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ACE AND ROC BOOKS<br />
FREE SCIENCE FICTION<br />
AND FANTASY SAMPLER
Published by <strong>Ace</strong> and <strong>Roc</strong>, divisions of<br />
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Excerpt from Fated<br />
© Benedict Jacka, 2012<br />
Excerpt from Clean<br />
© Alex Hughes, 2012<br />
Excerpt from Dark Currents<br />
© Jacqueline Carey, 2012<br />
Excerpt from Daughter of the Sword<br />
© Steve Bein, 2012<br />
Excerpt from Dark Light of Day<br />
© Jill Archer, 2012<br />
Excerpt from Alchemystic<br />
© Anton Strout, 2012<br />
First Printing, 2012<br />
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1<br />
Copyright 2012<br />
All rights reserved<br />
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ACE AND ROC BOOKS SAMPLER<br />
FATED<br />
by Benedict Jacka 3<br />
CLEAN<br />
by Alex Hughes 21<br />
DARK CURRENTS<br />
by Jacqueline Carey 55<br />
DAUGHTER OF THE SWORD<br />
by Steve Bein 71<br />
DARK LIGHT OF DAY<br />
by Jill Archer 87<br />
ALCHEMYSTIC<br />
by Anton Strout 115
FATED<br />
An Alex Verus Novel<br />
by Benedict Jacka<br />
An <strong>Ace</strong> March 2012 Paperback<br />
“Fated is an excellent novel, a gorgeously realized<br />
world with a uniquely powerful, vulnerable<br />
protagonist. Books this good remind me why I got<br />
into the storytelling business in the first place.”<br />
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher<br />
“Benedict Jacka writes a deft thrill-ride of an Urban<br />
Fantasy—a stay-up-all-night read.”<br />
—#1 New York Times bestselling author<br />
Patricia Briggs<br />
Alex Verus is part of a world hidden in plain sight, running<br />
a magic shop in London that caters to clientele who can<br />
do much more than pull rabbits out of hats. And while<br />
Alex’s own powers aren’t as showy as some mages,<br />
he does have the advantage of foreseeing the possible<br />
future—allowing him to pull off operations that have a<br />
million to one chance of success.<br />
But when Alex is approached by multiple factions seeking<br />
his skills to crack open a relic from a long-ago mage war,<br />
he knows that whatever’s inside must be beyond<br />
powerful. And thanks to his abilities, Alex can predict that<br />
by taking the job, his odds of survival are about to go<br />
from slim to none . . .
1<br />
It was a slow day, so I was reading a book at my desk and seeing<br />
into the future.<br />
There were only two customers in the shop. One was a stu‑<br />
dent with scraggly hair and a nervous way of glancing over his<br />
shoulder. He was standing by the herb and powder rack and had<br />
decided what to buy ten minutes ago but was still working up the<br />
nerve to ask me about it. The other customer was a kid wearing a<br />
Linkin Park T‑shirt who’d picked out a crystal ball but wasn’t go‑<br />
ing to bring it to the counter until the other guy had left.<br />
The kid had come on a bicycle, and in fifteen minutes a traffic<br />
warden was going to come by and ticket him for locking his bike to<br />
the railings. After that I was going to get a call I didn’t want to be<br />
disturbed for, so I set my paperback down on my desk and looked<br />
at the student. “Anything I can help you with?”<br />
He started and came over, glancing back at the kid and drop‑<br />
ping his voice slightly. “Um, hey. Do you—?”<br />
“No. I don’t sell spellbooks.”<br />
“Not even—?”<br />
“No.”<br />
“Is there, um, any way I could check?”<br />
“The spell you’re thinking of isn’t going to do any harm. Just try<br />
it and then go talk to the girl and see what happens.”
4 Benedict Jacka<br />
The student stared at me. “You knew that just from these?”<br />
I hadn’t even been paying attention to the herbs in his hand,<br />
but that was as good an explanation as any. “Want a bag?”<br />
He put verbena, myrrh, and incense into the bag I gave him<br />
and paid for it while still giving me an awestruck look, then left. As<br />
soon as the door swung shut, the other kid came over and asked me<br />
the price for the second‑biggest crystal ball, trying to sound casual.<br />
I didn’t bother checking to see what he was going to use it for—<br />
about the only way you can hurt yourself with a crystal ball is by<br />
hitting yourself over the head with it, which is more than I can say<br />
for some of the things I sell. Once the kid had let himself out, heft‑<br />
ing his paper bag, I got up, walked over, and flipped the sign on the<br />
door from OPEN to CLOSED. Through the window, I saw the kid<br />
unlock his bike and ride off. About thirty seconds later a traffic<br />
warden walked by.<br />
My shop’s in a district in the north centre of London called<br />
Camden Town. There’s a spot where the canal, three bridges, and<br />
two railway lines all meet and tangle together in a kind of urban<br />
reef knot, and my street is right in the middle. The bridges and the<br />
canal do a good job of fencing the area in, making it into a kind of<br />
oasis in the middle of the city. Apart from the trains, it’s surprisingly<br />
quiet. I like to go up onto the roof sometimes and look around over<br />
the canal and the funny‑shaped rooftops. Sometimes in the eve‑<br />
nings and early mornings, when the traffic’s muted and the light’s<br />
faded, it feels almost like a gateway to another world.<br />
The sign above my door says Arcana Emporium. Underneath is<br />
a smaller sign with some of the things I sell— implements, reagents,<br />
focus items, that sort of thing. You’d think it would be easier to just<br />
say magic shop, but I got sick of the endless stream of people asking<br />
for breakaway hoops and marked cards. Finally I worked out a deal<br />
with a stage magic store half a mile away, and now I keep a box of<br />
their business cards on the counter to hand out to anyone who<br />
comes in asking for the latest book by David Blaine. The kids go<br />
away happy, and I get some peace and quiet.
FATED 5<br />
My name’s Alex Verus. It’s not the name I was born with, but<br />
that’s another story. I’m a mage; a diviner. Some people call mages<br />
like me oracles, or seers, or probability mages if they want to be<br />
really wordy, and that’s fine too, just as long as they don’t call me a<br />
“fortune‑teller.” I’m not the only mage in the country, but as far as<br />
I know I’m the only one who runs a shop.<br />
Mages like me aren’t common, but we aren’t as rare as you<br />
might think either. We look the same as anyone else, and if you<br />
passed one of us on the street, odds are you’d never know it. Only<br />
if you were very observant would you notice something a little off,<br />
a little strange, and by the time you took another look, we’d be<br />
gone. It’s another world, hidden within your own, and most of<br />
those who live in it don’t like visitors.<br />
Those of us who do like visitors have to advertise, and it’s<br />
tricky to find a way of doing it that doesn’t make you sound crazy.<br />
The majority rely on word of mouth, though younger mages use<br />
the Internet. I’ve even heard of one guy in Chicago who adver‑<br />
tises in the phone book under “Wizard,” though that’s probably<br />
an urban legend. Me, I have my shop. Wiccans and pagans and<br />
New Agers are common enough nowadays that people accept the<br />
idea of a magic shop, or at least they understand that the weirdos<br />
have to buy their stuff from somewhere. Of course, they take for<br />
granted that it’s all a con and that the stuff in my shop is no more<br />
magical than an old pair of socks, and for the most part they’re<br />
right. But the stuff in my shop that isn’t magical is good camou‑<br />
flage for the stuff that is, like the thing sitting upstairs in a little<br />
blue lacquered cylinder that can grant any five wishes you ask. If<br />
that ever got out, I’d have much worse problems than the occa‑<br />
sional snigger.<br />
The futures had settled and the phone was going to ring in<br />
about thirty seconds. I settled down comfortably and, when the<br />
phone rang, let it go twice before picking up. “Hey.”<br />
“Hi, Alex,” Luna’s voice said into my ear. “Are you busy?”<br />
“Not even a little. How’s it going?”
6 Benedict Jacka<br />
“Can I ask a favour? I was going through a place in Clapham<br />
and found something. Can I bring it over?”<br />
“Right now?”<br />
“That’s not a problem, is it?”<br />
“Not really. Is there a rush?”<br />
“No. Well . . .” Luna hesitated. “This thing makes me a bit ner‑<br />
vous. I’d feel better if it was with you.”<br />
I didn’t even have to think about it. Like I said, it was a slow day.<br />
“You remember the way to the park?”<br />
“The one near your shop?”<br />
“I’ll meet you there. Where are you?”<br />
“Still in Clapham. I’m just about to get on my bike.”<br />
“So one and a half hours. You can make it before sunset if you<br />
hurry.”<br />
“I think I am going to hurry. I’m not sure . . .” Luna’s voice<br />
trailed off, then firmed. “Okay. See you soon.”<br />
She broke the connection. I held the phone in my hand, look‑<br />
ing at the display. Luna works for me on a part‑time basis, finding<br />
items for me to sell, though I don’t think she does it for the money.<br />
Either way, I couldn’t remember her ever being this nervous about<br />
one. It made me wonder exactly what she was carrying.<br />
You can think of magical talent as a pyramid. Making up the<br />
lowest and biggest layer are the normals. If magic is colours, these<br />
are the people born colourblind: they don’t know anything about<br />
magic and they don’t want to, thank you very much. They’ve got<br />
plenty of things to deal with already, and if they do see anything<br />
that might shake the way they look at things, they convince them‑<br />
selves they didn’t see it double quick. This is maybe ninety percent<br />
of the adult civilised world.<br />
Next up on the pyramid are the sensitives, the ones who aren’t<br />
colour‑blind. Sensitives are blessed (or cursed, depending how you<br />
look at it) with a wider spectrum of vision than normals. They can<br />
feel the presence of magic, the distant power in the sun and the<br />
earth and the stars, the warmth and stability of an old family home,
FATED 7<br />
the lingering wisps of death and horror at a Dark ritual site. Most<br />
often they don’t have the words to describe what they feel, but two<br />
sensitives can recognise each other by a kind of empathy, and it<br />
makes a powerful bond. Have you ever felt a connection to some‑<br />
one, as though you shared something even though you didn’t know<br />
what it was? It’s like that.<br />
Above the sensitives on the magical pecking order are the ad‑<br />
epts. These guys are only one percent or so, but unlike sensitives<br />
they can actually channel magic in a subtle way. Often it’s so subtle<br />
they don’t even know they’re doing it; they might be “lucky” at<br />
cards, or very good at “guessing” what’s on another person’s mind,<br />
but it’s mild enough that they just think they’re born lucky or per‑<br />
ceptive. But sometimes they figure out what they’re doing and start<br />
developing it, and some of these guys can get pretty impressive<br />
within their specific field.<br />
And then there are the mages.<br />
Luna’s somewhere between sensitive and adept. It’s hard even<br />
for me to know which, as she has some . . . unique characteristics<br />
that make her difficult to categorise, not to mention dangerous.<br />
But she’s also one of my very few friends, and I was looking forward<br />
to seeing her. Her tone of voice had left me concerned so I looked<br />
into the future and was glad to see she was going to arrive in an<br />
hour and a half, right on time.<br />
In the process, though, I noticed something that annoyed me:<br />
someone else was going to come through the door in a couple of<br />
minutes, despite the fact I’d just flipped my sign to say CLOSED.<br />
Camden gets a lot of tourists, and there’s always the one guy who<br />
figures opening hours don’t apply to him. I didn’t want to walk all<br />
the way over and lock the door, so I just sat watching the street<br />
grumpily until a figure appeared outside the door and pushed it<br />
open. It was a man wearing pressed trousers and a shirt with a tie.<br />
The bell above the door rang musically as he stepped inside and<br />
raised his eyebrows. “Hello, Alex.”<br />
As soon as he spoke I recognised who it was. A rush of adrena‑
8 Benedict Jacka<br />
line went through me as I spread my senses out to cover the shop<br />
and the street outside. My right hand shifted down a few inches to<br />
rest on the shelf under my desk. I couldn’t sense any attack, but<br />
that didn’t necessarily mean anything.<br />
Lyle just stood there, looking at me. “Well?” he said. “Aren’t<br />
you going to invite me in?”<br />
It had been more than four years since I’d seen Lyle, but he<br />
looked the same as I remembered. He was about as old as me, with<br />
a slim build, short black hair, and a slight olive tint to his skin that<br />
hinted at a Mediterranean ancestor somewhere in his family tree.<br />
His clothes were expensive and he wore them with a sort of casual<br />
elegance I knew I’d never be able to match. Lyle had always known<br />
how to look good.<br />
“Who else is here?” I said.<br />
Lyle sighed. “No one. Good grief, Alex, have you really gotten<br />
this paranoid?”<br />
I checked and rechecked and confirmed what he was saying. As<br />
far as I could tell, Lyle was the only other mage nearby. Besides, as<br />
my heartbeat began to slow, I realised that if the Council was plan‑<br />
ning an attack, Lyle was the last person they’d send. Suddenly I did<br />
feel paranoid.<br />
Of course, that didn’t mean I was happy to see him or anything.<br />
Lyle began walking forward, and I spoke sharply. “Stay there.”<br />
Lyle stopped and looked quizzically at me. “So?” he said, when<br />
I didn’t react. He was standing in the middle of my shop, in be‑<br />
tween the reagents and the shelves full of candles and bells. “Are<br />
we going to stand and stare at each other?”<br />
“How about you tell me why you’re here?”<br />
“I was hoping for a more comfortable place to talk.” Lyle tilted<br />
his head. “What about upstairs?”<br />
“No.”<br />
“Were you about to eat?”<br />
I pushed my chair back and rose to my feet. “Let’s go for a walk.”<br />
Once we were outside I breathed a little easier. There’s a
FATED 9<br />
roped‑off section to one side of my shop that contains actual<br />
magic items: focuses, residuals, and one‑shots. They’d been out<br />
of sight from where Lyle had been standing, but a few more steps<br />
and he couldn’t have missed them. None were powerful enough<br />
to make him think twice, but it wouldn’t take him long to put two<br />
and two together and figure out that if I had that many minor<br />
items, then I ought to have some major ones too. And I’d just as<br />
soon that particular bit of information didn’t get back to the<br />
Council.<br />
It was late spring and the London weather was mild enough to<br />
make walking a pleasure rather than a chore. Camden’s always busy,<br />
even when the market’s closed, but the buildings and bridges here<br />
have a dampening effect on stray sounds. I led Lyle down an alley to<br />
the canalside walk, and then stopped, leaning against the balustrade.<br />
As I walked I scanned the area thoroughly, both present and future,<br />
but came up empty. As far as I could tell, Lyle was on his own.<br />
I’ve known Lyle for more than ten years. He was an apprentice<br />
when we first met, awkward and eager, hurrying along in the foot‑<br />
steps of his Council master. Even then there was never any ques‑<br />
tion but that he’d try for the Council, but we were friends, if not<br />
close. At least for a little while. Then I had my falling‑out with<br />
Richard Drakh.<br />
I don’t really like to think about what happened in the year after<br />
that. There are some things so horrible you never really get over<br />
them; they make a kind of burnt‑out wasteland in your memory,<br />
and all you can do is try to move on. Lyle wasn’t directly responsi‑<br />
ble for the things that happened to me and the others in Richard’s<br />
mansion, but he’d had a pretty good idea of what was going on, just<br />
like the rest of the Council. At least, they would have had a good<br />
idea if they’d allowed themselves to think about it. Instead they<br />
avoided the subject and waited for me to do the convenient thing<br />
and vanish.<br />
Lyle’s not my friend anymore.<br />
Now he was standing next to me, brushing off the balustrade
10 Benedict Jacka<br />
before leaning on it, making sure none of the dirt got on his jacket.<br />
The walkway ran alongside the canal, following the curve of the<br />
canal out of sight. The water was dark and broken by choppy waves.<br />
It was an overcast day, the sunlight shining only dimly through the<br />
grey cloud.<br />
“Well,” Lyle said eventually, “if you don’t want to chat, shall we<br />
get down to business?”<br />
“I don’t think we’ve got much to chat about, do you?”<br />
“The Council would like to employ your services.”<br />
I blinked at that. “You’re here officially?”<br />
“Not exactly. There was some . . . disagreement on how best to<br />
proceed. The Council couldn’t come to a full agreement—”<br />
“The Council can’t come to a full agreement on when to have<br />
dinner.”<br />
“—on the best course of action,” Lyle finished smoothly. “Con‑<br />
sulting a diviner was considered as an interim measure.”<br />
“Consulting a diviner?” I asked, suddenly suspicious. The<br />
Council and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms. “Me specifically?”<br />
“As you know, the Council rarely requests—”<br />
“What about Alaundo? I thought he was their go‑to guy when<br />
they wanted a seer.”<br />
“I’m afraid I can’t discuss closed Council proceedings.”<br />
“Once you start going door to door, it isn’t closed proceedings<br />
anymore, is it? Come on, Lyle. I’m sure as hell not going to agree<br />
to anything unless I know why you’re here.”<br />
Lyle blew out an irritated breath. “Master Alaundo is currently<br />
on extended research.”<br />
“So he turned you down? What about Helikaon?”<br />
“He’s otherwise occupied.”<br />
“And that guy from the Netherlands? Dutch Jake or whatever<br />
he was called. I’m pretty sure he did divination work for—”<br />
“Alex,” Lyle said. “Don’t run through every diviner in the Brit‑<br />
ish Isles. I know the list as well as you do.”<br />
I grinned. “I’m the only one you can find, aren’t I? That’s why
FATED 11<br />
you’re coming here.” My eyes narrowed. “And the Council doesn’t<br />
even know. They wouldn’t have agreed to trust me with official<br />
business.”<br />
“I don’t appreciate threats,” Lyle said stiffly. “And I’d appreciate<br />
it if you didn’t use your abilities for these matters.”<br />
“You think I needed magic to figure that out?” Annoying Lyle<br />
was satisfying, but I knew it was risky to push him too far. “Okay. So<br />
what does the Council want so badly you’re willing to risk coming<br />
to me?”<br />
Lyle took a moment to straighten his tie. “I assume you’re aware<br />
of the Arrancar ruling?”<br />
I looked at him blankly.<br />
“It’s been common knowledge for months.”<br />
“Common knowledge to whom?”<br />
Lyle let out an irritated breath. “As a consequence of the Ar‑<br />
rancar conclave, mages are required to report all significant ar‑<br />
chaeological discoveries of arcana to the Council. Recently, a new<br />
discovery was reported—”<br />
“Reported?”<br />
“—and subjected to a preliminary investigation. The investiga‑<br />
tion team have concluded quite definitely that it’s a Precursor relic.”<br />
I looked up at that. “Functional?”<br />
“Yes.”<br />
“What kind?”<br />
“They weren’t able to determine.”<br />
“It’s sealed? I’m surprised they didn’t just force it.”<br />
Lyle hesitated.<br />
“Oh,” I said, catching on. “They did try to force it. What hap‑<br />
pened?”<br />
“I’m afraid that’s confidential.”<br />
“A ward? Guardian?”<br />
“In any case, a new investigation team is being formed. It<br />
was . . . considered necessary for them to have access to the abilities<br />
of a diviner.”
12 Benedict Jacka<br />
“And you want me on the team?”<br />
“Not exactly.” Lyle paused. “You’ll be an independent agent, re‑<br />
porting to me. I’ll pass on your recommendations to the investigators.”<br />
I frowned. “What?”<br />
Lyle cleared his throat. “Unfortunately it wouldn’t be feasible<br />
for you to join the team directly. The Council wouldn’t be able to<br />
clear you. But if you accept, I can promise I’ll tell you everything<br />
you need to know.”<br />
I turned away from Lyle, looking out over the canal. The rumble<br />
of an engine echoed around the brick walls from downstream, and a<br />
barge came into view, chugging along. It was painted yellow and red.<br />
The man at the tiller didn’t give us a glance as he passed. Lyle stayed<br />
quiet as the barge went by and disappeared around the bend of the<br />
canal. A breeze blew along the pathway, ruffling my hair.<br />
I still didn’t speak. Lyle coughed. A pair of seagulls flew over‑<br />
head, after the barge, calling with loud, discordant voices: arrrh,<br />
arrrh. “Alex?” Lyle asked.<br />
“Sorry,” I said. “Not interested.”<br />
“If it’s a question of money . . .”<br />
“No, I just don’t like the deal.”<br />
“Why?”<br />
“Because it stinks.”<br />
“Look, you have to be realistic. There’s no way the Council<br />
would give you clearance to—”<br />
“If the Council doesn’t want to give me clearance, you shouldn’t<br />
be coming to me in the first place.” I turned to look at Lyle. “What’s<br />
your idea, they need the information badly enough that they won’t<br />
care about where you’re getting it? I think sooner or later they’d<br />
start asking questions, and you’d cut me loose to avoid the flak. I’m<br />
not interested in being your fall guy.”<br />
Lyle blew out a breath. “Why are you being so irrational about<br />
this? I’m giving you a chance to get back in the Council’s favour.”<br />
He glanced around at the concrete and grey skies. “Given the alter‑<br />
native . . .”
FATED 13<br />
“Well, since you bring it up, it just so happens that I’m not es‑<br />
pecially interested in getting back in the Council’s favour.”<br />
“That’s ridiculous. The Council represents all of the mages in<br />
the country.”<br />
“Yeah, all the mages. That’s the problem.”<br />
“This is about that business with Drakh, isn’t it?” Lyle said. He<br />
rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Alex, it was ten years ago. Get over it.”<br />
“It doesn’t matter when it was,” I said tightly. “The Council<br />
haven’t gotten better. They’ve gotten worse.”<br />
“We’ve had ten years of peace. That’s your idea of ‘worse’?”<br />
“The reason you’ve had peace is because you and the Council<br />
let the Dark mages do whatever they want.” I glared at Lyle. “You<br />
know what they do to the people in their power. Why don’t you ask<br />
them how good a deal they think it is?”<br />
“We’re not starting another war, Alex. The Council isn’t going<br />
anywhere, and neither are the mages that are a part of it, Light or<br />
Dark. You’re just going to have to accept that.”<br />
I took a breath and looked out over the canal, listening to the<br />
distant cries of the seagulls. When I spoke again my voice was<br />
steady. “The answer’s no. Find someone else.”<br />
Lyle made a disgusted noise. “I should have known.” He stepped<br />
away and gave me a look. “You’re living in the past. Grow up.”<br />
I watched Lyle walk off. He didn’t look back. Once he’d disap‑<br />
peared around the corner, I turned back to the canal.<br />
So long as magic has existed, there’s always been a split be‑<br />
tween the two paths: the Light mages, and the Dark. Sometimes<br />
they’ve existed in uneasy truce; sometimes there have been con‑<br />
flicts. The last and greatest was called the Gate Rune War, and it<br />
happened forty years before I was born. It was a faction of the Dark<br />
mages against almost all of the Light, and the prize to the winner<br />
was total dominion over the earth.<br />
The Light side won— sort of. They stopped the Dark mages and<br />
killed their leaders, but by the time it was over most of the Light<br />
battle‑mages were dead as well. The Light survivors didn’t want to
14 Benedict Jacka<br />
fight any more wars, and the surviving Dark mages were allowed to<br />
regroup. Years passed. The old warriors were replaced by a new<br />
generation of mages who thought that peace was the natural order<br />
of things.<br />
By the time I arrived on the scene, Council policy was live and<br />
let live. Dark mages were tolerated so long as they didn’t go after<br />
Light mages, and vice versa. There was a set of rules called the Con‑<br />
cord that governed how mages could and couldn’t act towards each<br />
other. The Concord didn’t draw any distinction between Light and<br />
Dark, and there was a growing feeling that the division between<br />
Light and Dark was out of date. At the time, I thought it made a lot<br />
of sense. My own master, Richard Drakh, was a Dark mage, and I<br />
didn’t see why Light and Dark mages couldn’t get along.<br />
I changed my mind after I had my falling‑out with Richard, but<br />
by then it was too late. That was when I discovered that while the<br />
Concord had all sorts of rules for how mages were allowed to treat<br />
each other, it didn’t have any rules at all for how they were allowed<br />
to treat their apprentices. After I escaped, I went to Lyle and the<br />
Council. They didn’t want to know. I was left alone, with an angry<br />
Dark mage after me.<br />
Even now if I close my eyes I can still remember that time, the<br />
horrible paralysing fear. It’s impossible to understand unless you’ve<br />
experienced it: the terror of being hunted by something crueller<br />
and stronger than you. I was barely out of my teens, hardly able to<br />
look after myself, much less go face to face with someone like Rich‑<br />
ard. Now I look back on it I can see that the Council was really just<br />
waiting for Richard to get rid of me and remove the whole embar‑<br />
rassing mess. Instead I survived.<br />
So you can see why I’m not the Council’s favourite person. And<br />
why I’ve no desire to get in their good books, either.<br />
I knew that Lyle was gone and wasn’t coming back, but I stayed<br />
where I was for another twenty minutes, watching the reflections in<br />
the dark water and waiting for the ugly memories to settle. When I<br />
was calm again I put Lyle and everything he stood for out of my
FATED 15<br />
mind and went home. I didn’t feel like doing any more work that<br />
day, so I left for the park, locking the shop behind me.<br />
London is an old city. Even visitors can feel it— the sense of his‑<br />
tory, the weight of thousands of years. To a sensitive it’s even stron‑<br />
ger, like a physical presence embedded into the earth and stone.<br />
Over the centuries pockets have developed, little enclaves in the<br />
jungle of buildings, and the place I was going to is one of them.<br />
The park is about a ten‑minute walk from my shop, tucked<br />
down a twisting backstreet that nobody ever uses. It’s overgrown to<br />
the point of being nearly invisible behind the fence and trees.<br />
There are construction vehicles parked outside— officially the<br />
park’s supposed to be closed for redevelopment, but somehow the<br />
work never seems to get done. There are buildings all around, but<br />
leaves and branches shelter you from watching eyes.<br />
I was sitting on a blanket with my back against a beech tree<br />
when I heard the faint rattle of a bicycle on the road outside. A mo‑<br />
ment later a girl appeared through the trees, ducking under the<br />
branches. I waved and she changed direction, walking across the<br />
grass towards me.<br />
A glance at Luna would show you a girl in her early twenties,<br />
with blue eyes, fair skin, and wavy light brown hair worn up in two<br />
bunches. She moves very carefully, always looking where she<br />
places her hands and feet, and often she seems as though her body’s<br />
there while her mind’s somewhere far away. She hardly ever smiles<br />
and I’ve never seen her laugh, but apart from that you could talk to<br />
her without noticing anything strange . . . at least to begin with.<br />
Luna’s one of those people who was born into the world of magic<br />
without ever really getting a choice. Adepts and even mages can<br />
choose to abandon their power if they want to, bury their talents in<br />
the sand and walk away, but for Luna it’s different. A few hundred<br />
years ago in Sicily, one of Luna’s ancestors made the mistake of up‑<br />
setting a powerful strega. Backcountry witches have a reputation for<br />
being vicious, but this one was mean even by witch standards. In‑
16 Benedict Jacka<br />
stead of just killing the man, she put a curse on him that would<br />
strike his youngest daughter, and his daughter’s daughter, and her<br />
daughter after that, following his children down and down through<br />
the generations until his descendants died out or the world ended,<br />
whichever came first.<br />
I don’t know how that long‑dead witch managed to bind the<br />
curse so tightly to the family line, but she did a hell of a thorough<br />
job. She’s been dust and bones for centuries but the curse is just as<br />
strong as ever, and Luna’s the one in this generation who inherited<br />
it. Part of the reason the curse is so nasty is that it’s almost impos‑<br />
sible to tell it’s there. Even a mage wouldn’t notice it unless he<br />
knew exactly what to look for. If I concentrate I can see it around<br />
Luna as a kind of silvery‑grey mist, but I have only the vaguest idea<br />
how it does what it does.<br />
“Hey,” Luna said as she reached me, slinging her backpack off<br />
her shoulder. Instead of sitting on the blanket she picked a spot on<br />
the grass, a few yards away from me. “Are you all right?”<br />
“Sure. Why?”<br />
“You look as if something’s bothering you.”<br />
I shook my head in annoyance. I’d thought I’d concealed it bet‑<br />
ter than that, but I always have trouble hiding things from Luna.<br />
“Unwelcome visitor. How’s things?”<br />
Luna hesitated. “Can you . . . ?”<br />
“Let’s have a look at it.”<br />
Luna had been only waiting for me to ask; she unzipped her<br />
backpack and took out something wrapped in a cotton scarf. She<br />
leant forward to place it onto the edge of the blanket and un‑<br />
wrapped it, staying as far away as possible. The scarf fell away, Luna<br />
scooted back, and I leant forward in interest. Sitting in the folds of<br />
the scarf was what looked like a cube of red crystal.<br />
The thing was about three inches square and deep crimson, the<br />
colour of red stained glass. As I looked more closely, though, I saw<br />
it wasn’t transparent enough to be glass; I should have been able to<br />
see through it, but I couldn’t. Instead, if I looked closely, I could
FATED 17<br />
see what looked like tiny white sparks held in the cube’s depths.<br />
“Huh,” I said, sitting up. “Where’d you find it?”<br />
“It was in the attic of a house in Clapham West. But . . .” Luna<br />
paused. “There’s something strange. I went to the same house<br />
three weeks ago and didn’t find anything. But this time it was sit‑<br />
ting on a shelf, right out in the open. And when I went to the<br />
owner, he couldn’t remember owning it. He let me have it for<br />
free.” Luna frowned. “I’ve been wondering if I just missed it, but I<br />
don’t see how. You can feel it, can’t you?”<br />
I nodded. The cube radiated the distinct sense of otherness that<br />
all magic items do. This one wasn’t flashy, but it was strong; some‑<br />
one sensitive like Luna couldn’t have walked by without noticing.<br />
“Did you touch it?”<br />
Luna nodded.<br />
“What happened?”<br />
“It glowed,” Luna said. “Just for a second, and—” She hesi‑<br />
tated. “Well, I put it down, and it stopped. Then I wrapped it up<br />
and brought it here.”<br />
The cube wasn’t glowing now so I focused on it and concen‑<br />
trated. All mages can see into the magical spectrum to some de‑<br />
gree, but as a diviner I’m a lot better at it than most. A mage’s sight<br />
isn’t really sight— it’s more like a sixth sense— but the easiest way<br />
to interpret it is visually. It gives a sense of what the magic is, where<br />
it came from, and what it can do. If you’re skilled enough you can<br />
pick up the thoughts the magic was shaped out of and the kind of<br />
personality that created it. On a good day I can read an item’s<br />
whole history just from looking at it.<br />
Today wasn’t one of those days. Not only could I not read the<br />
item’s aura, I couldn’t read any aura on it at all. Which made no<br />
sense, because there should have been at least one aura, namely<br />
Luna’s. To my eyes Luna glowed a clear silver, wisps of mist con‑<br />
stantly drifting away and being renewed. A residue of it clung to<br />
everything she touched: her pack glowed silver, the scarf glowed<br />
silver, even the grass she was sitting on glowed silver, but the
18 Benedict Jacka<br />
cube itself radiated nothing at all. The thing was like a black<br />
hole.<br />
Left to their own devices magic items give off an aura, and the<br />
more powerful the item, the more powerful that aura is. This was<br />
why I’d had Luna bring the thing out here; if I’d tried to examine<br />
the cube in my shop I’d have had a hundred other auras distracting<br />
me. The park is a natural oasis, a kind of grounding circle which<br />
keeps other energies out, allowing me to concentrate on just one<br />
thing at a time. It’s possible to design an item so as to minimise its<br />
signature, but no matter how carefully you design a one‑shot or a<br />
focus, something’s going to be visible. The only way to mask a mag‑<br />
ical aura completely is to do it actively, which left only one thing<br />
this could be. I dropped my concentration and looked up at Luna.<br />
“You’ve found something special, all right.”<br />
“Do you know what it is?” Luna asked.<br />
I shook my head and thought for a moment. “What happened<br />
when you touched it?”<br />
“The sparks inside lit up and it glowed. Just for a second. Then<br />
it went dark again.” Luna seemed about to say something else, then<br />
stopped.<br />
“After that? Did it do anything else?”<br />
“Well . . .” Luna hesitated. “It might be nothing.”<br />
“Tell me.”<br />
“It felt like it was looking at me. Even after I put it away. I know<br />
that sounds weird.”<br />
I sat back against the tree, looking down at the cube. I didn’t<br />
like this at all. “Alex?” Luna asked. “What’s wrong?”<br />
“This is going to be trouble.”<br />
“Why?”<br />
I hesitated. I’d been teaching Luna about magic for a few<br />
months, but so far I’d avoided telling her much about the people<br />
who use it. I know Luna wants to be accepted into the magical<br />
world, and I also know there’s not much chance of it happening.<br />
Mage society is based on a hierarchy of power: the stronger your
FATED 19<br />
magic, the more status you have. Sensitives like Luna are second‑class<br />
citizens at best.<br />
“Look, there’s a reason not many mages run shops,” I said at<br />
last. “They’ve never bought in to the whole idea of yours and mine.<br />
A mage sees a magic item, his first reaction is to take it. Now, a<br />
minor item you can keep out of sight, but something really powerful<br />
. . . that’s different. Any mage who finds out about this thing is<br />
going to be willing to take time off his schedule and track you<br />
down to take it, and he might not be gentle about how. Just owning<br />
a major item is dangerous.”<br />
Luna was quiet. “But you don’t do that,” she said at last.<br />
I sighed. “No.”<br />
Luna looked at me, then turned away. We sat for a little while<br />
in silence.<br />
Luna’s curse is a spell of chance magic. Chance magic affects<br />
luck, bending probability so that something that might happen one<br />
time in a thousand, or a million, happens at just the right time— or<br />
the wrong one. The spell around Luna does both. It pulls bad luck<br />
away from her, and brings it to everyone nearby.<br />
The really twisted thing is that from what I’ve learnt, the spell<br />
was originally invented by Dark mages as a protection, not a curse,<br />
because it makes you as safe from accidents as a person can possi‑<br />
bly be. You can run across a motorway in rush hour, climb a tree in<br />
a lightning storm, walk through a battlefield with bombs going off<br />
all around you, all without taking a scratch.<br />
But the accidents don’t go away; they just get redirected to<br />
every one nearby, and when the spell is laid permanently, the re‑<br />
sults are horrible. The closer Luna gets to another person, the<br />
more the curse affects them. She can’t live in the same house as<br />
anyone else, because something terrible would happen within a<br />
month. She can’t keep pets, or they die. Even having friends is<br />
dangerous. The closer other people are to her, and the longer they<br />
stay near, the worse the result. Whenever Luna comes to care<br />
about any other human being, she knows that the more time she
20 Benedict Jacka<br />
spends with them, the more they’re going to be hurt. She told me<br />
once that the first boy she kissed ended up in a coma.<br />
I’ve spent some time researching Luna’s curse, trying to find a<br />
way to break it, but haven’t gotten anywhere. I might be able to get<br />
somewhere if I studied her intensively, but Luna’s life is hard<br />
enough without being treated like some kind of science project.<br />
Still . . . “Luna?”<br />
“Hm?”<br />
“There’s something I was . . .” Something brushed against my<br />
senses, and I stopped. I looked into the future and my stomach sud‑<br />
denly went cold.<br />
Luna was watching in puzzlement. She could tell from my ex‑<br />
pression that something was going on, but she didn’t know what.<br />
“Alex?”<br />
I jumped to my feet. “Get away!”<br />
Luna started to rise, confused. “What’s going on?”<br />
“There’s no time!” I was desperate; we had only seconds. “Be‑<br />
hind the tree, hide! Hurry!”<br />
Luna hesitated an instant longer, then moved quickly behind<br />
the beech. “Stay there,” I said, my voice low and urgent. “Don’t<br />
make a sound.” I turned back just as a man stepped from the trees<br />
in front of me.<br />
He was powerfully built, with a thick neck and wide hands, and<br />
muscles that bulged through the lines of his black coat. He might<br />
have looked like a bouncer or a bodyguard, maybe even a friendly<br />
one, if you didn’t look too closely at his eyes. “Verus, right?” the<br />
Dark mage said, regarding me steadily. “Don’t think we’ve met.”
