The Least Wrong Thing (177)

PSI-4

“He tried to kill us,” someone said. A male voice.

Hyacinth glanced away from the floating bottle to investigate. But the improvised firebomb was still lit and she had to…

Ted. It was Ted. He was still holding his tiny son against him, and he was standing amidst the floating glass in the middle of the room. “That man tried to kill us. Hyacinth…” He stared at her. “That man tried to kill my family!”

“Badly,” Hyacinth managed. She walked quickly past him to the closet under the stairs. There was a bucket of water in there with the chamber pot and she removed it. The wooden handle creaked, loud in the stillness.

Ted scrambled to the window frame and leaned out. The noise of the surviving decoys was faint under the storm. It was dark outside and he couldn’t see past the rain and the flying garbage. “Are you out there? Son of a bitch, are you out there? I’ll kill you!” He stepped over what was left of the window and put a foot on the porch.

Sanaam snatched him and pulled him back inside before Hyacinth could. “Ted. Ted, you can’t.” He had a hand around each of the smaller man’s shoulders and he shook him as if to wake him. “Ted. It’s a storm. You have Pablo. If you go outside you’ll be hit. You need to take care of your family here. He was just trying to scare us. He’s gone now. You can’t go out.”

“Oh, gods, this is my fault,” Fred said. He put his face in his hands. “Oh, gods, I’m sorry…”

Hyacinth lifted the bucket up to the bottle and extinguished it. “You guys, let go. Let it go. I’ve got it.” She felt the bottle thump into the water. The particolored magic around her faded and the glass shards fell to the floor.

“He can’t go out but I sure as hell can!”

That was a female voice and Hyacinth turned to look for it.

The brown girl with the flowered dress and headscarf had both her hands wrapped around the handle of a large iron frying pan which had once contained a frittata. There were still traces of yellow clinging to the inside. She was approaching the broken window with her head down as if preparing to hit a home run out of the park. “Come back here and try to hurt my boyfriend again, you bastard!” she snarled.

“Miss Opeyemi!” Sanaam said, but he didn’t want to let go of Ted. “Penny! Please don’t! If you go…”

More voices were making themselves heard. Some of them were quiet, Tania was asking Elizabeth if she was all right, but some of them were sharp and angry.

“Il could have hurt Lu and Calliope!” Chris cried.

“Hey!” Kitty said. She swatted him on the back of the head.

“Oh. Tu aussi, chéri.”

Ann shut her eyes and put a hand to her head. “Milo, don’t,” she muttered aloud. “I know. I know, but we can’t. Don’t…”

“Oh my gods! Is this why your house is always on fire?” Soup cried.

“Sometimes,” Maggie said. “Why? What’d you think it was?”

“I don’t know! I thought you and Milo probably kept blowing it up!”

“Sometimes…” Maggie allowed painfully.

“Your control is improving,” the General said. “Mrs. Toussaint, it’s all right. Sit here…”

Tommy grabbed his girlfriend and turned her around. “Penny! Hey, Pen. Don’t. I’m okay. We’re all okay.”

“What if I wasn’t here?” she said in a tiny voice. “What if you got hurt and I wasn’t here? Where would I go to find you? They don’t even want you at the hospital!”

“Penny, hon, we caught it. We all caught it. If you weren’t here we still would’ve caught it. Nobody would’ve been hurt. It’s a storm. We’re all kick-ass at magic right now, okay? Nobody’s going to hurt us, not even if they try…”

“What if we were still in the basement?” Cerise demanded. “What if we came up and the house was on fire?”

“Then we would’ve put it out, okay!” Tommy snapped at her.

“Oh, gods! My kitchen!” Mordecai said. He ran to assess the health of his kitchen. Despite the impending riot, Hyacinth groaned and shook her head. What about your kid? she thought.

Penny dropped the frying pan and began to weep. Tommy held her. “It’s okay. No. No, it’s okay.”

“Ted,” Sanaam said tightly, “I am just as mad about this as you are. My family are here too, and I might not even have been home to protect them. This is like my worst nightmare happening right now. They couldn’t even have done magic to protect themselves! But if any of us goes after that guy, everyone is going to go. It’s not safe. We have to stay here and look after them.” He made a weak laugh. “Ted, do you honestly think if you go out that window Maria isn’t going after you? With or without the kids!”

“Maria!” Ted said. She was sitting in one of the nice chairs holding Bethany in her lap. He stumbled over and crouched beside her. “Hey, Bette, you’re okay. You’re okay…”

Bethany latched onto his neck and he had to trade children with his wife.

“They’re after me because I killed the Prime Minister!” Fred cried. Hyacinth sat down next to him to keep him in the cot. If he started walking around her magic-infested house he was only going to get more shocks.

“No, listen… Barnaby, get down here and help me!… This wasn’t your fault. You didn’t kill anyone.”

“I…”

The door to Room 103 fell open. Literally fell open. It caved out of the doorway and hit the floor. An enormous pink-painted spider — with matching cocktail umbrella — was standing behind it with one of its spindly legs in the air, as if in greeting. It dropped the leg to the floor and clambered swiftly into the front room. Its gears and the hard tips of its legs made skittering noises like a box of cockroaches.

“Mother…” Steven said. He tried to duck out of the way but he wasn’t fast enough. He slipped and sat down in the broken glass. “Ah!” He lifted his hand and there was a two-inch shard sticking out of the palm. He didn’t feel it until he saw it. “Cào nǐ mā!”

“Shit!” Hyacinth said. She crouched down and tried to get Steven out of the glass without getting any more in him, or herself.

The spider hip-checked Sanaam — he staggered but didn’t fall — and climbed out the window, knocking a few more glass shards free with its many legs.

“Did that…” Tommy said, staring.

“What the literal hell was that?” Cerise said.

“C’est Lu’s highchair,” Chris said numbly. “Y pram.”

“It’s Erik,” Ann said. “Oh, no. Milo wired it through him like the baby gates. It’s Erik…”

Erik knew someone had just tried to hurt them. Hurt all of them. He felt the house or the window or something, or he just heard them and he knew what it meant. It had probably only taken him that long to react because the Lu-ambulator couldn’t work a doorknob. He had to take Milo’s magic hinges apart.

I almost killed six people, Milo, and he had been so sad, and so scared. That god had backed him into a corner and forced him, but…

But he had been willing to do it and these things weren’t entirely under his conscious control.

And he could feel them.

“I have to stop it,” she said. “I have to go get it. They talk to him and somebody is going to tell him where that man who threw the bottle is. They want to hurt him, they don’t care…” She cast about for something she could grab to help her incapacitate a magical highchair and lit on Penny’s frying pan.

Sanaam caught her hand before she could climb out the window. “Ann, once it gets out of the yard…”

It didn’t even get out of the yard. It had put two feet over a low section of the wall and was about to place a third when a bolt of magic hit it. The whole yard bleached white and multiple decoys fell dead to the ground. The Lu-ambulator keeled over sideways with a crunch, stiff legs in the air.

He smiled at her. “See?”

“Uh-uh,” Ann said. She pulled her hand away and hitched up her skirt so she wouldn’t get caught in what was left of the window.

The spider’s legs curled over, tentatively felt the ground and dug in. The whole machine vaulted upright and scurried down the street. It was already out of sight past the nail salon when they heard magic hit it again and saw a distant flash of light.

