by Hal Schrieve
Z did not explain to Tommy that they were not really friends with him and therefore it was not odd to not speak to him. It felt a little too cruel. “Sorry,” they said instead. “I can talk.”
“Who is it on the phone?” Mrs. Dunnigan asked quietly.
“Someone from school. Tommy Wodewose,” Z rasped. They wondered suddenly how Tommy had their number.
“How nice,” Mrs. Dunnigan said.
“Yeah,” Z mumbled. “Hey, I’m going to take the phone into my room.”
“Okay,” said Tommy on the phone.
“All right, dear,” Mrs. Dunnigan said, and picked up the nearest cat.
Z picked up the receiver and the phone and carried it as far from the wall as it would go. If they stretched the twisted cord all the way and set the receiver on the floor, they could just manage to sit inside the door to their room and, tilting their head a little, speak on the phone. The cats watched curiously as Z arranged all this.
“Okay,” Z said when they had hunkered down just inside the door to their room. “What do you want to talk about, Tommy? Is something wrong?”
“No.” Tommy giggled, and it sounded a little weird. “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing.”
“Okay,” Z said slowly. “You sound like it is.”
“My dad’s just being weird tonight,” Tommy said. “He’s like, mad at everyone. He gets weird sometimes.”
“That sucks,” Z said. “I hope it’s not like”—they paused, unsure how to ask—“I hope it’s not like, dangerous.”
“No! No, it’s not like, a hitting-people thing.”
“Oh,” Z said.
“It’s not like that,” Tommy repeated edgily.
“Okay.”
“He just snaps at my mom and then locks her out of their room and I don’t know, lifts weights or reads books about the coast of Spain or poetry or whatever he does. But then she can’t get in to brush her teeth and she has to sleep on the couch. It stresses everyone out. This time it was because she had left a thermos and a candy wrapper in his car. He doesn’t like messes.”
“Oh,” Z said. They held the phone close to their face with their shoulder and rubbed their hands together to generate heat. They felt cold all of a sudden.
“I don’t want to talk about my parents,” Tommy said.
“You don’t have to,” Z said, not pointing out that Tommy had been the one to bring it up. They hoped it came out in a kindly way. Everything they said was a kind of flat eerie rasp.
“I’ve been reading the books I still have, the ones not about . . . you know, your stuff. It’s really amazing, all the things people have done with magic before the Censorship Act.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s really great. There’s this spell here for summoning the thing that built the Eiffel Tower. It was this ancient afrit. You need about two hundred people to call it, and the book—this one’s from 1930—says you need a special license from the French government, but really, it’s amazing.”
“Sounds like it,” Z said, looking around the corner to see if Mrs. Dunnigan was listening. They couldn’t see her.
“Did you make the potion?” Tommy asked, surprising Z. “Did it work?”
Z paused. “Yeah,” they said hesitantly, not sure if they wanted to talk to Tommy about it. “I mean, I’ve made it. It’s not done yet. Aysel helped cast it but I have to drink it tonight. Something with the full moon.”
“That’s cool. Wow.”
“Yes,” Z said.
“I wonder—” He stopped. His voice was high and wheedling, and Z felt sure he was going to ask something of them.
“What?” they asked, in a voice that immediately felt too snappish.
“Can I see you when you drink it?” Tommy asked.
Z furrowed their brow and stared at the opposite wall. “Why?”
“I don’t know, it just would be—I mean, it’s pretty intense magic. It would help me when I bring back Archie, to see it.”
“I guess so.”
“Forbidden magic like that might get sort of crazy. You might want a friend,” Tommy said, his voice softening. It was as if he realized he had scared Z and was trying a different tactic. “And the spell can have multiple casters, right? I could be another caster.”
“How would you know?” Z pressed the plastic phone into their head, feeling it scrape against their jaw through the skin of their cheek. They did not want any lights or flashes or bangs inside them.
“I just remember from reading.”
Z was quiet for a moment. “Tommy,” they said, “don’t try anything.”