CLEAN<br />
A Mindspace Investigations Novel<br />
by Alex Hughes<br />
A <strong>Roc</strong> September 2012 Paperback<br />
A Ruthless Killer<br />
Out of sight<br />
Out of mind<br />
I used to work for the Telepath’s Guild before they kicked<br />
me out for a drug habit that wasn’t entirely my fault. Now<br />
I work for the cops, helping Homicide Detective Isabella<br />
Cherabino put killers behind bars.<br />
My ability to get inside the twisted minds of suspects<br />
makes me the best interrogator in the department.<br />
But the normals keep me on a short leash. When the<br />
Tech Wars ripped the world apart, the Guild stepped<br />
up to save it. But they had to get scary to do it—<br />
real scary.<br />
Now the cops don’t trust the telepaths, the Guild doesn’t<br />
trust me, a serial killer is stalking the city—and I’m<br />
aching for a fix. But I need to solve this case. Fast.<br />
I’ve just had a vision of the future: I’m the next to die.
1<br />
M y first interview of the night was Esperanza Mensalez‑Már, a<br />
thirty‑something woman dressed in a pink‑pressed suit I<br />
suspected cost more than my last paycheck. Not that I’d seen the<br />
paycheck, but that was the kind of impression she gave off, like she<br />
had too much money to cope. She was here as a suspect in the<br />
death of her husband.<br />
A uniformed officer escorted me, today’s babysitter to make<br />
sure I didn’t break any laws while interrogating. He took a menacing<br />
position at the back of the room and glared at the woman like she<br />
was his worst enemy—exactly what I wanted.<br />
I entered, carrying my props: an old‑fashioned ream of paper<br />
and two sharpened pencils. From the tape they’d given me, I’d<br />
pegged Esperanza as a control freak. So I threw the paper down<br />
crooked, spilling it everywhere, adding the pencils so they rolled<br />
along the table, then slouched back in the chair. I grabbed one<br />
of the pencils just before it hit the floor and started tapping it on<br />
the table. Tap, tappity-tap. Tappity-tap, tap, tap. Just for fun, I<br />
altered the pattern every now and then to keep it grating on her<br />
nerves.<br />
I stared at Esperanza for a long time while the pencil tapped<br />
against the table. Since Lieutenant Paulsen had exiled me to the<br />
interview rooms again, I’d be here three hours or more with
24 Alex Hughes<br />
nowhere else to go; I thought about that hard, knowing some of it<br />
would leak into my face.<br />
After ten minutes, her hand shot out and flattened mine against<br />
the table, stopping the pencil. “Stop,” she said. “Just stop.”<br />
Once her hand touched mine, I had what I needed. “I’m required<br />
by law in this situation to tell you I’m a Level Eight telepath.”<br />
Her hand shot back immediately. She wiped it against her skirt<br />
by reflex, as if she’d touched something slimy. The cold mask she’d<br />
worn had transformed into a look of abject horror. “You—”<br />
“I’m also required by law to tell you that skin‑to‑skin physical<br />
contact increases my ability to read your mind. Under certain<br />
conditions, it can be hazardous to your health and mental well‑<br />
being, so for most people it’s considered wise to avoid all physical<br />
contact with telepaths.” I quoted the standard write‑up the Guild<br />
gave the public. In reality, touch was only dangerous when the<br />
telepath wasn’t expecting it, and I’d figured her to do just what she<br />
had. So I’d blocked as a precaution. Any normal could have told<br />
you all she was thinking about was the tapping anyway.<br />
She started to say something, but I cut her off. “I’m very<br />
impressed, Esperanza.”<br />
“It’s Mrs. Mensalez‑Már,” she said evenly, steel in her voice. I’d<br />
hit a nerve.<br />
I slouched back in the chair and started tapping the pencil<br />
again, staring at her patiently. I’d noticed in the previous<br />
interviewer’s tape that the more he attacked her on a point of her<br />
story, the more she’d get cold and professional. So I’d back up, let<br />
her own fears work on her a bit. See what would happen.<br />
She couldn’t take the silence long. “You can’t possibly—”<br />
“I can feel how much you hated him,” I stated calmly, in the<br />
tone of voice you’d use to start a long story. “But the hyphen on<br />
your name was worth what, four hundred thousand ROCs?”<br />
“Eighteen million,” Esperanza corrected, her eyes narrowing.<br />
“The house alone was worth, what? Maybe two?”<br />
“Three point eight.” She preened.
CLEAN 25<br />
“It was a masterful plan. You must have set it up two years in<br />
advance. More maybe.” My tone was admiring, flattering.<br />
“Four,” she sniffed. “The idiot never even saw it coming.”<br />
I got in three more questions—with answers—before her brain<br />
caught up.<br />
Suddenly, her eyes widened as she realized what she’d said, and<br />
the ugliness in her soul came out like a plague. “I want a lawyer,”<br />
Mrs. Mensalez‑Már said. “Now.”<br />
I pulled out a pack of blue cigarettes and lit up, breathing in the<br />
nicotine a little desperately. I was on the smoking porch, an old<br />
slab of cracked concrete with a little awning behind the main bulk<br />
of DeKalb County Police Department Headquarters, where the<br />
shadow of the four‑story building cooled down the air a few de‑<br />
grees at this time of day. In August in Atlanta, when the heat flat‑<br />
tened you like the arms of a heavyweight boxer, you’d take<br />
whatever relief you could get.<br />
As I stood, sweat already beginning to gather in a pool at the top<br />
of my shoulder blades, I tried to retrieve my sanity from wherever<br />
I’d left it last. I wanted Satin, a drug, a habit, a poison—the fantasy<br />
I’d denied myself for three long years. It would have been six if I<br />
hadn’t fallen off the wagon twice. If it had been six, would this be<br />
easier? As my hands shook with a need for something I couldn’t<br />
have, I thought it had to get easier. I couldn’t have that rush, that<br />
stark perfection, not today. Not today.<br />
My hands shook and my brain cramped while I took another<br />
desperate drag of nicotine, looking out over the grimy courtyard<br />
and the old steel building behind it, watching the drizzly rain<br />
migrate more pollution into the soil. I struggled to focus, to<br />
remember the cops behind me. There was a reason I worked for<br />
them. On my better days, I knew they’d keep me on the wagon or<br />
die trying. Never mind the hostility. Never mind that I had to keep<br />
up a steady supply of rabbits to pull out of the hat just to earn my<br />
place.
26 Alex Hughes<br />
When the Telepaths’ Guild kicked me out, I had all the tests,<br />
all the ratings, all the gold stars a man could get. Level Eight,<br />
seventy‑eight‑P, I was a stronger telepath than most of the elite, and<br />
could predict the future correctly better than three times out of<br />
four. Still could, at least when the precog felt like working, but it<br />
hadn’t in months. Lately I was starting to run out of rabbits, not<br />
good for my relationship with the cops. Speaking of . . .<br />
Behind me, the heavy door creaked open, and I greeted the<br />
mind behind me. “Cherabino.”<br />
Detective Isabella Cherabino was a thirty‑something brunette,<br />
stacked, pretty, a workaholic, and perpetually in a bad mood. We<br />
would have been partners if we had been equals, but we weren’t. I<br />
was her pet cobra, maybe, or the monkey with the cymbals that<br />
followed her around. If a monkey could solve crimes in Mindspace,<br />
or pull rabbits out of hats and interview suspects, if the monkey was<br />
a dumb guy who annoyed her at regular intervals, that’s maybe<br />
what I was to her. Maybe. On a good day.<br />
On the porch, her nose wrinkled at the smell of the cigarettes.<br />
“I don’t understand why you like it out here. It’s miserable.”<br />
I shrugged. “It’s scenic.” It was also deserted, at least ten feet<br />
from anybody’s thoughts in Mindspace. Stressed‑out cops, suspects<br />
freaking out about interrogations, hostile criminals . . . Let’s just say<br />
the mental surroundings reeked. Even the heat was a break.<br />
“I heard about the confession. Do too many of those and they<br />
won’t ever let you out of the interview room again.” She looked at<br />
me critically. “If you’re feeling twitchy again, I can wait while you<br />
call Swartz.”<br />
I snuffed out the cigarette under my shoe, ignoring the<br />
comment. I didn’t want to talk about my craving to my sponsor<br />
right now. I could feel Cherabino’s tension and a hint of purpose—<br />
probably a new case—but she got testy when I jumped ahead.<br />
“What can I do for you?” I asked her.<br />
“You’ve heard about the murders?”<br />
“The serial thing, right?”
CLEAN 27<br />
Her jaw tightened. “Captain says we don’t say serial. Try to keep it<br />
quiet. Hope the papers don’t put it together.” She was obviously not a<br />
fan of this plan, but Cherabino could toe the line when she had to.<br />
She was thinking loudly, and I didn’t bother shutting her out.<br />
Six bodies? Really? “Six bodies in two months, it’s a serial. Doesn’t<br />
matter what they call it.”<br />
“If they can link them,” she returned. “We aren’t publicizing<br />
cause of death, and the victims aren’t related any way I can see.<br />
Might take them some time, and in the meantime we have a shot<br />
at solving it.” Her “we” meant her, the team, and me . . . specifically.<br />
“Why me?” I asked.<br />
She frowned at me. Oops, jumping ahead again—have to<br />
watch that.<br />
“We’re stuck. As I suppose you already know. I was hoping you’d do<br />
the Mindspace thing and get me a lead. Or two. Two would be nice.”<br />
I thought about another cigarette and gave it up as a lost cause. She<br />
was going to ask me to leave now. I didn’t think I had any other priority<br />
interviews scheduled this afternoon. I rubbed my jaw, thinking, and<br />
along the way realized I hadn’t shaved . . . since yesterday morning, felt<br />
like. Maybe a little longer. Have to take care of that soon.<br />
“You listening?” she spat.<br />
I blinked. “Yeah, just let me get my stuff and check in with<br />
Paulsen.”<br />
It took her a minute to realize she hadn’t asked me to leave yet<br />
and that I’d read it straight off her mind. She stared and seriously<br />
considered slapping the hell out of me. “Stay out of my head,<br />
damn it! I’ve told you before.”<br />
I stepped back, and she stalked off. Great, now I’d made<br />
Cherabino mad at me, and I knew better.<br />
I sighed, wishing for another cigarette, and fought down guilt.<br />
At least now I wasn’t craving my poison so bad. Distraction was a<br />
great trick, one of the first ones they teach you in the program. If I<br />
was going to see a crime scene, there would be plenty more<br />
distraction—even if it was stuff I’d rather not see.
28 Alex Hughes<br />
I patted down my pockets, made sure I had everything, the lighter<br />
and pack where they were supposed to be, and rolled my sleeves<br />
back down. I didn’t advertise the scars on my arms, not for any reason,<br />
and if long sleeves in August were the price I had to pay, so be it.<br />
I held on to the car door with a white‑knuckled grip, and took deep<br />
breaths. Cherabino had hit the flyer antigrav in the middle of the<br />
groundstreet—highly illegal. risen up two stories within the span<br />
of a second with no warning, and was now flipping off the BMW<br />
who’d had the temerity to get in her way. She merged into the cor‑<br />
rect sky lane, narrowly missing the floating marker.<br />
Below, a police‑sponsored sign on the old Decatur train station’s<br />
roof reminded commuters: fly safe and in your lane. Not that<br />
there was irony or anything.<br />
Cherabino turned on the siren for no good reason and forced<br />
herself into the air traffic over East College Avenue. She got too<br />
close to the air stream from the bullet train on the railroad tracks<br />
below and the flyer dipped alarmingly—I swallowed bile—but she<br />
recovered, muttering obscenities.<br />
I thought about reminding her about the new fuel/flight<br />
restrictions for the department, but her mental cursing got louder.<br />
I took a breath and blocked her out, giving her the privacy she’d<br />
demanded. It was a lot harder than it should have been.<br />
Her driving regained a measure of sanity as she leveled off and<br />
set the altimeter to auto. I looked down as the shadow of the police<br />
cruiser fell on the dirty redbrick buildings and the stream of<br />
groundcars below. It was lunchtime congestion, the yuppies out for<br />
quick carnivorous lunches fighting with the second‑shift blue<br />
collars already late for work in the factories to the east.<br />
I decided to risk talking. “You said there were six victims?”<br />
“That’s right.” She adjusted a mirror, gave a suspicious look to<br />
the driver minding his own business behind her, then glanced<br />
back at me. “In order: thirty‑something male Hispanic, an old<br />
white woman, a young black one, Indian scientist forty‑something,
CLEAN 29<br />
and the two Asian teenagers from last week. I can’t see they have<br />
anything in common other than the way they were dumped—and<br />
trust me, we’ve looked.”<br />
“You look worried,” I said.<br />
She sighed. “He’s escalating, to have another this quickly. And<br />
I need a break in the case. Badly.”<br />
“You don’t know it’s a he,” I said. “Do you?”<br />
“You kidding? It’s always a man with a group like this. Women<br />
take murder a lot more personally.”<br />
She had a point, but I replied, “Nobody says it can’t be a group.”<br />
“Don’t be a smartass,” Cherabino said without malice. Garden<br />
roofs and skyboard advertisements dotted the tops of the otherwise‑<br />
grimy ancient buildings below as we crossed west into the East<br />
Atlanta borough. “God knows we need a break in this case, yesterday.<br />
Captain got a phone call from the mayor Tuesday. He wants this<br />
solved, before the papers start splashing ‘serial’ across the front page.”<br />
“Something like that could be bad for business. Not like a<br />
normal murder or anything.”<br />
“Yeah.” She blew out a long line of air. “These are anything but<br />
normal.”<br />
I could feel a line of worry coming from her, and I blocked harder.<br />
A flash of an upcoming date next week came through—I frowned.<br />
What were we talking about again? Oh yeah. “What’s so different<br />
about these?” I asked. “Other than the hodgepodge of victims.”<br />
Her lips pursed. “Everything. There’s no obvious cause of death.<br />
No weapon marks, no fresh wounds, tox screens clean. If the bodies<br />
hadn’t been dumped, we probably would have assumed stroke, maybe<br />
even for the teenagers. There’s just no reason why they should—”<br />
I suppressed a yell as Cherabino grounded too quickly on Hosea<br />
Williams Street—not dangerous, not illegal, but scary as hell<br />
without a warning.<br />
She glanced back over at me disapprovingly as if her driving<br />
was my fault. “The fact I can’t connect the victims is starting to piss<br />
me off. No serial I’ve ever heard about picks random victims off the
30 Alex Hughes<br />
street this different—they always have a type. They work the type.<br />
Every briefing in the world says they work a type.”<br />
“I thought we weren’t saying serial.”<br />
“Multiple, then. Whatever.” Cherabino took a turn. Now the<br />
buildings on either side were three stories tall with cracking facades<br />
and battered brick, making the small street claustrophobic.<br />
She pulled into a weed‑grown rocks‑and‑grass field labeled<br />
parking and cut off the car. I let go of my grip on the handle.<br />
Cherabino turned to look at me, tension in her brown eyes. “You<br />
okay?” I knew she was referring to earlier, on the porch, the craving<br />
that still sat in the back of my head like an unwelcome neighbor. She<br />
could smell it when I got twitchy, after five years of working together<br />
on and off, and she’d taken the last dive off the wagon very personally.<br />
I looked at her, backlit by the sun like an angel, a grumpy<br />
beautiful angel. A lock of hair had escaped from her bun and lay<br />
across the soft curve of her cheek. I suppressed a sudden urge to<br />
tuck it behind her ear. I was supposed to keep my hands and mind<br />
to myself. Even if I wanted more sometimes.<br />
“Okay?” Her voice cracked like a whip, bringing me back.<br />
I coughed and sat back. “I’m fine.” Probably I’d say that if I was<br />
lit on fire and covered in supercancer, but that was beside the<br />
point. “Um, crime scene?”<br />
“Yeah.” She opened the car door and let the heat in. “Time to<br />
go to work.”<br />
I got out of the car, the strength of the heat and the sun nearly<br />
knocking me over. I put on a pair of cheap sunglasses and hurried after<br />
Cherabino, who was moving toward a nearby alley. Judging by the<br />
wind blowing a certain smell our way, our body was in that direction.<br />
Something she’d said earlier was bothering me, and I fished it<br />
out of memory. “Why a stroke?” I asked. “I thought you said they<br />
had nothing in common.”<br />
She glanced back, nose scrunched up against the smell. “They<br />
don’t. Just the brain damage.”<br />
“That’s what a stroke is, Cherabino.”
CLEAN 31<br />
She shook her head, her face growing cold as she prepared<br />
herself for the scene ahead. “Not if it’s specific. All the victims have<br />
damage in exactly the same spot.”<br />
I stopped walking. It took her a minute to realize I’d fallen<br />
behind—a minute before she was yelling at me to hurry the hell up.<br />
This was not good, I thought, as I complied. This was very not good.<br />
The alley was long and skinny, two painfully hot brick walls be‑<br />
hind the abandoned shell of a Thai restaurant. There was an<br />
empty dumpster at one end, coated with the smell of old garbage,<br />
a smell that mixed in bad ways with the reek of three‑day‑old de‑<br />
caying body in the heat. I told myself I never had to eat Thai again<br />
if I didn’t throw up. No vomiting in front of the cops. I was a con‑<br />
sultant, not a cop, and they’d never let me live it down.<br />
Three forensic techs filled the alley with careful thoughts while<br />
they took samples of every conceivable surface and mark. Two<br />
more detectives and a couple of beat cops were here, murmuring<br />
among themselves, angry at their helplessness to catch this guy.<br />
They deferred to Cherabino but gave me hostile looks.<br />
Myself, I was standing maybe six feet away, near the mouth of<br />
the alley, trying to take in the scene.<br />
Cherabino came up behind me with an electronic notebook.<br />
She was one of maybe six detectives in the department authorized<br />
to carry them, since she helped out with Electronic Crimes. She<br />
had to pass a background check to do it, and the notebook didn’t<br />
even have a transmitter. Police data within spitting distance of a<br />
transmitter was just asking for trouble—even those of us too young<br />
to remember the Tech Wars could agree to that.<br />
“You about ready?” Cherabino asked.<br />
I noted the lab techs. “Any physical evidence to link the cases<br />
to this point?”<br />
She sighed. “Not yet. We’re waiting on the lab for a few generic<br />
fibers, a couple of footprints, piddly stuff. I’m not holding my breath.”<br />
“The lab’s backed up again, huh?”
32 Alex Hughes<br />
“Yeah. Since the mayor called, maybe we’ll get bumped up in<br />
the queue. But I don’t think there’s anything there to find.”<br />
I took a moment to dip my toe into Mindspace, see what I was<br />
facing. “We need to clear out the alley,” I told her.<br />
“Why?” She looked up from her notes.<br />
“Because.”<br />
Cherabino sighed and tucked her notebook under her arm. She<br />
moved away from the wall, took a deep breath—somehow, without<br />
gagging—and yelled at the crime‑scene techs. “Everybody out!”<br />
She dealt with the murmuring, the threats, and the complaining<br />
without batting an eye. I stayed against the wall, out of the way,<br />
until she gestured me forward. Impatiently.<br />
I moved to the center of the scene, six inches from the dead body.<br />
The smell was almost overwhelming; the only reason anyone had found<br />
the body, after all, was the smell leaking into a shop three doors down.<br />
I fought down bile at my first look; the face was swollen horribly<br />
and covered in maggots. The thing had emptied its bowels, as dead<br />
bodies tend to do, which only made the smell—and the insect<br />
issue—worse. I made myself change my pronoun, after taking a<br />
closer look at the clothes. He. He had been out three days in the<br />
worst of the heat and pollution, at the height of the summer, I told<br />
myself. He couldn’t help this.<br />
His clothes had originally been clean, well kept; he’d been<br />
wearing pricey workout gear, new shoes, with a short haircut.<br />
Probably athletic, considering the attire, but hard to tell for sure.<br />
His dark complexion was still obvious if you could get your brain<br />
to focus past the flies. Black man, like one of the others, I thought.<br />
Couldn’t tell the age, but not a kid and not old.<br />
I wanted my poison, but my mind wasn’t kaleidoscoping, my hands<br />
weren’t shaking, and I had control over my stomach—mostly. I had to<br />
hold back a gag as the wind changed. I was okay. Time to work.<br />
“May I?” I asked Cherabino. She allowed me—reluctantly—to<br />
use her as an anchor when I went deep enough into Mindspace to<br />
need one.
