Chương 34: Bk 1 Ch 31: Slip

The one thing I'm certain about with Mr. Fletcher is that I need to make it look like an accident, one so convincing that no one will even think to dig deeper. Killing an informant in my own gang is one thing, even if I did it in an intentionally provocative way. Killing a true civilian, especially a rich civilian, is something else entirely, and that's not even considering the risk of revealing the exact secret I'm trying to keep hidden. Thankfully, I should have some time.

Elliot's charity is still in the very preliminary stages, with plenty of bureaucracy to get through before he can so much as buy a building. He'll be working at the Gottfried Clinic for another few months at least, so hopefully Mr. Fletcher won't be in any particular hurry. Part of me wants to hide the whole thing from Elliot, but hiding something like that has too much risk of blowing up in my face, and it wouldn't be fair to him even if I got away with it. I'll just have to do my best to convince him that Mr.

Fletcher needs to be dealt with in a permanent fashion. We've got another sparring session planned in a couple of days where I'll be able to talk to him. The sparring session itself is a bigger risk than I realized, but letting him know I want to cancel it on short notice would be an even bigger risk. Even if he's being watched, all they'll know is that he's sneaking out of his house at night and coming back a couple of hours later. Given that Mr.

Fletcher apparently already knows he's partying, that shouldn't arouse any extra suspicion. Still, it'll probably be the last one we have for a while. We meet at the usual place Monday night, and I fly us out of town. Anja's here too, of course, but I suspect that's going to be the opposite of a problem. As soon as we land, I say, "Listen, something's come up that you guys need to know about…" Their reactions are pretty much as I expect.

Elliot is scared and a little angry, but not enough to be happy about me killing the private investigator. Anja, on the other hand… Well, she does her best to work up some moral outrage, but it's obvious her heart's not really in it. Even if both of them still have some issues with their self-worth, Anja especially is very protective of Elliot, much more than she is of herself. She's absolutely furious that Mr. Fletcher is still trying to screw him over.

"What d'you think I should do?" asks Elliot once I've finished explaining everything.

"I should probably, like, figure out who's spying on me and fire them, right?"

"Actually, I probably wouldn't. Or, at least, I wouldn't fire them, finding out who they are could still be useful. Right now, though, you want to avoid tipping Mr. Fletcher off that you're onto him."

"I mean, I guess that makes sense, yeah. If he knows we know, that'd make it harder to, uh, steal back whatever evidence he's already got or something?" I sigh.

"Honestly? Stealing back the evidence is going to be nearly impossible. I wouldn't know where to start looking, or even what I'm actually looking for. The only way to be sure you got it all would be to interrogate him personally, or maybe one of his top people, and that's kind of the opposite of subtle."

"So… What, then?" I consider him silently for a few seconds, then say, "I want to ask you to let me handle it."

"Let you handle it?" he asks.

"You mean… kill him."

"Yeah."

"I… No. No, I don't want to do that even if he's blackmailing me. And anyway, would that even solve the problem? Wouldn't the evidence still be there?"

"It would. But the fact that he's trying to get more means that whatever he's got, he doesn't think it's good enough. Between him dying and you leaving, the clinic would almost certainly fall apart. There wouldn't be anyone in a position to use it, or continue the scheme. There's still a risk of someone stumbling on it by random chance, but, well… Unless he's actually got it labeled as 'Plan to Blackmail Apollo,' they probably wouldn't even realize what they were looking at."

"You think ABRA wouldn't get involved anyway if you just murdered him?"

"Oh, they absolutely would. That's why he needs to have an accident. A very convincing accident. For that, I need to learn a lot more about him. And my best connection to him right now is you. So it's your decision. I can't do it without your help."

"... There's got to be an alternative," says Elliot, crossing his arms and frowning.

"There's really only one," I say.

"Deny him his blackmail material by fessing up to ABRA yourself. They probably wouldn't take your talisman over it. But they would definitely have questions. They'd want to know who you got the original seeds from, where you grew it, who baked the brownies, that kind of thing. And you'd have to convince them it was just some friends you don't want to name cause you don't want to get them in trouble, and it had nothing to do with any gang, because that's something they actually would take your talisman for.

