Sorcerer's Luck

by Katharine Kerr

  Yet, when we met Jim and Cynthia for dinner, Tor acted perfectly normally. While we waited for a table at the restaurant, the two guys discussed baseball, whether the A’s had a chance to redeem their awful season, if the Giants could stay hot for the rest of theirs. Cynthia had invited Brittany and Roman to join us, but neither of us expected Brit to be on time. Just as we were seated, though, she did call—on my smartphone, not Cynthia’s, which was odd since Cyn had made the invitation. I found out why right away.

  “Maya,” Brittany said, “is Roman with you guys?”

  “No. Was he supposed to meet us here?”

  “No. I was just hoping that maybe he would.” She paused for a long moment. “We might be having our first crisis. The relapse. I mean, they usually do backslide at least once.”

  “Oh shit!”

  “Yeah. Look, tell Cynthia I’m sorry, but I’m going to stay here. He might show up. I’ll phone you if he does.”

  “Please. I don’t care how late it is. I’ll take the phone to bed with me.”

  “Okay. Talk to you later.”

  I clicked off. My hands were shaking so hard that I had trouble getting the phone back into my shoulder bag. My voice shook, too, as I explained the situation to everyone else. Tor turned in his chair to watch me with narrow eyes.

  “Oh my god!” Cynthia said. “Maybe we should go into the city and just be there while Brit waits. I hate to think of her being there all alone.”

  “Can’t we eat first?” Jim said. “Brit seems to have one of these crises every goddamn month.”

  “Aw, honey, that’s not fair!” Cynthia turned toward him. “There haven’t been that many.”

  Jim opened his mouth to reply, but Tor got in first.

  “You guys stay and eat. Maya and me will drive in. Okay? Our turn.” Tor glanced at me. “Why don’t you call her and tell her that help’s on the way?”

  “I’ll do that, sure,” I said, “and thank you.” I gave Cynthia as reassuring a smile as I could manage. “He’s my brother. It’s my problem.”

  Jim and Cynthia both relaxed. When the waiter appeared with menus, Tor stood up and greeted him.

  “I’m sorry,” Tor said. “We have to leave. Medical emergency.” He pulled a twenty dollar bill out of the pocket of his slacks and handed it to the startled young waiter. “Here’s something for your trouble. Looks like it won’t be a party of six after all. Our friends will be staying, though.”

  The waiter took the money and thanked him. Tor slipped his arm through mine and steered me through the restaurant while I called Brittany. When she heard that we’d be coming over, she nearly cried in relief.

  Before we headed for the freeway and San Francisco, Tor drove us home, much to my surprise. He put Gretel into the garage, then backed my old Chevy out while I waited on the sidewalk. He got out and secured the garage with his smartphone.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “You should wait here while I go get Roman. Where I’m going, Gretel would be stripped in about ten seconds. No one’s going to notice this car. I’m hoping I won’t have to get out of it, but you never know.”

  I gaped at him. “You know where Roman is? How?”

  “How do you think I know? Now, you go upstairs and—”

  “No! He’s my brother, and he’ll listen to me better’n he’ll listen to you.”

  Tor thought this over while I fumed.

  “Okay,” he said. “Get in the car. We’re going to grab him before he does something really stupid. He’s hanging out in San Francisco. Over in the Crocker-Amazon.” He paused and went totally still for a few seconds, then nodded. “Yeah, not far from the Daly City line.”

  I groaned and got into the car. Don’t get me wrong. A lot of decent, hard-working people live in that district, and a lot of students. You can find whole streets of nicely painted houses, but they’ll all have grates or bars over their front windows. Cheap rental buildings and liquor stores, the scruffy bars on Mission Street, the empty lots and the trash blowing around, and the way the cops avoid the area unless they’re cracking down on someone—it all combines to attract weak souls and their predators.