“I’m not even thinking about Archie Pagan right now,” Tommy said. “Just helping you.”
“I’m not saying you can’t,” Z said. They paused. “Although maybe you should consider not trying anything else. That isn’t an especially brilliant thing to do.”
“I won’t. I’ll be careful,” Tommy said. “So can I see you tonight when you take it?”
“I guess so,” Z said.
“Where are you going to do it?”
“I don’t know. By the bus stop. Or the park down the street.”
“I can meet you there,” Tommy said. “I’ll bring . . . like, I don’t know. I can bring snacks or something.” He laughed. “What do friends do? Should I bring something?”
“I’m fine,” Z said, not interested in explaining to Tommy that they didn’t eat much. “You don’t have to bring anything.”
“What time should we meet?”
“I don’t know,” Z said. A cat licked them with its rough tongue. “The moon rises soon. Forty minutes?”
“Okay,” Tommy said.
There was a long silence. The cat crawled into Z’s lap and began to gnaw at their hand. Z petted it, and it meowed loudly.
“What was that?” Tommy asked.
“One of Mrs. Dunnigan’s five million cats. They try to eat me whenever I sit still.” Z smiled as the cat bit them again. They didn’t mind it anymore. It wasn’t like they could feel it.
“If I leave now I can get there before the moon is up, I think,” Tommy said.
“Okay.” Z told him their address, and said they’d meet him by the side of the house.
Z put the phone back and went into their room again. They opened the window and peered out at the foggy night. It didn’t look like the moon was going to come out. Z walked back into the kitchen, thinking vaguely that they needed something to stir the potion with. Mrs. Dunnigan watched them get a spoon. Z made eye contact with Mrs. Dunnigan and slowly walked to the fridge, took a carton of yogurt to make it look as if they were eating something, said good night, and then returned to their room.
They pulled out the potion and put it on the windowsill and stared at it. It seemed to be glowing, but Z wasn’t sure if that was just a trick of the light.
Fifty minutes later, a shadowy figure moved down the sidewalk past the bus stop and stood, looking around. Z glanced into the hallway, saw that Mrs. Dunnigan had gone to bed, and then moved back to the window and hauled it open. They tried to get outside quietly but instead fell loudly into the bushes. A cat meowed inside. The figure looked over and saw them. Its blond hair shone in the dim light of the streetlamp.
“So why do you go by Z now?” Tommy asked.
“It’s my name.” Z managed to stand, and reached back inside their room to grab the potion and shut the window. They turned around toward Tommy and fumbled with the cap on the bottle.
“It hasn’t always been. What made you change it now?”
“I’ve been using it for a while but nobody has paid much attention,” Z said. Their response was clipped. “I just prefer it. It’s more gender-neutral.”
“Oh. Why do you want that?”
“Well, I’m not a girl or a boy,” Z said. They didn’t make eye contact, concentrating on their slippery, feeble fingers and the reluctant cap. “I’m something else. I’m a third thing. I don’t wear skirts or makeup but it’s not just about that. It’s like a deep feelin
g that I just don’t want to be a woman. I could do stuff that women don’t do and still be a woman, I know that, but I don’t want to still be a woman because people will always see me in a certain way, and make me act a certain way to be more like a real woman, and I don’t want to have all that in my head. If I’m a third thing I just refuse all that. And I don’t think I could be a man, because I hate almost every man I’ve ever met.”
“Oh.” Tommy did not say anything else.
“Not that it really matters if my body falls apart.” Z, feeling that was the end of that, struggled again with the bottle. This time they managed to open it.
“It looks weird,” Tommy said, pointing at the potion.
“I prepared it just like it said to,” Z said, giving the opalescent mixture a firm shake with their finger over the opening. It fizzed against their skin. It was the color of a smoggy sky at dusk now.
Tommy sat down in the dark grass to watch, expectantly. “So what was casting the spell like?”
“Aysel had to put blood into the potion in an energy pulse so I could access her magic to stay alive, and then we applied the sigil and she said the spell over it.” Z opened their pajama top to show the temporary tattoo above the sigil their mother had made. “I think it’ll work. The moon’s just about out.”
