wallpaper or the linoleum floor with its worn tracks.
The house was barely more than a dingy shed, but it was all she could afford. Between her father’s doctor visits and his meds and his visiting nurse there just wasn’t much left over from her salary, and she’d long ago used up what little was left of the family money, silver, antiques, and jewelry.
They were barely staying afloat.
And yet, as her father appeared in the cellar’s doorway, she had to smile. His fine gray hair radiated out of his head, a halo of fluff making him look like Beethoven, and his overly observant, slightly frantic eyes also gave him the look of a mad genius. Still, he seemed better than he had in a long while. For one thing, he had his fraying satin robe and silk pajamas on right-everything facing forward, with the top and bottom matching and the sash done up. He was clean, too, freshly bathed and smelling like bay rum aftershave.
It was such a contradiction: He needed his environment spotless and precisely ordered, but his personal hygiene and what he wore were not an issue at all. Although perhaps it made sense. Caught up in his tangled thoughts, he got too distracted by his delusions to be self-aware.
The meds were helping, though, and it showed as he met her eye and actually saw her.
“Daughter mine,” he said in the Old Language, “how fare thee this night?”
She responded as he preferred, in the mother tongue. “Well, my father. And you?”
He bowed with the grace of the aristocrat he was by blood and had been by station. “As always I am charmed by your greeting. Ah, yes, the doggen has put out my juice. How good of her.”
Her father sat with a swish of his robes, and he picked up the ceramic mug as if it were fine English china. “Whither thou goest?”
“To work. I am going to work.”
Her father frowned as he sipped. “You are well aware I do not approve of your industry outside of the home. A lady of your breeding should not be tendering her hours as such.”
“I know, father mine. But it makes me happy.”
His face softened. “Well, that is different. Alas, I do not understand the younger generation. Your mother managed the household and the servants and the gardens, and that was plenty to engage her nightly impulses.”
Ehlena looked down, thinking that her mother would weep to see where they had ended up. “I know.”
“You shall do as you will, though, and I shall love you e’ermore.”
She smiled at the words she’d heard all of her life. And on that note…“Father?”
He lowered the mug. “Yes?”
“I shall be a bit late in getting home this evening.”
“Indeed? Why for?”
“I am going to have coffee with a male-”
“What is that?”
The change in his tone brought her head up, and she looked around to see what-Oh, no…
“Nothing, Father, verily, it is nothing.” She quickly went over to the spoon she’d used to crush the pills and picked it up, rushing for the sink like she had a burn that needed cold water stat.
Her father’s voice quavered. “What…what was it doing? I-”
Ehlena quickly dried the spoon and slipped it in the drawer. “See? All gone. See?” She pointed to where it had been. “The counter is clean. There’s nothing there.”
“It was there…I saw it. Metal objects are not to be left…It’s not safe to…Who left it…Who left it out…Who left the spoon-”
“The maid did.”
“The maid! Again! She must be fired. I have told her-nothing metal is left out nothing metal is left out nothing metal is left out-they-are-watching-andtheywillpunishthosewhodisobeytheyarecloserthanweknowand-”
In the beginning, when her father’s attacks had first occurred, Ehlena had reached out to him as he got agitated, thinking a pat on the shoulder or a comforting hand in his own would help. Now she knew better. The less sensory input into his brain, the faster the rolling hysteria slowed: On the advice of his nurse, Ehlena pointed out the reality to him once and then didn’t move or speak.
It was hard, though, to watch him suffer and be unable to do anything to help. Especially when it was her fault.
Her father’s head shook back and forth, the agitation frothing his hair up into a fright wig of crazy frizz, while in his wobbling grip, CranRas jumped out of the mug, splashing on his veined hand and the sleeve of the robe and the pitted Formica tabletop. From his trembling lips, the staccato beats of syllables increased, his internal record getting played at an ever-higher speed, the flush of madness riding up the column of his throat and flaring in his cheeks.
Ehlena prayed this wasn’t going to be a bad one. The attacks, when they came, varied in intensity and duration, and the drugs helped shrink both metrics. But sometimes the illness bested the chemical management.
As her father’s words became too crowded to comprehend and he dropped the mug on the floor, all Ehlena could do was wait and pray to the Scribe Virgin that this would pass soon. Forcing her feet to stay glued to the crappy linoleum, she closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her rib cage.
If she had just remembered to put the spoon away. If she had just-
When her father’s chair scraped back and crashed to the floor, she knew she was going to be late for work. Again.
Humans really were cattle, Xhex thought as she looked over all the heads and shoulders packed in tight around ZeroSum’s general-population bar.
It was like some farmer had just grained up a trough and the milking stock was jockeying for muzzle space.
Not that the bovine characteristics of Homo sapiens were a bad thing. The herd mentality was easier to manage from a security point of view, and in a way, like cows, one could feed off of them: That crush around those bottles was all about wallet purge, with the tide flowing only one way-into the coffers.
Liquor sales were good. But the drugs and sex had even higher profit margins.
Xhex walked by the bar’s outer rim slowly, dousing the hot speculation of heterosexual men and homosexual women with hard looks. Man, she didn’t get it. Never had. For a female who wore nothing but muscle shirts and leathers and had hair cut short as a infantryman’s, she caught attention as much as the half-dressed prostitutes up in VIP area did.
Then again, rough sex was in fashion these days, and volunteers for autoerotic asphyxiation and ass-crack whippings and three ways with handcuffs were like the rats in Caldwell’s sewer system: everywhere and out at night. Which resulted in over a third of the club’s profits every month.
Thank you very much.
Unlike the working girls, however, she never took money for sex. Didn’t really do the sex thing at all. Except for Butch O’Neal, that cop. Well, that cop and…
Xhex came up to the VIP section’s velvet rope and took a glance inside the exclusive part of the club.
Shit. He was here.
Just what she needed tonight.
Her libido’s favorite eye candy was sitting in the far back at the Brotherhood’s table, his two buddies flanking him and thus buffering him from the three girls who were also crowded into the banquette. Damn, he was big in that booth, all decked out in an Affliction T-shirt and a black leather jacket that was built half biker, half flak.
There were weapons under it. Guns. Knives.
How things had changed. The first time he’d made an appearance, he’d been the size of a bar stool, packing barely enough muscle to bench-press a swizzle stick. But that was not the case anymore.
As she nodded to her bouncer and went up the three graduated steps, John Matthew lifted his stare from his Corona. Even through the dimness, his deep blue eyes glowed when he saw her, flashing like a set of sapphires.
Man, she could pick ’em. The son of a bitch was just out of his transition. The king was his whard. He lived with the Brotherhood. And he was a damned mute.
