Human for a Day (9781101552391) (5 page)

The man gave me an anxious look. “Miss?”

“Rum would be
very
lovely,” I said, stunned, and followed him.

The man led me down several blocks, seeming not to notice or care that I was barefoot and being pursued by an ever-growing number of pigeons. A few people waved as we passed, and one man called, “Nice catch, Andy. You find her down at the docks?” His companions laughed. My companion—Andy—didn't.

He also didn't scowl or walk any faster. I squinted at him. “I believe those men were implying that I was a woman of negotiable virtue.”

“Yes, miss.”

“And that you paid me for my company.”

“Yes, miss.”

“Doesn't that bother you?”

“No, miss.”

“Why not?”

“Because it isn't so, miss.” Andy stopped in front of a storefront that seemed to consist primarily of a grimy plate glass window with the name NORTON'S painted across it in gold leaf. I couldn't remember ever seeing it before. That, too, was worrisome, since there shouldn't have been anything in the city that I'd never seen. Not unless it had been constructed since I woke up, and this building was too old for that.

Andy didn't appear to notice my dismay. “In here, miss,” he said, opening the door and stepping inside. There was nothing to do but follow him.

The sound of the door closing behind us was accompanied by a series of dull thumps as my attendant pigeons tried to fly through the dirty window. I winced in sympathy before turning my attention to the room that we had entered.

It was clearly a public house of some sort—surprisingly clean for such an establishment—with a vast bar of polished ash dominating one wall. The shelves behind it were loaded with an assortment of liquors, only some of which were immediately familiar to me. Of equally questionable familiarity was the only other person in the room, a redheaded woman with her hair braided in a tight crown around her head and a barmaid's apron tied around her waist. She was regarding me with an unblinking stare that was almost as unnerving as my current condition.

“I brought her, ma'am,” said Andy.

“Very good, Andy,” the woman replied. She stepped around the bar, untying her apron as she approached us. Stopping a few feet in front of me, she looked me critically up and down before saying, “You're rather shorter than I assumed you would be.”

I bristled. “And you are?”

“I'm Mina Norton, and this is my establishment.” Her expression was grave as she added, “I may be your only hope for survival.”

“Ah,” I said, faintly. “Well, isn't that lovely. The pan-etheric disturbance would like some rum now, if you please.”

“Certainly,” said Mina. “While we drink, we can attempt to figure out what the incarnate city of San Francisco is doing in my bar.”

“And won't that be a lovely change?” I muttered.

 

Mina left Andy in charge of the bar after presenting him with a long list of instructions, including things like, “Don't serve gin to gargoyles; it makes them rowdy,” “Tell Tom he has to settle his tab before he gets another drink,” and “Don't let anyone into the back unless you hear screaming.” Then, armed with a bottle of rum, she led me through a door behind the bar and into the well-kept storeroom beyond.

“Why have I never seen this place?” I asked her. “It's not new.”

“Far from it. My father built it during the Gold Rush, before your attentions were fully formed. He thought it best that we be protected from certain forms of spiritual observation, and I've maintained those protections.” Mina tapped a wind chime that hung incongruously from the edge of a stocking shelf. A low tone rang through the room. “It's not that I dislike you, really. It's simply that I dislike being watched when I didn't invite the observation.”

“But you're in my . . .” I hesitated, trying to find the appropriate word. There didn't seem to be one. I followed her through the door at the back of the storeroom and down the stairway on the other side, finally saying, “You're
in
me. Don't you think that means you've invited the observation?”

“To be quite honest, no.” Mina stopped at the bottom of the stairs to light a match and touch it to a length of wick protruding from a copper pipe. The flame flared briefly, and gas lamps came on all around the room, illuminating a space I would have sworn I didn't contain.

Catching my expression, Mina shook out her match and said, “The walls are reinforced. Just let me know if you feel an earthquake coming on, and we should be fine.”

