“Good for them,” she replied in a small voice. “I don’t know. Maybe I can get better. I don’t think I can get any worse.”
He’d never seen her like this, so that might have been true. Rather than push the point, he gave her a moment to herself and turned instead to the werewolf.
“Conrad. I think it might be best if we spent the night here, actually. There is less chance of us being seen and we can keep an eye on the colonel so he doesn’t do…uh, whatever it was Moswen wanted him to do. Kill us, obviously. But what he said about ‘the team’ concerns me. He might have other guys still under his command—or close enough since he’s technically retired—who also went over to the dark side. If we wait until daylight to move out, that at least that reduces some of the risk.”
The lycanthrope agreed, although only on the condition that he be allowed to head outside and check to ensure that the street wasn’t a tow-away zone beyond a certain hour. A quick recon trip to their car and back assured him that it wasn’t.
By now, Riley had begun to recover and she felt more talkative.
“Remy,” she implored, “I’m serious about this. I need to get better. You guys almost died because I couldn’t stop him in time. I can’t…I can’t let my friends be in danger because I’m not able to do what I normally can.”
He nodded. I’ve heard many addicts say that before. No—stop it. She’s trying. Maybe she really will bounce off the bottom this time and keep moving up. Give her a chance.
The fairy continued. “And I’m tired of feeling bad all the time. It’s like you said. I keep feeling terrible because I can’t feel as great as I did the first couple of times. I can’t ever get it back. It’s like chasing something that always gets away. It isn’t worth it. I’m done. This is it, I promise.”
She reached a hand out. Remy extended his pinkie and let her grasp it.
“I am glad,” he replied, “to hear you say that. And I’ll help if I can. Starting tomorrow, you’ll need to prove it, though, and I think you can.”
She smiled. “Okay.”
Chapter Eleven
Por’s Bar, Lower Manhattan, New York
Bobby watched as Volz’s facial expression changed over the course of a couple of minutes. At first, he’d wrinkled his mouth and brow at what he called the “piss-weak taste” of non-dwarven beer. But after he’d downed the first one, the warm glow seemed to settle in and a goofy look of contentment crept over his broad features.
Porrillage, the bartender, spared him a quick glance before he returned to his work. “Weird,” the gnome commented. “I have never seen a dwarf enjoy regular beer that much. He must have fallen off the wagon.”
She smiled and immediately grasped all the implications of what the small man had said. That meant she’d understood the joke without any difficulty. It was a new experience, as jokes often went over her head.
With a watchful eye on her companion, she sipped her beer. It wasn’t bad. She pondered all the craftsmanship and refinement, not to mention trial and error and sheer dumb luck that must have gone into beermaking over the centuries.
It was incredible that people had perfected all these discoveries. And yet, she wondered, for what?
Someone came up beside her, a slender man with smooth, fine features, silky hair, and pointed ears. “Hello there,” he said in a smooth voice. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before. We get some humans but not enough, in my opinion.”
Bobby half-smiled. The guy was good-looking, albeit in a slightly swishy way, but she really wasn’t in the mood right now.
“Hi,” she countered. “Are you an elf? If so, I’m really sorry, but I’m not interested. I dated an elven guy once and it was a bad experience. You know, because of the differential aging factor. Most guys don’t want to be with a woman long-term if she’ll be sixty while he still looks like he’s in college, you know? I’m sure you can imagine how that kinda cramps a girl’s style.”
“Oh,” he replied and looked slightly uncomfortable. “Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say that.”
She shrugged. “I suppose you could try…I dunno, a gnomish chick? I assume they live about as long as you guys do.”
Por passed under the bar again. “Not quite,” he quipped.
“Too bad,” Bobby said, turned away from the elf, and focused on her brew.
Her would-be suitor, sulking, stepped over and pretended to ask Volz a question or two, but the dwarf merely made confused grunting sounds, so he sashayed over toward the arcade games.
Bobby took another sip. She was only two-thirds of the way into her first beer. She didn’t drink much, though, and already, the alcohol was loosening up her mind. It freed it to roam and explore.
She’d concocted the story about dating an elf on the spot and out of thin air, and it had clearly worked in persuading the guy to leave her alone. She never would have been able to manage that in the past.
Then again, before everything changed, she might not even have realized that he was simply trying to get into her panties.
It almost made her squirm with discomfort when she thought of how many things she must have missed over the years. She was only twenty-seven, but that was still slightly more than a quarter century’s worth of knowledge and insights—and squandered opportunities.
And the mention of aging and lifespans had set off a chain reaction of other notions and ideas and questions. What was the meaning of all this? How could people live blissfully unaware in such a multi-faceted universe—which included the preternatural alongside the natural, when the natural was already complex enough?
“Hey,” she said, “Por, could I get a refill here? It’s okay, you can charge it as a second beer.”
The gnome was hooking up another keg. “Sure thing, ma’am. Give me a second.” He finished the task and hurried over to climb his makeshift wooden steps to reach the bar.
