He sat next to her, pad against his chest.
“Am I going to regret this?” she asked.
He tipped down the pad. She looked at in confusion. In real life, her bad leg was much smaller than her good one, but he’d made it way larger, and more—it looked…vibrant. Energetic. Forceful.
Magical.
It was where the image of her came to life. She touched it. “Oh my god,” she said.
“What do you think?”
Her vision blurred. Her throat clogged with tears.
He’d loved her, leg and all. In drawing her, he’d loved her.
He loved her.
VERONICA SAT DOWN in her lab the next day, creaky from so many hours at the keyboard. She was on fire with this new discovery, which she called a ‘dithered time governance signature.’ She’d experimented on Jophius first. She’d adjusted him to blink out that afternoon, and then dithered him, and he’d persisted.
The extension worked.
She wished she could share her breakthrough with Max, but she wanted him to be surprised. He’d already sent the doomsday letters to the Salvos and set up everything with lawyers and safety deposit boxes, ensuring her protection. Now she’d have something for him: natural life. He’d expect to blink out tomorrow at 6:07 pm, and reappear on the doorstep ten seconds later. But he wouldn’t blink out.
He’d stay. He’d be normal. His own man.
The dithered time governance signature was a way of fooling the computers, totally outrageous in its simplicity—every time it hit the wall of seven days, it would bounce back and not realize it because of the way she’d bespelled it. Meanwhile, Max would age like a regular man.
She had to put in some limiting date, of course, just to not leave it blank, so she picked 2012. Instead of reappearing in a week as the man from the photo, he’d reappear in 30 years as the man in the photo. What the hell, they could always change it.
Then she thought about what a problem it would be for Max to reappear as a 40-year-old man in 2012 and not know anyone. So she put on the electrodes and conjured a recent photo of herself, and set that to appear in 2012 when Max appeared.
She needed a better place for them to appear, too, rather than January in Minnesota. It could be anywhere, if she had the coordinates. Maybe not even on this planet! The thought tickled her–the two of them materializing on some space station, like Mr. and Mrs. Buck Rogers. She put in the coordinates for a beach in Florida.
2012. Max might leave her by then. Or if the Soviet Union attacked, there’d be a nuclear winter and they definitely wouldn’t want to come back. But for now, they’d both age normally until 2012. Then Max would blink out and reappear in Florida as a younger man. What 70-year-old man wouldn’t want to blink out and appear on a beach as his 40-year-old self with his woman’s 40-year-old self? It was a pretty good gift.
She went back to find his command, which sat a few rows above the Jophius code. First, she cancelled the command to re-up him at 6:07 tomorrow. Having two Maxes would be bad. It was bad enough that he’d had to cross paths with his corpse.
Once Max’s cancellation went through, she copied in the new code. She hesitated over the enter key. Max would be free. But she wasn’t like one of those blind fish. Real things sometimes frightened and threatened, but they were still worth doing. You could jump into the unknown and just trust. Max had given her that.
She took a deep breath and hit enter, setting the commands across the umbra where the images lived.
It was at that very instant that the lights went off. She sat up as the fans quieted and slowed.
Veronica frowned. Had the command taken too much electricity? Or was this just a coincidence?
More importantly, had the command to give Max a natural life gone through before the electricity cut out? There was no way to tell.
Great. Now she’d have to get the power back on and re-enter everything, just to be safe. She grabbed a candle and went to the power box in the main part of the basement, but everything looked normal. Why was the power cut?
“Max?” She called up.
No answer.
Shivers prickled over her. A quick cast through the house told her she had visitors. Seven witches. In the same room with Max. The magical surge of seven witches at work had drained the electrical.
Shit.
Jophius was nowhere—probably out roaming the woods, too far for her to locate.
She limped quickly upstairs, and steeled herself and walked into the living room. The witches had arranged themselves on the furniture as though they were guests in for tea. She recognized only one of them: Kerucha, leader of the East Coast witches. Kerucha’s assistant had Max bound with a magical Skiveto string.
“What do you want?” Veronica asked calmly. “And make it fast. I’m busy. And you’d do well to let go of my bodyguard.”
“Funny story,” Kerucha said. “About your bodyguard here. Apparently, he’s been dead for three months.”
“Doesn’t look dead to me,” Veronica said.
“Me either,” Kerucha said. “But he is. See, it all started when I got curious about how the Council disappeared. One wants to avoid the fate of her unlucky sisters. My investigation led me to the Salvos.”
“Is this supposed to be fascinating in some way?” Veronica asked calmly, trying not to look at Max. She couldn’t let them know how important he was to her.
“You’ve been killing the hitters they send after you,” Kerucha continued. “But this last time, the very fresh corpse of a certain cop who’d died long ago was found among your victims. The corpse of one Detective Maxwell Drummond. Almost as if he’d been brought to life only to be killed. And—” she held up a finger and walked over to Max, set it upon his head. “…here he is again. Veronica, we would love your secret recipe.”
“Don’t give it to them,” Max said.
She tweaked his cheek. “Oh, she will. Or you, my friend, are in a world of pain.”
“I’m dead already,” Max growled.
