by Sevan Paris
“You could have campus reopened, but you couldn’t have them turn down the heat?” Casa says.
Kate takes two steps and drives the butt of her gun into Casa’s face. Casa falls into the podium, dragging it to the floor with him.
After a few moments, Casa looks up at Kate and Thinkor, blood running from nose and lip.
“As I was saying,” Thinkor gestures around the auditorium, “I did all of this so that I could, through you or now your starry associate, do one and one thing only: find the Superhero known as Pink. I do not have the patience for grandstanding, or any other type of interruption. So just to make sure we understand each other …” Kate raises the gun to her temple. Her mouth tightens. I think a tear rolls down her cheek.
“No …” I say. Or at least I try to. All that comes out is a kind of tight lipped murmur.
Gabe, I’m trying … but there is nothing—
“This is pointless,” Casa says. “I don’t know where she is.”
Kate presses the gun into her skin, tilting her head slightly.
“Then tell Pink to come here,” Thinkor says.
Casa laughs. “How can I tell her to do anything unless I know where she is?”
“You’re an intelligent person. I’m sure you can think of something.”
Casa shakes his head. “It’s impossible.”
A silence.
Thinkor points his front lobe at Casa. “It’s interesting that I can’t take control of your mind. And unfortunate.”
Kate pulls the trigger.
The red insides of Kate’s brain smack across Casa’s writing on the white board. She falls to the carpet before the gunshot stops ringing throughout the classroom.
Isaiah walks to where Kate stood, gun lifted to his own temple.
Thinkor pulls Casa to his feet and straightens the instructor’s collar. “Tell Pink to come here. And tell her to come here quickly.”
CHAPTER ONE
Before I even have a chance to knock, Ms. Mystick opens the gargantuan door to her home. Which I guess is good since, y’know, having a misty pink, transparent body prevents me from knocking anyway.
“Pink? I never expected you to come here.” Ms. Mystick says, styled eyebrow arched at me.
“Makes two of us.” I float past her, in the narrow space between her shoulder and the doorframe.
“Please, by all means, do come in,” Mystick says dryly. She turns to face me, hands resting at her statue-like midriff.
The Magick Sayer has a forty-five year old body that any twenty-five year old girl would kill for: smooth, strong legs you could see your reflection in; perfect hips, just big enough to be curvy but not baby momma; boobs big as melons, and probably just as firm; and long black hair straight out of a Garnier commercial. A white, bikini-looking costume allows her to show off all that she has with phat confidence.
God, how I totally hate her.
“What can I do for you?” She says in a board, throaty voice.
“You can start by shutting the door, so that people on the street don’t make with the staring. You’re used to it. Like it even. But I don’t.”
“I have a spell set up around the brownstone, preventing people from seeing any of the … strangeness that happens here.”
“Do you have anything that keeps people from seeing wardrobe malfunctions, cause let me tell ya, with that getup, it’s bound to happen at some—”
“Why are you here?”
I don’t have to breathe, but still I move my shoulders, like I’m taking a deep breath. Old habits die harder than dreams. “Duh, cause I, like, may need your help? With something Magickal?”
“ ‘May’ need?”
“Okay, okay—totally need? Are you happy?”
“What would make me happy—or at the very least, a great deal less agitated—is for you to stop inflecting every other sentence with a question mark.”
“Fine?” I say, barely above a whisper.
“What was that?”
“I said … fine.”
She shakes her head slightly and crosses the foyer, high heels clip-clopping beside a large rug with swirling earth tones (as in swirling, literally). Just behind her, an impossibly deep hallway extends at least four hundred feet. Each time I try to focus on a red vase at the hall’s end, it telescopes farther away. Mystick stops at a dope staircase that swirls up and up, with a few landings between here and wherever it goes.
“I’ve already told you,” she says, clopping one high heel on the first step, “I can’t help you. What was done to you—”
“Hello? I get that, Miss Houdini. But I’m not asking for you to help me back to what I was years ago.”
“You mean human?”
“I don’t—don’t say that. Not like that.”
She sighs. “Part of your problem is that you’ve never been able to accept who you were.”
“Right now, my problem is a know-it-all Sayer who won’t come off her high horse long enough for me to explain why I’ve swallowed the last ounce of pride that I have left to come here.”
She raises her eyebrows.
“Ga—someone I know got Magicked. And he said—did something to me.”
“Would this ‘Ga’ be Galaxy? A.K.A., Gabe Garrison?” She says, like the pretentious hussy that she is.
Two can play that game: I hover closer to her, a little higher than eye level. “Okay, so you two have obviously made with the intros. But he got rid of the Magick so there’s no reason to … go after him or anything.”
She cocks her head a little to the left. “You … care about him?”
“I care about what he did to me,” I say a little louder than I mean to.
“I see.” She turns and continues walking up the steps. “It is of little consequence anyway. For better or worse, Eldritch’s powers are once again with his Ward, Ember.” She laughs a little. “And all it took was the slaying of a Magick dragon to return them.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it was totally epic—can we return the conversation to Pink-ville? Gabe accidentally said my powers away. I can’t possess people anymore.”
