“Reach in and take it,” Selena said. “It won’t bite.”
Slowly, as if reaching into the mouth of a tiger, he withdrew the foam cup. He sniffed it once again. Then he smiled and began to drink, this time more slowly.
“We don’t have this where I come from,” he said.
“Oh? And where’s that?”
“I’m not sure what you would call it. In my language, it’s called
Ptah’l
, which means Red Island. It’s a small plane bordering several larger ones in a dimension adjacent to your own.”
Selena had managed to find some clothes for him, but they were ill-fitting. As a consequence, he resembled a tween skater. She’d tried to convince him to wear shoes, but he preferred to go barefoot. His feet were small and white against the linoleum floor.
So far, we hadn’t left the lobby of the forensics lab. He seemed most comfortable in the oversized leather chairs, and it wasn’t the right moment to drag him into an interrogation chamber. Eventually, he’d have to submit to a full round of medical tests. But for now, Selena was working on him slowly. She had a surprisingly gentle touch with kids. Even if this “kid” only looked like one.
“You know,” I said, sitting near him but not quite next to him, “you still haven’t told me your name. You know my boss, Selena. And I’m Tess.”
“My name is a combination of liquid and plosive sounds that you wouldn’t be able to replicate with your larynx,” he informed us, still sipping his hot chocolate. “But if you want, you can call me Ru. That’s the closest approximation.”
“Where did you learn our language, Ru?”
“Primary school.”
Huh.
“Can you tell us how you got here?”
“I don’t remember. I was running from them, and then I was just here.” He grimaced. “There was pain, and dark, and sand in my mouth. Then just dark.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
He set down his cup, but made no reply.
“Do you mean the demon who came after you?” Selena pressed.
“No. He’s one of the Kentauroi. A sentry. He was sent to recover me.”
“Do the Kentauroi have any abilities that we haven’t seen yet?” I asked. “Anything we should know about?”
Ru seemed to ponder this for a moment. “Well, there’s the tissue regeneration. And the combustible fibrous appendages. Also, I believe that they’re allergic to some microgametocytes.”
Selena frowned. “You mean pollen?”
“Particularly
Asteraceae ambrosia
. I believe the vernacular term is . . . ragweed?”
I smiled. “There’s a whole clump of it growing in the north parking lot. Maybe we should bring him back a nice bouquet.”
“It’s only an irritant,” Ru said. “A distraction, at best. You’ll have to keep a close watch on him, if you intend to hold him in this place. Are you using some manner of harmonic field that relies on weak nuclear energy?”
It was a little strange to answer these types of questions from someone who resembled a nine-year-old. But he seemed to value honesty.
“We’re using something similar to what you describe, yes,” Selena said.
“You may want to employ a green crystalline laser for diffraction purposes, then. If you don’t disperse the valences as widely as possible, he’ll sense any weak spots right away.” Ru held up his empty cup. “May I use the chocolate machine again?”
“Of course.”
He walked over to the corner of the room with his cup.
“What’s our next move?”
“We need to get more information out of him. If we can figure out what’s hunting him, we might be able to prepare an adequate defense.”
“I’m a little confused, though, about our role in this investigation. As far as I can tell, there’s no crime apparent.”
Selena stared at me. “Are you suggesting that we just let him go?”
“Of course not. But he says he doesn’t remember anything. And I’m not even sure that we can hold him. Sure, he’s discovered the wonders of the vending machine, and that’s captivating him for now. But what happens when he gets bored, or restless? The kid can spit acid. It’s going to be difficult to keep him here against his will.”
“All we can do is convince him that this is the safest place to stay.”
“Do you even believe that? I mean, okay, the lab’s pretty secure. It’s better than leaving him on the doorstep of the VPD. But what happens when ‘they’ send another bounty hunter to collect him? Maybe the next demon will be able to walk through walls or burn the whole place to the ground.”
“You’re not usually this alarmist,” Selena said. “Have you been getting enough sleep lately?”
I sighed. “No. I never get enough sleep. But that’s not the issue. I just keep thinking about three years ago, when we told Mia that we’d be able to keep her safe. We couldn’t even protect her from one psychotic agent.”
