Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Introduction

TROLLBRIDGE
SNATCH AS SNATCH CAN A Harry the Book Story
PSYCHO DANNY AND THE VIDEO MAN
THE DEVIL WITHIN
WEE-KIN WARRIOR
FALLS THE SHADOW
WE BURGLED IT, SURE WE DID
LONDON ON THE BRINK OF NEVER
ROSE
AN EXCESS OF JOY
STANNIS
FAERIE DOME
DISARMED AND DANGEROUS
GOOD MORNING HEARTACHE
’TWAS THE HAPPY HOUR AFTER CHRISTMAS . . .
ELI’S COMING
HELVIK’S DEAL
SECOND CHOICES

ABOUT THE EDITORS

“You’re—? You’re a gargoyle?”

“Are you going to tell me who you are?” she asked sleepily, no longer really caring about the answer. She’d learned the things she needed to know about him during the long night.
“I will show you.” He leaned over and pressed his lips to hers.
The kiss tasted of sand and goodbye, and she pulled back, fear flooding away her contentment.
“Come. Don’t be afraid.” He caught her wrist and drew her up, leading her to the windows. Gray light was only just beginning to sparkle the edges of the sky.
“There.” He pointed across the street. “There is what I am. Where I live.”
She looked in the direction he pointed, confused. He was pointing at the Elias Building, toward the nearest buttress, the resting place of her favorite gargoyle.
Except—except—the gargoyle was gone. The buttress was empty, stone jagged as if the gargoyle had been torn from it. The gargoyle at the corner was missing too.
“You’re—? You’re a gargoyle?” she whispered, and instantly regretted the horror with which she’d imbued the word. If that was who he was, then he was the one she’d talked to for years, who’d made her smile when water gurgled from his out-thrust tongue, whose face she saw under her fingertips when she worked. “You’re a gargoyle.” This time, there was wonder instead of horror.

—From “Eli’s Coming” by Linda P. Baker

Also Available from DAW Books:

Terribly Twisted Tales, edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg
Fairy tales are among the earliest fantasies we are exposed to when we are young and impressionable children. What more fun could a fantasy writer have than to take up the challenge of drawing upon this rich material and transforming it into something new. These eighteen stories by Dennis McKiernan, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Michael Stackpole, Jim Hines, and others do just that. From the adventure of the witch in the gingerbread house and her close encounter with the oven . . . to Golda Lockes who has a very special arrangement with those well-known bears . . . to a murderous attack with a glass slipper . . . to a wolf detective who sets out to solve “Grandma’s” murder, here are highly inventive stories that will give you an entirely new perspective on those classic tales.

Swordplay, edited by Denise Little
Swords—at one time they were the quintessential weapons, and even today there are true sword masters practicing their craft around the world. Certainly, swords are essential tools of the trade in fantasy novels. Magical or legendary blades, workaday weapons, deadly daggers, rapiers, cutlasses, broadswords, and samurai swords all can be found carried by the heroes and villains, soldiers and assassins who people the seventeen original tales to be found in Swordplay. From a dwarf-crafted blade meant to slay a dragon to a cursed sword that once belonged to D’Artagnan, from Arthur’s legendary Excalibur to the Sword of Solomon, from a sword bespelled to crave blood to cold steel that magicks its wielder into a video game, here are imaginative stories that cut right to the heart of fantasy adventure. With stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Moscoe, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Peter Orullian, Laura Resnick, and Janna Silverstein.

Gamer Fantastic,edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes
Whether you spend your evenings enmeshed in computer games, or gather with your friends for war games every weekend, or faithfully attend gaming conventions year after year—or you just enjoy reading stories with three-dimensional settings and characters facing imaginative challenges, you’ll find what you are looking for in these thirteen tales created by veterans of the fantasy realms such as Chris Pierson, Donald J. Bingle, Jim C. Hines, Bill Fawcett, S.L. Farrell, Brian M. Thomsen, Jean Rabe, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. And as an added bonus, there is a special introduction by Margaret Weis, and a tribute to Gary Gygax by Ed Greenwood. So arm yourself for a fun-filled time as you join the ranks with this brand-new anthology.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1496.

DAW Books is distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

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eISBN : 978-1-101-15197-6

First Printing, December 2009

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction copyright © 2009 by Jean Rabe
“Trollbridge,” copyright © 2009 by Timothy Zahn
“Snatch as Snatch Can: A Harry the Book Story,” copyright © 2009
by Mike Resnick
“Psycho Danny and the Video Man,” copyright © 2009 by Margaret
S. Lundock
“The Devil Within,” copyright © 2009 by Michael A. Stackpole
“Wee-kin Warrior,” copyright © 2009 by Marc Tassin
“Falls the Shadow,” copyright © 2009 by Judi Rohrig
“We Burgled It, Sure We Did,” copyright © 2009 by Miriam S.
Zucker
“London on the Brink of Never,” copyright © 2009 by Steven Savile
“Rose,” copyright © 2009 by Jackie Cassada
“An Excess of Joy,” copyright © 2009 by C.J. Henderson
“Stannis,” copyright © 2009 by Anton Strout
“Faerie Dome,” copyright © 2009 by Dean Legget
“Disarmed and Dangerous,” copyright © 2009 by Tim Waggoner
“Good Morning Heartache,” copyright © 2009 by Bradley P.
Beaulieu
“Twas The Happy Hour After Christmas,” copyright © 2009 by Robert
Wenzlaff
“Eli’s Coming,” copyright © 2009 by Linda P. Baker
“Helvik’s Deal,” copyright © 2009 by Vicki Steger
“Second Choices,” copyright © 2009 by The Estate of Brian M.
Thomsen

INTRODUCTION

I’m a small-town gal uncomfortable in a booming me tropolis. Give me places where the traffic is sparse and is accompanied by the quiet shush of cars that rarely sound their horns, where you’re more apt to hear a rooster crow than a siren sound, and where you can listen to a multitude of birds chirping anytime you open a window.
But I have visited cities—and will again. The fictional ones in this book and the real ones . . . Chicago (where I was mugged in the subway), Milwaukee (where I discovered a dusty, musty marvelous bookstore), Atlanta (where I dined in a revolving restaurant near the clouds), Portland (where I was constantly followed by a trio of homeless people), Denver (where I fell in love with a four-story bookstore), Dallas (where I fell in love with a tiny corner bookstore), Los Angeles (where I watched two pink-haired, tattooed men with chains dangling from their belts get real friendly on a street corner), Sydney (where I accidentally booked a hotel room in the bawdy red-light district), and more. In all of them car horns blared constantly, sirens echoed every few minutes, and traffic choked the streets and belched clouds of exhaust into the air.
In a city the colors are bright, everything is loud, trolls and fey folk can be found in some of the fourth-floor walkups, and the pace of life amazes and impresses . . . and often frightens and excites.
I’ve never stayed in any one city for any considerable stretch. There’s just something about a big city that basically unnerves me and sets my teeth to clicking.
But I wouldn’t mind staying in Mike Resnick’s city for a while. I’d really like to hang out with Harry the Book.
Oh, there’s magic in all big cities, real and fictional, I know—unexplained specters and visions you’re not likely to find in the small Wisconsin burgs that I favor. I’ve caught glimpses of the magic in Milwaukee, where the buildings reflect in each other’s windows to create dizzying pictures of distorted panes and bricks and wavy-looking people who live only in the mirror images. I’ve heard it in New Orleans, where the music pulses through the sidewalks and sets your heart in tempo with it. I’ve felt the unseen eyes that stare at you from every angle in the west coast business districts, and I’ve shivered under gargoyles that leer at you from rooftops in the old neighborhoods in New York.
The authors in this collection are well familiar with the magic—good and evil—and offer up exceptional tales of cities touched by the fantastic. Hugo award winner Timothy Zahn amuses with his New York City troll, Jackie Cassada warms souls with her city gone to the dogs, Mickey Zucker Reichert brings a smile or three with her thieving “Little People,” and Brian Thomas sends more than a few shivers with his take on a rotten Big Apple.
Join our eighteen authors as they lead you down the streets of their cities fantastic and show you things you’ll likely not find in any guidebook.

Enjoy,
Jean Rabe

TROLLBRIDGE

Timothy Zahn

Timothy Zahn has been writing science fiction for more than a quarter of a century. In that time he has published thirty-five novels, more than eighty short stories and novelettes, and four collections of short fiction. Best known for his eight Star Wars novels, he is also the author of the Quadrail series (Night Train to Rigel, The Third Lynx, Odd Girl Out), the Cobra series (including the upcoming Cobra Alliance), and the young-adult Dragonback series. The Zahn family lives on the Oregon coast.

Traffic seemed lighter than usual tonight, Kersh thought from his booth as he watched the lines of cars and trucks streaming through the George Washington Bridge’s toll plaza.
Or maybe it was that the traffic the past two nights had been unusually heavy. Kersh could never tell about those things. All he knew was that the lines of headlights and taillights stretched all the way to the horizon, the headlights streaming in from New Jersey, the taillights returning again from Manhattan.
In the old days, he thought wistfully, every one of those incoming vehicles would have had had to stop at booths like his. An endless stream of people giving Kersh money to cross his bridge.
But those days were long gone. First had come the automated bins where the drivers simply tossed in their coins. Far worse was the abomination called the E-ZPass. Those drivers still paid, of course, but they paid from their homes, without Kersh or anyone else in the plaza ever seeing or handling that money.
Which meant that sitting as he did in the booth marked E-ZPass/Cash, Kersh had to endure the frustration of passing the time idly while most of the cars drove through without even slowing down.
Sometimes the drivers waved cheerily as they passed. That just made it worse.
A movement at the corner of Kersh’s eye snapped him out of his gloomy reverie. A late-model Chevy was slowing down as it approached his booth. An E-ZPass user being extra cautious? Or someone with actual, real cash?
Kersh focused on the car. The driver had two hundred and eighty dollars on him, he saw, plus another four hundred in traveler’s checks. The woman beside him had seventy dollars cash and two hundred in traveler’s checks. Tourists, then, on their way to a grand adventure in New York City.
And tourists almost never had E-ZPasses.
Sure enough, the car slowed to a stop, the driver’s window sliding down as it did so. “Evening, sir,” Kersh said politely, his heart pounding with anticipation. “Eight dollars, please.”
They were a young couple, tired but still showing that spark of anticipation as they thought of the museums and plays and nightlife awaiting them. The driver’s expression slipped at bit as he caught full sight of Kersh’s wide face and shaggy brown hair. But the Midwestern courtesy that came with the Wisconsin tags quickly asserted itself. “Good evening,” he said politely to Kersh as he handed over a ten-dollar bill.
“Thank you,” Kersh said, handing over the two singles he’d pulled from his cash drawer as soon as he’d sensed the ten in the other’s hand. “Enjoy your visit.”
“Thanks,” the young man said, and drove off.
Kersh gripped the ten-dollar bill, savoring the feel of it between his thick fingers. Then, carefully, he slid it into the proper slot in the drawer. Watching the Wisconsin car as it climbed the long stretch of the bridge, he silently wished the young couple a pleasant trip to the Big Apple.
And wished them safety, as well. Not all the people in New York were friendly to strangers.
Not all the people in New York were even people.
He turned back to the lines of cars streaming across the toll plaza, feeling a sudden surge of loneliness for central Europe and the old wooden bridges where he’d grown up so many centuries ago. Did his fellow trolls still live beneath any of those bridges?
Probably not. The deep places of the world had been vanishing for centuries, and with them the beings who had once lived and thrived there. As far as he knew, he was the last troll in this part of the country. Possibly in the entire United States.
Possibly even in the entire world. Someday, he would be gone, too.
But until then, at least he still had a job that allowed him to cling to the old ways.
Another car was slowing down as it approached his booth. The driver was alone, with sixty-eight dollars in his wallet and a twenty ready in his hand. Feeling his heartbeat again speeding up, Kersh pulled a ten and two ones from his cash drawer and waited.

Seventeen more cars stopped and gave Kersh money before his shift ended five hours later. The day-shifter took over the booth, and Kersh headed toward the lot where the toll plaza employees parked their cars. From the lot it was only a short walk down to the Palisades Interstate Park stretching along the Hudson River where he made his home. The park was closed at this hour, of course, but over the years Kersh had found lots of ways to get in and out.
As he walked through the darkness, savoring the smell of trees and dirt and water, he found himself gazing up at the underside of the bridge. For all his trollish tendencies toward self-pity, he did realize know how lucky he was to have a bridge he could call his own. Even if he could only work it for a third of each day.
And not just any bridge, but a magnificent bridge, spanning a magnificent river. Kersh smiled, his eyes tracing the familiar lines and angles—
His large, flat feet stumbled to a halt. He knew every inch of that bridge, and there was something different up there tonight. Two somethings, in fact: a pair of cylinders about half the size of the orange barrels the Port Authority used when they needed to block off a lane for repairs.
But these barrels weren’t orange, and they were fastened to horizontal girders where no orange barrel had any business being. Had the workers began some maintenance on his bridge that he hadn’t heard about?
And then the wind shifted slightly, and he caught a faint whiff of something he’d smelled once before. It had been two years ago, when the Department of Homeland Security had run a nighttime test on the bridge. A test that had included antiterrorist agents, bomb-sniffing dogs . . . and bombs.
For a long minute he stared upward at the barrels. Then, squaring his massive shoulders, he turned and retraced his steps back to the toll plaza.

The man seated behind the supervisor’s desk was middle-aged, with the slightly greasy hair and unshaven cheeks of someone who’d been hauled out of bed at five-thirty in the morning. But for all that, his eyes were bright and alert. “Mr. Kersh,” he said politely as Kersh entered the room. “Please sit down.”
“Thank you,” Kersh said, lowering his bulk cautiously onto the office’s single guest chair. It wasn’t nearly strong enough to support his weight, but over the years he’d learned how to keep his legs angled backward so that he wasn’t so much sitting on the chair as he was squatting over it.
“I’m Special Agent McBride,” the man went on. “I’m investigating the bombs we removed from the bridge an hour ago.”
Kersh felt a lump form in his throat. So they had been real bombs. He’d asked several people over the past couple of hours, trying to find out for sure. But no one had been willing or able to tell him. “Is the bridge all right?” he asked.
“It’s fine,” McBride assured him. “The bombs weren’t very big, and they weren’t positioned with any expertise. They would have made a couple of very big bangs, and scared the hell out of a lot of people, but the damage would have been minor.” He raised his eyebrows. “Of course, that’s only relatively minor,” he amended. “You say you spotted the bombs after your shift?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Kersh said, feeling a flow of relief wash through his tension. His beloved bridge was safe.
“May I ask how?” McBride asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You left your booth at five this morning, supposedly heading home,” McBride said, his eyes steady on Kersh’s face. “Yet ten minutes later, you were back with the news that you’d seen something under the bridge.” He paused. “In pitch darkness. From a spot you shouldn’t have been in if you were actually on your way home.”
Kersh swallowed, his tension suddenly back. “It wasn’t really pitch dark,” he pointed out carefully. “There are a lot of lights from the bridge and the city. And I’ve got good eyes.”
“Good enough to pick out two small anomalies among all those girders and braces?”
“I know the bridge,” Kersh said, forcing his voice to stay calm. He wasn’t very smart, but it was abundantly clear where Agent McBride was going with this. “I spend a lot of time in the park just looking up at it.”
“Really,” McBride said. “You like bridges, do you?”
“I like them a lot,” Kersh said. “They’re kind of in my blood.”
“Mm,” McBride murmured. “Why were you there when you were supposed to be going home?”
Behind his bushy beard, Kersh grimaced. What could he say? That the address he’d given the Port Authority was only a mail drop, and that he actually lived in a hole below the bridge, the way trolls had for centuries? “I like to take a walk along the edge of the park before I head home,” he improvised desperately. “It helps me unwind.”
“Your job requires a lot of unwinding time, then?” McBride asked, not quite sarcastically.
“I just like looking at the bridge,” Kersh said. Even to his own ears, it sounded pretty lame.
“Mm,” McBride said again. “Well, I think that’s all I need right now. Thank you for your time.”
“You’re welcome,” Kersh said, standing up and backing toward the door. “Will you be finished in time for me to work my shift tonight?”
“You’ll need to call in later this afternoon,” McBride told him. “We should know by then when we’ll be reopening the bridge.” He hesitated. “And thank you for your warning.”
“You’re welcome,” Kersh muttered again, and escaped.
He headed down toward the park, barely even noticing all the Federal agents and Port Authority people milling around, his mood and eyes darkened with grief and loss.
Because it was over. All his years with the bridge. McBride would dig into his background and find out that he didn’t live where he said he did. Someone else would notice that the age on his old employment record was all screwy. Someone else would find out that he didn’t have a birth certificate or immigration papers, just the Social Security card he’d been issued when the program first began in 1935.
They would probably blame him for the bombs and put him in prison. They might even figure out that he wasn’t really human.
But if it was over, it wasn’t over quite yet. Maybe there was still time for him to find out who had put those bombs on his beloved bridge.
And he had a pretty good idea where to start looking.

Kersh spent the day wandering through town, visiting shops, historic sites, and parks. He had a big lunch, considered going to a movie so he could get a little sleep, decided instead to continue his walk.
He had company, of a sort, throughout most of the day. McBride had apparently assigned someone to follow him and report on his activities. The man was pretty good at his job, with a bagful of tricks that included a roll-up hat, sunglasses, a reversible jacket, and even a false mustache that he could quickly put on or take off.
Not that any of it helped him any. The man had exactly forty-four dollars in his wallet, which made him very easy for Kersh to pick out of the crowd.
At two o’clock he called his supervisor and was told not to come in, that the bridge wouldn’t be opening until the start of morning rush hour. Kersh thanked him, and continuing his wanderings.
An hour after sunset, he slipped away from McBride’s agent and returned to his bridge.
Normally, Kersh spent most of his time at the south end of the park, in the hole he’d dug beneath his bridge. Tonight, though, he had another destination in mind. Somewhere along the river, he knew, lived a group of water goblins.
He was nearly to the north end of the park when he finally found their nest, hidden among the stones and grasses at the edge of the water. “Goblins!” he called softly but firmly. “Goblins! I would speak with you.”
For a long minute the only sounds were the soft lapping of the river against its banks and the distant whooshing of the city traffic. Then, with a sudden rippling of the water, a small wizened figure pulled itself up onto the shore. “What do you want, Troll?” he demanded in a grating voice.
“I want to know what you did to my bridge,” Kersh growled back.
“Your bridge?” the goblin sneered.
“Yes, my bridge,” Kersh said. “You set two bombs to destroy it.”
Three more goblins popped up out of the water beside the first. “And if we did?” the first goblin challenged. “What are you going to do about it?”
The four of them took a menacing step toward Kersh. “I don’t want any trouble,” Kersh protested, taking a long step back. There were more goblins gathering back there, he knew—he’d heard them leave the water, and he could smell their dank odor on the light breeze. If the four in front of him would take just one more step . . .
“Go away, Troll,” the first goblin demanded as they moved in unison toward Kersh. “Leave us or you will die, wrapped in waterweeds like a newborn.”
“I don’t want any trouble,” Kersh said again. He took another step back.
And threw out an arm behind him to grab the nearest lurking goblin squarely around his thin throat.
The goblin gave a startled gurgle, which changed to a high-pitched squeak as Kersh hauled him off his feet and swung his body across the half dozen other goblins who had thought they were sneaking up on the big intruder. There was a flurry of squeaks, gasps, and curses as bodies went flying into the reeds or rocks or back into the river itself.
Kersh spun around just as the four original goblins charged. Three of them managed to stop in time; the fourth went flying into the river as Kersh swung his makeshift club across his torso. “But if you want trouble,” he added, lowering the squirming goblin to his side, “I can do that, too.”
“Enough,” a new voice rumbled from somewhere inland.
Kersh turned to see a much larger goblin emerge from concealment in the grasses. “You’re their king?” Kersh asked as he spotted the crown of water plants entwined around the other’s hairless head.
“I am,” the Goblin King confirmed. “Release him, and ask what you will.”
Kersh hesitated. Technically, a Goblin King only had to tell the truth if he himself was a prisoner. But the old rules had slackened somewhat over the years. It was probably worth showing a little good faith.
Besides, if the creature lied to him, Kersh could always come back later and wring his scrawny little neck.
“I want to know why you put those bombs on my bridge,” Kersh said, letting go of his prisoner’s neck. The creature scurried away, wheezing out curses as he went.
“We had nothing to do with any bombs,” the Goblin King said without hesitation. “Or with your precious bridge. Why would we?”
“Because the bridge allows humans to bypass your domain,” Kersh said. “Without bridges, many more would travel by boat, bringing fresh victims into your reach.”
The Goblin King hissed out a watery laugh. “And we waited more than seventy years after the bridge was built to decide to do this?”
That was a good point, Kersh had to admit. “You might only now have gotten fed up about it,” he suggested hesitantly.
“What we have gotten is resigned to it,” the Goblin King growled. “Besides, even if we were somehow able to destroy all the bridges, the humans would merely use the tunnels. Then the bridges would be rebuilt, and we would be no better off than we are now.”
Another good point, Kersh decided regretfully. Besides, how would the goblins have gotten the bombs up there in the first place? They were strong enough, but they couldn’t climb worth anything. “I suppose not,” he conceded.
The Goblin King hissed something bitter-sounding in the goblin language. “Then go,” he ordered. “Seek elsewhere for your enemy, and leave us at what peace we still have.”
“I will,” Kersh said. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
The Goblin King pointed a bony finger at Kersh’s chest. “But if I were you, I would look in only one direction for the creatures who threaten your bridge.” He tilted the finger up to point at the sky. “Look to the air, Troll. Look to those creatures who have always hated the intrusions of human metal and stone into their domain.”
Kersh frowned. Intrusions of metal and stone? “You mean the air sprites?”
The Goblin King snorted. “The legendary brilliance of trollish minds,” he said contemptuously. “Yes, I mean the air sprites. Seek them out, and take your vengeance there.”
“Perhaps I will,” Kersh said. “Farewell.”
He turned and made his way back along the river-bank, the anger that had been directed toward the water goblins now shifting to the air sprites. Those little pests, at least, would have no problem getting to the underside of his bridge.
The question was, how was he going to catch one of them and confirm they were the guilty parties? Most of the time they wafted through the air like living ghosts, only rarely coming in reach of earthbound creatures like himself.
They could be caught, he remembered, if he could just lure one into a spider web. Unfortunately, the days were long gone when there were spiders who could be hired or bribed for such a purpose.
But with a little of that trollish brilliance the Goblin King had mentioned, maybe he could come up with another way.

It was after midnight when Kersh finally heard the faint whispering sound that announced that an air sprite was near.
He sat up a little straighter, peering out from behind the bushes where he was hiding. He could see the sprite now, a nearly transparent shape whose edges billowed leisurely, like curling smoke on a nearly windless day. There was a faint bluish tint to the image, which meant this particular sprite was female. She was hovering about six feet above the wooden bowl of sugar water that Kersh had set out in the center of a stand of outward-bent ferns, her head moving back and forth as she searched for danger. A moment later, apparently satisfied, she began drifting downward.
Silently, stealthily, Kersh got a grip on the vine he’d rigged up as a trigger and waited. The sprite floated the rest of the way to the bowl, her flowing edges fluttering with ecstasy as she sipped at the sweet liquid. Gently, Kersh pulled the vine.
The fronds snapped upward and inward, closing on the sprite like the jaws of a Venus flytrap. The sprite twitched and tried to duck away, but as she dodged one group of fronds she backed into one of the others.
And suddenly the whole group of ferns was churning back and forth as the sprite fought furiously to free herself from the trap.
Lunging to his feet, Kersh shoved his way through the concealing bushes. “Don’t struggle,” he warned the sprite. “It’ll only make it worse.”
The sprite’s only answer was to redouble her efforts against the mysterious force that had trapped her against the fern. Kersh walked toward her, shaking his head. Sprites were not the brightest creatures. Something seemed to tingle past his head, like a screech or call too high-pitched for troll ears to hear. He reached the sprite and leaned over to get a grip on her.
And bellowed as a hundred needles suddenly jabbed into his skin.
He leaped backward, his corkscrewing arms sending blue- and red-tinged sprites flying in all directions. But each one that he managed to throw off was replaced by two more, digging their tiny insubstantial teeth into his hide as hard as they could.
Kersh’s skin was thick and tough, as many a would-be adventurer had learned to his sorrow over the years. But even trollish hide could take only so much. The air around him was thick with hazy bluish and reddish creatures, swarming around like the wasps from a hundred hives. He hadn’t realized there were this many in the New York area, let alone within range of his trapped sprite’s distress call. Clenching his teeth, he swung his arms even harder, trying to shake them off.
“We will strip the flesh from your bones, Troll,” a tiny voice said in Kersh’s ear, and dug his teeth into Kersh’s earlobe.
“Not a chance!” Kersh shouted back, batting him away.
“Release her!” a different voice demanded. “Release your prey!”
“Then leave my bridge alone!” Kersh snarled. “You hear me? You touch my bridge again and I’ll kill you all.” Through the growing pain, he again heard the tingling of the not-quite-audible voice.
And abruptly, the biting stopped.
Slowly, disbelievingly, Kersh came to a halt, breathing heavily, his whole body burning from the bites. The hills and trees of the park, the river and the city lights beyond the river—everything was still colored with swirling hints of red and blue. The sprites were still there, more than ready to resume their attack.
So why had they stopped?
“Your bridge has been harmed?”
It was the first sprite again. Only this time, the voice was calm and controlled, without the fury that Kersh had heard there earlier. It might even had held a little concern. “Someone tried to destroy it,” Kersh said, still panting.
“We’re sorry to hear that,” the sprite said. “We know what bridges mean to trolls.” He paused. “Yet the bridge appears to be as always.”
“The harm was stopped before it could happen,” Kersh said. “Are you saying it wasn’t you?”
“Of course not,” the sprite said. “Who would think we would do such a thing?”
Kersh grimaced. “It was the Water Goblin King.”
“Of course.” It was hard to put disgust into such a tiny voice, Kersh reflected, but the sprite had no difficulty whatsoever in pulling it off. “Goblins enjoy pitting peoples against each other, while they sit back and watch the blood and destruction. Never trust what a goblin says, Troll.”
“No,” Kersh said, thoroughly confused now. Clearly, someone was lying to him. But who? “So you didn’t try to hurt my bridge?” he asked, just to make sure.
“We do not destroy,” the sprite said firmly. “That is not our purpose. Besides, why would we want to hurt any bridge?”
“Because you don’t like the structures humans build into your air,” Kersh said. “That’s what the—that’s what I’ve heard.”
“Most of the time that’s true,” the sprite conceded. “But bridges are different. Especially now that most of the humans’ horseless carts pass over without stopping.”
Kersh felt his eyes narrow. “What do you mean by that?” he demanded.
“Not because it robs you of your purpose,” the sprite hastened to explain. “But because the thrill of the ride is better this way.”
“You ride the cars?” Kersh asked, wondering if he’d heard that right. “But I thought you couldn’t touch metal.”
“Oh, no, we don’t actually touch them,” the sprite explained. “We fly along close behind them, riding in the calm among the winds.”
“Ah,” Kersh said as he finally understood. “It’s called drafting.”
“Drafting,” the sprite said. “An interesting word. I shall remember it. I simply meant that when the carts stop to pay you for crossing your bridge, we must stop with them.”
“So it’s better when they don’t,” Kersh said with a sigh. Everyone, it seemed, benefited from the stupid E-ZPasses. Everyone except him. “So you really don’t dislike bridges?”
“Traveling—drafting—behind carts on a bridge takes us higher in the air than when they travel their usual pathways of hardened earth,” the sprite said. “It’s a pleasure we never had in the old days.”
“I understand,” Kersh said. “I’m sorry I accused you.” He looked down, suddenly remembering the sprite in his trap. “Here, let me help you.”
He knelt beside the sprite and carefully pulled her free of the ferns he’d tricked out. “What is that?” the other sprite asked, moving cautiously in for a closer look. “It doesn’t look like spider web.”
“No, it’s something the humans create,” Kersh told him as the trapped sprite came free and flew quickly away. “It’s called duct tape. Very strong.”
“Interesting,” the sprite said. “Is it made from actual ducks?”
“Artificial ones,” Kersh assured him. It seemed the simplest thing to say. “I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you.”
“We and the trolls have never been friends,” the spite said gravely. “But we’ve never truly been enemies, either. We understand you, and your need to have a bridge of your own.”
“Thank you for your patience,” Kersh said, bowing to the floating figure. “If there’s ever anything I can ever do for you, please don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Perhaps it is we who can help you,” the sprite said. “Tell us how exactly your bridge was threatened.”
Kersh told him about the bombs. “I see,” the sprite said thoughtfully when he’d finished. “So you are seeking someone who is both a good climber, and who can climb while carrying a load.”
“And who doesn’t know much about bridges,” Kersh added, remembering what McBride had said about the bombs not being in the right places to cause much damage.
“Yes,” the sprite said. “In that case—”
“Lord Albho!” a new voice cut in. “There is someone climbing beneath the bridge!”
Kersh tilted his head back, his eyes searching the span overhead. “Where?”
“Here,” the sprite said, moving between Kersh and the bridge.
And through the sprite’s faint reddish image, Kersh saw it: a smallish figure, laboriously crawling along the underside of the bridge roadway, heading toward the New Jersey end.
“I see him,” Lord Albho said. “A long way for him to have climbed from the far end.”
“Or else he climbed up the tower,” Kersh said. The figure was nearly to the same place the other bombs had been. No way Kersh could swim out to the tower, climb up to the span, and catch up with him in time.
Which left him only one other option. “I’ll have to climb up the anchorage,” he said, heading west across the park. “Thanks for your help.”
The sprite’s answer, if he gave one, was lost in the wind whistling past Kersh’s ears.
He reached the edge of the park and continued on, running full speed toward the mass of concrete and steel that formed his bridge’s western anchorage. The city’s nighttime traffic had long since faded to a trickle, and, as far as he could tell, no one spotted him. He reached the anchorage and started up, climbing hand over hand as fast as he could. He could only hope it would be fast enough.
The small figure, another barrel strapped across his back, was still toiling his way along the support members when Kersh reached him. And now, close up, Kersh could see that the creature was a gnome.
Which made no sense at all. What in the world was an underground creature like a gnome doing on Kersh’s bridge?
But that question could wait. “Stop!” he ordered, putting the full weight of trollish anger into his voice.
The gnome jumped as if he’d been bitten by a swarm of air sprites, his thin body jerking around toward his unexpected visitor.
Jerked around too far, in fact. He lurched sideways, the load on his back pulling him off balance. His hands scrambled frantically at the supports as he tried to regain his grip, but it was too little too late. With a mournful screech, he lost his grip and fell toward the water below.
And gave another startled screech as Kersh lunged, reaching one hand out and snatching the other’s bony wrist.
The gnome gave yet another screech. “Don’t drop me,” he pleaded in a gravelly voice. “Please. Don’t drop me.”
“Who are you?” Kersh demanded. “Why are you trying to destroy my bridge?”
“Please,” the gnome pleaded. “I was only doing it for her. Just for her. She’s dying—she needs this.”
“What does she need?” Kersh bit out, feeling his arm muscles starting to tremble with fatigue. Gnomes weren’t particularly heavy, but a gnome plus a barrel of explosives definitely was. And the long climb had burned through Kersh’s reserves of strength. “To see my bridge destroyed?”
“No, not that,” the gnome said. “Please pull me up—I’ll explain everything.”
“You’d better,” Kersh warned. Clenching his teeth, he started to pull.
Only to discover to his horror that he couldn’t. His strength—his massive, trollish strength—was gone. All of it. “You have to drop that barrel,” he said. “Do it—there’s no one below who’ll get hurt.”
“I can’t,” the gnome said. “It’s looped around the arm you’re holding. Please, just pull me up.”
Kersh tried again, but it was no use. “I can’t,” he gritted. “You’re too heavy.”
“Don’t drop me,” the gnome pleaded. “Please.”
“Don’t worry,” Kersh said. But the words were hollow . . . because if anyone had cause to worry, it was the gnome.
Because Kersh’s own last chance now was to let the other fall to his death. Only then might he have enough strength to pull himself back up onto the safety of the bridge.
The gnome deserved to die, anyway. Hadn’t he tried to destroy Kersh’s bridge, and perhaps hundreds of humans along with it?
“Please,” the gnome begged.
Kersh clenched his teeth, looking around desperately. But there was nothing. Nowhere for his feet to get a purchase; no one and nothing that could help them. The shallows of the river rippled along far below, the water glittering tantalizingly in the city lights.
But Kersh knew the water’s promise was an empty one.
The trembling in his muscles was getting worse. Another few minutes and his grip would give way. This was, he knew, his very last chance to save himself.
And then, over the rippling water, he heard a voice.
It was an ethereal voice, a haunting voice, rich with the lure of things bright and wonderful as it sang a wordless song of invitation and love. The music filled Kersh’s ears, banishing his anger and even his fear.
He closed his eyes, savoring the music as he’d never savored anything before. The agony in his arms, the danger to his bridge, even his own imminent death—none of it mattered anymore. All that mattered was the song.
The song, and a sudden overwhelming desire to seek out the singer. To hear the music up close, the way it was meant to be heard.
The thought wasn’t even fully formed in his mind when he suddenly found himself swinging by his arm from the bridge, drawing on deep sources of strength he hadn’t even known he had. Higher and higher he swung, back and forth, ignoring the pain in his arms and the little bleatings of the gnome still hanging below him. The song was calling to him, rising on the wind, stretching out to his heart as it beckoned him to the deep, open water.
The song reached its climax; and as Kersh reached the top of his arc, he shoved himself off the bridge with his last ounce of strength, hurling him and the gnome in a long, high arc toward the river. The wind whistled past, chilling his sweat-soaked face and arms as the two of them fell toward the dark river below—
They hit with a tremendous splash, and as the water closed over Kersh, he braced himself for the bone-breaking impact that would come as he slammed into the riverbed.
But he didn’t. His momentum eased, and then stopped, still with only water beneath his feet. That last powerful push had somehow sent them flying far enough outward to reach the safety of deep water. Kicking with his feet, digging into the water with his free hand, he started to claw his way toward the surface far above.
And then, a hand appeared from nowhere, grabbing onto the back of his collar. A second later, he found himself being pulled upward far faster than he could have managed even with both hands free. The weight of the gnome he was still gripping suddenly eased, and he realized that the little creature had finally been able to rid himself of his deadly burden. The water above Kersh grew lighter . . .
With another violent splash, his head broke through the surface. Gasping for breath, he let go of the gnome’s arm and stretched out both hands to keep himself afloat. He spotted the gnome a few feet away, his thin face and large eyes showing a fading panic as he also gulped in great lungfuls of air. Holding him tightly, keeping his face well above the water, was a young woman.
Or rather, something that looked like a young woman. “Thank you for not dropping him,” she said quietly to Kersh.
“Thank you for saving our lives,” Kersh replied. “You’re a siren?”
She nodded, and Kersh could see now that the eyes in that young face looked old. Old, and tired, and sad. “What happens now?” she asked.
Kersh took a couple of deep breaths. With her song no longer filling his mind, his arms suddenly felt like lead weights. “You can start by helping us back to shore,” he said. “And then,” he added, eyeing her as sternly as he could manage under the circumstances, “we need to talk.”

“You have to understand,” Grizzal said, his voice pleading, his thin gnome body shivering in the chilly night air. “Without purpose to her life, Serina was wasting away. Dying. I’d tried everything else. This was the only other thing I could think of.”
“What, destroying my bridge?” Kersh countered.
“She needed to see people plunging into the water around her,” Grizzal said, clutching the hand of the ancient-eyed woman sitting on the ground beside him. “I know it wouldn’t have been the same as if she’d sung them in. I know that. But I thought it might at least keep her alive until I could come up with something else.”
“I told him not to,” Serina said, her voice as tired as her eyes. “I know that my purpose is gone. That those who demanded such service from me are gone, as well.”
“And it was an evil purpose besides,” Kersh said.
“Robbing travelers who only wanted to cross a river in peace was any less evil?” Grizzal countered.
Kersh grimaced. “I know,” he conceded. “But—”
“But it was your purpose,” Serina said. “We are what we are.”
“I never killed people, anyway,” Kersh muttered. But he could nevertheless feel some sympathy for this creature of the old world, trapped hopelessly and without purpose here in the new.
“The people I sang to didn’t always die, either,” Serina said. “I always kept singing after they went into the water, hoping the extra strength I could give them would let them reach the shore.”
“It’s not death she needs anyway,” Grizzal insisted. “It’s sailors coming to her song. That’s all she wants. That’s all she needs.”
Kersh shook his head. “You should have picked a smaller bridge.”
Grizzal clutched his thin knees with his arms. “Or picked one without a troll.”
“We won’t bother you again,” Serina said quietly. “You, or your bridge. Thank you again for saving Grizzal.”
She stood, helping the still shivering gnome to his feet. Turning, they headed south along the river.
Kersh looked up at the span arching over his head, a sudden ache in his heart. Your bridge, she’d said. Only he had no bridge. Not anymore. In fact, at this point he would be lucky if there wasn’t already an arrest warrant out for him.
He looked back at the two figures walking slowly down the shoreline. “Hey!” he called, hauling himself to his feet.
They turned. “Yes?” Serina asked.
“This is ridiculous,” Kersh declared as he joined them. “We’ve lived on this world for hundreds of years. We can’t just give up. You can’t just give up.”
“You have an idea?” Grizzal asked hopefully.
“Not yet,” Kersh admitted. “But we’ve got brains, and we’ve got experience.”
“Right,” Grizzal muttered.
“It’ll be enough,” Kersh said firmly.
“If it’s not,” Serina offered, “we also have a chest full of gold and gems.”
Kersh blinked. “We do?”
“We do,” Grizzal said, giving the siren a quick frown. “Gnomes guard treasures. You didn’t know that?”
“Nope,” Kersh assured him. “But that’s great. It means we’ve got brains, experience, and money. So let’s put our heads together and see what we can come up with.”

The faint screams of a hundred children were drifting through the midmorning breezes when Kersh heard a soft, nearly-forgotten voice in his ear. “Greetings to you, Troll.”
“And to you, Lord Albho,” Kersh said, squinting out of the corner of his eye. The air sprite was even harder to see in the bright sunlight than he was at night, especially hovering against the bright colors of Kersh’s new home. “I trust you and your people are well?”
“We are,” Lord Albho said, and Kersh could hear the puzzlement in his voice. “What is this place? I have never seen its like.”
“This is where I now live and work,” Kersh told him. “My job with the other bridge came to an end.”
“Yes, we noticed your absence,” Lord Albho said. “We were mourning your passing until one of my people chanced upon you here.” The faint figure started suddenly as distant music joined the children’s screams. “That voice!” he breathed. “Is that a siren?”
“Indeed it is,” Kersh confirmed. “She sings all day long, watching with immense satisfaction as lines of people come to her and then hurl themselves into the depths of the water.”
“And drown?” Lord Albho asked, sounding shocked. “And you stand by and do nothing to stop it?”
“I not only don’t stop it, I help her do it,” Kersh said with a grin. “And, no, they don’t actually drown. On the contrary, they enjoy the experience. Of course, she’s not using anywhere near the full power of her song. That would probably cause trouble.” He pointed up at the sign arching over them. “You see that sign? In the words of the humans, it says Siren’s Cove.”
“Yes, I see it,” the sprite said, sounding more confused than ever. “Then they even know a siren is here?”
“Well, of course they don’t know she’s a real siren,” Kersh said. “They just think it’s a clever name for the newest section of the Crusoe Island amusement park.”
Lord Albho flittered a little higher to look past Kersh’s shoulder. “An amusement park?”
“That’s right,” Kersh said. “Our little corner of the park has three pools, two surf runs, a coral reef, and twelve of the best water slides in the business. And there’s something about that song of Serina’s that people say adds an extra touch of excitement to the experience.”
“I see,” Lord Albho murmured. “Very clever.”
“Thank you,” Kersh said modestly. “Actually the three of us came up with the idea together.”
“The three of you?”
“Me, Serina, and Serina’s husband Grizzal,” Kersh said. “He handles maintenance on our pumps and filters. Turns out gnomes are really good at hauling gremlins out of machinery.”
“So I’ve heard,” Lord Albho said, his voice suddenly thoughtful. “So the humans slide downward inside those curved tubes?”
“That’s right,” Kersh said. “And you know, I’ll bet drafting along behind them would be a really interesting experience.”
“I was just thinking the same,” the sprite said. “May I?”
“We would be honored by your presence,” Kersh said. Around the curve of the entrance walkway, a pair of adults and two young boys appeared, each carrying a swim bag. “I have to go back to work now,” he murmured. “But please come by later and tell me how it was.”
“I will,” the sprite promised, and flitted away.
Kersh drew himself up to his full height. “I am the troll of the bridge,” he called in a deep voice. “Who approaches?”
The father nudged the older of the two sons. The boy looked up, a little anxiously, but reassured by his parents’ smiles he turned back to Kersh and squared his shoulders. “I am Adam,” he said, pitching his own voice as low as he could. “I seek to cross your bridge.”
“Step forward, Adam,” Kersh said. The parents, he saw, had brought plenty of cash. It would be a full, rich day for them all. “The toll for you and your companions is fifty-four dollars.”
Solemnly, the boy handed over the money. “You have paid,” Kersh intoned. “Cross in peace.”
“Thank you, troll,” the boy said solemnly. He glanced at his parents again, and then he and his brother dashed across the short arch of the decorative entryway bridge.
The parents followed, and as they passed the father winked at Kersh. “Nice makeup job,” he murmured.
“Thank you, sir,” Kersh said, bowing his head. “Have a wonderful visit.”
He smiled as he watched the family head into the park. It would indeed be a full and rich day.
For them all.

SNATCH AS SNATCH CAN A Harry the Book Story

Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick is (according to Locus) the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short fiction. He is the author of fifty-eight novels, more than two hundred stories, and a pair of screenplays, and he has also edited fifty anthologies. His popular Harry the Book was created only a year ago, and Harry’s stories have already appeared in six anthologies and a magazine, with more on the way.

So we are sitting there in the dark, and the first one to strut across the stage is Fifi McDoll, who figures to be a thirteen on anyone’s ten scale, and the audience breaks into cheers, and for a minute I figure maybe the morning line of five-to-one was a little too generous, that this Fifi McDoll makes most girls, even such high-class ecdysiasts as Bedroom Eyes Betty, look like boys.
But then out comes Bubbles La Tour, and she looks just the way a one-to-three favorite ought to look, which is to say that if there is a straight line anywhere on her, it is probably between her two front teeth. I have never had the pleasure of her company, which looks from where I am sitting like this is a lot of pleasure not to have, but I can tell that she is the Secretariat or maybe the Babe Ruth of women.
I sit there, feeling No-Nose Minsky’s five large in my pocket, and I am getting ready to kiss it goodbye, along with the six other bets I have booked, because there is no way Bubbles La Tour can lose the Miss Lower South Manhattan Beauty Pageant, and I am thinking that even one-to-ten would be an overlay and that this is not going to be a good night, because each of the seven bets I have booked is on her, since a man would have to be blind and probably deceased to bet on the competition. From where I am sitting, it is clear that she can give each of the other girls a five-length lead, carry extra weights, and even if the track comes up muddy, she cannot help but win by daylight.
Ten or twelve more girls walk across the stage, but there is no spring to their stride, because they have seen Bubbles La Tour, and they know they are only fighting for place and show. Then the final contestant comes on, and it is Lizzie Lamont the Lizard Girl, who not only doffs her duds but also sheds her skin four times a night at Honest Ivan’s Palace of Delights. She differs from the other contestants not only in the matter of her epidermis, but also her claws, her wings, and her forked tongue, and I am starting to think that the morning line of 300-to- 1 might be a little too optimistic.
The judges adjourn to a back room to deliberate, and Velvet Voice Vinnie comes out and sings half a dozen hits from yesteryear, or yestercentury as the case may be, and I look over at No-Nose Minsky and he is beaming like he has already won, and indeed you could not find a person in the audience to suggest that he hasn’t.
Then the judges come back, and I notice that one of them has a black eye, and one is nursing a bloody nose, and none of them looks to be in mint or even fine condition, and they hand a little blood-spattered piece of paper to Vinnie, who looks at it, laughs as if he is reading a joke, and hands it back. The biggest judge, the only one who is not bleeding, says something to him, and Vinnie looks shocked, like he has just walked in on his wife and the mailman, or like one of his records actually gets a good review.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says, because it is easier than saying “Ladies, gentlemen, gnomes, goblins, leprechauns, elves, and assorted others,” which is more accurate but long-winded. Anyway, “ladies and gentlemen,” he says, “we have a winner.”
Bubbles La Tour is already smiling and bowing, and the audience is hooting and hollering, especially when she bows in the particular dress she is sort of wearing, but then Velvet Voice Vinnie holds a hand up. “And the winner,” he continues, “is Lizzie Lamont.”
The audience starts screaming words that should not be uttered in front of such innocent females as are standing on stage looking shell-shocked, and then Bubbles La Tour lets loose with a stream of invective that would put her no worse than third place in a county-wide cussing contest, and suddenly No-Nose Minsky is at my side, screaming that the fix was in and he wants his five thousand dollars back.
“I don’t know how you and your wizard did it,” he yells, “but clearly the fix was in, and I want satisfaction!”
“If you want satisfaction I suggest you visit Madame Fatima’s Exotic Realm of Pleasure just above Weasel Hannity’s Garage and Meat Market,” I say, “or perhaps make a private arrangement with Bedroom-Eyes Betty, who I am told can be quite an entrepreneur on occasion. As for me,” I continue with dignity, “I am not in the satisfaction business; I am in the bookmaking business.”
“You’ll be sorry for this, Harry!” he promises, shaking a fist at me. “I do not take being flim-flammed lightly. You and Big-Hearted Milton are in a world of trouble.”
“Just be glad Milton is over in Jersey at his favorite place of good repute, or he might turn you into a horned toad,” I say. “You should be careful before insulting such a powerful wizard.”
Actually, Milton is hiding at his brother’s place in Chicago until the current storm blows over, said storm being a redhead named Thelma who insists that certain promises were made and vows exchanged, and in truth I have no idea why Bubbles La Tour is a victim of such injustice, but at the moment I do not much care because it means I do not have to pay off any of the bets.
“Give me back my five large, and I won’t take my just and terrible vengeance,” says No-Nose Minsky.
“Where would I be if I refunded money to every player who bet on the wrong horse?” I say.
“Just you wait, Harry!” he hollers. “This isn’t finished yet!”
I look at the stage, where Lizzie Lamont is accepting her trophy, and point out that it is finished, and I leave as maybe five hundred thoughtful gentlemen from the audience are lining up to offer Bubbles La Tour their condolences.

The next day I am sitting in my office, which is the third booth at Joey Chicago’s 3-Star Tavern, doping out the line at Aqueduct. Gently Gently Dawkins, whose most recent diet lasted somewhat less than three hours and is now pushing three hundred and seventy-five pounds, is working on the crossword puzzle and has spent the past ten minutes trying to come up with a three-letter word for “firearm,” and he is sure there has been a misprint because as often as he tries it “gat” doesn’t work. Dead-End Dugan, who still can’t get used to being a zombie, keeps ordering drinks out of force of habit and then realizes that he isn’t thirsty. Benny Fifth Street is arguing the finer points of tiddlywinks with Joey Chicago, who is unimpressed with Benny’s claim that he played left forward wink on his fourth-grade tiddly team and made it all the way to the city semifinals before the other team’s mage turned his team’s tiddlywinks into nickels, and his teammates grabbed them and ran off to buy comics and dirty magazines, thus forfeiting all chance at the championship, which Benny regrets to this day, especially since he had a sawbuck riding on his team.
Finally Joey gets tired of hearing about Benny’s great lost opportunity, and he grabs a mop.
“The place is clean,” notes Benny. “Well, except for wherever Dead-End Dugan is standing.” Which is true, since little pieces of dirt and even a few pieces of Dugan are constantly falling to the floor wherever he happens to be.
“As long as he is out of town, I am going to clean Milton’s office,” says Joey.
“His office is the men’s room,” Benny points out.
“Have you seen all the pentagrams and mystic signs he’s drawn on the floor?” demands Joey. “It is time to scrub the place down, and it will be more entertaining than hearing about tiddlywinks. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, the black plague is more entertaining than hearing about tiddlywinks.”
“I could tell you about the Pick Up Sticks tournament I almost won in the second grade,” offers Benny.
“Suddenly that plague is looking mighty good indeed,” says Joey, disappearing into the men’s room.
“I got a bad feeling about this,” says Gently Gently. “Maybe some of those signs are protecting us against evil creatures from other dimensions, and we could be overrun by them if Joey washes them away.”
“I think they were supposed to protect Milton from overly aggressive redheads named Thelma,” I point out, “and you can see how well they worked.”
Gently Gently shrugs, which almost sets the room in motion. “You’re the boss,” he says.
I am glad someone remembers that, for Gently Gently, Benny, and Dugan all work for me, and Benny in particular gets annoyed when anyone calls them my toadies or my stooges, and rightfully points out that what they are is my flunkies.
“I’ll have another tall one,” says Dead-End Dugan when Joey Chicago emerges from the men’s room, mop in hand.
“Why?” says Joey. “You haven’t taken so much as a sip from the last six you ordered.”
I can see that Dugan is pondering the question, which means we won’t hear from him for another twenty minutes, because ever since he became a zombie, his brain is still functioning at 33 1/3 while everyone else is running 4.7-gigabyte disks between their ears.
Gently Gently walks over to the bar to grab a fistful of pretzels, and Joey Chicago slaps his hand.
“What was that for?” demands Gently Gently.
“You’re supposed to be on a diet,” says Joey.
“Do you want me to starve to death?” says Gently Gently.
“How long have I got to consider my answer?” replies Joey.
“Gently Gently Dawkins is the only guy I know who gains weight on a diet,” remarks Benny.
“Nonsense,” says Gently Gently. “I feel light as a feather.”
“How many four hundred pound feathers have you ever seen?” asks Benny.
“Really,” insists Gently Gently. “I feel lighter than I’ve felt in years.”
Joey Chicago stares at him. “Some of him is missing,” he announces.
“Under my chin and around my waist, right?” says Gently Gently, standing in the middle of the tavern and turning around.
“Everywhere,” says Benny, blinking his eyes rapidly.
“That is some diet!” exclaims Gently Gently. “I quit it last month, and is it still working its magic on me.”
“Something is working its magic on you,” I agree. “But I do not think it is the diet. You are becoming transparent.”
Gently Gently spins like a ballerina, which is not really the case but I do not know what you call a male ballerina, and then he jumps in the air, and if there is a basket ten feet above the ground, there is no question that he could stuff a basketball through it.
“I am going to have to load up on fats and carbohydrates so that I don’t shrink out of my clothes by this evening!” says Gently Gently with a blissful smile on his face. “What a diet!” He turns to Joey Chicago. “Give me an Old Peculiar, and put a cup of sugar in it.”
But before Joey can even answer him, he becomes so transparent that he is gone, and there is no trace of him anywhere.
“I am no expert,” says Benny, “but I do not believe a diet can do that, and especially not retroactively.”
Before anyone can answer, a banshee flies into the tavern with a piece of paper in its mouth, circles the room once, flies over to me, drops the paper in my hands, and flies out again.
“That is the most unusual newsboy I have ever seen,” says Benny.
“They do not deliver the paper at two-thirty in the afternoon,” answers Joey Chicago, “and besides, I cannot remember the last time the newspaper was only one page and printed in blue handwriting.”
“It is from No-Nose Minsky,” I announce.
“What does it say?” asks Benny.
So I read it aloud:

“To whom it may concern:
Harry, you foul swine, I still do not know how you fixed the Miss Lower South Manhattan Beauty Pageant, but I want my five large back, and to that end I have employed Morris the Mage and told him to put the snatch on your henchman, who will be returned relatively unharmed the moment you turn over my money to me.
Respectfully,&
No-Nose Minsky”

“So are you going to honor his request?” asks Joey Chicago.
“It was more a demand than a request,” says Benny, who is still mad that Joey isn’t interested in tiddlywinks and is looking to start an argument.
“You are disagreeing over semantics,” says Joey. “The important thing is that they’ve put the snatch on Gently Gently.”
“Maybe Big-Hearted Milton can magic him back,” suggested Dugan, who hasn’t noticed that Milton has been in hiding for the past three weeks.
“I do not pay ransoms, and I do not yield to threats,” I say at last. “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.”
“Who is Tribute?” asks Dugan.
“So you’re just going to let No-Nose Minsky and Morris the Mage beat you?” says Benny reproachfully. “Milton may be out of town, but there is always Sooth sayer Solly, or Maggie the Mystic, or—”
“If I give No-Nose his money back,” I say, “then every plunger who backs the wrong horse will want his money back.”
“I thought he was betting on women,” says Dugan, who seems no more confused than usual, which is to say a great deal more than somewhat.
“This is beyond you, Dead-End,” says Joey. “Don’t worry about it. Just busy yourself doing a bunch of dead things.”
Dugan frowns, and we can see he is going to be a few hours thinking of dead things to do, and I turn back to Benny.
“I, Harry the Book, have spoken. I will be sorry to lose Gently Gently, but I am a businessman, and refunding bets to suckers is bad business.”
And that is the way it stands for almost two days.
Then the banshee comes by with another message, to wit:

Where can I get five pounds of buffalo steak, potatoes au gratin made with warthog cheese, and a gallon of pickle-flavored ice cream?
Respectfully,
No-Nose Minsky

I read the note aloud, then crumple it up and toss it in the trash.
“No answer,” I say to the banshee, who has been hovering above me.
It flies out the door, but it is back three hours later.

Who is likely to be selling shrimp de jongue at four in the morning?
Cordially,
No-Nose Minsky

“No answer,” I tell the banshee.
Five more hours and it is back again.

Harry, he is eating me out of house and home. How did you ever put up with it? And quick, where can I get two gallons of Wisconsin buttermilk, a pound of Rubinski’s Russian peanut butter, and a loaf of Antiguan lemon bread?
Desperately,
Obidiah Minsky

This time the banshee doesn’t even wait for me to say “No answer” but just flies back out the door.
“Obidiah?” says Joey Chicago with a laugh.
“He is so upset that he forgets to use his real name,” chimes in Benny.
“Benny,” I say, “if I were you, I would move three feet to the left.”
Benny looks at the ceiling as if it might collapse any second but cannot find anything wrong with it. “Why?” he asks.
“Because,” I say, “you are standing exactly where Gently Gently Dawkins stands when Morris the Mage puts the snatch on him.”
“So?”
“So I intuit that we will soon have a visitor,” I say.
He looks at me like I am functioning on even less cylinders than Dead-End Dugan, but he goes over and sits at a table, and no sooner does he do so than Gently Gently Dawkins flickers into view, becoming more solid by the instant, and by the time he is completely back, holding a half-eaten sandwich in one hand and a rhino-flavored malt in the other, he looks to have put on a quick fifteen pounds.
“Hi, Harry,” he says as if he has never been away. He holds his sandwich out. “Can I offer you a bite?”
“No,” I say. “A growing boy like you needs all his strength. Did they treat you well?”
“They starved me a bit,” he replies, “but they never beat me or anything like that. I am glad to be back, but if you don’t mind, I’m going down the street to Carla’s Pie Shop to replenish my depleted strength.”
And with that he is gone.
“Well, let us hope No-Nose learned his lesson and there will be no more poor sportsmanship from him,” says Benny.
“I will give plenty of twenty-to-one against,” I say, because even as the words leave my mouth, Dead-End Dugan starts going all transparent.
“I am dying again,” he announces, looking down at his body. “This is the fourth time, or maybe the fifth”—suddenly he frowns, the first emotion he has shown since he came back from the cemetery over in Brooklyn five months ago—“and it’s got to stop!”
But it doesn’t, and fifteen seconds later there is no Dugan left, just a pile of dirt where he had been.
“Well, at least No-Nose won’t have to feed him,” says Benny.
“I hope you are not sympathizing with No-Nose Minsky,” I say, “because once he figures out that I am not going to give him back his five large for Dugan any more than I did for Gently Gently, you are probably next on his list.”
“If he feeds me like he fed Gently Gently, there are worse situations to be in,” replies Benny.
“He knows from Gently Gently that feeding is not an answer,” I say. “He will soon learn from Dugan that intelligence is not an answer. By the time he gets to you, he may be wondering if torture is an answer.”
“Torture is an answer?” repeats Benny, his eyes going wide with terror. “I do not even know the question!”
Joey Chicago spends the next five minutes suggesting questions to Benny, but on a lark he does so in Polish and a couple of other languages that are popular in distant lands, and Benny is becoming more and more panic-stricken, and finally Joey takes pity on him.
“Relax,” says Joey. “I personally will give plenty of eight-to-one that No-Nose Minsky and Morris the Mage do not put the snatch on you.”
“You think they’ll just keep Dugan, then?” asks Benny hopefully.
“No,” says Joey.
“Then why do you give eight-to-one that they won’t snatch me?”
“I think they will probably conclude that snatching Harry’s flunkies isn’t going to work. It is at least eight-to-one against.” Joey pauses thoughtfully. “On the other hand, I figure it is even money that they’ll kill you where you stand.”
Joey spends the next half hour giving Benny the morning line on exactly how he thinks Morris will kill him, and then Gently Gently comes back with crumbs on his mouth and shirt, looking more substantial and less transparent than ever.
“You’re sure they didn’t torture you, maybe just a little bit?” says Benny by way of greeting.
“Except for starving me, you mean?” asks Gently Gently. “No, they were very cordial and friendly. Mrs. No-Nose and I spent most of the time exchanging recipes.”
Just then a harpy swoops through the doorway and deposits a note in my hand.

Does he always smell this bad?
Curiously,
No-Nose

I have the harpy hover for a moment while I write an answer.

