“In now. In the here. You should be old. You should be dead. What are you?” He took another step back and missed the doorway he’d walked through when he’d entered the gazebo. He bumped into the gazebo railing behind him.
The street was empty, the shops quiet, the air growing heavy with the rising heat of the day.
It seemed normal. It all seemed right. But there was something off about this, and something very off about him.
“We’re just going about our business. You should too,” I said. “Move along, stranger.” I took a step, and he knocked his heel into the half wall, having somehow forgotten the railing behind him.
“She ran a bakery,” he blurted, pointing his cup at Lula. “You worked odd jobs until she hired you. You were going to get married. Did that ever happen? Did you actually marry or did something happen that day? I seem to remember something happened.”
Lu and I both went still. He was talking about our past, about our lives, like he’d been there.
“I asked nice,” I said. “Now I’m not going to ask nice.” I made a fist, and the satisfying sound of my knuckles cracking sent a sheet of sweat across the man’s pasty face.
“Who are you?” Lu asked, before I could get to swinging.
“I told you. Matthew Davis. Years ago, I was a banker. I worked for the bank. Worked my way up. Your father took out his first business loan with our establishment. You came by and asked for a loan once—”
“And you said no,” she replied.
I wouldn’t say she relaxed. There was a wariness Lu carried with her now, refreshed with every breath she took. The world was a dangerous place for monsters like her. For monsters like me.
For monsters like him. Because this guy was too old in years and too young in face to be human.
Pasty and panicked in his nice suit, carrying a trombone of all things, he could be a monster hunter.
“Still don’t recall your name,” I said.
“Mad Mat,” Lu said.
That name, I remembered.
He gave a sharp, startled smile. “I haven’t heard that name in…well, in a lifetime.”
“Or two,” I said. I didn’t want to believe her, didn’t want to believe him. But if Lu was right, and this chump wasn’t trying to play us as rubes, then we had another problem on our hands.
Mad Mat Davis, back when he had been human, had also been a snake in the grass, a real nasty piece of work.
“You remember, though. You remember me?” he asked.
“Sure, pal,” I said. “Whatever you say.”
His smile cracked, and through it bled a burning darkness that was felt, not seen. God power. Some time in his long life, he’d been touched by a god, marked. He may not even know it had happened. Many mortals were blessed, or cursed.
But just as quickly as I saw, or rather, felt the shock of what lingered behind his façade, it was gone.
He once again looked like a bookish, or maybe a banker-ish man, who was just as surprised as we were to stumble head-first into his impossible past.
“I, well, I remember both of you. And here you are. Alive. After all these years. May I…can I sit with you? Even if it’s just for a short time?”
There was a bench next to him, which would put him across the gazebo from us. Lula nodded toward it, and he lowered down. She settled back onto our bench while I remained on my feet.
Abbi, who had been quiet all this time, clambered up to stand on the bench next to Lula.
“Oh,” Mad Mat said. “Hello, little girl. You shouldn’t stand on that. You might fall and damage yourself.”
Abbi pursed her lips and squinted. “I see better from up high.”
Of course she did. She was used to looking down at people from the moon.