CLEAN 33<br />
“I guess,” she said, and braced herself, holding out the “hand” I<br />
needed as the anchor. She blanked her mind so forcefully I knew<br />
she was hiding something. It took a real effort not to find out what<br />
it was, not to pull it from her mind. I didn’t need her cooperation.<br />
I was strong enough—and well trained enough—that she probably<br />
wouldn’t even know. But she was off‑limits, and doing me a favor.<br />
I’d respect her and leave it alone.<br />
She made some scathing comment I ignored as I eased all the<br />
way down into Mindspace, until I felt the vibration of the minds of<br />
the forensic techs who had just left. I should have had her clear<br />
them out earlier; two of the men had been excited about a strip<br />
club they’d seen last night, and ethereal images of the dancers<br />
marred the surface of the space, mixed with the intense anger and<br />
frustration coming from the cops.<br />
The rest of my senses faded away, grayed out until Mindspace<br />
was all I could perceive. My link with Cherabino trailed up into<br />
reality behind me like a long, flat, yellow extension cord—yellow<br />
where no yellow should ever be. I could not see in this space, but I<br />
knew its depths and its shallows in the back of my head, a picture<br />
made by vibrations like a bat echoing through the night, a world<br />
complete without light.<br />
The alley was full of emotion‑ghosts, layer upon layer of shifting<br />
vapors left by excited minds on their way to something else. The<br />
walls were porous here, and I could feel the very faint ghosts of<br />
harried restaurant workers through the bricks, while outside insects<br />
swarmed with flittery hive minds over the rotting food in the<br />
dumpster. The dancers the techs had created leaped around<br />
imaginary poles, fading already.<br />
A few old junkie‑spikes dotted the walls, most from cigarettes or<br />
heroin, the occasional street cocktail. None were very recent, and<br />
none had the cloud‑cut feel of a high‑grade Satin boost.<br />
In the center of the alley there was a cold void, both expected<br />
and unusual. From the body itself I felt only absence, something I<br />
expected since his mind would have gone on to . . . wherever minds
34 Alex Hughes<br />
went when they died. But the void was still there. Three days after<br />
the death, it was still there. Something was off.<br />
“The victim died here, in the alley,” I said, and in the back of<br />
my mind felt Cherabino making note of it.<br />
Most of the other bodies were killed off-site, she said, as if from a<br />
hundred miles away. Any idea how it was done?<br />
I walked out carefully and tested the area around the void. Fear<br />
permeated the space, and with it the stench of death so terrifying,<br />
anyone with any trace of Ability would know something bad<br />
happened here. I gulped down bile. This was probably why the<br />
victim hadn’t been robbed; no one with any Ability or any sense at<br />
all was going to get this close. The techs all had to be deaf as doornails.<br />
I tried to put it into words: “He knew he was going to die, was<br />
dying already, no details on how. He was terrified—it’s pretty bad.<br />
Very bad. But . . .” I took a closer look. Something was wrong, the<br />
ghost of his mind almost . . . patchy. Disappearing in places, strong<br />
in others. “His ghost is wavering in and out like a bad radio station,<br />
even now. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”<br />
I combed the area carefully, looking for the traces of the killer.<br />
I found him, his mind separate from the victim’s. He was worried,<br />
scared, disgusted . . . but not angry. He also felt familiar, like a song<br />
just out of reach. I had no idea where I knew him from.<br />
There was also another man, farther down the alley, this presence<br />
so faint it could mean nothing at all. Both men were telepaths, I<br />
thought, which was bad news. Anyone who could feel a man’s mind die<br />
while he killed him went at least a little insane. To do it outside a war<br />
or a threat to your family, to do it without any pressing reason at all . . .<br />
A chill came over me. I didn’t think I’d like these guys. Not at all.<br />
One last look at the void, running my not‑there fingers around<br />
the cold edge, trying to see if I could get any more information<br />
about cause of death, about the killer’s intentions or how he did it.<br />
I tried to pick that vaguely familiar trace out of the middle of a<br />
haystack of violence, sharp fear and urgent, dull pain, desperation—<br />
Decade‑old instincts were all that saved me, and I pulled back
CLEAN 35<br />
desperately. The world stopped. Then I was back in the alley, heart<br />
pounding a million miles per hour. Cherabino looked at me<br />
quizzically, as if she’d felt the edges of my panic.<br />
“I’m okay,” I told her, trying to be convincing, working on<br />
breathing deeply to slow down my heart. What had just happened?<br />
The back of my head said . . . something bad.<br />
I thought through it. That feeling, like I’d just escaped Falling<br />
In. Which was impossible. Nobody Fell In three days after a death.<br />
Telepaths died occasionally from that sort of thing; there’d been<br />
cases where, if you knew a dying person well, if you were connected<br />
to him at the time, you could be pulled in after him. Almost<br />
happened to me once, when my then‑girlfriend’s mother had died<br />
faster than anyone expected. We’d both almost been sucked in<br />
to . . . wherever minds went when you died. We’d barely pulled<br />
each other out. But even then, death was gone from the room a few<br />
seconds later. I wouldn’t have been able to Fall In if I’d tried.<br />
I needed another look—dumb as hell, but what I needed. I<br />
opened myself back up to Mindspace, slowly, slowly, sinking back<br />
in all the way, to the depths, too deep to see anything but vibrations.<br />
I approached the edges of the void, slowly, slowly, so carefully it<br />
hurt to move. There, overlapping the edge of the void was<br />
something, like the tiny chip in a wineglass you noticed more with<br />
your fingers than with your eyes—an aberration. Small, not<br />
exciting. But it could crack our case.<br />
If the killer or killers had really used Ability, there should have<br />
been, well, a smear, where they’d walked away, taking the edges of<br />
the death with them for a few steps before it dissipated. But the<br />
smear wasn’t there.<br />
Instead, the Mindspace puckered. Just a little pucker. And it<br />
was good to have a certified Guild education, because I knew what<br />
that meant.<br />
Now I only had to explain it to Cherabino.
2<br />
S ergeant Branen was the head of Homicide and Cherabino’s<br />
boss, a short forty‑something man with overstyled hair and an<br />
air of confidence that made you want to trust him immediately.<br />
This made me dislike him on principle. He didn’t understand what<br />
I did and didn’t feel he needed to—but he did believe in results,<br />
and the conflict made for interesting meetings.<br />
Branen was also one of only three people in the department<br />
who could get me fired at any time. It was my goal in life—at least<br />
in front of him—to be twice as useful as annoying.<br />
“So,” he said after the second time I’d gone through what I’d<br />
found in the scene. “There was a . . . pucker in . . . Mindspace.<br />
What exactly does that mean?” He smiled his habitual smile, his<br />
eyes tired. His tiny beige office was almost too neat, his battered<br />
desk and guest chairs scrupulously clean.<br />
“It’s very rare,” I said, carefully neutral. “Like I said, it’s a small<br />
aberration in the fabric of Mindspace, a hiccup in the ghost, if you<br />
want to put it that way.”<br />
Branen looked pained. It wasn’t a good look on him. “You want<br />
to fight the Guild for jurisdiction and data . . . because you found<br />
a hiccup?”<br />
“Not exactly.” Although let’s be honest; I’d fight the Guild for a
CLEAN 37<br />
lot less. In this case, though, I just wanted some information from<br />
them. Nothing for Branen to get so worked up over. Just information.<br />
Cherabino noticed my attention flagging. “Does it work with<br />
the fish‑tank analogy?”<br />
“Um, maybe?” The downside to Cherabino’s sharp mind was<br />
that she got insufferably grumpy until she understood what was<br />
going on. Back in the beginning, she’d pumped me for weeks about<br />
the telepathy before I’d given her a good‑enough analogy to get her<br />
off my case. She just didn’t understand Mindspace—no matter how<br />
eloquently I tried to explain it—so I’d had to get creative. Don’t ask<br />
me why the fish tank made her happy; it just did, so I used it a lot.<br />
“I’m waiting,” Branen said.<br />
“Okay,” I began. “Imagine the world is a fish tank. One of those<br />
huge, multigallon monstrous fish tanks they have in ritzy offices.<br />
Better yet, picture the alley as a fish tank. You have sand on the<br />
bottom, and a definite ceiling, maybe even a sand castle or two,<br />
some coral. It’s a nice place. There’s all sorts of fish in it—you and<br />
Cherabino and half the world are shiny orange goldfish, Guild<br />
telepaths are those monster Japanese goldfish—what do you call<br />
them?—and you have a couple rogue bottom‑feeders. So you’re<br />
going along, doing your goldfish thing, until one of the goldfish<br />
discovers an Ability.”<br />
Branen sighed. “How is this helping me?”<br />
“I’m getting to it. Now, what happens if one of the goldfish goes<br />
quantum and pops over to the other side of the tank?” I stopped,<br />
then explained, “He teleports.” Cherabino seemed to be following<br />
okay; she wasn’t asking her usual slew of questions. “Two things<br />
happen. The water’s going to shoot out in a little explosion where<br />
he pops in, because now you have, say, an inch cubed of goldfish<br />
mass where there didn’t used to be any, and the water has to move<br />
out of the way very suddenly. It’s kinda messy, though, and it’s hard<br />
to identify that’s what it was if you weren’t there at the time. But the<br />
other thing that’s going to happen is on the other side, where he
38 Alex Hughes<br />
started out. Suddenly, the water has the same‑sized hole where the<br />
goldfish used to be, right? So it rushes in. But the water thing’s only<br />
an analogy—the way it works in Mindspace, the water moves<br />
weird, slow like honey, and what you’re left with is a little area<br />
where the water is less dense, and comes to a weird little pucker to<br />
show you where the fish used to be. At least for a few minutes.”<br />
“A few minutes?” Branen echoed, struggling with the concept.<br />
“So, what you’re saying is, our suspect teleported out of the area<br />
slightly before the police arrived. He was visiting the body?”<br />
“Not exactly,” I said, a little defensively. “It was a hot spot, and<br />
he was pulling along more than his own metaphysical weight, so it<br />
was like two of the monster Japanese pond‑rats popped out together.<br />
The hole takes longer to fill in.”<br />
Branen sighed. “So we’re talking teleporter. Which means Guild.”<br />
He rubbed his head. “And the victims? They’re not Guild, correct?”<br />
“Correct, sir. They’re not in the Registry.” Cherabino sat back<br />
in her chair comfortably, but then again she and Branen got along<br />
great. Me, on the other hand . . .<br />
Well, I had to say it. “They could be low‑level, normal jobs,<br />
normal lives.”<br />
They both turned to me. “What?” Cherabino said.<br />
“You know the Guild’s Registry is only a partial list of members,<br />
right?” Their shocked looks told me obviously not. “It’s an industry<br />
list. If you want to hang a shingle and make money off your<br />
Ability—and you’re legit—you go through the Guild process, you<br />
get trained and certified, pay the money, and you get registered.<br />
They get dues every year; you get the resources of a large<br />
organization and sometimes a job.” For the low‑level guys, it wasn’t<br />
a bad deal. You kept your nose clean, you showed up at the mixers,<br />
you went home every night, and you raked in the money.<br />
“So it’s like the Bar Association?” Cherabino leaned forward.<br />
I shrugged, stretched out in the chair. “I don’t know much<br />
about them.”
CLEAN 39<br />
“Organization for lawyers? Total control over your professional<br />
future, takes money from you and you have to be a member?”<br />
I blinked. “Actually, that’s not too far off. But the Guild’s only<br />
like that if you’re powerful enough. On the low end of the scale, it’s<br />
optional. If you don’t want to work for them, if you want to be an<br />
accountant, or a lawyer, or a bricklayer, you can. Keep your nose<br />
clean, you’ll never hear from them. But there’s a point—usually a<br />
heavy five in telepathy—where it’s not a choice anymore. At that<br />
point you work for the Guild directly, you do what they say, and<br />
you’re registered in the lists the Guild provides the public.” Well,<br />
most of them. The Guild held back a lot of information from the<br />
cops. A lot. Which was why I got paid my consultant fee, to tell<br />
them at least what they didn’t know.<br />
“What happens if someone wants to quit?” Cherabino asked,<br />
curious.<br />
I suppose it was an obvious question, but the truth was . . .<br />
“That’s not really something we talk about.”<br />
Both cops stared at me. I looked at my shoes, set on worn<br />
industrial carpet at least a decade old. When I looked up again, I<br />
stared past Cherabino at the speckled walls. Even in my situation—<br />
unusual to say the least—I had certain obligations, and I did not<br />
want Guild Enforcement coming after me, not for something<br />
stupid like this.<br />
“The point is,” I changed the subject, “somebody at the scene—<br />
I’d wager the killer—teleported out of there. Considering there<br />
weren’t any drag marks on the ground on the way in, I’d wager he<br />
teleported in as well, carrying the victim with him. Means he’s at<br />
least a 3‑T, plus a telepath as well—maybe a six or so. We’re talking<br />
double trouble here.”<br />
I rubbed my neck. “There are maybe twelve guys in the whole<br />
Solar System who can do both those things that strong, and they’ll<br />
be on the Spook list. The Guild will know what they’re doing at<br />
every moment of every day, and we wouldn’t be having this
40 Alex Hughes<br />
conversation, because after one body, the Guild would have taken<br />
lethal action.”<br />
Branen rubbed his head and picked up the phone on his desk,<br />
pushing a speed‑dial button. After the call went through, he<br />
asked, “Have a minute? I need your expertise.”<br />
In the silence after he hung up, I ventured, “Basically the—”<br />
He raised a finger for me to wait.<br />
I thought about attempting small talk, but I was bad at that sort<br />
of thing.<br />
A knock came on the partially open door.<br />
“Come,” Branen called out.<br />
Lieutenant Marla Paulsen entered the room and gave me a<br />
nod. Great, he’d invited my boss.<br />
She glanced at the chairs, and finding them occupied, leaned<br />
against the door frame.<br />
Branen inclined his head in my direction, eyes on her. “You<br />
know he’s assisting with the multiples case, right?” She nodded.<br />
“Well, we’ve got contradicting theories, and they all point to the<br />
Guild. You still keep up with the Koshna Treaty law changes?”<br />
“Not too many changes lately, but yes.”<br />
Paulsen was a strong woman with a strong face, skin the color<br />
of cinnamon sticks, and more than a few old‑fashioned wrinkles. At<br />
a young sixty‑mumble, she was a stickler for Tech Separation (she<br />
remembered the aftermath of the Tech Wars) and she wore her<br />
uniform like she’d been born to it. Paulsen had high standards, and<br />
as she’d told me more than once, she expected those standards to<br />
be met.<br />
Branen caught her up on the discussion and my Guild ramble<br />
in about three sentences, then said, “So with a perp who shouldn’t<br />
exist and victims who aren’t registered, can we ignore Koshna?”<br />
Paulsen frowned. “Well, technically the treaty says we’re<br />
supposed to call the Guild at first suspicion of anything, but the<br />
courts have been siding with the cops lately. Koshna Accords are<br />
there mostly to let the Guild police their own. Clearly they’re not
CLEAN 41<br />
policing themselves in this case.” She looked at me. “You sure this<br />
guy is a—what do you call it?”<br />
“Double trouble,” Cherabino offered.<br />
“Thank you. Double trouble. You sure he’s Guild?”<br />
I straightened in my chair reflexively under her look. “I know a<br />
teleport when I see one. I know a telepath. But there were two guys<br />
there. I think it’s one guy who’s the telepath and teleporter, I’m<br />
almost sure. We’re not guaranteed, though. They could be different<br />
guys.”<br />
Branen leaned back in his chair. “Worst‑case scenario,” he<br />
addressed Paulsen. “We don’t report it. We track it down to its<br />
conclusion, capture the perp, submit the findings in triplicate to<br />
the political guys to fight out with the Guild directly. What are we<br />
looking at?”<br />
She shook her head. “Won’t get that far. Besides the legal red<br />
tape, we can’t hold him without Guild support.”<br />
I nodded reluctantly and confirmed. “He’ll Jump out of the<br />
cell. Or convince the guard’s mind he wanted to let him out in the<br />
first place. The strong guys are hell to hold if you don’t know what<br />
you’re doing.”<br />
Branen sighed. “Let’s say we put boy wonder here on guard.<br />
What’s worst case?”<br />
Hold on now. “I’m not nearly—”<br />
Cherabino waved me down, and I seethed.<br />
Paulsen frowned slightly. “It’s a high‑profile case, or could be<br />
made one with a hint to the right reporter. They’d have to fight it<br />
in the courts.”<br />
Branen glanced at Cherabino, then back at her. “We still have<br />
friends in the DA’s office who’d be glad to take something like that<br />
on, for publicity if nothing else. Meanwhile the killer’s off the<br />
streets, and the captain doesn’t have to field a phone call from the<br />
mayor asking why we’re not doing anything about the East Atlanta<br />
murders. I say we do it.”<br />
“Do what?” I asked. I was shielding hard enough to give myself
42 Alex Hughes<br />
a headache, and I was definitely not tracking as well as I could have<br />
been.<br />
“Work the case without the Guild,” Cherabino said. “You might<br />
want to try to keep up.”<br />
I admit that the Guild weren’t my favorite people since they’d<br />
kicked me out, but . . . “Can you do that?” More important, could<br />
I do that? As bad as things were for me right now, they’d be a lot<br />
worse if I got the attention of their Enforcement unit. Still, it would<br />
twist the Guild’s tail, to have one of their people held responsible<br />
to the real world.<br />
“We’re going to,” Branen said, then addressed Paulsen. “Unless<br />
you have an objection?” They were technically equals, but<br />
Paulsen’s department was much larger, handling anything the<br />
other three didn’t. She was also more senior than he was, so while<br />
he didn’t have to defer, it was a good idea.<br />
She shook her head. “I’ll clear it with the captain, but it’s our<br />
case. In our jurisdiction.”<br />
After four hours of interviews, I was bone tired. The ancient eleva‑<br />
tor seemed to crawl. I mashed the third button twice to get it to<br />
engage, the buttons so old their imprinted numbers were worn<br />
away by a hundred years of fingerprints.<br />
Working for the Guild had given me a lot of numbers behind<br />
my name. Other than the eight and the seventy‑eight percent, my<br />
next big number was one‑ninety. That’s base valence; it means I<br />
can flex to read maybe ninety‑five minds out of a hundred. A big<br />
number for anybody; for a guy, it’s impressive. Or was.<br />
Unfortunately, it meant I could read almost everyone in the<br />
station, four floors of constant disturbance like ripples on a very<br />
windy lake. When I was this tired, the ripples came through my<br />
shields in waves, half‑heard and insistent.<br />
I only got the hard interviews, the ones that had stumped some<br />
detective, some beat cop to the point where he’d passed it up the<br />
line. I got the guilty, the difficult, the ones who cried heartbreaking
CLEAN 43<br />
manipulative tears, the angry men with something to hide and the<br />
women who thought they could sleep their way out of anything<br />
and didn’t realize a telepath couldn’t do casual sex even if he<br />
wanted to. In those times I was glad for Bellury, or McDonnell, or<br />
anyone else there.<br />
If the interviewee made it through me, he got a round with<br />
Paulsen, and she didn’t like to be disturbed for anything short of an<br />
asteroid barreling toward the Earth. I’d gotten real good, real quick,<br />
as a result—it helped that I could spot a lie at twenty paces. I also<br />
said right off I was a telepath, which sometimes made a gullible<br />
perp confess for no good reason. But no‑holds‑barred crazy people<br />
gave me nausea or worse, and some really annoying perps actually<br />
paid attention to the Guild’s service announcements.<br />
A bit of advice: if you must throw a telepath off your trail, be<br />
nice and recite multiplication tables or something. Concentrating<br />
on an out‑of‑tune rock song like the last suspect had just makes me<br />
want to hit you.<br />
I still had the ear‑wrenching, repetitive song stuck in my head<br />
from the last suspect. The low‑level cacophony of the station was<br />
rubbing at me like sandpaper. I was exhausted. And I wanted a hit<br />
with every fiber of my being. I thought about my tiny holdout stash<br />
in my apartment, the two little vials I’d put in a hole in the wall. I<br />
thought, tonight might be the night to take them out again.<br />
The elevator attempted to ding when it hit the floor, instead<br />
managing only a tiny metallic thud. I struggled to focus, bracing<br />
myself before walking out into the cubicle farm that was the third<br />
floor, detective alley. This was my least favorite part of the day.<br />
Cherabino’s cubicle was all the way at the other end of the<br />
building, past at least thirty cubicles full of thinking minds—row<br />
after row of forgettable boxes and claustrophobically crowded de‑<br />
tectives, none of which said hello.<br />
I walked past their silent eyes, unable to completely block the<br />
mixed‑bag observations on everything from my hairstyle to my his‑<br />
tory, the tightness of my butt to my latest successful interview. Also
44 Alex Hughes<br />
complete indifference and a lot of thinking on actual cases. They<br />
did actually do work here, some of them.<br />
The last two lines of cubicles were larger and had more space<br />
between them, with real windows on this side of the building. Over<br />
here it was quieter in Mindspace, the detectives here and bigwigs<br />
upstairs all calmly efficient, the secretaries below happy with their<br />
gossip. Some part of me calmed, knowing no one was paying any<br />
attention. I managed to put the shields back up, slowly, with a lot<br />
of effort.<br />
I passed Cherabino’s cubicle neighbor, and I said hello to An‑<br />
drew. I think he was an accountant; he thought about numbers a<br />
lot, was always in the cubicle, and had gourmet coffee.— The real<br />
stuff, from beans. He shared the coffee cheerfully, and never once<br />
labeled me Felon in his head.<br />
Andrew was on the phone, but he went ahead and waved me<br />
toward the coffee set up in the back of his cubicle. He hit mute<br />
briefly, and told me, “Get Cherabino some too—she’s been in<br />
there since noon.”<br />
“Thanks,” I said, and went to get the coffee. The first for me,<br />
black with sugar. Cherabino liked hers with one liquid creamer,<br />
half of one of the blue not‑sugar packets, and about three spoons of<br />
water. Andrew was already back to his phone call when I left, car‑<br />
rying two cups.<br />
She was hunched over, her face in her hands as she shook her<br />
head back and forth.<br />
“Cherabino?”<br />
She shot up, narrowly missed hitting her head on the desk lamp<br />
in the process. “What?” After blinking a few times: “Oh, it’s you.”<br />
“I have coffee,” I said, unnecessarily, and put her cup next to<br />
her hand on the only free spot on the desk. The rest was covered in<br />
paper and objects in a messy smorgasbord.<br />
I moved a pile of printouts off the cubicle’s second chair, plac‑<br />
ing the papers carefully on the floor separate from the other piles.
CLEAN 45<br />
For all the apparent mess around here, Cherabino claimed there<br />
was a pattern to the madness. That being said, the second chair and<br />
the counter next to it were sort of mine.<br />
I sat down. There was a scarf in a plain plastic bag on the desk,<br />
which was weird since Cherabino didn’t wear scarves. I picked it<br />
up and paused—the thing had a very clear effect on Mindspace. I<br />
could feel the kindly old woman who’d worn the scarf almost every<br />
day. Another presence, hanging over the thing like a faint perfume.<br />
Was that the presence from the crime scene? It felt familiar some‑<br />
how.<br />
“Where is this from?” I asked Cherabino. I didn’t get impres‑<br />
sions from objects often—they had to be in very close proximity to<br />
a person for a long time to pick up Mindspace—but it looked like<br />
I was just tired enough to notice. Maybe we could identify the guy<br />
from this.<br />
She turned around to face me, rubbing her eyes. They were<br />
bloodshot, with deep circles, and the rest of her face didn’t look<br />
much better. She looked . . . wilted, almost—but when I checked,<br />
no migraine. She sighed. “It’s from the second crime scene. It’s a<br />
reminder.”<br />
I studied the scarf again, but there were no blood spots. “I<br />
thought you weren’t supposed to take evidence from the file room.”<br />
She grabbed the scarf. “I’ll give it back when the case is over.”<br />
She pulled out a drawer, deposited the scarf, and shut it firmly. “Is<br />
there a reason you’re here?”<br />
I pointed to the cup I’d just given her. “Coffee, remember?”<br />
She turned around as if just now remembering, and took a sip.<br />
A pleasant warm feeling spread through her, the taste comforting.<br />
I sighed and worked a little harder to shut her out. “How’s the<br />
work coming?”<br />
She sighed and took another long sip of coffee, frowning. “Who<br />
battled the Hydra?”<br />
“What’s a Hydra?”<br />
She blinked. “I thought you were proud of your Guild educa‑
46 Alex Hughes<br />
tion. Maybe it was Jason. This big, huge monster—you cut off one<br />
head and two more grow up in its place. That’s what I’m doing, chas‑<br />
ing illicit net porn. No matter how many perverts we shut down, you<br />
turn your back and there’s six more just waiting for you to find them.”<br />
“I thought you weren’t working Electronic Crimes anymore,” I<br />
said.<br />
“They’re understaffed,” she said. “Two more rounds of job in‑<br />
terviews, a little training, and God willing I’m off for good. Two<br />
weeks, three maybe. But I’m waiting for some tests on the multiples<br />
case.” She took another sip of coffee, then looked at me again.<br />
“How are you?”<br />
“Other than feeling like someone has beat me with sticks, I’m<br />
fine.” She looked at me strangely, and I clarified, “Too many inter‑<br />
views, and the last guy was difficult. Really difficult. Any news on<br />
the case?”<br />
She sighed. “We’ve got several local cops going door to door tomor‑<br />
row and Saturday, guys who’ve done patrol in the area and know what<br />
they’re looking for. Paulsen’s handling details since they’re her guys, so<br />
if there’s anybody good, you’ll probably get them in the interview<br />
room. Just keep me in the loop, okay? I’d like to sit in if it’s possible.”<br />
“Possible?”<br />
She sighed, pointing to a loose stack of three files next to the<br />
computer that had previously blended into the mess. “Three new<br />
cases today, and only one’s Electronic Crimes. Branen’s going ape‑<br />
shit because the county turned down his request for more person‑<br />
nel. If Paulsen didn’t share, we’d all be underwater by now.”<br />
“Any city funds?” I asked her. The City of Decatur usually pre‑<br />
ferred to help fund the DeKalb County homicide and drug divi‑<br />
sions rather than tackle it on their own. They did their own patrols,<br />
but that was about it.<br />
“Not so far.” She rubbed her head. Wasn’t a migraine, not yet.<br />
“Though knowing them, they’ll slip them in right before elections.<br />
Listen, I’m going down to the morgue tomorrow morning to see if<br />
they’ve got anything on the latest multiples victim. You should come.”
CLEAN 47<br />
“I’m allowed at the morgue?”<br />
“You are if you behave yourself.” She frowned. “Why, weren’t<br />
you going to?”<br />
I ignored the sidebar and reiterated. “I’m not usually invited.”<br />
“Well, you are if I say so. With the Guild connection, people<br />
are going to talk. I want you there to debunk the myths before the<br />
rumors turn into anything. The last thing we need is a mass panic<br />
against the telepaths again.”<br />
“Again?”<br />
She shook her head. “Don’t be a moron. The last time, they<br />
called them witch hunts, and honestly, I don’t have time for that<br />
kind of foolishness.”<br />
She wasn’t quite right about the history. Most of the witches at<br />
Salem weren’t telepaths, just old women herbalists. Well, except<br />
the one, and she was famous in Guild circles; she projected a lot of<br />
the fear on the townsfolk. Perfect example of what not to do as a<br />
telepath.<br />
Still, what Cherabino meant by it was good. Kind, even. Fight‑<br />
ing the prejudices against the telepaths; she didn’t have to do that.<br />
I looked at the circles under her eyes again and asked the question<br />
quickly, before I could think better of it. “You got anything I can do<br />
to help with the caseload?”<br />
She shook her head. “Not at the moment, unless you’ve got<br />
new skills with the computer you’ve never told me about. I’m try‑<br />
ing to finish up the Net porn case today, and it’s not minor‑level<br />
coding. Advanced polygon cipher, at the very least, maybe worse.”<br />
“Um . . . is that good?”<br />
Cherabino laughed. It was a small laugh, more shocked than<br />
anything, but it counted. “Probably. We’re maybe halfway done.”<br />
“Congratulations,” I said, with as much cheer as I could muster<br />
past my general exhaustion.<br />
After just a little more small talk, we settled down to work in<br />
companionable silence, her on her cases, me on paperwork.<br />
In the quiet fifteen minutes later, I found the pencil she’d been
48 Alex Hughes<br />
looking for and handed it to her. In Mindspace, Cherabino’s pres‑<br />
ence was shocked, but I kept working, chewing on an antacid for my<br />
stomach as I filled out paperwork I’d rather not do. Whatever she was<br />
shocked at was probably something I didn’t want to see anyway.<br />
That night, I went home and slept, unaided. The vials stayed in<br />
the wall, and I stayed on the wagon. I was tired anyway.
