Irregulars: Stories by Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Ginn Hale and Astrid Amara (2 page)

***

Keith’s room at the Mark Spencer Hotel was small and not at all hip, but it had the two things Keith needed most—a bed and a tiny kitchenette. He laid his mage pistol on the small square of counter next to the range and started dinner. He heated the warped nonstick skillet that had come with the room and laid one piece of buttered bread down in it, hearing an appealing sizzle. He added a couple of slices of havarti and another slice of buttered bread and waited. He didn’t really watch his food so much as he listened to it—smelled it. Behind him the television let him know about events currently taking place in the Willamette Valley. There was a brewer’s festival and a triathlon, perfectly representing Portland’s twin obsessions: the culinary arts and outdoor recreation. The open window let in a pleasant summer breeze.

Keith was pondering his chances of still being in town for the brewer’s festival when he felt a slight vibration from his wrist. He glanced at his watch. The numeral three glowed red—goblins close by.

There was a knock at his door. Out of habit, Keith switched off the range and shifted his skillet off the electric element. Mage pistol in hand, he moved to peer through the fish-eye lens. Outside his door he saw a tall, well-muscled man wearing the standard black trench coat favored by their department, despite the fact that it was nearly eighty degrees outside. He had lustrous black hair and blue eyes and a jawline perfect enough to get him a job selling any men’s cologne on earth. The man smiled and held up his NIAD badge. The circular insignia of the Irregular Affairs Division gleamed dully in the yellow hallway light.

Gunther Heartman. Keith cracked his knuckles. It was a bad habit and also a tell, since he did it only when extremely irritated, but he found he couldn’t stop. Gunther worked in the San Francisco office as a field agent and member of the strike force. He also did do-gooder double duty as a community volunteer, coordinating the annual human returnee Christmas party. Held in San Francisco, this party was arranged for the benefit of humans who for whatever reason had been away from earth for too long to be normal. Some had been hostages; others, lost in amateur magic-using accidents only to be retrieved years later, addled and hopelessly out of sync with everyday human life. Still others had never lived on earth at all and were dealing with the problem of having been repatriated against their will. It was a mixed bag of scratched and dented individuals who needed further socialization before being allowed to roam free in the general population.

Gunther had convinced Keith to come in from HQ to participate the previous year. And because Gunther was a good-looking man, Keith had been happy to oblige, on the notion that he might find opportunity to seduce him. He’d taken the red-eye from DC and six hours after landing was running a little table where he helped the human race’s long-lost weirdos create, decorate, and ultimately eat the most disturbing Christmas cookies imaginable.

Still covered in sprinkles and colored sugar, they’d had sex for the first time. Keith had thought he was in love at the first taste of Gunther’s mouth, but he’d played it cool, returning to DC on the next flight.

Gunther had phoned him about a week later. He’d been in DC for some meeting. They’d met, screwed, and parted that very night.

This pattern repeated itself a few times as the two of them casually entered each other’s orbits, only to be pulled away again the next day. That suited Keith fine for a while.

Then, just like that, Heartman had ended it.

He’d ended it just as Keith had been about to suggest that they try to see more of each other.

Keith pulled the door open, but not far enough to let Heartman enter. “What are you doing here?”

“You called for me.”

“I called for a goblin linguist.”

“And here I am,” Gunther replied. “There was no one else available so they sent me.”

Keith gave a resigned sigh and pulled his NIAD-issue utility knife from his pocket. He folded the identification light out and focused the beam. “Light verification please, Agent Heartman?”

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’d feel comfortable calling me Gunther.” He offered his ID again.

“Let’s just keep it professional.” Keith shone his light across the plastic surface. Text previously invisible revealed itself, including Agent Heartman’s species: naturalized goblin.

Keith’s breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t known that, though he could see how Gunther would have failed to mention it.

Oddly, Gunther’s photograph didn’t shift under the light to show any other image. It looked just like he looked—like an actor who would have been cast to play a hot federal agent in some action film. The lean planes of his face would have photographed well from any angle. Probably even upside down.

“There’s no secondary ID photo here,” Keith remarked.

“There wouldn’t be. I’m transmogrified.” Gunther took a pack of Lucky Strikes filterless from his inside pocket, folded one into his mouth, and began to chew.

“It says naturalized here.” Keith stared hard at the ID and then at Gunther. Was this some sort of trick? Another creature casting a masking spell to look like Gunther? Keith surreptitiously adjusted the light to pierce illusions and, without warning, flashed the light into the other agent’s face.

Gunther winced and held up a hand against the piercing white light, but his countenance remained exactly the same.

“Although I am fully of snow goblin descent, I was transformed to be compatible with this world while still in utero.” Gunther kept his voice low and glanced around the empty hallway as he spoke. “This isn’t a glamour or masking spell or any other kind of illusion. My real body has been irrevocably reconfigured.”

“Right,” Keith muttered. “I’ve heard of that.”

Gunther said, “Do you think we could continue this conversation in private?”

“Oh, of course.” Keith stepped aside.

Gunther sauntered through the doorway, sidestepped the bed, and seated himself in a high-backed chair by the television. His eyes immediately honed in on the skillet.

“Are you cooking grilled cheese?”

“I was.” As Keith returned to the range and flipped his sandwich over, his deeply ingrained sense of hospitality took over and he found himself asking, “Want one?”

“Sure.” Gunther gave him a brilliant smile, showing his perfectly white teeth. “I’m always hungry.”

Chapter Two

Snow goblins were, for Keith’s money, the scariest looking of the species. Their pure white bodies seemed to be constructed entirely of bones, talons, and teeth. Only red slits marked their eyes and nostrils. They spoke in growls. They drank pure kerosene on the rocks and called it moonshine.

