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The server waited for me to take my first sip of pink-tinged tea, every line of his trim cater-waiter body vibrating with the need to know that I was satisfied, that he hadn't somehow managed to disappoint the most important person in the industry. He was hoping for his big break, and when he looked at me, he saw his name in lights.
Fool. Still, for the moment, a useful fool, and eliding a corpse is almost always more trouble than it's worth. I took the sip.
"Tangy," I said, and felt him swell with pride. "But a bit under-seasoned, don't you think? Really, I expected better from a place with this sort of reputation."
His shoulders sagged. Humans are so senselessly demonstrative, like they're afraid their emotions will lose all meaning if not painted constantly on a billboard. Noisy, nasty things.
"I am so sorry," he babbled. He began to reach for the tea, then froze, apparently realizing that taking it would mean snatching the cup out of my hands. "I'll remove it from your bill immediately. Honestly, I don't know what happened--"
"Bring me a glass of V8," I said. The cafe didn't sell the stuff, but the bodega across the street did, and I knew my eager attendant would make an unauthorized jaunt to get me what I asked for.
"Right away," he said, and turned and fled before I could change my mind about losing my temper. Mammalian fool.
I leaned back in my seat, considering the minds around me. They were all mammalian, hot and swift and teeming with untidy hormones. Most were human. A chupacabra actress held court at the table one over from mine, talking about making the transition between telenovelas and American drama.
It would be a small, easy thing to twist the part of her mind that allowed her to regulate her shape. How many of her fawning sycophants would stay in her company if she turned inside out and revealed herself as the glorious monster that she was? The screaming would be amusing, if nothing else--the chaos would be delicious.
But I would never get my V8. More, in this age of cell phones and cameras everywhere, the footage might attract the sort of people I didn't want to deal with. Monster-hunters are tedious at the best of times. Drama queens and ambulance chasers, the lot of them, driven by the fear that perhaps humans aren't at the top of the food chain after all.
As if they ever were. I sipped my tea, sighing with transitory contentment. It would have been difficult not to enjoy the delicate interplay of jasmine and tomato puree mixed with honey. It wasn't a
blend a cafe catering to a human clientele would ever think to put on a menu, but menus have little meaning for me. Truly, it was a lovely afternoon.
Maybe the V8 would be overkill. The tea was improving as it had time to fully mature. Jasmine is like that. I stood, taking my teacup with me.
My server was running back across the street, my requested beverage in hand. There was a truck heading his way, slowing to let the pedestrian pass. The driver was close enough for me to taste his thoughts, the slow, murky consideration of the world around him. One more boring man, living a boring life in a boring world, never making headlines, never doing anything worth remembering.
I could fix that.
The driver slammed his foot down on the gas, barreling forward fast enough to catch the unwary waiter square across the ribs. He went flying, V8 shooting out of his hand and smacking into the windshield. The truck continued onward before turning sharply and plowing into the front of the cafe. The chupacabra was fast enough to get up and out of the way before her table was driven through the window and into the dining room. Her companions were . . . less fortunate.
Humming to myself, still sipping my tea, I walked away. There must be something to do in a town like this on such a beautiful day. All I had to do was find it.
What possessed evolution to make something in such a practical form with no functional defenses, I may never know. Humans are fascinating creatures. They look like cuckoos: two arms, two legs, moderate sexual dimorphism. They have more variation in their appearance, but that only makes sense, as they have no other way of distinguishing one another. They can't read minds or feel thoughts like we do; they lack the true understanding of their peers that every cuckoo is born with.
Perhaps that's why they gather in such dismayingly large hives. Put a million cuckoos in one place and you'd get a riot the likes of which this world has never seen. We can't abide each other, save under very specific circumstances, when the need is greater than the desire to be left alone. Humans, though, they pile themselves up like locusts devouring a field, until their bodies are the greater part of their environment, and when they close the doors to their homes, they think themselves alone.
Humans are bees. Cuckoos are wasps. Even in this backward dimension where evolution clearly went wrong, bees exist to feed the wasps who move among them. They feed us in whatever way they can, and we show them the mercy of remaining solitary creatures. If we gathered in swarms like they do, we would destroy them inside of a season.
I walked. I sipped my tea. A man pulled a knife in the shadow of a parking garage, intending to take the purse of a young woman with two small children. He stabbed himself in the throat instead. His intended victims screamed in terrible harmony as I walked on.
The youngest of them would never recover. I could taste the shape of her trauma knitting together, one loop at a time. It would be a beautiful equation when it was finished, as long as no one interfered. I was nearly out of range of their minds, yet still close enough to reach out, tinker, and suggest. I'm no cuckoo queen, to completely modify memories. Pleasant as the power would be, it comes with a fate I have no interest in coveting.
Still, if I can't take a memory away, I can tone it down, wear off its edges, make it seem less important when set against the complicated mathematics of a life. The woman and her older child would forget this day more quickly than they would have believed possible, while the youngest would dwell on it, wrap herself around it, become it, until the stress of carrying that burden exploded in some fascinating new way.
I would be a hundred miles away by the time her equation reached its inevitable, explosive end. That was fine. Part of the fun of surrendering a piece of territory is in leaving presents for whoever takes control of it after me. Let the next cuckoo contend with whatever delicious atrocity this child grew up to commit. I would read about it in the papers, and have a pleasant memory to brighten a dull afternoon.
Still humming to myself and sipping my tea, I walked on.
The effort of altering their memories had been enough to leave me weary. I paused to look around and consider my options. Burbank is a lovely town for shopping, snacking, and playing with people, but its hotels tend toward the lower end of the scale, and most of the truly interesting people spend all their time behind gated walls protected by tedious security systems. Damned electronic eyes don't yield properly to psychic pressure.
There was a woman walking toward me on the sidewalk, her car keys in one hand and a Starbucks latte in the other, her thoughts filled with vague errands and emptiness. She would do. I waited for her to reach me, fell into step beside her, and smiled sweetly.
"There you are," I said. "I've been waiting ages."
There was a pause while her perception of reality adjusted to the changes I was feeding it. I felt her relax, and knew from the shape of her thoughts that she was smiling back, sheepishly, as if she had let someone terribly important down.
