“I’m sorry about the tranquilliser,” she answered.
“I swear, I’m not Elisabeth Bathory,” Heloise said.
“Sure you’re not. Are you drunk?”
“I—I can see stuff...even with my eyes closed! You didn’t have to drug me.” A thud sounded—a body impacting carpet. “I’ve never bathed in blood, ever.”
“You could have fooled me. You should sit down.”
“I am lying down. My betting board—it activated, and there you were. Did you find your answer?”
“Yes.” Yes, I found him.
“I cheated with a car set on fire, though,” she added.
“Didn’t matter. You’re little, and the boards like that. Nico, I would have—”
“Mrs Allen,” Nico interrupted, “when you were a housewife, did you wear a frilly white apron?”
“Did I—? Sure I did, and they were ruffled, not frilly.”
“You should get one, and only wear that. With your heels. And a string of pearls.”
“Is this your way of saying you’re feeling frisky?” Heloise said. “Because if I’m going to do that, you have to dress up as Mr Allen.”
“Frisky, like the cat. I like that. Okay, bye.”
“Wait!” Heloise said, exasperated. “You are—when I’m not stuck on the ceiling—you are annoying, do you know that? I wanted you to win. I knew you’d win.”
“Did you place a bet?”
“Yes. Where would you like the money?”
“Put all of it on animal shelters. Wait. And a victim’s shelter. And a shelter for trafficking survivors. And then give the girls at the strip club really big tips. For me.” And thank you.
“Thank you,” she said, heartfelt, and cut the communication. Then she gasped. She retrieved the messages she had scheduled to release in the morning and deleted them.
“I could make ye such a cute kitten,” Shayla said, her tone wistful, and she touched Nico’s wet strands of hair. Nico looked at her, wide-eyed. “Who is it ye’d like in a ruffled apron?”
“Oh. I guess...I guess I’m getting over a prejudice. That was the Bathory with legs.”
“Don’t ye feel bad ’bout flirting,” Shayla said. “She’s very nice legs.”
“But—I shouldn’t have. I’m supposed to be da—not dating you.”
“Aye, me and you.” Shayla grinned and gripped Nico by the coat lapels. Shayla bared her teeth playfully. “But I’m not the bad, countess lawyer vampire, am I? Who ye want walking ’round mostly naked for ye?”
“Oh, gosh, you, in only an apron. I need you both.” Nico clapped a hand over her mouth for such an arrogant demand, but Shayla smiled, apparently intrigued.
When had Nico lingered long enough to know a woman beyond the brief encounter? In the past, she’d none of the cunning or deception required to hide a vampire nature from an interested human. But on Darqueworld, deception wasn’t needed. She could know women. She could have two loves.
“Oh,” Nico said, dismayed. “I’ve never done anything like this. Real—real girlfriends.” She gulped. “Real relationships? I’m so bad at this.”
“No, don’t ye say that.” Shayla scooted close and gently pecked Nico on the lips. “There’ll be me, and Mrs Allen. Wearin’ a frilly apron. Do ye still want tae do tawdry Joycean things tae me?”
“Oh yes.” Nico smiled, broader than she’d ever smiled, and the expression hurt her face.
“That’s a start,” Shayla said, and kissed her.
The kiss Nico returned was still too tentative, but Nico held Shayla with a preciousness she’d thought no longer possible.
My hands aren’t his.
“Ye look so happy,” Shayla said softly.
“A future,” Nico simply said, and she couldn’t breathe, even though she didn’t need to. Something sprouted inside her, the seed of something.
Her Id chimed.
Nico opened her eyes. She was inside a sleep-egg for two, Bear on her chest and her switchblade in hand. The hatch surface woke and displayed a time: 09:30. Last night she hadn’t gone home with Shayla, as much as she had wanted to.
“I tried to kill you,” she had said. “And I tried to kill Heloise. I think I need a night to—to make sure I’m not a jerk anymore.”
