Sunshine

I put down a towel and accepted the knife, slipping it awkwardly back into the pocket it had come out of. I was careful not to look at the goddess as I did this: as if it was just a little jackknife. I wondered if vampire clothing had pockets. What would vampires keep in pockets? Handkerchiefs? House keys? Charms against being grilled (so to speak) by angry, high-ranking SOF officers?

I’d managed to move my chair a little during the commotion after I burst into tears. Con was safe for the moment, in shadow. I stood up and looked at the goddess. She was taller than I was, of course. There are spells to make you appear taller than whoever you are talking to, but they are expensive, and all but the best have a nasty habit of revealing you as your real height the minute you turn your attention to someone else. I guessed the goddess was just tall. “I apologize for making a fuss,” I said, as respectfully as I could. Maybe she was so accustomed to reeking hostility from most of her colleagues and interviewees that she didn’t register it any more. Maybe she would assume I didn’t like her because she’d intimidated me successfully. Well, she had.

“May we leave now, please?” I continued, holding my poisonous hands out placatingly, palms up. “I will come back whenever you like, but I’m so tired I can’t think. And I want a bath.” Several baths. And what I was wearing—the remains of what I was wearing—would so into the trash. No, the bonfire. I would start running out of clothing soon if I wasn’t careful. If I had a future it would have to include some shopping.

She made gracious-cooperation noises that were about as sincere as my respectfulness, and we were allowed to leave—Con and I, and Pat and John and Theo and Kate and Mike. In the windowless hallway Con and I drifted nonchalantly apart. I was trying to remember if there were any unexpected windows around blind corners. I hadn’t been at my best when we’d come through the first time. I wasn’t at my best now, but against all odds, I was improving.

Pat expelled a long noisy breath. “Well held, you guys,” he said. He glanced at Con. I could guess he was torn between wanting to celebrate a partial victory against the goddess and wanting to know who and what the hell my apparent ally really was. He caught my eyes and I watched him decide to trust me. I watched him watching me watching him decide to trust me. It was true: I owed him. That was something else I’d have to figure out later.

“Can I give you a ride home, Sunshine?” he said casually.

“That would be great,” I said feelingly. Even supposing I had bus fare in my pocket, which I didn’t, I didn’t yearn for the experience of getting Con and me anywhere in public. Any sane bus driver would refuse to let us on board, the way we looked, not to mention the nearest stop was a mile and a half from Yolande’s and I didn’t think I could walk that far.

I doubted that any nowheresville way was available in—from— daylight. And if I was too tired to walk from the bus stop I was way beyond too tired to deal with any nowheresvilles.

And turning up at Charlie’s, looking like this and with Con in tow, wasn’t an option.

“John, you want to take Mr. Connor—”

“He can come with me,” I said firmly. “We have to—talk.”

“I bet you do,” said Pat. “Okay, Sunshine, I won’t ask, but take notes, okay? I’m not going to do my heavy SOF guy trick and make you do your talking here because you’ve already had that from the goddess, and besides, if she found out I’d taken you to my office and got more out of you than she did she’d bust my ass back to Tinker Bell patrol.”

There is a legion of little old ladies (of assorted ages and sexes) who manage to believe that the Others are mostly small and cute and harmless, and live under toadstools, and wear harebells as hats. A lot of them ring up their local SOF div to report sightings, because that is the citizenly thing to do, and since there are a few ill-tempered Others who sometimes pretend to be small and cute and harmless— I’d never heard of any of them wearing harebells, however—these have to be checked out. But it is not a popular job.

“I’ve been getting reports from No Town right along, you know,” continued Pat, “and I want to know what you guys did. And I want it in triplicate, you got that? But I’m a patient man and I’ll wait. I won’t even tell the goddess I took you home together.”

“He’s lost his house keys anyway,” I said glibly, “and we can call a locksmith from my house.”

“He keep a fresh change of clothes at your house too?” said Pat. “Does Mel know? I didn’t say that.”

No windows yet. The other SOFs went their own ways, and it was just Pat and Con and me. Down a few more corridors, and now we were walking toward the glass doors into the parking lot. Con unobtrusively moved near me again and I tucked my arm under his arm and pretended to lean against him. It didn’t take a lot of pretending, any more than my tears for the goddess had.