Secondhand Sorcery

Darrell twisted around in the booth to glare towards the kitchen. “What’s keeping them? It doesn’t usually take this long.”

“It’s fine, baby,” Ti told him, laying her hand on his. “More time to spend together as a family. Whatcha got there, Marcus? Oh, Lord, child, not again.”

Keisha looked down at her five-year-old nephew, hard at work on his placemat with the restaurant’s crayons. She didn’t know how good kids at that age were supposed to be at art, but whatever he was drawing involved a lot of black and red. Not much else was clear. “Is … is that something on fire?” She looked up at her sister. “He draws a lot of fires?”

“No, it’s not always fire, but he just loves the new familiar.” She turned to her husband. “What are they calling her now?”

“That depends who you ask,” he said, still trying to catch a waiter’s eye. “The government won’t officially acknowledge anything. ‘Malkia’ is the name I’ve heard most.”

“It’s a big deal with the kids,” Ti explained, “now that there’s finally a black familiar. They think it’s exciting.”

“Half the boys in my class won’t shut up about her,” Tamika added, from Keisha’s right. Her thumbs were tapping frantically at her phone under the table. “They just wish she could have been a man, too.”

“And I wish you’d put that thing away, young lady.” Tamika shrugged, and kept texting. “Now.” The girl tapped ‘send’ and stuffed the device inside her jacket with a pout. “Thank you. I’m sorry, Keish.”

“It’s fine,” Keisha told her. “I live on my phone too. I know how it is. And she’s … how old are you now?” It had been at least a year, maybe more.

“Eleven.” Tamika spat out the word like old gum, her arms crossed. Tiana frowned.

“I remember eleven,” Keisha said. “You’re all ready to grow up, but nobody else is ready to let you, and you don’t know how. I’m glad she has friends, and a life outside of school.” On her other side, her nephew finally finished his masterpiece, and shoved the mat directly in front of her face for approval. “Oh, that’s wonderful! Is that a tank there?”

“It’s an army truck,” he corrected, enunciating each word carefully.

“I’m sorry, Marcus. It’s just hard to tell when it’s on fire like that.”

“Do you know her?” he asked, pointing to the scribble of black crayon with red lines coming out of it.

“Marcus Andre Wilson,” Ti said, and the boy immediately set the mat back down to doodle in a new spot.

“She might, you know,” Tamika pointed out, both elbows on the table. “It’s a fair question.”

Tiana’s eyes lit up like afterburners; only the abrupt arrival of a Cobb salad right in front of her saved her daughter from her wrath. A steak, a burger, a BLT, and the inevitable chicken tenders for Marcus followed right after, sparing them all any further attempts at conversation for a while.

A lot had changed since last visit, when Marcus was still in diapers and Tamika wasn’t trying to be a teenager. Keisha couldn’t tell whether they were normally this edgy, or if it was something about her presence, or some recent family crisis. They’d both accepted their customary Aunt Keisha gifts—Tamika really liked her Turkish dress, jury was still out on the Cypriot pop CD—but then they had to go out to eat and that was a bit of a minefield.

Right down to the seating arrangements. The kids wanted to sit with their aunt—Marcus because he actually liked her, Tamika because it made her as physically distant as possible from her mother. The adults, on the other hand, seemed just a little nervous around Keisha, and probably appreciated some distance as well.

Keisha sat, played diplomat, and stifled the urge to get out her own phone; it said something that she was more invested in the well-being of some foreign kids she’d just met than in her own family. Then again, Tamika wasn’t in danger of much more than getting her phone taken away. Keisha was tempted to ask Ti what she’d do if her daughter wrecked the Crimea, but aside from her own cover, the public didn’t know about that yet.

Her BLT was disappearing rapidly, no matter how slowly she chewed; what should she say instead? Nobody could ask her about anything related to her life, since nearly all of it was classified. That put all the social workload on her until somebody volunteered something.

She knew from past experience that asking Darrell about his work was a mistake. He’d tell her that people still needed HVAC, same as they ever did, in a way that didn’t quite manage to be hostile, and that would make Ti double down on her role as manners and normality enforcer, which would then get Darrell on edge. Keisha had been in actual combat situations that were less stressful than that. Anyway, Darrell was happy watching Auburn basketball on one of the TVs over the bar. Better to leave him alone.

Asking Tamika about school would be painful. Marcus wasn’t great at holding up his end of conversations. The old standby it was. “How’s the shirt business going, Ti?”

“Not great. We’ve got a couple of new designs, but people still aren’t buying much. The economy isn’t great, you know?”

