Snarling, the ankle-tall Yorkie charged George. He windmilled backward, then jogged a few steps. When Princess didn’t pause, he sprinted in a circle, grabbing for the trailing leash. Princess cut him off, biting the air where his hand had been. George yelped. I lurched to assist, stopping when a coughing fit doubled me over. Through watering eyes, I watched Princess herd the large man across the soccer field. The tiny dog all but disappeared in the grass, making George’s frantic, erratic path appear the run of a madman, or perhaps a man attacked by bees. Jamie raced around the pair, barking, a doggy grin splitting his face. He thought this was funny.
I forgot about how powerful the pooka was. I forgot I had no real authority over him. I forgot he temporarily looked like a dog. In that moment, he was a misbehaving child, and my inner mom roared to life.
“Jamie!” I snapped my fingers and pointed to my side. The pooka swung his head my direction. His tail drooped, and he trotted over to me, sat on my foot, and whined. I extricated my foot, then squatted, which put me below eye level with the seated Great Dane. “Jamie, you need to fix Princess. She’s going to hurt George or herself. Or me.”
The energy of the pooka’s soul divided, his left side becoming solid atrum, his right pure lux lucis.
Whoa. I took a stab at interpreting his soul’s statement, ignoring the frantic litany of “No, Princess! Bad Princess! I’m going to skin you and turn you into a slipper, Princess!”
“I know you think one form of energy is boring, but some of us like being all lux lucis,” I said. “Like me. By changing Princess to half atrum, you robbed her of her choice and her lux lucis.” Jamie whined, and I petted his right side. “You’re special. You get to be both energies. But the rest of the world doesn’t cherish the same balance.”
I chose my words carefully. It wasn’t the right time to tell him I hoped he’d embrace one side—my side. Such a blatant approach seemed doomed for failure. It was actions that mattered and that would convince Jamie to see my side. If I told him now that I would prefer a world without atrum, he might think I hated half of him. It might make him hate me, or himself.
“Can you change her back?”
Jamie’s whirling eyes held mine. When he loped away, I stood, fingers crossed behind my back. He easily overtook the charging Yorkie, and a bar of pure lux lucis extended from his soul, sliding through the teacup terror. As easily as he’d transformed her the first time, he eradicated all traces of atrum from Princess’s soul. The Yorkie skidded to a halt and sat. George continued to run for several strides before noticing Princess no longer chased him. He’d lost his other shoe somewhere along the way.
I sagged, hands to my knees, and fought the compulsion to cough again. The pooka’s strength terrified and awed me. For now, he obeyed me, but it was his choice, and I wouldn’t forget it.
“Thank you.” I petted his head when he trotted back to my side.
We left George creeping up on the Yorkie, who sat watching him with her head cocked, cuteness and goodwill restored. Jamie trudged at my side, tail drooping, back to the car, while I contemplated scary thoughts, like whether the pooka could change my soul as easily as he had Princess’s.
When I blinked to normal sight, I was surprised to see the sky washed red and orange in the sunset and the smoky street shadowed with twilight. Between the salamander and the Yorkie, we’d spent almost two hours in the besieged park. It’d felt like half that time. I opened the passenger door and Jamie stepped his front legs onto the floorboard. With his butt in the air, he morphed back to human. I yelped and covered my eyes.
“Give a girl some warning.” I trotted to the driver’s side with my eyes averted while he dressed.
I slid into my seat, and Jamie, fully dressed, flopped into the car next to me, then batted large gold eyes at me in the dim light. Instead of inciting compassion, his pitiful look rekindled my irritation. Jamie had disobeyed me when he’d run off and scared me when he played pooka god with the Yorkie. He might be a magical creature with one very restricted day under his belt, but I couldn’t let his actions go without remark. I settled on honesty, stripping my voice of as much emotion as possible.
“I’m mad at you.”
Jamie stilled, soft smile melting.
“You ran from me.”
“I wanted to explore.”
“You should ask first. You could have been hurt.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You imprinted on me so I could help you, right?”
