“Did
you bring your flute?”
Demi’s
guilty expression deepened. “Yes. Was I not supposed to? I was going to leave
it behind, but when I tried, I felt sort of sick to my stomach, so I brought it
with me. I’ll never do it again, I promise.”
“You
should be promising the exact opposite,” I said. “You’re a Pied Piper. That
flute is the best weapon you have. Sloane, you’re heading back to the station
with Andy and the subject. I need you to keep an eye on her. Watch for further
memetic flares, and for the love of the Index, call me if any bears show up.”
“Got
it,” said Sloane, and left the room.
Demi’s
eyes widened as she watched Sloane go. Swinging her gaze back around to me, she
said, “She didn’t fight with you. She didn’t even flip you off or call you a
melanin-deficient bitch.”
“You
know, they’re still slurs when you’re just repeating them,” I said mildly. Demi
promptly flushed a deep red, verging on purple. “Sloane isn’t the easiest
person to work with. That doesn’t actually make her unprofessional. Her job is
to figure out where the narratives are going, pinpoint the memetic incursions,
and help us stop them. She’s very good at what she does.”
Demi
didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Her dubiousness was written broadly
across her face for anyone to see.
“Anyway,
this is going to be your first official field action. Don’t worry about how
many regulations we’re breaking. I’ll help you do the paperwork when we
finish.”
Demi’s
eyes widened. “Paperwork?”
Even
with Andy nudging her steadily along, it took almost ten minutes to get
Jennifer into a coat and a pair of shoes and hustle her out the door to the
car. I waited until I heard the front door slam, and then moved to the living
room to watch them drive away. The van was still parked at the curb. Jeff being
Jeff, he might not even have noticed that half of the group had left.
“All
right,” I said, turning to Demi. “That’s your cue.”
“You
really think this is going to work?”
I
smiled thinly. “Never underestimate the power of a good story.”
We
returned to the bedroom, where the bears had already been seen—and more
importantly, where the neighbors were less likely to report strange goings-on
to Jennifer when she returned. A Latina girl in a black suit playing the flute
was definitely strange by the standards of almost any neighborhood.
The
window was surprisingly difficult to open. That was probably a good sign;
Jennifer hadn’t been unconsciously raising it for the bears while she was
asleep. Demi produced her flute from inside her jacket, took a deep breath, and
began to play.
It
was difficult to describe her music: it was like every good thing in the world
all run into a single melody, simple but deceptively complex. The taste of good coffee, so deep and complex that it was almost a
crime to describe it by a single name. The sound of
rain falling on the pavement, the smell of petrichor and moistened loam.
The color of a single raven’s feather in the sunlight, rainbows caught in
ebony—
I
was so absorbed in Demi’s song that I didn’t even hear the front door open.
Jeff came pelting inside, moving as fast as his legs would carry him, with a
pair of noise-blocking headphones in his hands. I gave him a dizzied smile, and
didn’t move away as he clamped the headphones down over my ears.
Demi’s
song cut off abruptly, replaced by a yearning emptiness. I tried to lift my
hands and take the headphones off, but Jeff was too fast for me. He grabbed my
wrists, forcing me to stay where I was while his lips formed the word “No.” I
blinked. He continued to hold my hands, and bit by bit the urge to take the
headphones off slipped away, taking the emptiness with it. I blinked again, and
stopped trying to raise my hands. That was when he finally let me go.
He
turned toward Demi, who was still playing her flute, and said something I
couldn’t hear. She stopped, lowering the instrument from her lips and staring
at him blankly. Jeff flashed her a thumbs-up and
removed the earplugs from his own ears before turning back to me.
I
took that as a hint and removed the headphones. “What the hell … ?”
“I
figured you’d try to use Demi to attract the bears—that
was
your goal, wasn’t it?” He paused long enough for me to nod
before continuing, “What I
didn’t
figure
was you being dumb enough to do it without ear protection. She’s a Pied Piper,
Henry, not a birdcall.”
“She
was playing to attract bears,” I protested.
