by Marjorie Liu
I barely heard him. My brain was finally catching up to something he’d said at the beginning. Father Cooperon. Father Cooperon.
As though Grant was a priest.
Ralph glanced down at me. “Ma’am. You cut your hair.”
“Burned it all off in the fire,” I said weakly, which got me a laugh. I glanced at the other men. “How are your guys who went into the building?”
They hesitated, glancing at each other. “Fine.”
“Bullshit,” muttered Ralph, climbing up the stairs. “McKenzie is having a nervous breakdown. Says he saw a monster. Pansy.”
One of the guys gave me a lopsided grin. “No face, he told us. Covered in scales. Snake lady.”
I pretended to shiver. And then shivered for real when the other man gave me a long look, and said, “Except for the hair, you look just like the woman McKenzie went in after. We still haven’t found any trace of her.”
Ralph, now at the top of the stairs, turned around. “Leave her alone. You hear a cough, you smell smoke on her? Jeee-sus. Anyone who went into that hell is gonna need a morgue for being too stupid to live.”
Grant coughed. I gave him a dirty look. A faint smile tugged the corner of his mouth, and he tweaked my hip as he limped past. I flinched. He ducked his head, brushed his mouth against my ear, and whispered, “You look beautiful, snake lady.”
He was insane. I kept telling myself that as we climbed the stairs.
It had stopped raining. Most of the people still hanging around outside the Coop were volunteers. Some of the homeless regulars had disappeared, but I blamed the presence of the police for that. I didn’t feel comfortable being near them, either. I had broken too many laws over the years.
Grant had no trouble with them. I hung back, watching for stress fractures, tension, but every person in uniform looked at him with deference and respect. Just a man, leaning on a cane, dressed in faded jeans and a thick flannel shirt. Just a straightforward, unruffled, man.
Big, sexy man, I thought, unable to help myself. A man who looked like a wolf compared to everyone around him, something a little other, a little sharp around the edges.
Not born on earth. Able to manipulate people with his voice. Able to change a demon, down to the core of its being.
Capable of killing an Avatar.
I didn’t remember that, but I knew it was true. Who knew what else he could do.
You had a taste, with Blood Mama.
Blood Mama. A demon queen. And, even though I couldn’t remember Grant, not before this morning, I recalled those Avatars, Ahsen and Mr. King, who had been afraid of something, someone, around me. Afraid, and hungry.
Of him.
And of something inside me. The darkness, that slept so lightly.
“Lightbringer,” I breathed to myself, tasting the word. It didn’t stir memories, but for some reason, I felt compelled to touch my chest. Listening for that sixth heartbeat.
I stopped, after a moment. I didn’t want to think about that. Scared me. Even Grant scared me. He was dangerous. My mother might have killed him for nothing more than the possibility he could go bad. There wasn’t anyone alive who should have that kind of power.
Including me.
I joined Grant as he was led to a body bag. One of the cops, a woman, gave me a quick once-over, followed by a tight smile. “Donate your hair to charity?”
“Yes,” I lied, and saw behind her the fireman whom I had rescued. He sat on the end of an ambulance, staring into space, a blanket over his shoulders and an oxygen mask on his face. I turned slightly, so my back was to him.
Ralph donned latex gloves and unzipped the body bag. I wasn’t surprised to see the man I’d found outside Byron’s door. Burned yes, but not as much as I would have expected. Even the fragment of clothing I saw appeared minimally charred.
What bothered me, though, was that his features were disturbingly bland, even for a dead man. As though someone had taken an eraser and rubbed out everything but a mouth, nose, and eyes. He looked . . . unreal. Like a doll.
“Never seen him before,” Grant said grimly. “I can’t imagine why he was up there. Was he the only one?”
“Thankfully.” Ralph hesitated. “Know anyone who’d want to burn you out?”
“No.” Grant looked him dead in the eyes. “I hope this was an accident.”
Ralph seemed to have trouble tearing his gaze away. “The investigators will figure that out.”
