by Chloe Garner
“I don’t like this,” Jason said. She lifted herself across the floor several inches and indicated he should sit.
“Then you can join us. I’m going to do all three of us. I need to know.”
“Say what again?”
“Measure us. I haven’t done me in a couple of months, anyway.”
She mixed the first set of ingredients in a wooden bowl, swirling them around.
“Carter would throw this up and be hung over for a week after,” she said. “These are the lightest ingredients I carry.”
She tipped the bowl back and swallowed a mouthful of it, closing her eyes to enjoy the rush of warm, confident power. She opened her eyes and smiled.
“I’m still narrow-spectrum light. As always.” She handed the bowl to Sam and he put his lips to it, then pushed it away, gagging. She took it carefully, and he gagged again, harder.
“I’m sorry,” he said, gagging again. He shook his head. “I can’t even smell that.”
She frowned, her stomach cramping with new worry. She handed the bowl to Jason absently, then forced herself to turn and watch him drink it. He handed her the bowl and looked at her skeptically.
“What did I just drink?” he asked.
“Stuff. How do you feel?”
He shrugged.
“Like I’m at a sleepover and this is the dare part.”
“You don’t feel anything at all?” she asked. He shook his head.
“Are we going to tell ghost stories, next?”
Huh.
She mixed the next set and smelled it. Rotten, damp, earthy. That was about right. She held her breath and swallowed it.
“High-power neutral,” she said. “Though, I don’t really carry a lot of high-high power stuff for natural.”
She handed it to Sam, who grimaced at it, but managed to drink it. He heaved once or twice, then passed the glass bowl to Jason. Jason rolled his eyes and drained it.
“I feel sick,” Sam said weakly. She looked at him sympathetically. The light ingredients managed to drown out the natural ones, but she felt her power dim. She raised her eyes at Jason.
“Nothing,” he said. “You guys are putting me on, right?”
She frowned, intrigued.
“Okay,” she said. She mixed the last set of ingredients in stone and held the bowl away from her.
“Can we stipulate that I would just throw this up and skip me?” she asked. Jason looked tempted, but Sam nodded. She handed the bowl to Sam and watched closely. He smelled it, then drank. She saw the realization in his eyes, but asked anyway.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Powerful,” he said. “Angry.”
She blew air through her lips, then nodded to Jason who took the bowl and drained it, as well. Certainly this one…
He looked at her, bored.
“I want my dollar now,” he said. That was very interesting. She looked back at Sam, distracted only for a moment, and concerned again. He looked as troubled as she felt.
“She changed you,” she said.
“So what do we do?” Jason asked. Samantha pulled the image of the design up in her mind, considering it. Then the fact that she was unable to touch Sam without feeling sick.
“I need more supplies,” she said. “Unless you know a better place to find a demonic street market, it’s time to go to New York.”
“Why did you come back?” Sam asked softly that first night as she sat on the bed next to him in the darkness. She looked at the shape of his lips in silhouette, then slid down to lay her head on the pillow as he rolled his head to look at her.
“Do you know where I am?” Samantha asked.
“Obviously,” he said.
“No. Do you know where I am?” she asked again. He paused.
“No.”
She rolled her head to look at the ceiling, listening to Jason snoring gently in the next bed for a moment.
“I never released you,” she said. “You are still bonded to me. Somehow she blocked that.” She rolled her head to look at him again. “And you didn’t break my bond completely, either. I don’t think it was entirely free will, at that point. So… it didn’t count, or something. It took me the longest time to figure out that that was what was bothering me about it, and then… Then it took me too long to get over the fact that you sent me away. I am sorry about that.”
He was silent for a few minutes, and for a moment, she wondered if he had fallen asleep.
“I didn’t think about you at all,” he said. “I didn’t even think to think that was weird.” He rolled and propped his head up with his elbow. “Why did you come back?”
“I told you. It wasn’t right.”
“Is that it?”
“The demon? Isn’t that enough?”
He waited. She chewed her upper lip.
“I’m not ready to give up on you yet,” she said.
<><><>
They got to New York at dusk, the final light of the sunset glinting off of the buildings as they came up out of the Holland Tunnel, and Samantha was surprised at the sense of homecoming she felt. It had been a long two days of driving, and she offered to give directions to a hotel first, but Jason wanted to get started. She assented and gave him directions to the bar.
“What is it?” Jason asked as he pulled into a parking garage several blocks away.
“It’s a demon bar,” she said. She unbuckled her seatbelt and, as Sam and Jason did the same, she put her hand on Jason’s shoulder.
“It’s one of those places where they either let you in or they don’t. Sam is welcome to try, but you’ve got no chance,” she said. Jason turned in his seat to look at her.
“You mean to tell me that the one place in the world where Sam is cooler than me is a demon bar?” he asked.
“Afraid so,” she said, patting his shoulder consolingly. She looked at Sam. “You coming?”
“Yeah.”
Sam beat her out the door and Jason turned and grabbed her wrist.
“Hey,” he said. She settled and looked at him. “Take care of him. I kind of just got him back.”
She nodded.
“So did I.”
