Page 64 of Butterfly Effects

“Arthur,” he breathed, the word sounding like an ordeal, like I was infinitely cruel to ask him to speak.

Right. That was quite enough of that. I grabbed his collar and hauled him down toward me, then kissed him firmly. He was stiff at first, not resisting or pulling away, but not yielding either, like he thought kissing me was somehow wrong. Then, bit by bit, he melted into me, until I felt his tail snake around my waist, followed by his arms, followed by him lifting me off my feet and clutching me against him. I let go of his collar and draped my own arms around his neck, continuing to kiss him until he sighed. Only then did I pull back, looking into his eyes.

They weren’t glossy anymore, and his pupils had returned almost to normal. He exhaled hard.

“You okay, buddy?” I asked.

“You kiss all your buddies like that?”

“I do. My trapeze instructor told me it was the best way to teach them not to drop me. I don’t want to be smeared across the tent floor.”

“A worthy perspective.” He set me carefully down on my feet. “Woof, that was a bad one. Thanks for knocking me out of it.”

“Anytime.” I stepped back and turned to look at Arthur, grateful for the broad surface of the tree limb. It was about as wide as a twin bed, which seemed extravagant for a tree, and close enough to flat that I didn’t feel like I was going to fall.

Arthur was sitting down about six feet away, back in the knee-hugging position he’d been in when I’d first found him.

“You okay over there?” I called.

“I’m sorry I doped your fiancé,” he replied, miserably.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “No harm done.”

He shot me a furious, almost feral look. “But there could have been. It would have been so easy.”

“I know.”

When Artie’s pheromones had first started manifesting in earnest, we’d all been goofy teenagers, and I’ll admit, there had been a certain fascination in the idea that he was just sweating pure aphrodisiac. I hadn’t been very interested in dating back then, so I hadn’t been jealous, exactly, but it had still seemed cool.

And then he’d sat me down and explained that he couldn’t control them, which made them a constant risk to his health and safety. Not only could he force someone to do something they would never do intentionally, but he could get seriously hurt if someone decided not to take “no” for an answer. The only way to avoid that potentiality was to stay locked in his room most of the time. Arthur had quickly come to the same conclusions, and was no more social than his predecessor had been.

I walked over to Arthur, offering him my hands. “There’s lots of weird vegetation around here,” I said. “I’m sure something will have some stinky-ass sap you can smear on yourself to block the pheromones.”

“Really?”

“Really. And you’re Lilu, which means you won’t be allergic to it the way I might be.” Lilu get some advantages to go with the whole “basically a sex-pollen factory” problem. The breeding is a big one, from a species perspective. They’re never going to die out, not with the way they reproduce. Extinction is not a worry for them.

For the individual, Lilu who have better control of their pheromones can use them to influence people without driving them into a lustful frenzy. And they’re not allergic to anything. Dad thinks it’s connected to their seemingly infinite cross-fertility: no good being able to reproduce with something if doing so will lead to a massive allergic reaction. They don’t get itchy from mosquito bites, they don’t catch poison oak … really, it’s a big-enough bonus to make the downsides seem almost reasonable. But only almost.

Sam walked over to join us, looking faintly embarrassed. “Sorry about that, Arthur,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “Didn’t mean to get all weird on you back there.”

“I appreciate the assist,” said Arthur, waving it off. “And now we’re in a tree. Why are we in a tree?”

“I like the tree,” said Sam.

I looked back toward the building. Fire was licking at the walls, charring the papery exterior, and generally making a nuisance of itself. It didn’t look like it was going to crown into the tree, however, and the patch of roof beneath our limb wasn’t actively burning just yet, which meant we had a little time. “The tree is not on fire, which makes it a lot better than the alternative,” I said grimly.

There was a commotion on the street below us. I popped my head over the edge of the limb to look, sliding on the rough bark before Sam wrapped his tail around my waist again to anchor me. I shot him a grateful look, then returned my attention to what was happening at street level.

There were no sirens. There were no lights. There were just swarms of Johrlac in banded bodysuits—dark blue, then golden orange, then light blue—riding what looked like giant froghopper bugs toward the burning building. One of the froghoppers was towing a cart with a large water tank on it. When they reached the building, they spread out to form a perimeter, and the riders slid down from their insects, moving to grab tubes connected to the tank. They strapped those tubes to the sides of the froghoppers, and the bugs began first to drink, then to spew cascades of foamy bubbles onto the fire.

The froth was thick and white, and it quashed the flames with a speed that simple water could never have managed. More Johrlac in the same colors but with added helmets and heavy coats charged into the building once the fire at the front had been put out, emerging a few seconds later with workers on their arms, steering them coughing and shaken to the other side of the street. No one screamed. No one shouted orders. The Johrlac not actively involved with the situation didn’t even stop to stare. They just kept going about their business, ignoring the burning administrative building as completely as they had ignored the lot of us while we were infiltrating the place.

“Look,” said Sam softly, and pointed. I followed the angle of his finger.

A new group of Johrlac had appeared, moving among the rescued workers. Their jumpsuits were banded black and a yellow so pale it looked white, creating a sharp contrast to the brighter yellow worn by many of the workers.

“Medical?” I guessed.