Is that something you think you can do? Knowing what the consequences will be if you don't pull it off perfectly, not just for you, but for us as well?" Elliot sighs and looks away.

"Look, I- Is it really my decision? Cause whenever you try and talk me into something, I pretty much always end up just going along with it in the end. And yeah, I know you're usually right about stuff and I'm usually glad I did whatever you said, but… I don't want to be glad I helped kill someone." I don't answer him immediately. Instead, it's Anja who responds.

"Look, Elliot… I don't exactly love the way Gabby does things a lot of the time. Sometimes… Sometimes I still feel like I'm betraying Eric by being friends with her, even if by the end, he'd become someone I would've despised if he hadn't been my brother. But Firestorm? I wish I could bring him back to life, just so I could kill him myself. Maybe Mr. Fletcher isn't quite that bad, but he's still a greedy piece of shit. He's still trying to abuse you and exploit you. So don't you dare turn yourself in for his sake.

If I could think of a better way to deal with him, then yeah, I'd tell you to do that instead. But you already gave him a second chance, and he used it to immediately stab you in the back. He chose to do that, no one forced him. So fuck him. I don't give a shit what happens to him, as long as you're safe. Just… Maybe it makes me a hypocrite, but just think of yourself for once, Elliot. Please." No matter how proud of Anja I am right now, I keep even the smallest hint of a smile off my face.

This is a serious moment, and it deserves to be treated seriously. Elliot slowly wilts as he listens to her, and he's silent for several seconds.

"I just… wish the world were a better place," he says eventually. I consider for a moment, then say, "Do you know what absolute zero is?" He shakes his head.

"It's the coldest temperature anything can ever be, uh, negative 273 degrees Celsius, I think. I don't remember what it is in Fahrenheit. See, the only way to cool something down is to put it next to something else that's even colder. But there's nothing below absolute zero, so once you're there, everything you could put it next to is hotter. Violence is kinda like that. If everyone was absolutely pacifist, the first guy willing to use violence to get what he wanted would just conquer everything.

The only way to stop violence is with violence. You can make the world a better place, but you can't make it perfectly peaceful, not as long as there are still humans in it. You'll always need at least the threat of violence to keep them in line." Elliot chews on that for a minute, then lets out an irritated huff.

"Next time, I should just bring Emily along and let her argue with you instead." I snort.

"She can't help unless you want to take the whole package, sorry. Even if the version of God Emily believes in isn't violent, he's still an irresistible force. Maybe the world would be a better place if it was a law of the universe that violence always ultimately fails. But the only higher power I've ever met seems to think violence is quality entertainment. I… respect Emily's commitment to her principles.

If she were in your shoes, I'm sure she wouldn't ever agree to kill anyone no matter what it cost her, or me, or Anja, or anyone else. She'd trust that as long as she did the right thing, everything would work out in the end. She would've been one of the martyrs who willingly walked to their execution and used their last breath to forgive the executioner. I admire that, even if I think she's wrong. But you shouldn't try and copy her unless you're willing to do the same thing.

Otherwise, it's not commitment, it's just naivety." Again, he's quiet for a while. Then he sighs.

"Yeah. I guess you're right again. Maybe if it was just me… But even then, if I get my talisman taken, that'd mean I couldn't heal people anymore, so I guess that'd kind of be selfish too. I dunno. It feels like if there's any rule that should just be simple and easy, it's 'don't kill people,' but somehow even that's complicated now. I…" He trails off and shakes his head.

"Alright. What d'you need to know about Mr. Fletcher?" I don't make any comment on my victory, either to gloat or apologize. I just get straight to business.

"Does he drink, or have any other vices? Does he have any kind of outdoor hobbies, skiing or boating or anything like that? What kind of vacations does he like to take?" Elliot frowns.

"Um… I know my parents gave him a real expensive bottle of whiskey once, and he seemed to like that, so I guess he probably drinks sometimes? I don't think he's an alcoholic or anything, though. His only outdoor hobby is golf, as far as I know. Uh… He's got a vacation house somewhere in Hawaii, he usually spends at least a few weeks a year out there, so maybe he's got a boat there too? I dunno, he doesn't really tell me about that kind of thing.