Ann was halfway down the stairs and Sanaam was standing on the porch, just outside the window. “Multiple redundancies!” she said. “Milo knew your wife would try to take it apart. People with anxiety are very clever that way. I have to go, Sam!”

“Hang on, I’ll come with you!” he said. He ducked into the house to look for a weapon.

“Don’t!” she called back. “Milo and I know how it works! You have to talk to Erik! Someone has to talk to Erik! We can’t let him do what he wants to do, because I know he doesn’t really want to do it! Please, Sam! I don’t want to hurt him!”

She turned left out of the gate and once her red rain boots hit the cobbles she began to run, following the magic strikes towards Eddows Lane.

———

“What the hell is going on, please, Sanaam,” Hyacinth said. She had Steven on a cot and Calliope had just set her doctor bag down next to her. “Hold still, I’m trying not to hurt you…”

“I think Erik is about to sort of accidentally-on-purpose murder someone with Lucy’s highchair and someone has to talk to him about it so he doesn’t,” Sanaam said with frightened delicacy. “Where’s Mordecai?”

“He doesn’t remember he has a kid, he’s useless,” Hyacinth snapped. “I have to do this! Sanaam, you go.”

“Dad, we’ve got kind of a problem over here,” Maggie said. She and Soup were standing outside the basement doorway and she flung a gesture at it.

The opaque gray shade was back but now there was only a single word in dark red capitals the color of blood: NO.

———

Milo, the problem is… Her boot plunked down in a muddy pothole she hadn’t seen and she pitched forward onto the cobbles, bruising her hands and one knee. Her head came up, her pale face a rising full moon over the darkened street, then her loose hair slopped over her eyes like a curly mop, blinding her. “Damn it!” She was glad she had put on her rain boots earlier, but she wished like hell the lamplighters had come. So what if it was raining?

Poor Fred seemed to have done a fair bit of damage to Violena and the surrounding area. She kept crunching through broken glass and at one point she kicked over a dented trash can.

The clouds above were low, pale, and the consistency of cotton candy. They were glowing faintly like the rain and the puddles, but more of a pinkish shade. She still couldn’t make out the Lu-ambulator in the shadows, so she was heading in the direction of the last magic strike and hoping another one would get it soon and slow it down.

She was also glad she had neglected to put on her corset, although worried about the state of her dress. The voluminous taffeta was soaked through and weighed a ton. She had gathered it into her off hand and was holding it out of the way so she could run, but she knew it was slowing her. As was her fear of running into a broken streetlamp and impaling herself.

Milo… She picked up her pace, gasping damp, ragged breaths that made her want to cough. Milo, the problem is I don’t want to hurt him!

Ann, you don’t have to say it. I know. I know! If you can get the gas tank open, the rain will melt the sugar and it won’t hurt anything. It will just power down.

But he’s not going to let me get close enough to do that, Milo. Will he know it’s me? Can he hear me if I talk to him? Will he feel me if I beat him to death with this goddamned frying pan, or is this like I’m putting down a bad dog he gave a command?

I don’t know! You know I don’t know! It wasn’t supposed to work this way! He wasn’t supposed to control it! I was using him like a… like a… Damn it, the General had it right. Like a fuse box!

A fuse box doesn’t have a brain and feelings, Milo, you idiot! Erik is a person!

WELL, WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO ABOUT THAT NOW?

JUST TELL ME HE’S NOT GOING TO FEEL HIS BIG SISTER KILLING HIM TO KEEP HIM FROM BEING A MURDERER!

I CAN’T DO THAT!

She drew up short, still clutching the frying pan, air burning in her chest. Magic stuck concurrently with a tear of thunder, she could feel the low, grinding sound in her gut. A round purple radiance indicated some object had been struck about half a block up and half a block over, towards Muro Road. She changed direction and ducked down an alley.

I hope that hit it and I hope that killed it…

Just get the gas tank open, Ann. If you have to hurt him to do it, it’s to stop him from hurting himself.

———

“Erik, please say something! Are you hurt?” Seth walked rapidly around him but he didn’t dare touch.

Erik was standing stiffly in the middle of the basement with his fists clenched at his sides, blazing like a bonfire. Seth half expected to hear the sound of the fire alarms from the Academé St. Honorée. He’d been student-teaching and the fire alarm sigils in that place had been ridiculously sensitive. All you had to do was put on a pot of coffee in the teacher’s lounge, and if you didn’t remember to set it to ‘lo’ the whole building had to evacuate.

Okay. Okay. Now, Kathy, please don’t throw that. That’s not nice. Line up, please. It’s probably okay, but let’s just be safe…

That history teacher, he could never remember about the coffee pot, what was his name…?

“Erik, can you talk? Erik, I don’t feel well. Please. Let’s sit down. Okay?”

The radio wasn’t saying anything, which was odd. He at least expected to hear something about the fire alarms, that thought was so clear.

“Headphones!” He knocked himself in the head with a fist, staggered and sat down on one of the cots. “Milo and Calliope did the headphones!” He dragged back to his feet and negotiated the distance to the worktable. The little metal switch was on the speaker box. He flipped it down.

The radio snarled: I WANT HIM TO DIE!

Seth glanced back at Erik, then at the radio.

Okay. Hey. Alba, let’s maybe not do that, the radio said softly, almost sweetly. He remembered taking the knife from her hand and pulling her away. Like when he told Kathy not to throw the paper airplane. Now, Alba, please don’t stab people. That’s not nice.

It had been a storm. It was the middle of the siege and that was stressful enough, and it had been a storm.

But usually people during storms just said they wanted to kill someone, they didn’t pick up a knife and lunge.

Mordecai was always better at it, the radio muttered.

Seth sighed and nodded. But Mordecai wasn’t here to manage Alba now and Erik was her son.

He approached on tiptoe and reached out a careful hand. “Hey, Erik? Can we talk about this? Can you tell me what’s going on?”

At least there weren’t any knives in the basement. Erik couldn’t hurt anyone.

———

The General laid one careful hand on the gray nothingness in the doorway. It felt cool to the touch and completely solid. There was no give.

“So,” she said. “I need to take apart Mr. Rose’s incompetent magic, which has baffled me twice before, plus whatever Erik has done to it, and this time I cannot actually perform any countermagic myself or even a ‘show me.’ And I am doing this because we do not wish a vandal to die?”

“We don’t care if he dies, we just don’t want Erik to kill him,” Maggie corrected her, frowning.

“Ah, yes, that makes more sense.” The General nodded. She clasped her hands and smiled. “Then let us begin. Miss O’Hara, I believe you read magical notation?”

———

We could kill him instead.

What are you talking about?

If we don’t want to hit Erik with the frying pan and we don’t want Erik to be a murderer, we could kill the guy who tried to hurt Lucy and Calliope instead. Then Erik couldn’t.

Ann stopped again and threw down the skirt of her dress. Milo, he’d know we did it and why! He might even sense it happening! What would he think of us?

That we love him, Ann.

———

“Erik, listen, I love you, I believe you about the window. I know you know things.” Seth was kneeling at his height with both hands on his shoulders, but he wasn’t sure Erik saw him. It was so bright he could hardly see Erik. “But you’re not outside. You’re here in the basement with me. I know what you can do and I’m sure you can see that man who threw the bottle. I’m sure you know exactly where he is. But you’re not really there. You can’t hurt him. Even if you wanted to do like Auntie Di, he’s not colored, he’s not connected, and you can’t get into him and hurt him…”

I’LL HURT HIM FROM THE OUTSIDE! the radio said.

