by S. E. Smith
Tau returned with a glass of water. He set it in front of her.
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome.” His voice was pure melted sugar. He sat down, and if he was rooting around in her mind, she couldn’t tell, and he wasn’t letting on. Maybe she’d just looked thirsty.
“It is. A thing.” Maddy swept her long, straight, black hair over her shoulder. Native American and years older than she looked. To the tune of a few hundred. She’d stopped the practice of extending her life long before Nikodemus came here and changed everything. “Am I right that until I made contact with you, if you were around the magekind or demonkind, you didn’t know?”
“I can’t tell who’s what.”
“Is it fair to say that until today you’d not calmed anyone down, to use your term. While you were here.”
“Yes.”
Palla snorted. “Fucking liar.”
“No, sir. I am not lying.”
Maddy lifted a hand. “If she was, she didn’t know.”
“You’re always giving the witches a pass.”
Maddy looked past her, cool as ice. “Are you saying, Palla, that you know she used, and you didn’t tell anyone?”
“I thought it was fucking obvious.”
“You should have shared your observations.”
He grunted.
“So, Wallace. You don’t know what effect you might have on a magic user? Is that right? Demon or magekind.”
She took a drink of water and set the cup down too hard. “Look, I didn’t do it on purpose. If I did anything at all, and I didn’t. It felt like what I do normally, only this wasn’t a normal situation. If I hadn’t done something, she’d have hurt me this time. Fire is no joke, and I am sick and tired of her picking at me. I know I’m no good at this. She doesn’t have to remind me and the rest of the world every ten seconds. I put up with enough shit as it is.”
“If you paid attention to anything I said, you know there are people whose power manifests in ways we think of as unusual.”
She settled down. She was good at that. Keeping an even keel when everything was going to hell. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Can you do it again?”
She shook her head, not because she couldn’t but because she wondered if Maddy was being thick on purpose. “It’s the reason I’m not dead.”
This time, Maddy, Tau, and Palla all looked at each other, and she got that hollow feeling in her center again. Palla growled. The asshole. Tau’s eyebrows arched, and Maddy, she looked more thoughtful than ever.
“I’m not going to say what would happen. Nothing most likely.”
Maddy set her clasped hands on the table. “That’s intriguing.”
“Not really.”
“Do you think you could come here on Mondays and Tuesdays instead Fridays? Same time? I’d like to work with you in private.”
Chapter 3
Six Mondays later, Wallace sat on Maddy’s couch, sick to her stomach and limp as a noodle. It was nine o’clock, an hour-and-a-half past the usual stopping time. If she didn’t find the energy to move, she’d miss her bus and have a hell of a long walk home. Or else she’d have to use the rest of her cash for the week for a cab; money she wouldn’t be able to spend on food. Her job at a non-profit dedicated to non-violent solutions to conflict did not pay well enough for cab fare, not with rent, utilities, and student loans to cover.
Six weeks and not much had changed. The answer to the intriguing question about what happened when she did her thing was still “nothing.” She could not start a fire, move a coffee cup, or make pretty sparkles in the air. Just like before. All the basic magics were beyond her ability. She didn’t understand why Maddy didn’t send her home with twenty bucks and a thank you very much.
This Monday was worse than usual because—hello—Monday, and because Tau wasn’t here, and because there’d been three other witches here, and they’d left going on two hours ago and the only one left besides Maddy was Palla, and he didn’t know when to give it a rest. Ever.
She lifted her head off the back of the couch when he came back from the kitchen with two beers. He was a horrible person. Demon. He was rude and impatient and seemed to think she was being deliberately incompetent. “Go away. I can’t do magic.”
Palla handed one of the beers to Maddy. He took a long pull from the other. She was so, so thirsty, and a beer would taste so good right now. He gave her his usual stink-eye.
Fuck you, too, asshole.
His faded jeans did a lot of favors for a girl who liked big guys. And that blue tee-shirt that fit close to his torso? That was a favor to straight women everywhere. Even though she hated him, he was fine. A very, very fine man. White as can be, though. Ironically, she was pretty sure he was what they called Black Irish, and wasn’t that funny as hell? Black Irish.
“Don’t get discouraged, Wallace.” Maddy sat on one of the chairs opposite the couch. “Sometimes it takes a while.”
She held out her hand, thumb and finger raised to her forehead in an L shape. “This is me. No talent.”
Palla stood behind Maddy’s chair, a malign, beautiful presence. If you liked a pale man with dark hair and green eyes and a killer face and body.
“You’re very interesting to us. Isn’t that right, Palla?”
“No.”
“I collect soup cans. That’s what’s interesting about me.”
Palla, because he lived to make her life miserable, was plenty smug about everything. And that was why today had been so awful. They’d worked on her linking up with Palla, that psychic connection demons had. They lived a whole other existence on a psychic level. Trying to link up with a demon made her sick to her stomach. With Palla, her problem was even worse. She couldn’t maintain a link with him for longer than ten seconds before she was dry heaving. For two and a half long hours, he’d made her try again and again and again.
