8. Cars &
Time
The interstate had
shudders back to life by the time I walk back to the car. Charlie has
moved it over to the side of the road and is in on her phone playing
a game. Jay is just sitting in the back and looks up as I walk over,
his face so empty of expression it hurts. I cease blocking the
binding between us and for a moment he resists in turn, trying to
make it weaker or at least make a statement.
Charlie looks up
and puts her phone away. “Better?”
“Not really.” I
get in the passenger’s seat. “We should be able to use the
interstates for a while.”
She just nods,
shifts into drive and pulls out into traffic. “Want to talk about
it?”
“No.”
“Good. You knew
it was this Kyle person, then?”
“No. I suspected.
There are few people who can look for me and hide themselves while
doing it. Kyle was one of them.”
She waits a beat,
then: “You called him, made him a body, bound him to it and killed
him.”
“Yes.”
“So you had this
planned for some time.”
“For whenever I
ran into him again, yes.” I offer up nothing else: not what Kyle
had done to people or how many lives he’d ruined. I’d just
murdered a man, magician or not, and there are a lot of things I
could be called but I wasn’t going to accept hero as one of them.
“Agent Six said
you were on the side of good,” she offers as she pulls out to pass
a trailer.
“Agent Six said I
was one of the good guys?” I let out a sound that fails to be a
laugh. “The Black Chamber consider themselves to be good, Charlie,
and their job – their duty as they see it – is murder. Oh, none
of the targets are human: bigfoot, yeti, were-creatures and the like.
They hunt them down and kill off the females.”
“Why?”
“The elimination
of breeding pairs.”
“But they let the other one live?”
“Their mandate doesn’t involve
extermination. And I imagine bigfeet and the like have some
ecological use or something; no idea.”
“Huh.” Charlie doesn’t look back.
“Jay?”
“I’m fine,” Jay says, arms
crossed and daring us to say otherwise.
The binding between us is otherwise, no
matter what he wants, throbbing with echoes of fear and pain. I try
to send through it that I didn’t want him to feel my pain but he
doesn’t care at all and the edges of the binding are frayed by
suspicion.
I close my eyes and fall into the
binding. He tries to shove me out of that.
Jay.
Go away! You left, magician.
I didn’t – I just needed to –.
No,
he sends back, and his fury and fear wash through me, into me. I
don’t care!
And he doesn’t. I
killed a human, and to him that isn’t important at all. I am. Our
binding is. That Charlie is our friend is. That he has to hide from
those who want to eat him is important, too. And nothing else at all.
And under that an ocean of fear that I will break the binding for
knowing this, fear so strong that he can barely hold it back with
anger.
“Oh,” I say
aloud. “I screwed up, didn’t I?”
Jay doesn’t move
in the back seat, still as a frozen knife blade.
“Jay,” I say,
adding his true name through the binding, “I bind myself to you in
turn, that I will not block your binding again.”
He blinks, testing
it silently as if probing a sore tooth, wariness etched in his eyes.
“Humans – close
ourselves off, sometimes. To deal with things. To not lash out at
others with our pain. I didn’t think.”
“You’re
thorry?” he says slowly.
“No. Magician.
But I won’t do it again.”
He
considers that gravely, not touching me or crying, then just nods.
“It hurt.”
Nothing else, just
a stubborn set to his jaw. I don’t need to look at Charlie’s coat
to know he was crying into it. I let out a breath and turn, holding
out my right hand. Jay takes it after a wary pause that hurts, and
not in the way of a good hurt. I reach, and feel his binding to me
twist between us, stunted slightly by my actions.
I reach out with a
binding in turn, as open as his was, a promise turned to power: I
will not block the binding between us unless our existences or those
or friends are at stake; I will not undo it. This I promise by your
binding to me, Jay, and this I swear, I send between us. I let
him bind himself to me and there are magicians who would be horrified
at that; that I bound myself to them would be reason enough for some
to seek my death.
Jay blinks, pulls
his hand back from mine and tests the binding slowly.
“I am human, Jay.
I can’t say I wouldn’t have blocked it again in a moment of
stress or fear. Now I can’t.”
“You didn’t
have –.” He pauses. “You thouldn’t have done that.”
“Even so.” I
smile, and it feels as tired as I am. “Rest, okay?”
He offers up a most
serious nod and rests his head against the side of the car, dead
asleep moments later and sleeping for the both of us.
“Magician,”
Charlie says quietly, holding to the speed limit as cars dart past
us.
“Yep?”
“That was really
stupid, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. But I
could have destroyed him without even knowing it, Charlie. I murdered
a magician; he didn’t care about that, only that I was safe and
we’d all be safe and then I went and hurt him. It’s always
worse when we don’t mean to.”
“Sometimes. So he
deserved death?”
“Kyle? No. No one
deserves that, but there are balances. Prices. Payments. And that was
his because of many things. There are some who might argue I was too
kind. He was not a good person, but he was a magician so the one
often follows from the other in the end.”
Charlie is quiet a
few moments then offers up a tight smile. “Jay considers you a good
person.” She pauses a beat. “Probably by his standard of people,
mind.”
“Charlie –.”
“Don’t. I understand what you did;
I think I know enough to not want to know more and I’d rather not
talk about it at all if that’s all the same to you.”
I nod and relax, letting go of the
world a little. Being in a moving vehicle helps to cast my thoughts
out. Nothing. Again. I know Leo is alive, and in Oregon, but I get
nothing else at all. He was always paranoid even by the standards of
magicians, and if he is being attacked as well his wards could be
even more impressive than usual, but that doesn’t feel right. It
feels like Leo is hiding from me, or at least hiding something from
me.
“Drive.”
“What do you think I’m doing?”
Charlie snaps, a hint of red in her eyes as she looks over at me.
I smile, and even the god in her pulls
back. “I was talking to the car. And the world.”
I shake Jay awake and get in the back,
getting him to sit up with Charlie and get a wary look from him in
response that quickly shifts to worried.
“I’m going to need to focus and
zone out. Just drive and the world will take care of the rest.”And
so saying I close my eyes, let go of flesh and focus on need and
desire, letting the magic build and then loosing it on the world.
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