PARTY!” Henry took a last furtive glance around as a caterer approached them with glasses of champagne. He unwillingly took Mimi’s hand.
As they walked up to the steps of the house, Ky could hear their voices receding, ten feet, twenty feet, maybe a safe distance away. It didn’t matter anyway; he couldn’t stay upright anymore. A small tree with sap leaking down its trunk started to fall in the bushes under the library windows. Just before it hit the ground, it turned silently into a wounded man. Ky covered the wound on his side and his hand filled up with blood. His mind was spinning. By instinct, he tried to change again into the crow, but he didn’t have the power. He heard Mimi’s voice shouting at Henry, something about champagne. His head swam and he lost consciousness.
Mimi dragged Henry up the steps while stepping out of her dress. She grabbed a bottle of champagne off one of the temporary bars that had been set up for the party and pulled him toward the hot tub, where indeed several partygoers were splashing around in various states of undress. She felt certain Ky and Henry had had an encounter. The question was, how had it gone? Was Ky back at the car, or was he lying dead in the bushes? How could she lose Henry and go back for Ky? She poured Henry a glass and tried to smile at him. She climbed up into the hot tub, never letting go of his arm. When the clock ticked five minutes to midnight, she was fully immersed in Henry’s hot tub holding a bottle of champagne in her hand. Henry seemed convinced that she was drunk. He had his arm around her waist underwater. Now that she knew what he was, she found his touch terrifying. How strong was an Or-ta? She had no idea. Was he strong enough to snap her in half? He could drown her, not at a party of course, but still. She thought about all the nights she had spent alone with Henry. Ky had said something about keeping her out of danger. She needed an excuse to get out, get Ky and leave. The champagne to water trick was perhaps not delicious but very convenient. She decided to go with a classic. She chugged the bottle.
“I need a refill.”
She hopped out of the tub. Soaking wet, barefoot, and in only her lingerie, she made a beeline for the limo. Dennis was there.
“Ready to go home, miss?” he asked. He didn’t say anything about her missing dress, lost shoes. She liked him. He was a professional.
She opened the back door. No Ky.
“I’ll just be another minute,” she said. She tried to sound casual despite how she felt.
She ran back to where she had found Henry. The library balcony created a deeper shadow against the darkness of the night. She heard a soft moan. Ky lay on the ground perfectly still, his hand covering a gaping stomach wound. She saw him and her heart rate skyrocketed. Her whole body started to shake. She had never seen a wound like that. Somehow she had thought that because he was magical, he wouldn’t have guts. She whispered a steady stream of curses under her breath. She could see that his breathing was shallow, but he was breathing.
“Ky, Ky, c’mon.” Keep it together, Mimi, she thought. She reached down and took his shoulder. “Ky, we’ve got to go.”
“Don’t, don’t touch my blood,” he said. She thought he was delirious.
“What? I’m not afraid of stuff like that.”
“No, really, Mimi, really, it’s magic, bad magic.”
“Okay, I’m getting your other shoulder. Let’s go home.” She hoisted him up on the less-wounded side, then glanced at the house. From what she could tell, they were not being watched. She half-carried, half-dragged him out of the bushes.
As she walked, her bare foot caught on something and she felt a searing pain. She cursed again and stumbled. Henry’s knife turned over as she kicked it, the blade glowing softly in the dark, still soaked with blood. It sliced a straight line into the bottom of her foot and she bit her lip to keep from screaming. She stumbled.
Where her blood mingled with Ky’s, her new wound opened wide. Just as suddenly as it had opened, it sealed itself closed.
The pain in her foot disappeared abruptly. For a moment she felt dizzy, hot; the world came into sharp focus and the colors of the night deepened. She thought she could see past the stars into the far reaches of space. Time itself seemed to emanate from her, where she stood on the lawn. Ky felt light in her arms, almost as though she had superhuman strength. Lifting him was as easy as lifting her own hand. She gasped. Air filled her lungs and she could sense its substance and power.
