Promises to Keep

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “Left,” I said, but Ellen was already heading down the path. Her rough-tread hiking boots were better for this than my cowboy boots. I should have changed before we came out here, but neither of us had wanted to take the time to go back to the office, much less my apartment uptown. The trip out here was a pain on mass transit, and I wanted to get here before night.

  Not that I hadn’t spent time in cemeteries at night, but never willingly, and this one… this one had a reputation. Both good and not-good.

  The noise got louder, as we went down the hill. It wasn’t loud, in and of itself; you wouldn’t have heard it if there was heavy traffic. It was like walking under a tree full of chattering birds, except it was coming from ground level, and it sounded…worse.

  I should have warned Ellen, but how the hell do you prep someone for this?

  “Ack!” She jumped back, damn near into my arms, and I caught her as gently as I could. “Steady…”

  The figure in front of us was about four feet tall, and barely a foot wide, and looked a hell of a lot like a bulked-up preying mantis, if preying mantis’ had unnervingly human faces behind the mandibles. Exactly who I’d hoped to run into.

  It clicked at us, and tilted its head.

  “Sorry to interrupt you,” I started to say, but those pop-set black eyes looked past me, right at Ellen, and chittered at her. I turned to look, just in time to see her shock slide back behind her usual poker face. Good girl, you don’t ever let them see you be shook.

  “You are not dead,” it said, almost accusingly. “Only the dead come to us.”

  “We are not dead,” I agreed. “But we have an interest in the dead. Not the same interest you have,” I hurried to clarify, just in case it thought we were competition. “Only in knowing if you have recently…” encountered? Eaten? “If anyone new has been brought to your attention.”

  “There are always new, always old.” It couldn’t seem to stop staring at Ellen, which was making both of us uneasy. I realized that there were others gathering, a few feet away. All right, I’d known they would be in a pack, or whatever they called themselves, but knowing that and seeing it up close and personal was a bit much. Normally I could handle anything the city threw at me with a certain level of calm, but this… These things would strip the flesh from my bones, when my time came, and crunch the bones into dust. It was what they did, it was their purpose in the circle of fucking life, but I hadn’t expected to ever actually face it while still breathing.

  “These would be…two men,” I managed to say, keeping what I thought - hoped - was a calm, cool note in my voice. “Humans. One black, one white?” I had no idea if it could even differentiate, with those eyes. “Still alive.”

  “The living do not interest us.” Its gaze was still stuck past my shoulder.

  “Yeah. Could have fooled me about that.” I shifted so that Ellen was entirely behind me, and tried to catch its attention again. “If you saw these men, would you tell me about it?”

  “If you came and asked me after I had seen them.”

  Took me a second to puzzle that one out, and I suspected that was as good as I was going to get. Doubtful they’d have access to telephones, much less the internet, and none of them were going to leave the grounds. Specifically, they couldn’t leave the grounds. Old story, of which I knew only the base legend: turf war; they lost.

  I didn’t bother to say thank you: carrion-eaters weren’t notorious for their adherence to Ms. Manners’ finest, and I wanted to get Ellen - and myself - away from them soonest possible.

  The slope back up seemed steeper than it had coming down, and neither of us stopped to talk until we were at the ridge again, and then back over the other side.

  “The hell?”

  I flinched. My mother used to have that same tone of voice: not shouting, but strong enough to break a ten-year-old’s nerve. “They’re called Direlings. They’re categorized as mostly harmless.”

  “Unless you happen to be dead. Or me. That thing wanted to touch me. What is it with fatae trying to touch me?”

  “It’s all that current you have coiled inside you,” I said, remembering my informant down the seaport, who had wanted very badly to touch my Shadow, too. I couldn’t think of any others, offhand, but she sounded like there had been a few. I frowned. I’d never felt any urge to touch her, not like that, but… I spent a considerable about of time around Talent, and I knew better. If Valere didn’t chop my hand off, Bonnie would. “They - we - can feel it, like electricity on our skin. And some of ‘em,” and I looked over my shoulder, an instinctive gesture, to make sure nobody was following us. “Some of ‘em are just damned creepy.”

