by Jes Battis
“Unfortunately not. It’ll be in a room with Selena.”
“Ouch. That’s scary.”
It was strange. I’d seen his power. I’d seen him die once before. That was scary. But you could never tell what frightened a person. Maybe when you controlled the forces of entropy and decay, the things that really scared you were impossible to describe.
“I’ll be there. Behind the two-way mirror.”
I kissed his cheek.
“Good.” His eyes fixed on mine. “You can protect me.”
I don’t think so, I wanted to say. I couldn’t before. I can’t now.
I just smiled. “Por supuesto. Of course.”
The air was damp, and I could feel the cold in my lungs. Derrick had left. It was just me on the dead street. All the clubs on Davie had closed down for the night. Every shop was dark. Even the convenience store on the corner of Bute was closed. All the sugary snacks and copies of Maxim were indistinguishable beyond the black pane of the storefront window.
On the left side of the street, a trolley bus had simply stopped. The cables that connected it to the electrical lines overhead were motionless. There was nobody on the bus. Not even a driver. The front door was open. I kept walking.
Davie was the only street in Vancouver that literally went into the ocean. It followed a steep incline until it hit the beach, giving way to sand, trees, and sunbaked patches of grass. Even a dozen blocks away, I could feel the knife-edge of wind coming from the water. I could smell something on the air. Something burnt or burning.
I kept walking. I could see the Christmas lights that covered the facade of St. Paul’s Hospital, winking on and off like holy semaphores in the distance. I turned onto Burrard, then paused by the empty lot that used to be a gas station. Now it was just a gaping hole, an abyss with a Pan-ago Pizza and a Quiznos, both encamped on the edge. Not much of a frontier, really.
I walked downhill toward the hospital. The Christmas display seemed to be the only source of illumination for miles, or at least for the length of the street. But I knew the city well enough to navigate it in the dark. I’d grown up here. It was like visiting your childhood bedroom and knowing instinctively where the light switch was, how many steps down the hall in the dark, how the blue glow from your parents’ television set flickered against the walls.
I stood in front of the entrance to the hospital. A sign next to the underground parking said NO SPACES. A row of ambulances was parked off to the side, each one identical, like Hot Wheels. The Christmas lights flickered. There was a nativity scene made of blue, green, and gold bulbs. Mary’s mantle was distractingly blue. Baby Jesus was supposed to be made of gold bulbs, but the yellow coating had flaked off in places, so that his face consisted of a few points of naked white light.
The doors slid open, and I walked into the emergency waiting room. All the lights were on, but the entire waiting area was empty. A blood pressure monitor beeped quietly next to the triage desk. The vinyl seats stretched in rows of dark green, burgundy, and puce. I wondered if every hospital in the world used the same furniture supplier. The floor was painted with blue, black, and red lines, demarcating patient zones from staff zones. I followed the red line, which led past the triage and down a hallway with evenly spaced, identical doors.
Pieces of equipment lay discarded in the corridor. I recognized an EKG and what looked like an IV drug dispenser, but there were other random components from different devices that didn’t look familiar. I didn’t touch anything.
It’s like the underworld. Don’t eat, drink, or touch anything, unless you want to end up like Persephone.
I could hear something. First a clicking. Then a long, slow sound, like air being pushed through a pump.
It was coming from the doorway to my left. Room number 521.
521. May the twenty-first. My birthday.
I opened the door. The room beyond was divided by a number of floral curtains, all moving slightly. I could feel cold air coming from an open window. A machine beeped. Then I heard the wheeze of the pump again.
A light shone from the curtained space in the corner of the room. I tried to feel what lay beyond it, but all my senses were asleep. I could barely feel the materia in the walls and floor around me. The cold weight of the machinery dulled everything.
You’ve still got your athame.
But I didn’t. The sheath on my belt was empty.
Shit.
I tried to block out the sound of the machines breathing. I reached further down, beneath the rotting linoleum and the foundations of the hospital, into the deep mineral structures that supported the building itself. But the familiar power was gone. All I could feel was lack. It chilled the tips of my fingers and settled around me, a static of snow and heavy shadow.
I exhaled and pushed open the curtain.
At first, the figure on the bed was unrecognizable. His skin was translucent, with veins thrown into startling relief. His eyes were closed. The pump moved his lungs, and clear fluid dripped through an IV. Different screens around the bedside displayed different numbers, but none of them seemed to mean anything. His blood pressure was 19 over 82.
I swallowed. 1982. The year I was born.
Click. Breathe. Click. Breathe.
I stared at his small, white hands, sheathed in wires. I looked at my own hands. There was no resemblance.
“Is it you?”
He opened his eyes. They were the color of dirty ice, with a flare of violet around the pinned pupil. He smiled.
“Tessa Isobel.”
“What are you doing in my dream?”
My father’s smile widened. “What are you doing in mine?”
I pointed at the monitors. “Are you dying?”
“I’ve been dying for almost seven hundred years.”
“If you need someone to pull the plug, just let me know.”
He chuckled. “You haven’t got the nerve.”
“Oh, I’ve got the nerve. I’ll do it right now.”
“Go ahead.”
