Behind Bars

by Meredith Katz

  That struck a nerve that he hadn't even realized was still raw. It hit him with such intensity that he felt dizzy rather than any specific emotion—not angry, not hurt, just off guard. He drew a breath in, unsteady. "No, I—no."

  "I'm sorry to say, but I'm not marriageable material. I know that well enough."

  Well, she was open enough about her habits, and there was no way she'd think he was unaware of them. It was almost a relief to think about that than the rest of it. Is she turning tricks in the room? he wondered. Is that why she's so sure she won't run out of money, or why she brings so many people up? The thought did make some sense, but he dismissed it almost at once. He would have noticed if any business were being conducted at the bar, and neither the regulars nor Tari seemed the sort to expect that sort of thing to get worked out after the fact.

  It was simply pleasure.

  He floundered to find the line of conversation again. "It's not—I wasn't looking to marry you for it. I just meant that you're helping Bru in a way I can't. He hasn't had a feminine influence in his life for a very long time."

  "I don't think that's gender," Tari said gently. "I think you're just too close to the situation. But that's to be expected. You two have spent all your time together as your only family for just as long."

  "Well—" He raised his eyes to hers again and found her watching him with an almost coy look, eyelids half-lowered. The expression sent a rush of heat through him and made his words dry up.

  Tari noticed. "But you're reacting to me with that sense of 'having a woman around the place', whether or not he is," she said, still coy. "Am I being a feminine influence on you?"

  And if the earlier comment had struck a nerve, that was like a bucket of ice water. "If you're asking if you're like my wife—no," he said, hoarse. She was still attractive, still appealing, but… "Nothing like."

  "Tell me about her," Tari said. She grabbed a pillow from the bed and hugged it, grinning up at him like a child waiting for story time.

  He drew a sharp breath to refuse, hurt and off-kilter, and something he'd told Bruant came back to mind: the more people remember her, the longer her memory will live. He let his breath out between his teeth in a slow hiss of air. "Not much to say," he said, hesitating.

  "How did you two meet?" Tari asked, still smiling at him, heavy-eyed.

  Pelerin closed his eyes, like he could redefine the space around them by doing so. The room itself was his, of course. His building, his rooms. But it felt heavy with Tari's overwhelming presence, like he was the stranger who didn't belong there.

  When he opened them, nothing had changed.

  "I used to be a city guard," he said slowly. "When I was younger, I mean. I joined in my teens. It's mostly the older guards who work the gates so I never ended up on that kind of interrogation duty. Since I was younger and fit, I mostly worked in the city streets, doing patrols."

  Tari gave him an obvious once-over. "I could see that."

  Strangely embarrassed, he made a face. How long had it been since anyone had properly flirted with him, even if just to tease? He didn't know how to respond, and pushed on. "It wasn't a dramatic story, how we met. Phalene's father ran the inn. I drank here often enough after work, and she served a lot of the food. We hit it off, got together, and I withdrew from the guard and took over running the inn when her father passed. She taught me how the business worked. We'd been together a couple of years when she had Bruant."

  "What was she like?"

  "That's the part that's nothing like you," he said, trying not to be unkind about it and hearing his voice come out maybe too soft instead. It was impossible to excise the fond tone though, as memories came so clearly that Pel expected Phalene could open the door and walk in right then. The shape of her face, the way the light caught her dark eyes, her ever-smiling soft mouth, the scent of her hair.

  "She was a lot less down-to-earth," he went on. "She liked to dream about life outside the city. She was kind of… fascinated, I suppose, with what it would be like to be a human living among demons. The fantasy thrilled her. She was like that in every way, though—driven by fantasy, I mean. She was always wanting to try something new, experience the world. It's why she loved the inn so much, getting to hear all kinds of people's stories."

  "Sounds more like me than you realize," Tari said, and laughed.

  He smiled at the clear tone of it but could feel a chill settling into his stomach. "I…" he began, then quieted, helpless as the memories became darker.

  "Pel?"

