Convergence (Winter Solstice Book 1)

by J. R. Rain

  On that particular night, however, I stayed home. It’s been a while, and I half want to say it was raining, but no, now that I think about it, someone had complained to Mom about me roaming around past midnight and threatened to call the authorities on her. Pretty sure the ‘Good Samaritan’ didn’t actually care about my welfare―they just didn’t want some kid watching them turn tricks.

  The trailer was tiny, and my room sat all the way at the back end. Mom had let me have the bigger room since she only used her bedroom for sleeping while I kinda lived in mine. I was sitting on the floor, engrossed in my PlayStation 2 (yeah, I stole it), when an explosion shook the trailer and fire went everywhere.

  Like I said, the night’s a bit of a blur. I remember staring into a wall of fire out in the hall and thinking I had nowhere to go, and the next thing I know, I’m walking over the grass out front. A cool breeze told me my pajamas were gone. To this day, I still can’t remember how I wound up naked or got out of there. I figure a while passed between the fire starting and me appearing outside since my mom had been there, crying. It had to be at least six minutes―so she had time to drive home from work. As soon as she saw me, she went from sobbing to screaming, and a fireman had run over to collect me in a blanket.

  Ever since that night, I’ve been obsessed with fire.

  Not in the itching to burn things way, more in the ‘I wound up being a firefighter’ way. You’d think after nearly burning to death at twelve, I’d be mortally terrified of anything bright orange. I never even had nightmares about it. Some kids who escape house fires without even having a close call have nightmares of fire for years. How I went from hopelessly trapped behind a wall of flames to being blasé about it, even fascinated by fire, I don’t think I’ll ever understand.

  Mom called it a miracle, as did most of her friends. I found out later that the trailer two to the right of ours had an E-Meth lab in it, which exploded. Take methamphetamines and crank them up with magic, and you get E-meth, or ‘enchanted meth.’ Some people call it ‘Cheth’ or ‘eldritch meth.’ Whatever name you use, it’s nasty shit. I hear it makes mages’ spells go wild too, which is never good. Magic is unpredictable sober. High plus extra power? Bad, bad idea. When the drug factory went up, the trailers adjacent to it vanished entirely. The one right next to ours melted so fast, the old couple who lived in it never even knew what hit them.

  Something bangs the wall next door with a loud thud. Tracy’s ear-piercing verbal assault follows. What did she expect? Date an asshole, don’t be all appalled when he acts like one.

  So anyway, that’s how I wound up working for the Philadelphia Fire Department. Big city, bigger fires. I’ve been at it ever since I graduated college. Couldn’t decide what I wanted to do, so I have a generic ‘liberal arts’ degree. I didn’t waste Mom’s money though; I worked a night job stripping. No contact or anything, but $1,600 a week for waving my boobs around on stage for a couple hours a night was a no-brainer. Apparently, guys like my ‘look.’ I’ve always thought of myself as average. I’m not that tall, nor am I short. Not too thin, not too fat. I had a guy describe me as ‘sinewy’ once. Another guy called me ‘lithe.’ As far as I’m concerned, the only striking feature I have is my paleness. Everyone always assumes I have whiteface on. Sigh.

  Oh, and my eyes are a little big. Gets everyone thinking I’m still seventeen. That is extremely annoying. I can’t hate them too much though. They are two big reasons why the cops let me slide so much as a kid. I can do the ‘innocent’ look quite well.

  It took me two years being officially part of the Philadelphia Fire Department before I did anything more than clean trucks or answer phones. Despite my times and scores on the training range being in the top five, I got coddled. The old lieutenant in charge of my stationhouse, Pirelli, didn’t want ‘the kid’ to get hurt, or have a dead female firefighter on his hands. I almost got fired when I snuck onto the back end of Ladder 13 on a four-alarmer in the warehouse district. No one noticed I’d participated in the containment effort until after we got back. Lieutenant Pirelli reamed me out. Verbally.

  The guys stood up for me though, said I pulled my weight. (If you ask me, I pulled well more than my weight.) But that’s all behind me now. Pirelli jumped at a chance to make Captain out in the sticks somewhere west. Our new lieutenant, Andrew Sims, has no such hang-ups about sending me in.

  So, I’m accepted (more or less) at my job.

