Was it only this morning the magic had abandoned him? Why?
The questions swirled about in his brain, eluding him. He had never been able to handle liquor; he should have left it alone.
Cassie was right; it was poison. “I've poisoned myself,” he muttered sadly and tottered on. He staggered toward the corner of a sidewalk that stretched eternally longer. “That woman was Cassie,” he admitted when he teetered on the edge of the gutter.
“And I knew it. But I didn’t. I swear I didn’t know her.”
A thin gray fog was stringing through the streets. He tried to rub it from his eyes, but it hung before him like ratty curtains, coloring all he viewed. It opened and closed mockingly around him and whispered soundlessly and mockingly in his ears. Half a block more to go, he told himself and staggered on. On South Jackson he turned into his alley mouth. The fog massed there, defying him. He plunged into it, to crash into Wee Bit O’lreland’s trash and then rebound into Great Winds Kite Shop dumpster. The brick wall caught him roughly. His fire escape was a black shadow overhead.
He craned his head back to look up at it. He gave a testing bounce on his legs. A wave of dizziness and nausea washed up from his belly and drowned him. Wizard took a deeper breath. “You can do anything you have to do,” he reminded himself sternly. He bent his knees deep, ignoring all the pain signals of his body. He concentrated only on the Jump, and sprang. His hands caught like claws on the old pipe. Its rust bit into his palms. He braced his foot against the bricks and pushed up. But his knees had gone rubbery again, and the muscles in his arms were like limp strings. He tightened his arms, straining to pull himself closer to the fire escape. He braced his foot again and gave a kick that let him release the pipe and grab for the edge of the fire escape. His hands caught.
He dangled from the edge of the fire escape. He knew what he must do; he had done it a thousand times. He had to chin himself up to the edge of the fire escape platform and slither onto it. But instead he hung there, like a shirt on a clothesline.
The cold black metal bit into his hands. His palms felt they must tear loose from the muscles and bones beneath them. He hung on doggedly, chewing pain. He could not make the quick hard pull that would jerk himself up to the edge. So he began the long slow tightening of muscles that would drag the full weight of his body up. His shoulder muscles creaked. Just a little farther, he promised himself, refusing to release his pent breath. A little more.
At the instant he knew that he must let go and drop to the pavement below, he felt two hands seize his ankles in a firm grip. Before he could kick free of them, they pushed up on his stiff legs, boosting him to the edge of the platform. He dragged himself up onto it and lay panting with his eyes shut. Waves of pastel light washed across the inside of his eyelids. His heart was slamming against his ribs and he couldn’t remember how to calm it. He had to let it run down as the cold air of the night washed against his sweating face.
“Hey!” The voice came from below. “Aren’t you going to give me a hand up?”
WIZARD ROLLED OUT of her way as she scrabbled up onto the platform. The aging iron landing groaned complainingly under the unaccustomed extra weight. Wizard sat up slowly to look at her. The climb had mussed her hair, but other than that she looked remarkably collected. She had clambered up the wall unaided. Now she brushed her hair back from her face and gave him a grin that was one part defiance to one part mischief.
“See? It’s not that easy to get rid of me. I should have known better than to leave you alone. Why’d you run out on me?”
“I don’t feel good.” Wizard didn’t want to talk, didn’t want her up here, didn’t want to do anything but crawl into an isolated place and curl up around the emptiness and sickness inside him. The magnitude of this disaster was such that he could not comprehend it. If only she would go away he could lie still and understand how awful it all was. Bent nearly double, he began his climb up the flight of metal steps. He heard her following. Well, let her. He couldn’t stop her. Silently he raised his window wider and wriggled inside. It was dark. but not so dark that he couldn’t make out his familiar path through the stacks of cardboard boxes stored in this room. He groped his way to the door of his den. There was a slight rustle from the roosting pigeons as he stepped through the door, but they settled again almost immediately. Behind him, Lynda had snagged her coat on the windowsill. She was muttering curses as she tugged at it, but he had no energy to hush her. He took four steps to his bed and dropped onto it. He could undress later.
Slowly he drew his knees up to his chest and tried to make his muscles go slack. His feet were horribly cold, but his fingers were too fuddled to manage the bootlaces. Best to just lie still for awhile. He heard a questioning mew; Black Thomas was on the pillow beside his head. He had narrowly missed him in the dark, and me big cat was not pleased with his carelessness.
Wizard set one apologetic hand on his dark, damp fur. Thomas gave a growl of pain and moved carefully closer to the warmth of Wizard’s body. He smelled like wet wool and clotted blood.
The two huddled together, snaring misery.
“Jesus H!” Lynda blotted the faint light from the doorway.
She seemed to fill the frame, looming over the room. He cringed deeper into his bed. “My God!” she went on. “I never imagined anything like this. What is that smell?”
She fumbled her way to the door and tried the light switch.
Nothing happened. She clicked it a few times and began to dig in her purse. Black Thomas was growling low at the intruder.
The pigeons huddled closer to one another on their shelves, cooing worriedly to one another. Wizard lay small and still, praying she would leave, praying this was just an evil dream.
Then she blasted them all with the flame of her cigarette lighter.
Wizard rolled to his knees, heedless of the pains that lanced through him and the nausea that swelled inside him. “Turn it down!” he hissed at her. “We’ll be seen!”
“Up here?” Lynda scoffed, but she whispered and adjusted the lighter to a smaller flame. “Look. don’t you have candles or something? I can’t see my way around in here.”
“Sit down and be quiet!”
“Where?” she demanded. He gestured furiously and she clunked and rumbled her way across the room to his mattress.
She lowered herself onto it with a snort of disgust and let the lighter go out. Wizard moved carefully through the darkness.
He found his candle and holder and set it on the floor. In the darkness he slipped to his entry window to put the plywood in place, and to his second window to make sure the blanket was tight. Soundlessly he moved back to me candle and knelt before it. He began the slow concentration of self, stealing his attention bit by bit from his aching body and tortured mind, and putting it toward a flame- His hands clutched one another to still their trembling- He slowed his breathing to quiet the demands of his body. The flame. He could see it, he could smell it. he could feel it, could sense its warmth. It was coming now, about to blossom on the wick, the perfect orange and yellow flame.
With a click and a hiss the flame appeared, searing his eyes and exploding new pain in his head. The candle flared and Lynda leaned back, taking her thumb off the lever of her lighter. ‘
In the glare of me little flame, he watched her slip her lighter back into her purse- Her candle flame dazzled his eyes. The flame in his mind was still there, focused, with nowhere to go.
It might be the last bit of magic left to him. Gradually it crumbled into bits inside him, falling like ash into the firepit of his soul. He sat on his heels, blinking away the black spots that danced before his eyes. Black Thomas moved up beside him to ask “Mrow?” Wizard put his hands on the cat’s rough fur, feeling the ribs beneath the layer of tough meat and muscle and feeling the life beneath that. It was strangely comforting to feel how strongly life beat in the rickety little body.