Moving Day

I can feel my death closing in. Pressure on the air, the feel of wind against the glass. I have hidden in the deep woods since before humans came here, and yet they continued to come despite all I do. They came, until there were too many. Until now, when a magician comes. I am far from the places they go, but even so I feel the magician, feel their power like something vast stirring at the bottom of an ocean. It is within me to sense such things, to use that to hide, to know when to flex my own power. To know when to keep still. To know when to strike, if needs must lead me down that path.

If this magician dies, another will come. I can feel the world outside my woods: the roar of human vehicles, the pressure of human lives, the shattering of the old places. To find another place to hide, to travel through their lands: I do not know if I have it in me anymore. I do not want to die, but the hunger wants so many other things. Five days, six, a week. Perhaps more since I ate. I hide, moving through trees, flowing within mosses and claiming shadows for my own. Moving, because I feel uneasy each time I stop.

A good monster hides from its prey. A wise one is so good the prey never know they exist, but I have eaten a half-dozen humans in the past year. Tried not to, but I have, and the human world is connected in ways I scarcely grasp. A net forming. A trap being made, though I do not understand how. I am considering options, how few they are, when I smell the human. A child, alone, walking down the path with a phone in hand. No adults. No one is with him. He does not smell of poisons, not of some bait meant to kill a monster – though humans rarely make such sacrifices. Even so, I am uneasy. A test by the magician? Magicians can do things other humans would never consider. I do not know if making a child be bait would be one in this time or place.

I move, and move again, gather moss for flesh, stray twigs for the bones of a new body, move out from behind trees to the path behind the child. I lash out, the hunger strikes out, and the child is somehow not there, behind me instead. I react on instinct, hurling power into the world. The magician will know where I am, but instincts can only be mastered so long. Somehow the child avoids the flare of energy that kills every animal about me. It will be some time before I have energy for that again.

The boy is staring at me through dark glasses, up at me in a way that suggests he isn’t seeing me. Would even humans let a blind child walk these paths alone? I pull back, knowing everything feels wrong. I should be leaving, fleeing deep into the woods, but something is holding me here. Some other power I can barely catch the edges of.

“That was really rude,” the boy says.

“Pardon?”My voice is the scraping of bone against bone; he doesn’t start at all.

“You hurt tons of animals and you didn’t need to because I’m just here to talk,” he says firmly.

I lash out, and the boy moves aside in a blur faster than anything human can move.

“Hello? I said talking, and we can’t have a good talking if you keep trying to eat me!”

“I’m sorry,” I say, without even thinking. I am not certain when last I was sorry for anything at all. The boy grins at that, and there is a power behind it. Not one I know, but power. Were he a magician, I would call it a binding. As it stands, I have no words for it yet.

“You are his familiar?”

The boy draws himself up at that to glare up toward me, radiating indignation. “I’m his friend,” he says, and lends the word a trust so deep it shakes me to the core.

I have not loved; it is not in the nature of my kind to do so, but I think that no human has loved as deeply as this boy trusts in a magician. Of all the beings one could trust, a magician is hardly safe. “But he sent you here,” I say, to say anything at all.

“Well, he felt you were scared of him but! you might not be of me because I’m Jaysome,” he says, and somehow I understand the meaning of the word I’ve never heard before.

“I have been the nightmare of this place for a long time. Keeping other monsters away with my legend, protecting humans when I could. But the world has changed. Too many food sources flee, vanish, and the humans are – sometimes I am hungry, and I cannot stop myself.”

“That’s totally what I told Honcho, because somethings bindings get all desperate and not-fun at all,” he says. “So we thought you could move somewhere quieter without humans, and that would be okay?”

“I have been here a long time. I do not know how to move.”

“Oh! Well, Honcho wanders a lot and I’ve learned from him and I could help,” he says.

“Why would you help me?”

“Because we’re friends,” the boy explains.

I draw back pulling my nature about me. I am more than moss and roots, more than vine and thorn. I can be wings and claws, fur and fangs as I must. “We only just met,” I say.

“But why wouldn’t you want to be friends?” he demands, looking hurt.

I draw back, stare down, let my power press against the world. The magician is both distant and close, a being more than a doing. The boy just stares up, utterly unfazed.

“What are you?”

“I’m Jay, and that’s a what too I think, and I’m from Outside the universe too but that means we could be friends and not fight because that’s just a really stupid thing to do!”

I sense nothing in him that is not human, though I know he can’t be human. Not with that speed, and certainly not that smile. “What will happen to the Barrens without me?” I say, and it comes out softer than I intend.

“I’ll do a binding to help protect it and Honcho will make sure it works and you can move somewhere fun without humans and start up a whole new legend,” he says, and he’s so happy for me that I find myself pleased as well. Power upon power, within this child.

I have no idea how many of my choices I’m making right now are my own; I think he is using influences on levels so deep I barely grasp them. Shaping me because he doesn’t want us to be enemies, and I – I have nothing in me to challenge that. Whatever he is, I am certain he could destroy me if I attacked him. And I am even more certain this magician knows this, and sent this boy rather than destroying me on is own.

So that I would have another choice. “Your magician, this Honcho, he is very wise. And wiser still to have a friend like you, I think.”

“I try to be a good friend, but I do have lots of adventures,” he says with a grin, and then his power is winthin me and without, as he hugs and the world shifts. Another forest, dark and still during the night as he lets go.

I have been unhomed and moved in moments. I shudder in fear, but the boy misses the fear and scrambles back.

“I didn’t mean to hug without asking, it was just fast and I think we’re in the rainforest so you get to meet human tribes and protect them and the rainforests from other people and I think that would be all kinds of Jaysome, right?!”

“It is – very acceptable,” I say.

The boy offers up another impossible grin and is gone between moments. I form a body slowly again, thinking about magicians and power, and wondering what Jay will become. But I let it go, for I have work to do and a new legend to create.

Cold Droughts

“You.”

I am halfway across the street but turn at the hate barbed into the word. The woman coming across the street is perhaps a year or two younger than I.

“That park bench you were sitting on was peeling and it isn’t anymore. You walked by potted plants and they stirred up from the drought.”

I keep walking; she crosses the road after, grabbing my left wrist in her right hand. “I know what you are,” she says, and there is nothing kind in her voice at all.

I merely raise one eyebrow and she lets go of my wrist as if stung. Most of the time, magic is quiet things, small changes almost no one notices in the world. It helps that people tend not to pay attention to such things. This woman is, though I am not sure she is seeing what others would.

“My sister is dying,” she says. “You will fix that.”

I let a whisper of my magic out, need meeting desire, meshing into will. A reaching, and a knowing. “Two doors down, the house with the blue shingles on the roof: a man is dying of cancer, begging for death from his wife. An ex-nurse, she knows so much she doesn’t dare to use, and her pain could be greater than his own.” I pause a beat, and continue. “Across the road, at the junction, an old dog is dying – loved, but in pain, and there is a family wishing that they could have just one more day without the dog in pain, one last memory for their son to have that isn’t his first brutal grasping of death. There are also, within this same street, two potential heart attacks and one car that, unless the breaks are talked to, is probably going to cause an accident within the next week.”

