Desires, Known

by Lilith Saintcrow

  She waited, but he very little else to say. There was noise on his end, too—someone yelling something, a brief blurring sound of something being nailed or stapled. She decided to go back on the offensive. “Chill, it’s all copacetic. Look, I’d really like to talk to you. Can we do coffee? Say, Thursday at eleven AM?”

  “Um.” He sounded unsure. “I really…”

  She looked up at the genie, her eyebrows raised. He nodded, fractionally, a brief odd flash in his dark eyes.

  “Sure!” Jake the Toronto Cowboy Stripper said. “Where?”

  Another instance of a few moments’ worth of planning being better than a pound of thinking on your feet. Em’s grin widened, and it felt natural now. “At La Almeda on Fortieth. You know it?”

  “It’s that coffee shop with the firebreather on its sign?”

  Fitting, isn’t it? You have no idea how much. “The very same, right next to the Barnes Mutual building. I’ll see you there.”

  “Okay, but I have to tell you—”

  Oh, no you don’t. She hung up, and peered up at the genie. “Okay. Now, May pretty much always goes there on her lunch break. I just need you to get her there a little earlier on Thursday, at eleven instead of noon. Can you do that without causing an explosion or losing her job or anything?”

  “I can be exceedingly subtle.” Another brief nod. “And do you wish him there as well?”

  Duh. “Well, I invited him. You think he won’t show up?”

  “Would you like to be sure?” His head moved, slowly, he gazed down at her like she was speaking Swahili or something. “And do you wish them to fall in love?”

  I’ll settle for some short-term lust to make her happy and distract her at the same time. Em blinked, glancing at the sky. Dark clouds hovered to the north; normally they would be knee-deep in snow already. Winter was damn mild this year. “Uh, well, that’s sort of not…no, I think things will be, uh, happen naturally if we just get them together. Love’s a big word, they’re definitely in like.”

  He considered this, a few strands of his dark ponytail moving on the breeze. He’d positioned himself to block most of the wind coming down Fifteenth. Awful nice of him. “But would you like to be sure? I can fill them with desire for each other.”

  Whoa. “I think that’s pretty much already happened. He’s been trying to tell me nicely each time that he’s only calling me to get May’s number. It’s a shame, because he’s packed and stacked, but—”

  The genie’s expression darkened slightly. “Do you wish him to fall in love with you, then?”

  Christ no. I’m too busy for anything else now that you’ve shown up. Besides, the idea sent a hot bolt of distaste crawling up from her stomach. “Hell no. Why the fuck would I want something like that?”

  Behind Hal, the granite facing of the library was full of muted color. His blue sweater didn’t look nearly thick enough to keep him warm. “Your…friend. She is not overcaring of you, I thought perhaps a manner of revenge could be—”

  “May’s my best friend.” Her tone could best be described as warning, and Em shivered as the dark fringe of cloud slid over the already veiled sun.

  “She is selfish and thoughtless.”

  Oh, hell no, magical dude. You do not get to make snap judgments about my friends. That’s my job. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about her, so just…” She restrained herself from saying shut up just in time. Took a deep breath, just as a spatter of icy rain rattled against the Library’s granite facade. It was going to be a cold, wet afternoon. “Let’s not get sidetracked. We’re here to do some research about your former, um, boss.”

  “Master.”

  “Boss.” The urge to glare at him was rising. “And yes, I would like both May and Toronto Stripper at the coffee shop at the same time. But no funny stuff, okay? Just…get them there, and let things take their course.”

  “Why is that acceptable, and filling them with desire not?” He even sounded genuinely curious. He didn’t look like the cold bothered him at all.

  “Because it’s not the same if someone makes you do it.” Although, really, was getting them to the coffee shop together a step over the ethical boundary? “Crap.” She exhaled, a long sound of frustration. “Look, you can’t just force people to shag, or to fall in love. You really can’t. All you can do is give an opportunity. They’ll figure it out. At the very worst they share an uncomfortable ten minutes talking about me and May goes back to work and he goes back to school, and I admit to May that I told him where to find her. But the rest of it’s just… Jesus. Did your other, um, bearers, did they do shit like that?”

