by Brhi Stokes
Right now, there is only the swiftly crescendoing snaps of Mrs Shen’s voice while her son appears to shrink beneath her admonishment. I watch it begin to backfire. Slowly, Connor’s posture starts to straighten, his jaw tightening. The self-pity and hurt transforming into righteous indignation. Into anger.
I feel my own fists clench in spite of myself; my father’s voice snarls in the back of my mind. The scene before me might as well be the house I grew up in; except that this one has fresh flowers on the table and clean carpets.
“Stop comparing me to Julian!” he explodes at her, finally, in English. “I will never go to your stupid religious brainwashing camp or your damn shrink! If I’m such a fucking embarrassment to you how about I just go off myself right now!”
His mother shouts something after him as he thrusts himself through the door and past me onto the street.
“That was constructive,” I tell the woman more mildly than I feel, as I turn to follow Connor. The sound of the door slamming shut behind me tells me what she thinks of my opinion. It also tells me of her determination to leave her son outside in the cold. For a moment, I just stand there. I am not equipped to handle these sorts of things- well, that’s not true. I am perfectly equipped to handle these sorts of things. I just prefer not to handle them. Regardless, letting Connor bolt off into the cold evening is hardly the responsible thing to do; even if I am more than tired of unwanted guests.
I have to jog to catch up to the boy as he strides down the road until he can step into a small alley. It is upon entry that I see he is crouched by the wall, shaking as tears stream down his cheeks. This is not what I had signed up for. I make a mental note to keep invitational tape recordings to myself from now on as I take a seat on the other side of the alley, mimicking his position. No wonder he had been reluctant to go home; I guess that means I am partially at fault for those tears.
“They want me to go to some church camp that they send all the fags on,” he tells me, head hung. His tears fall to the ground between his feet, leaving wet streaks down his face.
“It doesn’t sound like you like that word-”
He snorts, and I stop speaking. “It’s what my brother calls me. He’s the goddamn dream child of the family. So he knows, right?” A bitter laugh leaves his lips, though he still refuses to meet my gaze.
“Things like this usually take time, but they get better.” Even to me, my words are nothing more than a well-practised lie. I no longer even hold onto the hope that they might be true.
It does not look like Connor believes them, either. “Sure. Whatever.”
We sit there for some time as Connor’s tears slowly dry in the cold evening air. My back starts to ache from the cold wall, and my knees are stiff as I stretch them out. I had avoided starting a family of my own for these sorts of reasons - complications, money and time. The former of which I made enough of myself, and the other two that I wanted to horde like a greedy dragon.
“Sorry…” he mutters.
“Pardon?”
It is then that he looks up at me. “You drove me all the way out here and it was a waste of time. I’m still wasting your time. I’m really sorry.”
I have been doing pretty well up until this point, but something about his heartfelt apology tugs at me. It takes extra effort to toss aside the memories that surface and I grimace at the sense of kinship welling up in my chest. He should be angry with me for forcing him to come here, but he just stares over at me with watery eyes and a beaten-dog expression.
I stand, offering him a hand. “Don’t apologise. I could’ve just let you go home by yourself.” He takes the assistance and now we both stand in a small, cold alley on the side of a suburban street. This is the part where I should leave, where a smart person would offer to drive him to a friends house. Instead, the tightness in my chest begins to bubble out from my mouth and ruin my evening. “Anyway, as you might’ve noticed, I don’t have much in the way of food at home. I was going to stop by the pub for a bite on my way back. Did you want to come along?”
He fixes me with an incredulous look. There is anger in his eyes at the sympathy he imagines I am expressing. “No… thanks. I’m just gonna…” He shrugs, eyes on the ground.
I tell myself that I am simply trying to avoid the boy freezing to death on the street. I almost have myself convinced, too. Given that I have dragged him home to face his demons, part of me decides that I owe him a place to sleep, at least. Tomorrow, I tell myself, I’ll find out if he has other family or friends to stay with and take him there.
“The next part of the story has Daniel in it. You like Daniel.”
“What? Why do you think that?”
I shrug as I turn and head out onto the road; thankfully, Connor follows. “Because your eyes light up whenever I tell you about him.”
“…only because you give him an Irish accent,” he admits reluctantly.
“Well, he is Irish. Now, I could really go for some fish and chips.”
He scrunches his face up at me. “I hate fish.”
“Pie for you, then,” I agree as we reach the car.
The drive back to my building is quiet, but it is a much more comfortable quiet than the one on the way to Connor’s house.
“We’ll walk to the pub,” I tell Connor as I park the car. After all the excitement of today, I could use something to warm my limbs and loosen my tongue.
“How far away is it?”
“About a ten-minute walk. I’ll tell you the part with Daniel in it on our way there.”
I can see from the creasing at the edge of his lips that he likes the sound of this. As we walk through the light snowfall that begins to drift down before us, I continue with the story.
