Which warmed Paul’s heart; Aliyah shouldn’t hate her mother.
“Sorry,” Valentine apologized. “What don’t you like about being there?”
“I’m a freak.”
“You’re not a freak. Would a freak beat my best time on Mario Kart?”
“Mom doesn’t let Mario Kart in the house. There’s… books. Mom has a library for me. She picked them out to read to me, and… they’re good, Valentine. They’re such wonderful stories. They’re about girls who live in the woods and have happy families and date boys and do chores, and...”
“And?”
Aliyah went silent again. Valentine matched her silence. Paul stayed hidden in the hallway, shifting from foot to foot; Aliyah’s quiet times always made him nervous.
“…I’m never having that,” Aliyah whispered.
“So you snuck in to watch us do ’mancy, so you could feel normal.”
Paul winced at Valentine’s bluntness. He’d always been careful to let Aliyah come to her own conclusions, afraid parroting back interpretations of her feelings would just create some sad, rubber-stamp version of himself.
Valentine, however, ricocheted through a life based upon snap judgments. And gauging from Aliyah’s reluctant nod, Valentine had summed up Aliyah’s feelings.
She clasped her milkshake to her chest. “Dad said there would be other ’mancers to talk to! Tons of them!”
“That’s… what Anathema told him,” Valentine allowed. “And she was kiiiinda crazy.”
Aliyah’s face went grim. “I know.”
Aliyah had never spoken of the day she’d burned Anathema alive, though Paul and Valentine had done everything they could to get her to open up. Aliyah had committed murder for all the right reasons: Anathema was a psychotically focused ’mancer who’d already killed hundreds, and had in fact had just severed Paul’s toes with a spear when Aliyah had come to his defense. And Aliyah had never done ’mancy before, had no control over what happened aside from her literally incandescent rage.
But Aliyah had never expressed remorse over the killing.
That flinty unwillingness unnerved Paul.
“I know Anathema said she’d seeded New York with ’mancers…” Valentine began.
“She said there’d be hundreds!” Aliyah interrupted. “And it took two months for her to... to get me started, so where are all my ’mancer friends? Who’s going to protect us?”
“Trust me, kid, you don’t want them to show up,” Valentine said. “’Mancers, well… they’re like ice and fire. We believe, and believe hard, that the universe works a certain way. Usually when we meet, we kill each other.”
Aliyah gasped. “But you and Daddy…”
“We get along. But if it wasn’t for our love of magic, we’d never be friends.”
Paul wanted to debate that – then looked at the fuzzy mold of rice deliquescing in Valentine’s sink, and thought of the scalding hot decontamination showers he always took after spending the evening at Valentine’s place.
“Maybe I can make friends at school,” Aliyah said. “This one girl liked Mario Kart…”
Valentine grabbed Aliyah’s shoulder. “Kid, you’re a ’mancer. Your dreams bleed out of your head and turn into reality. That means you will spend your life alone.”
Had Valentine really said that? Paul froze. Aliyah trembled in Valentine’s grip.
“I’m sorry,” Valentine continued, emphasizing her words by shaking Aliyah. “But you need to understand. What you have now? Me and your dad to talk to? This is the most social support you’ll ever get. Your dad’s absorbing your flux for you, so you don’t understand. But… the bad luck goes after whatever you fear losing the most. So even if you found someone who somehow wasn’t ’mancy-terrified to confide in, you’d…”
Valentine slumped back in the futon. “I had a boyfriend. I liked him. I liked him too much, Aliyah. And when I singlehandedly fended off a battalion of SMASH agents, which is exactly as exciting as it sounds, the flux got away from me, and… it asked, ‘What would reach into Valentine’s chest like Kano’s hand to tear her beating heart right the fuck out?’ And bam. Poor Raphael got skewered.
“So I’m not gonna lie. I can’t lie. You need to embrace loneliness, because your magic’s going to kill all your friends.”
Aliyah set down her milkshake, sickened. “Even Daddy?”