She shook her head as if to shake off a dream. And then the world snapped back to normal, as though nothing had changed.
She pulled Ky, as fast as she could, toward the waiting car.
Dennis got out of the car as she approached, opened the doors, and ran up to help her.
Mimi started to babble an excuse as to why she was carrying an injured man, but Dennis gave her a quick look and said, “Get in. You didn’t touch the blood, did you?”
“No,” she said. She looked at her hands; no blood.
Dennis caught Ky in his gloved hands and laid him gently on one of the back seats of the limo. Mimi lay down on the opposite-facing seat. She felt Dennis close the doors and heard the crunching gravel under the car tires as they started to drive away. She pulled a bite stick out of her purse and looked at her watch. Perfect timing, she thought. Her world became static noise, and she lost consciousness.
Mimi woke up in the morning stretched out in the back of the limo, at home, parked in her garage. The windows and sunroof of the limo were blessedly tinted but through the high windows of the garage she could see that the sun was up in the sky, another balmy mid-morning in Los Angeles. Her legs were cramped underneath her. She wiggled her toes to wake them up, but the right leg was painful, protesting the movement. She must have fallen asleep right after her seizure: foolish to fall asleep on her right side, the bad side, she thought. Then the night before came back to her in a sickening rush of memory: Henry’s violent eyes, the champagne to water, Ky’s wound, Dennis’ seeming to know about him, the blood. She turned to look around. Across from her, Ky’s head was resting on the seat but he was awake looking at her, Ky the person. His wound was dressed, but his eyes were glassy. She could hear him pause slightly at the top of each painful breath. She smiled at him.
“I thought I used to have some wild nights,” Mimi quipped, “but I have never woken up in a limo in just my lingerie with a half-dead guy before.”
Ky managed to shake his head slowly. “That leaves a lot of possibilities for who you have woken up in a limo with, and what you were wearing.” Ky laughed weakly. He reached for his bandaged side.
“Yes it does.” She smiled. “Although it mostly used to be Paloma and me in the limo. I’m not quite as slutty as everyone thinks.”
Ky looked at her with thoughtful seriousness. “Thank you,” he said. “You came at just the right moment to save my life.”
“You are welcome. Where were you? When Henry was looking for you? We were standing in that spot.”
“I was a tree. Henry would have taken a while to guess that. I’m sure he doesn’t have one. Trees are uncommon. Or-ta don’t usually learn plant shapes, you know, because they don’t move much.” He laughed and winced.
“Good for hiding, though,” she said admiringly. “So much for reconnaissance only!”
“Hal has more power than I could have imagined. He must have known as soon as I was in the house.”
“But you got away.”
“Thanks to you, and Dennis.”
“Did Dennis…?”
“Yes, Dennis covered for us. Martine thinks we’re upstairs. Now we just have to find a way to get from here to there without being caught.”
“That sounds a lot like high school,” she giggled. “So Dennis is-?”
“My man.”
“So he is a man?”
“Yes, he’s a member of a culture that still believes in us. We have dealings with them, you might say. They live in the far north. We call on them when we need help, human help. They choose a different kind of life, more in harmony with ours.”
“But he’s really a person.”
/> “Yes. Before I decided to confide in you, he was my way in, before you got sick and needed a dog.” He looked at her sober face. She was remarkable. She wasn’t mad, she wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t self-conscious. Maybe confiding in her was a good choice after all. “Is it important to you that Dennis be a person?” he asked.
“I guess, since I thought you were a dog and you weren’t, and I thought Henry was a person and he isn’t, I’m feeling a little gun-shy, like who else really isn’t a person and I don’t know it?” She looked at him expectantly.
“That’s it, well except, it’s not quite the same, but…” Ky started.
“Who? Who else?” she insisted.
“Paloma,” Ky said with a wry grin.
“What?”
“Although in her case I’m guessing she doesn’t know it either. She’s mostly human, very mostly, at least seven-eighths, probably.”
