New York: Allie's War, Early Years

***

Riding down Divisadero towards my mom's, I leaned against the cab's window as it paused at a red light. I'd been spacing out when I realized I was staring at someone-a heart-shaped face framed with stiff, dyed braids that came off her head like a white and orange headdress. I read the name of the fetish bar on the marquee behind her, and realized abruptly what she must be. I'd heard about the place opening up, but hadn't been by to see it like everyone else. It just felt weird to me, gawking at them, like they were animals.

The woman's opaque blue eyes drank me in without apology or fear. Her hands rested on her hips over a white lace body suit.

I receded into the cab's seat so I would be less visible.

I caught the cabbie watching me in the rearview mirror and blushed.

"Yeah," he commented flatly. "They got a few of them now."

"I know...just forgot."

He didn't seem to hear me, or care maybe. "They just keep bringing more of them over here," he said. "Like we need our own damned glow-eye army. Fucking animals. I don't trust 'em...collared or not." He glanced at me in the mirror. Looking over my tangled hair and hastily applied makeup, he smiled. Maybe he thought the dishevelment was deliberate.

"You seen one before, honey?" he said.

"Yeah." I glanced out surreptitiously, but the seer was no longer looking at me. Smiling seductively at a man on the street, she touched his arm as he passed. The man jerked away as if burnt, glaring at her.

The seer laughed, but I saw her eyes turn cold, predatory.

"Really?" the cabbie said. "Where?"

"At the Coliseum. With my dad." I couldn't take my eyes off the seer. "On the street too, you know. Downtown."

The man nodded, absently. He'd already lost interest.

I ventured, "They're allowed to just walk around like that? What if she, you know...hurts someone?"

The cabbie pointed, tapping his window. "See that collar?"

I followed his finger to the circle of brushed metal around the female's neck. Finger-width, it had no markings I could see other than the pulsing blue light at the base when she turned her head.

Feeling the cabbie watching me, I nodded.

He said, "They're coded to the owner, see? They can't do nothing with that on...blinds 'em. They take it off when they're, ah...you know, working."

I nodded again.

I knew about the collars, of course. I hadn't actually meant that, when I'd been asking about her being outside...I'd more been wondering why she was on the street without her owner. Most of the seers I'd seen had some kind of human chaperone with them; I'd assumed it was for a reason. Not like I enjoyed seeing the whole seer-human dynamic. But I supposed I had to get used to it, since seers were getting to be so common in the city.