Spell Games

by T. A. Pratt

  The shapeless darkness in the mirror swelled and loomed closer. “I do not care if you know what I look like. But the Mycelium wishes you always to remember that your mind is under its control. That your perceptions are nothing but a courtesy extended to you in exchange for your continuing good service. Whenever you look upon me and see only darkness, you will know your eyes are not your own, that your senses and body belong to the Mycelium alone.”

  “So I'm still basically hallucinating, is what you're saying, and the reason I'm hallucinating is, the Mycelium is on a power-trip.”

  “I am saying you should drive. I am saying we have some distance to go.”

  “Across the freaking country. With you as a traveling companion. This is going to be worse than the vacations I took in the family station wagon when I was a kid.”

  “You are very insolent, for a slave.”

  “The worst thing you can do is kill me, Bulliard, and I'm starting to think that wouldn't be so bad.”

  Bulliard chuckled. It was a wet laugh, like fruiting bodies were bursting apart with every sound. “Silly messenger. I can do so many things that are worse than death.”

  “And on that note,” the messenger said, and shifted the van into drive.

  ou sure you're okay with driving?” Marla asked, hesitating by the passenger door. Just because she almost never drove didn't mean she'd forgotten how.

  “No, I'm all right, it's not the Bentley's fault I caused a five-car pileup.” They got in the car and pulled away from the run-down residential neighborhood where Langford's lab was hidden, behind the façade of a ranch house with flaking paint.

  “Hand me your cell, would you?” she said.

  B dug it out of his pocket and passed it over, keeping his eyes carefully fixed on the road the whole time. “No offense, just curious, but why don't you carry your own?”

  “Don't you watch TV? Criminal kingpins don't carry their own phones. Helps avoid wiretaps and cell cloning and all that stuff.” She flipped his open and began stabbing at buttons. She wasn't entirely sincere—she had a cell of her own, one magically rigged to get reception just about anywhere, but she seldom remembered to keep it charged, and it was currently a worthless paperweight in the bottom of her bag. Langford said he could make it so the phone never had to be recharged again, but apparently that would involve ovary-melting levels of radiation, which Marla reckoned was too high a price to pay for convenience. “I can't get over how weird it is knowing my brother's phone number again.” She finished dialing, hit the little green phone icon, and listened to the ring.

  “Marlita! I was just about to call you.”

  “Great minds think alike. You up for an early dinner? I want you to meet my, ah, business associate, Bradley Bowman.”

  “Didn't there used to be an actor with that name?”

  “Same guy. He's in a different business now.”

  “You never cease to surprise me, sis. Sure, let's eat, I've still got Rondeau with me, and I get the idea he's always hungry”

  They made arrangements, and Marla flipped the phone shut. “Better double back and go over the west bridge. Jason wants us to meet at some pub near the college, he says the food is really good.”

  “You never did tell me what caused your falling out with him.” B spoke in a careful tone Marla recognized: he didn't want to sound like he was prying, but yeah, he was prying. She considered. B was one of the handful of people she trusted with her secrets, and wouldn't it be better for somebody to know about Jason, about what he'd done? Her brother could be charming, and if she was the only one on the lookout for shady behavior, she might miss something.

  “When I was a teenager, there was this kid at my school with what you'd call a history of violence. He hurt a couple of my friends pretty badly and made it clear he was going to come for me next. So I… made sure that wouldn't happen. I got him before he could get me, and things went too far, and he wound up dead.”

  B whistled. “Marla, I'm sorry How old were you?”

  “Fourteen. Pretty much the end of my innocence, not that I ever suffered much from that. Jason was there for me, though. He helped me get rid of the evidence. He protected me. Pretty good brother, huh? I think he was even proud. Everything I ever learned about bushwhacking and ambush, I learned from him. At that time he was fleecing people pretty regularly—nobody expects to get conned by a fresh-faced seventeen-year-old, and he didn't have those tired eyes then. He was no stranger to the wrong side of the law. But helping cover up a mur-der? That wasn't something he'd do for just anybody.”

