by Chloe Garner
They entered a little greasy spoon diner and Abby waved at the man behind the counter.
“Abby,” he said.
“Sam is coming today,” she called. He grinned.
“I’ll tell Diego,” he answered. Abby picked a table along the wall and sat facing the door. Jason and Sam sat next to each other. The man from the counter came out and handed them menus.
“Tea, please,” Abby said. Sam and Jason ordered beers.
“What’s good here?” Jason asked.
“Sam loves the burger and fries. Carter won’t eat here, so I haven’t been in years.”
“Burgers?” Jason asked. Sam glanced through the menu and shrugged.
“Burgers.”
“Three,” Jason said, pointing at himself, Sam, and the empty seat. Abby handed him her menu and smiled.
“Thank you,” she said.
“What are you getting?” Jason asked as the man bustled away, calling back to the kitchen.
“I order off-menu,” Abby said. “Did you find everything you needed?”
“That’s a pretty mean setup he’s got,” Jason said. She folded her fingers to rest her chin on them.
“Sam bought most of it. The rest of it she made.”
“Damn.”
“Carter relied on her more than he would ever admit, in those years before she died. He pays a demon to maintain most of his equipment, now, but the kid does it with tools Sam built.”
Sam turned to watch the door as Samantha got close. She pushed the door open and nodded at the man at the counter, joining them. Abby greeted her in angeltongue and Samantha answered in the same. They spoke for several minutes in the language. Even with a few words at his disposal, Sam couldn’t identify the sounds in the words well enough to repeat any of them.
“I like that dress,” Samantha said finally.
“I know,” Abby told her.
“Diego would like to say hello,” the man said, approaching with his fingers woven around a pad of paper. Samantha looked up at him and smiled.
“Of course.”
He nodded and backed away. Jason leaned across the table.
“What’s going on?” he asked. A man in his mid-twenties appeared and knelt in front of Samantha taking her hands and greeting her in Spanish. She answered in Spanish and he kissed her hands, saying more. Sam stared. She expressed a warmth to the man that she didn’t really feel. It wasn’t that she resented him; she was putting it on because it was what he needed from her. He stood and nodded to the rest of the table, then bowed to Samantha before he left.
“Sam pulled a demon out of his mother. Saved his little sister,” Abby said after he was gone.
“And you still eat here?” Jason asked.
“It’s been years since I’ve seen him,” Samantha said. “He was worried about me, even though Abby said I was okay.”
Sam looked back at the doorway where the young man had disappeared. He had never spent time around the people they had helped, much. She might have eaten lunch here once a week for more than a year, seeing Diego every time. He didn’t know which one he would prefer.
She was watching him. He smiled and she nodded.
“Did you guys order?”
<><><>
It was long dark outside by the time they left. They had slept until well after noon that morning, but the darkness called on a sense that it was time to be tired, without the stimulus of work to be done.
“Where are you going next?” Abby asked.
“Nowhere,” Samantha said.
“We haven’t got any work in front of us,” Jason said. “I figured we could stick around here a few days, then just drift south.”
“I’d like to go back to Chapel Hill,” Sam said. Samantha saw Jason glower at him, but the fight over that would happen some other time.
“You going to train tomorrow?” Abby asked.
“Taken too many days off already,” Samantha said. “And Carter wants to see how I’m doing.”
“How you’re doing?” Jason asked.
“Responsibility for progress always lands on the master,” Abby said.
“Makes picking apprentices carefully important,” Samantha said.
“That will be fun,” Abby said. “I’ll bring them by in the morning then?”
“Yeah.”
Sam didn’t want her to go, but there wasn’t space for her at Abby’s and Samantha didn’t like the idea of him sleeping in her bed. Not with things like they were. She was so tired. And angry. She had nearly drawn Lahn on the subway on the way over. Carter had offered to scare up a demon bust for her, and if Sam hadn’t asked her to dinner, she would have gone for it. She had put up a good act at dinner, but she was stretched to breaking. On the verge of disappearing into the hole of destruction that went along with the destruction of her paradise. Making the world hurt like she did.
She took the subway back to Carter’s building and let herself in.
“Have fun?” he asked. He was sitting in the dark, but didn’t surprise her.
“Ate. Talked,” she said.
“Going to bed?”
“Good night, Carter.”
“Sleep well.”
He didn’t move as she crossed the long front room and closed the door to her room behind her. She changed without turning the light on and lay down, feeling Sam fall stone-asleep the moment he lay down. She stared up at a ceiling she couldn’t see.
She was angry. Growing angrier. Alone, without any refuge that she was willing to seek, she stewed, pushing the sheets away when she got too hot, then pulling them straight over her again for the comfort of something containing her. She curled up around a pillow, then threw it against the wall, sitting up in bed and drawing Lahn. She tossed the blade in the air, using sound alone to catch it. The mechanics, maintained over decades of practice, were comforting, but the deep-rooted burn continued to consume what little capacity she had for reason and social normality. She threw Lahn into the door, closing her eyes and listening to the noise of metal biting wood over and over in her head. There were lots of gashes in that door. Lots and lots.
