Jonathan Strahan - The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Volume 10

He peeled the orange. She half-expected his hand to pass right through it, but that was silly. She knew spirits could affect the physical world in ways far more varied and impressive than any human. Once she watched a building burst into sudden, all-encompassing flames, reducing itself to ash and windblown smoke in four minutes.

“I like oranges,” he said. “Also whiskey. Could you bring me some of that, next time?”

“Bourbon, rye, scotch – single-malt, blended...” She recited the names like a list of lovers, men who had done her wrong, men who she still loved and would take back in an instant. She had no intention of bringing him booze. But saying the names made her blood thicken and her mouth dry.

“Bring me your favorite,” he said.

“That’s maybe not such a good idea,” she semi-whispered.

He shrugged. “Whatever you like.”

She wondered if she could trust the sadness in his voice. If spirits really were all that different from men. If, at bottom, they wanted something, and once they had it they were through with you.

“Why don’t you stay?” he said, his eyes wide and throbbing with loneliness.

“I’ve got two dozen houses left to visit today,” she said. “And then I’ve got to turn the keys in. Otherwise, the other maintenance workers won’t be able to get in.”

“After, then. Come back here. You’re nice. I can see it.”

“I wish I could,” she said. “But there’s people expecting me.”

He nodded, and handed her half the orange.

A door slammed, upstairs, in the long seconds that came next. The spirit’s head whipped to the side, his lips curling into a snarl, and for an instant Agnes saw the face of something savage and canine.

“The wind,” she said.

“Sorry,” he whispered, human again, pale and embarrassed. “I’ve been very on edge lately. I don’t know why.”

“I’m Agnes,” she said, telling herself she had imagined the momentary monster-face. The next house was 12 Burnt Hills Road, and she hated that one. The spirit manifested as the house itself, floorboards opening like mouths and bricks shifting as she walked through.

“Call me Micah.”

He wiped one juice-wet hand on the hem of his flannel shirt, then extended it. They shook. She bowed her head again, and he laughed protestingly. Then she left.

It was a lie, of course. No one was expecting her. No one cared where she was.

HER MOTHER GAVE her a stiff-armed hug, her hands slick with tuna fish and mayonnaise.

“Wouldn’t have been smoking if I knew you were coming over,” she said, stubbing out a Virginia Slim she’d just lit off the stove burner.

“It’s fine, really,” Agnes said, sitting down at the kitchen table. The tiny trailer never failed to make her feel immense. “Can I help?”

“Boil me some water.”

Two days later, and Agnes couldn’t stop thinking about the man – the spirit – in the tiny red ranch. Even though her job was keeping spirits happy, she had only cared about them insofar as it might help her keep her job, and maybe one day get a better one.

Her mother tore plastic wrap roughly off the roll. “You never come by without a reason.”

Agnes almost said she simply missed her mother, but the woman was too sharp for lies. “I wanted to ask. About our house.”

Her mother snorted cruelly. Pear-shaped, crookedly ponytailed, smelling of church-basement bingo, her mother’s mind still terrified Agnes. The woman probably knew lots about household spirits and how they worked, from all those endless Sunday services and prayer groups. All Agnes remembered from church was that God was the prime spirit, present in all things and tying it all together, and Jesus was his emanation. Just like Micah was the emanation of 5775. Anyway Agnes should have known they couldn’t have a civil conversation. Her mother had spent six months waiting for an apology, and Agnes didn’t believe she had anything to apologize for.

“I wanted to ask about the spirit.”

“Ganesha.”

“It wasn’t actually Ganesha, mom. It just took that form.”

“Took that name, too.”

“Fine. But you never wondered why it took that form, and not another? Considering we’re not Hindu?”

“You could have called,” her mother said. “If you just wanted to ask me stupid questions.”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Agnes said, and stood up. “I actually thought you might be happy to see me.”

“You on something?” She looked at Agnes for the first time since she’d arrived.

“No, mom.” She looked around, debated asking about the trailer and its spirit, but the subject was a sore one.

She wondered if her mother knew. Where she slept at night.

“Better not be,” her mother said. “You don’t want to lose that job.” She stirred a third spoonful of powdered milk into her instant coffee. Her face was hard as winter pavement. “Considering what you had to do to get it.”

“THERE IS A crisis,” Trask said, clicking through pictures on his computer. Graffiti someone spray-painted onto the back of the bank – bloodsuckers, vampires, profiting from crisis. “A crisis of accountability! These people did it to themselves. They signed mortgages they didn’t understand...”

Agnes discretely texted herself the word accountability. She had lost the thread of what he was saying, as often happened during their supervisory meetings. Trask didn’t mind when she texted, when they talked. He did it himself, incessantly. Work is more important than etiquette, he said.

“How’s everything out on Route 9?”

“Same old,” she said.

“No signs of dissatisfaction?”

“I heard singing in a couple. That could mean –”

His hand flapped impatiently. “It’s in the reports?”

Agnes nodded.

“Good.”

Around her, the bank bustled. Trask watched the two television screens mounted on his wall. A new stack of spiral-bound printed reports sat on his desk. “What’re these?” she asked.

“The central bank has a big analysis division, and they’ve been looking at trends on underoccupied homes. These reports are... actionable.”

He was doing that thing, the thing people had done to her all through school. Trying to make her feel stupid. She didn’t mind it, coming from him. Trask trusted her.

Once, at a party, someone found out she worked for the bank and started yelling at her about how they had been thrown out when her husband got hurt on the job and couldn’t work. Agnes had kept her mouth shut because the girl was a friend of a friend, but she agreed with Trask: These people did it to themselves. The world didn’t owe you a house. The world is a swamp of shit and suffering and you have to bust your ass to keep your head above water and sometimes you still drown. Sometimes you drown slow. Like Agnes.

“You were late today,” he said.

“I know. I didn’t remember what day it was until it was almost too late.”

“You need to start using a calendar app.”

“I know,” she said.

“I’ve showed you how like ten times,” he said, swiveling his monitor to show her the calendar in his browser window, synched to his phone.

A map of the county hung below the televisions. Hundreds of pushpins peppered it, showing homes the bank owned. Lines divided the county into five transects, each of which had its own spirit maintenance worker. Hers was Transect 4, the westernmost one, the space least densely settled, the one that required the most driving. She scanned the map idly, avoiding even looking at Transect 1, and the pin that stabbed through the heart of the house where she grew up. The house her mother lost. The house that got her this job.

Agnes picked up a crude jade frog from his desk, weighed it in her hand, felt the tiny spirit inside. Could it see her? Know her heart? Every object had a spirit, and while stories said that long ago the trees talked and mountains moved to hurt or help humans, only homes still spoke. For the thousandth time, she thought of Micah.