“Who do you think you are, you son of a bitch…you had your chance. It’s too late. If you really had the power, why wait until now?”

I answered him: “Because I wasn’t supposed to until now. I recognize that. You better recognize that, too, Little Man, and think hard. There’s a reason I’m here. Looks like it’s you.”

Have you ever known your purpose in the world with dead certainty? Maybe you have. Or quite possibly you’re out of your damn mind and about to turn into some kind of despot…

I gripped that piece of Hinderspoint in my pocket. I think we can go ahead and refer to it as bedrock, now, a piece of deep reality, Plato’s ideal made manifest…

Whew, now that you mention it, I was getting dizzy.

Triss had begun to hum “The Street Where You Live.”

Set Monroe cast a sigil, and the ground surrounding me and Triss just dropped away, leaving us clinging to one another on a slender column of coconut topped earth. The boy was still sopping wet, face twisted and angry, standing on the far shore of proper ground, jerking back on Hexyn’s chain to keep him from…to keep him from…leaping down into the depths. Not to die. That shit wouldn’t kill an incubus. I knew it the way I know my own name that he would’ve taken the opportunity to walk to me, through flames that couldn’t harm him, in spite of the wrath of a magician who could.

I took Triss’ hand, I drew upon the strength of my circle (wounded, you say? Well, who the hell isn’t?), and I raised the ground again.

I raised it, and there was pavement in places instead of crushed-opal snow.
And dizzier…

Good thing Triss caught me by the arm because otherwise I might have hit the dirt.

I did manage a tired raspberry. Truth be told, he wasn’t really impressing me.

There’s an art to this business. And a business to this art. Applying will to the world with specific intention. Which, when you think about it, is what we’re all meant to do, magicians or straights. But this, what he was doing? Destruction for naught.

Hardly artful.

I blinked hard, breathed deeply. It sucked that he was this strong. I still didn’t have him where I wanted him. Soon. Soon or he’d kill us before I could even try for endgame.

“All that,” I said to him, “and you still got nothing. What are you? Play, damn it, and give me something real.”

“Oh, shit…” breathed Triss.

You know the place, the darkness thick and moving, alive and hungry, and it calls your name with a voice like somebody you used to know, somebody dead. I heard the voice of my six-year old cousin, many years gone, little boy voice asking me to come swim. He was the one who’d drowned.

Only my protection kept hands from grabbing us, dragging us into the dark, turning us into the next voice a loved one might hear during a haunting…

Voice tearful, Triss quoted someone saying something about sunshine…Alexander Pope?

Even Set Monroe’s world of soapflakes was better than that horror.

Poor Triss, trembling and crying, still pretty much hissed at me when I told her she should go.

He stood there leering, and I stood there royally pissed off, suddenly, even though the plan all along was to get him to get personal. Really. But, oh, I did not like it one bit when he did, and I made sure that he knew it.

A little boxed world for him: I made it out of adolescent concerns. Some of them were mine. Ever been laughed at ‘cuz one of your balls took a little longer to drop than some of the other boys in the locker room? I let him know what that felt like. Or reminded him. I wondered in an ant-stomping kind of way which girl or boy he’d crushed on laughed him out of the room. Made one up, you know the type, devastating in a million ways until the charm drops, no wit, no beauty, just one child sneering at another: “You ugly.” And in bad moments, he wonders if it’s true.

It didn’t quite land him on his knees, but close enough for government work. After he got clear of it, I said, “Fuck you,” just as if I was bored. You give me ghosts, I give you an American adolescence. Boo.

I don’t know what it was that Hexyn saw. It couldn’t have been the same thing. Reality is made up of the observer and the observed. What would a demon’s experience turn that into? The incubus huddled on the ground, and I would have given anything to take it back.

Will you hate me to know that I made myself smile? “You gonna cry now?” I called to Set Monroe.

Bet you’re thinking I went too far. Not really. He wasn’t making that jump off a cliff that I was aiming for. Crap.

I was feeling kind of spacey by this time. It’s one of the things that happens, one of the risks. You start getting unmoored. You start drifting. Reality in flux can equal a psyche in flux, and it does happen that a player will forget he’s not meant to be one of the game tokens. That happens and your head can kind of drift right off your shoulders like a balloon. Oh, I mean literally, too, but then you can lose your mind in a way that I’ve been told feels similar. Creeps up on a person like freezing to death, except that instead of falling asleep, you lose parts of yourself until there’s nothing left but raving Id.

