“It occurs to me,” he said, ragged, “that I could’ve taken the bloody lift.”
Noah appeared suddenly. One moment Saint was alone, and then he blinked and there was the smudged outline of a man standing beside him. Saint was panicked enough that he gave a half-yell and fell on his ass. Then he carefully rearranged himself so it looked like suddenly sitting down had been all part of the plan and that he thought staircases were really comfortable.
“Heyyy,” he said casually, or tried to, but he was short of breath and it came out strangled and choppy.
Noah blinked at him. “Oh, I… sorry, I didn’t think you’d be here,” he said, walking backwards, and Saint frowned.
“Hey, no, it’s good, I could use the company while I wait to be slaughtered.” He rolled his shoulders in a shrug and tried to grin. “I’m not very good at this whole monster-slaying thing, apparently. It was a maero, by the way. If maero are… ” He tried to spread out his arms, but they didn’t go far enough. “Big and scary,” he finished.
Now Noah looked panicky. He was standing on the landing, so their eyes were at about the same level. “You fought it? And didn’t win? Get up! Run, or it’ll catch you and you’ll die.”
Saint shook his head. “I’ve been here almost a minute, so if it was hurrying it would’ve caught up by now. Must be taking its time. Maybe even waiting back in the flat for me! Because hey, where else could I go?” He mushed his forehead with both hands.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Noah said. The wairua was doing what Saint assumed was the ghostly equivalent of pacing – changing position quicker than he could’ve if he’d been moving like humans did, first on the stairs above and then below and then to the side, flickering absentmindedly from place to place like he was too distracted to pay attention to silly little things like the laws of physics. “Saint. Move.”
“Why? I can’t kill the bloody thing – I cut its head off and it just put it back on! For all I know it can breathe fire and shoot acid from its eyes. It’s… it’s not human, pet. It’s not. Meanwhile I’m about as human as it gets. I can’t… go up against that.” Can’t do anything much, really, his thoughts whispered all traitorous.
“Saint, it’ll be coming after you,” Noah said, and then his gaze drifted up, and he shuddered. “Saint, run.”
Saint turned around. The maero was coming down the stairs. There were bloodstains on its fur, but it moved easily, casually. It wasn’t hurrying in the least.
“Stay where you are,” it said to Saint – it didn’t seem to notice Noah, shuddery and drifting as he was. “Or run, if you want. I’ll catch you in the end.”
Saint’s heart was beating so hard he could feel it, but he couldn’t seem to move, to get up. His brain was screaming run run run and he just sat there like an idiot and said, “I’m right here and I’m exhausted. Why can’t you just catch me now?”
The maero shrugged and grinned. Its grin was a terrible thing. “Need energy, now,” it said. “Need to eat fast. You?” It paused to press one long claw against Saint’s chest. “You I’ll kill slow.”
And it walked on down the stairs.
“Fuck,” Saint said, and he tilted his head back so it rested against the wall. “… Wait. What did it mean, need to eat fast?”
Noah shivered from place to place, and didn’t meet his eyes.
“Oh,” Saint said, and he was terrified and exhausted, but he made himself stand.
Tony spent an enjoyable morning wading through the depressing marsh that had once been her job.
“Yes, ma’am, I know you booked in for a Cheerful Dolphin Tour, but the boat’s being fixed and I – ma’am? Are you there?”
“I’ll refund your money in full, of course, and – huh? M-O-A-N-A. And Tony’s easy to spell, it’s, like… Tony. Why do you want to – no! You can’t! No, um, sorry, I mean literally you can’t, suing doesn’t even exist in New Zealand.”
“Well, personal reasons mainly, I – sorry, what did you call me? Well, you too! Jeez! I – oh man I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean that, I swear I’ll – hello?”
“Why can’t I follow through on the contract that, as you so kindly point out, I’ve already signed? Well! It is because I got murdered. This is my ghost, here to warn you of, um, omens. Bewaaaare the sickle-shaped tree on a full moon miiiidnight! Sir.”
She thumped her phone onto the table, breathing through her nose. No more calling people. No more. She had reached her limit.
