“Hello, Justin,” it said through the mindlink.
“Santa,” Justin replied. “I’ve brought you a present. We found it on a world ten thousand light years from here.” Following in his mother’s footsteps, Justin had become one of humanity’s preeminent xenoarchaeologists.
The gift was a dormant cityseed, much like the one from which the Santamind had grown. Damaged in transit to its destination, it had never started growing.
From one of the billions of subroutines of the Santamind, a long-silent voice forced a thought up to the conscious level:
WAKE THE CITYMIND
Saturnalia, a Roman winter festival, featured various forms of gift giving, including curious a gift of role reversal: allowing slaves to be nobles and nobles slaves.
Patricia Briggs’s dark and sensuous story unfolds in a world of identity shifts and deceptions. But it can be a gift to others to hide the beast within.…or a gift to reveal it.
—KO
Unappreciated Gifts
Patricia Briggs
At three in the afternoon on the first day of December, the werewolf sometimes known as the Moor, feared for centuries by his own kind, opened his email to find this:
Dear Asil:
We have become worried about you. A werewolf alone is a sad thing, especially at Christmas time. So we have a challenge for you. Five dates in two weeks. We have taken the work out of it and connected you with five people (from online dating sites) who should make interesting dates. The dates, except for meals which we thought should be up to you and your date, are planned and paid for (when necessary). Tickets for some events should arrive in today’s mail—all you have to do is write an email to each person and set up a time or place.
You should know that all of these people think they have been talking to you and are looking for you to bring a little spice into their lives. We have carefully chosen people we think would be very hurt to find out they were unwitting participants in a game. Some of us believe that you would not hurt a stranger just to avoid a little discomfort. Others think that knowing that we have informed the whole pack (via email) and instigated a betting pool will be better incentive. Especially since no one, so far, has bet on you attending more than one date.
Below you can see the profile, photos and email exchanges between your first date and … well I guess you know it’s not really you. Charles did help with sending email that looks like it’s coming from you and intercepting the return emails. Anna made him do it—but she’s not one of us. She does know who we are, but she has sworn not to tell.
Should you succeed in all five dates (success defined below) we shall confess, turn over any and all audio/video footage, and submit ourselves to your reckoning.
Sincerely,
Concerned Friends
* A successful date is one in which a) neither party runs screaming into the night b) there are no dead bodies at the end of it and c) lasts longer than two hours—at least an hour and a half of which is spent with your date—which is an hour and fifty minutes longer than we expect any date of yours to last.
Asil read the email three times, followed the link to his profile on biteme.com a dating site for … humans pretending to be vampires. The photo they’d used had to have been from a very expensive camera because he didn’t remember any such photos being taken of him—and it looked like a close up.
To get a close up from far enough away that he hadn’t noticed, that would take a very expensive camera. The photo showed him with his shirt off, looking slightly to the left of the camera with a black bacarra rose held between two fingers at hip level. It was clearly taken during the summer, but not, he thought, last summer. He’d moved that rose bush indoors because, even though it was supposed to be hardy, Aspen Creek, Montana, required a studier hardy than his bacarra rose could manage.
He approved of the photo. If he had to have a photo posted on a website called biteme, he supposed that it was good to have one in which it was possible to discern just how handsome he was. If the photo made him look a little too soft for his taste … well, it could have been worse.
He spent significantly less time checking out his date’s profile, which had only a black and white blurry photo of someone in a black cape. It was possible to discern that the person had two eyes and a mouth, but everything else was lost in shadows. The profile was brief and generic—the only reason he could find for this person to be singled out by the people who set him up was that this woman lived in Missoula, a city he knew to be free from vampires of the real blood-sucking variety. Missoula was only about four hours away by car. Aspen Creek was very, very far away from civilization.
Asil then read through the somewhat breathless emails exchanged between his to-be-date and the people who pretended to be him, looking for clues to whom he owed this charming … gift.
