Existentially Challenged, page 12
“We’ve got a follower today who’s come all the way from Inverness to receive El-Yetch’s blessing,” said Miracle Dad, rubbing his hands in a gesture combining prayer and excited anticipation. “But before that, let’s remind ourselves about the story of El-Yetch.”
He paused, smile wide and hands clasped, for long enough to make things awkward. Then, just as he was glancing desperately over to the woman at the laptop, the speakers began emitting a relaxing pipe tune. And from her position, Alison could clearly see that Miracle Mum’s laptop was displaying a video thumbnail entitled “Ten Hours of Baby Sleep Music.”
“Yes, El-Yetch!” said Miracle Dad, getting back into the swing of things. “Our adoptive mother. The Ancient who looked down at the little struggling specks of humanity and thought, hey, maybe there’s more I could be doing for these guys besides giving some of them superpowers and making their faces go weird. Maybe I could do something to help. And so she came into my daughter, and now she’s Miracle Meg.”
Alison had only been half listening, as she was keeping one eye on Beatrice and Roger as they crouched stealthily behind the fence waiting to strike, but as she parsed the words of Miracle Dad’s sermon, she found herself entertaining a few doubts. Miracle Dad had an authentic manner that would have been difficult to fake. He didn’t have the overblown religious fervor that only played well to credulous cultists; he was very matter of fact. He spoke about his god not with starry-eyed, desperate, one-sided love but the way one would, say, recommend a relative’s house-cleaning business.
Alison shook herself. Of course he seemed confident; hence the phrase confidence trickster.
“El-Yetch doesn’t want your worship,” Miracle Dad was saying, slowly drifting up and down the “stage” to give time to each segment of the audience. “She doesn’t care if you’ve sinned or if you love thy neighbor. She’ll never ask you to pledge your eternal devotion to her and her alone. She doesn’t want you to sing hymns, and she doesn’t want your money.”
“Donation from Xyzyx,” reported the woman at the laptop.
“Okay,” said Miracle Dad as a subtle titter went through the audience. “El-Yetch doesn’t want your money, but we very much do. All the money you donate goes toward producing these streams and helping us spread the important word of El-Yetch. Was there a question?”
“What is El-Yetch’s favorite flavor of crisp?” read Miracle Mum from the screen.
“Oh, salt and vinegar, definitely.”
Alison took a few careful looks around at the crowd. They didn’t seem like brainwashed cultists either. They were from all walks of life. There were young people and old people, families with children and people in loosened business attire who must have come straight from work. The same kinds of people Alison saw every day in the streets of Whitehall and the corridors of the Department. The kind of people she worked with, socialized with, went to school with . . .
A realization hit her like an iron stake, going through her suddenly open mouth and pinning her to the ground. Rana was here. Sitting just a few rows away.
Rana had been Alison’s closest friend back when Alison’s eidetic memory had caused her to be erroneously enlisted in the government magic school. Rana had been there, studying at the desk next to Alison’s, on the very day that Adam Hesketh had shown up and revealed her utter mundanity to the world.
Alison had been the rising star of her class. The other kids, the ones with real magic infusions, they had actually looked up to her. Her ears still burned with humiliation when she thought about that day. And then of course she had learned about the second school, the concrete prison where those with confirmed magical infusions were sent to be reeducated, to suppress all chance of dual consciousness. That was no longer policy, thankfully, but not because of any protest Alison had made.
Alison had occasionally wondered what she would do if she ever ran into one of her old classmates. She had eventually decided that it needn’t be an issue, as long as she just turned on her heel at first sight and ran until her shoes melted.
She rose into a half crouch and began picking her way through the seated crowd to the garden gate. This was LAXA’s show anyway. She and Diablerie were only here to make the arrest. Anderson would probably appreciate it if she retreated a little farther into the background . . .
Miracle Dad suddenly stopped sermonizing, which made Alison wonder for a moment if she was being called out, like someone going to the toilet halfway through a standup comedy act, but Miracle Dad was looking past her at the darkened street. The puttering of a motorcycle engine was breaking off from the background roar of distant traffic and growing in volume.
The sun was now almost completely down, and the figure on the motorbike coming up the street was a black shadow, the streetlamps not so much illuminating it as adding orange highlights. They reached the end of the street, pulled off a noisy full turn with a whine of tires, and then stopped in front of the Modern Miracle house, angrily slamming their foot to the tarmac like a suburban mother who damn well wasn’t leaving without a refund.
