by Jon Skovron
“Speaking of Claire, and I suppose Sophie, I’ve shown them to their room. The police should be coming round to get a statement from me about Robert Jekyll in about an hour or so. That should give me just enough time to show you to your room.”
“I have a room?”
“We have a policy here.” He got up from his desk. “We never turn away a magical creature.” He motioned me with an empty sleeve to follow him, then walked briskly down the hallway. “But we only let them stay free for a month. Then they must pay rent. It isn’t much, of course, but we found people who pay for things take better care of them.”
“Ruthven doesn’t charge for living space,” I said as we walked through the building. It sounded more defensive than I meant it to.
“He also doesn’t pay anyone.”
“True,” I admitted.
We stepped out of the building and into the midday sun.
“Are you hungry?” asked Kemp as he pulled sunglasses from his pocket and put them on his invisible head. “Shall we scavenge the leftover catering before heading over to the dormitory?”
“That would be great.”
Kemp led me to one of the large windowless soundstages and quietly opened a metal door. Inside was a narrow lobby, empty except for a long table filled with cold cuts, bread, vegetables, and other little snacks.
“They’re filming,” whispered Kemp. His sleeve pointed toward a closed double door set into the wall.
I nodded and grabbed a plate. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before. I started to pile up a plate, eating as I went.
Then the double doors opened and a human walked out into the lobby dressed in a loincloth. He was a really good-looking guy, all chiseled features and serious muscle definition. He looked at Kemp and his eyes went wide.
“Is that…an invisible man?” he said.
A tiny, winged girl about the size of a squirrel dropped onto his shoulder and patted his cheek with her little hand. “That’s Mr. Kemp, the technical director for the show,” she said in a piping voice. “He’s an aristocratic-looking Englishman, about middle-age.”
“Yes.” The human’s face went slack and he nodded three times rhythmically. Then he suddenly smiled. “Mr. Kemp!” He held out his hand. “It’s such a pleasure to meet you!”
“The pleasure’s all mine, Mr. Rains,” said Kemp as the actor gripped his invisible hand. “How’s filming going?”
“Wonderful! You work miracles at this studio!”
“I’m so glad you appreciate the art to the artifice,” said Kemp. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m showing our new tech whiz around The Studio.”
“Of course! I don’t want to hold you up. Just came out for a little snack while they’re changing sets,” said Rains. He turned to the table and looked down appraisingly at the desserts. The sprite whispered something in his ear and although he didn’t seem to be aware of her presence, he smiled, as if to himself, and moved on to the veggie section. I wondered if part of the sprite’s job was to keep him in shape for the show, or if she was just concerned about his health. Either way, it was hard to see the blatant manipulation as bad. But it was manipulation. Was it wrong to use magic on humans, no matter what? After all, in a way, the Siren, Medusa, and so many other monsters did it, and it didn’t seem to hurt anything. Well, most of the time, anyway. It made me think of VI. What if instead of getting mad at her for manipulating humans, I had tried to help her find less destructive ways of communicating? I wondered if it was too late for that. Obviously, she had a nasty temper. But maybe once she had some time to cool off…
“Coming, Boy?” asked Kemp.
I wolfed down the rest of my plate and nodded. He led me out through the exit and back into the bright sunlight.
“New tech whiz?” I asked we walked down one of the narrow streets.
“If you accept, of course. We are sorely in need of someone with some technical expertise. The digital age is not something many magical creatures have embraced.”
“Yeah, I know. It kind of made me unpopular at The Show.”
“Well, there will always be the old guard, I’m afraid. But I think you’ll find that creatures here on the West Coast are far more open-minded.”
“That would be nice.”
“If you accept the position, you’ll be paid, of course. As I was saying before, we pay everyone.” He led me off the street and onto a sidewalk that led to a tall building tucked away in the back of the compound. “With all due respect to Ruthven and The Show, television makes quite a bit more money than theater. We can afford this luxury where perhaps he must depend on a collective model. And with that additional capital, many of the creatures here have more autonomy than those in New York. With money of their own, they can choose how to spend it—on a car, clothes, whatever they like. Some creatures even live off Studio grounds in real houses with families and a complete place in human society.” He paused for a second. “Of course, that’s not possible for everyone.”
“Have you always been invisible?”
“Goodness, no. Could you imagine my poor mother trying to change nappies on an invisible baby? Strolling through the park with what appeared to be an empty pram?” He laughed. “No, I did this to myself, I’m afraid. Rather reckless, really. I learned the formula from a fellow named Griffin. He performed the experiment on himself, with tragic results. It made him invisible, but that specific compound was extremely toxic and it drove him mad. It took me years to refine the formula to a safe compound that I then administered successfully on myself. With the unexpected side effect of halting the aging process.”
“Really? Have you tried to isolate just that part? So people could halt the aging process without becoming invisible?”
“I tried.” And then he was quiet. He’d been so chatty up until then that the sudden silence was uncomfortable.
“It didn’t go well,” I said.
“No,” he said. “It didn’t.”
We walked on a little farther without talking until we came to the tall building.
“Ah, here we are.” He held the entrance door open for me. “The dormitory.”
