Which was too bad, really. After everything died down and I faced the fact that I was on my own again, I wanted nothing more than to leave town...take a nice long sabbatical.
But the man at the podium was talking again, so I forced my mind back to him.
“They weren’t able to track down birth parents?” the clerk persisted. “Through DNA records? Through medical records? Those were all international by then, weren’t they?”
“No, sir,” I said. “And yes, sir...they were.” When the clerk continued to stare at me, I felt my face flush. “Is this strictly relevant?” I said. “I’m going to be late for work.”
“Place of employment?”
I felt my jaw tighten.
To avoid glaring at this pompous jerk maybe, and just escalating things, I glanced around at the other people waiting with me in the courtroom instead.
A big, biker-looking guy covered in tattoos winked at me, folding massive arms across his leather-clad chest. The big guys always liked me for some reason. Maybe because I’m smallish for my age.
Then I saw the other guy.
Starting a little when I saw his pale eyes on mine, I stared back at him briefly, then forced my gaze back to the front of the room. He looked the same as he always looked.
Tall, even sitting down. Strangely silent. Focused. Weird eyes.
Those were the first words that popped into my head, anyway.
Jon and I had dubbed him Mr. Monochrome. With his black hair, pale skin, light eyes of some indeterminate color, the nickname seemed almost funny to us at the time. He even wore a black jacket, as if the contrast of his skin and hair wasn't quite enough.
I took another breath, just as the clerk’s voice sharpened.
“Place of employment?” he repeated.
“Lucky Cat,” I said. “It’s a diner on Divisadero.”
“Other sources of income?”
“Freelance.” At the clerk’s quizzical look, I explained, “I’m an artist. I do tattoo designs for Fang’s on Geary. Also Gorilla Joint, up on Haight...”
The clerk didn’t seem to be listening, though. His eyes had gone almost blank in the pause, like he was listening to a faraway tune. I watched his face, fighting another flush of irritation. Was he just messing with me? Or did he have a VR implant?
Now that I knew Mr. Mono was there, I just wanted to get out the hell out.
At least now I had a real excuse to spring for a cab.
The tall, dark-haired Mr. Monochrome had been following me for weeks. I first noticed him hanging around not long after I got out of jail, and first got the GPS locked onto my wrist. Maybe he was into chicks with anger management issues, Jon and I joked. Or maybe he was just hoping I'd go postal on someone else, and he'd have front row seats.
Either way, Jon was right; I really needed to report him.
The problem was, he hadn’t really done anything yet. Nothing but stare at me, and I didn’t want the cops to think I was paranoid, on top of everything else. I wanted to be able to give them something more concrete. Something other than, “Well, you see, a lot of weird people seem to like to follow me around, officers.”
Even as I thought it, the court's clerk nodded, marking something on the portable monitor with his thick index finger. At least he finally seemed to have gotten over his interest in my weird parentage. Peering down at my records, his eyes looked almost bored now. Or at the very least, preoccupied as he perused the relevant lines.
“Okay. Eight more months on your sentence,” he said, motioning for me that I could leave the podium. “Same time next month, Taylor.”
He crooked his finger at the biker on the bench next to me.
“You, Daniels...front and center. Verify identification.”
I walked back to my end of the bench and gathered up my shoulder bag and my jacket, still feeling stares on me from some of the other people in the room. The one I felt the most was the hardest to ignore. I glanced in the direction of Mr. Mono again, even as I shouldered on my jacket, tugging my hair out of the collar as I turned.
But he wasn't there anymore.
The chair where I'd seen him, only seconds before, was empty; the door still swung silently on its hinges, but Mr. Mono was definitely gone.
Riding down Divisadero Street towards my mom’s, I leaned against the cab’s window as it paused at a red light.
I’d been spacing out, not really paying attention to anything outside, when I realized that I was staring at someone.
She stared back at me, her sharp, blue eyes eyes openly hostile. Framed with stiff, dyed braids that came off her head like a white and orange headdress, her heart-shaped faced had an almost unreal beauty to it, even beyond the heavy layer of foundation and eye make-up she wore. I read the name of the fetish bar on the marquee behind her, and realized abruptly what she must be. I’d heard about the place opening up, but hadn’t been by to see it like everyone else.
It just felt weird to me, I guess. Gawking at them, like they were animals.
The woman’s opaque blue eyes drank me in without apology or fear. Her hands rested on her hips over a white, lace bodysuit.
I receded into the cab’s seat so I would be less visible.
I caught the cabbie watching me in the rearview mirror and blushed.
“Yeah,” he commented flatly. “They got a few of them now.”
“I know...just forgot.”
He didn’t seem to hear me, or care maybe.
“They just keep bringing more of them over here,” he complained. “Like we need our own damned glow-eye army. Fucking animals. I don’t trust ‘em...collared or not.” He glanced at me in the mirror. Looking over my tangled hair and hastily applied makeup, he smiled.
