by P. Kirby
“I hate it when you do that,” Benjamin said. “Read my thoughts.”
Breas opened the briefcase. “Vampire. It’s what I do.” He reached into the case. “And I read your scent, not your mind.”
Benjamin bit back a comment. He knew the vampire could read his scent; he just didn’t want to be reminded of it. But letting the vampire know it bugged him only made Breas do it more. So he sat down in the nearby easy chair and watched as Breas inspected the briefcase’s contents.
Breas removed the first item, a slim titanium cylinder banded in gold and about the size of a pen. Pointing the golden end away from him, he muttered something. Benjamin felt the dull vibration of magic immediately. It hummed throughout the room and then a small ring of light appeared at the tip of the cylinder. After considering the device for a few seconds, Breas muttered again and the light vanished. He did the same with the second device in the case.
“Something felt funny about that one,” Benjamin said. “Unbalanced maybe.” Both gadgets were Lockbreakers, high-end, elven-made, not the cheap, unreliable versions made by Teile demons.
Breas nodded. “The flux regulator might need some fine-tuning.” He looked at Benjamin. “You’re getting better, more sensitive.”
“I still can’t do much,” Benjamin said with a shrug. He had more innate magical power than Adam, but not enough to do anything significant.
“Practice makes perfect.” Breas tossed a Lockbreaker to Benjamin. “Activate it.”
Benjamin frowned and shot Breas a questioning look. The vampire responded with three words in Elvish. Benjamin nodded and turned his attention to the Lockbreaker.
The words of the spell had no real significance. Innate magical power worked a bit like a guitar and could be activated by strumming it with words that had the right rhythm and timbre. An experienced magic user like Breas could instinctively figure out which words or sounds would work, but Benjamin still needed a prompt.
The metal under his fingers felt cool, but Benjamin could also feel the quiet vibration of potential energy in the Lockbreaker. He closed his eyes and tried to feel the same potential in his body. When he thought he sensed a corresponding hum in his body, he spoke the words.
Nothing happened.
“You’re rushing it.” Breas’s laugh was low and throaty. “Remember what you are, or should I say, aren’t. You’re acting like an impatient human.”
Benjamin gave the vampire a futile dark look, only eliciting more laughter. In some ways, Breas was his friend, although Benjamin wasn’t sure Breas felt the same way. Friend wasn’t a word in the vampire’s vocabulary. But the vampire had helped him out of a few jams and even served as a kind of mentor. At any rate, Breas knew about Benjamin’s discomfort with immortality and never missed the chance to goad him.
Benjamin closed his eyes, this time waiting until he was certain that the tingling hyperawareness he felt was magical power. As he spoke the second word, he knew it was working. By the third, a hot rush of energy poured out of his skin, out his fingers and into the Lockbreaker.
Tight muscles in his face loosened as he smiled. “Cool.”
“Don’t get cocky, Red. Shut it down first.”
Several tries later, the light vanished and Benjamin tossed the Lockbreaker back to Breas. The vampire slipped the Lockbreaker in with its companion and shut the case. “Same account?”
“Yeah.”
Breas got up and disappeared into the bedroom, reappearing with a cell phone. While Breas made his call, Benjamin stared at the briefcase, his mind on the contents.
A human Taos collector who specialized in occult paraphernalia had purchased the Lockbreakers. The seller, a Teile demon—Teile demons delighted in selling magical mischief to humans—had bragged about the sale in a bar back on his home Plane and word had reached Breas of the transaction. The vampire had hired Benjamin to steal it from the human soon after.
No sensible, sentient, nonhumans wanted humans to know of their existence. Humans, quick to fight among themselves over petty issues like skin color and religion, were unlikely to coexist peacefully with elves and demons. Through glamours and other magical means, nonhuman sentient peoples could visit Earth Plane and conduct commerce in peace. The more magical devices fell into the wrong hands—i.e., human—the more chances that humans might discover they truly weren’t alone in the universe. Of course, the correct action would have been to retrieve the Lockbreakers and return them to the authorities, in this case elven law enforcement. Because of the potential for misuse, Lockbreakers were regulated by interPlanar treaty and could only be possessed by certain law-enforcement entities.
