“What were they going to try out?” Thursday asked.
Vasilis looked to the floor.
Heather answered instead. “Resurrection. Loki wanted to hunt a bear and bring it back to life.”
“Oh, fuck that,” Brynn said.
“So they went out to the backcountry wilderness in the dead of winter to go kill a hibernating bear—which by the way doesn’t count as hunting—and turn it into a zombie bear, and then they didn’t come back?” Thursday asked. “Gee, I can’t think of anything that might have gone wrong with that plan. What a mystery.”
“Thursday,” Doomsday said.
“No,” Thursday said. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Mystery solved. They got killed by winter or the bear and frankly it’s hard to claim they didn’t have it coming.”
“What about Gertrude Miller?” I asked. “She told us she was dead six months, then was resurrected.”
“Honestly,” Heather said, looking at Thursday, “when they didn’t come back from Glacier, Vasilis and I thought the same thing you did. But then Isola came back. Okay, she’s shell-shocked and doesn’t want to talk to us.” Heather turned to me. “But then Gertrude came back. She was dead. For six months.”
“She was telling the truth about that, then,” I said.
Heather nodded.
Vulture clapped his hands together. We all looked at him, and he tried, and failed, to wipe the smile off his face. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just . . . we have our first mystery!”
Thursday sighed. “We’ll start first thing in the morning?”
* * *
Dinner consisted of reheated couscous, baked potatoes, and green salad. There were too many of us for the table, so we ate on the couches and easy chairs. We talked about friends in common who weren’t dead or missing. The state of the anarchist movement and its role in fighting the rise of fascism and nationalism globally. Then, more interesting to me, the state of magic.
“How many practitioners do you think there are?” I asked. “Until a couple days ago, I’ve gone my whole life without seeing an ounce of real magic, and I’ve met plenty of people who spend their time trying.”
“It’s hard to answer,” Vasilis said. “I’d guess that, worldwide, we’re talking about a few hundred, maybe a thousand people who are real magicians, who are tapped into what the endless spirits have to offer. Then below that, I don’t know, a couple million people who stumble upon magic here and there but mostly fail?”
“What do you mean?”
“As far as I can tell, there’s only one system of magic that actually works with any consistency, and that involves appealing to—or summoning directly—the endless spirits. But there are a lot of rituals that end up tapping into that power kind of by accident, through a side door, that people stumble upon from time to time as they practice other systems. Most of those side doors are for magic that only affects the practitioner. Like, rituals to grant you courage work well. Rituals to heal yourself work a little less well. Rituals to heal other people—almost never, unless you’re communicating directly with a specific spirit.”
“Okay,” I said. “If there’s a system of magic that works, why doesn’t everyone know about it? Keeping information ‘rare’ is harder and harder these days.”
“Oh! I know!” Vulture said.
We all turned to look at him. He’d finished his food already and was lying across Heather and Brynn on the love seat.
“It’s the magic feds!” he said. “I’m on this forum, right, and I dunno, a lot of it probably isn’t true but there’s this thing people mention and no one knows its name but it’s the magic feds and they’re like Mulder and Scully but evil. Well, not evil from their point of view. But evil from my point of view.”
“Yeah,” Vasilis said. “It used to be the church. Now it’s the state. Still an inquisition.”
“Wait,” I said, “should we be worried about this, then?”
“I mean,” Vasilis said, “as long as you don’t do something crazy and spectacular like set an endless spirit against your enemies in broad daylight, you’ll be fine.”
Brynn started laughing.
“So,” I said, “yes. We should be worried.”
* * *
There was a spare bedroom—it had been Isola and Damien’s—and we piled in with our bags. Doomsday claimed the bed for herself and Thursday, and I laid my sleeping bag out on the floor. Vulture said he was going for a walk, Thursday said he was going to stand watch because something felt off.
Brynn was out in the living room, still talking with Heather.
I was exhausted, but as soon as I laid my head down on my balled-up hoodie, I was awake.
Too much, all in one day. Too much, all in one week.
I wanted Brynn there. I wanted to hold her. We’d been cuddling, most nights. I hadn’t kissed her or anything. I hadn’t really been sure I’d been ready to do something like that, and vice versa.
But I wanted to cuddle with her.
She was out in the living room, talking to a high-femme, gorgeous stranger. That was fine.
It would be fine.
The rain had let up, but there was still thunder in the distance. Other than that, everything was quiet. Small towns are strange at night—none of the people noises of big cities, none of the car noises of busy rural roads, none of the wildlife noises of the countryside. Just that thunder, and the sound of Brynn laughing from the living room.
It wasn’t fine.
I was being an idiot, and I knew it. Brynn didn’t owe me anything, and she wasn’t doing anything wrong or even weird or mean. Knowing I was being an idiot didn’t make it better.
Couldn’t I just think about the car crash instead?
Lightning lit the room. Doomsday started snoring.
Worry became anxiety, anxiety started on its way toward panic.
I got up, pulled my hoodie on, slipped on my