• • •
I had owed Daniel a few beers for some time now. Not that the failure had been mine; it turned out that pathologists led busy lives. After a few weeks of trying, we had finally found the time to head to his favourite pub and now he eyed me wearily as I told him about the three other fixers that had burst into my flat. I left out most of Matthen’s flirting and skipped the parts where Avilaigne had moulted flesh all over my home. Given Daniel’s profession, I doubted he would have been too off-put by the concept, but I thought to spare him that detail all the same.
“Well, it makes sense that you’re not the only one here. You’d be a sight busier if you were, friendo,” he told me as he picked reluctantly at his salad.
“That’s a nice, erm… healthy meal you’re tucking into, Daniel.”
“The missus says I need to lose weight. I keep telling her that no one over fifty needs to worry about that sorta thing anymore, but she’s gettin’ antsy about it.”
I hid my smile behind my pint. “You look fine to me,” I assured him once I had swallowed the mouthful; and the grin.
“Don’t lie to me, McAlaster, I’ve been married to a solicitor for fifteen years, I can just about smell them before they’re told. Like rain.”
“Solicitor?” I countered. “I thought she was a coroner?”
“She had to be a solicitor first. Still thinks like one, too.”
“Are you even allowed to work that closely?”
“We keep work contact to a minimum.”
“Right. Hrmm… Y’know, maybe I-”
“Your negotiating doesn’t count, Page.”
“Mediating,” I corrected.
“You know, I told you there were probably more of your kind,” he said.
I frowned at him, not at all liking the ribbing that was about to follow. “Yes. I know…”
“But you were convinced that you were special,” Daniel told me as he laughed. “‘Didn’t tell me about anyone else, so why should I think I’m not the only one’.” His imitation of my voice was half-decent, I found with dismay.
“Hey, this job didn’t come with a handbook. It came with me having to figure it out by myself. You ever throw yourself off a building just to see if someone was right?”
The humour dropped from h
is face. “I thought you jumped because-”
I waved the comment away, drinking down the rest of my pint. A comfortable quiet settled between us for a few minutes.
“So what’re you going to do about this dilemma that the girl’s in?” Daniel asked finally, and conversation resumed its flow.
“What, Avilaigne? Not a bloody thing, Dan. I did more than enough as is.” I picked through my own fish. Battered, unlike Daniel’s, and with a healthy serving of chips to boot.
“Aye, you saved her life by doing something that’s probably not that big a deal to you. The noble Page McAlaster,” he scoffed.
“I-”
“You were probably more interested in not having to clean the blood off your floors.”
He could always see right through me.
“Well… it’s blue, for starters. Although I wonder if it would just turn red as the human body solidified around…” I shook my head, putting my thoughts back on track. “Anyway, secondly, it would have been the body of some poor old woman. What was I supposed to do in that case? You ever find the cause of death to be ‘bled out from laser gunshot wounds’?” There was no way I was going to let him guilt me about this.
“Why tell me all this, then? If not to clean your conscience?”
I sighed, took a long swig from my glass, and shrugged. “I need to figure out how I’m going to explain my failure to retrieve that medallion.”
“To your bosses?”
“Well,” a new voice interrupted as a slender man slid into the booth seat next to me, “to me. I’ll relay the information to the Masters for you, of course.”
I looked up into a pair of eyes I could only describe as predatory. They were the colour of amber and tapered at the edges; the dark makeup around them giving them the impression of a hunting beast. Other than that, and his delicately thin body, he looked human enough.
“Seal?” I asked, glancing at Daniel to gauge his reaction.
“Seal,” agreed the newcomer, thrusting his palm out in my direction. The disturbing scent of cooked flesh met my nose as I watched a familiar pattern burn into his hand. Across the table, Daniel was frowning. He did not gag, but I should have expected that from someone who spent so much time around corpses. He also looked far more relaxed than I would have in his situation. Either he trusted me enough to know that my calmness meant we were safe, or he had balls of steel. Given his history, I would not be surprised if it was simply the latter.
“I believe you owe us an explanation,” the thin man said, fixing me with his predatory gaze. “Cat says you were unable to see your previous job to completion, too.”
“Cat…? Really?” I snorted. “The last one was literally a cat,” I explained to Daniel. My friend quirked a brow but did not say anything.
“Page…” My name was said gently, but even the soft sound of the man’s voice had me turning my head towards him as if it were against my will. I found myself realising I had actually preferred the cat.
“Right. In the first job, the girl killed herself before I got to her. I couldn’t have helped that.” Except, perhaps, by being a better shot. Guns were not my forte.
“And the second?” asked the man, as if he chose each word carefully before letting it leave his lips. As if he tasted each of them on his tongue first.
Not entirely sure how well lying to the messenger of likely omniscient beings might go, I stuck with the truth. “I gave it to another fixer. Natsuko, the Japanese girl?”
His eyes narrowed for the barest of seconds, perhaps in thought. “We know of Natsuko.”
“Yes. Well. She has it, so you’ll still get it back.”
“And you’ll be finalising any further assignments…?”
“…with accuracy and full completion,” I finished for him.
His tone was flat as he stared at me. “That was a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, Page.”
