“Eeeeew!”
Mom had told me to go find CG in one of the little lab rooms the Organisation keeps for purposes best not enquired into, and to do it before I grabbed lunch. She said it with one of those ‘Mom’ smiles – now I knew why. CG looked up from the thing in his hand that might have been a pestle, if I had any idea what a pestle was. Which I didn’t. So ‘thing in his hand’ was probably close enough. He shook his head. “Sorry. Unicorn Horn. That’s unicorns for you. Great PR – lousy personal hygiene. Not that that’s the problem.” He picked up a very tiny bottle of liquid. It shone a faint green. “Virgin’s Tears.”
I ran my mind over my less-than-dear fellows at Middle-of-Nowhere-High. Off the top of my head, I could think of a few I’d seen crying – mostly the football squad when some smart ass teacher was dumb enough to expect them to do something hard, like spell their names maybe. Or the cheer squad when someone didn’t try to look up their skirts. But I couldn’t think of even one who’d be worth tapping to fill the little glass bottle. This was Small Town USA. Everybody in town was practicing to be everybody else’s relative. It’s not like there was much else to do on a Saturday night – or any other night come to that. So nobody qualified. On the other hand, I hadn’t actually noticed any unicorns either. So I did the smartest thing I knew how to do at times like these. I said nothing, and waited.
CG sighed. “I know. No unicorns. But that’s normal. They’re big city hunters, mostly. More lost and lonely types in cities. Folk who never had so much as a friend, never mind...” CG flushed “Well, never mind anything else. It’s not like here, where half the town are their own grandparents. So cities are where you find them. Unicorns. Hanging round near every street corner, looking hopeful. It’s not generally a problem. We get the few people who can see them locked up by the people who can’t.”
“So how do you…?”
CG flushed. “I… well. When the boss needs supplies, I go get some.”
I grinned. “CG! So you’re a…? You should have said! I could have taken care of it for you any time!”
He flushed again. “Look. I may be a thousand years and change, but I’m still eight. Sort of.” He flushed again. “Well. Where it counts, anyway.” His face went flat. “Besides. It’s one less to worry about.”
“Worry about?”
“Weren’t you listening? I said cities are where they hunt. And a unicorn without its horn is a dead unicorn.” I dropped the eyebrow I had up, and raised the other one just for practice. CG sighed. “Look. You ever meet one? A virgin, I mean? Who’s met a unicorn?”
“CG, I don’t know if I’ve ever met any virgins at all. Well, apart from you.” I winked. “But like I said - we can talk about that.”
“No we bloody can’t. You have any idea how many pacts I’ve signed with demons? There’s a price to pay, and being eight makes it a lot easier to pay it. OK? Anyway. You never will.”
“Never will?”
“Meet one. A virgin who’s met a unicorn.” CG reached onto a shelf and took something down. He tossed it to me. The spiral twist on the horn sparkled like mother of pearl. The point was sharper than my best knife. “People never ask why unicorns want to hang out with virgins. You ever get horny, Maya?”
I grinned again. “Why, CG. I thought you’d never ask.”
This time it was CG’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Riiight. Ever wonder where the expression came from?” He nodded at my hands. “Pretty sharp, you think? But it makes getting the tears easier. Still, you’ve got to be quick. They don’t last long.”
“The tears? Or the girls?”
CG raised an eyebrow. “Girls? Unicorns don’t gender discriminate. Where there’s a way, there’s a horn.” He nodded at the tip of the horn in my hand. “And unicorns aren’t exactly known for, um, taking their time. So if you want Tears, you gotta be quick. And we’ve got a squad in most cities. They clean up.”
It wasn’t like any of the fairy tales Mom was supposed to have told me when I was a kid. Though Mom’s stories weren’t ever short on blood, or even horn come to that, they tended to have a lot more lead in them. “So that’s unicorns, huh? Getting their honey’s for nothin’, and their kicks for free?”
CD sighed. “Remind me to assign you some more reading. Why do you think I’ve signed my bloody soul away to…” his lips moved for a moment “… sixty three different demons? Though that’s demons for you. Big on power, lousy at book-keeping. Look, unicorns are magic, right? Hells, there’s nothing much more magic. Well, apart from…”
“From what?” If I didn’t know about it, it was a possible threat. That’s what Mom said.
For a moment, CG looked frightened. “Never you mind. If you ever have to go up against one of the Unborn, you’re dead already.” He shook his head. “No. Unicorns are more than bad enough. We don’t need drag…” His eyes went to the mirrors. “Right. So if you’re a unicorn, you need power, just to keep being one. And there’s nothing with more power than a soul. Especially the fresh ones. The pure ones. Capiche?”
