Winds in the East

Winds in the east, mist comin' in

Like something's a-brewin', about to begin

I can't put my finger on what lies in store

But I feel what's to happen has happened before

We all have places we like to go when we plot and scheme. Consider it a law of nature: anything that requires hatching needs a nest. Even those of us who are long since retired from the four-color charade still occasionally indulge in plotting. The mountain fortress stuff is mostly just for ego stroking, but everyone- lair or not- has a thinking place. Mine used to be on the couches at Portcullis, with a prop crystal ball, dark eyeliner, and enough black velvet to reupholster a battleship. Ugh, makeup. With eyes like mine, it's not healthy to spend that much time looking in a mirror. I don't make those kinds of plans any more, not really. It's not fun when you can see the weakness in everything. Still, whenever I get the urge to daydream I can curl up at the Cape & Cane with one of those yellow legal notepads and a glass of whatever's in season.

I cannot remember the name, but it was crisp and dry, it had been finished with isinglass, and it was completely ruined the moment Mr. Twist walked in the door. Stella sometimes jokes that Mr. Twist is the oldest being in creation. It's probably untrue, but I hate looking at him anyway. His curse and mine do not mix well. I'm certain it takes a sort of benevolent ignorance to endow a man with the ability to endlessly relive the previous 24 hours of his life, but it must have taken nothing less than divine sadism to choose that particular man. Mr. Twist gets unlimited second chances, and he uses them to perfect the art of pettiness.

"Good afternoon, Signum." His salutation was brusque but not wholly impolite. This couldn't have been his first time initiating this particular conversation, and choosing only my last name was a diplomatic compromise to avoid some previous offense. There was still an opening- there are cracks in everything, and I see them all- but tormenting him with this conversation would have no ultimate effect. Mr. Twist lived his life according to the brute force method. Still, I wondered just how many times he had earned my wrath that I'll never know about. Thinking about it was almost enough, but his eyes betrayed no sense of smugness or complacency. I studied his face. All mortals- and most immortals- are dying, but Mr. Twist is dying in the same way supernovae are dying, which is to say it's preferable to observe him at a significant distance. I knew what he wanted, the tiny flaws in his practiced sincerity had inflected enough that we didn't need to have the beginning of the conversation.

"She's in the back."

"I know." What he actually meant was he made it at least this far already. Creep.

"Would you like me to go get her?"

"No need to bother, she'll be out in a minute. Don't get up, you're going to want to be here for this." Maybe it's because I faked precognition for years, but I always hate when people do that- don't tell me what I'm going to want. Still, I could tell he was being honest, because the cracks were bigger. Lies tend to be conspicuously less flawed than the truth.

"Be here for what? What are you planning?"

"I'm not."

"You're going to have to do better than that."

"You think I'm lying?"

"I know you're lying. I can't figure out why you're wasting your time trying to lie to me."

"I'm meeting someone."

"Do they know?"

"Cute. It's an arranged meeting."

"You know you can't bring work in here."

"When you say something that hypocritical, is it physically painful for you to hear the flaws in your own words?"

Ouch.

"That's completely different. I don't work here, not really, and anyway my consultations save people's… well… they save people…" I trailed off. That was how they beat me, how everyone always beats me: just by holding up a mirror. My power directed inward can only cannibalize itself. Death by metacognition. I started to seethe. He had eternity to think of a comeback to anything I said. That was the real evil of Mr. Twist… he didn't mind spending an hour or two reliving the same thirty seconds over and over just to win an argument. He could always go back. The power to endlessly reset until he won, placed in the hands of a man for whom winning means hurting or humiliating someone. In the hands of someone else, that ability would render its user virtually incapable of losing, and yet Twist had lost Big, just like the rest of us. It wasn't hard to see why.

"Tay." Stella's voice cut through my mood. "Is everything ok?"

