“Is that for me?” I asked, nodding at the single file still sitting in the in-box on Chivalry’s desk, a stark contrast to the orderly but impressive pile organized in the adjoining out-box.
“Yes.” She reached over and handed it to me. “I would’ve called, but Mrs. Scott told me that you were coming back for dinner.”
The file’s weight was substantial, and I didn’t try to conceal my surprise. “Feels problematic.”
“No, nothing like that. I just got a message that the rusalka needs a meeting, and since I don’t think you’d ever met her before, I pulled the entire file for you to look over.”
After twenty-six years of ignoring anything supernatural (including myself), I’d been playing a desperate game of catch-up, particularly in the past month, where I’d suddenly found myself my mother’s official delegate and Ms. Noka’s boss. There had been quite a lot to learn, and I flipped open the file to its first page in the hope of refreshing my memory on this one—then immediately slapped it shut again. “Chivalry mentioned her once. How exactly does that one place a phone call to you?”
“One of her neighbors placed it at her request. Will you go up soon?”
“Might as well go tomorrow,” I said, unable to muster much enthusiasm. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. “It’s only up in Massachusetts.”
Ms. Noka gave me her Mona Lisa smile. “Remember to pick up the bait. There’s a note in there, but Mr. Scott always found duck gizzard the most effective. Especially in this weather, when you don’t have to wait a while.”
“I do read the whole file,” I noted, slightly defensively. At least, I did now. On my first fully commissioned task for the family, my friend and designated partner, Suzume, and I had driven up to Maine to deal with a group of selkies who were purportedly running a local protection scheme and sinking the boats of fishermen who wouldn’t pay in. It had actually been a bit more complicated than that, and I’d made the classic rookie mistake of not reading all of Ms. Noka’s carefully collected background information before we’d headed up. While it had turned out well in the end, there had been an uncomfortable incident where I’d been pushed off a dock by a toddler and Suze had punched a seal in the face. A teenager had filmed the whole thing on his phone, and there had been an awkward period where we’d thought that the video would not only go viral, but that Suze would be formally charged with endangering the local wildlife.
With the file tucked under my arm for later examination, we exchanged good-byes. I left the house without seeing any of my family again, but the knowledge that always pulsed in the back of my brain put them all on the second floor, probably in their individual rooms.
My battered Ford Fiesta sat beside my family’s row of gleaming cars like a squat mushroom invading a cultured garden. It took two tries for the engine to turn over, and I rubbed my hands briskly together to encourage the circulation as I waited for the sluggish heating system to warm up. I could see my breath in the air as I pulled out my phone and punched Suzume’s phone number in from memory and listened to it ring. We’d been in a strange holding pattern for the last month since I’d confessed my feelings to her. On the one hand, our friendship had continued unabated, and she was my regular partner on all my official trips and investigations around the territory. But at the same time, the question of what her answer was going to be was hanging between us.
Suze didn’t pick up, and I left a message outlining the basics of tomorrow’s task. When I’d agreed to work officially for my family, Chivalry and I had negotiated a basic salary. It had been a hotly contested discussion, with Chivalry arguing high and me arguing very low. I’d supported myself on minimum-wage jobs since I had graduated college, and while I was not a particular fan of the lifestyle that it had necessitated, I was also very wary about the possibility of my family buying my loyalties. We’d finally settled on an hourly wage for all tasks that was just a bit higher than what I would normally be earning in the open market of crappy jobs. Suzume had had no such ethical quibbles, and for her involvement with me, she was charging a very comfortable retaining fee.
I finished the message and ended the call, wondering what she was up to. With Suzume, there was always a long list of possibilities—anything from beating up problem clients for her family’s escort service to scampering around the woods in her natural fox form, with any number of activities in between. Since our visit to the selkies, most of our tasks had been relatively simple—investigations of why some tithes were low (the economic downturn was equally hard on supernatural-run businesses, as it turned out), a few territory disputes, some snooping into suspicious deaths that had uniformly turned out to have entirely human causes. Yet even though our job didn’t always have much interest to it, she’d remained committed.
