by Amy Lane
“Do they ever fight?” he asked, looking for the tarnish in the silver lining.
“Of course. But they never get violent—they just argue and bicker and then go their own ways. Like us, you know, but on a small scale. And eventually it all gets planted, and it’s the foothills, right? There’s all sorts of flowers—wildflowers, poppies, crocuses, daisies, frickin’ everything, right? And most of them, not all, mind you, but most of them, all bloom in a span of about two weeks. And for the last two springs, that means that every morning, for two weeks in a row, just as soon as the vampires go to bed and the sun comes out, they absolutely have to have my attention. So they buzz over my bed in a little cloud of perfect flying little magic rainbow people, and then they drag me outside, and then they all fly over to their flower and jump up and down and sing and beg me to come see their flower, and I have to stand in the middle of the yard, right? Because I don’t want to step on anyone else’s flower, and it’s this incredibly sweet chorus of them, and me and Green saying ‘It’s beautiful! Yes, it’s lovely! That’s perfect! Thank you! Yours is wonderful! Thank you!’ until they all forget why we’re there and fly away!”
Sam was laughing by now, honest, full-hearted kid laughter, his shoulders shaking, his head tilted back, as happy as any teenager ever was—except he kept having to wipe his cheeks with the backs of his hands. Not scrubbing the whole hand over his face, like a grown man, but the other way, like a little kid.
“Chaos isn’t always bad, Sam,” I said at last, when his laughter had died down a little. “I think… I think your thing is, you’re the child of… of chaos and man. There’s not a lot of you—maybe that makes your mom pretty special.”
Sam nodded, sober suddenly, even if he was no longer crying. “She’s pretty. And she’s really nice. She used to make such a big deal about how lucky she was to have me and my stepdad.”
I nodded. “So sometimes chaos is beautiful—and your mom caught his eye. And then there was you. And you have an… an affinity, I guess, for it. It’s your magic superpower, if you learn how to use it. You just need to learn how to use it.”
“Sometimes?” he asked, still bitter. “You just gave me one example—and it was a hell of an example, my lady, but no offense, you’re like one person in a million. How is that going to help me in my life?”
“Sam, I may be one of the few mortals to ever really see a fairy, but I’m not the only one to ever see wildflowers. They’re everywhere! And they’re still chaos. Have you ever been in one of those baby wards? A mom will come in to get her baby, and suddenly they’re all making noises and pooping and gurgling or crying or some of them sleeping right on through that other madness. That happens every day! A box full of kittens, two kids playing with a crate full of toys—” My hands made helpless gestures to the world around me. “—stars, clouds, raindrops, freckles, snowflakes. It’s all chaos, Sam! None of it is predictable. You told me you didn’t like the bad tingle—well, that means you’re probably not a bad person. You have a good heart. There’s a good way to live with this, just like there’s a good way to live with—”
“My stepdad!” He stood up now, angry. It was like he had to paint all of the evil in him in excruciating detail so I’d know how hopeless it was. “There’s a good way to live with that?”
“You think you’re the only one who hasn’t known your power like that?” I asked, irritated because, dammit, I was going to have to bring this funky bullshit up again. Goddessdammitalltofuck, why couldn’t I just write a self-help book—I Became a Mass Murderer and Kept My Soul Intact—and publish that fucker and get it over with? “You think you’re the only one whose power got away from you?”
“It wasn’t just him!” Sam shot back angrily. He was jumping up and down on the dock by now, and as the thing bobbed up and down in the water, I looked up to the floating bait shop apprehensively. How freaked out did he have to be to break something serious and send us both plunging into the lake in the sucking vortex of that thing? Fear can be an ugly ride sometimes, can’t it?
“Who else?” I asked. “I mean, I snapped, and I actually killed people. Your stepdad… that wasn’t even in your control!”
“Well, when I’m pissed, I can make it happen, okay?” His agitation stopped, and I drew a quiet sigh of relief—it was like he had reminded himself that becoming pissed was a bad thing.
