There was a sign that said we could only park there if we were guests, but Benji ignored that, mumbling “if they want to tow this fucking thing, go ahead.”

He pulled the lot and drove around to the back of the inn. There wasn’t anyone outside, and the curtains were drawn in most of the windows. We were as alone and invisible as we were going to get.

Benji eased the sedan into a spot near the woods and said, “There’s a path to the left. Keep a good distance behind me, okay?”

Schenectady was a sad sort of place. It reminded me a lot of the place I grew up in, which meant that I automatically disliked it. Then again, it made sense that it would do that—the towns and cities around here were all kind of the same, and my hometown was only forty minutes down the highway.

I wondered if people over there were still looking for me. Nobody seemed to be trying all that hard. My disappearance didn’t even make the news.

I decided I didn’t like Schenectady within a couple minutes of pulling into the city limits. There just wasn’t anything there. Nothing was clean enough or new enough to inspire anything—it all had that vaguely dirty, vaguely old look that everything in upstate New York hard—a veneer of slowly fading prominence that no amount of high-quality delis and pizza shops could peel away.

It wasn’t as bad as Syracuse, but it was still unpleasant. It was the sort of place where, by an unseen power of the city, it was literally impossible to be interesting.

I made a mental note to try and never end up there again.

Vale Park, on the other hand, was nice enough—at least, judging from the maps Benji gave me. A strange elongated patch of woods in the middle of an extended suburb. There was a thin puddle that passed as a pond through the center, with a small bridge over it that I assumed was where we were meeting.

I followed him into the woods at twenty paces back, following his trail like it left an invisible red line. Without entirely meaning to, I was copying his trail exactly—even when he doubled back or took an inefficient route around a log, I did the same. The sun was gone from overhead and the shadows were long and heavy—but I felt the pond, somewhere beyond the trees, and I knew that I was invincible here.

I wondered how much of the pond I could displace at once. I hadn’t yet gotten a chance to flex the bulk of my power—to date I’d only moved small amounts of water in fast, precise, or both ways. I had yet to dump a tsunami on someone, and I was really aching for a chance to do that.

Benji had told me this wasn’t going to be the time, though, so I quelled the ache with a quick pondering on what I actually planned to do to spook these people. How does one go about scaring cultists? They’re already cornering the market on creepy. This seemed like as good a time to dump a tsunami on someone as any, but I wasn’t about to disobey a direct order.

I decided to think about it more once I saw the cultists themselves. I still, despite the provided literature, didn’t really know what they were about.

I was expecting the cultists to be black-robed, with lanterns. Singing prayers to some unknowable, unfathomable evil. The literature I’d read didn’t really paint them that way, but the stereotypical image of a cultist was stronger than the facts.

But, as Benji left the path for a clearing in the woods, I caught my first glance of them. I kept myself to a shadow, out of sight if you weren’t looking for me, and I saw the people then. They really did look like regular folks. Benji went up to the one who was out from the group—and by “group” I mean five other people—and said, “Hey, Walt.”

“Hello,” this Walt character replied.

Walt wore a dusty flannel and black jeans with a white skullcap he’d embroidered some green lines into. All the members there had that white-and-green cap. I sort of liked it—a cult outfit small enough to fit in your pocket when you had to pretend to be a normal person. Highly portable and very practical.

I had no idea how old Walt was. Guessing was sort of a waste of time, given the little glint of silver around his neck that I assumed was a nature key. He looked around twenty-four, but he could’ve been eighty, and considering his name I was more inclined to believe the latter.

I suppose some people just don’t get any stronger.

Walt regarded Benji with a tight smile that he was just putting on—even I could see that much.

Their voices were quiet, but I could still hear the two of them fine with a bit of straining. “Look, man, you’ve gotta stop meeting during the park’s open hours. Come here at night and you’re fine,” Benji said.

“Our rituals require we meet at sunset,” Walt said. Clearly annoyed that he was being subjected to this song and dance again. “I’ve told you already.”

“I know,” Benji said. “And I’m giving you every chance to settle this quietly. I don’t care what you guys are doing as long as it’s quiet. Frankly, this place kind of blows, so I support you sprucing it up.” He chuckled a bit. “Pun not intended. Um—so just be quiet, okay? And make sure nobody sees you.”