“Dinnae wait too long tae accept ye’re not a jerk,” Shayla had said, and because there hadn’t been much of the night left, she returned with Nico to Jifk airport. There, Shayla joined her in a sleep-egg for two, filling the tiny space with the comforting, delicious scent of female fertility. Nico slept, exhausted, and only stirred briefly when Shayla roused later and kissed her good bye.
“I forgot to gie ye this, love,” Shayla had whispered, and pressed Nico’s shut switchblade into her hand.
Her Id chimed again, and she looked at the caller’s identity.
“Hi,” she answered. “I’m in an egg.”
“Lone Nico and Bear,” Specs hailed, his holo projecting. “That was a close one. Feeling better?”
“Yes,” Nico said. “Are the Makepeace okay with me?” She figured that if they gave Shayla her blade, they had to be, but she wanted to make sure.
“They will be, on one condition. Okay, this is more my condition, which I urge you to accept. Because I don’t think you’d want mind or memory adjustment—”
“No. My memories are hell, but they’re me.”
“Got it. That’s why I have a—and I wouldn’t recommend this unless I thought it a good fit for you. With your kind of no-nonsense, samurai approach. I like that, by the way.”
“What are we talking about?”
“Dialectal behavioural therapy,” Specs said. “Very direct, very methodical. No nonsense. Let’s try that first, to help you put a leash on that chronic behaviour. The terrifying one. Whaddaya say?”
“Yes,” Nico said. She had two women to think of.
“Aces.” Her Id lit up. “Sent you the page to an excellent outpatient group. And hey, you worried the bejaysus out of me last night.”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t get to do that again—I’m not sure what I’m telling you not to do, since you do good things. You have a scary way of doing good things, you know that?”
“I didn’t even arrive here to do what I did. I just...what if I’d been set up?” She thought of how she’d been allowed to keep her mints tin, of the Po in immigration. Of the way Tough Guy had simply watched her—how all the Makepeace had watched her. “What if I was meant to take down Fedotov Kolbasa?”
“That is so—where’s my team of computer hacking conspiracy geeks? Guess there’s just me. Whether you think this or that led you to whatever, I don’t think we’ll ever know the final answer. How about celebrating that it’s over! Because as much as I commend your lack of quips or zero desire to charm, you went a little bat guano crazy there, Lone Nico. Your trip down meifumado—it’s done, right? Let’s get you that mild-mannered life you want.”
“Okay.”
“We got a few more weeks together, you and me. I want to be able to release you into the wild, born free. As free as the wind blows. As free as the—”
“Okay, I get it,” Nico said.
“Another suggestion. Future Fits.” Her Id lit again. “They’re a non-profit that clothes the newly arrived in business attire. For the citizenship exams and for job interviews.”
“Thanks. But how did you know I needed clothes?”
“Well, that tee shirt you’re wearing is really cute, but it’s not quite you.”
Nico looked down. She wore a girl’s red tee with the logo, I Love Again NewYork, except the love part was a big pink heart with baby hearts. Her bared forearms revealed a message in raised scars that her maker had carved. One said, My Love, the other, Your Death.
“I’ll go right away,” she said. “By the way, what do you know about cosmetic surgery for vampires?”
***
After ending her conversation with Specs, Nico thought about popping out of her egg, but she didn’t feel ready
yet to face the bustle of the terminal. Shayla would be at Lucy’s already, serving up pancakes and pies.
Good morning, chick, Shayla’s message said. Come for a cup when you can.
Nico grinned, then opened a message from Heloise. It simply contained a list.
Heloise had divided her winnings among a large number of rescues and shelters. Nico scrolled through the names, each one having four figures listed next to it.
“Wow, people really didn’t think we were going to get out alive,” Nico said to Bear.
Heloise had sent only the list. Nico bit her lip, remembering the scent of Heloise’s blood and the blossoming red that had spread on her shirt.
“I’m not him,” she said. “But I am his daughter.”
She contacted the therapy treatment centre Specs recommended and made an appointment.