  “Your language is extraordinary.” A dismissive flick of his dark head. Somehow the rain avoided him. There wasn’t even a droplet on his lean shoulders, for Chrissake. “They were men, and thought to take their due. Women were to be sought, and had.”

  Ewwww. Misogyny central. “I like these guys less and less. And you just…you just did it?”

  “I had no choice.” He’d gone from curious to remote in a heartbeat, his thin face slamming shut with an almost audible snap. “What the bearer desires, I must perform.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to ask if any of the bearers had, well, tastes that leaned toward his type too. It was a distinctly uncomfortable notion, and that wasn’t the sort of thing you asked someone. They were men, he said, just like someone else would say the sky is blue.

  And May wondered why she didn’t date. Come to think of it, was she doing May any favors by putting her together with this guy both of them barely knew?

  Em’s stomach grumbled a little. She should have eaten her croissant. In a little bit she’d get cranky, and she was undercaffeinated as well. “Christ.” Another sigh welled up inside her. “Well, what I’m desiring right now is lunch, some decent espresso, and finding out what happened to your last boss. But you don’t have to do a thing about it. Come on, and be quiet. The last thing I need is to be thrown out of a library.”

  “I would not let them, Mis—ah, Emily.”

  Comforting. “Thanks.” She had to push past him to get around a fluted column—the library was part of a super-Edwardian pomp and neoclassical circumstance; you could practically smell the railroad baron who built it and his greasy, hair-pomaded satisfaction. “Let’s get on the internet.”

  * * *

  “First stop is always Google.” She pointed at the chair next to her at the long table, unwrapping her scarf. The computers weren’t too crowded this early in the afternoon, and thank goodness he’d caught on about speaking very softly. The librarians in here were serious business.

  The genie settled gingerly, glancing over the bookshelves with longing written on his face. Then he turned his chin back toward her, the very picture of patient attention.

  So she had to ask. “Do you like reading?”

  “I can absorb a great deal from books. From your electronics, not so much. Yet.”

  Now that was interesting. “Yet?”

  “I will adapt.” He said it so grimly it sounded like a disease, his mouth turning even thinner. If he would just stop with the proto-scowl, it would do wonders for him.

  Em suppressed another sigh. Stick with one problem at a time. “Okay. So what was the guy’s name?”

  “George. George Cavanaugh.”

  She grabbed a slice of scratch paper, digging in her purse for a pen. “And…what timeframe are we talking about? Give me a year he… The last year you saw him.”

  “According to your calendar?” He frowned slightly, his thin dark eyebrows coming together and his upper lip twitching a bit as if it wanted to curl. “Somewhere near 1760. Time moves… It is difficult.”

  “Cavanaugh—is that the way it’s spelled? Okay, good. I’m going to see what I can dig up. You, uh, do you want, would you like to go through some of the books here?” A stray draft brought her a whiff of cardamom—she should maybe ask him about his cologne. It just made her hungry, though.

  He hesitated. “I…am not averse
to it.”

  “Would it make you happy?” God, it was like pulling teeth. Hadn’t anyone ever asked him what he preferred before?

  “Happy?” A small, tight smile touched his mouth. His shoulders hunched slightly. “What is that?”

  “You know, rainbows, sunshine, the world not being a total drag? You have to remember the feeling.” Another thought struck her. “Or did you always want to be a genie?”

  “I was a slave.” He tipped his head back, studied the fabled glass dome, a lens staring at billowing dark clouds. The rain had turned to sleet. “There was nothing to want.”

  This just keeps getting better. “My God, that’s awful.”

  “It is the way of the world. Yes, I would find it pleasing to absorb as many of these books as I can.” A long pause, while he studied the ceiling like it held a secret or two. “May I?”