He cocked his head, considering. “No.”
“No?”
“I chose you because I like you.”
I sighed. “I like you, too. That’s why I don’t want you to get hurt. You need to let me help you until you understand the world better.” I pressed my lips together, then asked a question that’d weighed on me during the walk. “Did you change anyone’s—any thing’s—Primordium energy while I was taking out the salamander?”
“No.”
“Thank you.” I sagged into my seat and closed my eyes. They stung from the smoke. It hung in the air like a fog, burning in my lungs. “Let’s get out of here. I’m hungry.”
“Me too.”
I turned on the car, then took a moment to check in with Val.
“You okay, Val?”
Shazam! That’s how it’s done!
Shazam?
You were rockin’ and rollin’, groovin’ and oozin’.
“Oozing? Are you okay?”
Val’s pages bunched and fluttered, and I dropped him into my lap.
Yowza. Anytime. You and me, Dice. We’re unstoppable.
“Are we going to get food?” Jamie asked. He lifted his chin, pointedly not looking at Val. What was that about?
I’m full. Full, full, full. To the glue holding me together.
Now that he mentioned it, Val did look brighter than usual.
“You didn’t have to erase the atrum,” Jamie said, gaze focused out the window. “It would have dissipated with the new growth.”
Yeah, but where’s the fun in that? Ka-pow!
I closed Val and slid him back into his strap. He seemed okay even if he was acting weird. “That would have taken months, and I didn’t want any of the firefighters to get hurt—or anyone or anything else—in the meantime.”
“Oh.”
“Are you upset I cleaned up the atrum?” I pulled on my seat belt.
“I thought—” Jamie’s gaze darted toward Val. “No.”
Was he jealous of Val? If he weren’t a book, I’d say Val was drunk. Maybe he was. I’d pulled a lot of lux lucis out of the tree when cleaning up after the salamander. How much had he absorbed?
“Hey.” I took Jamie’s hand. His entire left side shimmered with lux lucis, and I wondered if it was his way of apologizing. “I’m really glad you came back.”
Jamie peeked at me with softly whirling irises. “Really?”
“Really.”
My stomach growled. I released his hand, blinked to normal sight, and pulled from the curb. When we cleared the police barricades and were beyond their sight, I pulled over to the side of the road and called Mr. Pitt. As aggravating as it was to hear that Rafi had taken care of three other problems while I’d been at the park, it did leave us a free moment for dinner. If I’d been alone, I would have gone to In-N-Out, then straight home to shower. Figuring Jamie deserved to see more of the world than the interior of my car and apartment, I turned the car toward downtown Roseville, crossing the freeway into Isabel’s territory. Since wardens could sense all atrum and lux lucis in their region, I wondered if she could feel the moment we crossed her border. Could Mr. Pitt pinpoint us at all times in our region? I’d have to ask.
I pulled the tip of my ponytail to my nose and coughed. Eau de Burn Pile was not a good scent on me. I rolled down the windows and cranked up the heat. After we got food, a shower moved to top priority, for both of us. Separately.
By the time we reached Vernon Street and found parking, Jamie’s cheerful disposition was
restored. He bounced out of the car and darted around to my side, showing remarkable constraint. Two blocks of the main street through downtown were blocked off for the weekly food truck extravaganza. Though the crowds were smaller tonight than during the warm summer months, plenty of people lined up at every truck’s order window, and most of the bench tables were at capacity.
Greasy, fragrant aromas emanating from a dozen trucks elicited dueling grows from our stomachs.
“Every truck has something different, so check your options before making a decision,” I said after explaining how food trucks worked.
Jamie bounced into the crowd. I kept an eye on him but headed straight for my favorite vendor. Normally I’d get fish tacos or their gourmet burger, but the sluggish feel of lux lucis inside me changed my order to a taco salad. The wild fluctuations of my soul in the last two days were catching up with me, and as much as I preferred otherwise, the best way to help my body recover was to consume live foods. I added a side of sweet potato fries, because I’m only human, then a second order for Jamie. I joined him in line at a truck featuring a pizza oven. He polished off the fries before we made it to the front of the line, then ordered a pizza with everything. We carried our food to a table and, by mutual consent, didn’t look up or speak until we’d cleaned our paper plates.
