Table of Contents
- You Blink
- How would you spend the long years in prison, inching toward Exile Day, in a future where execution has been replaced by a procedure to induce complete and permanent amnesia?
- Love Is a Verb
- Life is what happens… love is what we do when it does.
- The Gifted Sommelier
- An undead wine stewards’s job never ends, finding and serving the vintages that help the dead pass on to the other side.
- Girl, Woman, Gull, Sea
- In her dream she stands halfway across a concrete dam… Nothing can make her go back.
- Brightcheeks and Brokenhand
- Conscripted into preparing sacrificial virgins for the town’s local dragon, alchemist Din has never been a hero... until dragonslayer Cal shows up with a terrifying plan.
- A Whole Leaf, Dark and Red
- A story of loss seen from the five-year-old mind, when the wall between magic and mundane is still porous.
- In Which Archibald Wiggers Deeply Regrets His Second Trip to Manfred Mussholm’s Curio Shop in the Woods
- Archie gets more than he bargained for when he and his little pet Lola go to stock up on her favorite treats.
- In Which Liz Builds a Robot with Unexpected Results
- Liz loves to tinker with mechanical things—but her latest creation seems to have a mind of its own.
- Pathapathy
- A fleeting encounter sends a laid-back guitarist on an obsessive quest for more.
- To Save Fragile Things from the Pounding of Heavy Ages
- Beth hosts a niche science show with a modest audience. When a representative from the National Office of Truth in Media comes on board to edit scripts, ratings soar—but at what cost?
- Death Comes for Maggie McDaniel
- Love can be a hard thing when you have to hide it from the world.
- The Message Between the Words
- After a lifetime of self-imposed loneliness, a reclusive cargo pilot gets a second chance when her ship picks up a mysterious droplet.
- Time Travel Is a Voodoo Rite
- It seems all gears and gadgets and the innards of physics, but the truth is surprising.
- Putting Down Roots
- Laru’s grown up on a space station, dreaming of sunsets and unexpected rains. At last she’s been tapped for her first planetside mission.
- More Real Than Flesh
- In an augmented world where perfect beauty is the new normal, real bodies attract a certain kind of client—and Petch has paid the price long enough.
- A Puddle of Dead
- Fifteen years ago, Mia’s great love left her to chase a different high. She moved on with her life… until Henry shows up one night at her door.
⌃