  "She died," he said finally. Then, knowing Tari already knew that, he added, "It was because of that curiosity. The city watch relaxed over the years due to a lack of incidents. Nothing had happened since long before either of us were born, so it was easy to go in and out of Dolana, back then. She went out of the city to gather some wildflowers for the tables and met a… person out there. It would later turn out to be an aluga. She told me about the stranger she had met, a friendly woman with eyes that were black even where the whites should be. Talked to her about the weather, nothing important. I didn't think it was worth mentioning to anyone."

  "And?" It didn't seem like Tari needed an explanation as to what an aluga was. Pel had, back then, even if he'd never forget now. They passed for human in everything but their solid black eyes, until they attacked and their natures became clearer: demons who fed on human pain and fear.

  "What do you think?" Pel said flatly. "The third time they met, it fed. Her scream was too late to bring the guards in time to save her from the attack. She died slowly over hours, in terror and agony." He forced himself to draw a breath despite how tight his lungs felt. "We did a hunt and caught the demon, though."

  "I imagine that did not go well for the demon," Tari said, her tone light but expression serious.

  "Who the hell cares about the demon? It kept the rest of the village safe," Pel said roughly. An outsider couldn't understand. "It helped us test some of the methods the Inquisition had studied to try to trap or harm demons. They gave me the honor of using it to kill her."

  "Ah," Tari breathed, watching him almost with caution now.

  That's a normal response, he thought, depressed and hurting. Normal to be cautious of someone whose grief ended in vengeance. Normal to be wary of someone who admitted to having tortured and killed something, even if it was a demon, the demon that had killed his wife.

  He looked back up at Tari, and was surprised to see that her expression was still odd. Sympathetic, but with something underlying it. Interest still, maybe. Some kind of fascination. "I'm sorry for your loss," she said softly.

  Suddenly, facing her was too painful. "I should… I should go," he said, clearing his throat and pushing away from the wall. "I've brought the mood down far enough. I'll charge you the long-term rate from now on."

  "Thank you," Tari said. And then, in a strange, pleased tone, "And thank you for sharing that with me. I know it must have been hard. I appreciate it."

  He glanced back at her, saw that bright-eyed look still on her face, and just shook his head as he left the room.

  The expression was familiar—too familiar. It was how Phalene had gotten about people's stories, even the tragic ones.

  Just hearing about the wide range of experiences in human life had interested her so much. Someone else's horrible adventures, stories that had nothing to do with her.

  *~*~*

  The next afternoon, Pel heard voices coming from Bruant's room and assumed that Tari was in there—but five steps past Bruant's door, he stopped cold.

  Tari had gone out earlier to keep pushing a business deal. He was sure she hadn't come back yet.

  Pel stood tense where he was, trapped in a parent's indecisive horror. Bruant's an adult now. If he had a girl over, that was his right—or, for that matter, a boy; Pel himself had dated a few when he was younger.

  But Bruant hadn't mentioned being interested in anyone to him before, and when he'd passed by Pel on his way upstairs earlier, he'd been alone. The fro
nt door was still shut to anyone who didn't have a key, so either he'd somehow missed Bruant smuggling someone past him, which would already be a concern, because why, or someone had come in through the window.

  And that sort of behavior, happening on the second floor, still in (albeit dimming) daylight, was more likely to be demonic than human. Sure, it was possibly normal—he'd done it himself, after all—but cubants like incubi and succubi were famous for it. And surely there were other types of demons who could do likewise. There seemed to be more variety of the monsters out there than names he knew for them.

  It's probably fine, he told himself. It's probably nothing.

  But he'd be fucked if he'd let something happen to someone he loved a second time. Anxious, fretting, he turned and walked back to Bruant's room. The sound was still there, muffled and indistinct. He'd have to put his ear up to the door to hear details, and if it were just a lover, that'd be a horrible violation of Bruant's privacy.

  Indecision gripped him briefly, and then he forced himself to make a decision. He wouldn't listen. He wouldn't throw the door open. He wouldn't do anything that he wouldn't have wanted done to him back in the day.

