If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

      -- I Corinthians 13

i. and the lord's hand moves on the scheme of my nerves

Trace leaned over Justin's shoulder and started handing out glasses. "I still don't know why you couldn't get your own damn drinks," he grumbled. "I mean, just because you're all rich and famous pop stars --"

"And a Broadway star," Justin corrected, pointing at Joey. His cheeks were flushed, and he couldn't stop grinning, like he was more proud of Joey than Joey was of himself. "Man, did you see him? Did you see him up there?" He threw back his head and laughed again, then reached over and dragged Joey into a headlock, scruffing his knuckles over Joey's hair. "That's my man we're talking about!"

"I was kinda sitting right next to you, J," Trace said, tolerantly, and handed JC his bottle of water. "You sounded damn good, Joe."

"I went flat in 'Goodbye Love' and couldn't get it back for like, the rest of the show," Joey said.

"You couldn't tell," Justin assured him.

"Well, I could tell. I could hear it, I just couldn't fix it. I was too busy trying to remember the damn blocking."

"It was your first night! You're allowed to be nervous on your first night, even if it's not really your first night. Opening night jitters, right? I mean, everyone gets it." Justin bounced in place in the booth. "And fuck, but you had me sucked in. All of you. You've got such a damn good group of people."

"You starting to get opening night jitters of your own yet?" Joey asked.

Justin's shoulders tensed. "Yeah, hello, we're not talking about tomorrow night yet. If I think about it I'll freeze up. Tonight's about you, anyway. You rocked house on that stage. I'm still blown away."

"Hello?" Trace leaned over and waved a hand in front of JC's nose. JC jerked back and re-focused his attention on the group. "Chasez, you in there?"

Justin snorted. "He does that sometimes. Space cadet, remember? You should be used to it by now."

"What?" JC blinked, and then focused. He'd been paying attention to the conversation, but he'd also been paying attention to the little voice in the back of his mind that was slowly developing -- too slowly, really, for him to be comfortable with it. It took him a second to remember where he was and what he was doing. "Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I'm here. Just -- thinking about something."

Justin's lips thinned and he looked away. Joey reached out and closed his hand over JC's wrist reassuringly. "You gotta bail?"

JC shook his head automatically, and then stopped, re-considering. The tugging sensation was getting worse and worse. "I ... think I might. Are you okay with that?" He would have added more, but Trace was sitting right there, and no matter how much Justin trusted Trace, there were some things that should stay within the family.

"Yeah," Joey said. "Go. Fight the good fight. Truth, justice, and the American way. Keep the world safe for widows, orphans, and small fluffy dogs -- " Justin pinched him. Joey punched him right back. "No, seriously, go and take care of whatever it is. Give us a call when you get back, see if we're still here or not."

JC nodded and slid out of the booth. His mind was already on other things, but he remembered to stop and lean over to kiss Joey on the cheek. "You did sound great tonight," he said. "In case I forgot to tell you."

"You did forget," Joey said, and smiled. "But I could hear you thinking it."

The night outside felt like summer, like the last few gasps of heat were refusing to flee, but JC could smell autumn underneath it waiting to step in. It was just past midnight when he looked at his watch. He winced. He was trying to remember to stop at midnight and meditate, observe, and pray, the way Lance had told him would be useful for him at first, the way ritual magicians had been doing for millennia. Too many things to remember. Too many things to try and hold on to, all at once.

You're never going to have the same senses as someone who was born to it, Lance had said. But you'll find your own ways of working with it. I can teach you what works for me, but it might not work for you. I don't know. Nobody's ever done this before. I can't know what'll come of it.

Three days of talking, of waiting. Three times Lance had asked are you sure and JC had replied with yes. Three days before the ritual.

And now JC walked down the streets of Manhattan, with his fists balled up in the pockets of his jeans. "Lo tir'eh ot," he whispered, the words fitting strangely in his mouth, and the people around him moved out of his way, merging into the complicated dance of New York pedestrian traffic, but none of them took a second look. The neon lights cast a pink and orange glow on the sidewalk, and JC wondered where he was going, what he was being called to do.

When she ran headfirst into him, he was more startled than he should have been; nobody should have been able to see through the spell he'd crafted. His hands came up automatically to catch her. "Hey," he said. "Hey, easy. What is it? What's wrong?"

She tipped her face back and looked up at him. For a second, he was terrified she was going to figure out who he was and it would only make things worse; but she seemed to already know. Not what he did, but who he now was. "I need help," she said, her voice low and urgent. "They're in trouble. It's my fault. I need help."

The tug in the back of his head spiked, and then settled. He hummed a line of Hebrew under his breath, trying to calm her down.

"It's okay," he said. "Come on. Show me what's wrong."

Three types of magic, Lance had said. They'd been in Lance's workroom; JC had been sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall. All of them come from God, just in different ways. Psychic magic, which is natural and inborn. Everybody's got at least some of it, if they only paid enough attention to use it. Sorcery, or common magic, which is what everyone thinks of when they say "magic"; spells and stuff like that. And the magic I do, the holy magic. That's another story altogether.

"You have to help me," she repeated, and wrapped her hands around both his wrists and pulled. "I followed the instructions. Just the way they were written down, I did what I should have done, and it didn't work, and now Katie's in there and there's this thing --"

The holy magic is creation, renewal. It's like antibodies for the universe. It patches the holes. Fixes the illnesses. Takes care of the hundred little things the Name cannot always be there for.

"What were you trying to do?" JC asked.

She shoved a lock of hair out of her face. She couldn't have been more than seventeen, eighteen; the panic made her look older, but there was youth in her eyes. "All we wanted was to get Brian to notice Katie, and I found this book --"

Sometimes, a sorcerer, one of the common magicians, will tap into something that he or she can't control. Something rips, or tears, or just goes wrong. Fixing it is one of the things the holy magic is there for -- piecing together the broken things. Calling upon the power of the Name to act as God's hands, to make all the little corrections God's too busy to pay attention to. That's the part of it I do.

"It's okay," JC said. He was starting to feel it now, the slick hot sense of wrong behind his eyeballs. It was coming from one of the apartment buildings nearby, and he was almost certain that it would be the one she was tugging him towards. "I'll take care of it. Just show me where to go."

And since you don't seem to have the sense God gave little green apples, that's what you'll be doing now, too.

Had Lance known? JC wasn't sure. He didn't know if it was easier to believe Lance had, or that Lance had no idea.

*

Lance hadn't wanted to talk about it, but JC had come into the room just as he'd been finishing up a conversation. There'd been something in his voice, in his eyes, to make JC realize it was more than just another casual business deal.

"Who was it?" JC asked, collecting his coffee and trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes.

Lance had been staring out the window; JC's words seemed to snap him out of some trance. "The Russians came through," he'd said.

JC had stared at him for a few seconds, and then realization dawned. "The space thing?" he asked, and when Lance nodded, he let loose an excited whoop. "Lance, that's great, that's amazing, that's the best thing that's happened all year so far --"

But Lance wasn't smiling. "I can't take it," Lance cut him off. "I can't leave you on your own with less than a year of training. Because we might have dealt with the last set of shit going down, but there's always the day-to-day stuff, and I can't leave you alone to handle it. You remember what I told you. Once you start becoming aware of it, you can't give it up and go back. You can't un-learn what you've learned. You're going to be a target, Jayce."

JC had just shrugged. "I knew that when I signed up," he said. "You told me when this all started. I knew it, and I said I'd do it anyway. I mean, I won't last long without you recharging me, especially not with how quickly doing stuff burns through my power, but I can at least do something. Leave me here, leave me in charge, and go and do what you need to do. Fuck, it's not like whatever's in charge would hold you back from the chance to chase after your dream."

"I can't," Lance said. "What you do, what you know, that's not the right kind of magic. You know the sorcery. Some of it, at least. Some of the stuff I've picked up to make the rest of it easier. But that won't be enough to handle the patch-work I have to do."

"I can banish Nephilim and close portals with the best of them. It's practically grunt-work. You don't need to worry, Lance."

Lance's voice had sharpened, as though he were talking to a particularly impatient and slow student who refused to listen to what the teacher was saying. "No, actually, you can't. You can do it when I'm there, because I'm the one who can set it up for you, but you couldn't do it alone. You can't see what you're doing, you can't manipulate any of it. I can't leave you here with a big fat target painted on your back and no way to tap into the holy magic to fix things." He'd closed his eyes. "And banishing the Fallen isn't the only thing I do. It's just what you've seen me do, since -- well, since everything happened. There's so much more to it. So much more that I can't explain, except to say it involves putting right things that have gone wrong."

"So teach me," JC said. He'd tucked his feet up underneath him in lotus and watched Lance pace. "Teach me, and leave me here, and stop acting like you're going to have to give up the thought of everything you ever wanted just to stay here and -- I don't know, babysit me. Babysit the world around you."

"I can't. It's not possible to give someone the holy magic if they're not born to it. Either you're born with it, or you're not."

JC shook his head. "You said you were going to find a way to give me something. So I didn't have to work half-blind and half-deaf the whole time."

Lance had sighed. "Yes." A pause, barely long enough to hear; JC might have been imagining the reluctance in Lance's tone when he continued. "And you could just keep on working normal sorcery, the way you have been, with me feeding you power and letting you handle the little things to free me up for the big things, but that wouldn't work for long. Which is why I've been researching."

"And you've found something." JC had sat up straight. He knew that tone. "You found something, didn't you. Some way to do it. Some way to give me not just the senses to perceive sorcery, but to do the holy magic too."

"Not yet," Lance said. "I've been looking, but I haven't found anything yet."

JC couldn't tell if Lance was lying to him. He rather suspected Lance might be. "Well, keep looking. Because I'm not going to let you get away with brushing me off."

Lance shook his head. "You don't understand. You don't understand what it would do to you, what it would obligate you to do. I can't do that to you. I -- If I go, which I don't think I will, I could call someone. Somewhere. Call my mother, bring her in and have her take over the work. I'm not going to put it on you, though. You're good enough at what you do, if I'm there to power you, if I'm there to feed you, but even if I could give you the holy magic, I wouldn't leave you half-trained and with half-assed protections while I'm halfway across the globe."

It had pissed JC off. "My protections are not half-assed. You said so yourself, I'm better at this half-deaf and fully blind than some people who have been studying this stuff for years."

"I'm not saying --" Lance had interrupted.

JC didn't stop talking. "You're not going to pin all this on being worried for me, Lance. I know how it works, I know you're supposed to carry this sacred burden on your own, but I told you then and I'll tell you now, there is nothing that could keep me from watching your back now that I know what's going on and what's going down. So you're going to come up with something to help tie me into whatever mystical power source you use, and then we're going to do it, and then you're fucking well going to turn your ass around and go and fulfill your childhood dream and you're not going to give two seconds' thought about whether or not I can mind the store while you're gone, you got it? Because I can and I will and that's been the whole damn point all along."

There had been silence for a second. JC could see that Lance was thinking of arguing, but he kept his eyes on Lance's and kept his jaw set firmly and willed Lance to believe he was serious.

"I'm not going to put you into any more danger than you're already in," Lance had finally said.

"Baby," JC said. "I put myself there."

Lance's eyes had snapped. "And I'm not going to make it worse."

"Find a way," JC had said. "Because I'm not letting you pass this up, and if I have to find a way myself, I will."

*

It was only a chaos elemental; JC could have dealt with it in his sleep. The girls were terrified, though, and JC privately thought a little bit of terror would do them good. Keep them from messing with things they didn't understand, at least. For a little while, if not forever, and maybe in that little while they'd learn more caution.

He actually almost liked chaos elementals. They weren't much of a danger, only a nuisance. It was refreshing to be on a call that didn't involve mortal peril. He cleaned up after himself, made sure the girls would remember they'd done something stupid but not quite remember that someone had come to save their rear ends at the last second -- it wasn't good for people to believe there would be a cavalry riding to the rescue, Lance said, because it made them sloppy -- and called Joey, who was on his way back to his apartment and said he'd leave the light on until JC got home. All in a day's work.

Except the elemental had said something to him, before he had sent it back to where it came from, and he turned it over in his head while he was trying to hail a cab. Pick up, pack up, get moving; you tore it, you have to patch it whole. It's coming.

He didn't have any clue what the fuck that was supposed to mean.

Bach's Mass in G Minor kept running through his head. He wasn't having much luck hailing a cab, so he gave up; he wasn't far from a subway station, and Joey's place was three blocks' walk away from -- oh, the blue one. He could never remember how the New York subway system worked, but hell, he'd know it when he saw it. The don't-notice-me was still active, so he didn't even bother trying to get the attention of the lady in the token booth. He was pretty sure there was a MetroCard in his wallet, and if there wasn't, well, he always felt guilty about jumping turnstiles, but he wouldn't get busted for it.

You figured it out, didn't you. You found something.

Maybe.

JC stifled a yawn; it was getting late, even for him. Lance hadn't had time to teach JC his trick for getting by on four or five hours of sleep a night. He leaned against the wall of the subway station and closed his eyes. Too public to try to recharge, but at least he could take a moment before the train arrived to relax somewhat.

Well, tell me what we're going to have to do.

It's not that easy.

It still itched in the back of his head, like a buzzing, like the way one note out of tune felt in the middle of five-part harmony. For a minute after he climbed onto the subway train and took a seat, he thought it might be the hum of the engine, but it didn't change pitch and frequency when the train jerked back into motion. JC rubbed the sides of his eyes and pressed his fingertips against his temples; there was no way to scratch an itch that didn't actually exist. He could stand ten solid hours of sleep and a day or three without worrying about anything other than what was on the television.

The woman sitting across from him on the subway car glanced up from her book, scanning the car the way native New Yorkers learn to do; her eyes brushed past him, then stopped and returned. He dropped his eyes and chanted under his breath again: lo'-'iyra'meribhebhoth 'am 'asher sabhiyhb shathu alay, with a hint of suggestion behind it. She looked back down at her book, unconcerned. JC hoped that someday soon his Hebrew pronunciation would improve, at least to the point where Lance didn't wince every time he opened his mouth and then look guilty and try to hide the expression.

