Children of Mammon

by RLeeSmith

After spending one long night with Mike Schmidt, everything Ana Stark thought she knew about her missing aunt has changed. The life she had only just begun to build has fallen down and she doesn't know what else to do except build it up again. But how? What is the truth about Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria and the animatronics who live there? Who was the man in purple? And…who is she?

26. Chapter 26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The night passed at a crawl, but it did pass, as all things do. At 8:00, Ana climbed down from the roof at last, topped off the generator and loaded up the empty jerry cans, poured half a bottle of Redline in herself as a cheap facsimile of a night's sleep, and drove to Aunt Easter's house. Taking her hunting knife from the glove box, just in case she had unwelcome guests, Ana went inside to lock up. She was perfectly well aware that a locked door wouldn't keep anyone out if they wanted in badly enough, especially up here, in the only house on Coldslip Mountain, miles from town. No one would hear if someone, say Mason Kellar, chose to lob a rock through one of these exquisite leaded pane windows, climb through, and drag her screaming out. No one would care either, but that was another problem. Still, she locked up, going through the motions of securing the homefront while her mind was miles away, mentally fortifying the home that really counted: Freddy's.

She didn't bother to perform a thorough search while she was there. She did not feel as if she were alone, but then, she never did at Aunt Easter's house, so she gave it no mind. When she was done, she left. She did not look back and did not see the pale face high in the attic window, watching her drive away a little too fast, so that she would be at the Lowe's in Hurricane the second the doors opened.

Once there, tablet in hand with the measurements she'd taken onscreen, she did her shopping. For the most part, they had everything she wanted in stock, but one item needed to be cut to size. The gentleman whose job this was could not immediately be found on the premises; once tracked down, he was not over-eager to get on it. After trying several times to convince Ana to leave her number and wait for his call sometime tomorrow or the next day, he finally broke from his service persona and said, "Look, lady. It was the Fourth of July yesterday, in case you didn't notice, and I don't remember doing it, but I'm guessing I drank an elephant under the table. The last thing I want to do this morning is stand next to that screaming machine and cut your damn door. Give me a break, would you?"

In reply, Ana reached into her wallet, counted out a hundred dollars and held it up in a tight fan. "How about I give you this instead," she said, staring him down, "and you buy a hell of a big bottle of aspirin?"

Half an hour later, she was loading her purchases into the truck and fifteen minutes after that, she was back at Freddy's.

By this time, it was just after eleven and the animatronics were working their way through the first set of the day. Ana unloaded and refueled with more Redline, listening as they told stories with clear moral messages and sang songs that were not quite hymns, except Foxy in Pirate Cove, who unabashedly encouraged his little mateys to pillage and plunder and wash it all down with a bottle of rum. Their familiar voices, rising and falling in familiar ways, helped to quiet her racing thoughts. There would be plenty of time for fear later, but not now. She had work to do.

Ana started with the simple stuff, removing the old emergency exits and hanging the new security doors she'd just bought, bullet-resistant and solid core, good enough to hang at any bank, military complex or high school. The new ones had push-bars only on the inside and nothing at all on the outside. Three deadbolts—top, middle and bottom—locked into their new steel frames and they were good to go.

Next, the loading dock got its heavy-duty face-lift—a new rolling drop-door, freshly-cut to size—with quarter-inch facing armored plates over an internal reinforcement tie-rod construction. To this already impressive design, Ana added a few features of her own: one long metal strip carefully honed to razor-sharpness and fastened to the bottom lip just where careless fingers would grasp to pull the door up, and two edging clamps partway up the frame which would bring the door to a sudden, very sharp stop about a foot off the ground.

After that came the entry doors, replacing the old sliding glass models with a set of glazed steel ones whose pretty stamped pattern and acid-etched glass insets were not at all out of place for a restaurant while still being durable enough to hold back a horde of zombies. The handles were shallow wedges insufficient to attach a chain to if one were inclined to try and pull the doors open with the help of a car, but just perfect for hiding a few more razor blades in. She also slathered on a good coating of grease in case those plump little fingers needed help finding those razors.

That took care of the doors and there weren't many windows to speak of. The safety glass in the gym and the West Hall had been spray-painted numerous times and etched dull by years of sand-blasting, but not one had been broken or even cracked. Short of driving his mom's powder-blue Crown Vic into the building, Ana was confident Mason wasn't coming through them. The only other windows in the entire building were three small squares high on the wall in the employee's break room and Ana knew, having knocked one of them out to install her camp shower, the glass in those panes were as cheap as they came. It'd be a tight fit for anyone trying to crawl through, but tweakers tended to be scrawny. Something had to be done.

She boarded them up, because that was the obvious starting point, but just in case that didn't say Keep Out loud enough, she also studded the plywood she used with nails and reinforced them on the backside with lengths of 2x4. She seriously doubted Mason would think to bring a prybar with him when he came, so even this simple defense might keep him out. What did that leave?

Ana closed her eyes, trying to see the restaurant's weak points in her mind, but the momentum that had carried her along up to this point left her in the absence of activity. She was having a hard time seeing where things were in three dimensions and she realized after several frustrating minutes that she was super-imposing segments of the Circle Drive Freddy's from her childhood tapes over rooms of this Freddy's, as if in the extremity of her exhaustion, the line between past and present had blurred away.

Well, she didn't need to use her brain; she had a computer.

Ana took the back door of the employee's lounge through the storeroom and into the kitchen, where she started another pot of coffee brewing and popped the tab on yet another Redline. The sugary, slightly herbal taste was beginning to coat her mouth and throat, thick as cough syrup and about as appetizing. She managed three swallows, gagged, and gave the cupboard where she kept her 'vitamins' a measuring stare. She had a few Addys left and she was tempted to take one, but they had a way of turning her into just a ridiculous perfectionist and she could not afford to spend the next six hours spacing out the nails on a studded strip of plyboard. What else did she have? She'd popped all her Ecstasy working on Aunt Easter's house and took the last of her Vyvanse on the Kellar job. She didn't even have caffeine pills any more.

