The Iron Dragon's Daughter

— 16 —

RAVEN HAD BEEN TALKING OF GETTING A FEW FRIENDS together and organizing an orgy for the naming. Jane liked orgies well enough, but she didn't relish the thought of making a big event out of it. Something quiet and meaningful was more her speed.

So the last day before winter break she had a few words with Jimmy Jump-up in the hall after class. Jimmy was a decent sort, if a bit stolid. He contrived to smuggle her into his dorm room without being seen. It was a cold day and sleet was gathering in the corners of his window. He clattered down the blinds and carefully remade the bed.

They necked for a while, and then they took off each other's clothes.

"Where's that booklet?" Jimmy asked. Jane handed it to him and sat back on her heels at the head of his bed, knees wide apart. He lit a joss stick, then bowed down low before her cunt.

"Small beauty, flower of life," he began.

Already his cock was stiff. Because he was nearsighted, Jimmy had kept his glasses on. He held the missal out to one side, face solemn as he read the liturgy praising her cunt's every quality and appointment, her colors, texture, shape, and scent. To Jane this was irresistibly comic. She had to struggle not to laugh.

"May all visitors show you proper respect." He let a drop of the red chrism fall from its bottle onto her belly. The oil tickled slightly as it crept downward. The air was chill. It hardened Jane's nipples and raised gooseflesh on the backs of her arms.

"May you never want." He unstoppered the bottle of gold chrism.

With each prayer he bowed lower, and his mouth came closer. She could feel his warm breath on her thighs, stirring the hairs of her crotch, soft as a thought on her cunt. His rumbling words went right through her flesh and still he did not touch her. By slow degrees Jane had lost her impulse to laugh. She ached with desire. But it was important to wait.

At last Jimmy straightened and put down the booklet. "What name have you chosen for her?"

"Little Jane."

"So be it."

Jimmy Jump-up poured the clear chrism. Then he put his glasses aside and, mingling the oils, worshiped Little Jane with his hands. After a while he worshiped her with his mouth. And finally Jane grabbed him by the hair and pulled his mouth up to hers, and he worshiped her with everything he had.

Technically the ceremony was over. But as a practical matter, what came next was vastly important. The purpose of naming Little Jane was to render her cooperative and pliant, to make of her a friend and an ally for life. Her future conduct would be greatly influenced by the quality of her first postnaming experience.

For a while Jane concentrated on making it a good experience. Then she got distracted. Time passed. Jimmy's face turned red and he began making chuffing noises, like a malfunctioning steam engine. Jane wrapped her legs tight around his waist and hugged him to her as hard as she could.

She came then, and the room filled with butterflies.

Jimmy looked up, astonished. His face was blank and gaping. Then he began to laugh. There were bright wings everywhere. Flakes of red-orange-cobalt blue winked in and out of existence, in fleeting patterns that could be glimpsed but not grasped before dissolving into new forms. It was like being inside a kaleidoscope. Jimmy inhaled a tiny swallowtail and almost choked, and by the time Jane had done pounding him on his back they were both laughing helplessly.

They hurriedly pulled their clothes on and, waving towels, shooed the majority of the insects out into the hall. The hall monitor came out from his room just as they shut the door, and went roaring up and down the hall, trying to find out who was responsible. Jane had to lie facedown on the bed, biting a pillow to stifle her giggles. Her sides ached. At one point the monitor came right to their door and stood listening and they were almost discovered.

It seemed an auspicious beginning.

The next day was unseasonably warm and Jane went out on the Campanile with only a windbreaker. The Campanile had never rung that Jane could recall. Perhaps there was no money for it. But on a good day it was a fine place to hang out with a few friends, catch some sun, and maybe get stoned.

An erratic breeze whipped Jane's hair back. She stuck her hands in her hip pockets and leaned into it. From the top of Tintagel she could see the three other University buildings and beyond them the clustered ranks of buildings great and small that made up the Great Gray City. They were an army of stone, marching to a battle somewhere beyond the horizon. Gray and hazy they looked against a sky that was as white as a blank sheet of paper.

Sirin wasn't here yet, but Jane rolled herself a smoke anyway. It took three matches to light. She drew in, closed her eyes, exhaled slowly. Leaning back against one of the Campanile's support beams, she stared up at the black bronze bells, streaked white with pigeon droppings.

