Indexing (34 page)

“Sloane, please.”

She kept walking.

Gerry took a deep breath, and said, “Rose Red’s supposed to
be a girl, you know.”

Sloane stopped.

“Ten years of hormones and surgery and more therapy than I
like to think about just to be the man I was always supposed to be, and now
this story comes along and all that keeps running through my head is ‘well, it
was fun while it lasted. At least you got to be yourself for a little while.’” Gerry
looked down at his hands, lying limp and useless between his legs. “I grew up
knowing magic was real, and the one thing it could never do was fix me. I just
wanted to recognize the person in my mirror. I just wanted to know what it was
like to be normal.”

“None of us are normal,” said Sloane. He raised his head.
She was standing in front of him again, her red- and green-streaked hair
tumbling to almost cover her eyes. “We never got to be normal.”

“No, but you got to live in a world that didn’t judge you
for the ways you were strange,” Gerry said. “Henry can put on foundation or go
to Goth clubs. You’re happy in your skin. I’ve had to work my ass off for every
inch of normal I’ve ever had, and now I’m going to lose it all.”

“You don’t know that.” Sloane sat down on the edge of the
table, resting her weight on her hands. “We did cleanup for a male Little
Mermaid just last week, and Demi—that’s the new girl, the Latina chick with the
scared rabbit face—is a Pied Piper. Sometimes the narrative flips the gender of
a story to throw us off the scent.”

“Yeah, but Henry’s a girl.” Gerry shrugged. “I don’t think
the narrative can handle that kind of complexity. It’s going to want us both to
be women in order for the story to hang together. Something’s going to go wrong
with my hormone treatments, or there’s going to be an accident and the hospital
will give me the wrong medication, or
something
. Everything I’ve worked
for is going to go away because of the goddamn narrative.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Sloane sadly. “You’re doomed.”

Gerry raised his head and blinked at her. “What?”

“I mean, why did you even bother trying? You always knew
that the narrative would come for you one day. It would have been better to
just put on a pretty dress and live a lie. That way you wouldn’t have had
anything to lose. That would have really shown the narrative, right? Making
yourself miserable for your entire life, pretending to be something you
weren’t—that would have been a much better choice.”

“Sloane, what the fuck is—” Gerry stopped mid-sentence, his
mouth shutting with a snap. He eyed her for a moment before he asked, “Are you
messing with me?”

“Yes,” said Sloane blithely. “You’re being stupid, and so
I’m messing with you. It’s one of the simple joys of my life. Besides, I’m
still pissed at you for running off and leaving me with your sad sack of a
sister.”

“That’s not very nice, you know.”

“Since when has ‘nice’ been a part of my job description?”
countered Sloane. “I’m a Wicked Stepsister, remember? I’m not active, but I’m a
lot closer to it than I used to be, thanks to the narrative and our old
dispatcher.” Gerry looked at her blankly. She frowned. “Didn’t Henry tell you
about that?”

“Henry and I … we don’t really talk,” said Gerry slowly.
“Not for the last few years.”

Sloane’s frown deepened. “I knew you weren’t talking to the
rest of us, but I thought you were still in touch with Henry. How long is ‘the
last few years’?”

“I changed my last name to March eight years ago,” he said.
“So … about eight years, I guess.”

“You haven’t spoken to your sister in
eight years
?”
Sloane stared at him, looking genuinely stunned. All her masks had fallen away,
revealing a woman who was older than she looked and younger than she should
have been. “How can you
do
that to her? How can you do that to
yourself?”

“You never called me,” Gerry said.

“Uh, one, I didn’t have your number. Two, you were pretty
clear when you left here that you didn’t want to have any contact with the
freaky fairy tale people. And three, I’m not your sister. Henry’s your sister.
I’m just the girl who took your virginity in a supply closet. Totally different
relationship.” Sloane stood. “Come on. We need to talk to the team. We’re going
to find a way to freeze your story so that it won’t mess with you, and you’re
going to make things right with your sister.”

Gerry frowned as he stood, watching her carefully. “Why are
you so upset about this?”

