Chaos Choreography
Page 107
“That’s going to cost,” cautioned Alice.
“That’s why we have credit cards.”
“Routewitches don’t take money for things like this. They take . . . distance. Distance traveled, distance seen.” Alice sighed and plucked at her shirt. It was another tank top, this one dusky gray. “The shirt I was wearing earlier might work. I went through a lot of dimensions trying to get back to here, and I was wearing it the whole time. That’s got to have a little oomph behind it.”
“I am glad, I think, that no one in my immediate family was ever a witch,” said Dominic, in the slow, careful way he used when he was trying not to offend someone, but knew it might be unavoidable. “It seems very complicated, and like there are a great many rules to be learned and then avoided.”
“You’re not wrong,” I said.
Alice opened her mouth to speak, and froze as there was a knocking at the window. It was light, more a rapping than anything else. We all turned.
“Okay, first person who whispers ‘nevermore’ is getting kicked,” I said.
The rapping came again.
“I’ll answer that, shall I?” said Dominic. He walked over to the window, pushing his duster back to expose the hilt of the knife I’d given him for our six-month anniversary. And people say romance is dead.
He unlatched the window and eased it upward, shoulders tense as he prepared for the worst. What he got was Malena’s head appearing in the opening, upside-down.
“It is windy as shit and it smells like diapers out here,” she said. “I’m coming in.”
“By all means,” said Dominic, letting go of his duster as he stepped to the side. “I assume coming uninvited through motel windows is a point of chupacabra etiquette, and I should applaud your manners while shaming myself for my ignorance.”
“Nah, I’m just rude,” said Malena, swinging herself in through the window. Her hands and feet—both bare—were twisted into claws, covered with tiny black-and-orange scales. Spikes had broken through the skin of her shoulders, and pushed up the fabric at the back of her tube top in a disconcerting way. She saw me looking and shrugged, looking almost sheepish. “This is as far as I can go before my face starts getting weird and my tail starts popping out. It’s actually a little uncomfortable to stop here, but it’s better than getting shot for a monster when I start knocking on windows.”
“Right,” I said.
“Is that Chinese food?” asked Malena, changing subjects. Her hands and feet shifted back to the human norm, scales replaced by smooth brown skin, as the spikes on her back retracted. In a matter of seconds, no one could have ever guessed that she’d been the monster at our window. That was the trick with chupacabra: they hid in plain sight, except when they didn’t want to.
“Malena, why are you here?” I asked. It was a little past seven o’clock in the evening: while she could probably have made a large portion of her trip in the sewers, clinging to the walls to keep her pants clean, she would still have needed to walk aboveground at least partway. The risk of being seen didn’t seem to balance the reward of free Chinese food.
(Although for a dancer, it might come close. When we’re working, we’re like teenage boys: constantly hungry, and willing to go to great lengths for a free meal. Forget saying “hey kid, go into this cave and bring back the magic lantern for me.” You’d have much better luck with “hey kid, go into this cave, there’s an unguarded buffet.”)
“Because I figured you were going to try cutting me out of things about now, and while I should probably be down with that—I mean, hello, opportunity not to rush headlong into certain danger? Sign me up—I’m really not.” Malena bared her teeth. “Mac was one of mine. Now he’s dead. Whoever’s doing this needs to pay. Plus Brenna was on her way over, and she was willing to give me a ride once I showed her my claws.”
Which meant Brenna now knew that Malena was a chupacabra. That was a relief: it meant I didn’t need to worry about blowing Malena’s cover. As a human, it wasn’t my place to run around outing cryptids who didn’t want to be revealed.
Malena wasn’t done. She turned to Alice, frowning, and asked, “Where the fuck did you go? You scared the shit out of all of us.” She sounded affronted, like scaring her was some great and profound crime against the laws of nature. Maybe it was. I didn’t know much about chupacabra culture, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that it was based on firm principles of “don’t freak out your neighbor, save that for the humans.”
