In Which There Was No Warning



“Ms. Mackenzie, Ms. Johnson!” the librarian said, rounding the edge of the bookcase to the previously quiet corner of the upstairs stacks where we’d been conversing. “You made it a whole semester without a single noise warning, and… wait…”

Her eyes went back from me to Rowan.

“Uh, oh… hi!” I said. “This is my friend, Rowan. He’s new here.”

“Well… you’re not, and I know you know better than to hold shouting matches,” she said. “You should be setting a better example for the frosh.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I said. “Heat of the moment?”

“Well, if this conversation’s likely to stay that heated, please consider taking it elsewhere.”

“We will,” I said.

She retreated, muttering about how she had always thought it was the other one who started it.

“When you said you were a regular here…” Rowan said.

“Don’t you dare be glib, you bastard,” I said, forcing my volume lower towards the end to counteract the surge of anger.

“Mackenzie, what the f… what the heck is your problem?” Rowan said.

“What the ‘heck’?”

“I get shouty when I swear,” he said. “Seriously, though, what is your problem?”

“What’s my problem? Well, when were you going to tell me you’re a diabolist?”

“I’m not, okay?” he aid. “I just took a class!”

“Because the rest of the ones have prerequisites,” I said. “So you’re, what? A pre-diabolist?”

“Believe it or not, I haven’t declared a major,” he said.

“But you’re… dabbling,” I said. “Why?”

“Why do you think?” he said. “Mackenzie, I knew nothing about you except that went to school here as of a year ago, and that you’re apparently part demon.”

“So you thought you’d, what… bone up on me?”

“Well, I thought I might run into you,” he said. “I didn’t have any better idea.”

“You thought you’d find me in a demonology class?”

“Maybe not intro, but I thought you might be around,” he said. “What? You’re looking at me like I’m crazy, but people go to women’s studies to meet chicks!”

“…do they really?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe that’s just a stupid joke? I don’t know, Mackenzie! I don’t know shit about shit. I didn’t know you had a problem with diabolism. It all made sense at the time.”

“And you just didn’t happen to mention this before?” I said.

“Well, it didn’t seem significant before I knew you had a problem,” he said. “Then when it came up, it was like… oops, you know? No point in mentioning it. But it still didn’t seem really significant, so it just slipped out. I mean, I decided not to mention it at the moment you were talking about not liking diabolists because I felt kind of dumb, but I didn’t make like an ongoing resolution to keep it from you.”

“That’s… a pretty convenient explanation.”

“Yeah, I’m such a freaking mastermind that I had this convoluted cover story for if I casually mentioned the thing I’m keeping secret from you,” he said. “Mackenzie, Dee was in my head. Don’t you think she would have told you if I was plotting against you?”

“…sorry,” I said. “I guess I overreacted.”

“Da… dang straight,” he said. “What exactly is your problem with diabolism?”

“In general? I think the whole idea is kind of skeevy,” I said. “Being raised by my grandmother… well, I don’t make the mistake of thinking she gave me an unbiased view of anything, at least anymore. But she cleaned up after the messes of a lot of people who tried to get power through demons, and it wasn’t pretty. More personally… I don’t like people who are too interested in that side of me.”

“Okay,” he said. “That’s fair, I guess… but like I said, I didn’t know that, I didn’t know anything else about grown-up you, except for the demon thing.”

I laughed.

“What?”

“‘Grown-up’ me,” I said. “I feel like maybe I’ve done more growing in the last year than the ten before, but I still feel like a damn kid.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind, because being around you makes me feel like a kid.”

“Well, you were like, what, eight the last time we really hung out?”

“Fair,” he said. “Anyway, from a distance, you seemed pretty cool with the demon thing, too.”

“How so?”

“…well, I guess what I mean is, that’s how everybody else defined you, so I kind of assumed it was how you did, too,” he said. “Now that I say it out loud, it seems pretty silly…”

“No, it actually makes sense,” I said. “I mean, in the absence of any other information, I don’t know that I’d have come to a different conclusion. I mean, I have had a couple opportunities to learn the difference between how someone’s life looks from the outside and what it’s actually like up close… but that doesn’t actually make me better at figuring out what the real story is.”

“So…”

“So?”

“So, are you not pissed at me for having taken a class about demons?” he said.

“In fairness to me, I wasn’t mad about that, so much as about the agenda I immediately suspected you of having on the basis of that,” I said.

“…no offense, Mackenzie, but I think that actually sounds worse?”

“Yeah, well, I said in fairness, not in my defense,” I said. “So, assuming it only makes it sound worse because it is in fact worse, then I was still perfectly accurate in saying so.”

“Is that really the hill you want to die on?”

“Hey, if I’m wrong about everything else, give me this one thing to be right about,” I said. “Though… going back to your actual question, you’re not off the hook completely. I still think it was a weasel move to not tell me you took that class as soon as I told you I had a problem with it.”

