ALEX
If you were inclined to use the term “magic” lightly, it’s a word you might offer to describe a night like tonight. Twilight paints the grass of Georgetown’s lawn in broad strokes of deep emerald and shadow, and streetlamps act like glowing alchemists, turning the campus’s cobblestone walkway into gold. The sky is a slice of indigo, rich and sweet with Indian summer. And the crowd I’ve anchored onto? Just as beautiful—boys in tailored jackets, young women donning far too much makeup, beads, and gems.
This isn’t my world. I’m borrowing it, holding on to my old chum Warren’s stern as he sails through the warm waters of Georgetown University. But on nights like tonight, where the wind itself practically whistles a note of invincibility across campus, it’s far too easy for me to pretend, to get lost in what could have been. So I clutch the cheap plastic badge in my pocket as a reminder: It wasn’t just his fault. He couldn’t have done it without you. You ruined this for yourself.
The group ahead of Warren and me charges out of the wrought-iron gates of campus and crosses over to O Street. And then the crowd’s whispers start to grow louder, begin buzzing around us like fireflies:
“A faux shining room at Sigma Phi, can you believe it?”
“It’s going to be tops. Performing sorcerers, with shine, just like the Red Den—”
“Poser, you’ve never been to the Red Den—”
Giggles, squeals, laughter—
For a second, it’s too bright, too free, too wonderfully, painfully familiar, and I have to stop walking and collect myself. I start fumbling inside my jacket for a cigarette. It takes Warren a couple of steps to notice, and he doubles back as the crowd continues to trailblaze ahead.
“You’re positive you want to come along tonight?” Warren asks, as he fishes a Lucky out of his own pocket and lights it.
“Don’t worry, the badge is in my pocket, and that’s where it’ll stay.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Warren shakes his head, takes a drag, and watches the crowd continue down O Street toward Sigma Phi’s “criminal magic” party. “You’re almost a real agent now, Alex,” Warren says. “I thought . . .” He trails off.
“What? Tell me.”
“You told me that you joined the Prohibition Unit because you needed to move on. That you wanted to help the Feds catch guys like your father.”
I don’t answer.
“But it’s like you’re not even trying,” Warren pushes. “I mean, don’t you think this isn’t right? You hiding your badge, hitting up parties, chasing tail and magic like you’re just another freshman?”
A flame of embarrassment lights me up inside, but I quickly pinch it out. “I’m not pretending I’m just another freshman.” I throw Warren a hollow smile. “I’m hanging out with my old friend.”
“I saw you in the Harbin dorm a couple days ago, Alex.”
“So? I picked up some English-lit Betty at Chadwick’s the other night. She invited me back to her dorm.”
“It was in the middle of the afternoon,” he says flatly, “in the cafeteria.”
I turn away from him and give a stifled laugh to the sky. “Christ, Warren, I’m starting to think that you’re the police here.” I take another drag to buy myself time, to concoct another lie. I’m quick at it, dealing them out, stacking them up like a house of cards. I’ve had good practice.
And my father was the best of mentors.
“The Prohibition Unit had its trainee class come onto campus a few times, to hear Professor Starks’s lecture about sorcerer’s shine, and the magic of shine transference,” I explain slowly. “I must have grabbed a soda or something afterward.” At that, Warren’s face softens. It almost tempts me to tell him the truth. That I want my old life back so bad it hurts. That I want to go back in time and erase what happened, erase it all.
Instead I add, “But it’s nice to know you’re spying on me.”
“I’m not spying on you. I’m worried about you.” Warren looks at the pavement, stubs the rest of his cig into it. “I’m just not sure I understand anymore,” he says quietly. “I got it at first—tailing me till you got settled in the Unit, getting a taste of what could have been if your father hadn’t been indicted. But Alex, it’s been months since the trial.”
I study my cigarette, the way the white paper surrenders to the hungry cinders. “Is this an elaborate way of trying to tell me to get lost?”
Warren waits a second, another second. “Of course not.”
