“Uh,” Saint said. He sounded discomforted. Good, Steff thought savagely.
There was a pause.
“… For realsies, though,” Saint said. He sounded a lot more serious now, or at least as serious as someone could sound while using the word ‘realsies’. “Is it that hard to believe that you’re not the only one who has important things to do? Stuff to contribute?”
“Saint,” Steffan said, and then he said, “If you didn’t want to see me, you could’ve just said.”
And he hung up. Refreshing to be the one hanging up for a change.
He tried to go back to his work, but somehow it lacked its usual appeal. To be honest, it had for a while. He was passionate about the subject material, always had been, but – burnout? Was that the term? He had burnout something chronic. What he really needed was to go relax and have fun, but. Fun. How did you even fun?
He squared his jaw and ate an energy bar and settled down to put some good solid work into his thesis.
For several hours there was nothing but the sound of keyboard-tapping, interspersed by muttered calculations, frantic pen scrawl on whatever scrap paper was nearby, and occasional pacing. He worked quite studiously. It was Steffan. He always did.
He set his pen down and eyed his notes on vacuum decay. His sprawling colour-coded document full of quantum field information in general. His life’s work, the thing he was most passionate about in all the world.
“I am so fucking bored,” he said eventually, testing the words, and then he left.
His house was perched on Mt Victoria, with its impossibly steep roads and roads that were only connected to other roads by little flights of steps, with its bright-painted houses and parking spaces built on platforms jutting out into nothingness. Steff didn’t have a car, which made things easier, but he didn’t have a driveway either: the street didn’t reach him, so he had a stunted little cable car connecting the house with the narrow road.
The cable car rattled and creaked its way the short distance down the hill, and he got out and walked the medium distance into the central city. His life was measured out in moments of averageness, really. Forecast: boring, with a chance of bone-tired genius.
He went to the Pelham and sat there, fiddling studiously with his iPad like he was here to do work. There was an old couple arguing in the corner, a bored businessman sipping a ginger beer, a chatty group of high school students. He’d thought being around people might make him feel better, but he felt distanced. Normally this café’s clientele was made up of people more to his tastes –
That was a mean thought. He grabbed a free paper in an effort to cheer himself up. It was one of those silly uplifting ones that normally had crosswords and horoscopes and happy little bits of local news, articles about people with award-winning cheeses, that sort of thing.
The headline of this one read Man Mauled by Sharks was Wearing Lifejacket.
He blinked at it.
Sometimes he forgot to keep up with local news, being too immersed in his work; he hadn’t known about any shark attacks at all. He grimaced and placed the paper on the table. Not very cheery stuff. The old couple’s argument was much louder now. He got up to leave.
Half a second later he came back and snatched up the paper, scanning it. Something was nagging at him, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. This just seemed odd. Shark-maulings weren’t exactly common in Wellington Harbour.
The article was sparse on actual detail, so he sat down and fetched out his iPad, browsing news sites. As he’d thought, the authorities weren’t certain that it had been a shark; the body had been found in the water, but the bite marks weren’t consistent with any known species. He swiped his finger across the screen, looking at links. This wasn’t the only odd death. Other people had been drowned, or had gone missing. It went further back than the last few months, too. He sifted through news sites a little more, seeking. More unexplained deaths, and a couple had both fallen into comas as they were walking back to their hotel after a concert at the Michael Fowler Centre. Both of them at once, and neither of them had pre-existing conditions as far as the doctors could tell. Elsewhere a child had been found… drained of blood? There didn’t seem to be any common thread here, nothing that tied the incidents together aside from their strangeness.
“Hm,” he said. This seemed interesting, and finding things interesting was probably as close to having fun as he ever got. So he went to the library.
5
Saint ran up the stairs, coat flapping at his feet. At the top of the narrow little staircase there was a plain and serviceable door, which he kicked open. Now he was on the roof. The building was some officey headquarters or other in the business district, and he had to stop and blink for a second, because he had not been at all prepared for the view. It was early evening, the cloudy sky purpling at the edges. He could see the ocean stretching out, other buildings rising up around him, the ground far, far below. He hadn’t been prepared for the other part of the view, either, which was a bunch of creepy bird/human hybrids or something. Yikes.
