Hart & Boot & Other Stories by Tim Pratt Page B

for coming back just now, but that’s not what I mean. I mean his mother, and his father, wherever he is. You never try to hurt me, anyway, do you Daddy? You just try to keep me safe.” She spat the last word, and pressed the glass closer to her throat, until a spot of blood welled.
    “Fine!” Mancuso shouted. He held a long, shining blade in his hand, a slender silvery knife that had appeared as if by magic, but without sparkles or fanfare. Mr. Mancuso cut his palm and made a fist, dripping blood onto the asphalt. The blood hissed and smoked where it touched the ground, and Billy backed away, afraid it would spatter on his shoes. “I will not harm this boy or any he loves.”
    “Go on, Billy,” Caroline said, lowering the shard of glass.
    “But what will happen to you?” Billy said. “What about—”
    “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “You let me out of the coffin. I’m better off now than I was before. I might get away clean this time.”
    “You’re mine,” Mr. Mancuso said. “You’re my blood, and you will not leave me.”
    “Get on your bike and go, Billy,” Caroline said. She sounded very tired, as tired as Billy’s mom often did.
    Billy took his bike and pedaled away, not looking back, crying as he rode, the wind blowing his tears away.
    Once he got home, Billy crept into the house, only to find his mother lying on his bed with the lights on, clutching his pillow.
    “Mom?” he said.
    “Billy?” she said, sitting up, still holding the pillow. Her hair was mussed, her eyes red from crying. “I thought you ran away.” She shivered, and stopped speaking, and sobbed, soundlessly, shaking.
    Billy dropped his bag and got into bed with her. He held his mother in his arms and cried with her. “No, Mom, I won’t run away, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
    “Never leave me, Billy,” she said, her voice muffled against him. “Just stay with me, don’t go, never ever go away.”
    Never? Billy thought. Never ever?
    He held his mother close.
    He said, “Shh.

Terrible Ones
    The Greek Chorus first appeared on Thursday night, as Zara lugged two paper bags full of groceries into the gravel public parking lot. The Chorus members wore tattered togas made from faintly flower-patterned, oft-washed bedsheets, and their faces were painted white with greasepaint.
    Since she was in Berkeley, Zara assumed the Chorus members were performance artists of some kind, and didn’t pay much attention when they drifted from out of the bushes and among the parked cars to stand in a loose semicircle a few feet behind her. As she unlocked her trunk and wedged the grocery bags between a box of mismatched shoes and a broken lamp she’d never gotten around to throwing out, the Chorus said—in a single voice, from many throats—“Crazed with rapture, she sings and trills, dark bird that loves the night.” The line sounded familiar—Zara was an actress, and she’d done several classical plays—but she couldn’t quite place it.
    Zara straightened, slammed her trunk, and looked at the Chorus. The fading light and white make-up smeared their faces into blank anonymities. They might have been looking at her expectantly. “Fuck off,” she said. “You’re in my way.”
    One of the Chorus members cupped his ear theatrically. “What did you say? Never mind, I heard—as I hear your destiny. Weeping, cacophony, cries that assault the ear.”
    Zara got into her car, locked the doors, and threw it into the reverse. The Chorus scattered like pigeons making way for a bus. Once she’d backed past them, they reformed in front of her car, and their eyes shone in her headlights. She flipped up the high beams, and they shielded their faces from the brightness. Zara turned the wheel and drove away, leaving the Chorus to stand in the cloud of dust her wheels threw up from the gravel.
    ***
    The Furies were old in those days. Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera lived together in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, in an apartment