Being self-employed was the worst. Sure she’d always loved the idea of it, of running her own small business, and she liked it on the whole, but on days like this she yearned for a nine-to-five job where she didn’t have to decide things and not everything was her responsibility.
“You were… getting a little whimsical near the end there,” Hinewai said cautiously. She was perched by the window for some reason, watching her.
“Oh man, it’s just – some of those people were kind of jerks about it, but I can totally understand, is the thing. I mean, people really love dolphins, and I just, oh man, I hated just crushing their hopes like that.” She flumped onto the couch. “Two thirds of the jobs I had lined up for the next month were families. Families! Oh, man, think of their sad little faces. Maybe I should send a card…?”
Hinewai looked at her, head cocked curiously to one side. Tony looked back and trailed off into silence, not quite meaning to. The thing about Hinewai…
The thing about Hinewai was that she was kind of mean, okay, and silent and sullen, and her motivations just made no sense. Normally Tony could wriggle into people’s heads and understand them but she couldn’t, not with her. But.
Suddenly. Somehow.
Her eyes and the bones of her wrists and the way she bared her teeth in something very far from a smile, and the odd bone flute she wore around her neck, the way her long sharp-nailed fingers curled gently when she held it. Her voice. Her – her hair! All long and white and supernaturally tangle-free, and sometimes when the light caught it – when Tony got to see her in the light, which wasn’t all that often, she was only sitting by the window ’cos it was cloudy. So aversion to daylight was maybe an atua thing? Anyway, sometimes when the light caught it, her hair made rainbows.
Rainbows.
It was so unfair.
She was horrible. Tony knew that! Like, for example, right now, right this second? Hinewai had suddenly gone rigid, poised still and cautious like a cat. Tony had no idea why.
“What?” Tony said.
“I’m hungry,” Hinewai said absently. “Shh.”
Tony shhed.
A pigeon fluttered onto the sill and started pecking at crumbs, tilting its head to look at them with its mad eyes. All the normal pigeony things. Tony beamed at it. Maybe she should get some bread and scatter it and NO WHAT, HINEWAI NO, WHY WOULD YOU EVEN DO THAT?
Tony said, “Hin!” in weak protest, but she was too late. There was a startled squawking and flapping of wings as the pigeon tried to escape Hinewai’s sudden firm grip on it, but she snapped its neck without too much difficulty, and then brought it to her mouth and bit down. Blood ran down her chin.
She swallowed her mouthful and put the pigeon down, then finally glanced at Tony’s very stern face. “Is something the matter?” she said cautiously, like Tony was the one who was acting strangely.
Tony intensified her glare. It was the very glariest.
“Ah, of course,” Hinewai said, and got to her feet in an unfairly graceful motion, and picked up the little bundle of bones and bloodied feathers and dangling feet and put it in the fridge – “For later,” she said cheerfully. “That’s what humans do, yes?”
She was so horrible. Tony glared at her some more, because Hinewai was horrible and deserved to be glared at. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that if Tony wasn’t glaring she’d probably just smile adoringly by default. So yes. Tony glared.
Hinewai hunched defensively for a second, uncertain, shoulders jutting from beneath her plain black T-shir
t. Only for a second, though, and then she was calm and in control of herself again, fingers tapping thoughtfully against her thighs. She was looking at Tony in much the same way she’d looked at the pigeon, thoughtful as only hunters could be. Tony shivered.
Hinewai brightened in realisation – like she’d suddenly gone ‘oh, yes, inexplicably killing birds isn’t really what normal people do’ – except apparently what she thought she’d done wrong was etiquette. She picked up a napkin and dabbed the blood from her mouth, delicately. Then she gave Tony a hopeful look.
“Oh my god,” Tony said, against her will and common sense. “You are the sweetest thing.”
Hinewai smiled a little, in a cautious, distrustful sort of way. Hinewai wasn’t very good at smiling yet – she seemed to think it was weird or something. Hinewai thought a lot of perfectly normal things were weird.
“I thank you,” Hinewai said, and smiled in earnest, bright with joy.