***
Nico had no one to discuss the whole of what happened, with Shayla working and Heloise—well, Nico couldn’t face Heloise yet—so she talked it out with Bear. She sat Bear and his harness down on the small garment bag containing her new dress jacket from Future Fits, loosened the cuffs of her new white, button-down dress shirt, and placed Dorothy where her Id could record her words and film the diagrams she drew with chalk (bought at the Japanese sundries shop) on the rooftop of the YOBA. Tough Guy wasn’t present, but Amazon Woman was, and perhaps she listened while surveying the streets below.
“My maker makes me slave-bait, knowing I’d snap and become the killer he wanted,” Nico said. She drew a spawn-bud to signify him. “Then Fedosov, who later became Fedotov, sends me away.” She drew a sausage for Fedosov, and an arcing line away from the spawn-spud, sausage, and the circle representing Old Earth for her journey to the Pleiades. She drew seven stars. She then drew Bear in the stars. “And I guess he got obsessed, trying to protect himself from me. Putting me and Bear on his kolbasa label. Eating vampires to gain powers. But twenty years later, the vampire exodus happened, so he sent his people and his greedy little self over here.” Nico drew a large circle for Darqueworld. She paused.
“Twenty years is a long time to suck on vampires without the primacy noticing,” she pondered. “The vampires of the Leningrad Oblast should have found out, especially after my spree. Fedosov might’ve been forced to flee to Darqueworld soon after exiling me. Unless....”
The Makepeace turned her head, her face in profile. She seemed to wait for Nico to voice her suspicion. Nico became aware of the chalk in her hand, her Id recording, and of the words, sitting on her lips that could create a new hell for her.
This isn’t done, is it? She thought towards Amazon Woman. But Nico had decided: her part was done.
“Unless someone on Old Earth helped hide his activity,” she finished vaguely. She returned her attention to her drawings.
“He needed to be here before I got here, so he timed his arrival several years previous, renamed his kolbasa business, and waited. Then, two of his henchmen died in that time.” She drew two stick men on Darqueworld and crossed them out. “He also figured out a way to trap me, using Baba Yagas to make veils and a Po to mind-wipe vampires. Except Esche remembered.” Nico drew spikes. “And maybe he hoped to eat me and make my skull his drinking cup.” Nico drew half of a skull with bubbles rising from it, and then sat back on her heels, viewing her handiwork.
“But how long had he been manufacturing Prochnyy Kolbasa?” Nico solemnly asked the Makepeace.
“The product, Prochnyy, made its debut nine months before your arrival,” Amazon Woman answered, her gaze returned to the streets below.
“And when did you figure out what it was made of?” Nico retrieved Bear from where he sat in the sun and hugged him.
“The Autocratress of New Byzantium alerted us to Prochnyy’s qualities five months ago. The vampire primacy agreed to delay retribution while we determined Fedotov’s methods and whereabouts.”
“You didn’t know where he was. And then I showed up in immigration, and maybe the Po saw something in my head. You let me be the lure to draw Fedosov out.”
“You did well,” Amazon Woman said.
“I let Fedosov live. What will happen to him now?”
After some silence, Nico understood. The vampire primacy had Fedosov, and they would not be kind.
Nico picked up Dorothy and made a note to look up New Byzantium. If it was Christian, she wanted to see if they were like the obscure, Jewish sect of ancient times.
After putting on her harness, polishing the mystery and Skye buttons, and then situating Bear, she went to the Makepeace. Nico hugged her from behind. When she let go, Amazon Woman turned her head again.
“Have a good day, potential citizen,” she said.
***
Her unfinished business had been concluded. She was a cork shooting to the top, then bobbing. Nico moved through the rush hour crowds, float-floating, adrift on waves that kept pushing her towards a comforting shore. It was a shore Shayla happened to be on.
Shayla crouched in patched jeans at Loch Niamh’s shore, watching the waves lap. No longer in her waitress uniform, she did not look like a woman who had to blast spawn apart and babysit a homeless, injured, and mostly naked vampire last night. When Nico approached, Shayla rose and smiled.
“Are ye ready, love?” she asked.
Nico reached for Shayla’s hand, unable to say anything, and Shayla held it, firm and strong.