  “Yeah creepy as fuck. You take me to all the best places, boss. I want to go home and take a long, hot shower. With a scrub brush.”

  oOo

  We caught the subway just as it pulled into the station, slipping into a half-full car as far away from a noisy bunch of teenagers as we - and the other adults in the car - could manage. It had been a long day, and Ellen had done well, but there was something in her eyes that I didn’t think was just because she’d gotten ooked out by the direlings. Or not only because. I kept silent the first few stops, then leaned into her personal space just enough that we could keep the conversations semi-private.

  “The guys you saw, they were alive. And you heard the sound when they were still alive. So whatever was going to happen to them, it happens there. Direlings have no reason to hurt the living, so maybe now that they’re aware of it -“

  Ellen stared at one of the ads telling us in English and Spanish that the only way to get ahead was to learn radiology skills. “Do you really think those things will stop someone getting killed? Why should they interrupt someone giving them more to eat?”

  “Shadow, you know how many fatae die every day in the city? No direling has ever gone hungry.” All right, maybe that wasn’t the best thing to think about. I gripped the pole and let myself sway with the movement of the subway car as we pulled out of Brooklyn and headed under the river to Manhattan. “You need to trust your instincts.” This was an on-going argument: she trusted her instincts about as much as I trusted the Mayor’s office. That is to say, we trusted them to screw it up.

  “Okay, you need to trust me that I trust your instincts. How’s that?” It felt like dirty pool, and not what I was supposed to be teaching her, but if it got that look out of her eyes, I could let her go home to that much-needed hot shower and hopefully a decent night’s sleep.

  The train curved around a corner and she got a minute as everyone shifted to adjust before having to answer.

  “Okay?” I was pushing. I could hear myself pushing. Ellen was starting to turn into a solid investigator: she had an eye for details, the ability to think on her feet, and a deep-seated suspicion of everyone’s story. But she doubted her own, too, and that was a problem.

  Most PIs are assholes not because we’re assholes, but because we’ve learned that the only thing we can trust us our own gut. And the gut, as my old partner used to say, is directly connected to the asshole. Ellen still tried to please and placate as a way to stay off everyone’s radar. I should be pushing her to fight me, to stand her ground… but not today.

  “All right,” she said finally. “Yeah.” And then with a little more certainty, “Yeah, you’re right. But what are we supposed to do? I mean we can’t stake out the cemetery, not and follow up on the case, too.” She tilted her head at me, and I was struck again by the lines of her face. Most young women would be self-conscious about that strong a nose and jawline, but Ellen didn’t seem to even notice. Cleopatra herself would have been proud. Now to get the rest of her to follow suit…

  “I don’t know, kid. That’s why we only take one client at a time. You can’t spread yourself thin and expect to make a real difference.” It wasn’t a consoling thing to say, but if I’d bullshitted her here, she’d know. She’d heard me talk about focus often enough before.

  “My visions are-“

 
; “Your visions are important.” I headed that one off at the pass, before she started to wonder about a certain double-headed coin in my pocket. “If we need to call in help to cover all the corners, we will. It’s not like we’re alone in this. The PUPS would love to have a chance to out-spook the spooks, given a chance.” I grinned at her, and she smiled, reluctantly, back. Venec would hop at the chance to train some of his newbies, at our expense.

  We split at South Ferry, me heading back uptown, her off to the tiny apartment she’d gotten in the East Village. It was about the size of my bathroom, but the building was solid - both Didier and I had checked it out - and the landlord wasn’t on any of the NYPD slumlists, so it was about as good as an underemployed twenty-something without a trust fund was going to get, without leaving the island, and Valere had been clear that she was to stay within reach. The mentor-mentee thing used to involve fostering as well, I’d been told, but Ellen’s case was slightly beyond that, considering her age.

