February Thaw (6 page)

His brow furrowed. "I have names."

"Good. Pick one."

"Leonardo."

"di Caprio or da Vinci?"

"What?"

"Pick another."

"Fred."

*

"There used to be one here but now there isn't and so I came. The others are all still arguing over which one of them it should be but there isn't time." Fred tapped his chest lightly with a grimy fist. "I know."

Under normal circumstances, Isabel wouldn't have believed a word he'd said, but normal circumstances had been a little skint of late. The elevator chimed. Breathing shallowly through her teeth – breathing normally while sharing an enclosed space with Fred was not a good idea – she held up a hand as the door began to open. "Wait here until I check the hall. I'm
so
not explaining you to anyone."

The coast was clear. She got him out of the elevator and moving fast; hopefully fast enough that no one – specifically Mrs. Harris – could trace the nearly visible scent trail to the right door. Her sigh of relief when it closed behind them was a mistake. Or at least the inhale part of it was.

By the time she stopped coughing, Fred had left the foyer and was standing in the middle of the living room.

Isabel hurried in beside him. "Look, my father is going to kill me if this place ends up smelling like the inside of a hot dumpster. You need a shower and some clean clothes."

"Clean." His tone suggested he was searching for a definition of the word. "Okay."

All at once, he
was
clean – hair, clothes, probably breath if she'd wanted to get that close. Which she didn't.

"How did you do that?"

"Godfry!"

"What?"

Ignoring her, Fred headed for the terrace door and tried to push it open. On the other side, a big crow hopped from foot to foot and shouted, "Pull, you idiot!" When he finally pulled the door open and went through, the crow fluttered up to the top of a rattan chair.

"Well?" it croaked. "Did you tell her?"

"He said he's here to teach me," Isabel answered before Fred had the chance. "That there'll be a test. He said I'm the youngest wizard and the nasty thing with red eyes is after my power which redefined the rather shaky definition of normal I'd been working with. He didn't tell me what he is, it is, or
you
are."

"Him?" The crow turned to glare at her. "He's one of the nine – same as you."

"Nine?"

"Nine wizards. There's always nine. Don't ask why, I don't know. When one finally pops – and one popped early last year – the power finds a new conduit. That's you. It's been gathering in you since Beth Aswith died, which is why you're taking this so well in case you're thinking it has anything to do with you as a person."

Isabel curled her lip.

The bird ignored her, swivelling his head to face Fred. "Him, he's an old conduit."

"I'm a piece of O-pipe."

"Sure you are." And back to Isabel. "My name's Godfry. I'm with him. The big thing with red eyes is a bad guy – sort of an anti-wizard. You've got no control right now so you're lit up like a Christmas tree. The bad guys want your power. Actually, they want everyone's power, but you’re the only one they can find."

"Great." She picked savagely at a thread on her blazer for a moment. The crow's explanation, although it covered the main points, had been a little light on detail. First things first. "So, if there's seven other wizards, how come I rate the dumpster diver?"

This time, Fred answered for himself. "No one else would come in time. A wizard with an apprentice gains power. They're arguing over who should get to teach you and so they'll argue and stop each other from coming to you until it's too late." He peered nervously around the terrace, hands wrapped in the bottom of his T-shirt. "I've seen it before."

"Haven't they seen it before? And if they have, why aren't they here?"

"They don't care about your place in the web of power, only their own."

"Wizards, as a rule, aren't very nice people," Godfry snorted. "You should fit right in."

"Yeah, you'd fit in a roasting pan so, if I were you, I'd be careful."

"Oh, I'm so scared." Wings flapping, he hopped along the back of the chair. "Help, help, cranky teenager!"

"Stop it!" Fred's voice rang out with surprising force. "We haven't time."

"Oh, like you care," Isabel snapped. "A wizard with an apprentice gains power, remember? You're in it for yourself like everyone else."

He frowned, confused. "What would I do with more power?"

