Secondhand Sorcery

It was always disorienting for Keisha to disconnect from a construct, especially one she’d been giving her full attention. Her brain took time to switch inputs and outputs away from something that no longer existed. So she lost a few seconds after she released the whisperwing in Nadia’s bedroom. The hotel room spun around her a few times, trying to figure out which way was up; as soon as it decided for good, she got off her bed and out the door, not even stopping to put her shoes back on before racing down the carpeted hallway.

Dr. Gus’s new room was in the same hotel as hers—it was cheap, and with Titus Marshall scaring the tourists there were always vacancies. Around the corner, up a flight of stairs double-time, and she was there, hammering away at the door. He took a moment to answer; Keisha could picture him setting down whatever book he was reading, rising stiffly to his feet, and ambling over to the door.

As soon as it opened, she blurted out, “Nadia’s been blown.”

He blinked. “Really.” Then he looked down. “If we are fleeing the city, you will want shoes.”

“Fleeing the city? Who said we were … oh.” Belatedly her mind caught up with his.

Dr. Gus’s eyebrows raised. “I gather you were concerned with other aspects of the situation. Understandable. But you have much more personal experience with Titus Marshall than I do. Will he react with immediate violence against us?”

She shook her head. “More likely against her. And he’ll draw it out, too. With Yunks.”

“Hence your concern.” He glanced up and down the empty hallway. “You had better come in.” When she had sat down on the edge of his bed, and he had closed the door, he went on, “I was under the impression you had trained her in sovereignty protocol.”

“Yes and no,” she said as he meandered back to his chair. True to form, the reading lamp was on, and he had a volume of The Golden Bough out. “There’s only so much you can teach a child, through a whisperwing, in short sessions, when you can’t let her know what she’s actually doing.”

Dr. Gus put a hand on the back of the chair, but remained standing. “So it is possible, but by no means certain, that she will resist him. It might buy us some time to escape. Would you kindly notify the Colonel? It would not do to leave him behind.”

“And Nadia?” She already knew the answer, but she had to ask.

“Is beyond our power to help, at this juncture. If children are ill-suited for war, they are little better for espionage; either way they must take on the same risks as an adult asset without equivalent abilities or understanding.”

It wasn’t quite a direct rebuke, but it stung. “Sir, I owe that girl, we all owe her—”

“That debt will remain unpaid,” he said sternly. “And there is no action on your part or mine, however drastic, which is more likely to improve her situation, or ours, than to make it worse. We have been given a critical window in which to act, by the sacrifice of a courageous field operative. If you feel some measure of affection for the child, you would do better not to waste her final gift for the sake of your own pride.”

“It’s not pride,” she said, and knew it for a lie—giving Nadia up would be as good as admitting that she had wasted her time and got a decent kid killed in the process. The room was blurry now, however much she blinked.

“I will call Colonel Hampton, if you like,” he offered, only a little more gently. “But I do not have his number.” Keisha slapped at her pockets, found her phone, and passed it to him without a word. “Thank you,” he said, and walked over to the window to use it.

Keisha made her unsteady way into the bathroom, where she splashed cold water over her face. It would be easy to break down now, or to rehearse the ways this situation might have been avoided. Dr. Gus wouldn’t be brutal about it; he wouldn’t tell her how and why everything had gone wrong. That was her job, and he would trust her to do it. But it was a job for later, and whatever was going on in that castle right now, her eyes had to remain dry.

Thirty seconds later she was out the door and headed back to her own room at a brisk walk. Two minutes after that she was headed back again, with both her pipes stuffed into the bag over one shoulder and the green “oxygen” tank full of ectoplasm wheeling along beside her in its carrier.

He was still on the phone when she got back. “Yes, Colonel, I understand, but time is short. We will be by to pick you up momentarily. Please pack only what is essential.” He hung up, then looked at her. “I dearly hope you know his address.”

“I’ve been there a couple of times,” she said, taking her phone back.

“Very good.” He picked up The Golden Bough and crammed it into her bag. “The rest can be left behind. You will drive; I can alert the consulate on our way. You have everything else?”

“Passport, change of clothes, and every cash euro I’ve got.” Most of which would be used to keep the customs crowd from looking at her bag too closely.

“Hampton will have more, and my passport is in my pocket. Lead the way.”

She wouldn’t have thought Thessaloniki’s streets would be all that crowded at 1930 on a Wednesday night, but she was wrong. There was a performance going on in some park or other, and the authorities had closed off a couple of streets. Keisha was left to curse the Thessalonian arts scene from behind the wheel of Hamp’s Fiat, clenching till her hands were sore and struggling to keep thoughts of screaming children out of her head.