“You ready to try dessert?”
“What’s dessert?”
“A party for your mouth.” I led Jamie to the Belgian waffle vendor and demonstrated the best combination of waffle, ice cream, chocolate, whip cream, and chocolate chips. Jamie ordered exactly as I did. When he took his first bite, his eyes widened and he opened his mouth, pointing at the unappealing mash of food.
“This is sooo good.” At least, that’s what I thought he said.
He forked bites into his mouth with a teenager’s speed. I laughed at his blissful expressions, then twice as hard when he clutched his forehead and almost fell off the back of the bench seat.
“That’s what happens when you eat cold things too fast.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He moaned and hunched forward, massaging his forehead.
“I wasn’t sure you could get an ice cream headache.”
He ate slower after that, but not by much. Then he went back for a second waffle with the works and managed to finish it, too, before I polished mine off.
Wishing I hadn’t eaten quite so much, I decided to take the long way around the block back to the car, passing through the empty town square rather than through the dining crowd. In the summer, fountains of water speared through the concrete square for kids to run through, and the green lawn beyond hosted weekly events. Tonight, tall lamps illuminated the emptiness. Cold wind cut across the open space, and I drew my jacket tighter to my body. I brushed ineffectively at soot smudging the creamy fabric. To save money, I was going to buy only drab brown clothes from now on. Outside of cito duty, it seemed like every enforcer activity involved dirt—and me rolling in it.
One minute, Jamie walked beside me, head swinging to take in everything. The next, he slid out of his coat and yanked off his shirt, and a midnight-black Great Dane sprinted free of his jeans into the park.
“Wait—” I cut off my cry, glancing around. A little girl pointed and stared, tugging on her father’s sleeve, but she was the only person who’d witnessed Jamie’s transformation. I scooped up his dropped clothes and hustled after him, food sloshing in my stomach.
Jamie barked, running in circles on the concrete, pouncing and rolling on nothing. I slowed, blinking to Primordium. A stampede of imps surged from behind the post office across the street, bounding to the pooka. My lungs constricted. Not again! They swarmed Jamie, and the pooka barked with delight. Chinchilla-shaped bits of evil chased through the Great Dane’s legs, nipped at his hips and belly, and leapt to his back, tumbling down when Jamie rolled.
My feet took root. Imps were the smallest form of evil, born of pure atrum. They existed to feed on anybody they encountered and were as likely to try to swallow my pet wood as they were my ankle. They had no self-preservation and no rational thinking skills, yet they played with Jamie like real, thinking creatures.
Despite atrum layering his entire soul, Jamie didn’t feed the imps energy and, miraculously, none tried to feed on his soul, which meant all the imps remained smaller than Mr. Bond. After the initial swarm, no more imps appeared, and I relaxed my stranglehold on the bundle of clothing. Over forty imps clambered over my pooka—more than enough to tax me, but compared to the previous night’s endless stampede, the seething bundle of imps looked downright manageable.
My feet still didn’t move. Jamie raced back and forth across the concrete square, dodging between lampposts, a trail of imps bouncing after him. When he turned back toward them, the imps jumped him, disguising the Great Dane beneath their excited pile. Jamie broke free, tongue lolling, whirling eyes spinning with unmistakable delight.
I should have raced into the fray immediately. Clustered as they were, the imps were easy targets. But Jamie looked happy, so I stood there, hugging his borrowed clothes to my chest.
Niko’s warning surfaced. You need to be vigilant. More than one enforcer got too close to their pooka and lost perspective.
