Free Poison Sleep by T. A. Pratt Page B

way.”
    Rondeau had nearly lost a finger to one of Langford’s experiments, an experience that had finally stopped him from poking around the lab’s shelves.
    “Ted’s solid,” Marla said. She walked over to Langford and snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Hey, there’s a human being talking to you now. Can I get some attention?”
    “I can pay attention to many things at once,” Langford said. He looked up at Marla, though, and today his eyes were silver. Langford had a vast array of colored contacts, each pair magically altered to enhance his senses in a different way. She wondered what silver did, but asking Langford would just lead to a long lecture on the subject, and she didn’t have time. “What’s today’s emergency?” he asked.
    Marla glanced toward Ted, who stood holding the shoebox and staring at the coyote. “Hey, Ted, leave the box here, and go wait in the car, okay?”
    He nodded and slipped out of the room.
    “Here,” Langford said, rising and walking over to a silver refrigerator. He took out a small vial of clear liquid. “Put this into Ted’s food. He’s got prostate cancer, and without this, he’ll die. But this should clear it up.”
    Marla blinked at him. “Say
what
?” But she took the vial.
    Langford tapped the spot between his eyes. “These are diagnostic lenses. They scan for unusual masses and inconsistent densities, among other things. Cancer is easy to see with them.”
    “No, I figured that part; I mean, you have a
cancer
cure? What the fuck, Langford? Why isn’t this in every drugstore in America?”
    Langford shrugged. “It’s not science. Or, it’s only partly science. It reprograms the cancer tissue and convinces it to be more community-minded, gives the chaos a plan, but it’s mostly magical, so I can’t exactly get FDA approval.”
    “Still, you could dump some in the municipal water supply, at least!”
    “It’s not easy to make in quantity, Marla. Even that vial is dear, but you’re my main patron, so I’m willing to part with some of the substance to keep your assistant alive, and, I trust, earn some personal gratitude?”
    Marla nodded slowly. She’d follow up about this another time. Langford had weird priorities sometimes, and curing cancer might not be high on his to-do list if he had some other, more interesting project on his table. “Do you think Ted knows he has cancer?”
    “He’s probably shitting blood by now, so I suspect he’s worried, but perhaps too afraid to go to a doctor.”
    Or too poor. Or he just figures shitting blood is the sort of thing that happens when you eat out of garbage cans and live in alleys.
“Right,” Marla said. “Thanks, Langford.”
    “Yes, yes. What do you need? I
am
working on something.”
    “A woman escaped from the Blackwing Institute this morning. Her name’s Genevieve Kelley. She’s—”
    “I know who she is,” Langford said. “Dr. Husch has me in periodically to make sure the homunculi on her staff are functioning properly, and we sometimes consult on other cases, if Husch thinks there might be a physiological component. Kelley’s case has always interested me. She
escaped
? Fascinating.”
    Marla snorted. “You could call it that. The thing is, I
saw
her today. I was walking in the city, when everything around me changed. I went…someplace else. But it wasn’t anywhere on this Earth.” She described the strange buildings, the groves of trees, the cobblestones, the wind, the black tower. “Genevieve was
there
. I think it was her place.”
    Langford nodded, then stared at the ceiling for a moment. Marla waited. She was used to this. “She disappears, sometimes, in her sleep,” Langford said at last. “I’ve hypothesized that she has access to some sort of conditional universe, a little bit of pinched-off reality furnished by her subconscious, filled with comforts and monsters. Or possibly a place created by
stretching
reality, the way you can press your finger into a sheet