“So, sorry to ask,” she began as Por extended his hand toward her mug, “but did you hear the story about why I’m here? Probably not, since Remington’s busy. Let’s simply say I’ve gone through some major changes lately and I’m not sure if I’m…dealing with them as well as I could.”
The gnome’s face shifted into something that was half a grimace and half gentle sympathy. “You got initiated into the preternatural, did you? It’s okay, humans usually need a couple of weeks—or years—to really absorb it all.” He snatched her mug and bounded toward the tap.
“Yeah,” Bobby confirmed, “that’s it. Part of it. There’s more. My eyes have been opened in more ways than one… it’s like I’m seeing and hearing and thinking of things that are completely new—I’ve never experienced them in my life until now.”
It irked her that she couldn’t express herself more clearly. Why hadn’t she learned to talk better? She’d have to teach herself to speak like one of those erudite professor types, given that she had the brainpower for it now.
While she tried to organize her multitudinous strains of cognition and emotion into something that made more sense, a man to her left stepped out of her field of vision. Another man stepped into the same place—or was it the same person?
She turned her head toward him as he sidled up.
“Hey there,” he said. “Did you get cheated on? Sorry, ha, but that’s the first thing I thought of when you said your eyes had been opened.”
Bobby gave him a quick examination. The first man she’d seen—before the second one stepped in—had almost exactly the same body proportions as this one but his facial features were different. His skin tone slightly darker, hair lighter and wavier, and his jaw stronger, and he had five o'clock shadow.
It was the same man, she concluded.
A shapeshifter? He must have observed her for a while and tried to gauge her preferred type, then subtly altered his appearance to appeal to her. She had to admit, he looked good. But what she saw right now wasn’t really him, was it?
“No,” she told the guy flatly. “See, I never allowed it to get to that p
oint because I caught him lying to me. It was like he was one person one minute and a completely different person five minutes later—like I could never tell who the real person was and he became merely a number of different masks that he wore to suit the occasion. I like people who are genuine.”
The man stared in astonishment for a moment and nodded slowly. “Oh, right, I completely understand. Hell, everyone has different sides to their personality, but…they should at least try to be consistent. Not completely different.”
It occurred to her that he was setting her up. He would continue his attempt to flirt and when the time came to drop the bombshell that this wasn’t what he actually looked like, he could argue that it least it was close to his real appearance.
“Maybe,” she said. “You know, I almost think you’d look better with darker, straighter hair. And if you shaved a little closer.”
The man sighed, exasperated, and pushed away from the bar. “Well, I tried,” he grumbled and wandered off to play pool.
Volz chuckled. “Who’s that guy? He was funny…”
Por climbed up to the bar and pushed her mug across the surface, once again filled with foaming golden lager.
“Nicely done,” he told her. “That guy tries that shit on basically every new good-looking girl who comes in here. Half the time, it works and the other half, they’re usually not sure how to react. Hell, maybe the sonofabitch will go home tonight and rethink his life or something.”
“Well,” Bobby almost stammered, “life is…something that bears thinking about. I only said what seemed obvious, you know? And none of this would have even occurred to me a week ago. I notice so many more things but it makes me wonder—is this all there is? Is life really a group of people and other entities fumbling around trying to fool each other so they can fool themselves into thinking there’s a…a meaning to it all?”
The gnome paused and stared at her with a hard but not unfriendly squint, and he put his fists on his small round hips. “It sounds to me like you’re having one of those existential crisises…crises? Whatever the word is. Hey, we all have them sometimes, right? It’s okay.”
“I suppose,” She sighed and frowned as something occurred to her. “And I think it would be ‘crises,’ based on the way the Latin roots work. Or Greek. I…uh, would have to look that up to be sure, but based on my memory of how other words work, that sounds right. Like, there’s a pattern here. To the…suffixes. Do I make any sense?”
“Kinda,” said Por. “I’ll be right back.”
He ambled over to serve another patron, an apparently female member of a bulky, tusk-mouthed, green-skinned species who tried very hard not to look at Bobby. Perhaps she was envious of her looks or maybe simply contemptuous of her attempts at intellectual discussion.
The green woman’s boyfriend—or husband, perhaps—came out of the bathroom and sat beside her. His head snapped toward Bobby and something about his gaze reminded her of a hungry dog.
“Crap,” she murmured under her breath.
The green guy, even more muscled and yet ungainly than his paramour, extended a big arm in her direction and actually yelled at her. “Hey! You. Wanna come over here? We’re lonely. You look like you could use some fun.”
He made the word “fun” sound like it involved violently cathartic acts of anger management. His girlfriend, meanwhile, gritted her huge teeth.
Some of the ambient noise in the tavern died down. Bobby felt gazes drifting toward her. Even Volz looked uncomfortable, having snapped at least partially out of his complacent stupor.
She inhaled through her nose. “Well,” she called across the bar, “I might consider it but what does she have to say? Sorry, but among my…uh, species, threesomes have to be agreed on by everyone.”
“What?” The man snarled belligerently. “What she says doesn’t matter. You come over here now!”
His woman shoved him hard off the barstool and he sprawled across the floor. “Shut up, Ugluk! Look at her. She looks like some fairy whore anyway. You have no taste. Fucker! I’ll tell everyone about this. You’re going soft.”
