Gentlemen, we have a new campaign priority, so listen carefully,” Dubois said, back at his desk in the Red Room. “Alien. Go. Home.” He punctuated each word by slicing the air with his index finger. From where Toby sat, the picture on the wall of Wayne Wallace, first world president, was just over Dubois’s head, his own hand held up in greeting.

“Shouldn’t we consult with some military and other experts,” Toby asked, “to get their judgment on just what we’re up against?” Once again Dubois had ordered the “lowbody” aides out, and locked the door so even cabinet members couldn’t enter. Only his most central political staff were present: Toby, Lara, Vice President Rajan, and Phil Farley, Dubois’s chief of staff.

Dubois smiled and shook his head. “You’re thinking like a bureaucrat. What happened to the ‘get things done’ Toby I used to admire so much? The one who wanted ambitious policies that voters would notice?”

“We’re not setting grain policies here,” Toby said, fiddling with his scarf. “We’re not arguing about meat-eating in Australia, or gun violence, or cutting taxes. This is first contact. We can’t slam our doors on the galaxy because some alien was rude to you.”

Luna watched from her nest of quilts as Ewara lifted a heavy tome from a shelf in the little room. What is it? the child asked mind-to-mind, and Ewara smiled, remembering how she, too, had been reluctant to use her voice as a girl.

“First,” Ewara told her, “we will teach you to read, and one day, perhaps you’ll speak as well.” She lowered the thick book to the child’s lap, letting her run her fingers over the sunken gilt lettering on the cover. “Stories of Fae and Other Earthly Mysteries,” Ewara read aloud for her. “It was given to me when I was a young girl myself, so you can imagine how old it is.”

Luna hid her smile behind a hand, the light of the hearth dancing in her wide eyes. Will you read it to me?

“I will read you every story, but only if you promise to believe them.”

Are they true?

“Every one, though so few believe in them anymore.” Ewara’s eyes fell from Luna’s, seeing a lost people in her lap, Fae the world over living in fear, bearing their burdens in human form, not knowing… When she lifted her eyes to the child’s again, she smiled at her little, creased brow. “You’ll be leaving soon for Ruli’s forest, but I’ll send for you every now and again, so you can rest here with me, read to me, and maybe even learn a few manners.” She winked. “You may take the book with you, and Ruli will teach you the letters. One day, child, you will read this entire book to me.” But only after you’ve rewritten it, threading the stories back into our mutilated history, Ewara thought to herself with a smile.

“I like him, Tabs.”

“You know nothing about him.”

Cass was unprepared for the jagged lick of jealousy as the old boyfriend possibility became suddenly real. She clenched her hands into fists into her lap and bowed her head as she imagined Tabitha running her fingers through Nathan’s hair.

“You know him then,” she said, steeling herself.

“No. But I know men like him,” Tabitha responded, her voice flat, angry. Cass sighed in relief, relaxed her hands and looked up at her friend who was staring off into the distance, frowning. “Dangerous, selfish, arrogant, cold.” She turned to look at her. “You have nothing in common. Zero. He would destroy you.”

“Destroy me,” Cass scoffed. “Listen, drama queen. Guy was shaking when he bandaged me. So he’s sensitive. He helped us out today on no notice. So he’s nice. And we both don’t like blood, so there. That’s one thing in common.”

Tabitha barked a loud humorless laugh.

“Guys like him bathe in blood.” Cass stared at Tabitha, mouth open. Tabitha blinked then smiled ruefully. “Okay, that was a little drama-queenie.”

“And super disgusting.”

Tabitha grinned now. “Yeah, that too.” She held out her index finger toward Cass. “Agree to disagree?”

Cass nodded and stretched her own finger to Tabitha’s for a second.

The shot was something sweet and burny. The next thing Celia knew, there was a rum punch in her hand, and Imogene dragged her to the dance floor. Celia didn’t dance, not that Imogene asked. She started doing all these crazy breakdance moves. It was almost as if she was in her own music video, but people were into it. When Imogene wasn’t dancing, dudes surrounded her—guys who looked like they’d fallen off the cover of GQ.

Since being turned, Celia had developed this embarrassing new habit; she stared at men’s necks. It was one of those things her therapist told her she wasn’t supposed to do as a vampire. Apparently humans considered it off-putting. Celia didn’t see how this was fair, since men stared at women’s breasts all the time—not hers, but other women’s. At Necto, she stared at the ceiling and watched the lights move around, until she felt Imogene dragging her to the bar for another shot and rum punch. When Celia asked about Imogene’s cocktail choice she replied, “What? It’s beachy, bitch.”