“What else is she?”
“Something you would call an Amazon? But they weren’t people, they were trans-dimensional. They were travelers; they were only here on Earth for a short period of time. No one knows, not even the Or-ta know where they went, and we’ve never encountered them anywhere else, although you can find their children on different worlds. They actually did a lot of interbreeding despite their cold reputation.” A wistful look crossed Ky’s face, thinking about the time of the Amazons.
“So then what about Martine?”
“Fully human; the Amazon must be from the other side.”
“Paloma didn’t know her father. And Martine is very tight-lipped about him. What can she do? I’ve never seen her do anything. I mean, nothing weird. Does it change her?”
“Not really. She may have a variety of powers but mostly people don’t cultivate powers they don’t know about. She’s probably very strong for a person. If she decided to become a professional fighter, she’d win a lot.”
Mimi laughed at the thought of Paloma fighting at all. Although now that she thought about it, Paloma had been stronger than your average kid. “Is that why Paloma can’t get a date?”
“I guess it’s possible. Although, as she herself has so aptly described, she’s stuck between worlds in a completely different way.”
“I didn’t realize you were listening to that conversation.”
“Dogs have good hearing.” Ky flinched as he tried to sit up.
Mimi gave him a concerned look. “We should get you some water or stitches or whiskey or a spell or whatever helps you recover.”
“Water would be a good start.”
Mimi felt surprisingly invigorated for someone who had spent the night passed out in a limo. She guessed that was the beneficial part of not drinking. She pulled out her phone and sent Martine a text asking for doughnuts from the downtown bakery. She told Ky to duck and peered out the windows of the car. A few moments later, Martine came out of the house. She didn’t even look at the limo. She got in her car and drove away. Mimi sighed, relieved.
“Can you walk?” she asked Ky.
“What did you tell Martine?”
“She went to get us doughnuts.”
“No one in the world is more spoiled than you.”
“Possibly; you’re getting a plain one. Dogs don’t get frosting. You didn’t answer my question.”
Ky put his feet down on the floor of the car and tried to put some weight on them. “I don’t know,” he said.
Dennis had been sitting in front of the limo on a small chair, sleeping with his head propped up on the hood. He stirred when Martine came out but didn’t get up. Normally, he would have gone home, but he thought he might be needed. When Mimi opened the door, he came around.
“Miss Parks?”
She jumped. “Dennis! You startled me.” Mimi wondered for a moment if she should be angry with Dennis. He’d worked for her for months and she had barely noticed him. All that time he wasn’t really a driver at all.
“Do you need help?” Dennis asked.
Ky stepped out of the limo with a hand on the door and a hand on Mimi’s arm. His feet touched the ground and he sank into a heap.
“Yes,” she said.
They each took a shoulder and walked Ky into the house.
“Dennis, I’m a little offended that you didn’t tell Dad in the interview that you intended to take advantage of my drinking habits to spy on me,” she sniffed.
“I would have, Miss Mimi, but he never asked.”
They maneuvered Ky upstairs and laid him down on Mimi’s soft duvet.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
Mimi looked at him with a sharp, assessing gaze that she thought she might have absorbed from Martine. He looked bad, but he was definitely better than last night.
“The trick is that we can’t let Martine see that you’re injured,” she said to Ky. “She would baby you! But she’d also want an explanation.”
“Fortunately I’m a quick healer,” said Ky. He changed into his dog shape without even lifting his head. The wound was beginning to knit together but was still obvious, even under his gray fur. “But maybe I’ll lie here for a while,” he mumbled with his nose buried in the soft duvet.
“If you think he’s okay without me,” Mimi said to Dennis, “the shower is calling. I need to smell a lot less like chlorine and crazy, supernatural, party, fight stuff.” She headed into her bathroom and closed the door. They heard her turn on the shower and start singing a cheerful mélange of pop tunes.
Dennis walked quietly toward the door but Ky raised his head.
“Dennis,” he said.
“Yes sir?”
