We pulled up at a stoplight. Elsie took the opportunity to check her hair in the rearview mirror. She needn’t have bothered; it was perfect, as always. Elsie was a master of the art of the wash–and–wear cut, keeping her naturally blonde hair in the sort of artful bob that should have made her look outdated, but somehow only made her look more modern. The constantly changing color of the tips helped, of course. This week, the bottom inch or so of her hair was My Little Pony pink, a shade distinct enough from Barbie pink to have triggered a lecture the one time I got the two confused.
“Hot date tonight?” I asked.
“Carlotta,” Elsie said, and flashed an almost sheepish smile. “She called.”
I bit back the urge to yell at her. Elsie’s five years older than I am. If she wanted to date Carlotta, that was her business, not mine. And yet…“Aren’t you going back to school at the end of the summer?”
“Mmm–hmm. That’s what makes this perfect. She and I both know that we can’t possibly get serious.”
“Again.”
“Again,” Elsie allowed reluctantly. She looked resolutely out the windshield, shoulders squared, trying to appear every inch the responsible driver. “Carly knows it’s not going to be like last time. We’re just having a little fun.”
“Elsie…”
“It’s not going to get serious.”
“Okay,” I said, dropping the issue. “Whatever you say. Hey, can we swing by Killer Burger on the way home? I would murder for a milkshake.”
Elsie looked relieved. “Sure,” she said, and kept driving.
Elsie and I have always had a slightly strange relationship. She’s the girly one in our generation, even when compared to Verity, who knows how to tango in four–inch heels. Elsie understood nails, makeup, and hair care years before anyone else, and even threatened to go to cosmetology school before she realized she’d cause serious issues if she spent that much time in physical contact with straight humans. I wasn’t kidding when I called her a succubus. My Aunt Jane met and married a very sweet man when she was in her twenties, and it was nobody’s fault that he turned out to be an incubus, making their two children — Elsinore and Arthur — a succubus and another incubus, respectively.
Incubi and succubi are just the male and female forms of a single species, the Lilu. Both can make themselves irresistibly attractive, with a dose of empathy on the part of the males, and a dose of persuasive telepathy on the part of the females. Their specific talents are geared to work best on members of the opposite sex, which could have been a problem, if Elsie hadn’t come out of the closet at age eleven, and if Artie hadn’t been nursing a ten–year crush on our cousin Sarah, who also isn’t human. (She’s a cuckoo. Sort of a giant parasitic wasp with an improbably nice rack. Why nature decided that telepathic ambush predators needed to look like manic pixie dream girls straight from Central Casting is anybody’s guess. Seriously. If anybody has a good guess, I’d love to hear it.)
Elsie got a lot of persuasive telepathy and danger sense, and very little pheromonal “I’m too sexy for this song” magnetic attraction to the opposite sex. Artie got very little danger sense, which explains his thing for Sarah, a decent amount of empathy, and a lot of sexy, sexy pheromones. Thus explaining why he spent most of his time avoiding girls he’s not related to. Blood relations thankfully get immunity to the otherwise irresistible urge to jump my geeky cousin’s bones.
Of my three cousins, I get along best with Artie, who shares my love for comic book conventions, monster movies, and doing dramatic readings of the old family diaries. Sarah comes second, although spending time with both of them at the same time has been known to make me homicidally cranky. Elsie and I had always been each other’s last choice for companionship… but then Verity moved to New York, taking Sarah with her, and Artie decided to lock himself in his bedroom–slash–basement to avoid possibly coming into contact with any girls. Alex was in Ohio, and suddenly Elsie and I were the last ones standing.
(Sure, she could have spent her summer break with her parents, but there’s “dealing with a cousin you don’t have much in common with,” and “spending your summer with Aunt Jane.” Even if Aunt Jane was her mother, that was a fate I wouldn’t have wished on my worst enemy. Besides, Elsie had a car, which made her supremely useful, and she took an interest in roller derby, at least inasmuch as it presented her with an endless stream of hot girls in tight shorts. Everybody won.)
