Chapter One

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Attending a show at the Blackbird Cabaret was always a fascinating experience.

The building itself contributed a lot to that. Capinera actively refused to add permanent furniture, so you either stood, or you brought a chair or blanket to sit on if there was room at the event in question. The ceiling was open to show ducting and rafters from when the building was a warehouse, and the floor was open concrete except for a single, simple stage. The overall impression was an odd, surreal minimalism. It lent the Blackbird a sort of raw feeling, unfiltered and without any pretense.

Then you had the audience, which was its own kind of bizarre. Capinera didn’t exactly bar normal humans from it (though some of the individual performers did), but the crowd was always mostly or entirely drawn from the supernatural community. That never made up a large portion of the total population, but Pittsburgh had enough people to still maintain a decent crowd of us, and the Blackbird had enough of a reputation by now to draw people from further afield as well. I’d seen a lot of very strange people there, many of whom were barely even pretending to be mortals.

And, finally, there was the performance itself. Capinera was easily the most gifted a capella vocalist I’d ever heard, and those nights were so intense in their sound and emotion that I could barely tolerate being in the room for them. But most nights, she wasn’t performing herself, just providing the space for someone else. Those performers could be very, very strange, and unfortunately their quality was…not often on par with hers.

Tonight’s show was some kind of modernist theatre performance. It was very much on the strange side, framed as a murder mystery attempting to find out who murdered Santa Claus. That would have been odd enough already, but then the story started to portray a very different view of him than usual. The suspects included an elf (who was, I thought, genuinely some kind of fae) upset about the slave-driving nature of the North Pole’s operations; Rudolf (a minor-talent sorcerer I’d met once, in a bad costume) being depicted as transgender and pregnant with Santa’s child for unclear reasons; Frosty (I had no idea what he was, but the impression of an actual snowman was flawless) seeking revenge for a recent violent assault; and Mrs. Claus finally being fed up with Santa’s constant adulterous affairs.

It got more surreal from there. I sat and watched, fascinated but also somewhat baffled. The actors either weren’t doing a great job, or else they were doing a fantastic job of being artfully clumsy. The whole experience was extremely strange, and even Raincloud, currently lying down on my feet, felt confused.

When I’d grafted a tree spirit into a puppy, for lack of a better word, I’d been expecting to still have mental contact with him. My empathic connection to plants hadn’t gone away, and between that and the fact that he’d spent a few weeks living in my head, I’d been guessing that was how it would work. I hadn’t been disappointed.

I had not expected to also have that connection with the dog’s mind. I’d been very careful about making sure she still had her own mind and identity, sure. But I had no connection of that sort with animals. I didn’t know why I had one with Raincloud herself. My best guess was that the spirit was somehow mediating it, but he didn’t seem to be directly involved; he was separate from her, and her emotions didn’t seem to be filtered through him, didn’t feel like him. He’d said he wasn’t aware of any action on his part in the process.

I didn’t know why I had that connection to Raincloud. But I did. I could feel her mix of confused interest and boredom in the back of my head. It wasn’t as clear as talking to the spirit in the back of hers; Raincloud hadn’t quite gotten the hang of verbal reasoning yet, and she communicated mostly in emotions and sentence fragments.

Then again, given that the husky was only about four months old, that was still impressive as hell. Human children took years before they started to use language. Raincloud did it in a handful of months.

I reached down and scratched her ears a bit. She nuzzled up against my hand, and I felt a surge of affection and happiness enter that emotional mix. I smiled, and relaxed a bit, a tension in my shoulders fading. I hadn’t realized it was there until I let those muscles relax again.

There was something about Raincloud’s feelings that tended to affect me that way. I would have struggled to explain it in words. It was just a sort of…purity or completeness. When she felt that affection it was genuinely unconditional. Between her age and just, you know, being a dog, she loved without reservation. It was always…touching to feel that.

We watched as the play spun out to a close. The murder mystery went unsolved because, as the actors informed the audience, the writers had gone on strike before finishing the script, so they didn’t know how it was supposed to end. I applauded with the rest of the crowd, though I felt more bewildered than impressed.

People started filtering out, crowd and actors both. I stayed where I was, sitting on a small, folding camp chair in the back corner. Capinera let me store it here; she knew that I tended to lose my balance during the more intense shows, so she made sure I had the option of sitting down. I stayed there, pet Raincloud some more, and watched the crowd leave.

Once everyone else was gone, Capinera herself wandered over towards us. She was wearing a simple, dusty-black tunic and pants, giving her a rather severe look, the only spot of color being her eyes.

