Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 69

"Tribute."

Coming back around slowly, her gaze-catching mine-flat and pale. "Sycorax."

"I could just spike your pretty eyes out on my pinkie finger and eat them, lovely boy," she purred. "Hazel, aren't they?"

"Blue."

She shrugged and made an irritated, dismissive gesture, hands white as wax. "It's so hard to tell in the dark."

The girls made it to the street before Sycorax ended the discussion, but I had to follow them anyway. I paced my ordained prey, staying to the shadows, the collar of the black leather trenchcoat that Sycorax had picked out for me tugged up to half-hide the outline of my jaw. I never would have bought that coat for myself. You'd think anybody who'd been dead for any time at all would have had enough of blackness and shadows, thank you very much. Sycorax reveled in it. If she were three hundred years younger, she'd have been a gothchick.

It was a good night: n.o.body turned for a second look.

People are always dying, and human memory is short. In a hundred years, I shall probably be able to walk down any street in the world without raising an eyebrow.

As long as the sun is down.

Sycorax didn't bother to follow. I had no choice but to do as I was bid. It's more than a rule; it's a fact. I expected there were still a few women I knew who would get a kick out of that.

My girls staggered somewhat, weaving. One was a blonde, brittle dyed hair and a red beret. The other one had glossy chestnut brown waves and the profile of a little girl. I tracked them through the district toward the ocean, neon glow and littered sidewalks. A door would open and music would issue forth, and it wasn't long before I found myself mouthing the words to one particular song.

There's something gloriously ironic in a man charting a number-one hit twenty-five years after he's dead. Otis Redding, eat your heart out.

My quarry paused at an open-air patio where a live band played the blues. Girl singer, open coat and a spill of curls like wicked midnight: performing old standards, the kind I've always loved. Mama, tell my baby sister, not to do what I have done. I'll spend my life in sin and misery, in the House of the Rising Sun. A song that was already venerable when Eric Burdon made it famous.

There's all kinds of wh.o.r.edom, aren't there? And all kinds of bloodsuckers, too.

The singer nailed "Amazing Grace" a capella like heartbreak, voice sharp and gritty as little Mary Johnson doing "Cold, Cold Heart." I caught myself singing along and slashed my tongue with needle teeth before someone could overhear. Still no blood. I hadn't fed in a long time and it hurt more than it should have.

The girls sat down at a table and ordered food. I smelled beer, hot wings, eyewatering garlic. I suddenly very badly wanted a peanut b.u.t.ter sandwich and a milkshake.

Leaning against the high black iron fence, I watched the girls watching the band until a pa.s.serby in her fifties turned to get a startled better look at me. I stood up straight and met her gaze directly, giving her the crooked little-kid smile. It almost always works, except on Sycorax.

Trying to hide your face only convinces them they've seen something.

"Sorry," she said, waving me away with a smile. A moment later, she turned back. "You know you look like..."

"People say," I answered, pitching my voice high.

"Amazing." She nodded cheerfully, gave me a wide wondering grin, and continued on her way. I watched her go, chattering with her friends, shaking their heads.

The girls didn't stay for "King of the Road," although I would have liked to hear the version.

Kids.

I almost turned away when they walked past. They stank of garlic-stuffed mushrooms and beer. The reek of the herb knotted my stomach and seared my eyes. I actually tried to take a half-step away before the compulsion Sycorax had laid on me locked my knees and forced me back into pursuit.

They walked arm in arm, skinny twenty-year-olds with fake IDs and black vinyl miniskirts. Cheap boots, too much eyeliner. The one with the brown hair broke my heart every time she tossed her head, just that way. I let myself drift ahead of them, taking a gamble on where they would cut across the residential neighborhood near the ocean: a dangerous place for girls to be.

I ducked down a side street to cut them off and waited in the dark of an unlit doorway. Sycorax's control permitted that much. I leaned against the wall, scrubbing my face against my hands. It felt like a waxen mask, cold and stiff. My hands weren't much better.