He has been dead for almost three years. What did you expect?
Yours very truly,
Harry the Book

The harpy flies off, and five minutes later Dead-End Dugan begins taking shape. We watch as all the parts fill in, except for the knife wounds and the bullet holes, and finally he is pretty much the way he was when he left.
“Welcome back, Dead-End,” I say.
“Did they torture you?” asks Benny anxiously.
“I don’t know,” says Dugan.
“How can you not know?” demands Benny.
“I do not feel pain,” says Dugan, “and it is counterproductive to threaten me with death when I am already dead.”
I am about to compliment him on his answer, and especially his use of big words like “counterproductive,” when suddenly I feel a little flimsy, like the time I wake up with a hangover and go out to buy a paper and realize when everyone starts laughing that I have forgotten to put on my pants.
Then I feel flimsier still and realize that my pants are fine, it is me that is becoming absent. Gently Gently waves at me, and Benny says “Take care, Boss,” and Joey Chicago pours my drink back into the bottle, and then I am in No-Nose Minsky’s living room, surrounded by No-Nose and three of his henchpeople (which is the proper term, since of one them is Sledgehammer Sally), and I see Morris the Mage decked out in his robe and conical hat, both of which are covered with the same little signs you see on the horoscope page of the newspaper.
“How do you put up with him?” asks No-Nose.
“Dugan?” I say. “He just stands in the back of the bar and doesn’t bother anyone.”
“I maybe could put up with the smell,” says No-Nose, “and I suppose I could put up with the dirt, and I could possibly even put up with the things crawling around in his hair and under his fingernails . . .”
“Then why do you send him back?” I ask.
“What I cannot put up with is Mrs. No-Nose,” he says bitterly. “She takes one look at the furniture after he sits on it and says that either he goes or I go and she doesn’t care which, and then she starts swinging her rolling pin.” He shoots a bitter glance toward the kitchen. “It is not generally known, but I used to be Needle-Nose Minsky before our first argument.”
“She sounds formidable,” I say. “Maybe you should consider entering her in the Friday Night Fights.”
He shakes his head. “She needs motivation, so unless I am the opponent, she figures to last no more than thirty seconds of the first round.” He stares at me. “Enough small talk. I am through with toadies—”
“They are flunkies,” I correct him.
“They are a dead man and a blimp with an appetite!” he yells. “From now on, I am dealing only with you. You are my prisoner, and you are staying here until I get my five large back.”
“You lost it fair and square,” I say. “I do not make refunds.”
“I lost it unfair and crooked!” he yells. “What is the likelihood of Lizzie Lamont beating Bubbles La Tour?”
“I had it at 300-to-1,” I say. “But on reflection, I think 500-to-1 would have been a fairer price.”
“Then you agree!” he says.
“I agree that a longshot upset the favorite,” I say. “But I do not agree that I have to return your money.”
“The fix had to be in!” says No-Nose.
“It is possible,” I agree. “But I didn’t put it in, and I am not refunding bets I took in good faith.”
“Then you are going to stay here until you change your mind,” he says.
“It cannot be any more uncomfortable and confining than the third booth at Joey Chicago’s,” I say placidly.
“We are not savages here,” says No-Nose. “Well, except maybe for Sledgehammer Sally and Eldritch Oscar,” he adds, gesturing to two of his henchpeople. “You will be treated with respect and courtesy, but you will not set foot out of here until I have my five large.”
“Well, if I’m here, I’m here,” I say with a shrug. “I trust you will not stop me from practicing my profession. Is there a Racing Form in the place?”
No-Nose nods to Eldritch Oscar, who leaves the room and comes back in a minute with a Form. He gives it to No-Nose, who glances at it and then hands it to me.
“I see Apricot Preserve is running in the second tomorrow,” he notes. “And he is five-to-one on the morning line, which is clearly an overlay.”
“You think so?” I ask.
“Absolutely.”
“If you like,” I say, “I will book your bet.”
“I am tapped out,” he admits. “That is why I need my five large back.”
“You have always been an honorable man,” I say, “at least until your heinous and unforgivable behavior of the past two days. I will take your marker.”
“Done!” he shouts. “I will put five large on Apricot Preserve’s schnoz.”
I write it down and have him initial it.
“Do you see anything else you like?” I ask, handing him the Form.
Well, he looks at it, and studies it, and also has Eldritch Oscar bring him the daily paper, and when the dust has cleared he has bet ten large on All Day Sucker in the fourth, another ten large on Ticklish Tess in the fifth, twenty large on Kid Testosterone to kayo Hideous Horace Hochmeyer in the feature fight at the Garden, five large on the Jersey Geldings to beat the spread against the Rhode Island Ridglings, and just for the hell of it, he bets five yards that it’ll rain before midnight.
It does not take me long to see why No-Nose is tapped out. Apricot Preserve comes in first, all right, but he wins the third race by a neck after going to the post in the second. All Day Sucker lives up to his name and is still running at the end of the day. Ticklish Tess actually comes home first but is disqualified for taking a huge bite out of Bold Nudist in the homestretch, which surprises everyone since up until then it is generally considered that horses are vegetarians. Kid Testosterone closes his eyes and swings his money punch, a roundhouse right, which misses Hideous Horace and kayos the ref, but that is the best punch he has in him, and Hideous Horace puts him to sleep about twenty seconds after he does the same for the ref. The Jersey Geldings need to lose by less than thirty-five points to beat the spread; they are down 42-to- 3 at the half, and they have used all their energy to stay that close, because they at least scored a field goal in the first half, and that is three points more than they score for the rest of the game, which is played in a driving rain.
Mrs. No-Nose makes me a hearty breakfast. No-Nose waits until she has gone back into the kitchen, and then he and Morris the Mage approach me.
“Harry,” he says, “I am sending you back.”
“I thought I was here forever,” I say.
“I cannot afford to keep you,” he says. “You are here less than twenty-four hours, and I am already out fifty large plus a five-yard side bet.”
“I was going to discuss that with you,” I say. “How do you plan to pay me if you are tapped out?”
“I am not sure,” he says. “But I am a man of honor, except for being a kidnapper and such, and I will make good on my markers, for I cannot have it spread all over town that I ever welch on a bet.”
Before I can reply, Morris starts chanting in a language that was used by magicians eons ago, or maybe French diplomats, and suddenly I am back in Joey Chicago’s. It takes about two minutes for all my parts to arrive, but I find I am none the worse for wear or for extradimensional travel.
And that is the last I hear of No-Nose Minsky for almost a month. Then one day Benny Fifth Street reads in the paper that someone has put the snatch on Lizzie Lamont. Not only that, but the big guy who was one of the judges claims that it was the work of his enemies, because he has a crush on Lizzie Lamont and beats the other judges into voting for her. He also admits that he has a major bet down on her at 250-to-1 with Moneychanger McNamarra over in Queens, and the winnings are to be their nest egg. Only when he is through ranting does he realize what he has said, and I’m sure he will apologize to Bubbles La Tour and all other injured parties if Ill-Natured Sherman, who is Moneychanger McNamarra’s muscle, doesn’t immediately repossess his ill-gotten winnings and plant six slugs into his forehead, forming a kind of strange-looking smile a little higher up than most smiles tend to be.
The next afternoon a banshee flies into Joey Chicago’s and drops a thick envelope in my lap, then flies out, so clearly no answer is expected. I open it, and there is forty-five large, and a note which reads as follows:

Dear Harry:
Like I told you, I always pay my debts. I would deliver this in person, but life is getting complicated. When I hear that Lizzie Lamont’s old man is loaded, I have Morris put the snatch on her, and sure enough, the old gentleman coughs up fifty large—but while she is here, we fall in love. She is beautiful in her lizardly way, and kind, and gentle, and, most important, she has never even seen a rolling pin.
I know I am $5,500 short, but her father has put a hit out on me, and so has Esmeralda (Mrs. No-Nose to you), and I need that money to get Lizzie and me off the continent. I’ll send you the rest of it when I can.
This is my dream girl, this Lizzie. She’s got wings, a tail, more skins than you can shake a stick at, she even sees in the dark. She comes loaded with extras, just like a new luxury car.
Oops! Two shots just came through the window. Got to run.
Yours in haste,
No-Nose Minsky

And that is the last I hear from No-Nose and his new lady love.
Big-Hearted Milton shows up a couple of days later, and we tell him the story. I conclude by wondering where they are holed up.
“That’s no problem,” says Milton. “I’ll find out for you.”
He mumbles something that kind of rhymes, goes into his trance, rolls his eyes back in his head, stiffens like a board—which, I should add, is exactly the way he behaves after his fourth martini—and finally he opens his eyes and looks at Benny and Gently Gently and me.
“They are headed to a secluded resort on Bago Bago in the South Pacific,” he announces.
“It must be pretty nice there,” offers Benny.
“It used to be,” agrees Milton.
“Used to be?” asks Gently Gently.
“Yes,” says Milton. “Until Thelma decides I am hiding there and burns it down.”
Everyone laughs at that except me. I am still busy wondering where No-Nose Minsky is going to find the five large he owes me. Eventually the solution comes to me, and a minute later I am instructing Big-Hearted Milton to put the snatch on Lizzie Lamont.

PSYCHO DANNY AND THE VIDEO MAN

Margaret S. Lundock

Margaret Lundock has always had two passions; horses and writing. She chose to make horses her career and writing her hobby. While attending Colorado State University, she married a veterinary student. In 1982 they moved to Ocala, Florida, where they raised their three children and pursued their shared dream of breeding and racing Thoroughbreds. They have had the pleasure of competing successfully in stakes races at some of the premier racing venues, including Santa Anita, Belmont Park, and Gulf-stream. Calder Racecourse, in the Miami area, is their home track and the inspiration for this story. Some of the horse names used in the story are those of horses owned by Margaret and her husband. Margaret continues to write when she has time. She has had three short stories and several gaming articles published.

“nd they’re off!”
The bell rang, the starting gate sprang open, the crowd roared, and the horses and jockeys lunged out, a mob of brilliant color on top of thundering muscle.
“Naughty Kitten breaks alertly, with Lady of Spain and Savannah Girl tucked in behind her.”
The announcer went through the entire field as the horses rounded the first turn. Down the back side, he started through again.
“And it’s Naughty Kitten still in front, Lady of Spain, then Savannah Girl, with Cindanzri up on the outside.”
As the horses came off the final turn and straightened out for the stretch run, the cheers of the crowd rose. The rail birds, those bettors dedicated enough to endure the wilting Miami heat and stand out on the tarmac, yelled and pounded the rail, urging on their picks.
The rail rattled, and the ground shook as the field stampeded toward the wire. The announcer called the horses’ names, but no one listened; they were all shouting the number of their horse, their bet.
“Naughty Kitten is tiring, Savannah Girl is up on her outside, and from the back of the pack it’s Whirling Nina. Savannah Girl, Whirling Nina . . .”
Dirt flew, fans screamed, arms waved, but Danny didn’t notice any of it. He stared at the wire, rubbing his thumbs over the tips of his fingers. “Come on Five, come on! You can get past that horse!”
The yells of the guy in the flamingo and palm tree camp shirt next to Danny erupted on a wave of stale beer and sweat as he pumped his arms and stamped his flip flops.
The horses surged under the wire, and Danny touched the cable attached to the rail that ran to the photo finish camera up in the video room. There was a warm tingle and a spark as the magic collided with the electricity.
“Who won; was it Number Five?” the guy next to Danny asked no one in particular. He wiped his brow with his flamingo and palm tree print camp shirt that was already soaked from the humidity.
Danny turned away from the rail-bird chatter toward the respite of the air-conditioned grandstand.
“Ask Psycho Danny, he’ll know.”
“Hey, Danny, who won?”
“Number Five. Of course it’s Five,” he answered.
“I knew it!”
“No, it can’t be. He doesn’t know.”
“Psycho Danny knows, he always knows.”
Danny strode through the glass doors and breathed in the cool air. He slicked back his black hair as he leaped up the escalator two steps at a time to the mezzanine level. When he reached the top, he could see the track spread out before him, through the huge glass front of the grandstand, a green expanse surrounded by the high-rises and waterways of Miami. Tall slender palm trees topped with a poof of fronds waved in an early afternoon breeze that sent ripples across the infield lake. In the middle of it all was the all-important tote board. The light still flashed photo, the order of finish hadn’t been posted yet, but Danny knew what it was.
A moment later the results flashed up, five, one, three, seven. A combined moan and cheer rose from the crowd. Danny shuffled his tickets. He knew it was five, of course it was five.
“Danny, did you bet on Savannah Girl in the last race?” The languid Southern voice of Margery called to him.
“Five, I bet on Number Five.”
“Danny, come, sit with me a minute. For heaven’s sake, you look like Groucho Marx rushing around like you do. Come, sit with me a minute, Danny.” Margery patted the seat next to her in the box.
“Don’t you mean Psycho Danny?” Danny did stop, but he didn’t sit.
“Oh, Danny, I’d never call you that . . . to your face. Now come, sit. You have fifteen minutes to the next race, and I know you’ve already got your horse picked. You did have Savannah Girl, didn’t you?”
“I had Five. Nobody cares about names but the owners and the trainers. It’s the numbers that are important.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Come, sit.” Margery patted the seat next to her again. The charms on her bracelet jingled, her rings sparkled, her red lips smiled at him from under the broad brim of her hat. Curls dyed bright red surrounded a face that had once been beautiful, but now was only make-up over wrinkles.
Danny acquiesced and slid into the seat.
Margery’s jewelry clanked as she shifted to look directly at Danny through her oversized sunglasses.
“Please don’t tell me you’ve got New York Gent in the second race for the second half of your Daily Double.”
“I’ve got Three.” Danny pulled his program out of the back pocket of his slacks. “It’s Diamond Eye I’ve got. Why?”
“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” Margery held up her hand and wiggled her fingers bedecked with jewels as fake as her hair color. “Now if Cindanzri had won the first race, who knows. I hate made-up names. What is a Cindanzri, what does it mean? It’s just parts of names stuck together; it doesn’t help at all.”
With anyone else, Danny would have been up and rushing on by now, even if he did look like Groucho Marx, although he doubted Groucho ever sported an Egyptian cotton shirt and silk jacket. But Margery deserved a person’s respect. Her ramblings usually went somewhere, and her picks usually won.
Margery looked down at her wrist and fiddled with one of the charms on her bracelet, a little silver deer.
“My nephew just sent me this from Nala, Japan. You know they let the temple deer run free in the city there. Now if there was a horse named some deer something running, I’d have to bet on her, wouldn’t I?”
“The horses are coming onto the track for the running of the second race . . .” the announcer’s voice rang out, echoing in the glass-fronted cavern of the grandstand.
“I gotta check the horses out.”
Before he could rise, Margery put her hand, cool and greasy with hand lotion, on his.
“Pay attention to the names, Danny. You have to be careful how you bet.”
Danny forced a quick wincing smile to his lips slid his hand from under hers, and bounded back into motion. His patience with Margery had run out.
“Hey, Psycho Danny, who do you like in the second?”
“Danny, who’s your pick?”
“Hey Psycho, you alive in the Double?”
Danny ignored them all as he trotted down the escalator and out through the glass doors back into the steamy afternoon. The horses were already on the back stretch, circling behind the gate. Danny rushed to his spot on the rail, squeezing in between the flamingo and palm tree camp shirt and a red halter top.
“I bet on Number Six. His silks match my shirt,” the red halter top was saying to her friend.
“And they’re off!”
The dance began again. Danny concentrated on the horses, concentrated on the number, whispering to himself. The cacophony of cheering fans, blaring loudspeakers, and thundering hooves swirled around him, but all he could see was the number, his number, written in fire across his mind.
Number Three.
He breathed deep, preparing to send the magic through the cable.
“And coming off the far turn, Diamond Eye breaks free from the pack. It’s Diamond Eye by four, followed by a tiring New York Gent, then Don’t Be Cruel.”
Danny watched the number, his number, pulling away. He relaxed, the fire in his mind faded to embers, then to wisps of smoke. He could save his magic this time. He turned away before Diamond Eye crossed the finish line.
“Hey, Psycho, even I could tell who won that race. Fat lot of good it does me, I had the stinkin’ Eight,” the flamingo palm tree shirt guy grumbled.
Danny headed into the sanctuary of the grandstand to cool off and collect his winnings.
“Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, four thousand.” The cashier counted Danny’s winnings.
“Not a bad Daily Double, Danny.”
“I’ve done better, but it’ll do.” Danny gave a quick, one-sided smile that might have been a grimace as he scooped up his money.
“Do you ever lose?”
“You know I do, Chuck. The trick is to win more.” Danny shoved the bills in his inside jacket pocket. Now it was time for lunch.
The club house overlooked the track from the third floor of the grandstand. Above it were the private boxes and Director’s Room, and above that were the press boxes, stewards’ box, and the video room, where all of the videos from the different cameras around the track were coordinated by the Video Man. It was also where the all important photo finish photos were reviewed. The photos were taken automatically at ground level, and the signal sent up to the video room.
Danny lingered over his lunch. No flat beer and jumbo pretzels for him. Shrimp cordon bleu and key lime pie graced his table, washed down with a light chablis. He watched the afternoon clouds roll in from the ocean and wash the track with a warm, tropical shower, while the chatter of the winners and losers swirled around him.
“I put my tickets in my wallet behind my girlfriend’s photo.”
“You gotta bet on the grays, they win more.”
“This is my lucky scarf. I always win when I wave it.”
He placed a few bets and cashed a few tickets. He was not without talent as a bettor, he didn’t always need his magic. He just used it when there was a well matched field that would probably come down to the wire together. Then he placed his large bets, then he wrote the numbers of fire across his mind, concentrated on the finishers just as they flew under the wire, and hurled his magic at the electronic impulses that sent the image through the cable. A nose, a fraction, that’s all it took, just distort the image enough to put his number in front. The ninth race was such a race, a seven-horse field, well matched, good quality horses. That race was worthy of his magic.
“Number Four to win in the ninth,” Danny pulled his money from his inside jacket pocket. “Three thousand dollars.”
“You want it all to win?” Chuck asked. Danny always did his betting with Chuck. Chuck understood him.
“Number Four to win.”
“If he doesn’t win, you’re going to be in the I.C.U.,” Chuck said as he punched out the tickets.
“What are you talking about?”
“Number Four’s name, I.C.U. Crazy name for a horse. Probably put some poor groom in intensive care when he was a yearling.”
“Yeah, whatever. Number Four.” Danny didn’t care about names, just numbers.
The horses were already at the gate when Danny made his way to his spot on the rail. The flamingo and palm tree camp shirt guy was gone. The late afternoon sun broke through under the last lingering rain clouds, casting a glow over the palm trees and turning the windows of the surrounding sky scrapers to liquid gold.
The gate was right in front of Danny for the mile race. He could hear the crew whistling and clucking at the horses as they loaded. The smells of horse sweat, manure, and popcorn mingled in his nostrils. The droplets clinging to the bottom of the rail moistened his fingers.
But Danny didn’t notice any of it, he was already reaching inside of himself, fanning the magic.
“And they’re off!”
It started again, the yells of the jockeys, cheers of the crowd, thunder of hooves. The world around Danny was a writhing, waving tempest of motion and noise, while he stood silent and still in the eye of the hurricane. The number four filled his mind; he could sense the other numbers, some ahead and some behind.
The horses rounded the far turn and charged down the stretch three abreast. The crowd was on its feet.
“And it’s Try Again, I.C.U., and Danny Don’t, driving toward the wire. And here comes Video Man with a late charge. The three leaders continue to battle, Danny Don’t, Try Again, I.C.U., and here comes Video Man.”
The number four flamed in Danny’s mind, filled his consciousness. His fingers felt for the cable, his eyes were fixed on the wire. The magic channeled to his fingers. As the horses flew under the wire his magic raced into the cable, colliding with the electricity that carried the image of the photo.
There was a jolt, a numbing shock, a spark.
Danny jerked his hand from the rail. His fingers were red and stinging, his hand and arm were pins and needles.
“Who won?” The question swirled around Danny.
“Hey Psycho, you always know. Who won?”
“Number Four, it was Four.” Danny pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped his hand. It was wet. The rail had been wet. That didn’t make any difference to the magic. He’d used his magic in pouring rain.
“Nah, it couldn’t have been the number four. It was the two.”
“I think the six got it on a head bob.”
Danny stopped listening. He folded his handkerchief and returned it to his pocket. He knew, of course he knew. It was number four.
“And the winner is number two, Danny Don’t. Number six, Try Again is second, number four I.C.U. is third, and number seven Video Man is fourth.”
Danny whirled around toward the tote board. There were the numbers, two, six, four, seven.
“I guess they got you on that one, Psycho.”
“No, that’s not right. It’s four. Number four.” The afterglow of the number still glowed in his mind, like the image of a bright light on closed eye lids. He hadn’t faltered, hadn’t lost concentration. The spell had been complete.
“It’s now official. Danny Don’t, Try Again, I.C.U., Video Man.” The warning rang in his ears.
Danny turned and stared up at the video booth on the top floor of the grandstand. A light glittered in it, like the reflection of the sun off of a mirror, but the sun was behind the grandstand. The light sought him out, prostrated him in its glare, exposed him.
Danny tore into the grandstand, through it, and out into the parking lot, away from the light, away from the warning, away from the Video Man.
The engine of his fifty-seven Chevy roared to life. He stomped the gas pedal, popped the clutch, and sped out of the parking lot.
The fifty-seven, with its converted 350 engine, glass packs, and bored out cylinders, announced his dominance of the road as he mowed down the traffic on the boulevard. The dark canals lined with pastel houses with tile roofs hemmed him in. He charged up the on ramp onto the Interstate. The carburetor rumbled as it loosed all four barrels.
The wide sprawling Interstate stretched out before him. The red sun flashed like a strobe light between the high rises as Danny cruised through the evening traffic over the long sweeping curves. The marvel of modern technology, with tiers of overpasses, twisting about each other like snakes, wound its way through Miami and past the shore out across the sea to the Keys.
The wide highway invited him to follow it, to fly along it until he ripped through the gossamer veil that trapped him in the mortal world. He didn’t belong here, never had. His magic was his salvation and his curse. It made him different, but it made him whole. He didn’t abuse the magic of the numbers. He didn’t change world events, didn’t ruin people’s lives. All he wanted was to earn a comfortable place in this miasma of contrived busy work and cheap plastic.
The sky was black above the street lights and neon when Danny pulled the fifty-seven into his reserved parking space at his condominium. He walked out into the sultry night of old Miami. A park with towering palm trees and Norfolk pines on a blanket of Saint Augustine grass separated him from the Intracoastal Waterway as he walked down the sidewalk in front of pastel store fronts beneath neon signs. Above him, the high-rises loomed into the night. Reggae and steel drums blended with lapping water and ships’ bells.
“Buenas noches, Danny. You don’t look so good. Things no good at the track today?” Jorge greeted him at the door of a restaurant lost in the fifties, full of chrome and linoleum.
“No, no good today.”
“That’s okay, it’ll be better manana. Si?”
Jorge led him to a table in the corner next to a wall of square glass bricks that let the lights of the city through in little waves and dots.
“You want a beer tonight?”
“No, just iced tea.”
“Unsweet with lemon, si?”
“Si, yeah. And my usual.”
Danny absently felt in his jacket pocket for a cigarette. Then shook his head. He didn’t smoke any more, not since they made all the rules about when and where you could smoke. They were always making rules. Now someone was making rules about magic, his magic.
He could leave, go someplace else. Danny swirled the ice in his tea. A smile slid across his thin lips as he thought about the iced tea in New York, strong, bitter with a few ice cubes begrudgingly thrown in. He couldn’t go there. It was old, gray, crowded, with narrow roads and cold winters. Miami was expansive, with wide highways and soft, southern air.
Like Miami, his meal of jerk chicken, rice, fruit salsa, and fried bananas satisfied all of his tastes, sweet, sour, salty, bitter. There was enough spice to make his eyes water, but he was always anxious for the next bite.
The moist warmth of the night caressed Danny as he stepped out of the café. Across the street a bank sign flashed the time and temperature. Eleven forty-two. Seventy-nine degrees. Eleven forty-three. Seventy-nine degrees. He walked to the base of the sign and touched it. He could feel the pulses of the numbers, they danced in his mind like annoying gnats. He wrapped his mind around the numbers, and as they flashed on one last time, his magic caught them, squashed them. With a fizz, the sign went dark, and the night was left to the soft neon and distant lights sparkling on the black water.
“Evening, Danny,” the guy at the newsstand said as he handed Danny a form. He didn’t have to ask; it was what Danny always got.
Danny nodded and handed him seven dollars. He didn’t have to say keep the change; he always let the guy keep the change.
“That dumb bank sign is on the fritz again. It must have a short or something; it’s always going out. That’s fine with me—the flashing gives me a headache.”
Danny looked back at the darkened sign and felt the racing form in his hand, full of numbers. He headed home.
The morning sun flooded into Danny’s twelfth-floor condominium, shining on the chrome banister, reflecting off beveled mirrors, casting prisms onto the white walls and floors. The form was spread out on the coffee table, pages of numbers that he sorted into winners and losers. Danny rose from his couch and glided silently to the glass door of his balcony and pulled it open. The sea breeze wafted over him, catching his loose black robe so that it fluttered. The brine and sea salt mixed with the scent of rain that hinted at afternoon thunderstorms. Below, a cigar boat motored down the waterway, eager to reach the open water and turn loose its nine hundred horsepower super Vs.
The first race that held any interest was the fourth, so he had plenty of time to soak in the sun and gather his magic. Then he would play the game, fill his mind with the burning numbers, and touch the cable. Yesterday was a fluke, a short in the line.
The names didn’t mean anything.
He could think of plenty of names that could be strung into sentences, Who’s Crying Now, Smile, Spend a Buck, Lost in the Fog. That’s why names didn’t matter; it was numbers that mattered.
“And they’re off!”
Danny stood at his spot by the rail, the number seven blazed to life in his mind. The magic raced through his body, his hands tingled, his heart raced.
“Coming into the homestretch it’s E O Man, More Magic, and Many Moons. Making a late move is Final Warning Vid. More Moons is fading, E O Man is up on the outside to take the lead, More Magic is second. And from way out of it here comes I Said No.”
The magic flared, the flaming number scorched Danny’s mind. Sweat burst on his brow, his hand trembled on the cable.
“It’s E O Man, and More Magic, and here comes I Said No and Final Warning Vid. I Said No gets through on the rail. They’re four abreast—I Said No, More Magic, Final Warning Vid, E O Man.”
The horses pounded across the finish line. Danny shot his magic into the cable. Before his magic could dance with the electricity of the camera, a bolt hit it, ricochet ing it back, knocking him to the ground.
“What’s the matter, Psycho, can’t hold your liquor?”
“It’s about time someone knocked the little prick on his ass.”
Danny staggered to his feet. He rubbed his thumb over the blisters on his fingertips and glared up at the video booth.
The photo finish sign flashed on the tote board. Long minutes passed as the light flashed, the crowd grew restless. Danny stood, staring up at the booth, ignoring the camp shirts and halter tops and questions swirling around him.
“And the winner is number two, I Said No; number seven, More Magic, second; number eight, Final Warning Vid; and number three, E O Man. That’s: I Said No, More Magic, Final Warning Vid, E O Man.”
The light flashed in the video booth, searching Danny out and punctuating the warning on the tote board. This time Danny didn’t run. He glared up at the tinted windows of the booth that hid the Video Man. The rain clouds that the morning had promised rolled across the sun. The light in the video booth flashed off. Danny rubbed his fingers and stormed into the grandstand.
“Oh, Danny.”
The words, wrapped in Southern charm, caught Danny as he stepped off the escalator.
“Come sit with me.” Margery was all in coral that boldly clashed with her bright red hair.
Danny sat, still rubbing his stinging fingers.
“You’ve hurt your hand.” Margery reached out a hand decorated with coral fingernails.
Danny slipped his hands into his lap. “It’s nothing, just a burn.”
Thunder rumbled outside, shaking the plate glass front of the grandstand.
“Did you bet the last race?”
“Yeah, lost, but not too much.”
“Oh, Danny dear, you shouldn’t have bet. The names were all wrong.”
“It’s the numbers. Names don’t mean anything.”
“Danny, you have to be careful. You never know who’s watching.”
“Like the Video Man?”
“Danny, hush.” Margery covered her bright coral lips with a trembling hand.
She knew. She knew about the magic, about the Video Man. There was only one way she could. She used the magic too, only she used names. Names and charms.
There was no jingling on her wrist today, no bracelet loaded with charms, little trinkets that she’d tell you about, and if you listened she’d tell you who was going to win. She was scared, scared because of the Video Man.
The first drops of rain pelted the top of the grandstand, big, warm tropical drops.
“Where’s your bracelet?”
“It’s in my purse. I didn’t think it would go with this outfit.” Margery fussed with the ruffles of her skirt.
“It’d look good. Put it on.”
“But Danny, you never know who’s watching.”
Danny gave her a rare smile. “I’m watching. Put it on. It’ll be okay.”
The staccato drops became a constant drumming, then a thunderous pounding. The rail birds scurried into the grandstand. Wind whipped the palm trees of the infield.
The charms jangled as Margery tried to clasp her bracelet with shaking fingers. Danny cupped the bracelet in his hand, wrapped it around Margery’s wrist and clasped it.
“Who do you like in the next race?”
“Oh Danny, I don’t think you should—”
“It’s okay, who do you like?”
Margery fidgeted with her bracelet. “Remember yesterday I told you about this silver deer charm my nephew sent me? There’s a horse in this next race, Silver Doe—”
“The number, only the number matters.”
Margery thumbed through her form. “She’s Number Eight.”
“You better go bet.” Danny got to his feet.
“Danny, wait.” Margery jerked the charm from the bracelet, placed it in his palm and curled his blistered fingers around it.
“Number Eight,” Danny said resolutely, and strode to the escalator. He didn’t look back as the moving stairs carried him down to the lower levels. He didn’t see Margery wipe her cheek, smearing her rouge.
“Hey, Danny, where you goin’? Are you nuts; it’s pouring out there.”
“He’s crazy.”
“Yeah, Psycho probably wants to get knocked on his keester again.”
Danny flung the glass doors open and walked across the deserted tarmac to his place at the rail.
The horses dashed onto the track into the driving rain, trotting toward the starting gate with no post parade.
Danny looked at the little charm in his right hand, a delicate little silver deer. It was warm, tingling, ready to spill its magic. He looked up at the grandstand. The glass front was a gray sheet, and beyond it, on the second floor, was a brilliant coral dot, standing out against the dull, grim workaday world. As Danny looked, other dots appeared, faint and pale within the drab box. They were the bettors that hoped they had the magic. They were the bettors who wore their lucky outfits, put their tickets in a special place, cheered in a certain way. And for a minute while the race was running, they all touched the magic.
“The horses are entering the starting gate.”
The rain pounded down, streamed from his hair, soaked through his clothes, turned his form full of numbers to mush. He grabbed the rail and pressed the charm against it.
“And they’re off.”
Danny relaxed in a free fall into his magic. The flames rose, the numbers danced around him. Eight blazed into glory. He wound around the curves of the number, like driving the Interstate in the fifty-seven.
“And it’s Sliver Doe and Good-by Danny battling for the lead as they head toward the wire.”
Danny didn’t hear the hooves splashing toward him, didn’t feel the mud thrown on him. The horses battled under the wire, and Danny threw his magic into the cable.
The electricity in the cable erupted and Danny’s magic collided with the surge of magic from the Video Man and cascaded into an inferno. The jolt sent him to his knees, but he clung to the rail. His hand burned and sizzled, steaming in the pouring rain, melting the charm in a crucible of magic. It would end here, now. There was an ear-splitting explosion and a blinding flash.
The newspaper would report that the video box at the race track had been struck by lightning: one fatality, the Video Man.

THE DEVIL WITHIN

Michael A. Stackpole

Michael A. Stackpole is an award-winning author, editor, game designer, computer game designer, graphic novelist, and screenwriter. He’s best known for his New York Times bestselling Star Wars novels Rogue Squadron and I, Jedi. Last year he celebrated two milestones: his thirtieth anniversary as a published game designer and his twentieth anniversary as a published novelist. When not writing or attending conventions, he enjoys playing indoor soccer and dancing (both of which can be tough on the toes).

I knew he was never going to show up, but I didn’t expect he’d send a woman in his place. She had the shy librarian vibe going—the long, dark hair worn up, the glasses, the slender, tall body covered from ankles to throat and wrists. She was short a breathy, “You can help me find it in the stacks,” from the start of cheesy music on some streaming porn download.
The problem was that Adrienne, up there on stage one, was doing a better librarian act. Music pounded in Club Flesh, rippling through the dark interior. Adrienne grooved on it, moving with it, working her magic. Literally. You see her on the street, you’d be thinking 5 on a 10-scale. In here, using her magic to weave shadow into seductive mystery, she made supermodels ugly. Didn’t hurt that she’d watched the Oscars the night before and had altered her look to match the Best Actress winner.
Reverend Rayburn’s minion kept her composure as she threaded her way between two buxom twins. She offered me her hand. “Patrick Molloy? Callista Plumridge.”
To shake her hand, I’d have had to put down a glass of twelve-year-old Irish whiskey. I was disinclined to do that for two reasons. The first was that I was enjoying the drink. The second was that Irish whiskey was my magic’s trigger, and without it, my ability to work magic would dwindle to almost nothing.
Her hand wavered and then dipped away even before I spoke. “You can tell Rayburn I said no.”
She looked up at me, her brown eyes intelligent and searching. “I was told I had five minutes to make my case.”
“No. He had five minutes. Your time is up.”
She paused for a moment, then turned to the bartender, Eddie. “The purchase of a bottle of champagne gets me into the VIP lounge, doesn’t it?”
Eddie nodded. “Two hundred.”
She blanched but went for the money. She turned away from me, since she’d tucked it into her bra, and I think it was that little bit of modesty that got me. Modesty you don’t see a lot of in Club Flesh. It was something new and novel, and that was worth five minutes of my time.
I held a hand out and intercepted the money. “Rayburn going to cover this expense?”
She nodded.
“You don’t drink, do you?”
Her dark hair shimmered as she shook her head.
I stuffed the two c-bills into Eddie’s tip jar. “Forget the champagne. We’ll be in VIP One.”
Eddie would have protested, but patrons always chose the other VIP rooms first, seeing as how a local gangland boss had been decapitated in One. The woman followed me around the corner and up the steps, to a circular room with couches all the way around. I sat toward the center, since she’d be forced to sit close so we could be heard over the music. She’d also be forced to watch the main stage.
“Five minutes.”
“Reverend Rayburn would like your help in solving a problem.”
I sat back. “This the same Rayburn who holds a biannual fundraising drive to oust talented people from positions of public trust? This the same Rayburn who told an interviewer that my being tossed off the police force was a victory for morality and Christian enlightenment? That Reverend Rayburn?”
Callista didn’t shy from my anger, which is why I restarted the clock. She composed herself and nodded. “Reverend Rayburn believes he may have misspoken. Moreover, he is coming to believe that you were framed, and there is a possibility that he could use his influence to reopen the investigation into your case.”
Pieces started to fall into place. Winston Prout, the detective who’d been working Internal Affairs and got me kicked off the force, was a worshiper in Rayburn’s Salvation Cathedral. If Rayburn told him to, Prout would eat charcoal and shit diamonds. If I helped Rayburn, Rayburn gets me back on the force.
“Six minutes.”
“Have you heard of the Sissy King case?”
My hands went up. “Your time has run out. Thanks for playing.”
“What?”
“Okay, I may work here way too much, but there are yak herders in Tibet who’ve had their fill of the King case. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, four-year-old waif is stolen from her suburban gated-community home. The nanny has the night off, the parents are at a neighbors for an impromptu party celebrating a promotion. The hubby and wife split checking on their kids every half hour or so—emphasis on the ‘or so.’ Mom returns in tears. Sissy is gone, but her twin brothers are asleep. No signs of forced entry. No signs of intruders. Nothing on security tapes. That was three days ago. The girl is dead. The mom did it. It’s so obvious even Prout can connect the dots.”
Callista stared into my eyes, her expression resolute. “Do you believe in evil, Mr. Molloy?”
“Are you talking about the mother’s story? That she caught a fleeting glimpse of a demon carrying her daughter off?” I laughed. “I believe in evil. She’s it.”
“Do you believe in evil, Mr. Molloy?”
“Asked and answered.”
“Do you believe demons exist, Mr. Molloy?”
I hesitated, a blanket denial dying on my lips. “Being raised Catholic, it comes with mother’s milk. But I’ve grown up.”
Her chin rose defiantly. “You still believe, though. I believe in evil, and I also believe Mrs. King.”
“You think the chance of getting back on the force is enough to make me believe in her, too?”
She shook her head slowly. “Winston Prout has decided she did it. If he thinks she’s guilty, can she be?”
I smiled in spite of myself. Prout couldn’t find daylight even if he started looking at dawn and was facing east. “You know the odds of the child being alive are more slender than Adrienne’s g-string, right?”
Callista nodded. “You’ll want to talk to the mother.”
“Set it up.”
“She’s waiting in my car.” Callista stood. “That was six minutes. Shall we?”

I had heard about the case, but I hadn’t studied it. If the kid had been black or Latin and living the slums, people the next floor down wouldn’t have heard of it. Sissy King had two things going for her. One was her looks.
The other was that it was easy to hate her mother.
Lilith King ran her own company, working twenty hours a day, multi-tasking through most of it, catching cat-naps and soldiering on. In the past five years she’d delivered three children, defeated two hostile takeovers, and had swallowed up four smaller companies. A century and half ago she’d have been one of those pioneer women who would be plowing, would squat, plop a kid out, and keep on until that acre was finished.
And, of course, she looked stunning. Very tall, athletic, fiery red hair, green eyes, and teeth whiter than a virgin’s wedding gown. Lilith was just painful to behold. All the magic in the world wouldn’t lever Adrienne into that class of beauty, and Lilith’s predatory mien made her that much more attractive and that much easier to hate. She oozed power and scared people.
She waited beside the Land Cruiser, impatiently tapping a foot. I offered her my hand, and she took it. She tried to crush it, so I just shoved it deeper into her grip. She grunted, acknowledging my effort. I turned and extended my hand to Callista, too, which surprised both of them.
Callista, her grip softer but still firm, politely shook my hand.
I hadn’t been being polite. Ninety-nine percent of the time when one talented person comes near another, you feel it. Egos, auras, whatever you want to call it, bump up against each other. Sometimes it feels like steel wool on your skin, other times napalm. Occasionally that doesn’t happen, so pressing the flesh is the way to make sure. That’s ninety-nine percent accurate, too. Neither of the women was talented, a fact that started me building a box in which I could find the girl.
Lilith looked me up and down once and then jerked a thumb at the back seat. “Get in, Molloy.”
I didn’t reply. She wanted me to, which is why I didn’t.
She got into the passenger seat, and Callista slid behind the wheel. The car started, and we headed off. Callista kept watching the rearview and making right turns, checking to see if we were being followed.
“The PDA there on the seat is yours, Molloy. It has all the case files, pictures, and anything else you might need. It’s all indexed, ready to go.”
I slipped it into my pocket.
Lilith turned in her seat. “I know what you’ve heard. I’m a man-eater. My husband is a spineless slug who spends all his time praying at the Salvation Cathedral. Callie here and I are opposites. She’s all good and pure, and when I said I saw a demon, lots of folks just assumed I’d looked in the mirror.”
I nodded. After her demon story leaked, some friend had dug up a picture of her in a devil costume, complete with horns, tail, and pitchfork. Her husband, Darby, had been at the same party, dressed as an angel. He had a collar around his throat, and Lilith had been holding the leash clipped to it.
She frowned. “You going to say anything?”
I met her gaze. “How good a mother are you?”
Her eyes tightened. “Look, my husband and I were checking on the kids. We had a baby monitor on in each room. I was listening to Sissy, Darby was listening to the boys. We swapped off visits home. It’s a gated community. The alarm was on. We were listening. It might not have been how you would do it, but it’s how we did it.”
“Not what I asked.”
“What?”
“How good a mother are you?” I met her anger openly. “How much quality time you get with those kids? You carried them for nine months, so you figure your dues are paid until it’s time to ship them off to boarding school?”
Just for a heartbeat her façade cracked. She glanced down, picked at a French-manicured nail. Little blood there that never washes off? She deflated just a bit, her voice straining. “Not enough.”
She looked up, eyes glistening. “I work really hard to give them everything. Darby is a better nurturer than I am, but I love my children. I want Sissy back.”
“Because you love her or because someone took a possession away from you?”
Anger stiffened her features. “Because I love her and . . . because. . . .” Her voice broke. “Because I didn’t have enough time with her.”
“You think she’s alive because . . .”
She wanted to tell me that she knew, that a mother would know, but thought better of it. “Three-million-dollar reward for information that leads to her recovery. That will be yours, you know.”
She was right on half of it. That sort of money would yank information out of someone.
As for my collecting, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I had better odds of winning the lottery.
And those odds were much better than of me finding the girl.
“I’ll need something of Sissy’s.”
Lilith pointed to a paper bag behind Callista’s seat. An evidence bag, with the seal intact. Signed by Winston Prout. “It’s her teddy bear, Bubbles.”
I opened the bag. Cute bear. Had a cape and devil horns, even a pitchfork. “Inside joke?”
“Sissy was born on Halloween.” Lilith sighed. “I saw it in a store and gave it to her when she turned three. She never would have left Bubbles behind.”
“The demon didn’t like competition.”
“Don’t mock me.”
My eyes narrowed. “Either you’re lying and your hands are drenched in blood, or some other agency took your daughter. I don’t really care which. I’ll find the truth. And if you did kill her, sister, my mocking you is the least of your troubles.

I had Callista drop me in that part of the city colloquially known as “Tumbletown.” That was less because you could get laid down here than because it’s where the mighty ended up after a fall from grace. Club Flesh was toward the outskirts, but I headed deeper, into the area where pawnshops outnumbered Starbucks by a wide margin.
And by pawnshop I mean fences who handle stolen goods. In bulk.
My guy wasn’t in, so Bubbles and I slipped into a dark bar and sampled their Irish. It was the usual crap found in most bars. For me that’s the equivalent of those off-brand batteries that come with high-tech toys from Taiwan. It’ll do, but not for long. Not that Sniff had anything against me, but I might run into a few folks I’d angered while working on the other side of the law.
Gave me a chance to study the files on the PDA. Lilith said she’d worked hard to give her kids everything. By everything she meant perfection. She’d met her husband in college. He was studying child psychology, and she decided he was the whole package. Seemed a little light in the loafers to me, but she was man enough to make Mr. Universe look like a ninety-eight pound weakling, so I gave him a pass. Intelligent, nurturing, devout, and full of volunteerism, he was the kind of girl you’d take home to mother.
The nanny, Esmeralda Cruz, was in her fifties and also perfect. I had a full sheaf of medical records on her, as well as half a dozen letters of recommendation from past employers and two private investigator reports, all giving her a clean bill. Her alibi checked out for that night, too. She’d been babysitting for a grandniece and had been seen by two dozen reliable witnesses.
Everything else checked with what had been delivered by the news—save all the rank speculation and reportage of rumors. Cable News Networks sent reporters to a dozen different places that were supposed to be the hotspot for white slavery—which, when the victim isn’t some Aryan wet-dream, is simply called the sex trade—to hunt high and low for Sissy. They struck out, and so had Prout.
But Prout didn’t believe in using talent. He knew it existed and hated it. It was of the devil, and the Bible told him so. He clung to that belief because otherwise he’d have to admit he was inferior. That threatened him, made him scared. So instead of accepting reality and trying to understand it, he vilified it, and guys like me became collateral damage.
And guys like Rayburn made money off it.
Prout knew the basics. If you had talent, you had a trigger and you had a channel. Adrienne’s trigger I didn’t know, but her channel was visual. In folklore they’d call it glamour. She could consciously create optical illusions that changed her appearance. As power went, it wasn’t much, and she’d not been schooled in using her magic in other ways, but she made a living with it.
Fact was, very few talented people ever learned their trigger or channel. Fewer still had any serious power. Adrienne could make herself beautiful in the club’s half-light, but an untalented woman with a full make-up kit could do the same. Most folks didn’t have enough power to light a cigarette, so, for them, magic might as well have been the stuff of faerie stories.
Sniff, on the other hand, had some serious talent. I could feel him even before I entered his pawnshop. He didn’t know who was coming in, but he didn’t rabbit. He also didn’t smile, but that had nothing to do with whether he was happy to see me.
Smiling was pretty much beyond him.
Sniff was as ugly as Lilith was beautiful. If a princess’ kiss could turn a frog into a prince, Sniff only got half a kiss. Short, squat, covered in warts, he was a few green spots and finger-webbing shy of being a frog. His voice even had that croaking quality, as if he’d been chain-smoking robustos for the past seven years.
I tossed him the bag. He caught it in gloved hands and instantly dropped it to the counter. It was as if it had burned him. “Get it out of here.”
“This will clean the slate between us, Sniff.” I bellied up to the glass counter. “It belongs to Sissy King.”
He backed away. “Not happening.”
“Gotta find her.”
“I don’t work live things.”
“Someone’s got a selective memory.” Sniff’s talent worked in the area of psychometry. He takes the gloves off, touches an item and gets impressions. I know another guy with the same talent. He travels the world authenticating artwork. Makes big bucks. Sniff doesn’t do quite as well, but his talent is useful for a fence wanting to know exactly how hot an item is.
Sniff used his talent for something else, too, which is how we first met. He’d hang around laundromats, steal a pair of some cute girl’s panties, and then use them to follow the connection to her home. He just peeped, mostly. Someone called it in, and Sniff couldn’t outrun me, what with his pants down around his ankles and all.
“Trick, you can’t believe how hot this is.”
“Tick-tock, Sniff. Big reward, you get a piece.”
“But you don’t know . . .”
I looked at him through magic. He showed up mostly red with some black splotches that danced and jagged at the edges. Nervous. The splotches were weak points and if I pushed a spell through any of them, he’d be hurting.
My right hand came up and my palm opened. A dagger congealed above it, grown from an abundance of ice-crystals. Not really, but that’s how he saw it. I let it glitter and slowly rotate. “You don’t want me impatient.”
His splotches softened at the edges. He sighed. He tugged one glove off and poked the bag with a bare finger. “Damn.” He touched it again and then caressed it. “She’s alive and not that far away. A mile. Two.”
“Let’s go for a walk.”
He wasn’t listening to me. I returned to normal sight as his eyes glazed over. This was the part he hated. He pulled Bubbles from the bag. He clutched the stuffed animal to his chest. His voice wavered, rising and falling between his croak and a child’s plaintive wail.
“Duality. Two mommies. Real Mommy and Mom esme, love-Mommy.” He kissed the bear’s forehead and his voice became the little girl’s. “Why did you leave me, Mommy?”
I reached out and plucked the bear from his hands—and not without a fight. “You got a lock, Sniff?”
He blinked, then shivered and pulled his glove back on. “Yeah.” He pointed off to the southeast. “That way.”
“You need the bear?”
“No.”
I put it back into the bag and brought it with me. If nothing else, it would calm Sissy and let her know Lilith had sent us. Sniff pulled on a heavy leather jacket despite it being hotter than hell, and we headed out.
Unlike a hound dog, Sniff didn’t follow a trail per se. He had in his mind where she was located and headed straight for it. Psychic orienteering or geocaching—you know where the objective is, but the straight path isn’t going to be possible. He traveled due southeast, which had us cutting across the city’s street grid. We ran into a lot of blind alleys and one Irish bar where I treated myself to a double since we were getting close.
We headed down an alley and descended steps to a basement. Sniff touched the glass. “Very close now.”
I pulled him out of the way and kicked the door above the lock. Wood splintered. Glass shattered.
His voice spiked into Sissy’s. “Help me, help me!”
I ducked through the door and cut to the right. I looked through magic. Nothing. The ice dagger quivered at my fingertips, ready. Empty room, strewn with trash, stained mattresses, and used condoms. It stank of urine and sweat. Discarded lighters crunched underfoot. It had been a shooting gallery until recently, and there wasn’t much under Heaven or on Earth that could clean one up.
Sniff dashed across the floor, not even crying out when he tripped over a pallet and went down hard. He scrambled to his feet faster than I thought possible and dove at the far wall. He clawed it, clinging to the bricks, wailing uncontrollably.
Sissy was on the other side of the wall, in the next building’s basement.
Before I could take a step toward the door, the demon came through the wall. I didn’t see horns and tail at first, just a black storm cloud condensing above and around Sniff. An arm, rippling muscles highlighted in hot red, plucked Sniff off the wall and shook him. The hand contracted. Black talon pierced him. Sniff’s back arched. He screamed, and then the demon pitched him aside.
It came for me.
I threw the knife.
The demon batted it aside, but the knife exploded into its original ice shards, peppering its hand and forearm. Incandescent blood leaked from dozens of pinprick wounds. Fire flared from its empty eye-sockets, and then it gestured at me.
A gout of flame sprang from its palm. I invoked a circular blue shield and deflected it, but the impact still slammed me against the far wall. I felt heat, but not from fire. That was a common channel, and I was well used to it. This was something else. Emotional. Outrage at defiance, and yet more.
The demon, realizing I was still a threat, kept coming. I dodged, letting a second flame-jet splash against the wall. I shifted my shield and pushed. The disk flattened and the edge sharpened. It arced in like a Frisbee, all but slicing the demon in half.
Fire erupted from the wound, but the demon didn’t go down. It sank its talons into its hips and yanked, pulled itself together again. The volcano that had been its guts shrank to tiny spurts. It glared at me for a second, and then hurled itself back through the wall.
And Sissy screamed.
I bolted for the door, which is when the first of them hit me like a freight train. Tall, broad shouldered, blond hair close-cropped, black suit with white mock turtle, he knocked me down and landed with a knee on my chest. He shoved a big silver pistol in my face. Two more entered the room, one carrying a subma chine gun.
And all three had big crucifixes dangling from around their necks.
One checked Sniff. The guy on me started shouting, “Where is she? Where is she!”
I was torn. He was kneeling right above my hand. Answer the question or castrate him?
“Other side of that wall, moron.”
His compatriot felt along the wall. “No opening.”
Callista and Lilith came through the door. “Brother Jerome, get off him!”
The linebacker relented. “He says she’s on the other side of that wall. It’s another building. Let’s move.”
I rolled to my feet. “Wait.”
I staggered to the wall. What I was going to do was stupid, especially in that company, but I was pissed and I wanted to show off.
I wanted them to be afraid. You believe in evil, Missy? Let me show you power.
I pressed a hand to the wall and worked the dagger spell. I shifted it somewhat, burning up the last of the whiskey. I infused the magic with anger. The bricks, old as they were, down in the dank cellar, stained with mildew, might as well have been sponges. Magic flowed into them. Moisture condensed. Ice formed, expanding into microfractures. Molecular glaciers melted under pressure, flowed into new cracks and froze again. Ice thickened, frost coated the bricks. Then the white field crumbled, and brick chips sloughed down from a three by four foot hole.
I sagged to the side and slid to the floor. Brother Jerome dove head-first through the opening. He was mumbling a prayer as he went. Something scraped across concrete on the other side. Something else rang. Sounded like a bedpan. Empty soda cans clattering completed the symphony.
Jerome poked his head back out. “She was here. Door’s locked from the outside.”
Jerome’s companions ran off to check the streets. Lilith remained frozen, the bag with Bubbles in it clutched to her breast. Callista dropped to a knee beside me. “What happened?”
“Who the hell are they?”
“Reverend Rayburn thought you might need some help.”
Things became a bit more clear. She hadn’t been watching to see if we were being followed, she wanted to make sure. And the PDA had to have a tracking chip in it. Very nice set up.
“This was out of their league.” I spat to the side and wanted a drink badly—and not just because I was drained. I looked past Callista to Lilith. “It was big, black, red highlights?”
She nodded slowly, her expression a mixture of shock and relief. “I’m not crazy?”
“No.” I looked at Callista. “But you are, sister, if you think I’m doing anything else here. I’m done.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“You didn’t trust me.”
“I did, but . . .”
“Then if Rayburn wants to find the girl, let him get his fat ass into the street.” I got up and staggered over to Sniff, found a pulse. “He needs a hospital, now.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Lilith flipped open a cell phone. “Mr. Molloy, please.”
I gave her a hard stare, but a note in her voice—which sounded like Sniff channeling her daughter—broke my heart. All the time you just want to hate the world and get everyone to leave you alone, and something happens to stop you. “Shit!”
Callista took my hand. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Molloy.”
“Save it.” I stared at her again and she had the good graces to shrink back. “I need a drink, sleep, and time to think. Don’t do anything stupid, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have Sissy back in the next twenty-four.”