“Do you still have the book?” Tommy asked.
“Yeah,” Z said.
“I could be a second caster,” Tommy said. “I’m good at magic.”
“I like, leach your magic to live, is what would happen if you did that,” Z said.
“That’s okay,” Tommy said. “I don’t want you to die. Where’s the book? I’ll do the spell.”
“Uh,” Z said, and looked back at the window. They were worried they had jammed it shut.
“I can open it,” Tommy said. He went over to it and ran his hands along the sill. There was a slight blue glow and the window slid up silently. Z had not heard him say any spell, which was weird. He swung his narrow leg over the sill and scrambled in. “Where is it?”
“My bag,” Z said as quietly as possible. They were worried Mrs. Dunnigan wasn’t asleep yet, or would wake up.
Tommy climbed back out the window a second later, and a cat followed him outside, meowing.
“Get back in there!” Z said to the animal they thought was Angelina.
“Is it an indoor cat?”
“It’s just dumb,” Z said. “But she’ll be okay till morning I guess, and I’ll go back inside in a bit anyway if she sticks around.”
Tommy opened the book to the page with the spell. He had to go over to the streetlamp in order to read it. Z watched him.
“You need your blood,” they said. “Aysel used a safety pin.”
“It’s okay,” Tommy said. He took out a penknife and made a cut across the skin of his wrist.
“I don’t know if you need that much,” Z said. Tommy held his hand over it and the blue magic crackled around the blood. He moved the energy sphere over and pressed it down into the potion, which hissed and changed color. Then he put his wrist to his mouth.
“Ow.”
“I told you you didn’t have to do this,” Z said worriedly. They pictured the headline: Undead Teen Tricks Local Boy into Blood Servitude. Or something.
“No, it’s cool, really.” Tommy folded his arm to his side, holding the book with the other hand. He looked down and started to recite the sigil spell. Z felt the temporary tattoo do something as he read, or they thought they did. They also felt an echo of the feeling they had for Aysel earlier, though it felt more like physical warmth than the kind of emotional reflex Aysel inspired. Tommy finished and looked up.
“The thing on your chest is glowing,” he said with a hint of pride. “I guess that means we’re doing something right.”
Z figured there was no point in waiting. They tilted the bottle back, opened their mouth, and swallowed the stuff down. It was colder in their mouth than the temperature outside really warranted. Z felt weird as they drank.
“How does it taste?” Tommy asked.
“I can’t taste anything,” Z started to say, but they realized that for the first time in months they were tasting. The potion on their tongue was sweet and bitter at once. There was something happening in their mouth. It started with a buzzing that filled the spaces between their teeth like mechanical bees, and a drumming sound in their chest. Then it spread. Their forehead ached with novel temperatures, icy and then hot. Their veins seared. Z suddenly felt their hands against the dirt of the ground; they had fallen over. It seemed like there was water seeping into them, like their flesh had become a sponge.
“Do you need help?” Tommy asked.
Z shook their head. They pushed themselves upright with difficulty and swallowed the rest of the potion, drinking deeply. A discomfort settled in their throat; the more they drank, the thirstier they felt. They coughed. Suddenly they felt for the first time since the accident how dry every cell of their body was, how full of salt. The air was cold, chilling; Z hadn’t felt it before now. They breathed it in, uncertain if sensation was an improvement. It seemed as if every pore of their skin was aching for fluid. Z was a desert, parched.
“Water,” they coughed.
Tommy had a water bottle in the side pocket of his backpack. He turned frantically, his shoes scuffing in pine needles, and went to get it. He held it out to them nervously, his pale fingers quaking. Z drained it. They felt the potion in their gut, and they were filled with burning and boiling. There was an uncertain moment and Z fell over again onto the grass. Their eyes went black. They did not breathe.
“I thought you were dead,” Tommy said when they woke up again.
