Chapter 05: Planning and Supervision

My muscles were stiff when I woke up Friday morning, but it wasn't anything that a little warm stretching and a couple of aspirin didn't hold in abeyance. Mom and Mary were both quiet at the kitchen table as they ate their breakfasts. My other family members were either at work or still asleep. The voices in my head were mostly quiet, too. I glanced at the newspaper as I nibbled small bites from a piece of toast with a little peanut butter. The shocking story about bodies in a freezer and alleged demonic sacrifices had been demoted to the front of the local section. The article didn't contain any new information.

I was mostly concerned that someone might note that a kid with a ski mask, bicycle, and guitar had fled emergency workers right around the same time a supposed teenager wearing a ski mask had killed Guzman. Of course, if the police had managed to turn up a witness who had seen me enter Guzman's backyard with my guitar and bicycle, there was no way they could fail to make the connection. To my small relief, the article said nothing about that. Of course, it was entirely possible that the police had made the link but had managed not to leak it to the press.

Danny's brothers had Jenny duty, so Danny was allowed to join the rest of the shovel crew shortly after sunrise. He, Mike, and Terry, having hit Russ's weight set pretty hard, were in worse shape than the rest of us, and we worked slower than the evening before. Because we weren't being paid by the hour, it didn't matter to our customers.

A portion of our business was from person's whose drives we had cleared the day before. "Do you think they'll be pissed off when we make them pay again?" Terry asked.

"Why should they be?" Danny replied. "It's not like the work we did before doesn't count." Danny's prediction was right. We attempted to charge based on the difficulty of the job, and most people realized it was easier to remove three inches of snow twice, and cost them less, than it was to remove six inches of snow once, at least when one was working with a shovel.

With many adults having to dig themselves out before going to work, and lots of other kids with the same money-making idea we had, the neighborhood was again mostly functional by noon. Because the side streets of Packard were salted but not plowed, there still was some danger of cars getting stuck, but most of them managed to get along by following the tracks established by others.

The snowfall turned out to be not as big as the one earlier in December, but it was big enough. We hadn't had much of a thaw from the first snowfall, so the piles were getting large. We called it a workday and went home at lunchtime.

Mom stuck bowls of her homemade chili in front of her kids. It smelled good. "I bet you two worked up an appetite," she said to Mary and me.

"I could eat a raw buffalo," Mary said.

I didn't say anything. Rich and Charlie began chattering about the snow fort they were building with their friends down the street. Arthur's feelings of guilt were still playing havoc with my desire for food. The huge amount of exercise I'd been getting helped me force down enough that Mom didn't seem concerned, though. When I was finished, I said, "Thanks, Mom. That was good." I rinsed out my bowl. Mary was getting herself some more from the pot.

I gave Kirsten a call. After I briefly talked to Mrs. Kennedy, Kirsten was given the phone, and we exchanged preliminary pleasantries. "Mom and Dad are going shopping after supper for soundproofing stuff," I told her. "Mary and I need to watch Rich, Charlie, and Susan, but we're still allowed to practice. Mom suggested that I give you a heads-up, though, in case your mom didn't want you here without adult supervision."

"I need to talk to my mom." She did that and then said, "My mom wants to talk to yours."

"Bog only knows how long that will take," I said, "so I'll just tell you goodbye now. If you can't come over for practice, I'll give you a call this evening to talk a little." So we put our mothers on the phone.

While Mom was talking to Mrs. Kennedy, I said to Mary, "Could you come downstairs when you're done with lunch, please." She nodded, and I headed for the basement. When she showed up, I put down the book on Egyptian mythology I had signed out of the library and asked, "Would you like to talk about the news you learned yesterday?"

It took her a second to get it. "What? Oh. You told me never to talk about it." She sat down on the couch.

"I see you've put the pieces all together. Yes, it's much safer for me if you never talk about it with anyone, ever, but you've been looking worried, and I don't want you to suffer. I'll try to answer your questions, if you have them."

"He was a very bad man, wasn't he?"

"He was. There's no telling how many people he hurt. He killed at least two, but I suspect there probably were more."