  It was funny, really. To look at us, you’d think there was only about a decade’s difference. She’d had to grow up fast, and I’d… well, fauns age slower than humans. My hair was still dark and my bones didn’t creak, but there were days I felt older than dirt. Today - staring a carrion-eater in the mandibles - I felt every grain of it.

  oOo

  Ellen slogged her way up the three flights of stairs to her apartment, unlocked the door, and fell inside, shedding clothes as she went. She hadn’t been joking, entirely, about needing that shower. The way the direling had looked at her, its hand-claw-things opening and shutting like it wanted to measure the density of her bones just before it crunched into her…ugh.

  It wouldn’t have touched her. Danny wouldn’t have let it. Her boss might come across as being sort of laconic, maybe a little slow, with the way his body slouched and especially when he pulled the baseball cap down low over his face, but she knew that there was muscle under that jacket, and an inhuman strength that could throw a full-grown human off it tracks without breaking a sweat. Plus, he had the seriously overprotective thing going on, even when he tried not to let it show.

  Genevieve had warned her about that, months ago. “Danny’s a good guy. But he’s got…a thing.”

  “About women?”

  “About throwaways.” Her mentor was a lot of things, but subtle wasn’t one of them. That was why she left negotiations to her partner. “He wants to save the world, especially the underage part of the world.”

  “I’m not underage.” She hadn’t been, mentally, since she was around twelve, and started seeing things out of the corner of her eye, making her parents think she was crazy. Since she’d manifested as a Talent, on a family that didn’t have a clue magic existed.

  “You know what I mean.” Genevieve had given her that Look, the one that said she’d expected better, smarter, from her mentee, and that had been the end of that conversation.

  The shower was hot, almost to the point of scalding, and at this hour of the evening, when most people were just heading home or making dinner, there was actual water pressure. Ellen would have been content to stay there for an hour, except that ten minutes was about as long as she could count on the water staying hot.

  She debating washing her hair, and then decided it didn’t need it yet, and she really didn’t have the patience needed to deal with it, after. Pulling on sweats, and tossing her day’s clothing into the hamper, Ellen curled up on the sofa on her living room/dining room/work area, and reached for her notebook.

  Danny had done his Q&A, right after the vision, because he thought the first reactions were the best, the clearest. Ellen didn’t disagree, exactly, but she was starting to think that what lingered was important, too. Like in a dream, the details that sunk in and stayed were often pointing toward the thing you needed to remember. Or what might trigger an understanding of the dream.

  She shivered, and pulled a blanket up over her legs, even though the apartment was a reasonable temperature. The problem with that theory was that visions weren’t dreams. They didn’t come from her subconscious, but someone else’s energy, getting caught up in the current and arrowing in to her. They called her a storm-seer because storms picked up and tossed current around like whoa, and she caught the brunt of that every time, but once she’d gotten a little of her own current stored, the visions started finding her whenever there was the slightest surge.

  Most of them were small twinges, a sense of something being wrong, but not enough information to act on. Enough to wake her up in the night, but not enough to tell anyone about. She held the fragments close, and tried to remember what she could, knowing that she might be the only person in the world to know that someone was in danger.

  She couldn’t control them, that was the problem. She couldn’t close the door and say “sorry, busy.” Danny had taken her in to make use of those visions - both Genevieve and Bonnie were right, he couldn’t say no to someone in need - but she was distracting him from someone else who needed help, now.

  That…sucked. That more than sucked.

  And yeah, they could get one of the Pups to stake out the place - stake out a cemetery, ok the jokes just wrote themselves - but that felt wrong to her. Not that they wouldn’t do a fine job but…the visions came to her. She was the one supposed to do something about them. It was her responsibility.

  “Tomorrow, we need to be focusing on Mister McConnell,” she said, staring down at her open notebook. “Danny shouldn’t be stressing over this, too.”

