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“Probably no one,” Marla said. “It’s probably automated. I bet there’s a little model
train in Bethany’s lair, and a bit of sympathetic magic to make the big train follow the
path of the little one.”
“That would be one way to do it,” said a voice from the far end of the car, closest to the
engine. “But actually I just piggyback on the city’s electrical system and run my train
the old-fashioned way.”
Marla stood and faced the woman who’d emerged from the engine car. “Bethany, I
presume,” she said.
“And you must be Marla Mason. Trouble follows you. And, lucky me, here you are.”
12
B ethany slid the door shut behind her. She smiled, and made an odd clicking sound—
after a moment Marla realized it was the sound of Bethany tapping her teeth against the
ring in her lower lip. Bethany had no shortage of piercings, along with more extreme
body modifications. She was pale, tall, and slender, with black hair pulled back tightly
into a ponytail. Her eyes were yellow, and had horizontal slits, like a goat’s—either
she’d undergone a transplant to give herself permanent bruja eyes or she was wearing
novelty contact lenses. Short horns emerged from her forehead, just above her eyes,
wholly subcutaneous implants, probably metal, that added to her devilish appearance. A
large silver ring hung from her nose, like a bull ring, and smaller rings adorned her
eyebrows and lower lip. Her earlobes had stretchers in place, though the lobes weren’t
very big yet, merely the size of quarters. Light scarification decorated her cheeks—what
looked like Maori designs, though Marla didn’t know enough about such things to
determine their significance, if any. Bethany had brands on her bare upper arms, and a
choker of thorns was tattooed around her throat. Small metal implants—ball bearings,
horseshoe shapes, and blunt spikes—dotted her forearms and the backs of her hands.
She wore leather pants and a leather halter-top that, Marla assumed, covered other
bodily embellishments. “Come into the engine car, and we’ll talk,” Bethany said, and
Marla noticed that her tongue was split for part of its length, and that the underside was
not connected to the bottom of her mouth, which created an illusion of extraordinary
length that accentuated the forked tongue’s serpentlike quality. Bethany turned to lead
them into the engine car, revealing a crisscross of leather cords running up her back,
threaded through hooks implanted into the skin on either side of her spine.
There were magical advantages to such extreme bodily modifications, Marla knew,
especially in the realms of transformative magic. Bethany had altered her body’s
original definitions significantly, which would make it easier to shift into other forms.
Based on the design of her train, however, Marla suspected that Bethany’s principal
motivations for her bodily ornamentation were cosmetic.
“Where’s the train headed?” Marla asked, following Bethany into the engine car. This
compartment was more like a comfortable living room than a train car, with lounge
chairs, a couch, a flat-screen television, and ranks of humming black component
electronics. A small control panel with sterling fixtures stood beneath the curving front