She looked down at herself and shuddered. “Fine, yes, I’m a little overwrought right now. But what good could you possibly…”
Max grumbled, “Placer.”
She was kitsune enough for a flash of sympathy. Then she shook herself. “Like I’d share my personal life with a sumage.” She continued to vibrate.
“At least you know I understand pain.” Max tried to make his expression sympathetic. The ear-bud buzzed at him, petals wiggling. He refused to drape it back on.
Then the fox shifter dropped to earth with a sigh. She slumped and sat, perching on the edge of the curb. “He’s such a shithead.”
Max could sympathize. “Honey, they all are. Now, you gonna blast me to get it out of your system or can I go back to work? I’m not your fucking confessional.”
“You asked me what happened.”
“I was trying to be a nice guy. An aberration, I assure you.”
“You’re a dick.”
“Sweetheart, all men are dicks. The only thing to do is switch teams or see if the next one is less dickish. Haven’t you learned that by now? You’re what, fifty years old or something?”
“Aw, that’s so sweet of you! More like ninety.”
Impressive. She’d be one of the first born shifters, then. Before Super Saturation, all shifters were made. “Ninety? So why’s my sorry ass giving you love advice?”
“I hate sumages.”
“Yeah, yeah, tell me something I don’t know. Imagine being in my position. Sent out to handle your drama when I got my own to deal with. Stick it to me so we can both get on with our mornings.”
“Bite me.”
“Not my type, sweetheart.”
Impasse.
She was still vibrating, the gray still rippling around her. Max could feel the quintessence tingling against his skin. His trace marks zinged with it. He opened up to take it when she did go off, baring himself wide. He could handle it. He was the only one that could. A sumage, a dud, full of vast abilities to tap quintessence, yet he could only clean up someone else’s mess.
At this juncture, it’d be better for everyone if she’d just let it out. He hadn’t had a good blast to disPlace in months. Could use the practice. It’ll hurt like hell, though. Proper civic mages swore it never hurt when it was your own source of quintessence, but Max would never get to experience that. All he got was loaded down with someone else’s. It would scrape over and under his skin like a wire hairbrush, shooting along his tracers, leaving the smell of hot chemical coolant behind and a burning itchy ache.
“Soooo, this shithead boyfriend of which you speak.” Max sat on the curb a little away from her and stretched his long legs out. He made his voice lilting. “Tell old Maximillian all about it, honey.”
“Cheated, of course. What else would he do?”
“So he cheated, who cares?”
“I care!”
“Bullshit. Few kitsune are monogamous.”
“Oh right, you self-satisfied prick, just because we tend to go poly doesn’t mean a man can’t cheat? Don’t you know anything? There are still rules. Negotiations, lists of what’s allowed and what isn’t. He did…something…that wasn’t allowed.”
Max hid a smile. “Wrong sex?”
She bared tiny perfect teeth at him. “Wrong species. Banged some nahual stud.”
Max blinked. The size difference alone! Male kitsune were usually smaller than females, while a male puma shifter could be two hundred pounds and over six foot. I mean nahuals are hard to resist, we all know that. Heh. Hard. “How on earth did that work?”
The kitsune looked smug. “We can hover, remember, you idiot? And nahual are pretty darn flexible. You know…cat shifters.”
Max waggled his eyebrows. “Yeah, that I knew.”
“Oh, but there’s more.”
Max kinda wanted to meet the boyfriend kitsune at this juncture. Oh, not for that! Yech. Just to encounter such a paragon of un-virtue.
“Another nahual?”
“Worse.”
Max blinked. What other shifter would want to bed a tiny-dicked big-eyed…?
“Bakeneko.”
“Of course.” Well, at least the small cat shifter is more compatible size-wise with a kitsune.
“Pretty, tall, long hair, legs for days.”
Max gave her an incredulous look. Conservation of mass being what it was, and most bakeneko being domestic cat shifters, they tended to be as small as kitsune.
“Okay, legs for hours. But he went to her over me!”
