by Mike Allen
“Oh yeah, huh? Agony and Mags.”
“Among any other of your little experiments. And…” he looks over at Allemande Left meaningfully.
I dip my fingers into my drink and flick liquid at him; his feathers ruffle reflexively. “Don’t even.”
“I’m just saying. You might want to do something about that.”
“This isn’t my story, Jack.”
The Werewolf
Mary Magdalene Kendall is sprawled on a mattress on the floor of Agony Jones’s studio apartment, nude and overly warm. Agony is propped up against the wall, looking like she’s really wishing for the cigarette Mags denied her, also nude. She is painfully thin and always will be.
“How old were you?” Mags asks, and loops back with “If that’s not a rude question.”
Agony tousles her spiky hair. “Eighteen,” she says. “Generally it is, but considering…”
Mags laughs and stretches, very happy in her skin. “Mmmm. Considering.”
“1983. Dammit I want a smoke, but I don’t wanna get dressed.”
Mags taps her nose. “Super-sensitive, darling. Bad enough that the whole bed smells like smoke—”
“And sex—”
“That I don’t mind. Especially considering.” Another wicked wolfgirl smile. “We could find another way to occupy your mouth.”
The Witch
“See? They’re doing fine.”
I’m speaking to Jack’s ox head now, which is probably my favorite. His human head is too pretty. Inhuman in its perfect humanity. I prefer him straight-up inhuman. He snorts and wipes down the bar, and I try not to grin. “So how long?”
“Until … I don’t know.” I shift in my seat, restless. I’m wearing jeans and an Oxford shirt on a male body here, taller than the body I wore at the Mercy Seat. My head itches a little from suddenly having hair. I don’t scratch. I look around the bar and notice a bit of resonance in the corner. Finally, something interesting. I leave Jack a tip for nothing in particular and bring my drink over to the corner table, sit down with my back to the door. “Olly olly oxen free,” I singsong, looking at Jack, who rolls his eyes in disgust.
“Zzzzzzzeeeeeeee,” the air shivers out, like thousands of gnats.
“Come on. I wouldn’t have seen you if you weren’t here to work.”
The Oracle
The oracle in the corner—I call it the oracle in the corner pocket because I’m a goofball, but also because the corner is a pocket universe of its own—shimmers into view. Zie cycles through a persona every eyeblink, headscarf and hoop earrings, punk-rock tatters, a tuxedo, and I kick back in my chair and wait until zie settles, flickers only occasionally. This persona I’ve seen before, a low-voiced man who seems more solid than the table and chair, with a deck of cards. “What do you want, Zee?” he asks, his voice rough music, callused fingers tapping the deck.
“People always ask me that. No one says ‘How are you, Zee? Wanna get a drink, Zee?’”
“Then how are you, Zee?” He arches an eyebrow. I never could do that, just the one eyebrow.
“Apocalyptically bored.”
He nods. “That’s truer than you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bad things happen when beings who can smash together universes get bored.”
“Hey. I have a pretty good track record.”
“But you want something more now?”
“Well. Yeah.”
“What do you want?”
I stop. I think.
I deflect.
“Why aren’t you using the cards?”
“You know they’re just a prop.”
“Yeah, but it’s nice to pretend sometimes.”
He shakes his head. Shuffles. Flips a card out of the middle and flicks it at me; before I snatch it out of the air, he says, “And how long has it been?”
It’s a valentine, the kind kids give each other in school. Red construction paper heart taped onto a popsicle stick. “Since I hid my heart?”
“If that’s what the card is asking you.”
“Why should that matter?”
“How long, Zee?”
I think. “I don’t tell time like you do. A while.”
“How many hundreds of years is a while?”
“I’m not suicidal.”
“Never said you were. But I asked you what you wanted, and the card’s telling you you want your heart.”
The Witch’s Heart
is cold
is safe
is hidden
(is broken)
is hiding
is floating
is waiting
The Oracle
“Do you even remember where you put it?”
