I stopped relaxing. “You’re saying we have an airborne Sleeping Beauty?”
Jeff nodded. “Her influence is confined to the hospital right now, probably
because the vents were closed when she went fully infectious, but eventually
it’s going to start spreading.”
“How bad could this get?”
“Bad enough.” His expression was grim. “There’s
no vaccine, since it’s a new disease. Antibiotics won’t work on a virus. It
seems to spread through the air. One little crack and we could have a citywide
outbreak. City turns to state, and hell, we could lose the whole seaboard. This
thing
wants
to spread, Henry. It
wants to get bad enough—”
“—to attract a Prince,” I finished grimly. “Some
opportunistic son of a bitch out to nail a Princess for the sake of a payoff.
I hate Princes. The goddamn things are worse than rats.” I froze, considering
the implications of that statement.
“I don’t like them much either, Henry, but I don’t see how else we’re
going to stop this story before a lot of people get hurt.” Jeff gave me a
sidelong look. “I don’t like that look on your face. What are you thinking?”
“Get me Sloane,” I said, my own gaze swinging toward the hospital. “I
have a job for her.”
“You’re
insane,” announced Sloane, folding her arms across her chest and distorting her
skull-and-crossbones T-shirt graphic into something that was less pirate and
more Picasso. “I’ve always known that you were going to go over the edge one day,
but this is worse than I thought it was going to be. I just figured you’d start
talking to bunnies and singing into wishing wells.”
“Be as nasty as you want, Sloane; that won’t change what I’m asking you
to do.” I met her eyes as calmly as I could, trying to ignore her digs at my
borderline seven-oh-nine status. I had all the hallmarks—a dead mother, a
redheaded twin, and a deadbeat father who tried to claim custody over the
protests of his flaxen-fair trophy wife—but I dodged that bullet years ago, and
I’ve been dodging it ever since, bluebirds and unwanted wildflowers aside.
Sloane knows that, just like she knows that I’ll never respond in kind. It
wouldn’t be fair.
“What makes you think this is even going to work?”
“It’s going to work because we’re dealing with a pathogenic Sleeping
Beauty this time. The story’s trying to buck us off its trail and keep us from
disrupting the narrative. That’s fine, because if it’s a disease, it falls
under the AT Index for ‘vermin,’ and if the problem is vermin, we can resolve
the story with another story.”
“So you want Sloane to find you a two-eighty?” Andy shook his head. “I
know you don’t like the four-tens, but don’t you think this is reaching a
little?”
“It’s reaching, sure, but Henrietta’s got the right idea,” said Jeff
abruptly. We all turned to look at him. Our resident archivist had his copy of
the Index open, propped on one arm, his finger anchored midway down the
two-eighty column. He always had a paper Index in the
van: the story could change computer readouts if it got enough momentum, but
there’s nothing that changes a printed copy of the Aarne-Thompson
Index. “There’s a reported variation here where the two-eighty killed the
village that refused to pay him by piping the Black Death into their houses
while they slept. Pipers can control disease. The narrative supports it.”
“Then it’s settled,” I said, firmly. “We’re going to give it a try.
Sloane, you’re our fairy tale detector. Go do your job. Find me a Pied Piper.”
“I fucking hate you sometimes,” she snarled, and turned to stalk away.
Andy waited until she was out of earshot before he asked, “Do you
honestly think this is going to work?”
“I have no fucking clue,” I replied. “But that’s not the important
question here, is it?”
“What is?” he asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Can you think of anything better?”
Andy was silent.
I nodded. “I thought not,” I said. “Come on. Let’s get back to the van.
The coffee should be ready by now.”
The
containment team estimated that the hospital would be able to hold our Sleeping
Beauty—identified by the research crew back at headquarters as Alicia Connors,
age seventeen, daughter of a fairly prominent local family that had also been
reported as inexplicably asleep—for approximately six hours before the
contagion started to spread. They were close. The people nearest the hospital
began slumping gently over approximately five-and-a-half hours after our four-ten
went inside, marking the first cases outside the
hospital walls.
“If Sloane’s not back soon, we’re going to need to look at pulling our
men back,” said Jeff, watching as Andy continued his attempts at crowd control.