He nodded and let her out, rolling down his window and leaning the seat back.
“I’ll be here,” he said. Sam was waiting.
“So…” Samantha said as they walked the sidewalk toward the bar. Sam hunched his shoulders against a gust of wind and waited. “There’s kind of a lot I haven’t told you,” she said. “Still don’t actually know how. So… Just brace yourself, okay?”
They got to the bar and an enormous olive-skinned man challenged Samantha. He bared his teeth at her and she reached up and grabbed his chin between her thumb and index finger, pulling his face down to look in his eyes. She barked a few words in Hellspeak and he narrowed his eyes at her, then turned to let her past. She went to stand in the doorway and watched Sam. The door guard sized him up, and Sam folded his arms across his chest and spaced his feet evenly to return the treatment. There was a silent battle of wills, then Sam tossed his hair off his face and the guard nodded. Sam joined her. Samantha grinned behind her fist.
“Well done,” she said, leading the way down a red-lit hallway that twisted and turned. Off first one side and then the other were black curtains that let through more red light and the noises of revelry. Samantha ignored them. Through a set of heavy leather curtains she hit the main room, blue lit with blacklights in the ceiling. Deep, throbbing music timed the room and she straightened her neck as heads turned to look at them. A few of them nodded acknowledgment of her, but more licked their lips at Sam. In his loose-fitting, open-fronted blue shirt, the blacklights made him look like the only thing in the room. She walked him over to the bar and sat down on a stool, the blacklights picking out the white fibers in her jeans. She had picked a black shirt on purpose.
“Don’t drink anything you don’t open yourself,” she said. “Read the label. If you don’t know it, don’t drink it. Don’t take out your w
allet. Don’t offer to pay. This is as far as you go.”
“I’m coming with you,” he said. She shook her head.
“This is as far as any of the general public that can get in the front door would get. I’m a bit more special still. I can’t take you with me. I’ll be back soon.”
He set his elbows on the bar and looked across at the huge black man tending the bar. Charlie grinned, his teeth glowing.
“What’s your poison?”
“Play nice,” Samantha said, pointing at Charlie. He made a kiss-face at her, then glowered at Sam again. She raised her eyebrows at him as menacingly as she could, then headed off across the room again. She heard the muttering as she passed, turning her head once to look at a table whose occupants she had a particularly contentious history with, but otherwise she held her head up, making her way to the pair of swinging doors at the back of the room. A tall, skinny woman with white hair and a face like a mannequin nodded at her and she brushed through them.
The noise on this side of the doors was damped, but the low beat throbbed through the entire building like a heart beat. She took a wide hallway to the final room at the back of the building and looked up at a completely superfluous guard who was being punished with the task of having to stand at this door.
She said her name and it hissed, backing against the wall. She smiled crookedly and walked past it into the main office.
Nuri was reclining on a red velvet lounge, her long body clad in a black dress that was slit to the waist. She tilted her head to the side, her exquisite face passive, and she blinked slowly.
“Child,” she said, standing slowly. Her bare feet slid off the chair and she walked, elegant as a dream, across the room to take Samantha’s elbows. She kissed each of her cheekbones, then stood back to look at her. “I thought we had seen each other for the last time.” It was a gentle accusation.
“I left Carter, not you,” Samantha said. Nuri shook her head, once left, once right, her ebony features still.
“You left us all. I rejoiced at it. But you are back, now. What troubles you?”
“Sam!” a hearty voice called. Kjarr entered the room through another door, storming across the room to sweep her off the floor in a crushing embrace. “They tell me that that wet-behind-the-ears psychic at my bar belongs to you.”
“Yes,” Samantha said. Nuri’s eyes widened fractionally.
“There’s a new man?” she asked. Samantha bowed slightly at the waist.
“We are bonded,” she said. Nuri pressed her lips ever so slightly and nodded.
“That is well,” she said. “Does he suit you?”
Kjarr laughed loudly.
“Now that’s a loaded question. Let me look at you.”
He took Samantha’s shoulders roughly and squared her to face him. She couldn’t help grinning at the Norse god of a man. Nuri came to stand next to him, looking up at him with the subtle twist at the eyes that indicated happiness, then looked back at Samantha and blinked.
“She is as she left us, Kjarr. That she has returned means something.”
“That there isn’t enough adventure in the wide world,” he said. “What do you need from me, Sam? You’ll have it.”
Nuri closed her eyes with a disapproving smile and turned away.
“I just need a list, Kjarr. I’m shopping, and I need to know who’s selling, these days.”
She took a folded paper out of a pocket in her backpack and handed it to him. His eyes raised and he went to sit in the giant chair in the corner of the room. Nuri returned to her lounge.
“Will you not sit with me and tell me of your new man?” she asked. Samantha glanced at Kjarr, then went to sit on the floor next to Nuri.
“He is brave and kind and he loves me,” she said. Nuri nodded.
“He’s also covered in demon spit,” Kjarr said without looking up from the list. Samantha sat up.
“Is that what it is?” she asked. He glanced at her.