“Not leaving?” she asked me. Her voice was gentle, and slightly melancholic, as it almost always was.

“Not yet, if that’s alright,” I said. “My ride’s not here yet, and I figured I’d wait inside. Kinda chilly out.”

“Of course it’s alright,” Capinera said, sounding very pointedly patient, as though she were explaining the same thing for the tenth time. Which, to be fair, she was. “You are always welcome here. Both of you.”

Raincloud wriggled a bit at that. She was better at understanding words than shaping them, and between that and getting the meaning secondhand from me, she knew what Capinera said. She liked being included.

“Thanks. I know. I just don’t like to assume.”

“I understand,” Capinera said, leaning back against the wall. She seemed to do that rather than sit pretty often; I wasn’t sure why. “Saori’s not with you tonight?”

“Nah, she’s got her own thing tonight. Some kind of street racing deal, not really my scene.” I shrugged. “It’s not like we’re attached at the hip.”

“Probably for the best. It’s not healthy to become too enmeshed.” Capinera smiled a little. “What did you think of the show?”

“It was very…unique,” I said, trying my best to be polite without being dishonest. I was pretty sure my tone gave me away, but it seemed courteous to at least make a token effort. “Is it okay if I ask you something?”

“Certainly.”

“Why do you do this?” I gestured vaguely at the building around us. “Like, run this place, let people use it so freely. It must be an enormous headache. And even if you were particularly concerned with money—which, having seen your living space, I kinda doubt—this is not the kind of business that pays the bills. So why do you do it?”

Capinera was quiet for a long moment before saying, “I suppose I see it as a form of atonement.”

I blinked. That…was an unexpected answer. “Atonement,” I said. “To…host improv theatre?”

“Among other things. I don’t think atonement really has to be a direct inversion of what you did in the past. It’s more about the intention and meaning of the action.” She shrugged. “I give people a space in which to exist and express themselves freely. I make it easier for them to be who they want to be and to do what they want to do. I’ve taken a lot of things out of the world. My hope is that this adds something good back into it.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay. Yeah. I think I follow. You do a lot to try and make up for those things.”

A sad, wry half-smile played across Capinera’s features. “I have a lot to make up for.”

I always wanted to contest it when Capinera said things like that. I wanted to tell her that she was exaggerating. I wanted to believe that myself. Certainly I had a hard time picturing her committing atrocities. The Capinera I knew was a melancholic, gentle woman, one who spent enormous amounts of time and effort trying to help people, who had risked her life to protect a group of total strangers this past fall without hesitating for a heartbeat. I really wanted to believe that she must be exaggerating her older self’s sins, that the obvious guilt she felt was magnifying them in her memory.

I wanted to believe that, but I didn’t. The reality of the situation was that there were people who did live how she had described her old habits. There were people who killed other people for no reason beyond idle entertainment. And at the end of the day, she was there for that time in her life. I wasn’t. It would be incredibly arrogant of me to say on the basis of zero knowledge that she was wrong about it.

“I think you’re doing a pretty good job,” I said instead. “I don’t think I’ve known many people who were this committed to doing well by others.”

“Thank you, Kyoko. That means a lot to me.” Her smile was still slight and sad, but her eyes seemed a little less so.

I shrugged. “Just being honest.” I checked the time, then stretched a bit. My neck was stiff after sitting still for so long. “Okay, we should probably get going. She’ll be here pretty soon. Yes, that means you have to get up, c’mon.”

This last was directed at Raincloud. I did not, strictly speaking, have to say it out loud. Much of the actual meaning was being transmitted mentally, and actual speech wasn’t necessary for that. But I wasn’t all that accustomed to framing thoughts clearly enough and projecting them strongly enough for telepathy to work well. And it was also good for her, I thought. I wanted for her to be able to understand her world and the people around her. By both saying the words and projecting the meaning directly, I was hoping to help her learn the language, and it seemed to be working.

She grumbled a bit, but she stood up and stretched as well. I ruffled her ears a bit more and then got up myself. “Thanks for having us,” I said to Capinera, suppressing a yawn.

“Anytime. Thank you for talking with me.” She smiled as I walked out of the Blackbird, sad and sweet and gentle. She always seemed so gentle, in every interaction I’d had with her.

But I could see the rapier leaning against the wall beside the door, old and cold and well-used. I heard her locking the door, several locks, and good ones. I could feel the warding spells being armed again, and while I still wasn’t sure what those would do to someone who tried to break in, the power I could feel in them was anything but gentle.

