“Dreary,” Mr. Bolander said. Faye snapped out of her funk and looked over at him. They were sharing the back seat. Ian was driving and Whisper was in the passenger seat. If anyone asked, she was supposed to remember that Ian was a businessman from New Mexico, on his way to buy a property in Virginia. Whisper was supposed to be his wife, which worked well since Ian was wearing a wedding band anyway and Whisper seemed to have an unending selection of rings available from inside her gigantic purse. Faye was Ian’s young cousin along for the ride, and Mr. Bolander was Ian’s hired man, which was funny to her, since in reality Mr. Bolander was the senior and most experienced knight, but he’d insisted that appearances had to be kept in case they found themselves in a Sundown Town. She had no idea what that meant, but everybody else seemed to, and she hadn’t wanted to look ignorant.
“What?” It had been awhile since anyone had spoken. All that broken-down scenery made folks quiet.
“I meant the view. Dreary. Sad to see a place all shriveled up and dried out. They say that we’re in hard times, but seeing this sure makes that sink in.”
“It’s ugly,” Faye said quietly. It made her miss her green fields full of Holsteins.
“What was that?”
“I suppose I was just mumbling, Mr. Bolander.”
“Call me George, please.”
She turned to look at him. His eyes seemed a little sad as he studied the scene. “I’ve been told that this desert used to be fertile ground… until we ruined it.”
Whisper chimed in. “I’ve heard about this. They spoke of it at university. The bowl of dust, was it not?”
“Dust bowl,” Ian corrected. His need to constantly correct people annoyed Faye, but she bit her tongue.
“They were having a drought. Some bright boys in Washington recruited a mess of Weathermen to try and fix things. Biggest magical alteration of weather patterns in history, they said. Instead they made it a hundred times worse.” George was still talking to her. The nice man had no idea that Faye knew all too well about what had happened. Maybe not about the decisions or the magic used, but she knew all about the awful results. “They tried to use magic like a hammer and ended up wrecking the natural order of things. It’s barely rained here since and there’s a hot wind that sucks the life out of everything.”
“Magic’s always got a price,” Ian said. “Sooner people realize that and quit messing around with things over their heads, the better off we’ll all be.”
Faye turned away. “It’s ugly… ugly and mean.”
“Ugly maybe, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it mean.”
George was wrong. She knew the truth. The darkness of the dust storms that had ruined their skies were nothing compared to the darkness that lived in some men’s hearts. The winds had just exposed that meanness for the rest of the world to see.
Steam was pouring out from the open hood of the Chrysler. George and Ian had their heads inside and they were poking at the engine. Faye had no idea what they were doing in there. Grandpa had always managed to fix the tractor when it had broken down, but she had never been much help at that except for fetching different-sized wrenches from his toolbox.
They had passed through Ada less than half an hour before, and Faye had been extremely glad when they had only stopped briefly to pump some gas at a weathered little station owned by a stern Chickasaw man. Faye had kept her head down, her glasses and big straw hat on, but even then it was doubtful that anybody would recognize her. Whisper had asked if they could stop for lunch, but everyone else had been eager to keep going. There was still plenty of daylight left, and even then the Chrysler had good headlights. Besides, they needed to get out of the bad zone before the night winds came. Faye was happy that they would be well away from her old home before they stopped to sleep.
But that wasn’t looking too likely anymore.
“Doggone it.” George mopped his sweaty face with his handkerchief. “I’ve got no idea. Plenty of fluid. No leaks. Radiator appears to be in good shape.”
“None of you happen to be a Tinker?” Ian asked.
“Call them Fixers where I’m from. I’m a Crackler,” George answered. “You want me to charge the battery, I can. Other than that”-he shrugged-“sorry.”
“Traveler,” Faye said, but everybody already knew all about her.
“Infernal thing.” Ian stepped back and kicked the bumper. “Well, I sure as hell can’t Summon a mechanic.”
Whisper got out of the passenger side, scowled at the sun, then went back for her umbrella. She popped it open and walked over to examine the engine. “Is it broken?” Ian glared at her, as if the boiling steam cloud should have been explanation enough. Whisper, however, was either immune to his jerkiness or just plain didn’t care enough to notice. “Well?”
“It overheated and died on us. Is there anything you can do?”
“I do not know much about automobiles.” Whisper frowned at the engine. “I believe that touching it would soil my dress.”
Ian sighed. “I meant magically.”
“You would like for me to set it on fire?”
George laughed with genuine amusement. “Fine lot we are. Four powerful wizards and yet we’re easily defeated by the internal combustion engine.”
“Yeah, the Imperium best watch out for us…” Ian muttered. He glanced up and down the road. There wasn’t another car in sight. “I saw a garage back in that town. It looked to still be open.” Which was saying something since most everything else in Ada had been boarded up and abandoned.
“Everyone wore comfortable shoes, I hope,” George said. “It’s only a couple of miles.”
“Lock the car up,” Faye told Ian, and then to the others, “Anything you don’t want stolen, take it with you.”
“Is that necessary to-” Whisper began.