  So what did she have? The vision had been quiet, except for the chittering noise. And not-bright. Not dark, exactly, not like it would have been at night, but red-shadowed, like…dawn.

  She knew where, and now she knew when. She just didn’t know who, or why.

  Only the who mattered.

  She was off the couch and pulling a clean pair of jeans out of the drawer before she realized that she’d made a decision.

  And she wasn’t going to call Danny. This was her deal. She was going to watch, and shout an alarm, and that was all. Let the boss sleep.

  6

  Despite the urgent feeling driving her, Ellen was smart enough - despite what some people thought - not to just rush out to the cemetery, especially at night. She dressed carefully in layers, so that she wouldn’t get cold while she was waiting, and brewed a thermos of coffee to take with her. She packed that in a backpack from her days living in Central Park, threw in the leftover half of a deli sandwich from the day before, and a pear, just in case she got hungry, then reconsidered and added a chocolate bar, too. She’d been hoarding it for a bad day, but she thought sitting on cold grass all night waiting to see if someone got killed, qualified.

  Her mother’s voice sifted through the back of her head where she usually kept it locked down, reminding her that sitting on cold grass all night wasn’t required. Her mother had been not the best mother in the world, maybe, but it hadn’t been because she was a stupid woman. Ellen went into her closet and pulled out the folding beach chair she’d bought on the off chance that she might have a day she wanted to go to Coney Island or something, and put that by the door, too. Collapsed into its carrying case, it was small profile enough she shouldn’t get too many dirty looks.

  In fact, she did get looks, but mainly because she caught the tail end of rush hour, and there wasn’t really enough room for both her backpack and the collapsed chair, crushed in with so many other people. She made herself as small and unimposing as possible, but she wasn’t Genevieve, who could make herself disappear even when you were looking at her. Ellen was tall, with broad shoulders and sharp features, and people saw her, even when she didn’t want them to. Especially when she didn’t want them to.

  Slowly, the train emptied out as they got further into Brooklyn, and Ellen was able to exhale slightly, letting her shoulders slump. Genevieve was always telling her to listen to the subway cars, feel the current running with them, and learn how to pick up a little of that, siphoning it off in a slow but steady trickle. It wa
s hard to find it, though, when there were so many other people around. She couldn’t relax enough to feel it, wasn’t comfortable opening her own core to take it in. But she hadn’t done a full charge in a while, and her mentor hammered into her head enough times that the moment you ran down was when you’d need to pull up something massive. Ellen had the advantage over most other Talent for being able to find and use ley lines easily, but you couldn’t count on there being a line within reach. So: trickle charge, whenever and wherever she could.

  Grabbing an open seat, Ellen set her bags between her knees for safety, leaned her head back and closed her eyes, trying to feel the thrum of current sliding around her. It was faint, like a dry tickle in her throat, but she found it, touched it. Her breathing slowed, and she tried to remember what Genevieve had taught her. Find, touch. Open. Everyone visualized it differently, everyone handled it differently. In Ellen’s mind, her core was like her mother’s yarn stash, if the yarn were alive. Different colors, different textures, mostly either wrapped in a skein or coiled in a ball. It was hard to imagine closing or opening it the way Genevieve talked about, but she could unwind it, slip the end of the new current in, and rewind it into the appropriate skein…

  Distracted by what she was about to do, worried about how she was going to sneak into the cemetery, and what she might face, thinking that she should have packed something that could act like a weapon, Ellen almost didn’t notice when the first thread of train-current wound itself into her hands, and her hands automatically fed it into the existing ball of current, and it wound itself around and curled up inside her core like a contented cat.

  “Huh,” she said, once she realized what had happened. She didn’t feel any different, but there was a sense of…well-being that trumped her worries, just for an instant. “Not bad. Not bad at all.” By the time they reached her stop, Ellen was humming under her breath, and as she left the train, she patted it once, like saying thank you.