“You’re
a narrative in abeyance. It doesn’t matter what she’s playing to attract. And
besides that, you didn’t get the sheet music for bears.” He turned back to
Demi. “How are you feeling? Any dizziness, numbness, nausea … ?”
“I
just played the song that wanted to be played,” she said, eyes wide and a
little frightened. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I’m really sorry. It
was an accident.”
“Oh,
honey.” Jeff put his arm around her shoulders, shooting me an aggravated look.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Henry’s the one who fucked up, not you.”
I
folded my arms and glared at him, all too aware that my coloring was betraying
me once again and displaying the hot blush I could feel rushing into my cheeks.
He was right: using Demi as a birdcall was a good idea, but I’d gone about it
badly. I should have done more research before jumping straight to the easy
solution.
“Although
to be fair, your presence is probably influencing the rest of us to think ‘oh,
hey, call the Piper’ at every opportunity, so we’ll need to be on guard against
that,” continued Jeff. “Did we get bears?”
I
took a quick look out the window at the backyard, which now held every dog,
cat, pigeon, and crow in the neighborhood. But that was all. “No bears,” I
confirmed. “Is it because we didn’t use a bear-specific song?”
“If
the bears were close enough to hear Demi playing, they should have come,” said
Jeff. “And believe me, if they were within a mile of
here, they were close enough to hear her playing.”
“.
. . oh, that’s great,” I said, envisioning all the Lost Dog and Missing Cat
posters that would be cropping up in the surrounding neighborhoods. “Is there a
song that Demi can play to pipe all of these animals back where they came
from?”
“Yes,
and I brought it with me,” said Jeff, holding up a piece of sheet music.
My
face relaxed into a smile. “You’re so good to me.”
“Remember
that when it’s time for reviews,” he said, and moved to stand next to Demi.
“Okay, let’s just go over this a few times before you play it—some of the stops
can be tricky …”
I
tuned him out as Demi started nodding. Music isn’t my thing, and I wasn’t going
to understand most of what he said. Puss was twining around my ankles again. I
scooped up the cat and deposited it on the bed, moving away from the window in
the process. If the massed wildlife outside caught sight of me, there would be
a stampede as they tried to claim their places at my side. I may not be a fully
manifested Snow White, but there’s a point at which that ceases to matter.
Eventually,
Jeff signaled for me to put my headphones back on, and Demi raised her flute to
her lips, beginning to play a melody that I couldn’t hear. I didn’t hear the
animals leaving the yard either. The headphones blocked out everything …
including the sound of my phone ringing.
In
retrospect, I should probably have put it on vibrate.
We
were walking back to the van, having locked Jennifer’s door behind us, when
Jeff’s phone started to ring. He dug it out of his pocket, answering as we
walked. “Hello?”
“Did
I do all right?” asked Demi, shooting me an anxious glance.
I
nodded. “For your first time in the field, you did incredibly. Most of the
mistakes were mine. We’ll review them when we get back to the office and finish
dealing with our Goldilocks.”
“I’m
surprised you still make mistakes,” she said. Her tone was hesitant, like she
expected a reprimand for even saying something.
“The
only people who don’t make mistakes are the dead ones,” I said, and paused,
frowning. “Where’s Jeff?” We both stopped walking and turned to look behind us.
He was standing in the middle of the walkway, the phone still pressed against
his ear. All the blood had drained from his face, until he was almost as pale
as I was. It wasn’t a good look for him.
“Jeff?”
I said.
He
raised a finger, signaling for me to be quiet. I stopped talking. Demi,
standing beside me with a puzzled expression on her face, did the same. Seconds
ticked by, until finally Jeff said, “Yes, I see. Yes, we’re on our way.” He
lowered his phone and started power-walking toward the van.
“Jeff?”
He
didn’t stop. As he blew past us, he called, “There’s trouble at the office! We
have to move!”
“What
kind of trouble?” I demanded, turning around and running after him with Demi at
my heels like a large, confused puppy in sensible shoes.
“Bears!”
Well.
That explained a few things, even as it created a whole new category of
problems. “I’ll drive,” I said.
