The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl by Tim Pratt Page A

only take a minute, really—”
    “Beej,”
Marzi said. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Have you totally lost your mind?”
    “My mind’s been found, Marzi,” he said, so earnest it made Marzi’s heart break. “I’ve got a purpose now.” He put the palm of his hand flat on the glass. “Let me in, please?”
    A police car pulled up to the curb. The passenger door opened, and a young officer emerged, his hand on his holster. “You, on the steps!” he shouted. “Police! Turn around with your hands in the air!”
    Beej’s face fell. He looked at the wire cutters in his hands. “Didn’t work, did it?” he said mournfully. “I screwed up.”
    Marzi, absurdly, felt the urge to say
You did your best
. But she only shook her head.
    Beej turned around, holding his hands up. At the cop’s instruction, he dropped the wire cutters and came down the stairs to the pavement, where the cop quickly cuffed him and shoved him in the back of the car. Moments later, three other police cars arrived, lights flashing. Marzi, Jonathan, and Lindsay stood in the doorway, watching. Lindsay kept chatting with Joey for a while, then Marzi heard her say, “Shouldn’t we free up this line? I mean, for other emergencies?” She hit the disconnect button and grinned. “I let Joey cop a feel off me when we were fifteen, and he’s been willing to do anything for me ever since.”
    “Lucky for us,” Marzi said. What would have happened if the police hadn’t come, if Denis hadn’t been there to restrain Jane? Marzi didn’t want to think about it. But Jane was still out there, in the night, and she definitely seemed to have something personal against Marzi. She’d be back, muddy and feral, and what would Marzi do then?
             
    Denis drove home slowly, scanning the streets and sidewalks for signs of the police. He imagined a SWAT team—men in black body armor, with webbed belts full of tear gas grenades, holding complex guns with the strange curvature of modern abstract sculpture. On one level, he knew such fears were absurd, but that didn’t erase them.
    Jane sat fuming and quietly furious in the passenger seat;
literally
fuming, faint trailers of white steam rising from cracks in her muddy body. Her smell was overpoweringly earthy, fragrant, mineral. He could feel the heat of her fury, and wondered if her skin would harden, dry, and—dare he hope?—crack into fragments.
    “We were
this close,
” Jane said.
    “Didn’t you hear the sirens? We would have gotten caught!”
    “No cell can hold me. I’ll never be a political prisoner.”
    That’s all very well for you,
Denis thought.
What about me?
“I’m not so formidable,” he said, turning a corner, careful to obey the speed limit. “They could still be coming after us! I’m sure Marzi recognized me. There might be cops waiting for us at home!”
    “We didn’t do anything,” she spat. “What, trespassing?” She flicked her hand in dismissal, sending a glob of mud flying, to stick on the dashboard. “And anyway, if we’d gotten inside, freed the goddess, none of that would
matter,
the cops would be stripped of their power, the patriarchy would topple, the—”
    “Would you just shut the fuck up?” Denis said, surprised at the calmness in his voice; he felt like his brain was boiling, but his words came out tough-guy cool. Jane could disembowel him with one hand, turn her fingers into chisels and open him alive. He knew that, but he could take no more. “I’m tired. Maybe you don’t need to sleep anymore, but the goodwill of the goddess doesn’t sustain
me
.” He pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building, a knot of tension in his belly dissolving when he saw there were no police cars waiting. Yet.
    “I’m going home,” Jane said, through clenched teeth.
    “Fine by—” he began, then stopped. How could he have forgotten?
    The body. Jane’s body. If Mud-Jane was a ghost, then the corpse was
real,
and it was still in the back