Which isn’t to say I was about to misplace my wobbly-in-the-skull marbles imminently.

Just that I was tired and a little slack jawed when the great slabs of quartz the size of Buicks came hurtling at me. Slow on the uptake.

Miss Triss hit me at the knees just like her Daddy’d taught her, a nice tackle that slammed us both to the ground, throwing up plumes of the white stuff. The massive rocks sailed over us without changing course. She gasped something about plucking safety out of nettles, and cited Henry IV. I felt the strength of her play as a cold tingle and knew that the sigil she’d cast was the only thing that had kept us both from being obliterated. “Oh, holy shit, Lee,” she moaned.

“Honey, I’m sorry but I can’t take the shot that counts ’till he’s all in and he’s not, not yet. I’ll cover for you while you run back to town–”

“–The hell you will.”

The stuff was settling to the ground, and on us, providing some camouflage, just enough of a frosting to keep Set Monroe for drawing a bead on us too quickly.

I decided an insult was in order. Try to run me over with the rocky equivalent of an airborne fleet of Buicks? Naw, it’s too stupid to be pissed about. Don’t mind opening up the sky and drenching you with rainwater, for it, though. I mean, why not?

It of course got Hexyn wet, too. He was crouched on the ground, drenched, his oxblood skin gone patent shiny, raising gauntleted hands. And smiling.

Set Monroe spluttered, soaked and temporarily blinded.

Triss and I scrambled to our feet. “You play like a damn child,” I yelled. “Where’s your spark? Where’s your making?”

Seems I’d made the boy’s eyeliner run. Oh, yeah, I had struck a particular nerve, thrust Triss behind me and prepared for the worst.

Snarling, Set Monroe shook out his shoe-polish black hair, made sigil, made a little patch of of hell with us in the middle of it.

Triss screamed. I’d made certain we were both shielded, but you wouldn’t ‘ve blamed her if you’d been there. This was the meat of the matter, see. This is the way a chaos magician is supposed to play if you’re gonna throw down, like if you’ve made one of those stupid bar bets where a human soul might be up for grabs. Or something similar.

You may have been here before, yourself, at least in a nightmare.

“Triss…”

“I know, I know!”

So proud of that girl.

Set Monroe gave us lightning.

Triss gave him Mark Twain’s “…and the lightning bug” and diffused it.

I gave him the hand to talk to, courtesy of Andrea Trace of the Shadow Twins: Best. Gesture. Ever.

Which apparently curves lightning.

“My turn, Little Man,” I said.

If he was gonna insist on sticking to the elements, then I felt obliged to teach him something. Phazma taught me this one. “The ground ain’t nothin’ but water, baby. Go ‘head. Splash a little.”

When I splashed, I split the ground, a shallow fissure that tore from where I stood all the way up to the Hinderspoint line.

If Set Monroe hadn’t run, he would have fallen right on his ass.

He turned around and called me a motherfucker.

Excellent. Getting mad. Getting mad. But he wasn’t mad enough.

“Whatever, chickenshit,” I shouted. “You ain’t shown me nothin’ yet. Come on! Come on!”

Oh, fuck. “Brace, Triss,” I said.

My girl was chanting in Old English, utterly incomprehensible, eyes narrowed behind chunky glasses. You rock it, girl.

As for me, I drew a sigil in the unnatural sand. Nothing fancy. This heart I used to draw for Momma when I was in grade-school, clever boy, a one-stroke heart that incorporated the infinity sign. ‘Cuz Momma, I love you forever.

It surprised me a bit how unimaginative Set Monroe was being. I gave him ice, which I suppose can be considered kinda ho-hum, but at least I did something with it.

Set Monroe answered with fire. Not living fire or fire breathing robots or anything interesting. He just gave us conflagration, a sheet of flames meant to consume, and might have done had we not been strong.

It roared past, around, over us. It charred his quantum dandruff on the ground from pearl to ash. It left Triss trembling all over at how close this shit was coming, But it didn’t touch either one of us.

