No Dominion (The Walker Papers: A Garrison Report) (31 page)

She dragged her jeans on, hopping around the room when she lost her balance tugging them up. The mirror caught her attention a couple of times, reflecting an image so weird it looked like it belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine. Green highlights came from within, making her wheat-pale hair glow emerald, especially near the roots. It faded out to almost white around shoulders mostly bared by a spaghetti-strapped nightgown that wrinkled at her waist as she pulled her jeans all the way up and buttoned them. The light dimmed considerably, so her eyes were just big and dark, no longer reflecting green. She would need a hoodie to keep from attracting attention. And maybe sunglasses, because now that she’d noticed them, her eyes were starting to itch too. Suzy made a face at the mirror and turned away from it, looking for a shirt and shades.

Her fingers were two inches from the hoodie when the air shriveled up against her skin, turned cold, and pulled her backward through a hole the size of a pinhead.

There was power. That was all she could tell. Power latching on to her own magic, hauling her up a slick emerald path full of loops and twists and turns, like a roller coaster. More like a waterslide. She’d never liked waterslides. The joinings weren’t smooth enough and the water wasn’t deep enough, so she always fell out of the inner tubes and scraped herself up on the joints. This one was smooth, though, and fast enough that the friction made her skin burn. It burned the itch away, which helped. It also buffed her like she was a diamond—an emerald, she guessed—so that she wasn’t so much glowing as shining. Like a star, if stars were green.

She ran up against another pinhead-sized hole, and got shoved through head first onto a shag carpet floor.

For a minute she couldn’t see anything. There was light, lots of it, but it was all coming from her, drowning out everything else. She wasn’t even afraid yet, but something was bubbling deep inside her chest. A warning, one that ran deeper than anything Suzy had ever known. A warning that up until now she’d used her magic for others, but that she had no sense at all of the depths she could plumb if it was
herself
she needed to protect. It gave her confidence, though at the same time it ran so deep it was itself a little scary. She was the child of gods, and no one in their right mind messed with gods.

Weirdly, the thought calmed the deep warning inside her. There couldn’t be much that threatened gods. Joanne Walker did, but Joanne knew where Suzy lived. She would have called if she needed her, not magicked her away. Anybody else who thought they could hold even a semi-god like Suzy was either very, very powerful, or very, very dumb. She could give them the benefit of the doubt for a little bit, and assume they were dumb.

The itching had stopped. She thought that was the other reason she wasn’t going absolutely crazy with fear and anger. She’d fought zombies, after all. She’d gotten through the horror of her parents’ murders, and then she’d watched her birth father sluff off mortality to become the Green Man. She thought she could handle anything as long as she didn’t want to scratch her skin off.

Joanne was always using her powers to discover things. Suzy’s didn’t work like that, or at least, she didn’t think they did. But at the same time, she felt
confined
somehow, like she’d been pulled into something with a specific size and shape. She stretched out her hands and encountered resistance. A flare of her own magic shot around that sensation, exploring it in the same way Suzy had explored parks when she was little: up, down, under, over, around, in. That had been what her mother called
organic exploration,
using her whole person to learn the world. This was the same thing, except Suzy’s wholeness included magic now.

She’d never explored a pentagram before, though. It surrounded her, wobbling with paltry human power. It would barely hold a mouse, much less her. Suzy laughed. Someone would have the scare of their life and end up grateful that they’d conjured a polite modern teenage granddaughter of a god into their flimsy pentagram instead of one of the much, much worse things that were out there. She would start by shattering the pentagram, just to show them how much trouble they
might
have been in. She reached out to flick it away with a fingertip.

Just before she did, a high-pitched, familiar voice squeaked, “
Suzy
?”

Suzy froze mid-motion, then moved her hand above her eyes, like shading them would help her see out of the pentagram when she was the one emitting the light. “
Kiseko
?”

“Holy crap holy crap holy crap holy cra—” The litany came in a whisper, followed by an even softer, “How do we shut this thing
down
, Rob? That’s
Suzy
, holy crap it’s not a
nature
god you dork it’s my friend
Suzy
how did we call
Suzy
OMG WE DID MAGIC—”

The last part was overrun by a boy’s intense, soft voice: “Kiseko, be
quiet
or we’ll wake your
parents
up—”

“Well I told you we should’ve done this at your house, your parents are all big into the paranormal thing—”

“First, my parents would have noticed us raising a pentagram in the basement,” the boy said very dryly, “and second, they’d ground me until I was fifteen for messing with this stuff without supervision. Kiseko, stop panicking, you’re just feeding the power circle with your emotion. That’s not Suzanne
Quinley
, is it?”

Kiseko blurted, “Yes!”

The unseen boy groaned and muttered something Suzy couldn’t hear, then stepped up to the pentagram, putting his hands against it. Suzy could see him then, a tallish boy of twelve or thirteen, with a serious, apologetic expression. “Aunt Jo’s going to kill me,” he announced. “I’m really sorry. We’ll get you out of there in a minute.”

“Who are you? What are you—oh, nevermind. Kiseko talked you into this, didn’t she?” Suzy sat down and put her face in her hands, not sure if she should laugh or cry. “Kiso, what did you
do
?”

“Oh, I just wanted to try a little magic,” Kiseko said with an impatient stomp of her foot. “Robert, why won’t this thing come down?”

“You’re putting too much energy into it,” Robert repeated. “You need to calm down.”

