticket from Karachi. Hey, Thursday, the suites here are huge. There’s even a snooker room, and the minibar has fourteen different types of water.”

“Are you sure? No coffin-size Tupperware?”

“Well, let me go and look again,” she said sarcastically. “I just might have missed one of them.”

She looked at me with an annoyed glare, and I felt a bit . . . well, stupid.

“Mr Schitt,” Phoebe added, turning to Jack, “we’re extremely sorry for this intrusion upon your leisure time. We had a miscommunication but had to act on short notice—hence our lack of preparedness.”

“Polite of you, Officer . . . ?”

“Detective Judith Trask—Swindon PD.”

Phoebe could lie well when she wanted to.

“Polite of you, Officer Trask. But I feel that Thursday owes me the bigger apology.”

“I apologize unreservedly,” I said through clenched teeth. Jack was good—real good. He’d have had a Plan B and most probably a Plan C, too.

“Then we’ll say no more,” he declared, staring intently at me without blinking. “But heed my words: My sources tell me that you were designated NUT-4 in a recent appraisal—‘prone to strange and sustained delusional outbursts.’ If that is the case, then threatening a Goliath executive and making ridiculous claims about Day Players while demanding to see my genitals at gunpoint wouldn’t go down very well in an official complaint, now, would it?”

“In that,” I said slowly, “I think we are in complete agreement.”

“If anyone but you had done this, I would use my full powers to ensure that the perpetrator was ruined personally and financially, not to mention enmeshed in suicidally wearisome litigation for the rest of her natural life. But I have Protocol 451 to consider and more important matters to deal with, such as an alternative plan to save Swindon due to your daughter’s failings.”

He paused to let this sink in.

“So we’ll just forget this ever happened. Am I not magnanimous?”