In so far as Keith knew, Gunther Heartman had never scared anyone. Not even accidentally. He was polite, well meaning, and easygoing to a fault. Even when Gunther had ended his relationship with Keith—if you could describe a disjointed series of one-night stands a relationship—he’d been nice about it. “I think you might still be struggling with some issues,” Gunther had said, “and I don’t think being with me is necessarily helping you. I don’t think I’m the right man for you. And I know you’re not the right man for me.”

At the time, Keith had consoled himself by thinking that at least Gunther had had the guts to give him a real reason, instead of the old “it’s not you, it’s me” line. Keith had always wondered why Gunther thought he wasn’t the right man for Keith. Now he thought he knew. Not only was he not human, he was exactly the sort of extra-human American who had destroyed Keith’s previous life.

But that didn’t bear thinking about. Keith turned his attention fully back to cooking. Almost casually, he remarked, “I didn’t realize that you were of goblin descent.”

“There’s no reason you should have.”

Except that we’ve slept together at least a dozen times
, Keith thought. Aloud he said, “I suppose there are quite a few of you on the West Coast.”

Gunther nodded. “About six thousand. More than half of them were reengineered while they were still in the womb, like myself.”

“It’s odd that you never brought that up before,” Keith said.

“Is it?” Gunther gave him a meaningful look, though what meaning he intended Keith to take away was not clear.

“Yes, it is.” Keith flipped Gunther’s sandwich. “So, have you always looked human?”

“I haven’t just looked human, I’ve been human. I went to public school, ran track, and got my first job washing dishes at Kentucky Fried Chicken just like everybody else.” Gunther popped another cigarette into his mouth and chewed slowly. He fished in his pocket for his slim, yellow tin of lighter fluid, popped open the red safety cap, and took a swig. Thin, flammable vapor floated from his breath as he said, “I enjoy being human.”

“I bet you do,” Keith said dryly.

The other man gazed at him with a mild, pleasant smile and then said, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem slightly uncomfortable. Is it because you just found out I’m a goblin?”

“No,” Keith said.

“Is it because of our previous relationship?”

“Yes.” Keith took his sandwich, cut it in half, and offered one plate to Gunther, who accepted it with a strange half bow. Keith took his own plate and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I really didn’t mean for you to feel awkward—” Gunther began.

“Let’s just focus on the task at hand,” Keith cut him off before he could launch into another well-meaning speech. While they’d been seeing one another, Gunther’s reflexive urge toward humane action had been one of the qualities Keith admired. Now that same quality not only irked but confused him. “Did you get much of a debriefing?”

“Not much,” Gunther said, puffing around his first mouthful of hot, gooey cheese and bread.

“We’ve had three dead, butchered human carcasses here in Portland in the last six months.”

“Any evidence of serial killing?”

Keith shook his head. “FBI says you can never rule that out completely, but our informants say that human protein has appeared in a couple of different goblin venues in the city. The summer holy days are coming up. I think some members of Portland’s extra-human American community might be stocking up their pantries.”

“For the goblin solstice feast, you mean?”

“That’s right,” Keith said.

“And so you’re thinking that this is the work of some reactionary cadre of old-time religion goblin butchers, therefore you requested a native speaker to assist when you go talk to the community?”

“In a nutshell.” Keith thought he sensed a certain reluctance to comply emanating from Gunther but chose not to address it. Not yet, anyway. Clearly the two of them made for a less than ideal team. But if they could get through the next couple of days, they could both go back to their respective offices on opposite sides of the continent, no harm done.

“What about other known human predators?” Gunther asked.

“There are three registered vampires in the area. I’m planning to interview them as well, because there was some exsanguination present, but there’s nothing to connect them to the crimes at this moment.”

“So what do you have to link this to goblins?” Gunther asked.

“The timing and the state of the bodies. It’s circumstantial, I know, but these really look like goblin killings,” Keith said and from Gunther’s brief expression of distaste he guessed Gunther understood what he meant.

“I might have something more solid soon,” Keith added.

“Such as?”

“Maybe a venue. Lulu’s Flapjack Shack hosted a show recently that has all the hallmarks of a hide-in-plain-sight blood orgy. I’m heading over there in a few minutes and I’d like you to come along.”

“Yes, certainly.” Gunther took his remaining sandwich triangle, folded it in half, and, despite the magma-like cheese, ate it in three bites. He then said, “Do you mind if we stop to get another pack of cigarettes on the way? I’m out.”

***

Lulu’s Flapjack Shack inhabited a space that had certainly been continuously used as a hospitality venue since linoleum had been invented. Mismatched vinyl booths lined the dining room walls and small tables filled the center space, creating the feeling of being in a pastiche of all diners that had ever existed anywhere. Keith couldn’t tell if this was sophisticated and subtle interior design or the result of buying fixtures piecemeal.

According to the sign, Lulu’s was open twenty-three hours a day—the one hour closure occurring between four and five a.m.

Presumably, this was when they mopped.

At nine thirty p.m. the dining room was at about half capacity. Mostly the patrons seemed to be in the pre-legal phase of adolescence. Groups of five or six shared plates of french fries and pretended to be adults. At the diner counter, intermittently spaced single older males competed for the lone waitress’s conversational attention in between bites of all-day breakfast.

“Where do the bands play, do you think?” Keith asked Gunther, mostly to make conversation. The notion that the goblin currently setting off his proximity alert was standing right next to him disturbed him more than he wanted to admit, even to himself.

“Banquet room.” Gunther pointed down the long counter to a lighted sign at the back.