Elsie started chattering about nail maintenance techniques. I closed my eyes, enjoying the dull throb of my newest bruises, and let myself zone out to the pleasant mix of my cousin’s voice, the alt rock blasting from the radio, and the horns of all the people who were surprised to realize that Portland has traffic.
It was a good day.
§
So here’s the 4–1–1, before you get confused and hit Wikipedia looking for the family back story: we used to belong to a global organization called the Covenant of St. George, which has “kill all monsters” as its mission statement, and “die die die” on its official letterhead. The Covenant is not made up of terribly nice people. Which isn’t to say that my family is made up of terribly nice people — I’ve read too many of the old diaries to believe that — but we’re slightly less horrible without cause. Existence isn’t cause. Intentionally killing and eating people, that’s another story.
Like most organizations made up of homicidal assholes, the Covenant didn’t take my family’s resignation well, and they followed us to North America, where they proceeded to wipe us out, at least according to the official record. It was actually a pretty clever trick on the part of my grandparents, one which left the Covenant convinced our family line had been wiped from the face of the Earth, and left us free to pursue our work in private. Said work generally takes the form of keeping the human natives from marching on the cryptid natives with torches and pitchforks, while also keeping the cryptid natives from deciding the human natives would go just swell with a nice Chianti.
(As if. Everyone knows human flesh pairs best with a microbrew from the same region, since that way the drink will echo the subtle flavors of the meat. Having now fully made my transition into Creepytown, I will continue.)
Being officially extinct has its good points — I freely admit that — but it also comes with the occasional complication. For example, we’re expected to be combat–ready at all times, and to have experience working with people outside the family. How we’re supposed to accomplish these things without ever putting ourselves on the Covenant’s radar is left as an exercise to the individual trying to train. Verity’s answer was ballroom dancing. Alex’s was soccer and fencing. Mine was karate, followed by tumbling and gymnastics, until I got too good and could no longer risk performing in public. I needed a new outlet and training platform after that.
Enter roller derby, the sport of queens. Drunk, belligerent queens who probably couldn’t walk without slamming into walls, and were now on roller skates. Oh, yeah. Good times. I could explain the rules, but at the end of the day, if you’re not planning to strap on a pair of skates and knee protectors, you probably don’t care very much. Most people don’t. (People who do are heartily encouraged to put on a black and white jersey and join the wonderful world of the non–skating official. On their backs are the palaces of derby built.)
Here’s what’s likely to matter at any derby bout that you might choose to attend. At any point in time, there will be ten girls on roller skates on the track, coming from two different teams. Four of the girls from each team will be blockers, the position played by Fern and Carlotta. The last girl on each team is the jammer, the position I play. The jammer wants to circle the track a lot, and the more she does this, the more she scores. The blockers want to prevent her from circling the track. They do this by, well, blocking. Sometimes, girls slam into the track while moving at high speeds. That’s the price of doing business, when the business is roller derby. Each team consists of between ten and fifteen players, so as to have replacements for t
he ones who fall down during play. My team, the Slasher Chicks, has at least two jammers during any given game — usually me and our team captain, who skates under the name “Elmira Street.”
There are four teams to a league, and a whole lot of leagues to a geographical region. Individual teams skate against each other; so do individual leagues. The league I belong to, the Silver Screams, is one of three centered around Portland, Oregon. When not playing roller derby, I enjoy comic books, classic horror movies, blowing shit up, and setting traps for anyone stupid enough to come within twenty yards of my family home.
It’s a living.
§
Getting from Portland to my house meant driving for an hour down increasingly small and unassuming side roads, until we were finally shunted onto a gravel logging path that would have been perfectly at home in a movie with a name like Wrong Turn on the Way to the Murder Cabin, Part III: The Revenge of the Dude. Elsie pulled up in front of the closed gates that protected my family’s heavily–secured complex from casual visitors, door–to–door salesmen, and Covenant attacks.