A kind of bleak exhilaration filled her then. Somehow she was going to survive, raise the money to complete her education, and make a place for herself in the world. The blind, clifflike surfaces of the City convinced her of it. Surely there must be niches enough in so vast and anonymous a habitat for one as small and insignificant as she to get by.

"Bitch of a view, ain't it?"

She turned. The speaker crouched on the lip of the stone railing. He was monkey-browed, chinless, squint-eyed, loose-lipped, pugnosed, batwinged, potbellied, goat-horned, hunchbacked, sphinx-haunched, and altogether charming. A thuggish light gleamed in his slitted eyes. A gargoyle.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, it is."

"You going to hold onto that thing all day?"

Jane looked down at her hand, then up at the gargoyle. She dug through her knapsack looking for something the right weight. Then she put the joint down on the rail and anchored it with a compact. "Want a drag?"

"Don't mind if I do." The gargoyle shuffled closer and extended a long, apish arm. His blunt fingers closed about the cigarette. He took a slow, careful drag, then offered it back at arm's length. Jane shook her head. She knew something about gargoyles' hunting strategies.

"What's your name?" the gargoyle asked.

"Jane."

He made a brusque, clumsy, almost comical bow. "Sordido di Orgulous, at your service. Come here to sort things out, did you?"

"No, there's somebody I'm hoping to meet." Jane was looking for Sirin and Nant had told her that she liked to hang out here about this time of day.

"Me too."

Jane stared out into the City, enjoying its complexity, its size, its silence. Finally, more to be polite than because she actually cared, she said, "Another gargoyle?"

Sordido guffawed. "Haw! We rock people are too territorial for that. I got the south face, top fifteen floors. North face, top, belongs to Lordo di Branstock. Down below you got Sozzo di Tintagel. A local boy. One of those sleazebags sets foot on my turf, and I'll teach him a little lesson in how to fall.

"No, I got a regular little clientele comes out to talk things over with me. I'm a good listener. Comes of having such a slow metabolism. I don't get bored easily."

"What sorts of things do they talk about?"

"You'd be surprised. Shit they wouldn't tell their best friends. Most of 'em are just having a little flirt with danger. Others have got a serious self-destructive streak. They talk. I listen. They ask my advice. I give it. Every so often I manage to sweet-talk one over the edge. Then I eat. Nine times out of ten, that's what they were really after from the beginning. I got good hopes for the one who likes to come around here about this time."

A dark suspicion seized Jane. "You wouldn't know her name, would you?"

"Naw."

"Tall, good legs, long hair?"

"No offense, missy, but I have a hard time telling you guys apart."

"I see." Jane lapsed into silence.

For a time, they shared the view without speaking.

"So how about that Teind?" Sordido said suddenly. "You looking forward to it?"

Jane looked at him. "If that's the word for it. You figure it's bound to get somebody you know, maybe even a lot of them. So I'm not exactly anxious for it to happen. But then again, once it's over, it'll be over. You can get on with things. So maybe it'd be best if it happened and were done with." She paused. "What do you care about the Teind, anyway? I thought you guys were immune."

"It's the only time we get to eat our fill."

"Oh." She looked away.

"Oh," Sordido mimicked. "Oh dear. How terribly vulgar." Angrily, he reared up on his haunches and ponderously unfolded his wings. They were enormous. "Look at me. How much energy do you think it takes to get something this heavy up into the air?"

"Well—"

"A lot, that's how much. I'll tell you something else you don't know about the rock people. We only mate on the wing. Got that? So once every ten years you fill your streets with carrion and we get to climb down and eat our fill. It ain't pretty, I'll grant you that, but whose fault is that? We eat all we can. Then we start to climb again, back up the sides of whatever building is closest.

"It's a bitch of a climb. It takes hours. We've been at our business all day, so probably it's sunset. Them blood-gorged skies are as shiny bright as Hell Gate itself then. Clouds as purple as a bruise. We climb. Everything grows dark and the stars come out. By the time we get to the top, it's night.

"You've maybe noticed that the rock people ain't got many females. So when our ladies come into heat, there's a lot of competition for their favors. The moon comes up. We wait. Finally one begins to sing." He shivered. "Nekhbet! You don't know how beautiful their voices are. So sweet you want to fling yourself right off the building."

The door to Tintagel quietly opened and shut. Sirin walked out into the Campanile. When she saw Jane, she looked startled. But after an instant's hesitation, she sat down beside her on the railing. Together they listened to the gargoyle.