  By the time we got across the bridge and down to the south-eastern edge of San Francisco, the last light of the day was fading. The fog came pouring in, covering the sky a few tendrils at a time, turning the world cold and gray. We left the freeway and eventually found a desolate stretch of Mission Street, fringed with old stucco buildings and the occasional row of cheap little stores. What traffic there was moved fast, especially the big gray and red city buses, as if the drivers were hurrying to get out of the neighborhood. Tor kept in the right lane. We drove north, back toward the city, until we came to a block with a couple of empty lots and a bright pink Mexican restaurant, a stucco cube that could have been imported whole from Tijuana. That’s not a compliment.

  “I spotted him around here,” Tor said. “But if he’s going to shoot up, he’ll be inside somewhere.”

  “I don’t think he uses needles. I’ve never seen any tracks.”

  “That’s a good sign, then.”

  Tor made a U-turn in an empty intersection and headed back south. Near a big, well-lighted gas station I finally spotted Roman. He was leaning against the outside of a bus shelter, his hands shoved in his jacket pockets while he kept watch up a side street as if he were waiting for someone. When Tor pulled up at the curb, I unbuckled my seat belt fast and got out.

  “Ro,” I said, “what are you doing out here?”

  He spun around and stared at me. In the fluorescent light from the gas station, his skin looked gray, and his eyes were dark and huge.

  “I could say the same for you,” he said. “Shit.”

  “Get in the car. Brit’s worried sick.”

  “Can’t. I’m meeting someone.”

  “Yeah, I bet. One of your dealers?”

  He turned his back on me. Tor got out of the car and strode over to face him. Roman spun around only to see me still there. He turned back, tried to take a step sidewise and rammed into the side of the bus shelter. When he nearly fell, I grabbed his arm by the elbow and steadied him. He reeked of bourbon.

  “For chrissakes,” Roman said. “So I didn’t want to go out to fucking dinner with my little sister’s fucking ever so clean and nice fucking friends.”

  “Yeah, and this is better?” Tor said. “Come on, Cantescu! I know what’s going on. You keep seeing re-runs of the action in your head. Someone’s face exploding when you—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Roman said.

  “Was it a woman, and you thought it was a guy with an IED, but she was carrying a baby?”

  Roman swung at him, a hard right straight for his head. Tor stepped to one side as fast and smoothly as a dancer and grabbed Ro’s arm in both hands. He twisted and pulled. Roman started swearing in a stream of profanity so foul it was surreal, but Tor kept the pressure on, stepped forward, and forced him to his knees.

  “How many, Cantescu?” Tor said. “How many re-runs? You need to blot them out, don’t you? Every death. Every scream. Booze won’t do it anymore. Especially when you remember your dead buddy.”

  Roman looked up at him and started to cry. He sobbed, the tears ran, he caught his breath in big gulps and wept the harder. Tor let him go, then bent down and helped him to his feet.

  “Come on,” Tor said. “Get in the car.”

  I opened the back door. Roman stopped crying. He got in and slumped down, half-lying, half-sitting across the entire seat. I got in the front seat and turned around to lock the back door. Roman looked up at me, started to speak, then wept again. I just managed to buckle my seat belt before I started weeping with him. I finally got control of myself after Tor had driven us half-way across the city. I opened the glove compartment and took out the box of tissues I’d always kept there. I pulled out a handful and then handed the rest over the back of the seat to my brother.

  Brittany lived in San Francisco because she got free rent in return for helping
her grandmother, who owned a place out in the Sunset District just off Nineteenth Avenue. Her Grandma Wilson lived in the bottom floor flat while Brittany had the top unit of a building designed to fit in with the Victorian optique—big bay windows, a fancy double-door entrance with stained glass—but in the style of the 1930s. Stucco, gray, drab, in short. Sorcerer’s luck gave us a parking place right in front of it.

  Tor and I got out, and I opened the back door. Tor reached in and hauled Roman out, helped him stand, brushed some dirt off his sweatshirt. Roman stood still like a little boy and let him.

  “Okay,” Roman said. “You were in the military. Right?”

  “Norwegian army, yeah,” Tor said.

  “With the Coalition, huh? Iraq or Afghanistan?”

  “I don’t much like to talk about it.”

  “I can accept that.” Roman took a deep breath. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Look, you’ve got to tell Brittany what happened. I don’t just mean me and Maya fetching you. I mean what happened. Maybe not all of it. For sure not the details. But you’ve got to tell her.”

