The Reluctant Assassin Boxset

by Thomas K. Carpenter

  "She's got a point," said Zayn. "I'll try to be more honest."

  Everyone added their promises, and then Skylar added, "Since we're being honest, am I the only one with a mad crush on Instructor Pennywhistle?"

  "How could you not," said Vin, shaking his head incredulously. "But I think that's the point."

  "I'm honestly tired of marching through the Undercity," said Portia, drawing noises of agreement from the others.

  "Me too," said Zayn, "but at least we can say The Great Dildo Recovery Operation was a rousing success."

  "Rousing?" laughed Skylar. "That's a groaner."

  "Or a moaner!" added Vin.

  "You guys are all wet," said Portia with a sly grin.

  "This is hardly the time," added Zayn.

  "I can't wait to thrust myself beneath my covers," said Skylar.

  Zayn put out his hand and rocked it back and forth. "That one was passable."

  They kept the sex-related puns up until they reached the surface. By the time they made the Red Line train that would take them back to the hidden portal, it was nearly five in the morning. The four of them collapsed on a bench as the train rumbled towards their destination. Without a word, they hooked arms and leaned against each other. Though he was exhausted, he was also contented. For the first time since he'd come to the Academy, they were a team.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ninth Ward, November 2013

  What happens in the bodega stays in the bodega

  A cold and wet Atlantic wind blew in from the coast, forcing Zayn's hands into his pockets as he walked beside Instructor Allgood. The instructor had an elements charm, keeping the worst of the November weather off him, but he'd forbidden Zayn from doing the same, even though it was a spell that he actually knew.

  Before they'd left the Hold, Instructor Allgood had given him a shirt with the colors of the Jamaican flag to wear. Zayn didn't bother asking questions, since he knew the explanation would come in time, and questions only invited insults.

  When they stopped inside a bodega on a corner in the ninth ward with Bob Marley playing in the background, Zayn thought the instructor needed a bite to eat, until an old guy with graying dreads, wrinkles like deep valleys, and a full beard greeted them.

  "Larice," said Instructor Allgood with a rare spot of warmth in his voice, reaching across the cluttered counter to clasp hands. The easy manner made the instructor almost unrecognizable.

  "Carron, man, it's good to see you," said Larice in a heavy Jamaican accent. He looked past the instructor with his clouded eyes. "Ya, man. You the new kid? He's a good lookin' boy. He make a fine helper. What's your name?"

  "Zayn."

  Larice winked at Instructor Allgood, who was staring intently. "No, man. What's your name?"

  "Zayn," he said, but this time with the Jamaican accent he'd been practicing for weeks.

  "Wah bout yuh patwah?" asked Larice.

  "It like mi did baan inna Kingston," replied Zayn.

  "Good man," said Larice. "He have that Kingston vibe. You be my brother's son who live in Kingston. I give you the family tree later."

  Instructor Allgood put his hand on Zayn's shoulder. It felt like a bear had leaned on him. "Listen to Larice. No magic. Keep your eyes and ears open, you got it?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Instructor Allgood wrinkled his nose.

  "I mean, ya man."

  "Better. Don't forget, eyes and ears."

  He left, leaving Zayn with his "Uncle" Larice, who showed him the ins and outs of the store. The bodega was smaller than his group room back in the Hold, packed with shelves with barely enough room between to move.

  A woman with greenish-blue hair in a messy Mohawk entered not long after they'd settled behind the counter. She wore a white lab coat over a Garbage Kings T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. She had a cute face with a button nose, and a frenetic energy about her, as if she'd never stopped moving in her life.

  "Hey, Katie. How you be doin' today?" asked Larice.

  "Excellent, Larice. Excellent. We got a gig at the High Dragon, most def, most def," she said, sharing a complicated handshake with Larice. "Who's your boy?"

  "This is Zayn, he's my brother's boy from Kingston," said Larice. "And this is Katie Crescent."

  Katie reached across for a fist bump, which he returned. "Irie."

  "So what'dya come here for?" asked Katie as she was tapping her fingers on the counter in an up-tempo rhythm.