He looks back down O Street, which is now empty, save for an older gentleman walking his dog and a few students with bursting book satchels coming back from the library. “But tonight’s important to me. Sigma Phi’s going to choose their pledges this weekend, and I don’t want anything messing that up.”
I give him a glass smile. “Well, let’s make sure our boy gets what he wants.”
“I’m serious, Alex. Sigma’s president isn’t a joker, all right? Sam Rockaway takes his frat seriously, and he’s obsessed with sorcery. He’s been planning this criminal magic party since June. What happened the past few times I brought you around? That stuff can’t happen again.” A faint blush falls over his face as he mumbles, “Honestly, I didn’t even mean to tell you about tonight. It just sort of came out.”
That stings, not that I can entirely fault Warren for saying it. I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass, a liability. My nights trolling Georgetown with Warren always start all right—I feel comfortable hitting the town at his side, almost hopeful, like I’m getting to relive a warm, wonderful dream—but then something always goes wrong. Some ass says something that rubs me the wrong way, or I hit on the wrong guy’s girl. Last Friday I got into a fistfight with some arrogant junior who called me a “suit,” and I was dangerously close to transforming his varsity letter into a straightjacket.
I take another cigarette out, light the new one with the stub of my last. It’s a dirty habit, chain-smoking, but when I’m nervous I need to keep my hands busy. “Look, I’ll handle myself tonight, I promise, okay?” I tell Warren. “I’m not going to mess Sigma up for you. I’m just along for the ride. For a break from the grind.” I sigh out a flood of smoke. Then I add quietly, “Sometimes I just need to escape.”
I steal a glance at Warren. I want him to understand without me explaining any more. I want my friend of over a decade to tell me that everything’s okay, that no matter how many times I mess up, how desperate I seem, how dim my future’s become while his just keeps burning brighter—he’ll never leave me to flicker out alone.
But standing here under the streetlamps, the whispers of my life long gone disappearing like the crowd around the corner of O and 35th Streets, Warren’s face only shows pity.
He sighs, pastes on a false smile, and slaps me on the back, a fast, flippant gesture. “Okay, friend,” he says, “then we better hop. Sam said the performance starts at nine.”
We walk without another word down to 35th Street.
“Sam said to use his back door, in the alley.” Warren points us down a narrow, shadowed street behind the corner lot on 35th and O. The alley’s bordered on both sides with old homes that date back centuries, each painted in faded pastels, with sleepy back lots cluttered with trash cans. There’s a light on in about every third house, no noise but the sound of far-off traffic. In short, there’s absolutely no indication of a legendary sorcery party anywhere in our vicinity.
“You sure the crowd went this way?” I ask.
Warren pulls out a small piece of paper from the pocket of his trousers. He checks the address, then approaches one of the squat, shabby houses on our left, a two-story with smudged windows and chipping rose-colored paint. Two wooden Greek letters have been nailed over the entrance, the only faint scent of “fraternity” on the block.
“This is the address,” Warren mumbles.
I throw the stub of my cig into the dying bushes lining the little yard, then follow Warren up the set of cracked cement stairs to the house’s back door.
“1312”—he looks at me—“this has to be it.”
I shrug. “So try the door.”
Warren reaches for the doorknob, but his hand passes right through it. “Oh, wow.” He gingerly steps in, straight through the door, and I follow.
As soon as I cross the threshold, I feel it, that slow pull of walking straight through a protective force field. Like an unraveling, layer by layer, like I’m being consumed slowly by a thick, black nothing. I can’t see Warren, hell, I can’t even sense Warren—and then the void releases, the black softens into twilight, and we’re standing at another door, this one identical to the last, leading to an identical house, except each window of the house is now glowing, animated with light from within. A steady flow of jazz and conversation spills from the house’s interior.
“Holy shit,” Warren says. “Have you ever experienced anything like that?”
Call me jaded, but this force field is amateur magic at best. “A better sorcerer would have added a tactile manipulation, an actual house around the house, instead of just a protective shield,” I say. “See this little force field?” I wave my hand back through the charged, protective space. “As soon as cops or agents reach for the door, they’ll know there’s magic inside.”