“Can you punch me in?” she asked. “I don’t know this week’s code.”
“That’s because you keep getting me to punch you in all the time,” I said, and slid out of the car, walking around to the keypad. A few numbers later, the gates were swinging open, and Elsie and I were rolling merrily up the driveway toward home sweet suspiciously prison–like home.
Don’t let me give the impression that my family doesn’t have a nice house: it’s perfectly pleasant, for a place that looks like it was built by the Munsters after they became extreme survivalists. We have everything from blast shutters and triple–reinforced glass to a colony of ravens living in the tree outside my window, where they provide both early warning services and a valuable early–morning alarm clock (whether I want it or not). It’s just that living under lock and key in the middle of nowhere can get a bit, well, oppressive sometimes, which explains why I spend so much of my time fleeing to Portland under any excuse I can come up with.
The front door was standing open. That was pretty normal. Once someone’s past the front gate without setting off security, we assume that either they’re authorized, or that a door wouldn’t stop them. Elsie parked next to Mom’s minivan and we both got out of the car, heading up the porch steps and into the house.
“Mom? Dad?” No response. I knew they had to be on the property — their cars were there, and they’d never leave the front door open if they were going out. I just didn’t know where. After a few seconds of contemplation, I decided not to give a crap. I turned to Elsie. “Oreos?”
She grinned. “Oreos.”
One thing I have to give my parents: they sure know how to stock a pantry. Five minutes later we were seated at the kitchen counter with a plate of assorted Oreo cookies and tall glasses of 2% milk. (Yes, you can have assorted Oreos. Original, double–stuff, mint, fudge–dipped… the possibilities are endless and the heart attacks are optional.)
“I am giving up women in favor of Oreos,” declared Elsie, dipping a double–stuff in her glass.
“I’ll tell Carlotta you said that.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Okay. I’m giving up all other women in favor of Oreos.”
“It was worth a try.” I glanced toward the breadbox. “You can come out now. I see you.”
Head bowed and whiskers slicked back in supplication, a brown mouse crept out onto the counter. It would have looked like an ordinary household rodent if it hadn’t been wearing a cape made from a paisley silk scarf. “Priestesses,” it squeaked, head still bowed. “I come to Beg a Boon.”
“Mouse wants cookies,” I said to Elsie.
She nodded. “I can see that.”
“Should the mouse get cookies?”
“Well, you know what they say…”
The mouse raised its head, looking hopeful. “What do they say of the giving of cookies to mice, o Polychromatic Priestess?”
“If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to want a glass of milk,” said Elsie.
“And if you give a mouse a glass of milk, you’re going to get a musical number.” I nodded to the mouse. “Yes, you can join us for milk and cookies.”
“Hail!” shouted the mouse, humility forgotten at the promise of baked goods. “Hail the Festival of Giving a Mouse a Cookie!”
It seemed like the room was suddenly full of mice. They swarmed out from behind every cabinet and kitchen fixture, covering the counters in a furry blanket that respectfully stopped a foot from our plates. Countless tiny black eyes watched intently as I prepared two more plates of cookies, careful to load them with each of the available types of Oreo. When I was done I put the plates down next to the toaster. A great cheer went up from the mice. They descended on the cookies like locusts on a field of wheat, singing our praises all the while.
Elsie and I sat back with our snack, watching them. After a while, Elsie took the last double–stuff, and commented, “Aeslin mice are better than cable.”
“Amen,” I agreed. Given the choice, I’ll take talking religious mice who revere my family as gods over CNN any day. Anyone with any sense would do the same.
The ruckus went on for the better part of an hour. My parents eventually showed up — they’d been outside, collecting eggs from the henhouse and duck nests, and were entirely unsurprised to walk into the massive rodent musical number already in progress. They were equally unsurprised by my new bruises, the fact that Elsie had a date, and my desire to eat upstairs in my room. Eventually, Elsie went to her temporary bedroom to get changed, and I just went to my room.
