Miles to Go

by Laura Anne Gilman

  It wasn’t the best hook I’d ever heard, but I’d have bit no matter what. I pulled out my wallet, and counted out twenty dollars, handing it to her. She took the cash, and leaned back to press open a door that had been hidden in the wall behind her. “Go on in,” she said. “Enjoy.”

  The door led into a landing, and then a short flight of stairs leading down. The stairwell was barren but well-lit, and the steps were clean and in good repair. I tensed up anyway, and reached back to take Ellen’s hand, squeezing it once in warning before letting go. The door closed behind us, and I had the Glock in my hand, dipped down but ready. I didn’t think this was a trap, but I didn’t know what it was. Prepared was better.

  oOo

  At the bottom of the stairs there was no ambush, no guards, and no goons of any species waiting to get shot. There were, however, cases. Large cases and small ones, a dozen or so, each lit with professional quality lighting.

  Gun still in-hand, I stepped forward and looked into the first case. A face looked back. My breath caught, even as part of my brain was categorizing what I saw, the way I used to scan a crime scene. Ridged forehead, pearlescent skin yellowed with age, eyes wide and milky-white, and a jaw that, dropped open, showed a double row of sharp, shark-like teeth.

  A Nagini. Just the head, and a chunk of her neck: the muscled serpent’s body missing, maybe lost, maybe cut off for easier display.

  My throat tight, I moved on to the next case.

  “Danny?” Ellen’s voice was too small, too quiet, and I abandoned the display of what looked like a centaur’s forearm to see what she had found. She was standing in front of one of the full-sized cases, at the back, and her hands were palm-flat on the glass, as though trying to reach inside.

  The case was set up like a diorama, with a painted backdrop of leaves, green and vibrant, while a three-dimensional tree trunk filled the center of the case, and in front of that…

  No, not in front of. Nailed to the tree was the body of a woman, her skin smooth and brown, her arms twined above her head, her hair falling over one shoulder, down to her hips, her face…

  God, her face.

  Most people – Nulls, maybe even some Talent – would assume this was more of what was upstairs, frauds expertly done. I knew better.

  “A dryad,” Ellen choked out. “They did this to a dryad.”

  And another fatae had sent us down here, knowing what we’d see. Not that we had any great claim to the moral high ground compared to humans, overall, but… I’d trained myself to hold back emotion, to never let the anger interfere with the job. This took a hard shove, but it stayed down.

  “Come on.” I used my free hand to gather Ellen in closer, and we moved away from the ghoulish display, moving toward the back of the room, where a short hallway led us to another room, both of us bracing to find our missing trio, even as I prayed that I was wrong, that this wasn’t what it was.

  There were four exhibits in this room, each in a full, floor to ceiling case. And they were moving.

  My first instinct was to break the cases, to free the beings inside, but Ellen’s hand on my arm held me back. I looked back, and her face was strained, stressed, her eyes too wide and intently focused.

  “Current,” she said, looking at the half-dozen piskies fluttering around inside their case. “They’re not alive, not really. Just…moving.”

  Magic. A Talent did this. Not that I had any particular love for the squirrel-sized tricksters of the fatae, but not even piskies deserved this.

  And the other cases….

  Ellen let out a harsh cry, and fell to her knees, a howl rising out of her throat that made me want to kill something, anything, just to feed the bloodthirst I could feel in that sound. The rage that escaped my control, finally, was cool and hard, implacable, and in need of something to hit.

  In the other case, the largest one, were three mer, one perched on a rock, combing out her long green hair, the other two half-submerged, their tails flicking underwater, as though they were telling each other stories, or competing for her attention.

  Ellen keened, and I dropped to my knees beside her, trying to keep my gun out and ready while still trying to offer some useless support, some reminder that she wasn’t alone, my arm over her shoulders, holding her to me the way I would any injured, frightened child.

