Kelsey kneels to place one palm on the smooth stone floor, the other hand still holding the trigger. She reaches out with her mind and draws in glamour from beyond the chapel, making herself seem larger, more ferocious. Fangs and claws to match the Old One’s, eyes that glow with citylight, wings growing spurred and enormous to fill the vaulted space. She shows off for the Old One, goading him to match her skill.
When the Old One rises to her challenge, though, it takes glamour from the immediate area of the chapel. She feels the tension as it draws in more power, as if the relays are springs and the Old One stretches them out to their limits. The web of glamour pulls taut, singing like instrument strings, and when the threads are stretched to the breaking point, Kelsey jams her thumb down on the trigger.
The glamour springs back toward the relays, lightning-quick with elastic tension, and the relays suck it down, devouring the power and storing it. Each relay becomes a point of negative pressure, the energy flow from the Old One firmly established. Mindlessly thirsty, the relays will not stop drinking until the Old One is drained.
The Old One screeches and writhes. Its eyes and teeth and limbs disappear first, then wisps of black cloud begin to siphon off and it gradually shrinks. The last few seconds are the worst, when the core being of the Old One rends in a dozen different directions, and the very air wants to shrink away from its ancient rage. Then, with a final rip, the relays devour it.
The walls sigh relief at its passage.
Novak stands shakily from the dais steps and walks over to Kelsey. “You saved my life again. That’s twice now. Thank you.” His eyes are too deep and grateful, with a puzzling lack of disgust.
“Well. Have a nice life,” she says and flees the chapel.
With luck, Duncan will never ask her to take on the horrid human-form again. No frailty, no confusion, no illusions of humanity. That is what she wants, yes, she’s certain. Never again.
Kelsey flies her rounds, starting at the lake and meandering westwards. The city has been quiet for days, but something is different in the air tonight. Something waits for her.
She lands on the steps in front of Rockefeller Chapel—next to Novak.
“What are you doing?” she says, dropping her cloak of glamour so he can see her.
He jumps at her sudden appearance. “Waiting for you. Took you long enough to show up.”
She blinks. “Our business here is done.”
“I got this case, see. I think it’s up your alley.”
The rush of hope and anxiety and desire catches her off-guard, echoes of human-form emotions nothing like the cool certainty of a grotesque’s mission.
Novak takes her silence as an invitation to continue. “Today I had a out behind the River North cineplex that was drained of blood. What do you think? Vampire?”
“There are no vampires in Chicago.”
“Well that begs the question—who did take the blood, and why?”
She hesitates. “I don’t work for you.”
“What about my supernaturally blood-free Jane Doe? You willing to work for her?”
Kelsey scowls, knowing he’s probably right. This case sounds as if it involves elements he is ill-equipped to deal with, elements that fall into her realm of experience. Her responsibility, even.
“I brought a coat, for when you’re wearing your other face.” Novak holds the spare coat out to her. “Come on. We can go someplace warm, review the details. And hey, maybe you could give food a second chance.”
Reluctantly, she takes the coat from him and lets her wings melt away before wrapping it around her shoulders. The night air chills her human hands, and she shoves them down into the pockets. It feels strangely good—the cold and the coat, the discomfort and the doubt. Maybe it’s okay to want this. Maybe her human-self is not a curse, after all.
As they make their way to Novak’s car, the sidewalk sighs approval at the touch of her bare human feet. The streetlights flicker their agreement when she passes beneath them. Startled, Kelsey realizes the city wants this of her.
And she always gives the city what it wants.
BLUE JOE
by Stephanie Burgis
Josef Anton Miklovic, Blue Joe, was twenty-one years old and playing the sax in a nightclub in Youngstown, Ohio, when he met his father for the first time.
Joe was on stage with his family band: Karl on keyboard, hunched and intense; Niko on drums, grinning his lopsided, dreamer’s grin; and Ivan, as smooth and polished as a Croatian Clark Gable, playing his shining trumpet like a peal up to heaven.
Smoke swirled across the tables, obscuring the waitresses in their Betty Boop outfits and the customers in their sharp suits, with dyed blondes on their arms. Ivan had hooked up with the son of a local mob boss to pull this job, and the rest of the brothers knew how lucky they were to get it. Ivan had big plans, and Joe was happy to go along with them.
Joe soared into his lead break, and at the end of it, as he emerged sweating and victorious, he met the fierce gaze of a hawk-nosed man at the back of the room, through all the smoke and the darkness. Time froze around them, and the music stopped.
“You don’t look much like your mother,” the man said as he crossed the room. He wore a long black coat from a different era, and it flapped around him like the wings of a crow.
Joe squinted through the smoke, watching the man sidestep frozen Betty Boops and customers’ arms flung out in mid-gesture. Joe’s brothers were as still as statues on the stage around him, and he thought he probably ought to be scared.
“Everyone always said I took after her,” he said mildly.
“All they meant was, you don’t look like that lump she married.” The man reached the stage and jumped up onto it as easily as if it were only an inch high, instead of four feet from the ground. “You take after me.”
Joe looked the man up and down and knew it to be true. They shared the same crazy golden eyes, the same jet-black hair, though Joe’s was slicked back into fashionable lines, and the same great, hooked nose, about which Joe’s brothers had always teased him.
He turned to look at his brothers now, and the man before him shook his head.
“No. They’re not mine. Your mother and I had parted ways by then. But I told her I’d come for you to raise you right, when I was ready.”
“And you waited till now?” Joe laughed, despite the shock. “You left it a bit late, don’t you think?”
“It took time to make my way over. Do you remember the journey you took?”
Joe shook his head. “I was only a baby when we came over to the States.”
“Well, I took a longer route. It’s harder to leave the old country, for some.”
Some. Joe didn’t know exactly what the man meant, but he didn’t care to ask, not with the rest of the nightclub frozen around them like stills in a newsreel. Whatever power this man had, it was obviously more than the local mob, and that was enough to scare anyone with sense.
“I’m here now,” the man said, “and it’s more than time. Your mother hid you too well.” He fixed Joe in his hawk-like gaze. “Time to go.”
“Hey, I’m not going anywhere.” Joe stepped backward, crashing into Karl’s keyboard. “I’ve got family.”
“I’m your family.”
“Uh-uh.” Joe drew strength from his brothers’ presence around him, even though they couldn’t move. “I’m in a band. We’re going places together. Might even break into Hollywood, if we’re lucky.”