Danette wasn’t going to let him off the hook. She’d ask how much he was willing to sacrifice. What would he surrender? How deep was his commitment to the Arts?
He didn’t know all that much about Danette, only that she worked part-time at Evelyn’s school, she had once owned the house near the Underpass, and it was her fault she lost it. She had kids but didn’t talk of a husband. No one had helped her as she struggled to make it. And there had been other Sages. And she had history with Andrew, probably in a scenario like the one Bonnie had just described.
Bonnie cocked her head. “You don’t need to beat him. You just need to fight him. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this Fright Night thing is a step above the BCBA. This could get you real publicity. And I bet there’s a paycheck involved.”
Niko hadn’t thought of that. Could he charge an appearance fee? It might only be a couple thousand dollars, yet the money might be something he could use if he wanted to convince Mamo and Tato to give him some slack.
Bonnie was making headway. Then she said something unfair. “Teddy would want you to fight. You know that, right?”
It was a truth he couldn’t let himself hear.
Niko snapped at her. “You don’t know him. You don’t know us. You can’t say things like that, when you don’t know. We have history, long history, so don’t go there.”
“And we don’t.” Bonnie cooled off, tried not to glare, so instead shot him a finger gun. “Gotcha, Niko. I’m the new girl, the stupid new girl, who doesn’t know anything about your ‘long history.’” She air-quoted the words. “So we’re done talking because I don’t want to be the new girl with no history. And you don’t want to be an asshole. Or maybe you do. I don’t know. What do I know? I don’t have your long history. Fight or give up. I want to care. But I don’t think you want me to care. Was that how it went down with Taylor Sebastian?”
Yes and no. That was what he wanted to say. But he couldn’t talk. Too hurt. Too tired. And the ghosts felt like they had their fingers in his prana.
Bonnie was right about one thing: Taylor Sebastian was still in his life, and he was so tired of her. Bonnie was the new girl, but right then, she might as well have gone to high school with him. She was saying similar things. Only, Taylor had been softer and more encouraging.
The Pig pulled up. It was bad timing. Mamo rolled down the window. “Should we park? Can we visit?”
Bonnie stood, arms wrapped around herself, scowling.
“No,” Niko said. “He’s in surgery. We can visit tomorrow.”
He and Bonnie clambered in, to sit on toolboxes in the back, surrounded by swaying junk and cables.
The ride to Bonnie’s place in the Devil’s Edge was silent. Tato tried to get Niko to talk about the match, and Niko had to say they’d won it, then lost on a technicality, and then let the whole thing drop. It was hard to hold a conversation anyway, with Tato up front and Mamo driving, frowning, partly from worry for Teddy, partly because his mother would feel the tension between him and Bonnie. Then Mamo would be thinking they’d just lost their emergency on-call person.
Bonnie might as well have been covered in ice. She was silent. Part of him wanted her to be her charming, funny self, to get in good with his parents. Another part wondered about their fight. Was this the end of their relationship?
It couldn’t end. Everything she’d said had been right. It was only one terrible night. Teddy wouldn’t want Niko to quit. Taylor was around, at least in his thoughts, and Bonnie had been competing. He didn’t want any of it to be true.
He wanted the miserable night to never end, maybe as punishment, or maybe because if you lived in despair, you didn’t have to hope. He wanted Teddy to quit pushing him and follow his own dreams, and he wanted Taylor gone, gone forever, and not plaguing him with all their memories together.
When they pulled up to Bonnie’s apartment complex, Tato limped out and slammed open the side door. She stepped down and walked away.
It was over. Niko felt the pain and tried to let it go, but The Pranad said that some pain was holy. Any Artist that tried to become unfeeling was forever damned.
He didn’t want her to go. And he wanted her gone. Was that the curse of being a Gemini? To be forever torn?
Tato didn’t comment. He slammed the side door closed and got in the passenger seat.
Banging from the back of the van. Someone was pounding on the metal.
“She’s back,” Mamo said quietly.
Niko nearly leapt out of the van.