  Too late. Far too late to save them; whatever Ellen had seen must have been echoes of their road to this place, this end. “Are they aware?” I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to ask, but I needed to.

  “I don’t…” She choked back a sob, the sound thick with phlegm and sorrow. “I don’t know. There’s…” She stared at the case as though trying to memorize it. “There’s current there, but it’s wrapped around them so tightly, I can’t tell if anything’s beneath any more.”

  Current was kin to electricity. Life ran on electricity, too, the pump of hearts, the tingle in our brains. The thought that they might be aware, turned into conscious waxwork displays to horrify and titillate… it was worse than any horror movie I’d ever seen, because it was real.

  “Why?” So much pain in that voice, so much anger. “Why do I see things I can’t change? What’s the point?”

  Everything she’d hoped to do, tagging along with me, had shattered. I wanted to comfort her, but there was no comfort in this room.

  “We know what happened to them,” I said. “There’s no more uncertainty for their families. Sometimes, that’s the best we can do.”

  It sounds weak, but being able to give a family closure can be enough. When you know it’s not going to end well, having it end with even a small kindness…you take the gifts you get.

  “Not enough. They change out the exhibits, the sign on the door out front said, new ones every six weeks.” Ellen’s voice was raw but clear. “This is new… they had others before. They’ll have others again.”

  She looked up at the mer display, and something in her face changed, like the ocean had washed under her skin. “This is wrong.”

  On so many levels. But this misuse of magic, and fatae involved with the actual freak show, from the security to the door guard… it was going to get messy.

  “We can sic the PUPs on them, but for now we need to keep moving.” I could feel the time ticking down again – not for the teens, but for us. At some point, someone was going to start talking, and this place was not exactly the kind of place that liked official notice. If we wanted to bring them down, we had to make sure they didn’t spook.

  And I hadn’t forgotten that she’d seen me dead, too.

  “All right.” Ellen got to her feet, wobbling a little, but her back straightened and her chin went up, and I didn’t know how far it would carry her, but it was enough for now.

  We made it as far as the exit – and this one had an actual exit sign on it, not egress – when someone came in through the out door.

  “Not so fast,” the person said. Perkins. And he had a gun, too.

  “Oh, fuck me,” I said.

  oOo

  Ellen had gone through too many emotional switches already. She’d been scared, and sad, and horrified and too many other things she wasn’t quite able to grasp. When the carny owner confronted them, she reacted without thinking following not instinct – to hide – but the way Genevieve had been training her, to grab hold of her current and let it flow through her, opening herself up to it, so that she was ready to defend herself.

  And when she did that, something pushed at her. Something large, not powerful in and of itself, but large enough to make itself known. It didn’t feel like current, but it didn’t not exactly, either. She tried to ignore it, keeping her gaze on the man in front of them, trying to see what Danny was doing, in case they had to make a sudden run for it, or if she was supposed to drop or-

  That something pushed at her again, enough to slide through, a tendril, no, a gnat, biting at her, shoving something into her awareness, finding a tiny hole and forcing its way through.

  “You bastard.” She knew,
suddenly, as though the mers had told her, their last whispers in her ear. “You sold them. You told them they’d have jobs, lured them here, and then you sold them!” Once she opened herself to it, the whisper grew into a wave, swamping her, explaining everything without having to say anything at all. The other fatae in the cases were too weak, their awareness too faint to start, or gone too long. But the mers were fresh, the magic animating them keeping electrical impulses running in their brain, too, enough that she had Seen them, Seen their despair, their sense of betrayal, the way they’d been moved from place to place…

  They had called her here. Nobody else could hear them. Nobody else could do this.

  Current hummed inside her, making her feel queasy, like she was going to throw up, but at the same time like she could do anything, explode into violence like the ninja whatevers in the old movies her mother loved. Genevieve had warned her about that, about how dangerous is was to let current take control, that she could do more damage than she meant to.

  She wanted to do a lot of damage. But Danny was next to her, and there were people upstairs, and she didn’t know how to hurt only the right people.