“Handy,” I said neutrally. “How’d you find that out?”
The kid shrugged, trying to be casual. “I… I was flirting with this girl, right?”
I nodded. He was fifteen. I’d mostly hated boys when I was fifteen, mostly because they were walking hormones and I’d been invisible.
“So she… she laughs at me in front of my friends, and I’m pissed, and we’re walking into a rally, and the tingle just builds in my stomach, right? And I feed it, right? And then… then suddenly, on the floor of the gym, there’s just… you know. Stupid school bullshit going on, and that tingle just builds and I just feed it, because I’m pissed….”
I closed my eyes. Shit. This had hit the news about a year back. Someplace south, like Bakersfield. “You started a riot,” I said. “Kids started swinging at each other—like two people died.”
“Four,” Sam corrected, disconsolate. “Four. I didn’t know a damned one. No one I had a grudge against, no one I’d miss. Just four random-assed people, dead because I… I got pissed.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, trying to reason. I mean, technically you could make an argument for it—the kid had been pissed—but he hadn’t known. It didn’t help the dead people, but he didn’t deserve to torture himself with it either. “In order to actually assume responsibility for that, sport, you had to know you’d kill someone. It’s all very well to be a pissed-off kid and think you want to murder the world, but unless you know you can murder the world, wishing for it isn’t murder.”
“And how would you know?” he asked. I was tired of answering this question.
“How do you think she knows?” Teague asked, appearing like magic, hopping out of the water so fluidly that I was actually surprised he had his trunks on.
I gave a little shriek and Sam actually jumped. Teague gave a grim, hard smile and rolled his eyes.
“Jesus, brother!” I said breathlessly. “You sure do know how to make an entrance.”
“I know a lot about regret, Lady,” he said gruffly, slicking his dark hair out of his eyes. “And I know how much you don’t want to open that vein.” He was standing there, scars and all, to defend me—Goddess bless him.
“Thanks, Teague,” I told him, moved. “But I’ll bleed over Sam if I need to. It’s all good.”
“Never good to bleed like that,” he said, shaking his head. Then he sliced cleanly back into the water quicker than I could breathe, barely leaving a splash. He must have been listening to us even as he swam, just to make sure I was okay.
The kid laughed a little. “He’s not even sleeping with you, is he?”
I shook my head. “No, his dance card’s full. But those of us on the hill, we watch each other’s backs. You know?”
The kid nodded. “I get that. For a while, I thought… you know. That Annette was one of you.”
Aha—lightbulb on. I’d been wondering what Sam had seen in Annette. Apparently he’d thought he’d seen us.
“She was supposed to be Nicky’s ‘real’ wife, you know?” I still didn’t know how to say that. The idea was ludicrous, but it was also hurtful on a superficial level that I wasn’t sure I should be hurt on. Didn’t seem to matter—I was anyway.
“Nicky’s mom’s a bitch,” Sam said, and I wondered at the interactions I hadn’t seen between them. Well, shit. I couldn’t be everywhere, and I sure couldn’t be Green.
“She hasn’t been nice to me yet,” I said with a small smile. I started to go for my sock—we’d been out here long enough, and I was getting twitchy without something to do with my hands—but I stopped and sighed. It would be hot soon, and we hadn’t even taken on the
subject.
“Sam, about Annette….”
“You need to know what I did for her.” He nodded, and I wondered if we should go back and talk about his guilt some more, but Teague, for all his good intentions, had broken that moment.
“I really do.”
“I have no idea….” He laughed grimly and shook his head. “I mean, she… she started hitting on me, telling me that I looked special, like the rest of—how’d she put it?—‘Nicky’s in-laws.’ I told her I had some… talent, you know? And she got all… little girl. She wanted some talent too. I told her I could probably give her some, and then she hinted that she’d….” He blushed.
“She’d put out if you would?” I supplied, and he shrugged.
“And when we were doing it, I felt the tingle… and I sort of….” Again that blush.
