Vaughn R. Demont's Blog, page 2

Four on the Floor: Part Twenty-Three

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Part Twenty-Three

I groan, sitting up, rubbing my head, trying to steady my breathing. There are people across the street, in the diner, watching the events unfold. A few have already taken out their phones to get video. Val and Shan are staring each other down, and no one’s talking about the fact that Val’s holding a sword.

“Val! What are you doing? Put that away!” I immediately wince. Why is everything so loud?

“You dismiss me so casually?” He advances a step, Shan doesn’t move. “And choose… this as your protector?”

That gets a few people murmuring. If what those two said is true, the crowd will hear what they want, what makes sense, because a half-Sidhe drawing a magic sword on a black dragon on a city street in broad daylight doesn’t make sense. A self-absorbed white boy pissed off to the point of threatening violence on a white Goth girl who chose a tall, classically handsome black man over him? Yeah, I can see someone wanting to upload that to YouTube.

Shan cocks his head, his voice taking an edge. “This?”

Now it’s my turn to get between them, which means the point of that blade is now just under my breasts. Oh fuck, what am I doing….

“This is between me and the…” Val glares at me, I respond my folding my arms. Val almost spits the word, “Dragon.”

A few people gasp. I’m guessing they heard something much, much more offensive. The inflection was clear enough, though, that I feel Shan trying to move around me. I hold him back, in that I put my arm in his way and he’s kind enough to respect the gesture, because I doubt I could physically hold him back.

“Val, I don’t want to command you by your name. Put the sword down.”

He smiles, lips curled. “Go ahead. Speak in Sigil. Let the crowd know exactly what you are. You’re aware of the nation’s history regarding women who wield magic?”

“Of course, they-“

“They were burned at the stake as servants and whores of demons and devils. These people will ignore me, even that,” he says, pointing to Shan with his free hand.

Shan literally growls, but Val’s attention is diverted. It’s not hard to slide to Fae’s weak side after that. Working in a haunt means that, because your job is to scare people, that you have to deal with the fight or flight instinct. Most of the time it’s flight, but sometimes it’s fight, meaning you’re going to get punched, kicked, slapped, shoved, all manner of undisciplined tactics used in a brawl. Typically, you’re not supposed to fight back, because shortly after they hit you, flight kicks in and they run off, or they suddenly realize that it’s a haunted house so it’s all supposed to be in fun.

But you still learn how to throw a punch back, how to close, not scrunch the fist, pull back the thumb instead of tucking it under the fingers, keep the wrist locked, and apply force as if punching through their face, not at their face. And since Tasha covers boxing in the off-season, I also know about the simple jab-jab-hook combination.

Val, on the other hand, does not.

The crowd’s reaction is mixed to seeing the attractive young man put on his back by a woman, but there are several woman-positive comments mixed in as I’ve essentially fought and won the battle by myself without the aid of a man, though a few comments are directed at Shan for needing a white girl to fight in his stead. While Val is on the ground, hands covering his face, the sword drops to the pavement with a soft clatter.

I pick it up, and then stand over him, well, a couple of feet away so he can’t trip me up. “Don’t you ever try any shit like this again, you got that, Val? You and I never were, not by choice for either of us. Find something else to be a hero for, if they can stand you at all.”

I will admit it was not ladylike at all for me to punctuate that remark with a spit to his face. But it felt good, regardless.

I tap the flat of the blade against him while he gets to his feet, lip bleeding. “Now. Fuck off.”

The crowd dissipates soon after Val leaves, vanishing into the people, and I finally relax once he’s out of sight. My grip loosens enough on the sword hilt that I can hold it without my arm aching.

“They hunt my kind, you know,” Shan says from behind me, his eyes still focused on the crowd, keeping track, likely making sure that Val doesn’t return. “It’s sport to them, fodder for their self-aggrandizing tales. Mostly the children among us, quick enough to be hunted, strong enough to be a challenge, but not so difficult as to ruin the fun.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Of course it is.” He glances to me. “Were you expecting relief on my part that you managed such simple compassion?”

“If I were a dragon and said that, would you have responded the same way?”

He chuffs. “If you were a dragon and said that, I would fear your egg had been dropped several dozen times so as to leave you moon-brained and tragically naïve. Do not expect congratulations from me for stating the obvious.”

“Okay, but what the fuck have I done to deserve this treatment? This attitude?”

“You are a sorcerer. And human.”

“I get it, okay? Sorcerers are assholes to dragons and humans have treated all of you like shit. I can’t really change that, but I can choose how I act and what I do around you. So what have I done to deserve this? Is it the life debt? That’s your deal, not mine. Is it that I stood up to Val instead of letting you two fight it out in front of a crowd? Sorry if I didn’t let you two whip ‘em out and measure, but his problem was with me and my choices so it was my score to settle. Is it because I walked out on you from the diner? You were being a dick. I’m not expecting us to be friends, okay? We’ve both got our own reasons for chasing that other necromancer, but at least we’ve got the same goal. Can we at least work together, then? Equal partners?”

I extend my hand to make the point.

“What did you say?”

“A lot. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Equal.”

I nod. “Yeah. Equal partners.”

“I, a dragon, as an equal of you, a Keth?”

“That’s what I said.”

“And it is what you mean?”

“Yes, you and I will be equals in this.”

He takes my hand, grips it firmly, and shakes it. “Equals.”

“Equals.”

He lets go of my hand, and closes his eyes a few seconds, savoring the moment. When he opens them back up, he nods once, a curt smile on his face. “Then as your equal, I would ask that you remand yourself to a bathhouse or shower, as the wretchedness of your scent, I’m certain, is overwhelming my senses and corroding my brain.”

“God, you’re a dick.”

“I’m quite confident that entity would agree with my assessment.”

Sneak Peek: Wayward Son (Broken Mirrors #5)

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(Just to show the Coyotes that I haven’t abandoned Spencer and James. This is a work in progress, and work on Four on the Floor is helping me get back into writing and working on this one. Enjoy the sneak peek!

Nerve: Anonymity, Consequence and Dunbar’s Number

Nerve (2016)

Emma Roberts, Dave Franco

A high school senior finds herself immersed in an online game of truth or dare, where her every move starts to become manipulated by an anonymous community of “watchers.”

How much would someone have to pay you to act outside of your personality? Outside of your own code of morality? Outside the code of common morality? Outside of the law? What if doing it could cover your groceries for the week? Rent for the month? Pay for a car? Clear your student loan debt? Make you famous? Admired?