  “Just you?” Danny was saying, and she was confused at first, distracted by the current-hum, unable to focus well on the two armed men in front of her.

  “Son, I don’t want to be here,” Perkins said, lifting his weapon until it was pointed directly at Danny’s chest. “All you had to do was walk away, and nobody needed to be here, nobody needed to get hurt,” he continued, like they were having a friendly little chat. “I told you the truth – I didn’t want this anywhere near my show.”

  “But not out of any moral bias,” Danny said, and his voice was dry, dry as paper, dry as winter air. “Just because things were getting too hot. Maybe the local inspectors got complaints? Comments that couldn’t be ignored? There’s always a small percentage of suckers who get too disturbed, who start to think, instead of reacting, and maybe some of them knew about the fatae, knew that your ‘side show’ was too real to not be real?”

  “All it takes is one weak willy,” Perkins said, “and the bribes cost more than what you’re taking in. But I didn’t like it, not once I knew about,” and the tip of the gun moved slightly, taking in the entire basement, “this. Doesn’t matter, didn’t matter. Once you’re in the game, you don’t get to walk out again.”

  Ellen could see it all now, not the moment of death but just before, in that basement in the house by the Shore, the moment of realization when the girl cried out, desperate for something, for someone to know what had happened to her, to them, and the current had carried that call, dropping it into her brain, her core. It had all come from that, everything that brought them here.

  There was no meaning to it, there was no hidden purpose. It was all chance, all random, who she heard, who she saw, flickers in the current-line, roads taken or not-taken.

  Danny had moved in front of her, a subtle but clear protection, for all the good it would do, and was still talking. “So you’re here to kill us, is that it?”

  “Of course not,” the man said. “Killing a human? That’s illegal. Oh, wait. You’re not human, are you?”

  Fatae had no protection, because they didn’t exist, legally. He thought she was fatae, too. But he had felt her pull current…

  Ellen realized, suddenly, that Perskins didn’t know about Talent. He knew about fatae, but not magic. He thought they were all the same, and his business partners had never told him anything else.

  They were going to die. Die, and Danny would end up in one of these displays, and -

  *genevieve* She didn’t know if she could ping loud enough, over this far away, but she didn’t know what else to do. *bonnie!*

  The current sizzled and snapped around her, demanding that she do something. Something now, not waiting for someone else, hoping someone else will fix everything.

  Random chance. But random chance that ended with her, here.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Danny said, his voice tight and angry, but not scared, he wasn’t scared, and he stepped forward and the gun went off, too loud in the basement room. Ellen dropped instinctively even before Danny’s body hit hers, taking her to the ground, and then there was another gunshot, or maybe the echo of the first, and terror ripped through her, loosing the current in her core without any control whatsoever.

  The glass cases shattered, and all she heard was screaming.

  Some of it might have been her own.

  oOo

  I hate getting shot. Never happened while I was on the force, but since then? Three times: twice in the leg, once in the shoulder. This made a third time in the leg, and it never hurt any less. The fact that I was pretty sure he’d been aiming for my chest wasn’t much consolation.

  The noise seemed to have died down, so I lifted my head and risked looking around. Underneath me, Ellen made a noise, and tried to get up, too.

  “No. Stay down.” I put my hand on her head, and kept her from looking. She didn’t need to see this.

  I couldn’t use magic, but I could feel it. I was pretty sure head-blind Nulls a mile away would have felt this.

  The glass cases were all shattered, the lights overhead likewise. The room was lit by a handful of emergency lights, the red glow adding to the surreal hellishness.

  Perkins lay in front of us, face up. Or what was left of his face, anyway. Something had gouged at him, torn him apart, and left him in a puddle of… watered down blood.

  I was pretty sure, without bothering to test it, that it was seawater. Poor bastard. He’d gotten too deep in bad things, but as much as I despised him, he wasn’t the one who’d done this.