“That’s why we have credit cards.”
“Routewitches don’t take money for things like this. They take . . . distance. Distance traveled, distance seen.” Alice sighed and plucked at her shirt. It was another tank top, this one dusky gray. “The shirt I was wearing earlier might work. I went through a lot of dimensions trying to get back to here, and I was wearing it the whole time. That’s got to have a little oomph behind it.”
“I am glad, I think, that no one in my immediate family was ever a witch,” said Dominic, in the slow, careful way he used when he was trying not to offend someone, but knew it might be unavoidable. “It seems very complicated, and like there are a great many rules to be learned and then avoided.”
“You’re not wrong,” I said.
Alice opened her mouth to speak, and froze as there was a knocking at the window. It was light, more a rapping than anything else. We all turned.
“Okay, first person who whispers ‘nevermore’ is getting kicked,” I said.
The rapping came again.
“I’ll answer that, shall I?” said Dominic. He walked over to the window, pushing his duster back to expose the hilt of the knife I’d given him for our six-month anniversary. And people say romance is dead.
He unlatched the window and eased it upward, shoulders tense as he prepared for the worst. What he got was Malena’s head appearing in the opening, upside-down.
“It is windy as shit and it smells like diapers out here,” she said. “I’m coming in.”
“By all means,” said Dominic, letting go of his duster as he stepped to the side. “I assume coming uninvited through motel windows is a point of chupacabra etiquette, and I should applaud your manners while shaming myself for my ignorance.”
“Nah, I’m just rude,” said Malena, swinging herself in through the window. Her hands and feet—both bare—were twisted into claws, covered with tiny black-and-orange scales. Spikes had broken through the skin of her shoulders, and pushed up the fabric at the back of her tube top in a disconcerting way. She saw me looking and shrugged, looking almost sheepish. “This is as far as I can go before my face starts getting weird and my tail starts popping out. It’s actually a little uncomfortable to stop here, but it’s better than getting shot for a monster when I start knocking on windows.”
“Right,” I said.
“Is that Chinese food?” asked Malena, changing subjects. Her hands and feet shifted back to the human norm, scales replaced by smooth brown skin, as the spikes on her back retracted. In a matter of seconds, no one could have ever guessed that she’d been the monster at our window. That was the trick with chupacabra: they hid in plain sight, except when they didn’t want to.
“Malena, why are you here?” I asked. It was a little past seven o’clock in the evening: while she could probably have made a large portion of her trip in the sewers, clinging to the walls to keep her pants clean, she would still have needed to walk aboveground at least partway. The risk of being seen didn’t seem to balance the reward of free Chinese food.
(Although for a dancer, it might come close. When we’re working, we’re like teenage boys: constantly hungry, and willing to go to great lengths for a free meal. Forget saying “hey kid, go into this cave and bring back the magic lantern for me.” You’d have much better luck with “hey kid, go into this cave, there’s an unguarded buffet.”)
“Because I figured you were going to try cutting me out of things about now, and while I should probably be down with that—I mean, hello, opportunity not to rush headlong into certain danger? Sign me up—I’m really not.” Malena bared her teeth. “Mac was one of mine. Now he’s dead. Whoever’s doing this needs to pay. Plus Brenna was on her way over, and she was willing to give me a ride once I showed her my claws.”
Which meant Brenna now knew that Malena was a chupacabra. That was a relief: it meant I didn’t need to worry about blowing Malena’s cover. As a human, it wasn’t my place to run around outing cryptids who didn’t want to be revealed.
Malena wasn’t done. She turned to Alice, frowning, and asked, “Where the fuck did you go? You scared the shit out of all of us.” She sounded affronted, like scaring her was some great and profound crime against the laws of nature. Maybe it was. I didn’t know much about chupacabra culture, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that it was based on firm principles of “don’t freak out your neighbor, save that for the humans.”
