Dad left. He did most of the cooking. The twins used to eat scrambled eggs for breakfast that were orange from hot sauce, hotter than I could eat. Grace brand. Tiny little hole in the bottle, much smaller than a Tabasco hole, because you sure as hell did not want more than a couple drops in your food. Dad, he’d mash whole peppers into his curry and we all had to eat it or go hungry. And then when Mom started doing most of the cooking, it was all salt, no pepper. She never liked things as hot as he did.”
“So your capsaicin tolerance went way down; interesting. The kids too, I bet.”
“Yeah. They can’t even eat the red sauce that comes with Mexi-Fries at Taco Time now.”
She laughed out loud, the colour returning to her face. “I love that sauce. I wish they sold that sauce in bottles.”
“You’d do shots of that sauce.”
“I’d drink that sauce over ice like a highball.”
“You’re the grossest thing in the world.”
It was good to see her smile again. Might be the last one I’d see for a while. She finished her sandwich and wiped her fingers slowly, one by one, with a napkin, not looking at me. Then she said, “You guys should leave town.”
“That came out of left field.”
“Only if you weren’t paying attention. Drozanoth knows where you work now; why wouldn’t it know where you live? It might escalate, since you claim you refused its offer. They don’t like to be refused.”
“I did refuse it!” I said, startled. I felt as if she’d slapped me. “What, did you think I’d lie about that? To... come over here, grab the reactor, and run? Jesus Christ, Johnny. What do you think of me?”
“I think you’re in danger,” she said, as if I’d said nothing at all. “Think about it for a second, Nicky. You’re alive. Why? Because if it can’t fuck me up, because I’m the only one who knows how to make the reactor, then maybe it can apply strategic pressure to someone else. Someone close to me.”
I stared at her. Strategic pressure? Did that mean what it sounded like?
“It’ll get stronger, it’ll summon more magic to use,” she said. “And your chance to get away will get slimmer and slimmer. Imagine being in an empty room and being asked to write a novel. You can’t, of course. But supposing paper starts to blow in under the door, suppose it starts building up, supposing one day you get a pen...”
“So right now, it’s in the room, it’s... getting enough paper to... do that?”
“Yes. There’s still a chance, there might be a chance, to get away—and if you’re far enough away, it might not be able to find all of you right away. It might decide to save its energy and turn its attention entirely back to me. You’d be safe.”
“Strategic pressure,” I said, through a slowly closing throat. I couldn’t believe I had just dismissed Them as incompetent mobsters. “Using me as leverage against you, because it knows we’re friends. And since I said no, then...”
“Using your family as leverage against you. They’re not rocket scientists, Nicky—they’re brutal and crude and not very bright—but they understand pain. They know it well, after all this time.”
They understand pain. I’d known that from the start. How? Everything will be taken from you was a promise, not a prophecy. “All right,” I said. “I’ll... I’ll go talk to Mom about it.”
“I can help. I can get Rutger to help. We can find somewhere to hide all of you.”
I nodded, not really paying attention. Things were moving too quickly for me to keep up with. The kids were still in school, could we pull them out with a week left? Mom’s job, who would cover her shifts? If I missed work, Gino would be as much of a dick about it as possible, and I would lose my job. How long would we need to hide? Who would check the mail, who would look after the lawn? The city would cite us for weeds. They’d done that before. The neighbours would call bylaw on you. Maybe Mrs. Li could watch the place…unless that put her at risk too...
“If we called the police,” I said slowly, “and said that... you had a stalker, and left all the magic and gods out of it...”
“They can’t do anything.”
“How do you know?”
“What do you think they would do?”
“Well, they... I...” I stuttered into silence, feeling like an idiot. Of course