The woman steps back, fury and shame filling the air between us at all I leave unsaid. It is one of my gifts to speak truths that cannot be dismissed. It is not, always, a weapon. Enough so that I say nothing else, and wait.

“So, what, you just sit in some armchair, watch the world go by and the sun set in –.”

“The sun is always setting; it is also being born again. An old man who runs a bookstore told me a truth as deep as his magic goes, that the sun shines because it will go out. Knowing there is darkness is the reason for light, I think. And if magic could take away sorrow, it would not be magic at all. I can ease pain, yes. I can bend the world in small ways. But that is all any magician does, no matter how great and powerful our magics seem to be.”

“How do I become one?” she demands then, nd her anger gives a power to her voice. The resolve in her gaze remains unbroken. Never broken, not by something so small as the truth.

I look away first. “You have to want it more than anything else. And know how much you will pay, both for the magic and the cost of being a magician.”

“I would pay anything,” she says then, and I feel the world change with the force of her declaration.

I turn back, and the woman falls away with a sharp cry at whatever she sees in my face. “Then you have,” I say, with all the gentleness I can muster. “You choose to pay any price to become a magician, Brenda Klein, and you are paying the price for it now.”

Her eyes widen in horror as she realizes what anything means, and just how far it goes. “No. No, no, no.”

I walk away then and there is nothing in her to stop me. But perhaps enough to stop herself, perhaps enough to let go of the magic, to understand that power is not always power. And that sometimes all you can do is watch the sun set, hope it will rise, and know how painful freedom can be.

The Mysterious Text: A Not A Novel Publication

“Franklin.”

Four years of marriage lead to skills Sarah always calls our ‘marriage-sense’. The tingling of a bridge close to being burn, of a line close to being crossed. Every relationship a tightrope, at least some of the time. I look up from the text message. “I –.”

She reaches over, pushing our laptop away from the table. “It’s been three days.”

“I know. I’m just so fu–.” I bite back words.

“Deana is sleeping,” she says. “And if you wake her, you’ll have more to worry about than me.” But my wife smiles as she says it, the smile fading as she runs her fingers over my chin. “You haven’t shaved in two days.”

“I know, I just –.” I set my phone on our small office table that’s only called that because of the bills drawer. “I know something is wrong, Sarah. I’ve known Aiden since we were six years old: he is – was – is my best friend. I was the first person he came out to.”

“He was the best man at our wedding,” she says. “And convinced me to stick with you after that one party at Clover Point.”

“He did?”

“Phone calls afterwards, three of them. About how long he’d known you, that the drinks must have been spiked. That he turned out to be right helped.”

“Everyone else calls me Frank. Everyone at work, even my parents.”

“We don’t.”

I nod, gesture to the phone. “He used ‘Frank’ in his last text to me. He never did that. Refused to abbreviate anything unless he was in a hurry, and if he was there would be a period so I’d know it was Franklin. So I’d know it was my name. He had a new boyfriend, and he’s always – well, he’d have called Steven before the flight, after it landed. He would anyway, but he was – is – always does with regularity at the start of any relationship.”

“He would have sent us a picture of some street in Vancounver during the first day.”

“And he didn’t. He flew halfway across the country, and we know he left the airport and then – nothing. The police have enough to look into it: they’ll try, but it won’t be hard enough. I could almost hear the interest change when they decided it had to be an affair. I wanted to ask if they wanted another Pickton to escape them, but that wouldn’t have helped anything at all.”

Sarah laughs, as much in shock as surprise. “No, it wouldn’t.”

“And Deana is two, I can’t get time off work. Even if we could afford the flight.”

“I looked into our credit cards,” she says, stepping behind me to run fingers over my neck. “We can’t afford it. If we borrowed, it would have to be a friend willing to wait two years at least to be paid back, love.”

“I know. I know. He could be dying. Be dead. Be in some – and there is nothing we can do.” I don’t delete the message on my phone. I can do that much. I can read Vancouver news from so far away. I can hope. We can afford hope, if nothing else.

I force myself to stand, heading to the kitchen for a night cap and then bed. There is nothing we can afford to sell, nothing I can think to do in a world that doesn’t work like a mystery novel. I don’t know anything about solving crimes, nothing about finding murdered friends. All I know is that it all costs money, and that’s one thing we don’t have.

Moments of Jay

 “Jay.” Honcho walks into the RV. “There is a rather harried man in a suit here to see you. He says his name is Clive, and he was looking all over the city to try and find you for two days now.”

“Oh! Is he looking for hugs? Because I’ve only given out six this morning,” I say, getting off the one chair and hurrying to the door.

“I think he’s wanting something else,” Honcho says.

And he’s all a magician and really good with his voice so I don’t boing out of the RV and say hello like a Jay but just walk really boring like and stop as a man starts crying.

“You have to stop it,” he says.

“Huh?”

“Jay does many things,” Honcho says behind me. “Sometimes he even remembers doing them.”

I’d normally comment about that, but Clive sounds really scared and the bindings around me are frayed in weird directions human bindings don’t normally go.

“I was late for a meeting with a – a client. I said I was running out of time as I hurried across a road and there was a car and I got lucky and then this blind kid is asking if I’m ‘all kinds of stupid’ because he heard the car before I did AND probably saw it better than I did and he can’t even see’ and people were laughing but I was in too much of a hurry and the kid – you – you said something about finding time.”

“I did? I tend to leave Time alone because it gets all kinds of grumpy, but! humans have a lot more time than they think because clocks are inventions,” I say proudly, because I know stuff.

“There are two extra hours. To each day, to every day, the clocks have 13 hours for me and when it – the hands of the clock, the sounds. There is something in that, hiding, not wanting to be found,” Clive whispered. “I can’t get work done during them, not before them. It – it – it’s going to eat me, the thing inside the time we made.”

“But,” I say, “you still get all your work done, right? Cuz you’re really good at your job?”

“What?” Clive says in a really funny tone.

“That’s a really easy question,” I say crossly. “Because Honcho asks not-easy ones and I totally know what those are like.”

“I do,” he says.

“See?” I unmake the bindings on his perception with a huge grin. “You can’t run out of time because you did all your work in less time even when I gave you more!”

And Clive doesn’t even want a hug and almost says some really mean things before he runs away, which is definitely very rude.

“Jay,” Honcho says.

“I totally proved he had tons of free time and it worked,” I say.

“I know. But generally parables are a little more subtle than that if you want to subject someone to one.”

“Really? Even with humans?”

“Yes, even with humans.” Honcho ruffles my hair. “You were trying to show him a truth, but you can’t scare people toward the truth, Jay.”

“I didn’t know the extra hour stuff would be scary, since I’d never done it before for someone and –.”

“I know. It’s something to look into. But sometimes when people say things like that, you do know they don’t always mean them. We’ve talked about this a lot.”

“I totally know that, because Charlie says lots of mean things to me she doesn’t mean all the time!”

