by C. E. Murphy
“How about I come over and explain myself?” I found myself holding my coffee cup very carefully. I wanted to squeeze a fist around it, but it was a paper to-go cup, and I already couldn’t remember the last time I’d changed clothes. Pouring hot coffee over myself didn’t sound like a good idea.
Mark sighed. “All right. I’m staying at one of those shortterm rental places right next to Microsoft, on Northeast Fortieth. Oakwood, I think. You know where that is?”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” I hung up and concentrated on driving. Without traffic, it took less time to get there than I’d expected. I drove through the complex to the unit number he’d given me and threw my coffee cup away on my way up. He opened the door before I even knocked.
Concern colored his expression and his aura, blotches of worry that flashed through the opposite colors of the rainbow. Where Barb had red and yellow, Mark was orange and green, fading into indigo, all of it sunshine-bright. It was easier to see, without the two of them together, and I could now see the same razors of blackness between those brilliant shades. I didn’t know if I just hadn’t been looking closely enough before, or if believing they were the bad guys helped me see it. Either way, without thinking, I reached out and put my fingers into the murky splices, pulling them apart.
Butterflies swarmed out of the opening I’d made, midnight-blue and violet, darkness upon dark. They took the air around me away, settling onto my skin with grazing light brushes from their wings, and they fed on the silvery sheen of my own power. Spots swam through my vision like butterfly eyes, feathered with tiny piercing needles. I struck back, forming a fine-woven net with ease that surprised me, and swept it through the crevasse that butterflies pounded from.
They caught in the net and drained it dry, gobbling up the power there and becoming ever more solid, more real, themselves. They swooped together, making a fluttering, always moving body in the darkness, like a photograph mosaic made up of hundreds of other tiny photos. My head hurt, looking at it, and it only got worse as the form shifted and changed, never quite satisfied with its shape.
The butterflies on my skin kept nibbling away, tickling sensation bordering on pain. Power fluttered beneath my breastbone like a warning, and I strengthened the shields I’d built, both physical and mental.
Light shot off my skin, braiding into a thin cord that flashed away into the distance. Hundreds of butterflies followed the brightness, and for an instant I left my body, racing ahead to see where in hell they were going. It was my cord, my power; I could travel it instantaneously, just as quickly as I’d snapped out of myself and into Morrison’s house.
Morrison. I was there by his hospital bed a breath ahead of the butterflies, staring down at him in horror. The shields I’d left for him were vulnerable to my own power use, making a clear line for my enemy to follow.
I shut down every aspect of magic I could think of, slamming back into my body so hard I swooned. It was oldfashioned and fakey of me, but I didn’t think collapsing against the wall yet managing to keep my feet quite qualified as a faint. It was unquestionably a swoon. No self-respecting woman from an era beyond 1910 should find herself in a swoon. I was offended on my own behalf. I leaned there in my swoon, completely bereft of any of the power I’d gotten used to. No mental shields protecting my core self, no physical ones to keep butterfly feet off my skin. No auras blazing, not even a hint of impatient power bubbling behind my sternum. For the first time since the beginning of the year, I felt completely, wholly, absolutely and totally normal.
It was awful.
I’d gotten used to the nudging insistence of power within me, to a sparkle at the edges of things that told me how much more to see there was than what I saw through ordinary eyes. I’d gotten used to a vague sense of people, even when I was deliberately ignoring my power. I’d gotten used to a very slightly heightened awareness that I didn’t even know I’d gotten used to until I cut it off and made myself invisible to the butterfly demon residing in the dark places of Mark’s aura.
Mark—to whom it must have looked as if he’d opened the door, I’d reached for him and then tumbled sideways in a faint—caught me and pulled me into his arms with the strength and confidence of a fairy-tale hero. He drew me into his room, closed the door and looked down at me in confusion that had no place on a fairy tale hero. “Joanne?”
“I thought you were an English major.” Even my voice sounded wrong, all thin and raspy. I couldn’t tell if it was, or if magic had done something to my hearing, too, and now it was gone.
