I threw away my empty drink cup outside the door to laser tag and followed Viv through into an even darker space. It was warm and close in the antechamber, like being wrapped in a heavy, slightly damp blanket, and I found it comfortable even though bowling had warmed me up. The room smelled of sweat and ozone and, very faintly, someone’s cologne, a musky odor that wasn’t entirely pleasant. To me, it was the smell of imminent defeat. I was as bad at laser tag as I was good at bowling.
I accepted my sensor harness and laser pistol, listened to the safety lecture reeled off by a bored youth, and waited for the signal that we could enter the arena. Beside me, Viv examined her gun like it was a real weapon, and Judy stood balanced on the balls of her feet, looking like a coiled snake ready to strike.
The bell rang, and Judy darted forward and disappeared around a corner. Viv and I followed with less alacrity. Almost immediately, my vest buzzed with someone’s successful hit. I groaned and flung up my arms. “I didn’t even have a chance to hide!”
“You’re not supposed to hide, you’re supposed to shoot the enemy,” Viv said. She turned and ran, shooting into the darkness, and I heard another buzz, presumably from her victim. I groaned again, this time silently, and set off to locate the enemy.
After about five minutes, it was Enemy 4, Helena 0, and I was trying to remember why I’d agreed to this. Despite what Viv had said, I found a quiet corner and crouched while my breathing and heart rate slowed. The lights in the arena were dim, and the black light radiance combined with the lights on the harnesses made everything surreal, like we were in a dream landscape where things glowed that shouldn’t, or somewhere deep underwater. I set my gun down and rubbed my hand. I’d been holding it so tightly my palm ached.
Helena, I thought. Danger.
My heart lurched. I grabbed the gun and pointed it into the darkness. I’d never spoken to the oracle outside its space before, and that frightened me more than its warning did. “What danger?” I whispered.
Danger. They fall. The guardians remain.
“Oh, hell,” I said, and ran for the exit, and my phone.
Except I’d gotten turned around in the darkness, and everywhere I turned led to a dead end. I wanted to scream with frustration. This room wasn’t much bigger than Abernathy’s, and I couldn’t get lost there!
I rounded yet another dead-end corner and lowered my gun. The walls here were black and soft, covered in something velvety, with symbols painted on them in white that glowed purply-bright under the black lights. I needed to calm down and think sensibly.
I turned—and came face to face with Santiago.
I screamed and brought my gun to bear on his chest, where the lights of the harness gave me something to aim at. I squeezed the trigger again and again, backing away as I did because he didn’t fall with the first shot or the second. He just kept coming.
My heart pounded so hard it hurt, and I could barely breathe, could do nothing except keep shooting until the gun ran out of bullets. “Stop!” I screamed.
“What the hell?” Santiago said. Only it wasn’t Santiago. The voice was that of a teenager. “You shot me already, lady, you don’t got to keep firing. What’s wrong with you?”
I blinked, lowering my gun. The young man was tall and heavyset, bulky rather than fat, and his hair was cut military short. He scowled at me like my shots had actually hurt him. “I…I’m sorry,” I managed. “I thought you were…”
“Hey,” the young man said. He came forward, and I took an involuntary step back. “You’re really scared. Game too much for you?”
I wasn’t about to tell him the truth, that I’d freaked out and mistaken him for the man I’d killed. “I need to get out of here,” I said.
“Exit’s this way,” the young man said. He waved a hand back the way I’d come. “You need help?”
I wanted to say no, that I was fine, but I was shaking so hard I didn’t think I could hold the gun much longer. “I got lost,” I said, trying a laugh so he wouldn’t think I was crazy. Crazier than he already thought, anyway.
“Yeah, it’s confusing,” the young man said.
