by Sara Hanover
A singleton can remained on the fridge shelf, so we split it, and he helped me transfer ice from the garage to the kitchen. Then he watched solemnly as I located two containers for tea, big glass canisters. His eyes widened as I put them out on the kitchen counter.
“Church potlucks,” I said to him. “Thirsty crowds. Same difference as one of those big punch bowls.”
“Ah.”
“I can’t talk long. My meals should be here soon for distribution.” I shucked my wrist brace and began boiling water for tea and syrup.
Brian wandered through, a tool belt fastened low around his hips. He grinned and grabbed a tomato from a basket, washed it and walked back, sinking his teeth into it. We both lifted an eyebrow at that. Steptoe, as I went through the rooms to count heads, could not be seen anywhere. Somehow I hadn’t expected him to be found anywhere near hard labor.
I eyed Carter. “Did you know my dad was here?”
“No, not a hint, either at the department or the Society.” He paused. “We have your Aunt April on our radar, but she lives on the other side of town, even though she owns this property, too.”
I perked an eyebrow. “Whose radar? And why?”
“Society. April has a modicum of talent.”
“What?” I skewed around to face him in astonishment.
He shrugged. “Nothing noticeable to the average person. Not even enough to qualify as a hedge witch, per se, but she has luck. Good fortune. Enough that she’s listed as an attractor.”
I tried to imagine Great-Aunt April as attracting anything but couldn’t. In fact, it made my head hurt. “Interesting.”
“Yes, particularly that she gambles a lot.”
Another startling reveal. Did it run in my father’s heritage? “Really?”
“Absolutely. We think that’s part of what started your father on his own streak. Luck, however, never holds.”
I rubbed at the stone again. He looked at my hand.
“It bothers you.”
“No kidding.” That, and hearing family secrets I’d had no idea about. I decided to shrug it off by going back to work. I headed back to the tea-making after counting five heads in addition to Hiram and Brian: one bald-headed dwarf, two gingers, and two more seal-brown, albeit with very high foreheads. They all shouted and gave me a wave as I told them cold drinks were on the way shortly. They’d taken up the entirety of the mudroom floor except the extreme edges, which held some built-in shelves, and seemed to me to be demolishing everything rather than repairing, but they were the experts. I just prayed Aunt April wouldn’t show up unexpectedly and have a heart attack at the construction. Two batches brewing, I stood back and crossed my arms, no longer certain I really wanted to hear. “Tell me more.”
“I want to wait for Mary.”
“There are some things I’d just as soon she not know. It’s not like she doesn’t have enough to worry about.” Despite all the repair noise, I lowered my voice. “It reacts now and then, I just don’t know why. Or what to do about it.” Even as I said it, I reflected in relief that it stayed quiet around him, unlike my pulse.
“How?”
“It sparks. Gets heated. Sends me a shooting pain. I feel like one of those voodoo dolls sometimes.”
Carter rubbed his brow in a tired, futile way.
“Don’t tell me. Not good.”
“No, not that. Well, yes, sort of, but—” He pulled up a kitchen chair and sat in it, sucking on the ice cubes left in his emptied glass. “It can be used for defense, from what I’ve read, and it might be reacting to a perceived threat. What were you doing at the time?”
I thought of Joanna. Slim, graceful, smart, and quick, and probably able to down me with some kind of Japanese martial arts, but would she? Seriously? “Just stuff.” I shook my head in dismissal. “What else?”
“It responds to chaos. Feeds on it, it’s believed, but no one is quite sure about that. It’s possible it feeds on other energies and then creates chaos.”
“Wun-der-ful.” The tea held a good color now, so I lined up mason jars and filled them with ice and drink, put them on a tray, and took them out to deliver them. The crew emptied the jars in two gulps, so I made seconds and set the tray on a safe part of the living room floor, hopefully not destined for demolition, so they could reach them.
We sat on the top step upstairs with our own sweet teas, and I finally felt quenched. Carter took my hand and laid it open on his knee to examine the stone.
“It is beautiful,” he said reluctantly.
“I think it is. I saw marble counters like this in Evelyn’s home and loved them. All the rich caramels and gold sparks, and the brown and even the ebony swirled up with the ivory. Looks like a really good ice cream.”
Carter laughed.
“Of course, I could break my teeth on it.” I curled my fingers up, hiding the maelstrom.
“Is there training for it?”
“Does it come with a manual? Not that I could tell.”
I thought of the pamphlet Steptoe had recovered from the professor’s library. “You might be wrong on that.”
“I can be wrong on nearly everything. I can find out more, but in doing so, the Society is going to notice the questions I’m asking, and they will not hesitate to contact you.”
“Put me under dungeon arrest?”
“Maybe.”
He ducked his head as I punched him lightly in the shoulder. I know I couldn’t have hurt him—there were muscles galore there.
“So there’s no real good news and bad news.”
“Some bad news.”
“Then tell me.”
“The stone probably isn’t going to leave you as long as you’re alive.”
“Oh.” I blinked. “So if anybody wants to take it from me . . .”
