by Vance, Ramy
“I just don’t know,” I finally said. “Could be nothing, or she could come after you with the full brunt of her evil—”
“ness?”
“Yeah, that. Look, I’m not sorry I got angry, but I am sorry I put you in harm’s way. I thought it would be OK, and clearly it—”
“Was OK. Nothing happened.” He patted himself down. “See, no holes. I’m fine.”
“Maybe. I … I need time to think,” I said. “I’m going to walk home alone.”
His eyes flickered with pain. Oh Justin, he never could hide what he was feeling. He’d be a terrible poker player.
“I’m fine. We’re fine. I just need to think. You get that, don’t you?”
He paused and nodded.
“OK, I’ll see you tonight,” I said as I started to walk away. “And no going back into the museum.”
Justin shuddered. “Not for all the tea in China—whatever that means.”
“Actually, it’s an expression from—” Cutting off my own geekery, I shook my head. “I’ll see you later.”
And with that, I made my way back to Gardner Hall, trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together as I did.
↔
The world is quite beautiful after a snowfall. Everything covered in white, fresh snow crunching beneath your feet. The air smells clean, as if all the smells of exhaust and dirt and people have been frozen under the blanket of newly fallen crystal fractals.
But that’s only after a fresh fall. As soon as the city wakes up, starts packing the snow beneath its boots and wheels and snow plows, Montreal’s dusting of serene white becomes a blanket of every shade of gray and black and guck that exists between white and black.
Since it hadn’t snowed in a few days, Montreal was practically a brown paper bag that day I walked up the hill to think about my boyfriend and the hag dybbuk.
Going to the museum with him was stupid. He wasn’t ready, but he was so keen to join the good fight, I thought I’d give him a taste of what the good fight really looked like.
And oh-so-smart, always-thinking-ahead me thought that “taste” should come in the form of this dybbuk—one of the oldest and most evil spirits I’d ever had the displeasure of knowing (of course, when I was a vampire, I would have substituted “displeasure” with “ecstatic joy”).
With everything going on with the superheroes and their absolute lack of aging—something that shouldn’t have been possible; in the GoneGod World, magic always costs time—I had a theory that magic might be limited, but curses might not.
The dybbuk was cursed to live in the box until the end of the world. In theory, that meant she would outlive us all. If, that was, the curse still held.
And I think it did.
My first indicator had come when the dybbuk hadn’t tried to shake the salt off the edges of the box. That meant she was still stuck in there. And what was more, the fact that she hadn’t aged despite using her magic meant her powers fell outside the rules of magic.
Actually, I didn’t think she was using magic at all, but rather, her evil was being fueled by the curse itself. In order to understand her better, I needed to remember her curse in its entirety. Luckily for my eye-fatigued reading habit, I have a damn near photographic memory and this dybbuk’s curse was something I already knew.
She was a chaos spirit, put on Earth to lead humans into evil. To—and I quote: “Infect their hearts with the desire to sin.” But at the turn of the century, she was captured by a group of rabbis who confined her to a box. There she would live until this world was no more.
But despite the gods leaving, this world ticked on. It still was, so the fine print of her curse remained. She would live until this planet literally blew up.
I doubted the rabbis understood what they had done, thinking that by using the words “world no more” they would be confining her forever. But they had also granted her the power to live forever.
And so she lived in her box, only able to harm those in close proximity. There was more to her curse—much more—but for now, that was all I needed to know. The truly cursed could not die, even in the GoneGod World.
Since magic meant trading time (or life) for power, it also meant that whatever—or whoever—was causing all these superheroes to fly around and use massive amounts of power did so without fear of burning so much time that they would literally turn to dust.
And putting two and two together (something I’m so adept at doing), I needed only to find a cursed Other to figure out who was responsible for all this.
Within ten seconds of walking into Gardner Hall, I saw an acheri, a troll, a yeti, an adze and a faun. I’d have to research each and every one of their backgrounds to see if they were cursed or not.
But I also saw someone else who might offer me a clue or shortcut for figuring this out.
Underdawg.
Up, up and away.
↔
Underdawg no longer wore his red costume or cape, but instead an old t-shirt with Voltron on it, shorts and an icepack he held to his head. He was watching TV from the couch in the common room, nursing what I could only imagine was one hell of a hangover.
I walked over and plopped myself in the chair next to him. With what I hoped was an inviting smile, I said, “Remember me?”
He looked over and groaned. “Listen, if I said or did anything last night to offend you, I am so, so sorry. I’ll never drink again. I swear.”
“No, nothing like that. Cassy and I helped you to your room, that’s all.”
“Oh. Ahh … thanks.”
“Nae bother,” I said. He gave me a curious look and I added, “No worries. It’s Scottish for … I’m Scottish.”
And as smooth as silk, I thought—in my head.
“OK. Thanks.” He turned back to the TV.