“Who has he gotten tangled up with?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s what this is for, isn’t it?” he asked. She nodded, glancing at Nuri. Reading the woman’s face was an art, and Samantha couldn’t pull anything from her expression.
“You bonded him?” Nuri asked. Samantha nodded. The pinched expression was pain. “Bonding sometimes drives difficult decisions. May you sail clear of such storms.”
It was a warning. Samantha listened to it carefully, holding each word in enormous regard.
“You’ll find most of these from the normal vendors,” Kjarr said, standing, “but a few of them are going to be much harder.”
He walked her over to the desk and pointed to each of them, telling her who was currently most likely to have them and where they were selling.
“Have you seen Carter?” he asked. She shook her head.
“I will not seek him out,” she told him. “I’m here on business.”
“Then I won’t keep you,” Kjarr said, handing her list back. Nuri was standing behind her when she turned.
“May you find what you seek,” she said. Samantha nodded her head to the towering woman, then Nuri put her arms around her. Samantha carefully hugged the woman back, shocked beyond speechlessness at the show of affection. “Return to us safely,” the woman murmured in her ear, then straightened. Kjarr crushed her in another hug, then led her to the door and opened it for her.
“Good luck with the young one,” he said in parting. “It’s an admirable challenge for you.”
She nodded, then, after the door had settled closed and she had left the hearing range of the guard, she looked up at the ceiling.
“Ball’s in your court, Abby,” she said. She went through the swinging doors and rejoined Sam at the bar.
“Everyone in this room is a demon?” he asked. She looked around the room openly, ignoring the stares.
“There are a couple of gray angels and a couple of us, but other than that, yeah.”
“It’s a good thing we left Jason in the car,” Sam said. She grinned.
“You get what you need?” he asked. She nodded.
“Let’s head out.”
She led the way back out, grabbing his arm at one point when they heard screams coming from a room behind them. Her hand flew off his shirt involuntarily and she hid it behind her, pretending it hadn’t happened.
“No one comes here without knowing what they’re getting into,” she said.
“I did,” he said. She looked up at him.
“I was watching over you. As long as Charlie didn’t decide to be funny, you weren’t in danger.”
“Charlie?”
“He has a funny sense of humor when it comes to mixed drinks,” she said, continuing down the hallway.
They made their way back to the parking garage and woke Jason.
“We may as well walk from here,” Samantha said. “Parking is a thing.”
The three of them made their way back down out of the parking garage and a car pulled up to the curb in front of them. Carter got out, followed by a woman with frizzy black hair in a long black skirt.
“Carter,” Samantha said.
“You weren’t even going to call?” he asked. She shrugged.
“I’m not here to visit.”
Carter glanced at Sam and Jason, eyes amused.
“Your little friend has gotten himself into trouble, I see,” he said. He cocked his head to one side and looked at Sam. “You’re covered in demon spit.”
“Gross,” Jason said.
“I know,” Samantha said.
“You know?” Sam asked. She shrugged. Be cool.
Carter put his hands in the pockets of his long coat and looked back at Samantha.
“You aren’t going shopping like that.”
“Why not?”
“I have a reputation. You come with me, they go with her. You go out properly attired.”
Samantha sighed.
“Fine.”
“What?” Jason protested.
“I will get better prices,” Samantha said, then turned to face Sam and Jason quickly. “I need to talk to him. He may be able to tell me what I should be looking for.”
She nodded to try to encourage them to go along with it, and Sam leaned sideways to look around her.
“Who are you?” he asked the woman standing behind Carter. She smiled warmly and stepped around him, extending her hand.
“Hi. I’m Abby.”
<><><>
Abby sat a tea set down on the table in front of them and sat on an armchair, crossing her legs primly.
“So, which of you is she taking care of at this point?” she asked in a soft English accent, looking between them. “I get confused.” She waited, frowning, then nodded. “Right. Both of you.”
“You’re psychic,” Sam said. She nodded, pouring tea and offering it to Jason. Jason held up his hands and shook his head. Sam took the cup and sat back against the couch. She poured herself a cup and leaned back, watching him.
“I am.”
“You’re the Abby she’s always talking to,” Jason said. She nodded, sipping her tea and still watching Sam.
“I am.”
“Dude,” Jason said, turning to Sam. “She isn’t crazy.”
“I see that,” Sam said, not moving his eyes from Abby. She smiled at him, catty.
“We have a lot to talk about, you and I,” she said.
“You sent Carter.”
“When you needed him, yes.”
“Why didn’t you send him before we called?”
“Changing the future so that what you saw doesn’t happen any more gives you massive headaches for days. I have to wait until you call, unless it’s the worst kind of emergency.” She smiled mysteriously and sipped her tea. “Technically, you’ll never know how many times I’ve done it, though.” She put her tea cup down and leaned forward, looking into his eyes. “They’ve started spitting in your face.”
He nodded.
“I’d love to tell you it’s a phase,” she said, “but it isn’t.”
“The headaches,” he said. “You understand them.”
She pursed her lips, looking down at her tea, then pulled her upper lip down over her lower lip.
“Sam, I can’t tell you what I wouldn’t have given to have had Sam be there to walk me through those first fifteen months.”