…The thing about Hinewai was that Tony knew, logically, she should be wary, should keep her distance – and then Hinewai looked at her, eyes solemn pools of shadow and cheekbones sharp as broken glass, talking all prickly and ferocious and strange, and it was all Tony could do not to kiss her silent. Or she smiled like that, and, and Tony basically lost the ability to form words. Which… she didn’t really have an abundance of in the first place, so that was distinctly unfair. So. Yeah. Her flat-neighbour and scary supernatural ally and sort-of-friend was jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Okay.
Which was…
It wasn’t that Tony minded, it was just – dealing with apparently being a taniwha and dealing with apparently liking the ladies at least a little at the same time was fundamentally unfair. One or the other she could handle, but both? No.
On the other hand, hey, maybe it was normal to get crushes on scary beautiful fae atua-people regardless of how you previously identified in terms of orientation. There was nothing wrong with that. You liked who you liked, and sexuality could be a shifting thing. So that was fine.
On the other other hand, she had a crush on a girl who ate pigeons.
…She could really use some air.
“I, um,” Tony said. “I need to go look at the ocean a bit.”
Hinewai frowned, cocking her head. That was so cu – that was totally not endearing in the slightest. “Is something the matter?”
The matter was that the last thing Tony wanted was to go all stupid and love-struck right when she most needed to have her wits about her. She needed a job, she needed to be able to navigate this awesome scary new world, she needed – “I just,” she said. “Need to look at the ocean, okay?” She attempted a grin and bounced a bit. “Everything’s just kind of overwhelming! The sea’s really pretty, it calms me down.” It was home.
“Even after turning into a ‘horrible sea monster’?” Hinewai said.
“Oh. Right, yeah. That.” Tony stuck her hands deep in her pockets, curled them into fists, bit her lip. “I should start trying to deal with all of this, shouldn’t I.”
“You should have done that a long while since,” Hinewai said flatly. “I blame your human upbringing; it’s plainly what made you so stupid.”
Tony stared at her. “… I,” she said, and she left very quickly before she could do something stupid like burst into tears, or punch Hinewai in the face, or turn into a taniwha. Or all three of those things at once.
The ocean. Yes.
It had felt like home as soon as she saw it, the sea had; she’d grown up on an apricot orchard in Otago and they’d visited the lake often enough that she knew how much she loved water, the sparkle and glint of it, how smooth and weightless the world was when you swam. She’d never realised about the sea, though, until she’d visited Wellington for the first time and everything fell into place, every step she walked and breath she breathed had made her mind and heart sing out home home home.
Just thinking about it made her calmer, usually, but she was still fighting off anger and shame, so instead she wondered about that. About how coming to Wellington had been so perfect, how everything had fitted together so well.
Tony went and bought some gelato, then sat in the corner of the store to eat it. She rang her mother.
She had to ring a couple of times; her mother tended to misplace the phone, even though it was a landline. She got through finally, though, and it was a relief just to hear the familiar voice on the other end. “Sweetheart! How are you?”
“I’m gay,” Tony said, toying disconsolately with her spoon. “I’m like, at least sixty percent gay.”
“Peach pit,” her mother said kindly, “I love and support you no matter what. Also, you’ve been in love with Wonder Woman since you were seven.”
“No, shut up,” Tony said, half-laughing, “she was really classy, okay, I was young and impressionable – oh, uh, and the other thing. I’m also a taniwhaaaa?” She petered off on the last syllable.
“Oh, finally,” her mother said.
Tony’s gelato was melting. She scooped around the edge of the cup, capturing the drops. “Wow, you sound really unsurprised – it’s like you knew that or something,” she said, grinning a little.
“Think of it this way! You have a secret identity. Like Wonder Woman, or Iron Man… ”
“Muuuum,” Tony complained, “when will you stop with that – I will never be anything like Tony Stark!”
“You’re very good with your business, though,” her mother said proudly. The conversation was comfortingly familiar, which was what her mum had intended, probably. It brought back memories of rainy days spent lying on the floor reading comics with her. They were nice memories, soft and familiar as well-worn pages.
Tony grinned. “Which is just another way in which I’m absolutely nothing like Tony Stark,” she said. “Seriously though.”
“In all seriousness, dearest, you should talk to your uncle. He knows more about this sort of thing. It comes from your father’s side of the family.”