Darrell’s eyes flicked in Keisha’s direction, just for a second, before returning to Auburn. She pretended not to notice. The two of them had had exactly one political discussion, six years ago, just after the wedding. It hadn’t gone well. He wasn’t a Rootstocker, but he did have some strong opinions about how the government spent its money, and that included the military. Those kinds of opinion seemed to be common, and getting more so.

“Are you still selling mostly adult sizes?”

“Oh, no, we branched out to kids and infants ages ago. Onesies are just about the only thing that’s still moving as well as ever. You might say they’re the bright spot in our business model.”

“Oh, cute! Are those some of your new designs?” Tamika hit her with an ironic smirk; she was old enough to tell that Aunt Keisha sincerely did not give a damn about onesie patterns. Aunt Keisha would remember that next time she was gift shopping. Anyway, it got Ti going, which was the point. Almost a full minute passed before her sister wound down and somebody had to kick the conversation to get its motor going again.

To her surprise, it was Tamika who did her that favor. “Have you heard of Carson Wood? His stuff’s real popular with kids my age.” She pulled her phone back out, paused, and asked her mother, “May I show her?” in tones of impeccable politeness. Ti looked suspicious, but nodded. Was this just another part of their power game?

Nope. Tamika pulled up a luridly colored page from a comic book: a man on his knees pleading for help from a floating wizard in red and blue rags. Tantrum Song. Keisha didn’t quite gasp, but it was a near thing; Ti’s suspicious look hardened. But all Keisha said was, “Y’all do know real familiars can’t talk like this, right?”

“That’s what they say, anyway,” Tamika replied, unimpressed. “But it’s just a story. It doesn’t all have to be perfectly accurate, y’know?”

“Mm-hmm.” Keisha discovered she was able to flip through the other pages by swiping. Tantrum Song went on to fight some kind of reptilian creatures, ripping several of them in half in bursts of bright red blood. There was no emissor in sight. “What are the lizard-men supposed to be?”

“Aliens, I think. I don’t really follow this nonsense,” Tamika stressed. “It’s more of a boy thing. Just thought you might be interested.”

“Wait,” Ti said. “Is this more of those awful comic things? Mika, you know perfectly well you’re not supposed to be passing those around.”

“It’s the internet. It passes itself around. I’m only showing her.”

Ti sighed. “Keisha, I’m sorry, it’s just this stupid fad and—Marcus, eat your dinner!” The boy dipped his head back down to his barely-touched chicken tenders and fries. “Child, you don’t need to be looking at that trash. Nobody does,” she added, with a glare at her daughter.

“And I usually don’t,” Tamika retorted, her voice calm and reasonable: why are you making such a big deal out of this, Mama? “But I thought Aunt Keisha might be interested to know what people my age are saying about the Numenate.”

Keisha kept scrolling; apparently the Numenate was run by a short man with big eyebrows and a cigar, who called up little devils or spirits or something to illustrate conversational points and run errands for him. “Well, it is … illuminating.”

Ti looked like she wanted to snatch the phone away. “Tamika Joy, please tell me you at least showed her one of the clean ones.”

“Carson Wood’s are all clean! The nasty sex comics are all other people, trying to imitate his style and get in on his game. Even I know that, and I don’t even read them.”

Keisha wasn’t sure she believed that last part. She glanced at Darrell; he was shaking his head a little, but his eyes were glued to the screen. Somebody got fouled, most likely.

“These things get shared at school,” Ti explained. “A lot of them aren’t really appropriate for children, and some of them get in trouble for copyright infringement too, so the administration put a ban on them.”

“Sounds like it didn’t work.”

“It’s mostly the eighth graders showing each other the inappropriate ones,” Tamika said. “Nobody in my class. Except Ben Cooper, but nobody likes him. He’s a freak.”

“What the hell?” Everyone turned to look at Darrell as he stood up. “I was watching that, damn it!”

“Darrell, please!” But everyone, not just at their table but everyone in the restaurant, was looking at the screens over the bar. All three were now showing the familiar, ominous seals of the DOD and five other federal entities against a black background. “Oh my God, no, not again, Jesus please—“

The bartender turned up the volume so they could hear as the report began. Texas, this time. Centered on Corpus Christi and San Antonio. Up to three emissants, striking separately, details still unclear. At least a thousand fatalities, but there was reason to believe one emissor had been killed already and the Numenate was responding. Further details would be given as—the rest was drowned out by dozens of loud alert buzzers as the same news hit every phone in the restaurant simultaneously.

“What the hell is this?” Darrell demanded over the racket, looking at Keisha.

“Retaliation, probably. We just put a serious hurting on them on Saturday. This is their response.” It wasn’t technically correct—she was pretty sure the Marshalls were working alone now—but he didn’t need to know that, or give her that stinkeye.