Warren rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue—sorcery is the one topic I still have the upper hand on, always will. Of course I know I’m being a prick, but Warren’s pathetic, almost childlike wonder over this lackluster work of sorcery bothers me. I’m angry at magic. I’m angry at my father, at those D Street gangsters who sold him out, at myself—
These days, I’m pretty much angry at everything.
Warren grabs the real doorknob in front of him, pushes the wooden door open, and we step into a narrow hall that’s packed with college kids, whispers, and speculation. There must be dozens of frat boys idling, passing some of the legal stuff around—whiskey, rum—to warm themselves up for the main event. Dames are angling around one another, standing on their tiptoes to see the front of the line, to judge how long it’s going to take to get in. The air is heavy with perfume and sweat, and conversations bounce off the walls. A line to the freaking door for a glimpse, a taste, of magic. If declaring something criminal doesn’t render it sexier, then I don’t know what does.
“Sigma Phi attracts a crowd, doesn’t it?” I shout to Warren over the noise.
Warren throws me a self-satisfied smile. “It’s the most sought-after fraternity on campus. And on a night like tonight, with live sorcering? Place is going to shoot through the roof.”
“You really think you stand a shot of getting into a frat like this?” I mean it to sound curious, but it comes across like an accusation.
But Warren doesn’t flinch. I wait as he shakes the hands of a group of tweed-vested chaps who’ve filtered in behind us. Warren puffs out his chest a little as he does it, tosses his hair in the same way I used to, when I was a guy who could pull off a hair toss. I’ve been noticing Warren’s got a little more presence since he moved into his freshman dorm, and since I started training with the Unit this summer. It’s like he’s managed to grow into his own, now that he’s out from under my shadow. “I better.” He turns back and leans in conspiratorially. “My dad took Sam’s father and two older brothers out to Saint Michaels for a golf weekend in August, to sweeten the deal.”
“Thank God for fathers,” I say simply.
At that, Warren’s face turns beet red.
“Come on, War, I’m teasing,” I add, trying to let us both off the hook. But the damage is done.
Before the awkwardness has a chance to settle in and stay, a redheaded dame comes barreling toward us from the back door, saving us from each other. She sidesteps through the back of the line, which prompts a chorus of, “Come on! Wait your turn!”
“Sorry, gents,” the ginger announces, “but my fella’s holding my spot for me.”
As evidence, she sidles up to Warren’s other side and plants the airiest of kisses onto his cheek.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d make it,” Warren says breathlessly, no residue at all of “big man on campus” left in his tone.
“And miss the party of the year? No thank you.” The redhead straightens her skirt. She’s cute—cherry mouth, cherry hair, little upturned nose. And rich, that much is obvious from her pearls and the embroidered LM on her purse. Perhaps equally as obvious, Warren is definitely not her “fella.” Not in the way he wants to be, at least: I can tell from the way she’s already moved on, is scanning the crowd for someone else she might know who’s closer to the front. I hate this habit of mine—reading into the slightest gesture, the meaning of a smile, a pause. But since my father’s indictment, I can’t seem to stop. It’s like I’m watching everyone, waiting for the other shoe to drop, scouting whether anyone’s on the hunt for the full truth, and whether they’re starting to circle in on me.
“Sam’s roommate told Sasha who told Laura that Sam’s having three DC sorcerers here tonight,” the ginger prattles as she keeps surveying the crowd ahead. She still hasn’t seen or acknowledged me. “And they’re going to actually brew some sorcerer’s shine! Can you believe it? Sam’s auctioning off ten shots of it to raise money for the Christmas Ball.”
“Are you serious?” Warren matches her enthusiasm.
“That’s what I heard.” She sighs loudly and dramatically. “God, it’s so hot, all of it. I’ve been wanting to try shine so bad I’ve been dreaming about it. I better win one.”
For a second, I’m tempted to show her a magic that will send her into a dream so thick and hot she’ll never want to climb out.