He also goes to, like, conferences and stuff a couple times a year, but not nearly as often as my parents, I dunno when the next one would be." That's already useful. An accident all the way over in Hawaii would be vastly less suspicious than one here.

"What about the people around him? Is he married, children? Do you know which of his employees he might bring into his little conspiracy? Don't worry, I'm not gonna kill any of them," I quickly clarify.

"Too suspicious, even if I wanted to. Just trying to paint a picture."

"He's got family, yeah, I think his oldest kid is like… maybe eight or nine?" He shrugs.

"Might be older now, I only met them once. Employees… The head of security at the clinic is a guy named Clive Johnson, most of the guys who always drive me around and stuff report to him. I think he's sort of, you know, Mr. Fletcher's general problem-solver. If anyone else is involved, it's definitely him." I nod thoughtfully.

"Alright. That's a good start. For now, I would just play it safe. Be extra careful not to do anything or say anything incriminating at home, there's a chance he could have you bugged. If he makes his move sooner than I'm expecting, just play along, and play for time. Tell him you can't just cancel things abruptly cause it'll make ABRA suspicious, you need to lose interest slowly as you run into problems. Aside from that, just do your best not to act any different than normal."

"Right," he agrees, a little unenthusiastically. Anja steps over and gives him a hug.

"I'm sorry. I know you don't like any of this. Try… Try not to beat yourself up over it, okay? You're still a good person. Way better than Mr. Fletcher. Don't forget that all of this is his fault, not yours."

"... Yeah, alright. I'll do my best."

"Do you still wanna spar after this?" I ask after a moment. He thinks for a little while, then nods decisively.

"Yeah. It'd feel kind of dishonest not to. If I'm gonna do this, I shouldn't pretend like I'm never okay with violence." Now I let myself smile.

"Good attitude."

"Um… Before we get started, I wanna try and see if I can help Elliot fly again," says Anja.

"Alright, sure," says Elliot, shrugging. It's something she's been trying off and on for a little while, now. Her clones can carry Elliot just fine, but it's slow and awkward, not really something you'd want to try against anyone who can fly themselves or who has any kind of ranged attack. She feels like there's a more effective way to do it, and when it comes to magic, that kind of intuition is usually correct. She summons a clone, winged as usual.

"Since I can make my clones selectively intangible, I wanna see if I can, uh, basically put you inside it, kind of like armor."

"R-Right, that makes sense," says Elliot, blushing slightly. I snicker quietly. The clone steps towards Elliot, and then phases through him so they overlap. It's similar to how Anja flies herself, keeping a clone perfectly overlapped with her own body so only the wings stick out. The problem is, the clones are shaped like Anja, and Elliot is not shaped like Anja. After a few seconds, she frowns.

"I can't make it tangible again. I think it can't, like, intersect your body at all, or else your magic resists it. I wanna see if I can reshape it so it fits better, hold still for a minute, okay?" He nods. For a minute, nothing happens except Anja muttering to herself with her arms crossed.

"You might want to try a different approach," I say eventually.

"Are you sure there's a way to make this work?"

"I mean, I'm not sure, but it feels like there should be," she says.

"Then you're probably thinking about it wrong somehow. If you can give your clones wings, then there has to be other ways you can change them as well."

"I feel like there is, but I still haven't figured out a way to summon anything else."

"Maybe it's a matter of function?" I suggest.

"You gave your clones wings specifically so you'd be able to fly. Maybe any changes have to be for a specific purpose?"

"That's… Maybe? I don't think that's quite right, but…" She trails off, muttering to herself again.

"Do you… remember if Arcturus said anything about your magic, back when you first got it?" asks Elliot hesitantly. She thinks for a moment.

"He didn't really say that much, I think Virgo got bored of me pretty quick to be honest. I wasn't… really in a good place to be asking questions, either. But… I think he called them spirits, instead of clones? I just always thought of them as clones, cause that's kind of what they are."

"Spirits," I repeat, frowning thoughtfully. It's a bit of a vague word; unlike gravity, for example, spirits aren't something that actually exist, or at least not without magic. In this case, though, it does seem to mean something specific, no doubt something to do with how Anja herself thinks of the concept.

