He screams at me, tries to yank his legs out of the pavement. I’m too far away for him to be a threat, and I’m not about to get any closer. He struggles for a bit, but then exhaustion gets the better of him and he gives up, his whole body slouching in defeat. I put the Browning away. I get a strong sense that the gun feels disappointed. I’ve been getting that feeling a lot lately.

“Fucking murderer,” the kid screams.

If the gunfire doesn’t get the cops coming, his screaming like a maniac will. The street’s empty, and only a couple of cars are in driveways in the next block. That should give me a few minutes to figure out what the hell is going on without worrying about police.

“Narrow that down a little for me. Who exactly do you think I’ve murdered?” I say, because let’s be honest, it’s not like he’s wrong. “Her? In the house? Who was she? Your mom? Sister? Aunt?”

“So, you did do it,” he says. “You fucking murderer.”

“Nope. Just saw her ghost. It’s kinda my thing.”

“Yeah, I know all about you and your fucking army of the dead.”

“I— What?”

“They told me you killed her. Showed it to me. Told me all about you.”

“Whoa, hang on. Who did what to the how now?”

He gives me a smile that never reaches his eyes. That’s when it occurs to me then that I have made a tactical error. Mages don’t go running around with hats that say MAGIC BOY in big, neon letters. The only way we know that there’s another of us nearby is if they either fire off a spell or start pulling power from the environment.

Magic collects in pools. Cities and towns have the most concentrated magic, people, events, the environment all mixing to give it a unique taste as individual as the city itself. But you’ll find it in the wild, too, if you know the right places. We can tap into it, draw some off if we don’t have enough of our own available for a spell.

If you drink from the pool fast enough, another mage is going to feel it. Drink it in sips over a few minutes or longer and nobody’ll ever notice until you’re good and ready to use it. It’s an old trick. I’ve used it myself lots of times.

I really should have seen it coming.

Everything happens too fast. I feel the magic flare out from the kid like an explosion, warping the world around it as it spreads. The pavement I’ve wrapped around his legs uncoils. A thick sheet of it peels up from the street to create a six-foot-tall wall between us. Sharp, thin spears of asphalt a few inches long form out of the wall.