“No you won’t because you’re not really there!” Seth said. “You don’t have a body there, Erik! You don’t even have an animal! I’m damn sure that’s how it works because otherwise Diane would’ve saved your mom! But all she could do was watch!” He choked and shook his head, then he looked up again and spoke firmly, “You need to let that man go and come back. Please. You don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t know what you’re doing. There are magic strikes out there and I don’t know if… I don’t know if they’ll hit this part of you that’s out there. I don’t know what that would do to you. Please come back to the basement and stay here with me!”

(I HAVE A MACHINE!) Erik said. He was sure that was Erik, that came out of Erik, but he didn’t make a sound. He hadn’t even drawn a breath.

Seth saw — he didn’t see but he thought he saw — something. Some metal object with scorched and scraped pink paint on its sides, jagged, rattling legs and a crumpled paper umbrella sticking out of it. He could read white letters in slick printing: All or nothing! “What is that?” he muttered.

(IT’S MY OLD HIGHCHAIR!) Erik said.

…And then he smiled. (I gotcha.)

The man knew something was following him but he couldn’t see what. He’d ducked into an alley to check behind him. He was wearing a knee-length mac with a hood, and fingerless gloves. Breathing hard. The alley smelled like grease and fermenting garbage. He was looking at the street, but Erik could go up the walls.

Seth wasn’t there. He saw it because Erik saw it, a canted view from near but not quite inside a shuddering machine that was stiff and trailing pieces of itself but could still move.

The blue man fell back, turned and threw up on the floor. The garbage. The smell of the garbage. And everything hurt. He hurt, but… but the machine hurt too! It had no mind, it couldn’t feel but it hurt! Making it go was like lifting a broken leg that weighed a thousand pounds and standing on it. It wanted to stop and Erik wouldn’t let it. Didn’t Erik feel that?

Am I imagining how it feels because I feel that way too?

Oh, gods, I can barely think as it is and I don’t know what I’m doing. Why didn’t I let Auntie Di teach me this? I need it and I don’t have it!

He picked himself up but he was afraid to touch again. He couldn’t go back to that alley. “Erik, please let go and come back,” he said softly. “You don’t need to do this. Please let the nice machine sleep now. It’s tired.”

(Shh! I’m just gonna get this bad guy real quick and I’ll be right with you!)

———

Please let it be hit again, please hit it again… She wouldn’t have been able to catch up to the damn thing at all if not for the magic strikes. She wouldn’t have been able to find it. Milo’s intent to make a highchair that could get out of the way in the too-small kitchen had resulted in a swift-footed adversary that could ignore terrain.

She felt the bolt before she saw it. The air sizzled and smelled of ozone.

The machine was illuminated in electric blue light with a purple halo. It was standing at the top of a peaked roof. It crouched and shuddered but did not fall, and then she couldn’t see it anymore — her vision was bleached by the vanished light.

“There you are,” she muttered aloud. She altered her course and ran before she could even see the ground.

———

There you are, he thought. The glow from the magic was just enough. It was a woman in a long dress. She was running. She had to be a normal person, if she were a colored the magic would’ve hit her and lit her up.

He retreated a little farther into the alley. She couldn’t possibly see him. If she really was following him from the house, she would run past. And if she didn’t…

He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a clasp knife. The blade he unfolded was five inches long and gleamed silver in the faint light. Don’t make me hurt you, lady. Just keep going…

Something clattered among the piled trash behind him, making him jump. He turned briefly but couldn’t see anything. Probably a rat. Maybe a dog. “Shoo,” he said softly, without looking. He had to keep an eye on the woman. She was…

Something cold poked him in the side of the head. Not like a gun or a knife — blunt, like a stick. Poke. Poke.

There was something on the wall! Dark, with too many legs. It was shaped like a spider but the fucking thing was huge!

He forgot all about the woman. “What the shitting SHIT?” he cried.

He made a halfhearted pass with his knife, as if the image itself might be cut away.

The thing climbed down from the wall. It made a whispering sound, audible under the rain, and gold sparks cascaded from its joints at random. There was a tattered piece of paper flapping above it like a sail. Something metal was dragging behind it and made a hollow, snarling sound.

He backed up and knocked into the trash can he’d been hiding behind. The space was narrow, hemmed in by garbage and debris from the storm which was gathering against a battered chain-link fence at the opposite end. There was a single fire escape, a metal ladder going up, but it was towards the fence, past the thing. If he dodged to either side it could reach him, and he couldn’t back up.

One of its legs came up and swatted the wrist of the hand holding the knife. The narrow piece of metal hit hard against the bone and stung like a switch. His fingers let go and the silver blade vanished into the litter and darkness.

While he was staring at that, another leg came up and banged him in the side of the head.

He staggered and pulled the trash can in front of him, preparing to throw it at the monster and run.

He didn’t get a chance.

Something swift and heavy knocked into the body of the thing and rang it like a bell. It shuddered backwards and cleaved to the wall again.

“Pardon me,” the woman said breathlessly. “Please don’t run. It’s faster than me and it can climb walls. If you don’t keep me between you and it, it may kill you and we’re trying to avoid that.”

She slid in front of him and brandished her weapon. It was a frying pan. She held the wooden handle in both hands and angled it like a baseball bat.

“Erik, sweetheart!” she said. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but please let’s not do this. I don’t want to hurt you!”

———

ANN?! said the radio.

———

The gray shade in the doorway was surrounded by blinking strands of colored light. The word it had been displaying — NO — flickered, vanished, and was replaced by ANN?! in ragged capitals. Then it too stuttered out, replaced by random symbols including a skull and crossbones and some cartoon cherries Erik had seen on a slot machine in a movie once.

The shade winked out, but only for a moment. It returned at full strength with no words at all.

The General tapped it with a finger. “Now that is interesting,” she said.

———

The Lu-ambulator was in a pitiful state after multiple strikes. The paint job was scraped and scorched, it was dragging one leg and two more were sparking at the joints. It was meant to operate with only three, for Safety Mode, and it could probably do so if one or two were damaged but still able to support weight.

It was vibrating and for a moment she hoped some of the servos were letting go, but the motion was too regular. She decided that whacking it on the chassis had engaged the purr function.

It sounded like a growl. Lucy’s highchair had gone feral.

That’s interesting…

What is? She was speaking soothingly to an object which she didn’t know had the capacity to understand or react and swatting its legs out of the way trying to reach the gas tank in the back.

It’s not using the shield spell. I wonder if the magic strikes took it out or Erik doesn’t know how it works?

“What difference does that make?” she snapped aloud.

I don’t know! But I’m not much use with the frying pan so will you just let me process?

“Please remain where you are, Mr. Bad Guy,” Ann reminded the man hiding behind both her and a trash can. “I’m not above bashing your head in to save your life, but Cin says that doesn’t work like the movies and I may damage your brain.”

…Or kill him. I mean, it’s not like we’ve decided we’re above that.

Not if Erik is watching us. Period.

He wouldn’t…

If we give him the idea it’s okay to hurt that man he’s going to help us, Milo!