“We do a good job of that already,” Walt said. “Only the trusted few can come with me to this circle.”

“And they’re the only ones who get to see that your little key necklace isn’t just jewelry.”

Walt nodded.

“Cool. Now can you just show them this after nine?”

Walt fell quiet for a second. “Why are you bothering us?”

“What do you mean, why? If people find out about you guys—and what you can actually do—bad shit happens.”

“Define bad.”

Benji’s light demeanor faded. “Look, pal, you’re on thin ice here. I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that, because I honestly believe you guys are harmless and you’re doing a pretty good thing. I think you understand as well as I do why it’s bad for people to know about magic. Your organization is designed to keep as few people from knowing that you’re actually the real deal as possible, which I—honestly—respect a lot. It’s humble of you. I’m just asking that you stick to the plan a little tighter. That’s all. Sunset, there’s still people walking around this park sometimes. When it’s dark, there’s nobody here. Just do this when it’s dark. You don’t want to be involved in a memory cleanse, man. We have to outsource that shit and it’s super expensive.”

One of the people in the group went to speak—some noise that I guess counted as the start of a word came out of them—and Walt put up a hand to silence them. “What I don’t understand,” Walt started, slowly, clasping his hands together without breaking eye contact. “Is why you keep harassing us even though we’ve: A, done nothing wrong; B, got a goal you agree with; and C, never been caught.”

Benji gritted his teeth for half a second, then relaxed. It was just a tensing of his jaw, but I knew the movement when I saw it. Frustration at a brick wall. I was very familiar. “I know you’re kind of an old timer, but people just record weird stuff now,” he said, calmed. Benji planted his feet, stuck his hands in his pockets. “Most of the time it gets lost in the bowels of the internet and gets relegated to the ramblings of crazy people, but that’s just the luck of public perception on our side. If anyone ever found out that the conspiracy nuts, just this once, were actually right, the aforementioned bad shit happens. Now, I’m not an idiot. I know we’re not gonna be able to keep this secret forever. It’s just not going to happen. Something’s gonna slip, and when it happens, it happens. But I’m gonna do everything I can to keep this down because I am in a position to let this façade go on just a bit longer, and if you think this doesn’t end in all of us getting hunted down and slaughtered by the full might of the United States Armed Forces, then you have your head so far up your own ass you can lick your own uvula.”

“I like to believe we can live in harmony,” Walt said, quietly.

“I’ve always been camp Magneto,” Benji shrugged. “I just can’t see this ending any other way.”

Walt glanced back at the assembled five for a second. They were exchanging quick looks at each other and Walt, avoiding Benji’s eyes. Shifting in place, hands in their pockets.

“Maybe that’s your problem,” Walt replied. “In the City-Nature Harmony Coalition, we believe that things can coexist. I’m not an idiot either, Ben.”

“It’s Benji.”

“Benji, sure. I’m not dumb, either. I know it’s going to be hard. But if we don’t believe things can get better, what do we have? The world lives through people who think the future can be brighter. Saying it can’t be done is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Walt paused. “You’re very intent on this. Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Yes,” Benji said. “Lots.”

“Then why—”

“Because you f—”

Hesitation. A clenched fist loosened.

“You people are going to get us all killed if you’re not careful.”

I could only see the corners of Benji’s mouth, but even through the dwindling light I could see it twitch upward. “Let me tell you—let me spell this out in plain terms—what happens if magic is confirmed to be real. The United States declares martial law. Basically every nation does. The military hires teams of people to comb through every video that appears to have someone performing magic in them, because they do exist. Some of those videos are fake. They’re made by people practicing CGI or whatever. It doesn’t matter, the military won’t take the risk. Everyone who is performing magic or appears to be will be shot on sight. Some of those people don’t have keys. You know what happens to magical people who don’t have keys?”

Walt was silent.

“They explode, Walt. Like bombs. You know that a third of the bombings in the U.S. are keyless magicals dying? That’s what happens. The keys literally keep our magic in check. The more powerful these people are, the bigger the explosion when they trip down some stairs or stub their toe too hard and their magic gets more agitated than their flesh can handle. And there’s jack shit anyone can do about it. So innocent people will die on two sides. People with families will die. Innocent people will—literally—be slaughtered in the streets. Children, Walt.”

