Desires, Known

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “I can never get over the shifter ones,” the matron replied. “I start thinking about the mass conversion from human to honey badger. It just yanks me right out of the story.”

  “Physics, the great downfall of every love story,” the third woman chimed in. They laughed, a sound soft and pleasant as the rustle of dove’s wings, and Hal thinned out again to encompass the entire section. He set himself to absorbing them all, and congratulated himself that soon, very soon, he would understand more about his maddening, fascinating bearer.

  For a long while he soaked into them, slipping from book to book with growing confidence. The men in these books represented an ideal, to be sure, but it was a fairly steady one. Even a mortal man could understand the basics—fidelity above all, a form of chivalry, competence, and an admission that a woman was the most amazing creature ever created. There were “historical” books—some full of glaring inaccuracy, others obviously carefully researched—and a breathtaking kaleidoscope of male “types”, from the domineering protector to the gentler man driven to revenge or protection. “Faith-based” romances, full of Popist pap, Protestant self-denial, and quite a few “humbled” heroes—and the “paranormal” ones. Some of the latter had obviously dug into troves of arcane knowledge by the shovelful. Was this the only way they could compass the strangeness of the invisible powers?

  It beggared belief. But now he could explain much in terms his bearer would understand. Did she read these books? Which of the mortal heroes were her favorites? What did she long for, dream of?

  He was pulled sideways into the “science” fiction next, a strange section amalgamated with what they called “fantasy.” Unfamiliar concepts forced their way into his receptive consciousness, and it would take time to digest such a mass of information. A mortal man would die of old age before he could absorb even a tenth of what this building held.

  It was glorious.

  Little by little, a strange sensation crept through him. Almost a chill. At first he paid little heed, but it sharpened into an unease. He slid through the nonfiction section once more, absorbing what he could in another vast lump, before coalescing at the railing of the second floor, looking down into the vast central well of the library. The computers were near the back, set into rows of cabinets, and they had become crowded.

  He looked for his bearer’s curly dark head and could not find it. Frowning, Hal thinned out into insubstantiality again, searching for his fetter. The chill sharpened yet again, and he sensed danger.

  She had left the building.

  Trust Yourself

  Em leaned against the printer, trying to ignore the shelves of impulse candy near the long package-wrapping counter. Emailing everything she’d found to herself and heading out to find a cheaper—and faster—way to print it was the most efficient way to tackle the situation, especially since there was a CopySend two blocks away. The library’s printers meant well, but they were lumbering beasts and she didn’t have cash in her wallet for the copy fees. Two blocks away, she could sign in, send it to a lightning-fast machine, and use her debit card.

  The urge to sign onto her bank statements was well-nigh overpowering, but she resisted it mightily.

  She was fairly sure she’d found the guy—George Alfred Cavanaugh, one of the leading luminaries of something called the Sophic Gentlemen’s Club. The Club seemed to be a rival organization to the Freemasons—at least, there was a lot of back-and-forthing in some old newspapers. Some guy in England, bless his strange little historical fetishes, had scanned a bunch of pamphlets dealing with a sort of war between Freemasons and the Sophics—or the Fratres, as they liked to call themselves. There were accusations of all sorts of nifty stuff—double-dealing, ungentlemanly fisticuffs, and hints of “offenses against God and man.” Which, given the 1700s, could have been anything from sodomy to an interest in vaccination.

  The war had seemed mostly confined to insults in various newsletters and tongue-in-cheek adverts, but there were hints of something else—a number of starchy English “authorities” had printed notices about disturbing the peace and altercations in “clubs.” Probably not nightclubs, either. This Cavanaugh guy seemed pretty high up in the Sophics.

  It was enough to make her wonder if the Freemasons really were a cabal secretly running the world instead of just old guys who couldn’t decide what kind of gravy they wanted. Working for a caterer part time in college had gotten her into one of their lodges, and she remembered the boss running her capable hands back through her long, curling, gray hair and swearing under her breath because the clients wouldn’t specify white or brown gravy without arguing over it for a week, for God’s sake.