He asked some more questions, promised to be in touch, then freed us up to the volunteers, who had begun pressing near the police tape, watching Grant with anxious eyes. Me, I got a few looks. But it was clear who folks responded to.
It didn’t take long to reassure everyone. Grant told the volunteers to go home, that the shelter would be closed for a few days. He asked several of the women to make some calls and find beds for all the regulars. Told her to pay for hotel rooms if she needed to, and gave her his credit card. No one argued, no one whined. I watched the crowd and listened to his voice.
“You didn’t use your . . . gift,” I said, as we walked back inside the building.
“I didn’t need to.” Grant glanced down at me. “People can be reasonable, you know. Decent, too.”
“Pollyanna.”
“Pessimist.”
“Can you see . . . decency?” I fluttered my fingers like I was tracing the outline of a person. “When you look at someone?”
“I see a lot of things. More than I want to, sometimes. More than I can . . . resist, occasionally.” He shrugged, grim-faced. “People come here with problems. Addictions, mental disorders, rage. I . . . tweak . . . them.”
“You change them.”
“I help them.”
“Are they the same people when you’re done?”
“Yes.” He glanced at me. “Mostly.”
“Giving yourself some wiggle room, there.”
“A wife-beater won’t be the same person when I’m done with him,” he admitted. “But he won’t be a robot, either. I don’t possess people, Maxine.”
“But you play God. Just a little.”
Grant hesitated. “You do, too.”
I said nothing. A little stung. A little hungry for more. I hadn’t had a conversation like this in . . . well, longer than I could remember. Which didn’t mean much, apparently.
But I was hungry for words. Hungrier than I should have been.
I had never gone to school. Kids my own age were seen from afar, and even up close they might as well have been a million miles away. I said hello to some boys when I was growing up, but it was just in passing: in the aisles of a library, or in a grocery store when my mom and I would roll into some town to stock up on food. We never stayed anywhere long enough for more than hello. Even if we had, my mom wouldn’t have allowed it. We had too many secrets. And she had too many demons who needed killing.
I read a lot, though. I learned about the world through books and television, and my own eyes. I figured there were kids who had it worse, by a lot. I always knew I was loved. I was always protected.
But being with Grant, here and now, made me realize again how much I had missed out on—and how much I still wanted some semblance of a normal life. A good, simple life.
Right. Now I was the crazy one.
Grant limped past the basement door. I stared at his back. “Where are you going?”
He glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t answer. I listened to the boys on my skin, flexed my hands, but they were silent. No danger around us. Not for the moment.
Grant led me to an office. Not much furniture, just a table, a couple chairs. No phone. A framed picture, about the size of my hand. I was in it. So was Grant. We were sitting together on driftwood, at the beach. Both of us smiling. Not forced smiles, but the kind that begin and end on a laugh.
“I look happy,” I whispered.
“Remember that.” Grant pulled the picture out of the frame. He pushed it into my hands. “You’re not alone, Maxine. You’re not . . . u
nloved.”
I exhaled, sharply. “Just means I have more to lose.”
“More to fight for.”
“More pains in the ass I’ve got to deal with.”
Grant smiled. “But I have a nice ass.”
I laughed. Bubbled out of me before I could stop it. Not a big sound, not a giggle, but just a good laugh that made me feel warm, and more like myself than I had felt since waking up this morning in a pool of blood.
Grant sat on the edge of the table, watching me. “What do you think is going on, Maxine? Is that woman part of the reason you’ve lost your memory?”
I shook my head, still looking at the photo. “I think Jack knew she was coming. I think that’s why he wanted to talk to me. What happened last night . . .” I stopped, and leaned against the wall. “You should have seen the look on her face, the way she . . . prostrated . . . herself in front of Jack’s body. She worships his kind. She thinks they’re gods. She accused me of not protecting him, as though the fact that I was alive and his human body was dead was a mark against me. I think . . . I think she believes I killed him. She called me his defiler.”
