by India Arden
“Unfortunately, yes,” Sterling said. “Apparently, all the canned air in the city has been huffed up by high school students desperate for a fix. But, wouldn’t you know it? Sidehustle saw the trend coming and stocked up years ago.”
Sterling and I went downstairs together to answer the door. Not that I didn’t trust Sidehustle…. Well, yeah, actually. I didn’t trust him. If he ever got so much as a foot in the door, it would be hours before he left. The guy was starved for attention, and he had this air about him like the desperate kid brother who’s been excluded from the clubhouse. It would be easier to keep him from slipping inside with both of us blocking the doorway.
Sterling opened the door, and there he was, in all his grubby glory: Sidehustle. At least six-foot-four, dusty blonde hair spiked with office supplies—maybe white glue diluted with rubbing alcohol, tipped green with highlighter pens. No one knew which defunct office supply store he was squatting in, but wherever it was, it had a good bit of inventory left. Toner. Cables. Cases of stale vending machine pretzels. If white-collar businesses used to buy it, Sidehustle could obtain it.
For a price.
His overcoat might have been blue, once. Now it was an indeterminate gray. If Sidehustle wanted a new coat, he could certainly have procured one. But the thought of customizing the lining with all the special pouches and pockets he was accustomed to was probably way too daunting.
He smiled at the two of us, a thin smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, and opened his coat with a showman-like flourish tinged with armpit stink.
“Sterling,” he said, nodding. “Edward.” Funny how jarring it was to hear my old name. As if the person who’d lived my life the past twenty-six years hadn’t actually been me. “It’s your lucky day. Not only do I come bearing the canned elixir which you seek…but I’ve procured a fresh roller for your ailing machine.”
He drew a small part from one of the dozen inner pockets and held it up triumphantly between thumb and forefinger. “Behold! And practically new, too.”
“Let me see that,” Sterling said, unimpressed. He held the part to the light, squinting. “This isn’t any better than the one we’ve already got.”
“I’ll have you know, that printer was functioning perfectly until a power surge took it out of commission. Where do you think all the bands were getting their flyers printed?”
“What do you want for it?” Sterling asked.
Sidehustle craned his neck as if to see around the corner. “Well, now…what might you be hoarding in that vast repository of returned merchandise that might interest me?”
“Anything of value was looted or destroyed,” I said easily, “and you know it.”
“And yet…those of us who know how to pick the gems from among the dross are the ones who ultimately flourish. There was plenty to be had in Lerman’s. Your continued success is evidence, indeed.”
“Leather boots?” Sterling suggested.
“Even should you accommodate my rare size—twelve narrow—the chance I would find said boots even remotely fetching is infinitesimal.”
I abstained from pointing out his current footwear was held together with duct tape. This was all part of the bargaining process.
“An electric kettle?” Sterling tried. “Perfect for making ramen, and a heck of a lot more portable than a microwave.”
“Indeed. I have a great stock of them, myself.”
Sterling gave a huff of annoyance, then mumbled, “Fine.” He thrust out a fist and pulled up his sleeve. “What about my watch?”
It wasn’t exactly a Rolex. The cheap face was printed with a web, and the second hand had a spider on the end, constantly circling in tiny clicks. The moment Sidehustle saw it, his eyes glittered with greed. “I suppose I could take it off your…heh…hands.”
“And throw in the canned air.”
“Highway robbery!” Sidehustle declared, with dramatic affront. “It’s the very last can!”
Sterling shrugged. “If you’re not in the market for boots, I’ve got all kinds of socks….”
“Fiiine. I’ll settle for the watch. But only because I have access to more watch batteries than I could drain in a lifetime.”
While Sterling worked off the watch, Sidehustle shifted his stance, attempting to peer past us, into the warehouse. There was nothing to see but an empty hallway. Still, it didn’t stop him from trying.
Sterling closed the deal with a low five, and Sidehustle ambled off, glancing at his new watch no less than three times before he reached the edge of the parking lot.
I closed and locked the door once he’d wandered out of sight. “Sorry about your watch.”
Sterling shrugged. “There’s a whole box of them under the belts and wallets. Some of them even work.”
We headed back for the computer room where he tutted me out of the way every time I tried to help, which left me puzzling over the completely impenetrable diagrams, itching with the need to do something useful.
“You’re as bad as Sidehustle admiring his new watch,” Sterling told me. “I was gonna count how many times you looked out that window, but I ran out of fingers, and I’ve got no desire to flash my dick.”
“They should be back by now.”
“Should they? Once they grab the extractor, the main objective is to keep from getting caught. And speed and stealth don’t necessarily mix.” When I grunted a semi-agreement, he cocked his head and added, “You’re worried for the girl.”
I couldn’t deny it.
“She knows her way around,” he said, “and she’s tougher than she looks. She’ll be fine.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Believe it or not, I get it. I have a strict rule about not romancing anyone I might get attached to.”
“Romancing—is that what you call it?”
He ignored the dig. “But there’s something so quietly wounded about her—plus, the whole too-smart-for-her-own-good thing—I might be rethinking my policy….”
