Chapter 12 Mirrors and Smoke
When the song ends, I’m panting and covered in sweat. I touch my fingers to my face, and they come away wet. I’ve been crying. My knees buckle, and I let myself crumple to the floor.
Laila’s story—it sickens me. Her pain, her desperation, her actions.
Her power, Muya’s power, my power, can be used for far more than playing defense.
It makes me never want to use it again. And yet, I sympathize with her.
Maybe the demons are right, maybe I should give it up, go back to my normal life, and forget I ever knew about this world.
Even if I wanted to use Laila’s method, I couldn’t.
I don’t even really know who my enemy is.
So instead, I do a Nisha Special: nothing.
I remain paranoid, searching for demons in every corner.
I shut myself up inside my apartment whenever I can, shuttling from work to home and back again until my Saturday morning shift is over and I can simply lie in bed.
But on Sunday, I feel stir-crazy. I’m usually fine with endlessly scrolling my phone, but right now, I want to move.
I try to dance, but the memory of Laila prevents me from sinking into it. I’m afraid of what I could see next.
If a magical demon is going to get me, they can find me inside my apartment just as well as outside, I reason.
Which is how I find myself in a nearby park, watching dogs chase squirrels.
I wonder if the squirrels see the dogs as a sign of the good season to come—winter ending—or whether it’s always terrifying.
At UChicago, boys used to joke that our motto should be “Where the squirrels are cuter than the girls.” Not Aaron, though.
I sit on a damp bench and try to collect my thoughts.
The demon pursuing me has made a few different attempts, but with days of nothing in between each one.
I’m not a genius, but it feels like a pattern.
Like maybe the demon takes time to plan each one or is weak and needs to recharge afterward—maybe that’s why he would pursue even my small amount of power.
It’s a lot of conjecture, but I become more and more convinced of my own slapdash theory.
Following this hypothesis, he’s due for another attempt on my life.
The next morning, I wake up sweating at five a.m. and decide to head to the clinic.
Maybe that will make me feel better. As I climb up the stairs to the L platform, I’m taken aback by how quiet it is.
I’ve never been out here this early, and I’m glad for that.
It’s a scary, still kind of silence, not calm or peaceful. The nape of my neck is crawling.
At the top of the platform, there’s one other man waiting. I glance at him, and then scoff. “Waiting for me?” I ask Muya.
He smiles. “Of course. I had a sense you would come up here, and I wanted to show you something.”
I don’t respond, backing away. My phone is in my hand, ready to emergency dial.
Muya rolls his eyes. “If I wanted to hurt you, I would have already!”
He moves, faster than my eye can track, and grabs my free hand.
I scream, but there’s nobody around to hear it.
Then Muya’s magic surges through me—or maybe my magic surges toward Muya, and for a brief moment, I see the totality of the world.
Everything is shimmering, everything is magic.
I look down beyond the platform, and the dull Chicago earth is practically glowing.
The sky dances, the air itself is saturated with the feeling of beauty.
I exhale, and the world returns to normal.
I turn to Muya, who is grinning from ear to ear.
“See? We share the same magic. Knowledge is the fabric of the world, and this is what it looks like dormant. Ignorance and knowledge are two sides of the same coin, and the ability to remove knowledge, to cause anyone to forget anything—it is far more powerful than you can imagine.”
Part of me wants to ask him to bring it back, that vision that filled me with such elation, but I bite my tongue.
“What’s your point?” I ask instead.
“You don’t seem to understand what you have, or the danger you’re in. You don’t seem to understand what we could do together. Look, there’s a train approaching the station. We could stop it.”
“Now you have telekinesis?” I’m half joking, half concerned.
“No. Power over minds, over ignorance, is so much stronger than that. The train operator is already anticipating stopping. If we both make that train operator forget he needs to reach the station first, that part of his mind will be veiled. And he will stop before he gets here.”
I feel Muya’s magic straining, and my own magic wants to respond. For a moment, I resist, but then my curiosity takes over. And as the magic surges, the train stops.
“That is what the entirety of my power could do. I could stop armies. But the whole is more than the sum of its parts; divided, it is much weaker. I want my magic back. I could be the most powerful ally you have ever had.”