  Under the olive color of his skin the blood left Roman’s face. “You’re right,” he said. “Shit.”

  I hurried into the entranceway to ring Brittany’s doorbell, but I heard her coming downstairs. She’d been watching out the window, she told me when she opened the door.

  “Oh god, thank you, Maya!” she said. “And Tor, thank him, too. Or I mean, do you guys want to come in? I’m all to pieces.”

  “No, you and Ro need to talk without us there. Brit! You’ve fallen in love with my rotten brother, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged and twisted her face into a sour expression. “I am so stupid some times! I always loved the dogs I rescued, too, but this is different. I don’t want to give Roman away to a good home.”

  Despite everything we managed to laugh. Roman walked up to us, looked at the steps by Brittany’s feet, and mumbled, “Sorry.” Brittany grabbed him by the arm and guided him firmly inside. I shut the door behind them and went back to the car. Tor had already gotten into the driver’s seat. I got in and buckled on my seat belt while he watched me.

  “Brittany says thank you,” I said.

  “She’s welcome, yeah.” He smiled briefly. “That was close there, when your brother asked me about the military.”

  “I was getting ready to jump in and lie for you.”

  Tor smiled again, then let it fade.

  “What I wonder,” I said, “is how you knew all that, about his dead friend, and the woman with the baby. Sorcery?”

  “No, I was just guessing. Too many women died in Iraq. Every soldier loses a friend. Someone lost me. If he’s still alive, he must be ninety by now, but I bet he never forgot the guy I was back then. You don’t.”

  My eyes filled with tears again. I wiped them off on my sleeve.

  “You know,” Tor went on, “it’s easier to lay aside what we suffered in the war than what we did. I don’t have to go through what Roman’s going through because I was shot and killed. That made it even. Paid in full. He got out of there alive.”

  Tor’s statements were always logical, that is, if you could believe his premises, like this one: I died, but I remember it all anyway. I could think of nothing to say. He sighed once and started the car.

  Chapter 14

  Tor drove in his usual fast but careful way out of the city and back to the Bay Bridge. Once we’d crossed, I called Cynthia and told her that we’d found Roman and returned him to Brittany. She thanked me, because she’d been worrying—just as I knew she would.

  “Do you think he’ll do this again?” Cynthia said.

  “I don’t know. I hope not. But I think we’d better be ready for it. Brittany warned us it’s a long process, pulling someone back.”

  “So she did. Well, take care. I’d better go. Jim’s grumbling.”

  When Tor and I got home, he turned on both lamps in the living room. The bright colored glow through the Tiffany shades comforted me. I flopped into an armchair and stretched my aching legs out in front of me.

  “You need chi,” Tor said. “Then I’ll fix something for dinner. I’m really hungry.”

  Tor turned off the air conditioner and opened the east window. The night air, scented with the neighbor’s honeysuckle, swept over me. Tor pulled élan from the night air and sent it flowing over me. I opened my mouth and gulped it in, swallowed and savored it, as if I drank down some beautiful liquor. I could see its color in my mind, a deep ruby red, and feel the warmth as it spread through my body.

  “I like watching you feed,” Tor said. “You look so happy.”

  “I am happy. You’re wonderful.”

  He grinned and went into the kitchen. I lay back in the chair and looked out the east window. The bloated moon, too close to full, had just risen over the distant hills. Moon in Virgo, I thought. By then the month had changed over to September.

  Thanks to his TV phobia, I’d been thinking of Tor as a luddite, but he had no trouble buying and installing the nanny cam. When he figured out how to route it over his wireless connection to his laptop, I realized that he had to be serious about hating television in particular, not technology in general.

  “It really scrambles your brain waves,” he told me when I asked. “I’m not kidding. It changes the entire pattern of how you think. From what I’ve read, the digital monitors are better than the CRTs. It’s the pattern of lines that carry the signal on a CRT that does the brain wave damage. It’s like hypnosis. But the shows aren’t any better no matter what you bring them in on.”