  I’m happy (more or less) being alone.

  Why do I still feel uneasy? It’s annoying, and it’s been that way as long as I can remember. The little bastard in my head is why I got into so much trouble. Noise in my brain or something. I simply can’t sit still doing nothing. If I do, that weird feeling comes back. It’s like when you go to work but can’t remember if you left the coffee machine on, and wonder if you’re going to get home to a pile of smoking ash. Or, as Mom would say, it’s like emailing her latest manuscript off to the publisher and finding a typo two seconds after she clicks send. It also kind of feels like a cop following me for six miles, wondering if he knows what I did three intersections ago or saw that thing I did with the beggar.

  Oh, not like homeless beggar. I mean those annoying people who put on the bright orange vests and stand in traffic at stoplights trying to prey on a captive audience. It’s hilarious to give their buckets a telekinetic whack and throw money everywhere. Let ‘em scramble around trying to pick shit up with cars driving over it all.

  Okay, so perhaps I do have a bit of road rage. Did I mention I’ve been known to have a short temper sometimes? Except with Mom. I can never bring myself to be pissy with her. Something about her presence is like balm on a rash. Even though I’m twenty-three, she can still hold me and I stop worrying about everything. That constant irritating unease? Yeah, it goes away when I’m with her. Sometimes it’s tempting to move in back home―even if she did buy a house way off in Allentown. Living with my mom would help ease my mind, and especially in this economy, not having to pay rent would rule. But, I don’t wanna be that kid that never moves out. Plus, as long as I keep my mind occupied, it’s fine.

  Relatively fine. Truthfully, it sucks, always feeling like I forgot something important or something really bad is going to happen to me any second.

  The shouting next door alternates from Tracy to Asshole for a few minutes. Something else crashes into the wall, followed by a barrage of Tracy’s shouting. I curl my feet over the side of the coffee table, daydreaming about storming in there and telling them both off. How can I pay attention to a show I’ve seen a hundred times already with all that noise?

  A child’s tearful wailing yell undercuts the shouting. Damn. Now I feel guilty. That poor kid. She can’t be older than nine. I’ve only caught glimpses of her here and there, and don’t remember any bruises, but hearing her cry-scream at her mother to ‘please stop fighting’ is getting under my skin. She has the same skinny threadbare look I use to rock at her age. Not a lot of money; not a lot of food.

  Not my kid.

  Not my problem.

  Or it shouldn’t be. The longer I sit here hearing that little girl cry, the more likely I am to do something stupid.

  I have to get away from that madhouse.

  Time to go for a walk.

  n a hurry to get away from the screaming, I grab a hoodie, step into my flip-flops, and head out the door. The majority of my non-work wardrobe consists of short skirts and some manner of leg-covering from fishnets to yoga pants, plus either Doc Martens, combat boots, or flip-flops. At the moment, I lack the patience to change, so the world will have to suffer me in sweat pants.

  Killing that perv years ago didn’t bother me. Maybe because I have no idea how I did it or even really if. I’d like to think I did it and he didn’t simply suffer a coincidental massive cranial aneurysm as soon as I wanted the piece of shit to die. Hey, it could happen. Dead people in fires don’t bother me at all, unless they’re kids… but thank whatever powers that be I haven’t had
to witness that yet. Even lamb annoys me. Like, at least let the damn sheep grow up first before you kill it for food, right?

  It has to be Mom’s doing. She’s so nurturing. If I got anything from her, it’s that need to protect the weak or innocent. Once you’re an adult, sorry pal, not my problem. I mean, as a professional firefighter, hauling citizens out of burning buildings is my problem. Irritating neighbors, not so much. I’d never yawn and leave some poor idiot to burn to death. More like if shit happened beyond my control, I wouldn’t like be a wreck over it.

  I head out my door into a narrow hallway that smells like a mixture of spaghetti sauce and beer farts. Tracy screaming, Asshole screaming, and her daughter begging them both to stop are still noticeable, though not as overbearing. A particularly loud wail of ‘please don’t hit her’ from the kid gets me to clench my fists and stuff them in my sweatshirt pockets. Head down, I force myself to trudge to the stairs and jog the six flights to the ground floor.