The above questions are nothing new in fiction or film. Stephen King’s Needful Things (as well as the film) asked what sins you’d commit for the material things you’ve wanted all your life. Indecent Proposal asked if you’d commit, and/or forgive infidelity for $1,000,000. But, there’s always a new generation, new people who are tempted by the same questions and offers for different representations of the same abstract concepts (fame, wealth, status) in exchange for increasingly risky, and darkening moral behavior. It’s generally referred to as a Faustian Bargain at its height, trading one’s soul either literally or figuratively, for selfish gain.

Those Damned Millennials

2016’s Nerve explores similar themes, using the medium of the internet and social media to be the primary driver for the plot. Marketed as a techno-thriller, it risks the same failings as all the other internet-centered techno-thrillers in the 20th century. Gen X Sandra Bullock “getting caught in” The Net is considered a dated laughingstock now, but the concept of your identity being stolen and completely rewritten as that a career criminal, your medical records altered to make a visit to the hospital potentially fatal, and your entire life being devastated by unknown assailants… is now kind of possible.

Hackers provides all of the same fears, but with Gen Y teenaged hackers as the heroes, fighting for the ideals of the internet, freedom, neutrality, and presentation and ownership of one’s own identity. It’s still dated as Hell, though, as there’s a scene of the characters oohing and ahhing over a laptop’s tech specs that were rendered hysterically obsolete inside of two years.

Nerve presents the last of the Millennials, teenagers born in 1998 and 1999, all caught up in an app-based social media game of “truth or dare without the truths” where every watcher and player’s phone is a server, a subtle reference to blockchain-based possibilities. The plot of the movie is simple enough: Vee, the protagonist, is a worrisome student photographer who lets her fears and anxieties run her life. She signs up for Nerve as a Player and becomes a sensation and hugely popular on her first night, the last night of the current game, getting internet fame and thousands of dollars by completing dares, until it turns out that the game is much more sinister and subject to mob rule than originally thought.

The story itself runs along well-worn tropes and expectations, and there aren’t too many big surprises for anyone with multi-modal literacy over the age of 25 (hence it being a YA movie), but it still raises discussion topics, refusing to be shelved as a “turn-your-brain-off” popcorn movie. For starters, it shows the strain of the social contract the larger the society involved grows.

Social Media vs. Social Contract

A challenge of social media is that of Dunbar’s Number, also known as “the monkeysphere”, or the theory that the human brain does not possess a developed enough neocortex to manage social connections, such as friendship, with more than 150 people. (This number has been suggested to be as low as 30 and as high as 250, depending on the society the individual dwells in.) This is generally why social connections fade as one moves from one society to another (neighborhood, school, work). The larger the society, the more difficult to impossible it becomes to maintain a social connection, and therefore attachment to the social contract.

The social contract itself is, at its most simplified and barest essence, “I won’t kill you if you won’t kill me.” This isn’t to imply that social media will bring about an end to that aspect of the social contract, but what the social contract relies on at its core is the regard for other people as living human beings. This is often circumvented through rationalization and dehumanization. Often, this is done in mass psychology with simplified rules and guidelines to appeal to less developed areas of the brain, often using rhyme, melody, or catchphrases to ingrain concepts.

This is done in Nerve at first with its three rules: 1) Every dare must be recorded with one’s own phone, 2) Bail or Fail and lose everything, and 3) Snitches Get Stitches. All three rules are displayed laden with memes to link the rules to primal emotions, particularly rule 3, which uses images of violence and cowardice to imprint that the consequences will be dire. That breakers of the third rule are beaten, have their identities and money stolen, and havoc wrought on their and their family’s lives, is brushed aside and ignored, or rationalized by group chanting of “Snitches Get Stitches” while the rulebreaker is punished for calling out the increasingly dangerous dares to anyone with the power to stop it.

Oversharing vs. Data-Mining

Considering that the dares are primarily built around a player’s worst fears and moral philosophy, it could be argued (likely by anyone over the age of 30) that the blame lies solely with the player, as all of the information used against them is directly mined from their social media profiles, and how much and can learned about a person by deep-diving into everything someone elects to share online, and that an expectation of privacy is only supposed, not actually implied by law, and is given nowhere in that lengthy Terms of Service agreement that everyone agrees to without reading. (Victim blaming, as we all know, has been one of the darker parts of society for ages.)

However, in the case of Nerve, the app mines data without the player’s, or watcher’s knowledge, making it freely available to anyone who’s paid $20 for a one-day watcher pass. It can be argued that the app’s simply mining everything that was freely shared by the player, or that they were tagged in. This is presented to be a simple task with every phone in the network acting as part of a bot-net. It presents a counter-argument that this information was being taken and used without their knowledge or approval, but they don’t argue because they’re getting paid hundreds to thousands of dollars to either let it happen to complete dares, or watch the increasingly dangerous broadcasts for their own voyeuristic pleasure.

Anonymity vs. Consequence

The finale of Nerve takes the plot to its logical-to-slippery-slope end with the final two players facing each other with loaded guns and the final dare being for one to shoot the other for the grand prize, surrounded by hundreds of fans dressed in masks, all with phones out to watch or film. This, of course, is to show that everyone present or watching in private will retain their anonymity no matter the result of the “duel” between the last two Players, both of whom are revealed to be “Prisoners” or Players who snitched and are relegated to essential slavery to the game under threat of ruin to themselves and their families. An impassioned speech by the protagonist inspires unease in one watcher present, but in the end is ignored.

While it can be critiqued that this is what Millennials will become without threat of consequence, it’s more indicative of several theories and their effect on the social contract. The finale of Nerve can be explained simply with John Gabriel’s Internet Fuckwad Theory (Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Fuckwad), but can be delved into more adequately by examining the factors at work in Nerve.

First, the sheer number of watchers severely outweighs the players, and only in one scene are the protagonist’s friends watching, thus overwhelming Dunbar’s Number by hundreds, and thousands. Since the protagonist is not part of the vast majority of watchers’ “monkeysphere”, personal connection’s effect on personal morality is negated or never established.

Once personal connection is off the table, Kohlberg’s Moral Development comes into play. Adherence to the social contract is within the Post-Conventional stage, and is removed by the overwhelming of Dunbar’s Number. The protagonist, after all, is stripped of her name and identity, being only a screenname to the thousands of watchers, and only seen on screens, making it easier to dehumanize her, and the other players, as only existing for the entertainment that they paid to see. (That many of the watchers are from well-to-do families and the players are largely from working class cannot be ignored.) That the watchers are only screennames themselves and afforded the same level of anonymity places extra strain on morality. That “Snitches Get Stitches” is the most stringent and punished rule removes the concern of Conventional Morality. (Do the laws of society forbid this?) This leaves the watchers with only concern for Pre-Conventional morality. (Will I be punished?)