He went around. Bonnie stood there, purse over her shoulder. She looked him square in the face.
He looked back. All the nights they’d shared came back to him... naked, laughing, feeling her heat, feeling her ice. She’d sing. They’d cycle together. He loved her. The emotions swept into him. In some ways, he loved her far more than he’d loved Taylor.
“This is where I say I’m sorry,” Niko said. “Not for the world. But for me.”
She nodded. “Niko, I don’t want for this to be over.”
“I don’t either.”
“But I need to know about Taylor.”
“Now probably isn’t the time,” he said.
“Don’t call me until it is.” She lifted a hand. “Goodbye, Niko.”
He raised his own hand. “Goodbye, Bonnie.”
She turned, walked up the steps to the entryway, and swiped her hand across the sensor. The gate unlocked, and she left him.
He got back in with his parents, pulling up a Whitney to sit on near them. That was a mistake. Well, add one more to the pile.
He wasn’t an expert, but it felt like a break-up.
Mamo found her way to the freeway. She found his face in the rearview mirror. “Niko, we’ll need you until Teddy is better.”
If he got better.
Niko had already fought several battles that day. He wasn’t going to fight another one with his mother over the business. Giving up on the Arts was the easy solution. The Pranad had a bunch of stuff to say about easy solutions as well.
At home, Niko found himself on his meditation mat, breathing in twelve rounds of the vape pen and then cycling. His mind wouldn’t quiet. His prana felt cracked; he’d never felt more crippled.
He did twelve rounds of the Duodecim. One after another, despite his racing mind and his troubled spirit. He didn’t get relief. He cycled like a Battle Artist, but he sure didn’t feel like one.
The shower helped more.
Before he went to bed, he checked his phone. Maybe Bonnie texted him. Teddy wouldn’t have. At that moment, he was being repaired. God help the doctors and the Luna Artist.
Niko saw he had a direct message from none other than Andrew J. Coffey. I WON’T BE FIGHTING YOU, OR ANY OF YOUR TALENTLESS SAGES. NOT IN THIS LIFE. AND I’M GOING TO DO WHAT I CAN TO MAKE SURE YOU AND DANNI DRAGON NEVER, EVER MAKE IT IN THIS BUSINESS. YOU ARE NOT WORTHY.
It was the perfect terrible ending to a perfect terrible day.
No amount of So-Me likes or new fans was going to help him sleep that night.
The Bodies
MONIQUE CHECKED HER phone again. It was Monday night, she was parked in a SoulFire car, and her trusty Aleksy was with her. Another stakeout, looking for signs of the chochlik or his new serpent cambion. Aleksy had gotten a meal from a Twelve Burger. She’d brought vegetables, falafel, and hummus. Both had coffees.
Another dinner in their car. Another long night away from her apartment, and away from Logan, which was good and bad. She couldn’t afford to go out, and Aleksy bought her the coffee. She was grateful and let go of the shame relatively easily.
She had bigger sins to worry about. The executive team had decided, against her wishes, to keep their knowledge of the chochlik secret. That meant no press, no contact with local law enforcement, and no sharing intel with the military. Monique’s goose chase now meant something to them, and they didn’t want any other corporation sniffing around for the new type of daemon.
It sickened her. But she played
along. Quitting would have been a righteous act, but righteousness wouldn’t pay her bills, and she’d lose all her resources to hunt the thing down. Aleksy included.
She sat with him in the car, parked in a row of fairly unabandoned houses. Some were boarded up. Others had the lights on behind bars. Groups of rough-looking young men clustered under streetlights.
As they sat, Monique kept expecting two things. One? For Aleksy to bring up the Niko Black fight. The afternoon event had eclipsed the main event. Niko had hit the local scene hard but had failed to reach even a back page on SoulFire’s website. Was that because the marketing people didn’t think it would matter, or was it because the Unrepresented had won, and then conceded the victory? Monique wasn’t sure. But Aleksy hadn’t mentioned a word about it. She assumed he’d gone to the fight, though a deeper part of her wasn’t sure.
The other thing she expected? For the night nurse to call to say Logan had wandered out again.