Ugluk responded in his own native tongue, which sounded like chunks of concrete forced through a woodchipper. Soon, the couple growled and swatted at each other as they argued their way out the door, much to the relief of the entire bar.
Por chuckled. “Miss Bobby,” he proclaimed, “the next one is on the house. We have a non-discrimination policy, of course, but orcs and alcohol don’t mix. You probably saved me considerable business. Maybe you should give lessons on some of this shit.”
She shrugged. “Well, it was obvious that the two of them had a rocky kind of relationship. It wasn’t really about me so there was no reason for me to be involved. I let them deal with their own problems.”
It was nice that Por seemed to appreciate her, but even as he slid her a free extra beer, she was glum. There she was, twice as smart as she’d ever been, and yet she barely understood what was happening.
“I wonder,” she began aloud, “are most misunderstandings because so many people are average? It makes sense when you think about it. Most things in society are meant for the majority who fall in the middle. People who are either too dumb or too smart must…you know, be confused most the time.” She almost laughed. “Not like I’d know or anything.”
Por listened to her with one ear while he conferred briefly with one of the waitresses on a complicated cocktail order from a table full of what might have been aliens. Once he was done, he turned to Bobby again.
“I tell you what,” he began in a low voice that would have been inaudible to the other patrons. “I can tell you’re having a rough evening, despite making mine even better. And from what you told me when you first came in, Remy—who, to be honest, is kind of a dipshit—has landed you all in trouble yet again.”
“That’s the long and short of it, yeah,” she admitted.
The gnome fished around under the bar, found something, and laid a small hand flat on the wooden surface.
“This,” he explained, “is a key to the guest room. Around the corner back there”—he gestured with his head—“is a staircase that’ll take you to it. You and your dwarf buddy can spend the night. You’ll feel much better in the morning after a good sleep, trust me. Wake up to a fresh start and some of those thoughts will have sorted themselves out in your head, all by themselves, while you were dreaming.”
Bobby hadn’t expected that. “Okay, sure, thanks. Shit, I am getting tired. It’s been a long day.” She accepted the key and drained the rest of her beer in a long gulp.
Volz looked at her, his eyes dull. “Sleep,” he dribbled. “That sounds…good.”
Por had been about to return to work, but he lingered a moment longer. “Oh, there are two beds with a curtain you can pull between them. And if that still isn’t enough to put your mind at ease, look under the one closer to the door, where you’ll find a baseball bat. Ain’t nobody gonna try anything after you whack him a few times with that.”
She laughed and it felt good. “Thanks, Por. I’m fairly sure Volz meant it, though. He’s already barely conscious as is.”
Then a chill went through her as she contemplated the multiple ways in which that statement was true.
Chapter Twelve
Bayside, Queens, New York
Remington extended his index finger and used it to pat Riley gently on the back. “Okay. Do you feel better? You can do this. We believe in you and stuff.”
The fairy inhaled audibly and her wings perked up as she spread her arms and closed her eyes.
Outside, the sun was up, although only a little of its light penetrated the cracks in the blinds. Remy and Conrad stood on either side of James Russel’s bed, while the fairy stood on the nightstand next to it, in full view of the man’s chest.
When Russel had awoken in the middle of the night, mostly delirious, they’d given him water and sleeping pills. Now, he was technically awake but in some kind of drowsy fugue state that was likely th
e combined results of the drugs, exhaustion, confusion, and whatever the hell Moswen’s brand might still be doing to him.
The time had come to take care of that last problem.
The fairy clapped her hands and held them pressed together, and silvery light erupted from the colonel’s chest. He’d mumbled wordlessly and shifted his position while his head lolled from side to side. Now, however, he stiffened and his eyes snapped wide open.
Conrad exchanged a glance with Remy, and it occurred to both of them that, if the fairy’s spell failed, their captive might die of a heart attack or a stroke even before Moswen could kill him herself. Then they’d have to deal with the unexplained death of a retired officer under circumstances where a few witnesses might have seen them approach his house.
And Taylor still wasn’t around to perform a mindwipe. If they fucked it up, there would be no clean slate.
Particles of golden light, the residues of Moswen’s power, began to filter through the silver, but Riley’s aura held.
“You got this,” Remy assured her and hoped he was being encouraging and not pressuring her. “You already cut the bitch off from having full access. The job’s half done. You only need to remove the part that’s left.”
She made a humming sound and trembles rippled through her minuscule body as she concentrated to channel her power into the body of the man tied to the bed and do what she could to purge him of the Egyptian vampire’s malevolent influence.
Colonel Russel’s mouth fell open and strangled gasps emerged from it. His eyes were glazed and his hands clawed at the sheets. While he thrashed helplessly in place, the starlight glow on his chest intensified, solidified, and became a cloud that blotted out the golden sparks.
Finally. a long sigh rattled from his lungs and all the magical light winked out at once. He slumped on the mattress, breathing hard and sweating.
Riley fell to her side and moaned, shuddering but conscious.
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