Fright Court

by Mindy Klasky

  I need you.

  I had to say something, had to figure out some way to finish my sentence. But no words would come.

  Long after my silence had become awkward, James finally cleared his throat. “That’s why I need you to be the clerk for the Night Court,” he said, as if that’s what he’d meant all along. “You’ve seen the wreck we imperials make, just trying to stay organized. The last thing I want is to look as incompetent as Dan Feld makes us out to be.”

  “Dan Feld?” I stumbled toward the conversational lifeline. I was a coward.

  James squared his shoulders and stood, as if we’d reached a mutual agreement to head back to work. “I got another letter from the councilman’s office tonight. He wants me to justify your position, along with the human security guards. He hinted pretty strongly that he wants to shut us down altogether. It looks like that newspaper article will be more important than ever—your swaying public opinion might be just the leverage we need to survive.”

  I shivered at the thought of the Night Court closing. Dan Feld couldn’t take away my job. Not when I had finally found a position that felt right to me. Not when I truly felt like I belonged, for the first time in my adult life, even if I was a human, working among the imperials.

  James matched my stride as we walked back through the park, as we returned to the well-lit city streets. When we reached the courthouse door, I handed back his jacket. At least, this time, it hadn’t come in contact with my blood.

  I nodded my thanks as he held the door for me, and I waited with a fixed smile as he unlocked the door to the clerk’s office. I knew that I should focus on the threat presented by Councilor Feld, on the Banner article. But as I wished James a good night, all of that seemed utterly unimportant, vague and uncertain and immaterial. I watched James head back to his own office, passing through the Staff Only door, and I actually felt cheated that he had apparently decided not to put me through my paces in the Old Library that night.

  And for the rest of my shift, I replayed our conversation in my head.

  I need you.

  By dawn, I still hadn’t figured out how I should have responded. What I should have said. Or done. I didn’t have any idea at all. And that thought unsettled me more than anything else I’d yet learned about the Eastern Empire.

  CHAPTER 9

  BY SUNDAY, I’D given up hashing and re-hashing and re-re-hashing that strange conversation under the barren oak trees on Capitol Hill. I’d moved on to more immediate problems: how to celebrate my goddaughter Nora’s first birthday with Chris Gardner in tow.

  The party started off easily enough, with plenty of oohs and ahs over my gift—a perfect purple onesie (with a perfect pink cupcake appliqued over Nora’s perfect tummy.) Allison and Steve did their parts too, of course, making sure that Nora got her favorite dinner of string cheese, baked sweet potato, and a handful of Cheerios. Chris pitched in, leading us in a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday before we all indulged in cake with ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream, at least for us grown-ups.

  When the birthday girl was almost asleep in her highchair, Al swooped her upstairs to tuck her into bed. Steve muttered something about lighting the grill to cook dinner, and he disappeared onto the deck. That left Chris and me standing in the kitchen. I was surprised by how comfortable I felt with him, as if he’d always been a part of my life, always hung out with my best friend and her husband and me.

  “I’ve often thought that the best meal in the world would be made even better by eating dessert first.” I was eyeing the leftover birthday cake, wondering if I could take home a piece with a frosting rose. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, though, I pictured them splashed across the front page of the Washington Banner. “That’s off the record!”

  Chris grinned and shook his head. “Nope. I think I just found my lede.”

  “Chris!”

  “Relax,” he said. “Half of Washington would agree with you.”

  I flashed him a grin and asked, “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “A Coke would be great.” Apparently Chris took his designated driver responsibilities seriously. Of course, I’d visited Allison and Steve often enough that I felt at home in their kitchen; I didn’t hesitate before I found a chilled can of soda in the fridge. I debated a split second before I grabbed a Sam Adams for myself.

  Chris tapped the top of his can three times before he opened the pop top. I bit back a grin; I always did the same thing. Since discovering the trick, I’d never had a can of soda fizz up on me.

  Steve came in from the deck before I could comment on Chris’s wisdom. “Great,” he said, noting our beverages. I passed him his own bottle of beer. “And the steaks,” he said, pointing to a massive platter of meat on the middle shelf. “Sarah, I know you want yours rare. Chris? How about you?”

  “Actually,” I said, before Chris could answer, “I’m not eating meat these days.”

  Pity. Those steaks looked like heaven on a plate. Knowing Steve and Al, the meat had come from the farmer’s market—all-organic, grass-fed, free-range. In fact, the cows had probably led a better life than I had, right up to the moment when they became pure temptation on a platter.

  “Yeah, right,” Steve snorted.

  “Really,” I protested. “I went veggie a few weeks ago. I’m sorry, I thought Allison told you.”

  “Allison doesn’t tell me a lot of things these days.”

  Ouch. Steve’s sharp tone suddenly made me think that there was more at stake here than an extra T-bone for the carnivores to fight over.

  I glanced at Chris, sending him strong thought waves of “Off the record. Off the record.” He gave no indication that he heard me, but he did say, “I’ll take mine medium.”

  Steve nodded before he looked back at me. “I think we still have a couple of those veggie burgers that Allison got the last time her sister visited.”