I find it hard to look at Twist because of the way his flaws endlessly refract and multiply in front of my eyes. I find it hard to look away from Stella for nearly the same reason. She is the most beautiful, most broken thing I have ever seen. I wonder if she can really see herself: utter, terrible near-perfection, scarred with just one conspicuous crack- that from which all other flaws originate. I've heard it called "the most necessary failing in history," although I have never shared that description with her. My eyes have seen many, many scars. Nothing else looks like that. When she's in the room, it is difficult to look elsewhere.

"I'm fine," I said, and I really was. My eyes and ears are sensitive to potential energy, so when Stella's around, even someone like Twist becomes just so much background noise. I continued, "Twist thinks you're going to let him use the Intuition Table."

I couldn't help feeling smug. Cold reading is low-brow stuff, parlor tricks really, but I'm very, very good at parlor tricks. Blind spots, misdirected attention, micro-expressions, they all read as potential weakness. Cracks. He had been eyeing the jar since he walked in. He didn't react to my words, at least not this version of him, but I felt a secret joy knowing that, in any timeline, I would never ever tell him how I figured that out.

"After a fashion, yes, Octa… Tay is right."

"The answer is no." Stella can speak in a way so it's possible to hear the punctuation. With anyone else, that would have been it, but Mr. Twist lives in a world where definitive answers are a temporary inconvenience. He stared at her, waiting. She shrugged. "You can't afford it."

"I know someone with really good credit." I barely managed to stifle a giggle. Infinite mulligans, and that was his best comeback. I overpaid for a couple banter classes from The Dealer a few years back, and while it was mostly simple improv exercises, I can at least pride myself on never having delivered anything that cringe-worthy. Twist continued, oblivious,"...but he needs permission to get through the door."

Stella frowned. I saw her do the math. The list of folks who are both still alive and unwelcome at the C&C is understandably short. Among those, who would know about the Intuition Table, and who among that subset would have the unmitigated gall to send Mr Twist begging a favor? Someone with no better choice in messengers. I saw the subtlest flicker of worry in her glare as she figured it out. It is unlikely anyone else noticed, distracted as they were by the fact that the ambient temperature in the bar dropped 10 degrees.

"Why would he send you?"

"Who else could afford to sit here and wait, all day, every day?" I saw a crack there, in Twist's answer, he was being careful not to be flippant. "That, and I think he wants me to help him beat the Table."

"How long have you been here?" Her voice was tinged with literal ice. The bottles in the bar began to fog over.

I could see his breath as he answered, "Two years, by your reckoning. I've spent more time than I care to recall sitting here waiting for him to stumble back into a tangent reality."

"Is it worth it?" The shadows deepened, and frost began to creep over the woodwork.

"I don't know yet," Twist answered honestly, betraying just a hint of fear.

"How does he expect to get past the door?" With every word, the shadows in the corners began to creep forward.

"By apologizing."

Nobody else could have seen it, but Stella's single flaw was radiating colors I don't have names for. She's not human; she was not originally designed to experience cognitive dissonance. I don't pretend to understand, but something about the idea of denying someone- even an adversary- the chance for absolution was causing her no small amount of discomfort. I realized that Mr. Twist was holding his breath in apprehension, and I wondered briefly where else this conversation might have gone. She noticed my shiver and forced herself to relax. Whatever was producing light in the wall sconces burned a little brighter, bringing a bit of warmth back into the room. We waited for her to speak.

"Where is he?"

"Nowhere, yet. I came early as a courtesy. In about ninety minutes he'll knock on the Rooftop Door in St. Lucia."

Stella considered this. "…and if we're not on the other side to answer?"

"This isn't a threat. He's not plotting to dismantle the Doorspace substrate. It isn't about going home. He wants to use the Table, and if he doesn't get what he wants, I have to go back and try again until he does."

I balked a little at the thought of someone attacking the Door dialer- not that I've ever been particularly fond of home. It was just the idea of not being able to go back, even if home is full of loss and pain. Twist said something about going home… my eyes widened. It finally dawned on me who they were talking about. "Stella, you can't."

"That's not true, Tay." Her eyes met mine, and she shrugged, "I'm the only one who can."