There was more, too. I’d left the Drains, but I’d brought some of the Drains with me when I’d left. I was a manifestation of the Drains, and these same actions -scaring people, making an impression, hurting and killing- they were all actions the Drains wanted me to undertake.
So I hadn’t really escaped at all. I was only serving the ends of the Drains in this space.
I really wished I had access to books on bogeymen and things that went bump in the night. Especially now that I was one.
“You should work on it,” he said, filling my contemplative silence. “Whatever ugly got in you while you were stuck in that world, it’s getting more of a hold.”
I touched my face, and I saw how some parts of my tattoos were standing out from the skin, raised in places, like something thin had been slipped beneath them.
That was more than a little spooky.
I glanced around, and I saw a kid walking down the street, backpack slung over one shoulder. He kicked a snowbank.
The mumbling man seemed to notice too, because he glanced at me.
“I should go,” I said. I didn’t give details on why.
“I should get my friend out of the way,” he said. Then, as if he were reading my mind, he added, “Be careful, the children are being escorted by family.”
The word family had an emphasis that left little doubt in my mind as to which families he was referring to.
“By the by, if you ever feel like hunting…”
He wasn’t talking about hunting animals.
“Maybe,” I said.
“This will be something to behold,” he said. “It’s just a question of when, and we’ll have more victims than we can imagine.”
“Human victims?” I asked.
“Practitioner victims, but they’re more or less the same thing” he said. “There’s a gentleman’s agreement of sorts about touching or killing the humans, or giving them reason to worry. Anything’s fair game, so long as it’s covert.”
“You talk about it so casually, killing people,” I said.
“There’s enough of them,” he said, a little coldly, though none of that cold seeped into his placid expression or tone of voice.
I was starting to wonder if he was always middle of the road in appearance and action. It forced me to start second guessing his earlier responses, and whether he’d been masking a complete other attitude.
“You were one of them,” I said.
But the faceless woman shook her head at me.
“Was I?” he asked. “Most of us weren’t very good at being human when we were alive. She wasn’t. I wasn’t. Were you?”
“I… wasn’t,” I said. Wasn’t alive.
“I wasn’t one of them, not really. Are you walking this way?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He gestured. We walked alongside each other. Where the sidewalks didn’t have room for more than two people to walk side by side, I was on the other side of the display windows and car mirrors.
My progress staggered somewhat, with me periodically leaping from the light shed from one surface to the light from the next. There was a pause as we crossed one set of traffic lights. I waited on the other side for him.
He spoke, “Sandra wants to preserve tradition. Johannes wants a new world, where Others exist in ghettos, eating phantom sustenance. The Behaims seem to think that they can make everything better if they’re in charge. I don’t know what the Thorburns want.”
“I wish I knew, myself.”
“If you do find out, let me know.”
I saw the tall Other from earlier cross the street to avoid this particular pair.
“Where can I find you?” I asked.
“Under someone’s bed,” he said. “Wandering dark alleys, sitting in the backseats of cars. I’m not easy to find. You might go looking for her, but she only picks out a target once in a blue moon. Hm, hm, hm, how to arrange it?”
The faceless woman touched her scarf.
“Ah, of course. The Ambassador.”
“Ambassador?”
“Short black hair, unruly, goblins, short checked scarf?”
“Maggie?”
“Not quite. I’d say her name, but that calls her. She’s taken on certain responsibilities.”
I remembered my vision. She’d raised her hand as a neutral party.
Ambassador, though?
“She’s the person I’m looking for,” I said.
“Oh? Oh! Well, she isn’t at the school.”
I gave him a concerned look.
“Complicated. Best to let her explain. Mags Holt, Ambassador. An Other in a mirror requests your company.”
“Mags?” I asked.
“She’s busy, so I don’t know how long she might be, but-”
He was looking just over his shoulder. A problem?
He stepped back out of the way, putting his shoulders to the display window of the pharmacy.
I ducked out of sight, sticking to the light.
A group of Behaim women, ushering their teenage and elementary-school aged kids along.
The faceless woman made a move, like she was going to follow or act somehow, and the revenant seized her arm. “Don’t. Stop being so damned territorial. Patience.”
She pulled it free, and she seemed pissed.
However close their relationship, he backed up even further, pressed against the window, clearly trying to keep his distance.
I spoke up, “The person who makes the first move loses.”
She didn’t let up, still crowding the revenant’s personal space, but she tilted her head, one smear of an eye peering at me.
“You reach out to hurt one of them, and they’ll protect themselves. Then someone else will hurt you while you’re occupied with your focus elsewhere. It’s why this balance exists. There are creatures that are stronger, prouder, and more dangerous than any of us, and they’re holding back for now because they recognize this.”
She relaxed a little.
“Well said,” ‘Mags’ said.
She stepped into view.
“My cue to go,” my new friend said. “The offer to go hunting stands.”
“Thank you for the discussion,” I said, as diplomatically as I could. I suddenly felt very on the spot, caught between my association with these… things and Mags here.
Between being the monster and being the man.
She was in the company of two goblins who were all wrapped up in snowsuits, only eyes peering out. One had mismatched eyes. Not just color, but size and species. She looked rougher than I’d seen her before, hair tousled, clothes a little tattered. Her hand was at one side, near what I assumed to be a weapon.
She looked like she’d grown up a year overnight. It had only been a month. Not even.
“I’ve heard that you held onto your connection to me somehow,” I said. “You remember me?”
“You’re not entirely wrong,” she said. “It doesn’t look like you held onto yourself all that well, though.”
“Came to pieces,” I said. “Had to fill the gaps with something, I guess.”