“Totally a weasel move,” he said. “Though not, you know, premeditated. What I want to know is, is this going to affect your ability to trust me, and if so, what the heck am I supposed to do about it?”

“…I think it’s more a result of my ongoing difficulty trusting you,” I said. “I mean, if we had known each other for the past ten years, or even the past three semesters, then maybe I wouldn’t have jumped to the worst possible conclusion.

“Okay, so… I guess what I’m wondering is, do you actually need to get info from anybody, or were you just waiting until enough time had passed that you could plausibly present what you already know?”

“I told you, it was an intro course,” he said. “Not even practical diabolism, just basic demonology.”

“Okay, but I don’t need to know how to summon a demon or draw on it for magic,” I said. “I’d think a semester-long course on the basic nature of demons would be exactly what I needed to get a handle on this stuff.”

“Then why didn’t you ever take one?”

“…you know why,” I said.

“I actually don’t?” he said. “I mean, sorry if I’m stepping on another mental block or something, but I don’t understand why not trusting anyone in the diabolism department means you can’t take classes with them. It’s not like it would be any less against the law for them to steal your blood or bind your soul or whatever you’re afraid they’re going to do…”

“Don’t fucking minimize it, okay?” I said. “At the very least, it would be super uncomfortable to be the only demonblood in a class that’s all about demons… I’m not fond of being singled out as an example by teachers.”

“Okay. Well, anyway, I guess it doesn’t make a lot of difference because that class in particular is a lot less useful than you might think,” he said. “It’s the one they make you take before you take anything with practical knowledge, so it’s a lot of safety tips and cautionary tales and don’t-don’t-don’ts.”

“Then I’m extra glad I didn’t take it,” I said. “I have had a hard enough time getting over the idea that I’m evil and dangerous without paying to have someone remind me three times a week.”

“Paying… oh, right,” he said. “You know, I have a hard time actually connecting in my head the fact that tuition pays for our classes. I mean, I think of it as buying a semester of schooling. I think it doesn’t help that the professors basically act like bosses. I had one teacher tell me that he would take points off our grade for every absence, even excused ones, because that’s how it’s going to work in the real world when we get jobs.”

“I don’t know where he got his idea of ‘the real world’,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure most jobs don’t grade on the academic point scale.”

“My worst teacher so far took points off the next test every time you missed, because she said you can’t expect to miss the prep and get a perfect grade,” he said. “So, I said that was like telling someone not to touch a stove or they’d get burned, only the stove isn’t on and you stick them with a cigarette every time they touch it.”

“What did she say to that?”

“Holy shit, Mackenzie!” Rowan said, forgetting his vocabulary and volume. “You think I’m crazy? I didn’t say it to her!”

I laughed.

Why not? It was funny.

“So, you really didn’t learn anything in intro to demonology?” I asked.

“No, and none of the other related courses I wanted fit my schedule this time around,” he said.

“Damn… that would be an upside to this whole mess,” I said.

“The mess where you snapped and yelled at me for no reason?”

“No good reason,” I said. “I had my reason, and it made sense at the time… like your reason for taking the class.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m just… the more I think about it, the more I’m like, why do I need a reason? You’ve got a problem with it, but it’s not against the law. It’s in the course catalogue.”

“I’m not saying you should feel the need to justify yourself to me,” I said. “I just mean… you basically admitted your reason only made sense based on a lack of information, and so did my reaction. Right or wrong, it made sense at the time.”

“And now that we’ve gone through all this drama over it, it just would kind of make sense that it would all be for something?”

I laughed again.

“Man, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed,” he said.

“What?”

“When you laugh, I never know if you’re laughing at me,” he said. “You read a lot more when we were kids, and you knew a lot more… you had a cooler mom, in a lot of ways… and when I didn’t something you did, you usually laughed.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I imagine I was kind of a jerk like that, but in my defense, I don’t think kids that age really understand the difference between themselves and other people… I swear I’m not laughing at you, Rowan. I’m laughing at the ridiculousness that is my life.”

“What do you mean?”

“First, a brief misunderstanding that gets cleared up in a single conversation hardly counts as ‘all this drama’ by my standards,” I said. “And second, I learned long ago that no matter what stories and TV shows train you to expect, not everything that happens in life is going to ‘pay off’ somehow, no matter how significant it seems at the time.”

“I guess it wouldn’t,” he said. “Though… I mean… it’s because of the class that I have some idea who I should be talking to. I just… I feel really awkward doing it outside of class, without any, you know, context or cover story.”

“Well…”

“Yeah?”

“You took the 101 class meaning to take more,” I said. “So you could always take that tack.”

