by C. E. Murphy
"I have a family," Rosie said stiffly. "My parents are doing just fine."
"Oh, darling." Valentine smiled. "You know that's different from having a husband and children of your own. I do hope you'll be spending some more time with Hank, Rosie. Not that I'm matchmaking," she said with a laugh that made Rosie struggle not to wince, "but I think spending time with some nice young people is just what he needs, and I'm sure you'd like that too, right now."
"I'd like a job right now, Mrs Vaughn." She'd started to get used to confessing to friends that she had college plans, but that seemed like more than she needed to tell Valentine Vaughn. Besides, Mrs Vaughn would probably hear it soon enough from Hank.
Valentine's eyes lit up at someone down the street and she smiled again, first at Rosie, then, as Rosie turned, at Harrison Vaughn, who strode toward them at a brisk walk, as if wholly undisturbed by the warm air. He hadn't even broken a sweat, Rosie saw as he joined them, and promptly wondered if some demons were impervious to weather.
"Here's the man you need to talk to, then, Rosie," Valentine said mischievously. "Harry, you remember Hank's friend, Rosie Ransom. Rosie is absolutely determined to keep working, Harry. This is one young lady who insists she won't give up her dreams. You must have a position for her somewhere, mustn't you?"
"Rosie." Harrison Vaughn smiled and offered a big cool hand that Rosie shook nervously. "Val can't talk you into the domestic life, hm? I'm impressed. I thought she could convince anyone of anything."
"Except you not to call me ‘Val'," Valentine said. "Really, Harrison."
"If you really minded, I'd stop." Vaughn kissed Valentine's cheek, then regarded Rosie. "I'm sure I could fit you in somewhere, Rosie, if you're that determined. I won't even hold it against you when you get married and leave me in the lurch. Can you type?"
"No." A spark ran through Rosie. "But I know someone who's taking classes now, someone who needs a job more than I do. If you could give her a break, Mr Vaughn, just a chance to get up to speed while she learns, I'm sure she'd do a good job for you."
Vaughn's eyebrows rose. "We have a Good Samaritan on our hands here, Val. Now are you asking me for two jobs, Rosie?"
Rosie threw her shoulders back and met his eye with as steely a look as she could manage. "No, sir. Like I said, my friend Pearl needs work a lot more than I do."
"Not Pearl Daly," Valentine said in surprise. Rosie looked at her, astonished, and she waved long, elegant fingers. "Hank mentioned her in connection with the whole incident this weekend. Really, Rosie? From what I understand—"
"She's a nice girl who got in a lot of trouble," Rosie said fiercely. "She needs help getting back on her feet, and she's real shy, not likely to put herself forward, so if you're willing to help out, Mr Vaughn, won't you help Pearl? Won't you—" Her gut seized as it struck her that Harrison Vaughn might be the last person on earth it would be safe for Pearl to work for. She swallowed hard and finished, "—find somewhere in one of your offices she could work? Somewhere not too important, while she learns, and if she's any good, she could move up, couldn't she? She deserves a chance, Mr Vaughn. She didn't do anything wrong."
A smile a lot like Hank's tugged the corner of Vaughn's mouth. "I'll see what I can do, Miss Ransom. And in the meantime, don't think I've forgotten about those boxing lessons I promised you. I like a girl who can take care of herself."
"Boxing lessons, Harry?" Valentine examined both her husband and Rosie with dismay. "You can't be serious. For heaven's sake, what is the world coming to. When I was a girl, no polite young lady would even consider something so crass and violent as boxing. I wish the world could be the way it was then, Harry. I find this all very distressing."
"Change is inevitable, Val."
"So is dinner," the breathless waitress announced, arriving with several bags of food that she handed to both the Vaughns and to Rosie. "I'm sorry this took so long, we're just so busy. But here you go, fresh and hot!"
Harrison Vaughn dipped into a pocket and came out with a five-dollar bill that he tucked into the waitress's apron pocket. "Thank you—Clara," he said, tipping his head to read her name tag. "Thank you, Clara. I appreciate a job done with politeness and enthusiasm. Good luck with the rest of the evening in there."
"Gosh, thank you, mister! Thank you!" Clara ran back into the diner, leaving Vaughn and Rosie smiling openly, and Valentine with a smile of rueful tolerance.
