“I’m already thinking twice. You learn to, or you do very poorly as a practitioner.”
I nodded.
“Were you the one to kill Laird?”
I turned my attention his way, just a little too fast. Gloria reacted much as I had, but looked sideways instead, then back to me.
“Yeah,” he said. “Like you said, I’ve got tricks up my sleeve.”
“I won’t confirm or deny,” I said.
“But it’s as good as a confirmation. Was the killing just?”
Just, he asked me.
I could say yes and feel reasonably confident I was telling the truth. I might even sway the man.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “It was desperate.”
“I can’t tell if you don’t seem like the desperate sort at all, sitting in a stranger’s car with no sign of hesitation, or if you’re made of little but.”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“I believe you all the same. I’ll think on it,” he said.
“Okay,” I said.
This fact-finding mission had turned into something else entirely. I still wasn’t too worried. Whatever tools he had at his disposal, I only had to scramble to one side and I should be able to make it to safety.
“Laird has- had children,” Gloria said.
“I know,” I told her.
“Are you affiliated with the Thorburns?” Ben asked.
I looked at him, but I was fairly confident in my poker face.
“I’m only asking,” he elaborated, “Because the time and place of the death suggest one conclusion.”
“I’m my own man,” I said. “But there are three people and one bird in the Thorburn faction I’d very much like to save. I haven’t decided what needs to be done in the heir’s case.”
“I see.”
“If it helps,” I ventured, “I would very much like for your grandchildren to walk away safe as well. Same for the Duchamp’s grandchildren.”
“And the rest of us?”
“Let the cards fall where they may,” I told him. “For you and me both. War is war, and if you guys are participating, I won’t rule anything out. You wanted to know what I am? I’m tenacious. I don’t give a damn about the old guard or tradition or anything like that. So long as the innocents are still standing at the end, I don’t care what happens to the rest of us.”
Gloria spoke up, “You’re not counting yourself among the innocents?”
“No. But those three people, that one bird, the youngest Behaims and Duchamps?”
“Is that what you want then?” Ben asked. “Those four for the grandchildren? An implicit threat that if one of those four is harmed, the children might be too?”
“No,” I said. “I want you guys to get the point. I want all of us to stop smashing our heads against the wall, failing to learn as we repeat cycles over and over. I want change, I want us to do this one thing Right. That includes leaving those four and the grandchildren out of it. It means paying more attention to who you’re putting in charge, because Laird was arrogant, Duncan was stupid, and you can’t afford to make a bad call on the third go-around.”
“Uh huh,” he said.
I waited for more of an answer.
I didn’t get it.
“You getting out of my car anytime soon? I’m not driving you to our house.”
“Sure,” I said.
I opened the car door. There was mostly darkness beyond.
“I’ll turn around, tell the others back at the house, as diplomatically as I can,” Ben said. “You try this spiel on Sandra yet?”
“No,” I said.
“You’ll find it a harder sell. The Duchamps are a little more wrapped up in keeping things the same.”
“We’ll see how it goes,” I said.
I stepped out and over.
The next swatch of available reflections was lower, and I got to enjoy a moment’s ‘flight’ before I landed. I felt things snap in my legs, and I felt things alter just a little in the process, crawling in tighter.
Sandra, I thought.
Rose had spoken out against terms of war. There was probably a reason for it, but there was a reason for the terms of war too.
I wasn’t sure how this was going to play out, but I liked having a hand in things, guiding them.
I liked knowing that the Behaims weren’t arrogant scumbags across the board, even if the one legit Behaim I’d talked to thus far was a dopey older guy who wore a hat while driving.
If I was a little obsessive on that particular accessory, it was because I had too many memories of nearly being blindsided while on my motorcycle.
Talking on a cell phone while driving? I fantasized about reaching in through an open window, snatching it, and dashing it to pieces on the road before accelerating off.
I was fairly certain my ability to practice was cut off, now that I was more Other than practitioner. Some ideas held true across the board. Connections, certain means of offense and defense…
But I didn’t have the Sight. I couldn’t call Sandra’s name and find her, nor could I catch her name when Ben said it, and follow that thread to its source.
Still, the idea went both ways. If I tried to find her that way, she could find me, and I preferred to stay under the radar. That Ben had connected dots was a hassle, but I didn’t feel too exposed.
I moved. I was more comfortable in my skin now, riding the high of three minor victories. Molly caught, Green Eyes released, and now a successful contact with a Behaim.
I crossed tracts of darkness, scouting. There was no shortage of possible threats to note and keep track of.
A collection of ghosts at one point. No June or Leonard in that small crowd. They’d been spent, their echoes erased.
A man and a woman who seemed to notice me the moment I looked their way. The man was black, and had thick dreadlocks under a toque, the woman very prim and proper, blonde. A Duchamp.
I ducked out of their way before anything came of it.
Still, it inspired a line of thinking. Johannes had a hand in many of the visiting Others. Sandra, by way of her connections to the Duchamps, had a mess of contacts to draw from, apparently.
As far as searches went, it was haphazard, unreliable. I simply navigated, and tried to find the highest concentrations of practitioner.
In the end, it came down to sheer luck. Good or bad, I wasn’t sure.
I found Sandra.
I found the High Drunk, too, and his coterie of Others that looked like overactive teenagers and college students.
Fuck. Was Toronto leaking? A part of me had hoped the issues I’d left behind would at least keep the locals there busy.
Sandra and the Drunk were walking side by side, talking, the group following a few paces behind, crowding together, jostling and messing around as they walked three or four abreast on a sidewalk that comfortably let two people walk side by side. They were playful, like enthusiastic kids.
I skipped ahead to a car.
No eye contact. I faced away. I wanted to create as few points of contact as possible.
I only listened.
“…don’t know the particulars,” Sandra said.
“I’m good at improvisation,” Jeremy Meath replied.
“The benefit of working with a god.”
“Exactly,” he said. He smiled. “Don’t fret.”
“I’m not fretting.”