“I am,” Z reminded him. But they felt less dead now than they had, somehow. Something was happening in their chest—not exactly a heartbeat, but a kind of presence. Z wasn’t sure how to articulate that.
“How do you feel?” Tommy asked.
“I don’t know,” Z said slowly, honestly.
“You look a little better,” Tommy said.
“Do I?”
“The skin on your face looks less like it’s . . . it’s less flaky.”
Z reached up and felt their face. It was true. There was something else, too—Z’s fingers felt cold against their cheek. Z’s cheek was warm—or at least warmer than the icy air which surrounded Z and Tommy in the cold night by the bus stop. Their bones ached more intensely than before, as if something in them was trying to mend.
Z almost felt like crying.
In the morning, Z heard Mrs. Dunnigan get up at a quarter to four and make two pots of coffee in a row. They stayed in bed awhile, to give her some time to herself. At five, they got up and walked out. They glanced over at the potion as they opened the door and realized a cat might come in and knock it over, so they put it on a high shelf.
Out in the living room, Mrs. Dunnigan was glued to the television set. This was very unusual.
“What is it?” Z asked.
Mrs. Dunnigan did not answer.
On the screen there were two paramedics hauling away the body of a young dead man. He was naked, and his body was riddled with bullet holes.
“Holy shit,” Z said. “What’s happening?”
Mrs. Dunnigan remained silent, jittering quietly in her chair. Her brow was furrowed. Z looked at the screen as a reporter appeared to speak about what was happening.
“The werewolves set upon Ron Hardeback by this Salem grocery store last night. He attempted to fend them off, to no avail. Luckily, a local woman, who has preferred to remain anonymous, tipped off police when she saw the two giant beasts moving quickly past her home. The police arrived and shot both werewolves. Both have since died. They are as yet unidentified. Hardeback has been moved to Salem Hospital, where he remains in stable condition.” The reporter onscreen looked tired, like she hadn’t had time to put on makeup after waking up this morning.
“Oh,” Z said.
“This is very bad,” Mrs. Dunnigan said very quietly.
>
The television continued to speak. “Hardeback had worked for years at a clinic for treating werewolves with electroshock therapy under the Werewolf Commission in Sacramento, California. His leg was bitten deeply, and he has significant nerve damage from bites. Police are looking into the possibility that the attack was revenge.”
Z was still mesmerized by the repeating footage of the dead bodies. “Why are they showing the bodies?” they asked. “And they’re naked. Is that appropriate? Shouldn’t that be censored?”
“They’re werewolves,” Mrs. Dunnigan answered, her eyes wide as she peered over her glasses. Her teeth chattered faintly. “Werewolves are classified as beasts on full-moon days. Censorship rules don’t apply to beasts.”
“That doesn’t seem quite fair,” Z said. “Even if they were attacking someone.”
“No,” Mrs. Dunnigan said.
At a quarter past seven, the news was still playing, but Z left to go to school. Cop cars drove by quickly in twos and threes. Z wondered if it was because of the werewolf attack. The sirens weren’t on, but they still made Z jump. They thought of Aysel and worried.
Z met up with Tommy in the woods near the school. The trees hung low and thick and green with needles falling incessantly in fine waves on the ground. Tommy waited beneath a tall tree, submerged in shadow. He looked as if he hadn’t slept at all. His backpack was on the ground next to him. It was too empty-looking to contain any books.
“Have you seen all the cop cars?” he asked Z. “It’s insane.”
“It is,” Z agreed. They almost added that they were worried about Aysel before remembering Tommy knew nothing about Aysel. They bit their tongue.
“I heard they found more documents. There’s a whole ring of werewolves,” Tommy said. He laughed nervously.
“I wonder what the cops will do.”
“Shoot more of them, probably,” Tommy said. “And try to find out who was seeing Archie Pagan before he died, to track them all down.”
Z didn’t like to think about anyone meaning to hurt or kill someone. It made them think of Uncle Hugh, and what he had said while shaking them. They looked back up at Tommy, who was watching them with a frightening intensity.