I’d been right. I needed a drink, a lot of sleep and even more time to think. What I got was a lot to drink, very little sleep and my thinking wasn’t quite Six Sigma.
The whole demon thing was messing me up. What I saw had demon written all over it. But I’m not an exorcist, so how would I know? All that really mattered was that the thing was big, nasty, very powerful and, apparently, Sissy’s kidnapper.
The weird thing was that as powerful as it was, it didn’t seem powerful enough. I’d used the shield-slice before to take down enemies. Usually I don’t razor-edge it, so it’s more of a bludgeon than a knife, but it drops them and raises quite a welt. But that’s guys who armor-up with magic, and no one was home in the Beelzebub costume.
And was kidnapping really something a demon would do? Demons possessed people. Listening to Reverend Rayburn’s Ray of Grace television show certainly gave that impression. It was all pea-soup puke and speaking in tongues until Reverend Rayburn said the words and cast the demon out.
Aside from the stage dressing, however, whatever nailed Sniff could have been nothing more than a massive spell. I’d seen animation spells before—they were just a more powerful form of glamour. The weirdest case was of a ventriloquist who used magic to animate his dummy. The guy had murdered his wife and would have gotten away with it if the dummy hadn’t confessed.
So, all I was really left with was two things. Sissy was still close, and whoever had taken her was a very talented enemy. What that enemy wanted, I had no idea. Could have been the kidnapper had been hired by Lilith’s corporate enemies—they’d have the money and motive to hire talent like that. Sissy was a bargaining chip, and that provided another vector on locating her.
At least, that’s what I came awake thinking. I really needed more sleep, but the buzzing at my door made up for in consistency what it lacked in urgency. Which wasn’t much. Good thing about drinking and thinking before bed is that I didn’t have to get dressed to stumble to the door. I’d have looked through the peephole first before opening up, but my eyes were not quite at the stage where they were focusing.
That, however, didn’t stop me from recognizing Brother Jerome. “Mr. Molloy, Reverend Rayburn wants you down at the station.”
Those were his words, and my brain did some creative translation. When I heard station I was thinking Lilith had had been arrested. So I nodded, grabbed some shoes and followed Brother Jerome to the car waiting on the curb. Some other brother was driving, so I climbed in the back and promptly fell asleep.
By station, Brother Jerome meant television station, a fact I discovered as Jerome and his companion frog-marched me into make-up. The make-up team hit me like a trauma-team in the ER. The only real differences were that having bullets dug out hurt less, and in the ER they cut your clothes off, rather than slap you into a suit from wardrobe that fit really well and felt even better.
Felt almost as good as the suits I used to wear when I was a detective.
Someone with a headset appeared in the doorway. “You ready, Mr. Molloy? You’re in segment three.”
“Segment three of what?”
“Ray of Grace. We’re doing a live special on the King case.” He pointed at the monitor in the corner. “You have ten minutes.”
Sure enough, there was Raymond Rayburn in a dark suit, white shirt and blue tie worked with hundreds of little gold crosses. He was trim, but the hair-plugs hadn’t worked out as well as he might like. He smiled openly and then was able to be serious, projecting concern as he spoke in low tones with Sissy’s parents. He sat between them, with Lilith on his left and Darby alone at the end of the semicircle. He held her hand tenderly, never looking away from her even as he nodded to acknowledge a comment Darby had made.
The camera pulled back. Esmeralda, the nanny, sat on the other side of Lilith, looking tired, dowdy and star-struck. There was an open chair next to her, which pretty much had my name written all over it. The camera lingered on the chair as Rayburn intoned, “and very soon we’ll bring you an eyewitness who has seen the demon, Lilith, verifying your story of this horrible ordeal.”
That was enough for me. I got out of the make-up chair and headed straight for the door. Brother Jerome and a whole choir of angels couldn’t have stopped me from heading out. Rayburn was going to churn this story until money flooded in, and I wasn’t going to be any part of it.
More importantly, time on that set could be spent finding the girl.
So I was halfway down the hall when Callista caught up with me. “Please, Mr. Molloy, don’t go.”
I yanked my wrist free of her grasp. “I agreed to help find the girl, not finance Rayburn’s next jihad against the talented.”
“It’s not like that.”
“No?” I shook my head. “You asked me if I believed in evil. I do. In its most petty and stupid form. That would be your boss. How much with this soap opera bring in?”
She swallowed hard. “There’s no denying . . .”
“Using Sissy to raise funds is pure evil, and I’m not playing.”
Callista caught my wrist again. “Mr. Molloy, if you don’t tell what you saw, Inspector Prout is going to arrest Lilith. He’s already here, waiting.”
“Uh-huh. Another ploy? A dramatic arrest on live TV? That’ll put gold in the coffers.”
“Remember what you told me yesterday? It’s now been four days. People believe Sissy is dead. They’re not looking anymore. You can convince them that she isn’t dead. We have millions of people watching live. Maybe they can help find her. Please, for Sissy’s sake?”
Something in her voice. “You actually believe this will help? You don’t care that Rayburn is using this for his benefit?”
“I care, but it’s an ill wind that blows no good.”
“Rayburn blows all right.” I muttered a curse under my breath. “He makes it a circus—more of a circus—I walk.”
Relief poured over her face. “Come, it’s time.”
Some tech slithered a microphone up against my skin and clipped it to my tie. Callista took me under the audience bleachers and around to the set. The monitors showed an ad being run. The guy with the headset got me situated. A light swiveled to pin me in place. Callista walked to the far side of the set, spoke briefly to Rayburn, and then stood in the wings, behind him, facing me.
Rayburn gave me a nod and a fake smile, then Mr. Headset counted us back in.
Ray’s smile became 200 proof unctuous. “We’re back on Ray of Grace, with Sissy King’s parents. Lilith, you told the police an amazing story about your daughter’s kidnapping. Would you mind telling us, once again, what you saw?”
Lilith spoke clearly and plainly, drained of the Amazonian strength I’d first witnessed. Part of it was an act, but that was a smaller part. Unless she was a good an actress as she was a corporator, the lip tremble, the tremolo in the voice, and that tiny bead of sweat at her forehead couldn’t have been faked. The audience grew silent, everyone intent on her words. Even the nanny, who had to have heard the story a dozen times already, closed her eyes and listened closely. She even raised a hand and dialed up the volume on her hearing aid.
Rayburn patted Lilith’s hand. “Such an ordeal for so loving a mother. Lilith, you’ve been painted a liar in the press. They’ve said horrible things about you. That you were a bad mother, that you neglected your children. They have said you killed your daughter and concocted a lie to cover the murder. But we know, now, that your story is entirely true. Everything they’ve said about you is wrong because an investigator we hired has found the truth. He’s seen the demon. He knows your daughter is alive.”
Rayburn looked over at me, but I barely noticed him. During his introduction, the nanny had gotten twitchy—perp twitchy. It almost made sense. If Lilith’s enemies had kidnapped Sissy, having an insider to help was the easiest way to make things work.
Esme’s head came up and whipped around. Her dark eyes blazed with fury. I felt the heat and tasted the bitter venom. It wasn’t surprise at having been found out, but something different. But before I could place it, something else attracted my attention.
An oily black cloud boiled around the lights and descended cloven-hoofed feet first. Before it touched down, I torched the last bit of whiskey in my system and raised a shield. The demon struck, shattering it with one blow, knocked me flying me into the audience’s front row.
The audience screamed. I’d landed in the lap of a large woman in a floral-print dress. She pitched me to the floor and then stampeded over me with the rest of her prayer circle. The demon’s talons missed both of us, but they shredded the large purple hat she’d been wearing.
Suddenly Ray was on his feet, hand raised. “In the name of Jesus Christ, I bind thee, Satan!”
The demon, which crouched in the middle of the set, backhanded Ray and sent his limp body careening past Callista. It grabbed Darby King, who was already praying at the top of his lungs, and sent him sailing above the audience. He crashed down into the baptismal font set with a splash.
Then, apelike, the demon raised both hands above Lilith’s head. Talons gleamed. Muscles bulged. Claws descended.
But never reached their target.
In the wings, pure white light enveloped Callista. It flowed from her open hand. The light blossomed into an umbrella that shielded Lilith. The demon pounded on it with one fist, then the other. It lunged, trying to bite through it, and even lashed it with its barbed tail, but the shield proved impregnable.
All the while Esme sat there, rigid, frozen. Her eyes had rolled up in her head, and her hands gripped the arms of the chair. She looked as though she was going to stroke out, ruining the world of perfection that Lilith had created for her children.
Perfection.
The demon vaulted the white dome. It drove at Callista. She looked up, her eyes wide. Her expression slackened, but her lips still moved, silently intoning a prayer.
The demon again raised both paws. One was set to shred Lilith, and the other threatened Callista. She’d have to make a choice. Save herself or Lilith.
I rolled to my feet and sprinted forward.
Callista chose.
Lilith’s shield never wavered.
And I caught Esme with a punch that snapped her head around and sent the hearing aid flying.
The demon evaporated, becoming nothing more than an inky stain that washed over both women. Callista, the light vanishing, staggered forward and leaned on Rayburn’s chair. Beside her Lilith hunched forward, hands on her face, sobs wracking her body.
I picked up the hearing aid. Had I been thinking clearly I would have seen it immediately. Esme had been perfect. The reports said nothing about deafness. Lilith never would have hired her if she couldn’t hear children crying.
I clipped the aid to my ear. Sissy’s sobs came through clearly. Esme had been using it as a baby monitor.
There was no doubt she was talented. I’d felt the sting when I punched her. Somewhere along the line, Esme had discovered her trigger: the sadness of children. Feeling empowered by the suffering of children slowly drove her mad. As it turned out, she’d tried to combat things through religion and working with happy children, children who wanted for nothing.
Sissy, beautiful child that she was, had always wanted more, especially of her mommy. Sissy’s pain filled Esme with magic energy. It, in turn, got shaped through Esme’s religion, which branded magic evil and demonic. She stole the child to nurture her and make her happy, but Sissy still wanted her mother. The baby monitor let Esme care for Sissy, but also tortured the nanny. She lashed out, the demon appeared, and people got hurt.
Prout took the earpiece. Tech-lab boys were able to isolate the frequency and triangulate back to where the signal originated from. Sissy was rescued with great fanfare.
Esme got bundled off to a hospital for the criminally insane. Sniff and Darby recovered from their ordeals. Rayburn did too, but slowly. I don’t know if he’d ever intended to honor the deal he’d offered me, but by the time he was on solid food again and speaking, circumstances pretty much made it all a moot point.
Real magic doesn’t make it onto video. That’s why there was nothing on the security cameras at the King place. The video from the show just had people being tossed around which, when compared to Hollywood special effects, was boring. In fact, the only clear images out of the whole show were of me decking an old woman.
The reward went by the boards, too. Turns out that Adrienne had been one of the two-dozen alibi witnesses for Esme. Since I was connected to her through the club, Prout suggested I might have conspired with Esme in the kidnapping. It was pretty innovative thinking for him, and if I ever find out who gave him that idea in the first place, there will be some serious trouble.
The Kings did right by Sniff. Lilith sold off her companies. She moved her family to the mountains and started taking care of everyone herself. I give it about three years. She’ll return with a book on child care and start some new industry.
Callista Plumridge got thrust into the limelight and hosted Ray of Grace while the Reverend convalesced. She became a big star. Got her own show. She started making serious money lecturing.
I congratulated her on that over coffee once—mine being liberally laced with whiskey. She raised her mug and smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Molloy.”
I watched her face closely. “So, how are you going to deal with being talented and being among the elite of those who hate us?”
“But I’m not talented.”
“I know what I saw.”
Callista smiled and glanced down into her mug. “Do you remember when I asked if you believed in evil?”
“Yeah.”
“I told you I believed. It wasn’t because I’d seen a demon.” Her smile softened. “It’s because I believe in He who opposed evil. You didn’t see my magic, you saw His power using me as a conduit.”
“Jesus saved Lilith? Why did He let Rayburn get trashed?”
She looked up, her expression quite innocent. “Reverend Rayburn acted for his own glory. I protected Lilith.”
You asked “What would Jesus do?” and did it? I wanted to scoff, but I did know what I’d seen. She had chosen to sacrifice herself instead of letting Lilith die.
Callista reached out and took my hand in hers. No spark. “I know you don’t want to believe any of this, Patrick, but you have a part in Jesus’ plan, too. You saved me because He didn’t want me to die.”
“And this is the part where I pray and get saved? You’re forgetting, Callista, I’m talented. I play for the other team.”
“Jesus never said . . .”
“Jesus needs to send a memo to His agents here on Earth.” I rose, but she still clung to my hand.
I let her hang on.
“Think on it, Patrick. You know what you know. What do you truly believe?”
“I believe that delusions come in many denominations. You believe you’re not talented. I believe there is no God.”
“One of us would be wrong.”
“Good-bye, Callista.” I slipped my hand from hers and walked away.
She nailed it.
One of us was wrong.
And a part of me that I hate was hoping it was me.

WEE-KIN WARRIOR

Marc Tassin

Marc Tassin is a gamer at heart, but after stumbling into the world of writing, he decided to stay. From the bloody decks of pirate ships to the secret lives of gerbils, his short stories, games, and articles have explored the far reaches of fantasy and science fiction. Marc lives in a little house in the woods just outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife and two children. He still runs a weekly game and relishes making his players earn every gold piece he gives them.

If there’s one thing Devon learned in the six months since the fairies conscripted him to fight in their war, it’s that there are really only two types of people in the world. There are those who freak out and start scream-world. There are those who freak out and start screaming when you walk into the room carrying a sword, and those who will work really hard to pretend you’re not there. Fortunately for Devon, the folks in the internet café were all of the second type.
He’d also discovered that with type-2s, the more outrageous or disturbing a thing, the harder a type-2 worked to ignore it. Wearing a battered leather biker jacket, mismatched knee-high motocross shin guards, roller blade elbow pads, ski goggles, fingerless leather gloves, and a red, white, and blue bicycle helmet, not to mention the sword, Devon was the most intensely ignorable thing these people were likely to see.
He walked up to the counter where a college girl in an apron sat reading a mystery novel. The heavy cinnamon scent of her “Inspired by Curve Crush” faux perfume mingled with the rich aroma of espresso. The girl turned a page of her book.
Devon clanked his sword down in front of her. She looked up without a hint of surprise, or interest for that matter.
Yep, Devon thought. Hard-core type-2.
“I hear you’re having some trouble with your computers,” he said.
“Uh, yeah,” she answered. “Uh, are you from the computer company?”
“Sure,” he answered. “Where’s the server?”
She pointed to a door at the rear of the café.
“Thanks,” he said.
Devon took his sword and headed toward the door. Reaching it, he grabbed for the handle but stopped when he spotted a closed circuit camera mounted near the ceiling. Devon suspected that the city had laws about carrying swords in public, and his battles typically resulted in at least some level of property damage. Seeing as Devon’s past life as a computer programmer hadn’t lent itself to “bulking up,” the opposite in fact, he doubted that he would do well in prison.
When he voiced these concerns, the fairies assured him that the glamour they cast on him provided complete protection from all mortal means of evidence gathering. That meant no fingerprints, video, or even fiber matching (which Devon didn’t believe worked outside of TV crime shows anyhow).
All the same, he still got nervous. The little bastards had made him their slave. There wasn’t any reason to think they wouldn’t lie to him about something like this.
Devon shrugged. Nothing he could do about it now. He grasped the door handle and yanked it open. In the light shining in from the café he saw a disused bathroom converted into a storage closet. Tall metal shelves lined the walls, stacked with paper cups, plastic lids, and boxes of coffee.
Tucked in the corner of the closet sat a small desk with a computer on it, along with the various pieces of electronic paraphernalia necessary to run the coffee house’s network. On a stool in front of the computer, alternating between furious typing and epileptic mouse clicking, sat a two-foot tall, green skinned creature with pointed ears, arms as long as it was tall, and a shock of green-black hair that stood out like spines.
A gremlin.
“Hey, ugly,” Devon said, pointing his sword at it. “Playtime’s over.”
Not his best line, he knew, but not terrible. Devon spent a lot of time thinking up good taglines. The movies made it seem easy to come up with these sorts of phrases on the fly, but of course that’s just the movies. Prepping a few in advance, even so-so ones, made him sound much cooler. Otherwise he ended up muttering something like “Yeah, you’re . . . uh . . . gonna not like the thing I’m about to do.”
The gremlin turned and looked at Devon, baring its spiny little teeth and glaring at him with bulgy yellow eyes. Devon grinned and advanced.
Too easy, he thought.
Two more gremlins dropped from the ceiling onto Devon’s shoulders. They weren’t heavy, but the shock of it sent him stumbling. He crashed into a shelf, bringing down an avalanche of coffee filters, and fell. The impact knocked the two gremlins loose.
Devon still had a grip on his sword, so he took a wild swing at one of them. He clipped it, and it exploded into a cloud of green dust with a loud pop. The first time he’d killed a gremlin, this had surprised him. He’d expected a sickening thud as the blade cut through flesh and bone. Maybe even a squishy slap. But popping like a balloon wasn’t on the list.
Turns out, this is what happens to any magical creature if you kill it. They pop into a cloud of pixie dust, or fairy dust, or whatever sort of dust the thing you just killed turns into. And they don’t actually die. They just sort of “go away” for awhile, eventually reforming somewhere else. So, while killing wee-folk isn’t permanent, the experience is pretty unpleasant for them. Getting popped a few times serves as a decent deterrent to bad behavior.
Devon scrambled to his feet, but the gremlins were faster. Before he could take another swing the two remaining gremlins were on him. One had him around the leg, trying to gnaw through his shin guard. The other leaped onto his shoulders and scratched at his cheeks.
Noting just how damn bad this hurt, Devon slammed back, pinning the offending gremlin against one of the metal shelves. Boxes of coffee tumbled off, and the gremlin squeaked in pain. Two more solid smacks and Devon heard a welcome pop.
This left the one on his leg. He grabbed at it with his free hand, but the little bugger tried to bite his fingers. Devon yanked his hand away, but in doing so he lost his balance and tripped over a box of coffee. Careening out the door he crashed onto the floor of the café.
A number of the patrons stared at him with wide eyes. A few even seemed to consider a transition to from type-2 denial over to type-1. To their credit, and Devon’s relief, they managed to hold back. The girl at the counter had a cordless phone in her hand, but she wasn’t dialing. Not yet, anyhow.
One of the annoyances of Devon’s job was that no one else could see the gremlins (or any of the other wee-folk, for that matter.) As he understood it, the fairies had unlocked something in his mind that let him see what others could not. Some people are born with this trait, an attribute more common a few hundred years back, but few people in the modern world have it. Even when someone is born with it, through the miracle of modern antipsychotic drugs doctors could “heal” the person, effectively turning the ability off. Unfortunately for Devon, this pretty much guaranteed that anyone who saw him fighting would peg him as a total loon.
A sharp pain in his leg reminded him of his current predicament. The gremlin had given up on his shin and sunk its teeth into his thigh. He grabbed the gremlin by the hair, ripped it off of his leg, and threw it back into the closet. Leaping to his feet Devon looked over at his audience.
“Nasty virus,” he said.
He raised his sword over his head and charged back into the closet. The gremlin clambered to its feet and stumbled toward him, but its knees wobbled, and it had trouble moving in a straight line. Devon chopped, and with a loud pop the battle was over.
Devon took a moment to catch his breath and then checked the computer. The gremlin had written a predictive algorithm designed to crash the café’s computers whenever it detected someone working for a significant period of time without saving their work.
Typical gremlin trick, he thought.
Gremlins sabotaged anything mechanical, electrical, or technological and then fed off the frustration and anxiety that resulted. The more grief they caused, the better the meal.
Devon made a couple of quick deletions, and soon he had everything back to normal. Brushing himself off and straightening his jacket and goggles, he walked out into the café. Most of the people were still standing, and a few had gathered at the counter with the girl, whispering to one another. They stopped as soon as he appeared.
He strode across the room, everyone watching him silently. Just as he prepared to leave, the girl at the counter spoke.
“So, uh, were you, um, able to fix the problem?”
“All set,” he said. “I’ll send a bill.”
He opened the door and walked across the street to his car.
Thank heaven for type-2, he thought.
When Devon got back to his apartment, he smelled his company before he saw him. A rank, earthy odor filled the air, as if someone had left a steaming pile of swamp muck somewhere in the house. Considering the source, he might have preferred that. He left his gear in the front closet, except for his sword, and went down the short hallway to the living room.
Sitting on his couch watching television was a six-hundred pound troll. The fairies used this ten-foot-tall, green skinned monstrosity to ensure that Devon followed their rules. They reinforced the importance of Devon’s obedience by having the troll, named Gronk, perform a demonstration that involved squashing a watermelon between two fingers.
Devon walked up behind Gronk, raised the sword high, and brought it down on the troll’s head. Tried to, anyhow. The troll snatched the blade in mid-arc with one of its manhole sized hands. Cranking its head around, it screwed up its misshapen face into a disgusted frown. With a single easy motion it ripped the blade from Devon’s hand and tossed it to the other side of the room.
“Nice try, meat,” it rumbled in a deep, bass voice.
On his first night “in the service” Devon freaked out and took a swing at the troll. When the troll didn’t kill him for it, Devon found out that he could pretty much do this as often as he wanted. As long as he still went on his missions, the troll didn’t perform the watermelon trick on his head. Since then, anytime Gronk came over, Devon gave it a shot. He always hoped he would hit, although he shuddered to think of what a troll might pop into if the sword ever hit home.
“Quit starin’ and go make dinner,” the troll said. “I’m hungry.”
Devon sighed and tromped off to the kitchen. He heated the oven, poured an entire five pound bulk bag of fish sticks on a couple of trays, and tossed them in. Trolls are crazy about fish, and Gronk turned really nasty when he got hungry. After he’d smashed up Devon’s Xbox in a hunger rage, Devon always kept a few bulk bags of fish sticks on hand, just in case the troll dropped in.
Gronk visited unpleasantly often since wee-folk don’t have cable. The monster loved television, and most nights he showed up at Devon’s place, plopped down on the couch, and hogged the remote for the rest of the evening. Worst of all, Gronk would only watch the sort of shows one might expect a troll to enjoy: slasher flicks and reality TV.
This left Devon with plenty of time to sit alone and brood, something he had always excelled at but had perfected over the past six months. He sat at the kitchen table and stared at the oven, letting his mind wander. He thought back to the days when he lived a normal life. A life free of trolls and gremlins. A job that didn’t involve killing things with a sword.
Unfortunately, Devon found no solace in the past. He felt like the poster boy for “average guy in America.” He got average grades in high-school, went to an average college, and got a midrange job writing networking software for a tiny company. He’d rented an apartment in a middle-class neighborhood, bought an economy car to get around the city, and had some loose acquaintances from work that he met at the bar for drinks every so often, but no real friends.
And like a lot of average folks, he found himself out of work when the local economy tanked and his company shut down. He spent the next few months after that scraping by on unemployment, interviewing for and failing to get the few jobs that came up, and fearing the inevitable move into his parents’ basement.
The core of the problem lay in the fact that Devon didn’t know what he wanted. He had spent his entire life just drifting along, never finding anything that really aroused his passions. In a way, slavery seemed about the most appropriate career choice available for a guy like him.
The timer on the oven dinged, and grabbing some oven mitts, he took out the sizzling trays of fish. He dumped them into a plastic dish tub and took it out to Gronk.
“Here, Gronk. Dinner.”
He tossed the tub onto the coffee table. The troll grabbed a handful of the blazing hot fish and shoved them in his mouth, never taking his eyes off of the American Idol contestant crooning away on the television.
“Thanks,” Gronk sputtered, spraying chunks of fish around the living room.
Devon sighed and went to bed.

Devon awoke to a face-full of stinking troll breath.
“Wake up, meat,” Gronk shouted.
Gronk shook the bed so violently Devon had to grab the mattress to avoid getting thrown off. When the shaking stopped Devon looked at the clock. 2:00 AM.
“Jeezuz, Gronk, I’m sleeping here. Come back in the morning.”
“No, meat gets up now.”
Gronk flipped the mattress off the bed, which sent Devon tumbling across the room. He crashed into the dresser, tangled in sheets and blankets. Tearing away the bedding, he jumped to his feet. He grabbed the closest thing he could find, a lamp from the dresser, and hurled it at Gronk’s head. The lamp shattered on the troll’s warty, green skinned skull, sending glass bouncing around the room.
Gronk didn’t flinch.
“Get dressed. Get gear,” Gronk said. “Fairies coming.”
The fairies? thought Devon.
The last time Devon had talked directly with a fairy was six months ago, when they first came to him. Grabbing his jeans, a flannel shirt, and some socks he dashed into the living room.

The fairies stood on the coffee table. There were three of them; two females and one male. They were about eighteen inches tall, in flowing gowns that danced and waved as if weightless, and each had four dragonfly-like wings that glowed with rainbow patterns.
“We have a problem,” the male fairy said in a sing-song tenor voice. The words tinkled as he spoke, as if someone had mounted a wind chime in his throat.
The female fairy to the right brushed a strand of gossamer blonde hair from her face with a delicate hand, an action Devon found disturbingly sexy considering that the fairy didn’t even come up to his knee-cap.
“One of our operatives has been captured,” she said. The air around her glimmered with sparkles.
“Captured by whom?” Devon asked. “Gremlins?”
The female on the left nodded, her tightly cropped chrome hair glittering in the lamp light.
“We think so,” she said, her alto voice dripping with lusty overtones that any Hollywood starlet would murder a puppy, maybe two puppies, for. “He hasn’t reported in.”
Devon frowned.
“Then how do you know he was captured?” Devon said. “Maybe he just got sick of you assholes and found a way to escape.”
Gronk smacked Devon in the head, sending him crumpling onto the couch. It felt like getting slapped with a desk chair. Devon sat up, rubbing his throbbing skull, and glared at Gronk.
“You will go rescue this operative and return him to safety,” the male fairy stated.
“You will show no mercy to our enemies,” the female on the right declared.
“You will return to us successful, or you will die in the attempt,” the female on the left purred.
“Yeah, yeah, the usual stuff,” Devon said. “So who am I rescuing? A garden gnome or something?”
“No,” the male said. “Another human.”

Devon raced down Carpenter Road at well over the speed limit, the engine of his little car whining in complaint. He didn’t know how he would explain his armor and the sword in the passenger seat if he got pulled over, but he felt a deep panic setting in and wanted to get to the address the fairies gave him as quickly as possible.
Up until that night, it had never occurred to Devon that there might be other humans fighting for the fairies. When he realized this, a weird sort of “brothers-in-arms” feeling washed over him. If a fellow warrior needed help, Devon would make damn sure that he got it!
But something deeper nagged at him, and as Devon rounded the corner onto Washtenaw Avenue, it finally hit. In all the battles he’d fought, he had never felt any sense of real danger. The gremlins pulled hair, scratched, bit, and were generally annoying, but he always had this sense that he could take them. But this guy, the one he was about to rescue, this guy got taken out by the thing the fairies sent him to fight. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t a gremlin.
Devon swallowed hard and wondered if he should try to buy a gun or something. Of course, he didn’t have any idea where one might buy a gun at 3:00 A.M. without a background check. Those weren’t exactly the sort of circles he ran in. Still, any edge would have been nice.
If he could have brought Gronk along, he would have felt better, but the fairies insisted that the Pact did not allow it. A thousand years ago the various wee-folk factions signed a treaty called the Pact. According to the Pact, no wee-folk could take up arms against another. But due to a loophole in the wording of the Pact, nothing prevented the wee-folk from enlisting humans to fight for them.
The only thing he found comfort in, and man did he need some comfort, was that he had grown quite skilled in swordplay during his many battles. Add to this the sword fighting lessons he’d taken two months ago through the local branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and he felt like a pretty good swordsman.
That bit of comfort would have to cover him, because at that moment he arrived at the address the fairies had given him.

Devon crept up to the rear entrance of the abandoned department store. The alley behind the store was almost completely dark, lit only by the chemical orange glow of the street lamps at the far end of the building. The door stood partly open, and, white knuckling his sword in his right hand, he pushed the door open the rest of the way with his left.
It creaked on noisy hinges, and Devon cringed as the sound echoed inside the building. As he tried to see through the blackness within, Devon cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight. With slow, measured steps, he entered. Broken glass crunched under the heels of his combat boots, and the looming silhouettes of large, unidentifiable objects stood along the walls.
The little light from outside seemed absorbed by the shadows. As his eyes struggled to adapt, Devon heard voices from somewhere ahead. Summoning all the courage he could muster, he pushed forward.
Navigating by feel, he headed toward the voices. They grew louder and soon coalesced into a rhythmic chant. The language wasn’t one he knew, the words cluttered with deep, throat-clearing noises and an exaggerated pronunciation of the letter S that reminded Devon of the accents they give snake men in bad sci-fi movies.
Feeling along the wall, he found the entrance to a hallway and saw flickering firelight coming from a room off to one side. Devon gripped the hilt of his blade tighter.
Soon he could hear a whole group of voices muttering in unison. Over them all rang a high female voice.
“Klee-ere-rel. Klee-arr-lisssss. Klee-an-laaa.”
“Klee-ere-rel. Klee-arr-lisssss. Klee-an-laaa.”
He reached the doorway and pressed his back against the wall. He wasn’t sure, but he swore he heard a man’s voice against the rhythm of the chant. It sounded muffled, as if he were gagged and trying to shout.
Well, thought Devon, only one way I’m gonna find out.
He took a deep breath and stepped around the corner. In the center of a large, empty storage room stood a beautiful dark-haired woman wearing jet black robes. She held a heavy staff in one hand and a glittering dagger in the other. On the floor before her lay a man dressed in khakis and a red polo shirt. His captors had hog-tied him using a length of clothes line, blindfolded him with a strip of black cloth, and placed a piece of duct tape over his mouth. In a circle around him kneeled at least twenty gremlins, bowing and chanting, along with the woman. Nearby, a fire burned in a metal pot shedding a dim light over the room.
When the woman noticed Devon, she shouted, “Silence!”
The gremlins obeyed and rose to their feet to face Devon. Saliva dripped from their needle-sharp teeth, and their yellow eyes shone malevolently. The woman’s eyes narrowed.
“The Fey send yet another of their lackeys to disrupt my plans.” She growled in a voice that both convinced Devon he was in love with her while at the same time filling him with dread.
“We need our sacrifice,” she said, “but this one will serve as an excellent example to our enemies. Kill him . . . but bring me the head.”
Devon broke out in a cold sweat, and his muscles started to twitch. The time came for his body to choose Fight or Flight, and Fight got kicked in the head, locked in a closet, and buried under six feet of concrete.
He wanted to run. But he couldn’t run. He stood there anchored to that place by one simple thing—the look of utter terror in the eyes of that poor guy on the floor. Another average joe, just like Devon, who got roped into something so far outside his realm of understanding that his brain put his type-2 reaction into overdrive and left it on full. And now here was this guy, tied up on the floor, and about to get turned into a virgin (it was an assumption, but the computer geek aura the guy gave off suggested it was probably true) sacrifice.
Suddenly, Devon knew what he needed to do. With a warrior’s cry, Fight busted through the concrete, punched Flight firmly in the gut, and tossed his ass overboard.
“Baby, this story’s only got one ending, and it ain’t ‘Happily Ever After.’ ”
The best line of his life, and he came up with it on the fly to boot. Nothing had ever felt so right. Devon grinned bigger than he had since the premiere of Star Wars.
The woman shook with rage. Swinging the dagger over her head, she shrieked, “Kill him, kill him, KILL HIM!”
The gremlins charged, and Devon took the ready stance he’d learned in his sword fighting lessons. The first wave hit, and Devon brought the sword around in a long arc.
POP! POP! POP! POP! POP!
Green dust filled the air, and the other gremlins hesitated. Devon didn’t have any more clever ideas, so he waded straight into the fray. With a mighty sweep of his arm, he brought the sword around again.
POP!
He thrust the tip into a gremlin to his right.
POP!
Another gremlin came at him from the left, but Devon saw him and brought the heavy heel of his combat boot down on its head.
POP!
The gremlins began to panic. They skittered back and forth between Devon and the woman, unsure whom they feared more.
Devon skewered another one.
POP!
So much green dust filled the air that Devon had to wipe his ski goggles to clear his vision. As his hand came away, he found the woman’s face inches from his own. She hit him with so much strength that he flew back through the doorway. Devon hit the floor hard, knocking the wind out of him. The woman was beautiful no more. Her skin paled to a sickly yellow, sucked in at the cheeks, and tight over the angles of her skull. Her hair faded to stark white and flailed about like a living thing.
Devon tried to bring up his sword, but the woman’s hand, now tipped with glistening black claws, came down on his wrist and forced it to the ground. The blade fell from his grip and skittered across the floor.
“Now, human,” she hissed, “you will die!”
The woman opened her mouth to reveal a vicious set of fangs. Devon grabbed her throat with his free hand, and somehow held her back.
“You know, lady,” he grunted. “I am sick of people telling me what to do.”
Devon smashed his head forward and caught the woman full in the mouth with the plastic bill of his bicycle helmet. Teeth cracked and snapped, and the woman screamed in surprise and pain. She stumbled off Devon, grasping at her mouth, blood trickling between her fingers.
Devon snatched his sword and jumped to his feet. He charged the woman, shouting as he raced across the room toward her. Her eyes went wide. She tried to escape, but she tripped over the man tied up on the floor. Devon hurtled through the air and landed with his boot planted firmly on her chest. She let out a gasp.
The woman grabbed at his legs, but her claws scraped uselessly on his shin guards. She looked around for the gremlins, but the survivors were scurrying for a door on the far side of the room. Finally, hissing furiously, she turned back to Devon, just in time to see the point of his blade come down on her face.
POP!

Devon went home, crashed on his bed, and slept all day. When he woke, he smelled that Gronk was still there, so he went out to the living room. Gronk and the guy he had rescued were sitting on the couch eating fish sticks and watching the latest installment of Big Brother. Gronk stared intently at the screen, but the man heard Devon come in.
“Oh, hey,” the man said. “I’m glad you’re okay. Oh, I’m Alan. Wow, your troll is way bigger than mine.”
Devon walked over to the couch and squeezed down next to them.
“Thanks for saving me, Dev. I’ve been doing this for three years, and I’ve never been in so much trouble. I think you saved my life.”
“No problem,” Devon said.
“No, really. You were awesome. You are really good at this.”
And in that moment, Devon knew Alan was right. He was really good at this. He was way better than average. And other than the enslavement part, Devon liked doing it. Devon threw his head back and laughed, then turned and smiled at Alan.
“Thank you,” he said. “And no problem with the save. Just doing my job.”
Devon reached behind Alan and punched Gronk in the arm.
“Hey, stinky,” he said to the troll. “Pass over those fish sticks. I’m starving.”
Gronk smacked him in the head.

FALLS THE SHADOW

Judi Rohrig

Having lived in Indianapolis, IN, and Louisville, KY, native Hoosier Judi Rohrig considers herself very much a “city girl,” even if her Wonder years were spent in a small river town. A Bram Stoker Award-winning editor (Hellnotes), Rohrig has seen her fiction published in Masques , Pandora’s Closet, Furry Fantastic, Dreaming of Angels, Extremes , and Cemetery Dance magazine. She also has published essays in On Writing Horror and Personal Demons, and has had interviews published in several online venues as well as in Mystery Scene magazine and the Evansville Courier & Press. She may be found online at [http://judirohrig.blogspot.com] http://judirohrig.blogspot.com.

“Every man casts a shadow; not his body only,
but his imperfectly mingled spirit.
This is his grief.
Let him turn which way he will,
it falls opposite to the sun . . .”

—Henry David Thoreau

When I was little, my mother would tuck me away in my bed, purporting a safe haven as she whispered: “Time for little girls to get their beauty sleep.” I found neither the beauty nor the sleep. I was more the princess and the pea type—though not a traditional one. No lime-colored legumes poking up under downy feathers. No, no.
I was still in the bed with the bars when I first heard their razored whispers in the night. It would have been fine if irritating noises had been it, but just as the infomercial promises “That’s not all,” it wasn’t. Monsters—real ones with gnawing teeth and slashing fingernails—skulked under my bed at night.
Moving into my older sister’s room with the big bed didn’t help. They followed, reveling in the additional space, frolicking in the shadowy closet. Even when I’d scrunch down below my quilt, trying to muffle their sniggers, they’d only talk louder. My older sister didn’t seem to hear them, and after I’d seen the puzzled look in her eyes too many times, and the same worried expression mirrored in my mother’s face as I asked about the voices, I learned there are some things you keep to yourself.
But then they grew bolder, attacking me in the middle of the night, scratching and clawing at whatever parts of me I couldn’t hide. My mother tried to solve my “problem” by keeping my nails closely clipped and making me wear long-sleeved pajamas.
That’s when I learned to look after myself. I’d wait until my sister’s breathing settled into her lazy buzz, then I’d wrap myself in my quilt, tiptoe across the dimly lit hall, and huddle in the bathroom all night, a cold tub my refuge, the night light my protective shield.
It was only when I saw the first gray fingers of dawn wriggling under the door that I crept back to my bed. That was the hour the monsters hated most of all. I’d found that out the morning I’d talked myself into being brave enough to lift the flowery dust ruffle and get more than a peek at them.
Maybe if it had been in the cold of the dark, they wouldn’t have scattered in such dread, but the growing light made them scurry about like cartoon mice, their high-pitched shrills rousting my sister. “Why the heck are you screeching like that?” she yelled.
Hoping somehow I could leave them behind as I moved into being an adult, I buried myself deep in the heart of the biggest city I could find. But nighttime offered only a vacant pretense of restful sleep. Something was always lurking in a shadow, but so still in its haste and soft in its urgency, only the hairs on the back of my neck and my soul felt its breath.
That is, until the attacks resumed. They found me even way up on the sixth floor of my crowded, smelly apartment building.
City life was doable, though, after I discovered that most people dreaded working the overnight shifts. Jobs were plentiful in places that catered to those whose habits or responsibilities kept them awake at odd hours. That’s the beauty of a metropolis.
Da Kelly hired me right away as a waitress. His Shamrock Café, with its long gray counter and six wooden booths, was a neighborhood hangout, nestled on a corner in what was known as the Irish section of the city. Hiberniaville is what Bree, the cook of the eleven to six shift, called our little bastion. She addressed every other male as “Pat,” though the neighborhood had shifted away from its mostly Irish identity when the highway department, carving away several blocks, uprooted entire clans for the new Interstate. The nearby exit allowed the Shamrock to survive and made it a convenient stop. Our clientele included wayfaring truckers and factory workers, or the all too-frequent pride of stoned-out college kids from the nearby university.
Working at the Shamrock was how I met him.
I had summarily dismissed Russell Chambers as merely one of the three elbow-deep-in-soapsuds dishwashers who scraped the food remnants from the iron-stone and swabbed the lipstick and finger stains from the glassware. Until the bourbon-pickled redhead entered the picture the day after St. Paddy’s Day.
I think only Tammy Faye Bakker and Captain Jack Sparrow marked their eyes with as much mascara as she did, and her incessant crying caused it to slide down her overly rouged cheeks like the inky rain off the bricks in the alley.
But there she sat in the back booth, sniffling and dabbing with tissues she plucked from her purse. And there sat Chambers, back erect against the hard wood, head cocked to the side with a flop of hair shielding his eyes. He was obviously listening, but he was making no overtures toward the woman.
“Jilted lover,” Bree whispered as she passed by behind the counter. Her finely penciled eyebrows bounced up and down above her wry grin.
It didn’t look like that to me. The redhead never once reached out to Chambers, but kept her long fingers busy tissue-diving in her purse. Chambers’ own hands rested unmoving on the table, fingers threaded in a prayerful pose. No apprehensive clenching or jittery thrumming. Not even a nervous twitch.
“Long-lost sister squeezing brother-dear for rent money,” Bree said as she scooted past me again. “I’m telling you, girl.”
I wiped off the counter and then glanced back. Not a lover. Not a sister. A what? The eggs and bacon on Bree’s griddle sizzled along with my brain.
Chambers was one of a trio of dishwashers. Though I spent very little time schmoozing with any of them, there was no mistaking one for the other. Rancid Bob, the midday guy, was aptly named, a slimy character straight out of a Dickens novel. His chatter was endless and charged with slurs, slander, scorn, and suggestion. Black Garcia, with his shock of curly black hair and deep, dark eyes, was our usual sudsman on the night shift. As for Chambers . . . “Chambers” was all the name Bree and I knew until the redhead appeared and inquired about a “Russell” Chambers. At the time I was in the back fetching more eggs and bacon for the front fridge. I’d been surprised to see him loading the dishwashing racks when I’d come on, since he usually didn’t arrive until the end of our shift.
The redhead and Chambers sat for a good half hour before she shoved a folded blue envelope across the table at him and wobbled out in her stiletto black boots. On closer inspection, Red looked a lot older, her fiery mane gray at the brow, her face bloated and well streaked by her crying.
After she’d gone, Chambers sat unmoving in the booth for about ten minutes before he took a deep, deep breath, sucking in half the air in the place and exhaling a wealth of burden. I didn’t see the envelope in his hand when he made his way back into the kitchen.
I found myself lingering past my shift to study him a little more closely. Tall and thin with shaggy graying-blond hair that he mostly tucked up under a once-bright bandana, Chambers usually sported well-worn jeans and long-sleeved faded T-shirts. He rarely talked with anybody except Da. Somewhere between his loose flop of bangs and his stubble of beard were his facial features—eyes, nose, mouth—but he didn’t share his face with any of us. Especially his eyes. He always diverted those.
Ginny, one of the two morning waitresses, caught me studying him. “You’d be better off hooking up with Garcia, honey, excepting he’s married with a hundred kids. Or even Rancid Bob. Take a pass on Chambers.”
“What’s the matter with Chambers?”
She leaned in, resting her elbows on the counter, and spoke softly: “You mean besides the fact he never talks to anybody or looks anybody in the eye?” She looked straight into mine then leaned back. “He’s got this weird energy level. Some days he’ll be like a steam engine or something, and then some days he looks like he’ll topple over dead if someone walks by him too quickly.” She shrugged. “He’s the best dishwasher we have, but he’s just a dishwasher. You should set your sights higher.”
It took very little prodding on my part to find out more information from Da. He told me Chambers lived in some group home. “You know, for those lovely children. It’s just across the street from St. Lucy’s on Barker. Past the old fountain square. I never thought he looked or acted like one of them.”
“Them?”
“They’ve all that Down Syndrome thing. But lovely, kind men. Some of them are older though, I think. When I hired Chambers, I figured he was one. They’re always such good workers. Steady and reliable. And clean. Very kind. Happy people.”
Only I thought those with Down Syndrome were usually short with broad hands and small heads. Of course, I’d never gotten a good look at Chambers’ face. Maybe that’s why he shrouded his eyes beneath his disheveled hair.
What I’d found out didn’t impress Bree. “Wow,” was all she said in a flat voice. I figured she would have several scenarios to offer, such as that the redhead had given him money in that envelope to give to a brother or son who lived at the home. Or something like that. But Bree wasn’t curious any longer.
I moved along in my own life, pushing Chambers’ mysterious blubbering redhead into the dump file of my mind and battling my own demons, sleeping in the daylight in my ancient claw-foot tub, cursing myself for falling asleep on a Saturday night and then having to recover from a blitz of gnawing and scratching.
About six months passed when, while taking out my trash, my eye caught a wrinkled photograph on the crease of rain-soaked newspaper atop a discarded stack wedged beside the dumpster. There was something oddly familiar about the hairdo.
It was the redhead. Only this time she was grinning ear to ear.
The story detailed how her father had died several years ago. I was struck cold when I read where the redhead’s aunt, an obvious stalwart witch who had thwarted Red from enjoying her inheritance via numerous lawsuits, had herself been found dead the past spring. The picture marked Red’s sale of the crumbling house to a developer who would be restoring it to its former nineteenth century glory. Apparently the aunt had occupied the house all these years, holding it hostage as the court battles ensued. But old auntie died on March 20.
March 20. That was just two days after Red had shoved a blue envelope to Chambers across the table in the back booth at the Shamrock.
The article didn’t mention any relative who might live near St. Lucy’s.

The late September sun had set, still spreading its gold and copper hues across the buildings and grounds at St. Lucy’s when I parked the Chevette in the front lot. I wanted to be brave and knock on the door, but bravery wasn’t a virtue I readily possessed. I sat there, running my own scenarios through my head. They all involved Chambers using his spandex-gloved hands to shove Red’s nemesis down a flight of stairs or maybe adding sleeping pills to her midnight warm milk. I was convinced Red had made arrangements with Chambers that night to solve her problem once and for all.
The next morning, after I clocked out, I headed straight for the kitchen. My plan was simply to chat up Chambers. I had to make him speak to me, to make him look me in the eye.
Instead, I found Rancid Bob, spewing out his usual lewd aphorisms and sexually charged comments, wiping his greasy hands on his apron. “If I ever find that sonofabitch, I’m gonna wipe my nose on him.” Then he growled. “Oh, yeah, who cares? Who thinks I have a life outside of this hellhole, right? Not you.”
“What happened?”
“I’m working two goddamned shifts is what happened. Chambers ain’t coming in.”
“Maybe he’s just late.”
“Nah, Da called me in early. Said he won’t be in today. Bastard. Da better get somebody in here right away. I ain’t working two shifts again.” He blathered more, but I was already on my way to the group home.
I’d drawn back my fist twice before I finally found the courage to knock. A squat, round man with a toothy smile answered the door. “I’m Billy. What do you want?”
“I’m looking for Russell Chambers. We both work at the Shamrock Café.”
“Oh, Rusty isn’t well, not well at all. We’re all so worried.”
With that, he grabbed my arm and yanked me into the long hallway. The strength in Billy’s short arms surprised me.
“Come help Rusty. Help him.”
As we made our way toward the back of the house, several other men emerged from other rooms, following as I tried to keep pace with Billy.
“She’s come to help Rusty!” Billy announced to each man.
I hesitated when Billy flew through the door marked “Bath,” but I’d come this far.
Crumpled amid blankets and pillows in the large bathtub was Chambers. His bare arms, the ones he’d kept hidden under his long-sleeved shirts, revealed minute nasty scratches and bites as well as numerous scars of healed injuries. I knew these marks. I had ones just like them.
“He’s sick,” someone behind me said. “Usually, he gets better pretty fast.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, but when I placed my hand on Chambers’ shoulder, what shot through me was an answer of sorts. My mind . . . rippled. It was like having a number of television screens blink on all at one time, with voices muffled by a fluttering of something like a sheer curtain. I touched him again. His flesh was clammy, but my fingers tingled.
“He finds them and brings them home,” Billy said.
“What? Who? Finds who?”
“Lost . . . cats and dogs. That’s all I find . . . lost cats . . . and dogs.” Chambers’ voice was weak, but just the sound of it drew a strange delight from all the men gathered just outside the bathroom. “I’m sorry my friends brought you here for . . . for. . . . I’m okay. Just the flu.” He retreated beneath a blanket.
“Yeah, that explains the cuts and scratches on your arms,” I said.
“Really, you can go.”
“No. I can’t go. You know I can’t.”
Chambers tugged his blanket closer, but I didn’t move. When I said I wasn’t going anywhere until he answered a few of my questions, he told me to wait in the front hall so he could get dressed.
As I left, the men squeezed into the bathroom, chattering away, helping their friend.
I’d never met anybody else with my kinds of scars. Or anybody else who slept in a bathtub. Now that there were at least two of us, I had questions that needed to be answered. Besides, I wanted . . . no, needed, to touch him again.
When more than an hour passed, I got the message. Or I got scared. Was becoming a Russell Chambers my future? What could be in his eyes that he worked so hard to hide? Maybe there were no slants with folds of skin at the inner corners like the rest of his Down Syndrome brothers. Maybe there was something else.
I wasn’t even halfway across the street when I spotted him leaning against my banged up, wine-colored Chevette. I’d expected him to be frail and weak, as he was in the bathroom, but there he stood looking nearly robust. He did look a bit scruffy behind the sunglasses that he’d wrapped around his face.
“You want to know,” he said, “about them.” He tilted his head toward me, nodding some weird affirmation behind his shades. “Okay. But while we talk, you can be my chauffeur. I have somewhere I need to be. You know the Butchertown area?”
I did.
We talked a lot—well, he did—as I drove, maneuvering around trucks, buses, and cars all bound for someplace normal. Funny that a guy who rarely uttered anything couldn’t stop.
He overflowed with information about his life, talking about how his family had institutionalized him when he was young, thinking he’d been cutting himself and lying about his nightly visitors. He called the monsters “rascals.”
“But then I found a use for them,” he said.
“Killing people? Is that how you use them?”
He laughed. It was a pitiful sound, filled with incredulity and sadness which he followed with a heavy silence. “Why would you think that?”
“Day after St. Paddy’s Day a redhead came to talk with you at the Shamrock. I saw her give you a blue envelope. Two days later the aunt who was fighting her inheritance turned up dead.”
He leaned his head back on the car seat, almost visibly sinking into the vinyl as his body relaxed, his barrage of words suddenly halted.
My blood started running cold as I realized how stupid I was to blurt it all out like that. I mean, I barely knew this guy, and what I did know didn’t look good.
“I’m impressed, detective,” he finally said, “but you’re wrong. Oh, she did pay me, but not for that.”
“Then what?”
He sat up. “Turn there on Baxter and go down the block all the way to the end of the street. You’ll know which house.”
The Bedford stone looked a cliché, right out of a cheap horror movie. Overgrown with weeds and un-managed trees, the house slumped under years of neglect with dangling shutters and a crumbling stoop.
It seemed perfect for some clandestine abattoir where a sicko would torture a stupid, lonely woman with a big mouth. I parked across the street under some droopy trees.
“You stay in the car. Okay?” he said. “If I’m still in there when it starts to get dark, you leave.”
“But I—”
Both his large hands squeezed mine together, firmly but gently. “No questions just now. Just do as I say. Stay in the car. Leave if it gets dark. Okay?” For a second he hesitated, and then he unfolded his long legs out the door. He hadn’t even reached the porch when a man in a blue baseball cap came from around the side of the house. Chambers’ mien changed. He seemed oddly taller, and the free hand he’d shoved in the pocket of his jeans at first now swept the air as he and the man looked to the second floor window in the dilapidated house.
Chambers stood rigid before making his way up the weed-infested steps. I watched him set his shoulders in a determined pose, then disappear inside.
For the first ten minutes, the man in the blue hat bounced from one foot to the next, glancing up and down the street and then back to the house. He’d just lit a cigarette when the glass of the upstairs window shattered and blew out odd-sized fragments, spraying the shrubs and street in front of the house. I ducked down, but when I sat back up, the man in the blue hat had vanished.
A few seconds later, a red Chevy pickup chewed up the dust and glass fragments in the street with its huge tires as it tore from behind what was left of the falling-down garage. The man was at the wheel sans his blue ball cap. He headed straight for me, barely sliding around the Chevette at the last second. As he passed, I saw his face was the color of whitewash.
I wanted to run, too. I wanted Chambers to come out of the house now so we could leave. Only I couldn’t do anything but press my chest against the steering wheel and watch the house. And wait.
While I did, breezes ruffled the leaves of the trees that surrounded the car, the house, the street. The air was warm, but my bones were brittle with a fear chill.
I was six again, when Marcy spent the night in the hospital in Indianapolis and Grandma Suelle stayed with me. She’d found me in the bathroom the first night and forced me to my bed. The second night she’d tucked the blankets around me so tightly I was as good as roped down. Of course, the monsters came from beneath. They clawed their way up the quilt and made a war-party visit atop my bed. My screams woke Grandma, but instead of any comfort, she’d thrown me over her lap and smacked my ass so hard I had trouble sitting for next two days. Somehow she ignored the cuts the monsters had made to my face, telling my parents that I had done it all to myself by playing a game under my bed and getting snarled in the metal springs.
The wind began playing tricks as I swore I could hear the monsters’ shrills and squeaks coming from somewhere in the distance. I clutched the steering wheel like some blessed talisman, praying fervently that Chambers would come out the door soon. Very, very soon.
And I was ten again, when the monsters set a fire in my closet, burning up my clothes and my favorite dolls. I was thirteen and sixteen and all the ages before and after and in between. War parties and fires, shredded clothes and stolen toys, booby-traps and . . .
The fear made me shake and feel colder than any deep snow, but I watched the house. Finally, I watched the sun begin to sink past the taller buildings.
The sounds of the swooping crows—loud and accusing—ricocheted from the surrounding houses into the trees. I listened harder for the shrills, but all I heard were the leaves rubbing against one another and the squeak of a loose shutter clinging desperately to some rusty nail. The shadows began to deepen, and I knew I had to go.
Throwing the car into gear, I had just taken one more glance at the house and started to move when I saw Chambers standing right in front of me. The force of the moving car threw him on the hood and then back off to the side as I tromped on the brakes.
“Chambers!”
He was pulling himself up to sit by the time I’d made my way around the car.
“Oh, Geezus! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean . . . I thought . . . You said to leave. The sun . . .”
I’m sure I babbled more, but I shut up once I recognized the fresh cuts and scratches on his head and face, deep and bleeding. They hadn’t been caused by the Chevette hitting him. I knew the tiny claw marks, and knowing, I threw my arms around him and started crying.
His large hands didn’t seem as strong as he grabbed my arms. As the television screens in my head flickered, flashed, and zoomed, I stared directly into his eyes. I don’t know how to describe them. Like hard, unreflecting glass. More like my grandma’s eyes when she lay on her deathbed. Distant. Lost. And yet, I saw . . .
“Drive . . .” he was able to say as he pushed me away.
Only I couldn’t break my stare.
“Drive,” he shouted, shoving the sunglasses on his face.
And I did.
He collapsed in the seat, almost melting into the vinyl. I didn’t know where exactly to go, I just drove. The city is big, the roads endless strips leading somewhere and nowhere at the same time.
I finally drove us back to the group home. Billy and his brothers seemed to have a routine about what to do. They bathed him and tended his wounds, dabbing and bandaging.
“Did you help Rusty save the cats?” Billy asked.
I didn’t know how to answer, didn’t know anything really, including what had happened in the house or why. I did know he had battled the same monsters I knew too well.
Scrunching down beside the tub where Chambers lay, I leaned my head on the cold side, feeling more exhausted than I could ever remember. I didn’t know any other way to help him except to be there beside him. Eventually, I fell asleep.
When I opened my eyes again, I lay curled up in a bed, soft pillow beneath my head, nubby blanket covering my shoulders. It was night.
I jumped up, clutching the blanket against me. They would be coming.
“No, they won’t.” Chambers was facing me as he sat in a chair beside the bed. No sunglasses. He was looking straight at me, though the dark impeded my ability to see his eyes clearly.
“You can control them. You can use them,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“They feed on fear.” He laughed. “That’s why I live here with Billy and the rest of my brothers.”
“Billy has no fear?”
“Of course he does, but it’s not the same. Your fear, my fear, everybody’s else’s fear . . . it’s a complicated fear. I think that same chromosome they get shorted is the one we get all messed up.”
“I don’t understand.”
“See?” He moved to be beside me on the bed. “You have to understand. You question. You reason. You imagine. Billy just accepts things as they are. They just . . . are. And he and all my brothers go about their jobs and enjoy what they have. That’s why I live here. It’s the only place where I feel safe, where I don’t have to fear . . . them.”
“And that’s the control?”
Chambers leaned back, crossing his legs. “Only some of it. They still come at night. That’s why I sleep in a bathtub.”
“Lights on?”
“Lights on.”
“After I left the institution, I moved into a place where nobody else wanted to live,” Chambers said. “I guess I should have been suspicious when the rent was so low, but . . . Well, one night a terrible storm knocked out the power all down our block.”
“No night light.”
“Yup. Gone. I went to get my flashlight when something swept across my arm. Then it happened again.”
“Are you talking about ghosts?” I laughed.
Chambers stood and walked to window. “I heard them coming. You know the sound of them, little screeches and that chattering sound they make. Well, damned if whatever had touched my arm didn’t hear them, too. And damned if he didn’t jump right into me.”
There was a long silence because I didn’t know what to say.
“What if men—and women, too—had a bunch of past-life souls rotting away in the deepest realms of their unconscious? And what if these past lives fused into a great collective, single-minded, artificially generated creature that existed in the unconscious half of reality? And what if that collective was evil and gathered even more evil along the way?”
My light bulb flashed on. “Then that collective would be pretty darned evil and nasty,” I said.
“The Egyptians believed in the existence of a devil, contending that those who were not pure would have their souls ‘eaten’ and ‘swallowed’ by that devil. That’s who the rascals are, a collective looking to nibble away so they can attain enough energy to inhabit somebody’s soul. I just go around and use them to gather those lost souls. In me.”
If I hadn’t been sitting down, I would have fallen on the floor. All this evil and devil talk made my head swim.
“You didn’t kill Red’s aunt.”
“Nope. If anything, Red thought she was helping her by ridding the house of her father’s ghost. Guess it did just the opposite.”
The task—which is what Chambers called it—began just before noon. After a lunch at the crab shack restaurant near the river, we met a man named Mr. Joseph.
Trim, yet hardly slight in build, Mr. Joseph, who was as nervous looking as the man with the blue ball cap, looked to be of some breeding and class. I figured him for a banker or insurance salesman. His neatly trimmed and waxed handlebar mustache wiggled back and forth as he talked about his mother. She’d lived in the same house her entire life, having in fact been born in the upstairs bedroom during a horrible snowstorm. Her own mother hadn’t survived the birthing experience, and she’d been reared by a maiden aunt. Except for the weekend she’d run away with the sailor whose seed fathered Mr. Joseph, she’d never been out of the city proper. A basically uneducated woman, she’d spent her life doing alterations and repairs for several dry cleaning services, and with the money she’d earned, she’d been able to send her son to college. He’d become a successful stockbroker, married well, had children, and had led a respectable life.
Yet after Mr. Joseph had shared all that, what he said next were bitter words, not grateful ones. “I want her out of there,” he finally said in a breaking voice. “I know that makes me sound like the bastard I am, but I don’t know what else to do.”
Chambers leaned closer to the man. “You’re talking about your mother.”
“I know that!”
This time when he spoke, Chambers’ voice was soft. Comforting. Soothing in its tones. “What you are seeking is right. There comes a time when a person needs . . . peace.”
“It’s been seven years now—”
“I understand.”
“I don’t want to hurt her.”
“I understand that, too.”
“No one can live there—”
“Not even you.”
“I’ve tried! But I have a wife and family. My son is afraid of her . . . the slamming doors . . . the broken dishes. I can’t—”
Chambers looked like a priest offering absolution.
Tears streamed down Mr. Joseph’s face, just like the redhead’s. “They said you were different. That you wouldn’t . . . hurt her.”
“Everything will be fine.”
After Mr. Joseph left, Chambers and I walked along the river, watching the barges haul coal and grain.
“I know you’ve told me all about this ‘Division Theory, ’ but I’m not sure how or why what you say works. Why do we—you and I—have to suffer for people we don’t even know and who are dead anyway?”
“Kierkegaard said: ‘We must experience our hells while on earth if we do not want to experience them after we die.’ That’s as close to an answer as I have. I wouldn’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
Just before two, we pulled up outside a nicely kept house in one of those neighborhoods where whole blocks of houses were attached. Each had a little stoop with marble steps, and though they may have been built with different colored bricks, they seemed woven together.
I started to open the door when Chambers grabbed my arm. The television screens zipped even faster than ever before. I know I jumped a bit, which released his hold. “Promise you’ll do everything I tell you. Promise you’ll trust me, no matter what I do or say. No matter what happens.”
Remembering the claw marks on his arms and face and the attacks I’d endured as child, I knew this wouldn’t be easy or safe. “I promise,” I said.
It all happened more quickly than I imagined.
Once inside, Chambers made the musty old parlor as dark as he could, stretching the few tattered curtains across the smudged windows. He removed his sunglasses, folding them with a click and tucking them in his pocket. Then we sat down in the dust and waited.
I heard their razored whispers long before I felt the first nip on my arm.
“Miss Joseph?” Chambers whispered. “Miss Joseph, it’s okay. I’m here.”
Now the whispers grew to a loud buzz, like bees being rattled from their hive. Over and over, the monsters struck. My face, my hair, my arms, my legs . . .
“They can’t have you, Miss Joseph. I can have you! Come rest with me. Come.”
With those words, Chambers wrapped his arms around my shoulders and the whirlwind hit. The buzzing of the monsters was drowned out by all the voices of the people on the television screens. Only each soul was calling for Miss Joseph: “Jump! Jump now!” they called.
While the monsters slammed against us, the voices continued their calls.
“It’s safe here, Miss Joseph . . . safe . . . safe . . . safe.”
And like a summer’s sudden storm, it all ended, and we were on our way. A bit worse for the wear, but with more damage to Chambers than to me. Before I managed to return him to Billy and his brothers, I wondered how much longer Chambers would last before all the other souls inside him consumed him fully. They rested in him, and when his own light finally went out, so would theirs.
I moved out of my apartment and into the group home. Billy and his brothers exuded a kind of peaceful simplicity, doing their jobs, asking no questions, accepting simple answers, giving unconditional love.
Miss Joseph made the leap as she was urged to do. She had many stories. Sometimes I listened to her all day. She was my first shadow.

WE BURGLED IT, SURE WE DID

Mickey Zucker Reichert

Mickey Zucker Reichert is a pediatrician, parent to multitudes (at least it seems like that many), bird wrangler, goat roper, dog trainer, cat herder, horse rider, and fish feeder who has learned (the hard way) not to let macaws remove contact lenses. Also the author of twenty-two novels (including the Renshai, Nightfall, Barakhai, and Bifrost series), one illustrated novella, and fifty plus short stories. Mickey’s age is a mathematically guarded secret: the square root of 8649 minus the hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangle with a side length of 33.941126.

