I walked away from Paul’s apartment feeling like a winner. Feeling like a god damn secret agent superhero in an amazing suit, so I called Denise.
“Hey, you’re about to end your shift, right?”
“Twenty minutes, I’m halfway home.”
“I had a weird undercover mission today, and DMA bought me an amazing new suit. I’ve got to show you this before I put it in my closet for a year. Can you get cleaned up and meet me somewhere?”
Denise got really quiet for way too long.
“Sorry,” I said. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Tim,” she said, obviously angry. “You can’t ask me on a date and then go home to a demon. I can’t believe…”
“Whoa!” I said, desperately backpedaling. “I wasn’t trying to make it a date, I was just… Shit. I’ve just never had a real suit before, and I wanted to show somebody. And it won’t be a big deal to Lydia, but you would get it. You would love it, and you would know what it means, and I… Shit. I didn’t even think about how this looks. I’m sorry.”
Her expression softened. “I’m sure it’s a great suit. Just wear it next time we have to dress up for some Bluestar pony show. I’ll see it then.”
* * *
I went home to Lydia and walked in with my ego slightly deflated, but still strutting a little.
Lydia came down from her perch and paced around me.
I posed for her and said, “Well, what do you think?”
“I think someone is taking you very seriously, but it might be for the wrong reasons.”
“What the fuck, Lydia? After all the shit you’ve given me about the way I dress, you can’t just be happy for me?”
“Of course,” Lydia said. “I’m sorry, but this is so nice, it has to be a gift. And it looks like the kind of gift that comes with strings attached.”
“You are so goddamn paranoid!” I yelled, letting some of my frustration slip out. “Yes, I got it for a mission, a successful mission and I fucking killed it. I earned this as a perk and there’s nothing to worry about.”
“I’m sorry,” Lydia repeated. “You look wonderful. Even more impressive than your last wardrobe change.” She took my hands and flashed into a black dress, then stood next to me while I conjured a hologram of the two of us together.
“You look perfect,” I said. “We look perfect. We really should go somewhere. It’ll be months before I have a reason to wear this again, and I’ve checked off so many life goals so quickly this year, we deserve to celebrate.”
“It’s dangerous for us to go out together,” Lydia whispered, like she really didn’t want to say it. “It was foolish of me to go with you the last time we did this, but I didn’t understand your world as well as I do now. This city… There are too many demon thralls in this city. Too many eyes that might see me.”
“So, let’s go to another city. We’ve got flying cars now, an. Let’s go somewhere they don’t have a wizard or a demon behind every fucking lamp post. Let’s see, what’s the least magical place I can think of, short of flying all the way back to Texas…”
I had Jeeves pull up a map and tell me how much it would cost to go to different states. “When I was in middle school, I lived in this corporate octagon and went to this fancy HDI executive school in Providence. Only lasted a couple years, but there was this restaurant the rich kids used to go to… I always had to stay back in the dining hall.
“Jeeves, search my marked locations, Providence, Rhode Island, restaurants close to HDI Preparatory Academy.”
I found it, still in business, but closed. “I forgot how late it was. All the good restaurants are closed, but we could still go to a cool cocktail bar. You up for that?”
“Of course,” Lydia said. “Casual, fewer people at this hour; I suspect you’ll prefer it.”
So, Lydia and I crossed the street and caught a flying cab in our fancy clothes, headed for some boutique bar in Rhode Island that I had never even heard of.
I started to cheer up as we soared over the city in the priority lane, exhilarated by the city lights and the sudden sense of freedom that washed over me. I was in a flying car with a beautiful woman and a great suit. I was a card-carrying superhero on a major team, and I was about to put a whole network of bad guys in jail, even if the process had been a bit sketchy.
I had a lingering pang of embarrassment from pissing off Denise, but life was still pretty damn good. So, why couldn’t I enjoy this? Why did I have a weird, anxious feeling building up in my chest? Was I just allergic to happiness? Was Lydia making me as paranoid as she was? Was I still doubting myself, no matter how many monsters I punched or how many lives I saved?
Then Lydia said, “I presume you asked your witch first?” like she was reading my mind.
I said, “Yes. It turned out to be a really bad idea, but yes, I wanted to show her. After watching her be a big celebrity the other day, I wanted to show her I was growing up. And have I ruined our evening by telling you that?”
“No,” Lydia smirked. “I am always happy to be your second choice.”
* * *
The bar was dark and cozy and romantic. Perfect for my mood and my suit, even if we were a bit overdressed. We sat down across from each other at a tiny corner table, instinctively picking something by the emergency exit, angled so we could both see the door.
I wanted to drink something classy, but I still wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol, so I got some elaborate juice cocktail and encouraged Lydia to do the same.
