by Mur Lafferty
They sat in silence for a while. Zoë pulled out a fantasy book and was trying to remember who was betraying whom in the current chapter, when Reynard spoke again.
“How long have you worked among coterie? How long have you known of them?”
Zoë put a finger in her book to mark her page. She grinned ruefully. “Is it that obvious?” Reynard nodded. “About three months now.”
“But you’re a talker, yes?”
Zoë squinted at him. A talker? She was a citytalker but she had never heard the term “talker.”
Then again, the only people she’d heard reference it were a reticent male zoëtist and a schizophrenic wealthy homeless woman. She hadn’t had the most reliable mentors.
Still, a coterie train was not the place to reveal a secret, even to a human.
“Talker? I’m not sure what you mean,” she lied.
“There aren’t a lot left,” he said. “They were more numerous generations ago. They’re humans who have like a sixth sense when they’re in cities. They have intuition as to what alleys not to go down, that kind of thing. They have insane luck to avoid trouble in cities. But they’re useless in rural areas.”
Zoë blinked. “That’s amazing. I’ve not heard of that. How do they get the power? I know zoëtism is largely genetic but needs to be studied, right?”
“It’s genetic, cultivated in families. There are some very old families that were all citytalkers. It used to be that only magical humans would breed with magical humans, thereby keeping the magic strong.”
Zoë looked at her hands. “What about orphans?”
Reynard winced. “That’s not a good situation, it’s one of the reasons the skill is dying. While the magic is genetic, it has to be practiced, studied like any other skill. Someone with raw power won’t be able to do much but sense odd things and intuit the future. They probably won’t even notice this feeling only happens in urban areas.”
Zoë worked hard to keep her features even and interested, not alarmed. “Wouldn’t too much inbreeding make human coterie have weak hips, or idiot children, or English princes?”
Reynard smiled and brushed his spiky black hair back. “You’d think, but there were enough of them, once upon a time, to thin out the inbreeding problems. And the gene is recessive, so sometimes parents would have a child who wasn’t a talker, but that kid could go on to be a parent to a talker. If he or she married right, anyway.”
Zoë looked out the window at the countryside whizzing by at amazing speed. “So how do these huge families let orphans happen? How is that possible if they treasure the gift so much?”
“Well, in the sixties, there was a bit of a genetic purge,” Reynard said.
“A… bit of one? Just a little bit of genocide?” Zoë asked, eyes wide.
Reynard watched her briefly, looking uncertain, then lowered his voice further. “You really don’t know anything about human coterie history? Nothing at all?”
Zoë shook her head. “Like I said, I’m new.”
Reynard kept his voice low. “The coterie decided they didn’t like the humans that had magic. If you weren’t an actual magical being like a vampire or a fairy, then you were shit in their eyes. They began hunting us. Some of the humans panicked and did a very stupid thing. They all hid in the same place. It took the coterie years to find them, but once they did, the slaughter was monumental.”
Zoë nodded slowly. “Like Battleship?” Reynard blinked at her. “When I play Battleship, I clump all my ships together so that the opponent’s bombs are falling everywhere in the ocean. But once they hit, they can find all my ships together and kill me instantly.
“Oh, and now that you know my strategy, remind me never to play Battleship with you,” she continued. Reynard stared at her, and Zoë realized the proper response to the revelation of a massacre was probably not board game strategy discussion.
“Sorry. I talk a lot when I’m nervous. That’s pretty horrific.”
“Right, Battleship,” Reynard said. “That’s an… interesting strategy. But yes, that’s similar to what I’m talking about.”
“Where did they hide?” Zoë asked, her voice in a whisper.
Reynard acted as if he hadn’t heard Zoë. “Anyway, a lot of the magical humans died. I mean a lot of them. Some had plans to put their kids in orphanages so they would never be discovered, and then the parents got slaughtered. So that’s how come there are orphans with a coveted talent.”
