by Hal Schrieve
“Tommy, you got strapped into this machine, too, right?” Aysel asked.
Tommy was very, very pale. “Yeah,” he said.
“I want you to know that that’s bullshit,” Elaine added, “I said it before but it is. Electroshock on fey doesn’t work at all the way it does on werewolves. If your dad tells you he’s nonmagical now, he’s bullshitting you. Fey are made of magic. You can’t get rid of it.”
“He said he had a special method,” Tommy said. “Maybe he was right. But I’m never getting in one of those things again.” Suddenly Tommy started shaking. They all watched him. Z made eye contact with him for a second and then looked away; it was too deeply unsettling to see the frenzy in his eyes. They looked up, instead, toward the bloody ceiling. Tommy’s eyes followed theirs and he gave a little shriek of a sob. Elaine gave Tommy’s left shoulder a little tentative pat; he seemed not to notice. He put his fingers to his neck, as if checking his pulse.
“Tommy, let’s get you out of here,” Z said.
“He turned up the voltage really high.” Tommy got up and walked over to the chair, and looked down at it. “And the chair came loose from the ground . . . And I was this big lion thing, I think. And then he had a gun, and he was coming toward me.”
“Did you heal from that on your own?” Elaine asked. “Are the bullets still in you?”
“I pulled them out,” Tommy said. “With magic.” His voice shook. “Once the body was in the woods I tried to bury it. But I—I got upset and I transformed again and when I came to I was really—I couldn’t think straight. I was scared. I didn’t really think about it, to be honest. I just went home and left him where he was.” Tommy paused and shut his eyes. “God. I hate myself.”
Elaine moved forward and clasped Tommy’s shoulders. “Tommy,” she said, “I have hurt a lot of people. Everyone hurts people.”
“But you haven’t killed anyone,” Tommy said.
“No, I haven’t,” Elaine said. “But I don’t want you to think you’re a monster, Tommy.”
“But I still killed him,” Tommy said. There were tears in his eyes again. It was clear that he didn’t know what to make of Elaine’s sudden willingness to forgive him. “I don’t know what was happening to me. I couldn’t control myself. And that’s dangerous, isn’t it? You all—werewolves know when you will transform and you can get away from people. You know days ahead when the change is going to be. I’m a demon. I could kill someone at any moment!”
“No,” Elaine said firmly, her hands still on Tommy’s shoulders.
“Aysel’s necklace works on me. I can’t look directly at it. I can’t get too close to it without feeling weird.”
“What?” Aysel asked. Her hand went to her necklace.
“I’m a thing, a thing that looks like a boy sometimes but really isn’t anything, just a demon—”
“He shot you in the chest.”
Tommy stared at her for a moment and then crouched on the floor, where he sat staring at his hands. Even Aysel, who had looked about ready to punch him earlier, now looked worried for him. She was hugging herself, looking between Tommy and the blood on the ceiling. Z knew how upset Aysel had to be about everything, and they knew she was as confused as they were about how to feel about everything. Z looked over at Elaine and stared at her until she looked up at Z. Elaine’s eyes were red and opened wide; her eyebrows were furrowed. When she made eye contact with Z she blinked hard and shook her head.
“Let’s set a fire, keep moving. They’ll find the chair in the rubble, but whatever. The papers will be gone.”
They all stood there then, looking at one another. A feeling of being deeply exhausted, washed out and raw, rose in Z and they could see that the others felt it too. Z looked at Tommy again, thinking of what he had gone through, and of the fear he must have lived with these last weeks. What would happen to him now? What would his life be like? They thought of what Elaine had said, that Tommy was a being made of magic. He had more power than any of them, then—more than Aysel even. It was hard to believe it of the tiny, skinny form curled like the bones of a mouse on the floor with his hair in his reddening eyes. He could tear the world apart if he was scared enough.
And he was connected now with the sigil on Z’s chest.