Cyndi Henderson filed away the paperwork from her previous customer in her bank drawer and raised her head to nod at the next person in line. Startled by his appearance, she found herself staring, motionless.
He was the size of a young child, no taller than the three fat little tykes she had seen playing with Duplos on the checkered carpet. He wore a dull red parka zipped to the neck, the hood shadowing his face, the polyester shell hiding a bulge that made her unconsciously suck in her own slender gut. She watched him slide a wooden box across the floor in front of her window before stepping on it to meet her gaze.
In direct contrast to his size, he sported wizened features wreathed in white hair, including a long beard/ mustache combination. His nose was generous, but not bulbous, and red at the tip. Blue eyes sparkled, full of a vigor and mischief she would not have expected from one so obviously old.
The man smiled at her, kindly, Henderson thought. He dropped a deposit slip to the counter, upside down, displaying a handwritten note.
Henderson picked it up and started reading:
“We are burgling youse, sure we are. Please be after telling ye’r customers to lie prone with hands on backs of heads. Do not be howling eejits or heroes, and no one gets hurt, aye? You will be putting all ye’r gold coins in some bag there. Sure, we leave then, no harm.”
For several moments, Henderson studied the note, trying to make sense of it. She knew she was being robbed, yet she felt no real fear, only confusion. Criminals were not known for their coherence or grammar, yet she could not imagine the sort of person who would write in such a strange and cryptic manner.
Then, the man’s coat opened fully to reveal an obvious automatic weapon, a rifle-like gun with an enormous circular piece. To Henderson, it looked like something out of a 1930s gangster movie. The fear that had evaded her came in a sudden rush. Her hands shot up of their own accord, and her heart pounded wildly.
The midget took a hand off his weapon to jab it at the note. “Be after telling ’em,” he said, in a heavy, musical accent.
“I will,” Henderson promised emphatically. “Just don’t shoot.” She grabbed the phone and tapped the intercom button. “Attention customers of Hills Bank. A robbery is taking place.” She looked out to see how her news was being received, only to find everyone breathlessly awaiting her next words. The three children she had noticed earlier had morphed into more short adults clutching World War II style Thompson machine guns. “They have asked that you lie on the floor with your hands behind your heads.” She added forcefully, as much for the robbers as the victims, “And have promised not to harm any of us so long as we don’t act . . . like . . .” She found herself stuck with the note’s own bizarre wording, “. . . howling eejits or heroes.”
To Henderson’s relief, the customers scurried to obey. She deliberately kept herself from looking toward the back offices, where the loan officers, clerical workers, and higher ranking officials would be quietly hiding and, hopefully, calling the police.
“Coins,” the man said, snapping the gun to remind her of its presence.
“Coins.” Henderson set the note back on the counter and reread it. “Gold coins?” She tried to sound as sincere as possible, worried to die for their disappointment and ignorance. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. We don’t have any gold coins. The mint stopped making those in—”
The gun glided closer, and the man’s brow knitted. “Gold coins,” he demanded. Clearly, he would not take “no” for an answer.
Henderson swallowed hard. “Do you mean . . . ?” she started timidly “. . . Sacagawea and Presidential dollars? Those are gold-colored, but they’re not actually—”
The man nodded. “Take those, we will.”
Henderson obediently opened her drawer. They always kept a few rolls of various dollar coins for collectors. “Do you want the paper bills, too?”
“We don’t.”
Henderson’s thoughts whirled. Each drawer might hold as many as six or seven rolls of the gold-colored coins. That did not seem like much of a haul for four men to risk a lifetime in prison, nor for anyone to risk his life. Obediently, she grabbed a pair of cash bags and dropped rolls of dollar coins into each, as well as the handful of single coins she had received from customers during the day. She opened every other teller’s drawer, adding their rolls and loose gold coins to the mix. In the end, it seemed meager, but she handed the bags to the elderly midget. “That’s all of them.”
Still clutching his machine gun, the small man took both bags in his other hand and clambered down from his perch. For an instant, Henderson lost sight of him as his head slid below the counter. She never caught so much as a glimpse of him, or his companions, again.

Police Captain James Stoltzfus buried his face in his hands, fingertips digging into his tight, graying curls. “Midgets,” he said.
Apparently, Ken Romando had not yet left the detective’s office. “I think they prefer to be called ‘Little People.’ ”
Though moot, the point was interesting. Stoltzfus peered at the younger man between his fingers. “Really?”
“I think so. I heard it somewhere.” Romando’s round face twisted in thought, and he squinted his dark eyes. “Or maybe it’s ‘dwarfs’ they like. I can’t remember.”
Stoltzfus grunted. “Midgets, dwarfs, Little People. Whatever they call themselves, four of them just robbed Hills Bank.”
“Yes, sir.”
“With old-fashioned gangster guns.”
“1920s Thompson sub-guns. It’s true. I saw them in the surveillance video.”
Stoltzfus looked up abruptly, letting his hands drop to the desk. “There’s a video? Why haven’t I seen it?”
Romando blinked. “Because . . . I . . . haven’t brought it to you yet?” It came out more like a question than a statement. “I only just saw it myself, Captain.”
“Bring it.”
Romando hurried out of the room, leaving Stoltzfus shaking his head in wonderment. The captain felt ancient, rickety, ready for retirement two years early. He studied his hands, ashy brown with blatant spots of pink vitiligo. Not so long ago, he would have worried about the blotches, would have kept them well lotioned. Now, he found himself too caught up in matters of work and family to concern himself with looks. “Midgets with Tommies scared the piss out of a bunch of rural Iowans. And all they took was $963 in dollar coins?” He threw up his hands. “The world’s gone completely insane.”
A knock sounded on the door.
“Come in,” Stoltzfus said gruffly.
Romando rejoined him, carrying a DVD by the edges. With the toe of his shoe, he pulled the door closed behind him.
Stoltzfus gestured toward the combo TV/DVD/VCR player sitting on a cart in the corner, between his bookshelves. “As I understand it, someone triggered the alarm pretty much immediately. And we got there in less than ten minutes.”
“That’s right.” Romando pulled the cart away from the wall and wheeled it directly in front of Stolzfus’ desk. He checked the cord, ascertained that it was plugged into the outlet, then bent down to insert the DVD.
“And the thieves were already gone by the time we arrived.”
Romando watched the drawer shut. “Most of the eye witnesses say they glanced away for just an instant, and the . . . the . . . Little People disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Stoltzfus sighed and wriggled his fingers, drawing them outward in an arc. “Like in a puff of magical smoke?”
“More like, the customers glanced away and when they looked back, the little dudes were gone.” Romando finally turned to face his captain, the remote control for the combo player in hand.
“You’ve seen the video, Romando. How do they get out so quickly?”
Romando developed a sudden interest in the controller. “I . . . don’t know, exactly. I’ve watched it twice, with Kent and Murdoch. I always . . . blink. At the exact wrong time.”
“Blink?” Stoltzfus rolled his eyes. “So watch it again.”
“I did.”
“And again until you see it. Hold your damned lids open, if you have to.”
Romando’s tone gained a defensive quality. “I will. I will. But you made me bring it to you. And, just so you know, Kent and Murdoch missed it, too, same as I did.”
Without another word, Stoltzfus gestured for Romando to start the DVD.
The drama unfolded before their eyes, though not from a particularly helpful angle. They had just reached the spot where the “children” threw off their winter coats to reveal the machine guns hidden beneath them when another knock sounded on the captain’s door.
Trying to catch every detail, Stoltzfus jumped at the sound. Romando hit the pause button.
Donny Murdoch poked his head inside the room. “Captain, there’s been another bank robbery.”
Stoltzfus gaped. Crime was rare enough in southern Iowa that most newspapers carried only a few mentions of DUIs and petty larceny on any given day. This was only the second bank heist Stoltzfus had ever worked, and another just a few hours later seemed impossible. “Where?”
“Seattle, sir.”
“Seattle?” Stoltzfus had never heard of a Seattle, Iowa. “Where’s that?”
Murdoch gave his captain a curious look. “Washington, sir. State, not D.C.”
Stoltzfus threw up his hands, exasperated. “I know where that Seattle is. I thought you meant—” It did not seem worth explaining. “Seattle, Washington, is a little outside of our jurisdiction.”
“Yes, sir.” Murdoch came all the way into the room, holding the door. “But it’s them midgets again.”
“Little People,” Romando corrected.
Stoltzfus glanced at his watch. It read 6:43 PM. The Hills robbery had taken place at about 3:30. “What time was the Seattle robbery?”
“Four. Four-thirty.”
Stoltzfus’ brow knitted. “Four? So we’re obviously dealing with a different set of midgets.”
“Not necessarily.” Murdoch scratched at the sandy stubble on his chin. “Seattle’s two hours behind us. Their 4:00 is our 6:00.”
Stoltzfus looked at his watch again. Now, it read 6:44 PM.” If you believe the 4:30 time, it took Seattle less than fifteen minutes to contact us. How did they know to do that?”
“Because of the note,” Murdoch explained. “The one we didn’t find at the scene.”
“Yes,” Stoltzfus prompted.
“They did. Written on the back of a Hills Bank, Iowa, deposit slip.”
“Ah.”
“And just like our teller said, the grammar was atrocious. Hard to understand.” Murdoch took a piece of paper from his pocket. “Want to hear it?”
Deep in thought, Stoltzfus tapped a finger on his desk. “Leave it here, would you? Then, I want you and Romando to check out all the nearby airports: Moline, Cedar Rapids. See if anybody remembers a bunch of midgets flying to Seattle. Tell Kent and Ming to check out the Iowa City Municipal and any other small airports that might allow private flights. Hit the farm hangars, if you need to. No way to get to Seattle that fast without flying, and someone had to notice a bunch of midgets with . . .” Stoltzfus hesitated. “Murdoch, did they hit Seattle with the Tommies?”
Murdoch nodded.
Stoltzfus shook his head. “They’ve got to be collector’s items. Too expensive for them to ditch and get new ones, I’d think, but it might be worth checking out gun dealers. Can’t smuggle a glass of water on a plane anymore; there’s no way they got those automatics through security.”
“We’re on it!” Romando said, dropping the remote onto Stoltzfus’ desk and hurrying Murdoch back out the door.
Stoltzfus darted after them, needing to talk to Jamar. Their best computer man could be checking details of the guns, as well as making certain the midgets had not hit any other banks before the one in Hills. For now, Stoltzfus knew he needed to review the surveillance tape with attention to every detail.

Police Captain James Stoltzfus awakened with a start, his neck cramped and his head slumped over his desk. He stretched, wiping a string of drool from the left corner of his mouth. Suddenly realizing an out of place sound had awakened him, he glanced around his office, finding all the familiar details in appropriate order. His watch read 3:07 AM. Shit. Amy’s gonna kill me.
“’Tis yer men what’s after finding us, isn’t it?”
Badly startled, Stoltzfus nearly turned himself inside out. “Who? Where?” He looked under his desk, only to see a pair of stubby legs dressed in red polyester pants and old fashioned shoes with large, silver buckles. Midget. He leaped to his feet to peer over the desk.
A wizened, male face returned the captain’s stare, beneath a pointed hat that perfectly matched the pants. He also wore a square-cut scarlet coat with double rows of silver buttons and a long, white beard. He looked like something out of the gnomes book Stoltzfus’ daughter had once checked out of the school library.
“Who are you?” Stoltzfus managed to ask.
“Me name’s Inbhir Fernmaighe.” He pronounced it “Inver Farney” with a strong, lyrical Irish brogue. “An’ I’m a leipreachán.”
Stoltzfus bit his lip, and the pain assured him he was not dreaming. “A . . . leprechaun?”
“Close enough.” His green eyes twinkled behind a pair of small, odd spectacles. “Tis we what was after fecking yer gold.”
Stoltzfus edged around his desk for a better look at the self-proclaimed leprechaun. “Fecking?” It sounded obscene.
“Nicking. Burgling, if you will.”
Stoltzfus clarified the obvious. “You’re one of the bank robbers?”
“I am.”
Though he already knew the answer, Stoltzfus could scarcely believe the small man had so blithely confessed to a felony. He rubbed his dark eyes briskly. His men had brought back nothing useful by footwork or computer. The captain had watched the tape at least fifteen times. It seemed impossible that one of the bank robbers, someone who had escaped without a trace, would deliberately walk into a detective’s office.
Still standing to keep the midget in sight, Stoltzfus eased open his top desk drawer and worked his fingers quietly inside, seeking the portable tape recorder he always kept there. He groped over pens, pencils, and other odd items. “So you and your friends fashion yourselves . . . leprechauns?”
“Tis not a matter of fashion, Captain Stoltzfus. Tis a matter of fact. We be leipreacháns, to be sure, male faeries of the Tuatha Dé Danaan.”
Stoltzfus found the recorder and blindly mashed down the record and play buttons, hoping he had a read ied cassette inside it. “Can you speak English for me, please?”
Again a light flashed through the small man’s eyes, and he smiled impishly. “Jabbers and bedad, I have English. Mine be more genuine than yers, I’d be supposing.”
Stoltzfus took his hands from the drawer and walked around the desk for a better look at his guest. “You’re from Ireland, then?”
“I am.”
Stoltzfus nodded thoughtfully, trying to plan his next move. “You’re right, then. Your English probably is closer to the original than mine. But what was that thing you said? About leprechauns?”
“We be male faeries, I said. Of the Tuatha Dé Danaan.”
“Thooahhadahnan,” Stoltzfus tried.
“Tuatha Dé Danaan,” Inbhir Fernmaighe restored the proper inflection.
Stoltzfus did not make another stab at it. “And can you tell me your name again?”
“Inbhir Fernmaighe, tisn’t it?” The self-proclaimed leprechaun placed his hands on his tiny hips. “If ye’re no going to listen, I’ll be having after talking with someone else.”
“No! Wait, please, Mr. Farney. You just caught me napping.” It suddenly occurred to Stoltzfus that the midget had sneaked past the entire night staff. Apparently, not one had seen him enter the station or their captain’s office. “I’m awake now. And listening.” Gold-colored coins. Leprechauns. Things started to come together, in a perverse sort of way. Weirder things have happened . . . maybe. “Mr. Farney, are you telling me that you and your friends are stealing those dollar coins for your . . .” Stoltzfus became very careful, not wanting to offend the crazy man. “. . . pots . . . of . . . gold?”
“Yeah, sure, noo ye be thinking.”
Struck by the urge to make absolutely sure the recorder was working, Stoltzfus glanced at his desk. Deciding opening the drawer would not be prudent, he turned his gaze back on his visitor. Or tried to. The leprechaun had vanished.
Stoltzfus froze. “Mr. Farney?” He swept a glance around the entire room, finding no one. “Mr. Farney?” He dropped into his chair, heart pounding. I imagined the whole thing. I’m going crazy. This case is driving me out of my ever-loving mind. The desire to check the tape recorder became a desperate need. He threw open the drawer. The recorder sat in its usual place amid rolling pencils, disturbed by the sudden movement. He had depressed the proper buttons. The tape whirred, no louder than a whisper.
Did it all occur in my head? Was I talking out loud? Stoltzfus had to hear what he had recorded. He jabbed the “stop” button, then the “rewind.” Closing his eyes, he then hit “play.” His words flooded out, sounding strange and only partially familiar, like all recordings of one’s own voice. “. . . coins for your . . . pots . . . of . . . gold?”
The brogue followed, “Yeah, sure, noo you’re thinking.”
That’s not me. Stoltzfus hit the “stop” button again, cold sweat beading on his upper lip. That’s definitely not me.
“Do you be believing me noo, Captain Stoltzfus?”
Stoltzfus jumped, banging his knuckles on the desk drawer. He barely remembered to restart the recording before moving around his desk to see Inbhir Fernmaighe standing as if he had never moved.
“Did you . . .” Stoltzfus stammered. “Did you just . . . disappear?”
“I did,” the little man admitted. “I thought you done be needing some convincing, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Stoltzfus admitted. He hooked his chair with a foot and dragged it to the side of his desk, afraid to take his eyes from Inbhir Fernmaighe again.
“So, are ye believing I’m a leipreachán now? Or do ye be needing more convincing?”
Stoltzfus would have liked to see the creature’s entire repertoire of tricks, but he knew it was unnecessary. He could not forget that, in the fifteen times he had watched the surveillance video, he had blinked at the moment of the burglars’ departure exactly fifteen times. “I believe you, Mr. Farney.” To Stoltzfus’ surprise, he actually did. “But there’s a few things I don’t understand.”
“Aye?” The leprechaun seemed prepared to respond.
“You’ve been around a very long time, right?”
“Since before the Celts had Ireland.”
Stoltzfus did not know enough history to date that, but he felt certain it involved centuries. “So why now? Why America?”
Inbhir Fernmaighe smiled at the question. He seemed pleased that Stoltzfus had finally turned to intelligent questioning. “At first, we be coming here to escape the legends. No one here was believing in faeries. But, in the past few decades, people be bilowen, and not just to their gorsoon.”
Stoltzfus raised a hand. “You lost me at ‘bilowen.’ ”
“Bilowen means telling tales.”
Stoltzfus guessed, “So, gorsoon are offspring. Children.”
“They are. And people aren’t dismissing ones that talk of leipreacháns as thundering eejits no more, to be sure. More and more, yer Americans are after believing in such things.”
Stoltzfus had to agree. It amazed him the number of otherwise reasonable people who had started cham pioning Big Foot, demons, and angels. The current onslaught of movies featured dragons, crop circles, and the Loch Ness monster. The latter two were confessed hoaxes, but that did not stop the legends from persisting. Even a serious presidential candidate claimed to have seen space aliens, and another professed to a belief in magic. Neither had won, but neither had been laughed out of politics, either.
“Sure, where once yer people was letting us be, noo they be grabbing us. And demanding our gold. But we ain’t got no gold no more, sure as we don’t.”
“So you’re stealing Sacagaweas and Presidential dollars.”
The leprechaun made a bland and obvious gesture. “Sure we are.” His expression went serious for the first time since had entered the office. “Captain Stoltzfus, we don’t want to be burgling banks, no we don’t. Arra, we can be cunning and mischievous, especially when we have drink taken. But we’re generally harmless, sure we are.”
Stoltzfus wondered why Inbhir Fernmaighe had not waited longer to turn himself in, if indeed that was what he was doing. A few more banks successfully hit, and the leprechauns could have made some serious demands.
As if in answer to the unspoken question, the leprechaun explained, “We be worried we might have to be after shooting someone.”
That reminded Stoltzfus of something he had learned in his research. “You know, those guns you’re using are worth more than twenty thousand a piece. That’s a lot of dollar coins.”
“Sure Jaysus, they might be. If they were being real.”
“So they’re not real.”
Inbhir Fernmaighe turned Stoltzfus an incredulous look. “We’re being leprechauns, don’t ye remember?”
“I remember.”
“So, captain, is there being anything ye can do for us?”
Stoltzfus considered, rubbing fingers over his tired eyes. “Can you give me twenty-four hours?”
“Sure, we can.”
Stoltzfus amended. “Well, can you give me thirty-six hours, then? I’d like to sleep in my own bed tonight, and I’ve already got a lot of explaining to do to my wife.”
“Thirty-six hours then. I’m coming back here, amn’t I?”
Stoltzfus grinned, “I certainly hope you am.” He withdrew his gaze for only an instant, and Inbhir Fernmaighe was gone.

After checking for the fourth time to make sure his office door was completely closed, Captain James Stoltzfus wandered back to his desk and shuffled a few papers. He could bring himself to do nothing more significant. His thoughts raced too fast for him to concentrate on anything, and he hated the very idea of missing Inbhir Fernmaighe’s entrance.
Nevertheless, the leprechaun’s lilting brogue surprised him again, “I be here noo, captain.”
Stoltzfus jerked his head down and sideways to find Inbhir Fernmaighe, wearing the same red jacket, hat, and pants, standing directly in front of him. “Man, you scared the crap out of me.” He clutched his chest as if suffering a mock heart attack. “I’m never going to get used to that sudden appearance of yours.”
“I be hoping you never have to, aye. I don’t intend to spend me life talking to the likes o’ ye, no offense.”
“None taken.” Stoltzfus smiled. “So, you’re back.”
“Thirty-six hours gone. It would be seeming so.”
That boded well. Apparently, the creature was serious about getting out of the bank robbing trade. “I brought a man who thinks he has the answer to our dilemma.” Stoltzfus leaned his bottom against his desk. “He’s in the front room. I told him you’d get in here without passing him. He said, if you did that, he’d believe you were a leprechaun.”
Inbhir Fernmaighe grinned. “Then he’ll be after believing then, sure.”
“He sure will.” Stoltzfus could scarcely believe he had talked the businessman from Minnesota to Iowa on the promise of meeting a real leprechaun. It was a testament to Stoltzfus’ own solid reputation, one he had every intention of keeping intact. “He says he’ll pay for everything you stole. And he’ll do whatever it takes to get the banks to drop charges against all of you.”
Inbhir Fernmaighe made a solemn nod, gaze firmly fixed on Stoltzfus. “I be listening.”
“He also says he’ll refill each of your pots with real gold, provided there aren’t too many of you, and you don’t use trick pots that never fill.”
Inbhir Fernmaighe grinned mischievously. “He be knowing leipreacháns then, sure he be.”
Stoltzfus supposed some might consider the man an expert, in an odd sort of way. “So will you meet with him?” A trickle of sweat ran down Stoltzfus’ chest, reminding him of the true significance of this meeting. They had no choice but to appease the leprechauns. He doubted anyone could keep one in a jail cell. Even if the creatures killed someone during a holdup, Iowa did not have a death penalty. Imprisonment was their only punishment option, and it seemed utterly futile.
“Coolaboola.” Inbhir Fernmaighe did not seem to notice the look of growing confusion on Stoltzfus’ face. “I be tired of holding a gun in me oxter.”
“What?” the captain could not help saying.
“Coolaboola,” Inbhir Fernmaighe repeated louder, as if that might help. “It be meaning . . .” He considered the phraseology for a moment, then supplied the answer in a Midwest American accent. “O.K.”
It sounded ludicrous. Stoltzfus chuckled.
“And me oxter is me . . .” The leprechaun lifted an arm and tapped under it. “. . . that area there, noo.”
“Armpit?” Stoltzfus supplied.
Inbhir Fernmaighe bobbed his head. “It’s that I do be thinking of. Arm pit. Pit o’ the arm.”
“So what you’re saying is . . .”
The leprechaun finished the sentence: “I’ll be meeting yer man, yeah?”
“Yeah.” Stoltzfus stepped away from his desk, toward the door. “I’ll let him in now, then. He has a whole presentation he wants to give you.”
Inbhir Fernmaighe leaped lightly onto Stoltzfus desk and settled on top of it, cross-legged. “Then I be getting myself comfortable, so I be.”
“Good idea.” Glad the leprechaun was keeping an open mind, Captain Stoltzfus headed for the door.

Sweat rolled down Stephen Stilton’s arms, and he mopped his ample red brow with his T-shirt. He set the weed whacker aside and called for his wife, “Ellen, can you bring that lemonade?” The odor of freshly cut greenery hung in the air, and bits of grass clung to his clammy skin.
“I’m coming. I’m coming.” Ellen hurried toward him, her broad thighs jiggling beneath the thin material of her summer shorts. She wore a sleeveless shirt, and her long, sandy hair was pulled into a pony tail. She carried two filled glasses.
Stilton surveyed his handiwork. Every year, the wild flowers that defined his neighbor’s lawn encroached further onto his own. He found himself hard pressed to keep up with the invading jungle. “One of these days,” he mumbled, irritated. “I’m going to tell Jansen just where—” At that moment, he caught sight of something still and green. A midget, no taller than a toddler, stood peering at him curiously. Dressed in a green frock coat, a broad brimmed hat trimmed with clover, and a pair of buckle shoes, he studied Stilton with the same curiosity as Stilton did him.
Without taking his eyes from the creature, Stilton half-whispered. “Ellen. Ellen, come here. Come here, right now.”
From behind, Stilton could hear the sounds of his wife quickening her pace. “What is it, Steve?”
“It’s, it’s . . . I think it’s . . .” Stilton could not finish. It would sound insane.
Ellen stepped to his side and gasped. The glasses fell, spilling lemonade that splashed all three of them. “Stephen, it’s a leprechaun. A leprechaun!” She crouched beside her husband. “Pin it with your stare, Steve. If you look away, it will disappear.”
“He will be after disappearing,” the leprechaun corrected in a lilting brogue.
Ellen screamed.
Stilton continued to stare at the creature, afraid to blink.
“I suppose youse be wanting my treasure, yeah?”
“I—” Stilton did not know what to say. “If . . . if you don’t . . . mind. Treasure . . . would be nice.”
Ellen gripped Stilton’s arm until her nails gouged him. She had not held him that tightly since she had given birth to their first son thirty years ago.
The creature handed Stilton a colorful cardboard cereal box with its familiar picture of a red-haired cartoon leprechaun, the big G of General Mills, and its picture of toasted oat cereal with bright, shaped marshmallow bits. Stilton could not help looking at it. “L-lucky Charms?” he stammered.
The moment Stilton withdrew his gaze, the leprechaun disappeared, leaving them with a single, too-familiar line. “They’re magically delicious.”

LONDON ON THE BRINK OF NEVER

Steven Savile

Steven Savile has written extensively for Doctor Who, Torchwood, Stargate and Primeval, including his latest novel Shadow of the Jaguar, which won the Scribe Award for best YA tie-in novel, as well as for Warhammer, where he has to date written four vampire novels, the most recent being Curse of the Necrarch. He edited Elemental, the tsunami relief anthology, as well as Black Gondolier and Other Stories and Smoke Ghost and other Apparitions, the definitive collections of Fritz Leiber’s horror stories. Find out more about what’s happening right now at [http://www.stevensavile.com] http://www.stevensavile.com.

The fog was like a thick not-quite black veil shrouding a widow’s face. It was a fitting analogy, Draydon Meer thought, as he walked along the blind streets of the grieving city. London, mother of infinite sadness, mistress of melancholy, was as seductive as the gentle sway of a doxy’s hips as she flattered to deceive the coin from lusty fools. London, Goddess of the Smog.
He had been born here, had lived and loved and lied here, and when the time came, he would die here in this loneliest of places. He had a stone heart that beat to the rhythms of the city. Brougham carriages and hansom cabs rattled unseeing and unseen across the cobbled streets, the whinny of the horses and the crack of the whips like blood in his veins. It was a two-way relationship; the city gave him life, but he cherished hers, and in cherishing it he became her memory—the stones didn’t hold on to their past glories, there was no passion play of ghosts to bring it all back night after night no matter how much the Spiritualists might have wished it otherwise. It was people like Draydon Meer that kept London alive.
He tapped the steel tip of his wolf’s head cane against the cobbles, feeling the street out. He walked with confidence despite the fact that the thick fog made it impossible to see more than a foot in front of his face. The hoi polloi talked about the fog as a good thing, a sign of progress, of industry taking root and mankind flourishing against all the odds. The simple-minded fools didn’t dare remember what it was like before the fog came. Meer remembered. It was all he could think about. But, then, he had lost so much more than the others knew precisely because he remembered.
He bought a punnet of roasted chestnuts from a vendor on the corner of Courtney Place and juggled the hot nuts for a mile, crunching and listening to the ethereal strains of conversation he happened upon. People talked about curious things when they didn’t think there was anyone close enough to overhear. He smiled at the fog-masked lover’s promises and puzzled over the nefarious schemes of no-goods. What was beautiful about both of them was that neither had even the vaguest inkling that the city was dying. Draydon Meer knew it was so because he had lived through it more than once before, and he remembered what it was like back before the smog came. His life had been simple then—there was peace in ignorance. Now he walked with the demons and the devils staring back at him through the plate glass windows of the stores that promised an array of unearthly delights and sweet deceits because he knew things only the dead should know.
He knew what was on the other side of the fog. He knew why the quality of the air itself was changing, and it wasn’t what any one of them believed—but that was hardly surprising as they still believed in a god that had long since abandoned them. That was the extent of their science; the options of the world were infinite because their deity’s influence was equally limitless. Odd then, Meer thought, that the fools still insisted on using their faith as both armor to protect them from the worst, and, paradoxically, as a sword to lance deep wounds into others who didn’t share their blind faith. It could hardly come as a surprise, then, that there was so much suffering in the city. No, the air was changing because it was no longer theirs to breathe. That was the truth of it.
It had begun with peculiar lights in the sky, and then the fog had come rising up from the Thames to roll out across the city. It had been nothing more than a peculiar temperature inversion, hot and cold thermals reversed, trapping the moisture in the air, but it had become something much more sinister as it spread—it had become a malaise that choked the life out of the weak, the emphy semic, the asthmatic, the bronchial, and those who were just plain old. It robbed the city of its vitality lung by wheezing lung.
This wasn’t the London he had grown up in; it was the London of his imagination, as it might have been in another place and another time, all towering gothic spires, brooding gargoyles, shadows and sinister shapes, leeched of all color by the choking pea-souper. It amused Meer no end that they hadn’t been able to separate the fact from the fiction when they resurrected it to taunt him. Instead of his own personal hell they had given him something almost magical, recreating all of these wonderful childhood fictions for him and him alone. Because there was no doubt he was alone, even with all of the disembodied voices floating out there just a single step beyond the veil of fog—always that one single step away from him.
It was all about the fog, or rather what lay beyond the fog: nothing. The denizens of the city shuffled about their everyday concerns, doing laundry, fighting over fish scraps down at the market, arguing over hard bread and rotten fruit and kicking rats as the vermin spilled out of the gutters to feed on the scraps they dropped during the fighting. They did it every day, caught in a time-loop, playing out the same arguments, flirting with the same whores and wives, offering the same chancer’s smiles and never seeing beyond it. It had become so ingrained within Draydon Meer that he could walk the streets with his eyes closed, counting out the paces, twists, and swerves to negotiate the crowds without ever bumping into a soul. He had lived this day so many times now that the seemingly random acts of life were stamped indelibly on his mind.
Did that make them ghosts?
He walked down streets that would never know the moon falling silver across them, by windows that would never reflect midnight.
Meer still hadn’t worked out why he continued to do this to himself. It was as though his life had become one of those elaborate Chinese finger puzzles—no matter how hard he pulled and worried at it, life only clung on all the more stubbornly. Always and forever was such a long and lonely time. That was the first lesson he had learned. He had thought that perhaps it was even more like a puzzle than he had guessed, that there was some trip or trigger or lesson he had to complete to move on to the next level and slip out of this hell on earth. That would have given some sort of meaning to the meaningless, but there were no meanings, profound or otherwise. This memory of London was nothing more than existence flashing across the mind of a dying man, that instant of the bullet piercing the temple slowed down to a crawl.
Was that even possible?
Could there be a grain of truth in that old cliché of life flashing before your eyes?
He shook his head. No. There was no truth in it. That much he knew for sure and certain. He had thought for a while that perhaps it was time itself that was broken. Meer remembered the scientists talking about time as a spiral and space as a curve and the way it all rolled out from some central point, the universe expanding until it reached that elastic breaking point and snapped back on itself, everything that had happened rolling back toward the beginning—life in reverse. But even that didn’t work, because that would only mean living through the same day twice, once clockwise, once counter.
On the corner of Piccadilly and Regent Street he saw them. He had walked here in another life. It had been his boy’s favorite place because of the noise and the people and the bright lights and glass buildings of the Trocadero filled with amusement arcades. But of course, that was just another way in which this remembered city was wrong—the postwar fog from before the Clean Air Bill juxtaposed with the bright shiny dome of an entertainment pavilion that wouldn’t be built for another fifty years. These were all just fragments of the London of his life.
He reached out instinctively with his left hand to grasp his boy’s smaller one, and lifted him up into his arms. He weighed less than nothing. Meer hugged him fiercely, as though it might be the last time he could. This place had long since stopped being peculiar to Draydon Meer, but that he could simply think about his boy and reach out knowing Jonas would be there despite the fact that two paving slabs earlier he had been alone, well that kind of magic could never become commonplace.
Meer felt their presence then. It was as familiar as it was vile. He shuddered at the first glimpse of them. He had come to think of them as gargoyles because they resembled the gothic stone guardians that watched over the city, but they were more than merely watchers. Across certain parts of the city they scoured the rooftops, the skittering of their claws on the slate tiles ever present, like the ruffling of starling feathers and the caw-caw of pigeons. They crawled through the high guttering, traversing the city unseen by those below. They weren’t gargoyles though; they were manifestations of his Id. The dark subconscious given wretched form. What that said about the inside of Draydon Meer’s head did not bear thinking about.
They were always lurking around Eros, as though the blind love statue somehow drew them to it. Perhaps it did. They moaned, a low ululating sound that infused the fog with grief. At first they were no more substantial that the other shapes in the mist, but this time as he neared, they did not dissipate but rather took on solid form, scuttling forward on hands and knees menacingly. Their grossly malformed heads twisted left and right, nostrils flaring as they breathed in the cloying smog. As one their eyes came around to stare balefully at his boy.
Fight or flight was what it always came down to. The gargoyles clawed their way relentlessly forward, stony eyes fixed on Jonas. The slow drag of their talons on the pavement grated on his nerves. They fixated on the boy because he wasn’t meant to be here. He was wrong. Time was like that: It tried again and again to heal itself. It didn’t take a genius to understand it. Some things were meant to happen, and the world would do its damned est to make sure they did. Jonas’ death was one of those things.
December 9th, 1952. The day was etched onto his soul. It was right in the middle of the worst of the great smogs that had smothered the postwar city. The hospitals were overflowing, cars and busses abandoned in the middle of the road. Ambulances led by the drivers holding blazing torches took five hours to carry the sick to the emergency rooms, becoming hearses along the way. Jonas had asthma. His windpipe had closed up as panic closed in, choking the life out of his rag doll body. Meer had held him in his arms, screaming for the ambulance. He leaned up against the metal railings, part of him struck by the irony that those same railings had once been a part of stretchers used to carry the wounded and the dying during the war. When it had finally arrived, there had been no oxygen left, and seven other people were dead and dying inside. The ambulance men had laid Jonas on his side on the floor, not even on a pallet, and told him they had two more pick-ups to make. Meer realized sickly that he had wasted three precious hours that he could never get back and killed his own son in the process. Had he carried him in his arms the five miles across the city, he might have made it.
There hadn’t been any gargoyles that day, at least none that crawled and slithered through the fog.
They had barely moved at one mile an hour, the driver too frightened of what he might hit in the fog. Jonas died in his arms, a sad, wheezing, frightened death looking up at him, begging Meer to do something to save him.
And now every day he relived December 9th, 1952, he tried to find another way to save his son. He checked his watch, taking the gold fob from his pocket and studying it. Twelve minutes past nine. Jonas had lived eighteen minutes longer than the last time they had walked this way. They had made it this long before. He knew what would happen next. On the stroke of the quarter hour Menlough would appear. Menlough was worse than the gargoyles of his Id by far. Menlough was a reaper. Emaciated and unreasonably tall, Menlough was a clockwork golem, constructed from rusted iron and tarnished brass. Where the wind blew back the tails of his coats, it exposed his green heart of cogs and staves instead of flesh and bones. Meer didn’t know where Menlough came from, but the significance of the mechanisms was painfully clear. Time, time, time. They had had too long together, Jonas had to go.
He let go of his son’s hand, knowing it was the last time he would feel its tiny warm presence before their time ran out. The next time he held it that hand would be cold.
“Go! No, not that way, there!” Meer pointed down one of the narrow alleyways that disappeared toward Soho. He had tried saving his son in a hundred different ways, some he had forgotten, and he had tried a thousand variants, clutching the boy to his chest, carrying him through the fog, his sadness salty on his cheek. He had tried to fight Menlough and his kind off but, they were remorseless. He had tried to hide, hoping the world would end around him, but then the first bird had fallen from the sky. It had been a sign of the creeping death. He had watched the starling fall. It was always the first. Other birds fell in their hundreds and thousands to turn the street to feather and bone, but the starling was always the first. The tiny creature lay twisted. Its wings were broken. The bird’s blind eyes gazed up at the sky dreaming of avian angels come to carry them home. It had taken him a dozen failures to realize the gargoyles were responsible, and it took him a moment more to realize that he was looking down at one of the wretched creatures now. The end was closing in on them.
He heard the soft flutter of another bird falling and then the flurry of frightened wings and the distant drum of carcass after carcass coming down. He couldn’t see them because of the fog, but that didn’t make the sounds any less horrific.
He stumbled forward, trying to draw Menlough away from his boy. “Here! Come here!” Meer flapped his arms, making a show of himself. The creature inclined its mechanical head, the sound of the gears grating loudly. The clockwork man wasn’t alone. Out of the mists eight more of his brethren glided, their feet barely seeming to move as they closed in on Meer. He knew each and every one of them and had come to think of Menlough and his brothers as the Infernals, each somehow representing another Dantesque level to this hell of his. Menlough’s twin, Kai Seda, was elemental where his brother was elegant, his fine cogs and gears moving in their intricate dance as he emerged from the smog. Fire blazed in the heart of Arak Shai, the one he thought of as the torturer. He had good reason. A thousand times he had found her leaning down over his boy, the oil of her mechanisms dripping like acid onto Jonas’ gray face. Her silks followed the contours of her body, rippling with the turgid breeze. They moved silently, like ghosts. Footfalls would have been a blessed relief. There was none of the coarseness of Kai Seda or disfiguration of Kor Luca. Her body was perfect in its grotesqueness. The others drifted into the square, taking up positions around the statue. They were the demons of this place.
None of them moved to stop Jonas as he ran between them.
They never did.
Meer had tried killing himself but that didn’t help. He slid the knife in, eyes flaring as it fell through his fingers because even as they glazed over, the smog began to clear and the pain began to fade. The knife never hit the floor. It simply ceased to be in this city fantastique of his mind, this personal hell he confined himself to.
That was what it was, he knew—or at least some detached part of his subconscious did. He was in his own personal hell. It wasn’t brimstone and flame for him, no ice, there was merely too little time and a dying boy. There didn’t need to be any more than that to make it unbearable. What could be worse than walking empty fog-wreathed streets clutching his dying boy? Hell did not need the gribblies or the saber-toothed gwars. It didn’t need anything—because nothing was so much more frightening.
Above him he heard the crackle of static as speakers mounted into the walls crackled into life. They made him jump every time. And the damned whistling! Meer turned round and around again, trying to see where the whistling came from. It was an old war melody being whistled off key. A moment later he heard the singing, a dry old voice telling him that: “While you’ve a lucifer to light your fag, smile, boys, that’s the style.” It was just another peculiarity of this London he had conjured . . . a song from fifty years ago meant to keep the spirits of the troops up while shells and shrapnel rained down on them. Here, now, it was anything but inspiring. The refrain ate away at him with its demand that he smile, smile, smile, knowing as he did that there was nothing left to smile about.
The Infernals never spoke—they had no means of projecting words, only the ceaseless tick tock tick tock of their mechanisms. The singer had to be human or at least more mundane than gargoyles or tin pot demons.
“Where are you?” Meer yelled, earning himself those same seven lines over and over again. “What’s the use of worrying?” It taunted, and then up close, so close he could feel the prickle of breath in his ear, “Just smile, smile, smile.”
He lurched forward a stumbling step and spun around.
There was no one there.
There never was.
A part of Draydon Meer suspected he was the mysterious singer—or just another part of him was. No matter how desperately he wanted there to be another being of flesh and blood trapped in this hellish rendition of London with him, he knew he was alone.
He plunged headlong into the fog, running away from the singer, away from the Infernals, toward nowhere, because sometimes nowhere was the best place to be.
He ran down into the ground, staggering down the steps into the Underground. Immediately the quality of the air changed. It was dead air down here, stale and deoxygenated. He thought he saw shadow shapes moving in front of him. He struggled to hear the slap of footsteps on the cold tiles of the tunnel’s floor. The old wooden escalators groaned and wheezed as they lumbered up and down the steep descent. The air smelled of . . . yesterday. That was the only way he could think of it. “Jonas? Jonas is that you?”
The boy didn’t answer.
Meer took his fob watch out of his pocket again and checked the time. Only four minutes had past. Two hundred and forty seconds. Next to no time, and yet . . . too much time. Old posters for cigarettes and alcohol lined the sides of the tunnel. The white tiles were smeared black with soot where the creative bill-stickers hadn’t already glued up their adverts.
He heard the whistle of the train—a long, low lament that echoed mournfully down the tracks. He had never seen the train. He heard the steel wheels driving over the track. Heard the screech of the iron brakes and the blare of the horn, but he never saw the train.
He was always too late.
Not today, he promised himself.
“Run, Jonas! Get on the train! Don’t wait for me!” He yelled, hoping the boy would do as he was told, and knowing even as he yelled that the increased exertion from all of the running and the poor quality of the air was going to kill his son. He wouldn’t even reach the platform before he stumbled and fell, wheezing and unable to catch his breath as panic choked the life out of him.
He looked over his shoulder. There were no signs of any of the Infernals. They, like the gargoyles, belonged to London above, not London below. Down here was the realm of the Disenfranchised—the Lost Boys and Girls of London—though they were anything but the gang of Pan’s delinquents the name suggested. The city was every bit as harsh a place as it was fantastic. The Disenfranchised were truly that, lost, spiritually and physically. They were the closest things to ghosts the city had to offer. They were invisible to polite society, wretched souls that clung to the dark places, hiding out in the shadows. Meer ran hard, arms and legs pumping. His feet slipped on the slick floor tiles, his head filled with that damned order to smile, smile, smile. They would be here in less than a minute.
He careened around the bend, grasping the banister and taking the stairs worn smooth by the shuffle of countless feet three and four at a time before he jumped the rest of the way to the bottom.
There was no sign of Jonas.
The silver shell of the train, however, was nestled up against the platform, its doors open invitingly.
It was less than fifty feet from where he was to the safety of the train. Safety: that was how he thought of the train. It wasn’t a part of the city. It rumbled eternally on beneath it, going to places beyond the fog. Outside. That was all he could think about—that was all his world came down to—getting the boy outside of the city. The fog would be receding already five miles outside of the Square Mile, the East End and the river. It rose from the river first and slipped and slithered through the still-dreaming streets, and when it finally relinquished its choking hold, the streets around the riverbanks were always the last to be freed. That was the way of it. South-walk, Rotherhithe, Wapping, and Mill Pond would be the last bastions of the fog. The train would carry them out beyond that, to breathable air.
Breathing hard, he ran for it.
Behind him he heard the sighs of the Disenfranchised freeing themselves of their prisons.
A valve hissed somewhere, and the doors slid closed. He hit them full on, trying to pry them open with his fingers as the carriage lurched away from the platform. He ran alongside it, pulling at the door, but the mechanism refused to give. For ten feet more the train dragged him along the platform, his shoes slipping and sliding across the ceramic floor, and then it spat him out and he went sprawling. He hit the ground hard and lay there gasping.
He saw Jonas’ face pressed up against the glass window, his boy being carried away from him. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Meer lay on his side, gasping.
The Disenfranchised gathered around him, clawing at his clothes, at his pockets and at his face and hands, looking to take from him everything he had. He didn’t care. They could not reach the one thing he cared about. He watched the back of the train disappear slowly into the dark tunnel as they stripped him.
He didn’t care what they did to him. They could kill him—strip the flesh from his bones with their filed-down teeth if they wanted to, Jonas was free. He would be out beyond the reach of the fog in air he could breathe, and there was nothing any of them, not the Infernals, the gargoyles, the Disenfranchised, or even the whistler could do to prevent that.
For once Meer did smile.
Then a sliver of fear wormed its way into his mind as he heard the fabric tear beneath grubby fingers. What if he died? Would it all reset? Would he find himself back out there on the foggy streets looking for a way to save his son? Would death snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or would the world end with Jonas free and alive anyway? Because what father wouldn’t sacrifice himself for his own boy if that was what it came down to?
Their faces were weird, as though they were plastered with the advertising bills, crusted images of pin-up models, lipstick girls, and cigarette smoking heroes forming the features of damned. He had never seen them up close before. As he struggled to roll over onto his stomach and stand, he saw more of them pushing their way out of the tunnel walls. The tiles cracked and the posters tore as the Disenfranchised tore themselves free of the physical stuff of the city—the very dirt of the place—and shuffled toward the tunnels to block his exit. Low ululating moans escaped their chipped and brittle lips as they swayed, arms outstretched, grasping.
Draydon Meer scrambled to his feet, pushing them away from him. There was nowhere to run, not along the tracks after the train or back up the tunnels toward the surface.
He was trapped.
He roared with frustration, lashing out at them, pushing the creatures—because they weren’t human, not anymore, they were all the things he had lost during his long and lonely life, his innocence, his hope, friends, loves, all of the things he had taken for granted and that had been wrenched away from him—back toward the walls, trying to force them back into the very earth they bled out of.
He drove them back, slamming the flats of his hands into their hard shells. Each impact jarred some vague memory or guilt free as he pounded them with the full force of his fists, desperate to be free. And then a gap opened up among them, and he ran without looking back. He saw blood on his clenched fists as he pumped his arms. He didn’t dare risk the mechanical escalator or the lift to the surface. He took the winding stair. One thousand and twenty three steps to the world above, and then he was out, beyond the ticket barriers and into the street again.
If anything, the fog was worse now.
He looked down at his open hand, half-expecting Jonas to take shape out of the thick gray stuff of the air and it all to begin again, another failure played out.
He didn’t know what to do. He had never made it this far. He didn’t know whether to walk or run, to hide or to try to find a way over one of the bridges. It was growing increasingly difficult to breathe. The fog was choking the life out of him.
He heard the damned whistling again, mocking him now.
“He’s gone,” Meer cried out. “You can’t reach him now. He doesn’t have to move, doesn’t have to run. The train is taking him out beyond the fog. He isn’t going to die this time.”
“Yes, he is,” the whistler said. Somehow the man had come up right behind him without Meer hearing so much as a footstep through the broken bodies of the dead birds. They had stopped falling, he realized. The silence was somehow worse. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it. No last minute heroics. No salvation. He’ll die this time like every other time because outside of this place he is already dead. That monkey’s gone to heaven.”
“No,” Meer said, denying the man. He didn’t say anything else.
He felt rather than saw the whistler move. The man walked slowly around to face him, his footsteps measured and slow. He was carrying Meer’s wolf’s-head cane. He hadn’t even realized he had lost it. Meer looked up to see his own eyes and lips and hair and everything else looking back at him—but they weren’t the same, not quite. The whistler was in negative, the sunken hollows of his eyes darker than dark, the planes of his brow and ridge of his nose whiter than white—so much so they disappeared within the smog making the whistler look as though he were melting. “But then, so are you,” the whistler said. “This isn’t some fantastic place, some great blue heaven. This is in here,” he tapped at his temple. “None of it is real; it’s a construction, a fabrication, an illusion—all fancy words for the truth: It is a lie. Why do you think there is so much fog? Because there’s nothing beyond it. We’re standing in London on the brink of never—you’ve just sent your boy out into nothing. That, my ignorant friend, is what hell is. Failing your boy again and again and again and having to live through it for all eternity because you keep thinking you can win. You can’t.”
“That’s not true,” he said, but the words whispered away insidiously inside his mind. Could it be true?
“Why do you think we always let the boy go? Why do you think we never try to stop you, only follow you?”
He didn’t know.
“Yes you do,” the whistler said, party to his thoughts as they raced. “I could try every door in this street, and it wouldn’t open, but you, you just have to reach out and the stuff of hell forms behind it. That’s the nature of the Dreamer. You fashion. You move on, it ceases to be. We have to follow.”
But if that were true . . . all he had to do was reach Jonas before he reached the end and disappeared into never.
“You won’t find him. He’s gone. The train only goes so far down the tunnel, then it simply ceases to be. He was on the train. That means he’s gone.”
“Is this my punishment? My life dragging out slowly before my eyes while I . . . what? Die?”
“You’re already dead. I told you.”
“And this is hell?”
“For you.”
“There has to be a way out. Through the fog. Under it,” he looked up to the sky, “over it. I can’t go on watching him die. There has to be a way . . .”
“To win? No,” the whistler shook his head. “If you don’t believe me, look down.”
He did. He hadn’t realized that he was clutching Jonas’ warm small hand so tightly. The boy looked up at him with his big trusting eyes.
He wanted to scream.
He picked the wheezing boy up, clutching him close to his chest. He was shaking. They both were. He looked up. The gargoyles were already there, starting to move along the gutters. He looked about frantically for an open door, pushing them as he moved down the street, working his way toward St Martin’s in the Field, one of the oldest churches with a bell tower in the city.
Time, he thought. Time. Looking up at the face of the huge clock on the side of the church, and seeing the tears in the sky where the gargoyles clawed their way through into this reality.
There was nowhere to run where they could not find him. He knew that, and still he ran.
He didn’t know where he was going until he was climbing the stairs of the old bell tower, his son clutched close to his chest, smothering up against his coat. The wind was fierce as he pushed open the door. For a moment he just stood there, stunned as the fog roiled beneath him. He strained to see beyond its tendrils, out over the rooftops and the river, but there was nothing to see.
He didn’t want to know anymore. He didn’t want to hope. This was Hell all right. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve it, but he would work it out eventually.
Draydon Meer clambered over the railing and stood on the narrow ledge one hundred feet above the city though all he could see beneath him was fog. He brushed the hair away from his boy’s face and kissed him softly on the forehead.
And then he stepped out into nothing, wondering if his mind would invent the pain for him. He wanted to hurt physically as well as mentally, even if it was only for a fraction of a heartbeat.
There was no impact.
For a moment there was nothing. It was as though they had been cocooned in the fog. Then he heard the ethereal strains of conversation, other voices, other Edens, so far away from him it was all he could do to open his eyes and look down.
He was alone, on the corner of Courtney Place, the streets lost to the Goddess of the Smog.
He checked his watch. It was a little before eight. On the corner of the street a vendor was selling roasted chestnuts; beside him another was selling the daily rag. Meer reached into his pocket for coins and bought both. Hunger gnawed at him as he folded back the crease and saw the day’s date writ bold above the headline of the newspaper: December 9th, 1952. It took a moment for the significance of the numbers to sink in; then the fog that dampened his mind cleared, and he remembered. It was the day his boy died. He looked at his fob watch again. He had time. A little more than an hour.
And hope flared inside him as this stray voice that wasn’t quite his own whispered: “Perhaps this time you can save him.”
All he knew at that moment was that he had to try.
There wasn’t a father alive who would do anything else, not while there was still a chance.
Before he knew it, he was running, his little boy’s hand in his, so desperately grateful for a second chance to break his own heart.

ROSE

Jackie Cassada

Jackie Cassada has written the science fiction/ fantasy review column for Library Journal since 1984, giving her the perfect excuse to read a lot of imaginative, cutting-edge fiction and call it “work.” Her published fiction includes the now-out-of-print Immortal Eyes trilogy (The Toybox; Shadows on the Hill; The Court of All Kings) written for the Changeling: the Dreaming roleplaying game, and she has contributed short stories to several anthologies. Her most recent short story, “Voices,” appeared in Time Twisters (DAW Books 2006). She has worked for Buncombe County Public Libraries since 1978. She shares a home in western North Carolina with her long-time partner, five cats and a Plott Hound. In her spare time, she volunteers for the Asheville Humane Society Animal Shelter, reads, plays role-playing games, crochets, follows far too many Yahoo groups, and dreams of founding a sanctuary for geriatric and problem animals.

I was looking for another lost dog when I found Rose. The missing animal, one of those little lap dog things, had jumped out of her owner’s car while it was parked outside the Blue Heron Gallery, a trendy counterculture enterprise that sold marked up collages of junk and unidentifiable scraps of metal as “art.”
Looking for people, animals, and lost objects is my specialty. I don’t know how I find things; I just follow my hunches after I learn a few particulars from my client.
I started my search at the owner’s car, a midnight blue late-model Mercedes, after first examining the pink doggie bed and pastel squeaky toys—all of them brand new—in the back seat. Frankly, I might have run, too, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
The dog’s owner, Bonita Ross, made some of the gallery’s wall clutter and actually sold a few pieces now and then. A compact dynamo of a woman in her midthirties, she exuded confidence when she was in familiar territory, like the art world. Right now, she just looked defeated. She supplied me with a picture of the pooch, a long-haired black and white dainty little thing named Prissy, who looked like the tiny dog that won Westminster back in the nineties.
“She just jumped through the window while I was loading some works-in-progress into the trunk,” Bonita said, her voice breathless with panic. “She’s never done anything like this before,” she added, “so of course I didn’t have her on a leash, and she hates collars—”
Of course, let’s not worry about the fact that there’s a leash law in the city and in the county, for that matter. Prissy hated collars, so Prissy didn’t wear one. I hoped my thoughts weren’t as transparent as I feared they were.
“I don’t suppose she was microchipped,” I asked, already guessing the answer.
“Ugh! And violate her privacy? Those things are the first step toward becoming a police state!” I could see a soapbox forming under Bonita’s feet and tried to head it off before she stepped up on it.
“Have you called Animal Control?” I asked.
She nodded. “And our veterinarian, and the animal shelter, and the mayor’s office, and the hospitals and emergency rooms.” Her voice dropped drastically, a sign of desperation. “They have nothing. I didn’t know what else I could do. Then Jody told me about you, Miss Castor, and how you found Digby for him when he’d given up hope.”
“Please, call me Tamlyn,” I said. “And don’t worry, I’ll find Precious for you.”
“Prissy,” she corrected me.
“Prissy,” I repeated. At least get the name right. “You just sit tight, Bonita, and I’ll find your dog. Maybe you should go back to your studio and create something,” I suggested. “To take your mind off Prissy,” I added.
She nodded and sighed and started back toward her car and her gallery loft. Just before she got in her car, she turned back to me.
“What do I owe you?” she asked. I always hated this part. Not nearly enough, I wanted to say, but instead I told her what I told everyone else.
“I’ll find your dog first, and then we’ll figure out how much work it was for me to find her.”
“Oh,” she said, as if that answered all her questions. I turned my back on her quickly and set out, trying to wrap my mind around the thoughts and instinctual processes of a five-pound dog—a Papillon. Finally remembering the dog’s breed cheered me up.
I closed my eyes and visualized the little dog leaping through the window, maybe startled at the jumble of art pieces in her owner’s arms. “Now, where did you go?” I whispered, my head cocked, listening to something on the wind and inside my heart.
My trail led me to the river and to the lower part of the city, where several abandoned warehouses that used to house tobacco until the late twentieth century stood clumped together on the flood plain. Here and there, someone had reclaimed a warehouse and turned it into a business—of sorts. Joe’s Fine Antiques boasted a bright yellow paint job with red letters. Inside, Joe kept a collection of salvage furniture, some of it from the last flood that closed down a good part of the river district, including some pretty ritzy galleries and loft apartments. He also collected odd pieces of junk. When I was a kid, my dad bought about a dozen Coltrane albums, the old vinyl records of another era, for fifty cents apiece. I never understood Coltrane; his type of jazz, the pure stuff, was always just outside my comprehension, and I respected that. For my dad, the joy was in the bargain. I could tell he didn’t understand the music either, but he listened to it religiously, proud of his mercantile acumen.
There were other refurbished warehouses—a Saturday tailgate market that turned into a restaurant after market hours and served vegetarian soups and stews and casseroles made from the produce that hadn’t sold during the day. What was left over after that went to the soup kitchens the next morning.
Mostly, however, the rickety wooden buildings sat empty and forlorn except, rumors said, on certain nights when a line of cars poured in from as far away as Atlanta and Knoxville. On those nights, people who didn’t “belong” stayed far away. Those who did belong approached carefully, many of them hauling muscular, tough-looking pit bulls on chains, while others felt their pockets to make sure they had plenty of cash—and at least a couple of napkins to wipe off any blood spills. On some nights, people showed up with fighting roosters instead, but the crowd was essentially the same, the callousness and the bloodlust all but palpable—at least that’s what I heard.
Jody is my source for all these rumors, not because he is involved in anything shady, but because he “hears things,” just as I “find things.” Interestingly enough, Jody is deaf. Digby, an Old English Sheepdog with a short haircut and eyes you can see, serves as Jody’s ears, but somehow, even though Jody can’t hear the sound of traffic or the cacophony of modern music or even normal conversation, he can hear rumors—and if he hears something, you can bet on it to be true.
Prissy’s trail, or the hunch I was following, led to one of those abandoned warehouses. This one practically fronted on the river. During the flood of ’03, the water came up the side of the warehouse but never quite made it inside. The outside boards still show water damage—or maybe the stains of dog and rooster blood.
As I rounded the corner of the building, I could hear the river close by. The past few weeks had seen steady rain at least every other day, and the water was threatening its banks, the sound of its long seaward journey creating a white-noise symphony as background music for the warehouses and their dark secrets—and the white lump of flesh and bone and blood that lay amid the garbage collecting along the narrow ground between the building and the river.
My heart caught as I took in the sight, trying to make out what I was looking at. The feelings I trusted didn’t point me in that direction, but I felt another tug just the same, coming from what surely was the body of a dog. My hackles rose as I crept forward. It’s a feeling you can’t mistake, part danger and part sick dread at what I knew I was going to see.
A young pit bull bitch, maybe two years old, lay on her side amid the garbage and debris of what must have been last night’s dogfight—sticky beer bottles, cigarette butts, the stubs of some fancy cigars, used condoms, paper cups, and here and there a candy wrapper and what might be a broken needle. At one time, she had been white, but so many puncture wounds had bled freely that her white coat was mottled with brownish red.
I studied her for as long as I could stand to look at the still form.
“Make it to the Bridge, little girl,” I whispered. “You can rest on the other side of the Rainbow.”
I still felt a tug closer to the river, so I started in that direction.
I felt a physical jolt as the image of a blood-stained belly contracted as lungs gasped desperately for breath. The picture was in my head. Turning back, I moved as quickly as I dared through the garbage and knelt down closer to the dog.
“No bridge.” The picture in my head changed to something broad and multicolored, stretching into infinity. The dog stood with her feet almost on the bridge, but she pulled away, or tried to.
By this time, tears streamed down my face. I had never seen anything like this before. It would be so easy for her to die, to just give it all up and cross the damn bridge into Dog Happy Land or whatever they called it, to leave behind the pain and the misery that had plagued her too short life.
“I wish I knew what to do,” I murmured, reaching out a hand to stroke the skin just above her eye, one of the few places that didn’t look too sore to touch. “I wish I could understand you.”
“Done,” I heard in my head. In my mind, an image formed of the river, just about at the spot where my hunch had drawn me. The river looked different—there were more blues and grays and yellows—and I remembered a website that showed the spectrum of colors dogs saw, a range of colors that did not include red! I was seeing pictures from the dying dog’s mind. She was focusing, with the singularity of focus for which terriers are known, on a little black and white patch of . . . something . . . that was trying to pull itself up on the river bank.
Prissy! I stood, remembering to lower the wounded bitch’s head to the ground as carefully as I could, and ran over to where the little Papillon lay belly down on the river bank, her fur sopping and her little body shivering. She raised her head just enough to look me in the eye and threw up—river water, mud, dirt, some unrecognizable river bottom sludge, bile—until at last she just lay panting on the ground, her little side heaving up and down.
Another picture popped into my head. This time I saw a wildly distorted picture of myself, all huge feet, towering legs and large hands with a headlike glob too far skyward to make out any features. The big hands picked up the little dog and walked over toward the pit bull and put her beside the other dog.
“Are you sure?” I asked Prissy, feeling a little foolish as I did so. As I spoke, I sent back the same image she had sent me, correcting my proportions at the same time. I felt a wave of forbearance come from Prissy, who was no longer shivering since I had mostly tucked her inside my sweater.
As soon as I put Prissy on the ground next to the pit bull, the tiny dog pulled herself upright and started licking the open wounds. Before my eyes, the lesions closed, open cuts drew together, fresh skin grew over the abrasions and drag marks, and even the bruises lightened to almost nothing. After about thirty minutes of solid licking, Prissy sat down, head drooping, exhausted.
A picture of a sweater—my sweater—formed in my head. I was beginning to get the hang of this new form of communication. I picked Prissy up and tucked her away inside my sweater.
Then I gathered the pit bull in my arms. She was lighter than I expected until I realized I was feeling her ribs and her pelvic bones. The hike back to the car took longer than usual; I hadn’t planned on being weighed down by a good armful of dog. I stopped outside the gallery long enough to put the dog I had come to think of as “Rose” in the passenger side of the front seat. Then I went inside to return Prissy to her appropriately joyful owner.
I would need the money I got for finding Prissy to pay a whopper of a vet bill.

