Sunshine

It’s probably worse, the partbloods that are fine till they hit adolescence, and suddenly find out that the Other blood, which they may not have known about, is alive and kicking and going to ruin their lives. Every now and then it happens to a grown-up. There was a famous case a few years ago about a thirty-eight-year-old bank manager who suddenly grew horns. They fired him. He’d had an exemplary career till that moment. He appealed. The case got a huge amount of publicity.

They still fired him.

As “sensitive” industries go, SOF was at the top. No way any demon partblood was going to get hired by the SOFs.

Even someone like Mary might be turned down if she applied for basic SOF training, if anyone was so poor-spirited as to report to her recruitment team that the coffee she poured was always hot. Mary wasn’t registered. If the government insisted on registering everyone who could sew a seam that never unraveled or pour coffee that stayed hot or patch a bicycle tire that didn’t pop somewhere else a hundred feet down the road, they’d have to register sixty percent or something of the population, and fond as the government was of paper trails and tax levies, apparently this boggled even their tiny minds. But SOF cared down to this level. The deep widow’s peaks you sometimes get with a little peri blood and which are so fashionable that models and actors are forever having cosmetic surgery to implant them, if one of these people had a sudden desire for a midlife career change to SOF they’d have to go in with their surgeon’s certificate taped to their forehead, or they’d be turned away at the door. SOF didn’t fool around.

Pat blinked his blue eyes at me and smiled. He had a nice smile as a demon. His teeth were blue too.

“SOF is rotten with partbloods,” said Jesse. “I’m one. Theo’s another. So is John. So are Kate and Millicent and Mike. We somehow seem to find each other to partner with. Safer, of course. ‘Hey, doesn’t that blue guy look a lot like Pat? Where is Pat, anyway?’ ‘Look like Pat? You must be joking. He’s at home with a head cold anyway.’ But Pat’s the most spectacular of us, which is why we called him in tonight.”

I had maybe about managed to keep my jaw from dropping round my ankles while Pat turned blue—it had taken several minutes, I could go with the flow—but this was absolutely one too many. This was on a par with, say, finding out the president of the global council was a sucker, the moon was made of green cheese, and the sun only rose in the morning because of this complicated system of levers and dials overseen by an encampment of the master race from Antares settled on Mars…“What the hell d’you mean SOF is rotten with partbloods? What about the goddam blood test when they take you?”

All three of them smiled. Slowly. For a moment I was the only human in the room, and they were all bigger and tougher than I was. I went very still. Not, I’m sorry to say, the stillness of serenity and compassion. Much more like a rabbit in headlights.

The moment passed.

“It must have been a bastard in the beginning,” said Jesse.

“When the only drug that worked made you piss green for a week,” said Pat.

“Or indigo or violet,” said Theo.

“Yeah,” said Pat. “Depending on what kind of partblood you were.”

“But the lab is pretty well infiltrated by now,” said Jesse. “Once you get that far you’re usually home already.”

There was another pause. Maybe I was supposed to ask what “you’re home already” meant, but I didn’t want to know any more. I hadn’t been so mind-blasted since I woke up next to a bonfire surrounded by vampires. As the silence lengthened I realized that the tension level was rising again, and there were more meaningful looks flashing back and forth. I tried to rouse myself. But I was so tired.

At last Pat spoke. “Okay,” he said. “Where we were. Um. We’ve been thinking for a while that something like…turning blue must have happened to you out at the lake. Or—wherever. But we haven’t had a good excuse to, well, ask you about it closely. Somewhere we could lock the door when I held my breath.”

“Till tonight we haven’t been totally sure that’s what we were looking at anyway,” said Jesse. “Arguably we still aren’t.”

They looked at me hopefully.

I thought about what I could say. They’d just handed me all their careers on a platter. All I had to do was walk out of here and tell someone—say, Mr. Responsible Media—that Pat turned blue, three-eyed, and twelve-fingered if he held his breath, and that several of his closest colleagues including his partner knew about it, and they’d tie Pat to a chair, put a plastic bag over his head, and await developments. They’d have to. Even if the twenty-four-star bigwig supreme commander honcho of SOF was a fullblood demon him- or herself and knew the name of every partblood in the service, the public furor would make them do it. Being an unlicensed magic handler was a mouse turd in comparison.

My brain slowly ground out the next necessary connection to be made. Oh…