I shrug. “I could tell Cal there was no way Enid could help. But I’d be lying, and I’m not real good at that.”
Her aura seems to fade toward transparence for a moment. Then she looks to Enid, through Enid and right down into his soul.
He puts up his hands to ward her off. “Hey, no, baby. Don’t ask me that.”
She says, “What if he could convince the Council-convince Mary-that it was a good thing?”
“How’s he gonna do that, Mags?”
The look they exchange is loaded with subtext. There’s something here I’m not in on.
“With your ability,” I say, “you might be able to free more flares-more fireflies. You might be able to free them all.”
Shaking his head, Enid slumps farther into his chair. “No, man. No way I can do that.”
“Then maybe I can. I’ve managed to harness a few twisted talents. I can see and walk through your portals. Maybe I can learn to do what you do, or maybe I can help you do it.”
Enid grins at me unexpectedly, the furrows alongside his mouth becoming deep smile lines. “Sort of a sideman, huh?” “Or a sidekick.”
He reaches up to rub his eyes, which are bloodshot, I assume from lack of sleep. “It’s not the same thing. The portals is one thing; the music is something else.”
“I’m willing to try if you are. Look, if Mary is as dedicated to freeing and protecting people as you say, then isn’t this a golden opportunity? A talent like yours could save a lot of enslaved flares. We can find the Source-the Storm.”
“You seem awful sure of that.”
“I am.” Sometimes I wish I weren’t. “But let’s say we can free some of the flares. The missing piece in the scenario is where do we take them where they’ll be safe?” I smile. “Nice place you got here.”
Enid and Magritte exchange another verbose look, then Enid says, “Lemme go talk to the Council,” and leaves me alone with Magritte.
I feel her beside me, a cool, blue furnace. I have a swift and unworthy fantasy about what it might be like to make love to her. It shocks me. She is looking at me with those giant cat’s eyes while this slithers through my mind, and the sudden one-two punch of lust and shame drive me over to the hearth, where the heat from my face is lost in the fire. She follows me, so my relief is short-lived.
I try to keep my mind on the problem at hand. “So you were in Chicago when this happened to you?” I ask without looking at her.
“Yeah.”
“Was it sudden? I know with Tina-my friend’s sister- it happened gradually, over several days. We thought she’d gotten some sort of radiation poisoning.”
Magritte’s hands make a series of vague little gestures before she says, “Poisoning, huh? Yeah, it took a while for me to get poisoned, too.” She giggles, but there isn’t any mirth in it. It ends in a strange little hiccup.
I glance at her face and surprise something both bitter and desperate in her expression. “Was it painful?” I ask. “Tina was in physical pain up until… well, until it was over. After, she seemed … relieved … released. I think there was a different kind of pain, then.”
She grimaces, her sharp little flare teeth making her seem feral. “Sounds like sex.”
Well, that catches me napping. I’m speechless, and what’s left of my lust flares (you will pardon the pun) then shrivels right up.
“I don’t know what I’d’ve done without Enid,” she says in a voice like the rustle of dry leaves. “Out of the frying pan, into the fire… Uncle Nathan always said that about me.”
She turns her face away; the flames paint it gold and red, even through her aura of rippling light.
“How close did you get to the Storm before Enid-” “Struck by lightning,” she murmurs. “You ever been in a tornado?”
“Ah, no … an experience I’ve managed to avoid, living in Manhattan.”
“Stay in this part of the country long and you won’t be able to avoid it. Tornado just sucks up anything that gets close. Even at a distance, you can feel the power of it. Like a magnet, pulling at you. You see it; it dances in your eyes. You know it’s a quick trip to hell, but it’s so powerful, so beautiful, that part of you wants to walk right up and touch it. You want it to take you.”
She pins me with her eyes, suddenly dark as the underbelly of a thunderhead. “Storm was like that. One minute I was dancing for him, the next minute I was dancing for the Storm.”
I recall someone a lifetime ago talking this way about cocaine. She got struck by lightning, too, in a manner of speaking. One night, in a cranked haze, she walked right onto the third rail in our tunnel.
“Dancing,” I repeat. “For Enid?” I’m trying, I realize, to wrap my mind around their relationship, as if it matters.
“No, not Enid. Enid is my friend.” She lays subtle stress on the last word. “He was there to save me from one thing, and ended up saving me from something worse.”
“You knew him before the Change?”
“He played at the club I worked before his manager got him a break. After, he’d come back to check up on me, make sure I was okay, talk about getting me out of there. He tried to get me out of there.” She shrugged, spilling radiance into the air. “When all the weird shit came down, he was there for me. In the wrong place at the right time, I guess.”
Darkness flitters across her face again like the shadow of wings. It’s the same look I glimpsed earlier when she asked if we’d abandon Tina. I have the sudden conviction that Magritte knows a lot about abandonment. I fight the urge to stroke her cheek. Did I mention I’m a lousy fighter?
She doesn’t flinch away from my touch as I expect. Instead, she turns into it, fixing me with her whiteless topaz eyes, wrapping me in a tingling veil.
From my fingertips, gold-white light fans out across her cheek and bleeds into her own vivid aura. A luminous mist glides over my hand, my arm, my head. It envelops her, too, and in a moment we’re engulfed in a veil of something kinetic that is both hers and mine. The world is shut out. I hear no shimmer of wind chimes, no snap of flame, no life-noise from the camp outside, not my own breathing, not even my own heartbeat. I am aware only of our mutual amazement.
The opening of the kitchen door pulls us apart. The combined aura explodes soundlessly and the outside world rushes back in. I am dispossessed.
“Council wants to see you,” says Enid, and if he is aware of having interrupted something, he hides it.
The Council meets in a large parlor I suspect was once the staff lounge. There is a huge braided rug around which sit nine people on chairs, bench seats, and pillows. They are an interesting mix, five women (including Mary), four men. They are racially mixed, too-three blacks, one Hispanic, one Asian, two Native American. Mary is the sole Caucasian. They are old and young. Fresh and worn.
Their clothing suggests diversity of social strata, as well. The Asian gentleman wears a sweater that is obviously cashmere, but his L.L. Bean boots are muddy and scuffed. The Hispanic woman next to him is dressed in ill-fitting overalls and a man’s flannel jacket-Kmart wardrobe. They both have very clean but very chapped and callused hands.
In the once real world, clothes said something about who you were. Now I think they might only say something about where you’ve been. The Change has been a great equalizer, I suppose, whatever its faults. Perhaps it’s true that no evil happens that does not bring good in its wake. If there was ever a time you couldn’t judge a man by his clothes, it’s now.
I smooth the loose tails of my own gaudy purple and green plaid flannel and await their verdict.
“Enid has explained what you’re proposing,” Mary says. “On the surface, it sounds ideal. Like Kismet. You have a way of tracking the Storm; we have, just possibly, the means of freeing its slaves and an underground railroad ready to receive them.”