She might actually die sober. God, who'd have seen that coming?

Ana took her Redline, left her 'vitamins', and went out to the dining room. Bonnie and Chica were onstage, singing and dancing to Everybunny Needs Somebunny, while Freddy stood over by the cashier's station, examining the changes she'd made to the lobby doors. He looked around when she came in, and he might have started to say something, but he stopped before he could get a whole word out and looked at her more closely.

"Like what you see?" Ana challenged, rummaging through the loose stack of things Mason's guys had stolen for her tablet's charger. She'd spent a good two hours cleaning up after the fight, but somehow hadn't made it as far as her bed. She didn't see much point, truth be told. Her air mattress had been punctured and gone flat; her cardboard-box cubby-hole closet had been ransacked and partially crushed; those of her possessions that hadn't been taken had still been manhandled and thrown around. She didn't want to clean them up. Truth be told, she didn't even want to touch them. Stupid to think she had gotten into a shouting match with Freddy over her damn shirts and now, just a few days later, she was willing to pitch all the rest of them in the trash too, just because Bats and Trigger-Man…and Slater and Wyborn…had rubbed their greasy fingers over them.

"NO," Freddy said.

Ana, distracted from the complicated business of plugging in a power cord, blinked around at him. "No, what?"

"NO. I. DON'T. LIKE. WHAT. I. SEE."

She stared at him, confused, then made the connection. She'd already forgotten her childish taunt. God, she was tired. When had that happened? Even a few years ago, she'd have been able to stay up two nights in a row without so much as dulling the edge of her perceptions. Was this what getting old felt like? This sucked.

Grimacing, she drank two more swallows of Redline. "Well, too bad," she mumbled, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth until she was sure she wasn't about to yark cherry-and-ginseng flavored hyper-water back up into her own lap. "Because I'm only going to get worse as the day goes on."

"WHY? WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?"

"Oh. You know. Holding down the fort, which in this case means fortifying the fort." Ana frowned at her tablet for a few seconds…and a few more…and finally remembered what she was doing. She tapped the roombuilder app, loaded her saved Freddy's file, and ran her tired eyes over the shapes and text until they pulled themselves together and made sense. Lobby, loading dock, West Hall and playground doors, and the emergency fire exit in the back by the security office—all taken care of. Plus the windows in the break room. Was she missing anything?

"Oh fuck yeah, where's my head at?" she groaned, rubbing her eyes. "The gate."

"WHAT?"

"I was going to get a gate so I can block off the access road. Or I should say, so Mason will have to either dent his mom's fender busting through it or go all the way back to town to get some bolt-cutters or, more likely, leave the cars and walk around it. Why didn't I get the fucking gate? I was right there. I remember looking right at the different kinds they had."

"WOULDN'T. PEOPLE. SEE. IT."

She squinted at him, then clapped a hand to her forehead. "Yeah. Yeah, that's why. People would see it. I keep forgetting I'm not supposed to be here. You know, though…I bet I could take the arm down and use them to get some of those big rocks from around the base of the bluff. Some of those suckers have to weigh two or three hundred pounds. Doesn't take a lot of them to keep a Crown Vic out. But I need to get right on that shit if I'm going to do it because this day is flying by me, b…uh, Freddy. I don't have time to waste."

So saying, Ana leaned back, stretching out her aching spine, then gave up and just lay down flat on the table. She breathed, working her lungs against the enormous drag of gravity. Sweat tickled, hot and unpleasant where it pooled in the hollows of her body, cold and even more unpleasant where it collected in a musky swamp underneath her. It smelled like recycled Redline.

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?"

"The coldly welcome embrace of death."

Freddy clicked a few times. "THAT'S. NOT. FUNNY."

"It wasn't a joke." She thought for a moment, also against the enormous pull of gravity. She said, "Today, I ate at this new restaurant called Karma. There's no menu. Everyone just gets what they deserve. That's a joke."

Freddy grumbled to himself for a moment, then said, "THAT. ONE. WAS. PRETTY. GOOD."

"Thanks."

"HAVE. YOU. REALLY. EATEN. THOUGH."

"Sure."

"COFFEE. DOESN'T. COUNT." He tapped one metal finger against the bottle in her hand. "KNEE. THERE. DOES. THIS."

"Calories are calories."

He grunted disapprovingly and said, "GO. TO. BED. AN-N-A."

"Can't. Not yet."

"IF. ANY. ONE. COMES. I'LL. WAKE. YOU."

"Sure you will."

"YOU. DON'T. BELIEVE. ME."

"Let's just say I've noticed Bedtime Bear has his own priorities at times."

"YOU. NEED. TO. SLEEP."

"Not yet."

"WHY. NOT."

"I can't."

"WHY. NOT."

"Because I can't, Freddy. Not yet." She sighed and sat up, folding her hands loosely together around her drink and looking up at him. "Let me run down the timeline for you, big…uh…"

"BEAR," he said, not unkindly. "GO. AHEAD."

"You don't like it."

He grunted, rolling one burly, cracked shoulder. "IT'S. GROWING. ON. ME. GO. ON."

"Okay, well, here's how it went down yesterday. A little after eight o'clock, all hell broke loose right here in the dining room. Words were said. Punches were thrown. A nail-gun memorably failed and a cordless handsaw just as memorably did not. When the dust settled, six bad guys ran home with their tails tucked. Still with me?"

"YES."

"This town is not that big, so I figure by nine o'clock, Slater, Wyborn and Riley were wherever home is for them, and Dentist for sure and maybe Trigger and Bats were at the hospital—hopefully different hospitals, but whatever—where they wouldn't have even been seen earlier than midnight, not on the Fourth of July. All that time in the waiting room would have given them the perfect opportunity to drop some texts, see who was bored, and round up a posse. But they never showed, which means what?"

"THEY. WENT. TO. SLEEP."

