“Deb, seriously, get a hold of yourself. Take a couple of deep, cleansing breaths, okay?” says Carly, rocking back on her heels as she waves her arms in front of her like a yoga instructor, sweeping them out and in like she’s about to start a meditation session. “You got this!” she follows up cheerfully before she presses the headphones to her ears again. “Oh shit, Mandy’s taking calls—”
“I told her not to take calls on the air. It’s what you do on talk shows, not on news shows,” Deb groans, peering at the television screen. “Go yell at her, okay?”
Carly salutes in reply and races out of the room.
“Look,” says Deb then, leaning forward, tapping her blunt finger on her desktop. “I need this shit straight. Holly, who the hell is this jokester?” She waves her hand toward Virago.
That’s just how Deb talks, but it still rubs me the wrong way as I stare down at her, seated in her swivel chair, and frown.
“Deb, I’m not certain how to break this to you, but it’s not exactly the Loch Ness monster out there,” I tell her sharply, folding my arms in front of my chest. “This isn’t something that can be explained. It’s a monster out there, literally, and Virago is here to…to kill it. Because it’s very dangerous,” I tell her, summarizing the reasons that Virago needs to find the beast succinctly, and—I hope—drawing no further questions about other worldly origins for the beast. And for Virago.
“Wait…kill it?” says Deb, scribbling something furiously on a piece of scrap paper with another pen that she fumbles out of her desk drawer. She glances up, just then, narrows her eyes shrewdly at Virago. “Why are you gonna kill it? Are you some big game hunter or something? What exactly is it that you’re trying to kill?” Deb has worked in news long enough that she thinks that if she asks the question in enough different ways, eventually she’ll get the answer she wants to hear.
“I don’t know exactly what it is,” repeats Virago, crossing her arms, too, as she shakes her head. She raises her chin, her eyes glittering dangerously. “I do know that it will put many people’s lives in danger, so I do what I must do in order to keep that from happening.”
“Danger? Oh, God, this is seriously too good to be true,” mutters Deb, drawing a big circle around whatever it is that she scribbled down. She’s rolling her eyes, too, which means that she obviously doesn’t believe that last part. Deb flicks her gaze up to the television, and then groans out loud. “That damn kid is still taking phone calls, I have my phones ringing off the hook and hundreds of email messages are pouring in from everywhere because we are the only news station in all of Boston who’s saying anything about this right now.” She places her hands flat on the desk and glances up at us with her sharp gaze. She shrugs. “So, okay, here’s what we’re going to do, kids. I’m going to send a cameraman with you for the day to shadow you, see you meet this monster head on.” She’s already picking up her phone to page the secretary as she rattles off quickly, like something in very fine print: “I mean, if you’re okay with that.”
“Are you kidding? Absolutely not,” I tell her instantly, mouth open in shock, at the exact same moment that Carly—dashing into the room—shouts “sure!”
“Carly,” I hiss, rounding on her, but she’s already giving Deb a big thumbs up and turning to me as she grabs her headset off and tosses it onto Deb’s desk, running her hands through her frizzy hair.
“I’ll do it—I’ll be the camerawoman,” she tells the room at large. “I know how to work the camera, and besides, I can get you the footage quicker. But I’ll just shadow her for a few hours, okay?” She’s already tugging on my arm, practically trying to drag me toward the open door out of Deb’s office. “Surely you’d agree to just a few hours, Holly.”
“Shadow?” says Virago, perplexed, as I sigh.
“Carly’s going to follow us around with a big old camera perched on her shoulder to take constant video of us,” I say with a single brow raised.
“It’s for posterity’s sake,” Deb tells us, already turning away from us, and typing much too hard on a beat-up looking laptop. “Be back by seven, Aisley,” she snaps at Carly, and Carly gives me a great, big smile as she pushes me by the small of my back right out of Deb’s office and down the corridor, Virago following along at a more sedate pace, shutting the door behind us.