“Cool,” Tony said.
“Just give me a minute, I think he’s out in that blasted radish patch of his.” Tony, smiling, moved the phone away from her ear just in time: “RAAANGI!” she heard, distantly, and she chuckled to herself.
The gelato was delicious.
“Hey, kid,” her uncle said half a minute later, and Tony moved the phone back to her ear.
“Hey, matu.”
“So what’s on your mind?” Rangi said.
“I want to talk about taniwha.”
She could hear the clatter of metal; he was probably making tea. “Boy troubles?” he said knowingly. “Or problems at work? You just remember you’re a precious pearl and any boy’d be lucky to – oh. Uhh.”
“Mum said you’d be the one to ask about that,” Tony said sweetly.
There was an awkward throat-clearing noise. “Oh, uh,” he said. “No idea why she’d say that. You know I don’t know te reo or the stories as well as I’d like! Aha… Taniwha are like dragons, right? Lizard dragons. Basically lizards. Man, I sure don’t know anything about taniwha.”
“Rangi.”
“So I hear you’re gay now! How’s that going?”
Tony sighed and tried a different tactic. “Hey, remember the first time we visited Lake Wanaka? When I was really little?”
“Course I do,” Rangi said, sounding relieved.
“Remember how I swam really well even though it was the first time I ever swam?”
“Yeah,” he said proudly. “Like a fish.”
“And then when the fisherman let me pretend to steer but then I was really good at it and –”
“What’re you getting at here, hon.”
“Was Dad a taniwha too?”
Rangi hummed noncommittally.
“Matu,” Tony said.
“… Maybe a bit.”
Tony rolled her eyes. “A bit.”
“Yeah!” Rangi said. “Yeah.”
Tony made a frustrated noise. “You are the worst person ever to talk to about this, ugh,”
she said.
“Anyone you can talk to about this up there?” Rangi said. There was the sound of sizzling fat. Oh, a fry-up. Yay.
“One guy, but he’s cryptic and weird and sprang it on me without giving me a choice.”
Rangi growled. “Want me to come over and bash a few heads?”
“No, uncle, that’s – no it’s really fine. I can bash heads myself if I want, I’m hella strong when I’m all taniwha.”
“You can turn into one? Your father always just had strong instincts. Damn.” He whistled. “That’s my girl!”
“Sure, matu.”
“You should probably go talk to that guy,” Rangi continued. There were more sizzling sounds. She had better finish the conversation before he left the phone lying on a table or something.
“Next time you do come up, could I borrow your old guitar? My one’s strings got broke and I haven’t had time to practice.”
“Sure thing. And you give him hell from me, kiddo.”
“I will give him, like, a gazillion hells,” she promised, hanging up. She finished her gelato. Then she went down to the ocean, feeling a lot more at ease. Family could do that.
4
Saint hadn’t been this terrified since – well, to be honest, he’d never been this terrified. But people were in trouble.
“I have to help them,” was the first thing he said once he’d managed to stand up, and he nodded to himself and ran down the stairs.
…Ran down two or three of the stairs, at least, before his tired feet stumbled. He reeled, nearly fell, had to catch his balance with one hand against the wall. “Okay,” he said conversationally, gasping a bit, “first I have to re-learn how to walk, apparently. Then I have to help them.”
“It’s dangerous,” Noah said, plainly distressed. “You might die. Don’t.” He was twitching back and forth with more and more rapidity until he was barely in one place for long enough for Saint to look at him before he moved again.
“Yeah, but if I don’t then some other people will die,” Saint snapped, “possibly in rather extreme amounts of pain – I don’t know, I’m not exactly an expert on the hunting habits of maero but I’m willing to bet it won’t be fun. Would you rather they die instead of me?” He didn’t wait for Noah to answer before he continued. “Not that there’s much I can do, mind, except maybe yell a bit and hope that some police folk come along so they can die instead. I cut its head off and it survived. More than just survived – it’s dandy, it looks like it’s up for killing me and then killing a few other people and then skipping through a happy little meadow. The only scenario where I’d win against that thing is if we were in a competition to see who was best at dying!”
The Wind City Page 6