 We’re making out in some big van-car with guy-breath and guy-hands while we barrel along some dark road. The girl sits in the far back with us and she’s finally started drinking, trading gulps from the bottle and listening to the wet smacking and grunting and our feet tapping in time. We have Bedroom Boy with us and we’ve promised the girl we’re going to do something terrible to him. In response, the girl said her name is Sarah, but otherwise she’s stayed quiet, sitting in the far back with us, a wary expression on her face.

“So you’re like a gang or something?” the Sarah-girl finally asks. Her eyes have stopped running, but now she’s wiping her nose over and over.

“We’re sirens,” we agree, taking another long swallow.

“Like the Odyssey, right?”

Odysseus.

Fear makes us convulse in a long, body-wrenching shudder that spirals out into the night, following the threads of fate that connect all the sirens we have been and will be, so that everywhere and everywhen we are shuddering, in cities and villages and open plains and rocky coasts, aloft on our black wings or still stuck in the mire of this world singing yes come to us yes, we all to a one shudder.

Oh, we have not thought his name in so long.

Death gasped, struggling to fill her lungs. The brininess of the sea, the stench of early decomposition, and her own sweat assaulted her nostrils. Gulls cawed nearby, one right beside her face. She shooed the bird away. Sand made her skin itch. She tried to brush it off, but only managed to spread it around.

She squinted against the sun. It peeked over the eastern horizon, illuminating bodies strewn across the beach, mixed in with mattresses, uprooted palm trees, and even an orange Lamborghini, sticking at an angle out of the sand as if it was a flying car that had come in for a rough landing.

Beside Death lay a dead woman. The water had washed most of the make-up off her face, leaving streaks of mascara. She wore one of those short dresses with the elastic bottom that barely covered the wearer’s buttocks, the kind that made it look like girls had forgotten to wear pants. Only now, that dress rode up, revealing the girl’s lacy panties. Death tugged the hem down.
She rose to her feet, naked herself. She crossed her arms over her breasts, shivering despite the warmth.

She had kept the form of a youthful redhead that she’d had as Death. But something of her immortal self remained. It lay curled in a small, tight ball inside her, a knot of darkness.
She wanted to find a way to give. She’d taken enough. And given how fleeting life could be, she didn’t want to waste any time. She had a lot to make up for.

“Can a generative kitchen alter food to bioengineer poison, with no direct command from a human being?”
 
“As I understand the technology, we would need to reinterpret the concept of ‘command,’ since generative kitchens are intended to assess and respond to the desires of their owners, conscious or unconscious. But I don’t think that such a kitchen could act on its own volition. A generative kitchen is a machine, and there are fail-safes.”
 
The defense bot leaned forward and gripped the railing of the witness box. “But Mr. Ellis is dead, sir. And, according to the kitchen’s own logs, the cyanide was processed as a component of the meal, in the kitchen and by the kitchen, on the night the meal was served. So, I ask you again: based on your understanding of the bioengineering of cyanide from bitter almonds, would a generative kitchen be able to make the poison—or, really, make the almonds excessively poisonous—on its own agency?”
 
“No, I don’t think so. I can’t imagine how the protocols against that could go wrong.”

Miss Ascot, gone. The Captain, gone. Nipper huddled deep in his pocket, refusing to emerge. Even the Mighty Terror was gone, and that meant the only one to protect him from the stares and murmurs was Sir Dmitri, and Sir Dmitri lay very still, whimpering occasionally. I know I was Bad, Rags-n-Bones wailed silently. Why wasn’t I punished, instead of Sir Dmitri?

But he couldn’t afford to wail. Absurd, and utterly opposite to the rightful way of things though it was, Sir Dmitri needed his protection now. Gulping down the cold lump that rose at that thought, he shook Sir Dmitri gently. “Sir Dmitri? You’re not dead, are you, sir?”

“Of course he’s not dead,” said the ragged youth.

“No, I’m not dead,” said Sir Dmitri in a tight voice. “But my leg—” His ears pricked and he fell silent. That was all the warning Rags-n-Bones had before a shadow fell over him. He looked up into a pair of large, slaty-blue eyes. It took every scrap of willpower he possessed not to bolt up the nearest chestnut tree.

Rotten and vain? Cinderella seethed to hear herself lumped in with the likes of her stepmother. This beast didn’t know her. She tiptoed on in the snow, sure that she was close to eavesdropping upon something that would help. And then, there it was: “One more truly evil person by midnight,” said Krampus, “but these days, it’d be easier to find a needle in a—”

“Krampus! You need to find someone?”

“Are you following me? Back to your cellar!”

“The most evil person in Vienna?”

“What do you know of such evil?”

She smirked. How little he really did know her soul. What she’d witnessed in this house. All its goodness and warmth, stripped bare by her stepmother.

“I have recently been to a place,” said Cinderella, “where the most wicked creatures in all Vienna turn circles around each other with more abandon than witches and warlocks. They won’t be disbanding until midnight. There you can do your Nicholas business quickly.”