“Trust me.” Faye got her. 45 out of the car and stuck it into the special pocket in her traveling dress. The knife Lance had made for her went on the other side. Sure, her family had moved to California, but she knew how desperate folks around these parts could be. Other than Mr. Browning’s pistol and Lance’s knife, everything else was replaceable.
They set out for Ada, which put Faye into a very sour mood.
There was nothing but dirt for miles. The trees were all dead. The only other feature was the telephone poles running alongside the road, and it was so desolate that there weren’t even any birds sitting on the wires. The afternoon wasn’t too hot, but the wind was harsh and dry. She had to hold onto her hat to keep from losing it. Whisper’s fancy umbrella got turned inside out in the first mile. She complained about that, called it her favorite parasol, and ended up chucking it into a ditch.
Ian made an attempt at conversation. “So, this telephone call that Jake Sullivan supposedly took…”
Faye was about worn out with this guy’s attitude. “What do you mean ‘supposedly’?”
“I’m not saying it didn’t happen, just how do we know it was the Chairman’s ghost?”
“Because Mr. Sullivan said so.”
“Maybe it was a trick. I mean, Sullivan’s a Heavy. Everybody knows Heavies aren’t very bright.”
George realized the hole that Ian was digging for himself much faster than Ian did, and tried to intervene. “Normally, when I hear someone say ‘everybody knows,’ what follows shortly after tends to be wrong.”
“Sullivan’s only been in the Society for what, less than a year? But because he’s had some dream about actually seeing the Power, we’re all supposed to hop to when he tells us something crazy?”
“That’s not true at all,” Faye snapped. “Mr. Sullivan is super smart. He’s just not a show-off about it like some folks.”
“We’re taking the fall for an assassination attempt, but instead of spending our time figuring out who set us up, we’re spinning our wheels trying to talk to Iron Guards about some being that probably doesn’t even exist.”
Faye stopped abruptly. The others made it a few more steps before they realiz
ed she was no longer keeping up. She waited while they turned back to her. Faye put her hands on her hips and gave Ian the look normally reserved for people she was about to murder. “You better shut up.”
“Hey, wait a sec-”
“No. You listen, and you listen good. This big critter is real and it isn’t messing around. When it shows up, nothing else is going to matter. If you don’t believe that, then you’re the stupid one.”
Ian’s face turned red and he started to respond, but Whisper cut him off. “But how do you know this, Faye?”
How could she explain? “It’s right there, right outside of the real world. It’s pushing on the door, getting heavier and heavier, and pretty soon the hinges are going to give and then it’s coming inside. When I listen, when it’s real quiet, like when I’m trying to sleep.. I can hear it.”
Ian threw his hands in the air. “You’re off your rocker.”
George put one hand on Ian’s arm to shush him. “Faye, how come you didn’t say this to the elders?”
“I did… They didn’t believe me either. I don’t know how I know. I don’t know how come my Power is different than yours. It just is. I just do. I can feel it, okay?”
“But-”
Faye was frustrated. She didn’t want to argue with a bunch of people who just couldn’t understand. She checked her head map and scouted the road for danger, clear, and Traveled. The soles of her shoes hit asphalt a hundred yards away. It was about as far as she could manage lately, a frustratingly useless little amount of distance compared to what she’d done before. She stood there in the dust and waited for the others to catch up. It gave her a chance to collect herself.
Of course the others didn’t understand. Nobody else had a connection to the Power like she did. They got drips of water coming out of a faucet and she had a mighty river… or at least she had before. Now she was down to a small stream, but on the Tokugawa, it had been a river. She didn’t know how she’d gotten so strong so fast, though the elders had kept poking and asking questions, trying to figure it out. They had seemed more worried about how she’d managed to Travel the entire Tempest than they were about the Enemy coming. They tried not to show it, but she could tell they didn’t trust her. It was shaking Faye’s confidence.
It was this place. Ada made her upset. Just being close to her old house made her feel like crying angry tears.
I’m stronger than that. I’m better than that. When she was a little girl, she’d had to live inside her own head, because it was the only safe place. But she wasn’t a scared little girl anymore, that nobody loved because they all thought she’d been possessed by the devil. She was Sally Faye Vierra, knight of the Grimnoir. She’d saved lives, battled the Imperium, and been a hero. She’d thought that she had put the miserable sad part of her life behind her, but apparently it was still there. It would always be there until she buried it once and for all.
She knew what she had to do.
Ian got to her first. “What’s your deal?”
“Fix the car. I’ll catch up.” And then she Traveled away.
Ian Wright watched the Traveler blink out of existence. He looked around the wastes, but Faye was nowhere to be seen. “Well, damn it all to hell.”
George and Whisper caught up a moment later. “Where did she run off to?”
“Personal business, I imagine,” Whisper said. “You should not have insulted her.”
Ian grunted. “Yeah, I was pretty dumb.”
“You were rude,” George pointed out.
“Not that. I wish I would’ve realized that she could’ve just Traveled back to town and saved us the walk.”
It took many long hops to reach home.
The old homestead was smaller than she remembered. She hadn’t realized it would seem so tiny. Maybe she’d just gotten used to being in cities with buildings that absolutely towered overhead, or maybe she’d spent too much time living in homes that made this place look like the shack it was… Or maybe she’d just gotten taller over the last four years.
