Neon plastic ties hung from the rafters and fluttered in the ebb and flow of air, dancing at the corner of my vision and casting flickering shadows on the ground. I tried to keep everything in sight, jerking left and right as I walked across the floor like a spazzing FBI agent. I would have laughed at myself if my heart hadn’t been clogging my throat.
I made myself look at the pit. It gaped like an open mouth, making me think of Venus flytraps and sea anemones that ate foolish enforcers. I blinked to Primordium and crept closer, standing well clear of the rim.
Lux lucis swelled from the center of the pit and burst, white particles falling back to the crater like water droplets. Atrum undulated around the rim of the pit, swirling faster and faster until the crest of the wave caught up with the tail of it, and it spiked to the sky, flattened, and oozed down toward the center of the hole. Arches of lux lucis spiraled in and out of the atrum, some twice as high as my head, some so small they didn’t clear my knees. None of the lux lucis or atrum canceled each other out.
“This is so not normal.” I looked for a connection to the mall, perhaps tendrils of atrum stretching toward the shops, but all the energy remained contained in the pit.
The pit started to boil. All the lux lucis and atrum combined and frothed along the edge, bursting in huge bubbles in the center, simmering denser and denser until I couldn’t see the ground beneath it.
A long arm of candy cane–spiraled lux lucis and atrum surged from the center, pushing the bubbling pool over the edge of the pit and toward my toes. I backpedaled frantically. The energy receded, but the candy cane arm remained like a horn pointing from the center of the hole. Then it dropped. Soundlessly, weightlessly, absorbed into the boiling mass too quickly to follow.
I barely saw the cresting wave of lux lucis that arched out of the crater and swallowed me whole before the world went black.
12
Never Do a Bad Job Well
A cocoon of comfort wrapped me, warm and soft. I reached—not with my hand or any body part because my body wasn’t responding, but somehow I petted something and sank into dense, soft fur. A fake bearskin rug? A real bearskin rug? A real bear?
Fear constricted my chest and stuck to the insides of my lungs, utterly foreign and overwhelming. I fought, punching and kicking with phantom limbs. I flailed until I couldn’t remember what had frightened me. Relaxing again, I rolled in the warmth. Soft fur caressed my face. Mr. Bond?
I remembered my cat, and with that memory came a rush of all the memories of Mr. Bond. Mr. Bond as a kitten pouncing on my toes; Mr. Bond batting a plastic bottle cap around the kitchen; Mr. Bond curled up on my lap, asleep and uncaring that I had to pee.
But this thing was too big. Mr. Bond fit in my lap. If anything, I fit in this thing’s lap.
I trembled. Big things with fur were usually scary. I couldn’t see what this was. I couldn’t see anything. My heart pounded. I strained my hearing. A whip cracked; a car’s engine revved.
I remembered the pit. I remembered the surge of energy cresting over me. I remembered the hard, cold ground of the garage as my limp body slammed into it.
I found my hands. I lost the warmth and fur.
Plastic snapped. Fluorescent light pierced my eyes, eliciting instant tears. Beams and wires crisscrossed above me.
I jackknifed up and spun on all fours to face the pit, blinking to Primordium. The crater frothed, but softly now. Atrum undulated like a placid lake, not like water in a centrifuge. Lux lucis floated across it, expanding and shrinking like an ever-changing Rorschach test. I scrambled to my feet. My head thumped in pain. My vision tunneled and I crouched while blood rushed back to my brain.
Mud coated my pants. I brushed at my jeans, stopping when I noticed my palms. They must have taken the brunt of my fall. Pebbles pressed into the skin, held in place by dry mud. I picked the rocks off, thankful to find no abrasions underneath. I didn’t relish the pain in my future when my numb hands thawed.