“Maybe.” Valentine sighed. “Look, kid, SMASH and the Task Force, they’re... they’re out to get us. And… you’ve got to be prepared, Aliyah.”
Aliyah stared at the blank television screen, eyes flinty. “I am prepared.”
Paul thought back to that counsellor’s report:
Aliyah’s mother has stated she has no friends and never initiates social interactions with other children…
Now Paul knew why.
“That is bullshit.”
He stepped forward, swept Aliyah into his arms; Valentine froze like she’d been caught raiding the cookie jar. Aliyah looked up, beaming, at her father.
“Daddy,” she said, delighted. “You swore!”
“I’ll swear whenever Valentine is that wrong.” He released Aliyah, whirled on Valentine. “Just how many ’mancers had you met before we started working together, Valentine?”
Valentine glowered. “Enough.”
“Two! You met two! That whole speech, Aliyah, was based on Valentine’s experience with two ’mancers. Imagine if you’d met two Chinese people and extrapolated behavior based on that sample size!”
“Paul,” Valentine warned him. “We don’t have to have this discussion in front of her.”
“There’s no discussion to be had, Valentine. You and I have forged a great friendship. Who’s to say we couldn’t join forces with other ’mancers?”
Valentine raised one plucked eyebrow. “…all the dead people in Europe?”
“That was in World War II,” Paul said, undeterred. “And that accident happened when the whole world was at war.”
“Thank you for clarifying that, professor.”
“And yes, warring ’mancers ripped open broaches to the demon dimensions, but the Allied ’mancers – a volunteer squadron! – worked together quite efficiently until then.”
“That’s like saying the Titanic sailed beautifully until it hit an iceberg, Paul.”
“I’m not saying things can’t go wrong, Valentine. I’m saying that if we can find the new ’mancers Anathema promised, well… maybe some of them could help us.”
“And some could be new Anathemas.”
Aliyah clutched her milkshake to her chest as though it were a teddy bear. Paul gave Valentine an icy glare. “Can we talk in the kitchen?”
“What, you mean that conversation I told you we shouldn’t have in front of her suddenly seems like a bad idea?”
“I don’t conceal the things I say to her from you!”
Valentine rose from the futon, hands grasping imaginary game controllers. “And maybe you should think before you promise her–”
“STOP IT!”
Aliyah flung something at them; Paul heard a whoosh and a triumphant ching!, then the world condensed around him, turning tight blue and spherical. He struggled for freedom as he lifted off the ground, floating into a glimmering icicle sphere that held him tight. Valentine wriggled for freedom next to him as they were bound back to back.
“...Did that bitch just throw a Pokeball at us?” Valentine asked, her voice rising in admiration – before the ball dropped to the ground and rolled under the futon, carrying a now-shrunken Paul and Valentine with it.
“You do not fight!” Aliyah cried. Paul saw her crouching down to look under the couch, brandishing her milkshake at them as their Pokeball jail rolled back to bump against the wall. “It’s bad enough when Mommy and David fight! We all have to be friends! So you–”
In her anger, Aliyah forgot her training. The flux took her by surprise. Her milkshake cup sagged; ice cream spattered all over Aliyah’s shoes.
“Fuck!” Aliya
h screamed.
Paul felt Valentine’s shoulders tense apologetically against his.
Aliyah flung the milkshake against the television; sticky cream oozed down the blank screen. “You’re all I have! So you – you get along!”
She opened the closet door, which, with a glimmer of ’mancy, now opened into her room at her mother’s place – a large space as neat as a landlord’s showcase, a tasteful duvet spread across the bed, the vacuumed carpet, a box of Good Housekeeping-approved toys against the wall. A picture-perfect space for a normal little girl.
Aliyah slammed the door shut, leaving Valentine and Paul trapped in Pokespace.
Paul had the distinct feeling he’d been put into a timeout.
Neither spoke for a very long time. Then Valentine cleared her throat.
“…I just don’t wanna lie to her, Paul.”
“And I don’t want her to lose hope.”