  But he still needed to know.

  So he knocked.

  Immediately the sound stopped. There was a silence, as if Bruant—and perhaps, whoever was in there with him—was waiting to see if he'd leave.

  Shit. He knocked again. "Bru—?"

  This time, he could hear Bruant's voice through the door, raised to carry: "One minute, Dad!"

  He strained to hear what was happening, but didn't hear anything now. What should I do?

  Bruant's locked turned with an audible click. It was too soon for his window to have been opened and closed to let someone out; he must have got up from wherever he was and come right over. It didn't entirely reassure Pel—he still had no idea what exactly he was going to see when the door opened—but it was still a damn sight better than the alternative.

  But when it creaked open, Bruant not bothering to keep it closed but pulling it wide, all he saw was Bruant himself, shirtless and staring out at him in wide-eyed alarm from his perfectly normal messy room with its unmade bed and its unfortunate pile of laundry on the floor. "Dad? What is it?"

  Pel looked past him, searching the room for anything unusual, but there didn't seem to be anyone or anything there except Kip, sitting up on Bruant's bed and looking curious about the commotion.

  "Dad?" Bruant prompted again, brows furrowed.

  Maybe I'm losing it. "I thought I heard… I thought I heard you talking to someone."

  Bruant stared at him, keeping himself almost unnaturally still, then abruptly stepped aside, holding his door open. "I was talking to Kip," he said slowly and strained, like he wasn't sure when his father had turned into a madman.

  "To Kip," Pel repeated blankly. He looked at the cat, who blinked back slowly, then flopped down as if it had tired of these shenanigans. "And… was the cat answering back?"

  "What?" Bruant's voice pitched up a bit, cracking. "That's crazy, Dad. What the hell? He's a cat! Cats can't talk."

  Pel found himself embarrassed at the incredulity in Bruant's tone. "That's—no. I know that. I mean, I thought I heard two voices. Is that something you can explain, Bru?"

  "Maybe you heard his meowing as another voice?" Bruant asked slowly, tense and uncomfortable, staring at Pel with the near panic of talking to someone who was acting completely unreasonable. "I was trying to teach him tricks. You didn't hear any words, did you…?"

  "No," Pel admitted, hearing his voice come out just as embarrassed as he felt. "Just two different tones."

  Bruant let out a short, sharp breath. He blinked rapidly, looking down as relief washed over his features. "Way to freak me out, Dad," he said. Then, seeming to perk up instantly in a surprising mood swing, "Look, it's normal with him. I'll show you. Kip. Hey, Kip."

  The cat flicked an ear in their direction but didn't move.

  "Kip."

  Finally, Kip lifted his head, letting out a low-voiced complaint. "Mow."

  The smile Bruant gave Pel was almost eager, like he thought he was in trouble and wanted to please. "He does that if I talk to him. He likes to chat back. Kip, who's a good cat?"

  Kip's tail thumped on the bed a few times in agitation. "Mooooow," he whined back.

  "Kip, will you sit? Sit, Kip!"

  "Meeeeeeeeeehh." The cat was answering again but very definitely was not sitting, still flopped bonelessly on his side.

  Bruant grinned at Kip, then turned the smile on Pel. Bruant's anxiety had faded into something softer and more genuine, and Pel had to admit that it had been a while since he'd seen his son look at him with that kind of happiness. "Getting him to actually do the trick is the hard part," Bruant admitted. "Anyway, you think that might be what you heard?"

  It had been pretty muffled. It really could have been something as simple and stupid as a cat meowing back. Pel put his face in his hands, groaning. "I don't even know what I was thinking."

  "You've been stressed lately," Bruant said consolingly. He seemed to hesitate, then took two quick steps over, put a hand on Pel's back, and patted it awkwardly a few times. "My fault."

  "No, you… like you said, you had the right to be angry," Pel muttered into his hands. He scrubbed at his face, trying to will his embarrassment down. His protectiveness and fear had been suffocating; what they had turned into almost felt more so. "It's all right if you're angry with me. I mean, I don't like it, but…"

  Bruant's hand paused in its movement on his back. "Thanks," he said, and there was a guilty tone in his voice again that was horrible to hear. "I appreciate that."

