She glanced back at the DHS cop, who still stood, filled with swagger, on the concrete. She took his measure, just as the brujas had taken her measure earlier. And this time? She definitely found him wanting.
She slowly stood and brushed the soil from her hands. Staring right at him, she cocked her fingers into a Y-shape and pointed them his way, not so he would notice, but enough so that the elements and the spirits around paid heed.
“We’re coming for you, pendejo,” she whispered. “For you and your friends. And when you least expect it, we’re going to strike you down.”
She flicked her fingers and released her intention, sending it winging toward the emblem patch sewn onto the left side of his uniform, hovering near his heart.
24
Jack
After explaining his plan to Olivia, who had heartily agreed with it, Jack had texted Lucy, who said she would meet him, just give her a place.
So here they were, in the stately Victorian dining room of the Lebanese place near Brenda’s shop on Hawthorne, digging into lamb, and tabouli fragrant with parsley.
He was keeping himself busy, shoveling hummus onto a still-warm, fresh-baked piece of pita bread that was a far cry from the sorry ass dried-out husks of his childhood store-bought pita. Plus, the hummus was made with the world’s most delicious olive oil.
He glanced across the table. Lucy looked tired.
“Hey, you okay?”
She shrugged, then took a sip of water, gazing into the ice cubes that filled the glass, before setting it down with a thunk. The music was quiet. Jack could just make out a stringed instrument—was it called an oud?—and drums.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
Lucy took a bite of lamb and chewed for a while before taking another sip of water. She cleared her throat.
“I feel like I’m getting into trouble,” she said. “I’m…I don’t know, I’m just angry. Pissed off and exhausted. And while I want to believe that the coven and everyone else will rally, and maybe even save the day, I also feel like this time it’s all too big for us to take on.”
Her dark eyes peered into him as if looking for some answers she didn’t have. He knew he didn’t have them, either.
“I think we may have bitten off more than we can chew, you know? I mean, the other stuff we’ve done? Helping the houseless people with the police sweeps, taking on Caroline’s dick of an ex-husband, even fighting the local fascists…” She lowered her voice. “But this? We’re taking on the US government.”
The final words were almost a whisper.
Jack knew how she felt. He also knew there was something she wasn’t telling him, but he figured she would, in her own time. He had his own secrets, and frankly, if it weren’t for the new energy influx from that God, Lugh, he would’ve tucked his tail and run by now. Speaking of, he felt the pressure of a hand on his shoulder, lending him more strength, and a message began to push its way up from his subconscious. Jack straightened in his chair and let the words come. The words that Lucy needed to hear. Not his words, but words he could deliver nonetheless.
“Nothing is ever certain,” he said, “and we know that. I’m sure you would be the first to tell me that. But we also need to do everything we can, throw our whole weight behind this. Because that long arc won’t bend toward justice if we don’t. And the promise of justice is all we have right now.”
Lucy sat back in her chair, a slight grin touching her lips, not quite a smile. Not yet.
“Well, listen to you. I never thought I’d see the day when you would talk like that.”
Jack was suddenly self-conscious, and he felt his ears grow warm. Dammit. They were probably pink on the tips, which only increased his sense of embarrassment.
“Not my words,” he mumbled.
Understanding lit up Lucy’s eyes. She licked her lips and nodded.
“Lugh?” she asked
Jack nodded back.
That did get a real smile out of her, if only for a second. “Pretty weird, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He scooped up some more hummus, then cleared his throat. “Do the witches have a plan?”
“Getting there,” Lucy replied. “How about you?”
He nodded as he chewed and swallowed.
“I can’t talk about much of it, of course, or I’d have to kill you.” He smiled. “But I want to see what you think about this one part.”
Lucy shoveled some more food in her mouth.
“I had this idea…. A way to bust through something. You know the recordings of the children crying in the camps?”
Lucy nodded and waved for him to go on.
“I want to make a loop of that,” he said. “And I want to loop it in and out with sounds of gunfire, and women screaming, and buildings on fire. And I want to loop it in and out with other children’s voices saying Mama, Daddy; I want the sounds to be a knife twisting in every person’s gut. I want these fuckers to pay.”
Jack felt a little surprised at his own vehemence. But it was all true.
Lucy set her fork down, her skin two shades paler than usual. She leaned forward, just slightly, face intent. “And you can broadcast this?”
He leaned even closer, getting ready to whisper across the table. “We think we can get it onto every computer in the DHS.”
They both sat back and picked up their forks again. Jack forked up some tabouli, and started wishing he’d ordered a beer with dinner. This was way more intense than he expected.
Nah. Better lay off the beer for a while.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Lucy said, after a few minutes of concentrating on her food. “That’ll be perfect. Just perfect for what we’re planning.”
Jack felt warm inside. He realized it wasn’t only from her approval, but from the sense that he was finally part of something important. Something real.
They got through the rest of the meal by talking about nonsense, knowing they couldn’t discuss anything else despite their minds being preoccupied. Finally, after the waiter had cleared their plates, Lucy looked up at him again.