I started unplugging random cords. I flicked off machines. I pressed every red button on every monitor. The numbers flickered and died.
My father didn’t.
“You see? You can’t do it.”
“That’s not fair.”
He touched my hand. His fingers were warm. Feverish.
“You tried, though. That’s what counts.”
I stared at him. A thousand kill-sites revolved within his eyes. Fire gathered within them. I felt it on my face. I took it into my lungs, and it seared all the way down like bourbon, eradicating me cell by cell.
“I’m going to find you,” I said.
His hand was soft and gracile in my own. Almost liquid.
I looked down, and there was nothing but blood, a spreading, silent pool of blood on the bedsheets. His face rose out of the stain, like hot wax.
You are, the blood said. You are going to find me.
3
I woke up disoriented, like something had taken me apart during the night and put me back together all wrong. The comforter and sheets were lying in a tangle on the floor, and my pillow was nowhere to be found. I guess that’s what happens when you’re wrestling with demons in your sleep. Particularly demonic relations.
I never knew my real father. I’d seen him in visions and dreams, a dark, penumbral presence, like a piece of black sky torn from the middle of a storm. La tormenta, in Spanish. Hah. I was learning. Sometimes Lucian called me la tormentita, his little storm.
Kevin Corday was the father I’d known since I could remember anything. Twenty-six years ago he was just a stranger on his way home at night, taking a shortcut through Oppenheimer Park. He found my mother lying unconscious, bloody and broken. He brought her to the hospital, and from that moment onward, he was always a part of our lives. Even then, I was a tiny seed growing inside of her, the product of a violent assault. My mother said she didn’t remember anything about that night, except for Kevin holding her hand in the hospital room and, afterward, the
pain of recovery. But I wasn’t so sure. I can’t see how you could forget something like that.
And in my vision, she’d recognized him. My “real” father. She’d stared into his ancient, reptilian eyes, and she’d known him.
I could see her, holding her athame with its pearl hilt. Standing before the creature who’d nearly torn her apart years ago, numb to her screams.
You won’t see her. As long as I live, you won’t ever know her.
But that promise couldn’t be kept anymore. I needed to know him, to know it, the pureblood demon who’d sired me. He was in my dreams more and more, whispering from some dark, wrecked place within my mind. He could see me. Like a tourist from another world, he was watching me fumble and fall down and try to get through each day without having a complete mental breakdown. And he was enjoying himself, disporting himself and taking his pleasures.
If he was going to reach out and meddle with my life from another world, at the very least I’d get some answers from him.
Of course. All you have to do is find him, and figure out a way not to get killed while doing it. Simple as putting together furniture. Connect h-bolt to c, and then shoot yourself in the head, because it’ll hurt far less than what he might do to you.
I stood up. The blinds were half-closed, and rain-filtered light seeped into the bedroom, giving everything the grayish cast of a silent film. I needed an outfit that would go with the rain. Something gortexy. It was bad enough that I had to wear a bra at all times in the house now, since we were living with two teenagers.
I felt too tired to put an outfit together. Too tired to even drag myself across the room, let alone reach the kitchen. I guess having your ass kicked by a primordial demon could do that to you. But that was a year ago, and I still felt like my insides were raw. Like my body was nothing but scar tissue, held together by stitches, bandages, and the dumbass neurons that refused to stop firing. I loved my job, and I loved my family, but all I wanted to do was close my eyes and let myself be washed away.
I stood still for a moment, relaxed, and tried to align myself with the earth.
When I was a little girl, and my power was at its height, I used to be able to hear the convection currents deep beneath the crust. For some reason, they sounded like distant dogs barking to my twelve-year-old ears. Now I could barely feel the layers of mud, sediment, and bedrock beneath the house, creaking and settling within their dark matrix. The power didn’t flow through me like I was a naked lightbulb anymore. Lately, it felt more like trying to coax an old transmission into second gear, with every nerve in my body screaming a complaint.
If I felt this way at twenty-six, how would I feel at forty? No wonder mages died young. The golden years weren’t much to look forward to.
I threw on a sweater and ventured into the hallway. Derrick was cooking something, and I could smell coffee. My senses perked up. Materia couldn’t rouse me in the morning, but coffee was a different story.
The kitchen was a strange domestic tableau. Mia sat at the table, drinking coffee and doing her homework, or at least something that looked like her homework. Even Derrick, who had a flair for handwriting analysis, could barely decipher what she wrote in the margins of her notebook.
Miles was sitting next to her, looking over her shoulder. He signed something to her that I didn’t catch, and she shook her head.
“No, I think I’m supposed to solve for y. But I could be wrong. I stared at this same problem for, like, a thousand years last night before going to bed, and it still doesn’t make any sense.”
“Math never really helped anybody.” Derrick put a plate of bacon and eggs in front of her. “Except for bloodstain analysts. But they’re creepy.”
She tasted the eggs and made a face. “Did you put rosemary in these?”
“I may have.”
“God, is there anything you don’t put rosemary in?”
“I can think of several things.”
“All I’m saying is that, sometimes, you can just let eggs be eggs, you know? They don’t always have to be fancy.”