Anonymity removes the concern for punishment, made evident by the final dare issued by the protagonist herself, “I dare you to shoot me”, and decided upon by the watchers themselves. Even with one of her friends insisting that others at a party vote no, the choice to kill her wins in a landslide. This isn’t surprising, considering the preceding dare for the two finalists to shoot each other wasn’t shouted down by anyone but raucously cheered on. After all, we had no problem with Katniss Everdeen dropping a hive of tracker jackers on a woman to die in horrifying agony because we had no idea who that girl was other than having killed a kid because she was made to by the games. No one got arrested for cheering on the combatants. No one was punished for being in the faceless masses that cheered on Joaquin Phoenix to give people the thumbs down in the Colosseum. There wasn’t enough personal connection to the characters to penetrate the shroud of anonymity to warrant any modicum of mercy.

It’s not until the big reveal is enacted that anyone shows a modicum of fear, when every phone addresses the watcher by their real identity and names them as an accessory to murder for voting yes. They all sign out, and the app is shut down forever, because the crowd is forced to confront the morality that human beings learn as toddlers, “if I’m bad, and I’m caught, I’ll be punished”. Even if the actual logistics of arresting and convicting that many people is laughably absurd, the fear of possibly getting 20 to Life for tapping “Yes” is enough to shut the game down.

In the end, Nerve asks its intended audience to consider the effect that social media and perceived anonymity might have on one’s moral center. It’s a line of questioning that has to be approached by every generation that grows more complex with each advancement of technology that enables further and wider connection, but acts as a double edged sword with how it can enrich and harm both oneself and others, and, to refer to the old adage, with its increasing power, comes increasing responsibility placed in the hands of those who are still figuring out what morality is without the added strain of peer pressure, mob rule, and an increasingly strained (and still developing) neocortex with an ever growing number of people in our lives. Nerve, at least, offers a happy ending, with the network shut down by the fear of consequence. It doesn’t mean our society is fixed, though. For the opposition to that ending, you only need to watch Black Mirror, or worse, The Purge.

The Road (Saturday Book Club)

While reading The Road, I was reminded of a photo album. It seemed the best way to interpret the sparse style by which McCarthy wrote the novel. Instead of chapters, the book is broken into small sections, every scene getting its own break, like snapshots. This did make for easier reading, as you could just break wherever you wanted after looking at each particular “snapshot” and taking in the images, the progress, and getting whatever meaning you want out of it. It also works for isolating the primary emotions of the book, namely fear, hope, and love.

By breaking the piece into such small sections, the novel can deliver an intense and emotional scene, such as the confrontation with the cannibal where the father expends one of the last two bullets, and then break it off, giving the reader a chance to “catch his breath” so to speak.

I was still left asking a few questions at the end of the piece, however. The boy and his father survive for the most part because of the father’s numerous skills, as he’s apparently an experienced woodsman, has knowledge of boats, and is a marksman (and is apparently has quite the florid vocabulary for his interior monologues). While it’s certainly not unbelievable for a person to possess such skills, there’s never any reason given as to how he acquired them. I would have been satisfied at some offhand comment that would have implied he’d been a Boy Scout, but that would require a look at the past, and apparently the father cannot look upon his past unless it involves some form of despair. While this is also understandable, considering everything that’s been lost (as well as his wife’s suicide shortly after giving birth), with the amount of luck that the two protagonists experience, I would think that the father would be grateful for something in his past.

The luck is something else that I took minor issue with, though in some circles it’s referred to as “script immunity”. During the whole piece, the reader is reminded of the horror and fear of the “wolf at the door”, namely other people. While the reader is treated to plenty of ideas, and of course the “slaughterhouse” in the basement of one house, there’s never any real confrontation with the feared cannibals. They remain almost permanently in the background, with two appearances to confirm that it’s not just paranoia (though if I had access to a DSM-V I could easily write up the father with PTSD and chronic paranoia, and probably tuberculosis). Also, even though the father and son were starving, I never really felt they were in danger (it does take the father several hundred pages to die, after all), and while I did feel relief when they discovered the bomb shelter filled with food, the matter of finding it smacked of deus ex machina (as did the boat, and the family that takes in the son at the end).

Still, the book does accomplish its purpose, which is love and hope triumphing in the face of fear and futility, “carrying the fire” as the father and son so eloquently put it, though it seems to do it in the most bittersweet way possible. Even though the son is found after his father finally succumbs to illness,  it’s simply a matter of time before the new group runs out of food or is attacked by cannibals. To use the cliché, the book felt of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Four on the Floor: Part Twenty-Two

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Part Twenty-Two

I’m sitting at a diner booth somewhere in Beckettsville. Shan got us here, I was mostly putting one foot in front of the other. A car might’ve been involved. Probably, considering the distance. I’m rocking back and forth, trying to rebel against the urge in my brain telling me to just relax, that nothing’s as weird as I think it us, because I can’t swallow that logic anymore.

I can accept that magic and dragons and Fae are real, but I refuse to believe that none of this is weird, nothing to worry about.

My foot is nudged by Shan, seated across from me, bringing me out of it for a moment. Damn, these booths look old.

“Hm? What?” I look around, see a woman only a couple years older than me standing next to the table, holding an order pad. She’s wearing a ballcap for the Gryphons, local football team, which I know a bit about thanks to Tasha’s podcast, and recognize from the colors, because my vision is a little blurred, my face hot. Was I crying?

“Do you need anything?” She offers me a few napkins, in a way that suggests that I was crying. “I’ll get you some water. Take your time, okay?”

I take them, dry my eyes, and I can see most of her attention is on Shan, who’s stoic, currently. Once she leaves, I glance to him before folding and crumpling the remaining napkins to give my fingers something to do. “Did you fly me here?”

“No.”

“So, how did we-“

“I called in a favor, which I don’t like doing. This place is regarded as off-limits for many. We can’t take sanctuary, but we can take a moment’s respite.”

With that, I take in the diner once again. It looks like any other local diner with booths, a lunch counter, a pass-through to the kitchen where…

Another dragon is working the grill.

“Is that-“

“Davinicus, yes. Do not speak his name, or any clever sobriquets you devise. Ignore him, he serves another Keth, though he’ll insist their relationship is based on…” He rolls his eyes. “Friendship and mutual respect.”

“It’s not?”

He smirks at me. “Not with one of yours, no. Platonic ideals cannot survive exposure to the solipsistic and megalomaniacal paradigm that defines a sorcerer.”

