The Last Smile in Sunder City (The Fetch Phillips Archives #1) - Luke Arnold Page 0,72
I asked. “Practicing?”
“Testing,” she replied.
“For what?”
“To see if it works.” I looked up at her with a more condescending look than I’d meant to. “What, don’t you approve?”
“Come on. He doesn’t really think one of the spells might still work, does he?”
“What if it does?” It was hard to tell if she was serious.
“It’s gone.”
“Astute observation, Fetch. Perhaps we should call the papers.”
She left me to my drink, deciding that the Wizard would provide more uplifting conversation. I opened up the envelope and tipped Rye’s mail out in front of me. The first papers were water damaged, but it didn’t seem to matter. They were just more editions of the same mundane newsletters I’d seen the first time. I gave each one a brief read, not sure what I was looking for, but just hoping for something that wasn’t a recipe or an op-ed about appreciating the old times.
I could see why Rye, from what I knew of him, didn’t connect with these voices. They were all desperately clinging to the past, rehashing old stories and remembering old times, but without any real mention of what comes next. I flipped through page after page of beautifully printed stories that served no more purpose than going over the good old days. It annoyed me, for some reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I downed my drink and signaled Eileen for another.
“I have something else for you,” she said as she poured. “It’s not much, but it’s something.”
“Yeah?”
“I told you I was doing a stock-take. Clearing out all the old volumes that we don’t need any more. Well, we’re missing a lot of stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Just books. But, a lot of Edmund’s favorites. They’re not up in his room and they’re not on the shelves. I mean, plenty of books go missing so it’s not that crazy, but it’s giving me hope. Maybe he’s still out there, you know. Eating up everything while he still can.”
She was right, it wasn’t much. I tried to draw something from it but my eyes kept falling back to the Wizard, who still hadn’t stopped his foolish game. He was annoying me too.
“What would you do?” I asked Eileen.
“What?”
“If it came back?”
She smiled and poured herself a drink. I must have finally made the conversation interesting enough.
“I’d get back to the books and learn how to heal. Witches always made good medics. I didn’t think I had the stomach for it when I was younger but now, after everything I’ve seen, I don’t think I’d have a problem with a bit of blood and bone.”
My eyes were locked on the Wizard’s fingertips, tracing lines in useless space. A long, intricate letter to no one.
“You think you’d be happy? If it happened?”
“Oh sure,” she said. “I’m not exactly wailing in the streets at the moment but it’s not a bad thought. Which is why I like to believe that there’s a chance.”
I sipped at my second glass, reminding myself not to get carried away.
“But it wouldn’t make it back the way it was,” I said, throwing a dismissive gesture towards the other end of the bar. “Old Boney there might be able to make a ball of fire and you might study your medicine but you can’t stuff the life back into things that lost it. Even if we started up the fires and buried our sins and lifted the Angels off the streets and put the Dragons in the sky, too many lights have been out for too long. I don’t care how much horseshit and optimism you rub together, nothing’s going to bring that spark back.”
She hadn’t touched her drink. She hadn’t moved. She was looking down at me from across the bar and everything cheeky and happy-to-see-me had gone.
“We don’t go back, Fetch. Nobody goes back. But where are you going to be when this world wakes up one morning and is ready to move on?”
Where would I be? I used to know that answer: in a mansion on a hill waiting for a miracle. But Baxter was about to put a bulldozer through that dream, so where would that leave me?
I didn’t have an answer. She didn’t wait for one. She went over to the Wizard and didn’t look back.
I pushed my whiskey away and threw some coins beside it. I stuffed some of the newsletters back in the envelope but stopped when I saw a thin, yellowed piece of paper that was different to the rest.