“Gerald …” Sloane took a deep breath, visibly calming
herself down. Then she took his hands in hers and said, “My family died a long
time ago. All of them. If I have blood relatives left in this world, I’m not
allowed to know about them, because my story means that I might hurt them. But
I had a family once, and I’d give anything—
anything
—for the chance to
have them back for just a day. Just an hour. Your family is back in the other
room, and she’s probably been worried about you this whole time. You’re going
to make things right with her, or you’re going to regret it for the rest of
your life. I’ll make sure of that.”

Gerry took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, and kept hold of
her hand as she led him out of the room, back into the future.

I was heading down the hall toward the break room when
Sloane came around the corner up ahead, hauling a frazzled-looking Gerry by one
hand. I stopped, blinking, and let them come to me. Sloane yanked Gerry to a
stop before releasing his hand, grabbing his shoulders, and shoving him in my
direction. If we hadn’t been essentially the same size, he would have knocked
me over. As it was, he caught himself against my shoulders as I caught his
upper arms. Both of us blinked at Sloane.

“You two, talk, now,” she snapped, and stormed toward the
bullpen, where she would doubtless improve everyone’s day with her
sunshine-bright demeanor.

“What did you do to Sloane?” I demanded, pushing Gerry away
from me. “She looks like she’s going to start microwaving baby bunnies to take
the edge off.”

“Uh, nothing,” he said, a blush creeping into his cheeks.

It wasn’t as good as one of my blushes—the lucky bastard
actually inherited some melanin from our mother, even if it wasn’t enough to
make him more than Irish pale—but it confirmed one of my suspicions. I stepped
back and folded my arms, glowering at him. “Did you go off to make out with
Sloane?”

“No,” he mumbled. “I went off because I needed to get my
head together, and Sloane was willing to help me do it. The making out was sort
of an unexpected bonus.”

“Oh my God you are such a
boy
,” I groaned. “I thought
you were freaking out or something.”

“To be fair, I sort of was. I just found my focus.”

I paused. I was still mad at him—maybe I was always going to
be mad at him—but he needed me, and I couldn’t let anger be the only thing that
was left between us. Even if I wanted to do that to him, I couldn’t do that to
myself. So I cleared my throat and said the first thing that popped into my
head: “Does your focus look like Sloane’s ass?”

Gerry grinned unrepentantly. I groaned again, but my heart
wasn’t in it. If Gerry was grinning at me like that, he wasn’t too depressed to
cope with the world.

“You’re a pig,” I informed him. “Not in a literal, house of
straw sense, but still.”

“It’s good to see you too, sis,” he said, and hugged me.
“I’m sorry I was all weird before. This situation is sort of messing me up.”

“I picked up on that,” I said, hugging him back. “We’re not
going to let this thing hurt you, okay? We’re going to figure out what’s going
on and why your story has activated—it shouldn’t have been able to, not with me
squarely invested in being the wrong kind of Snow White—and then we’re going to
stop it.”

“Can you do that?” he asked dubiously.

“Sure,” I said. It wasn’t entirely a lie: stories can be
averted. I just had no idea how we were going to manage it with this one. “In
the meanwhile, I’m not letting you out of my sight. I hope you like couches,
because you’re staying with me for the next few days.”

“Do you still have bluebird issues?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Oh, dude, you have
no
idea.”

Gerry emerged from the bathroom, a toothbrush in his hand
and a perplexed expression on his face. “There’s a frog in your toilet,” he
informed me. He was wearing sweatpants and a shirt with the Bureau logo on it,
having forgotten to pack pajamas in his hurry to find me and make me fix
whatever was going wrong with his life.

“I know,” I said. “Just ignore it. Try not to pee on it. It
gets pissed off when that happens, no pun intended.” Since I had access to my
entire wardrobe, I was in one of my normal flannel pajama sets. This one had
been a gag gift from Andy the previous Christmas: red, printed all over with
happy moose. I looked like something out of a bad holiday special. I was okay
with that. They made me happy, and they didn’t seem princessy at all.

