Kage Baker: Dark Mondays

The photo enlargements came in and were impressive enough to be encouraging. Shadow bought a portfolio at the art supply store and spent a long day waiting in the outer offices of the art directors of the two local free weeklies. She was told she might want to look into getting a union card; she was told she needed to invest in professional equipment. Everyone agreed, though, that the shot with the baby doll in the ashes was striking.

“Because, you know why? It’s an illusion,” said the art director at the Hollywood Free Voice . She held it up to the light. “There’s no baby there at all, if you look at it closely. It’s just flames, or smoke or something. Really, that’s a hundred-to-one shot.”

But she didn’t offer to buy it.

By the time Shadow got out of the Hollywood Free Voice office, which was all the way down Santa Monica at Western, there seemed little point in going home to sleep for an hour. There was a coffeehouse by the bus stop; she went in and got an espresso, and sat at one of the tables with her portfolio, flipping once more through the pictures.

Was it a baby doll? It was blurred and soft-edged, but you could see the face and the arms, and at least one leg.

“Damn,” said someone, leaning over her. A hand reached down and pulled out the other shot, the one she’d taken of the burned-out garage. “Nice work. You an adjuster too?”

“What?” Shadow looked up at him. He was a little older than she, wore glasses, was smoking a cigarette.

“Are you a claims adjuster?”

“No,” she said.

“So, this is just, like, your hobby?” He sat down at her table uninvited. She sized him up: nice clothes. Long-sleeved shirt, narrow tie. He was coked up. He used the same black hair dye she did; she could smell it, under his aftershave.

“I’m breaking in,” she informed him.

“Good!” He stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and held out his hand. “Jon Horton. How’s it going?”

“Shadow,” she said, shaking his hand warily. He put both elbows on the table, took his cigarette out again and had a deep drag on it.

“See, I’m an insurance adjuster. I take a lot of shots like that but I can’t use them, isn’t that a bitch?”

“Use them for what?” she asked, wondering if he was gay.

“I’m publishing a magazine,” he said. “ Negative Pulse . You’ve heard of it?”

“Maybe, yeah,” she lied.

“Poetry. Stories. Artwork. It’s, like, this necessary corrective for fucking hippie fantasy shit. We want stark images. Bitter truths, okay? We’re reminding the complacent bourgeois assholes out there that this is real life, okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

He talked a lot more. He told her all about his life, what a rebel he was, how he’d run his high school paper and how angry he’d made the principal when he’d done an article exposing something—Shadow couldn’t quite tell what—but that was just the way he was, he was driven to challenge authority anywhere.

Eventually he came around to talking about Negative Pulse again, and how great it was going to be when they got an issue out.

“And, see, here’s the thing, Sandra: I think your picture would look great on the cover.” He leaned back, stubbed out his cigarette and raised his eyebrows at her.

“How much?” she said.

“What?”

“How much do you pay?”

“Well, eventually, I mean, we’re just getting started. It’s a communal effort on the part of all the artists involved, see? We’re all investing in Negative Pulse because we believe in it, we believe it’s like this spirit of the times, right? So we’re all making sacrifices to get it up and running.”

“Shit, look at the time,” said Shadow. “Josh, you know, that sounds great and everything but I really have to go catch a bus now, okay? Got a business card? I’ll call you sometime.”

Two nights later, as she walked up the hill from the bus stop, she thought saw the little boy again. He was standing back by the garages, staring at her. No; this must be his older brother. He had the same red hair, but appeared to be about ten. She looked in disbelief at her watch. It was 5 in the morning, and freezing cold. She almost spoke to him, but something in his stare creeped her out.

Shadow kept walking, wondering why he hadn’t figured out about cutting screens and breaking in through back windows; it had always worked for her, when she’d been locked out.

She went up to Woodland Court to avoid cutting past the garages, meaning to come down the front steps. Near the top, a dark figure stepped out of the bamboo.

“We meet again, little one.”

“Shit.” Shadow stopped. It was Julie, the queen of the coven from Mohawk Manor, in her white makeup and vampire cape. She must have gained thirty pounds since Shadow had seen her last. A figure moved out from behind a parked car, off to her left: Darlene, the other vampire girl. Shadow heard footsteps running up the hill behind her and turned to see Todd, the boy with the spiked collar, holding his cape out to either side as he ran.

“Yes; we have our ways of tracking you down. We really feel you ought to reconsider ooof ohjesuschrist!” said Julie, as Shadow hit her in the stomach with a well-placed Doc Marten. Julie collapsed, clutching her fat gut. Shadow whirled around and bashed Todd right between the eyes with her thermos, but didn’t wait to see the result; she dove under his cape and ran down the hill, then skidded around the corner and raced uphill on Camrose. She had to stop for a minute at Hightower to catch her breath, but they didn’t seem to be following her.

It was an old neighborhood, never planned; it had evolved as houses had been built up into the hillside. No streets connected with the upper homes. They were reached only by the elevator in the tower that had given the street its name, or by a series of high, narrow flights of stairs and walkways that zigzagged back and forth across the hill. Shadow had explored it all, when she’d first moved into the neighborhood.

She went to the tower and took its elevator up. At the top she got out and doubled back down toward Woodland Court, walking along in a sort of tunnel formed by bougainvillea branches that overhung the public walk, with white trumpet-vine, plumeria, honeysuckle and jasmine. The night air was like paradise.

She could see over back fences as she crept along, now and then getting a glimpse into somebody’s lit kitchen: an ancient lady in a bathrobe, sitting hunched over a cup of coffee. A woman in a nightgown, ironing a pair of striped trousers. A young man with all his hair standing up, walking to and fro as a tiny baby screamed on his shoulder.

Shadow flitted past them, unseen and unknown.

Here was the house with the unlocked iron gate; she had learned that if she ran down the steps at the side of the house, crossed the lower garden and ducked through a hedge, she emerged just above the tallest of the bamboo thickets. Now she dropped down the steps in three bounds, silent, and crept into the darkness on the other side of the hedge.

There she stopped, listening, until it began to grow light. She felt her way forward, taking infinite care. A voice spoke from the other side of the bamboo thicket.

“I don’t think she’s coming back tonight.” That was Darlene.

“She has to come back sometime,” said Julie. “Little bitch.”

“But it’ll be daylight soon,” said Darlene, with a trace of whimper in her voice.

“I don’t give a shit, okay?” said Todd. “She broke my fucking nose. I’m going to kick her ass.”

Shadow grinned. She found a comfortable position and settled back to wait. The sky paled; the roar of the waking city rose from down on Highland. Finally she heard Darlene again, crying.