I shrug. “Or a dragon, apparently.”

He leans back in the booth, folds his arms. “I doubt you even know what those words mean.”

“Platonic? Based on the ideas of love regarding family and friends, but not romantic. I told you I’m aro and ace, so to think I wouldn’t know that is insulting. Solipsistic? The idea that nothing exists, that everything, and I mean everything is happening in your head, that all of existence revolves only around you. Be aware of current events, that just describes affluent white heterosexual cisgender male privilege. Megalomania? Deranged self-love and self-aggrandizement to the point of unwitting self-destruction? That’s every dictator in history, even if you only made it to junior high.”

I flip Shan off, of course, right as the server comes back to our table in time to assume I meant it for her. The glass is put down heavily, and the table’s left alone. Guess I won’t be ordering food.

Shan shakes his head, keeping that smirk. “Fate abhors a sorcerer, I would grow accustomed to such malevolent kismet.”

“If you insinuate I don’t know the meaning of those words, Shan, I’m throwing this water in your face and very publicly breaking up with you for sleeping with my best friend.” I meet his eyes, and the staring contest persists for several seconds.”

“I don’t blink. At least, not for another several minutes.”

I break, and his smirk grows to a grin.

“Why are you so nice to me and such a dick at the same time?”

“Because I’d rather you and the other killed each other.”

“So why don’t you just leave, then?” I snap back.

He narrows his golden eyes at me. “Because you are a sorcerer, and I am a dragon, and I owe you my life. I despise debt, and I owe you one I can never repay.”

“You saved me how many times? I think we’re even.”

“I am expected to!” He slams his fists on the table, which cracks, and silences the diner. “I would prefer anything than being tied to a Keth.” He spits out the last word, and the table fizzes where the acid splashes. “I hate the other for having the gall to command me, and you for-“

“Don’t you give me shit for commanding you, you were diving at me to do to me what you just did to this table.” My shoulders sag as I sigh. “They’re all going to think we’re crazy now.” I gesture meekly to the rest of the diner.

Shan takes one of the paper placemats and turns it over, picking up a pencil that’s been left on the table for kids to do the maze on the front, and then writing a string of letters and numbers. “I’ll compensate the owner.”

I glance at the figures, and he instinctively covers them with his hand.

“Afraid for your account in Switzerland?”

He makes a disgusted grumble. “My horde will never be stored in one place, especially near my enemies.”

“Shan, honest question?”

The dragon responds with the slightest of nods.

“Do you have any friends? I mean, all I have are zombies and a ghost in a plastic skull but-“ I look around. Eh. They all think I’m crazy anyway. “At least I have people who don’t clench at the sight of me.”

He blinks, and chuckles, shaking his head. “You command magic, words of power, you truck with the dead and call the shadows. You just don’t see them ‘clenching’.”

“Spoken like a true misanthrope.”

“Sorcerers created us to be their slaves, religions contorted us into symbols of evil, humans view us as causes for fear and avarice and abuse of power. What’s there to like about any of you?”

“You were nicer before the lake.”

“I didn’t have a life debt to you before the lake.”

“So I was supposed to let you drown?”

“You’re a necromancer, even death wouldn’t have freed me from you.”

I get up from the table, and head out to the street. I have a good idea where I am, I can head back to Tasha’s and pick up Pumpkin, find out where the other necromancer is and put an end to all of this and get back on with my small little life helping zombies move on.

“Sorcerer!”

And he’s following me. Fucking life debt, you know a guy had to have come up with that. I should just let people die and talk to their spirits instead. Easier to work with.

I find myself on the pavement, head blurry. Val is a few feet away, Shan between us. And Val has his sword drawn.

And pointed at me.

Excerpt: Breaking Ties

A sidekick’s work is never done.

Broken Mirrors, Book 4

Kicked out of his family, fetching coffee for idiots, out of cash, and usually starving, Spencer Crain is a shadow of his former self. And more certain than ever that living a normal, serious life is the last thing a Coyote should shoot for.

When he gets the chance to investigate a troll/sidhe gunfight at Under The Bridge, he can’t drop “office intern” from his résumé fast enough. Even if it means bringing the last person he ever thought he’d see again back into his life—his father.

James Black, the Sorcerer King, was taking an inordinately long time to choose a draconic protector, but his kidnapping by dragons seems a little extreme. It’s up to Spence to navigate Fae politics, work the Feud, bring down a murderous order of sidhe knights, and heroically save James, the man he loves. Assisted by the guy James has been dating.

Ain’t love grand?

Warning: This novel contains a Coyote doing the ultimate thankless job—the sidekick—dragon-shifter sorcerers, Dwarves, pop-culture references, and a shotgun that shoots lightning bolts. Freakin’ lightning bolts, people!

Chapter One

Spencer

December 19, 2:37 am

I’m up ninety bucks when the first shot rings out.

On TV the obvious thing to do is duck behind the bar or pool table or whatever’s in diving distance that looks sturdy and, if you’re not one of the shooters, generally cower and maybe crack wise about the service being terrible while you blindly reach around for your beer. TV and I haven’t been on good terms lately, so I go with the duck-and-cover route and leave it at that.

Also, the jukebox has it all wrong. Gunfight music is supposed to be heavy metal, techno or classical if you’re using a lot of slow-motion shots. Whoever decided to pull a gun at Under the Bridge obviously didn’t review proper procedure when they queued up some Blondie.

Plus, you wouldn’t expect a gunfight at a Fae bar, nor would you expect a bar full of Fae to clear out as quickly as it did. I guess getting shot likely affects the Fair Folk just as much as us regular folk. Regardless, all I can make out from my limited vantage are overturned chairs, broken beer bottles knocked to the floor by escaping patrons, and a large collection of gum stuck to the underside of the table. Ick.

The second shot is a cannon-fire explosion that can only mean that Bjorn, the bartender, has entered the fray. A seven-foot troll with a Ruger Casull is no one you want tripping over you, so I continue to huddle under the pool table.

Don’t look at me like that. I’m a Coyote. We don’t do action-movie bullshit.

That I hear dead quiet instead of screaming likely means that either Bjorn missed, it was a warning shot that got the gunman’s attention, or there’s very likely a dead body. I take the opportunity to peek over the pool table and chance a glance.

A few feet in front of the bar is a woman dressed in stylized blue-steel half-plate, which looks out of place considering the Glock in her hand. (TV gives you a general idea of which guns are which.) Her skin is a dark green, accentuating the cobalt-blue blood that leaks from the stump where her head used to be, attached by a flap of bloody skin and… I’m not going to look at it anymore; I’m feeling queasy as it is. Bjorn is slumped against the bar, holding the Casull and clutching his chest, his breathing shallow.