Dead already. Was he? Had the command for him to have a natural life gone through? Or would he blink out tomorrow?
“You can’t let them have it,” Max said.
“Shut up,” Kerucha said. Her assistant tightened the line on Max. He kept his face impassive, but blood seeped through his shirt where the Skiveto cut into his shoulders.
With a fling of her hand, Veronica blasted the thing off. Oh, it was folly to use her energy for a blast like that, especially if she was heading into a fight, but hell if she’d see him hurt. She wound a protection spell around him just as the collective power of the witches blew into her, slamming her against a wall.
She hit back, calling to Jophius in her mind. She crashed a lamp against the weakest witch’s head, thinking to pick them off one by one.
“We just want your secret,” Kerucha said. “It’s your computer, isn’t it? You actually did what you said. And kept it a secret.”
“You’ll never get it.” Veronica swept a hand, stoking up wind that roared through the house in red gusts.
Max went for one of the witches and he was blown back onto the floor. These witches were brimming with power. They had been preparing for this fight.
“Nobody has to die,” Kerucha said. “Just hand it over. With instructions.”
“You’ll have to kill me first,” Veronica said.
“We’ll kill him first.”
“I won’t let you!”
“Be happy it’s us, Veronica. Your secret’s out. Whoever controls life and matter controls the planet. Don’t you prefer it to be witches? Your next callers will suck the knowledge right out of your brain.”
But Kerucha would raise armies, slaughter millions, usher in a witch dynasty. Veronica should’ve destroyed the thing. She knew that now. She’d been so arrogant.
She mustered all her strength, crashing a bookcase onto them.
“Run, Max! Get out!” Her protection spell would let him get out of range if he ran fast enough.
&n
bsp; Max headed toward the kitchen instead of out the front door.
No!
One of the witches started after him.
“No!” Veronica flung electricity, knocking her back, using an algorithm that would be strange to them all. Kerucha tried to punch through it. Another of the other witches tried to go after Max, and Veronica bespelled the floor with sparks, but the drain left her open to a jolt of pain from another. A window broke. Another tried to pull Max back, but bricks began to pop out from around the fireplace.
“Where is the computer?” Kerucha asked calmly, as if a fight didn’t rage around her. “In the basement?”
“You can’t have it.” Veronica hit back with hellhail the size of baseballs. She’d fought the Council, hadn’t she? She’d used everything she had, but she’d nearly won. The pain worsened as she rained fiery projectiles. One witch’s hair caught on fire and Kerucha had to draw water. Veronica went harder, but she was losing energy. Growing cold.
The battle raged on, and in the noise and confusion of it, Veronica became aware of smashing coming from somewhere else. Rhythmic smashing, like metal and glass. At first she thought it was something the witches were doing. It came to her, as her strength finally drained, as she slid to the floor, that it was Max. In the basement. Destroying the computers.
“Noooo!” she cried. “Noooo!”
Kerucha pulled herself up from the ground. “What?”
The smashing went on and on.
Kerucha’s eyes widened in understanding. “He’s wrecking your computer!”
“He’s wrecking all of them,” Veronica whispered.
“Stop him!” Kerucha flew into the kitchen, heading for the basement with the other witches on her tail. Veronica heaved herself up, shivering, and went after them.
They found Max sitting on the floor in the shadowy computer lab, sledgehammer in one hand, flashlight in the other. The machines were destroyed. Utterly destroyed.
“Max, no!”
“It’s over,” he said. “And I wrecked your backup disks, too. Everything’s gone. It ends here.”
“You didn’t!” Kerucha powered on the lights. The room blazed to life. Max had been thorough. Everything was destroyed.
Tears welled up in Veronica’s eyes. “I can’t recreate this code, Max. It’s too complex, too full of accidents. I can never get it back!”
“I know.”
She fell to her knees on the cold concrete floor, weak again. Her teeth had begun to chatter. She’d canceled the re-up of him before she’d entered the command to give him a natural life. “I can never get you back.”
Unless the command went through.
“It had to be done, Veronica.” Max knelt in front of her, took her hands in his. “It’s done, baby.”
Kerucha pointed at Max. “Check if they’re telling the truth. This might be a ruse.”
Her assistant waved her hands. Veronica allowed it, knowing Max would’ve gotten everything. She’d shown him her backup disks. She could see fragments of them on the floor. Even if a backup survived, slid under one of the machines, it would take years to configure new computers.
“They both think it’s lost,” the assistant said. “They both believe this.”
A tear slid down Veronica’s cheek. “I can’t lose you.”
“We have a day, right?”
“I should kill you,” Kerucha said to Max. “I should kill you both.”
A gasp from the doorway. The witches backed up as Jophius trotted in, snarling.
“Jesus!” Kerucha retreated toward her sisters, clustered in the doorway. “Jophius?”
Max grabbed the loose skin around Jophius’s neck and pulled him close. “And he’s been hungry for witches since he finished off the Council. You harm a hair on Veronica’s head and Jophius will hunt you down and eat you just as he ate the Council. Now get the hell out!”
Jophius growled and snorted.
“Nothing here we want anyway,” one of the other witches said, looking at Kerucha, clearly eager to leave.