Jody lives upstairs from me in the two-story downtown walk-up we coowned. The building fronted on Concord Avenue, one of downtown’s main drags. In the 1950s, the street was filled with beer joints and tattoo parlors and whorehouses. Thirty years later, it experienced a renaissance. Now it was home to unique shops and boutiques, a used-book and magazine store that started the street’s rebirth, coffee houses, an Indian restaurant, a veggie bar, antique stores, more restaurants and clubs, and, yes, a tattoo and piercing parlor. I ran my “business,” such as it was, out of the front room, which also served as a general meeting place for people who had lost something to put up notices and read the notices of others. My living quarters were in the back, where a bedroom and sitting room, kitchen with space for dining, and a real bath gave me everything I needed for the present.
Jody took the news of my new dog with his usual aplomb.
“She’s pretty,” he signed.
Sometimes Jody used words, but he obviously felt more comfortable talking with his hands, and it allowed Digby to be included in the conversation. I wasn’t nearly as good at signing as Jody was, but in halting gestures I told him the story of how I found Rose. By this time, we were sitting in my back room at the kitchen table lingering over the remains of a pasta Alfredo and a spinach salad. Digby sat in his usual place, at Jody’s side, his ears alert for any sounds that Jody might need to know about.
Rose slept soundly, stretched out full length on the large dog-pillow I’d bought her, telling myself that the deep rose color broken by green and brown stripes was not “pink.” She’d had food and water, which she ate quickly, looking over her shoulder the whole time to make sure that I wasn’t coming to take it away from her—at least that was the question her pictures asked in my head. It had been a hard day for her, and the rescue was only the beginning. I took her to the veterinarian who took care of Digby, got her microchipped, de wormed, vaccinated, and given a wellness check-up. Dr. Michaels seemed surprised that she was in reasonably good shape, aside from the starvation and the lingering bruises and some really old scars and signs that she’d already birthed several litters of puppies.
I took home a bunch of pills to give her, some enriched dog food, vitamin water, and a whole set of instructions, along with an appointment to have her spayed when her weight was in the normal range. Then we went to see the groomer, who cleaned her up, trimmed her nails, brushed her teeth and put a pink bandana around her neck despite my (weak) protestations. I had to admit, pink looks good on a white dog, particularly on a female white dog. I bought her a leash and collar, both in stylish black.
By the time we’d accomplished all that, it was time for food for Rose and then a quick dinner for Jody and me. Jody hates to cook, so we usually end up sharing meals, either in my kitchen or at one of the restaurants within walking distance.
“That’s a bad place,” Jody signed, after I’d finished my story. I included the part about Prissy’s magic trick because I knew Jody would believe it. He made me promise not to tell Prissy’s owner. “The woman wouldn’t know what to do with it. I’m sure Prissy is a better judge of when and where to do her thing than Ms. Collage Lady.”
I laughed at Jody’s sign for Bonita, who, for all her arty affections was a good-hearted person and gave Prissy a good, if somewhat roseate, life.
“I know it’s bad,” I signed. “They fight dogs and cocks there, and Rose is the proof of that.”
Jody shook his head. “It’s even worse. They don’t just fight animals. There’s a man—he runs the operation—who’s just pure evil.”
“Evil?”
Jody nodded, his sandy hair falling into his eyes and making him look like a very tall seven-year old instead of the forty-something woodcarver who was making a name for himself locally.
“He calls himself Butcher, but I don’t know if that’s a family name or a profession or just what he likes to do,” Jody said, his fingers signing as fast as most people talk. I found I had no problem keeping up with him, which was when I noticed that Digby had moved so that he had a paw on my foot. I gave the dog a quizzical look, and he lowered his head and looked away—at Rose, who was now snoring.
“His fights are more than just fights, too,” Jody continued. “I’ve heard that he considers himself some mediator between the gods and the earth, that he keeps these gods happy with blood so they don’t go around looking for something worse.”
“So the animals that die in these fights are actually sacrifices?” That sick feeling was coming over me again, like the feeling I had when I first saw Rose and knew that I was going to witness something very very wrong.
Again, Jody let a nod answer. “He lives way back in the hills. His ‘boys’ drive him in every now and then for one of his ‘sacrifights.’ ”
“Great, he’s a wordsmith, too,” I mumbled, but signed for Jody to continue. I had a feeling it was important to hear everything he had to tell me.
“He’ll fight any kind of dog, usually pit bulls, or any kind of cock, but he likes the solid black ones and the solid white ones best,” Jody signed. “They make the best offerings to his gods.”
“Is this some real religion?” I asked, thinking that it didn’t exactly sound like any I knew of, not even the old folk beliefs.
“No,” Jody shook his head emphatically, voicing the answer instead of signing it. “The things he worships are not gods, exactly. Not demons either. We’d be lucky if they were.”
I was beginning to get a picture I didn’t like. Legends of elder gods and Greek titans and chthonic forces blind to the existence of humanity but sensitive to the reek of blood and destruction sent a sudden shiver down my back. Rose growled in her sleep, and Digby removed his paw from my foot long enough to shake himself thoroughly.
“Can we do something about it?” I asked, and immediately regretted the words. I find lost things. I don’t break up dog-fighting rings and stop sacrifices to elder gods.
“I’m afraid we have to,” Jody said. “He’ll know that Rose was rescued. She’s been dedicated to his gods, and he’ll come after her or call her back to him.”
“How do you know so much about this?” I asked Jody, feeling a little dumbfounded and a lot out of the loop.
Jody grinned. “Before the accident that took away my hearing,” he signed, “I was a theology student going for my PhD in theology and comparative religions. I got—injured—in the line of fire.” The finality of his hand movements told me that I wasn’t going to get any more details about that piece of his life immediately. “I’ve been trying to put the pieces together for a while. I’ve felt the badness down by the river, but my specialty lies in hearing rumors and sorting out the true ones to pass along to people who need to know. You’re the one who finds lost things, and if the Butcher ain’t lost, then I don’t know who is!”
“We can’t bring anyone else into this,” I said. “Nobody who didn’t already know about it would believe it.”
Jody agreed. “Just you, me, and the dogs. And it’ll have to be quick. He’ll want to finish what he started with Rose before too long.”
Somehow, that sounded about right. We stayed up planning until Rose woke us up with an urgent need to go outside. The sun was rising.

A steady rainfall started in the morning of the night we planned to mobilize against the Butcher. By evening, the wind had picked up, and the rain had morphed into a torrential gushing that soaked through slickers, put holes in umbrellas, and beat a steady tattoo on many of the buildings downtown that still had flat tin roofs.
Despite the rain, we knew we had to go ahead. All of us felt it—me, Jody, Digby, and, most of all, Rose. Unlike the rest of us, who tried our best not to project anxiety, Rose could hardly contain her excitement. At one point I tried to calm her by holding her face and looking into her eyes. She opened her mouth wide in that goofy smile that makes me think that pit bulls had some wide-mouth frog in their ancestry. Her tail thrashed ecstatically behind her, and she pranced, moving from side to side, paw to paw, like a boxer warming up before a championship fight.
Jody showed me his prize of the day, a small vial of clear liquid. “I got it from the basilica at the top of the hill,” he signed. “Blessed by the pope, too!”
“Which one?” I asked, “the saint or the scholar?”
Jody shook his head and gave the sign for six of one, half a dozen of the other. “We can use either,” he said. “I just have to get close enough to break the vial over whatever manifests to grab its sacrifice.” Jody’s face was pale, and I could see tiny beads of sweat near his hairline. I was still feeling pretty surreal about the whole thing. Intellectually, I knew we were going out to fight monsters, human and—other. My gut hadn’t quite caught up with my head, though. When it did, I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy the sensation.
I worried about Rose. I’d had her for less than a week, and she was still too skinny; but her pelvic bones no longer stuck up like flagpoles, and her ribs, while still visible, no longer looked as though they were going to break through the skin. Prissy’s medicinal tongue had apparently restored some energy to Rose as well.
We piled into Jody’s pick-up truck, an orange and white 1978 Ford that had seen better days but probably would keep running until the economy collapsed and fossil fuels were no longer available. Digby sandwiched his bulk between me and Jody so he could alert him to anything like police sirens or railroad warning bells. Rose sat on my lap, her front paws braced against the dashboard.
As we turned off the main streets and headed toward the river district, the road became a water-covered nightmare. I was glad the truck was built high off the ground because that meant we had a little more time before we had to worry seriously about flooding the engine and getting trapped in rising waters. But we were headed toward the river, toward the warehouse where I first saw Rose.
About an eighth of a mile before our destination, Jody cut the engine. “We’ll walk from here,” he said. I got out of the car, while Rose and Digby had a precedence battle, with Rose, the lady, winning and clambering out before the sheep dog. Jody went around to the back of the truck and removed some objects that had been carefully wrapped in oilskin.
“What are those?” I asked.
“Trees,” Jody said. “Living trees I uprooted yesterday further up the river.” How he saw the expression on my face in the dark is beyond me, but he quickly added, “I’ll put them back if they survive the night!” His fingers signed against my arm so I could “hear” him in the dark.
Both dogs sent us pictures of the four of us slinking toward the side of the building where all the garbage was and where Rose had been deposited to die or be consumed. We stopped all conversation and crept forward, the dogs in the lead since they could see better than we could.
Before the feeling of wrongness hit me, the stench caught my nose. The dogs smelled it, too, and unlike other unpleasant smells that dogs seem to revel in, this was one miasmic reek that nearly turned them both away.
Butcher, a lanky mountain man clad in overalls and work boots and nothing else, knelt in the pile of garbage, right where Rose should have been. I could hear him calling out something that didn’t sound like “Rose,” but must have been her name. I had to grab her by the collar and sit on the wet mucky ground to keep her from stiff-legging it up to him, drawn by the unholy power in his voice.

“Blood calls ya, Viper! Blood commands ya!
Blood calls ya, Viper! Blood commands ya!
Blood calls ya, Viper! Blood commands ya for the third time!
Bitch, come!”

Rose tore away from me at that point, leaving me on my back in the mud with a broken leather collar in my hand. Barking wildly, Digby followed Rose. Jody reached out a hand to pull me up and, when I was standing, shoved the smaller of the two saplings into my arms.
Hoping that I’d know what to do when the time came, I followed Jody, trying not to slip on ground that was growing more and more waterlogged by the minute.
The Butcher was alone. That was the good thing. He didn’t hear us coming because his own chanting drowned out the mucky sounds of our footsteps. How he managed not to hear Digby, however, still puzzles me.
He stood and faced Rose, put out a hand to her and said something unintelligible but that sounded as if it had come straight from some dark lord’s repertoire. Rose dropped to her belly and started crawling up to him. Digby followed. I could only watch, horrified, as she rolled over and gave him her belly. That was when I noticed Digby’s paw just touching Rose’s tail.
The Butcher raised something that looked like a machete and cried out in more of that inchoate speech. I lost my concentration for a moment because the ground started shaking right where the garbage covered it. Something was taking form as a rift opened up in the earth next to the warehouse.
The rain cast a heavy curtain in front of us so I couldn’t see the creature clearly, but I got the impression of rot and maggots, decay, the moldering away of a burned out planet. All that fixed itself in my mind with a persistence that became a little more than annoying.
“Now,” Jody screamed and rushed forward to strike at the intruder with his living wood. I followed him, sickeningly aware of the fact that I had left Rose and Digby to face the Butcher with little resources.
There was a shriek as Jody unloaded his vial of holy water, I smashed my sapling into the general area of the creature’s legs, Rose screamed and then gave a hopeless snarl, and Digby made a noise more like a lion’s roar than a sheep dog’s bark and leaped on the Butcher.
Suddenly two things happened that neither Jody nor I expected. Tearing past us like a fur-covered bullet, a tiny black and white creature launched itself into the Butcher’s face, its high-pitched growl setting the fillings in my teeth on edge but doing something far worse to the Butcher. The second thing that happened was that a huge piece of sculpture containing silver, iron, and some other unrecognizable metals that seemed to glow in the darkness hurtled past me, barely missed Jody, and landed in the creature’s chest area, where it immediately started to sizzle and burn.
“Drive it into the river! The water will banish it!” Bonita’s voice screamed out instructions. But it seemed as if the river wasn’t waiting around. With a huge surge, it spilled over its banks and encircled the otherworldly creature, turning it to flame, then steam, then just a reeking odor. The water kept coming and surrounded the Butcher, who slipped, blinded by the tiny Papillon on his face, and was carried away by what looked like a watery fist.
The rain stopped. Just like that. I looked around at the two broken trees, a pair of dogs that lay bloodied on the ground and a littler dog that picked her way across the wet ground, settled down in front of the first dog she came to, and began poking at Digby with her tongue.
“Bonita?” the incredulity must have shown in my voice because she laughed.
“Did you think I was going to abandon the person who saved my precious little healing dog? Besides, sometimes I just know I have to be somewhere at a certain time—like tonight.”
“You knew!” I said, still trying to use my mind to reassemble a world that had been ripped apart at the seams and no longer made the same sense it used to.
“Of course I knew,” she said. “Prissy told me the day I got her when she retired from showing. She has papers, you know, and she’s a champion. Weatherfield’s Florence Nightingale is her official name. I just call her Prissy ’cause she is!”
Jody was down on the ground cradling Digby in his arms while Prissy finished up on him and then looked at me before heading toward Rose. Bonita nodded. “There’ll be time to talk later,” she said. “Go to your dog.”
I held Rose close to me while Prissy licked shut the deep cut from the machete. “No bridge,” Rose imaged me. “Not yet.”
I pulled her closer to me as Prissy got in her last lick and returned to Bonita, sitting at her feet with one paw raised in an elegant plea to be picked up. I buried my face in Rose’s neck, breathing in the warm doggy smell, along with a certain wet dog odor that wasn’t as pleasant. “No bridge,” I repeated. “I think we’ve got a lot more work to do.”

Author’s Note: This story was written in memory of Loteki’s Supernatural Being (Kirby), the Papillon who won Westminster in 1999 and in honor of the Vicktory dogs, who survived the fate of most pit bulls confiscated from people who engage in illegal dogfights. This is also for the groups that saved their lives: the ASPCA, BAD-RAP (Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About Pitbulls) and Best Friends in Utah, as well as other rescue organizations. Thank you, too, to Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, for insisting that it’s not the breed of dog but the way a dog is raised and for proving it through the wonderful pit bulls in his pack.

AN EXCESS OF JOY

C.J. Henderson

C.J. Henderson is the creator of the Teddy London supernatural detective series and the author of more than fifty books and novels, including The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies, The Field Guide to Monsters, and Baby’s First Mythos, to name a few. He has also written hundreds of short stories and comics, as well as thousands of nonfiction pieces. For those who would like to see more of the character Professor Piers Knight, who appeared in this volume, we recommend you try the first novel in the Brooklyn Knights series. If you would simply like some more C.J., we recommend a trip to his website www. [http://cjhenderson.com] cjhenderson.com, where there are always free short stories for one and all.

“One joy scatters a hundred griefs.”
Proverb

“Bob, who has the potato salad?”
“Hey, hey-yo Jenny, grab those four benches over there—get some of our stuff over on them before someone else grabs ’em, will ya?”
“Mike, spread some of our blankets out behind them.”
In the city of New York, connecting the boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island, there exists one of the true wonders of the modern world. Like many of mankind’s other great marvels, it is a structure the leading “they” of its time said could not be built. Which particular edifice “they” were so incorrect about in this instance was the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, one of the most impressive technological creations thrown upward to the heavens throughout all of human history.
“Who has the barbecues?”
“They’re in Tony’s van, with the raincoats and stuff.”
Nearly half a century old, when first constructed it was the world’s largest suspension bridge, spanning more than a mile-wide gap separating two massive sections of the city. During the ten years it took to build, work on the great project was a regular news feature—not only in the city where it was under construction, or even within its country. No, it was a feat the entire world followed with interest, from the lifting out of the initial ceremonial shovelful of dirt to the moment when the first motorists were sent across its towering, cloud-drenched lanes.
“Where are the coolers?”
“Hold your horses; they’re coming.”
Its cable wire, some 143,000 miles of it, was reported as capable of reaching more than halfway to the moon. Its towers soared to the height of sixty stories, each of them containing as much steel as the Empire State Building. And it was that intense concentration of open metal that, early one midsummer’s Thursday morning, had attracted such a flurry of activity.
“Com’on, people—we are on a timetable here.”
There were, of course, always cars to be found in the tiny parking area just off the Belt Parkway East, the roadway running along the coast of Brooklyn that passed directly under the towering bridge. One could drive by at four in the morning and glance over at the miscellaneous vehicles that would inevitably be there, wondering which ones held lovers, which ones drug dealers. Some came, of course, simply because it was an out-of-the-way place one could legally park and be left alone. Some came only to stare at one of the most magnificent sights in one of the greatest cities in the world.
“Oh, Carolyn, who has the altar?”
“I think it’s in Bob’s back seat.”
And some, like Bob and Jenny Krelchic and the thirteen others they had brought with them, came on that singular day under an ever-darkening sky for once-in-a-lifetime reasons vastly beyond the ken of most mortals.

Down the Belt Parkway, moving further east approximately ten miles, the scene was quite the same in Brooklyn’s world famous Coney Island. The place had drastically reduced in both size and splendor since its glory days as an international tourist location. Now, once fabled Luna Park, the “city of a million lights,” was only remembered in the recollections of the oldest of grandparents. Out of all the amazing and spectacular rides it had boasted in the long ago, the glorious madness of the outdoor wooden horse races—oaken thoroughbreds hurtling along stories above the pavement, carrying their seven and eight-year-old equestrians to greatness—and all the rest, the boat rides, the tumble slides, the rolling room and sliding floor and the unforgettable, never-ending hall of mirrors—now, only one of its miracles remained sturdy and sure and in all its original glory.
Protected from developers by its historic significance, the towering Parachute Ride still stood sentinel watch, its shadow looming over the miles of boardwalk to be found in both directions. A giant umbrella of steel and wire, it shouldered its way into the sky, far taller than any building around it, visible for miles in every direction. When first built, it was a wonder for the senses. Sitting on the smallest of wooden seats, its passengers would be hoisted numerous stories into the air until, when they finally reached the top, they would be released and sent hurtling toward the ground. Their parachute would always open, of course, and they would exit safely back out onto the boardwalk, often quite shaken but most assuredly thrilled.
All in all, the fabulous structure produced millions upon millions of happy, unique-to-their-owner memories, until the sorrowful moment in time when the relentless guardians of the public interest shut down the grand lady—to protect the children, you understand. Its usefulness crippled, still the giantess stood firm against the elements, decade after decade, until finally the moment came to decide the revered ride’s final destiny. Protected by some wiser-than-average god, the Parachute Ride was designated a public landmark, and although she was not reopened for the giving of monumentally spectacular thrills, extensive repairs were nonetheless made, massive sections were rebuilt, and finally the brightest of orange paints was brought in by the truck-load to make her a presentable figure in her old age.
Although, on that singular day, a group of mostly quiet, fairly stern young men were to be found moving toward her with a purpose of their own, one to which no one in all the multiple scores of years the great tower had stood had ever thought to put her. Heaping their burdens on the boardwalk before the antique ride, mostly piles of rain slickers and musical instruments, the men turned to inspecting their surroundings.
Doing arm and leg stretches, rolling their necks and hips, cracking their knuckles, they surveyed up and down the long wooden walkway, checking to see just how many intruders they might be forced to deal with once they got underway. Finding the number of potential busybodies well within the acceptable, the men turned toward one of their own. Understanding their questioning looks, the fellow glanced up at the thickening clouds in the sky, then at his watch. Deciding the timing was adequate, meaning that they would not be late, he gave his compatriots the signal to begin, saying;
“All right, let’s try to get this right, shall we?”
“Yeah,” quipped one of the others, “it’s not like you can take a ‘do-over’ when you’re playing ‘The End of the World’ concerto.”
A number of the group chuckled, several quite heartily—but, not the majority.
These were not the only odd gatherings assembling that morning. At numerous other spots all across New York City, sites containing specifically a staggeringly large object made chiefly of metal, similar small parties were forming. At the massive unisphere still standing in the Sheep Meadow of Queens, left over from the city’s last World’s Fair held decades previously, twenty-some women took up positions around the stylized globe. Out of all the costumes the group possessed, they had decided that day to perform dressed as nuns, although considering the unusually high amount of piercings and tattoos one could spot despite their not-especially-revealing garb, one had to wonder why they bothered.
At the base of the Chrysler Building, with its multiple storied, breathtaking, art deco metal pinnacle, folks wearing no similar costumes, nor working to create any covering illusion, simply began to gather where they could. As the sky grew darker, the much predicted for that day blue of it slowly filling with an unexpected thick and ugly ebony, more of them emerged from the subways of nearby Grand Central Station or disembarked from buses and taxis. Finding their own spots against the wall, this or that position where they felt somewhat comfortable, the gathering mass all fell into a pattern of checking their timepieces and waiting.
And so it was around the city. Everywhere there was a bridge of tremendous size, a stadium more metal than concrete, small bands of people—none larger than forty-five nor smaller than fifteen—continued to congregate, waiting for “the moment.” In the Brooklyn Navy Yard, with its massive cranes, at the not-so-well-known Army post on Staten Island where the military stored the veritable battalion of tanks, trucks, and rocket launchers they felt they needed to protect the city, at the various subway system work hubs with their fields of metal train cars resting on their miles of support track—people gathered.
And waited.
Watching the time.
As they did so, quite unexpectedly, as far as the rest of the great city was concerned, that is, the sky the nation’s various meteorologists had predicted in unprecedented unison would be “clear and sunny” continued to fall further into a starless darkness, a deep and shining black, unbroken in any manner. This in itself was not so unusual. What most were finding perplexing about the gathering inky void was that it had no explanation. It was, as far as modern science could determine, not a storm front in any conventional sense of the word. Also, it was not covering the hemisphere—nighttime gone wrong, so to speak. It was, instead, a focused singularity of some kind or another, an ever-stretching shroud that allowed nothing to penetrate it.
“The altar’s aimed at the bridge, honey.”
“Then get everyone to the benches,” Bob answered his wife. Consulting his watch once more, he shuddered to think of what might happen if things went wrong. Of course, his mind whispered, think of what will happen if nothing is done at all.
“We only have a couple of minutes.”
For those with the capability to measure such phenomenon, the still-widening blackness that had seemed to originate over the skies of Brooklyn had stretched to cover all of New York City. As it continued to spiral outward, the darkening had crossed all of New Jersey to the west to reach Pennsylvania and all of Connecticut to the east to begin flooding over Rhode Island. It had increased its dimensions equally to the north and south as well and, those studying it were shocked to learn that not only was it spreading, but it was doing so exponentially.
“Guys,” said the leader of the quiet men, anticipating the storm to come, “I hope you have your parts memorized, because anyone relying on sheet music is, I do believe, going to be left behind.”
More of those gathered chuckled this time. Gallows humor it might be, but somehow, actually seeing the building darkness that they all had been assured would arrive—despite the predictions of the experts—allowed many to actually find a type of inner comfort, a kind of what-do-you-know, we-were-right smugness. Some of the quiet men were gamblers, the kinds of fellows who enjoyed throwing the dice against impossible odds. Others were there because they simply loved making music, enough so to play in the rain. Then there were those who were simply tired of feeling alone in the universe—who wanted to stand for something—even if it had to be something they could not quite comprehend.
And, as the last minutes ticked down, every group stationed around the city began to put into play their particular puzzle piece. At the Chrysler Building, the acappella artists began clearing their throats, spraying them or taking lozenges against the weather to come. At the Hell’s Gate Bridge, the Fortelli Family Jugglers unlimbered the last of their duck pins. In the Bronx, in a particularly exposed stand of abandoned warehouses, the Bad Boys Bonk Band picked up their drumsticks, hammers, and clubs, ready to add their own notes to the coming defiance.
As minutes reduced to mere seconds, tension of two kinds sprang up throughout the multistate area now graced by the ever-stretching shade. The first, of course, was the panic of the fearful, the dread running through the hearts of those millions staring up into the sky, not understanding what they were seeing, but terrified nonetheless. The second, far smaller building tension was that thrown off by those who did have some idea of what was coming.
“Thirty seconds, everybody—”
Waiting in their small groups—stretching, tuning, flexing, testing their ability to do a pirouette, making certain their gloves were tight, their spit valves clear, and so forth—
“Twenty-five be the countdown, you losers . . .”
Their tension, was not exactly born from their understanding, their knowledge of what was descending—
“T-Twenty, twenty s-seconds . . .”
Rather, theirs was a tension created out of their understanding of their own limitations, out of their fear that they might not have the goods.
“Gentlemen, fifteen seconds. That’s a ‘one’ and a ‘five’ for those of you who came over from Jersey—”
After all, who were they to stand against an interdi mensional fury? Merely people, after all. Nothing more than simple flesh and blood. What, the back of many of their minds asked in those final moments, did any of them have to offer in a battle against a destroyer of worlds?
“Get yo asses ready to drum, yo muthas—it be ten seconds from curtain.”
The man who had contacted all of the various groups had explained that the coming horror, the possible Armageddon planned by Destiny would arrive that Thursday morning at 11:18, Eastern Standard Time. That was the moment the stars would align. That was the instant the doorway would be opened.
“Ten seconds—assume your positions, sisters!”
In that singular instance, a crack would be formed in space and time, a rent that would allow a vast and terrible presence to filter through from a cosmos it had consumed and left barren long ago into our own.
“Nine—”
The fellow had explained that if this presence was not met head on, if nothing was done to stop it, then it would ooze on through to the first world in its path—their world—devouring it in quick and massive bites. There would be no notice taken of any aspect of their planet—its history, art, culture, none of it would mean anything to the horror lurking behind the darkness.
“Eight—”
The billions of human lives contained on the Earth would be counted no higher or in any way more meaningful than those of anything else. Blue whales, sheep, honey bees, pigeons, mice, crab grass, paramecia— and people—all would be mere fuel to what was coming.
“Seven—”
Professor Piers Knight was no mythic figure, no Be owulf, or Roland, nor even an Indiana Jones. He was simply one of the directors of the Brooklyn Museum, a man who came across a scroll in an old and forgotten jar and decided to translate it. What he discovered there did more than shake or discomfort him—
“Six—”
It left him shattered—terrified. It bespoke the end of all things. And, when cross referenced with other sources, the idea of it became irrefutable. It was the missing key that explained those Biblical passages concerned with the end of the world. It was the last fragment needed to allow a clear understanding of the prophecies of Nostradamus and a score of other ancient references all screaming the same, hideous message—that it was coming.
“Five—”
And so, as his studies and investigations did nothing but further strengthen his initial theory, with but weeks to do something, the good professor threw himself into action.
“Four—”
The problem Knight incurred, however, was that there seemed no way to combat the ever-looming terror. Every reference pointing out the arrival of the coming shambler made extensive mention of its utter invulnerability. There was no use in uniting the nuclear powers of the Earth, forging even a one time alliance that would focus their destructive powers on the approaching nightmare, for no matter what they might throw against it, the destroyer would simply add the power of it to its own.
“Three—”
Bombs—hydrogen, neutron, or otherwise—fire, bullets, poison, nerve gas, chemical agents—these were all carved from a reality well understood by that which approached. Indeed, there was simply no abrasive, corrosive, or explosive whatsoever that would do anything but further empower their enemy. And then, quite by chance, the professor ran across a quotation that shattered his perceptions. Written out in block letters on a once white rectangle of cardboard, they were the words of Honoré de Balzac—
“Two—”

AN EXCESS OF JOY IS HARDER TO BEAR THAN ANY AMOUNT OF SORROW

And those thirteen simple words, fastened to a dark wall in a back room of his museum with cracked and faded tape, stirred within his soul an answer so radical, so overwhelmingly human, he knew it was mankind’s only chance for survival.
“One!”
And, at that precise moment, the sky over Brooklyn split, the dimensional threads of several universes began to unravel, and in seventy-eight different spots around New York City, the gaiety of mankind was unleashed in every conceivable manner. At the Verrazano-Narrows, the pastor and choir of the First Methodist Church of Green Point raised their voices in reverent song. At the Unisphere, the Vespertine Ladies Dance Troupe launched into an extended arrangement of their showi est dance numbers. At the Chrysler Building, a medley of Broadway’s most joyous love songs was heard in the streets. And so it went everywhere else.
Under the Parachute Ride, the Brooklyn Gay Men’s Polka Partiteers aimed their defiant accordions and piccolos to the heavens, even as the Bronx’s Bad Boys bonked their own message out for that which would destroy them. And on it went, in that selfsame moment, jugglers tossed and caught, puppeteers spoke for the mouths worn on their fingers, comedians cracked wise, skaters—wheeled, bladed, and those on boards—began their free-form ballets, gymnasts tumbled and leaped, jazzmen reached for the high notes, all of them, and all the rest, doing what they loved—doing it the best they knew how.
Doing it in the rain and aiming it at the sky.
“Jezuz Christie,” complained one of the Bad Boys, “it’s comin’ down like dey can’t get rid of it fast enough.”
“Gonna be enough to flush yo sorry ass to hell, yo don’t keep playin’.”
The rain came as it always did when one air mass met another of greatly different temperature. Dark as the world beneath the spreading canopy of blackness had been, visibility reduced to practically nothing as the torrent forced its way out of the clouds. Drivers did not even attempt to pull off the road; they simply stopped and turned on all the lights they had available to them as they prayed.
The thunder came next, great overwhelming blasts of it, rattling windows, rocking buildings, terrifying children, giving the adults caring for them pause as well. Over and over, the sky was shattered and its clouds torn asunder as the storm’s mounting violence erupted across the landscape. Lightning followed each monstrous peal, blasting the earth, thousands of bolts of silvered energy reaching out for whatever it could find.
Through it all, the seventy-eight knots of humanity played and sang and danced, continuing to perform as their clothes plastered to their bodies, as the temperature dropped and the winds grew harsher, as their skin puckered and their hair slicked to their skulls. The professor had warned them this would happen—and that it would only be the beginning. He had been correct.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” The redheaded young woman had to practically scream her words, the only way they could be heard over the growing gale. Standing next to her in one of the dozens of parking lots to be found in JFK International Airport, her companion answered:
“ ‘Want to’ do this, Bridget?” he questioned, giving the girl half a smile, all he could muster—really. “No. Who in their right minds would ‘want to do this?’ But if you ask if I ‘have to’ do this, well . . . I’m afraid my answer would be different.”
“But, professor,” she said, her face filled with grave concern, “you can’t be . . . I mean, if—”
Knight placed a single finger softly against Bridget’s lips. Taking a quick glance at his watch, he knew his time was running short. He needed to be in position in another five minutes. His body already beginning to shiver because of the rain and wind, he knew both were only going to get worse. Indeed, even as the thought passed through his mind, he saw the change beginning.
“You know why I have to do this.”
As the temperature continued to drop, all around himself and his assistant, the rain was rapidly hardening, growing denser. So quickly was the transformation forced upon the weather that the downpour had no time to change into snow. Instead, the droplets began freezing into stinging bullets of hail. Across the city the speeding ice slashed at the seventy-eight groups, bouncing from their musical instruments, coating the ground beneath their dancing, skating, leaping feet, matting their hair, stinging their hands and faces. As the lightning continuing to shatter the atmosphere in every direction, the defenders struggled to continue.
“But it’s so impossible,” Bridget cried. Although she had not worked for Knight all that long, the girl knew the professor was surprisingly well-informed on the supposed potential of all the magical objects within the various collections owned by the Brooklyn Museum. She had witnessed his work with several pieces, amazed that some of the tales she had always been taught were naught but fancy had more than merely a touch of truth to them. As she held onto his arm, she wailed, “We should have told someone.”
But those had been the slightest of trifles, hardly more than parlor illusions—dime-store magic tricks—compared to what Knight was about to attempt. And what he was about to attempt was truly a monumental act—one the redhead could scarcely comprehend.
“Bridget,” the professor said the young woman’s name as softly as he could and still be heard over the howl of the storm raging all about them. “Even if they could stop what was coming, which I don’t believe they can—who would have believed us?”
Piers Knight was not elderly; indeed, he barely looked middle aged. But still, he was only a man. Like those in all the groups he had set to action that morning, nothing more than flesh and bones, muscles, sinews, blood, and brains.
“They would have had to believe us,” she answered, knowing she was bordering on the irrational even as she spoke. Tears streaming down her face, she blurted futilely, “This should be the Army’s responsibility—the United Nations—somebody else!”
“My dear,” Knight answered, his eyes locked with hers even as his hands checked over his pockets, making certain he was carrying everything he would need, “there is nobody else.”
And then, before either of them could say more, the first tremors were felt. Despite the fact that Manhattan Island and most of the surrounding area for miles in every direction were part of the same massive sheet of miles-thick bedrock, that substratum did possess several small fault lines. It was enough. As the burrower slashing its way through the morning sky came closer to escaping its own dimension, the very idea of its presence caused the ground below its arrival point to convulse.
In a thousand spots, sidewalks cracked, roadways buckled, lawns were swallowed. Ice hanging heavy in their branches, battered by frightening gales, the soil about them softened by the drenching torrent, trees began to topple by the thousands across the country. The shadow had already reached across the American continent, upward to the Arctic, over the sea to the British Isles and beyond. As the darkness raced beyond the equator, the rain and lightning followed, preparing the way for the rapidly advancing ice and quakes.
Staggering to his feet, within his brain Knight cursed his foolishness. What kind of damned idiot was he, a voice from the back of his mind asked, to think he could stand against what was coming? How did he think he could possibly prevail?
Ignoring his fear, bottling it up and casting it aside, the professor dug his feet into the building slush, then reached down to help Bridget regain an upright position once more. Afraid she was going to begin yet another argument, one for which he was certain they had no time, he sucked down a deep breath, preparing to cut her off when she suddenly blurted:
“You better get going, professor.” Holding up her own watch so he could see its face, she added, her mouth willing to give him a tight smile of approval, “It’s almost time.”
“Well,” he said, feeling an irrational boost of confidence simply because a pretty girl had grinned at him, “if you say so . . .”
Taking a deep breath, Knight bowed his head and bent his shoulders, pulling inward on himself, working to generate what additional body heat he could. Then, removing a metal disc from his inner jacket pocket, he exposed it to the open air, wishing at the same time to be lifted into the air. Instantly the fabled Disc of the Winds, one of the few weapons of Solomon’s arsenal to survive to modern times, carried the professor upward into the storm-driven sky. As he ascended, the length of nylon rope he had previously attached to his ankle played out quickly.
The other end had been secured to Knight’s car, but Bridget had hold of the line nonetheless. The professor had chosen the airport as the point from which he would launch his attack for two reasons. One, it was only a handful of miles from the spot where the horror from beyond was to emerge. Second, once the storm forced the airport to turn away all approaching aircraft, the lack of tall structures anywhere made it the perfect spot for him to attempt what he hoped he could accomplish. Sliding the second artifact, which he had “borrowed” from the museum that morning, from inside his jacket he said a quiet prayer in the last seconds before he had to strike.
The object in question was an ornately carved wooden rod, a device that had not seen the light of day since last displayed during the Brooklyn Museum’s 1929/30 exhibit “Ritual Magic & Agriculture.” Supposedly, after the spring sowing and planting, as the entire community surrounded the fields, singing and dancing into the night, a Mayan high priest would use the wand to focus his energies while praying for a bountiful harvest. It was a gamble, Knight knew, to trust in the “supposed” powers of the artifact, but it was all he had.
When the cord around his ankle reached the end of its four hundred feet, the resulting jerk made the professor smile as he pictured himself as a kite. Swinging in the breeze, pelted by the driving ice and howling winds, Knight summoned all the strength he had within him, forcing himself to stop shivering. Checking his watch one last time, he then closed his eyes, clamping his teeth together to keep them from chattering.
All right, he thought, half his brain counting down the last remaining seconds, the other summoning his courage, this thing knows nothing but hate and lust. It’s come here to share its vast knowledge of these subjects with us.
Waving his arms in a steady pattern, as if an orchestra conductor readying his musicians, Knight began summoning all the energies he had commissioned. Collecting in the great masses of steel and iron around the city—the stored dynamics of the dance, the pleasure of the familiar song, the thrill of a perfectly executed move, the heart-pleasing, soul-softening, overwhelming ecstasy of music and rhythm—all of it he called to himself. The self-satisfaction every member of his seventy-eight had selflessly offered to the atmosphere, he pulled to himself, snaring it, winding it about his wand like a massive, metaphysical cotton candy. And then, as the growing ball of power threatened to fry the very skin from his body, he went for more.
Adding his own prayers to those of the ancients, Knight went past the power being offered by his scattered entertainers at that moment. Beseeching the memories of the Earth itself, he reached into the past, searching for the pleasure his seventy-eight had given to others. Every laugh his comedians had coaxed forth, each gasp of awe his magicians and dancers had been blessed with, every deep sigh of blissful satisfaction his singers and musicians had received as payment for their talent, all of it he demanded, adding it to his massive bundle of building energy.
Calling forth every drop of laughter, each smile, grin, and chuckle, as well as wave after wave of applause, Knight could feel the wand vibrating in his fingers. Grasping it with both hands, the rapidly growing heat of the thing scorched his gloves, burned his fingers. Buffeted by the shrieking winds, praying he could hold on for the few more seconds needed, he opened his mouth, cursing;
“So, Hell-spawn, you know only hate and greed? Well, so did we. Long ago, all we knew was rapine murder, but . . . we learned a few things over the centuries.”
Then, as his head clocked off the final instant, as the storm hit its zenith, but a single second from covering the entire planet, Knight spun himself around in the air, aimed his bit of ancient wood at the terror emerging from the sky, and snarled:
“Choke on them!”
At the speed of thought all the raging power the professor had collected was released, thrown directly into the heart of his target, convulsing the hideous god-thing with a pain it had never known. For a trillion millennia, it had never felt such monstrousness before—joy, caring, love and individuality, the giddy pride of hitting High C. It was more than the Ten-Horned Beast could bear. Seemingly unstoppable master of the universe, it turned and fled, repulsed and repugned by the unbearable filth of human joy.
And, in that instant, all was ended. The fallen trees were not replanted, but the storm that had ravaged them disappeared in but a single heartbeat. The ice filling the Hudson and East Rivers began to melt. Magma forcing itself through the planet’s crust stopped bubbling upward, dropping back below the surface. And, all about New York City, dancers and singers, musicians, tumblers and jugglers, and all the rest wiped their eyes in amazement. Everything the professor had told them had come true.
Including their victory over the master of hell.
Weary, waterlogged, some scarred, several broken, the seventy-eight worked to pull themselves together. After all, they had saved the Earth. Now they had to get back to their jobs and families, back to paying their bills and separating their paper from their glass and plastics.
At the airport, Knight did much the same. Drained of energy, soaking wet, feeling half drowned and chilled to the marrow, he made a clumsy effort to stand, then surrendered to the overwhelming fatigue coursing through his system and simply splashed down in the frosty piles of slush covering the parking lot. Holding up the wand he had used to capture humanity’s victory, he stared at it with the singular fascination only an academic can achieve, whispering to himself;
“Well, what do you know? It worked.”
Staggering to his side, feeling much the same as the professor despite her youth, Bridget collapsed next to him, laughing as she did so. When Knight asked what she found so amusing, she answered:
“I just realized, you promised most of those groups you had out there drumming up joy that if we survived, you would make certain they got to perform at the museum. Well . . . we survived.” Returning the young woman a wry smile that curved but one end of his mouth, Knight replied:
“Well, they deserve it. They did give their all in the service of a greater good. What more can be asked of anyone? It’s as the poet said, ‘And each man stands with his face in the light of his own drawn sword, ready to do what a hero can.’ ”
“And what macho wordsmith gave us that one,” asked Bridget. “Kipling? Robert E. Howard?”
“Actually,” answered the professor, his smile spreading across his entire face, “it was Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”
Knight and his assistant looked at each other for a moment and then began to howl hysterically. At first, splashing slush like children in a pool, they soon began grabbing handfuls of it and tossing it at one another, tears streaming down their faces as they continued to laugh at the insanity of it all.
And, all around the city, the seventy-eight gathered themselves to go home, each and every one of them wondering wistfully in precisely what manner they would someday explain to their grandchildren how once upon a time they save the world with an excess of joy.

STANNIS

Anton Strout

Anton Strout was born in the Berkshire Hills—mere miles from writing heavyweights Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. He currently lives in historic Jackson Heights, New York (where nothing paranormal ever really happens, he assures you). His first urban fantasy novel, Dead to Me, came out in March 2008 from Ace Books. His short stories include “The Lady in Red” in the DAW Books anthology Pandora’s Closet, and a tie-in story to Dead to Me entitled “The Fourteenth Virtue” in DAW’s The Dimension Next Door (Fall 2008). He has worked for Penguin Group (USA) for the past ten years in their paperback sales department, and yes, it is as glamorous as it sounds. In his scant spare time, he is an always writer, a sometimes actor, a sometimes musician, an occasional RPGer, and the world’s most casual and controller-smashing video gamer. He is currently hard at work on the next book featuring Simon Canderous and can often be found lurking the darkened hallways of [http://www.antonstrout.com] www.antonstrout.com. He is also proud to be one of the founding members of The League of Reluctant Adults ( [http://www.leagueofreluctantadults.com] www.leagueofreluctantadults.com), where urban fantasists come to play.

The first thing the creature noticed upon waking was the cool wetness against his stone skin where he perched. It wasn’t the kind of liquid coolness he was used to, not like the falling rain that had slowly left its mark on his substantial frame for just more than a century now, but rather something . . . bubbly.
Without moving from his ledge, he cast his eyes toward the unique prickling sensation he felt along the curve of his right calf. A young human woman with dark hair down to her shoulders and blue eyes was frantically scrubbing away at the flexed muscle using a bristly brush that she kept dipping into a bucket of soapy water. She was dressed in a black T-shirt and what he would normally think of as men’s overalls, but who knew if that was right anymore? The world was constantly changing. The creature longed to move from his position but didn’t dare for fear of discovery. That would be breaking one of the rules.
Not sure what to do, he turned his attention to the sight that had greeted him tens of thousands of times—the soft orange glow of a sun that was once again vanishing beyond the horizon. Much of his view had altered through the years as newer buildings rose with the world’s progress. But bits of the horizon were still available to him. As the dregs of daylight slowly gave way to the blue-black of the nighttime sky, the stiffness in his body left him, which made holding his position even more difficult while this woman continued to scrub away at him.
Suddenly, the dark haired woman spoke.
“You can move if you like,” she said. “It’s all right. I know what you are.”
It was only after a moment that the creature realized she was actually talking to him. It felt unfamiliar; no one had spoken directly to him for countless years. When he was certain he wasn’t imagining it, he stretched himself up to his full height and stepped off the ledge and onto the roof proper. The woman gasped and the smile faltered on her face.
He cocked his head.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t really prepared . . . you must be at least seven feet tall . . . and those wings!”
He expanded his stone wings to their full ten-foot span. They had been carved to look like those of a bat.
“I understand,” he said. “Your kind looks incredibly frail to me in comparison.”
The woman raised a hand to cover her mouth as she laughed. “I guess you don’t get many of our kind up here . . .”
His face saddened for a moment.
“I’ve known one or two of you in my time,” he said. He paused. “What were you doing to me?” He flexed his neck as he bent to examine his leg. The stone there was covered in markings he couldn’t identify, but they definitely hadn’t been there the night before.
“Trying to wash you,” she said, holding up the brush she had been using and waving it at him. “Usually no one’s allowed up on the roof of our building, but I was pissed off at my family about some stuff I’d rather not get into, and so I came up. The locks had been broken, and it looks as though you’ve been the victim of vandalism. Someone tagged you.”
“Tagged?”
“You know, spray painted with graffiti,” she said.
He stared with blank eyes.
“On second thought, no, I guess it’s quite possible you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
The creature shook his head. “Graffiti,” he said after a moment. “That word I am familiar with. Tagged, however, I am not. But I shall add this colloquialism to my knowledge.”
He bent his still wet leg so the woman could reach it again.
“You may continue,” he said. “And thank you.”
The woman stepped toward him, this time with more caution than before, and started scrubbing again. “I couldn’t stand to see you marked up like this. It offends my artistic sensibility.” She dipped the brush into the soapy water. “Have you a name?”
Stannis cocked his head at her again. “Stannis.” Even though he was used to the deep sound of his voice, his own name sounded funny on his lips, He hadn’t said it in years. “And you are . . .”
“I am a sculptor,” she said. She scrubbed his side now, harder this time. The tag was slowly fading from it. “Does that hurt at all?”
“Hurt?” Stannis laughed at the mere thought of it, the bass of his rocky voice booming out. “No. It does not hurt. I’m afraid it would take far more than that to cause me pain.”
The woman stopped scrubbing, dipped the brush back into the bucket and when she started up again, scrubbed with even more force. The tag was almost gone, a mere ghost of the vandalism.
“By the way,” she said after several more moments, “I’m Alexandra.”
The creature looked down at her, watching the fragile arms of the woman working their way back and forth against his stone skin.
She dropped the brush and reached down and picked something up off the roof. It was a well-worn and ancient moleskin notebook. She brandished it like a weapon and then placed it gently on the ledge before she retrieved her brush and fell back to scrubbing. “So tell me about my great-great grandfather.”

“There is much for you to learn,” the human he had come to know as Alexander said to him. “But before there is learning, there are rules, no? And for such a learned occasion, I thought it best to dress properly.”
Stannis, who had only recently been taught that his name was Stannis, nodded. He looked the human over in the dim light cast from the lantern. There had been times the dark-haired fellow with the kind eyes had shown up in workman’s coveralls that were spattered with mortar and bits of stone, but today Alexander was dressed in a three-button frock coat and pinstriped dress pants. For once, his hair was combed and free of the rock dust that most stone masons usually sported.
“Now then,” Alexander said, making an arcane gesture with his hand, “always protect the family. That is the first of all rules. Do you understand?”
Stannis felt a tingling sensation wash over him. “I understand.”
“I know the very concept of family is new to you,” Alexander said, patting him on one of his solid shoulders in a collegial way, “but I’ve shown you the photographs of those closest to me—my kin. And there will also be the kin to come.”
He turned from Stannis and moved along the edge of the roof where a massive block of solid stone sat on the ledge.
“Don’t worry,” he continued. “You will not be alone in this task. But before I fashion another, first we must continue your education.”
“Always protect the family,” Stannis said, repeating the first rule.
“Good,” Alexander said. He shuffled to a chair he had set up across from his creation. A moleskin journal lay on the cushion and he grabbed it, flipping it open.
“Second,” he said, gesturing again, “always return here before sun up. Trust your instincts. You will feel the pull of the building calling to you, and you must always return here before the light of day transforms you to solid stone.”
Stannis nodded again as the sensation hit him. He had already experienced the phenomenon the man was describing during one of the few flights he had taken while testing the limits of his new body. There had, of course, been nights in his first few weeks of his creation when random thought began to form in his fledgling mind, and he had begun to explore the world as a child would have.
“Always return before the light of day,” he repeated.
Alexander smiled at him.
“And last,” Alexander said, “do your best to keep yourself hidden from humanity.”
Stannis stood quietly for a moment, going over the rules in what little mind he had developed. His look darkened, and the man noticed.
“What is it, Stannis? What’s wrong?”
When Stannis found the correct words, he asked, “Why?”
“Why?” the man asked with a laugh. “Why what?”
Stannis could feel something unsettling stirring in the rock of his chest. “Why must I hide away from those like you, and why does your family need protecting?”
The man’s eyes lit up. “Excellent! Excellent questions! You’re learning, as I hoped you would. Your natural curiosity drives you!”
Alexander walk to the other side of the rooftop and gestured for Stannis to follow. The large stone figure moved away from the ledge and strode after his creator, the roof shaking from his weight as he walked.
Alexander waited for him at the far edge of the building. “Our ever growing Manhattan!” Alexander said, as he reached up and put his hand on Stannis’ shoulder. “Each day a new invention of some kind comes into being, like parts of this very building we’re standing on. Look to the horizon . . . nothing stands taller than we! And why? Because of the creative minds of the Otis Elevator Company. After just a few short years, the landscape of this island has already started to take on a whole new look.”
The wrinkles around Alexander’s eyes becoming more pronounced. “Everyone thought Brooklyn was going to be the big city around here, what with all its room to grow. ‘Manhattan’s only an island,’ they said! Well, now that Manhattan can build up . . .”
For several moments, the two of them stood in silence watching the city with all its tiny lights burning in the windows of other lesser buildings. Finally, Alexander turned away and headed back to their original spot. He sat in his chair and resumed flipping through his notebook. Stannis, however, took a few more minutes to take in the expanding skyline, and then returned to his perch.
“Everything in this city is happening so fast,” Alexander said, weariness in his voice now. “I can barely keep up with all the orders coming in for more unique stonework pieces. I’ve no time anymore to look after my family. God only knows what the future holds for them. The higher we build toward the heavens, the more I worry about the dangers that still roam the ground. Who knows what lies ahead for my children?”
He fell silent for a time as he read through his notebook.
“You, my friend,” Alexander said when he looked up minutes later, “are my legacy. You can stand sentinel for the ages, keeping my kin from harm as long as they reside in this city, this building.”
“I understand,” Stannis said.
The kindness in Alexander’s eyes flickered for a moment. “No,” he said, “I don’t think you do . . . but I think that you will.”

“So you’re really a gargoyle.” Alexandra’s voice was tinged with wonder. She pushed a hank of hair behind her ear and continued flipping through the worn moleskin notebook. “I saw this cartoon about gargoyles when I was a kid, but I didn’t think they actually, you know . . . existed.”
“Gargoyle,” Stannis repeated with a shudder. “Such a crass name. I prefer the term ‘grotesque.’ ”
“That sounds a lot worse, actually,” she said with a frown.
Stannis looked surprised. “Really?”
The girl nodded. “By modern standards, yeah.”
“The stonemason hated the word gargoyle,” Stannis said. “I remember that being the layperson’s term for what I was. My creator preferred to call me his chimera or his grotesque.”
The girl’s eyes widened and she sat down on the ledge.
“So you really did know my great-great grandfather, didn’t you? He was your creator?”
Stannis nodded.
She gave a low whistle. “That was more than a hundred years ago.” She ran hand down the worn, pock-marked stone of his arm. “Looks like you’ve had your fair share of acid rain or something. You’ve got a little bit of erosion going on there.”
Stannis pulled away. Even with his years of vigilance in the city, he had little familiarity with humans touching him. He reached up and felt along the same area where a few of the spots on his arm were worn down.
“I’m not even sure if my creator could have predicted how swiftly the modern world would wear on a grotesque such as I.”
“Still,” she said, “the underlying carving is exquisite.”
Stannis grinned. “Thank you. A love of stonework runs in your family, I see.”
“Not really,” Alexandra said. “Except for me, I suppose. When my parents told me about our past, something about that time period and my great-great grandfather’s craftsmanship just spoke to me. How well did you know him?”
“As well as any large hunk of stone can know its maker, I suppose,” Stannis said.
Alexandra laughed. “You’ve got quite the sense of humor, you know, all things considered.”
“Your great-great grandfather carved me with the capacity to learn all things,” Stannis added.
“You said there were rules.” She flipped through the notebook again, searching.
“Yes,” Stannis said. “Always protect the family. Always return to the building before daylight and always keep hidden from humanity.”
“Well, two out of three ain’t bad,” she said, holding up two fingers.
“There were more to come.” Stannis looked to the large block of half-carved stone on the ledge next to him. “But . . .”
Alexandra gently closed the notebook, set it down, and slid over to the block Stannis had indicated.
“It’s broken,” she said.
Stannis shook his head. “Not broken,” he said with great sadness. “Never finished.”
“Too bad,” she said, looking sad herself. “I would have loved to have seen whatever my great-great-grandfather saw when he started carving it. He never got around to finishing it?”
Stannis shrugged, causing his wings to flap.
“What happened? Do you remember?”
“One night your great-great grandfather stopped coming to the roof.”
Alexandra turned away from the block.
“He died late one summer from what I’ve been told,” she said.
“Your kind die so soon,” Stannis said.
“I suppose we do.” Alexandra stood and started toward the far side of the roof.
“Those wings,” she said as she crossed, “they’re not just ornamental, are they?”
Stannis cocked his head.
“They work, right? You can fly?”
Stannis nodded.
Alexandra stopped at the edge of the roof and stepped up onto the ledge.
“Good,” she said, and jumped.
Before she was out of sight, Stannis heard the words of his maker in his head, screaming one of the rules at him. Always protect the family.
With a speed that was inhuman, Stannis charged across the roof and dove over the side. The girl was already far below, but he flapped his wings and closed the distance. The wind rushed past him, reminding him it had been years since he had taken flight and he felt a wave of pleasure in it. Stannis reached out, remembering how fragile these humans were, and carefully grabbed for her.
His arm caught her by one wrist, and before he could begin flying back to the top of the roof, she pulled herself around him like a scared little girl, clutching both arms around his neck as he felt the drumming of her heart against his chest.
As Stannis flew straight up into the nighttime sky, Alexandra stopped shaking.
“Your wings,” she said, “they’re so quiet, but they’re made of stone. I thought they’d make some kind of noise or something.”
Stannis said nothing but continued to fly higher, feeling the great-great grandchild of his maker tightening her grip on him. Once they were higher than any of the surrounding buildings, he swooped down through the concrete and metal canyons, angling back and forth through the gaps in the buildings, and then circling until his own building came back into sight. When he landed, Stannis set Alexandra down and stepped away from her.
“I do not engage in games, child.”
“Relax,” she said, still breathless. “I just had to see it for myself, if everything my great-great grandfather wrote in his book was true.”
Stannis stood, unmoving.
“Relax,” she repeated. “Stonework’s not the only thing of his I took an interest in.”
Alexandra consulted the notebook. “I think the first thing I’ll do is add a new rule.”
“Only the maker can do that,” Stannis said with a shake of his head.
“Always protect the family. And since I’m part of ‘the family,’ I think I know a little bit about what’s in our best interest. Besides, times change, and so should the rules with them.”
Stannis considered this, and then cracked a smile. “So you will bend the rules, Alexandra, but not break them.”
“Yeah.” She made a gesture that Stannis remembered from his maker and even felt the same sensation as back then. “I think the first change I’m going to make is that you also always protect her.”
“Her?” Stannis asked, somewhat confused.
Alexandra crossed to the large unfinished block. She put her hands on it and felt the curves of the raw stone that had been left there.
“I mean her, your unfinished companion here.”
“But only the maker . . .”
Alexandra held up the notebook.
“Everything I need is right here.”
Stannis felt a strange pain wash across his chest, different from the magic he had felt a second ago. He stumbled, sitting hard on the ledge next to the block.
“You okay?” Alexandra asked.
“I’m . . . fine,” Stannis said. “I just . . . have never felt anything quite like this before.”
Alexandra smiled. “I think its called hope.”
He looked up at her. “You would do this for me?”
Alexandra nodded.
“Why?” he asked. “I don’t understand.”
“I may need to come up here to get away from my family sometimes,” she said, “but they are family, and we do have such a thing as honor and respect, especially when it comes to finishing a job. Believe me, I wish I were as lucky as you. I’d kill if someone could just magically concoct me a suitable companion through this life. How could I deny you that when it’s in my power to give? After all, you’ve given so much of yourself watching over us all these years.”
“I’m simply performing my only function in this world,” Stannis replied. The pain in his chest faded and warmed into something else, perhaps this ‘hope’ Alexandra was talking about. “That’s what I was made for.”
“I see my great-great grandfather taught you modesty as well,” Alexandra said. “Listen, I’m very protective of my family, and you’re a part of that—my family. I may be a century late, but I am my great- great grandfather’s namesake, after all, and a sculptor. Maybe this is what I was made for, too.”
Stannis again wondered about the all too brief life of these creatures. He would continue holding up his end of the rules, and after so many years, he would happily welcome the new family members.
Alexandra threw him the soapy brush and handed him the bucket. “Let’s get to work. I can’t begin to carve her until she’s all cleaned up. She’s covered in bird shit.”

FAERIE DOME

Dean Leggett

Dean Alan Leggett has enjoyed life since the start. He discovered adventure all around him. Growing up in rural Wisconsin provided four full seasons of fun with his friends. He proudly served his country in the United States Air Force. He returned to Wisconsin, where the adventure continues. He recently moved to the small town of Sussex, a strangely fitting place to write this most recent story. When Dean isn’t working in the bizarre world of information technology, he is writing in the more sane worlds of mythology.

I am not the type of man to wear a hat, and so on days like this the chill catches up with me. For weeks now, freezing rain, snow, and ice have gripped the city.
I watched the sun rise slowly through the Chicago spires of metal and glass as I made my way to work. Blades of sunlight stabbed into the surrounding suburbs, bringing false hopes of warmth. Mounds of snow lined the streets, as men pushing metal shovels tried in vain to loosen nature’s grip. Whiteness clung to every place possible.
Why did the old ones choose this cold hell in which to build one of the select few western circles of stones? It was beyond my comprehension.
Was the weather warmer in this place thousands of years ago?
If only the twins could search their magical memories for the location of a circle near the equator. Oh, I’ve asked them, Rochelle and Tessa, and they said something about: “Seasons are nature’s greatest gift to the world. Enjoy each one equally, for no single season is better than the rest.”
Even after all the seasons I have lived through, my enjoyment of winter is not possible. I would move this ring of stones to Arizona in a heartbeat if I thought they would keep the connection to the fey realm.