There's two parts to the magic I do. And you have to be born to both of them. There's ways to work sorcery without having the inborn talent, but they're dangerous unless there's someone there with the sense of it, to keep you from burning through everything that keeps you breathing. Nobody's ever found a way to work the holy magic without the talent for it, though. And if you're serious about wanting this whole crazy mess, and I don't know why you would be, you'd need both.

No way to scratch an itch that didn't actually exist, except to realize it was trying to call to that sense of duty buried deep within. The train pulled into the 50th Street station, and JC was on his feet before he could even process the fact that he was moving. Something else was calling to him; something nearby, muffled by shields or wards or something, but whatever it was, it needed him to go and take a look.

Twice in one night was rare, but not unheard of. In a city the size of Manhattan, with only a few people like him to take care of the things that could go wrong -- and there were a lot of things that could go wrong -- he wasn't surprised to realize there was something else he had to do. He slid his backpack up his shoulder, feeling the weight of the supplies it contained tugging at him, and stifled another yawn. At least he'd be able to sleep in, in the morning.

So you've figured out a way to do it.

It's just not possible to give you what I've got. That's inborn. You've either got it or you don't, and you don't. I could give you ... something, though. It's a lot more left-hand path than I usually handle, and it'd hurt like a motherfucker -- both of us -- and it wouldn't give you everything and it might backfire. But I could give you something. Something close.

Then do it.

You don't know what you're asking for.

You don't know what I'm offering.

As soon as Lance had told him, had told all of them about his other job, the one that didn't involve singing and dancing in front of an audience of screaming teenagers, there had been no doubt in JC's mind what he was going to do. It was simple, really; you didn't leave a brother to stand against the wolves with nobody watching his back, no matter what form those wolves might take. He didn't understand all of it, and Lance never seemed to miss an opportunity to remind him of that fact -- never in an unkind fashion, but still. JC had been satisfied to act as a kind of magical battery to power what Lance had been doing, at first. There were things you could do even if you couldn't feel them, and Lance had said that if you had a strong enough will, you could change some things even if you couldn't feel them changing.

JC had always had a very strong will.

It was that strong will that kept him from turning around and heading back down the stairs, walking out the door and hiding from the image that presented itself to him, when he followed that wordless tugging into a nondescript apartment building and let himself into the corner apartment on the fifteenth floor with the simplest of lockpicking spells.

The girl couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen years old. The room was sharp with the scent of it, heavy and metallic. Half her skin was missing, there were lines of chalk and sticky browning blood on the floor, and he could feel the presence in the room, the malevolent something that had been stirred up and only partially taken away with whomever had done this.

He breathed through his mouth and tried to ignore the way the runes on the floor made his stomach twist. He reached for the purity of the prayer to serve as a shield, meha'olam ve'adh ha'olam, and it helped, a little. A very little.

Think, he told himself, as the sense of urgency hit him. Think, you aren't going to have much time. The calm clarity of his own mental voice in his ears reminded him of what he needed to do. Salt and holy water around the doors and windows to contain whatever had been raised. From Hebrew to Latin for the dispelling; his Latin pronunciation was better than his Hebrew, and with something like this, he didn't want to take the chance. "Qui scit comburere aqua et lavare igne facit de terra caelum et de caelo terram pretiosam," he whispered, and reached for the fire no one else could see.

The crawling fetid stench of the room lifted enough to let him think a little more clearly. It would linger on; nothing he could do would make it go away completely, but whatever had happened in this room, whatever he hadn't gotten there in time for, would no longer be dangerous. Not enough time, no time to do what he should have done, but he did have just enough time to carry away what he could, so he could study it later. He pulled the notebook out of his back pocket and scribbled down the runes, taking care to make just enough of a mistake in transcription that whatever lurked in their depths wouldn't transfer itself to him, before upending the bottle of holy water over one of them and scrubbing with his foot.

"Police, freeze," the voice came from the door, sharp and unsteady, just as he was finishing up. JC turned to find a squat man with dark skin and uneasy eyes, wearing a police uniform, looking at him as though he were debating reaching for his gun. "Don't move. Don't fucking move. Kos, call for backup, we've got a situation here."

A year ago -- six months ago -- that would have sent JC into a panic. Now, he just shook his head. "No," he said, softly, and reached for the music that slept inside him. "Find who did this to her, if you can. But I was never here."

The detective shook himself as JC slipped past him, as though waking from sleep. JC shoved the notebook back in his pocket and let himself out of the building.

It wasn't the first time he'd been somewhere someone had died, but it was the first time he'd been the only one there who could have stopped it.

What do we have to do?

It's in the blood. It's all in the blood.

*

Joey and Kelly had rejected JC's offer to stay at a hotel the minute he'd made it; they'd only let Justin get away with it because Justin came with entourage and as much as they all liked Trace, he didn't have much of a concept of how to act around the baby. JC was different. JC was a pretty decent houseguest, as long as you didn't mind his occasional moments of total space-out. Not to mention the nights when he'd come stumbling back in at five in the morning, looking lost and forlorn and smelling of sour sweat and fear as he let himself in with the loaner key.

Joey was waiting up, because he always waited up when someone he loved was out and about. He liked knowing they'd gotten home safely. He uncurled himself from the recliner in the dark, clearing his throat as softly as he could to avoid startling JC -- he'd learned not to startle JC the hard way -- and struggled to his feet. The last remnants of the night's alcohol were sparkling at the edges of his vision, and he tried to keep himself from yawning.

JC turned to look at him, and Joey thought that if it wouldn't be inaccurate -- at least, he hoped it would be inaccurate -- the only word to use to describe him would be "haunted". "Joey," JC said. Joey could hear it in his voice, the thick low dread. JC blinked a few times, as though Joey were some kind of mysterious apparition, and half-stumbled to lean against the doorframe. "Joey."

Joey didn't know what went on, those nights when Lance and JC disappeared and came back looking tired and drawn, and he didn't really want to know. "Bad?" He came to stand next to JC, resting his hand against the small of JC's back and rubbing lightly.

"Bad," JC said. He was trying to keep his voice down, and he flinched ever-so-slightly away from Joey's touch. Joey figured that meant whatever JC had dealt with, whatever JC had had to do, had left him feeling stinking and crawling and filthy, like it had wormed under his skin. "Really bad."

"What was it?"

"Some kind of -- sacrifice, I think," JC said. Joey winced. "She was young. Really young, Joey. I don't --" He fumbled at his back pocket, pulled out a notebook and pressed it into Joey's hands. "Take this, okay? Just -- take it away from me for a little while. I don't want it near me, I don't want it around me, you can't feel it so you're safe to hold on to it until the morning, I just want to --"

Joey put the notebook onto the bookshelf behind him. "Jayce. It's okay. Come on. You go and take a shower, I'll make you a cup of tea, you can tell me about it. You look like a fucking ghost." He touched JC's cheek softly. JC's eyes were hollow in the half-light spilling from the open bathroom door in the hallway. "Come on, man, you look wiped."

"I didn't get there in time, Joey." JC shook his head and looked down at his hands. "The cops were there, but I didn't get there in time to save her. I was too late."

"You can't save everyone, Jayce," Joey said, as gently as he could, and nudged him towards the townhouse's guest bathroom. "Come on. Take a shower. You'll feel better, you know you always feel better after you take a shower. Then you can tell me what you need to tell me, enough to get it out of your head, and then you can try to sleep. It's in the police's hands now."

JC caught Joey's wrist in his hand, turning it over and running his fingers along the veins that stretched there. Joey held back a shiver. He'd seen JC this disturbed before, had been there for the aftermath of nights very much like this, but there was just enough of the otherworldly in JC's eyes to make him wonder what it was that JC had seen this time and wouldn't share. "You know what the worst part of all this is, Joey?"

"What's that?"

"It was human. Whatever it was that did that to her, it was human."

Joey closed his eyes and tried not to picture anything. Joey had seen JC like this before, but never without Lance there to take care of him. Joey didn't know quite what to do, what to say. "Then it's best to let the cops handle it. You can't be everywhere, JC. All you can do is your best."

JC took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. His fingers clenched, then relaxed against Joey's skin. "Lance would have been able to make it in time," he said, and shut himself in the bathroom before Joey could think of something to say in reply.

The shower hissed on a minute later. Joey closed his eyes and thought of Kelly, of Briahna, asleep behind another closed door. The notebook JC had handed him was small and spiral-bound, sized perfectly to fit into the back pocket of a pair of jeans. It was bent slightly, and the cover was shiny where it had rubbed against JC's ass day after day. He flipped past the grocery lists and half-finished lyrics to find what he knew must be there, and copied the symbols down before JC finished washing himself as clean as he could.

*

It had started out of simple curiosity, and a desire to do something instead of just standing there.

New York City was full of antique bookstores. Joey was the first person to admit he wasn't the world's greatest bibliophile, but there was something about walking into a room and being faced with row after row, shelf after shelf, of mismatched and aging spines. There was a particular smell, the smell of old books and dusty corners, that always made him think of lazy afternoons spent in a public library in Brooklyn, reading old plays and trying to figure out how to get into Jo DiConstanza's pants.

He'd made the list of which stores might have what he was looking for out of the phone book when he first moved back to New York. None of them would be it, of course; the kind of place he was looking for didn't tend to advertise. But maybe one of them would be able to point him in the direction he needed to go.

Kelly had watched with amusement; years ago, she'd accepted that there were some things in the world that could only be categorized into the box of "Joey is sometimes weird", and had displayed a marvelous facility at recognizing those things and putting them into that box when necessary. She hadn't batted an eyelash when he'd taken that carefully-constructed list and visited each of the twenty stores in order. Some of them had been easily crossed off, of course. Nothing showy. Nothing public. He knew when he started that the place he wanted had to exist, and he knew with just as much certainty that it would not be listed in the phone book or on the Internet. But he had no other place to start.

He could have asked for help -- he still remembered where to go, and whom to ask -- but something told him he was better off on his own, for this. Everyone he'd met when he'd been trailing along behind Lance had been polite enough, but there were no guarantees that would continue to be the case.

When he finally found it, it was after spending more time than he could count traipsing all over the five boroughs. He'd been into and out of more New Age and mystical stores than he thought any city, even one the size of New York, could support, and none of them had been it. But he'd been standing between the bookshelves of Magickal Realms, head tipped to one side, studying the spines of the two or three books that might have contained something of use to him, when someone had cleared her throat next to him.

She was tall and thin, all leg and elbow, and dressed like a refugee from the Salvation Army. "I've been seeing you in and out of the usual haunts this month," she'd said, giving him a direct stare.

Joey had nodded. "Looking for someplace that carries stuff that isn't likely to come out of mainstream publishing houses, if you know what I mean."

She tilted her head and chewed on her lip and he thought for a minute that she was looking right through him. "Yeah," she finally said. "I do. Give me your hand."

He'd put his hand in hers, expecting some kind of mystical and showy demonstration of something or other, but she'd just pulled out a pen and written an address on his palm. The nub dug into his skin, but it wasn't painful, just odd. "Tell him Zia sent you," she'd said, and turned to walk out. The heat of the New York City summer had blurred the lines of ink with sweat by the time he could write them down on a more permanent medium, but they'd still been legible enough.

Once he'd started looking for it, once he'd had his attention called to it, he began to notice it more and more often. Never overt; never showy. The ones who wore it on their sleeves were, he suspected, the ones who were giving Lance and JC the headaches to begin with. But every now and then, someone would give him a sidelong glance in a store, or watch him with interest on the subway, and he got used to differentiating when they were staring at Joey Fatone from when they were staring at him for another reason. He still wore the jewelry Lance had done something to, protected or blessed or something, and occasionally he would be walking down the street and something not-quite-right would catch him out of the corner of his eye. This was the world Lance walked in, the world JC was learning, and Joey wondered if they could see it on him, too, if being aware of it was enough to change you.

Whatever it was, it and the girl's name had been enough to let him in the back room of the tidy and nondescript used bookshop. He hadn't thought to look there, not for what he'd been trying to find. Hadn't pictured the mundane and prosaic shelves of Harlequin romance novels and science-fiction pulp, or the tightly-locked case containing first editions from Dickens to Dumas, or the smooth old white-haired and bearded man wearing, not the stereotypical tweed jacket, but black jeans and a t-shirt with a cryptic string of 1s and 0s across the chest. Hadn't expected to be escorted behind the counter, led through the door to the back room and down the old and rickety stairs, and left to browse for as long as he would like.

Joey had been very grateful for his bank balance when, four hours later, he had emerged with his arms full of carefully-chosen references (some hand-copied, with notes in the margins in languages he didn't speak, rough-edged and unevenly bound and each of them looking like it might be the only one of its kind that still existed in the world) and Adam, the proprietor, had tallied them up and named a number that would probably cover the store's lease for three full years. "You look to be furnishing a library," Adam had said.

"I'm, uh, trying to fill in some gaps in my knowledge."

Joey had expected to be questioned further, but Adam had simply nodded and lifted each volume with reverent hands into a box on the counter. "If you're in need of translation services, I can place you in contact with several people who do such things."

The books were thick and dense and heavy and at first, it took him an hour to work through three or four pages, squinting at the crabbed and heavy script. It gave him a headache, and more than once he considered just dropping it all and going back to blissful ignorance. After a few days of it, he started keeping notes in a spiral notebook that he kept next to the volumes on his desk. He couldn't make heads nor tails of half of it; every book seemed to contradict every other book, and sometimes they contradicted themselves. Halfway through, he had to close his eyes and fight the urge to toss them out the window; it was driving him that crazy.

But he was going to get through this, and he was going to learn something while he was doing it, and he was fucking well never again going to get stuck in a situation where he didn't understand what was going on. He'd had enough of that in his life and he'd promised himself, after Lou, that once was enough. He knew there were people he could go to for help, but that felt like cheating.

Kelly had just sighed softly and started keeping her New York Times bestsellers beside the bed, in order to leave him room on the shelves.

