Secondhand Sorcery

It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and Mr. Griffith was still talking. Talking, and talking, the jaw moving up and down, that one stained tooth showing every time, but Nadia was done listening. She didn’t remember what it was even about this time, why she was in his office again. Was it the bandannas he was convinced were gang signs—or her being late for class because she had to jump her uncle’s car—or the homework she didn’t do because she picked up an extra shift at the shop so her family could make rent? Did it matter?

No, she decided. It didn’t. It didn’t, and he didn’t, and this didn’t. Nadia could have been working by now, making real money, instead of hanging out listening to this pendejo rattle on about the good college she was never going to get into—and didn’t want to anyway. Abruptly she got up. Mr. Griffith was slower, grunting as he got that fat belly up, flopping around the green tie his wife got him that never managed to match a single shirt he owned. Nadia shoved him back, and he missed the chair, smacking his head against the wall on the way down. He shouted, some shit about assault. Nadia threw up a middle finger for him with one hand while the other yanked open his office door.

Cops showed up at the shop later, while Nadia was changing the oil on an old Buick. Of course. Didn’t give any specifics, didn’t ask about Griffith, just started sniffing around. When they started talking about drugs, Jimmy told them to show him a warrant or get the hell out of his shop. They didn’t leave. Jimmy stepped closer, said it again. Nadia could see Teresa in the office through the window glass, talking into the phone real fast … Mr. Carter pulled up to the shop inside thirty seconds, tires squealing. He managed to talk them down somehow, and they went away. But Mr. Carter gave Nadia a glare when they did. Like all this mierda was her fault. So she shrugged, and threw up her hands, and walked away.

That was just how it went. How it always went. Everywhere she went, everything she did, there was some man trying to pin it on her. It was all stupid, not even worth her time. The only way to win was to walk away. And when it wasn’t men, it was women, women in cafes, little women with blonde hair and big round glasses giving Nadia excuses she’d already heard before, trying to get her to do whatever they wanted, just like that cabrón Griffith.

Now she was back in the world again, on a windy street in the middle of Turkey of all places, doing something somebody else wanted to do for reasons she just didn’t get. There was Mister Higgins already, disgusting as always, a giant wobbling hairy fat sack of a torso on two splayed feet, and a huge clawed hand poking out either side with no arm in the middle. His head—could you even call it a head?—was just a flap of skin on top of his body, googly eyes, pointed nose and bat-ears stuck on like decorations. The whole thing popped back, like the lid of a trash can, as he leaned forward, and thousands of bubbles came spewing out of the gaping fang-lined hole he called a mouth.

It was an absolute storm of bubbles, far more than he usually made, moving against the wind and across the street towards the GDS building, swelling up as they flew until they hit the brick walls. Pop! Pop! The crisp little sound somehow drowned out the noise of masonry smashing and cracking, as the air inside those big pretty bubbles rushed out in a shockwave. Men stood up at their suddenly exposed desks inside, shouting inaudibly as the walls came down. More bubbles came in after them, caught them up and shrank with them inside, crushing them into a mess of bloody meat. Nadia caught the noise of a few gunshots—nearly drowned out by the dainty popping bubbles—and imagined bullets hitting the soapy gossamer baubles and bouncing impossibly back to hit the men who fired them.

Meanwhile, Fatima was sitting on the asphalt against their car’s rear bumper, next to the empty red-thermos kitty, not even looking at the building her emissant was wrecking. She was already fishing out a cigarette from her jacket; she paused, looked up, met and matched her sister’s frown. “You know, you could help,” she said. “And get down out of sight, they’ve got guns in there.”

Abruptly Nadia realized Ézarine was standing beside her. Today she shone greenish-white, like glow-in-the-dark stickers, and stared coldly at the repulsive Mister Higgins and his frothing spew. The last fifty feet of the building was demolished now, top to bottom, and men and women were pouring out of every exit they could find, shouting and pointing, heading for their cars but it didn’t work, the bubbles were there too, playing Mister Higgins’s favorite game, lifting their vehicles up in the air and dropping them down in crushed lumps to crater the lot.

The emissant paused to take a breath (why did he need to take breaths?), and did three big lurching hops forward, his blubbery belly sloshing back and forth with each jump. Again he exhaled, a fresh wave of giant gleaming spheres. Across the street, people called for help, but their phones weren’t working. The bubbles took them, lifting them up, not even crushing now, leaving them suspended in the air to bobble while they pounded uselessly at the wet soapy walls, frantically using up their air supply. Courtesy of Mister Higgins, Enrique “Omar” Alvarez’s last middle finger to the world from beyond the grave.

Pop, pop! went the torrent battering down the walls, but there was another sound too, off to Nadia’s right. A sound she heard in her dreams, a sound she hated—an obnoxious, tinny, grating music like a worn-down carnival ride. A few kilometers to the southeast, Shum-Shum floated in the updraft from its own fires. Çankaya Köşkü, the Turkish presidential palace, was burning, the president and his entire household almost certainly dead already.