“Who’s Mia?”
Ru was standing behind us, holding another steaming cup of hot chocolate.
“How much of that did you hear?” Selena asked.
“All of it. I can hear conversations on the floor below us, as well. And the floor below that. Your species tends to yell a lot.”
I nodded. “It’s a habit.”
“Who’s Mia?” he repeated.
“She’s a girl that lives with me. I adopted her a few years ago.”
“Is she a demon?”
I frowned. “Technically.”
“I don’t understand.”
I gave Selena a look.
She shrugged.
I turned back to Ru. “Mia was infected with a vampiric retrovirus. She takes medication to suppress the plasmids in her blood, but we can’t eliminate them. She also has the genetic potential to manipulate materia, just like Selena and I.”
“Why would you want to suppress the virus?”
“Well—because she doesn’t want to be a vampire.”
“Did she tell you that herself?”
I hesitated. “Not in so many words, no. But she was infected at an early age. If we’d let the virus run its course, there was a good chance that she’d be hurt, or killed, or that she’d hurt someone else.”
“But vampirism would also make her stronger and give her more acute senses. It would eliminate any further genetic deficiencies in her body and lengthen her life span, perhaps indefinitely. Why wouldn’t she want that?”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to drink human blood,” Selena said.
“She wouldn’t have to. Synthetic blood is bottled and sold in nearly every world, including my own. Some vampires also choose to subsist on animal blood.” His green eyes surveyed me coolly. “It seems as though you took the decision away from her. That hardly seems fair.”
“That’s true. But—” I found myself groping. How could I explain to a pureblood demon that humans valued their own humanity? Maybe we overvalued it. But it seemed a lot better than the alternative. “Maybe she’d prefer to live a normal life.”
“If she has demonic viral agents in her bloodstream, she isn’t living a normal life. Just as neither of you two are living a normal life, by virtue of the genetic anomaly that allows you to manipulate your world’s natural forces. What you call ‘materia.’ ” He shrugged. “It just seems illogical to deny her the choice.”
“But you never had the same choice,” Selena said. “You were born pureblood. You’ve never known anything different.”
“But I’ve thought about it,” he said. “I may not be able to change what I am, but I still think about it. Perhaps that’s worse.”
I stared at him. Who exactly was this boy-shaped demon, sipping his third cup of hot chocolate in front of me?
“When the police found you,” Selena said, “you appeared to have no vital signs.”
“Like I said—there was dark, and then sand. That’s all I remember.”
“And you still don’t want to talk about what was chasing you?”
“It was bad.”
That was his only response.
“If you’ll consent to it, we’d like to perform a physical exam on you.”
“It’s fine. Take your samples. I don’t mind.”
“Thank you.”
He chuckled suddenly. “That’s what the Ferid used to say. When they were first convincing us to leave our homes.
We just want to help.
”
“The Ferid?” I asked. “Are those the demons who are after you?”
Ru didn’t answer, but looked at me suddenly instead. “What happened to your friend? The one who was injured?”
“His name is Derrick. He’s in the hospital right now.”
“And his mate?”
I chuckled. “I’m not sure how Miles would feel about being called that. But yes, they’re together. He’s at the hospital as well.”
“And your mate?” His eyes stayed on me.
“I—” I looked at Selena. Her expression was impossible to read. “I’m not sure who you mean.”
He seemed to scan me for a moment. Then he shrugged. “It’s not important. From what I understand, your species doesn’t mate for life.”
I thought about Lucian. How could you mate for life with someone whose power was entirely based on death? I still didn’t even know how old he really was. He’d never told me anything about past partners. I felt strangely cheated by the lack of information. It’s not as if I wanted him to talk about old lovers. But it would have been nice to have at least some basis for comparison.
Last year, we’d investigated the death of Luiz Ordeño, a very old, very powerful necromancer with entangled political connections. I remembered that there hadn’t been a single picture of friends or family on his walls. No evidence of past loves, no tokens of affection, no mementos. Just a kind of relentless blank where human (or even nonhuman) connections should have been.