Joey wasn't even sure why he was doing it. Oh, he told himself it was because he wanted to know, to understand, but that wasn't all of it. There was a little bit of him, just enough for him to recognize it, that missed the days when Lance used to look up to him for answers -- about girls, about life, about everything. Somewhere along the line, that had stopped, and after what had happened on the second half of the tour, it felt more like he was running along behind Lance, trying to catch up, trying to at least build a common vocabulary so they could discuss things at all.

"What's this?" JC had asked when he'd visited, standing in Joey's living room, his hand on the cover of one of the books, looking up to meet Joey's eyes. JC still held onto enough of his upbringing that he would never handle someone else's property uninvited, no matter how curious he was.

Joey had looked away. "Just some stuff I've been reading lately."

JC had frowned. "Joey, that's not exactly light bedtime reading."

"I know, all right? I'm just -- I want to help, that's all. I don't want to do it. I just want to understand it." It had sounded stupid, coming out of his mouth, like saying it made him realize how unlikely it was that he'd ever have something to contribute.

JC's eyes had softened, though. "Just be careful, okay? Come to me when you finish these, we'll talk it over. Lance says that every single book that's ever been written down, unless you're getting personal journals and sometimes even then, is about sixty percent bullshit."

"I have a pretty good bullshit detector," Joey had said, and ended the discussion by stacking the books on the bookshelf behind him and going to order Chinese food for lunch.

*

Chris hit town just before the lunch rush, showing up at Joey's with a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, a pair of sunglasses perched on his forehead and displacing the mohawk, and a serious case of driver's tan. Within five minutes of arrival, he'd thumped Joey on the back, called Justin and told him to get his skinny white-boy ass over there, spun Kelly around and dipped her backwards until she shrieked and clutched his arms to hold herself up, and held Briahna upside-down and blown raspberries on her tummy until she had dissolved into helpless giggles.

"Good to see you, too, man, but shush. C's still asleep." Joey pondered rescuing his daughter, but Chris's grasp was always strong, and there were few people in the world Joey trusted as much as he trusted Chris to take care of something precious and irreplaceable. "And be careful with Bri, she's got a cold."

Chris stilled immediately, flipping Bri back right-side-up and soothing her disappointed whimpering by sticking one of his pinky fingers in her mouth for her to suck on. "Oops," he said, not really sounding contrite. "You guys out late partying?"

"He got unexpectedly called away," Joey said, and Chris's eyes flicked to Kelly before he nodded. "We missed you last night."

"I tried to make it," Chris said. "There was just no way. I didn't realize when I agreed to do that stupid pageant thing that it'd conflict."

"No, no. It's cool. Did you see Lance while you were down there?"

Chris shook his head. "He already had JC visiting, and I couldn't find the time to detour up to Houston from SPI. Texas is fucking huge, man. Figured I'd catch him next time they ship him back to the States, or head on over to Russia before he goes up even if it takes a bottle of Valium to get me there. You heard anything about how he's doing?"

"He's doing okay," came the sleepy voice from the door, and they both turned to see JC standing there, running one hand through his hair. Chris whooped, passed Bri over to Kelly with a deftness that spoke of way too many hours spent holding babies, and bounded across the room to gather JC up into a hug. JC exhaled sharply as Chris impacted, and then there were a few minutes of limbs and lips going on, while Joey met Kelly's eyes with a resigned air of "well, it's just Chris."

When they disengaged, JC wrapped one arm around Chris's waist, finished nuzzling his neck, and then headed for the kitchen. Joey looked for signs of the previous night's upset, but JC had his company face on, and Joey couldn't tell what he was thinking. "How old's the coffee?" JC called.

"Joey made it around nine," Kelly said. "And -- shit, I'm going to be late for Bri's appointment." She passed the baby back to Chris, and ducked into the other room to grab the diaper bag. "Chris, is Justin coming over?"

"I don't know," Chris called back, and, free of the need to watch the noise level, turned Briahna upside-down again. "I woke him up, so even if he is, it won't be for a while."

"Well, I was just seeing if we were going to need more food in the fridge." Kelly came back out with diaper bag in tow, saw Chris holding the baby upside-down, and sighed, more tolerant than upset. "Chris, if you drop my plague-ridden daughter on her head, you're never welcome in this house ever again."

"Fate worse than death!" Chris proclaimed, and handed Bri back over to her. "I couldn't live without seeing your fair face ever again. If you ever decide to drop the ape over here, I get first dibs."

JC came out of the kitchen, coffee mug in hand. Kelly hoisted Briahna up on one hip and tucked her feet into her shoes. "If you ever decide you're going back to girls, I might just take you up on that. I'll be back in a few hours. Try not to burn the house down while I'm gone." She leaned over and kissed Joey before she left.

The minute the door clicked shut, the atmosphere in the room shifted. Joey looked over to JC and said, "I woke up early and managed to figure out some info on the stuff you found last night."

JC's shoulders twitched, like he'd been trying not to think about it. Chris looked back and forth between them like a trapped rabbit. "Bad shit went down?"

"Bad shit went down," JC confirmed, and leaned one hip against the desk. "I didn't ask you to look stuff up, Joey."

"Yeah, and you didn't ask me to make sure there was coffee left over for you when you woke up, now did you, but that doesn't mean I didn't make an extra-large pot this morning." Joey leaned over and picked up the sheets of notes from his morning research. "I couldn't find a lot on it. I guess I don't have the right books. I can go and talk to my guy later on this afternoon if you want me to."

"Your guy?" Chris looked back and forth some more. "Joey, you have a guy? When'd you get a guy? Jayce, what the hell happened last night? Nobody tells me anything anymore."

JC's lips twitched. "Well, you know, if you ever answered your cell phone, we might."

"I answer the phone when I'm not stoned off my ass. My caller ID isn't working so I don't know if it's my mother, and you know she gets upset when I don't share my weed with her. You're ducking the question." Chris kicked JC's foot lightly. "What happened?"

"Someone died," JC said. The words were tight and small, sharp contrast to his humor of just a few seconds ago. He put the mug of coffee down on the desk with a hair more force than was truly necessary. "I was too slow and too late and someone died. Joey, I don't want you in on this."

"We've been through this." Joey crossed his arms across his chest. "I dropped the ball the first time, I'm not going to drop it again. This is part of your life, and it's damn well going to be part of mine, too."

Chris held up a hand. "Not meaning to get into the middle of this, but I've been wandering across the country. Someone want to fill me in on what's been going on?"

Joey transferred his attention to Chris. "I've been doing some reading -- okay, a lot of reading. I don't understand a lot of it, but I can at least summarize and hand it over to someone who does understand it. JC doesn't want me involved, he says it's too dangerous." Joey had wondered, at the time, whether JC realized that had been the same argument Lance had used on JC.

Chris frowned. "You mean you're doing magic too?" He seemed to have trouble saying the word "magic", like his mouth was getting in the way of itself. Chris had, perhaps, been a little more affected by his brush with the supernatural than he would let on.

"No," JC said, quickly. "He -- it's like Lance said. You're either born with it, or you're not."

"You weren't born with it." Chris tilted his head.

"No," JC repeated. "I wasn't." He set the paper down next to his coffee mug. "And I don't really want to talk about how I got here, because first, I'm not Lance and I don't feel like talking for ten minutes on something I don't think you guys really want to hear, and second, I'm trying pretty hard to totally blank it out and never think of it ever again, okay? I'm really tired; I'm going to go back to sleep. Wake me up if we're doing anything."

Chris waited until JC was out of earshot to look back at Joey. "Perhaps this household should consider switching to decaf."

"He was out late last night." Joey fought back the urge to defend JC. "And I think this is really getting to him."

"I told him this would fuck with his head." Chris sighed and shook his head. "What got you into it?"

"I told you. I wanted to help." Joey didn't want to get into all of the reasons, though, not even with Chris, so he temporized. "It's pretty interesting, all of it. I mean, the books are rough going in places, and it's not like I speak any of the weird languages that half of them are in, but, you know, I can be a research monkey just like anyone else."

Chris quirked one eyebrow and then wandered over to browse the bookshelves. Joey was keeping the books he'd been collecting on the top shelf, as though by keeping them high and away, they'd somehow be less dangerous. "Hey, answer me this." Joey made an affirmative noise, and Chris tipped his head back over to look again. "Is he right? Do you have to be born with it?"

"Yeah," Joey said, and then amended, "Well, yes and no. It's -- it's kind of hard to explain. I don't know if I'm really right or not, but I'm getting some different stories from this stuff, and it's -- I mean, Lance was talking like magic was just one thing, right? And C does the same thing. But what I'm getting is that there are really three kinds of magic, and one of them -- sorcery -- is divided up into as many different types as there are -- well, types of music."

"And?" Chris prompted.

Joey's breath hissed out in a sigh. "And some of those types you have to be born to, just like Lance said. Some of them, anyone can wake them up if they try, because you have to have the talent for them but everyone has some latent talent for some part of it or another. Some of them you can do without the talent for it, but it's harder, or it costs more. And some of them are, like, really fucking scary, what you have to do to get them to work, especially if you don't have the inborn talent for them. And I think that's what Jayce stumbled onto, last night." Joey picked up the piece of paper JC had left on the desk and looked at it. "I think he found someone who doesn't have the magic, but wants it. Wants it enough to kill for it."

Chris frowned. "That's possible? To get all of this by -- what, killing someone and eating their powers?"

Chris's tone was as flippant as he could make it, but he was actually almost right. "Yeah," Joey said. "It's possible. The books talk about it, it's like -- Look, I don't know what I'm talking about, you know? I could be totally wrong. But see, there are three different types of magic. There's what everyone now calls psychic powers. Just about everyone's got the potential for one or more of those talents, they're just sleeping, and you can wake them up if you know what you're doing. Seeing stuff in the future, or, like, the laying on of hands to heal other people, or knowing stuff about what other people are feeling. Stuff that comes entirely from inside you, and is powered by your own natural energy, all of which kind of replenishes itself as you go; you kind of take it in from everything else. And then there's what's called true magic, sorcery -- the stuff with actual spells and rituals and stuff. That stuff uses an entirely different internal power source, and you need a bunch of different skills for it, you need to be able to memorize stuff and manipulate the power flows and -- well, I'm babbling."

Chris was listening, though, and Joey figured it couldn't hurt to keep going until Chris stopped him. "Some of the same stuff can be handled by psychic gifts and by sorcery, just in different ways. But, see, the biggest thing you need to do sorcery is the -- hold on, let me try and find the way this book put it." He picked one of the books out of the stack on the desk itself, flipping through the pages as quickly as he could without risking damage. "Here we go. This author didn't know about the third type of magic, but it's a good summary still. The spelling is shit, but this is what I'm talking about: 'The sorcerer is the rarest of any who seek to understand the arcane arts, for he' -- they weren't all that big on women's lib back then -- 'is the one born with the gift to see the world as it is, not how man would make it, and the strength to draw the power required to change it.'"

"Uh-huh." Chris sounded dubious. "Is that supposed to make sense?"

"It does when you realize that all of these people talk in some kind of code. 'The gift to see the world as it is' -- I think that means that people with the talent for actual magic -- sorcery, this book calls it -- can see through illusion spells and sense stuff like whether or not there's magic being used. And can see the way their sorcery is working, whether or not it is actually working, correct it if it's going wrong, instead of just trusting to blind luck and faith that they've done everything right. 'The strength to draw the power' -- that's the hard part. The difference between sorcery and psychic talents is that the power for sorcery comes from the outside. A bunch of different types of outside power, from what I can tell, but from outside."

"So?" Against his better judgment, Chris was interested; Joey could tell. "Couldn't anyone draw on those power sources, then?"

Joey shook his head. "No, it's like -- well, the book used this awful analogy that would have made perfect sense in the fifteen-hundreds but took me forever to understand, but it's kind of like a well. People with the talent can use all the water in the well, and it's okay, because it'll fill back up ... however wells get filled up, whatever, sooner or later. People without the talent, it's more like a cup. Empty the cup, that's it, the water's gone. And you're in the desert, and while you're trying to find some water somewhere to refill the cup, you're gonna die of thirst."

"So when Lance started teaching JC, he was teaching him --"

"With JC working blind." Joey nodded. "Because JC didn't have it, he wasn't a sorcerer or whatever you want to call it, so Lance had to keep feeding him the energy and sort of guiding his hands. I think. I mean, Lance had to have been getting something out of it, or he wouldn't have been doing it. And he sure seemed less tired afterwards, so it wasn't like teaching JC was a big drain on him or something. And the holy magic, what Lance does, is apparently something else entirely, and I can't find much reference to it in any of these books. I do know you have to be a sorcerer to be a holy mage, but not all sorcerers are holy mages, and not all holy mages use sorcerous magic much, even if they can. And don't even get me started on the question of where all these different types of magic come from. But somewhere along the way Lance figured out a way to sort of put the sorcerer ability into JC, and that's what I can't figure out. All the books say it should be impossible."

"And he won't tell you when you ask." It wasn't a question; Chris knew them too well.

Joey sighed and shook his head again. Trust Chris to cut right to the heart of what Joey had been avoiding thinking about for weeks. "Nope. All he'll say is that he doesn't want to talk about it, because nobody should know it's possible." He paused. "And I think that's what we're dealing with here. I think whatever it is, it's ugly, and I don't like thinking about what it might have been. I think whoever this guy is that JC was messing with last night, he figured it out too. And I don't want to believe that about Lance and JC, but hell. I've been wrong about things before."

"That's why you started doing all this reading." Chris's voice was slow, like he was coming to the conclusions as he was saying them. "Because you want to know what they haven't been telling us, and you don't know whether or not you can trust them to tell us the truth."

Joey opened his mouth to deny it, and then stopped. "A little," he said, slowly. "Yeah. A little. I don't know, I hate thinking it. But with all the years that Lance wasn't telling us anything --"

"--you started thinking, once you found out what was really going on, that you didn't know if everything we thought we knew was wrong." Chris nodded. "Yeah. I've been trying to deal with that one myself." He offered up a wan smile. "I think I've mostly picked the fingers-in-ears-la-la-I-can't-hear-you approach."

