Welcome to Bordertown (38 page)

Alaunus cleared his throat. “Eventually, of course, I tire of them and move on.”

“That’s pretty shitty of you. What happens to the women after that?”

“Traditionally, they pine away unto death. But that effect seems to be diminished on the Border, which is a blessing, really, though they are probably unhappy for a while, I suppose.” He stood up. “But you, Allie Land, I want
you
, and I don’t understand why you don’t—”

Allie took off one of her shoes—who the hell went to sleep in
high heels
?—and threw it at his head, but he vanished before it struck him, and the dream vanished with him.

*   *   *

In her next dream, which was one of her usual ones, she was onstage in a vast stadium, before a crowd so large it seemed to encompass all of humanity. Everyone was focused on Allie, standing in the spotlight at the head of Allison Wonderland—the current band lineup was a bit shadowy—and holding a guitar, about to open her mouth and launch into the first song of the set of her life.

Even in the dream, she thought,
I’m just one little wish away from making all this come true.

*   *   *

Allie woke to an annoying and weirdly familiar voice saying, “But it doesn’t
work
!” in the vicinity of the front door. She was half sprawled on the futon, her mouth tasted like something furry had died of a wasting disease under her tongue, and she desperately wanted coffee.

She got up, stretched, and went to the front door, where Psyche was talking in a low and reasonable tone. “I’m not a fairy godmother. I didn’t grant the wish. I just showed you your star. I don’t know why it isn’t working on this girl—perhaps something in the wording of your wish provided a loophole.”

“Morning, Psyche. Who’s at the door?”

Psyche turned, and there was Alaunus outside, looking rather more bedraggled than he had in her dream, though he did have on a stupid old-fashioned ruffly shirt. His face froze. “This is a conspiracy. You’re in this together.”

“Alaunus … 
this
is the girl you’re talking about?” Psyche looked from me to Alaunus, her eyes wide. “You’d better come in. We’ll have some breakfast and … talk about this.”

Alaunus entered stiffly, and Allie narrowed her eyes. “Stay out of my dreams, jerk. Learn to take no for an answer, or I’ll find out whether
elves
are vulnerable to getting kicked in the balls.”

To her shock, Alaunus began sobbing. He sat on the futon, his arms wrapped around himself, and cried. Allie sat on a cushion on the other side of the low table, watching him with interest as Psyche brought over a pot of tea and some of that fresh fruit the elf politician had sent her. She sat beside Alaunus and patted him on the back a bit awkwardly. Psyche was nice enough, but motherly she wasn’t.

Allie sipped some tea, which was too hot to taste much of anything, and peeled a banana. “So this guy got a wish, too? How many of those things do you give out, anyway?”

Psyche shook her head. “I don’t give them out. I saw my own star, soon after I got to Bordertown, and I made a wish on a whim, never expecting it to come true. I said, ‘I wish I could stay here, and have a good life, and keep studying the stars.’ And it came true. In a way.” She shrugged. “Last year, the stars directed me to Alaunus, and I showed him his star. Yesterday, they directed me to you.”

Alaunus lifted his head and stared at Allie. “She has a star, too? Could that be why my powers failed to work on her?”

“It makes sense,” Psyche said. “Your … charm … never worked on me, either. Allie, if I may ask, what’s your birthday?”

“September twenty-third. Why? You going to do my chart after all?”

“No. But you were born on the autumnal equinox. I was born on an equinox, and so was Alaunus—a day when night and day are in perfect balance, the same length, and we were each born at precisely the moment when day becomes night. A borderline time, a threshold time, a twilight time. What time were you born?”

“I don’t know exactly. Evening, I think.”

Psyche nodded. “Then you likely fit the pattern, too. Something about being born at that precise moment on that day—even in different years—brought us to the attention of … whatever’s up there, looking down on us. I’d hazard a guess that Alaunus’s wish-given powers don’t work on others like him, other children of the equinox. It’s a working hypothesis, at least.”

Allie frowned. “So, wait, how do you know he was born on the equinox? Do they have the same seasons over in elfy-welfy land?”

