Jake and the Dynamo (remember that book?) is still unavailable as of this writing since the unfortunate out-of-businessing of my publisher. I have no known date for a re-release, but I am seriously considering self-publishing within the next few months and also releasing volume 2 the same way. Volume 3 is also underway, though I’ve set it aside for the moment for another writing project. In any case, here is a preview.
It had been a Sunday afternoon in early spring. The weather was at last warming up, so Marionette’s drafty attic was comfortable again after a terrible winter. Although her joints didn’t stiffen up in cold as readily as a human’s did, and though she couldn’t suffer frostbite or pneumonia, she could still feel miserable. She had spent much of the winter warming her fingers over a small cast-iron stove and painting a few strokes at a time before needing to warm her fingers again.
Now down to shirtsleeves and green boyshorts, she spent a lazy Sunday lying in her cot. The paint-flecked bedclothes were in a tangled mess, partly over her and partly under.
Kasumi Sugihara, down to a sports bra and boxers, lay beside her and smoked a cigarette. In her magical form, she was Card Collector Kasumi, but for the moment, she was merely an ordinary fifteen-year-old girl. She and Marionette had wiled away the late morning and much of the afternoon reading magazines, talking about TV dramas, discussing battle tactics, and gossiping about which boys they hated.
Marionette held, balanced on her stomach, a crystal Pontarlier glass of milky absinthe louche. She gazed at it for half a minute, raised her head, and took a sip. A faintly bitter scent of blended herbs met her olfactory sensors, and then the drink slipped smoothly down her synthetic throat.
Kasumi sighed out a long, curling stream of smoke. “You drink too much,” she said.
“You smoke too much,” Marionette replied before she sipped again. “And it doesn’t matter how much I drink.”
Kasumi snatched the glass from her hand and took a long pull. When she lowered it, she stuck out her tongue. “Blech.”
“Your cigarette’s ruining the taste, and don’t drink it like that.” Marionette tried to take the glass back, but Kasumi, with a faint giggle, rolled onto her side, forcing Marionette to reach across her.
“I just don’t like licorice,” Kasumi said.
“You’re gonna be drunk in a second. Give it here.”
Marionette took the glass back and tipped the rest of the contents into her mouth.
“Look who’s talking,” said Kasumi.
“I’m just keeping it away from you. And I can’t get drunk.”
Marionette flopped back onto her pillow. “But sometimes I wish I could.” Turning the glass over in her hands, she watched the light from the window glint off its surface. “Although it doesn’t affect me, I have a taste for the stuff. It’s another of my father’s jokes.”
“You don’t have to do what he programmed into you, do you?”
“I like to. It relaxes me.”
“I wish I could relax.” Kasumi sat up and stretched her arms over her head before she stubbed out her cigarette in the tray on the nightstand. “I can’t believe I’m gonna be doing this for another three years.”
With an artist’s attention to detail, Marionette’s ocular sensors traced the lines of muscle in Kasumi’s back. Kasumi was lithe and firmly knit like a ballerina or gymnast. The exertions of the magical form had their effect on the normal body, so most magical girls turned out small, wiry, and solidly muscled.
Marionette wondered for a moment if that was why her father had designed her to look so boyish. Art imitating life.
“Is it really so bad?” Marionette asked.
Kasumi kept her back to her and stared at the wisps of smoke rising from the ashtray. “You wouldn’t know, would you? You were designed for this stuff.”
“I was designed to want to leave it behind, just as you do.”
“For what?”
Lying on the bed, Marionette shrugged her shoulders. “Family. Art. What do you want to leave it for?”
Kasumi sighed. “Why are we like this?” She reached behind herself and, for a moment, clumsily ran her fingers over Marionette’s waist. She paused for a second, but then pushed her hand upward—
Marionette took her fingers, interlaced them with her own, and kissed them. “Kasumi, you know I shut off my sexuality program.”
Kasumi grunted and stuck a fresh cigarette in her mouth. She flicked her lighter. “So you keep saying. If that were true, how could you paint?”
“I don’t know how it is for real humans, but for me, my artistic impulse is in a separate subroutine.”
Kasumi chuckled quietly. “You’re harsh. You know most of the girls have a crush on you.”
“Some. Not most.”
“Still.”
Marionette sighed. “It’s because I’m more experienced, because I’m in charge, because I look like a boy, and because they’re under a lot of stress. Most of them grow out of it.”
After a few deep pulls, which quickly created half an inch of ash, Kasumi stubbed her cigarette out, leaving it unfinished. “I won’t. I won’t grow out of it.”
“You will, Kasumi. Give it time.”
Kasumi flopped back down onto the bed and pushed against Marionette’s side. “No, I’ve already decided. I’m never getting over you.”
“I’m just a machine, you know.”
Their fingers were still intertwined, so Kasumi squeezed Marionette’s hand. “Then I’ll be your heart.” She tapped her own chest. “You’re alive here. You live in my soul, Marionette, and you always will. Whether you live anywhere else doesn’t matter to me.”
