had a USB drive that he’d brought home from the Ten Percent Project office, which was the size of two peas—but when he texted Patricia, she said it couldn’t be something he’d borrowed. She needed something he owned himself, free and clear. That ruled out the electronic components and tools littering his desk and shelves, which were all technically on loan from Milton.
Laurence rummaged through his desk. Pencils, pens … that little figurine of Mega Man was pretty tiny, move that to the top of the list. He started a pile, and rummaged through drawers and boxes and closet shelves, trying not to wake Isobel. And then, all at once, he knew.
“Oh no,” he said aloud. “Not that. No no no. Fuck. Fuck no.” He couldn’t breathe. Like an asthma attack, or something. All of the joy he’d felt earlier slipped away as if it had never been there, and he felt instead like he’d been kicked in the solar plexus with a sharp steel toe.
He stayed up most of the rest of the night, searching and searching. But he never found anything that counted as a real possession and was smaller than his grandmother’s ring.
He brought it to Patricia the next morning, eyes sore from lack of sleep. “This is the only thing I have of my grandmother’s,” he told her. “She gave it to me when she was dying.”
“I’m sorry,” Patricia said. She stood in the doorway of her apartment building, in a bathrobe. Maybe he’d woken her, but he doubted it.
“She said it was her mother’s, and she wanted to pass it down to a granddaughter, but I was her only grandchild,” Laurence said. “She wanted me to give it to whoever I married, and then to our daughter, if we had one.”
“I’m really sorry,” Patricia said.
“I was going to give it to Serafina,” Laurence said. “As an engagement ring. I promised my grandma I would give it to my bride.”
Patricia didn’t say anything, just stared in her purple robe. Her hair was a pile of tangles.
“I really have to give it to you? We can’t just call it quits?”
“You really have to. Or your friend might get sucked back into that place. Or you might, instead.” When she put it like that, the ring was a pretty small price to pay.
“You knew it was going to be this.” He handed it to her, still in its tiny, tiny velvet box. Actually, with the box, it was almost bigger than a toy car he owned. But not quite.
“I knew it would be something like this.” Patricia put the ring into the pocket of her robe, where it barely made a lump. “Or the spell wouldn’t have worked.”
“Why couldn’t it just be something like, I have to stand on one foot for an hour? Why does it have to be my most valued possession, and the linchpin of my courting strategy? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Do you want to come in and have some toaster waffles?” Patricia stepped back and held the door open. “I can’t talk about this out here, in the open.”
The toaster waffles failed to materialize, but instead she had locally made organic Pop-Tarts, which were probably better. They sat on the gray lumpy sofa, where Deedee and the other roommate had been watching Jersey Shore every other time Laurence had been there. Patricia kept glancing over toward the hallway for any signs they were stirring or listening in to this conversation.
“So I might have mentioned there are two kinds of magic.” Patricia handed Laurence a blueberry pastry and a mug of English Breakfast.
“Good and bad, I’m guessing,” said Laurence, not quite having his mouth full. Patricia’s bathrobe was splayed out on the sofa next to him, and he wondered if he could grab the ring while she wasn’t looking. But then he remembered the part about someone getting pulled back into the nightmare dimension.
“No, though that’s a common misconception. There’s Healer magic and Trickster magic. Back in the day, many people believed Healer magic was good and Trickster magic was evil—but Healers can be judgmental control freaks, and Tricksters can be super-compassionate and basically save your life.”
“Like last night,” Laurence said.
Patricia nodded. “The Healer and Trickster schools formed over hundreds of years, out of lots of local traditions from all over the world. And there was a time, in the 1830s, when the two groups went to war. The world could have been torn apart. But there was this woman named Hortense Walker, who