Pulling into the parking lot, not even Rochelle’s silly bright red bug could cheer me. Its big headlight eyes seemed to watch me as I parked across from it. It glistened in the morning sun. I washed my car every week, and it never looked as spotless.
The parking lot sits adjacent to a smaller office building connecting to a looming two-hundred-foot diameter glass dome. Towering nearly a hundred feet in the air, the dome has seen worse weather than this winter. It protects the small, ancient ring of stones hidden within.
My relatives discovered the stone circle in Chicago more than a century past. They purchased the surrounding land, and we were able to collect funding for the design and building of what is now know as the Nalan Dome. It is a single, large dome built on the same concept as Milwaukee’s three horticultural domes to the north.
Only the Nalan Dome is never open to the public.
These days I allow only special guests inside for research or worship.
Grandmother worked for years on perfecting the runes carved in the foundation and exterior stone walls. Those runes of power strengthened our magic and also prevented unwanted attention. Those runes now hide behind shrubs and landscaping and keep a lock on our treasures within. Simple shrubs do not diminish the power they emanate.
Tugging open the first set of glass entry doors, I stomped off the majority of the snow before pulling off my galoshes. I placed them next to the brightly colored snow boots the twins left to dry. “Twins” is what I call the two young women inside. They are not actually related by blood; they are two girls bonded by fate. Tessa and Rochelle are both products of a ritual scribed on stone from ancient times. We performed the last set of such rituals in March of nineteen eighty-eight.
It was a clear night, with no moon to obstruct the stars. Only a select group of women were invited to participate, each one of them a true believer. More importantly, each was early in the cycle of pregnancy, a key requirement for that particular druidic ceremony. Their friends and family thought the women were attending a spiritual retreat. Oh, it was spiritual, that part was on the mark—these women were offering up their unborn children to become the vessels of ancient spirits, souls long thought departed from this world. I don’t know who was more surprised that it worked, Grandmother or the women who danced and sang that night under the moonless sky. Either way, it brought new meaning to the phrase “careful what you wish for.” I hung up my outer coat and headed for the lab.
There was Rochelle bouncing in her chair, her long wavy red hair flowing back and forth to a beat. I could not see the white wires reaching up to her ears, but I well knew they were there. They were always there. For Rochelle, the small white box was a source of unlimited energy that she could tap into any time she wished. At a large adjacent work area sat my Tessa. She looked up from her desk and gave a wave. She glanced quickly over at Rochelle. I smiled as Tessa flipped her head back and forth mimicking Rochelle’s movements to an unheard song. I rolled my eyes and headed toward my own work area.
Tessa returned to resting her chin on her palm, gazing into the electronic glow that fascinated her to no end. The light emanating from the wide screen shown through her midnight black hair and made it look as though it were spun from pure obsidian. Both possessed an almost magic beauty. That either could pass as “normal” would happen only in a larger city. There were many stranger things in Chicago than two fairy-touched women. At least the Windy City gave us some cover for our activities.
I sorted through the morning mail as I settled into my station. The laboratory wasn’t large, but the open layout made it feel impressive. My area was in the rear and on a slightly raised platform. Four other work stations were arranged below, with a front wall created from the dome itself. Only the middle two desks were currently in use. My vantage point provided me an opportunity to keep an eye on the twins.
Our research and experiments vary, though all involve tracing myths and legends about the fey realm and examining ancient objects thought to be faerie-touched. I have given them each a large number of projects—enough to keep them busy for years. I have directed Rochelle and Tessa to maintain daily diaries they store on a central network drive. They log any feelings, unusual emotions, and, most important, any memories from the past. It was not that they could fully recall the past of the spirits inhabiting them, but at times they did add some interesting visions of times long ago. Tessa enjoys her on-line research most of all.
Of their many unusual gifts I was most impressed with was the way the girls could interact, or almost commune, with young children, animals, trees, and even plants.
There were seven women in the circle that night. Four came to term. All four had girls, and the fey spirits filled each one. The first girl passed away in her early teens; Amanda had struggled from the very start and didn’t make the cut. The second one to pass away was Bridget. Little Bridget, who left this world but a few years ago, was often reclusive. While Tessa and Rochelle were able to get along very well, Bridget would frequently distance herself from them. It didn’t help that by age twelve Tess and Rochelle had become inseparable, forcing Bridget down her own path. By sixteen the connection between Tessa and Rochelle was so strong I started calling them the twins.
Bridget’s gifts had appeared to be the strongest of the three. She would share in her journals vivid memories of the past; some entries even contained hidden knowledge of the modern day world—things she should not have been able to learn by simple research. Bridget was blessed with light blonde, almost white, hair and very pale skin. This beauty amplified her light green eyes. Bridget was special in so very many ways. I do miss her dearly.
Looking up, I noticed Tessa approaching. Tessa’s presence demanded attention with her six-foot frame. There was no missing the fact that Tessa enjoyed the local Y and kept in top shape. Tessa liked the cut and toned look exercise grants. Dance and music were Rochelle’s passions. Her favorite places away from the dome were local dance clubs. They both frequented the local youth scene. Tessa with her midnight hair, dark eyes, and, I must say, very attractive figure, seemed to fit her spirit. Dressed in black again today, she reminded me of a widow spider; spinning her charm to slowly lure in a mate just close enough to devour him.
They had dragged me with them to the clubs a few times. Told me I had to find someone before I became too old, as they said I was looking almost thirty-five. They had no way to judge my true age.
I pulled off my suit coat and hung it on the wooden rack behind my desk, loosening my tie as Tessa came up the platform carrying a steaming mug of coffee. Even in this cold, dreary weather Tessa dressed to command attention. She wore a typical Tessa suit—studious but alluring and, of course, black. Her skirt was not short, but her long legs made the black pin-striped corporate look appear risqué.
With a wide smile she set the mug down on the edge of the desk. “Here, I thought you would like this. We were wondering why you have been late so often this week. That is unlike you. Is your car acting up again?” With a sly twist she added, “We can always stop and pick you up on our way in.”
It was never too early for a jab or two from Tessa. She knew my thoughts on riding in any car with Rochelle driving. Besides, I wouldn’t let Tessa contort herself into the back, and they knew I didn’t like riding in the back either.
“That’s okay, Tess, but thanks for the offer.” Picking up the mug, I let the warmth soak into my still partly frozen hands. I slid into my chair. “Have you made any additional progress on the crystal skull research?”
Tessa glanced toward Rochelle and shook her head. “Not much. Last night we stayed very late. Rochelle spent hours sitting in the ring with the skull in her lap. I sat with her for a while. She said she thought the skull wanted something.”
Tessa had suggested finding a crystal skull to research. She sensed that there might be a few ancient crystal skulls still around from when the druids walked the lands and that maybe they would provide a stronger link to times long past. She had managed to find a few interesting links about them online last fall, and subsequently she spent weeks trying to track down someone who owned one and would consider parting with it. A few days ago she flew down to New Mexico and met with a willing owner.
Within seconds of first touching the skull, Tessa made a connection. Alloria, it wanted to be called. Tessa was able to barter with the collector. On the return flight Tessa purchased a seat for it on the plane to ensure it stayed next to her. She was thrilled with her connection to it.
That was until the skull met Rochelle.
Since then it has been silent toward Tessa. Rochelle has a way of taking things Tessa thinks are for her. I guess that is the way with twins.
With a sigh Tessa added, “It is strange, this skull. After telling me its name, it would hum tones in my head. The humming was peaceful and would change pitch often, seemingly trying to speak to me in an unknown language. Since Rochelle first touched Alloria, everything has gone silent for me. Maybe it can only be bonded to one person at a time, and now it is bonded with Rochelle. Maybe I’ll have to find another skull.”
As if she could hear us discussing her, Rochelle pulled a white plug from her ear. Faint music could be heard even from this distance coming from the tiny bud. Rochelle gave a wicked grin. She jumped up from her chair and bounded over. Try as we might, we were never able to get Rochelle to dress appropriately. She liked loose fitting and brightly colored t-shirts with jeans. Some days she would even wear coveralls. I still vividly remember the day we picked out a formal dress for Rochelle to wear to an important meeting downtown. We were meeting with a group of long-time investors. Rochelle showed up at the dome that morning in coveralls, a tie-dyed t-shirt, and she was chewing on a piece of straw for effect. She slid the straw to the side of her mouth and said, “Y’all ready to meet dem der fancy type folks? I reckon I’ll be making dem feel all sorts of important. I’m even wearing dem knickers you always say I should. I didn’t know they’d be so darn itchy.”
Rochelle did not attend the meeting that day. I left her behind and gave her a list of chores fitting for her apparel.
Today we have a scheduled visit from a private investor, and here is Rochelle clad in her rebel ways again. Her t-shirt this morning proclaims: Squirrels should protect their nuts!
“Hey there, Martin, still drinking that black goo, I see?” Rochelle pointed at my coffee mug.
I scowled. Sensing my growing anger, Rochelle quickly stood straight, giving me a quick salute and using that Shirley Temple voice: “Morning, sir! Anything I can do for you this day, Lord Martin?”
So much for showing the impressionable youth movies you once appreciated.
“Rochelle, what have you experienced from your time with the crystal skull? Is it indeed a fey creation? Your notes lately have been greatly lacking. Have you been able to communicate with it or recognize any words or phrases?” I tried to watch her eyes closely, hoping to catch a hint of the real answers underneath her mask of the moment.
“When I gently sing to Alloria, she feels warmer to the touch. Alloria also hums to me as she did early on with Tessa. It is very soothing.” Rochelle closed her eyes and smiled. “I spent last night in the glass garden with Alloria—she does like it there. Her humming is more intense, almost like a sing song.”
I should be happy. At least the skull was keeping her from the clubs. If there was a connection between the faerie race and the magic of the skull, I thought we should have experienced more by now. Then again, it did not appear that the twins could establish a solid connection with their faerie-bound spirits as Bridget was able to do. Perhaps I should be grateful they were not as strongly connected. Bridget tried to use that connection, and look what it brought her.
Rochelle opened her eyes and pointed back toward the glass walkway to the dome. “I feel it knows we are talking about it. I left it in the garden last night. Maybe you should go in there and talk to it, Martin. It might do you some good.” With a twinkle in her eye she added, “It might help you finally relax, be at peace, and, Goddess forbid, maybe even sing. Want to know a secret, Martin?” Rochelle leaned in close and looked around as though hidden eyes were watching. “Alloria told me you will someday relax and sing for us.”
I felt Tessa’s hand on my shoulder. She knew Rochelle did so enjoy getting me wound up. Tessa broke the tense silence. “Rochelle, leave Martin be. He needs to drink his coffee and settle in before we have visitors. Why don’t you review the video from last night’s session and edit a copy for the archives?” It was more of a statement than a question.
Rochelle tipped her head to the side, letting her red hair flow down her shoulder, “Whatever you say, Tessa luv.” Glancing back toward Martin, “I like your tie. It makes you look almost important.” With that, she strutted back to her desk and popped the white buds back into her ears.
Tessa squeezed my shoulder again. “Please be patient with her and don’t worry so much, Martin. She is a free spirit trapped in a human shell.”
“Tessa, I do worry about Rochelle. I have lost too many girls already, and I do not want to lose Rochelle too.” I took a long drink from my mug and watched Rochelle as she picked up the beat again. When I looked back up at Tessa, I was a bit unsettled by her stern glare.
“Martin, I promise you what happened to Bridget will not happen to Rochelle, or to me for that matter.” Tessa turned and headed into the glass walkway toward the dome.
I watched Tessa walk away. It was then I noticed she was barefoot. It seemed an odd combination, her sleek black corporate suit and bare feet. I pulled my eyes away and signed into my workstation. We had collected so much information through the years about the ancient Earth and the old fey races. I hoped one day I would have a son to pass on my work to. Glancing back toward the dome where Tessa disappeared, I felt that time might be very soon indeed. Tessa would make a fine mother.
The day passed quickly. Our long-time investor, Thomas, was thrilled that we were able to obtain a crystal skull for research. His assistant and Tessa reviewed the videos and notes from the skull sessions, at times giggling like schoolgirls. I shared with Thomas that Tessa would soon be a major part of my next project. I also apologized for Rochelle’s attire. Thomas laughed and assured me it was fine.
The four of us went out for drinks followed by a nice dinner. As we often did, we rented a limo for the day. Rochelle stayed behind to spend more time with Alloria.

I awoke the next morning feeling tired and drained. My morning shower didn’t help. I felt my youth was slipping away and that I would soon need to undergo another ritual to stave off the years.
I headed into the office.
As I walked toward the entrance, Tessa was walking out. She glared at me. “Late again, I see.” She glided toward Rochelle’s car.
“Where are you going this early?” I tried to sound interested.
“Rochelle asked me to pick up some supplies. She also said I should change into something more rugged, that we may get dirty today.” She didn’t look back as she climbed into Rochelle’s bug and buzzed out of the lot.
Supplies, what supplies would Rochelle need? I couldn’t fathom what Rochelle was up to now. The lab was empty. I walked toward my desk and noticed there was no coffee made. “That’s just great.” I hung my suit coat up. I decided to log in quick and check the dome cameras and spy on Rochelle.
Rochelle was sitting cross-legged inside the ring. Her face pointed up, her eyes were closed, and that skull was in her lap. Her hair was pulled back, arms to her sides and her fingers dug into the grass. I selected a different angle and zoomed in on her face. Her eyes moved under her eyelids, as though she was in a dream state. The skull in her lap almost seemed to glow. I felt a chill down my spine. Something didn’t feel right. I moved the camera and scanned around the circle. Nothing seemed disturbed.
I set the camera back on Rochelle, paused the video feed, and headed toward the coffee pot. The pot and the coffee can were empty. This was not going to be my best day ever. I opened the cupboards and searched for more. Even instant would do right now. I growled in frustration. I didn’t want to leave while Rochelle was commun ing with the skull, and Tessa was in a strange mood. I ran my fingers through my hair and looked around. Something was wrong. What?
I went to the refrigerator. My head was pounding as I looked for something to help calm my nerves. “Soy milk!” I exclaimed. “What the hell is this bean juice doing in here? Chocolate soy milk! Has this world gone completely insane?” I slammed the door, hearing things fall inside. I could feel my heartbeat through my eyes. I needed to calm down.
I filled my coffee mug with tap water and headed back to my desk. Picking up my phone, I decided to call Tessa on her cell and ask her to stop at a drive thru on her way back. No sooner had I finished dialing her number when I heard her cell phone vibrate and ring from her desk.
“DAMN THIS DAY!” I pressed “Play” on the video feed.
Other than her eyes, Rochelle was eerily still. Maybe the twins were right, I needed to relax more. Okay, nothing is really wrong, I am just being paranoid, I told myself. “Is the skull aware? The skull doesn’t know, it can’t know. Everything will be all right this time.”
I decided I would get my own coffee. Taking a deep breath, I bundled up and headed back into the winter chill.

The line at the coffee shop was huge, like a python winding through the meaningless displays. At first I thought the shop seconded as a diner, with all the tables and a fifteen-foot menu across the back wall. It was then I realized it wasn’t a menu for food, but a menu for flavored coffee! What is happening to this world, five dollars for a cup of coffee? I remembered what five dollars could buy when I was younger.
Finally reaching the front counter, I ordered. “Large coffee to go, just black coffee with no tricks, you hear! None of your hippie bean juice or rice squeezing. I just want a normal cup of coffee.” I handed the arrogant little tart my credit card. She glanced at the name on the card and gave me a smug look.
“I bet you’re that Martin guy Tessa buys coffee for once in a while.” She must have read by my expression that she was right. “Always the same. Just black, Tessa says. I expected you to be much older.”
I signed the curling slip of paper and thought about creative comments to write in the tip section. I decided to just get my coffee and leave. I would deal with this girl later. She would see me again and learn the error of her smug ways.
Sipping on the nectar of sanity, I pulled into the lot. Tessa was already back. Heading to the lab, I was greeted by a strangely friendly Rochelle.
“Were we out of coffee? You should have asked me to pick some up.” She twitched the corner of her mouth as she looked at the large java symbols on the cup. “Well, that should have been a fun experience for you. A dapper old fellow like you being exposed to the modern society of the coffee shop. I almost wish I could have seen that.”
I couldn’t help but give a small smile. “I am sure you would have loved to see it.” Looking around, I couldn’t spot Tessa. “Is Tessa in the dome with the skull?”
“No, I actually placed Alloria in the metal vault where she can be safe for a while. Did Tessa tell you Alloria has opened up and awakened me with her songs and wondrous tales? Alloria has wholly connected this body and my true spirit at last.” Rochelle gave a lazy yawn. “I can feel the world around me like never before. Recall things of the past with such clarity. It is amazing. I know how Grandmother must have felt before you put her in the ground.” Rochelle’s eyes locked onto mine. A cold feeling seemed to radiate from her.
“How do you know what my grandmother felt?” I tried to keep my expression focused and calm while I puzzled this out. What exactly had the skull done to her? Shared with her?
Rochelle’s normal innocence seemed a distant memory as she stared at me sternly. “I didn’t say your grandmother, I said Grandmother, a term I ascribe to a distant blood relation of yours. It wasn’t until today that I learned that particular relation was instead your wife. Alloria explained that “Grandmother” was just a name you called her because she grew old when you did not. She was your first wife. She was also like me, a fey spirit in a human shell, a shell that could not in turn give you a child.”
I stared dumbstruck at her.
“Oh, Alloria said you sacrificed Grandmother in some ritual to extend your own life. You were finished using her, after all.”
My mind raced as I scrambled to put the pieces together. “Rochelle, you of all people should realize that magic is unpredictable, that the skull could be fabricating tales. Yes, Grandmother was my wife for many decades. But this can be a discussion for another time!”
“Martin, my dear, I feel this is the time.” Rochelle’s hand pointed toward the dome, but her eyes were still locked on mine.
Rochelle didn’t realize that her little epiphany was not going to change things for her. I was still in control. Bridget learned that the hard way, and I’d killed her to prevent her from leaving this cage—this faerie dome. If necessary, I would kill Rochelle too. I only really needed Tessa.
“Let’s head into the circle, Martin, and the three of us can discuss the past, present, and our future together.” I threw my coat over a nearby chair, loosened my tie, and walked toward the dome. I searched through my memory for a ritual to cast to put Rochelle in her place.
Rochelle followed me; I glanced over and felt a chill down my spine at seeing her wicked little smile. I crossed the dirt path that led to the ring of stones and gasped out loud as I caught Tessa digging in the center of the circle.
“Tessa, stop it!” I shouted before I realized I was running toward her. I grabbed her arm and spun her around. She turned and gave me the darkest look I have seen in almost a half a century.
“I never wanted to believe you could do such a thing, Martin! You better pray to your gods that I don’t find what I was told is down here!” Tessa had dirt and tears streaking down her face.
I could feel the power radiate off her. I stepped back. It was time to take control; I had let this go on long enough. I whispered an incantation to draw power from the runes that lined the dome. I would need to kill Rochelle quickly, but I had plans for Tessa.
Tessa would come to her senses after she learned how she would be part of the future, how she would bear our child and help spread the old magic. I completed the incantation directed at Rochelle. Nothing happened. Rochelle should be dead, but instead she was leaning on one of the stone pillars, giggling.
“See, Tessa, I told you it is time to take back what is ours!” Rochelle’s eyes cut into me as they started to glow. “Alloria told me about your runes. I dealt with those last night. You have grown careless in your arrogance. It is too bad really; you were once so strong in the ways of the fey.”
Glancing back to Tessa, I began whispering a secondary spell, this time not of control but protection. I wouldn’t need the runes for that. “Tessa, listen to me. Sacrifices had to be made in the past to bring forth a future. Your future. Our future.” I felt the static across my arms as the protective spell snapped into place. “Tessa, come with me. I will share the whole story with you.” I held out my hand, hoping she would grab hold. Instead, she returned to digging.
Fine. Let her dig. I would deal with Rochelle. I started the words that would reawaken the binding lines of power I placed on her when she was born.
“Your words are empty to me, Martin. Your time has passed. Don’t fret, I have plans for you.” Rochelle no longer looked like that little red-haired girl I once loved. Rather, she looked like an angry goddess out for revenge.
“I will teach you a lesson, you little bitch!” I collected my anger and focused my rage, planning to use the binding spell to bring her to her knees. But my connection to the magic was gone.
Just then, I heard Tessa’s shovel impact something solid. My arm flailed out to grab Tessa’s. She turned in a flash, black hair wrapping around her head like a nest of coiled vipers. Instead, she grabbed at me—and tossed me like a ragdoll against a nearby column of stone. I heard bones break on impact—that dull crack followed by unimaginable pain. My shield was meant to protect me from their magic and spells, not from the force of a simple physical attack.
I struggled to pull a breath. It took all my inner strength to not cry out. All I could do now was watch. It seemed like hours, but I knew it was only moments before Tessa chopped at the remaining dirt and pulled open the casket. I didn’t need to see over the mound of dirt to know what she was seeing.
I had placed each metal jar in that box through the years. Each girl’s name was bound in runes, etched across the outside. They were the children who’d been given to me, some dead at birth, some dead in early years or teen years by nature or my hand. I didn’t know if Tessa was more shocked at the number I had collected through the years or to realize all of my lies, which were now exposed.
Either way, I knew she was looking for the one etched “Bridget.” Her unearthly scream signaled she had found it.
The scream pulled in the air around her, causing a strong wind to disturb the inside of the dome. My ears ached as the pressure inside quickly grew. The sound of the metal vents bending and breaking free of the ice was loud.
Tessa threw her head back and found her inner power. Breaking free of years of bondage, she made me silently proud. The air crackled, and the dome’s walls blew apart. Metal framework snapped to her will until all that was left of the ceiling was open sky.
Rochelle walked toward Tessa barefoot, unaffected by the glass that now littered the ring. “See, Tessa, I told you it would be safer for Alloria in the vault. Just look at the mess you made.” Rochelle came to me, squatted, and looked me eye-to-eye just inches away. “Well, Martin, what should we do with you now? You have been a very bad boy indeed.” She brushed the hair out of my eyes.
I tried to move, but every slight gesture sent waves of pain through my head. I fought for breath, but I could not form words. Tessa walked up beside Rochelle, and I could feel the wind gather once again. Tessa’s dark eyes bored into mine, and even with my magical shield she tore into my soul.
In the end it was Rochelle who saved me. Rochelle stood and hugged Tessa close, whispering in her ear as she held her tight. Moments later the wind was silent once again. The air was still, but cold. I could see my breath.
The taste of blood was strong. I swallowed heavily as they both looked down at me. Rochelle thrust out her hand toward me, and the world went black.

They kept me around. I do not know if it was Alloria’s teachings or their ancient gifts remembered, but they were now the ones in control of the reconstructed faerie dome. They kept me in a small cage with a few wood sticks crisscrossing the brass bars. They would put newspapers down for me, maybe to taunt me with news from a world I was no longer a part of. I would hop around trying to read parts until I would lose control of my tiny bowels and mess up the words.
I was now Rochelle’s personal pet. She would often ask me to sing.
At first I would scream at her, but she just smiled at my angry chirping. Over time, though, I learned to sing. She would close her eyes and smile, and her serene expression would make me sing all that stronger.
Where once personal power and control over others had granted me happiness, now I know the truth. Happiness is as simple as seeing someone you care about smile. If only I had learned that lesson a long, long time ago. Oh, look, a sunflower seed!

DISARMED AND DANGEROUS

Tim Waggoner

Tim Waggoner’s novels include Nekropolis, the Blade of the Flame trilogy, the Godfire duology, and others. He’s published more than eighty short stories, some of them collected in All Too Surreal. His articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest, Writers’ Journal, and other publications. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and is a faculty mentor in Seton Hill University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program. You can visit him on the web at www. [http://timwaggoner.com] timwaggoner.com.

Gleaming steel talons came streaking toward my face, and though my reflexes aren’t what they used to be, I managed to dodge to the right in time to keep from losing anything more than my left ear. I wasn’t particularly concerned. An ear’s not all that important, and I could always get it reattached later. Assuming that the demon on the other end of those talons didn’t turn me into shredded zombie flakes first.
The steel talons—possibly a surgical augmentation since the rest of the creature appeared organic—sank into the alley wall, neatly pinning my ear to the brick in the process. The alley walls were covered with leech-vine, but luckily for the demon, its talons had sunk into a patch of brick where the vine was thin. Even luckier, the inorganic substance of its talons didn’t prod the vine into attacking. The demon grunted in frustration, and the scale-covered muscles on its arm tightened as it fought to pull its hand free. This would have been an excellent time for me to turn and run like hell—or in my case, do a shuffling half-walk, half-run—away from the demon. But I had unfinished business with the damned thing. Besides, it had my ear.
A variety of specialized weaponry comes in handy in my line of work, and I reached into the outer pocket of my suit jacket and withdrew one of my most useful tools.
With a final yank the demon managed to pull its hand loose, and it turned to face me, shark teeth bared in a savage snarl, my bloodless ear still stuck to one of its talons. When it saw the weapon I held aimed at the corrugated hide directly between its eyes, the snarl became a chuckle.
“A squirt gun?” Its voice sounded like ground glass being shaken in a coffee can. “Are you insane? Real bullets wouldn’t do much more than tickle me!”
“I know.” I tightened my finger on the plastic trigger and began pumping streams of holy water into the demon’s face.
The creature howled in pain as its facial scales began to sizzle and smoke. The demon threw up its hands to protect itself, the motion dislodging my ear and sending it flying. I didn’t see where it landed; I was a bit busy. I’d look for it later—assuming I survived. I kept firing, if that’s the right term to use when your ammo is liquid, hoping to at least disable the demon, if not kill it. Unfortunately, the demon had other ideas.
Bellowing in agony, eyes squeezed shut and weeping blood, the creature lashed out and fastened its thick fingers around the wrist of my gun hand. Before I could react, the demon yanked, and my right arm came out of the socket as easily as a greasy wing parting from an overcooked chicken. I had only a single thought.
Not again!

“I have to warn you, Matt. This isn’t the prettiest work I’ve ever done. I’m a houngan, not a surgeon.”
“Don’t worry about it. I got over being vain about my appearance about the same time I stopped breathing. Look at it this way: you have an important advantage over a medical doctor. You don’t have to worry about your patient dying if you screw up.”
It was late afternoon, and my confrontation with the demon lay several hours in the future. I was sitting on a stool in Papa Chatha’s workshop, shirt off, holding my right arm in place with my left hand while Papa, seated next to me, played seamstress. His brow was furrowed in concentration, and small beads of sweat had gathered on the mahogany skin of his smoothly shaven head. His white pullover shirt and pants were splotched with stains that looked too much like blood. None of it was mine, though. I hadn’t bled for a long time. One of the advantages of being a zombie.
Another benefit was that I felt no pain as Papa sank the bone needle into the gray-tinged flesh of my shoulder. I could feel pressure as the pointed tip emerged from the ragged skin of my left arm, felt the tug as Papa pulled the thread through, but that was all. I looked away, but not because I found it uncomfortable to watch someone reattaching a limb that had once been part of my body. I’ve gotten banged up quite a few times since I came to Nekropolis, and Papa’s usually the one who gets stuck trying to put the pieces back together. I didn’t want to watch because seeing Papa at work reminded me that not only couldn’t I experience pain, I couldn’t experience pleasure, either. Not physically, at any rate.
I scanned the shelves in Papa’s workroom, taking in the multitude of materials that a professional voodoo practitioner needs to perform his art: wax-sealed vials filled with ground herbs and dried chemicals, jars containing desiccated bits of animals—rooster claws, lizard tails, raven wings—books and scrolls piled on tabletops next to rattles and tambourines of various sizes, along with pouches of tobacco, chocolate bars, and bottles of rum. Papa said he used the latter three substances to make offerings to the Loa, the voodoo spirits, and while I had no reason to doubt him, over the years I’ve noticed that he tends to run out of rum before anything else.
“There.” Papa broke off the thread with his ivory-white teeth, then tied the end into a knot. I turned back and examined the result. The stitching looked tight enough, but the pattern was uneven, to put it kindly. Papa hadn’t been kidding about the aesthetic qualities of his sewing. You’d think a guy who makes as many voodoo dolls as he does would be a better seamstress.
“Give it a try,” Papa said.
I made a fist with my right hand and flexed the arm. It moved stiffly, but that had nothing to do with Papa’s repair job and everything to do with the fact that I was dead.
I lowered my arm. “Feels good. Thanks.” I rose from the stool and went over to the chair where I’d draped my shirt, suit jacket, and tie. Most zombies wear whatever rags they died in, but I’m not your run-of-the-mill walking dead man. I’m still self-aware and possess free will. Before I came to this dimension, back when I was alive, I worked as a homicide detective in Cleveland. I wore a suit on the job then, and I still wear one now. Makes me feel more human, I guess.
Papa continued sitting on his stool while I got dressed. “Sorry I couldn’t do more for the skin, but the spells I used to fuse the bone and muscle back together should last for about a month before they need to be reapplied,” he said. “That is, assuming you don’t irritate any more cyclops.” He frowned. “Cyclopses? Cyclopsi?” He shrugged. “Whatever.”
I finished with my tie and slid on my jacket. “You know Troilus. Always trying one scam or another to make easy money. This time it was a protection racket.” I lowered my voice to a bass monotone in what I thought was a passable imitation of the cyclops. “ ‘Pay me a hundred darkgems a week or you might end up taking a bath in Phlegethon.’ ”
Phlegethon is the river of green fire that surrounds Nekropolis and separates the city’s five sections. It’s a cold fire that burns the spirit instead of the flesh, but its waters are home to giant serpents called Lesk, who are only too eager to use their sharp teeth to take care of what the flames can’t.
Papa grinned. “I assume you were hired to encourage Troilus to pursue alternative methods of securing an income. Your employer anyone I know?”
“A vampire named Kyra who has a tattoo parlor on the other side of the Sprawl, not far from the Bridge of Forgotten Pleasures. She uses living ink, and the tattoos she creates move through their wearer’s skin. It’s a striking effect.”
Papa nodded. “This is the first time I’ve heard her name, but I’ve seen her work before. So what did you do?”
“I decided on the subtle approach. I tracked down Troilus and told him that if he didn’t stop threatening people, I’d poke his eye out.”
Papa laughed. “Very subtle! Let me guess: In response, Troilus yanked your arm out of the socket.”
“That’s right. But I’m nothing if not professional. Instead of getting angry, I calmly asked Troilus to give me my arm back. People like him are used to getting what they want through violence, and he was so surprised by my lack of reaction that he just looked at me with that basketball-sized eye of his for a moment before doing as I asked.”
“And what did you do after that?”
“Undead or not, I’m a man of my word. An arm doesn’t have to be attached to be useful, you know.” I looked at the fingers on my right hand and frowned. “I think there’s still some vitreous fluid under my nails.”
Papa grinned and shook his head. “One of these days, Matt, you’re going to get yourself torn into so many bits that not even Father Dis will be able to put you back together.”
“Let’s hope that day’s a long time coming.” I reached into the inner pocket of my suit jacket and took out a handful of darkgems. My fee for helping Kyra. I hadn’t charged her much, but even though I was dead and no longer needed food or drink, I still needed money to cover the rent on my apartment and to pay Papa Chatha for his services. Not only for today’s repair, but for the regular application of the preservative spells that keep me from rotting and smelling like Lake Erie at low tide.
I held them out to Papa Chatha. “I know it’s not enough, but I’ll get you the rest when I can.”
He took the gems and tucked them into a pocket of his white shirt. “Tell you what, I’ll call it even if you stick around and play a few games of rattlebones with me.”
I hesitated before replying. Not long, but long enough for Papa to notice.
“I’d love to, but I’ve got an appointment to see another client.”
Papa could’ve asked me to call and reschedule. We do have cell phones in Nekropolis, along with our own Aethernet, too. But he just smiled—a touch sadly, I thought—and nodded his understanding. I mumbled a quick goodbye and departed Papa’s workshop. I was lying. I didn’t have any appointment scheduled, but I’d never been much for socializing, even when I was alive. Besides, I needed to scrounge up some more work if I was going to pay Papa the rest of what I owed him. Even houngans have expenses. It’s not like dried raven wings come free, you know.
And I stunk at rattlebones anyway.

Monsters are real. So are witches and ghosts and just about any other thing you can think of that goes bump in the night. They coexisted alongside humanity for thousands of years, peacefully enough for the most part. But several centuries ago Father Dis—who supposedly was worshiped as a god of death by the Romans—decided that humans were becoming too numerous and, more importantly, too dangerous to share the planet with. Dis met with five other powerful supernatural beings called Darklords to decide what should be done. Several of the Lords wanted to enslave humanity or simply exterminate the pests altogether, but in the end it was decided that the Darkfolk, as supernaturals call themselves, would relocate to another dimension, a realm of darkness called the Null Plains, and there they would create their own home, a vast city to rival any that had ever existed on Earth.
Nekropolis.
The Darklords didn’t completely sever their ties to Earth, though. After all, not only was it their original home, the Darkfolk had all sorts of uses for humanity’s technology—not to mention humans themselves. Five mystic portals between Earth and Nekropolis were created, each one controlled by a different Darklord. I came through one of those portals as a living man, chasing a suspect in a series of ritualistic murders that had happened in Cleveland. By the time I’d finished with, as Elvis used to say, TCB, the suspect was dead and I was too. Except I didn’t stay that way. I couldn’t return home as a zombie—without Papa Chatha’s preservation spells I’d eventually rot away to nothing—so I had no choice but to remain in Nekropolis and try to make a new life for myself here. It was easier than you’d think. I didn’t have any family or friends to speak of back home, and Darkfolk aren’t all that different than humans, not deep down. They have needs and desires, and while most try to fulfill them lawfully, many don’t. Too many.
Since I was a cop on Earth, I use those same skills to pay the bills here. But Nekropolis doesn’t have an organized police force. Each of the five Darklords sees to justice in his or her domain, while Father Dis—with the aid of his squadron of golemlike Sentinels—oversees the entire city, including the Darklords. But just like back home, justice isn’t always applied fairly and consistently in Nekropolis, and that’s when people turn to me, Matthew Richter, zombie PI.

Papa Chatha’s workshop was located in the Sprawl, a riotous maze of streets and buildings ruled over by Lady Varvara, the Demon Queen. Although ruled is too strong a word. The Sprawl is a combination of Times Square on New Year’s Eve, Mardi Gras, and Carnivale in Rio—a never-ending party with Varvara serving as eternal hostess. I make my home here, not because I’m especially fond of the chaotic anything-goes atmosphere, but because I’ve had a few run-ins with the other Darklords, and I’m not exactly welcome in their domains. Besides, this is where all the work is.
Case in point: Only a few moments after I left Papa’s, a woman came hurrying up to me. I’d never seen her before; if I had, I’d have remembered. She was beautiful, with long blonde hair that fell halfway down her back, and she was well over six feet tall, with a trim, well-toned body. The state of her physical fitness was easy to assess because she wasn’t wearing any clothing. Not that she was naked, exactly. From the neck up, her skin was a creamy ivory, but from the neck down—excluding her hands—it was black. Not African-American black, but black-black. Obsidian. The color created the illusion that she was wearing a black skin-tight body suit, especially in the shadowy half-light provided by Umbriel, the dark sun which shrouds Nekropolis in perpetual dusk.
“Excuse me—are you the dead guy who helped out Kyra, the tattoo artist?”
She stopped as she reached me, out of breath, and I wondered how far she’d run to find me. All the way from the other side of the Sprawl, I guessed, given her mention of Kyra. That meant whatever her problem was, it was urgent. At least to her.
“That’s me. Matthew Richter.” I offered my right hand for her to shake. My arm movement felt a little loose and wobbly, and I wondered if Papa’s repair job was already starting to go bad. It’s not like him to do shoddy work, but then again, reattaching entire limbs isn’t normally part of a houngan’s repertoire.
The woman eyed my hand for a moment before giving it a perfunctory shake. Citizens of Nekropolis are generally tolerant of racial and species differences, but even here, few people are thrilled to touch a zombie’s flesh.
“My name’s Maera.” She looked as if she wanted to wipe her hand off, but since she wasn’t wearing any clothes, she didn’t have anything to wipe it off onto other than her own body. As she struggled with this dilemma, I took the opportunity to examine her more closely.
She was strikingly beautiful, especially given her wardrobe choice, so much so that I wondered when someone would finally get around to inventing Viagra for zombies. But if I had any doubt about Maera’s beauty, I had only to look around at our fellow pedestrians. All the men on the street, and more than a few women, gazed at Maera with intense interest. Some seemed to merely appreciate the aesthetics of her appearance, while others—most notably the vampires, ghouls, and lycanthropes in the crowd—clearly hungered for her, and not just sexually. I wasn’t certain what race she was at first. Back on Earth, racial distinctions mattered only in a social sense, and even then they were only part of an individual’s background, not a defining quality. Individuality is just as important a factor in Nekropolis, but racial qualities carry more weight here. When dealing with someone on these streets, it’s important to know if in the back of their minds they’re considering eating you, drinking your blood, possessing your body, devouring your soul, or any combination thereof.
Maera’s teeth were blunt, and she had no excess body hair or feral gleam in her eyes. So she wasn’t one of the Bloodborn or a lyke, and she was far too attractive to be a ghoul. She wasn’t a ghost or a revenant. Her handshake had been too solid and firm. I thought for a moment that she might be human, perhaps one of the witchfolk known as the Arcane, but then I noticed multicolored flecks in her eyes rotating slowly, like small organic kaleidoscopes.
“You’re a demon,” I said.
She nodded. “How could you tell?”
“I’m a detective. It’s my job.” Clients expect you to say stuff like that. It’s all part of the package they’re buying.
I didn’t add that she was extremely beautiful for a demon. They come in all shapes and sizes, and some of them can change their form as easily as you or I change clothes. But no matter what body they appear in, they can’t disguise their eyes.
Maera continued. “Kyra’s the one who did my . . . outfit.” She gave me a tentative, almost shy smile. “I saw her today, and she told me how you helped her with the cyclops, and I thought . . .” Her fragile smile fell away and she looked as if she might cry.
“You’re in trouble, and you need help.” I didn’t need to be a detective to figure this part out.
Maera nodded.
“Tell me about it.”
She drew in a trembling breath and started talking.

“They’re holding him on the second floor,” Maera whispered.
We were standing close together in an alley across the street from the building in question. So close that, if I hadn’t been dead, I could’ve felt Maera’s breath in my ear as she whispered. I was disappointed I couldn’t. There are a lot of things about being alive that I miss, and you can probably imagine most of them, but it’s the small, unexpected things I miss the most. Like a woman’s breath on my skin.
This was one of the seamier neighborhoods in the Sprawl, and that’s saying something. The sidewalks were cracked—when they were paved at all—and the buildings looked like they were made out of crumbling sandstone instead of brick. The windows were boarded or barred, and probably protected by cheap wardspells that were just as likely to backfire and injure the residents as repel intruders. Leech-vine covered walls and roofs, and rat-like vermin skulked through the shadows, fighting over whatever rancid treasures they came across. The few pedestrians that were either brave or foolish enough to walk the street moved with quick, determined strides, expressions coldly neutral, gazes alert for any challenge or threat. None of them appeared to be armed, but I knew they were, some of them heavily so. No one came here without a means of protecting themselves, myself included.
The building Maera had pointed out looked no different from any of the others on the street, but then, if what she’d told me was true, it was important the occupants didn’t draw attention to themselves.
“How many?” I asked.
“I only saw two. The rest of the building was deserted.”
Appeared deserted, I amended mentally. “How long ago was that?”
“It was early, before noon. I was too upset to notice the exact time, though.”
According to Maera’s story, this morning she and her lover—a male demon named Finn—had been on their way to the Six-Legged Café, one of Nekropolis’ more specialized eateries, for a breakfast of live cockroaches and blood-fattened ticks. But before they could reach the restaurant, a pair of men approached them and drew obsidian daggers with intricate runes carved into the blades. The instant nausea that surged through Maera’s gut told her the weapons were Dire Blades, knives created specifically to slay supernatural creatures of all kinds. Of course, as sharp as the daggers were, they were quite capable of killing nonsupernatural beings as well. Dire Blades were so lethal to supernaturals that it hurt just to hold them, and there was only one group in the city tough enough to wield them: the Dominari, Nekropolis’ version of the Mafia.
The two mobsters—a werewolf with cybernetic implants and a creature that resembled a bipedal lobster with opposable thumbs on its claws—told the demon lovers that they had come to collect the darkgems Finn owed them. Maera had known Finn loved to gamble—after all, they’d met at a tangleclaw table—but she hadn’t known that her boyfriend had been dumb enough to borrow money from a Dominari loan shark to finance his hobby. A hobby, as it turned out, that he was spectacularly bad at. Finn had been sure he’d win enough to pay back the darkgems he owed along with the steep interest the Dominari toughs wanted. But Finn had hard luck and even less skill, and he didn’t have a single gem to his name, and Maera didn’t have much more than what it would take to pay for their buggy breakfast.
The Dominari sharks were less than pleased, but when they saw how beautiful Maera was, not to mention the striking way she “clothed” herself, they decided to cut Finn a break. They wouldn’t kill him on the spot . . . if his gorgeous girlfriend used her unnatural assets to earn the money Finn owed them. Maera started to tell Techwolf and Lobster-Head that she had no intention of prostituting herself for them, but before she could get more than a couple words out, the lycanthrope pricked Finn on the back of the hand with his Dire Blade. That brief touch was enough to cause the demon to scream in agony, and Maera, tears streaming from her kaleidoscope eyes, told them she’d do anything they wanted, just as long as they didn’t hurt Finn anymore. After that, the two Dominari toughs escorted the demon lovers to this blighted neighborhood and marched them into the abandoned building across the street. Inside, in one of the upper rooms, they shoved Finn onto the floor and bound him in manacles made from the same enchanted obsidian as their Dire Blades, rendering him helpless. Then Maera received her instructions on just how much money she had to make and how fast she had to make it in order to pay back the debt Finn owed the Dominari and save his life. And she was warned that if she so much as looked in a Sentinel’s direction, let alone told her tale of woe to one of the golems, Finn would die for certain, and she’d be next.
Filled with despair but seeing no other choice, Maera returned to her usual stomping grounds in the Sprawl, picked out a street corner to conduct business on, and prepared to do what she had to do. But before she could attract her first customer, Kyra saw her and came over to talk, specifically to tell her about what this zombie PI she’d hired had done to a certain greedy cyclops earlier. Maera realized then that she did have another choice, and after asking Kyra where I could be found, the de moness abandoned her street corner and hurried off to search for me.
At least, that’s the story Maera told. But she was a demon, and her kind had been known to tell a fib now and again. I was withholding judgment on her tale until I’d had a chance to check it out more thoroughly.
“You stay here and keep out of sight,” I told her. “I’ll go see how the land lies.”
Without waiting for her to reply, I left the alley and started across the street. Instead of walking, though, I shuffled, dragging my left leg and allowing my arms to dangle loosely at my sides. I canted my head to the left and let my mouth gape open. If I’d been able to produce any saliva, I’d have drooled. There aren’t many benefits to being a zombie, but instant camouflage was one of them. Walking—or rather shuffling—dead are common in Nekropolis, so much so that people pay them little attention. As long as I don’t moan “Braaaaaaaiiiinssssss . . .” and try to take a bite out of someone’s skull, once I go into my act, I might as well be invisible.
I made it to the sidewalk in front of the Dominari sharks’ hideout without drawing any undue attention to myself. I doubted I’d done so unobserved, though. The sharks would either have sentry wards on the building to warn them of anyone’s approach, or if they were too cheap to pay for the spellwork, one of them would be keeping watch on the street through a window, mostly likely one of the two on the second story facing the street. I couldn’t simply look up and check without risking blowing my disguise. Regular zombies aren’t bright enough to recognize a building for what it is, let alone understand what windows are. But there was a way to make that work for me.
I continued shuffling toward the building and bumped into the wall, like a goldfish bopping its nose against the glass of its bowl. I was careful to avoid the leech-vine clinging to the front of the building. It couldn’t do much to me since I was already dead, but it would snag hold of me nevertheless, and I couldn’t fight my way free without ruining my act. I stumbled back from the wall, waving my arms erratically and looking around in confusion: right, left, down, and then up. If anyone was watching, all they would see is another brain-dead zombie perplexed by the seemingly magical appearance of a large solid object in his path. And when that zombie looked up, he saw a dingy, tattered curtain drawn away from the right second-floor window, and then a second later, he saw it fall back into place. I didn’t get a look at whoever had been standing at the window. Considering the dark light cast by Umbriel, everyone in Nekropolis is usually standing in shadow of one sort or another. But the movement of the curtain was enough to let me know that someone was indeed on the second floor of the building, and that whoever it was knew a zombie had come calling. I just hoped they bought my act and decided I was a harmless nuisance to be ignored.
I stumbled around for a moment as if unsure what to do next before finally heading down the sidewalk toward the alley at the side of the building. I was tempted to look back across the street to see if Maera had done as I’d told her, but I didn’t want to give her away in case I was still being observed. I shuffled into the alley, did my bump-into-the-wall bit again, and looked up. Leech-vine completely covered this side of the building, so thick that I couldn’t tell if there were windows here or not. I decided to take a chance that if there were, the vines would block any view of the alley, and I hurried to the other end at my usual less-than-breakneck-but-faster-than-a-shuffle speed. I knew the longer I took to reconnoiter the place, the more time whoever was inside would have to get suspicious.
Behind the building was a cross alley that provided a lovely view of the backsides of another row of vine-covered hovels. Detritus filled the alley, along with rats, cats, dogs, vermin, and other less-identifiable scavengers, all sifting through the open landfill for whatever they could find to eat, including each other. But I hadn’t come here to observe the local fauna in action. I’d come in search of a back door, and I’d found one. The problem was, it was wide open and someone was standing in the doorway grinning at me—someone who now possessed a fancy new ocular implant in place of the eye I’d poked out earlier.
“Hello, Troilus. Whoever your cyber-doc is, he, she, or it did a decent job.” In some ways, the technology in Nekropolis is more advanced than Earth’s. The physi ognomy of supernatural creatures—given their overall strength and healing capacity—lends itself far more easily to biomechanical and genetic enhancement than humans. Troilus’ eye implant was a little crooked, it wept pus, and from the way the skin around it had blistered, I knew the machinery was running hot. The image resolution was probably substandard too, but all in all, not bad for what had surely been a rush job completed by a street surgeon.
The cyclops was bald, though he had a curly black beard. He was heavily muscled, and wore a white tunic, black belt, and sandals. The front of the tunic was stained reddish brown, and it took me a moment to realize that Troilus hadn’t changed it since this morning. He’d either been in one hell of a hurry for revenge, or he was a mega slob. Probably both, I decided.
“I think I actually did you a favor,” I said. “Your cyber-eye makes you look twice as intimidating as you did before. Of course, it also makes you look twice as ugly too, and I didn’t think that was possible.”
Troilus’ large hands curled into equally large fists. “If you got any more jokes, you better tell them fast,” he growled. “Because when I get hold of you, the first thing I’m going to do is rip out your tongue so I don’t have to listen to you yammer on anymore.”
I contemplated a witty rejoinder, trying to decide between I don’t give tongue on the second date and Go to hell, asshole, when I heard trash rustle behind me. “Hello, Maera. I was wondering when you were going to show up.”
I turned around and, sure enough, there she was, looking beautiful as ever, kaleidoscope eyes glittering, lips stretched into a cold, cruel smile.
“There’s no Finn and no Dominari loan sharks,” I said. “Just a pissed-off cyclops and his demon friend.”
“Business associate,” Maera corrected. “You didn’t think Troilus planned to go into the protection racket by himself, did you?”
“I suppose he’s the brawn and you’re the brains.”
Her smile widened, pliable demon flesh stretching farther than a human’s could without tearing. I’d seen similar effects before, but it was still disturbing to watch. “Actually, we’re both brawn.”
Maera’s attention-getting form blurred and shifted, and when she’d finished rearranging herself, instead of a beautiful naked woman with a black body-suit tattoo, standing before me was a hulking reptilian demon with steel talons jutting forth from its thick scaly fingers.
“This your real shape?” I asked.
Maera shrugged her massive shoulders. “I’m whatever I choose to be.” Her voice had become high-pitched, brittle, and grating, like metal fragments and glass shards rubbing together.
“That’s true of everyone, one way or another,” I countered.
A heavy hand gripped my shoulder, and Troilus turned me back around to face him. “Spare us the philosophy,” he said. “I got enough of that from the damned Greeks.”
“Tell me one thing before you start dismembering me.” Before Troilus could deny me, I hurried on. “You could’ve jumped me anytime. Why bring me here, and using such an elaborate cover story to boot?”
It’s hard to read the expression of someone whose only eye looks like a large camera lens, but a smug tone crept into the cyclops’ voice. “To humiliate you, of course. You think you’re so smart, so tough . . .” He sneered. “How does it feel to know that you’ve been outsmarted by a pair of street crooks?”
“If it ever happens, I’ll let you know.” While Troilus had been talking, I’d reached into my pants pocket and pulled out a handful of narrow white plastic pouches. I took one between my thumb and forefinger, aimed it at Troilus’ new eye, and squeezed. The packet burst under the pressure and thick red liquid splattered his lens. Before he could react, I took hold of the remaining packets, squeezed them in my fist, and smeared the gooey red results onto the cyclops’ tunic to join the stains already present.
“What the—what is this gunk?” Troilus reached toward his ocular implant to clear his lens, but all he succeeded in doing was smearing it around more.
Maera laughed. “It’s ketchup, you moron!” The demon looked at me. “Is this your idea of a secret weapon?”
“That’s right.” I grabbed hold of Troilus’ arm, spun him around once, kicked him in the kneecap to knock him off balance, and then shoved. I’m not any stronger than I was when alive, but I had the advantage of surprise. The cyclops went stumbling backward and landed on his mythological ass in a pile of trash.
Maera laughed even harder, but the demon’s laughter quickly died away as the first of the alley’s hungry scavengers—attracted by the smell of the ketchup—began to swarm over Troilus, Mostly bugs at first, but larger creatures swiftly followed. Within seconds, Troilus was screaming and thrashing about, trying to shake off his attackers. But his exertions lessened, his screams diminished, and soon he lay still and quiet, and the scavengers were able to continue feeding in peace.
Maera gaped as she watched her partner’s remains being swiftly and efficiently disposed of.
“Everything tastes better with ketchup,” I said.
Maera turned to me, her kaleidoscope eyes flashing with fury, and thrust her steel talons toward my face.

“I already had that arm reattached once today, and I still haven’t paid for it!”
Maera grinned as she tossed the limb in question aside. Her scaly hide was dotted with charred, smoking patches where the holy water had struck, but the wounds weren’t enough to incapacitate her.
“Forget the arm,” she said. “You’re not going to need it anymore. As a matter of fact, when I’m through, you’re not going to need your body at all.”
The demon continued grinning as she came toward me. I’d dropped the squirt gun when she tore my arm off, and the weapon lay on the ground. I could operate it with my left hand well enough if I could get hold of it, but there was no way I could get past Maera now. I stepped back as Maera advanced, and I felt myself bump into the alley wall. Coils of thirsty leech-vine wrapped around my body, barbs penetrating my clothing and sinking deep into my flesh, pinning me in place.
“Perfect!” Maera said in delight. She stopped in front of me, close enough to reach me but not so close that she was in danger of being attacked by leech-vine. “The way I figure it, you’re already dead, so the leech-vine won’t hurt you. It’ll probably let go of you in a minute once it realizes there’s nothing inside your veins for it to feed on. But it should hold you still long enough for me to tear your head off. If you’re dead, you can’t be killed, and that means you’ll stay conscious even after you’re decapitated.” She leaned in closer, and her grin widened. “I’m going to take you home and make you my pet. I might get a birdcage for you, or maybe I’ll just keep you in a box. Who knows? I might start a whole new trend: pet zombie heads!”
She reached out with her steel-taloned hands, but before she could take hold of my head, I spoke.
“You’re right. Leech-vine can’t hurt me, and I can continue to survive as just a head. But you forgot something.”
Maera’s thick brow wrinkled in a frown. “What?”
“My arm.” I nodded toward the ground.
Maera looked down just time to see my arm—which had crawled over to us in the time it had taken the demon to advance—snatch hold of a leech-vine tendril and jam it against it her reptilian foot. The vine, realizing it had something alive to feed on, released me and whipped a dozen tendrils toward Maera. She screamed as the leech-vine covered her body and pulled her tight against the alley wall. The air was filled with soft slurping sounds as the vine began to drain the demon’s blood, but I didn’t look. Maybe Maera, like Troilus, had deserved what she got, but that didn’t mean I had to gloat about it. I understand death better than most, and I know it’s never something to celebrate.
With a sigh, I bent down to retrieve my arm for the second time that day. I tucked the limb under my remaining arm and walked out of the alley, headed back to Papa’s.

“So when did you first become suspicious of Maera?” Papa asked. For the second time that day, the voodoo priest worked on reattaching my arm, but with one difference: Instead of using a needle and thread to hold the skin together, he employed a hot soldering gun. I wondered what burning zombie flesh smelled like, and I was glad my nose was as dead as the rest of me.
“When Maera first approached me, she told me she was a customer of Kyra’s. But Kyra specializes in living, animated tattoos that move across the wearer’s skin—Maera’s full-body tattoo didn’t move. That didn’t mean that Kyra couldn’t have done the work, but it started me thinking.”
Papa squinted one eye shut as he worked, and while the smell didn’t seem to affect him, I noticed he made sure to breathe through his mouth. “And where did those thoughts lead?” he asked.
“Maera’s story sounded good on the surface, and it’s exactly the sort of thing the Dominari does, but that was the problem: It sounded too good. Why would Techwolf and Lobster-Head take both Finn and Maera to their hideout? They could’ve given her their instructions when they first accosted the two demons on the street. Why waste time forcing Maera to accompany them to their pesthole of a neighborhood? The faster she started turning tricks, the faster the Dominari would get their money back.”
“Maybe the loan sharks didn’t want to conduct their business in the public eye.” He gave me an embarrassed smile. “If they’d been real, I mean.”
“I’ll admit Maera’s story wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility. The loan sharks might’ve wanted to make their demands on her in private, and they might’ve wanted her to see Finn in manacles, just to drive home the point that they were deadly serious. And despite their warning not to seek help from the Sentinels, Maera might’ve decided to take a chance on the zombie detective that had helped out her friend Kyra. But that was one too many might’ves for me. I decided her story was bogus, and after that, it was just a matter of playing along until I could figure out what her game was.”
“And you nearly ended up as a talking head in a birdcage for your troubles,” Papa said. He touched the hot metal tip of the soldering gun to my shoulder one last time, and then leaned back. “Finished. Try to take it easy on the arm for the next few days so the spells have a chance to take hold fully, all right? Same with the ear.”
“Sure thing.” I reached up with left hand and touched the ear Papa had also reattached. The arm worked and the ear didn’t fall off, so all was right with the underworld—at least for the time being. I got up from the stool and slipped on the pullover shirt that Papa had lent me. My suit jacket and shirt were riddled with holes from where the leech-vine had grabbed me, and while Papa had used his soldering gun to seal the punctures on my dead flesh, he drew the line at tailoring. Considering how bad his sewing was, I didn’t mind.
Papa rose from his stool, turned off the soldering gun, and placed it on his workbench to cool.
“There’s one last thing,” I said. “Since Maera’s story was a lie—”
“She didn’t pay you,” Papa finished. “Which means that not only don’t you have the darkgems to cover the balance on your last repair, you can’t pay for this one either.”
“Afraid not.”
Papa grinned. “No worries. You’ll pay when you can. You always do.” He stuck out his hand and we shook.
I’d told a small lie of my own to Papa just then. There was something more about Maera, something that I’d learned from her and Troilus. Solitude can be all well and good, but sometimes it’s nice to have a friend.
“If you have the time, I’m up for a game of rattlebones,” I said, then added, “If the offer’s still good.”
Papa looked at me, and for a moment I thought he might comment on my change of heart, but instead he grinned even wider and clapped me on the back gently, careful not to ruin his latest repair.
“Always, my friend. Always.”

GOOD MORNING HEARTACHE

Bradley P. Beaulieu

Bradley P. Beaulieu is a writer of speculative fiction who figured he’d better get serious about writing before he found himself on the wrong side of a lifelong career in software. His story, “In the Eyes of the Empress’s Cat,” was voted one of the Notable Stories of 2006 by the Million Writers Award. Other stories have appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Writers of the Future, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and several DAW anthologies. He lives in Racine, Wisconsin, with his wife, daughter, and two cats, where he enjoys cooking spicy dishes and hiding out on the weekends with his family. For more, please visit www. [http://quillings.com] quillings.com.