"And you stopped him."

"Yes. I have mixed feelings about that."

"Why?"

"A man died. I killed him."

"I imagine that's just an awful experience; it has to be, but did you have any choice?"

"The demon and I, we fought--either in my head or in a metaphorical place. I won and sent the demon back after his summoner."

Mary's eyes opened wide. "What was that like?"

I described the battle to her, slightly edited for gore. "After I won, I could have called the police, but I chose to go after Guzman, the demon's servant, myself."

"So you decided to go into danger when you didn't have to. Why?"

"I fought with myself, but in the end, I wanted to make sure Guzman didn't survive."

"I think the evil bastard got what was coming to him," Mary said in a fierce tone.

Arthur felt shocked. Ursus remarked, She's her mother's daughter.

Arthur managed to gain control of our tongue for a few moments. "By the law, what I did was murder."

"I don't know what the law says, but I can't see how what you did was wrong."

Thank you, Mary. "Do you have any more questions?" I asked.

"How long do I have to make up my mind about learning magic? I-- I don't know if I could cope with the danger."

"You can have all the time you want--years, even. Are you still willing to be my assistant sometimes?"

"Are you sure you should keep messing around with it?"

"It has gone way beyond messing around. It's part of who I am, now."

Mary thought for a few seconds and then nodded. "I promise never to talk about what happened without your permission first."

"Thank you." Several moments passed in silence.

"I think I'll go see if I can pick out some tunes on my new piano."

"Have fun." She went upstairs.

Your sister is a fine, sensible girl, Ursus said to Arthur.

Shut up, Arthur said.

Shades of gray, I said.

Shut up.

You've been traumatized, Ursus said. We've all been traumatized. Killing a fellow human being isn't easy for most people. It certainly isn't for me. Still, it's best not to brood.

Shut up.

Let's change the subject, Ursus suggested. The next magic ritual we should do is the recharging of our protective-circle amulet.

I felt his fucking skull break under my fucking foot, Arthur thought. That was our emotional limit, and we rushed into our room to cry for a while. Fortunately, we didn't puke up lunch.

Bawling a bit proved to be cathartic, at least temporarily, and once we finished we went upstairs and took a shower. When I came out of the bathroom, Mom said, "Mrs. Kennedy will be staying here while you kids practice tonight."

"I don't blame her for not trusting me," I said, "but I thought she trusted me more than that."

"I'm not sure it's you. Certainly, no one wants you and Kirsten to do anything goddamn stupid, but her big worry seems to be that a couple of kids in grade eight are in your band."

"Mike and Danny aren't the most upstanding citizens, but they never would disrespect you so much that they'd break your rules in your own house. They like you, and they know I wouldn't put up with it, or Mary."

"I know that--at least I hope that--but I understand her concern. Younger kids usually first get exposed to bad shit from either older friends or older bothers and sisters. I should know, being one of eight." She laughed. "Quitting smoking almost killed me, and I've told you about sniffing the gasoline barrels at the wharf."

I shook my head. "My exposure to the drug culture is peripheral, but even I know huffing is idiotic."

"We didn't know any better, and it made us feel good. When Papa caught us, he whipped the hide off our arses, and then when he brought us home, Mama whipped us some more. I had welts for over a goddamn week." We shared a rueful headshake, and then Mom continued with her point. "When Kirsten got the bit in her teeth over you, she gave her parents a wake-up call. They don't want her running wild, and it's older kids she's most likely to do that with."

"Kirsten's really smart," Arthur said. "I can't see her doing anything self-destructive."

"Smarts aren't always enough. It's more complex than that, and smart people don't always take telling. They get used to being right, and go around with the assumption that people who aren't as bright as they are don't know what the hell they're talking about."

Your mother's right, you know, Ursus said. It took me a while to learn that lesson myself. Plus, when you're smart, you can come up with much more creative rationalizations for going ahead with your bad ideas.

"But what's so special about here?" I asked. "We were all allowed to go off together as a group just yesterday."

"There's booze here. And a lot more privacy. And it's a hell of a lot more comfortable if you do feel the urge to get up to no good."