He’d been leaving more and more often.
That first night, after her heart-to-heart with Aleksy, she’d found Logan at an Apollo Coffee Shop, staring at his phone. When she’d eased it out of his hand, he’d stared forward. She wasn’t sure if he’d been pretending to be gone, or if he’d really lost his consciousness again. It was like he’d been annoyed with her, frustrated beyond belief.
She’d led him back. He’d done the same thing again, a few nights later. She had an old-fashioned deadbolt put on the front door, and the keys were now closely regulated. That had helped. However, when Logan was awake, he was smart. He’d kept himself fed during those lean years in the Underbelly. Monique? Not so much. She’d had to learn to find food on her own.
Monique checked her phone again.
“Logan?” Aleksy asked.
“Logan.” Monique turned off the display. “So, regarding our crazy families, do you want to go first? Or should I?”
“What do you mean?” Aleksy mashed up his hamburger wrapper.
He knew what she meant. The guy ran hot and cold. Sometimes, he could get personal. Other nights, it was all business.
Aleksy didn’t seem like he was about to open up about his brother. Instead, he talked shop. “I’ve gone over the reports on the tentacle cambion. There isn’t any trace of the chochlik on it. As far as we could tell, it was a level-six cambion, which shouldn’t exist. Yet other than its power, there is nothing very special about it.”
Monique sipped her coffee. “The real mystery is the chochlik. Oh, by the way, the VP of Marketing isn’t in love with the name. He says it sounds too foreign. When we catch it, that’s probably not going to stick. That’s probably not important in the grand scheme of things.”
Aleksy leaned on the steering wheel, pushing himself back into the seat. It was just something he did. She’d gotten used to his habits after their long months and long nights together. People had their rhythms. What decided that? Was there a genetic component for sighing? For eating a certain way? Or was it all just a dance of prana in the physical world?
“There hasn’t been another murder,” he said. “That’s the important thing, I guess. But if there had been, we might have a clue where it is. We could triangulate a possible location. As it is, we don’t know where it is. It might be anywhere, really.”
“We’re about as far west as you can go, though it could move across the ocean to Hawaii. Maybe. No reports. You’re right. It’s good there aren’t more murders.” Monique laughed. “I can just see me sighing at a board meeting. Damn, I wish more people would die. It would be a small price to pay in the name of SoulFire’s bottom line. Better profit margins through slaughter! I wonder how the PR people would spin that.”
Her deadlines hung over her head, very Sword of Damocles. She had to find the rogue shadow man by the end of the year. And then there was the Grand Tournament and the Triple Crown. She’d focused so much on the former, the latter just might be slipping out of her fingers.
Aleksy didn’t laugh. Something was weighing on him. Should she press the issue and ask?
She went for the joke instead, to alleviate her own boredom as much as anything. “Aleksy, part of your job is to be my adoring audience. You laugh when I’m funny, which is all the time, always. Yes?”
“I don’t understand?”
“Is there any truth in the Pollack jokes? You’re being thick tonight. I’m betting it’s something with your brother, the up-and-coming Niko Black, Battle Artist extraordinaire. Tell me, truthfully, is he coming for my job? I might have to spruce up my resume.” Monique punched him lightly on his arm.
Aleksy shifted in his seat. “He has a job. But he won’t ever be CEO of the Fix-It Shoppe. I guess he is the Chief Battle Artist, though. As much good as that does him.”
“Sunday dinner yesterday? Was it as bad as always?” Monique asked.
“Cancelled. My brother’s best friend got in a car accident. Niko and my parents were at the hospital all day.” Aleksy squinted in the darkness. He reached back, pulled his laptop, and adjusted the antennae. “We have satellites taking pictures. Sometimes, the high-powered daemons show up in the images. At this point, I don’t see anything—”
Monique had to cut him off. “Aleksy, is your brother’s friend okay?” She tried not to show her exasperation.
“He is. He’ll survive. I’m not sure about my brother. My dad is worried about him. It’s the same old story. I left. Niko stayed. He has to give up on his dream. I get to live mine.” Aleksy turned his head. The laptop shined on his hairline, turning it a silvery blue.