“So, that thing you brought up the other day… Why did it never work out between us?” She held up a hand. “Don’t get me wrong, I was pissed off at you the other day, and still feel pretty annoyed…but I’m willing to hear you out, at least.”
Jack’s stomach clenched, but he inhaled and felt that steadying hand on his shoulder again.
“Because I was afraid,” he said. “I was afraid of everything, Lucy. And that included getting close to you.”
“And now?”
He slid his hands across the half-empty table, waiting. She looked from his hands to his face to his hands again. He saw when she made the decision, and gently placed her warm hands over his, wincing slightly.
“Hand still hurting?”
“Just a little. I’ll be fine.”
Jack leaned forward again, staring at her lips, Lucy moved forward too. It was as if a string connected them, drawing them closer.
He looked into her eyes and found that she was looking back, and just for a second, for one brief lovely moment, their lips met.
The kiss was warm, tasting of hummus, and Lucy, and there, just around the edges, the taste of possibility.
Then Lucy broke the kiss.
“Too much,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m not there yet. No way are we there yet.”
“However long it takes is fine,” he said. “I know I’ve got more explaining to do, and a lot to make up for. But I’m going to try.”
But instead of sounding like rejection or refusal, that one word of hers, “yet,” filled his ears with the sound of promise.
The promise that there just might be more to come.
25
Lucy
It was midday on Saturday, and there was much to do. But Lucy was restless and angry. Her hands still itched and tingled, though luckily the scrapes were healing. Her hands and her restless feet brought her downtown for some reason.
&
nbsp; Downtown on a Saturday just before lunch might have been pleasant. There was more space on the sidewalks than during the week, and with barely a trace of smoke in the air, by all accounts, it was a beautiful day.
If only she could enjoy it.
Lucy walked past some lunchgoers and people heading toward the museum. She walked through the little string of park blocks heading toward City Hall. The terra cotta rotunda gleamed in the summer sun and the sight of it made Lucy feel ill.
“Collaborators,” she muttered to herself. Every last one of them. Oh, the mayor talked a good game about being a sanctuary city and had even pledged to not allow the police force to work with ICE and the DHS. But the clearing of the camp had proved that was all a lie.
And so did the cops that had begun following Lucy around.
Yeah, she thought. She’d only figured that out after dinner last night when she saw headlights behind her as she made her way home. When she exited her truck, the Portland Police Bureau car sped past her, gunning its engine. As if she wouldn’t notice it was there otherwise.
Someone dogged her steps today, and she had already been passed by two bicycle cops who slowed down and stared at her before moving on to harass two houseless people who’d been slow in packing up their camp. But mostly? She could feel eyes on her back. As if someone was always there.
Shrugging, she walked out of the shaded park and crossed toward the rotunda, squinting at the sudden burst of sunlight. Chalked messages surrounded the building, a bright rainbow of colors on the pale, gray-white sidewalks. We welcome immigrants, one message read. Children deserve homes, not cages, read another. There were messages in Spanish, English, and Arabic.
A small, ragged bunch of people sat on the rotunda steps, already sweating, sharing coffee and water and a giant box of doughnuts. Lucy greeted the ones she remembered from camp, but didn’t stop. Instead, she entered the shade of the rotunda facing the triple sets of glass doors that led to the metal detectors just inside the building. In the past, Lucy had haunted city council meetings or met with her council members, but she wasn’t going inside today. Today she was interested in the building itself.
Lucy took a deep breath and spread her boots to shoulder width, anchoring herself. She needed all the support she could get. It probably wasn’t even safe for her to be here, considering she was on the radar of the Department of Homeland Security, and yeah, being followed by Portland cops. But her hands and her heart had led her here and every fiber of her being told her she needed to do this work. And the Goddess, Tonantzin, still burned like a halo around her head.
Lucy just had to hope that the comrades from the former Abolish ICE encampment would warn her if anything was about to happen.
You know they’ll have your back, she thought, allowing herself to close her eyes, to settle deeper into her center, the witch’s core of power. Only then did she open up the energy centers in the palms of her hands. She reached into the stone, seeking out the support of the building, the symbol of Portland’s city government. And she breathed.
A whispering of voices filled her head. She couldn’t quite make out the words, and just forced herself to relax and let them flow.
Then voices from the physical world intruded.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
“Leave her alone! She’s just standing there!”
The warring voices snapped Lucy back to attention. Luckily she hadn’t gone too deep yet, so there wasn’t the queasy vertigo she’d gotten at the ICE building. She whispered a thanks to the building, patted the column, then turned. One of the ICE Breakers—a young, gender queer person with tufts of yellow hair sticking out on their head, and a ring piercing their nose—glared at a cop from green eyes.
The cop was a white man in a Portland Police Bureau uniform. His close-cropped hair looked almost like one of those haircuts the young fascists loved, not quite as long on top, though. His head snapped from the younger person to Lucy, back and forth, trying to decide who was the bigger threat, and who he needed to deal with first.