She got up and opened the door, pulling Lahn free and looking out into the front room. Compared to her own, it was easy to see with the light from the shuttered windows. Carter had gone to bed. She carried her shoes across the room and let herself out, putting the boots on in the elevator. She took the keys to the Mustang out of the box and started the engine, taking a small, momentary calm out of the rumble, then putting it into gear and pulling out of the garage.
She knew where she was going. She hadn’t admitted it to herself yet, but she knew. She had known the moment she threw Lahn.
She waited for the gate in front of the alley next to Abby’s building to open, parking behind Abby’s car, and unlocked the side door with the palm of her hand, pushing it open and walking up flight after flight of stairs just for the burn in her legs she got at the end.
She stood in front of the door to Abby’s apartment for a long time, feeling Abby standing next to her. She opened the door. Abby had left it unlocked.
Sam was asleep on the couch, dreamless. She looked down at him for a moment, resisting the urge to brush the hair off of his face, then went back to the guest room.
Jason was still sitting up, re-gripping knives when she walked in. He looked up but didn’t say anything.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
“Okay.”
She licked her lips, leaning back against the door.
“What did you come here for, Sam?” he asked.
“Take your shirt off.”
He finished winding a strip of treated leather around a long-bladed knife and slid it back into the nylon sheath, then peeled his shirt off and tossed it onto his bag. Red-purple marks speckled his shoulder and down the side of his chest. She stared at them. He looked down.
“Yeah, you bite. No kidding.”
“Do you mind it?”
He shook his head, rubbing the palm of one hand with
the opposite thumb.
“What did you come here for?”
She strode across the room, pulling his mouth up to hers and kissing him hard, biting his lips, his tongue. He lay back on the bed, pulling her down with him. She bit his ear, then his neck, pulling the skin away with her teeth. At the muscle along the top of his shoulder she stopped, pulling him over onto his side so his head dropped away and the muscle pulled tight. She used her lips, her tongue, her teeth, pulling a bruise to the skin. His hands were under her shirt, holding her against him, and she worked her way to the round of his shoulder and down the outside of his arm, wrapping her leg over the point of his hip. He put the palms of his hands under her chin and lifted her face back to his, biting her back now.
They wrestled, biting, kissing, until she exhausted herself. The anger burnt out. He kissed her neck and she pushed him away, sitting with her back against the wall and her arms wrapped around her knees. He had a fresh row of marks, and her lips tasted of his sweat. She had his skin under her fingernails. He lay on his back and put his hands behind his head.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Better,” she said softly. “Why didn’t you tell Sam?”
“Because right this second it’s none of his business,” he said.
“He’s going to be angry,” she said.
“He’s angry a lot,” Jason said. “You two need to figure out what you actually want and do something about it. If this makes him do it, works for me.”
“Why do you let me do that?” she asked. He looked over at the spots on his arm and laughed.
“Sweetheart, you aren’t anywhere close to the edge of my comfort zone. You should have seen the marks Rachel, that woman downstairs from Carter, gave me.”
Samantha shuddered into the wall.
“What I don’t get is why you’re doing it,” he said.
“It’s either this or hunt demons,” she said. He laughed at the ceiling.
“Well, there’s a strange moral equivalent for you,” he said. “Why don’t you tell Sam?”
“Because when I tell him, I’ll have to stop. I couldn’t… Not if he knew.”
“You going to regret this?” he asked. She dropped her chin against her knees.
“Probably.”
“See, that’s what I don’t get. This isn’t like you.” He looked over at her. “But it is, isn’t it?”
She looked at him, then away.
“Damn. Kara got it right the first time she met you.”
“What did she say?” Samantha asked, alarmed. He laughed.
“That everyone knew you were a good girl but you,” he said. She looked away, hiding her face against her legs.
“It’s okay, Sweetheart. You’re keeping it together. You take on too much. If it helps, you won’t get any judgment from me.” He rolled onto his side, and she wished he would put his shirt back on. “I feel asymmetric, though. You do favor your left.”
She looked from one shoulder to the other, then crawled off the bed and went to the closet to get a blanket.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m going to go sleep next to Sam,” she said. He stood and took the blanket from her, wrapping it around her shoulders and handing her a pillow.
“I’m sorry I embarrassed you. I can’t help it. I know I don’t take it as seriously as you do,” he said. “We still friends?”
She spread the blanket like a cape to wrap her arms around his chest and he hugged her.
“Are you actually going to sleep now?” he asked. She nodded. “Good. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He let her go and opened the door for her. She looked back at him in the hallway and he smiled, then closed the door. She curled up in the blanket on the floor next to the couch, reaching out to touch Sam’s hand where it hung midair, then closed her eyes and slept.
<><><>
Sam woke out of a warm dream to find Abby’s living room bathed in morning light. He rolled onto his back and stretched his feet off the end of the couch. He heard Abby and Jason talking softly and he sat up to look over the back of the couch.
“How long have you been awake?” he asked.
“Couple hours,” Jason said. “She said your brain was hurt and you needed the extra sleep. I said you’ve always been a slacker who liked to sleep late.”