  She waved a hand. “Knock yourself out, you don’t have to ask. If I find something—”

  “Just say my name. I will hear.”

  “Hal. Okay. Go have fun, find me when you’re done.”

  He didn’t pop out of existence this time, thank God. He just got up, like a normal human being, and headed for the stairs. Maybe he would start at the top and work down, or maybe he had a secret genie reading list.

  Em shook her head. Her hair was getting in her face. God. This poor guy. No wonder he’s weird. She stared at the scrap of paper. George Cavanaugh, 1760.

  What would it be like, to wake up after two and a half centuries plus and find out the whole world had changed? Or to be a slave—he’d said bearers, plural, which meant more than one person bossing him around; how long ago had he been enslaved? There was bound to be some emotional baggage on that. And those other “bearers”—he talked about them as if they were related. A whole happy family of assholes with a genie. They sounded egocentric as fuck-all.

  And he went around calling May selfish. Okay, sometimes she was thoughtless, but she would never do something like make someone a slave. The “bearers” didn’t sound very smart, either, which was probably a blessing. God only knew how much damage a smart sociopath could do with a genie.

  Well, if there was one genie, maybe there had to be more? The stories didn’t come from nowhere. Maybe, before looking into this Cavanaugh asshole, she should get a more solid idea of Hal. Just in the interests of figuring out how to get the damn ring off her finger and her life back to normal.

  Em found she was rubbing the flat agate with her right middle finger, a thoughtful motion. The ring moved a little, and she stopped, staring at it.

  It hadn’t moved before.

  She pulled it along her finger, testing. It slid to her knuckle and got stuck—well, okay, maybe she was premenstrual and swelling a bit. She slid it back, looked at the screen in front of her.

  Well, no time like the present. She settled herself, and typed in how do you get rid of a genie?

  Our Tithes

  Saint Bartholomew’s Cathedral loomed large and gray on Fortis Avenue. Though Peakes End was definitely older, the church looked flat-out eternal. The parsonage, tucked alongside the main bulk like a nest-edge propping up a stone wing, and Peter Cavanaugh almost shuddered as he edged along the mossy, crumbling concrete path between the outer wall and the church. He climbed the three steps and knocked politely. He would have to change when he got home; the rain was full of ice and he wasn’t wearing a coat.

  It would be dangerous to walk up to this particular door in anything that could hide a weapon.

  “Yes?” Father Lantoreux, lean and dark-haired, opened it himself. Milky, rain-fogged sunlight struggled to reach the slippery steps, touched the priest’s white collar and fell into his cassock without a murmur. His narrow eyes betrayed no shock or impatience at seeing a stranger on his doorstep, but then, a father would not.

  The Papists, the old man would sometimes sneer. Always so theatrical.

  What would happen, Peter wondered, if he yanked on the hilt nestled at the small of his back and plunged the crystal-bladed dagger into the good Father’s belly? It might even kill one of the fighting order of Saint Bartholomew. No, Peter wasn’t wearing a coat, but a knife was so easy to hide.

  You need that blade for other things. Instead, he proffered the manila envelope. The priest examined him, and invisible feathers brushed against Peter’s hair.

  “Sophic,” the good father said quietly. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  Well, that answered the question of whether the Bartholomews knew their asses from holes in the ground, in his late father’s somewhat pungent phrasing. “We aren’t enemies,” Peter said, carefully. “Our brotherhood has come across some…disturbing information, and we offer it in the spirit of cooperation.”

  “And fish fly.” The man’s hand extended, though, and he took the envelope. “What is it you want in return? Since you are businessmen.”

  “We pay our tithes, Father.” All of them. And with interest, too.

  Father Lantoreux’s nose was a wonder of Gallic architecture, and he wrinkled it a little. “God requires only faith.”

  In that case, he should come around more often. And bring booze. “Yours will no doubt equip you to face one of your old enemies.” He shook his head slightly, searching for the right note of carelessness. “There’s a witch in town, Father. This comes straight from the old man himself.”

