Chasing the Moon (6 page)

There was another reason she loved the Mexican place. She loved it because it was their place. Here she didn’t have to share Calvin with anyone else. Here, and really only here, nothing else mattered.

The front door flew open and a mound of hairy blue thing with a face like a buffalo entered. A pair of giant black mantises hung on each of its arms.

“There goes the neighborhood,” said Sharon.

The buffalo crept up to the employee in charge of seating, promptly devoured her in one bite, and lurched to a table. There was a couple already seated there, but they were all too happy to concede their table and meal to the creatures.

The buffalo slurped down the enchiladas while the bugs sniffed the beers. They chirped, chewing on the tablecloth and licking the wax from the candles.

“Should we go somewhere else?” she asked.

“You haven’t even gotten your food yet,” he replied.

“It’s not that important.”

The waiter tried to take the buffalo’s order and was set upon by the bugs for his trouble.

“That’s it.” Calvin pushed away from the table.

“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“But—”

But he was already away.

“Excuse me.”

The buffalo and bugs ignored him.

“I said, excuse me.”

The bugs stopped tormenting the waiter and raised their heads. The buffalo snorted.

“People are trying to eat here,” said Calvin.

The buffalo rose to its full height and howled at Calvin, spraying a healthy dose of phosphorescent drool across his face. The bugs chortled.

“I’m trying to be nice about this, but there is no call for this behavior. Everyone’s just trying to have a pleasant evening, and you’re ruining it for everyone.”

The rude beast howled and shook its head, splattering copious amounts of drool throughout the room.

“Have it your way.”

Calvin raised a hand and smacked the buffalo across the nose. The air cracked with thunder. The monster fell on one knee. Calvin grabbed it by the ear and yanked it to its feet. The buffalo squawked and roared, but Calvin pulled it helplessly toward the front door.

“And spit it out,”he said.

The buffalo spit up the seating girl, whole and unharmed though covered in slime.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t mention it.”

Calvin tossed the beast out the front door. He helped the seating girl up, then turned on the bugs.

“You should probably leave now.”

They scampered out the door. One tried to take the waiter to go, but a word from Calvin helped it change its mind.

“And don’t come back unless you’re willing to behave,” shouted Calvin before returning to his table.

“Thanks,” Sharon said.

“No problem.” He reached across the table and used his napkin to wipe away a smudge of glowing buffalo drool from her chin. “I know how much you love this place.”

They shared a smile.

Their meal was on the house.

Diana sold coats. Or, to be more honest, she stood around in the coat section of a department store and waited for people to come around and pick out coats. Buying coats was one of those shopping experiences in which a clerk served about the same purpose as a mannequin. Only instead of wearing the coat, she told people how good they looked in their potential new wardrobe additions.

She didn’t lie. If someone looked genuinely bad in a coat, she usually told them this (in a gentle, soft-sell fashion). But it was hard to look bad in a coat, and it really wasn’t hard to pick out one that you liked that looked fine on your body type. Although there was one dreadful red-and-orange eyesore that had been in the coat department since long before her and would probably still be there, waiting, long after she was gone.

As jobs went, it wasn’t horrible. She’d had worse. She’d had better. She wasn’t planning on making a career out of it, but it paid the bills for the time being. The only bad thing about it was that it could be dull and, when she was in the wrong frame of mind, a single shift could last thirty or forty hours.

Today felt like it would be one of those days.

After being trapped for four days and change in her apartment, she wasn’t ready to be trapped in a bigger room. She also didn’t feel like calling in sick because that would inevitably lead to questions. Where had she been? Why hadn’t she called in? And so on.

It would almost be easier to go in to work and pretend she hadn’t even missed. Except that even if she was willing to pretend, no one else would be. The same questions would still be waiting.
Why is there a hairy green monster following you?

Oh, just something I picked up at the nexus of realities
, she would reply.
Can I help you with a coat?

She supposed she could have just skipped today and not called, but that wasn’t the way she was hardwired. It was against her character to miss work four days in a row without letting someone know.

A glance at the clock confirmed she had two minutes before having to get up and get ready. She lay in bed and wished there were a way to miss and not call in and avoid the various hassles awaiting her on each and every path before her.

The phone rang in the other room. She was slow to answer it because she had to move the dresser blocking her door. The door didn’t have a lock, and she didn’t trust Vom to stay in control of his appetites while she slept. By the time she
moved the dresser out of the way he had already answered the phone.

“Hello. Yes, yes. Oh really?” He listened, making generic
I’m listening
sounds to confirm this to both her and the person on the other end of the phone. “Okay. I’ll tell her. No problem.”

He hung up.

“There was a fire at the store,” he said.

“Oh my… was anyone hurt?”

Vom shrugged. “Didn’t say. Just said you don’t have to bother coming in today.”

She leaned against the wall and absorbed the news. On the bright side, her work problem was solved.