“It’s not trying to hurt you,” said the man. It appeared a very sincere and metallic-sounding game of patty-cake was taking place in front of him.

“I didn’t throw a firebomb at his whole family. I’m glad he knows the difference, but don’t you get any ideas. If he thinks he can get to you without going through me…”

“I didn’t…”

“Spare us. I know what you did and I’m not doing this to defend you. This is for a scared little boy in a basement…” She dealt another heavy blow to the body and drove the thing back down the wall. It was trying to climb over her and she couldn’t even see the gas tank from below. “…who doesn’t understand what he’s doing!”

———

“After conferring with Miss O’Hara, I believe what we have here is a focus-based rearrangement of Mr. Rose’s incoherent design,” the General said. “The boy has no idea what he is doing, he did not build this or make any alterations. He is maintaining a different application of the existing functions by force of will. There is little to no inertia, and when he stops paying attention the baby gate reverts to its original form, which can be bypassed simply by stepping over… Ah-ha.” The gray shade flickered out again and she had just enough time to stuff her hand through it. When the shade reformed her hand and arm were repelled as if by magnetism. She flexed her fingers and examined them. “…And there does not seem to be any danger of crushing or detachment.”

Maggie and Sanaam said, “Mom!” and “Sir!” at almost the same time in almost the same offended tone.

She waved her hand. “I was reasonably sure Mr. Rose had no desire to injure Lucy and we have a competent medic available.” She glanced at Hyacinth, who was busy trying to wrangle two injured men, one of whom kept getting up and trying to find a phone no matter how many times she told him to lie down. “More or less. As I was saying, we do not actually have to take this apart to get to him, we only need to distract him. Unfortunately, we have a bit of a tautology here because we cannot get to him to distract him. If we could coordinate with Miss Rose we might be able to time it, but we cannot…”

“Seth is in the basement with him,” Soup said. “Can’t he…”

The General frowned acidly towards the basement. “I doubt Mr. Zusman has any idea what he’s doing either.”

———

There was a wind in the basement. Erik’s flame was creeping outwards and Seth was scooting away from it, backwards, but he was running out of room. The entire ceiling was alight, with a rippling glow that looked like the surface of the water viewed from the bottom of a pool.

Every sense he had was telling him this was dangerous and he needed to get out of there, but he couldn’t.

Even if he wanted to try, he wasn’t going to abandon a child who was burning alive.

“Erik, please talk to me. Please tell me what’s going on. Please tell me what you need me to do. I can’t think…”

The radio blared static and fell backwards off of the worktable, as if shot. The speaker box squealed and then made its best attempt at words, but Seth wasn’t sure if they were out loud or in his head.

(THEY WON’T STOP MESSING WITH ME-THEY WON’T LET ME DO THIS FOR THEM-THEY NEVER LET ME HELP THEM-I CAN DO THINGS! ANN, STOP HITTING ME!!)

“Are they hurting you?” Seth said, very small.

Erik didn’t answer him. Erik wasn’t looking at him. He didn’t even know if Erik could hear him, if there was enough of Erik in the basement to do that, or if this glowing body was sort of a placeholder, empty except for a vague sense that there was someone else in the basement that didn’t know what to do. Sometimes Diane left entirely, but she went limp and looked dead when that happened.

But this was Erik and this was a storm and Diane didn’t do that during storms because it was dangerous and even she wasn’t totally sure what she was doing or how it worked.

“Oh, gods, this is stupid,” Seth told himself. “This is stupid. I am a stupid, stupid man. I’m only going to make it worse and then Hyacinth will have to look after me or I’ll die and people will be sad and it’s all my fault…” He crept closer on his hands and knees, flinching against the light, and reached out to grab Erik’s hand. The flames felt hot, and then cold, in waves like some dangerous radiation that was going to sneak up and kill him weeks or even years later. Just a quick look and if they’re not hurting him I’ll…

Ann was holding a huge iron frying pan and she brought it down on his head. He felt something snap and it staggered him but he didn’t fall. Erik was behind him holding him up and telling him to keep going. Please.

(WHEN WE LET THEM GO THEY COME BACK! WHEN WE LET THEM GO THEY COME BACK! WHY DOESN’T ANYONE UNDERSTAND THIS? WHEN WE LET THEM GO THEY COME BACK!)

An image of a boy kicking a child in the street became became a gang of men in red jackets became an uncle with a broken arm and missing teeth became a little sign in a shop window that said ‘We Do Not Serve Magicians’ became a man in a white apron who told them they couldn’t use the counter or the phones became a man in an office signing papers to okay an assassination to stamp out the dissident movement and end the war became men with guns shooting Sarah in her bed before she could even lift her head off the pillow…

Between these were images of children with black eyes and bloody noses and wounds on their bodies from being beaten or thrown into walls, or being made to work until they bled. Children who didn’t get food or warm clothing because their caretakers needed to buy liquor and cigarettes, or because they were trying their damnedest but just couldn’t find work, or because they were too broken and tired to try at all anymore, or because they didn’t even have anyone to take care of them. Children that the police took pictures of and kept files on or apprehended shoplifting and dragged home to be hurt more, or even arrested, but didn’t help, they didn’t help…

Even when they did help it wasn’t over and tomorrow there would be another poor, hungry kid he had to walk home because they were afraid…

All this resolved in the image of someone they both loved and respected saying, You can learn how to do this. You can learn how to protect yourself and everything that’s important to you instead of relying on everyone else to protect you, and then sighting down the barrel of a rifle and firing — not at a tree but at a human being who had thrown a flaming bottle and tried to kill people they loved.

(THERE ARE BAD PEOPLE AND WHEN YOU LET THEM GO THEY HURT EVERYONE FOREVER!)

(Oh, gods, Erik. I understand. I do. I really do.)

Ann was lifting the frying pan. He put a hand up to ward her away but she hit him again. He was breaking and she wouldn’t stop. She was saying he needed to stop, and she lifted the frying pan again.

(ARRÊTE ÇA!)

More by instinct than sense, he brought up his hand with the gesture for a shield.

———

She heard the man behind her moving to one side and she warned him in a low voice, “Stop that.”

They had actually managed to get the gas tank open, if only briefly, but it wasn’t meant to stay open. It was meant to stay closed. The cover flopped back down and the latch engaged due to the weight alone. She was trying to reach it and get it open again, but the Lu-ambulator had a much longer reach than her, even with the frying pan, and it was trying to snatch her aside and get past.

Just as she was about to smack it back down the wall and reach over it again, her vision warped into a blue-tinted fish-eye and her blow was turned aside. The pan bounced off the shield spell and she almost hit herself in the face. She sat down in a puddle with a cry.

The Lu-ambulator vaulted over her, she saw its dark body against the glowing sky, and attached itself to the wall above the man who had thrown the bottle. It still had the shield up and it caught him with the edge, knocking him to the ground.

“Get thee behind me, bad guy!” Ann snarled. There wasn’t much room in the alley to maneuver and she threw herself forward. The man scrabbled back and they changed places like the mad tea party to end up just as they’d begun.

Erik figured out the shield spell. He’s watching us and adapting his behavior. I don’t know if he can’t hear or he isn’t listening.

But do we know if we’re hurting him?

They both agreed: No. We can’t know that. And there is no way in hell we’re getting that gas tank open.

