"That still leaves me with around ten thousand days. That's murders happening on 0.18 percent of your life. Do you think that maybe you could have a day where there's some kind of game or gathering and people don't die?"
"That's some pretty scary dice you're rolling, Xan. Percentages mean something different when you have life and death involved. If 0.18 percent of planes crashed, you can bet that manufacturer is going out of business."
"I still think you might be able to relax once in a while," he said. "I'm betting someone dies during that LARP," she said.
• • •
Mallory had a strange, sometimes seen as cursed, ability: if a murder happened in her vicinity, she was likely to see it, or find the body, and more often than not, be the one to solve it. Unlike characters in murder series, her skills in solving murders did nothing for her social life, with possible friends or lovers quickly learning that to be around Mallory was to be around death at some point.
"Going to the convention is better than just waiting around for a murder to happen," Xan said, getting a glass of tea in her kitchen. "You say you hate it when someone dies, but that's when you go into 'super Mallory sleuth mode' and you're happier doing this than any other thing. You come alive, Mal. Then you solve it and go dormant again."
Mallory would have protested, but he wasn't wrong. "Sometimes I feel like I live in a box like a doll, and when there's a murder, I'm taken out of the box to solve it, and when we're done, I go back in."
"Remember what Phineas told you the last time he was here?" Xan asked.
Mallory laughed. "He said I was a one-tool problem. A knife can cut vegetables, fruit, meat, and string, but the cherry pitter has only one job."
"Exactly! You're the cherry pitter, Mal. What you need to do is be the knife."
"I wish he'd chosen a different metaphor, though," Mallory said. "One that doesn't remind people of murder."
Xan's brother, Phineas, was a chef and hip-hop artist, and Mallory adored him. But his observations were often awkwardly accurate.
Mallory and Xan both came to live aboard the station with special dispensation—Xan was a murder suspect and AWOL through no fault of his own, and Mallory wanted to see if living among aliens would stop the murders. And they had...so long as no humans were around.
The first time she caught a serial killer aboard the station, she realized that she had a symbiotic connection with the Sundry that was directly connected with her murder sense. She didn't cause the murders, much to her relief, but she just tended to be unconsciously drawn to places where concentrated violence was about to occur.
This knowledge didn't help anything. People still died. She still solved the cases. But she felt better knowing it wasn't her fault.
Xan poured her a glass of tea and brought it to her. "Glad you're okay. See if the Sundry will give you a watch next time you go in." He headed toward the door with a little salute.
"Hang on, you're being weird. What happened with Stephanie and Ferdinand in the bar?" Mallory asked, grabbing his T-shirt.
"Tina was coming aboard now to tell us she is coming aboard later," he said. "Apparently ruling a prison planet is too"—here he made air quotes with his hands—" 'boring.' But she's coming in her official capacity and wants to show us something 'fucking awesome.' " He grimaced. "The other Gneiss won't tell me what it is. They say by law the news has to come from Tina."
Mallory blanched. "That can't be good." Tina was a twelve-foot-tall rock alien, a Gneiss, who was queen of the prison planet Bezoar. She did not have a lot of common sense but was refreshingly self-aware about it. She was, however, powerful, headstrong, and dangerous. Through her own bizarre and illegal actions, she had changed her body from an eight-foot-tall humanoid to a being shaped more like a mech, complete with a jet pack, and her chest was hollow and served as a haven for the Cuckoos, a green subspecies of the Sundry who owed Tina a great debt. What she gained from having a hivemind alive in her chest, Mallory still didn't know. But she said she liked the company.
After about ten minutes with Tina, you learned you just had to hold on for dear life if you wanted to keep up with her.
"All right, then, I guess we can prepare for peak Tina," she said. "Thanks for coming to check on me."
"You going back in there?" he asked, pointing to the swarm that now hovered in the bedroom door.
"No, I apparently have a keynote speech to write," Mallory said. "And I'm not real sure what my topic is."
"How about how First Contact has changed the mystery genre? he asked.
She snorted. "I think I'm the only one writing books with aliens in them.
