disobeying Sanderson’s orders whenever I didn’t agree with them.
The latter was the reason I’d come here, and I’d come alone because while Night Jinx is a living embodiment of chaos, his day self has a stick up his ass a mile long. He was a stickler for… well, everything. But especially for rules. If he’d known what I was up to, he’d chastise me for going against Sanderson’s wishes, nag me to stop, and keep nagging me. At least until sunset. And I simply wasn’t up to dealing with that right now. Besides, after the memory I’d relived during my backstep, I didn’t want to be around Jinx, regardless of which Aspect he was in.
Wet Dreams’ interior is about as no-frills as it was possible for a bar to get. Brick walls, concrete floor (complete with suspicious stains), round wooden tables and uncomfortable chairs, and a bar that looked like, well, a bar. The lighting was dim, which added to the bar’s overall miasma of gloom. Incubi, regardless of their Aspect, are more comfortable in dark places. Light doesn’t hurt them in any way, but it does make them uncomfortable.
The action at Wet Dreams doesn’t really pick up until after dark, but there were a dozen or so regulars present. I was familiar with them all, but some I knew better than others, and none were all that happy to see me. An Incubus named Scattershot got up from his table as soon as I walked in, and headed for the exit. As far as I knew, he wasn’t involved in anything shady, but I made a mental note to check up on him later.
Lizzie Longlegs was sitting at a table with Cancer Jack, both of them looking relatively normal in their Day Aspects. Jack eyed me warily as I entered, ever-present cigarette dangling from his lips, but Lizzie gave me a smile and a nod. Lizzie and Jack had been an on-again, off-again couple for years, longer than I’d been an officer. Maybe longer than I’d been alive. Their relationship ran hot and cold. When it was hot, it was very hot, but when it turned cold… well, it was better – and safer – to stay as far away from them as possible.
I tried to get a read on which extreme the pendulum of their relationship was currently at, but their body language gave nothing away. They weren’t sitting close, but they weren’t sitting far apart, either. They weren’t touching, but they weren’t shooting venomous looks at each other, so that was a good sign.
Abe Chen sat at the bar, and he glanced over his shoulder at me, face expressionless, and then faced forward once more. Abe’s a middle-aged man whose Incubus – some kind of bird creature he called Budgie – left him not long after its Ideation was complete. He had no idea where it might’ve gone, and he never heard from it again.
There’s no law that says an Incubus has to remain near its creator. Once they come into existence, they’re separate beings, free to make their own choices and act as they will. Even so, they tend to stay close to their Ideators if they stay on Earth, even if they don’t maintain contact with them. There’s a bond – or maybe link would be a better word – between Ideators and Incubi. One that goes both ways. It’s not uncommon for Ideators to follow their Incubi to Nod, and if for some reason they can’t find each other or become separated – or if one dies – they feel as if there’s something wrong in their lives, something vital. They often end up lonely and depressed.
Although in Abe’s case, no one really believed there ever had been a Budgie. He was commonly thought to be a nightfreak, a human who’d somehow become aware of Incubi and wanted so much to be a part of their world that he posed as an Ideator. Abe was a nice guy and harmless enough, so the customers at Wet Dreams played along with his pretense, myself and Jinx included.
At the opposite end of the bar sat one of the creepiest Incubi I’ve ever encountered – the Darkness – along with his Ideator, a woman in her sixties named Maggie Martin.
The latter was the reason I’d come here, and I’d come alone because while Night Jinx is a living embodiment of chaos, his day self has a stick up his ass a mile long. He was a stickler for… well, everything. But especially for rules. If he’d known what I was up to, he’d chastise me for going against Sanderson’s wishes, nag me to stop, and keep nagging me. At least until sunset. And I simply wasn’t up to dealing with that right now. Besides, after the memory I’d relived during my backstep, I didn’t want to be around Jinx, regardless of which Aspect he was in.
Wet Dreams’ interior is about as no-frills as it was possible for a bar to get. Brick walls, concrete floor (complete with suspicious stains), round wooden tables and uncomfortable chairs, and a bar that looked like, well, a bar. The lighting was dim, which added to the bar’s overall miasma of gloom. Incubi, regardless of their Aspect, are more comfortable in dark places. Light doesn’t hurt them in any way, but it does make them uncomfortable.
The action at Wet Dreams doesn’t really pick up until after dark, but there were a dozen or so regulars present. I was familiar with them all, but some I knew better than others, and none were all that happy to see me. An Incubus named Scattershot got up from his table as soon as I walked in, and headed for the exit. As far as I knew, he wasn’t involved in anything shady, but I made a mental note to check up on him later.
Lizzie Longlegs was sitting at a table with Cancer Jack, both of them looking relatively normal in their Day Aspects. Jack eyed me warily as I entered, ever-present cigarette dangling from his lips, but Lizzie gave me a smile and a nod. Lizzie and Jack had been an on-again, off-again couple for years, longer than I’d been an officer. Maybe longer than I’d been alive. Their relationship ran hot and cold. When it was hot, it was very hot, but when it turned cold… well, it was better – and safer – to stay as far away from them as possible.
I tried to get a read on which extreme the pendulum of their relationship was currently at, but their body language gave nothing away. They weren’t sitting close, but they weren’t sitting far apart, either. They weren’t touching, but they weren’t shooting venomous looks at each other, so that was a good sign.
Abe Chen sat at the bar, and he glanced over his shoulder at me, face expressionless, and then faced forward once more. Abe’s a middle-aged man whose Incubus – some kind of bird creature he called Budgie – left him not long after its Ideation was complete. He had no idea where it might’ve gone, and he never heard from it again.
There’s no law that says an Incubus has to remain near its creator. Once they come into existence, they’re separate beings, free to make their own choices and act as they will. Even so, they tend to stay close to their Ideators if they stay on Earth, even if they don’t maintain contact with them. There’s a bond – or maybe link would be a better word – between Ideators and Incubi. One that goes both ways. It’s not uncommon for Ideators to follow their Incubi to Nod, and if for some reason they can’t find each other or become separated – or if one dies – they feel as if there’s something wrong in their lives, something vital. They often end up lonely and depressed.
Although in Abe’s case, no one really believed there ever had been a Budgie. He was commonly thought to be a nightfreak, a human who’d somehow become aware of Incubi and wanted so much to be a part of their world that he posed as an Ideator. Abe was a nice guy and harmless enough, so the customers at Wet Dreams played along with his pretense, myself and Jinx included.
At the opposite end of the bar sat one of the creepiest Incubi I’ve ever encountered – the Darkness – along with his Ideator, a woman in her sixties named Maggie Martin.
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