Love for the Cold-Blooded. Or

by Alex Gabriel

  “Yeah well.” Pat couldn’t very well speak up in defense of hoagies at large, but it had to be said that this time around, Butterfly had been plenty lucky one had been around to save her from herself. Kind of a tricky conversational situation, really. “They’re not the ones who design the clothes, though. Even if a bunch of them are probably lame enough to wear them. I mean, I know that at least one of them voluntarily wears Ghost Matter sweatshirts, can you believe that?”

  “No! Not Ghost Matter?” Butterfly stared at him in horror.

  Pat nodded grimly. “I know, right?”

  She’d stopped sobbing now, although her breathing was still uneven and raw. Still, she looked way more composed, and another moment later, Pat gave a triumphant mental fistpump as she sat up straight and arranged her wings neatly behind herself. She then smoothed a quick hand over her hair and produced a dainty pastel handkerchief to dab at the moisture on her face. She hadn’t been wearing make-up, which was very fortunate, considering.

  She really was remarkable, even in this extremely disheveled state. “Your wings are super awesome, Butterfly. Flying is pretty much the best superpower anyway, and you can even hover and all. And on top of that, your wings totally look like jewels. I mean, they shimmer in all sorts of colors, depending on the light, and they’re all translucent and delicately elegant and shit. You know?”

  Pat trailed off uncertainly when she didn’t react in any other way than to stare at him.

  “It’s Patrick, right?” she asked abruptly, after another tense moment had passed.

  Pat nodded. “Well, yeah. Or just Pat. But Patrick works.”

  “Will you be my right hand, Patrick?”

  Pat gaped at her. Then, he blinked. Then, he waited for the punchline, but — none seemed to be forthcoming. “Uhm?” he said at last.

  “I am offering you the position as my most trusted lieutenant.” Butterfly was still all swollen and red, but it looked entirely different now that she had her composure back… almost like wounds of battle.

  “I, uh.” What, seriously? “But you don’t know me! And I’m Sir Toby’s minion.”

  Butterfly scoffed, tossing her curls behind one shoulder with a practiced shake of the head. “I know enough. You are far too good to work as a mere minion, Patrick. I would not so mistake your worth.”

  “Thanks,” Pat’s mouth said, mostly on autopilot. “I mean, wow, seriously. That’s a great offer. But I’m Sir Toby’s minion. I can’t abandon my dread master in the middle of his bid for dominion. Would you even want me to?”

  She raised her eyebrows at this and inclined her head slightly, gracefully. Conceding a point. “I suppose not. Very well, then. Let us speak again once your engagement as Sir Toby’s minion is over.”

  And that, evidently, was that. Butterfly did not seem interested in conversing any further with him, so Pat wandered back out into the living room, where Nick was doing a very poor impression of a man who hadn’t been listening in at all, no indeed, not even a little bit.

  For an instant of mingled hope and apprehension, Pat was certain Nick was going to say something to him — something that had nothing to do with the mission they’d jointly undertaken to save Butterfly. But then one of the devices on Nick’s belt hummed, and Nick frowned as he turned away to take a call from Nexus.

  The ensuing conversation sounded very aggravating, from what Pat could glean by Nick’s side of it. Apparently, Nexus was not best pleased that Nick had (as she put it) abandoned her in the middle of the fight, and blamed him for the successful escape of Sir Toby and his minions. It appeared that in Nexus’ mind, Butterfly had been a minor concern that should have been handled after Sir Toby had been dealt with, especially if Nick’s assertion was true and Butterfly would have simply neutralized herself if she’d tried to use the stolen Crystal of Power.

  People were right about Nexus. Pat was glad to see that Nick entirely refused to accept her point of view; he got more and more quietly furious as the conversation went on, until finally he hung up on her.

  Good. One scarily amoral hoagie was plenty enough for any city, thanks. And Nick… well. Pat was kind of fond of how non-scary and non-amoral he was. Pat was kind of fond of him, period. Which was the entire problem, when you thought about it.

