Expatriates

by Alicia McKenzie

There's an old Chinese curse about 'living in interesting times'. Whoever the bloke was who came up with that choice bit, I figured he knew all too well what he was talking about. Life's a bloody unpredictable thing at times, and you don't need to be a mutant spy who can't quite manage to keep away from the sodding spandex brigade to appreciate that. Although it helps.

I really should stop blaming the spandex brigade for everything. They had nothing at all to do with this latest weirdness, which is bloody depressing when I think about it--does that mean it's me? That "weird shit just follows you around, Wisdom," as Tabitha might've said?

It took me by surprise that night, that's for sure. I was in New York to meet with an operative, just for a check-in with one of my networks. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing I hadn't done a hundred sodding times before. I figured I'd get the job done, have a pint or two, and catch the first flight back across the pond in the morning.

That was before the taxi driver got me lost.

See, there's this bar - just a hole in the wall, really - called Dian's. It's a little seedy, a little dingy, and caters to those who want to have a few pints of watery American beer and do some business in a place where the help make a point of not seeing or hearing anything. Perfect, really, for my purposes.

Unfortunately, it wasn't where I wound up that night. Things started to go wrong when I dozed off in the cab. Stupid thing to do, I know, but I'd been most of the way around the world in the previous week, and that's a little too much jet-lag, even for me. My watch was still on Moscow time, and half my wits had absconded off to Fiji with most of my common sense.

So when the cab stopped, I thrust a twenty at the driver and dragged my sorry carcass out, all before the grogginess faded enough to let me realize that this wasn't Dian's, and wasn't even the right part of town.

"Wait--" I started, turning back towards the cab, but the driver had already taken off as if the hounds of hell were at his heels. "OY!" I bellowed after the cab, but by that time it was around the next corner, brakes squealing, and there wasn't much else to be done but swear and think evil thoughts about New York cabbies and how stupid you had to be to doze off in the space of a fifteen minute cab ride and wind up in a part of the city you've never seen before.

A strange part of the city, too. There were a few houses on one side of the street, big old brownstones, but none of them had any lights on. All the little shops were dark, too, and I didn't see a pay phone anywhere. It was a foggy night, which didn't help. Felt like I was back in dear old London, actually, and I wasn't keen on that at all. There wasn't a soul around, as far as I could see, and as I ambled off to lean against the nearest wall and have a cigarette to steady my nerves, I saw at a glance what must have happened.

Across the street, on the backside of a building, was a tall, arched wooden door that looked completely out of place, like something that would have fit better on an upper-class house from the nineteenth century or some such bloody thing. Above it, spelled out neatly in neon that somehow managed not to look tacky, was a name.

Dion's.

All right. So I'd mumbled, or the cabbie couldn't spell. Sighing, I stubbed out the cigarette and started across the street. Wrong place or not, they'd at least be able to tell me where the hell I was, which was a necessary first step in getting where I was supposed to be.

I was halfway across the street when she appeared. She came walking out of the fog like a ghost, swathed head to toe in a hooded cloak (yes, a hooded full-length cloak, and how many people do you see walking down a deserted street in New York wearing something like that?) and strode--glided--bloody hell, I didn't know what to call what she was doing with her hips, but it was interesting to watch--over to the door to Dion's.

This is where I should say something about how our eyes met and she gave me a come-hither look or some such bloody thing, but I'd be making it up. She didn't give me a come-hither look--she didn't even look at me, and it didn't matter, not one bit. The closest she came to me was about twenty feet, and even at that distance, I felt it. This--tug, my whole body leaning towards her of its own accord, blood rushing to places it really shouldn't be. My head started to spin, a still-functioning part of my brain pointed out that it had gotten awfully hot out here all of a sudden, and all I could smell were flowers. Not perfume, mind you. Flowers, as if I'd stopped, dropped and rolled in a field of them.

So I followed her, of course. I like to think I didn't have much of an option. Whatever she was giving off - mutant pheremones or magic, I'd figured at the time - was pretty heady stuff, and as I'd already stated, I was not precisely in the land of the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

There were no bouncers inside the door at Dion's. Just a genial bloke in a tuxedo who tried to take my coat, but backed off when I growled at him. I noticed his little friend was hanging up the cloak my mystery woman had been wearing, but I reasoned that I could probably make an educated guess as to who she was, given her height and build. If all else failed, I'd wander around until I caught that scent of flowers again.

I followed the doorman's gesture and went down the gold-trimmed hall, through another set of doors, and immediately realized I was as far from the comfortable, shabby anonymity of Dian's as it was possible to get.

This was--well, it was definitely a club, but I'd never seen anything like it, and I'd been to the Hellfire Club. Carved pillars and goldwork and stained glass and huge painting everywhere, and somehow it avoided being tacky, just like the neon outside.