3<br />
I tapped my fingers against the wood grain of the table. Swartz<br />
was late. And by late, I meant, not early. Swartz was one of those<br />
spry sleepless old men who showed up to everything at least a half<br />
hour early. So it was unthinkable, with me arriving a whole minute<br />
and a half before the agreed time, that he wasn’t here yet.<br />
Here being an out‑of‑the‑way corner of a faded old coffee shop,<br />
what had once been a pub before the owner’s mother joined AA<br />
more than thirty years ago. A long wooden bar still dominated the<br />
space, beat up with coffee stains and long scratches. Pub tables<br />
lined the walls with chairs and carefully repaired leather booths.<br />
Behind the bar, the owner nodded at me and turned around to<br />
brew a pot of dark licorice coffee.<br />
That black licorice‑flavored liquid was a taste I’d never known<br />
existed until I met Swartz. It was too strong a flavor for me to say I<br />
liked it, exactly, but the pungent taste and Swartz’s abrupt truth<br />
mixed together in my mind over and over until the tradition of<br />
both became a stalwart against weakness, until the black licorice<br />
clung and clung and made me want to be a better man. Or spit it<br />
all back up again, all at once. I had days of both.<br />
There was Swartz—the whole dark room flashed with the<br />
outside sun as he entered, then the room dimmed again as the<br />
door swung closed. He made his way toward me, his slate gray hair
50 Alex Hughes<br />
slicked back in a style that had been old when his grandfather was<br />
alive. The pronounced wrinkles on his thin face in no way took<br />
away from his air of authority. He wore a pair of beat‑up khakis and<br />
a textured golf shirt.<br />
Swartz sat down, the leather on the seat creaking, and nodded<br />
a greeting. Then he waved to the owner, who held up a finger to let<br />
us know it would be another moment.<br />
I nodded in return. He made me come up with a list of three<br />
things I was grateful for every week—I had to tell him three brand‑<br />
new things at our usual weekly meeting, or he’d give me this look,<br />
all disappointed. And the feeling I got from his mind was worse,<br />
like“ungrateful” was an insult of the worst order. So, I studied. I<br />
thought. And for six years running now—not counting the two<br />
weeks I’d missed the last time off the wagon—every week I had<br />
three new things. This week I was having trouble.<br />
“How are you?” I asked, hoping to delay the inevitable question<br />
for another few minutes.<br />
“I’m okay,” he said. “School starts in a couple of weeks and we<br />
go back a week before the kids do. I’m putting together some lesson<br />
plans, looking for some new stories to get their attention.” Swartz<br />
taught history at a poor high school south of Decatur, and spent<br />
the summers reading. I’d heard some of his stories—all based in<br />
real history, apparently—and wished I’d had him as a teacher at<br />
some point.<br />
“Think I might quit smoking,” he added.<br />
“That’s crazy talk,” I told him. “What will you do when you get<br />
a craving?”<br />
His bushy gray eyebrows went up a little. “Pray. Go to a meeting.<br />
Call and talk to someone who understands—same thing we do<br />
now. You are still doing those things.” He made it a statement,<br />
looking directly at me.<br />
I sighed. “Maybe not the praying so much.” I also hadn’t called<br />
Swartz yesterday, which he wasn’t mentioning but I knew he’d noted.<br />
I was supposed to call him every day. Twice a day, four times a day,
CLEAN 51<br />
more, if needed. The only time I couldn’t get him was when he was at<br />
school, and he’d call me back at the very next class break. It was a rule.<br />
He sat back as the owner arrived with an ugly squat brown<br />
coffeepot and two uglier cups. The man set both cups down then<br />
filled them with the coffee. “Be careful; it’s hot,” he said, and went<br />
back to the bar.<br />
I was antsy today, ready to jump out of my skin, but I pulled the<br />
coffee cup over to my side of the table. I’d get through this, and<br />
then go to work. I would.<br />
Swartz took a sip of his coffee. “You’re letting Step Seven go,<br />
son. Asking God to remove your shortcomings is the only way this<br />
is going to work long term. We’re coming up on three years now,<br />
that’s good, that’s wonderful. But you let the humility go, you let it<br />
all go. You can’t handle this by yourself. If we could, we wouldn’t<br />
be sitting here.” His mind echoed a weak picture of me at that first<br />
meeting, then the knowledge of his own struggle. “We need the<br />
system, we need God, we need each other.”<br />
“The Higher Power,” I corrected.<br />
He pierced me with those sharp eyes. “Is calling him some<br />
vague title going to change anything for you? He’s God either way.”<br />
“Aren’t we going to talk about my three things for the week?” I<br />
asked him, to change the subject.<br />
“We can,” he said, but I knew he wasn’t done. I’d get an earful<br />
of the God‑talk later.<br />
“Air conditioning, good coffee, and . . .” I made something up<br />
on the spot. “The fact that Cherabino called me out on a case<br />
again. One I can actually help with.”<br />
“You’ve used coffee before. Twice.”<br />
“This is good Jamaican coffee, not the swill at the police station<br />
but the good blue stuff Cherabino’s neighbor brings in.”<br />
He let me get away with it. “Okay. Tell me about Cherabino,<br />
then.”<br />
“She’s okay. Overloaded. Deep in the case, worried, angry, not<br />
happy at me, but—other than a migraine Tuesday—okay.”
52 Alex Hughes<br />
“You said she invited you to a case?” Swartz put his hand on the<br />
back of the leather booth.<br />
I told him the nonclassified parts, holding back the number of<br />
victims and the cause of death, and finished with the probable<br />
connection to the Guild. “That’s the thing though. I’m not sure I<br />
can ethically not tell them. I mean, delay, yeah, everybody delays,<br />
but if we get to the end of this thing and I haven’t told them, it’s<br />
going to be bad for me.” I hated the Guild sometimes, for what<br />
they’d done to me. But I couldn’t rip out their training so easily.<br />
He took another swallow. “You’ve been blacklisted for years.<br />
What else can they do?”<br />
The Koshna Accords didn’t mean a thing to the normals, except<br />
for the occasional political power play like the cops were planning.<br />
A play I wasn’t entirely certain I should support.<br />
“Well, they could rescind my employment papers, for one.<br />
They can lock me up in Guild holding indefinitely. I’m still a<br />
telepath, a Level Eight. All they have to do is declare me a danger<br />
to myself or to society and that’s it.” My worst nightmare was waking<br />
up in a Guild facility scheduled for a mindwipe. And the thing<br />
was, it was all too possible. To someone like me, the treaty was a red<br />
line in the sand that gave the Guild any power they wanted.<br />
When the Tech Wars ripped the world apart, the Guild stepped<br />
up to save it. But they had to get scary to do it—real scary. They’d<br />
won the right to govern themselves, to have political independence,<br />
sure. But they’d lost the casual trust of most of the normals along<br />
the way. When your pit bull saves you from the robber about to kill<br />
you, you’re grateful. But when the pit bull tears the guy apart in<br />
little bloody ribbons, you never look at the thing the same way<br />
again.<br />
“I’m a telepath, Swartz. A Level Eight. For all intents and<br />
purposes that means the Guild owns me, even now. No normal<br />
court of law in the world is going to stand up to the Guild, to the<br />
treaty. Not for me.”<br />
“I just don’t believe that, kid.” Swartz said. “Think about it. You
CLEAN 53<br />
really think Paulsen and Cherabino will let you disappear without<br />
a fight? You’ve earned yourself friends in the system, kid.”<br />
“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “People are different under<br />
pressure, especially around telepaths. Plus I cause them a lot of<br />
headaches.”<br />
“You’re selling yourself short. The department kept you on after<br />
the last fall off the wagon. That means quite a bit.” Swartz shrugged.<br />
“They’re not exactly helpless. I wouldn’t worry about the Guild too<br />
much.”<br />
“Sure,” I said, to stop the conversation. I didn’t really want to<br />
have the cheer‑me‑up moment right now. But the Guild did mostly<br />
keep to its own ethics. Mostly. If I kept to the same I might have a<br />
chance. And that old lady’s scarf was bothering me.<br />
“You’re awfully quiet.”<br />
“Just thinking.” I shrugged. We sipped our too‑hot coffee,<br />
enjoyed the air conditioning.<br />
“How are you?” Swartz prompted.<br />
I stared at my hands, decided what to say. Maybe the truth this<br />
time. “A tough week, a very tough week.”<br />
“Why is that?”<br />
“The interview room has been hell. Two crazies yesterday, in a<br />
bad way. I’ve wanted Satin pretty much every day. As great as<br />
another case is, this one’s a lot of pressure—the case is weird, I<br />
know too much, and there’s a lot of pressure. I’m ex‑Guild, not a<br />
detective. That’s Cherabino’s job. . . .” After a pause, I looked up.<br />
“But everybody’s looking at me for that rabbit, that sudden push<br />
out of the hat, and the precog’s not cooperating. It’s a lot of pressure.<br />
Screwing up. Coming up with the rabbit. A lot of pressure. Plus<br />
whatever I end up having to do with the Guild.”<br />
Swartz sipped his coffee. “How are you handling it?”<br />
I sighed. He wasn’t going to take less than the truth. “Not great.<br />
Want to fall off the world for a while. I’ve thought about the craving<br />
way too much today, thinking, what if I gave in?” It would be the<br />
easy way out.
54 Alex Hughes<br />
Swartz gave me the most disapproving look I had ever received,<br />
and that—considering he’d been my sponsor for six years—was<br />
really saying something. “That’s dangerous. You can’t afford to<br />
think like that, ever. And even if you do, not out loud. I’ll say it<br />
again, kid. Satin is your enemy. Your poison. Your worst enemy.<br />
Responsibility is something you need to be embracing, not running<br />
from. I’ll tell you as many times as I need to.”<br />
I set my jaw. “You want truth, you get it.”<br />
Swartz let the statement hang, and I sipped the cooling coffee.<br />
The taste of the licorice filled my whole mouth, my nose, my<br />
throat. I wanted to spit it up, have done with it, but instead I choked<br />
the taste down. I was going to do it today, I thought. Today I was<br />
going to choke it up and stay on the wagon, let the vials stay where<br />
they were. Today I was going to try.<br />
“Now,” Swartz said, pulling out the Big Book. “Let’s take a look<br />
at the steps again.”
DARK CURRENTS<br />
Agent of Hel<br />
by Jacqueline Carey<br />
A <strong>Roc</strong> October 2012 Hardcover<br />
An all-new world from the New York Times bestselling<br />
author of the acclaimed Kushiel’s Legacy novels.<br />
The Midwestern resort town of Pemkowet boasts a diverse<br />
population: eccentric locals, wealthy summer people, and<br />
tourists by the busload; not to mention fairies, sprites,<br />
vampires, naiads, ogres and a whole host of eldritch folk,<br />
presided over by Hel, a reclusive Norse goddess.<br />
To Daisy Johanssen, fathered by an incubus and raised by<br />
a single mother, it’s home. And as Hel’s enforcer and the<br />
designated liaison to the Pemkowet Police Department, it’s<br />
up to her to ensure relations between the mundane and<br />
eldritch communities run smoothly.<br />
But when a young man from a nearby college<br />
drowns—and signs point to eldritch involvement—the<br />
town’s booming paranormal tourism trade is at stake.<br />
Teamed up with her childhood crush, Officer Cody Fairfax,<br />
a sexy werewolf on the down-low, Daisy must solve the<br />
crime—and keep a tight rein on the darker side of her<br />
nature. For if she’s ever tempted to invoke her demonic<br />
birthright, it could accidentally unleash nothing less than<br />
Armageddon.<br />
“Jacqueline Carey proves her versatility with this<br />
compelling and delightful piece of urban fantasy.”<br />
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris<br />
“Carey’s storytelling is top-notch.”—Publishers Weekly<br />
“Carey’s sensual, often erotically charged prose<br />
is reminiscent of the best efforts of Tanith Lee and<br />
Anne Rice.”—Library Journal
I t was an idyllic summer evening in Pemkowet the night the Van‑<br />
derhei kid died. No one could have guessed that the town was<br />
hovering on the brink of tragedy. Well, I suppose that’s not techni‑<br />
cally true. The Sphinx might have known; and the Norns too,<br />
come to think of it. But if they did, they kept it to themselves.<br />
There’s some sort of Soothsayers Code that prevents soothsayers<br />
from soothsaying on a day‑to‑day basis, when it might, you know,<br />
avert this kind of ordinary, everyday tragedy. Something about the<br />
laws of causality being broken and the order of creation overturned,<br />
resulting in a world run amok, rivers running backward, the sun<br />
rising in the west, cats and dogs getting married . . .<br />
I don’t know, don’t ask me.<br />
I don’t pretend to understand, especially since it wasn’t an ordi‑<br />
nary, everyday tragedy after all. But I guess it didn’t rise to the stan‑<br />
dard required to break the Soothsayers Code, since no sooth was<br />
said.<br />
Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.<br />
So it was an idyllic evening in Pemkowet, the little resort town<br />
I call home. A mid‑July Michigan evening, soft and warm, not too<br />
muggy, one of those evenings when the sunlight promises to linger<br />
forever.<br />
It was a Sunday, and I had plans to meet my best friend Jen
58 Jacqueline Carey<br />
Cassopolis for Music in the Gazebo. Gatos del Sol, a Tex‑Mex<br />
band, were playing. They say music hath charms to soothe the sav‑<br />
age breast, and in my experience, it’s true. Also, I’d seen the promo<br />
poster, and the guys in the band were pretty cute.<br />
Hey, it doesn’t hurt.<br />
Mogwai didn’t come when I called him, but he was a cat of inde‑<br />
pendent means and he’d been pissed at me since I gave in to pleas<br />
from my friends in animal rescue and had him neutered. I hated to<br />
do it since he wasn’t really my cat so much as a streetwise buddy who<br />
dropped by on a regular basis, but there were an awful lot of feral<br />
Moglets running around town. I filled his bowl on the back porch<br />
and made sure the torn screen that served as a cat door was ajar.<br />
It wasn’t the most secure arrangement, but I didn’t worry too<br />
much. For one thing, my apartment was on the second story above<br />
Mrs. Browne’s Olde World Bakery. Mogwai’s route to the screen<br />
porch involved a series of feline acrobatics, dumpster to fence to<br />
porch, that I doubted many humans could duplicate.<br />
As for non‑humans . . . well. Those who were my friends, I<br />
trusted. As far as I knew, those who weren’t didn’t want much of<br />
anything to do with me.<br />
I slung my folding chair in the carrying case over my shoulder,<br />
locked the apartment behind me and headed down the stairs into<br />
the alley alongside the park. In the front of the bakery, there was a<br />
line of tourists spilling out the door and down the sidewalk. There<br />
always was this time of year. Most locals would avoid the place<br />
until after Labor Day.<br />
It was quiet in the rear of the bakery. That was where the magic<br />
happened, but it happened in the wee hours of the night, after the<br />
bars had closed and the last tourist had staggered home, before the<br />
sun rose.<br />
Cutting through the park, I headed for the river, dodging mean‑<br />
dering families pushing strollers, small children clutching ice‑<br />
cream cones that melted and dripped down their chubby hands.<br />
It could be a pain if you’re in a hurry, but I wasn’t, so it made
DARK CURRENTS 59<br />
me smile. I still remembered my first ice‑cream cone. It was Blue<br />
Moon, a single scoop in a kiddy cone. If you’ve never had it, I can’t<br />
even begin to describe it.<br />
Truth is, for all its quirks and flaws, I love this town. I wasn’t<br />
born here, but I was conceived here. And when my mom returned<br />
here four years later, a desperate young single mother with a half‑<br />
human child who couldn’t manage to fit into the mundane world<br />
outside, Pemkowet took us in.<br />
Twenty years later, I’m still glad to be here.<br />
My feeling of benevolent well‑being persisted the entire two<br />
blocks it took to reach the gazebo. The gazebo was perched in a<br />
smaller park alongside the river. It was a fanciful structure of white<br />
gingerbread wicker strung with white Christmas lights, dim in the<br />
still‑bright daylight. The band was setting up and a good‑sized<br />
crowd had already gathered, locals and tourists alike. The river<br />
sparkled in the sunlight. It had its own unique smell, dank and<br />
green and a little fishy, yet somehow appealing.<br />
The hand‑cranked chain ferry, its curlicued canopy also painted<br />
white, was making its way across the river, the big chain rattling as<br />
a pair of small boys hauled furiously at the crank, their efforts en‑<br />
couraged by the amused operator in the best Tom Sawyer tradition.<br />
I’d begged for a chance to turn the crank when I was a kid, too.<br />
Beside the ferry landing, a massive weeping willow trailed an abun‑<br />
dance of graceful branches into the water. Beneath its green<br />
shadow, tourists fed popcorn to the ducks, the adults hoping for a<br />
glimpse of something more eldritch and exotic, the children de‑<br />
lighted to settle for greedy mallards.<br />
Life was good.<br />
A vast affection filled me, making me feel warm and buoyant. I<br />
held onto the feeling, willing it to last.<br />
It didn’t.<br />
The moment I caught sight of Jen, it fled, leaving me feeling as<br />
shriveled as a pricked balloon. Envy rushed in to fill the empty<br />
space it left behind.
60 Jacqueline Carey<br />
I’m okay with being cute, honest. I shouldn’t complain. I recog‑<br />
nize the fact that there’s a certain irony in it. On a good day, I can<br />
aspire to pretty.<br />
Jen’s pretty on an ordinary day, and on a good day, she can as‑<br />
pire to gorgeous. She’s got that perfect Mediterranean coloring<br />
with dark hair and olive skin, and she’s one of those girls who al‑<br />
ways looks sort of glossy. When we were both teenagers, my mom<br />
said she looked like Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont<br />
High. I’d never heard of the movie, which shocked Mom, so she<br />
rented it from the library and we watched it together. We watched<br />
a lot of TV and videos together, Mom and I. Turns out it was a<br />
pretty good movie, and she was right.<br />
Anyway.<br />
Jen was having a good day, in part because the light was hitting<br />
her just so, and in part because she was flirting with a guy who<br />
obviously found her attractive, mirroring it right back at him. A guy<br />
I knew.<br />
Oh, crap.<br />
In a small town, practically everyone knows one another. When<br />
you combine the entire population of Pemkowet, East Pemkowet<br />
and the outlying township, it’s only about 3,000 people. Between<br />
the tourists, the cottagers and the boat‑owners, that triples during<br />
the summer, but they don’t count in the same way people you<br />
went to high school with did.<br />
I not only went to high school with Cody Fairfax, I worked with<br />
him at the Pemkowet Police Department, where he was the young‑<br />
est patrol officer on the force and I was a part‑time file clerk. Or at<br />
least that’s what I’d started out as. I did a lot more behind the<br />
scenes, but that was mostly between me and the chief.<br />
Unfortunately for me, I had a whopper of an unrequited crush<br />
on Cody Fairfax, currently lounging on a blanket at my best friend’s<br />
feet, propped on his elbows, legs crossed at the ankles. Unfortu‑<br />
nately for him, I also knew exactly what kind of closet case he was.<br />
When it came to women, he had a reputation for being a player
DARK CURRENTS 61<br />
that he’d earned fair and square, but there was a reason behind it,<br />
and it wasn’t fear of commitment.<br />
Cody was afraid of being found out.<br />
Envy and anger, two of the Seven Deadlies. I could feel them<br />
coiling deliciously in my gut, wanting to rise and consume me. I had<br />
to be careful with that sort of thing, especially anger. When I lost<br />
control of my temper, things . . . happened. With an effort, I made<br />
myself envision the emotions as a glass filled with roiling liquid, and<br />
imagined myself emptying it slowly on the ground.<br />
Bit by bit, my mood eased.<br />
While the band tuned their instruments, I picked my way through<br />
the throng, unpacked my folding chair and plunked it beside Jen’s.<br />
She glanced over at me. “Hey, Daise! It’s about time.”<br />
I made myself smile in response. “Yeah, sorry. I was hoping<br />
Mogwai had forgiven me.”<br />
Jen laughed. “After you had him snipped? Not likely.”<br />
Cody acknowledged me with a studied casualness. “Good eve‑<br />
ning, Miss Daisy Jo.”<br />
“Officer Fairfax.” I shot him a covert glare. He raised one eye‑<br />
brow in response.<br />
Members of the eldritch always recognize each other and we<br />
can usually identify each other in time. Cody knew perfectly well<br />
that I knew what he was. After all, in some circles in Pemkowet, it<br />
was common knowledge. But the soothsayers aren’t the only ones<br />
with a code. There’s a code of honor in the eldritch community,<br />
too. You don’t out each other. Everyone in town knew about me<br />
because the story had gotten around when I was conceived, even<br />
before Mom and I moved back here. It was different with the Fair‑<br />
faxes. And I wouldn’t out Cody for spite or any other petty reason.<br />
I’d catch some serious flak if I did, and his reclusive clan was ru‑<br />
mored to be pretty dangerous, too. But that didn’t mean I was about<br />
to let him work his wiles on Jen. She’d had a hard enough life.<br />
I just wished he wasn’t so damn good‑looking and that I didn’t<br />
have a crush on him.
62 Jacqueline Carey<br />
I couldn’t help it. For me, it went back to the fourth grade.<br />
Cody was in the seventh grade, and we rode the school bus to‑<br />
gether; me to the mobile home community alongside the river out<br />
in the marshy sticks where Mom rented a double‑wide, him to his<br />
clan’s place out in the county woods.<br />
There were bullies on the bus, and if I wasn’t exactly afraid of<br />
them, I was afraid of the reaction they might elicit from me. They<br />
had heard the rumors. They made it a point to pick on me.<br />
Cody made them quit.<br />
It was as simple as that, and I’d been infatuated with him ever<br />
since. Even through his transformation from a promising young JV<br />
basketball star to a semi‑dropout loser and alleged stoner, through<br />
his myriad high‑school‑and‑after conquests, none of which ever<br />
lasted longer than a month or two, and through his surprising re‑<br />
birth as an officer of the law.<br />
Once, he had protected me.<br />
It was enough.<br />
“Ladies, I should be going.” Uncrossing his legs and hoisting<br />
himself from propped elbows, Cody rose to his feet. He did it in<br />
one effortless movement, the kind you might expect of someone<br />
who had been a JV basketball star. Or, say, a feral someone who<br />
occasionally howled at the moon and turned into something wild,<br />
untamed and bloodthirsty; possibly quite furry. “I’m on duty to‑<br />
night.”<br />
I glanced surreptitiously at the sky, where a crescent moon<br />
hung pale in the fading cerulean. The chief and I had never dis‑<br />
cussed it, but I was pretty sure he scheduled Cody for patrol duty<br />
very, very carefully.<br />
“Call me?” Jen asked hopefully.<br />
Cody’s gaze slide sideways toward me. He had light‑brown eyes<br />
speckled with gold, a distinctive topaz color. There was a hint of phos‑<br />
phorescent green behind them that only I could see. “We’ll see.”<br />
He left, and the locals in attendance retreived various prohib‑<br />
ited adult beverages they’d hidden from his view.
DARK CURRENTS 63<br />
“Jeez!” Jen muttered under her breath. “Call or don’t call, but<br />
you don’t have to be a jerk about it.” She paused. “Do you think<br />
he’ll call?”<br />
I shrugged. “I guess we’ll see.”<br />
The band was good.<br />
And that was a good thing, since it helped distract me while Jen<br />
went on and on and back and forth about Cody Fairfax, and<br />
whether or not he really was a jerk, whether or not he might call,<br />
whether she should go out with him if he did—<br />
Well, that was an easy one.<br />
“No,” I said. “I don’t.”<br />
She eyed me suspiciously. “So he is a jerk?”<br />
I sighed. Lying isn’t one of the Seven Deadlies, but I tried to<br />
avoid it. When you’re condemned to go through life worrying<br />
about being the spawn of Satan, you learn to avoid anything that<br />
leads you down a dark path. “Not exactly. It’s just . . . you know his<br />
track record.”<br />
“Yeah, but people change.” Jen scanned the crowd, looking for<br />
her eleven‑year‑old brother. “Brandon! Stay where I can see you,<br />
okay?” Lowering her voice, she turned back to me. “Is it true that<br />
Cody only became a cop so he could make sure his family doesn’t<br />
get busted for growing pot in the county woods?”<br />
“No,” I said honestly. “I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”<br />
“They’re a little like the Joads or something, aren’t they? Like<br />
one of those inbred redneck families Mr. Leary made us read<br />
about.” Jen nibbled on a manicured thumbnail, caught herself do‑<br />
ing it and stopped. “But Cody’s different.” She shrugged. “Anyway,<br />
who am I to talk about family?”<br />
I didn’t say anything. Jen’s family was no prize. Her father<br />
worked as a caretaker and handyman for a bunch of wealthy fami‑<br />
lies with summer homes. He could fix almost anything, and when<br />
he was sober, he had a reputation for being a reasonably decent<br />
guy. But he wasn’t sober often, especially at home. He had a chip
64 Jacqueline Carey<br />
on his shoulder that grew ten times bigger when he drank, and he<br />
took his temper out on Jen’s mother.<br />
Still, compared to my father, that was nothing.<br />
“Sorry.” Jen made a self‑deprecating face. “You know what I<br />
mean. Your mom’s great. You know I love her.”<br />
“Yeah.” I smiled at her. “I know.”<br />
It was true. Ever since Jen and I had become friends in high<br />
school, when I helped her track down her older sister Bethany at<br />
the House of Shadows and make sure she was okay, or as okay as<br />
she could be under the circumstances, Mom had taken Jen under<br />
her wing, doing her best to make sure Jen didn’t get into the same<br />
kind of trouble. Which is sort of ironic if you think about it, since<br />
dating a werewolf might fall under that category. On the other<br />
hand, I knew plenty of girls who’d dated Cody Fairfax without suf‑<br />
fering any side effects worse than common heartbreak, so I guess<br />
it’s nowhere near as dangerous as becoming a blood‑slut out at Twi‑<br />
light Manor.<br />
By the way, if you’re ever conversing with an actual vampire, do<br />
not refer to the House of Shadows as Twilight Manor. There’s a<br />
reason vampires aren’t known for their senses of humor. If you ac‑<br />
cidentally do so, I’d say run, but it’s probably already too late.<br />
Los Gatos del Sol ended one song and went straight into an‑<br />
other rollicking number. It’s hard to stay moody when you’re listen‑<br />
ing to a good Tex‑Mex band, and they were cute, especially the<br />
accordian player. Funny how accordian players are dorky in a polka<br />
band, but kind of sexy playing Tex‑Mex or zydeco. This one was<br />
working the whole smoldering Latino thing, tossing his head to<br />
keep an errant lock of black hair out of his eyes. Catching my gaze,<br />
he winked at me. There was a faint sheen of sweat on the brown<br />
skin of his bare throat, and I imagined myself licking it.<br />
A jolt of lust shivered the length of my spine, making my tail<br />
twitch.<br />
Yeah, I said tail.<br />
No horns, no batwings, no cloven hooves, and Mom swears I don’t
DARK CURRENTS 65<br />
have a birthmark that reads 666 on my scalp. Since I trust her, I haven’t<br />
shaved my head to check. Mostly, I take after her. I have her pert nose,<br />
her cheekbones, her chin. I inherited her fair skin and that white‑<br />
blonde Scandinavian hair everyone thinks comes from a bottle.<br />
But I have my father’s eyes, which are as black as the pits of . . .<br />
well, you know. And a cute little tail, which I’ve learned to tuck as<br />
carefully as a drag queen tucks his package, only back to front.<br />
For the record, I’m not actually the spawn of Satan. My father’s<br />
name is Belphegor, lesser demon and occasional incubus. Here’s<br />
another piece of advice: If you’re vacationing in Pemkowet, or any‑<br />
where on the planet with a functioning underworld, do not mess<br />
around with a ouija board. The spirit you summon might just pay<br />
a visit. Mom learned that the hard way, and I’m living proof of it.<br />
Daisy Johanssen, reluctant hell‑spawn. That’s me.<br />
At any rate, there’s a fine line between desire and lust, and<br />
unfortunately, lust is one of the Seven Deadlies. With my emo‑<br />
tions roiling under the surface, it wasn’t safe to skirt around the<br />
edges of it; not to mention the fact that casual hook‑ups tended to<br />
go south at some point. There are circumstances under which it<br />
becomes very difficult to conceal a tail, even a small one. Believe<br />
me, that’s an awkward conversation to have.<br />
“Check it out.” Jen nudged my arm, jerking her chin at the ac‑<br />
cordian player. “He’s checking you out.”<br />
“Yeah.” Ruefully, I folded up the image of my licking his throat<br />
and packed it away in a mental suitcase, zipping it closed. “But it’s<br />
complicated.”<br />
“Yeah, I know.” Jen was quiet a moment. “I’m sorry.”<br />
“Thanks.” I was grateful for her understanding.<br />
In the west, the sun sank slowly behind the treeline. Los Gatos<br />
del Sol took a break. The Pride of Pemkowet, a replica of an old‑<br />
fashioned paddle‑wheel steamboat, churned down the river to<br />
catch the sunset, laden with sightseers. There was a splash, and<br />
then oohs and ahs from the tourists aboard the boat. They’d caught<br />
a glimpse of something this time; a flash of a naiad’s pearl‑white
66 Jacqueline Carey<br />
arm, maybe, or an undine’s hair trailing like translucent seaweed.<br />
The locals stayed seated while the tourists in the park rushed to the<br />
dock to see, returning in muttering disappointment. Whatever it<br />
was, they’d missed it.<br />
By the time the band began its last set, the dusk was luminous.<br />
I watched the children at play.<br />
It was a lovely sight, and only a little bittersweet. I missed the<br />
careless unselfconsciousness of childhood, when a boy on the<br />
bus could be a hero and nothing more complicated. The young‑<br />
est kids flitted around the park like dragonflies. There were little<br />
girls forming friendships on the spot, one in a flounced polka‑<br />
dotted skirt, one decked out in tie‑dye by latter‑day hippy parents.<br />
There was a young gymnast showing off, turning cartwheel after<br />
perfect cartwheel. Jen’s brother Brandon was hanging out with a<br />
couple of buddies, trying to look like they were too cool to play<br />
with the little kids. He was a surprise baby, what they call a<br />
change‑of‑life baby.<br />
There was a dad letting his three daughters spin around him<br />
like a Maypole, making themselves dizzy until they fell tumbling<br />
onto the soft grass. Over there, a boy who couldn’t have been older<br />
than five or six was swiveling his hips like a miniature Elvis. There<br />
was a giggling blonde girl with a doll in the crook of one arm lead‑<br />
ing another little girl in gingham by the hand toward the bushes—<br />
Oh, crap.<br />
My skin prickled. One of those kids wasn’t a kid. Reaching into<br />
my purse, I eased out my police ID and stood slowly.<br />
“What’s up?” Jen asked.<br />
My tail twitched again, this time in a predatory reflex. “Hang<br />
on. I’ll be right back.”<br />
I followed the little girls behind the curve of the ornamental hedge,<br />
catching them just as the one was handing her doll to the other.<br />
“Don’t take that, sweetheart,” I said to the girl in gingham.<br />
“That’s not a nice doll.”<br />
She gave me a confused look.