  Cold wind meets me outside, fluttering my hair to the side. It’s early March, and Old Man Winter hasn’t quite gotten around to screwing off for the year yet. Brr. Bare midriff and flip-flops aren’t made for this kind of weather. A couple of tenants from the next apartment tower hang around the front porch across the street. One of them’s got shorts on. Ugh, how can he stand that?

  I get the usual ‘hey babys’ and whistles as I go by. Half of me wants to get pissed at them for the objectification, but the rest of me adores being thought of as pretty. Though, I doubt they mean it as a sincere compliment. They’d catcall just about anything with boobs. The indignant half pushes up to an indignant two-thirds, and I give them a sour look on my way by.

  With nowhere specific in mind to go other than out of earshot of the war raging in apartment sixty-five, I wind up hiking all the way to the end of the block, crossing the narrow alley that cuts it in half. Yeah, apartment sixty-five is next to me. I’m in number sixty-six. On the sixth floor. I thought it was cool. Mom doesn’t like it though. She can be superstitious, especially about things like that. I never understood it really. Whenever someone goes off on the religion thing around me, I tend to roll my eyes and walk the other way. But hey, it makes Mom happy.

  An overbearing glow from inside Kwan’s Market bathes the corner in near-daylight, almost painful to look at amid the sea of darkness in this part of town. Channeling my inner moth, I’m drawn to the light and decide to go inside.

  The owner, a middle-aged guy, looks up from his Scry, an enchanted slab of glass most of us use to read novels, play little games, or talk to people far away. Mind you, some do go for the electronic versions. They are a quarter the price, but the batteries run out. A Scry needs a new power gem once every three years.

  His green Philadelphia Eagles shirt looks like someone hit his condiment counter with a Mayhem Jinx when he’d been standing too close. He smiles at me, and I return it. Every time we make eye contact, I calm down a little. I don’t really know the guy too well, but I have a strong feeling he’s nice, honest, and wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  I also think he’s worried about his elderly parents.

  Oh, I’m pretty sure I can read minds, too. Or not so much read as understand who I’m looking at, like how I knew in an instant that the perv wanted to hurt me. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t be so jealous of anyone with magical gifts. Sure, what I can do isn’t flashy―it’s not even visible―but it can come in damn handy. If our trailer hadn’t burned down, I would’ve made a hell of a detective. But, yeah… I don’t have a wonderful relationship with laws.

  Spray painting penises all over the police chief’s car when I was fifteen kinda pissed him off. He remembered me two years ago and bitched when I got on the fire department. Tried to get me fired, but since I’d been a minor at the time, he had nothing solid. I guess ‘oh pay no attention, you know kids do stupid things’ only counts for boys.

  Mr. Kwan buries his face in his Scry again. A glimmer of eldritch light dances around the edge of the device, tinting the whole area around him yellow. I wander the shelves, my hands still in my hoodie pockets. Having come here with nothing specific in mind, I scan for anything that catches my eye. Hopefully, by the time I’m head-bangingly bored with casing a convenience store at almost 10:30 p.m. under the oversaturated glare of three times the amount of life-sucking fluorescent lights a place this size needs, my neighbors will have yelled themselves quiet.

  Hearing that kid next door plead has notched my mood up into a bad place. I have my darker moments, and I have daydreamed (probably too often) about doing cruel, unseemly things to random halfwits. It does scare me somewhat how close to ‘hey, I could do this,’ it feels sometimes. Like all that stands between me and sticking something long, narrow, and pointy into people like that judgy bitch from 52nd street is a shrug and a ‘meh, fuck it.’ Being called a hooker because my midriff is showing got under my skin.

  So far, every time I’ve come close to doing something bad, I think of Mom and how disappointed she’d be in me. It’s worked so far. Maybe I’m a sociopath? Maybe I should be on meds? Nah. Socios have no emotion, and I get plenty pissed off―or like in the case of the kid next door―guilty. Tracy’s lying in a grave of her own digging, but her daughter doesn’t deserve it.

  Argh!

  I swipe a canister of quick oatmeal off a shelf and get millimeters from hurling it across the room before I catch myself. Easy, Brooklyn. Easy. I let a lungful of air out my nostrils and set the almost-projectile down.