The crowd was even more surreal. I knew at a glance that most of them weren't human. Not that there were all that many obvious physical differences - although some of the tall blokes in the crowd could've given some of my spandex-clad acquaintances a run for their money - but it was still perfectly obvious that these weren't homo sapiens I was dealing with. You could see it in their eyes, the way they moved--the faint glow beneath their skin. The music was coming from everywhere and nowhere, wild and dissonant one minute, soft and melodic the next.

As I stood there frozen in the doorway, a woman walked past me - not my mystery woman, she was too short - wearing a dress that looked like a Victorian nightgown and her very long green hair loose to the floor, studded with multicolored ornaments that I realized abruptly were living butterflies. Mostly because one of them perched just above her ear shifted position and flipped its wings at me. The green-haired woman gave me a smile that bared delicately pointed teeth, and paused to brush a hand along my jaw before she walked on.

I felt something like I had out in the street, only a lot less overwhelming. Under other circumstances, I might have followed emerald-hair and her butterflies, just to satisfy my curiosity, but I'd come in here after my cloaked lady from the street, and I could still smell flowers.

It was pretty clear, given how crowded this place was, that I wasn't going to have much luck standing here in the doorway gawking. I retreated to a little table over in the corner, figuring I'd eyeball the crowd for a while, see if I could spot anyone who made me want to start worshipping the ground she was walking on.

A dwarf in a gold waistcoat came by and placed a tall glass of something golden and frothy on the table in front of me. I opened my mouth to protest, but he shook his head. "On the house," he said in a surprisingly deep voice. "Dion likes to make first-timers feel welcome." He inclined his head in the direction of the huge bar, and I followed his gaze, twitching a bit nervously as the red-haired bartender gave me a wicked smile and a half-bow.

Odd-looking chap. Dressed like something out of the sixteenth century and not as clearly nonhuman as some of the others, but there was something about his eyes--I met them, and wanted to run for the door right then and there. Part of my brain was gibbering 'demon!' at me, but something told me that was understating things a little. I'd had just enough experience with things like this to realize that the bartender was something considerably beyond my experience. I'd guess 'god', but I really didn't think I wanted to go there.

"Wouldn't want to disappoint Dion," I said, a bit more hoarsely than I'd intended, and raised my glass to the bartender. He nodded at me, still smiling, and I took a sip.

Whatever it was, it was warm, and burned all the way down. Not beer--definitely not beer. Reminded me a little of the mead I'd tried once, but that wasn't quite right, either.

"Just wave me down if you'd like another, sir," the dwarf said with a smirk, and vanished into the crowd.

"Not bloody likely," I muttered dazedly. Between the jet-lag and whatever was messing with my head, I didn't think I wanted to add whatever intoxicating effects a fairy drink might have on an unwary mortal.

I had figured it out, even if it had taken me a few minutes. I'd obviously stumbled on the local hangout for expatriate Sidhe and other otherworldly types. Black Air had always known there was a whole community of them here in New York, but that hadn't been quite my department, so I'd never gone digging in the files to find out more.

It would certainly explain what had happened out on the street. I'd caught a whiff or two of glamour, and reacted like most mortal men would. A little hard on my pride, maybe, but no catastrophe--

Flowers, again. The smell swamped my sense, and I looked up dizzily as a shadow fell over the table. The woman standing there - my mystery lady this time, had to be - looked like something out of a Rossetti painting. And I mean a specific Rossetti painting--one I'd seen and vaguely remembered. She had long, sunlit brown hair and clear green eyes, and a face so sodding perfect it defied description.

Not human. Definitely not human.

She shattered the image of angelic perfection by looking me up and down and giving me a sly, suggestive smile. "Well," she said in a throaty, vaguely British-accented voice, "I do generally prefer the knight in shining armor type, but there's something to be said for a nicely scruffy man."

I opened my mouth. Closed it again. Thought better of leaving the drink alone, and took a sip to fortify myself before I responded. "Nice dress," I managed. And it was, although it was a bit charitable, calling it a dress. It had no back, not much more front, and was translucent. She wore it well, though. Had to say that much for her.

She laughed, and sat down next to me. "Here," she said, setting the bottle of tequila she was carrying down on the table. "You don't want to drink that stuff," she said dismissively, gesturing at my glass. "Dion's idea of a joke. You'll wake up twenty years from now, wishing you were dead."

I had the disturbing impression she meant that literally. "I'll skip it then, I guess," I said, watching as she signaled to the dwarf and he came hurrying over with a pair of shot glasses. "Anyway, it's always a good night for tequila."

"A man after my own heart," my mystery lady declared approvingly, and filled both shot glasses. She tossed hers back like a pro; I felt obligated to follow suit. "Sodding brilliant, whoever came up with this," she said a bit breathily, waggling the bottle at me.

