So easy.
Tara cursed the teachers who gave her options that were always easy, but never right.
“Report the gargoyles,” she said. “Hold off on the rest, the miracle, and I’ll give you an exclusive like you won’t believe.”
“When?”
“Two days,” she said. “Sooner, I hope. I need to make arrangements.”
Jones’s face betrayed little. “Deal. But this better be big.”
“Trust me.”
18
Tara did not look at the moon while she stormed the three blocks to her apartment. The moon didn’t seem to care. She slammed her front door open with a Crafty glance, and mailbox ditto. Bad form, she reprimanded herself as she marched upstairs, flipping from envelope to envelope. Ms. Kevarian would be disappointed. The weak-willed gratified themselves with needless displays of power. The shadows that stalked Tara, the deep drums her footfalls became, the tarnish that spread from her touch on the banister—these seemed impressive but were at heart only a child’s tantrum strained through sorcery.
She allowed herself the tantrum’s comfort. Ms. Kevarian wasn’t here.
You shouldn’t be either, chattered the contemptible voice in the back of her head. You should have stayed with her.
And left Alt Coulumb to weather this storm on its own? No. She’d chosen this path. She’d walk it. She just had to get hold of herself.
The mail did not reassure. This week’s Thaumaturgist. An advertisement from a continuing education course. A sealed letter with an Edgemont postmark she’d not open yet. And, at the bottom, a utilitarian envelope from the Hidden Schools, containing a student loan bill.
“Fuck.” She leaned against her apartment door, 403. Her heart was racing for reasons that had nothing to do with the stairs. She stopped it entirely, and stopped breathing too. Her limbs chilled and she heard small sounds—carriages on the road outside, mice skittering over floorboards, a drunk man’s laughter from the first floor, and beneath all these the bass fiddle note of the revolving world.
Okay. She started her heart again, breathed. Physical form had this to recommend it: your lungs let you know when they were happy.
She fished her keys from her purse, but when she reached for the latch, it popped open of its own accord. Still leaning against a suddenly open door, she lurched to catch herself on the doorjamb. Envelopes fell, and the Thaumaturgist flew like a drunken bird, flapping and spinning to land open to a two-page spread about the lure of shadow banking.
She knelt to retrieve her fallen mail.
Then she noticed that her apartment was not dark.
Nor were the lights on.
She closed the Thaumaturgist, set it on the table by the door along with the bills and letters, and took a deep breath. Then she looked up.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You do, though,” the goddess said. “On some level.” She stood by the counter of Tara’s kitchen-living-dining room, holding a knife. She looked precisely like Tara, only she glowed, and her jacket wasn’t torn. “I made you a snack.” She pointed to a bowl.
“Carrots.”
“Simple, I grant, but you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to do things with matter. Given how vigorously you people invent fables about machines that fly and boxes that talk, you’d expect opening a refrigerator door or picking up a kitchen knife to be easier. Every activity on this plane involves so many counterbalancing forces and microscopic, hells, quantum interactions; I would have made you cookies but I never can remember how the proteins denature. Besides, you should eat healthier.”
“You pull that stunt, then lecture me on my life choices?”
“The man was hurting his friends. He would have hurt his children next. In many ways he has already. He was scared, and alone, and do you think Shale breaking his arm would have helped?”
“So you broke his mind instead.”
“I offered him perspective. You people get so closed up inside those little brains. Their structure changes in response to thought, you know, like your muscles respond to use. The used parts bulk up. Bad training develops uneven strength; it takes time and painful work to balance unbalanced muscles.”
“Or a shortcut that deprives someone of all agency.”
“Trust me, this guy needed help. I did no permanent damage, just gave him short-term access to better cognitive machinery, superior theory of mind. What he does with the memory of that is up to him. Have a carrot.”
Tara grabbed the bowl from the counter. She’d had a late, fried dinner, and her stomach was growling. The carrot crunched. She didn’t remember having carrots in her fridge, but she thought better of raising the point. “You could have asked before you used my soul to save his.”