by Chloe Garner
“He’s telling me the truth?”
“You’re naked aren’t you?” Samantha asked. “And you had sex in my bed.”
“This is your bed?”
“You think I’m the one who sleeps on the floor?”
Kara snorted.
“Sorry. He isn’t lying?”
“He lies all the time, but I’ve never seen him lie to you.”
“You’re a demon killer?”
“Sure.”
“And you do magic.”
“Just out of the market for selling it. I’ve got boxes of cash in the closet if you want to see them.”
“Boxes?” Jason asked. She turned to look at him.
“Been meaning to tell you about that. Money is a funny thing, to us.”
“Us?” Kara asked.
“We don’t have a name for ourselves. Anyone who doesn’t know who we are doesn’t matter to us.”
“Who are you?”
Samantha shrugged.
“We write the rules and then we enforce them.”
Kara wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her chin on her knees.
“You were always a mismatch for the Rangers.”
“I’ve always been a mismatch for everyone.”
“He said he’s been in Hell for the last year.”
“Nine months, give or take, by my count,” Samantha answered.
“That sounds terrible.”
“You really have no idea.”
“Wait a minute,” Jason said. “Why is she more credible than I am?”
“Because you want to have sex with me,” Kara said.
“How do you know I don’t?” Samantha asked. Kara’s eyes got wide, and she laughed.
“Seriously?”
“Sorry. No. Not… Sorry, no. Ew. I’m sorry I said that. It just popped into my head.”
Kara grinned.
“I missed you.”
“You’re naked,” Samantha answered. She turned to Jason. “Look, I’m sorry to do this to you, but we do have to go.”
“Because Sam had a vision,” Kara said.
“He’s tied in close to the dark. When he has a vision spontaneously like he did, it’s because something dark is nearby.”
“Where?” Jason asked.
“New Haven,” she said.
“That’s maybe two hours?” Jason asked. Why do we have to go tonight?”
“Because Sam said so,” she answered. “He wasn’t far away in time.”
Jason looked at Kara.
“Will you stay?”
“Are you asking if I’ll still be here when you get back?”
“Please?”
“I just drove all night,” she said. “I’m sleeping here whether you want me or not. You aren’t getting away again that easily.”
Samantha stood.
“I’d hug you, but you aren’t wearing any clothes.”
“Under all your clothes, you’re naked, too,” Kara said.
“Not if I try hard enough,” Samantha answered.
“Please. I’ve seen your cleavage,” Kara said. “When you want to hot up, you can do it.”
Samantha crossed her arms across her chest.
“I haven’t got cleavage.”
“Your breasts would beg to differ.”
Jason closed his eyes.
“Are we really going to argue about whether or not Sam has cleavage?”
“She’s the one arguing,” Kara said.
“I’m leaving now. Please be less naked when I come back,” Samantha said.
After a moment’s consideration, she returned to the bedside, delicately pulled Kara’s jeans to one side, and picked up a book.
“And I’m taking this.”
Jason nudged her shoulder as she walked past.
“Thanks.”
“Glad to help. Even if you are indecent.”
He nudged her harder.
“You call me that again, I’ll tell Kara about the leopard bruises Sam’s got going on.”
“You wouldn’t.”
He grinned. She made a face at him that appeared to be a horrified attempt at fury, then went back across the hallway. He closed the door and Kara stood, stretching, then picking up her dinner and taking it to the kitchen.
“So it’s all true.”
“There’s more I just forgot.”
“You’re going to have to figure out how to make that into a better story,” Kara said.
“Why? I’m not going to tell anyone else.”
“Everyone’s going to ask,” she said, leaning against the counter.
“Yeah, I’ll have to come up with something for everyone else.”
“You’re okay?” she asked after a long pause.
“Not really, but I think I will be.”
“How long have you been back?”
“Just a few days.”
She nodded.
“Who did you call before me?”
“No one.”
She nodded again. With characteristic lack of warning, she launched herself across the room, throwing herself at him and holding him tight.
“You disappear again, I will personally hunt you down and kill you.”
“With my blessing,” he answered. He held her close for as long as he could, then let her go. She went to lay down in the bed as he packed for New Haven.
<><><>
“Did you see anything useful?” Samantha had asked when he’d told her his vision. He shook his head.
“I fell out too fast. Where would you be?” he asked.
“Tell me about it again.”
He’d described the bathroom again, then explained that part of the next room was a blur as he’d fallen out.
“There was something there. A bedroom maybe…”
She’d sighed.
“Was there a painting on the wall?”
He frowned, reviewing the images in his head.
“Maybe.”
“Lots of blue?”
“Yeah… I think so.”
“A ship. At sea.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know where you were.”
And now he stood in front of her house. Her house. It had never occurred to him that she would own real estate anywhere, not to mention a stately house in a nice neighborhood in New Haven.