“So just invite them all to an orgy and have done with it. Better use of your energy than throwing all the local quintessence at my sad, lonely old face. Some of us are getting jealous here.”
She looked sullen. “It wasn’t negotiated beforehand.”
Max’s ear-bud shivered in an aggressive manner. The processing paperwork on his desk was no doubt piling up. “Look, darling, while I find your sex life fascinating, could we get on to the part where you explode so I can get back to my sorry-ass desk and shit-ass job?”
She barked out a laugh. “Isn’t this also your job?”
“Not often. I’m Placer. We aren’t needed very much except when kitsune with the reputation for burning things start hovering in parking lots.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’d only be needed for Surges otherwise. And Surges never lose control.”
“Sticks too far up their asses.”
The kitsune laughed. “Exactly. You know, you’re not half bad for a sumage.”
“I get that from the discerning types.”
“I’m Gladiola.”
“Maximillian. You can call me Max.”
Things were looking up. Cool, I might not have to…
“Gladdy! I’m sorry, but you’re being so unreasonable.” The boyfriend appeared to have arrived.
Gladiola stood and instantly began hovering again.
“How could you?” She pointed a tiny trembling hand.
Max stood as well. I’m stuck in the middle of some interspecies soap opera. Wait. Why doesn’t such a thing exist? Hollywood is totally falling down on the job. This is some golden crap.
And then she lost it.
Max knew it was coming the moment the boyfriend showed up.
The quintessence burst out of her in one violent wave. That rare type of discharge, pure energy so huge and unfettered most mages couldn’t even gather that much in order to cast it. Frankly, most shifters weren’t Alpha or ancient enough to control their own shifter natures, let alone harness excess. It took a strong kitsune to pack such a punch.
The invisible tingling blast bowled Max over, threw him backward, slamming him against the side of the closest car, surging into him. It wanted to be fire. Burned with the need.
Max slid down into total bonelessness. Fortunately, being Placer, he could take the massive hit without combusting. He spread it out and up, redirecting energy into matter as a sudden burst of…ear-buds. Or thousands of tiny flowers that looked like ear-buds. They scattered, covering the cars around him in a dusting of small orange petals.
It hurt, though. The trace lines all over Max’s body carried the quintessence as a combined burn, electric shock, and bad case of poison ivy. A mesh of pain flew through him, neck to wrists to ankles. It netted him, turning his skin inside out, shredded and scalded and itchy. It fried his poor ear-bud, turning it into shriveled brown mush.
“Shit, that hurts.” He lay, staring up at the clear blue California sky. He felt his body ought to be smoking, like that of a cartoon character. He was covered in tiny flowers. Far above, a single fluffy cloud floated, giving him the metaphorical finger.
He couldn’t move – the pain was receding but he was weaker than that kitsune boyfriend would have been once the nahual finished with him. How did that work? Well, the boyfriend is here. Maybe I’ll just ask him.
Unluckily for Max, his mouth was still operational. “So Gladdy’s boyfriend – or should I say ex-boyfriend? – that thing with the puma shif
ter, how’d you and he, you know…fit?”
“Ignore him. Fucking sumage has a total fascination with kitsune sex lives.” Gladiola sounded better. Calm. Controlled. Well, bully for her.
“Hey. Be nice.” Max continued to speak at the insulting cloud, unwilling to try turning his head just yet. “I’ve a fascination with everyone’s sex lives. You’re nothing special. My own is so nonexistent, I gotta get my jollies somewhere.”
“Over-share, Maximillian.” Gladiola sounded like an exasperated maiden aunt.
“Who is this guy?” The boyfriend kitsune came over and looked down at Max. Must be a novel experience for him, looking down at anyone.
Max would have stuck his hand out but he still couldn’t move. Besides, kitsune were so diminutive, did one give them a finger instead of a hand? Which finger? With this lad, if he used the middle one, it’d be taken as an invitation. Max covered a snort of laughter by introducing himself. “Maximillian Barker. Nice to meet you. Why don’t you take your lady friend off for a smoothie at the cafe? Sort this all out in a calm, controlled manner?”
