Fay-Tal Attraction
Boxing Day Night, 1887. Whitechapel, London
If you have to make a professional’s life miserable, don’t ever try it while they’re working. Whether you’re their target or not, they’re looking for you. Because they’re looking for everything, looking for everyone. At least, the good ones are. So the best time is when they’re playing. Because even professionals stop looking properly when there’s a ball involved. Or, as it may be, a foggy night. If, that is, their thing is foggy nights. Which is why I was stood in an alley off Commercial Road.
There’s nothing really difficult about time travel, though the ingredients are a bitch. Virgin’s Tears are getting real hard to come by. Not so much the tears—more the virgins. Which is mostly why there’s a crowd of unicorns hanging round near every street corner, looking hopeful. It’s not generally a problem. The few people who can see them are normally locked up pretty quick by the large number of people who can’t. Who are told to lock them up by the ones who know the unicorns are really there. So it evens out—Unicorn’s Horn is a lot easier than it used to be. And unicorn steak takes some beating.
I’d followed her from the pub at Mitre Square. I made a mental note to take care of it. The pub, I mean. She’d made her way through the alleys the way she had every one of the last few nights. Sometimes she’d stop on a corner, say hello to some other girl on the night shift. They all knew her. Or enough, anyway. Too many would just make more work later.
“’Night, Fay. You get home quick now!” She smiled at the latest one. I followed her as she slipped into another alley. That was when I heard it. Tap. Tap. Tap….
It was time.
If nothing else, he was thorough. He’d been keeping his pattern random, backward and forward. That was going to confuse the heck out of historians. This one was a backward, and he was a long way down his road. The stake through her stomach. The cut open chest. His knife careful and precise, the liver and heart extracted. Like I said. If you’re going to make a professional’s life miserable, do it when they’re having fun. So I stepped out from the shadows. “Hey, Jack.” Then I shot him.
No. I didn’t kill him. He had questions to answer. Besides. He was Executive Suite. Dragon would have him tagged from zipper to zatch. I killed him, they’d smell it on me in a minute.
* * * * *
350 was tight. Wasn’t the first time I’d stashed someone there so we could chat a while. But I couldn’t have him running out on me while I did what needed doing. It’s kind of hard to run without legs. So I cut his off. It gave knee-capping a whole new meaning, except he didn’t have any anymore. Knees, that is. I sealed the ends of his legs in hot tar, so he wouldn’t bleed to death. And so it wouldn’t look out of place when I got rid of him later. Not yet though. Like I said: he had questions to answer.
* * * * *
1888. Whitechapel, London
I was a little short on Virgin’s Tears. So when I got back to Whitechapel, a few weeks had passed. I figured that wasn’t good. I was right. When I broke into the morgue, Fay was gone. So I went to the pauper’s graveyard. Good job nobody was going to pay for cremation. I dug. When I opened the casket, she wasn’t happy.
“Bloody hell, Jack. Took your time, didn’t you?” Yup. She was pissed.
“Hello to you too, Prowess.” That’s the thing about being a Shape-shifter. Having your heart and liver cut out is more an inconvenience than anything else. “So. Who do we have to fix?”
The cop was easy. Even police Inspectors take an occasional drink, and Edmund Reid was no different. First, Prowess fixed him so he got rid of all evidence there’d ever been an investigation. After he was done she sucked a bit harder, and he forgot everything. Like it never happened. An evening or so around Whitechapel, and nobody there remembered Fairy Fay. A little gasoline, a match, a little of Prowess, and nobody remembered there’d ever been a pub at Mitre Square either. Or the people in it when it burned down.
The easiest person to get rid of? Somebody who was never there in the first place. So Fairy Fay went back to the land of the never-was, and a whole new set of web pages got a reason to exist. But that was OK. Web pages are like unicorns. Everybody knows people who believe them, or in them, are crazy. Which suits the Dragon just fine.
That left Jack.