Ann grinned and spoke brightly, “Okay! New plan!” She spun the frying pan in her hands and put all of her weight behind another blow against the shield. “Hit the shield! Don’t hit Erik! Hit the shield!” She focused on the right side, hoping to drive it out towards the street where the open space would facilitate more magic strikes.

Let the storm hit Erik!

———

(This isn’t working. We need a new plan.)

(Don’t hurt her.)

(We won’t hurt her, but we need her out of the way!)

———

The Lu-ambulator dodged left, towards the street. She hadn’t been expecting that and she missed it with her next blow, hitting the wall beside it instead. It scrabbled out of her way, sliding on the brickwork as the damaged magic in it let go, then before she could get to it to hit it again, it climbed up.

It circled back around on the wall, too high for her to reach. Its broken leg clattered against the bricks, swinging like a pendulum.

“Stay behind me, don’t run,” Ann said tightly. She clutched the frying pan tighter and watched the machine, wary of another jump.

It climbed higher, to roof level, and extended one of its pointed legs in the air, straight up.

What is he…?

Milo realized it first. He didn’t have time to put it into words, but he knew what was coming and he didn’t think there was any way to stop it.

Magic struck the machine. It lit up brilliant blue-white with purple edges, and as Ann was watching, another leg came up and aimed the full force of the strike right at her.

At her face. At her eyes.

The whole world went white, and then too dark to see.

———

The threads of colored light went dark. Tania blinked and touched a hand to her head. “General D’Iver, it…”

White words appeared on the gray shade one stroke at a time, as if written in chalk: Stay down please, Miss Rose. That really hurts, but I think I can do it again.

“That’s Seth,” Soup and Maggie both said. It was his handwriting, which tended to blur from neat printing into semi-cursive when he tried to keep up with himself.

The General tapped on the shade with a finger. It was still as solid as ever, and it appeared someone had just broken Tania’s weak application of the ‘show me’ spell. Another player had joined the game.

“Hyacinth, will you confirm for me what Mr. Zusman did during the war?”

“A shit ton of drugs!” Hyacinth called over.

“Tactics,” Soup said. “It was tactics. He talks about it sometimes when he’s sick.”

“I thought that was it,” said the General. She made a faint smile, but whether it was pained or sincere was anyone’s guess. “Well, this is fun.”

———

“Wait! I’m fine! This is fine! Don’t run, just let me…”

She heard retreating footsteps, then the sound of clattering metal following.

She rose to her hands and knees, picked up her head and regarded the purplish darkness, blinking.

“He ran, didn’t he?”

I don’t know. I can’t see.

She felt through the puddles and trash for the frying pan. Her forehead knocked into the brick wall and she sat down again with a splash.

Ann tipped her head back and declared to the thundering storm, soaked pink taffeta dress and all, “You know, Erik, if you didn’t tell us specifically that you didn’t want to do this, I would just let you have him! I really would!” She rolled back to her hands and knees and began feeling her way around again.

———

“I’ve flavored the coffee!” Mordecai declared. “This one is vanilla, I think this is amaretto…” He frowned and set the tray down on the end table, on top of the bowl of contraceptive charms. Nobody seemed to be displaying the excitement he felt flavored coffee warranted. Most of them were sitting on cots, bundled in blankets, and they looked like a bunch of refugees. “Do you people want tea? Or what?”

“No.” Hyacinth blundered over and stole the mug of amaretto. “Caffeine and sugar is all you’re good for, so keep it up. Nobody’s going to sleep with the window like that, and I have too much to do.”

“Have you hurt Annie, you stupid door?” Cerise demanded at a shriek, from the side of the room where people were trying to take apart Milo’s magic and whatever Erik had done to it. She kicked the flat gray nothingness and it did not budge, nor did the message admonishing Ann to stay down change.

“Can you do the kind with the fern leaf?” Fred asked, reaching.

“What, fern-flavored?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think…”

“Fred, dammit, sit down!” Hyacinth snapped. She lunged forward, but not quite far enough. “No, not there!” He had just dropped his butt onto a cot without an anti-magic blanket over it. There was an electric crackle and the whole works collapsed, spilling him once again onto the floor, which might have more broken glass on it.

Hyacinth crouched carefully and tried to collect him. “Can somebody find a broom and sweep the floor? Please? If you’re not too traumatized! Come on, Fred. Are you…”

“Pardon me,” said the General.

Hyacinth screamed and dropped Fred. “Where did you come from?”

“I have been less than ten feet away for quite some time, but you are not paying attention. As I was saying, Mr. Halsey.” The General tipped him a polite bow and gestured towards the basement doorway. “Time is short and we must be pragmatic. Will you break something for me?”

He regarded her blearily. “Is it gonna hurt?”

“I would be surprised if it did not.”

———

(Ow! Ow! Ow! Don’t, Ann!)

He turned to look for her, with a shield up to ward her away. He slid down the wall and nearly fell.

(It’s not her.)

(Don’t you feel that?)

(Sanaam is trying to pry off the basement window?)

(No, not that! I don’t know what it is, it… Ow! You stop that right now, young man!)

It was like electricity. A seizure. A kid throwing a flashbang instead of a spitball. Everything locked up and he slid down again.

He was going to fall and break into a million pieces. He wasn’t enough for this.

He wanted to let go…

Erik caught him and pushed him up. A single leg found a crack in the brickwork and dug in, stopping the slide.

(We’re enough together.)

(I don’t know if you’re right about that, but I’ll try if you’ll help me.)

They began to climb again.

———

Ann heard the noise again. She turned toward it and cringed back from it all at once. It sounded like snarling and coughing. Her vision was beginning to clear up, but the alley was all puddles and shadows.

“Who’s there?”

The noise continued. It was metallic.

There was a scrabbling sound under the ever-present rain.

The leg! It’s the broken leg! The broken leg on the bricks!

“Erik?” Ann said cautiously. She stood. She had found the frying pan or a frying-pan-like object and she lifted it. “Are you still here? Why are you still here?” She laughed weakly. “Are you worried about me?”

That would be really cute, but I bet that’s not it, Ann.

She leaned back and led with what she hoped was the frying pan. “You wouldn’t hurt us, would you, Erik?”

The scrabbling lessened. She caught a wink of pale sparks at roof height, over thirty feet above.

“Why are you…?” She was ready for him to jump or fall on her, but he didn’t reappear and the noises had faded.

The man had to have gone left or right, into the street or another alley. Even if he had turned again and gone that way, it would be faster to go after him on level ground. The man couldn’t climb…

Both Ann and Milo thought at the same time: Fire escape.

A bolt of purple magic struck the roof above, as if to punctuate it.

Ann and Milo thought: What an idiot.

———

The gray shade in the basement doorway was displaying a new message: You stop that right now, young man — again in white letters as if written in chalk. As the General watched, it punctuated itself with a sharp exclamation point, and then a double underline.

“It appears we might actually get in that way if we prolonged the assault,” she noted. “But it is a pity Mr. Halsey has lost consciousness.”

The purple gentleman was lying on the floor under two anti-magic blankets while Hyacinth ran a bottle of smelling salts under his nose and shouted his name. There was a curl of purple smoke rising from his left hand.

The General felt along the doorway for any gaps and spoke absently, “Hyacinth, I don’t suppose we might just borrow a piece of Mr. Halsey while you do that…”

The woman snarled at her like an angry cat, not even words.