  Oh well. He’d get over it. He didn’t want to, but he would — not wanting to get over it was probably just another symptom. And then Pat would no longer have to feel the weird, wrenching fondness that tugged at him when Nick frowned forebodingly as he listened to Nexus, looking both heroically square-jawed and childishly mulish at the same time. And Pat wouldn’t think that Nick looked remarkably fuckable for someone so wrapped up in a quantum costume, force fields and righteousness. And Pat wouldn’t have so much trouble remembering that Nick wasn’t just — or perhaps even primarily — Nicholas Andersen, grumpy-sweet dork and socially challenged geek. He was also Silver Paladin, one of the foremost superheroes of his time… which was, of course, in itself the best reason why Pat should never have jumped into bed with him in the first place. Let alone, well. Done anything to compound the initial error.

  But yesterday’s sun couldn’t hatch today’s snakelets. So, yeah. Getting over it. That was the plan.

  Chapter Eleven

  When all else fails, try honesty.

  “This is an honor that I feel goes out not only to me — perhaps not even mainly to me! — but mostly to the art of combining a modern concept of urban living spaces with a pragmatic view of the necessary constraints of municipal planning.”

  Pat couldn’t roll his eyes, seeing as how he was seated on a stage with half a dozen sweat-inducing spotlights glaring down on him. He doubted anyone was paying attention to him, but even so, he knew how to behave.

  “My design concept was the city of tomorrow,” the winner of the cityscape contest gushed on. Pat had seen the mock-ups of her design, and it was solid enough, if somewhat boring — good craftsmanship with a streak of elegance. The way the woman regurgitated banal commonplaces as though they were the lost wisdom of the ancient serpent charmers, though, you’d never guess she was actually competent. “In a society changing as rapidly as ours, the city of the future must have the capacity to change along with bla bla blablabla.”

  Especially since his city was so much more awesome than the more conservative designs the jury was awarding. Patropolis had a castle surrounded by a moat, and not one but several drawbridges. Patropolis had a magnetic monorail public transport system — coolness factor: infinity, noise and pollution: zilch. Patropolis’ canalization spelled out the ancient rune for ‘enduring, wicked joy’ (probably, nobody had ever really translated it with absolute certainty) while at the same time being the most efficient shape to do the job. Not to mention that Patropolis had a comprehensive waste management concept that tied neatly into water, energy and power, everything brought back into the cycle of —

  “Congratulations,” said a too-familiar monotone, flat enough to sound sarcastic to the uninitiated (although Pat knew it wasn’t meant to be). Nicholas Andersen, prominent citizen and noted philanthropist, handed the beaming urban planner a certificate and shook her hand. “Outstanding work.” A smallish storm of cameras flared up as the journalists took their shots.

  Apparently, Nick was one of the sponsors of this contest. Who knew, right? Talk about irony.

  The other sponsor was the Municipal Planning Office, which was offering paid internships to the first and second prize winners. Pat would have loved to win an internship, but whatever, it was too early for him anyway. And hey, by the time he graduated and had an actual chance of winning contests like this, the long-awaited Municipal Office for Collateral Damages (bureaucrat speech for “hoagie damage”) might have seen the light of day. Maybe he’d be able to intern with them — that’d be the coolest thing ever.

  The planning office’s representative shook the glowing first prize winner’s hand, as well, bestowing some vaguely patronizing congratulatory words on her. Nick, for his part, was cl
early thinking of something else entirely, now that his part in the ceremony was over.

  In all the time they’d been on this stage together, Nick hadn’t looked at Pat once. Not a single time. Not even a glance.

  Nick didn’t have to pretend they were friends; that would have been absurd. But neither did Nick have to sweep his gaze past the corner of the stage where Pat sat with quite that much stoic indifference. It made Pat feel as though he wasn’t even there — not worthy of even the most basic kind of assertion that he existed.

  “Our sincere thanks go out to everyone who participated in our contest,” the moderating official intoned earnestly, turning a smile on the people sitting at the back of the stage with Pat. “We are fortunate to have so many talented young urban designers in our midst. In particular, we would like to give an honorable mention to the following future architects of our cities.”