She preferred the sessions with Tau. In his own quiet way, Tau was just as exacting as Palla, but he wasn’t an asshole about it, and he didn’t make her feel like a piece of shit when things didn’t go well. He was never anything but unreasonably gorgeous, deadly quiet, or insanely polite, or all three. Tau made her want to be better and work harder. He made her feel like she was better. She wasn’t, but he made her feel like it. Today and for the next two weeks, she had Palla to fail with.
She hated Palla and his green eyes. And she hated his we both know you’re incompetent sneer with the fire of a thousand burning suns. She hated him so much she’d rather die than fail, and she failed every single time. She was the only street witch she’d seen who was African American, and every single failure might as well be a big neon sign that said, black girls are no good at magic.
Palla bent over, elbows on the tufted top of Maddy’s chair. Maddy slouched down and looked up at Palla with a smile. She actually liked the guy. But then he didn’t treat Maddy like he thought she was toxic waste.
She used to wonder if Maddy and Tau were a thing. The answer was no. No, they were not. Maddy and Palla were also not a thing, despite the cozy way they were arranged right now. Wallace figured that out the first time the demon Kynan Aijan showed up. Have mercy. Maddy and Kynan weren’t a thing either, but the sparks were lethal.
“I should go.”
“We kept you late.” Maddy reached up and pushed Palla’s arm out of the way. “You’re dripping water on me.”
“Sorry.”
Palla pushed off the top of Maddy’s chair and hurled his beer straight at Wallace’s head.
He put all his strength behind it, too. She yelped, and so did Maddy, and then her mid-section emptied out as she ducked, and there was, all at the same time, the sound of her screaming, “You asshole!” and then sound of nothing at all.
She didn’t end up with a beer bottle broken against her cranium. Or beer all over her. Or on the couch.
Maddy said, “Oh my God.”
Palla smirked. “I fucking knew it.”
She sat up. Anything other
reaction might come at the cost of her life. The hollowness in her stomach threatened to consume her. Maddy stared at her with big, big eyes, and Palla was still smirking. There was a pile of broken glass on the floor midway between her and Maddy. Not much was left of the bottle that would have killed her if Maddy hadn’t intervened. “Thank you, Maddy.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Wallace leaned forward, empty inside, and she gave back every smug, hateful look the demon had ever given her. She spoke with preternatural serenity. “Eat shit, Palla.”
The demon advanced on her. “Take me down, witch.”
“No.”
“I’ll snap your fucking neck if you don’t.”
Palla was drawing on his magic, she knew that because the color of his eyes changed from green to gold. She felt it gathering, and it was immense. It had to be for her to have that shiver across the back of her neck.
Maddy cried out. “No!”
Jesus, he’d been playing with them all up to now. He was holding onto killing magic. She stood, and she was hollow, and that black hole in her flexed. Palla roared, a sound that tore from his throat and wasn’t remotely human. If he killed her, then fine. Fine. She was not going to answer violence with violence.
Nothing happened.
Maddy, on her feet, also burned with magic. She turned on Palla. “You are insane. Insane! What the hell are you thinking?”
The demon’s eyes burned solid gold. “She dead dropped me, Maddy.”
“She could have killed you.”
“No.” The two paid no attention to her protest.
“Probably not,” Palla said.
“I would never kill anyone. Never.”
“Wallace, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“My God.” Maddy looked at her with awe.
“What?”
“You dead dropped Palla.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Palla let out a sound that was half growl, half laugh. “Mission fucking accomplished.”
She focused on him. His eyes remained gold. “Stop being a dick.”
“Oh. It speaks to the demon.”
“Fuck you.”
“Human scum.”
From her state of serenity, she said, “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
“What do you think?”
Maddy put a hand on his chest. “Palla, please be quiet.” And then she said, “You can stay the night here.”
At first Wallace thought Maddy meant Palla, but she didn’t. Maddy meant her. “I can’t. I have work tomorrow.”
Palla walked to the broken glass and pushed at the remains with the toe of his shoe. “We need to do something about that.”
Wallace remained in her state of unnatural calm. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Maddy spoke at the same time. “Really, I think you’ve done enough.”
He cocked one eyebrow. “It means what I said.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that I have a job and need to keep it.”
“Why?”
“Must be nice to have a life where you can ask a question like that. Student loans don’t pay themselves. And the refrigerator doesn’t get stocked by magic.”
“That’s not my fault.”
Maddy sighed. “I mean it, Palla. You need to leave. I am not prepared to deal with you right now, and I don’t think Wallace is either.”
Palla fished a set of car keys from his pocket. “See you, Maddy.” Then he pointed at her, and she despised his smug grin. “Later, Angel.”
Wallace waved at him with a fake smile. He’d get that she didn’t mean it, and he did. He replied with, “Fuck you, too.”
When the door closed after him, Maddy collapsed on a chair. “That—I don’t even—I apologize on Palla’s behalf.”
“Don’t bother.”
“He chose the wrong way to find out what you can do.”
“Which is nothing.” She hadn’t done anything. She couldn’t have. She wasn’t capable. “It’s late. I need to go.”
Maddy steepled her fingers and stared at her over the tops. “Are you sure you won’t stay the night?”