* * * * *
Back at 350, Jack wasn’t happy either. “Shadow. This time—this time you’ve really gone too far. You know you can’t kill me. And you know you can’t hold me here forever. When I get back and tell The Master….” He stopped.
“Yes. The Master. I’ve been hearing a lot about him recently. Who is he, Jack?”
Jack laughed. “A nice try, Shadow. But you don’t sit at any table high enough to know about….” He stopped again. “Yes. A nice try indeed.”
Damn. I was going to have to rebuild the bloody wall. Again. A few strokes with a hammer I kept for occasions like this, and Twinkle greeted the world. As in, not greeting. Being dead will do that. You didn’t need Jack’s surgical training to see she’d been dead for a while. “Nope. I don’t. Know any high tables, I mean. But she did,” I pointed.
“But she’s … we’ve been tracking her for … I saw her yesterday!” If Jack hadn’t been happy before, he was even less happy now.
“Yup. You’ve been keeping tabs on her, right? While she ‘followed’ me?” It was my turn. I grinned. “Well, we had quite the little chat, Twinkle and me.”
“Twinkle?”
I sighed. “Twinkle. We didn’t exactly get down to names, Jack. Anyway. We had quite a little chat. I’m good at chats. Right, Jack?”
“Do at least try, Shadow. I don’t know how you did it, but it doesn’t matter. She was just a Cleaner. There’s nothing she could have told you about—about matters.” Jack didn’t grin. I guessed he figured he was about to find out how good I was. At chats. Which was fine by me, because he wasn’t.
I grinned. “I guess you’re right, Jack. I guess there’s no chance those high tables thought your … amusements … were getting risky. That you were getting sloppy. That they put one of their best in your pocket, to maybe find out. No chance, right Jack?” Getting Jack on edge would make things easier. So I pulled a knife from my boot, and put him on edge. Throats aren’t any good if the mark knows you can’t kill them, but stomach wounds bleed big, and you can always sew them up. “So, Jack. Since you don’t know what I know, you won’t know when I know you’re lying. You know?” I stopped, just to check if my ‘knows’ were in the right place. They were. “So. The Master. What do you know, Jack?” I lit a flame under the tar I’d used to seal his legs. I grinned. Normally the grin was just for effect. Normally, like I said, it was just a job. It was this time as well. But this time was different. This time, I was working for me.
I figured the grin should have just about done it. So I hit him. Hard. He went out like a light. Which let Prowess stop being the extra layer of wall behind me. She grimaced as she slithered down. “Damn. I hate that. You get used to legs and—” she shuddered. Or shivered. “—and bits.”
“Is he ready, P?”
A bit of Prowess oozed over to Jack. Then it stopped. “Ready for what, Jack? What do you want?”
“Everything, P. Hell, I don’t even know the right questions yet. I need everything, and I need to be able to ask him stuff I don’t know.”
Prowess’ face went hard. As though she wanted to make a point, she grew another face and that one went hard as well. “That’s big, Jack. Damn big. You see….” She looked at me. “Well, no. You probably don’t. What do you think memory is, Jack?” I waited. She was going to tell me anyway. “You see, memory—it’s not all that chemical nonsense they talk about. It’s your soul, Jack.”
Which was interesting. Because I remembered things. Which meant….
“No it doesn’t, Jack.” Prowess apparently couldn’t read my mind. Blondie was different. Of course, most people couldn’t walk out of walls either. Not that Blondie was exactly people, so that’s just what she did. Walk out of the wall. Prowess’ brow furrowed. Her eyes started to glaze. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.” Blondie sounded amused.
“Powers above! She’s a dragon, Shadow! What the—” Prowess stopped. She thought a moment. “Yes. I do believe the moment is appropriate for this sort of thing. What the fuck have you got me into, Jack?”
