Titan's Day

by Dan Stout

  “What the . . .” She stared at the glass. “It multiplied. It scaled up on its own!”

  “I guess,” I said. “I told it to, and it responded.”

  “What do you mean, you told it to?”

  “I’m not entirely sure.” I wiped a hand across my forehead. “I kind of encouraged it to boost?”

  “That’s not how magic works.”

  I raised an eyebrow. The flower in the middle of the table proved her wrong. It was wilted, like it had aged a week in that single jump forward.

  “No.” Gellica blinked several times, as if trying to hit some kind of internal reset. “Carter, I don’t mean that what you’re saying is difficult. It’s flat out impossible.”

  “So how did it happen?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not a sorcerer. But I know that’s not supposed to happen.” Gellica chewed on her lower lip, brows furrowed.

  “For what it’s worth . . .” I ran my hand between the shard and the flower, searching for any trace of cobwebs. “I don’t think they’re connected anymore.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’d feel it, I guess?” I sat on the edge of the couch, elbows on knees, hands clasped in front of me. “So that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Now . . . what do we do about this?”

  “Okay,” said Gellica. “Okay. That was unexpected. And exciting.” She stared at the wineglass in her hand, that had almost been knocked over by a delicate flower. She drained its contents in a single slug, then looked at me. “Start from the beginning.”

  * * *

  “So when you ran into this the first time, you came straight here and talked to me?”

  “Right. You said it wasn’t how manna felt.”

  “That’s because it doesn’t. And you weren’t doing,” she stared at the shards and withered flower petals, “that as a demonstration.”

  “I thought sorcerers could sense magic. You skip that class, too?” We’d gone over every detail, and a deep exhaustion had settled over me.

  She gave a weak laugh. “Everyone can hear music,” she said. “What you’re talking about is like seeing the notes in the air.” She scratched her leg and looked around the office. Her eyes widened. “These strings you felt. Are there any in here?”

  “You mean around us now?” I asked. “No. And they’re more like cobwebs than strings.”

  “And around me?” Insistent, her voice rising as her throat constricted. “Nothing?” I could see her consider the odds that whatever I was doing could affect her as well.

  I shook my head, speaking slowly and with certainty. “No. I wouldn’t have come near you if I did.”

  Her shoulders relaxed. “Thank you.” She didn’t need to elaborate.

  “But,” she said. “If you don’t feel it around me . . .” She stared at the shards again. “The drug.” She rubbed her dimpled chin, sounding more confident as she went. “It must be something to do with the combination of angel tears and manna.”

  I flopped back against the couch cushions, unable to hide a smile. Gellica had come to the same conclusion I had. Not only did that mean I wasn’t crazy, but it also explained why the effect didn’t take place consistently. If the cobwebs were only present around snake oil, it made sense that I couldn’t affect Guyer’s bonded brooch pin and baton, or why Guyer’s cloak and Paulus’s tattoos hadn’t sent tingles racing down my arm. It also explained why I couldn’t sense any cobwebs around Gellica. They all used undiluted manna, free from contamination.

  “A single drop of manna,” I said, “and a single drop of angel tears. That’s all it takes to transform magic into something we can feel and interact with.” In the same way one person, one single act, could change a situation.

  “No,” said Gellica, snapping my train of thought. “Not we. You.” She pointed at the shards. “I can’t do this. As far as I know, no one else can, either. And we don’t know anything about why you have this connection, or how we can test it.”

  “Who said anything about testing it?”

  “I did.” She sat back, tugging on her upper lip. “Because whatever this is, it deserves study. We need to get snake oil. Is that something you can, you know . . .”

  I stared at her.

  “Just because I’m a cop doesn’t mean I have unlimited access to illicit activity,” I said. “And the connections I do have are with people smart enough to never sell drugs to a cop.”

  She sat back, pondering this information.

  “What about Paulus?” I asked. “She’s experimented before, pushed boundaries, ignored proscriptions.”

  Gellica raised an eyebrow. We both knew that Paulus’s experimentation was how Gellica had been created. I hurried to clarify.

  “She’s rich, influential, and not afraid to flex her muscles,” I said. “If anyone would have snake oil lying around—”

  Gellica interrupted me. “Let’s say she does. I don’t know about it, and you’re not detecting it. So what’s that tell you? She’s not using it.”

  “She’s not using it herself.”

  Gellica let out a growling sigh. “Fine. But that’s the same thing as far as we’re concerned.”

  It wasn’t, not in the least. But it was as far as I’d get on that topic with her that night, so I let it drop. Besides, I was just relieved to have someone believe me. I sat back in the couch and let myself relax.

  “This is exactly what I tried to tell the DO, but she wouldn’t listen, no matter—”

  “Wait.” She broke in with hands raised. “Carter, this isn’t something you can talk about.”

  “Not with just anyone. But I’m trying to figure out what in Hells is happening. If there’s someone who can fix it—”

  “Nobody!” she said. “No one can know about this. If people knew you can do that—” She shook her head. “We’d end up in adjoining observation cells.”

