“Ukhodite! Ukhodite, nemedlenno!” David cried. “Why isn’t it working?”
“It’s an anti-magic flare, you stupid slut!” John snapped. Another errant bullet pinged off the wall between them. “The light!”
“The light?” David snatched him by the collar of the bomber jacket and hauled him over the lip of the roach-and-rat infested dumpster.
◆◇◆
“Brilliant,” Maggie muttered. She whipped off her own coat and did her level best to crawl under it. Turn out the light, she thought. Turn out the light, turn out the light…
It just wasn’t enough fabric. There were three flares down there. The alley was blazing like a bonfire!
A cough behind her made her jump. Mordecai had taken off Hyacinth’s coat and was muffling the inevitable result with a handkerchief. She nodded quickly. She didn’t want him to die or anything, but she didn’t want Erik to die either.
He threw the coat over her, but it was much smaller. It still wasn’t enough. The flare in the sky was still drifting and burning, and the slow, misaimed bullets were still flying.
◆◇◆
“Ukhodite!” David cried, from beneath a grease-stained cardboard box, but the intermittent bullets continued “It’s still not working!”
“David, if you really can set people on fire, there is no time like the present,” John said dizzily. The shadowy garbage was heaped around him and he made no effort to burrow deeper or extricate himself, too stunned and disoriented — and drunk. He really should’ve eaten more mutant frites.
“Well…” David hazarded a peek over the edge of the dumpster and ducked down again at the sound of another shot. “I… I… I don’t know. I think maybe I shouldn’t have played around with the glowing… Oh, gods, something touched me!”
“It’s not shooting at you, so whatever it is, make friends with it! Can you set people on fire or not?”
“I-I-I don’t suppose you could get them to stand closer together, or be a bit more flammable? Do you have any matches?”
John snatched him by the shirt collar and dragged him near enough to kiss. “I need you to get out of here so I can call someone who knows how to fight!”
“Um,” David said, “can do. Will do. But maybe shouldn’t? Ah, that is, I can handle five Brandy Alexanders and half a bottle of champagne, dear, but I’m not one-hundred-percent sure he can.”
“I’ll manage,” John said. He dug through his pockets and found his keychain penlight, and finally the pen. He put the penlight between his teeth and said, “Uss imme ee ekons oo ite iss ouwn!”
◆◇◆
The addition of the fur vest made no difference at all. Now Mordecai was trying desperately to muffle the sounds of his impending demise and take off the turtleneck sweater at the same time.
She swatted him and hissed, “It’s not going to work! It’s too bright, I can’t block…”
The big cartoon teeth were still chomping away on the roof peak behind him. Because they were neon. Neon didn’t need magic to work.
She picked up all the clothes and scuttled away towards the sign. She didn’t have to block all the light with a coat, she just had to get somewhere that wasn’t lit by the flare!
“Thaaaat guyyyy,” a slurred voice announced from below, at full volume, “is not even a DAVID, let alone a BOYFRIEND, you… dumb, poor dumb gay guy, you…”
Mordecai drew a gasp and began coughing at full volume too.
◆◇◆
John yelped, grabbed Erik by the coat, and sent them both crunching back into the trash. “Focus!” he cried. “Please focus! Look, shiny penlight!”
“That’s not very teapot,” Erik muttered, annoyed.
“Erik, I have been controlling your damaged brain for over a year now, please just work with me!”
◆◇◆
Maggie pulled her muffler over his head, unsettling the glasses and probably smearing the makeup irreparably. She shoved the fur vest at him. “Give me three seconds,” she snarled. “Stand behind me and puff up like a scared kitten! I’ve almost got this!”
◆◇◆
“‘All the cops’ isn’t a number,” Erik said fuzzily. “Need number and, uh… Whaddya-call-em?”
“He can have a shot and a cigarette from the Chatterbox, does it really have to be a number?”
Erik nodded.
