“Isn’t there someplace you’re supposed to be right now? Like…school?”
She spread her hands. “Seriously. A month. What the hell, Dan? I told you everything you wanted to know, and you still ratted me out.”
“Hey, it’s not all sunshine for me, either. I’m in trouble, too.”
“What? Is Caitlin going to spank you?” She dropped her voice and murmured out one side of her mouth. “Not like she doesn’t do that already.”
“Hey now—”
“What?” She shrugged and gave me an innocent look. “I’m just saying, people talk. Whatever floats your boat, you do you. I don’t judge.”
“Did you come all the way over here just to take cheap shots at me, or are you hiding from the truant officer?”
“I came because I want to know what gives.” She sighed. “Seriously. I thought we were cool. I thought we were friends.”
“We are friends.”
“Friends don’t tell other friends’ mothers that they were out at house parties without permission. Even ones where people got killed. Especially those.”
What could I tell her? I’d already kicked her legs out from under her once this week, refusing to take her on as my apprentice. I didn’t want to do it twice. Ultimately, this was one of those rare cases where the truth was the best policy.
“I’m your friend,” I told her. “I’m your mom’s friend, too. And I’m also allegedly a grown adult, which means I’ve got responsibilities. Yes, Emma can be a little…”
“Abrasive? Overbearing? Insufferable?”
“It seems that way right now, sure. But…can you see how I’ve got a different perspective? I hear how she talks about you when you’re not in the room. And she gets frustrated with you about as much as you get frustrated with her—”
“Zero surprise there, since she never listens.”
“—but it comes from a place of love,” I said. “If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t care. She’s trying her best to do right by you, Melanie. And I can’t promise anything, but I really think five, ten years from now, you and her are going to relate to each other a lot better and be a lot closer. It just takes some growing to get there. Maybe…a little less trying to drive each other nuts. A little less. A teensy bit.”
“Whatever.” My tenuous grasp of teenagerese told me that was the best I’d get from her. She glanced down at the mailbag. “What’s this?”
“Little experiment. I’m having a problem with my wand.”
“They make medication for that now.”
“Cute.” I showed her the mahogany stick. “There’s some serious magic locked in this thing; so far I’ve seen two of its moves, and I’m betting it’s capable of more than that. Anyway, one of the wand’s powers is a short-range translocation.”
“Translocation?” Melanie’s eyes widened. “Wait, like a transporter beam, like on Star Trek?”
“Sort of. I’ve only gotten it to work once. In theory, I jump into a confined space like a bag or a cabinet, trigger the effect, and the wand moves me elsewhere. See, Howard Canton, the guy who created the wand, he was a stage magician back in the forties. He designed a lot of his spellwork to replicate classic illusions.”
“Holy shit,” she said. “Show me. I’ve got to see this. Can I try it?”
“Well, therein lies the rub.”
I walked into the living room and she trailed behind me.
“If you start rubbing your wand, I’m leaving.”
I chose to ignore that. “Canton’s wand has one very weird restriction. It doesn’t just work when you want it to; it only wakes up when it senses its owner is trying to save someone in danger.”
“Not seeing a problem,” she said. “Don’t people try to kill you, like, twice a day on average? You’re in danger all the time.”
“Ah, that’s the thing. It won’t lift a magical finger to save its owner. Damien Ecko murdered Canton sometime in the fifties, and Canton didn’t even bother bringing the wand to their showdown. He knew it wouldn’t help. He hid it away instead.”
“What? That’s nuts. Why create this super-powerful doohickey and wire it so it wouldn’t even help the guy who made it? If I had my own transporter beam, I’d use that thing all the time.”
“Would you use it to go back to class, where you’re supposed to be right now?” I asked.
“You haven’t kicked me out yet.”
“I’m a bad role model. And I don’t know why he did it, except to keep it out of the hands of somebody like me.”
Melanie frowned at the wand. She tilted her head, contemplating. “Maybe it’s like dog training.”
“How do you mean?”
“You get the behavior you reward,” she said. “Maybe this Canton guy wanted to encourage himself to go out and save people.”
“Yeah, well, Canton’s dead now, like most people who think they can use magic to be a hero. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Power corrupts?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “And more importantly, every system has a flaw, and every set of rules has a loophole. A real bad guy is scarfing up all of Canton’s relics, and he’s hot to get his hands on this wand. If he thinks he can unlock its power, I definitely can. Just have to figure out how.”
I reached for the remote control and offered it to her.
“So I’m going to try to hack this thing. Wanna help?”
22.
“I’m not sure exactly what the wand is responding to when it decides to work,” I said to Melanie. “It might be something as simple as the sound of someone in distress, or something that looks like real violence.”
She looked from the remote in her hands to the television. I’d cued it up halfway into a horror flick. On the screen, a hockey-masked killer was frozen in the rain, mid-rampage, holding a machete high over his head.
“I hate horror movies,” she muttered.
“You just don’t appreciate classic cinema.”
“Seriously,” Melanie said. “We are surrounded by literal, actual monsters. All day. Every day. Some of my mom’s coworkers eat people. Why would you want to watch make-believe psychos on top of that?”
“At the end of the day, the make-believe psychos usually lose. I find it refreshing.”
I walked over to the kitchen nook and stepped into the first mailbag, pulling it up over my shoes.
“Okay, when I say go, hit Play. I’m going to try to wake up the wand. If this works—if—I should pop out of the bag right next to you.”
“Ready,” she said.
I concentrated, closing my eyes, and felt the smooth mahogany wand under my fingertips. This was a game, at heart—a battle of wits between me and a dead magician. I was good at games. I breathed fast, almost hyperventilating, trying to push my heartbeat. The brain is an impressionable organ, which is why horror movies and roller coasters work in the first place: even when you know you’re perfectly safe, a little trickery can convince your body that you’re in danger and trigger those sweet fight-or-flight chemicals to flow.
Running out of time, I told myself. If I don’t get over there in the next two seconds—
“Now!” I said.
Melanie tapped the remote and a shrill scream burst from the television speakers. I dropped to a crouch and hauled the mail sack over my head, burying myself in canvas and darkness. A pulse of magic jolted along my spine, sizzling down my arm and into the wand, kick-starting it to life. Then I jumped to my feet, bursting from the bag—
—and found myself standing exactly where I’d started, in the kitchen. On the screen, the machete buried itself in a wayward camp counselor’s skull while sharp violin chords screamed.
“You’re too late,” Melanie said. The remote dangled from her hand as she gave me a dubious look. “Freddy claimed another victim.”
“That’s Jason.”
“I don’t care.” She turned off the TV and tossed the remote onto the couch. “So the wand is smart enough to know the difference between fake danger and real danger.”
“We learned something. That’s progress. Even if it doesn’t go the way you want, an experiment is never a failure if you learn something from it.”
Melanie strolled into the kitchen. “Where do you keep your silverware?”
“Drawer on the left, why?”