by D. J. Bodden
“What do you… Jonas?” she said, blinking. She brushed the hair from her face with her free hand and let him go. “Honey, are you alright? What did I—?”
“You were dreaming of Dad, or remembering him. I tried to wake you,” Jonas sputtered, rubbing his neck. She lifted me off the ground like I didn’t weigh a thing, he thought. And as for his mother losing her powers, he now knew it was a lie, he just wasn’t sure why she’d allowed it to spread.
“I was with — I was thinking of your dad, and… you surprised me.” She looked him over, then added, “Your glamour is working.”
“Yeah, it started today. So, your powers — I mean, I thought you’d lost them, but that clearly…” he ran a hand through his hair, not sure how to describe what he’d felt. He glanced at the foot of the bed, and said, “What’s the box for?”
“Did you need something, Jonas?” she said, ignoring his question. Her hair, once again, looked perfectly in place, her expression neutral.
Jonas flinched under the coldness of her gaze. “Yes. I mean, I came in because you said to ask if I needed blood but then you—”
She walked over to the black mini-fridge, took out two pouches, and tossed them to him. “I’ll have one brought for your room. Good night, Jonas.”
“I… you too, Mom.” Eyes prickling, he clutched the two blood packs to his chest and walked out of her room.
♚
Jonas didn’t see his mother again for two days. When he tried checking her room, the door was locked. Something — probably her chest of drawers — was also jammed behind it. He stayed up Wednesday night to see if she’d leave for work, but she never did. Jonas pictured her, curled up on her bed, escaping to an imaginary world in which his father was alive, and he hadn’t been born yet.
He sat in the silent apartment, unable to cry or yell or think of anything that would fix the situation. He wasn’t upset that she’d rather live in a world without him, he was terrified she’d become completely disconnected and go out to see if the sun was real again, leaving him an orphan on top of everything else.
♚
Thursday, instead of going home, he went to the Agency and rode the elevator down to the administrative floor, picturing the veneered table with five legs. It was early afternoon, and Fangston’s office was locked, but the Director’s secretary was there.
“Hi, Jonas. I’m Linda,” she said, smiling. “We met once before, and I was also at your dad’s funeral. Is there something I can help you with? The Director is probably still sleeping, and won’t be in for a few more hours.”
“Umm, actually, I just need to see a box of stuff my father left for me. Do you know where I could find it?”
Linda’s smile faded. “I’m sorry, Jonas. I’m not sure that would be a good idea. Mr. Fangston is pretty particular about your father’s things, but if you could just wait—”
“That’s okay, Linda. I completely understand. It’s just that I’m having a really tough time since my dad… well…” he paused, milking the moment. “I just wanted to look.”
Linda bit her lip, and tapped the end of her pen on her desk.
“You just want to look, not take anything, right?”
“Right,” Jonas said.
She gave Jonas a conspiratorial look. “Not a word to Mr. Fangston, okay?”
“I promise,” Jonas said, “you don’t know how much this means to me.”
“It’s alright, Jonas. I have a son too.” Bingo, Jonas thought, although her being a mother surprised him; she didn’t look a day over twenty. “Just sit at my desk,” she said, “If the phone rings, don’t answer it. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She walked out and Jonas sat down, like he’d been told. Her computer was locked, her desk devoid of anything particularly interesting. There were some old leather-bound books that were probably ledgers of some sort, although, once when he glanced at them out of the corner of his eye, he could have sworn they were shimmering a little. He picked one up and tried to read it, but the letters looked like gibberish and seemed to dart away from his gaze. It made his head hurt. Then he noticed that if he squinted, and looked at the page slightly off center, one word seemed to jump out. “Ah-pree-ay,” he said, sounding it out.
The book snapped shut loudly, making a sound like a gunshot and startling him so badly that he almost fell out of the chair.
“Well, aren’t you an interesting kid?” Linda said, from the doorway. She was carrying his father’s box.
