Her face was buried in the cushion of the couch, and from the wet spot under her cheek, she’d been drooling like a Saint Bernard all night. Her body was twisted in a position she would’ve previously thought unachievable. Her back was probably stiff, but the pain in her head was so all consuming, her spine could’ve been removed during the night and she wouldn’t know.
“Ow,” Wraith thought she whispered, but it rang through her head like she’d screamed it through a loudspeaker.
When she turned her head, light burned through her eyelids and stabbed her brain. “Ow!” she said again. And again regretted it.
After several minutes of lying there, wallowing in her misery, she decided to try moving. Reluctantly, she began disentangling herself. Every movement made her wince, and she would’ve whimpered if she could’ve done it without making her head explode. When she finally rolled to her back, her arm went limp and fell to the floor, knocking something over. Blindly—no way was she going to open her eyes—she groped for whatever it was. Her fingers, still tingling from having been slept on, found a bottle.
I love you, Benji, she thought to herself, hoping that wouldn’t hurt as much as talking.
It did.
After fumbling for a minute, she got the cap of the bottle off and began sucking down water. It was warm, but it was wet, and she could practically hear her body soaking it in. When she shifted her grip on the bottle, she noticed something attached to the bottom of it. Carefully, she opened one eye just enough to see a single-dose pack of aspirin taped to the bottle. She tore it open and swallowed the pills with another mouthful of water.
Somehow, she’d get that boy canonized for the saint he was. Maybe Brigid could help with that.
She finished the bottle, then just lay there quietly with her eyes closed. An indeterminate time later, she thought she might be able to open her eyes all the way without dying. She opened one, then the other. Her head didn’t explode, which she took as a good sign. Once the aspirin kicked in, she sat up, very, very slowly. Her stomach then added its own complaints to the mounting pile from her body.
“I know why they call them Southern Storms,” she said to no one. “I feel like a hurricane, a tornado, and a tsunami ganged up and kicked my ass.”
Eventually, she started to feel like a human being again. She went to the two clothes hampers set against one wall. They were entangled quantumly with matching hampers at Brigid’s house. One was for dirty clothes, one for clean. Her soiled clothes went into the dirty hamper, and she drew the numbers and symbols—the quantum information of reality—that floated around her into the correct equation. The contents of the hamper instantly were transported to its twin.
Sometimes she felt guilty dumping her laundry on Brigid, or more likely someone on Brigid’s staff, but she’d insisted on, at the very least, keeping Wraith in clean clothes.
In the clean hamper, Wraith found some black cargo pants and a black shirt with DON’T PANIC in large, friendly letters on the front.
She smiled.
This was a serious contender for her favorite shirt, though the one that read Don’t Mess with Me, I’m Good at Math still had a slight lead. Once dressed, she grabbed her beloved jacket. It was long and hooded, its dark brown canvas patched in several spots with leather. It was rough and road worn, but then so was she.
Drawing up the entropic equation, she stepped through the universal junction point and emerged on a tropical island, the exact location of which she didn’t really know. It was one of the places that she’d remembered finding during the early days after escaping the Order, when she’d been teleporting, without any control whatsoever, all over the world.
She smiled at the fresh water pond before her and the large waterfall that fed it. After stripping off her clothes, she dove in. The cool water washed away the residue of the night before, along with the dirt and sweat. In a small rocky alcove, she retrieved the soap and shampoo she kept here.
Sure, she could just go to Brigid’s house and use the shower, but why? Would anyone if they had this option?
Refreshed and clean, she stepped out of the water and let the hot tropical breeze dry her. She always seemed to forget to bring a towel, a huge violation for any hitchhiker.
“Sorry, Ford,” she said after slipping the shirt on and smiling.
Once more she drew up the entropic equation and stepped through the universal junction point. In a single stride, she went from a small and hidden tropical island to a back alley in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The place smelled terrible, just like you’d imagine somewhere that was frequented by drunken revelers would smell the morning after.
Focused on breathing through her mouth, she put on her sunglasses and reached into her coat pocket. From there she retrieved the cell phone Brigid had given her, plugged in the headphones, and started playing her favorite playlist of the moment. The Doubleclicks song “Now I Am the Fastest” came on, and it always made her smile. She quietly sang along as she flipped to an app no one else in the world had or could use.
The phone looked to the world like just another smartphone, if a little battered around the edges. But it wasn’t just another smartphone, of course. She’d worked some fairly clever—if she did say so herself—magic on it so it drew from the energy around it; kinetic, heat, microwave, even dark energy. Thus it never ran out of power or needed to be recharged. The app opened, and she entered Edward’s cell phone number. Drawing in the required formulation from the quantum information floating around her, she hit the Find button. A long and complicated equation began unravelling from the phone. It spread quickly, and while it was capable of reaching out to every location at the same time—quantum superposition is a fun toy if you know how to use it—she limited the range to the city of New Orleans. No need to waste time searching for Edward’s phone in places she knew it wouldn’t be.