Bewilderment swept Mark’s handsome features, darkening his eyes. “I am. Was. What?”
I pushed away, trusting him less than my feet, which weren’t any too steady. It was a nice little apartment, with a hall off to the left that presumably led to the bedrooms. The furniture in the living room we were in looked comfortable. I put my hand on the back of the couch, hoping it would steady me. Mostly its squishiness made me want to curl up and whimper until I fell asleep. I rotated myself a few degrees so I could watch Mark.
“What’s an English major doing working in a physics department? What’s Project Rainbow? Why are you here, Mark? Who are you?” My voice was changing again, high and thready. Maybe it wasn’t my ears at all.
Mark moved around to look at me worriedly as I swayed. “How do you even know about Project Rainbow? It’s a—I worked for the physics department because physicists need people to translate what they’re writing into plain English so they can get grant money, Joanne. Barb got me the job. She’s been the department’s receptionist since college.” He spread his hands, expression twisted with confusion. “Project Rainbow’s a quantum physics project my lab’s been working on, this thing about dimensions and other worlds lying alongside ours. They’ve been trying to open a—well, the plain English translation is a wormhole. A passage into other worlds. They did their first test just a couple weeks ago. The project’s named for the song, you know? The Rainbow Connection. Joanne, what’s wrong?”
“A couple of weeks.” Just at the same time Coyote had gone missing, I bet. “Wormholes. Jesus Christ. Congratulations. I think it worked. You punched through to another reality and finished what I started.” I laughed, high-pitched painful sound. “Oh, that makes sense, in a completely screwed up way. No wonder you got hit. They’re all sleeping down there in Arizona, Mark. How come you and Barb woke up?”
His gaze went fuzzy with uncertainty. “What are you talking about?”
“Your mom must’ve been right.” I wasn’t talking to him anymore. “You must have Navajo blood in you somewhere, if the rez got hit and everybody woke up, and then your department did, but you’re awake, too. So it’s another demon.” My voice dropped, all my thoughts and attention turned inward. “Okay. That gives me something to work with. Some kind of Dine demon.” That was kind of fun to say, plus I was proud of myself for remembering the Navajo word for themselves. “You’re some kind of Dine demon.”
“Joanne.” Mark came toward me cautiously, holding his hands wide. “Are you okay? You’re not making any sense.”
“Get away from me!” I clutched the back of the couch, trying to keep my balance. I’d think after a whole lifetime of not having any power, cutting myself off from it after six months wouldn’t totally disrupt my system. I knew I could turn it back on, access it again, but with Mark in the room and Morrison so exposed, I didn’t dare.
Mark stopped dead, hands still spread. “I don’t know what’s wrong, Joanne.”
“Your aura! It’s all screwed up and it fits with Barb’s perfectly! And there are butterflies in the dark spaces!” I sounded like a lunatic. Mark took a slow step backward. I didn’t know if he was trying to calm me down or trying to get away from the crazy lady.
“Barb and I are twins, Jo. Fraternal twins. We told you that.” He offered a lopsided smile that was endearing even when I was in the midst of half-panicked uncertainty. “I guess it’d make sense our auras would fit together. What do you mean, it’s screwed
up? Butterflies? Dark spaces?” His smile went a little more fragile. “I’m glad you want to talk about your shamanism thing, but I don’t have the frame of reference for your use of the language. And I hate to change the subject, but I really think I need to know what’s going on with you and Captain Morrison.”
“You’re such an English major,” I whispered. I wanted to like this guy. I did like this guy. It just figured he’d turn out to be some kind of monster in larger scheme of things. Then my head shifted of its own accord, small motion that made the muscles in my neck creak. “Nothing’s going on. He’s my boss. Is Barb here?”
Mark held up his hands, careful appeasing gesture. “Maybe we can talk about Barb in a while, Jo. I want to talk about us right now.”
“Us? There isn’t an us. Usses are for people who—who—” I was not doing so well with the words. “Who aren’t us. She’s here, isn’t she? What are you guys doing here, anyway, Mark? Why’d you come to Seattle?”
He hesitated. “Barb wanted to, and I’d never been.”