“Carly, what the hell were you thinking? Virago can’t be found out. If people hear that she thinks she’s from another world…I mean…” I trail off, hissing into her ear as we round another corner, heading toward the equipment rooms. Carly fishes a set of keys out of her pocket, unlocks the creaking metal door, pushing it open and flicking on the light with another eye roll.
“God, I know, why do you think I’m the one shadowing you?”
“Why are you shadowing us at all? This just complicates things,” I mutter, following her into the dank, musty-smelling equipment room. The public access station has always been a little low on funding, but the way that most of the cords to various pieces of electronic equipment are stored are by elaborate knots, and there are used coffee cups sitting on top of old computer monitors, and about a foot of solid dust on the top of every single thing. To make matters worse, most of the cameras the public access station uses were manufactured a couple of decades ago, and are so out of date that getting film for them is more difficult than it’s worth.
Not that this ever phases the employees of LEM Public Access Television, a hardy bunch of people who work extra hard because they believe in the station and public television devoutly. Carly—one of LEM’s biggest supporters—picks up a choice piece of vintage camera equipment right now, hefting it onto her shoulder. At least this camera doesn’t have coffee rings on top of it (and who knows how much liquid has been spilled on them) like most of the other equipment, so will probably work. She fiddles with it, peering inside the VHS component.
“Hey, I want in on this, too, you know,” she tells me, glancing up with a bright smile. “I mean, think about it. I’m the one who most of this information has been funneling through, so I know right whereabouts the monster was just sighted. We can work together,” she says, encouragingly. “We’ll put our three heads together, and we’ll find that beast in no time at all, you’ll see.”
My trepidation starts to clear. Carly’s right, of course. After all, she’s been getting all of the reports, the information moving directly through her, and if we can get to the beast, not only will we have a chance at cornering it and keeping it from hurting other people, but she’ll also get a pretty spectacular news clip that will make the television station the highest rated in our city. That’d be pretty awesome for her, and for the station, Deb and her grouchiness notwithstanding.
And, honestly, if Carly comes along, I won’t be able to do any passionate declarations of love, infatuation or attraction to Virago. And perhaps that’s just as well right now.
We’ve got to get our heads in the game. Right now, somewhere in Boston, there’s a massive beast who could hurt anyone at any time.
That’s got to be stopped.
I glance at Virago, feel my heart sinking in me as she smiles fetchingly at Carly, steps forward and offers to carry the camera out to the car for her with a genteel nod of her head. Carly actually blushes a little at this kind offer, and then hands Virago the camera without a second thought. Of course Virago hefts it up and places it lightly on her shoulder like it weighs about as much as a butterfly. Because to Virago, the woman who picks up swords like they’re matchsticks, it probably does weigh as much as a butterfly.
Carly and I exit the storeroom, and she fiddles with the key in the lock, making certain the door is locked behind us. She glances up at me, and then turns back to the lock with a sideways smile as she mutters, “Damn, you’ve got it bad.”
I round on her, feeling my cheeks burn instantaneously. Virago is already a ways down the hallway, striding confidently back the way we came, the camera easily balanced on her shoulder. God, I hope she’s out of earshot.
“Wh
at the hell?” I hiss to her, but Carly’s got one eyebrow raised, and her tongue in her cheek as she stares at me imperiously.
“You think I can’t see that you’ve got the hots for Virago?” she whispers back to me, removing the key from the lock and trying the door handle. It doesn’t budge, and she deposits the key ring back into her jeans pocket. “I mean, seriously, Holly, satellites can see you drooling from space.”
“First off, that’s disgusting,” I mutter, following after her as she saunters down the hallway. I glance up at Virago, but I still think she might be out of earshot. I lower my voice to a tiny whisper anyway. “Second off—”
“Second off, you’ve got it bad, and that’s completely obvious,” Carly repeats, grinning at Virago who turns to look back at us down the hallway. “Two seconds!” she calls out, practically singing. “Holly and I have to powder our noses!” Then she grabs my shoulders and all but shoves me through a swinging door and into the lady’s bathroom we were passing. The last thing I see is Virago’s perplexed face before the door slams shut behind us.