“I’m sorry,” Jonas said, “I don’t know what happened. I was trying to read it, and –”
Linda gave him a lopsided smile. “It’s okay Jonas, you were lucky all it did was scare you a little. The Agency is full of dangerous objects.”
Jonas blushed and quickly put the book back on the shelf. “I don’t — I mean, the book just looked different, that’s all. Is that my dad’s stuff?” he said, hoping to change the subject as quickly as possible.
She nodded and set the box on her desk. “It doesn’t leave this room, okay? I’m going to go get a coffee from the lounge, and then I’ll be back.” Then she patted him on the shoulder and walked out.
As soon as she was gone, Jonas opened the box and lifted everything out, setting the Bible on the desk and wrapping the smaller items in his father’s leather jacket. The small, circular recess in the bottom of the box was still there. He tried pushing on it and picked at it with his fingernails, but it didn’t budge. Thinking of the elevator, he tried probing the box with his mind. There was definitely something there, but he couldn’t activate the mechanism. He tried using some of his father’s old coins in the spot, but they weren’t the right size. Besides, that would have been too obvious, Fangston would have tried that already. Then Jonas remembered the Director asking him about his father’s lucky coin.
On a whim, Jonas pulled a quarter from his pocket. It fit perfectly in the spot, but nothing happened. Fangston thinks Dad’s coin opens the box, he thought, but Dad’s coin wasn’t real. Then he thought about Viviane, about the way people looked at him at school, and all the things he’d thought weren’t real two weeks ago. He thought about his mother, locked in her room with her imaginary husband. Since when does real matter? Looking down at the quarter, he focused on it until it looked like his father’s lucky coin. Then he placed it in the indentation.
There was a click, and the bottom of the box popped open.
CHAPTER 15
I can’t believe that worked, Jonas thought. He lifted the lid to the inner compartment. The bottom side bore the inscription, “We see through a glass, darkly,” which, knowing his dad, had to be some kind of inside joke. Inside the compartment, there was only one item, a half-inch thick leather-bound book, about the size of a composition notebook. Jonas recognized it as one of his father’s journals. He wanted to read it right then, but knew Linda would be back at any moment, so he lifted his coat, stuffed the journal into the back of his waistband, and closed the false bottom. Then, he put everything back in the box exactly as it had been.
“Jonas! You should have told me you were coming; we could have done this in my office.” Marcus Fangston was leaning against the doorway, with a very nervous looking secretary behind him. “Did you find anything? Were you able to open it?” Fangston said, advancing into the room. Anger rolled off him like a heat wave, and Jonas smelled… sulfur.
“You’re the demon,” Jonas blurted out. He didn’t have time to curse himself for speaking the thought out loud, because Fangston grabbed him, mentally, and shoved him back through his own barrier.
♚
Jonas stumbled backward, but Sam caught him, lifting him to his feet. They were on the parapet of his walls and a strong, hot wind was blowing in from the edge of his consciousness. Jonas could see the glow of a massive fire on the horizon that filled the air with orange, red, and black smoke. The smell was overwhelming, and made him want to retch.
“It’s brimstone,” Fangston said, looking out over the wall with his back to Jonas. Sam shout
ed an order, and several guardians rushed forward with weapons drawn. Fangston merely waved his hand and they died, burned to ash like paper in a bonfire. Jonas felt as if someone had just stabbed a needle into his brain, above his right eye. “We need to talk, Jonas. There isn’t much time.”
“I don’t see that we have anything to talk about,” Jonas said, and tried to throw Fangston off the wall, like he’d thrown Phillip around. It didn’t work.
Fangston raised a finger, then pointed at one of the six-foot-tall crenellations. Jonas was jerked from his feet and slammed into the wall. “I’m sorry. I wish I could be gentler, convince you to trust me, let you ask all of your angry little questions and say we’d save the world together. But, there’s no time for that. I’m your mother and father’s oldest friend—”
“You’re a demon.”
Fangston sighed. “No, I’m the idiot who thought I was strong enough to contain a demon within the walls of my mind. It was a mistake. Can we move past this?”