  Zayn's mouth went dry. They hadn't talked about his back story yet, but the words came easily. "A bit of trouble back home, so my dad sent me here."

  "Sorry to hear, but I know your Uncle Larice could use the help," she said, then her face brightened like a supernova. "Hey! You should come see us play at the High Dragon. We're totally gonna rock it."

  "Katie's the drummer for her band," said Larice.

  She tugged on her white coat. "Lab tech by day, rock god by night. Or at least, wannabe rock god. Our band is pretty new."

  "What kind?" asked Zayn.

  "Retro jazz-hop," she said. "We're called the Sticky Wickets. Our lyricist is sick. So you in?"

  Buoyed by her enthusiasm, Zayn nearly said yes. "Sorry, man. I'm not even twenty-one, and I promised my da that I'd stay out of trouble. Respect."

  "That's cool. Oh shit, I've got to get to practice. Hamal hates it when I'm late," said Katie as she ran out of the bodega without buying anything, throwing a "Bye!" over her shoulder as she left like an unruly but cute whirlwind.

  Uncle Larice let him run the counter for an hour, introducing him to the locals, giving him their backstory in between.

  "Okay, man. I gotta go. You do alright. I'll be back at five after my treatments." He snapped his fingers. "One thing, there's an orange tabby that likes to wander into the store. Don't let him in, he's trouble that one."

  Uncle Larice gave him a shoulder-hug before disappearing out the front.

  The weather turned wet, and customers came rushing in. He sold a lot of cold medicine and lotto tickets.

  By the afternoon, he had the hang of the cash register and his back story, since anyone that was a local stayed and chatted, forcing him to repeat it. The bodega served a mix of neighborhoods. There were some expensive flats north of the bodega. He met an older well-dressed black woman who worked nearby that lived in one with her wife. A couple of rent-controlled apartments to the south contained a lot of families, while lower-cost flats to the east tended to have young professionals and artists like Katie. On the west side was an office building for D'Agastine-branded products. The side of the brick building had a giant mural of Celesse D'Agastine with a giant alien moon behind her. Zayn didn't know much about the Hundred Halls, but even he knew who Celesse D'Agastine, the patron of the Alchemists Hall, was.

  When the sun came out, his customers dried up. Zayn was resting his chin in his hands with his elbows on the counter when he heard the bell on the door rattle, but the door didn't fully open. When he didn't see anyone in the bodega, he let his eyes drift closed.

  His eyes flashed open when he heard the soft click of cardboard tumbling together. He looked over the counter, examining the aisles, but found no one in the store.

  "Hello? Anyone here, man?"

  Zayn heard a crunching sound, directly on the other side of the counter. He leaned all the way over, looking straight down at a large orange tabby cat with little raccoon-like hands gobbling down a chocolate bar. The area in front of the counter was littered with wrappers.

  The tabby turned its head until its green eyes were staring up into Zayn's face. Its eyes went wide, then it darted towards the door, somehow slipping its fingers beneath the bottom and pulling it open enough to squeeze out before Zayn could reach it.

  He got outside in time to see the tabby scurrying across the street, weaving into the pedestrian traffic on the other side. A half-hearted, "man," slipped out before he returned inside to survey the damage.

  He was scooping up the wrappers, there had to be at least twenty, when
the bell clattered behind him, and he heard, "Dammit, man, I told you not to let the tabby in the store."

  Zayn's stomach sunk three feet. Uncle Larice was standing behind him with his hands on his hips.

  "I'm sorry," said Zayn. "I didn't see it come in, and how does a cat have hands?"

  Uncle Larice used the counter to crouch down with him, helping him collect the wrappers. "Must be fifty dollars of sales lost, right here, man. You got to keep your eyes open. Were you sleepin'?" He gave a soul-worn sigh. "I'll let this one go and not tell Carron, but that's it. No more mistakes. And yeah, man, the cat have hands because it not a cat, it's a callolo."

  "What's a callolo?"

  "A right bastard is what it is, that's all I know," said Larice, shaking his head. "You best ask Carron. Anyway, now you know. You can head back now, I take over from here."

