by Chloe Garner
“You do not antagonize these people,” she said. “They are some of the most powerful sorcerers on the planet, and while they can’t take me on, directly, they can certainly annoy me by pestering you. Do you enjoy having sensation in your lower extremities?” She glared at him with flared eyes for another moment, then jerked back to the next doorway. “Behave.”
“Yeah, that’s already gotten old,” Jason said. She tossed one more glare over her shoulder, then straightened and tossed her hair aggressively. Sam was grinning. They followed her down a short set of stairs and through a heavy purple curtain into a flame-lit, wood room full of old-style market stalls. They had seen similar ones in New York, but these had a much older feel to them. The room’s occupants didn’t pay much attention to them, at first, but one by one, heads turned to stare at Samantha. She held herself strictly upright, meeting eyes. Jason wished he had his gun. A tall man with slicked black hair, wearing a heavy suit that might have been purple or black, depending on the light, approached, his pencil mustache emphasizing the tick at one corner of his mouth.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Yes,” Samantha answered.
“How is Carter?”
“Carter.”
The mustache ticked harder.
“Yes.”
They stared at each other.
“How is Evelyn?” Samantha asked.
“She should die soon,” he said.
“Mmm,” Samantha said.
“I am expected to replace her,” he said after another minute. She nodded silently, face not betraying the slightest emotion. “She invited you to align with us, once, I believe.” Samantha nodded again. The mustache ticked frantically as deadened eyes watched Samantha. “Should I successfully take her place, I would extend you the same invitation.”
Samantha chewed her tongue in the back of her mouth for a moment.
“It’s too hot here for clothes like that,” she said finally. She looked at the room. “I’m here to buy. I don’t want to upend the social order and I don’t want to duel. Anyone who approaches me with either intent,” she said, turning back to the man with the ticky mustache meaningfully, “will find themselves promptly dead. Is that clear?”
The mustache turned up into a sneer.
“We ask that you check livestock at the door,” he said.
“Then who’s vouching for you?” she asked, putting a palm up in front of her, inches from his chest. She slowly pushed the hand forward and he backed away at the same rate. The tick traveled to his eye, the whole side of his face spasming as she pushed him away, then she looked at Jason. She smiled easily.
“We’ll make this quick, shall we?”
He raised his eyebrows and nodded, wondering if the man in front of her was in pain or just completely fractured. She smiled again and turned to her right, going to the first stall.
“Would you really kill one of them?” he asked.
“Yes,” Sam said. “Why?” The question was directed at Samantha.
“You hate them that much?” Jason asked. She licked her lips.
“This is what people look like who think that magic makes them gods,” she said. “They excuse themselves from the natural order. I don’t mind reinstating it.”
At the booth, a tall, slender woman with long black hair and a dark green dress smoldered at Jason. He startled, then grinned.
“Hi,” he said. She gave him a sideways grin, then sucked in her lower lip, turning her face down to look at him through her eyelashes.
“Hello,” she answered.
“Lespa, your vanity knows no bounds,” Samantha said. The woman flinched her nose in anger at Samantha, then batted her eyes at Jason again.
“What’s your name?” she asked him. Samantha started going through jars, holding this one up to the light, opening that one and letting the contents sift into the jar off of a scoop.
“I’m Jason,” he told the woman. She smiled, revealing perfect white teeth.
“She’s not much fun,” she said, indicating Samantha.
“But I’m the one with the money,” Samantha said. Lespa shrugged, eyes not leaving Jason.
“There are things in the world more fun than money.”
“Lespa,” Samantha warned. Lespa grinned wider, reaching forward to run a finger over the back of Jason’s hand. Her touch tingled against his skin, and her eyes held his as his heart rate picked up slightly. Samantha grunted.
“Enough,” she said, flipping a hand at the woman. He must have blinked, though he didn’t feel it happen, because where a tall, elegant woman had stood, there was now a short middle-aged woman with pocked, sagging skin. She giggled and winked at him. He pulled his hand away. Samantha put an arm behind her, tapping Sam’s chest.
“Pull that out for me,” she said. Sam pulled the chain he wore out from under his shirt and dropped it back onto his chest. Lespa stared at it.
“Six ounces of the powdered frog liver, a dozen rush weeds, and one black pixie,” Samantha said. Lespa grinned at Jason and he closed his eyes hard, hating his body for falling for her.
“Six thousand,” she said.
“I’ll give you two-hundred fifty,” Samantha said. Lespa turned with outrage and Samantha rolled her eyes. “I’m not a pink-skinned baby, Lespa. You’re going to tell me the black pixie alone cost five grand, and I’m going to tell you that I know for a fact that you’re importing them from Belize at thirty bucks apiece. You’ll tell me that the fire up north knocked out the supply of rush weeds, and I’ll remind you that it takes natural magic to kill the plant, and that they only set them back two weeks, five months ago. Seriously. I say two fifty. You say six hundred. I say three hundred, we agree on three twenty-five, and you tell Anisa that you skinned me alive. I’ve got places to be, okay?”
Lespa pouted for a minute, then put out her hand. Samantha smiled tightly, packing up her goods. Jason couldn’t have guessed which of the three containers was which.
