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Medea stops in the street so that cars have to drive around her. She just looks at me, her face sweeping through the phases of the moon, turning her from a beautiful young woman to an old crone and back again.
“You’re as constant as the stars in a few things, Sandman Slim. For example, your stupidity and selfishness.”
“I also steal cable. What’s your point?”
“What you’re planning is reckless beyond belief. War is coming from below and above. And you plan on inserting yourself into the middle of it? And for what? A personal vendetta. You’ve even involved the Kissi. That alone has made the situation a thousand times worse.”
“What I’m doing is a lot more than a vendetta.”
A minivan full of frat boys goes around her, hooting and flipping her off. Medea flicks her head at them and the van’s windows explode inward. You can hear the frat boys screaming as the van rolls to a stop at the corner.
“The last time we met, who were you with? Ah yes, the Czech whore.”
“Watch your mouth. Her name is Brigitte and the proper term you’re looking for is ‘porn star.’ You’re just jealous of her because you never had a three-way with a cosmonaut.”
“And now you’re debasing yourself with that rabid dog in your room.”
“Candy and I are only at the shoc Yo at thek and awe stage. Debasing is penciled in for next Thursday.”
Medea glances up the street as the bloody frat boys stumble out of the van. She turns and looks at me.
“Now you’re sacrificing yourself for dear sweet Alice.”
“You already know that, and I want to be dead before one, so I’m leaving. Have a nice time playing pranks on civilians.”
I get into the car, but suddenly she’s next to me with her hand on the door.
She says, “Are you really going to sacrifice yourself to save your great betrayer?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You and Alice didn’t find each other by chance. We sent her to you.”
She lets that sink in for a minute. It doesn’t. It just sits there staring at me, ugly and cold.
Medea says, “Do you think the Sub Rosa is so blind that it wouldn’t notice a child as powerful as you being raised by ordinary parents? You were dangerous when a child and became more so as you grew. Then you chose to distance yourself from the Sub Rosa, its codes and bylaws.”
“Codes and bylaws? What are you? The Rotary Club? Fuck off.”
Medea leans in closer. A faint smile plays around her mouth as it morphs from a young woman’s full lips to a crone’s, as dry and cracked as a desert plain.
“When you left us we needed to know what you were up to. A simple spell wouldn’t do. You would have broken it. So we sent something you would accept wholeheartedly. The girl.”
“Alice wasn’t Sub Rosa. She didn’t have any magic. I would have known.”
“You’re right. Poor Alice was an invalid. But her parents had the gift. They’re Sub Rosa, which makes her Sub Rosa, too. Alice’s infirmity is what made her the perfect operative. With no magic of her own, you would never suspect her. And keeping watch over you was the one way she could contribute to her people’s welfare.”
Alice flashes in my memory. A thousand snapshots of her face. Her hands. Her body. There’s nothing that reads as magic or lies.
“I don’t believe you.”
“The truth doesn’t require your belief. Alice was never yours. She belonged to us.”
“Did Mason put you up to this? Aelita? Maybe both of them. What did they promise you, Baba Yaga? Your owdivaga? Yon Kentucky fried-chicken-leg house?”
Medea laughs. Up the block frat boys are pulling glass fragments out of each other’s faces. One sits on the curb staring at the phone in his hand. He can’t think of who to call.
“I’m the Inquisition and the Inquisition is beyond the sort of desires that make bribery possible.”
