Christian checked the address he'd written down, and compared that to his current location. He wasn't sure he'd ever stop reaffirming several times over that he had the right house when he was doing visits like this. It wasn't the job itself, that was something he was good at, or the people, since he generally liked them. It was that moment of uncertainty when he was about to ring a doorbell or knock on a door and then had to wait, hoping he was in the right place, until they answered.
Sometimes there were visible indications that reduced the anxiety. In itself, the small house with its white aluminum siding was unremarkable, one of over a dozen within sight on this quiet street. Hundreds of them had been thrown up around the city in the forties and fifties, simple and efficient, all on one level aside from the basement. The cheerful curtains showing through the windows, all rippling in today's brisk breeze despite two of them having air conditioner units in them, told him little. However, he recognized the designs painted on the large terracotta flowerpot that stood beside the front door: crosshatching, crosses, sets of parallel lines, comb-like things, those were all Vinča symbols, though most people would probably notice only the red miniature rosebush that was thriving in the pot. The person he was coming to meet had bought multiple books on Neolithic Europe, including a book on those symbols, and they'd had fascinating conversations more than once in which he'd learned a lot. Fortunately, his boss believed in building positive relationships with customers—she didn't even mind if he gave brief Tarot demonstrations to the curious, within reason.
As instructed, he went up the empty driveway to the side door and rang the doorbell.
To his relief, Bianca answered quickly, greeting him with a warm smile and beckoning him inside. It was hard to tell how much grey threaded her short dirty-blonde hair, but the creases at the corners of her eyes suggested that there was probably some lurking there. Lean and of moderate height, she gestured frequently when she talked, quick minimalist motions coming rapid-fire. With the warmth of the day, even though summer was still in its early days, her lightweight sky-blue jersey dress looked comfortable and sensible—more so than his own jeans, probably.
“Thanks,” she said, escorting him inside and up the half-flight of stairs to the main floor. “For coming, and for not just telling me I'm insane. Two different people told me you helped them, and one said your mother figured out some weirdness they were going through...”
“It's okay,” Christian said gently. He'd heard all this a couple of times over. That was just as well, since it was hard to hear her past the other sounds.
“Basement! Basement, witch! Danger in basement!” The impression Christian had was of a plump chest-high squirrel-like biped, all of en iridescent but the hue changed depending on exactly what was behind en, leaping up and down behind Bianca and waving weirdly long arms with hands spread wide. The obvious clue that Bianca couldn't see or hear anything was completely unnecessary to tell him that was a liminal. He'd never seen one that looked quite like that and had no name to put on en, but no one had ever managed a comprehensive list.
He kept his voice calm and his gaze focused on Bianca, with an effort. The motion and the colour chaos were intensely distracting, rather than any kind of camouflage, and if he looked at en too long he was going to start feeling sick. “I'm not going to speculate until I take a look around. Just let me check I've got the facts straight.” He felt like he should be talking more loudly in an effort to be heard across the liminal's pleas, but he forced it to stay at a conversational level. “You close the windows so you can turn on the air conditioning, and as soon as you leave the room the windows are open again?”
“Wi-i-i-itch! Just look in the basement!” The fluffy tail twitched violently, arching behind the liminal's back, sometimes flicking right against the ceiling on some of the more energetic vertical bounces.
Bianca nodded. “I don't know what... I mean, I suppose I could be losing my mind that badly, or something, but I'm certain that I've closed them, even locked them or wedged them shut, and they've still been open a few minutes later. If you can't help, I suppose my next step is talking to a doctor about what's wrong with my brain.”
“Witch! Hey, witch! Can you hear me? Go. In. Basement!”
“And you're intermittently getting headaches that feel like they're at the front and they're just sort of dull and nagging?”
“Yes. They're very draining. By the time I go get pain meds and come back, I usually don't have the energy to close the damned windows again.”
“Bad air, witch! Hello? Air is bad! Listen to me!”