  I stared in complete non-understanding. I had heard something about the changes to brain waves somewhere, I realized, but I’d never thought twice about it.

  “Whatever,” I said. “I wanted to ask you something. What are we going to do about the élan I need? When the bjarki’s dominant, I mean. Last time I ran really low and hurt all over.”

  “I can feed you right before you lock me in, feed you as much as you can absorb.”

  “That’ll help.” I thought back to the other time he’d made the transformation. “I was low to begin with, that first time. Besides, I didn’t know what to expect. I still don’t, really. I’ve only been here for one change.” I ran the timeline in my mind. “I’ve only known you for six weeks, haven’t I?”

  “You’ve known me a hell of a lot longer than six weeks.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I mean now. Here. In this life.”

  “It’s all one life. It’s just hard to remember the earlier parts. The memories turn into pictures, and then pieces of pictures, and after a while they’re gone.”

  “After a while? After a couple of lives, I suppose you mean.”

  “Yeah. Talking about this frosts you, doesn’t it?”

  I shrugged and realized why I felt like sulking. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just plain nervous, I guess, about what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

  “You and me both.”

  “Are you sure you want me to use the nanny cam?”

  “Oh yeah. It’s always better to know than wonder.” He looked at me and smiled in a particularly smug way. “About all kinds of things. Like what’s behind those shutters. Remember them?”

  I turned and walked off before I said something nasty. He followed me into my bedroom and stopped by the writing desk. I was going to refuse to look at it, but curiosity won. On the lid two figures were fighting with swords, a black man with the sun for his head, and a white woman with the moon for hers. Tiny red lions formed the circle around them, a sign that they were releasing a lot of power.

  “What does that mean?” I said.

  “They’re trying to achieve a balance between them. They’re doing it wrong.”

  “Like we are?” I heard my voice snarl.

  “That’s not what I meant!” Tor crossed his arms over his chest.

  I realized that we stood on the edge of our first fight. Not now, I thought. Totally wrong time! />
  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Look, you need to rest up for tomorrow.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry, too.” He hesitated, then laughed, but the throaty sound merged into a growl. “Ever hear that old expression? Irritable as a bear with a sore paw?”

  “Yeah.” I managed to smile at him. “I have. Come lie down, and I’ll rub your back.”

  “Thanks. That’ll help.” He glanced at the bed and winced. “But not in here.”

  On the carved headboard of the bed, the moon lacked only a sliver before it would turn full.

  Somewhere in the night, when we were both asleep, the transformation moved into its first stage. I woke in the gray dawn to find myself about to fall out of bed, because Tor had edged me way over and curled up in the middle of it. He’d curved his back and folded somehow at the waist, drawn up and tucked in his long legs, and bent his head so that his chin nearly touched his knees. I surrendered to the pull of gravity and got out of bed. His eyes opened. He stared unmoving at me as if he’d forgotten who I was, then sat up with a strange sound, not really a growl, more of a snort, but animal all the same. I took a couple of big steps back, but he came to himself and smiled at me. He uncurled, stretched, swore at how stiff he was, and slid over to his side of the bed.

  “Might as well get up,” he said. “I’m glad I went to the store yesterday.”

  I dressed, but he put on only a pair of jeans. He padded barefoot into the bathroom, then went to the kitchen. When I followed, I found him rummaging through the refrigerator—him, the man who never ate breakfast. He pulled out a flat package of sausages.

  “I guess I should cook these,” he said. “Before I eat them, I mean.”

  “Yes, you should. They’re pork.”

  He got out the frying pan, set it onto the stove, then turned to me.

  “I’d better feed you first.”

  With a toss of his head he indicated we were to go to the living room. In front of the east window, where sunlight fell in a long stripe across the rug, he gathered élan and let it pour over me. I absorbed all I could, swallowed in big gulps while Tor stood with his arms raised and gathered more of what we both wanted so badly. He tipped his head back in order to soak up the élan he needed for himself, but I could see how tightly he’d set his jaw, how his eyes had gone wide with fear. I gulped a last few shreds until I could take not one slurp or smidgen more, and watched him finish feeding.