Zoë sat back, feeling the color go out of her face. She hadn’t searched much for her birth parents; her adoptive parents had been the only ones she had known, so she hadn’t worried about the unknown “sperm and egg donors,” as her dad had called them.
“It takes five seconds to father a child, but a lifetime to raise it,” he was fond of saying.
But if that five seconds helped create another, altogether stranger genetic brand than most humans got, then what did that mean?
“How many are left?” she asked, her voice barely audible.
He heard her, had been watching her closely. “They don’t know. The genocide fervor calmed down in the eighties, same as the civil rights fervor stopped boiling over among the other humans. But no one has done a census. Coterie know some have to be out there, but we don’t know where they are.”
Zoë’s mind was a whirl. Her birth parents probably had the same skill she had, and they could be alive. This was too much. She searched for another topic—any more questions and she would reveal herself, if she hadn’t already. “So who are the human coterie? There’s talkers, and the zoëtists, I guess, right?”
Reynard nodded. “Keep going.”
Zoë thought. “I don’t know. Werewolves? Superheroes? Ninjas?”
“One out of three is not bad,” Reynard said, laughing. “Nearly all the weres are gone now. I don’t know where they are hiding, but I’m fairly sure they haven’t been eradicated. Got any more guesses?”
Zoë chewed her lip. “Can humans do magic, I mean beyond what the zoëtists can do? Wizards, witches, those types? Is Hogwarts real?”
Reynard snorted. “I wouldn’t say that. Well. Actually, I don’t know, honestly, but wizards are like weres—they may still exist but I haven’t seen any. At best they’ve been hunted to near-extinction and likely do not want to be found.”
Zoë rubbed her face so she could focus. “But wait, why are zoëtists not hiding? They seem to be out in the open.”
Reynard chanced a peek at the still-talking women down the aisle. “Zoëtists are powerful, crazy powerful. They’re the only ones who could stand up to an army of coterie since they could build an army themselves.”
“Wizards aren’t powerful, then? Do they just throw cantrips around?”
Reynard looked at her.
“You know. Cantrips? Lame-ass D&D first-level mage spell? Am I the only well-read person of my generation?” She sighed. “Cantrips are like making a noise sound in the next room, distracting people, make lights dance, you know. Parlor tricks. Obi-Wan distracting Stormtroopers when turning off the tractor beam. That kind of thing.”
Reynard blinked. “Oh! Yes! Actually, I think the writers of D&D consulted with a wizard at the time of that writing. They didn’t know he was a wizard, but he was so intrigued by their project that he was happy to weigh in.”
Zoë laughed, covering her mouth so that Arthur wouldn’t wake up. “You’re shitting me. D&D is based on real magic? Even the really stupid spells? Bigby’s Crushing Hand? Portable Hole?”
Reynard shifted, and Zoë realized she suddenly knew more than her companion did. “I don’t know the details. If you ever meet a mage, maybe you can ask him. Anyway, you’ve got a sense of the human coterie genocide. And these people were doubly fucked because Public Works didn’t think they needed protection since they were coterie, even though it was the coterie attacking them. The humans either went underground or fought to the death. Except for the zoëtists, who managed to carve out a position for themselves. Then a truce was formed in 1978
.”
The late hour was starting to catch up to Zoë. “Why did no one tell me about this? It feels like something somewhat important to tell the new girl who is learning about coterie relations.”
“Well, you already know they likely want to eat you. Why give you another reason to fear them?”
They had to have known she would find out about it, right? Especially as she had befriended a zoëtist. But Ben was oddly reluctant to discuss human coterie issues, and Zoë could see why, now.
Reynard glanced at the door leading toward the front of the train. “So your whole team is in first class while you, the boss, are back here in coach?”
“That’s about it, yeah,” Zoë said.
Reynard sighed. “That blows.”
“I’ve had to deal with much worse,” Zoë said. She yawned, despite her growing anxiety.
“So what happens if my coworkers find out I—know about this?” She had nearly slipped up and said, “I’m a talker” but had caught herself. “Are they going to kill me? Besides the ones who already want to kill me, I mean.”
