“Alchemists can raise the dead,” says Dodger suddenly.
“Yes,” says Erin. She doesn’t say any of the other things, the things about the costs of such an action, the reasons most people would never dream of doing such a thing. Sometimes when the facts speak for themselves, they do so by telling blatant, beautiful lies. “But if you want to be able to make an alchemist do what you want, you need to manifest. You need to know where we are.”
Dodger looks at her flatly before she reaches across the table and grabs the salt and pepper shakers, removes their lids, and dumps their contents onto the Formica, stirring the mess with her fingers until it has been inextricably mingled. (The resulting blend looks distressingly like the coal dust and ground silver Leigh favors. Dodger doesn’t know this. Erin does, and she shivers.)
“We need to determine the properties of the set in order to define the quadrants,” says Dodger. “You said this is either water or fire, correct?”
“Yes,” says Erin.
“Assigning values to the four possibilities, with water standing as negative two and fire standing at positive two, we begin by subtracting air and earth from each . . .” Dodger’s fingers continue to move as she speaks, drawing lines and equations through the mess she’s made, sinking deeper and deeper into her own little world.
The air around their booth is getting colder. What Dodger is doing isn’t math in the truest sense of the word, and at the same time, it’s a deeper, truer arithmetic than she’s done in years. It is the instinctive math of children weighing parental disapproval against the rapidly setting sun, and the heartbroken math of sailors measuring the holes in their boat against the distance to the shore. This is the math that moves the universe, the measure and countermeasure that dances over and around the numbers. Dodger holds this kind of math in her bones, and her fingers dance through the blend of vegetable and mineral scattered in front of her, separating them from one another with almost thoughtless swipes. Bit by bit, the figures she is pulling from the bone and char blending are becoming paler, losing the charcoal tint of the pepper.
When she’s done, she has separated the salt and the pepper. It should have been impossible. She doesn’t even appear to realize it’s happened. Dodger taps the table beneath her last line of incomprehensible figures and says, “Water. That’s why we’re having this drought, or part of it. Whatever Baker’s enemies—I can’t believe I’m saying this—whatever Baker’s enemies did to unmake her work, it’s still going on, and part of it is trying to deny the quadrants their essential natures. So you take as much of the water away from the place that’s supposed to represent water in the equation as you can, and hope eventually it gets so unbalanced that it can’t hold together anymore.”
“Makes sense,” says Erin. “Baker purified the elements when she divided them. She tied each of them to a concrete anchor point, but nothing in nature wants to be pure for long. If someone wanted to destroy the Impossible City, they’d begin by destabilizing the elements. That’s what Baum was trying to do, with his mixed and muddled Oz. The old bastard.”
“I don’t care about your dead alchemists and their stupid plans,” says Dodger. She stands. This time, no one stops her. “We’re in the element of water, and if you can give me the dimensions of its borders and the alchemical flux that attends them, I can lead you straight to whatever serves as its center. Now can we go?”
“There’s just one more thing we have to do first,” says Erin.
“What?” demands Dodger.
Erin smiles implacably. “I have to pay the check.”
Even under the circumstances, Roger can’t keep from laughing.
* * *
They walk the mile and a half to the BART station, through abandoned business parks and silent residential neighborhoods. Erin takes the lead at first, with Roger behind her and Dodger bringing up the rear. Dodger is muttering to herself, taking quick, tight looks around, like she’s measuring things. Roger keeps looking back at Dodger, reassuring himself that she hasn’t run away. Finally, he turns his face forward and closes his eyes.
“Hey, Dodge.”
The sound of Roger’s voice echoing in her skull is enough to make her jump. He’s still walking. She narrows her eyes. “You’re going to trip and fall.”
“I’m not.” Being this close to his body while he’s in her head gives his