“hey! believe in christ!” yelled the rider, holding something up in one hand. Alison rose slightly to get a better view and recognized it to be a leather-bound Bible in the brief moment before they threw it.
It seemed to fly through the air in slow motion as Alison experienced a moment of perfect clarity, during which she realized two things: first, it appeared to be an extremely heavy volume with a cover reinforced with metal bits on the corners, and second, it was absolutely going to hit her in the face.
It was a perfect hit, depending on your perspective. One of the reinforced corners landed an inch above Alison’s right eye. An ice-cold stab of pain threw her head back, which slowly transitioned into a rather pleasant warmth that soaked through to the back of her brain. Something started humming soothingly in her ears. It was only after she felt blood streaming sideways along her forehead that she realized she was lying on her back.
“oh shit! sorry!” yelled the biker, before gunning their engine and riding off into the gathering clouds of fuzzy pink cotton wool that were now surrounding Alison.
She felt friendly hands on her limbs and the sensation of being lifted, which made the fuzzy pink cotton wool spiral in faster. Snatches of conversation drifted through the pink and burst like bubbles in her ears.
“What happened?”
“Bloody Bible thumper . . .”
“Yeah, literally.”
“There’s a lot of blood.”
“Come on. Get her inside!” That was Miracle Dad.
“Alison? I know her. That’s Alison Arkin . . .” That was Rana.
“Noooo I’m nooot . . .” moaned Alison groggily, before the pink clouds engulfed her again.
She floated there in a state of warm bliss, far away from the troubles of the waking world with all its hurled Bibles, intrigues, and shouty Downing Street enforcers, before being rudely stirred back to partial consciousness by the feel of something cold and hard beneath her. She was sitting on a floor with her back to a wall.
Unbidden, her faultless memory felt the lines of the tiles beneath her and of the metal drain directly beneath her left buttock and reported that the floor they were on was one she had seen before. It was the bathroom floor in the Modern Miracle house, the very one from the video.
Someone helpfully pressed a cold washcloth against her forehead, which only served to remind her of the head wound, and with that, the pain crashed into her again like a fast-moving wave. Her entire body cringed and something roared in her ears, creating a harmony with the anguished moan that escaped, unbidden, from her throat.
A small hand touched her cheek. “Don’t be afraid,” said the voice of Miracle Meg.
A moment later, Alison was overcome by a sensation completely new to her. It started as a tingle in the pit of her stomach and swiftly exploded to fill her entire body to the tips of her fingers, chasing away all the pain and leaving only a mild, glittering coldness.
She felt a warm throb wash over the wounded part of her forehead, and then a rather alarming sensation of skin crawling, accompanied by a frenzied whispering in her ears. It reminded her of the chittering of the Ancients she had heard on her first and only attempt to draw a rune, but with all the voices hissing in unison.
When the whispering stopped, the pink fog went away. Alison was dropped unceremoniously back into full alertness. She was sitting bolt upright on the bathroom floor, her body fizzing with energy as if she were two coffees deep at a really productive meeting.
She felt at her brow. Some blood was still there, but she could sense with inexplicable certainty that her body had already manufactured a replacement quantity. The wound was completely closed. Nothing remained but a thin, unnoticeable Y-shaped scar that could have been several weeks old.
She looked up at Miracle Meg in astonishment, who was sitting on the toilet, just as she had done in the video. She definitely wasn’t older than eleven and had black hair pulled tightly back into twin pigtails. She was smiling expectantly, as if waiting for the teacher to praise her work.
“What did you do?” was all Alison could say.
“I healed you,” said Miracle Meg, frowning in confusion for a moment but smiling throughout.
Alison felt at her forehead again. “It’s real,” she breathed. “You really did.”
“Miracle Meg does it again!” said the voice of Miracle Dad.
Alison looked to her left and saw that there were about seventeen people packed into the hallway that led up to the bathroom, several of them holding out camera phones. Miracle Dad was at the forefront, holding the webcam from his laptop.
“I think it’s safe to say that El-Yetch has a new believer!” he said into the webcam before turning it on Alison again. “Alison Arkin from the Department of Extradimensional Affairs, you’ve just been magically healed by Miracle Meg! Anything to say to the people?”
Alison stared, suddenly exhausted, into the cloud of unfeeling black camera lenses, and thought about the people. Specifically, she thought about people like Sean Anderson, who would no doubt see this, and at this moment would probably be clutching the armrests of his chair so hard that his fingertips were three inches deep.