“Why would you do that?”
Fangston sighed, waved a hand, and a tower exploded, raining dirt, stone, and timber all around it. Pain lanced through Jonas’ head again, stronger than before. “Couldn’t do that before I trapped the demon. Had to use tricks, like Viviane, only I wasn’t a puppeteer either,” he said, “but I couldn’t keep the damned thing contained, and it’s been fighting me for control ever since.”
“So that’s it? You wanted more power? That’s why you betrayed my parents and attacked me?”
Fangston turned to face him. He was wearing an old black raincoat that flapped a little in the hot breeze. He looked tired, his face gaunt and slightly sunken. “The world is bigger than you realize, Jonas. It’s not just about you, your parents, or even this city. Alice never understood that, either. It’s about human governments and corporations growing bigger and more demanding every decade, placing greater restrictions on us, requiring more agents for missions or experiments, making threats… they’re going to herd us into camps one day, or find a ‘cure’ to make everyone normal, like them, so they don’t feel threatened. Only we won’t go quietly, Jonas, I can promise you that. There would be war the likes of which they have never known.
“To prevent that, there has to be a balance of power they understand. It isn’t enough that we keep the peace and protect them from demons, warlocks, and things like Doris that would ruin their tidy little lives. Appeasement doesn’t work on humans, Jonas, you need a stick big enough to keep them in line. No one else was willing to act, so I did. I’m not ashamed of that.” He shrugged. “As for your parents, I forbade Victor from investigating the Order, and I’ve tried to keep you and Alice out of it, too.”
Jonas thought about it, trying to be objective. “You tried to stop me from training here, didn’t you?”
“Yes! But then you blabbed about Madoc pointing the finger at me, and the demon wanted you close so it could watch you. You’re just like your father, down to his stubbornness and narrow definitions of right and wrong!”
Even though he knew Fangston meant it as an insult, Jonas felt absurdly pleased. His hand closed on his father’s coin, and he rubbed it between his thumb and index finger.
The wind carried an angry bellow over the parapet, and the horizon flashed with repeated lighting strikes.
“It’s breaking loose,” Fangston said. “When you wake up, pretend I caught you before you opened the box, and leave as quickly as you can. Find Madoc. Take whatever you found to your mother and tell her what’s happened. If anyone can kick this thing out of me, it will be her.”
“What about my father?”
“Alive when I last saw him, but I don’t know what happened to him after that. I hide things from the demon, and the demon hides things from me.”
My father’s alive, Jonas thought, then felt himself being hurled back out of his own head.
♚
“Well, Jonas? Did you find anything in the box?” Fangston asked, probing his barrier.
“No, sir.” Jonas said, truthfully. But he had found something in the compartment underneath it. His father had always said that an honest man never lied, and a wise man knew when to keep his mouth shut. “You came in before I could really look at everything. I thought one of these coins might trigger the slot at the bottom of the box, but they don’t fit.”
Fangston frowned. “We’ve tried those, and the ones from your apartment, too. You didn’t find his special coin? The one he was always playing with?”
Jonas looked at Fangston’s face. It was twitching, like he was trying to make two facial expressions at the same time. “The only thing I found in my father’s possessions that even came close, was a plain old quarter. The special coin must have been on him when he… died. You didn’t see it?”
Fangston hesitated, then looked at Jonas like he was seeing him for the first time. “All we found were ashes, Jonas. Surely, you remember?”
Jonas winced, the memory still as vivid as if it had just happened yesterday – standing in the shower, trying to wash the grit from him hands, face, and hair. “I remember, sir.” But it wasn’t him, he thought to himself, then said, “Well, I guess if you’ve already tried the other coins, I should be heading home.”
“Yes, you do that. Oh, and Jonas… next time you have an idea of something new to try, wait for me. I might be able to help.”
“I will, sir,” Jonas said. He walked out of the office, the journal pressed tightly against his back.