The inside reminded me a little of the hotel where we’d stayed in Pittsburgh. A little impersonal, maybe, but clean and well lit. Kemp led me up a set of stairs and down a long hallway. Some of the rooms had open doors, and I could see creatures of all kinds hanging out inside, watching TV or asleep. Other rooms had closed doors. I could hear music coming through some of them.
We stopped in front of one of the doors, and Kemp opened it. The room was about the size of my family’s apartment at The Show, except there were windows, and it was furnished with cool, modern-looking furniture instead of old broken stuff salvaged from the junkyard. There was a living room/dining room area in the middle, and a kitchen area with a stove and fridge off to the left. Off to the right were a bathroom and bedroom.
“Well?” asked Kemp as we stood in my bright, simple apartment. “What do you think? Suitable quarters for a young bachelor such as yourself?”
“It’s nicer than anyplace I’ve ever lived.”
“And what do you think about the job?” he said.
I knew there was only one way I could make it work. Online friends, chat, email, coding, my whole connection to the hacker community I’d practically grown up with—it all had to go. If I accepted this job, I could only do the boring stuff: anonymous, impersonal business emails, network monitoring and optimization, off-the-shelf software installations without any customization or tweaking. In other words, I’d have to treat computers like someone who didn’t like computers very much. The idea almost made me want to go back to cooking oxtail at the West Indian Delight.
But this paid a lot better and was in a community that seemed just about perfect for me. This was my chance to start my own life, for real, here in LA with Claire and Sophie, far from my mother’s overprotectiveness and my father’s domineering plans.
“I’ve been traveling a long time,
” I said to Kemp. “I need someplace to call home.” I couldn’t help grinning a little bit, then. “Besides, I kinda miss show biz.”
22
The Measure of a Man
I LOUNGED ON a deck chair next to the pool, my eyes closed against the bright California sun. I had to admit, my post-tech LA life was pretty great. It seemed kind of unbelievable that only a month before, I’d been hiding under cover of night at a travel plaza in New Jersey, living on food I pulled out of Dumpsters.
A shadow suddenly darkened the sky and I felt a drop of water on my chest.
“You are such a lazy git,” I heard Claire’s voice saying.
I opened my eyes and saw her silhouette leaning in, her wet hair hanging over me. She reached up and wrung it out on my stomach.
“Ah, cold!” I winced.
She laughed and flopped down on the chair next to mine. She had a deep tan now. Three decent meals a day, eight hours of sleep a night, access to a gym, and a job as a light grip had given her a perfect athlete’s physique. She seemed more relaxed, too. I didn’t know whether it was living at The Studio or because she didn’t have to worry about her brother anymore. What I did know was that the old Claire would never have worn a bikini, but the new Claire sported one all the time. And I wasn’t complaining.
Of course, I was doing pretty well myself. And it wasn’t like I was completely tech free. After all, I was the one man IT army for The Studio. First, I’d built myself some new custom interfaces. I’d tweaked the USB design quite a bit and expanded the scrambler algorithm way past spec. I didn’t know if it was even possible for VI to pick up some sort of identifying bioelectrical signature from my nervous system, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
When I was satisfied that I was completely untraceable, I dove into work at The Studio. I’d been afraid the business stuff would be boring, but I actually didn’t mind it too much. It was comforting to wake up every morning and have tiny problems that I knew exactly how to solve. Probably because I’d spent the better part of a year never really knowing what the hell I was doing, facing huge problems without solutions. And since there were lots of little problems to solve, I kept busy.
On a typical day, I worked for a while in the morning upgrading the servers, firming up the firewall, ordering parts for the new key fob security system, or cleaning up some actor’s computer. Then I’d go out to the private pool behind the offices. Two naiads, Nixie and Maura, lived in the pool. Naiads were nymphs, like the dryad wood nymphs who worked at The Show, but they lived in water, and had blue skin, webbed fingers and toes, and thin gill slits on their neck. When they found out I didn’t know how to swim, they offered to teach me. So I’d practice with them for a little while, then relax on the deck until Claire came out with food she’d snagged from the catering table on the set. We’d catch up a little, eat, goof around, and then go back to work for a few more hours. At night, we’d hang out with some of the other creatures who lived at The Studio. The mummy who managed the finances was kind of an asshole, but the sprites were hilarious, the gremlins offered some amazing DIY tips, and the genie had some seriously crazy anecdotes. We’d have game nights and movie nights and other goofy stuff that made me feel like we were really part of a community.
Now I lay in a deck chair by the pool, with Claire next to me. The sun had already dried up the small bit of water she’d wrung onto my stomach.
“You going out to that club with Guilder and his mates tonight?” asked Claire.
“Haven’t decided yet.” Guilder was an elf Claire and I had become friends with. He lived off Studio grounds with a bunch of other elves. This was the first time they’d invited us out with them.
“I’m going,” said Claire.
“Really? I thought clubbing was more Sophie’s scene.”
She just shrugged her bare, tan shoulders. “You should go, too. I think it’ll be fun.”
“You, getting down at a club? How could I miss that?”