“If only to get away from you?” suggested Gladiola, also coming to look down at him.
“Exactly.”
She laughed. Then bent and patted his cheek with one small hand in a totally patronizing way. “You’re all right, for a sumage. Thanks for taking the hit. Interesting choice of dispersal conversion. Pretty. I always liked scarlet pimpernels. Oop, there they go.”
With a great ricocheting whomp, the flowers all around them returned to quintessence. Just like that, they evaporated back into their preferred immaterial state.
“Next time I’ll try for gladiolas. More symbolic,” said Max, but it was just him and the cloud – the two kitsune had left. “Okay, see if I care, green carnations it shall be, henceforth.”
He heard Gladdy ask, as the two fox shifters moved away, “How’d you get here, honey?”
“Brought the bug.”
Max twisted his head to look over at a mechanical bee the size of a tricycle parked nearby. Kitsune equivalent of a bad-boy motorcycle. Gladdy should have known.
CHAPTER TWO
Werewolf Conundrum
Biff arrived, parked, took off his helmet, and got pelted with a hail of tiny orange vegetation. What the hell?
He looked around but couldn’t identify the cause. There were no trees around shedding buds. No random wedding party. He plucked one off. A whole flower, as if it had launched itself into the air and taken flight.
He sniffed it and sneezed. Cast quintessence. Not as bad as it could be. Not so much coolant as burnt buttery sugar.
Of course, this was the Marin Civic Center – all sorts of shifters would be here to register, pay fines, testify in court, that sort of thing. And guess what lucky schmucks keep tabs on the critters? Mages. The kind that made a werewolf sneeze. And covered a parking lot in a hail of orange flowers.
Biff wrinkled his nose and sneezed again. I hate civic mages. Stuck-up posturing pompous twits.
Then, with a whomp, the flowers vanished back into static state.
Eyes watering slightly, Biff stomped into the stunning old building. There was a sumage on security detail at the door, ready to Plug up anyone’s casting. As if a mage would be dumb enough to cast inside the Civic Center. That’d be like a perp bringing a gun to his arraignment, just plain stupid.
The Plug gave him the evil eye.
“Werewolf.”
“Mage.”
“Like I’d be holding the door for your hairy ass if I could actually cast.”
Biff sneered at him. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Sumage.”
The man shifted to the balls of his feet. “You trying to start something?”
Biff grunted.
The man looked surprised.
Yeah, you bastard. Beta. You can’t push me into a temper. Perhaps it’s a good thing Alec sent me. Judd would have slammed the sumage’s head into the door just for looking at him wrong.
Biff found his way to the Department of Unnatural Registration and Processing of Shifters. DURPS was tucked into a far corner of the long pink building. There he passed another Plug (they sure weren’t taking any chances) and stood in line for an hour. This yielded up a numbered ticket that gave him a new line to stand in. Whoopee. Half an hour after that, he’d gotten the application forms at last. Despite the fact that Alec had already submitted them online, they also wanted hard copy. Biff ambled over to some chairs, filled out the forms, and stood in yet another line. Twenty minutes after that, he handed the pack’s residency application over to a Pincher. Pincher sumages weren’t good for much – they could only cancel out the small spells. This seemed to be what she was searching for, as all she did was touch the papers. She handed them off to someone else who actually read them. Then she told him to take a seat and wait.
So Biff sat and waited.
And waited.
* * *
Max felt the blast under his skin all morning, scraping and raw over his chest in particular. He tried to concentrate on the paperwork he was processing, because it’s weird to have your DURPS caseworker idly rubbing his pectorals at you.
One particular application was rather upsetting. Max glared at it for a long time, looking for flaws. He hated dealing with werewolves. Usually he only had to process them remotely through port authority to ship back out as quickly as possible. But this was an official werewolf pack residence request. Why is a pack petitioning to move here? And why Sausalito? Maybe I can persuade them to take West Marin instead. Olema would put them an hour away from civilization and provide major parkland for runs. They’ll be nothing but a headache in Sausalito – too close to the city. Plus, that’s where I live. Last thing I need is a pack of homophobic biker asshats hassling my neighbors.