"Honestly, Harrison, left to your own devices, you'd give every penny you make away. Rosie, do you need a lift anywhere? We have the car."
"No, I couldn't ask you to go out of your way. The tram goes right where I need to. Thank you, though."
"Of course. Tell your friend Irene and her handsome soldier hello for me, won't you, dear?"
"… sure." Rosie watched the Vaughns leave before looking in the window again at Rich and Irene. They were laughing again, Irene's hand on top of Rich's on the booth table. They didn't look as nice together as she and Rich did, Rosie thought with a pang of uncertainty. She and Rich both had dark hair and light eyes, like they'd been made as a matched set. But then again, maybe Rich did look better with Irene, with her red hair and brown eyes. Maybe they were less ordinary together than Rosie and Rich were.
Well, she hardly needed to worry about that right now. She and Rich had a whole lot to talk about, and she could hardly blame him for having dinner with Irene when she'd made it plain that she wasn't ready for a big commitment. A queer knot of jealousy, hard to swallow down, still twisted the breath out of her. Lips pressed together, she turned her back on Rich and Irene, and went to catch the tram.
She'd gotten most of the way to Jean's house when she realized that she hadn't gotten any sense of danger off Harrison Vaughn's approach or presence. She'd felt nothing like the thrill that had warned her before Helen Montgomery's attack. She sagged against the tram window, clutching the bag of hot food against her belly, and wished she felt better about eliminating the only lead they'd had.
✪ ✪ ✪
"Yeah," Jean said over her burger and fries as Rosie explained it all to her, "yeah, well, there's no telling if sensing Montgomery was Redeemer magic or just some kind of luck, anyway. Maybe you just saw a shadow at the right time. The only way to know for sure is if we find another demon to test it out on."
Rosie pushed her own food away and folded her arms on Jean's kitchen table so she could rest her forehead on them. "How are we going to do that?"
"They've been coming out of the woodwork. I guess we wait a day or two."
"That's a terrible plan."
"I know, but I don't have another one. Are you going to eat those fries?"
"Yes." Rosie sat up and pulled her food back to herself protectively. A knock sounded on Jean's door and Rosie stood, eyeing Jean. "That's probably Hank. No stealing my fries."
"Mmhmm." Jean took one as Rosie left, and laughed at Rosie's expression. "I just wanted to see you make that face," she called after Rosie, and Rosie, shaking her head and smiling, opened the front door to a bedraggled Hank Vaughn.
"I wish you'd told me you'd be here. I'd have saved myself twenty minutes of driving and ten minutes of bad flirting from that tall housemate of yours." Hank pushed his way past Rosie and threw himself into Jean's couch, unbuttoning the collar of his shirt. "Damn, it's hot. How can you be eating burgers?"
"Because ice cream sundaes would have melted on the way over. I got you one."
"A sundae?" Hank pushed out of the couch again, and still headed for the kitchen when Rosie muttered, "A burger." He reached for one of Jean's fries on the way past, got his hand slapped, and stole five of Rosie's instead. She protested and he shoved them in his mouth without guilt. "Where are the plates?"
"Second cupboard from the sink, and you can get yours yourself. I should've drunk your soda." Rosie sat and glared over her burger as Hank poured his food onto a plate and joined them at the table.
"There's soda? Cold soda? You're an angel, Rosie Ransom."
"In the fridge," R
osie said, mollified. Hank jumped up again to get his, and Jean said, "So Rosie cleared your dad of wrongdoing while you were out."
"I think I did. Maybe."
Hank said, "I told you," when Jean had finished explaining. "I wish it didn't leave us with no answers, but I told you."
"Still," Rosie said, "we want to test your empathy, Hank. It's hard to believe any of it's real. What if Jean's right and I was just lucky with Helen Montgomery? You didn't know she was there, so—"
To her surprise, Hank's eyebrows rose with intrigue. "How are you going to test me?"
"By going into another room and trying to feel things you can't see on our faces. How far away does your empathy work from?"
"I don't know exactly, but far enough that driving around in Europe, I'd know if we came within, say, a quarter mile? Across a room is easy. Walls don't stop it, if that's what you're asking. This will be interesting. I've never had anyone to run tests with. But I don't know how well it works if someone's trying to feel the emotion. I don't know if that's real enough, if you take my meaning."