“Exactly.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“OF COURSE,” Carter added, “there is another scenario. The stone uses you for whatever it wants, and then it moves on by itself.”
That didn’t take away the sudden chill at the back of my neck at my imagined vision of the wreckage left in its wake. “It—it can do that?”
“Historically, that’s exactly what it’s done. It’s far more likely to choose its next partner than it is to be acquired. It has a mind of its own.”
“I don’t want to be the chosen one.” I felt as though I’d been trapped in a hobbity storyline.
He looked like he wanted to take hold of my hand again but didn’t reach for it. “No. The only good thing about it is, you’ve found your father.”
“Sort of. He doesn’t think he’s dead, but he doesn’t know. Brian and Steptoe think he might be transitioning or caught between this place and another dimension. Do you have to be dead to do that?”
“Not all the time.”
“What could have forced him between?”
“No way of knowing, but if we could find out, then we’d have a better idea how to get him back. Or.” He stopped.
“Help him go forward.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
I twisted my fingers together. “You didn’t have to, because it stands to reason he can’t just hang where he is. We have to find a way to get him free, and that means going forward if that’s what it takes, right? It’s not like I haven’t already thought of him as dead these past few years anyway. But, if we have to do that, I don’t know how I’m going to explain it to my mom.” My words choked up in my throat and I stopped talking because I ached and my voice went mute on me. He still didn’t take my hand back in his, but he leaned against me a little. His body was both strong and warm, and I drew comfort from it. I glared at my hand in case the stone started sparking but it didn’t. If Carter Phillips were dangerous, the stone was not reacting.
That didn’t stop me from thinking he was dangerous, just a different
sort of threat than the stone might sense.
“You might be about telling ’er the whole truth.”
I twisted about, to see Steptoe standing in the shadowed end of the upstairs hallway, stepping out of the darkness as if he’d manifested himself there, rather than coming in the front door like everyone else. He walked toward us, snapping a rolled-up paper in one hand against the other. Carter’s jaw tightened.
“That’s the truth as far as I know it.”
“No, it ain’t, and don’t let him tell you it is, ducks.” Steptoe lowered himself to sit, not quite next to us, but back against the corner of the hallway.
“Maybe I haven’t had access to the same sources you have.” Carter pointed at the rolled-up paper.
“Well, now that might be a bit true, although I would think your lot had a copy or two of this in its study, eh? Maybe you just weren’t allowed to see it.”
Carter made a muffled noise, rather like a muted snort.
I craned my head at Steptoe. “What truth would that be?”
He eyed me solemnly. “It’s possible the man you greeted as your father is not him. We know Malender can project if he gathers enough power, rather than greet us in person, like. Maybe he’s stretching his influence here.”
I made a funny sound from deep in my throat, words that stuck and wouldn’t come out.
“How would he even know anything about John Graham Andrews? Why would you be telling her something like that, Simon?”
“Because it’s the truth.” He sighed. “Not that I ain’t above twistin’ it now and then to my advantage, but Tessa ’ere has been nothing but kind to me. After our first meeting. I call us friends. It’s not like that with most folks, is it? You can’t call just anybody your mates.” He unrolled the pamphlet. “The stone is chaos. Not lawful or unlawful, just simple chaos. It can reach for whatever it wishes and who’s to say that it didn’t jump into our girl here because that one ordered it to?” He underlined a paragraph with his finger as he spoke. “Says ’ere it doesn’t ’ave to be attached to do its user’s bidding.”
“One would have to be very strong in using magical energy.” Carter’s voice went flat.
“Oh, and our guy wouldn’t be? C’mon.” Steptoe poked him in the chest with his pamphlet.
Carter put a hand up as if to snatch it before stopping, and his gaze never left the pamphlet. I could almost feel the itch in his fingers to grab it.
“Wot? Got to see it yourself? Here then.” He pushed the fragile missive forward.
Carter spread it out carefully and began to read. I watched his face, my throat still a bit knotted up from that momentary jump of fear. I felt it melt away entirely as I took note of his lips moving slightly while he read. The schoolboy concentration rounded some of the hard edges off him.
“So,” Steptoe said, as he hooked his arms about his knees companionably. “I heard you got exposed while you were in th’ Middle East. What’s that about? Got a touch of the djinn, did you?”
“I don’t talk about it.”
“Never? Now that’s a right injustice, that is. People want to know. I want to know.”
Carter turned his head slowly to meet Steptoe’s stare.
“It’s private.”
“Sure, and I wouldn’t wonder, ’cause it puts you on the same rung as me. Your power is just as chancy as it can be, init?”
“If it came from a djinn.” Carter turned back to his paragraph. “It did not.”
“Well, that’s wot you might say, right?”
Carter grabbed him. Then he took up my hand. “I don’t talk about it, but I’ll show you.”
In the blink of an eye, we stood in a desert. That wink hit me in the gut with a whirling sensation that made me think my head might pop off, but deposited me neatly on my feet under a velvet, starlit sky. Sand crunched under my sneakers. Dry air reached down and tried to suck my breath away the way only a desert could.