“I really don't think there's anything wrong with your brain,” Christian said. “I am definitely getting a sense of there being something here. I don't think it means you any harm, though.” The liminal shook ens head so vigorously that the motion briefly interfered with ens bouncing. He didn’t much like using ‘it’ instead of the more polite form ‘en’ for a liminal of uncertain gender or sex, but that was always too complicated to get into with clients, so the more impersonal pronoun was going to have to do. “This is just a hunch, but I'm sort of getting a feeling that it would be worth taking a quick look in the basement. What's down there?”
“Just the utilities room with the furnace and water heater and washer and dryer, and a rec room and spare bedroom.”
“Then that shouldn't take too long. Could you...?” He inclined his head towards the stairs, and did his best not to notice the half-visible liminal running to get ahead of them. En wasn't really all that squirrel-like, the face was too humanoid and en would be a chubby and very long-limbed squirrel, but that tail and the way en moved still made him think of one.
“Sure. C'mon.”
Back past the side door and down another half-flight of stairs, they reached a small foyer area. An open archway led to what was obviously the rec room: from here he could see a TV and VCR on a small table, a computer with the box part tipped up on its side next to the bulky monitor, a couch and a coffee table. One door was ajar, and clearly the spare room. The other door was closed completely.
The liminal placed enself in front of the latter and thumped on it repeatedly and rapidly with the open palms of both hands. Bianca started perceptibly and glanced at the door, then sighed. “Did I mention the odd noises sometimes?”
“In here! Bad air! Don't go inside!” At least en stopped bouncing, though en continued to hop from one foot to the other. That was probably an improvement, but not necessarily a large one.
“Is that the utilities room?” Christian asked Bianca, gesturing to it.
She nodded. “Yes. It's a bit of a mess, but you can go in if you want.”
“Nonononono! Bad air!”
“I'm getting a bad feeling from it,” Christian said, but he walked over to lay a hand on the door. His own senses told him nothing, but there were limits to what he could pick up directly. The liminal retreated to make space for him. “Was there... did you have any other changes around the time the windows stopped staying closed?”
“Hot water thing!” the liminal said.
“Maybe something to do with your hot water heater?”
“I had it replaced,” Bianca said. “The old one stopped working.”
A new hot water heater. A liminal screeching about bad air and repeatedly opening windows.
His knowledge of home repair and maintenance was extremely limited, but his family had encouraged him to read up on possible causes of apparent haunting behaviour that were not at all extramundane, things like electromagnetism and mental health issues and a host of others. One of them was carbon monoxide, which he thought was more often from a furnace... but it could maybe be from a hot water heater too.
He flattened both hands against the door and closed his eyes, using inner senses to search. He could perceive all the small lives that existed within any dwelling, insects and spiders that could never be kept out completely.
The utilities room wasn't entirely devoid of them, but there were far fewer than he'd expect for such a space.
“I'm definitely getting the impression that the core of the problem is in this room, and the timing on the hot water heater sounds pretty coincidental. I'm certain that there's something that's dwelling in this house with you... but I think it's friendly.”
“Yesyesyesyes! Friendly! I like this human!”
“After all, it's been opening up windows, and if there's a chance that the hot water heater might be leaking something toxic, it might have saved your life.”
“Something toxic?” Bianca went pale. “I haven't smelled... oh. Carbon monoxide doesn't have a smell.” She glanced nervously at the small deep window. It was already open.
“It's... I could swear it's saying the air's bad. At the very least, it believes that, so its intentions are good.”
“The air is bad, witch! Dead mice! Want to go see? Nonono, don't go see, I can get them?”
It was just as well his back was to Bianca and the liminal was visible only peripherally. It was hard enough trying to keep from asking the liminal to please just shut up and let him talk to Bianca, but that was only going to invite questions he really didn't want to have to answer. At least Bianca couldn't see his expression. He took a slow, deep breath, trying to centre himself so he could keep his voice steady.
“Since it almost certainly means well, I don't think you need to worry about its presence. Honestly, if it's able to do things like opening windows to keep you safe, then under better conditions, it might even be able to do small things to make life simpler. Keep you from losing your keys, things like that. If you want to keep it happy, or just say thank you for the warning on this, you could try leaving it something sweet. Traditionally, of course, something like cream...”