  “That would be great!” I said, automatically turning to the freezer. Sure enough, there was a crushed green box at the very back, hidden behind the Haagen-Dazs and the gourmet ravioli. Shaped soy protein. Yum.

  For a split second, I considered forgetting about my vegetarian diet for just one night. What exactly was James going to do if I ate meat, anyway? Then, I remembered the gleam of his fangs, the sudden, heart-stopping motion as he revealed his true self outside Judge DuBois’s courtroom door. I would be perfectly content to never see another fang for the rest of my natural life.

  Veggie burgers were a small price to pay for, um, breathing.

  Allison came back into the kitchen just as I closed the freezer door. She saw the box in my hand and said, “Oh, Sarah! I’m so sorry! I completely forgot to say anything to Steve when he went shopping.”

  “Yes,” Steve said, and there was unmistakable acid on his tongue. “You did.”

  “No biggie,” I said, smiling at the fake meat product like a vegan Miss America accepting her tiara. Nevertheless, I was astonished by the sparring between my best friend and her husband. I had—literally—never heard them exchange a harsh word. It was bad enough that I had to witness Steve’s testiness, but I was sick at the thought of Chris listening in, at the notion that he might be taking mental notes for his article even now.

  As if he could heard my worries, Chris plucked the box out of my hands. “Come on,” he said to Steve. “I’ll help.”

  The door had barely closed behind them before Allison was dropping ice cubes into a tumbler. A generous splash of Dewar’s followed, and I waited until she’d taken a gulp before I asked, “What was that about?”

  “That,” she said, taking a more sedate follow-up sip, “was about how Steve is always right. And I am always wrong.”

  I huffed in disbelief. “Come on!”

  “I’ll show you,” she said. Before I could protest, she led me to the basement stairs.

  I knew that Allison and Steve had been refinishing the downstairs for months. Even though they could have afforded to hire the finest workmen in the D.C. met
ropolitan area, they wanted to learn about renovation from the ground up, or so Allison had assured me as she showed off paint chip after fabric swatch after flooring sample. I couldn’t imagine when they found time to work on the project between their busy jobs, parenting Nora, and the thousand other things on their mutual plates.

  But they had found time somewhere. The room was absolutely stunning. Bamboo floors stretched from end to end. An area rug echoed the deep burgundy upholstery on the couch, tying in two patterned armchairs and an ottoman. A huge entertainment center hinted at an oversized television and the video games I knew Steve loved.

  “This is amazing!” I said sincerely. “The walls are gorgeous!” The shade was halfway between green and grey, cool and soothing. The paint had been applied perfectly, as if the room had been dipped into a giant vat of color.

  “The color is Desert Sage,” Allison said, pursing her lips as if I’d caught her chewing on grapefruit rind. “And it’s the problem, in a nutshell.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I bought too much paint. We have a full five gallon bucket left over.”

  I laughed. I thought she had to be kidding—what were five gallons of paint in a project as extensive as the one I was admiring?—but she shook her head and downed another slug of Scotch.

  “Steve said that we would only need five gallons, but I didn’t believe him. I figured it was better to have too much than too little, and I went ahead and got two five-gallon drums—a couple of weekends ago, when he was up in New York on the Langerhans case. He was right, I was wrong, and the store won’t buy back paint after the color has been mixed. Steve has been furious since we finished the whole room without touching the second bucket.”

  “You have got to be kidding.” I heard how upset Al was, but I was having trouble picturing Steve getting angry over something so minor.

  She shrugged. “Obviously, there’s something else going on. But he won’t talk about it. And he’s never in town long enough for me to insist.”

  The bleak expression on her face sent a lance through my heart. I should have known that she was upset before now. We should have talked about it ages ago. My job was keeping me too busy—the job that I had watched James scour from her memory. Shoving down my raw guilt, I made a silent vow to be a better friend, starting now.

  As the ice cubes rattled in Allison’s glass, I forced a smile and said defiantly, “Well, I love the color.”

  “It’s yours if you want it,” Allison said. “Five whole gallons worth.”

  “Really?” I pictured it on the walls of my basement apartment. It would add class to the place, make it seem more like a home, less like a ratty dorm room that I never quite got around to fixing up.

  “Absolutely,” Allison said. “I’m dying to get it out of the garage. It makes me feel guilty, every time I see it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and I gave her the quick hug I should have been around to give her weeks before. We headed upstairs, both of us making a conscious effort to change the subject. We settled on the look of pure joy on Nora’s face as she discovered the wonder of birthday cake frosting.

  By the time Steve and Chris came in with the steaks, the tension seemed to be forgotten. The four of us gathered around the dining room table and spent a couple of hours proving that appetizers of birthday cake and ice cream didn’t actually spoil our appetites.

  Steve and Chris had hit it off; they spent most of the night making Allison and me laugh with stories about various on-the-job disasters, from law firm to newspaper. No one mentioned New York or travel or anything else that might have opened raw wounds.

  It was nearly midnight when everyone else started to yawn. I, of course, was wide awake, just reaching my prime hours of activity. I helped to clear the table and sneaked as many dishes into the dishwasher as I could before Allison shooed me back to the living room. We chatted for a few more minutes, but the others were looking completely bleary-eyed. It was a school night, after all. They all had to go to work in the morning.

