It turned out that I was mostly superfluous for that phase of things. Bill and Jessie were still making phone calls. They’d apparently run into a lot of unanswered calls. I was a little skeptical about that, at first. Chalk it up to my age. I’m part of that generation that grew up with smartphones. I’m never willingly more than a few feet from it. I absolutely hate it when I’m in a no-service zone. Yes, they still exist. You have to get off the beaten track to find them, but I’m off the beaten track on a pretty regular basis. While some monsters can pass themselves off as human easily enough, plenty of them can’t. When they get out of hand, it’s off to some of the more obscure areas of the country I go. Let me tell you, those consumer-grade GPS maps get less and less reliable in places where you can drive two hundred miles between patches of civilization. It’s the reason why I’m one of the only people my age that I know of who religiously carries a paper atlas when he travels.

Once I thought about it, though, those unanswered calls made more sense to me. I knew that Gran had been around since before the first telephone was even invented. She was fine with your basic rotary phone, but she had zero use for cell phones. I’d offered to get her one and been kindly, but firmly dissuaded. As far as she was concerned, nobody needed round-the-clock access to her. I had the sneaking suspicion that a lot of the people Bill and Jessie were trying to track down had a similar mindset. For all I knew, they also came from a time before everyone had instant communication glued to their hand day and night. So, I killed a couple of hours avoiding Gran. I didn’t think she’d try to have our necessary talk before all this went down, but you can never tell with people. It just seemed better not to tempt fate.

Annie, on the other hand, seemed to see this as some kind of golden opportunity. I heard her having what sounded like a very serious, very in-depth conversation with Gran. I can’t even pretend that I understood what they were talking about. It’s those kinds of moments that make me realize that I’m no kind of magical scholar. Oh, I could figure things out. It was even fun, sometimes, but I didn’t delve deep into the mysteries of magic. I wasn’t trying to break new magical ground. No, I’m definitely on the thuggish end of the magical spectrum. I was interested in the practical things that magic could do for me in a fight and not much else.

I tried to blame Bill and Gran for that, too. My heart wasn’t in it, though. They may have encouraged me in that direction, but it lined up pretty neatly with my own inclinations. It wasn’t that I was stupid. I did well enough in school. There’s a bachelor’s degree floating around in my apartment somewhere to prove it. It was that I just didn’t find those deeper mysteries compelling. I guess you see those differences all over the place if you look for them. People who liked the theoretical stuff became engineers. People who liked the practical, hands-on stuff started construction companies. For computer junkies, theory people become computer scientists, while application people become computer programmers. Sure, there was always some overlap in skills, but nobody was going to mistake my magical approach for Annie’s.

I ultimately found the inside of the house too stifling. It was a small house to begin with, and there were a lot more bodies in there than I was used to seeing. I went outside and sat down on the steps. Evening was approaching fast, and the streetlights started coming on in fits and starts. At least, the ones with working bulbs did. I watched as the shadows deepened and eventually became black pits between the buildings. I knew, not very far away, bad things were happening in alleys just the ones I could see. I also knew that nothing was happening in the alleys nearby worse than rats and cats battling it out. Since that particular war had probably been going on since the dawn of mammals, I kept my nose out of it. Besides, rats are disgusting. I wasn’t of a mind to do them any good turns. I heard the door open behind me and looked back. Jessie closed the door behind her and frowned around the dimly lit neighborhood.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Not the most inviting place, is it?” She asked and sat down next to me.

“It’s not so bad right around here, but no. It’s not a great place to live.”

“Why do you? I mean, with your skills and reputation, you could charge enough to live pretty well.”

I shrugged. “Gran lives here. She’s always handled the, well, I guess you’d call it the management end of things. People don’t call me. They call her. It hasn’t been a problem.”

“Until now,” said Jessie.

“Yeah, until now,” I admitted. “But that’s not really a you problem. Hell, it’s not even really a today problem.”

“That’s true enough. If you do end up striking out on your own, though, let me know. I can put you in touch with people who can send work your way.”

“I don’t think I’m really cut out for what you do, Jessie.”

She barked out a laugh. “I know you’re not cut out for what I do. You just have to tell them what kind of work you are interested in. There’s plenty of people out there with exactly the kinds of problems you do solve. They aren’t afraid to pay to make those problems go away, either. Sure, the brokers might offer you something outside your wheelhouse on occasion, but it’s just business for them. If you say no, you say no. They just call the next guy on the list.”

“That’s good to know. I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks, Jessie.”

“Well, it’s not pure altruism on my part. I do get a finder’s fee for referring real talent to them.”

I laughed that time. “Glad to know I’d be contributing to your fiscal well-being.”

“Hey, I have to pay Sven somehow. That guy isn’t cheap.”

There was an awkward pause in the conversation, which told me everything I really needed to know.

“You guys finished making your calls?”

“Yeah, we’ve got some help on the way. They’ll meet us outside of Chicago. Then, we’ll head to my place and decorate it for unwanted guests. Anyway, if you need anything, now is the time to go and get it. We’ll be heading out soon.”

I shook my head. “I’ve got a go bag in the car with the essentials. I may also have a few nasty tricks in there that I don’t usually need to pull out.”

“Get ready to pull them out. I don’t care if Carter shows up by himself or with a whole posse. I want every dirty trick in the book waiting for him.”

Things happened in a hurry after that. Gran pulled Bill aside and gave him some terse advice or instructions. I’m honestly not sure which. He just nodded along with a serious look on his face. Annie announced that she would ride with me. I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to ride with her all the way to Chicago. I just let it go. It seemed like a trivial thing to argue about with everything else I had on my mind. Then, Gran pulled me aside. The awkwardness of that moment felt like a noose around my throat. It was a hollow concern, though. Gran just looked me over. I could see the worry in her eyes. There was something else there, too, but I couldn’t figure out what before she started talking.

“You watch your back, Jericho. You’ve never done anything like this before. It’s different when you’re fighting human beings, but you can’t let that stop you. You do whatever you have to do to survive,” she said, pausing to think for a moment. “Listen to Bill. He’s had to do things like this before.”

It shouldn’t have come as a shock, but it did. I’d always imagined that Bill was like me, except that he handled the really dangerous stuff I wasn’t ready for yet. In hindsight, though, people were too afraid of him. You had to do something, maybe more than once, for people to be that afraid of you. I hadn’t asked what he did to the Raven’s Council. I’d just assumed that he’d beaten them within an inch of their lives or directed magical horrors their way. When I considered the situation with my new mindset, though, the more realistic outcome was that most of those people landed in shallow graves somewhere. I examined my own feelings on the topic and felt, not good about it, but indifferent. I’d bet money that every last one of those fuckers had it coming for something.

I gave Gran a nod. “I will.”

“Alright, then. You get moving. There’s work that needs to be done.”