by C. T. Aaron
Spark snorts and half-grins.
“She was coming here this morning but then she never came home. I’m really worried.”
“What portal?”
“Huh?”
“Portal. Doorway. Entry. Black hole. Whatever. Where did she come in at?”
“Oh!” I give him the crossroads of our high school.
“There has been a lot of activity over there all day,” Spark says.
“Yeah, I saw two guys coming out of there just before I came here.”
“Black guy and a white guy?”
“Yes!”
Spark puts his hands into his back pockets. “That was Richard and Eddie. Eddie’s been fighting in Alexander’s big meets for about a year now. Musta lost today finally. Probably dead.”
I try to get spit into my mouth. No luck. “Please. Can you help me find her?”
“She know anybody over here? This world?”
“Know anybody? No! How the hell would she—wait. This one guy. Oscar.”
Spark sucks in a sharp breath through his nose. “Oscar.”
“You know him? My age, maybe, pretty good looking?”
Spark walks to his lawn chair and table, speaking as he goes. “Oh, I know who Oscar is.”
I follow him. Spark lights a cigarette and blows smoke toward the ceiling. My guts twist like the rising smoke. “You think they’re together?”
“Oh, I’d say that’s pretty likely if she’s been gone this whole time.”
“Why? What are they doing? How do you know?”
My heart clenches tight as I think about Mae running off with that jackass. Why would she do something like to me? After the morning we’d had together squaring off with Ballcap and the principal and everything?
Spark blows more smoke. He gazes at me like I’m his little sister. “Lookit, kid. I don’t want to get into this, but trust me, it’s best if you just go home now.”
“No! Not until I know what’s going on! How do you know Oscar?”
Spark eases into the lawn chair, not meeting my eyes. He smokes for what seems like forever before finally saying, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but . . . she’s gonna die.”
SEVEN
Oddly, every muscle in my body relaxes. Honestly, I feel like I did before going after Ballcap in the hallway. Loose and ready to roll. Someone threatened Maebry? I’m not going to spend time threatening them back. I’m just going to end them.
“What did you just say?”
Spark taps ashes into the ashtray. “So this guy, Alexander. He’s a, uh . . . well technically I guess he’s not a criminal since I don’t know what laws he’d be breaking, but he’s not someone you want to cross. He runs most of the meets in the state. Well, ‘state’ being relative of course. But this is definitely his land, least as far as he’s concerned.”
“What’s that have to do with Oscar?”
“Oscar’s his kid. Wants to be like daddy someday. What kind of Fam’s your girl got?”
“A gargoyle, I guess.”
“Oh, yeah? Cool. Pretty big? Big as your dog?”
“At least. Bigger, I’d say.”
Spark nods like this does not surprise him. “That’s probably it, then. He made her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”
He says this last part in a different voice that I feel like I should recognize, from a movie maybe, but I can’t place it.
Also, I don’t care, because as he speaks, I remember how something about Oscar bothered me last night, beyond just being my girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend. Now I realize what it was:
He didn’t order anything. He came in, talked to us for a minute, and left.
Oscar didn’t just wander in off the street last night. He wasn’t there to get coffee and just so happened to run into Mae. He was there to test the waters with her, maybe even to cause friction between her and me, because he knew it might make her head to the mirror world. But she hadn’t been alone since then, not until we left school this morning.
Till I ran away. Till I didn’t come with her here.
This wasn’t random. Oscar set her up. Followed her. Maybe had been for awhile now.
“Son of a bitch,” I whisper.
Spark stamps out his smoke.
“Okay, so what’s that mean?” I say as my muscles tense again. “What’s he going to do with her?”
“Probably convinced her to fight in the big meet that’s coming up.”
“Convinced Mae? No. Sorry, no. You don’t know her. She would never, ever do something like that.”
“Maybe he’s got something on her. Or maybe he just threatened her.”
As I gape at him, Spark shakes his head and lights another cigarette.
“Don’t act all surprised, kid. This might be a whacked-out bizarro world, but it’s just as real as Earth. People do shitty things. People like Alexander and Oscar.”
“So she’s going to fight her Familiar, like in that arena? The one by where the I-10 would be?”
“That little two-bit place? Uh . . . sort of, but, you know. Bigger venue. And a little more . . . deadly.”
I stare at him. Spark climbs out of the chair.
“Alexander’s meets, the big ones, like the one he’s got coming up . . . they’re for keeps. To the death.”
For no particular reason, I turn and walk away from him, to the opposite end of the room, trying to process.
“But Mae said if your Fam dies, you die too.”
“That’s right.”
“So why would anyone do that?” I face him. “That doesn’t even make any sense!”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “Money.”
“I don’t believe you. For how much? There’s no way—”
“Half a million,” Spark snaps. “Three quarters. Maybe even a million.”
“No one’s going to risk their lives for—”
“I’m sorry, how old are you? Are you just now logging in to reality? People die for less than that all the time. Maybe they’re desperate, or maybe they just want the thrill. Eddie wasn’t fighting for money, Eddie liked being a big shot here. And it probably killed him.”
As my breath gets short in my lungs, Spark steps closer to me.