“I’ll clean up the blood in the limo tonight.”
“I can do it for you, sir. I’ll be careful.”
“It’s too dangerous,” said Ky.
“Understood,” said Dennis. “I’ll lock it then and return it to the rental agency tomorrow.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you, Ky Or-ta, for the caution.”
Ky nodded.
Mimi showered quickly, washing out her hair. She leaped out when she heard Martine return with the doughnuts and went downstairs still drying her head with a towel. Martine was talking on the phone with Mimi’s father and didn’t see Mimi coming.
“Yes, she went…yes, I think she did. She looked beautiful, of course. Well, I think it’s the dog, Mr. Parks. That may have been the best thing.” Martine was leaning on the counter, tapping a little rhythm with her bare feet on the sand-colored tile. “Yes, I will. You take care of yourself too.”
Mimi laughed to herself, went back to the foot of the stairs, and made some noise. Martine looked around.
“When is Dad back?”
“Next week,” said Martine cheerfully.
That evening Mimi picked up pizza and sat in the park eating with Ky. Ky thought he could risk being a man so that none of the well-meaning dog owners would interrupt their conversation to tell Mimi not to feed her dog pizza.
“And so I don’t look like I’m insane for talking to you,” she added.
They sat on the park bench together for a while without talking, and then Mimi said, “Can I ask you something off topic and then we can go back to stopping Henry? This might be a stupid question.”
“It might be,” Ky acknowledged. “What is it?”
“Are vampires real?”
Ky laughed a big warm belly laugh, “That is a stupid question!” His laugh filled the afternoon air.
“Well sorry, I mean…”
“Don’t even tell me you don’t know the answer to that.”
“Sorry, I just thought because you’re real…”
“Of course vampires are real!” He was still laughing, he wiped a tear from his eye.
“Really?”
“Yes! They’re not as common as they used to be, but real, yes they’re real.”
She still couldn’t quite tell if he was joking, but she pursued it anyway, “What about dragons?”
“Extinct, well, sort of extinct. Dragons have complicated
biology.”
“Unicorns?”
He looked at her suddenly very seriously, “Oh, that one I’m not going to tell you.”
“What? Why not? You can’t do that. If you know and I don’t, you have to tell me!”
“No, we don’t talk about unicorns. You may find out one day, but I hope you do not.” Any trace of a joke had been wiped from his face.
“Why? I’m going to make you tell me.”
“How?”
“I’ll trick you into it somehow!”
“Well until you do that, I’m definitely not telling.” The smile returned to his face, leaving only a trace of sadness behind his eyes. “Anything else you want to know?”
“Everything,” she said nonchalantly.
“Hmm, you and me both.”
“Oh wait! At the party I was worried about…can Henry read my mind?”
“I would never have revealed myself to you if I thought he could! Communication of that kind, mind to mind, takes practice and willing participants. Sometimes it can happen, though, if…” Ky hesitated, realizing that he should have been more cautious. “You weren’t what you might call ‘in love’ with him, were you? I assumed you weren’t.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Then no. He definitely can’t read your mind.”
Sausage and mushroom pizza was Mimi’s favorite. She never ate it, though, because it was so fattening. But her priorities had changed. Ky had said he didn’t have a favorite, so a large sausage and mushroom was quickly disappearing between them.
Mimi looked into the pizza box and picked up the last piece, “Spying makes me hungry. Did you find out anything about Henry?”
Ky was quiet for so long that she thought he hadn’t heard her. Then he started softly, “Hal has some kind of new power, terrible power, but he won’t change, even in a fight. It’s very strange. Our power should come from changing, not from staying the same. He sneaked up on me in the library, which he shouldn’t have been able to do when I was in my dog shape, and then he destroyed me in our fight. It was hardly a fight at all.”
“Obviously,” she agreed.
“Thanks.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“Books to spears. It’s so much power. It’s estranging something from its very essence.” He idly picked up the pizza box and transformed it into a small spear.