  It wasn’t exactly the image of a brotherhood that could control powerful wish-granting hunks. Or maybe it was, and that was why the world hadn’t ended.

  Emily even had a few moments, looking through a website on 18th-century “grimoires”—some type of magic book, apparently—of thinking maybe Hal could teach her a little bit about real magic. The idea that it was all true, that she could maybe learn to do some of the shit people only saw in movies, was powerfully attractive.

  Then it occurred to her, well, maybe she was better off not knowing, especially if it had to do with enslaving people. It didn’t sound like a happy time all around.

  The orange nylon carpet in here looked like it was from the seventies, and was worn down to the nap in more than one place. God. I need a sandwich. Better yet, a burger, dripping with cheese and bacon. And pickles. There was that place—was it on Fifteenth?—that served milkshakes, too. A peanut-butter-Oreo milkshake. They would put bacon in, if you asked. May had talked her into it, and it was a glorious taste sensation but not one you could indulge in more than once a year.

  She is thoughtless and selfish.

  He didn’t know a damn thing about May. He didn’t know about her growing up in that fundamentalist shithole of a town, or the fact that she volunteered at a no-kill shelter out in Gole Heights regularly. He didn’t know about May coming over almost every night for a few months after the divorce, with a movie or a magazine or something in a casserole dish, knowing that the last thing Em wanted to do was think about what had just happened or cook. During finals crunch week, it was always May making sure their mini-fridge had the healthiest snacks they could dredge up as they starved through college. There was May when Em had pneumonia that bad, scary winter, driving her to the hospital and sitting for three hours holding Em’s hand as she coughed and choked and shivered with fever. It was May who comforted Em each time she called her parents and heard her mother’s disappointment, her father’s silent wishing she’d been born a boy, May who was listed as beneficiary on Em’s 401(k) if something happened.

  Now there was a thought. Had the genie touched her retirement fund? She was going to have to seriously think about the implications of the whole damn financial thing.

  The printer shuddered, spitting out sheet after sheet. She’d have to get something to eat and try to find the gigantic whipped-cream house again. Would the address be in her GPS as “home”? Maybe Hal had been that thorough. Who knew? Hopefully he was enjoying the library.

  Em told the persistent sense that she hadn’t logged out of her email to go away. She’d checked four times before standing up from her chair and stretching, and another two times before she picked up her purse, and walked back twice to make sure before she left the building.

  It paid to be sure. Especially when you’d just been chucked into the deep end of, well, magic. She scratched her chin thoughtfully on her blue scarf, relishing its familiar comfort.

  Did the kid behind the counter, doing something at a large paper-cutting machine, know about this? Did anyone outside, on the sidewalk, going about their daily lives, know? How about government people? Police, EMTs, first responders? Did the military know? Were there secret wars going on with genies and other, darker things? Things like the big hairy whatevers in her apartment?

  Appetites, Hal called them. Like bloodhounds, exc
ept they bring the prey back once it is dead.

  Ugh. Her phone buzzed. She dug it out, wondering if she should check to see if, say, Becky’s number was still in her contacts. Or Brett’s email.

  It was an 800 number. Telemarketer, probably. Even a genie couldn’t stop robocalls.

  God. Would anyone she’d met at work recognize her? So many questions, ramifications, her head hurt trying to wrap around it all.

  The printer finally finished. She winced a little as she saw the end total, but it was about half of what it would be at the library, and quicker, too. Her receipt spat out of a slit on the machine’s front, and she spent a few moments tidying the stack of freshly printed paper. Somewhere in it might be a clue. After a while, she’d just dumped everything about Cavanaugh into a cloud document and—

  Wait, did I sign out of that? Well, of course she had—it was attached to her email suite.

  She was getting silly. Lunch was definitely called for. It would be more like dinner by the time she actually got a table somewhere. She had a spot, so she might as well stay parked—and pay the exorbitant rates—unless she wanted a drive-thru and the concomitant worry of navigating the beginning of rush hour. Even a genie might not be able to deal with the traffic on the freeway around five PM.