“I’m sorry our kitchen doesn’t resemble a truck-stop diner. If you’d like, I can make some corned-beef hash for you.”
“Mmmm. Could you burn it a little? I love it that way.” He looked at Miles and signed: Any advice?
Miles shrugged and signed back: At least she’s eating breakfast.
“Morning.” At least I think that was what I said. It might have been “mgrngrl.”
Derrick put a steaming mug in front of me. “You’re up early. I thought you weren’t meeting with Tasha until ten.”
I let the mug warm my hands. “I have to stop by the trace lab first.”
“Is Cindée working with the armor that they found on Ordeño?”
“And Ben. He mentioned something about a Teichmann test for old blood, and it got him all excited.”
Mia closed her notebook. “Why was the dude wearing armor? Was he in one of those medieval reenactment societies? Because there’s this guy in my physics class, George Pearsall, and both of his parents belong to one of those, and they actually put on armor and fight with swords. I mean, she’s like a serving wench or something, but apparently his dad—”
“We’re not discussing the details of an active case over breakfast.” I eyed her mug critically. “Since when are you drinking coffee?”
“Since I started studying for AP exams.”
“It hardly seems healthy.”
“Didn’t you eat, like, a whole box of vanilla wafers before you went to bed last night?” She shook her head. “That’s not just unhealthy; it’s sad.”
“I had low blood sugar. And you’re fifteen. You should be enjoying the tenth grade, not studying for college entrance exams.”
“They’re AP exams. The SAT is totally different, although I’m going to write that, too. It’s the only way I’ll get into Stanford.”
“Make sure to win a few scholarships in the meantime,” Derrick said. “We can’t afford to pay that kind of tuition.”
“Those grants are supercompetitive. That’s why I have to ace all of my AP exams and do extra-credit work.”
“Isn’t Stanford a little far away?” I asked. “What about UBC?”
“What about it?”
“They have lots of great programs.”
Mia folded her arms. “Tess, do you even know what I want to study?”
God, I hated when she said my name like that. Tess, do you even know what I’m talking about? Tess, do you have any idea how lame you sound? I never talked to my mother that way. But Mia wasn’t my biological kid, and she knew it.
Miles made a quick sign while looking at me: He extended the index fingers of both hands and rotated them counterclockwise next to his head, while assuming an expression of vague authority.
“History,” I said. “Classics, right?”
Mia gave him a look. “That’s cheating. She totally didn’t know.”
He shrugged and spoke softly: “Just making conversation.”
I heard some shuffling in the living room, and Patrick emerged. He looked exhausted. He was pale, even for a vampire, and he hadn’t even bothered to use any of Derrick’s thirty-dollar hair paste. His five-o’clock shadow made him look older than eighteen, and slightly threatening, which I didn’t want to admit even if I felt it. Living with a young vampire magnate had its emotional ups and downs. Mostly, I tried not to think about the fact that he could drain my blood while I was sleeping. If he wanted to borrow the car and stay at a friend’s place, I wasn’t going to stand in his way.
“Morning.” Derrick raised an eyebrow. “Looking a bit rakish, aren’t we? Did you sleep in a mausoleum?”
“Funny.” Patrick sat down and yawned. “Barely slept at all, actually.”
“I’ll make some more coffee.” Derrick grabbed another filter from the drawer. “Now, if I had my Gaggia espresso machine, I wouldn’t need—”
I raised my hand. “Don’t even. That matter was already settled.”
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He rolled his eyes and poured more coffee into the machine.
I turned to Patrick. “Why aren’t you sleeping? When I was your age, I could sleep twelve hours a night.”
Of course, I wasn’t a vampire.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I need a nicer bed.”
“You got my old bed,” Mia said, “and I got the futon. So don’t complain.”
“You can have it back.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Right. Because you stole every pillow in the house anyway, so it doesn’t matter that you got the crappy futon.”
“Oh, my God, why are you still going on about the pillows? I took one extra pillow from the couch.”
“Yeah, the one I was using.”
“So why was it on the couch?”
“Just because it’s on the couch doesn’t make it—”
“Shut it. Both of you.” I drained my mug. “As long as you’re both living in this house, you have to learn to get along. That means respecting each other’s boundaries and actually making an effort once in a while.”
Mia laughed. “Yeah, like he totally makes such an effort. Yesterday he ate all the leftover pizza and left greasy paper towels on the counter.”
“I asked you if you wanted some.”
“Yeah, when you already had two pieces in your mouth. And then you spent forty minutes in the bathroom, doing God knows what.”
“It’s called—”
“Whoa.” I stood up. “I don’t want to hear any more of this. I’m late for work. You’ll have to figure it out on your own.”
“But he can’t just hog the bathroom all the time. We all have to use it, and I’m tired of it smelling like Axe body spray.”
“You can use the downstairs bathroom.”
“There’s mold on the ceiling! And the toilet makes that weird noise.”
I walked into the living room, searching for my coat. “Then use the bushes. I don’t care. In the meantime, Patrick, I’ll pick you up another pillow.”
“It’s okay,” he called back. “You can just give me twenty bucks and I’ll pick it up myself. You probably don’t have time to visit the mall and shop for me.”