BEFORE THE ELVES picked us up, Claire and I met in the dorm lobby. She was dressed in tight black pants, black cowboy boots, and a purple, fitted button-up shirt open at the collar. She caught me checking her out and gave me a guarded look.
“What?” she said.
I shrugged. “You look great.”
“Oh.” She smiled sheepishly. “Thanks. You too.”
Once we got to the club, I understood why Claire had wanted to go: it was a cowboy-themed club. It had all kinds of random country-western stuff decorating the walls, like leather saddles and cowhides, and the bar looked like the kind you see in old Clint Eastwood movies. But there was also a big dance floor with flashing lights and a booming sound system.
“Check that out.” Claire pointed to a mechanical bull on the other side of the dance floor.
“Come on,” said Guilder, his pointed features rising up into a grin. “Let’s do it!”
So Guilder, Claire, and I made our way around the perimeter of the dance floor to where a small crowd was gathered around the mechanical bull. We watched a human stay up for a few seconds on the massive, shifting torso, then slide off into the padded mats that surrounded the bull.
“Elves are natural riders.” Guilder pulled the knit cap that covered his pointy ears down tight and winked at me. “This will be a snap.”
It threw him pretty quick.
“Harder than it looks!” he shouted to me over the music, his pale face flushed as he climbed out of the padded ring.
“You going to do it?” Claire asked me.
“Why?” I asked. “I’d just be showing off. There’s no way it could throw me.”
“Ha! So you say.”
“I’ll do it if you will.”
“Hmmm,” she said.
“Let’s sweeten the deal,” I said. “Whoever falls off first…I don’t know. Has to do something.”
“Whoever falls off first has to make the other one dinner.”
“But I don’t know how to cook!”
“Already pretty sure you’ll lose, huh?”
“Oh, that’s it! Game on!”
So I climbed up onto the mechanical bull. As soon as it started, I realized why it was so hard. The seat was really slippery, there was nothing to grip on to, and the machine used your own weight against you. It dipped me one way, then pivoted underneath me so that my legs were moving in a new direction, while my upper body was still moving in the old direction. And the harder I fought to stay on, the more I slipped off. It didn’t take long before I landed in the padded mats.
“Told you!” laughed Guilder as he helped me up.
“Fifteen seconds!” said Claire, grinning in this wild way I’d never seen before. “That was pathetic!”
“Your turn,” I said. “Let’s see you last half that long.”
She stuck her tongue out at me, then climbed up onto the mechanical bull. It jerked into action, and for a moment, it looked like she was about to get tossed immediately. But then she stretched her long legs out wide, and started to swivel her hips almost like she was dancing. That was when I realized that the key to staying on was not strength, but fluidity. Grace. The ability to constantly adjust. I usually thought of Claire as someone who wasn’t very flexible. But that wasn’t what I was seeing up there now, so maybe it wasn’t really true. At least, not anymore. I’d sure changed a lot. Maybe she had, too. Or maybe there were things about her that had never been able to come to the surface before. Maybe a little space and stability was all she needed. Her silky black hair whipped around her smooth, tanned face. She had a little flush to her cheeks right now and there was an openness in her eyes. And she was laughing. I don’t think I’d ever heard a real laugh from her before. It was loud and rich and a little bit clumsy. And I loved it.
The rest of the crowd loved it, too. As she hung on there longer and longer, the announcer started calling people over, shouting that she might break the all-time record. Someone threw her a cowboy hat. She caught it in one hand, still moving with the mechanical bull, and waved t
he hat in the air. People started coming over from the dance floor, the music dropped away, and the whole place was just screaming for her. Finally, the announcer declared that she’d broken the record. Everyone went wild at that. She looked at me, then, with this triumphant grin, and pantomimed stirring a pot. That’s when she fell off.
She was still laughing as I gave her a hand up. Laughing so hard she fell into me. The heat of her exertion was pouring off her, and our faces were right up close to each other.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this side of you,” I said.
“I’m layered,” she said, still leaning into me. “You have to look deeper sometimes.”
“I try, but you don’t usually let me get that close.”
“No?” She raised an eyebrow. “This close enough for you?” And then she kissed me hard, her fingers locking onto the back of my head. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d been waiting for that. I grabbed her and I squeezed her as hard as I could. I knew she could handle it. With Claire, there was no need to hold back. And as we kissed at the feet of the mechanical bull, the crowds still cheered. And I don’t know if they were cheering for the record being broken or for something else, but it felt like they were cheering for us, for this moment that had taken us so long to get to.
When she finally broke away, she pressed her cheek against mine so that her lips were on my ear. “That was nice. But you still owe me dinner.”
THE NEXT MORNING, I sat by the pool and stared into its sparkling depths as I drank my coffee. The naiads were curled up on the bottom, their little gills slowly opening and closing as they slept. I thought about how I was feeling about Claire. I thought about how I still felt about Sophie. I didn’t have a ton of experience with romance, but if there was one thing I had learned from being with Liel, it was that I couldn’t just wait around expecting things to work out on their own. If there was something I wanted, I had to take a risk and put myself out there. And if it failed…well, it wouldn’t be the first time my heart had been broken.