“Said your powers away …” She stops near the step to the first landing and looks over her shoulder at me. “What did he say to you, exactly?”
“That I can’t just ride around in somebody’s body whenever I like. And that he’s a big dummy.”
One side of her mouth tightens.
“Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating on that last one a little.”
“I fail to see what I can do. As I’ve already mentioned, Eldritch’s Magicks returned to—”
“Duh! I’m here because I need YOU to give me my powers back.”
“…. I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
“I hear with Magick, anything is possible.”
“Oh, it’s not impossible for Magick to grant them back. It’s simply impossible for me to use the Magicks to grant them back. And I suspect that if Gabe still had the Magicks, it would be impossible for him as well.”
There’s something weird about Ms. Mystick using Gabe’s first name. It’s like—I don’t know—like she doesn’t deserve to be that familiar with him. “What does that mean?” I say, more to myself than her.
“These Magicks are said under very specific circumstances. The words obviously create them, but the intentions of the Sayer and the interpretations of the place the Magicks come from give the meaning. And purpose. Without being fully aware of what those meanings and intentions were—”
“I can’t—there has to be something somebody can do. I can’t stay like this.”
“Pink …”
“I CAN’T STAY LIKE THIS!” I rush to Mystick, a little of my body enveloping her. “YOU WILL HELP ME OR—”
She raises her right hand.
Crackling, angry energy whispers a grunting laugh and hurls my misty butt away from the staircase and to the other side of the foyer.
Mystick meets my glare from the landing, eyes and hands sparking with white, arcane energy: �
��Do not mistake tolerance for weakness, child.”
I drift away from the floor, ready to bolt through the wall if she lets another one of those things fly from her fingers. “I’m not a child,” I say in a low voice.
“Then stop appearing as one.”
I flinch at the words; they hurt worse than the Magick she shot at me. I make myself look thirteen instead of twenty-three because it makes being me—existing as me—easier. And now this—the last part of my life that gave me the closest thing to happiness—is gone too. Think I would even cry if I could. Part of not being able to feel anything for anyone or anything is that you feel a lot more for yourself. “ …. Are you even going to try to help me?”
A long pause passes before the energy disappears from Mystick’s eyes and hands. “Unintentionally on his part or not, the way in which you lead your life is ultimately what lead Gabe to do this.”
“But—”
“There is no ‘but.’ What happened happened. The price you’re paying may be one you’ll have to pay the rest of your life.”
“And how long will that be?!” I dart back and forth at the bottom of the stairs, hands balled into fists. “Do I even age?! Am I gonna be around long after you, Galaxy, the whole world is gone? Just floating out in-in nothingness?”
“I do not know.” Her eyes shift back and forth. “But … all may not be lost just yet.”
“What?”
She looks back at me. “As I said, the circumstances creating this spell were very specific. You may find a way to regain a piece of who you were.”
“Regain a piece … wait—of who I was yesterday or who I was years ago?”
Mystick opens her mouth to reply, but the screech of a small animal stops her short. Something the size of a bird, but looks more like a dragon, flies down from the rafters overhead and hovers, leathery wings flapping over Mystick’s bare shoulder. The brown critter sticks out its long neck and whispers something to her. Mystick nods, looking at me.
“This will have to wait, Pink. Something is happening right now that requires your attention.”
“What? No, I don’t care. There is nothing I can do to anything anyway. How could—”
Mystick waves a hand, probably far more dramatically than she has to. A screen of some weird-ass, Magickal television sparkles into existence, hovering eight feet in front of her. It’s about fifty inches wide and, of course, in high-def. With a reluctant grunt, I float up to the other side of the image, so that both of us see a mirror reflection of what the other sees.
“This is Lisa Lancaster, reporting live from the UTP campus, where an unknown Super has just taken at least twenty people hostage. The full extent of this Super’s powers are unclear, but the hostages’ stiff movements, as you can see here in the footage taken of the classroom windows, suggests that they are under some form of mind control.”
“Lisa, those hostages—they appear to be armed …”
“That’s correct Mitch. The telepath has posted hostages armed with handguns at both the windows and the exits. Which suggests the telepath will force them to engage police or HEROES if provoked.”
“Lisa, I have a couple of questions. The first one is … where is HEROES? Isn’t this the sort of thing the organization was created to handle?”
“It absolutely is, Mitch. But they are not on the scene, and the police refuse to comment.
“Interesting. Well, here is my second question: has this telepathic Super given anyone a list of demands?”
“Not specifically, Mitch. What we have seen is that the hostages appear to be murmuring the same word over and over: Pink.”
I think Lisa Lancaster keeps talking, but I don’t hear her.
Seeing the look on my face, Mystick makes the Magick TV disappear with a flick of her wrist. “You have to go down there.”
“Uh, don’t you mean, like, yourself? Or Galaxy?”
She shakes her head. “I have my hands full with Macabre. And your resistance to telepathy makes you a far better choice.”
“But, he—Gabe—will get involved in this anyway. It’s his usual M.O., followed by getting in over his head, and then saving the day. Trust me, he’s done it a ton already.”