Of course, she was still a kitsune, and was entirely capable of creating her own fun. I’d flipped down the sun visor on my drive down this morning and had discovered that some unnamed prankster (definitely Suze) had glued two small craft-baskety googly eyes to it, so now it appeared that the visor had eyes and was watching me.
It was lucky that there wasn’t any traffic on the road back to my apartment in Providence, since the Fiesta’s heater never managed to dispel any air that I would’ve characterized as warmer than “somewhat cool.” Since the Fiesta had spent the entire summer with inoperable air-conditioning, I couldn’t help but feel moderately annoyed that it was apparently capable of disgorging cool air, but only in the completely wrong season. By the time I got home, I hustled quickly to get into the apartment, sighing in relief when I got into the stairway with its comparatively warmer temperatures. I’d bought my funeral suit and formal jacket new for the occasion—since my transition had begun, I’d put on enough muscle to go up four suit sizes, which had necessitated a shopping trip. After much hunting, I’d managed to find clothing that wouldn’t shatter my budget or sear my brother’s eyeballs on such a sad day. My suit had started its life in a very exclusive store window, until the store owners apparently realized that not many men were willing to strut their stuff in lime green. It had made its way down to the discount warehouse, where I’d bought it, and then I spent a rather interesting afternoon with Suzume figuring out how to dye it black in my apartment’s bathtub. The suit actually had a decent lining to it, but at a certain point in Rhode Island, typically around Halloween, it becomes preferable to just never leave the house if you aren’t wearing a heavy-knit sweater and the downiest of down parkas.
I climbed the three flights of stairs that led from the ground-floor boutique lingerie store, past Mrs. Bandyopadyay’s, and ended at the two-bedroom apartment that I shared at the top with my latest roommate, Dan Tabak. We’d only lived together for a month, though so far he’d managed to pay his half of the rent on time and not make any particular messes. But with any shared living situation, there would always be compromises—as I scrabbled in my pocket for the keys, I could hear the melodious (and now far-too-familiar) tones of Benedict Cumberbatch’s voice.
Inside was a typical Sunday tableau—Dan was sitting on the sofa, a wide assortment of thick law textbooks spread out on the battered coffee table in front of him, along with half a dozen completely stuffed notebooks, and his dreaded flash-card-making supplies. Dan was a second-year law student at Johnson and Wales University, and if I’d ever had even the slightest shred of interest in getting a law degree, seeing Dan in action would’ve crushed it. In the rare moments when Dan wasn’t in class, or in a study group, or studying on his own, he was making flash cards as a study aid. It seemed like a horrible and endless process to me, but then again, I’d called higher education a success after getting a bachelor’s degree in film theory—an accomplishment that had involved not a single flash card, and a number of actually good films.
I collapsed into our armchair and looked over at the TV screen. A hellacious storm was whipping through the palm trees on a tropical island while Benedict Cumberbatch gave a stately narration. Dan liked to run epic BBC nature documentarie
s as background when he was making flash cards or organizing the day’s class notes. He claimed that documentaries like Wild Pacific had narrators whose voices were very soothing. I’d seen his DVDs of Sherlock, though, and had suspicions that Dan simply had a crush on Benedict Cumberbatch, but it seemed a little hypocritical to throw stones. After all, I’d seen a lot of shitty movies simply because Amy Adams was starring in them.
“Hey,” Dan greeted me, not looking up from his text. I glanced at the title, Corporations, and shuddered. “How’d it all go?”
“How do these things ever go? Mostly it just went, and at least now it’s over.” I reached down and pulled off my shoes, sighing in relief. Dress shoes were not made with all-day comfort in mind.
“Is it true that you guys go through this every five years?” Dan looked up from his book and raised his dark eyebrows inquisitively.