  He’d been the one they could reach, though. Maybe. They? Maybe my Shadow had done this on her own. I didn’t think so, though.

  I’d leave figuring it out to the PUPs. My responsibility was to the living.

  “Come on,” I said, sliding my hand down to Ellen’s shoulder. “Close your eyes, and come on. Trust me, and don’t look.”

  She got to her feet, still shaking, and slid her hand into my other one, twisting her fingers with mine. I tried to project as much reassurance as I could into my voice and touch, and slowly her skin warmed, her shaking eased.

  “Your leg…”

  “Hurts like hell, needs to be looked at, yeah. But not here. Let’s go.”

  I’m not sure who was supporting whom, but we walked out of the exit and up into the lobby of the building. A few people stared, but nobody stopped us, as we walked out into the sunlight, and the car.

  10

  Most of my cases, I get to see the wrap-up. I’m the one who delivers a missing kid home, or tells the client good news about whatever they’d feared… or brings them the news they’re never prepared to hear. Sometimes it’s the best moment in the world, sometimes it’s the worst, but there’s always a sense of closure, that the agreement I’d entered into had been fulfilled.

  I didn’t have that, here. We’d gotten back to the city without incident, dropping the car off at the rental place and cabbing it, not back to my office, or the emergency room, but directly to the PUPI offices uptown. Bonnie’d been waiting, as had Valere and her partner, hovering with a mix of fear and anger. Valere had been almost maternal, swooping down on Ellen and wanting to know what had happened, if she was okay. The girl put up with it for a few minutes, stoic as an oak, and then broke down, wrapping her arms around her knees and putting her head down in a clear do-not-ask warning sign.

  I didn’t blame her a damn bit. I was tempted to myself. But Bonnie and Venec were waiting, and I needed to give them my report, so they could go do whatever it was they could do, to make sure this mess didn’t get swept under anyone’s’ rug.

  That’s what PUPI was there for, to make sure magical crimes didn’t get excused, explained, or otherwise forgotten. And if that meant that I didn’t get to be in on the final moments… I was all right with that, for once. There wasn’t anyone to tell: I knew that the sideshow’d already moved
on, and finding them would be damned near impossible. Word would go out, because the Cosa Nostradamus would know, once PUPI was done. People – our people – would be alert, now.

  Only what happened before I could say anything was that their office manager/medic took one look at me, and had me flat on my back and pantsless in under three minutes, possibly a world record. Only after she’d pronounced me bullet free and luckier than I deserved, and stitched me up, was Venec was allowed to take over. He was the thorough bastard I’d expected, wringing the last detail out of me until I almost wished the bullet had done more damage.

  By the time I was turned loose, Ellen had been swept away by her mentor. I stood in the office lobby, my leg aching like a bitch, and feeling weirdly bereft. She had only shown up, what, 36 hours ago? If that? How had I gotten used to having a shadow, so quickly?

  I hoped that Valere was able to help her deal with what she’d seen what she’d done, and headed home to a date with my case notes for the job Ellen’s arrival had interrupted, a stool to put my leg up on, and a bottle of gin.

  oOo

  I don’t drink often, but when I do, it’s with the intensity and fierceness of my faun kin. And twice in one week added up, even for me. Which meant that when someone slammed on the door of my apartment at WTF early the next morning, I wanted to tell them to fuck off and die. Instead, I made sure I was wearing shorts - I was - and staggered to the front door. I didn’t get hungover as easily as humans did, but there was some definite dehydration-exhaustion happening in my cells.

  “Open the door, Danny.”

  I opened the door. My shadow stood there, looking about as good as I felt. But she was fully dressed, and carrying a box of what smelled like pain au chocolat.

  “Come in,” I said, but she was already in, handing me the box and stalking into the apartment like she owned it. I closed the door behind her, and leaned against it, holding the pastry box. Definitely pain au chocolat. My mouth watered, even as my brain demanded coffee. And my body wanted painkillers.