Exhaling heavily, I set the clothes on a bench and pulled the pet wood from my back pocket. With a flick of my wrist, I extended it to full length, then filled it with lux lucis. Trudging into the frolicking mass, I waved the long wand. Imps trailing at the back of the pack swiveled to face me. The pooka held untold allure, but I was closer. True to their nature, a handful charged me. I swiped the pet wood through their bodies, pulsing lux lucis into the wand in coordination with each strike. The imps disappeared in sparkles of atrum before they touched me.
Jamie circled me, and a dozen imps spun from him to attack me. More atrum glitter fell around my feet. Slowing, Jamie approached me at a trot, head cocked and a bundle of imps astride.
“You and I need to talk about where it’s appropriate to change,” I said, striving to remain neutral to his woeful expression. “For starters, never in public.”
He barked. Imps tumbled from him. Half tried to regain purchase while the others turned on me. This time, several managed to latch on to my soul before I disintegrated them. By the time the last of the imps abandoned Jamie, my movements were sloppy, my soul dim. The imps might have been small, and I’d gotten stronger, but I wasn’t strong enough to shrug off expending the volume of lux lucis necessary to wipe out that many imps.
Jamie trailed me from tree to tree until I’d topped off my lux lucis levels, and together we turned to face the empty square. Atrum coated the concrete where Jamie had run repeated figure eights. If the imps had made a single pass, they wouldn’t have deposited a noticeable trail, but the frequency combined with their excitement had built up a thin smear. I crouched, looped lux lucis through my palm, and set it rolling through the closest swath of atrum. Jamie bent his nose close to my hand, then licked my face before I could jump out of reach.
“Blech.” I swiped slobber onto my coat sleeve. “We need to discuss tongue boundaries, too.”
Jamie pranced to the next patch of atrum, his soul swirling with black and white energy again. His left paw turned pure white and whirled with energy. When he released it, lux lucis shot from his nails across the pavement. The long line stretched across the square, then spun like the hand of a clock with Jamie at the fulcrum. Lux lucis washed over my shoes, tickling me from my toes to my ankles. After one sweep, it winked out, leaving the square completely clean.
The lecture on the tip of my tongue withered. “You’re so going to have to show me how to do that.”
Jamie woofed.
We investigated the post office to see what had attracted so many imps in the first place. It backed up to the tip of Roseville’s rail yard, where three sets of tracks diverged into dozens. A heavy rumble announced the approach of a freight engine. When the engineer blasted the horn, Jamie jumped, tucking his tail and running to me. I patted a sa
fe patch of his side and pointed out the locomotive, and Jamie watched the train rumble past with a fascination that would have done Dad proud.
I kept looking for the source of the imps, finding a clue only when I turned to get Jamie’s attention: A faint trail of atrum bumped across the rails to the cluster of shops hugging the other side of the tracks.
Since we couldn’t hop the fence and follow the trail across the tracks, Jamie and I returned to the car, where Jamie changed while crouched next to the car and then dressed in the dark, and I surreptitiously provided cover from passersby. A few minutes later, and a few complaints about the uncomfortable constriction of jeans, and we were on our way.
“Why can’t I change in front of other people?” Jamie asked as we curved around the Oak Street roundabout and headed under the tracks on Washington Boulevard.
“Because it’ll frighten them and cause them to ask too many questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“They’ll want to know what you are and how you do it.”
“I’ll tell them I’m a pooka.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t know pookas exist.”
“They should.”
“Most people don’t know enforcers exist. Or vervet. Or prajurit. It’s better that way.”
“Why?”
“Because most people can’t see Primordium. What they don’t see, they don’t think exists.”
Jamie frowned. “Are you teasing me?”
“Nope.”
Divided from the rest of downtown’s shopping district by the tracks and bracketed by historic housing, this pocket of Roseville contained a handful of struggling mom-and-pop shops and a plethora of businesses typically not welcome elsewhere. In three short blocks, four bars, two nightclubs, and a hookah lounge mixed with tattoo parlors, a questionable hotel, and, oddly, two recording studios and an organic donut shop. In the early evening on a December weeknight, it looked like a ghost town.
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