Nighttime had cooled it down but not all the way, never all the way I was guessing, and the desert held sandy dunes and far away, dun-colored hills. The silence—so complete. I realized that the city I inhabited buzzed crazily with noise, barely heard but always there, intruding, and here—nothing but the sound of our breathing. Out here, nothing distorted or took the stars’ shine away. They hung, crystal clear and in force, overhead. I felt a sense of awe and knew why early man must have seen godlike forces in them, fates that operated for and against us, the ordinary. The night began to fade and lift. The sand we inhabited looked almost pink, its hue coming from the sun on the horizon as it started to crown, and far away misty shreds of cloud and night pulled away. I lifted my face to the sun and felt as many had before, I’m certain, awe and fear of the power shifting to the sky. The sun brought life. It chased away fear. It could also melt you down into a mere greasy spot on the ground. As it rose, I could feel its beams angle across my body, draining away hopelessness and cold.
Carter spoke, his voice wrapping around me. “I died in Afghanistan. Under attack, trying to save what I could of our patrol, but my buddy and I, we got hit. Hard. I woke in Egypt.”
This was Egypt? Woah. I wanted to see the Sphinx. The pyramids. The great museum in Cairo. I twitched with all the wants. Then I caught what he’d said. “You . . . died?”
“I did. Maybe just for a second or two, but I died. And when I opened my eyes again, I was here. Cradled in Amel’s elbow, he on his knees in pain. We were bathed in sunlight.”
“You were gifted by Ra?” Steptoe murmured.
“My buddy was Egyptian-American. He brought us here. It took less than a heartbeat, and then I felt myself breathing—and bleeding—again. He didn’t move. He held me in what was . . . I don’t have words for it . . . a corona of sunlight. And blessing. And an otherworldly interest, as if we’d caught the attention of something so vast, there were no words available. Another blast of sun-heat and we were back in Afghanistan, with the med-evac chopper landing next to us. I made it. He didn’t.”
But the rest of his patrol had, too. That had been the whole hero incident for which we knew him when he came back home to Richmond.
“As bright as the sun is, it casts mighty shadows.”
Carter took a deep breath, echoed by Steptoe. I think I kept holding my breath until something growled at me, from behind.
“Don’t look back.” Carter’s fingers tightened about mine.
My stone grew very warm in my left hand, but Carter couldn’t know that as he held tight to my right. I didn’t want to look, but neither did I want to have my spine ripped out of my body by whatever growled back there. Without more thought than that, I began to turn my head. Sand crunched under a stealthy footfall or paw step.
Carter pulled us close into his hold and the scene whirled again, going absolutely black, and sending my stomach into a whirlpool before our feet thudded down on carpet and we were home again. Sitting, even, on the stairs.
I wanted to tell him how awesome it looked and felt, but my stomach revolted. I pitched to my feet and barely made it down the hall in time.
When I came back, wiping my mouth and cringing at the taste of mouthwash, Steptoe and Carter were more or less ignoring each other at the top of the stairs. I knew why the two of them sulked: Steptoe thought he’d had an ally even if Carter didn’t want to be one; Carter didn’t like having his secrets pried out of him. Of course, maybe the prowler at our backs had been more in sync with Carter than he wanted us to know. Bright sun, dark shadows. Sounded rather chaotic to me, so maybe Steptoe was right after all. The lesser demon would know all about the flip side to good things. Carter wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, naturally.
I sat down. “That can’t be all that happened.”
“Well, no. But I won’t talk about the rest. It’s different for each and every one of us, unless you’re born into it.”
“Was Brian born into i
t, you think? The professor, I mean.”
“I couldn’t say. He’s not talked about much, except for now, of course, with all that’s been going on around him. I won’t even venture to say how much power his last incarnation had or didn’t have, though I know his influence could have been great.”
“Could have been?”
“He refused to play politics. Said it demeaned all those who should have been working toward a common cause. It’s one of the reasons Remy left him. She thought he was both impractical and arrogant. She is ambitious. Some would say too much so.”
I considered my professor. Impractical, sometimes—but arrogant? No. If I would put that label on anyone, I’d put it on her first. So maybe she’d wanted to rise through the ranks to become, what, Imperial Overall Wizard or something? Would that have given her more power? Or did power come out of study and learning, not greedy acquisition? I had no way of knowing. “So how does one go up the ladder? Is there one?”
“Yes, and no. There are always those who like to lead, but they’re not necessarily the most powerful in the Society when it comes to their personal magic. Sometimes the detail oriented and the diplomatic are more valuable. And then there’s the Enforcers.”
“Enforcers?”
“Right up your alley, eh guv?”
Carter sniffed. “Not me, unless I’ve been cornered into it. Frankly, I’ve little time for the Society. I’m building a career here that is important to me, and they know they’re on the backburner as far as I’m concerned. They helped place me here, but had no idea how much I wanted to be where I am. So they’ve lost a bit of their hold on me.”
“You’ll boil that pot when you come to it?”
“Exactly. Which reminds me.” He gathered himself. “I’ve got chores waiting at home.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Clothes don’t get cleaned and pressed on their own.”
“You can’t wave a wand?”
He nudged me. “Say good night, Tessa.”
