Chapter 38 Longest Day Ever
thirty-eight
Longest Day Ever
By the end of the second attempt, I was thoroughly embarrassed, ashamed, and frustrated.
Laurence passed no judgement of his own while asking questions, and the result was “Threat level, very low.” I wouldn’t need to be monitored closely, and was free to use my magic in the ways I had been.
The IBMA apparently don’t involve themselves in the morals or politics of other worlds, but have a set of laws and standards of their own that often closely align.
Laurence comes around the desk and stands beside me. “It was nice to meet you, Ms. Feng. Best of luck out there.”
He taps my arm and I’m sucked through another beam of light back to the atrium. I stumble around for a moment until I catch sight of Jamie, and another person I know.
“Sylvia?” I ask the wild-haired woman.
She opens her arms. “You’re a registered witch! Congratulations!”
I’m not sure I’m hugging-friends with her yet, but I give her one anyway. She squeezes me extra tight, then releases me and gives me a wily smile.
“What threat level did you get?”
“Medium the first time, very low the second,” I say.
Jamie sighs. “You humans.”
“Same for me. Who knew lying was taken so seriously at the IBMA!” She pats my shoulders. “You doing okay otherwise? Not too freaky?”
“Fine,” I say with a shrug. “Was it weird for you?”
She seesaws her head. “Well, they followed me around in blacked-out SUVs for two weeks before deciding to knock on the door, so, yeah, it was weird.”
I look at Jamie. “You guys are creeps.”
She rolls her eyes, blinking her third lid. “That wasn’t my case, and they were assessing Apollo’s threat level at a distance while making sure Sylvia was safe.”
“Uh-huh,” Sylvia grunts, then smiles at me again. “Well, we’ve got a trial to be at in about twenty minutes, so we should go.”
“Trial?” I ask. “I thought I was all good?”
“Your face…” Sylvia snort-laughs. “Not for you. Rhazan!”
I look at Jamie as betrayal swirls in my gut.
She crosses her arms and cocks out a hip. “It’s his final parole hearing, moved up at my request on account of good behavior.”
“Oh,” I murmur.
“Aren’t you excited?” Sylvia asks.
“Yeah, yes. Very,” I say, my smile returning. “It’s just been a whirlwind of emotions today, you know? And I kinda, um, am responsible for the death of two people.”
“We retrieved them from the skreet domain mostly intact,” Jamie says. “One lost a few fingers.”
The rock of guilt in my stomach lightens and I let out a heavy breath.
Not a murderer. Not this time, at least.
“I need to take Zhao Lei to his own holding cell to await trial, so I’ll meet you there,” Jamie says, summoning the jade coffin closer with a flick of her wrist.
She reaches out to shake my hand. “You’re no longer in my custody.”
I grasp her palm and green glitter ekes out of my arm back into her body. A million questions bubble up in my mind, but the impending trial for Rhaz takes precedence.
“Thank you for…”
For not getting Rhaz in trouble when you suspected I’d been in his realm.
For not squealing on me when you knew I was about to pull some crazy magical stunt with Lei.
For watching over Lacey and the town.
For saving the men I almost killed…
“For everything,” I finally say, releasing her hand.
Her eyes narrow. “Plausible deniability is the furthest extent of my capacity to lie, so it would be best to keep your clandestine activity around me to a minimum in the future.”
I clear my throat to suppress a laugh. “Noted.”
“Take care of her, Syl,” Jamie says with a nod for the woman beside me.
Sylvia salutes playfully. “You can count on me.”
We follow Jamie out to the street, or what could be considered a street. There aren’t any vehicles other than the infrequent passing of the pods, and not a lot of foot traffic either. Mostly people appearing or disappearing on beams of light.
Jamie does just that, taking off with Lei to who knows where within this cave-like compound.
“So how does the no mass thing work here?” I ask.
Sylvia shrugs. “Beats the hell out of me. I don’t have a BS.”
“What does bullshit have to do with it?”
She barks a laugh. “A bachelor of science. I’m a business major.”
“Oh.”
“Are you still in school?”
“Uh, no.”
She puts her arm out for me to take. “So, you graduated?”
“I didn’t go to college…or finish high school,” I murmur as I place my hand on her forearm.
She pats me softly. “That doesn’t determine your worth.”
“I know,” I say, a little too defensively, and pink flares around my feet.
We both stare down at the leaking magic, like it’s trying to escape me.
She arches an eyebrow. “Lying is pretty obvious here.”