“Please get anything you want,” I insisted. “No more ordering food for you. Please, get whatever you want. Spoil yourself. Get a steak. Get four steaks. Make somebody fly to Maine and get you lobster. Seriously. I want to watch you eat Earth food that makes you glad to be here.”
Lydia smiled. “I am quite happy to be here, but it’s been so long; I haven’t eaten regularly since Jacob had me supervise his chef. I can’t even remember what I liked.”
“I’m in the mood for cow. Oh! I have an idea. I know just what you want,” I said, immediately contradicting myself and ordering food for Lydia.
I got a charcuterie board and watched Lydia’s face as she relived dozens of beautiful memories, enjoying a selection of meat and fancy cheeses that were no big deal to the other people in here, but turned out to be a new experience for me, and a rapturous trip back in time for her: feta cheese, brie, prosciutto, pepper salami, pickled peppers, stuffed olives, and sesame bread.
We ate way too much way too fast, but it was beautiful to see her this happy, to have finally figured out a way to reward her and show her that the 21st century was not all bad.
Lydia savored another stuffed olive and released a long, luxurious breath. Demon body language is subtle, and Lydia was always a little stiff, but I saw the tension drain out of her as she looked around the room.
“You know what I see here, Timothy?”
I grinned and raised an eyebrow.
“Nothing,” she whispered. “I see nothing. No angels, no demons, no gods, nothing. No one in this room has a tether. No one in this room is cursed. No one in this room is a secret angel or a secret demon or a disguised ancient god. These are just… people. Just normal people living their normal lives, having a drink with friends in a beautiful place.”
Lydia was smiling so much she looked like she was going to cry. “I was so worried after all this time in Boston, worried that the whole world was like that now, like every good thing on Earth had been chewed up and destroyed by things like me.
“But this… this means outside the giant cities, in places where the magic flows slowly, there are still normal people living normal lives. It’s not too late for them, and it means there are still places we could go…” she stopped herself for a moment and resumed. “Places we could go, if you ever decide to settle down.”
“Timothy, do we have to go home? I mean, tonight, do we have to go home tonight? Do you have to be at your job tomorrow?”
“Nope,” I said, stretching in my chair with a big smile on my face. “This is technically my weekend, so I don’t have to report to Randy for two whole days.”
“In that case, I have an idea. I feel so safe here, could we stay the night? Do you have enough money to get us a hotel room, and let us take a little vacation, just for a day or so?”
“Can you really just do that? Walk into a hotel without a reservation? I have one set of clothes, and I don’t even have a toothbrush.”
“The hotel will have all the little things. And besides, you’re always bragging about what you can get delivered by your machines. Can you order clothes and shoes and all the little things you need to stay the night?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I can. I haven’t stayed in a hotel since my debate trips in high school. I don’t even know how much they cost. I’ve been so busy; I don’t even know how much money I have.”
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I had Jeeves pull up my account and got a pleasant surprise. “Wow, I really have been getting a lot of overtime. And it looks like I got a bonus for fighting the river monster. Holy shit, I’m not poor. I mean, I’m not rich, but for the first time since Innovex, I’m not poor.”
That sense of exhilaration and freedom I felt in the cab swept over me again, magnified ten times. I didn’t have to go home. I didn’t have to go to my stupid depressing apartment across from the gods damned Reclamation Zone and kill two pointless days waiting to do my job again.
I could walk right into a four-star hotel like a grownup, buy a room, and totally blow off all my worries and all my responsibilities like all the bad shit belonged to somebody else.
“Let’s do it,” I said. “But first, I’m gonna eat some cow. And please, get whatever you want.”
I got a small, perfect ribeye steak, and Lydia got the lamb.
I teased her as she savored her first bite. “A demon ordering lamb is a bit on the nose, Lydia.”
Lydia crunched some bones in her teeth and said, “Tastes like innocence.”
* * *
It was almost 2 a.m. when I finally called for our check. I was dreading it, but the waitress said. “Looks like you don’t have a check. Your bill has been paid by an anonymous party.”
“What? Who the hell?” My heart leapt to my throat, as if this act of generosity was some kind of threat. Was there a demon watching us eat? Had a supervillain poisoned our food?
Then a message from Harrison Moore popped up in the corner of my eye and said, “Nice job today. Enjoy your weekend.”
Jeeves found us a luxury hotel off Kennedy Plaza and Lydia and I walked in like we owned the place. It was surreal to think I belonged in a place like this, that I was dressed like someone who belonged here, for the first time in my life.
I asked for a room with a King bed and the clerk said all she had was a suite, ironically named the Dante Suite, for approximately twice what I had been planning to pay.
I looked back at Lydia, watching her head swivel like an adorable tourist as she took in the sleek modern hotel, and got ready to disappoint her.
Then I remembered something and pulled out my badge. I waved it at the clerk and said, “I just remembered I’m a superhero and shit, can I get a discount?”
