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title: Yes, Anything
visibility: public
---
Close your eyes. It's late afternoon, and the golden streams of sunlight are creeping in through the stained glass of a half-full bar, lighting the dust motes into visible beams of varying tints and colors. This place doesn't get busier than happy hour, and for two women sitting at their regular booth - not a clean table, but probably the _cleanest_ to be found here, with the least indeterminate stickiness and stale beer smell - it's the right density of schlubby middle-aged patrons and thin enthusiastic hipsters for a pair of conspirators to have a private conversation in peace and comfort. You notice that the thinner, sharper-edged of the two seems deep in thought...

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I leaned back and groaned, blowing a smooth and careless river of smoke between my pursed lips, The Cigarette perched between my fingers in a deceptively tight two-finger pose. Carmen waited patiently, sipping her beer, watching me think. The noise of the bar, in warm tones like the wood of our booth seats, faded into the background. I closed my eyes and considered the biology of it. Everything else fell away from my attention, the clink of glass and murmur of regulars, gone.

"Fuck. There's no way around it." I opened my eyes and glared at a chip in the far wall. "We need a changeling."

Carmen laughed. "A changeling? Where are we gonna find a changeling for this job?" She brushed some crumbs off her oversized sweater, which permitted a clearer view of the permanent stains on the Eagles logo. She tapped at the edge of her plate with a finger. "What about a wolf. Eh? They're a dime a dozen in this town, we both know it. _They_ transform too."

I shook my head. "Not in a way that could sever the connection. You still have an arm before, and an arm after, right? Either way, from wolf to human or back again."

She picked up her sandwich, took a big bite, and responded around it. "Shuw. Thas how weahwolves wook. Obviouswy."

"Obviously." I pointed at my arm. "Which is why we can't use a wolf for this job. It needs to be arm, then no arm - quick." I lowered my voice to a whisper. "You have to understand, this thing doesn't want to exist on its own. It'll work its little knifey ass off to stay integrated with the host."

Carmen gulped down her bite of BLT. "Right. The whole blood thing. Why is everything about blood, anyways?"

I shrugged. "Blood is life. Everybody wants life."

"Sweetie, I raised four kids. If I asked one of them what he wanted for his birthday, and he said 'blood,' we'd be looking up psychs in the phone book." She went in for another mouthful. "It's gwoss, bwood is gwoss."

"Well Carnificābō wants blood. It's just a dull, lifeless little stage prop without a host vascular system to tangle itself up in. It needs a battery, or it can't do its thing."

"Well why not one of us?" She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "We've got arms and some shape changing abilities, asterisk."

I shook my head. "We're dead batteries. The knife needs a living thing."

Carmen smirked. "Well that probably rules out a few other options, don't it?"

I couldn't help but smile at her. "You were going to suggest a vampire, weren't you?"

She took another glug of her beer. It was some kind of stout or porter, dark and heavy. "You know me. And I know you - if a vamp could do the job..."

I stared her down, lifting The Cigarette back up to my lips. "I'd do what's necessary. I'd complain, but I'd do it." I sucked the air through the tobacco and the filter. "A woman has to have her priorities in order."

"See that's what _I_ kept telling _myself._" I saw the muscles in her neck tense up just a bit. "You can take that hint any time, honey."

I stared at The Cig, now nearly burnt down, and I stubbed it out in the ashtray in front of me. "I'm still just fine with my choices, thanks. I know what I want."

"At all costs."

"More or less."

She shook her head. "You're a fucking nutcase. I'm loving the ride, don't get me wrong here, sugar. I'm in all the way to see what happens. But you're a fucking nutcase, with a fucking nutcase contract, and that's just the facts."

I chuckled. "Yeah, _I_ have the nutcase contract? Look who's talking."

She shook her head vigorously, swiping _no_ with her hands, in a way that made the leftover cigarette smoke dance out of the way. "Uh-uh. There's a line, Lizzie - see, my contract is _unwise._" She made a vertical gesture with her hands, _this box over here._ "Your contract..." She gestured again in a distinctly separate zone of the space between us. "... is _unwell._ There's a difference."

"You're saying you'd pick something else, if you had the chance to do it over?"

"I dunno. I might. I think about it sometimes."

"Hey, I keep offering to go break some linebacker kneecaps for you..."

She jabbed her finger at me. "Don't you fucking _dare._"

I smirked, and took a second to go back to WINTER, 16 YEARS OLD, NEXT TO THE ICE MACHINE BEHIND THE 7-ELEVEN, HOLDING THE Cigarette. The only one I ever smoked. It was bad at the time, put me off smoking for the rest of my life, but _after_ living I'd developed the acquired taste. It was a Camel Blue, better than a pack of blues you could buy today and at a cost of zero dollars. I stuck it in my mouth, struck the lighter in my other hand, and puffed the Cig to life for the thousand and something-eth time.

She glared as I continued smugly, "... and every time I offer, you always react like _that._ That's no way to live forever, you know."

"Well, not everyone is quite so *'aT All cOsTs'* as you." It was a very funny impression, cartoonishly affable and icy. I was flattered. "It's the goddamn Eagles, you fucking harlot. There's things in this world that are sacred."

I couldn't help but show my teeth in a Cheshire cat grin. "This is why you're so fun to work with, Carmen. The way your mind works is a delicious and profound mystery to me."