And Honcho says nothing at all to that, probably because I’m pretty clever too sometimes.

Birthday Presenting!

1.

A death marches out of the motel, a shadow of seething fury moving across the parking lot and onto the patio, eyes burning and fists clenched. “You are dead.”

“Good morning,” I say, drink my coffee, and gesturing to one sitting on the table. “Coffee?”

“Coffee,” Death repeats, in tones one would use to declare war.

“It’s quite good.” I pause a beat. “Also, you’re scaring the staff and customers in the coffee shop.”

Red fire burns, banks, flicks out, the shadows and god power being pulled deep within as Charlie sits carefully down. “I am still going to kill you, magician.”

“Knowing why would help. Not that I imagine you’d be short of reasons?”

Charlie smiles against her will at that. “You had to remind Jay that my birthday was tomorrow.”

“You thought he’d forget?”

“He was going to give me a ‘Jaysome hug’. You reminded him that he gives hugs a lot so now he’s looking for a gift,” she snaps.

“Oh.”

“And insisting he’ll find me the best gift ever. Remember him finding those smurfs?”

“They were small.”

“But not often blue since they covered their skin in the blood of their enemies and consumed an entire bear like land piranha would. You are going to make sure he gets me a sane gift. Or else.”

Even Charlie realizes the ‘or else’ goes too far, but I just raise an eyebrow. “Or else what?”

“Or else I convince Jay that magicians have lots of birthdays and see how many gifts he can bring you. Don’t think I won’t do it.”

I finish my coffee and stand. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good,” she says, and begins drinking her coffee. And doesn’t even think to ask why I set Jay out to find a gift, or even why I’d do that. I leave her anger to blind her and poke Jay gently through bindings to find out where he is. And I pause, and wonder if at least some of her anger might be justified as I explain to Jay that Charlie definitely does not want the Loch Ness Monster as a birthday present, not even if Nessie wants a vacation.

I’m even more firm that Charlie won’t want Nessie’s ten thousand young.

2.

I don’t try and spend my birthday hiding, not really. But I sneak out of my RV, catch a bus across the city we’re in, lose myself in a dozen tourist things rating highly on Yelp, browse a museum for the first time since some school trip when I was twelve or thirteen. I can’t hide from Jay, even if I wanted to try. There are bindings connecting us together as friends and I’m not sure I could break all of that even if I wanted to. I know I couldn’t break them on his end.

Which is why my phone buzzes me in my left pocket shortly after noon despite the fact I made sure not to bring it with me. I sigh and remove it; Jay is from far, far Outside the universe and uses bindings in ways even the wandering magician barely understands. He’s also My Friend, which means more than I likt to think sometimes.

‘I TOTALLY HAVE YOUR PRESENT!!! :D’ is the text from Jay, who would definitely pout a lot if I tried to inform him I didn’t want it.

I remind myself that the wandering magician at least tried to vet the gift. And that Jay’s weird aggressive innocence means it can’t be that bad, and text back asking where it is. He responds with an address and enough exclamation marks to mak a teacher cringe in horror. I’d worry more at that except Jay is enthused by pretty much everything in the universe, and more than happy to share that with everyone he meets.

I debate calling the magician and demanding a heads up, but I doubt he’d give me one. I remind myself I’m a god-eater, that I have a god inside me, that I’m a trained exorcist and, most importantly, that I’m me. It helps, because I don’t give that a choice except to help, and I walk a good ten minutes to one of those modern restaurants. The kind where the food is more a decoration than something to be eaten, the staff all looking like they came out of a period piece.

There are just six tables inside a vast area, each cordoned off by plants, a couple of water features, various dividers all done up to seem as though they weren’t dividers at all. The cost must be ridiculous, but I doubt Jay even gave it a single thought.

The waiter has a perfect smile, ushers me to a small table, brings bread, along with water I’m told is GMO-free and smells of lemons. I half-hope that the magician convinced Jay that a meal was gift enough until he comes into the restaurant. Male. I’m sure of that much. Gorgeous, as if you melded together every Hollywood actor I loved and put them into one perfect body. The staff stare as well, shaken from their routines – possibly also their definitions of themselves – as he comes and sits across from me.

“Charlie?”

“Yes,” I say, relieved this doesn’t seem to be Jay in a disguise. “And you are?”

“John.”

“And this is a date?”

“If – if you want?”

“Okay. And what are you?” He blinks, not moving. “You look like every actor I’ve never thought was remotely cute turned into one person. It is, at the least, distracting but I’ve seen Walkers of the Far Reaches who could destroy people with a smile. So. Talk.”

“I am a tulpa, a creature made of thought. We normally cannot change our forms, but Jay altered me so I could do so, in exchange for a date with a friend of his?”

“And you said yes, knowing nothing about me?”

“Jay is very – persuasive,” John says. “Like a puppy you do not want to hurt. And I have done worse things than go on dates with strangers.”

Food arrives, though we haven’t ordered. The plates are small, the staff don’t hover and the food is shockingly good, enough to be a date all in itself.

“The pears,” I manage. “Like an orgasm.”

John lets out a laugh that seems entirely human as I catch up with what I said, and we share a grin as we eat some more. He tells me that he mostly does human things, lives a simple human life, does small work. Tries no to be noticed, because tulpas can’t change as humans change. He has no idea how Jay even found him, or why, but wasn’t about to question it.

“No matter the cost?” I ask finally as we’re drinking the dessert wine.

“I desire to survive, the same as everyone else.” His smile is small and sad, but beautiful for all of that.

I thank him and we leave, each going our separate ways. I almost make it two blocks before Jay manages to run into me. At least not doing so literally, since people would definitely comment if some blind boy slammed right into someone and their response was resignation.

“Kiddo.”

“Your date is over already? But I totally planned that, and helped John, and got the staff all ready to be Jaysome and has plans for a nice Hotel and everything,” he says.

I ruffle his hair gently. “I’m sure you did, Jay, but I didn’t need all that.”

“But –,” he protests, looking up at me.

“How about we just spend the rest of the day hanging out together,” I say.

“But we do that all the time! I wanted it to be all kinds of special and –.”

I press a finger to his lips. “The wanting makes it special, at least a little. We can hang out, talk, walk about without any adventures at all.”

Jay blinks a few times at that. “Without adventures?” he says finally.

I have to grin at his stricken look and hug him, letting go as I stand and taking his left hand in my right. “Just being with a friend can be adventure enough, okay?”

Jay considers that, then nods and grins, his cane folding up and going into a pocket. “And you can lead!”

“That will make sure we don’t run into adventures?”

“Probably,” he says, quite seriously.

I shake my head and we walk slowly down streets, Jay peppering me with questions about everything I can see, and my asking questions about bindings he’s sensing in turn as we make plans to meet the magician for supper and I do my best to convince him that just hanging out for a nice, quiet afternoon is all the birthday present I could want.

I suspect it won’t stop him from wanting to get me another ‘gift’ next year, but I can hope.

3.

“We need to talk.”

I look up from gently using magic to massage old stones as Charlie glowers at me. “About?”