Meanwhile, Dr. Gus tried to persuade the consulate staff that it was in their best interests to get everyone important the hell out of the country. He finally hung up around the time they got to Hamp’s apartment. Then they had to stuff him into the tiny car with them—somehow finding room for all their luggage—and make their way down to the airport.

Keisha kept her magnolia flower firmly in mind the whole way, mostly because it made it harder to feel upset with herself. But it was very fortunate that she did; when the car in front of her rear-ended a truck, she had the presence of mind to slam on the brakes.

Half a second later the car behind them came crashing into their rear, and for the next ten seconds the world was a maelstrom of flashing lights, honking horns, crunching metal and shattering glass; their pitiful compact got bounced around like a pinball. The magnolia flickered in and out of focus as they careened, giving her glimpses of a flashing rainbow light inside her mind.

When it was finished—when the remains of their car was still, and the last crash had sounded far off in the distance—Keisha raised her face from the wilted airbag. Hamp was giggling feebly in the passenger seat, his face bruised and bloody, his hair peppered with shards of glass. She was just going to check on Dr. Gus in the back when a brilliant flash of light drew her eyes to the horizon instead.

Shum-Shum rose into the night sky, looking like a gilded nightmare. The glowing jewel-toned panels on its sides revolved like a carousel, spitting fire and lightning with every twinkle. Somehow, the demented tootling tune it made drowned out the earth-shaking explosions it set off all around it; its dangling beads jiggled and danced to the beat.

The Colonel, who had a trickle of blood running down his face from a cut in his forehead, sat up and clapped for the monster, grinning like an idiot. He was still better than the woman thirty feet down the road, who got out of her ruined car to hop up and down while she cheered. Keisha ignored both of them to look at Dr. Gus, who was slumped against the back of her seat with his glasses cracked and a good-sized lump on his head.

The fires were already spreading, black smoke rising in plumes. A quick look around told her that they wouldn’t be getting anywhere on the road even if they got a working car; Shum-Shum’s keystone sequence (or whatever it was) had set off a half-mile pileup. Whatever Yuri was doing—if she judged the direction right, he was wrecking the airport—he was causing massive collateral damage in the process, so their top priority would be to get off the road and put some distance between them and the flying murder-lamp.

She had wrestled the chuckling Hamp out of the passenger seat, and was trying to pry the back door open so she could get Dr. Gus out, when Shum-Shum abruptly disappeared. The dark street instantly became much quieter, the obnoxious music replaced by wailing sirens, distant screams, sobs, and moans. Hampton hissed and crouched down against the wreck, clutching his head. Keisha wondered how bad she looked herself, how bad she would feel when the adrenaline wore off.

She didn’t trust the thing to stay gone. She squirmed back into the wreck, fished her pic’ out of the carnage, and whistled up an old-school “chigsaw” drone to rip the jammed door free.

Dr. Gus moaned and shifted in his seat as the vicious little bug went to work grinding through the crumpled metal; it took about five seconds for the ruined door to land on the pavement with a clang. The chig still had plenty of life in it, so she set it loose to wander the area hacking open any other wrecked doors it found. It would deplete a little of her mental bandwidth, sure, but it might also save somebody’s life. And her cover was shot anyway.

Hamp was in rough shape, but he could walk. She gave him the green tank and her bag, which he took without a protest, then tossed Dr. Gus over her shoulders into a fireman’s carry. He muttered something unintelligible, but didn’t wake up. She was a bit out of shape, but could still move about as fast carrying the little old man as the Colonel could stagger with the tank carrier.

He followed her in silence through the newly made labyrinth of smashed bumpers and broken glass, not even grumbling. She could understand. They’d put her through a simulation of a primeval’s halo back in training, and the aftermath had been just plain nasty, like coming off an acid trip. Poor Hamp couldn’t catch a break.

They’d wrecked close to the airport, on a major road lined with gas stations and car rental places. She opted for one of the latter—if Shum-Shum came back, it was a lot less flammable. The clerk on duty had already run out to help someone out of a wreck. Her phone started ringing in her pocket as she was struggling to find a way into the parking lot. She laid her burden down gently on a bench just as the ringing stopped—missed call, Dimitri something at the consulate. Probably wondering why Mr. Marshall had effectively declared war on Greece.

It was a good question, and she didn’t call back to tell them she didn’t know. However pissed he was, Titus didn’t need to blow the airport to kingdom come just to stop the three of them from leaving the country. A couple of cars full of Praetorians would have done the trick. She’d have expected him to either declare open war against the United States, or else assassinate them quietly. This little tantrum didn’t make sense.

She looked down at Dr. Gus—still out. Pulse steady, breathing regular, occasional movement, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d sustained a concussion, which was no joke for a man his age. “Colonel Hampton. You’re the ranking officer on the scene. Any ideas?” It was mostly a rhetorical question, but when she looked up he was pulling out his phone. “Uh, sir? What are you doing?”