“With your assistance.”
I hold up my hands. “But I can’t do anything!”
She sighs. “Has it occurred to you that the exact nature of Galaxy’s words may mean that you can still use your power?” It’s just not up to you to say when?”
“What do you mean?”
“ ‘You can’t just possess anyone whenever you like.’ “
“That’s …” I stop, amazed that I haven’t figured it out already. “I can possess people when he wants me to?”
“Which means you can still make a difference.”
“And it means that, when it comes to my life, Gabe Garrison is driving, and I’m riding bitch.”
“A crude, but accurate description. Although, you should ask yourself if it’s necessarily a bad situation.”
“Bad? Of course it’s bad! What else could it be?”
“Spend more time thinking of others and less of yourself, and you may discover that on your own.”
“I …” I’m too flustered. I can’t believe I came here, all helpless, prideless, and she STILL isn’t going to do anything.
“At the very most, confronting this telepath alongside Gabe will allow you to save lives. And the very least, you’ll be able to see if my theory about your situation is accurate.”
I groan and mime holding a phone to my ear: “Hello, wind? This is leaf. I’ll be right there …”
***
A breeze catches some snow off the top of the Blue Cross building, passing it right through my misty I Heart Brittany shirt, capris and Keds. Like I’m nothing. A pink, cloudy nothing.
Most people think that I can fly, but that’s not really the case. I float. I hover. I dart. But I do not fly. Flying implies that I don’t fight this wind, constantly tugging and shoving at me, serving as a perfectly depressing symbol for my so-called life.
It also makes going from one side of the city to the other an absolute bitch. Moving is more like swimming. I don’t kick my feet or anything … just thinking about swimming is enough, but is does take focus. And there’s no way to get anywhere fast.
The trip to UTP gives me way too much time to think about stuff. Like people, parents, HEROES, and villains, screwing me over since I was old enough to realize I was being screwed. And now, the one cool thing (well, kinda cool thing) that gives me an escape is taken from me? By Gabe Garrison. The pube that Casa talked me into helping.
But is it his fault? Really? Or is it the Magick? That crazy stuff that made me. That stuff that’s nothing like Harry Potter and way more like Wes Craven. That thing that took my life from me years ago and continues to take my life from me now.
I round the corner of Rackenzie Arena. Reporters and paparazzi turn their lenses my way with mad expectation. Like dominos, everyone’s arms rise, one after the other, pointing at me. Yelling my name. Trying to stand between me and the camera, trying to catch a moment in the spotlight. So they can point to proof and say, “I was there. Right there the day a Super terrorist took a bunch of college students hostage. I was there when he asked for Pink. And I was there when Pink showed up just to say that she didn’t give a shit.”
There is no way this ends well. For anybody.
I hover above Grota Hall, looking down. Thinking about leaving. Trying to think of another way out of this. Trying and failing.
A downdraft catches me, pushing me down to the auditorium’s window. Cops say something to me over that bull horn thing, probably wanting me to do anything other than what I’m doing.
I reach the auditorium window. Blank faced students with pistols look through me, mouths forming the same word again and again: Pink.
Pink, Pink, Pink, Pink …
I think-swim through the window and through the students. I see Casa and Thinkor. And a whole bunch of students wit
h guns. And blood splattered across a dry erase board and under the body of a dead girl, red bullet hole burnt through her white toboggan.
None of it phases me. Until I hover in a little more and see him: Gabe, powered up as Galaxy. He’s lying on his side in the aisle, facing the carnage at the front of the classroom. Looks like he’s still alive, which is a big plus for the hostages. If he were dead, there’d be no reason for me to stay.
If I had a heart, it would probably be doing something. Like beating hard or whatever. “So, I’m, like, here? Can you just let everyone go already?”
Thinkor gestures around him. “That’s it? Are you not the slightest bit surprised to see me? Or this?”
I shrug. “Why you’re doing it doesn’t matter right now. Just the how.”
Thinkor laughs. Every student with a gun laughs with him in a perfect synch. “To you perhaps. But why would I let them go so quickly after our little swaray just began?”
The students with the guns all whisper, “Began, began, began, began …”
I float down, arms still crossed, hip thrusted out. “I’m sorry. Is this the part where you reveal your dastardly plan? Where you prove you’re just as capable of being a scumbag when Liberty isn’t around? If so—bored now.”
Casa rubs a nasty, fist sized welt bellow his Adam’s apple. His narrowed eyes point to the blood covered notes on the white board, trying to tell me something …
Thinkor steps between us. “None of that.” Thinkor looks at Casa and then back at me. “This was his idea, you know. To go ahead and alert the media. The authorities. He thought it was the only way you would show. But he still didn’t think you actually would show.” Thinkor gestures at the bruise on Casa’s throat. “That was the last thing he said before I freed myself of the good doctor’s sarcasm.”
“I … look, we can totally do the whole villain/hero exchange if you want. Complete with the grander or whateve’s. But you’re going to have to let everyone else go—”
“You seem to think you have some measure of control over this situation, that it is my role to do as you say.