  Chapter Four

  When Pel saw Tari in the late afternoon the next day, he told her what had happened, expecting to get a laugh out of her.

  He'd managed to calm down sometime after he'd excused himself. It had almost taken to the start of the work day, so he focused as always on the cooks, the food, the regulars, the daily work. When the day was over, he'd collapsed into bed for a night of nonsensical stress dreams.

  The next day, he did usual morning routine: he woke up, finished cleaning, and went for his daily jog. The jog itself wasn't enough to reduce his stress, so he hit up the training field. Publicly available, it was his favorite place to work out and go a few round with some old friends from the guard. He climbed the wall, focusing on nothing but finding his next handholds and footholds, and thought he'd sweated it out.

  He hadn't. He kept thinking of that scene, and how humiliating it was, inevitably drawn back to the topic of his own neurotic behavior.

  By then, it had become funny to him. I deserve a laugh at that kind of paranoia, he'd decided. Somehow, his fear had crept up on him and become so large that he'd literally jumped into a situation where the rational explanation should have occurred to him without needing to bother Bruant at all.

  He wasn't expecting Tari to stare at him, looking genuinely discomfited.

  "Tari…?" he asked, suddenly embarrassed again. This time, it was less for his actual behavior and more about how it might be perceived. What if it wasn't funny? There was a good chance he was actually starting to look deranged to others. He'd been tossing around thoughts of paranoia and neuroses all day—what was to stop someone else from doing the same?

  "Well," she said finally. "I'm glad it turned out to be nothing, Pel. But what if it had been a demon?"

  He blinked. The thought had become so absurd to him that it took a moment to pull himself back to that moment of fear, without the shadow of ridicule overlaying it. "What?"

  "If you had unlocked the door and thrown it open, and found Bru sitting there talking with a demon," Tari said. "What would you have done?"

  "I'd have—" It took him a moment to realize both his error of the day before and his need not to mention it. He had an amulet, given to him by the Inquisition for his service with the aluga, which could briefly bind a demon. It was a rare thing, inherited from a magician who had
passed through before, and stronger than the wards the guards used to test visitors to see if they flinched. He could have used that to trap it, but he hadn't been carrying it around with him regularly for years. He hadn't even thought about it for years.

  "Well," he said, searching for another answer to give even as he spoke. "I'd have run the demon off. If it was sitting and talking with him, it would probably rather not have to fight. I'd run it off, and then I'd make sure Bruant was safe. I'd pay the Inquisition to check the place out, tell them about the near miss. They wouldn't need to know he'd been talking to it. He'd be safe and it would get properly hunted."

  "Sure," she said. "From what I've heard, that'd be fine… if it were an unwanted demon intrusion. No humans to blame for that one. But if they were sitting and talking, what if the demon was there with Bruant's consent?"

  "There's no such thing," he said shortly. "Not really. They can convince people otherwise, but that doesn't mean it's true."

  She lifted her brows. "Those are some fine hairs to split," she said dryly. "Speaking as someone who comes from a place where humans and demons interact all the time, I'd say that a human still has a choice about whether or not they want to talk to a specific demon."

  "They might think they do, but—"

  "And you think they don't. What makes you right and them wrong?"

  "It's—because they're demons—"

  Tari sighed. She flopped back on her bed and spread her arms out. Pel, sitting next to her, found himself caught in the strangely pleasant position of looking down at her. The thought of leaning down to kiss her flitted through his mind, but it was quickly pushed away; the mood wasn't right. Not to mention how inappropriate it would be, as her landlord.

  It didn't make him want it less.

  For a few moments, Tari just lay there before speaking again. "If you're wrong, your world view might just fall apart, I'm sure. But maybe it doesn't matter. It's sort of beside the point, isn't it? So let's get back to that. If, last night, there was a demon there, one who Bruant wanted there, what would you do?"