“Maple cookies! Cream sandwich ones! Loooove maple cookies!”
Christian closed his eyes tightly and counted to five mentally. “Although I'm getting the sense that this one likes those maple cream sandwich cookies, so making sure you have those around will likely go over well. If it has enough presence to manipulate the windows, don't be surprised if the cookies disappear right out of the package, but make sure you invite it. Maybe put them in a special place to make it clear they're a gift.”
“Maple cookies,” Bianca repeated. “Seriously?”
“I... have no idea, honestly. That's just what I'm getting from it, sorry.”
“If that hot water heater is actually leaking something that could have killed me by now, then I'll buy it all the cookies it wants. And all the cream to dunk them in. I'll call today and have someone come and check.”
Christian took a deep breath, then wondered whether that was a good idea right here, under the circumstances. He stepped back from the door with a nod. “I think... I'm really hoping that what's living here will be less agitated now that it knows you understand the situation and you're going to act on it.”
“Yesyesyesyes!”
“It's probably been frantic, wanting a way to warn you and only able to keep opening windows.”
“Yesyes! Thank you witch! Thank you!”
“Fortunate for it, and for me, that you're around,” Bianca said, with a smile. “Suppose we go back upstairs and make sure all the windows are open.”
“Sounds good to me,” Christian said in relief. “If there's nothing else wrong...”
“Nothing else, just bad air!” The liminal raced up the stairs ahead of them.
“... then this should be easy enough to fix, right? I'm sorry it's something that's going to maybe be expensive, though.”
“Mm, I plan to complain to the people who installed it,” Bianca said. “Maybe I can get them to do it for free since they might have messed up the first time. I don't intend to tell them about my in-house guardian angel, though. I'll just tell them I've been getting headaches and the person I saw about them suggested that it might be carbon monoxide.”
“That sounds like it could work. I'll do a quick walk-through of the rest of the house, if you like, to see if I pick up on anything else, but probably this is it.”
“I'd feel better if you could.” She gestured. “Feel free. Yell if you want me. I'm going to see if I can find the invoice for the water heater.” She pulled open one of the kitchen drawers and began to flip through the paper inside.
“Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't want to waste time. This should only take a minute.”
The liminal followed Christian.
“Witch? Thank you witch! Hear me? Thank you!”
Christian kept quiet until he was in the hallway that held the bedrooms and bathroom, about as far away as he could get, before he turned to the liminal.
“You're welcome,” he whispered. “Thank you for protecting her. You'll keep looking out for her? And for her son, when he's home from school?”
The liminal nodded energetically. “I like both. Don't want to have to find a new home.”
“Don't eat all the cookies at once. Go slow.”
“Okay.”
“I have to go. I can't explain everything to her, she'd be afraid. But I think she'll like feeling like she's protected.”
He went back to the kitchen. Bianca had an invoice spread on the kitchen counter while she inspected it. She looked up immediately, though.
“All clear,” Christian assured her. “I don't get the slightest sense of anything else wrong. Every bad feeling and warning I'm getting is pointing to the same source.”
Bianca nodded. “That's a relief. One crisis is enough. I'll let you know what they say. But I really appreciate you coming over here just to humour me.”
“Things happen,” Christian said gently. “I happened to be born a bit more sensitive and my parents taught me to pay attention to it. I like using that to help out. Just please don't tell everyone you know that I can do weird things, okay? I'd rather keep it kind of quiet. I mean, if you know of someone who needs help, that's fine, just...”
“Got it. I've only been talking about being frustrated and freaked out about the windows to a few people, most of them shop at your store and know you anyway. I won't mention it to anyone else. I can understand not wanting too much attention.” She fished a folded bill from a pocket in the side-seam of her dress and held it out. “But you may have to put up with a lot of thanks from me.”