“Sorry,” she said.
MEANWHILE
20
Victor Casin was spending that same evening exploring a gravel quarry, and his mood was only getting fouler the more convinced he became that Leslie-Ifrig wasn’t there. He had walked all the way around six piles of gravel so far and had completely lost track of which ones he had already checked, so he was starting again from the yellow bulldozer. This time he made sure to give every gravel pile a savage kick so he could remember it, and so it would know who was boss.
Before long, his jeans were coated in gray dust from the knees down, which gave him a strange feeling of satisfaction. He pictured himself at the office tomorrow, being approached by a colleague asking why his clothes were covered in dust. Naturally, Victor would instantly reply: “Because I spent last night in a quarry looking for a dangerous possession, who was out causing trouble because I didn’t kill them when I had the chance, because the new policy is to give the poor, misunderstood demigods smacks on the wrist when they try to incinerate people.” And thus would said colleague hang their head in shame at Victor’s devastating correctness.
Victor practiced the wording under his breath. Then, since the quarry was deserted at this time of night, he recited it out loud. Then he made his way to the top of the nearest pile, planted one foot higher than the other, and announced his devastating argument to the stars with one finger held high, then spent a moment to drink in the imagined applause.
A burst of magical fire appeared just over the next rise, and Victor flinched so hard that he toppled over and rolled back down the gravel slope, dusting the rest of his outfit with a layer of gray powder. He was able to translate it into a forward roll and stopped in an alert crouch that he imagined would probably have impressed someone.
Another yellow mushroom cloud unfolded into the sky, far enough away that Victor doubted it was being cast at him, or because of anything he had done. He crept toward the next rise and ascended it as slowly as possible, shifting his weight carefully to avoid making the gravel crunch.
Just beyond the quarry was a wild plain of unkempt grass and an oxbow lake that was murky and green with algae. Someone was standing with their back to Victor between the two arms of the lake, restlessly stirring the ground with one foot.
Their silhouette was made a little indistinct by a baggy hoodie that seemed to have been thrown on so haphazardly that it was only pure random chance that their arms had gone into the sleeves, but Victor could tell that it was Leslie-Ifrig. The big giveaway was when he or she summoned a gigantic boomerang-shaped wave of flame and sent it over the waters of the lake, close enough to the surface to send ripples that glittered impressively in the orange glare.
Victor continued advancing as slowly as he could, descending the gentle slope of gravel onto the grass. With Leslie-Ifrig unaware, he had the opportunity to end this swiftly and painlessly. All he had to do was superheat the three or four square feet around Leslie-Ifrig to the evaporation point of human bone. Using all his concentration, it should only take about half a second for a space as small as that, and they’d never have a chance to react.
No doubt the Department would kick up a stink if he didn’t issue a warning first or offer a complimentary premurder beverage. But apparently the Department only saw Victor as good for killing things, and it would serve them right if he proved them entirely correct.
But something made him hesitate, and he wasn’t entirely sure what. Maybe he was picking up danger vibes from Leslie-Ifrig’s rather deliberate nonchalance. Surely they wouldn’t drop their guard like this. They must have some sort of magical booby trap set up.
Maybe they already knew that Victor was there and were waiting for him to attempt the ambush, so they could turn it around on him somehow. Well, he wasn’t going to fall for it. He held out a hand and sent a beam of fiery energy well above Leslie-Ifrig’s head, but close enough that it added its own cascade of reflections across the lake.
Leslie-Ifrig immediately spun around, delighted. “You came!”
Victor stayed in a half-crouched combat stance, arms extended as if aiming an invisible sniper rifle at a nervous person in a vest of dynamite. “Of course I came,” said Victor, maintaining fierce eye contact.
Leslie-Ifrig beamed. “Come on! If we both did one of these curved-line things, we could probably draw a big heart over the lake.”
“I’m not here to play games,” growled Victor, not moving. “I have to take you in.”
Leslie-Ifrig frowned with the part of their face that was capable of doing so. “Why?”
Victor was getting more and more frustrated with Leslie-Ifrig’s interpretation of events. As far as he was concerned, he was talking down a dangerous threat that could blow up on him at any second. Leslie-Ifrig seemed to think they were hanging out at the mall with a friend, endlessly passing the “What do you want to do?” buck back and forth. “Because we can’t let you go around setting fire to things,” said Victor.
