Water to Burn

by Katharine Kerr

  Ari reappeared in the doorway, this time with his razor in his hand. Shaving soap covered half of his face.

  “Who were you talking to now?” he said.

  “Venus,” I said. “The Roman goddess, y’know?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I see that nothing’s changed while I’ve been gone.” He went back into the bathroom and slammed the door behind him.

  While he cleaned up, I checked some Agency files on our protected site, TranceWeb, which has its own encryption system. Since the cross-agency file on Reb Ezekiel had yet to come through, I hunted for archived intel on sea creatures such as kelpies, nereids, and mermaids in the hopes of finding out more about Fog Face.

  None of these creatures—whether Chaotic or Orderly—have the same kind of reality as an actual animal like a seal or a fish. Most sightings fall under the heading of IOIs or outright hallucinations. A few, however, of these “things seen” have a quasi-reality, because they’re manifestations of the hidden forces of the universe. Solid they’re not, but those who observe them are seeing something real, not mere illusions.

  The trick is knowing the difference. I felt a gut response to Fog Face strong enough to assume he emanated from the forces of Order and Harmony. Since I found nothing about mist creatures in the archives, I’d have to test the assumption as I went along.

  While I finished my search, Ari unpacked his clothes, then went into the kitchen and began rummaging around in the refrigerator. We’d stopped at a local grocery the night before and stocked up on a number of staples, like coffee, lettuce, and tomatoes for me.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll eat breakfast,” he called out.

  “No,” I said. “I won’t.”

  In a minute or two he appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was eating a half round of pita bread filled with something.

  “What’s in that?” I said.

  “Peanut butter,” he said. “And sweet gherkins.”

  “And what?”

  “Pickles, you’d call them.”

  I gagged. He returned to the kitchen to eat it out of my sight.

  After he ate this evidence that breakfast is a miserable meal, he began stowing the other luggage. In particular he worked from his salesman’s sample case, a big tan leather holdover from his previous cover story, when he’d posed as an importer of prayer shawls as well as some souvenir goods from the Holy Land. It actually held gadgets, among them a detection device for bugs in the walls, something he called an “interference generator” to protect our cell phone connections, and a gizmo that checked my landline and answering machine for wiretaps. At one point, when the case stood open, I glimpsed a long narrow bundle, wrapped in black.

  “What’s that in the prayer shawl?” I asked.

  “The name is tallit.” He looked up and scowled at me. “Not prayer shawl.”

  “Sorry, but you called them that when you came to my office—the first time, if you remember.”

  “I had to use the sodding password I was given. That was just the kind of insensitive gaffe your State Department is known for.” He glanced into the case. “As for this, it’s just a bit of cloth. You never wrap things in a tallit.”

  “Okay. I didn’t realize. But what’s the thing in the cloth?”

  “None of your business.” He gave me the smile I call his tiger’s smile, tight-lipped and narrow-eyed. “But it’s in two pieces at the moment. Perfectly harmless.”

  “You mean it’s some kind of gun.”

  “You don’t want to know.” He shut the case and stood up.

  I could recognize a change of subject when I saw one. “How do you get this stuff through Customs?” I said.

  “Someone calls ahead. The security forces are waiting for me when I get off the plane.”

  I knew better than to ask who the “someone” was.

  “That reminds me,” he went on. “The next time you call your Aunt Eileen? Tell her I brought her a gift from Jerusalem.”

  “It’s not a gun, is it?” I said.

  “Don’t be silly! It’s a rosary. The beads were carved from wood grown in the Holy Land.”

  “She’ll love that. Michael will be glad you’re back, too. He’s been badgering me about eating more. On your orders.”

  “Not orders. A simple request. He’s a good kid, or he will be with a little supervision.”

  “Which you’re planning on supplying.”

  “Will you mind?”

  “Of course not. You’re right about my little brother. He needs it.”