He led me around two corners, and there was the exit, down a short hall I could swear I’d been down three times already. “Thanks,” I said, and hurried along to the antechamber, where I dropped the gun and bent over with my hands on my knees, breathing the musky air deeply. Then I found the locker where I’d put my things and pulled my phone out of my purse. Conscious of the bored attendant, who was watching me with idle curiosity, I tapped out a text to Malcolm: ATTACK HAPPENING ON NAMED NEUTRALITY DON’T KNOW WHICH ONE HELP
“You get scared in there?” The attendant didn’t bother to conceal his disdain.
I remembered seeing Santiago’s face, how he wouldn’t stop advancing on me, and the shakes started again. I turned my back on the attendant without responding and stared at my phone, willing Malcolm to reply. Except he wouldn’t, would he, because he’d be texting Lucia or someone who could find out what had happened. So a lack of response was a good thing. It didn’t stop me wishing for reassurance.
People started emerging from the arena, stripping off their harnesses and handing them to the attendant along with their guns. “Looks like Helena turned tail early,” Viv said with a grin that showed brilliantly under the black lights. The grin disappeared. “What happened?” she asked, putting an arm around my shoulders.
“I can’t talk here,” I whispered, then repeated myself more loudly so she and Judy could hear me over the noise of the rest of the players.
We left the bowling alley and walked to Judy’s car. Night had fallen, but even though it wasn’t any darker outside than it had been in the building, it was a natural darkness, broken by the white streetlights and the glowing LASERPINZ sign over the door. The fresh air made the shakes retreat, but I didn’t feel completely comfortable until I was safely inside Judy’s car. It was still warm from the heat of the day and I again felt like I was wrapped in a soft blanket, though this one smelled of sweet mint from the air freshener.
“What happened?” Judy asked.
I took a deep breath. “The oracle spoke to me. It said there was danger and that the guardians were falling…no, that they remain…I can’t remember. I texted Malcolm.”
“That’s not what scared you, though,” Viv said. “You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”
A semi-hysterical giggle escaped my lips. “I guess I did,” I said. I giggled again, and then I was laughing like a madwoman, completely incapable of controlling myself. Tears ran down my cheeks, and in my hysteria I couldn’t tell if they were tears of laughter or fear or sadness. I hugged myself and mentally screamed at myself to pull it together as Viv and Judy exclaimed over me.
Distantly I was aware of a calm, collected central Me, and I reached out to her and felt I’d found something more real than my fears. I held onto that central self until calmness radiated out from it, stilling my laughter and shaking and tears. I wiped my eyes and said, “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Viv said. “Hel, you’re scaring us. What happened?”
I took another calming breath. “I think I had a flashback or something. I mistook one of the players for Mr. Santiago, and I freaked out.”
“I didn’t even think about that possibility,” Judy said. “I’m sorry we came here.”
“No, it’s okay.” The shakes were almost completely gone. “I think I was on edge because of the oracle’s warning, and the guy was the same size as…anyway, I’m not going to avoid everything that might remind me of past traumas, because I’d never go anywhere.”
“I don’t know much about PTSD, but I know you have to be careful about the things that trigger those memories,” Viv said. “I think putting a gun in your hand was a mistake.”
“It sure scared the guy I shot,” I said with a chuckle that didn’t sound at all manic. “Maybe you’re right. It’s not like I’m losing much if I never play laser tag again, right?”
“I don’t want to down
play your emotional reaction,” Judy said, “because it worries me, but shouldn’t we also worry about something happening to the named Neutralities? What if Abernathy’s is under attack?”
“I don’t know what to do,” I said, gratefully seizing on this as a way to stop thinking about Santiago. “If it is the store, we shouldn’t go there, and it’s not like we can reach the other two Neutralities.”
“Back to your house,” Viv said. “Malcolm will have learned what’s going on.”
As Judy navigated the freeway at higher speeds than I was comfortable with, my phone rang. “Malcolm,” I said, my heart in my throat. “What happened?”
“Invaders attacked the Sanctuary,” Malcolm said. “They made an assault by air.”
My mental image of invaders in tiny parachutes resurfaced. “Is Samudra okay?”
