Necessary Evil

by Donald Hanley

  “Are you having second thoughts about the internship?” he frowned.

  “I don’t know if I can do it. What if I make a mistake? What if someone gets hurt because of something I did?” Someone like you.

  “Policemen are human, Peter,” he told me, “we make mistakes and our mistakes can be deadly. That’s why we train every day and that’s why we work together as a team, so we prevent as many of them as we can.” He rubbed his forehead with a sigh. “Give it a chance, Peter. We won’t ask you to do anything you can’t handle. After a couple of weeks, if you still think it’s not something you want to do, you can quit, no problem. Okay?”

  I drew a shaky breath. “Okay.”

  “You’ll be fine, Peter,” he said firmly. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” I’d already done the wrong thing for what I hoped was the right reason. Maybe that counted for something. Dad nodded absently, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Are you going to be all right?” I asked uneasily.

  “I’m just a bit light-headed, that’s all,” he said, “I think I’ll head to bed early tonight.” He opened his office door and stepped aside to let me out first. “Have fun with your, um, your –” He shook his head to try to clear out the cobwebs. “Sorry, what is it you’re doing?”

  “A sleepover,” I told him, feeling miserable.

  “Oh, right. Well, have fun.”

  “We will.” I watched him walk slowly down the hall towards his bedroom, shaking his head like he was trying to remember something important.

  “Is everything all right, Peter?” Mom called from the kitchen. She had a sheet of unbaked cookies in her hand, ready to go into the oven. “Your father looked a bit, well, distracted.”

  “He’s just tired,” I told her. “He’ll be fine in the morning.” I really, really hoped that was true. “I need to get packed.”

  “All right. The cookies will be ready in fifteen minutes. Tell Olivia I found the sprinkles,” she added with a smile.

  “I will.” I don’t deserve sprinkles, I told myself as I shambled down the hall to my bedroom. I’m a miserable excuse for a son. I plopped down on the edge of my bed and scrubbed my face with both hands.

  “Is everything okay, Peter?” Olivia asked hesitantly. She had her borrowed book in her hands but it didn’t look like she was actually reading it. “Are we in trouble? Your father’s a policeman, isn’t he?”

  “Everything’s fine,” I told her, although my body language probably conveyed a completely different message. “Where is everyone?”

  “Melissa’s in your sister’s room,” she reported. Susie’s door was closed, as usual. “Dara’s getting changed into proper clothes.”

  “Why didn’t she get changed in here?”

  “Peter!” Olivia looked aghast at the suggestion. “She wasn’t wearing any, you know,” she dropped her voice to a confidential whisper, “underwear.”

  “So?”

  “I would have seen her – her – everything!” she protested.

  I wasn’t in the mood for this sort of nonsense. “You really need to lighten up about this, Olivia,” I said. “Different people have different ideas about showing their bodies. Dara’s just an extreme example, that’s all.”

  “That doesn’t make it right!”

  “This from the girl who handed me her panties last night,” I observed dryly.

  Olivia may not have been able to blush as a ghost but she more than made up for it now. “That was different!” she insisted.

  “How, exactly?”

  “Because I was trying to, you know –” Her voice trailed off into a mumble and she couldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Trying to what?”

  “Trying to make you like me,” she admitted meekly. “I mean, I was just a ghost then and you were the only person who could see me and I thought maybe, since I was dead anyway, it wouldn’t matter and I could just –” Her words faded out again.

  “Seduce me?” I guessed doubtfully.

  “No! I mean, tease you, maybe,” she admitted, “because I wanted you to like me but then they evaporated and now I have to walk around forever without any, you know,” she cleared her throat, “underwear and I realized it was a bad idea as soon as I did it but I hope you don’t mind. I mean, you are my boyfriend, after all,” she added with an eager nod.

  For someone as painfully shy as Olivia was, she certainly had a knack for turning a simple No into a stream-of-consciousness ramble. “I’m not your boyfriend, Olivia,” I reminded her carefully.

  “Yes you are,” she insisted, “you just haven’t decided if I’m your girlfriend yet.”

  “I don’t think it works like that.”