“Oh shit.” I wish I could be more articulate here, but that’s all I’ve got. I get out from behind the pool table and go to him, considering even if she were a zombie she is not getting up from that. “Stay with me, okay?” I fish out my cell, a burner I picked up six months ago that I’ve yet to burn. “I’m going to call an ambulance—”

The phone’s slapped from my hand by blue-blood-covered fingers. “No humans.”

I’m able to get a look at his injury, and it does not look like the just-a-flesh-wound variety that enables heroes to continue emptying clips into the onslaught. “Jesus, what kind of ammo did she use?”

“Iron. Special.” He swallows, baring his teeth as a wave of pain hits him. “Fae killers. Didn’t exit.” The gun is still in his grasp, his knuckles white, the grip cracking under the pressure. My face is suddenly slick with his blood when he takes hold of it. “Tell my stories, Bard, promise me. Let my honor be known, that I outlived the coward sent to kill me.”

Another one of my roles in life, being a Bard. Makes me easy to talk to, but for Fae it holds a special significance.

I gulp and inspect the wound. “Or…I could try to help you. How deep in is it?” Funny, usually I say those words in an entirely different context. “I mean, I don’t want to nick an artery or anything and make it worse.” I chew my lip. “You’re sure paramedics wouldn’t be a better idea?”

The troll glares at me. “And let humans cut into me with steel?” Oh yeah, steel has iron in it. Forgot about that.

“Wait, wait, just…hold on a bit.” I retrieve my phone and start dialing. “I know someone who can help you that isn’t involved with the Feud or the Fae, and with any luck he can get here soon.” In the meantime I apply pressure to the wound, or rather, help him apply pressure and stuff it with gauze in the form of a clean bar rag.

Help arrives fifteen minutes later, a short red-haired human with a white streak in his bangs. He’s tired and wearing thrown-on jeans and a too-large black polo shirt with Bremen’s Automotive across the breast. Not surprisingly, he chooses to react first to the dead body on the floor instead of his blood-smeared Coyote sidekick and the troll who’s in the midst of bleeding out. “Holy fuck, Spence, what’d you do?”

I shrug helplessly. “Mostly? I hustled a commoner sidhe out of ninety bucks, and he fled the gunfight that broke out before he could pay me. I was going to go after him, but I didn’t want Bjorn here haunting my ass over an unpaid bar tab. So, uh, James, mind doing your thing?”

“What exactly are you asking me to do?” James gives the corpse a wide berth, shuddering Vaughn R. Demont visibly at the spreading pool of blue blood. “Jesus Christ, what happened to her?”

I point at the revolver in Bjorn’s hand to answer his question, the troll still gripping it to focus his pain.

James does the math after seeing the pistol in the dead Fae’s hand. “Okay, okay, what’s wrong with him? It is him you want me to work on, right? Because I don’t do…” he gestures futilely at the body, “…that.”

“Gee, James, they’re both holding guns, I’d guess he’s got a sniffle.” I help Bjorn pull his hand away from the wound. The troll hacks up some blood, and that’s never a good sign. “He’s been shot. God, I thought you had to be smart to be a—”

He holds up a hand as he kneels next to the troll and me. “Seriously, Spence, that’s just getting old.” James looks at me. “Regular bullets or…”

“Iron.”

He winces, but he levels his gaze on the wound, holding his fingers just in front of the opening that pulses out blue blood (different shade than the sidhe, but I guess it’s just a difference in type) at a much weaker pace.

“Spence, I need the name for iron.” He clicks his tongue a couple times and touches the troll’s forehead, a word coming from his mouth that’s contorted into English, not quite matching his lip movements, like a bad dubbing job. The word is in Sigil, the language of magic. “Sleep.” After the troll’s eyes close and James confirms he’s breathing, he looks at me. “That enough to go off?”

A handy trick Bards have is that we can speak in any language as long as we’ve heard it before. Granted, I usually sound like a tourist that drunkenly memorized a phrase book, but it’s enough to be understood. Sigil, being a magical language, is a bit trickier, so I need to hear it every now and then or I’ll forget it. The upside is that when I can speak it, I’m fluent as a Fae. “Iron.”

There’s a reason James needs me to translate for him despite the fact that he’s the one who gave the damned language its current name.

“Iron no want here. Iron go turn be blood now yes.”

See what I mean? Ironic that he thinks I sound like an idiot most of the time, but then again he does have a good reason. Magic’s pretty complicated, and James is possibly the only one in the world who can really do it. When he does it right, some amazing things can happen. When he does it wrong, well, there’s an elevated train in the City that now has some serious self-esteem issues.

Still, you’d think the guy who named the language would know more than fifty words of it.

TV gives you expectations where magic is concerned, you know. There’s supposed to be lights and sounds and ripples in the air and a general shudder that goes through your soul. Flashy stuff. Instead there’s nothing but James breathing almost as shallowly as the ventilated troll. “We need to close the wound,” he rasps. “The healing spell I know only works on me.”

“Got it covered.” I dig into my pocket and take out my deck of cards, which no Coyote ever leaves home without, and draw out one of the few remaining clubs in the deck, since it’s been dwindled lately. I press the card (the Jack, in case you’re curious) against the wound

and stuff the bloody bar rag in the sleeping troll’s mouth. “Brace yourself, Bjorn.”

James’s eyes go wide as he sees the card. “Spence, is that the Jack?”

“Hi.” No, I didn’t just say hi, I said Hi, the Japanese element of Fire, seeing as I filched this trick from a Fox. I don’t really get James’s concern, though, until the trick literally fires—a gout of flame bursting from the card that burns closed the wound while it singes my eyebrows and a fair bit of my bangs. Oh, right. The Jack. Ranks a lot higher in the suit, so…a lot more powerful.

Could’ve been worse, could’ve been the Ace.

The troll awakens, screaming through the cloth, some fresh blood dripping from his mouth until he spits out the rag, which hits me in the chest, getting even more blood on me. It’s a good thing that I’ve seen a zombie exploded by a wave of thunder before, otherwise all the blood might make me ill. Well, it is, but I can hold off on puking for a while.

“Spence, he’s probably still bleeding internally…”

I wave James off and shake my head. “He’s a troll. They regenerate, remember?” I have to chuckle at him. “Jesus, James, isn’t that covered in the Monster Manual?”

He narrows his eyes at me crossly. “The trolls in the game aren’t Fae.” James looks into the troll’s eyes. “You going to make it?”

