It struck Hal as fitting. He snapped again, and the man was suddenly in dungarees and a rough cotton shirt, heavy boots caked with wet dirt and undergarments as uncomfortable as Hal could make them.
He watched as the man picked himself up at the bottom of the slope and shook his blond head, dirt and sand vengefully sliding into every small crevice of flesh or cloth it could find. Soon the whistle would blow, and it would be time to return to work, and the man’s bafflement would be complete.
She had not specified that Brett would keep the job, after all.
The effect began at Hal’s toes and rose, a slow wave of pleasure. Performing a work rewarded him. He had long fought it, thinking it would make him slavish, but really, why should he not enjoy what he did? Cruel or compassionate, his bearers were helpless without him. He was the fulcrum that moved miracles through the world, and this small recompense was only his due.
He wrapped invisibility around him again, but when he returned to his bearer’s small office by taking another small sideways step, she was not there.
The Guys in the White Coats
Her phone buzzed again just as her car started. She grabbed it and her thumb hit the accept instead of decline. “Shit,” she almost-yelled, and decided maybe it was May. The laurel hedge in front of her usual parking spot sparkled with rain as the clouds parted enough to let a single lone sunbeam through. There were going to be rainbows.
And she was not dreaming. Or if she was, it was a particularly vivid nightmare.
“Nope, just me,” the caller said. His voice sounded oddly familiar. “Is this Emily? Emily Maldean?”
He even pronounced it right. Em grabbed her scattered wits, buckled her seatbelt, and dropped the car into reverse. “Do I owe you money?”
“Nope. This is Jake, from the Halloween party. Your friend May gave me your number, and I thought I’d call rather than text, because it’s less—”
“Who?” She backed out in a hurry, saved from hitting another car by the fact that nobody had parked next to her. The firm was renting this huge suburban office space from an even bigger company, but they only occupied about a third of it. “I’m sorry, but who?”
Brett’s red Toyota had been in the next row when she arrived that morning. She’d noticed it because he’d taken up two spaces, as usual, as if a Corolla could ever have that valuable a paint job.
It was gone. The two empty spaces were like knocked-out teeth, staring at her.
“The cowboy from Ontario. Listen, I wanted to make sure you got home all right, and—”
What. The fuck. “May gave you my number?” This was the absolute last thing she needed.
“She did. I also wanted to—” He took a deep breath, and Em stared at the gearshift. “I wanted to see if you, um. If I could meet you for coffee somewhere.”
Drive. She had to put it into drive if she wanted the car to go forward. “What?” I am not tracking like I should be. “Listen, now’s not a good time. I’m driving. Thanks for making sure I got home safe. You were a real prince, I’m glad to have met you, and say goodnight, Gracie.”
“Goodnight, Gra—”
Well, at least he was fast on his feet. She hit the disconnect, dropped her phone into her purse in the passenger seat, and almost stomped the gas before she realized the car was still in reverse.
Em very carefully pressed the tab, worked the shift lever down to the D, and heard her own breathing, high and sharp. She was making a small wheezing noise, and her vision was doing funny things, narrowing as if she was in a tunnel. She was in no condition to be driving.
She could probably ask her phone for the directions to the nearest mental hospital, except didn’t wondering if you were crazy make you halfway sane? Sweat had gathered under her arms and at the small of her back, her bra poked her again, and her heart was pounding like it meant to escape or give her some sort of attack.
Her car eased forward. She made this drive damn near every day, it wasn’t even lunchtime, traffic would be minimal. She’d probably get pulled over halfway home. Could genies fix traffic tickets?
The worst part wasn’t Becky just staring at her over the wall, then shaking her head and saying I forgot what I was gonna say. Crazy, huh? It wasn’t even the way Em’s heart was pounding so hard she was going to pass out if it kept up, or the fact that there didn’t seem to be enough air.