Z was not able to think too long because suddenly there was a noise downstairs. Aysel seemed to hear it first; she looked up toward the door. Soon the sound reached the rest of them. It was the low ache of wood bending as someone walked down the hallway beneath them. Initially it wasn’t clear if it was just the noise of the building creaking, but as the seconds passed it resolved itself into definite, distinct footsteps. Elaine, who had seemed distracted, heard it and froze, looking quickly around at them all.
“Shit,” she mouthed.
The footsteps paused and a woman’s voice called out, from down the stairs. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
“It’s the dentist,” Tommy said. He was getting to his feet unsteadily. “Who works downstairs. I’ve met her a couple times.”
“Mr. Briggs?” the voice called. “Is that you?”
“Stay very quiet,” Elaine whispered. She looked over at the door to the secret room. Z could see her puzzling over what to do. One could close the door, possibly, with a lot of work—but then they would all be trapped inside. In any case it was sure to make a noise. And the footsteps were now coming up the stairs.
The footsteps retreated just as Elaine looked ready to rush out and attack the dentist. Then, in the hallway, there was the sound of a phone being dialed. The dentist had one of those small new cell phones. After a second, her voice spoke again, this time low and confidential into the receiver Z imagined was pressed close against her face.
“Yes, hello, 911? I would like to report . . . a burglary. I think. The intruder may still be here. I’m at the Cloudburst Pines office complex in East Lancaster . . .”
16
This is terrible,” Aysel said quietly. “What do we do?”
“I’ll distract her,” Tommy whispered suddenly. He stood up, swaying a little. “She’s seen me before. Then—I don’t know—you all can go past if I can get her downstairs, or go out the window . . .” He said all this very fast, and walked quickly toward the door.
Aysel looked back at Elaine and Z. Elaine was clearly trying to think of a plan. Z merely looked paralyzed. Their eyes flicked over to Aysel and Aysel realized Z was not going to be able to move very fast. There was no way they would get out without being seen.
Unless Aysel did something.
Aysel shut her eyes and felt the well of wavering magic in a warm sphere. All the rage that had been building up for the last hour, and the fear, had fed quietly into it, the energy pent up and almost painful when one focused on it. Aysel knew she had the capacity for an immense burst of magic if she tried. But what should she try to do?
Tommy, meanwhile, had gone out into the main office, and then there was the sound of him opening the door into the hall.
“Hang on,” the woman said, out in the hall, apparently into the receiver. Then, to Tommy, “Oh, it’s you—”
“I’m sorry for startling you,” Tommy said.
“I thought there were burglars,” the woman said in an accusatory way. “The police are on their way. It’s the middle of the night. What are you doing here? This is— this is Archie’s office, isn’t it?”
The 911 call had been placed. The police would be here soon. The only thing to do would be to try to make it easier for them all to flee and make sure that the woman wasn’t able to tell anyone what had happened.
“I, um. I was coming to pick up some papers that were left over after Dr. Pagan died. Medical records,” Tommy said. “I called uh, I called Mrs. Pagan, and she said that she would be here . . .”
“So late at night?” The woman sounded doubtful.
Tommy was silent for a second, and Aysel realized his story was going to crumble. She looked back again at Elaine and knew Elaine didn’t have any idea of what to do, eithe
r. If only Tommy would shut the door to the office, they could try to go out the window. Aysel wondered how to communicate this to Tommy.
“No,” Tommy finally said. “But uh, the door was open, when I got here, so I . . . I just went in and my papers and things were on the desk, so I picked them up.” His voice got a little farther away. He was clearly trying to edge down the hall, and take the dentist with him.
“I thought I heard voices. Are you sure you’re alone?”
Aysel was sure the woman was going to lean forward and look into the office, and she moved toward the door of the secret room. Indeed, the dentist’s shadow fell across the door into the empty office. She was going to see them. Aysel closed her eyes and allowed a shard of her ball of frustrated magic to splinter and shoot toward the door. It swung shut with a slam that was too forceful to be natural.
“What was that?” the woman said, and her footsteps approached. She tried to turn the doorknob. Aysel pursed her lips in an instant and tried to remember the spell for locking. She couldn’t remember the Latin, but she thought of what she wanted. Don’t let her get in, she thought.
