Caster

by Elsie Chapman

  This makes something in my stomach flutter, and I slow down, unsure of what to think.

  The second reason I notice Baseball Cap is because he’s a cop. He thinks the silver armband is hidden beneath his sleeve, but he’s oblivious about the breeze.

  This makes my mouth go dry.

  Why would a cop be watching Rudy’s place? Sure, businesses in the Tobacco Sector have been known to be fronts, putting up a facade to sell all kinds of illegal items out their back doors.

  But Rudy’s legit, always sure to renew his licenses on time. And his formulas—his nonmagic ones, that is, the ones that stand in for the full magic formulas he actually sells—all meet grade. He’s careful mostly because he’s a full magic caster and he knows how to avoid getting noticed by suits of any kind. He knows how to get around the law.

  Like with Shire—Rudy was the one who called in her death. He knew a sleazy medical examiner willing to be bribed to falsify a medical report that made sure not to include anything about her casting magic—only reporting her death as due to an accidental high fall.

  Rudy still hasn’t told me which spell—or spells—she’d been attempting to cast from up there. I still don’t know the actual physical reason why she died. I don’t know how much pain she must have been in, or if she died before it could even fully hit her.

  Why were you even there, Rudy? She always sold magic alone. It was the middle of the night! Who would buy magic in the middle of the night? On top of a building?

  Fresh anger builds in my throat, while a huge wave of missing my sister brings tears to the backs of my eyes. Rudy has no right to keep any of this from me. And Shire—she should have known better.

  Shire, why would you try casting more magic than you could control? Why would you chance something like that when I was always right there, wanting to help?

  Something else hits me then, and it twists my stomach into a huge knot.

  The year anniversary of Shire’s death is nearly here. If that guy is a cop and he’s here to ask Rudy about Shire, how long before that cop’s coming to my parents to talk to them? Cops hate having a case on their books for more than a year, and the pressure goes up to solve them. Many innocents have gone down just so some Scout can clear an unsolved case.

  How much would my parents be forced to bend before they’d break and give away the truth about what Shire was doing? How long before they give away me and my full magic?

  My heart’s thudding hard as I force myself to walk past Baseball Cap’s line of vision and into the shop.

  Inside, I lean back against a wall, taking off my smog mask and folding it back into my pocket. I breathe deep to calm down so I can tell Rudy about the cop without freaking out. I glance around, searching for him.

  It’s the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, and the apothecary has just a few customers. Here the smoke scent of the sector lifts completely and another deep breath brings ginseng and eucalyptus to my nose, cinnamon and mint and honey. Shining amber bottles line floor-to-ceiling shelves. The air is tinged with a haze, the perpetual vapors and mists from Rudy’s mixing and concocting that never seem to dissipate entirely. The place reminds of another time, an easier and mellower era in the past—maybe it’s a time when full magic and casters like Rudy and me weren’t quite so feared.

  As a person who likes helping to heal people, he’s not the greatest at separating his full magic from his store stock. Even hurting from making the good stuff doesn’t stop him. His effective medications are definitely why his shop isn’t wanting for customers. They’re why his customers are so loyal to a lot of his remedies.

  I’d tell him he should be more careful, but Rudy wouldn’t listen to me. Only Shire being gone keeps him from barring me from his apothecary altogether. I’ve made a point to come in at random times so he can never figure out how to avoid me.

  But I’ll tell him about the cop outside. Because now that I’m here seeing his customers, maybe it’s not that surprising that the cop is watching Rudy. All these years he’s run this apothecary, doctoring up some of his medications with full magic and selling them as typical ones—maybe he’s finally caught.

  I wait for him to finish serving the last customer at the counter and then walk up.

  “Rudy, there’s something I have to—”

  He cuts me off with a tired, heavy sigh, not looking up from a pad of paper he’s scribbling on. He’s older, in his forties, maybe even in his fifties. His black hair is going gray, and all his clothing always seems a size too big. His starter bag is slung around his waist, and the words START ME UP! are printed across it.

  “Aza, I’m busy. Can we do this another time?”

  I fight back a spurt of irritation. “No, because there’s a cop outside and he’s watching the shop.”

  Rudy stops scribbling and looks up sharply at me. “What did you say?”

  He shoves his white-framed glasses higher on his nose. He’s nearsighted but has never used his magic to fix the condition. Instead he likes to collect different-style frames, the way some people collect purses or shoes. From behind the glasses his gaze is startled, shaken.

  I only really know Rudy as brusque, and reluctant, and borderline rude. Except for that one terrible night when he was in tears.

  Closer up gives away how his eyes are bloodshot, how the bags directly underneath them are purple. His skin is more sallow than gold, and his cheeks seem more gaunt than normal. Even his hair seems grayer than the last time I saw him. I glance again at his baggy clothing—maybe I’m misremembering about it always being too big. Maybe he’s been losing weight or something.

  I wonder if he’s having problems eating, or sleeping. I wonder if guilt can pervade even dreams so that you can be afraid to sleep. I wonder why I feel bad about it instead of satisfied.

