Free Bloody Fabulous by Ekaterina Sedia

for me, Colleen, and not some supernatural creature he heard on a midnight flight over the ocean.
    I like men for more than just their clothes, after all.
    As promised I’m wearing a silver comb in my hair. Traditional calling card of all banshees. He approaches my table carefully.
    “You’re here,” he says.
    “As agreed,” I say. “Sit down.”
    He slides off his coat before he sits. Nice square shoulders, long arms, fingers that look deft enough to both fire a weapon and cradle a baby. He smells like woodsmoke.
    “What do I call you?” John asks.
    I want to tell him just to hear the syllables roll off his tongue. But some things are best unsaid. “It doesn’t matter, Mr. O’Neill. We won’t be meeting again.”
    He’s staring at me in a way that’s bordering on rude. I hope the glamour isn’t flickering, or that I haven’t somehow messed it up.
    “How did you know my father was dying? We were over the middle of the ocean and he was here, at Mass General. Heart attack.”
    “That doesn’t matter either.” It’s not as if Maeve told me to spill any banshee secrets, after all. “It’s what we do. Sing a lament.”
    A muscle twitches along his jaw. “I’ve lost men in battle and you’ve never sung for them.”
    “They weren’t your blood, and I wasn’t in the neighborhood.” I drink from the coffee in front of me. Straight coffee, nothing with a kick, because I’m flying in four hours. “I’m sorry for your father.”
    “Don’t be. He wasn’t—well, he was old. He was from here, Boston. My mother came from Galway. They married late and they had me late and now it’s too late to say most of what I wanted—” Abruptly he stands up again. “Will you wait here while I get a drink?”
    It’s no hardship to watch him go to the bar and order a Guinness. Those jeans fit his backside quite well. He isn’t wearing a wedding ring but surely he has a girlfriend somewhere, a woman who’d be wise not to let him out of her sight for too long. When he sits down again he says, “My mother told me all banshees are haggard old crones, toothless and gray haired. I’m glad she’s wrong.”
    “Trick of the light,” I say lightly. “I’m as cronish and ugly as they come.”
    “No, you’re beautiful,” he says, and then ducks his gaze. “I haven’t been able to get your song out of my head.”
    Banshees don’t enchant men. It’s not our job. For a moment I worry that somehow I cast a spell or built the glamour too strongly.
    Maeve will not be happy if I accidentally use fey magic to snare a human lover.
    “Mr. O’Neill, why is it you had to speak to me so urgently?” I ask.
    He lifts his head and eyes me squarely. “To find out if I was losing my mind. I’m on emergency leave from Iraq. I tried to get here before he died, but it was too late. When I go back, I have to know that my brain’s not cracked or fried. Not that it matters to the U.S. Army . . . ”
    Despite myself, I touch his hand. His skin is warm but there’s Sorrow inside him, swollen and raw. His father might have been a good man, or maybe not, but it’s a rare son who can bury his father without cost.
    “Your brain is fine, Mr. O’Neill. You won’t hear me again.”
    “Never?” he asks.
    I steel my resolve. “Our paths aren’t likely to cross again. Honest truth, no denying it. I’m leaving tonight and won’t be back this way soon. You’re going back to Iraq. “
    “Is there a way I can reach you? A cell phone, a post office box?”
    The door opens to let in three men in the middle of a sports argument. They’re loud, boisterous types, good-humored until they drink too much, bad-humored afterward. Just like many of my passengers. They remind me that I have to get back to the hotel, get myself in uniform, eat dinner, catch the van, and fly back across the Atlantic tonight.
    “It’s not in our best interests,” I tell him.
    “I think you’re wrong,” he said, again with that direct stare. “I think it