“Ah, no, Alaunus was mortal when he was born,” Psyche said. “His wish …”

Alaunus covered his face with his hands, and Allie laughed—she couldn’t help it. “Wait, you weren’t always an elf? You were a guy who
wished
to be an elf? How very Otherkin of you. And you gave me all that crap about how your kind are called
Truebloods.
Ha. Un-Trueblood more like it.”

“You’re so
mean
to me!” he said, uncovering his face. “No one is ever mean to me anymore!”

“Somebody oughta be.” Allie was pissed, and she was just getting warmed up. “If what you told me in that dream last night is true, you’re a walking, talking date-rape drug. The living embodiment of GHB in a bad Michael Jackson jacket, taking advantage of people. And now you’re
crying
about it? Boo-hoo, everyone loves you. I saw you in that club, girls hanging off you, guys buying you drinks—getting the total rock-star treatment, except you don’t have to actually
do
anything or have any talent. So what are you whining about?”

“Because I’m still so alone.” His voice was sufficiently miserable that Allie let her next line of attack die. “When I stood beneath my star, I was just a filthy human street kid, beneath notice, beneath contempt, ignored when I wasn’t being beaten—and I wished that
everyone would love me.
I transformed into this. An
elf. A lovetalker—or something close enough. At first, it was a dream come true. Everyone loved having me in their company, and they were all willing to … do things for me.”

Alaunus picked at a bit of silver thread sticking out of the sleeve of his Ren faire–looking shirt, and Allie thought he was trying to avoid her gaze. “But something was wrong. The other el—the Truebloods—they’re very good to me. They adore me, they tell me their secrets, they show me their magics, but the truth is”—he slumped, shrinking down into himself—“I got to the point where I couldn’t stand the company of elves. I understand their language well enough—I guess that comes with this body—but I never get their jokes, if they
are
jokes, and they always talk about books, artists, musicians, people I’ve never heard of, and they just assume this shared knowledge, this weird, like, cultural heritage. I don’t have that, and being among them made me feel lonelier than ever. Sometimes the Truebloods I spent time with would make some gesture or say some phrase and look at me expectantly, and when I didn’t do whatever I was supposed to—make the secret sign, give them the special handshake, complete the famous line of poetry they were quoting—they’d just look at me, a little confused, and say my memory must have been affected by my passage through the Wall. So I stopped spending time with elves, started spending time with mortals, most of whom are half in love with elves
anyway
, but that doesn’t work too well, either. Humans never stop thinking of me as alien. They’ll pause in midconversation to explain things they think I won’t understand—what
Sesame Street
is, who President Nixon was, what the Apollo moon landings were—and
that’s
frustrating, so I snap at them and say I’m not an idiot, and they don’t even get annoyed with me, just apologetic, angry at
themselves
for making me mad.”

Now he looked up at Allie, and his eyes were wide and bright
and almost blazing, and he said, “But at least they
liked
me. Their company was tolerable because of … well, the free drinks, and the free rent, and all the sex. Whereas you … you don’t like me at all. You mock me, laugh at me, dismiss me, no matter how hard I try. I wished to be loved, but I think I should have wished to be
worthy
of love.” He bowed his head. “I don’t want to be … this … anymore.”

“Eat a pear,” Allie said. “It’ll make you feel better.”

While he mournfully munched, Allie mused for a bit. “So what do you want to do? Can you get another wish? Wish yourself back to normal?”

Psyche shook her head. “Another star has not appeared for him. I don’t understand why they come, but I have no reason to think he’ll get another wish.”

And I’m not about to waste my wish turning him into a human again
, she thought.
He got himself into this.
“The way I see it,” Allie said, “is you’ve got a magical problem. So maybe you should look for a magical solution.”

“Where? I can charm myself into the offices of the most powerful elves in Bordertown—they accept me as one of their own and find me endlessly fascinating—but magic here is so strange and unreliable, what good would it do? What if any attempted solution made things
worse
?” He took a ferocious bite from his pear.

“Okay. So go through the Wall.”

Alaunus stared at her, mouth open, bits of partially chewed pear showing.
How can anybody find that charming?
Allie thought. “You’re an elf, right? Or everybody thinks you are. You can do that whole elfy thing. Sure, you don’t know their knock-knock jokes or their legislative process, but you can charm your way past the Border guards. And magic is supposed to work better on the other side of the Wall. Go find the king or queen or whatever they’ve got
over there and ask for help—hell, tell them you’re trapped in a Trueblood’s body and you want
out.
I’m sure they’ll get right on that. What’ve you got to lose?”