  I lean in. “I said, there’s a cop outside and he’s—”

  He moves out from behind the counter and goes to peer out the window. I follow and look over his shoulder. The cop’s still out there, his face turned right in our direction.

  Rudy steps back, deeper into the shadows of the apothecary. “No, you’re wrong. It’s a cop, but he’s watching the place next door.”

  My thoughts scramble to recall what shop is next door, but nothing comes.

  I squint out the window again. “What do you mean? He’s staring right over here.”

  “It might be hard to tell, but it’s definitely next door.” Rudy’s voice sounds wrong—too stiff. Careful.

  “What’s next door?”

  “It’s a snuff place, but they’ve already been caught selling opium and pipes and stuff. The cops are probably just waiting for one more incident in order to close them down for good.”

  Before I can say anything to that, Rudy heads off toward one of the shop shelves and begins to rearrange tins and bottles.

  I can’t deny I now doubt what I saw out there, but I’m still annoyed as I follow him over. Because I’m a bit embarrassed about jumping to conclusions so fast. Because it’s always so easy for him to dismiss me over nearly everything, exactly the way he just did. Because I hate how I always have to follow him. How even if he’s using me as much as I’m using him—I’m picking his brain and he’s assuaging his guilt—he never forgets to remind me just how much I still have to learn.

  Sometimes I think it’s worth trying to break down his defenses. How if I could make him like me the way he liked Shire, I’d learn to trust him the way she did, too.

  But I never think it for long. I see him and I think of Shire dying and all the questions he hasn’t actually answered. I see him and I think of my parents and how their deep grief keeps them from even really wanting to know. All that matters to them is that the daughter who’s left is the one who’s barely been any help at all.

  “Okay, so you know why I’m here,” I say to Rudy when I walk up to him.

  Like before, he’s too busy to look away from his work. “Thanks for telling me about the cop. I’m glad you were wrong, but it was still go
od to know.”

  I glare at him hard enough that the side of his face must be burning. “You know that’s not the only reason why.”

  He moves glass amber bottles around on the shelf, making them clink against one another. I have no clue how he’s trying to organize them. It all seems very haphazard when normally he’s practically berating me to be nothing but exact whenever I’m doing some kind of chore around here. Powder up this package of roots, will you? But make sure you use the mortar and pestle just this way with your wrist, each and every time. Otherwise the grind will be too coarse and you’ll only have to do it over again.

  “Well, I think I’ve pretty much helped you out as much as I can, Aza,” he says now, still only looking at the bottles and sliding them around and not bothering to face me. “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

  “You were Shire’s instructor for nearly eight years!”

  I can’t make myself stop. Jihen, Saint Willow, my parents’ despair whenever they look at me, the once-majestic legacy of a family business now needing rescue—I feel them all, breathing down my neck. And here’s Rudy, trying to run away from me when he’s my last hope. “Eight years! But I come here for not even one and it’s supposed to be enough? You’re not going to get rid of me that easily, okay? I—”

  Rudy clamps his hand over my mouth so I can’t say anything else. You owe me you owe me you should have died instead of Shire plays out silently in my head as he drags me behind the counter and into the shop’s supply room.

  He slams the door shut behind us. I’m expecting him to be furious, but instead he just looks even more tired, and much older than I know he is. A flicker of worry comes, of shame that I’m here when he just wants to be left in peace. To maybe get over Shire his own way, on his own, without her sister reminding him every day how he messed up.

  But I stamp out those feelings and keep glaring at him. I’m too desperate for sympathy. Sympathy doesn’t pay.

  “Aza, you need to be more careful. You can’t just be out there saying stuff like—”

  “I wouldn’t, if you’d just help me.”

  “I have helped,” he snaps. He shoves his glasses up. “What else do you want from me?”

  “Answers.” Medicinal smells waft out from the rows of bottles and stacks of tins that fill the shelves lining the room.

  “I’ve answered all I can.”

  “So how have you helped me, exactly? You’ve had me be your shop helper is what you’ve been doing. Shelving ointments, bottling tonics—how does any of that help me learn how to control magic?”

  “You can cast now, can’t you?”

  “That’s not the same thing as learning control.”

  He throws up his arms. “Then don’t cast at all, I don’t know. Make marks some other way. Go get a job at a Guz-n-Go. I know the pay is crap, but you can’t be charging that much for spells yet anyway, given how recently you started.”

  I laugh and it’s shrill. “I can’t believe she liked working with you.”

  “No one’s making you stay.”

  Shire makes me stay. Saint Willow and his family legacy make me stay. Magic makes me stay.

  Rudy rubs his face and swears. “Look, you come here unannounced whenever you feel like it and demand advice, answers. And I’m here working, Aza, at this shop that is supposed to be just any other shop in the city. I’m doing my best to pretend I’m leftover magic because that’s what we have to do.”

  “Then pretend. Why does that mean you can’t help me?”

  “Because sometimes I get tired of full magic, all right? Sometimes I even hate it, the way it controls you if you don’t control it. And maybe I want to quit while I’m ahead of the game and not end up an Ivor, waking up with my body completely twisted up inside my skin and maybe even getting caged and put up for display by a Scout because of it.”