  “It does and as soon as you dump Melissa properly we can be together forever.”

  I was sure she didn’t mean to make that pronouncement sound quite so ominous but a shiver ran down my spine anyway. I was saved from any further discussion on the subject by Daraxandriel’s arrival.

  “Does this garb meet with thine approval?” she asked Olivia irritably.

  She wore a white polo with a pleated navy blue skirt along with ankle socks and sneakers. Her tail made it impossible for her to wear panties and it was pretty obvious that she wasn’t wearing a bra either. Olivia opened her mouth, no doubt to complain about these wardrobe oversights, but then she glanced at me and reconsidered.

  “It’s fine,” she said curtly, making it very clear that it wasn’t.

  “Glad to hear it,” I said. “Pack up your laptop and grab another change of clothes,” I told Dara. “I’ll find something to carry everything in.”

  I had a suitcase stashed away somewhere but it was too unwieldy to carry if we had to move quickly. Instead, I hauled my backpack out of the bowels of my closet and dumped the detritus of the last school semester onto the floor. I replaced it with another pair of jeans, two t-shirts, underwear, and socks, and went into the bathroom to retrieve my toiletry kit. By the time I returned, Dara had thrown one of her sundresses and her favorite Dallas Cowboys jersey on the bed and was busy shutting down her computer.

  It took me several tries to shoehorn all of the clothes, computers, kit, and cables into the backpack and I ended up filling all of the pockets to capacity. The thing had to weigh at least twenty-five pounds but at least we were ready to make a run for it if we needed to.

  “Should I bring something too?” Olivia asked doubtfully. The only things she had was the shift and panties she borrowed from Dara and a pair of Susie’s sandals.

  “You’re probably fine,” I told her. “You can always go ghost if you need to.” She nodded reluctantly. “What’s taking Melissa and Susie so long?”

  “Thou didst request a wardstone for Melissa,” Daraxandriel reminded me. “Such are not quickly fashioned.”

  “We need to get going,” I grumbled. The longer we stayed in one place, the easier it would be for Lilixandriel to find us. An insistent beeping sounded in the distance. “Your cookies are ready,” I told Olivia. “I’ll check on Susie.”

  Olivia and Daraxandriel went off to indulge their sweet teeth – sweet tooths? – as I nearly threw out my back slinging the pack over my shoulder. I trudged across the hall like a Sherpa and rapped on Susie’s door. “Are you two almost done?”

  “Just a minute!” Melissa called.

  “Two minutes,” Susie corrected her. “Maybe five. Ten, tops.”

  “Faster is better,” I reminded them.

  “You can’t rush these things, Peter. You don’t want them to smudge.”

  “Smudge?” I wasn’t sure I heard that right.

  “Talking slows me down,” she warned.

  “Fine, just hurry it up. We need to go.” I hiked to the kitchen and found Olivia, Daraxandriel, and Mom seated around the table with a plate of sprinkled snickerdoodles in front of them. Olivia had a glass of milk as well.

  “These are perfect, Mrs. Collins!” Olivia enthused, savoring another bite of her cookie. “They’re just like Momma make
s.”

  “I’m so glad you like them, dear,” Mom smiled. “Here, Peter, have one.” She held out the plate to me.

  “I’m good, thanks.” I dropped the backpack to the floor with a thud, wincing as I belatedly remembered the two laptops jammed inside. The plate remained pointed in my direction and I took a cookie with a sigh. “Thanks,” I said grudgingly.

  “You’re welcome,” Mom said placidly, returning the plate to the table. “So where are you off to now?” She eyed my backpack like she thought I might be smuggling contraband out of the house.

  “We are oversleeping,” Daraxandriel said absently, carefully nibbling around the edge of her snickerdoodle as if she intended to make it last as long as possible.

  “Sleeping over,” I corrected her. “At Melissa’s,” I added hastily, before anyone could contradict the story I told Dad.

  “What about me?” Melissa appeared behind me, holding her hands like she just scrubbed up for surgery.

  “The sleepover’s at your place,” I told her, trying to give her a significant look so she wouldn’t argue with me.