“A crew of demons glitches here every weekend to clean and do the landscaping,” she said as they leaned against Gwen in the driveway. The sun was down and the front of the house was lit by streetlights. It felt like they were intruding on a place that had never even considered the kind of life they’d all lived.
“Why do you have a house?” Jason asked.
“I bought it with Justin,” she said. “Well, I bought it, but he helped pick it.”
“Where did you get the kind of money for a house like this?”
Samantha looked at Sam and smiled.
“She’s got money, dude,” Sam said. “Trust me.”
“Boxes of it?”
“I helped pack those boxes.”
“Damn.”
Sam listened to what she’d said again, and suddenly the dread anticipation she’d felt all the way here made sense.
“Wait, this was going to be your house with Justin?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you’d both worked in New York,” Jason said.
“We would have had an apartment in town, too,” she said. “But we wanted to get away. A long way away. It was going to be…” She stopped. “We never lived here. You want to go in?”
Sam rubbed her back as she unlocked the front door with the palm of her hand, and she sent him gratitude. She flipped a lightswitch by the door and Sam and Jason followed her in.
Jason whistled.
“It’s a pretty place, Sam.”
“Yeah. I know.”
It was an upscale house with hardwood floors and high ceilings, bigger than his childhood house, but not palatial. Something was bothering him, and he felt Samant
ha waiting for him to figure out what it was. He realized he knew the layout of the first floor.
“I know this place,” he said. Samantha felt a flutter of panic.
“I don’t want to be here,” she said. “I’m going to go check on linens upstairs. You guys… Don’t follow me.”
She dashed up the stairs and Jason looked after her.
“What was that about?”
Sam put his hand on a wall, turning everything flat white in his mind’s eye. She’d brought him here. Here, of all places. He supposed it had made sense at the time, with the world as messed up as it had been, and considering…
“What is she talking about?” Jason asked. “What are you talking about?”
“I told you we dream together sometimes?”
“Okay. Still weird, yeah.”
“While you were gone…” He felt bad betraying the confidence, but it was only Jason, and he needed to talk it through. “We had sex here.”
“Back up and try that again?”
“She brought me here while we were asleep, over and over again.”
Jason shook his head and blinked hard.
“How was it?”
“Weird. It’s still a dream, you know? It’s not like it’s real. Things change when you aren’t watching. And… Jason, she knows some really weird stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Like really, really weird. I try to talk to her about it, and she won’t. But…” Even when he’d thought Jason was dead, he’d wanted to ask it. “Would you talk to her?”
“Whoa. Wait a minute. What are you suggesting?”
“You told me everything I knew about girls until… Caroline, basically.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Really?”
“You like to talk about it. Admit it.”
Jason shrugged, looking like he wanted to get away.
“I’m not giving your girlfriend the sex talk, Sam. Not gonna happen.”
“Please. She needs to talk to someone. Who else has she got?”
“Why do you think she wouldn’t shut me down, too?”
“Because she needs to talk about it. I don’t know what happened to her, but… She’s always upset when it comes up. You and Kara… I thought I was going to have to come rescue her. She almost froze up.”
“She’s a big girl, Sam.”
“She needs someone to talk to. I don’t think she ever has.”
“You’re gonna keep bugging me about this, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you really think she wants to talk to me?”
“No, but you’re the best friend she’s got.”
Jason scratched his elbow and looked around the house.
“Here?”
“With white walls and floors. Like a cartoon house.”
“Freaky.”
Sam wished he had words he was willing to use to describe it. Somehow at the time it hadn’t seemed that strange, just part of the life they’d been living. Up all night hunting demons, sleeping all day having lucid sex dreams in a house she had apparently bought with her dead fiancé. Normal. It astonished him how fast it had changed.
“She needs to talk to someone, Jason. She’s never had friends to talk to. She’s completely terrified of it.”
“I have a hard time imagining her terrified of anything.”
“That isn’t true.”
Sam thought of how she had always reacted to him, to Jason, to Kara. Put a demon in front of her, or a sorcerer, Samantha was square in her comfort zone. Win or lose, she knew what she was doing and she was fearless. With people, though, she had never been comfortable with most of them. Jason shrugged.
“I’ll think about it. But not until after, okay?”
“Okay.”
Samantha came back downstairs.
“Nothing up there out of place. There are two bedrooms and the master. You guys can pick which bedroom you want; I get the master.”
“We’re sleeping in separate rooms?” Jason asked.
“Only way it’s going to work if we’re staying here.”
“Why?”
Sam grunted.
“Think, then speak,” he said. Jason gave him a clueless look. “This is her house with Justin.”
“So?”
Samantha laughed.
“I needed more cluelessness in my life, Jason. I’ve missed that.”
“What?” Jason looked at Sam. “I don’t get it.”