“Ouch!”
Aysel looked through the door to the secret room and saw that the doorknob in the outer office had melted into a silver, tarnished river of hot metal that was seeping slowly toward the carpeted floor. She blinked.
Behind her, she felt Elaine’s breath suddenly on the back of her head. “Nice work,” Elaine said quietly. “I was panicking.”
“What is that?” the dentist’s voice said, outside.
“There must be a security spell on the door,” said Tommy, feebly. He was now stuck outside the room as well. They all would have to figure out how to get to him and get him away before police came. For now, though—
“The window, quick,” Elaine said. Aysel turned around and pulled Z from where they were standing in the middle of the floor. To Aysel’s surprise, they pulled away forcefully. Aysel felt the tendons in their arm strain and there was a chilling snapping noise as they staggered back. Z didn’t show any sign of having noticed.
“We have to finish destroying the evidence and then hide the secret room,” Z said. “Someone could be in danger otherwise. Tommy especially.” They turned toward the mess.
Aysel shot a bolt of her angry-magic at a file cabinet containing most of the remaining papers, and it exploded. She shot another bolt at the electric chair. It buzzed with a purple electric glow and crumbled into dust and embers. Aysel was a little shaken by her own ferocity. “There,” she said. “They’re gone. Let’s go.” She grabbed Z’s hand and pulled them toward the door. Outside, Elaine had removed the glass from the window with a spell again and had one leg over the side.
“Let’s see if I can do this,” she said, and disappeared over the ledge, her frizzy hair trailing after her, a rush of orange-illuminated light. Aysel rushed over to the open window. The wind blew the curtains back into the room. Outside, Elaine was standing upright about a foot above the earth, holding herself aloft with an anti-gravity spell Aysel recognized as a variation of one she had learned in elementary school. Elaine looked breathless as the purple force field broke and she dropped to the ground.
“You next,” Aysel said, turning back to Z. “I’ll help.”
“Wait, the door to the room,” Z said. “We have to close it.”
“I’ll deal with it,” Aysel snapped, forgetting to be quiet. Outside the door, the dentist was pounding her fists against the wood. She seemed awfully brazen for someone who seemed to believe that burglars had invaded, Aysel thought. The door creaked against its hinges.
“Who is in there?” she called loudly. “You are trespassing—”
Aysel put all her strength into slamming shut the bookshelf-door to the interior room. The wolf inside her prickled up in her shoulders. She turned toward the entrance to the office that the woman was behind and felt the familiar crackle of static in her hair. Everything rushed at her at once, and she felt her eyes and face grow hot with it. Sweat collected on her brow. She had to be careful, doing so many forceful, wordless spells at once. If she didn’t use caution, she would end up doing more harm than she meant to, unleashing all of her magic at once in a torrent she couldn’t control. But this woman couldn’t see them. Aysel knew she had to protect Z, and herself, but she couldn’t remember any Latin—her brain was going blank. There was nothing to do but return her attention to the buzzing locus of magic in the front of her brain, and she gritted her teeth, and ran forward and kicked the door with a loud, languageless cry. Aysel wasn’t sure exactly what this would do, and she was not prepared for what happened. As her foot made contact with the door, it burst instantly into a sizzling purple fire. On the other side of it, the woman screamed. For a second, Aysel stared with some horror at what she had done. Then she shook herself back to her senses.
“Come on, let’s go!” Aysel said. She rushed forward and lifted Z over her shoulder, diving toward the window. The evening air hit their faces as they flew through it, and Aysel drank it in, filling her lungs with its sweetness, so sharp and refreshing after the hot, dead air of the dead therapist’s room. She brought the swell of magical energy within her to her feet and sang the anti-gravity spell under her breath—non deficimus, nec me in terra deorsum—and landed, lightly. She looked back at the window they had leapt out of and saw smoke issuing from it. Aysel’s fire was spreading.
“That’s that,” she said to Z, trying to be jovial. Her heart was pounding. Z looked at her with a kind of morose horror that made Aysel feel horrible.