The clerk swiped my badge, and I charged the Dante Suite to Harry.
* * *
We walked into the impossible, gratuitous hotel suite and I froze for a moment, trying to take it in. “Lydia, we are not going to destroy this room, but I am not leaving until we have had sex on every surface I can see, including the vertical ones.”
Lydia said, “It really is a lovely suit,” and proceeded to take it off for me.
* * *
I was lounging in bed a few hours later, watching Lydia. Her mannerisms had loosened up. She was letting her eyes drift more, like she didn’t have to be constantly scanning for threats here. She was naked and beautiful and just a bit playful, in a way she rarely was at home.
“This was a great idea,” I said. “And you think we’re safe because there’s less magic here?”
“Not less, exactly, but slower,” she said. “Our capacity is the same, but the energy inside us will charge much more slowly. Energy you could recover in minutes if we were in Boston may take hours to accumulate here.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve traded magic with you,” I said. “You always get a little bit, right, every time I touch you? Just from being close to me, with our tether thing? But we haven’t actively swapped magic since that first night. I guess I’ve been afraid to.”
“You needed comfort, not fireworks, and you don’t need me as much as the others did, since you’re pulling magic from the Earth, now that we’re both pulling magic from the Earth.”
“So, you’re not connected to Hell at all?”
“I can’t draw magic from Hell unless I have a Master there, channeling power to me from the Lake. The magic on Earth is wonderful, but it means I’m limited by the way it ebbs and flows here, recovering power faster or slower depending on where I am. The power in Hell feels different, but it’s steadier, more consistent, because infernal magic comes from the suffering of damned souls, and that suffering is consistent, in a way magic on Earth is not.”
“So, when you pull magic from Hell, you are literally drawing power from human suffering? That’s horrible.”
She shrugged. “Perhaps I should have kept that to myself, but you deserve to know, and it’s important to remember, most of the suffering in Hell is justified. You may quibble with the judgment of angels, but most souls in Hell receive suffering in proportion to the pain they inflicted on others.”
I frowned. “That sounds like the kind of bullshit rationalization you would use on Tobias.”
“Tobias did not just pull power from Hell,” Lydia said, subtly changing the subject to avoid the issue. “All your ancestors pulled power from the Earth to some degree, even if most of it still came through me.”
“But you convinced my ancestors that feeding off the suffering of souls in Hell was no big deal. I don’t buy that. I’m not ready to say people deserve to suffer, no matter what the angels accuse them of.”
“Oh Timothy, you are still so young,” Lydia said, making me frown harder. “Please, I’m not trying to insult you, but even now, after all you’ve seen on Earth and Hell, you still don’t quite believe in evil; but the world is full of people who will hurt others without a second thought. They will happily lie, cheat, and steal from anyone who exists outside themselves, and feel nothing but a warm sense of superiority. Those are the people Hell is for. Those are the people who belong down there, for the same reason I belong down there.”
“I don’t accept that,” I said. “I will never accept that. Do you feel guilt about the people you’ve hurt?”
“I feel a kind of regret, now that I’m older,” Lydia said. “But I was never expected to be human. I was an instrument of my Master’s will from the day I was created, even when I was living with and learning from your ancestors. It never occurred to me to feel empathy or guilt, because all that mattered was pleasing my Master. I couldn’t feel guilt until I hurt someone I loved, and I’ve only felt love for eight men on Earth.”
“So, other human life means nothing to you?”
“It only means something to me to the extent it means something to you. I shouldn’t admit that. It’s going to frighten you to hear me admit that, but I simply could not function if I felt the pain of every person I meet the way you do. I’ve been trained to ignore it and do my job, like a soldier or a prince, serving a greater cause.”
“You think you could learn to care about people? If you spent enough time with me?”
“Perhaps, but I’ve spent entire human lifetimes learning to be what I am. I can’t promise to turn all that around in one lifetime, no matter how much I love you.”
* * *
“How would it feel if we swapped magic here? How would it feel if we did it slower this time? Not crazy like our first time.”
Lydia seemed surprised and amused by this, like she always did when I initiated sex or asked her for something outside my comfort zone.
“Is that what you want?” she asked, always making me say it twice, whenever I asked her for something directly.
“That’s what I want,” I said. “The first time I asked you to show me what I am. Now I want you to show me how I’ve changed.”
The first time we did this, Lydia treated it like a ritual, locking doors and dimming lights. But this time I did that part for her, setting the hotel room to night mode with a few flicks of my wrist.
Then I reached for her and brought in a slow surge of magic while I held her in my arms.
* * *
It was beautiful this time, beautiful but different, as I slowly fed her power and felt it circle back to me. Still clearly Lydia’s power, tasting like apples or pears or whatever the Hell that was, sweet and pure and softer somehow, since she was drawing magic from the Earth.
