Shane did not struggle to accept mermaids as part of her world. She had met a dryad, siren, djinn, demons, probably aliens. She had served cappuccinos to fairy folk who thought it was cute to tip with twenties that turned to pennies. She had been instrumental in killing maybe a dozen vampires and one angel--though the angel had wanted to leverage her death into a holocaust, so that was less bragworthy.
A mermaid didn't move the needle of credulity. Shane would find it suspect if someone attempted to assure her mermaids were made up and couldn't possibly exist because they were biologically dubious (which, of course, they were, but so what? Shane was biologically dubious weekly). The merfolk were known enough to inspire songs that poisoned karaoke nights, so they existed. That was how the real world worked. If you got enough people behind the idea, it happened. If you made enough of them doubt, that was as good as a sucker punch that came with implosion, which daemons generally wished to avoid.
"I don't suppose you could make introductions before the hand-off," Shane said without much hope. "She might have a hint about breaking the curse on that sword since she wants it, and I'm going to presume she knows the nature of the merchandise. Also, I am an excellent swimmer. I imagine I could manage a handshake while treading water. Wait, do actual mermaids have flippers? Is it insensitive to speak to one about handshakes?"
"I would not know how to introduce you," Steven said. "She didn't hire me directly, and she won't be to the drop off before the minute she decided."
Shane saw how difficult his laconic, secretive nature would make their interactions, but she was presently too mature and wary to jump on top of him to steal his thoughts in hopes of expediting the preliminary interrogation. She did not know how much longer she could boast this if he didn't start fessing up. If he needed twenty questions, Shane would hailstone barrage him with them. She had been told on good authority that she was stubborn. "But she is your client."
"As I understand it, yes. These things are done through intermediaries," he said, straining to get the six-syllable word out through his clenched teeth. She couldn't tell how much this misadventure physically hurt Steven. Psychologically fatiguing, no doubt, but Shane's own healing made muscle strain largely notional. At least she felt it when a knife parted her muscles.
"But you know a mermaid hired you?" Shane prompted.
"Correct," he said.
"Is she your weirdest client?" she asked, hoping a stranger question might throw him off enough to reveal salient information.
He shook his head. "Probably a waste of time to pursue that. I'm sure you've seen things."
"It would help if you could, as much as possible, actually tell me how you got this sword," said Shane, opting for a direct appeal. "It might help fix this curse. Failing that, it will be more entertaining for me than your Mysterious Man of Few Words act."
The request came through an encrypted line. Not on the phone as such, though the message used this as a conduit, finding the format easier than shriveled messagers poofing before him. It was not the first request he had received, enough that he had a cell phone without service so he wouldn't be distracted by more mundane calls--though Steven implied these were few. He had built his reputation on being the right man for jobs beyond the capabilities of most, and these became less infrequent recently.
"Do you kill people?" Shane asked.
"Is it disqualifying from your help if I do?"
"Technically, no, but I prefer to know. Personally, I will not be thrilled about helping you and may not do the best job possible, consciously or unconsciously," she said. "I am nigh unkillable, and you wouldn't want to. Which you know, but it bears underlining. Beyond that, I take a dim view on wanton violence."
"I do not kill anyone who was not close to killing me," said Steven. "I do hurt people who were not yet aware they wanted to hurt me. This does not make them less inclined to hurt me, but it makes them less able to. If it helps, Miss, I haven't hurt many people who you'd want to be alone in a church with."
Shane could not much object to this.
Steven accepted the job, and the contract was slipped under his hotel room door moments later, though he knew better than to swing it open in hopes of finding who did the slipping. No one did. That was the point of it.
These contracts came with price tags attached when they meant to entice just about anyone to do the job, damn the danger.
For Steven, the space where there would be a number with an excess of zeros was scribbled over with something he wanted.
"Which is uncommon?"
"It depends on what you want, Miss," said Steven. "Anyone will accept a job for money or power."
"Not you?"
"Not unless I need money and power," he said, "both of which are burdens. You know this."
"What did you want badly enough to attempt this?"
His squint was patient and skeptical that she didn't know better than to ask.
"When did you find out it was a mermaid?" Shane asked instead.
It was not that Steven was incurious; it was a liability to know too many details about things that should not concern him. If he were caught by the wrong person, there was no torture capable of making him divulge a secret. (Shane's questions stood next to no chance of dislodging anything he did not wish to offer.)
Refraining from knowing more than what was necessary distracted him from the goal, which he could afford even less on this job.