“I can’t.”
“That was extraordinary, what you did. You do realize that?”
“No.” Other than her overall tremble, she didn’t feel any different than any other time.
Maddy rubbed her arms. “I was convinced one of you was going to end up dead.”
“It wouldn’t have been him.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“I don’t believe in violence. It’s wrong, and I don’t want anything to do with hurting anyone ever.” She pushed to her feet. “I have to get home.”
“It’s no trouble if you stay here. I’m happy to have you.”
“I have an early day.” She didn’t know the morning bus schedules or how early she’d have to get up in order to get home to change for work. Mostly she wanted to be at home. Safe. Alone. Stewing, for sure, about what had happened here.
“I have a guest room. You’d have your own shower. Doesn’t matter how late or early you need to get up.”
“Thanks. Another time maybe.”
Maddy sat forward. “I’m going to talk to Nikodemus about bringing you on staff.”
“To do what?” She stood. If she didn’t go now, she was walking home.
“Palla is right about you needing a better job.” Maddy got up, too, and walked with her to the door. She glanced up and down the street. This was a quiet neighborhood. “Where you’d park?”
“Not far.” She shrugged on her jacket and slung her purse crossways over her chest. Her bus pass was safe in her back pocket. She pointed up the street a ways.
“Text me when you make it home?”
“Sure thing.” Which she would do when she made the transfer in Berkeley. Otherwise, Maddy would worry about how long it took her to get home.
With a wave, she headed downhill and even took out her house keys as if her hypothetical car was just a few feet away. She stuck her keys between her clenched fingers, Wolverine style, and headed down the hill toward North Berkeley and the nearest bus stop that would take her downtown.
She well out of sight of Maddy’s house when someone stepped out of the shadows.
Chapter 4
Palla didn’t have to make a link with the human to know he’d scared the shit out of her. She didn’t have the slightest ability to sense his kind. She was also quick to assume the worst of him. Couldn’t blame her for that. “Hey. It’s cool. It’s me.”
“What the fuck!”
He saw plenty well in the dark. Well enough to know her big brown eyes were wide open.
“Why would you even do that? Jumping out at me like that?”
“What?” He spread his arms to either side of him.
“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“No.” He wanted to return that attitude full force, but since he was about to ask her for a favor, that wasn’t the best idea. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“You are not.”
Better not answer that, because he wasn’t. Much. He’d done the needful. “I want to talk to you.”
Like a lot of Northern Californians who refused to admit it got cold at night—for them—she wasn’t wearing a decent coat. Just a sweater that was more for show than warmth. Fine with him. She looked great in a sweater.
“You could have talked to me at Maddy’s.”
“It’s private.”
She gave him one of those looks humans did when they were staring over the tops of a pair of glasses. Skeptical, if he was right about the contexts in which he’d seen that expression from others. No glasses in this case. If she’d put any magic behind that glare, he’d be hurting.
He lifted his hands. “Can we sit in your car and talk?”
“No, we can’t.”
“I won’t pull anything.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She caught up q
uick. “You have got to be kidding. No. Just don’t even.”
“Even if it was allowed, I wouldn’t do anything to you.” From her disgust, which he got loud and clear, he could tell that had come out all wrong. Well, roll with it, right? They weren’t going to be friends anyway. “I would like to talk to you. Please.”
She gave him a long look, and he didn’t like it much. She had that bizarre, freaky power and, of all the witches who worked with Maddy, she was the hardest for him to read. Some of the rules against making links with humans were annoying as hell. “Make it quick, would you?”
“It’s cold. Let’s sit in your car.” The usual evening fog chilled the air. She had to be cold. Her thin sweater was not up to the task of keeping her warm.
She started walking again so he followed along. He scanned the parked vehicles, trying to guess which car was hers. Something cheap, for sure. She went past several candidate junkers. Maybe she’d surprise him and be driving something racy. She kept walking.
“How far away did you park?”
She kept her hands clenched around the strap of her purse. “My car is called AC Transit.”
He grabbed her elbow, and she whipped around, but he’d already let go because touching her made his fingers go numb. She was ramping up, and Jesus, he did not want to get hit again, after her just having turned his magic into a gaping void. “You took the bus here?”
“Every Monday and Tuesday.”
“Where do you live? Berkeley, right?”
“Yeah.”
He stared at the sky, what he could see of it anyway, what with the trees and the ambient light. He fucking missed the stars. “I’ll drive you home.”
“No.”
“I’ll drive you to the bus stop, then.” He was getting the sense that his action tonight, while a strategic success, had been a tactical error.
“I don’t want any favors from you.”
Being what she was, she’d had a rough life. That was a given. He put his hands on his hips. In the normal course of things, he didn’t deal with humans. His lack of practice at reading them without a link made this harder. Survivors like her were tough as nails. They often isolated themselves and something like seventy percent of them either killed their magic entirely or were left with insignificant residue. If they didn’t cope one way or another, their untrained, unchanneled powers got them sent to institutions, medicated, jailed, or left barely holding on to their sanity. All things considered, Wallace Jackson was highly functional.