And suddenly the bus shelter was full of gruuaa. I was looking at the big angry army guy and as the gruuaa poured into the bus shelter I saw a medium-sized hairy black and white cannonball arc immediately in front of the army guy. Mongo. I wasted half a second thinking, no, it can’t be Mongo, there’s nobody home now, which is to say Ran, to forget and leave the door open. But you know your own dog. It was Mongo.
Mongo dived across the road immediately in front of the army guy staring at me, and broke his gaze. He looked at the dog, gestured to one of his aides, and looked back at me—
Except that he didn’t look back at me. He looked toward the bus shelter and then he looked confused. His eyes skated right over the open front of the shelter where Casimir and I (and a very large knapsack and a very large algebra book) were sitting. He stopped and looked around like he was searching for something he had dropped. He looked up again, straight at the bus shelter like he was sure whatever it was was in that direction. Then the woman with the wand-gun said something to him, and I noticed the blinking lights had gone clear. Ha ha ha yourself. He scowled at the lights, he turned away . . . he was missing out the bus shelter, and heading toward the gate into the park.
By then my arms were full of Mongo. “Mongo, you loophead,” I said, burying my face in his fur, “what are you doing here?” But my stomach was telling me something was seriously wrong. “What are you doing here?” I looked up, still clutching Mongo, who didn’t anything like all fit in my lap. I could feel some kind of greeting going on between Mongo and Hix—Mongo was a licker, and since I could feel Hix, if faintly, maybe Mongo could lick her. I stared around. Even now, knowing the shadows were friendly—well, knowing that Hix was friendly, and since they’d just stopped the army guy I was ready to guess the way-too-many-shadows around us were okay too—it was pretty scary. I remembered that first evening, opening the door to Val and seeing the shadows rearing up behind him like the end of the world as I knew it.
Which it had been, one way or another.
It was normal-shadowy in the bus shelter; it was late afternoon and both the park fence and the first line of trees were between us and what was left of the sunlight. But sun shadows and gruuaa shadows were as different as—oh, as two black dogs from each other—when one’s a Pomeranian and one’s a Labrador.
I looked at Casimir. He was looking a little green, although that might have been the normal bus-shelter shadows: the inside walls were painted seasick green. But Casimir was staring at the gruuaa, so I guessed it was more to do with them. He hadn’t looked green when we first got here. “I have never seen so many,” he said. He made it sound like a question.
I was trying to decide what to answer when I remembered Val saying that most people had to be trained to see them. “You can see them,” I said. “And you knew that Hix was helping us.”
Casimir went on staring at the gruuaa. Did he look a little shifty? I couldn’t decide. But, I thought hopefully, if the border tech didn’t stop him, maybe seeing gruuaa wasn’t going to get me jailed for the rest of my life either. I glanced at my algebra book. I’d worry about cobey-folding later.
“Yes,” he said. “My mother gave all of us some basic training. I had little aptitude for most of it.” He glanced up at me and smiled, that mental-health-destroying smile. “If I were talking about cooking, I would say that I can boil water. I do not help in the kitchen at the restaurant.” He looked down again and shook his head. “So many,” he said. “So many.”
“They all—er—belong—I guess—er—to my—stepfather,” I said. Belong? Stepfather? I was still having trouble with stepfather.
“Your stepfather?”
“Val,” I said, which was less creepo than going on calling him my stepfather. “He—er—he has a lot of them.”
Casimir blinked.
“He’s from Orzaskan,” I said helpfully. “I think they have more of them there. Like you said. In Oldworld.”
“Orzaskan,” Casimir said thoughtfully. “Val . . .” He blinked again. “You don’t mean . . . Val Crudon, do you?”
“Er,” I said. I should have kept saying stepfather. “Yes.”
“Your stepfather is Valadi Crudon?” repeated Casimir wonderingly.
“He isn’t, any more,” I said defensively. “A—whatever.” I didn’t want to say “magician” out loud. Even though that was maybe exactly what he was, then, now, any more, whenever.
I didn’t want to ask if it had been a huge headline all over the Slav Commonwealth that Valadi Crudon had been his government’s executioner. I didn’t want to ask if Casimir had any idea how you took magic away from a magician. One of the things our mental hygiene class taught us about Genecor was that gene-chopping a young person was neat and clean and complete. On a middle-aged grown-up the magic gene had silted or fuzzed up and got tangled with its neighbors, and trying to chop it then was really dangerous.
Could a magician maybe rust out, like an old car? If he didn’t use his magic any more? If his government had just kind of contained Val for a while? So whatever it was that happened that day out at the shed was maybe like the radio coming on when you twisted the ignition key of your old car, but the engine wasn’t going to turn over?
“There is some great mystery about him,” said Casimir. “He disappeared—years ago. I was still a boy. There were two of them—Valadi and one other. The other is known to have died. No one knows what happened to Valadi. My mother was very distressed. She said he was the greatest magician in the Commonwealth—even greater than his friend who died.”
His friend who died. I rushed to say: “He’s here, okay? Here in Newworld. He’s been here over a year. He has a visa and everything. He tutors really bright kids and really dumb ones in math and science. They made him leave it all behind—like you.”
“Yes,” said Casimir. “But I had very little to leave behind. And his gruuaa came anyway.”
My phone rang, and I was glad of the excuse not to go on with this conversation. Val was famous? Even if what had happened hadn’t been a headline, there was a reason his government had chosen him to . . . I dragged my phone out from under Mongo with difficulty. Mom. I clicked on. “Hi,” I said. “Mongo’s with me.”
“I—oh,” said Mom. “Oh, thank the gods. He got out when—Where are you?”
“I’m at the park,” I said cautiously. “I’ll be home—er.” I didn’t know the drivers on this route, and it was all downtown. They might not let Mongo on the bus.
“I have a car,” said Casimir. “I will take you home. It is not a good car, but it is a car. Your dog and your gruuaa are welcome.” He smiled, and I lost track of my conversation with Mom.
“Maggie?” said Mom.
“Unh,” I said. “Casimir’s here too. He’s got a car, and he’ll bring me home.”
“Casimir?” said Mom. “Is he another senior?”
You could be standing in a burning building and the firemen are all yelling, Jump! Jump! and your mom would still want to know about the person whose name you’ve just said for the first time in her hearing. “No,” I said. “He’s the person I told you about—last night. Going to Runyon. Jill has met him, okay?”