Free Indexing by Seanan McGuire

turned
out to be completely devoid of family members in all of the iterations that we
had on file. The Piper arrived in town as a stranger, did his or her business,
and then left, usually taking something precious along in lieu of the original
payment. After rattling off that special little fact, Jeff smiled broadly and
said, “That’s why you’ll be the first one in the department to receive your
check every pay period, Miss Santos. We don’t want your story to decide that
we’re trying to short you something that’s rightfully yours!”
    “Because
having magic flute girl go all Scanners on us with an arpeggio would be
a stupid-ass way to die,” contributed Sloane, without taking her eyes off her
computer screen.
    I wadded up a
Post-it note and threw it at her. “How many pairs of shoes do you need? Turn
around and pretend you care about good team relations.”
    “Uh, point the
first, I don’t care about good team relations,” said Sloane, spinning
around in her chair so that I could see her face when she flipped me off.
“Point the second, I stopped shopping for shoes an hour ago. I’m buying bulk
lots of hair dye now.”
    “I don’t
understand any of this,” said Demi blankly.
    “Don’t worry,”
said Andy. “Neither does anyone else.”
    Jeff cleared
his throat. “If the rest of you are done goofing around, I’d like to call your
attention to some of the finer points of the Pied Piper clade of stories …”
And then he was off and running again, listing a dozen possible variations on a
theme that we were all about to become intimately familiar with. I watched Demi
out of the corner of my eye while he talked. This was going to impact her most
of all, after all.
    I’ll never
understand what it’s like to find out that you’re on the ATI spectrum. I was
raised knowing what I could potentially become. So was my brother, Jerry.
Neither of us had a single day where we thought of ourselves as “normal” or
believed that fairy tales were anything other than a fate to be avoided. Demi
was just finding out about that world now. It was becoming real for her, and
there was nothing that I, or anyone else, could do.
    I should have
felt guiltier than I did. Her story might never have triggered. But in the end,
all I felt was grateful that we’d been able to avert a Sleeping Beauty, and
that no one had needed to die.
    Jeff was still
talking. I shook off the clinging shreds of my thoughts, and forced myself to
listen. If Demi’s story ever took a turn for the dark, I might need to know
what he had said in the beginning, when we still thought she had a chance.
#
    Between the paperwork, dealing
with Demi’s gear, and everything else, I didn’t make it back to my car until
ten minutes to midnight. The time was enough to make me wince. Midnight is a
bad hour for anyone on the ATI spectrum. We don’t like it. Too many stories set
their watches by it, so to speak.
    The wince got
worse when I pulled out my keys and Sloane stepped out of the shadows of the
carport. Her bangs were hanging over her eyes, and her lips were set firmly
into a frown.
    “Can I get a
ride home?” she asked.
    I didn’t ask
how she’d been able to get to work in the first place. I didn’t suggest that
she call for a taxi. I just nodded, and said, “Get in.”
    She didn’t say
anything for the first six blocks of our drive. Then she said, quietly, “The
Pied Piper is a cipher. He’s not good. He’s not bad. He’s just a man who does a
job and gets mad when people try to rook him.”
    “I know.”
    “Snow White’s
good. The Wicked Stepsisters are bad. Pied Piper … that could go either
way.”
    “So we’ll
watch her. We’ll make sure she picks the right path.” I shrugged. “This isn’t
our first fairy tale, Sloane. It’ll be okay.”
    “Maybe. But
one day, it won’t be. What’s going to happen then?”
    I didn’t have
an answer for her. So I turned on the radio, and we rode in silence toward
midnight, and the distant