“You always do what she wants?”
A tiny smile played over his mouth. “Yeah, pretty much. Bossy big sister, you know? Seventeen whole minutes older than me. She’s got the adventuresome streak, I guess. She’s kind of the tough one.”
“The female of the species is more deadly than the male? Great.” I got to fight with the mean sibling. On the other hand, at least she didn’t have Mark’s reach. “When’d you two get here?”
Mark’s eyes went fuzzy, eyebrows drawn down over them. After a couple seconds he frowned more deeply and looked away, shaking his head. “A few days ago. Maybe on the Fourth.”
And Billy’d gone to sleep that night. “Mark.” I said his name carefully. “How’d your sister get herself invited to the North Precinct Fourth of July party if she’s never been to Seattle before?”
“Well, she…” His forehead wrinkled until I thought it must hurt. “I don’t know. She makes friends fast. She’s cute.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She is. And I bet she does.” As easily as Mark had made friends with me, in fact. I was starting to get a list in my head, gifts that my opponent seemed to have in his repertoire. Charm. Good looks. I remembered the dreams I’d had, and shivered. The ability to offer a girl things she wanted through the sleeping world. A vampiric tendency to drain life from people, an affinity for butterflies and a dislike of topaz. It seemed like a bizarre combination of talents for a demon of any sort, but the razors in the blackness of Mark’s aura and my sleeping friends made me more inclined to believe it than not.
Very, very cautiously I reached for the power lying quietly inside me. It stirred and sparked like an engine rolling over, not quite sure it wanted to start. Since I wasn’t quite sure I wanted it to, either, I didn’t object to its reluctance. But those sparks set something off inside of me, a very thin trickle of magic that spilled through my veins like a promise. It felt like Petite idling at a stoplight, with me grinning at the guy in the souped-up Civic next to me ’cause I knew I could dust him at the drop of a hat.
Not that I, a good, law-abiding citizen and one of Seattle’s finest, would ever, ever think of street racing, or a ten-second quarter mile. Especially not down that long stretch of Aurora that got relatively little traffic late at night, with kids listening in on police scanners while a lot of money got put on the line. Because, after all, Petite was a very recognizable vehicle, and Morrison would kill me.
If he could catch me, anyway.
Which was sort of the same principle I wanted to try on Mark. I didn’t know if Barb would’ve noticed me, psychically speaking, if I hadn’t gone in on the astral level first. Once I did, there was no going back, but Mark’s butterfly-ridden rainbows didn’t seem to be actively considering me a threat, despite my initial foray. If the power he and Barbara shared really was split up, she might be carrying the aggressive side—red and yellow in her colors even suggested that. Mark’s power might be more passive, so if I didn’t attack it directly, it might ignore me. He might not even realize it was there.
That might mean I hadn’t fallen for a bad guy, which would be nice. I wasn’t counting on it.
The trickle of power running through me finally made it to my eyes, sliding the Sight on. Mark’s aura still flexed and bent with uncertainty, but the black slashes between colors didn’t strike out at me, or suddenly fill with butterfly eyes. I rubbed the heel of my hand against my breastbone, then exhaled deeply. “Okay. You’re coming back to my place.”
“No,” Barb said from behind me, “he really isn’t.”
CHAPTER 30
She would’ve been a lot better off if she hadn’t said anything. I ducked, which was not at all my usual response to people speaking unexpectedly behind me, but it proved to be a good choice. A lamp sailed over my head and smashed into the wall. Mark, who had to have seen her sneaking up on me, lamp in hand, yelled with surprise, anyway. I spun around, still crouched, and charged full-bore into Barbara’s rib cage.
I only had about two steps to build up momentum, but it was enough. I got my shoulder in her gut and she whooshed out air, unable to dig in and stop my headlong rush. That was okay. The bathroom door frame stopped it a handful of steps later. Barbara croaked like a dying frog as her spine impacted the frame and my shoulder drove farther into her belly.
It was incredibly satisfying.