Bjorn sniffs at James and promptly spits in the human’s face. “Keth.” Then the troll glares at me. “You brought a sorcerer here?”

I tilt my head. “Sorry. Next time I’ll just let you die. And tell really embarrassing stories at your funeral. Remember that time I ralphed on your boots? Classic. I’m sure it’ll go over well.”

James in the meantime is wiping his face clean. “Don’t worry about it, Spence. I’m used to it.” He pokes the troll in the shoulder, the one that’s not near the wound. “You didn’t answer my question, are you going to make it?”

Bjorn snorts but after a second nods silently.

“Fantastic.” I get up, and help James to his feet as well before motioning to the dead Fae.

“Mind telling us what this is all about?”

The barkeep looks away. “Nothing that concerns you.”

I scoff. “I would say getting shot at concerns me.”

“Especially,” James chimes in, “if this spills out onto the street and innocent people get shot.” The troll starts to respond, but James holds up his hand, static jumping between his fingertips. “I swear to God, you had better not be about to imply that I don’t care about innocent people because I’m a sorcerer.”

Bjorn takes a moment to select his words. “It is an internal matter. Humans will not even be aware.”

The troll has a point. Trolls and Coyotes and sidhe and sorcerers are only stories, remember? Much easier for humanity to subconsciously ignore it or see the gunfight here as a robbery gone wrong or something.

The sorcerer shrugs simply and glances at me. “Spence, you okay getting home?”

I’ll admit I blink a few times. “That’s it? You’re going to let this go?” I point at the dead woman a little more, well, pointedly. “That woman is dead, James.”

“It’s two in the morning, and I’m not a cop or a PI or any of that shit. My job is to stay alive and not rock the boat because this City alone is filled with people who’d love nothing more than to see me dead. Considering that, do you really think I want to get involved with the Fae? I can’t name one story where dealings with them end well for the human. The last six months have actually gone nicely for me. I don’t want to jinx that.” To his credit, he reaches over and knocks the wooden bar. “Now, as I was saying, do you need a ride back to the diner?”

I shake my head, and with that James leaves as easily as he arrived. I can’t blame him, really, considering everything he’s been through, but simply because I see where he’s coming from doesn’t mean it’s right. After all, we were both here in this moment. If there’s one thing a Coyote can pick out, it’s Fate weaving up something big, and I can definitely get a feeling about what happened here tonight, and not because I was shot at. (Okay, maybe the shots weren’t aimed at me, but they could’ve been!)

Bjorn is still leaning against the bar, but his breathing sounds better, his face turning blue. He’s a troll, so the blue skin’s actually a good sign here. “Leave me, Trickster.”

I mockingly play up considering it a few seconds longer than I probably should, and then pull over a chair and sit in it backwards, resting my elbows on the back while I peer at him. “No can do. I’d rather stick around, make sure no one comes in and clips you while you’re waiting for help. The Keth might not give a damn but this whole ordeal has sparked my curiosity.”

He hardens his stare at me. “You’ll get nothing from me.”

I give him a Coyote smile, easy and confident. “You’re adorable. I’m a Bard, remember? And we’re in a bar. This is my natural habitat, Bjorn. Do you really believe you’re not going to tell me the stories I need to hear?”

It’s another upside, and I would consider it the biggest one, honestly. Bards need to collect stories to tell, and we can’t do that if everyone’s tight-lipped. As a result it’s easy to let things slip around a Bard, simple to trust us. We’re better than a stranger’s confessional, single-serving friend and bartender combined.

“Bjorn, I’ve taken stories from the gods and the King of the Phouka himself. Do you really think a troll who defeated a mortal enemy in single combat is going to resist bragging about it to someone like me?”

Bjorn snorts at that. “She wasn’t a mortal enemy, just a minor noble carrying heraldry of the Cobalt…” He blinks at me. “I despise Coyotes.”

I shrug playfully. “Wouldn’t be the first time I heard that tonight.” I rest my chin in my hands. “My apologies, though. It was so rude of me to interrupt.” My grin widens. “Please, do go on.”

Writing Process: Setting Development (How I Planned The City)

While I’ve heard them referred to as the “Passover Questions” in regards to building the details of a plot, I’ve always referred to them as the “questions of urgency”: Why could this only happen to this person? Why could this only happen on this day? Why could this only happen in this place? The latter question I will admit is one that I tend to lean on while reading any story. I ask myself why Anita Blake could only hunt vampires in St. Louis when Austin would do just as well. Why can Harry Dresden only work openly as a wizard in the Chicago area? Could Whiteout have happened in any place other than Antarctica? And of course, why can my own novel only take place in an urban setting?

I also made the decision to create a whole new urban area rather than go with an established city. While I took some Urban Sociology in undergraduate school, I found that Richard Florida’s books were an excellent resource for building the world in which to set my story. I didn’t want to drown the reader in sociologist lingo, but I wanted to make sure that the concepts put forward by Florida were utilized well in the creation of the five different sections of the City.

The two affluent sections of the City, Destry Bay and Allora, are based on Florida’s model of a more idealized city structure rooted in a strong financial center. Allora possesses parks, a prestigious university, a transportation center located close to the financial center so that most locations within it are accessible by public mass transit, cutting down on traffic and improving air and noise quality. Destry Bay I set on Florida’s model for making an area more “walkable” in order to increase the quality of communities and “de-sprawl” the largely suburban feel of the area. While Destry Bay is so far only featured in another series that I’m working on, the overall canon will still reflect this ideal.

Beckettsville I wanted to use the idea of a city area in a state of transition that is shedding its dependence on factories and making a move to high-tech, or at least attempting to. For this area, I’m using Florida’s plan of increasing an area’s “gay index” and “bohemian index” in order to attract high-tech firms. Attracting gays and artists, according to Florida, gives an area more of a feeling of tolerance and acceptance (The prime example for this, Florida says, is Austin, which has a remarkably high gay index and bohemian index as well as being home to many tech firms and computer companies). The “SoHo Effect” is also remarked on by the main character at one point (it’s remarked that the only class he stayed awake in was Sociology) for the area, that gays and artists live in the area because of the cheap rent, but their presence will more than likely attract more affluent residents and thus drive up the rent, and drive them out.

St. Benedict, however, I’m trying to show a city in decline. Essentially, I’m doing everything that Florida says not to do in order to make a city succeed. The Benedict is largely filled with closed factories, roads that are in bad condition, underfunded civil services such as police and fire, and little in the way of schools and parks, and very few stops for mass transit. Even the waterfront is mostly closed industry docks. As a result homelessness and crime are high, its reputation is rather bad. This is the area where I put the more predatory creatures such as werecreatures and vampires, as they’d be less likely to be noticed.

