InsaneJournal

Gideon glared down at the phone in his hand. Phones were supposed to be big and clunky and attached to walls. Buying this thing had been an adventure of the least enjoyable sort. The salesgirl had tried to talk him into an expensive phone that did eighteen other things he didn't care about until she'd noticed his fangs, and then had gone utterly silent for a long moment. She'd timidly asked what he was looking for and (not his proudest moment), Gideon had pretended to be several decades older than he was and forced her to explain everything about phones to him. He wound up with the absolute simplest one in the store and with strange little cards that apparently translated to minutes he could spend talking. He'd amused himself a little bit with the camera that was apparently part of all phones now, but after the novelty of blurry pictures of passerby and squirrels had worn off, he was back to glaring. He'd never felt more like a cranky old man.

He needed the phone for this whole demon-fighting thing. No one could contact him if he didn't have one. And maybe he'd learn to like it. He could give a phone number to his friends now, Jim and Alanna and everyone else. It'd certainly come in handy if he were about to be late for work or if Gareth wanted to order pizza or something. Or, well, emergencies, that vague, cloudy category of events that people had been telling him for years required a phone. Buying it had chipped a little into his funds, but he was still solvent. And it was so hard to find payphones nowadays.

The night had been spent on reading his new book and listening to It's a Beautiful Day over and over while knitting. Gideon was the world's most drug-free hippie, but he could replicate the effects of pot pretty well by combining real psychedelic music, textile art, and ridiculous fantasy novels. When he glanced over at the window, halfway through a deep blue sweater that was several sizes too big for him, Gideon nodded. Dawn was on the way. Squinting at the tiny phone in his hand, he dialed each number, one by one. He'd been needing to make this call for a while now.

After all that buildup, there was no answer at the first number he called. Well, Kivi was probably meditating. Damn. He'd really been hoping for his oldest brother. Kivi was the sweetest person in the whole universe, and Gideon needed an understanding voice right now. Next, by seniority, was Qi. Not so gentle, but he was pretty sure Qi knew everything. For news and advice, she'd be as good or better than reaching the quiet Indian monk. She picked up on the third ring, speaking Cantonese as she answered. "Hello hello, isn't it an odd time to be calling?"

"No, I think it's just when you get in most nights," Gideon answered in Mandarin. Anyone who'd heard his English would have been quite confused at his flawless, rather formal Chinese. He hadn't been allowed mistakes when he'd been learning. Qi had been in charge of his Cantonese and would probably prefer that he practiced, but he needed to be sure both sides of this conversation were intelligible to him. "Hello, Big Sister."

"Oh, my, Littlest Brother," she teased. "It's been years." He could see her quite clearly, in some slinky dress that flowed and twisted and managed to remain modest, with tall heels and pretty hair, beaming her fangy smile, horizontally slit pupils wide in the dim light of her little apartment and her monkey's tail swinging her purse as she set her things in order. Qi liked order.

"It's been a year and a half. I'm sorry I haven't called more." He went to twirl the cord of the phone around his finger, remembered there wasn't one, and glowered at the space in the air where it should have been. "Did I really disturb you? I tried Kivi first."

"I wasn't your first choice? I'm wounded, my tow-headed treasure. No, I'm teasing, dear. Kivi is in San Diego. I'm not clear on why." He faintly heard her nails, a little too sharp to be ordinary, tap against a desk. "Allow me a guess. You're calling to see how everyone is after the demons?"

"Among other things." He swallowed. He should have called right as soon as he'd found out about the outing of supernaturals. "I also want to know how everyone is. Just living their lives."

"We're still all dead, sweetheart." She laughed for a moment and Gideon smiled. He missed them. "We're all in one piece. Poor Fenfang had a terrible run-in with something invisible that made her behave atrociously, and getting rid of it required a medium friend of mine and Longwei actually pulling out his lion side. Very impressive. I hadn't seen him do it since he was your age. Other than that, some nasty injuries, but they're healing already, and we're all going armed. Now, as to our unlife in general... Most of us haven't changed our patterns much. I enjoyed coming out, you can imagine. Things have been a lot more fun, and I think I'm doing some good. There are a lot of smug grandmothers at home whose children had grown up after you left. They're having a splendid time saying told you so."

"Good." No one too hurt. He couldn't begin to contact everyone he was worried about, every face in his photo album, but he could be sure about his family. Qi looked after everyone.

"I've sprouted feathers right along my shoulder-blades. It's very odd."

"Must look nice on you."

"Aren't you sweet. Thinking of moving home any time soon, wayward child?" He didn't know how to answer, and after his silence went on for a moment she sighed. "I know, I know. You're a natural wanderer."

"I'm staying put where I am for now, actually. With the world so new and all, I want to get a real idea of things before I go back to wandering." He was afraid she'd scold him for not coming back to San Francisco to find his new place in a new society, but she was silent. "I did call for another reason. I have a question. An official, important one."

"Oh, do tell. I'm aquiver." She was so damn annoying sometimes. Gideon loved her, but so annoying. It was really hard to remember that she was six-hundred years old and an incredible, unstoppable force if she wanted to be.