When I asked Lucian if he knew anything about Ordeño’s romantic past, his reply didn’t clear anything up.
Like most people who’ve lived for more than a few hundred years, I think that he was bisexual, or at the very least open-minded. But I never saw him with a partner of either gender.
Was that the only productive way to deal with the weight of all those years? Sexual variety? It seemed to make monogamy impossible. So where did that leave Lucian and me?
Ru was still staring at me. I cleared my throat.
“Sometimes we do mate for life,” I said. “When the right partner comes along.”
“But often you don’t—correct?”
I nodded. “We try. We should at least get points for that.”
“I’m too young to mate,” he said.
The gravity of his tone made me want to laugh, but I managed to suppress it. “How old are you, exactly?”
“I am in my third ecdysis.”
“What’s that in years?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Two hundred thirty-one.”
“Wow. That’s a long childhood.”
“We have a lot to learn.”
“It’s different here. We get tossed out of the nest at eighteen.”
“How barbaric.”
“This is quite educational,” Selena said, “but it might be best, Ru, if you got some sleep. I mean—does your species require sleep?”
“Less than yours. But yes.”
“We’ve prepared a room for you. It’s not exactly the Hilton, but it should do for the time being. The pull-out bed is comfortable enough.”
He looked around the lab, taking in the glass-partitioned rooms and walls lined with various equipment. “Do you all live here?”
“No. We have separate dwelling spaces. Apartments.”
“I live in a house with a lot of crazy people,” I clarified.
“My family and I live together in one place.” His eyes surveyed a dark corner of the lobby. “We all sleep in the same chamber. At night, everything glows red from the hydrogen storms outside. I like to close my eyes and listen to the low hissing of the cloud layers. Then, in the morning, our windowpane is streaked with colors. From all the chromophores. Like the stained glass in your churches.”
“Well,” Selena said, “I can’t promise you—um—chromophores. But we do have satellite TV installed in the room. And there’s a minifridge.”
“Will I be expected to remain here? In this room with the minifridge?”
“You aren’t a prisoner. You can go if you like. But, frankly, it’s not safe for you outside of this building. It’s barely safe for you inside.”
“Maybe you should just put me in the prison cell with the Kentauros. Then at least I can see my death coming.”
“Death’s not coming for anyone tonight,” Selena said. “You’ve got around-the-clock protection. And the Kentauros won’t be leaving its cell anytime soon.”
Ru looked at me. “Will you be going back to your house tonight?”
I felt slightly uncomfortable beneath his gaze. “First I’ll be going to the hospital, to check on Derrick. I may end up staying the night there. But I’ll be back here in the morning. I can even bring you breakfast.”
“What’s breakfast?”
“The first meal of the day.”
“You divide your food into cycles?”
“Basically, yes. What do you do?”
“We just eat all day long.”
“That’s called being a teenager. You and Patrick would get along well.”
“Who’s that?”
“Another person that I adopted. Less officially than Mia, granted. But he still lives with us.”
“In the big crazy house?”
I smiled. “That’s right.”
“It sounds fun. Can I visit?”
I looked at Selena.
Absolutely not,
she mouthed.
“Sure. Just not tonight.”
“Okay.”
“Sleep tight, Ru, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Thank you, Tess. I hope that you sleep tight as well.”
“I’ll try.”
“Follow me,” Selena said. “Your suite is down the hall. I think you’ll be pleased by the snacks that we’ve assembled for you.”
“What are snacks?”
“In my opinion, pretty much a reason for living.”
He followed her down the hall. The sight of his bare feet receding into the dark made me suck in my breath.
Then I headed for the elevator.
The CORE clinic resembled a regular hospital,
complete with vinyl chairs and offensive fluorescent lighting, only the inhabitants tended to have more creative injuries. Some patients could regenerate on their own, but still needed a little extra help. Others were suffering from materia burns, psychic shock, and other supernatural ailments that Demerol couldn’t really help with. The nurses here had seen everything, from detached souls (a nasty condition called “exospiritus”) to bodies rendered two-dimensional by a flatland curse. That was never pretty.