Blondie grinned. “He’s a little puzzled, my dear. You told him he has no soul. But he remembers things. So he thinks you’re lying. Are you lying, dear?” She grinned wider. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. No, Jack. She isn’t lying. Yes. What people call memory is really their soul. Little bits of their soul that get scraped off at different times, in different places. Little bits of their soul the rest of their soul is always connected to. But you? You have—something else. And no. I’m not telling you what it is. Not yet.” She grinned again. I had a feeling there were a lot of things Blondie wasn’t telling me. But we’d get to those. Whether Blondie knew it or not. She winked at me. Which meant she probably did. And didn’t seem too worried.
Prowess pursed her lips. “Whatever, Jack. But what it means is, I can’t do what I do. Eat. Bits of him, I mean. I have to take it all, Jack. All of it. I have to take his soul. And I’m not doing it. Unless….”
That’s how it always is. In the end. There’s always a price. Always an ‘unless’. “Unless what, P?”
“Unless I get you too, Jack.” Blondie smirked. Me? I waited. Prowess spat at Blondie. “Don’t be so tiresome.” She looked at me. “No, Jack. Not that. Not that it wouldn’t….” for a moment, she looked thoughtful. Then, “No. Not that. You’re the only person I’ve never been able to read, Jack. So that’s what I want. To read you.”
I shrugged. “Nothing to read, P. What you see is what you get. I’m just a guy who walked out of a bar.”
“That’s what you are now, Jack. But it’s not what you were once. So if ever you find out, I want it. I want it all.”
“You’d better agree, Shadow.” For some reason Blondie sounded excited. Which probably wasn’t good. But I still needed what Jack had. And Prowess? The wall had a lot of space left behind it. If I needed it. “Sure.”
“And done!” Blondie wasn’t just excited. She was on fire. Literally. A ball of flame sprang into life round her. “Oh. Sorry. Never mind me.” I had another feeling. That something important had just happened. And I had no idea what it was.
* * * * *
September 8th, 1863. Baie Sainte Marie, Nova Scotia, Canada
A cold wind blew along the beach. I dropped Jack from where he’d been slung over my shoulder. Prowess’ smile was as cold as the wind, and then some. “So what do we do, Jack? He’s empty now. You going to kill him?” I told her about the tag. Told her how the Dragon would smell it on me if I killed him. Prowess frowned. “But—but he’ll be dead anyway, won’t he?”
I could see P’s lips moving as she tried to work out how a guy who was going to have been dead for a hundred and fifty years wasn’t going to be dead when we’d taken him from. And if that sounds confusing, you’re right. It is. Lucky for me, that’s not how it works. “He’s Tagged.” The look on P’s face said that didn’t help. I shrugged. “The Tag’s in his head with him. Say I Tagged you yesterday, at Carnegie Hall.” Prowess looked pissed. I sighed. “OK, I didn’t. But say I did. Tag wouldn’t know you was here in the Back-Along. Just know a day was gone and you wasn’t dead. But you die? The Tag wouldn’t know when. Just that it happened so many days after they was set on you. But they’d get a print of every soul near you the moment it happened.” It wasn’t like that at all. But it was close enough.
“So what do we do, Jack?”
“Can you put anything in him? Anything at all?”
“There’s always a bit left. A fragment. A scratch of his soul. So yes. A few words, maybe.”
“Well then. Not Jack. Jason. John. Something beginning with J.”
Prowess eyes looked far away, across a distant horizon of years. “I knew a boy once. Jerome….”
“Where was that, P?”
Prowess smiled, her eyes still distant. “What? Oh. Trieste. But….” Her eyes focused back on the here and now. “But no matter.” Her eyes focused on Jack. “There. It’s done.” We left, the same way we came. Someone would find him. Soon enough.
See, that’s the way it is. There’s always something somebody wants. And there’s always a price. The trick is to make sure somebody else pays. Like now. I guess that’s a question for you. Who’s going to pay?
But it’s not the Question. Or maybe … maybe it is.