  “Family”

  “Right. So a few months later, Jason calls me up, kind of panicked, and asks for my help. All I had was a learner's permit, and it was after midnight, but I took Mom's car and drove across town to the address he gave me, in a swanky subdivision, and parked a few blocks away like he said I should. It was a big house, turned out it belonged to a deacon at the church, a widower who lived alone, kids all grown up and moved away. Jason was there… along with the deacon. His body anyway. Jason had killed him with a kitchen knife. The guy was in his underwear and a wife-beater T-shirt, bled out on the linoleum by the sink.

  “Jason was trying to act all in control, but his eyes had this crazy gleam I'd never seen before, like a trapped animal. He told me he'd been working on a blackmail angle for a while—the deacon was queer, and Jason got wind of that somehow and started to put himself forward as a willing plaything. He got the deacon on tape talking about what he wanted to do to him, you know? Jason came over that night to let the deacon know about the tape and start squeezing him for cash, or whatever.”

  “Damn. That's cold.”

  “Jason was never overly encumbered with a conscience. Deacons who preach damnation for gays on Sunday while cruising teenage boys on Saturday nights don't get a ton of sympathy from me, but they don't deserve to get murdered. Jason said it was self-defense, or an accident, or both. Said he came over, played the tape, and things… got out of hand. ‘Things got heavy’ is how Jason put it. I'm not sure of the precise chain of events, but the end result was Jason stabbing the guy”

  “You don't think it was self-defense?”

  “How do I know? I didn't see any other weapons, and how big a threat is an out-of-shape guy in his fifties against a tough seventeen-year-old? But to Jason, it was all very simple. When I had a dead body on my hands, he'd helped me. Now that he was the one with a corpse to get rid of, he expected me to return the favor.”

  “I'm guessing you didn't grab a shovel and ask where to dig.”

  “I flipped my shit, B. I was still messed up about the guy I'd killed, full of guilt and remorse and emotions I couldn't even name, and now my brother had killed a guy? I couldn't deal with it. Plus—and I told Jason this—my murder had been a matter of life or death, me or him. Jason's had been a matter of profit. That was different, couldn't he see that? I'd done murder to keep myself alive. Jason had done it to save himself from his own stupid decisions, to keep a mark from beefing to the cops, whatever. But Jason didn't get the distinction. He said we were family, we were in it together, and I had to help him. But I didn't. I packed my shit and left town. Jason's little killing spree wasn't the only reason—my mom's latest boyfriend was getting a little grabby, and I was afraid I might lose my shit and do something violent to him if I didn't leave soon—but Jason's little problem was what pushed me over the edge. I left that night, and my last interaction with my family was a very low-pitched screaming match with my brother in a dead guy's kitchen.”

  “Ah. So he didn't take it well.”

  “Called me an ingrate, and a hypocrite, and worse. Said I was betraying my family by refusing to help him. Said as far as he was concerned, I wasn't his sister anymore. Said I better hope I never got myself into shit again, because he wasn't going to help me climb out next time. I never thought my brother was a good guy, exactly, but up until then, he'd always been a bad guy who was on my side.”

  “Wow.” B shook his head. “And now
he's back. No wonder you're suspicious.”

  “Sure, but—it's been eighteen years. He says he's out of that heavy stuff, that it was a youthful indiscretion, a one-time thing. Honestly, B, I'm sure I've got more blood on my hands than Jason does. I like to think my violence is in the service of a greater good, and usually it is, but there are some definite borderline edge cases in my past where I didn't have motives all that much purer than Jason's were. He seems willing to forgive and forget, and I'm trying to show willing, too—letting him pull Rondeau into helping him out with his latest scam, like that. He's my brother. He's a big part of the reason I am the way I am. I don't know if I would have survived as a teenage runaway on the streets of Felport without the things he'd taught me. At the very least, he deserves a chance to be part of my family again. Maybe I deserve a chance to be part of his, too.”

  She went silent, and B let the silence hang there—he was good like that. Marla directed B to take the next left and pull into the lot next to the Foxfire Tavern, where Jason's Mercedes was already parked. After they got out of the car, Marla turned to B. “All right. Time to meet my brother. Don't mention anything about magic, and, ah, don't let on that you know… that stuff I just told you.”

