The girl—for that was what she looked like, a brown-haired, brown-eyed human girl of perhaps fifteen years— smiled kindly at it. “Many from this cycle do not know Me. You are forgiven.” She glanced at Xitil. “You are sure? This one looks rather…”
“Unprepossessing?” Xitil chuckled, a low rumble that made her breasts quiver. “It’s young and weak and too curious for its own good, but you do not require a warrior. Gan has the skills you do need. It can cross unsummoned, and I can use it to pass instructions and information to your tool.”
“Ah. And the other tool I requested?” the girl asked.
Xitil ran a claw idly along the great mound of her hip, parting the veils so the lush curls of her pubes peeked out. “That was predicated upon our original plan. You did not open the Gate. Nor have you been willing to honor my one personal request.”
Threat—challenge—power rippled through the air, power so vast Gan had no reference for it. In one quick, nauseous plunge, it fell into vertigo as gravity tugged, released, and clenched again around it. Its hearts stopped beating altogether.
As quickly as the storm had hit, it passed.
The girl laughed, a light, carefree sound. “Oh, look— we have frightened poor Gan. It would be a shame if we harmed it with our little testings, wouldn’t it? But really, Xitil, it is too bad of you to taunt me sexually. You know my feelings about that sort of thing.”
Oh. Oh! So that’s who She was…
Xitil shrugged and didn’t reply.
The girl who wasn’t a girl at all turned to study Gan. “I suppose such tools are not plentiful, and yet it’s so small. The size of a human child. No matter how its form is altered, it won’t present the appearance I need.”
“You think not?” Xitil’s eyes glowed, “Gan.”
Gan’s attention fixed entirely on its prince, for beneath the syllable of its callname reverberated a tug on its true-name.
“Grow.”
Gan scrunched its face unhappily and obeyed—a trifle slowly, perhaps, but she hadn’t said to hurry. It was twelve feet tall and very uncomfortable when Xitil spoke again.
“Stop.”
Gan obeyed that command gladly and then concentrated on holding itself steady while the nongirl studied it.
“Amazing,” she said at last. Her voice sounded distant;
Gan’s ears were too attenuated to catch sounds properly. “I had no idea you could disperse yourselves that way.” She cocked her head. “I can see through its hands.”
Xitil chuckled. “Poor Gan. It lacks the substance to expand greatly, but it will do for your purposes. Resume your usual size, Gan.”
Gan dropped back into its normal density with a sigh of relief.
“I have a job for you,” she told it. “How would you like to drink a little blood?”
“I would like that,” it answered honestly. “Whose?”
“A human’s. She will be brought here.”
Brought here? Gan’s eyes grew large. This, it realized, was why Xitil had allied with the one who looked like a brown-eyed girl. Part of the reason, anyway. Xitil’s games were never simple. Xitil’s guest would bring a human here for Gan to… to… Gan whispered, “You wish me to possess this human, Most Feared?”
Xitil smoothed her hair over one breast with a ruby-tipped claw. “There. I knew you couldn’t be entirely ignorant. You did eat old Mevroax, after all.”
“And—and the human will go back to its realm?” Gan’s senses were whirling. To be able to experience the human realm as a human—it would eat and drink and fuck as humans do, and see so much! So much more than it had ever been able to see or do before—
“She’d be of little use to me here. Of course she will be returned. But you will not be able to possess her immediately, Gan. She is a sensitive.”
Gan’s mouth opened. Just in time, it closed it again. The Most Feared must know some way to get behind a sensitive’s barriers, or she would not have brought Gan here. And it was never a good idea to question her.
“Very wise, Gan.” Fortunately, Xitil was amused rather than annoyed by Gan’s near gaffe. Whatever she planned to do with the human, it had put her in a high good humor. “Your unvoiced thoughts are quite correct, though. Normally breaching a sensitive would present a problem, but my guest will deal with that.”
Gan’s gaze swung back to the brown-eyed girl. It swallowed. Xitil had earned her title of Most Feared, yes. But this one…
The girl smiled at it sweetly. “Don’t fret, Gan. What I will use to open the human to your possession won’t harm you. Demons are not subject to guilt.”
Gan felt a wave of relief. That made sense. Humans, with their pesky, mysterious souls, were always vulnerable to guilt. Even sensitives could be reached that way. Not by demons, of course, but the gods specialized in souls and guilt and worship and such, didn’t they?
“You will be directed by another tool of mine,” the girl told it. “Xitil, with your permission… ?”
Xitil didn’t reply, but the rocks near the girl groaned and parted, revealing another tunnel. A few minutes later, a human male stepped out. His face held the usual assortment of features—unremarkable, Gan thought, even for a human. He wore one of those suits that betokened status in the western nations of Earth and carried a black staff that matched him in height.
Gan sniffed. It was to take orders from this man? Why, he was no more prepossessing than Gan was. His energy was thin, not at all powerful.
The staff he held, however… Gan squinted at the length of wood, reading it more carefully. Huh. That was odd. The staff had power, but it read as empty rather than dense.
“Most High,” the man whispered, his attention fixed on the girlish avatar. His eyes glowed with what Gan supposed was worship. “How may I please you?”
She smiled at him. “This little one is called Gan. It will do your bidding when you return. Gan.” She turned to it, still smiling. “This is the Most Reverend Patrick Harlowe. When the time comes, he will assist you.”
Gan dared a question of the brown-haired girl, borrowing the mode of address the human had used. One could never be too courteous in dealing with such as She. “May this puny one ask who I will be drinking from, Most High?”
“Her name is Lily. Lily Yu.”
ONE
The Odyssey was large, crowded, and noisy. Built in the seventies, the circular restaurant with its glinting window-walls perched on a promontory by the ocean like a giant disco ball gone flat over the years.
Wedding guests filled two rooms and spilled out onto the patio, which provided a fine view of the sun going down over the western waves. In the main banquet room, music competed with the hum of conversation as couples young and old took to the dance floor. In the adjoining dining room, buffet tables were piled artfully with crackers and crudites, shrimp and smoked salmon, fruit and cheese, and bite-sized cookies. The remains of a towering wedding cake occupied a place of honor at a separate table.
Lily Yu wasn’t watching the sunset or nibbling wedding cake. She was too busy trying to keep her second cousin, Freddie Chang, from stepping on her feet and wondering when she could leave.
Not for at least an hour, she decided. Not without paying a terrible price. Her mother would know if she snuck out early.
Freddie interrupted his monologue on the iniquities of the self-employment tax to say, “You could at least try to look like you’re enjoying yourself.”
“Why?”
“Everyone is watching. Your mother. My mother. Everyone.”
“Does that mean you aren’t going to try to grope me this time?”
His chin jutted in the mulish, self-righteous way that had made her spill lemonade in his lap when he was twelve. “You don’t have to be crude. Just because a guy tries to be friendly—”