Even Varney seemed to be cheered by the change of scenery. Their hotel looked out over the harbor, the bleached-white domes of the little seventeenth-century mosque visible to the right, facing out at the lighthouse at the end of its long breakwater. He and Ruthven sat on the balcony, under the shade of an umbrella, drinking a very creditable wine and watching a speck of white out on the water beyond the lighthouse.
“Are you sure they know what they’re doing?” Varney asked for the second time. Ruthven swirled his glass, watching the light catch and ripple, and then looked up.
“Reasonably sure. Stop worrying,” he said. “They look like they’re having a nice time sailing the bounding main.”
Greta and Cranswell weren’t doing too badly, although the water beyond the lighthouse was noticeably choppier. He watched them steer the rented boat in circles for a while before looking over at his companion, whose face held such a hopeless expression of longing that Ruthven had to blink and glance away quickly.
Varney cleared his throat. “They seem to be getting on quite well together,” he said.
It was intended to be wry, but only managed mournful. Ruthven looked back at him, measuring the expression, wondering if Varney really hadn’t seen certain of the things that were right in front of his admittedly strange eyes. “Her affections do not that way lie, my friend.”
“What do you mean?” Varney frowned.
“I mean,” he said, sitting back and picking up his glass again, “that among other instances I happened to notice Dr. Helsing in Athens visiting an extremely expensive boutique of the sort that purveys nightdresses. Of the frilly, diaphanous, and possibly even underwired persuasion, suitable for moonlit rendezvous.”
“What on earth are you saying, Edmund?” The formidable brows were drawn together.
He couldn’t help smiling. It sounded an awful lot better than Lord Ruthven. “There’s a full moon tonight,” he said. “You might consider the fact that her balcony adjoins this one.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Varney said, still frowning mightily, but there was that faint flush of color high on his cheekbones again, and the glass in his hand was not entirely steady.
“Ah, well.” Ruthven looked complacently at the tiny ripples in the dark surface of the wine. “I think I’ll dine out tonight. Young Cranswell was going on about that retsina place he’d seen on Yelp.”
“You’re very kind to him,” Varney said, obviously grateful for the change of subject. Out in the harbor the white speck was no longer a speck, but a boat; Ruthven could make out Greta’s pale hair tugged by the wind, Cranswell’s dark head bent close to hers as she drove.
“His father was a good friend of mine,” he said. “I promised I’d look out for him, which, to be bracingly honest, I don’t think I have been doing very well of late.”
“Is it really over, do you think?”
Ruthven looked bleak for a moment, and then his smile came back, wry now, a little crooked. “No. It’s never going to be really over; as long as we exist, there will be people determined to try to remedy that condition. But this part of it is done with. Kree-akh and his people are safe back in their old home. I got an e-mail from Greta’s witch friend saying that everyone’s been released from the clinic and recovering nicely. Anna Volkov should be back at work in a couple of weeks. Even that slightly deranged kid Whitlow will be okay. He’s being cared for.”
“‘Peace, the spell’s wound up’?” Varney said.
“Something like that. You heard the Devil; it’s unlikely to happen again.”
“I’m having difficulty believing any of that was real,” Varney said. “The … the Devil bit.”
“I know.” Ruthven finished his wine, set down the glass. “But Greta said that Fass told her a little bit about Samael, about how the structure of Hell works. I gather there is a rather complicated bureaucracy keeping the place running, and sophisticated cities, and in fact a Lake Avernus Spa and Resort where demons go to take rest cures. Frankly, in a world where rebellious remnants of creation use 1940s electrical technology to broadcast their ill will upon the earth, I’m willing to believe quite a few improbable things before breakfast. And, really, I have to think that at least if I’ve been thoroughly put out and personally damaged and had my property destroyed I have at least not recently been bored.”
“You are remarkably efficient at finding silver linings,” Varney said.
“I find that if you dig deep enough you can almost always find something worth the effort. And, well, it is nice, to know one is not alone. Nice to have friends.”
Varney watched the sleek white shape of the boat on the dark water, watched the little figure of Greta ready with the rope as they drifted up to the dock, watched her leap ashore. “I shall have to work at getting used to the idea,” he said.
“Do.” Ruthven smiled at him across the table, and was pleased and only a little surprised when Varney smiled back. It changed his face, warmed the melancholy eyes, took a few years off his apparent age.
They watched Cranswell finish tying up and join Greta, both of them walking slowly back toward the hotel—and then saw her stop dead still in her tracks and stare.
Along the path at the water’s edge a third figure was walking toward them: a man, tall and thin in a pale linen suit, a straw panama tipped rakishly on his head.
The figure looked up toward Ruthven and Varney and gave them a little wave, just before a ballistic Greta flung herself at him and knocked his hat off. They watched him hug her off her feet, spinning her around in a delighted circle, and then put her down, protesting, in order to shake Cranswell’s hand. Even from a distance they could see the expression on his thin face. Beside Ruthven, Varney’s own smile was brighter than ever, almost the expression of a living man.
They looked down from the balcony together at Greta and Cranswell, now wearing Fastitocalon’s hat; and watched Fastitocalon take the outstretched hands they offered him, and let them lead him home.