The worst was that Em had edged down the hall to the breakroom and seen, on the floor in front of the violently yellow counter the coffeemaker rested on, a pile of crumpled clothing. Slacks, blue button-down with white collar and cuffs, wingtips, and apparently Brett had been a tighty-whities man.
Which explained a lot, but still. The kicker of it all was the Creamsicle-orange tie, still neatly knotted, a little, empty noose.
Her hands clutched the steering wheel, white-knuckled. She’d told him to go help a little old lady across the street. Was he off doing that?
Christ, she was thinking as if it was real. But…that pile of clothes. She should have stuck around to see if anyone else could see it.
Dream. This is a dream. If I really want it to, the car will fly home. I’ll wake up now. I really would like to wake up now.
Em set her jaw. She was going to catch hell for just leaving in the middle of the day. She stared out the windshield, checked the gearshift.
“Okay,” she told herself. “You’re in drive. You’re going to drive home. You’re going to walk upstairs and shut the door and go take a bath and go to bed. Or call May.” The thought of that phone call made a short, acidic chuckle burble in her throat. “Hi, May? Look, I need some help. I’m having hallucinations, can you send the guys in the white coats over? Also, I think someone vanished at work today but left all his clothes behind and…”
Her blue, used, very good gas mileage Honda crept forward, rolling to a stop at the end of the row. She checked both ways as if traffic might be coming, cut the wheel and risked going a little faster. She could focus on one intersection at a time.
The sun peeked out again as she turned onto 168th. The commute was pretty awful, but her job wasn’t bad. She was probably going to get fired for running out in the middle of the day. Then she would probably starve, ending up homeless in an alley shaking a tin can and raving about genies. They weren’t kidding when they said drinking could ruin your life.
She hit the freeway southbound with no snags, and with each humming mile her breathing evened out and the dark clouds at the corners of her vision faded. Her heart was still going too fast, she was sweating all over and her bra was going to drive her mad, and the ring was glittering on her third left finger but she didn’t dare take her hands from the wheel.
The exits ticked off, one by one. Hers was coming up, and she let out a half-sob, half-laugh of sheer gratitude.
That was when a soft warm breeze caressed her cheek, carrying with it a thread of cardamom. There was a dark bulk in the passenger seat that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Where are we going?” he inquired, mildly.
Em screamed, the wheel jerked, rubber screeched, and they were airborne.
* * *
A jolt. A brief second of blackness starred with hard cold points of light. Her scream dissolved into a wrenching gasp, and she leaned over, retching. There was an iron bar across her stomach—his arm, and he just stood there, holding her as if she weighed nothing.
She heaved, but nothing came out. It occurred to her that she was staring at her very own kitchen floor, with its tiny pebble-tiles, hard to scrub and even worse to kneel on to look for something. A dreamy, disconnected desire to not throw up on a nice clean floor managed to back everything down her throat, bile burning as it retreated. She hung there, limp with relief for a few moments, until the thought that she was in shock or dead, trapped in the tangled wreckage of her nice little blue Honda, brought her back with a jolt and she jerked, trying to get away from his grasp.
He was saying something, over and over, softly. “All is well, mistress. Shh
, calm, all is well.”
Maybe she’d stumbled out into traffic the night of Gloria’s party and this was hell. No, hell wouldn’t have hot showers or coffee. Purgatory, then? She could believe in that, but genies were a step too far, as May would say.
Jesus Christ, what would May say about this?
She straightened, and his grip changed. Em put her hands flat against his very broad chest and pushed, but he didn’t let go. So she had to look up, and up—he was too tall—and into a pair of dark eyes with gold-threaded irises. Human eyes, humanly concerned. His mouth was drawn tight, a vertical line just beginning between his arched eyebrows. Even the faint shadow of stubble on his cheeks was there, even his pores, and there was no way Em could ever in a million years dream up anything this detailed.
He still didn’t let go of her. Yep, built just like a man, and she could even see the small knitted bumps in his sweater’s shoulder, a tiny glint of gold at his right ear—a small hoop, because a genie had to have an earring, right? Had he gotten that out of the Sunshine Fairy Tales book?
