Page 76 of A Subtle Scar
I spun on my heel. Academy first, embassy second, and then I’d catch the first flight home. Fucking assholes.
I’d dropped my jacket on Charon’s bedroom floor, so that was a loss, but I was going to see my damn tailor, and Iwasgoing to fucking spend a small fortune on a suit I didn’t need, and then I’d wear it for whatever hookup date I could arrange on short notice, and fuck those two. Fuck everyone. Fuck the world. Fuck Victor for being stupid enough to get dragged into that monster’s car, and fuck that monster. Fuck my parents and the police, and every fucking person who had looked at me with that helpless fucking smile when I was the kid whose brother had been murdered. That kid who looked like a carbon copy of that murdered brother and couldn’t do anything about that.
I was running toward the Lac across the lawn, breathless. In tears. Fuck crying. I didn’t do that shit anymore. I could talk about Victor without this. I had practiced doing just that with the therapists. Fuck my useless existence. There wasn’t even a single fucking reason for me to break out into tears. I wasfine.
“It should have been me. He should’ve fucking taken me.” The words tumbled out of my mouth without rhyme or reason, and they made no sense. They made all the sense. Victor was the older one. He’d have been better. Better by himself. Better at dealing with stuff. Better at forgetting me. “I should’ve died…”
I braced my hands on my knees. Was I hyperventilating or just crying too much?
Hands soothed me. Shadows on either side blocked out the light and the views of others, sheltering me. Fuck. I wasn’t worth getting sheltered.
“Leave me,” I said. My voice was shit. I sounded pathetic.
“No,” those two assholes said in chorus.
“Fuck you. I hate you.” They were not bad people. Maybe there was someone else they could make very happy with their midnight porn show. Someone who deserved it.
“You don’t strike me as a man who hates easily,” I heard Charon’s soft yet firm voice. “But if you must, it’s okay to hate us. For a while. We forgive you for it, so go ahead, my love. Do your worst.”
“I’m not your fucking anything,” I hissed. At Charon’s prissy shoes. I felt like curling up into a ball. My chest felt funny.
“Chandler. Vincent. You are my fucking everything, and I forgive you.”
“So do I,” Hermes said. “And I also think you’re really cute, by the way, and I really like that you’re alive. I like that so damn much, baby, you have no idea. Uhm. When I said I’d buy you all the stuff, I just meant I want you to have everything you could ever want. And not, you know. As a replacement.”
I could just imagine those wildflower honey eyes, wide and open, looking to be understood and accepted for all the extra behavior, be it a doughnut fetish or shirts that always rode up or pink cocktails that were too sweet. I couldn’t look. I didn’t want to see anything anymore.
“Just leave me alone already. I don’t want you,” I said. I sounded weak. I didn’t do weak, and I didn’t do this kind of sharing with others either. “Take me back. I have work to do.” It would settle me. Getting to the bottom of this case, preventing worse from happening, it would calm me down, and once these two were gone, I could go back to normal and just live my life in peace. I’d make sure no one forced me to take vacation time ever again, even if I had to use magic to make it happen.
“We’re not leaving you, baby.”
Stronger than the smell of grass and the lake’s water, I smelled the two of them, cloves and cedarwood. I didn’t have myself together, and so a brief fantasy of simply allowing myself to fall into their combined scent andallowhit me, scared me, and made me grit my teeth until it was gone. I couldn’t do that. I didn’t take part in things, not really, I kept my distance. That was how I had lived. How I felt about living my life that way didn’t matter.
“No, we are not,” Charon agreed, and before I could respond, I felt him, his magic. It wreathed around me, strong as ivy, dark as midnight waters. I thought that it was going to choke me, but instead, it just settled, a burden that forced my heart to slow and made my breaths deeper.
What their goal was in whammying me now, I had no idea, but I didn’t care for it. As a result, I drew on every bit of offensive magic I could summon.
It wasn’t my best, I knew that. My concentration was shit, and I felt like one of those car-sized lawn mowers had gone over me, cut me deep. But whatever these two immortals wanted with me, I wasn’t going to have any part of it. They could move on to the next magic user for all I cared. My life worked. It was perfect. They would upset it and ruin the equilibrium I had honed so carefully.
I released my blast. I knew the magic wasn’t my strongest, but I’d still expected it to dosomething.
“Shh, yes, that’s fine, darling, we don’t mind,” Charon said.
I wasn’t sure whether he had countered my magic or had done something to deflect it and let it fizzle out elsewhere. I considered another blast. I needed to get away from them. My legs were kind of wobbly though, and I’d need any head start I could make for myself if I was going to outrun them.
“Let’s take him elsewhere,” Hermes said. When he spoke, the sound of his voice made me recognize the magic around me was his too. He’d pushed his immortal power on me as well, and up until that point, I’d not even noticed.
His teleportation magic soon enveloped me and Charon, and when we came out of it, I didn’t recognize where we were. Indoors. A plush restaurant with art deco wallpaper and expensive, heavy chairs covering the tables. It appeared empty.
I turned left where an unattended but generous bar displayed colorful bottles, many of them top shelf at a cursory glance, and a wide variety of glasses, all of it multiplied by the mirrored backs of the shelves. Above it, in gold lettering, a sign proclaimed: “humanitas per magiae, omnia per humanitas.” Humanity through the magicks, everything through humanity.
“Is this…a Freemagi place?”
My question was ignored, and I was pulled onto a corner bench, and oddly, I noticed the thick carpet under my feet. You could always tell when someone invested in good carpets.
A Tiffany lamp sat on a shelf set into the very corner, right where the bench curved to follow the wall. I noticed because it framed Charon’s head like a flower crown. Hermes naturally sat down on my other side, and over his shoulder, I saw buildings that I recognized.
“Place du Bourg-de-Four,” I said. Still Geneva then, but I’d had no idea there was a Freemagi loge in Geneva.
