Shades

Come out, Gustav’s voice rang in his mind.

What do you want, old man?

I am neighborhood welcome wagon. I know you, Michael Bedrik.

Bedrik grinned. And I know you, Gustav, whose secret name is Partha.

Gustav was visibly startled. Bedrik’s smile grew wider. The Russian hadn’t expected him to know his magical name.

Come outside, Gustav thought. Say hello, yes?

You’re a fool, Bedrik replied. Do you really think I’d breach the circle? If you wish to draw me out and challenge me, you’ll have to do better than this transparent ploy. Really, I’m surprised—and disappointed. After all I’ve heard about you. I’d expect better than this.

Gustav didn’t respond. The old man suddenly seemed distracted. Bedrik frowned, glancing again at his ruined yard.

When he looked up again, Gustav was gone.

“Damn,” Bedrik swore. “I’ll need to move faster.”

789

His mother wasn’t home. Danny wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t expected her to be. A quick check of the cupboard confirmed that they were out of booze. She was probably down at Giordano’s liquor store, restocking. That was the only time she left the house, other than for work.

Danny fixed himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but threw it away after two bites. He had no appetite. He turned on the television and watched a few minutes of Sanford and Son before turning it off again. He wasn’t in the mood to laugh. Danny felt like dying; he wanted to crawl into bed, curl up into a ball, and just float away. He wished for his mother, wished she was there to give him a hug and tell him it would be okay.

But the only thing his mother hugged was the vodka bottles.

He bet the Giordano kids were getting hugged by their mother tonight.

Sometimes, he wished he could wipe Giordano’s Happy Bottle Shop off the planet. Toss a Molotov cocktail through their window, like on The A-Team, and just burn the place down. But could he stop there? Sometimes, when he slept, Danny had dreams in which the entire world was on fire. The dreams ended differently, depending on when he woke up, but they always started the same—at Giordano’s.

When she was sober, Danny’s mom was quiet and depressed. When she’d been drinking, she was loud and angry—or stupefied. Regardless of her state of mind, she was never the mother he’d had when his dad was alive. His memories of a happy mom were rapidly fading, just like the memories of his father. Sometimes, he had to look at his father’s picture to remember the contours of his face or the smell of his aftershave.

He looked at his mother’s picture to remember her smile.

The tears surprised him, sudden in their ferocity. His body trembled. His breath caught in his throat. His chest hurt. Danny sat on the couch in his quiet, empty home and cried harder than he ever had before. He cried for his parents, and for his friends, and for himself.

And when it was over, Danny decided it was time to make things better. Magic affected change in the magician’s reality. The easiest place to start was his mom.

Gustav had told him to study, so study he had; learning about alcoholism and the human brain, dependency and depression. Some of it didn’t make much sense, but he thought he was ready for what had to be done. First, he had to get his mother over her dependency, change her programming. Next, he had to prevent her body from crashing as the alcohol left her system. She’d been a functional alcoholic for a long time now, and he knew the physical withdrawals would be bad. He’d read that some people actually died from the DTs. He couldn’t let that happen to her.

Step one, relaxation. Preparing his mind and body were essential. He had to be calm and alert. Danny began some deep breathing exercises that Gustav had shown him, forcing his breaths to come in slow and deep and exhaling so that he completely cleared his lungs. When he was ready, he focused on his mother. There were a lot of things that could go wrong, if he didn’t do this right. Visualization was the key to success. He had to visualize the alcoholism as a living, breathing entity dwelling within his mother, and then destroy it without affecting any other part of her mind. In changing their reality, he didn’t want to change his mom; he just wanted her to be free from the booze. He wanted her to be happy again.

He kept his eyes shut and floated, his breathing shallow and rhythmic. Then, in the silence, he heard a whisper—the whip crack of a feather, the echo of a cat barking. It seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. Danny’s eyes blinked open and he sat up straight. The living room was dark and empty. He was alone.

But the sound continued.

It shifted, resembling the padding of paws. One second it was behind the couch. The next, it was beneath the recliner, and then perched atop the lamp, and finally all three at the same time. His head darted back and forth, trying to track it, but he still saw nothing. His heart hammered, and his ears rang. The sound changed again to the clicking of crab shells. Whatever it was, he’d heard it before—that night outside the abandoned Greek restaurant, when he’d teleported himself. The same day he’d discovered a dead body…

…and discovered magic.

The sound solidified and Danny felt a presence in the room. The air seemed heavy, the atmosphere electric. The lamp dimmed; then flickered out completely, plunging the living room into darkness.

Whimpering, Danny pulled his feet up onto the sofa.

Headlights flashed through the gap in the curtains. A car pulled into the driveway, his mother; the engine’s sickly whine was as familiar as anything else in the house. At the same moment, the presence vanished. The lamp bulb brightened again, dispelling the darkness. The noises stopped. Whatever it had been, it was gone.

Outside, the car door slammed. He heard footsteps and the jangle of keys. His mother opened the trunk. Bags rustled and glass bottles clicked together. Then she slammed the trunk. Her footsteps headed up the driveway.

Pushing the fear from his mind, Danny focused on his breathing, forcing himself to calm down and relax. Visualize. Despite everything that had just happened, he looked remarkably tranquil on the sofa, eyelids half-closed, mouth open, pulse and breathing slowing. Only his eyes moved.

The keys jangled in the lock. A moment later, the front door opened, and his mother walked in.

“You’re home,” she mumbled. “What are you doing?”

Danny couldn’t respond. Although he remained still, his eyes widened. The visualization had worked—maybe too well. The demon Alcohol clung to her back. It looked like a mutant monkey-mosquito hybrid. A proboscis fed directly into her brain. He knew that his mind had created this thing to symbolize her dependency, but it seemed so real. Its flesh wiggled as she shut the door behind her. Its glowing, insect-like eyes regarded him without blinking, a thousand facets of glossy red. He could even smell the creature—rotten and spoiled and sickly. Its thick-toed feet clutched her shoulders. Her hair was twisted in its stubby fingers.

“Danny?” His mother sat the bags down on the coffee table. The bottles clinked.

“Hey, Mom…”

He was suddenly overcome with doubt. What the hell was he doing? Was it possible to stop the thing crawling on his mother? Was it really just his mind’s creation, a representation of her disease, or had he somehow made it real through magic?

His mother collapsed into the recliner, kicked off her shoes, and rummaged through the bags.

“God,” she moaned. “What a day. I hate that fucking place. How was school?”

“Okay,” he lied. “Boring.”

Sighing, his mother pulled a bottle of vodka from the bag and twisted the cap. Then she took a drink.

“Mmm, that hits the spot. I needed this.”

The creature cooed, shivering with pleasure. Danny squirmed. If his mother heard it, she gave no indication.

She looked at him and smiled weakly. Then she took another drink.

The energies he’d been gathering inside coalesced and Danny let them fly, imagining them as a blistering ball that scorched the air between them. He thrust out his hands. Blistering light erupted from his fingertips and struck the demon in the head, severing the spear-like proboscis. Red energy fizzled from the hollow tube like blood, and