  We both looked at the coffee table. The flower bloom crumpled inward, shriveling and growing thin, its petals losing color and puckering like a decaying orange rind. We watched it become increasingly gossamer, until it was barely there at all.

  “That’s what’ll happen to me,” she said, her voice soft.

  “What?”

  “If I don’t have access to manna. I’ll get manna rot and fall away to nothing.”

  “Not everything magical rots.”

  “As long as the sorcerer who made the connections severs them,” she said. “Or if the connection isn’t used. Or if, or if . . .” She trailed off with a roll of her wrist, indicating that the list went on and on. “But I’m half magic, remember? I need regular manna treatments to stay alive. It’s a trade-off—Paulus got her clone, and I got a lifetime of magical addiction.”

  Gellica pressed a knuckle against the flower bloom and it collapsed. A withered husk that could float away on the faintest breeze.

  I ran a finger along my collar, giving myself a little more breathing room. “I’m sorry.”

  “I respect the ambassador,” she said. “But I don’t enjoy being chained to her supply of manna. Whenever I’ve thought about leaving, starting out on my own . . .” She flexed her hands, and I could practically see her fighting the urge to ball them into fists. “Well, you can imagine why I find the issue of manna supply of personal interest.”

  “If my life depended on it, I probably would as well.”

  She cocked her head toward the decaying mound that had been the flower. “Are you so sure it doesn’t?”

  I started to spit out a smartass comment, only to feel my grin slip away. Would I end up a withered husk, eaten away from the inside by magic?

  “Don’t worry too much,” she said. “We don’t know how this works, but we can find out.”

  I felt a warm rush of gratitude. Gellica might have needed someone to share her secrets, but I needed her just as much.
I dealt with that kind of revelation like I always did: I changed the subject.

  “Listen,” I said, “I want to say I’m sorry about the other night.”

  “You already did.”

  “Not about crashing that fundraiser. About ending the night so soon.”

  “No need to apologize.” She straightened. “You want to keep things professional. That’s fine.”

  I cleared my throat. “No.”

  Gellica snorted. “No meaning no or no meaning yes?”

  “No meaning I don’t know.”

  “Well I notice that you feel comfortable coming in and running your mouth. And I’m guessing that that’s the hallmark of most of your relationships.”

  “Is this a relationship?”

  “I don’t know what it is. I wanted it to—” Gellica grimaced, and for a moment I was afraid she was going to be sick. “I wanted it to be something.” She crossed the room, and grabbed a decanter, the brown liquid inside swirling with her anger. “But you weren’t interested. You made it clear.”

  “I’m not very clear about anything in my life.”

  She turned, empty glass in one hand, half-full decanter in the other. “Are you going to find who killed your Jane Doe?”

  I turned away. “Don’t know.”

  “When will you stop?”

  I shrugged. Scratched my ear. Shrugged again.

  “You won’t,” she said, and poured herself a drink. “Pretty clear how you feel about that. Pretty clear how you feel about me. And about my . . .”

  “You mean your—”

  She cut me off, raising the decanter like a weapon.

  “If you say ‘rawr,’ Carter, I swear on the Path that I will club you to death where you stand.”

  I didn’t say anything, and let my pantomimed claw drop to my side.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m exhausted, and I need some food. I know you’ve gotta get back to your crowd.”

  “Oh no, this is more interesting than the stuffed shirts downstairs.”

  That gave me a small bolt of energy. “I’m glad I could interest you in something.”

  She took a long drink, wiped a drip of liquor from her lips with the back of her hand, the hand that still held the decanter. “You think I like being a freak?”

  “No,” I said, then clarified. “No meaning you’re not a freak. You’re just you.” I slid forward, bouncing my weight on the end of the couch cushion. “I mean, takwin stuff is weird. But I’ve got my own bag of weird I bring to the table.” I clasped my hands, left hidden inside right. “It’s the trust issues.”

  “Trust issues?” Gellica refilled her glass and set the decanter down with a clatter. At least I wouldn’t be clubbed to death. “What kind of trust issues do I have?”

  “Not you,” I said. “Me. About you.”

  “Okay.” She joined me on the couch, glass nestled in her lap. “What kind of trust issues do you,” she nodded in my direction, “have with me?” She settled back into the cushions.

  “Well,” I said. “I mean, Paulus created you.”

  “Yes.” Her voice was hard. Suspicious.

  “For a reason,” I said. “She doesn’t do much of anything without a plan.”

  “Yes.” Still tense. I was on thin ice.

  I rubbed my eyes.

  “Okay,” I said. “Paulus can control weather, she can control motion. So . . .” I chewed my lower lip, briefly, before continuing. “Can she control you?”

  Gellica was slow to respond. “Wow. You do have trust issues.”

  “You work in a morally ambiguous organization, for a shit-heel of a person who is also your clone mother. And she’s a sorcerer. Is it really outrageous for me to wonder how independent you are?”

  “I was plenty independent when I dragged you away from Paulus and saved your life.”

  “Yeah,” I said, remembering the attack a month ago, when I’d experienced firsthand Paulus’s control over her wind creature. “You probably pissed off your mom on that one.”