“Kids don’t get keys,” Walt said.

I had bad news for him, but I stayed put.

“You think the military knows that?” Benji replied.

Walt was unmoved. “Benji, this is all fine to muse about, but if you think the military doesn’t already know about us, you’re being horribly naïve. If your plan was the truth, we’d all be dead already.”

“We’re not all dead because the public doesn’t know. The military doesn’t care until Joe down the street hears about it. News of us hits the reputable outlets—we’re all dead. Hug your kids, kiss your wife, you’re getting shot in the fucking street. You think the people in charge of keeping this country safe care if one guy with a nature key is just growing plants in a city? Running a fucking farm stand that never seems to run out of produce? Walt, you’re the good one. Out there—” Benji thrust a hand outward, gesturing to the city obscured by the trees. “Out there are the bad people. You think most people with keys are just trying to get by, but they’re not. It’s half-and-half. Half of them just want to pretend magic isn’t real and they want to go about their life. They’re gonna get gunned down on their way home from the grocery store. Half of them want to get revenge on someone. You know as well as I do that well-adjusted people don’t get keys.

Benji paused. Walt, for half a second, looked down. “The people who get keys are angry, vitriolic, hateful people. They get keys because they, in one way or another, need one. They have a problem only magic can solve. They want to kill. They want to hurt. And if you think the telepath beset by army men with guns isn’t going to rot the minds of everyone in a quarter-mile radius on their way out, then no, Walt, I’m not the naïve one—you are.”

Walt opened his mouth to speak, but Benji cut him off. “Shut up. I’m not done. You listen.”

Walt stopped.

“You want to know why I’ve been here six times? The truth is that I have way, way more important things to do than this. I’ve got a stack of paperwork to attend to that’s up to my fucking knees. I’ve got a dozen other shitheads way more violent than you running around that I’ve got to smack some sense into. The reason I waste so much time trying to talk sense into you is because you’re the good people. Your goal is good, your people are good. You’re a good person. The idiots I deal with on a daily basis are just as likely to get themselves killed than they are to do anything actually dangerous. Most of the area I patrol is rural garbage land. Half of the punks I have to discipline couldn’t find a decent person to hurt for a mile around. You’re the only one in a real place with a real goal and a real thing going on. You’re the only good one, but you’re the only one that I actually worry about blowing this whole thing for all of us.

“You wanna know something, Walt?” Benji asked, the air of power around him. He was on a roll; nothing could stop him. He was invincible. He looked Walt dead in the eye and I shivered in the damp warmth of the woods. “I lied. I am the bad people. The unit I run is the unit Jan Prochazka sends out when negotiation fails. The people I command are the ones who go out and end things when people refuse to be reasonable. I am asking you to do something very simple. I want you to do that thing so we can all be happy. You are refusing to be reasonable. You want to know what my boss said when you refused to scoot your little prayer session back a few hours? He told me to kill you. You want to know what he said when I came to him after the fourth time? He told me to kill you, and one of your little circle at random; just “pick whichever one whose face I like the least.” Which, for reference, would be you.” Benji pointed at a woman with saggy eyes and an unfortunately long chin in the group. “You want to know what he said after the fifth time?”

Benji waited for Walt’s response; which took a long time since Walt wasn’t sure Benji was done.

“What, Benji? What did he say?” Walt replied, in an even tone. I personally felt like Benji was being mocked; but he didn’t seem to feel that way, or maybe he just didn’t care.

Benji stuffed a smirk. “He told me to pretend that I was going to just talk to you guys again, and then just kill you all instead. Bury your corpses so far underground that not even the dogs can find them.”

And Benji’s head swiveled back towards me.

And then he closed his eyes, and he turned back to Walt.

“But I’m not going to do that, Walt. Even though I’m pissed you’ve wasted this much of my time. Even though I’m pissed that I put all this effort into trying to be nice to you, trying to be reasonable with your whole operation, because I think you’re doing a good thing. Instead, I’m going to do something adjacent. I’m going to show you want happens when you’re not reasonable.”

He snapped his fingers.

I started walking forward. I’d blinked and paces had gone by. Somewhere deep in my head was a plan I did not conceive of.