Reynard waved his hand, as if brutal murder was a minor threat. “No, it was only a small, zealous faction of coterie who hunted the humans. I’m sure they’re not actively hunting anymore.”
“Then why do they keep themselves hidden? If it’s safe for talkers, weres, and wizards, then why not come out?”
Reynard stared out the window. “Habit, I suppose. No one has heard from active human coterie—beyond zoëtists—in decades. Some younger coterie are thinking it’s a myth. The zoëtists don’t like to talk about the other humans. They try to distance themselves.”
Zoë’s brain buzzed with troubling thoughts and more questions. But every answer brought more questions, and she was getting very tired. The adrenaline rush from what she had found out was wearing off. She stretched and yawned.
She pulled a neck pillow from her laptop bag and leaned her seat back the scant inches the train allowed her. Only as she was dozing off did she realize that Reynard was just like her, a hidden human coterie.
Zoë stirred awake when the train pulled into Baltimore, the slowing of the rocking having disturbed her. Reynard was awake, staring out the window at the ghostly train station. Only a few coterie boarded.
Zoë yawned. “Did you sleep at all?” she asked.
Reynard shook his head and kept looking out the window. “I really don’t like to sleep with vampires around. Even if they’re not hungry, they may remember the Great Hunt and want to take it up again. Not a lot of places to hide on a train.”
Zoë blinked several times to try to wake her tired eyes up. “Do you know how many talkers are left in the world?”
“I think each city has at least one,” he said. “New York was notoriously without one for years, or so we thought. Some witnesses on December eighth thought there may have been one in the city, but there was so much chaos we don’t know. Many could have gone underground, literally or figuratively. If you don’t talk to the city, it’s hard for other talkers to notice you.”
This guy was talking as if he was a citytalker and had already confided in her. Zoë tried to squash her excitement.
“I still find it hard to believe none of my friends have mentioned talkers to me,” Zoë said. “I mean, I work with zombies and vampires, yeah, who could be only a little older than me, but there’s also a couple of goddesses, a nine-tailed kitsune, and others. Do you think if I asked them about the genocide, they’d tell me?”
Reynard shook his head. “I wouldn’t. If nothing else, they will be interested in where you heard about it, and ask questions. I can’t afford that. Because you’ve already figured it out about me, haven’t you?”
Zoë smiled. “You didn’t make it difficult to figure out. I’m surprised you were so forthcoming with a stranger.”
Reynard took his eyes away from the Baltimore station as the train began to move. “I think I see a kindred spirit in you,” he said. Before Zoë could start to panic, he added, “You like to court danger, don’t you?”
Zoë sat up straighter. “What do you mean?”
Reynard ticked the points off on his hand. “You’ve got a job with people who will eat you if they get a chance, including a fucking incubus, and it sounds like you were in the middle of the action on 12/8 when surrounded by vastly better-qualified people.”
Zoë sputtered. “OK, that’s not fair. If you hadn’t noticed, the economy is shit, and I needed a job. And the other stuff…” She sat up straighter, her back feeling as if an ice spike had been inserted where her spinal cord should have been. “How do you know all of those things?”
He slouched comfortably in his seat, his head in a shadow. “There’s only one way I could have found out. She told me.”
Was this why the city had said she was supposed to avoid citytalkers? She had communicated with this dude? Zoë paused then laughed.
“As for why, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. As for now, I just really am going to need some caffeine if I am going to stay alert to watch for killer vampires tonight. Want anything from the café car?”
Reynard smiled and got up. “I’ll go with you. I doubt the train will have much for human consumption, but we can go check. They probably have something for the zoëtists. Do you have your talisman?” Zoë nodded and brought her necklace out of her shirt. Reynard nodded. “Just let me do the talking, OK?”
“If you say so.”