“I’m not. I’m drawing hearts. Trying to draw hearts.”
“You’re upsetting people.”
“Who?”
“me!” Victor’s sudden blast of rage sent sparks flying from the gravel near his feet. “I’m people! You’re upsetting me!”
Leslie-Ifrig cocked their head like a poorly trained dog as their owner yells sit for the fifth time. Their lips parted and their shoulders sagged as an unpleasant realization hit. “You don’t like me.”
Victor didn’t reply. He was too busy repeatedly chanting the word de-escalate in his head.
“Why don’t you like me?” asked Leslie-Ifrig plaintively, their lower lip quivering.
Victor’s arms dropped in exasperation. “Because you’re Ifrig!” He gestured broadly. “You’re the one who did this to me!”
Leslie-Ifrig stared at him, the furrows on their brow emphasized by glowing red lines. “When did I put dust all over your jeans?”
“You made me into this!” Victor could feel his anger rising and consequently his magic sparking and bubbling just behind his eyes and teeth. He screwed his eyelids shut and pushed it back inside himself. “I could have been anything. You understand that?”
“I understand,” lied the increasingly concerned Leslie-Ifrig as the threat/negotiator roles reversed.
“I could’ve gone to university,” continued Victor, shoulders shaking. “I could’ve been a businessman. Or a scientist. Or I could’ve learned a trade. Plumbing. Carpentry. I could’ve worked behind the till at the god-damn Morrisons.” He swatted away a few strands of hair that had fallen in front of his eyes. “I could’ve finished school! Got my A levels! Finished maths! Figured out how trigonometry worked!”
“Doesn’t sound that great,” offered Leslie-Ifrig.
“Well, I’ll never know!” yelled Victor, blue flame flaring at his eyes for an instant. “I will never know what any of that is like, because when I was eleven years old things started catching fire. And after that, everything went away. My toys, my computer, my Judge Dredd pillowcase . . . all burned. One by one.”
Leslie-Ifrig gave a worried half smile. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Victor clenched his fists as hard as he could to stop his emotions rising. “That was the worst part,” he said, no longer looking directly at Leslie-Ifrig. “That it happened when all my potential was spreading out in front of me. All of that got cut off. I had to go to the monastery, then the second school, then . . .” He held out his hands, then let them flop to his sides, as if unable to bear the weight. “This is all I can be, now, because of you. Just something that destroys and kills.”
He paused, smile wide and hands clasped, for long enough to make things awkward. Then, just as he was glancing desperately over to the woman at the laptop, the speakers began emitting a relaxing pipe tune. And from her position, Alison could clearly see that Miracle Mum’s laptop was displaying a video thumbnail entitled “Ten Hours of Baby Sleep Music.”
“Yes, El-Yetch!” said Miracle Dad, getting back into the swing of things. “Our adoptive mother. The Ancient who looked down at the little struggling specks of humanity and thought, hey, maybe there’s more I could be doing for these guys besides giving some of them superpowers and making their faces go weird. Maybe I could do something to help. And so she came into my daughter, and now she’s Miracle Meg.”
Alison had only been half listening, as she was keeping one eye on Beatrice and Roger as they crouched stealthily behind the fence waiting to strike, but as she parsed the words of Miracle Dad’s sermon, she found herself entertaining a few doubts. Miracle Dad had an authentic manner that would have been difficult to fake. He didn’t have the overblown religious fervor that only played well to credulous cultists; he was very matter of fact. He spoke about his god not with starry-eyed, desperate, one-sided love but the way one would, say, recommend a relative’s house-cleaning business.
Alison shook herself. Of course he seemed confident; hence the phrase confidence trickster.
“El-Yetch doesn’t want your worship,” Miracle Dad was saying, slowly drifting up and down the “stage” to give time to each segment of the audience. “She doesn’t care if you’ve sinned or if you love thy neighbor. She’ll never ask you to pledge your eternal devotion to her and her alone. She doesn’t want you to sing hymns, and she doesn’t want your money.”
“Donation from Xyzyx,” reported the woman at the laptop.
“Okay,” said Miracle Dad as a subtle titter went through the audience. “El-Yetch doesn’t want your money, but we very much do. All the money you donate goes toward producing these streams and helping us spread the important word of El-Yetch. Was there a question?”
“What is El-Yetch’s favorite flavor of crisp?” read Miracle Mum from the screen.
“Oh, salt and vinegar, definitely.”
