Sunshine

Watch your back, Sunshine.

Why would she be watching me? What was there in my file that had caught her eye? Something important enough to lay a fetch on me for?

Something she had, after all, picked up during her illegal troll of me the night we met?

Was she trolling me now? My head hurt so much I couldn’t tell how much of it was her godsawful aura and how much was…just the way I was feeling. Had she tried to troll Con? If she had—no, wait, she couldn’t’ve or he’d be staked and beheaded by now—okay, even if he had blocked her—what might the block tell her? Wouldn’t a vampire block look—taste, smell, whatever—different than a human one? Or did Con’s passing include the shape of his mind to a mind search?

But being able to block a mind search was illegal too. Ordinary humans couldn’t do it. Which meant anyone who did wasn’t an ordinary human. And if you know something, you know it, even if you got that knowledge by proscribed means. Like by trolling without authority.

It wasn’t my back that needed watching at this moment. It was Con’s. As well as his front, sides, top, bottom, and any other attached bits.

I stared at the window. In the lower corner nearer me there was a tiny gap where the blind didn’t fit true. I was sure I could see light coming in.

The goddess had her back to the window. She had a huge desk—of course—that sprawled in front of it, but it was a big room, and there was plenty of space for her minions and Pat and his lot plus Con and me. Her desk was empty. Even her com gear was all shut away in a wall closet; I knew this because one of her vassals folded the doors back and sat down in front of it. There was a lot of it; it looked like it would take up the entire wall if the doors were pushed back all the way. I was glad I wasn’t a techie. If I’d understood any of what I could see, I would have been even more jittery than I already was.

There were now fifteen of us. She’d only had three flunkies when we entered, but when it turned out she wasn’t going to be able to get rid of Pat one of them muttered into her wire and four more people had entered almost as soon as she’d finished speaking, marching nearly in lockstep. The goddess must keep them in a cupboard right outside her door for those moments when she needed to oppress a situation quickly. Maybe she chose people who wanted to spend their off-duty hours folded up in a drawer too, the better for rapid retrieval.

We faced each other over her desk, them and us. Con and I sat in two chairs about six feet apart. Pat, keeping up the pretense that we were under defensive surveillance, had a pair of people behind each of our chairs. He leaned against the wall behind us, but off to one side, nearer Con; I could see him out of the corner of my eye without turning my head. His wire squeaked at him periodically; occasionally he muttered back. Once I saw him jerk his head up and stare at us—Con or me, I couldn’t tell—after some very agitated squeaking. I wondered what his field people might be telling him about what they were finding in the remains of No Town. I wasn’t used to seeing Pat wearing a wire. He hadn’t any time I’d seen him at Charlie’s. He hadn’t when I visited his office downstairs here. He hadn’t even when we drove out to the lake. The wire made him look a lot more threatening. More like a regular member of SOF, the huge national agency dedicated to protecting humans against the Other threat, which as one of its minor local operations had planted an illegal fetch on me.

Even with a wire, Pat wasn’t nearly as threatening as a vampire.

Or as the goddess.

Several of the flunkies’ wires squeaked at them too. I saw them glancing at each other worriedly. Perhaps they always looked worried. Being the goddess’ flunky can’t have been an easy job, even if you have the personality for it.

The goddess paraded up and down behind her desk, occasionally leaning on it for emphasis, occasionally coming round to the front to sit on the edge and stare at us. She ignored everyone else.

I thought I saw her glance at the window too. Okay, I could make a dive for Con the moment she touched the blind, but that would give two things away simultaneously: what he was. And what I could do.

The air in the room seemed to press against my skull like a tightening vise. Maybe it was just the goddess. I looked at my hands. I thought I could see tiny filaments of green or black running up the backs of them, running up my arms, like gangrene spreading from the site of infection. I couldn’t see any sign of the golden web, even though the blanket wrapped around me had rubbed a lot of the blood off. I could see only green and black. Death as an infection. The infection had begun five months ago. Maybe I’d already died back at Bo’s headquarters—perhaps when the scar on my breast reopened— and it hadn’t quite caught up with me yet. Maybe Con had delayed the inevitable by making me—offering me his blood to drink. Undead blood was used to keeping dead people moving, after all. So maybe it didn’t matter if I gave myself away. I was worm fodder as soon as the green and black filaments reached my beating heart.

It did matter. I would be giving Con away too.

I’m very sorry, Con was saying to the goddess. I know how thin my story sounds. But there is nothing else to tell you. It was all very baffling to me—to Miss Seddon and me—too.

There was a little silence. I set my tea mug down on the floor, and groped in my pocket for my little knife, the knife that glowed with daylight even in the dark, the knife that burned Con if he touched it. I held it a moment before I pulled it out, wondering if I was dead—not undead, Con promised me I couldn’t be turned, just dead, a new form of zombie perhaps, which would explain why my brain was refusing to work properly, why nothing seemed quite real, not even my fear. A zombie’s brain always goes first, while sometimes their hearts go on beating. If I was dead, perhaps I couldn’t save Con from the daylight any more either. The knife was warm in my hand. Body heat. But zombies are usually cool. Like all the undead. My knife was warm like the touch of a friend, against my gangrenous hand. Suddenly there were tears in my eyes. Do zombies weep?

I pulled the knife out. I made all the effort I was capable of, to be here, to be present, in this room, with Con and Pat and the goddess of pain.

“Pardon me,” I said. “I want to return your knife before I—er—forget.” I should have said something about why I was remembering now rather than at some other moment, why I had Mr. Connor’s knife in the first place, but I couldn’t think of anything. I was at the end of my thinking. It was taking all my energy to be here.

And I didn’t know that it would work. It was merely the only thing I could imagine to try.

Con turned toward me. He almost forgot to be human. When I tossed him the knife his hand moved toward where it was going to be…I felt him check himself. He plucked the knife out of the air a little too neatly, but not impossibly so. Not inhumanly. He caught it, and closed his fingers around it, rested his hand on his knee. The knife had disappeared. If there was anything to see as it burned him, if it burned him, if it was still full of daylight—of my sunshine—no one in the room would see. He set his tea mug down, so he still had one hand free. “Thank you,” he said, and turned back to the goddess as if for her next question.

We had our one bit of luck then. There was a wire-squeak so momentous, apparently, that one of the goddess’ minions risked whispering it to her, and she was distracted, perhaps, from this curious business of Mr. Connor’s knife. She wasn’t very happy about whatever news the minion gave her, whatever it was.

Then she sighed, elaborately, as if releasing tension. As if asking everyone in the room to relax. I didn’t relax. Con didn’t, but then he was never relaxed, any more than he was ever tense. He was just there. Pat didn’t relax. I couldn’t see any of the rest of us. The minions didn’t relax. I’m sure there is a regulation in their contract that forbids them to relax. The goddess looked around at us and smiled. It wasn’t a very good smile. If I had to choose, I would say Con did it better.