“Only because people are small minded about the capabilities of Botox,” said Sloane, still leaning on the doorbell. “I figure the noise will start driving him out of his tree any second now, and then we can come in for a little chat.”
“Annoyance as an interrogation tactic is so very you,” I commented, and glanced at Jeff. He looked away, refusing to meet my eyes. I sighed. “Did anybody get any hits on a body while we were driving?”
“Three John Does came into the morgue last night, but none with stab wounds,” said Andy. “The only stabbing victims we have all came with confirmed attackers who weren’t our Mermaid.”
Someone started shouting unintelligibly from behind the club door. Sloane kept her finger on the doorbell, leaning even harder into the malicious act of driving everyone inside La Maison Verte out of their minds.
Then the door swung open, revealing a tall, skinny man in dirty jeans and nothing else, which gave us an impressive view of the colorful tattoos that covered his chest. He snarled at Sloane in a language I didn’t understand, making a grab for her arm.
I don’t think he saw her move. One second, he was trying to make her stop ringing the doorbell, and the next, she was holding his wrist firmly in one hand, while the other hand kept up the racket. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s not polite to hit a lady?” she asked, in a voice so sugary-sweet that it was terrifying.
Time for me to step in, before she actually started breaking bones. “Hello. We’re from the ATF,” I said, stepping forward and flashing my badge too quickly for him to read the writing. He went pale and stopped struggling against Sloane’s hand. “We had a report of a stabbing here last night?”
“How did you—”
“You shouldn’t answer questions with questions,” said Sloane, doing something complicated with her fingers. The man groaned, sagging in her grip. “It’s rude.”
“Yes, okay, yes!” the man half said, half gasped. “One of our regulars. He didn’t want to go to the hospital. Said it wasn’t that bad. I let his friends take him home.”
I leaned close, looking at him coldly. “We’re gonna need a name.”
#
Jeff worked his magic on the local DMV database, and we quickly determined that our stabbing victim, Kyle Johnston, lived in a suburb less than five miles from the Christian house. We piled back into our cars and took off, ignoring traffic and safety regulations in favor of getting to the wounded Prince as quickly as possible. As callous as it sounded, things might still be okay if he died. If he fell into a coma…
The narrative loves comas. It can use them in all sorts of interesting, horrible ways that will do nothing good for anyone who comes into range. “Sloane, call the Bureau, ask them to put Demi on the phone,” I said, turning onto the freeway. “I need to ask her something.”
“Is it how to play ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ on the recorder? Because I can teach you that.” And yet she was already dialing—Sloane might be snarky and unpleasant when she had the chance, but she knew her job.
I focused on the road while Sloane talked, snapped, and shouted her way through the various levels of bureaucracy between us and our imprisoned team member. Finally, she said, “Demi, it’s Sloane. Henry needs to ask you something. I’m putting you on speaker.”
“Henry?” Demi’s voice was rendered thin and tinny by its passage through the phone.
“Here,” I said. “Demi, do you remember the other day when we were talking about Birdie’s plan and what you’d managed to ascertain while you were undercover?” That was the word we were using now, at least when there was a chance that we could have been bugged by the Bureau. Not “enthralled,” but “undercover.” It seemed so much more, well, on our side.
“Yes,” said Demi. “I told you I don’t know much—”
“But you know more than the rest of us. You said that Birdie was planting stories like bombs. What did you mean by that?”
“Just that she’d be triggering unstable narratives when she could, to see if the blowback could make other stories go active. Chain reactions. Why?”
“Because we have a Little Mermaid who should have been a Beast, and who tried for murder-suicide instead of picking one,” I said grimly. “Sound unstable to you?”
“I don’t know the Index as well as you do,” Demi said hesitantly. “Maybe?”
“Demi, did she say anything else about what she was planning to do with the unstable stories? Anything at all?”
“Just that there were a lot of them.”
Every time Demi started a sentence with the word “just” I felt like there were a dozen things she wasn’t telling me—things she might not even know she knew, because they were buried under a hundred inconsequential things, and she hadn’t been with us long enough to learn to listen. Demi had barely received enough field training to keep her from getting killed before we were shoving her into the path of the narrative.
I should probably have felt guilty about that. Maybe I would have, except that I knew I would activate her again if I had to. I would do it again in a heartbeat. “Okay, Demi. Thanks for that. I’ll let you know how this turns out when we get back to the Bureau.” I gestured for Sloane to hang up before Demi could say anything else. She’d already contributed as much as she could, and I didn’t want to upset her when there was nothing she could do to help. “Sloane, thoughts?”
“You mean do I think Birdie set our Mermaid up as a narrative hand grenade? Yeah, I do.” Sloane tucked her phone back into her pocket. “Let’s hope the Prince is dead,” she added, echoing my earlier sentiment. “I don’t want to think about what’s going to happen if he’s still breathing.”
“Me neither,” I said, and hit the gas.
