One Evening, Not Jaysome

“What have you done?”

Power drives me to my knees. I’ve seen the wandering magician pissed off before. But I’ve never had the whole weight of his power against me. Not like this. There is a killing look in his eyes, his will a mountain without end. Magicians are human. I know this. But right now he feels like nothing so much as a force of nature, implacable and ferociously controlled.

“Nathen –,” I try.

His name does not pause him at all. I swear reality itself quakes about us. Afraid. I remember the time he was kin to fae for a second. Somehow this feels beyond that. As though he were real, and everything about us nothing but illusion.

I stand, holding his gaze. The god inside me is the fear in shadows, the darkness in closets, the monster under the bed. Claws and teeth and anger that barely match my own. I don’t try and eat his magic; right now I doubt I’d survive. But I eat my own fear, fan my own anger. Find strength and keep on my feet.

“Magician.” I don’t recognize my own voice for a moment. “Do you have any idea what Jay did?”

“Explain.” My anger doesn’t flow around him so much as crash back into me. There is no give to his expression.

“Jay took it upon himself to make sure I never lost a single calorie despite every diet I have attempted in four fucking years!”

“Because the calories would be sad if they left you,” the magician says, and almost there is a hint of humour, of humanity in the reply.

“I. Don’t. Care. Why.”

“You don’t have a choice, Charlie. You left Jay scared of you. So he ran away.” The magician smiles. I thought I’d seen his coldest smile a few times, the one he tried to hide from Jay and me. This smile is a dark fury I’ve never seen before, remote and alien like a flicker of light in a bottomless hole.

“Nath –.Magician –.”

“Where can Jay run that he believes you cannot follow?” he demands, and the truth of those words forces itself upon me.

“Oh. Oh shit,” I whisper. “He ran back Outside the universe.”

“Almost. I pulled him back in,” and his tone is so bleak I stumble back from it more than the terrible power that hasn’t let up.

“How?”

He blinks, and the pressure is gone. All that power, all the rage, and he pulls it back inside without even a hint it cost him anything to do. “I may tell you. Some day. Jay is hiding in a couch. You will find him, and you will apologize.”

He doesn’t make demands, not like this. Magicians don’t. He turns and walks away.

I open my mouth. He is Honcho. He is Nathen. he is the wandering magician. But none of those names seem to fit him right now. It will be gone. He’ll be the person I know soon. His name will the name I know. But I can’t shake the certainty that he is no longer the person I know, and paid a price to save Jay that neither Jay nor I will ever understand.

I try to say I’m sorry, but the words aren’t enough. Not for anything that matters at all.