Alison took a few careful looks around at the crowd. They didn’t seem like brainwashed cultists either. They were from all walks of life. There were young people and old people, families with children and people in loosened business attire who must have come straight from work. The same kinds of people Alison saw every day in the streets of Whitehall and the corridors of the Department. The kind of people she worked with, socialized with, went to school with . . .
A realization hit her like an iron stake, going through her suddenly open mouth and pinning her to the ground. Rana was here. Sitting just a few rows away.
Rana had been Alison’s closest friend back when Alison’s eidetic memory had caused her to be erroneously enlisted in the government magic school. Rana had been there, studying at the desk next to Alison’s, on the very day that Adam Hesketh had shown up and revealed her utter mundanity to the world.
Alison had been the rising star of her class. The other kids, the ones with real magic infusions, they had actually looked up to her. Her ears still burned with humiliation when she thought about that day. And then of course she had learned about the second school, the concrete prison where those with confirmed magical infusions were sent to be reeducated, to suppress all chance of dual consciousness. That was no longer policy, thankfully, but not because of any protest Alison had made.
Alison had occasionally wondered what she would do if she ever ran into one of her old classmates. She had eventually decided that it needn’t be an issue, as long as she just turned on her heel at first sight and ran until her shoes melted.
She rose into a half crouch and began picking her way through the seated crowd to the garden gate. This was LAXA’s show anyway. She and Diablerie were only here to make the arrest. Anderson would probably appreciate it if she retreated a little farther into the background . . .
Miracle Dad suddenly stopped sermonizing, which made Alison wonder for a moment if she was being called out, like someone going to the toilet halfway through a standup comedy act, but Miracle Dad was looking past her at the darkened street. The puttering of a motorcycle engine was breaking off from the background roar of distant traffic and growing in volume.
The sun was now almost completely down, and the figure on the motorbike coming up the street was a black shadow, the streetlamps not so much illuminating it as adding orange highlights. They reached the end of the street, pulled off a noisy full turn with a whine of tires, and then stopped in front of the Modern Miracle house, angrily slamming their foot to the tarmac like a suburban mother who damn well wasn’t leaving without a refund.
“hey! believe in christ!” yelled the rider, holding something up in one hand. Alison rose slightly to get a better view and recognized it to be a leather-bound Bible in the brief moment before they threw it.
It seemed to fly through the air in slow motion as Alison experienced a moment of perfect clarity, during which she realized two things: first, it appeared to be an extremely heavy volume with a cover reinforced with metal bits on the corners, and second, it was absolutely going to hit her in the face.
It was a perfect hit, depending on your perspective. One of the reinforced corners landed an inch above Alison’s right eye. An ice-cold stab of pain threw her head back, which slowly transitioned into a rather pleasant warmth that soaked through to the back of her brain. Something started humming soothingly in her ears. It was only after she felt blood streaming sideways along her forehead that she realized she was lying on her back.
“oh shit! sorry!” yelled the biker, before gunning their engine and riding off into the gathering clouds of fuzzy pink cotton wool that were now surrounding Alison.
She felt friendly hands on her limbs and the sensation of being lifted, which made the fuzzy pink cotton wool spiral in faster. Snatches of conversation drifted through the pink and burst like bubbles in her ears.
“What happened?”
“Bloody Bible thumper . . .”
“Yeah, literally.”
“There’s a lot of blood.”
“Come on. Get her inside!” That was Miracle Dad.
“Alison? I know her. That’s Alison Arkin . . .” That was Rana.
“Noooo I’m nooot . . .” moaned Alison groggily, before the pink clouds engulfed her again.
She floated there in a state of warm bliss, far away from the troubles of the waking world with all its hurled Bibles, intrigues, and shouty Downing Street enforcers, before being rudely stirred back to partial consciousness by the feel of something cold and hard beneath her. She was sitting on a floor with her back to a wall.
Unbidden, her faultless memory felt the lines of the tiles beneath her and of the metal drain directly beneath her left buttock and reported that the floor they were on was one she had seen before. It was the bathroom floor in the Modern Miracle house, the very one from the video.
Someone helpfully pressed a cold washcloth against her forehead, which only served to remind her of the head wound, and with that, the pain crashed into her again like a fast-moving wave. Her entire body cringed and something roared in her ears, creating a harmony with the anguished moan that escaped, unbidden, from her throat.
A small hand touched her cheek. “Don’t be afraid,” said the voice of Miracle Meg.