“Where’s Tommy?” Elaine asked.
“Still inside,” Aysel said. “He was stuck on the other side of the door. I hope he can get out. I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to go back in. We have to get out of here.”
“We can’t leave Tommy,” Elaine and Z said at once.
“I didn’t say we should,” Aysel said. She looked from one to the other, wondering how not to make them hate her while getting them both away from the burning building. “But we also can’t all get caught. I think Tommy can take care of himself better than you think. He got away from the police twice already today.”
“Thanks,” a voice behind Aysel said. She turned. Tommy was disheveled, his pale hair mussed up at the back of his head. He smiled nervously.
“How did you—” Z began.
“Never mind, I’m sure we’ll know in a bit,” Elaine said. “Right now we have all our members assembled and are outside a burning building and the cops are on their way, so let’s get the hell out of here. Can I hear an aye for support?”
They all ran. Elaine led the way. She turned and they all rushed through a kind of dirt alley behind a cluster of warehouses, between large metal dumpsters and the marked-up beige walls of the buildings. The security lamps which lit the parking lot didn’t reach into the alleyways and for a second Aysel squinted from the loss of light, and stumbled. She was breathing hard trying to keep up, and out of the corner of her eye she could see Z stumbling. She remembered Z falling walking home from school. Even if the potion had helped them, Z wasn’t going to be able to keep up this pace for long. Aysel decided to carry them again if they fell behind. Tommy, meanwhile, traveled fast, and had boundless energy. Elaine ran far enough ahead that there was always a danger of losing her, but she seemed to be determined not to let them fall behind. After they got out from the long alley between warehouses they found themselves in a neighborhood. Elaine turned away from the road that led toward a thoroughfare and took them, instead, toward a series of smaller residential streets. She had slowed to a walk—either because there was no way Z could keep up with her pace or because she thought they were safe. But she did not stop, either. The idea seemed to be to get as far as possible from the main road. Aysel looked over her shoulder only once, and saw a column of smoke rising into the sky behind them. She bit her lip and hoped that the dentist woman had the good sense to get out of the building. Hopefully, the police might think she had set the building on fire,
for insurance fraud. She could now hear the distant wail of sirens. Aysel thought: This is the second time I have been on the run from the cops in a week. This time I actually set something on fire.
They came to a neighborhood park,with small, dilapidated pieces of beige playground equipment made of wood and metal pipes. There wasn’t much light. Elaine turned and nodded to them and then looped her arms around a pull-up bar and brought herself up so she was sitting on it.
“We’re far enough away now that I think we can rest,” she said. Her face was dark with the blood that had rushed to it running, and she combed her frizzy hair out of her eyes with her hand. “I don’t think the police will be looking at these neighborhoods for a while, and in the meantime we all need to catch our breath.”
Tommy pulled his hooded cape up over his hair. “What did you do back there, Aysel? The building’s on fire.”
“I was trying to get her to stay out of the room. I just sort of . . . let something go.” Aysel felt guilt pounding in her head.
“Hopefully they can’t trace it back to us,” Z said. They sat down grimly on the round-pebbled gravel and hugged their knees to their chest.
“Well, we’re in for it either way,” Tommy said. He grimaced. “It’s probably time for us to get out of town as soon as we can.”
“You have a point,” Elaine said. “I definitely was not planning our break-in to have casualties.” She looked at Aysel. “Not that we know that woman is hurt, of course, but she was definitely in for some smoke inhalation.”
“Sorry,” Aysel said, and felt a deep gloom settle on her shoulders.
“You were saving our asses, nobody holds it against you.”
“All our asses except for Tommy, anyway,” Z said.
Aysel looked at Z. They were glaring at her. Aysel found her throat had closed up. She choked for a second. “I wanted to get Tommy out,” she said. “My magic just sort of—happened. I wasn’t thinking.”
“You trapped him in a burning building.”
“He’s alive, isn’t he?” Aysel found her voice sounded angry, even though she didn’t feel angry. She felt—scared. Z had never looked at her like that.