I knew instinctively what it was I wanted to do.

“And for what it’s worth,” Benji said, as I approached from the darkness, “kids can, in fact, get keys.”

Walt’s eyes warmed, and just as suddenly froze over as I came into the clearing. A child. I was familiar with this story. I knew how it ended.

I glanced at Benji and he nodded.

I closed my eyes and stretched my consciousness over every plant in the ring around the clearing. If I couldn’t drop a tsunami on someone’s head like I’d always imagined I would, I could at least do this.

Into each leaf I dug in the claws of my perception—I felt them bob in the light wind, their moisture and their veins blue and cool in my mind.

And from each leaf I pulled.

I opened my eyes and watched what I had set in motion, and what I was maintaining.

A fine mist was rising in the clearing—up and sideways from every leaf; from the grass under our feet to the ferns around to the trees themselves. I collected it all into a huge ball hovering over us. Walt spun around, eyes flickering from tree to tree as they shriveled and browned in front of him. The grass became hard and yellow, and all around us, everything died.

He stepped back, head turned up. Hands shaking at his sides.

The trees around us cracked and snapped as the last drops of water were sucked clean from them, and the ball of water overhead was maybe fifteen feet wide.

I let it out slowly—letting it pour down, but only on him; a little column of water pouring down on a circular area maybe two feet wide. Walt just stood there and took it, getting drenched underneath a tiny waterfall.

And once that was done, I did one more.

From behind him I picked a person at random. I didn’t know how exactly I was going to do it—but I knew the feeling, and I knew the intent, and often times the specifics could be obfuscated if those two things were strong enough.

From the depths of her throat I grabbed every ounce of moisture I could find.

She buckled over, coughed a deep, dry cough—a hateful hacking noise that scattered a bird somewhere. It sounded like a truck backfiring.

She tried to pick herself up but could not. Her eyes were bloodshot and red—and from her mouth rose the same mist that came from the plants.

Walt turned to her and saw what was happening, and he shouted her name. She took a twitching step forward and collapsed to the ground. Skin cracked and wrinkled. Split in parts.

Thick blood leaking out of her mouth like drool.

Then I let go.

Walt ran to her side, took her hand, asked her if she was okay. Her throat was a sheet of sandpaper. She could not speak.

Again, she coughed—like a balloon popping—and a couple droplets of blood splattered onto the yellowed grass.

Walt turned back to Benji, who locked eye contact with him again. “You will have services late enough in the night to be sure that nobody will see you.”

Walt glanced at the rest of his group—all standing, all frozen.

“Okay,” he said. Small.

“If anyone sees you, you will report it to me so I can take care of it.”

Benji fished a card out of his pocket and tossed it sideways at Walt—it got caught in the wind and landed about halfway between the two.

Walt eyed the card and didn’t move. “Okay.”

“And we will never speak of this again. Okay?”

Walt looked Benji in the eye. In Walt’s eyes was a cold fear that I had only seen briefly before.

Job well done.

“Okay,” Walt said, quietly.

“Good.”

Benji snapped his fingers at me and pointed vaguely at where we’d parked the car.

I turned and followed him without a word.

0 0 0

I walked back to the car with my head held high. I scared the bejesus out of them—just like I was supposed to. Job well done, everyone’s happy, so on, so forth.

Walking in a straight line was tough, though. Once the adrenaline wore off, I found that I was woozier than I thought I was, and it was difficult to see anything beyond a couple feet in front of me.

But I did a great job, so it didn’t matter. Exhausted, sure, but it was all fine.

I was glowing.

We got into the car and Benji started it without a word.

He pulled out of the Days Inn and we started back towards the highway.

As we drove, I slowly became uncomfortable. Benji refused to look anywhere but directly in front of him. He gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, and he drove fast enough to get us vaporized if we crashed.

I started counting the lamps on the highway, the signs illuminated by our headlights.

About twenty minutes in, the silence became unbearable. I had to say something—I needed to gauge what Benji was feeling. He was mad about something but I had no idea what it was. I did a perfectly good job as far as I was concerned—so maybe he was just annoyed that it came to what it did.

I figured a question unrelated to the case we’d just closed would be good. And maybe I could kill two birds with one stone if I asked something about a certain someone, so I did.