  On the way back, Zayn mulled over the encounter with the callolo and how he could have done better. He was cutting through a street construction area with orange cones, passing a closed deli, when he heard a strange noise from across the street, behind a scrap trailer piled with old concrete.

  A guy in sweatpants and a ratty black T-shirt was holding his chest as if he were having a heart attack. He was sweaty and shaking. His bright red forehead looked like he was a volcano about to erupt.

  "Are you okay, man?" asked Zayn, stepping off the curb.

  "I'm alive. I'm alive," he said feverishly.

  "You don't look so good."

  The guy held a hand before his face as if he were seeing it for the first time. Then the skin on his hand turned crystalline, the many facets catching the sunlight and gleaming like the crown jewels.

  "Ha! See," said the man breathlessly.

  "That's a nice trick, but you still don't look so good," said Zayn. "You should get to a hospital. I'd bet this city has a good one."

  Zayn checked the street. He was the only other person on it.

  "I can do this," said the guy as he held both his arms before his face, straining as if he were trying to pass a kidney stone.

  Zayn took a few more steps, deciding whether or not the guy was dangerous. Before he could make his final decision, the crystalline substance that had transformed the man's hand spread to both his arms.

  "I did it!"

  But the crystalline skin didn't stop spreading, and the man's face quickly turned to horror as it moved to his chest and down his torso, taking over his legs and even the clothes around him. As it went up his neck and transformed his head, he mouthed the word, "Help," before his mouth was swallowed by it.

  The crystalline man staggered on his feet, unbalanced by his newfound weight. He took a step off the curb and plummeted forward.

  Zayn moved to catch him, but he fell too fast. The crystalline man shattered into a million tiny pieces as he hit the concrete.

  Zayn stood amidst the dust. What just happened?

  Moments later, a taxi came flying up the street, and Zayn hurried back to the sidewalk. The speeding vehicle swirled the dust, turning the air glittery. It took him a bit to regain his senses. There was no one on the street to share his experience with, and it seemed so incredible and horrifying that he wasn't sure he'd tell anyone either.

  Before he'd come to the city of sorcery, he'd heard wild tales that he hadn't believed, but after watching a man turn to crystal and explode into dust, he recalibrated those stories in his head. Zayn checked the street for passing cars, then headed back towards the Academy.

  Chapter Twelve

  Twelfth Ward, November 2013

  What if 4H Club educated assassins?

  For the first three months of their education, they'd been taught exclusively by Instructors Allgood and Pennywhistle, and the majority of the classes had been with the former. While Zayn had come to enjoy their yin-yang personalities, it'd also grown a little stale being screamed at, and then politely lectured, by the same two people. It was like waking up in an ice cave, then wandering out into the desert, only to get shoved back into the cold each night.

  When they learned that the day's lessons would be taught by Instructor O'Keefe, there was general excitement among the first years. They'd traveled to another location in the city on the Blue Line, arriving at an empty factory with the windows blocked off and cleared of equipment.

  They were told that O'Keefe taught the upperclassman, was one of Priyanka's longest serving instructors, and could be quite peculiar.

  The cluster of first years stood in the back of the empty factory, on smooth concrete that bore scorch marks further out. A series of tables with coverings on them waited to their left. The place had a chemical smell like formaldehyde, and it made his nose burn a little when he inhaled too deeply.

  "Anyone heard anything about O'Keefe?" asked Skylar.

  "Not a word," said Zayn, looking around the empty factory. "If those tables weren't over there, I'd think we were in the wrong place."

  "Maybe she's going to teach us how to take a nap," said Vin, raising his arms in a stretch. "I can't remember the last time I slept more than three hours."

  "I like it when you sleep less," said Portia, playfully punching Vin in the arm. "Because you snore like two chupacabras having sex."

  Vin turned immediately. "You've heard a chupa—"

  An explosion at the center of the factory, like a miniature supernova, startled them into silence. Zayn was used to flashy spells, and even the Five Elements could make grand gestures, but this was a raw, primal display of magic that he felt in his gut.

