Aldo Giovanni Novalli
The letters grew blurry as she looked at them, and Marci closed her eyes. “Stop it,” she hissed, covering her face with her hands. “Don’t cry. Don’t you dare…”
But there was no stopping it, not this time. She’d held on for so long, but the sight of her father’s ashes sealed up by some government mortician and mailed to her because she was too broke and scared to go back to Las Vegas for an actual funeral was the very last straw. She couldn’t fight it if she tried, so she didn’t. She just slumped over, sliding down the cold metal wall of pay-by-delivery mailboxes as she started to cry in big, ugly sobs.
She cried for her father, who’d deserved so much better than to be shot and left in the desert like trash. She cried because Bixby was already dead, and she couldn’t kill him again. She cried because she’d never get to tell her daddy she’d met a dragon, or show him the DFZ. He’d always wanted to come here, and now he had. In a box. Not even a proper urn, but a stupid cardboard box. She hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye.
That set Marci off all over again. Behind her, she heard the soft scrape of footsteps as other people came in to check their mail only to turn around again when they saw the crazy lady sobbing over a package, but mortifying as it was, she couldn’t stop. All the emotions and fears and regrets she’d been putting off since the night she’d fled her house were finally coming due, and she had no choice but to keep going until, at last, she’d cried herself dry.
When she looked up again, she was sitting on the floor. The narrow aisles of mailboxes were deathly silent around her, probably because she’d scared off all the other customers. That was fine with her. Marci had always hated crying, but crying in front of others was the worst. Ironic, too, because her father had always encouraged her to cry. He’d claimed that tears were how you let go of the things that hurt too much to keep, but Marci didn’t feel like she’d let go of anything. She was still miserable, and her father was still dead, along with everything he’d wanted for her. She’d dropped out of school, first because she was running from Bixby, and then because working with a dragon in the DFZ had been so much more appealing than going home to Vegas where she’d be constantly reminded of her dad. She’d rationalized the situation by telling herself that if she just stuck with Julius, she was bound to meet a dragon who could teach her ten times what her professors knew. Then, tonight, she had, and she’d screwed that up, too.
That set her off all over again. But just as Marci was curling back into a ball for sobs round two, something cold and soft bumped into her back.
Her head snapped up in alarm, and she looked over just in time to see Ghost jump through the wall of boxes. He landed on the cement floor beside her, giving his fluffy, semi-transparent body a shake before turning to greet her with a slow blink of his glowing blue eyes.
It was a sign of just how miserable her life had become that this scrap of affection from her undead cat actually made Marci feel better. “Hello to you, too,” she croaked, holding out her hand. “Where have you been?”
Ghost meowed silently, bumping his head against her hand. Marci smiled back, ignoring the grave-like chill of his fur as she scratched behind his ears. “You know, for a bound spirit, you sure do vanish a lot. Where do you go, anyway? Undead mouse hunting?”
Instead of answering, Ghost butted his head demandingly against her scratching hand, causing his transparent ears to pass right through her fingers. A few weeks ago, that would have creeped her out. Now, Marci thought it was kind of cute.
“Well, wherever you went, I’m glad your day seems to have gone better than mine,” she said sadly. “Not that that would be hard. I’m pretty sure you didn’t humiliate yourself in front of the most powerful dragon in the Americas.” He bumped her hand again, and Marci obediently scratched harder, closing her eyes against the institutional white glare of the post office’s high-efficiency halogen lamps. “Why am I such an idiot, Ghost?”
It was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but the semi-transparent cat purred in her mind.
Human.
“Tell me about it,” she grumbled, pulling her cold-stiffened fingers back to tap on the cardboard box containing all that was left of her dad. “I’m just full of reminders of my mortality today. It’s not like I mind being human, but…I wish they wouldn’t treat me like I was worthless, you know? It’s not our fault we die, or that we lost all our knowledge of magic. Therewasno magic for a thousand years. Now that it’s back, we’re having to reinvent everything from scratch, and it’s so freaking pointless. Look at my dad. He was part of the first generation of mages, and they had no idea what they were doing. There was no one to teach them, and that’s just so stupid when you think about the fact that there areimmortal creatureswaddling around who could explain everything if they could stop looking down their snouts for three seconds and answer some basic questions!”
Her hands were clenched into fists by the time she finished. She hadn’t even realized how angry she was about this until it all came spilling out. The more she thought about it, though, the angrier she got.
“It’s just so wasteful!” she cried. “My Theoretical Thaumaturgy professor back at UNLV was the best in his field. Not because he was anything special, but becausethere was no one else. We’ve only had magic for sixty years. That’s not enough time to develop any sort of real understanding. We still don’t know why magic works or where it comes from, we don’t even know why there are spirits. Maybe we did once, but if that information existed, it’s long gone. Now we’re back to fumbling around in the dark for whatever we can find, and all the spirits and dragons are sitting around watching us with their fingers on the light switch, but they won’t flip it on because they’re all a bunch of stingy, egotisticalbastards!”
She turned to give Ghost anAm I right?look, but the cat was cleaning his paws, utterly uninterested.
Marci flopped back against the wall of PO boxes with a sigh. Served her right for ranting at a cat, she guessed, but it had still felt good. Anything was better than crying like a baby over things she couldn’t change.
“I just wish I could make them talk,” she said wistfully. “There are legends of ancient wizards who shot dragons out of the skies like clay pigeons, but there’s no evidence that the pre-drought mages were more powerful than us. The only difference between then and now is knowledge. If we got that again, not even Bethesda the Heartstriker could look down on us.”
Nowtherewas a satisfying thought. Too bad it was a pipe dream. If there was one thing the immortals of the world seemed to actually agree on, it was that humans should be kept in the dark. Marci supposed that made sense when you considered the whole ‘shooting dragons out of the skies like skeet’ thing, but it still sucked. But what could she do? Nothing. For all she knew, Bethesda wasn’t even bringing Julius back.
“Come on,” she said, pushing herself up. “Other people need to use their boxes, and I think I’ve done enough crying for one night. I need to get Daddy home and into a proper urn.”
She tucked the cardboard box containing her father into her shoulder bag and started down the hall. But when she looked back to make sure Ghost was following, that cat was just sitting there, staring at her with unblinking eyes.
Want to know?
“Excuse me?”
Magic,he said in her mind.Power.Do you want it?
Marci shifted uneasily. That was one of the most complete sentences she’d ever heard Ghost speak, which would have been great if it hadn’t sounded so much like a deal with the devil. “Of course I want to know about magic,” she said cautiously. “And who doesn’t want power? But—”
I have,Ghost said casually.Can share.
Okay, now he was just making fun of her. “Likely story. We’re directly connected, remember? If you had power, I think I’d know.”
Can share.Ghost said again, ignoring her sarcasm.Help me.