He wore a nice aftershave, or cologne, something expensive.
Monique again found her reaction to him amusing. A relationship with him would be a bad idea. He was ten years younger, and still had some of that teenage angst that follows some people into their twenties. And he was a subordinate. That, right there, was the deal breaker.
He turned back. “Have you ever had that? Did your happiness ever rely on someone else’s misery?”
She had friends. She’d had boyfriends. And an almost husband, which would’ve turned into a definite ex-husband. No mother. But a father, who had tested her, from day one, throwing the most grueling trials imaginable at her.
She remembered being ten, maybe ten, maybe younger, it was hard to know. Logan had owed some bad people money in the Underbelly, and he’d been late on payments. He was in a bind. If he paid them back, they’d kill him. If he didn’t pay them, they’d torture him then kill him. He’d given her a bundle of money, and she’d stuffed it into her school backpack. He sent her into the back of a bar, into a smoky room full of men.
He figured since she was a kid, she could pay them without any consequences. He’d bet her life on the idea. She’d walked into the stink of the place, the darkness, the loud music, and every one of those men a giant compared to her. She’d given the money to a man running an underground Unconnected Battle Con, a man with a jagged scar across his throat. That pink scar was visible in his thick beard. He’d eyed her with brown eyes that didn’t have a spark of emotion in them. That was Calabra. He took the money. And he’d enlisted a bar lady, a thin, smelly woman, to escort Monique back home.
Calabra had also tested her, but that was later, after he gave her his copy of A Princess of the Changing Winds and started her training.
She exhaled out the storm that came from such memories. “I had to learn happiness in my own misery. Which is the only way to win happiness. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that we all have to walk through our own lives the best way we know how. We have to be aware of how our actions affect other people, but it’s a sad, heavy thing to carry everyone’s misery. What can you do, today, to alleviate your misery and the misery of the people around you?”
Aleksy hardened. “I won’t quit SoulFire. I won’t go back to the Fix-It. I won’t get entangled in all that drama.”
Monique laughed. “All that drama is family. All that drama is life. And you can’t leave, not until we find the chochlik. You don’t have to ans
wer the terrible question tonight. But think on it.” She thought of Logan and checked her phone. Cheryl would chide her for not being able to let go of her worry. What would Calabra have done?
That last question was easy. Calabra would’ve killed Logan and been done with the whole unpleasant business. Calabra used murder like other people used power tools. In fact, he often combined the two.
“You know about family drama... with Logan. That’s why you keep checking your phone.”
Another laugh from Monique. “And here I was, thinking I was enlightened. Maybe I am, but not where family is concerned. Which is a common complaint among us superheroes.”
“Not just superheroes.” Aleksy finally chuckled. Ironic, he laughed at his own bittersweet joke and not hers.
The door to the house across the street burst open. A woman screamed. The house was a tattered collection of wood, splintered siding, and rotten roofing—the people pouring out were just as tattered.
Monique exploded out of the car. Aleksy called after her, “Monique, wait, it’s not safe.”
Aww, he cared.
She dashed across the street, her Sanguine Second Study blurring her legs. She used a Sky Second Study to float over the fence and onto the tall weeds of what used to be the front lawn.
Some guy, as thin as a skeleton, yelped. His arms hung out of his filthy T-shirt like weeping willow branches.
“What’s the problem?” she asked.
“Daemon. Something. Dark.” He took off.
It was enough of a description for Monique. The doorway was jammed. Some of the people were hanging out on the porch. The sulfurous stink of prank clung to them. It only added to the rankness of their unshowered bodies.
She pushed her way through, reinforcing her hands with Tidal Force, a Luna ability. The people parted.
Her implants whispered in her ear. “Prana at ninety-seven percent.”
To her right, a living room, where bodies lay bleeding amid the dozen couches crammed into the space. Standing lamps were scattered across the floor, their bulbs seeping light. It was hard to see, but no, there, the shadow man, on the steps.
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