Page 15 of Zero Happily Ever Afters

Chapter Five

I soared through the evening sky, zipping across the land in a blur of psychic energy. It didn’t take long to pinpoint Milo’s mind. He was a single star in the cluster of the cosmos, but he burned as bright as the sun. It didn’t matter that a galaxy of minds buzzed around me. It didn’t matter that I traveled faster than light and further than sound or that my branch should’ve stretched thin and shattered a hundred times over from the distance. I breezed ahead, fixating on what I’d learned.

Manifestations weren’t a separate entity. In retrospect, I always knew that to a degree. I mean, they were me. They were my thoughts split into two forms at the same time. Forms that allowed me to use my telepathy without restraint or distraction in my day-to-day life by turning the volume down, so to speak. I left my other half to his devices, making observations and then informing me later when we merged back as one entity. But then there was the vile manifestation, the one who plotted and conspired and brought death where he walked. I’d met him before, an active, engaging manifestation who warped my perception of how my psychic energy worked.

But he was never a manifestation, merely a persona. A figment of personality traits, an arrogant piece of my imagination that sprouted real desires. And while I kneweveryone had personas, fantastical sides to themselves that dwelled in their imagination, I didn’t spend a lot of time in people’s imaginations. Either they ran wild with chaos or were dim and depressing, dying a slow death as reality seeped into every waking thought, preventing a mental escape.

One day, someday, I’d need to delve into the deepest recesses of my subconscious and account for every possible persona lurking in those shadows. What happened with the Doppler would never happen again. While I knew attaching to Milo was a priority and teaching my students another, I’d ensure that both halves of my conscious mind worked to master my magic. I’d strive to make sense of it once and for all.

For now, I focused on Milo. Having finally reached him, I sighed a deep exhale of relief. Sure, I was nothing but magical energy, and breathing didn’t actually fill my nonexistent lungs in this psychic phantom-like form, but it still offered me a reprieve, a chance to think and compose myself before attaching to Milo. My other half was probably already wondering when he’d need to message Milo about this development and creating a schedule on when to check the memories and observations I made.

Milo walked through the airport, a swagger in his steps, even though exhaustion weighed heavy on his shoulders. His flight had an unexpected layover thanks to some high-flying fiends. Waiting for the airport in Kansas to get a half-decent enchanter to banish the demonic energy took forever, and Milo hated the restrictions on licensing across state lines. Sure, in the case of an emergency, Enchanter Evergreen could’ve swooped in and cleared away this threat in minutes without fear of a fine or penalties. But since everything The Inevitable Future gleaned from his potential outcomes, it seemed the only way their state’s general attorney would consider the incident an actual emergency was if those fiends formed into a demon and ripped one of the plane’s wings off.

Not every state, every branch of government, worked well with guilds and enchanters. Turned out Kansas was quite adamant their local authorities could handle any threats, which explained why they had the highest warlock mortality rate in the country and often required National Guard intervention on their demon populace.

None of that mattered now. Milo had arrived. It didn’t take long for the Global Guild representatives to find him and make swift introductions as they escorted him out of the airport.

A group of fifteen people circled Milo, taking pictures, measurements, jotting notes, feeling the skin of his hands, his cheeks—one even squeezed the tips of his hair then played with the gel between their fingers. It was as if they only had one job to do. An invasive one at that, but Milo didn’t seem too shocked by their actions since he’d caught glimpses of the possibility and had years of experience with the Cerberus Guild PR team. Granted, they weren’t as handsy.

“I’m Ronald MacDonald,” a short, stout man said with a chuckle. “And no relation. But you best believe I trademarked my name, too. That’s how good I am at my brand.”

He was a round man. Quite literally very rounded, almost perfectly symmetrical like an ornament. It must’ve been his magic, an augmentation branch, perhaps. It didn’t hinder him any. He had a sturdy build and a quick pace as he led the pack that continued evaluating Milo. I assumed because he assumed and, well, he understood the industry far better than I did.