"I don't think that's going to work in the long run, Chris." Joey could hear his own voice, serious and sober. "I mean, whether we like it or not, this is obviously here and around and we're going to have to do something with it. Something about it."

Chris flopped down onto the couch and looked up at Joey. "What do you suggest we do? I mean, it's not like we can just leap into the situation and start plugging away at stuff. It's like Lance says. Either you've got it or you don't."

"Maybe," Joey said. "Maybe not. Maybe we can find something we can do, maybe we can't. Maybe we can figure out what Lance and JC are doing, figure out how they're doing it, maybe we can't. I don't think sticking our fingers in our ears is going to accomplish anything, though."

"It'll make me feel better," Chris said, and that was the end of that.

*

There are rules. Rules about what you can do to other people without asking them first. Rules about what you should do to other people without asking them first. You'll find a lot of people have a lot of different rules about what's ethical and what isn't, but most of those are geared to sorcery, not the holy magic. The holy magic has its own set of rules, and because I'm powerful enough to be called Magus, I have another set of rules on top of that, too.

I thought you were supposed to ask first. Before you did something to someone. Before you changed things for them, with magic.

You are, really. But there are times when you can't, and times when you shouldn't. There are times when pragmatism trumps those ethics. Someone who's consistently and repeatedly abused his or her magic would never consent to having that magic removed, for instance, but if that's the case, you'd have to do something. There's always the greater good to think of. Not just the person's greater good, but the greater good of Creation as a whole. The cosmos as a whole. That's what we have to keep in mind.

But how do you know? How do you make that decision?

It's just one of the things to add to the list of things you ask God 'why me' about. It's one of the things you have to decide, and if you decide wrong -- well, you deal with it afterwards, the best way you know how.

That conversation played out in JC's head as he sat in the audience for the VMAs, waiting to go up and present. He winced, sitting in the middle of thousands of people all staring up at Justin trying to work his way through dance steps he hadn't yet learned bone-deep. Justin looked off, as though the nerves had gotten in between him and his music. JC had known it was going to happen.

He'd been standing in the hallway while Chris had knelt next to a pale and shaking Justin in Joey's bathroom, holding his head while Justin emptied the contents of his stomach into the toilet. JC only would have had to reach out slightly. Just a bit. Just a hand brushed over the back of Justin's hand, a phrase hummed under his breath, a tiny reaching out and setting right -- that would have been the only thing necessary to calm Justin's nerves enough to take away the fear and uncertainty.

JC had been the one to bring up the topic of ethics and consent. He'd seen Lance doing a lot of things that -- well, they weren't wrong, because they were done to fix things, on the larger scale. But it really did sit wrong with him, half the time, some of the things they did without letting the people they were doing them to know what was going on.

I mean, who are we to play God?

Those of us who carry the holy magic are entitled to play God, Jayce. We're God's hands, God's proxies. We're doing what God needs to have done.

A lot of other people have claimed to be doing God's will in the past, you know. And they did a lot of shitty things in God's name.

I know. Believe me, I know.

It kept JC up at night, sometimes, worrying at the problem like a dog worries at a bone, trying to come up with his own rules for when it was all right to act and when it wasn't. And then, standing outside Joey's bathroom and watching Justin turn his head and spit, watching Chris hand him a glass of water and make some half-hearted wisecrack to make Justin smile -- then, he realized all of his resolutions about leaving things alone unless it was absolutely necessary for him to act were all well and good, but when it concerned one of the people he loved, they were so easy to push to the wayside.

He'd just shifted his weight, ready to reach for the magic and step through the door, when Joey had caught his wrist.

"Don't," Joey had said. JC looked over and saw the expression on Joey's face, the instinctive understanding of precisely what JC was struggling with. There was something else there, written underneath the understanding; something JC didn't understand, and didn't really like. Joey was looking at him like he was something new and strange. Foreign. "He wouldn't thank you for it. Not now, not even later. Not if he knew."

JC had caught his breath, feeling for a minute like he'd been broadsided, and then nodded slowly and went to get another glass of ice water and a fresh shirt for Justin to change into.

It didn't stop him now from curling his fingers into fists, trapped in the uncomfortable seat of yet another auditorium theatre -- and how many of those had he spent nights just like this sitting in? -- humming counterpoint under his breath and willing strength to Justin with every inch of his body. Maybe Joey had been right, but magic that couldn't be used to help out your friend wasn't very good magic at all.

"Well," Chris said brightly afterwards, "that didn't totally suck," and Justin shot him a death-glare. JC rested a hand on Justin's shoulder, and tried not to be upset when Justin jerked away.

*

Adam Pendleton, Ltd., Bookseller, was patiently dealing with a woman carrying her poodle under one arm and insisting in a sharp voice that she knew there had to be a copy of whatever bestseller was topping the New York Times charts that week tucked away somewhere behind the counter. Joey stood behind her just long enough for the dog to growl at him and for Adam to shoot him a glance that said yes, I know. He made a tiny gesture, Adam nodded back at him, and he slipped around the counter and through the door to downstairs. Behind him, the woman's voice grew even more shrill, demanding to know why he had been allowed through. Adam's voice, soothing and calming beyond all human limits of patience, was so low that Joey couldn't make out the words.

Sometimes Joey wondered where Adam had found all the books in the basement, why Adam kept them. Some of them made the nape of Joey's neck crawl, even if he couldn't understand what they were saying. With some of them, you didn't need to be able to read to know they were dealing with things you just plain old didn't want to think about. It was as though something in the fabric of the pages, the leather of the covers, spoke of a sleeping malicious potential.

Joey'd asked Adam, once, why he kept those books, in among the stuff that dealt with more run-of-the-mill types of magic. Adam had sighed and said, "The ones who are working against magic like that need to know. Information isn't the problem. It's how the information is used." It had seemed like the old "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, and it sat wrong with Joey -- so much of this sat almost-wrong with Joey, little echoes of things that could be used in so many evil ways -- but he'd let it go.

There hadn't been much to go on, for the symbols JC had brought home, but there had been a few hints and suggestions. Joey knew he could spend the entire day rummaging through books, skimming for some mention of what he needed to know and hoping his tired eyes didn't miss the one reference buried in the middle of a ninth-century text, but he didn't have all day. He didn't have the magic in him, and he didn't want it there, but that didn't mean he hadn't found one or two spells that he was willing to use. Spells he could use, even without being able to feel them.

He blocked out the sounds from upstairs, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. The words slept just underneath his heart, like they wanted to be spoken. He didn't even know what language they were in, but in spite of that, he could pronounce them properly; the minute he'd laid eyes on them, he'd known. It wasn't the language that mattered; it was what he was asking for -- praying for -- behind it.

The last syllables rushed out from his lips like a soft breath, and his knees were a touch weak behind them. He couldn't add it up, but he knew he'd just spent a fraction more of that otherworldly currency. Someday, he knew, he was going to run out. He figured he'd deal with that when he got there. It was a little spell, so small that the long-dead author of the book he'd found it in hadn't bothered to cloak it in metaphors and half-truths. It didn't count for much. It didn't cost much.

Power. It was all about the power; having the power, being able to sense the power, being able to direct and use the power. Joey thought he understood, just a little, why someone might be willing to kill for the ability to do things like that. Cut a few corners. Save a few minutes. Save a lot more than a few minutes, in a few cases.

Adam came down the stairs with two steaming mugs of tea in his hands just as the final hints of golden light faded from the books Joey was pulling from the shelves. It hadn't been long enough for the spell to wear off, which meant Joey had found everything containing any information that might be of use to him. The stack on the table was depressingly large. "Indexing spell?" Adam asked, nodding to the books, and handed over one of the mugs of tea.

"I kind of think of it as the magical Yellow Pages. You know, let your fingers do the walking." Joey dropped down into one of the chairs; Adam kept the study table down here because half his customer base made less in a year than some single books cost, and Adam was always willing to let people drop in and look up a few things. It didn't stop him from selling the books, of course, but he was willing to serve as librarian while he was waiting for someone to come along and take them home. "Did you manage to lose the diva?"

"Yes, and locked the door behind her. God save me from dealing with idiots." Adam tasted his tea and made a face. Joey hoped it was from the memory of dealing with the woman, and not the taste of the tea. "You've got an eclectic assortment here. What are you dealing with?"

Sometimes Joey thought that Adam, if confronted with the end of the world happening in his backyard, would just push up his glasses, shrug, and start handing out books about it. Adam had, one or two times, been a godsend, pointing Joey directly to the books he wanted before he even knew what they were. That had been before Joey had learned the index spell, and he still tended to view Adam as a sort of magical encyclopedia. Joey didn't even know if Adam knew who he was; he didn't seem like the type to follow the pop scene.

They'd spent some time drinking together a month or so ago, when Joey had been trying to find some good references on first-century Ephesian Goddess-worship. JC had been dealing with a cult claiming they were resurrecting the tradition. They hadn't, but they'd managed to tap into something three planes over and more than slightly unpleasant. It had been tough for a while -- it was one of JC's first big solo projects -- and Joey'd pulled every spare moment he hadn't been in rehearsal to help. Adam, apparently deciding Joey had passed some sort of test, had come down with a bottle of whiskey and two glasses and they'd stayed up half the night, well past the store's usual closing time, pulling books off the shelves and talking through what it could possibly have been.

"I don't know," Joey said now, and ran a hand over his head. The tea was warm and tasted slightly of damp plants. He wasn't sure what it was, but it wasn't half bad. "C ran into bad shit the other night. He couldn't tell me much, but he looked pretty spooked afterwards. I copied down some of the symbols he brought home, figured it'd be a good idea to stop in and see if any of these --" He gestured at the stack of books with one hand. "-- had anything to say about it."

"Hmm. May I see?" Adam held out one hand for the copy of the runes, and Joey shoved it across the table without thinking twice. He'd learned, that night, that Adam had been raised in a strongly magical family but had gotten next to nothing of the talent himself. His family didn't produce holy magicians, but sorcery ran in bloodlines too. Adam had once said snide things to Joey about his younger brother, who was apparently the family hotshot, and then never mentioned it again.

In return, Adam knew that Joey had a friend who'd somehow managed to get thrust into the middle of things without much preparation, and was more than willing to help out by providing as much information as possible. "Hmm," he said now, squinting at the lines. "Old magic. Blood magic, judging by the feel of these."

"Yeah." Joey nodded. "And if how weirded out he was by it is anything to go by, bad magic. He said someone died."

Adam's mouth twisted. "For things like what this feels like, someone always has to. Be careful, all right? Things like this happen in pairs. Or more. People who are working with magic like this -- well, it's addictive. You get a taste for it, they say. Like a need, under the skin."

Joey wondered if all magic couldn't be described like that, in the end. "Great," he said. He'd been pretty sure of that, but hearing it from Adam didn't make him feel much better. "So we're going to have more dead bodies on our hands?"

Adam nodded. "Most likely. And whatever the dark mage is trying to do -- well. He -- or she, though they're not usually female -- may not be working toward something in particular. He may just be drunk on the power, unwilling to give that up. But it's been my experience that there is always a greater purpose, in the end."

"Great," Joey said again, and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Look, I hate to ask this, but if this all goes down and we can't handle it --"

"Unfortunately," Adam said, and there was true regret in his voice, "I wouldn't be of much use. Except possibly to turn pages, and you seem to have that well in hand. Of course, if you need another pair of eyes -- well, that much I'll always help with. But I'm afraid this kind of magic is well out of my league. My family's more nature magic, not blood magic, and we all know I fall in the last-and-the-least end of the spectrum. Information, yes. Assistance, probably not. If you're in desperate need, I could possibly call in some old favors for you, but I wouldn't even count on that. Manhattan summers are a bad time for sensitives; most of them try to get away from the press of all the people and the heat." "Yeah," Joey said. "I wasn't really counting on it. C tends to get called in on the kind of things most people can't do much about."

Adam nodded again. "The ones who have the holy magic are like that. So many people don't even know it exists, much less how to handle it or how to handle the things it's needed for."

Joey sighed. "Yeah. I know a few people I could call, in an absolute emergency. Not too many, but a few. Unfortunately, our guy is out of town too. Way out of town."

"I'll keep my ears open. A great deal of information comes through my doors; if I hear anything that may be of use, I'll let you know." Adam nodded to the mug. "Drink your tea; it's getting cold. And then I'll help you carry those upstairs and figure out how much of your bankroll is disappearing into my pocket."

"It's a deal," Joey said.

*

Justin was sitting at the kitchen table with one of Kelly's romance paperbacks in one hand, alternately turning pages and eating a slice of leftover pizza with the other, when Joey came home lugging the box of books. "C said to tell you he'd be back late tomorrow," Justin said, mouth full, without looking up from the book. "And Chris disappeared. Said something about the East Village, record stores, you know Chris and vinyl. I think he and C are fighting again."

Joey raised an eyebrow and dropped the box on the counter. "What makes you say that?"

Justin shrugged. "Chris slept with me last night, not with C, and you know I'm not anybody's first choice. I steal the covers. Is everything okay?"

Joey closed his eyes and wondered if he was going to have to take the time to mediate some kind of internal warfare, too. He stayed out of the complex dance of who was sharing whose bed at any given time -- not because he didn't swing that way (theoretically, he did, even if usually it was only after a few beers and when Kelly had given him permission in advance) and not because he didn't find any of his bandmates sexually attractive (he wasn't blind and he wasn't dead, after all), but simply out of some small lingering belief that you didn't fuck around with the people you had to work with. He had the sneaking suspicion that Chris's choice of bedmate last night had nothing to do with whether or not he was getting along with JC, and everything to do with the fact that Justin had needed him in a way Justin hadn't needed him in years, but it wasn't his place to interfere. "You're the one who just told me JC and Chris were fighting again, shouldn't you be the one who tells me whether everything's okay or not?"

"Not like that," Justin said, and put down the book. Joey wondered when Justin had picked up a taste for bodice-rippers, and decided it would be safest not to ask. "I meant with, you know. The stuff we don't talk about. And don't look at me like that, I was only reading it because it was sitting right here on the table."