I stepped out of the protection sigil. I strutted back and forth a couple of times. I looked him straight in the eye and called out, “Weak. Assed. Shit.” Hell, yes, I was goading him. Hell, yes. I had to provoke him into doing something he shouldn’t. Well, you know, besides all this. Something else…

Hexyn was on his knees, watching me with horror.

Couldn’t surrender. Not even for his sake.

“Come on,” I shouted to Set Monroe. “You borin’ me! Come on and show me somethin’!”

“Triss,” I said, “Honey, I would like to apologize in advance for any mayhem that might occur. In retrospect for ever given you an inkling about anything and getting you caught up in this mess. And right now just for everything.”

“Shut up, you goofball. Can you take him?”

That was a very fine question indeed, but how the hell could I know? I shrugged and we walked faster.

And eventually stepped into those angel-shavings again. The world as a Hostess Snowball. Over-sugared coconut with a broken rainbow all in it…

I took a breath, gripped the rock I’d put in my pocket.

We walked out a few yards, then turned to face the little bit of our world that remained. Hinderspoint, Virginia. Maybe it never seemed this way to you, but when I was really, really little, this town was all there was in my mind. No state of Virginia, no United States of America, no North America, no Western Hemisphere, no Earth, no Solar System, no Milky Way, no Multiverse, no Realm of the Lesser Powers, no Realm of the Greater. Like the scholar who existed in that sweet spot in history when it was very possible to know every single thing known about one’s world (though you still had to be exceptional).

There’s positives to both ways of being, I think. When I’m scared, you can guess how small I long for my universe to shrink.

That was the last thing I could allow to happen right now.

There was something Coy used to whisper in my ear a long time ago under certain circumstances, made me tingle all over to hear it: “Play the big magic, Lee. Bring it.”

I could feel Set Monroe coming to the margins of the last of the world, hair on the backs of my arms rising, skin crawling with electricity. “Triss,” I said hurriedly, “you’re my back-up. That rock, your anchor. You think of Benjamin. You think of our town. You think of Coy, Phazma, Andrea, and Jason. The bastard steps foot onto white, you throw a hard spell, just smack the shit out of him with it. Got anything?”

She grinned, then her eyes got big.

Set Monroe was here, Hexyn before him like a hound on all fours.

My girl picked something from the Lord of the Rings: “You shall not pass” which knocked his ass back a good ten yards, both of them skidding back, digging furrows in the opalescence, neither of them quite losing their footing. But it was good, it was good.

Gave me time to get my shit together a little.

All this white had put me in mind of snow and ice. I ranged a wall around them, if so narrow it barely cleared the two of them, built it higher and higher, a tube of ice, an oubliette, one of those medieval dungeons that was just a hole you dropped somebody in. It was probably because of Hexyn that I made it transparent. They were only supposed to see a circle of sky, distant, just a dot at the top.

Instead, we could see each other.

With a nasty grin, Set Monroe jerked back on Hexyn’s chain and yelled something. Next thing, Hexyn had his palms pressed against the ice, straining against it.

Stupid me thought he was trying to shove through.

He’s a demon. He’s very warm and he did melt through.

Hastily, I swiped my hand before me to negate the sigil I had drawn in the air, made the hollow tower of ice vanish. Yes, I was afraid it would fall…but on Hexyn.

Set Monroe laughed at me.

“What?”

“We’re gonna need two small rocks. I know what you’re thinking, but that’s not it. Over there by that tree, but he can’t know what you’re doing, okay? One for you and one for me. Can you do that?”

She squeezed me back. “Watch me work.” The next moment, she’d spasmed in my arms, clapped a hand over her mouth and staggered away toward one of the birch trees the town had voted to line the sidewalks with. They grew out of this metal work grating, like a rayed sun with the tree growing out of its center. Retching, Tress landed at the base of one, threw up.

Have mercy. She’s awfully small to bring up that much. But do you know she brought back what I’d asked for? Palmed one to me, without even a wink.

She leaned her forehead against my chest, murmured, “How’s that suit ya?”

“Just fine. That trick must’ve gotten you out of a lot of gym classes. You with me?”

“Hell, yeah,” she whispered. She wasn’t any less afraid, but she didn’t let it matter.

That left me nothing else to do, did it?

“Set Monroe,” I shouted, turning. “You really think you’re the hotness, don’t you? Think you got it all under control?”