  Em glanced at the print shop’s windows. A chill slid down her back, along her arms, through the backs of her legs.

  It was too dark—well, the clouds of sleet overhead were heavy, and it was winter. The streetlamps were blinking and stuttering as they woke up, though the cars hadn’t turned their headlights on yet. People hurried under the ice-spattering deluge, so Em took a few moments to stuff the thick sheaf of maybe-useless paper into the laptop pocket in her purse. It would be heavy, and hell on her shoulders, but that would keep them from getting soaked.

  Sleet splatted dully against the window; the wind was up, too. It looked damn cold out there.

  And take, for example, the guy standing by the newspaper boxes right outside the CopySend’s automatic door. He had a long dark coat with a high collar, but it looked far too thin for this weather. His hat was weird, too—a wide brim and a round crown, reminding her vaguely of old Westerns. He just stood there, facing the street, and ice-freighted rain ran in long strings off his hat brim.

  Why did that bother her so much? Maybe he was waiting for a bus? But the nearest stop was in the middle of the next block, or in front of the library two blocks away in the other direction. If he wanted a newspaper, why didn’t he just go around the front of the boxes and get one? Was he watching the office building across the street, or the sandwich shop on their first floor?

  Emily’s stomach gave an unhappy burble.

  May had texted her. Planning the Xmas party with Gloria. You game?

  Not really. She could wait until she was less cranky to reply, though. Maybe she could even tactfully bow out this year. Or get the genie to hang some tinsel. That was, if she hadn’t figured out how to get rid of him in two months.

  He hadn’t shown up yet. Maybe he was reading up on a couple hundred years of history. Explaining Thanksgiving and indigenous genocide to him was going to be a chore.

  Em stopped just outside the range of the automatic door. What was bothering her so much? It wasn’t her phone, or her slight irritation at being asked to do the scut work of organizing for yet another Christmas party she probably wouldn’t attend for more than a couple hours, if that. It wasn’t even that she was so hungry she could probably put away a cheeseburger and a half before she slowed down.

  It was her feet. They refused to budge, planted against ancient, cheap, tough-as-nails, industrial carpeting. Her very sensible rainproof boots—fished out of a coat closet in the front hall of the whipped-cream house—just wouldn’t move.

  That’s your instinct right there, May would say. Trust it. Trust yourself.

  And oh, how Em had needed to hear that, especially after Steven. Endlessly agonizing over whether or not she was doing the right thing.

  You know you did.

  Just like she knew, right now, that something was very, very wrong, and she needed to stay still.

  Her gaze snagged, again, on the man in the black hat. Where had she seen a hat like that before? And he was really, really damp. What was he doing just standing there? It was weird, but not dangerous, right?

  He moved, restlessly, as if sensing her notice. His hat made funny little bobbing motions, like he was coughing. He turned, and she caught a flash of white high on his collar. A priest? The closest church was…well, goddamn, she didn’t know. Not within three blocks.

  Still, it was the city, and you saw all sorts of stuff on the sidewalk.

  The maybe-priest took a few long swinging strides; Em watched as he glided across the plate-glass window. A FedEx truck barreled to a stop, throwing up a sheet of rainwater, and the lone CopyStop employee scuttled past Em to help the driver, a harried-looking strawberry-blond man who hadn’t got the memo about winter and was wearing navy-blue shorts. Just looking at him made Em feel a little cold.

  “You need an umbrella, ma’am?” the CopyStop kid asked her, craning over his shoulder while he carried a stack of boxes into the brightly lit haven of his little store.

  “No,” she heard herself say, and tested her legs. They moved just fine now. “Thanks anyway, though.”

  She braced herself and hurried out into the curtains of icy, stinging sleet, turning away from the direction the maybe-priest had gone. It would mean crossing the street upstream instead of down to get back to her car, but that was probably for the best.

  Screw getting a restaurant meal. She wanted to be home, posthaste, even if it meant sitting in some traffic. And even if it wasn’t really home, but a white creampuff of a house too big for any reasonable human being.