They always said JC was the one who lived in another world. Sometimes Joey thought it was only because they were all so familiar with Justin's world that it didn't seem weird to them. "I don't know what's up with that, that's what I've been trying to find out. Did C say where he was going?"

Justin shrugged again. "Some kind of thing in Southampton. He didn't ask any of us to come out with him, I dunno. I'm heading back out west tomorrow, I've got this press thing next week in LA and I think I'm gonna take some downtime with Alyssa first. I was gonna try to get out here for the club thing you're doing, but I have to stick around for the launch party."

Joey immediately felt like a jerk. He'd forgotten about what was going on with Justin's album in the middle of everything else. "Shit, that's already? I didn't think it was so close."

"Believe me, Joey," Justin said, "I wake up in the middle of the night knowing exactly how long until then." He was pale under his tan, and Joey wondered if he'd been sleeping at all. "We still on for the end of the month? Assuming that the world doesn't end before then."

"Don't even joke about that," Joey said, shocked. "Don't even -- it's not funny, Justin."

"It used to be." Justin shrugged and picked the book back up. "Grab me another slice of pizza when you go by the fridge? I couldn't eat a goddamn thing yesterday and my body's trying to make me pay for it now."

*

JC's phone buzzed against his hip just as he was starting to relax. He pulled it out, saw the number was Lance's just as it rang through to voicemail, and knew he'd never be able to find enough peace and quiet in the club to listen to the message or take the call. He excused himself from the table; P. Diddy, holding court, barely even noticed him go.

Outside, the air held that late-August dead humidity, like it was thinking about raining but wasn't thinking about it too hard. He checked the message quickly -- nothing more in-depth than "hey, it's me, call me back when you've got a second" -- and dialed before he could talk himself out of it.

Lance answered in between the second and third ring. "Wasn't expecting you to call back so quickly," he said, not even bothering with a greeting. Recently all of their conversations had started to feel like continuations of each other, all of them eventually bleeding into one.

The sound of Lance's voice brought back thoughts of the late-afternoon Texas summer humidity. The way that Lance's breath had sounded in his ears, as JC bent over him and mouthed at his neck. The way he'd felt, for the first time since they'd started sleeping together so many years ago, that Lance wasn't holding anything back. The way it had felt like they'd been melting into each other, dissolving, with the thrumming throbbing feel of magic trading back and forth between them, echoing and reflecting, enhancing each of their senses in a synergy that left JC feeling like he'd been falling into nothingness. He'd never thought, never dreamed, that sex with anyone could break down his boundaries like that.

It had been the first time he'd slept with anyone since the night in Lance's workroom, and for the first time he understood why Lance had always seemed to be holding something back with all of them, before. He would have done the same thing. It hadn't been unpleasant, but it had been uncomfortable. Lance had seemed just as shocked as JC had been, and they'd carefully avoided talking about it afterwards. JC had caught himself holding back from reaching out to Lance, the next day, as though just the simple act of touching could throw them into that identity-dissolving union again. "Nah, it's cool," JC said, leaning back against the building. Keep it light; keep it casual. They'd work out what the heck was going on between the two of them on the personal level later, once Lance got home, once everything was out of crisis mode. "Just out clubbing with a bunch of people after the party, nothing major. Is something up?"

He could imagine Lance standing in the middle of the room they'd assigned him, pacing back and forth, holding the cell phone up against one ear. "That's what I was going to ask you. I've got this feeling. Like an itch under my skin. It feels like it's connected to you somehow. Is anything going down?"

JC closed his eyes. He had been intending to call Lance yesterday, but their schedules hadn't overlapped enough for him to get Lance in person, and it wasn't the kind of thing one trusted to email or voice mail. "Well, it's been mostly quiet. A few things, nothing major or stuff that I can't handle. Except --" He bit his lip, and tried to think of a way to phrase it.

"Except?" Lance's voice was soft and steady, encouragement in his ear.

"There was this -- I walked into something on Wednesday night. Blood magic. Bad blood magic. There was -- there was a victim. She didn't make it." JC tried to keep his voice as neutral as possible.

"Shit." There was a soft exhale from the other end of the phone, and JC could practically see Lance dragging a hand through his hair. "Motherfucker. When did you get there? During, or after?"

"After." Shame burned in his throat. "I felt it while it was happening, I think, but it wasn't strong enough to make me think it was real and I wasn't imagining it, and by the time I got there --"

"Stop beating yourself up over it." The command was soft, but it was a command nonetheless. "Warded?"

"Yeah. Strong wards. Really strong wards."

"That's why, then. You're never going to be as good at sensing through wards as someone who was born to it. It's a miracle you can sense it when it's practically being scrawled across the sky. Did you clean up afterwards?"

"Yeah," JC said again. "And I got the symbols written down. I was going to scan them in and send them to you, see if you had any idea. They're not anything I've ever been exposed to."

"Yeah, I'll take a look, but I don't have a lot of my reference stuff out here with me. They sort of make you travel light." Lance chuckled, then sobered again. "You can call my mom if you need someone to go through books looking for stuff. She's getting itchy skin about you too, I think -- if you need anything, don't hesitate to call her. She doesn't want anything to happen to you."

"Actually," JC said, after a pause, "Joey's been sort of helping out." He'd told Lance about Joey's new choice of reading material, and Lance had just hmmed thoughtfully and then seemed to set the matter aside. "He's apparently found somebody he can trust to give him information, and God only knows where he's getting all these books but he's always got something useful to contribute. Even when I tell him I don't want him involved."

There was another pause, and then Lance hmmed again. "Well, I suppose -- information won't hurt, no matter where it comes from. You should still check in with Mom, though. And you can always go down and talk to Kei, if you need another pair of eyes. I'd advise against talking to Ojiisan if you don't have to, but if you need to, he can probably find you someone who hasn't bailed on the city for the summer. Do you need me to come help?"

"No," JC said quickly. "Dude, you're flying back to Russia in what, six hours? I can handle it. I can. It was only the once --" and oh, it burned under his skin, guilt and shame at not being able to get there fast enough, but he hid it as well as he could -- "and I'm on the lookout for it now. I'll know how it feels if it happens again. And maybe next time I won't be too fucking slow."

Lance sighed. "Be careful, all right? Remember that stuff like that isn't just magical and spiritual. If you walk in on something you're not ready for --"

"I'll be ready for it." JC tried to put a hint of iron into his voice. "And I'm not trying to play the hero here. I know what I'm capable of, and I can handle it. I promise you, I'll call the minute I have anything. The guy left a lot of mess and a lot of crap, but nothing that could possibly be used to trace him. I checked. If it happens again, I'll feel it, and I'll find some way of nailing his ass. I will."

"Okay," Lance said again after a long minute. "I'll email you some of the stuff I have for tracking shit like that if you can get to the scene again, or if it happens again. Just -- be careful, all right, C? If you need me for anything, call. I hate dropping you in the middle of all this without me."

"I know you do, baby," JC said. "And you know, I kind of hate it too. But I'm good. I promise."

"Okay," Lance said. "I'll call you when I get back over there, okay? Love you."

"Love you too," JC said, but Lance had already hung up. He stared at the cracks in the sidewalk and hoped he hadn't sounded anywhere near as uncertain as he felt.

Hearing Lance's voice had stilled the little narration in the back of his head, the memories that had been running in endless loop, as though the reality of Lance had pre-empted the recollected version of him. It left him feeling empty, though, to hang up the phone, like a part of him was missing. He was halfway across the country, and it wasn't the first time that they'd all been separated, but something was missing when Lance wasn't around.

JC slid the phone back into his pocket and tried not to wonder what would be different if Lance were there.

*

JC got back to Joey's late Sunday night, after Kelly and Bri had already left for their flight back to Orlando. He wondered sometimes how the long-distance thing was working for them, and why Kelly hadn't just quit her job and moved up to Manhattan full-time, but he thought he understood the need to do something on her own, not just as an extension of Joey. And it wasn't as though Joey couldn't afford weekly plane tickets.

Joey was sitting up, sprawled out on the sofa in the living room with his feet on the coffee table and an old and heavy-looking book in his lap, when JC unlocked the door and kicked off his shoes. He looked up and blinked, stifling a yawn. "Wasn't expecting you back tonight."

JC shrugged. "Didn't feel like staying out any longer. I mean, it was just a party." He dropped his bag in the foyer and kicked it under the table. "Why are you still up? Didn't you have a show tonight?"

"Yeah, but I got home and I didn't feel like sleeping. And I have a lot of stuff to read through, and we've got Mondays off, and hey, it distracts me from the fact that Kelly and the rugrat went home." Joey patted the couch next to him. "C'mon, you look wiped. Settle down with me for a bit and unwind from having to be all public and stuff."

It sounded like precisely what JC needed, and he nodded. "Let me just go lose these clothes. You want anything from the kitchen?"

"Grab me another beer," Joey said, but he'd already turned his attention back to the book in his lap, and JC smiled and went to change into loungewear. Things had been kind of weird between him and Joey for a few days, but this, this was familiar.

He handed Joey a bottle of beer, then settled in and picked up the book that was topmost on the stack. It was half in English, half in Latin. He'd been learning Latin (in his copious spare time, he liked to say whenever the subject came up), but he couldn't remember more than half the words without a dictionary, which he didn't have with him. He settled down to lie across the couch with his head in Joey's lap and his knees draped up and over the arm of the couch anyway, propping the book up on his chest. Joey petted his hair with one hand and turned pages with the other, and it was almost like being back on a bus, if he squinted and concentrated on nothing more than the pages.

He was deep into the treatise on magical power sources, rubbing the tiny and nearly-faded scar across the base of his thumb, getting more and more uncomfortable as things were reminding him of that night a few weeks before Lance left for training --

Are you sure you understand? Are you sure you know what this is going to do to you?

Are you?

-- when the pain arced through his skull like electricity. There were a few minutes where the world around him was nothing but blinding white light. When he could think again, he was on his knees on the floor. Joey had his hands on JC's shoulders and was repeating endless variations on the phrase "C, look at me. Look at me, C."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," JC chanted, the minute it cleared enough to let him speak. "Fuck, I gotta go -- I have to --" He didn't know what it was, but it was pulling at him, like a hook under his skin tugging him relentlessly toward the east. "I have to go. Now."

Joey hesitated for a second, and then nodded. "Okay. I'm coming with you." His voice didn't leave any room for argument. "Come on, get your stuff."

JC pressed his palms firmly against his eyelids, willing the headache to go away. "You know I'm not going to let you."

"And you know that you still can't navigate in Manhattan worth shit without getting lost. Plus, all I'm going to do is follow along behind you, so let's just cut this debate and move. You lead." Joey stood up and held out a hand. "You look like you can't even walk straight right now, much less figure out where we're going. Come on, I've got your back."

No time, no time, no time to wonder what Joey was really thinking -- "All right," JC said, and pulled himself to a standing position with Joey's help. He took a deep breath and then held out his hands. "May I?"

Joey looked confused for a second. "May you what?"

"Protections. Wards. Stuff to keep you from being a target if you're near this with me. Stuff to keep you from being noticed while we're doing this. I have to ask before I do it."

Joey's eyebrows stayed raised, but he didn't take more than half a second to answer. "Of course. You've got my permission for anything you think is necessary, C, you know that."

"I have to ask," JC repeated, and then touched his palms to Joey's cheeks. The spell coiled in JC's chest, waiting there for him to sing it into life. He'd always thought of protection spells as Mozart, unsure why but it just seemed to fit, and he layered the wards on top of Sed signifer sanctus Michael repraesentet eas in lucem sanctam, quam olim Abrahae promisisti et semini ejus from the Requiem sung out clear and pure. His headache flared again as he dropped his hands, but Joey just looked at him steadily, ready for anything.

"Come on," JC said, and turned around to grab up his backpack full of stuff as they hit the door running.

Joey had the native New Yorker's skill at hailing cabs, and he guided JC into the backseat before asking, in an undertone, "Any idea where we're going?"

JC closed his eyes and tried to get a sense of where they were and where they were going. "East. East and south, by water."

"I don't suppose these Spidey-senses come with a street address?" Joey asked, but he was already leaning forward to talk to the cabbie. "Not sure where we're going, man, but just take us down Sixth and then over to Lower East. We'll tell you when to turn."

The cabbie gave him a dubious look, but clicked the meter on anyway. JC leaned back against the leather seat and breathed, trying to empty himself of everything but that call. "Turn left here," he said, after a few minutes, and the cabbie obliged. "And ... two or three blocks south, and then right."

It was Manhattan; the cabbie had probably seen twelve stranger things before breakfast. The car was silent except for the radio and the driver singing along with it; JC absently noted with the part of his mind reserved for such things that the man was ever so slightly off-key. They were close, so close, when he leaned forward. "Slow down," he said, and made a show of looking out the window as though he was checking for street addresses. It was throbbing under his skin by now, the way a wound pulsed with blood-flow. The buildings were cheap housing, and trash was strewn on the streets and sidewalks. "Here," he said, and the driver stopped.

"Thanks, man," Joey said, and slipped a few bills through the window. "You okay, C?" he added in an undertone.

JC just kept breathing. "Yeah," he said. "I'm --" He slid out of the cab, stepping up onto the curb, looking around and trying to fix himself firmly in this world. The sense of something broken was strong, so strong. "Just -- stay behind me. And don't touch anything. And don't say anything. And don't --"

"I get the picture," Joey said.

JC took another deep breath and made his way up the steps to the door of the building that was singing to him the loudest. It was locked, of course, but the lock fell open under his fingertips with a whispered "aperite". He pushed his way through with Joey following him. The hallway was dark: reeking of urine, covered in graffiti. Up two flights of stairs; it was coming from the last apartment in the back corner. JC could sense the heartbeats of the other people in the apartment building, silent and tucked away and minding their own business.

Never open a door before checking to see if it's warded, and what's behind it, Lance's voice whispered in his memory. He rested his palm flat on the door, and then jerked it back as quickly as he could when he felt the roiling magic behind it. "Fuck!" slipped out from between his lips. "Fuck, fuck, fuck --"

Joey (who was looking around them nervously, watching out, JC imagined, for physical danger rather than magical) laid a hand on JC's arm. JC jerked back quickly, hissing. Joey just wanted to reassure, he knew, but he was so hyper-sensitive, listening, reaching, that to be touched at all was agony. "Sorry," he muttered, quickly. "I just -- don't touch me --"

Joey let it go. "Okay. What's wrong? What's in there?"

