Irregulars: Stories by Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Ginn Hale and Astrid Amara (58 page)

Falk turned to face Jason and the regard in his expression made Jason flush slightly. Slowly Falk lifted the white towel away from the gory hole in his chest. The sight of it still unnerved Jason, but he pushed past that. Here was something of real value that he could do, something that made him feel a little more in control.

Already the gentle notes of his healing melody came to him and he wrote them across lengths of masking tape in a flurry. He closed Falk’s chest quickly and then just stared at the new skin.

Falk too stared down at the phrases of tiny notes that lay like pale scars over his chest.

“A song?” Falk asked.

Jason nodded.

“Any tune I’d know?”

“No. It just came to me, when you said that I should think of healing.”

Falk contemplated his chest for a moment more, perhaps attempting to decipher the pattern of scars, and then shrugged. “As long as it’s not ‘Love for Sale’, I think we’re fine.”

Jason smiled. He liked Falk’s dry humor and calm demeanor. Somehow he made even this strange, bloody scene seem reasonable. Then he realized that he was staring and self-consciously lowered his gaze before Falk could take note.

“So what do you need the salt for?” Jason asked.

“Ah yes, that. Add it to the water in the tub,” Falk directed him.

Jason dumped the salt out and watched as the large white crystals melted into the still, red water. Beside him, Falk remained motionless, slowly recovering his natural radiance. Finally, he leaned over the heap of his discarded clothes and dug into a pocket of his trench coat. He cupped something between his hands, plainly hiding it from Jason’s view.

“I have a proposition for you, my girl,” Falk whispered over his own hands.

Jason tried to not to stare, but there wasn’t anything else in the tiny confines of the bathroom that he could even pretend was more interesting. He remembered that just before they’d been accosted Falk had told him that a girl’s heart lay hidden in his pocket. Was that what Falk cradled so gently in his big, scarred hands?

“I can give you a living body, but in return you’ll be bound to my will by my blood.” Falk spoke softly over his hands. His expression was gentle and his deep voice struck Jason as disconcertingly charming.

“It’s your choice,” Falk said, as if responding to a question. He smiled wryly at something and shook his head. “No, not as a princess…Who do you think I am, the gnome king? Nah, you wouldn’t like him anyway, would you?”

“Are you talking to…her ghost?” Jason asked.

Falk glanced to him and gave him a quick nod but then returned his attention his hands.

“A kitty? You’re certain? Sure, I can manage a cat. Easy peasy…” Then Falk looked up at Jason and his eyes shone like blue flames. “She wants to know if you’ll sing her a lullaby. She says she heard you singing to yourself when we were in the shade lands. She likes your voice.”

“Oh that…” Jason resisted his reflexive embarrassment at having been caught doing something so strange as humming to himself when he was terrified—the quiet melody came unbidden in moments of fear. He hardly knew when he was doing it anymore. Compared to the bizarre sights and actions he’d witnessed today, it hardly seemed worth note.

“I’d be happy to sing a song. If you want,” Jason offered.

“A lullaby,” Falk clarified. “That would be great.” His intense blue gaze had already dropped back to his cupped hands.

As Jason sang, “Hush Little Baby”, Falk leaned over the tub and slowly submerged his thick, scarred hands in the bloody water. Something wriggled from between his fingers. Jason fully expected to see a little heart. He’d almost begun to imagine the pink symmetry of a valentine. But the shape beneath the murky water looked leggy and insectile—like a spider but big. The sight gave him a pause. He didn’t like normal house spiders and the thing creeping across the bottom of his tub was nearly the size of one of Falk’s fists.

“Keep singing,” Falk reminded from where he crouched beside the tub.

Jason continued the lullaby, though he watched the shadowy form beneath the red water warily.

Falk stroked his mutilated left hand over the water, producing a series of ripples. Below, the spider’s silhouette broke and distorted. Falk glared down, his expression going hard and commanding. He spat out a rasping low word and Jason saw silver light burst from his lips. The water flashed as if reflecting the light. Then Falk slapped his hand down into the tub.