In the end he concluded that whoever was writing emails as him knew him rather well. These were letters he might have sent himself—excepting only that he would never have written to anyone who signed up on a website for fools who pretended to be vampires.
He hadn’t been able to pick up much about his “date” from the emails: they seemed very impersonal for someone looking for love on the Internet. But people these days did not express themselves as well as they used to in writing, particularly not in email writing.
He considered what he should do. Probably he could figure out who sent the email to him—he had some strong suspicions. But he had been invited to a game. An adventure. Adventures were often uncomfortable, but never boring.
He composed an email to Kelly whose email was—Asil sighed—[email protected] and arranged to meet her at his favorite Thai restaurant in Missoula an hour and a half before they were to attend a Masquerade ball. In their email exchange, his opponents had been happy to assure Kelly that he had suitable clothes for the ball—which was a costume that humans would think a vampire might wear to such a thing. They would eat, separate to change into costume—and then attend the ball.
When he finished his date proposal, he wrote back to the people who had begun this adventure for him.
Dearest Children
Challenge accepted.
Asil
Post-script—You do know I am Muslim, yes? I do not care about Christmas, except that the music which the season subjects me to is mostly bad.
Two days later
Asil sipped his water and waited. He was good at waiting, as any hunter must be. He did not fuss or wiggle or fret. He just took another sip of water, held it in his mouth and then swallowed and looked with outward peacefulness at the pair of black bacarra roses in a small vase that were to identify himself for his date. Yes, he was very good at waiting—that did not mean, however, that he was happy about it.
Luckily for his date, he arrived five minutes later in a whirl of sound as he knocked into chairs and a waitress while he rushed to get to the seat opposite Asil.
“I’m so sorry,” said the young man who was supposed to be a woman. He sat down awkwardly—like a puppy all elbows and knees without interrupting his rapid speech. “You’re waiting for a girl named Kelly and she is me. She is I.” He made an impatient with himself sound and tried again. “I have this acquaintance and his girlfriend who aren’t too bright. They thought that setting some poor guy up on a blind date with a loser like me when he thought he would be getting a pretty girl would be funny. They didn’t give me your email address or any way to contact you—just the restaurant inform—”
He looked up. His mouth stayed where it was and noise quit coming out of it.
Yes, Asil thought, the other’s awe soothing the feathers that had been ruffled by the wait, I am beautiful.
“What the hell are you doing on a web dating site?” snapped the person who was evidently Asil’s date for the evening, when he could speak. He shoved his glasses up his nose rather savagely and scowled at Asil.
He was not, this young man, himself in possession of a great deal of attractiveness at this t
ime. Asil had lived long enough to see that five or six years of aging would be kind to acne blemishes and put some muscle on a frame that was too lanky for the hands and feet attached to it. With a good hair cut, contacts, and a little confidence, he would be arresting—if not pretty.
Asil raised an eyebrow and summoned a waitress. “I will give you a moment to collect yourself and then we shall begin this again.”
He’d eaten at the restaurant enough times that the staff knew him. The waitress who approached at his gesture spoke Thai as her native tongue. Asil did not speak Thai. However he was moderately fluent in Lao, which she also spoke. Together they could muddle along through the menu. She spoke good-enough-for-restaurant English, but Lao was more comfortable for her.
He had decided to take charge of this date, because obviously someone needed to take charge of this young man who had an acquaintance willing to set him up with what might have been a very dangerous situation.
This was Montana, after all; even if Missoula was sort of the hippie habitat, it was not necessarily safe to send a young man on a date with a man expecting a woman. Especially a young man who likes other men. Asil was beautiful, but heterosexual men were seldom struck dumb in his presence.
He ordered pad thai because it was safe. He stopped chattering with the waitress to address his date. “Are you allergic to any foods—especially peanuts? Do you have any other dietary restrictions?”
“No,” his date—was his name still Kelly?—said, sounding a little thunderstruck.
