Miles to Go

by Laura Anne Gilman

  “You want coffee?” I asked. “The machine’s old, but it does decent enough work.”

  “I don’t drink coffee,” she said, and my opinion dropped a little. I also wondered how the hell she was surviving, living with Valere. Maybe she teamed up with Didier and drank tea?

  “I like my caffeine carbonated,” she said, almost apologetically.

  “Oh, right. There’s some soda in the fridge but I don’t know how old it is. Does that stuff go bad?”

  “Not that my taste buds ever noticed.” She went to the little fridge tucked under the far counter, and pulled out a can, frowning at it. “Yeah, that’ll do.”

  My obligations dealt with, I opened the door to the back office, and went in. I left the door open, just in case.

  I’d upgraded to a sweet little laptop a few months ago, which was one of the reasons I was leery of letting a Talent – especially an untrained one – anywhere near it. The older desktops were easier to ground. Nick, one of Bonnie’s teammates, said that netbooks were actually safer around Talent – he used one, when he did his Talent-hacking thing – but my hands never fit on the keyboards.

  “All right, Chinjy, give me what you’ve got.”

  The Child in Jeopardy site was a relatively recent thing, compiling every Amber alert, every state’s child welfare filing, every missing person’s report filed on a minor, swept and sorted into a database that could be broken down by gender, location, description, and type of abduction, and multiples of same. You had to be licensed and accredited to get access, hoops upon hoops set in place to prevent abuse and satisfy the privacy rights advocates. But the retrieval rate for missing minors had gone up seven percent since we - private investigators and other non-government interests - were able to use it, and that made all the hoops, and the yearly fee, worth it to me.

  The sheer number of names in the database always made me want to drink. I’d learned to do a tunnel vision sort of thing, only look at the ones who fell within the parameters of my case, and never, ever for fucking ever look when I wasn’t on a case. I focused on the girls, narrowed down the parameters, and still got over thirty kickbacks just in the past six months. I needed more.

  “Hey-” and for a second I couldn’t remember her name, only “Shadow” and I didn’t think that would go over well. But before I could remember, she was in the doorway, hesitant, like she wasn’t sure she was allowed in.

  Computer. Right. I’d warned her off.

  “How you coming with those notes?” I asked.

  She held up the pad, and I could see that it had been filled with writing and a not-bad pencil sketch of three faces. “The moment I started, it all kind of fell out.”

  “Talk to me. What’s most significant, most memorable about them?”

  She hesitated, and I realized that her body language wasn’t just about proximity to the computer, or me. Something else was going on. Then something clicked for her, you could see it in her face. “What?”

  It took a second for her to put the thought into words. “The kids. The ones I saw. They… their skin color was off, and it threw me. I’d thought there was a scrim between us, or they were blue from the cold, but the more I tried to remember, the more I… their skin was weird. And they had gills. On their necks.” She raised her hand and placed it on the side of her own neck, like you would if something bit you.

  Well, hell. I closed the laptop and stood up, palming the taser stashed in the desk drawer. “Right. Time to do a different kind of research.”

  3

  I felt bad, dragging Shadow everywhere, but I didn’t even suggest her staying back in the office. First, I was under orders to keep her safe, and while I didn’t think anything was going to go down in my office – I’d been working there for six years now and the most excitement we’d ever had was when a rabid squirrel decided to take up residence in the bathroom down the hall – I couldn’t say for sure trouble wasn’t going to suddenly show up.

  And anyway, she wasn’t going to stay put, not when we might have a lead on the missing kids. I knew that already. She might be a mouse, but if you poked her, she roared.

  We took the 5 line downtown. It was the start of rush hour, so we didn’t catch seats, but there was room to railhang without getting squashed up against other people. I’m a New Yorker through and through but I hate the subway, especially when it’s crowded. People tend to cluster toward me, not even realizing it, and I’ve got a touch of clausto to begin with. My mom might’ve spent most of her career before me on a ship, but my fatae genetics were geared more to open hillsides and relative solitude. I never did understand why I stayed in New York, except I couldn’t quite wrap my horns around leaving.

  Shadow swayed a bit, swinging toward me, then catching herself. She had that slightly dreamy look on her face, one I recognized from long exposure: she was jamming with the current that ran through the underground tracks, looping around the electricity that powered the trains, the lights, streaming through stone-carved tunnels, winding in around itself and just waiting for a Talent to come siphon it off, just a little bit, a hit to sooth the stress of a long day.

  Or so I’d been told. All I could feel was the rackety-clack of the rail under us, the occasional hitching scream of the brakes, and random cold bursts of the train’s straining air conditioning. But it was nice to watch her face, see the tiny stress lines around her mouth ease. She had a nice mouth, wide, and full, but not pouty or posed. You could describe it in crude terms, yeah, but my mother did her best to raise me to not be a dick. Anyway, all I could think was that she probably had an awesome smile. If she ever smiled.

  “What are we – where are we going?” she asked, not opening her eyes.

  “What, you’re not going to just trail after me like a good shadow, trusting my decision-making?” The moment the words fell out of my mouth I wished I could recall them, remembering how badly she’d reacted before. Her eyes opened then, and she stared at me, judging something.