She rolled her eyes, arms crossed, huffy. I could practically see the gears turning in her head. "And if we get the knife? Who's on the kill list, other than the obvious?"

I stole the sandwich off her plate and scarfed down a bite before she could protest. She stared at me, dumbfounded, and I winked at her. "Ashide from him - (mm) - obvioushly, there'sh shome who'sh, but alsho shome whatsh."

She leaned in. "Lizzie, you're concocting something, and I wanna know. What do you mean, *whats?* You said it's a knife that can kill anyone."

I swallowed. "Uh-uh. I specifically never said that. What I _did_ say, was it's a knife that can kill _anything._" I licked my lips clean. "We're here, at this dive in midtown, right? So what's stopping me from taking a step forward and having sushi in Tokyo right now?"

"Well you're not in Tokyo, idiot."

"Right, but think. You have to frame the idea right. What is the obstacle in the way of me being in Tokyo? What's preventing me from just being there if I want to be?"

She looked at me suspiciously. "It's... far away."

"Exactly!" I yelled, a little too loud, and then dropped to a whisper. "It's distance, right? Distance is the obstacle."

The gears were starting to get traction in her brain. I could see it. "Sure...."

"Well distance is just a concept, just a thing, right? And let's say I had this knife in my hand, Carnificābō. A knife... that can kill... _anything._"

"Oh fuck."

"If you can frame it right in your mind, you start to realize this knife can do just about anything. Open a portal to a faraway place, if you kill the distance. Make you instantly rich, if you kill your poverty. Cure any disease. Kill your ignorance, to learn anything you want. For the price of having to think about it like a Jeopardy contestant, and having the handle of the knife integrate its veins with yours, you can grant more or less any imaginable wish."

At some point she'd gripped onto her glass, hard, and a bead of condensation had started a voyage down her finger. She didn't seem to notice. "Oh _fuck._"

"You wanna know why nobody's stolen the knife before? Not for awhile, anyways."

Her eyes darted back and forth conspiratorially. "Well I expect if someone has it, it'd be hard to take from 'em, given the whole granting of wishes thing. How the hell do you steal something like that?"

I wagged my finger. "Easier than it sounds. We won't be the first people to try."

"So he'll be paranoid, for entirely justified reasons, about someone stealing the fucking knife. That's swell, hon. How do you know someone else will try to steal it, anyways?"

"No. I mean someone tried to steal it a long time ago."

"Who?"

"Long story, doesn't matter, and stop interrupting. The owner, he panicked, and made a big juicy mistake. He killed time itself, in a bubble 3.7 meters in diameter around himself. It's been measured and everything. He, and the knife, they've been frozen in the bubble for about 40 years now. Nobody's been able to break into that bubble, but *we* will. If anything, that's the easy part." I leaned back, put my feet on the table, and puffed a ring of smoke. "We have boy wonder on the team now."

Carmen stared at me for a long moment. "*Alan?*" I just smirked and nodded. She took a deep chug of her beer. "Good luck with that one."

I raised The Cigarette in a mock toast. "He's already working on what we need, not that he knows it yet. But like I said, that's the easy part. When the bubble drops, we need to move fast. We'll have the advantage of the old host being disoriented and terrified, so I think we can lop his arm off faster than he can realize what's happening."

Carmen nodded, started to get her feet under her again. "Tricky, but doable, okay. What's the location?"

I sucked in another puff of tar and toasted tobacco mulch. "Warehouse in Pittsburgh, and that's where most of the challenge lies. The place is occupied. There's this... mm... a polycule, I suppose, of gnomes."

"Fucking gnomes," Carmen gritted her teeth as she said it.

"Oh yes. So you know what that's going to mean."

"Yeah. Automations. Defenses. Automated defenses. Enchantments and booby traps and random bullshit all over the floor. And that's if they're not home." She stopped, and gave me a pointed look. "They *aren't* gonna be home, right?"

"I have a distraction lined up," I reassured her, a bit of a purr in my voice. It was a good plan. "And besides, we're ghosts. What's a trap to a ghost?"

She held up her fingers and started counting off. "Salt lines, rock salt shotguns, iron cages, bear traps, rune circles, holy flame.... and don't forget, we'll have a new host to escort through the mess, one you told me in no uncertain terms needs to be alive."

"T-t-t-t-t. You're right about the defenses, but we don't need the host for the heist, just to use the knife afterwards. Think about it." I tapped out The Cig. "Easy, clean, and simple."

Carmen looked me up and down. "You really think so, don'tcha?" Her lip curled up. "I mean, it's not the worst plan. On paper."

"Oh Carmen, you wound me. As if you've never seen my contingency management skills before."

"Don't forget how you died, Sugar."

"Ancient history," I brushed her off, "that I learned quite well from, thank you very much."

She laughed, and finished off the rest of her beer. "You're a crazy one, Lizzie, but I'll play along. Where do we start?"

I fetched The Cigarette and sheltered it in the cup of my hands, striking the lighter until it caught. "Well, like I said..." I blew a current of smoke into the air above the empty glass and nearly-finished sandwich. "... we have to find a changeling."

 * [03 - Midway](/writing/em/03)
 * [05 - Whispers](/writing/em/05)