  “Discretion is the soul of me.” B patted her on the shoulder.

  He's a good apprentice, she thought. And a better friend.

  The Foxfire Tavern was a typical pub—dark wood, brass accents, vintage beer signs on the walls—and Rondeau and Jason were lounging in a booth big enough to sit six comfortably, beers already before them. Marla slid in next to Rondeau and B sat beside Jason. They made a strange foursome—B in his camouflage coat, Jason in his immaculate suit, Rondeau in a hideous brown outfit, and Marla in loose unbleached cotton pants and shirt. To an outside observer they would have looked like one of those wildly mismatched merry bands on a fantasy quest.

  “You kids have a good day ripping off morons?” Marla flipped open a menu.

  “I think it was a good learning experience for Rondeau,” Jason said. He turned to B and stuck out his hand. “I think my sister forgot to introduce us. I'm Jason.”

  “Bradley. My friends call me B.”

  “I hope I qualify for that honor soon,” Jason said. “I've seen your movies. You left Hollywood behind for a life of crime, huh?”

  “More like Hollywood left me behind, and I had to take what I could get.”

  “Let's hear it for upward mobility,” Jason said.

  After that they all sat, no one sure what to say, fiddling with their beer mats and looking at their menus a little too intently. Marla had no problem with uncomfortable silences as long as she was the one causing the discomfort, but being uncomfortable herself was no fun.

  Rondeau rescued them. “Hey, B, the table service in this place is glacial, and Marla said you were starving. Let's go to the bar and get drinks and make pointed remarks about how hungry you are, whaddya say?”

  “Good boys,” Marla said. “Bring me a lemonade.”

  Left alone with Jason, it would have been weird to keep sitting quietly, so Marla decided to broach one of the many subjects she'd been wondering about. “So, uh, how's the rest of the family? You in touch with anybody?”

  Jason shook his head. “Haven't seen or heard from any of the cousins in years. We were never all that close-knit anyway, I'm sure you remember.”

  “I do. Uh, how's Mom?”

  Jason rolled his beer glass back and forth between his palms, a nervous habit Marla recognized. “I've been meaning to tell you. I wasn't sure how to bring it up…. Mom's gone. Five years ago. Her funeral's the last time I saw any of the rest of the family.”

  Marla winced. “Shit. Shit. I'm sorry, Jason. You shouldn't have had to deal with that on your own.”

  “It was okay I mean, not okay, but I had money for the funeral and everything, it wasn't a problem. I would have told you when it happened, but I wasn't sure how to get in touch.”

  “That was one of my unreachable years.” Five years ago she'd been a ragged up-and-comer in Felport's magical underworld, not the kind of person who had a fixed address. “Still, it was a shitty thing, you having to face that alone, and I'm truly sorry.” She paused. “For everything. For leaving… the way I did.”

  “I never blamed you for taking off. Too many of Mom's boyfriends thought you and her were some kind of package deal—I'd catch them looking at you, and I know you saw it, too. I sure got tired of secretly beating their asses. It made sense you would leave.”

  Marla laughed. “You beat up Mom's boyfriends?”

  “Sure, the ones who needed beatings. Of course, Mom's own fine interpersonal skills ran off more of them than I did.”

  B and Rondeau returned bearing drinks.

  “Jason just broke the news that my mom passed away five years back,” Marla said. B and Rondeau murmured condolences, which Marla waved away. “It's okay, I feel bad I didn't go to the funeral, but it's all right.” She'd never had a particularly good relationship with her mother—to be honest, her mother had basically been walking poison—and it was hard to grieve for her now. “She was young, though,” Marla said. “What did she die of? Was it… ?” Marla mimed tipping back a bottle.

  “Cirrhosis of the liver.” Jason raised his beer glass ironically “Guess we're lucky neither one of us inherited the alcoholic gene, huh?”

  “Well, it's not like we don't have other… compulsive issues. We didn't exactly choose safe lines of work, either of us, so there's got to be some kind of danger-seeking thing going on. Not to get all psychoanalytical.”

  “You've got a point. But better chills and thrills than booze and pills. You know the most messed-up thing about Mom dying?”

