Sam’s shift at Brunson’s began only an hour after he and Amy finished breakfast, and as he restocked shelves with fifty-pound bags of rice and flour and sugar, his roiling mind took some small comfort in the steady physical labor. Still, his thoughts constantly returned to Amy, and to the situation. During a bathroom break—because he was making himself take those—he caught a glimpse of himself in the smudgy mirror and felt a wave of the hopelessness that lay beneath all of this. His face had not changed the slightest bit in all these years—decades, generations, in which he did not age and never would. As time passed with Amy, he could grow a beard and appear older; he was only twenty-three to her, after all, and still had a good ten or even fifteen years in which his youthful face and fit body would pass as a genetic blessing and nothing more. But after that—what then? Even if he and Amy didn’t make it that long as a couple, how old would this child be when he grew suspicious of his father’s appearance?
He returned to the sales floor and was pulling a pallet of olive oil canisters toward the display when his boss approached him. “Hey, Sam,” he said. “We had some raw chicken drip onto a bunch of those big sacks of bread crumbs. Can you get them out to the trash?”
“Sure thing.”
Outside, he stopped the dolly at the Dumpster and looked around at the unkempt, peacefully abandoned space. The quiet corner of the parking lot, just to his right, was where Amy had first smiled and waved at him, standing at the car with Lola while Kevin handed over her number. He had always suspected Kevin looked down on him: a mere worker bee, scrappy in his appearance, uneducated and poor and lacking in ambition. He had also perceived that Kevin felt threatened by the qualities Sam possessed which he did not: not only his strength, but the way he made people laugh, and the flirtatious attention he attracted from women in nearly any situation—his animal magnetism, Tabby used to call it. It’s all in how you use it, Kevin had said, and Sam had laughed at him inwardly, not realizing that Kevin had been using it on Sam’s own girl.
He stacked the bags of bread crumbs on the ground behind the Dumpster, gave a final glance around, and snapped his fingers above the pile. A spray of sparks flew out and landed on the bags, instantly igniting them. The flames leaped up as high as his hands, burning through their fuel rapidly, filling the air with the scent of scorched bread. It was soothing to watch it burn, calming to his razor-edged nerves.
When the flames had nearly reached the ground, he crouched down and held his hand to their dancing top edges, pulling them back into himself. A burst of heat surged through his arm, but the sensation dissipated, and instantly the fire was gone. All that was left was the pile of ash, and the wind would carry that away in short order. He burned things hot and clean, every time.
He stood, brushed the ash from his jeans, and pushed the dolly back inside.
~ * ~
The smell of roast beef hit him as soon as he walked in the door after work. Amy stood at the stove, wearing a Cascade Mocha Crafters apron this time instead of the cupcake one, mashing potatoes into a bowl. “Hey, you’re home,” she said happily, and leaned back to prompt him to kiss her. He complied, and she asked, “How was work?”
“Warehouse-tastic.”
“Can you set the table? This is almost ready.”
It didn’t escape his notice that she had prepared his favorite dinner: the Sunday supper whose scent he had often caught, during his younger years, wafting through the windows of homes beyond his neighborhood when he walked to the Catholic church to collect the food alms offered to families. Day-old bread and apples, a sack of peas or cornmeal, the occasional wedge of salt pork. He was grateful for it and ate it hungrily, but it wasn’t roast beef.
Nonetheless, he was quiet during dinner, and his unusual lack of good humor seemed to make Amy nervous. She reached for his hand when he finished his meal, interlacing her fingers with his on the table. The rest of the group more than made up for it, as Remy had catered an office party that day that had gotten a little out of hand with the Irish coffee, and the stories were lively enough even to induce Sam to crack a smile.
“Sorry I couldn’t spare anybody to help you with that,” said Kevin. “We really need to hire a few more people. LA was barely manageable, and the skeleton crew we’re bringing on the East Coast trip is worrying me pretty bad.”
“We’ll make it work,” said Amy. “We just need to reorganize how we handle the booth when the lines are long.”
“I’m more worried about coming up with enough product for a New York crowd.” He looked at Sam. “Hey, I’d still love some ideas from you about places we should hit while we’re at your old stomping grounds. You used to live in New York, too, right?”
Sam leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, but I haven’t been there in like a hundred years. Great tavern on Cross Street, though. The dark ale’s good, and at the brothel upstairs you can get a BJ for a dime.”
“Ha ha.”
A few weeks earlier he had been glad to offer Kevin his considerable expertise in the nightlife of Boston, but now, imagining him out with Amy having a good time in the places Sam used to haunt with Tabby, he felt far less generous. In fact, he wasn’t keen on the two of them going off on this little jaunt at all, even with Lola in tow. Lola liked Sam, but she was Kevin’s friend first and foremost. He and Amy could be going at it like monkeys in the next bed over and she would never breathe a word about it to Sam.
“I’ll take time off and come along, if you need the help,” said Sam. “I mean, I don’t mind.”
Lola eyed him skeptically. “You just took time off to go to Tennessee.”