No, the genie in there had a goatee and weird grayish-green skin. This guy just looked…human.
“My car,” Em whispered. His gaze had fastened on her mouth, and that was weird. It should have made her uncomfortable. She should have been screaming and wriggling away. She should have been clawing his eyes out and throwing anything she could reach at him.
Well, in a second or two, I just might. She needed a moment.
“Safely below, where you usually leave it. Would you like to see?” One eyebrow lifted slightly when she began to frantically shake her head. “Easy, mistress. The first time is the hardest.”
“My name is Emily,” she managed, blankly.
“Emily.” Was that a smile, tilting up the corners of his lips? The division between lip and skin was a hair-thin line, chiseled to a sharp edge.
No hallucination was this good. “Let go of me.”
“Is that a command?”
Every time a woman says that, it damn well is. “Yes.”
“Very well.” His arm loosened, and hey presto, she was free.
Her hip hit a drawer-pull and her head almost clipped the cabinet door she’d left open this morning to grab her travel cup. Her shoulders smacked into the wall at the end of the kitchen, her Japanese wood-carving calendar swinging slightly and her feet still going, trying to push her back through paint, drywall, lumber, and anything else in her way. Her silver garbage can was knocked aside and waltzed up against the fridge with a cheery bong sound that would have been hilarious if it had happened at any other time.
His hands fell back to his sides. Em’s were fists. Her throat was a desert, and she was dizzy. “I would have died.” I sound like I’m about to scream.
“Perhaps. But I was there.”
Well now, wasn’t that the whole problem? Em set her shoulders, wishing she had May’s talent for just going with the bizarre no matter how deep it got. “Okay.” She folded her arms, tried to peel herself away from the wall. Tried again, and this time, succeeded. “You, uh…”
What would May do?
Well, when she put it that way, sangfroid was just within the range of options. “You—do you want some coffee?”
Unintended Consequences
Whatever response he had expected, it was not this brittle calm.
“It’s not espresso,” she said, measuring out something that smelled very familiar. Coffee. A whole bag of the beans, an utter luxury, and she even had a small whirring contraption to grind them. “I’ve had my eye on a sweet little Breville machine for a while, but it’s a bit steep, you know? So I just have this Mr. Coffee but the beans are fresh.” Her hands shook, and her voice was a little too high, but all in all, she was…remarkably…
Hal couldn’t find the word. He was sure there was one, but it escaped him at the moment.
“The really important thing is to—look, can you say something? Anything? I’m really trying here.” A dark curl fell in her face, she shook it away with a nervous toss of her fine head.
Just like a beautiful, skittish thoroughbred. One that needed a gentle hand, a soothing voice, and absolute trust in her rider. One that did not suffer fools gladly, if at all. “It is a difficult thing.” His throat was dry. “You are doing…very well.”
“Gee, thanks.” Sarcasm, and another toss of those long curls, working their way free of the pins and small elastics holding them back. “It’s not every day a Halloween genie crashes my car. So, uh, what did you do to Brett? Please tell me you didn’t kill him.”
“You specified a different job, comparable pay and benefits, somewhere he could not make women uncomfortable. Not death.”
“That’s comforting. So what exactly did you do?”
“He is employed at an oil refinery.” Hal weighed whether or not to tell her the rest. He could not lie, but he did not have to—
“Well, that will work off some of his pudge,” she muttered. She flicked a switch and the machine gurgled into life. “Shit!” She picked up a forgotten part of it—the basket holding a paper filter and the ground beans, very cleverly constructed—and shoved it home with surprising force. “So, uh, can I unwish things?”
“Do you want to?” He sniffed cautiously. Yes, it was good coffee—potio Arabica, Cavanaugh had called it when in the mood for a witticism. Hal had already decided he liked this bearer far more than the last. At least she was interesting. Far easier on the eyes. And much, much gentler. Cavanaugh’s tastes ran to vengeance, noxious mischief—and flaying the skin from those who displeased him heartily enough.