DARK CURRENTS 67<br />
“We were only playing!” the blonde said in a sweet, piping voice.<br />
She had pink, rosy cheeks and blue eyes set in a heart‑shaped face.<br />
It takes an effort of will to see through a glamour, and not every‑<br />
one can do it, but I can. The angelic‑looking child before me<br />
turned into a milkweed fairy, all sharp‑angled features and tip‑tilted<br />
eyes, a halo of silvery fluff floating around its head, tattered, trans‑<br />
lucent wings springing from its shoulder blades. The baby doll it<br />
clutched had become a ripe milkweed pod oozing sticky white sap.<br />
I held up my ID. “Play somewhere else.”<br />
The fairy hissed at me, baring a mouthful of needle‑sharp teeth.<br />
“Thou hast no authority over me! I do not yield to a piece of plastic!”<br />
“No?” I held up my other hand, my left hand, palm outward,<br />
displaying the rune written there, invisible to mundane eyes but<br />
plain as day to a fairy’s. “How about this?”<br />
The fairy recoiled, but held its ground. “Hel should never have<br />
granted an ill‑gotten half‑breed such license!”<br />
For the record, that’s Hel the Norse goddess of the dead, unre‑<br />
lated to the hell from whence my father came. Ironic, I know. An<br />
eldritch community needs a functioning underworld to exist,<br />
which makes Hel the number one supernatural authority in town.<br />
And I just happen to be her agent.<br />
“But she did.” Anger stirred in me, and this time I let it rise,<br />
molten hot and delicious. I could feel the pressure building against<br />
my eardrums. On the other side of the hedge, someone let out a<br />
startled yelp as a bottle of soda popped its lid. The scent of ozone<br />
hung in the air, and electricity lifted my hair. I bared my own teeth<br />
in a smile, my tail twitching violently beneath the skirt of my sun‑<br />
dress. And since you’re probably wondering, no, I don’t wear pant‑<br />
ies. “Do you yield?”<br />
With another hiss, the milkweed fairy vanished.<br />
The little mortal girl in the gingham dress burst into tears.<br />
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Reaching down, I took her hand and let<br />
my anger drain away. “What’s your name?”<br />
She sniffled. “Shawna.”
68 Jacqueline Carey<br />
“That’s very pretty.” I smiled at her. “Okay, Shawna. Let’s go<br />
find your mom and dad, shall we?”<br />
Within a minute, I had her restored to her parents. Mom and<br />
Dad were a nice young couple visiting from Ohio. Caught up in<br />
the idyllic mood, listening to the band and watching the antics of<br />
the many children, they hadn’t even noticed their daughter’s fleet‑<br />
ing absence. It had been so brief, I couldn’t blame them. It was<br />
easy to let your guard down on a beautiful evening in Pemkowet.<br />
“Listen.” Lowering my voice, I nodded toward the public rest‑<br />
room, a squat cinderblock building rendered charming by virtue of<br />
a colorful Seurat painting replicated on its walls. While tourists<br />
emptied their bladders inside, 19 th century Parisians strolled and<br />
lounged on the island of La Grande Jatte. “This may sound strange,<br />
but I strongly recommend you take Shawna to the bathroom and<br />
turn her dress inside‑out.”<br />
Ohio Mom blinked at me. “I beg your pardon?”<br />
I laid one hand on Shawna’s head, stroking the wispy brown<br />
hair escaping from her ponytail. “It’s just a precaution. But your<br />
daughter caught a fairy’s attention. Better to be safe than sorry.”<br />
Ohio Mom turned pale. Ohio Dad laughed. “Relax, hon. It’s<br />
just a publicity stunt.” He winked at me. “Fairies, huh?”<br />
Tourists, gah!<br />
“It’s not a publicity stunt.” I couldn’t keep a hint of irritation from<br />
my voice. “Trust me, you don’t want to wake up in the morning and<br />
find nothing but a milkweed pod lying on Shawna’s pillow.”<br />
Which could very well have happened if little Shawna had<br />
taken the doll. That’s all the fairy would have needed to make a<br />
changeling. Oh, we would have tracked her down eventually— I<br />
would have known what had happened as soon as I saw the missing<br />
persons report, which is how I came by my special role in the de‑<br />
partment in the first place— but it would have resulted in some<br />
seriously bad publicity.<br />
Plus, there’s no telling how it might have affected the kid. Peo‑<br />
ple who get abducted by fairies come back . . . changed.
DARK CURRENTS 69<br />
It took a bit of convincing, but Ohio Mom decided to humor<br />
me. I went back to rejoin Jen.<br />
“Errant fairy,” I explained briefly.<br />
She nodded. “Did you get them to turn the kid’s dress inside‑<br />
out?”<br />
“Eventually.”<br />
Jen made a face. “Tourists.”<br />
“Yep.”<br />
It wasn’t entirely their fault. The Pemkowet Visitors Bureau ac‑<br />
tively cultivates paranormal tourism. They don’t offer any<br />
guarantees— most visitors never catch more than a fleeting glimpse<br />
of a member of the eldritch community, or they fail to recognize<br />
those of us who pass for human— but the PVB isn’t exactly candid<br />
about the potential dangers, either.<br />
What with being a goddess and all, albeit a much diminished<br />
one, Hel keeps most of the eldritch folk in line. The rune inscribed<br />
on my left palm is a symbol that I’m licensed to enforce her rules<br />
and act as her liaison between the underworld and the mundane<br />
authorities. It works pretty well most of the time, at least with the<br />
eldritch who respect order. Unfortunately, there are plenty who<br />
prefer chaos.<br />
Especially fairies, of which we have many.<br />
Los Gatos del Sol wrapped their last set. The crowd began to<br />
disperse into the warm night. Jen retrieved her brother Brandon,<br />
and we discussed plans to schedule a good old‑fashioned movie<br />
night with my mom, or maybe a Gilmore Girls marathon.<br />
I was relieved that she didn’t mention Cody again. Generally<br />
speaking, Jen and I didn’t keep secrets from each other. My crush<br />
on Cody was a glaring exception. It was tied up with keeping his<br />
secret, which I was honor‑bound to do.<br />
By the time I made my way back to my place, the young couple<br />
in the front apartment were making loud and vigorous love, which<br />
I could hear on the landing; but on the plus side, Mogwai had de‑<br />
cided to make an appearance. I turned on the stereo and poured
70 Jacqueline Carey<br />
myself a couple inches of good scotch, my one grown‑up indul‑<br />
gence, then lit a few candles and curled up in the love‑seat on my<br />
screen porch to mull over the evening.<br />
Mogwai settled his considerable tricolored bulk in my lap,<br />
kneading and purring his deep, raspy purr.<br />
“Not too bad, Mog.” I stroked him absentmindedly. “One<br />
changeling scenario, averted. Hel would be pleased.”<br />
He twitched one notched ear in a cat‑quick flick.<br />
I sighed. “And yeah, one hopeless crush flirting with my BFF.<br />
But it’s not really any of my business, is it?”<br />
He purred louder in agreement.<br />
On the stereo, Billie Holiday sang good morning to heartache,<br />
her voice fragile and almost tremulous; and yet there was a fine<br />
steel thread of strength running through it, a strength born of suf‑<br />
fering and resolve. Of all the music in the world, nothing soothes<br />
my own savage breast like women singing the blues. The year I<br />
discovered it, I was twelve, and my mom was dating a bassist in a<br />
local jazz band, the only serious boyfriend I’d ever known her to<br />
have. He introduced us to a lot of music. His name was Trey Sum‑<br />
mers, and he was killed in a car accident that winter. I still missed<br />
him, and I know Mom did, too.<br />
I petted.<br />
Mogwai purred.<br />
Outside, the night was filled with the sounds of a resort town in<br />
full revelry; partying tourists frequenting the bars, bass beats thump‑<br />
ing. Inside, with profoundly poignant resignation, Billie Holiday<br />
invited heartache to sit down.<br />
I blew out the candles and went to bed.
DAUGHTER OF THE SWORD<br />
A Novel of the Fated Blades<br />
by STEVE BEIN<br />
A <strong>Roc</strong> October 2012 Paperback<br />
Not every blade can be mastered . . .<br />
Mariko Oshiro is not your average Tokyo cop. As the only<br />
female detective in the city’s most elite police unit, she has<br />
to fight for every ounce of respect, especially from her new<br />
boss. While she wants to track down a rumored cocaine<br />
shipment, he gives her the least promising case possible.<br />
But the case—the attempted theft of an old samurai<br />
sword—proves more dangerous than anyone on the force<br />
could have imagined.<br />
The owner of the sword, Professor Yasuo Yamada, says<br />
it was crafted by the legendary Master Inazuma, a sword<br />
smith whose blades are rumored to have magical qualities.<br />
The man trying to steal it already owns another<br />
Inazuma—one whose deadly power eventually comes to<br />
control all who wield it. Or so says Yamada, and though<br />
he has studied swords and swordsmanship all his life,<br />
Mariko isn’t convinced.<br />
But Mariko’s skepticism hardly matters. Her investigation<br />
has put her on a collision course with a curse centuries old<br />
and as bloodthirsty as ever. She is only the latest in a long<br />
line of warriors and soldiers to confront this power, and<br />
even the sword she learns to wield could turn against her.
1.<br />
T he sword in Fuchida Shūzō’s bed was the oldest known of her<br />
kind, and he loved listening to her song.<br />
A tachi in the shinogi-zukuri style, she was forged by the great<br />
master Inazuma. She lay now on Fuchida’s bed, nestled in his<br />
black silk sheets and framed in a rectangle of sunlight. The arch of<br />
her back was as graceful as any woman’s. Small waves ran the<br />
length of her blade, no bigger than clover petals, never wavering<br />
more than a centimeter from her razor edge. When he lay this<br />
close to her, Fuchida could see the grain of her forging, faint silver<br />
lines like wood grain in her shinogi-ji, the flat surface between her<br />
edge and curving spine. A train rattled by on the Marunouchi<br />
Line, distant enough that he could barely hear it, close enough<br />
that it drowned out the subtle ring his thumbnail made when he<br />
traced it along her ridge. The early evening rush of Tokyo traffic<br />
murmured through the open bedroom window, spoiling any<br />
chance of hearing her song.<br />
He rose, careful not to disturb her, and walked naked to the<br />
window to close it. Beyond the glass stretched the crazed labyrinth<br />
of Shinjuku, a werewolf in urban form, biding its time until<br />
nightfall to unleash its full madness. Businesses stacked three and<br />
four high wallpapered their steel‑and‑glass faces with signs of neon<br />
and animated LEDs: pachinko parlors and noodle shops, nightclubs
74 Steve Bein<br />
and strip clubs, Nova language schools and Sumitomo cash<br />
machines, shot bars and smartphone dealers. And somewhere<br />
beyond all that, there was a second Inazuma. Fuchida had spent<br />
fifteen years searching for it, and at last it was within reach. He<br />
could go and claim it at any moment. A voice deep within him<br />
cried out for it. He needed to get it now.<br />
He silenced the voice through sheer force of will. This was no<br />
time to start indulging impatience. He knew where that road would<br />
lead. Better to close the window and close off his longing for the<br />
second sword.<br />
The air blowing in was cool at this height, twenty‑two stories<br />
above the street, and the heavy scent of moisture promised evening<br />
rain. Fuchida slid the window shut, watching his reflection shift in<br />
the glass. In this light he could see only his darkest parts: long black<br />
hair, eyes like black coffee, shadows under his pectoral muscles.<br />
The blues and blacks and purples of his tattoos traced a random<br />
spiderwebbing pattern down to the black triangle of pubic hair.<br />
There were darker parts to him, features not visible to those outside<br />
the window. Throats sliced open, women beaten, enemies buried<br />
in the concrete foundations of high‑rises and public schools. Dark<br />
desires and darker deeds did not reflect in glass.<br />
He looked down at his tattoos. Dragons and spiders crawled up<br />
his arms. A fiery buddha dominated his chest, sword and vajra in<br />
hand. The dragons and buddhas shed tears, every teardrop marking<br />
a kill. There were so many now that he’d lost count. He insisted on<br />
the traditional method for every tattoo, grateful for the discipline<br />
the hooks and hammers had drilled into him. With the second<br />
Inazuma so close, he needed every bit of that discipline not to rush<br />
out and grab it. It was said that the Inazuma blades changed the<br />
course of history. There was no telling what Fuchida could do with<br />
two of them.<br />
For all the years he’d spent hunting the second sword, even<br />
Fuchida himself hadn’t known exactly how he would use it. Gut<br />
instinct had long assured him that with two Inazumas he could
DAUGHTER OF THE SWORD 75<br />
carve out his place in history, but it was only a few weeks ago that<br />
he finally understood how. It could only be fate: after fifteen years<br />
of searching, nothing; then, as soon as he discovered how to make<br />
his mark on the world, the second blade suddenly revealed itself to<br />
him. He and the swords were meant to be together. It could be no<br />
other way. He slipped back into bed with his beloved. She was<br />
beautiful beyond description. If not for that second sword, he felt<br />
he could lose hours just trying to put a name to her colors. The<br />
gleaming gray of her shinogi-ji might be called gunmetal today, but<br />
she was already a hundred and fifty years old by the time the<br />
Mongols first brought guns to Japanese shores. The pale silver of<br />
her tempering had no name at all; it was to be found only in the<br />
lining of clouds, and only then when the sun struck at just the right<br />
angle. She seemed to glow with her own light. No sonnet had ever<br />
described colors so pure; no love song had ever been sung of a<br />
woman more beautiful. The thought of lying with two such<br />
beauties was enough to make his heart race.<br />
He’d taken to sleeping with her years ago, but couldn’t<br />
remember how long it had been since they’d started sleeping naked<br />
together. He did remember that he’d first done it as another way to<br />
test himself. Her blade was so sharp that if he dropped a tissue over<br />
her, its own weight would be enough to cut it in two. A bad roll in<br />
his sleep would push her deep into his flesh. Even if she did not kill<br />
him, there was hardly anywhere she could cut that would not spoil<br />
his tattoos. And he had no doubt that she would kill him if he gave<br />
her the opportunity. She’d killed men before, dozens of them.<br />
Ancient samurai had slain hundreds on her edge, but that was true<br />
of any number of swords. The beauty in Fuchida’s bed had a will<br />
of her own, and a murderous will at that. It was said that she’d<br />
killed any who professed to own her. It was said no man could<br />
master her. Fuchida Shūzō was the first to prove the legend wrong.<br />
And soon he would forge a legend of his own. Two Inazumas.<br />
No one had ever owned two before. Even Master Inazuma himself<br />
had never been in the presence of two of his own blades; it was said
76 Steve Bein<br />
that he forged but one at a time, devoting himself to it as a priest<br />
devoted himself to his god. All Fuchida had to do to claim his<br />
place in immortality was to claim the second sword.<br />
And now that sword was so close that it was all Fuchida could<br />
do to stay in bed listening to his beautiful singer. With two fingers<br />
he caressed the whole length of her, his fingertips drawing a<br />
keening note from her as they ran along her tempering. His desire<br />
for her was no less for wanting the other sword. It was so close. The<br />
woman who owned it was only across town. She was a policewoman,<br />
an unlikely owner for such a treasure, and tracking the sword to her<br />
had been considerably harder than Fuchida could have imagined.<br />
Fifteen years, and now the sword was within his grasp. His breath<br />
quickened at the thought.<br />
But he would not indulge that crying voice in his mind. It pleaded<br />
with him: he needed to get out of bed, get dressed, get the sword<br />
now. Fuchida silenced it. He would be disciplined about this. He<br />
would spend a final night alone with his blade, one last night with<br />
his exquisite beauty before he brought another into their home.<br />
Killing the policewoman could wait until tomorrow.
2.<br />
I t was exactly the opposite of a well‑designed sting. Detective<br />
Sergeant Oshiro Mariko cursed herself for taking it, cursed<br />
Lieutenant Hashimoto for retiring, and cursed the new LT for<br />
taking a perfectly good plan and blowing it right to hell.<br />
Mariko would have preferred to stake out the suspect’s<br />
apartment. There were only so many exits to cover in an apartment<br />
building, only so many places a perp could run. That was especially<br />
true in the kind of building a low‑rent Tokyo pusher could afford to<br />
live in, and this Bumps Ryota was definitely low‑rent. Mariko could<br />
see him now, reflected in the window of the okonomiyaki restaurant<br />
right in front of her nose. Even from this distance, she thought he<br />
walked as if his feet did not touch the ground. He held his arms<br />
close to his chest, one palm flat against his cheek as if trying to<br />
restrain a nervous tic or muscular spasm.<br />
She should have said no. Hell, she’d tried to say no. She’d<br />
wanted to walk away as soon as the good plan hit the toilet. But<br />
something had drawn her back to this one, and it wasn’t just some<br />
vague sense of loyalty to Lieutenant Hashimoto. Her mother would<br />
have said that when a person feels compelled, that meant something<br />
was meant to be, but Mariko didn’t believe in all that destiny crap.<br />
She was a detective: she believed what the evidence supported
78 Steve Bein<br />
believing. So with all the evidence pointing to a first‑class fiasco,<br />
why hadn’t she said no? What made this case special?<br />
Bumps paced to and fro around a low flower planter centered<br />
in one of the main intersections of the open‑air mall. Nothing<br />
special about him. Nothing special about this place either. A<br />
framework of I‑beams instead of walls, the beams painted the same<br />
pale blue as the bottom of a swimming pool. Mounted above them<br />
was a roof of translucent Plexiglas domes, giant versions of those<br />
eggs that pantyhose used to come in. Suspended below the huge<br />
half eggs were ranks upon ranks of glowing fluorescent tubes,<br />
giving everything below not one shadow but a host of thin<br />
overlapping ones. Bumps couldn’t have chosen a better place to be<br />
staked out by the police if he’d tried. No one on Mariko’s team<br />
would give even a moment’s thought to drawing down on him in a<br />
public mall. But Bumps’s position was better still, smack in the<br />
middle of a four‑way intersection peppered with shoppers and a<br />
million little alleyways between all the shops. Even with a battalion<br />
Mariko couldn’t have put a man on every possible escape route,<br />
and with only two other officers for her sting, she couldn’t even<br />
cover the four cardinal directions. It was almost as if Bumps Ryota<br />
and this new Lieutenant Ko were on the same side.<br />
Mariko’s okonomiyaki shop was on the southeast corner of the<br />
intersection. She smelled hoisin sauce and frying shrimp from<br />
within, and saw Bumps’s skinny little reflection pacing back and<br />
forth in the foreground of her own. Short spikes crowned her image<br />
in the plate glass—her hair was still wet from the rain outside—and<br />
her eyes looked strained and tired. As well they might, she told<br />
herself, given the worst sting operation of all time, but she nipped<br />
that thought right in the bud. She already got too little respect from<br />
the men on her team; there was no point in undermining her<br />
authority further by undermining herself.<br />
She had a patrolman named Mishima about ten meters down<br />
the west corridor, sitting on a bench with a couple of shopping<br />
bags and looking for all the world like a tired, fat man waiting for
DAUGHTER OF THE SWORD 79<br />
his wife. In the north corridor she’d placed Toyoda in a sunglasses<br />
shop—a natural fit, since she’d never seen him without a pair of<br />
sunglasses propped in his close‑cropped hair. Twenty meters past<br />
Toyoda the mall opened onto a dark street, traffic hissing by on the<br />
wet asphalt. Mariko had to trust Toyoda’s background as a soccer<br />
fullback would help him defend that corridor, because if Bumps<br />
got to the open street, catching him would become a whole new<br />
kind of nightmare. Every neon sign in this mall would linger as<br />
sunspots in her officers’ eyes, and a half‑blind chase in traffic wasn’t<br />
Mariko’s idea of a winning strategy.<br />
Again she cursed Hashimoto for retiring. Why couldn’t he have<br />
left one week later? She cursed herself too for not sticking with the<br />
original plan, even if that meant taking whatever crap Lieutenant<br />
Ko might have for her afterward. Better to turn her back on the<br />
whole operation than to try to do it half‑assed.<br />
Why hadn’t she just turned and walked? Her usual answer<br />
wouldn’t cut it this time. Yes, she had to prove herself to her<br />
commander, but she knew that would be true for the rest of her<br />
career. Yes, first impressions were important, but that was all the<br />
more reason not to take this assignment; it was as if Lieutenant Ko<br />
was setting her up for failure. And she’d gone along with it anyway.<br />
Why? For the umpteenth time she looked to her reflection for an<br />
answer: why did she feel compelled to take this sting?<br />
“Sergeant, this is Two,” said Toyoda’s deep voice in Mariko’s<br />
Bluetooth. “I have a possible approaching the suspect now.”<br />
Yet another flaw in the operation, Mariko thought. At ten<br />
minutes to ten, there were so few shoppers left that you could<br />
take a good guess at which ones were looking to score a hit.<br />
Bumps, in turn, could guess that the three people who never<br />
wandered more than a few paces from their positions might have<br />
been, oh, say, cops. And if a buyer didn’t come within the next<br />
ten minutes, the only people left in the mall would be Bumps and<br />
Mariko’s team.<br />
But Mariko managed to keep a lid on all such lamentations.
80 Steve Bein<br />
Instead she said, “Come on, Two. A description might be helpful,<br />
don’t you think?”<br />
“Tight little number. Orange hair. Fuck‑me pumps.”<br />
“Oh, I got her,” said Mishima. “Yeah, that’s real nice.”<br />
“I don’t suppose I could bother you two to be professional,<br />
could I?” Mariko winced as soon as she said it. These guys had<br />
been salivating over the air all night, but pissing them off now<br />
wouldn’t do any good. She needed them sharp.<br />
“Possible has reached the suspect,” said Toyoda.<br />
Mariko reached into the purse slung across her torso and<br />
withdrew a compact—one she never used except in circumstances<br />
like these. Flicking it open with a stubby thumbnail, she used it to<br />
look over her shoulder. There was the perp, talking to. . . . Oh no.<br />
Saori.<br />
Just like that, everything fell into a lower and hotter level of<br />
hell. Bumps would be done with his transaction in thirty seconds<br />
or less. Pull the trigger on the sting too early and he wouldn’t be<br />
guilty of anything. Pull it too late and she’d have no choice but to<br />
arrest him and Saori. Within her thirty‑second window, she had<br />
another window of one, maybe two seconds where she could nail<br />
Bumps Ryota and still let Saori walk.<br />
There was the other option too. She could choose not to pull<br />
the trigger at all. Let them go. Tell Ko his plan was a pooch screw<br />
from the get‑go, then set up a new sting on Bumps and another<br />
buyer. Or just let Saori walk and then hit Bumps, hoping he was<br />
carrying enough to nail him on intent to distribute.<br />
“On your toes, boys,” she said into the Bluetooth. “We go on my<br />
signal.”<br />
Saori and Bumps were still talking. Saori’s hair was longer than<br />
Mariko remembered, dyed peroxide orange. Bumps had long hair<br />
too, shoulder length, straight pressed, and tawny like a lion’s. Both<br />
were bone skinny, their clothes hanging off them like sails from a<br />
mast in dead air. Their image in Mariko’s hand mirror trembled. It<br />
was hard to tell if either had passed anything to the other.
DAUGHTER OF THE SWORD 81<br />
“What are we waiting for, Sergeant?”<br />
“Zip it, Three. We don’t have a bust if he doesn’t sell her<br />
anything.”<br />
There. Had their hands touched? In the trembling mirror it was<br />
hard to tell. Mariko turned around to get a better look. Bumps was<br />
definitely putting something into his jacket pocket. What about<br />
Saori? Mariko could only see her back. Saori’s hands were in front<br />
of her belly, her skeletally skinny elbows winging out on either<br />
side.<br />
“Hell with it,” Mariko muttered. Then full volume, “Move,<br />
move, move!”<br />
Bumps Ryota locked eyes with her. They were jumpy, his eyes,<br />
but despite the fact that he was amped, he froze in place for one<br />
full second before he bolted.<br />
One second was enough time for Mariko to clear the heavy<br />
Taser from her belt line, not enough time to close within firing<br />
range. Bumps took off like a rabbit on speed.<br />
Toyoda was on an intercept course with him. Mishima bore<br />
down on Saori, just on the fringe of Mariko’s peripheral vision.<br />
Bumps juked right and put a bench between himself and Toyoda.<br />
Instead of vaulting it, Toyoda went around. That was all the<br />
breakaway Bumps needed.<br />
Mariko bounded over the bench, dashing past Toyoda and not<br />
sparing the breath to call him a jackass. She wasn’t going to catch<br />
Bumps. Five more strides and he’d be out of the dry neon mouth<br />
of the mall and into the slick, busy darkness of the streets.<br />
Whether out of inspiration or desperation, Mariko couldn’t say,<br />
but she chucked the Taser. It wheeled end over end, almost in slow<br />
motion, and Mariko was sure she hadn’t put enough into the throw.<br />
The thing was heavy; it wasn’t going to make it. But then it hit<br />
Bumps in the base of the neck. He stutter‑stepped, stumbled,<br />
regained his footing. It was enough.<br />
Like so many others in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police<br />
Department, Mariko had taken the department’s aikido course. In
82 Steve Bein<br />
the heat of the moment, she couldn’t remember a single technique.<br />
She grabbed a fistful of Bumps’s stiff, tawny hair. Bumps kept<br />
running. She stopped.<br />
In the next instant Bumps was on his ass. “Stay down,” Mariko<br />
said, panting, fumbling for her cuffs with her shaky, sweaty left hand.<br />
One of those newer‑model Toyotas hissed by, the kind that<br />
looked like a pregnant roller skate. A raindrop thwacked heavily on<br />
Mariko’s scalp. She felt it roll through the forest of her choppy hair,<br />
tracing a cold line down the back of her head toward the collar of<br />
her blouse. Overhead, the low‑hanging clouds glowed white, the<br />
way they could only do in a city the size of Tokyo. Every building<br />
in sight was the same height, nine or ten stories before disappearing<br />
into the haze. The sole exception was the mall, with its roof like<br />
rows and rows of mannequin tits, the drumming of fat, heavy<br />
raindrops beating against them, loud as a low‑flying 747 that<br />
wouldn’t leave Mariko’s airspace.<br />
Bumps was still wheezing, his eyes pinched shut and all his<br />
yellow teeth visible, when Mishima and Toyoda approached with a<br />
handcuffed Saori. The sunglasses in Toyoda’s black hair were off‑<br />
kilter, and Mishima had his tie undone, his jacket slung over one<br />
shoulder. A crowd of bystanders formed a wide semicircle, centered<br />
on Mariko as if choreographed that way, their formation stopping<br />
at the border between wet and dry pavement.<br />
“Is it true?” said Toyoda. “Is she your sister?”<br />
Mariko looked up at the glowing sky and the domes of Plexiglas.<br />
Rain pounded the mall’s roof, not half as loud as Mariko’s<br />
thundering heart. “Give her to me,” Mariko said.<br />
“Wait!” Bumps said as Mariko passed him off. “I’m useful to<br />
you! I got information!”<br />
“Sure you do,” said Mariko, then nodded for Mishima and<br />
Toyoda to leave. Both men stood their ground, their gazes flicking<br />
between Mariko and Saori. “That guy you’re holding is a suspect,”<br />
Mariko said. “Customarily we take them down to post and book<br />
them.”
