by Wayne Santos
First published 2021 by Solaris
an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,
Riverside House, Osney Mead,
Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK
www.solarisbooks.com
ISBN: 978-1-78618-450-4
Copyright © Wayne Santos 2021
Designed & typeset by Rebellion Publishing
The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
For Kit,
There’s no stalking here,
but I did keep my promise.
It just took a while.
Chapter One
THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMETHING BROKEN
FOR MARIA MALIHAN, love was like being clumsy; falling fast and hard and painful. A lurching sensation of joy and terrifying vertigo fell on her, as Tate looked into her eyes and said, “I am never going to find anyone like you ever again, am I?”
The sound around them, on the grounds of Casa Loma, seemed to dim and fade away. The cheers of children on field trips on a sunny Toronto afternoon became distant echoes. The directions shouted out by photographers as cosplayers struck poses in their Gothic-Lolita outfits against the backdrop of the castle fell to a buzz.
This wasn’t just some thrilling crush, this was true love. And true love was a horrible gauntlet that the oldest, deepest part of Maria’s soul had been dreading, because when it was this real, this true, it involved four things: a man, loss of body awareness, a horse, and imminent death. The first two things happened in rapid succession.
Tate’s words fell through her. And in falling through her, they dragged her down with them, in both the spiritual and physical senses.
Not the faint dizziness that had accompanied past relationships, but full-blown vertigo. Holy shit, she must really love this guy…
His face was a thin, angular, Eurasian star, a chiseled comet of adoration, a pleasantly tanned smile of a bespectacled, flying angel, and that meant all kinds of horrible, awful trouble, though Maria wasn’t exactly sure how.
As she dropped away, his better-than-average looks receding away from her like a cloud in the sky, there was a powerful feeling left on the surface of her by his simple words. And she hoped, desperately, that he wasn’t just saying romantic bullshit that he’d read from some pick-up artist book, because when he said it, it seared her with some kind of truth, and there was nothing left in the wake of that force but something that she had to call love. Because nothing else made her as terrified as this feeling in her heart.
She tripped over some hedges and fell into the Casa Loma fountain. Her flailing entangled a pair of cosplayers dressed like Samurai Cinderella and a disturbingly hot haute-couture skunk. They all fell in, shrieking like a fever dream undergoing anaphylactic shock in a peanut shower.
“That… was not the response I was expecting or hoping for,” Tate said, with no small amount of confusion.
She tried to speak through the vertigo, could not win against it and went back under, drowning.
Tate, because he was Tate, brought her back to the surface and helped the two others out.
“I’m so happy right now,” she managed to cough out, choking on the water in her lungs. At least, she hoped that the happiness would come, once her head stopped acting like a bowling ball looking for an alley.
She groaned and fell forward on the steps Tate had sat her down upon, keeping her face towards the ground. Tate half-patted, half-rubbed her back, eventually producing a tiny cloth for her to wipe her face with that she recognized as the one he used to clean the lenses of his glasses. She took it and dabbed at her face.
Love. Hooray.
“You should have told me you were sick,” Tate said, above her, and she clung to the sound of his voice. It was the ladder she would use to climb out of vertigo.
“It’s love,” she said. “I’m lovesick. Keep talking to me, please.” Slow. Deep. Breaths.
“Should we maybe go to a clinic? Get you checked out? This isn’t normal.”
“It is for me,” Maria insisted. “Just not frequent.” Because I think you’re The One, and that’s scaring me shitless. “You just surprised me.”
“You are not alone in that,” Tate said. He brought his arm around her; it was wet, but then so was she, and two other demoralized cosplayers. “But I meant it. I don’t think there’s ever going to be anyone like you.”
She felt her love surge, accompanied by a fresh loss of balance that almost sent her rolling down the stairs. Tate, God bless him, caught her.
“It’s not a mistake,” she insisted.
“What isn’t?”
“Saying that to me. Please, please don’t think you made a mistake saying that to me. It was lovely. You’re lovely. You just made this day perfect.”
“‘Perfect’ would be having a hair dryer on hand,” Tate said, but she could hear the smile in his voice, even as the world insisted it was now 90 degrees. She swooned more happiness.
“People are going to think I’m drunk,” she said.
“There’s a Shoppers Drug Mart a couple of blocks away,” Tate said. “I think we can get you some pills or something.”
“Some romantic interlude this turned out to be.”
“Dramamine is pink,” Tate said. “It can be your anti-dizziness valentine.”
She laughed, her body tried to move in two separate directions, thought the better of it, and put a stopper on the whole laughing thing. “Maybe that’s a good idea. We should go before they make me pay for all this.”
“Walang hiya,” Tate said, smiling. But he stood and extended his hand.