Gerry looked at me flatly for a moment before shaking his
head and walking back into the bathroom, which was apparently less
perturbing—frog and all—than trying to deal with me. I laughed and went back to
tucking sheets into the couch. If a little frog was enough to freak him out,
this was going to be a fun sleepover.

Having Gerry in my house was probably a terrible idea, but
we didn’t have any better options. If he was on the verge of going full
princess, sending him to Sloane’s could get one or both of them killed, since
Sloane was still fighting her natural tendency to murder any princesses in her
immediate vicinity. Andy’s place was reasonably safe, excepting his husband,
who was tolerant of him bringing work home, but not quite
that
tolerant.
Jeff didn’t offer. Demi couldn’t, since she still lived with her parents. That
left me, and my living room couch, and my carpet with the marigolds and
cinquefoil growing around the edges. I paused to pull out my phone and take a
few quick pictures of the little yellow flowers. Jeff would probably be able to
figure out something about our current situation by studying the patterns of
their growth.

And if he couldn’t, well, at least they were pretty.

Gerry emerged from the bathroom a second time, announcing,
“All done. And I didn’t pee on your frog.”

“I thank you, the frog thanks you, and your own butt thanks
you,” I said, tossing him a pillow. “Like I said, the frog gets pissy when
pissed on, and angry frogs jump around a lot.”

“Do I want to know why you have a frog living in your
toilet?”

It was a reasonable question. It probably deserved a
reasonable answer. It was really too bad for both of us that I didn’t have one.
“Having a frog in my toilet was the best out of a list of lousy options,” I
said, sinking down onto the freshly made couch and resting my elbows on my
knees as I looked up at him. “Get rid of the frog and you get talking goldfish
sometimes, or garter snakes.”

“Garter snakes?” he asked, sounding horrified.

I nodded. “I had to call Jeff in the middle of the night to
come and get them out. It was that or pee in the sink.”

“Jeff, huh?” Gerry walked over and sat down on the couch
next to me, his shoulder almost brushing mine. “Looks like you’re getting
pretty cozy with that guy. How come I haven’t met him before?”

“How about because we haven’t spoken for eight years as a
starter?” I asked.

Gerry grimaced and looked away. “I guess that would be part
of it,” he admitted.

I sighed and took mercy. “Jeff has been with the Bureau
since about a year before I got assigned to my current field team,” I said. “He
was on track to go into a permanent position in the Archives, but he managed to
argue his way into something more active. His story doesn’t lend itself well to
sitting still. I get the feeling that he was never much for idleness before he
found out that he was part of the narrative.”

“And is he your boyfriend?”

Yes.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s …
complicated.” I shook my head. “We’ve been having trouble with the narrative
lately. It’s getting more aggressive, and it’s been changing the way that it
attacks. He nearly got swallowed by his story. I kissed him to snap him out of
it. I guess he’s had a crush on me for a while now.”

“Uh-huh. What about you? Do you have a crush on him, or is
this some sort of fairy tale compulsion?” Gerry’s lips twisted into a grimace.
“I don’t like how much power this thing has over us. I really don’t want to
think about it making you do things that you wouldn’t—”

“It’s not like that,” I interrupted, before he could take
himself any further along that unpleasant line of thought. “I’ve liked Jeff for
a while too. He’s kind. He’s funny. He doesn’t look at me like I’m a freak.
Those are pretty rare qualities to find in a man, and they’re rarer when you
consider that I could never be involved with someone who doesn’t know my line
of work. I don’t know what we are to each other yet—things have been hectic,
what with my story going active and everything—but I’m happy to find out. Don’t
go all protective brother on him. He doesn’t deserve that.”

“As long as you’re happy.” Gerry leaned back into the couch,
closing his eyes with a groan. “God, Henry. I thought I got clear of all this
fairy tale crap, and then the damn deer show up at my school …”

“Not just the deer,” I said.

He opened one eye. “What?”

“I said, ‘not just the deer.’” I shook my head. “I know you,
remember? There’s no way you would have freaked out and run for the Bureau just
because you saw some out-of-place deer. You might get spooked, but you hate the
narrative too much to be that easy. There has to have been something else.”

“Yeah.” He closed his eye again. “There was something else.”

“So? What is it?”