“My birthday. You. Jay. You sicced him on me with ideas about gifts he could get me. And you do nothing without having ulterior motives, magician.”

I smile. “You say that word in ways Jay never would.”

“And I’m wrong in this?”

“No.” I pull the magic back. “Jay is flexing his nature more. Testing the world, feeling the limits of it and pushing against them. I wanted some idea of how far he’s let himself grow.”

“Let?” She says warily.

I try on the shape of a smile. “You remember Oregon.”

“The attempted invasion into the universe from Outside?”

“I called forth a Power with the universe to aid us.”

Charlie shudders, the god within her withdrawing even from the memory. “It was – big. I try and forget what I saw but I can’t.”

“It was Time, or at least an approximation of It.” I shove my hands into my pockets. “Jay is kin to that kind of power, Charlie. Potentially even greater, for all anyone knows. You’ve seem something of what Else he is.”

“Yes. It was – large. Strange. He was terrified I would be scared of him.”

“He doesn’t know what he is. Not yet. I don’t think he’ll let himself know. Nothing with the potential he has should even be able to enter the universe, Charlie. But he is here, and our friend, and we must deal with that as best we can.”

“By testing him?”

“If we have to.” I walk back toward the RV. “As we need to.”

“That’s not safe at all,” she says softly.

“Few worthwhile things are wholly safe,” I say, and the answer is a glib magician’s one that she doesn’t question at all.

Facebook status updates part XXXVII (July 2015)

If fimbulwinter is what precedes Ragnarok then perhaps more greenhouses gasses are a good thing?

“Only small people fear small things.”

Once upon a time, someone told me that madness was doing the same thing over and over, but now I know that isn’t true: madness is doing what you know you shouldn’t do and being desperate enough to do it anyway.

“I found something I shouldn’t have.”

“That is the start of many great stories. And tragedies too, I imagine.” Kes chuckled, the sound soft and bubbly.

“I think you trust autocorrect more than you trust me.”

You are my control, my alt, even my delete key.

Some days the parking lot cried over how empty it was at night. No one noticed, even if there were more cracks in the asphalt to be fixed than the city had budgeted for.

Joe replaced his personality with a series of tattoos.

Reasons I could never be vegan: having to tell everyone I meet that I was a vegan would take up too much time.

“I’m sorry, but we can’t hire you. You only have 1 star reviews on AmazonLife.”

He started the interview process for all potential hires by introducing them to his assistant, a red sockpuppet named Sparkie that conducted the first half of the interview.

They said it was cultural appropriation when the older generation began to mimic their slang in a post-emoji world.

You asked how I survived, but I was wearing armour rather than armor, and the extra letter was all the kevlar I needed.

“They say that X marks the spot but won’t tell you Y.”

I kept trying to find a way to tell you, unable to finds words in our own tongue. No matter that our tongues were not strangers, that we were often so close as to be one. But I had deleted your Twitter account by accident, and could not bring myself to share so deep a truth.

So I understand, I think, why you never told me about your affair.

“I have to hide my poetry in prose, or they will never take me seriously at all!”

“You’re writing a technical manual on how to use a digital camera. You can’t expect to win a Pulitzer with that, not even if you hide an epic poem in it.”

“You never know. You never know. I’d settle for the Carnegie Medal.”

I opened the door of my closet a crack, just to see if you were waiting on the other side.

“When we said that the community was going to be mixed-use, we meant that poor people were not going to be part of that mix.”

“I was tired of never getting caught,” was all the bank robber said in his interview despite the press demanding to know how he had been given a four million dollar golden handshake despite seeing the banks profits plunge by 45% during his tenure as CEO.

I filled the silence with pregnant pauses and dangling ellipses

“I think I am in love with just how much I hate you.”

“Yes, I do know you can, ah, transform into bacon, ham, and sausage, but I am afraid that it is NOT a superpower, Mr. Pig”

“Ah, the teapot you gave me has no handles on it. I was wondering why?”

“Didn’t you read the script on on the bottom?”

“No, I –.Truth? You named a teapot?”

“You can’t handle the truth!”

“… I think I am about to throw it at your head.”

Sometimes life just throws the most awful sucker-punches right at us. And the only thing we can do is find a way to get back up, even if sometimes we don't see why we spend the effort...

If you could be one button on a microwave, which button would you be?

I don’t know love could be counterfeited until I met you.

Did you know that nothing is ever counterfeited because! you can’t fake something without knowing the true thing too :D

Proposed yoga pose: frowning cactus.

“Will you be my frenemy?”

“That’s not how most people ask someone out for a date.”

“I’m just trying to be honest about how it may end.”

Clinging to fading glories as though they were morning ones, we plant seeds in the ground as if a garden might sprout. We talk about wonders with voices choked raw with nostalgia and we forget our great dream was another’s nightmare, or how many steps backward we took for every one we staggered forward. We keep pretending we have so much to offer as though the future ever needed us at all.

Imagine if your life was really divided into chapters. All the ways in which you’d dread the cliffhangers.

“I am so scared of how much I need you.”

“You’ve never said that to me before.”

“Sorry. I was talking to my frappuccino.”

Breakfast Friendings!

“Restraint is important,” I say as we cross the road to the Breakfast Buffet. The exterior doesn’t look like much: basic sign over the door, no folding sign outside advertising specials, one window filled with signs for various local services. Someone had swept out the small parking lot recently and the place looked clean. It was more than could be said for many people, and a magician tries as hard as possible to not just on external appearances.

If only because in my case the judgement would probably be ‘bland’. Beside me, Jay twists his head toward me, his left hand firm in my right as he uses his white cane on the pavement with his over hand. “I know that,” he says. “I restrain myself all the time,” he adds proudly.

I would laugh, but Jay is probably being serious. And in his own strange way he definitely does so. “Which means you’re not eating the entire buffet?” I ask.

“But that’s what a buffet is for, right? It might be sad if I don’t eat it all!”

“Trust me, it will cope. Just like Charlie happily coped with you not making your coffee, tea, and pepsi morning drink for her again this morning.”

“Okay.” Jay nods to that and tugs at me as we cross the street. “We can order from a menu them? That way you can tell me all the neat things on it.”

The door opens easily under my touch, the place having no wards at all. The interior feels warm and friendly, air conditioning meeting the smell of cooking potatoes. The restaurant is half-full with one waitress taking orders and another, one of the owners from the description Charlie gave, is at the till, making change and then taking coffee to one table.

I find a table and sit with Jay, who is craning his head about as he listens to conversations and sensing bindings happily. The owner gestures the waitress away, quick and subtle, then walks over to our table herself. “You'd be the magician, then.”

I nod. “I am. This is Jay.”

“Hi,” Jay says and offers up a huge grin. The owner blinks, offers up her own name, and asks what we want since Jay using the buffet would be awkward. I tell Jay the items on the menu and he picks half the food, saying all of page two sounds really nummy. Because Jay.