DAUGHTER OF THE SWORD 83<br />
Mishima’s chubby face sank, and Toyoda gave Mariko the evil<br />
eye, but at last they did as they were told. Mariko shook her head.<br />
She didn’t know what it would take to earn these boys’ respect, but<br />
apparently running down a fleeing perp single‑handedly wasn’t<br />
sufficient.<br />
“Miko,” Saori said, “you have to get me out of this.” Her teeth<br />
were like her pusher’s, gray where they were not yellow. She’d lost<br />
weight since Mariko had seen her last; her cheeks seemed hollow,<br />
her lips thin like an old woman’s. Her face was flushed, but not<br />
with shame; Mariko could only see indignance there.<br />
“I don’t know how to help you anymore, Saori.”<br />
The sallow face hardened. “Are you kidding? What are you<br />
doing, staking me out now? Those guys came out of nowhere.”<br />
“Well, that makes one thing that’s gone right tonight.” Mariko’s<br />
laugh sounded forced even to her. “Shit, Saori, if you had any idea<br />
how bad this thing went down, you’d know how bad you’re<br />
tweaking.”<br />
“I’m not tweaking.”<br />
“Uh‑huh.”<br />
Mariko took Saori by the joint between the cuffs and gave her a<br />
gentle shove in the direction the other two had taken Bumps Ryota,<br />
toward the pair of squads they had waiting in the mall’s shipping<br />
dock. She hated being put in this position. Ever since Saori had<br />
started using, all Mariko had ever wanted to do was help. Saori was<br />
the reason she’d put in for Narcotics in the first place: to bust the<br />
shitheads who would sell to her sister, yes, but also to try to get an<br />
understanding of addiction itself. The only understanding she’d<br />
gleaned so far was that an addict had to hit rock bottom before<br />
recovery. Was getting arrested by her own sister rock bottom<br />
enough? Was Mariko helping at all? She couldn’t be sure.<br />
As she ushered Saori along, she found the mall had become a<br />
breeding ground for shoppers, mostly high school girls still in<br />
uniform; their numbers seemed to have tripled in the last minute or<br />
so. Text messages had summoned them like a wizard’s incantation,
84 Steve Bein<br />
exorcising them from every corner of the mall and drawing them all<br />
to this one place. Gawking faces passed judgment from every<br />
direction, and at least a dozen cell phones had their tiny black bug<br />
eyes trained on the fabulous Oshiro sisters. Within the hour every<br />
teenager in Tokyo would have received the image from a friend.<br />
Saori fussed at her cuffs, twisting her bone‑thin arms. “You<br />
know what, Miko? This is bullshit. You want to stake me out, fine.<br />
Just don’t lie about it. Be the overprotective bitch you’ve always<br />
been; just come right out and say it.”<br />
“We were staking your pusher. It’s not my fault you came to buy<br />
tonight.”<br />
“Whatever. I’m not even carrying.”<br />
Mariko stopped. “Is that true?”<br />
“Well, yeah.”<br />
“Saori, did the other officers find anything on you?”<br />
“No.”<br />
Mariko rolled her eyes. She didn’t know why she bothered<br />
asking questions anymore; when she was using, Saori would lie to<br />
anyone about anything. The only question now was, would she pat<br />
Saori down in front of the high schoolers and their phones, or<br />
could she find a quieter place?<br />
The quieter place was on the opposite side of a tan steel service<br />
door, in a long yellow hallway whose fluorescent tube lights<br />
hummed and droned and flickered. As Mariko patted down Saori’s<br />
ribs and back and belly, the question she really wanted to ask was,<br />
Why are you making me do this? Tomorrow’s conversation with<br />
their mother was sure to be a hoot. Now that conversation would<br />
have to include Big Sister Miko picking on Poor Little Saori by<br />
searching her for contraband. No matter how bad things got, Saori<br />
always found a way to make them worse.<br />
But this time, thankfully, she was clean. Mariko had to run her<br />
fingers over Saori’s underwear to make sure, and she wanted to<br />
smack Saori for putting her in a position to have to grope her own
DAUGHTER OF THE SWORD 85<br />
sister, but Mariko had pulled the trigger just right. They had Bumps<br />
and, owing as much to sheer luck as good judgment, they didn’t<br />
have anything on Saori.<br />
“Do you have any idea how lucky you are?” Mariko said,<br />
pushing a brown service door open and ushering Saori through it.<br />
A vicious diatribe from Saori echoed throughout the long, narrow<br />
hallway, mostly in Japanese but with the choicest words in English.<br />
It had always been Saori’s favorite language for cursing. Mariko<br />
didn’t listen to a word of it. She was still thinking about fate. She’d<br />
had no way of knowing Saori was buying from Bumps, and yet<br />
she’d felt drawn to this case—and now, lo and behold, she was<br />
perfectly placed to save her family a lot of shame and grief. Mom<br />
would have said it was meant to be. Mariko still didn’t buy it, but<br />
neither could she deny the compulsion she’d felt.<br />
She walked to the end of the hall, pushing Saori along in front<br />
of her. When she reached the door at the far end, she opened it<br />
and took Saori into the mall’s shipping and receiving room. It was<br />
a cavernous space, with undressed lightbulbs dangling from a<br />
ceiling high enough to admit a tractor‑trailer. Two squads were<br />
parked in the loading dock just outside the huge open door. Bumps<br />
was already inside the nearest one. Mishima and Toyoda leaned<br />
against the driver’s‑side doors, smoking, the lightbulbs gleaming<br />
like a string of stars in the sunglasses atop Toyoda’s head.<br />
“Which one of you searched this suspect?” Mariko said.<br />
Mishima and Toyoda looked at each other.<br />
“Damn it, guys, you have to have a reason to put handcuffs on<br />
somebody.” She fished for her key, and with a few clicks Saori was<br />
rubbing her red, unshackled wrists together.<br />
“Mishima,” Mariko said, pointing at Bumps in the backseat,<br />
“take him back to post and process him. Toyoda, go with him. By<br />
the time I get there, I want to see a report on my desk explaining<br />
why you weren’t in position to take down our suspect and why you<br />
left me without backup in running him down.”
86 Steve Bein<br />
Toyoda scowled at her as if she’d called his mother a whore.<br />
“Come on, Oshiro, there were only three of us. I had to leave<br />
somebody without backup.”<br />
“That’s Detective Oshiro, and yes, you could have left Mishima<br />
without backup. Instead, you chose to help him cuff a woman who<br />
wasn’t fleeing, a woman who ultimately can’t even be charged with<br />
anything—”<br />
“A woman who’s your sister.”<br />
“That’s beside the point. You showed bad judgment tonight—<br />
all night long, as far as I’m concerned—and I’m giving you a<br />
chance to write down your side of it before I talk to Lieutenant Ko<br />
about your suspension. So give me a heartfelt ‘thank you’ and get<br />
the hell out of here.”<br />
Toyoda’s scowl deepened. “What about her?” he said.<br />
Mariko turned to look Saori in the eye. Quietly, somberly, she<br />
said, “I’m taking her to detox. Again. Unless she wants to face<br />
charges of conspiracy to traffic narcotics.”<br />
The charge would never stick, but Saori didn’t have to know<br />
that. She looked at Mariko, then at the floor. “Fine,” Saori said,<br />
“let’s go.”<br />
Tomorrow’s conversation with their mother was looking better<br />
and better all the time.
DARK LIGHT OF DAY<br />
by Jill Archer<br />
An <strong>Ace</strong> October 2012 Paperback<br />
Armageddon is over. The demons won. And yet<br />
somehow . . . the world has continued. Survivors worship<br />
patron demons under a draconian system of tributes and<br />
rules. These laws keep the demons from warring among<br />
themselves, and the world from slipping back into chaos.<br />
Noon Onyx grew up on the banks of th river Lethe,<br />
daughter of a prominent politician, and a descendant of<br />
Lucifer’s warlords. Noon has a secret—she was born with<br />
waning magic, the dark, destructive, fiery power that is<br />
used to control demons and maintain the delicate peace<br />
among them. But a woman with waning magic is unheard<br />
of and some will consider her an abomination.<br />
Noon is summoned to attend St. Lucifer’s, a school of<br />
demon law. She must decide whether to declare her<br />
powers there . . . or attempt to continue hiding them,<br />
knowing the price for doing so may be death. And once<br />
she meets the forbiddingly powerful Ari Carmine—who<br />
suspects Noon is harboring magic as deadly as his<br />
own—Noon realizes there may be more at stake than<br />
just her life.
1<br />
WINTER GARDEN<br />
T he wind whipping across my face made it feel as if I’d just<br />
scrubbed with camphor and bits of glass. My eyes watered and<br />
my nose ran. I sniffled and kept walking, my boots crunching over<br />
the ice and snow. Stars winked high above me like baby’s breath<br />
thrown into an inky sea, but the main light came from small um‑<br />
ber street lights tucked into the stone wall beside me. The Aster’s<br />
front gate was just thirty yards ahead. I tried not to think about how<br />
cold the walk home would be if they refused to let me in. Inside my<br />
pocket, I squeezed my letter, forever wrinkling it. I knew some<br />
people framed theirs. I didn’t care. I planned to burn mine.<br />
The wall I’d been walking along ended and a massive iron gate<br />
rose up in its place. To its side was a call box. Giving the letter one<br />
final vicious squeeze, I withdrew my hand, opened the box, and<br />
turned the crank. It stuck at first and I had to wrench it free from a<br />
brittle crust of snow and ice. Finally I heard a pop and some clicking.<br />
But no one answered. I stood for another half‑minute or so, blowing<br />
breath into my cupped hands to warm my now frigid mouth and<br />
nose. I turned the crank again. It was too late for dinner and too early<br />
for bed. Someone would answer. After a while, Mrs. Aster did.
90 Jill Archer<br />
“Hello?” squawked the box.<br />
“Evening, Mrs. Aster,” I said, trying to keep my voice pleasant.<br />
“It’s Nouiomo Onyx.”<br />
A moment of silence passed as I tucked a strand of hair back<br />
into my hood. The frost on my mitten brushed my cheek. The spot<br />
burned as if someone had just nicked me with a metal rake.<br />
“Good evening, Noon.”<br />
“Is Peter home?”<br />
“I haven’t seen him since dinner.” This may or may not have<br />
been true. The Aster’s house was as big as a castle and I knew Peter<br />
spent most of his time studying either in his room or in the family<br />
library.<br />
“I need to talk to him about something,” I said, still managing<br />
to keep the impatience out of my voice. “Would you let him know<br />
I’m here?”<br />
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”<br />
“No. I’m leaving tomorrow. That’s what I want to talk to him<br />
about.”<br />
There was a long pause before she answered again.<br />
“Noon, I have two hundred poinsettias, five holly trees, and a<br />
dozen live mistletoe sprigs in the house. You can’t come in. I’m<br />
sorry.”<br />
I fought for calm and swallowed the lump in my throat. What<br />
had I expected? It was Yuletide and the Asters were Angels, for<br />
Luck’s sake.<br />
“Can you tell him to come out?”<br />
Another long pause and then, “He’s studying.”<br />
I sighed. The lump was gone, replaced with resignation. I had<br />
lived next to Peter for twenty‑one years, my whole life. And I could<br />
count on one hand the number of times this gate had opened for me.<br />
I cleared my throat, wanting my voice to sound stronger than I felt.<br />
“Tell him I stopped by then, would you?”<br />
“Of course. Goodnight, Noon.” The squawking stopped and<br />
then the static and the box went completely silent.
DARK LIGHT OF DAY 91<br />
I turned and started crunching my way back, stepping carefully,<br />
and clutching my hood beneath my chin to keep the wind from<br />
my ears. I was so focused on how cold and miserable I was that it<br />
took me awhile to notice the warmth spreading from the pocket of<br />
my cape. Just as I started to smell burning wool— disgusting!—<br />
warm turned to seriously hot and I glanced down to see that I had<br />
set my cape on fire. Brilliant. I hadn’t inadvertently set anything on<br />
fire since puberty. I waved a flat hand over the flames and quickly<br />
smothered the fire. I looked around to see if anyone was watching.<br />
Someone was.<br />
Luckily, it was Peter.<br />
He was leaning against the stone wall I had just walked along.<br />
The same stone wall that ran for miles along the Lemiscus, a lane<br />
as old as the Apocalypse. The Lemiscus separated our families’ two<br />
estates. The Asters had a wall running along their side. On ours?<br />
Nothing. My father, Karanos Onyx, was one of the most powerful<br />
Maegesters in the country. We didn’t need walls to keep our pri‑<br />
vacy.<br />
Peter’s hood was down, his cloak unbuttoned, and his hands<br />
bare— obviously he’d rushed to meet me. In the deep twilight, his<br />
white blonde hair was the color of snow and ash, nearly the oppo‑<br />
site of my midnight‑colored tresses. He pushed off the wall with his<br />
shoulder, his lanky frame ambling over to my shivering one, and<br />
put his arm around me. His smile was friendly but his frost blue<br />
eyes were disapproving. He’d seen the fire.<br />
“Shall we?” he said, motioning toward a small wooden door<br />
that was half‑hidden in the wall.<br />
“Is it safe?”<br />
“As safe as it always is. I cast the spell just before opening the<br />
door.”<br />
Huddled together we stepped through the doorway. Peter<br />
closed the door behind us and I stared ahead, remembering the<br />
first time I had stepped through that door. I’d been five and it was<br />
the first time I’d ever stepped foot in a garden. I’d been so in awe,
92 Jill Archer<br />
so overwhelmed, by the life growing within these walls. The dark,<br />
destructive waning magic I tried so desperately to keep hidden<br />
deep inside of me had pulsed in response to the rich magentas,<br />
bright clarets, and cheerful fuchsias of the blooms and buds.<br />
Within seconds of my entry, I had killed three hydrangeas, two<br />
hostas, and a mulberry tree. Instantly, they’d become black silhou‑<br />
ettes against the garden’s remaining ruddy colors.<br />
It was the single most horrifying day of my life. And the most hope‑<br />
ful. Because a moment later Peter had cast a protective spell over the<br />
surviving plants so that I could walk among them— green, growing,<br />
living plants. I dared not touch anything now, but at least I could look.<br />
The place would have been magical even without a spell. Yew<br />
topiaries shaped as Mephistopheles, Beelzebub and Alecto warred<br />
alongside Gabriel, Michael and Mary. They were all dormant now,<br />
the yews buried under an inch of fresh snow, but I could feel their<br />
presence. Alive and well, they waited for spring to resume their<br />
fight. Behind the wall, shielded by hedgerows and distant cypress<br />
trees, the snowflakes felt less like bits of glass and more like cold<br />
confetti. Peter and I sat down on a small cement bench, which was<br />
nestled back nicely in a cut‑out niche of the hedgerow. He spread<br />
one side of his cloak around me and cast a spell of warmth over us.<br />
My shivering subsided.<br />
“What’s wrong?” he asked.<br />
He’d seen the fire so I couldn’t very well say, “nothing.” But I’d<br />
burned the letter so I couldn’t just shove it at him in way of expla‑<br />
nation either.<br />
“I’ve been accepted to St. Lucifer’s Law School.”<br />
Peter’s face went still. It could have been surprise. It could have<br />
been anger. With Peter, you could never tell.<br />
“Luck, Noon, did you apply there?”<br />
I rolled my eyes. “My mom sent in the application for me. She<br />
swears she didn’t tell them about my magic. She thinks I should<br />
tell them. Her exact words were, ‘It’s your power, you have to de‑<br />
cide to use it.’” I snorted, remembering.
DARK LIGHT OF DAY 93<br />
My power. As if it was something positive. People like me, who<br />
possessed waning magic, were a menace. Not only could I kill<br />
something just by touching it, my presence alone had the potential<br />
to harm growing things. Plants, pregnant women, gardens,<br />
greenery— all could suffer disastrous consequences if I came too<br />
near. Worse than that though, was what we were expected to be‑<br />
come: Maegesters, or demon peacekeepers. Because waning magic<br />
was the only type of magic that could be used to control demons.<br />
Becoming a Maegester meant learning all of the Byzantine laws<br />
that Halja’s ruling demons idolized and then training to become<br />
their consiglieres, their judges, and even their executioners.<br />
Worse than that though, was that I was the only female with<br />
waning magic that I knew of.<br />
Unfortunately, I had to live with it, which was why I’d spent my<br />
whole life wishing I possessed the waxing magic of a Mederi healer,<br />
rather than the waning magic of a future Maegester.<br />
“So are you going to go?”<br />
I shrugged and made a helpless gesture. Ever since I was five,<br />
after that first disastrous entry into the Aster garden, Peter and I had<br />
been plotting a way to reverse my magic. Peter thought the answer<br />
was to find a rumored long lost Reversal Spell. But, so far, we<br />
hadn’t found it and my time was running out. Law and scripture<br />
required us to use our talents for the greater good. The demons<br />
who ruled Halja had no patience for rule breakers, and so under<br />
Haljan law, anyone with magic had to declare it by Bryde’s Day of<br />
their twenty‑first year. That day, the day I’d been dreading my en‑<br />
tire life, was now just weeks away.<br />
“I don’t know, Peter. It’s a big gamble, not declaring by the dead‑<br />
line. I’ll be killed if they find out I have magic and didn’t declare it.”<br />
Peter scoffed and I bristled.<br />
“Peter!” I said, suddenly angry. The snow on the branches<br />
above us instantly melted and dribbled down on us, a chilling re‑<br />
minder of the combustible magic I was trying to hide. “You act as<br />
if the demons, the Council, and the law are of no concern.”
94 Jill Archer<br />
Slowly, he rubbed the back of his bare neck, swiping at the cold<br />
drops that had fallen there. He stared out into the snow covered<br />
garden, his lustrous blue eyes never meeting the soft smokey<br />
bronze of mine.<br />
“Noon, I’m so close,” he said finally, turning to me. “You’ve got<br />
to trust me. I know I’ll be able to find the Reversal Spell before<br />
Bryde’s Day. Can’t you convince your mother to let you stay home<br />
for a few more weeks?”<br />
I shook my head. “She kicked me out, Peter. My own mother.”<br />
Peter grimaced. “Is there anyone else you can stay with? Just<br />
until I find the spell?”<br />
I stared at him and then smirked. “I’d move in with you but<br />
your mother hates me.”<br />
“She doesn’t hate you . . . Wait, you’d move in with me?”<br />
“I . . .”<br />
I didn’t know. Peter was my best (and only) friend, but I’d given<br />
up my adolescent dreams of anything happening romantically be‑<br />
tween us years ago. I’m not even sure Peter had known I’d felt that<br />
way about him.<br />
“Peter, I need my own place. And I need a job. I need to figure<br />
out what to do with my life.”<br />
“Well, I guess you could go to St. Lucifer’s temporarily, just<br />
until I find the spell. If your mother didn’t declare for you, your<br />
secret’s still safe. Some people might suspect, but I think they’re<br />
too afraid of your father to speak openly of it or to declare for you.<br />
Just enroll in the Barrister classes, not the Maegester ones. Instead<br />
of learning how to police demons like a future Maegester, learn<br />
how to help Hyrkes follow the Demon Council rules like a future<br />
Barrister.”<br />
“There will be others with waning magic who are there to train<br />
as Maegesters. They’ll be in the Barrister classes too. There won’t<br />
be any way to avoid them.” Members of the Host who had waning<br />
magic could often sense one another. It was a magical remnant of<br />
the days when our ancestors had been Lucifer’s warlords.
DARK LIGHT OF DAY 95<br />
“I can cast a cloaking spell over you that should last for a few<br />
weeks,” Peter said. “I’ll reinforce it when I get there.”<br />
Peter was twenty‑four. For the last three years he’d been attend‑<br />
ing the Joshua School, a prestigious Angel academy that shared a<br />
campus with St. Lucifer’s. Angels, whose power came from their<br />
beliefs rather than their birth, were different than waning and wax‑<br />
ing magic users. They cast spells, instead of using innate power.<br />
I raised my eyebrows at him. “You can cast a powerful enough<br />
cloaking spell to hide me from any Maegester at St. Lucifer’s?”<br />
For the first time that night, Peter grinned. “Have a little faith,<br />
Noon. Have you ever sensed your dad’s magic before?”<br />
I frowned. Not that I could remember. Peter nodded and smiled.<br />
“That’s because he’s always had himself cloaked. I can do the<br />
same for you.”<br />
“Do you really think you can find the Reversal Spell in less<br />
than a month?” I said, still worried. “Most people think it’s a myth.”<br />
“It’s not a myth!” Peter grabbed my arm as if I hadn’t heard his<br />
next words quoted from him a thousand times already.<br />
“‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall<br />
be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain,<br />
for the former things have passed away. And He who was seated on<br />
the throne said, I make all things new. Write this down, for these<br />
words are trustworthy and true.’<br />
“Noon, somewhere out there is an ultimate spell of reversal, a<br />
spell that makes things the way they were meant to be. The old<br />
Book of Revelation doesn’t give us the spell, but we know from it<br />
that the spell once existed. Someone wrote it down at His com‑<br />
mand and I’m going to find it.”<br />
I stayed silent, not knowing what to say. Did the Reversal Spell<br />
really exist?<br />
“What does Night think?” Peter said, cutting into my thoughts.<br />
Night was short for Nocturo, the Maegester’s name my parents<br />
had given to my twin brother. Of course, within a day of our birth,<br />
it became clear that our names were completely inconsistent with
96 Jill Archer<br />
our magic. Because magic and gender were so closely related in<br />
Halja, our birth mix‑up was something we Onyxes almost never<br />
discussed. The fact that I had been born with the waning magic of<br />
a Maegester and Night had been born with the waxing magic of a<br />
Mederi embarrassed my father, shamed my mother, and caused<br />
Night and me no end of grief.<br />
“Night left two weeks ago to join one of the Mederi tribes,” I<br />
said.<br />
Peter stared at the Alecto topiary, frowning. I brushed snow<br />
from my knees.<br />
“That’s going to make it hard.”<br />
“Tell me about it. My mom and dad weren’t speaking before.<br />
Now they can’t even stand to be in the same room with each other.”<br />
“I meant your brother’s choice to openly train as a Mederi healer<br />
might make it harder to cast the Reversal Spell once we find it.”<br />
Peter stood up, taking his cloak with him and breaking the spell<br />
of warmth he’d cast over us. The wind whistled in my ears again<br />
and I shrugged. Night hadn’t consulted me. He’d just left. Now,<br />
our mother obviously thought it was my turn.<br />
“I think Night just looked at the calendar and decided a few<br />
more weeks weren’t going to matter. He got tired of waiting.”<br />
“Don’t declare, Noon. Once you declare, it’ll be that much<br />
harder for us. Even if I found the Reversal Spell, the Council might<br />
not let me use it.”<br />
“Don’t worry,” I said, laughing bitterly. “Declaring my magic<br />
and training to become a Maegester is the last thing I want to do.”<br />
I pulled my hand from my pocket. The ashes from my burned<br />
acceptance letter spilled out into the wind and then settled on the<br />
garden’s snowy white coating. By the time Peter finished casting<br />
my cloaking spell, the little black bits were gone.
2<br />
PETITS FLEURS<br />
I f Halja, my country, was the lone man left standing in a battlefield<br />
after a long and brutal war, then its future would be the spilled<br />
blood under his feet— expected, yet somehow still startling, slippery<br />
and shifting, a sacrifice for peace in a world full of demons. Real<br />
ones. Because it was here in Halja that Lucifer’s army, the Host, beat<br />
the Savior’s army in the last great battle of the Apocalypse.<br />
And yet . . .<br />
Life goes on pretty much the way it did before. People still get mar‑<br />
ried, have babies, and pay their taxes. Many things were destroyed, but<br />
many things have been rebuilt. We have mechanized cabriolets,<br />
electro‑harmonic machines, winder lifts, pots of lip gloss, and nail lac‑<br />
quer. We have time to do our hair. Because the Apocalypse happened<br />
over two thousand years ago. Armageddon is old news and in the days,<br />
years, centuries, and millennia since, we’ve mourned our dead, buried<br />
them, and even forgotten where their graves were.<br />
Lucifer’s Host, which consisted of his warlords, their wives and<br />
sisters, and the demons they controlled, evolved. Not physically,<br />
but culturally. The warlords became Maegesters, or peacekeepers.<br />
The wives and sisters became Mederies, or healers. And the de‑
98 Jill Archer<br />
mons broke into two groups: those that value Halja’s future and<br />
those that don’t.<br />
Well, like it or not, expected or startling, my future began at five<br />
a.m. the next morning when the tinny ring of my alarm bell woke<br />
me. In the cold blackness of pre‑dawn I dressed hurriedly in slim<br />
wool pants, a linen undershirt, and a heavy gray sweater with a<br />
large cowl collar that could double as an extra hood if needed. I<br />
grabbed my leather back pack and crept downstairs to see if I could<br />
find something to eat before I had to leave to catch the ferry that<br />
would take me to St. Lucifer’s.<br />
Our house was as big as Peter’s (maybe even bigger) so it took<br />
me a few minutes to reach the kitchen. My fingertips brushed the<br />
walls as I went, each turn illuminating memories of events that oc‑<br />
curred in these darkened rooms long ago. There was where, at<br />
eight, I’d tripped on one of the carpets and smashed my head into<br />
the side of that table, nearly slicing my ear off. Night had tried to<br />
heal me, but my father had stumbled upon us before he could and<br />
had bellowed for my mother. She’d patched me up, with catgut<br />
stitches instead of magic, and Night had never tried again. At least<br />
not in this house. There was where I’d thrown my first fire ball. At<br />
my mother. I hadn’t meant to. I hadn’t even known I could. Thank<br />
Luck, I’d missed and hit the wall instead. She’d grabbed me by the<br />
ear (the one she’d sewn with catgut four years earlier) and marched<br />
me upstairs to look out the window at her blackened garden.<br />
“Do you want the whole house to look like that?” she’d asked,<br />
shaking me by the ear.<br />
She’d made me paint the wall white again, but I swore I could<br />
still see the black spot, even in the dark.<br />
There was a light on in the kitchen. I hoped it was Estelle, our<br />
housekeeper. But when I rounded the corner and entered, I saw<br />
my mother at the end of the long wooden table, scraping the tops<br />
of several white iced petits fours into a trash can.<br />
“I’ve told Estelle,” she said, almost to herself, although she had
DARK LIGHT OF DAY 99<br />
to know I was there, “no flowers. I’ve told her bells, stars, arrows,<br />
hearts . . . whatever she fancies, but no flowers.” With each word,<br />
my mother’s scraping became more violent. The last petit four<br />
crumbled into the trash can, icing, cake, and all. She stood for a<br />
moment looking down at it, unable to meet my silent gaze.<br />
Why was she upset? She was getting what she wanted. Me out of<br />
her house. I sighed. It was probably a good thing. For both of us.<br />
I grabbed one of the last unviolated petits fours. In the red light<br />
of the kitchen’s brick oven fire and the overhead iron chandelier<br />
candles, the white icing looked orange. The little flower flickered<br />
on top, almost like a tiny flame.<br />
“She doesn’t make them for you,” I said, popping the little cake<br />
into my mouth. “She makes them for me.”<br />
My mother looked up at me frowning. Had she been crying? In<br />
this light, it was hard to tell. And why didn’t she have the electric<br />
lights on anyway? My mother had always been far too fond of fire.<br />
Two score and five years or so ago, my mother, Aurelia Onyx ne<br />
Ferrum of the Hawthorn Tribe, had been the most beautiful and<br />
powerful Mederi the south bank had seen in at least three genera‑<br />
tions. She’d cured countless diseases, scoured scores of unnamed<br />
pestilence, helped crippled children walk again, and the blind to<br />
see. She’d birthed hundreds of babies, healed new mothers, and<br />
brought blue babies back to life. No one miscarried with the young<br />
Aurelia Onyx attending. She’d been a superb midwife. Not only<br />
beyond reproach, but a shining example of what all young, dutiful<br />
Mederies aspire to be.<br />
Her garden had been legendary. Bluebells, bog lilies, and cat‑<br />
tails had bloomed next to sand verbena and prickly pear. Wisteria<br />
blossomed next to bougainvillea, passion flowers sprouted amongst<br />
sea holly, four o’clocks opened at dawn, and the night‑blooming<br />
cereus flowered not just on midsummer’s night, but every night of<br />
the year. People never spoke directly to me about it, of course, but<br />
I’d gathered that, in its heyday, my mother’s garden had been some‑<br />
thing of a fertility shrine. Hyrkes —humans with no magic—came
100 Jill Archer<br />
from as far as the New Babylon suburbs just to spend the day in it.<br />
Losing a day’s work and traveling for hours was nothing in trade for<br />
the chance to soak up all that life and to possibly see her. Or even<br />
to have her touch you. Because Aurelia Onyx had had the gift of<br />
life.<br />
But as her marital years wore on and she created no new life of<br />
her own, folks began to wonder. Fewer and fewer people traveled<br />
from New Babylon to the garden. Fewer Hyrkes hired her as a mid‑<br />
wife. It was impossible for a Mederi of her strength to be barren.<br />
Wasn’t it?<br />
I have no idea what happened then or how it did. I only know<br />
that my brother and I were born twenty‑one years ago and the day<br />
after our birth my mother burned her garden to the ground. With<br />
a can of gasoline and a match, because Mederies didn’t have de‑<br />
structive power. But every day of my life that I’d woken to my view<br />
of the charred garden that never grew back, I knew different. You<br />
didn’t need magic to destroy.<br />
My mother had certainly proven that again with Estelle’s poor<br />
petits fours.<br />
“I think your brother has joined the Demeter Tribe,” she said,<br />
setting her knife on the table top.<br />
“Demeter sounds like a good choice,” I said, scrambling to re‑<br />
member what I knew about that tribe. My mother pressed her lips<br />
together, showing me what Hawthorne likely thought of Demeter.<br />
Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers. As a male Mederi, Night<br />
wouldn’t exactly have his pick of tribes to choose from.<br />
I walked over to the table and surveyed the decapitated petits<br />
fours. I selected two more and walked over to the ice box to find<br />
some juice. I didn’t think I had the patience to boil water for tea<br />
this morning.<br />
“How do you know he joined Demeter?” I asked, peering into<br />
dark, ice cold box. Several glass bottles in varying shades of red,<br />
pink, orange, and yellow were neatly lined up on the top shelf. I<br />
grabbed the pink one—pomegranate juice—and went to fetch a
DARK LIGHT OF DAY 101<br />
glass. Even though there was only enough left for one person, I<br />
knew better than to drink straight from the bottle in front of Aure‑<br />
lia.<br />
“They had an opening. One of their Mederies disappeared re‑<br />
cently.”<br />
“Disappeared?” Disappearances in Halja usually didn’t have<br />
happy endings.<br />
“Linnaea Saphir, Demeter’s Monarch, sent her best midwife<br />
up to New Babylon last week. She’d received an unsigned note<br />
from a messenger requesting immediate assistance with a difficult<br />
birth in a neighborhood to the east of the city. Amaryllis Apatite,<br />
the Mederi midwife she sent, climbed on board the North‑South<br />
Express at 2:00 p.m. last Tuesday and hasn’t been seen since.”<br />
No need to ask how she knew all this. My mother might not<br />
practice medicine anymore, but she still kept in touch with Haw‑<br />
thorne’s Monarch. And news of a missing Mederi would be some‑<br />
thing for every tribe to be concerned about.<br />
“They’re not afraid it’s another Ionys situation are they?”<br />
Ionys was the Patron Demon of Wine, Winemaking, and<br />
Vineyards. Last year, the demon’s favored drink had turned one<br />
of the local vintners mad. Over the course of five weeks last<br />
spring, he’d abducted and murdered six Mederies. He’d sprinkled<br />
their blood across his vineyard in the hopes that Ionys (despite<br />
the demon’s prohibition against such practices) would reward<br />
him with an excellent vintage. Needless to say, the follower was<br />
caught, tried, condemned to death, and his vineyards confiscated<br />
and burned.<br />
I shoved the uneaten petits fours back onto the table, feeling<br />
suddenly ill. My mother’s silence was answer enough.<br />
“Are you worried?” I said. “About Night? Because we haven’t<br />
heard from him?”<br />
Aurelia stared at me with her dark, red‑rimmed eyes.<br />
“Yes,” she said simply, picking up the knife again. “Of course<br />
I’m worried about him. Him. The Apatite girl. You.” And with that
102 Jill Archer<br />
last word she took her knife and swept every bit of Estelle’s ruined<br />
petits fours into the trash.<br />
I wanted to tell her we’d be alright. Night. Me. The missing<br />
Mederi. But this was Halja. The land of demons. A place where<br />
our footing, and our future, was always slippery, shifting, treacher‑<br />
ous, and unsure.