A moment later, Alison was overcome by a sensation completely new to her. It started as a tingle in the pit of her stomach and swiftly exploded to fill her entire body to the tips of her fingers, chasing away all the pain and leaving only a mild, glittering coldness.
She felt a warm throb wash over the wounded part of her forehead, and then a rather alarming sensation of skin crawling, accompanied by a frenzied whispering in her ears. It reminded her of the chittering of the Ancients she had heard on her first and only attempt to draw a rune, but with all the voices hissing in unison.
When the whispering stopped, the pink fog went away. Alison was dropped unceremoniously back into full alertness. She was sitting bolt upright on the bathroom floor, her body fizzing with energy as if she were two coffees deep at a really productive meeting.
She felt at her brow. Some blood was still there, but she could sense with inexplicable certainty that her body had already manufactured a replacement quantity. The wound was completely closed. Nothing remained but a thin, unnoticeable Y-shaped scar that could have been several weeks old.
She looked up at Miracle Meg in astonishment, who was sitting on the toilet, just as she had done in the video. She definitely wasn’t older than eleven and had black hair pulled tightly back into twin pigtails. She was smiling expectantly, as if waiting for the teacher to praise her work.
“What did you do?” was all Alison could say.
“I healed you,” said Miracle Meg, frowning in confusion for a moment but smiling throughout.
Alison felt at her forehead again. “It’s real,” she breathed. “You really did.”
“Miracle Meg does it again!” said the voice of Miracle Dad.
Alison looked to her left and saw that there were about seventeen people packed into the hallway that led up to the bathroom, several of them holding out camera phones. Miracle Dad was at the forefront, holding the webcam from his laptop.
“I think it’s safe to say that El-Yetch has a new believer!” he said into the webcam before turning it on Alison again. “Alison Arkin from the Department of Extradimensional Affairs, you’ve just been magically healed by Miracle Meg! Anything to say to the people?”
Alison stared, suddenly exhausted, into the cloud of unfeeling black camera lenses, and thought about the people. Specifically, she thought about people like Sean Anderson, who would no doubt see this, and at this moment would probably be clutching the armrests of his chair so hard that his fingertips were three inches deep.
“Sorry,” she said.
MEANWHILE
20
Victor Casin was spending that same evening exploring a gravel quarry, and his mood was only getting fouler the more convinced he became that Leslie-Ifrig wasn’t there. He had walked all the way around six piles of gravel so far and had completely lost track of which ones he had already checked, so he was starting again from the yellow bulldozer. This time he made sure to give every gravel pile a savage kick so he could remember it, and so it would know who was boss.
Before long, his jeans were coated in gray dust from the knees down, which gave him a strange feeling of satisfaction. He pictured himself at the office tomorrow, being approached by a colleague asking why his clothes were covered in dust. Naturally, Victor would instantly reply: “Because I spent last night in a quarry looking for a dangerous possession, who was out causing trouble because I didn’t kill them when I had the chance, because the new policy is to give the poor, misunderstood demigods smacks on the wrist when they try to incinerate people.” And thus would said colleague hang their head in shame at Victor’s devastating correctness.
Victor practiced the wording under his breath. Then, since the quarry was deserted at this time of night, he recited it out loud. Then he made his way to the top of the nearest pile, planted one foot higher than the other, and announced his devastating argument to the stars with one finger held high, then spent a moment to drink in the imagined applause.
A burst of magical fire appeared just over the next rise, and Victor flinched so hard that he toppled over and rolled back down the gravel slope, dusting the rest of his outfit with a layer of gray powder. He was able to translate it into a forward roll and stopped in an alert crouch that he imagined would probably have impressed someone.
Another yellow mushroom cloud unfolded into the sky, far enough away that Victor doubted it was being cast at him, or because of anything he had done. He crept toward the next rise and ascended it as slowly as possible, shifting his weight carefully to avoid making the gravel crunch.
Just beyond the quarry was a wild plain of unkempt grass and an oxbow lake that was murky and green with algae. Someone was standing with their back to Victor between the two arms of the lake, restlessly stirring the ground with one foot.
Their silhouette was made a little indistinct by a baggy hoodie that seemed to have been thrown on so haphazardly that it was only pure random chance that their arms had gone into the sleeves, but Victor could tell that it was Leslie-Ifrig. The big giveaway was when he or she summoned a gigantic boomerang-shaped wave of flame and sent it over the waters of the lake, close enough to the surface to send ripples that glittered impressively in the orange glare.
