Free Pale Queen Rising by A.R. Kahler

screaming child.
    I start walking down the street and he keeps pace, expertly navigating puddles so his expensive Italian leather shoes don’t get wet. I mean, they look expensive. I’m sure they’re human flesh. Probably an Italian.
    “So we’re here in this beautiful weather because?”
    “Because this is the last place that reported a leak.” Which, after saying it, I realize sounds kind of funny, but I don’t correct the language.
    He glances over at me, and I catch the faintest glimpse of blue flame from behind the glasses. A group of drunk college students skirt around us. Seriously, how are they already drunk? It’s like nine on a Tuesday.
    I’m jealous.
    “You keep speaking of secrecy, keeping our actions hidden from this third party. But won’t killing off their suppliers be a red flag?” he asks.
    I stop in the middle of the sidewalk and glare at him.
    “Do you remember our terms? Without question. Explicitly stated.”
    “I’m not questioning,” he says. “I’m just trying to learn more about your plan.”
    “My plan is to do exactly what Mab says and get it over with. She knows more about what’s going on than I do and that’s fine by me. I’m the weapon, not the mastermind behind it.”
    “It still surprises me you’re okay with that,” he muses, but he doesn’t press the subject. Probably because he knows I’d send him back missing a limb.
    This is why I hate having him around. It’s not the advances or sarcasm—those I can handle. Hell, those I enjoy. It’s the fact that he questions. And when he questions, I start to wonder what I’m doing as well. The rage inside me grows, but it’s not at him, not really. It’s at this third party, the one who’s threatening my livelihood and making me question everything.
    “Suppliers die all the time,” I finally mutter, continuing down the sidewalk. “It’s part of the job. We just need to find one who will talk and direct us to their buyer. Then we’re done.”
    “Then perhaps tonight will be our lucky night.” He holds a hand out and watches the rain collect and sizzle on his skin. “It’s already going so fortuitously well.”

    The exterior of the venue is pretty nondescript, jammed between a pizza place and a shady-looking convenience store. There’s your usual marquee announcing tonight’s show—Roxie Rhode and the Long Island Truckers—and a ticket booth out front, a line of college kids smoking shitty cigarettes and wearing beanies stretching around the block. It’s Seattle’s University District, which explains the red eyes and bad fashion choices and scent of pot that drifts through the crowd like a ghost. The main drag—The Ave—is teeming with bars and corner stores and vegan restaurants, all a little dirty and run down from the rain and soot and clientele. And in some strange twist of irony, it’s probably one of the few places in the mortal world I feel at home. It’s shabby in a fashionable sort of way, the faintest layer of grit coating everything like a teenager pretending to be tough. Phone poles are covered in peeling posters and decades of staples and nails, the gutters flowing with leaves and trash and dark water. It’s kind of disgusting. But it’s crawling with magic, and like so many places where “the youth” gather, it’s infested with Dream. Mostly the darker kind.
    Eli and I don’t bother with the line, nor do we pretend with tickets. From what I can hear, the show’s already started, and these kids are either just loitering or the opening act is really bad. I walk right up to the ticket booth and wink at the cashier, an older woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a green shawl.
    “Business as usual?” she asks.
    “You know it. They any good?”
    She shrugs and looks to the line behind me. The kids are eying us suspiciously. Eli’s dressed like some skeezy music manager, and I could easily be his mail-order bride. Or escort. They must think we’re some sort of famous.
    “They seem