Gingerly, I probed my head. My ear hurt, as did a spot behind my temple, where more dirt and gravel caught in my hair and beanie, but overall my head seemed okay. Even my soul looked good. In fact, it looked better than good; I looked like I’d slept pressed against a four-hundred-year-old oak tree and had absorbed the entire thing. If there were such an event as an enforcer pageant, my soul would have given Niko’s a run for its money. I glistened.
The whip crack of plastic snapped me out of my soul-gazing trance. I checked the crater. Still calm.
Much more carefully this time, I straightened and assessed my limbs. They creaked and popped and shivered, but they worked.
How long have I been out? Given my bone-cold body, at least an hour. The better question was, how much trouble was I in?
I stumbled a few steps, arms outstretched for balance, to collect my wand and knife from where they’d fallen. I’d been lucky to not skewer myself on either. With stiff fingers, I sheathed the knife, then collapsed the wand and slid it back into my purse; both weapons had proved useless against the pit. I kept an eye on the tranquil energy the entire time, and I didn’t turn my back on it until I’d backed halfway across the garage. By then, my legs had recovered enough not to wobble with each step, and I chanced a jog.
If everything worked in my favor, I wouldn’t be in any trouble because no one would know about this foolhardy venture.
With my fingers crossed, I peeked through the plastic. Seeing all was clear, I trotted to the fence and slipped through to the other side. Only then did I slow and look at the sky. Blackness stretched above the light poles.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I chanted softly as I hobbled toward my Civic. I grabbed the blanket from my trunk and tugged it over my driver’s seat before I crawled behind the wheel. The ignition turned over, and warm air blasted from the vents. I had a feeling the air wasn’t really warm; I was too cold to know better.
The dash clock lit up.
“Seven thirty? You’ve got to be kidding me!” I checked the sky and my clock again. “There’s no way it’s already morning.”
I gunned it for the main road. As I drew clear of the confines of the mall, I spotted the eastern horizon. Clouds had fooled me. It was morning.
I drove home like a madwoman with the heater on full blast. My hands stung on the steering wheel, the warmth waking bruises. The heat burned my cheeks, but by the time I got home, the blocks of ice that were my toes had thawed enough for me to run up the stairs two at a time. For once, I didn’t even pause to say hi to Mr. Bond when I burst through the doors. I raced for the shower, shedding clothes as I went. Twenty minutes later, I was dressed again and headed back out the door for work, detouring long enough to fill Mr. Bond’s empty food bowl and grab a banana.
I paused on the threshold and opened Valentine.
“What happened to me?”
I wouldn’t know. Then, scrawled in what I could only call a sarcastic font: Partner.
“I went back to the pit last night.”
Good for you. If you’d taken me, we could have skipped this whole conversation.
And wouldn’t that have been nice. I took a deep breath and let it out softly. “I’m sorry I forgot to take you with me. I was in a rush. But the last time I took you near the pit, you accused me of trying to kill you. You remember telling me you passed out?”
I’m a book. I don’t have a memory. I have archives, and they are infinite.
“Good. Because last night the lux lucis was wild and swallowed me and I passed out. What do you make of that?”
Are you attempting to elicit empathy by having a shared experience?
“What? No. I want to know what happened.”
I can’t tell you anything from your recollection. Viewing an event through your perspective skews the original reality. If I had been there . . .
“Is that a long-winded way of saying you still don’t have a clue?” He didn’t respond. I ground my teeth. “Check out my soul. I’m like a super-enforcer. Any thoughts on that?”
Must be nice for you.
“Why don’t I give you some time to access your ‘archives.’ I’m sure you’ll come up with something.” I shut Valentine and slid him gently into his strap, then stomped my feet to vent my frustration. If I put extra bounce in my hips down the stairs, jarring the book more than normal, I would never admit to it.
I found another good reason for a hissy fit when I reached my car: Sam crouched in the open driver’s door of the Impala parked beside my Civic. Seeing me, he emptied his hands in the pockets of his zip-up sweatshirt and shut the car door.
“Hi!” He smiled at me like we were reunited high school friends.