  He turned and walked away, careful not to slip on the moss. The brothers of Saint Bartholomew’s order trained all their lives to deal with a certain kind of nonhuman, invisible intelligence, one less useful than malevolent. Their regrettable vows about safeguarding the innocent were pretty flexible when it came to females, though, just like in every other century. Inside the envelope was a scrap of cheap carpet, brought back through space on the claws of one of the balked, almost-dead Appetites, and the terror soaking it would no doubt prove a lodestone to a brother tasked to find and destroy what they thought of as Satan’s spawn.

  His wingtips slipped; he almost went down in a heap. Still, Peter felt oddly cheerful.

  It was really quite gratifying, the way the priest had gone pale.

  Strange Concepts

  Hal reached the law and finance section before he thinned out, oil soaking through a tortoise shell. The books welcomed him, and he spent a short while—after making certain he fully grasped the mechanics of their banking and the finer details of their financial structures—ascertaining the organization of the rest of the subjects. It was quite logical, though there was a distressing dearth of what Cavanaugh would have called natural philosophy or useful occultia. Of course, such things would not be in a public library. The Fratres—and their predecessors—had always been very clear that the hidden powers were only to be accessed by responsible property-owners.

  The great explosion of printed matter, however, had come about in fiction. Sometime during his long dormancy, the novel as a form had reached heights of popularity undreamed of by the men of culture in Cavanaugh’s time.

  The knowledge contained in their other books—especially history—would be useful, but Hal found himself pulled toward the vast glittering field of imagination. He thinned out even further, first sweeping through the children’s section to gain a basic understanding, then turning his attention to the fiction shelves.

  Such worlds they imagined! Clarissa was nothing to this, though he could remember Cavanaugh and his brothers denouncing it as a piece of sentimental trash. Women wrote novels now, though, as well as scholarly works. There seemed little women could not do in this new world. Their voices were marvelous—entirely new horizons, the other half of humanity no longer locked in the silence of the ignored. They wore what they pleased and even owned property.

  Simply amazing. Wonderful. Surely they would reach the stars, now that they were not wasting themselves on petty differences?

  As soon as it was born, that hope was crushed. Some of the novels were full of dark things, indeed.

  Oh, that’s why she…interesting. Now, what is that
?

  An entire section labeled Romance. Chivalry and knights? Did they still dream of such things—eras so bygone the stink of their sweat and feces was forgotten, and only the rosewater and spectacle?

  Hal intended to only brush the surface of the Romance section. Instead, he almost solidified in shock, halfway through a bookcase. Oh. That…that was unexpected.

  A few more moments showed him just how valuable these books were. They were not only full of the changing mores of this society, but also of that most winning of creatures: women. Their dreams, their wishes, their desires, their secrets. What a marvelous gift they had given to males, mortal or otherwise, in writing so plainly what they longed for, how they chose their mates.

  Hal solidified just enough to see who came into these aisles, searching for answers.

  Now that was strange. Three women were in this one aisle, conversing in low tones about authors, heroes, and “happy-ever-afters.” They were all three vivid with interest, though two were young and one was, by the state of her hips, a well-married matron.

  Did the mortal men…not read these? Incomprehensible stupidity on their part.

  The science, the technology—he had a basic but thorough grasp, and it would be refined as he studied the world around him. This treasure trove deserved his attention now. He could barely believe his luck.

  Hidden in these books might be the key to keeping his bearer….happy. The more he could refine his handling of her, the better chance he stood of at least convincing her of his usefulness.

  Why do I care? One mortal is just like another.

  Except she was not. In all the years, of all the bearers, not one had even thought to ask of his freedom, or his own desires. Perhaps, had the ring fallen into the hands of a woman before now…but that was beside the point. He was here, now, with this woman, and he craved to remain so.

  “…paranormal romance,” one of the younger women said. “I eat that up with a spoon.”