“Okay, so, Dad wasn’t exaggerating when he said this place was a shithole,” I observed as we neared my brother’s apartment.

Located spitting distance from Skid Row—a place literally synonymous with poverty and homelessness—Conner’s apartment building was one of those beige boxes that seem to pop up as soon as the crime rate reached a certain milestone. It was ugly and functional, with most of the windows dominated by crappy window-unit air-conditioners most likely supplied by the tenants and not the landlord. We were distant enough from Skid Row that the sidewalk wasn’t covered in tents (though there were some scattered about) but were close enough that the residents of the tent cities were in evidence. Trash was everywhere. Graffiti, while not omnipresent like in certain places in the city, was nonetheless making itself abundantly known. The smell of urine mixed with other waste started to fill the car, so I turned on the air recirculation on the AC.

“I’ve never been to this part of LA,” Alice said. “You see it on the news occasionally, but in person…”

“TV doesn’t really do it justice,” I said.

I saw her nod in the rear-view mirror.

My mom didn’t comment. She had been here before and was probably less shocked by what she was seeing. She was also more focused on me. She had to tell me to turn on my headlights and it had taken me a minute to figure out how. I hadn’t used them in years. I can see perfectly well in almost complete darkness, and my car had several enchantments on it that made other cars (or rather, their occupants) avoid it and made cops ignore it. Since she had to prod me into turning them on, she had been studying me. Perhaps she had been studying me since she first laid eyes on me. It has been nearly a decade since we were together. I looked a lot different from the gangly young man she had known. Now I was a gangly man. A gangly man with superpowers.

I felt my face become thoughtful. I rarely think of my abilities as anything other than that: abilities. But a lot of them were pretty synonymous with superpowers. I had super strength. I couldn’t pick up a car or anything, but I could definitely rip a door off a car and hurl it with enough force to embed it in another car if I hit the right spot. I had enhanced hearing and sight. Not smell though. I looked into what makes for a strong sense of smell and it’d involve turning too much of my heads real estate into scent receptors.

I didn’t feel super. Mostly I felt scared. Surprisingly, I wasn’t scared for myself. That there, that was a new experience. Or at least an unfamiliar one. I was usually scared for myself and the state of my mind and/or soul. But now I’m not scared about me—I’m scared about my little brother.

I preferred the former.

The new vulnerability played across my mind as I searched for a parking space on auto-pilot. It’s—it’s weird not being scared about myself for once. On one hand, a part of me guiltily felt relieved that I wasn’t the one in danger. The larger part of me felt that other part of me feeling relieved was a major betrayal, not only to Conner but to myself. Fuck you, selfish part of me.

Conner and I were only two years apart, and he had always been mature for his age. We grew up together and were each other’s first friends. But as I hit the age where mom kept floating the idea of college, we grew apart. Probably because Conner knew, just like I did, that I’d take any opportunity to get away from my father I could get. Just like he would.

I became ashamed to realize that, aside from the occasional phone call where I didn’t do too much asking, I had no idea what Conner’s life had been like after I left. I had just been… ecstatic. And a mess. And ecstatic mess who was stumbling into his first series of real relationships. I had had few thoughts about what Conner must be going through, alone. I had just been relieved to be making friends who knew nothing about my home life.

Look how that turned out.

I realized I had parked and began shutting the car down. Alice reminded me about the headlights and I murmured a thanks as I turned them off. I was about to climb out of the car but was held up by a concerned noise my mom made.

“I don’t think you can park here,” she said, pointing at the big “No Parking After 6 PM” sign.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said as I resumed my exodus from the tiny Japanese vehicle. The car wasn’t uncomfortable once I was in it, but being as tall as I was made getting in and out of it a non-trivial exercise. I met Alice on the sidewalk and noticed my mother hadn’t exited the car yet. I approached her door and opened it so we could talk.

“You alright?” I asked.

“Maybe we should do this tomorrow morning? The police said some things about this part of the city…” She was wringing her hands and looking at the squalor around us like it might come alive and attack her.

I felt like saying something along the lines of “Oh, you don’t have to worry: I’m the most dangerous thing here.” But I don’t think she’d find comfort with that and it’d probably bring up many awkward questions. Or rather, reasonable questions with awkward answers. When is the best time to tell your mom you’re housing a piece of yourself from another dimension, and in that dimension, they’re analogous to Cthulhu? And that you might be infected with whatever the fuck that is?

The short answer is there isn’t a good time, and I’m not going to think about the long answer.