“You’re really a sorcerer’s shine virgin?” I say instead, wedging myself right into their conversation.
The ginger turns her head, annoyed, in my direction. But then she stops, sizes me up, faintly blushes. I know she must like what she sees, they almost all do before they really get to know me. Sure enough, her cherry mouth starts to turn up like little stems.
“Lana Morgan, Alex. Alex, Lana Morgan,” Warren introduces us quickly. I notice he leaves my last name out of the introduction.
Lana leans closer. “So are you a freshman too? I haven’t seen you around—I’d remember.” She lets her eyes linger on me. The line starts moving again, and we all take a few steps forward together. Warren uses the chance to reinsert himself between us.
“No, Alex is a friend from the old days, just along for the ride,” Warren says quickly. “He works for the government.”
I watch Lana’s interest deflate. “The government,” she says blandly. “How interesting.”
“I’m actually a sorcery expert,” I’m quick to add. “I’m training with the Prohibition Unit, the Domestic Magic division.”
“You don’t say?” Lana’s smile brightens a few watts, as Warren rolls his eyes next to me. “I bet you’re just chock-full of all sorts of fascinating information.” Then she shoots Warren a confused, fearful glance. “Wait, if he’s a Fed, what’s he doing here?”
Warren laughs out something like, “My thoughts exactly,” but I talk over him: “Let’s just say I value fieldwork.” I shoot her my smile, the cocky, off-center one, the one my last fling told me was the only reason she put up with me so long.
“So you’re one of those Unit men, the fun kind.” Lana meets my smile and wiggles her eyebrows. The corrupt kind, is what she means. The Unit’s notorious for making more money off bribes than their government salaries. It’s part of the reason I joined—the agency’s messy, disorganized, an easy place to get lost and hide. “Did you ever have to take a shot of shine, you know, as part of the job? To see what it’s like?”
“Absolutely.”
Her eyes become liquid, hungrier. “So what’s it feel like, drinking the sorcerer’s shine?”
The sorcerer’s shine—the magic spell without any other elements, water turned into pure magic touch inside a bottle. The primary reason the anti-sorcery activists were able to pass the Eighteenth Amendment, besides the record-high crime rate during the Great War and the media’s frenzy over a slew of high-profile magic robberies, and one of the most sought-after, addictive magic drugs on the black market. A spell quite literally stumbled upon centuries ago, goes the rumor, when some sorcerer was so drunk he forgot to add his spell’s other elements.
I hesitate before pulling out the little silver flask of shine that I brought, the one I made this morning before I took the streetcar into work and sat behind a desk for ten hours. I was planning on giving it to Warren as a thank-you, pawn it off as a score from the Unit’s temporary evidence room, but now I’m not in the mood. Now I want Warren—with his big Sigma Phi dreams and his golf-trip-wielding father and his borrowed hair toss—to feel what it’s like to lose something.
“It’s different for everyone.” I pull the flask out of my coat with the flourish of a true performance sorcerer. “You’ve got to try it for yourself.”
Lana wraps her hands around mine, which are wrapped around the flask, and gasps. “Are you serious? I can have this?”
“Of course, doll. But better drink it tonight. Shine’s magic only lasts a day—that flask will just be water again tomorrow.”
She looks around, then takes it from me slowly, as Warren mutters, “Stealing government property now too?” But I ignore him, just relish this moment of having something to offer.
“Drink it now,” I urge her, “so it’ll hit you right as you walk into the party.”
She nods, like I really am some unquestionable expert, and then takes the flask to her lips and downs it in one gulp.
“When will I feel it?” she whispers, giggles, as she passes the flask back to me.
“Any minute.”
We’re moving closer to the front, now maybe one or two groups away. A narrow white door to what looks to be a broom closet stands half-open about ten feet ahead, and a nice if nondescript-looking man sits on a stool next to the door. As we take another collective step forward, Lana gasps, stops.
“Oh. My. God,” she whispers, arching her neck back. “Holy Mother. Holy effing Mother.”