Christian accepted it and tucked it into the pocket of his jeans. He only asked twenty dollars, but he was sure he'd seen the edge of a blue ten folded inside the green twenty. Accepting money for this kind of thing made him uncomfortable, but he knew Bianca could afford it—and he really didn't make all that much working part-time at the bookstore. “Thanks. If there's any other problems, let me know, and I'm here.”
With farewells duly said, Christian stepped back outside and headed for the sidewalk.
He paused under a large maple and rested a hand against its bark to steady himself while he closed his eyes and took several slow deep breaths.
Often all he found was a local imprint of past events that corrupted current energy in ways that made human inhabitants feel inexplicably bad—ill, irritable, sad, it varied, but while cleaning it up took time and some of his own energy, it was simple to do. Occasionally it was a ghost that hadn't realized yet that they had died, which just meant gently explaining, or one refusing to move on, which he had yet to have to deal with alone and was in no hurry to face. The unpredictable ones were the liminals that lived everywhere, straddling the boundary between the plane on which humans lived and another of their own. This one, at least, had been a benevolent one. He'd handled minor unpleasant ones before by himself, but it had been comforting to know that if he got in over his head, Vadin would know and intervene.
He had much less faith in the insistence that he could ask his new roommate for help. For one thing, as near as he could tell, Mark lacked the slightest trace of witchblood and was simply an ungifted human. For another, bargain or not, he wasn't at all sure Mark would particularly care.
But he was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to sleep at night if he refused to at least try to help someone who was facing a problem that no one else would believe was real. He'd just have to hope he'd learned enough from his family and their liminal friends and allies to be able to muddle through while he got better. Maybe he could find a liminal ally, if not friend, on a par with the naga Vadin who had become his grandfather's beloved companion, playful resourceful harpy Iambe who found his mother a kindred spirit, the quiet hulder Hanna who had been Cecilia’s dearest friend and had bid them all farewell soon after her death. That, however, was likely to take time.
Right now, he needed to get home. It had been a long day, coming here after spending six hours at the bookstore, and the nearest bus stop was a couple of blocks from here. And the heavy air and the restless breeze and those low clouds suggested that there might be a thunderstorm on the way.
Christian checked the address he'd written down, and compared that to his current location. He wasn't sure he'd ever stop reaffirming several times over that he had the right house when he was doing visits like this. It wasn't the job itself, that was something he was good at, or the people, since he generally liked them. It was that moment of uncertainty when he was about to ring a doorbell or knock on a door and then had to wait, hoping he was in the right place, until they answered.
Sometimes there were visible indications that reduced the anxiety. In itself, the small house with its white aluminum siding was unremarkable, one of over a dozen within sight on this quiet street. Hundreds of them had been thrown up around the city in the forties and fifties, simple and efficient, all on one level aside from the basement. The cheerful curtains showing through the windows, all rippling in today's brisk breeze despite two of them having air conditioner units in them, told him little. However, he recognized the designs painted on the large terracotta flowerpot that stood beside the front door: crosshatching, crosses, sets of parallel lines, comb-like things, those were all Vinča symbols, though most people would probably notice only the red miniature rosebush that was thriving in the pot. The person he was coming to meet had bought multiple books on Neolithic Europe, including a book on those symbols, and they'd had fascinating conversations more than once in which he'd learned a lot. Fortunately, his boss believed in building positive relationships with customers—she didn't even mind if he gave brief Tarot demonstrations to the curious, within reason.
As instructed, he went up the empty driveway to the side door and rang the doorbell.
To his relief, Bianca answered quickly, greeting him with a warm smile and beckoning him inside. It was hard to tell how much grey threaded her short dirty-blonde hair, but the creases at the corners of her eyes suggested that there was probably some lurking there. Lean and of moderate height, she gestured frequently when she talked, quick minimalist motions coming rapid-fire. With the warmth of the day, even though summer was still in its early days, her lightweight sky-blue jersey dress looked comfortable and sensible—more so than his own jeans, probably.
“Thanks,” she said, escorting him inside and up the half-flight of stairs to the main floor. “For coming, and for not just telling me I'm insane. Two different people told me you helped them, and one said your mother figured out some weirdness they were going through...”