“They won’t care. My manager’s cool. The Nashville trip was the first time I’ve requested leave in over a year.” Not since Tabby disappeared, when he had taken off a full week and did nothing but drink and burn things, knowing that the alcohol wouldn’t affect his mind but at least filled the emptiness inside him with something his body could consume. He didn’t even prowl until the night before he returned to work, when he forced himself to. An incubus who arrives in a dreamer’s bed too hungry causes her to dream of monsters.
“That would be great, honestly,” said Kevin. “I could really use the extra hands.”
“It would be awesome,” echoed Amy. She tightened her fingers around Sam’s. “I’d love for you to show me the places you know.”
Across the table, Kevin put his arm around Rose. She smiled at Sam, and he realized she had been watching him silently all this time, observing the dynamics of the conversation. Inwardly he chided himself to keep his hostility toward Kevin in check. She needed not to know.
~ * ~
The garden center was insane on a Saturday afternoon, packed with urban homesteaders gathering up seedlings and bags of fertilizer and ridiculously expensive, colorful metal ladders for their tomatoes to climb. As bad as his housemates were at steering a simple flatbed shopping cart, Sam wondered at the safety of letting them handle a rake or hoe.
“Look at this,” he said to Amy, picking up a cherry-red tomato ladder. “‘Powder-coated steel.’ Twenty-eight dollars. How much is a tomato? Maybe seventy-five cents? How many tomatoes are you going to grow to justify this thing?”
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Amy sighed. “First of all, I’m not buying that thing, but secondly, you’re looking at it all wrong. You can grow the heirloom varieties you want, organically, and harvest them perfectly ripe—”
“It’s a fucking tomato,” said Sam. “You cut it up and put it on a cheeseburger. It doesn’t have to dazzle you but so much.”
“Well, you’re not thinking like a foodie.”
“You’re right about that. I’m thinking like somebody with reasonable priorities.”
Rose appeared from around the corner with a bottle of some sort of garden chemical. “Found the neem oil.”
“Take Sam over to the hardware section while I look at seedlings,” Amy said to her. “He’s driving me crazy.”
Rose smiled at him sympathetically. She seemed less sick lately—it had been a while since he’d heard her through the wall—and although he couldn’t yet see that she was pregnant, she had begun wearing looser clothes. Amy hadn’t been sick at all, but in the days since her announcement she had suddenly grown tired and touchy, as if the façade had dropped and she could now admit she felt like crap.
“Come on, Sammy,” said Rose. “Let’s take you over to the manly things.”
They had barely passed out of Amy’s hearing range when Rose spoke to him in a tone both covert and ironic. “I hear your girlfriend is in a delicate condition these days.”
“She is, indeed.”
“I’m sure that came as quite a surprise.”
His laugh was low, bordering on sarcastic. But he said, “Well, at least I know how it got there.”
“Do you know her due date yet?”
“Right after Christmas.” Sam had done the math and figured out that the blessed event had happened right around the time he moved in. In a strange way, that made it slightly more forgivable. He himself had gone on a prowling binge in the week leading up to that date, one that made his Tennessee adventures look tame—a sort of extended bachelor party in which he had added gluttony to his usual order off the menu of seven deadly sins.
“Only about six weeks behind me. Won’t this household be fun, come next winter.” She offered Sam a sly smile and turned up an aisle that overlooked the greenhouses. “Here you go. Tools. Lots of them.”
“Great. Come back and find me once Amy’s done.”
Rose walked away, and Sam looked over the display of tools with genuine interest. He liked working with his hands, as long as it didn’t involve scraping and softening hides in a tannery. Eventually the humidity drifting out from the greenhouse began to make his throat uncomfortable—ambient moisture, the curse of every incubus—and he wandered off in search of a place to smoke.
He found his way outside, where an elaborate train set had been set up around tiers of lush flowering plants. The display was surrounded by families—parents smiling, and dozens of children whose faces reflected utter enchantment. He tucked his cigarettes back into his pocket and watched the scene, drawn in by the detail of the train set. It was a magnificent toy, and the little boy in him looked upon it with glee. Near him, a father picked up his eager toddler and held him so he could see the trains from a much higher vantage point. The child pointed and babbled something Sam couldn’t understand, but his expression communicated well enough.
Such scenes always pulled at his heart a little. Sam remembered his own father warmly, if not well. He had died of typhus when Sam was twelve, and the loss had been wrenching, plunging his mother into a deep state of grief and the family into even deeper poverty. His mother had sometimes told him that he had his father’s heart, and though that observation felt more complicated with every year that passed, he knew she had meant well by it. Though he could never carry on the family name, as his father had surely hoped his sons would, he liked that he made cambions who could not be killed by pestilence. That particular death had no power over the people he helped create, and that felt like a small victory he had won.
Maybe—just possibly—he was thinking about this situation with Amy and her pregnancy all wrong. Maybe, if his own father were here, he would tell Sam that he should take it year by year, since nothing is guaranteed in a human life in any case. That if he truly did have his father’s heart, even a dozen years would be enough to make a difference that mattered.