"What kind of spirits?"

"Dunno," says Anja, shrugging.

"Warrior spirits, I guess? That's what Valkyries are associated with." I hesitate for a moment.

"Do you think… it has something to do with the spirits of the dead?"

"No," she says, shaking her head.

"I… thought of that myself, but it didn't really go anywhere." I nod.

"Well, maybe take a step back, then. If you're sure your, uh, your spirits can help other people fly as well, then maybe they're not warrior spirits first and foremost."

"I dunno," she says again.

"Like, I don't call them clones just cause they look like me. As far as I can tell, they do whatever I would do in their place. Or, at least, I've never had one do something I didn't want it to do, but I've never felt like I'm directly controlling them, either. I can send them away, they'll keep doing whatever I would do even if I'm not with them."

"What about your wings, though?" I ask.

"You control your own flight, don't you?"

"I guess? It's kind of hard to explain. I can't actually, like, feel the wings or anything, there's no real feedback, but they still do what I want. I just kind of figured that, like, if the clone is in the exact same position as me, then wherever I want to go is also where it wants to go."

"Well, if the goal is to let other people fly, you need your spirits to act like they would instead, right? Otherwise, you're still basically just carrying them."

"... Yeah, that makes sense, I guess. But I don't know how to change the way my, uh, my spirits act, either."

"Maybe you need to stop thinking of them like your spirits?" suggests Elliot.

"Like, instead of trying to change them, give them away somehow?"

"How am I supposed to…" She trails off, once again frowning in thought. Eventually, she mutters, "Maybe… Maybe, like, guardian spirits?" The clone vanishes. Elliot jerks in surprise and says, "Woah, holy shit."

"What, what happened?" asks Anja.

"I'm not sure what I just did." Instead of answering, a faint blue glow surrounds Elliot, and wings sprout from his back, exactly like when Anja does it. He raises his hand and examines it for a moment, then gives his wings an experimental flap and rises a few feet into the air.

"Holy shit!" he says again, laughing, and starts flying in a wide circle without any apparent difficulty. He lands, and the wings vanish, the reappear again a second later.

"It's like… It's like my magic, except it's not my magic. I think you, like, gave me a little piece of your magic somehow."

"... Oh. Huh. I think you're right, cause I can tell the- the spirit is still there, but it feels… different somehow?" Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"Shit, wait, hang on," I say.

"This could be big. Anja, can you drop your transformation? Actually, Elliot too?"

"Um, sure, alright," says Anja. Both of them do. Elliot's wings don't vanish.

"Wait, what? How are they still there?" He makes them vanish and reappear a couple more times.

"I dunno, but I've still got whatever you gave me."

"Anja, your spirits usually last until you dismiss them, you drop your transformation, or they're destroyed, right?" I ask.

"Yeah. You think it might be permanent, until I take it back?"

"I do. And… I think you might be able to give bits of your magic to regular humans, as well."

"That's, uh… That's a big deal, right?"

"Yeah. That's a big deal," I say dryly. I can only think of a single magical capable of empowering regular humans off the top of my head: Machiavelli, the boss of the Chicago Outfit, one of the largest and most powerful gangs in the entire country. His empowered minions are supposed to be strong enough to fight weak magicals one on one, and he's got dozens of them. Allegedly, his magic is also extremely addictive, so that's something we should probably test before we start handing it out like candy.

We do test that, and quite a few other things as well. As far as any of us can tell, there aren't any negative effects to Anja's magic. Essentially, her spirits give whoever they're attached to the exact same abilities the spirit would have on its own: They're much stronger, faster, and tougher than a regular human, they can summon inferior copies of her weapons, and they can fly.

From a tactical perspective, it's mostly useless outside of letting Elliot fly on his own, doing nothing except making her spirits vastly less disposable. From a strategic perspective, it's hard to overstate how incredibly valuable it is, effectively creating up to half a dozen independent pseudo-magicals at the cost of making Anja herself somewhat less effective in a fight.

"Do you think you could do this all along?" asks Elliot eventually. She hesitates, then nods.