She opened her mouth and closed it again. Even clean, he still had the frayed-at- the-edges look of the street. "Okay. Good poi...." Her eyes widened involuntarily – another physical sensation she could have happily done without – and she jabbed a finger toward the sky. "Look!"

Fred and Godfry turned just as the clouds drifted into new formations.

"I see a horsy," the crow mocked.

"There were eyes," Isabel insisted. "Blood red eyes in the clouds."

"It was the sunset through a couple of clear spots."

"It was not." Fred's hands were rolled so high in his T-shirt, Isabel could see the hollow curve under the edge of his ribs. "The first lesson is to trust what you actually see not what you think you should see."

"Or what I
want
should be there," Godfry muttered. "If you two want to see blood red eyes in the clouds, be my guest, I don't."

Unwinding a hand, Fred rested it lightly on the crow's back. "What you want doesn’t change anything. But what
you
want..." He turned to Isabel. "...does. You have to agree to become my apprentice. Your choice."

"Your what?"

"My student."

"I have to agree to learn to be a wizard from a skinny dumpster diver and a smart ass bird or I wait around for the teeth and claws to catch up with the eyes?"

"Yes."

"Great choice."

"Not really. But you might survive either way. Some people do."

Except for the nervous mannerisms, Fred looked and sounded like he knew what he was talking about. And she had to admit that nervous mannerisms weren’t unreasonable given giant red eyes. "Okay. Why don't you get something to eat while I get changed. On second thought..." She had a sudden vision of the two of them in the kitchen. "...wait here and I'll bring something out."

*

When Isabel returned to the terrace in street clothes, Fred had eaten a deli-pack of sliced roast beef, half a loaf of bread, and was just licking the last of the mustard off a tablespoon. "Don't put that back in the... Eww. Tell you what..." She pushed the jar toward him. "...why don’t you just
keep
the mustard."

Smiling, he shoved the spoon down until he could get the lid on, screwed it tight and dropped the jar over his left shoulder. It never hit the terrace.

"What happened to...?"

"Pocket universe," Godfry told her, hopping down onto the table and poking around in the deli wrapping. "Very handy."

"I'm sure." It would certainly solve the forty-pound backpack problem. "So what's next?"

Fred stood and wiped his hands on his pants, leaving bright yellow smears against the green. "Next we go to my workshop and I teach you how to control your power."

"Okay, where's your workshop?"

*

"This is your workshop?"

A short walk from Isabel's building had brought them to the alley between the Sutton Place Hotel and the insurance headquarters next to it. Given the calibre of tenants in both buildings it was a pretty clean alley, but still...

"The world is my workshop."

"Cliché," Godfry put in from the top of a dumpster, "but true."

"Okay." Eye roll over, she folded her arms. "So teach me."

Fred patted the air beside her shoulder. "Learn where your skin is."

"It's on my body."

"Can you feel it?" He headed for the dumpster.

Could she feel her skin? How stupid was that. Of course she could. She could feel her socks hug her ankles, the waistband of her jeans cutting in just a bit, how warm it was under her watch...

"From the inside." Fred's voice bounced about the dumpster and then floated up, eerily disconnected from his body. "Oh wow. It’s a good thing I kept the mustard."

*

"You can't feel your skin from the inside," Isabel snorted at last. They were walking along College Street, heading toward Spadina.

"I can't?"

She glanced over at Fred, but he was watching where he was putting his feet with single-minded intensity. "Okay,
I
can't."

"When you try, what do you feel?"

"I don't know." A pause while he crouched and picked something off the sidewalk – she didn't want to know what. "A sort of a sizzle."

"Good. You found the power." He straightened, putting the something in his pocket. "That's what I wanted you to find."

"Yeah? Then why didn’t you just tell me to look for the power?"

"Did you know what to look for?"

"No, but..."

"Now you do."

Isabel sighed. What a waste of time. "Is that lesson two?"

Fred started. "There was a lesson one?"

"Yeah: trust what you actually see, not what you think you should see." They'd reached the lights and, as they seemed to have been wandering without purpose, Isabel crossed north with the green.

