Blood Engines(30)

 

Jared didn’t answer, just panted and leaned his forehead against the wall before him.

 

“Somebody should untie him,” Marla said.

 

Block letters, each line a stroke of the whip that had just barely drawn blood, spelled out “MA” on Jared’s left butt cheek. The lettering was so neat, it might have been written with a knife.

 

Jared, untied by one of the watchers, stepped off the X-frame and winced. “I thought we might play more,” he said, not very hopefully. “Something less…stingy.”

 

“No, thanks,” Marla said. “I said I wanted to see you whipped, and I got what I wanted. I’m sure you won’t lack for people who want to dominate you, walking around here with ‘MA’ written on your ass.” She glanced around. “That bullwhip’s up for grabs, if anyone wants it. Just clean the tip with some alcohol.” Drawing her cloak around her, she slipped out of the room, and up out of the dungeon, people complimenting her on her whip-handling all the way. Marla even muttered acknowledgment to a few of the comments.

 

Whipping the idiot had been fun—she hadn’t done anything nasty in hours, and she’d been feeling fidgety. But now she wanted to find Finch. After her performance with the bullwhip, other people were going to start following her around and asking for her attention, and she simply wasn’t in the mood.

 

She spotted Rondeau in the hot tub, with Zara squirming in his lap, and walked in their direction.

 

Then she saw Bradley Bowman in the hot tub beside them, doing his best to be inconspicuous. “Well,” she said, crouching by the tub, behind them, whispering into Bradley’s ear. “I know you didn’t simply follow us, because I would have noticed. Has someone been using their little twitch of psychic ability to find out where I’m going to be, hmm?”

 

“It’s not what you think,” B said. “When you blew me off this afternoon, I went looking for something to do to pass the time, and I ended up here.”

 

“So you’ve been to these parties before?” Marla said, voice silky and dangerous.

 

“I think he’s on the up-and-up, Marla,” Rondeau said. “He nearly peed in the pool when he saw me. I don’t think it has anything to do with us. This party is just the place to be, is all.”

 

Zara yawned, pointedly, and Rondeau went back to nuzzling.

 

“There’s no such thing as a coincidence, Rondeau,” Marla said. “Not on a night like this. If B’s here, he’s almost certainly here for a reason, even if we don’t know what it is.”

 

“See?” Rondeau said to B. “I told you.” Zara made a petulant noise at his inattention.

 

“Confluence,” B said.

 

“That’s right,” Marla said. “Now, what do you know about Finch?”

 

B shrugged uncomfortably and glanced around at the other people—the ordinaries—in the hot tub. “Nothing much. Nothing more than anybody else knows.”

 

Marla sighed. Discretion was all well and good, but she was tired of being patient. She’d wasted too much of today killing hummingbirds and whipping idiots, and she wanted some forward momentum. She dipped her finger into the hot tub and swirled it counterclockwise. After a moment, the ordinaries in the tub climbed out and wandered away. Even Zara climbed off Rondeau’s lap and went into the house.

 

Rondeau sighed. “I only had sex with her once. We were sitting here so I could recuperate.”

 

“Maybe you can hook up with her again later,” B said, sliding out of the water.

 

“Yeah, sure,” Rondeau said. “But do you think I really want to look underneath all those other people to find her?”

 

“You know,” B said, “you could’ve asked me to get out of the tub, and we could have gone to a private corner of the yard to talk.”

 

“Marla prefers direct action,” Rondeau said. “Which is why you’d better start telling her about Finch.”

 

“I meant what I said, pretty much,” B said. “Finch is a rich, horny, pushy, generous, no-nonsense bear of a guy. He throws parties and trains submissives. He also runs an independent press, publishes erotica and nonfiction about sex. I’m pretty sure he makes pornos, too, all kinds, though that’s the shady side of his business, and I think on paper he doesn’t have anything to do with movies at all.” B glanced around. “I hear he does stuff for the, ah, specialty market. Really hardcore S&M, the kind that’s only questionably legal in this country. I’ve heard rumors that he does snuff films, but I think that’s bullshit, it’s just the kind of thing people say when they hear about somebody making illicit movies.”