The sound of a door crashing open a few rooms away interrupted us. Just as well. I was comfortable talking to Sterling about philosophical subjects, not women. I was across the room and out the door in a heartbeat, Sterling right behind me, and I reached the Lerman’s Returns Room just as our friends staggered back in—filthy, bedraggled and reeking.
My heart leapt when I saw it was all three of them, and no one else…then plummeted when I realized Aurora was hanging limply from Rain’s arms. He looked from me to Sterling and back again, and begged with a desperation that verged on pain, “Help her.”
It seemed that Sterling and I weren’t the only ones getting attached.
21
AURORA
This is not my bed.
Shallow first thought to wake up with, I know. It should’ve been something like, Huzzah, I’m alive! But given how awful I felt, I wasn’t exactly sure I could classify my state as living.
I pried open one crusty eye, but I didn’t need to see the black lace netting or the lamps draped with filmy purple scarves to know where I was. The scent of patchouli had already clued me in. And compared to the pervasive rot of the sewers, the bitter, earthen smell was an utter delight.
It was a small space riddled with ductwork, some sort of defunct mechanical room. Brocade curtains hid some of the pipes and ducts, but the ceiling was all conduit and galvanized panels. A few posters were tacked to the walls, dog-eared vintage pictures of bands I’d never heard of, all of them androgynous, with pale skin, crimped black hair, and wicked eyeliner. There was space enough for a rack of clothes, mostly black, and a bed.
If you could call it that.
Sterling came and sat beside me on his awful mattress. It squeaked like a floating pool lounger. In fact…I think it was a floating pool lounger.
“What happened?” I said. It came out like sandpaper.
He took my hand into his lap—at first, I thought, to comfort me. But then he laid a finger across my wrist. How absurd that a man in guyliner would be checking my pu
lse.
He said, “We think of ourselves as a single being. Maybe that’s true for our consciousness—but our bodies are more like ecosystems, communities of various symbiotes and organisms. Big, festive celebrations of coexistence. Unfortunately, your party was crashed. And the thugs that did it are ruining it for everybody.”
“What are you talking about? Bacteria? Fungus? Parasites?”
“Does it matter?”
“You don’t know,” I said. “Do you?”
“I could take a culture down to the coroner’s lab my next shift and have someone tell me what latched onto you down there in the sewers, but what good would it do? There’s no curing their patients—no prescriptions, no dispensary. But, while I can’t tell you exactly what names modern science would pin on uninvited guests making themselves at home in your body…make no mistake.” He pressed his hand gently to his solar plexus. “I know plenty.”
He picked up a package of cherry jello from the floor and pried out one of the single-serving cups.
I turned my head toward the brocaded wall and moaned, “I can’t.”
“Who says it’s for you?”
I was so nauseated, even the thought of him eating in my vicinity made my stomach churn. But when he peeled off the foil top, he didn’t suck the stuff down. Just held it in his lap.
“Seriously,” I warned him. “Even the smell is too much.”
“Good. That’ll help grease the wheels.” The enigmatic half-smile on his face faded, and in all seriousness, he added, “This would be a lot easier if you hadn’t woken up.”
He bowed his head and went very still, as if he was praying—though obviously, he wasn’t. If Sterling bothered speaking to any god, it wasn’t one who heard rosaries. When he called to the Arcana with his earth aspect, it didn’t flex the air like a showier talent might. It was a quiet shift. Deep. Even primal. But what I didn’t understand was what an Earth Master could really do for me, since the one I’d always known was essentially a glorified gardener.
Maybe fungi counted as plants. And while the thought of being riddled with fungus was horrific on so many levels, if that meant Sterling could do something about it….
When his eyes opened, his irises flickered the violet of a storm cloud at sunset. “I’ll need to touch you,” he said, and without waiting for permission, slipped his hand under the covers.
Please.
That’s how my body responded. Not in a heal me way, either. I was mortified by its reaction, but by the time that realization hit the thinking part of me, a throb of need had already surged down between my legs. And when his hand slid under the hem of my T-shirt, my whole being yearned into his touch.
His purely clinical touch.
Of course he didn’t think of me that way. My embarrassment was palpable, but he didn’t seem to notice, or maybe just didn’t care. He settled his cool hand on my abdomen, palm down, fingers spread, and then closed his eyes and focused again, speaking to forces I neither saw nor understood. Not just the Arcana, but the Earth—Fire’s opposite—which felt entirely foreign.
Fire is as ephemeral as it is violent. Earth is patient and abiding. Fire destroys. Earth nurtures. And as much as the aspects of the Arcana aren’t supposed to compete with one another, I must have absorbed my father’s opinion of them being equal only in name…with Fire, naturally, being the superior aspect. I’d never comprehended the subtleties of Earth. Now, though, with Sterling’s skin pressed against mine—with the forces of Earth reaching through him—I felt its formidable power.
It was massive. Not only the power to move mountains, but the catalyst of life itself.
And the life in him beckoned seductively to the life in me.
Desire raged through my body.
He felt it. He must have. The corner of his mouth quirked up, but only for a moment. But then his brow furrowed as he focused, not on me and my needy vagina, but whatever else had managed to burrow into my body during my time in the sewers. I did my best to think of something other than his touch—for all I knew, he wasn’t even into women—but my traitorous body squirmed beneath his hand, pleading for it to move higher and cup my breast…or inch lower, and delve between my thighs.
