Page 2 of Elixir of Strife
And now here I was, using our proud and ancientbruhamagic to deaden the potentially squeaky hinges on this alarmingly stinky filing cabinet. I clucked my tongue, pursed my lips, and risked a whistle. Nothing. The spell had worked, taking the ambient silence of the office, stretching it into a pall to keep the quiet quiet.
Safely out of range of the little sphere of silence, Max grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. “Nicely done, Witch Boy.”
The response I mouthed was swallowed by the magic, but he could read my lips anyway. Max frowned as my lips silently formed the shape of the words.
“You’re welcome, Rich Boy,” I told him.
I slipped the bell back into my pocket, counting on the brief duration of the spell to cover the worst of the noise. I placed my hand on the door, steadying my breath. I pulled the cabinet open.
An angry circular buzzsaw came screaming out of the cabinet, shrieking at an upward angle, flying at a slant toward the ceiling. My heart dropped into my stomach. Locks of my hair moved in the breeze that accompanied the spinning murder-plate, this discus of death. Any lower and that thing could have instantly decapitated me.
I covered my head and hit the floor, my reflexes and desperate self-preservation forcing my knees to fold underneath me. Strong hands were yanking me down, too, Max’s hands pulling me to the ground, tugging on the edge of my jacket.
We could bicker all we wanted, but the boy definitely had only the best intentions in mind for me. Besides, I was reasonably sure that he’d grown quite fond of kissing me, and he couldn’t very well do that if I didn’t have a head anymore. Well, he could, technically, but how grotesque.
Metal struck stone, scraping and clanging. I shook as I turned my head. Sparks flew as the buzzsaw struck the wall, vicious teeth biting into brick before it rebounded again.
“Enough,” Max shouted from somewhere on the ground beside me. “That’s enough, already. I’m calling it. We’re done.”
The air wavered, the cubicles and plain white walls of the office transforming into the brick walls of a shady, but no less steaming back alley. The relatively softer generic carpet underneath melted away, revealing gritty concrete. And in place of the filing cabinet was a dumpster.
“Fuck’s sake,” I muttered, picking myself up off the ground, offering Max a helping hand. “A buzzsaw in a filing cabinet. Now I’ve seen everything.”
“You never know,” said a voice from farther down the alley.
It was Guillotina Hernandez, Max’s childhood best friend and bodyguard, back from a time when he was still valued by the sinister Brillante clan. She was responsible for arming the quote-unquote filing cabinet, clearly.
The rest of the illusion was generated by Roscoe Stone, one half of the team behind Unholy Grounds, what had quickly become my favorite Dos Lunas hangout. This was the same alley where Guillotina and I first met, back when she almost chopped my head off with a buzzsaw. Same shit, different day.
Roscoe was in one of his ultra comfy hoodie and sweat-pant combos, while Guillotina wore her standard uniform of a leather jacket, fitted jeans, and combat boots. How could they dress like that without sweating their butts off? Then again, neither of them had spent the morning creeping and sneaking around an imaginary, illusory office.
“Ross,” I shouted down the alley. “Serious question. Why is this dumpster so damn smelly? You don’t actually throw dead bodies in here, do you?”
“Very cute,” he answered, approaching us with Tina at his side. “It’s a hot day, okay? Really didn’t work for the simulation, unfortunately, unless you imagine the office with busted air-conditioning.”
Max shook his head, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Tell me about it. I need a drink. Damn.”
“Why did you have to wear a leather jacket today, anyway?” I grumbled, handing it back to him.
The implication, of course, being that he should have worn only the tank top for my benefit. I wouldn’t have had to hold it like a cheerleader with a varsity jacket while he got to play ball and show off to the rest of the school. Janky metaphor, maybe, and it wasn’t like we were actually dating. Wait. Were we?
Max grudgingly took the jacket. “Hey, neither of us knew that we were going to do some weirdo mission simulation in a boiling-hot back alley today. And I’d like to point out that I only took it off halfway through the infiltration. You would have been way more distracted if I was working with bare arms the entire time. Couldn’t take your eyes off me.”
I stood there with my mouth open, unable to utter anything apart from an indignant, horrified gasp. I mean, he was right, but how dare he throw it in my face? Couldn’t a guy objectify another guy in peace?
Roscoe laughed. “Very funny, Max. And you couldn’t keep your eyes off Leon, either. Especially when he leaned over to cast that charm on the filing cabinet.”
“Dumpster,” Guillotina corrected. “Filing dumpster. And Ross is right. I was there. You kept staring at his cute little ass.”
I shot her an approving grin, fighting back the flush of heat threatening to turn my cheeks red. Max was checking out my butt, huh? Couldn’t blame him.
“Thank you, Tina,” Max snapped. “But we’re not taking feedback from insane booby trappers right now. Who the hell puts buzzsaws in a filing cabinet?”
Guillotina’s eyes went wide as she jabbed a finger at her chest. “I would. I would put buzzsaws and razorblades in everything if I had to. You know there are even more dangerous people out there, Maximo. You’re lucky the cabinet wasn’t full of explosives. Or snakes.”
“Snakes would be terrible,” I agreed, nodding, then shaking my head. “See, Max, this wouldn’t be a problem if you’d just leverage your insanely wealthy family resources to rent us a proper office. Give Roscoe some space to work out a really good obstacle course.”
Roscoe sniffed.