It is when he starts talking of want and power that I remember myself.
I yank my hand out of Muya’s, and the world seems instantly duller.
The hum of magic is gone. We both wear matching looks of disappointment as the train starts again, our hold over the conductor lost. “Think on it,” Muya says, moving to leave.
His voice is stiff and distant. “You are in more danger than you think.”
“I know. Please, wait. I know. But I need this power to protect myself.”
“If I had all my power, I could protect you.”
“Then why were you so eager to share with Chandini, Tara, Laila… should I go on?”
“That was a different time. A world filled with demons and magic. There was enough to go around. There isn’t now.”
“So what’s fueling the demon coming after me?”
Muya’s face contorts into an expression I can’t quite place. “Some demons cannot be killed. The world is always giving them power.”
“Like ignorance?” I quip, but he nods.
“Yes, like ignorance. Like any human folly. And—” He cuts himself off.
“And what?”
“And I don’t know why I would give information to some human who doesn’t trust me. Who stole from me.”
“I didn’t steal from you, I freed you. You should be thanking me, not disdaining humanity.”
He grimaces. “I always hope humans will be better than you are. But I am always disappointed. You have only benefitted from this relationship so far. It is true that you freed me, but you only allow me to be half myself.”
“Surely you are more than your power,” I say. I could add that his power has put me in danger since the start, but I don’t. He will only use it as another reason for me to give it up.
“A classically human belief,” Muya says. “Demons are their power, nothing more and nothing less. If you do not want to help me, then I will continue to search for how to help myself. Just—stay safe.” He leaves, and I don’t call after him this time. His opinion of me is clear.
I get to the clinic by seven a.m. I don’t have the keys, so I pace around the perimeter. I don’t see anything out of place, but my magic is deeply, deeply unsettled by Muya’s tricks, and Laila’s face still haunts me.
I don’t hear Diane until she waves her hand in front of my face and I startle. “You okay, honey?”
“Just tired,” I say, trying to smile.
Diane seems to understand. “You good to escort this morning?”
“Yup,” I say. “I’m going to blast Beyoncé. No tears allowed.”
She ushers me inside, where I take five minutes to warm up and put on my vest before heading back out to brave the wind.
It’s one of those days that veteran Midwesterners would insist is “pretty good, actually, if it wasn’t for the windchill,” which means it’s terribly cold.
I connect my Bluetooth to the old boom box and start playing Cowboy Carter.
It’s that kind of day. Around seven thirty, the first few protesters show up, and the medical staff sets up for the day.
When I step inside to ask for the day’s projected patient count, Diane looks at me suspiciously. “What is it?”
“I just… I have a funny feeling.” It’s clinic shorthand for a paranoia that sometimes takes hold given all the threats we get. Usually, we let that person poke around and assuage their fears without judgment.
Diane squeezes my arm. “I’m sorry. I know it’s been really intense around here. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I say. “The last two weeks have made me antsy, I think. You know how it is. I’m just going to…” I gesture back at the office, where I plan to search my spam filter for anything suspicious before the day officially starts.
I don’t find anything in my email besides the usual violent rambling, I’m going to rape you and murder you, you murdering bitch! I head back to the front just in time to find JJ pulling on a clinic vest. I follow her out.
“All quiet?” I ask.
“I just got here,” JJ says. She looks a little nervous. “It doesn’t look great, but hey, that’s what I signed up for!”
“Forty Days is special,” I tell her.
Her eyes dart over to the protesters. “Do you ever wonder why they do it?” she asks.
I shrug. “I know why they do it. They hate women and want to yell at them—”
“But not all of them, right? Some of them are women.”
I laugh. “Plenty of women hate women, but no, you’re right.
Some of them truly believe that human life begins at the moment of conception, contrary to scientific evidence and the consensus of what—ninety-seven?
ninety-eight?—percent of OB-GYNs. So to them, we’re murderers.
They believe it because their religion says so.
Never mind that many have themselves had abortions or taken their daughters to have abortions. ”
JJ frowns. “If you really thought that murder was happening, routinely and regularly, wouldn’t you want to do everything to stop it?” She hastens to add, “I don’t agree, of course. But I’m just saying.”