Asil went back to ordering.
“It is so boring,” commented his waitress still in Lao when he had finished. “That is not like you.”
“It is a date,” he told her, “I am being careful.”
She smiled and wrinkles spread over her cheeks in a friendly burst. “Ooo. A date! How exciting. We shall make safe food for you, then, but we will make sure it is good, too.”
“I thought you were supposed to be from out of town,” his date said half-accusingly after the waitress left. “She knew you.”
“I live in Aspen Creek,” Asil said softly, trying to reign in the menace while his wolf urged him to force this boy who dared challenge him down on the floor where he would give his throat. His beast was not tame enough for dating, but Asil could keep a rein on his instincts for a few hours. “I shop in Missoula or Kalispell. There are no restaurants in Aspen Creek except for the gas station which makes sandwiches, so when I am out, I eat where there is good food.”
“Sorry,” the boy said, looking away. “That wasn’t fair. I mean, even if you had lied about not being from Missoula, which I’m sure you didn’t, the lie perpetrated on you is worse. I’m sorry that you got caught up in all of this. My friend—” he almost choked on the word, as well he should “—he thought he was being funny. He was trying to put me in an awkward position and didn’t think about what he was doing to you.”
“Didn’t think,” Asil murmured, touching the vase lightly with one finger. “Those are the right words.”
“He said you thought you were going out with a girl.”
“Are you Kelly Lieberman?” asked Asil.
The boy nodded.
“Then I am on a date with you.” He narrowed his eyes at the boy and considered him. Two hours or he would lose the bet. Oh, he could claim that they’d (whoever they were) had failed when they had not gotten the proper sex. That they had not succeeded in arranging a proper date—but it would be better to win this despite their unwitting divergence from the unspoken rules of their game.
“He was pretty sure that you’d end up being a fake, too,” Kelly said. “I thought you’d be someone else. Trace showed me your profile photo—and no one who looks like you do needs an on-line service. He said you’d probably be three hundred pounds and deserve the joke he’d played on you.”
“And if I had been?” Asil asked.
“If I hadn’t shown up, you’d have gotten angry,” said Kelly perceptively. “But you’d have shrugged it off. It would be your date’s loss for not realizing what ‘she’ missed, right? But someone who lies about themselves, they don’t have the good things to fall back on when things go wrong.” He met Asil’s eyes. “Someone like that would have been hurt. I had to come and let him know that it was my fail, not his.”
Asil decided that he liked this young man, in spite of the fact that he’d been late to their date. His judgment of people was usually quick—and always accurate. Tonight would not be a waste of time at all. He decided that it would be positively enjoyable.
Kelly’s body tightened in preparation to getting up. “So you know everything. I’m sorry about the date, thing—but at least you’ll have a good dinner. And—” an assessment so quick that a less perceptive man would have missed it and the approval Kelly felt of Asil’s good looks “—you really won’t have trouble finding a date if you want one. I’ll leave you to your dinner.”
“Sit down,” said Asil quietly, pleased when the boy did so with automatic instant obedience. It was not only wolves who knew who was in charge when Asil was in a room.
“You don’t need me,” Kelly said. “Someone who looks like you doesn’t have trouble finding dates.”
“Apparently I do,” murmured Asil. “I am sorry that this cannot be a real date for you—my tastes are only for women. But I think that we shall eat this very good food that will come out shortly. And I think we should go to this Masquerade ball and enjoy ourselves.”
Kelly looked at him. Pushed his glasses up his nose again, sneered and said, “Right. And you have some river front property in Death Valley to sell me. How about I pay for this dinner and you can go find a date next door?”
Next door to the Thai restaurant was a cowboy bar.