She was wearing a rather sizeable necklace, I noted. Some sort of silver glyph with a round green stone almost the color of her eyes--I blinked and looked away rapidly, not wanting her to think that I was staring at her breasts. Not that they weren't very nice--

"I saw you out on the street," she said, filling our glasses again. "You looked a little lost. Are you lost, Scruffy?"

There was a ripple of laughter in her voice. I met those nearly incandescent eyes again and immediately felt as though I were drowning. "Wisdom," I muttered, and picked up the shot glass. "Pete Wisdom."

"What an interesting name," she purred at me. "Is it a misnomer?"

I blinked at her. She still looked as though she was finding something terribly amusing. "What?" I asked a bit gruffly.

"Are you wise?" Her lips curved once more in that vaguely disturbing smile. "Not wise to follow a strange woman into a strange bar, really. She might decide to take you home and keep you."

It crossed my mind that it might be very enjoyable to be taken home, but I wasn't so sure about the 'kept' part. "I can take care of myself," I said, the words coming out more brusquely than I'd intended, again.

She didn't seem bothered. "I thought I smelled power on you, outside." She took my hand suddenly, and began to examine it closely. I started to pull away, but her skin was cool, oddly electric, and all my muscles seemed frozen. "Interesting," she murmured, and then looked up at me, still smiling. "Very interesting. Power, but not my type. Mutant, right?"

I decided not to answer that. "You--um, didn't give me your name," I said as she let go of my hand.

"Kildare," she said carelessly, tossing back her second shot of tequila. "Don't shorten it, or I'll be forced to do something drastic. I hate nicknames."

"So we're on a first-name basis, then?" I stole the bottle from her, noting as I glanced at the label that it was plain, garden-variety tequila. Nothing at all mystical about it, at first glance. A little incongruous, really, given our surroundings.

"Why not?" Kildare leaned closer, giving me a conspiratorial wink. "Informality is one of the things I love about the New World."

"The New World, is it? Should I ask how 'new' it is for you?"

Kildare laughed lightly. "Oh, I've been here for a while." Before I could do more than stiffen, she'd reached into the pocket of my couch and removed my pack of cigarettes. She slid one out, snapped the fingers of her other hand, and it lit in a sparkling flash of golden light. "You sound like you're a more recent transplant, though," she went on, leaving me to wonder what constituted a 'while' from the perspective of someone who was most likely immortal.

"Not quite a transplant," I temporized.

"Ah, still cherishing some ties to the old sod, then?" Kildare winked at me, sidling closer. "I know the feeling. No place like home, isn't that what they say?"

I had a God-only-knew-how-old faery all but sitting on my lap and waxing nostalgic. I'd either been very, very good or very, very bad sometime in the recent past. I was betting on the latter.

I could say I spared a thought for the operative sitting in that other bar, waiting for me, but I'd be lying through my teeth. "You're wearing the shoes for it," I pointed out refilling our glasses. Well, they were red stiletto heels, not ruby slippers, but the metaphor still wasn't a bad one.

"I suppose I am, aren't I?" Kildare gave me a lazy grin, slipping an arm around my shoulders. "Bloody things hurt my feet. The lengths to which I go to be fashionable."

Mixed signals. That was what she was giving me, and I was thoroughly intrigued. I'd always had a certain mental image of faeries, and this cigarette-smoking, tequila-downing, thoroughly gorgeous creature didn't quite fit it.

"So tell me, princess," I said speculatively, "what do you call keeping company with a mortal? Slumming?"

Kildare didn't so much as bat an eye at the 'princess' moniker, which should have made me suspicious, if my common sense hadn't taken that aforementioned long trip to a more temperate clime. "I like mortals," she said, giving me a wide-eyed, innocent look that didn't fool me for a second. "They're not much on stamina, but they make up for it in creativity."

My head was swimming again, and the smell of flowers was almost enough to make me sneeze. "Would you ease up on the glamour, love?" I muttered, reaching out to push her back to a safer distance. Only my hand wound up on her bare shoulder, and as soon as I touched her--

--well, I think I'll stop there. A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell, and while I know I don't really fall under that category, my memory of the rest of that night, to be perfectly honest, isn't all that clear. I remember finishing the tequila bottle and having Kildare steer me out of Dion's, but the rest is just a pleasant haze.

I woke up stark naked in the biggest sodding bed I've ever seen, only to have the mirror on the wall tell me snidely that my hair looked like a haystack.

We won't mention the bloody huge aquarium on her wall. I sort of blocked that out once I noticed the miniature mer-people and their little city.

Kildare made me coffee, made a few observations that may or may not have made me blush - I'm not about to admit it, one way or the other - and made me promise to stop by her shop the next time she was in New York. I'm not sure whether I will or not. Nine hundred year old faery princesses - I did some checking, after I got back to the office - aren't quite my cup of tea. And the Sidhe aren't known for their long attention spans.

Then again, I just might take the chance and look her up. After all, letting a little magic into your life never hurt anyone, did it?

fin

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