“Yes, of course,” I said. A variety of arcane seals were chiseled into the floor and ceiling. I pointed to one of them. “Are those why I can't normally see you?”

“Yes, they are.” She walked calmly across the room to the twin of the bar upstairs, where she put down the rum and bent forward, leaning over the wood to extract a pair of glasses. “As for why I don't believe we've invited observation, the spirits of cities are born when a sufficient number of thinking beings have moved into the area. Those thinking beings don't get a vote in the matter. My father had no objection to you, and neither do I, but that doesn't mean I want you looking over my shoulder all the time.”

I frowned as I followed her. “You could move.”

“We were here first.” She poured two fingers of amber rum into a glass and pushed it toward me. “Here. This should make you feel better.”

“Thank you.” The rum didn't have a taste so much as it had a sensation, like fire running down my throat. I choked a little, coughing into my hand before putting the glass aside. “Much better,” I managed to wheeze. “Now, can you tell me what I'm doing here?”

“I haven't a clue,” said Mina, pouring herself a much larger glass of rum and downing it in a single impressive swallow. “I didn't know anything was going on until my orrery of the Bay Area started spinning out of control. It was as if one of the largest gravitational forces—that being you—had vanished from the model.
Something
was disturbing the natural order of things. My books indicated that it might be a matter of incarnation, so I sent Andy looking for a naked, confused person who wasn't meant to be a person at all. He has an eye for that sort of thing.”

“Why's that?” I asked, reaching for the bottle of rum. Getting drunk was sounding more appealing by the moment.

“Because he's a person who wasn't meant to be a person at all. What's the last thing you remember?”

I stopped, blinking at her for a few seconds, before I poured myself another glass of rum and said, “I was . . . it's hard to explain where I am, when I'm in my natural state. I'm everywhere. I'm the sidewalks and the rooftops and the houses. I'm the shops and the theaters and the stands the food vendors set up along the beach. I see things, but they aren't immediate. Not the way they are right now.”

“Small gods,” Mina said, turning to begin rummaging through the shelves of liquor behind the bar. “Lares and Penates. That's where all this began. You would have been a household spirit, once, when everyone carried their own gods with them. Now, you're the soul of a city, and you're sitting here wearing my golem's coat, drinking rum, leaving San Francisco just this side of completely unprotected.”

“What?” I looked at her with alarm. “I can't be unprotected. I have police, firemen, pigeons—”

“None of whom will be able to defend you if whatever—or whoever—caused you to incarnate shows up with a shotgun,” Mina said, sounding entirely too reasonable. She turned back to me, holding a bottle of something green. “Did anything unusual happen before you took on flesh? Anything at all?”

“I . . . I don't remember.”

“Try.” It wasn't a suggestion. She poured a glass of the green liquid and pushed it across the bar to me. “A great deal depends on it.”

Lacking any better options, I picked up the glass and drank.

 

This time, when I awoke, I was lying flat on my back on the basement floor, and there were no pigeons. Mina was standing over me, a quizzical look on her face. “Well?”

“There was a man.” I pushed myself into a sitting position. My throat felt raw and tender from whatever it was she'd given me to drink. “He was . . . he was the summer! The whole summer, walking around like a man!”

“That's James Holly,” said Mina, dismissively. “He's the Summer King. Did he do this?”

“No. He . . . he was running away from something. Some
one
. The man who did this to me. This one wasn't the summer.”

“Most men aren't,” agreed Mina, helping me to my feet. “What was he?”

“He was like you. The same sort of construction.”

Mina's eyebrows lifted. “He was an alchemist?”

“Is that what you are?”

“Since I doubt you can use your magical city powers to detect bartenders, yes.” She sighed. “His name is Stuart. He's a little unbalanced. And apparently, he's learned how to incarnate the souls of cities. Oh, won't this be fun?” She started for the stairs.

“Wait!” I cried, alarmed. “Where are you going?”