"… by one, the gents raise their voices in answer. Deep and low. We don't sound so lovely, maybe, but it's profound. Like thunder after larksong.

"Dunno how long the singing lasts. You kind of lose track. But at last she stretches out and looks around. Kind of teasing-like. She spreads her wings. She leaps. She flies. She soars high up into the sky, and she's still singing.

"That's when we totally lose control. We scrabble over the edge, and instinct takes over. Maybe twenty-thirty-forty of us will form up into a flock and fly after her. We're all feeling our oats, laughing and joking. She's only going to mate with one of us. So it gets rough up there. That's how I got this kink in my leg. That's how I lost two of these." He spread his claws, retracted them again.

"Now, it's the ladies who perpetuate the race. They got to raise the cubs, keep 'em fed, and kick 'em off the ledge when they get big enough to start killing each other. So natch, they're a lot stronger than the gents. Only the best of us can keep up. The flock dwindles. And of course there are ways of convincing the competition that it's maybe time to go home.

"Finally, there's just you and her. She's still ahead of you, but she ain't trying to get away. Fact is, maybe she slows down a bit. Maybe she glances back, kind of flirty, to see what you're like. She tilts a wing, and the moonlight is pale on her flank. Ahhhh, but she's long and as tawny-lean as a lioness. Her talons are like black glass daggers. Her breasts are two white skulls, and there's hunger in her eyes.

"She spirals upward, and you follow. The City falls away. The air is cold and clear. Your every muscle aches like fire, but you're getting closer. Her wings obliterate the sky. She reaches out her slender arms to you, and she's as beautiful and tender as Death herself. The smell of her musk is maddening. She wants you—she can't hide it—as bad as you want her."

Sirin was breathing shallowly. "It sounds lovely," she whispered.

"So the ladies tell us." Sordido heaved a long, deep sigh. "Then again, that's what they would say, innit? It's not as if the gent ever got to voice an opinion on the subject afterwards."

"I beg your pardon?" Jane said.

"Well, we don't survive it, do we? The lady's had a long night, and pretty soon she's incubating a brood of maybe a dozen cubs, she's going to need her energy. She's got to eat something."

"That's grotesque!" Jane said.

Sirin said nothing.

"Yeah, well, from your point of view, maybe so. But you can't blame them for it—the ladies. That's just our biology. They got no say over it." For a moment Sordido sank in on himself in gloom. Then, with visible effort, he straightened. A slow shrug. "Well. Look, I'm sorry if I'm depressing you. It's just that the subject is kind of—you know."

"I understand."

"No hard feelings?" He held out his hand.

"No hard—"

"Jane!" Sirin grabbed Jane and yanked her back as she reached out to take the gargoyle's hand. The stone fingers closed about empty air.

Sordido chuckled. "Damn."

Sirin led Jane from the Campanile. The granite corridors and marble halls of Tintagel closed about them with a faint exhalation of stale air. Jane felt tense and weak with aftershock. But she didn't thank Sirin for saving her life. So long as she didn't thank her, Jane knew, so long as the tension between them held, Sirin couldn't break free. And there were things that needed to be said.

They walked blindly down a passage whose ceiling was so low that Jane cringed whenever they passed under an air duct. Electrical cables were stapled to the gray walls in twos and threes, looping over the doorways to redundant classrooms converted to long-term storage. Cardboard boxes of outdated course guides and commencement addresses waited wearily by doors that would never open for them.

The passage dead-ended into a stairwell and they sat down on the top step. Voices arose from below, and the occasional clatter of hurrying feet, but nobody appeared. Above them, a dusty stuffed crocodile twisted slowly in otherwise undetectable currents of air. Gray stuffing oozed out where its seams were parting.

"Sirin, what in the world are you doing, meeting with that creature?"

Sirin stared at her knees, shook her head.

Jane took her friend's hands. They were like ice. Sirin had lost weight; her cheekbones were sharper, her eyes glittery-cold. She looked beautiful and doomed. "I know it's none of my business. But you've been missing a lot of classes lately. The girls are beginning to talk. They say that if your grade point average goes any lower, you'll be facing automatic expulsion."

"Expulsion. That's a laugh."

"That's exactly the attitude I'm talking about! Sirin, look, I've got problems of my own, I don't dare get too deeply involved in yours. Understand? If I try to help, it'll just drag us both down together. But I'm your friend. At the very least I can warn you of what everyone but you can see coming down."