  I guess I passed, because she shook her head, and closed her eyes again, letting her body sway as we slid around a curve in the tunnel. “I don’t trust anybody anymore,” she said. “But I’m good at following.”

  There was something in that, some depth in her words that lost me. I’m usually pretty good at sounding the depths, too. I decided to focus on the hunt, and worry about my shadow later.

  “Yeah, you proved that earlier,” I admitted. “We’re going to talk to some people, best you stay quiet and just pay attention. If you see anything, or you remember anything, tuck it into your brain and tell me when we’re alone.”

  She clearly remembered her earlier promise, because she just nodded once, and followed me up out of the station at our stop, down John Street and into the chaos of the South Street Seaport. Home to some of the most comprehensive kitsch in all Manhattan, outdoing even Times Square on summer afternoons when half the world and three-quarters of Wall Street were there for the view, the booze, and the mingling. I’d spent more than a few hours here himself, killing time and a few beers, watching the tall ships and the tourist boats.

  This time, I bypassed the flurry of the Seaport itself, dodging buskers, tour-hawkers, and tourists, Ellen at my heel. Under the overhang, and down past the old fish market, where the East River greenway began.

  This had been easier when it was still run down and dingy; nobody questioned a guy sitting on the bench, talking to himself. But then, I wasn’t by myself, now.

  That would make it easier, and possibly harder.

  “Sit.”

  She sat, legs stretched out in front of her, and damn the girl had some legs. She leaned back against the bench, her elbows braced, and lifted her face to the sun, then looked at me when I sat next to her.

  “Whatever happens, just pretend I’m talking to you.”

  “Whatever,” and she lazily waved a hand. It wasn’t a perfect act, but it was pretty good. I turned so that it seemed as though I was facing her, and watched the walkway over her shoulder.


  “I’m here looking for information. You know that I pay fair for whatever I get.”

  She shook her head, and smiled. Two men came along the path, talking to each other; one of them noticed her legs, the other kept yakking, and then they were gone. To my right, something in the sparse shrubbery between the walkway and the street made a rustling noise. It could have been the wind, or a squirrel, or a rat.

  “Come on, don’t waste my time.” I played irritated, annoyed, no time to waste. Truth was, I’d be willing to sit here all night if that’s what it took. I’d done it before.

  “More children gone walkabye?”

  My shadow jumped a little; the voice was right by her elbow, way too close, and way too loud for a whisper. I might have jumped too, if I hadn’t been expecting it.

  If someone weren’t paying attention, they’d think that a bush had overgrown the verge, greenstick branches reaching over the bench, buds of leaves too small for full-summer and the faintest hint of fading yellow flowers. Then they’d realize that the branches were too thick, the leaves and flowers moving with a slow, steady pulse, and then, if they were paying attention, they’d see the eyes, heavy black orbs, and the small, sucker-shaped mouth.

  “You know me,” I said, keeping it casual. The trick to dealing with fatae was to never let them think that you needed them. Humans liked to be needed, got off on it, could be flattered into giving it away. Fatae saw it as a chance to build obligation, accumulate debt they could turn around and use for themselves.

  Of course, they want to be needed, too. The desire to show off how much smarter you were is universal to every species that could communicate.

  “We know you,” it agreed. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

  “Fish,” I said.

  “Ah.”

  One branchlet touched Ellen’s shoulder, and she managed not to jump or shudder. Her expression wasn’t too happy, though.

  “Talent,” it said. “Shiny-sharp.”

  “Valere’s,” I said, and the branchlet paused, squeezed once, and fell away. Her eyes were wide, but she didn’t react. Someday – soon, I was betting – she’d be able to singe grabby hands on her own. But for now, a mentor’s protection was…well, part of why Talent had mentors.

  “You have anything?” I didn’t want to waste time.

  “Wrong time, right place. Fish go missing, weeks ago. Think first it was prank or school-joke, but they not come back. School scared, swim back north. Think shark got ‘em.”

  Close enough, if not the kind of sharks the school had been thinking.

  “You’re a pal,” I said, and passed something flat-palmed over Ellen’s shoulder, where it disappeared into the leaflets.

  oOo

  Ellen focused on breathing. If she kept breathing, she’d be all right, even when that…thing touched her, sticky-sharp pressure on her shoulder, on her neck, and she wouldn’t turn around to look, didn’t want to see anything more than what she’d already glimpsed out of the side of her eyes. She focused instead on Danny, on his face, his hands moving as he talked. He had nice hands, strong ones. They looked like they’d be capable of doing a lot more than hailing a cab or typing. She moved her gaze up to his face, the rough lines of his jaw, the curls plastered now in the summer heat against his forehead. He had cute ears. She noticed that in passing, not letting herself smile at the thought. His attention was on whatever was touching her, talking to it, listening to the hot whisper that she didn’t dare listen to, or she would turn to look at it, and she knew if she did it would be over, she would freak, she would break her promise to Danny, and right now that promise – that she would follow, and she would tell him everything, and he’d find a way out of the nightmare of her vision, was all that was keeping her intact.

