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Bridget

“A charismologist?” he asks. “You don’t look like any lecturer.”

“I’m in the field.” Bridget sips her drink.

“A demon hunter?” He’s rubbing her arm; his hand is warm and callused. An honest hand. “My, my. Any tricks you want to share?”

“Sure.” Bridget pulls a vial from her purse. “For instance. A little consecrated balsam–” She dips her finger. “–in a fleur-de-lis… on someone’s chest…” She traces the sign onto him; he’s grinning. “Will expel a minor quasit.”

“That so?” he says, then smashes his head into the bar, falls and vomits fire.

“Kinda messy, though,” sighs Bridget.

Muriel

The problem with learning tricks to get around a bad memory is that a bad memory makes it hard to learn tricks; but Muriel does learn, after enough panic, enough sweat. All the hooks: felt tips that last longer than ballpoints on skin, unlikely cryptic phrases. Muriel puts her coat where she’ll have to notice her keys. She sets phone numbers to music.

“You correct my spelling,” says Lev curiously, “but you can’t remember my middle name?”

“Letters are like music notes,” she grumbles. “Two places to fit in your head.”

“My middle initial’s a letter.”

“What’s it stand for?”

“S.”

Rasmussen

“It just dropped in?” says Rasmussen blankly.

“Figure of speech, sir,” says a Whitecoat. “But it does seem to have, ah, plonked right into the Kuiper gap.”

“Two satellites, you said.” Rasmussen scrabbles through spectroscopy printouts. “Composed of–you’re joking.”

“No sir. Ninety-eight percent lead, sir.”

“But the damn thing’s a gas giant!” Rasmussen says. “Unless its core is all heavy metals–”

“Looks like the core’s iron,” says the Whitecoat. “And it’s shaped like–well, you should probably see it yourself, sir.”

He passes over the Röntgen print. Rasmussen squints, turns it sideways, stops.

“Is that a hook?” he asks.

Sergei

Thrice-bearded Sergei Sergeiovitch slaps the last militia man aside with the flat of his axe, laughing, tattooed. The women of the village try to shield their girl-children from the leers of his band; the old men are crying. They know that whether the raiders move along or winter here, it won’t end well. Sergei himself is a tale to frighten children. But they’d be less afraid if they knew his real name was Leslie.

“What? No!” roars Leslie. “I am Sergei son of Sergei!”

That’s not what your mother calls you, Leslie.

“Lay off my mom!”

Too late, Leslie.

South

This is how South remembers the pilot: two days, two weeks long.

The first morning he shows up at 8:10 a.m., script in his mouth; he pulls off his shirt in the parking lot and somebody’s coming at him with a sponge. That day he eats three different meals called “lunch.” Bailey yells Cut, Wrap, Go Home at four in the morning.

South sleeps in his car for eleven hours. He wakes up, one big sweaty muscle knot, to Fenchurch the production assistant tapping on his window.

“They bought fifteen more minutes,” she says. “Shower, eat, next shoot’s at midnight.”

Fletcher

“There’s no way he’ll move to Maryland,” says Fletcher, tending to a midrange turkey. “Not now.”

“What, Soundflowers made him a better offer?”

“Personal reasons. Good ones. That better, girl?” Fletcher zips the turkey shut and shoos it off the table; it flaps through a pack of trehuahuas, scattering them, changing the timbre of the yard outside.

“Then what do we do? Craigslist it again?” Absalom chews his lip. “Nobody wants into startups anymore.”

“Pull stakes,” says Fletcher. “Go west.”

A bass cow ambles into the barn, hide thumping, chewing cud. The rafters rattle. Absalom feels like the sky is falling.

Veronica

“You can’t drive this thing yourself?” Veronica scrambles up the tube.

“Nobody alive can stabilize two butterball thrusters,” Top says. “Not anymore. And yes, we need both, unless you want to pirouette out of here.”

“So what, we yell ‘turn right’ at each other?”

“Synch harness,” Top says shortly.

“Oh no. No no.”

But he makes her wear it anyway. She kick-starts her side as he snaps in and his body streams into hers: an itch, his full bladder, the tense knot between his shoulders. Maybe the patrol’s closer than she thought. Veronica wonders if he feels her uterus cramping.

Nan

Today the Melpomene is nothing but hungry: it groans and whines and stomps around the basement, heaving itself into the file cabinets, kicking its boots. Nan throws it potatoes, the birthdays of saints, turingery and Epsom salts. It snaps them up and begs for more.

“We have an agreement!” shouts Nan. “No more until I see a trick!”

It tries to eat the stairs. Nan throws down her shoes and jeans; it eats them and farts. She feeds it her blouse and underwear. The Melpomene changes into a mirror.

“You always do that,” Nan mutters. It shrugs. Nan’s reflection dances indecently.

Holly

They gave her a towel, but her hair is still stiff, her face tight. Crackly.

“Shouldn’t you be fucking Rose?” she says when Roger opens the door.

Concern in his big brown eyes–she shoves past him, pulls off her shirt. “Want to fuck this instead?” she asks. “I won’t even watch.”

“Holly, I’m going to call someone–”

“God dammit!” she screams. “Why won’t you judge me!”

“Never learned how,” he says, and leaves.

Holly puts her open hand through a pane in the glass door, then wraps it in a towel. Her hair is so matted. She grabs the scissors.

Caitlan

“Listen, the evidence of polar melting is scarce at best–”

“Ah ah ah,” says Caitlan, flipping open her diploma-badge. “Oxford.

“That doesn’t automatically mean you’re right!” rages Colby.

“Actually, if you care to review section 8 of U.N. Resolution 1723, I think you’ll find that–” She stops with the document halfway out of her uniform’s hidden pocket and cocks her head. “Do you hear that?”

“What?” says Colby. “No.”

Caitlan nods firmly. “The Oxford Signal. I must away!”

“Oh for petesakes,” says Colby, but Caitlan’s already shrugging into her official Oxford jetpack, which burns the clean, renewable hyperfuel called “petrol.”