AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1
Madame Anna Sees All
People who knew about Others thought spider-kin seers couldn’t be surprised, but even Liliana could only see what she looked for. No one wakes up and wonders, Will a Celtic werewolf accuse me of murder today?
Liliana simply looked to see what the weather would be, just as she did every morning. When her fourth eyes showed her a fast-forward movie of clouds gathering and drizzly rain, she put on warm blue knit tights under her purple velvet skirt.
Her only plan for the day was to clean and organize before her favorite client’s appointment. Janice Willoughby had been her client for over a decade. The room-bot that kept her floors spotless and dusted everything it could reach was a thank you gift from Mrs. Willoughby. Something to do with Liliana’s advice helping her to become Mrs. Willoughby. She even invited Liliana to her wedding ten years ago in the Fayetteville Community Church.
The spider-kin seer didn’t go of course. Weddings were filled with crowds of strangers. But it was still nice to be invited. And the room-bot was marvelously useful.
Unfortunately, the handy bot’s telescoping arms couldn’t reach to dust the highest shelves in the room where the spider seer conducted business. Liliana balanced on her ballet-slippered toes between the back slats of a wooden chair and the edge of a shelf while she dusted. Out of boredom, she let her fourth eyes wander. Large and cat-slanted, the eyes opened on her forehead above her eyebrows, lavender and teal opalescent colors swirling.
She saw three strangers on her front porch. The shortest one would knock on the front door—very soon by the sharp, barely future shading of the vision. She glanced at the nicely dressed short woman’s wrist phone as she lifted her hand to knock.
She had only a minute or two until they arrived, depending on how accurate the time on the woman’s wrist phone was.
Strangers.
Liliana twisted the dust rag in her hands. Strangers often laughed at her or spoke to her slowly as if she were stupid.
Her clients understood that Liliana had trouble sometimes remembering to follow social rules. Strangers expected her to already know and follow all the rules.
Who made up the social rules anyway? How does everyone else always know them?
She sighed in frustration, balanced on one toe tip on the chair’s back for a moment, then hopped lightly down to the hardwood floor. She tossed her dust rag onto the corner shelf next to the pile of unfolded scarves.
There was no avoiding it. The three people did not look like they wanted her to convert to their religion or to sell her anything. She would have to answer the door.
Liliana closed all six of her inhuman eyes out of careful habit and brushed her thick, black hair forward with her fingers on both sides. Her hair would help obscure the tiny crinkles from closed spider eyes on her forehead and temples. Her appearance should now be indistinguishable from a young adult human. All three of Liliana’s parents had worked hard to teach her how to blend around humans. Normals could sometimes be violently intolerant of those who were different, and Liliana didn’t want to have to kill anyone today.
She cracked the door just as the short woman’s knuckles were about to touch it. That let in the traffic noise of the busy street in front of her house.
The three strangers were taken aback for only a moment. Lots of people had door cameras these days and might have been warned by their house AIs watching through those mechanical eyes.
Maybe these people were driving by and saw my sign.
The big sign outside said, “Madame Anna Sees All.” It wasn’t true, since no one could see all without going insane, but her second mother urged her to paint it five decades ago. Ixchel said that advertising did not have to be accurate, only catchy.
Curiosity tickled the back of every part of Liliana’s mind. Some part sent her a thrill of possible danger, but she couldn’t trace it. Perhaps the warning was from a part of her mind that used one of her closed sets of eyes. She would check after her strange visitors left.
A brief glance with her first eyes, her dark blue human eyes, told her only one of the three people on her doorstep was a man. He wore jeans, an open synth-leather jacket, and a black T-shirt with white letters and a stick figure that said, “Stand back. I’m going to try…science.” Disproportionately large, shiny black combat boots stuck out from his ordinary jeans.
She stared at them. He must have very big feet.
Those look like actual leather, made from cows.
Taxes on leather and other animal products had made them an expensive rarity since 2036, when the Green Party swept the elections toward the end of the Energy Wars.
The short woman in the blue synth-silk suit held up a shiny gold badge in the general direction of Liliana’s wandering gaze. Her skin was perhaps the darkest shade Liliana had ever seen on a human, and she wore her hair in neat, shoulder-length braids. Her stature put her face nearly level with Liliana’s. An agreeable coincidence. There were not many people as petite as she was.
Keeping her smile carefully small so her fangs wouldn’t show, Liliana smiled at the woman’s sensible but dressy flats.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m Detective Shonda Jackson. This is the CID liaison with Fort Liberty, Sergeant Zoe Giovanni, and special CID consultant, Doctor Peter Teague.” She indicated the other two people, who nodded in turn. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Questions,” Liliana repeated. The tightness in her shoulders relaxed. Everyone came to ask her questions. They must be new clients then. She waited for them to ask.
“Yes,” the police detective confirmed.