"Good lesson." He stepped off the curb after her. "Wish I’d had a fish."

"Right." And as far as she was concerned, that was it for the night. Godfry, by far the more consistently articulate of the two, had long since disappeared. "Look, I gave it a shot but it's getting late and I promised my dad I'd be in bed by midnight."

"You agreed to be my apprentice."

"Fine." She rolled her eyes and picked up the pace back toward Bay Street. "I'll be your apprentice tomor..."

The shadows moved in the way shadows didn't, drawing closer, growling softly, tiny red lights flickering in pairs. They were all around her, cutting her off.

"Find the sizzle! Grasp it. Throw it at them!"

Fred sounded kilometres away although she knew he couldn’t have been more than a meter behind her. Propelled by the pounding of her heart, the sizzle raced around just under her skin. No way she could catch it. And what the hell did
grasp
mean anyway?

A louder growl. Isabel spun around to face it. Her elbow brushed shadow. Sparks flew. She wanted to scream but she couldn't find her voice. Wrapping her arms around her body, she tried to make herself as small as possible. Which seemed to contain the sizzle.

So she'd found it. But if this was grasping it, how did she throw it?

As a second shadow brushed icy terror against her.

The night exploded in light.

When she could see again, Isabel stared at the image of an elongated arm burned into the bricks of the building beside her, the talons nearly touching the shadow of her throat.

She peered through the white spots dancing through her vision. "Did I do that?"

"The youngest is the most powerful."

"So you said." There were other images burned beyond the closest one. "Cool. So, if I can do this, why do I need you?"

"Do you know how you did it?"

"Uh..." Icy terror. Light. "...no."

"Can you do it again?"

The sizzle had faded to a tingle – and in some places not even that. "Not right now."

"What if you had to? What if they attacked again?"

"More of them?" When he nodded, she moved a little closer to the streetlight. "Okay, okay, I need you. Still, can't I have a moment to enjoy my victory?"

"No." His voice dropped an octave and he held out his hand. "Teenager sets off explosion in street. Film at eleven."

"That's so retro, but I take your point." The wail of police sirens grew closer. His hand was still basically clean. She reluctantly put hers in it.

And they were standing outside her building.

Fighting the urge to puke, Isabel staggered back until her shoulder blades were pressed against the brick. Waiting for the world to stop rocking, she sucked in deep lungfuls of air.

"Downside to everything," Fred murmured philosophically. "Can you spare some change?"

Although Isabel offered him the use of the spare room, Fred spent the night on the terrace, wrapped in a disgusting sleeping bag he pulled from his pocket universe.

"I have to be where the sky people can contact me. And you have to sleep with your head at the foot of the bed."

"Why? Will it, like, scramble my power signature or something?"

"I have Liza Minnelli’s signature on my arm."

*

Safe in her room, Isabel checked her messages and called her father back at his hotel. Conference was going great, blah, blah, blah. New York funds seemed interested in buying in, yadda, yadda, yadda.

"Izzy, are you listening to me?"

"Sure, Dad. I'm just tired. I'll see you Friday. Love you. Bye." She hung up before he could answer and glared at her bed. Wondering why she was listening to someone who ate pizza crusts covered in someone else's spit, she yanked up the sheets and moved the pillows down against the foot-board.

The first time she woke, gasping for breath, she turned on every light in her bedroom before going back to sleep. The second time, she stuffed a pair of jeans along the crack under the door. The third time, she shoved her mattress off the box spring and onto the floor so they couldn’t come up at her from below.

At least I don’t have to worry about Dad.

Hands rolled in the sheet, she stared at the ceiling and counted backwards from a hundred in French.

*

"You look like crap."

"You look like you'd go with cranberry sauce." Stepping past the crow, Isabel swept a searching glare around the terrace. "Where's Fred?"

"He left about sunrise."

"Contacted by the sky people?"

"Not likely," Godfry snorted. "They're just a figment of old Fred's imagination – his reason for why he goes completely buggy if he sleeps inside."

"Great."