Sunshine

He sat on the edge of my bed again. He had one leg folded under him and the other foot still on the floor, sitting to face me cringing into the headboard. I thought, okay, okay, he still has one foot on the floor. And he only took his shirt off.

“Do you still have the knife you transmuted?” he said. “That would be the best.”

The best what. I knew this was going to have blood in it. I knew I wasn’t going to like it. And that particular knife, of course…“Uh. Well, yes, I still have it.” I didn’t move.

“Show me,” he said. A human might have said, what’s your problem? So where is it? He just said, show me.

I opened the bedside table drawer. When my jeans went in the wash, the contents of my pockets went in there. The knife was there. It was lying next to the glyph as if they were getting to know each other.

The light was visible at once in the darkness. I picked the knife up and cradled it in my hand: a tiny, clement sun that happened to look like a pocketknife. In ordinary daylight or good strong electric light it still looked like a pocketknife. I held it out toward him.

“This has been—since that night?”

“Yes. It happened—do you remember, right at the end, I transmuted it again, into the key to my door?”

“Yes.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s when it happened. It had been something-in-the-dark-colored when I pulled it out. I don’t…it was something to do with making the change at night, I think. I think I’m not supposed to be able to do stuff after dark. But I did do it. I felt something…crack. Snap. In me. And since then it’s been like this. I shifted it back to a knife the next day—didn’t notice till evening what had happened. I thought it would fade after a while, but it hasn’t.”

I think I’m not supposed to be able to do stuff after dark. I had done this somehow though. And I happened to have been being held in the lap of a vampire at the time. That had been another of the things I hadn’t been thinking about, the last two months. Because if it was something to do with the vampire—this vampire—why had my knife become impregnated with light?

I hadn’t told anyone, shown anyone. It was very odd, finally having someone to tell. I hadn’t wanted to tell anyone at the coffeehouse, any of the SOFs. When I spent the night with Mel, I was careful to keep my knife in its pocket. I was still trying to be Rae Seddon, coffeehouse baker, in that life. Even after I’d exposed my little secret that it had been vampires at the lake—that I was a magic handler and a transmuter—I still hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about my knife. The only person, you should forgive the term, left to tell was him. The vampire. The vampire I had now agreed to ally myself with in the hopes of winning against a common enemy.

It was a relief, telling someone.

I wondered what else an unknown something breaking open inside me might have let loose, besides a little radiant dye leak. I wondered if the jackknife of a bad-magic cross would glow in the dark. Sure. And when I went nuts it would transmute into a chainsaw.

He looked at it, but made no attempt to touch it. “That helps to explain. One of the reasons it has taken this extra time for me to come to you is that it has puzzled me you are not weaker, having borne what you bear two months already. I have been seeking an explanation. It could be crucial to our effort tonight.” He paused. When he went on, his voice had dropped half an octave or so, and it wasn’t easy to hear to begin with because of the weird rough half-echo and the tonelessness. “What you show me is a judgment on my arrogance; it did not occur to me to ask you for information. I have much to learn about working with anyone, for all that I believed I had thought through what I said to you last time. I ask pardon.”

I gaped at him. “Oh please. Like I’m not sitting here half expecting you to change your mind and eat me. Oh, sorry, I forgot, I’m poisonous, I suppose I’m safe after all, I get to bite the big one without your help. I’m your little friend the deadly nightshade. But that’s just it: humans and vampires don’t ally. We’re implacable enemies. Like cobras and mongooses. Mongeese. Why should you have thought of asking me anything? If there is going to be pardoning between us, it should be for lunacy, and mutual.”

At least he didn’t laugh.

“Very well. We shall learn together.”

“Speaking of learning,” I said. “I take it you have learned what to do about this,” and I gestured toward my breast. “Since you’re here.”

“I have learned what will work, if anything will.”

“And what if it doesn’t work?”

“Then both of us end our existence tonight,” he said in that impassive we’re-chained-to-the-wall-and-the-bad-guys-are-coming voice I remembered too well.

Oh gee. Don’t pull your punches like that. I can take the truth, really I can. I said something like, “Unnngh.”

“I believe it will work.”

“I’m delighted to hear it.”

“Your wound is worse.”