"Sleep is an understatement. The most likely pills for them to have been prescribed is Oxycodone in some form. Recommended dose would be about fifteen milligrams. Most likely dose for them to have taken is thirty or so, and maybe more after fifteen or twenty minutes if they thought it wasn't working fast enough. Peak effects take thirty minutes to an hour, so by, say, five in the morning, those guys were flying and then they were out. Sleep? Ha. They were dead to the world. But right about now, give or take an hour, they're going to start waking up. Dentist will almost certainly keep himself numb until he gets his teeth taken care of, but I'm not sure about the others, and frankly, I'm not even sure which way I want them to go. The ones that eat pills today may be less likely to want to come back for Round Two, but they're way more likely to talk to whoever might be listening about Round One. The ones that stay soberish are slightly less likely to talk, but way more likely to get pissed, which will eventually lead to talking. And the ones who don't have pills and don't want to be sober are going to score some meth—from Mason—and get high. More on that later, but for now, the way I see it is, my best odds of getting a return visit is anytime between now and about two in the morning."

Freddy nodded, looking thoughtful in a scowling way.

"If that doesn't happen, then every day the odds get a little less, with a short spike into the red zone every afternoon around five once word gets back to them that I'm working again, because that's such a stupidly perfect time to throw an ambush. But in general, yeah, every day, a little less. Until the weekend, when it ramps right the fuck back up there, because on Sunday, Mrs. Kellar goes to church and Mason's Meth-Mart opens for business. What do you know about meth, Freddy?"

Freddy's stare narrowed sharply. "A. BETTER. QUESTION. IS. WHAT. DO. YOU. KNOW. ABOUT. IT. AND. HOW. DID. YOU. LEARN."

"Relax. Never tried it, never will. I don't touch the hard stuff. Anyway, here's the thing about meth. It doesn't just make you feel good, it makes you feel strong. Powerful, like nothing can stop you. Just as soon as you get your fix, you lose even the concept of consequences, at least the negative ones, because in your head, you legit cannot lose. It's also a terrific painkiller. Also-also, and this is the biggest point of them all, there will be four to six of them there, depending on how Slater and Wyborn fit in, and they'll probably be sitting close together so they can bitch about me, because they are just the biggest morons you can possibly imagine, and short of wearing a matched set of pussy-pink team t-shirts that say I got my ass served to me at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria—"

Freddy snorted.

"I imagine it with that cartoony version of Chica, you know the one? In her apron and the chef's hat with the big smile and a shiny platter with a shaved-off ass instead of a cupcake? Anyway, my point is, they could not look more like a bunch of guys that got beat up," Ana concluded. "And if that happens, I am straight-fucked, because one of your guys getting beat up is somebody shitting on your guy, but four to six of them? That's somebody shitting on you. And at that point, all I can hope is that Mason decides a fight with Rider isn't worth the fun of gangbanging me to death, because that comes next. However, and here is where the slimmest of slim hopes shines forth, big bear, if for whatever reason they do not all go hang out at Mason's place this weekend, by next weekend, the bruises will be fading and the pain will have reduced from avenge-me to let's-not-do-that-again levels. There will always…" Ana trailed off, took a shoring swallow of breath, forced a hearty smile and continued, "…always be a risk that someone will talk, but if I live through the weekend, I might be okay."

Freddy nodded, then reached out and gave her a pat on the head, like she'd been complaining the whole time about homework or not getting invited to the popular kid's party. "YOU'LL. BE. FINE," he declared. "IF. THERE'S. TROUBLE. I'LL. HANDLE. IT."

"I'll bet you will," Ana agreed. "You'll come stomping in, all, 'Rule number forty-four, no gangbanging in the dining room!' And if that doesn't get their attention, why, you'll clap your hands!"

"POSSIBLY," Freddy said, smiling in spite of his narrowing eyes. "I'M. THIS. CLOSE. TO. CLAPPING. ONE. NOW."

Ana laughed into the neck of her bottle. "Just the one, huh?"

"JUST. THE. ONE."

"And what's the sound of one hand clapping, Fred?" she asked obligingly, certain that was where this non-sequitur was headed.

But Freddy just laughed his booming stage laugh and walked away. At the door, however, he stopped and looked back. "AN-N-A. PROMISE. ME. WHEN. THEY. COME. YOU. WON'T. FIGHT."

She smiled, feeling a helpless sort of warmth in her heart instead of the exasperated prickles this attempt at control deserved. Gently, she said, "No."

Her refusal did not appear to have surprised him much. He merely nodded and adjusted his parameters. "PROMISE. ME. YOU. WON'T. SHUT. ME. OFF."

She thought about it, swishing the last of her liquid caffeine around on the bottom of the bottle to hear the rhythmic sloshing sound it made. "I will if you promise you'll take the others and hide, like down in the maze or something, until the fight's over."

His head tipped back as his brows drew down—a bear who had just been profoundly insulted, but who was determined to keep his dignity. "I. WILL. NOT."

She spread her hands slightly, commiserating in their mutual helplessness before the fickle whims of fate, and drank off her Redline. "Going back up top," she announced, boosting herself off the table and onto her feet. She waved at the stage, already heading for the kitchen. "Talk to you later, my man. Bye, Chica."

"EAT. SOME. THING," Freddy bellowed after her.

"Yeah, yeah." Ana put her bottle in the sink and went back to the roof.

---

Foxy couldn't leave the Cove during operating hours and so he could only listen as Ana dug herself in for the retaliation she thought was coming. Foxy wasn't as sure. Oh, he didn't doubt they'd want to be repaid for their humiliating defeat, but they wouldn't come to Freddy's to get it. Far more likely they'd nab her in some quiet, unlit lot some night or even run her off the road, which as Foxy recalled it, was a long stretch of nothing betwixt here and town. Failing that, they'd find out where she lived and lie up for her there, reasoning sensibly enough that she'd show eventually. But come here? What kind of idiot looked to do their wicked work in an already-haunted house?