Still as a pillar Sirin sat. Her face was white as salt. "I'm marked," she said. "For the Teind."

You don't know that, Jane almost said. But something in Sirin's expression convinced her otherwise. "How can you be sure?"

"I scryed it. Three times. Once in a virgin speculum. Once in a pool of ink. Once in a cupped double-handful of my own blood."

"You can't be certain! Prediction is an imprecise science, after all."

"Three times? That's pretty damn sure."

Now at last Jane began to cry. She couldn't help it. "Oh, Sirin, how could you? You know as well as I do how dangerous scrying the future can be. Half the time what it shows you wouldn't happen if you hadn't foreseen it." She released Sirin's hands, intending to hug and reassure her. But her feelings welled up and instead she punched her in the shoulder, just as hard as she could. It was all too awful. "Damn you! Why?"

Emotionlessly, Sirin said, "I didn't have any reasons. I've never had any reasons to do anything. Maybe other people have reasons. But when I look inside myself it's like there was an emptiness inside where something ought to be but isn't. Why? I don't know. Why not?"

The crocodile leered down at them both. An ironic sparkle glinted in one dull glass eye and a silent chuckle threatened to stretch his grin so wide all his gray cotton stuffing would fall out. Mastering herself, Jane wiped her eyes against her sleeve. "You can still take steps to protect yourself."

"I've already done everything. I even looked into buying an exemption, that's how desperate I was."

"You could—"

"But since I'm not going to, what would be the point?" Suddenly Sirin laughed, shook her hair, and said, "Not another word. Let's go hang out in the student center. We'll have a soda, play a few hands of cards, dish a little gossip. That would be fun. But with so little time left to me, I don't want to waste any of it just talking and talking and talking about this thing."

Jane bit her lip and nodded. Together they started down the stairs. The crocodile dwindled above them. She could feel its scornful regard shrink to a hot point source of emotion and then wink out.

"Sirin? What you said about an exemption. You mean I could buy my way out of the Teind?"

"Forget I said anything. It's more money than you've got anyway."

As it turned out, the money an exemption from the Teind would cost was exorbitant and then some. Jane stopped by Dr. Nemesis's office for information, though she doubted she could hack the cost. She had the brochure in her purse the afternoon when Ratsnickle came by to ask after the gloves.

He caught her as she was leaving her dissection lab. The metal door clicked softly shut behind her, closing away the chill rows of cadavers on chrome gurneys. The refrigerator rooms were at the bottom of an obscure cul-de-sac, and so late in the day there was very little traffic. The halls were quiet.

Ahead, where the corridor turned, Monkey wheeled her bike into view, blocking the way. Ratsnickle strolled alongside her.

Jane stopped.

Leaving Monkey behind, Ratsnickle approached Jane. She waited, ready for anything he might have to say.

"Have you heard?" he asked. "Sirin's on the bane."

"What? I don't believe you." Flustered, because it fit so well, Jane said, "She wouldn't. Sirin's not like that."

A shrug. "Believe what you will." Down the hall, Monkey leaned against her bicycle, eyes two burning smudges of hatred. "You and I have things to talk about."

"I'm not going to steal for you. Not now, not again, not ever."

"There are ways and ways to make us even."

"I don't owe you a thing."

"Oh?" Ratsnickle's eyebrows rose. He held out his palm. "Give me the faun-skin gloves and I'll call it quits. I'll walk out of your life and you'll never see me again."

Jane said nothing. There was nothing she could say.

Ratsnickle glanced over his shoulder to determine that nobody but she and Monkey were about. Then slowly he unbuttoned his trousers in what he obviously thought a seductive manner, and hauled out his penis.

Jane felt an involuntary thrill of revulsion. Penises had never exactly impressed her as things of beauty, but Ratsnickle's was particularly ugly and faintly green as well, doubtless because his standards of cleanliness had allowed some mold or microscopic moss to establish itself there.

He watched her avidly, an electric grin splitting his face. Down below, his penis was hardening in small jerks, like some ludicrous rubber toy being inflated by a hand pump.

"Better put it away before it starts to draw flies," Jane said.

Ratsnickle's face twisted with anger. "You hypocrite! I was watching—you liked what you saw. You couldn't get enough of it. You wanted to go down on me right then and there." But he scooped it back into his trousers and rebuttoned them anyway.

"Funny. I could have sworn what I was thinking was that there's never a pair of pruning shears around when you need one."