#
“Kyle Johnston, this is the police.” Andy hammered on the door, shouting in his most booming voice at the same time. It would definitely have been intimidating if I hadn’t known him. The fact that Kyle wasn’t answering spoke poorly for his continued survival. “Please open your door, or we’re coming in.”
“He’s here,” said Sloane, pacing back and forth behind Andy like a chained dog. She had the half-starved look she sometimes got when we were close to an active story, nostrils flaring and eyes taking on a feral gleam. “He’s inside that door.”
“Is he alive?” I asked.
She shot me a glare. “Story wouldn’t still be here if he wasn’t.”
“Got it,” I said. “Andy?”
“Step away from the door!” he shouted, just in case Kyle was close enough to hear.
The sound of Andy kicking in the door was viscerally satisfying in a way that was difficult to describe. I drew my gun, holding it low as I motioned for Andy and Sloane to lead the way, and we entered Kyle Johnston’s home.
If Michael and Linda’s house looked like it had been decorated several years ago and then allowed to slip slowly, inexorably out of style, Kyle’s condo was the polar opposite. Every article of furniture and piece of artwork on the wall was perfectly hip, perfectly new, perfectly now, like there was a chance that a lifestyle magazine could arrive and start grading at any moment. The only thing out of place was the trail of blood that started halfway down the hall and extended toward the back of the condo.
I pointed to the blood trail and then to Andy, indicating that he should go that way. Looking to Jeff and Sloane, I pointed in the opposite direction. We needed to cover the whole place, and we needed to do it as quickly and quietly as possible.
Sloane scowled, pointing in the direction of the blood. I shook my head and pointed again at the door on the other side of the room. Still glaring at me, she grabbed Jeff’s arm and dragged him with her as she finally deigned to follow orders.
Andy had waited for me—less out of respect than out of a healthy desire not to go wandering off into a narrative-infected house all by himself. He raised an eyebrow as I turned to face him. I rolled my eyes and started following the blood, my gun braced against my wrist and Andy a looming, familiar presence at my
back. We had done this routine before. That didn’t make it any easier.
The blood trail ended at the bathroom, where wads of gauze and bloody towels carpeted the floor. There was no sign of Kyle Johnston. Andy and I still searched the cupboards, closet, and bedroom before turning and retracing our steps, looking for the rest of our team.
We didn’t have to go far. Sloane and Jeff were in the kitchen, where a slim, good-looking man with bandages wrapped around his otherwise bare chest had collapsed on the linoleum. He wasn’t dead. He was breathing, and what’s more, there was a certain strange vitality about him that caught and held my eye, almost like it was daring me to come close, to smell the lingering traces of his cologne and read the birdwing traceries of his collarbones—
Sloane’s hand caught my elbow as I started to step past her. “Maybe you shouldn’t,” she said, and for once, her voice was almost kind. “A woman in your condition and a narrative running this close to the surface, there’s no telling what could happen.”
I reddened. “I wouldn’t,” I said, my protest sounding hollow even to my own ears.
“You’re a fairy tale princess, Henry. You get too close to a sleeping prince and you’re not going to have a choice.” She let me go and pushed me back a step in the same motion, somehow making it seem like it had been my decision to retreat. “We’ve got this. Go wait by the car.”
“Dammit,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes hard with the heels of my hands. “All right. Call if you need anything.” I’d always known that there would be downsides if my story ever went live. I had never considered that an inability to stand near an active Prince might be among them.
Footsteps followed me out of the condo and down the walkway to my car. I didn’t stop or look behind me until my hand was resting on the hood. Then I turned, looking at Jeff, and asked wearily, “Is this where you say ‘I told you so’ and tell me all about how I was inevitably going to wind up enthralled by the first sleeping prince I saw? Because I’m not in the mood.”
“No, this is where I ask if you’re okay,” he said. He took a breath before ducking his head and adding, “I also wanted to say that I was sorry, if you’re in the mood for an apology. I was stupid before.”
“You’ve been being stupid for a couple of weeks now, and we’re on a case,” I said, folding my arms. “What makes this the right time to come and apologize to me?”
“Well, there’s the fact that you may need to be distracted to keep you from going and flinging yourself on our currently comatose guest—not that you’d want to, you understand, just that there’s a chance the narrative would try to manipulate things so as to leave you no choice.” Jeff reached up and nervously adjusted his glasses. “There’s also the fact that our fight earlier this morning was about princes, and now we’re dealing with one. That seems unlikely to be a coincidence.”
“If you think the narrative wants you to apologize—”
“I think that if the narrative wants anything where the two of us are concerned, it’s exactly what it’s getting right now: a fight. It wants us to be alienated from one another. It wants me to be so…insecure about what your story means that I withdraw and stop trying to build on what we may have. It wants you to be alone. Lonely people are easier prey for the idea of true love in a single kiss and a partner who’s too busy sleeping their life away to protest.”
I frowned slowly. “You think the narrative made you pick a fight with me?”