As she spoke, her words activated some memories in my head that originated with Ursus, and it became manifest that a nice warm house was a far more tempting setting for unwise decisions than a clump of scrub in a vacant lot, or any other local privacy spots we could find. "All right," I said. "I don't mind Mrs. Kennedy being here. All we were going to do is practice. Her presence doesn't change that at all."

"Arthur, you know I trust you. Just letting you hang around with that Danny shows how much."

"Yeah, I know."

"Mrs. Kennedy trusts you, too. Just letting you near her daughter shows how much."

"I--" Arthur felt at a loss for words, and Ursus and I refrained from helping.

"Putting myself in Helen's shoes," Mom continued, "I'm hoping Mary stays down on the farm for a long time. I know if she comes to me next year saying that she has a boyfriend, I'm going to be real tempted to send her to school with an armed guard and lock her in her bedroom at all other times."

"What about Mary?" called Mary, who stopped plinking and plunking on the piano in the living room.

"I was saying that I hope Mary stays the thoughtful, sweet-natured daughter that she's always been," Mom called back.

"Thank you," Mary said.

I went back to the basement and read until about a quarter to three. Mike, Terry, Mary, and I walked over together to Hank's Music Emporium for our first music lessons. Mary carried the beginning piano books the parents and I had bought her for Christmas. The rest of us had guitar cases. On the way there, Terry pulled a loose snowball from the pocket of his coat. Mary was slightly in front, and he gently lobbed it so that it landed on her tuque-covered head.

"Hey! Who did that?"

"I remain silent," I said as I pointed at Terry with my free hand. I had brought my new electric guitar with me in its case rather than the acoustic. I didn't want the acoustic seen in public for a while.

"In a place and time of my own choosing, I'm going to get you for that, Prestor," Mary said with a smile.

Mike and Terry's tutors turned out to be a couple of long-haired guys in their early twenties. Hank introduced them as Brian and Andy. Mary and I browsed around the store while Mike and Terry were receiving their lessons. I bought a tuning fork and a used metronome. "What are you going to do with all the money you've been saving?" I asked Mary.

"I don't know yet. I wanted a piano, but there was no way I could save for that any time soon. Now that I have a piano, my stuff hunger seems pretty satisfied, at least for a while." We had worked our way over to the combo organs. She gestured at them. "There's no way I could ever afford something like that, either."

"Maybe some day," I said.

A little before 3:30, a woman with short gray hair came in. She was thin, about medium height, and had impeccable posture. "Mrs. Fedderstein," Hank said, "allow me to introduce Mary Powyr, who I hear is very eager to learn how to play the piano. This is her brother Arthur, who is going to be taking guitar lessons from me."

"Hello, Arthur, Mary. I'm pleased to meet you, and I'm always delighted to work with persons who are eager to learn." She shook hands with us. Her grip was firm.

"Oh, I am," said Mary. "I've wanted this for years."

"For weeks she's been practicing on her own on a chord organ," I said.

"Well, I hope you haven't picked up any bad habits," said Mrs. Fedderstein to Mary, "but such dedication is commendable. Do you want to learn how to play the full-sized organ, too?"

"Yes, but I think it's going to be a long time before I run the idea by Mom and Dad," Mary replied.

"The piano is a good place to start in any case."

Mike, Terry and their tutors soon came out, and Mrs. Fedderstein led Mary to one room while Hank led me to another. The room had two Checker Super Reverbs, two stools, two guitar stands, a table, and a guitar case underneath the table. Hank told me get out my guitar. He opened up the other case and got out his own axe. It was a heavily customized Checker that had its bridge pickup replaced with a humbucker.

"It's gorgeous," I said, admiring the mother-of-pearl inlays in the ebony fingerboard and the variable-hued azure paint job.

"Thanks, I had it done before I got married and quit being a fulltime musician." He put the guitar in one of the stands.

"I need guitar stands," I said.

"Plug in." I did that and got up on one of the stools. Hank had me go through the things I had been working on. I could switch between the open chords smoothly, but barre chords still needed work, and my picking could use some speed. I told him that I could read both tablature and conventional notation, at least for popular songs.