“And your girl,” he says, somewhat gently, “ten to one, is caught up in it. Which is why you should go home, right now, before you get caught up in it too.”
For a moment, all I can think about is how much I actually considered fighting with Ezzy for money. It makes me sick to think about now. Maebry’s been right all along—I don’t want to be like them.
But no time for a guilt trip now. I shake my body a little bit like Ezzy does.
“How do I find her?”
“You don’t. Lookit, if it was Oscar or any of Alexander’s guys, they know what they’re doing. They could just watch the portals, and if she comes through, they grab her. She’s already disappeared without a trace back on Earth. They don’t have to do a damn thing to throw people off track, she’s done it for them. Even assuming the cops track down any witnesses, no one’s going to say, ‘Oh, she probably hopped into that interdimensional portal, there, have you checked?’”
“Exactly! So now what? I need help!”
“Not sure what help I can give you.”
“Just tell me where the fight will be! Do you know that?”
Spark’s expression shifts, like I’m suddenly wearing different clothes or something. “I’m pretty sure where this one’s likely to go down tonight, yeah.”
“Tonight? How can you even tell when nighttime is in this place?”
He holds up his left forearm. He wears a big gold watch.
I roll my eyes. “Okay, yeah, but how’s it work? I thought all electronics got scrambled here.”
“Not all. And this winds up. Clocks and watches used to do that. You know. In days of yore?”
I bite back more sarcasm; I don’t have time for it. “Will you take me there? To this meet?”
“Oh, hell no.”
“What?”<
br />
Spark returns to his camping table and lights his third cigarette. “Sorry, kid, I am not in the taxi business. I’ll tell you where to go if you really want to know, but that is it. You don’t mess with guys like Alexander. I don’t want to use words like ‘organized crime,’ but, oops, I just did.”
I step over to him. “I don’t give a single shit who he is, I just want my girlfriend back!”
Spark blows smoke into the air, away from my face. “And how do you plan on doing that?”
“I’ve got my Fam!”
“Yeah, and he’s a big one, but Alexander’s got a lot more firepower than that.”
“What, guns?”
“Guns, Fams, henchmen. He’s a regular comic book Big Bad.” Spark puts a hand on my shoulder. “Lookit, you got guts and that’s great, but I gotta tell ya, I don’t see much hope for you here. Any chance your girl can fight?”
My head droops. “She said it’s like a video game. You can control your Fam?”
“More or less, yeah. Can she?”
Can Mae fight? No. Her entire worldview is based on nonviolence, on not fighting. If it was to protect someone else, sure, maybe. This? No way.
I lift my head. “No, she can’t. Not even close. What am I supposed to do, call the cops?”
“Well, you could, but then they’d lock you up for a psych eval, at best.”
I take his hand off me, but hold it in both of mine. “Please. Ezzy must have brought me here because he thought you were a good guy. I’ve only been in this world once before, and that wasn’t for very long. You’ve got to know more than just where to find them.”
Spark eyes me, takes a puff from his cigarette, blows it out. Then he pulls out from my grasp and turns away, like he’s thinking. So I shut up and just watch.
“You like football?” Spark says out of nowhere.
“Not particularly.”
“You know Cardinals’ Stadium, though, right?”
I shrug so he’ll have to turn around and look at me, only he doesn’t.
“Out in Glendale where you come from,” Spark says, his back still to me. “That’s where they’ll have it.”
“The meet?”
“Yep.” Sighing, he finally turns. “Lookit, I decided to live here full time because I couldn’t hack it anymore where you come from. From—there. I go in every so often to stock up on stuff, but that’s it. I’m here specifically to stay out of trouble, and this little quest you’re on is the polar opposite of that.”
He goes to the ashtray and stubs out the smoke.
“Problem is, that’s twenty-odd miles from here,” Spark goes on. I can’t tell if he’s talking to himself or what. “Twenty miles here isn’t the same thing as Earth. Uber isn’t exactly running a hot business here. You’d be on foot, you and your Fam. A marathoner can make 26 miles in as little as three hours, but you’re not a marathoner, and this ain’t Earth as you know it—”
“I run cross country,” I interrupt.
Spark pauses, then smirks. “Cross country, huh? Yeah, well, I don’t think you’ve crossed a country quite like this.”
I can’t argue with that.
“A lot can go wrong between here and there, never mind what’s likely to happen to you once you did get there, and let me emphasize, that’s if you did.”
He picks up another cigarette. “Ten to one, no one even knows you’re here, right?”
I shift my weight from foot to foot. Not much point in lying. “No.”
Spark lights his smoke, not saying anything more.
“Will you please help me?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But why?” God, I sound a like a baby. But so what. Spark’s convinced me that Maebry is about to get freaking murdered, but he won’t man up and help out?
He studies the glowing tip of the cigarette. “Because I don’t feel like getting killed. And that’s what you’re asking to do, kid. Believe me.”
I don’t try to stop a sneer. “You’re a dick.”
Spark looks up.
“You know this stuff goes on, and you just sit here smoking and . . . whatever else it is you do here. Why don’t you stop it?”