“The Sanctuary’s protections are more robust than even I knew. Not one invader reached the premises. I’m told they were vaporized mid-air.”
Now my mental image expanded to include falling invaders burning up like meteors in the atmosphere. “That’s such a relief.”
“How did you know it had happened?”
“The oracle spoke to me.” Now that I was well away from the scene of my nightmare, I could reflect on that impossibility. “It’s never done that to me before. Not when I wasn’t in Abernathy’s.”
“Except when it was touching your dreams—but that’s not quite the same.”
“No.” I shifted into a more comfortable position and glanced at the speedometer, then wished I hadn’t. “I don’t know what it means.”
“Are you coming home?”
My phone buzzed with an incoming text. I glanced at the display in time to see Samudra’s name. “Yes. Samudra just texted me. We’ll be home in a few minutes.”
“Lucia sent enforcers to the store, in case the invaders tried a simultaneous attack,” Malcolm said. “Take care. Just because they’ve never attacked a custodian outside their Neutrality doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen.”
“I will. I’m pretty sure Judy could outrun them.” Judy snorted amusement. “I…I’ll be home soon.” I felt awkward about repeating my experience for him in front of Judy and Viv, even though they’d seen my emotional outburst and wouldn’t judge me if I had another.
“I love you,” Malcolm said. “Stay safe.”
I ended the call and checked my texts. “Malcolm said invaders attacked the Sanctuary and were driven off before they even touched the ground,” I said, “and…Samudra says everything is fine and wants to set up another video call with me and Claude.”
“That’s good,” Viv said, too casually.
I glanced back at her. “Okay, what are you not saying?”
Viv met Judy’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “We know you’ve been through a lot, Hel,” Viv said, “but you’ve been acting strange ever since Montana, and we wish you’d say what’s bothering you.”
“Which is a polite way of saying ‘talk, or else,’” Judy said. “Which is what I’ve wanted to say for the last four months, only Viv convinced me it was better to let you decide to come clean on your own. But it’s clear we’ve gone past that point.”
I turned my head to look out the window at the freeway speeding past. Lucia had said—but Lucia’s primary concern was the welfare of all magery, and she was paranoid when it came to her responsibilities. I’d obeyed her wishes, but now I wished I hadn’t, because my primary concern was my Neutrality, and I knew better than Lucia what mattered most to myself and Abernathy’s.
“Lucia made me promise I wouldn’t tell,” I said, not looking away from the window, “and I thought she was right, which is why I didn’t say anything. But now I think maybe that was the wrong decision.” I took a deep breath. “Four months ago, the oracle told me it had seen its end, and mine too.”
Viv sucked in a startled breath. Judy said sharply, “You mean death? Or some other kind of ending?”
“See, that’s why I should have told you. I assumed it meant death, but Claude, and now you, pointed out that that’s not the only interpretation. It’s been telling me it and I are going to end for the last four months, and it’s wearing on me. Between that, and the attacks on the store, and everything else that’s happened to me since I became custodian—”
“I’m amazed you’re even sane,” Viv said. “Helena, you know you don’t have to worry about us spreading the news. That’s why Lucia told you to keep quiet about it, right?”
“Yeah. And I’m sorry. I guess, in part, I also didn’t want people treating me like I’m fragile. Except it turns out I am, so I’m not sure what the point of that was.”
“You’re not fragile,” Judy said. She took the next exit and turned right, heading toward my neighborhood. “You’ve faced tremendous challenges and survived. So you’ve got a little emotional scar tissue. Nobody would blame you for backing down, but you never have. I was more worried about you when you were pretending you didn’t have a problem.”
“Me too, really.” I finally turned to look at Judy, whose eyes were on the road, and then at Viv, who was watching me. “I guess that’s what threw me about tonight. I thought I was getting past the thing about killing Mr. Santiago. I haven’t dreamed about him for over two weeks.”
“It takes time, sweetie,” Viv said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “But no more laser tag.”