  “Oh, the sleepover. Right. It’s at my place,” she told Mom.

  “What’s the occasion?” Mom asked.

  “Occasion? Um –” Melissa looked at me for a hint but I didn’t have one to give her. “It’s a, uh, house-warming party.”

  “House-warming?” Mom frowned. “Did you move already?”

  “Oh, no, sorry, that’s not until this weekend,” Melissa stammered. “No, this is actually a, um, a house-unwarming.” Mom just blinked at her. “You know, to celebrate finally leaving and being out on my own?” Her smile wasn’t as reassuring as she probably meant it to be.

  “I see,” Mom said doubtfully. “Well, would you like a snickerdoodle?” she asked hopefully, offering the plate again.

  “Oh, sorry, I can’t. My nails are still wet.” Melissa blew on her fingertips and flapped her hands.

  “They’re black,” I observed doubtfully.

  “It was the only color Susie had that didn’t glitter,” she grimaced. “I’m not actually sure I’m allowed to have black nails at work.”

  “I can add the crystals to whatever color you want,” Susie shrugged as she walked into the kitchen. “Just bring me the bottle.”

  “Let’s worry about that later,” I said, shooting a glance at Mom to see if she suspected anything. “Aren’t you going to get packed?”

  “I have everything I need.” She flipped her wand in the air like a baton but fortunately Mom was used to seeing her with it.

  “What about your clothes and your toothbrush and stuff? And your other stuff?” I added, pointing surreptitiously to her wand as she twirled it between her fingers.

  “I don’t have it.”

  “I can see that. Why not?”

  “We left my bag at the library, remember? Everything’s in there.”

  “The library’s closed now,” I complained. Mrs. Kendricks would probably let us in but I hesitated to bother her right now.

  Susie shrugged. “I need a new athame anyway. Mine got fried.” Daraxandriel ignored her resentful glare.

  “You’re not going to a sleepover without a change of clothes,” Mom insisted, “and a proper pair of pajamas.”

  “Pajamas make me itchy,” Susie argued.

  “It doesn’t matter. Remember Hannah Ingram’s sleepover back in eighth grade? Mrs. Ingram wouldn’t speak to me for almost a year.” Mom got to her feet and ushered Susie back down the hall, ignoring her protests.

  “My wand’s still in your car, Peter,” Melissa reminded me. I dug out my key fob and held it out to her. She waggled her fingers at me with an exasperated expression.

  “Oh, right. Are those really wards?” I asked doubtfully.

  “They better be or I contributed a lot of blood to the cause for no good reason. My fingertips are tingling,” she added bemusedly. “Hopefully that means they’re working.”

  “With any luck, we won’t need to test that theory. I’ll be right back.”

  I went out to the Mustang and rummaged through the interior, searching for Melissa’s errant wand. It wasn’t on the back seat or stuck in between the cushions or lying on the floor. I was starting to wonder if it had fallen out onto the street outside her office but I finally discovered it hiding under the driver’s seat.

  I looked it over curiously as I closed and locked the Mustang. It was just a tapered rod of reddish-brown wood, like an oddly-shaped chopstick, and I couldn’t detect anything special about it at all. I gave it a few experimental flicks but I didn’t know any actual witchcraft spells. I might as well have been conducting an invisible orchestra for all the good the wand did me.

  I turned back to the house but I paused with my hand on the gate, absolutely certain someone was watching me. The front door was closed and all the curtains in the windows were closed. I glanced around uneasily but there was no traffic in the street and all of the neighboring yards were empty. Then my eyes fell on a small black shape sitting on the sidewalk directly across me, watching me with unblinking yellow eyes with its tail curled around its paws. It wasn’t wearing a collar.

  8

  The word neighborhood often brings to mind an image of a street of similar-looking houses populated by friendly people who greet each other by name and wave as they go about their daily business. This impression is reinforced by all those old black-and-white TV shows Mom and Dad used to watch, where people looked out for one another, offered sodas and sage advice to troubled kids, and solved every problem within half an hour.

