“Caleb—”
“—and bam! The door slammed opened and there it was, swathed in that awful black curtain with the embroidered bats on it. Seriously, who thinks that crap is chic?”
“A casino designed to look like hell?” John said, feeling queasy. He looked at the shortbread, but didn’t eat it. He didn’t want a damned cookie. He wanted to know what was wrong with him.
“More like the bargain bin at Party City, the week after Halloween,” Caleb said sourly. “But I still had nightmares for days.”
John frowned. “Because of the bats?”
“Because of the way the water pushed and bulged at the plastic. It . . . wobbled.” The word was accompanied by a small shudder.
“Caleb—”
The coffee pot went off again, and the giant war mage stood to silence it. “Then, when I finally got my shit together and cursed the thing into oblivion, do you know what happened?”
“It turned into steam,” John said, watching the same thing boil out of the pot, while another random memory tried to ensnare him.
He brutally thrust it away.
“Caleb—”
“It turned into steam!” Caleb agreed. “For a minute. ‘Til the damned thing re-condensed and came after me, and by then it was pissed.”
John gave up attempting to explain anything to Caleb, because it felt impossible. His friend was an excellent war mage, better than most people gave him credit for, since he wasn’t constantly trying to claw his way to the top. But he also wasn’t a shrink, someone John was starting to suspect he needed, and it wasn’t fair to saddle him with this.
John decided to finish his terrible coffee, reassure Caleb, and go find someone who could help him.
But not in the Corps.
War mages were essentially magical nukes, and there were stringent policies in place for any who started to “malfunction.” Mental illness of any kind, whether PTSD or more magically induced problems, did not result in therapy. Best case scenario, it resulted in a carefully supervised leave, where any unusual behavior was flagged and reported. Worse case, it resulted in being locked up, drugged, or put in what was essentially prison until the Corps decided what to do with you—assuming they ever did.
There were stories of men who had been in the stasis pods the Corps used for warehousing its problems for a century or more, until a cure was found. There were rumors of others who were still there, from even earlier times, slumbering through the years while any life they’d had passed them by. And they would continue to do so for who knew how much longer.
John felt a shudder go through him, harsh and bone deep. He knew what it was like to lose literally everything and come back to a world changed beyond recognition. He wouldn’t go through that again. He couldn’t. Even if they eventually saved him, it wouldn’t matter.
Everything he gave a damn about was here.
“John?”
He looked up to see Caleb leaning across the desk again, coffeepot in hand. His friend was watching him narrowly, but still didn’t demand the answers John knew he wanted. He was giving him time to volunteer the information, only what he had to say wasn’t anything Caleb wanted to hear.
“You want some more or what?” Caleb asked, after a moment.
John held out his mug. Caleb topped him off with what he’d promised would be stronger this time. He’d lied.
John took a sip and made a face. “Do you honestly call this coffee?”
“Do you honestly still have a stomach lining?”
John started to reply when Caleb held up a hand.
“Wait.” He pulled a jar and a spoon out of the battered metal cabinet. And proceeded to add a heaping mound of instant coffee on top of the sudsy water.
John just looked at him.
He added another spoonful.
John waited patiently.
Caleb sat the jar down on the desk and made a be-my-guest gesture. John obliged. And finally managed to come up with something that was still swill, but was at least swill with a punch.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that,” Caleb muttered, and gathered up his now sadly depleted stash.
John drank his newly fortified coffee and his friend went back to describing the battle with the manlikan. It sounded like a Keystone cops sketch, with the creature flinging the burning curtain at some of the casino’s vampire guards, who had arrived at exactly the wrong time and went up like Roman candles. And then something about a fire extinguisher exploding.
John was trying to pay attention—Caleb told a good story—but his problems kept intruding. And not just the current one. But everything that had happened in the past month, a dizzying array of insanity that had started with an ancient demon curse and ended—
Here. With John sitting in his friend’s office, wondering if the Corps’ version of the men in the white coats were on their way while Caleb kept him busy. And the fact that he would entertain that, would actually suspect that one of his oldest friends would be feeding him shortbread and regaling him with crazy stories so he wouldn’t run away, so they’d know where to find him—
Said everything about what kind of shape he was in. And he wasn’t going to get any better sitting here. John ate the cookie, knocked back the swill, and started to sit the cup on the desk before noticing something . . . strange.
Very strange.
“Caleb?” he said cautiously. Caleb’s lively story had come to an end at some point, but lost in thought, John hadn’t noticed. The two men had never felt burdened with the need for conversation. They’d often spent hours in each other’s company, even on missions that didn’t require it, in comfortable silence.
This wasn’t comfortable.
And neither was the hot coffee now running off the desk like a smoking waterfall. John abruptly pulled back, and managed to avoid having it soak through his trainers. But the liquid stream continued to come nonetheless, cascading off the desk to stain the worn carpet squares on the office floor.
Yet Caleb just stood there, eyes fixed, the now empty pot in one hand, the coffee-covered desk under the other, unmoving.
The hell?
Chapter Four
C aleb?” John said again, unsure for a moment if he was seeing things. And frankly hoping so. “Caleb!”
No response.
The doily was ruined, John thought ridiculously, as he watched coffee being soaked up by the paper lace for a second. Before snapping out of it and surging to his feet, his senses expanding in all directions. But if there was a threat, he couldn’t detect it.
There was no magic swirling around. No blonde time traveler of his acquaintance popping in for a private word and pausing everything around her. No anything.
Just his friend, standing there blank faced and unmoving, like an imposing statue carved out of wood.
Like the men in the hall, John realized, catching a glimpse through the glass pane in the door. He stuck his head out to see Jackson, a hard-bitten trainer, petrified in the midst of giving some sandy haired recruit a blessing out. The old man still had his mouth open, wide enough for a single gold molar to catch the light. And to wink at John as if to say: “Isn’t this fun?”
No, John thought, his hand dropping automatically to the thigh holster he wasn’t wearing. He cursed, because he wasn’t wearing anything else, either, at least not of the weapon variety. Which was a problem considering the large knot of glassy-eyed war mages headed his way.