Trickster (24 page)

I looked back at Gottschalk. My teeth were clenched tightly shut.

“Lem,” Mags said, staring at Gottschalk. “What does he
mean
?”

I made a fist with my bloody arm, then snapped it back toward the bedroom door and barked a single word. The door slammed shut. “It means this son of a bitch just traded every living thing on the fucking planet for his own sad shitsack of a little life.”

Gottschalk’s eyes went to the door and back to me. Opened his mouth.

“Mags,” I said. “Don’t let this fat piece of shit
speak
.”

Anger pulsed inside me. Gottschalk, without a scar on his body, fat and useless and running his little freak show, squeezing out a few more years in bed and letting everyone else, all the rest of us, die in his place. Without even a peep of protest over Hiram. Over
me
.

We were not good people. But this was fucking above and beyond.

Mags leaped forward, vaulting onto the bed and clamping his hands around Gottschalk’s jowly throat. The old man’s tongue popped out like in those old cartoons, a pink ribbon writhing around. His two robed freaks just stood there, dreamy, so fucking Charmed they couldn’t even think straight.

There were two noises. A shattering noise coming from the door as something pounded against it. And a wet noise coming from Gottschalk.

I went to the window and tore the curtains down.
Pushed up at the sash. It was painted shut, years and years and layers and layers of cheap paint and grime. I stepped back, flicked some blood at it, whispering two more words, and the window exploded outward.

There was another explosion outside, a flash of clear light under the door, and the house slewed to the left, a ragged crack erupting in the wall. The whole house crashing down. I opened my mouth to tell Mags to let the old man linger and move.

The door burst inward. Claire suddenly rose up in the air. I made a futile grab at her, but a second later she was sucked toward the window, pulled through without hesitation, screaming all the way.

The air was filled with a terrible moaning sound, old wood held in a complex pattern for decades bending and stretching, yawing and snapping free.

Entropy rushing in, delighted to be home.

“Mags!” I yelled, and the house collapsed. There was a roar and dust and a rafter the size of a fucking redwood smacked down onto the floor next to me, smashing down through the planks into the basement, the floor tilting under me. Up above, a cracking noise, and I looked up in time to see the roof plummeting down toward me.

I
came to in a rush. I blinked on, all systems go.

My head was pounding, a sharp, stabbing pain in my skull with every pulse. It was hot, and I breathed in more dust than air.

I opened my eyes. I was blind.

Not blind. As I listened to Mags, who was chanting something very close to me, I realized it was very, very dark, but as I lay there with my eyes open the subtle, smudged edges of things slowly coalesced. A panic seized me; I was in an air pocket. Above me was a mass of wood and metal and stone, the remains of the house. I turned my head slowly. Mags was pushed up next to me. He was muttering. The spell was keeping the air pocket from collapsing. It was holding the debris of the house above us, maintaining a tiny bubble of space for us.

Mags was bleeding from the head, a steady trickle. He was burning himself up to keep the air pocket going. As I watched, a thick drop of blood detached
from his scalp, and disappeared an inch from the dusty floor of our little cave, sizzling away like it had never existed. It was immediately followed by another.

I was bleeding, too. I started murmuring along with him, and a second later he stopped. Sucked in air. Shuddered next to me, exhausted. As I cast I could feel the weight of the rubble above us. Tons and tons. I realized that only a constant push of magic could stop it from crushing us—if we paused for a second, it would overwhelm us. The weight burned away every syllable as I spat it out, and the sense of being drained, of deflating, never stopped.

We were going to die. It was only a matter of time.

I listened to Mags’s breathing. I pictured Claire, the expression on her face as she was sucked backward out the window. She was dead, too. Also only a matter of time, depending on when Mika Renar was ready to put the
Biludha-tah-namus
into motion. I wondered if I’d be crushed in this air pocket first, or if I’d still be muttering spells desperately when the
biludha
swept through, all of us swelling up and exploding into red mist so our blood could be burned off, smashing the laws of the universe itself and making Renar and her conspirators immortal. I wondered if I could time it so we died before the ritual claimed us, so I wouldn’t have to contribute to that mummy’s immortality.

“I’m sorry,” Mags said, panting like a dog. “I’m sorry, Lem.”

I couldn’t stop casting. If I broke off to say something to Mags, we’d be crushed a second later.

I raised my head a little. Something caught and complained in my back, a sharp pain. I pushed through it and tried to get a good look at our little cave of disaster. There was some light, because I could see, so there had to be air getting in, gaps in the wreckage. It was insane to think we might tunnel out, but I didn’t have any sane possibilities presenting themselves. Maybe I’d let Mags catch his breath, and maybe he could cast something on top of what I was spinning, create a tunnel that way, or shift it all away from us. Something. There had to be something. I was not going to die in fucking
Texas
.

I couldn’t think how to communicate this with Mags, though, without stopping the spell. I thought about the chances he’d think it through on his own. I wasn’t encouraged.

I turned my head. Mags had passed out.

I heard Claire on the bus as we talked through the endless Texas night.

“So if you’re not going to be some master magician or whatever,” she’d asked, quiet and lit by the soft orange glow of the reading lights, “why are you still out there, doing this? Why not do something else? Something you wouldn’t have to bleed for?”

“What would I do? Work? This
is
work. This is harder work than most.”

She’d shrugged, unimpressed. “What’s the point? Do something that matters. Bleed people, but for a reason. Leave a mark.”

And I’d replied, feeling smug in my fucking original philosophy of life.