“It’s safe.”
“Yes. It’s hidden, and it’s safe, and you’ll live forever without it. But is that even what you want anymore?”
The Vampire
Agony Jones will live forever and never grow up and she is tired. She masks it with fresh hair dye on the regular and boot-stomping music and brief torrid affairs that end in bloodshed (not hers).
Agony Jones is pretty sure that she’s not built for a long-term relationship. Especially with someone who doesn’t approve of her diet and, oh yeah, does not have a lifespan the equal of her own.
The Werewolf
Mary Magdalene Kendall stalks the night, fists balled in the pockets of a leather jacket, fresh from another fight about fucking Agony bringing home what she likes to call “takeout.” Mags cannot deal with walking in to find Agony face down in some random person, even if it’s only food, not sex. She knows Agony needs the blood, she knew the first night what Agony was, but it wears on her. It just wears on her.
When she gets home, Agony’s dinner will have wandered off with a dazed grin, and Agony will
a) be sullen and resentful
b) be pretending nothing happened
c) be quiet and withdrawn, which is her version of an apology.
Mary Magdalene Kendall is not sure she’s built for this.
The Vampire and the Werewolf
When Mags walks through the door, Agony is sitting on the mattress, miserable, and she says “It was a Duran Duran concert.”
“What?” This was not a sentence Mags was prepared for, and she has difficulty parsing it.
“When I was turned. I was at a goddamn Duran Duran concert.”
Mags can’t help it—despite Agony’s I-dare-you glare, she collapses into giggles and onto the mattress. “You? Punk-ass you? At a—”
Agony buries her face in her hands. “Right in the middle of ‘Rio.’”
Mags can’t breathe, she’s laughing so hard, and it even forces a chuckle or two out of Agony. “At—at least—at least it wasn’t ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’!”
Agony whacks her with a pillow and she laughs even harder, until Agony is laughing just as hard. “Don’t tell anyone!”
“I’m gonna tell everyone!”
“Don’t you dare!”
Mags calms herself and looks at Agony. Little Agony, who went to a New Wave concert as a goofy teenager and got turned. Agony, who knows that she has to be a hardass or she’ll be seen as prey.
Mags knows a little about that. She has a shy kid sister. She worries.
“I won’t tell,” she says.
Agony shifts on the mattress. “Are we okay? Ish?”
“Ish. I still—”
“I know.”
“Can you not bring them home?” Mags’s voice comes out higher than anticipated, plaintive, surprising them both.
Agony squeezes her hand, cold on warm. “I can do that.”
The Witch
Hiding your heart is standard operating procedure for witches. If there was a manual, heart-hiding would be in it. If we had soap operas, one would be called The Hidden Heart. It’s a thing. If you hide your heart, no one can destroy you. You are untouchable, inviolate, immortal.
I don’t see why I’d want mine back. It’s messy.
Allemande Left is leaning on the bar, all grace and elegance. His extension is flawless, the line of his body impeccable. He has more instinct for this than I ever will, immortality or no. “Interesting reading,” he says with a very small smile, sipping something blue.
“Should I look for it?”
“You don’t know where it is?”
I wave a hand dismissively, disturbing one of the tiny processors orbiting my again-bare head. “I remember most of it, I think. It’s been a long time.”
“You have lost a piece of your heart,” Allemande Left says thoughtfully, smile curving broader. “How almost mortal of you, Zee.”
I suppress a flare of petulance. Mostly. “I don’t need it.”
“I believe that you might.”
“I don’t see why anyone would.”
“You forget, Zee.” Allemande Left brushes a small, dry kiss onto my cheek, his silver-threaded hair swinging over one shoulder. “You forget things when you don’t have a heart.”
The Witch
Do not think I’m being literal.
The heart that I have hidden is not a lump of striated muscle. There are no veins flopping out of it. The heart I have hidden is an abstraction, a Platonic ideal of a heart. It’s a rite of passage, being able to encompass one’s heart. To remove it, to examine it.