"Remember what I said I ran into Wednesday night?"

"...Yeah."

"It's back. Or rather, the aftermath of it is. There's at least one dead body in there, and a whole lot of ugly magic, and I'm too late again." JC curled his fingers into fists. "Fuck." He bit off the word and curled his fingers into his palms.

Joey's first impulse was always to touch, but he checked the motion and shoved his hand behind his back. "You gonna be able to handle it?"

"Are you?" JC shot back. "Do you really want to see what's behind that door?" It was always easier to face things like this alone, but he didn't want Joey to have to go through it with him.

Joey met his eyes. "I said I was with you, I'm fucking with you."

"All right, then." JC brushed his fingers over the lock, and it too sprang open beneath his touch. The magic washed over him, thick and heavy and malevolent, and he couldn't tell if it was blood or smoke or incense or just plain evil he was smelling. Joey's presence behind him, bright and clean and pure, was the one thing that kept him upright as he stepped through the door.

Behind him, Joey stopped dead on the threshold, and JC couldn't tell if it was from the blood and viscera spread out on the floor or if Joey could sense the presence of the magic too. It snapped and twisted and burned in his veins. This time the victim was a man, probably in his late twenties, and as JC desperately tried to block out the crawling fetid wrongness, he slowly realized that there were old wards around the room, the faint remnants of lines of white light that had been shattered into a thousand pieces by something older and stronger than they were.

"Holy Mother of God," Joey breathed, crossing himself. Some amount of sense reasserted itself, because he shut the door behind him. JC knotted his hands into fists again as the miasma doubled, having no way to escape, but it was precisely what he would have told Joey to do: shut the door to keep that power from creeping down the hallway and getting loose. The other inhabitants of the building would be sleeping poorly, haunted by nightmares of death and blood, as it was; he couldn't risk letting any more of it get free.

"Okay," Joey said, and came up to stand at JC's elbow. He very carefully avoided placing his feet over any of the lines of symbols painted in blood. "I'm, uh, thinking there's probably a lot of really bad mojo in here right now, am I right?"

"Yeah." Joey's presence helped; with Joey standing close enough for JC to feel that pure solid goodness he could almost think again. "I've got to dispel it. But not yet. I need to see if whoever did this left any clues --"

"Gimme your backpack," Joey said. JC blinked at him. Joey sighed. "Give me your backpack. I'll copy down the symbols and save you some time. I'm the one who's going to be looking them up anyway, it's better if I do it. You check for a signature, and see if you can find anything that'll lead you back to the sick fuck who's responsible for this. And then you can clean up the vibes or whatever and we can go home and take a shower and then I think I'm going to get really, really, really drunk, but I'm pretty sure I can hold off the panic attack until we get out of here." He licked his lips. "I wouldn't say no to working really quickly, though."

JC wondered if this had been how Lance had felt when JC had first wormed his way into this section of Lance's life, like everything was a little more okay if there was someone else there with you. "Yeah. Okay. Don't forget to make a few mistakes when you copy them down. I just -- God, I can't think in here. It's worse than forty thousand screaming teenagers."

"Nothing could be worse than forty thousand screaming teenagers," Joey said, with no small amount of gallows humor, and held out his hand for the backpack. When JC handed it over, Joey dug out notebook and pen, and then set to his scribe's task, carefully not looking at the body any more than he had to.

Freed of that worry, JC closed his eyes for a second, and then opened them again. It wasn't like the last time, where someone had already called the cops and he only had a few minutes to work. This was the kind of neighborhood where a dead body wouldn't be noticed for a few days, not until the smell ripened in the late August heat, so he had time. He had nothing but time.

A year ago he would have been just like Joey, looking at the scene with no senses other than the usual five, but a lot had changed in a year. He closed his eyes again to try and shut out everything that wasn't utterly necessary, and breathed the words. "Adonai qera'thiykha chushah liyha'aziynah qoliy beqor'iy-lakh."

When he opened his eyes again, the room was awash with traces of both light gold and sullen, wine-deep red. The gold was traced around the doors and windows, simple patterns that were broken and faded -- old wards, then, placed by the man who was now lying dead before him. They held the feel of someone who was quick and vibrant and full of life, someone who had little magical power but used what he could to protect himself and the people around him. JC could feel them snaking out under his feet and surrounding the rest of the building, and understood without having to reach further that this man had been the one to keep the residents of the building mostly sane, happy, and healthy. He wished he'd gotten a chance to meet him.

Whatever had broken those wards still lingered, pooling in the corners and dripping down the walls, but no matter how hard JC squinted at it, he couldn't get any sense of what was behind it. It felt like blood smelled, but there was no personality behind it, no sense of self. It was as though whoever had done it hadn't spent the time to clean up after himself, except to strip anything identifying from the power signatures that roped the room like an unpleasant net. There was arrogance in that, in using enough care to strip personal signature from the magic but not enough to clean up afterwards. It was almost as though whoever had done this was taunting him -- not him personally, but anyone who came along afterwards.

Nothing. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Not even a hair on the floor or a piece of skin under the fingernails of the dead man. There was nothing in the apartment that shouldn't have been there except for the itchy crawling symbols scrawled across the floor in blood mixed with some sort of oil. JC fought the urge to put a fist through the wall and crossed the room in three measured steps to rummage through his backpack for the supplies he would need. Joey, looking decidedly pale around the edges, didn't look up from his notebook. "Anything?"

"Nothing." JC rubbed his eyes again and shook his head. "There's -- there's plenty of energy, and it's creepy as fuck, but there's nothing I can use. Nothing I can trace, nothing I can track -- it's like something just came out of nowhere and did this. Everything personal's been wiped away."

Joey pressed his lips together and continued scrawling symbols in pencil with a careful hand. "Is it just that whatever's in here is keeping you from being able to think straight?"

"Maybe." JC blew out breath from between his pursed lips. "I think I know why I didn't feel it until it was over, though. It's -- there were blocks up here. Not wards so much as -- containment. Whoever did this wanted to make sure none of the energy was wasted until he was done recharging." He realized he was using masculine pronouns, had been mentally since he'd walked through the door, and that felt right. "And then he dropped the containment and that's when I felt it. That's why I didn't get here until it was too late."

"You know, there's something that's really bugging me about all of this," Joey said, slowly. "And I might be totally off base here, and if I am --"

"You probably know about as much on the topic as I do right now," JC interrupted. "You've been doing a hell of a lot of reading."

Joey's lips curved quickly in a not-quite-smile, but he let it go. "Anyway. You said the guy wiped all personal traces, right?" He waited for JC's nod. "And there were spells up to contain it, too."

"Yeah. Big ones. With teeth. Enough to block me totally, and then give me the headache from hell halfway across Manhattan. I'm surprised more people didn't feel it." Maybe they had, and had ignored it. Maybe they hadn't. Lance had said that not too many people had that sort of sense, even if they could feel and use the magic; it was particular to Lance's own task, Lance's own gifts.

"Okay." Joey chewed on his lip. "But blood magic like this is usually used by someone who doesn't have the talent for sorcery at all, right? Someone who can't feel the energy, someone who can't pull the energy from where you and Lance get it from, right?"

"Right." JC had the feeling that he should have been able to follow Joey's train of thought, but his head still felt like molasses. He curled his fingers around the plastic bottle of holy water he'd dug out from the bottom of his backpack and tried to think of the best way to start demolishing it, start banishing that stink of unhealthy magic.

"So. I might be totally wrong." Joey took a breath. "But if someone's powerful enough to do that, because all the reading I've done says that stripping your own personal signature from magic is fucking hard to do --"

It hit JC between the eyes, like a flash. "Then he'd be powerful enough to tap the magic without having to use blood sacrifice to build up his power. He's a powerful enough magician that he's got to be a natural talent, he can't just be taking the power from his victims and using that."

"Which means --"

"That whatever purpose this has, it isn't for power. Or isn't only for power." JC felt dizzy, and it wasn't just from standing in the room with a dead body. "It means that there's something else going on here entirely."

"Fuck," Joey said. "I was afraid of that."

"Think about it later," JC said. "When we're out of here. Once I've got this cleaned up. Once it isn't dangerous for someone to so much as breathe the same air."

"Yeah." Joey limned in the last line in the notebook, carefully broken so it didn't transfer whatever the unknown adversary had been trying to build, and shoved the paper back into JC's backpack. "And, uh, speaking of that --"

JC nodded and poured a handful of holy water into his cupped palm. "Just be glad I protected you before we walked into this, or you'd be having nightmares for weeks."

"I think I've already got that covered," Joey said under his breath, but JC pretended not to hear as he dipped his fingers into the water and reached for the threads of magic that seethed around him.

*

JC let Joey shower first when they got home. When it was his turn for the hot water, he tipped his head back under the spray, closed his eyes, and tried to come up with any solution other than the obvious.

He couldn't, though. "I'm going to have to call Diane," he said, when he came out of the shower in a towel. "I really, really don't want to. But I'm going to have to call Diane."

Joey was already in bed, with books and papers spread out over the covers. He started stacking them neatly as JC emerged from the bathroom, and JC was grateful to realize Joey had no intention of putting him in the guest bedroom that night. It was probably as much for Joey's benefit as for his own, but there was no way he wanted to sleep alone. "Why don't you want to?"

"She, uh. Really doesn't approve of me getting involved in all of this." JC pinched the bridge of his nose and sat down on the opposite side of the bed. "Lance said she wanted him to tell all of us what was going on, back in Orlando at the very beginning, but I get the sense that it was more of a vague informational thing, not a hey, come get in on the action kind of thing. I don't think she trusts my motives."

"Jayce." Joey paused in stacking his papers and looked at JC. "I have a question, okay? And it's probably going to be really insulting, and I know you're not going to want to answer it, but I need to know, okay?"

With an introduction like that, JC knew exactly what Joey was going to ask. He'd been waiting for it for a while, especially with the looks Joey had been giving him over the past few days. He didn't want to answer it now any more than he'd wanted to answer it then. "I didn't ask you to get involved in this," he said. It wasn't an answer, but he knew Joey would take it as one.

"Yeah, I know." Joey took a deep breath and kept going. "You and Lance. When this all started you were -- I don't know, like I am now, totally non-magical. And then Lance announces that he's going to Russia and all of a sudden you're the Boy Wonder. And nobody's talking about how. I've done enough reading --"

"I know." JC drew his knees up underneath him to sit cross-legged, and sighed. "You can probably guess."

"I can guess. I don't want to be right." Joey leaned over and put the books and papers on the floor. He wasn't looking at JC, and JC was thankful for that small mercy.

There was a minute where nobody was talking, and then JC sighed again. "You see," he started, slowly, looking for the words, "blood magic isn't all wrong. It isn't all evil. It's not inherently good or bad, dark or light or whatever. You remember when we were dealing with all that crap back on the tour, when Lance was marking all the doors with his blood to seal us in and keep us safe?"

Joey nodded. "Yeah. I remember." His tone was neutral. JC thought "neutral" was about the best he could hope for.

"What you're reading is probably dwelling a lot on how blood magic is almost always malevolent. Done to other people, without their consent. Done for evil purposes." Joey nodded again, but he didn't say anything. "It isn't. It's a power source, and a way of -- It's old. Primal, in a lot of ways. One of the first kinds of magic that ever existed. And if you can tap into it with your own blood, or you have two people who are working it willingly, or in the most powerful scenario you have someone who offers himself up as a willing sacrifice -- that carries a lot of power. A whole lot of power."

"I'm with you," Joey said.

"Right. And there are a lot of in-betweens in the sort of magical scale of ethics, too." JC flashed back to that conversation with Lance, and couldn't decide whether to laugh or cringe at the thought that he was the one left to explain Lance's positions on the matter. "There's what we were dealing with tonight, which is -- black magic is such a loaded term, and it's not right, it's not that kind of duality, but yeah, what we were dealing with tonight is evil. There's no two ways about it. It's someone taking something from someone else without their consent and without their permission and using it for whatever, and it makes my skin crawl. And on the total other opposite side of it, you've got -- oh, what Lance does, holy magic, sacred magic. Or what some other people do, with earth magic or spirit magic or even just personal magic. But there's this whole huge grey area in the middle where intent matters."

"Right," Joey said, as JC took a breath. He couldn't read Joey's expression.

He was talking too much. He knew it, and he couldn't stop himself, but talking about theory kept him distant from talking about practice. About a specific practice. "And there are all these different types of magic, and they all come from God in the end -- God in whatever face He's wearing, because it's not like Judaism or Christianity or whatever is the only answer, they're all right, they're all answers. God made the world, and God made all these different types of magic, and some of them are tests of our free will, just like Lance said the last time we were all talking about this sort of thing. You can't make the right choices if you don't have the option to make the wrong choices. And most people can't deal with God's magic directly, they have to go through one of these middle steps, and sometimes it doesn't matter how you do it, it matters what your intent is --"

Joey just looked at him, waiting patiently. He didn't say anything.

JC sighed and tipped over his palm. The scar at the base of his thumb was barely visible in the low light of the nightstand lamp, but he knew Joey would see it anyway. "You're asking if Lance and I put the power into me with blood magic."

They'd been in Lance's house, in the one room he'd never let anyone see before. The floor was marble, with plain white walls and an inlaid circle of some darker stone. JC's toe rings set off soft chiming sounds as he walked. Some part of his head had been expecting the floor to be cold, but it was warm like bath-water beneath his feet.

The circle was more than large enough to fit both of them kneeling on the floor. Lance didn't say anything as he lit the candles and laid out the knife, until finally there was nothing more he could do to distract himself and he looked back at JC. JC tried a smile. It felt awkward, pasted-on.

"It's not evil," Lance said.

"I trust you." Because JC did; unquestioningly, unstintingly.