John sighed. He crossed his fingers. “Oh, Dayashri, please, just one more obstacle, okay? I didn’t mean for this to happen…” He took a breath and, still half-drunk, peeked over the side of the dumpster to count the men who were shooting and yelling at them to surrender.
◆◇◆
One shot, three kills, Maggie thought, regarding the flare in the sky. She couldn’t see the other two, she only had an approximate location, and not a lot of time to define the parameters of a spell.
“No,” she muttered, aloud. She banged the heel of her palm on the side of her head. BAKA. They probably had more.
Turn out the lights, she thought, pulling the coats over her head. ALL the lights…
◆◇◆
Holding the penlight in his teeth, John scribbled out “all the cops” and shakily wrote, “8” in bold black.
◆◇◆
The flares went out. The neon went out. Every light in the whole block went out.
◆◇◆
The penlight went out.
“Friiiig!” John said, shaking it. “What the fuck? Is it the battery? I can’t…”
Erik covered his hand, and stilled it. “Hey-hey, John. John, those guys are shooting at us, huh?”
“They were…” They seem to have stopped for the moment.
Erik drew a few deep breaths, panting. “Then I’m fucking pissed.”
The green glow returned. Not much, but enough to read.
“Please hurry,” John said.
Erik grinned and signed a thumbs up. He clasped his hands and closed his eye, the one he could. The metal one remained open, fixed and staring at the bold black print.
◆◇◆
“Maggie, I can’t see,” Mordecai whispered, somewhere close in the darkness.
“I just killed everything fire-related that was in range of those flares,” she replied in kind. “Including gunpowder and electricity. For the next two hours, maybe more. Unfortunately, I’ve also created a low-pressure magical microclimate and used up all the ambient on this rooftop, maybe the whole building. If we wanna do anything else, we need something to start bleeding or die. We can’t pull anything out of the dumpster from here, and I don’t wanna let the fucking cops shoot us. Any ideas?”
He muffled another small cough. “Pr-proxy?” he said
She dug her hand into her pocket, already shaking her head. Her hand lit upon a pen; she clicked the button and ran a search anyway. “It’s too far,” she said. “You don’t have any batteries, do you?” Her pants had a lot of storage space, but she was coming up empty.
He patted down his pockets and shook Hyacinth’s coat. Something rattled and fell onto the roof. He stamped on it blindly.
“Did you get it?”
“Yes…”
“…But it wasn’t a battery.” Her cursory attempt at a spell had failed to engage.
“I think I just killed a bottle of pills.”
“A glass one?” She was feeling around on the roof for sharp pieces.
“Plastic.”
“Fuck.”
“Don’t we have safety pins?”
“Sure. Wanna see if we can find ‘em?”
◆◇◆
The realm of the gods — or perhaps only the customer-service area available to coloured folks — was cool, dark, and quiet. Oddly peaceful. The featureless black firmament was punctuated by roiling balls of green flame that did nothing to illuminate the darkness. They hung there like Yule ornaments — large and small, near and far, but with little sense of distance or scale.
Erik regarded the familiar situation with a hazy awareness at best. He had one thing to do and it was branded across his mind like a great big neon sign. He couldn’t even hear the others trying to wheedle him into choosing them. He had only the vaguest idea they might be trying.
Saint George, he told them, or thought at them, or maybe he just knew it and he didn’t need to communicate it at all. Shot and cigarette. Eight.
Aw, geez, kid, said the medium-sized, slow, bright light. The only light. The only light that mattered. What did they do to you? Are you with me? Hey! Come on! Wake up!
Saint George, Erik replied. Shot and cigarette. Eight.
No, no, no. C’mon! said the light. We’re not doin’ this. Not like this. I’m thrilled to help out, but not like this. What’d they do to your brain? Is this shit permanent? I’ll fuckin’ kill ‘em!
Saint George. Shot and cigarette. Eight.
Kid, look at me. The light was very near. Listen to me. You hearin’ me? Your family are right there on the roof and they will take you home! I won’t hurt them, I swear it. Let’s kill this motherfucker who stole you and go home, yeah? I will get you home! I will walk you all the way back to Marsellia myself if you let me. I owe it to your mom! What do you say?