"You have come a long way fast," he said. "It's the fastest I've ever personally seen."

"Thanks."

"It doesn't look like you've picked up any bad habits, either."

Of course not, commented Ursus.

"Do you always play in classical position like that, with your thumb behind the neck?" Hank continued.

"I'll wrap my thumb around if I need the leverage to bend the neck a little, but most of my practicing is done with thumb behind." The lesson went quickly. Hank gave me some picking exercises to practice and some advice on making the barre. I decided that I liked him.

Mary and I came out at roughly the same time. Mike and Terry were looking at amplifiers. Their new instructors were still with them talking about effects pedals. "You guys need guitar stands," I said to Mike and Terry.

"Right," Mike said.

"Get one for your bass, too," I advised.

"We made some money shoveling snow the last two days," I said to Hank in explanation. I picked out two stands for myself. I wanted a gig bag for my acoustic, too, but I didn't want to burn through all of my money again. And effects pedals. I wanted effects pedals. As I paid for my purchases and lesson, I said, "Music is an expensive hobby."

"Gearing up is," Hank said, "but once you have your instrument and equipment, it's not so bad."

We said our goodbyes to our instructors. Once we were outside, Mike said, "Brian is really cool."

"So's Andy," Terry said.

"They're in the same band, Honey Lane," Mike said. "You ever hear of them?"

"Nope," I said.

"The whole band went to Thompson High," Terry said, referring the high school that was a short walk from our houses.

"They have an album out. God commands that we hear it," Mike said.

"Indeed," I said.

"Andy usually plays lead, and Brian usually plays rhythm," Terry said.

"But sometimes they switch," Mike said, "and they both can play bass, too."

"And their bass player, Steve somethingorother teaches at Hank's, too," said Terry. "They said they didn't mind if we schedule the occasional lesson with him at 3:00, too; just give them some notice."

"We've already decided that me and Terry are going to trade tutors every few weeks," Mike said.

"That sounds like a good idea," I said.

"I like my teacher," Mary said. "She thinks I learned an impressive amount on my own."

"Brian usually sings lead, and Andy usually does backing vocals," Mike said.

"But sometimes they switch," Terry said, "and Steve the bass guy can sing, too."

"They sound like a versatile band," I said.

"Man," Mike said, "being a musician is a most ek-skellent thing to do."

"How is their record doing?" I asked.

"They said it was selling pretty good regionally," Mike replied, "but that you need a national hit to make any serious cash."

"They mostly pay their bills with performing, though," Terry said. "They round out their income giving lessons."

"Brain said they sometimes help out Hank as salesmen, too," Mike said. "A professional musician, that's the life I want."

Have you ever been a pro? I asked Ursus internally.

He had to think about it. The memories felt hazy. I don't think the relevant memories have been completely installed in this brain yet, he concluded. It appeared that it was going to take a long time for all of Ursus's memories to implant themselves in Arthur's brain. I think I've earned my bread that way a few times, but most of the time I've made my living as a wizard. I believe I was a king once, too.

"I think I'm going to learn a lot," Mary said. She plugged Terry with a snowball just before we went inside.

Chapter 06

Chapter 04: Heavy Talk, Badinage, and Ominous Warnings

When we got home, Mom and Mrs. Kennedy were still talking at the kitchen table. They both had coffee. I think coffee was Mom's staple food. My little brothers, Rich and Charlie, both appeared to be out. Susan was in the family room playing with the cats, rolling balls for them to chase.

"Mind if I take this drum downstairs, Mrs. P.?" Danny asked.

"Go ahead." She looked at me. "Let's see what you got." Mike and Terry unwrapped the amplifier while I opened up the guitar case on the table.

"What in the hell is it with you and ugly guitars?" Mom asked. "That thing looks like a festered ass."

"That's one of the reasons I could afford it. It sounds good, though."

"Let's hear it."

I played "The Shepard's Lament" with some reverb and vibrato.

"Hmph. Well, maybe you can talk your father into refinishing it for you." She paused. "You know, now that you kids are using electric instruments, we're going to have to do something about the damn noise."