“Sounds like a zealot.”
“A zealot who uses her voice to drain the life out of an old woman?”
“That man up there, in the body bag. He was drained.”
“How can you tell?”
“He was . . . emptier . . . than a regular dead person. A new corpse still retains some residual energy. That man had nothing. Mary would have died the same way if you hadn’t stopped that woman.”
“You might have stopped her.”
“I was too busy pouring energy into Mary.” Grant smiled grimly. “I should have done something different. Attacked.”
“You followed your instincts. You saved her. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Except the woman is gone. Out there now. Probably hurting others.” Grant looked down at his hands. “She knows what she’s doing. She’s had training. Not like me, Maxine. I still don’t understand everything I can do. I’ve spent my life playing this thing by ear.”
“Your mother?”
“Never told me. She died when I was in my teens.” He gestured at the picture in my hands. “I’ve learned more about myself in the past two years than I ever imagined. More than I wanted to imagine. Without you . . . it would have been difficult.”
“I can’t imagine I made it easier. I’m no bargain.”
Grant shook his head, mouth tilting into a wry smile. “You’re my only friend, Maxine. Before you, I had no one. No one I could talk to about who I am. No one I could be honest with. I think you understand what that means. Better than anyone.”
I stared. No one could look at me like that and be lying. No liar could live around me this long without being murdered by the boys. And no one but this man could see me bald and tattooed, strangling a woman with my bare hands, exorcising demons, talking about the end of the world—and not even bat an eye.
What had I lost?
“I just scared you,” Grant said quietly.
“Yes. You scare me a lot.”
“Scared of being happy?”
I held up the photo. “This is overwhelming. I should have spent my entire life alone.”
“But you made a home.”
“I made a home,” I agreed. “I wish I remembered you.”
Grant pushed himself off the table, leaning hard on the cane. “Come on. Mary and Rex are probably rolling joints by now.”
I slid the photo into my vest pocket. “That cop called you something. Father Cooperon. Anything else you want to tell me?”
Grant smiled and held open the office door. “What do you think it means?”
“You don’t want to know what I think.”
He leaned down close to my ear. I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink. But instead of speaking, he moved a fraction, and kissed my cheek. Softly, gently, his mouth lingering against my skin. Heat washed over me. My heart pounded. I wanted very much to turn my head and see what his lips tasted like. Cinnamon, maybe. Or sunlight.
But I didn’t. And he pulled away before I could take the leap.
My second kiss, I thought.
We didn’t talk as we walked back to the basement. I wanted to. I had more questions. No time to waste on silence. But I felt off-balance. I couldn’t count on my voice to work.
At the bottom of the stairs, Zee began to twitch. Not exactly a warning, but nothing I wanted to take for granted. I left Grant behind and jogged to Mary’s room.
I opened the door. First thing I saw was Byron, sitting up. Rex and Mary stood on the other side of the crammed space, staring at him. Neither had pleasant looks on their faces.
“Hey,” I said to the boy, walking quickly to the bed. “Are you—”
Byron looked at me, and I stopped. He was not my blood, not my child, but I knew him. I knew that kid as well as anyone could.
But I didn’t know the boy in front of me.
“Maxine,” said Byron. “Oh, my sweet girl.”
I clutched the rack beside me, needing something to hold on to. The metal rail crumpled beneath my grip. The boy flinched. For a moment, just one, I imagined fear in his eyes.
“Forgive me,” said the boy, but his voice was deeper, his accent refined, and his eyes—the way he looked at me—
Byron was gone. Jack had found his new skin.
CHAPTER 10
JACK Meddle. Meddling Man, Zee called him. Full of riddles. But I suppose when your grandfather was older than a star, you made allowances for eccentricities and secrets.
Except the ones that cost lives.
“HOW could you?” I asked, feeling lucky I could speak at all. We’d been so happy last night.