Saint George. Shot and cigarette. Eight.
Son of a bitch! Just give me one more! I can’t leave any of those fucking cops alive, but gimme one more and I’ll get you out of here. I’ll kill him FOR you! Yeah?
Saint George. Shot and cigarette. Eight.
The light stilled, considering. I’ll come with you… if you can solve a simple math problem. This is my one condition. What’s eight plus one? We’re negotiating. Remember? You know how to negotiate. It’s in there somewhere. Gimme eight plus one!
Saint George. Shot and cigarette. Eight.
Aw, Christ on a stick. Alright. Fine!
◆◇◆
They’d managed to get Mordecai back into a coat and zipped up, blind-man’s-bluff-style. Maggie was still trying to get her coat the right way up. She had found what she thought was a sleeve, but following it wasn’t leading her to a lapel with a pin in it.
It had only just occurred to her that the sleeve must be inside out, when another voice, like Erik’s but definitely not Erik’s, arose from the chaos in the alley below.
“ALRIGHT! AT LEAST ONE OF Y’ALL MOTHERFUCKERS BETTER RUN!”
Mordecai erupted in another shocked coughing fit. “He cuh… He…”
Maggie clamped her hand over the sound, smothering him with the muffler. “Calm the fuck down!” she hissed.
“He can’t call another one,” Mordecai said quickly. “They don’t just leave and let you call another one, not when…”
“Huh? The fuck’s wrong with this piece-of-shit gun?”
“Don’t try to stand or you’ll fall,” Maggie said firmly. “Come on.”
They crawled back towards the edge. The alley was lit up again, this time in blazing green.
◆◇◆
Erik was maskless, wigless, without a trace of makeup remaining, and lit up like a gas jet. He held a limp human body in one hand, by an obvious broken neck, and a gun in the other.
“Hey, stop right there,” he said, absently examining the cartridges in the cylinder. He snapped it back into the body of the gun with a glowing green hand. “I wasn’t bein’ serious!” He took aim at a fleeing man in a dark uniform and fired. A tongue of green flame escaped the muzzle of the weapon, entirely without smoke, and a piece of the man’s head sheared away. In the light, it looked black too.
Erik grinned. “Can’t have you tellin’ tales! That’s two!”
Two more shots followed in rapid succession, “Three! Four!”
Erik dropped the gun and kicked it away. “Bitch to reload… Bullets, bullets, who’s got some bullets?”
He was so fast. He didn’t get a cool trail effect like the comic books, not even lit up like he was, but he’d pawed through the crumpled bodies and collected two more guns in less than a second.
“Five! Six!”
◆◇◆
“Who…?” Maggie said.
Mordecai yanked her back by the collar of her shirt. “No. No-no-no,” he said quickly, almost delicately. “Don’t let the man see you. Just let the man count. Let the man count…”
◆◇◆
“Seven!”
Erik kicked the legs out from under a man who’d been tearing down the alley and screaming into a radio handset. “Oh, ‘send backup’?” he sneered. “Sure. I got your backup — Eight! — right here.” He collected the handset and depressed the button on the side. “Quit yer fuckin’ job!” He threw it to the ground beside the dead man, and stamped on it.
Then he levelled the gun at John’s head. “Hey, rat. You have no idea what kinda deal he made with me, so how ‘bout you crawl back in your hole?”
John vanished back into the dumpster with a crunch.
“Hey!” Erik said, with one gun aimed at the dumpster and the other towards the near end of the alley. “Little girlfriend! You want your boyfriend back?”
◆◇◆
Maggie opened her mouth and Mordecai clamped a hand over it. “No,” he hissed.
◆◇◆
“We got a limited amount of time to work with, here, girlie!” Erik cried. “I promise I won’t kill ya! Don’t I seem like a trustworthy guy? HEY!” He fired a shot at the wall above John’s head. “What’d I just say? S’right.” Erik tipped his head up towards the roof, holding the revolvers crossed in front of him. “One boyfriend, going once! One boyfriend, going twice! Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me, here? GROW SOME GUTS! One boyfriend…”
◆◇◆
“Don’t,” said Mordecai.