"You aren't kicking us out, are you Mrs. P.?" asked Danny, who had returned from the basement.

"No, but I might have some strenuous volunteer work for you all to do this weekend."

That was ominous. "What's that?" asked Kirsten.

"Mr. Powyr and I were discussing installing sound insulation in the basement. The hung ceiling needs to be dropped, and the insulation rolled out and fastened. We're going to need to wrap the pipes and ductwork, too, and install a solid door at the top of the stairs. We'll pay for it, but it would be nice if the people practicing down there helped out with the work."

Oh.

"I'll be here first thing Saturday morning," said Dan. He was good at that sort of stuff.

"Yeah, me and Terry too, I guess," said Mike.

Kirsten looked at her mother. "You should help out, too, after your jujutsu lesson on Saturday," Mrs. Kennedy said. "I'll drive you over." Of course, there was no need for Mary or me to respond.

"I have to get going," said Dan. "I'll see you guys later for shoveling. Are we going to practice?"

"We shouldn't start skipping it, if we're serious about it," I said. "I guess we'll practice from 6:30 to 7:30, and then resume shoveling after that." I turned to Mike and Terry. "If you guys can get over here right after supper, we'll get in some dedicated guitar time before everyone else shows up."

"I take it you ambitious young go-getters are planning to go shoveling drives again," Mom said. "Don't overdo it this time."

"Heh," said Dan. "I guess I shouldn't have hit the weights so hard earlier." I saw him to the door.

When I came back, Terry was telling Mom about lifting weights that afternoon. Mom said, "Be careful with that crap. You can rack yourself up pretty bad if you don't know what you're doing."

"Danny's brother Russ seems to know what he's about," said Mike. "He was showing us." Mike paused for a second. "I think I'll go hang with Dan while the snow piles up enough to be worth shoveling. It's not right that he gets stuck alone so often."

Mike cleared out, and the rest of the kids, except Susan, went downstairs. I was the worst billiards player there, so I let Kirsten, Pam, Mary and Terry play while I set up my new guitar in what had become our rehearsal corner between the pool table and the stairs. The amp had a practice setting that boosted the bass at low volumes. I put that on, adjusted the volume so that the electric wasn't any louder than my acoustic, opened up the guitar songbook that Kirsten had got me for Christmas, and started looking for a song to learn.

No, not "Stick in the Spokes", advised Ursus. This early in your relationship, you don't want Kirsten to wonder if you're singing about her.

Maybe it would be for the best if I let her go, said Arthur. Now that the excitement was over, Arthur was starting to feel guilty again, much to the dismay of Ursus and me. His feelings of guilt, of course, were experienced by all of us.

Ursus tried a different tack in dealing with Arthur while I made use of our developing ability to think of three things at once and searched through the book for a good song. Ursus carefully recalled the terror of the girl who the diabolist was going to sacrifice. He remembered the demon attacking our protective circle around the house and then later attacking us on our bicycle. He imagined the fear of the women who were found dismembered in Guzman's freezer. Guzman murdered his own wife, Arthur.

We went to his house to kill him. We had no idea that he intended to kill that girl. Then when we had him down, we finished him off. I might be just a kid, but I know enough about the law to know that that is murder.

Ursus let out a mighty mental sigh. Yes, technically, by the laws of your land, we murdered that man. Arthur, I hate to play age and wisdom vs. youth and immaturity, but I understand what you are going through. Right now, you're maturing rapidly, but you still have a youthful tendency to see things in black and white sometimes. The real world doesn't work that way.

Arthur fumed. I felt my face flush. I know that murder is wrong.

I very much don't want to have to spend years locked up in a juvenile prison if you spill the beans and manage to convince a judge that we committed premeditated murder, Ursus said. And if you think about it, I'm sure you don't want that either.

Arthur, will you trust me? Ursus continued. In a relatively short while, a year or so--at most two--your picture of the world is going to be a lot more complex. I know, because I went through the same development, and you have a copy of my brain. By that time, I'm sure you'll agree with me that we had no choice about Guzman.

So you're saying, Arthur said, that in about a year I'm going to become more immoral, maybe evil.