He had been watching with some amusement. “Who’d say any different?”

Hexyn hadn’t moved except to cover his face with his hands.

“I would,” I said. “And you know I’m the one that matters.”

A little smugness seemed to roll off of him. “Dude, you’re not. I’m the one who changed the world.”

“Did you?” I smiled, poked my toe into the solid sidewalk of Hinderspoint, walked over to a shuttered bookstore and rapped my knuckles gently against a brick wall. “You sure? I suspect you can’t even transmute that caddy you’re sitting on. I think this place is something you did not expect at all.”

What a juvenile nerve to strike, but you do what you can do. He jutted out his chin. “So? You transmute it then.”

“I don’t give a damn about the car, but as far as Hinderspoint? I happen to like it. You’re the one with the problem. And I don’t think it counts to be king of the hill if you didn’t have to knock anybody off to get to the top.”

I glanced behind me. Coy looked shocked, not an emotion I’d ever seen from him. I felt the teeniest bit proud to be a part of something that could shake his cool so thoroughly. Even if it might mean the death of me.

He still supported Phazma and Jason, neither of them in any condition for much of anything. Andrea clung to her brother still, shook her head slightly when I looked at her. She wouldn’t be going anywhere, either. I mouthed at Coy to stay here, turned away so as not to give him a chance to argue.

I smiled prettily at Set Monroe. “Little Man, come out into this world you made and see if you can take down someone who can really play. Tell you what, I’ll meet you in ten. Miss Triss?” She fell right on into step beside me, even rested her hand in the crook of my arm when I offered it to her like a gentleman.

We both seemed to be trembling at different but complementary rates which might have been mistaken for a little pep in our step.

I like to think.

A few blocks away, we found them.

Set Monroe sat on the roof of a teal Cadillac, Hexyn crouched on the hood before him, head hanging between his knees, choke collar still around his neck, Set Monroe holding the leash.

Phazma had fallen, lay sprawled on the bricks unconscious. I prayed she was unconscious.

Andrea and Jason sat next to her, both of them distraught. Wild-eyed, Jason tried to pull his hair out while Andrea cried and kept him from succeeding. He’d broken up against the shoals.

From the Cadillac, I heard: “I knew you wouldn’t wuss out, Liam Shaughnessy.”

I gestured at the three on the ground. “Could I have a moment?” So like dirt, but I made myself say it: “Please.”

And yes, it pleased him. Set Monroe swept his arm to indicate the wrecked half of my circle. “Take your time, dude.”

Coy told me to see to Jason while he and Triss knelt over Phazma.

Andrea sobbed at me that it was all my fault.

“I know it, hon, you can bitch-slap me later. Here, let me look…Jason. Jason. Come on, hon.” I whispered in his ear a few things that were real, including his big sister’s love for him.

He took a sharp breath, clapped his palms over his eyes. “He wanted me to break this sigil…he made me try. He knew I studied these kinds of things. How did he know?”

Shit. “Because he has Hexyn. Hexyn knows me; I know you. I’m sorry.”

He broke my heart with crying, apologizing to me, because he didn’t fight like Phazma did, because Set Monroe threatened to kill his sister. “I could’ve helped him destroy everything…”

I knew the feeling. I grabbed Andrea’s hand and she flinched. “Andrea, keep talking to him. Keep him anchored.”

She nodded, but was still hanging on even after I let go. “You fix this, you son-of-a-bitch.”

I pulled away, was relieved to see Phazma sitting up. She sighed when she saw me, but nodded deeply. I’m okay, you’re okay.

It was Coy who told everybody to get on their feet. He stood between Phazma and Jason, a shoulder beneath her left arm, Jason’s right, helping to support them both. Triss held Phazma’s hand. Andrea still clung to her brother.

I stood in front of them. We all faced Set Monroe.

“Nice triage,” he said.

I ignored him, turned and hugged Triss. She jumped a little, surprised. “I need you to do something for me,” I whispered.

The ground felt weirdly smooth and even beneath what turned out to be just a few inches of whatever this fairy-dandruff junk turned out to be. It seemed as if Set Monroe had demolished the majority of the town, plowed it under, then carefully graded the surface to a uniform level.

And my spine felt like it had been replaced by old-fashioned freon. I just stayed cold from the sheer intensity of Set Monroe’s play.