◆◇◆
There came a distant wail of a police siren.
“Fuckin’ sold,” Erik muttered. He dropped one gun, and shot the back door with the other. He kicked it down. “Let’s go, rat. You’re goddamn lucky the kid needs taking care of…”
John scurried out of the dumpster, very ratlike, and scuttled into the building behind him.
◆◇◆
“Why did you…” she cried.
He grabbed her blindly and shook her. “It is not supposed to work that way, do you understand? He… They… Evicted a god somehow and replaced it with a new one in less than a minute! That one kills people! He kills people like you’d turn off a light switch, and I am not even sure John knew that when he had Erik call him! Do you want to find out who else is in the blind bag? Oh, gods…” He heard cries and calumny beneath their feet. “Are there people still in there? Is Hyacinth still in there?”
There were two more shots in quick succession.
◆◇◆
John watched a glowing, gun-toting Erik survey a dark nightclub full of cowering people.
Two uniformed men stood up, shouting in Prokovian, and pointing guns of their own.
“Nope,” Erik said. He shot each gun, and left the men bawling on the floor with the others, hands mangled and bloody. A split second later he was standing behind the bar, holding a pack of cigarettes John hadn’t even seen him pick up, and pouring a shot from a bottle with a spout.
“Get over here, rat,” Erik said. “C’mon! Get over here and take the gun, you’re not getting out of here without it!”
Trembling, John took the gun.
Erik downed the shot and lit up the cigarette with a flicker of green flame. He leaned nearer and whispered, “It ain’t gonna work for you, there’s something wrong with the fucking powder, but don’t let on. Point the bang-end at the fragile human beings and keep your finger on the trigger. Do it!”
John levelled the gun at the club full of innocent people and put his finger on the trigger.
“You losing your taste for it now ya have to see it?” Erik said. “Then man up and let the kid go.”
Erik took a single drag, and the cigarette was nothing but ashes. He swept them away.
Then he staggered, braced himself against the bar with a hand, dropped his head, and threw up. “Oh, gods. No more liquor. Please.”
“Erik?” John said faintly.
“I ‘unno…” Erik tugged at the red blazer and frock coat. “Where’s my funny T-shirt?”
“Please get me David,” John said. He gasped and shuddered. “I don’t know what to do. Please get me David. I can’t help you. Please!”
◆◇◆
“I don’t know how in the fuck you expect me to get to her with no magic and no eyesight,” Maggie said sharply. “He said he’d give us Erik!”
Mordecai grabbed her. He was shaking his head. She could barely make him out. Her eyes were starting to adjust to the faint glow the clouds were reflecting from the rest of the city.
“Maggie, they lie…”
“Hold still, please,” Maggie replied, and she punched him in the face.
◆◇◆
Hey, asshole, are you in here? Erik asked. Hey! You know who I mean! YOU!
Kid, is that you?
No, not you, we’ve done you. DAVID! I SEE YOU!
The light was small, bright, swift, and trying to hide behind a larger one. Um. Ah-heh. No hablo anglés?
John needs you, let’s go.
Ah… Not that I wouldn’t, ordinarily, but… Is there any chance that if I go back there, I might die? I-I think… I rather think I’ve done that at some point, and I didn’t enjoy it very much, and, um…
Is he your boyfriend or not, you fucking piece of shit?
◆◇◆
“Oh, my gods!” Erik said fussily. “Oh, um… This is new! Um…”
“David?” John said sickly.
“What happened to the policemen?”
“They’re dead and I just want to go home and wait for the rest of them to come kill us.” He blinked and wobbled. “Actually, that seems like some unnecessary extra steps.” He put the gun to his head, without much hope, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
He set it back on the bar. “Yep, we’re stuck with it.”