He takes a slow drag, and gives a slow exhale. “The United States bombs innocent civilians in foreign countries, did you know that?”
“I don’t know, I guess.”
“Why don’t you stop it? Bad parents get drunk and beat their kids, did you know that?” He gives me no time to answer: “Why don’t you stop it? Do you want a list of all the heinous stuff that happens in the world? Any world? What did you do to stop any of it? Probably nothing. Probably you were more worried about Snapchat or boy bands or whatever else it is you do there.”
He shakes his head at me.
“If you want my help, my help is to tell you to go home. I’m sorry your girl got into this, but there ain’t shit-all you can do about it. Sorry.”
“Yeah, you sound it. Suck off.” I beeline to the front door and throw it open.
Ezzy lifts his head, blinking.
“I know where she is. We’re on our own, let’s go.”
I climb onto Ezzy’s back just as Spark pulls the door open again. He stays on his side of the threshold.
“You know where it is?” he calls.
“West,” I snarl back at him.
“So, roughly that way?” He points to his right.
“Yeah, roughly, so what.”
“You got a compass? Map? Gonna follow the sun? Street signs?”
Ezzy stands tall and I grip his scruff. Spark’s right, of course. The arena is west from here, I know that much, but nothing else. Even if we could make twenty miles in three hours, it’s probably going to be twice that or more with no real sense of direction. There’s no sun to follow, I don’t have a compass or a map, and street signs are few and far between from what I’ve seen.
“I don’t know. All I know is I’m not giving up.”
Spark stares at me, and I can’t read his expression. I stare back, trying to make myself appear defiant.
What I really am is scared and hopeless, but I don’t want him to think that.
“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” Spark says. “Sit tight for a sec.”
He goes inside, but comes back a minute later wearing an expensive gray hiking backpack. His gun is strapped to his waist on a black belt. He jogs down the steps and lifts a plain black canvas backpack.
He nods at Ezzy. “He want to carry us both?”
Ezzy growls.
“No,” I say. Yeah, he’s a big dog, but the two of us would weigh more than two hundred pounds, at a guess. I couldn’t ask him to try that.
“Then hop off,” Spark says. “If I’m walking, you’re walking.”
I slide off Ezzy’s back and take the canvas pack. I grunt with surprise when I slide it over my shoulder.
“What’s in this?”
“With any luck, stuff that will keep us alive,” Spark says, not sounding very hopeful about that prospect. He turns to look at the roof, and a second later, the big-ass spider clambers soundlessly off the house, coming to rest behind Spark. It still terrifies me, but it’s good to know she belongs to Spark. He stares at her for a moment, then the spider climbs away to the west.
“Can you communicate with her without speaking? I have to talk out loud.”
“No, I control her. Just like you can control yours if you want to.”
“I don’t want to.”
He shrugs. “That’s cool. It wasn’t a suggestion. I just gave her a boost to get going is all. She’ll scout for us. Betty can’t see well, but her other senses are top of the line.”
“You named her Betty?”
“Sure, why not? You named yours, right?”
“Ezzy, yeah.”
“Nice to meetcha, Ezzy. You ready for this?”
“You’re serious,” I say. “You’re really going to take me there.”
“I’ll take you as far as I feel like I can without getti
ng killed, yeah. That might be a block, or a mile, or right up to the front gate. It all depends. We should get going. Follow me, and be quiet.”
I nod quickly. Spark lights a new cigarette and shoves the lighter into his jeans pocket. He’s wearing hiking boots now, but still no shirt.
“This is gonna hurt,” he sighs, and after adjusting his pack, starts heading down the dirt road.
Ezzy and I trade glances, then follow after him.
Ezzy turns his big golden eyes to me. I scratch behind his ear.
“Yeah, Big Dog, I’m scared too.”
EIGHT
Spark leads us down the dirt road and turns west, or what would be west in the real world.
“Does this place have a name?” I ask, jogging to catch up with him. Ezzy stays behind me, swinging his head back and forth to look for danger. I don’t see Betty anywhere, and that’s fine with me.
“Not that I know of.” Spark smokes with his left hand, his right hand resting on the handle of his gun.
“I feel like it should have a name.”
“Lots of things here don’t have names. You planning on staying?”
“No.”
“Then don’t worry about it.”
The way he says it, he doesn’t really want to talk. But I’m way too keyed up to keep quiet. If Mae was here with me, then I could shut up. She calms me down.
God, where is she right now? What are they doing to her?
“Why do you stay here?” Talking about anything is better than worrying about Maebry right now.
“Lookit, I’m not here to make friends, all right?” Spark glances around at the half-completed or half-destroyed structures dumped into the landscape around us.
“Sorry.”
But then after a minute of silence, Spark crushes out his cigarette into the dirt and says, “I felt safer here. Not, like, in general, because this is a dangerous place, not sure you picked up on that.”
“I did.”
“Yeah, well, it’s still better than where I used to live.”
“Oh. Like, the hood?”
“Uh . . . Scottsdale. North Scottsdale. So, no. Racist.”
“Sorry.”
He grins. “Kidding.”
“Wait, North Scottsdale? Was that your house we were in?”