“She doesn’t know what ‘powdering our noses’ means, Carly,” I sigh and shake my head as Carly turns to the mirror, starting to rearrange her ponytail this way and that, drawing it up to the top of her head with a few specific tugs as she glances at my reflection with brows raised.
“She’ll figure it out. But, this is serious conversation time right now, Holly. What the hell is going on?” Carly rounds on me, her expression stern, her mouth turning down at the corners. “You have the hots for her, that much is totally and appallingly obvious. So have you broken up with Nicole yet?”
I’m spluttering. How do you explain to your best friend that you don’t (as she so eloquently put it) “have the hots” for someone when you totally do? There’s no use in lying to her, but it’s hard admitting it to myself that I find Virago ridiculously attractive.
That I think I’m falling in love with her.
I lean back against the cold tile of the bathroom wall as the truth of that statement moves through me. I mean, maybe I’m not falling in love with her. To be honest, would I even know what it feels like? I don’t think I’ve ever fallen in love with anyone. I don’t think I fell in love with Nicole when we first started going out. I knew that I liked her, so I pursued her. That was it. There weren’t any deeper feelings than physical attraction, and I thought that was good enough in the beginning of a relationship. I thought that was good enough to inspire me to start something with her if I thought she was attractive, and she thought I was attractive. I thought that things could grow from there.
And when I look at Virago, yeah, there’s a hell of a lot of physical attraction. But it’s not just that. There’s so much more. When I gaze at that woman, that woman from another world, I see this entire sort of package, because she’s kind, she has this great sense of humor, she’s incredibly thoughtful and good and a knight for heaven’s sake. And she likes my dog. There are so many little things that I never thought about before, that it never occurred to me really mattered until I didn’t have them with the woman I’d been intending on spending the rest of my life with.
Honestly, and I know this sounds terrible, but I thought you were supposed to settle in a romantic relationship. No one’s perfect, and I thought if you were too picky, and had too long of a list of qualifications for a romantic partner would mean that you’d spend your entire life alone.
And now I find out that all of the things that were on my list (that I’d, admittedly, never even thought about putting on a list until I met Virago) are realized in this one amazing woman.
The gut-wrenching, painful as hell part is that she’s from another world. And we are absolutely, positively not meant to be together because of that.
I think about Nicole. About how she hates Shelley, how she doesn’t have time for me anymore. How she still wants to be my girlfriend, the kind of girlfriend who doesn’t make commitments like moving in together, the kind of girlfriend you can call up on the weekend if you need someone to go to a party with or you’d like some time in bed. The kind of girlfriend that’s, honestly, almost meaningless. I’ve become that to Nicole when all I ever wanted was something romantic, something love-filled.
Maybe I wanted too much.
So much sadness fills me that I answer Carly with what makes the most logical sense. Because it’s the only thing I can cling to in that moment of realization that Virago and I are not meant to be.
“No,” I whisper to Carly, feeling my heart sink inside of me. “I haven’t broken up with Nicole yet. I don’t…” I swallow, let it spill out of me, the one idea I haven’t even wanted to think about yet. “I don’t honestly know if I will.”
She stares at me, her eyes narrowing, her hands placed on her hips.
“Just…just think about it, Carly,” I tell her quietly. My heart has sunk so low in me now that I can feel it starting to break along the edges. “Nicole and I? We’re all right together. I’ve put so much time into the relationship. Four years. Maybe this is as good as it gets for me.”
“What are you talking about?” Carly reaches forward, grabs my shoulders, shakes me gently. “Holly, seriously, you’re starting to scare me. I know you, okay? I know how you over-think shit. And I can tell you right now that this is actually much, much simpler than you’re making it.” She takes a deep breath, searches my eyes. “You like Virago, it’s obvious. So just admit it.”