Less satisfying was the way she heaved in a breath of air and used the energy to bring her knee up into my left boob. Insomuch as people aim in fistfights, she was probably aiming for my diaphragm, but crushing my breast was at least as effective. I went, “Glork,” and staggered back, still doubled over, clutching an arm over my chest. Barbara kicked me in the jaw with her bare toes, then howled and fell back herself, hopping on her other foot. Despite having head-butted me earlier, she pretty much fought like a girl, which was to say, without any experience at it. Anybody who’s gotten in a couple of real fights learns to hit soft parts with hard parts. Kicking me in the face was a good idea, but she should’ve done a side kick and made the impact point my nose with her heel.
I actually thought all of that during the course of a couple ragged breaths, by which time the radiating pain in my breast had lessened enough to let me move again. Barb was still hopping up and down and shrieking when I dragged in one more breath and let it pull me to my full height, so I was looking down six inches at her. I wanted to have a really good view of slamming her into the floor. She stopped jumping around when I reached for her, eyes widening as she twigged to the fact that the fight wasn’t over yet.
A pair of strong arms wrapped around me, pinning my own arms to my sides. Mark, through gritted teeth right next to my ear, said, “I—” and the rest of it was lost to me bracing myself against him and lifting both feet to kick Barb in the gut.
She flew back and crashed into the wall. Mark staggered under a hundred and sixty pounds of unexpected weight in his arms. I got my feet under me again and slammed my head back, Mark’s lovely nose crunching quite horribly against my skull. He shrieked like a girl and let me go, and for a moment there I stood there, a panting, breathless, triumphant king of the hill. I hadn’t gotten into a fight with ordinary, unarmed people since I was a teenager. It was nice to know I hadn’t lost my touch, and that brawling was still in my repertoire. “Now that I have your attention.”
Like Barb, I should’ve kept my mouth shut. She got enough breath back to produce a howl of outrage and flung herself on me, hands clawed all over again. Her weight was enough to drive me back into Mark, and all three of us went down in a clawing, scratching, shouting pile of arms and legs. I caught an elbow to the ear and my head started ringing. I grabbed a shoulder and pounded on it, which just felt good. It was better than not knowing what to do, and it was much better than remembering that Coyote’d died to keep me safe. White fury rose up in me and I smashed down all the harder.
The shoulder moved and gave me room for purchase on a shirt—Barbara’s, slippery soft sleeping satin
—and I dug my hands in, lifting her away bodily. She kicked and squealed and I grunted, dropping her heavily to the side. A couple of seconds later I ended up on top of the dogpile, straddling Mark’s chest with his arms pinned by my knees and shins. He gave me an unexpected rakish grin that really didn’t go with a bleeding, swollen nose, and said, “Dis has probmis.”
I was so taken aback I actually laughed out loud. Barbara lunged and I drew a fist back and said, “Eht!” in warning, not threatening her at all, but Mark. He might make me laugh, but that wasn’t enough at this particular moment in time to save him from getting the tar beat out of him. Barb lurched to a halt and a thrill of triumph went through me. She was protective of her baby brother. “Here we are, then,” I breathed. “I need some answers. Who are you? What are you? Why are you doing this? What in God’s name have I done to you?”
Barb all but hissed at me. I rolled my eyes, settling my weight on Mark’s chest. “I can sit here all day, you redheaded bitch.” I didn’t know if it was true. I thought I might fall asleep if I had to sit there for more than a couple minutes. But Barb didn’t know that, and it sounded good.
“Leave him alone,” she muttered, “and I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me and I’ll leave him alone.”
She gave me a baleful look and snaked a hand out, cautiously, toward Mark. It didn’t look like an attack, so I let her.
That, too, was a mistake.
I did not think of rainbows as something that had sound. Nonetheless, rainbow thunder rolled over me as she touched her brother’s shoulder. Their auras melded and fit together, dark spaces between them filling up with missing color. Color and noise slammed into me and I grabbed my head, aware I was yelling fruitlessly at the thunder rumbling in my mind. I didn’t want to respond, not even to protect myself, for fear of sending up that beacon that pointed straight to Morrison again, and so all I could do was yell.