Brenda just circles items on a menu to save time and heads to the back to give the staff the order. I relax, letting the magic in me out gently. There are no wards, not as a magician would make them, not even the kind people make about their own identities or the chains they wrap about their desires. But there is a subtle pressure, a quiet whispering of power. Strength enough that Brenda resisted the unconscious force of friendship behind one of Jay’s grins. A strength that has deep roots and is definitely aware of us.

“Honcho,” Jay says. “I think you’re kinda scaring the god?”

I blink. “I don’t mean to. You can sense him?”

“Uh-huh. He feels nice.” And that’s all he offers up as the owner brings over coffee for me and a hot chocolate for Jay. Almost everyone is making use of the buffet so our food comes quickly and Jay happily inhales it back with more hot chocolate; it is quite good, and I eat mine as the cook comes out of the kitchen briefly. He’s a tall, solid bald man – why his parents named him Kiwi is probably something I’ll never learn. Beside and half-behind is a shorter, thin young man. The god named James, wearing an apron and, along with the cook, watching Jay eat in bemused astonishment.

Jay, at least, does not belch as he finishes his meals and I ignore his hints about the buffet. “Have more hot chocolate. Let the food digest,” I say and head to the kitchen. Both the cook and god have gone back through the doors but no one tries to prevent me from entering. The god is doing dishes and washes off his hands.

“Do you mind if I take a break?” he asks softly.

The cook starts, tries to hide that. “You need anything?”

“I’ll be fine,” James says, and I follow him out behind the building. Even the small area for staff parking is clean, as is their dumpster. The god reaches into a pocket and produces a small pack of cigarettes and a lighter. I feel the world shift a little, like an instrument being tuned.

“I offer these without binding, implicit or explicit,” he says softly, holding out the pack.

I grin at that, accept a cigarette, light both of ours. “You use miracles to make cigarettes often?”

The god blushes at that. “Few people ever notice when I do miracles. Like magicians with magic, I think?”

“If we do it properly, yes. I don’t know much about gods, all told: I imagine magicians who are bound to their city learn more, but I wander.” I take a deep drag. “Charlie told me about you, of course, but you were careful to use none of your power I think. I suspect that shielding Brenda, Kiwi and the waitress –.”

“Alexis.”

“I didn’t catch her name, but you are shielding them from Jay being, well, Jay. That takes a fair bit of power, I imagine?”

“You never shield people against Jay?”

“He would probably sulk if I tried,” I say dryly.

James blinks. “It’s not that hard. Mostly because he is unconscious about it, and most of it isn’t any kind of power, just his nature. If it occurred to him to force the issue, I am not sure I could work a miracle strong enough to stop it. In a sense, my power runs deeper than yours I think, but Jay is far, far deeper than that?”

“He is.” I pause, and the god goes cross-eyed for a moment as Jay uses power at a conscious level, no doubt prodded by a text message from Charlie. “You should be protected against other gods trying to consume you to prevent this restaurant from expanding, so long as you don’t abuse that protection.”

“I am.” He shakes his head to clear it. “You could have done this.”

“I could have, but Jay quite likes being useful. Much like some gods in that respect?”

James grins at that, a bit sheepish. “Thank you. I did not expect –.” He shakes his head.

“Yes. I found what you expected from meeting a god-eater to be curious. Not that most gods know about Charlie, but that you are all scared without reason.”

His eyes narrow. He’s quick, though that hardly surprises me. “You think the godnet website encourages this?”

“I don’t know; I would think it is worth looking into though. There are some terrible magicians, but I run into few who think that applies to all magicians.”

“I’ll see what I can find out.” He finishes his cigarette. “That is why you wished to speak to me?”

“In part. I’d also like to know if god-energy – used by a god or otherwise – could help a fae and I restore Jay’s sight. I don’t need to know now, or even from you: I’m just thinking of the future.”

James nods; there is nothing I can read in his expression, and I do him the courtesy of not trying.

“I ask without binding, implicit or explicit,” I say, and that wins a grin from the god that I return.

“I – ah,” James says.

“Ah?”

“Jay.”

“He’s got someone to help him with the buffet, hasn’t he?” I say, resigned.

The god nods. “He can eat a lot,” and I think there is something he wants me to know in that, but I’m not sure what.

I walk back into the restaurant and to the front, watching the one waitress help Jay load up food on a plate. The owner looks at me, I look back.

“You’ll be wanting more coffee then?” Brenda asks.

“Oh, yes,” I say, and she laughs at my tone as Jay sits back down with a huge, shameless grin and begins eating. A few people in the restaurant are staring in astonishment.

I drink coffee, considering gods and friendship and wondering just how far a god could carry a miracle in order to save themselves. But I voice none of it aloud and we leave without having any adventure at all – at least according to Jay, who remains oblivious that a lot of other people definitely had an adventure watching him eat that much food. I think about the future, and the limits of power, and I keep the thoughts entirely to myself.

Buffet Tips

I don’t know when I first realized something wasn’t right about James. Looking back, I’d like to think it was the first day: he showed up almost before the ad wanting a prep cook had been placed. Or when he politely declined every offer of a raise over the next two years. But the reality was three months ago when I arrived early to the kitchen and found him already prepping for the breakfast rush, entirely oblivious to the fact that the alarm code had been changed after we had to fire Sam. No one had been told the new code, and yet he had been in the kitchen and the alarm hadn’t gone off.

I was too frazzled to think much of it until later since everyone else called in sick with an ugly flu that was going around. Somehow, I managed to avoid it and my husband was out of town trying to score us new produce suppliers – even Kiwi was feeling under the weather, thouugh – so I was running all the tables and James was being the cook as well as prep cook and dishwasher, making sure the breakfast buffet was full and somehow had time to inform me that table four was trying to sneak out without paying.

Afterward, he looked as pale as I felt until I said a prayer of thanks – one of those non-generic ones you do after a crazy day at work. I actually saw colour return to his face and stared at him. “James?”

“Ma’am?” he said.

“You’re not even breathing hard.”

He blinked, and something like chagrin crossed his face. “Sorry.”

“I don’t –.” And I was so tired I began putting things together. “You prepped enough for the whole day, the whole rush, right down to the meals for staff at the end,” I said, waving to our breakfast hashes before I went into the fridge. He’d somehow found time to prep a bit for tomorrow as well. “Talk” I said as I came out. “Because, right now, gift horse or not, I’m feeling a little scared.”

He jerked back at that as if I’d struck him, took almost a minute to find his voice. He looked so young, then, when he told me what he was, when he allowed me to see something of it. There was light, warmth, and other things. Kiwi’s voice, and mine. Our needs, our desire for The Breakfast Buffet to succeed, the fact that we’d dumped our live savings and retirement plans into it. I think that Kiwi can’t have kids was part of it, though James didn’t say.

It turned out gods weren’t what I thought. They made themselves as much as they were made, tied to a business, a home, a place of some kind that had the right shape of need for them. The greater the need, sometimes, the more miracles he could do, though there were limits. He’d been able to keep the flu away from me, though not anyone else, and there were definite limits to how much energy he got from us, what he could do and when. Most of the time, he was just like any prep cook, busser and dishwasher, he explained, even if he wasn’t at all.