Well, it really didn't matter what he thought. Ana believed it and Freddy at least considered it plausible enough that he stood back and let her do whatever the hell it was she was doing to make all that racket. Foxy's opinion was not asked.

So the time passed. Ana moved about, her work measured out by short spates of work-noise followed by long silences, then more noise in new places, and more silence. The quiet was never peaceful. Freddy came and went, somewhat less regularly than he'd been apt to in the past. At times, the two of them met in the hall, exchanging serious talk in a comfortable manner as two ships passing on a misty night, trading words of warning before sailing on.

Foxy sang songs and told stories. Between sets, he waited, propped up in the bow or pacing in his cabin or sitting on deck. It was just another day after all, and like all days, it ended.

A few minutes after nine, he gave all the little kiddies who were not here a final farewell and shut himself down. At ten, his eyes opened again. And at a quarter after two in the morning, he heard the door to the East Hall creak open.

Foxy, propped up on his elbows in the bow of his ship, swiveled his ears in that direction, but did not take his eyes from the tricky business of walking a doubloon across the bare bones of his fingers. Freddy had passed through not six minutes ago, so it was either Chica or Ana, and when the door shut without an invitation to come to the arcade, he knew which.

"Ahoy, lass," he said in the flattest, least-ahoyingest tone he'd ever heard come out of his speaker. He hadn't planned to or anything. It was just there, almost a taste in his mouth and the taste was bitter. "How's the roof c-c-coming along?"

"What? Oh Jesus, you don't even know. The roof is done," Ana said, her boots tromping down the ramp toward him in a slow, noisy gait, heavier than she was. Tired. "Well, not done-done, but done enough. As done as I ever hoped it would be. Nothing left but the interior stuff and I'll get to that in my own time, assuming I have any."

"A d-d-difficult job done well." Flip went the coin, fake gold color gleaming in the light of his eyes. It landed on his fore-knuckle, face-up. His own face. He couldn't tell if it were grinning or snarling. He flipped it again without walking it, caught it and put it in his pocket. "Good on ye, and all that. Now why-why—WHY CAN'T PIRATES PLAY CARDS?—why don't ye sound happier about that-t-t?"

"We had an incident Saturday night."

"Oh aye?" he said, like he didn't know. Because as far as she knew, he didn't.

"Aye," she sighed and by the sound of it, sat herself on the front row bench. "Some guys broke in. We got into it a little bit. I let them get away, so…"

Foxy dug his hook into the deck rail, gouging up splinters and flicking them idly over the side. "So?" he prompted.

"So what happens when you let the bad guy get away, Captain?"

"Makes for a b-b-better story, in me opinion."

"Only if I'm alive to tell it."

"And the likelihood o' that be…?"

"I'm an optimist, so we'll call it fifty-fifty."

"Ye need Chica to t-t-tell ye what optimism means, luv. I don't think ye has it quite right." He worried his hook in as deep as it would go and broke out a chunk of wood almost the size of his finger. "Ye bring a b-b—BOTTLE OF RUM—with ye by any chance?"

"Sorry, it's Sunday. Liquor stores aren't open. I'll pick some up tomorrow after work."

"Yer working again?" he asked idly, scraping the new chasm clean before digging into it some more.

"Jeez, I really need to come here more often. Yeah, I'm working. Same place as before. We'll see how it goes this time, but I hope to get a few month's pay before I'm out on my ass again."

"Telling ye, that ain't optimism. Ye c-c-coming aboard?"

"No. I'm not staying."

"Course not," Foxy muttered, the words little more than a low hum through his speaker. Louder, he said, "Well, thanks for stopping in t'port, lass. FAIR WINDS AND A FOLLOWING SEA."

A few seconds passed, silent. Then he heard her boots scrape as she stood up.

"Don't go," he said and then sat, staring at the hole he'd carved into the rail of the ship, wondering who'd said it, because he never would.

"You just said—"

"I know what-t-t I said. Don't go."

More silence.

"Come down here, then," she said finally. "I'm not going to talk at the curtain all night."

Not that she intended to stay all night, but Foxy didn't point that out. She was a breath away from leaving as it was.

"You must really be in a bad mood," she said as he went down from the ship to the stage. "You're actually using the gangplank."

"Just to kee—eeeeeeeeeee—keep ye guessing, luv."

She had another lantern with her, sitting beside her on the bench so that its yellow light shone up and from one side, monster-style. Her frowning mouth was made broader and deeper than it was by shadows. Her cheeks were high and hollowed. Her eyes seemed lost in sockets. She had a pretty neck, though, something he'd never noticed before. Slender, graceful, but with very prominent collarbones.

"Ye've lost-t-t weight," he observed, finding a friendly stretch of wall to lean himself up against.

"You've lost skin," she shot back.

Foxy glanced down at himself, running his fingers and the tip of his hook along his newest scars.

"So let's not get personal," Ana said, reaching for her ear, only to draw her hand back and glower into her empty palm.

"Trying to quit-t-t?"

"No. Just not a good idea to get stoned tonight. If those guys come back, I need to have my head on straight. Not that that's really very likely at this hour, but I wouldn't want to bet my life on it."

"More of yer p-p-particular brand of optimism, eh?"

"If you knew what I was really thinking, you'd know I'm staying almost obscenely positive right now."

"And what are—ARR! ME HEARTIES!—ye thinking?"

She was quiet for a time, looking down at the plastic cap of her lantern like it had the answers written on it. "That I don't want to die here," she said at last, with a surprising lack of emotion either in her voice or on her face.

"One p-p-place be as good as the next," he reminded her.

"You'd think that, wouldn't you? But I don't know. I keep thinking about these guys I know who've been in and how they say—"

"In what?"