"We'll find out. We should put wax in his ears, too," Jean said to Rosie. "So he can't hear anything we do or say."
"Do I get any say in this?" Hank asked dryly, but after dinner, he submitted to the wax ear plugs without objection, and sat in the living room, his back to the kitchen, where the women remained.
Despite his ears being plugged, Rosie lowered her voice. "How are we going to do this?"
"The best way I can figure is something like this." Jean thew a punch straight into Rosie's stomach, so hard the dinner she'd just eaten came halfway back up. Rosie made a sick sound and dropped to her knees, tears in her eyes, and from the living room Hank said, "Pain. Anger. Nausea. Rosie is hurting."
Rosie, struggling to draw a breath, lifted an astonished, tear-filled gaze toward the door. "Disbelief, amazement," said Hank. Rosie met Jean's guilty eyes and accepted her help in getting up.
"Now you do me." Jean braced like she was getting ready for a hit. Rosie stuck her fingers in Jean's armpit and wiggled them. Jean swallowed a shriek and batted at Rosie's hand, fighting off startled laughter.
"Surprise," Hank reported. "Something else. Humor, kind of. Mostly surprise. Oh. Sadness. Jean …" He sounded sad, too, as Jean pressed a hand over her mouth, unable to stop tears from spilling over.
"Sorry. Sorry," she said hoarsely. "I was ready to get punched, and then you know how sometimes you can't tell if you're laughing or crying, and I just miss Ruby so much, and it just hit me again, I didn't expect it …"
Rosie pulled her into a hug, forgetting about the experiment. "It's okay. It's okay, hon. Cry all you need to. You've been so brave."
"I don't feel brave at all."
"Compassion," Hank said from the living room, softly. "Fear. Loneliness. You're both tired."
"That's enough." Rosie's voice cracked. She lifted it, trying again, hoping Hank would hear her this time. "That's enough, Hank. Shh," she said more softly, to Jean. "Shh, it's okay, hon. It's okay."
"It's not okay! How can it be okay, Ruby's dead!"
"It's okay to cry," Rosie amended. She pulled Jean down to the floor, hugging her. "I know it's not okay, none of it is okay, but it's okay to cry. You don't have to be brave all the time."
"Anger," Hank said, now from the doorway. His eyes were closed, unhappiness etched in lines on his face. "Futility. Loss. Emptiness. Love. I'm sorry, Jean. I really am."
"Just shut up now," Jean said hoarsely. Hank nodded and stepped back from the door, leaving Rosie alone with her again. "The worst part is I keep living," Jean whispered. "I keep right on living without her and I don't even want to be doing that. Sometimes I forget, already, for a whole minute or two. I get distracted and I forget, how can I already forget, she hasn't even been dead a week and sometimes I forget—!"
"You're not forgetting her. You're never going to forget her, Jean. It's okay to be alive, though. To keep on breathing and forget for a minute that she's not here anymore. It's hard to get used to the idea that she's not. Forgetting that she's not isn't the same as forgetting her, not at all."
"It hurts so bad when I remember she's gone, though." Jean's voice came in raw gasps. "It hurts all over again, just like new."
"I know. I know. C'mon. Come on." Rosie helped Jean to her feet, helped her out of the kitchen, past Hank in the living room and toward the bedrooms. "Which room are you sleeping in, hon? You need to lie down and rest for a while."
"Mine. Mine. It didn't help at all, trying to sleep in the other room. At least I can still smell her perfume in my room."
Rosie left her curled around a pillow on the big double bed, with a light blanket pulled up over her and the curtains tugged closed. Hank sat on the edge of the armchair, fingers knotted together and his head dropped, gaze locked on the floor, although he looked up when Rosie sat wearily in the couch. "Did I do that? Did I make it worse?"
"No." Rosie sank back, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. "No, she's just been being real tough all day, all week, and it caught up to her. She misses Ruby so much. They were so close." She dropped her hands, looking at Hank. "You're the real deal, though, aren't you? You really can sense emotions."
"Yeah." Consternation writhed across Hank's face. "What happened in there? That wasn't false emotion, that pain and anger I felt from you."