“To telephone the Summer King and let him know that we're all about to die. You can come, if you'd like. Or you can drink more aconite absinthe. I understand that even geographic fixtures can become drunk, if they consume enough. Feel free to try.”

Then she was gone, walking back up the stairs to the storeroom. I stayed where I was, wobbling slightly on my unfamiliar legs, and tried to figure out what, precisely, was going on. When I realized that I wasn't going to succeed, I followed her.

I took the absinthe with me.

 

It took approximately thirty minutes for James Holly to cross me and arrive at the bar. That was sufficient time for Mina to find me a dress—too big at the bust, too long in the skirt, but still an improvement over Andy's borrowed coat—and a pair of shoes. James burst into the room, ignoring the CLOSED sign on the door, and demanded, “Where is she?”

Mina looked up from polishing a beer stein and replied, mildly, “James Holly, Summer King, meet the City of San Francisco. San Francisco, meet James Holly, the source of all our troubles.” Andy didn't even grant this much of an acknowledgement, but simply continued sweeping the floor.

“That's unfair,” objected James, before bowing in my direction. I remembered that gesture, even though I'd never seen it before, and smiled at him in answer. “My lady. I am very sorry for your current inconvenience.”

“I have absolutely no idea what's going on right now,” I said, still smiling. It seemed like the best thing to do. “Are you really the
entire
summer?”

“To my occasional chagrin, yes.” He straightened. “Miss Norton, are you sure this is my brother-in-law's work?”

“She saw an alchemist chasing you shortly before she was given human form, James. What do you think?”

James scowled. “Blast and damn.”

“Precisely.”

I held up a hand. “Could you please explain what's going on? I don't appreciate being talked around, even if I'm not customarily in a position to join the conversation.”

“It's simple, really. He,” Mina pointed at James, “is married to the Winter Queen, and the Winter Queen's younger sister is married to your embodying alchemist.”

“Stuart and Jane Hauser,” interjected James. “They want to claim our Seasons. Margaret and I would rather they didn't, as this would kill us.”

“What does that have to do with
me
?” I demanded. “I'm not really involved in this line of succession. I just want to stay alive.”

“I'd assume Stuart was planning to sacrifice you to gain power, if he'd been there when you incarnated,” said Mina. “As he wasn't, I have to assume that he wanted you out of the way for a time. He wanted San Francisco stripped of mystical defenses.”

“Are you humans always this complicated?” I rubbed my forehead. “I'd like to resume being a city, please.”

Mina frowned. “You never stopped,” she said. “You just stopped paying attention to yourself. James, grab a bottle of Scotch and follow me. We need to find out what Stuart is up to.”

 

The gas lamps in the basement were still on. Mina stormed down the stairs with the two of us behind her, muttering to herself. “You!” she whirled, pointing at me. “Where is Stuart?”

“In an abandoned warehouse two blocks east of here,” I replied, without thinking about it. I froze. “What—what did you do?”

“Nothing. You did it. You can't be completely sundered from yourself, or we'd have fallen into the ocean by now.” She moved behind the bar, grabbing a large stein and several bottles. “James, the Scotch. City, tell your pigeons to watch Stuart. If he moves, you need to know.”

“I can try,” I said, uncertainly.

“Don't try. Do it or we're all going to die.”

James frowned as he passed the Scotch. “A bit apocalyptic, don't you think?”

“No.” Mina half-filled the stein with Scotch before beginning to add splashes from her other bottles. “Why incarnate the city of San Francisco? Why distract her from her usual occupation?”

“Boredom?” he ventured.

“He's trying to start an earthquake.” My voice surprised even me. James turned to stare at me, but I was distracted by the sensations in the bottom of my feet, the itching I hadn't recognized until I started trying to focus on what I was, rather than the body I was wearing. “He's pressing down on one of my faults—he wants to shake the city into the sea. Why would he do that to me?” I looked at them pleadingly. “Why?”