Waves sloshed and crested as Falk agitated the water further. Strangely, the blood seemed to settle out of the water and Jason realized that he could now see the scarlet shape distorting below the frothing water. What had been a plump ruby spider stretched and twisted like a length of red kelp caught in storm surf. The sharp peaks that Jason had thought were huge mandibles rolled and resolved into two little ears. The legs folded and bent from hard insect angles to supple mammalian limbs. A tail flicked through the water and then a yowling feline head broke the surface.

It was a kitten, Jason realized, though, he’d never seen a cat with such a brilliant crimson coat or such dark eyes before.

The kitten sank its claws into Falk’s hand and wrist as it scrambled to escape the water. Falk scooped it up and cradled the shaking creature in the crook of his arm.

“You’re all right, Princess. I’ve got you. See, you’re fine.” Falk stroked the cat’s head and began drying its tiny body with the clean corner of one of Jason’s bloodstained towels.

“So, she’s the ghost girl you told me about earlier?” Jason stared at the kitten.

“One and the same.” Falk shrugged. “Give or take a few legs.”

“But she’s…alive now?”

“Princess here wasn’t really all that dead to start with. Her body was gone, but her soul was intact and her will was strong. By my count that made her two-thirds alive already. I just built her a body to inhabit.”  

Disconcertingly, the kitten studied Falk as if contemplating his explanation. Then she nodded.

“But she looks like a cat to me,” Jason said. “Shouldn’t I see something else? Her true ghostly form or something?”

“Not anymore. This body is her genuine flesh now.” Falk stroked the kitten’s ears. “This isn’t some transformation of her original flesh or a glamour disguising her. She’s a kitten all the way to her bones.”

“A normal kitten?” Jason asked skeptically, because looking at her closely, he noticed that the toes of her front paws strongly resembled fuzzy fingers and he could almost make out a darker patch of fur on her foreleg that looked remarkably similar to the
F
tattooed on Falk’s shoulder.

“I didn’t say that,” Falk replied. He stood with the kitten and snatched up his stained trench coat, then started out of the bathroom. “You ever heard of familiars?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Like witches’ familiars?” Jason pulled the plug from the tub and then followed Falk as the water drained out.

Falk tossed his coat over the doorknob, then strode to the window, apparently unconcerned about displaying his nudity to the world. He released the kitten onto the windowsill, where she set straight to licking her ass.

“Exactly like a witch’s familiar.” Falk gave the kitten one of his brief, crooked smiles. “A spirit pulled from another realm and bound to a witch’s will by blood and flesh.”

“So Princess is your familiar?” Jason inquired. Then after Falk’s quick nod, he asked, “Does the
F
on her shoulder stand for Falk? Like your tattoo?”

“Hers might. Mine doesn’t…” For the first time since they’d met Jason thought Falk actually looked taken off guard. But then he shook his head. “No. It stands for Franklyn Fairgate.”

He gazed past the kitten and out the window, with an oddly distant expression. Jason guessed that was the end of the conversation, but then Falk turned back to him. “Franklyn brought me into the Irregulars, way back during the war. They were desperate for grunts and guinea pigs and I fit the bill for both. I spent four years catching bullets and testing black poison for him.”

“That sounds terrible.”

“Those were the times. People were dying by the thousands in the trenches. We had to do everything we could to end it.” Falk shrugged. “You got spare pair pajamas or something by any chance?”

Jason accepted the abrupt change of subject. Though the mention of people dying in trenches made him wonder just what war Falk was talking about.

“I have a pair of sweats that might fit you.”

Jason easily located the faded blue sweatpants from among his few other clothes. Falk, in the meantime, steamed the windowpane with his breath and then drew a small square on the glass.

“Here.” Jason handed him the pants.