Ratsnickle drew himself up and for an instant she thought he was going to hit her. But instead he seized her hand in both of his and kissed her knuckles. "Touché, sweet lady. But one touch is not a duel, nor does a single skirmish determine the battle. We shall meet again on the field of combat—dearest enemy."

He swaggered away, without even looking back to see if Monkey would follow.

As soon as he was gone, Jane ducked into the nearest bathroom to wash her hands.

The bathroom was tiled and painted a glossy black. Graffiti were painstakingly carved into the paint. Several generations of angular runes were visible through successive coats, palimpsests of anger and flip obscenity. Curved mirrors leaned over the sinks, so that Jane had to stare up into a distorted image of herself to check on her makeup.

The bathroom door slammed. A ballooning and deflating Monkey swam toward her in the mirror.

Monkey was in a state, her face red and her fists clenched. Her hair was a mess. "You bitch! You cat! You get your fucking claws out of my sweetie!"

"You can have him. I don't want any part of him." Jane went on washing her hands. "Goddess knows, the two of you deserve each other."

"Cute. Very cute. I know your devious little ways." Monkey began to cry. "I've done things for him that you never would. Not in a million years. I degraded myself for him."

Jane finished rinsing her hands. She cranked a paper towel from the dispenser. "Well, good for you."

"Don't give me any of your lip. Don't you fucking dare. I'm warning you." Suddenly Monkey staggered and lurched. She grabbed the edge of the sink to steady herself.

"Are you okay?" Jane asked cautiously.

"I thought for a second I was having a—" Monkey shook her head. It was obvious she'd lost the thread of what she was saying. She shivered convulsively. Then from a jacket pocket she removed a tissue-wrapped bundle. "Look at this." She peeled away the tissues to reveal a blown-glass unicorn. She set it down on the cosmetics shelf. "Ratsnickle bought me this on our first date." The sad little trinket caught the light and made it dance. "What did he ever buy for you?"

"Nothing."

"Damn straight, nothing!" Triumphantly, Monkey picked up the unicorn.

It shattered in her hand.

Jane stepped back, startled. Monkey stood as if transfixed, arm extended. Blood ran down her fingertips and dripped to the floor. "That's one small step for man," she said, "one giant leap for—" She gagged, and a spume of fish eyes poured from her mouth. They spilled down the front of her blouse.

"Monkey?"

"The surface is fine and powdery, it adheres in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the soles and sides of my foot." The voice that came from Monkey's mouth was unlike anything Jane had ever heard, harsh and broken by static, as if she were speaking from somewhere hundreds of thousands of miles away. "I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles."

With the onset of the awen her pupils had clenched, sucking in the irises, and disappeared, leaving her eyes a hard milky white. She did not resist when Jane, mastering her horror, guided her to a sink and ran cold water over her bleeding hand. "It's a very soft surface," she said. There was a clean handkerchief in Jane's purse; she used it to bandage up Monkey's palm, hoping there weren't any slivers of glass in the cuts. "But here and there, where I probe with the contingency sample collector, I run into very hard surface."

"Hard surface," Jane repeated. She moistened a paper towel and wiped the vomit from the corners of Monkey's mouth. A toilet flushed and a rusalka emerged from a stall. She gave the two of them an odd look and left without washing her hands. Jane realized that she had to decide whether to leave her roommate here for the night or not. She started for the door, came back to the small figure slumped on the floor, started for the door again. She could not leave. Finally she sighed. "I'm taking you home, Monkey." Her roommate nodded dreamily. "This certainly has to be the most historic phone call ever made."

Monkey's bicycle was leaning against the wall outside, and Jane's was in a locker not far away. Monkey was in no shape to ride, but luckily there was a conversion kit in her saddlebags. Jane got out a wrench and deftly connected the two with crossbars, matched gears and slaved the pedals, and shipped one set of handlebars. Before long she had a four-wheeler with a sling seat low in the rear and the driver's seat high at the front. Her roommate reclining in deathlike languor behind her, Jane started off.

Two changes of elevator later, they were back in Habundia. When they got to their room, Monkey climbed weakly from the tandem, stumbled, and almost fell. Jane unlocked the door, seized Monkey by the nape of her blouse, and guided her toward her bed. One shove and she tumbled facedown on top of the counterpane.

Jane swung Monkey's legs onto the bed and rolled her over on her back. Monkey's face was gray, but when Jane laid a finger under her nostrils, there was a warm touch of breath. She yanked off Monkey's shoes and began to undo her clothes. Then she thought better of it. There were limits.