3<br />
FIRST LIGHT<br />
W e lived in a small village called Etincelle on the south bank<br />
of the Lethe. The river flowed between Etincelle and New<br />
Babylon, Halja’s biggest and only city. The Lethe’s south bank had<br />
been settled sometime after the Apocalypse by the Host, some An‑<br />
gels, and their Hyrke servants. How the Host and the Angels man‑<br />
aged to occupy the same ground without continuing Armageddon<br />
is no small mystery. Perhaps the Angels were too bereaved by the<br />
death of their Savior to continue their holy war. Certainly the Host<br />
was disorganized. Killing the Savior had weakened Lucifer to the<br />
point of near annihilation. It was said he collapsed on the field in<br />
his armor, no longer able to bear its weight. Lilith rushed to him,<br />
but it was too late. He transformed before her eyes, first into a ser‑<br />
pent, then a dragon, and then finally a star in the firmament of<br />
Halja.<br />
His star, the Morning Star, winked down at me now as I trudged<br />
to the edge of the Lethe in the slowly lightening dark.<br />
The wind and snow from the night before were gone, replaced<br />
with a still crispness. The air smelled almost sterilely clean, at least<br />
until I came within a few yards of the dock when the stench of
104 Jill Archer<br />
dead fish, wood rot, and engine fuel became too concentrated to<br />
ignore. I told myself it was the foul smell that slowed my steps but<br />
I knew it was fear. Last night’s determination to attend St. Lucifer’s<br />
masquerading as a human Hyrke with no magical powers disap‑<br />
peared with the clean smelling air. The brief burst of raw grit that<br />
had seen me through the tearless farewell with my mother was<br />
gone. I clung to the thought of Peter’s cloaking spell and mentally<br />
pulled it around myself for warmth and courage. No one knew that<br />
I’d been born with waning magic. There was no reason, yet, to de‑<br />
clare my status and start training as a Maegester. Maybe I really<br />
would be able to hide until Peter found a way to reverse my magic.<br />
I looked across the wide gray expanse of the Lethe. Today, I<br />
knew it for what it was: the choppy, white capped boundary be‑<br />
tween my childhood home and my uncertain future. It was dotted<br />
with all the tiny, muted‑colored ferries that ran between Etincelle<br />
and New Babylon. The only people who worked in Etincelle were<br />
the Hyrke servants of the Host and Angels. Everyone else worked in<br />
New Babylon, which was a bustling hub of cosmopolitan urbanity,<br />
similar in many ways to the old world cities that existed before the<br />
Apocalypse. New Babylon offered myriad opportunities that Etin‑<br />
celle did not— shopping, entertainment, the diversity that comes<br />
from a large population, as well as employment. So travel between<br />
the two areas was brisk.<br />
My mother had booked me on the 6:06 a.m. ferry. She hadn’t<br />
told me its name. We’d said little to each other after our discussion<br />
about Night’s possible whereabouts and the missing Mederi. The<br />
bulk of our remaining conversation had been taken up with logis‑<br />
tics. She’d arranged to have most of my things sent ahead to St.<br />
Lucifer’s. There was an orientation for new students tomorrow<br />
morning at nine a.m., and she’d purchased a one way ferry ticket<br />
for me. I wasn’t to be late.<br />
It was 5:42 a.m. I wasn’t late.<br />
The ferry wasn’t even there so I dropped my leather backpack<br />
beside a wooden bench and slumped down into it. I huddled un‑
DARK LIGHT OF DAY 105<br />
der my bulky layers of clothing, the gray collared sweater, my dark<br />
winter cloak, and my heavy snow boots. I pulled the sweater’s cowl<br />
collar up over my mouth and nose for warmth and looked out<br />
across the water, searching for my ferry.<br />
The other ferries hustled about. They all had names like Absence,<br />
Veracity, or Courage. Like a little augury, I thought. Would<br />
my ferry bear a name of inspiration, enlightenment— or dread?<br />
The water lapped at the pier beneath me and boats’ horns and bells<br />
sounded in the distance. Hyrke captains yelled things to mates,<br />
dock boys shouted at each other, and then, as more and more fer‑<br />
ries approached from the north, the dock got busier. Ropes<br />
thumped as they were thrown to the dock, rubber bumpers<br />
squeaked as boats lined up and were tied off. Feet thudded down<br />
the pier as commuters and shoppers prepared to board.<br />
I recognized most of them. Marius Steele, a Maegester whose<br />
clients were almost exclusively winged imps who barely had the<br />
power to light a match, boarded the Absence. He glanced in my<br />
direction, recognized me, and gave a startled little wave before<br />
scurrying onto the boat. Mark Grayson, a Hyrke mechanic who<br />
lived on the Petrificus estate, boarded the ferry Honor. The Petrifi‑<br />
cae, despite their ominous surname, were more relaxed than most<br />
Host families. They allowed Grayson to accept work from other<br />
sources— both in Etincelle and New Babylon. Though a Hyrke,<br />
Grayson was well respected on the south bank. He had no magic,<br />
of course, but magic wasn’t necessary to work with machines.<br />
Grayson gave me a polite nod, which I returned, before he nimbly<br />
jumped on board Honor. Soon it would be my turn. It should be<br />
easy. Just step on board. After all, I’d crossed the Lethe countless<br />
times already.<br />
But this time was different. For one thing, I’d always had a re‑<br />
turn ticket. And for another, I’d never been trying to pull off the<br />
near impossible. Hiding my magic at St. Lucifer’s would be infi‑<br />
nitely more difficult than it had been at the Ajaccio Academy, my<br />
Hyrke high school, or Gaillard University, my Hyrke undergradu‑
106 Jill Archer<br />
ate college. But declaring I was a woman with waning magic would<br />
not only brand me as the freak I didn’t want to be, it would also set<br />
me on a career path I most emphatically did not want.<br />
Just before six, a tiny beat up boat chugged across the water to‑<br />
ward the dock. Its paint was faded and its engine sputtered, but it<br />
was as fast as it needed to be and soon a scrawny boy of about<br />
twelve was jumping to the pier and tying it off. I sat on my bench<br />
and stared. The boat was about fifty feet in length. A cabin occu‑<br />
pied almost half of the deck. The rest of the deck was covered with<br />
benches. The boy gave a wave to the captain and the engine shut<br />
down. The captain, a short, stocky, gray haired old man, came out<br />
and they exchanged a few words I couldn’t make out. Likely about<br />
something insignificant like fuel or fees. I heard more thumping<br />
on the dock. I guessed I wouldn’t be the only one taking the 6:06<br />
this morning. Someone with a determined step approached. But<br />
when I looked up to see who it was, I wasn’t prepared for my reac‑<br />
tion.<br />
Instead of cold, I felt suddenly hot. Like my body was the letter<br />
I’d inadvertently burned last night. I could feel Peter’s spell kick in.<br />
It acted as a counter force and I realized my magic had flared up<br />
unbidden. It would have been only horrifyingly frightening had it<br />
stopped there. But the magic tug‑of‑war continued in my body un‑<br />
abated. My waning magic wrestled with Peter’s spell. The battle<br />
raced across my skin, over my scalp, into my fingertips, skittering<br />
into the pit of my stomach where it roiled, threatening to boil over.<br />
I clenched the arm of the bench and gritted my teeth. The man<br />
with the determined steps slowed, then stopped and turned, look‑<br />
ing straight at me. I didn’t recognize him, but he stared anyway,<br />
making no movement except, perhaps, a slight widening of his<br />
eyes.<br />
Whether it was Peter’s spell or my own sense of self‑preservation<br />
that prevailed, I don’t know, but the electric revolt of my stomach<br />
stopped, moving out as a feeling of pins and needles in my legs and<br />
arms. The feeling finally settled into a numbing coldness that I
DARK LIGHT OF DAY 107<br />
might have mistaken for simply sitting too long if I weren’t still<br />
looking at the man who had been the mysterious catalyst of the<br />
whole incident.<br />
He was young, around my age, and good looking in a dark,<br />
imposing way. This was a man who would feel at ease threatening,<br />
or possibly even torturing. But I got the impression he’d turn the<br />
screws with a smile, which made him seem even more sinister. His<br />
hair was short, very short, as if he’d just come from the barber. Was<br />
he a Hyrke? I didn’t think he was an Angel or a member of the<br />
Host. I’d memorized every face in the Etincelle Register (it was<br />
easier to avoid other waning magic users if I knew what they looked<br />
like). His face hadn’t been in there. I would have remembered.<br />
But his eyes were more piercing than any Hyrke’s I’d ever seen.<br />
They were so brown they were almost black and they bored into<br />
me with an intensity that made me feel as if I were a butterfly<br />
pinned to a box frame. Then the moment was broken and he<br />
walked over to me.<br />
“Are you crossing on the 6:06?” he asked. His voice was deeper<br />
than I’d expected.<br />
I cleared my throat and pulled my hand free of the arm rest. I<br />
opened my mouth but no words came out. I’m sure I looked like<br />
an idiot. Like I was fourteen again and someone had just asked me<br />
to the school dance. Part of me actually wanted to get on the boat<br />
if he was going to be on it.<br />
“No,” I said, surprising myself. What else was I going to do? Of<br />
course I was getting on the boat, which would make me look dou‑<br />
bly stupid after this response.<br />
He nodded but kept staring down at me, frowning.<br />
“What?” I snapped. He was undeniably attractive but right now<br />
I just wanted him to go away. I had to figure out what I was going<br />
to do.<br />
He shrugged, turned around and walked toward the ferry. I<br />
watched him the whole way. He was tall and solidly built. He<br />
moved gracefully for his size and too soon, he bounded over the
108 Jill Archer<br />
rail of the ferry, into the cabin, and out of my sight. A few other<br />
passengers boarded. None were strangers but there was no one I<br />
knew really well either. At 6:05 a whistle sounded and I knew it was<br />
the last call for boarding. I stood up and grabbed my leather back<br />
pack, lacing one of the straps over my right shoulder. But I did<br />
nothing else. I just stood there.<br />
The stranger emerged from the cabin just as the scrawny boy<br />
was untying the ferry’s ropes from the dock. The boy threw each<br />
rope to the stranger, who caught them easily and stowed them un‑<br />
der the benches. The boy jumped aboard and entered the cabin. I<br />
knew the boat was seconds from leaving.<br />
If I was going to go, it had to be now. What other choice did I<br />
have? My mother had made it clear I wasn’t welcome back home.<br />
Night couldn’t take me in. My waning magic would stunt or kill<br />
everything his tribe would try to grow. At least Peter’s cloaking spell<br />
gave me a chance to hide at St. Lucifer’s, passing as a Hyrke, while<br />
Peter continued to look for the Reversal Spell that might turn my<br />
destructive waning magic into the nurturing waxing magic I was<br />
supposed to have been born with.<br />
I started walking across the pier just as the ferry was leaving. I<br />
hurried my pace. The boat’s bumpers squealed as it began to ma‑<br />
neuver out of its spot. The engine rumbled and the ferry slowly<br />
started to pull away.<br />
I wasn’t going to make it. I started running and covered the last<br />
few yards in seconds, but in those seconds the ferry had moved al‑<br />
most as far. It was now at least five feet from the pier. I stood para‑<br />
lyzed with all manner of emotions— anger (at myself), disbelief (at<br />
the situation), and fear (my constant companion).<br />
Someone yelled.<br />
“Throw your pack!” It was the stranger. He was motioning im‑<br />
patiently with his hands to underscore his advice.<br />
Without thinking I unshouldered my pack and tossed it into the<br />
air. It sailed over the water in a great big arc and landed in the<br />
stranger’s arms. I should be so lucky, I thought. Now I was commit‑
DARK LIGHT OF DAY 109<br />
ted. I stepped to the edge of the pier and jumped out over the water<br />
as far as I could.<br />
It wasn’t far enough.<br />
I slammed into the side of the ferry and almost fell into the<br />
water. I would have, too, if the stranger hadn’t caught both of my<br />
hands with his own. The jump hurt a lot more than I thought it<br />
would. I’d naively thought that I’d either land on the boat with both<br />
my feet under me, or fall in the water unharmed. Landing only<br />
halfway, smashing my head into the side of the railing, and then<br />
being dragged by the ferry, now gaining speed at an alarming rate,<br />
with my legs half‑submerged in the water, just hadn’t occurred to<br />
me.<br />
“Are you okay?” The stranger yelled to me. “Try to drag yourself<br />
up.”<br />
My head was still pounding and I think I was partially in shock<br />
at what I’d just done. I vaguely registered that my hands hurt too.<br />
The stranger was squeezing them so hard I thought he’d crack the<br />
bones. Fear replaced dazed confusion as I realized I might actually<br />
drown if he let go of me. We were now hundreds of yards from the<br />
dock. With my water soaked snow boots, a heavy cloak, and a<br />
banged up head, my chances of surviving the ice cold water were<br />
maybe fifty‑fifty. What in Luck’s name had I done?<br />
I took the stranger’s advice and tried to drag myself aboard. But<br />
my arms were weakened by pain and shock and the drag of the<br />
water on my boots was greater than my resolve. After a few seconds<br />
effort, I fell back and let myself go limp again. I felt my hands slip‑<br />
ping from his.<br />
“Come on! You can do it,” the stranger shouted. “Don’t give up<br />
now!”<br />
I looked up and met his gaze. He was so determined. His rug‑<br />
gedly handsome face was grimly set with the effort of holding my<br />
weight against the side of the boat. He wasn’t going to let me fall<br />
into the water. I was no one to him, but I could tell that he would<br />
to do anything and everything to make sure I made it into the boat.
110 Jill Archer<br />
And from what I’d seen, anything and everything included more<br />
than most Hyrkes had to give.<br />
He let go of my left hand. I screamed . But then he leaned over<br />
the rail, putting himself at substantial risk of falling in too, and<br />
shoved his hand under my armpit. It was awkward because of my<br />
cloak, but somehow he managed to get his arm almost all the way<br />
around me. He started pulling and I finally started helping. It sud‑<br />
denly mattered what this man thought of me. I’d lied to him on the<br />
dock and now here he was trying to save me from a drastically<br />
stupid, ill‑timed jump to the boat I’d sworn I wasn’t boarding.<br />
After a full minute of further struggling— obviously everyone<br />
inside the cabin was oblivious to my plight— we managed to get<br />
me over the railing and onto the boat. We collapsed together on<br />
deck, entangled in each other’s arms, my cloak billowing out and<br />
settling over us like a blanket. For a few seconds neither of us said<br />
anything. We just lay there, panting from our efforts. I had no idea<br />
what he was thinking but my thoughts were positively racing.<br />
What, in all of Luck’s scorched Hell, was I going to say to this man?<br />
I disentangled first and hauled myself up from the deck. I<br />
thought I saw a flash of disappointment in his face but I couldn’t be<br />
sure. Then he rose too and stood in front of me. His frank assess‑<br />
ment of me was unnerving. His gaze swept over me as if he already<br />
knew every one of my secrets. That would be dangerous, I thought,<br />
and doubled my resolve to play the part of a credible Hyrke.<br />
“Thank you,” I gushed. At least my gratefulness wasn’t fake. I<br />
stuck out my hand. “I’m Noon.”<br />
“Ari Carmine,” he said, shaking my hand. His grip was gentle<br />
and he turned my hand palm‑side down and rubbed his thumb<br />
across my bruised knuckles. “I’m sorry I hurt your hands,” he said,<br />
and for a moment I thought he might raise my hand to his lips in<br />
some antiquated chivalrous gesture. But he switched his gaze from<br />
my hand to my face and something he saw there must have made<br />
him change his mind. He released my hand and let it drop.<br />
“Do you have a last name, Noon?”
DARK LIGHT OF DAY 111<br />
I hated that question. My last name produced reactions in people<br />
that I’d rather avoid. I paused and thought about making something<br />
up, but I’d lied to him once already. Now that he’d save me from<br />
possibly drowning, I didn’t want to lie to him anymore than I had to.<br />
“Onyx.”<br />
He nodded. Like he’d expected it. Which wasn’t what I’d ex‑<br />
pected. Hyrkes who didn’t know me usually looked wary when they<br />
first heard my last name.<br />
“I know your father,” he said.<br />
Doesn’t everyone? I thought, but just nodded. The Demon<br />
Council, that body politic that ran Halja and everyone in it, had an<br />
executive head. The Executive position was always held by a Mae‑<br />
gester. For the past twenty‑one years, that Maegester had been<br />
Karanos Onyx, my father.<br />
“So you’re the Executive’s daughter. One of the Hyrke twins<br />
born to Host parents.”<br />
I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like he might have put a little<br />
too much emphasis on the word Hyrke. On the other hand, it<br />
seemed more likely that deciding to attend St. Lucifer’s was in‑<br />
creasing my normal paranoia.<br />
“That’s right. My brother’s Nocturo,” I said, careful to use the<br />
Maegester’s name Night had been given at birth instead of the<br />
nickname he’d adopted later.<br />
“So, what brings you to cross the Lethe, Noon?”<br />
I could have just told him. Hyrkes attended St. Lucifer’s too<br />
(otherwise my plan to masquerade as one wouldn’t work). But this<br />
guy seemed a little too well informed of my background and I<br />
didn’t want to get into any discussion about demon law or anything<br />
to do with Maegesters, Executives, demons, or otherwise.<br />
Still, I was trying not to lie.<br />
“You,” I blurted out. He looked surprised for a moment and<br />
then grinned. What a sight. I couldn’t help thinking of that pre‑<br />
Apocalyptic nursery tale, something about a wolf and the line, “the<br />
better to eat you with.” He looked positively carnivorous.
112 Jill Archer<br />
“I wondered why you changed your mind,” he said, chuckling.<br />
The rumbling sound of it made me swallow. I shook my head. This<br />
whole introduction had gone horribly wrong.<br />
“No. I just meant if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be crossing at<br />
all,” I said with as much dignity and sincerity as I had left. “Thank<br />
you, again.” I turned to go.<br />
There was something about him that made me nervous. I<br />
couldn’t say whether it was a bad nervous or a good nervous. But I<br />
had too many other things to worry about to stick around figuring<br />
out which one. I walked over to the cabin door and reached for the<br />
door handle. His hand closed around mine in a way that was be‑<br />
coming too familiar too fast.<br />
“Mind if I sit with you?”<br />
I stared down at his hand over mine wondering what to do. I<br />
would look seriously horrible if I couldn’t just sit with someone<br />
who had recently rescued me from falling into the Lethe.<br />
“On one condition,” I said.<br />
“Anything,” he said. I raised my eyebrows. He grinned again. I<br />
fought a tickly feeling in my stomach— fear or excitement?<br />
“No more questions.”<br />
He looked disappointed but then brightened. “Fine,” he said.<br />
“We can talk about me instead,” and he locked his arm in mine<br />
and led me over to a seat near a heater.<br />
True to his word, he told me about himself. He’d been raised in<br />
Bradbury, a working class Hyrke neighborhood in the southwest<br />
section of New Babylon. He had a younger brother, Matt, who was<br />
seventeen and trying to decide where to go to college. The top<br />
contenders were my alma mater, Gaillard, and the Engineering<br />
Institute. Apparently Matt was some kind of mechanical genius. I<br />
told Ari that I’d gone to Gaillard.<br />
“You’re kidding?” he said, sounding genuinely surprised. Was<br />
he surprised at finding a connection between us, no matter how<br />
tenuous? New Babylonians tended to do that when they found they<br />
shared something in common with a stranger. That’s what hap‑
DARK LIGHT OF DAY 113<br />
pened when you lived in a city populated with a million people. Or<br />
was he surprised that someone who’d willingly jumped off a pier to<br />
a moving boat would be accepted at Gaillard? Gaillard wasn’t for<br />
academic slackers. You had to have excellent grades just to get in,<br />
let alone stand out against your peers. My parents had sent Night<br />
and me there before the ink was dry on our Ajaccio Academy diplo‑<br />
mas. It was the perfect solution for them. The urban campus had<br />
no plants for me to kill and the Hyrke curriculum offered no occult<br />
training to confuse (or educate) us.<br />
Ari told me he’d gone to Etincelle last night to stay with his<br />
aunt. She was his mother’s sister and I gathered they were close.<br />
He’d brought her a birthday present— a garnet pendant on a silver<br />
chain— because the sisters’ favorite color was red.<br />
“What’s your favorite color?” he said suddenly.<br />
I opened my mouth to answer but then realized I’d be opening<br />
the door again to further questions about myself so I said instead,<br />
“What’s yours?”<br />
“Black,” he said slowly, looking at my hair and then bringing<br />
his gaze back to my eyes. My heart skipped a beat. I hoped he’d<br />
think my rosy cheeks were due to the cold.<br />
“Who’s your aunt?” I asked, thinking I would probably know her.<br />
“Judy Pinkerton.”<br />
“Oh, right,” I said. “She lives on the Decemai Estate.” He nod‑<br />
ded. The Decemai family lived off the Lemiscus too but miles<br />
from us.<br />
I felt myself opening up a little as we talked. Ari wasn’t the type<br />
to burst into spontaneous laughter. But I had fun. It had been a<br />
long time since I’d chatted it up with a Hyrke. Their conversations<br />
always seemed so normal. Maybe pretending to be a Hyrke at St.<br />
Lucifer’s wouldn’t be so bad after all.<br />
Too soon the crossing ended and our little ferry started docking<br />
on the north bank. I grabbed my pack from underneath my seat<br />
and prepared to go. Ari grabbed my hand— a not unpleasant habit<br />
he had adopted over the last hour or so.
114 Jill Archer<br />
“Let’s get together again,” he said.<br />
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”<br />
“Why? This crossing was one of the best I’ve ever had.”<br />
Wow. Really? Surprisingly, I felt the same, but I knew he<br />
wouldn’t have said that if he’d known he’d been sitting next to<br />
someone who could instantly turn him to ashes.<br />
“Come on, I want to hear more about you, Noon. You made<br />
me talk about myself almost the whole time. Next time, it’s your<br />
turn.”<br />
I just stared at him, speechless and nearly numb with the power<br />
of my wanting things to be different.<br />
“Come on, you can’t hide forever.” Was that my plan? I hope I<br />
didn’t look as pained as I felt.<br />
I shook my head. “I’ll see you around.”<br />
I resisted the impulse to hug him. Sure, he’d maybe saved my<br />
life and we’d spent a pleasant hour crossing the Lethe, but I didn’t<br />
even really know this guy.<br />
“I’m sure you will,” he said and smiled. Then he turned around<br />
and walked in the opposite direction of where I was headed.<br />
I watched him for awhile, wondering if I’d made a mistake. I’d<br />
had Hyrke flings before. He might be a welcome distraction from<br />
all the stress St. Lucifer’s was sure to heap on me. On the other<br />
hand, it was more likely the guy would become an unwanted com‑<br />
plication and I turned away. I walked for awhile and then couldn’t<br />
help myself. I glanced over my shoulder. Ari was gone. I could see<br />
our ferry though, tied up and loading passengers bound for Etince‑<br />
lle. Its name was as faded as the rest of it, but I could just make out<br />
the lettering: FIRST LIGHT.<br />
So much for the augury idea. A boat named after its arrival time<br />
told me nothing about my future. I turned my back on it and kept<br />
walking.
