by Rose Lerner
While she stared goggle-eyed and gulped for air, the new arrival bowed to her like they were at a cotillion. There was a bow and a quiver of arrows on his back and a sword at his waist. Naturally. He also moved like he was made of more liquid, smoother things than flesh and bone.
“Well,” Sam said, breathless. The leather rims of her shoes bit into her palms. She clenched her hand tighter on the pain. “Well—for crying out loud!”
She hadn’t meant to say it. A lot more presence of mind and she’d have managed a better line. A little more and she’d have sworn in all the shades of blue she’d picked up over the last few years. In shock, though, she’d reverted to the minced oath she’d grown up hearing, and the sound of her own words made her start giggling.
The guy’s frown and furrowed brow got her laughing harder. From the way he looked, she might just as well have started speaking Greek.
“I mean you no harm, lady,” he said. Lady in his mouth sounded very different from the way Sam had heard it from bus drivers and deli clerks. “I’ve come at your summons; what would you have of me?”
Sam closed her mouth. Her laughter had been half hysterics. She couldn’t afford hysterics now, and this was no laughing matter: she wished she’d paid more attention to the Arabian Nights stories, even though the guy didn’t look like a genie. The clicking remoteness of the game table fell over her again, and she took comfort in it. Whatever this guy was, however he’d showed up, now he was a matter of risk and calculation. She knew both of those.
Ante: “I want,” she said, lining every word into place before she spoke, “to be able to ask you as many questions as I want without using up this—favor.”
Amusement flickered in his eyes, and at the edge of his mouth. “That you may most assuredly do, O cautious one. The service is genuine. I’ll not try and deceive you.”
“Huh,” she said. “Of course, you’d say the same thing if you were feeding me a line, but—okay, mac, I guess I gotta start with a postulate. So this isn’t one of those deals where I get pie-eyed and say—and I’m not saying it—that I wish so-and-so was at the bottom of the ocean and then it happens and I’ve wasted my wish?”
“No,” he said, once he’d taken a second or two to work the problem. “Nor could I accomplish such a task, I must warn you.”
“We’re gonna come back to that. Is there a time limit?”
He smiled, giving a significant glance to her body, then her face. “Forty or fifty years, I’d think, barring accidents.”
“Great.” She relaxed: not much, but there was a bridge under her feet now, not a tightrope. “So, in order: What can you do? What’s the price? And who are you?”
* * *
The woman stood facing the unknown and bargained.
Talathan had missed simple conversation. He had sought his duty when he grew weary of solitude and wanted novelty, but he’d been expecting disbelief or terror from the first meeting—if not simple and unthinking greed. Stories and his own memories suggested that mortals were capable of more, but it had been long since he’d mistaken capability for certainty.
She had, briefly, been clearly stunned by his entrance; her recovery had been just as clear, and very fast. She wasn’t a careless woman. Talathan, as yet, didn’t presume to know what she was, save quick of thought and speech both.
In the moonlight, in the way of her kind, she was also comely: short, slender, with auburn hair that curled at her shoulders and large blue eyes. Her gown was a thin column of silk, light green spotted with blue flowers, which fell lightly to her calves, left her arms bare, and dipped low enough to show the upper slopes of her pale breasts. Jewels hung low from her ears and flashed on her fingers; none of them were real, nor would even look it save to his people’s most casual observers.
His observation was far from casual. The woman noticed that and cocked her head, giving him a smile that was challenging but not quite hostile. “See anything green, pal?”
In answer, Talathan gestured toward her skirt.
She blinked, then laughed, surrendering the point. “All right, so I used the wrong line, and you can see in the dark. What else have you got?”
“Two of my abilities you know already. The others…” He paused. “I’ve not made such a list before now.”
Another laugh: this one touched with bitterness. “Lucky you,” she said, lips pursing on the last syllable.
“Few men can match me for speed. Fewer still for skill at arms, I’d hazard, or at stealth. We hunt for amusement, and I have, at need, been a warrior.”