Maybe he thought the dishevelment was deliberate.
“You seen one before, honey?” he said.
“Yeah.” I glanced out surreptitiously, but the seer was no longer looking at me. Smiling seductively at a man on the street, she touched his arm as he passed. The man jerked away as if burnt, glaring at her.
The seer laughed, but I saw those blue eyes turn cold, predatory.
“Really?” the cabbie said. “Where?”
“At the Coliseum. With my dad.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the seer. “On the street too, you know. Downtown.”
The man nodded, absently. He’d already lost interest.
I ventured, “They’re allowed to just walk around like that? What if she, you know...hurts someone?”
The cabbie pointed, tapping his window. “See that collar?”
I followed his pointing finger to the circle of brushed metal around the female’s neck. Finger-width, it had no markings I could see, other than the pulsing blue light at the base when she turned her head.
Feeling the cabbie watching me, I nodded.
He said, “They’re coded to the owner, see? They can’t do nothing with that on...blinds ‘em. They take it off when they’re, ah...you know, working.”
I nodded again.
I knew about the collars, of course.
I hadn't actually meant that, when I'd been asking about her being outside...I'd more been wondering why she was on the street without her owner, if maybe they worried they might just run away, saw the collar off. Most of the seers I'd seen had some kind of human chaperone with them; I'd assumed it was for a reason.
Not like I enjoyed seeing the whole seer-human dynamic in the first place. But I supposed I had to get used to it, since seers were getting to be so common in the city.
Seers had been around since the early 1900s, in one way or another...ever since humans first found them living in those snowy caves in Asia. I’d read about them in high school and college. History mainly. Studying the wars, of course, but also the history of Seer Containment, or “SCARB,” the World Court, organic machines, sight ownership, the trade wars in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. And learning about Syrimne, of course, the seer who led the one and only rebellion against humans.
Syrimne had been te
lekinetic, and scary as hell, from all accounts.
But that was pretty rare, telekinesis. In fact, Syrimne was the only documented case of verified telekinesis in any seer...at least officially. Meaning according to anyone who didn't read the same nutty conspiracy theories espoused by my brother, Jon.
Lately, everyone with money seemed to have one...their own pet seer, that is.
I used to think of that as a New York thing, but it had spread to San Francisco faster than I could have imagined. Sex and fetish shops specializing in seers had popped up all over town. If the laws changed or SCARB was loosening its controls, no one bothered to say so on the feeds.
I did wonder that some of them wouldn’t be smart enough to figure out how to get the collars off. Without their human owners, that is.
I almost understood the driver not being thrilled with the sudden influx of seers all over the city. Heck, maybe Jon’s conspiracy stuff was true, about how the government was in secret collaboration with seers to mind-warp the rest of us. Jon was convinced we all might wake up one day inside a dream created by a bunch of seers to keep us all docile.
Looking at that female seer, though, I had trouble seeing her as colluding with anyone, much less a bunch of guys in suits who wanted to feed us all mental straightjackets.
No, she looked like she’d rather just shoot me in the head.
The cabbie dropped me off on Fell Street. He pulled up in front of the familiar, purple Victorian, and I transferred money to his cab number from my headset as I was sliding off the back seat. Trying to hurry, I slammed the door and promptly tripped over a dented juice bottle. Bending down to pick it up, I tossed it in my mother’s neighbor’s yellow recycling carton, then noticed that the neighbor’s bin was empty, along with my mother’s section of curb.
Great. Another week of week-old garbage.
Digging my keys from my red vinyl jacket, I righted them to insert in the dead bolt lock...but the door was already open. A prickle of nerves ran up my spine. Had she been out today already? Or had the front door really been open all night?
Walking inside, I heard the television.
I shut the door behind me loudly.
“Mom?” I headed for the sound of the t.v., dragging with me the bag of donuts and coffee I’d grabbed from the street vendor in front of the courthouse. Passing the dining room, I saw that she’d closed the drapes, which was strange, too.
My mother liked to watch the birds, even in the fog.
“Mom, you forgot the garbage again,” I said. Pausing, I raised my voice. “Tuesday, Mom. Remember? Every Tuesday. It never changes.”
No answer.
A prickle of fear touched my spine.
“Hey, Mom...I don't have a lot of time. I promised I'd come by, so I'm here...but I can't stay. I just wanted to make sure you were up. Aunt Carol's coming, remember...?”
When she didn't answer again, I felt my nerves worsen. Moving faster down the hall, I stepped out into the living room, stopping when my eyes met a shock of skin sprawled on the paisley print couch.
“...Oh,” I said.
Sighing, half in relief and half in irritation, I crossed the remainder of the room, kicking aside an empty bottle that at least partly accounted for the smell from the faux-Indian carpet. Sitting on the squishy couch I’d loved as a kid, I sank so low I nearly got dumped on the floor.