"Oh." Rosie slid her hands over her stomach and chuckled thinly. "She punched me, the witch. I thought I was going to vomit."
"She—!" Hank laughed, though he kept it as low as their voices were. "It was sure effective."
"She hits like a tank! I thought I was strong, but Jean's a tank! You teach her to fight, Hank, and she'll be better than I'll ever be."
"No. I watched you yesterday. You've got something special, Rosie."
"Magic." Rosie half-laughed the word. "Magic doesn't count. Jean's got natural talent."
"Magic counts for a lot, in this fight."
She glanced at him, mouth pressed in a thin line, before she nodded and looked away. "Yeah. I guess it's got to. Oh. Oh! We found something out about Helen Montgomery. She worked at the same factory I did. It's a hotbed, Hank. That's three demons we've run into who are associated with it. Have you spent any time out there? Maybe there's something you can sense."
"I haven't prowled through it. Maybe I should. Maybe I'm trusting how far I think my reach is, too much. Maybe I need to be closer."
"Or slower. You've been doing a lot of driving around, hunting, right? Maybe it's just too fast, when people are always moving too. Think how easy it is to miss somebody you're looking for in a crowd when you're sure they're there. They could just be stepping the wrong direction at the wrong time. If hunting demons is like that, only bigger …"
Hank smiled faintly. "Then maybe it is my own incompetence, and not some conspiracy within Ex Libris."
"That's not what I was going to say."
"No, I know. You're generally kinder than that." He frowned toward the bedroom. "Should we go check the factory out, or do you need to stay?"
Rosie glanced over her shoulder, as if the back of the couch didn't block her view of the hall and bedroom door. "I think she'll probably sleep, but I'm not sure I can get on to the premises even if I'm being sneaky, Hank. I know a lot of the girls, even some of the night shift, and they all know I've been fired. Maybe you should go by yourself."
"I'd feel a lot better with a Redeemer at my side."
A smile curled Rosie's mouth. "Really?"
"Swear to God. Even in the best of circumstances, we try not to hunt demons alone, Rosie. It's hard as hell to capture one by yourself. For some strange reason they'd rather kill you than let you read them into a book or catch them in a drawing. And I'm a terrible artist."
Rosie let go a startled little laugh. "But I bet you read well. I bet you can do your mom's accent and sound all foreign and exotic."
"Sure, if I'm reading something somebody else wrote, but when you're trying to catch a demon, you're
trying to write their essence onto the page, not read someone else's words. An Ex Libris-trained artist can … see, I guess, is the word. Can see into the infested shell and write or draw the demon's … personality. I don't write that well or that quickly. Especially when something is trying to kill me."
"Can people really do that? Write, or draw, or—or whatever—when a demon's fighting for its life? Can they do it fast enough? How? I'd think they'd be too busy being terrified."
"We try to capture them first. They don't really change shape or anything, so if you can chain one up or throw it in a cell, generally they can't go anywhere. They can redouble, but only if they get close enough to touch someone, and we're mostly smart enough not to let that happen." Hank smiled faintly. "Mostly. Anyway, usually they've been captured, so they're holding still while the artist works. But the great artists can do it on the fly. Compose music, or sculpt soft wood, sometimes even stone, so fast that even while we're fighting the demon, it's weakening. Its essence is being stripped away, drawn into the art. They say da Vinci could do it, and I've heard Rosetta Tharpe can."
"Ros—Sister Rosetta Tharpe? The singer?" Hank nodded and delight bloomed in Rosie's chest. "So women can fight demons."
For an instant Hank looked like he wanted to argue, but it faded into resignation. "It's dangerous for singers. Worse than usual, I mean. I saw …" He shook his head. "He wasn't anybody. Just someone who worked for Ex Libris, but he could sing. We fought an ochim one night, and we were losing. Badly. Jacques began to sing, and he—he wasn't a composer, you understand. He wasn't writing it down. That's the trouble with dance and song, to capture them. They're easy to do in the moment, but they're ephemeral. There's no physical prison that holds them. But Jacques made himself the prison. He sang it into himself. It couldn't resist. His voice was so beautiful, and his song … it went into him, the demon did. And then, before it could take hold, he blew his own brains out. It was the bravest thing I've ever seen anyone do. He saved five of us that night."