Moonlight shone off her eyes as they flicked to the hilt of his sword, then to the quiver on his back. She shook her head, curls brushing against the nape of her neck. “I’m not looking to fight King Arthur.” Her lips tightened again. “I couldn’t, say, ask for a million dollars and just have it show up, could I?”
“Yes and no. I could create the seeming of great wealth, but it would fade: by the next dawn, there would be only leaves.”
“And your coach will be a pumpkin at midnight, huh?” she asked, looking down at the shoes that dangled from one hand.
Momentarily, like so much of what she said, her comment left Talathan blank; then, as was not the case with much of what she said, he recognized the allusion. “Your old tales do have truth to them. It could happen again, if such was your desire.”
“Huh,” said the woman once more, and thought on the notion, then laughed again. “No. Men aren’t solid. And anyhow, your handsome prince—or even your passable millionaire—has all the pretty broke girls he wants. Guys like that marry fame or money, and they keep their own flatfoots to make sure the blushing bride has the genuine article. No glass slipper needed.”
“Very well,” he said, relieved. Giving her the trappings of wealth for a night would have been too simple; nor did he believe she’d have been happy as a rich man’s pet, either wife or mistress. Men, as she’d noted, weren’t solid, and those used to having their own way were often cruel, intentionally or no.
Her service, not her happiness, was Talathan’s affair, and yet he was pleased.
“So. You can turn into an owl, you can fake cash for a day or so, you’re hell in a fight, and you can probably catch any rabbits around. And you can see in the dark.” As she spoke, she placed the flute back into its container, then slid the box into the bag on her shoulder. Shoes still in hand, she tilted her head and looked at Talathan again. “That about the score?”
“Save for the various charms of my person.”
“We’ll take those on account,” she said dryly. “Next question. What are your rates?”
“My rates?”
“If I do figure out how you can help me”—she gestured outward with her free hand, false jewels flashing in the moonlight—“what do I pay for it?”
“Nothing.”
She gave him a look of pure and naked skepticism, mouth slanted and eyebrows almost meeting her hairline.
“Do you think me so deceptive?” he asked, laughing but surprised.
She shrugged her pale shoulders, the motion sparse and economical. “I don’t think anything’s free.”
“Ah.” The sea lapped at the heels of Talathan’s boots. He studied the woman before him, and the sand behind her, with buildings rising up at its far edge. “Say rather that this is payment itself, for a favor done before the one who performed it, or her folk, had ever heard of these lands.”
“And this is a—a chip, huh, or a ticket?” She tapped her purse, clearly meaning the flute. “Whoever holds the item gets to cash in.”
Talathan nodded.
For a third time, she said “Huh.” She looked past Talathan, thinking, and her absent gaze caught the starlight. Wind blew the skirt of her gown around her bare legs: waves of green and blue like the ocean itself. She curled her toes into the sand.
“Do you have to stay here until I figure it out?”
“No. Neither here on the beach nor here in your world—although you would have to call on me a
gain, were I to go back to my own. The flute opens a door as well as sending a message.”
She nodded, earrings swaying. “I’m back that way.” Another sparkling wave of her hand, this one toward the buildings. “There’s a neon sign, that’s a kind that glows, with a purple crab on it. I’m under it, third room from the right. I’ll open a window when I get there.”
“Your quarters?” Talathan asked, mildly surprised. He knew something of the changes that had taken place since his last visit; he believed himself to be unclear on many of the details. Certainly he’d last come at a time when most women wouldn’t casually issue such an invitation.
Judging from the red-haired woman’s slightly defensive shrug and her wry look, customs hadn’t changed completely. “It’s warmer than here, it’s safer than here, and my reputation’s not going to suffer any. I’d fly, if I were you, though,” she added. “However good you are, I don’t much like your chances walking through town dressed like that.”