“What is this freaking floor made of?” I mumble.
“Magical lie-detector stuff,” she says with a shrug.
Light wraps around us in a blink, and the disembodied voice chimes, “Calculating trajectory, two, one, nine point zero, Legal Proceedings.”
The sucking sensation overtakes my body and then we’re levitating. The travel takes only a fraction of a second, leaving me disoriented again as I look at very different surroundings. There are green plants that sort of resemble trees, but they have a lot more noodly branches that move…
There are a lot more people—er, beings?—here, all of them a little wary of us as we walk toward the white edifice ahead. The architecture is basic, clean, and functional. I guess the weird trees make up for how bland it looks here. Very corporate.
Sylvia stops at a kiosk outside the building for directions, and then we’re walking through walls again. The inside of the building is just as bland as the outside. No art, no water fountains, no bathrooms…what the hell is this place?
Before I get the opportunity to ask, Sylvia is running down the hall into Apollo’s arms. He’s wearing more clothes than the last time I saw him—a black turtleneck and dark slacks. Then I realize his wings are nowhere to be seen. He must be a shape-shifter, too.
I stand beside them in a small alcove off the main hallway as they lavish one another with affection.
“You’re just in time,” Apollo says. “They’re sealing the room in a few minutes.”
He taps his foot, and aqua blue magic fires out from where he stands toward the wall. It lights up in a rectangular door shape, and then the wall disappears, revealing a bright coliseum.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of beings are gathered in the tiered circular space, speaking to one another avidly. The noise in the room is an oscillating hum of different kinds of chatter. Apollo leads the way in, and we stop just beyond the threshold.
A beam of white casts down around us, and then we’re in the stands. I grab on to the railing in front of me, trying to stop my head from spinning.
“You’ll get used to that,” Sylvia says.
“Better yet if this is the last time we need to come here,” Apollo says with a hand against his stomach.
A chime dings through the room, and quiet falls in the stands. An alien voice speaks next, but it’s quickly replaced by an English-speaking voice.
“The room is now sealed. Presiding adjudicator Kl3pk/rt—” I cringe at the sharpness of the untranslated name—“will now begin session 80:085:101.”
I yawn and press against my ears with my fingers. “That was something.”
Sylvia is doing the same. “Magic in the room isn’t perfect for everyone.”
Some being beside me grunts, its long trunk waggling side to side in a very chiding manner. I take that for a “shh” and close my mouth.
The next several minutes is Klepkurt—a spider-like creature with so many eyes, they must be able to see everyone at once—speaks about rules and regulations, then covers the docket. There are twenty-eight parole hearings in this session, and Rhazan is last.
I glance around at the multitude of beings in the room. Do people just come to these for fun, or are there really this many of them invested in the outcomes of parole hearings? Or are some of them witnesses?
I don’t have to wait long for answers as the first person is light-beam abducted from the stands and placed at the bottom of the coliseum with the first parolee.
They speak to the creature’s reform over the last seven cycles—however long that is—and that they’ve been adjusted to life on some plane I’ve never heard of and didn’t have an appropriate English translation.
Another five beings speak on behalf of the one standing at the center of the room before Klepkurt sounds the chime again.
“It has been decided by this court that Poffle Glerm Abrugadie Jr. be released for monitored parole, and another hearing will take place in one cycle.”
The chime sounds again, and Poffle is beamed away from the center of the arena.
Sylvia sighs. “It’s gonna be a looong day.”
By the fifteenth hearing, I expect my feet to hurt, but they don’t. Apparently, there’s no up or down, no gravity and yet we stick to the ground and I feel like I have weight. By the twentieth hearing, I’m surprised I don’t have to pee. Nor am I thirsty, or hungry.
This place is fucking weird.
Anticipation bubbles under my skin when we reach the twenty-fifth hearing. I go back to our song, letting it fill up my mind and flow through my veins. I breathe deeply and identify the anxiety growing. I stand apart from the feeling and observe its irrelevance.
Rhazan will either be released from parole, or he will still be on it.
Either way, I’m registered now. I’m allowed to be in his realm, and he’s allowed to be in mine—as long as he doesn’t leave the coffee shop.
If Nai Nai and Ace want to move back to Boston when this is all done, we will.
And when Ace is old enough, I’ll go back to Maine.
Nothing is going to keep us apart, so there’s nothing to fear.
The twenty-seventh being is beamed to the arena and Sylvia turns to me.
“You ready?” she asks.
I nod. Come what may, I’m ready.