I could feel Ursus losing patience, but he tried yet another angle. Remember a few weeks ago when you lied to Miss Gorse about getting into a fight with Al?

Yeah. So?

Why did you do that?

I didn't want to get punished for a fight I didn't start.

But the rules of your school say that all students in a fight are to be punished, no matter who starts it.

Those rules are wrong.

So it's OK to break rules that are wrong, Ursus concluded.

Maybe, but the rules against murdering someone aren't wrong.

Not usually, no. But in the case of Guzman, they were incomplete. Your society has no rules at all about what to do with a demon summoner.

We had him beat, and then we killed him. That's murder.

If we had left him alive with his power and knowledge intact--and I have no idea how to remove them on this node--it was just a matter of time before he summoned another demon.

I could feel Arthur becoming increasingly upset. His mixture of guilt and confusion were becoming nauseating. I think, I purposefully interjected, that "Hop a Train (and Ride for Free)" is a good song to learn. It had a somewhat harder beat than what we had been practicing, and a faster tempo than "Paragon's Parade", which was the current fastest song in our repertoire. It will make us work on our picking skills.

I think the change in topic was welcomed by all three of my consciousnesses. I felt general assent about the song choice, and then Arthur said to me, You know, we need a name for you.

What?

I'm Arthur. He's Ursus. Who are you?

I'm both.

That's not very convenient. Do you want to be called "Both"?

Eh, call me "Bear," then.

Ursus had largely figured out the local music notation, so it wasn't that difficult to begin learning the song. After we had worked on it a bit, Pam asked, "Is that 'Hop a Train'?"

"Yeah. I take it I have a ways to go before it's clearly identifiable."

"You're picking it up really fast, if you just started learning it," Kirsten said.

"You are present at my first attempt."

"My boyfriend--super genius."

"I wouldn't go that far," said Mary.

Did Mary just zing me? I looked at her. She had a small smile on her face, but it was mixed with worry. It looks like we're going to have to talk to her, Ursus noted.

"My boyfriend--regular, everyday genius?" inquired Kirsten with a grin.

"That's a little better," Mary allowed.

"Your boyfriend--bright weirdo?" Terry asked.

"To be fair, I think he is somewhat beyond bright," Kirsten said.

"Your boyfriend--brilliant weirdo," Pam said.

"Now you're going too far again," Mary said.

"What's between bright and brilliant?" Terry asked.

"Does anyone have a thesaurus?" Kirsten inquired.

"You aren't borrowing mine," I said as I went back to studying the song.

After they had played for a while, Mary asked, "Are you sure you don't want to shoot a game, Artie?"

"I'm fine, but it's nice of you to offer."

After some time, Mrs. Kennedy called Kirsten and Pam. "We better leave before the roads get too bad, and I should start dinner anyway." I went upstairs with them and gave Kirsten a goodbye hug.

Once they had gone, Terry said, "It's starting to pile up. Do you think anyone will hire us yet?"

"Let's do our drives and see if anyone else is out shoveling. If they are, it's a signal that people are worried about it getting too deep to move easily." So that's what we did. Mary and I did our drive while Terry did his. After a while, Mary and I went over to help Terry. His sister Colleen must have realized what was happening, because just as we were finishing up the Prestor drive she came out and all four of us did the drive of the old folks who were the Prestor's other next-door neighbors.

"We're going to go shoveling again, Coll," said Terry to his sister.

"We made a killing last time. I'm in if I'm welcome."

"If it's anything like last time, we can use all hands," I said, "and I'm not going to overdo it as much."

"No, certainly not," Colleen said. "According to the weather, if we get as much snow as expected tonight, it will be one of the snowiest Decembers on record for the Detroit area."

"Maybe you should give Mike a call at Danny's," I said to Terry. "While you do that, the rest of us will see if we can drum up some business."

The retired man a few houses away was out clearing his drive. Colleen, Mary, and I walked up to him. "How much?" asked Mr. Bearse.

"Right now, a pound," I said. "If you wait until it's deeper, though, it will be more."

"Do it, you little thieves." He smiled when he said it.