“Wait. I just moved in, and I haven’t talked to anyone yet. How did they get this number? Even I don’t know it yet.”

Vom shrugged again, but she could tell he was holding out on her. Even though he didn’t have any eyes, his mouths pursed suspiciously. She could feel he was lying to her. Probably part of that psychic bond they shared.

He withered beneath her glare.

“You’d probably call it magic. Or sorcery. Or wizardry. Or
majik
with a
j
and a
k
. Though I’ve always found that pretentious and unnecessary.”

“Okay, so now you’re telling me I have magical powers.”

“It’s just a side effect of straddling multiple floors of reality. Any intelligent being can do it, provided they have the will and desire. Also, you need a conduit to gather the appropriate metaphysical charge and—”

“Stop.”

“What? Too technical again?”

“I’m sure you have a great metaphorical explanation you could give me, but it’ll just be more mumbo jumbo that I really don’t understand.”

“You wished not to go to work. Magic took care of that for you.”

“I didn’t wish for a fire.”

“You didn’t
not
wish for a fire.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Unguided reality manipulation will always take the path of least resistance. Since you didn’t specify the details, you can hardly be upset by the results.”

She hastily threw on some clothes, not bothering to shower.

“Where are you going?” asked Vom.

“To the store,” she said.

“I thought you didn’t want to go to the store.”

“I didn’t, but if I started a magic fire that killed somebody, I need to know.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you need to know?” asked Vom.

“Because it’s important.”

“It’s important to know if you killed someone?”

“Yes.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I couldn’t live with myself if I did.”

Vom nodded. “Then why would you want to know?”

Diana said, “You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand. You may have killed someone by accident
and now you think it’ll make things better to torture yourself about it. Just because I don’t agree with it doesn’t mean I can’t understand it.”

“We can’t all be amoral monsters with a complete indifference to human life.”

“I’m not indifferent to human life as a whole,” he said. “Just individual ones.”

“My mistake. I’m going. You stay here.”

Vom snarled. “I’m a cosmic entity. Not a puppy.”

“Just do me a favor,” she said. “Try not to chew on the furniture.”

He grinned. “I promise nothing.”

Diana rushed to the store, stopping only for a coffee and a bagel. When she was almost there she realized that seeing the fire wouldn’t answer any questions. By then she was less concerned with the possible body count and just determined to see what the results of her careless wish might be. She envisioned the entire department store burned to the ground. Then, worrying that perhaps imagining something like that would make it happen, she did her best to wipe the image from her mind. But it was like asking herself not to think about a pink dinosaur. Once the idea was introduced it uldn’t be removed.

She should’ve taken the time to listen to Vom’s explanation. If she did have magical powers now, it was probably smart to understand them.

The department store had not been destroyed. closed for repairs read a sign on the door. She peered through the windows and, while the coat section wasn’t visible from outside, she could see that most of the visible smoke damage was in that
general area. The store was still standing, and it didn’t look as if the fire department had had to soak the place down to stop the fire from spreading.

“Pretty bad, huh?” asked Wendall from behind her.

She turned toward him. He worked in housewares. Wendall was short, a little chubby, with curly hair and a perpetual smile. Always cheerful. Sometimes too much so. They hadn’t talked much, but she liked him in a pleasant, casualacquaintance way.

“Had to come and see for yourself, huh?” He joined her at the window. “Me too.”

“Do they know how it happened?” she asked.

“They think it was an electrical short. You know how old the wiring is in this place. Thank God, nobody was hurt.”

She breathed an inner sigh of relief.

“They say it’ll probably take a week or two to fix the damage,” he said. “Say, you want to go get a cup of coffee or something?”

“Actually, I just had some coffee,” she replied.

“There’s a great little bagel place just around the corner,” he said.

“Uh, I just…”

“My treat.”

Wendall grinned at her. He had a crush on her. Possibly. It wasn’t easy to tell because he was always so friendly, but he was that special brand of nice guy who was so used to being overlooked that any woman who acknowledged his existence became attractive by default. Or maybe she was just flattering herself. Maybe he was just being friendly again.

“Yeah, sure.”

She figured it couldn’t hurt to spend some time with a regular, non-world-devouring person, and Wendall was as ordinary as reality could get.

The “great little bagel place just around the corner” was actually the “adequate little bagel place just around the corner where she ate lunch two or three times a week,” but she found the familiarity comforting. Something like a half-cat, halfrabbit hopped around, unobserved by everyone else, under one of the tables, but she resolutely ignored it.

Wendall carried the bulk of most conversations. He wasn’t a blabbermouth, but if you weren’t feeling up to talking he didn’t mind filling the silence himself. He talked about nothing important. She didn’t hold it against him since most talk was about nothing important. She didn’t have anything worthwhile to discuss either, aside from herent induction into the world of the supernatural, and this was the last thing she wanted to talk about. But there were only so many variations of “Crazy weather we’ve been having lately,” so much shop talk, before she found herself zoning out.