“Very well, but do please notify us if he wakes up and is willing to try again. Our options are limited and Miss Rose is out there somewhere with a frying pan and no idea she is trying to disable a team.”

———

The space was limited by a fall of at least three storeys on every side and all the options were bad. The roof was gabled, in accordance with the shabby gothic aesthetic of Strawberryfield, and the desire for cheap living and storage space. There was either an attic up there or some very confused people trying to sleep with all the stamping and clumping going on. There were eight chimneys, four masonry with tiny windows and roofs of their own and four metal ones with cone-shaped hoods from stoves. This meant a quad of storefronts with apartments above and maybe a second fire escape somewhere or another quad accessible via a leap and a prayer. There was a fence of decorative ironwork around the whole thing, with arrow-shaped finials at shin-height, and one conventional lightning rod with a weathervane on it.

This obstacle course was anywhere from thirty to fifty feet off the ground and covered in wet shingles and Ann and Milo had no idea why a man on the run from a monster would choose it over a comparatively flat street which might have buildings to hide in or policemen to alert. This was the logic of a victim in a horror movie who wanted to die with maximum drama instead of with any sense.

She threw the frying pan over the ironwork and hauled herself after it, her red rubber boots skidding on the slick metal rungs of the ladder. As she planted a foot on the surface of the roof she felt her dress catch and tear. She pulled herself forward, tearing it more, and screamed, “What the hell were you thinking, you stupid, stupid bad guy?”

“I just have to wait for the magic to get it!” a faint voice replied.

The Lu-ambulator trundled past Ann in the direction of the sound, remarkably steady on its pointed feet. Its broken leg had come completely detached and it was carrying the remains of the limb curled in another limb, like a shell shocked soldier wandering the battlefield with a vague idea that a medic might be able to put him back together. It froze and hunkered down. The vibration of the purr function looked like a tremble.

There might have been a scent of ozone, or a feeling of static, but Ann alerted a moment later and held up the frying pan to shield her eyes — which she should have done before!

The Lu-ambulator didn’t seem to notice her. It remained crouching for a split second longer, then it pitched itself sideways and rolled down the roof, catching itself against the ironwork at the edge.

The magic strike nailed the place where it had been instead of rerouting itself to follow. Ann took down the frying pan and saw a glowing purple object on the roof. She could just make it out as the light faded — the crumpled metal form of the broken leg.

A decoy…

Ann, am I out of my mind or is Erik getting smarter?

“You are out of your mind too,” Ann muttered. “If you weren’t out of your mind we wouldn’t be in this situation, you would’ve just let Lucy use the damn highchair with no legs.”

It wasn’t safe!

DOES THIS SEEM SAFE TO YOU, MILO??

The Lu-ambulator collected its leg and began scrabbling across the roof again. Ann followed, but it was faster than her. She couldn’t see where the bad guy was and she didn’t know if it could. All she could do was try to stay near and hope the magic would slow it enough.

“Bad guy, it’s figured out how to avoid the magic and all it has to do to kill you is find you and throw you off!” Ann hollered. “Wherever you are, stay down, don’t make noise and pray to a god of your choice that I find you before it does!”

———

(I’m faster than her and she doesn’t know where he is. I just have to get to him. I’ll finish it before she can stop me. Then I can sleep.)

(But she’s following me! I don’t want her to fall!)

They weren’t sure who was who and which was which. They were aware that two people were involved in this process, but not what parts of them were going into it and whose parts they were originally. Two lifetimes of experience had knitted themselves together to make one whole schizophrenic object that could’ve been a sweater or a sock or a hat. They both felt both things: excited and hopeful about getting this over with and stopping, and scared and sick about Ann on the roof in the rain. They couldn’t aim more magic at her now to keep her away, she would fall and die. Not just be hurt, not from that far. Fall and die.

(If she’s going to get hurt are we going to stop?)

The damaged machine shuddered to a halt in a valley between the roof peaks, the writing faded from the gray shade in the doorway and one of the kitchen cabinets turned Mordecai’s hand aside, even though he was just getting the cinnamon out of the spice rack.

(I can’t stop. This is my responsibility.)

(I don’t want to stop. I want to win.)

(Okay.)

———

I WANT TO WIN, appeared in block letters on the gray shade. They were all facing the right way.

The General huffed an irritated sigh. “I have no context, but we’re obviously not going to be dealing with rational people even if we do get in there. Hyacinth, if you have anything like a tranquilizer dart…”

Sanaam climbed in through the broken window. He was wearing his captain’s coat, in dark blue with gold detailing and streaks of faint purple from the rain. He had Cerise’s hedge clippers in his right hand and a few minor injuries. “The window frame is gone and the glass is just hanging there in midair. I still can’t break it, even if I jam something in there and leverage it from the inside. I tried talking to them but they’re not answering. The whole basement is lit up like an overloaded mage light, I can’t even see them. The doors still don’t work. As far as I can tell this window is the only way in or out of the house.”

“Is the light green or blue?” Calliope said. She was holding a broom and was doing her best to tidy the glass like Hyacinth wanted.

Sanaam paused with his coat in his hands and frowned. “It’s… I’m not sure. Greenish blue? Does that make any difference, Calliope?”

She shrugged and continued to sweep. “Dunno. They lit up two different colors when they were being lamps, and it was like polka dots in here when everyone hit the bottle and the glass. If it’s all one color like that it sounds like somebody threw in some mineral spirits and mixed ‘em.”

“Being lamps,” Sanaam said.

“You know. Lamps. ‘Click.’”

Sanaam swerved away from her and approached the people he trusted to make sense in an emergency. “Sir, are you making any progress in here?”

“We were but we’ve damaged our tool.” She threw a gesture towards the man on the floor.

“He is a human being!” Hyacinth snapped.

“They might’ve made me in a lab, I’m still not sure,” Fred said weakly. Hyacinth grabbed him and sat him up. He shut his eyes and leaned against her. “Did you get him? The kid in the basement?”

“We might if you can manage four or five more shocks,” the General said.

“I don’t have four or five more of those in me, General… General… Whatever-it-is.”

“What about one?”

“No!” said Hyacinth.

“Maybe one,” Fred said. He winced. “Right now?”

“No, I need to think for a moment,” said the General. She stood up and turned away from everyone, facing the wall. She preferred to be in her office with some paper to mark up, but this would have to do. “Fortunately, in terms of military strategy, I outrank a volunteer tactician who could only operate with a god on board. If not for the time constraint, I would destroy him.”

A small brown hand tugged her arm and trespassed upon what she had tried to make a private space, “Mom, please don’t destroy our teacher.”

“Not literally, Magnificent. Please do not interrupt unless you have more information on the situation at hand.”

Maggie frowned at her. “If Soup and Bethany think you’re going to hurt Seth they’ll try to kill you and I’ll help them.”

“All right, I will bear that in mind. Go away.”

Maggie retreated. The General stood facing the wall for a few minutes more, trying to ignore the pregnant silence and the eyes staring at her back.

Mordecai’s frustrated voice intruded faintly, “Damn it, let me have the nutmeg, you stupid kitchen! Good day, sunshine! Erik, don’t you know I’m making coffee?”