  Doughnut. Yeah. That sounds good. I’ll nab a doughnut and coffee. I need to drink almost an entire pot to notice caffeine anyway, so one small cup to wash down an empty calorie bomb won’t keep me up too late. Not like I won’t be awake ‘til at least 1 a.m. anyway. Can’t help it. Being a night owl sucks when my shift starts at seven.

  At the back end of the store, Kwan’s got a two-pot brewer right next to a case of doughnuts that have probably been sitting since earlier this morning, or at least this afternoon. I poke around until I locate a Boston cream that isn’t too stale. After dropping it in a little wax paper bag, I pour myself a coffee―black of course―and put a cap on it.

  Chimes announce the door opening. Two guys stride in, heading over to the register. I can’t see much more than a wool hat and a black hood over the tops of the shelves from here. I collect my treat and coffee, and proceed to the register between an aisle packed with pet food on the left, and paper goods on the right. The end-caps have beef jerky, cat food, and snack cakes. Wow, organizational fail much?

  Wool Hat guy moves to stand a bit to the right of the register and whips out a large silver handgun, before trying to pick Kwan’s nose with it. The other guy hovers near the case of lottery scratch-off cards on the left, holding an empty plastic bag, as if expecting Mr. Kwan to fill it.

  Both guys look somewhere between eighteen and twenty, one white, with the gun, one Hispanic. I get a sense of fear from them, and the intention to steal. Oh, yay for psychic abilities.

  The armed one wags the pistol at the shopkeeper, yelling, “Come on, man. Hurry the fuck up!”

  I walk over to the register into the nice convenient open spot the thugs left between them. After setting my food on the counter, I hold my keyring out, dangling my AATM crystal on its little keychain holder. “Hey, Kwan. Just a donut and a small coffee.”

  My indifferent smirk must have caught the guys off guard, as they stop being all fidgety, and stare at me. Mr. Kwan blinks, once, twice, his face almost as pale as mine. Aww. He’s worried about me. That’s so sweet.

  “You got some balls, bitch,” says the white guy. When I don’t react, he swings around, putting the gun in my face. “I said, you got some balls, bitch.”

  I glance out of the corner of my eye at the .45 barrel an inch or so away from my cheek. Oh, screw this guy. I’m already in a bad mood. My telekinesis wraps around his whole arm, and I make the weapon angle upward before forcing his elbow to bend back so the gun presses against his tem
ple.

  “Didn’t your parents teach you not to wave those things in a girl’s face?” I give him an exaggerated once-over. “My, that’s a rather big gun. Are you trying to make up for something else being small? No shame, man!”

  He trembles from the strain of fighting me for control of his arm. Don’t bother, pal. I shoved a pickup truck out of a parking space once after the shithead cut Mom off. The man screams, his stare locked on his gun, but he can’t pull it away. Howling, he grabs his right wrist with his left and tugs; I smirk, and keep the pistol right where I put it.

  Mr. Kwan goes weak in the knees. The poor guy looks ready to faint.

  Bang.

  Pain stabs me in the back of the left shoulder. It hurts like a huge guy hauled off and punched me, but there’s blood on the front of my sleeve. I catch a glimpse of the Hispanic dick’s reflection in the lotto ticket case. A small black revolver in his hand wobbles like a Chihuahua on amphetamines, a wisp of smoke trailing up from the barrel.

  The son of a bitch shot me.

  Oh, now I’m pissed.

  “You’re about to have a bad day,” I snarl in Spanish.

  A tiny tweak of telekinesis nudges the trigger on the .45, and Moron One’s brains leap over the ceiling, floor, and a shelf of toilet paper. His buddy shrieks in terror and tries to shoot me again, but his bullet goes high, shattering glass somewhere behind me. In an instant of total rage, I grab him bodily with my telekinesis and pour all my fury into away.

  The man sails out the door, spinning head over sneakers. Unfortunately, he doesn’t make it to the other side of the street due to an unexpected meeting with a passing PEPTA bus. The whump of him getting intimate with the windshield makes me feign a cringe.

  I look at Mr. Kwan and again hold out my AATM crystal. “Sorry about that.”

  Numb, he stands there, staring at me.

  “Okay then.” I lean over the counter and ring myself up while the shopkeeper continues doing a perfect impression of a statue. “I walked a whole block for this coffee and doughnut; I’d rather not leave empty-handed.”