“I don’t think anyone’s going to give us trouble,” I said, holding out my hand for her to take. “Despite my feelings for the man, I admit Dad did an adequate job teaching me to defend myself,” I continued as I helped her out of the car and closed the door behind her.

“It’s one thing to know how to defend yourself,” she complained as she nervously looked around. “And another to go somewhere where you know you’ll likely have to.”

A valid point.

“Conner doesn’t have time for us to be squeamish,” I said gently. Then, in a more encouraging tone: “Show me his apartment.”

She nodded and began walking towards the big beige box that could be called an apartment complex but probably should be called “condemned.” As we approached I could see cracks in the walls and water damage, and we haven’t even entered the thing yet. My mom guided us to the main entrance, which was one of those security doors with a mechanical keypad. This brought my mom up short.

“Shoot!” She said. “I forgot to call the manager,” she looked up at me apologetically. “He let us in last time.”

I made a show of looking around casually. “This part of town, I’m guessing it’s more for show than function.” I reached over and gripped the doorknob and gave it a rattle. While I did so, I gathered the magic of the one spell I knew under my new method and turned the knob on the other side of the door. On my second rattling of the door, it opened.

My mother frowned in disapproval. “They should really have better security.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

I shrugged and waved her through, Alice and I sharing a look over her head.

Last year, during our adventure at sea, Alice had let me know that my magical education was lacking. I was almost entirely self-taught when we met and was using magic in a very dangerous manner if you wanted to live longer than three decades. It was basically like trying to operate a car without engine oil, or a firewall between the engine and the driver’s seat.

That missing fundamental was what is known as a Separation Method, or Method for short. It was also known in more recent times as an Insulating Method. Basically, a Method was a way to cast magic and keep the magic from affecting you and keeping it affecting the shit you want it to affect.

Alice had recommended the Bulwark Method, which is what most of the Martinez family and the larger magical community use. With the Bulwark, you basically make a mental construct that is separate from your mind, where you can assemble spells and fire them off without having to be afraid of cooking your brain in your skull. The downside of this method was it took a while to set up, with most practitioners taking two to three years to achieve it. The upside is that once it was made it made learning new spells incredibly easy.

The Bulwark wasn’t the only method, however. In fact, there were dozens. Maybe hundreds. But because it was so prevalent in the community, the Bulwark was synonymous with Method. Kinda how older people call all tissues Kleenex’s or copiers Xerox’s.

I had gone with a different Method. As much as I could appreciate the ease and uniform use of the Bulwark, I was already behind in my magical education and I didn’t want to spend a few years doing meditation exercises to build a tiny room in my mind where I can store my spells like a magical gun locker. The method I had chosen was Circe’s.

Why the method was named after a Greek sorceress known for turning people into animals is a mystery, even to some of the truly ancient people who practice the method. The nearest I could tell (and I am no expert on the subject) is that turning people into animals is not something you can accomplish with a pre-built Bulwark spell; each casting needed to be tailored to the individual. Which is where Circe’s method shines.

Instead of building a little room in your mind where you store all your magic spells, Circe’s method requires you to sit down with one spell and learn it by rote from every single angle, while practicing a form of meditation that keeps the energies from bleeding over into your body. The downside of this method is that you have to do it with every spell you want to learn, which makes adding spells to your arsenal a pain in the ass. The upside is that every spell you learn this way becomes the Swiss Army Knife version of that spell.

The spell I focused on for my first spell with my new method is a moderately powerful telekinesis spell, meant to push or lift a couple hundred pounds. Alice knows the spell and gave me the little book that detailed how to cast it. But since I had to go over every inch of the spell, from its weakest application, narrowest focus to widest, whether I could split the effect or flatten it—it became so much more versatile.

The other upside of Circe’s method is that, when you completely master a spell, you no longer need the verbal components.

My mom lead us to the elevator (I was surprised that it worked, but not surprised by its cleanliness. In that it was not clean. I was thankful for my gloves.) and took us to the third floor. I gave a worried glance at the flickering fluorescent lights, housed in a broken light fixture. I suddenly remembered that I’m a good buck fifty heavier than I looked, standing in a shitty elevator in a shitty apartment building that was definitely not up to code. I hoped their elevator technician was on the ball.

The doors opened with a jerky, stutter-step motion. One of them didn’t quite open all the way. My mom almost tripped on exiting, as we discovered the elevator hadn’t quite made it all the way up to be flush with the third floor. The hallway we exited to had a couple of half-full trash bags leaning up against the wall, under some colorful (and shitty) graffiti of a cartoon cat fellating a cactus.