The final section, Grunstadt, I haven’t touched. I’ve planned to make the City a relatively open setting for other writers, with that one section the base for them to work in. It’s in the relative middle of City, on the southern end with some water front, so it has a mix of upper, middle, and lower class. I’ve also put forward that Grunstadt is where a majority of the “ethnic neighborhoods” are likely to be found if other mythologies need a jumping off point in the City.

All in all, I’ve found that Florida’s works have made a lot of sense for the city-planning, not only for how each section works and develops, but also which supernatural creatures and gods would likely be found where. As gods are often humanized, you’d have to expect them to have their own preferences where’d they set up digs and feel comfortable working as it were. Hopefully it’ll all work, and the reader will see the choices I’ve made and agree with how the City works.

Excuse Me, Excuse Me…

This Is My Stop

Daria premiered in 1997, meaning the show is now old enough to drink, and the original target audience is no longer disaffected teenaged cynics and realists. “Generation X” is the term commonly applied to Daria Morgendorffer, as she was a breakaway character from Gen X mainstay Beavis and Butthead (essentially Mike Judge’s paradigm before he mellowed into West Texas families in King of the Hill), as well as the fact that Daria’s voice actress had plenty of Gen X cred, starring in the pilot of The Real World (a point which Janeane Garafalo has repeatedly pointed out when people assume she provided the voice of Daria). Millennials claim Daria on virtue of the character’s high-school age and the series release in 1997, suggesting a birthdate in 1980 or 1981, putting her into the fuzzy range of the Echo Boomers/Generation Y before the more definite Millennial start date of 1985.

Got to Get Off, I May Go Pop…

Now available to stream in its entirety on Hulu, I dove back in with nostalgic abandon while my peers wailed and lamented that it will be “rebooted”. The reboot, tentatively titled Daria and Jodie, will focus on white, straight, and cisgendered Daria as well as Jodie, the straight, black cisgendered honor student shown in several episodes to comment on the immense pressure upon her to succeed, not just from parental pressure, but how she’s seen as the role model for her fellow black students, and the expected ambassador of her race to anyone in the predominantly white suburb of Lawndale.

“Why would they reboot it!?! It was perfect before!” is among the most common comments, but as diversity and visibility goes… was it? Even updating the setting to reflect 2018 or 2019 will require major changes both on the political landscape and the technological landscape. Consider that Gen Z/iGen will be starting college in 2019, that’s the current population of high school students, who would find the students of Lawndale High to be lacking in diversity. Where are the LGBTIQAP+ characters? Examples of gender fluidity? Students who aren’t just white, token or background black, or token Asians?

I’ve Got to be Direct

Chances are that Daria and Jodie wouldn’t be targeted at aging Gen X or Gen Ys, but current teenagers that are two generations ahead who’d eye-roll as well as Daria at the full-screen, dated animation of cartoon from the previous century.

But, if rebooting beloved Gen X properties has proven anything, there will be, and already is, some whinging about it, because hearing about a show you loved as a teenager or in your early 20s getting rebooted twenty-one years after its premiere could force some uncomfortable, and readily denied, confrontations of self-image: you’re getting old, you’re becoming your parents, and thanks to Facebook updates from jerks you knew in high school, you’re likely running far behind the pack in the race of life. It turns out we can be as bad as the Boomers and Busters when it comes to feelings of ownership and entitlement when it comes to what we consider established aspects of our cultural identity, as well as the touchstones that define us, from “You remind me of the babe…” to “P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way…” and everything in between.

If I’m Wrong, Please Correct… (La, La, La…)

An excellent example is provided in the original series, the season 3, episode 6, “The Lost Girls”, where Daria suffers through being shadowed by an aging mid-thirties writer from NYC who runs a teen magazine named after herself, Val, which Daria of course skewers mercilessly for its slavish and asinine attempts to be cool and edgy in the most branding and market-positive way possible. Val, of course, lives in denial of her age and continuing assertion of her consciousness of youth culture, because she’s deluded herself into believing that not only is she part of it, but that’s she’s the one at the helm of it. In 1999, when it debuted, the message was “Recognize the Vals in your life”. In 2018, the message is, “If you can’t recognize the Vals, there’s a good chance you’ve become her”.

That is the danger when a property is rebooted, that the original audience will cling so tightly they strangle the life out of a new project because they still believe that either the original is timeless and without fault, or that the reboot isn’t targeted explicitly at them instead of a newer, younger (or differently gendered) audience.

You’re Standing On My Neck

For rebooting Daria, the bar isn’t set too high. The requirements are a sarcastic realist teenage girl, a collection of current high school archetypes, a display of generational divide between parents and children, as well as siblings, and a depiction of Galentine’s Day-worthy female friendship. Pushback might occur from including Jodie, a black honor student, in the title, implying that Jane Lane won’t be reprised, but intersections of Daria’s and Jodie’s lives occurred several times over the course of the series, particularly in the season 2 episode “Gifted”, where both Daria and Jodie are selected to possibly attend a pipeline prep school for gifted students. The episode demonstrates the strength of both characters, as well as the secluded interaction between Jodie and Daria where the former points out that the latter is free to be as combative, sarcastic, and abrasive as she wants because no one expects any different from Daria, a white student, while Jodie is expected to perform according to the expectations of a black role model despite possessing the same sly and scathing wit as Daria. A reboot in the era of “woke-ness” would allow Jodie more room to breathe and more time to speak while still allowing a white audience to still enjoy Daria’s repeated barbs of her more privileged white classmates.

La, la, la, la, la…

In the end, the concern lies with MTV, and the fear that the show will be retooled into a crass, tone-deaf, focus-grouped hollow and shallow parody of itself, but that’s the fear, not, as many old guard fans believe, the assumption. Through bringing on younger, diverse writers, while still maintaining the style of animation, the reboot could be an enjoyable introduction for a younger audience to the sort of jaded, sarcastic humor that was the calling card of their Gen X and Gen Y parents, while still addressing the same social issues and concerns now being faced on a regular basis by today’s youth culture. After all, if Brooklyn Nine-Nine can have a scene where twin black 6 year olds have institutional racism explained to them while still managing a laugh, then a reboot where a young white cynic quips sardonic and drops snark can easily make room for a young black woman to read and drop shade.

Magic Bites (Saturday Book Club)

Magic Bites (Kate Daniels #1)

Ilona Andrews

There are stories you get the feeling are going to be a series, and then there are stories that out and out tell you they’re going to be a series. Magic Bites is definitely in the latter camp. Even without a series name sitting above the main title such as with The Dresden Files or Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, the introduction of Kate Daniels telegraphs almost everything.

