Post-Smoke

There are very few real magicians left in the world, be they waking or dreaming. There are a lot of people who are small with small tricks, and big people with no trick at all. It's not a rule, but it's hard to have magic and power as well: magic slips between cracks and power is about paving them over. Or never seeing them, often enough.

I was drunk. Not drunk enough, since I could still order beer from the bartender, who handed each cheap bottle we'd be ashamed to import over in the kind of commiserating silence of the best bartenders the world over. He didn't ask if I'd had too many, didn't ask what my problems were, just handed drinks between serving other customers. You don't get to be good in his business without reading your custom, and I figured he'd read me just fine when a hand fell on my shoulder.

"Evenin'," the officer drawled, his voice fake-Southern charm, the feel of him rubber and grit with no hint of donuts at all. This one did his job well and loved it; such people bear watching. From a distance.

I glanced over my shoulder. His uniform was starched clean, smile a formality under cop-cold eyes. "Whatever you're selling I'm not buying." My voice was almost steady. Hooray for me.

"I'm not selling anything."

"Everyone is." I turned back to the bar. His hand dropped onto my shoulder, meat pressing into bone. "Let go," I said, and threaded power into the words without thinking. He jerked back, I turned, meant to apologize, or tell him to go elsewhere – same thing, often enough, but he hauled me one-handed from the chair and we were out back so fast it was his own kind of magic.

He beat me senseless, because that's what cops like him do. It was his magic, of fists and pain to put the world in order. I let him hit me a few times, figuring I deserved it. Let the drinks slide out of me with each blow instead of pain. No need to tell you how I learned to get myself beaten sober: it's not the kind of story one repeats.

I slid his hand past me on his fourth blow, maybe the fifth, standing with it. Not magic, just movement, but he had no way of knowing that. He knew something, that much was in his eyes. I could hear the distant whine of firetrucks beyond the circle we formed, forced myself to hear nothing more. There are few magicians in this world: after tonight, there was one less.

"This is about a man. Carlos. Missing since this evening, wife and kids frantic. Fuckin' social media shitstorm," the cop said, his hatred automatic of anything that brought up the lower classes. "Secretary at work – Maureen – she said you found her wedding ring for her. You're to find the kid."

I had no idea if this was his kind of joke, some department game he'd been on the wrong end of: he was cop enough to give nothing away, even if I'd wanted to go looking. "It doesn't work like that. Magic doesn't find lost people."

He stepped back, flexed knuckles. My impression of him went down a few rungs on the evolutionary chain, but he didn't say magic wasn't real. Cops. They see too much and never enough. "Why not?"

"Who isn't lost some of the time? Nothing is static."

His hand snapped out. This time I don't let it touch me, reached past to twist the collar of his perfect shirt.

"Even you. Even me." I stepped back, raising empty hands. His hand fell to his gun, away a moment later. He tried to fix his collar, it remained bent despite all his efforts.

I don't know if he's scared of me. I'm not sure even he knows. "You could try."

"No." I could feel ghosts gathering behind him now: I have no idea if any are men, let a breeze blow them apart before I could see more. Learning how to not see ghosts is important, if you're the sort who can see them. "So many go missing, officer. So many are lost, and a lifetime spent finding them all would leave me more lost than they."

He doesn't understand. I don't care, not about him, but Maureen seemed kind. I imagine Carlos' family must be as well, to push the police this hard. And I owed the world for the breeze, or so I told myself. I raised my head, held the officer's gaze. "The fire at the old Dumas hotel. You will not find a body in it, but if you ask the owner as you ask questions, officer –" And he flinched a little at that but was silent "– he will tell you about the man he let sleep there. About the people taken to it. About what he did, to help others."

As I said, there are few magicians in the world. I made it one less earlier tonight.

"Carlos' children will grow up without a father."

"Sometimes that is for the best." I am human as much as magician, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. "Sometimes things must vanish and never be found again, no matter how hard we don't look for them."

The officer swore. Checked his collar again. He looked smaller than he had earlier. "For the fire then." His gaze locked with mine. "A life for a life."

That he guessed so quickly: I am still drunk, or I wanted to be found out. Needed to, perhaps. I don't know. Being human is often not wanting to know. I crouched to the ground, held out a hand, blew a breath into the world, pulled it back. The breath comes with leaves, a pop can, scattered paper and twigs that take on a body all their own, voice high and indignant at being alive, at having to die.

"I am sorry." It ignored me, testing out arms and legs as it skittered over the ground. I stood and nodded to the police officer, one professional to another. "This will lead you to Carlos. Destroy it after. It will hate you and love you and you will never be able to trust a pop can again."

He doesn't ask if I am joking. I watched him walk away until he turns the corner. Didn't go back into the bar, didn't throw up: I don't have such dramatics left to me. I walked out the other way, through a door that opened before I touched it, and headed to a motel.

The next morning I turned the tv on to find a man named Carlos is the headline story. Kidnapped by people who thought he was someone else, rescued by a brave officer earmarked for Detective. I waited to feel something, felt nothing at all. No desire to rush out and bend the world to my will, no need to pay the terrible cost it will demand.

I am not my father. I would not become him. I flicked the tv off and was content.