"Yeah. They're magically malicious. I figured that part out already."
"Their formidable physical attributes are minor compared to the enormous potential that dwells within them. Should I wield my powers directly against them, the results could be catastrophic."
"Uh-huh," I said, lowering my hands. "When you say 'severe,' and 'catastrophic,' you mean…"
"The end of all life upon this sphere."
"Right." I took a deep breath. "Couldn't you at least give me some more information about them? Anything would help."
"My personal knowledge of them is limited. And even were I to employ my arts to learn more, I would be constrained to tell you nothing."
"What? Why?"
"Knowledge is power—a fact with which I suspect you are intimately familiar. If I used my power to gain knowledge, and then shared that knowledge with you to affect the outcome of this situation, it would be as disruptive as if I had done so myself. It would upset certain critical natural balances and as a result, the eldritch portals would open in order to create a redressing of the forces so unbalanced."
"Which would be… ?" I asked. "A series of confrontations like those you experienced a few months ago—beginning with Morlun and continuing through Morwen's incursion and confrontation with Loki, your battle with Shathra, all of which culminated in Dormmamu's attempted destruction of this reality on your birthday. You would again be a critical variable in the equation. It would expose both you and uncounted innocents to enormous peril. And so I must do nothing. Even having this conversation at all is potentially dangerous."
I shuddered. Then I slumped in my chair. My head suddenly felt really heavy on my neck. What was the point? For crying out loud, it had been nothing short of a miracle that I had survived Morlun, much less the rest of that mess. I wasn't asking Strange to make them go poof. I just wanted him to help me. Just a little.
Strange spoke quietly, and his voice was strained with regret and compassion. "I am sorry that I cannot aid you in this battle, as you have so often aided me in mine. It is unjust. Unfair."
"Since when has life been fair?" I asked. Strange smiled. "In the long view, I think it might be worse if life was fair, and each of us received every-thing he deserved. My mistakes would have earned me torments to disturb the dreams of Dante himself."
"Amen," I said quietly, having pulled some epic blunders of my own.
"I wish you luck in your struggle," Strange said. He rose and offered me his hand. "But you should know that I believe you have the necessary potential to overcome this foe. Do not lose heart. There is more strength in you than even you know. I am truly sorry that I cannot do more."
I thought about just storming out, but Aunt May didn't raise me to be rude. Besides, if Strange said he couldn't help, he couldn't help, period. He might be weird, wordy, and unsettling, but he's not a coward or a liar. If he could have helped me, he would have. I believed that.
"S'okay, Doc." I shook his hand, and he walked me to the door of his office. "I never got the chance to thank you for that birthday present."
Strange inclined his head, a solemn gesture. "It was my pleasure and honor to be able to bestow it. Even so, it in no way lessens my gratitude and obligation to you for times gone by."
"Don't worry about me. I'm used to going it alone."
"Which is the problem," he said.
I stopped, blinked, and looked up at him. "Hey. Did you just—"
Strange smiled, very slightly, and quietly shut the door in my face.
Strange said he couldn't share information, but had he just tried to slip me something? If he was going to do that, why not just come out and say it? Why the heck does everything have to be so confusing when he's involved?
Freaking sorcerers. Freaking mystic muckety-mucks.
Wong entered the room on nearly soundless feet, carrying a paper lunch bag. I turned to face him.
"I have always found," Wong said, "that the master quite often is able to say something important without ever coming anywhere near it in conversation. I would humbly suggest that you consider his words singly, collectively and most carefully."
"Why does it always have to be twenty questions with him?"
"Because he is the master. Did your talk go well?"
I grunted. "Not really. I was hoping for a little good luck this time around."
Wong bowed his head, then offered me the lunch bag. "I regret that the outcome of your visit did not please you. I hope that ham on wheat will satisfy."
I accepted the bag as we walked to the door. "It's my favorite."
"Really? Then one might say that you found a little good luck after all."
I blinked at him. "Wait. Wong, did you just—" Wong bowed politely and shut the door in my face.
I looked at the door.
I looked at the lunch bag.
"Their weakness is ham on wheat?" I asked the door.
The door was almost as informative as Strange and Wong.
"This is why I don't like messing around in this magic stuff!" I hollered at Strange's mansion.
People on the sidewalks stopped to stare at me.
I scowled. "I swear, one of these days I'm going to snap and throw a garbage truck through that stupid window." I shook my head, muttered some things I'd never say around Aunt May, and opened the lunch bag.
Ham-on-wheat sandwiches, two of them, in plastic bags.
An apple.
And a black-lacquered square box as wide as my hand, maybe half an inch thick.
Interesting.
It reminded me of a jewelry case. I opened it. Inside were three small, black stones, along with a folded piece of paper that looked like a page torn from a book.
I read over it.
Very interesting.
For the first time that day, I felt something almost like real hope.
I closed the lunch bag, tied it to my belt with a bit of webbing, and swung for home.
Chapter 14
"Let me get this straight," Mary Jane said as she sat down across the kitchen table from me. "You went to ask for Doctor Strange's help, and he gave you magic beans?"
"Well. He didn't give them to me. Wong did."
"Wong did."
"And they aren't beans. They're rocks."
"Magic rocks. And he told you they would help?"
"No," I said.
"Wong did?"
"No," I said. "Wong gave me lunch. And rocks. And this. But he didn't tell me anything." I slid her the piece of paper Wong had packed in the lunch bag while I munched on the sandwiches.
The ham was that expensive honey-baked kind that Aunt May can only afford once a year, for Christmas, and it was delicious. The bread was wheat bread, sure enough, but homemade and fresh, and Wong had made it with a splash of Italian dressing and had somehow found a fresh-grown tomato, not one of those Styrofoam imitation tomatoes my grocery store sells. It was good.
Maybe I should think about asking Wong for cooking lessons. If only he wasn't such a wise-acre.
"Alhambran agates," Mary Jane read. "Long used to detain the most savage nonmortal corporeal beings. Touched to the flesh of a willing or insensible entity, they resonate with a static pocket dimension from which there is no simple means of egress." She frowned. "Static pocket dimension?"
"A tiny reality where not much happens, and where time doesn't progress at the same rate as everywhere else," I said. "It's like a combination prison cell and deep freeze."
"But magic," she said.
"Well. There are some quantum theories that indicate that something like this could be possible, but…"
She reached for one of the stones. "So you just touch the Ancient with the magic rock and poof?"
I caught her wrist gently before she could touch it. "I'm not sure exactly what they will and won't do," I said. "But they're evidently powerful and dangerous. I think it's best not to take any chances."