“Thanks.” Falk took the clothes and pulled them on quickly. Normally the sweats looked rumpled hanging off Jason’s slim frame, but on Falk they clung to the muscles of his thighs and stretched to accommodate his groin. Falk turned his attention back to the kitten. He stroked her head with one finger.

“You go to Gunther, Princess. Tell him about the ambush at the coffee shop and that I’ve secured Jason at his residence but that I think that this is bigger than just Phipps. We might be dealing with the sidhe. Tuatha Dé Dannan.”

The kitten rammed her nose into Falk’s palm.

“Yeah, you’re pretty as anything. Now get going,” Falk told her.

The kitten butted her head lightly against the square that Falk had drawn on the windowpane. The glass swung out like the flap of a cat door. Beyond it Jason glimpsed the corner of a door. Then the cat darted through, the glass swung closed, and the view returned to the familiar expanse of surrounding buildings, power lines, and the darkening sky.

Falk briefly studied the sky, then commented, “Looks like rain again tonight.”

Jason just stared at him. He made all these truly unreal things seem so simple…so normal.

“You’re amazing…” The comment escaped Jason before he could think about it. “How do you just do something like that as if it were nothing?”

Falk simply shrugged, but Jason thought there might have been the slightest flush to his tanned face.

“I mean, you’re magic. Really magic.” Jason wished he could think of any other words to convey exactly how astounding everything Falk did seemed to be. The man walked through walls and brought animals to life from bathwater. He always seemed to have a solution for any situation.

Earlier, Jason had been too disoriented and then too terrified to truly appreciate any of it. But now it struck him just how incredible Falk was. Like some magician out of a movie, only so much more soft spoken and subdued that no one would have ever have suspected.

“You’re one to talk,” Falk replied.

“Me?” Jason shook his head. “I could never—”

“You could,” Falk cut him off. “Why else do you think those goblins wanted you? Why do you think Phipps sold you?”

“Because I can see things,” Jason supplied. “But that’s not really doing anything except opening my eyes. And most of what I see isn’t useful to me. It’s weird and creepy. It’s not like I can change anything by seeing it.”

“Maybe not yet, but everything begins with perception. No one can alter what he can’t perceive. The more perfectly you see, the more accurately you can work magic.” Falk gave a wry smile. “Most of us have to build spells based on myths, superstitions, and guesswork. Believe me, all that can go to shit fast.” Falk lifted his mutilated hand and very slowly closed his fingers into a fist, then dropped his hand back down to his side. “You’re far more rare and powerful than you realize, Jason.”

Jason contemplated his shelf of musical notations. He didn’t feel powerful and rarity just made him a freak. His true sight had screwed up most of his life and now it made him a target for attacks from monsters.

“None of that did me any good when those goblins came after us at HRD.” Jason dropped his gaze to his own pale hands. “I would have died if you hadn’t been there. And you got shot protecting me…”

“All part of the service,” Falk replied easily. Then he cast Jason a scrutinizing glance. “I suppose I could teach you a trick or two, but I don’t know if I’d be doing you a favor or just getting you in deeper.”

“I’d like to be able to protect myself.” The idea appealed immensely to Jason. “I don’t see how that could hurt.”

“You wouldn’t, would you? But I’ve seen it happen more than once.” Falk leaned back against the wall. “A guy picks up a few moves and he starts to think he can take on the world. Then, when he should be running for his life, he stands his ground and ends up butchered.” Falk scowled and turned his gaze to the stained walls surrounding them. “Sometimes a little magic is worse than none. And on top of that, learning magic isn’t like taking up the trombone. It’s dangerous. And if you’re going to take on a teacher it should be someone you know and trust. Someone who isn’t going to skip town in two weeks.”

Jason felt a flare of disappointment at the mention of Falk leaving, but it didn’t alter his situation. If anything, it exacerbated it.

“That may be,” Jason replied. “But you’re the only person I’ve got right now and I need to learn now. I mean, Mr. Phipps is still going to come after me and there may be more of those goblins as well.”