  “I prefer ‘boss,’ thank you.” She scowled at the floor. “And yes, she was angry. But I’d do it again. You know why?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Because it was the right thing to do.” Her jaw clenched and she stood, pacing away from me, back to the safety of the other side of the desk. She stood behind her chair, where she drained her glass and began shifting it from hand to hand. “I’m my own person. If anyone should understand that, it’s you.”

  “Why?” I said. “Because I got manna on my fingers? Because the doctors prodded me and think I’m a freak?”

  “No, dammit! Because I told you who I am, and I—” she turned away. “I thought you accepted it.” She slammed the glass down and stood there, chest heaving, one hand resting on the desk, the other clenched into a fist. “I trusted you with a secret that could destroy me, and no matter how thick-headed and stubborn you are,” she let out a controlled breath, “I know that you’ve got a right and wrong in that head, and it guides you true. Even if I don’t always agree. But here’s the thing,” she stood a little taller, “no one else knows what I am. I can’t tell anyone else. You have friends who know what you went through. You have departmental psychiatrists and coworkers. My whole life, I’ve only had Paulus. And then you.”

  I saw her now. Maybe for the first time. She’d been so alone for so long. She wasn’t interested in me. She wanted an honest relationship with someone. Anyone. I was just the guy who filled the suit.

  I ran ruined fingers over my knee and wondered how long I’d have lasted if I’d grown up like Gellica. A lifetime locked away and told to lie to the world about who I was? Hells, I’d probably never have made it past my teenage years.

  Relaxing my hands, I let out a long sigh and said, “I lost Jane.”

  “What?”

  “You asked me when I’d stop trying to find Jane’s killer. I screwed up, should have kept things closer to the vest, and got the case taken away from us. So . . .” I shrugged, a feigned indifference as I let the word trail off.

  She nodded her understanding, staring at the withered remnant of our flower.

  “We all make mistakes,” she said. “I misread Mitri Tenebrae.”

  “Oh?” I strove for indifference again.

  “I thought he was a friendly face, a social butterfly at worst. But freaks like us, we walk our paths alone.” Her lips curled, then dropped. The humorless smile of someone laughing at their own foolishness. “He’s more desperate for a manna connection than we thought. He’s willing to put people in danger for it.”

  “He threatened you?” I sat up.

  “I can more than take care of myself.”

  It was hard to argue the point, considering she’d saved my life at least once. But I recognized an evasion when I heard one. “That’s not an answer.”

  “The explosion at his fundraiser—the one he blamed on overheated candles?”

  “I know,” I said. “It was Paulus’s creature.”

  “No,” she said. “It was the necklace he’d given me. It burst, like it was a poorly crafted spell.”

  That didn’t sit right with me. “Tenebrae’s a communications expert.”

  “Right, so maybe he used something unusual, something unstable to make the binding.” She looked at the shard.

  “Snake oil. That would explain why I felt cobwebs around his apartment.”

  “He’s in charge of TCI’s secure communications for the military encampment,” she said. “He’s dropping hints that if he doesn’t get a personal manna connection, he knows enough to make things complicated for TCI, the AFS, and more.” Gellica sloshed the remnants of her drink. “Depending on what he knows, it could put people’s lives in danger, cost jobs—Hells, he could even start a war.”

  “He can’t think he’ll get away with it.” />
  “He’s a rich sorcerer. He’s gotten away with everything his entire life. Why would he think any differently now?”

  Coming from someone whose mother was a rich sorcerer, that was saying something.

  “Besides,” she continued, “it doesn’t matter if he gets caught. Once the information is out, the damage is done.” She rubbed her eyes, pressing hard enough to leave temporary white marks on her cheekbones.

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’ve hired some people to follow him, track his movements. If he’s collecting information and we can prove it, we’ll turn him over to the military.”

  “And if you can’t prove it?”

  She rolled her head back to look at the gilded ceiling. “I do what Paulus tells me to do. And I’m not going to tell you what that entails. But I’m not some kind of secret assassin, if that’s what you’re asking. Paulus has plenty of other ways to incapacitate enemies, even one as powerful as Tenebrae.”

  It was a reminder that Gellica had the kind of political power that could change lives. She’d helped Talena, and maybe we could use it to help someone else.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Hear me out on this, okay?”

  Gellica didn’t answer, and I went on.

  “You admitted there’re people in the Bunker on Paulus’s payroll.”

  She looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “I’m not so drunk that I’d respond to that.”

  “You want to make an impact,” I said. “How about you flex Paulus’s political muscle and get me back on the Jane Doe case.”

  “Carter . . .”

  “I’ll do something for you in return,” I said.

  “What could you possibly do that we’d—”

  “The Responders’ Remembrance,” I said. “If you get me reassigned to the cases I want, I’ll stand onstage and be a supportive face for Paulus.”

  She blinked. “You do the Remembrance and I’ll see what I can do.”

  It was the best option I had. “Deal.”

  We stared at each other, and it seemed like we’d said everything that had to be said. She stood, and I followed suit. I looked at the clock on her desk.