They weren't long. I was unlucky. They picked the better of the two routes through the brownstones, the one I had been able to justify choosing, and just that innocently chose their fate.

The scent of bougainvillea and jacaranda filled the s.p.a.ces of the night. I watched them skipping from streetlight to streetlight, shadows stretched out behind them, catching up, and then reaching before. The brown-haired one walked a few steps ahead of the bleach-blonde, humming to herself.

I couldn't help it. It wasn't one of my standards, but every blues singer born knows the words to that one. h.e.l.l, I used to have a horse by that name.

I picked up the tune.

I had to.

"...they call the Rising Sun. It's been the ruin of many a poor boy. And me, O G.o.d, I'm one!"

Their heads snapped up. Twenty, maybe. I was dead before they were born. Gratifying that they recognized my voice.

"Fellas, don't believe what a bad woman tells you-though her eyes be blue, or brown...." I strolled out of the shadows, ducking my head and smiling, letting the words trail away.

The dark-haired girl did a double take. She had a lovely nose, pert and turned up. The blonde blinked a couple of times, but I don't think she made the connection. I'd changed my appearance some, and I'd lost a lot of weight.

The stench of garlic on their breath would have thickened my blood in my veins if I had any left. I swallowed hard, remembering all those songs about wandering ghosts and unquiet graves. Ghosts that all seem to want the same thing: revenge, and to lay down and rest.

I smiled wider. What the lady wants, the lady gets.

"Oh, wow," the darker girl said. "Do you have any idea how much you look like...."

The street was empty, dark and deserted. I came up under the streetlight, close enough to reach out and touch the tip of that nose if I wanted. I dropped them a look that used to melt hearts, sidelong glance under lowered lashes. "People say," I answered.

And, sick to my stomach, I broke their necks before I fed.

It was the least I could do.

Poison roiled in my belly when I laid them out gently in the light of that streetlamp, in the rich dark covering the waterfront, close enough to smell the sea. I straightened their spines so they wouldn't look so terrible for whoever found them, but at least they wouldn't be coming back.

It was happening already: my limbs jerked and shook. My flesh crawled with ripples like fire, my tongue numb as a drunk's. I'm going back to New Orleans, to wear that ball and chain....

Not this time. Struggling to smooth each step, to hide the venom flooding my veins, I hurried back to my poor, hungry mistress. I stole the brunette's wallet. I stopped and bought breath mints at the all-night grocery.

I beat Sycorax home.

Seven Steeds Oak for your eyes. Heart made of stone.

Hands taut on the rein while the brown horse bears you down.

(Down, down, dilly down, down.) (Ash and rue, rosemary and thorn) Neither the chains nor enchantments have changed you- glamours are illusions.

The human skin beneath (though grown chill), does not peel.

But seven years in Faerie is hours enough to make strange.

Oak for your eyes. Heart made of stone.

Hands taut on the rein while the black horse bears you down.

(Down, down, dilly down, down.) (Ash and rue, rosemary and thorn) Old songs forecast a savior, but who comes to pull a woman down?

Whatever p.r.i.c.kles or fangs- what fire or venom-wounds you- what armor you grow in return- oh, lady. You are expected to be the one who can hold on Oak for your eyes. Heart made of stone.

Hands taut on the rein while the roan horse bears you down.

(Down, down, dilly down, down.) (Ash and rue, rosemary and thorn) The winter chose wiser once she learned to choose sisters.

Hands tremble on reins slick with sweating.

A real woman would lift her sorry a.s.s off that pony and get her job done.

Oak for your eyes. Heart made of stone.

Hands taut on the rein while the red horse bears you down.

(Down, down, dilly down, down.) (Ash and rue, rosemary and thorn) No.

This the path.

This the rein.

This the lolloping stride of your stalwart mare rocking among the broad backs of the h.e.l.lbound band.

No souls to sell save yours, and no one is coming to spare.

Oak for your eyes. Heart made of stone.

Hands taut on the rein while the bay horse bears you down.

(Down, down, dilly down, down.) (Ash and rue, rosemary and thorn) Seven years in Faerie is long enough to grow strange.