"Huh? Oh, sorry. Prison, I meant. Been in prison. Anyway, they were all pretty level-headed when they went in, but they all came out with some weird ideas and the one they all had in common was the notion that if you die in prison, you stay there. No heaven, no hell, no purgatory. Just prison, forever. This one guy thought it would be like being in the hole for eternity. Another guy thought it would be just like regular prison, with guards and inmates and everything, like he wouldn't even know he was dead. But the one that really got to me was the guy who said it would be like Alice going through the mirror. Same place, only darker and not as nice. And he'd be alone there, just him in the whole place, this looking-glass prison, and it wouldn't even matter if the gates were closed or the guards were gone, because you can't leave."

"And ye think-k-k that's what it would be like to die at Freddy's, do ye?" he asked, darkly intrigued by the notion. If there had ever been a time when Foxy had believed in an everlasting soul, he had forgotten what it felt like. The longer he lived, the more obvious it became that there was no 'life,' only a mechanical process whose programming gave it an over-inflated sense of importance. Without life, there could be no after-life and therefore no soul…and yet…hadn't he taken Foxanne out of the building for just this same reason? Because to kill her in Freddy's was to prison her there forever, formless and unheard. So maybe he did believe in a soul after all, as long as it was in hell. It was the God business he didn't believe in.

But Ana shook her head. "Not just Freddy's. Mammon. This whole town. How did he put it…? It lures you in with the smell of rotten meat and traps you forever."

"Don't hold—FAST TO THE RIGGING—back now, luv. Tell us how ye really-ly-ly feel."

"I would if I knew." Again, she reached for her ear and again had to stop and stare at her empty hand. Shaking her head, she said, "But I'll tell you what I don't feel, and for the life of me, I can't explain it, but I'm not sorry I came back. This whole town and everyone in it hates me, but I'm still not sorry. Why is that, Foxy?"

He shrugged. "We ain't-t-t in town."

"And it's all about you, is it?"

"Well, ain't it?"

Funnily enough, it looked like she was giving that serious thought.

"I don't think so," she said at last. "I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a factor, but it can't be the whole reason."

"Why not?"

She glanced at him, faking a scowl to hide a laugh that hid a troubled and genuine uncertainty. "Because it's such a stupid reason."

"Ah."

"My life is in danger, as corny as that sounds. Risking it for love would be ridiculous enough. Risking it for the love of a wind-up rabbit is not a grand romantic gesture, it's insane. But is staying for a ghost any better?"

"Couldn't say," said Foxy, thinking how easily she'd thrown down the word 'love'. His chest itched. He scratched at it without thinking. "I thought-t-t ye didn't believe in ghosts."

"I don't. And everyone I knew and loved is dead, so what am I staying for?"

"Well, yer a stubborn wee—eeeeeeeee—" Foxy smacked his speaker quiet. "—wee thing and a bit of a b-b-brash, so I reckon yer staying just to show yer muckle chappie and his pack o' c-c-cumbergrounds ye can't be run off."

Ana peered up at him. "I got, like, half of that and I'm stone-sober."

"I said yer an ijit and no one t-t-tells—TALES OF THE SEA!—tells ye what t-t-to do. But ain't ye aiming a b-b-bit high to hate the whole t-t-town when it's just a few folk in it what-t-t want ye dead?"

"I don't hate the town. It hates me. I don't even hate Mason. He's a paranoid, delusional meth-addict with anger issues. He's doing everything just right within those parameters."

Foxy snorted, amused. "When ye look at it that way…"

"I do look at it that way," said Ana in almost an exasperated manner, as if it hardly needed saying, much less repeating. "Mason was always going to be what he is, with or without me. His value was fixed from birth. I'm the variable here, remember?"

"No," said Foxy, squinting at her. "The hell are ye on about-t-t?"

"Oh, yeah." She laughed. "Sorry, sometimes I forget you don't just know everything I know. Okay, so a couple years ago, I tried something called salvia. Hallucinogen. Very short, very intense highs. Rider got into it a bit, but it wasn't catching on as a party drug, and it was weird because everyone was saying it worked way beyond their expectations, but then they almost never got more. No repeat business means no profit margin. So Rider's like, we should try this and see what's up, and I said okay. So we all meet at his place and get comfy in the backyard, designate a guy to be the trip advisor, and load the bong. I don't really do the party drugs, but hallucinogens can be fun, so when that bong comes around, I take a big blast and hold it maybe five seconds. Soon as I breathed out, I was gone."

"That fast, eh?"

"That fast, that hard. I wasn't just tripping, I was gone. I mean me. My essential me-ness. It was instantaneous ego-death."

"Oh aye?"

"Aye," she said with grim good humor, laughing at a memory that was not funny. "I not only ceased to be Ana, I actually forgot I was a person at all for a while. I became a number."

"Like…six or…?"

"No, not like six," she said, still smiling, but with an uneasy shine in her eyes. "I was not an integer. I had no fixed value. I was this…this abstract numerical placeholder. A variable. The x for when you solve for x. And don't ask me to explain how horrifying that was, because I'll never be able to do it. It was so real, so immediate and so fucking real, and I never questioned its validity. This was my life now and it wasn't even life because it had no corporeal process. I had no meaning at all except as part of someone else's equation. My existence was floating forever through the arithmeverse, just waiting for someone else to solve for x."

"Sounds bloody awful," said Foxy, honestly enough.

"Thank you!" she exclaimed, flinging her hands out at him as if to offer his commiseration a hug. "Most people just laugh when they hear that story. Anyway, it felt like forever in the moment, but it was only a couple of minutes. I kind of came down…but even that was weird. I was a variable and then I was a cognizant variable and then a person-variable and then a person and finally me, and each shift had a different abstract numerical quantity and none of them were integers, not even the Ana Stark one. I can't really say it was a bad trip. I get the feeling it did exactly what it was supposed to do, but yeah, no, it was not a party drug and I can see why so many people try it once and never again."

"How'd yer friend do?"

"Rider? He said he melded with the pool and became one of the tiles. Just hanging out doing tile-stuff with all the other tiles. You know, containing water, bonding to grout, fostering the growth of algae. Said he had the strong impression that his entire life's memories as a human was just a fantasy he'd made up to escape the tedium of being a tile."

"Scary."