Benjamin knew Breas had a buyer who was paying handsomely for the honor of illegally owning the devices. Ultimately it didn’t matter much to Benjamin, as long as the devices were sent off Earth Plane. Humans and magic, like children and matches, were a poor mixture. His thoughts turned to Maya.
“Who is she?”
Benjamin flinched. “Huh?”
Breas set a beer on the coffee table in front of Benjamin and then collapsed gracelessly on the couch, a fresh beer in his hand. “Who’s your mystery woman?”
Benjamin stalled, slowly twisting the top off the bottle. He started to say “Nobody,” but that seemed like a poor way to characterize Maya.
“Maya Stephenson,” he said and then took a long swallow of beer. The vampire’s silence made him turn. Surprise wiped the cold alien quality off Breas’s face, leaving him looking like any young man.
“The Maya Stephenson?”
“Yeah.”
The vampire smirked. “You’ve got a thing for your creator.”
“Good beer,” Benjamin muttered, feeling his face grow warm.
“So she’s hot?”
Benjamin brought the bottle to his lips, hiding the grin that tried to take over his mouth.
“Wow. She must be something if she’s got you beyond moping about Isabel.”
The vampire’s words hit him like a splash of ice water. “Salt and wounds, Breas.”
To Benjamin’s surprise, Breas said, “Sorry.”
At a loss for words, the two men watched the soccer game in silence. After a few minutes, a pizza commercial replaced the game and Benjamin spoke.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to EverVerse.”
The vampire’s face was still. “That’s why you’ve made contact with Maya Stephenson.”
Benjamin winced. “Initially, I hoped to avoid that, but—”
“I smell Adam,” the vampire said, with not a little distaste.
“Adam has this theory. According to his research, if a drawing or illustration of him is transported to EverVerse, it will ensure his immortality here on Earth. His existence wouldn’t be tied to an image on paper.”
Breas’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed more beer. “And you’d be the one to carry it to EverVerse, when you Fade.”
“Yeah, except things didn’t work out.” Benjamin took a deep breath and told Breas everything that had happened from the failed burglary to the night he attacked Maya.
When he was done, Breas said, “You realize you’ve had your ass kicked twice by women?”
“One of them had a shotgun.”
“And the other was an angry little woman in pink pajamas.”
“I was wounded. She got in a lucky shot.”
“You wouldn’t have hurt her anyway. You’re not Adam.”
Benjamin clenched his fist around the bottle, remembering Adam’s words at breakfast the day before. “If I can’t convince her to destroy the drawings, I don’t know what Adam will do to her, but I’m sure it won’t be…healthy.”
“You have leverage. He needs your cooperation. He needs you to take his drawing to EverVerse.”
Benjamin nodded. “Yeah. But Adam’s not a patient man.”
The vampire frowned. “In that respect, and only that respect, Adam is very human.”
Chapter Ten
“The background should be orange,”
Niles said, his tone that of a parent chiding a child. “It’s in the contract.”
Maya pushed her hair behind her ears and struggled to maintain a pleasant expression. After another night of troubling nightmares featuring Adam Sayres and Benjamin Black, Maya was in no condition to deal with Niles. Especially not on a Monday morning.
“I haven’t seen the contract,” she said between gritted teeth.
“Really? You should always read the contract, Maya.”
No. That’s the project manager’s job. You read the contract and tell me what’s in it before I work up the galleys. Focusing on the sad masquerade of a comb-over on his head, she said, “I’ll work up new drafts with the correct color.”
“Thank you. And let’s try and be more careful next time.”
Maya couldn’t resist. “Yes, let’s,” she answered, hiding her grin at Niles’s confused expression. Her sarcasm would come back to haunt her in her yearly performance evaluation, but it was worth it.