“Is that supposed to be Garfield?” Alice asked.

I shrugged.

My mom lead us down the hall, of which only one of the four light fixtures was operating, lending the place some real Silent Hill vibes. If it wasn’t for the two children loudly chasing each other up and down the hall under the watchful (if tired) eyes of their mother, I’d probably be resting my hand on my Webley and getting ready to draw.

We fell into single file on the right to allow the children to run past, looking like they were playing a game of tag. I was watching them with a little amusement and almost ran into my mom as she stopped in front of a door.

“This is it,” she said, gesturing at the door.

I had expected some police tape over the door and wasn’t disappointed. It wasn’t crossed over the door, however, but hung loosely from the frame, suggesting that someone had been inside and hadn’t bothered to step under the tape. I caught my mom’s eye.

“Was this like this when you were here?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, we had to duck under the tape.”

“When were you here last?” I asked, fidgeting with my gloves.

“About two weeks ago,” she replied.

I winced. They had been looking for Conner and trying to call me for two fucking weeks. I shoved my guilt aside and tried the doorknob, finding it locked. I was about to make up some pretext as to why it wasn’t locked for my mom's sake but realized she had already seen me do magic and that I was trying to hide largely from habit. I caught her eye and winked as the door clicked and swung open, guided by my magic.

She gave a little gasp. “W-was that you?”

“You betcha,” I said, scanning the room.

The apartment was tiny. From seeing the building outside and noticing the general structure inside, I assumed the northern side of the building was mostly studio apartments while the southern side had the bigger, family-sized apartments. Because of the size of Conner’s apartment, I could see most of it from the front door.

The far right corner had a twin mattress with a big comforter and a bunch of large pillows. Above it were some floating shelves Conner likely installed himself with some tools, books, and a model steam engine I had gotten him for his birthday right before I moved out. He had wanted to be an engineer at the time so I figured he’d like a model train that was an actual real steam engine, and I was right. I was touched to see it here and surprised that no one had stolen it during his absence. I stepped into the room to get a better look at the place.

The kitchenette was bare. Conner had never been much of a cook, and the fast food wrappers overfilling the trash can told me that hadn’t changed. From what I could see from the small counter, he subsisted mostly on McDonald’s, McDonald’s coffee, and instant coffee.

As I scanned the room a portrait of his daily life started to paint itself in my mind. The scattered mechanical and engineering books told me something about his goals. The tools here and there, along with a couple of engine parts, told me he brought his work home. The coveralls in the hamper with his name on them told me he worked in a garage, but the university letter on the nightstand told me he was taking night classes.

Overall, nothing stood out that would tell me why people would bother to kidnap him. From what I could piece together, he looked like he was too busy to even be in a position to catch the eye of any criminals or criminal organizations. The fact that they hadn’t demanded a ransom was also telling.

Why keep him alive?

“Alright,” I said, pulling the glove off my right hand. “Time to do what I came here to do.”

There was a sharp intake of breath as my mom caught sight of my hand. Whoops. “We’ll talk about it later,” I told her, soothingly. “I promise. But right now I need my concentration because I’m going to do more hoodoo to find Conner.”

First thing I did before I actually touched anything was remove the mental block I had on my psychometry. I hadn’t used it since before my cruise adventure because I was convinced (thoroughly and LOUDLY) by Ida and Alice to stop trading the souls of murderers to eldritch beings for power and to protect myself the old-fashioned way with high-powered ordnance (this from Ida) and magical prowess (this from Alice).

Psychometry is the ability to tell the past of an item by touch. I had used it mainly to break cold cases for my own purposes (see previous comment about murderers), breaking into old evidence lockups to touch things until I got something I could use. It was a pain in the ass to experience 24/7, however (nobody wants to know that someone had blown their nose on their sheets, even if the sheets had then been washed and dyed), so I had figured out a little trick to “turn it off” when I wasn’t using it.

Alice thinks the technique I used is similar to building a Bulwark, which was the leading factor in her continued attempts to get me to use the method. She thinks that because of the mental shenanigans I’ve forced myself to do to live with the powers I’ve bought, I could master the method in record time. She might be right, but Circe’s method is just more appealing.

So, with my psychometry now in full effect, I crossed back to the open door and touched the door handle, because that was the most likely thing the kidnappers had touched.

Information exploded in my mind and I crumpled to the floor like a marionette with cut strings.