“No. I think my own insecurity and inexperience with dating since my own story started and desire not to mess up our friendship made me pick a fight with you. I think the narrative wants me not to apologize.” Jeff shrugged, his mouth thinning to a firm line. “I have waited a very long time to be able to have inappropriately timed discussions about the status of our relationship with you. I don’t intend to let my own stupidity take this opportunity away from me.”
“I’m not an opportunity, Jeff,” I said. “I’m a person. I lead your field team. We’re always going to be peers before we can be anything else.”
He shrugged. “I know all that. I also know you’re the one who brought me back when my story was trying to take me away—and we’ve all seen Demi, we know what would have happened to me if it had succeeded. I don’t know how my story could have been turned offensive, and I don’t particularly want to. The kiss didn’t work because kisses break spells, Henry. The kiss worked because it was you. I really want to give us a try. I’ll do my best not to freak out on you like I did today.”
“I hate princes,” I said, without thinking about it. I just spoke, letting the words flow through me and out into the air. “They don’t even get names half the time, they just get passed around like little narrative explosions, and all you can do is hope you won’t get caught in the blast. I’ve never thought much about what I’d want in a significant other, but I’ve always known that it wouldn’t be a prince. Being active isn’t going to change that.”
“So what do you want?”
I thought about it for a moment before I smiled and said, “You.”
We were both professionals and we were technically at work, even if I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near the crime scene until Kyle Johnston was safely stowed in the back seat of Andy’s car. So we just stood there, smiling awkwardly at one another, until Sloane came out and gave us the all-clear. She was smirking when she did it, like she could tell what we’d been discussing just from the way that we stood.
Let her smirk. I was too happy to care.
#
We were done in the field and back in at the Bureau by four o’clock—plenty of time for me to walk up to Deputy Director Brewer’s office and tell his secretary that I needed to see him. He let me in five minutes later. It was an impressive response time, especially considering the number of active stories we’d had recently. I guess when you’re at the center of the storm, you stop putting things on hold.
“Can I help you, Agent Marchen?” he asked, walking back around his desk and retaking his seat.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “We have reason to believe that the next stage in Birdie’s plan involves modifying borderline stories to guarantee a dangerous and potentially violent resolution.”
He looked at me like I was speaking Latin.
I tried again: “She’s weaponizing fairy tales, sir.”
“As if they weren’t dangerous enough already?” He leaned back in his seat, still staring at me. “What do you suggest we do about this?”
“Sir, I am down a body and dealing with things that have been twisted out of true. I think you know what I want to do about this.”
His gaze hardened. “You’re making a request that could end your career.”
“With all due respect, everything I’ve done in the last month could end my career. What’s one more?”
“Are you sure you can manage her?”
“I think she wants to prove herself. The archivists have confirmed her claims: her story was vulnerable to Birdie’s targeting. We can prevent that from happening again.”
“Are you sure enough that you’re willing to risk your entire team on it?”
That was the real question, wasn’t it? I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
He sighed. “Then I’ll sign the papers. But I hope to God you know what you’re doing, Marchen.”
“I do, Deputy Director. I really do.”
Kyle Johnston was in the Archive, sleeping and receiving medical care. Jeff and I were going out for coffee after work. And I was getting Demi back.
I knew exactly what I was doing.
I just hoped that I was doing the right things.
Episode 11
Scarlet Flowers
Memetic incursion in progress: tale type 426 (“The Two Girls and the Bear”)
Status: IN PROGRESS
Gerald March, high school English teacher and purposefully ordinary guy, had not started his Tuesday expecting to end up running for his life.
He’d been having a reasonably good day, as school days
went: his students had been about as well behaved as high school students are capable of being, and some of them had even read the material before first period, which verged on the miraculous. The weather was good, the cute barista at the Starbucks had given him extra whipped cream on his morning mocha, and he’d even managed to snag one of the faculty parking spaces in the front row. Everything had been going just fine until fourth period.
Fourth period was when the herd of deer had appeared on the quad.
Thanks to the modern wonder of smartphones and data plans, the entire school had known about their visitors in a matter of minutes. He’d lost control of the class before he’d fully grasped what was going on. They’d rushed to press their noses to the windows, and he’d followed them, trying to figure out what all the excitement was about.
As soon as he’d appeared behind the glass, the deer had turned, every one of them, their heads swiveling toward him with a predatory intensity that was rare in herbivores. He’d paled, taking a large step backward, and then—to his shame—he’d turned around and run. He hadn’t even stopped by the office on his way off campus. That would mean the end of this teaching job for sure. No matter how good a teacher you are, you can’t just run off and leave a class of high school sophomores on their own. He was dimly aware that he should call the school and tell them he was sick, or that he’d suffered a family emergency, or something, but he didn’t have time for that. If he stopped running, they would catch up with him, and if they caught up with him …
Gerald March had spent his entire life working to become the man he wanted to be. He wasn’t going to let some stupid story pull him back into its clutches now. So he ran, and he hoped that his sister—who had never had the sense to step away from her own doorway into the narrative—would be there to break him loose.
#
Indexing Page 29