"You'd think, but he liked it. Every couple of months, he gets the urge to try it again. So far, he's been a tree, a lounge chair, the rip on a ripped label on his bottle of beer—that was a fun one, being the invasive space between a formerly whole inanimate object glued to another inanimate object—an eyelash, and the bacteria growing under all ten of his fingernails simultaneously. Anyway," she said, waving that off, "it was a bad time, but it kind of perfectly sums up my life, so I think about it every now and then. Mason was always going to be Mason—just like a six is always a six—but he wasn't fated to come here and fuck shit up until my variable dropped into the equation and he was forced to solve for x. Now there's no way out, but it didn't have to happen."

"Mathematical fatalism. Interesting. Ye'll have to t-t-t—TELL TALES OF THE SEA—tell Chica about this'n," he said. "Might-t-t be a new one even on her."

"The point is, people say you can do anything you want with your life, but that isn't true. Even an x, which has infinite possibility, cannot solve itself. It is defined by the fixed values of other numbers—real and imaginary," she added, holding up a finger to point at the distinction. "Whereas integers have value, but no potential for change beyond the static expression of a greater equation."

Foxy nodded politely and said, "Don't take this wrong, luv, but are sure ye ain't high right now?"

"I wish. No, I'm working in—" She checked her watch. "—three hours. I haven't had a puff, a pill or a drop to drink since Friday." She thought about it, shrugged and added, "I haven't had sleep either, so if I'm acting weird, it's that. It is a good metaphor though. Admit it."

"T'ain't bad, though if I were ye, I d-d-don't know that I'd be looking for the meaning o' me life in a b-b-bad trip."

"No, clearly I should just let a talking fox in a pizza parlor show me the path to true enlightenment."

"If ye insist." Foxy pushed himself off the wall, walked to the edge of the stage and hopped down. As Ana watched, relaxed and cautious and curious, he came and sat himself beside her on the protesting bench. "So," said Foxy, snapping his eyepatch down as he looked at her. "In me c-c-capacity of spiritual guide, let me ask ye something, lass."

"Sure," she said, still smiling, but wary.

"What in the hell d-d-did ye do?"

"What, to Mason? Well, apparently he thinks I—"

"I couldn't g-g-give a seagull's sour shit for that mutton-headed measle and all his mates t-t-together," Foxy interrupted with a dismissive snort. "What did ye do, yer own self, that-t-t would make ye stay where ye c-c-can only be made unwelcome and unhappy-py-py all the rest of yer life? Or at least all the rest of yer t-t-t—TIME TO SAIL—time in Mammon, which, seeing as yer all but planning yer b-b-bleeding funeral, and showing all the emotion of an oyster while yer about it, might-t-t I add, amounts to the same thing."

"And what? You don't think I'm taking that seriously enough, just because I'm not having hysterics? What good would that do?"

"None a'tall. And d-d-don't put words in me mouth, lass. We're pirates, ye and I. Ye c-c-can live or die any way that ye please. But why here? Why, when it d-d-don't make ye happy and now ye don't even feel safe?"

"It's my home."

"Lord, lass, if ye could only-ly-ly see yer face when ye just said that. Looked like ye were kissing a squid."

She rolled damn near her whole head in rolling her eyes, then hunched herself over and looked at the floor for a while. "I don't know," she said at last. "It's a town. One place is as good as any other, isn't that what you said? And it's not like I have anything better waiting for me somewhere else."

"You g-g-got somewhere worse?"

She laughed. "Jesus, Captain, is there anywhere worse?"

Foxy rocked back, making a broad there-you-go gesture with both hands.

"Oh for…It's where I'm from, that's all. I'm part of this town. It's part of me. It's where I was born, where I was supposed to die. Why do you care anyway?"

"Just a c-c-curious chap, me. I've a keen interest in stories and collects all I can." Foxy raised his eyepatch to wink. "Just one o' me many hobbies, lass. I also collects c-c-coins, swords and ladies' knickers."

One corner of her mouth twitched up. She studied him a moment more while Foxy channeled his inner 'wubby' and did his best to look like an inanimate object that a lonely child could confide all her darkest secrets in and maybe hug on for comfort when she was done.

"Okay," she said finally. "One incredibly boring story about me, coming up. You remember my cousin, David?"

"Aye," said Foxy, but it was a different David he saw in his mind's eye. He'd doubtless met Ana's cousin-chappie, maybe even knew him well, as he'd known dozens upon dozens of chappies and frillies well who had made no lasting impression on him. For Foxy, there was only one 'David' and that was David Blaylock, who in spite of the stained blood that ran in his veins, had only ever wanted to play the hero and kill a monster.

With effort, Foxy closed his thoughts to the poor doomed mite that had been and the thing he had become, and refocused on Ana in the here and now. "Aye, I remember. But this is supposed to b-b-be a story about ye, not he."

"It is. See, when I was a kid, right before I was taken, on the last good day of my life, David asked me if it was ever okay to hurt someone. I thought he was talking about superheroes. You know, Batman had this big thing in the comics where he didn't kill, and the Burton movie had really redrawn some lines in the sand for David. Superheroes never really interested me. They were just…I don't know, pardon my gender bias, but if I thought about them at all, it was just as Barbies for boys." She scrunched up her nose in affectionate disdain, smiling. "But I loved David and he took all that shit so seriously, so whenever he wanted to talk about it, I just nodded a lot and let him talk. Not this time. He said it was important. He needed to know. And he asked me, if there was someone bad who hurt people and there was no one you could tell and no one who would help you, was it okay to hurt them back? That was when I knew he was talking about me."

"Why ye?"

"My mom used to hit me," said Ana, waving off the words as she spoke them as if they were no more than a distracting fly. "The point is, he knew what I was thinking and he flipped it on me before I could even answer. He said, 'What if it was me? If someone hurt me, would you hurt them back?'"

"Would ye?"

"I'm getting to that."