He needed a break, it was midmorning, and the coffee kiosk was singing a siren song. Not really – of course, mermaids didn’t work land-bound jobs, even drink-related ones. No, the DURPS coffee stall was manned by a perfectly ordinary human, who passed over Max’s large latte with three pumps of vanilla syrup in silent judgment. Max grinned, unabashed. He had no proof the sugar helped with the remnant tracer itching, but he liked the excuse. It’d been too long since he’d had to Place a hit and he was feeling wobbly. Nothing like vanilla syrup to de-wobble a guy.
He saw Gladiola and her boyfriend still sitting in deep conversation nearby, clutching hands. Nice that she doesn’t have to actually do to her own job today.
She caught sight of Max and had the temerity to wave.
He raised his latte in salute and returned to his office, shaking his head.
“Barker!” His boss, in the flesh this time, stopped him.
“Ms Trickle.”
“Where’s your ear-bud?”
“Fried, ma’am, in the kitsune blowup.”
“You’re joking.”
“I never joke about blow jobs.”
“They’re designed to take a Surge.”
“Well, that one didn’t. Here.” He reached into his pocket and fished out the sad, wilted thing. It looked a bit like a dead earthworm.
“Christ. That’s awful.”
“You know, I slept with this guy once had a d—”
“I don’t want to know.”
Max grinned and sipped his latte, waiting for her to get to the point.
“You better give that to specs down in R&D. If it should have survived a Surge, they got themselves a Surge problem.” Trickle paused and gave Max a malicious simile. “They’ll want to interview you.”
Max placed a palm to his chest in a Southern-belle manner. “What, little ol’ moi? I’m just some poor sad ol’ sumage with no useful skill and no—”
“Don’t you ever shut up?”
“I do if there’s something in my mouth.” Max’s eyes gleamed. Torturing his boss was always fun. Of course, he’d probably get fired for it someday, but what other joy in life was there if she insisted on going around being all pompous? I’m turning into a lonel
y waspish old queen.
“Barker, those werewolves are coming in this afternoon. We’re putting them through the usual lines and paperwork and so forth but you know they’re ending up at your desk.”
“Because you love me?”
“Because I think you up against werewolves will be hilarious.”
“You couldn’t just send them to me directly? They’d be a lot less grumpy.”
“No preferential treatment, you know that.”
“Everyone is part of the bureaucracy.” Max slurped his vanilla syrup with a coffee twist.
“Even you.”
“Especially me.” Max was well aware where he sat in Civic Center hierarchy – at the very bottom.
“Pain in the ass.” Trickle walked away.
“Only when asked nicely.”
Ms Trickle flicked him off without turning back toward him.
Max drank another gulp of his latte, sighed, and headed back to his office. Annoyed werewolves incoming. Smile, Maximillian, this is going to be a glorious day.
* * *
The number of people in the waiting room made Biff twitchy. Too many other shifters. He sniffed, trying to identify them all. He’d rarely met any other types of shifters in his life. He was coming to understand how insular his upbringing had been.
Eau de wet dog and old carpet to the left. Barghest? His curiosity was piqued – he’d never met a black dog before. He moved to the next scent marker. Blubber and seaweed. That means selkie. Biff knew that smell. It’d been a seal shifter incident back in Boston that threw Marvin and Alec together. He focused idly on a tall good-looking Norse type with a bad attitude, who might be a berserker with those bloodshot eyes. Or a pothead. There was a family of cute kitsune just coming in. But who minded foxes? Although they gave both him and the black dog wary looks. Right in front of Biff stood a fantastic-looking Latino man smelling of sun-warmed fur and sardines, with a certain feline grace and cocky attitude that could only mean werecat. Nahual? Again Biff was intrigued – puma shifters were supposed to be very beautiful in either form.
Biff flinched away from that thought. I must be getting hard up if I’m lusting after a cat shifter.
Sumage Solution GL Carriger Page 2