Lucy flicked her eyes to the young ICE Breaker. “Thanks, comrade.”
Then she turned her attention to the cop.
“I don’t know why you’re following me,” she said. “I’m just a Portland resident, coming to visit a building I help pay for.”
The cop stepped toward her and squared off. “You’ve been messing around a lot of city buildings lately, haven’t you?”
Lucy crossed her arms over her chest and rocked back on her heels. “Where I go isn’t really any of your business.”
“I think it is,” he said, taking another step forward.
The low, simmering anger that had filled Lucy for the past several days boiled through her, shifting into rage. Her hands became fists, and an angry flood of spittle filled her mouth. Wanting to spit at his feet so badly, Lucy forced herself to swallow.
She saw his hand twitch, just in reach of his baton….
“Leave her alone, man!” Three other ICE Breakers had joined the first beneath the rotunda. They wouldn’t let her be arrested without a fight.
“Excuse me, sir.” A new voice. Alejandro.
“Lucy! I’m sorry I’m late.” Alejandro stepped between Lucy and the cop, dressed as usual in a neat button-down shirt, pale pink today, and dress slacks. He addressed the cop.
“My friend was just waiting for me; I had a business appointment around the corner. We are just going to lunch.”
The air beneath the rotunda was thick with tension, and everyone stood frozen, staring, waiting for either action or dispersal.
“You should tell your friend to watch herself,” the cop finally said.
“I’ll do that,” Alejandro replied. The cop turned on his heel and left.
“Hey,” said the young ICE Breaker, “you okay?”
“Yeah,” Lucy nodded. “Thanks for stepping up. All of you. I appreciate it.”
“Any time, comrade.” They loped back to where two of their members guarded the water and signs, followed by their friends, snagged a doughnut from the box, and sat back down as if nothing had happened.
Alejandro stared at Lucy. She could tell he was pissed.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked. “We talked about you not going rogue. You’re putting the whole operation at risk. You need to discipline yourself!”
Lucy looked at him and then at the ground, shaking. She took in a big, shuddering breath, pushing air all the way out to the edges of her skin. Then she shook her hands out again, trying to release the anger and tension.
Looking up at her coven mate, she said, “I can’t stop, Alejandro. You’re probably right. But I just can’t. The magic…”
“We can’t talk here,” he said, then turned on his heel and clicked away.
She stood in the shade of the rotunda, sounds of conversations of people, cars, and crows filtering toward her ears, looking at Alejandro’s well-pressed shirt and the curved dome of his head.
Lucy knew that he was right to be worried, and angry even. She was acting like a fool, but whatever compulsion she was under wouldn’t let her stop.
The Goddess had given her a charge, and Lucy’s magic had responded. And by all the powers in all the worlds, she would damn well see this through.
Alejandro paused and looked back, waiting.
Lucy exhaled, then walked out into the August sunshine and followed.
26
Jack
The North Portland Park was a sea of people.
Children shrieked from the playground area as a group of parents talked, keeping an eye on their offspring while catching up on neighborhood gossip. Over at the tables beneath the elm trees, people set up for their Saturday picnics. Two teenagers played Frisbee with a dog, laughing uproariously.
And Jack? Jack, unbelievably to himself, was in the middle of a bunch of sweating activists, learning techniques for blockading and dealing with the possibility of arrest. A group of about fifty people gathered on the grass
, going through drills, while a smaller group in wheelchairs and scooters practiced on a basketball court nearby. A few of the wheelchair brigade wore “Fatties Against Fascism” and “Crips Smash the Fash” T-shirts, which made him grin.
He’d been all set up to meet again with Olivia, but that guy with the spear—Lugh—kept bugging him. Between the pressure at his back, and the feeling in his gut, it seemed that there was something Jack needed to be doing, something other than sitting at a desk, writing more code.
Besides, Jack had figured out his part of the pattern and passed it along to Olivia. Now that he thought of it, something like that happened during every project. He would be completely immersed trying to figure out the puzzle, but once he had the key, Jack was left slogging through the project until the end, because brilliant insights without a finished project didn’t equal money in his checking account. So he was just as happy at this point to leave the hacking to Olivia’s crew. They were better at the ins and outs of it than him anyway. To get up to speed would take time they just didn’t have at this point and Jack didn’t want to become a liability.
There would be other chances to work with them in the future, Jack was sure.
But all of that reasoning was just him, coming up with a justification for what didn’t really have an explanation. Jack simply knew he needed to be on the front lines for this event, despite never having participated in anything like on-the-streets civil disobedience in his life.
So when Moss had texted, suggesting he might want to meet up at the park, Jack jumped at the chance. So here he was, sweating, learning the proper way to link arms, and to stand and walk in formation without tripping or getting hurt. And of course, because Moss was one of the trainers, it included some woo stuff about “making your aura bigger” and “don’t only link to your comrades, make sure you link to the earth beneath your feet.”
Jack wasn’t sure about any of it, but the whole thing felt exhilarating.
By Sun Page 11