The want was excruciating.
It didn’t last long, though, and not because he relieved me of the burning ache I normally took care of myself. The nausea I’d momentarily forgotten reared up inside me, so sudden and so severe that arousal couldn’t possibly coexist in the same body. Before I could roll away from him, the sickness spiked and I was wracked with spasms—not the sort I’d been hoping for when his fingers first crept beneath my shirt, either.
There was nothing in my stomach to bring up, but my body still did its best to expel the nonexistence.
“There you go,” Sterling said gently, as if my agonizing contortions were all part of his grand scheme. He caressed my cheek with a hand that smelled of patchouli and turned my head to the side. As painful as it was to be retching up nothing, it was better than puking into his hand. Which was exactly what would’ve happened if I’d eaten anything since the Transfiguration ceremony.
As it was, he ended up with a palmful of rank, frothy spit.
“I’m sorry,” I managed, between the aftershocks of my shudders.
“Nothing to be sorry about. This is just what I was hoping for.” He drizzled my saliva into the cup, then held it up to the dim light of the draped lamp. “All that sugar. The yeasts are gonna have a field day.”
“You’re…encouraging them?”
He shook the last few drops of foul saliva into the jello. “Hardly. Our alliance was brief, to say the least. But I had to make good on my promise—give up on harassing your ecosystem and I’d show them a really good time. Enough sugar and protein to keep all kinds of microorganisms happy.” He turned toward a waste chute in the wall and dropped in the cup. It fell, and I didn’t hear it hit bottom. “But from here on out, they’re on their own.”
I stared up at the ductwork and tried to decide if my nausea was actually ebbing, or if I was just relieved to no longer be gagging on parasite-filled spit. “Did you get all of it?” I asked. “All it takes is one bacteria to multiply…one tapeworm to lay eggs….”
“Anyone who didn’t board the party bus to jello-ville will have to deal with your natural defenses—and I told your body’s bouncers exactly how to handle the few stubborn crashers who stayed behind. Your GI tract will be fine.” He peeled open another gelatin cup. “But if you could squeeze out a few tears, you’d really be doing your eyelash mites a solid.”
Despite myself, I laughed. “You can hear them? All these tiny little things?”
“Only if I listen.”
“I’ve never been able to cry on command,” I said. It sounded a lot better than I do my best not to cry in case I won’t be able to stop.
He leaned over and grabbed a lamp from a cardboard box doubling as a nightstand. “Glance into the bright light and see if that doesn’t make your eyes water.”
When he whisked off the purple scarf, I did as he’d asked. And it did produce a sluggish tear, which he caught with the open jello. We had to try a few more times before we made the other eye water. Making myself tear up was a lot less unpleasant than vomiting spit. But since it wasn’t anywhere near as taxing, it left me with a lot more awareness of his closeness, wallowing in the awkwardness of my urges.
I might not be his type, but me? I didn’t have a type. Every guy my age at the compound saw me as nothing but Fire’s Daughter. Someone to be ignored, or used, or both. Having that topsy-turvy feeling of attraction was rare enough. But experiencing it for each of the Rebels the minute any of them touched me? It was embarrassing. Like I was so starved for contact, so pathetic, I didn’t know how to act in front of a man, and all it took was a whiff of his scent or the touch of his skin to—
“Aurora?”
“Hm?”
“They’re all flushed out. You can stop forcing out the tears.”
I surreptitiously
knuckled my eyes while he dropped the second cup of gelatin down the disposal. By the time he perched on the edge of the inflatable lounger again, I’d managed to quell the waterworks. He peeled open another jello, and I said, “I hate to even ask where that one needs to go.”
He smiled then—a full-on smile. The first one I’d ever really seen on him. “I was going to suggest you eat it. But only if you’re hungry.”
Surprisingly enough, I was. Famished, actually. There were no spoons, but the jello was room temperature, warm enough to slide right out of the cup. I finished one, Sterling handed me another, and I ate that, too. And once I’d swallowed them both, I no longer felt like I’d be better off dead. I was sore and exhausted, but I’d be okay.
I handed him the empty plastic cup and our fingers brushed. There was no magical tingle there, just the unfulfilled longing of someone who’d never been allowed to get close to anyone. Yes, I’d be okay. Frustrated? Maybe. But…okay.
Did he feel it too, that spark of attraction? Or was it ridiculous to think he’d even look at me twice when he had a whole world of much cooler women (or maybe men) to choose from?
“I’m curious,” he said, “about the Arcanum.”
My heart sank a little. Of course he was only interested in my carefully censored Arcane knowledge. That was all any of them wanted from me. “What about it?”
“Why is it only offered to male Aspirants? Does it react to the Y chromosome, or is it all a matter of chauvinism?”
I had…no idea. “Genetics weren’t really a thing back when Arcanum was first discovered.” I thought of the single tintype photo of Grace Thompson looking stiff, expressionless, and painfully corseted. “According to the early writings, the first woman to receive it didn’t Transfigure—she vaporized.”