I looked at the blood still oozing from my thumb where I’d touched the point of the horn. And I told myself if I ever came across any unicorns, we were going to have a nice little chat. And it would be my Glock doing the talking, even if I hadn’t ‘qualified’ for unicorn interest in a long time. Which made me I wonder if Mom had had more than hormones-not-screwing-missions on her mind when she brought Sven and Maria home. I shrugged. “Point…” I tossed the horn back to CG “… taken. So what’s the big deal then?”
CG raised his other eyebrow, as though I’d done something clever. “Big deal?”
I had no idea what I’d done right, but wasn’t going to boost his ego by asking what it was. I nodded at the horn. “Horn. Tears. Deal?”
“Oh. She didn’t tell you. Figures.”
“Tell me what?”
“Your new job.”
Washington D.C. - 350 And Down
The man in the leather duster shrugged. “Heffy? Never heard of him.”
“YOU’RE A LOUSY LI… er, I mean, you’re a lousy liar, Jack.” The old man paused. “Actually, that’s not true. You’re damn good at it. But there aren’t many who can get their hands on Chaos – never mind make it into bullets, and a gun to fire it. Or all the other nice toys he’s fixed you up with. Heffy’s about all there is.”
“Like I said. I never heard of any Heffy. But if I had, I guess I’d be thinking about paying him a visit. He said those slugs would take care of anything.”
“No he didn’t, Jack. He said they’d take care of anything you needed to take care…” The old man stopped. “Very clever, Jack.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “So you know whoever it is you think I know. And whoever it is, they tell you what they say to me. Exactly what they say to me. Maybe I’d better remind them who they’re working for.”
“Oh, he’s working for you, Jack. It just might not always seem that way. Not yet, anyway.” The old man shook his head. “So why are we here, Jack?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“Of course I know, Jack. But you have to tell me. There are Rules – and even I can’t get round all of them.” The old man winked. “So humour me, Jack. Why are we here?”
“Someone tried to kill me.”
“Ah. Well, you don’t look dead Jack. So that’s alright. Isn’t it?”
“No. It isn’t. They got me. Got me cold. And I never saw them coming. And I always see them coming. And I was working. The fourteenth century wasn’t big on 357 Glocks, but that’s what she hit me with.”
“She? So you’re busy taking care of unfinished business, and before you can put a bullet in Vlad’s head, some young girl you didn’t even notice steps out from behind a tree and puts one in yours?”
“Interesting. I never told you about…”
“So I’m a good guesser, right Jack?” The old man tilted his head, nodding slightly at the shadow of an old woman Jack knew had no reason to be on the wall it was decorating. Not that that seemed to stop it being there. The shadow raised what looked like the shadow of a stick. “I mean it’s not like I’d risk any trans-temporal-quantum-irregularity, universe fucked up and ending paradox stuff by telling you stuff I’m not supposed to know. I’m just a bloody good guesser, right Jack? I mean – RIGHT JACK?”
Jack made a point of not looking at the shadow on the wall. “Guess so.” He made equally sure he didn’t watch as the shadow faded from the wall it should never have been on.
“Phew.” The old man wiped his forehead. “She can be a right bugger, Moira.”
“Moira?”
“Never you mind, Jack. So. You ever wondered how you do it, Jack?”
“How do I do what?”
“What you do. When you… fix… things?”
Jack shrugged. He took a bottle from his jacket, and threw it to the old man. “Damned if I know. You tell me.”
“No, Jack. You tell me.” The old man tilted his head towards the wall that was busy not having any shadow on it.
Jack’s gun echoed – and the wall had a new bullet hole. There was a faint scream that might have been an old crone – or even three of them. He nodded to himself as green ichor oozed from the wall. “Right. So I get a job. I read all there is to read on the target. It’s best if I can find things they wrote themselves – but whatever I can get. I drink my medicine – and I fix it.”
The old man gave a worried look to the bullet hole. “Right. Right – yes, Jack. But how?”
“I go back. I go back to when the target needs fixing – and I fix it.”
“So how do you know? How do you know where you have to go, Jack? And how do you get there?”
“I told you. I read stuff. And I know. The rest? Unicorn Horn and Tears.”
“But how do you know, Jack?”
Jack sighed. “Because I remember. Because once I’ve done it, it’s in the past. Well, my past. So my now-me can remember doing it.”
“So Jack. You remember. And you remember things that happened, and things that never happened, even if they did once, because you stopped them. And maybe – just maybe – sometimes you even remember things happening that never happened at all. Because you haven’t ‘nudged’ them yet, but one day you might. Right, Jack?”
“Right.”
“So you ever wonder what memory is, Jack?”