---

It was snowing outside. Not hard, but it was noticeable. I stood and watched the snowflakes dancing in the light of the one functional streetlight in that warehouse lot. Raincloud frolicked in the snow like the puppy she was. Siberian huskies were bred for colder places than this, and a little snow would hardly bother her.

It didn’t really bother me either. Oh, I felt a bit cold. I would not have wanted to wait out here if I didn’t have to. But it didn’t actually bother me, didn’t register as important. And, in any case, it was only a few minutes before Maddie pulled up.

I got in the car, some older SUV with a lot of cargo area, and had Raincloud on my lap before saying anything. It was for the same reason that I had been waiting outside a few minutes ahead of schedule. Maddie was a friend, and she was happy to give me a ride, particularly given that she lived not far from here and had an appointment not far from my house. But she was obsessively punctual, and she’d really not appreciate it if we made her anything remotely close to late for that appointment.

I could feel Raincloud’s distaste at the vehicle. I couldn’t really argue, either. Maddie’s car smelled like blood, indelibly so, and while I normally had no objection to that, this was…different. It wasn’t fresh, for one thing. This was a layered smell, the product of repeated exposure over the course of years. Fresh blood mostly made Raincloud hungry, and my response was usually either indifference, hunger, or arousal, based on context. But old, stale blood wasn’t nearly as pleasant.

And there was something else, though I wasn’t sure Raincloud would notice it. I wasn’t even sure it was a physical smell; it might have been coming from my perception of the car’s energy, its metaphysical qualities. To me, though, it was very apparent. The smell of blood in there was subtly wrong, in a way I couldn’t have explained. It just…didn’t smell the way blood should, and while it was not intrinsically unpleasant, it was very jarring.

“So how’ve things been going?” Maddie asked, pulling out of the lot. Her driving was very measured, very calm. Now that I was accustomed to Saori’s madcap recklessness and daredevil stunts, it felt almost surreal how sedate Maddie was.

“Pretty well, I think,” I said. I shrugged. “I’m pretty much done healing from the mess in September. Thanks again for that, by the way. You were accidentally very helpful in dealing with that situation.”

“Anytime. Literally; I hear bizarre stories with no apparent meaning so often you can always count on me to have one.” Maddie was grinning.

I snorted. “Yeah, well, that’s an increasingly common trait among the people in my life. Though some of them are, ah, a little more proactive about finding bizarre stories. Last week Saori burgled a haberdasher. So that she could put a hat on a statue while vandalizing it. I didn’t even know haberdashers were a real thing anymore.”

Maddie started to laugh, then realized I wasn’t, and paused. “Wait. You’re not kidding?”

“Nope!” I said cheerfully. “I was there for that one. It wasn’t even a nice hat. I have no idea why she bothered.”

I wasn’t sure what it said about me that this kind of thing was starting to feel almost normal. I mean, it’s amazing what all can become normal, can start to feel mundane. I knew that. But still.

“Damn. She’s insane.” Maddie had met Saori, though only a couple of times. That was enough that while she sounded a bit disgusted, and a bit impressed, and a bit fascinated, she didn’t sound surprised in the slightest.

“I think that’s why we get along with each other, honestly,” I agreed. “Who else could tolerate us?”

Maddie laughed, and I grinned, and let her think that I was joking. I wasn’t, though, not really. It was something I’d thought about a lot over the past three months or so. And the truth was that while I talked a lot of shit about Saori being a maniac, in my own ways I was every bit as far past the limits of sanity as she was. The connections I drew between ideas were not normal and were not always rational. My perceptions of the world were so far removed from objective reality a lot of the time that I might as well be hallucinating. Emotionally I was a mess, and while the numerous psychiatric diagnoses when I was younger had been very incomplete, they hadn’t exactly been wrong.

Maybe it made sense that I seemed to only get along well with lunatics. Who else would understand this? Who would be able to relate to it? Maybe all my friends, definitely including Maddie herself, were nuts because I was insane myself. Maybe sanity and madness just didn’t mix well.

I wasn’t joking at all. And in its own way, that was the funniest part.

“So how did that trip to Chicago go?” I asked her, rather than try to explain any of that. Raincloud curled up a little more snugly in my lap. She wouldn’t be able to do that for all that much longer before she outgrew it. Siberians were not a huge breed, but mine was not a huge lap, and she wouldn’t be able to fit like that for long. She knew that, and was relishing it while she had the chance.