  “What?”

  “She wrote us out of the will. Assuming we were ever in it. Left everything she had to one of her scumbag ex-boyfriends—I guess the guy she was seeing when she thought to make a will.” He shook his head. “She didn't have much anyway, but it's the principle of the thing, you know? Some random asshole she met in a bar has Grandma's antique silverware. It's fucked up. Family, huh? Ah, but I shouldn't bitch. I doubt we have a monopoly on screwed-up familial stuff.”

  “Hell, Jason,” Marla said, “you've been in my will all along, even when I didn't own anything but the shoes on my feet and the bruises on my knuckles.”

  Jason blinked at her, and Marla was pleased to see genuine surprise on his face. “Really?”

  She shrugged. “I wasn't going to give anything to Mom, and you're the only living relative I ever gave a damn about. I figured if I died, and they had to get word to somebody, I'd just as soon it was you and not one of the cousins. The least I could do for making you deal with that crap was leave you my dirty laundry and the leftovers in my fridge, right?”

  “Marlita, you've just restored my faith in family” Jason raised his glass to her.

  “My parents kicked me out of the house when they found out I was gay,” B said, stirring the straw in his glass of iced tea. “Then, when I started making money in Hollywood? They appeared on my doorstep one day and said all was forgiven. I believed them for about ten seconds, but my dad wouldn't hug me, and Mom wouldn't look at me, and pretty soon they were asking if I could help them out with a loan. So yeah… family”

  “Fuck all y'all,” Rondeau said. “Parents? I grew up in an alley eating out of trash cans.”

  “All right, Rondeau wins,” Marla said. “That's why I never play fucked-up family with him. He's always got some story about how his only friend was a dead cat, and it tops everybody.”

  “I wish I'd had a dead cat for a friend,” Rondeau said.

  “I had to make do with a dead rat. But I grew up and made a new family. Marla. Bradley A few other people. My brothers and sisters in arms. Here's to the family you choose.”

  “I'll drink to that,” Jason said, and they all clinked glasses. “I know you got stuck with me by birth, Marla, but I'm hoping we might get to the point where we'd choose each other for family anyway”
<
br />   “It could happen, big brother.”

  After another couple of hours of chitchat and assorted deep-fried finger foods, B started yawning conspicuously Marla poked him. “Lightweight. Why don't you go home and get some sleep?”

  “Bless you.” B pushed his half-full water glass away “I know you're going to have me up at some unhallowed hour tomorrow.”

  “I just want you to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, B.”

  Rondeau checked his watch. “I should bail, too, see how things are going at the club. Can we take the car, or….”

  “I'll give Marlita a ride home,” Jason said. “If that's all right with you, sis?”

  “You haven't had enough family bonding, huh?” She munched a cold mozzarella stick, then nodded. “All right, sure. See you two in the morning.”

  B and Rondeau said their farewells, leaving Marla and Jason facing each other across the booth.

  “The food here isn't bad,” Jason said, “but what do you say we hit some places that are a little more fun?”

  “I'm not sure I can handle your idea of fun.” “Have a little faith. Remember those little tricks I used to show you in the kitchen, or the yard? Didn't you ever want to try them out in real life?”

  “I'm not a big fan of recreational stealing, Jason.” He rolled his eyes. “Who's talking about stealing? Stealing is boring. I'm just talking about, you know, magic tricks. Bets. Not even halfway serious money If you insist, we can play for funsies—”

  Marla laughed. Funsies. As opposed to playing for keepsies. She'd forgotten that phrase. When they were kids and Jason offered to make a bet with her or show her a card or a dice trick or even something fancy with glasses or matchboxes or peas or walnut shells, she'd always insisted they play for funsies—at least, after the first time, when she'd lost her milk money betting him that bats were blind. She'd been about seven years old at the time. She hadn't believed him until he'd shown her the encyclopedia article about it—not that faking such a thing would have been beyond his abilities, even then. “That's nice of you to offer, bro. But I guess if we're talking about five or ten bucks a pop from the kind of people who are dumb enough to make bets with guys they meet in bars, you can play for keepsies.”