  That image is woefully out of date. I’m aware of the existence of our neighbors, mostly when they make too much noise on the weekend, but it would never occur to me to go to them for help if something happened. I know their last names and I might recognize some of them if I happened to encounter them somewhere else, but they’re basically strangers to me. I can’t remember the last time any of them dropped by to visit.

  These days, neighborhoods aren’t close-knit communities, they’re collections of families with the same zip code. I have closer relationships online with people I’ve never met than with the folks who live next door. It’s a pity, really. I could use some sage advice. And a soda.

  I swallowed convulsively to get my heart back down where it belonged as the cat and I held a staring contest, which I lost. I held Melissa’s wand outstretched in a death grip, its tip pointed right between the cat’s eyes, but unless it charged me and impaled itself on the wand, I needed a better weapon.

  I slowly tucked the wand into my waistband and lifted my right hand until my targeting reticle outlined the cat in a white glow. My left index finger shifted back and forth as I tried to decide how best to deal with this situation. Fireball. Flame Lance. Lightning Strike. Whirlwind. Dart Swarm. Any of my damage spells would immediately obliterate anything as small as a cat but they tended to be noisy and visually spectacular, which would attract a lot of unwanted attention. I needed something subtler.

  I switched to my control set, made sure the cat was still targeted, and touched Sleep. The cat exploded with a loud pop! leaving behind a noxious smudge on the sidewalk.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed. “It really was an imp.”

  I turned around in a complete circle, searching for any others that might be lurking about, but the street was cat-free. I edged my way to the front door and eased my way inside, half-expecting something to jump out from behind the rose bushes and attack me, but I shut the door unassailed.

  “Guys, I just saw an imp –” I stopped when I realized Mom and Susie were standing right there.

  “An imp?” Mom frowned.

  “No, not an imp! An imp ... ressive black cat.”

  “I’m on it!” Susie bounded past me and out the front door before I could stop her, leaving Mom and me staring after her.

  “I guess she really does like cats now,” Mom mused doubtfully. Melissa, Daraxandriel, and Olivia looked at each other worriedly.

  “She ca
n’t get enough of them,” I agreed. “Pack up, everyone, we need to go. Mom, do you mind if we use the van again?”

  “Well, I suppose, but what if I need to go out before you get back tomorrow?”

  “You can use the Mustang.” I handed her my key fob. “Just be careful. It’s got a lot more power than the van.”

  Mom snorted. “I drove a Dodge Charger with a 5.7 hemi and a five-speed stick in college, Peter. I think I can handle your Mustang.”

  “You did?” This was the first I’d heard of this.

  “Oh, yes. That’s how I met your father.”

  “Really? How?”

  She coughed delicately. “I got the first speeding ticket he ever wrote.”

  “What? Mom!” I was aghast. Mothers weren’t supposed to commit crimes, even minor ones like traffic violations.

  “I showed him some cleavage and batted my eyes at him so he’d let me off with a warning. He wouldn’t do it, though,” she grumbled.

  “Mom!”

  “I wrote my phone number on the ticket and he called me that weekend, though, so it worked out okay.” She smiled to herself at the memory. “Enjoy your sleepover, kids!” She sashayed down the hall towards her bedroom, humming to herself. All I could do was stare as another childhood illusion crumbled into dust.

  “Got it!” Susie reappeared, looking smug.

  “You didn’t get it,” I told her. “I already got it.”

  “You did not,” she insisted. “It was sitting right there on Melissa’s car. Fuge and pop, like always. You should probably take it through a car wash, though,” she told Melissa, who heaved a put-upon sigh.

  “It was on her car? Crap, there must have been two of them. We need to get out of here before any more show up. Do you have your stuff?” Susie turned around to show me the pink backpack on her back. She probably hadn’t used it since she was ten. “Good enough. Let’s go!”

  Olivia chugged her milk and snagged another handful of snickerdoodles as I herded everyone into the garage, although I had to reverse course at Melissa’s insistence to retrieve her purse from my bedroom and find a plastic bag for her damp work clothes. I grabbed my own backpack on the way out and threw everything in the back of the van before opening the garage door. I checked for imps as it lifted but the driveway was clear.