Valentine nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I get that.”
“I know you do.”
The argument settled, they both relaxed. Paul was more comfortable with silence, anyway.
“I spy with my little eye,” Valentine said, “Something beginning with ‘M’…”
It was a long several hours before the Pokeball dissolved.
Six
Bold and Infeasible Stances
Paul usually loved riding the subway. As a man with one artificial foot and a toeless half-foot jammed into a clunky orthotic boot, people stared at him when he walked by. Yet on the subway, jammed shoulder to shoulder with the Saturday morning crowd, Paul was just another commuter.
Except on days when Paul’s face was on the front page of every newspaper.
A little old lady looked up from her knitting, starting the recognition cycle. She glanced at Paul’s face, seeing a scrawny middle-aged Greek man.
She checked his ankle: Paul’s signature black carbon ProPrio™ artificial foot.
Her eyes flew open.
Paul raised his newspaper, blocking eye contact. The local headlines had not been kind: the New York Post, flippant as always, had a picture of Paul at the press conference, with the smoking garage Photoshopped in behind him, along with the bold words “TSABO TSTRIKES OUT AGAIN.” The Daily News was slightly nicer with “PSYCHO MANTIS PSLIPS AWAY,” but they still had a goofy picture of Paul, baffled by the escape.
Paul wrinkled his nose. He hated the way the local papers treated him like a crazy superhero – yes, he’d lost his right foot killing an illustromancer, a handful of mundane men who’d taken down a ’mancer single-handed. And yes, he’d lost the toes on his other foot in a showdown with Anathema the paleomancer, which made him the greatest ’mancer-hunter alive, but…
…he didn’t want to hunt ’mancers.
To read the papers, you’d have thought Paul only got out of bed on the off chance he might get to strangle a ’mancer. The papers made ’mancy seem like a toxic hazard that any good American wanted eradicated from the earth.
Furthermore, the papers spoke as if punching Psycho Mantis in the face would be the greatest thing Paul could do for humanity. Paul found that idea repellent; true changes weren’t created through violence, but through thousands of tiny kindnesses and efficiencies.
Paul didn’t contradict the papers, though. In fact, he’d let the mayor’s office play up that dumb ’mancers-versus-mundanes angle… because it had helped keep his job.
And now, after years of holding his nose to court the media, the news had turned against him. Which was why he was commuting into the mayor’s office on a Saturday morning.
The subway screeched to a stop. Paul’s replacement phone rang: it was Imani, his ex-wife.
They’d been divorced for almost three years, and still his heart stuttered whenever she called.
“Paul,” she said, “We have to talk.”
Paul had never once seen Imani cry – not when she’d come to him after thirteen years of marriage asking for divorce, not when their daughter Aliyah had been so burned the doctors feared she might not survive. Imani worked at the highest tiers of corporate law; women who broke down under high pressure didn’t last long.
But her voice quavered now.
He scurried off the subway, huddled under a steel support beam to scrape up some privacy. “What’d she do this time?”
“She mouthed off to David when he told her it was bedtime – told him he didn’t get to tell her what to do, Daddy did. So I sent her to her room. Then I found her on her bed with milkshake all over her dress, hours later. We don’t allow processed sugar in this house, Paul. She must have snuck out again. But I don’t know how.”
Imani hadn’t called last night. She must have stayed up all night, deciding whether to confide in Paul.
Paul heard Valentine’s voice: Why do you even talk to that frigid clamhole, Paul? She sued the courts for exclusive custody! If the judges had sided with her, you’d never have seen Aliyah again. Why don’t you just let her rot in the sewage of her own awful choices?
“…because she cares about Aliyah as much as I do,” Paul muttered.
“What?” Imani asked.
“I said Aliyah loves you.”
“A little girl! Eight!”
“ – almost nine – ”
“A nine-year-old on the streets! On her own!” Imani cried. “Where anyone could… take her. All because I gave her a timeout for swearing at my husband.”