"I think so, yeah. I just… I was so fixated on not letting anyone else get hurt, I never would've considered using my magic like this, letting someone else fight instead of me." We do eventually actually have a proper spar. It's again both of them vs me, since that'll give Elliot the best opportunity to experiment with Anja's magic. I'm excited, because it's the first time I've ever gotten to fight a fully aerial battle, even just for practice.

It's both an advantage and a disadvantage for me: I'm much faster in the air than they are, but I'll also have a lot less available material to use my magic on. I still start off by ripping a big chunk of earth out of the ground to use as a bludgeon. I make an attempt to form it into a proper vortex, but as expected, Elliot immediately begins tying it together it with roots. Instead, I compress it into a smaller, denser sphere.

The optimal strategy seems fairly straightforward: Anja is a close-range fighter and Elliot is a long-range fighter, so I want to try and separate them and deal with Elliot first. They obviously realize the same thing, and they've honestly gotten quite good at fighting together. Anja stubbornly does her best to keep herself between me and Elliot, holding her four unattached spirits back until I try to go in, then swarming me.

Meanwhile, Elliot keeps up a steady barrage of arrows, forcing me to constantly deflect or dodge. I attack in a series of fast lunges, darting in and out, trying to slash at Elliot as I pass by while hurling my bludgeon at Anja to keep her back. After several passes, I manage to take them by surprise, suddenly diverting towards Anja instead and clipping one of her wings with my spear. That's enough to dispel the entire spirit, sending her plummeting for the second it'll take her to summon another.

I capitalize by finally smashing her with my bludgeon while she can't dodge, not doing a whole lot of damage, but still sending her flying away. Then, I dart for Elliot. Like Anja, his wings are the most vulnerable part of him, and he won't be able to resummon them without her help. But he's also got a different perspective on Anja's magic than Anja herself; just as I'm about to hit them, he pulls them back in, making them vanish until I've passed by, then bringing them back out again.

Even so, he's still less maneuverable than me. I manage to close the distance anyway, and his wings are big targets. He keeps needing to pull them in for longer, which makes him even less maneuverable, and thus even less able to defend himself. Anja's already rushing back, but it'll take her a few more seconds to get here, and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to finish him off before then. I press harder- And then something very unexpected happens.

Twin blades emerge from the ends of Elliot's bow, made of golden light just like his arrows, and he turns his next block into an awkward slash. I dodge it instinctively, reacting to the new threat before I'm even consciously aware of it, but it gives him space to bring his wings back. I can't help but hesitate for just an instant, adjusting to the situation. Then I go back in, still trying to finish him off before Anja arrives.

I still outmatch him, but now, he's not completely on the defensive like he was before, and that's enough to make the difference. I'm forced to break off to avoid a lunge from Anja, and then I'm surrounded by her spirits. I slash through one, dodge another, decide to make a tactical retreat, but Anja manages to position herself to just barely cut me off and force me to swerve sideways instead of straight up.

I block her slash, dodge another clone, sense another threat coming, but I can't quite react to it in time-"OW! Motherfucker! Did you really have to hit me right in the ass?"

"S-sorry!" says Elliot, clearly trying to hold back laughter as the golden arrow decorating my behind slowly fades away. Anja doesn't even bother hiding her laughter, giving a loud victory woop.

"Yes! We got her! That was awesome, I knew you'd be able to pull it off!" She flies over, grabs him, kisses him, then retreats, blushing. We all sink back down to the ground.

"How'd you do that?" is the first question I ask. Elliot awkwardly scratches the back of his head.

"Well, uh, I kept thinking about what you said the other month, about getting more comfortable fighting at close range. It's kind of hard when my weapon is a bow, you know? But your weapon is a staff, and you always use it as a spear, and I just kind of wondered if I could do the same thing. I, uh, I also managed to get a little advice from Snowflake while I was up in Portland. Then, I just kind of, you know, kept trying until it clicked."

"Well, shit. Color me impressed," I say, trying not to rub my injury; it'll heal up within ten minutes or so. Even if you can't change your weapon's form, it's pretty common for powerful magicals to learn new abilities with it, like using melee weapons to fire some kind of energy blast, for example. But even if Elliot's grown a lot in the last few months, he's still really not that powerful, so maybe it's less difficult than I assumed. I hold up my staff, considering it.