I told Kiwi, of course, because you don’t hide things like that from your husband. James offered proof, though clearly he was uncomfortable being so naked to us, and said he didn’t know about God, or anything like that. He was closer to a guardian spirit, Kiwi figured, and asked if this meant he’d work for free. James had said he couldn’t, almost apologetic until Kiwi offered up one of his wicked grins and left a god blushing and laughing weakly at falling for the joke.

Funny this was, it hadn’t changed anything. We didn’t make a point to pray more, though we did thank him more when we realized when he was using his nature. He’s mostly shy about it even now; most gods don’t have a working relationship with the people wh empower them in case it got awkward. Which is why I was shocked to arrive at the usual 6:30 Tuesday morning and find him crying in the kitchen, arms wrapped about himself and shaking all over. “James?”

He spun as if he hadn’t heard me enter at all, eyes wide. “Ma’am, I –.”

“It’s Brenda.” And I grabbed him by the right ear and dragged him into the front, shoving him firmly into a chair and forcing coffee into his hands. “What’s wrong?”

“Th-there’s a god eater in the Starbucks across the road,” he whispered.

I hadn’t even known James could stutter until that moment. I sat as well, and glared at him when he moved as if to stand. “We don’t open until 7:30. We can open late if we have to. Talk.”

“She eats gods. Destroys them, sometimes maybe moves them? I’ve only heard stories. There hasn’t been a god eater in a long time,” he whispered, staring down at his hands. “I’m not – I don’t know what she might do.”

“You think she would try and destroy you?”

“I don’t know!”

I started at the cry and stood slowly. “Do you know who it is?” He shook his head; I headed to the door and told him to wait, leaving and closing it behind me as I walked across the road.

I had no idea what a god-eater looked like, but the Starbucks was busy – it helped, since one woman was sitting by herself near the door and the two tables around her were empty. No one seems consciously aware of avoiding the tables/ It was a little like how James could weave between tables and people moved without thinking, maybe. I had no idea what I’d expected, but she couldn’t have been more than twenty.

I sat down across from her. “You’re the god-eater?”

She put her phone away and looked up, dark eyes staring into me for a long moment. It took an effort not to move back: she looked like her bite would be far worse than her back, and there was something about her that reminded me of the principal way back in high school. I’d never considered myself sensitive – Kiwi would laugh himself sick if someone called me that – but even a blind person would have realized there was power here. “And if I am?”

“I co-own the Breakfast Buffet across the road. You are terrifying our god and I rather need him top prep the breakfast rush.”

She blinked. “The god works for you?”

“He is paid staff, yes. And we don’t need you eating him, or whatever it is you do. Understood?”

“I am afraid not.” She stood. “You are?”

“Brenda.”

“I’m Charlie. And I am afraid I’m going to have to talk to your god, though I have no plan of hurting them.”

“And if I say no?”

Her eyes burned. For a second, something red and hungry stared out into a too-small world and then her eyes seemed human again. “I am afraid I would have to insist. I’d rather not do that.”

I hesitated, then nodded. I didn’t know what else to do: no one else would believe if I told them our restaurant had a god. I don’t know how many places do – James doesn’t know himself, but says the rare places that know they do keep quiet about it. She stood and brought her coffee across the road. James was in the back, doing prep work with quiet intensity, and set the knife down in a slow, careful movement. There was no colour in his face at all.

“What are you?” he whispered.

“A god-eater. My name is Charlie.”

“That’s not all you are,” James said, as though reluctant.”

Charlie shrugged. “I also know how to do exorcisms, and I have weird friends. You have a name?”

“James,” he said, barely over a whisper.

“A human name. And you’re paid as staff?”

“I work full time,” he said, meeting her gaze. “Minimum wage.”

“I didn’t know gods did that.” Charlie hesitated, and I liked her for the hesitation. “Can I ask what you do with the money?”

James licked his lips. “You – you – you don’t know?”

“No.”

“Godnet. It’s a – a website. Funds are donated to it, and gods whose homes are in danger of failing can ask for funds. Each god can only ask once. We don’t know who runs it, or why. Every god who can puts money in. Most gods use tithes or favours for revenue. Not many work, I think, or would admit to it but I like it. I help more like this than I do with miracles, most of the time.”

“And it makes you stronger. The customers believe, the staff believe. Clever.”

“I didn’t do it to be clever,” James snapped, then shrunk back.

“I’m not going to bite you,” Charlie said.

“You could. Your bite is worse than your bark.”

To that Charlie made no reply, instead looking at me. “Do you have plans to expand?”

“Eventually?”

“All the locations will be yours, to work in and draw upon,” Charlie said to James.

The god opened his mouth, closes it. “You can do that?”

“Yes.” She grinned. “Tomorrow morning a magician and a blind boy will come for breakfast. Talk to them, and they’ll make sure no other gods try and eat you if they think you’re getting too big. Jay is very good with bindings.”

James just nodded, looking stunned as Charlie headed out the front and left. I locked the door behind her and walked back into the kitchen. “That turned out okay?”

“You were going to expand?”

“In a few years, if we’re able to. I wasn’t sure how to bring it up with you; I thought you might only be here?”

“I would have been. Now I’m not. Thank you,” he said.

“Your welcome,” I said dryly, and went to the front, not quite closing the door. I caught James’s whoop of joy, and wondered if this meant he’d accept a raise next month. I closed the door after that and began the process of getting the front ready for the first customers, half-dreading tomorrow and what a magician might bring to our restaurant, but not about to share that with the help. Even if they were a god.

Morning Confession

Gerald sits at my kitchen table, hands clasped together on it. They’re shaking despite his efforts. He didn’t make a joke about my answering the door in a nightgown at 6:30 in the morning, hasn’t made a single comment about the French press, how it’s a coffee machine for people who hate coffee. Nothing like that. I’m full of openings he hasn’t taken a jab at, and there is something. I don’t know what, and the not-knowing is a strangeness like waking up to find a stranger in my brother’s skin. He’s big, my oldest brother. Big and solid, with muscles honed in years at a second-hand auto mechanics, knuckles the veterans of dozens of bar fights.

He should be at work. Gerald always complains at how he’s working long before Some People get up, which always includes me. I set a cup of coffee beside him, make my own. He doesn’t press at the silence. He just sits, waits until I am sitting.

“Sang isn’t home?”

“He’s away on business.”

That wins a nod. “Tom, I –.” Gerald holds the coffee, not drinking it. I’m expecting the usual litany: how mom and dad decided their youngest son was the one worthy of an Education, how I work at the university while he is a grease monkey. Never mind that he works with more computers than I do most days, or that he makes more money than I do: none of that fits his narrative.

“Gerry?”

No twitch at the name I called him when we were kids. “You know how much Emma got from me in the divorce.”

“Some of it.”

He looks away, actually looks away. “I had to take other work, to make ends meet.”