She looked up into his green eyes, his light brown hair, and his narrow face set into slightly darkened skin; the lucky roll of the genetic dice that had blessed him with the best of England and the Philippines.
“It’s unfair when you pull that Tagalog shit on me,” she said, grabbing his hand and letting him hoist her up.
He shook his head as they headed off the castle grounds. “I’m only half-Filipino, and you’re full, you should understand all this stuff.”
“Yeah well, I grew up in Grande Prairie. Sue me. What did you just say?”
“‘You have no shame,’ basically.”
“I’m sick with love, these are special circumstances.”
“Are you?” Tate asked, and this time, there was a note of uncertainty in his voice.
“Sick? Did you not just see my triple lindy into the pool?”
“No, the love part.”
“I’m thirty-two years old. I think that’s been enough time to figure out when it’s for real. And these wet clothes sure are real, so I’m taking that as final confirmation.” She slipped her fingers between his and squeezed. “It’s not classy, but it’s true. Like so many other things in my life, so that’s consistent.”
They made their way to the rear of the castle grounds and walked down the steep steps that a Scott Pilgrim villain had once ground on a skateboard, in both the comic and the movie. The fear dropped away to something manageable and less violently destabilizing, gradually transitioning to a warm, messy goo in her heart that was no less gross in imagery, but far more comforting to her soul. There was something familiar about this, deeply, wonderfully
familiar—her hand in his, the trees going by as they walked. It’s not like they hadn’t done this sort of thing before, but now that it was out there, the L-Word, made real, suddenly this seemed more real too.
“So how do we say it, Phil-boy?” she asked.
“Say what?”
“The gooshy, mushy words. How do we say it in our language?”
He smiled, and when he spoke the words were soft and quiet. “Mahal kita.”
She turned her hand into a gun and pointed it at him, pulling the trigger and letting the recoil kick her hand back. “Right back atcha. I’m so fucking romantic.”
“Are you okay with this? Seriously?”
She stopped and took both of his hands in hers, looking at him. “If I hadn’t taken a dunk, I’d be so kissing you right now. But I won’t. Because that would be gross for you. That’s how much I love you.”
“We can buy mouthwash with the Gravol,” he suggested.
“Let’s do that. There’s going to be kissing afoot today.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be back at work soon?”
“I’m going to call in sick,” she said. “I have proof. I can even bring it to them in a bag, if they really want to see.”
“Such a professional.”
“It’s a video game studio. They’ll just announce a delay into the next year anyway, that’s always how it goes.”
She hastened them down the steps. She wanted to keep this styleless, not-classy-at-all, gooey feeling going. Heading back to the office would put a serious dent in that, and now that the fear was a more distant thing, she was going to say ‘fuck it’ to the fear by fucking Tate, as the ultimate, defiant ‘fuck you’ to… whatever. She was happy right now, dammit, and that was a rare thing, so she was going to have this.
LATER, AS SHE tumbled away into sleep, the third thing happened. She had the dream again. Although technically, this wasn’t really ‘again,’ as when she’d had this dream before, she wasn’t Maria Malihan.
Tate had fallen asleep after they had exhausted themselves with sex that caught her by surprise with the gentleness. Even now, he held her gently, his breath a reassuring tickle against her skin, a whisper without words that said, I am still here.
But Tate did not follow her into this dream. No one could.
It was a territory that only the divine could tread, even if Maria herself was not yet aware of this.
She heard the thunder. Then saw the dark clouds too low in the sky, until she realized she was high in the air, watching the lightning fork and arc across the clouds like broken shards of light.
Below lay a vast plain, the thunder coming from two directions; here in the sky where she was, and down below where hooves beyond counting hammered the ground in a joyous run for its own sake.
Horses. More horses than she could count.
They were powerful, numerous and free, following their own direction, heedless and fearless of the storm above them. Maybe the storm had come to admire them the way Maria herself had; in the dream, even the clouds and lightning deferred to the animals below, to their speed and majesty.
She descended, drawing closer, the hoofbeats vibrating through her as the horses ran on, a stream of muscled white, brown and black patches of color.
At the head, the leader of these magnificent beasts, a horse unlike the others, its muscles and rippling movement alien. It ran on two legs. It had arms and hands. It turned up, looking directly at her, and then it shouted.
YOU CRAZY GODDAMN BITCH! NOT AGAIN! NOT THIS TIME! LEAVE ME ALONE! FUCK YOU!
With a whinny that echoed in the air, it veered hard, and the rest of the horses followed it. It raised one hand, turning it into a closed fist, from which its middle finger emerged.
She stopped; she wasn’t quite sure how, in mid-air, but she attributed it to the whateverness of dreams.
And off in the distance, as the horses left her behind, she could still hear something screaming FUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU!
She woke up, blinking slowly, watching dapples of sunlight play across her ceiling, and eventually became aware of Tate still beside her.