"I ain't asking ye," said Foxy, shaking his head. "I'm asking, is that-t-t what he said? Would ye? Not is it ok-k-kay, but just what would ye d-d-do about it?"

Ana looked at him, her frown slowly smoothing out into an expression of surprise. She laughed. "Now that you mention it, yeah. He left out the ethical angle that time around. Anyway, I had never thought about it like that, that it might be David getting hit, David in the closet…in the hospital. And I said no, I wouldn't hurt them back. I said…I said I'd hurt them first." She wiped her eyes again. This time, they were wet. "I honestly think that was what gave him the idea. What do you think?"

"How old were ye?"

Ana rolled her eyes. "God, I knew that was coming," she sighed. "Ten."

"Then it weren't yer fault."

"That's not what I asked."

"Aye, it was," he said implacably. "Ye d-d-did it a roundabout way, but that were just-t-t what ye asked and the answer is, don't be daft, girl, ye were t-t-ten."

"That's old enough to start thinking about what you say before you say it," Ana argued. "It's old enough to be held accountable for your mistakes."

"Ten?" Foxy snorted. "Ten ain't old enough t-t-to keep yer fingers out'n yer nose. But aye, I'll play along. If ye could live it over-r-r—BOARD—what would ye say d-d-different? Eh? And how do ye reckon that would-d-d change things?"

"I don't know. All I know is, I told David it was all right to hurt someone if it saved someone you cared about. And I knew he meant me. I knew it. So if he was looking for permission to do what he did, I gave it to him."

"What did he do?"

"I don't know," said Ana, rubbing at her face. "I never saw him again, remember? I guess he got caught, though. And it must have been pretty fucking impressive, because it was the reason his dad re-entered his life with the ammunition that Aunt Easter was an unfit mother who shouldn't be allowed to raise their son, apparently not even to have visitation rights. That day, that answer, destroyed that family. I deserve everything that's happened to me," she declared.

"Reckon I'd agree with ye, if life really-ly-ly was that simple, but it ain't. Yer cousin-chap must-t-t have had a hundred—GOLD DOUBLOONS—chances to stop whatever it was he set-t-t out to do, but he didn't. If there's blame to be pinned, it's on him. And if it were me d-d-doing the pinning, I wouldn't anyhow. He were ten, same as ye."

"He was eleven."

"What the bloody hell ever, girl. He was a bleeding child, is me point, and so were ye and that's all."

"But it didn't have to be all, that's my point. If that was really the moment everything changed, what would have happened if I'd told him a real hero never kills, not even the bad guy, or better yet, just kept my goddamn mouth shut? If I hadn't given him permission to do what he did, David never would have gotten in trouble."

"And that would-d-d have changed things, would it?"

"It would have changed everything! If David's father had never come to get him, he would have grown up here. And I've had grown up here with him." Her eyes lifted, darting around the empty amphitheater like it was the world, and she, fixing her place in it. "And like everyone else who grows up in Mammon, I'd have never been beyond it further than Hurricane or St. George, or maybe on some exciting day trip to the landfill in Washington. Ha. I'd probably cut pictures from magazines of places like California and Montana and Georgia—all the places I've lived in and learned to hate—and hung them on the wall. Hidden behind posters, maybe, the way I used to hide Bonnie. And my mother…"

She leaned back on her hands, basking beneath the dark stage lights, rolling her shoulders to make them take her weight. "She'd have drunk herself to death, like my…father."

The last word ended weakly, not as if sad, just uncertain. If it was grief, she recovered herself quickly, turning an aggressive smile on Foxy before he thought to ask if she were all right.

"I could have had the life I always dreamed of," she told him. "David. Aunt Easter. You."

"Me, eh?"

"This place." She shrugged, looking around again. Her legs shifted, gathering as if to stand only to stretch out again. Restless. "I would have been here when it opened. I might have worked here. I would have seen you every day. Or every night, depending on my schedule. I'd have come here so often, it would have gotten boring."

He didn't know what to say to that. Despite her smile, he sensed this was no happy thought. He said, frowning, "Oh."

"Me and David both," she decided. "God knows, he'd have lived here if he could. Freddy's was his second home. You were family more than friends. You…you especially, Captain…You were real to him in a way you never were for me. I saw machines even then," she confided with an apologetic glance. "Living machines, if that makes sense. Kid-sense. But David thought you were really real. Alive, not just living. Breathing. Bleeding. I don't know. I suppose he would have grown out of that eventually, but—"

"—the things ye b-b-believe as a child," Foxy said with her and said the rest by himself when she lapsed into silence. "They never really-ly-ly leave ye."

"No," she said after a moment. Her smile slipped, turned sad and distant. "They don't. So yeah, he'd have been here with me. Just think, I could have lost my virginity right here." She gave up the smile at last and just stared into the dark. "And it would have been, oh, clumsy and secret and sweet instead of…"

Silence.

She shook her head at last, shadows in her eyes. "And we would have grown up, him and me, grown up and grown apart, turned into friends and then into cousins. He would have had girlfriends, lots of girlfriends. He would have married, had kids. Hell, maybe so would I." She thought about that, her eyes round and staring. "Shit, by now, I'd have four or five of them. My husband would work and I'd keep the house and grow a garden and get pregnant. We'd fight about money and he'd make me go to church because people talk in this town when you don't. I imagine I'd cry a lot."

"Ye might-t-t be happy," he pointed out. "Ye ever think o' that?"

She shook her head, still staring into the shadowed place where she watched this alternate history play out. "No one is happy in this town. It's a bad place, Foxy. It's a shiny apple full of worms…or Chica, chirping away about safety and friendship when she's full of maggots and mushrooms."

"Chica's happy," said Foxy, thinking, 'Sometimes.' Aloud, he said, "She'd b-b-be the first to tell ye—TALES O' THE SEA—to look for the happy and b-bring it in where ye find-d-d it."

"Sounds like her, all right."

"Ye don't-t-t think ye could be happy with an or-or—OARS OUT AND ROW, LADS—ordinary life?"