“You mean… wait until next semester and actually take them?” he said. “Or… try to transfer in? Because I like you and all, Mackenzie… I mean, historically… and I’m invested in this whole mystery, even leaving aside my personal stake… but I’m not going to screw my schedule up for it, if it’s not actually immediate life and death.”

“Huh,” I said.

“What?”

“It’s never occurred to me to screw up my schedule even when it is life and death,” I said.

“You mean hypothetically?”

“Well, I mean… even when it’s life and death, life theoretically is going to keep going on,” I said. “And it has so far, so… I’ve always kept school stuff at a pretty steady priority, in terms of… school/life/drama/murderous intrigue balance.”

“That’s insane.”

“But I’m still here,” I said. “Alive and in school. But no, I didn’t mean waiting until next year or transferring. I mean, that’s your cover story for asking around. You took one class, you’re thinking about more… I don’t actually have much direct experience with diabolists, but most people around here are pretty eager to sell students on their major, and if they remember you from last semester and wonder what happened… well, they might try to recruit you.”

“But if I’m not actually signing up, how does that help?”

“It means they’ll answer pretty much anything you ask,” I said. “And probably more. They won’t wonder why you’re curious, because A, they know you have a pre-existing interest, and B, they’ll be in full on wonderful-world-of-demons mode so it wouldn’t even occur to them that you wouldn’t be interested.”

“You think that’ll work? I mean, if they even remember me I figure they’d be pissed that I didn’t stick with it.”

“Listen, I’m pretty sure that if you tell a professor of anything that you’re an undeclared freshman, and you won’t even have to hint that you might be interested in their area of expertise,” I said. I didn’t have much experience with this, but it sure sounded true. It felt true. “If anything, the fact that you came and left will make them more interested… like you’re the the one who got away, you know?”

“…I’d feel weird lying,” he said.

“Well, you’re the one who said you needed a cover story,” I said. “Rowan, did you think you’d find one that’s true? Anyway, you don’t have to lie, per se… just tell them that you took a class last semester and you were thinking about taking more. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“That’s… kind of devious.”

“It’s kind of obvious to me?” I said. “My grandmother had a pretty strong injunction against me lying, but… the truth wasn’t always my friend. It took me a long time to get over that.”

I didn’t tell him that part of getting over that was realizing that deceit wasn’t just saying something that wasn’t factually true, but intention… you could say something utterly false in all honesty, or something that evaluated to true while lying your ass off.

More than just not wanting to think of himself as a liar, Rowan was probably understandably nervous about lying to someone who studied and performed one of the foulest types of legal magic for a living. There was no sense taking away the fig leaf that would act as his security blanket in doing so.

“I guess that makes sense,” he said. “And you really don’t mind me cozying up to these guys?”

“Who you cozy up to is your business,” I said. “Honestly, if you really want to keep studying it, that’s also your business, though I’d ask you to keep everything having to do with it the hell away from me.”

“I was only interested in it because I thought it would help me get closer to you,” he said. “And now I not only don’t need that, I know it would do the opposite… so, yeah. I figure I’ll find out what I can, and get the hell out.”

“That sounds like a plan,” I said. I liked where this was going, but there was something sour in the back of my head, like the tickle in the back of your throat before a cough. “Rowan?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really sorry for my reaction,” I said. “And more than that… I don’t know if it’s real or not. What you said about a mental block? I think it’s not just the mystery telepath who left them in my head. When I mentioned my grandmother… I’m almost one hundred percent sure she wasn’t a telepath, and I kind of think if she was she would have repressed it, but she had her… methods. She left blocks in my head.”

“Like the lying thing.”

“Like the lying thing, and a bunch of other garbage that almost completely screwed up my life even without her,” I said. “And probably my kneejerk reaction to the whole subject of diabolism.”

“That’s understandable.”

“I’m glad you understand, but I treated a lot of people really shittily, sometimes very causally, in my first months here. I usually apologized… I think… but I’m not sure I ever really made it up to them.”

“Hey… like you said, your grandmother…”

“She’s not here,” I said. “I don’t want her to be a part of my life, ever again. Not even as an excuse. I’m sorry.”

“It’s cool,” he said. “Mackenzie, you’re my oldest friend…”

“I don’t remember you, though.”

“Yeah, but here’s the thing,” he said. “We never got to grow up together, but we never had to drift apart, either, right? You didn’t go off to high school a year before me, you didn’t get a boyfriend… or girlfriend… who was jealous of the shrimpy boy who followed you around… so I don’t care if you can’t trust me completely. Okay, that actually hurts, but I mean, I can suck it up and bear it. I don’t care if we fight. Because you’re here, and you’re real, and I found you.”

“I… I honestly don’t know what to say,” I said.

“That’s cool,” he said. “That was usually me, back in the day, not knowing what to say to you. I guess it’s just my turn.”