“I do,” Sam said. “That’s enough.” He looked outside. “Sun’s coming up.”
“Is it time?”
He went through the images from his vision. They’d talked through the shadows, coming to the conclusion that it had probably been early morning.
“I think so.”
“Well, come watch my back. I’m gonna go shower.”
<><><>
She had loved this bathroom. The glass door on the shower that kept her from being completely blind, and the fact that it had a full view of the bathroom. A shower curtain was just an invitation for someone to sneak up on her. With water-softened skin, no weapons, and bad footing, there were few times she felt more exposed.
She felt Sam show up in his vision and approach her.
“That’s close enough, Sam,” she said.
He jerked away and vanished. She turned off the shower and grabbed a towel, drying quickly, dressing, and going out into the master bedroom.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Why are we here again?” Jason asked.
“Sam saw it. There’s got to be something here.”
“Either that or he’s developing a peeping Tom tendency,” Jason observed.
Samantha looked around.
“Nothing is out of place, from what I remember. I don’t know what triggered him.”
“Does something have to trigger him?” Jason asked.
“I think so.”
Sam was confused. Something was supposed to have happened, but he didn’t know what. They stood for a few more minutes, just to see, then Samantha went back into the bathroom to finish drying her hair.
“What do you guys want for breakfast?” she asked.
“What are the options?” Jason called back.
“There’s a decent place in town, last I knew, or someone could go shopping, and I could cook.”
There was a short conflict, then Sam went downstairs and left. Samantha went back into the bedroom and motioned to Jason to follow her downstairs.
“So…” Jason said as she started going through the kitchen, remembering where everything was.
“What did he put you up to?” she asked.
“He recognized the house,” Jason said.
“I know. I knew it when he did.”
“He says you need to talk, and you won’t talk to him.”
Samantha sighed, feeling the creeping urge to avoid in the pit of her stomach.
“There are good reasons for that,” she said. There was a pitcher in the fridge. Would have had water in it, at one point. There were still ice cubes in the ice cube tray.
“Why?” Jason pressed.
“Because I don’t want to. Because I can’t.”
“It isn’t that big a deal. If it weren’t for sex, none of us would exist.”
She leaned against a counter to look at him.
“Propagation of the species. That’s what you’ve got for argument?”
“Most people do it. You and Sam like each other. I’m pretty sure you love each other. There’s no reason to be so touchy.”
Samantha sat down at the kitchen table across from him and folded her hands, taking her time to speak.
“Jason, you don’t know my history. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sweetheart, you haven’t done anything. Believe me, I’ve done a lot more than you think.”
She steeled herself, vowing to get through all the words before she panicked and ran away.
“H
ave you ever watched a man take an egg out of boiling water, peel it with his bare hands, put it into a woman’s body, and proceed to make scrambled eggs out of it?”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“Why were you there for something like that?”
“Carter was there doing a contract, and I had to learn contract law somehow.”
“What has that got to do with a contract?”
“Nothing. It was just when the demon would see him. Oh,” she said, the surge of bitter anger propelling her on. “How about overseeing the execution of a man who was raped to death through his ribcage?”
Jason swallowed.
“Both of those before my twentieth birthday. My first year here. Sex is pain, it’s power, it’s manipulation. And I don’t want to talk about it. Leave me alone.”
She’d never put words to anything she’d seen before, and it left her hands shaking. She regretted it, in one sense, because it had brought up the man’s screams as he’d failed to die for hour after hour. You can’t kill a demon that way. The look in the gray angel’s eyes as she’d watched Samantha and screamed, a noise somewhere between pain and want, out in a realm of existence Samantha hadn’t yet known existed. It had shaken Samantha to her very foundations of belief to find that gray angels participated in games like that. There had been a defiant look to her; Samantha had learned later that some gray angels hate humanity’s innocence. They weren’t all like that, but some of them relished stripping away ignorance and naivete.
There was relief, here, too. Samantha pressed her back against a wall out of sight and slid to the floor, her insides quivering. He’d been shocked. It wasn’t just her overreacting. Even Jason had been surprised. It wasn’t just her.
“Sam?” he called.
“Yeah,” she answered.
“I’m sorry.”
He came to sit across from her in the front hall. Sam was worried about her. He wanted to come back, to defend her from whatever had gone wrong, but she pushed him away. He had set it up, he could deal with the fallout. She looked up at the ceiling for a long time, then looked at Jason.
“Would you explain it to Sam? I can’t.”
“Yeah.”
When Sam got back from the grocery store thirty minutes later, Samantha got up, helped him carry food into the kitchen, then started breakfast.
<><><>
Breakfast eaten and cleaned up, there still wasn’t anything out of the ordinary to suggest why they were there.
“I really just want to kill something,” Jason said. “Is that really so much to ask?”