“The kitchen too,” the General muttered. She didn’t believe in ‘eureka’ moments. One couldn’t not expect great leaps of inspiration without building a solid foundation to leap from. Nevertheless, she had been engaged in a complex logic puzzle and it was kind of him to slot the last piece in like that for her.

She drew in a breath and turned back around. “Right! Ladies and gentlemen, this is all connected. Mr. Rose appears incapable of separating his applications of magic in a logical fashion and vomits up hairball-like structures which cannot be untangled. We couldn’t see it earlier because Miss O’Hara is not as good at my magic as I am, but I have investigated this structure on a previous occasion and it is completely stupid. Wiring Erik and Lucy’s highchair into it can only have made it worse. The highchair in particular is yet another hairball, I must assume…”

“Sir, time constraint,” Sanaam said gently.

“It is a pity because I could do a whole series of lectures on how ridiculous this is.” She sighed and began again, “In practical terms, this means we do not need to get into the basement to distract them. We need to distribute ourselves around the house and activate the various components of this spell. I don’t think this will get rid of the obstruction entirely, but with Mr. Halsey’s help we should be able to disrupt it enough to gain entry. We must plan for only one person to breach the doorway and prepare backup in case we have time enough to deploy it. But the first person through must be someone both Erik and Mr. Zusman will listen to, even if they are out of their tiny minds. I have no hope of performing this function myself because I’ve burned all my bridges with both of them. Do we have any volunteers?”

———

The rounded body of the walking highchair rose over the chimney like a dark sun, covered in rivulets of glowing rain. There was a man in a raincoat crouched below. Another magic strike was threatening and Seth and Erik had to abandon all hope of surprise, drop the broken leg and jump down again before it hit.

“Oh, shit,” the man said.

“Erik, please don’t do this!” Ann cried out, still too far away to stop them. “You don’t have to do this! Can you hear me?”

They could, but it didn’t matter.

Mordecai was after more things from the spice rack for the coffee and they absently let him reach in.

(I can’t grab him, no fingers.)

(Kick, hit, or push?)

In the basement, they both smiled.

(I don’t have to pick.)

Sanaam was rattling the front doorknob again, they thought he was testing to see if they were still paying attention. They were and they didn’t let him out, but he didn’t give up and go away. He was still doing it.

Now Cerise was turning the doorknob leading out the back from the kitchen.

(What? Is the house on fire? Do they really need to get out?)

(But the front window is…)

Calliope was in Room 103 singing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ to open her closet.

(Calliope, you weirdo, do you want art supplies? Why right now?)

They let her into the closet.

But Chris was upstairs holding Lucy and signing the same song with his weird accent in front of the closet in Room 201.

(What? Those are Ann’s dresses and shoes! You can’t have them to glue to the ceiling!)

And Kitty was trying to take books off the bookshelf in the front room.

(Didn’t she already alphabetize that?)

They tried to close Chris out, but Calliope was still taking things out of her closet and Mordecai was emptying the spice rack and they weren’t sure what they wanted to do about Kitty.

(I don’t want her to lose my stencil… But what if she gets upset? Fred and Steven are hurt, she might…)

Ted and Maria were banging on the kitchen window with pots and pans and seemed to be trying to break it. Tania was doing the same to the window in Room 102, and Elizabeth in Room 103. Bethany was running through the baby gates that closed off the kitchen and Tommy and Penny were holding hands and dancing each other in circles through the one at the bottom of the stairs.

(Have they all gone crazy?)

(No, this isn’t important. They…)

Mordecai was still taking things out of the damn spice rack!

(It doesn’t matter! Let them do whatever they want! He’s going to…)

Magic slammed into them like a safe falling onto a cartoon cat’s head. The dial spun and the door fell open so that one dazed creature with birdies flying above it could look out. Through a purple fog they saw the man running and they couldn’t move to catch him.

(No, no, no, no…)

Even through the pain, they felt the chaos back at the house and wanted to recoil from it. They couldn’t let go. They couldn’t let go of the house and go after the man. It was too much. It was like being insane. They had to…

Seth drew back. The basement was bathed in tangled blue and green light. It was cold, and the boy in his arms was damp and shivering. (Erik, I…)

There was pain, not another magic strike but that electric crackle and the sense of being violated…

They slammed back together as Seth grabbed Erik to prevent that from hurting him. An enraged voice that came from both of them and somehow neither of them demanded at a snarl, (WHO THREW THAT?)

Maggie thumped into the basement and sat down hard, trying not to fall down the stairs. Her mother had made a concerted effort to explain the protective reflexes in soldiers under fire and psychological theory and motivation, and her dad had warned her not to fall down the stairs. She appreciated the part about not falling down the stairs a bit more at the moment. She scooted sideways and checked behind her but the gray shade was already back up in the doorway and her reinforcements hadn’t made it. Soup and Calliope had been behind her, but she was deemed to be the most effective person for the situation.

The basement was lit up in a swirling, unified blue-green. Turquoise blue, like the water off the beach on Saint Matt’s. She couldn’t see people, only shadows and dizzying eddies in the air like whirlpools. There was a constant sound of radio static and ruffling sheets of paper.

Okay, well, we knew it was gonna be crazy down here, she thought. She had Hyacinth’s goggles strapped to her forehead and she pulled them down over her eyes.

Hyacinth had warned her that a hit of raw magic wouldn’t hurt her, but it could knock her over and bleach out her vision. She had also said that crazy people weren’t hurtful or evil, they were just making decisions based on bad information. They didn’t want to hurt you. But they might if they thought you were going to hurt them.

Barnaby said it helped to stay calm, but sometimes you needed to yell for them to hear you.

Oh, yeah, I am definitely ready to yell right now, Maggie thought. She put her hand on the banister and crept down the stairs.

She had barely put one foot on the floor before the voice of legion addressed her from the light, (YOUNG LADY, WAS THAT YOU?)

She had time to think that would make a darn good special effect for a devil movie, and then an invisible force seized the front of her dress and began to drag her into the air. The toes of her shoes left the ground and her dress tightening around her body made her gasp for breath. It was as if someone had grabbed the fabric in a fist and they were twisting it.

(WE DON’T HURT OUR FRIENDS!)

She thought — the thinking part of her seemed to have become detached from the part of her that was worried about dying — that Calliope had to be right about something mixing them. This voice sounded like the god of all teachers, but Seth would never hurt her, not like this, not even if she hurt someone else. Erik was the one who thought people who hurt others needed to be pushed in front of buses, that part was all him.

She wondered if Seth even knew he was doing this.

(IF YOU CAN’T BEHAVE YOURSELF, I’M GOING TO ASK YOU TO SIT IN THE HALL! YOU CAN COME BACK WHEN YOU’RE READY TO LEARN!)

She tipped back her head and yelled, “Mr. Zusman, I don’t have to be here! If you try to make me sit in the hall, I will just leave! I am giving you my time and I deserve more respect than that! NOW WILL YOU PLEASE SWITCH BACK ON?”

She was set down gently and she thought something even tugged on her dress to straighten it.

The light dimmed. It did not go out, but she began to make out the familiar features of the basement. The worktable. The brick walls. A cot.

In the center, at the brightest place, only a few feet away from her, two human figures in underwear were sitting on the floor and clinging to each other. Seth was shielding Erik with his body, but she could see a little bit of his face, and they both looked miserable. More than miserable. Haunted.