And still Nadia was standing in one place, her Ézarine beside her, both of them with arms crossed, while her brother and sister knocked over a country’s government on the orders of men and women they barely knew. Doing Russia’s wet-work. Hah. The thought came to her, like an old memory brought back by sudden prompting, that she had been upset this morning. Frightened, worried, angry, tense, hot and sick inside with her own misery. She could feel it coming back now inside her, burbling up like bile at the back of her throat. Ézarine shone a little brighter as the fear and the anger grew back inside them. It was only a kind of energy to her, a tightening of the soul, pressure on a coiled spring ready to be released.

The Security building was starting to show serious structural damage now, essential girders bending and crumpling, broad slabs of floor crashing out onto the ground as their supports were blown away. There were reasons—she remembered that, too—why she was supposed to allow this. To participate, even. None of them were very good reasons. Neither were the reasons why she’d done the things she did before, under Titus. She’d gone along with it, she supposed, because she couldn’t think of any way of making everything better. That was wrong; she saw that now, now that she could take her anger out and set it down in front of her like this, to study it with a curled lip like a roach waiting to be stepped on.

If the game was stupid, you didn’t try to find a way to win it, and stick with it until the perfect solution appeared. That would keep you a slave forever. The first step had to be to stop playing, and walk away.

Mister Higgins took another breath, a great big one, and clenched his stupid goofy puppet-hands with excitement. Then exhaled it, straight up into the sky, as Ézarine spun into being three feet away to side-kick him right in his pendulous gut. He was no lightweight, but Ézarine was stronger than ever. He bounced like a rubber ball across the parking lot, spraying chunks of black asphalt with every impact.

He came to a rest belly-up, of course, waggling his four stubby limbs like an upended turtle. Ézarine reappeared in the air right above him, and came down with her feet pointed like a dagger at what passed for his heart. She glowed like a falling star as she landed, and the force of their meeting rocked the car beside Nadia on its suspension. When the dust of black tar and soap foam cleared her familiar was straddling Fatima’s, punching down hard, driving her fists one after another straight into his fat pouchy throat.

“Nadia, what the hell are you—“ Something caught Nadia’s left wrist, and without thinking she spun around to slap at it, like an annoying fly. She was surprised to see Fatima’s face in the way of the blow, wasn’t sure whether to feel dismay or satisfaction when her adopted sister let go of her wrist and reeled back, clutching at her cheek. “Ow! What the fuck?”

The bubbles came out of Mister Higgins in a belching torrent, driving Ézarine up and off; she flickered in midair and reappeared behind his head, seizing him by the stupid little tuft of black hair between his ugly bat ears and yanking hard, thrusting her other arm into his slobbering mouth for extra leverage while she tried to tear his face off. It was a mistake. In spite of all her efforts, the silly flap of a head came down, catching her hand between his snaggle teeth. Her scream broke every window for a quarter-mile, and the car’s pelted Nadia with glinting pebbles like hailstones—

Fatima charged, and Nadia fell hard onto the pavement, losing the world in a burst of stars when she hit her head. For a moment all but pain was forgotten, and Nadia felt Ézarine’s half of the halo start to fade as Fatima landed on her stomach, driving the breath out of her. But then an open hand raked across her face, nails digging in hard, and Nadia was sure she was angry enough to call a dozen Ézarines if she chose.

Her emissant was beside them in an instant, picking up Fatima and slamming her against the car. She made a noise between a shout and a squeal, and fell across Nadia. Ézarine kicked her roughly off, then prodded her with a foot, trying to make her get up. She groaned, and rolled a little, but stayed on the ground. Nadia did not.

Across the parking lot, Mister Higgins had miraculously found his way to his oversized feet, but wasn’t doing anything else. He slumped forward, flapping his arms at the air in his distress, letting out a few ineffectual bubbles in a forlorn little hiccup. His big cartoony goggle-eyes rolled in opposite directions. Ézarine twirled into place before him, leaned gracefully back on her long legs, retracted a fist for a killing blow with the force of her whole body behind it. He did not seem to see her. Like a bowstring releasing she rushed forward, and her fist went through him as he abruptly evaporated into a dismal cloud of ectoplasm.

Bereft of her target, Ézarine was bowled over by her own momentum. She shook her head as she got up—but she, too, was looking weaker than she had before. She shivered, and her empty midnight eyes swept back and forth, looking for an enemy. The glow was gone from her skin; half the support for her halo had disappeared.

it wasn’t fair she was beautiful and mister higgins was nothing nothing at all why should she be held back by the disgusting thing everything was always holding her back everyone was always holding them back what did they want from her

Nadia lifted her face from the nubbly surface of the parking lot, and wondered how it had got there. She saw there was a dark smear on the ground, and her cheek stung; she put a hand to it, felt swollen scratches, and her fingers came away bloody. Still puzzled, she stood up, brushing translucent beads of shattered safety glass off her clothing. The car was in very bad shape, she noticed. Not as bad as all the cars across the street, but not really driveable anymore.