  What Fear Is

  She was in one of the small metal cages they used to lift themselves from floor to floor. Hal, deciding it probably was not quite wise to surprise her by coalescing in such cramped quarters, waited on the floor she’d parked on. The bell to announce the lift’s presence dinged, and when the door opened, he was surprised to see her soaked almost all the way through, shivering, and very pale. Her curling hair hung in wet ribbons, and she had just sneezed, her hand cupped over her nose. Those wide dark forest-eyes met his, and Hal, possessing a stomach since he was corporeal, wondered why said internal organ suddenly dropped inside him.

  Well, what would one of those chivalric heroes do? Take off his jacket and offer it to her, of course. But he could do so much more.

  “Oh, hey.” She lowered her hand, wrinkling her nose. Even her knitted scarf was soaked. “Got all your reading done?”

  “You left the library.” He tried not to glower, stepping forward as she shuffled out of the lift. It chimed and prepared itself for another trip.

  “Yeah, I had to go print some stuff out.” Her boots squeaked a little, they were so damp. “There was a strange guy—”

  The power leapt to obey him. She gasped, water leaving her hair and clothing in long ribbons, drawn free without heat so as not to scald her. Then, very carefully, the warmth—just a few degrees, so she stopped shivering. She looked a little less pale now. Much better.

  “There.” He watched her expression change from shock to pleasure, and congratulated himself. “A strange man, you say?” The chill of danger had not receded, but there was no reason to make her feel it. Had she been menaced by a mortal?

  “Yeah. It’s the weirdest thing.” She hitched her bag higher on her slim shoulder. “Crap. I can never remember where I park in these things.”

  “Over here.” He pointed, tried to decide whether carrying her bag was the romantic thing to do. Or an arm over her shoulder? No, that was too much. If this were one of the novels, how would the hero behave? Courteously, of course. At least she was dry, and no longer freezing.

  “You’re a lifesaver. Anyway, yeah. Guy was just standing out in the rain. Who knows, though, in the city you see all sorts of—”

 
He moved, pushing her behind the nearest round concrete pillar before he was quite aware of the projectiles flashing her way. They were very fast, and he stepped aside for a moment to consider them. Ugly things—yes, he had absorbed the knowledge of bullets. The arquebuses and muskets of Cavanaugh’s day had evolved considerably.

  In the end, though, they were simply mortal missiles. Even if a faint scrim of not-quite-light danced on the blunt nose of each one.

  Ah. A newer magic, and one he had considerable experience of. The Church, it seemed, was alive and well. Not to mention still dabbling in things its public face professed a horror of and disbelief in.

  Hal spread his fingers, and the bullets ceased struggling against his grasp on the timeflow. When he rejoined its stream, they would drop to the ground, harmless, chattering and hissing as the magical charge on them fizzed uselessly. The next item, of course, was their source, and Hal found himself, for the first time in centuries, facing a fighting priest of the Order of Saint Bartholomew.

  A lean, blond, blue-eyed young man in a round-crowned hat, wet clear through from the rain outside like Hal’s bearer had been. The priest held a pistol in one hand, obviously meaning to injure or even kill Hal’s bearer, and his other hand clasped the hilt of a straight sword with a tar-black blade.

  How interesting. He had never seen such a weapon, and probed at it deftly with nonphsyical fingers. It did not fight his hold on this small sliver of the timestream, nor did it resonate when plucked at. Clearly this was what the priest meant to use on Hal. Caution was called for.

  Time dropped back into place, and Hal’s foot flicked out, connecting solidly with the mortal priest’s midsection. The man went flying and his pistol barked wildly, scattering bullets in a wide arc. None of them approached Hal’s bearer, so he blurred forward, leaping lightly atop one of the concrete teeth meant to stop a metal chariot from plowing through the lifts. The priest landed with a snap of breaking bones and the crunch of crumpling metal, sliding down the side of a large black vehicle parked on the dividing line between two spots.