We set to. Soon Terry and Mike joined us. As planned, we adjourned for supper and practice, from which Kirsten was excused for bad travel conditions.

Of course, Mary's piano arrived while we were eating. It was an upright model, and the deliverymen put it in the living room. It would have been more useful in the basement, but there was no way a leased piano was going down there. They warned that it probably would need to be retuned and gave Dad the card of a piano tuner recommended by their employer.

After practice, Danny helped our snow removal efforts. Having learned from our previous mistakes, we paced ourselves and knocked off a bit before 10:00. "If we don't overdo it, we'll be able to get up first thing tomorrow and pick up some more work," I said when I thought people were starting to reach their limits.

"I'm done," said Mary. With that, we adjourned.

"Anyone want to help me rip off a billboard?" Danny asked. He pulled a pair of locking pliers from a pocket of his well-worn sheepskin coat.

"Why?" asked Terry.

"I want to make a couple drum stools. What they want for one in Hank's is way more than I want to pay."

"I'll help," said Mike.

"Can I borrow a hammer from your garage?"

"Why not?" The two of them headed for the Prestor's garage and then the vacant lot we called "the field." It usually had a billboard or two along Cord Road. Liberated billboards, often made from good plywood, had provided Danny with much building material over the years. Mary and I went home.

Ursus took note of Arthur's feelings. You don't seem offended at all that someone's property rights are about to be violated, Ursus observed.

I guess not. Billboards from the field just seem to be a natural resource.

Clearly, taking them is theft.

That's true, but it doesn't feel like it. Also, the things are damn ugly. Pulling them down aids beautification.

That's just rationalization, Ursus said.

I agree, Arthur said, but I can't get worked up over billboards.

Neither can I, said Ursus. I just wanted you to note a shade of gray.

After Mom and Dad asked us about our earnings, I swallowed a couple aspirins with a full glass of water before heading to the bathroom to brush my teeth. "Are you hurting already?" Mom asked.

"I'm a little sore, but those were mostly to make sure I didn't hurt as much in the morning."

"That sounds like a good idea," said Mary as she moved to duplicate my actions. Mom shook her head, but she didn't say anything.

Harvey the cat followed me downstairs. My brain mates and I practiced scales on the acoustic for about ten minutes, then Ursus thought, We are going to keep working magic.

I guess, thought Arthur. I hate all the trouble it caused, though.

Magic didn't cause the trouble. Guzman the diabolist caused the trouble. Magic allowed us to discover his depredations. If we hadn't scried him, who knows how long he would have gone on hurting people before he was caught?

Was it all a coincidence? I asked to interrupt the feeling of building guilt from Arthur.

What?

Ursus was already getting the answer to his question before I thought it explicitly in mental words, but I "said" it to him anyway. When we were split like that, it seemed more natural. Living so close together that we could easily reach him.

I don't know. I've sometimes thought that there might be a benign force in the multiverse, and magic, I believe, polices itself. If you make a promise involving magic, for instance, and you break it, it can look like the multiverse itself has turned against you, your "luck" gets so bad. I've seen it happen, and I've been careful never to make any oath on my magic that I couldn't easily keep.

Let me get this straight, thought Arthur. You think God or magic or manna or something caused Mom and Dad to move near Guzman so we could one day stop him?

Either that, or it made Guzman move near your parents. I don't know it for sure, but through my long life I've been in the right place at the right time, or depending on how you look at it, the wrong place at the wrong time far too often for me to believe it has all been coincidence. We were treated with examples from Ursus's memory.

Oh. Being a wizard is an even bigger responsibility than I thought, Arthur said. We were feeling mixed pride and apprehension.

It can be, thought Ursus, but it's also a lot of fun.

Amen to that, I thought.

Now, getting back to what I was about to get at, Ursus said, I was acting foolish when I let us leap into magic without taking adequate safety precautions. That demon could have easily killed us. From now on, we're going to proceed more cautiously.

We climbed into bed. Ursus explained some of the precautions we were going to take. Harvey made himself comfortable on my feet. We had nightmares as we slept, but that was to be expected.

Chapter 05