There were four of them, bundled up in oversized clothes that didn’t do much to hide their inhumanity. His eyes traced the thinness of their arms and the shabby patches of feathers springing out of their skin in places, the tough almost-scaly hooked hands. On his arrival they all sprang up in a cacophony of squawks and screeches, hopping back in quick nervous motions, their eyes fixed on him. This behaviour was especially unnerving on the two that kept tilting their heads so they could keep Saint in view with one eye or the other, a seagull thing and a parroty one with greenish feathers.
“Noah,” Saint said, raising his hands carefully, slowly, fake-smiling like he didn’t have hostile intent, “you are an utterly rubbish distraction.”
He tried to glance over at where Noah was standing without taking his eyes off the bird things. It was Noah who’d suggested hunting for atua on the rooftops, where there was no way for them to escape and wreak havoc on the civilians; personally Saint suspected he just liked being somewhere he could feel the wind. He was twirling patterns with it, spinning it between his fingers as he stood there on the edge. Saint was fine with that so long as he didn’t go all weird and amnesiac again, which – had been happening less and less often, actually. And Noah’s shape was generally firmer now, too. “I did warn you,” Noah said almost too quietly. “There’s… not much I can do.”
Saint chuckled. “Sweet one, I have to warn you – if I get killed by a bunch of mutant chickens because of your self-esteem issues I will be really not amused.” The bird things were still just watching him, wary but staying still; slowly he let his hands drop. One, a little plump thing, was too wrapped up in layers of clothes for him to make out clearly, and one had wide goldish eyes and white and black feathers like a gull. The parrot one tilted its head back and forth, staring. They all of them stared.
“What are these things exactly?” Saint said, and he took a step forward. The cluster of creatures recoiled. One hissed, its head bobbing. The parrot flapped its arms; it had a stretch of diseased-looking red feathers, underneath. None of them had anything like real wings, though.
“Spirits displaced,” Noah said. “Pests. Petty little creatures that grew of the forestland.”
“Like those little hakuturi of yours? But, y’know, not as dead.”
Noah sniffed. “Those hakuturi were the spirits of this place when it had more woodland,” he said. “These things – I’m a friend to birds generally, but these are just scavengers. Pests. It ill becomes them. They don’t fit here.”
“Except for seagull guy,” Saint said. The creature in question had wandered off to pick at the ground. “He’s just chilling. Kudos to you, seagull guy. Noah, are these things even harmful? They don’t actually seem likely to be of any danger to anyone.”
“Well, they’re abominations in any case,” Noah said, and then another of the parroty ones scuttled out from behind the cover of a ventilation thing, snapping its beak at them. It grip
ped something in its claw-hands that looked remarkably like a car aerial. “And you forget that I’ve known of this side of the world a lot longer than you have,” Noah added. “I’ve seen them attack people. Do you want them to hurt people?”
That decided things. “Oh, you public menace,” Saint said to the parrot, and he pirouetted and sent a spear of flame directly at it. He missed by a large margin. He guessed he kind of deserved that. Spinning in circles wasn’t very practical.
The other birdthings uttered shrill cries of alarm and scattered. Saint whooped and ran amongst them, laughing. “This is less heroic than I was picturing at the start,” he said, as his next burst of fire caught the seagull one solidly in its beaky face. “I pictured myself standing silhouetted bold and grim at sunrise, holding my own against like, a dozen maero, y’know? This is more like… ” He flailed flame at one of the birdthings and swore cheerfully when he missed it. “Pest extermination. I’m not complaining, mind. I merely observe.”
“Maero are largely South Island creatures,” Noah said. “Your – house-sharer… ”
“Flatmate,” Saint said helpfully. The parrot one launched itself over the handrail to glide north down the Quay, but Saint managed to singe its tail-feathers to send it on its way.