“Is that all you have to say?” Ti, for once, didn’t try to calm him down or shut him up. Only watched and listened, her eyes wide.

“It’s all you’re going to hear from me right now. I shouldn’t have even told you that, I’m not a spokesperson for the Numenate.”

“So when you put a ‘hurting’ on them, did you anticipate this happening?” He waved an arm at the televisions, still spewing boilerplate BOLO for civilians.

“I’m a warrant officer, not a general. I don’t make those kinds of call.”

“Well, who does? And is he going to be accountable?”

People from other tables were looking their way now, listening in. “Darrell, you’re making a scene. You might want to stop, and calm down.”

“You might want to get your ass out of here and help! See? Texas is on fire. You get paid to defend us. Why are you just sitting there, telling me what I am and am not allowed to know?”

She gave up on Darrell and looked down at Tamika. “Texas is a long way away from here,” she told her niece. “We have layered defenses in place. Those three—or however many there are—aren’t going to make it this far.”

“Yeah, I know,” she mumbled.

“You’re not her father!”

“No, you are. Maybe you ought to act like it.” She was tensed up as she said it, ready to block if he punched her across the table. But his hands stayed where they were, clenching the table’s edge. His phone’s alert was still going off in his pocket, as was Keisha’s. She reached in to turn it off, without taking her eyes off Darrell. He let his keep going while he stared at her, stone-cold.

There were lots of people looking at them now—everybody who wasn’t tied to their phone or the screen. Thank you, Darrell Wilson, for advertising my employer … but now she could either stay silent, and reinforce his position for him in the eyes of everyone present, or go out on a limb. “This was a mistake,” she said, for everyone’s benefit. “A mistake on their part. Texas is an obvious target, too obvious—right across the border. I don’t have all the facts yet, nobody does, but I expect they’re retreating already, and it still won’t save them. We have assets in Mexico too. It’s highly likely that by this time tomorrow they’ll be down three emissors, people they can’t afford to lose. And Mexico will tighten their security.”

“Because they always do what we say,” Darrell said. At least he was quieter now. “Or what you say.”

“Because we’re in this together,” she corrected him. Truthfully, she hadn’t really expected anything so drastic to happen, and wondered what it said about decision-making in the Kremlin. They were burning a lot of resources with this.

“For how long?”

“For as long as it takes.”

“It’s been decades already.”

“And? Do you want to be taking orders from Moscow instead? Because that’s your alternative.”

“Damn right,” called a voice from across the restaurant. Keisha glanced over and saw a muscular, clean-cut man sitting with his girlfriend at another booth. He hoisted his beer in salute.

“Excuse me,” Darrell said. “I don’t remember you being part of this conversation.” The TVs had gone back to regular programming now, but his phone was still going off, the last in the room. He finally reached down to shut it off.

“Maybe you ought to be more quiet about it, then,” the man retorted. His girl put a hand on his forearm, at the same time Ti gripped Darrell’s bicep.

“We’re all finished eating,” Ti said. “We should probably pay and leave. Tomorrow’s a school day.”

Darrell looked down at the remains of his steak. “Yeah,” he said, and reached for his wallet. Keisha’s ally hefted his beer again, and returned his attention to his girlfriend.

It was time for her to do her part for public order. “Do either of you have to go to the bathroom before we leave?” Two no’s.

“Go anyway,” their mother told them at once, grateful to be back in her comfort zone. “Excuse me, babe.” Darrell got up to let her out, and Keisha decided to join the family restroom caravan so she wouldn’t be left alone with him.

“I’m sorry about Darrell,” Ti told her over the sink, three minutes later. “You know how he is.”

She didn’t, really—she had no idea why he thought it was a good idea to pick a fight in public—but that wasn’t a good point to press. “It’s fine. I’ve run into worse.”

“He’s just scared, you know?” Her hands were shaking just a little as she helped Marcus wash up. “We all are.”

“I am, too,” Keisha said. About different things. “It’s harder when you can’t talk about what scares you, believe me.”

“At least you know, though!” Ti looked back at Tamika, who was carefully keeping her eyes on her hands while she scrubbed, and scrubbed, and scrubbed. Ti lowered her voice. “All we hear is bits and pieces, little tidbits we don’t know whether to believe, and every once in a while something just comes out of the blue to raise hell like this. And we can’t do a blessed thing about it.” She shivered. “It’s different for us mortals, Keish.”

Not as different as you think, Ti. She didn’t know if Nadia, Fatima, or Ruslan were even alive, but the odds were against it, and there was no way to find out. She couldn’t even find out why they’d done it. “Tamika, I think those hands are clean enough. Let’s go.”

At least a dozen heads turned to track them as they made their way back to the table and out of the building. They weren’t even trying to hide it.