I touched his arm, a move that has gotten the attention of many an admirer. Underdawg—or rather, Boggie—didn’t look at me. Either he was having the worst headache imaginable or his nerves were numbed to the point where he couldn’t feel my hand.
The thought that he wasn’t interested didn’t cross my mind. Honest.
I squeezed his arm. “You know, last night you said some pretty crazy stuff.”
“I did?” He was still looking at the TV. “Like what?”
“You said you could fly and had super strength and—” I didn’t need to finish my thought because his eyes betrayed him.
He sat quiet for a long second. “I was drunk.”
“Just drunk?”
“OK, drunk and a bit stoned.”
“I’d say.” I smiled and gave him a wink. “What happened last night?”
“Ahh, nothing. Just a wild night, that’s all.”
I could tell he was hiding something when he turned his body away from me. But it was more than a secret … he was scared.
“Listen—Boggie, right?”
He nodded.
“If something is going on, you can tell me.”
“Nothing’s going on.”
He was getting defensive, and I could tell that unless I said something he’d get up and walk away. I’d been in the confiding zone with people hundreds of times over my long, long life, and I knew enough of how this all would go down to know I had one chance to get him to open up.
If he walked away now, he’d put me into the non-confiding zone and never let me in. Well, not without torture.
I had to break through, and the quickest way to get someone to open up is by telling them a secret of your own.
I grabbed his hand. “And you were super strong. And dressed like Underdog.” I touched his palm and whispered, “Sorry, I mean Underdawg, as in d-a-w-g.”
I was taking a risk by admitting I had been out in the forest, but it was a risk I had to take. The superhero problem was already out of hand, and these guys still didn’t know what they were truly capable of. It was only a matter of time before they started doing other, more nefarious acts that would probably involve tearing up banks, kidnapping the pre
sident’s daughter or worse.
But that wasn’t what I was really worried about. There were rumors that the fighting between Others and humans was getting worse. Much worse. Here in Montreal things were pretty tame—so tame that this city was a safe haven for Others and one of the few places on Earth where the multitude of species got along.
Human authorities were already blaming Others for the superhero outbreak. The last thing this world needed was an incident created by some stupid teenager with superpowers being pinned on Others and used as an excuse for further persecution of an already villainized group.
Just when I thought Boggie’s eyes couldn’t widen any more, they opened so wide I thought his eyeballs would fall out. “You were there.”
I put a finger on the dale of my upper lip. “Shush. I won’t tell if you don’t.”
“What’s there to tell?”
“Oh, come now. How you—Boggie, a seemingly normal kid—have superpowers, for one?”
“Look who’s talking.”
“I don’t have superpowers—I just have a mask, a dirk and a desire to throw myself in harm’s way. But you … you can fly. How?”
“I … I don’t know. I was hanging out with Cassy, showing her some old reruns of Underdog. We were laughing about how cool it would be to have superpowers and stuff and ...” He stopped, looking around.
“And?”
“You know how in Underdog he takes this pill to get strong and all?” he whispered. “Well, we were discussing what kind of pill I’d take to gain my powers, and we decided that it would be … you know.” He made the universal gesture for toking.
“Ahh. You into the reefer, mon,” I said in my best Jamaican accent.
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Go on,” I said, lamenting how funny the elves found me, but how humans just didn’t seem to get my sense of humor.
“So … and you’ve got to keep this between us.”
“Hey, there are literally three people who know about my extracurricular activities—four, including you. I’m trusting you with my biggest secret, so …” I gestured for him to go on.
“So yeah,” he said, nervous. “OK. Cassy—and you’ve got to remember we were both really stoned—she starts crying and saying something I couldn’t understand. She had this really worried look on her face, like she was in pain but needed to tell me something really important.
“I tried to make her feel better—you know, comfort her.”
“I’m sure you did.” I winked.
“No, nothing like that.” He shook his head, and then cringed in hungover pain. “I mean, Cassy is gorgeous. But she’s a friend and she was really upset. The last time I saw someone so miserable was when my best friend’s dad died. He cried and I knew there was nothing in the world I could do or say that would make things better. Not that I didn’t try … with him, and with Cassy.
“But that was the kind of upset she was. I would never use that kind of misery to take advantage of anyone.”
I could tell he was serious. Boggie, for all his own extracurricular activities, was a really good guy. “OK, sorry. I didn’t mean it that way,” I said. “What was she upset about?”
“I have no idea. She kept saying something over and over again, but every time I tried to catch it, it was muffled by her tears or something would happen that drowned out her words.”
“What do you mean?” I said, leaning in close. “Be specific.”
“I don’t know,” he said, thinking back to last night. “Like when she was about to tell me what upset her, my phone’s alarm rang, but when I looked at it, I hadn’t set it to ring. Or one time she started telling me and my coat rack broke.”
“And you couldn’t hear her because your coats fell?”
“It didn’t just break—it shattered. Loudly.” He made an exploding gesture with his hands.