“They could
kill
me,” he said. “They could, I don’t know, turn me into a
salamander.
Turn me inside out. They could do anything!”

“Yeah, maybe … but before you get salamandered, you’d get to see what lies beyond the Border, wouldn’t you? How many guys born mortal get to do
that
?”

“I …” Alaunus looked at Psyche. “Can it work?”

“Let me examine your chart.” Psyche pulled a sheaf of pages down from one of her bookshelves. She sat on a stool at the drafting table and began poring over the sheets.

“Have you thought about your wish—” Alaunus began.

“Shhh!” Psyche said. “Quiet, please. Give me a moment.”

So Allie and Alaunus drank tea and eyeballed each other warily, and Allie tried to refrain from humming and tapping her foot. Finally Psyche said, “It’s impossible to predict what might happen if you try to cross the Border, as the magics preventing any penetration of the Realm beyond are too powerful, but it is definitely an auspicious day for a journey, Alaunus. I can say that. You will make it through Elfhaeme Gate unscathed, and the trajectory from there is promising.”

“I’ll do it.” He put down his teacup and stood, trying to go for the assured-confidence look, but with some trembly freak-out leaking from around the edges. “It will do me good to move on. And it will be an adventure.”

“You’re doing the right thing, Al,” Allie said. “This is the first non-dick move you’ve made, really. Come see my band play if you ever make it back this way. We should be
huge
by then.”

Alaunus nodded gravely and extended his hand. Allie shook it
with a solemnity equal to his own, and Alaunus said, “I wish you the best,” apparently totally oblivious to the irony of that particular wording.

After he was gone, Allie flung herself down on the futon, exhausted by the whole exchange. “You ever think maybe you shouldn’t tell people about their wishes? Seems like they can make trouble.”

Psyche nodded. “Yes. But the stars compel me. I get my livelihood from them, and I’m unwilling to risk offending them. I’m sure they have their reasons. Would you like to come back to town with me? I can drop you off downtown while I go to my meetings.”

“Sure thing, and thanks. But you wear the stupid daisy helmet this time.”

*   *   *

Allie spent the day exploring Bordertown, visiting places she’d read about on the wildly inaccurate Bordertown Travel Wiki online: Getting some caffeine at Café Cubana, complete with totally like, whoa, over-the-top drag queen hosts and reportedly magical teapots that sometimes talked, though she didn’t hear them say anything. Stopping in at The Dancing Ferret to see if she could pass herself off as new again and get another free beer failed, and she was warned not to try anything like it again or she’d be banned. She did barter a tablet of diazepam for the best burger she’d ever had in her life. Pausing outside the Mock Avenue Church, though she couldn’t see the gargoyle. Hanging out on the promenade and looking at (but not touching) the strange red Mad River and the boats there, and wondering if anybody would dare eat fish caught from addictive liquid. Browsing at Elsewhere Library and
really
wishing she’d thought to bring the last Harry Potter books after all, since she could’ve probably done a sweet trade. Watching skater kids at Tumbledown Park. Checking out
music venues and places she might sit in with some other bands as a way of meeting people, though they were mostly closed during the day. Trying to get a feel for the place, avoiding the neighborhoods and streets Psyche had warned her against and, most of all, trying to decide what, exactly, she’d say when she stood under her wishing star tonight.

The decision had seemed easy until she saw what getting his heart’s desire had done to Al.

*   *   *

Psyche picked her up and took her to dinner at a weird place called Bolivar’s with a prix fixe menu, something Allie had never encountered before. The food was kinda weird—would’ve been even without what Psyche told her were Faerie ingredients—but good, and the rednut pastries were especially awesome. Psyche told her more about the city, about where she might find work if she wanted a job and stuff like that, carefully avoiding the issue of wishes. After dinner, they rode back up the hill to Stargazer House. Psyche went wordlessly to the roof, and Allie followed. While Psyche stared at the heavens and made occasional handwritten notes by starlight, Allie just waited for her star to appear.