She closes her eyes, licks her lips, purses them. I haven’t hit the stuff myself in a long time, but I know the stages of a shine trip inside and out, from working with my father, and now the Unit—at least the stages of a trip before your body comes to need the stuff. First comes the euphoria, the flood of magic out of the bottle and into your blood. Then “the clarity,” where things take on a different sheen, like the world is coming together. Like there’s been a secret, evasive all your life, that’s now being whispered into your ear. Then, as our Unit guidebook clinically states, comes a “heightened sense of invincibility, increased sociability, and the ecstasy of the senses.” Which, in layman’s terms, basically means that the world becomes enchanted.
“Good?” I ask.
Lana laughs, seductive, guttural, looks me right in the eyes, her pupils two tiny specks. “Perfection.”
“You ever think these kinds of tricks could land you right alongside your old man?” Warren digs, as Lana stumbles to my other side, so now I’m in between them.
“Relax, Warren,” I mutter, as Lana wraps her arm around mine. I try to focus on her, but Warren won’t let it go.
“I still remember what you told me, right after his indictment, how you never wanted to be like him. Ever.” Warren leans in. “Every time you ask me to take you out, I think about that, how ironic it is. ’Cause it’s like you’re trying to be him,” he adds. “It’s like you can’t help it.”
Warren’s words hit me hot and quick, the shock of his jab quickly settling into angry shame. “I guess neither of us is man enough to change,” I cut next to him. “Jealousy still looks bad on you, Warren.”
We reach the cleaning closet, come face-to-face with the man on the stool sporting a black jacket, black pants, and a bowler hat. He gives us a smile and folds his hand out like a welcome toward the door. “Your turn, folks. Step inside.”
Lana, Warren, me—we all peer into the closet out of instinct. There are cleaning supplies stashed in the dusty corners, an old broom, buckets. No light.
“But it’s not a closet.” Lana looks at me with those wide eyes. “It’s a test.”
The doorman nods with an almost cringe-worthy, put-on flourish. “Very wise.” He smiles at me. “Appearances can be deceiving.”
Lana takes me by the hand, and Warren and I follow her into the broom closet.
The closet is a double-sided trick, it has to be: linking two objects together through time and space, so that guests walk into one door, only to instantly walk out of another located somewhere else. Sure enough, as we pass through the broom closet, we magically exit a different door that leads into a low-lit, windowless hallway faintly smelling of mildew. My guess is that we’ve been transported into the cellar of the house.
A double-sided trick, a link, isn’t particularly difficult—like all magic manipulations of reality, it just takes the right words of power, the right objects, and of course, the magic touch—but it’s definitely a crowd-pleaser. And it’s real sorcery, not one a puffer could try to fake in a pathetic attempt to flaunt himself as magic. So my guess is that Warren’s buddy Sam has shelled out quite a lot of cash for this little party to go down. Sorcerers aren’t the typical frat-house fare—you hear whispers of performances in higher-echelon circles, you find them in the city’s shining rooms owned by the mob. And even though magic itself doesn’t wow me, the keys to it—money, influence, power—that’s a bag of tricks I still can’t accept that I’ve lost.
“Don’t leave me,” Lana says dreamily. She works her hand up to my bicep as we walk down the hall. “You’re an angel, you know that? You’ve brought me something amazing. You’ve brought me light.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.”
“That’s for damn sure,” Warren mutters behind me.
I ignore him, just wrap my hand around Lana’s, and together we follow the hallway until it dumps us into the main space of the cellar, a wide, low-ceilinged, windowless den that looks like it spans the entire length and width of the house. The ceiling is peppered with small, blinking lights, and the floor is shiny as a still mirror, reflecting back the lights on its glossy black surface, which creates the effect that we’re walking over a field of stars. There are a few trees lining the perimeter of the crowded room, oaks with arms that stretch and bend like they’re being animated by a magic wind, with leaves that rustle and sway, all tucked away in the basement of Sigma Phi.