It's gotten more powerful in terms of how much damage it can inflict on other magicals, but aside from that, it hasn't changed at all since I got it. Why a staff in the first place, though, if I'm always going to use it like a spear anyway? Sure, it's also a focus for my magic; I can make my gravity fields moderately stronger and larger if I control them with gestures from my staff rather than with thought alone. But that still works fine when the spear blade is out, so why have the option to make it vanish at all?

"Bet you she figures it out herself by the end of the night," says Anja.

"Hey, I've gotta rest until my ass heals anyway, might as well do something useful," I say, shooing her away. She laughs, then suggests a one on one Elliot. I leave them to it. The first thing I try is just making the spearblade longer. It doesn't work, but I feel like I'm sort of on the right track. Trying to extend the blade while it's already out feels a bit like trying to jump without bending my knees first, so my next attempt is to summon a longer one to start with.

That doesn't work either, and feels exactly the same. I frown, flicking the spearblade in and out a few times. I'm pretty sure there's something here, but I can't quite figure out what it is. As far as I've ever noticed, the blade only has two modes, "on" and "off." After a couple of minutes, Anja manages to beat Elliot even while letting him fly, her spirits eventually surrounding him and cutting him off. His new melee weapon is definitely an upgrade, but he's still vastly more effective as a support fighter.

She kisses the little cut she gave him better, and then they rejoin me.

"No luck so far?" she asks. I shake my head.

"It feels like I'm trying stretch a muscle I didn't even know I had."

"Yeah, that's kind of how it felt for me, too," says Elliot.

"The trick that ended up working for me was, uh, kind of trying to summon an arrow without summoning an arrow? Like, the same kind of process, but focusing on making it anything except an arrow, and eventually it just figured out where it was supposed to go instead." I hmm and nod, then give it a try. It's a very awkward exercise, and I can see why most magicals wouldn't discover it on their own.

Eventually, though, I do manage to begin the process of summoning my spearblade without actually summoning my spearblade. Instead, the sphere on the end of my staff begins glowing. I'm surprised enough that I immediately lose it, and the glow fades. Now that I sort of have an idea what I'm aiming for, though, I get it again after just a few more tries. I manage to hold the glow for several seconds, but nothing else happens.

Finally, after several more tries, I get my staff glowing again, and then summon my spearblade. This time, something happens. Instead of a blade, a beam lances out of the end of my staff, a couple of inches across and several feet long. Just like the blade, the core of it is black, surrounded by a white glow. Unlike the blade, it's only there for an instant before vanishing.

"Huh," I say.

"Told you," says Anja. I give her an amused glance.

"I don't think I've got it quite yet." I think for a moment, then pull a bunch of dirt out of the ground and compress it into a rough sphere a few feet across. I dump it on the ground, then point my staff at it and try to repeat the process. It still takes a few attempts, but after a minute, the beam once again shoots out of my staff. Nothing especially dramatic happens when it hits my impromptu target, so I move closer to investigate.

Leaning down, I find a perfectly smooth hole about two inches across bored straight through the entire sphere. There's no pile of dirt on the other side; the matter hit by the beam seems to have been completely erased.

"Alright, that's… definitely interesting. Still needs some work before it's actually usable." After some experimentation, it seems like what I'm doing is causing the energy that would normally form the blade to build up in the staff instead. The more energy I can build up, the longer the beam is when I release it. I'm not sure if there's a hard limit on that, but the difficulty of keeping the energy contained increases quickly the more I build up. The other limit is practical.

After another half hour or so of practice, I can pretty reliably create a beam around twenty feet long after a couple seconds of building up energy, but that's both way too slow and way too short ranged to be of much use in a fight. Hopefully, more practice will improve both of those. The good news is that the beam is already extremely powerful. After some very careful testing, we determine that the only thing capable of actually stopping it is Anja's shield, and presumably other magical weapons as well.

I'm obviously not going to test it on either of them directly, but I can get an idea of the damage it might inflict based on the threat they sense from it, and they think there's a pretty good chance it could break their transformations in a single shot. I'm still significantly more powerful than them, of course, but I'm pretty sure my spear would take at least two or three solid hits to do the same thing. Anja eventually gets in on the action as well, although she has less success than me.

