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- How would you spend the long years in prison, inching toward Exile Day, in a future where execution has been replaced by a procedure to induce complete and permanent amnesia?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 sommelier’s job never ends, finding and serving the vintages that help the dead pass on to the other side. But one mystery eludes him: the identity of the proprietor of the hotel of the dead. Can he help her find peace after centuries in purgatory?
- 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, Din the alchemist has never been much of a hero. But when Cal the aspiring dragonslayer shows up with a harebrained scheme to infiltrate the dragon’s lair, he may not have a choice.
- 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 (part of the president’s War on Misinformation) comes on board to help edit scripts, ratings soar. But she soon realizes this help isn’t what it seems, and might just have devastating consequences for her own family and the country.
- 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.
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