“Except the skin,” the other man whispered.
“Beautiful, beautiful,” the woman said. “So fragile. Won’t you dance with us?”
She reached out, and her smile was a timid one. All the scarier because of how obviously calculated it was.
“Don’t fucking touch me,” I said. I slapped her hand away.
The realization of just how bad that one kneejerk reaction was settled in so quickly I suspected I’d seen it coming.
But I didn’t like being touched.
“I’ve been rebuked,” she said. The back of her hand found her forehead, face turning skyward. Her playfulness belied the glitter of anger in her eyes, when she glanced down at me to gauge my reaction.
“The rose is usually better at the verbal jousting,” Patrick said. He swayed a little, then caught himself with a hand on the woman’s shoulder. She reached up to lay her hand across his, as if it were all choreographed, an act. “It’s brutish to fall back on physical violence.”
“It’s almost insulting, to see a creature that so resembles us, acting so basely,” the woman said.
“It is, isn’t it, Ev? An affront.”
His male companion stepped around me, alighting briefly on a snowbank that my foot would have plunged into, before coming to a stop just behind my left shoulder.
When I looked, Patrick was to my right, back to the wall.
“But moods do shift so dramatically from generation to generation,” Patrick finished. “It adds a liveliness to the proceedings, breaks the patterns we so easily fall into. It’s why we love you, my rose.”
I wanted to cut in, to speak, but I wasn’t sure what to say. The confusion of being cast five hours into the future wasn’t helping, nor was being surrounded. It was all I could do to avoid a repeat performance that would get them really offended.
“I’m sorry for that,” I said, looking the woman in the eyes. “It was crude. I regret it.”
“Then will you let me touch you?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
She pouted a little. “You’re afraid. That’s okay. You’re so small, so fragile. A petal adrift in the wind, that will soon dry up and do nothing more than feed the bugs and return to the earth. I can fix that. Give you life, like you’ve never imagined it. All of the best things you could ever experience, in tastes, touches, music and song.”
“It’s like cheating,” Patrick said. “We both know there’s nothing good waiting for you at the end, my rose, not while your bloodline has this weight pulling it down. You and your children and your children’s children, all down the line, there’s only one place you can go. But we can give you the paradise you and yours are denied. Two, three centuries. Sublime things, everything you thought you might enjoy, and everything you never even considered. There’ll be so little left of you when it’s all done that it won’t even matter where you’re going.”
“I can flense your skin,” the other man said. “But without pain. The movement of air as someone enters the room will have you arching your back, whimpering in anticipation.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline,” I said. I couldn’t hide the tremor in my voice. I felt more than a little backed against a wall, here. It wasn’t just being surrounded.
Patrick wasted no time in seizing on that weakness. “Are you sure? No more fear, no concerns. If you’re worried about the bloodline, I’m sure we could round up someone to make it happen, allowing you to do your duty. You can be as specific as you like, whatever your preferences in body, hair, personality. Keller here might even enjoy hunting them down.”
Keller. The male companion, almost avian in features, with the bone structure, the gaze.
Somehow, it was easy to imagine him as a hunter.
“We can even make the birth painless. An exercise in joy, rather than pain, without blood or sweat or tears,” Ev said. “Something beautiful that could be the centerpiece for a party. Architecture and dances and music, all around one singular event, with a moment of crescendo-”
“This rose is male,” Keller said. “Men don’t give birth.”
“Male?” Ev asked. She gave me a closer look.
I was pretty sure no humans had made that mistake since I was five or so.
Patrick, for his part, mused, “I forgot that detail. I’m sure we could make it happen. Do you want to try, my rose?”
I took advantage of the momentary confusion to cut in, “I have other obligations.”
“Well,” Patrick said. He shifted position, coming damn close to brushing up against me. “That leaves us with a problem. You’ve offended Ev, and decorum demands that things be made right. If you won’t accept our invitation, then how will this be resolved?”
“It’s all right,” Ev said. She wobbled a bit, and then stepped to one side to lean against the wall. She took another drink from the bottle. “I’ll settle for him giving me his apologies. Perhaps a kiss on the cheek?”
My heart thudded in my chest.
A kiss? Was there a trap here?
“No.”
It wasn’t my voice.
Rose.
All three of the strangers backed away from the wall, until they could see the window where Rose was reflected. With the curtains drawn, the streetlights reflected her well in the glass of the window.
“Ah,” Patrick said. He glanced between us. “I like this.”
“We can’t take your deal, Essylt. I hope we can arrange something else,” Rose said.
“We can, we can. But first, I must insist…” Patrick hopped up onto the four-inch window sill, taking a knee, somehow without falling or touching the glass. He reached through the glass and put a hand on the back of Rose’s neck, then drew her forward, his head passing into the window to plant the lightest of kisses on her forehead.
He hopped down, giving me a plain view of a very startled Rose.
Ev, or Essylt as Rose had called her, looked between Rose and I with a somewhat drunken amusement, her movements languid.
“Whatever happened?” Patrick asked. “Now we have two roses, but they’re so vulnerable. Thornless.”
“It makes you just want to break them,” Ev said. “So you can have those last beautiful moments all to yourself.”
“And a mess,” Rose said.
“Messes can be cleaned up,” Ev said. “Memories are forever, and forever is a very long time.”
“Hear hear,” Patrick said. He, Ev and Keller each tipped their bottles back to drink. Patrick licked the corner of his mouth.
“The breaking will have to wait,” Rose said. “Until we’ve resolved this issue of Blake’s manners. I’m afraid he can’t give you his apologies. It’s too high a price. If he needed to make amends to someone else in the future, what would he do?”
“But that’s half the fun,” Ev said. “Watching the dance that follows the exchange.”
“We’re in an awkward spot,” Rose said. “We didn’t intend to be out after dark, but Laird Behaim pulled a trick on us. He promised us his protection while we were in his presence, and then he disappeared on us, and turned the hands on the clock forward.”