  About three minutes later, my Aunt Eileen called. In my family, this kind of “mental overlap,” as we call it, is not coincidence. The first thing she said after hello was, “I dreamt last night that your Ari came back to San Francisco.”

  “He’s not mine, exactly,” I said, “but he did, yeah. He’s here now.”

  “Oh, good! Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? Michael will be so glad to see him.”

  “I’ll ask.”

  Ari agreed so fast and so happily to accept the invitation that the truth washed over me: he liked my family. He actually liked the peculiar collection of my relatives that he’d met, the same people who had made my previous boyfriends all run like hell in the opposite direction. I’d have a better chance of stopping a tidal wave than of talking Ari out of our moving in together.

  “Six o’clock then,” Eileen said. “Your uncle likes to eat when he gets home from work. Besides, he has less time to drink that way.”

  “We’ll be there,” I said.

  During the call, Ari had been hovering nearby. I clicked off and slipped the phone back into my jeans pocket.

  “About that apartment,” he began.

  I sighed and surrendered. “I want to move down near the ocean.”

  Ari’s grin disappeared. “It’ll be cold and foggy.”

  “I know, but that’s where I need to live.” I got up and put my hands on his shoulders. “You’ll have me to keep you warm.”

  “Oh, very well, then.” He bent his head for a quick kiss. “Near the ocean it is.”

  My landlady, Mrs. Zukovski, wasted no time when it came to speeding the parting tenant. Just as we were about to leave to start apartment hunting, the glazier, a certain Mr. Hansen, arrived to give an estimate on the window. Mrs. Zukovski escorted him up; she’d put on actual clothes for the occasion, a pink polyester tracksuit almost as baggy as the muumuus she usually favored. It clashed, however, every bit as badly as they did with her purple hair.

  Hansen himself, a tall man with a shaved head and arms bulging with muscles, began by discussing the available types of glass. Every time he gave a by-the-square-foot price, Mrs. Z moaned softly. Trailing behind them was a young man in denim coveralls carrying a clipboard and measuring tape, Hansen’s assistant, I assumed at first, though oddly enough, Hansen carried a clipboard and tape of his own.

  While Hansen measured the central window, the assistant stood to one side and looked around him, so carefully and slowly that I realized he was studying the apartment. He was a skinny little guy with a narrow face and some kind of adenoid problem, apparently, since his mouth hung slightly open. He had pale gray eyes that appeared too big for their sockets—fish eyes, I thought.

  “That estimate’s for the big window,” Hansen was saying, “but you should have the side panels refitted, too. Look, the framing’s warped right clear off the glass.” He moved to the side window in question and nearly stepped on the assistant, who scuttled out of the way.

  That’s when I realized no one but me could see him. I raised my hand to sketch a ward. He noticed and began edging sideways toward the open door, but not fast enough. I drew the ward with a sweep of my hand and flung it straight for him. It hit with a pale blue flash of light. He disappeared, and the clipboard and tape vanished with him, though a faint odor of fried fish lingered in the air.

  Neither Hansen nor Mrs. Z noticed because they were arguing about money, which they continued to do as they left the apartment. Ari, how
ever, had been watching the proceedings from the kitchen. As soon as I shut the door, he came in and stood looking at the spot where Fish Guy had been standing.

  “What was that?” he said.

  “Did you see him?”

  “It was a him? No, of course not. But I did see you draw some kind of symbol in the air and gesture toward the wall.”

  “The target was a Chaos creature dressed up to look like a human being. Huh. I’ve never seen that before. I’d better report in to my handler. I need to go into trance.”

  I flopped down on the couch, rested my head against the upholstery, and let my mind slip below the consciousness level. As soon as I sent out the emergency signal, Y responded. That’s the only name I have for him, Y, even though he’s been my handler ever since I took the job. I do know what he looks like, however. Since my promotion he’s appeared in these trance meetings as himself, or so he’s assured me: a Japanese-American man with glasses, streaks of gray in his thick hair, and distinguished features. In his youth, he must have been really handsome.