“Baby, you practiced today?”
No response, but I could hear him in his room talking with someone and playing that hip-hop garbage of his. I’d had a long, long day, and maybe I shouldn’t have been so keyed up, just walking in the door, but I swear someday that child is going to be the death of me. I walked straight to his room and cracked my head against the door trying to open it. It wasn’t locked—no son of mine is having locks on his door—but there was something piled up on the other side. The talk stopped, and I heard them shuffling around inside.
And I smelled it.
“Lord have mercy, baby. I told you you can’t be smoking that stuff in my house.”
The door opened and Dion stood there. He looked shamed, but mostly he was defiant, like I was the enemy. As time had gone on he’d done that more and more, and every time he did, I lost a little bit more of myself.
Combs sat on the far side of the bed in his big old coat and his retro afro, acting cool as summer tea.
“Give it here,” I said. “Now.”
It took a minute, but Dion went to his computer desk and from behind the monitor pulled out a small bag of weed. He handed it to me while staring down at my worn work shoes.
I shook the bag at Combs. “You bring this into my house?”
He sat there, his face blank, unapologetic.
“I brought it, Mama,” Dion said.
I stared at Dion, sure he was lying. He knew—though I hated to admit it—that I wouldn’t do much to him. But Combs . . . I catch him bringing weed into my home, his parents are going to hear about it, the cops, his pastor, even his grandmama who lives in Tennessee is going to hear about it.
“Go on home.”
He left without saying a word while Dion fell onto his bed.
“When’s this going to stop?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “It was only a little bit.”
I took a deep breath, fighting the urge not to walk over and hit him upside his little corn-rowed head. That wasn’t the way to win him back; his third time running away had taught me that. He’d been gone nearly a month when the cops found him sleeping in the attic of a South Bronx row house that looked like it was ready to cave in on itself. I couldn’t afford to give him another reason to go back to those people. He’d be selling for sure.
If he wasn’t already.
“What would your father say?”
He opened his mouth, and I could hear the words already—can’t say nothing, he’s dead—but he changed his mind, I think, because he dropped his head and said, “Sorry, Mama.”
“You’re talking to Dr. Michaels about this next Monday.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“I asked if you’d practiced today.”
He shook his head.
“You got a recital in ten days, Dee.”
“I know the songs.”
“Not if that mess you played last night is what you’re calling know.”
He stared at me.
“Well?”
He went into his closet, which was hardly more than a pile of CD cases and computer cables and keyboards, and grabbed his trumpet case. He threw it on the bed and tried to walk past me.
“Where you think you’re going?”
“We’re out of Coke.”
“No, no.” I pointed to the case. “Go on. I’ll get you your Coke, Massah Dee.”
“Shut up, Mama.”
I headed down in our slow-as-hell elevator and stepped out after reaching the basement.
And then I stopped in my tracks.
Ten feet ahead, blocking my way to the locker room, was an old black man lying on the painted concrete, peering into a metal case the size of a lunch box. As soon as he realized he wasn’t alone, he stood, dreadlocks flying. He towered over me.
The first thing that popped into my head was rape. I was only five-five; he was at least six-two, and he must have outweighed me by a hundred pounds.
I backed up, ready to run.
He grabbed his case and charged after me. I turned, screaming for help, but before I knew it he was right by me, shoving me into the wall.
I cowered against the cold, cinder blocks, but he just kept on running, past the elevator and into the stairwell leading up to the first floor.
I sat there, breathing. Part of me knew I should get up and get back upstairs, call the cops. Another part of me, the part that was confused and angry, wanted to know what the hell he was doing breaking into our basement.
I stared at the door to the locker room, still gasping for breath, and then it hit me. Dee!
Knowing the elevator would take too long I ran to the stairs and climbed the eight floors up to our apartment. The door was open, like I’d left it, and when I stepped inside, nothing, thank the Lord, seemed different.
As I listened to Dee practicing his trumpet down the hall, the tightness in my shoulders and arms released.
Seconds later, though, the hairs on my arms stood up.
Usually Dee would play “Mo’ Better Blues”. Poorly. It was his favorite song and the one I’d used to get him to sign up for the Music Outreach program at school. His instructor had given strong praise those first few months, but ever since then Dee had been putting in the bare minimum, practicing only when I pushed him and talking about the recitals as though they were worse than civics.
Tonight, though, he was playing “Good Morning Heartache”. Billie Holiday’s lyrics were replaced with sad and soulful notes that reminded me of a lazy river. He played beautifully. Perfectly.
I opened his door slowly to find him sitting on his bed, eyes closed, playing the song with a mournful expression on his face. I swear, in that moment, that boy was Satchmo in the flesh.
“Dee?”
The song cut off, leaving a breathless silence between us.
He blinked, looked up at me with a confused expression.
“How’d you do that?” I asked, wanting to hear him talk more than I wanted to hear an answer.
“Do what?”
“Play like that.”
He shook his head as he stared at the trumpet.
“I haven’t started yet, mama.”
The hairs on my neck stood just as high as the ones on my arm. “Yes, you did. You were playing an old Billie Holiday song.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “No, I wasn’t. I just took it out.” He smacked his lips and put a face on as though he’d just spent three waterless weeks in the Mo jave. “Get me some Coke.”
“Please,” I said, too unsettled to be angry with his tone.
“Please.”
I backed slowly out of his room and went to the kitchen. I waited for him to start playing, and when he did it sounded like it always had: “Mo’ Better Blues”, cracks and stutters and missed notes galore.
I put on two sweaters that night.
I never did get warm.

I saw the old man again a week later. Dion was out the door early for an extra lesson before school. I followed for a few blocks to make sure, and then, as I was headed for the subway stop, I saw him walking on the other side of the street. He wore a tattered army coat and a grease-stained fedora that barely contained his dirty pile of dreads. I hid behind an old yellow Cadillac and waited as he crossed the street, looking into that box as he went.
He followed in Dee’s tracks, sending a chill right down my spine, but he came to a stop before reaching the next street light. After a minute of confused glances between the box and the street ahead of him, he turned around and headed right back toward me, sending my heart right up into my throat.
He saw me for sure, but I don’t think he recognized me. I let him pass, avoiding eye contact, and then followed.
He’d been after Dee, I was positive, and maybe in his crazy old man way he thought he still was. He took out a child’s xylophone from inside his coat and began playing it with a piece of beef jerky. He went to the subway station, the same one I used to get to work, hitting that damn xylophone with his jerky and listening to it as if he were tuning a piano.
I sat across from him and tried not to draw attention to myself. He had taken out a stethoscope and was holding the chestpiece against the stainless steel handrail next to him. His eyes were closed and he had a look of concentration as if he were working three of those Su doku puzzles all at once. He placed the chestpiece on another part of the railing, his eyes closed, that pinched look of focus still squarely on his face. Between his rag gedy brown shoes was that metal case.
By the time we’d hit two more stops, I’d finally summoned the courage to confront him. I leaned forward between the Wall Street types and slapped his knee. He didn’t respond. I was just leaning forward to tap him again when he opened his yellowed and bloodshot eyes. He stared at me without a single ounce of charity, which, if you know me at all, only added fuel to the fire.
“What were you doing in my apartment?”
He blinked his eyes as if he hadn’t seen me at all until just then. “I weren’t nowhere.”
“Don’t you give me that. You were in my basement last week doing something—” I pointed to the metal box “—with that.”
He glanced up at the other people, who had started to watch the exchange. “Did no such thing.” He said the words, but his face turned sad, regretful maybe. The stethoscope was in his ears, and as the train rose along the track, his eyes went wide. He placed the chestpiece back onto the rail and made a sound like meh-meh-ma, and listened carefully.
Then in a flash he grabbed the box, pulled himself up, and bulled his way past the suits to the door as the train came to a stop at Grand Central. The second the doors opened, he was blowing a bosun’s whistle and cutting through the crowd like a plow blade. While people began filtering onto the train as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, I stared, angry as hell that he would just run off.
I shot off the train right as the doors were closing.
When I reached the main concourse, I heard his whistle and headed toward the exits. I followed outside into the bitter cold, jumping above the crowd as I went, and saw him heading west. But then his whistling stopped, and I lost him.
I was headed back toward Grand Central when I saw him sitting at one of the small tables in Bryant Park, his box resting next to him. He was facing the trees while morning commuters walked past, but he wasn’t paying them no mind. He had a heartfelt smile on his face, and he was leaning to one side, toward an empty chair, and talking softly, like you would with someone you love. He looked just like my granddaddy used to when the family came over for a barbecue. I’d hide as he watching everyone play on the back lawn. He seemed so happy, maybe the happiest he’d ever been, and I wondered what this old man was thinking as he watched.
“Who you talking to?” I asked him.
As if the bubble of his dream had burst, he looked up at me, then back at the bench, then at me again. The smile on his face hardened like mud cracking under the Texas sun.
“Why don’t you mind your own damn business?”
That got me mad all over again. “What were you doing in my apartment?”
“Told you I wasn’t.”
He started rifling through his coat. I don’t know what he was looking for, and I definitely don’t know what came over me, but while he was occupied, I darted forward and grabbed his metal box.
It was much heavier than I thought it would be. “What is this?” I peered through the small hole, expecting to see naked women inside.
Instead there was the mouthpiece from a trumpet hung from the top of the box with a piece of black, curly hair. I grimaced, wondering if it was his own or someone else’s. Pasted to the sides were ripped pieces of maps, a lot of it Manhattan, but I recognized the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, even Jersey City.
Pain ripped along my fingers as the old man jerked the box away. Then he grabbed my face with a grimy, burly hand and shoved me backward, hard.
I remember hearing that mouthpiece clatter around the inside of the box as I fell and struck my head against the paving blocks. Pain rang inside my head as the man towered over me screaming obscenities, each word releasing a puff of white breath into the brisk winter wind. I cowered. I thought he was going to bring that box down on my head, but people had started to gather. When he realized that, he turned and ran.
The people at the library took me in and cleaned up the cut at the back of my head. I was an hour late getting to Bellevue, and my boss didn’t seem to like my excuse, even after I’d shown him the cut. He sent me home without pay and a request to think about what it was I wanted to do in life.

I had calmed down somewhat by the time I got home, but my gut started boiling the minute I stepped foot off the elevator. My apartment was only two doors down, and I heard voices, kids laughing.
I tested the door slowly, thinking it might be locked. It was, and I used the key carefully to unlock it and step inside.
Dee was sitting on the couch along with Combs and two of his little hoodlum friends, all of them playing that damn chicken game on the PlayStation. On the long table just behind our beige couch were a few dozen prescription medicine bottles. I closed the door quietly; the boys were all eyeing me.
Dion at least had the decency to look ashamed. The others, though, stared at me as if I were some little bitch stepping on their turf. Combs moved around the couch and started stuffing medicine bottles inside the pockets of his oversized winter coat. The other two stared at Dion.
“What is going on in this house, Dion James?”
“Nothing, Mama.”
“Leave that stuff there,” I said to Combs, but he just glared at me and kept stuffing medicine bottles, filling my home with the rattle of hundreds of tiny pills.
I stepped forward, heart pumping like a steam engine. It was all I could do not to let it show, to start screaming for Dion to go to his room and for the boys to get out. But this wasn’t just weed. This was serious crime right here, something that’d get Dion time if the cops got involved.
I stepped up to Combs and stared him straight in the face. “I said leave that there.”
“Hell, no. This here’s mine.”
“You think the police’ll agree?”
“You ain’t going to call no police, Moms. You’re going to shut your mouth and leave it to me.”
“Get out of my house.”
He put the last of them in his pockets and then turned. Even though he was only sixteen, he already stood taller than I did.
“We gone . . .” He stepped closer, and I don’t think my heart had ever beat faster than at that moment. “Gotta go see the man, anyway. But we cool, right?” He stared down on me, his eyes half shaded and cool. I could smell alcohol on his breath.
I practically whispered my next words. “I told you to get out.”
Combs smiled, a smile that promised what he would do if I did call the cops. “Yeah, we cool. Come on, y’all.”
They left, the other two staring at me like Combs now that I’d been backed into a corner.
The moment they were out into the hall, I slammed the door and locked it. Then I rounded on Dee. He backed up behind the coffee table. “What are you doing, boy?” I ran around it and slapped him across his head. “What are you trying to do to us?”
He cowered and dropped into the lounger in the corner, but I kept whaling on him until he was screaming for me to stop.
“I’m sorry, Mama!”
“Don’t you sorry me!” I pointed to the table where the medicine had been stacked. “What is this?”
“I don’t know. It’s for some guy Combs knows.”
“They stealing those?”
“No.”
I stared at him, not believing a single word coming out of his mouth. “Are you stealing those?”
“No! I go with, but not into the houses.”
I reeled back. I could feel Dee slipping away from me. The way he was staring at me, the way he’d been acting lately, especially these past few months. I’d become the enemy. I swore I’d send him out to Oklahoma to live with his grandma if he kept messing with boys like Combs and skipping school. But the idea of him leaving . . . I don’t know what I’d do without him.
“We’re talking to the counselor about this,” I said.
“Yes, Mama.”
“Get to your room.” I slapped the crown of his head. “I can’t stand to look at you right now.”
He didn’t say a word as he marched past. The door to his room clicked shut a moment later.
“And I’d better hear Wynton-fucking-Marsalis coming up out of that room for the next two hours. You stop, your lips better be bleeding like Bleek’s, you hear me? There better be a cut the size of the Rio Grande.”
He played for hours, but it was as bad and lifeless as ever.

I was sitting close to the stage, where the school orchestra was arranged in a half-circle. Dion was playing with the brass section on the left side. I couldn’t help but smile. Times had been tough, but Dee had tried hard these past few days, and he was doing real well tonight. Real well.
Then came Dee’s song. It was an extended version of “Summertime” where seven of the kids came up to the podium for solos. As the song started and moved on, I hardly heard a note. I was too busy watching Dee and smiling when he looked over. Lord, how my heart swelled seeing him up there in his black pants and red sweater and white button-down shirt. He wore his clothes with flair. He was gorgeous, my baby boy.
As little Marilee stepped down with her clarinet, the crowd erupted as if it were the Apollo, and Dee wove through the other kids onto the podium.
The song faded to a whisper. Dee started to play, and it was fine—not perfect, but fine. Then a shiver went down my frame like an old car refusing to stop. Dee had started to play well. Real well. His eyes, instead of watching the crowd, closed, and his face hardened into a soulful look of concentration, as if he’d been lost in the song for so long he couldn’t find his way out.
The playing was perfect. Miles Davis perfect. Lord, Louis Armstrong perfect.
I got up from my seat and walked right up onto that stage. Dee didn’t see me, but he woke up when I grabbed his arm and shook the trumpet away from his mouth. One last high-pitched squeak filled the auditorium as the instrument fell from his hands and clattered to the stage.
The band stopped. There wasn’t a sound in the place, but then everyone started talking, a low rumble that filled the auditorium with my shame. Everyone was staring at me, wondering if I’d lost my mind.
I didn’t care. I scanned the audience and found him sitting near the back. He got up immediately—taking his little metal box with him—and stormed out through the middle set of doors.
I pulled Dee off stage and whirled him around.
“Who are you?”
He squinted and shook his head. “Mama, why’d you do that?”
“Do you even remember being up there?”
He glanced back at the podium, then back at me with a confused expression on his face. “I don’t . . . A little. Didn’t I do well?”
He was covering. He didn’t remember a thing.
“Stay here,” I told him as Mr. Mitchell came my way.
“Mama?” I heard as I headed quickly for the rear exit.
“Stay right there! And call the police!”
I ran out through the stage exit and headed for the front of the building. Snow was coming down in dime-sized flakes, and a fresh layer of it covered the street, but I had sensible shoes on. I hoped the old man had tripped or got hit by a cab on his way out.
I saw him a block away by the time I came to the front. I ran across the street—nearly got hit by a cab myself—and charged after him. Then he turned a corner, and I lost sight of him. I turned right and cut through an alley. I grew up around here—I knew some shortcuts, and I was not about to let some fat old fool get away from me. No I wasn’t.
I caught him near the playground. He’d tried to hop over the chain link fence, and his coat got snagged. When he saw me running, he tore it free and kept going but slipped on a patch of ice when he hit the basketball court. His metal box went skidding away from him.
“What in the hell did you do to my boy?” I asked as I picked up the box.
He tried to get up, but I used my foot to shove him down again.
The street lamp nearby flickered, and then I realized he was crying.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. You have a fine boy, and I didn’t do nothing.”
Somewhere among the buildings of Harlem I heard a police siren turn on.
“Then what happened?”
He looked at me, and then the metal box I was holding tight. The lamp flickered like lightning, and the siren came closer.
I backed up as he rolled away and came to his feet. He held his hands out as though he was showing me he wasn’t armed. “It won’t happen again. You can keep the box to make sure.”
“So what won’t happen again?”
He backed away farther as the sound of the siren increased sharply. “He turned and ran.
I let him go, confused as I’ve ever been in my life.

I rang the bell of number three at the gorgeous Brooklyn brownstone I found myself standing in front of three days later.
“Yes?” came the voice of Evangeline Thurman over the intercom.
“My name is Virginia Gaines. We spoke on the phone?”
“And I told you I wasn’t interested in talking.”
I swallowed. She was my only hope for figuring this out. “I brought the box, Ms. Thurman. It has some things from your son. I thought you might like to have it.”
There was a pause. Every second that passed felt as though my heart was going to pound right out my chest.
The door buzzed. “Third floor on the right.”
Her apartment was decorated with dozens of beautiful African artifacts. She sat across from me on a bamboo chair. She had snow white hair and pale skin for a black woman, but her eyes were bright and her smile could stop traffic. She looked more than a little bit like Billie Holiday. I wished I had looked half as good at forty as she did right then.
“The box?” she said.
From my Strand book bag I pulled out the contraption. When I’d unscrewed the top of the box and peeled back the bits of map glued around the interior, I’d found yellowed old clippings from the Times referring to Rondell Washington. That clipping didn’t have a date, but another one did, and after a little research I’d found the obituary, dated December 25th, 1986. My whole body had gone tingly as I’d read it. It talked about the suicide of a promising young trumpet player who’d killed himself by leaping from the Triborough Bridge on Christmas Eve. It spoke of a promising career in music cut short, of a recent audition with the Count Basie Orchestra, of the parents, Isaiah and Evangeline Washington, left behind. It hadn’t taken too much more to find her phone number.
Evangeline leaned forward and took the box. “I’m familiar.” She began to inspect it.
“He’s made others?”
“A few. The police, sooner or later, find him somewhere he shouldn’t be, and they’ve taken them away from him. He won’t go near a police station nowadays. The police give me the boxes.”
“What do you do with them?”
“I toss them in the trash. What do you think I do with them?”
“I think he uses them to find your son, maybe call to him, I’m not sure which.”
Evangeline nodded. “That’s what he believes, yes.”
“What do you believe?”
She raised one eyebrow, and I suddenly felt foolish before this graceful old queen. “They don’t do dick all, Ms. Gaines.”
“Virginia.”
“Virginia. My husband, even before he lost his mind, was obsessed with keeping the memory of our son alive. For months after the funeral, he’d play those sad little tapes he’d made of Rondell. He called in to work sick more often then he went, and they offered to help, but Isaiah wouldn’t have none of it. So what were they going to do? They had to let him go. But that just gave him more time to pursue his—” she sent a sour expression toward the box “—hobby.”
“Please, Ms. Thurman. I need to find Isaiah.”
Evangeline smiled and leaned further back into the creaking bamboo chair. “It’d be best if you leave this all alone. Call the police. They know about him. Tell them he’s bothering you, and they’ll send some cars around, keep an eye on you.”
I shook my head. “I can’t do that. My son’s involved now. He’s been . . .” It sounded strange now that I was about to say it aloud. “He plays the trumpet . . .”
I stopped because Evangeline’s face had become cross.
“Did he put you up to this?”
“Who?”
“My ex-husband is who.”
“No, why would you—”
“Ms. Gaines, I’m in no mood to be played the fool.” She pointed to the door. “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave.”
I stood and looked her square in the eye. “My son’s been playing jazz for a few months. Lord help me for saying, but he’s not good—believe me, I know—but I swear to you the night I first saw your husband, I came upstairs and found my son playing ‘Good Morning Heartache,’ and then again when Isaiah came to the school, Dee played the song of his life. He was Louis and Dizzy and Miles all wrapped up into one.”
“What song did you just say?”
“ ‘Good Morning Heartache.’ It’s a Billie—”
“I know what it is.” Evangeline stared at me for a long, long time. Her arm reached out, and she stood and steadied herself against the back of the chair. “My husband tell you about that song?”
I shook my head no.
Her lips pursed, and she took a deep breath before speaking again. “I’ll tell you something, Ms. Gaines, and then you’re going to leave.”
I nodded.
“Isaiah has a lock of my son’s hair. I don’t know where it is, and don’t you think for a minute I believe in any of this, but the point is my husband does. If you take that from him, if you destroy it where he can see you doing it, I think he’ll stop.”
I thought back to the piece of hair that was suspending the mouthpiece inside the box. “Why haven’t you told the police about it then?”
She shrugged, her eyes beginning to water. “It’s the last thing he has of Rondell’s. It’s the only thing he values anymore. I suppose I kept hoping he would come out of it on his own, but if he’s really on to your son like you say he is, then maybe this is best.”
“Thank you, Ms. Thurman.”
She turned away from me and stared out the window without saying another word.

Dee was gone when I got home. I had a terrible, terrible feeling about this. I waited, hoping he’d come back, but then I couldn’t take it anymore. I called the police and was on hold when a knock came at the door. I hung up immediately and found Jordan, one of Combs’ little friends, standing there looking nervous.
“You best come, Ms. Gaines. Dion’s in trouble.”
“Where?”
“I’ll bring you.”
We ran ten blocks until we came to an apartment building off Martin Luther King. We went around the back, but I could hear it before he made it to the alley-way. Someone somewhere was playing a trumpet. The sun had already set, but by the light still coming out of the west I could see Dee, ten stories up, standing on top of the building’s water tower, playing “One More for My Baby” to the New York sky. Lying on the asphalt between me and the building’s dumpsters were the shattered remains of a wooden ladder.
We went in through a rear door that looked as though it had been jimmied open. We took the stairwell as quickly as we could. Jordan stopped on the fourth floor, unable to keep up, but I kept going, the thought of my boy jumping off that tower playing through my mind over and over again.
I could hardly breathe by the time I made it to the top. The service door hung open. Combs was standing there, trying to talk Dee down from the tower, but Dee was ignoring him, just standing on the edge of it, playing that song. I looked for some way up, but then I remembered the broken ladder ten stories below.
“Dee, can you hear me?”
The song continued, sad and lonely. Soulful.
I sidestepped until I reached the edge of the roof, and I saw Isaiah staring up at us.
“Combs?” I said softly.
Combs looked between me and Dion as if he couldn’t decide which one he wanted to pay attention to.
“You strapped, Combs?”
His gaze locked on me. “You don’t need no gun, Ms. Gaines.”
“I want you to give it to me and then you’re going to get on out of here.”
“Ms. Gaines . . .”
“Combs, give me your God damn gun.”
He must have seen something in me, heard something in my voice, because after one little minute he reached inside his huge coat and pulled out a Saturday night special. He handed it to me and headed for the service door.
“Tell that crazy old man down there to come on up.”
He nodded and left.
“Dee, you can stop playing now. Mama says it’s all right.”
The song came to an end, and he started playing “Good Morning Heartache.” I got so cold when it began because I knew—I knew—he was going to jump when he finished that song.
“Rondell, that you?”
The song faltered, the first time I’d heard that happen while Rondell was inside my boy.
I tried using sweet words to talk him down. I tried pretending I was his mother. I screamed at him to stop playing and get off that tower. But all my words were ignored. Suddenly another thought occurred to me: This wasn’t the first boy to commit suicide like this. It couldn’t have been. Isaiah had been chasing Rondell for years. I wondered how many young men had died because that poor boy’s father had refused to let his son go.
Isaiah came limping out onto the roof.
I trained the gun on him. “Where is it?”
He looked up to Dee and then back to me with a look of shock on his grimy face. “Where is what?”
“Rondell’s hair, where is it?”
Even by the light of the setting sun I could see him go pale. “What do you mean?”
The song was nearly finished.
I stepped forward, putting my entire being into my shaking fist to make him understand that I would kill him without another thought if it would save my Dee.
“Enough have died, Isaiah! Give me the hair. Let Rondell go!”
He looked around as if searching for something. He wrung his hands, his face on the verge of tears. Then he breathed in wetly and stood up taller. “I can’t do that,” he said. “Go on and shoot if you need to, but I can’t kill my boy.”
The song stopped.
My heart fell through to my stomach. I nearly threw up.
I looked up to Dee. He let the trumpet clatter to the steel roof of the water tower and stared down.
The gun was still trained on Isaiah. I squeezed the trigger, felt the pressure of the spring as I came closer and closer to releasing the hammer. I should kill him. I should kill this man for letting my son die.
But I couldn’t do it. I released the trigger and trained the gun on Dee instead.
I squeezed once, the gun reared back as the air around me thundered.
Somewhere nearby a host of pigeons took flight.
Dee was still staring down, oblivious to my badly aimed shot.
I squeezed again. Please, Lord, let me miss anything vital.
The mouth of the gun roared.
Dee screamed and fell to the roof, clutching his leg.
“Rondell!” Isaiah screamed.
Blood was dripping down the side of the tower. It crept hungrily along the rusted side and began to patter against the tar-patched surface of the roof.
I went over and smeared my hand in the blood, coating my palm real good, and then I stalked over to Isaiah and held it inches from his face.
“This is my son’s blood.” I pointed up to the tower with the gun. “That’s my son up there ready to kill himself. Your son died twenty years ago. Now give me his hair, Isaiah, or I swear I’ll shoot you now and burn your whole body up and hope it was on you when I did.”
His eyes never left my hand. I could feel the blood trickling along my palm and dripping along my wrist.
“Rondell . . .”
“Let him go, Isaiah.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath and then reached up and took off his stained fedora. He pulled at the back of his head, feeling around his dreadlocks, until he came to one he liked. He pulled it along the front of his face, and there, tied with several pieces of twine, was a long lock of hair. He untied it carefully and gathered all the pieces into his hand and gave them to me.
I accepted them, realizing I had nothing to light them with.
From his coat Isaiah dug out a Zippo lighter and an old scrap of newspaper.
“You keep the lighter,” I said. I wrapped the hair into the newspaper, rolled it up tight, and held it out for Isaiah.
Isaiah flicked the lighter to life and touched the flame to the end of the paper. It burned slowly, lighting Isaiah’s sad face with a ruddy glow. The smell of burning hair and the sounds of sniffling, mine and his, filled the cold air—that and the sound of Dee’s moaning.
“I’m coming, baby. Don’t you worry. Mama’s coming.”

A year later, I was sitting in Bryant Park, reading my paper. I could hear Dee’s trumpet playing a ways away, and if I looked up, I could see him between the trees, sitting with Isaiah. Isaiah had turned out to be a fine trumpet player and an excellent teacher. Six months after the incident on the roof, he’d shown up at my door, telling me he’d been to therapy, courtesy of the state, and he’d just been let out. He said he’d started a job tutoring young men in the trumpet and could he please speak with my son, just for a minute.
I didn’t hold any anger for him anymore, but I told him no. He kept coming by once every few weeks, very friendly, asking if he could just play one song for Dee, see if he wanted to learn more about it. I kept saying no, but I was worried. Dee hadn’t taken to the teacher in the outreach program, and Combs had started coming by again.
That was what did it. I couldn’t let him slip back into that life.
The next time Isaiah came around, I gave him permission. They’d practiced together once or twice a week since then, mostly at Bryant Park and always with me watching.
I checked my watch and seeing it was time, I gathered my things and headed on over, but I stopped as I approached.
Dee was playing “Mo’ Better Blues,” eyes closed, soulful.
It was close to perfect, but it wasn’t Rondell or Dizzy or Wynton or Miles. This was Dee’s. He’d made the song his own.
Lord, how my heart swelled seeing him playing there, a small crowd watching with smiles on their faces.
Isaiah caught my eye. Then he nodded as if to lift my spirits, to say Dee’ll be fine.
I nodded back, wiping tears from my face, saying I know.
I know he’ll be fine.
My baby boy.

’TWAS THE HAPPY HOUR AFTER CHRISTMAS . . .

Robert Wenzlaff

Robert Wenzlaff lives in his hometown of Toledo, Ohio, with his children and pet chinchilla, but he has lived and traveled throughout the country while serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. Of late he finds himself as an electrical engineer in the civilian world working on projects almost as fantastic as he writes about in his fiction. Being a fan of science fiction and fantasy since the eighth grade, he took to writing late in his college days, polishing his craft slowly over the years as much as the rigors of military and family duty would allow. Joining a local writer’s group in the Toledo area, he is further honing his skills by trying to bring the fullness of his experience into the stories and characters he brings to life.

Two days ago, a man in a red fur suit would have been invisible in any bar in New York City. But when this one stepped from his cab in front of the Thrundheim Bar and Grill on the day after Christmas, Thor knew he must be seeing the real thing.
“Is that really you, Nick?” Thor called from behind the bar in a rumbling voice, as the man in red walked through the front door.
The old man slowly raised his eyes toward the bar-keep and flicked the tassel of his hat over his shoulder. Behind the twinkle in those eyes was a deepness Thor knew all too well—the bedraggledness of a thousand years.
“Lord of Thunder,” the man’s soft voice drifted across the nearly empty bar, “I’d doubted the rumors, but it is you.”
Thor grabbed a towel from under the counter and wiped a space for his honored guest. “You must be tired after last night.” He gestured to the stool behind the freshly cleaned space. “Please, Nick, have a seat.”
Santa scanned the place as he walked over. He set his bag on the floor next to the stool. “Are you sure we can talk here?” He crooked his head toward the two men sitting in the corner booth.
“Don’t worry about them. They’re mortal, but I don’t think Frank’s been sober since Thanksgiving, Jerry maybe since the Fourth of July. So what can I get you?”
Santa tried a soft chuckle as he took his seat, and a jolly “ho” spurted out. “I’d love to have whatever they’re having, but I—”
Thor grabbed a mug from the stack, deftly flipped it over, and drew frothy ale from the tap.
“Oh, that looks so good,” Santa pulled off his hat and set it on the bar and began working off his mittens as Thor slid the beer in front of him. He looked longingly at it and continued, “but as I was about to say, I fear it’s still too close to the holidays.” Santa reached out and grabbed the drink. The ale turned to milk at the instant of his touch. He sighed. “See what I mean?”
Thor let out a raucous roar that echoed through the bar. “Oh, the good old reality-bending human subcon sciousness still has you firmly in its grip.”
“It lightens up around mid-February. But it’s all milk and cookies from October till then.” Santa stared at the glass.
“That’s gotta suck.”
“At least since the nineteen-thirties I can enjoy a Coke once in a while.” He poked at the pile of hat on the bar. “But I have to put up with this red and white abomination to get that. Marketing geniuses—what a pain in the ass.”
Thor chucked. “I may be officially retired, but I still have some tricks.” Abruptly he pounded both fists on the bar, and the whole building shook, rattling the bottles and glasses stacked behind him. A clap of thunder echoed in the distance.
Startled, Santa threw his arms in the air and jumped to his feet, knocking his stool over. He glanced over to the booth, and Thor followed his gaze. Frank had looked up, but he didn’t seem interested. Jerry hadn’t even noticed. Santa looked back to his mug. Once again it was full of beer.
“Told you those two weren’t a problem. Go ahead, Nick. Take a drink. It should last a while.” Thor tossed a bag of pretzels from the rack behind him onto the bar.
Santa raised the glass to his lips and savored a long, slow sip. He set the glass down and licked the foam from his mustache. “Ho, ho, ho, indeed.” He tore into the bag of pretzels. “Just how long can you make that last?”
“Oh, an hour or so. I’ve been working on that spell for a while. The Neo-Pagans have been trying to rewrite my retirement plans lately, so I have to fight back occasionally by using magic. The subconscious can be a bitch, having to bend to every whim of humanity. But we knew that was the deal when we became immortal.”
“Ho Oh,” Santa shook his head as he stood his seat back up, “It was never like this when I took the position. Fifteen hundred years ago change was a slow thing. It would take decades, even centuries, to make any noticeable changes in my mythos. Now with television and the Internet . . . and lord knows whatever they’ll come up with next . . . one well placed commercial or TV special, and the humans can undo years of careful planning. Even in my hometown, they replaced my saintly statue with one of those red plastic monstrosities.”
Thor tilted his head, drew back the corners of his mouth, and nodded in agreement as he polished a glass.
“Of course, I’ve been trying to make that work for me,” Santa continued, “I have agents seeding images of me in my more traditional garb all over the place.” He pointed to the hat on the bar. “They say that maybe in a year or two I can go back to wearing wreaths instead of this silly thing. But even they’re not sure if they can ever get my miter back. It’s so frustrating.”
“I had an agent once. The only thing he ever got me was a comic book and a dirty joke.”
“I’ve heard the joke. It’s pretty damned funny.” Santa raised a pretzel to his lips. “So how are things with your folks?”
“Frij is still around,” Thor replied. “Earth goddesses like this realm. Dad? He took an executive consultant position with the big guy. Goes by the name of Uriel now. You know Dad, he has to be in the boardroom even if he’s not in the big chair.”
“I always wondered about that. I mean you can’t just add archangels.”
“He even got his eye back. Jesus took care of it.” Thor stroked the braid of his long red beard. “I’d figure you’d be up on all the new politics, Saint Nicholas. I mean, you are one of the new management’s ringers.”
“Oh, the whole ‘saint’ thing is largely a ceremonial title.”
Thor thought for a moment. “Aren’t all titles?”
Santa laughed. “Good point.” He took another drink. “Tell me, Thor, how did you end up here?”
“I tried to take over the family mythos for a while, while Dad was out of it. But when Dad switched sides, I knew it was a losing battle, especially with the giants gone. We’d worked so hard, accomplished so much, that the world didn’t really need us. I wasn’t a critical icon anymore, so I retired. That was probably five centuries ago. It’s not too bad living among the humans, once you get used to the idea.” Thor’s cheeks turned almost as red as his beard. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Santa sighed looking into his glass. “You know, I’ve been thinking about retirement myself a lot lately.”
The red from Thor’s cheeks faded. “You can’t mean that. You can’t just walk . . .”
“Why not? You did.”
“That was way different, and you know it. I was at the bottom of my game when I quit. I had maybe a few hundred diehard believers. So little power was sent my way that I had to get a day job and start eating to survive.
“But you, Santa,” Thor continued, “you’re at the top. The mortals’ tug-o-war stinks sometimes, but if you’re not there to receive that power, then . . . I shudder to think what might rise up to fill that void.”
“I know how it’s supposed to work, Thor, old friend. I just don’t know if I can keep it up. They think I start making toys for next year on the twenty-sixth, now. The wife and I haven’t had a vacation in almost a century. You wouldn’t believe how much power I had to expend just to get down here to talk to you.” He sipped at the last of his beer.
“Oh, I’d believe it.” Thor set down his towel and began unbraiding his beard. “I have a crazy thought. You need a vacation, maybe I can help.” He puffed up his whiskers with his fingers, slouched forward and jutted out his stomach.
The last of Santa’s beer sprayed past his lips he laughed so hard. “Ho ho. A tall, buff, red-haired Santa Claus? I’m sure the world would go for that.”
“Well, we can work on the disguise. Get some over-the-counter hair color maybe.”
Santa raised his hand to his chin and studied the Thunder God. “I know you can handle the weather. This could actually work.”
Thor stroked his beard again. “You know, for a retirement gig, this bar is really great. But I can’t say I haven’t occasionally had a longing to be back in the mythical for a while. So we’d be doing each other a favor.”
“Tell you what, Thor, you head up north and look after the elves, and the Missus and I can look after this place for a few months.” Santa stroked his beard in exactly the way Thor had earlier. “I could be your older brother watching the place while you’re on holiday.”
“Nobody around here would notice, as long as they got served.”
“The toy production end isn’t as huge a deal as it used to be, especially since the whole operation went commercial, but there’s plenty to keep up on. You just have to make sure the elves stay focused. Since that Tolkien movie came out, they have this strange desire to go west. Just remind them that at the North Pole, you can only go south and they usually shake it off. Now if we can just get the Frost Giants to get over their grudge—”
“Frost Giants?” Thor asked with raised eyebrows.
“I use them as security.”
“You have a pressing need for security at the North Pole?”
“More than you’d think. Those damned nuclear subs have been popping up through the ice since the Fifties. The giants’ snowscreen spell is all that’s kept proof-of-magic out of the world.”
“Oh, I hated that spell. I wandered around Noden dorf lost for weeks because of that. But I think I have an angle the giants will buy. Yeah, we can make this work.”
“Nancy wanted the Bahamas, but New York City is a nice vacation spot, too. I’ll have my legal elves work out the details.” Santa smiled and pushed the empty mug toward the Thunder God. “One more for the road. This year I have reason to celebrate.”

ELI’S COMING

Linda P. Baker

Science fiction/fantasy author Linda P. Baker’s novels are The Irda and Tears of the Night Sky, with Nancy Varian Berberick. She has short fiction in more than a dozen anthologies, including First Contact, The New Amazons, Time Twisters and Pandora’s Closet. Linda, her husband, Larry, and their Airedale terrier, Grady, live in Mobile, Alabama. They enjoy anything Celtic, antique auctions, reading, and walking with Grady. Grady enjoys walking, riding in the car, napping, singing, and chewing up doors.

“ The one has awakened.”
It was an interesting pronouncement, but Lida would rather Melisande had predicted a customer coming her way. Without taking her chin out of her hand, she swiveled her head to look at the woman next to her.
Melisande had her Tarot cards laid out in an odd spread Lida had never seen before and was leaning over them, murmuring as she sometimes did when reading for herself.
It had been a slow week in the Market, and Lida was nowhere near making her rent. The tourists, identifiable by their determinedly bright clothing, were more interested in choosing between faerie-made amulets and vials of vampire blood than in having their fortunes told, and the city dwellers and the locals were staying home because the clouds hovering overhead had been spitting rain at odd intervals for several days.
Melisande dug around in her purse, coming up with the box that held her oracle. She tipped the contents into her palm, closed her eyes for a moment, then opened her fist and let the objects rain down on the cards. She paused for a moment, her eyes flickering over the tiny figures and pieces of metal and stones and crystals. “Its heart is stone.”
Lida peered at the well-worn Tarot cards. The way Melisande did readings, using odd spreads and topping them off with her oracle, made it impossible for Lida to interpret. “What does it mean?”
Melisande’s fingers hovered over the cards. “I’m not sure.” She fingered a piece of dark, pitted stone that lay in the center of the top card. Melisande was the truest, most gifted seer Lida had ever met, and for her to be unsure of a reading was beyond odd. As Lida shifted her chair closer, something moved among the rows of greenery that lined a nearby space. She turned, gaze locking with a man who was staring at her over the leaves of a plant. Not the old man who sold the plants or a bright white tourist. A silver man.
The sight of him shot through Lida. It was as if the moon suddenly broke through the clouds and blotted out the watery sunlight. Her skin and her toes and even the ends of her hair tingled.
He looked like a statue carved of marble. He was tall and broad shouldered. And so strikingly silver. He had gray hair shot through with silver, and his pale silver-blue eyes crinkled at the corners. He wore a long, elegant silvery-gray wool coat. He wasn’t handsome—his lips were thin and his nose was almost too large for his face—but he was so elegant it didn’t matter.
Lida smiled, somehow delighted. She didn’t normally have such a reaction to men—or to women or anything that lived, for that matter. It wasn’t that she disliked people. It was just that, with all their movement and jostling and breathing, people seemed so much less interesting than things that were eternally still. She willed him to stay there, frozen, for just a moment longer.
But of course, he moved, flushing as he realized he’d been caught staring, or maybe because she was staring back. He returned her smile, glanced past her to Melisande, and started toward them.
For the first time, Lida felt a dart of dislike for Melisande. Not because of her talent, but because of her rich brown curls and her emerald green eyes and her mysterious beauty.
Beside her, Lida felt dishwater blonde frizzy and rumpled and uninteresting, which was usually fine because she didn’t care about drawing anyone’s attention. She just wanted to make enough money to pay her rent, keep her stomach from rumbling, and buy art supplies. This time, she cared. She wanted this elegant, silvery man to sit down opposite her.
Before he could slide past her, she motioned to the chair across from her and cleared her throat to say, “Would you like your cards read?”
He hesitated and put his hand on the back of the chair as if he might actually be considering her offer. “I—” He cleared his throat, too. “I have no coin with which to pay you.”
His slight accent was unidentifiable, but his voice was as silvery gray as the rest of him. Deep, smooth, cultured, but cautious, as if he wasn’t sure of his choice of words.
Despite the shortcoming—a richly silver man who apparently had no silver to spend—she shrugged and gestured again for him to sit. His scent, dry like clean wool, wafted across the table.
She knew without looking that Melisande was gaping. Lida’s rent was due in a few days, and there she sat, offering a reading for free.
Lida picked up her cards as he sat down. “What’s your name?”
He hesitated, and she could practically see his mind working behind those pale eyes. Clicking through possible choices.
“Eli.” He said it with a hint of a question, as if he wasn’t quite sure, then paused as he searched for a last name to go with it.
She rescued him. “There’s a building near my apartment that used to be called the Elias Building. Is your name short for Elias? Or Elijah?”
Again that hesitation. Alarm bells should have been sounding in her head, but . . . Lots of people in this part of the city didn’t use their real names. “I’m Lida. It’s short for Alida.”
“Lida.” He said her name as if he was tasting it.
Lida rotated her shoulders as a tingle shivered across them. The thought of his tongue on her name made her insides feel all silvery. “Is there a question you’d like answered?”
Confusion showed on his face.
“By the cards?” she prompted.
“Ah . . .” He watched her hands moving as she shuffled the cards. “I cannot think of a question.”
She stopped shuffling. “It’s okay. I’m a little short on answers today.”
He shifted, maybe bracing to rise, and she put out her hand to stop him. “I’ll bet you’re a hot chocolate drinker. Would you like to get some? I know a coffee shop that makes it with cream and real chocolate.” That bold, speeding voice couldn’t possibly be hers! She barely talked to the few people she knew, much less babbled to complete strangers. But she didn’t want this man to walk away.
“Yes,” he said. “I like hot chocolate. But I have no—”
“It’s okay,” she rushed in. “My treat.”
“Treat?” His voice said plainly that he didn’t understand the use of the word.
She laughed. “Where are you from?”
Again, there was that hesitation as he searched for an answer.
Pasts were like names in the District, either disposable or too personal to ask about so casually, and she instantly regretted being so blunt, so she smiled to make amends. “My treat. That means I’ll buy the hot chocolate.”
“Ah. Yes, thank you. That would be nice.”
She stood and wrapped her cards in a silk scarf and tucked them into the pocket of her skirt. “You’re not from around here, are you?” Still a touch personal, but it seemed safe enough.
“I was not born here. I live—lived here for many years. I have been away.”
Lida quickly folded her small table, then the chairs. “Look after my things?” she asked Melisande. She knew it was no imposition. The plantseller let them stow their chairs and tables in his booth at the end of the day, and when one of them needed to leave before he was ready to close, the other always put both sets away.
“Lida—” Melisande motioned her close and indicated the cards and stones. “He sees with the eyes of a child. He is an angel of blood.”
Lida looked at the cards and stones, but she couldn’t see what Melisande saw. Besides, the cards could be talking about anyone, or any creature, now or sometime in the future.
She leaned down and whispered back, “I’ll be okay. At least we know he’s not a vampire.” She glanced back at Eli, standing in the watery sunshine. “And he can’t be a demon, ’cause I can see him.” She patted Melisande and turned away.
Eli extended the crook of his arm.
The old-fashioned gesture pleased her, and Lida took his arm, waving back at Melisande, and mouthing, “I’ll be fine, really,” as they walked away.
Eli headed out through the Market. He looked around curiously as they wound their way past stalls and tables and tarps laid out on the ground. He paused at a table to run his palm over a blanket supposedly woven of antique werewolf hair.
“It’s more likely to smell like a wet dog than a werewolf,” she whispered.
He looked shocked, but before he could respond, a little terrier snarled at them from under the table. Eli started.
Laughing, she led him out of the Market and down a cobblestoned street that was one of her favorites in the District. She loved how the buildings crowded together and leaned in over the narrow street as if they were eager to see what was coming around the corner. “Do you know this part of town?”
He looked around. “Yes. Many things are changed, but buildings can always tell you where you are.”
Lida liked the strange way he phrased things. “I love buildings. And statues, and rocks, and most anything that just sort of sits and watches instead of jumping around and stirring up air. I usually like buildings more than I like people.” She smiled up at him to show he wasn’t one of those people. “There’s just something so mysterious and alluring about an old building.”
She paused to lay her hands on the building they were passing. The bricks were smooth with age, and she could smell the slow deterioration of the ancient mortar holding them together. “It’s been here so long it’s almost alive. But alive in a way that’s serene and sweet and wise, not noisy.”
“You can hear them?” Eli asked.
He didn’t sound as though he was teasing, so she answered him honestly, “I wish I could. But I can’t, so I pretend they can hear me instead.”
She looked back at Eli, half expecting him to be looking at her as if she were crazy, but he seemed fascinated.
He put his palm next to hers on the bricks. “This one does not like that it has become many small living spaces. It does not like all the walls. It was once a large store, filled with spices and flour and barrels of nails and bolts of silk from far away. It misses the scents of that time.”
Lida laughed aloud and pointed to the next building. “What about that one?”
Eli closed his eyes, concentrating. “That one, however, likes the small spaces and the people who live in them. It likes the way their feet sound on the wood floors.”
“And that one?” She pointed down the street, to one of her favorites. On its corners carved faces peered out from behind ornate whirls and bunches of limestone leaves.
Eli smiled. “That one wants you to talk to it more.”
Lida laughed again, delighted with him and the warm swirl of arousal that began at her feet and slowly twisted up, rising from the cobblestones like heat on a summer day. It made her happy to think that he might actually be hearing those things. And if he wasn’t, well . . . that was okay, too, because . . . well, because he was silver and elegant and unusual. And though he moved and breathed, he didn’t disturb the air. “Who are you?” she asked. “What are you?”
He turned, brushing his fingertips against he seam of his elegant coat, almost covering that little hesitation tic.
“Well, you’re not a vampire.” She waved her hand around to indicate the daylight. “And you’re not a werewolf, because the dog at the market didn’t like you. And you’re not a ghost or a demon, because I can see you.” Her voice died away. She hadn’t really meant to tell him that. She hated the falsely sympathetic, pitying looks she got when people learned she had no sense of Shadow.
“I don’t understand.”
She grimaced. “I’m a null.”
He shook his head, clearly not understanding the term.
“A mundane.”
Still no sign of comprehension on his face.
“A null is someone who has no supernatural talents and can’t see Shadow creatures.”
“But you do have supernatural talent,” he protested. “You have the gift of sight, of reading the cards.”
“Oh. That.” Lida flushed and strolled on, trailing her fingers along the bricks. “I can get by, but my ‘sight’ is mostly just common sense and observation and knowing what the cards mean.”
He fell into step with her. His expression was unreadable, but if she had to guess, she’d think he was disappointed. But why should he care that she was a null?
“Anyway, I just do that to earn the rent. My real passion is—” She stopped abruptly, because she really hadn’t meant to tell him that. He just seemed so easy to talk to the words just came flowing out, almost like she’d been talking to him forever.
“Is what?” He touched her shoulder to stop her.
A flood of fear and excitement jolted her stomach. She’d never shown another living soul her real passion. Only the shadows of her apartment had ever seen them. “My sculptures.” Before the words could retreat into her throat and hide, she blurted, “Would you like to see them?”
Eli extended his arm. “I would like that.”
Before she could change her mind, she tucked her fingers into the crook of his elbow and led him back the way they had come, toward her apartment.
The clouds sank lower as they walked, and the first big drop of rain landed on Lida’s nose just as they reached her building. She took a quick step into the alcove that sheltered the front door, but Eli hung back, holding out his hand to catch the raindrops. He rubbed them between his fingers, smiling, as if he’d never felt water before.
He sees with the eyes of a child. He is an angel of blood. Lida’s fingers trembled as she tried to fit her key into the lock, fear dislodging the warm fire in her belly. But was she afraid of him, or of what she was about to do?
After a moment more of enjoying the rain, Eli joined her. With raindrops sparkling like silver sequins on his shoulders and clinging to the strands of his thick hair, he looked more like an angel of water.
The image kept her grinning through the walk across the lobby and the clackety elevator ride, then her trepidation returned. What if Eli looked at her sculptures and turned away with disappointment or mumbled polite, insincere compliments the way people did when they didn’t know what else to say? But surely a man who could listen to buildings would understand what she was trying to do with clay and stone?
She pushed open the door and ushered Eli in. The entirety of her living area was combined in the first huge room. She paused in the middle, seeing it as he must be seeing it—a huge room with a basic kitchen, plain dining table and chairs, a rickety bookcase, a much used, overstuffed chair, and a couple of thrift store lamps. The bedroom area and the door to the tiny bathroom were curtained off with large panels of mismatched material strung on rope. The whole space smelled of the oil paints and clay and stone dust.
Eli went to the door of the other room, slipping off his coat. Underneath, he wore a dark gray suit that fit his broad shoulders as if it had been tailored for him.
He hesitated in the door to her studio as she took his coat. “May I see your work now?”
She delayed the moment when she would have to take him in by fussing with the coat, smoothing the soft wool, folding it carefully before laying it across a chair. “I’m having second thoughts. I’m afraid you’ll think they’re terrible.”
“Will it matter if I do?”
She stopped and thought, really thought, wrinkling up her forehead. She had only just met him, so it shouldn’t matter. But it did.
He held out his hand. “I’m sure I will like your work. And I promise not to tell you if I do not.” And then he smiled with a crinkly good humor that lit his eyes and made them even bluer.
She couldn’t help but laugh and motion him into her studio.
There were mediocre oil and acrylic paintings standing against the walls, watercolors, a few pretty good pencil drawings, and several really good photographs taped up. And hidden behind two wooden folding screens were her sculptures. Not hidden because she was ashamed of them, but because they seemed as if they needed privacy and shadow.
Eli peered at the photographs taped to the screens. They were her favorites, photos of the granite and limestone building visible just out the windows, the Elias Building she’d mentioned to him. It was the grandfather of buildings in the District and in a sad state of disrepair, but she’d been in love with it since she was a child. It looked as if it had started out to be something grand, a church or a theater, but was never quite finished. One of the towers on the far side had no spire, and the arches near the top were mismatched. But it had life, and a jumbled, lopsided charm. And best of all, gargoyles.
She’d taken the apartment despite the warehouse-tall ceilings that sucked away warmth in the winter, and the creaky floors, and the tiny, rusty bathroom, and the smell of cooking onions that wafted up from below, because the windows looked out on the Elias and two of its gargoyles. From the moment she’d first seen them, they’d felt like old friends.
Eli seemed mesmerized by the photos, especially the only one she’d mounted and framed. It was a profile shot of the closest gargoyle. She’d taken it with a telephoto lens, late on a rainy day, so the image was grainy and gray, as if the gargoyle had been moving in and out of focus.
She turned to point out the gargoyles, but Eli stopped her, catching her elbow and turning her back to the screens.
“May I?”
She nodded, tongue suddenly frozen against her teeth, and led the way.
Eli’s face was set, as if he was determined to follow his promise and not give away any negative reactions.
She turned her back as he came face to face with her first gargoyle. It was of clay and no longer than her forearm. Beyond it were others of clay and stone, enough to show her passion was nearing obsession. Two stood hidden under damp cloths, not quite finished. The one she most wanted Eli to like was the pale gray limestone one at the back. It was nearly finished, almost as tall as him, and it stood instead of squatting as most gargoyles did. Its delicate female features had haunted her dreams for months while she’d worked on smaller stones, even rocks she’d picked up at river’s edge, until she had enough confidence to begin shaping and smoothing it.
Eli stood, his face still as stone, his fingertips touching the first little gargoyle as if he were listening to whispers she couldn’t hear. He drifted to another, then another, touching each as he had the first. He even touched the ones covered with cloth, molding the damp material to their half-shaped bodies. Finally, he moved to the largest one, her stone treasure, and put his hands on its chest as if he could feel a heartbeat. “They live,” he said.
Relief and warmth flooded her. They lived for her, too, in a way that flesh never could.
He turned and came at her. At her, that was the only word for it. His eyes glittered as bright and silvered as the raindrops had on his coat.
She took a step back, but when he touched her, it was with the same awe and tenderness he’d shown to the gargoyles. “You said you had no gift, but you have the greatest gift of all. You are the Mother. You give life.” His voice was wild, hoarse, and his breath was hot on her face.
She would have backed away again but for the feel of his fingertips on her temples. His hands weren’t elegant at all. His hands were blunt, blue-collar hands, cool but rough as unpolished stone.
He leaned in and tilted her face up to his and kissed her.
She resisted for a moment, but the taste of his mouth, like dry, rich stone, swept through her, made her mold her body to his like clay yielding under insistent fingers, swept her mind away like a flood of rain water down a spout.
Later, much, much later, lying with her head on Eli’s shoulder, Lida could only remember parts of the hours since that first kiss. It all seemed hidden in shadow and delight, so much sensation that her mind couldn’t really take it all in. She remembered the weight of him, the hardness of him like stone, and the surprised pleasure on his face when she rose above him and her hair, wild with the humidity, fell about them. As Melisande had said, he saw with the eyes of a child. And he touched her as if he had not touched in a very long time. But she understood that. It had been a long time for her, too.
“Are you going to tell me who you are?” she asked sleepily, no longer really caring about the answer. She’d learned the things she needed to know about him during the long night.
“I will show you.” He leaned over and pressed his lips to hers.
The kiss tasted of sand and goodbye, and she pulled back, fear flooding away her contentment.
“Come. Don’t be afraid.” He caught her wrist and drew her up, leading her to the windows. Gray light was only just beginning to sparkle the edges of the sky.
“There.” He pointed across the street. “There is what I am. Where I live.”
She looked in the direction he pointed, confused. He was pointing at the Elias Building, toward the nearest buttress, the resting place of her favorite gargoyle.
Except—except—the gargoyle was gone. The buttress was empty, stone jagged as if the gargoyle had been torn from it. The gargoyle at the other corner was missing, too.
“You’re—? You’re a gargoyle?” she whispered, and instantly regretted the horror with which she’d imbued the word. If that was who he was, then he was the one she’d talked to for years, who’d made her smile when water gurgled from his out-thrust tongue, whose face she saw under her fingertips when she worked. “You’re a gargoyle.” This time, there was wonder instead of horror.
He nodded. “Once, our kind walked as man does, in the sun and the shadow. We were made by the Mothers and the Fathers, those who could give life to stone. But the gift was lost, forgotten over time, stamped out by those who feared the shadows. I was made by one who had only a limited ability and little knowledge of what he did. I live, but I do not move, except on the anniversary of my making. And then only for a limited time.”
“You mean you have to go back? To that?” She looked at the torn stone and shuddered. Stone didn’t seem so superior to flesh now. “When?”
Eli’s arms tightened about her shoulders. “Soon. I thought I might be able stay for a while, but—I must return.”
“But you could stay if you wanted to? If there’s a way—!”
“No,” he interrupted, and his voice was granite, hard and unmovable. “The price is too high.”
Words leapt into her mind. Angel of blood. Blood. “You need blood, like a vampire.” Hope rose up in her like a balloon dancing on a string. He didn’t know because he had been born in a different time. Blood was easy to get. There were as many addicted to the giving of blood as the vampires were to taking it.
“No. And yes. I need—I require—the blood of the bone. From a living soul who is gifted, magical as the faerie.”
“Blood of the bone?” Understanding slammed into her. Blood of the bone. Bone marrow. She felt sick. “And if you don’t get it?”
“My brothers and I, we sleep. Until the next time, a hundred years from now.”
She wandered away from him, picking up pieces of their clothing as she went, trying not to think of his rough hands, slowing stripping her dress away. Of his voice, and his mouth, and his silver heart showing her the true life of stone.
Eli joined her, sorting out the pieces of his clothing from hers, dressing as he moved back to the windows. “I was drawn to the Market by the call of your power. But when I saw it was you, I knew I could not take you.”
“I don’t understand. You mean you came looking for me? To kill me?” A trickle of fear slid down her spine, like a droplet of silvery water, cold and shining.
“I came looking for the one whose power was so strong it called to me. But I did not know it was you until I saw you.”
She found her robe, lying across the chair next to her bed, underneath the shirt she had stood on tiptoe to slide off his shoulders. Instead of putting on his robe, she slipped on his shirt. His scent clung to the soft cotton.
“I have watched you, as you have watched me through these windows. I have longed to hear the words I could see you whispering. To know what you hid behind walls of wood.”
She rushed across the room and threw her arms around him. Her tears smeared his skin, and he tilted her face to kiss them away.
“What about the other gargoyles? Will they come for me?”
“No. It wouldn’t do them any good. They’re only hunky punks.”
“They’re what?”
“Hunky punks.”
She shook her head.
“I am the gargoyle of that building. They are only grotesques, copies set upon the other corners for balance.”
Understanding came flooding in. A gargoyle, archi tecturally, was a working waterspout. But most of the figures that people called gargoyles were actually only grotesques, carved figures that served no purpose other than decoration. She’d never heard them called hunky punks.
“They cannot direct water. And they cannot feed. They walk only if I do. And this century . . .” Eli cupped her face in his hands, “. . . I choose to sleep.” He kissed the tip of her nose, the tips of her fingers, slipped his shirt off her and onto him, and then left without looking back.
She started to run after him but instead sank down to the cold floor. He’d left his elegant gray coat behind, and she moved only enough to reach the hem of it, drew it to her and wrapped it around her shoulders.
She wasn’t sure how many hours had passed before she looked up again. It must have been a long time. Murky sunlight lit the room.
She went to the window and looked out, pressing her fingers to the panes. There were two gargoyles, where earlier there had been ripped stone. No, not two. One gargoyle and one grotesque.
She’d never noticed before, but she saw now that only the one nearest her was a waterspout. Eli.
If she could have turned her heart to dead, unfeeling stone in her chest, she would have.
Slowly she dressed and headed out into the mist toward the Market.