  When Pat’s name was called — “And lastly, one student who has not even graduated yet turned in a remarkable model for a functional fantasy city: Patrick West!” —, Cea and Zen jumped to their feet and cheered, whistled and waved wildly enough to make Pat laugh, and possibly blush.

  When Pat snuck a quick peak at him, just to check, Nick was deep in conversation with the first prize winner, who was practically vibrating out of her skin from excitement. Screw Nick, anyway. And screw that woman too, there was no need for her to lean that close. No need for her to be quite so attractive, either, or to wear that nice an outfit. Pat hoped her stupid internship was a torturous hell of copying documents and making coffee.

  “You are so bad at this, Patrick,” said Zen, as soon as he got off the stage. “It looked like you were trying to murder him with your eyes.”

  “You need to stop hoping for powers you don’t have and start working with what you’ve got,” Cea butted in. “I mean, if it were me, I’d just have an elevator experience a regrettable malfunction, or whatever. But you…”

  Pat threw a glance over his shoulder to make sure Nick had left. “I wasn’t trying to murder him. I was only —”

  “You were only trying to do this completely wrong.” Zen again. “Haven’t you been listening to a word we’ve been saying all these years? This is basic! It’s in, like, chapter one of the West Sister Dating Rulebook. You have to bargain from a position of strength, Patrick. Strength. It is essential.”

  “But I don’t have a position of strength!”

  Cea looked at Zen. Zen looked at Cea. Then they both looked back at Pat. It was almost like being in a weird kind of puppet play.

  “You would have one if you weren’t being such an idiot, Patrick,” Zen said slowly, enunciating each word as carefully as though talking to a child. “And the first thing you need to do is to stop seeming like you care.”

  “I do care.”

  “That’s the point! You can’t let your opponent know that.”

  His opponent? Okay, yeah, Nick was his opponent in the classical hoagie sense, even if it had been impossible to think of him like that for while now. But that’s not what Zen was talking about, and Pat didn’t think he wanted to go down the West Sister Dating Rules road in this instance.

  Cea was nodding agreement to Zen’s words of wisdom. “He wants to get a reaction, and you’re playing right into his hands. Stop reacting and start forcing him to react. That’s the only way to gain the upper hand.”

  “Exactly! He never glanced your way at all.” Zen grinned, showing a flash of sharp teeth. “Not even once. That’s not indifference. That is, in fact, the very opposite of indifference.”

  Pat made a face. He knew Nick wasn’t indifferent to him — how could he be, given what had happened between them? Compared to disgust and betrayal, Pat might actually have preferred indifference.

  Though… Nick hadn’t turned Pat over to Nexus after the Butterfly thing; hadn’t even mentioned Pat’s involvement, or the involvement of any minion of Sir Toby’s. He’d just nodded curtly and taken off with a composed Butterfly securely slung over his shoulder. This didn’t necessarily mean anything more than that Nick wouldn’t wish the wrath of Nexus on anyone, of course. But still, maybe…

  “So here’s what you do, Patpat. You go back to work. You find out where Andersen or Silver Paladin are scheduled to appear and just happen to be there, too. You —”

  But Pat didn’t bother listening to the rest, because — no. No, no way, that was bullshit, and it wasn’t what he was going to do at all. He didn’t want to try gaining the upper hand. Nick wasn’t his opponent, and he didn’t want to think of him that way (not in any way that didn’t involve the inevitable opposition of Silver Paladin and Sir Toby’s minion, at least). And what was the use of constantly hanging around him, trying to find deeper meaning in every look or non-look, every word that was or was not spoken? Pat was going to go crazy like that, and it wouldn’t change a thing.

  He couldn’t go on like this, constantly wishing things were still the way they had been, or hoping they could be that way again. They weren’t. They never would be again. Everything between him and Nick had changed, and time wasn’t going to flow backwards just because Pat moped hard enough.