This did not mean he was unobservant. He knew the legalese of these contracts, refined through exposure to fairy games and djinn deals. For the most part, the clauses were standard. No one wanted to hire a merc only to entrap them. For one thing, that would be the last job they could have contracted out. The paranormal world is nothing if not gossipy, and one didn't want to get a notoriety for the wrong sort of deceit.
That the destination was the banks of the Hudson River suggested something aquatic. In a subsection of a subclause, he saw a prohibition on stepping into a body of running water until the prize was relinquished. He did the arithmetic.
"I was unaware mermaids didn't like swimmers," said Shane. "One would think they might appreciate the company or the victims. I know a little about mermaids--partly that they are not sirenous. In ancient Greece, Thessaloniki committed suicide by jumping into the sea after Alexander, only she was immortal, and it didn't take, so she became a mermaid instead." Shane nodded her head thoughtfully. "Do you think there is a chance it's Thessaloniki?"
"I don't think you are that lucky."
"Vampires also don't like running water," Shane noted. "Some of them, at least."
"Well, the mermaid didn't hire a vampire," Steven said. "Probably a good reason for that."
Steven did not know the sword was cursed. He did not, at that, know it was a sword. He had only the exact location--a shipping crate in Newburgh, fifty miles from where they stood--and the contract, which was good enough to pulse as he drew closer to its quarry.
"I was unaware Newburgh was a shipping destination," said Shane. "Also, do you happen to have that contract?"
"It used to be, a hundred years ago. It isn't now," Steven said, "which eased figuring out where I was supposed to look. The contracts expire--vanish--once their terms have been met. No evidence. So, I got the sword, I lost the paper."
Newburgh was not the sort of place one should want to wander late at night, or so twitchy white people had assured Shane when she suggested going to a club there for a queer dance party. For Steven, nowhere in Newburgh at any house could pose a threat. Few people would look at him and itch for a fight. He was the sort of man you might see at the end of the bar, throwing back a shot glass of something that smelled more of turpentine than fermented fruit, but you wouldn't bump him on the way to the toilet.
Steven didn't trust an easy job, especially for what the contract offered. If he could get to his quarry without breaking a sweat, he suspected someone was fucking with him. Still, he had a job to do, and he wouldn't be dissuaded merely because it was an obvious trap.
The maroon and rusted container had been beached on the shore, close to the Metro North train tracks. It might have stood out in other places, but not there. It looked like any other piece of garbage that dredged up from the Hudson--more so for the rust--only eight and a half feet tall. He pressed his palm to the side, cooler than the night and dry.
He listened for that contact to trigger something, for enemies to fall upon him, for the metal itself to warp to consume him, but it remained quiet. He knocked on the side, putting his ear to it to listen for the echo. There wasn't much in there to dampen the sound. He wondered if there was anything at all. If he were meant to bring the crate itself somewhere, tough shit. There wasn't anything for that, any way short of another ship to transport it. He looked toward the river, watching the dull whites and yellows of the lights on smaller boats. Nothing he would bother stealing to finish his job.
Steven knew a little about a lot, a generalist. Studying the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge--called the Hamilton Fish Bridge by no one, rechristened after some politician no one remembered--he could see how a ship could pass this way capable of dropping it off, though why they would remain an open question. If there were anything of value contained within, it was a shitty way of protecting it.
He picked the twist lock on the crate's door. It was a flimsy thing. He wouldn't have given it to a kid to secure his locker. The concentration of it soothed him; the delicacy of the tender work of a tiny puzzle on this immense object past its prime felt like the last time he fucked anyone.
It wasn't more than two minutes before it was done--the lock, not the sex, which lasted about ten times that and was worth half it. It fell open. He tossed the lock to the pebbles on the shore to be forgotten, turning the shining silver handle of the box. That, and the mechanism behind it, felt newer than the box's walls. He could have forced it open if it came to that--middle age had done nothing to lessen the ropey muscles of his arms and back--but he wasn't ungrateful that he could do this with more finesse and quiet.
At first, he thought his concern had been proven right, that the crate was empty. Then he saw the glint in a back corner. He pressed himself against the wall, letting the door shield him, and waited again. If it could have been done by any goon, it would have been. The client must have expected more trouble, and Steven was not intent on receiving it.
It was quiet. Steven took out a Krypton penlight, sweeping it around the box. Some spider had built a web in a corner, but he saw nothing else but the sword.
"You some sort of guardian?" he asked the spider, its legs so long, thin, and translucent that it could have masqueraded as the web.
It did not respond, so he decided it was a no, and he wouldn't have to appease or fight it.
If he had known he was coming for a sword, he could have brought supplies for that, including a case to put it in to keep it safe and hidden. But the client didn't want him to know, or she didn't know herself. He wasn't sure which he preferred. Some things were better left as a mystery.