“You have heard,” Asil murmured, the bitterness in the young man’s voice having (mostly) calmed the wolf’s reaction to the defiance and disrespect, “that the best revenge is living well, no? I think that we should go, dance, and have a good time.” He smiled at Kelly with charm. “You and I, we know that it is a pretend date—but that doesn’t mean we cannot enjoy ourselves and twit your … acquaintance as well. I brought a costume with me and it would be a shame not to wear it.” A rental costume had arrived in the mail, evidently sent by his benefactors. But Asil was a clothes horse. There had been no need for a rental. “Just like that, huh?” asked Kelly, still plainly distrustful.
“I don’t like bullies,” Asil said. “It is a particular pet peeve of mine. I especially don’t like bullies who put their victims in a position where they could be hurt.”
Kelly looked at him and Asil allowed him to hold his gaze. His wolf wasn’t happy with it, but Kelly was no threat, so Asil’s wolf didn’t insist on punishing him or forcing him to show his throat. Happily, for Kelly, the boy dropped his eyes and looked away. “It would be awesome to get some of my own back,” he said, somewhat wistfully.
Asil nodded his head graciously. “Yes.”
The boy settled as if he might stay for more than a few seconds and said, “Hey. I’m Kelly and I’m your date tonight. Most of the stuff in the profile you have is wrong. So let me tell you about myself. I’m twenty-two and in my first year of grad school here—studying toxicology.”
Asil was grateful that the food came right at that moment. What had they been thinking? Asil grumbled to himself. A grandmother of ninety would have been a baby to him, true, but still, twenty-two was still wet behind the ears.
Still, the boy was entertaining enough, when he wasn’t writhing in embarrassment or anger. Asil ate very good food and found himself rather charmed. For a date forced upon him, this was quite unexpectedly interesting.
Kelly dug into the food with a will and ate almost as much as Asil did—and werewolves need a lot of food. They finished nearly together and finished the meal with a decent Lambrusco that this restaurant kept on hand, which dry and bubbly, was a fitting end to the meal. Asil preferred merlots and big reds himself, but Thai food required a little less impact. He didn’t l
ike sweet wines, so the Lambrusco was a fine compromise. Dinner finished, it was time to negotiate the next step. Since Asil had a car and Kelly had a driver’s license, he finally persuaded Kelly to drop him off at his hotel and take Asil’s car to Kelly’s apartment. They would both change, Kelly could pick him up again, and Asil wouldn’t know where Kelly lived.
“That’s not safe for you,” insisted Kelly. “What if I steal the car or wreck it?”
“That’s what insurance is for, mi cielo.”
“You shouldn’t let me know where you are staying either,” the boy said stubbornly.
“Ruby’s,” said Asil silkily because Kelly had implied that Asil should be afraid. “Room 216.”
“You’re being stupid,” said Kelly.
“No,” said Asil. “And that is enough conversation on the subject.” If he let his wolf out and Kelly ran “screaming into the night,” Asil would lose the game he was playing with his unknown opponents. But if Kelly didn’t stop arguing, Asil’s half-mad wolf would come out. So Kelly had to stop.
Asil got up and paid for the dinner to give them both some space, and chatted about food and pecularidades Americanos with the woman who had waited upon them until his wolf had calmed down.
When Kelly saw his car, he almost refused to drive. Perhaps Asil should have brought the Subaru, but when one went on a date to a ball one drove the good car.
“It’s a Porsche, I’ve never driven a Porsche.”
“It’s a Cayenne,” soothed Asil as he opened the driver’s door and ushered Kelly into the seat without the boy knowing he’d been pushed inside. “They are cheaper than most Porsches.” His wasn’t, but some of the models were.
“What do you do for a living?” asked Kelly as Asil got in the passenger seat.
“There is old money in my family,” apologized Asil, because he knew that Americans had this weird thing about inherited wealth. It was very old money—all of it earned by him. “I grow things and try not to lose money at it.” There, he had a career and legitimacy. “It drives just like any other car,” he said, instead of telling Kelly that they were sitting around wasting time. “Just go.”
A Fantastic Holiday Season Page 28