Different traditions have different ways of safeguarding their hearts. One tradition swears by the hackneyed old methods: the heart should be kept in an egg on a mountain in the wilderness and so forth. Some traditions keep all of the hearts in one central location, which I find efficient yet foolhardy.
Mine is a heart divided.
The Bar
I close my eyes.
I close my eyes.
I close my eyes.
I close my eyes and flick through realities like I’m skimming a just-read book for a remembered piece of dialogue, somewhere back there on page whatever, but these pages are universes. It’s delicate work. I flash through world after world after bar after bar, keeping my Self contained in a tiny sphere at the center of me, about where my heart would go—my body changes too quickly when I do this. Too much cognitive dissonance. I am not a body, I’m a witch. And this is silly anyway, but witches are curious beasts.
I open my eyes.
The bar is enormous. The bar may, itself, be an entire world. I remember this one, and I smile. I nod at the bartender, Luminiferous Aether. It jiggles slightly in a way that indicates a raised eyebrow—I haven’t been here in a while, maybe a few hundred years, but it remembers me.
The humors are playing bridge at the table by the door. As always, the biles are partnered, opposing blood and phlegm, who appear to be winning. The Odic Force and Elan Vital are twining at the bar as if they’re attempting to fuse in search of scientific validity. Or maybe they’re just tipsy. I don’t know what they’re drinking. I don’t know what anyone else drinks here; they’e all too damn esoteric.
Phlogiston moves sullenly out of my way, allowing me a seat at the bar. Some beings never get over being discredited. Some of us just shrug it off and go about our business, enjoying the lack of attention. I’ve tried pep-talking Phlogiston before, though, and it never works.
Luminiferous Aether dims and brightens; a question. “Nothing to drink,” I say. “But you were holding something for me.”
It shimmers into view on the bar—a small leather book that emits a low but noticeable hum. I nod to Aether and place my hand on it.
The Witch’s Heart
sings home and home and home again
floods in
establishes its borders
waits
The Witch
I close my eyes.
The Vampire
Agony Jones is in too deep.
She is in love, heart wild and untrammelled, singing into the night! She is reckless and heedless and helpless and hopeless. Because
a) Mary Magdalene Kendall is a werewolf from a proper werewolf family, and she has not introduced her to her parents yet, and
b) Mary Magdalene Kendall is mortal.
Agony Jones stomps down the streets, hair and aura spiked—Mags is beautiful! and mortal. Mags is wickedly silly! and mortal. Mags is kind and funny and clever! and mortal.
And mortal. And mortal. And mortal. Like the heartbeat Agony doesn’t have.
The Werewolf
blood and scent of fear-on-prey and streaks of shades of grey and
running running running
jaws snapping shut
the tearing, rending, flesh from flesh from bone
rich coppersweetsalt thick on muzzle
and
Mary Magdalene Kendall flows back, gasping, nude, streaks of gore on coppertan limbs. Shivering a little from cold, a little from the change.
She draws a hot bath, eases in, gasping as heat suffuses sore muscles, watching the water pink. She sighs, and she thinks, Agony.
Her first thought after every change. Agony, Agony, Agony, a song in her head every time she emerges; Agony.
Agony.
The Witch
I sit at a corner table, watching the vampire and the werewolf play footsie. This one seems to be sticking. Not just the couple: the worlds. The membrane seems to have become permanently permeable. Which is the sort of thing that might get me in trouble if anyone was watching, which no one ever is.
Belying that thought, Jack sets a highball glass in front of me. I look up and up at him, eyebrow raised; he sighs and sits. “And how’s your quest?” he asks.
I scrunch up my face and take a sip of whatever. Boozycherrysomething. “What is this?”
“I am calling it The Witch’s Heart,” he grins.