All of this will be gone tomorrow. All pure magic is real, a true manipulation of reality, but it’s fleeting. From sorcerer’s shine to magic replicas, force fields, and every type of trick, all of a sorcerer’s magic is condemned to fade away after a day. Most people think that makes sorcery even more mesmerizing: getting a glimpse of a world that’s better than our own, but one that only lasts for a moment. But magic’s taken too much from me to see it as anything but a swindle.
“I feel like we’re flying.” Lana takes my face gently and presses hers into it, her cherry lips on mine, before she pulls away. “More magic,” she says. “Take me.”
I scan the room. The crowd is divided into clusters, anywhere from ten to about thirty college kids arranged in a semicircle around each of the three hired sorcerers on the floor. Each holds their audience’s attention with a small, space-friendly trick, performing it parlor-style for their enraptured crowd on repeat.
My eyes rest on the nearest sorcerer, a few feet away. He takes his time fanning playing cards into a rainbow above his head, and then folds them back into a perfect deck that lands softly on his outstretched hand.
“Come on”—I pull Lana toward him—“you’ll love this.”
She practically coos as we watch the trick once, twice, three times. I bet the show must seem even more wowing when she’s on shine. She sneaks me another kiss as we stumble over to another performer, one who holds a small sphere of fire in his palm, waving it back and forth and jovially threatening to hand it over to a particularly shell-shocked dame on the sidelines. Lana whispers, “That light is so hot, so blinding, Alex.”
As she leans into me, I can’t help but agree; it’s bright in here, warm and familiar. If I just focus on this girl, the way she’s looking at me, on the jazz music blaring and the faint scent of privilege that perfumes the cellar, I can forget. I can lose myself in the now.
“I want to get so lost,” Lana whispers into my ear, then pulls away from me suggestively. I want to get lost too. “Come find me.”
“Wait, Lana,” I laugh. But as I move to chase after her, Warren steps in my way.
“You can stop, all right?” he says flatly, yelling into my ear over the jazz. “Uncle. You want to feel like a big man? I say uncle.”
I shake my head. “What are you taking about?”
“God, you’re really going to make me spell it out?” He looks around uncomfortably, blushes. “I have my eye on Lana, all right, Alex?”
An electric feeling, shiny and heady, lights me up from the inside. “That’s funny, ’cause it seems like she’s got her eye on me.”
“Yeah, as a joke, as a trip, same as the shine,” Warren snaps. “She’s the daughter of a freaking senator. Don’t kid yourself.”
And despite the blood sport we’re playing, the hard daggers we’ve been slinging at each other, I’m still surprised silent by his cut. My eyes pinch without my permission, and I have to look at the floor.
“Jesus, what are we doing, Alex?” Warren says. “Look, I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You’re right, I’m not.” Warren runs his fingers through his hair, gives me that infuriating, borrowed hair toss again. “I’m tired of this. It’s awful what your father did, it really is, all right? And I felt bad for you. Sometimes I still do. But you’re becoming poison,” he says. “Happy? There’s the truth.” And then he turns to walk away.
The anger starts to boil, overflow inside. I need to direct it, somewhere, anywhere else, besides letting it burn me inside out. So before Warren gets away from me, before I think better of it, I take a step forward and give him a sharp shove to the back.
He stumbles forward, and a couple of chaps and dames on the edge of the nearby performance circle stop talking and stare. Warren whips around. “Are you serious?” He takes a few running steps toward me and pushes back. “Leave. Just go home, Alex.”
But I shove him again, sending him off balance.
“Keep your dirty hands off me,” he seethes, as he barrels back into me. I grab his neck into a headlock and send us both scrambling to the floor.
“Fight!” I hear from somewhere above us.
I grab Warren by the collar, give him a hard slap to the jaw, not enough to hurt, just enough to shock him. “You’re a pathetic fighter,” I say, as I grip him tighter.