ALCHEMYSTIC<br />
Book One of the<br />
Spellmason Chronicles<br />
by Anton Strout<br />
An <strong>Ace</strong> October 2012 Paperback<br />
First in a brand-new series from the author of<br />
Simon Canderous Novels.<br />
Alexandra Belarus is a struggling artist living in New York<br />
City, even though her family is rich in real estate,<br />
including a towering, gothic Gramercy Park building built<br />
by her great-great grandfather. But the truth of her<br />
bloodline is revealed when she is attacked in the streets<br />
and saved by an inhumanly powerful winged figure.<br />
A figure that knows the Belarus name . . .<br />
Lexi’s great-great grandfather was a spellmason—an artisan<br />
who could work magic on stone. But in his day, dark forces<br />
worked against him and his, so he left a<br />
spell of protection on his family. Now that Lexi is in danger,<br />
the spell has awoken her ancestor’s most trusted and<br />
fearsome creation: a gargoyle named Stanis.<br />
Lexi and Stanis are equally surprised to find themselves<br />
bound. But as they learn to work together, they realize<br />
that they need each other to save the city they<br />
both love . . .<br />
Praise for the Simon Canderous novels:<br />
“Following Simon’s adventures is like being the pinball<br />
in an especially antic game, but it’s well worth the<br />
wear and tear.”<br />
—Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author
As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is,<br />
in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.<br />
‑Victor Hugo<br />
1. Stanis<br />
W aking was easy. Something primal in the night sky called out<br />
to me like a banshee at the witching hour. When was the<br />
last time I had even encountered one of them, I wondered? I could<br />
not recall that . . . or much of anything. But that was always the way<br />
of waking, I remembered. The lingering disorientation of dream‑<br />
ing held its sway for a moment longer before slipping from my<br />
grasp like leaves on the wind. The haunting, faintly familiar face<br />
that had been the focus of them once again faded. Stanis, the fig‑<br />
ure said, and nothing more. I fought to hold the image—that of a<br />
pale gentleman with wild, black tangles of hair and kind blue eyes.<br />
Had the hair always been black? I was not sure. A haunted im‑<br />
age from frozen fragments of my broken memories swore it re‑<br />
called this exact same figure with a full head of gray as well, but<br />
already I could feel something in my mind pushing those thoughts<br />
aside as the routine of waking took over.<br />
I stretched, every muscle in my form crying out with pure joy.<br />
As I relaxed my body, an intense itch flared down two long sections<br />
of my back. My wings, I remembered. Of course. I looked back over<br />
my shoulder to find the giant stone wings like those of a bat curled
118 Anton Strout<br />
close to my back. I worked the muscles along my shoulder blades,<br />
my heavy wings extending, flexing out for a moment to relieve the<br />
itch they had called up upon my waking, both pleasure and pain in<br />
the gesture.<br />
A hunger awoke in my chest, but I forced myself to ignore it for<br />
the moment. It would win—as it always did—but for now I fought<br />
it off as my hearing focused in on the sounds of the city rising up<br />
all around me. The occasional bleat of traffic down below sounded<br />
out, much like the sheep I remembered that used to roam the vast<br />
fields that once occupied this island.<br />
Manhattan, I recalled. Long ago, the whole island had looked<br />
more like the tiny park in front of the building where I had awoken,<br />
the one the humans called Gramercy.<br />
A cool wind blew through the green leaves of the trees in it—<br />
had they not just been bare?<br />
Had the word Manhattan been right, either? I was not sure and<br />
forced myself to concentrate through my lingering confusion. I<br />
looked around the towers of glass and light rising all around me,<br />
hoping for familiarity and glad when I discerned a few things that<br />
still seemed unchanged in this modern world.<br />
There was still the tallest tower that stood to the north of my roof‑<br />
top, its lone spire illuminated in bright lights, this time in the colors<br />
red, blue and white. Some time soon the skies would light up in color‑<br />
ful explosive bursts, the humans celebrating, cheering, but surely it<br />
was not that time of year again already. I did not understand the ritual,<br />
but it was something I used to mark the passing of the years.<br />
I turned from the building and its light, looking south now.<br />
Things had changed a great deal there in recent times. Two other<br />
towers had stood there, once the highest and greatest points on that<br />
horizon, but now there was nothing where I thought those struc‑<br />
tures should be, adding to my sense of disorientation.<br />
Before I could wonder too long if I was mistaken in my thoughts,<br />
I felt that gnawing hunger rising up again in my chest, a burning<br />
need to do. What, though, I still was not quite sure. It picked away
ALCHEMYSTIC 119<br />
at me like a hammer at stone until I could ignore it no longer. The<br />
itching sensation between my shoulders rejoined it cries and I gave<br />
into the pull of it all. Looking back over my shoulder, I watched<br />
my stone wings unfurl from against my body once more, stretching<br />
them twice as wide as I stood tall. The itch died as I worked them,<br />
retracting the wings close to my body and then extending them to<br />
their fullest over and over.<br />
All the sensations rose to the center of my thoughts, a strong<br />
and unrecalled memory forcing itself forward—one of the rules.<br />
Protect.<br />
With wings extended, I leapt off my perch along the edge of the<br />
roof I called home, my body dropping into the night sky. As my<br />
form tumbled toward the park called Gramercy, my wings recalled<br />
memories of flight, lifting me before I struck the street full of traffic<br />
below. I set off, heading north, the red, blue and white lights of the<br />
tallest tower a flaming beacon that oriented me, all other thoughts<br />
leaving me as that one word once again consumed all other<br />
thoughts and burned them away.<br />
Protect.<br />
But just what I was meant to protect, I was unsure.<br />
2. Alexandra<br />
Punching clay felt a lot more satisfying than any sexy time Ghost<br />
pottery wheel spinning nonsense ever could, I thought to myself.<br />
Each strike released my anger as my balled up fists sank reward‑<br />
ingly into it, the unfinished statue form still too soft to actually do<br />
any damage to my wrists. I had never spent my time punching<br />
much of anything, but rage held its sway over me and I couldn’t<br />
stop myself.<br />
I pulled my hands free, flecks of the clay flying into my long<br />
black hair. Normally I’d have already tied it up while working in
120 Anton Strout<br />
our old unused Belarus family art studio up here on the seventh<br />
floor. But then again normally, someone, namely my brother,<br />
wouldn’t have dressed my latest attempt at a Gothic inspired statue<br />
in a basketball jersey, mirrored sunglasses, and wrapped its now<br />
deformed hand around a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. As a final com‑<br />
ment of my artistry, a half smoked cigarette hung from its mouth,<br />
and the top of its head was adorned in a Statue of Liberty‑type<br />
crown made of discarded butts.<br />
A sound from somewhere up above the art studio, on the roof of<br />
the building itself, snapped me out of my red rage, making me step<br />
back from my now even worse looking statue mock up‑in‑progress.<br />
Whatever potential I had seen in it was now lost, its form pummeled<br />
and twisted like something Salvador Dali would have envisioned, but<br />
not in a good way. I let out a long sigh and wiped my now gray hands<br />
down the front of the overalls I preferred to wear in the art space. They<br />
weren’t exactly flattering, but function won out over fashion in my<br />
book, right down to the paint and clay all over them. I didn’t bother to<br />
keep them clear of the black tank top I wore, either. It was already<br />
coated in enough clay it was most likely trash bound anyway.<br />
I walked across the large open floor of my family’s building, out<br />
of my great‑great grandfather’s art space with its dozens of historic<br />
pieces and hundreds of puzzle boxes he had created, and out<br />
through the library, sidestepping around one of the many mid‑<br />
Nineteenth century sofas.<br />
Having heard the sounds on the roof, which I was sure meant<br />
my brother, Devon, was up there, I threw open the door leading<br />
out to the small terrace just below it, walked out, and turned to<br />
stare up at it.<br />
“Hey, asshole!” I shouted. “Get the hell down here, right now!”<br />
No response. Typical Devon. I stormed back in, leaving the<br />
July air to pour into the building, which was musty enough to need<br />
a good airing out every once in awhile. I went back into the studio,<br />
headed for the table I had left my shoulder bag on. I tore it open<br />
with such a fury I shocked myself, worried for a moment that I had
ALCHEMYSTIC 121<br />
ruined it. The thought riled me more, to the point that by the time<br />
I found my phone my hands were shaking.<br />
I clicked on “Devon,” then waited for it to dial through. My<br />
eyes panned the room as I stood there. Part of me was already se‑<br />
cretly glad I had destroyed my work. Compared to everything else<br />
around the art studio—here thanks to the long ago talents and<br />
skills of Alexander Belarus—mine was a pale imitation.<br />
“Yeah?” my brother’s voice barked into the phone, causing me<br />
to jump. Short. Curt. So very Devon.<br />
“Get down from the roof,” I said. “Now!”<br />
His usual heavy sigh came through the phone. “Lexi, what are<br />
you rambling on about now? I’m waiting on a meeting.”<br />
I pulled my phone away from me face and checked the time.<br />
“At this time of night? It’s nearly eleven!”<br />
“Listen,” he said. “Sometimes you’re dealing with contractors,<br />
unions, architects, zoning, permits . . . and that shit waits for no<br />
man, got it? You take the meetings when they come. C’mon, I real‑<br />
ize you have no grasp of the family business . . .”<br />
“Nor do I have to,” I said. “That’s what they have you for. I have<br />
zero interest in real estate development.”<br />
“Aww,” my brother mocked. “I thought you were all about the<br />
Belarus legacy.”<br />
“Moving property and writing contracts aren’t the Belarus leg‑<br />
acy,” I said. “It’s the actual art and architecture that our great‑great<br />
grandfather crafted for this city. You’d know that if you actually<br />
opened a book in our family library or looked at one of his pieces<br />
of art here. Speaking of which . . .”<br />
Devon chuckled. “Hey, you did just say you wanted me to<br />
spend more time in the art studio, right?”<br />
“Not defacing my art,” I said. “I would appreciate it if you’d<br />
keep your hands off of my work.”<br />
“That’s not work,” he said. “Dressing up, learning the family<br />
business . . . that’s work ”<br />
“First born son gets all those perks,” I said. “Not me.” I had never
122 Anton Strout<br />
even been on our father’s radar for that type of stuff. I got to be all<br />
girly girl, all pretty and petite, apparently. Truthfully, I didn’t give a<br />
shit about all the construction and landlording . . . and Devon knew<br />
it, this not being the first time our differences on honoring the fam‑<br />
ily’s name had put us at odds. Our true legacy, I had always and still<br />
believed, lay in the beauty of the buildings my grandfather had de‑<br />
signed. My work as a sculptor was the best way I knew to pay homage<br />
to that. For my brother, however, the expansion of our already vast<br />
Manhattan landholdings was the only way to honor the Belarus<br />
name. He didn’t care about design or craftsmanship as my great<br />
grandfather had. He cared about cold hard cash.<br />
“You should take an interest in the family business,” he said, his<br />
voice dark now, his business tone.<br />
“Are we the mob now, Devon?”<br />
“Carving pretty things isn’t where the money is,” he said. “That’s<br />
why I did what I did to your precious statue, to prove my point.<br />
That stuff’s not important for the Belarus name. It’s land. It’s prop‑<br />
erty. Jesus, Lexi, do you have any idea how this company runs?<br />
This is about land in Manhattan, about who controls it, and who<br />
can earn off it.”<br />
“Half this city owes Alexander Belarus a debt of gratitude!”<br />
“Fine, Lex, I’ll build him a museum. We’ll put all his stuff be‑<br />
hind glass, charge admission. Then we might make some money.<br />
You’d be happy. I’d be happy. Everybody wins. Will that suffice?”<br />
“Not really,” I said, unable to let go of my anger, my short nails<br />
digging into the palm of my free hand. “You’d probably just fuck<br />
up everything in the museum like you did here in the studio.”<br />
“Give me a break, will you?” he fired back, his voice chance,<br />
grew darker, more serious. “There are bigger things out there than<br />
all that playing around you do.”<br />
“If history and art are playing around,” I said, “then so be it.”<br />
“It wouldn’t hurt you to learn the family business,” he said,<br />
short. “I have to go. Meeting time.”<br />
“And it wouldn’t hurt you to be a better brother,” I said. “Stay
ALCHEMYSTIC 123<br />
away from my stuff, Devon. We’re not kids anymore. I feel stupid<br />
even having to say it.” Tears of frustration began to pour and before<br />
he could get in the last word as he always had to, I ended the call,<br />
slamming my phone down onto the soft leather of my bag. I moved<br />
into the library, opting for one of the more shadowy sofas as far<br />
from the lights of the art studio as possible. The quiet darkness<br />
calmed me a little, but thinking about the ruined model for my<br />
eventual sculpture kept nagging at me.<br />
I didn’t know how long I had been sitting there—minutes, a half<br />
hour—when another sound caught my attention, this time coming<br />
from out on the terrace that stood outside the set of double doors off<br />
across the far end of the floor. Footsteps. I snapped out of my funk and<br />
wiped my tears away as best I could. A small ray of happiness welled<br />
up in me at the sight of my favorite short blonde, now sporting fresh<br />
bangs that sat just above her black horn rimmed glasses. Her dancer’s<br />
bag was thrown across her body from one shoulder to the opposite hip,<br />
and she twirled around in perfect form once inside the doors.<br />
“You going to air condition all of Manhattan now?” Aurora Tor‑<br />
res asked, pulling the doors shut.<br />
“Maybe, Rory,” I said. “I thought your apartment down in the<br />
Village could use it, what with your Thermostat issues.”<br />
Rory started across the room toward me. “Appreciate it. Our<br />
central air still isn’t working. If it doesn’t get fixed by the Fourth, I’ll<br />
leave it to Marshall to deal with the landlord. He’s used to conflict<br />
after all, what with running Roll For Initiative.”<br />
“Marshall’s game shop is still open?”<br />
She nodded. “It’s amazing how spending all your savings for<br />
college on your hobby‑turned‑business can you keep you going,”<br />
Rory said. “But conflict seems to be part of his day to day. They do<br />
a lot of ‘war gaming’, or so he tells me. I don’t get any of it.”<br />
“Let your roommate fight the battles,” I said. “Nice.”<br />
She stopped in front of my sofa, pulling her evidently heavy bag<br />
off her shoulder and shaking it at me. “Like I’ve got time between<br />
my course load and dance rehearsals.”
124 Anton Strout<br />
“I thought summers were for lightening all that,” I said.<br />
“Not when you take a summer intensive,” she said. “And it is<br />
intensive, overachiever that I am. Then there’s the workout of<br />
climbing up the fire escape to avoid the rest of the Belarus clan.<br />
My body hurts.” She put the bag down, bending with it, and that’s<br />
when she noticed my face. “What’s wrong?”<br />
I wiped at my eyes with the back of my forearm, avoiding the<br />
flecks of clay there. “Three guesses,” I said.<br />
“Douglas Belarus,” she said, then tapped the side of her head<br />
like she was thinking. “He’s worried that his daughter doesn’t spend<br />
enough time getting holy and taking to the knee at our Sister of<br />
Perpetual Bowing and Scraping.”<br />
I laughed despite my tears at the truth of it, snorting through<br />
my now running nose. “Wrong, although I’m sure he’d love it if I<br />
did join him more often. Love the dad, but not really looking to get<br />
my church on that many times a week.”<br />
“Okay then,” she said. “Juliana Belarus, caring mother but a<br />
quiet mouse when it comes to who wears the pants in the family.”<br />
I shook my head. “Strike two.”<br />
“Ahh,” Rory said, dropping onto the sofa next to me. She threw<br />
her arm around my shoulder and squeezed, her deceptively thin<br />
frame still well muscled enough to make it hurt a little. “Big brother<br />
strikes again. What did he do this time, as we continue on into the<br />
third decade of the Sibling Cold War?”<br />
I pointed over to the art studio side of the floor. Rory’s eyes<br />
caught site of it and she let out a low, slow whistle.<br />
“Wow,” she said. “Made your art his own personal punching<br />
bag, I see.”<br />
My face went flush with embarrassment, but I couldn’t help but<br />
let a small laugh escape my lips. “Actually . . . that part was me.”<br />
“Really now?” Rory stood and walked over to the area, circling<br />
the table the tall slab of half molded clay sat on. “I’m impressed,<br />
Lexi. You been working out? Maybe I can make a dancer out of<br />
you yet. You did some serious damage here.”
ALCHEMYSTIC 125<br />
“The punches are mine, all the rest is Devon, though.”<br />
“It’s good you got out some of your aggression there, Lexi,” she<br />
said, and I gave her a wary sidelong look. “I mean it! Look, I know he’s<br />
family and all, but some people are just born mean‑spirited. He’s a<br />
natural born asshole, my dear. Your reaction to his bullshit is normal.”<br />
I stood up, walking back toward the art studio. “I knew I picked<br />
cubby partners well back in third grade,” I said. “Thanks.”<br />
Rory gave an elaborate flourish and a bow, each motion fluid<br />
and graceful.<br />
My phone vibrated on my bag at the table next to her. Rory<br />
snatched it up and waved it for me to see. “Speak of the devil,” she<br />
said. “It’s Devon.”<br />
“Give it,” I said, but Rory held it away from me while it kept on<br />
ringing.<br />
“No,” she said. “I know you, Lexi. You’re just going to be the<br />
one to be all apologetic and try to make nice, as usual. And it’s not<br />
okay. The way he treats you borders on abuse. You have every right<br />
to be pissed. Say it.”<br />
“This is stupid,” I said. “Just give me the phone.”<br />
“Say it,” she repeated, unwavering. There was almost a pixie‑ish<br />
glee in her eyes.<br />
“Fine,” I said, just wanting the phone at this point. “I have every<br />
right to be pissed.”<br />
Rory rolled her eyes. “Mean it.”<br />
Whether I was exasperated with her game or the fact that I just<br />
wanted my damn phone, I wasn’t sure. I only know that it triggered<br />
something deep inside me that snapped. “I have every write to be<br />
pissed!” I shouted.<br />
Rory jumped at that in surprise, then handed the phone over to<br />
me. “Excellent,” she said. “Now have at him!”<br />
I swiped my finger across the screen, lifted the phone to my head<br />
and screamed into it. “Go fuck yourself, Devon,” I said. “Next time<br />
you see me, you’d better walk off in the opposite direction. For real.”<br />
A pronounced silence filled the line.
126 Anton Strout<br />
“Hey, ass!” Rory shouted with a bit of a suppressed giggle to it,<br />
apparently loving the fury I was throwing at him.<br />
A man’s voice came on the line but it was not my brother. “Is<br />
this Lexi? Lexi Belarus?”<br />
“Only my friends call me Lexi,” I snapped, ignoring the strang‑<br />
er’s butchering of my last name. It came out Bell La Roose, remind‑<br />
ing me of the childhood jibes of Bella Moose, not at all sounding<br />
like Bell Air Us. That didn’t bother me so much. I was more upset<br />
at him using the familiar version of my first name. “Which one of<br />
Devon’s friends is this? You can go screw yourself too!”<br />
“Sorry,” the man said. “That’s the only name that the phone<br />
shows.”<br />
“Who the hell is this?”<br />
“This is officer Michael Lawrence of the NYPD. May I ask how<br />
you are related to Devon?”<br />
“I’m his sister,” I said, my anger mixing with growing curiosity.<br />
“We found this phone lying on the street, and you’re the last<br />
number dialed. I think you should know that there’s a distinct pos‑<br />
sibility your brother may be in trouble.”<br />
“Trouble how exactly?”<br />
“Do you have any association with a building on St. Mark’s<br />
Place?”<br />
I had to stop and think for a moment. “I think so,” I said, my<br />
blood running cold. “That’s one of my family’s properties. We’re in<br />
real estate.”<br />
“I regret to inform you that there’s been an accident.”<br />
“What kind of accident?” I went to lean back against one of the<br />
drafting tables in the studio, but missed it completely. Rory caught<br />
me and didn’t let go, especially after I had said the word accident.<br />
“A building collapse, miss,” the officer said. “Your family’s build‑<br />
ing.”<br />
“That can’t be,” I said, feeling all the emotions of the past few<br />
minutes drain away, a little more every second. “I just spoke to<br />
him . . . maybe half an hour ago . . .? You’re mistaken.”
ALCHEMYSTIC 127<br />
“I wish I were, miss,” the man said. “But it is unlikely.”<br />
“Maybe he wasn’t there,” I said, panic filling my chest, the beat<br />
of my heart rising up into my throat. “Maybe he got out. That’s why<br />
you were able to find his phone.”<br />
“Was he wearing a ring with a dark green stone in it on his left<br />
hand?”<br />
“Yes,” I said, clutching at the similar one hanging around my<br />
own neck from an old silver chain. “It’s a family thing. There<br />
should be a family crest of sorts carved in it. Kind of looks like a bat<br />
wings surrounded by an octagon, stylized ‘B’ on it.”<br />
“Yes, miss, I see it,” he said. “Since you were the last person he<br />
talked to, we’re going to need you to come down to the Ninth Pre‑<br />
cinct and identify his hand.”<br />
“Just his hand?” I asked, a nervous laugh overtaking me.<br />
Holy hell,” Rory whispered, then clamped her hands over her<br />
mouth.<br />
“Jesus Christ,” a man in the background said. “Give me that<br />
goddamn thing. Hello?”<br />
An older voice this time.<br />
“Yes? What’s going on?”<br />
“I’m sorry about that, miss. My partner shouldn’t have said that.”<br />
“Just tell me what is going on!” I said, shaking now. “Why was<br />
he asking me about my brother’s hand?”<br />
“Because,” the older man said. “It’s all we found. It was still<br />
holding the phone.”<br />
3. Alexandra<br />
W hen you have your own catacombs—in the basement of<br />
your family’s building no less—having a funeral is a rela‑<br />
tively quick and painless affair. Painless, I suppose, except for the<br />
tons of bricks that had crushed my brother, that is. Still, as I stood
128 Anton Strout<br />
down there on the upper of the two levels among family and friends<br />
to bury Devon, I found just being in the space comforting despite<br />
the circumstances under which I was down there. Ornately carved<br />
Gothic pillars rose up high above, the aisles full of stone tombs and<br />
markers where our ancestors lay buried for well over a century, all<br />
of it dimly lit by the addition of subtle modern lighting that set a<br />
somber subterranean tone for the catacombs, keeping the solemn<br />
nature of the space intact.<br />
The space was packed, mostly with men who smelled a bit too<br />
much like cigars and cologne. Despite the fact that everyone<br />
around me was dressed up, I still felt like I had stepped out of a<br />
Tim Burton movie in my long black dress covered in antique lace,<br />
courtesy of a short lived period Rory and I spent in a Goth phase.<br />
Couple that with my inability to get rid of anything, I was surprised<br />
I had actually found something somewhat suitable to wear, some‑<br />
thing other than overalls covered in clay and paint.<br />
“You okay?” Rory asked in a whisper from where she stood right<br />
at my shoulder.<br />
My best friend stood at my right shoulder, her roommate, Mar‑<br />
shall Blackmoore at my left. Both of them were dressed to the<br />
nines. Rory’s hair was mostly hidden by the hat and short black veil<br />
she wore over her face and I was surprised to see Marshall in a suit<br />
and tie. I was surprised to see he owned more than shirts with<br />
clever sayings, superheroes or gaming references I always had to<br />
have explained out to me. He put a hand awkwardly around my<br />
shoulder, but it was a welcome gesture. His kind brown eyes peeked<br />
out from under a mess of unkempt black hair, full of sincerity, so<br />
much so I wanted to cry, although at the moment I surprised my‑<br />
self by realizing I was slowly filling up with a building anger.<br />
“Look at all these people,” I said, keeping my voice low. We<br />
were standing far enough away from my mother and father who<br />
were right up by the tomb itself that they wouldn’t here, but I didn’t<br />
want to draw any attention from the gathered crowd either. “Did<br />
any of them even know my brother?”
ALCHEMYSTIC 129<br />
“Maybe,” Rory said. “Your family has its fingers in a lot of pies.<br />
Delicious, real estate pies. And let’s face it . . . you don’t really<br />
know the business side of things all that well, Lexi, so of course<br />
they’re all strangers to you.”<br />
“Why do I feel like that’s all about to change?” I said, pushing<br />
down a suddenly realized panic that rose in my throat just pictur‑<br />
ing myself faking my way through the family business. “God, I look<br />
horrible in pantsuits.”<br />
“Alexandra, I hardly think your clothing is what you should be<br />
fixating on,” Rory said.<br />
I didn’t like my emotions running the show and concentrated<br />
on my breathing. It was hard to have a panic attack if you could<br />
control your breathing. “Fine then,” I said as my heart began to<br />
calm. “I’ll fixate instead on being angry at all these strangers being<br />
here. Happy?”<br />
“That’s healthy,” Marshall added in a whisper, giving her a<br />
thumbs up. “Good work, Rory.”<br />
“It’s not her fault,” I said. “It’s all me. Hell, I don’t even have the<br />
right to be angry at them for their lack of sincerity. Who am I to<br />
judge them? I’m the person who wanted to kill him myself the<br />
night he passed away. I was so furious at him for messing up my<br />
stupid art project . . . which just sounds petty now.”<br />
“Hold on,” Rory said. “Never forget. Your brother was an ass‑<br />
hole, Lexi. Not to piss on the dead.”<br />
My heart hurt, but Rory was right. Still . . . “He was my asshole,”<br />
I said, as if claiming some sort of ownership of him somehow could<br />
fix the conflicting feelings I was having about his passing.<br />
“Don’t beat yourself up too much about it,” Rory said. “Just<br />
because someone died doesn’t excuse their behavior in life.”<br />
The services closer to the tomb itself ended and the crowd be‑<br />
gan to break up. Men and women in pricy clothing who I didn’t<br />
know started offering me their condolences and all I could do was<br />
shake their hands and nod politely with a solemn thank you. Even‑<br />
tually, my mother, father and the spiritual leader of his church who
130 Anton Strout<br />
conducted the ceremony would make their way over to me and my<br />
friends, but I didn’t plan on being around for that. I wasn’t sure I<br />
could take the churchier side of things I was sure an occasion like<br />
this would bring out of my father.<br />
“Let’s go lower,” I said to my friends after shaking a mothbally<br />
smelling woman’s hand. I spun and headed back off into the rest of<br />
the crypt through an ocean of businessmen and women. “If I have<br />
to shake another hand, I’m going to start crying again.”<br />
I led Rory and Marshall back through the catacombs, the sound<br />
of the funeral fading off into the distance until it was no more than<br />
a far away echo. Toward the rear of the upper floor of the cata‑<br />
combs a long sloping staircase came into view and I led us down<br />
them into an older section.<br />
“I’ve never been to a funeral like this,” Marshall said, looking<br />
around the space. “Like ever. Then again, most of my friend’s don’t<br />
have their own family crypt.”<br />
Rory laughed, but there was a hesitancy in it. “How come the<br />
older we get the creepier this place gets? We used to tear through<br />
here playing. Then we got all teen and moody and started listening<br />
to The Cure down here. Now, I just wish it were a regular base‑<br />
ment.”<br />
“I miss my basement,” Marshall added. “You don’t really get<br />
them here in the city much.”<br />
I gave him a weak smile. “You miss it? Why? What was in your<br />
basement?”<br />
“Most of my old gaming stuff,” he said. “Rule books, minia‑<br />
tures, maps . . .”<br />
“Wow,” Rory said, slapping a hand over his mouth as we contin‑<br />
ued walking. “Just . . . wow.”<br />
“Yep,” Marshall said with a mix of pride and shame once he<br />
pried her hand away. “I’m a poster child for alpha geeks every‑<br />
where.”<br />
“Alpha?” Rory asked. “Really? You’re ranking yourself that high?”<br />
“I have to,” he said, nodding. “Otherwise, I was just an only
ALCHEMYSTIC 131<br />
child playing Dungeons & Dragons pretty much alone down there,<br />
and that’s just sad.”<br />
Rory’s mouth went to speak, but then she stopped herself and<br />
the crypt went quiet. I really wish she had continued on, though.<br />
Their lightness made my heart less heavy.<br />
“Not to be morose,” Marshall said, turning to me, “but doesn’t<br />
this place creep you out a little?”<br />
“Why?” I said. “Sometimes I come down here for a little inspi‑<br />
ration in my art.”<br />
“What’s so inspirational?” Marshall asked, looking around with<br />
nervous eyes. “All it inspires in me is a healthy fear of zombies and<br />
bloodsuckers. No offense to Clan Belarus.”<br />
I waved it off. “None taken.”<br />
“Strange as it may sound, I said, “this place is comforting to me.<br />
This crypt is original to the building. Which means my great‑great<br />
grandfather planned this place out at the same time. It makes me<br />
feel very connected to it. With all his artistry and architecture<br />
sprinkled throughout Manhattan, it’s just amazing to have some<br />
that’s, I don’t know, just ours.”<br />
“He’s buried here too?” he asked.<br />
Rory gave him a look of disapproval through her veil.<br />
“What?” he asked. “I’ve never been down here. We always hang<br />
out up in the art studio and library.”<br />
“His library,” Rory said. “Everything about this place is his, so<br />
yeah, he’s buried here.”<br />
“Generations of us are,” I said moving off into the dim lights<br />
further back among the older tombs. I came upon the marker fur‑<br />
thest back on this lower level, that of Alexander Belarus. My name‑<br />
sake. The carving of the figure on top of the sarcophagus was<br />
exquisite, a likeness I could only imagine was as close to the way he<br />
actually looked in life, covered in carved stonework and adorn‑<br />
ments all over it. Seeing the gemstone sigil set into the stone at the<br />
center of the figure had my fingers going for the one similar to it<br />
around my neck.
132 Anton Strout<br />
“Uncanny,” Marshall said, looking from the figure carved on<br />
the tomb to me. “I see the resemblance. Although, truth be told, I<br />
like your hair better. The black, wavy shoulder length looks better<br />
on you.”<br />
“Less stony too,” Rory added.<br />
I laughed out loud, finding the sound refreshing in the empty<br />
echoes down here in the family crypt.<br />
“Thanks, guys,” I said, leaning against one of the pillars, wrap‑<br />
ping my arms around myself. “You somehow made this all a bit<br />
more bearable.”<br />
“Absolutely,” Rory said, coming over and hugging me close.<br />
“It’s the least a best friend could do.”<br />
Marshall came over and hugged me as awkwardly as only he<br />
could. “I know I’m relatively new to your guys’ life and all, but I’m<br />
glad to be here.”<br />
As the hug lingered, Rory put a hand on both our shoulders,<br />
pushing him back. “No hitting on the grieving,” she said. “Got it?”<br />
Marshall’s face went beet red. “I‑ I wasn’t. I mean . . . I’d<br />
never—“<br />
“There you are,” my father’s voice called out from somewhere<br />
further forward in the crypt, the hint of his Slavic accent in his<br />
words, even though he was third generation and born here. “I<br />
thought I might find you down here.” He approached us, his bald‑<br />
ing head sweating. He dabbed at it with a handkerchief in one of<br />
his meaty hands, giving a nod to Marshall and a firm smile to Rory.<br />
“Aurora, thank you for coming. God bless and keep you.”<br />
Despite the solemn occasion, Marshall couldn’t help but<br />
snicker at the use of her proper name.<br />
“Marsh!” Rory snipped. “What are the rules?”<br />
He fought back his smile by coughing into his hand. “No laugh‑<br />
ing at your full name,” he said. “Aurora. Sorry. Rory.” Composed<br />
once again, he turned to my father. “Sorry, Mr. Belarus. I don’t<br />
mean any disrespect. I just get nervous laughter when it’s most in<br />
appropriate.”
ALCHEMYSTIC 133<br />
There was a sadness in my father’s eyes, but he managed a kind<br />
smile. “Dark times could use a little lightness,” he said, then turned<br />
to Rory. “Aurora is a fine name.” He clapped her on both shoul‑<br />
ders. “Your boyfriend should call you that more often.”<br />
Rory’s face went pale. “Marshall’s so not my boyfriend.”<br />
My father turned to me, his eyes narrowing at me, shooting dag‑<br />
gers at me. “Hey! He’s not my boyfriend either,” I said, quick as I<br />
could. “I’ve only know him as long as Rory’s been going to college!”<br />
“No, no,” Marshall said, feigning disinterest with his voice.<br />
“Please don’t all jump at a chance to date me at once, ladies. My<br />
dance card is pretty full.”<br />
This seemed good enough to satisfy my father that Marshall was<br />
no threat and he turned back to Rory. “Again, thank you so very<br />
much for coming,” he said, softer once again, “but I must steal my<br />
daughter away from you.”<br />
I stiffened. “You need me now?” I asked. “Don’t you have like a<br />
million people up there who want to talk to you?”<br />
“Yes,” he said, all pleasantries falling from his voice as he turned<br />
to me, somber. “That is why I need you, Alexandra. There are peo‑<br />
ple you must come meet.”<br />
My stomach clenched up. “Dad, I’m really not feeling it. You<br />
know I’d do anything for you. But are you sure it’s the best time for<br />
meet and greet right now?”<br />
“Alexandra,” he snapped, his voice raised. Marshall jumped.<br />
My name echoed over and over through the silence of the lower<br />
catacombs. “It is not a request. Come.”<br />
His words struck my soul. I looked to my friends, but they were<br />
too stunned. My father turned and walked off without another<br />
word, not bothering to excuse himself from Rory and Marshall’s<br />
presence.<br />
A chill ran down my spine. I thought it must have been my fa‑<br />
ther’s words and his tone, but it felt like more than just that. The<br />
catacombs seemed alive despite the heavy air of death that perme‑<br />
ated it. The carved faces on the tombs seemed to follow me with
134 Anton Strout<br />
their stares, as well as those of the blank‑eyed gargoyles lining the<br />
tops of the support columns. The occasion itself and my father’s<br />
sudden harshness put such a creeped out mood over me that I<br />
found myself startled, swearing I saw a movement among the gar‑<br />
goyle statues. Not wanting to come of crazy to my friends, I told<br />
myself it was all an illusion caused by the stress of the day.<br />
Despite rationalizing it to myself, I stopped looking up or<br />
around and fell in behind my father, trading my creepy‑crawly sen‑<br />
sation for hating the idea of what was coming instead. He wanted<br />
me to meet his business people. I had thought burying my brother<br />
would be the worst of it today, but between being dragged before<br />
my father’s colleagues and my guilt over the last words Devon and<br />
I had exchanged, I didn’t think there was much of a chance of my<br />
day improving. At least my father hadn’t brought his spiritual ad‑<br />
viser down here with him. That was a small comfort in an other‑<br />
wise uncomfortable day.
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