“First, do no harm. I’ve seen what ambition looks like with mages. It looks like genocides and human hearts torn out of people’s chests on the tops of pyramids and concentration camps and cults. It looks like wars set off just to feed some fucking ritual. That’s what leaving your mark means for people like Renar and Amir, and even Hiram, with his short cons that cost so much fucking blood.” I’d stretched and wiggled my toes inside my shoes. “
That’s
leaving your mark, with us. So I’m not going to leave a mark. My goal is to get through without anyone knowing I was here.”

I’d been good at it, too. Do no harm. Leave no mark.

I hadn’t hurt anyone but myself, and there was no fucking sign that I’d ever existed, anywhere. I had seven dollars in my pocket and a single suit of sweaty, crusty clothes. I had holes in my shoes. I had Pitr Mags. I’d never had a lease, or a mortgage. I’d never had a credit card or a bank account. I had a birth certificate, somewhere, so there was some portion of the world’s forests on my account, but that was it. I’d stolen things. Money, mostly, conned out of Charmed people. Trinkets here and there when survival absolutely demanded it.

I kept murmuring the spell, draining myself to keep our air pocket intact. Sweat poured down my face. I was shivering.

I remembered the girl in Hiram’s study. Her doodled-on sneakers.
She’d
been shivering, too. In the span of time between me meeting her and me trapped
in the air pocket, we were linked by uncontrollable shivering. And what had I done.

I’d done nothing.

I’d left no mark on her. I’d refused to bleed her like a fucking vampire, I’d told Hiram to fuck himself, and he’d spent the better part of a decade punishing me in little ways, tiny vindictive ways. Keeping our bond intact so I couldn’t leave the city. Reminding me, whenever I needed help, that he owed me nothing and I owed him everything. Insults and sneers.

And he’d bled the girl anyway. To spite me. To teach me that last lesson, that it didn’t
matter
what I approved of or disapproved of. That the universe bled us all. It was a lesson I was just starting to grasp.

I didn’t know what had happened to that girl. She’d vanished from my life. But I knew. I knew she’d been bled, over and over again, probably. Paid sometimes, by magicians like Hiram who imagined they were civilized because they dished out a few twenty-dollar bills each time. Or not paid, sometimes, by any number of
saganustari
or even
idimustari
who came across her. She was dead by now. Used up, buried in some basement. Or not. Dead all the same. Maybe covered in runes. Left in a bathtub in an abandoned apartment to rot.

I’d never touched her and she was dead anyway.

I saw Claire, folded in half, hurtling through the window.

My speech was getting slurry, my tongue thick and numb. The rubble above us shifted, raining dust down
onto us. Mags sat up with a grunt, smacked his head on a gnarled old header, and flattened again.

“Fuck,” he said, mildly. Like he was whispering good morning to you.

I kept slurring the spell. My mouth hurt. My throat burned. I thought it was a great time for Mags to take over again, but instead of jumping in and resting me, he convulsed, throwing his arms and legs up and punching at the ceiling of the air pocket with his fists.

“Fuck!” he shouted, hoarse. “FUCK!”

I shut my eyes and forced myself to loop through the spell again. A wave of dizzy exhaustion swept me clean.

“FUCK!”

I concentrated. Moved my burning lips. The end of each syllable fit into the beginning of the next perfectly, clicking into place. Some people never saw it, the invisible way the syllables fit together. Once you saw it, it was obvious. It was invigorating. Once you saw it, you could do anything with the Words. Anything. Some of us just repeated spells. Just drew some blood and recited, and they would always be whatever they were. But if you
saw,
then it all made sense, and making up a spell was as easy as ordering coffee. I could do it in my sleep, just plucking sounds from the air and feeding them to the universe with a bit of gas. My mind went smooth and glassy and I slumped there moving my lips moving my lips moving my—

I thought about just stopping.

Relief swept through me at just the thought. I imagined just stopping. The building crushing us, a second or two of pain, maybe less. Maybe none. Just letting go, going to sleep.

I kept moving my lips.

I saw the expression on Claire’s face as she folded in half and flew through the window.

My tongue was swollen and dry. I kept moving my lips. The universe kept accepting my sacrifice. An endless hole with no bottom or purpose, absorbing everything. I thought of the black relief of just giving up, just
stopping,
and I thought that Claire would be alone. Truly, completely alone. Abandoned.

I kept moving my lips. A gray wave of dizziness filled my brain, and I knew I had one, maybe two more passes in me before it was over. The cold black relief rose up, and I started sinking, and I
wanted
to sink. To be numb, to be blind, to
stop moving my lips
.

I took a breath, intending to hold it. To wait the unpredictable beat of the universe as it judged whether I had
paused
or
stopped
. That final, endless moment.

And then I kicked for the surface.

I opened my eyes and there was Mags, panting next to me. I could feel his warmth, his physical presence. I reached out and took hold of his arm weakly, pulling him ineffectually toward me. I could feel him in the air, his blood everywhere around me.

I kicked for the surface. I sucked in air with a painful convulsive twitch of my chest, and grabbed hold of Mags’s gas and spoke the Words, louder. My stomach
flipped as I felt his strength flow through me, glorious, awful.

Our air pocket shuddered, inched outward.

Mags turned sharply to look at me, then nodded. He reached over and took hold of me in turn.

I spoke the spell again, hoarse, pulling more gas from Mags, and the air pocket creaked again, swelling. I repeated the spell a second later, vibrating with impatience, feeling Mags like he was hooked up to me with wires.

And then, muffled, distant, I heard someone shouting back at us.

“Hello?”

I kept casting. My heart lurched in my cavernous, empty chest, boomeranging around. Mags fell silent for a second. The air pocket suddenly doubled in size, debris raining down around its invisible surface. Mags gasped and his hands tightened painfully on my arm.

“Holy fuck,” Mags said quietly. “Is that Daryl fucking
Houy
?” He took a deep breath. “Hey! Hey, Daryl!”