"Well, you see, I have a friend. A human friend. You'd love him. He's so sweet. And he's sick. Sick as I was." He waited for an interruption. She never let him speak for long. But for once, he was being allowed to ramble a little. "He's not going to ask me, and I'm not sure how to ask him, but he's going to die. Soon. And if I can convince him to keep living, and if things work out the way I'm hoping, well, maybe he'd say yes. And if it comes to it, well, he's really sick. Really, really sick. I might need to hurry. Will you give me permission to turn him if it happens that way?"

"It's a bit irregular, Little Brother. Standing permission would be out of the ordinary, but I can't see what's wrong with it. You're aware you can turn him without asking him."

"I know, but that's..." He was going to say evil, but Qi had been turned without her permission, and so had two of his brothers. Under their circumstances, he thought it was alright. "Rude." She giggled at his word choice but let him go on. "And he's not exactly alright with supernaturals and such. It's complicated, alright?"

"I believe you. Since I can't meet this candidate, much as I trust your estimation of his worthiness, you'll have to tell me more. You're young to be siring, Gideon." She very rarely used his given name. She wasn't teasing him now. Gideon took a deep breath.

He needed to say everything right, but doing justice to his friend wasn't hard for him. "His name is Gareth. He's about forty-five, I think. I bet he'd remind you of me. He's so good-hearted. He gets excited over the littlest things. It's like having a child around sometimes, but he's wise, too. Wise, not smart. There's a whole world behind his eyes. He's had a terribly hard life and everything seems to go wrong for him, but he still has this smile that makes you think everything will be fine." He couldn't conceal the less perfect truths from his sister, but he didn't have to. Luna was a house meant for duty and second chances and happiness, not abstract ideals. "He makes dumb mistakes and he's scared and lonely all the time, but he has potential to make something wonderful out of immortality. And he has someone to live for, even though neither of them can quite see it that way yet."

He could have kept going a long time, but Qi spoke again. "Alright, that's enough. I'll believe he dazzles you. These are very odd circumstances, Dixiebird, but I hereby grant you permission to induct your friend to our house, provided you're satisfied with the conditions when you think the time has come." He could practically hear her rolling her eyes.

"Thank you, Big Sister." He felt himself relax. He hadn't really been able to think of why she'd say no. He loved his family and his house and he was sure she wouldn't see anything wrong. Still, Gideon was prone to worrying lately.

"You're welcome. Though I do discourage turning people just because you're mad for them now. You can wind up thoroughly out of love in just a little while when you live forever."

"I am not!" It wasn't exactly a lie. He couldn't call what he felt for a man he'd known for under a month love. The words rang hollow and bitter in his mouth anyway. He knew that what he felt was the result of loneliness, that he was behaving like a stupid kid, that he was grasping at straws out of a hunger he'd kept buried for too long. When he'd first met them, he'd felt terrible for Gareth, pining for Dusty like that. Now he knew what it felt like. And he felt worse.

"Fine, fine, you're perfectly apathetic and acting entirely out of generalized goodwill for the man with, ahem, a whole world behind his eyes and, what was it, a smile that makes you think everything will be fine?" Her teasing had never been directed at such a weak point. Gideon wondered suddenly if she made other people feel this small and miserable, if he'd just been luck so far that she hadn't found any of the sore spots in his heart before. He liked to think she was just being careless.

"Did Master take any of you older ones as a lover?" The question burst from him unbidden, a niggling doubt at the back of his mind bursting free.

Qi didn't miss a beat. "Well, not me. I was still ascetic when he first changed me, and by the time I lost interest in that I'd moved beyond that particular mortal desire. It happens to a lot of us, you know. Getting up there in years makes sex a rather remote inclination. You know, I'm not sure about Kivi. He's about fifty years older than I am, remember. But I'm sure he slept with Nianzu. You never met Nianzu. He's still in China. You'd like him. Master's first child, you remember? And several of the younger ones. Longwei and Xia, definitely. I suspect several more. I'm sure you figured out it one of his ways of teaching, sweetest."

Gideon was glad Kivi hadn't answered. Kivi wouldn't have told him the truth. He'd much rather lie than cause pain like this. It was useful for once that Qi had utterly and completely forgotten how to be human. "I knew that. I was just wondering. I'll let you go to bed, Big Sister."

"Thank you, dearest. And talk to us soon. I want an address so we can send you things." She forgot to say goodbye when she hung up. Just as well. Gideon wasn't sure he'd have trusted his voice to answer.

It really was true. There'd never been anything between them but a charitable compassion, no more feeling than Chongde put into any of his pupils. His Bodhisattva teacher had moved well beyond that desire, as Gideon should have by now. Only the young put any stock in those feelings, it seemed. And from the ache in his still heart, he was very young indeed. He'd told himself for years that it didn't matter, that his feelings had been enough to sustain him, that just being a good student had been enough, but Qi's blithe confirmation that no one had ever really wanted him made him feel cold, shivery, and nauseous, quite in spite of the knowledge that he couldn't feel any of those things anymore. She'd just told him what he already knew, so why did it have to hurt this much?