Even Byron. Byron, who had done the dishes and washed away the entire aftermath of Jack’s pie-making carnage—because it was my birthday, and he knew I would have cleaned up for the old man.
I remembered the boy, in the apron. I remembered his small, satisfied smile.
A full-bodied shudder wracked Jack, and the look he gave me was nothing I had ever seen on Byron’s face, or even the old man’s: fear, uncertainty, self- loathing. He raised a trembling hand, as though warding me off. “Don’t say it. I can’t bear to hear it again. I know my apologies are worthless, but please, we never meant to hurt you, or any of the women in your bloodline. We were desperate. It was the only way.”
I had thought I understood him until then. “What?”
He stilled. Grant said, “This has nothing to do with last night, old man.”
Jack’s face turned waxen, pale. I tried to move, and couldn’t. I felt so heavy, my legs weak. When I breathed, no air reached my lungs.
“Old Wolf,” I managed, finally. “Get out of that boy.”
“The boy.” He spoke slowly, as though the words were foreign, as though he’d forgotten where he was, who he was inhabiting. “He’s not being harmed.”
I grabbed his wrist—that stolen, knobby wrist—and leaned down into his face. Killed me to see those eyes, those eyes that were not Byron’s eyes. Not Byron’s soul. Not the spark that was the boy, and the boy alone.
“How dare you,” I said. “How dare you do this to him.”
My grandfather tugged his wrist free and swung his legs over the bed’s edge—moving unsteadily, wincing as though in pain.
“This is temporary,” he replied, but all I could hear was Byron’s voice, stolen from him; and all I could think of was the boy, somewhere inside, maybe watching, maybe aware—locked out of his own body. Possessed against his will.
I blocked Jack from standing. “It’s one thing to take an embryo in the womb, or even a coma patient . . . but this is something else. Byron is not yours.”
Jack took hold of my arm and squeezed. Desperation, in his eyes. Fear. Grief.
“I wouldn’t have done this if there were another way. Do you understand? There’s no time, Maxine. Why else do you think I came to you last night?”
“I
don’t remember last night, Jack. I woke up in your blood. Beside your corpse.” A cold hard knot settled in my gut—same knot that had been in me all day, only larger, like a tumor. “What happened? Who cut your throat?”
Rex made a small sound of surprise. Grant gave him a warning look, while Mary settled against the racks, stroking the leaves of her plants while giving Jack a long, thoughtful look.
My grandfather didn’t answer my question. Just sat back, staring like he’d never seen me before. “How could you possibly forget?”
“You tell me.” I looked so hard into his eyes I thought my head would pop. “Someone’s come for you. Now you’ve made Byron a target. If she hurts his body, if she takes him to God knows where because of you . . .”
Jack rocked forward. “Who has come?”
“Another hound,” Mary spoke up, tapping her chest with a long bony finger. “Has your scent, Wolf.”
“Shit,” Rex muttered, his aura twisting down his shoulders like snakes. “This world is getting too crowded.”
“She calls herself the Messenger,” I said, ignoring him. “Sent by her Aetar Masters. Praise be their light.”
Pure revulsion roped down my spine when I said those words. My mouth felt dirty. “I saw the look in her eyes. She’s going to keep coming until she’s dead, or you’re back in the Labyrinth. And if she doesn’t return home, your kind will just send another. Or am I wrong?”
Jack’s expression was so grim. He looked down, saw the amulet hanging around his neck, and shuddered. He stuffed it beneath his shirt. “Let me up.”
Grant edged me aside. Gentle, when he touched me— but there was nothing mild about his expression. “Give me one good reason to leave you inside that boy.”
“I can’t,” Jack said, looking like he wanted nothing more than to melt back into the covers and pull them over his head. “But we have no time for anything else. Not the womb, not some coma victim whose brain I must repair. I would never have done this if there were another way.”
“This is sick,” I said. “All of this is sick.”
“It’s life,” Jack replied, hoarse. “Survival.”
“I’m not going to let Byron’s throat get cut.”