Kasumi started nuzzling her neck, so Marionette sat up and said, “I need another drink.”
“You haven’t had enough?”
“You’ve been smoking like a chimney. I’m trying to keep pace. Besides—”
“I know, I know. It doesn’t do anything to you.”
“It’s got a lot of water. Just this afternoon, I’ve stored up enough deuterium to last me for three months.”
She extracted her hand from Kasumi’s, climbed from the cot, snatched the lighter from the nightstand, and walked to her kitchenette. There, she performed the elaborate ritual of a Bohemian pour. First, she laid a perforated spoon across the mouth of her glass and set upon it a single sugar cube. Then she poured emerald green liquor over the cube until the spherical bulb at the bottom of the glass was full.
Once she was done with that, she lit the sugar on fire and watched it burn a faint blue.
Sitting on the counter atop a narrow stand was a drip fountain full of ice water. When the sugar began to sizzle and bubble, Marionette moved the glass under the spigot and let the water snuff the flame. As the water pitter-pattered into the glass, the absinthe changed from emerald green to a murky and cloudy yellow. After most of the sugar had dissolved, Marionette took up the spoon and stirred, at last shutting off the spigot when the glass was nearly full.
Taking a sip, she contemplated for a moment and nodded in approval.
“Is that fun?” Kasumi asked from the bed.
“Yes. The Green Lady, they call her—muse of many an artist. They say the wormwood gives the mind clarity and insight.”
“It tastes gross, but I admit I’m pretty calm.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s supposed to make you a mellow drunk.”
“You wouldn’t know.”
“No, but I like the look, the smell, the pour, the history. And unlike you, I like the taste.”
Kasumi giggled. “Couldn’t I be your muse instead?”
“Sorry, but I already have my lady.”
Marionette sipped again and changed the subject. “Hey, you figured out those new cards yet?”
Kasumi groaned and rolled over onto her stomach. “Do we have to talk shop?”
“Come on, tell me.”
“I don’t like them. I’d rather just stick with my starter deck. I mean, all these cards showing up … I hardly know where to put them.”
“You’re powering up, Kasumi. That’s a good thing. Some magical girls have to fight for years without getting a power-up.”
“But I get them all the time! Like, I get up one morning, and Marie Laveau’s long-lost deck of cursed Tarot cards is just sitting on the front porch. It freaks me out. Don’t try to tell me that’s normal.”
Marionette laughed quietly as she turned the glass in her hand, watching the light sparkle from the liquor. “Normal’s not in the cards for any of us.”
With a grunt, Kasumi said, “I think you need to adjust your humor program.”
Marionette laughed again. “Kasumi, you’re the Card Collector. Magical cards are attracted to you. There’s no reason to fight it. Just accept it.”
Kasumi squirmed. “But I got some new ones recently, and … well, they look like regular playing cards, but they’re … they’re powerful. I can feel their power. I’m afraid I’ll hurt somebody.”
Marionette smiled. “Hurt some monster instead. You know you’re always complaining that your starter deck is weak—”
Kasumi flopped onto her back again. “Yeah, I know, but it’s not like I have a familiar to help me out. I just had some ghost wizard show up and tell me I have to collect cards, and then he disappeared. It sucks.”
“So this latest deck, what is it, exactly?”
Kasumi shrugged. “The cards contain elements, and each element is tied to a time of day … I can explain it all later if you’re interested. Not right now.”
“I’m interested.”
“I’m afraid, Marionette. I could hurt a lot of people with these if I use them wrong.”
“Tell me.” Marionette sipped her absinthe again. “I’ll listen.” Another sip. “And you might even inspire me.”
Kasumi sat up and pushed her hair out of her eyes as if arising from sleep. She raised one eyebrow, and her voice turned faintly sultry as she said, “Maybe I could find a different way to inspire you.”
Marionette turned the glass, letting the light play across the surface of the louche. “Let me paint you,” she murmured.
Kasumi smiled; it was a faint smile, enigmatic, with a hint of melancholy. “You’ve asked me that several times now.”
“I meant it every time.”
“Is it me you want—or the magical girl?”
“Both. What I have in mind will have to be a composite.”
“Why?”
Marionette returned Kasumi’s faint, sad smile. “Like you, I want to remember. I want things to live on, just like this. But you’re going to grow up, Kasumi—and you’re going to leave me behind.”
“I’ll never forget you, Marionette.”
“You will,” Marionette whispered. “They always do.”
Seated on a corner of the cot, Kasumi turned and looked out the window. Faint noises rose from the street below—the sound of cars, the sound of oblivious people going about their lives. Slowly, she pulled her sports bra up over her head. Then, gripping her long, thick locks in one hand, she pulled her hair down across her breasts. Looking back over her tautly muscled shoulder, still wearing that enigmatic smile, she whispered, “Better set up your easel.”
Quietly, with the electroactive muscles in her face deactivated, Marionette gazed at her for half a minute. Then, after another swallow of the Green Lady, she slowly and carefully set her glass down on the counter.
It made a faint clink.