“Of course I like Virago,” I whisper, letting the truth come out of my mouth. Now it’s real. Now I can’t take those words back.
“So here’s the most obvious and simplest resolution in this whole damn universe: why don’t you just tell her?” asks Carly, drawing out the words in frustration. It’s obvious, of course. I should tell Virago how I feel about her.
But I can’t.
“You don’t understand,” I manage, swallowing. “I…I have Nicole,” I tell my best friend, feeling my insides begin to crumble as she stares at me, her mouth open in consternation.
“Holly,” she whispers, her face full of emotion as she tries to find the right words. She opens and shuts her mouth, and then clears her throat. “Holly,” she repeats, words soft. “This is your life.”
The bathroom door is pushed open, and one of the producers comes in, eyes wide and pausing when she sees us, Carly’s hands gripping my shoulders, obviously very emotional. “Sorry,” she mutters, walking quickly past us to get to the bathroom stalls, her gaze ducked down.
“You and me…we’ll talk about this later,” Carly mutters to me, shaking her head and straightening with a frown, tugging on the edges of her shirt as she turns angrily back to the mirror and yanks on her ponytail. I take a deep breath, and then we’re back out in the corridor where Virago stands patiently waiting for us, camera on her shoulder, other hand on her hip, her head to the side as she stares easily down the hallway, eyes unfocused, like she’s thinking about something very important.
“Ready to catch us a monster?” asks Carly brightly.
“No,” I whisper at the exact same moment that Virago’s eyes narrow, that she nods emphatically.
“Yes,” she tell us, her voice ringing out with strength.
We set off down the corridor together, the oddest pairing of the Three Musketeers that ever existed: a knight from another world, a public access television station producer…
And a woman who wants something she can never have.
Honestly, that sounds much more dramatic than it needs to be. I can be realistic sometimes, and this is just the way it is. I’m already in a relationship with Nicole. Virago is from another world, destined to return there as soon as possible. I would have probably continued on with my relationship with Nicole if Virago had shown up, Nicole and I acting like nothing had ever happened. I wouldn’t have known that there was someone out there who was perfect for me. I would never have known how much I was missing.
But now I do know.
And it’s the simple truth to say that it br
eaks my heart.
Chapter 10: The Red Herring
“What, exactly, are we looking for again?”
Casting an amused glance at Carly, Virago shakes her head almost ruefully as she rolls her shoulders back.
“An enormous beast,” mutters Virago, glancing up at the bright sun.
The three of us stand together in a small cluster down by the commercial fishing vessels at the docks. It’s a powerful scent of fish that’s surrounding us currently, and I’m trying to take small breaths through my mouth because the odor from the boats, the warehouses and the crates, rising in steady waves from the heat baking us, is pretty horrific. Virago is currently staring out at the water, Carly’s staring at Virago (and pointing her camera at Virago unwaveringly as it balances on her shoulder), and I’m standing beside both of them as we watch the undulating surface of the bright blue bay and look for…
Well. I don’t really know what we’re looking for either, to be honest.
“Different patterns in the water,” Virago explains quietly, as if she heard my unspoken question. “We’re looking for currents underneath the surface that might show us that there’s something large moving under the water.”
“But couldn’t a random current be a big fish or a shark or something?” I ask her, staring hard at the blue ocean. Nothing much moves save for the rhythmic surface.
“Granted, that may be the case…but this is where it was last sighted. So a random current may be another creatures. Or we may just get lucky, and it could be the beast,” says Virago quietly, narrowing her eyes at the water.
She’s right: according to the tweet that someone directed at Carly’s public access news Twitter account, the beast was just sighted here about ten minutes ago. Carly had gotten an alert on her phone as we were loading the camera into my car, and then we’d taken off quickly from the LEM public television station, speeding through the relatively quiet streets of Boston, thankfully a little less busy than usual because it was a Sunday.
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