The change, though simple, took Maya three hours, in part because two other project managers stopped by with more self-induced crises. After leaving the latest versions on Niles’s desk, she headed for Roland’s cubicle. By the stiff set of his shoulders, she could tell he’d been having the same kind of morning.
“Morning,” she said to his back. Famtek’s website was up on his computer screen.
“Thank you for leaving off the ‘good’ part.” Roland turned to her. “The head honchos want a new web page layout. Only they don’t want to pay for it.”
Maya nodded. “Billable hours?” Billable hours were a perpetual fly in the ointment in consulting. If a project couldn’t be charged to a client, it had to be done quickly. Naturally, some of the most time-consuming tasks couldn’t be billed to the client, no matter how creative the folks in accounting got.
“Business as usual,” Maya said, taking in his office. Unlike her desk and those of most of their colleagues, mountains of paperwork didn’t obscure the light gray desk surface. Technical documents and books were shelved by category on a plain metal bookshelf. All the desk drawers were closed, but Maya knew their contents—project folders—were organized and labeled, nothing out of place. Roland started to say something more and then paused, studying Maya’s face. “You didn’t stop by to bitch about project managers, did you?”
She reached for a pad of yellow sticky notes, peeled a sheet free and crumpled it up. It was an old habit; for some reason the sound of crumpled paper, the feel of its fibers giving way under her fingers, soothed her, sending delicious little electrical shivers up her arm. The sad little yellow ball arced through the air toward the bin under Roland’s desk, where it fell, making a quiet echo in the empty can.
“That bad, huh?” Roland recognized the significance of the mangled paper. “Let’s take a break before you harm any more helpless sticky notes.”
The office complex where Famtek resided had been built before the city of Santa Fe realized that water might be a precious commodity in the desert and enacted restrictions on landscaping. The grounds still had a lawn, although a few years of water restrictions had left it patchy. Benches were situated under the half dozen cottonwood trees that were scattered around the building. Maya and Roland aimed for the tree farthest from Famtek’s front entry.
Before leaving the office, they had put on their jackets, but the day was so lovely it seemed a pointless exercise. Maya shrugged off her leather jacket, her red sweater sufficient in the warm winter sun. She took her sunglasses from the jacket’s pocket and put them on. Where to begin?
“My Maya’s at a loss for words. This is serious.” Roland’s dark eyebrows came together in consternation. “Are your folks okay? Your brother?”
She smiled, warmed by her friend’s concern. They had met in junior high, drawn together by a crush on the same boy who, ultimately, had no interest in either of them. The crush faded but Roland and Maya’s friendship held. It survived a five-year separation when Maya chose to stay in New Mexico and attend UNM in Albuquerque, and Roland attended the University of Texas at Austin.
Roland moved back to Santa Fe first, when he took a commercial artist position at Famtek. Maya, who had been working for an advertising agency in Albuquerque, hired on with Famtek a year later.
“No, Roland, it’s not my family.” She paused, watching a pair of men in suits who had emerged from the law office next to Famtek. “It’s weird, crazy.”
“Weird and crazy? Do tell.”
“I met a guy.” She toyed with the zipper on her jacket. “Guys.”
“Guy-zuh, plural? Awesome.” Roland’s teeth shone white against his olive skin. “Why aren’t you happy? ‘Guys’ is good, no?”
She bit her lip and then fixed a hard stare on Roland. “One’s a cop. The other is a thief.”
“Sounds exciting.” Roland grinned and then Maya watched as her words slowly sank in. Despite their human subjects, her graphic novels had been her private indulgence, a delicious relief from serious and respectable commercial art projects. Roland was the only person who had read all the stories. Even he didn’t have copies of his own. Though she kept promising to print some out, she never quite got around to it. “A cop and a thief,” Roland said. “You’re kidding, right?”
“It gets better.”
“Better? You mean like ‘one’s a dark, sultry lawman and the other is a tall redheaded drink of water’?” Maya nodded and Roland said, “No way.”