“Carter’s paying,” Samantha said. Lespa narrowed her eyes for a minute.
“Fine,” she said. Samantha held up a hand and a short man in glasses hurried over.
“Tab, payable by Carter,” Samantha said. “Three hundred and twenty-five dollars to Lespa.”
The man took out a pad of paper and wrote it down. Samantha made a small salute to the woman and glanced at Jason.
“Next.”
<><><>
It took almost two hours to work their way around the room, buying powders and roots from some merchants, blades and bits of metal from others. At one point, Samantha handed Jason a multi-metal blob shaped like a gobstopper and a size that he could close his hand over.
“Put that in your pocket,” she said. Jason pocketed the lump, and it felt as though a dozen fingers he hadn’t noticed stopped poking him. She paid for the lump of metal and a strange shape made of thick black wire, then glanced at him.
“That isn’t a bullet-proof vest,” she said, “but it is targeted pretty well at a few of the people around here.”
He nodded, and they went on.
By the end, she had spent more than ten-thousand dollars and Jason could see why she hated the place. He hadn’t gotten to watch her shopping in New York, but Sam had never suggested it was this contentious. Sam had said that the demons seemed to respect her, and the humans actually appeared to like her. The room seemed to have a static charge, always on the verge of jumping bolts of lightning at them. They made it back to the Cruiser in their respective three pieces, and Jason started driving.
“Now we go drinking?” he asked. She nodded, going through the different things in her bag. She rolled over the back seat at one point and he frowned.
“When did that get there?” he asked.
“I put it here in New York,” she said of the multi-drawered cabinet she was filing things into.
“Seriously?” he asked.
“Seriously.”
“I saw it,” Sam said.
Jason shook his head.
> “It seemed like there was less space back there than I remembered.”
Sam laughed.
Jason made for a bar he had been to before with a girl he had met several years before. The place was trendy to the point of hipster, and they blared monochromatic hip hop full time, but the drinks were cheap, the food was amazing, and the servers were hot. They got a table in the middle of the room, the only one open, and ordered drinks and appetizers. Samantha laughed, teasing Sam about the girl at the bar who was hitting on him, and Jason immediately started working on the waitress.
“You want me to go over there?” Sam asked. Samantha grinned, downing another shot.
“No. But she does.”
“I’m serious. I’ll go over there.”
“No you won’t,” Jason said. Sam dropped his jaw in mock-disbelief.
“I will. Just to prove that I would.”
“You can’t lie to me,” Samantha said, eyes dancing. Jason howled.
“Do not play poker with this woman,” he said. Sam ducked his head over his beer.
“I don’t think he should play poker at all,” Samantha said. Sam’s head jerked up.
“Hey.”
Jason laughed, raising his beer to Samantha. She picked hers up in salute and drained it.
“You want another?” Jason asked. She rolled her eyes.
“You just want an excuse to call her over here again.”
“It’s not like I’m making a secret about it,” he said, raising his arm at the midriff-bared woman standing at the end of the bar. She grinned and grabbed a tray. He glanced at Samantha as the woman made her way across the floor. “You’re sure she isn’t faking it?”
“Anything fake on her was put there surgically,” Samantha said. Sam laughed.
“What can I get you, baby?” she asked. Jason pointed without looking.
“Another beer, another round of shots, and what time you get off tonight.”
“You’re a tourist,” she said, grinning. “I don’t do tourists.”
He shook his head.
“I’m here on business.”
“No way,” she said, jerking her head at Sam. “You want another one?”
Jason watched as Sam shook his beer, then shrugged.
“Sure.”
The waitress left and Jason grinned at Sam.
“Pretty weak for liquid courage,” he said. Sam rolled his eyes, then frowned as Samantha sat bolt upright in her chair.
“What is it?” he asked. Jason looked where she had suddenly turned, finding him immediately.
“It’s him,” she said softly.
The Asian dancer was out on the dance floor, dancing by himself, as much as the girls around him would let him.
“Who?” Sam asked.
“Alexander,” she said absently. Sam looked at Jason.
“The Alexander?” he asked. Jason nodded. For Jason, dance was a means to an end, but even he appreciated the skill Alexander had. You didn’t have to look very hard to see him, even on the nearly-unlit floor. In the midst of gyrating and side-shifting dancers, he had an exuberance and a liquidity to his motion that made him unmistakable in a crowd, whether or not you saw his face. He looked at Samantha. She was entranced.
“I’ve never watched him from the outside,” she said to no one in particular. Jason considered a joke, something about ‘from the inside’, but rejected it. She glanced at Sam, who nodded, then, drawn magnetically forward, she stood and slid across the bar, merging into the pattern of dance with Alexander like they were playing in the same water current. Sam watched.
“Wow,” he said.
“What?”
“Just… I’ve never actually seen her when she was like this,” he said.
“Yeah,” Jason said. The waitress brought the drinks, and he looked over at her.
“You know I’m not going to take no for an answer, right?” he said. She grinned at him.
“You know I’m not that easy, right?” she answered.
“Nothing wrong with knowing what you want,” Jason said.
“And what makes you think I want you?”