Her power felt more benevolent, without the edge I felt the first time, when she was trying to brute force seduce me with it.
My vision didn’t just pop and snap into the gray this time. This time it was a slow transition, as all the objects in the room seemed to lose color and fade away, until Lydia and I were floating in our own little universe, glowing white and gold, slowly merging our auras into something new.
In real space, I could feel her embrace me. I could still feel her touch as I could feel the bed holding us up, but it felt like our souls were floating, staying roughly within the boundaries of our physical bodies, but still floating, lending a sweet, dreamlike quality to the whole thing.
Not passionate this time, not overwhelming like our first time or like my first magic duel with Denise, just a slow exchange of comfort and power, bonding with this creature who loved me, perhaps more than anyone alive.
We held each other in this nowhere place, drifting in and out of dreaming and sleeping and breathing together, until the sun came through the hotel curtains, and we had to wake up.
Lydia kissed me gently as we came back to our bodies and lay beside me, silent on the bed as I squinted in the morning light.
“Lydia, I’m sorry you felt like my second choice last night. It’s just… I thought Denise would have a really funny reaction to the suit, and… There are plenty of things where you would be the first person…”
“Timothy, stop.”
I sighed. “Yeah. Okay.”
* * *
We did not have sex on every surface of that hotel room before we left, but somebody should probably clean those curtains.
I stayed in bed for breakfast, shamelessly naked, while a concierge had my suit cleaned. Then I put on the fancy hotel robe and pulled up some catalog holograms between us.
“You pick my clothes this time,” I told Lydia. “No vampire shit, no vintage ‘80s crap, please. Just look through the contemporary stuff here and pick something from one of these local stores.”
Lydia surprised me by picking something perfectly ordinary. Very nice, but ordinary, and unlike anything I had ever purchased in my life. A light tan shirt with white shorts and leather sandals, insanely expensive leather sandals, that I really didn’t want to waste money on, since they would be useless for nine months a year in Boston.
I was not eager to show off my pasty white legs, but it was pushing ninety degrees in Providence that day, and Lydia said this would be perfect for a young professional man on vacation.
I winced a little as I pushed the big green PAY button, but I decided to trust her judgment and make this a vacation from my whole self, not just from my job.
We took a long, slow shower while we waited for the drone to deliver the clothes. Lydia pinned me against the wall and said, “You can’t run from me today. You don’t even have clothes. You would have to run into the hall naked, screaming about a demon trying to drag you back to her room.”
“You don’t realize how much time I’ve spent in that locker room,” I said. “So many maintenance guys and office staff have seen me naked, waving my junk around in front of a hotel clerk wouldn’t even make me blush.”
* * *
We were about to pack and leave when I realized I didn’t have any luggage; just a disposable garment bag with my suit in it. I had Lydia pick out an overnight bag and paid for priority delivery to get it before checkout time. It ended up being a leather overnight bag so nice, I was scared to check what it cost.
I carefully folded my suit and Lydia said, “Wait.” before I zipped it up. She ran to the closet and came back with that luxurious white robe.
“Please let me steal this,” she said. “The one you have at home is tattered, and filthy and seven years old. I want you to take home another set of good memories. And besides,” she teased me. “This one will look much better on Denise.”
We didn’t go home right away after we checked out. We asked the front desk to watch “our” luggage while we strolled through Market Square, where we had coffee milk and fried clams.
I was not a big fan of seafood, but I’ll eat anything fried, and Lydia took to coffee milk like it was the best thing she had ever tasted. The whole trip was worth it to see her reaction to that.
And then we just ambled through parks and random residential streets, shocked by how green and beautiful everything was. I didn’t realize how badly Boston had been ravaged by magic catastrophes and monster attacks until I visited a place that still looked normal.
It made me angry to compare cities and realize how centuries of Boston history had been blithely wiped off the map by vengeful gods or whatever the hell kept spawning monsters in that river.
What had Boston done to deserve this? What had America done to deserve this? To be forgotten by its children and destroyed by a soulless collection of power-mad corporate monarchs?
We stayed way longer than I intended to, lounging in parks, strolling through museums, cuddling on benches and perching on fountains until it got dark.
Then we climbed into a hotel shuttle with my bag, and watched the city slowly recede beneath us.
“Lydia, would you like to live here?”
“Don’t tease me with things you don’t actually want,” Lydia said. “Don’t tease me with things you won’t let yourself have. You’re just discovering your power, but you’ve already taken on responsibilities in this world. You can’t just abandon those, no matter how much they worry me.”
“But you see the same thing I do, that the entire world is not a demon-infested shithole. That there may be some decent places left to live.”
“This would be a lovely place to retire, after you’ve given the world everything you have to give.”