“Ahh, I see,” I said, not really seeing at all.
“After a while I gave up trying to figure out why she was upset and tried to comfort her. And before you make some crude joke … again, not that way. I made a joke. Something along the lines of if I was Underdog I’d carry her up, up and away, and—”
“Boggie,” a voice said, out of breath, “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
We both looked back to see Cassy walking into the common room and toward us in a huff.
And just when things were starting to make sense, I thought.
“What makes sense?” they both said in unison.
Me and my out-loudness. One day it’ll get me killed.
I Can’t Hear You … Let’s Go for a Walk
Cassy sat between us, which was no small feat given I had been basically holding Boggie’s hand in my let’s talk way.
“Boggie,” she said, “how are you feeling? Your head must be rattling like the bells of Pompeii when the volcano erupted.”
“Interesting reference,” I said, narrowing my eyes.
“We watched the movie together. You know, the one with Jon Snow in it.”
“Oh, I know Jon Snow well, I do,” I said in a tone a bit too creepy for my liking.
I know Jon Snow, I shuddered to myself (thankfully in my head). What’s wrong with me?
Being around Cassy threw me off, and it wasn’t just her beauty. Something else about her sent my internal compass spinning, and I didn’t know what.
“So,” Cassy said, “what are you two talking about? You mentioned that something made sense. What was it?”
“Ahh …” I stuttered, looking for a lie.
But before I could come up with one, Boggie sighed. “She knows.”
“Does she?” Cassy said, her face draining of any hint that we were friends. I’ve seen that look on mountain lions just before they attacked me (and yes, that’s happened to me more than once. Such is my life).
“I do.” I nodded. “But I don’t know why or how.” The words jumped out of me and I immediately regretted them, throwing my hand up in the air like I was trying to catch them before they reached her ears.
“One more thing,” Boggie said. “She’s the girl in the cherub mask.”
“Is she?” Cassy said. I saw her ball her hands into fists.
“Boggie!” I cried out. “That’s our little secret.”
“I know, I know,” he said in a defensive tone. “But I can’t help it.” Those last words were said as a meaningless defense, as if he was merely stating the truth.
Then it hit me. He’d said it that way exactly for that reason: he really couldn’t help it.
And neither could I.
“Cassy,” I said, “I think we need to go for a walk.”
↔
“So what are you?” she asked.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” I said, resisting the urge to blurt out exactly who and what I was. I could sense myself being compelled to answer her question, but over three hundred years of sorcerers and mages and overpowered Others wishing to use my vampiric ass for their nefarious purposes, I had built a resistance to psionic magic.
I shook my head. “Your spell won’t work on me. Not now that I’ve become aware of it.”
“Spell? I’m not casting a spell,” she said, still in step with me.
I was leading her down the hill and toward campus. I might not have been able to understand who and what Cassy was, but I knew someone who would.
“Really?” I said. “You’re not using a little bit of psionic magic to get me to open up?”
“No.”
Her response was telling. The mere fact that she hadn’t raised a curious or confused eyebrow at the words “psionic” and “magic” told me she was more than just a girl with silver hair.
“I can feel the truth desperately wanting to wiggle its way out of me and into your ears.”
Cassy shrugged. “It is just my way.”
“Your way? What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” Cassy said, turning away and looking down the path.
“OK,” I said, steppin
g in front of her. “Let’s play a round of Twenty Questions. Only the truth. Deal?” I stuck out my hand.
Cassy looked at my hand for a long second before nodding. “Deal.” But instead of shaking my hand, she grabbed my wrist.
It had been a long time since anyone had done that to me. Two hundred years and change … but I remembered exactly what it meant. It was the old way of shaking hands between two knights or noble warriors. It meant that whatever palaver was to take place, it would be done in peace.
I grabbed her wrist back and gave it a firm shake.
↔
“Question one: How old are you?” I asked.
“Roughly three thousand, two hundred and thirty four years old,” she said. “Question two: You?”
My jaw dropped, and it took me a full three seconds before I could respond. “Three hundred years and change.”
“Funny how we get less and less accurate about our age as the years go on.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, “funny. Question three: Are you human?”
“Half,” she said. “My Other side is more touch than parentage.”
Touch, another ancient word. In the old days, when an Other touched you, they gave you a bit of their magic. It was a literal transfer of their essence into you.
She looked at me with a curious eye. “So you understand?”
I nodded.
“Then your question four should be: Who touched me?”
We both giggled. Hey, we might have been ancient beings, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t giggle at double entendres.
“OK, who touched you?”
“Calliope and Leigia.”
“Holy shit!” I said. “A muse and a siren.”
She nodded. “Yeah, you could say they’re my fairy godparents.”
“Question six: Do you still see them?”
Her gaze went distant. “Calliope, yes. But Leigia drowned when they left.”
“Yeah, I heard the sirens all drowned on the day of the GrandExodus. But I thought that was just a rumor.”