It took ten minutes to disengage the bicycles and put them away. When she was done, Jane found herself too worked up even to think of studying. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she stared at her roommate with loathing.

There was a knock on the door.

"Won't this stupid day ever end?" Jane strode to the door and flung it open. "What!"

A buxom little spunkie grinned up at her. "Billy Bugaboo's waiting for you in the lobby. He's got a banana in his pocket that I think he wants to give you."

"Yeah, well, you can tell him—"

"He said to tell you that he got the thing you wanted."

"Oh."

"So what should I tell him?"

"Shit." Jane was tired. She was feeling ill-used and angry and distinctly antisocial. The timing was pure Billy Bugaboo. "Tell him I'll be down as soon as I can put together a change of underwear."

"Do you want me to wear this?"

"No, I will." She laid her blouse aside, turned her back to Billy. "Help me with this bra, will you?" While he fumbled with the little hooks, she asked, "Did you have any trouble stealing it?"

"What does it matter? I got the fucking thing."

"Why, Billy," she said in surprise. "That doesn't sound a bit like you."

"I'm sorry, it's just—I don't know." Confused and embarrassed, Billy busied himself undoing the buttons of his shirt. Briefly, he had loomed larger in Jane's sight. Now he dwindled to his former stature. "I just kind of wish it didn't have to be like this."

"That was the deal, remember?" Jane looked at him with mingled guilt and scorn. What a wet, hopeless thing he was! But she was careful not to let it show. Gently, she said, "Sometimes people want things they shouldn't. I'm trusting you, Billy." Then, when he did not reply, "It'll be nice. I promise."

She kicked free of her jeans. Billy folded his and put them on the dresser. They were both naked now. "Give it to me," she said.

Billy's was a box of a room, as sparely arranged as a stage setting. No rugs on the floor. No posters on the wall. It had a bed, a dresser, a chair, and a lamp—one of each. A short stack of textbooks rested on the dresser beside the lamp. With the curtain drawn and the overhead dimmed, it felt like the hushed moment before a performance begins.

Billy went to his closet and brought out the jacket.

It was the right one for sure—she recognized the patches and the worn and frayed places as well. This was Puck Aleshire's own jacket. The smell of it was unmistakable.

She draped it over her shoulders. It was heavier than she'd expected, and she liked that. It felt hot against her flesh, and the fact of being partially covered made the rest of her seem exposed and vulnerable. The mingled scents of Puck and leather wrapped themselves about her. She closed her eyes. "C'mere," she said.

Billy bent, slid his arms under the jacket, and hugged her close. Jane raised her mouth to his. She stood on her tiptoes, so that Little Jane rubbed against his cock. She could feel his veins hammering. He was ready to pop already, and rather than try to nurse that first anxious orgasm along, she decided to see how quickly she could bring him off.

Drawing back, she cupped a hand about Billy's stones, squeezing them slightly, balancing two against one. She licked his nipples, sucked them hard, teased them with small bites. Billy's hands clutched her head, and he made a low noise at the back of his throat, like some marsh beast calling across the night for its mate.

Jane slid her hand upward and squeezed. The jacket started to slip from her shoulders, and she reached around quickly to lift it back. She began moving her hand, long hard strokes up and down. "You like that?"

"Yess."

"Good." She kept stroking. Up and down. Faster.

With a small cry of dismay, he spurted. Warm sperm gushed over both their bellies and down the side of her hand.

Jane hooked a leg behind him and toppled him over on the bed. She crawled after him. "What a mess," she murmured. "What a sticky, sticky mess." Seizing hold of his softening member, she shifted herself around so that her crotch was level with Billy's mouth. Then she began to lick his belly clean.

By the time she had worked her tongue all the way down that long, long torso, Billy was hard again. Without her having to tell him to, he began to lick her abdomen, performing the same service for her that she had for him.

"I left a pair of aviator glasses on the chair with my blouse," Jane said after a while. "Be a sweet and get them for me, will you?"

Obeying, Billy grumbled, "I like looking into your eyes."

"It's three-quarters of my final grade," Jane lied. "You don't want to see me flunk out, do you?" She fit them on. "Can you see anything?"

"Of course I can't," he said. "If I stare real hard I can see that your eyes are shut."