You have learned the shape of the p.r.i.c.ker-bush.

The spitting cat.

The firebrand.

Turned weird and wild you will b.l.o.o.d.y hands as would grasp you.

Unfair but not untrue.

Oak for your eyes. Heart made of stone.

Hands taut on the rein while the grey horse bears you down.

(Down, down, dilly down, down.) (Ash and rue, rosemary and thorn) Maybe if there were a woman- No.

Oak for your eyes. Heart made of stone.

Hands taut on the rein while the white horse bears you down.

(Down, down, dilly down, down.) (Ash and rue, rosemary and thorn) Seven years in Faerie has made you deep, pointed, and still.

No lover's hand will clutch a bridle that does not ring.

Which will not fall.

The Girl Who Sang Rose Madder A real backstage mostly resembles the opening tease of The Muppet Show: dust, bustle, and unflattering light. Em had gotten over her delusions of glamour pretty fast, though the delusions of grandeur took a little longer to kick her off the ledge. Now, she dodged a costume trolley, sidestepped a roadie, and managed to find a corner that wasn't immediately in use. She rose on tiptoe, craning her neck to look for Ange. Maybe over by the service table, although Em thought it possible that her sister hadn't consumed anything more solid than gin and protein shakes since the early eighties.

Someone touched Em's shoulder, and she spun, heartbeat drowning out whatever he said. A side of beef in a SECURITY s.h.i.+rt loomed from the shadows, and Em instinctively drew herself up in her boots. Her flight reflex had been broken for years. She made it up with housecat bravado.

"Your pa.s.s." He poked at her chest. She glanced down, pretty sure that he wasn't copping a feel-Ange got all the looks, and if Em was feeling like a s.h.i.+t, she'd say it was an even trade for brains and talent-and realized that her all-access pa.s.s had twisted under her leather vest. "Sorry." She hauled it out.

He studied it until he was satisfied, even breaking out his flashlight, and only then glanced at her face.

The double take was gratifying. "s.h.i.+t. You're Emma Case. What are you doing at a Trial show? You used to be great!"

Em ... was feeling like a s.h.i.+t. She blinked at him, slowly, and let herself smile.

"I mean-" he backpedaled. "I'm a fan. I just mean I'm a fan. You're amazing. Number nineteen on the Rolling Stone 'Top 100 Guitarists' of all time-"

"Yeah," she said. "Joni Mitch.e.l.l is better. It's a crime she didn't make the list any higher than number seventy-two, but it was a total boy's club anyway. Maybe they got her confused with Jack White when they were putting things in order."

He was already backing up. Em pushed up the sleeve of her henley and scratched the pad of scar tissue in the crook of her right arm with uncallused fingers. She really ought to get her ink touched up; if it faded any more and if she got any grayer, people were going to start mistaking her for Johnny Winter.

Hah. She'd be lucky to live long enough to go gray.

But he wasn't done gus.h.i.+ng. He bounced in place and tried again. "You were a Warlord. I have all your alb.u.ms from the seventies. On vinyl. I used to play the first two every d.a.m.n day after high school. Madder Rose. And Stick It In."

"Cla.s.s of '89?"

He blushed. " '87."

"Let me guess. You loved the Who, the Pretenders, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones."

He shrugged. "You know? Never so much the Stones. They had started to suck so much by then ... " And then he recollected himself and stuck out a hand. "I'm Earl."

She took it. What the h.e.l.l. "Em."

He held onto her hand too long, but the handshake wasn't too creepy otherwise. Em risked a smile. And then he put his foot in it for good. "So what happened?"

"Seth Savage got completely f.u.c.ked up on heroin and hanged himself from a hotel room shower rod in Las Vegas six years ago," Em answered, in practiced staccato. She turned her face away. "It kind of sank our chances of getting the band back together. Look, have you seen my sister around? I kind of need to find her."

Yeah. She used to be a Warlord. Some days, she got up, showered, walked the dogs, made scrambled eggs and was on her second or third mimosa before she remembered.