“Not the gangs,” I say, almost a question. Our town isn’t big, but sometimes it feels that way. Most of the crime is the gangs striking at each other, but there’s always fallout. The melting pot boiling over, as my boss Maria called it once during our chats about town at work, since the gangs are probably more diverse than the rest of the town these days.

“Mob. Gangs. People with money,” he says quietly, almost softly, not looking up from the table. “I found plans on the Internet, adapted them. I’m good at making things. I make IEDs. Bombs,” he finally adds when I wait him out.

“Bombs,” I repeat.

His head jerks up. “Not that kind, not the terrorist – none of that shit. The gang members take each other out. Bombs in vehicles to hit each other with. Last night’s was disguised as a present. Only it ended up in the wrong car, the driver taking it out of town. The people I’d given to had the radio, they set it off remotely. I didn’t know any of that until this morning. When I – I – I got a visit. At home.”

“You made a bomb, it was put in the wrong car and set off?” A nod. “And it was traced back to you?”

“I don’t know how.” He looks up finally, setting the coffee down as his hands are shaking too badly. “There was this guy at my back door. Ordinary. Think he was white, but he looked ordinary.”

“So he was white,” slips out, before I can think about it.

“No, I mean – he fit in. Like you could have dropped him anywhere and he’d fit in. That kind of ordinary, like spies are in movies. The kind of –.” Gerald shakes his head. “He looked soft, Tom. Ordinary, like that, and then he held up some plastic, and asked questions.”

And my older brother shudders at that, literally shudders and wraps his arms about himself.

“... he was FBI?” I ask. “People died?”

“No,” says Gerald. “Least I don’t think so. If he was, all those stories about aliens and shit –. Tom, when he spoke to me, I had to answer him. Had to, like his voice was dragging truth out of me, like he was speaking truth so I didn’t have a choice in return. I’ve never heard anything like it. He just stared at me after, looking through me, into me, more than that. Turned out no one had died, but he’d been renting the vehicle and wanted answers.

“He was quiet after. Not a good quiet. Then said I’d been very lucky so far, but luck wouldn’t last. And that I should stop making these for anyone. He could have – have ordered me to. His voice was like that, but he didn’t. He just walked outside. I think he talked to someone on his phone, made some arrangement at 5:45 in the morning because he came back inside with an envelope of bills. Money, mix of new and old. More than enough to – to make up for the money I’d lose not making IEDs.”

“He paid you to stop making them?”

“He said there weren’t many problems money could solve, but it could help with a few. Be a means, but not an end. Give me space, time to think. Then the man just left. Walked out and left, and it was only then I realized he’d unlocked the doors without touching them, that they locked behind him. I don’t know what he was, what this is, but you know things, Tom.”

I almost laugh at the need, at the belief in my older brother’s voice. Only, this time, I have something, at least a little bit. “I asked Sang about North Korea a few times, about stories he’d heard. He told me he and some friends once tried to go north, through the zone between both nations. A bet and dare, really, through an area that has become like a wildlife preserve since people aren’t in it, and they ran into a Korean woman who told them to go back. He says she said it, and they had no choice at all. He didn’t expect me to believe it, but I did that study a few years back of myths in large urban centres. Almost all of them involve at least one person with a voice that can’t be ignored. The rest of it varies, and often gets really outlandish, but I think there is something to them. Or could be. I don’t know what it is, or who you ran into.”

“You don’t think I’m crazy.”

“Probably not.”

Gerald starts, almost grins at that and finally begins drinking the coffee. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t think I can help you with that,” I say, and he doesn’t make a bitter comment about my Education. He just nods, drinks the coffee, and finally leaves. I’d like to think he’ll use this money for some courses somewhere. Stop thinking a lot of things, and make his own way. But I don’t know. I can’t know.

I make myself another coffee, think about people with voices that can’t be ignored, and stories I’ve heard and never shared with Gerald at all. I decide that today is a very good day to work from home. Just in case the man with the voice is out there. Because we all have truths we never want to speak.

The Reunion

The ghost is screaming, the sounds cracking windows as I dive to the floor and roll. The floor of the house buckles wildly, the ghost visible in the old ballroom wreathed in chains made appliance cords, snow tire chains and scraps of the second and third floor carpets. I’ve seen ghosts do many things to scare humans, but being a fashion statement was never one of them until now.

I snarl six Words of exorcism that Dyer taught me. The ghost flickers like a tv image gone sour, only to let out another scream as the old home shudders about me. The entire home was built as part of a movie set fifteen years ago; security has been refusing to examine the property. Phone calls were made, and someone found out about me. I don’t know why: there are a lot of real exorcists in the world, and most of them are probably far better than I’d be at this. And definitely far better on less than an hours notice.

I discard exorcism and stand, reaching out with my nature. I eat gods, among other things. It generally suffices for ghosts, but this one is somehow slipping away, shifting out of my grasp. I manage to shred some of the garments the ghost is wearing and their head – explodes, reforms, exploding again like a broken light bulb as the carpets and cords form about it again.

Which is, of course, when my phone rings.

I answer it, and snarl, “I’m busy.”

“Charlie.” It’s the wandering magician. Of course it is.

“Don’t let me you lost Jay?” I say, since I rather upped and left him to deal with the kid from Outside the universe over a month ago. For all sorts of reasons, some of which even made sense at the time.

“No. We’re coming for a visit.” He pauses. “In a few minutes. You might want to be outside, since Jay’s presence hurts ghosts.”

“I might want to, will I?”

“The ghost is being hurt enough as it is,” he says simply, and hangs up before I can hang up on him.

I stare at my phone, put it away. Hurt? I pause, and feel the floor shudder about me, the creaking of the building. I don’t call up the god inside me, not for this, but I stare at the carpets – the chains – the cords – and things come together. “You’re not haunting this house. It’s keeping you here.”

I can talk to gods, I can speak to and banish ghosts. I don’t know how to talk to buildings, and now that I consider that I’m pretty happy to lack that skill. I reach up, and speak four quiet Words, a reverse exorcism trick Dyer taught me to give the ghost power. It shudders, tearing free of the bindings and lands on the ground. Thin, humanoid. A man in a bowler hat, retaining that much from when he was alive.

“Talk to me.”

“I made the house famous in the movie, was in the TV show that came after until I died of a heart attack on set,” the ghost says in a thin, whispery voice. “I haunted this place for a time, but everyone left. All the TVs, all the crews, and we’re far enough off the main roads that even hooligans rarely come out this far. I wanted to leave as well; the house didn’t want to be alone.”

“Of course not.” I don’t bother telling the ghost I have no idea who he was. I raise my voice. “House. You are going to let him go and I am going to leave now. If you don’t do this, the wandering magician is inbound to this location and he can do terrible things to you.”

The lights in the ballroom flicker out. I decide that calling the house a cliché wouldn’t be productive.

“He’s not alone. The wandering magician is travelling with a creature from Outside the universe, and I think you really don’t want to know what kind of Outsider a magician would travel with, and definitely not want to get in their way?”