  A woman's thick Scottish accent cut through the silence as the black smoke at the center of the factory rolled towards the high ceiling.

  "I hope I got your attention there. Nothing like a good explosion to wake you up and wet my panties."

  The class turned to find a woman with steel-gray hair bound into a long braid that hung over her shoulder. She looked like an older, wiser version of Lara Croft in a tank top and cargo shorts.

  Instructor O'Keefe walked right up to Vin, who was her same height, poked him in the chest with her finger, and said, "You're a fine slab of meat that in my youth I might have torn into like a pride of lions."

  Vin looked more stunned by her comment than he had by the explosion. He stammered out a collection of syllables that barely resembled a word.

  Instructor O'Keefe moved back to the front of the class and held her hand up. "If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm Instructor O'Keefe. I'm in charge of giving you the right tools to survive your future missions, assuming you survive that right bastard Carron's maltreatment."

  She gave them a big wink, eliciting laughter from the group. Zayn found himself liking her right away.

  "First I'm gonna show you a few things, give you an idea of what yer capable of. And if you survive yer first few years and join me in class, you'll get to learn more. Alright now, who's the resident arsehole of this here class?"

  Before even a word could be spoken, someone shoved Eddie forward. He stumbled next to Instructor O'Keefe, who had him by inches and pounds. She put a hand on his shoulder.

  "Nice to meet you..."

  "Eddie. I, uhm, nice to meet you," he replied.

  She winked at the class. "You won't be saying that for very long. You're going to help me demonstrate what's possible in this Hall."

  Eddie swallowed as he glanced back at the place where the explosion had happened minutes before. He looked like he was going to be sick.

  "So Carron has been drilling it into your wee heads that you've got to be ready, got to be prepared for anything. I'm sure you've been up late cramming with your papers, trying to eat it all like a python with a puppy." Everyone made an "eww" noise. "But you can't be prepared for everything, and spells take time, time you may not have. So Priyanka wants me to show you a few things, little tricks."

  Instructor O'Keefe wandered over to a table and yanked its covering off with the flair of a magician, revealing a scattering of items that Zayn couldn't make out from the back of the class. But he didn't have
to wait long, as Instructor O'Keefe grabbed a bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses. With the bottle cradled in her arm, she brought them back to Eddie, gave the shot glasses to him, and poured two generous shots of amber liquid.

  She clinked her glass against his, spilling whiskey on her fingers, and lifted it in salute. Eddie looked at it suspiciously.

  "Trust me, kid. This is to loosen you up, you're tighter than a pair of gym shorts." She threw the whiskey into the back of her throat, shoved the glass into a pocket on her shorts, and proceeded to lick her fingers while she waited for Eddie to drink his shot.

  Reluctantly, Eddie took a tentative sip, then shook his head slightly before finishing the shot.

  "That wasn't so bad, was it?" she asked, taking the shot glass from him and putting it in the other side of her cargo shorts.

  "No," said Eddie.

  "Good," said Instructor O'Keefe, smiling like a cat who'd just convinced a family of mice to join it for dinner. "One of the ways you can bypass a target's defenses is to enchant something that they drink or eat. But"—she held up the bottle of whiskey—"a worthy target will have their food or drink tested. This whiskey is as it looks, just whiskey."

  She wandered back to the table, set the bottle down. Then pulled the shot glasses from her pockets.

  "But these, specifically this one," she said, holding up the glass that Eddie had drank from, "is enchanted to imbue whatever liquid is placed within with a mild suggestive." She looked to Eddie, whose forehead was tightening with increased concern. "Eddie, would you please demonstrate what a chicken does in its yard."

  Eddie's expression turned to horror with the realization that he was going to follow her command. He held his elbows out at his side, crouched a bit, and started moving his head back and forth on his neck.

  "Cluck, cluck, cluck," said Eddie, looking like a man trapped in his own body.

  Laughter exploded from the class, growing louder as Eddie visibly fought with the compulsion. It lasted for about a minute, then he was finally able to get control of himself.