First there’s the trope of the main character harboring the dark secret. With Harry Dresden it’s having been taught by a dark wizard and having taken a life with his magic. With Anita Blake, it’s the fact that she’s dating almost everything supernatural in St. Louis. With Kate, she more than likely is the daughter of Roland, the Most Powerful Vampire/Magical Being Ever (at least in the setting), but doesn’t want anyone to know about it, even the reader, though it’s almost painfully obvious by the end of the book.

There’s also the introduction of the Will They or Won’t They trope commonly used in television series and some modern urban fantasy series. You have two people who obviously want each other but for some reason, usually stubborn pride, they refuse to acknowledge it, and end up simply being rather awkward around each other, usually to provide comic relief. With Magic Bites, the trope is represented by Kate and Curran, the Beast Lord of Atlanta, probably the most feared and respected person in the city. They meet-cute, they banter, they fight, they flirt, but never really get anywhere relationship-wise, but at the end of the book the reader is given the idea that hey, something might happen later.

Everything in Magic Bites feels stock even with an interesting setting. The idea of Atlanta caught in an environmental battle between magic and science that sways back and forth like a weather pattern is intriguing, but the setting is simply treated as set dressing, something quirky and cool to only be utilized at a pivotal plot moment to provide some tension a la Murphy’s Law.

I would’ve written off the plot entirely if I hadn’t been caught by the red herrings, everything feels so railroaded throughout the book that you don’t notice the jump in the tracks, when a minor annoyance suddenly becomes the antagonist, but then it’s just a Big Fight Climax with the plucky Kate Daniels and her super special sword against the magical badass bent on world domination.

In my opinion, Kate is never given the chance to be human. No matter what her origins might be, she comes across as an assemblage of one-liners and bad attitude wielding a sword. The only reason I can see that she was made female was perhaps to make not seem as stereotypical and maybe a little more empowering, but making a strong female character isn’t just putting breasts on an action star, they need flaws as well. When Kate is trapped inside her house with hundreds of undead creatures trying to claw their way inside like a wet dream of George Romero, I want her to at least acknowledge some fear, not just crack wise and get pissed off. Even her social connections are strained. The only two people who actually like her are distant: One only calls her on the phone, and the other charges her $500 an hour to act as a sounding board. You would think that a person who lives like this would be miserable, or at least trying to forge connections, but Kate appears unaffected. She proceeds almost robotically to the next plot point, following the trail of bread crumbs.

If anything, Magic Bites helped to underline my writing strategy for my characters, which is to make them flawed and human to balance out their supernatural gifts. I want great power to come with problems and frustrations as well as responsibility, and for it to affect the little things for better or worse as well as the big. Doing this, in my opinion, grounds the story more for the reader, but perhaps the 24/7 magical lifestyle that Kate Daniels leads serves as an escape, which is commonly the purpose of fantasy fiction.

Four on the Floor: Part Twenty-One

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Part Twenty-One

“Thank you, Shan.” I take his offered hand, as he’d rose to his feet. They’re a snug fit, but comfortable, and hold up to a double pirouette while still keeping traction. “The other boots weren’t that expensive, you didn’t have to tear your skin off.”

“Accessing my hoard is troublesome these days.” He tics his head toward what looks like an access road a hundred yards away, and starts walking, with my in tow.

“Wait, dragons actually have hoards of treasure? You’ve got a pile of gold coins somewhere that you nap on.”

The response is an eye roll so dismissive of my assumption I want to take him to every nightclub’s Goth night in the City.

I shrug. “Went with silver instead? Platinum?” I move up alongside him. “Diamonds and pearls?”

He stops. “You had best not be mocking me.”

“For?”

He doesn’t respond, just resumes walking.

“Wait, I know we both just had a near-death experience, but why do you think I’m mocking…” I smirk. “Wait, is it actually a pile of diamonds and pearls? That’s so… Prince.”

His eyes blaze with sudden anger. “Don’t you dare think to mock-“

“Hold on, are you actually a fan of Prince?”

His voice thunders across the field, likely ripples the lake. “His art was the only treasure that made this world worthy of existing!”

I stop myself. Blinking a few seconds. “Well, yeah. I mean, let’s not forget Bowie, but I’m definitely not anti-Prince. Just surprised that uh, you’d be into his music.”

“I am surprised as well, though it is because you are not more shaken by a ‘near-death experience’ as you put it.”

“Shan?” I haven’t moved yet. “So much has happened that I’m moving into being numb. That a dragon would be into Prince is practically the only thing that could surprise me into feeling something, right now. I don’t know where we’re going or what we’re going to do. I want to track down that other necromancer, as much out of self-defense as getting justice for the woman he murdered. That’s my goal, and we’re out in the boonies with no car and no phone, and no offense, but I’m not really up to flying back to the City.”

He stops, then turns. “So we drive.”

“I don’t have a car, and I’m not going to steal one. If the police have my phone, stealing a car would make it less believable that I didn’t kill anyone.”

He exhales hard through gritted teeth. “You are a sorcerer. Conjure an automobile.”

“…huh?”

“Create one from…” He makes air quotes, and seems as disgusted by them as me. “Thin air.”

“That’d be pretty handy if I knew how to do that, but, I don’t, so I can’t.”

He spits acid onto the grass, which understandably melts and burns and smokes. “How did you learn magic?”

“I have a… friend. He knows the magic words, I figure out the pronunciation, and it works. I remember a couple, but lately…”

All of the words that came so easily. Shadows, come to me! All of that, it’s nothing like what Pumpkin has taught me. I don’t know where it’s coming from, or how I can do it, and if I wasn’t using it to save my own life I’d be terrified. Well, I am, but like I mentioned, I’m slipping into numb.

“But lately?” He prods, literally pokes me, his voice softer, almost showing concern.

“I’m doing stuff that’s way beyond raising a spirit or washing a sink full of dishes. When you were in the lake, I… I think I called the shadows to me. I was moving so fast, and I reached you, and I think I commanded you to be human, so I could get you out of the water. I don’t know those words, Shan.” I shake my head quickly. “I was never taught them.”

My throat tightens with stress, the numbness fading so panic can take its place, wanting to run, to hide, cower, but it’s through a filter. I know I feel this way but… I also know that I know, and that’s all the distance my sanity needs to keep on an even keel. It’s like a gentle pulse in the back of my brain that this is all normal, that it will pass, that I’ll be okay.

And I know this sense of calm isn’t me.