  I shake my head, surprised. “Really? You’re scared of going Ivor? You’re probably more likely to get struck by light—”

  “So you coming here, reminding me all the time how we have to live—you’re not making it any easier, that’s all.”

  “I guess Shire being gone doesn’t make it easier, either. Since casting full magic is what killed her. Since you’re the one who taught her.” Then my voice hitches and I don’t know who’s more surprised, Rudy or me. My eyes get hot. The rows of glass and tins all shimmer and waver. “Once I know I can beat the spell that she couldn’t, I promise I’ll leave you alone, all right? And you—you should want to teach me that, don’t you think?”

  Rudy’s gone still. Like my words have frozen him. Finally, he rubs his face again. He cleans his glasses using the front of his shirt. His eyes are more bloodshot than ever, and I can’t tell if it’s him just being exhausted for whatever reason or because his eyes sting like mine still do.

  He puts his glasses back on and points to a row of boxes on a low shelf. “Those need to be unpacked and sorted and then repacked.”

  I stiffen as he heads toward the door that takes him back into the apothecary. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Aza.” Rudy stops at the door. “One more thing before you start yelling.”

  I’m almost numb. Everything I just said and it’s like he didn’t hear me at all. Panic wells while a crushing kind of defeat leaves me hollow. All I can do is look at him.

  “Stop overthinking it. You complaining that I’m just having you help out around the shop instead of teaching you how to control your magic? Shire used to say the same thing—before she finally understood.”

  I take down all the boxes and line them up on the floor. Inside each is a jumbled mix of supplies—more bottles and tins, droppers and vials. There are packages of dried flower buds and rhubarb roots and tiny glass jars full of clear syrups.

  I sit down and stare at the mess in front of me, my thoughts racing. I’m still hollow inside from the idea of defeat … but not so much anymore.

  So Shire trained just this way, too—organizing and sorting, measuring and pouring—and I never had a clue. I always just assumed she practiced by casting real magic. How she learned to deal with the pain and then recover before doing it again.

  I can blame my parents for making it part of their deal, agreeing to let Shire cast magic for marks as long as she didn’t tell me anything about training with Rudy. I know they did it to discourage me from thinking I could go along, too. How they did it out of worry for me as much as for practical reasons, since I really wasn’t ready at all. They only had to look at Shire’s scar to remind themselves of that, to look at the scant amount of marks in the till as the teahouse went through repairs.

  And after a while, I got used to not asking questions anymore. I got used to Shire heading out and coming back and the shop’s honor marks getting paid on time. Just like I got used to her staying in her room for hours, quietly suffering as she healed from her last casting.

  But I’m no longer willing to look the other way.

  I take a deep breath and begin to empty the boxes. Something steely fills my blood, settles my racing mind—hope, determination, maybe just delusion if that’s what it takes.

  Shire, I’m going to figure this out. I stand bottles on the floor, stack jars and tins. You’re dead, but I’m not, and I’m going to save us from Saint Willow.

  When I finally have Rudy’s boxed apothecary supplies laid out in front of me on the floor, I sit back and stare at them again, frowning and wondering what it all means when it comes to magic. The answer feels slippery, just out of grasp.

  I will the panic to stay away for a bit longer. Reach again for that steeliness I need so badly to stay with me.

  “C’mon, you stupid hunk of glass …” I whisper, reaching for one of the bottles. The coolness of its neck is soothing in my fingers. “What are you supposed to help me understand?”

  I decide to start sorting, as Rudy asked. I could think all of this is just another chore. That nothing has changed from when I was here last time or the time before. But he’s asked me to d
o this for a reason. I know that now.

  I set the bottle down behind me where there’s room on the floor, and reach for another. I start a new pile for each different kind of item, and before long, I’ve settled into a groove and barely think as I work. It’s mindless once you get the pattern down and just follow it.

  Bottles here, jars here, green bottles here, vials here—

  I stop moving and slowly set down the vial I was holding.

  My thoughts start to race again.

  All those times he made me organize shelves, taking every single item off and placing them all back down. My one shoulder—the shoulder of my casting arm—was sore the next day from repeating the same motion too many times.

  The dozens of bottles he had me fill with one of his formulas for treating a bad cough. So that by the time I was done, I didn’t even have to think about double-checking the amount I was using because I just knew it was fine.

  The rows of ingredients he had me memorize, knowing exactly where each item was just by picturing the layout in my head. A clear vision in my mind. Everything I could need, right at my fingertips.

  A laugh bursts free, flooding the last of the hollowness that’d still been nestled inside me even as its echo bounces across the room. I can’t miss the relief in it, the note of startled amazement.

  “Really, Rudy?” I start sorting again, rushing to finish now that I understand. “Couldn’t you have just told me?”

  But I know why he didn’t. I would have listened and not really believed I needed to do any of it. I would have gone out to cast full magic without worry, sure I already knew everything.

  I might not have even made it to this point.

  The earth might be half gone.

  I slow down the sorting on purpose now, taking more care with each item as I set it in its right place. The motions of my hands move like cogs turning in a wristwatch—the kind full magic casters don’t really wear anymore because each casting burns up the mechanisms inside—smooth in their repetition, from here to here and then back again.