  “Feel your core,” Genevieve had told her. “Reach in, down into where you feel the most centered, the most real and shove your hands into that, feel what’s there.”

  Ellen’d spent so many years being told she was crazy, just looking for attention, imagining things…. When the Central Park cult leader had told her she was special, that she had something, and then cast her out, Ellen had decided that they were all right, that everything she felt, everything she saw, thought she’d seen, just meant she was crazy, broken.

  She still wasn’t sure she wasn’t. But when she breathed deep and reached, the way Genevieve had taught her, the static prickle of warmth and comfort that greeted her, stinging up her arms and spine, down her legs, connecting her to every inch of her body and the static waiting beyond….

  It made her feel like broken was another word for amazing.

  And then the thing touched her again, and her eyes went wide, instinctively falling into her core the rest of the world fading to a blur of grey sounds, wrapping herself in the static, the current that rested inside her, and suddenly she could see the three teens again, the blue tinge of their skin, the dampness of their clothing, the faded, haunted expression in their eyes, not hurt or angry but lost, so lost, and she needed to find them, she needed to wipe that look away and if she just reached, she knew that she could find them, could-

  “Ellen.”

  She opened her eyes, not remembering having closed them, and Danny’s hands were on hers, his face inches away, his eyes intent enough on her to be scary. The thing behind her was gone, she knew that without looking.

  “It wasn’t going to hurt you. It was just curious. You’re strong, we can all feel that. Some of them get a little grabby, but… ”

  She almost couldn’t remember what he was talking about. “I saw them again.”

  He pulled back, his expression changing from concern to something sharper, more hungry. “Another vision?”

  “Not a new vision, it was… I saw it again, only closer, clearer. More details, things I missed last time.”

  “Is that normal?”

  She almost cried at the absurdity of the question, and his face changed again as though realizing that yeah, she had no idea. It was subtle, something around his eyes and mouth, the way they tensed and relaxed, but she could read them like signposts, and somehow that let her breathe more easily.

  “You’ll remember it now, though?” he asked.

  “I…yes.” Before, the visions had been like nightmares, fading wisps that couldn’t be clutched at, disappearing almost the moment she became aware of them. This time it was different.

  Different worried her, but she thought maybe it was the way Genevieve had said, that the more control she got, the better she’d be at this, more able to control it. Control was the name of the game.

  Danny stood up, slipping sunglasses back on, pushing them up the bridge of his nose and looking away, over across the water. “My snitch confirmed that several merfolk disappeared from here, so we’re on the right track.”

  “Mer…mermaids?”

  “Don’t ever call ‘em that if you want to step into the ocean without fear, ever again. Merfolk, or mers.”

  She nodded, storing that information away with everything else she’d been learning. “They disappeared from here?”

  “Under this very dock, it says.”

  It being the ..thing that had been behind her, that had touched her. She resisted another shudder, and instead got up off the bench - noting as she did so that what she’d thought was a bush was now gone, as though it had gotten up on its roots and tip-toed away - and walked across to the railing overlooking the water. Not really the ocean, here, if she remembered the maps right. The end of the East River and the start of the bay, waters mixing and mingling with the tides. She tried to imagine beings swimming underneath, living in those waters, and was surprised to find that it was easy enough. She’d already been introduced to a woman who lived in, no, belonged to a tree, after all. Why not mers?

  oOo

  “Danny?”

  It was the first time she’d used my name. That was my first thought, even as I got up to join her where she stood along the railing. The slightly briny air made me even more aware of the
sweat on my scalp and back, while her skin practically shimmered in the sunlight, bringing out dark copper highlights along her cheekbone. Amerindian blood in there, maybe. Or just that I don’t know enough about human races to catch the clues; they were all so much alike, compared to the fatae, I found it difficult to take the divisions seriously.

  “Did you remember something else?” I asked, resting my hands on the wooden railing, and looking not at her, but the ocean spread out in front of us. If I narrowed my gaze enough, I could block out the boats and the buildings, and almost imagine the city didn’t exist around us, just for an instant.

  “No. I….” She kept looking out across the water too, her head turning slightly, scanning from left to right, with the longest hesitation toward the right. “I can feel them.”

  “What?” Okay, that wasn’t what I’d been expecting. I didn’t know seers could do that. “When you say feel, you mean…?”

  “I don’t know. You, ah, you feel different. You, the…the thing that touched me, PB – all the fatae I’ve met so far, you all feel different, but when you’re near me I can feel you, recognize you. I can feel them here, too. Or, something, anyway. Something that feels like what I saw in the vision.” Her forehead crinkled again, trying to get the right words. “Mers, I guess, but specific. Familiar feels.”

  Talent, I’d been told, could pick up signatures, the feeling current got after it’s been wrapped around another Talent, or something. But it took training, and a level of skill there was no way Shadow had, not yet. Still, she’d already had them in her head, their current, and their fate, zapped into her brain. That could be enough of a connection. Maybe.

  Magic. I might be part of it, but that didn’t mean I understood it. Not really. I didn’t let that stop me, though.

  “Can you follow it? The feeling?”

  “I… yes. Maybe. Yes.” Her breath hitched, and she nodded. Yeah, she could do that.