“It's okay,” Christian said gently. He'd heard all this a couple of times over. That was just as well, since it was hard to hear her past the other sounds.
“Basement! Basement, witch! Danger in basement!” The impression Christian had was of a plump chest-high squirrel-like biped, all of en iridescent but the hue changed depending on exactly what was behind en, leaping up and down behind Bianca and waving weirdly long arms with hands spread wide. The obvious clue that Bianca couldn't see or hear anything was completely unnecessary to tell him that was a liminal. He'd never seen one that looked quite like that and had no name to put on en, but no one had ever managed a comprehensive list.
He kept his voice calm and his gaze focused on Bianca, with an effort. The motion and the colour chaos were intensely distracting, rather than any kind of camouflage, and if he looked at en too long he was going to start feeling sick. “I'm not going to speculate until I take a look around. Just let me check I've got the facts straight.” He felt like he should be talking more loudly in an effort to be heard across the liminal's pleas, but he forced it to stay at a conversational level. “You close the windows so you can turn on the air conditioning, and as soon as you leave the room the windows are open again?”
“Wi-i-i-itch! Just look in the basement!” The fluffy tail twitched violently, arching behind the liminal's back, sometimes flicking right against the ceiling on some of the more energetic vertical bounces.
Bianca nodded. “I don't know what... I mean, I suppose I could be losing my mind that badly, or something, but I'm certain that I've closed them, even locked them or wedged them shut, and they've still been open a few minutes later. If you can't help, I suppose my next step is talking to a doctor about what's wrong with my brain.”
“Witch! Hey, witch! Can you hear me? Go. In. Basement!”
“And you're intermittently getting headaches that feel like they're at the front and they're just sort of dull and nagging?”
“Yes. They're very draining. By the time I go get pain meds and come back, I usually don't have the energy to close the damned windows again.”
“Bad air, witch! Hello? Air is bad! Listen to me!”
“I really don't think there's anything wrong with your brain,” Christian said. “I am definitely getting a sense of there being something here. I don't think it means you any harm, though.” The liminal shook ens head so vigorously that the motion briefly interfered with ens bouncing. He didn’t much like using ‘it’ instead of the more polite form ‘en’ for a liminal of uncertain gender or sex, but that was always too complicated to get into with clients, so the more impersonal pronoun was going to have to do. “This is just a hunch, but I'm sort of getting a feeling that it would be worth taking a quick look in the basement. What's down there?”
“Just the utilities room with the furnace and water heater and washer and dryer, and a rec room and spare bedroom.”
“Then that shouldn't take too long. Could you...?” He inclined his head towards the stairs, and did his best not to notice the half-visible liminal running to get ahead of them. En wasn't really all that squirrel-like, the face was too humanoid and en would be a chubby and very long-limbed squirrel, but that tail and the way en moved still made him think of one.
“Sure. C'mon.”
Back past the side door and down another half-flight of stairs, they reached a small foyer area. An open archway led to what was obviously the rec room: from here he could see a TV and VCR on a small table, a computer with the box part tipped up on its side next to the bulky monitor, a couch and a coffee table. One door was ajar, and clearly the spare room. The other door was closed completely.
The liminal placed enself in front of the latter and thumped on it repeatedly and rapidly with the open palms of both hands. Bianca started perceptibly and glanced at the door, then sighed. “Did I mention the odd noises sometimes?”
“In here! Bad air! Don't go inside!” At least en stopped bouncing, though en continued to hop from one foot to the other. That was probably an improvement, but not necessarily a large one.
“Is that the utilities room?” Christian asked Bianca, gesturing to it.
She nodded. “Yes. It's a bit of a mess, but you can go in if you want.”
“Nonononono! Bad air!”
“I'm getting a bad feeling from it,” Christian said, but he walked over to lay a hand on the door. His own senses told him nothing, but there were limits to what he could pick up directly. The liminal retreated to make space for him. “Was there... did you have any other changes around the time the windows stopped staying closed?”
“Hot water thing!” the liminal said.
“Maybe something to do with your hot water heater?”
