Page 64 of Junk Magic

I would have argued, but the backyard couldn’t be any hotter than the kitchen, where the bubbling pots, constantly running oven and press of bodies had become oppressive. The air conditioner was simply not designed to compete. By contrast, a small breeze slithered in through the door when Caleb opened it, beckoning enticingly.

I decided that Cyrus had this, and ventured forth.

A few minutes later, I was sitting under the lone piece of greenery in my back yard—unless you counted the cactus—drinking my beer. A rainbow of colored pots now littered the purloined grills, bubbling merrily away; a few racks of ribs from the early cooking with my stew pot were now kissing the flame for the first time; and a couple more tables had been dragged out of the house to provide surfaces for the platters of finished meat.

Things appeared to be handled out here, too.

“Didn’t think they had trees in Vegas,” Sophie said, coming over to join me. She had a beer in hand which was sweating almost as much as I was, and which I guessed I should say something about. But I’d brought them alcohol back at HQ when I wanted to grill them, so it seemed hypocritical. And with the Corps deeming them old enough to fight, it also felt stupid to tell them that they couldn’t have a beer on a hot day.

I took another swig of my own drink and repressed a sigh.

This mentoring thing was a bitch.

Sophie was taking in the leafy canopy above us. “I expected a barren desert,” she added. “But I see these everywhere.”

“Sweet acacia,” I told her. “It’s why I bought the house. It has little yellow puffballs in spring. Messy, but pretty.”

Sophie looked as if she was trying to visualize the puffballs. After a while she gave up, sat down and watched Danny instead. He was posing with a spatula for Jen, who was wandering around, taking pictures with her phone. Of him, of the food, of everyone, as far as I could tell.

She doesn’t want to forget this, I thought, and felt something uncomfortable under my breastbone.

“Danny better hurry,” Sophie said, as Cyrus’s boys began edging closer to the burning pits. “Or we’re gonna have a riot soon. And I’m not sure I won’t help.”

“He said an hour, but that was maybe fifteen minutes ago.”

“Really?” she brightened. “God, I could eat a whole rack by myself!”

“Grab it early.”

“Why?” She balanced her bottle between her crossed legs and scraped sweaty red hair off her neck. “There’s plenty.”

“You’ve never seen Weres eat.”

She shook her head. “We had a Were at school for a while. He was always hungry.”

I raised an eyebrow. “In school? His clan allowed that?”

“Mage mother. Corps used it to claim him, and I don’t think his clan liked his talent much anyway. Firestarter.”

“Ah.” It explained why she knew something about Weres.

“He used to slip out at night to get more food. I mean, they fed us enough, but he was a bottomless pit. I gave him my dessert most days and he’d eat it in one bite. We started giving him orders after a while, for beer, candy, whatever. He never took any money—”

He never paid, I thought cynically.

“—and it was pretty cool, until they transferred him.”

“Transferred?”

“To another facility. For Intransigents. That’s what they call us when—”

“I know.”

It was the term for kids that the Corps had given up on, the ones who were never getting out. They held them at the schools for a while, after they started to get out of hand, but as soon as a bed opened up elsewhere, they disappeared. It made the regular facilities look better, since the students who remained were better behaved.

And kept up the façade of the system being about schools instead of prisons.

Sophie nodded, and took a moment to tie her hair up into a bouncy ponytail. Then she licked her lips and glanced at me. Here we go, I thought.

---