She examined the coffee machine critically as it began to burble. Her breeches were soft, and though the bottoms were cut for boots, the top showed more of her fine hips than had ever been permissible in Cavanaugh’s time. “Well, he’s a creep. But it’s not exactly fair of me to just…you know, wish him away. It’s not ethical.”
Hal shrugged. Cavanaugh—and indeed, most of his bearers—had not worried overmuch about such things. “It is as you wish it, mistr—ah, Emily.”
A steady amber stream plashed down into the waiting glass pot. She kept stealing nervous little glances at him, those wide dark eyes—there was moss in their depths, like a still quiet pond, hints of dark green in her irises, and now he had been close enough to tell—showing a little white, again like a restive animal’s. “You gonna vanish again while you—”
“It is not necessary. I think I’d best stay at your side for a short while.” He held himself very still and carefully upright to avoid frightening her further. “You seem…distracted.”
“Fucking out of my mind is what I am.” Another mutter, this time directed at the sink. She flicked at one of the taps, a quick habitual motion, and laved her expressive fingers.
Her language was extraordinary for a woman. Did they all speak thus, now? “I assure you, you are quite sane.” As such things go.
“My hallucination tells me I’m quite sane.” Now she tipped her head back, addressing the ceiling and the marvelous golden light coming from the overhead fixture. “Peachy. Listen…what’s your name, anyway?”
I doubt you could pronounce it, even if I could tell you. “You may call me Hal.”
“That’s great.” She finally looked directly at him, not quite meeting his gaze. “But, really, do you have a real name?”
Was she staring at his nose? Did she find it unpleasing? He had not had time to discern which alterations to his appearance would make him acceptable. “I…” How to explain? “It was…lost, Mistress Emily.”
“Lost?”
“The…process whereby I became what I am took certain things from me. That was one of them.”
“Jesus.” Her expression changed from moment to moment. Now it had settled on…what? “You were made?” The gurgling and sputtering of the coffeemaker underlaid her words. The resultant brew smelled slightly burnt, but otherwise quite palatable.
“Once I was…as you are.” He sought the right words, the mo
st careful way of stating it. “A group of men—sorcerers, you might call them—wished to experiment. For whatever reason, I was ideal.”
“For whatever reason?” Her shoulders were easing, little by little. “Do you remember…it, do you remember anything else?”
“It was a long time ago.” Would she ask how long? None of the others had. His first few bearers had known, but those later did not care. You did not ask a hammer, a wheel, a stylus how old it was. It was simply a tool, one to be used until it was no longer necessary.
“So…like a curse?” Now she leaned forward a little, as if she was staring at the dancing numbers on the glowing screen, trapped in that ill-smelling warren where she spent her days. There was something about her face, though. He couldn’t quite place it. Some word he could not draw to the surface of his consciousness.
“Not precisely.” The conversation was not going as he had anticipated. He finally found the word he wanted to describe the emotion on her transparent face, and it irked him.
It was pity.
A long moment of silence, during which they studied each other carefully. The coffeemaker continued to burble and exhale. Imagine, women drinking coffee. In the privacy of their own rooms, certainly, but still.
“If I take the ring off, what happens to you?”
“You have already tried taking it off.” He made the words as neutral as possible. Now was not the moment to ask himself why he was stating it so cautiously. “You may dismiss me, that will return me to my place of waiting.”
“Is it…do you like it there? Is it comfortable?” Her shoulders hunched a little. Her sweater was a bit askew, but she made no move to straighten it. She kept nervously shifting her weight from one foot to the other, and he took care to remain immobile, or, if he must move, to do so very slowly.
No bearer had ever asked him that question before, either. “It is adequate. I do not…” He was about to say he did not enjoy it, but what was that to her? To anyone?
Desires, Known Page 8