  Chris volunteered to lug the troublesome paint out to his car for me. He deposited it in the trunk of his Corolla, and then we all exchanged cheerful goodnights. The patch of bad temper between Steve and Allison seemed like a half-forgotten dream, a misunderstanding that couldn’t possibly have been real.

  Traffic was light, and Chris managed to find a parking space a mere half block from my front door. He wasted no time unlocking the trunk and heaving out the giant bucket of paint.

  “Oh!” I said. “Let me get that!”

  “I’ve got it.”

  I thought about explaining that I was stronger than I looked, that I’d been working in a veritable fitness boot camp for almost a month. There was no way I could tell him that, though. Not when he was certain to ask unanswerable follow-up questions. Not when everything I said to him remained on the record. I settled for fishing my keys out of my purse and getting the door open as quickly as I could.

  “Where do you want it?” he asked, lugging the paint over the threshold.

  Just like that, I thought. An ordinary human guy walks into my house, without any formal invitation, without any complex rules about power and control and supernatural monsters. Everything was easy with Chris. Normal.

  Except that he was waiting for an answer from me. “Over there,” I said belatedly. “By the bookcase.”

  I helped him edge it into the corner, using the toe of my shoe to shove the heavy bucket. Chris automatically turned the container, centering the label so that it looked balanced and even against the wall.

  When he straightened, he flexed his fingers, revealing an angry red line across his palm. “Oh no!” I said. “I didn’t realize it was that heavy!” Without thinking, I traced the path of the metal handle, as if I were some sort of deranged gypsy fortune teller.

  “It’s fine,” Chris said, opening and closing his hand again. “Nothing permanent.” He took a half-step away from me, restoring some essential balance I hadn’t realized was out of kilter. He nodded at my countless paperbacks, precisely arranged to line up at the front edge of each shelf. “You weren’t kidding,” he said. “You really do read a lot of Poe.”

  “That’s nothing,” I said. “You should see the Hawthorne in the bedroom.”

  I flushed as soon as I said the words. I hadn’t meant them that way. I wasn’t really inviting him into my bedroom. Who cared about a half dozen editions of The Scarlet Letter, anyway? Even if each one had a different critical essay bound in with the text of the novel? And if they were organized in impeccable alphabetic order, with ties between editions broken by date of publication?

  I caught a startled expression on Chris’s face, as if I’d just told him some risqué joke. “That was totally off the record,” I said. “Really.”

  I knew what he was going to say, though. I knew he would assure me that my reading habits were exactly the sort of thing that his readers wanted to know, that they were part and parcel of the story he was going to write. I knew he would say it, and I knew I wouldn’t believe him. And I knew that I absolutely, positively, one hundred percent did not want one more reminder that he was a reporter, and I was the subject of his story.

  So I did the only thing I could think of to keep him silent. I closed the distance between us, and I kissed him.

  I’m not sure which of us was more surprised. It wasn’t like I made a habit of walking around and kissing strange men whenever the fancy took me. I couldn’t actually remember another time when I’d dared to make the first move. It felt right, though, with Chris. Easy. Comfortable.

  His lips were warm beneath mine, soft, and after an initial hesitation when his shoulders tensed, he leaned toward me, relaxed into me, gave himself over to the kiss. I startled myself by moaning a little at the back of my throat, and I raised my hand to curl my fingers around the back of his neck, to pull him even closer.

  His fingers closed around my wrist, warm and pliable, but undeniably firm. “Sarah,” he whispered. “I can’t.” />
  He stepped away, and I was suddenly chilled by the space between us. By the space, or by my sudden, overwhelming embarrassment.

  I considered running out the front door, leaving my apartment behind forever. I considered darting into my Hawthorne-infested bedroom, locking myself in my bathroom, refusing to come out for the next millennium. I considered melting into the carpet, disappearing in a pool of abject mortification.

  “I—I just thought —” That was some other woman talking, some other person using my voice. After a few more false starts, that slattern managed to say, “I thought you were telling me something when you turned coffee into dinner at the Tabard Inn!… When you offered to drive me to Allison’s tonight… We should have just met there!”

  He sighed heavily. Sighed. Like a human man. A man who breathed.

  A fresh wave of humiliation washed over me. Did I even really like Chris? Or was I just attracted to him because he was human? Because he was normal and steady and predictable in the middle of the strange imperial world that filled half my hours? Was I attracted to Chris at all, or did I only like him because he wasn’t James?

  “I’m sorry,” he said, cutting through my frantic self-doubt. “I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to mislead you. At all. In any way.” He ran a hand through his curls, suddenly looking a thousand times more tired than I felt.

  “No,” I said. “I’m the one… I just thought… I mean, I felt like we… Like you… Like there was…” I had apparently forgotten how to string together a complete sentence—subject, verb, object.

  He shook his head slowly and sighed again, expressing the same human uncertainty that I felt closing in around me on all sides. “There was,” he said at last. “And, to be honest, there is. But I can’t follow through on that. Not now. Not when I’m writing an article about you.”