After many attempts, she manages to make her sword glow faintly blue and leave a wispy crescent of blue light behind as she swings it, but it doesn't travel more than a couple of feet. Assuming a weapon's additional abilities are also fixed from the start, I speculate that different weapons might take different levels of power to make full use of. We wrap up by sparring one more time two against one, but end up calling it a draw after around ten minutes.

With Elliot able to hold me off marginally better at close range, I can't keep him separated from Anja for long enough to land a hit on him. At the same time, neither of them can catch me as long as I don't get careless. It's still good practice for all of us, though, so I don't mind at all. Investigating Mr. Fletcher proves to be slow going, so I hope I'm right that I'll have plenty of time. I'm a little hesitant to get the gang involved, since only a couple of members know about my friendship with Apollo.

I do ask Mr. Sterling for help, and he promises to try and get his hands on Mr. Fletcher's tax records, which will have a list of his properties if nothing else. Again, though, it's going to take a while, since we can't risk leaving a record of our interest. With the various concerns on my mind, I'm surprised to realize that there's less than two weeks of school left.

It's a little strange, listening to kids stress about finals and stuff while I'm trying to figure out the best way to murder someone without drawing any suspicion. I don't regret coming back to school, and I'm still fully intending to graduate, but I'm not sure how much of a "normal" life I've really managed to maintain. I'm starting to feel almost like a tourist at school, playing at normalcy for a little while before returning to my real life.

I'm reminded that school is still important to other people when my math teacher holds me back after class on Wednesday. His name is Mr. Kincaid, but I haven't really interacted with him all that much over the course of the year; I don't usually need to ask questions, and I've never been to his office hours, either.

"Please, have a seat," he says with a small smile.

"Don't worry, there's nothing wrong. I've just been very impressed with your performance this past year, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to share any plans you might have for college."

"Sure! I think I'd wanna study astronomy," I half-lie; that is what I'd want to study if I were planning on going to college. He nods.

"That's a fascinating subject, and you've certainly got the math skills for it. Are you aware of the district's College Now program?" I shake my head.

"For students who finish Calculus before their Senior year, the district will pay for you to take classes at the University to continue your math education. It does require a recommendation from their Calculus teacher to ensure that they're capable of handling it and won't be wasting money, but I'd be happy to give that. The University's schedule doesn't line up nicely with ours, of course, so you'd most likely need to give up your free period to make it work.

But if you do, you'd be able to take Multivariable Calculus or Differential Equations immediately, rather than missing a full year of math."

"Oh," I say, genuinely surprised. My first impulse is to make an excuse, but… if Elliot can improve his magic by studying actual biology, could the same thing be true for me? I'm not sure, but it seems like it's worth investigating at least a little, and this is a pretty low-investment way of doing it.

"I might be interested, yeah. Who would I talk to, in order to sign up?"

"The school councilor," he replies.

"I'll let her know to expect you. Anyhow, just wanted to put the idea in your head. Don't let me make you late for your next class." I tell the others about it at lunch, although I honestly already pretty much know what they'll think.

"Fucking neeeerd," says Cassie. I flip her off.

"I think you should go for it," says Alex.

"You never know what you might end up doing in the future, and even if you don't use it, it's never bad to learn things."

"Man, it's so unfair that you're this good at school on top of everything else," complains Anja.

"Math's easy, I don't know what everyone's always whining about," I say, grinning. Everyone boos me.

"Do you, uh, think you'll actually end up going to college, then?" asks Tyler. I shrug.

"I dunno. Probably not right away, but maybe eventually."

"... Um, excuse me." I glance over at the timid voice interrupting us, finding a girl who looks like she's probably a Freshman.

"Is, um… Is your name Cassie?"

"Yup, that's me," says Cassie, grinning.

"Need something?" I frown slightly. It's not unusual for a kid buying drugs for the first time to be a little nervous, but this doesn't feel quite right for that; I'm pretty sure the girl is holding back tears. She hesitates, swallows a couple of time, then nods.

"I… I need help," she whispers.

"I think… I think my sister might be in trouble. Like… really bad trouble."