Free Night Terrors by Tim Waggoner Page A

back to me. “By the way, excellent work in taking down that gang of melatonin smugglers last month. Top-notch work!”
    Eklips crossed silently to her partner’s side, her feet seeming not to touch the floor. She never made a sound when she moved, a quality I had never gotten used to. She reached up and gently placed her hand on Damon’s shoulder, and I did my best not to grimace.
    Romantic and physical relationships between human and Incubi – assuming the latter possess the proper anatomy – although rare, are accepted by the majority of Nod’s citizens and institutions, including the Shadow Watch. But relationships between Ideators and the Incubi they create are, if not forbidden, mostly frowned upon. Ideators and their Incubi aren’t linked genetically, of course, so our relationship isn’t precisely that of parent and child, but in a metaphysical sense at least, it’s close enough. So to most of us, myself included, sex between Ideators and their Incubi comes uncomfortably close to incest.
    And many Incubi are reluctant to have sex with humans for another reason. Centuries past, some Ideators considered themselves magicians and viewed the Incubi they created as slaves to do with as they pleased. And some Incubi saw themselves as powerful demons who could whatever they wished to their creators. Rape on both sides was often the result, and the word incubus – which originally came from one of the Latin words for nightmare – came to be associated with a demonic sexual predator, primarily a male. Somewhere along the line, someone eventually coined the word succubus for the female variety of these “demons”, although as far as I know, no one in Nod uses it.
    So, because some of their ancestors had been ill-used by humans, and vice versa, most Incubi prefer to stick to their own kind when it comes to carnal pleasure. Obviously, Eklips was of a different mind on the subject. The issue has never come up between Jinx and me, and to be honest, the thought makes me more than a little ill.
    “I’m surprised you two were able to get here so fast,” I said to Eklips, baring my teeth at her in an insincere smile. “I figured you’d be too busy attending the opening of a new Broadway show, or maybe checking out a quaint new art gallery.”
    Eklips didn’t smile back at me. She never smiled, not in public, anyway. I wondered if she ever smiled at Damon when they were alone.
    “Rumor is that you two had Quietus in custody but let him escape? Is that true?” Her voice was like two swaths of black velvet being rubbed together. I’d never heard her raise her voice above a near whisper, even when she was furious. In some ways, that’s scarier than anything Jinx does. Classier, too.
    Jinx ground his nail-teeth together, and his eyes began to glow red. Not a good sign. Normally, I would’ve tried to defuse the situation. Having your psychotic clown partner go full-tilt horror movie in your boss’s office doesn’t make for a positive performance review. But these two always pissed me off – especially Eklips – and so I decided to sit back in my chair and watch the fun.
    But before Jinx could do anything interesting, Sanderson laid his right arm atop his desk, palm up, and pulled his jacket and sleeve cuffs back with his left hand. He wore a wisper around his wrist, but just below that was a tattoo of a closed eye. The rest of us in the room with Sanderson stopped talking – for that matter, we stopped breathing – and focused on the eye tattoo. I braced myself for the eye to open, knowing that very bad things would happen if it did. But after several moments passed quietly, Sanderson pulled his sleeve back down. He then looked at Jinx – whose eyes were no longer glowing – and without a hint of emotion spoke a single word.
    “Dismissed.”
     
    “It wouldn’t be so bad if it was anyone else but those two,” I said.
    Jinx and I were walking down Chimera Street, away from the Rookery. The building is made of