“What were you doing?” I demanded, even though I knew.
“I got bored waiting for you, so I did a little sightseeing.”
“Sightseeing?” No, wait. There was a larger issue. “You were waiting for me? Are you stalking me?” I eyed him up and down. He didn’t look threatening, not even in his wannabe gangster apparel of baggy dark jeans, gray sweatshirt, and black beanie pulled down so low it partially covered his eyes. Nothing short of a full head wrap would disguise his neon-orange hair, though, and curly tufts poked out over his ears.
He held up dirty palms as if to pacify me, his fingers bright pink from the cold. “I’m not stalking you. Geez. That’s creepy. I just wanted to see you again.”
“So you figured out where I live and followed me? That’s the definition of stalking!”
“When you put it like that, it sounds bad. But it’s not like I followed you up to your apartment. I don’t even know which one is yours. I saw your car and was, like, ‘I’ll wait for her here.’”
“I drive a Civic, the most popular car in America. You happened to miraculously know this one was mine?” I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him.
“It has your license plate on it.”
He’d memorized my plate. I didn’t know what to say.
“I want to join your group.”
“What?”
“Your superhero group. I want to become a member.”
I glanced around reflexively. We were the only two people in the parking lot. I stepped up to the bumper of the Impala, stopping within arm’s reach of Sam.
“I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
“The costume. The guns. You admitted that you’ve got a region and you fight crime. You’re a superhero! I know it.”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I flashed back to finding Sam breaking into my car—the first time. I’d been working the convention dressed as a video game character, yes, with guns. Flush in the first week of my job, I’d said things I shouldn’t have, hoping to straighten Sam out. Clearly it had backfired.
“I’m not a superhero,” I hissed, denying the one thing I could. It did have a good ring to it, though. Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer, Superhero Extraordinaire.
“I’m not delusional,” Sam said, his eyes huge and earnest. “I don’t think I’ve got powers. But I could help you out. You know, like a sidekick. Or an errand boy. Or your whipping boy. Whatever. And maybe you could teach me things. I won’t tell anyone. Your secret’s safe with me.”
Whipping boy? “Sam! There is no secret! I’m an office worker. I make bumper stickers.” I stopped short of telling him where the headquarters were or the fake name of my company. The last thing I needed was for Sam to show up at work.
“Right.” He winked with enough exaggeration to move his whole body.
I rolled my eyes. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
He rolled his eyes right back at me. “I go to a charter school. I work on my own time. Don’t you see how perfect this is? I could be your lackey.”
It would be nice to hand over the cito spray and devote my day to something more exciting. Of course, if Sam had the enforcer gene, he wouldn’t be burgling cars. I’d been silent too long, though, and Sam took it as encouragement.
“It could be like an internship.” He swiped off his beanie and struck a pose fit for a puppy. Curls sprang around his head in a fiery halo.
I fought to contain a smile he’d see as more encouragement. “Unless you want to intern at juvie, you’d better put back what you took from that car.”
“Aww, but they were practically begging to have this stuff taken.”
“Leaving something in your locked car is not an open invitation to have it stolen. Just like not parking under a light is not an invitation to have your car broken into.”
“Bet you haven’t parked in a dark spot since.”
“Put the stuff back.”
Sam looked at the Impala. “But it’s locked.”
“You got into it the first time. Get into it again.”
“The first time I had motivation. I can’t do it without motivation. If you promise to teach me some superhero stuff, that’d do the trick.”
“You should be motivated because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Nope. That’s not working for me.”
Enforcer material he was not. “That’s it. I’m calling the cops.” I fished in my purse for Medusa.
“Hang on. I’m feeling motivated.” Sam pulled a piece of flat metal from his hip. It looked like a ruler but longer.
“You’ve upgraded.”
“Yeah. I had to. You stole my hanger.”
“I didn’t steal anything!”
“If that makes you feel better.” He pulled his beanie back on. “Keep a lookout for people, okay?”