David put an arm around him and slid the gun out of reach. “That’s all right. We’re all right. No need for… Hey! Ostav’te eto v pokoye!”
A largish man, perhaps a bouncer or just a would-be hero, had been sneaking towards the abandoned gun with his hand out. He backed away and sat down.
“I-I’m doing the glowing,” David stammered. “I think… I’m very sure it’s a matter of being upset. This is, um… Juh-Johnny, don’t you ever do that again, do you understand me? Never again!”
“Okay,” John said.
“Just, um, sit down. Drink this.” He handed John the bottle with the spout. “And, um… Oh, dear, what am I going to do with the rest of you?”
◆◇◆
“Magnificent D’Iver, I am an old man who concusses very easily and you need my brain!”
“I have a brain,” she replied. “I need your blood.” She hit him again.
◆◇◆
“…and, let me see, about six feet tall, fair-haired, and wearing this red blazer right here! All right? Everybody nod if I’m still controlling your minds with the glowing! Excellent! Oh, where was I? Um… Three men, wearing these jackets right here, and they were very unmagical and very homophobic! It was probably one of those anti-molly political things. We’re all very pro-molly right now! And… Oh, gods, wait, do you need it again in Prokovian or did I just transcend language? Johnny? Oh, gods, you’re passed out on the floor, you can’t hear me… Okay, from the top!”
◆◇◆
“I swear to you, Officer, this was not my fault…”
“Em!” She shook him.
“What? Oh, gods…” His head came up and regarded her blearily. “Maggie, if this isn’t blood, I’m hallucinating a taste.”
“No,” she said. “I know. But you’re a liability, and I need you to stay up here and keep your head down, okay? If something happens to me, jump down into that dumpster — feet first, okay? — and retreat to the café. In any other case, I will come back for you when it’s safe. Now, don’t get up, are you reading me? I will deal with this.”
“I think I need a nap…”
She shook her coat over him, with the dark inner lining facing up. “That’s a good idea.”
She descended slowly from above, into the alley, with an eye on both back doors. There had been no further shots, but she had no idea what she was going to find when she went in. Potentially two more dead bodies, but not more than that. She hoped.
Probably more cops, she told herself, firmly. She had seen two friends in desperate trouble go through that door with a gun just a few minutes ago, but they wouldn’t do…
Well, she didn’t think they were that desperate, or stupid.
She decided to use the kitchen door. It would give her a bit of a buffer to approach unseen.
As she tried the metal knob, a glowing green Erik with a dead-or-unconscious body slung over his shoulder came out of the neighbouring exit.
She gasped and lifted her hand, closing her fingers into the gesture for a shield spell.
“Um, pardon me,” Erik said. “I… I’m in a bit of a pickle and I could really use your help. Will you help me, please? Right now?”
“Oh, sure,” Maggie said. She dropped the shield. “What’s the problem?”
“I… Well, I don’t mean me,” Erik said, with a slight bow. “But someone has certainly just murdered quite a few policemen and… Well, I don’t need someone to take the blame, I’m not going through all that again, ha-ha, but I seem to have made my boyfriend drink until he passed out, and I’m afraid I may have killed him, er, also he just tried to kill himself and… and I really don’t know how to handle that sort of thing. I can’t very well walk home like this, ha-ha, and, um, I think there was a siren a little bit ago? So there is something of a time constraint…”
“Don’t worry about that, I sent this whole neighbourhood back to the Stone Age to put out the flares,” Maggie replied. “If the cops want in, they’ll be walking from at least a block away, but I bet they’re a little freaked out their cars stopped working. You’ve got…”
Erik lifted a finger. “Hang on a tick. You put out the flares?”
“Yep,” Maggie said, helpfully enough.
Erik, or whatever was running him at the moment, seemed equal parts pleased and mystified. “Well, thank you very much. Could you tell me why?”
“That’s my boyfriend you’ve got there. Not him, the guy you’re wearing.”