“Kiseko,” Suzy said into her hands, “doesn’t do calm. She’s Kiseko Anderson, Superhero.” Which was nicer than super-emo, which was what Suzy’s mother used to call Kiseko. She used to say that Kiseko was hysteria waiting to happen. She’d said it with a smile, but she hadn’t been wrong. The first time Suzy had met her, Kiseko had been sprawled full-length on her belly, sobbing piteously into her arms. There had been no one else around. Suzy, concerned, had crouched to ask what was wrong.

Kiseko, seven years old and dripping snot, had lifted her head, discovered her parents had gone inside rather than remain on the street to observe her tantrum, and shut off the waterworks as if they’d never happened. Her face wasn’t even red from crying. Kiseko had sat up, wiped her nose, and shrugged. “I don’t want to live in Seattle. My parents made me move here.”

“Oh! You’re the new family? I watched you move in. I’m Suzy.” Suzy had offered her hand like a little adult. Kiseko had burst out laughing and hugged Suzy instead. Overwhelmed, Suzanne had thought Kiseko was the strongest, wonderful est, and most dramatic person she’d ever met. They’d made friends,
been
friends, through everything, right up until Suzy’s parents and four high school students had been murdered.

Kiseko hadn’t come to school for a week, not even for the memorial services. She’d barely been able to say goodbye when Aunt Mae had come to take Suzy to Olympia. It wasn’t that Suzy blamed her. It was only that she’d never seen Kiseko take the world at anything less than full tilt, and her friend’s pallor and quietness still haunted her.

It wasn’t in evidence now, thought. Kiseko tossed her hair proudly. “Superhero nothing. Super
witch
! I built a power circle! I still don’t get why you’re in it.” She squinted through the brightness at Suzy. “Or why you’re glowing.”

Robert mumbled, “She doesn’t know about y—” and then more clearly said, “If you don’t know about Suzanne, why did you want to try magic in the first place? How did you know it was real?”

Kiseko stopped with arms akimbo and looked at Robert like he was about half his actual age. “The
zombies
, hel
lo
? OMG, don’t tell me you didn’t even notice the
zombies
—!”

“Sure, it’s just most people—”

Kiseko blew an exasperated breath. “Most people are
morons
, hel
lo
! As if the
entire city
of Seattle could get turned into a film set without, like,
everybody
noticing? As if some director would think digging up my
back yard
and resurrecting my
dog
was worth the time and money? As if Suzy would just
show up
at my house to console me after we had to bury Fluffy again? Actually, Suzy, seriously, what were you doing there? I was all, like, emotional. I forgot to ask.”

Suzy peered through her fingers at her best friend, who still stood arms akimbo, but now with her attention directed away from Robert and at Suzanne. As far as Suzy had known, Kiseko wholeheartedly believed Suzy had shown up at Kiseko’s house a little after midnight after Halloween simply so Kiseko would have somebody’s shoulder to sob on as they re-buried their beloved family pet. Not once, not
once
, had Kiseko ever suggested that she thought there was any other reason for Suzy to show up in Seattle beyond Kiseko needing her at that very moment in time. But now light was starting to gleam in her eyes. “OMG, what
were
you doing there, and does it have to do with me, like, summoning you?”

“Were you summoning me on Halloween?” Suzy asked faintly.

“No, just now! OMG! Are you dangerous?”

Suzy’s response was so even, so steady, that she barely even knew it for her own voice: “You have no idea.”

For the first time since Suzy had arrived, Kiseko actually went silent, her eyes round and her throat moving as she swallowed heavily. When she spoke again, it was hardly more than a squeak: “So should I, like, not let you out of there?”

“You couldn’t keep me in if you tried. Kiso, what are you
doing
? Who is this boy?” Suzy’s somber tone changed as she squinted again at Robert. “You’re too young to be her boyfriend, right? I mean, no offense, but you look like you’re twelve.”

“I am. I’m Robert Holliday. My dad—”

“
Detective
Holliday? Detective Walker’s
partner
?”

“Yeah.” Robert looked apologetic. “If I’d had any idea she was going to summon you…”

“I wasn’t summoning her! I wanted a nature god, because it’s like
April
and it’s snowing and I don’t want my sixteenth
birthday party
to be in a
snowstorm
—!” Kiseko broke off with a small noise of dismay. “Um, Suzy, are you a nature god?”

“No.” Suzanne flicked a finger against the power circle, shattering the shields. “But my father is.”

Kiseko fell over with a thud. Suzy winced and stepped out of the circle—Kiso had drawn on the carpet with chalk, her mother was going to kill her—to help Kiso sit up. “My head’s ringing,” Kiseko mumbled. “It feels like somebody broke a crystal glass inside it.”

“I think I kind of did. Hang on, I’ll get you some aspirin.” Suzy stepped over Kiseko and scurried to the bathroom, which hadn’t changed at all since she’d last been there. Well, the towels had probably been changed, but otherwise it, and the rest of the house Suzy glimpsed, looked the same as it had six months earlier. That was a relief. Houses should stay the same, even if the people in them changed. She came back with water and aspirin, which Kiseko took as obediently as she ever did anything. Then she gave Suzy a gimlet stare, though Suzy didn’t know what a gimlet actually was, and said, “Well?”

“No, wait, first I want to know how you know Detective Holliday’s son.” Suzy sat down between Kiso and Robert, close enough that their cross-legged knees were all touching.

“I summoned you,” Kiseko muttered. “I should get to ask the questions. We’re in chess club together.”

Suzy eyed Robert. “You’re twelve and in high school?”

“I come over from the middle school because I can beat everybody there too easily.”

“Oh. Cool. Okay, um.” Suzy pulled her hair over her shoulder and twitched into a nervous braid, then undid it again. “Um.”