Human for a Day (9781101552391) (6 page)

“Because he's mad,” said James.

“Because he wants to blackmail us into giving him the summer,” said Mina. She picked up the stein and swigged half its contents before pouring the rest into a flask she produced from inside her bodice. Dropping the empty stein to the bar, she tucked the flask away and said, “All right. Let's go save you.”

 

Walking through my own streets was even more disconcerting now that I had a vague idea of what was going on. It didn't exactly help that I acquired an escort of pigeons, stray cats, and wharf rats as soon as we stepped out of the bar. Mina ignored the wildlife, scowling at shadows and taking occasional swigs from her flask. James also ignored the wildlife, perhaps because he was distracted by the way flowers kept sprouting from the cracks in the pavement as he passed.

“Oh, yes, we're
very
unobtrusive,” muttered Mina, glaring at a dandelion that had suddenly popped up in front of her shoe.

James looked abashed.

“If we can stop the earthquake, does that mean he'll stop doing whatever he's done to me?” I asked, hurrying to catch up with the pair of them. “This is very distracting. I don't like it.”

“The human condition is so rarely welcome,” said Mina.

“That isn't an answer.”

“It wasn't intended as one.” She sighed. “I don't know, all right? So far as I know, no one has ever incarnated a Lare of your scale without their cooperation. This could be permanent.”

I stared at her, horrified. “What do you mean, permanent ?”

“I mean it could last until you die. Now come on. This will be entirely moot if we all plummet into the Pacific Ocean. If you don't mind?” Mina sped up, forcing us to follow or be left behind.

“I don't think I like her,” I muttered.

James just smiled.

 

The warehouse was old, crumbling, empty, and most importantly, mine. Unlike Mina's bar, it had never been shielded against me, and when I pressed my hand against the wall, it was happy to tell me what it contained. I would have had no trouble interpreting its message in my natural form. As it was, my knees nearly buckled before I gasped, “He's in the back. There's a woman with him. She's . . . on fire?”

James and Mina exchanged a look. “Jane,” they said, in unison.

“He's reading something. I don't understand the words. No one in me speaks that language.”

“Probably Babylonian, or something dreary like that,” sighed Mina. “Well, then. In we go.”

I pulled my hand away from the wall. “What? What about a plan?”

“That
is
the plan.” She held up her flask, smiling sardonically. “Last call. Place your orders and get out.” With that, she shoved the warehouse door open and strode inside. James shook his head and followed.

“I won't do it!” I called after them. “I'm going to stand right here until you come back here and have a better plan!” They didn't come back. The itching in my feet was getting worse. Scowling, I motioned for the pigeons to come along, and ran after them.

James and Mina were striding through the warehouse, making no effort to move stealthily. I caught up to them easily, my pigeons soaring overhead and roosting in the rafters. Neither James nor Mina said anything, and then I heard the sound of chanting, different now that I was hearing it with ears, but also what I'd heard before.

“Stop that rubbish right now, Stuart!” half-shouted James. “You're being silly. Dropping the entire city into the ocean doesn't make you clever, it makes you a bit of a bastard.” He paused. “Ah, apologies for my language, Miss the City.”

“People are saying worse inside me right now,” I reassured him.

That was when the first fireball hit the rafters, and things became too complicated for conversation.

 

The flaming woman charged out of the back, her hands filled with dirty orange fire. She flung it at us indiscriminately, rapidly filling the warehouse with the smell of singed pigeon feathers. Mina and I dove for cover while James raised his hands, heat like the sun baking off him until the flames were dwarfed by its power. “This, again?” he asked. Sunlight surged, and the flaming woman was blown backward, slamming into the wall with a bone-rattling thud.

“City, come on!” shouted Mina, skirting the burning patches of floor as she made for the back of the warehouse. “I need you!”

With no better idea of what to do—and no real desire to be set aflame—I followed, pausing only to stomp out any embers I passed. I was too aware of how old and dry the wood around us was. My pigeons, rats, and cats came with me, and they, too, stopped to extinguish any flames small enough to be handled by their wings and paws.

Behind us, the woman shouted something spiteful, and James answered with another burst of heat. It was like all of July was trying to happen at once. Then we passed a large stack of boxes, and I lost my concern for anything but the man kneeling in front of me, still chanting in that language I didn't understand. It made my teeth ache, but not as much as the sight of the chalk circle around him. Something about it was
wrong
. I couldn't look directly at it.

“Stop that!” I shouted, involuntarily.

The man looked up and—to my dismay—laughed. At least that meant he wasn't chanting anymore. “Oh, this is cute. You've brought me the city, Miss Norton? How did you even find her?”

“I have my ways, Stuart,” snapped Mina. “Listen to your habitation when she tells you to do something, and stop that.”

“This is giving me a headache,” I complained. “I'm not used to having a head. I don't like this.”

“The headache is probably from the rum, but we'll have worse than a headache in a few minutes if Stuart doesn't stop playing silly buggers with the laws of nature.” Mina started to uncap her flask.

“I wouldn't do that, Miss Norton.” Stuart stood, shouting something in a different language I didn't recognize. This one made my eyes water and caused a gust of wind to sweep Mina off her feet and slam her into the wall. Her flask hit the floor, still capped.

Stuart turned toward me, smiling. I took a step backward.

“Don't come any closer,” I said. “Or . . . or else.”