“I’m not participating in this.”
“If someone comes along now, you’re an accessory to me breaking into this car.”
“What!”
“I don’t have to put the stuff back.” Sam turned to me, his face the picture of innocence.
“Yes, you do. Now hurry.” I glanced around for people, my heart racing. At any moment someone could walk by, see Sam jimmying the lock, and call the cops. No cop would believe I was making sure Sam returned stolen items.
Sam popped the lock and poured the loose change into the center console. He started to shut the door.
“All of it,” I ordered, bouncing from foot to foot.
Sighing, he pulled an MP3 player, a parking pass, two lighters, and a pair of sunglasses out of his pockets. He dumped them all on the passenger seat.
“Is that where you found them?”
“Nope.” He locked and shut the Impala’s door.
“Get away from the car.”
Grinning, Sam held up his hands in surrender. I moved so he could walk past me. He stopped just beyond the car’s bumper and held out his hands.
“I know the drill,” he said.
It took me a moment to realize what he was doing. With a sigh, I blinked. Gray spots speckled his soul, and as I expected, several chinchilla-like imps fed off his wrists. I circled his wrists with my fingers and fed the imps lux lucis until they exploded, then fed Sam a little more to cleanse his soul. I wasn’t sure why I bothered. Clearly my attempts to wipe away his clepto tendencies by cleaning his soul were not working. But doing nothing felt like giving up on the kid.
I glanced around. A few imps sucked on my ankles. I clamped down on a yelp and let go of Sam’s wrists so I could concentrate. The imps attached to me exploded in sparkles of atrum.
“See. You wouldn’t do the handholding thing if you weren’t a superhero,” Sam said.
I had to admit, it was an odd ritual for a normal person. “I’m trying to send you good intentions and curb your evil ways.”
“Uh-huh. I’d hold your hand anytime, superpowers or not.”
“I’m not a superhero.” I sounded like a recording.
“If you say so. I’ll be around.”
He jogged off through the apartment complex with a jaunty wave. I watched him go, wondering how things had gotten so far out of hand and how I was ever going to convince Sam I was an ordinary person, especially when I wasn’t.
I glanced down at my soul. Cleansing Sam had done nothing to dim my unnatural glow
.
* * *
“I don’t need your help yet, Will,” Rose said when I poked my head into the conference room. A familiar collection of spray bottles covered the table in front of her. I waited for Rose to end her call, then realized she wasn’t on the phone. I glanced behind me. Will was across the office, walking out of the break room.
“Um,” I said.
Rose spun and gaped. “That’s you. Damn, did you have a date with Jesus?”
“What?”
“You feel like—” She held her hands out to me as if warming them against a fire. “You feel . . . amazing.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t give me ‘thank you.’ What the hell happened with your love doctor?”
“Nothing.”
Rose propped her hands on her hips and tapped a tennis-shoe-clad toe.
“No date last night. Just a bit of foolishness. I’ll tell you about it later.” If Rose could feel the difference in my soul, I needed to be twice as fast as planned if I hoped to escape the office without Mr. Pitt noticing my soul’s unnatural glow.
Rose arched her eyebrows at me. Squaring my shoulders, I marched to Mr. Pitt’s office.
“I’ve resented your implication all along, Liam. My territory’s experienced no more evil than— Sure, I’ve had two demons, but you can hardly count the one Summer encountered—”
I paused, then ducked into my cubicle before Mr. Pitt saw me. Rose leaned out of the conference doorway and mouthed, “Wimp.” I made shooing motions at her. I wasn’t afraid of Mr. Pitt; I wanted to eavesdrop.
“If my enforcer wasn’t doing the work of—” Pause. “She may be untried, but she’s not untrained. Niko—” Pause, then at full volume, “Says who! Let’s look at the records, Liam. How was Summer or Rafi their first week on the job?”
A Fistful of Fire: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 2) Page 17