I pull my own gun, a Browning Hi-Power covered in Nazi Waffen marks. It’s an ugly piece of hardware and I always feel like I’m shoving my hand into a barrel of cockroaches when I pick it up. It’s filled with all the hatred and nastiness from the war and I can tap into that with my own magic, making a .357 look like a popgun.

I look under the car and see the shooter’s feet as he starts running toward me. More gunshots, more misses. One of them punches through the driver’s side door of the Caddy and dents the steel on the passenger side.

Sonofabitch. Shoot at me all you like. I’m used to it. Shoot my car? Fuck you.

The Browning likes to shoot people, and I can feel it pulling at me to pop this guy in the head. Somebody else might listen to it, but I’ve had years of practice at telling it to fuck off. I decide to do something a little less final.

Magic’s like improvisational cooking. But instead of spices, you’re using bits and pieces of negotiated reality. Mages don’t throw fireballs. They collect oxygen into a sphere, give it some spin, heat it up until it burns, tell gravity to fuck itself, and then shoot that bastard across the room.

In this case, reality and I have a conversation about loosening the binding of pavement, liquefying tar, stretching a little pocket of the world like it’s taffy. This all happens in less than a second.

I shouldn’t be doing this to a normal, but if it’s that or putting giant holes in his head, this is probably the better way to go. I slam my hand onto the street and let the spell loose, the magic bending the world around me. Thick ropes of pavement leap out of the street and wrap around the shooter’s legs. His yell of surprise turns into one of pain as everything just below the knee stops moving and everything above keeps going.

Including the gun, which is the important part. It skitters across the street, stopping at the curb. I step out from behind the Cadillac, the Browning in my hand and . . .

It’s a kid.

Late teens, early twenties at most. Rumpled shirt, stained pants. He clearly hasn’t slept, hasn’t shaved. Everything about him is haggard and raw.

He looks an awful lot like the ghost I’ve been watching all morning. His eyes are filled with rage. I know that look. I wore it myself when I killed the man who murdered my parents. Dragged him screaming across the veil and fed him to ghosts. If that was his mom in there I’m not surprised.

What is surprising is that he looks like he thinks I had something to do with it.