“Oh. Yes.”
I was grateful when he stood; my stomach dropping only when he turned back to the table. “And why did you give Natsuko the object?”
“Hrmm? Well, because she was- Wait, shouldn’t you know this already? She would have had to explain why she didn’t end up doing her job, right?”
The messenger’s expression was placid, but his eyes narrowed once more in a way that made my skin crawl. Then, without waiting for a real answer, he turned and left the pub.
“If I didn’t believe you before…” murmured Daniel, shaking his head.
“Right. I think I’m going to need a few more of these pints before the night’s through. I don’t think Lion Eyes there was very happy with me.”
“Well you cocked up two jobs- What?” he added as I threw him a glare. “You did.”
“I am getting us both another pint,” I told him as I stood.
“Thought I told you I was on a diet.”
“You’ll just have to drown in liver failure with me, old man.”
**
I fell through the air, arms spread wide. I was far higher than I ever remembered being, plummeting through the clouds. My face froze as I dropped from the great height, my skin so numb that I only barely registered bits of it tearing from my nose and cheeks as I fell. Closer and closer I came to the ground, watching every tree and then every blade of grass as if the world had highlighted them in my view. Just as I hit the ground, the dream repeated. It felt as if it lasted all night.
I was, unsurprisingly, somewhat hungover when I awoke. It was not as though I got blackout drunk these days, so I fully remembered curling up on the settee with a spare blanket. This made it quite surprising to see that there were strange people in my home that certainly had not been there when I had slumped onto the seat last night. I sat bolt upright, looking between the pair of unfamiliar faces and wondering whether the headache was causing their features to swim or vice versa. Then, I noticed that the shimmering involved the woman having a small beard and dark blue skin, and revealed horns atop the man’s tanned forehead.
“Oh no,” I groaned. “How did you find my flat?” God only knew how they had gotten into the blasted thing.
The woman - at least, the one in the body of a woman - frowned softly at me, but there was no malice in her gaze. “Are you unwell?”
“Worse now,” I told her, moving to the kitchen for some water and painkillers - the morsridone would do. Hopefully, it would also curb some of those dreams… “What are you doing here?”
The pair followed me. “Here, domains are not communal, they are owned. So I believe we have trespassed,” the man explained to his companion, who looked suitably shocked.
“Our apologies,” she told me seriously.
I stared at them from across the kitchen. “You haven’t answered any of my questions so far. Let’s start from the top. Why are you here?”
“We tracked down the thief,” the woman told me, nodding. “But the Myrkdrawian informed us that she no longer had it; it had never been in her realm. We confirmed this with a seeking spell-”
“Spell?” I tried not to sound too incredulous.
“Yes, spell. A… magic incantation that allows us to-”
“Yes. I get the idea,” I interrupted, raising a hand. “Continue, please.”
“And she told us that the Sacred Oath was to be found in the realm of Earth,” she finished.
Oh, bugger. Sacred Oath? That sounded important. I had to remind myself that I had seen the amulet hanging around the neck of a holy figure. Of course it was important; the Masters wouldn’t have sought it else-wise. My concern was that this had never happened before. I had stolen away with various items from other planes over the last six months and no one else had come to hunt me down and demand their return. A small voice in my head told me that this would not have happened had I refused to give the amulet to Natsuko. I tried telling myself that refusing the girl would only have led to bigger problems, but a small part of me was unsure. I put the idea out of my mind that resolving the situation another way would have stopped the ever-increasing num
ber of visits from strangers.
Realising that the pair were staring at me in the silence, I spoke. “And Avilaigne told you where I lived?”
“Oh, no. The Myrkdrawian gave us a general location, but your domain is quite easy to find.”
“What do you mean?” I rubbed at my head. This conversation was not hangover material. The morsridone worked well enough on the headache, but my thinking was still fuzzy and lethargic. Come to think of it, everything looked a little like I was viewing it from underwater. I did not recall having the sensation before I had downed the pills.
“There is a rift in your living quarters,” explained the man, drawing my attention away from my wavering hands and back to him. “There is no magic here, is there?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Hrmm,” he rubbed at an ear, and I could see through the haze that they were finely pointed, just as I had noticed on the others of Evisalon. “I think a better translation would be ‘transdimensional hole’, perhaps?”
“...in my flat?”
“Down the stairs, near the entrance portal,” chimed the woman.
Where whatever I stick the tape onto winds up, I thought. So that’s how it works.
“All right. Well.” I scrubbed at my eyes, hoping the morsridone’s side-effects would wear off soon. “If you spoke to Avilaigne, you’d know that I don’t have it, either. So your best bet would be to use that… spell of yours and head on over to Japan to retrieve it. Or wherever she left for.”
They both just stared at me, their unnervingly pale eyes shifting in and out of focus behind their human housings. I had no take on their strange body language; these people were far more removed from me than Avilaigne or Matthen had been. It had never occurred to me until now how uncomfortable that might make me. My leg up on the conversation was completely gone; or, I supposed, it had never really existed with these people.