By
putting on the siren and breaking every traffic law I came into contact with, I
estimated that we would arrive at headquarters in approximately thirty minutes.
As I drove, Jeff sat in the back of the van with the Index open on his lap and
shouted his findings toward the front: “I have a few variations recorded where
Goldilocks didn’t initially break into the home of the three bears—they came in
her
home and took it over. Then, when
she tried to chase them out, the normal ‘larcenous little girl’ narrative
started to unfold. We’re probably looking at one of these home-invasion
scenarios.”
“But
she doesn’t live where we work!” protested Demi.
“That’s
irrelevant,” I said, taking a sharp turn without slowing down. It felt like one
of the van’s wheels lifted off the ground. That probably meant that I should
take my foot off the gas, at least a little. I didn’t. “The narrative doesn’t
give a crap about whether it makes sense. The narrative just wants to
happen
. The memetic incursion that’s starting
around Jennifer Lockwood calls for bears. Apparently, since our office is now
where Jennifer is located, that makes it her home, and that’s good enough to
qualify for bears.”
“But
that doesn’t even make any
sense
!”
In
the rearview mirror, I saw Jeff lean over the seat to put a hand on her
shoulder. “It does make sense, I promise you, but it’s hard to understand at
first. You’ll get there. What matters right now is that Henry is going to kill
us all trying to get back to the office before those bears eat Andy and
Jennifer and everyone else in the building.”
“What
about Sloane?” asked Demi, almost reluctantly.
I
snorted. “Do you really think a
bear
can take her out? They should be worried about being locked in with her.
They’re not used to a story that comes with an actual villain.” There was a
stop sign up ahead. I tore through it without slowing down, leaving blaring
horns in our wake. “Jeff, do you have your gun?”
“Yes,
but—”
“Good.
Find some bear-fighting music for Demi, something that calms them down without
distracting the rest of us. We’ll be in the parking lot in five minutes.”
“Bear-fighting
music—on it,” said Jeff, and disappeared from the mirror as he retreated to
resume his perusal of the Index.
“I
don’t like this,” said Demi.
“Welcome
to the club,” I said, and sped up.
From
the outside, it wasn’t obvious that the building that housed the ATI Management
Bureau belonged to the government. It was unmarked, and there were an unusually
high number of security cameras, but those were the only sign that most people
would have that anything was unusual about the place. Everything else about it
screamed generic office building, probably belonging to some start-up that
hadn’t bothered to invest in exterior signage yet. That was the way we liked
it.
There
were no bears in the parking lot when we came roaring through the gate, and
there were no people standing outside on the sidewalk. That could be a good
sign—they hadn’t evacuated the building—or it could be a bad one—they hadn’t
had
time
to evacuate the building. I
parked our van at the curb closest to the entrance, ignoring the fact that it
technically wasn’t a parking space, and cautiously opened the door.
“Coast
looks clear,” I said, swinging my legs out of the car. When nothing came
roaring out of the bushes to attack me, I got the rest of the way out, drawing
my gun in the same motion. Still there were no bears. “Okay, you two, we’re
moving for the building.”
“Do
we have to?” asked Jeff.
“
Now
,” I snarled.
Demi
and Jeff got out of the van.
We
made our way down the sidewalk to the front door, only to find it locked from
inside. The windows were shuttered. It hadn’t been obvious from the parking lot
with the midday sun glinting off the glass, but up close, it was clear that we
wouldn’t be getting any visual clues as to what was happening inside.
“There’s
a back entrance,” murmured Jeff.
“Does
it lock down when the alarm is pulled?” I asked.
“It’s
supposed to, but the circuit doesn’t always connect,” he said. “I’ve been
asking Maintenance to fix it for months.”
“Well
then, let’s hope they didn’t finally decide to start doing their jobs,” I said.
“Lead the way.”
Jeff
took us in a counterclockwise circuit around the building, finally ducking
behind a scrubby-looking tree and into a narrow alcove. There was a clicking
sound, followed by the soft creak of hinges. “We’re in,” he said.