“I had it replaced,” Bianca said. “The old one stopped working.”
A new hot water heater. A liminal screeching about bad air and repeatedly opening windows.
His knowledge of home repair and maintenance was extremely limited, but his family had encouraged him to read up on possible causes of apparent haunting behaviour that were not at all extramundane, things like electromagnetism and mental health issues and a host of others. One of them was carbon monoxide, which he thought was more often from a furnace... but it could maybe be from a hot water heater too.
He flattened both hands against the door and closed his eyes, using inner senses to search. He could perceive all the small lives that existed within any dwelling, insects and spiders that could never be kept out completely.
The utilities room wasn't entirely devoid of them, but there were far fewer than he'd expect for such a space.
“I'm definitely getting the impression that the core of the problem is in this room, and the timing on the hot water heater sounds pretty coincidental. I'm certain that there's something that's dwelling in this house with you... but I think it's friendly.”
“Yesyesyesyes! Friendly! I like this human!”
“After all, it's been opening up windows, and if there's a chance that the hot water heater might be leaking something toxic, it might have saved your life.”
“Something toxic?” Bianca went pale. “I haven't smelled... oh. Carbon monoxide doesn't have a smell.” She glanced nervously at the small deep window. It was already open.
“It's... I could swear it's saying the air's bad. At the very least, it believes that, so its intentions are good.”
“The air is bad, witch! Dead mice! Want to go see? Nonono, don't go see, I can get them?”
It was just as well his back was to Bianca and the liminal was visible only peripherally. It was hard enough trying to keep from asking the liminal to please just shut up and let him talk to Bianca, but that was only going to invite questions he really didn't want to have to answer. At least Bianca couldn't see his expression. He took a slow, deep breath, trying to centre himself so he could keep his voice steady.
“Since it almost certainly means well, I don't think you need to worry about its presence. Honestly, if it's able to do things like opening windows to keep you safe, then under better conditions, it might even be able to do small things to make life simpler. Keep you from losing your keys, things like that. If you want to keep it happy, or just say thank you for the warning on this, you could try leaving it something sweet. Traditionally, of course, something like cream...”
“Maple cookies! Cream sandwich ones! Loooove maple cookies!”
Christian closed his eyes tightly and counted to five mentally. “Although I'm getting the sense that this one likes those maple cream sandwich cookies, so making sure you have those around will likely go over well. If it has enough presence to manipulate the windows, don't be surprised if the cookies disappear right out of the package, but make sure you invite it. Maybe put them in a special place to make it clear they're a gift.”
“Maple cookies,” Bianca repeated. “Seriously?”
“I... have no idea, honestly. That's just what I'm getting from it, sorry.”
“If that hot water heater is actually leaking something that could have killed me by now, then I'll buy it all the cookies it wants. And all the cream to dunk them in. I'll call today and have someone come and check.”
Christian took a deep breath, then wondered whether that was a good idea right here, under the circumstances. He stepped back from the door with a nod. “I think... I'm really hoping that what's living here will be less agitated now that it knows you understand the situation and you're going to act on it.”
“Yesyesyesyes!”
“It's probably been frantic, wanting a way to warn you and only able to keep opening windows.”
“Yesyes! Thank you witch! Thank you!”
“Fortunate for it, and for me, that you're around,” Bianca said, with a smile. “Suppose we go back upstairs and make sure all the windows are open.”
“Sounds good to me,” Christian said in relief. “If there's nothing else wrong...”
“Nothing else, just bad air!” The liminal raced up the stairs ahead of them.
“... then this should be easy enough to fix, right? I'm sorry it's something that's going to maybe be expensive, though.”
“Mm, I plan to complain to the people who installed it,” Bianca said. “Maybe I can get them to do it for free since they might have messed up the first time. I don't intend to tell them about my in-house guardian angel, though. I'll just tell them I've been getting headaches and the person I saw about them suggested that it might be carbon monoxide.”
“That sounds like it could work. I'll do a quick walk-through of the rest of the house, if you like, to see if I pick up on anything else, but probably this is it.”