I set down the coffee cup I had surfed to safety, and dropped the crumpled bag of donuts to the carpet. Sighing again, I leaned over to tap my mother’s bare back. The skin there was smooth and somehow younger than the rest of her, marked with tan lines from working in her garden.
“Mom? What are you doing?” I looked at the clock in exasperation. "I have to go."
I looked around at the open photo album, the crushed cigarette butts that she’d sworn up and down just two days ago that she no longer smoked, the faded, Mickey Mouse drinking glass that had once been Jon’s. I counted five butts in the plastic Waikiki ashtray with the hula girl painted on it, and at least two more in the bottom of Mickey’s glass.
The only thing I didn’t look at was the television, where the familiar voice of my father could be heard amid kid laughter and cheers.
The birthday video.
I had been four. That was right before dad’s MS had been diagnosed, before he started losing weight, before he gave me the ceramic dolphin music box and promised he would never leave me. The day after he died, I smashed the box to a million pieces on the curb outside of our house. The next day, I moved out. I had been seventeen.
“Mom?”
A muffled voice emerged from against my mother’s arm.
“You are an evil, evil child.”
“You going to church? Aunt Carol's coming, remember?”
“I don’t belong in church.”
“Sure you do.” I patted her back. “Where else does an old drunk go for repentance?”
My mother, Mia Taylor, raised her head. Bleary-eyed and pale, dark circles under her eyes, she looked old to me suddenly, in a way that brought a rush of what felt oddly like anger.
She also looked hurt. “You are evil. Did you bring coffee?”
“Yup. With the requisite sugar fat explosion, dunked in chocolate-flavored lard...your favorite.”
She was already reaching for the bag, her eyes faintly quizzical, like they always were when I cracked one of my dumb jokes. She unfurled the crinkled paper and peered inside.
Her voice grew timid. “Will you go with me?”
I failed to completely stifle a snort.
“Come on, Mom. Conversion? This early in the morning? I’m way too young to fear death that much.”
As soon as I said it, my eyes made contact with the television.
There, my father held me in his arms, beaming so wide, his eyes so shining that I couldn’t help but feel him, hearing his laugh through the middle of my chest. Only after I could breathe again did I look at my mom. Her deer-like eyes were wide as she munched on the edge of a donut, chocolate frosting coating her small fingers.
“You’ve got to get past this,” I said, hating myself for saying it, knowing how often I’d said similar things, bludgeoning my mother with them, who despite all her apparent frailty was the more resilient one.
It was me who covered myself over in sharp laughs and dismissive shrugs.
Or, in the words of the boyfriend before Jaden, a Puerto Rican from New York, I was “a cold white woman, made of ice.”
A faint nausea rose briefly, a pulse of warmth.
I disagree, a voice said.
I jumped violently, enough to make my mom look over.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
She never seemed to hold a grudge over my cracks. She was a better person than me.
She patted my leg. “Are you okay, Allie-bird? You look like a goose walked on your grave.”
I forced my eyes to the television, watched my dad lean down to help my four-year-old self blow out four pink candles on a cake with white, fluffy frosting. Four-year-old me looked up at twenty-eight-year-old me and beamed, wanting to be my friend.
But watching my younger self wrapped in the gnarled, work-worn hands of my father, I felt nothing but envy.
END SAMPLE
For the rest of ALLIE’s WAR, AN URBAN FANTASY: EPISODE 1, visit the author's website at www.jcandrijeski.com for a list of vendors and links
MORE BOOKS BY JC ANDRIJESKI
ALLIE’S WAR SERIES
(Episodes sold individually, too)
Rook: Allie’s War Episodes 1-4
Shield: Allie’s War Episodes 5-8
Sword: Allie’s War Episodes 9-12
Shadow: Allie’s War Episodes 13-17
Knight: Allie's War Episodes 18-23
War: Allie’s War Episodes 24-27
Bridge: Allie’s War Episodes 28-31
New York: Allie's War Early Years
Revik: Allie’s War Early Years
Terian: Allie’s War Early Years
GATE SHIF
TER SERIES
The Morph
ALIEN APOCALYPSE SERIES
The Culling (Alien Apocalypse #1)
The Royals (Alien Apocalypse #2)
The New Order (Alien Apocalypse #3)
About the Author
JC Andrijeski has published novels, novellas, serials, graphic novels and short stories, including new adult urban fantasy series, Allie’s War, the new adult dystopian series, Alien Apocalypse, and the Gate Shifter series, about a shape-shifting alien and a tough-girl PI from Seattle. She also writes crime fiction and some literary, although her first love will always be of the supernatural, especially when it involves kick-ass superpowers and people fighting for the light and against their own inner demons.
JC travels extensively and has lived abroad in Europe, Australia and Asia, but currently lives and works full time as a writer in Portland, OR.
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Bird Magics
Copyright © 2011 by JC Andrijeski
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