“Dr. Huntington, I presume,” she said as a small dot appeared on her screen. To her surprise, it was only a few blocks away.
Briefly, she thought about trying to find Benji and his crew first, but she reminded herself of the promise she’d made to Brigid. Of course, she could check on them, make sure they were fine—and, of course, they would be—and then she could go find Benji, guilt free.
She turned the music up and made her way through the Quarter, which was fairly desolate at nine thirty in the morning. Not that she could blame the city. Sleeping for several more hours sounded like just this side of heaven, but she needed to be out and about, doing something. Her depression was easier to fight off when she wasn’t lying in bed—or on the couch—in her little room, secluded from the world.
People traffic might’ve been light, but the car traffic was heavy. She crossed Decatur Street and checked the phone again. The signal was leading her south and through a sort of shopping mall, most of the stalls selling the kind of tchotchkes that tourists love—shirts, shot glasses, snow globes, etc. When she reached the southern exit, Wraith checked the phone again. There was some kind of café ahead. That was probably where they were.
As she approached, her stomach grumbled at the smell of coffee and something sweet and fried. Ignoring her rumbling stomach and watering mouth, she found a place to observe the tables without being easily seen. While Brigid hadn’t expressly said to not let Edward and Caitlin see her, Wraith picked up that vibe and decided it was best to go with it.
It wasn’t easy. When she saw the coffee cups and the powdered sugar-covered donut things, she almost charged the counter to demand sugar and caffeine. That would probably give her away though, so she just kept telling her stomach that the minute Edward and Caitlin left, she’d inundate it with coffee and fried dough. The rumbling did ease up, but just a little.
That’s when she spotted them seated at a table with a well-dressed man who looked a lot like a young Don Cheadle. She couldn’t read their lips or hear their conversation, but their body language was hard to misinterpret. Whatever they were discussing, they were keen on keeping others from overhear
ing it. Edward and Caitlin were talking, and by the way they kept looking at each other, it wasn’t a pleasant topic. The unknown man had his arms crossed and was looking at them like they were both insane. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what the likely topic of discussion was.
Wraith thought she saw Caitlin mouth the word faerie, but she couldn’t be sure. After just a couple of minutes, her hunger wouldn’t be ignored. When the line was empty, she went to the counter. She was careful to keep herself hidden behind a group of people, but also keep Edward, Caitlin, and their friend in view.
“Can I help you?” the girl working the window asked.
“Can I get a large coffee, but half of it hot chocolate?” Wraith asked. “And a double order of whatever those fried-dough things are.”
The girl looked at her like she was an idiot. “The beignets?”
“Sure, if that’s what they’re called.”
“Here or to go?”
“To go.”
Wraith paid and in less than a minute received a big cup and a paper bag. When she’d returned to her observation point, she took a sip of the coffee. It was so hot she wondered if it was brewed using a fusion reactor. With a whisper of effort, she drew an equation around the cup, whisking away some of the heat. She often used the same thing to chill the cans of soda in her safe house; when you didn’t have a fridge, you made do. Unlike with her sodas, she didn’t let the coffee get to ice cold. She just let it move from molten to hot. After taking a sip, she added a dozen packets of sugar, mostly to kill the flavor of chicory.
Why did people feel the need to screw with something as wonderful as coffee?
When it was palatable, she drank her sugar/coffee/chocolate slurry and ate the beignets. Those were awesome. After every bite she would dip it back into the bag to renew the coating of powdered sugar. Soon her brain was buzzing. After eating the last piece of fried dough, she resumed her surveillance. She had to admit, the idea of this sounded a lot cooler than it actually was.
Brigid hadn’t given her reason to think it would be exciting or cool, but Wraith had still imagined it being kind of secret-agenty. It didn’t take long for boredom to creep in. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to do this. Edward and Caitlin had been nice to her and helped Sprout and Con when they’d been hurt, but this was getting capital B boring. So she made a command decision. No way did Brigid intend her to spend every hour of every day babysitting Edward and Caitlin. They were obviously fine, so she gave herself permission to leave.
She set the app to alert her if Edward’s phone moved more than a block, hit Play on her phone, and made her way up Decatur. Her plan was to see if she could find Benji and learn a little more about the town. Maybe she’d even convince him and his band to join the Forgotten Circle. Her plans for the Circle hadn’t panned out like she’d hoped. Originally, her intention had been to find other street kids, slingers and fifties alike, train them to protect themselves, and get their help in finding still more kids. There were a couple of dozen so far who, after learning to use their abilities effectively, helped out, but they were scattered all over the country. Despite being transient by nature, it was surprising how many street kids didn’t want to leave the cities they called home. At the least, it would be good to have some contacts in New Orleans, and Benji seemed interested in helping others.