The fences had been made out of scrap lumber and weaved-together branches. They’d been too poor to buy good wire even before the dust had come. The pigs had gotten loose all the time, but they had never wandered too far. Then they had all died when the air turned to poison and everyone had taken to wearing masks to protect their faces. The outhouse had collapsed into a heap of splinters.
The ground was a lifeless grey color and the entire yard had been smoothed perfectly flat by the constant wind. There were two metal poles in front of the old shack. Ma’s clothesline had run between those. Faye remembered running and playing between the hanging clothes. Whenever she’d forget herself in the moment and accidentally Traveled, she’d receive a beating. Traveling had been so much fun, though, that it had still been worth it. Now, one of the clothes poles had fallen down. The other stuck out of the ground at an angle, like something had crashed into it.
The house itself was also at a slight angle. She’d like to say the wind had done that, but more than likely, Pa had been a little drunk when he’d built the place. The front door was missing. Probably taken by a neighbor to use for firewood. The doorway was a black, gaping hole. She couldn’t do it. Faye told herself she was being silly. She’d fought the Chairman, why was this so difficult?
It took her nearly half an hour of standing in the yard before she screwed up enough courage to walk inside.
Beams of sunlight came through the tiny windows and a few holes in the wall and roof. There was no glass in the windows, but then again, there never had been. In the winter they’d just hung old canvas over the narrow slits to hold in the heat. During the dust storms, they’d tried that, but nothing could keep out the choking silt. The floor was dirt. Faye remembered using her fingers and drawing pretty designs in that dirt. It used to make her mad when the others would walk on them, but since there was only the one room to share, it was to be expected.
It was empty except for spiderwebs and trash. Their cobbled together furniture was missing. She hadn’t known why she’d expected otherwise.
There was lots of broken glass left over from Pa’s bottles. She kicked those out of the way and made some space. Not worried about getting her sturdy dress dirty, Faye sat cross-legged in the middle of the room. She closed her eyes and sat still and quiet for a long time.
The memories came flooding back. When her eyes turned grey and her Power showed up, people had become scared of her and what she could do. Her pa had hated her for it. Her ma was always wringing her hands and crying. Life had already been mean and hard, and her becoming different had just made it worse for everyone. Any bad luck that happened, and there had been plenty, had been blamed on her.
She remembered listening in on one of her parents’ whispered conversations late one night when they’d thought that everyone else had been asleep. They’d talked about maybe drowning her in the well. Ma said that nobody would ever have to know. Pa had said no, because murdering her would be a sin, besides, she’d probably just Travel out of the water, and tattle on them to the sheriff. Ma had said that the sheriff would never believe a devil child. Pa had put his foot down and told her to go to sleep.
Not everyone had been like that, though. Some folks in town had been friendly. Nice as could be, and even interested in what she could do, except Ma always shooed her away from those people with their crazy notions. There had only been one other person with magic in Ada. He could make things freeze, until he got run over by a tractor and killed. Then she’d been the only cursed oddball around.
Good thing I’m not odd anymore. She had quit being odd the day that Pa had sold her for ten dollars to her new family.
Opening her eyes, Faye came to a very profound realization: This was an empty house. It didn’t mean anything to her. The scared little Okie girl didn’t exist anymore. She had important things to do, like solve a big crime and then save the world from a horrible monster from outer space. There was no time for moping.
Faye usually kept a
packet of matches in her pocket. Unlike many of her associates, she didn’t smoke, but you never knew when you might need to set something on fire. She pushed up all the garbage into one corner, found a piece of old newspaper, and struck the match. The trash pile quickly caught as she walked back into the sunshine.
The wood was so dry that it went right up. She marveled at how fast the place was consumed. It was like all that stored-up anger and sadness burned extra hot. Faye leaned on the fence and watched her old house burn to the ground.
OCI Headquarters
Crow was studying a gigantic map of the country when the office phone rang. He let one of the men answer it. He was too busy puzzling over the logistical issues related to the overall mission of the OCI, and didn’t want to interrupt his train of thought. Using the 1930 census data, there were approximately one hundred and twenty-five million Americans. The estimate was that about one in a hundred of those had some small measure of magical affinity, which put that at a staggering one and a quarter million people. Luckily, he didn’t need to worry about them yet. They would come later, after the country was used to the idea of controlling magic. The boss was clever like that.
His current issue was the one in a thousand that was an actual Active, with access to magic capable of causing serious problems. One-hundred-and-twenty-five thousand people would need to register, and many of them wouldn’t want to. Those holdouts would be his problem.
The law had not even been read in Congress yet, but the boss knew that it was going to pass. It was too early to begin implementing the plan, but it was common knowledge that some specific Actives would cause trouble. They were Crow’s red flags, and there were a lot of red flags on that map. Too many of those flags had question marks drawn on them. The goal was to neutralize as many of those as possible to ensure a smooth transition. Then there were the gold flags. Those were the special cases. There were very few gold flags on his map, but-the ones that the boss had big plans for.
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