Victor continued advancing as slowly as he could, descending the gentle slope of gravel onto the grass. With Leslie-Ifrig unaware, he had the opportunity to end this swiftly and painlessly. All he had to do was superheat the three or four square feet around Leslie-Ifrig to the evaporation point of human bone. Using all his concentration, it should only take about half a second for a space as small as that, and they’d never have a chance to react.
No doubt the Department would kick up a stink if he didn’t issue a warning first or offer a complimentary premurder beverage. But apparently the Department only saw Victor as good for killing things, and it would serve them right if he proved them entirely correct.
But something made him hesitate, and he wasn’t entirely sure what. Maybe he was picking up danger vibes from Leslie-Ifrig’s rather deliberate nonchalance. Surely they wouldn’t drop their guard like this. They must have some sort of magical booby trap set up.
Maybe they already knew that Victor was there and were waiting for him to attempt the ambush, so they could turn it around on him somehow. Well, he wasn’t going to fall for it. He held out a hand and sent a beam of fiery energy well above Leslie-Ifrig’s head, but close enough that it added its own cascade of reflections across the lake.
Leslie-Ifrig immediately spun around, delighted. “You came!”
Victor stayed in a half-crouched combat stance, arms extended as if aiming an invisible sniper rifle at a nervous person in a vest of dynamite. “Of course I came,” said Victor, maintaining fierce eye contact.
Leslie-Ifrig beamed. “Come on! If we both did one of these curved-line things, we could probably draw a big heart over the lake.”
“I’m not here to play games,” growled Victor, not moving. “I have to take you in.”
Leslie-Ifrig frowned with the part of their face that was capable of doing so. “Why?”
Victor was getting more and more frustrated with Leslie-Ifrig’s interpretation of events. As far as he was concerned, he was talking down a dangerous threat that could blow up on him at any second. Leslie-Ifrig seemed to think they were hanging out at the mall with a friend, endlessly passing the “What do you want to do?” buck back and forth. “Because we can’t let you go around setting fire to things,” said Victor.
“I’m not. I’m drawing hearts. Trying to draw hearts.”
“You’re upsetting people.”
“Who?”
“me!” Victor’s sudden blast of rage sent sparks flying from the gravel near his feet. “I’m people! You’re upsetting me!”
Leslie-Ifrig cocked their head like a poorly trained dog as their owner yells sit for the fifth time. Their lips parted and their shoulders sagged as an unpleasant realization hit. “You don’t like me.”
Victor didn’t reply. He was too busy repeatedly chanting the word de-escalate in his head.
“Why don’t you like me?” asked Leslie-Ifrig plaintively, their lower lip quivering.
Victor’s arms dropped in exasperation. “Because you’re Ifrig!” He gestured broadly. “You’re the one who did this to me!”
Leslie-Ifrig stared at him, the furrows on their brow emphasized by glowing red lines. “When did I put dust all over your jeans?”
“You made me into this!” Victor could feel his anger rising and consequently his magic sparking and bubbling just behind his eyes and teeth. He screwed his eyelids shut and pushed it back inside himself. “I could have been anything. You understand that?”
“I understand,” lied the increasingly concerned Leslie-Ifrig as the threat/negotiator roles reversed.
“I could’ve gone to university,” continued Victor, shoulders shaking. “I could’ve been a businessman. Or a scientist. Or I could’ve learned a trade. Plumbing. Carpentry. I could’ve worked behind the till at the god-damn Morrisons.” He swatted away a few strands of hair that had fallen in front of his eyes. “I could’ve finished school! Got my A levels! Finished maths! Figured out how trigonometry worked!”
“Doesn’t sound that great,” offered Leslie-Ifrig.
“Well, I’ll never know!” yelled Victor, blue flame flaring at his eyes for an instant. “I will never know what any of that is like, because when I was eleven years old things started catching fire. And after that, everything went away. My toys, my computer, my Judge Dredd pillowcase . . . all burned. One by one.”
Leslie-Ifrig gave a worried half smile. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Victor clenched his fists as hard as he could to stop his emotions rising. “That was the worst part,” he said, no longer looking directly at Leslie-Ifrig. “That it happened when all my potential was spreading out in front of me. All of that got cut off. I had to go to the monastery, then the second school, then . . .” He held out his hands, then let them flop to his sides, as if unable to bear the weight. “This is all I can be, now, because of you. Just something that destroys and kills.”