And there, she saw, was Fatima, lying on the ground. She was bleeding too—you could see it in a pool around her head—and breathing fast. How had all that happened? Nadia knelt down and put out a hand to check on her; Fatima flinched at the touch, groaned, and pulled her arm away, muttering something sullen. “Fatima! Are you all right?” She didn’t answer. “Fatima, talk to me!” Her eyes cracked open for an instant, and she looked up at the sky. If she recognized her adopted sister, or even realized she was there, she didn’t show it. After a couple of seconds, her eyes shut again.

Help. Nadia needed help. She stood up, and looked around, but the nearest other person was their driver, who was lying perfectly still in a very awkward position, his feet and lower legs still in the car, his body slumped on the ground with his submachine gun a few feet away. Why had he even got out of the car, and with the gun of all things? That wasn’t his job, he was supposed to stay in the car and drive them away as soon … as soon as they were done … with the … with the …

oh god

Now Nadia was breathing even faster than Fatima. What had she done? No, that was obvious, why had she done it? Obvious too, not helpful. She had to think but Fatima was bleeding on the ground and Nadia didn’t know how to fix her and she’d just betrayed the mission while there were still dozens if not hundreds of Turkey’s most important security officials milling around just across the street! Fatima would probably die without help, but how could she get that help without revealing who they were? Was there any way out of this that didn’t end with both of them shot, with good reason, by the people they had just attacked? Or maybe tortured for clues to help the Turks hunt down the rest of their family?

Their family. Her family. She’d just—oh god she’d just had Ézarine throw Fatima this wasn’t even like Titus this was so much worse she wasn’t even a Marshall anymore and that hadn’t counted for anything she was nothing now nothing she was the enemy of the whole world they would hunt her down like a dog no they would compete in teams to see whose side could hunt her down first if Fatima’s ghost did not haunt her to an early grave sooner and she would deserve it god how had she been so—

People were coming out of the cafe now, out of stores and apartment buildings all around them, poking their heads out of the shattered doors like frightened rabbits peeking out of their burrows after a gunshot. Most of them were on their phones already, calling for help. A few of the bravest and kindest took hesitant steps out into the parking lot, towards the two sweet innocent girls and the hurt man lying beside the broken car. And one, Nadia saw with rising terror, had his phone out to use as a camera, sweeping it across the lot to take a video.

There was only one option left; Nadia thought of Mila, and a dead Frenchman nattering on about her freedom, and Ézarine blossomed into the world again, right beside her, shining out to dispel the darkness of doubt and fear with her righteous anger. First things first: she snatched the phone out of the stupid gawker’s hands, knocking him down in the process, and crushed the vile thing into fragments with one hand. Then she flickered away, picked up the driver’s gun, and gave it to Nadia, who swept its sights over the few Good Turkish Samaritans coming to help. They shouted their indignation, but obediently scuttled back indoors.

And next? That was a more difficult question. Still, being an outcast almost simplified things. If the whole world was her enemy, she only had one person left to look out for—herself. Fatima … Fatima was the one remaining complication. Even now, Nadia could feel some small portion of regret and shame. But if there was no helping her, what was the use hanging around feeling guilty?

Just to be sure, she had Ézarine pick up the driver and drop him onto the middle of the street, where he landed with a meaty thwack. There. One more useful thing done. A howl of outrage was all the thanks she got from the little rabbits in their cafe, from the scuttling security suits across the street. Curses and threats in Turkish, shouted from a safe distance. It didn’t matter. Not one of them was fit to judge her.

Then a gun went off. That was another matter. Ézarine flitted over to the Security building and let out all her rage in a shout to break the world. Nadia couldn’t even hear it; the people in the lot fell down en masse. The water in blood had a resonant frequency too, the same as everything else. She had been merciful, and kept it short, since they hadn’t picked this fight. They would probably wake up again. Probably. She wasn’t a doctor. She probably should have been studying things like that, instead of nonsense about Indian princes and French communists.

There were no more gunshots. Another problem solved. But she didn’t think she could fight off the whole world that way. It was time to leave. The cars were all destroyed, which hardly mattered since Nadia didn’t know how to drive. No bikes in sight, either. She supposed there was nothing for it but to … walk away. Hmph.

She turned back for a last look at Fatima. Maybe hurt, maybe dying. But the sooner Nadia went away, the sooner an ambulance could arrive—if there were any ambulances free for foreign terrorists. The Russians, then, if they could even be bothered to look after the children they used after they left a job half-done. Whoever. It was out of her hands. She bent down, kissed her poor suffering sister on the forehead by way of apology, and made her way down the road beside Ézarine, keeping her gun prominently visible.

Eventually she would have to dismiss the familiar again, and then her heart would break. Better to put it off. If she kept walking long enough, she would be too tired to dream when she finally passed out. Anyway, she had work to do. She couldn’t expect to live for long with the whole world as her enemy. But getting rid of enemies was almost the only thing she was good at.