“Maggie, please go away,” Seth said, but maybe only because it was easier for him to talk. “We’re doing this so the man won’t ever hurt you.” He made a weak smile. The smile of a man who was holding a gun and desperately trying to talk her down so he wouldn’t have to shoot — but she wasn’t sure if he was pointing it at her or at himself. “Okay? Please just let us do this for you. Then we’ll stop. It’s okay.”

That clicked instantly with what her mother had been trying to tell her, but with way too many words. To sum up: They didn’t start this fight but now that they were in it all they could think about was keeping their friends from dying. People forgot about themselves, they forgot their friends didn’t want them to die either, and sometimes they did really brave and really stupid things.

This situation is unique and you may be able to remind them of what they mean to each other before they capture the enemy turret with nothing but fixed bayonets and determination, so to speak, Magnificent.

Seth, I’m about to flip you like a pancake, Maggie thought. She planted her feet firmly, folded her arms across her chest and spoke in a low voice, just loud enough to be heard over the static, “Mr. Zusman, you are teaching my friend Erik a pisspoor lesson in conflict resolution and self-respect and I want you to cut it out right now. He thinks the world of you and he can see you. Do you want him to learn that what you’re doing is okay?”

Seth drew back from Erik and the light fragmented into frozen pieces of blue and green, like a stained-glass window. The level of power and support he had been feeling was all out of proportion with the tiny figure in his arms. Erik was even a little bit stronger than him, but that wasn’t really how it was.

They had forgotten who was who, and that one of them was small. Maybe Erik didn’t even know how little he was, not on the inside.

(Little boys aren’t supposed to kill bad guys for real.)

Erik shook his head. He looked so tired. His eye brimmed over tears. (You have to help me. You said you understood. You said you understood!)

(Erik, I do understand, but this isn’t helping you.)

(No, no, no, no…)

(I’m sorry. This is my fault. You would never…)

The green light flared suddenly brighter and swallowed the blue.

(IF YOU WON’T HELP ME I HAVE TO DO IT MYSELF!)

———

Ann nudged the man back behind her with the frying pan. “Have you never seen a horror movie? How dumb are you?”

“But…” He gestured at the machine. It hadn’t moved since the magic hit it. It was curled up with its legs under it like a dead bug.

“I’m going to check it. Stay there. It won’t hurt me.” Just as she was about to bat the nearest leg with the edge of the pan, the whole machine shuddered and roared back to life — almost literally roared as the balky purr function re-engaged and shook the thing like a jackhammer.

“Horror movies will save your life!” Ann declared, as she drew back the frying pan and prepared to deal however many blows it would take to knock the monster out until the inevitable sequel.

The Lu-ambulator turned on one unsteady leg then staggered away from both her and the man who had thrown the bottle.

“Be extremely careful,” Ann said. She backed away too, keeping herself between the man and the machine. “I don’t think he has much left and he’s desperate.”

Slipping and sliding on the wet shingles, the machine made its way up the peak of the roof. It tapped the decorative ironwork with one leg, as if it were blind and checking for obstacles with the tip of a cane. It paused and seemed to regard them for a moment.

Then it tipped itself over the brink.

———

Seth crumpled as if fainting. He hit the floor hard, and the blue light that had briefly enveloped the green evaporated. He curled up, tucking his head under his arms, and issued a low moan. “…gods. Oh, my gods, my gods…”

Erik snarled and turned on him. (WHY DID YOU…)

A small spiky object flew from over Maggie’s right shoulder and impacted Erik’s forehead just above the eyepatch. He staggered and fell back.

Maggie turned, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, and saw Bianca Taube emerging from beneath the staircase holding her birdcage. As Maggie watched her she shut one eye, took aim, and threw that too. While Erik was entangled with the birdcage and making the most godawful, inhuman noises, she calmly removed a fire blanket from one of the cots, threw it over the whole mess, and then sat on Erik. “It’s not really his fault, little white girl,” the old woman said, as the boy beneath her struggled and howled. “Mr. Taube could do what they did, a little, and sometimes he got confused. That’s all it is. Confused.”

“Where the hell did you come from?” Maggie said.

“I’m a bit slower than the rest of you and when we heard all the commotion upstairs Jessica and I decided to stay down here.” She picked up the melon and put it back in the birdcage. It was slightly chipped and leaking some green fluid, but no harm done. She latched the door on it. “Mr. Taube might have stopped them, but I don’t understand it myself and I didn’t want to get confused like the poor gentleman here.” She nudged Seth with her shoe. “But Jessica and I just can’t abide violence.”

“You hit my friend with a birdcage!”

“Not out of malice. If we let them start fighting they might’ve got tangled up again. This is an improvement.” She peeled back the blanket. Erik had gone out, he was no longer struggling, and he had progressed from screaming to sobbing quietly with his head in his hands.

“Erik!” Maggie thumped to the floor beside him, found one of his hands and held it. “Hey. Hey. It’s okay.”

“No,” he said softly. He pulled his hand away.

“Are you hurt? Will you get off of him, please, lady?”

Mrs. Taube stood slowly and picked up her birdcage. “Give them a little time and keep them away from each other, little white girl,” she said. “They’ll soon sort themselves out. We all need our space. When Mr. Taube didn’t give me my space, I used to throw knives at him.”

Despite being in charge of two traumatized people that she had no idea how to handle, Maggie straightened and said, “What?”

“Oh, well, that was our act,” Mrs. Taube said airily. She paused at the bottom of the stairs and shrugged. “Knife throwing and mind reading. We were with the Khoriv Circus. He wasn’t much of a mind-reader, it was much more impressive with me throwing knives at him.” She frowned. “Of course, when it was for the act I missed on purpose.” She went up the stairs and Maggie stared after her.

After a moment, the girl numbly addressed the two traumatized people who were crying and shivering on either side of her, “You know, I think the worst thing about this is there’s nothing about what she just said that explains Jessica. Are you with me, you guys?”

———

The man stared down at the pieces of machine visible in the street below — a few here, a few there. He turned to the woman and smiled. “It’s not going to get up now!”

“Yes, I suppose we’ve got that sorted, haven’t we?” The dripping woman in the ragged dress lifted her head and smiled as well. It was gleaming and terrifying. She lifted the frying pan again and spun it in her hands. “Now all we need to do is sort out how you tried to kill my whole family and we’ll be all set!”

She gave a polite laugh and stepped towards him, still smiling.

I've seen storms before, but not like this
This is bad, this is crazy, this is why
This thing we built is broken, without a doubt
Hello, highchair, I think it’s time to die
I protect you when I can, I always will
But now you’re going somewhere I can’t find
This dress is soaking wet, I’m going to fall
But a tiny voice whispers in my mind
You aren’t lost, just in need
And I must succeed
And do the least wrong thing
Will there be a dawn beyond this night?
I don't know anymore what to do
I can't find my direction, I'm not alone
The light that’s always guiding me is you
How to rise from the floor?
This isn’t funny anymore
Just do the least wrong thing
Take a step, step again
Is this really all that I can do
The least wrong thing
I can’t see too far ahead
There’s just too much at stake
But focus now on this next breath, this next step
This next move is one that I must make
So I'll get through this night
Stumbling blindly toward your light
And do the least wrong thing
And, with the dawn, what comes then?
I don’t know if anything will ever be the same again
But I'll hear that voice and make that choice
And do the least wrong thing