♚
All the way home, Jonas kept thinking about how he was going to approach his mother. If I can just convince her that Dad is still alive, and all she needs to do is exorcise Fangston or whatever you do to get rid of a demon, it might be enough to snap her back to reality. Then maybe, just maybe, with Fangston back to normal and the journal safely in hand, they’d be able to find out where his father really was.
“Mom?” Jonas said as he walked in the front door. He reached back and pulled the journal out of his waistband — he’d left it there during the walk home, in case the demon was having him watched. “I think I found –” He paused, seeing that Phillip had followed him inside.
“Oh, hey Phillip… can you wait outside for a minute? I need to—”
“Bert’s been here today,” Phillip said, pushing past Jonas. He touched a deep gouge in the wall, and added, “Practically sprayed the place.”
Phillip walked down the hallway, with Jonas close behind, and knocked on the door. “Mrs. Black?” When she didn’t answer, he ripped the handle out, and pushed the door open. “She’s not here,” he said. “No ash, no signs of a struggle. You think Bert could have forced her to leave?”
Jonas weighed whether he should trust Phillip or not. He’s seen the journal, and I know about Kieran. He shook his head. “Not a chance.”
“Then she followed him of her own free will or she’s using him as a puppet.” Phillip said, his huge hands clenched into fists. “Either way, they’re both gone.”
♚
After an hour of studying the journal, Jonas slammed it shut in frustration. It was useless. All the entries were in some kind of code, or a language that Google knew absolutely nothing about. There were drawings of runes, some etched into objects, and others laid out in spirals and geometrical shapes. But Jonas had no context to place them in. There were also what looked like chemical formulas that popped up in the middle of paragraphs, but they didn’t match anything Jonas could find online either.
Phillip had left to follow Bert’s trail. The apartment didn’t feel that different than it usually did. The rent, utilities, cable, and phone bills, were all paid automatically out of his parents’ account. He had no access to it, but it would keep functioning unless his mother canceled it. In the past, the automated flow of money seemed comforting. Now, he realized, it was almost terrifying. His mother didn’t have to come back. He could go on without her and be just fine. She didn’t have to feel guilty… if guilt was even an issue. For all Jonas knew, she thought her dream w
orld with his dad was real and Jonas was, in fact, the illusion.
She left me, he thought. She hadn’t called, left a note, or sent word. She’d just left, either following Bert or dragging him along with her. He’d spent the last year trying to keep it together for her, to do his duty as a son, and she’d just left. She hadn’t needed him at all. Why did I even bother? he thought, angry that his dad had raised him to believe it was his responsibility in the first place.
He closed his eyes, fists clenched on his thighs, and took a deep breath. I did the right thing. It wasn’t wasted. He needed to hold onto that. His mother was grieving, angry, and vulnerable. He had to figure out where she’d gone.
She’d left in broad daylight. How? Jonas wondered how long she’d stood outside, the day he found her scorched. Two minutes? An hour? How much exposure did she need to be able to tolerate to make her getaway? With Bert along, she could probably make the trip in a… The box! Before, when he’d found her catatonic in her room, there’d been a wooden crate at the foot of her bed. He quickly checked her room… gone. She’d obviously been planning her escape for days.
At least she’d come through for him in one respect. He now had a mini-fridge in his bedroom, stocked with blood packs. Her fridge had been emptied. Guess she wanted snacks for the road, he thought. Maybe she was planning on being back by now, Jonas told himself. Not that he believed it. Most likely, the same people who took his dad took her as well. So if he found her, then maybe… One problem at a time, he thought.
♚
He couldn’t talk to Amelia about what happened. He couldn’t talk to Eve, either. He needed to stick to his routine and stay away from the Agency during the week. Hopefully Fangston could keep his demon at bay. He wondered if the Director had known about the coin all along — if knowledge of it, and now the journal, were the last parts of his mind he’d been able to hang on to. After all, he’d said he was keeping secrets. Maybe that made him brave, but it still didn’t make up for letting the demon in and betraying Jonas’ father in the first place.