"I think…I think heaven is an ordinary life. And hell is seeing how close you came to having one."

"It ain't too late, is it?"

"For me, it is. For him…" She shrugged. "Tell you the truth, I don't think I want to know how he turned out. And I know he wouldn't want to know how I turned out."

"Ye don't think-k-k he misses ye?"

"He might, if he even remembers me. But if he does, I'd rather have him miss me and hope I found my way to a good life than knock on his door and see the look on his face when he sees how wrong he is."

"Yer too hard-d-d on yerself, lass."

"Oh please. Don't." She glanced down at herself. "A blind man could see the mess I've made of myself."

On impulse—black, selfish impulse—Foxy leaned toward her and bumped the end of his muzzle against her cheek.

She twitched back, blinking around at him with startled eyes and a crooked smile. "Did…Did you just kiss me?"

Foxy scratched his hook self-consciously over the back of his head and did not answer.

She laughed, looked at him, then threw her head back and did it right, filling the auditorium with happy noise right before she clapped both hands to her face and burst into a short storm of silent, shuddery tears. It was over before he knew what to do about them. She scrubbed her cheeks dry on her fist and smiled at him with the mist still on her lashes.

"That's a new low even for me," she told him in a voice that was strained, but steady. "I got a pity-kiss from a robot."

She took her lantern and got up, still smiling.

He jumped up after her and caught her wrist; the lantern fell from her grip, hit the floor and shut itself off, dashing the room into darkness where the only light came from him and it was none too white.

"It weren't pity," he said and, fiercely ignoring that bedraggled whisper where other men kept their consciences, he yanked her stumbling right up close. "I don't-t-t got pity."

It was wrong. He wasn't so far gone that he didn't know that and know it damned well, but Foxy and wrong had gone hand in hook for too long to start caring now. He kissed her again, bruising her throat when she turned her face away, hooking at the neck of her shirt to expose her shoulder to his unfeeling mouth. His teeth scratched at her, drawing blood in tiny beads, but she never flinched, never struggled, never spoke.

He wasn't good at kissing. Regardless of what else people wanted in the party room, they rarely wanted to get that close to his mouth, his teeth. He'd never been programmed for it, and watching a thing wasn't the same as understanding a thing. But his hand…he knew how to use that. He knew where to touch and how, when to be tender and when to be rough. It was easy, so much easier than he would have thought, like it was another routine he'd practiced ten times daily for all these years. He moved as he knew to move and, if not for the first time ever in his life, at least the first in this last long span of years, there was passion in his touch. He wanted to feel passion in hers…but she didn't move. He listened for the quickening and coarsening of her breath; she scarcely breathed at all.

For a moment—a moment of computer's time, when moments last as long as you want them to, or don't want them to—he considered pressing on. He could bring her around, he had no doubt. Many a nervous customer had stiffened up in his arms or squirmed out of them to pace the room and loudly question what they were doing, but he'd always brought them around. 'Right' and 'wrong' were only words, a little noise pushed out by air, no different than a fart. If Foxy had learned nothing else about people, he'd learned they don't practice self-denial for morality's sake, they do it for an audience. There was none here. He could bring her around.

But Ana didn't need bringing around on that regard, did she? She'd kissed Bonnie before. She was bold enough admitting that. Hell, she'd done it right in front of him, in front of Freddy, in front of the whole world. If it was Foxy she wanted, she wouldn't have waited to be caught or needed to be coaxed. She'd have taken him, brought him around. She'd call herself his girl out where anyone could hear. She'd call him her man.

'I'm jealous,' thought Foxy, deep in that moment that had all the time in the world to think such things. 'It ain't him at all, it's me. I've had a hundred women and he's only got the one and I want her.'

He didn't feel shame often. He didn't recognize it now. He decided he was confused and, being confused, he let her go.

She didn't back away from him. Her eyes as she looked at him were clear, steady, unafraid. Her expression neither accused nor inquired; she knew what that was about and wasn't interested in hearing it explained or defended.

He was more confused than ever.

"Okay," she said finally. "That was a thing that happened."

Foxy held her stare with some effort, but couldn't control his ears. They folded back and lay low, betraying emotions he could not consciously name.

"So where the hell did that come from?" she asked, still not angry, merely sounding curious. "And where did you think it was going?"

She waited, but he didn't know what to say.

"It's all right. You're a pirate," she said at last and rolled one shoulder in a careless shrug. "You don't apologize. I won't ask you to and I won't bitch on about it. I'll make this brief. There's really just two small points I'd like to make and I want you to listen and implement them into your programming right away. You listening?

He nodded once, ears still low.

"First. Just because I kiss Bonnie doesn't mean I kiss everyone. It's not the same as a handshake. It's not even the same as a hug. Got it?"

He nodded again.

"Second." Now her jaw tightened and anger put a shine in her eyes, unfairly making her look even more beautiful as she said, "If I'm upset and you don't want to see it, change the fucking subject or, hell, tell me to leave, but don't you fucking try to kiss it better. Unless I'm sad because I haven't gotten laid in a long time, you are not going to solve any problems and it is a huge, I mean huge, fucking insult to act like all any girl needs to feel better is a good dicking." Ana had not shouted, but she paused now for a few breaths and when she spoke again, she was even quieter and a little calmer. "Now. Have you got that?"

Foxy nodded.

Ana bent down and retrieved her lantern, straightened up and looked at him, but whatever she was thinking, it stayed behind her eyes. She left without another word, which came as something of a relief, because there was not one blessed thing Foxy could have said to unmake the kiss, even if he wanted to. And he didn't. Some part of him was already coldly turning things over, turning his reluctant attention to one key element: She hadn't said no. She'd told him it wasn't a handshake and she told him it wasn't the right time, but she hadn't told him to take his damned hands off her and never to do it again.

She didn't love him, he knew that. But Foxy had been with a lot of women and when it came to love, the feeling was by no means necessary to the act. All he had to do was be the wrong man at the right time. And remember not to kiss her.