“No more laser tag,” I agreed.
15
When we got home, Malcolm was in the living room, watching TV with the sound off. He stood and came around the couch to hold me when I entered the room. I clung to him, wishing it wasn’t so obvious that was what I was doing. “Are you all right?” he asked. “You’re trembling.”
I hadn’t realized the shaking had started again and reached inside myself for that place of calm. “Later,” I said. “I need to talk to Samudra. He said half an hour. Fifteen minutes, now.”
“This is insane,” Judy said. She was staring at the television, which I now realized was silent despite the images playing out on the screen. “Barcelona. Why Barcelona?”
I focused on the TV and felt sick. A banner across the bottom of the screen said that this was prerecorded footage from Barcelona, but in the darkness, it could have been any city—any city in flames. The camera showed a street scene that teemed with agitated movement. The fires were burning cars whose flames reflected off the jagged edges of broken windows. Men carrying sticks or lengths of pipe ran past, ducking into alleyways or flinging lumps that might have been stones or bricks into the few remaining unbroken windows. They ignored the camera. It looked so much like a scene from a movie I almost asked Malcolm who was starring in it.
“A terrorist group threatened to unleash their bioweapon on Barcelona about five hours ago,” Malcolm said. He still had his arms around me, but his attention was on the grisly scene playing out in front of us. “City officials declared it was a hoax, but then people began complaining of illness, and panic set in. This—”
The scene shrank to a little square in one corner of the screen, and a newscaster came on. Malcolm found the remote and turned on the sound. “—as it develops,” the newscaster said. She looked as calm as if she were reporting on the weather. “So far, there have been no reports of widespread death as has occurred in other cities around the world. City officials remain silent in the face of widespread looting and destruction.”
The camera view shifted, and the newscaster turned to face the new camera. “In other news, the final death count in Natchitoches has reached two hundred and seventy-one. The CDC intends to release preliminary findings about the disease-causing agent at noon tomorrow, along with recommendations for how people can protect themselves against another attack. Presidential spokespersons urge citizens to remain calm. We will continue to update these stories as more information becomes available.”
The station’s logo filled the screen, and Malcolm turned the TV off. “It’s been like that all evening,” he said. “There was no invader attack on
Barcelona. Fear and misinformation did all the work.”
“It’s going to get worse, isn’t it,” Viv said. “As long as the invaders keep attacking, panic will rise.”
“And what happens when it’s New York or London or Shanghai?” Judy said. “Barcelona is huge, but it’s not the biggest city in the world.”
“Not all of it is burning, but enough to be a disaster.” Malcolm looked at Viv. “We need Darius Wallach’s solution soon.”
“I wish I could tell you how much longer it will take,” Viv said. “We’re working as fast as we can.”
“That wasn’t a criticism.”
“I know, but we feel the pressure, I promise.” Viv sank onto the couch and buried her face in her hands.
“But it will be a permanent solution,” Judy said. “No more Long War.”
My phone buzzed with an incoming text. “Samudra. I forgot. Sorry, I have to make a call.”
“We’re leaving, anyway,” Judy said. She hugged me, such a rare gesture of affection from her I was startled. “See you tomorrow.”
Viv hugged me too. “I’ll see if I can convince Mr. Wallach to pick up that augury,” she murmured. “Hang in there, okay?”
When they were gone, I set up my laptop on the kitchen table. Malcolm turned the TV back on and turned the volume down low. “Let me know if I’m disturbing you,” he said.
“I was going to say the same to you,” I replied. The video call light was blinking, and I clicked the button and saw Samudra and Claude appear in their little rectangles. “Sorry about the delay,” I told them.
“We do not need to rush,” Samudra said. His color was up, and he looked more alive than I’d ever seen him. “The attack was deflected perfectly, and if they did not attack the Athenaeum or Abernathy’s at the same time, I think it unlikely they will attack again soon.”
The Book of Destiny Page 16