“I'd feel better if you could.” She gestured. “Feel free. Yell if you want me. I'm going to see if I can find the invoice for the water heater.” She pulled open one of the kitchen drawers and began to flip through the paper inside.
“Yeah, I can see why you wouldn't want to waste time. This should only take a minute.”
The liminal followed Christian.
“Witch? Thank you witch! Hear me? Thank you!”
Christian kept quiet until he was in the hallway that held the bedrooms and bathroom, about as far away as he could get, before he turned to the liminal.
“You're welcome,” he whispered. “Thank you for protecting her. You'll keep looking out for her? And for her son, when he's home from school?”
The liminal nodded energetically. “I like both. Don't want to have to find a new home.”
“Don't eat all the cookies at once. Go slow.”
“Okay.”
“I have to go. I can't explain everything to her, she'd be afraid. But I think she'll like feeling like she's protected.”
He went back to the kitchen. Bianca had an invoice spread on the kitchen counter while she inspected it. She looked up immediately, though.
“All clear,” Christian assured her. “I don't get the slightest sense of anything else wrong. Every bad feeling and warning I'm getting is pointing to the same source.”
Bianca nodded. “That's a relief. One crisis is enough. I'll let you know what they say. But I really appreciate you coming over here just to humour me.”
“Things happen,” Christian said gently. “I happened to be born a bit more sensitive and my parents taught me to pay attention to it. I like using that to help out. Just please don't tell everyone you know that I can do weird things, okay? I'd rather keep it kind of quiet. I mean, if you know of someone who needs help, that's fine, just...”
“Got it. I've only been talking about being frustrated and freaked out about the windows to a few people, most of them shop at your store and know you anyway. I won't mention it to anyone else. I can understand not wanting too much attention.” She fished a folded bill from a pocket in the side-seam of her dress and held it out. “But you may have to put up with a lot of thanks from me.”
Christian accepted it and tucked it into the pocket of his jeans. He only asked twenty dollars, but he was sure he'd seen the edge of a blue ten folded inside the green twenty. Accepting money for this kind of thing made him uncomfortable, but he knew Bianca could afford it—and he really didn't make all that much working part-time at the bookstore. “Thanks. If there's any other problems, let me know, and I'm here.”
With farewells duly said, Christian stepped back outside and headed for the sidewalk.
He paused under a large maple and rested a hand against its bark to steady himself while he closed his eyes and took several slow deep breaths.
Often all he found was a local imprint of past events that corrupted current energy in ways that made human inhabitants feel inexplicably bad—ill, irritable, sad, it varied, but while cleaning it up took time and some of his own energy, it was simple to do. Occasionally it was a ghost that hadn't realized yet that they had died, which just meant gently explaining, or one refusing to move on, which he had yet to have to deal with alone and was in no hurry to face. The unpredictable ones were the liminals that lived everywhere, straddling the boundary between the plane on which humans lived and another of their own. This one, at least, had been a benevolent one. He'd handled minor unpleasant ones before by himself, but it had been comforting to know that if he got in over his head, Vadin would know and intervene.
He had much less faith in the insistence that he could ask his new roommate for help. For one thing, as near as he could tell, Mark lacked the slightest trace of witchblood and was simply an ungifted human. For another, bargain or not, he wasn't at all sure Mark would particularly care.
But he was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to sleep at night if he refused to at least try to help someone who was facing a problem that no one else would believe was real. He'd just have to hope he'd learned enough from his family and their liminal friends and allies to be able to muddle through while he got better. Maybe he could find a liminal ally, if not friend, on a par with the naga Vadin who had become his grandfather's beloved companion, playful resourceful harpy Iambe who found his mother a kindred spirit, the quiet hulder Hanna who had been Cecilia’s dearest friend and had bid them all farewell soon after her death. That, however, was likely to take time.
Right now, he needed to get home. It had been a long day, coming here after spending six hours at the bookstore, and the nearest bus stop was a couple of blocks from here. And the heavy air and the restless breeze and those low clouds suggested that there might be a thunderstorm on the way.