“We can’t afford to have an entire team fall asleep for a hundred years. The
strain on personnel would be unbelievable.”
“She’ll be here,” I said. “God, I hate Sleeping Beauties.” Why that
story, out of all the possible stories, should have the sort of staying power
it does is beyond me. Centuries of helpless girls, half of them rotting away
years before their Prince could come. It makes me sick.
“I know,” said Jeff. “Look, Henry—”
Whatever platitude he’d been preparing about hating the story, not the
subject, was cut off as Sloane came storming back up the street, managing to
stomp at a pace most people can’t manage when running. She was hauling a
frail-looking slip of a teenage girl along by one arm. The girl was clutching a
concert flute in one hand, and she looked distinctly alarmed. I couldn’t blame
her. Sloane is distinctly alarming.
“Here,” announced Sloane, shoving the girl in our direction. “Demi Santos.
She’s a music major at the community college. I
followed the pigeons. You explain what’s happening to her. I’m going to go
twist the heads off some kittens.” She spun on her heel and went stalking off
again.
The brusquely identified Ms. Santos shot us an alarmed look. Jeff, trying
to be helpful, said encouragingly, “Don’t worry. Sloane very rarely twists the
head off anything.”
Demi Santos, now officially convinced that she’d been abducted by crazy
people, burst into tears.
“Jeff, handle her,” I snapped. “Sloane!” I
stalked after my runaway team member, who didn’t stop, slow down, or turn to
look at me. “
Sloane!
”
“Fuck you, princess,” she said, holding up a hand and once again showing
me her middle finger. “I did what you asked. Now go save the day like a good
little hero while I slink off like a good little
villain
.” Her last word dripped with venom. I found myself wanting
to retreat as my inner Snow White stirred, alarmed by the presence of danger.
Forget that. “You want me to write you up?” I demanded.
She stopped walking. I didn’t.
“I could do that, you know,” I said, pulling up even with her. “All I
have to do is send in one little report that says you’re not as redeemed as we
all want to believe you are, and you’re going back to rehab for another six months.
I don’t want to file that report. Do you want to make me?”
“I hate you,” she said, without turning to look at me.
“Sometimes I hate me too,” I said. “But I can’t care about that right
now, and neither can you. I need to know what’s up with that girl. With—what
did you say her name was?”
“Demi Santos,” said Sloane, voice dropping to a mumble. “She’s a music major. Theory and composition.
There were pigeons lined up on the windowsill of the practice room. Mice and cats in the grass, all listening to her. She’s our
girl, Henry. She’s been primed to go for years, but nothing’s ever managed to
push her over the edge, because she has her music, and she has her family, and
she’s never felt the
need
that makes
a Piper. She’s never reached for the power.” She finally turned to look at me.
Her mascara had run down her cheeks like liquid tar. I didn’t need to ask how
long she’d been crying. “She never wanted to be a story, and we’re going to
force her.”
“We have to. If we don’t—”
“There’s always another way.”
“What do you want us to do? Should we kill Alicia? Because that’s one way
to end the story—assuming we could get close enough to pull it off, that is,
which I seriously doubt. Should we find a Prince? Waking one of
them
would do just as much damage as
waking our Piper. Maybe more—if we have a Prince and a Beauty both, the odds
are damn good that we’re going to get an Evil Sorceress. You’re the closest
candidate. Do you want to risk that?”
Sloane looked away. “No,” she mumbled.
“You think
I
want to do this to
her? Sloane, you
know
me. You know
better.” The idea of someone deciding that
my
story needed to be completed, that
my
fairy tale needed to be awakened . .
. it was enough to turn my stomach. And yet I knew full well that if someone
ever managed to get a Magic Mirror to work, I was likely to find someone from
the head office standing on my doorstep with an apple and an apologetic
expression.
“You sent me after her.”
“Yeah, because what I want doesn’t always mesh with what I need in order
to do my job. But I promise you: we’re not going to hurt this girl for nothing.
This thing … it has the potential to infect the whole city, maybe the whole
state. We’re saving a lot of lives.”
Sloane was silent.