Meanwhile, as Triss and I walked toward the only bit that seemed to be left of the world as we know it, Coy kind of frolicked around us, stirring up clouds of white, rolling around to show his belly, nudging one or the other of us in the ass with his pointy cold nose. Trying to keep Miss Triss entertained and calm. And me. Hell, yeah, I was scared, too.

Good ol’ Coy. What a stupid cosmic joke that I couldn’t call him “My Coy.” Yup, I wanted cake. I wanted to eat it, too. I wanted ice cream on the side, two scoops.

Triss still kept her voice at about a whisper. “How do we even know Set Monroe’s gonna be there at the center of town? Why stay here if he could be anywhere, doing anything?”

“You kidding?” I answered quietly. “That is a place he can’t change. Deep reality, hon. At best, he’s gonna find that majorly irritating.”

“He’ll worry it like a bone,” Coy said, trotting next to her. “Like a bone made of iron.”

Of course, that made me giggle.

He gave his head a shake, ran a little ways ahead.

As we got closer, I began to notice fluctuations in the general atmosphere of chaos…spikes of activity. I had been trying not to think too much about the three who’d gone ahead of us, but now I felt relieved. You can kind of feel the quality of a circle-members’ shaping. Phazma and Andrea…Jason, too, but there was something wrong, and relief plummeted to a knot of fear crumpled in my stomach.

I kept my big mouth shut, but if I knew, Coy certainly did.

Triss, my little newbie, probably couldn’t separate those fluctuations, assuming she could sense them in the first place, from the general feeling of ZOMG! that kept her off-balance.

Finally, we stepped from white-stuff onto brick sidewalk. Coy turned to face us, got up on his hind legs, elongating, blurring, shifting into his man-shape. I know what you’re thinking. Sadly, he reconstituted very much clothed.

He held up a hand, stood frozen, listening. “There’s people still here,” he said. “Not very many. Most of them are hiding.”

I exposed my tattoo again, about ready to make it gone, do my big reveal, but he stopped me by covering it with his hand. It was the first time he’d touched me since he found out where my heart was. “Not yet.” He let go with just the slightest hesitation.

“Jason might be hurt.”

“Brah. You don’t want to engage him yet. Not until you get to your circle.”

Back in this slice of Hinderspoint, I started to wonder how it could matter. Whatever anybody said, no matter my considerable rep, I was still on a certain level of scale untested and untried. Couldn’t say the same for Set Monroe, now, could we? Beyond the boundaries of this very strange yet ordinary place, he had changed the world. Into Cream of Wheat, but still…

We continued on, all of us creeping around like cat-burglars, scanning every intersection as if expecting race-cars instead of traffic. We scuttled across the empty streets, stayed close to the walls.

Our feet in the dead quiet made a scuffling racket that made me wince. Okay, Triss’s and mine. Of course, Coy didn’t make a sound. He moved fluidly, gracefully. I imagined him running down rabbits. I’d never thought to ask before, but now I caught myself wondering which of his aspects he liked the best.

There was a sound. I’ve heard it in real life before, but most people at least would recognize if from the movie and t.v. approximation: the authoritative shucking of a pump-action shotgun.

I threw my hands up, stepping in front of Triss. Coy stepped in front of the both of us.

The Naiad lowered the weapon, smiled her serene smile. I hadn’t realized where we were, my fear making downtown Hinderspoint into some strange place I’d never been to before. Munich, maybe. She stood in front of her ruined coffee shop, in the midst of what I’d brought down upon her, and she behaved as if she was actually happy to see me.

She greeted Coy first, bowing to him pretty deeply, considering who she was. It kind of gave me an idea of where Coy fit into things, you know, in the backstage hierarchy none of us mortals are meant to know about.

I whispered to Triss, “He’s your rockstar, honey.”

“‘Kay, my money’s still on you,” she whispered back.

The Naiad, carrying her shotgun easily in the crook of her arm, muzzle pointed at the ground, approached me, touched my cheek. “Your time at last,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. I guess so. Any advice?”

“Don’t let him beat you,” said with a dainty shrug. She patted my cheek. “He’s waiting for you, you know. He knows that you are coming.”

Aw, hell. So much for stealth.

She turned, kissed Triss on the forehead.