Having delivered that warning, she turned. Her dress came down much lower in the back; she was bare nearly to the waist. Glancing over her shoulder once, as if to make sure Talathan was real, she then turned back toward the buildings and began to walk.
* * *
The journey went much more quickly for Talathan, unfamiliar as he was with the town. He found the garish sign without much trouble, then spent half an hour perched on a branch outside, watching all of the windows in case either he or the woman had miscalculated.
He thought briefly, as the time went on, to worry for her safety. The town was small, but she was a woman alone; even he, an outsider, knew how unpleasant their fates could be in this world, and what sort of predators they might draw. Her lack of concern was Talathan’s best reassurance: She had the air of one who knew risk well, and not because she was foolhardy.
And indeed, she came in shortly after the question of violence had crossed his mind, opening the door, pulling a faded ribbon tied to a broken chain, which in its turn lit a lamp in the ceiling, and only then opening the window. She watched him fly in and transform, her hands on her hips and her head cocked slightly to one side, as fascinated as mortals had ever been but trying much harder to conceal it than any Talathan had met.
“Well,” she said, when he stood before her, head almost touching the low and cracked ceiling, “I’m probably not ready for the bughouse after all. What are you, anyhow?”
“Silath to ourselves, the people of starlight. Among you, we’ve been the sidhe, or the Fair Folk. Elves, to some.”
“Elves.” The woman laughed, shaking her head. The room’s light was hazier than the moonlight had been, but it did show colors better; her lips were dark red, likely painted, which made her smile all the harder. “Mister, I’m pretty sure I left the ‘nice’ list at least three years back.”
“I suspect that story has less truth behind it—at least, it’s not a familiar tale for me.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
The woman put her purse down on the table. It was a rickety, scarred thing, like the chair in front of it and the narrow bed to the side. A basin nearby was whitish porcelain, chipped and stained, with rusty taps. Bits of fabric hung from its sides: clothes, hung out to dry as best they could. The carpet might have been pink once; the peeling wallpaper still had a faint pattern of roses.
She turned to face Talathan again. “Let me put it like this: Are you from hell? That’s not going to scotch the deal, necessarily, I just want to know what I’m getting myself into.”
That question, at least, was familiar ground. “No. We’re not angels, but neither are we devils. Your soul is safe.”
“You’d get a lot of argument on that,” she said, but an edge of tension went out of her shoulders, left that long, slim neck. She sat down in the chair, leaned back, and let out a long, slow breath. “What do I call you?”
“Talathan,” he said.
“Sam. You might as well sit down.” She waved a hand toward the bed. “This isn’t going to be speedy. I hope you don’t have any big plans.”
“Had I, I’d not have volunteered.”
“You sure know how to flatter a girl.” As she talked, she stripped the paste rings from her fingers. They dropped onto the table with muffled clunks. “You’re what the suits might call an unanticipated resource. Don’t get me wrong—I’m glad. But what did other people do with you?”
Talathan unburdened himself of bow and quiver, then sat on the edge of the bed. The springs protested. “I wasn’t always the one to answer the call, but I know stories of those who served before me. Some wanted love—lost lovers found, unrequited love returned. That was the hardest of tasks.”
“I bet,” said Sam, with a skeptical exhale that wasn’t quite laughter.
“Others wanted their enemies slain. That would be easier.”
As Talathan talked, Sam had been running her hands through her hair, pulling metal pins out and depositing them on the table. She turned back toward him and blinked, then sighed. “Naw. The whole Apple Valley Bank—that’s the kind of thing that gets noticed. And most of ’em don’t deserve it, anyhow.”
“They’re not evil men?” he asked.
In the bad light, with her hair falling down, she looked tired: no less fair for it, but weary beyond what he could imagine, and the look in her eyes made her almost as old as he was. “Nah. Heartless. It’s worse—evil’s one guy, but heartless is a whole machine. You know what machines are?”
“In essence. You may have guessed that I’m not the first visitor to your world. Men—and women—have crossed to our side as well, through the years. That escape, also, is within my means to grant you.”