“Where did Bell come from?” I asked him.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Benji snapped.

I blinked.

“What the fuck was that, Erika? I told you—I fucking told you—just scare them. Those are the good people! They didn’t do anything! The tree shriveling and the waterfall was great—that was perfect—and then you went and ruined it by killing that poor woman in what has got to be one of the most brutal ways to die I’ve seen in my career, and I’ve seen someone get shredded by dust. Just—flesh slurry, like that.”

He snapped his fingers and I jolted.

“I—”

I had nothing to say.

“No. Listen to me. I don’t know what the fuck went through your head where you thought that was a good idea, but…Jesus Christ.”

“I didn’t kill her,” I whispered.

My throat as dry as hers; paralyzed in the seat.

“Yes, you fucking did!” Benji paused, for half a second. “If that woman doesn’t get a saline I.V in negative five minutes she’ll be dead before the ambulance siren even turns on. You sucked so much water out of her that the texture of her blood was wrong! How does someone even do that?”

Benji paused. Speedometer read ninety-seven. He eased onto the brakes and let the car drift into the breakdown lane.

Slowed to a stop, threw on the hazards, and put his head between his hands on the steering wheel.

“Just once,” he said, to his knees. “Just fucking once I wanted to solve one of these cases without just killing everyone. I just wanted to keep the body count to zero for one fucking case. I have no idea what crossed my mind where I thought it would be a good idea to take the one person I didn’t know I could trust to follow a simple order along for the last talk. All I had to do was wait until tomorrow. One day. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. Cygnus could’ve done it easy. Yoru and Ava are both fucking psycho but at least they would’ve understood what I was asking. Even Bell would’ve been subtle enough. But you had to go and ruin what would’ve been a perfect ending by murdering someone.

“You know how long I’ve been pushing Prochazka off my back on this case? It’s been three weeks of dealing with the same shit. Every time he tells me to just grab a bruiser and slaughter them. He doesn’t give a shit. Every time I tell him to fuck off and that I’ll do it my own way. And look—look at this. That woman is fucked, Erika. She either dies, or she lives with severe brain damage. That wasn’t necessary. That was murder.”

He picked up his head and turned to me. I was aware of it in my peripheral vision.

“Are you even listening to me?” he shouted.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight. It was okay. I wasn’t there.

For a moment Benji just stared at me—eyes shut tight, knuckles white around the hem of my shirt, breathing—in and out.

He paused. I don’t know what made him stop. My eyes were closed; I’ll never know.

But maybe he realized he was afraid of me.

My best guess, without seeing him: He put his hands on the top of the steering wheel, maybe in a loose triangle, sitting upright and staring at the stretch of road in front of him. Watching the stars rise over the big green highway overhead sign that marked where the next exit was.

Cars went past us like bullets.

“I wish Bell was a telepath,” Benji said, slowly. “Or we had a telepath somewhere on our payroll. I wish we had one so I could figure out what exactly it is you’re thinking about. If it’s anything. Because—fuck me—I’m pretty sure it’s nothing at all, isn’t it?”

In.

“It’s just—”

He faltered.

Out.

“What does Prochazka see in you? You’re twelve fucking years old and have a key for some reason, you’re the most powerful water key I’ve ever seen, and you’re barely functional. What is in there that made him overrule me? It can’t be that you’re just an insanely efficient bruiser that’s easy to manipulate. It can’t be just that. Prochazka doesn’t work that way. He must see something else in you, but—fuck, I’ve got no idea. Beats the hell out of me.”

In.

Benji sighed. “Fuck. Just—fuck. I don’t know. Fuck it.”

He turned the car back on.

“I want to go home.”

Out.

0 0 0

The next day the paralysis was gone, like rain in the sun. It rolled off me as it always did. In the morning I was a new human, and the broken shell Benji accidentally got to see was gone. It no longer existed. The person that arose that morning was a version of Erika never before seen, brand-new, one who knew nothing of last night’s failure, and would not speak of it unless it was dug out of her, specifically, with surgical instruments and cold chisels.

I met with Prochazka in his office afterward to talk about what we did.

I said to him, “Benji hates me.”

Prochazka replied, “That’s okay. I don’t.”

I shrugged and said nothing.

I did not understand.