“What? But you can do it too!” exclaimed Mimi.
“No, feel it,” said Ky, “really.”
She reached out her hand tentatively to take the sharp end of the spear. She felt cardboard in her hand. “It’s still the pizza box.”
“Right, think that could put a big hole in your side?”
“So…”
“I can make it look like anything; well, most things. But to make it behave like metal? It has to be metal. As you know, I can change champagne into water easily.”
“A cruel trick,” sighed Mimi.
“They’re hardly different.”
“That’s not how I feel about them!” Mimi protested.
Ky continued as though he hadn’t heard her. “And I can turn the pizza box into a book.” The pizza box flapped around for a moment and then lined itself neatly up into hundreds of pages. Mimi found herself looking at a large open dictionary that was floating just above the bench. “Or a paper airplane.” The dictionary obediently dissolved into a large tidily folded paper airplane. “Even maybe a tree or something like that.” The paper airplane zoomed around their heads and came to rest on the bench. It grew into a small tree, grew large pink flowers that fell to the ground, then collapsed back to being a pizza box. Mimi kicked one of the flowers with the toe of her shoe; it disappeared. “But paper to metal….” She could see him focus his efforts on the box. It started spinning around out of control, changing rapidly into objects she couldn’t quite see, until Ky was clearly exhausted and it fell back to being a pizza box again on the bench. “It’s unnatural. Unless…maybe, if the books were specific. But not even Ezik has done that.”
“Who’s Ezik?”
“My boss, very powerful for an Or-ta, although I also used to think that about myself, before last night.”
“You got out alive.”
“Thanks to you. But that’s another thing.”
“What?”
“He would have killed me. I saw it in his eyes, in his fighting style. It’s not that Or-ta can’t kill, or never have, but it’s rare.”
“So when you fight?”
“You best your opponent; it’s possible to win, to capture. We just don’t usually fight to the death.”
The park was quiet. Golden evening light filtered through the trees. Mimi had been worried about paparazzi, but Ky said he could use his powers to make them, if not invisible, then at least uninteresting.
“Ky, are you immortal? I mean, if you don’t get killed.”
“Yes.”
“And you can’t get sick?” Mimi continued.
Ky looked at her face and became aware of her sudden vulnerability and the turn in conversation. “No, we can’t get sick,” he said gently.
“That must be so different.”
“I imagine it is,” said Ky. “I haven’t ever thought about not being immortal. Although I have been almost killed a few times in my life, including last night. I’ve never been wounded like that. I’ve never bled like that.”
“That was pretty gross.”
“You handled it well. You could be a nurse.”
“I couldn’t be,” said Mimi. “You didn’t hear what I was thinking.”
“I heard you cursing like a sailor.”
“You were conscious enough for that?”
“Yes, I thought it must really be bad to make you curse like that. I didn’t know some of those words were still in fashion.”
“Somehow I thought, because you’re magical, you wouldn’t have guts.”
“We can be killed in the shape we’re in. The human shape is fragile.”
“I feel fragile all the time now,” she said putting her hands up to her own stomach. “I used to feel like I was immortal, or I behaved as though I was.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
“Before I got sick I would excuse myself for doing crazy things by thinking, ‘Well, I won’t live forever!’ or ‘I won’t be young forever!’ I feel like I’m just starting to know what that means.”
The evening light glittered on the leaves of the trees, the tops of the grass, her eyelashes.
“I have this dream where I die in pieces; first my hands, then my feet and then my knees are sort of crushed,” she admitted. “And I can’t do anything about it. And I think in the dream—I won’t live forever—but it’s completely different from the way I used to think it.”
“Is the dream because of the pain from your seizures?”
“I guess so. But also I guess because I’m a person, and we die.” She rubbed her hands together unconsciously; there was always a nagging ache in her hands from where they clenched tight with her seizures. She had to keep her fingernails short now, but there were still dig marks on her palms. Sometimes they bled. She ran her fingertips over them. “The pain just helps me realize it.”