“St. Louis,” Maddie corrected me. “And it was a shitshow. First the girl I was supposed to be bodyguarding forgot to tell me that oh hey one of the people at this ‛business negotiation’ was going to be pissed at her for having misplaced a shipment of something, and apparently she didn’t word the terms of the parley agreement very well because they were able to start shooting without breaking that truce.”

I winced at that. Oaths were a huge deal among supernatural creatures of all kinds, without exception as far as I knew. Even among humans who just dealt with them extensively. If someone agreed to a truce, and they broke that promise, they might as well have just cut their own throat, long-term. But that guarantee only extended as far as the exact limits of the oath someone had sworn.

“I know, right? Moron.” Maddie would have rolled her eyes if that wouldn’t have required her to look away from the road. It was empty, between it being a little past midnight and this being a pretty low-traffic part of the city to begin with. But she was the sort of person who would still follow the guidelines. Hell, as far as I knew she barely ever went above the speed limit unless she was on a job or running late.

“So what happened at that point?”

“Well, I got her dumb ass out of the building. Not the easiest trick, by the way. But whatever, got her out, drove out of there, done. Except then when it was time for her to pay up, she decided instead she should poison me so she didn’t have to.”

I had to actually close my eyes and take a deep breath at that. “What kind of fucking idiot do you have to be to do that?”

Maddie laughed. “I know, right? I can’t fathom why people try this occasionally. Like, girl, you hired me because I was good at keeping people from getting killed. The hell did you think you agreed to pay for if you don’t think I can survive that? I don’t get it. So anyway yeah at that point I killed her and gave her head to the guy she’d cheated, with a note apologizing for the inconvenience.”

“Yeah, honestly, have to admit she kinda deserved that one.” I was still trying, and failing, to figure out how many ways this woman had counted as “too dumb to live”. I thought at least four but it was hard to say for sure.

“Yup. I don’t normally go in for that kind of thing, it’s kinda tacky, but that bitch had it coming.” Maddie paused, and looked away from the road long enough to glance at Raincloud. “Oh, uh, sorry. Didn’t mean to insult you with the comparison there. Can I give you something to apologize, maybe a pendant to hang from your collar or something?” She gestured vaguely with one hand, drawing attention to the bracelet she was wearing. It was silver, set with a vivid, gorgeous scarlet crystal.

I had to admit I was impressed by how smoothly she’d worked that in. I knew Maddie, and had more than half expected this, and yet I still could almost have been convinced that this offer was a natural part of the conversation. Certainly Raincloud fell for it. I could feel her sudden interest, could tell that she was starting to move to agree.

Before she could indicate as much, I interrupted. “No. You may not.” My tone wasn’t exactly cold, but it was distinctly firm, not at all the casual banter of a few moments ago.

Maddie didn’t seem perturbed by that. She just laughed a bit. “Okay, okay. Sorry. Had to try, you know how it is.”

I nodded, a little tense, but not terribly so. I did know how it was, and while I was a little upset that she’d tried this stunt with my dog, I wasn’t really angry. Maddie was what she was. And leaving all other factors aside, she was a freelancer in a line of work where freelancers often didn’t fare well. She’d had her own clients try to kill her enough times that it barely even registered to her as meaningful anymore. Holding her to the same standards I would apply to someone without that background would be unfair of me.

Still, I was tense. And I could tell that Raincloud had noticed, because she felt curious. This time the thought she was expressing was formed clearly enough, and specifically enough, to fit it into words. Why? They’re pretty.

They are pretty, I agreed. I didn’t say it out loud this time, though. Maddie knew why I’d stepped in there, but saying it in front of her would still be gauche. And besides, I could use the practice; I was still getting the hang of projecting thoughts clearly and strongly enough for this without saying them out loud. But they are also dangerous. Maddie can control those crystals; it’s why she’s always looking to give them to people. She can turn them into weapons very quickly.

There was a feeling of dawning realization at that. Oh. I see. Is she not your friend?

I managed to convey a shrug without actually shrugging, something I’d had to practice; gestures were an automatic thing for me much of the time. She is my friend, but her life has taught her that friends can become enemies very quickly. She wasn’t planning to hurt you; this is something she does with a lot of people, just in case she needs it later. I ruffled Raincloud’s ears a bit. We can get something else for you that’s not dangerous. Maybe a ruby to hang from your collar. The red would look nice on your fur.

She made a happy sound, and nestled in against me with another surge of affection. I gave her some more pets, and tried not to think about how worried I was that I wouldn’t be able to keep her safe.

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