Alex gratitude was obvious in his shining eyes.
“No, not really,” Rebecca laughed, patting him on the head and then heading for the door. “But I think you’re doing okay, all things considered.”
Alex sat there for a while, after she left, wondering what she had actually come for, why it was that Rebecca kept such a close eye on him, and why she got so nervous anytime he mentioned Mitsuru. After a few minutes, he decided to put it aside, no closer to a solution than when he had started. He would have to find out what the deal was, eventually. But, he didn’t have to do it right now.
He lay back against the pillows, his eyes half-open, and let his mind drift. It felt good, at that moment, to just lie there, nothing he had to do, nothing to worry about, no expectations to meet. Somehow, Alex felt so tired, and that bothered him, on a fundamental level. What had been the value of all that sleep, if he had not rested?
He frowned, trying to remember, something about sleep, something Eerie had told him. Something about what sleep actually was, what happened while he was asleep…
“The Church of Sleep,” he said softly, turning the phrase over in his mouth like sour candy.
Had he heard someone say that before? Alex wasn’t sure. It still didn’t mean anything to him, but there was a certain… resonance, maybe. A quality of dislocation. A memory from the time before words, like something passing nearby in darkness, evident only in the displacement of air. He felt uncertain, reluctant to follow his thoughts any further in this direction.
Alex wondered if he had slept. Had he dreamed? Had this all happened before?
The headache was so brief, it was over before he realized that it had started, accompanied by a piercing shriek that reverberated in the back of his skull, echoes of a pain he had forgotten. It went on and on, much longer than he could stand, even though it was over before he realized it had begun. The silence that followed was beautiful.
Alex tried to remember what he had been thinking about for the last few minutes for a while, and then he gave up.
He looked down at his hands, blue-veins under the pale skin of his palms, and flexed his fingers. He was awake. Alex ran his fingers along the cold rounded steel of the bed frame, bunched the starched sheets in his hands. This was real.
There was nothing, he thought, opening his eyes and smiling at Eerie, curled in her giant sweatshirt, her head peeking out from the gaping hood, breathing softly, the pink of her slightly parted lips. There was nothing here to worry him, nothing to be afraid of. He had not forgotten anything, nothing important.
She stirred, shifting her hips, drawing her knees up close to her chest, her lips mouthing words that he could not hear, but recognized intuitively, and almost understood. He watched her chest rise and fall, let his eyes linger on the curvature of her white calves, moving against each other with furtive languor. Alex watched Eerie sleep, and felt something like peace, for a little while, wondering what it was that she dreamed of.
In the half-light of the early morning, in a room that was not quite cold, on top of a bed that was not his own, Alex watched Eerie breathe, her face untroubled by whatever passed for a changeling’s dreams. He waited for her to wake, for her to open her eyes and speak to him, to say his name and make everything real.
Thirty
The two guards behind the desk didn’t seem to like Alice’s cheerful smile very much.
The heavy duffel bag she dumped on the faux mahogany desktop with a series of metallic thuds they appeared to like even less.
Alice didn’t look like she was working, to Chris. She looked like she was reveling in the moment, relishing every action.
To say that her job was her life would be to trivialize it. The reality was, the only time that Alice honestly felt like
“My name is Alice Gallow, and I’m here in regards to an ongoing Audit of the Terrie Cartel, as ordered by the Director,” she gushed, grinning at the bank of cameras above the security guards’ heads. She unzipped the bag, one of the guards leaning cautiously closer to peer inside. She upended it onto the desktop, pouring dozens of heavy green German anti-personnel grenades, their pins daisy-chained and attached to one end of a carabineer with wire.
“I don’t have an appointment. Is that going to be a problem?”
Both of the guards moved in unison, one reaching for his gun, the other trying to meld himself with the marble paneled wall behind him, his mouth moving in some kind of desperate plea or prayer, his eyes mad with panic. Alice paused a moment to relish it, before yanking on the carabineer. The pins gave way in rapid succession, a satisfying chorus of near-simultaneous clicks. Alice fell backwards through her own shadow just ahead of the blast wave.
The detonation itself was deafening. The wall panels buckled and rattled, and the air was suddenly dense with particles of glass and wood, and bits of the unfortunate guards, all deformed by the velocity of the force that propelled them. The desk area itself simply disintegrated, the larger chunks tossed straight up toward the white painted ceiling, leaving behind a pile of splintered, smoldering wood.
Next to Chris, huddled behind a retaining column near the glass frontage of the office building, Alice laughed until she wept, pressing her face into her folded arms and rocking back and forth. Chris looked away, carefully removing the fragments of safety glass from his hair, the front windows and doors having shattered with the shockwave of the explosion.
“I do hope that the rest of your plan is better thought out,” Chris said, standing up and wiping soot and dust from his hopelessly stained suit.
Alice smiled back at him, her expression satisfied and benign, her cheeks streaked with tears that had left a trail behind them in the ash and dust that smeared her face. Chris clucked his tongue, fished a handkerchief from his inside pocket, and proceeded to wipe Alice’s face an approximation of clean. Alice simply allowed this to happen, grinning cheerfully up at him.
“You ready?”
Chris examined his handkerchief sadly. For a moment, he looked as if he was going to return it to his pocket, but then he thought better of it and tossed it aside.
Alice nodded and stood up, brushing the front of her coat absently.
“Of course, Chris,” she said quietly, patting him on the shoulder and then walking past him. “This is the best part of the job. You’ll see.”
After a moment, Chris followed her across the ruined entryway, around the charred remains of the front desk, and up to a bank of shining brushed metal elevators.
“Probably,” Chris agreed glumly. “I never actually wanted to, though. Are we really just going to take the elevator up?”
Alice shrugged and pressed the call button.
“Why not? They must know I’m here, and who I am. I did announce myself and my business,” she said, gesturing at the remains of the security cameras.
“Quite,” Chris said dryly. “This isn’t my usual stock in trade. Alice, dear, I don’t know how much good I’m going to be able to do you.”
She looked over at him briefly, the dreamy smile fixed on her face, her blue eyes smoldering.
“I have a pretty good idea how much harm you’ve done, Chris,” Alice said brightly. “So I’d suggest that trying to do me at least that much good is probably your best strategy right now.”
Chris straightened his tie with thin, white fingers, and smoothed his hair in the reflection of the polished brass that framed the elevator, frowning slightly at his appearance.
“Very well. If that is how it has to be. I warn you, though, that this is an ineffective, and in all probability, wasteful use of my services.”
Alice nodded, tapping the toe of her boot against the brushed aluminum doors of the elevator, leaving small