“Your flatmate was an outlier.”
“Really? You know ‘outlier’ but not ‘flatmate’. Really.” He seemed to have gotten rid of most of them, but he was still full of energy, so he tilted his head upwards and sent a great roar of fire harmlessly to either side of him, just for the fun of it. He whirled laughing as the sparks dispersed. “Oh that was so cool. Noah, did you see that?”
The ghost-man was looking serious as always. It was awfully hard to make him laugh, which just meant that Saint had to try harder. “There’s still one left,” Noah pointed out.
Saint rolled his eyes. “You are absolutely no fun. Honestly.”
There was one left, the one so bundled up in cast-off clothes that it was unrecognisable. Saint flapped his arms at it. “BEGONE!” he bellowed, loud as he could, and he waved his arms some more in what he hoped looked like arcane gestures. “Leeeave this place! Never return! Maybe go hang out at Zealandia or something! Begooooone!” It didn’t move, so he walked closer, clapping his hands so sparks came out. “Hey, get on out of here,” he said, and the bird looked up, looked straight into his eyes.
Its eyes were wide and yellow and staring, glaring, set under thick white brows. Its face was lined with brown speckled feathers.
The morepork gave a high, piercing cry, and then it fled, leaving him staring after it.
“Well,” Saint said, a little at a loss.
They just stayed there for a while, hanging out. Noah wanted to leave, but Saint was enjoying the view, the air. The company, too.
It wasn’t often that he invited people to stay the night, despite what Steff thought. He didn’t have one night stands so much as …one night dates. Generally it went: meet someone pretty and interesting, flirt a lot, take them somewhere interesting, be silly and fun, and duck out of their lives afterwards if they’re boring. There was more variety that way. You could take them to Te Papa and manage to make it interesting – last time he’d done that by pretending that the giant squid had insulted him and he’d insulted it back in rhyme. The girl had been a good one that time – she’d stared a bit and then laughed and laughed and laughed, and he’d got to end that day with the warm happy glow that comes of knowing that you’ve brought some pleasant variety into someone else’s life. The one before her had just blinked at him in confusion when he took her out into howling southerly winds to go broken-umbrella collecting.
It wasn’t very often he invited them home, not when ‘home’ was such a miserable, dull place. That would ruin the picture he’d built of himself, this dashing mysterious guy – going to their places was fine, of course, but generally they expected to go to his place, and… even he didn’t want to spend time at his place, so they sure wouldn’t. It was shabby, and dreary, and whenever he was there he felt like it somehow shrank him down, diminished him, making him shabby and dreary too. There weren’t many prospective partners that he was fond enough of to not mind the thought of them seeing him so low. Actually, not many people at all.
…Actually, no one. He hadn’t seen his best friend in person in… what, three months? Five? Twelve? And even before that their friendship hadn’t been friendship so much as Saint dropping by and commandeering Steff’s parents’ car at three a.m. and going on exciting Bro Dates to long-dysfunctional movie theatres and then disappearing and basically he wasn’t very good at people, okay. They were great and all – there just weren’t that many he liked being exposed to for more than a day or two at a time. Any longer than that and you couldn’t just rely on charm any more. You had to be yourself. People got to know you.
Eek.
So anyway, the point was this: once people had actually seen to the heart of him, he was less than willing to suggest spending more time with them, because he very seldom wanted to.
“So, hey,” he said conversationally, swinging his legs over the edge, “we should hang out more, some time. In a non-monster setting, I mean. Nonprofessionally,” he clarified. “Not as colleagues. A colleague-free sort of situation, is what I’m getting at here.”
Noah stared at him like – well, like he was sitting on the rooftop of some boring office building on a windy evening, which he was, but Noah didn’t have any right to act like that was weird.
“What?” Saint said irritably.
“What?” echoed Noah, looking confused.