“No,” she said, so quickly that Talathan wondered if he’d given offense. Sam got to her feet, pushing herself off the chair with more strength than moving her small body should have required. “I need five hundred dollars,” she said, voice and eyes both suddenly gone flat. “Four fifty now, maybe. I need it in a form that’s going to stick around, and I need it in a month.”
The room went silent. It smelled like old smoke and old meals. “I know not how to give it to you,” Talathan said finally, and with real regret.
“I know. That’s my job.”
* * *
It was. Sam had known that almost from the start. She’d asked, just to make sure, but she hadn’t expected otherwise. She’d hoped to end the night thirty dollars in the black; she’d ended up with fifty-two and an... elf. It wasn’t the time to start complaining.
Hell, if worst came to worst, the guy might be able to clean up at a few boxing matches—or down in Hollywood. He was pretty enough, and they were filming in color now: a movie might actually come close to the rich brown of his hair, or the hazel green of his eyes. She could set herself up as an agent, maybe, get a downtown office and a gum-chewing secretary.
The thought made her smile. “Look,” she said, “I’ve got to sleep on this one.”
Talathan nodded. “I’ll return with the dawn, then.”
“Like fun you will,” said Sam. “I don’t know what kind of hours you keep at the North Pole, but around here the day starts at nine, latest. And—” She pushed her hair back from her face. “What are you going to do out there all night, sit in a tree and eat mice?”
“The tree, likely. I don’t eat when I’m transformed,” he said, wrinkling his upper lip, “save in dire need.”
“I think I can spring for flapjacks and joe tomorrow. Mice optional. And you might as well stay here.”
Talathan gave her a long look. “That isn’t generally done, is it?”
“No,” she said, pulling on casualness with a short laugh. Her face felt hot. She bent to her suitcase to hide it. “If my ma were dead, she’d roll over in her grave. So what?”
“I would not serve you so ill—”
“My ma’s halfway across the country. Nobody here’s gonna see me again, and if they do, they won’t care. And—well, like I said, I haven’t been a nice girl in a long time.” Sa
m rummaged through her clothes, finding nightgown and robe, carefully not looking behind her, carefully not thinking about a few of those not-so-nice-girl occasions. They’d been bad, strictly speaking, but not bad, as experiences went, and this guy was already too pretty by half. “You want a roof over your head, it’s not going to change a damn thing if you take this one.”
She shut the suitcase and turned, clothing in hand, to see Talathan standing by the window and watching her. Bone-tired as it was, her body responded, coming to attention in a spike of lust not unmixed with wariness. She hadn’t heard him move at all.
“The floor would be more comfortable than the tree,” he admitted with a faint smile, “if the offer is true.”
“Yeah,” she said, and wondered whether he’d mentioned the floor because he was being a gentleman or because he didn’t want anything else.
Maybe he was just being practical. The bed was barely wider than Sam, and she wasn’t a big girl.
She tried not to dwell. As it was, the silence while she changed, facing one wall with him looking at the other, was heavy, awkward. She was glad to tie her robe and wash up, when turning on the tap filled the room with at least one normal sound.
Outside, the wind picked up again. “Must have been hard,” Sam said, “flying over here in this.”
“Harder than otherwise. Is it common?”
“This time of year. Sets some people’s nerves on end, the noise.”
“Not you?” Talathan had stretched out on the floor while she washed, arms crossed behind his head.
Sam snorted. “I’ve seen the sky turn before a tornado. I’ve tried to find my way home in a duster. Wind’s got to be more than loud to scare me.”
She climbed into bed and tossed him the single pillow, then pulled the top blanket loose and threw it down as well. “Here. It’s about as even a split as we’re going to get in a place like this.”
“It’s not necessary.”
“Yeah,” she said, “it is. Good night. If I’m imagining you and you’re gone in the morning, it’s been... fun losing my mind.”