  Pat had to move forward… had to move on. It was the only way.

  ~~~~~

  “Good afternoon, Night Manager West,” the Andersen Estate’s AI greeted him at the door.

  “Hi, Ay,” said Pat, and snickered a tiny bit at the rhyme, because, come on. The AI, needless to say, did not acknowledge Pat’s comic genius in any way. Clearly, it had no sense of humor whatsoever. “Hey, how’d you know it was me? I hadn’t said anything yet.”

  A pause. Then, the AI responded in what Pat couldn’t help but feel was a slightly different pitch than usual. It was probably just his imagination, though. “You checked in at the front guard station and opened the door to the mansion by means of a biometric scan of your palm, which identified you to the security subsystem.”

  Oh. Right. The new voice recognition thing was throwing Pat off.

  Unfortunately, voice recognition wasn’t the only thing throwing him off. The double chocolate cake he’d baked last night felt oddly heavy in Pat’s hands, and for the millionth time he wondered whether he was making a mistake. But… he didn’t really think so, was the thing. No point second-guessing himself just because it had been a tough decision, and hadn’t grown any easier since he’d made it.

  “Assistant House Manager Wainwright is expecting you in her office,” the AI prompted. Pat took this to mean that he’d been standing around for longer than the AI considered either necessary or suitable.

  “Nag, nag, nag,” Pat muttered as he started off. If the AI heard him — and it must have, since it heard everything now — it chose to take the high road and didn’t respond.

  Just in front of AHM Suze’s office, Pat paused, his hand already on the doorknob. “Hey, Ay.”

  “Yes, Night Manager West?”

  “I’m sorry about that thing. You know. The companion mix-up. I wasn’t trying to mess with your data or whatever.” The AI had always been incredibly insistent on getting its virtual ducks in a row and having everything run smoothly, like perfectly interlocking gears. It made sense, too; of course it must be incredibly irritating for an estate management AI — by its very nature precise, punctual and absolute — to have to contend with missing or faulty data.

  So. Couldn’t hurt to apologize. And now that the AI reacted to his voice, speaking with it seemed very different — more like a conversation with an actual being.

  The AI didn’t respond, and after another moment, Pat rolled his eyes at himself and pushed open Suze’s door, belatedly remembering to knock when was already halfway in the room. Like the AI cared for apologies about past data anxieties. It was an estate management system; a super smart and advanced one, yeah, but still just a management system for all that.

  “Mr. West. I trust you are feeling better.” Suze, on the other hand, cared very much. Or would have, if she had known, which thankfully she did not seem to do. Looked
like Nick and the AI were keeping his secret.

  Suze was inspecting Pat from behind her desk, leaning forward with her fingers steepled on the expensive grained wood as though she were training to be a challenger of the ‘byzantine plot-spinning mastermind’ persuasion. That’d be a sight to see — Pat could actually imagine her doing a decent job of it. Mastermind was one of the most difficult challenger types to pull off without making a fool of yourself, but she had the attitude for it.

  “Assistant House Manager Wainwright, I must regretfully inform you that I will no longer be able to work for the Andersen Estate,” Pat said, before his thoughts could run off to gods knew where and leave him stranded with nothing to say. “Thank you for your guidance. I hope… you know.”

  Okay, he should probably have planned out the entire speech, not just the first two sentences. He’d meant to add something about hoping his departure didn’t inconvenience Suze too much, but maybe it was wiser not to say anything about that, anyway.

  Suze stared at him in stony silence for a full minute. Pat could see her lips getting ever more pale as she pressed them together. Her fingers were still steepled before her, entirely still. It was creepy, was what it was.

  “Very well,” she said at last, and leaned back in her chair to turn back to her monitor, effectively dismissing him. “I consider this a wise decision on your part, Mr. West. It has always been abundantly clear that you lack a serving heart.”

  Ouch. Hard to argue with that assessment, yeah, but even so — that was the worst condemnation AHM Wainwright could give, and she meant every syllable of it.

  He nodded at her awkwardly and half backed out of the room, closing the door very gently so as not to make a sound.

  “Wow,” Pat told the empty hallway. “That woman is scary.”

  “Mr. West,” said the AI, pleasantly bland as ever. “Mr. Andersen invites you to join him in his private laboratory.”