Visitors

This story is part of the Angel Chronicles, and relates to prior events in Incoming. The characters, however, are new.

“So I suppose you want to ask me why I left town,” Benjamin said hopefully, as the bus skidded to a stop.

“Not really,” Allison said coldly. “Now leave me alone, will you? I have a group. They’re from a British wizard community. Very important. Gotta go.”

She waved off the robed passengers from the bus and lined them up neatly on the sidewalk, conjuring up a bullhorn in her hand and giving it a swift tap with her hand. “Right, people? Everyone hear me? Okay. Hear we have the home of Linus Wistwickingham, founder of our beloved magical city. It’s been magically preserved to look exactly as it did the day he left it, moments before he inadvertently blasted himself into a quantum dimension. People didn’t understand magic quite as well back then.”

“And when exactly was that, miss?” one of the tourist wizards asked, raising his hand.

Allison neatly ignored him. “Moving on!” she said. “Next up, the statue of Reginald Cloud-Pomfrey, the only known wizard to have fought in the American Revolutionary War!”

As the crowd oohed and aahed, and Allison tried to remember exactly which side Reginald Cloud-Pomfrey had fought on, Benjamin attempted to catch her attention again. “Look, I had a reason,” he said. “It was important!”

“I don’t care,” Allison said, ushering the excited group down the street.

“But, Allison-”

She whirled to face him, forgetting entirely about the astonished tourists. “I don’t care, Benjamin! We were in danger from the Feds, we could’ve all been dragged off to a lab somewhere or had to fight it out with the military for heaven’s sake and you weren’t there! And you should’ve been!”

There was a long silence. The tourists looked awkwardly at their shoes. One of them coughed nervously. Finally Allison sighed. “Fine. I’ll ask. Just once. Where were you?”

“I wanted to see the aliens.” he said sheepishly.

“The what?”

“Aliens. There was a bunch of people who wanted to storm Area 51 to see the aliens and I wanted to see them too.”

Allison paused. “And?”

“Ah,” Benjamin said. “I had a nice talk with some Air Force people. Lots of guns. Very convincing. Also government guys in suits. More guns.They convinced me I probably shouldn’t stay around there too long.”

“So you don’t know if there are aliens there or not.”

“No.”

“Oh.”

The tourists gave up on the drama and started off down the street. Allison rolled her eyes. “Next time, make sure there’s actually aliens there before you run off to check ’em out, okay? We’ve got spells for that.”

“Right. Yeah. I’ll do that.”