  “I’ve been meaning to contact you,” Y thought to me. “What’s the problem?”

  “I’ve had an unpleasant visitor.”

  I extruded an image of Fish Guy, that is, I visualized him so clearly that the image picked up Qi and became visible to other psychics. As I described what had happened, Y examined this 3-D picture.

  “The ward dispatched him?” Y said. “This bodes ill.”

  “Very ill,” I said. “I’ve never heard of a Chaos critter appearing human before, not even a real dorky human like this guy.”

  “Neither have I. I wonder if he was the usual creature, or if he was some new type of projection.”

  “Projection? You mean a direct link back to a Chaos master’s mind?”

  “I’m not sure what I mean. The thought just came to me. That’s the trouble with running on intuition.”

  “Yeah, ’fraid so. Look, some old magical texts talk about astral projections—”

  “I wish you’d stop referring to those. There’s nothing scientific about them.”

  I bit my inner tongue and shielded my thoughts to keep from snapping at him. There’s nothing scientific about ignoring evidence, either, is what I wanted to say, even though the evidence needs to be sorted through.

  “I think he was a totally new kind of apparition,” I said, “because when he vanished he left nothing behind. An ordinary Chaos creature would have popped like a balloon and left a skin or pieces on the floor for a couple of seconds.”

  “That’s very true.” Y paused to remove his glasses and wipe them on a white handkerchief that materialized in his image’s hand. “It bears investigating.” He put the glasses back on. “But be very careful.”

  “I will. You can bet on that.”

  “I need to sign off and go to a meeting, but quickly, is there anything else you need to report?”

  “I have a question. What about that gate between worlds? The one in my aunt’s house.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have anything new to tell you. The higher-ups are still making up their minds what to do.”

  “They’d better make them up faster. It’s beginning to wear on the family, wondering if some radioactive weirdo’s going to come charging in one night.”

  “I could possibly put in a requisition for a Marine squad to stand guard—”

  “That would be worse. Never mind. Just try to drop a few of the right words in the right ears, will you?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Y’s image flickered and disappeared.

  I swam back up to the surface of my mind and opened my eyes. Ari was sitting on my computer chair on the other side of the coffee table and staring at me.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m back.”

  “You need to eat something.” Ari glowered at me.

  “No, I don’t. Aunt Eileen’s going to fix a massive meal to welcome you back. I’ll wait.”

  I changed into a dark green corduroy skirt, brown boots, and a rust sweater, so I could look respectable if, by some miracle, we saw a workable apartment for rent. Since the day looked cold, I added my raincoat. I also carried my cross-agency government ID, which is not precisely fake—that group knows I have it even though I don’t work for them. Ari wore the navy-blue pinstriped suit he calls his police outfit, a move that turned out to be prescient, even though he has no psychic talents.

  Since I wanted to live by the ocean, we drove to the outer Sunset district, one of the least interesting parts of San Francisco. It stretches from the big crosstown artery, 19th Avenue, down to the Great Highway and Ocean Beach on the western edge of the city. The neighborhood features street after street of jam-packed houses, painted in pastels, most of them built in the late ’30s and ’40s by the same company. The typical house is your basic cube, set above a garage and fronted by a tiny square of lawn.

  After an hour or so of cruising for “for rent” signs, Ari turned glum. We were heading north on 37th Avenue when I realized that he was staring out the window with a hopeless sort of expression on his face.

  “I know this isn’t the coolest architecture in the world,” I said.

  “It’s not the architecture. It’s the sodding fog. Look at it! Doesn’t it ever leave?”

  Since we’d paused at a stop sign, and no other cars moved on the gray and windswept street, I looked. In the sky to the west a hovering Fog Face stared at me with a hopeless expression that matched Ari’s.

  “Uh, yeah, it does sometimes,” I said and hung a left onto Rivera. “We’re going to the beach.”

  Fog Face smiled and disappeared.

  As we drove west on Rivera, I heard the thuck thuck thuck of a helicopter passing overhead, going in the same direction as we were. Ari rolled down his window and stuck his head out to look.