I snort, equal parts due to the joke and to the fact that Jack made a joke and is smiling. “What’s in it?”
“I’d tell you, but you’d forget instantly and you don’t actually care. So.” He flicks the towel at me. “Quest.”
“I thought you didn’t like it when I bend the laws of physics?”
“Well, it’s been keeping you out of my hair—and I find that when you’re out of my hair, I start to get worried. At least when you’re causing trouble in my bars, I know what you’re up to.”
I take another sip of The Witch’s Heart. “No shit, this is really good.”
“Zee.”
“Okay.” I spread my hand out on the scarred wooden table. Black nail polish in this bar, and no jewelry. “I found seven pieces. They’re all knitted back together and humming in counterpoint to each other and it is highly weird.”
“Seven? How many pieces are there total?”
“Nine? I think? It feels like nine.” I turn inward, trace the borders of my incomplete heart. “It feels like two missing.”
“So where are you off to next?”
I shrug.
“Don’t you want to see what happens when the gang’s all back together?”
“Well, I don’t know. Is the thing. Where the other two pieces are.”
Jack tilts his head skeptically. “Zee. Really.”
My almost-heart stutters oddly, feels swollen. I watch a tiny fluff of a feather swirl down, and I catch it. It weighs nothing. “I lost them, I think. A while ago. I remembered where I stashed the first few pieces, and once I had those, they led me to the others, but I’m blocked now. I’m not being led anywhere. I’m just … here. And they ache, all along the edges where pieces are missing. Not a sharp pain, nothing acute, just this constant pull but I don’t know to where or to what.” I drink again. “This was a stupid idea. The Oracle’s a jerk.” I poke savagely at the cherry with the stirrer, stabbing it a dozen times, more. Cherry juice infuses the liquor, bleeding from the raggedly torn center of the fruit. I impale it and scowl.
When I look up, Jack is gone.
The Vampire and the Werewolf
Agony Jones can deal with anything expect being without Mary Magdalene Kendall and
Mary Magdalene Kendall can deal wi
th anything except being without Agony Jones.
It’s okay that she’s mortal; they’ll figure it out.
It’s okay that she drinks blood, they’ll figure it out.
They are both killers in their own way, anyway. They both love 80s music and broken-in leather and each other, and you’d be surprised how far that’ll get you. You really would.
The Witch’s Heart
aches
The Courtesan
“It’s not about being perfect,” says Allemande Left.
I am perched on my stool in her corner again, watching her apply her prosthetics. She is effortlessly perfect, with an economy of movement that is truly impeccable. “I don’t believe you.”
She laughs, black eyes catching mine in her mirror. “It’s not. Perfect looks artificial. Like old-Earth beauty pageants, where all the girls looked exactly the same. The same teeth, the same makeup job, the same dress, the same updo. Perfect is Teflon. It leaves nothing to catch the eye.” She smiles and runs a hand along her arm, currently studded with small triangular implants. “I’m slightly asymmetrical. My coloring is uneven. I have scars.”
“We all have scars.” I realize that my hand is over my almost-heart.
Allemande Left realizes it as well. She kneels before me. Black eyes, tapered skull—I don’t even know what species she’s emulating today. It doesn’t matter. When Allemande Left is with me, Allemande Left is with me; I would know Allemande Left anywhere. “What is it, Zee?”
“My heart hurts.”
I hadn’t planned to say it, but it’s true. The ache has deepened, and my heart has begun to move. It is a wild thing in my chest. It thrashes to its own music.
Allemande Left takes my hands in hers, in her slender blue multi-jointed hands, and she kisses them gently. She places one back against my chest, keeping her hand over it, and she places the other on her own narrow chest, holds it in place.
And my heart pulls from two directions at once.
The Witch’s Heart
is desperate
is tearing
is almost almost almost
The Witch
“Allemande Left! What..?”
She laughs. “You gave it to me for safekeeping, Zee. So long ago. I’ve kept it with my own.”