"Then don't. Now you have to promise not to say another word until we're done." Forestalling his protest, she added, "This is for my thesis, remember? I'm not asking much. And tonight, anything you want, I'll do. Whatever you want, wherever you want it—go right ahead. But you can't speak. That's just the way the esoteric arts work."

The truth was that esoterica was strictly brew-your-own, irreproducible, a set of techniques and skills without recipes, rituals, or road maps. Half its power came from discovery, from meeting and overcoming one's embarrassment, fear, and even disgust. But some of the things Jane had in mind to do tonight, she could only enjoy if she pretended Billy B were somebody else.

She rubbed the side of her face against his cock and thought, how smooth and silky. So hard, she thought, so big. She closed her mouth about its tip and thought, how salty my Puck tastes!

Time melted away.

Through most of the journey she was like the navigator of a small ship, moving surely with the currents, trimming the canvas to catch more wind, running before the squall. She was skimming over the surface at fantastic speed, the water hissing, the sails creaking with the strain. Then suddenly, all the oceans united to surge up beneath her, and she lost control. Billy was on top of her when it happened. She began to struggle wildly.

Alarmed, Billy started to pull back, but she grabbed him and slammed him back down on top of her. Puck wouldn't pull back. He'd be relentless. He was pounding away at her—"Faster!" she muttered—like a wild animal in rut. She raked his back with her nails, hard enough to draw blood. It only made him hotter. He was mad with lust. His passion was so great now that he'd lost all track of her identity. He no longer cared that it was her beneath him. It could have been anybody. The fury of his need obliterated all thought.

She was close to it now. Jane wriggled down inside the jacket so she could bury her face in the collar. She breathed in the smell of leather. Puck's scent imbued the jacket. It rose most strongly from the armpits but the tang of him was everywhere. She was slippery with sweat herself. Their smells mingled and rose in an alchemical marriage, forming something rich and wild. She took the jacket between her teeth and bit down hard. She was going to come.

Sex energy was most accessible at the moment of orgasm. This was why adepts were usually female. Where a witch might have a string, a series, an archipelago of orgasms to work with, the warlock was (usually) limited to one. Males tended to gravitate to the necromantic arts, it taking no special talent to kill things. Jane knew, though, she'd have to work with the one. Inexperienced as she was, it was first time or never.

Marshaling her resources, she concentrated on identifying, isolating and distancing herself from the power rising within. Her mind closed about it like two hands trapping a thrush. A perfect and universal stillness seized her. Briefly, she was free of all bounds.

Forcing herself—this was the hardest part—to expect nothing, she opened her eyes.

She was sitting on a stool in a crowded lunch counter. Her mother looked up, startled, from a cup of light brown coffee. One of her mother's elbows brushed against an ashtray, knocking it off the counter. Butts and ashes went flying. Heads swiveled.

Jane held the fluttering source captive in her mind. This must surely be what it felt like to be a sorceress! The exultant power filled her entire being, like light in a crystal figurine. It struggled to escape. It was a bird, a force, a sphere of light. She willed it up from within and down along her arm. Her hand tingled with fierce power. It was growing more intensely real, as solid as anything in the room.

Now!

She slapped her hand down on the countertop. The coffee cup jumped, and she snatched up what lay beside it. Her mother's mouth was opening to form the beginning of a question.

Before anything could be said, the power outflowed and dispersed. The instant ended. The restaurant and her mother both were gone. Jane was back in Billy's bed again. He was lying motionless atop her. She reached up and, wincing, untangled the shades from her ears. "I can't breathe," she said.

With a slow groan, he rolled off.

Jane stared at the spoon in her hand. It was there and it was real. Jane ran her thumb over it and over it. It was made of unplated steel. A simple string of stamped circles bounded by two thin lines looped around the edges of the handle for decoration. She turned it over and read the inscription on its back:

IKEA

stainless

Made In Korea

Strange runes, and perfectly meaningless to her. But full of hope. Their larger portent reassured Jane. They were tangible proof that her power was growing. Anything was possible. All it would take was luck and lore. She could raise the money for her tuition and enough to buy an exemption from the Teind as well. And one for Sirin while she was at it—why not?—and another for Puck Aleshire.

Her life was a complete mess, true, but it could be straightened out. All it would take was money. Money could straighten out anything, if you had enough of it.

She knew where to get that money, but until tonight she hadn't the nerve to try. Now she had proved herself. It was time.

"Wow," Billy said.

"Oh, shut up."