I shrugged awkwardly. We were really just still in the figuring-each-other-out phase of rooming. But unlike all of my previous roommates, Dan wasn’t human. I was still getting used to living with someone who not only knew about vampires and the supernatural, but who actually heard regular gossip about my family. “Usually a little longer than that, but sometimes less,” I replied, trying to be polite but really not wanting to keep talking about the subject.
Dan let it drop. “Did you eat? I made too much, so there are still some leftovers in the pot.”
I eyed him suspiciously. “Was it one of those meals?” Dan was a ghoul, which meant that a certain amount of his intake had to be human organs in order for him to maintain his health. The ghouls in my mother’s territory had all originated in Turkey and had acclimated well to America, most of them finding an easy source for their dietary needs by opening funeral homes or working in hospital sanitation. It had made me extremely cautious around Dan’s cooking, though, and we’d had to have a few pretty serious conversations about dish cleanup, prompt post-preparation trash disposal, and the labeling of leftovers.
“Just the shepherd’s pie. The sweet potatoes are safe.” Dan snorted. “I can’t believe that you’re so squeamish about these things. It’s not like I interrogate you about every beverage you store in the fridge.”
“Really? What the hell was that soda discussion last week about, then?”
“You know my feelings about high-fructose corn syrup.” Dan narrowed his eyes, and a very stubborn and lawyery look crossed his handsome face.
I shook my head, unwilling to reengage on this particular issue, even if it meant that I had to abide by Dan’s new list of sodas that were banned in the apartment. I was also not entirely full after my partial dinner at my mother’s, so I got up to investigate the sweet potatoes. There was still a full serving in the pot, looking extremely inviting, so I spooned it into a small dish. I carefully avoided looking at the partially empty casserole dish. Since Dan had moved in, I’d learned to my horror about how many sins dishes like shepherd’s pie and meat loaf could conceal. I put the now-empty pot in the sink and turned on the faucet, automatically stepping back to avoid the incipient spreading puddle that had been this sink’s hallmark for many months. To my surprise, everything remained dry, and the faucet even managed to avoid its usual cantankerous sputter. For a moment, I wondered whether my landlord had finally, for the first time in all the years I’d lived there, responded to a repair request. But that seemed like the kind of out-of-character behavior usually only present in body snatching and encroaching brain tumors, and the last time I’d seen Mr. Jennings, he’d seemed completely normal.
“Dan,” I called over my shoulder, “did Jaison fix the sink?” Despite my extreme dislike of Dan’s meat products and my unwelcome exposure to so many viewings of nature documentaries, he had come with one very big mark in his favor—his boyfriend, Jaison, who was a general contractor. Since Dan had moved in, Jaison had fixed the broken window in his room, adjusted the iffy thermostat on the living room radiator, and even figured out why the pipes in the bathroom made such a racket whenever anyone showered. (He hadn’t been able to fix that pipe problem, since it would’ve involved completely opening up the walls, but it was nice to have a diagnosis.)
“He swung by with the parts early this afternoon. Said that it was driving him nuts,” Dan said, not looking up.
I was distinctly impressed. “He came by on a Sunday and fixed our sink, without you even asking? You can never break up with this man.” And clearly, short of Dan setting fire to the curtains, I could never ditch him as a roommate.
“Yeah, I’ll pass that one along,” Dan replied dryly. “I’ve got your half of the materials costs written down on a Post-it somewhere.” Then he tilted his head backward over the back of the couch to look at me. “Hey, can you put the last of the shepherd’s pie in the microwave for me? I think I’ll finish it off.”
“I’m not touching that thing, even with a spatula.” I put my bowl of sweet potatoes in the microwave and nuked it as Dan laughed incredulously at my statement and turned his attention back to the screen, where Benedict Cumberbatch was now discussing the coconut thief crab. My phone gave its incoming-text buzz, and I pulled it out. Suze was up for the trip to Massachusetts tomorrow. I smiled, texted back an acknowledgment, and then polished off the sweet potatoes in short order. A comfortable silence fell between me and Dan, though I found myself glancing over at him several times, wanting to ask a question that I had a strong feeling would be crossing a boundary. I wished I could ask him how he could date Jaison, who was a human with no knowledge of the supernatural world at all, and feel comfortable not only keeping such an enormous secret from him, but also eat three dinners a week that were made from humans. I wanted to know whether it was as easy as he made it look, or whether it was actually much, much harder, and he was just really good at keeping up a facade. I wondered what Dan thought of my brother’s relationships with his wives. Did he think Chivalry’s approach was sensible, or was he actually as appalled by it as I was by his shepherd’s pie?