Coffee.
Definitely coffee now.
Chapter Two
LOVE SHOULD MAKE EVERYTHING LEGAL
MARIA WAS THREE-FOR-FOUR so far on true love. A man; check. Catastrophic clumsiness; check. The damn horse; check, check. Only the last one was left, and it couldn’t be far behind, but Maria Malihan was not immediately aware of it. That was a worry for another Maria, one not faced with more immediate work concerns.
Ducking out of the office had not been part of the plan yesterday, but Maria figured she could do the damage control as long as she made a new plan. Maria was big on plans. She was big on anything that involved trying to figure out stuff in advance and then sticking to it, which was why, in theory, working in video games should have been a great job for her.
And sometimes, it even was, when there wasn’t a crunch with 100-hour work weeks that demanded the triple sacrifice of health, sanity, and family relationships.
Fortunately, it usually didn’t come to that for Maria. She worked in concept art; she loved environments; she loved nature: as such, she was one of the environmental concept artists, creating the lush tropical jungles, forbidding mountain landscapes, and turbulent waterfalls that inspired the level designers to try and match what she carried in her heart. People liked her pictures. Sometimes her pictures even ended up in the ‘extras’ section of the video games she shipped. It was a weird thing to create stuff that was supposed to inspire the creators whose stuff would actually get seen, but Maria liked that sense of being a foundation or cornerstone; she held things up, even if no one on the outside knew about it.
Everyware was one of the bigger studios, what some of the gaming aficionados referred to as a ‘triple-A studio.’ Their games were huge—the bonuses, too, if they got a high review average on Metacritic. She was just another tiny cog in a vast, multinational machine, but she loved that they paid her a not inconsiderable sum of money to sit around all day and draw environments.
She handled the damage control with her co-workers. Yes, she was feeling better today. No, it wasn’t something she ate. Yes, she was sure she could come in and do this. Yes, she wanted some Tim Bits, the ones with jelly inside, please.
She accepted the well-wishes and concerns and sat at her desk, ready to work, but something was off. It had been there, ever since she woke and left Tate at the kitchen table, eating the breakfast he’d made for the both of them. At first, she thought it was because she was excited. Love was here, and it was real. Or at least, it felt like the real thing.
And that was the problem. It was very familiar, and so, for reasons she could not explain, terrifying. Since yesterday, there had been an undercurrent of adrenaline to everything she’d done, a magnified version of her mood when playing a horror game, knowing an unkillable boss could break through a wall at any moment.
She put on her blinders and focused on the work groove. Her Cintiq practically hummed, the ideas ready to jump out of her fingers, her stylus poised while Tim Bit crumbs dangled from her mouth…
She got a notification on her computer. It was from the interoffice chat channel, from Aurelio Valdez, the Studio Manager.
Feeling better?
Yup, thanks!
Got something I need to talk to you about.
My office.
Just a few minutes.
Okay. You want a Tim Bit?
Any chocolate left?
Today’s your lucky day.
I love you!
The faint buzz of irritation whenever he said stuff like that was today accompanied by that strange anxiety that came from nowhere, had no source. She shook it. It was just damn snack food; let it go.
She scooted by the plate of surviving Tim-Bits, picking up a few, and made her way from the open concept area that the wage slaves were corralled in, to the hallowed upper levels, where the executives had real offices. This was where the
‘magic’ happened, by which she meant the bad decisions periodically forced on staff. Staff who would later be laid off when a game came out, and customers hated the decisions, while the people who’d actually made those decisions kept their jobs.
Maria had thus far avoided that particular ax. She kept telling herself that it was because she was good at her job, and she knew there was truth to that. But she was also concerned that maybe Aurelio had something to do with it.
Now she came into his slightly intimidating office, with its serene, neutral off-white color scheme, and sat down in a chair before his desk, while he smiled, still intent on something he was typing on his computer. Eventually, he turned to take the plate she was holding.
“I almost never manage to get these.” He took one of the tiny not-really-doughnuts and popped the entire chocolatey thing into his mouth, then closed his eyes and tilted his head toward the ceiling. “So bad for me. I will never stop loving these things.” He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “Or you.”
She smiled, but it was her Oh-Jesus-Fuck-Not-This-Again-I-Really-Need-This-Job smile. “Aurelio…”
He raised his hand, saw the chocolate on the fingers, and sucked at them momentarily. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. My mouth gets away from me sometimes, but that’s it, right? Have you ever known me to break protocol? Do I ever do anything unprofessional?”
“No. You don’t.” She reached for one of the bits, and he pushed the plate closer to her. “This isn’t why you called me up here, is it?”
“No. No, of course not. That just slipped out. It might slip out from time to time until you realize what a mistake this all is. But hope springs eternal. I haven’t given up on you.”