“So are you,” Sam said, swinging his legs over the side of the couch. They hit something. That moved.
“And yet, here I am, drinking tea for breakfast, waiting for you to get up,” Jason said. Sam looked down and frowned at Samantha.
“Hello. When did you get here?”
She rolled away from his feet and curled deeper into her blanket.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
“Why did you sleep on the floor?” he asked. “Jason’s got a full bed in there.”
“Why don’t you sleep with him?” she asked, stretching.
“Because we’re manly men and I get to change his vote when we have a tie,” Jason said.
“And the bed was covered in knives when I wanted to go to sleep,” Sam said.
“How does that work?” Abby asked. “The changing his vote thing? I’ve been trying to get Carter to be more democratic in his decision making.”
“When we disagree, Jason’s more stubborn than I am, and we just admit he’s going to get his way,” Sam said. “Which isn’t going to help you with Carter any.”
“Oh, Abby’s competitive in the battle of wills,” Samantha said.
“Really?” Jason asked.
“It’s an acquired skill,” Abby said. “I want to watch Sam beat you up now. Are you ready to go?”
“Sam?” Jason asked. “Sams?”
“Let me brush my teeth,” Sam said. “Then we can go.”
“I’ll go get dressed and meet you in the studio,” Samantha said.
“Studio?” Jason asked. “That’s what you call it?”
“I pretend it’s a happy place to be,” Samantha said. “I’ll see you guys in a bit.”
She and Abby made eye contact, and she left. Sam yawned and stretched and wandered down the hallway to find his toothbrush.
He’d had strange dreams. Couldn’t remember any of them, but had just woken unsettled at one point in the middle of the night. He wondered if Samantha had been asleep on the floor at that point. He hadn’t checked.
Abby drove them back to Carter’s building and parked in the garage, going down the stairs rather than waiting for the elevator. Samantha was in the yellow room, stretching. There was a pair of proper swords leaning sheathed against the wall next to the practice swords he was used to.
“Carter is making coffee. He’ll be down in a few minutes,” Samantha said. Jason picked up one of the swords and pulled it a few inches out of the sheath to look at the blade. Sam took the other one. They were sharp.
“It’s your call,” Samantha said. “The risk is mostly mine. I’m not going to hurt you on accident any more.”
“Any more?”
“At the beginning, you had the potential to be someplace you shouldn’t have been and I could have hit a point where I couldn’t get clear in time. You don’t do the really stupid stuff any more.”
Sam snorted.
“I never did really stupid stuff,” Jason said.
“Even I know that’s not true,” Abby said. “And I don’t do the hand-to-hand thing.”
“I still say you should let me teach you,” Samantha said.
“Not going to happen,” Abby said, sitting and stretching her feet out in front of her.
“You should stretch,” Samantha said. Jason joined her in the center of the room, still unwilling to go through the sequence Samantha had tried multiple times to teach him. Sam smiled. Jason could actually reach his toes. Sam hadn’t been able to do that since he was a teenager. Samantha hugged her arms around her knees. She was better this morning. When they had left the restaurant he had noticed her mood getting stormier and stormier. He suspected that
was what had disrupted his sleep. She had woken up cleaner, though, if not sunnier. Calm.
Carter arrived a few minutes later and handed coffee mugs to Sam and Abby.
“All right. Let’s see this green apprentice put through his paces,” he said, shooing Sam away from the workout bench. Sam went to go sit next to Abby and Samantha motioned to the wall. Jason picked the real swords. Sam had known he would. So had Samantha.
“Don’t try to impress him,” Samantha said. “Impress me.”
Jason grinned and took his stance.
The motions were too quick for Sam to be sure of how good they were. They were just fast. Jason had been getting progressively faster, and Sam couldn’t critique the motion in real time any more. He glanced over at Carter, but was unable to read the man’s face. He tried to hide his grin when he realized Carter was wearing dress shoes, looking back over at Samantha and Jason. Samantha was zoned, off in the purest corner of her mechanical mind. That was reassuring to Sam above anything else.
Metal against metal, the sound was cacophonous in the closed room, and Samantha’s bare feet made soft slapping noises as she worked against Jason. In a general way, Sam recognized that Samantha was giving Jason opportunities for flair. She wasn’t making mistakes, but rather stretching him to come up with creative rebuttals. They broke and she put her hand up, returning to the wall and putting her blade away. She motioned Jason away as he moved to do the same, and she drew Lahn from the sheath on her back. She held it out for him to see.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
Sam wished he could understand the significance of that blade in this context, but the way Abby sat up, even Carter inched forward, indicated there was substantial importance to Samantha fighting Jason with it. Her. He hadn’t mastered the mental practice of calling a piece of metal ‘her’.
There was a pause as Samantha let Jason pick his timing, then they went again. Samantha was faster than before, the weight difference in the blades making a huge difference to her, and she exposed Jason’s weaknesses in his reaction time. Sam frowned. It wasn’t the time. Jason was fast enough, he thought. It was that he wasn’t reacting correctly. He glanced over at Carter. His eyebrows were down, ever so slightly, but Sam had no idea what it meant. He looked at Abby who smiled and nodded.