In response, Maya launched into the story of how she met Adam Richards.
“Adam Richards, who happens to be a dead ringer for Adam Sayres, comic book guy, is the cop.” Roland raised a dark eyebrow. “So who’s the thief?”
“The guy that broke into my place last week.” Maya took a deep breath before continuing. “He broke in again, Saturday night. I was home.”
“Oh my God, are you all right?”
“Yeah. Actually, I kicked his butt.” Roland smiled as she told him how she had fought off the redheaded burglar.
“Too bad Ms. Kalman and her shotgun weren’t around.”
“Honestly, Roland, I don’t think he really meant to hurt me.”
“He threatened you with a knife. And what’s this crap about your drawings?”
“This is where it gets really weird.” She told Roland what the thief had told her about EverVerse and her supposed ability to bring drawings to life.
“He believes this? He’s insane!”
“Yeah. Insane,” she said, without much conviction.
“You don’t really believe him, do you?”
She rubbed her eyes, sore from hours of staring at a computer screen. “I don’t know what to believe, Roland. He, the thief, had a point. What are the odds that two guys who look exactly like my unpublished comic book characters would show up in my life within days of each other?”
“Exactly, or just a resemblance?”
“Benjamin Black is a redhead, but instead of light-colored eyes, I gave him dark gray, right?”
Roland nodded.
“Well, this guy, the one who thinks he’s Benjamin, has the same dark eyes. And a scar on his chin and a bump on his nose from being broken.”
“Plastic surgery and contacts.” Roland’s eyes were bright with imagination.
“Maybe, but he didn’t seem to be wearing contacts.”
“It’s hard to tell unless you get really close.” Roland winked and nudged Maya. “So what happened after you beat him up?”
After Maya had told the remainder of the story, Roland said, “Why didn’t you call Adam or the cops?”
“What if he’s right? What if Adam Richards is really Adam Sayres?”
“You hear yourself, right?”
“You didn’t see them, Roland. What if this is some kind of scam? That would mean Adam Richards is in on this too.”
“So what have you got that they want?” Roland rubbed his chin. “Maybe they need you to forge great works of art for them. The three of you will pull off the biggest art hoax ev
er.”
Maya frowned at Roland. “If Eric were here, he’d be giving you The Look.”
“What look?”
“The look that says, ‘I can’t believe I’m in love with this crazy man.’”
Roland grinned. “Oh, that look. I love that look.”
All morning, every time the phone rang, Maya’s heart leaped into her mouth, trying to escape the rush of elation and dread that fluttered in her stomach. When the phone rang at eleven and the caller was Adam Richards, Maya imagined she looked like a stressed-out cartoon character, her hair sticking out at crazy angles, eyes big as saucers. He asked her to lunch and she readily agreed even though there wasn’t a spot on her desk that wasn’t covered by work that needed to be done.
I’m a teenager again. Ditching school to be with the cute boy. She was desperate to see him again, to confirm that his resemblance to Adam Sayres was simply the result of an overactive imagination. All the while, she dreaded what she knew would be an encounter with truth: Her artist’s eye sometimes embellished, but it never told a lie.
Lunchtime traffic was a nightmare with people in a hurry to get away from the office, or alternately, taking their time getting back. She spent half the trip trapped behind a lumbering dump truck, which was billowing toxic clouds of smoke. Dump trucks and other heavy machinery never seemed to be in a hurry to get anywhere.
Forcing her little SUV into the left lane, ignoring the indignant honk of a driver who had nastily sped up when he saw her turn signal, she turned into the parking lot of the Mako Café. If the parking lot was any indication, the food must be great. The only available parking spots were either marked handicapped or on the street. After deftly maneuvering her vehicle between two supersized SUVs, she headed for the café.
The sun-bleached shark’s head with its fierce mouth full of menu made her smile. The remnants of the smile still on her face, she tugged open the heavy door and faced about a half dozen people waiting to be seated. She was about to give her name to the maître d’ when she spotted him.