They took the train to the city’s wall, and then descended down to the veldt. From the wall’s edge, they walked towards a sheltered rest area. The sun was dipping, lighting the world with orange and blue, while beneath, the black shadows stretched and grew. Beyond the rest area, small memorials of flowers, candles, and gifts sat on the earth and rough grass, some emitting holo-photographs. A balloon drifted from one. At the perimeter of the scattered memorials, small cairns sat stacked. Nico laid her garment bag down on a picnic table and joined Shayla, who surveyed the veldt, thumbs in her woven belt. The last of the sunlight illuminated her calm face. Nico held Shayla’s belt, her fingers in the waistband, and Shayla looked at her, her gaze kind.
“Ye saw yer maker once, love, so he’ll not appear again.”
Shayla put a hand against Nico’s neck. They waited, watching the sun disappear beneath the horizon. Darkness moved in and enveloped. Shayla caressed Nico’s nape and gestured to the veldt.
“Walk to the cairns, chick, but no farther.”
Nico nodded. She straightened Bear and his choker, and walked past the memorials, the wind tugging at her hair and clothes. She stopped at the last of the cairns and stared into the dark.
In the distance, a girl stood, with long, platinum-white hair and black clothes that remained still in the veldt’s wind. She wore a leather choker, but she stood too far away for Nico to discern if it had little spikes.
Nico’s apology died on her lips. Somehow, she knew that Esche had travelled beyond what words could convey. One more step, and Nico might follow Esche to the wordless world.
Nico blinked, and Esche disappeared.
“Good-bye,” Nico whispered.
***
She went home with Shayla and spent the night being sexually solicitous. Bright and early in the morning, Nico jumped up the steps of the Immigration Centre, ready to take her citizenship exam.
I’m full of witch’s blood, me! Nico leaped six steps in a single bound.
She wore her new (used) black blazer, originally intended for a high school uniform. Shayla had brushed Nico’s back and shoulders, then pecked her on the lips like a mum sending her child to school. Shayla had the evening shift at Lucy’s, and intended to pick Nico up when the exam was done. A school insignia patch had been unstitched from the blazer’s left breast, and Nico had placed Shayla’s buttons to distract from any indication of the former patch. She also wore a grey and pink striped necktie, and so did Bear.
She entered the great lobby, the piano’s keys tinkling. Music echoed, a beautiful, familiar melody, and a crowd gathered around the piano and i
ts player.
There’s a place for us, Nico sang in her head as she boarded the escalator. She saw herself in the escalator’s mirrored wall, and noticed that her black blazer did not match the black of her skirt, nor did her black stockings. The escalator ascended and the piano’s pure sounds flowed; smooth, light, and nuanced beneath strong, assured strokes. Nico glanced over the side and saw Heloise seated at the piano. Nico’s still heart jumped.
Heloise concentrated on her playing, her sharp brows intent. One hand danced over the other to lightly touch the higher octaves and then returned. The music rose in the space that stretched above, following Nico up the escalator.
“Somewhen a place for us,” a man sang softly behind her.
Nico’s chest tightened. When she reached the floor, she walked quickly to the women’s restroom. Her vision blurred. Heloise’s music ended, the last, soft keystroke echoing, and in the stillness, no applause followed. The bathroom door shut behind Nico. She saw herself in the mirror, and the painful tears fell.
Our heart’s opening, she thought to Bear, because her throat refused to work.
She approached the sink counter. Her mirror-double hadn’t the face of the new arrival of days ago but her waif countenance remained, pointing to some great sadness within that might become more ghostlike, someday. And perhaps fade just a little away.
It’s not like you can get over violation, imprisonment, torture, and mind games in one move to a new planet, she told herself, and wiped her cheeks. But immigrants and refugees had done so through the ages, fleeing wars, concentration camps, famines, and disasters. Life began again.
The bathroom door opened, and Heloise walked in.
She started at the sight of Nico, then gave her a look of exasperation.
“I am not stalking you,” Heloise said. “And I’m not going to touch you. So don’t you dare scream.”
Nico swallowed. “You’re way over there, how can you molest me?” Heloise approached the far sink, then washed her hands beneath the vibrations.
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