"And so you took the sword?" Shane asked, because he had trailed off more than that she needed that clarified. She was looking at the sword. They could take as given this fact.
"Yeah," he said slowly, ruefully. "I took the sword."
Steven did not wield the sword at first. You didn't grip a knife unless you intended to use it, and you backed up if you dropped it. He held it point down as though to assure he didn't mean it as a threat to anyone seeing him.
It wasn't good enough. A minute after Steven had his hands on it, the crate shook like it was nothing more than cardboard. This bordered on relief. His muscle released their tension, as now the waiting could stop and the conflict could begin. He could fight whatever they threw at him and die to it, or more likely not. He had a damn good track record of not dying.
He cracked his neck and started for the door as though it would surely be his aggressors' next move, imprisoning him within and dealing with him with more leisure. Pushing the crate into the river and waiting for the water to do its dirty work would be the easiest, but such people (such things) did not always hold to being easy. If they took pleasure in pain, if they wanted it to last, they could devise other methods.
Maybe they expected him to beg for his life, to say he hadn't wanted the sword and would gladly leave it behind. He hadn't known about the sword ten minutes ago, but he would kill them all before he gave it up now. It was the principle of the thing.
He expected he was an unknown quantity. His adversaries from other jobs could have a handle on him. As it stood, all the people shaking the box could assume was that Steven was an intrepid thief who knew his way around flimsy locks.
Although he dealt with the magical as a matter of course, he was not versed in magic and did not trust its cost. He understood it, and it had at times tried to seduce him into letting it inside, but he better trusted his physical strength. It had yet to disappoint.
He slipped out of the crate before the door shut, managing it with a second to spare. Had he held the sword properly, it would not have sliced into his abdomen, but he didn't have too much concern with the wound there. He had sewn up worse, and recently.
The door scraped him, but that was almost a joke now. Blood had already leaked from him, pouring like a hot spring from his side. This would soon be a liability--not the blood itself, but its scent and energy. He could be tracked if it was gushing, but he didn't need to get back to his car to staunch the worst of it and put distance between whoever was after him and the prize. Already, the pain of it was less, whether from adrenaline or his having misjudged the depth of the wound.
Steven had been shot at so often and with such variety that the sound of the shot barely made his blood pressure spike. (It was, in fact, holding steady despite his presumed blood loss; he knew he had a while until it would become a problem.)
Something hit his shoulder, a flare of pain that knocked him from his sure footing, but then he was okay. Was it a sandbag? Why would they fire nonlethal rounds? What sense did that make?
His grip on the sword remained firm, unyielding. He could not pretend, even to the innocents on the streets of Newburgh at this hour, he was not a threat, and flipped the sword to its martial position, meant for a hack and slash if it came to that. It was awkward to hold in one hand and barely better in two, but he didn't see a reason to let that slow his escape.
He was almost to the car when he felt it hit his head. They say you never hear the shot that kills you, but that is not true when you are still around after.
It was so fast that he only registered the pressure and being thrown to the brick paving blocks. They, more than the bullets, let him know the truth of the sword as he stood again with torn jeans and no wounds.
"Relatable," Shane pronounced.
"It is like that for you?"
Shane shook her head. "I feel it. It doesn't last long anymore--I've become adept at thinking the injuries away--but it's there at first."
"You ever been shot in the head?"
She shook her head. "Throat, though," she said. "I had my neck sliced open once, but that wasn't too painful after the first slit. Panic-inducing, though."
"I'm not looking forward to feeling it."
Hearing the tale of his theft--paltry as the details were when it came to this taciturn man--Shane did not want Steven to have this sword. She much more did not want whoever had put notional holes in him to have it, though she couldn't tell who these people were, aside from probably not the sword's rightful owners. She presumed he was not lying to her--it would make her job so much harder if she had to second-guess him. He seemed honest, as most people do who don't seem to want to harm her in some way when they would have no trouble doing so.
Steven had not bothered wondering who the people who wanted him dead were. "In my line of work, you get used to it."
"What line of work is that, exactly?"
"'Procuring artifacts,'" he said, apparently quoting someone, an airy mockery to it.
"But not for money."
"Not this time," he said evenly.
Shane likewise did not relish the idea of throwing this sword into a river for a mermaid. For one, this sword would not be the ideal weapon in the water. A spear or harpoon made sense. A sword would need swinging that water would not allow, and that was before factoring in its curse.
That was not her greatest concern, though she would revisit it. First, she had to get Steven to be able to interact in the world without a sword taped to him.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.