The ballroom door opens at that. The ghost lets out a gasp, and vanishes into the Grey Lands. I walk out as if I wasn’t worried at all, mentally kicking myself for not looking up the movie at least before I arrived. The assignment had been in haste, but even so – I shake my head as I walk outside, heading toward the RV I’ve been using for the last few months. Had the magician not been en route, I’d have probably had to do weird things to the ghost or burn the house down. The latter probably leading to not getting paid, among other things.

Not that I’m surprised he was near, since I’m not sure the life of a wandering magician allows for coincidences. And just thinking about that is depressing enough that I’m almost at the trailer when a shape hurls through the darkness toward me in an inhuman blur to slam into my side. I draw the strength of the god inside me, brace myself, and barely stop from attacking when the figure begins speaking.

“We totally tracked you down and it was an adventure and I missed you and that’s not a good adventure and Honcho and I had adventures but it’s not the same even if it’s more fun because he doesn’t get being Jaysome and doesn’t believe I’m a princess and you didn’t have to go away and I’d kinda like to stay together lots and we’re friends and I’m all kinds of –.”

“Jay. Breathe.”

Jay gulps in breaths and presses tight against me, all of eleven, from far Outside the universe and ... my friend. Which means a lot of things, most of which I try not to think about too hard.

“You okay, kiddo?”

“I missed you!”

Nothing shatters. The house doesn’t explode. I relax a little: Jay can bind and unbind things to a degree that nothing human – not even magicians – can manage. “Jay, you had adventures with the magician.”

“But you weren’t there,” he flings out, pulling away to glare sightlessly up at me from behind dark glasses. “You’re my friend, and you went away again and it hurt!”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I manage.

“Oh! Okay,” and he grins at that, the kind of smile that every other smile is a pale echo of. Pure joy and trust.

“It’s okay, is it?” I say once I catch my breath.

“Uh-huh, Cuz I was worried but now I’m not and we can have more adventures!”

The wandering magician comes walking onto the property, slipping through a door in the chainlink fence I don’t think existed a few minutes ago. Nathen looks ordinary: it’s one of his talents, possibly not something involving magic. He’s carrying Jay’s white cane and tosses to toward Jay.

Jay senses the binding, catches it and grins even wider. “I brought Honcho,” he says proudly.

“I noticed.”

“Jay. We did leave the car back in town.” The magician pauses. “You might getting it and bringing it here?”

“I get to drive?!” Jay asks, bouncing from foot to foot.

“If nothing breaks. Yes,” he says, and Jay is gone in an inhuman blur back down the road. I think he might be singing Queen songs, but it’s hard to tell.

“You’re letting Jay drive,” I ask.

The wandering magician actually winces at that. “It seems the easiest way to keep him occupied.”

“We are in a forest. He could have had an adventure exploring it,” I say dryly.

“Yes, and probably found several monsters he wanted to be friends with,” he says, even dryer. “I thought it best we speak in private.”

“This is private?”

“The house isn’t listening,” and because he is a magician, or at leas the kind he is, he can speak truth that another can’t mishear. He rubs the bridge of his nose and sits down on the bumper of my RV. “I have apologized to Jay, even though Jay never understands apologies. I believe I owe you far more than that.”

“Pardon me?”

“I left you with Jay after my actions left him blind. You’re his friend, yes, but he is bound to be in ways even Jay may not entirely understand. He wanted to travel with me – with you as well, but if he had to choose between us ....” he trails off.

“I know.”

“And Jay knows you know, which hurt him since he doesn’t want to hurt his friends. He was trying to hide how much he missed me, thinking he failed because you left, but – it wasn’t only him. A ten year old boy left for you to look after with on your own.”

“He’s eleven now.” I don’t know why it’s important to say, but I say it.

“Eleven, yes.” He doesn’t look up at me, hands clasped tight between his legs. “He was blinded, and you were left alone to help him come to terms with that, to cope with that. And to deal with him being Jay, all on your lonesome. I think,” he says, and looks up, “that it was grossly unfair of me to leave you to face the amount of dinosaur movies he subjected you to by yourself.”

I snort at that. “We did see Jurassic World many times. I have no idea if that’s part of him trying to be a normal human kid, or just being Jay. I doubt he knows either, really. And you’re right: you should never have gone.”

“I know.” He stands. Not Jay-quick, but he is quicker than one would expect, and his face is pale and hard for a moment. “And I won’t again.”

“What?”

“I won’t do that again,” he says, and the fact has power threaded through it.

“Magician.” I take a deep breath. “We all make mistakes. Even you, or we wouldn’t be human. You can’t make a promise like that.”

“If I don’t, I might go again. Might hurt Jay again and – not be able to – or hurt you, and do the same. I’m good at hurting others, but I also have to live with it. To move beyond it.” And then he smiles a crooked magician’s smile full of unsaid things and spoken secrets. “If you will travel with us again, of course. I’m not about to impose, not after everything.”

“You think Jay is going to let me go?” I say, half-joking.

“He will need to let us go someday,” he says gently. “But for now – he would forgive, because he is Jay, but he would not understand.”

“Point.” I open my mouth to ask where he is going next when a blue car comes skidding through the mesh fence the security company put up around the property.

The magician spins as Jay comes barrelling out of the car, and forms a ward from the wind, the strength pf the house, other things I can’t sense at all.

“Honcho, I’m kinda,” Jay begins when the explosion hurls him right into and through the wards, to bounce several times until he hits the side of my RV with a shocked yelp.

I move around the RV as Jay picks himself up off the ground. His shirt and pants are torn, but he’s not actually hurt: he’s far tougher than anything human, but looks almost comically surprised and worried.

“I totally didn’t so that,” he says. “I thought the box was a present, but the bindings felt weird as I got closer but! I was busy driving and that’s pretty hard when you can’t see at all and are focusing a lot on bindings and then I was flying, only it wasn’t proper flying at all!”

The magician just walks to the smoking remains of the car. “Next time, Jay, please pay more attention to mysterious boxes put in vehicles. Even if you think they are presents for you.”

I walk over. “What were you two doing in town?”

“Nothing.” The magician holds out a hand, and pieces of plastic snap up from the wreckage to his grip. “I can use this to find who made the bomb and track them. I doubt it was intended for me if it was that obvious, but we’ll need to find out who.”

I stare at the wrecked fence, the smoking remains of the car. “I also need to get paid. It might prove difficult, given the fence.”

The magician smiles at that. “I think I can convince your employers to pay you.”

“Ah. Point.” I walk back to the RV. “You drive; I’ll catch up with Jay.”

He nods and walks over, getting in as Jay apologizes again for the explosion. I explain that everything is fine and it wasn’t his fault and Jay realizes the three of us are travelling together again and lets out a huge several squeal of bouncing joy and then sits down at the table and pouts.

“Jay?” I say warily.

“Neither of you said how good my driving was,” he says crossly.

The magician bursts out laughing at that, only just managing not to swerve the car off the road. I bury my face in my hands as Jay demands to know why we’re laughing at him but even so I can’t shake the feeling that everything feels better with the three of us together again. And I’m almost certain Jay isn’t causing that feeling without even knowing what he’s doing. Almost.