“Blake!” a guy greeted me from the door. He was black, hair cut short to the point it was barely a shadow on his head and wiry, and he didn’t try to hide or take shame in his body type. He wore a suit jacket that was a bit tattered and skinny jeans with gray smudges on them.
“Hey Ty,” I said.
I was right, it was right. Friends, familiarity, faces I knew. I felt more at ease.
More like me, even with that big fat ‘practitioner’ piece jammed in the middle of the puzzle that was me and my identity.
“Beer?” he said, holding up a case so I could see over Amanda’s head.
“Beer!” Amanda’s eyes lit up.
“Fridge,” I said. “Should be lots of room. Thanks.”
Goosh let go of Amanda so Amanda could go get beer and talk to Ty.
“While they’re busy,” Goosh said, stepping closer, without intruding into my personal space. “Want me to run interference? Fill people in on anything, so you don’t have to keep answering the same question?”
Did I? Yeah.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m not a millionaire, not like that. I’m stuck looking after a house that I can’t sell, a house that a lot of people want me to sell. And it’s ugly. There was talk, I’m pretty damn sure, down at the police station down there, that my cousin’s death wasn’t an accident.”
“No,” Goosh said, her voice a hush.
I shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know. But for now, I’m laying low. I’ve got to go back in a few weeks, maybe sooner, to wrangle some stuff. I-”
“Hey, Blake,” Tyler interrupted me, from across the room. Amanda had attached herself to him. “What’s the tape thing?”
“It is what it is,” I said, too tired to come up with better. “I was doing that, it was sort of meditative, I stopped halfway. Was going to do all around the apartment.”
“Can I finish it?” he asked.
“Yeah, if you use the t-square to get the lines perfect,” I said. “And if there’s enough tape, maybe you could do triangles inside of triangles? If there’s enough. It’d look ugly if only half was done.”
And it would disrupt the border’s effectiveness.
“Eyeballing it, I’d say there’s enough tape.”
“Go for it,” I told him.
I heard him tearing tape free from the roll.
Hooray for artist friends.
“You’re going back, you said?” Goosh asked.
“And I’ve got stuff to wrangle here, and… I dunno,” I said. “Honestly, my life’s been turned upside down, and I barely even feel like me.”
“You know we have your back.”
“I wouldn’t want to involve you, get you embroiled in the ugly parts of it.”
“I don’t think many of us would mind.”
“I think you would, once you got the full picture. A lawyer I was speaking to… she told me that she thought I was a goner. The police chief hates me and my family, biggest most influential families have it in for me, a lot of people want the house sold so the town can expand, and I couldn’t even go shopping without getting in a fight.”
“So you get more bodies on the ground. They’re not going to go after you if you’re in a group.”
“Wanna bet?” I asked. “They hate me. For no reason.”
“Heyyy!” someone cried out, behind Goosh.
“Hey Joseph,” Goosh said, smiling.
I couldn’t match Joseph’s enthusiasm, but I did smile, and it wasn’t forced.
“The carpenter resurrects, only it takes him a week,” Joseph said.
“Says ‘Joseph’?” Goosh asked.
“I’m more a handyman than a carpenter,” I said. “And I’m not middle-eastern. But I’m damn glad to be back, whatever I am.”
“No worries,” he said. He bowed his head, presenting a plastic container. “I humbly offer cupcakes as a token of worship. You saved me from diabetes, because I was totally going to eat the entire tray myself.”
“Beer and cupcakes,” I said.
“You don’t want?”
“I’m not having beer,” I said. I had to fight to avoid being negative. “And I am more than happy to help save you from diabetes. I’d love one.”
“I am having beer,” Goosh said. “And I’d love one too.”
Joseph cracked open the container and provided each of us with a cupcake. I wasn’t sure what the figures on the top were. I supposed they were video game characters, but I hadn’t really played a video game in years.
“Lemme fill you in,” Goosh told him.
I took the opportunity to break away, taking it all in. Amanda and Ty working on the tape, Goosh talking to Joseph. More people coming in the door, waving at me, before listening to what Goosh was saying.
I took in a deep breath, then exhaled slowly.
I felt at ease.
Standing in the corner, the mirrors lining the walls to either side of me, I nibbled on the cupcake.
“I’m jealous,” Rose told me.
“Sorry,” I murmured, holding the cupcake up so people couldn’t see me talking to myself.
“I don’t really have friends. You have this.”
“A lot of them are odd,” I said. “Some are more acquaintances than friends.”
“I don’t even have acquaintances. But you have connections, ties.”
“I hear you,” I said. “But I meant what I said. We’ll get you out, and maybe I can introduce you to my friends and acquaintances.”
“That’d be nice,” she said. “Are you worried?”
“About?”
“Getting them involved. If some Other comes in…”
“Don’t even talk about that,” I said. I took a bite of cupcake and waved at Joel as he made his way in.
I glanced at Rose, and I saw her staring at the group. She was barely blinking, her eyes on the people who were coming and going.
I looked, too. Used the Sight to make sure that there weren’t any connections to things that there shouldn’t be connections to. No objects on their person that might point to something odd. Sure, they could hide it if they wanted to, but short of Laird trying to do to me what I’d done to him, I had trouble imagining a situation where one of my friends would be an Other or practitioner in disguise.
“You think it’s likely?” I asked, after I’d swallowed.
“The families are going to be mad. Behaims, Duchamps, the bit players who wanted you dead. Maybe Mara, maybe Johannes. I don’t know. They’ll send trouble your way, somehow.”
I nodded, taking another bite of cupcake.
“You need a third win. Three strikes, Laird’s out.”
“You don’t think he broke my streak, pulling this?”
“Different battlefield, that. But in terms of public perception, in terms of the murder, and reputation? He’s struck out twice. One more time, you’ve got him out.”
“I feel like I need to make a bigger play than I have, to make it count,” I said.
“Probably.”
I saw two more people enter. One strange looking girl I didn’t recognize. Her eyes were small, her nose broad, shoulders drawn in. I looked at the connections, and she had a very odd connection to me. Nothing like any of the connections I had to my friends.