"I know you do. But you need to know. It's not evil. But I'm going to be taking something from you, and giving something to you, and you need to know that ahead of time, and you need to consent to it. Because it's the consent that makes it different. That makes it not evil."

"Lance." JC leaned over and let his hand close around Lance's wrist. "Lance, you told me already. I know. I know what it is, and I know what it's going to do, and I'm not going to say I'm not scared, because I am. But I trust you. And I agree. Consent. Whatever."

"You have to take this seriously, C." Lance was back to looking exhausted for the first time in months, for the first time since JC had stepped up to his side. JC wondered how many nights he'd been sitting up trying to figure out what they were about to do. "You have to. I can't do it if you don't understand what's involved."

JC slid his robe down over his shoulders. "You have no idea how seriously I'm taking this," he said. "And I think that you're even more scared than I am."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm asking," Joey said. "Because that's the only way I could possibly imagine -- possibly find -- And I didn't want to think you guys could have been involved with that, no matter how much Lance knows what he's doing."

JC nodded. His fingers were cold, and he tucked them up under his thighs. "Yeah," he said. "And you're right. We did."

Joey's shoulders tensed, quickly, and then relaxed. JC wouldn't have seen it if he hadn't been looking for it. "Okay," he said after a minute. "Okay. Was it --"

"It was hard and it took forever and it was one of the most painful things I've ever done in my entire life." JC watched the wall so he didn't have to look at Joey. "It hurt like a motherfucker and it blew some things wide open in my head that weren't meant to be there and it still aches sometimes, you know? The way your leg still hurts when the weather changes."

Lance was the one to raise the circle around them. JC could do it, and Lance said he was pretty good at it, but for something like this, it was important that it be just right. And JC couldn't feel it, couldn't sense the protections and see if they were constructed properly, layered right. Couldn't yet, he thought, and then winced. He consented, truly he did. He wanted. Not the bad kind of want, the kind where you'd do anything to get just a little more power, but the kind of want where you're going to do the job anyway and you need the tools to get it done right. Lance had once said that the only person who should have this kind of power was the kind of person who didn't want it in the first place. JC tried not to think about that too much.

"Okay," Lance said, after what felt like forever of staring off into space and whispering lightly under his breath in languages JC didn't know. He'd have to learn them. "Last chance to --"

"Do it," JC said. "I trust you. Do it."

Lance bit his lip, but nodded, and picked up the knife. It was single-edged, curved, designed to be held in one hand with a spot for the holder to place a finger against the backside of the blade to steady it. It looked old and well-cared-for. Lance pressed it to his lips, then used it to trace the solar cross against his body: forehead, groin, right shoulder, left shoulder, whispering, Ateh, malkuth, v'geburah, v'gedulah, l'olam, amen. JC could recite it along with him by now. The words comforted him. They were something easy and familiar in this web of uncertainty.

The knife was cold against his breastbone, tracing symbols he couldn't read but could feel, slinking inside of him and wrapping their way around his heart. The point of the blade was sharp, so sharp, and it parted his skin without pain. Lance had a deft touch. Only a few drops of blood rose to greet the open air, at the corners of the symbols, where the knife turned. It was over so quickly that it didn't even hurt, only itched. For a minute, JC thought that if this was as bad as it got, it wouldn't be bad at all.

And then Lance finished, took a deep breath, and held out his hand for JC's own. The itch got worse. It itched like ten thousand mosquito bites all at once, like something had crawled under his skin and was trying to get out. Lance was watching him and waiting, waiting like he'd wait forever if he had to, and for a minute JC remembered the kid who'd never quite seemed to know what to say. There was no sign of that kid now. This was Lance, the essence of Lance, looking back at him, and if it had been anyone else, JC would have bolted. If it had been anyone else, JC wouldn't have been there in the first place.

He picked up his hand and put it in both of Lance's own, and closed his eyes, because he couldn't look. He could do this, but not if he had to look. There was a quick swab of something cool and astringent over his palm, and he almost had to laugh at that, because of course Lance would remember the disinfectant first, and then the knife bit into the base of his thumb and that hurt like a motherfucker.

It hurt. It hurt so much he couldn't help but yell, even though he'd promised himself he wouldn't because he didn't want to add one bit of guilt to Lance's shoulders. Lance was talking to him, just "shh, baby, I know, hurts like a bitch, I know, I know." JC was a wimp about pain. It was one thing to push yourself until your muscles ached, but something like this, blood and skin and flesh, that was something else entirely.

His palm was slick and slippery. He forced himself to open his eyes, but he didn't look down, because he didn't want to see. Lance swabbed his own palm with the disinfectant and made an answering slice in his own hand. JC winced at how casually he slit open his own skin. Lance wiped his fingers over the blood that rose, and then traced those fingers along the lines on JC's chest. His fingers burned, or froze, or both. The edges of JC's vision swam with red that he couldn't quite see, and as Lance finished re-drawing the lines in his own blood, that red haze rose further until it covered everything.

"Selah," Lance murmured, and then wrapped his bleeding hand around JC's so the injured skin was pressed up against JC's own.

Lance was saying something else, low and carefully measured, but JC couldn't hear it. He was falling into his own heartbeat. Something exploded behind his eyes, pain perhaps, or maybe just fierce and unremitting sensation. It felt like sunlight in a desert at high noon, brutal and honest and uncontrolled. Like brushfire rushing through the dry undergrowth. Like the dam bursting and letting the river through. It started in his chest and tore through him between one breath and the next, and then it was --

"It hurt," JC repeated. He pulled his shoulders in, holding himself close, trying to forget. "It hurt so badly I've blocked it out. Like how you remember later that it hurt, but you don't remember what the hurting felt like."

Lance was saying something, but JC couldn't hear it. He was inside his own head, pulling himself tight, trying to tuck himself away from the pain. Whatever it was rushed through him, rearranging things in its wake. Picking up one piece and turning it over. Taking something and dropping it on the floor hard enough for it to shatter. Bringing something along with it and depositing it somewhere else, somewhere it was never meant to be. JC was open and raw and aching and Lance was holding on, unrelenting, unmerciful, holding on and pulling with something JC couldn't feel, except he could --

"And then, when that part of it was over, and God, it fucking lasted for a thousand fucking years, I could -- it was like waking up, it was like the first time you open your eyes when you wake up someplace new --"

JC knew his eyes were closed. Knew he was shouting, or screaming, or something, some kind of noise he couldn't hold back. He had his eyes shut and he knew he'd tilted over, slumped across Lance's lap, and Lance was holding on to him, one hand still clamped around JC's, the other arm around his shoulders. Lance was a beacon of gold blazing against nerve-endings that were inflamed, burned, torn open. So much, so much power, and the edges of the circle that contained them were dark and solid and vibrated pentatonic scales and the room beyond was washed-out and pale but he could still feel the way it held the thin white lines of old and faded spells, so much, so much, felt like forever, felt like it had been there forever, because it had been there forever, past present future everything nothing and he could feel it and he was coming apart, the negative image of an orgasm, hurt instead of bliss, burning --

Joey had pressed his shoulderblades back up against the wall, like he was trying to get away, like he was trying to retreat from whatever he heard in JC's voice. JC pulled his knees up against his chest and rested his cheek against his knees. Tried to keep his voice as neutral as he could. "It was like waking up. Because when it was over and I could feel again, I could -- I could feel."

The first thing he realized was that his throat was raw. Lance was still holding him, supporting him, keeping him from falling. Too much. Lance was too bright. He jerked backwards, scrambling against the marble of the floor, trying to find purchase against the slippery surface. The blood left a bright and vivid trail smeared behind him. Hot, cold, bright, loud, it was like he could feel it shrieking across all of his senses --

"You can't lock it down, yet, Jayce, not yet, we're not done yet, I swear to the Name, I will teach you how to shut it down when you don't need it, I know how much it is, I know, just breathe through it, look at me, look at my eyes, just in my eyes, nothing else, come on, just look at me --"

Lance's voice was steady. It was the tone he used when he was trying to calm someone down, trying to handle them, and JC hissed, because he hated to be handled. Anger knifed through him, first of a thousand other emotions he couldn't even start to name. He didn't know whether to cry or laugh or scream. Lance held up a hand, just one finger in front of his own eyes, pinning JC's eyes with his own. "Narrow it down, Jayce, come on, I know you can do it. Just here. Just look here. My eyes. Nothing else, none of the rest of it, just here."

Lance's eyes were on him, pale green capturing his attention, and that focus was almost enough to help him find himself again. The first breath savaged his chest but the second one was easier, and the third one after that. The pain ebbed slowly. As JC breathed, his chest rising and falling in time with Lance's, it retreated to a shriek and then just a moan. He breathed with it, and he breathed into it, and he didn't know how long it was, but eventually he coughed and then turned his head and shivered, once, from his shoulders down to his knees.

"God," Lance said, and breathed out roughly. He rocked his shoulders back and forth and JC could hear something pop. Could feel it in his own shoulders, a quick flare of release. "Say something. Please, God, say something."

It took him a minute before he remembered how his tongue and lips worked. "Still here," JC finally managed. "Still -- God, Lance, it hurts, you're so fucking loud --"

Lance exhaled again. "Oh, barukh atah Adonai, it worked, it didn't burn you out -- I'm sorry, Jayce, I'm so fucking sorry, I've got it turned down and hidden as much as I can. Just -- take a minute. Get used to it."

JC wondered how he was supposed to get used to anything when the whole world was an inferno. He wondered if he was ever going to be able to feel anything else ever again. It was safest just to breathe, to put his attention into the inhalation and the exhalation, nothing more. "I'm," he said after a minute. "Well. Not okay. But I'm here." He coughed again, and swallowed, and tried not to shiver again. "God. That motherfucking hurt."

Lance closed his eyes for a second longer than a blink should take, and then brought his hands up to rub them across his face. He seemed to have forgotten that his hand was still bleeding. The smear of rust across his cheek stood out in sharp contrast to his skin, which was paler than JC had ever seen it. "We're not done yet," Lance said, muffled and small against his palms, and JC fought to keep from whimpering.

JC fell silent: remembering, and trying not to. Joey shifted his weight when the silence got to be too much, and pulled the covers further up around him as though trying to block out the cold that wasn't there. "It's okay, C," he said. "It's -- you don't have to tell me. You don't. Not if you don't want to." JC could hear the lie in it, though; he could hear the way Joey wanted to ask and hated himself for even thinking it.

"It's not that," JC said, and scrubbed his hands over his face. It was Lance's gesture, just one of the hundreds of things of Lance's he carried with him. "It's -- You asked. You need to know this. You deserve to know this. I'm not going to tell you the details of how we did it. We promised we'd never tell another human being how we did it. I just don't know how to put it into words."

There were no words for it, no words for the way it felt when Lance let his hands fall again and squared his shoulders. "You can feel it now," Lance said, and JC almost laughed, because that was the biggest understatement he'd ever heard in his life, and he'd heard some good ones. Lance didn't notice. "But you can't tap into it. You can't tap the power. And if we don't tie you into it somehow, you're going to burn through everything you've got, ten times faster than you'd ever do otherwise, and I can't keep feeding you, not now. We just closed off what was letting me do that. Side effect. So if we don't introduce you to it, tie you into it, you're not going to have anything left."

JC knew all of that. Lance had explained it all, slowly and carefully, until he was sure JC understood. "Do it," he said, his voice scraping over his raw throat. "Do it, just fucking do it, don't stop to explain it again, just do it --" He didn't want to hear Lance explaining, he didn't want to have the chance to stop and realize, he didn't want to waste time with the endless asking and re-asking. They couldn't stop, not now, not half-done.

And maybe Lance knew that, maybe Lance could feel that, because he blessedly didn't ask again, not the way he usually did. He bit his lip and closed his hands around JC's wrists and reached, reached with hands, reached with not-hands, and if what they'd already done had been opening things up, this was throwing them out into the flood. If this had been what it should have felt like to have Lance filling him up with the power, have Lance storing tiny fragments of his power in JC for JC to call on it when needed, the way they had been doing -- if this had been what it should have felt like, JC never would have come back, not after the first time.

Lance was singing again, or chanting, or something, thick and heavy and steady, and the sound of it hurt JC's ears, but he clung to it like a lifeline. The flood of power rushed into him, like lemon juice or acid poured across a wound that was already nearly too much to bear. He couldn't hold it all, couldn't contain it all; he would come apart beneath it, come undone, dissolve into nothing but the power and the pain. It poured into him, peeked its fingers into every nook and cranny, saw him and measured him and pored through all of the secrets and all the things he never thought about in the middle of the night. It knew him, and it wasn't just power, there was something behind it. Watching him. Weighing him.

He didn't know where it came from, but he was whispering under his breath anyway. Oh Lord I am not worthy to receive you but only say the word and I shall be healed. It pulled; it shoved. It sliced through all his illusions, all his polite lies to himself. It saw him, cataloged him, spread him open and laid him out. It was not cruel, nor was it kind. It simply was. Everything and nothing, alpha and omega, the first and the last, and it burned away all his shadows and left him standing out to dry in the relentless heat of that tremendous wave.

And then Lance stopped, and JC threw his head back, and that presence paused and then exploded, in his chest, in his head, in his heart. It was a river, it was a tsunami, it was being cut adrift and thrown into the pull of it. It was warm and untamed and wild and bright and terrifying. White and gold and that color that wasn't a color at all. Cacophony and discordance. Filling him, flooding him, in omnes generationes saeculi saeculorum amen and then there was nothing left of him. He was empty, bare, nothing but a vessel for that tremendous and awesome power. Hollowed; hallowed. It saw him, and it knew him, and it filled him, and it held him, and he knew it wouldn't let him go.

It should have hurt. He'd been expecting it to hurt. It didn't, not at all. It was wild and full and immense, but it wrapped him up in its arms, nudged its head into all his corners and edges, nosed around and made itself at home. It didn't feel like something new, but like something long-familiar and intimate. And after what felt like forever, after what felt like nothing more than a few short breaths, it curled around his heart and wormed its way into the pit of his belly, fitted itself against his spine, tucked itself into his blood, and -- satisfied with itself -- it slept.