“My job,” he said, stubbornly whacking at the screen with stiff fingers. His dexterity was still crap, a month after his encounter with Yunks, and Shum-Shum couldn’t have helped. “I’m the liaison. Let’s liaise, before he burns down the whole city.” He sounded a little punch-drunk.

“I don’t think that’s a—“ He held up his hand for silence, the phone to his ear. She heard ringing … and more ringing … and then a canned voicemail recording. Amazingly, it was factory-default English. Hamp stuffed the phone back in his pocket without leaving a message.

“First time he’s passed up a chance to rant,” he said, staring at the mess on the road.

“Yeah, I know. He’s got my number, too. This is weird.” A familiar, ominous sound made her look up. She saw nothing, but it was night, and they’d be running dark. “Oh, no. Please tell me you don’t hear that, Hamp.”

He sat down heavily on the next bench over. “Sorry. F-16s, I’d guess. Hellenic Air Force has plenty of ‘em.” Rockets screamed somewhere overhead, and a series of far-off detonations echoed in the dark. “Yep. ASMs.”

“Goddammit, there are children in that castle!”

“How many kids just died here?” he said, waving at the disaster on the road. “The son of a bitch has been running their city and rubbing their nose in it for months, and they had to take it. Now he craters an airport, out of the blue. What did he expect them to do?”

Keisha’s hands clutched at her hair, threatening to tear it out. “Ahh, relax,” he said sourly. “It’s a big-ass stone building. They’d want about a dozen cruise missiles to take it all down, maybe more, and they won’t risk that kind of firepower in their own town when a halo could pop up and send all of them into a high-rise.”

She gave him a hard stare; he fidgeted, and added, “Those Mavericks or whatever are pea-shooters. Showing resolve, saving face, letting off steam, all that crap.”

He had a point, and she was glad he was recovering from Shum-Shum’s halo. But she wasn’t comforted, and it didn’t help her mood to hear the crackle of distant gunfire. Praetorian toughs letting loose in the streets, escalation feeding escalation? Wonderful. The whole region of Macedonia would be demolished by dawn at this rate.

She bent down, unzipped her bag, and started screwing her Benny together. Hamp watched her cautiously with his pouchy basset eyes, but didn’t object. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, only that it didn’t involve sitting in the parking lot of a car rental business while the world went to hell around her. For the time being, they were stuck here, but if Dr. Gus woke up enough to walk, they could probably cut through alleys to reach a clear stretch of road. Maybe she could whistle up a few more chigsaws to clear the road for rescue vehicles; her original had long since run out of steam and died …

No. Scratch that. She had a better idea. “Hamp, are you packing?” He only frowned. “Heat. You got a sidearm on you?” That got her a wary nod. “Good. Keep an eye on the doc for me. I’m going to do some recon.”

The SCOPES form was one of the very few things she could make that didn’t look like an insect; people tended to freak out, or at least notice, when they saw bugs bigger than softballs. It looked like a big-eyed little owl instead. Still a little conspicuous, just not nightmare fuel. It flapped and fluttered into shape out of a giant bubble of ectoplasm, then took to the sky for her, scanning the area with flawless high-def full-color night vision.

As she’d expected, there was an arc-shaped zone of destruction, centered on the mass of slag and pockmarked concrete that used to be the airport, butting up against the Gulf of Salonica. She studied from above for a few seconds. Yes. There it was: an unmarked space, where Yuri would have stood to survey his handiwork without getting burned alive. It was a big empty field just northeast of the airport, right next to the water.

The owl’s huge eyes easily picked out the red and yellow gleam of working car lights wiggling their way back and forth along dirt roads, looking for a gap in the world-record roadblock their owner had trapped himself with. She swooped in lower until she could peer through the driver’s side window from a few hundred feet away, and confirm that a smallish, fair-haired teenage boy was shouting and thumping at the dashboard inside. Marshall obviously hadn’t planned this at all well.

She looked around for long enough to confirm that he wasn’t going anywhere fast—and pick out the least inconvenient route on foot—then let the little bird land on a tree and dissipate. Again she spent several seconds disoriented. When she was centered again, she said, “Hamp, I need to borrow your gun.”

“What for?”

“Yuri’s less than a mile away, as trapped as we are. I’m going to go find out what the hell is going on.”

“A handgun against a familiar?”

“A handgun and a VRIL,” she corrected, breaking down the pipe, stowing it, and slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Shum-Shum’s not that great at causing damage smaller than a city block, and his halo can’t touch me. C’mon, fork it over.”

“You know, I am still your CO,” he observed. But he unzipped his jacket and reached inside as he said it.

“Yeah, and if I don’t make it back, it’s been an honor and a pleasure. But I’ve taken down whole buildings full of terrorists before. I think I can handle a fourteen-year-old with a god complex.”