There were tiny feathers dusting Saint’s coat. He brushed them away. “That a yes? We could catch some food, watch a movie. Watch some food, in your case.” He stood up so he could stick his hands in his pockets and grin charmingly. “I’d be sure to choose something aesthetically appealing, because I am just that nice. Maybe bento? Bento’s really nice to look at. It’s like art, but with soy sauce! It’d be fun, honest.”
Noah frowned at him. It was easier to see him as the light faded, though still not exactly easy – he just became a more sharply defined shadow. “Is this a bad time,” Noah said slowly, “to admit that I have no idea what you’re talking about? This language is still somewhat new to me. Sometimes I find you hard to follow.”
Saint grinned. “That’s kind of what I go for. Which part in general? Sushi’s food,” he added, helpfully.
“You’re asking me something?” Noah said uncertainly. “Or… something.”
“I’m asking if you want to hang out.”
Noah continued to look confused. “… No?”
“Wow, way to squish my self-esteem like a cube of modelling clay.”
“I don’t know what you’re asking!”
“I want to know if you’d like to spend time with me, and thanks awfully for making me spell it out!” he snapped. “Not really an alphabet I’m familiar with, pet. This is hard for me, okay? This is practically cryptography.”
Noah blinked at him. “I – what? Oh.” Then the confusion gave way to realisation, which gave way to a glare, yikes. Scary glary ghost man. “You said you’d help me,” he said, accusingly.
“What? I will, that’s –”
“You can’t just worm out of this,” Noah said stiffly. “I don’t know what you’re proposing, but this is important. We can’t just – just slack off and go catch some food, or whatever. I know you’re a lazy coward but this is important.”
“Catch a movie. Movies are what you catch,” Saint said. “… Wait, what?”
Noah blinked. “Ahhh,” he said, drawing the word out slowly. “Can we pretend I didn’t say that?”
Saint pinched the bridge of his nose. It seemed the kind of exaggerated sign of irritation that was appropriate for this situation. “If I annoy you that much, why are you even here?”
“I told you,” Noah said. “I need your help.”
“Uh-huh.” Saint snorted and sat down again, swinging his legs into the abyss.
He breathed in deep, feeling the breeze against his face, watching cars passing by far below. “You’re all flimsy and insubstantial, so you need me for the whole monster-slaying gig, yeah yeah. Which, might I mention, is awfully enjoyable so far, so thanks for that, but – why me?”
Noah sat next to him. Saint glared and pointedly shuffled a few centimetres away from him. Noah glared back and bumped his shoulder against Saint’s.
Saint flinched away. “Blech,” he said. It felt like pins and needles but worse. Pins and giant needles. Pins and swords. “That wasn’t an answer.”
Noah sighed. “You see things other people don’t,” he said, sounding just as irritated as Saint was. “You – don’t live in quite the same world most others do, you live outside. You’re a rule-breaker, like me.”
“So you’re a lazy coward too, then? I rejoice! Misery loves –”
“Oh, shut up. Yes! Yes, the things that make you useful to me are the same things that make you unreliable and shiftless,” Noah said. “I can handle that. Please can we stop talking about emotions now? This is stupid.”
Saint stared at him. The thought of spending any more time with this guy than he absolutely had to was becoming less and less appealing. That was always how it went. “And now I’m something to be handled? Wow, thanks for that,” he said. “So glad to be demoted from ‘partner’ to ‘liability’. From what you’re saying I guess you know me pretty well, so don’t you know that’s not the way to do this? You really should start faking some more niceness. Flattery should be spread over your every statement, like maple syrup over pikelets. Pancakes. Both! I’m unreliable and shiftless, after all. You can’t be too careful!”
“And reckless,” Noah said, watching him. “Easily angered. It makes you unpredictable. You should be flattered I trust you at all.”
“Like hell I should! I don’t even know who you are. Sorry, who you were. Oh, because in case you’d forgotten, you are really quite dead! Aliveness is not a thing you’re even slightly – oh, hey. Huh.” He stopped, distracted, squinting down at the street far below them. “That’s… ” he said, and his voice was for some reason thick and hoarse as ash, clogged.
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