“You’ve got three other tables waiting on food, and we’ve had ours for twenty minutes. Who ordered the wings that you stole for us? Them?” he asked, motioning to a table of men. She grinned.
“Smartass.”
He twitched his eyebrows at her. She laughed, open-mouthed, and left. He turned back to Sam.
“You okay?” he asked. Sam looked back at him.
“That obvious?”
“If I know about it, no way she doesn’t,” Jason said.
“I don’t know that she can hear me,” he said. “She’s… really loud right now.”
Jason shook his head.
“Ignoring how weird that is, she pays attention to you before anyone else. She knows.”
“I don’t want her to know,” Sam said. Jason shrugged.
“That’s what you signed up for,” he said. Sam sighed.
“I know.”
They watched, Jason finishing off the wings absently. Alexander was leading, now, playfully, thighs to thighs, hips to hips. Alexander never took his eyes off Samantha; neither did Sam. Jason flirted with the waitress. The hours rolled.
Finally, the pair of them seemed to spontaneously break off of the floor, heading back to the table.
“Alexander, these are my friends, Sam and Jason. I travel with them.”
Alexander jerked his head at Sam, grinning.
“Good to meet you,” he said, shaking hands first with Sam, then with Jason.
“You want to sit and have a drink with us?” Jason asked. Alexander ran both hands through his hair.
“No, I’m out.” He looked at Samantha and grinned. “I’ll see you around.”
“No,” she said. “How do I get in touch with you?”
“He shrugged exaggeratedly.
“I’ll see you around.”
He held up a hand in farewell to Sam and Jason, then nodded in an almost-bow to Samantha and left. Samantha had a careless grin like she had forgotten that people could see her face. Sam and Jason both stared at her. She laughed.
“What? I’m having fun. Wasn’t that the point?”
“I’m glad you’re happy,” Sam said, finishing his beer. Samantha stole Jason’s newly-opened bottle and drained it.
“I’m beat,” she said. The waitress brought over the check as Samantha spoke.
“I’m going out with some friends,” she said, handing the check to Jason. “You can come if you can keep up.”
“Oh, honey. I can keep up,” Jason said, handing her cash to cover the bill. She grinned.
“I’ll go get my purse.” She looked over at Sam and Samantha. “Good night.”
“Night,” Sam said. Jason grinned, and Sam rolled his eyes.
“First thing in the morning,” Sam reminded. Jason closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. I’ll be there. Can you guys get back to Andre’s on your own?”
“I can flag a cab,” Sam said. “Don’t forget to come get us in the morning, though.”
“I know.” Jason flashed a grin as the waitress returned. “See you guys tomorrow.”
<><><>
Samantha knew that Sam was unhappy. She looked over at him a few times on the ride back to the waypoint house, but was enjoying her dance buzz too much to start the conversation, just yet. He paid the cabbie and let her into the house, re-hiding the key as she went upstairs to the room that Andre had allocated to the two of them. She wasn’t thrilled, allowing herself to get a reputation like that with some of the people they stayed with, but she agreed with Jason - it was simpler this way - and she wasn’t happy, any more, sleeping that far away from Sam. He followed her upstairs and turned his back as she changed into the clothes she normally slept in, and she went to brush her teeth as he changed. When she came back in, he was sitting on the bed.
“Can we talk?” he asked. She nodded.
“I’m n
ot avoiding you.”
“I know. You’re just so freaking happy.”
She laughed, turning off the light and walking carefully across the room to the bed. She found his hand in the darkness before she kicked the bedframe, and went to lay down on top of the bed on her side as he got in. She rolled on her side, looking at the profile of his face in the dim blue light that filtered through the curtains.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“You love him,” he said. She sighed, the light-hearted feeling persisting even without active memory of touch, of shared mass and balance.
“I do.”
“You barely know him,” he said.
“I don’t know him at all.”
“But you love him.”
“He makes me happy. There’s nothing more complicated to it than that.”
He rolled his head to look at her.
“It doesn’t bother you at all to say that you love him.”
She shook her head.
“Even though you don’t know him. That’s supposed to be really hard. To say you love someone.”
“Have you ever been in love, Sam?”
He thought, a slurry of emotions stirring as he remembered or considered things she couldn’t even guess at.
“Yes.”
“Was it scary?”
“Yes.”
She laughed.
“I’m not afraid of love. Loss sucks, but pretending you aren’t in love just makes it less fun to be in love. It doesn’t protect you from losing it any.”
“You make it sound easy,” he said. She sighed, a slight insecurity bouncing back and forth between them.
“With Alexander, it just is. It’s light and frothy and sweet and easy.” She looked at him, the shape of his hair where it launched clear of his ear, the shadowed shape of his jaw, reading the concern off of him. “If I never saw him again, I don’t think I’d be that upset. It can’t be anything. It isn’t anything. It’s just… happy. He makes me happy. Love isn’t always like that. It isn’t even usually like that.”
“How did you love Justin?” Sam asked. She didn’t react fast enough to damp the stab of pain she felt at the memory, and he reacted immediately with regret. She pushed back calm, acceptance, bittersweet happiness. She didn’t mind talking about it. The pain wasn’t a bad thing.