“You’d rather be immortal, I take it?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not an option. I’m just saying, you can’t get sick, and you won’t die unless someone kills you, which sounds pretty awesome to me right now, and you’re going to risk all that to stop Henry. You already have. I know you were in pain last night. I saw you. You could hardly breathe. You’re in pain now.”
“Yes. I am. I guess I am willing to risk everything to stop Henry.”
“And he wants to kill you and he probably can because he has some crazy power you don’t understand.”
“Well, Or-ta are not monsters. He doesn’t necessarily want to kill me. He just doesn’t see another way of getting what he wants.”
“But you’d still risk it.”
“Of course.”
“W
hy?”
“It’s the right thing to do, but also,” Ky paused, “there does have to be more to life than just enjoying being immortal.”
“I will gladly trade you,” said Mimi.
“And then what would you do?” asked Ky.
“Everything, maybe nothing. Go swimming, take a nap. New books, movies, and recipes come out all the time. I would not get bored.”
Ky and Mimi sat in silence for a moment, each lost in thought. To any passerby they looked just like two friends on a park bench, relaxing in the evening light.
“There’s something I can’t explain,” Ky said. “I keep going over one moment from last night. It’s too strange. I know Henry can fly. He must have at least one flying shape. So why didn’t he follow me?”
“Follow you?”
“I jumped out the window. He was right on my heels. He could have had me, but he ran down the stairs instead. Why?”
“Well, maybe we’ll find out this weekend…when we meet him in New York.”
“What?”
“We’re invited to meet him in New York this weekend. Okay; by we, I mean me. I bet that you are really not invited.” Ky watched her lips curl up in a little smirk as she made herself laugh. She was terrified of her seizures but here she was, facing the most dangerous opponent currently in her world, and laughing. She was remarkable.
“Mimi, I can’t let you do that for me.”
“That’s not your choice.”
“You just told me you’d rather go swimming and take a nap!”
“I said if I were you I’d take a nap. Being immortal and not being in pain? Not even an option for me.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“What did I just explain to you?”
“I’ve already put you through too much.”
“I promised Henry I’d go. He doesn’t suspect me. I’m a better actor than you think.”
“It’s not about your acting. I can’t let you…”
“Let me what? Whore myself out? Are you talking about how I lost my dress? Because, you know, I’m a perfume model; so, really, there isn’t anyone who hasn’t seen me in lingerie. But if you don’t want me to help you, maybe you should have thought about staying my dog for a while!”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
She didn’t seem offended, just thoughtful. Hers was a different world from the one Ky had visited last time he’d been on Earth, different because women were different.
“I don’t think there will be any hot tub at this party, so my dignity should be safe,” she said. “Henry’s opening a new flagship liquor store, introducing a new, very high-end product line. It will be an extremely exclusive party. I’ll go to the early evening opening. You’ll figure out what he’s up to without getting speared.”
“That’s our whole plan?”
“Got anything else?”
“You said he’s opening a liquor store?”
“Yes, very high-end. I assume that everyone at the opening will be political cronies. It will be small. I lobbied hard for my invite. I think I only got it because I ignored him for so long. Exclusivity can really work in your favor. I should have done more disappearing when I actually cared about my Hollywood career.”
“A party that not even you were invited to? That’s interesting. Could he be getting power from these people? It doesn’t make sense. We can extract power from some things but usually not without destroying them. And people aren’t usually magical, especially political. Wait…”
“Wait what?”
“He’s surrounded by all these powerful people and he’s stealing, or borrowing, or…no, that’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“That’s what was in the scotch! It affects the senator the same way, but less so because he’s a man.” Ky’s face was alight with sudden understanding.
“Scotch? Senator?”
“He’s not just giving it out. He’s drinking it! If we go to New York, I’ll need you to do more than just distract Henry.”
“You mean more than just distract Henry and save your life?” Mimi gave him a measured look.
Ky returned her gaze. “Yes, possibly much more.”