“And you’re just pathetic,” he spits. He thrashes his hand, nails bared toward me, and manages to cut my lip. As he tries to roll over, I send my shoulder into his stomach before two pairs of hands rip us apart. It’s only when I’m pulled to my feet that I realize the music has been cut, the sorcerers have stopped their tricks, and Warren and I are now the main performance.
“What the hell, Warren?” this Napoleon of a frat boy says, barreling in between us.
Warren freezes. “Sam, I—”
“Who is this guy?” Sam interrupts, nodding toward me.
“An old friend.”
“Doesn’t look like a friend to me.” Sam studies me with wide eyes. “You even go here, chump?”
“No, I’m a trainee,” I say slowly, “with the Prohibition Unit.”
Sam pops a sharp, cutting laugh over the crowd’s silence. “So you’re fighting with a pig, Warren, at a criminal magic party?”
“I’m not a pig,” I interject.
“Shut up,” Warren and this Sam chap say in unison.
Sam turns his wrath back to Warren, stares him down. “It was stupid, bringing him here. And we take smart fellas at Sigma Phi—”
“No, no, he’s cool,” Warren interrupts with a stammer. “I mean, he’s a total prick, but he won’t rat on us—he can’t, he’s as crooked as his old man—”
At the mention of my father, my fist takes on a mind of its own, flies out from my side before I can stop it, sucker punches Warren right in the jaw.
Warren stops, sucks in his breath, in shock or pain I’m not sure. He looks at me silently, as he holds his face.
“Get these losers out of here,” Sam barks at the two varsity-letter types that pulled us apart earlier. Each of them grabs one of my arms, as another frat boy comes to the rescue and restrains Warren.
Sam glares at Warren. “Don’t come back here.”
The frat boys take us up the back stairs, into a dark kitchen, through the side door and the force field, and into the alley behind 35th Street. And then they leave Warren and me with each other.
“I can’t believe it.” Warren gives a weird, almost girlish laugh as he rubs his jaw. “You just managed to ruin everything.”
The high from Lana and the adrenaline from the fight are both waning, and a dull, familiar self-loathing starts taking over. “It’s all right,” I say softly. “Sam must have paid an arm and a leg for those sorcerers. My bet is he was already shined. He won’t remember tomorrow. You’ll get in.”
Warren just stares at me like I’m insane. “Don’t ever talk to me again, you understand?”
He turns on his heel, starts fumbling with his pack of cigarettes as he walks into the alley.
“Come on, Warren, that was as much your fault as it was mine.”
He doesn’t answer, and my heart starts pounding.
“Warren.”
Nothing but smoke funneling over his head as he turns onto O Street. “WARREN!”
Christ, he’s really serious.
“Warren, come on!”
And then the pounding gives way to a strange, searing ache in my chest. It vaguely feels like a part of me’s melting.
I stand there for a long while, alone. I smoke one cigarette, then another, study the force field of the house in front of me, the dark exterior, the magic blanket of quiet draped over the raging Sigma Phi house within. I picture all those pretty dames and lucky chaps. Dolls with nothing to worry about but the shade of their lipstick. Boys with fathers who can buy them into fraternities. Boys like Warren.
Once upon a time, boys like me.
I take a long drag, focusing on that force field. And then I turn inward, wait for that huge, all-encompassing feeling of power to start coursing through my veins, fuel me with lightning. And when I feel ready, full, I flick my cigarette stub toward the force field and exhale with a whisper: “Poof.”
The facade in front of the Sigma Phi house shatters, crumbles into dust in a flash of a moment, spirals away like it’s being carried by a magic wind, and now I’m staring at the real house. Light shines from every window. The quiet back alley of Georgetown is shocked awake with the wailing jazz that thunders from within Sigma Phi. No longer cloaked in magic, it’s bright as a beacon, a siren. The house practically thumps against the crisp September night.
I watch neighbors’ lights go on around me, witness a woman in her nightgown thrust open her door to assess the commotion from across the street. Dogs bark and more lights blink on as I walk away, smiling, down the alley toward O Street.
And for just a second, the world feels a little fairer. Despite the fat lip that Warren just gave me, I even manage a whistle around the corner.