There wasn’t enough rain to truly taste. Only a mist that itched and tickled the granite bones of his shoulders. So he sat, unmoving, unbreathing. Seeing only what was before him—the empty apartment across the street.
Before her, before Lida, there had been nothing for a very long time. Only stacks of boxes and shapes covered in dusty white sheets. But then she had come. She. Sitting so still he sometimes wondered if she breathed. Standing at the window and staring back at him. Talking sometimes, her lips forming words he could not hear. Blowing breath circles on the windowpanes and tracing shapes in them. And now he had the memory of her scent, of her skin, to add to what he could see. So he sat, unmoving. Unbreathing. Waiting for Lida to return home.
Rain came and went, gurgling through him and down into the street. Lightning flashed, and then she was there. Not there in the apartment. But there. On the roof behind him. He could not turn to see her. He could not hear her. But he could taste her, on the air, through the stone. He could feel her, and he longed for the touch of her warm, living skin on his granite hide, though he thought that it might well drive him mad. To feel her, to taste her, but not to touch her.
There was someone with her. Someone who moved about faster than she, crunching footsteps, setting the air to wafting over his stone spine. Someone whose taste he did not know.
Then there was movement. Violent movement. And then the strong taste of blood and salt. Of life. If he could have moved, he would have stretched out the long spout of his tongue and dipped it into the salty, salty liquid. More, his bones screamed. More! And then there was more. More. Salt and copper, draining, draining, slowly sliding down his throat, soaking down into his bones. Movement. Creaking, painful, stone becoming muscle, tearing, moving. His eyelids moved, blinking. His knees and elbows came alive. Screeching and rasping as stone became muscle and tendons and skin.
Warm fingers grasped his arms, guided him until he was sitting on the rough, graveled roof. Something was thrust into his mouth. Splintered bone, and he sucked at it greedily. Life came rushing into him, filling him with warmth and breath. He had to push the broken edges of the bone away to suck in air. He opened his eyes, terrified of what he would see.
Lightning cracked overhead and blinded him, then illuminated the roof about him in flashes of silver blue. Flashes of pain too much to bear. An axe. Something that might once have been a woman. Tarot cards, curling, turning to pulp in the rain. And Lida.
Lida crouched beside him. The sobs were hers. The pain was hers. Her hands and arms were covered in gore. Her pale dress was splattered, bright red blood flowers blooming across the cotton.
She held a ragged bone out like a gift. “She’s the most gifted person I know. Is it enough?” Silver tears streamed through the blood on her sweet face.
“What have you done?” he croaked, breathing in horror and death and despair, pushing away the ragged bone.
“Please don’t look at me that way.” She clutched at him. “I had to. You said I was their Mother, but you don’t understand. All I thought of as I was making them was you. You were in my hands when I was making them. You were in my eyes and my heart. You’re their Father.”
He wanted to turn away from her, wanted to be stone again, to feel only numbness instead of his heart cracking to pieces in his chest. Could she feel the despair in him, glass being ground back to sand?
“I had to,” she whispered. “The cards told it. Melisande saw an angel of blood, and she thought it was you, but she was wrong. It was me.”
And then the rain came again, like tears without salt. So different when it was pouring over him instead of through him. Lightning flashed, silver reflected in the panes of glass across the street.

HELVIK’S DEAL

Vicki Steger

Vicki Steger lives on a small pussy willow farm in Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin with her husband, Dale, and their aging cat, Dave, and a senile Sheltie named Chet as well as a flock of Rhode Island Red chickens. She and Dale have three children and four grandchildren. Vicki recently retired after nearly thirty years of working in the orthodontic laboratory business. She now spends her time writing, reading, volunteering at the local high school’s drama department and doing anything to avoid housework and cooking.

There is a certain peace that comes from knowing the day and method of your demise. I think mine will be a relief to me tomorrow morning on Tower Green. I was told the executioner is very good at his trade. He was brought from France, and I should be grateful, I could have been burned at the stake. A fate many here have suffered of late. This is one thing I must thank Great Harry for; the decision of how my end would come rests with him.
The charge of adultery is a falsehood; the king is the only man I have been with since he had my engagement to Henry Percy undone. Percy is the only man I ever loved, but to marry someone you love is foolhardy. It shows a softness of mind and a lack of good breeding; it is, in a word, dangerous.
I have spent seventeen days in this tower, the very lodging where I spent the night before my coronation three years ago. I have screamed my throat raw, laughed without control, threatened everyone in sight, and thrown things.
Now my thoughts are of the world that awaits me. My knees bruised by the stone floor after days of prayer and confession begging forgiveness and mercy. God himself knows if it enough to gain admittance to heaven.
I could blame Helvik and his sorcery and my ambitious father for my plight, but I would have never come this far without them. The world’s greatest alchemist wasted not his time making gold. His way to riches and power was to control the wealthy and powerful. Helvik said he would make Thomas Boleyn king, after I gave birth to four princes. Shortly after the birth of the last son, King Henry would then meet his end in a jousting accident. My father would be made Lord Protector, as grandfather of the princes, and rule England. I was convinced to play the beautiful deck of cards encased in an ivory box presented to me by the alchemist, and I would be Queen of England. After securing the throne with four sons, my part would be fulfilled, for this was our bargain.
I knew the King was desirous of a male heir above any earthly thing. Secretly emboldened by the cards’ promise, I convinced him I could provide many sons. I was with child when I secretly married Henry. Now I no longer saw the need to continue playing the cards as I had been instructed, so I hid them away.
To my great sorrow I gave birth to a princess. The King was furious, but I convinced him the next would be a son. It was a dead son, and three more dead sons followed until Henry lost all interest in me. I should have kept playing the cards.
The witless court rumors told I had bewitched the King. I was born with two unfortunate disfigurements, a sixth finger and a permanent dark blemish on my tiny neck; my enemies claimed these were marks of the devil.
I pray you not judge me too harshly, for I chose my own way in life, and God alone holds now my fate.

Anne Boleyn
The Lord’s year 1536

Lucy Callahan’s day began as every other had for the past fifty-some years. Sitting behind her bar, squinting through the stinging smoke of a Winston held effortlessly between her lips, her hands kept free to pour drinks and mop up after her customers.
The cluster of old coots that called Callahan’s home were Lucy’s only family; she thought of them as a dozen uncles. She and her saloon were part of the neighborhood’s crumbling landscape. Her throaty voice barked a “what’ll it be?” though in almost every case she knew her customer’s drink of choice.
In this dark little place she waited for the faithful who would hold their nightly services at what they laughingly referred to as “Callahan’s Tavernacle.” This handful of aging derelicts and retirees would filter in as they did every afternoon. They would take up their places, as well as unfinished discussions and disagreements of the previous night.
The customers she affectionately referred to as the dirty dozen swiveled on squeaky stools at the heavily varnished bar sticky with years of residue. In their memories this was a prosperous steel city. Long gone were the days when standing room only kept three bartend ers hustling all night, every night.
In those days the malt sulfur stench that hung in the air was belched from enormous stacks. Soot from the steel mills covered the region in a grimy gray blanket. But when the mills closed, life slowly seeped from the area as if a plug had been pulled, leaving the skeletal remains of a once thriving industrial city.
Now Lucy found it nearly impossible to make a living. The liquor salesman demanded cash for his deliveries, something that was unheard of when her father was alive.
Paul, Don, and Willie formed their usual clot at the bar’s end as their drinks were pushed in front of them. The rest soon trickled in for their daily group therapy.
Gilly hobbled over and tipped his plaid golf cap in salute to Lucy before hanging it on his pronged cane. That gesture had been his signature greeting since she was a child, one of the reasons he was secretly her favorite.
Joe and Dale shook bar dice and played a few noisy games of casino while smoke from their cheap cigars spewed into the air.
The Christmas lights strung above the bar reflected off Wally’s bald head. “So you wax that thing?” Dale teased him with a laugh.
The battered cash registers till stood ready to receive mounds of change and damp dollar bills scooped from the bar.
Gilly and Ray methodically stabbed pegs into their slender cribbage board. They promptly glanced up while munching pork rinds to welcome Chuck, as the stagnant air was refreshed by the scent of his Lifebuoy soap that floated in on a crisp night breeze.
Another called to a tall man wearing a shabby cardigan adorned with peeling elbow patches: “Hey Bob, what are you doin’ here? It’s yer anniversary aina?”
Bob smiled and replied, “Ya, fifty-five years today.”
“So what’s your secret?” asked another.
“Separate vacations. She’s on a cruise right now,” Bob said, as he held up a hand to signal Lucy.
As the men watched an Indiana Pacers game, Bert screamed at the old Magnavox suspended in the corner as though it had personally offended him.
It wasn’t long before Hank, the bar’s resident wind-bag and consummate know-it-all turned to announce: “None of ya’s knows what the hell yer talking about.” That was all the fuel needed to keep Callahan’s bickering and buzzing until midnight.
Scraps of conversations filled the smoky air along with tales of colonoscopies, basketball scores, and broken water heaters. As Lucy turned over a Camel matchbook to light another cigarette, she heard: “They’ll never give me a colonoscopy. I’ve got a tattoo back there says exit only!” Then a rumble of laughter rose from the bar.
Ron arrived earlier than usual, with the aroma of stale Old Spice that always clung to his rough skin. He dusted winter’s first snowflakes from his fraying wool jacket and slid effortlessly into his chair.
He quickly ordered another rum and Coke while he slurped the first, as his cold, stiff hands fumbled with a deck of cards.
Ron had the only other business still open on this block of Athison Street. Several years before he’d been forced to turn his once-successful antique business into a pawn shop. Not looking forward to an empty home—without his estranged wife and Ruckus, their aging Basset hound—he turned up every night for a dose of alcohol and conversation. With misty eyes he announced just how much he missed that dog.
Tonight he told her he was interested in playing some cards.
“What ya got there?” asked Lucy. A fly buzzing in a beer puddle momentarily attracted her attention before she smothered it with a bleach-soaked rag.
The old pawn broker showed off his new find. “Hey look, Luce, I got these in today in a box of junk. The guy tells me this is World War II stuff his dad took off a dead German, claimed it belonged to Hitler’s alchemist, some General named Ludendorff. You know, the usual bullshit.”
“Well, they’re not brand new.” She moved quickly to refill a hoisted glass.
Ron’s downcast eyes told Lucy she should have been a bit more interested in his new find.
The hours passed, taking Ron’s sobriety with them as Lucy occasionally watched his wrinkled hands lovingly fondle the intriguing cards.
“Last call,” she barked, rubbing the back of her neck. Her sore feet knew it was time to call it a night when she approached Ron, the only one left at the bar. “It’s time to settle up, Ron,” she said, confronting her friend about his substantial tab.
Through the smoky haze of the small room, he gazed up at her a little cross-eyed, his cheeks stained pink with embarrassment. “I know I must owe you a lot by now. I’m really sorry, it’s just never been this bad, you know, with the business. I meant to pay you before this, really Luce. Would you take these for the money I owe? I have a feeling they are worth something.” His voice sounded a little thick.
It was late, and all Lucy wanted was to feed her cat and go to bed. She yawned and held out her palm for the small ivory box. “Sure.”
On her way upstairs she wondered if his cards really were worth enough to cover the tab; she’d pursue their value in the morning. Her only expectation now was of a warm bath.

Noon the next day found Lucy elbow-deep at the sink, when her gaze fell on the ancient yellowing box containing the deck of old cards. She wiped her soapy hands on a damp, musty towel and sat down to have a look at what she has taken in trade for Ron’s sizable tab.
Outside, dusty snow swirled around the lamppost on the deserted sidewalk. As morning light filtered through the lacey frost patterns on the smudged windows, she couldn’t help admiring the detail and exquisite hand coloring of the thick, stiff cards. These certainly were printed on one of Europe’s first printing presses.
Her heart quickened as she wondered what these would fetch on eBay and vowed to do some research later to find out. She gently spread them out to get a better look and was amazed by the beauty of every one, the delicate detail. Each had a personality all its own; the brilliant colors made them tiny works of art. How had the colors not faded after all these years?
One of the cards lay facedown while the others faced toward her; she flipped that card over. To her surprise it read good fortune awaits one who welcomes strangers. She chuckled as she tapped the sides of the deck to fit them into the ivory box. Strangers, she thought. There hasn’t been anyone she didn’t know come through her door in years. She sometimes wished she didn’t know quite as much about the crowd that called Callahan’s home.
However, that night, just as the cards seemingly predicted, a tall aristocratic gentleman wandered through the door under the blinking of a dying neon sign. The mellow scent of sandalwood preceded him as he took his place on a corner stool.
Thirty years ago Lucy could have been lost in those piercing dark eyes, with thoughts of a life outside this bar spinning around her head. But all such notions had long been replaced by the quiet comfort of her aging cat.
Gilly glanced in the direction of the newcomer before quickly returning to his conversation and cribbage game. He whispered a question about what this perfectly groomed stranger clad in a cashmere dress coat was doing in their shot and beer joint.
With the presence of someone used to getting what he wanted, the newcomer quietly ordered cognac. Lucy dug through dusty bottles of an upper cupboard to find something suitable, and to her amazement there stood an unopened bottle of Ohard V.S.O.P. She pulled it down to discover it was nearly ninety years old. The man nodded with a serene smile as Lucy carefully poured some of the amber contents into a small snifter.
A bit later when she glanced into the mirror of the back bar, the stranger had vanished. Under his empty glass lay a sheaf of dead presidents. Her breath caught in her throat when she realized this cash would pay her overdue utility bills with enough left to buy her cat that rhinestone collar she’d had her eyes on.

Wednesday, while Lucy mopped the grime left from the melting snow of the previous night, she glanced up to see a small group outside her door. An attractive woman was tapping at the window. She was surrounded by a camera crew from Channel Sixty-Two. Startled, Lucy hollered that she wasn’t open for business. The blonde motioned her over with a leather gloved hand and mouthed: “We need to talk to you.” Lucy slid the bucket over and reluctantly clicked open the lock.
“I’m Sally Stenovich, representing WHAM, Hammond’s number one oldies radio station. You have won our fantastic Life of Luxury Sweepstakes. As our grand prize winner you will be whisked away by limo for an all-expense-paid day at Visions Spa, including a makeover.”
Lucy could see Sally struggle to keep the plastic smile fastened to her highly glossed lips. “After your day of beauty and pampering, it’s off to Carson’s for a brand new wardrobe chosen especially for you by Carson’s personal shopper. Then to Giovanni’s Village Restaurant for a night of fine dining before you will be escorted to the symphony as our guest. The Channel Sixty-Two crew and I will be with you every step of the way as you are transformed into royalty for the day. Doesn’t it sound divine?”
The puzzled bartender could only stare at the animated blonde. Then asked her to repeat what she had just said—slowly.

It took no time at all for Lucy to tape a closed sign to the front door of Callahan’s before she was treated to a fairy-tale day. The dove gray of her hair was replaced by the vibrant red she’d had as a girl. The stunning makeup, acrylic nails, and pedicure made her unrecognizable when her chair swiveled to face the mirror. She gasped with delight at her transformation. Of course, the Channel Sixty-Two cameraman documented her amazed expression, as well as that of the team that had toiled all day for this effect.
Lucy returned well after the witching hour, exhausted and overwhelmed, feeling like Cinderella after a night on the town.

The next morning, as Lucy swung her feet to the floor, feeling for her slippers, she spied the lovely gown draped across the end of the bed and realized it hadn’t been a dream. A glance at her open closet displayed a complete new wardrobe but had her wondering where she would go in such finery. Certainly not to shovel the sidewalk, which was what she was about to do.
Mr. Coffee gurgled and hissed, and the aroma of dark roast beans filled the cramped kitchen. Lucy was surprised to see the small box open and a card displayed on her table. The card had a filigreed edge of four leaf clovers surrounding ornate script that read, good fortune awaits one who plays their cards right.
Clutching her coffee cup, inhaling the clouds that rose in the cold hall, she descended the stairs. The two feet of heavy wet snow that had fallen during the night had been removed from her portion of the sidewalk. Not knowing who she could thank for this act of kindness, she sat behind the bar and exhaled cigarette smoke, accompanied by the familiar morning cough. She leaned back to admire her first manicure. She even liked the clicking sound her nails made when she tapped them on the bar.

The coming weekend brought in Purdue students returning home for Christmas break. After several boil ermakers, their cell phones eagerly summoned more of their kind, and soon a boisterous crowd filled the place, intent on spending every cent of their parents’ money.
Lucy gratefully seized the cash and stuffed the bills into the till, before snapping the deadbolt behind the last of the stumbling crowd. She slowly climbed the stairs, feeling fatigue seeping into every bone, and decided she would definitely sleep in tomorrow.

The phone behind the bar rang persistently as Lucy went about her midmorning chores the next day. A voice full of enthusiasm vigorously announced that the group calling itself Citizens for Hammond’s Revitalization was interested in renting her place for a rally that afternoon.
When she informed him she was in the process of cleaning—after all Callahan’s hadn’t been open on a Sunday in decades—the cheerful man on the other end insisted he would make it worth her while. That was two hours from now, thought Lucy as she relented. Her hands were pruning from the hot soapy water while she regretted not having told the man no.
Soon Callahan’s was bustling wall to wall with the city’s most influential political committee. While Lucy tapped another quarter barrel, the spokesman for the group stuck his hand over the bar and introduced himself as Peter Dombrowski. She recognized him as the man she had spoken with on the phone two hours earlier. A curly haired, slightly built dynamo, Peter resembled a chipmunk on crack with a voice that emanated directly from his nose.
Lucy grabbed a rag to dry her hands before grasping his outstretched palm.
“Charmed,” she replied, trying her best to force a smile.
Peter raised her hand in a triumphant gesture, before introducing her to the waiting crowd as the next Mayor of Hammond. Lucy pulled her hand from his grip and laughed, welcoming everyone to Callahan’s. A roar rose from the excited assembly; they blew noisemakers while confetti fell.
An alert Channel Sixty-Two news team documented every move. The crowd was quieted as Peter lifted his palms toward the ceiling. “Silence!” He turned to Lucy. “You are, indeed, our candidate for mayor come this spring election.” He waved a folder aloft bulging with signed petitions while Lucy stood in stunned disbelief. She felt his pale blue eyes rapidly pierce her composure before announcing: “We have collected ten thousand signatures, far more than required for your bid in the mayoral election.”
The cameraman zoomed in.
Lucy was speechless, awed, swept up in a sea of emotion she had a difficult time mastering. She steadied herself. “I . . . I need time to think about this.” She blinked and sucked in a deep breath. “Thank you. Thank all of you for your incredible support.”
The crowd overwhelmed her, everyone wanting to shake her hand, each trying to be heard over the others, vying for her attention. It wasn’t until late that evening that she shut the doors and turned out the lights.

Monday’s icy afternoon blew in the regulars. Only Gilly noticed something was different about his friend. Lucy felt compelled to tell him everything that had happened the past few days, culminating in her unsolicited bid to run for mayor. Gilly sat quietly as she spilled all the details, tapping the ash from her cigarette as she searched his face.
In the confident steady voice she’d known since childhood, he said: “Lucy, you know better than to think you’re getting something for nothing. There will be a piper. How much are you willing to pay?” His eyes bored into hers, bringing a sudden thought she hadn’t entertained.
There was no free ride. She knew that. There might even be something sinister behind her recent good fortune.
She glanced around the bar to see who needed a refill, and there sat the gentleman of the generous tip of a few days’ past. She had been so deeply involved in conversation with Gilly she hadn’t noticed him, and she couldn’t get to him in time before he left.

In the predawn hours of the next morning, Lucy’s deep sleep was shattered by the annoying shrill ring of the phone. Her voice cracked as she answered. Ray was on the other end. His voice faltered as he choked on the words: “There’s been an accident.” And with a sharp intake of ragged breath, painfully announced: “Gilly’s dead.”
She had to tell herself to breathe while her insides whirled. She stumbled to the kitchen and ran water into a dented kettle for tea. Trembling, she splashed water on her face and fell into a chair, trying to calm the small hurricane that surged in her head. This was more than she could cope with. The kettle’s low whistle sounded just as the cat landed in her lap.
Moments later she reached into the cupboard to grab the nearest mug and spotted a loose card from the deck; it fluttered to the counter. Lucy grabbed her chest and shrieked “No!”
The card was edged in ornately drawn ribbons of black ink around the words YOU WILL LOSE SOMEONE NEAR AND DEAR.
Terrified, summoning her last bit of strength, she raced to her bathroom, threw open the medicine cabinet, and tossed aside anything that was not Valium. Popping open the small plastic container was difficult with her shaking hands, but she managed to toss two tiny pills down her throat before tossing the cards into the trash can under the sink.
Her heart was pulsating in her throat when she attempted Ron’s number three times before getting it right.
Shivering and disheveled, Lucy’s friend stepped through the door of his second home twenty minutes later and was whisked upstairs. He fell back into a kitchen chair as Lucy slid a water glass full of Bacardi rum across the wooden table; he barely snatched it before it sailed off the edge.
“Ron, I don’t think Gilly’s death was an accident. It’s connected to those damn cards of yours. A few days ago I googled this ‘Ludendorf’ and found out he was Hitler’s alchemist. So I did some more research. Supposedly the world’s greatest alchemist was Helvik, and some say he found the secret to immortality. I think it’s all true and that Helvik was Ludendorf. It sounds impossible, I know, but I believe it. I think this Helvik must need to control someone. The cards, Ron, that’s how he controls and gains power—through that damnable deck of cards. They must be destroyed. Burning won’t work. I tried that just before you got here.”
Ron stared at her, incredulously.
“Helvik must have been brilliant, Ron. He would have made these cards as indestructible as he knew how. I did a little research, and this one Internet site said that alchemists tried to make gold by melting all kinds of base metals. These cards have survived more than five hundred years. I’m betting the only way to destroy them is to get them into the furnace where steel is melted.”
Ron threw back the rum. “Don’t worry, Luce. I got you into this mess, leave this to me. I might not believe all of this, but I’ll take care of it.”

Morning’s light brought the Callahan Clan pounding their insistence on being let in. They solemnly entered and lined the bar. Lucy took her place and mixed a batch of hot toddies, which she served with liverwurst and onion sandwiches to her bereaved friends.
Gilly had no children, and it was unclear to the group what should be done about a funeral. Lucy’s voice shook when she volunteered to make the arrangements. At some point she fell asleep with her head on the bar, waking with a throbbing headache, her scratchy eyes nearly swollen shut. Everyone had gone but Ron, who was peacefully snoring, graying head resting on his folded jacket.

Three days later a lovely ceremony for Gilly was given by Father Timothy Riordan, reverently attended by the Callahan Clan. While the group was gathering at the bar to drink a farewell to one of their own, Gilly’s silver urn was placed on his favorite stool. His worn plaid cap stood sentinel on the pronged cane. So many toasts and eulogies were given that no one noticed the tall gentleman in a dark cashmere coat who took a place in the corner.
But when the door swung wide, they all spotted a young athletic man. He walked directly to Lucy and held out his hand. “Lucy Callahan? I’m Mitchell Morgan, alderman of your district and your opponent in the mayoral race. I’m here to size up my competition. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you after all the news coverage you’ve been getting lately. You’ve saved yourself a fortune in publicity. I’m quite envious.”
Lucy shook the well-manicured hand extended over the bar. With an exasperated stare at the man who could have just as well been stumping for President, she said: “I haven’t signed the nomination papers yet. And this is not a good time. We’re having a funeral here.”
Then, as if he hadn’t heard a word: “I don’t know how you managed the endorsement of the Hammond Citizen’s group. I’ve been to every meeting to get the nod from them. They are the kingmakers here, or queen in your case.” He smiled so wide a coat hanger could have fit between his cheeks.
Lucy tried to be as gracious as possible. Operating only on caffeine, cigarettes, and Valium for the past several days, she offered him a drink and sandwich and returned to work.
Lucy was secretly grateful Ron had insisted on seeing her upstairs. She was drained; anxiety’s tendrils gripped her insides and refused to let go. Opening the apartment door, they found a small bomb must have exploded. Every drawer had been spilled, closets ravaged, furniture overturned, the medicine cabinet door hung by one hinge, cushions and bedding were strewn over the dusty-rose carpet. Her grandmother’s hurricane lamp lay in shards behind the sofa. How had they not heard someone ransacking the place directly above their heads?
“Where did you stash those cards?” Ron’s tense voice squeaked.
She ran to the garbage pail under the sink to find it was empty. They picked through debris for nearly an hour, to find nothing at all missing but the yellowing box and its cursed contents.

Lucy woke the next morning to a pounding on Callahan’s front door. She gathered her tattered chenille robe around her as she furiously stomped downstairs, to see who she would punch squarely in the face.
There stood a short balding man with a worn briefcase. He instinctively stepped back when he saw the crazed slipper-footed woman marching directly toward him. His voice quavered as he extended a hand and introduced himself as Jay Perlman, attorney for the late Gilbert O’Day.
Lucy swept aside, allowing the nervous man entry, and offered him a seat while she busied herself making coffee. The attorney produced a profusion of papers; among them was the deed to Callahan’s. Mr. O’Day’s insurance policies had paid off both mortgages and set up a trust that would see her clear to retire quite comfortably.
Her voice cracked as she thanked Mr. Perlman, hot tears splashing onto her worn robe. She embraced him, and kissed his balding head while he shuffled papers with her signature back into his briefcase. His lips wrinkled in a slight smile as he promised to return the following week.
Grief and relief equally flooded through her as she sat on Gilly’s favorite stool. She gazed on the morning light reflecting off his silver urn, which rested on the back bar next to his cribbage board and plaid golf cap. She lit another cigarette and aimed the remote at the ancient television. As the picture filled the screen, there stood Mitchell Morgan, flashing his radiant smile for dozens of reporters who held a collection of microphones in his direction.
“Tell us, Mr. Morgan, why you have decided to withdraw from the mayoral race and announce your candidacy for United States Senate?” asked Sally Stenovich, who had elbowed her way to the front of the rat pack.
Then Lucy saw something that released the knot in her stomach. A shiver of cold spiraled up her spine. There, directly behind the jovial candidate, silently stood a tall, distinguished gentleman with piercing dark eyes, wearing a cashmere topcoat.
“Why?” Morgan mused. “It was in the cards, I guess.”

SECOND CHOICES

Brian M. Thomsen

Brian M. Thomsen (1959-2008) was the author of more than sixty short stories and articles and two fantasy novels, as well as such nonfiction works as Ireland’s Most Wanted, The Awful Truths, and Man of Two Worlds. He edited Shadows of Blue and Gray, The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce, Commanding Voices of Blue and Gray, the critically acclaimed The American Fantasy Tradition, and The Man in the Arena, Selected Writings of Theodore Roosevelt, as well as coedited with Eric Haney Beyond Shock and Awe, and with Bill Fawcett You Did What?!! His two most recent works were Pasta Fazool for the Wiseguy’s Soul and Oval Office Occult. He grew up in Rockaway Beach, attended Regis High School in New York City, and last resided in Brooklyn with his loving wife Donna and two extremely talented cats—Sparky and Minx.

Victoria Dawson’s neck really bothered her. Her doctor called it “monitor crick,” sort of the carpel tunnel syndrome for the neck for those who worked long hours at old-style monitors that didn’t tilt, and Vicki’s boss liked to kid that Hardware Retail Quarterly—The Craftsman Companion had all of the latest journalist gizmos as seen on “Lou Grant.”
Real funny, she thought.
My godson’s fourth grade class in Newark had more up-to-date computer equipment.
. . . and the equipment suited the work. How exciting can handyman tools be? Last month’s big bonus was a new hammer with a Green Bay Packer logo on it, big whoop.
Rolling Stone, this job was definitely not.
And now, thanks to so-called summer hours, all of her deadlines had been moved up to earlier in the week . . . and if that wasn’t bad enough, her time off on Fridays like this one were taken up with those “counseling sessions” that she had been prescribed to treat what the HR department had diagnosed as excessive lateness and absence due to depression—as if it was her fault that some mornings she just didn’t feel like getting out of bed.
Well, at least the sessions, for all their worthlessness, had run their course (as her insurance had just reached maximum coverage duration), so today’s session would hopefully just be long enough to tell Dr. M, “Thanks for the walk down memory lane, and I’ll be sure that someone invites you to my wake or retirement or whatever.”
As Vicki got up to leave and catch the PATH into Manhattan, the phone rang.
If she had cared about her job or any of the assignments she was working on, she would have answered it . . . but that would lead to her being late for her last session and having to hear all about some mumbo jumbo like passive aggressiveness.
She didn’t, so she didn’t.
Maybe she’d catch a movie in the city after the session and before tubing it back to Jersey City.
The new Jennifer Garner film looked cute.

Glad you could make it. Wait a minute. Lest I forget. Second Choices. Session ten. Tape ten. Time 2:30 PM. Client Victoria Dawson. That’s done. I was afraid you weren’t coming in today.
And miss the last session.
Last session?
Well my insurance has run out, and . . .
Oh that, don’t worry about it.
Well, I . . .
You worry too much.
I . . .
And when you’re not worrying, you’re regretting . . .
I . . .
You’re not satisfied with your life.
. . . have . . .
You don’t like where you are.
. . . other . . .
And I am sure I can change things for you, really change things.
. . . commitments . . .
Or, how shall I say, allow you a chance to make those changes yourself.
Dr. M, will you let me say something?
Oh, but I have for the last nine weeks, and I’ve taped each of our sessions just as I’m taping this one right now. I’ve listened very carefully to everything you’ve said. All about being dumped by the only guy you ever dated, stuck in a dead-end boring job, missed out on all of the fun everyone else seemed to have. Yes, I have heard everything that you’ve said. And I know I can help you change everything.
. . . did you say “everything?”
Yes, literally transform your life. Do the fairy godmother thing, the old choose three wishes all to be granted, yadda yadda yadda. Your problem isn’t really “your now,” it’s “your then.”
Well, now sucks.
Of course it does. I mean look at yourself. You’ve probably never spent more than thirty bucks on your hair, your fashion sense is seven-year-old Donna Karan in all possible shades of beige, your glasses are from the Fashion Budget collection, and your idea of a personal scent is whatever deodorant is on sale this week. You look up the word “spinster” in the dictionary and there you are, and you haven’t even come close to hitting forty yet.
And it’s all your own fault, or should I say the fault of the choices you made.
Sure. It’s all my fault.
Good. I’m glad we agree on that. Now, do you want to do something about it?
Listen, I don’t have time for four years of therapy, let alone an insurance plan ready to cover it.
Again with the money and time. Time is controllable in situations like ours . . . if one is willing to commit.
What are you talking about?
Look around. Do you think someone just gave me this office on the fashionable West Side? Do you think it came with a hand-carved working fireplace?
I always thought that it was a violation to have a working fireplace in an office building.
Who cares? I don’t. I keep that baby burning all year round. I like the flames, nice and homey, but that’s neither here nor there. This city has been good to me, and it can be good to you, too.
It hasn’t been so far.
It’s all here on the tapes. You used to be an outer-borough girl, and then you joined the bridge-and-tunnel crowd. You’re not a New Yorker. You’ve never let the city embrace you, felt the blanket of the New York night, wallowed in her wildness.
Well, I’ve always wanted to.
But you didn’t. Back in high school, your friend Lori used to invite you to sneak into town for shopping, but you turned her down. Queens Center was about as daring as you were willing to risk.
Risk?
It’s all about risk. I bet Lori was embarrassed for you, but, still, you were the perfect proverbial wing-girl that made her look so much better to the opposite sex. You were her safety net in case a risk turned out to be, well, too risky. She took a few risks with you as back up, she had some fun, and poof she’s got it all, a well-employed hubby, two kids, a satisfying job, and, oh, yes, a good friend who can babysit when she and Bob need to get frisky. She took some risks, and they paid off. You, on the other hand, never did. So now you are here and unhappy because the world has passed you by. No guys, no gratitude, and the best years behind you. Remember that Kathleen Turner film about Peggy Sue? How she cried at her high school reunion? And think about it. She had it oodles better than you.
Thanks a lot.
Wouldn’t it be nice to go back and do it all again, accept maybe change a few things?
Sure, but the last time I looked, that type of thing was confined to TV shows doomed to repeats on the Syfy network.
Look. I’ve studied everything you’ve said about your life, and I’ve pinpointed the exact point where a few different choices would have made all of the difference in the world. You skipped your prom . . .
I wasn’t asked.
Which is not to say you didn’t go out a few times, but gee, Lori got the attention. Well, at least from those who guys who didn’t stand a chance with Mean Jeannie or any of the other Alpha girls. How lucky of Lori!
She was my best friend. Still is. I’m her daughter’s godmother.
Oh, I bet that keeps you warm at night. In college you “dated” one guy for awhile. Tried living together while he was working on his MBA, but he dumped you once he got his degree. Got married as I recall. A rich client’s daughter.
Thanks for reminding me.
And you can barely make ends meet even though you live in Jersey City.
So?
So, what if I could guarantee that we could change a few things. What if I could arrange for you to go to a prom, date lots of guys, even live in Manhattan? What would you say to that?
Who do you think you are? My real fairy godmother?
No, dear, just someone who can provide you a chance to go back and embrace a few different options, to take control of your destiny, to make a few changes, and to have a good time, to let the city embrace you. My agency, Second Choices, does more than just counsel people such as yourself. We actually offer some a second chance to make a second choice.
How?
You need to rewrite your life. This is a special diary, a life book. Books such as these allow one to reflect on the events of their lives in a way that some people—like you—never experience. Haven’t you ever said to yourself, why didn’t I ever, oh, whatever?
Sure.
Well, now you can. I am offering you the opportunity to go back and change the vectors of your life. You’ve told me what you think you want. I can’t give it to you, POOF, like some wizard or something—all I can do is give you the opportunity to not make those same decisions, those mistakes you made the first time out.
Like Frankie?
Oh, way before Frankie.
Like not going to work for Rolling Stone or Wired?
Anything’s possible, but even before such opportunities might have been made available, there was a time when your life could have changed. With this little book you can go back, and once your “course” has been righted you’ll pop right back here, complete with a new life and a full diary that you wrote, and a life that you lived based on how you chose.
A new life?
Your new life. The life of someone who went to a prom, lives in Manhattan, has been desired by men, yadda yadda yadda.
Let me guess. All I have to do is sign a contract in blood turning over my soul to you.
Ha! That’s a good one. No devil has ever claimed anyone’s soul through a contract. That’s the stupid sort of folklore that . . . well, anyway . . . modern people realize that they have no one to blame but themselves. People choose to go down the road to ruin, and it’s not paved with good intentions.
Look out this window. Look at this beautiful city. Don’t you want to be embraced by it? It wants to embrace you.
So you . . .
All I can do is offer you a second chance. The rest is up to you.
What do I have to do?
Open up the book and write: Dear Diary, Today I am taking control of my life, and you will provide the record of the choices I’ve made. I now control my destiny. I accept this second chance to make a second set of choices. I am in control, I want to make these changes, I will change my life.
That’s it?
And then embrace the changes. You know what you did the first time and how it turned out . . .
How will I know what to do?
You’re smart. Start with the prom thing, and we’ll go from there. It’ll be easy. With what you know now, life back then will be a breeze. I assure you that you’ll be able to say goodbye to Hardware Retail Quarterly, Jersey City, and the rat race you currently hate.
Now pick up the pen and write, and remember to keep the diary with at least one entry each week. Just think of the fun you’ll have reliving it all. Now, pick up the pen and write.

Dear Diary,
Today I am taking control of my life, and you will provide the record of the choices I’ve made.
I now control my destiny.
I accept this second chance to make a second set of choices.
I am in control, I want to make these changes, I will change my life.
Amen.
Okay, the hokey stuff is over. . . .

I can’t believe it. Dr. M must really be some sort of fairy godmother.
I’m freakin sixteen again, and it is 1995, and I’m back in Bellerose wearing my Mary Louise Academy school uniform.
It’s March and . . . That was Lori who just called. I think I’m beginning to remember now.
Lori and I were real close because Mean Jeannie used to make fun of her being top heavy for her age. She used to call us “Boob and Board,” y’know, as in flat as a board. But then Lori got a boyfriend and I was left on my own.
She wants to go shopping.
Geez.
I forgot how shitty it was being me at sixteen.
Wallflower, grades obsessed, no social life, afraid of the world, afraid of getting caught—I didn’t even realize that my parents weren’t watching, that both of them were too busy cheating on each other.
Yeah, that’s right. Mom was the one who thought Frankie was a good thing . . . and then said she wasn’t surprised when he got his MBA and left me for that blonde. I remember her comforting words: “Now he’s the blonde’s problem. Guys like that always have something going on the side.” Thanks, Mom.
But none of that has happened yet.
That doesn’t have to be me.
I can turn in my citizenship papers for loserville.
I’m gonna call Lori right back.
Shopping it is.

I never knew shopping could be so much fun, but I think I’ve scared Lori.
She seems like such a wuss now.
When we hooked up at the E, she said why don’t we go to the village and check out the hot NYU guys, and I said sure.
She was expecting me to insist on Queens Center yet again. Not the Vicky she was expecting.
So, anyway, we took the train—which was neither as dirty or as scary as I seemed to remember—transferred, and got off at 8th Street, where Lori remembered there were a bunch of cute shops she had browsed the night her older sister had taken her to Rocky Horror.
I remember I was jealous of Lori a bit because I thought she was so pretty, but now I see that it really was just how she carried herself, and of course her healthy build. I remember she also used to wear make up (though not today, I guess not wanting to waste the effort on what she thought would be a trip to Queens Center).
We found this place down the block from the Antique Boutique. All sorts of fashions from vintage to real off-the-rack stuff, and as per usual Lori immediately picked out a bunch of outfits and went to try them on while I watched our stuff.
I’m standing there taking it all in when a sales girls dressed in beatnik black came over to see if there was anything I wanted.
I told her I was just waiting for Lori, who was taking her sweet time trying some outfits on that she probably wasn’t going to buy.
“Don’t I know it,” she said. “All the outer-borough Catholic school girls come here to get their nastys on. What size are you?”
I couldn’t remember. Obviously smaller than I had become. Desk spread does that to you. I was going to guess when she just waved her hand and said . . .
“Never mind. I have a good idea. And I know exactly what would be perfect for you.”
She disappeared into the racks despite my protestations.
Lori returned with her items already bagged and paid for. Shopping with Lori meant usually she did the shopping and I helped with the bags, and we were heading back to the subway when the sales girl I had been talking to caught up to us and said that I forgot my bag.
Lori immediately became her super gregarious self and said that it was about time I bought some new threads. The girl handed me the bag, and when I went for my wallet, she said not to worry about it as she joined us down the subway stairs to the R.
She introduced herself as Missy something-vaguely-Greek-sounding (Stasinopoulos maybe?) as she was drowned out by the incoming train.
As I headed home—Missy stayed to wait for a different train—I overheard Lori ask her if she gave me an employee discount.
“No,” I heard her say, “Five finger. See you at Limelight on Friday.”
Limelight? I asked Lori.
“Sure. It’s a club. Your new friend put passes in our bags—and we are soooo going.”

Lori just called to confirm for the umpteenth time that I wasn’t chickening out on the Limelight tomorrow.
I planned to go home with her after school tomorrow (told Mom it was a weekend study session), have dinner, get changed, and sneak out around elevenish since the party doesn’t start until twelve.
Lori said she is even going to lend me something appropriate to wear.
But she doesn’t need to.

I don’t believe it.
The clothes from Missy are verrry daring and not like me at all . . . so of course I’m going to wear them Friday.
I’ve tried them on, and they’re a little tight (the top even makes it look like I have the beginnings of a decent set of boobs, though nowhere rivaling Lori’s), and they are sooooo hot and risky.
Just what the doctor ordered.
They’re hot—in more ways then one, given Missy’s five-fingered discount.
Such a bad girl.

The Limelight was a church.
Who’d a’thunk it?
The party was for some band that thought it was the next Motley Crüe, and Missy met us at the door. She asked me how the threads fit.
A little tight, I replied.
Tight is nice, she countered, and then said they looked great on me.
(Lezzie? I don’t think so, but you never can tell—that’s one choice I don’t want to make.) Maybe she works for the club or perhaps the record label—I’ll have to remember to ask.
Lori was quite impressed with my threads and helped me with my makeup (thankfully stopping short of a full Boy George as she usually did to herself) and said that I looked so smoking that if I didn’t turn a few heads, then all of the guys there would have to be gay or blind or both.
When Lori went into full flirt mode and became otherwise engaged, Missy came over to keep me company and introduced me to a few guys. At one point she shoved me so that I actually collided with one!
“Contact is good,” she cackled, and we both laughed.
The club was loud and crowded and very much a party.
I even had a sea-breeze (I forgot I wasn’t even close to legal—but no one seemed to care).
A good time was had by all.
I even got out on the dance floor once with Lori and Missy and some guys.
Definitely a step in the right direction.

Thank God I remembered my high school math. I would never have gotten my homework done otherwise.

Bombed the chem exam, and Sister Mary Louise was extremely disappointed in me, or at least so she said.
Funny thing—I used to be scared of her and the other penguins.
Now not so much.

Missy just called.
She said Tino asked for my digits.
Whose Tino?
One of the guys we were dancing with at Limelight.
She said he goes to NYU and doesn’t mind that I’m only in high school.
He’s got a thing for Catholic schoolgirls.
We’re going to double date.
When I asked about Lori, Missy said that she thought she was busy. I think this is about the time Lori took up with Brad—the guy who she dated until she met Tom, who she married.

Well, thank God for Missy.
Tino and Missy’s date spent all of dinner talking to each other about cars.
Then we walked over to the West Village . . . and still it was the guys together and me and Missy together.
Then Missy leaned over and said: “Game change time.”
I didn’t understand.
“Gotta make it worth his while. Do as I do.”
At the next traffic light she sidled up to Scott, I think his name was, and stuck her hand into his back pocket, and POOF they’re arm in arm. And I’m walking side by side with Tino, who actually started talking to me. I just looked at him tongue-tied.
Then Missy said let’s all see if we can crash Rocky Horror, and we did.

Tino called!
He wanted to know if I was all right.
I called Missy right away. She was a bit cold. She said I almost blew it with him.
I told her I didn’t know what I was doing, I mean I just met him and all.
“I think he really likes you. You gotta give him a little something, and then he’ll do the same for you.”
Remembering why I’d gone back into my past, I asked her if she thought he would do a doofy thing like take me to my junior prom, which was three weeks away.
“Sure,” she said with a giggle, “but you got to make him think it will be worth his while.”
I paused for a moment, and she jumped back in with: “Nothing drastic, just a kiss and the hint of a promise for more. Touch him, put your hand in his back pocket, be daring . . . a suggestion of willingness, and if it feels good just go ahead.”

Saw Tino again, alone this time. Pizza at Ray’s.
He’s in the creative writing program, and he plays rugby in Central Park.
I’m gonna go see him play next week.

Bombed the Spanish test, too.
Thank God I’ve had straight As to this point.
I told Mr. Mason, my guidance counselor, about my parents fighting.
He said he’d explain the situation to my teachers.
It was already so late in the year, and no one wanted to do damage to my permanent record. That should give me some breathing room.

Tino said yes.
He said he liked me and that I was worth more than the inconvenience of a trip to penguin-land.
Gotta call Missy.
I need help in getting the right outfit.
Won’t Lori be green with envy?
Brad’s only a high school senior.

Missy is lending me a gown of hers.
It’s a wrap thing that is both tight and loose and really exotic. It’s a little long, so she is lending me her stiletto heels as well.
She’s been so helpful.
Now it’s up to me not to screw it up.
Maybe Tino is the one. I’d like him to be the one.
There he is.
Off we go.

Which brings us right back here to the present. What’s the last thing you remember from back then?
Tino kissing me at the junior prom. Why is everything so blurry?
You must have lost your contacts on the way here today.
I wear contacts now?
Of course. You know what they say: “Boys seldom make passes at girls . . .”
“who wear glasses.” All part of my makeover?
All part of the new life you have chosen for yourself.
You mean by my going to the junior prom, everything’s changed?
That, coupled with all of the other choices you made from that point on. As I said, one little thing builds on another. Stop fidgeting!
Sorry, Dr. M. It’s funny, my neck doesn’t bother me anymore, but my back is a little sore.
No more monitor crick, a bonus. Comes from not being cooped up writing about hardware all day.
But my back, did I sleep wrong?
You asked for three wishes, using that fairy godmother metaphor that you seemed so comfortable with. And they have all been fulfilled. You went to a prom, you live in Manhattan, and your life has been filled with men who desire you. Another success story for Second Choices, where the client’s choices can even change the present.
Is it always that simple?
Most of the time. Of course, some people can’t break the pattern they had already established, so as a result history just repeats itself, no better no worse.
A friend from high school days used to always tell me to “be daring. Choosing the next step doesn’t mean you have to choose the next one after that. It’s just one thing at a time . . .”
(Chuckle.) And if it feels good just go ahead, yeah. Stop fidgeting! It’s unbecoming.
Sorry. Yeah, that’s what she said. How did you know that? Oh, the diary.
Yup, right here. An open book on your new life and how you got here.
I can’t wait to read it.
Well, at least the good parts. And when you walk out that door all of that other, old life will fade away and be replaced by what’s on your scribbled page.
Too bad I lost my contacts. I guess I’ll have to wait till I get home . . .
It will be too late by then. Better if you have a look-see now. Besides, I just love to see the expression on a satisfied client’s face. Tell you what. I’ll let you use my glasses, they’ll do the trick. But you’ll have to stop fidgeting.
I can’t help it. I’ve got this really annoying itch. Hey, what am I wearing? This isn’t . . .
. . . your work clothes? Of course they are.
But why are they so tight?
Tight is nice. Remember? Here, have a look. I don’t really need these anyway.
Thanks. Wait, this can’t be right. What? My . . .
Boobs? They’re very nice and perfectly displayed. You definitely got your money’s worth.
But they’re so big!
Only a little more than a D, two and half steps up from your previous B.
But they’re so . . .
It’s probably why your back is bothering you. Just the price of beauty, and being slightly top heavy. Remember how you were so jealous of Lori? But you can’t beat how they look in that tiger Danskin stretch top and black spandex. Not just anyone can pull that look off, and I bet all of the guys love it.
Wait, without your glasses, you look familiar!
I do.
Missy! And you haven’t aged a day.
What can I say, the years have been kind. Well, at least to me. But you got exactly what you wanted . . . all three wishes . . . no longer a loser from the bridge-and-tunnel crowd. Gotta admit I’ve taken good care of you.
You’ve got me dressed like some sort of skank.
No, dear, I didn’t dress you this morning. Or, how shall I say . . . yesterday morning.
Yesterday?
Oh, that’s right, how can I expect you to be up to speed yet.
What do you mean by yesterday morning?
You didn’t make it home last night.
And?
You spent last night in jail. But since I knew you wouldn’t want to miss this appointment, I made sure that you made bail.
Jail?
Just the usual. Soliciting.
What . . . but I’m not . . .
A streetwalker? Well, not usually, but business was a little slow and . . .
What did you do to me?
Nothing. You made the choices and here you are.
I didn’t do anything . . .
Different when you took a trip to the past? Oh, yes you did. Just a few things at first, but then . . .
No. I don’t believe you. I mean, I was the same person.
Exactly.
I was a good girl . . . I didn’t . . . I mean I had that scholarship . . .
Mae West once said: “There are no good girls gone wrong—just bad girls found out.” You were found out, and that scholarship never happened. You didn’t even finish your senior year.
But . . .
Good girls don’t accept stolen merchandise or sneak around or neglect their studies. You changed the pattern. What can I say? Some girls have better luck than others. Sometimes the smart choices are the right choices, and sometimes we allow ourselves to get carried away. I knew a man who never realized he was an alcoholic until I bought him his first drink. This city is filled with folks who might have lived nice lives of quiet desperation in Hampton, Virginia, or Mt. Ayre, Iowa, but just seem to swim right down the drain once they take a bite of what the Big Apple has to offer. Not the Apple’s fault really. Read your diary. Try May 24, the entry after the prom.
“Well that’s over . . . and it wasn’t exactly magic either. I mean, it was really cool seeing the surprised look on everyone’s faces when I walked in on Tino’s arm . . . and not just the mean girls, the faculty chaperones, too. Who would have thought that little miss teacher’s pet would be making an appearance?
“And Tino showed up right on time with a beautiful corsage (thank God the p-units didn’t smell his breath or see his car). Everything was beautiful, well except for when he got a little grabby halfway through.
“I mean, I did look GOOD, REAL GOOD. He kept telling me that. And he really was doing me a favor—it was just a junior prom—so when he went outside for a smoke and didn’t come back after five minutes, of course I went out after him, and there he was leaning against his car talking to Mean Girl Jeannie sans her bf.
“Naturally, I went over to him, and he put his arm around me, and Jeannie left for freer pastures. So when he suggested we get in the car, I said sure. He deserved something.
“God knows Mean Girl Jeannie would have given him some. Just something to tide him over, just like Missy said. Then he really kissed me, and everything was all right . . . but even so, I can’t wait till next year.
“I mean the senior prom is really what it’s all about, and it will be Tino’s and my first year anniversary.” (FFFLLLIPPPP)
“Tino can’t help it that girls come on to him. I mean, like college girls and secretaries and stuff.
“I think he’s getting restless, but I can’t lose him now. I mean we have the whole summer ahead of us.” (FFFLLLIPPPP)
“Well, that wasn’t too bad.
“I mean, he really seemed to like it, and I didn’t even taste anything that lasted past a mouthful of Bud.
“He’s taking me to see the Smithereens at the Beacon next week, and maybe backstage afterwards.
“Aren’t I the luckiest girl in the world?”
(FFFLLLIPPPP)
“Missy’s gonna let me change at her place before I hook up with Tino.
“She’s lending me her fishnets and leather skirt to wear with a peek-a-boo T.
“The p-units think I’m staying over with her.
“This night is gonna be so great.”
(FFFLLLIPPPP)
“I shouldn’t have drunk so much.
“I missed it.
“I friggin’ lost my virginity and can’t even remember anything between the bar we went to after the Beacon and when I woke up in Tino’s arms.”

Ah, first love. Read on . . .
(FFFLLLIPPPP)

“Oh, this is really great!!!
“Caitlin gets MY internship and Tino just up and leaves for Portland, Oregon.
“Thank God for Missy.
“Out of the blue she pages me.
“She has an extra pass for a party at the Limelight.
“Screw the SAT prep.
“It’s party time, and Missy is always willing to share and cover.”
(FFFLLLIPPPP)
“X is like ecstasy!
“And Hans is great too. Tino was such a loser.”

Hans?
A musician, remember? You were going to be his muse. You missed the SAT because of him. Probably why you didn’t graduate.
Didn’t graduate?
Nope. But that was okay because you didn’t need a degree to do what you wanted to do.
But what about my parents?
They gave up when you went all Nancy Spungen on them. Funny thing, though, the trouble with you brought them back together. Perhaps they blame themselves silly then. Try the entry, oh, about here.

“Problem—Missy has to go to the West Coast, and she’s subletting her place. I need a place to crash.
“She knows this guy . . . I think she said his name was Flick . . . who just broke up with his girlfriend. Maybe we can work something out.
“I mean, all I need is a roof over my head and some time to get some writing samples together.”

You still thought you could make it as a writer for Rolling Stone at that point. Too bad that wasn’t one of your three wishes.
I didn’t choose what to wish for. You did.
A technicality. Read on.

“Dancing’s not too bad, and most of the guys are nice. Gigi thinks I could get better tips with better tits.”

Took you two years to pay them off too, not counting the interest—look about six entries later.

“Armando . . .”

He was the club manager

“. . . is such a pain. It used to be just a BJ every payday. Now he’s upped the vig to parties with his friends.”

Upped the vig to parties with his friends.?

Uh-huh, but they’re more than worth the price. I mean, they are spectacular, and Frankie did help pay them off for you.
Frankie, you mean . . . ?
Read on.

“Who cares if he’s married? He’s got a place in the city, and he can get me out of this dump.”
Three months later you were on the street. It was a company apartment, and he changed jobs. Left you flat. That getting pregnant thing didn’t work.
Getting pregnant?
You thought that was a way to get your hooks in him. Little did you know.
I was pregnant?
But it was okay, you miscarried early on, no biggie. Put an end to future problems like that, too.
This can’t be happening.
But, oh, it is—or did, and all with your own consent. I mean, you made these choices.
But this isn’t what I wanted.
You live in Manhattan, have been desired by many men with a very active social life, and you even went to your prom . . . junior prom, but the devil wins on a technicality since she controls the details. I mean, you never actually specified senior prom or anything.
Devil?
Missy is short for Mephistopheles. I’ve had an office in New York since before the Dutch arrived. The city has been good to me, a beacon of opportunity ripe for a wrecker like myself. It draws in the sailors of life with the promise of safety, and I get to scour the rocks for their remains once she is finished with them . . . and, of course, I get the afterwards as well.
Afterwards?
You probably call it the afterlife, but believe me what’s in store for you later on is far from living.
No . . .
You stopped saying no a long time ago . . . probably why you got that nasty case of crabs that’s bothering you now.
But . . .
There are some things that penicillin can’t cure. You still have your looks. That underwiring does wonders to compensate for the droopage. You’re still a pretty nice piece of tits and ass.
But this is not what I wanted.
It’s what you got. It’s what you wrote in that diary—the life you lived, the choices you made. And some of those choices were pretty bad, which is why you are here now.
I’m not giving you my soul.
I have that already. Care to see your rap sheet? You’re bound for a locale hotter than my fireplace over there. After a few months in prison—which is where you are bound for first—unless I intervene.
Intervene?
Sure, I can get you another chance.
And undo all of this.
(Laugh.) No, of course not silly. I meant I can keep out of prison, where you will wind up getting shivved by a jealous bull.
But you said chance . . .
Sure, I have this nice place in Hell’s Kitchen down from that Disneyfied pit that used to be Times Square. You’ll have a nice room and a few nice nighties . . .
No.
Wise up. It’s better to postpone those flames, the torment, you know, the damnation, as long as possible.
Maybe I can change.
There are no new chapters here. Too late. You traded in your beige Donna Karans for animal print Freder icks of Hollywood. You belong to the city now . . . my city! The last chapter is already written. You just haven’t lived it yet. Now, hand me the diary, and I’ll put it in a safe place.
Maybe I can rewrite it.
No. Just hand it back.
I can try.
It’s written in your hand. It can’t be changed.
I know better now. I can change.
But, dear, you already have changed. This is your life now. In no time at all these pages will take the place of any of those other memories of your previous life.
My life that was . . .
Until you chose to change it.
But I didn’t know.
No one ever does. You got what you asked for. And now today is the first day of the rest of your life . . . in my employ. I have big plans for you. You may find this hard to believe, but there are some guys out there who are bigger losers in the love department than you ever were, and most of them are more than willing to sell their soul for what you can provide. It might not be love but it’s at least satisfying . . . well, for them at least.
I don’t want to sell my body.
You don’t own it. I do, and with a little help from me and some good behavior on your part, it will stay in reasonably good condition, well, for a while. Stop crying. When you walk out that door, it will all be over anyway. Tori cried herself out years ago.
Tori.
Yes. That’s the name you go by now.
Vicki is gone. You are Tori.
But I don’t want to be that person.
Tough, now hand me the diary.
No.
It’s of no use to you anymore.
(Scream!)
Now, why did you have to go and throw it into the fireplace . . . after all the time I’ve invested in. . . .

Victoria Dawson’s neck really bothered her. Her doctor called it “monitor crick,” sort of the carpel tunnel syndrome for the neck for those who worked long hours at old-style monitors that didn’t tilt, and Vicki’s boss liked to kid that Hardware Retail Quarterly—The Craftsman Companion had all of the latest journalist gizmos as seen on “Lou Grant.”
Real funny, she thought.
My godson’s fourth grade class in Newark had more up-to-date computer equipment.
. . . and the equipment suited the work. How exciting can handyman tools be? Last month’s big bonus was a new hammer with a Green Bay Packer logo on it, big whoop.
Rolling Stone, this job was definitely not.
And now, thanks to so-called summer hours, all of her deadlines had been moved up to earlier in the week . . . and if that wasn’t bad enough, her time off on Fridays like this one were taken up with those “counseling sessions” that she had been prescribed to treat what the HR department had diagnosed as excessive lateness and absence due to depression—as if it was her fault that some mornings she just didn’t feel like getting out of bed.
Well, at least the sessions, for all their worthlessness, had run their course (as her insurance had just reached maximum coverage duration), so today’s session would hopefully just be long enough to tell Dr. M, “Thanks for the walk down memory lane, and I’ll be sure that someone invites you to my wake or retirement or whatever.”
As Vicki got up to leave and catch the PATH into Manhattan, the phone rang.
If she had cared about her job or any of the assignments she was working on, she would have answered it . . . but that would lead to her being late and having to hear all about some mumbo jumbo like passive aggressiveness.
Who needs any more of that!
Just for yucks she checked the caller ID read-out.
Lori.
Maybe she’d want to see that new Jennifer Garner film that had just opened?
She picked up the phone.
“Hey, Lori.”
“Glad I caught you. There’s been a screw-up, and neither Tom nor I can get back to Jersey in time to be there when the kids come home from day camp. Can you be there to meet the bus?”
Dr. M was going to be pissed.
But it was the last session the insurance company would cover.
“Sure.”
“Super. Maybe we can catch a movie later. The new Jennifer Garner film looks cute.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Vicki hung up and obliviously went back to her sucky life.
But at least it was her sucky life and no longer included waste-of-time shrink sessions just because HR told her to go.
Not even HR could overrule the all-powerful insurance companies.
And who needed a weekly trek into the city anyway?
The Big Apple was rotten to the core, at least so she had been told.

(Grateful acknowledgement for inspiration is duly owed to the short story “Blind Alley” by Malcolm Jameson and the novel Privileged Conversation by Evan Hunter.)

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Jean Rabe is the author of two dozen books and more than four dozen short stories. She primarily writes fantasy but dabbles in science fiction, military, and horror genres when given the opportunity. A former newspaper reporter and news bureau chief, she’s also edited anthologies, gaming magazines, and newsletters. When not writing, Jean works on her growing to-be-read stack of books, plays role-playing and board games, visits museums, and fiercely tugs on old socks with her three dogs. Visit her web site at: [http://www.jeanrabe.com] www.jeanrabe.com.

Martin H. Greenberg is the CEO of Tekno Books and its predecessor companies, now the largest book developer of commercial fiction and nonfiction in the world, with over two thousand published books, including more than one thousand anthologies, that have been translated into thirty-three languages. He is the recipient of an unprecedented three Lifetime Achievement Awards in the Science Fiction, Mystery, and Supernatural Horror genres—the Milford Award in Science Fiction, the Bram Stoker Award in Horror, and the Ellery Queen Award in Mystery—the only person in publishing history to have received all three awards.