“Pointed and shot.”
The full blush took over his entire body, down to his knobby knees peering out from under his cargo shorts. “A-yup.” He looked entirely embarrassed, but at least I’d figured out what was so alluring about her that he’d been willing to fuck her behind a tree. For a little while, she’d wanted the thing he feared most about himself. What’s not to like?
She’d spent the night shrieking obscenities about me from her cabin because she’d been caught. I imagined that whatever “little girl” appeal she’d had the night before had flaked and crumbled like bad varnish in the intervening hours.
“Well, see?” I said. “You do know about touch, blood, and song.”
“That was probably more fun than blood,” he told me wisely. I found myself liking him immensely.
“Until the end,” I reminded him, keeping my voice gentle.
“She seemed nicer than that.” The sun had moved as we spoke, and we were no longer in the shade of the surrounding hills. Sam turned his face up to the sunlight and closed his eyes. I knew that feeling—that maybe you could fly away into the big blue, and those awful things that hurt you wouldn’t hurt you anymore.
Sweet, sweet Goddess, please give this kid a break. If any kid needed a clear light through the confusion, it would seem to be this kid—this mixed-up, well-intentioned, insanely dangerous son of chaos and man.
I sighed. This conversation had gone on long enough as it was.
“Sam,” I said, keeping my voice pitched low. Even with Teague now doing laps in the distance, and probably still listening, there was still the illusion that we were alone. We were night people, and a loud voice right now felt almost obscene. “She wasn’t real, boy. I know you want to think the girl in your bed likes you, but really, all she wanted was what she thought you could give.”
The kid nodded. “Lady Cory, I knew she didn’t love me—or even like me. I mean, I’m a kid, and she’s a grown-up. I figured we were using each other, and that was okay.”
“But….” I urged him on. We both needed him to complete the thought.
“But that she despised me so much? That’s… that’s wrong. I mean, lust is okay, right?”
“If it’s sensual and consensual,” I replied neutrally. It was the hill’s creed. We lived by it.
“So why’s she so obsessed with our sex not being real?”
I shrugged. “She’s got this idea of purity. She’s trying to keep herself ‘pure’ for a guy who doesn’t really exist.”
“Aren’t you sleeping with him?” the kid asked, justifiably confused.
I laughed a little and sat back down on the dock. Experimentally I poked a toe in the frigid lake. I shuddered—you really did have to be a werecreature or an elf or something to swim here in the morning, didn’t you? Out in the distance, Teague was hauling his bantam Irish body through the water with the sleekness of a river otter. He seemed to prove my point.
“Her idea of what should be perfect isn’t real,” I amended in the thoughtful quiet. “It’s chimerical—it’s like a unicorn or a griffin or something. Just because you can imagine it doesn’t mean it exists.”
“Well, then,” said Sam logically, “I shouldn’t exist either—and neither should you.”
I shrugged. “Well, just because you can imagine it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist either. In our case, we’re alive and breathing—but our superpowers cause us as much pain as joy. In Nicky’s case, his mom wants him to be happy, but he wouldn’t touch that heifer with an electric cattle prod and a hazmat suit. There’s always a disconnect between your dreams and reality, Sam. In Annette’s case, it’s like the disconnect between Green Day and that kid banging on his tennis shoe with a pencil. Never the freakin’ twain shall meet, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, well, I wish I’d never met her freakin’ twain, if you know what I mean,” the kid grumbled, and I didn’t blame him in the least.
I laughed. “Well, the real question is, now that you’ve freaked her in the twain, what can she do with it?”
The kid shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lady, I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I’ve never done anything like that, and even when I have a little bit of control—well, it’s a crapshoot, mostly. But if she’s like me, that… tingle, it will let her know when she can do something with it. And if she’s as just plain pissed nasty as she seemed last night….”
“It will be a nasty thing she does with the power. We both know that, Sam.”