Paul hated hearing Imani talk about her husband, as though they’d never been married. He also hated himself for not being used to that by now.
“You did nothing wrong,” Paul reassured her. “A timeout is – it’s pretty generous if she used the F-word.”
“She used the MF-word.”
“Oh Lord.” It was increasingly difficult to raise Aliyah, even with Paul and Valentine’s ’mancy to keep her in line. Teenagers started rebelling once they got a taste of power – growing large physically, getting jobs, finally gaining alternatives to circumvent their parents’ punishments. But Aliyah, not quite nine, had almost infinite magic power at her disposal.
She was rebelling early. Way early.
Poor Imani had no clue what was about to hit her.
“I tried to get her to open up when she got back, Paul. I talked about how inappropriate she’d been, like the psychologist suggested. I asked her what David had said that angered her; she said nothing.”
That was the flip side to Aliyah, Paul thought. A normal little girl wouldn’t have been able to keep a secret like “Being a ’mancer” for long – but Aliyah had locked her emotions deep inside long before her ’mancy. That secrecy kept her safe from the world.
But when Paul wanted her to open up about killing Anathema, Aliyah’s stubborn refusal to share slammed shut like a door.
“I asked her where she went,” Imani said, “Still she said nothing. Not a word. I hugged her, and begged her, and did the active feedback thing, and… and…” She pulled back with a dispassionate sniff.
Paul could imagine her now, in a crisp corporate attorney’s outfit designed to complement her dark brown skin, sitting regally with ruler-straight posture at the edge of the bed, brushing off the hem of her dress rather than allowing tears to ruin her makeup’s subtle enhancements.
“It was like talking to a doll,” Imani continued. “I made an emergency therapist appointment this morning: she sat silent for a full forty-five minutes!”
“You know our girl, Imani: she’ll talk on her time.” That was the theory, anyway.
“And I have done everything to keep her safe. I moved to a new apartment with no windows. I set burglar alarms. David and I, when she’s home, we…” She swallowed, as if debating divulging this information to her ex-husband. “We take shifts. Watching. So she can’t slip past us. And still she got out. David said it must have been something I’d done. Then he stormed out. And…” She swallowed. “I don’t know what to do, Paul.”
“David will be back,” Paul reassured her, wanting her to feel better, w
ondering, when did I sign up to support my ex-wife’s relationship with the man she cheated on me with? “Even if he hated you,” Paul joked, “He wouldn’t risk the headlines of a bad divorce. You’ve got friends in the court and the press. You’d make his life hell.”
“Very funny.” The suppressed bemusement in her voice made him smile.
“And Aliyah’s bold, but she’s not stupid. If she’s out on the streets…” Paul winced, hating to tell Imani even a half-truth. “I’m sure she’s playing it safe. Some mothers even let their kids take the subway at this age.”
“But how do I stop her from getting out? How do I get her to talk?”
“I don’t know, Imani. She doesn’t do that at our house.”
“That’s because you give her those damn videogames. As a pacifier.”
“No, we play them together. They could be quite a social activity, if only you’d–”
“Can you honestly tell me,” Imani shot back, her voice glacial once again, “That you think videogames are improving her life?”
It’s not the videogames. It’s the ’mancy. And she can’t stop doing that.
Paul rolled the words on his tongue, wanting to say them as he had so many times before. If he could just tell Imani, then everything would be easier. He hated watching Imani’s leonine confidence eroded. And Imani loved Aliyah, would almost certainly help Aliyah in ways he and Valentine could not…
Then Paul’s eyes settled on today’s Times op-ed: “Why Reprocess ’Mancers When We Could Execute Them?”
Paul remembered the dead eyes of the Unimancers he’d fought. They had all been ’mancers like him once, each obsessed with model trains or baseball or death metal – and someone had reported them. SMASH had rounded them up, shipped them off to the Refactor out in Arizona, brainwashed them until they all thought the exact same way as their commander.
They could use magic only if the group hivemind allowed it. Their individual needs: erased.
They barely remembered their names.
The Flux Page 5