Reynard removed his trench coat, carefully folded it, and left it on his seat. He and Zoë walked down the aisle past the dozing zoëtists. Zoë watched with amusement as a little dirt golem about six inches tall stood watch at one table, seeming to glare at her as she walked by.
The train thrummed beneath them, smooth and powerful. They had left the city by now and Zoë marveled at their speed. They really would reach New Orleans before the morning, amazingly enough.
She realized she was unlike Reynard, who firmly demanded his place among coterie. Zoë herself wanted to spend some time on a human bullet train, no matter what “club” she belonged to. She held her breath as they passed into the adjoining car, not sure what they would find, but they encountered a bunch of dozing sprites.
The car was dark, but the slightly glowing air sprites drifted along the top of the car. Zoë would have freaked out and assumed they were ghosts a couple of months ago, but now she knew they were dozing elementals.
She thought about Morgen, her friend the water sprite, and her heart rose in her throat. “Let’s keep moving,” she whispered to Reynard.
“You know they’re not ghosts, right?” Reynard asked.
“Yes, but sprites remind me of someone, that’s all,” Zoë said. “Can we just keep moving?”
The next car was also dark, and completely full of sleeping zombies. One woman sat in front of an untouched Tupperware container of brains, all gray and shiny, and Zoë averted her gaze. Some zombies’ elbows stuck out into the aisle and Reynard and Zoë had to inch around them. The train lurched a bit as it went around a curve, and Zoë flailed, catching the luggage rack over their heads to avoid tumbling into a zombie’s lap.
Reynard snickered and offered Zoë his hand. Zoë pulled herself up on her own, glared at him, and they went on their way.
She wondered how she was going to make it back through with a drink in her hand.
The third car was finally what they were waiting for. A vampire stood, bored, at the snack stand, flipping through a magazine. He was a tall and lithe Indian, who sneered at them as if they were rodents on his pristine train.
“Zoëtists,” he said, blowing his bangs out of his face. “What can I get for you?”
“What do you have that’s caffeinated?” Reynard asked.
The vampire reached under the counter and pulled out a can of Diet Coke and a can of Coke. “Not much call for it around here.”
“Thanks,” Reynard said, and took them both, handing the vampire a hell note. He presented both cans to Zoë, who took the Coke
. She was dismayed that the can was warm. She thanked the vampire but he ignored her.
“Pleasant,” muttered Zoë to Reynard.
Reynard shrugged. “Told you it wouldn’t be very human-friendly.”
Underneath their feet the train’s hum changed timbre very slightly, and both the vampire and Reynard raised their heads, alert.
Zoë looked from one to the other. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
“This train has reached its maximum safe speed. It just sped up. That’s not supposed to happen, is it?” Reynard said this last sentence to the vampire, who ignored him.
The vampire exited from behind his little café counter and peered out the window. He said something in Hindi and fumbled for a walkie-talkie on his belt.
“Engineering. This is Deepu in the café car. If you’re trying to outrun an old-fashioned train robbery, you’re going to need to go faster.”
CHAPTER 1
Getting There
The Ghost Train Slaughtered Kid
The human creation of high-speed rails has made it possible for the coterie to piggyback on human railroads and create the first-ever ghost bullet train. The ghost train Slaughtered Kid is the first high-speed coterie-only train to go from Boston, MA, to New Orleans, LA (with stops in New York City, Baltimore, DC, Richmond, Raleigh, Columbia, Atlanta, and Pensacola, for some reason), in about ten hours. It serves all coterie, human and nonhuman, and you can buy your ticket at most train stations if you know where to book with a coterie agent. While it is open to all, it does segregate by cars, so vampires, gremlins, and deities will be seated with like folk, as well as all humans, including thralls.
Being that it is a ghost train, it is staffed mainly by ghosts, as they can find themselves in a corporeal existence on the train, while stepping off makes them go insubstantial again.
Accommodations include single seats, booth-type seats, and sleeper cars. The train has compartments for all sizes of coterie, and encourages little people, leprechauns, and gremlins to take advantage of their quality interiors.