“Or else what? You'll shout at me? Behold the City by the Bay, reduced to harsh words and questionable allies.” He stepped out of the chalk circle. “You're a brilliant work of transfiguration. Lead into gold, city into girl. Oh, the things I'll be able to do once I've taken you apart—”

Mina wasn't moving. James was shouting something in the warehouse behind us; that, and the waves of heat washing against my back, told me there was no assistance coming from that quarter. Stuart was advancing on me, looking entirely too pleased with himself. I did the only thing I could think of, futile as it was certain to be. I raised one hand, pointing at Stuart, and used the other to gesture my animal attendants forward.

“Pigeons,” I said, “kill.”

With a raucous din worthy of Chinese New Year, the urban wildlife descended. Stuart screamed. After that, the feathers obscured the worst of it—at least for a little while.

 

My animals stopped shy of tearing Stuart to pieces, but only because James came around the corner with Jane's unconscious body slung over one shoulder, looked at the scene, and groaned. “Don't kill him if you have a choice, please?” he asked. “My wife will be annoyed if I let him die. It's a family thing.”

“He was quite happy to kill
us
,” I said. “He was going to use me for parts!”

“And now he's not, so please?”

“Very well.” I sighed and clapped my hands, calling, “Everyone come away from the bad man. He's probably terrible for your digestion, anyway.” The animals came with only a few complaints, moving to cover the floor all around me. Pigeons settled on my head and shoulders. I didn't shoo them off. “Now what?”

“First, this.” James dumped Jane next to Stuart, who was scratched and bleeding but still breathing. Ignoring them both, James picked up Mina's flask and uncapped it, pouring the contents onto the chalk circle. The lines blurred and ran together, becoming a muddled mess.

“Get the books,” rasped Mina. I turned to see her sitting up, one hand pressed to her head. “I'll need them to return the city to its original state, assuming it can be done at all.”

“What about them?” I asked, pointing to Jane and Stuart.

“Leave them,” said Mina. “This is enough of a setback that they shouldn't be a problem for a while.”

I scowled. “I'll be watching them.”

“Good,” said Mina, and smiled, before wincing. “Now can someone help me up?”

 

It took us substantially longer to make our way back to the bar. Mina shuffled slowly, with James supporting her, and the sidewalk in front of me was carpeted with living bodies. Their eyes watched every step I took, furred and feathered bodies parting for my footsteps. My companions weren't so lucky.

“I had no idea there were this many rats in the city,” muttered James, after the fifth one he managed to accidentally step on. “Can't you send them off?”

“No. They're worried about me. They're afraid I'm going to leave them.”

“Of all the conscious worshippers a Lare could have, you chose pigeons and rats,” sighed Mina. “Tell them that if they don't let us get back to my establishment, you
will
be leaving them, because I won't be able to send you back to your original state.”

The animals seemed to understand her. They scattered, leaving the way clear for the remainder of our walk. The CLOSED sign was still up on the bar door, and Andy was still behind the counter. He didn't appear to have moved while we were away. That might have been because he hadn't.

“Storeroom,” commanded Mina. “James, help me.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Drink a great deal. After that?” She flashed me a pained smile. “I'm going to settle your tab.”

 

“Stuart used a poorly advised variation on the Cinderella Cordial,” said Mina, looking much better now that she'd consumed most of a bottle of rum and something green that smelled like fermented herbs. “It allows you to transform an ordinary girl into a princess for an evening—or, if used without safeguards by a suicidal idiot, to transform the spirit of a city into an ordinary girl for the same period of time.” Her hands moved as she spoke, pouring an ominous assortment of liquids into a tall glass.

“Why was this poorly advised?” asked James.

“Beyond the part where the city didn't grant consent, she has no shoes to leave on the palace step.” Mina picked up a spoon, giving the mixture a stir. “It's losing the shoe that undoes things. Without that, we must improvise. It's that or have a permanently human city cluttering up the place.”

“No, thank you,” I said quickly.

Mina smiled. “I thought you'd feel that way, although I admit my motives are selfish. Stuart may have succeeded in damaging the fault. If he did, I need you to delay the earthquake as long as possible, to give us time to prepare. Can you do that?”

“I can try,” I said.

“Good.” She added a final shot of liquid to the glass and handed it to me. “It was very nice to meet you. Now drink this and go.”

“Thank you.” The liquid was sweet and sharp and spicy, all at the same time; it burned my tongue and throat, until it felt like I was drinking the fire Jane had been flinging at us in the warehouse. As I drank, I realized that it was getting harder to feel my fingers wrapped around the glass, and harder to keep my eyes from closing. I kept drinking. The burn intensified, sharpened—

—and it was runoff from last night's rainfall trickling through my gutters, it was puddles on the sidewalk and saltwater foam blowing up against the beachside houses. I couldn't feel my fingers because I didn't have any fingers, and I couldn't open my eyes because I didn't have any eyes. I didn't need them. Every pair of eyes in the city belonged to me. Every hand was mine. I was home.

I never left.

 

James looked at the spot where the city had been standing. Only her borrowed clothes remained, lying empty on the floor. “How long do you think we have before whatever Stuart's done comes due?” he asked.

“Not long,” said Mina, flatly. “I recognized those symbols. He was willing to create another Atlantis, if that was what it took to take the summer. We'll have to deal with him sooner or later.”

“I'll tell Margaret, when she wakes up.” James rubbed his face with one hand. “Can the city hold back the quake?”

“I think so.” Mina smiled, bending to pick up the dress San Francisco had been wearing. “We sent our accidental Cinderella home. She'll try to help us, if she can, but it can't hold forever.”

“Well, then,” said James. “Let's get to work.”

 

Anton Strout