I opened my mouth to ask the last one, then shut it quickly. I shouldn’t ask questions when I might not be ready for the answers, I reminded myself. And even though my half of the rent was paid up for another four months, and between the family work and some part-time floater work I’d picked up, I was more financially solvent than I’d been in the last five years, it was a good idea to maintain roommate harmony by not poking at sleeping dogs. I’d spent far too many months too recently with a sum net worth of less than fifty dollars to not be pleasantly enjoying being able to buy a new DVD or replace a worn-out piece of clothing without worrying about paying my bills. I was even managing to accrue a tidy sum that I hoped would help overhaul some of the Fiesta’s more-pressing issues—it would be nice, for instance, to experience a winter that didn’t require mittens while driving.
Leaving Dan to his Sisyphean flash-card construction, I headed to bed.
I found two very tiny googly eyes glued to the back of my toothbrush, and one single googly eye affixed to the cap of my toothpaste. I laughed at the sight, but then felt a low feeling of unease as I considered where Suze might be going with this one. I checked my room carefully for any more eyes before finally pulling up my heavy winter comforter and slowly falling asleep, the precise murmur of Benedict Cumberbatch’s narration still drifting through my bedroom wall.
* * *
Armed with a bag of assorted Munchkins from Dunkin’ Donuts and a coffee for each of us, I picked Suzume up from her house at ten the next morning. She was scampering out of her front door the moment I pulled into her driveway. The grin covering her face was nearly as brilliant as her neon green North Face parka. Suzume was very familiar with the Fiesta’s winter performance at this point, so she was wearing a heavy pair of blue corduroy pants, and her silky black hair was arranged in two jaunty pigtails that just showed under the bobble-topped fleece hat that matched her parka.
“Fuck is it cold in here!” she noted as she pitched her duffel bag into the backseat with a heavy metallic clunk that indicated that she wa
s prepared for whatever we might encounter. “Fort, I’m not telling you that you should buy a new car—”
“I’m sure you aren’t, but somehow I think that is going to be the takeaway on this comment,” I noted.
She continued blithely over me. “No, I’d never question your automotive decisions. I’m just going to note how glad I am at this particular juncture that my reproductive organs naturally reside inside my body and don’t have to try to make the inward crawl that yours probably are attempting at this moment.”
I snorted, handing her coffee over as she pulled on a pair of gloves that she had apparently set aside just for the car ride. “Do you have all of that out of your system now, or am I going to hear variations on this theme for the whole drive?”
“I can make no promises,” Suze said, her beautiful almond-shaped eyes crinkling in humor.
Getting from Providence to the small town just outside Lowell, Massachusetts, where the rusalka lived required a cautious snaking around the edge of Boston. Even at ten o’clock on a Monday morning, the roads leading into Boston were stuffed with commuters, and we made our way carefully around and then up, neither of us having any intention of turning an hour-and-a-half drive into a three-hour Masshole-infested nightmare of bad driving and Red Sox bumper stickers.
Resting just below the border into New Hampshire, Lowell is one of the classic New England cities. Farming roots made way to an industrial boom, followed by the slow and painful collapse of the mill and textile industries. Despite a growing student population thanks to the Lowell branch of the University of Massachusetts, and a slow but helpful influx of several high-tech and biomedical companies, driving through downtown Lowell was still a stark and sad presentation of the bones of the town’s mighty past. Though some of the old factories had been turned into museums or apartment buildings, many still sat vacant.
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