In his mind’s eye he could see Meridiana’s measuring, slightly alarmed gaze. He could easily imagine what she would think of his reasoning. But to hell with her; he wasn’t bound by succubus strictures and regulations. He was an incubus: he could be punished, he could be killed, but he could not be ruled.
He turned away from the display and back toward the building. The drier outside air had made his throat feel better, and he no longer needed to smoke. He headed back into the store, eager now to find Amy. Already he felt apologetic for how he had treated her these past few days.
~ * ~
The flight to Boston left early the next morning, but a long layover in Chicago meant that it was the dinner hour when they arrived. Still, Kevin and Lola in particular were feeling energized; they all ate together at a pub within walking distance of the hotel, then returned by way of the Lawn on D Street, a sort of grown-up playground offering all sorts of amusements—ping-pong tables and giant Jenga and great circular swings that lit up at night. It felt good to Sam to be back in Boston, and better still to explore someplace new within the city, because retracing his steps with Tabitha would have only soured his mood. Instead, he felt the gentle lift of being back in his element—the self-assurance of being a native, or close enough to one, rather than a stranger in a strange land.
Once they got back to the hotel room, Amy took a long, hot shower, during which Sam stripped down to his underwear and lay on the bed watching a Red Sox game on TV. It was practically rapturous to see his team play again, after so many years of sneaking into nearly every single game, followed by the two summers that had dragged him very far from home.
She came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her wet hair curly and tucked behind her ears. She smoothed on lotion, then dug around in her suitcase for her pajamas. Sam said, “C’mere. You’re not going to need those for a while.”
“I just want to relax for a bit.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She found the tank top and shorts and let the towel drop as she put them on. “Are we really watching baseball?”
“Well, I had another idea, but you don’t seem to be on the same page.”
“God, Sam.” She sighed, found a pair of socks, and sat on the edge of the bed to pull them on. “I’m sure you can go an entire twenty-four hours without getting laid. Seriously.”
He sat up and looked at her with genuine concern. “Is something wrong?”
“Yeah. I’ve been up since five, and I’m tired.” She fetched her toothbrush from her bag. When she disappeared into the bathroom again, Sam got up and followed her.
He stopped at the doorway and leaned on his arm against the frame. “You’ll sleep better if I make you come, and then you’ll wake up nice and refreshed.”
She gave him a withering look that perplexed him. “Nice try,” she said through a mouthful of toothpaste, and spat in the sink. “If you need it that bad, just jerk off. You can do it in bed for all I care. Just put in your earbuds so your porn doesn’t keep me awake.”
He felt his face contorting in offended disbelief. It wasn’t simply that he couldn’t gratify himself, although that was also true; it was the refusal to reconnect with him in the way he had always reconnected with his partner, coupled with a suggestion that boggled his Victorian-bred mind. A man didn’t look at pornography and play with himself in the presence of his girlfriend. It was too disrespectful to fathom.
“That’s disgusting,” he told her.
She laughed spontaneously and spat again. “Are you serious? Please. What a convenient time for you to become a prude.”
He shook his head in dismay. “We don’t have to be intense about it. Just lie on your side and I’ll take you from behind. I’ll make it good for you, too.”
“Sam.” She turned from the sink to face him, her toothbrush still in hand, her eyes wide with aggravation. “I don’t want to have sex with you tonight. My God, stop trying to fucking manipulate me. You sound like my high school boyfriend.”
Spurned, he abandoned the doorway and stalked back toward the bed, unsure of what to do. He picked up his jeans from the floor and pulled them on, buckling his belt as she reemerged from the bathroom. She said, “Oh, now you’re leaving?”
“I’m just going downstairs for a drink.”
“Oh, good idea.” She made a scoffing sound as she pushed back the covers. “Fucking ridiculous. Can’t handle being turned down even once. Boo hoo, better get the alcohol.”
“That’s not it.” The darts of her words hurt him, for she misunderstood him so badly. “I just wanted to be close to you, that’s all.”
“Stop it.”
He picked up his shirt from earlier, then thought better of it and went through his bag to find his prowling shirt. The very act of it made him feel bereft. The yearning for intimacy with his partner and the urge to seek out dreamers were two very different desires. But not entirely different; and in the absence of the first, he would not be able to suppress the second.
He took the stairwell down to the bar, got a beer, and stepped out onto the patio to drink it. From there he could see the city, the small square lights of its windows shining in the darkness, the familiar silhouette of its buildings against the horizon. Without even trying, he could remember the locations of a dozen of his old dreamers. He knew he needed to be smart and stay within the hotel so he would not be gone for too long, but just for a few beautiful moments he felt like his old self again, looking out over the city of Boston lit up with endless possibility.
He drank down his beer, feeling the furnace in his belly flaring to life, welcoming the fuel. Already his fingertips were tingling in the anticipation of transfiguring into his elemental self, and his groin as well, because he couldn’t help that. No matter how he tried, there was nothing he could do.