C. E. Murphy - No Dominion - A Garrison Report

“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.”

“Suzanne’s biological father is Herne, a nature god,” Robert volunteered into Suzy’s nervous silence. “She didn’t find out until last January, when her parents were killed. He was going to sacrifice her so he could take over his father’s position as a wild god, but Aunt Jo stopped him. Also Suzy really, really helped with the zombies last Halloween. Like, she got her grandfather, the wild god, to ride early and save Seattle from them.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably as Suzy and Kiseko both goggled at him. “Is that right?”

“Not…exactly,” Suzy said faintly. “But that’s…pretty close. How do you know…how did you…?”

Robert looked slightly apologetic. “Dad and Aunt Jo talked about it where I could hear, is all. And you looked like you were having a hard time getting started so I thought I’d help.” His face was turning increasingly red. “Sorry.”

“No, that’s okay. That, um. Yeah. Pretty much.” Suzy cast a tentative glance at Kiseko, whose eyes and mouth formed nearly perfect O ’s.

“And you didn’t tell me?” Kiso demanded in a whisper. At least she had the presence of mind to whisper. Her parents weren’t going to know what to do when they woke up and found Suzy, who was supposed to be in Olympia, in their basement instead. “You didn’t tell me?” Kiseko asked more loudly.

“It’s not that easy to tell!” Suzy protested. “I wanted to, I just, well, I mean, how? How do you say, “Hey, best friend, turns out I’m like only partly human and by the way my biological father is the one who killed everybody at the high school that day?””

Kiso went white. “What?”

“Oh, God.” Suzy ducked her head and shook her hair so it fell to hide her face as she whispered, “Yeah. I guess Robert didn’t mention that part. He killed my parents, too. He was crazy,” she whispered apologetically through her hair. “I don’t even know all of it, but he was…he was like mostly human for hundreds of years, and it kind of made him crazy. I think. And he was trying to align things so he could become a whole god, when really he was supposed to be a half-god. It was awful. He was awful. It was a mess. I didn’t want to talk about it. And I can’t really anyway, because who would believe it?”

“I would have!”

Suzy looked up through the curtain of her hair. Kiseko’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, either with offense or anger. “Would you have?” Suzy asked. “I mean, up until half an hour ago when you went crazy stupid and did magic and summoned me, would you have?”

“Well—well you could’ve told me anyway!”

“Aunt Jo says people work really hard at explaining magic away when it happens,” Robert said quietly. “Kiseko’s different to start with, because she didn’t believe the Hollywood story about the zombies—”

“What about you?” Suzy asked. “How come you’re even here?”

“My dad is a medium. He sees ghosts,” Robert clarified. “Mom’s a wise woman. My family’s all kind of cool with this stuff.”

“And Kiseko found this out how?”

“I was reading a book about magic before chess club started, a couple weeks ago. Rob said it wasn’t very good if I really wanted to learn about magic. At first I thought he was kidding but he looked so serious. So then I got curious. So you’re magic ? Do something magic!”

“I don’t—it’s not like that. Most of my magic is seeing the future.”

Kiseko lunged forward, grabbing Suzy’s arms. “OMG! Can you tell me what college I’m going to? Can you tell me if I get married? How many kids do I have? No, wait, am I totally cool like Isadora Duncan and I go around having lots of kids but never getting married—”