He sighed and stood and stretched, and then he looked unhappily at the phone attached to a lanyard around his neck. We had been out there for some time—I half expected Bracken to come out looking for me in a minute.
“I’ve got to go check on my mom, Lady….” He didn’t sound happy about it, and I wasn’t either. This conversation only felt half-done.
“Why you gotta call me that?” I asked, almost out of habit. Still, I stood and stretched next to him—we’d shifted about in the course of the conversation, but I still thought I’d carry the imprint of the rough, slip-proof plastic on my ass for the rest of the day.
He looked at me seriously. “You know, some teachers, they demand you call them by their names, or they give themselves a nickname and they make you call them that. But some teachers, you have to—it’s just respect, you know? You’re Lady Cory—”
“I’m maybe six years older than you!”
“You’re Lady Cory. That guy out there”—a gesture to Teague—“I think the whole reason he came out and swam for freaking ever was to protect you. What kind of asshole am I, I can’t see that?”
I shrugged, hating this truth a lot right now. “Yeah. Well, a title isn’t necessary, Sam. I just want to keep us all safe. And with that in mind, can you tell me anything about how to counter what that bitch might do to us?”
Sam thought for a second, and then shivered. He shivered again, and before I could ask him “Tingle?” he gave my hoodie a little downward zip and pressed his hand against my bare shoulder.
“What in the fuck….” Tingle, he’d called it. Tingle, my fat white-trash ass. This was a fucking bee-sting swelling of power. It was a spider bite, a poison-oak reaction, and I could tell by Sam’s wide eyes and sudden “Ouch!” that he hadn’t been expecting it either.
He yanked his hand from my shoulder and shook it like it hurt, and I glared at him. “What in the fuck?” I repeated dumbly. I zipped my sweater down a little more and checked out the place where his hand had been. I expected it to be red and swollen, but it wasn’t. It was still pale, like the rest of me, since I’d been swimming with SPF 50-plus and a cotton shirt, but underneath it, contained in the outline of the handprint, there were… stars. Tiny purple stars, like a tattoo, but sitting translucently under my skin.
“Sam?” I asked, feeling out with my power. They weren’t… binding. Not in the way our mark was on the people who followed Green and me. They were almost… hovering. “What did you do?”
“I felt a tingle,” he said a little numbly. “I wanted to help you, make up for what I did. I just… followed it, that’s all.”
“Green?” I thought a little desperately, and as usual, Green reassured me.
“Protection, beloved. It’s protection. Thank the nice boy, Corinne Carol-Anne. The sons of man and chaos are… unpredictable, at best.”
“It’s okay, Sam,” I said out loud, because Sam was truly starting to look upset, and Goddess knew we didn’t want this kid upset. “It’s okay—I think it’s protection. Whatever she’s doing, she won’t be able to do it to me, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” he asked hopefully, and I nodded.
“Go back and check your mom, sweetheart,” I said gently. “Tell her you love her. Believe she loves you back. This… this is a great gift, and I’m grateful, right?”
The kid nodded, dashing his hand across his eyes. “Lady, we’re going to have to go. I’m… I’m getting a tingle that says ‘home.’ I’ve had it since last night, and I was just putting it off until we talked. I can’t….”
“You can’t ignore them,” I said, nodding. “I get it. Look, Sam, do me a favor. Before you go, stop and get my phone number, and my cell, and the hill’s phone number. If you ever have trouble, a problem, a thing you can’t resolve…. You wanted to be with Annette because you wanted someone who’d have your back, right? Well, we’ve got your back. Fuck her—” I blushed and rolled my eyes. “Or not,” I finished lamely, and he actually laughed.
“I got you. I’m sorry. I’d like to talk more… I just, I told her we were going, and I’ve been out here forever, and—”
“And you can’t ignore shit like that. I got you.”
He trotted up the road to the cabins. I blinked once and then twice, trying to put our entire conversation into context and failing.
I’d need to talk it over with Bracken, I thought. And Green. And Nicky, and Teague, and Max and Mario and….