“Ah.” Erik pointed at her and nodded. “Ah-ha. Oh, gods, I may be in serious trouble here…” He set John on the ground, well away from the other bodies, and slumped down beside him, utterly defeated. “Oh, no…”
“No, no, not like that,” Maggie said. John was wrapped in a long coat, but his arms hadn’t been put through the sleeves. She fixed that for him and rolled him onto his side, propping him that way with a leg and an elbow. “In case he pukes. You want him to puke — if you can do that with your god powers or some ipecac or whatever — but now is not the time or the place, yeah?” She smiled disarmingly.
“Thank you. You’re being very kind, but I suppose I’ve, er, inflicted that on you,” Erik said, wincing. “I, um, I promised I wouldn’t hurt you, dear. Specifically you. Please tell me, are you… Are you hurt, at all?”
“Nope!”
Erik gave a nervous laugh and touched his hand to his brow. “Oh! Phew! That’s a relief. You’re very clever. Glad I ran into you! Ha-ha. This is terribly handy, the, the glowing… But, er, I can’t seem to switch it off and it’s very conspicuous… Does he do this often?”
Maggie waggled a hand. “Usually during magic storms, but that’s different. This isn’t the weather overloading him, it’s you.” She smiled and shrugged. “I’m not the god expert. He’s on the roof, and I punched him a few times, so he’s not in the best shape.”
Erik held up a hand to stop her, almost like it really was Erik. “Sorry. Why did you punch this person?”
“To get some blood out of him so I could do magic. I killed most of the ambient doing this to the lights.” She gestured to the darkness around them. “It’s really hard to hit yourself hard enough to draw blood, it was just practical. And we had no idea if you were killing people in there.”
“No,” Erik said quickly. “No, I don’t… Well…” He regarded John. “I wouldn’t on purpose. I just didn’t know what else to do.”
“No, I get that,” she said, nodding. “It’s like that for me a lot too!” She patted his glowing hand. “But it’ll probably calm down when you do.”
“Oh, now, you see, that is a problem. Because, er, this is all very stressful and… I-I think I may be having a panic attack? Or sending your boyfriend into a cardiac arrest, I suppose. Oh, gods…”
“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Maggie said. “I mean, you’re operating him in overdrive, that can’t be good for him…”
“No, no… Oh, dear me…”
She took both his hands. “But you can’t fixate on that or you’ll just make it worse. This is a perfectly rational response to a high stress situation. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to feel hurt. But it’s not going to kill you.” She laughed a little. “It’s physically impossible to kill you, right?”
“I… Well, yes,” he allowed, as if it had just occurred to him. “I suppose. But I don’t want him to die,” he patted John. “Or him.” He touched Erik’s chest. “This is rather like I’m juggling a pair of innocent soft kittens, and at any moment the police may appear and shoot both of them.”
“Yeah, time constraints suck,” Maggie said. She stood, helping Erik to his feet as well. “So what you’re gonna wanna do is take a few deep breaths and suppress all that shit.”
“Excuse me?” Erik said. He caught himself. “Er, that is, please elaborate? Uh, clarify?”
“Sure! Just cram it way down deep inside you,” Maggie said, nodding. “Dissociate. Deny, deny, deny. You’re not scared at all. Compress all your pent-up, unexpressed pain and anxiety into a tiny ball, then swallow that shit and let it power your every waking moment like a fucking sun, you get me?”
“Um. Young lady,” Erik said shakily. “This is strictly hypothetical, I just want a verbal answer… If you were capable of killing me right now, would you?”
“Oh, yeah. I mean, that would stop you from hurting Erik, and we could all go home. Violence is always a solution, you just have to apply it properly.”
“Do you… Happen to have any idea how I can get my unconscious, suicidal boyfriend to safety with… with a level of violence I am capable of inflicting? I should say, I’m a bit squeamish…”
“Honestly? Keep having that panic attack, stay off the main roads, tell anyone who sees you you’re not worth noticing, and push Erik as far as he’s able to go. Get John to a human being who can watch him and help him.”
“Oh, dear. I’m afraid he’s burned all his bridges and it’s just me now.”