Family. When they’re far away you miss them, and when they’re close, you wish they’d go away.
§
Friday found me strapping on my skates and artfully “bloodstained” knee and elbow guards as I waited with the rest of the Slasher Chicks. We looked like we’d already been attacked by a serial killer, thanks to our uniforms: blood–spattered white tank tops and pleated camo–print miniskirts short enough that they were only appropriate for certain kinds of parties. Derby was one of the appropriate kinds.
The Concussion Stand was prepping on the other side of the track. Their red and white usherette costumes were definitely tidier–looking than ours. Tidy isn’t everything.
Elsie was sitting dead–center in the front row of bleachers, trying to show support for her cousin and her not–girlfriend really–honest at the same time. It wasn’t working the way she’d intended: instead of sitting in neutral territory, she’d managed to surround herself with fans of one of the two teams currently skating. The girls in black and blue were the Bad Idea Bears, out of Beaverton. The ones in various shades of pink were the Rose Petals, from Wilsonville. Going by the sea of pink around Elsie, she was in Rose territory.
And those Roses had thorns. Their jammers barely seemed to obey the laws of gravity, and I’d seen two of their blockers eat track, get back up, and keep skating without seeming to realize they’d fallen. If they hadn’t been losing, I’d have started to suspect them of being Oread ringers. Oreads don’t feel pain the way humans do, which is why they usually politely abstain from full–contact sports. It’s not fair to put a moving mountain in a contest with people who are made of nothing sturdier than meat.
The Bad Idea Bears skated clean, fast, and coordinated. The Rose Petals were enthusiastic and they had a great tolerance for pain, but it was going to be a while before they were skating on the same level.
Then things changed.
It was a blink–and–you’ll–miss–it moment. The jammer for the Bad Idea Bears was in the lead, circling the track like her faux fur–covered ass was on fire. Then, with nothing between her and another pass, she began losing speed. It wasn’t a block. It didn’t look like exhaustion. She just… stopped skating, drifting slower and slower until she had lost all momentum. Her arms fell to her sides, but her hands never touched her hips to signal the end of the jam. Since only the lead jammer could stop a jam in the m
iddle, play technically continued. She was still on her feet, after all.
Confusion spread through the stands as people stood up, demanding to know what the hell she thought she was doing. Someone booed. Someone else shouted for a referee to intervene. The jammer from the Rose Petals kept going, encountering less and less resistance as the rest of the Bad Idea Bears clustered around their teammate. I didn’t know her name, but I could see her well enough to realize that her eyes were unfocused, and that she was starting to wobble.
The jammer from the Rose Petals circled the track one more time. And the jammer from the Bad Idea Bears fell forward, her eyes rolling back in her head. She hit the track so hard that the thump of her helmet bouncing off the floor echoed all the way to the back of the bleachers. The crowd went suddenly silent. For a split second, it felt like no one dared to breathe.
“Medic!” shouted a referee, running for the fallen jammer.
The auditorium snapped back into life. Referees, non–skating officials, and medical staff swarmed around the girl, obscuring her from sight. At first, there were the usual jokes and nervous chuckles about seeing someone eat track hard. Then, as the medical staff didn’t call for them to resume play, the laughter died.
“What happened?” whispered Fern.
I glanced to the side to see her standing at my elbow, her helmet in her hands and her eyes as wide as it was physically possible for them to go. The three drops of blood she had painted on her cheek looked more like strawberry jam, but her worry was very real.
“I don’t know,” I said, looking back to the track. “She was fine, right up until she stopped skating. I don’t think…” I paused, reviewing what I’d seen before I said, “I don’t think she was okay when she stopped. I think it just took a little while for her body to realize that it was time for her to fall over.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“I wish I knew.” I shook my head, still watching the officials as they obscured our track. We were already ten minutes into what should have been halftime, but that wasn’t important. What mattered was the girl, lying on the wooden floor with her eyes closed, and the people who surrounded her.
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