  “It’s a police chopper.” He had to yell over the noise.

  At that point we heard sirens, too, racing ahead of us. I drove faster. When we reached the end of the street, which stops at the Great Highway, we parked the car and got out. Just across Rivera I noticed a small yellow school bus. Inside, maybe a dozen kids sat oddly quietly for kids waiting to go somewhere. A pair of adults walked up and down the aisle. Above us the helicopter headed out to sea. The noise dimmed, and I could hear myself think again.

  The Great Highway runs on a semi-artificial surface, built of reinforced dunes and a seawall, some ten to twelve feet above street level. We headed up the path that leads through moribund freeway daisies to a crosswalk and a stoplight. At the top we saw a pair of squad cars and an ambulance blocking one lane of the highway. Ari pulled his Interpol ID out of his shirt pocket. A uniformed officer, a skinny white guy, jogged across the crosswalk with one hand raised in the universal “stop” sign. When Ari showed him the ID, he lowered his arm.

  I glanced back at the Great Highway. Despite the “great” in its name, nobody drives on this roadway much because it tends to be blocked by blowing sand from the beach. That afternoon a few cars came speeding along, only to slow down as they approached the police presence. Most slowed further to rubberneck, then sped up once they passed. A white luxury sedan approached at a steady speed and zipped on by in the outer lane. I caught a glimpse of a blond man at the wheel before it sped out of sight. I turned my attention back to the police.

  “What happened here?” Ari said.

  “A drowning,” the officer said. “Well, we’re pretty sure the poor kid drowned. The Coast Guard’s sending a rescue unit, but the water’s pretty damn cold this time of year, and the girl’s only twelve. Not a strong swimmer, they tell us.”

  He jerked his head in the direction of the “them,” a huddle of seven people, standing on the cement half circle at the top of the seawall. I got my cross-agency ID out of my shoulder bag and held it out. “Mind if I have a word with them?” I said.

  He glanced at the ID, whistled under his breath, and shrugged again. “No problem, sure. The mother’s real broken up, though.”
/>   “Yeah, I bet. I’ll talk to someone else.”

  The officer escorted us across the road to the concrete esplanade. A sergeant, a formidable-looking African-American guy of about forty, met us. We showed our IDs again.

  On the half circle of view area, near the steps that led down to the actual sand and water, two women had their arms around a third, who stood hunched over, sobbing, with her hands covering her face. Two men stood protectively on either side of a teenage boy, who was shivering despite the heavy blanket wrapped around him. His red hair hung in wet tendrils around his face. Everyone wore heavy jeans or slacks and sensible thick jackets.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone planned on going into the water for a swim,” I said.

  “They didn’t,” the sergeant said. “A rogue wave.”

  “What?” Ari said. “It’s high tide, but the sea looks calm enough.”

  “Yeah. It’s strange, all around. Here, I’ll let you talk to the preacher.”

  A youngish white man, wearing jeans and a parka, open at the throat to display a black shirt with a churchman’s white collar, hurried over when the sergeant beckoned to him. He introduced himself as the Reverend Tom Wilson of a local Baptist church. He had a long narrow face and pale blue eyes that at the moment looked half full of tears.

  “Can you stand to tell me what happened?” I said.

  “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away,” Wilson said, but his voice shook. “Blessed be the name of the Lord! It’s a terrible thing. I can’t believe it happened, and here I saw it myself.”

  I made a sympathetic noise.

  “Our church also runs a Christian school,” Wilson went on. “We brought a group of kids out here for a nature walk.”

  “Those are the children waiting in the bus?” I said.

  “Yes. The police agreed that they didn’t need to stand out in the cold. Anyway, we kept everyone on the sand, no wading allowed, even.” He swallowed heavily. “I’ve lived in the Bay Area all my life. I know what the riptides and such are like.”

  “Very dangerous, yeah,” I said. “Did the missing girl run into the water?”