Maggie frowned. “Have you considered some kind of habitual substance abuse?”
“Oh!” Erik laughed. “Every moment of every day! Why, that won’t be hard at all. Thank you very much, my dear. Erik is a lucky fellow!” He collected John, and slung him over the opposite shoulder this time. “But, um, sorry to say, I need your boyfriend in order to have any sort of relationship with my boyfriend, and I’m very worried about him. So, could you toddle off somewhere safe — unharmed, of course! — and leave us alone and never come back? Do you think that might actually work?”
“I have no idea what you’re doing and, clearly, neither do you, but I’ll do my best.”
“Thank you. That’s certainly all anyone can ask! I suppose — once I’m safely away from you — I’ll give that ‘suppressing it’ a try, and maybe purchase some substances on the way back. Don’t worry! I’m sure I won’t kill your boyfriend. I haven’t far to go, and he doesn’t feel at all like when I almost killed him before. I’ll take good care of him. We’re all going to be very happy together. I’ll send you postcards!”
“No problem,” Maggie said. “We’re cool.”
Erik gave a cheerful little wave and set off into the darkness. He paused at the far end of the alley and called back, “Ta!”
Maggie tipped him a salute.
Well! Since they’d sorted all that out, she guessed she’d better get Mordecai down from the roof, find Hyacinth, and get everyone back to San Rosille!
She lit a small foxfire, just so she could see him, and shooed him down to the ground with a gesture. He seemed to have lost consciousness at some point, but head trauma would do that to a guy. She wasn’t worried about it. She set him down against the wall and knelt beside him. “Hey, are you awake in there? We gotta get out of here and go home. Forever.”
He lifted his head, regarded her with a dazed smile, and patted her encouragingly on the cheek.
“No, no, come on. David just walked off with Erik and John, they’re fine, they’re going to send us postcards, and… The fuck did I just say?” She shot to her feet and spun around. “Oh, my gods, what happened? Where are they? Did I just let them GO?”
It was like something had broken, or a fuse had blown. One minute she’d been giving advice to a god like they were sitting on a park bench having an ordinary day, and then the circuit breaker kicked in and snapped her back to the alley with the dead cops and the out-of-control disaster. All the panic, fear, frustration and anger came flooding back as if she’d ripped a plastic bag off her head just in time to keep it from suffocating her.
She ran to the far end of the alley, leaving Mordecai gasping and coughing on the ground behind her. She didn’t see any glowing. She’d told him how to suppress his emotions and switch it off. “Oh, FUCK!”
Hyacinth came barrelling out of the kitchen door, clutching a glowstick. “David just brainwashed over two-hundred people and somehow he missed ME!” she howled. “Nobody in there has any fucking clue…” She drew up short. “Oh, my gods, did he tell these poor sons of bitches to kill each other?”
Then Mordecai just screamed.
Hyacinth fell backwards, warding the apparition away with a hand, and Maggie came tearing back.
“Did I fall off the roof?” he cried. “Am I dead?”
“What the fuck?” said Hyacinth.
“No,” Maggie said tightly. She picked both of them up with magic and dimmed the foxfire to near invisibility. “Nope! No more, that’s it, no! We are DONE here!” She began walking away, dragging two panicked human beings through the air behind her like a set of balloons. “I don’t care what happened, I don’t care who else is dead, we are exiting this shitshow posthaste, and we can unpack it when we’re safe and far away from the gods and the dead cops. Now, shut up! Both of you!” She turned, snarling, and ripped the glowstick out of Hyacinth’s hand. “And give me that!” She stuffed it into a pocket, dousing the light.
Silence, near darkness, and nothing but the sound of Maggie’s stamping feet.
For a little while.
“Am I not dead, then?” Mordecai said, mousy-small.
“Shut the fuck up!” Maggie snapped.
That kept them quiet until she made it to the edge of her blackout. She left them there, glued to a wall, out of view, to wait patiently for her to return with her mom, Ann, and the suitcase.
