Pandaemonium Read Online Free PDF Page B

SPECT SLAMMED into me so hard it was like a body-check from the inside out. I suppose I must have reached for it, touched the hair-trigger, seen the need and made the choice, but it didn’t seem like that: instinctive, better than instant, the thing right there before I knew I needed it. That’s how it felt, at least, to me. Lord only knows what Tybalt felt, but he squawled and was gone, leaping wildly from my arms onto the sofa-back and away.
    Bird stared at me; I stared at the bird, through window-glass that was suddenly frail as clingfilm, soap-bubble thin. I swear, I thought it was going to fly straight in. A shatter and a squawk, and a room abruptly full of black scavenger. I’d fought the Corbies off easily enough before, when they were two together – but somehow birds are always worse indoors, more threatening, something to be afraid of.
    This one didn’t come in, didn’t try. It sat on the jib and cocked its head and looked at me, and I couldn’t even tell if it was one Corbie alone or just a common crow. Nothing to worry about, either way – but I didn’t like the way its eye glittered, and I really didn’t want it spying on me. Nor on Jacey; I was tired of bringing trouble to other people, especially –
     
     
    N O, NOT THAT. Nobody was special, or more deserving. Nobody deserved this. Me. I was sick of myself in virus mode, infecting whoever I touched. Even when I did it deliberately, and with the best of intentions.
    Whether that was an innocent crow or a single spy, I went to shut it out. Floor-to-ceiling windows demand floor-to-ceiling curtains, unless you choose to make a drama of your life and act it out for river traffic to observe. Jacey wouldn’t do that; nor would I. I’d sewn the curtains, just to show him that I could. He’d fixed up the mechanism that opened and closed them, just to show me that he wasn’t an entirely useless, spoiled rich kid with no practical application. So I called him a geek instead, spoiled rich kid playing with electric motors because he had no people-skills worth mentioning. I don’t know what he would have called me next, because that was the point where I’d pressed the button that closed the curtains, and kissed him quiet, and offered to teach him all the people-skills he’d ever need, right then and right there, on the carpet.
    It was a joke, of course. He knew far more already than a simple human girl could ever learn, about bodies and how to handle them. Even so. It was a joke that took his breath away. He might have immortal confidence when it came to sex, but he knew no more about love than I did. We were discovering it together the way you do, the way you have to, hand in hand and hopeful.
    And then – well. Everything came down, as it can when sex and love go sour in the worst way. And now I had to try to rebuild something from the wreckage, and I really didn’t want that damn bird watching me. Us. Whatever.
    So I jabbed my finger down on Jacey’s precious button, wondering if he’d fixed the whine in the motor yet that always slightly spoiled the swish of the curtains as they crossed the glass, and –
    Um.
    Oops.
    Aspect. Full-on. I hadn’t exactly forgotten, but I’d been in and out of it, on and off all day, and when it’s on I have to go more gently with the world around me, and – yeah. That’s the bit that I forgot.
    I can push my fingers into solid brick if I need to. Stabbing down on a switch, all hurried and heedless – well.
    Jacey? I fixed that whine for you...
    One thing for sure, the mechanism was never going to whine again.
    Never going to do anything again.
    I extracted my finger from the junction-box with a lot more care than I’d shown on the way in. Behind me, I heard Jacey coming back. As I turned around, I was already constructing my excuses: it’s not my fault, I didn’t reach for my Aspect, it kind of thrust itself upon me; no blame to me for letting that slip my mind...
    No. That was pathetic. I wasn’t a kid any