For the next hour Wraith wandered up and down the streets of the French Quarter, but she never saw Benji, Joker, Bones, or Matchbook. What she did find though surprised the hell out of her: slingers, and lots of them. After months of seeking out slingers and fifties, Wraith had gotten very good at spotting them without resorting to magic. But after seeing the eighth kid in as many minutes, she removed her sunglasses and slipped on her leather-and-brass goggles. She adjusted the apertures and colored jeweler’s lenses of each eyepiece. To anyone who didn’t know, she’d just look like some steampunk fan. But the lenses let her see through glamours and simple charms. She could always see the numbers and symbols that made up the quantum information of everything around her, but the goggles added color and made it easier to see magic quickly. It was like adding titles to books. She could always read the books to see what they were about, but if she could read the titles, it was a lot faster to find what she was looking for.
The slingers kept mostly to side streets, but in almost every alcove, there they were, street kids who had wisps of magic drifting off and around them like colored smoke in a gentle breeze. They ranged in age from early teens to midtwenties. Most had several piercings and/or tattoos. All of them watched her as she walked by.
It took nearly half an hour before Wraith realized there was a formulation of magic drifting around the slingers that was almost identical. She paused and feigned checking her phone, but instead she used the tinted glass of the goggles to hide her actual intent. She looked over a collection of three slingers, two girls and a boy. They all had the same equation winding around them, and it emanated from the small leather bags they wore around their necks. It took her a minute to figure out that the bags wrapped the wearer in a sort of cloud that diverted attention away.
That must have been why she hadn’t noticed them at all yesterday. The magic was very subtle—it had to be so the affected party wouldn’t notice the effects. It was also a brilliant idea. The most common problem for street kids—magical or not—was cops, business owners, or just run-of-the-mill assholes, hassling them for loitering. People tended to want to ignore the homeless, unless they were in their way, or scaring off paying customers. These talismans, whatever they were, drew on that natural inclination.
Wraith shifted her focus to the kids themselves. They were clearly mortal slingers, and while they did have a respectable amount of power, they were relative lightweights. She doubted they’d made the charms themselves. She tucked away the phone, pushed the goggles back onto her head, and walked over to the trio.
“How’s it going?” Wraith asked.
The three eyed her suspiciously.
“It’s cool,” she said. “I’m a slinger too.”
They relaxed a little, but just a little. Life on the street was hard, and there was always someone who wanted what you had. That tended to breed suspicion, especially among the less powerful.
“I’m Wraith,” she said. “I just got into town from—”
“Wraith? The Wraith?” one of the girls asked. She was below average in height with long dreadlocks decorated with rings and colored thread wrapped around them. Her skin was dark, but it had large patches over her body and face that were pale white. Even one of her dreads was white blond. “The one from Seattle who took on the FBI on her own?
“No,” said the other girl. She was covered in freckles and sported dyed green and red hair. “She had her friends helping her. Three of them, all fifties, right?”
Wraith opened her mouth.
“You’re both wrong,” said the boy. He had a dozen piercings and several tattoos on his face. “They—”
“It was the Order,” Wraith said. “A group that was kidnapping fifties, killing them, and binding their souls to slingers to make them more powerful.”
The three just stared at her.
“The FBI got involved, but I never actually took them on,” she said, then thought about it. “Well, I sort of did, but not like you’re thinking.”
“I can’t believe it’s you!” the dreadlocked girl said.
Wraith started to feel uncomfortable. There was a population of street kids who were always moving, and they carried stories with them. Apparently Wraith’s had reached far and wide.
“What are you doing in NOLA?” the boy asked. “Are you here about the zombies?”
“No, I’m just—wait, did you say zombies?”
“They aren’t zombies, Flats,” said the girl with dreads.
“Yes, Panda, they are,” Flats said. “Why do you think Mama Toups is handing out gris-gris like candy on Halloween?”
“I’ve heard that word before,” Wraith said. “What’s a
gris-gris?”
They all looked at her like she was stupid.
“This is,” Flats said and held out the leather pouch around his neck.
Wraith almost lowered her goggles, but she decided not to. Instead, she focused and looked over the quantum information of the bag. It was like she’d suspected. The bag drew on people’s natural tendency to ignore anything they weren’t focused on and amplified it.
“Someone gave this to you?” Wraith asked.
“Yeah,” Panda said. “Mama Toups, a local voodoo queen. She and her people are giving them out to the slingers who are hiding out in the city.”
“Why are you hiding out?” Wraith asked.
“Because someone was snatching kids off the street in just about every city,” Panda said. “We heard, like most slingers did, through some fifties that this area was controlled by the First House.”
The freckled girl laughed. “Not that we had any idea what that was.”
“I found out not long ago myself,” Wraith said.
“Well,” Panda continued, “the fifties all said the First House really protects their territories. There were no snatchings down here.”
“Of course, it wasn’t true,” Flats said. “It was just like everywhere else.”
“But if you’re going to be hiding anyway,” Panda said, “you might as well be warm. Besides, the locals are pretty good to us. They leave us be and look out for us too.” She held out the gris-gris as evidence.
“And the voodoo queen”—Wraith couldn’t believe there was such a thing—“is just giving those out to slingers?”
“You tell her, Lash,” Panda said to the freckled girl. “You’re the one who found out about them.”
The Returned Page 7