All the benediction we were going to get. I sighed, made an I-told-you-so face at Coy, then lifted my sleeve again.

Sometimes, it just takes a decision. Like: Today, I will be who I am. Follow-up can be a real bitch, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

In the fullness of myself, I don’t need the blood of a Greater Power to transfigure one of my own sigils. This time, I spit on my palm, pressed it against the skin, willed the tattoo that had hidden me gone, and so it came to pass.

Poor Triss jumped when I tilted my head back and yelled: “Comin’ for ya, you little shit!”

My voice bounced off the walls into infinity.

The town was gone. I mean, we could see the center, maybe three miles away, just where it should’ve been. But the rest of it? Replaced by a barren, glittering expanse of…well, not snow. It gave off weird glints of rainbow.

Without letting go of my hand, Triss bent down to run her fingers through the stuff. “It feels…” I think her own voice startled her. The hush was even more profound than what you get during a midnight snowstorm. You know, when there’s no traffic and nobody at all out on the street and all you hear is maybe the wind, and the softness of falling snow against the already fallen… She straightened, pressed her shoulder into my side. “It feels like flower petals,” she whispered. “But it looks like crushed opals or something.”

Lucky for us, the light wasn’t as harsh as it had first seemed. We would have been blinded by the reflections.

I glanced back at the house, saw nothing except for the blue banner. The house had been safer than anybody thought. Interesting. The only reason Set Monroe could break the protection sigils was because I had been there. The way it looked now, though, Jason’s main spell had held. So…Set Monroe could find me, yet not know exactly where I was?

Eh, screw it. I started to coax Triss into heading to exactly where neither of us really wanted to go when I saw a small plume of whiteness in the distance…and getting closer. what the hell, now?

Triss shaded her eyes. “Hey…’zat a dog?”

Squinting, I couldn’t answer her until it got a little closer. “That,” I said, “is a coyote. More specifically, that’s Coy.”

I recognized that brown-gray pelt, that gait, that goofy dog-smile with his tongue lolling out as he ran. The hell?

Finally, he skidded to halt in front of us, panting.

“That’s…is that really you?” Triss asked, holding out the flat of her hand for him to sniff.

“Oh, yeah,” Coy answered, snuffling, gave her palm a friendly lick. “It’s me.”

“Wow…you’re…you’re beautiful.”

Son of a bitch looked ever so pleased. “Thanks, girl. Not everybody appreciates this side of me.”

“For shit’s sake, Coy!” I finally burst out. “What the hell is wrong with you? So, which is it? You trust me? You don’t? What?”

Coy, still smiling, sat back on his haunches, tilted his head to gaze at me. The eyes, unsettling enough, were still the same. “Brah. You are the one who has to clean this mess up, but there’s no reason for you to go in balls out. A diversion seemed like a good idea. Let Jason and the Argonauts go in. Let me go in after, keep the little bastard busy. Then you could sneak on up at your leisure. That was the plan, anyhow. I turned back as soon as I realized you’d knocked down Jason’s wall. Didn’t expect you to get out so fast.”

I jutted a thumb at Triss.

The tongue disappeared into his mouth which closed with a snap, and he pulled back his head to gaze at my girl. After a moment, he said, “Welcome to the Game, player.”

“Thanks,” said Triss. She swallowed, took in the changed world, and I knew what she was thinking before she said it. “Everybody…everybody’s gone, aren’t they. He made ‘em disappear?”

“Haven’t seen anyone. Don’t smell anyone,” Coy answered quietly. “Maybe toward the center of town…I dunno. Maybe the people are protected there.”

Benjamin and their apartment, turned to opal flowers…

“We can fix it?” Her voice was flat. The pleading was in her eyes.

I finally understood why Coy had been so impatient with me not wanting to be “that guy” anymore. That Guy? That Guy had: balls, verve, talent, imagination, and will. Oh, That Guy had been an arrogant little shit, but he could do what had to be done.

“We can fix it,” I told her. “Everything as it should be, Missy, and then some.”

Coy was grinning again.

I pushed up my sleeve, looked at my little tattoo of negation, fought down the impulse to obliterate it right now. That Guy likes the big entrance. Let the knuckleheads know he’s coming.

Not yet, honey, not yet. We’ll make it big. We’ll make it loud. But only when the time is right.