I sighed. “Do you need a little bit?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be back at the van. Come join us when you’re ready.” With that
said, I turned and walked away from her, giving her the space that she needed
to come to terms with what she’d just done. Giving Demi to us was tantamount to
betraying her, in Sloane’s mind: she had just condemned the girl to life on the
ATI spectrum.
Now we just had to make sure that it was worth it.
Andy was
still trying to calm Demi down when I returned. She was holding an open can of
Diet Pepsi, taking small sips and hiccupping occasionally as he reassured her
over and over again that we weren’t going to let Sloane anywhere near her. I
stayed well out of the way, waiting for her to stop crying and dry her tears. I
am not one of nature’s more reassuring people, and even if this city contained
another Pied Piper—which was statistically unlikely; the story is popular, but
it’s not
that
popular, and there
aren’t that many variations—we didn’t have time to send Sloane out to find
them. The contagion was continuing to spread while we all stood around getting
in touch with our feelings. If Demi wasn’t up for the job, the entire city was
at risk of an extended, unplanned nap time.
Andy straightened, waving to me. “Henry, I think you can come over now,”
he called, giving Demi an encouraging smile. “We’re mostly calmed down.”
“Thank you, Andy.” I walked over to them, offering Demi my hand. “I’m
Special Agent Henrietta Marchen. I assume that my
friend Andrew has given you a basic rundown of the situation?” She sniffled,
nodding. She didn’t take my hand. After a second of awkward silence, I withdrew
it. “Well, that’s good; it saves time. Has he told you what we need you to do?”
“No, ma’am,” she said. Her voice was barely above a whisper. Honestly, I
was just relieved to hear her speak. If she’d turned out to be a Little
Mermaid, I think I would have screamed.
“Okay, Demi, here’s the situation: we have a Sleeping Beauty in that
building.” I pointed to the hospital. “Her particular story takes the form of
an airborne infection. I need you to play your flute and lure in rats from as
far away as you can manage. Once you have them here, I need you to send them
into the hospital, pipe the sickness into them, and then pipe them into the
sewers to drown. Think you can do that for us?”
Demi stared at me. Finally, in the tone of someone who was just starting
to catch up with the rest of the class, she said, “You people are insane.”
“Probably,” I agreed, without malice. “We fight fairy tales for a living.
We’re the definition of ‘people who go among mad people.’ But whether we’re
insane or not, my proposal is a simple one. I think you’ll like it.”
“What’s that?” asked Demi, with natural, understandable wariness.
I smiled. I know how creepy I am when I smile. Whoever came up with “skin
as white as snow, lips as red as blood” and thought people would find it
attractive really wasn’t thinking things through. “Pipe the rats into the hospital,
and we’ll let you leave.”
“Agent Marchen!”
The shout wasn’t a surprise. If anything, the surprise was that it had
taken so long to come. I swallowed my irritation and pasted my best expression
of bland obedience across my face as I turned to face the officious-looking
little man who was storming in my direction, dark clouds and thunder virtually
visible above his head. Deputy Director Brewer was thin as a whip, with dirty
blond hair that had probably been thinning years before he pissed off the wrong
person and got himself reassigned to the ATI Management Bureau. Probably. I mean, we were pretty aggravating before you got
to know us—and more aggravating after you got to know us—but I didn’t think we
had the power to make a man’s hair fall out.
According to Sloane, the deputy director not only
wasn’t on the ATI scale, he was so far from being a fairy tale that he
practically came out the other side to become an anchor to the “real” world. I
found that reassuring, somehow. It meant that he was one man who’d never stand
up and announce that he’d discovered his inner Prince Charming. His inner
bureaucrat, maybe, but in his case, “inner” was right up on the surface.
And oh, did he look
pissed
.
“Yes, Deputy Director?” I asked.
“What’s this I’m hearing about a civilian?”
I resisted the urge to glance back to the van where Demi was going over
sheet music options with Jeff, who was absolutely delighted to have an excuse
to download half the great composers of Europe on work’s time. They were
focusing on pieces composed during the Black Death, since they were more likely
to match up with the timeline on our Pied Piper variant. “I’m afraid you’ll
have to be more specific,” I said. “There are a lot of civilians involved in
this action.”