Kerucha frowned. “We’ll have our eyes on you. All of them.”
Sparks crackled as they fled.
Max rubbed Veronica’s arms. “Are you okay?”
“No, Max.” She looked at her life’s work, in shambles. And was he there to stay or not? “I don’t want you to go.”
He wrapped his arms around her, trying to warm her. “I was never really here.”
“Yes, you were. Max…”
“Shhhh.” He picked her up and carried her up the stairs, just like before, but he bypassed the trashed living room. “Into the bath with you.”
“I’m not as bad as I was after I fought the Council,” she protested. “I can walk.”
“Humor me.” Upstairs he set her on the bathroom easy chair and started the water. It crashed into the deep, deep tub.
“Max—”
“We have a day, baby,” he said. “Let’s get you warm. It was all stolen time, anyway.”
“We could’ve had more,” she whispered. “It was supposed to be a surprise, but I figured out a way to give you natural life.”
He furrowed his brow, eyes intense. Was he angry?
“It’s just that you love living so much, and you wanted to be your own man, and I wanted you to have that. To be free and alive. And just as I was inputting the commands, the power went out.”
“You tried to give me a natural life?”
“Yes. I wanted you to be your own boss with your own life. Not dependent on me in any way.”
“You wanted to set me free.”
She explained how she’d re-set the time so that he’d age naturally and wouldn’t blink out until 2012. “And, er, I had to put something, so I re-upped you as what you are now. In Florida.”
“In 2012?”
“Yes,” she said.
“So if the command had gone through, I would’ve grown old until 2012, at which point I blink out and reappear as the age I am now, off on some beach? And the same with you?”
“Well, except I wouldn’t blink out. There’d be two of me,” she said, “an old me here and a young me with you on a beach.”
He scowled. “Jesus.”
“Well, I figured we’d be able to alter it if we wanted. I didn’t think the computers would be destroyed. If the command did go through, that’s all set in stone now. We’d just figure something out. But Max, I’m almost sure the power was cut before the command went through. And now the computers…even if I worked around the clock for the next decade…”
“It’s okay, Veronica—”
“No, it’s not. Listen to me, Max. You asked me once if you have a soul and then you wouldn’t let me answer. The truth is, I don’t know, but—”
Max kneeled in front of her and kissed her, stopping her words in their tracks. “But I know,” he said. “I know I have a soul because of how much I love you.” He pulled away and pressed his palm to his chest. “This much love, no way could it all fit in here.”
She put her hand over his. How could she live without him now? Tears blurred her eyes. “Why didn’t I work faster?” she whispered. “Why didn’t I input it just a minute sooner? Why did I have to test it on Jophius?”
“Stop.” He kissed her. “You tried to set me free.”
“I doubt it went through.”
“But I’m here now.” He broke away and swished his hand in the water, then turned off both spigots. “We’re here now.” He pulled off his shirt as he had before. It seemed like months ago, when she’d first let him bathe her. She brought her hands to her shirt, fingers trembling.
“Oh, please.” He stood in front of her, undid her shirt for her. She really was cold. And so tired and drained. “You’re going to have to stop using all your power on these witches.”
“They won’t come for me after this. And neither will the Salvos, thanks to you.”
When she was undressed, he picked her up and stepped into the tub, lowering them both, slowly, letting the water surround the
m. He kissed her ear, her neck, and then stretched out under her, holding her. The warmth rolled through her, thawing her.
“So let me get this straight,” he said. “Jophius got a natural life? But not me? Should I be insulted?”
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Hey, it’s a joke,” he said.
“It’s not funny.”
“What are you gonna do, not re-up me?”
She splashed him. “You’re not funny at all.”
They stayed up the whole night talking. In the morning, Veronica made his favorite breakfast of steak and eggs. She was feeling almost normal.
They ate. They made love. They made snow angels out in the sunshiny day, then came back in and made love in front of the fire. They tried not to watch the clock. He’d be gone at 6:07 p.m.
Unless the command had gone through.
That evening, Veronica made steak and garlic mashed potatoes with gravy, another Max favorite, and brought it out to the living room. The grandfather clock had just struck five. Max was busy hanging something over the mantel. The drawing of her. Framed.
She just stood there, speechless.
“I want you to see always how I see you. How beautiful you really are.”
She swallowed back the tears and set down the plates. Neither of them felt like eating, though. They snuggled together, with Max getting up now and then to stoke the fire.
For the hundredth time, she went over that moment of hitting the enter key the day before, trying to tell herself that the command had gone through before the power went out.
It seemed too much to hope.
She said, “I’ll keep an eye on her from a distance. I’ll make sure that family has enough money.”
Max tightened his arms around her. “Let’s not talk like that, Veronica. Maybe the command went through. Everything’s electricity. You said so yourself, remember? Emotions and thoughts. It doesn’t only come from the wires.”
“I just want you to know it, though. That Teresa’s taken care of.”
“I want us to stop saying goodbye,” he said. “No more watching the damn clock. I want this to be a normal hour. As if we have a normal life.”
“You’re willing to watch Miami Vice?”
“Yes, Veronica. You know why?”
Fire & Frost Page 13