“You’ll wish to familiarize yourself with these.” Ronald snapped his fingers, and the young woman to his left scuddled around and handed Milo a stack of papers.

Milo sighed, skimming through the confidential case files. The last thing he expected when getting tapped by the biggest and strongest guild in the world was paperwork. To be fair, theyhadn’t given him paperwork. It was research and intel, so it was more like homework.

I snickered, floating alongside him as he read through the documents. The team of representatives ushered him outside of the airport and toward a parking strip where cars pulled in and out for pickups and drop-offs.

“Geez, this is a lot,” Milo said, eyeing the traffic. “Like, a lot a lot. It’s just so much.”

“The number of times I’m sure you’ve heard that, Enchanter Evergreen.” Ronald winked—not in a suggestive, flirty manner, but playful and definitely with a hint of winning over his audience.

Which worked. Milo laughed, then went right to work diving into the reading material. I rolled my eyes because, at the end of the day, Milo was an easy audience to appease. If I weren’t so closely attached to Milo at the moment, I’d consider delving into Ronald MacDonald’s thoughts, where I was certain I’d find a list of ways to appeal to Enchanter Evergreen’s ego. This guy was a “yes” man on the Global Guild level, so winning over top-ranked witches was a sport for him.

“I’m not sure what your team expects from me.” Milo flipped through a few pages, heart elevating with each passing second. I wanted to reach out, console him, offer him some type of reprieve from the dread that consumed him with each word he read. “I can’t see the potential futures of the dead.”

Not them directly, anyway. He needed a living anchor to read their possible outcomes. The most tragic part of Milo’s clairvoyance was he could still see the futures where dead loved ones could’ve played a role. There were hundreds of futures with Finn floating around Milo’s mind. They were like knives stabbing me in the stomach every time I stumbled onto one of those possibilities that would never be.

“Oh, not to worry,” Ronald said, grabbing a file from the stack while nonchalantly shrugging off the mountain of reported deaths in the papers Milo held.

Ronald had the appearance of a man who never dealt directly with death. Sure, he worked for the Global Guild, clearly handling dangerous cases like this one regularly, but he maintained a healthy distance from murder. Milo noted how it made Ronald oblivious to the weight and horror. Not in an insulting way, merely a uniformed, desensitized manner. After all, people died every day, and Ronald didn’t even know them, so why should those deaths sting? Milo understood not everyone could carry the guilt.

I reached out as the psychic phantom I was and consoled Milo, wishing to send him waves of comfort and healing and hopeful one day he’d stop blaming himself for every atrocity that struck the world. He couldn’t be everywhere, he couldn’t predict everything, and he couldn’t save everyone.

“See.” Ronald pointed to a section of the file he’d snatched up. “There’s a survivor.”

Benjamin Oxland. He didn’t look very old from the portrait they had on file. Maybe four or five. It was hard to say. I typically avoided little children as their thoughts were wonky, and their voices were loud. Plus, I didn’t have much patience for anyone.

Milo came to a stop, rereading the state of the child. The magic that’d killed all those people in the novel of papers he clutched hadn’t struck down Benjamin Oxland. This kid survived, if one could call it that. Apparently, the attack left him physically unscathed while in a vegetative state.

“What happened to him exactly?” Milo’s mind whirled through every magic he knew from years in the industry, from years of listening to Finn’s branch history lessons, but he’d never heard of a magic that could attack multiple minds at once and slaughter them, of a magic that could keep the victim trappedeven after the witch who cast the magic had fled the scene of the crime. “What kind of magic traps someone inside their own head?”

“That’d be—”

“Oceanic Collapse,” a feminine voice answered from above.

Milo spun around, catching full sight of the woman floating above him. She wore a golden cape with the Global Guild emblem on display for all those nearby. It matched her makeup and complimented her dark brown complexion. She’d appeared from literal thin air, moving so quickly and silently that neither mine nor Milo’s magic detected her presence until she was right on top of us.

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