"God," JC said, and even he couldn't tell if it was prayer or blasphemy or just simple observation. "God."

"Yeah," Lance said. He was pale and small and exhausted, but there was a smile on his lips, as though he'd been saving this one small secret for the very end. "I couldn't tell you. I couldn't find the words."

"I can feel you breathe." JC tipped his head back and probed at the feel of it, the way one might probe at a chipped tooth with one's tongue. It still felt raw, aching, but the initial searing pain had been soothed away by that -- well, he knew what it was, divine presence the likes of which he'd never felt in church, but he didn't really want to think about it too hard. He felt like he was too big for his skin, like all he had to do was reach out and touch the world, like he could stick his finger in an electrical socket and ride the waves to power him. "You're so bright."

Lance scrubbed a hand over his face. "Jayce, baby," he said, and it was weary and fond at once. "Look at yourself."

JC fell silent, filled once again with the remembrance of that glory. He tried to find a way to say it, tried to translate it into mundane language for Joey to understand. He couldn't. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and made a helpless gesture.

"I don't need the words," Joey said. "I don't -- I." He stopped, and then took a deep breath and started again. "C, I worry about you. About both of you. You guys are dealing with terrifying shit, and I don't know how to help you. How to stand by you. And I don't know enough to watch out for you with this, watch out for any of the warning signs that you're into something over your head. I don't know how to do it for you, and I don't know how to do it for Lance. Some of what you both do worries me. I don't want to see you get hurt, and I don't want to stand by and watch you run into problems you can't handle."

JC stared down at his hands, linked together in his lap. "Sometimes my first impulse is to say I can handle anything," he said, quietly. "That's what scares me."

There was a long minute of silence, and then Joey slid away from the wall. He moved across the bed to sit facing JC, cross-legged as well, and picked up JC's hand with both of his own. "Through the lifeline," he said, tracing the scar across JC's palm. "And the fate line."

Joey was warm and solid and there, like a tree would be there, like a house. JC was still learning how to read it, how to read all of it, but Joey had always felt that way, even before JC could actually sense it. He was tired, so tired, and the headache still throbbed behind his eyes. "Can't get out of things like this without a few scars," he said, trying for levity and mostly failing.

Joey let their linked hands fall to his lap. He didn't let go. "Was it worth it, Jayce?" he asked, with his head tilted to one side.

JC closed his eyes. "Yeah. Yeah, it was."

"Would you do it again?"

It caught in his throat. "Don't ask me that. Don't -- don't make me answer that. I can't. I did it, and it's over, and I'm not the same person anymore, and I can't answer that. I can't."

"Shh," Joey said, and his fingers pressed against JC's. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I don't want to -- I'm sorry." He closed his eyes for a minute and sighed, deeply, then slid two inches closer and wrapped his arms around JC's shoulders. JC stayed frozen for a minute, then slumped against Joey's comforting weight. "You gotta promise to let me help you. You gotta promise. You gotta let me watch you, watch out for you. Watch out for what it does to you."

"I can't fail at this. I don't know what it cost Lance to do this, but it cost him a lot more than it cost me. I know that much. And I can't ever make him regret it."

"That's bullshit." Joey pulled back and looked into JC's eyes. "C, man, that's bullshit. Listen to yourself. You sound like some kind of, I don't know, battered girlfriend or something. If you set yourself up to think like that you're going to burn out in some kind of crazy martyr glory, and that shit is not cool. You'll do what you do, and anything you do is going to be good enough, because it'll be your best, and you'll keep your head and you'll keep a hold of yourself and you will do what you need to do and you won't abuse it. I won't let you."

It sliced through JC like a scythe. He blinked at Joey a few times, and then opened his mouth. Nothing came out, so he stopped trying after a minute. Joey sighed again and rubbed his hands over JC's biceps. "I'm not yelling at you," he said. "I've just watched you turn into someone scary over the past six months or so. It's like I don't even know you anymore. I worry."

"Someone's gotta do it," JC said. "Joey, it's a shit job, but someone's gotta do it, and --"

"If you say 'it's gonna be me', I'm going to kick your ass."

He spared a smile at that. "No, that's not what I was going to say. I was going to say that if someone's gonna do it, I'd rather it be someone I trust. Like me. Like Lance." He left off saying that he didn't know how much he trusted himself, knowing Joey wouldn't understand. He trusted himself to have the dedication, but every day that passed was a reminder that he'd come to this too late, too quickly.

"What do you feel?" Joey asked, abruptly. "From all of us. What does it feel like?"

JC bit his lip. "It's -- that's not an easy question to answer. It's not just like you can put it to words. There aren't words." But that was the easy answer, and Joey deserved something more than the easy answer. "Chris is ... like needles, under the skin. No, not quite. It doesn't hurt, it's ... warm, almost warm enough to burn, but he prickles, too. Justin's like -- like a lake in the sunlight. There's a warm and comfortable part, and you can just bask in it, and then there's all this depth underneath it that nobody can ever touch. Lance is like sunlight reflected off metal. Bright, and you have to squint against it."

"And me?"

JC tipped his head to one side and rested it on Joey's shoulder. "Warm. Safe. Like a tree with strong and heavy roots."

"Huh." Joey turned that over in his head a few times, thinking. He rested his cheek against the top of JC's head. "Could be worse, I suppose."

"It's why I came to stay with you." JC stifled a yawn.

Joey picked his head up again and made the little "get off my shoulder and let's lie down flat in a real bed" twitching motion. "Come on, let's get you into bed. Long day."

"Yeah," JC said, and then held up a hand. "Hang on. Gimme a minute, let me recharge my batteries some."

Joey raised an eyebrow, but didn't question further. JC waited just long enough to make sure Joey wasn't going to say anything else, and then closed his eyes. He turned his attention outward, then inward, reaching for it, reaching for the spot deep within his belly that linked him to the world, to the power, to the power source. It came on slowly -- it's there to call on, Lance's voice whispered in his memory, but it takes concentration to address, so you should always make sure you're at full strength before you go to take care of something, because you'll have to use what you've got stored up instead of what's there for the taking unless you can maintain that touch all the time. Few people can. It's too much to deal with, in the middle of what you're doing.

Joey was still watching him when he let that endless sweet communion slip away. Before JC could say anything, Joey said, "Thank you."

JC's eyebrows drew together. "For?"

"Trusting me enough to tell me. I'm still uncomfortable about it, but at least now I know."

"You're welcome," JC said, and hoped Joey would manage to put everything out of his mind before sleep. Joey leaned over and reached to shut off the light. "You should probably leave that on," JC said, quietly.

"Yeah. I guess I should." Joey sighed, then slid under the covers. JC stretched out next to him, close enough to be there, far enough to give Joey some space. It lasted for about two seconds, and then Joey rolled over and threw one arm and one leg over JC, burying his face in JC's shoulder.

"C?" Joey's voice was muffled.

"Yeah?"

"Does it ever get easier to deal with?"

JC breathed out sharply and wormed one arm around Joey. He remembered the first dead body he'd seen, and how long it had taken him to sleep peacefully afterwards. "A little," he said. "Or maybe it just gets easier to forget."

Joey sighed and held on more tightly. "I was afraid of that."

*

Diane showed up with an overnight bag, a box of books, and pursed lips about four hours after JC called her.

"You want a cup of coffee or something?" Joey asked, scratching his stomach under his t-shirt and then dragging a hand through his hair. He hadn't bothered putting on anything other than the t-shirt and boxers he'd slept in. Everyone's relatives had long ago reached the status of family, not company.

Diane unbent long enough to give him a smile. "No, thank you, Joey. It's nice of you to ask, though. How's Phyllis?"

"She's good. I'll tell her you said hi. You sure you don't want coffee or something? Lunch? I got some of Mom's lasagna that she sent up last week."

"I was hoping to get a chance to talk to JC, actually." Diane sat down at the kitchen table and looked at them both. "Alone, if possible."

JC poured himself a cup of coffee and brought it over to the table. "Joey stays," he said, firmly. "I know your opinions on the subject, but Joey stays."

Diane shook her head slowly, and then sighed. "I'm not the enemy here, JC," she said. "This is a bad situation for everyone involved, and I know you're just doing your best. I only wish Lance had -- well, that's water under the bridge. I just don't think it's smart to involve more people in things."

"I'm involved already," Joey said. "And I involved myself, so don't go blaming Lance or JC or anyone but me. I know it's not traditional, but there's nothing about us that's traditional to begin with. I'm not going anywhere."

Diane studied them both for a long minute, and then sighed again. "You have to understand," she said. "I've been doing this for longer than you boys have been alive. And in all that time, I've never spoken about it to someone who doesn't have the magic. Jim knows, but he doesn't think about it much, and he never asks and we don't talk about it." She shook her head. "You don't understand the way we're trained not to talk about it. I don't know how Lance managed to tell you as much as he has."

"Nearly getting eaten by the minions of hell will change a friendship that way," JC said, and then smiled as pleasantly as he could when Diane's eyes flickered over to meet his. He felt guilty. He liked Lance's mom, really he did, but the way her nostrils flared every time she saw him recently, as though she could smell the blood he'd long since washed from his skin, left him edgy and uncomfortable. Something about her just set his teeth on edge, like they were destined to circle around each other warily and feel out the boundaries of their new relationship.

Joey looked over at JC -- JC could read the "okay, I see why you didn't want to call her" in Joey's eyes -- and then leaned forward. "So, what do you have for us?"

"Unfortunately," Diane said, "not a great deal. Without having been there myself, without having felt it, I'm limited in what I can do."

"I felt it," JC said. "It was wrong."

She shot him a glance underneath her eyelids. "I'm sure you did feel it, JC. And I believe you when you say it was evil, but you don't have as much experience handling these things as the rest of us do. There are some things that you can only understand once you've experienced them."

"I know what blood magic feels like," JC said, each word neat and precise.

There was a moment of silence. Nobody quite looked at anybody else. "I know you do," she said, finally. "You're always going to be sensitive to it. And that's the other reason, quite frankly, why I don't want to let you deal with it alone. Because you may not be as objective as you think you are."

"Whoa," said Joey, holding up his hands. "Okay. Look, Diane, JC called you because people are dying here, and we want to make sure it doesn't happen again. What can you tell us to help us keep this guy from going on doing whatever he's doing?"

Diane sighed. "Not much. Quite frankly, the type of magic we do isn't proactive, it's reactive. And if what JC told me on the phone is true, whoever is doing this is quite experienced in shielding. There's the chance, the small chance, that if someone were willing to expend a great deal of effort and energy for little to no chance of success, he or she might be able to tap into the feel of the region and sense if a particular large area of it were being shielded -- but that probably wouldn't be effective, both because of the size of the area and the fact that there are probably hundreds of shielded areas, for legitimate purposes. If you can manage to get me the power signature, I can get you something."

"There's nothing there," JC said. "I checked twice. Three times. Nothing. This guy, whoever he is, is damn good at covering his tracks."

"All right." Diane lifted one eyebrow in an expression that was so like Lance that JC's heart nearly stopped for a minute. He missed Lance so damn much. "I'm not going to impose on your hospitality, Joey, but if you need me for anything at all, call me. I'm going to be staying with a friend down in the Village, and we'll look into things. When I have something, I'll call you."

"Sounds good," JC said, and both of them stood as Diane got up to let herself out.

"Man," Joey said, when they were alone again. "You weren't kidding, were you? That's not the Diane I know."

JC pinched the bridge of his nose. "She doesn't trust me. She thinks I'm in this for the power, somehow. That I'm in it to get something out of it. And she's really, really mistrustful of the -- of how we managed to pull this off."

"But it was Lance's idea." Joey frowned. "Why isn't she blaming him?"

"I think she is." JC turned his mug of coffee around in his hands. "I think I'm just getting the edges of that; I think Lance is getting it a lot worse. She kind of stopped talking to him for a few weeks when all this went down in the first place."

"That's harsh."

"I think Lance is almost used to it by now," JC said. "Not with his mom, but just in general. I think he sort of expects it all to blow up in his face."

Joey sighed softly. "I think Lance is a little too fond of the suffering martyr routine," he said. "And you're kind of starting to tip over the edge to follow him. Come on, get dressed."

"What?" JC looked up, his eyebrows drawing together.

"Put on clothes. You know, clothes you can wear out of the house. We're going out. Somewhere we won't have to deal with any of this."

"Joey, we have so much stuff we have to do --"

"And number one on that list is not going nuts by thinking about it, okay? You called Diane, we gave her the info we have, we can come back later tonight and read until our eyes cross, but it's my day off and I'm damn well going to make use of it." Joey stood up. "Come on."

"Joey --"

"Jayce." Joey's eyes, when JC stopped to look closely, were haunted around the edges. "Gimme a break, okay? Please? I'm not dealing with all of this nearly as well as I might seem to be, and if I don't get out of this house and go do something else for a while I'm going to crack."

Put that way, JC couldn't say no. "All right," he said, after a minute. "Let me just go take a quick shower."

*

"Vinnie's House of Pizza and tattoo parlor, Vinnie speaking," JC said automatically as he picked up the phone.

Chris's laughter was bright even through the static. "You fucker, that was totally my line. No fair stealing."

JC grinned and leaned against the wall. "Good lines are group assets. What's up, man?"

"Not much. We're -- where the fuck are we, anyway?" Chris pulled the cell phone away from his mouth and JC could hear him conversing briefly. "There appears to be some small dispute as to whether we are in Wyoming or Wisconsin. Ron says hi."

"Wyoming and Wisconsin are nowhere near each other, Chris."

"Yeah, but they both start with a W, man. You know geography is not my best subject. So how come you didn't tell me I had to buy you a Cuisinart?"

With Chris, it was sometimes easiest to admit defeat up front. "You lost me there."

"You. Joey. Shacking up. Aren't we supposed to buy presents for that sort of shit? I mean, there's really no etiquette guide for 'one of my best friends is shacking up with one of my other best friends, who is nearly engaged to his girlfriend and has a kid, but hey, I'm a sensitive new age kind of guy so I can just roll with it.' Or if there is one, nobody's sent me my copy yet. When were you gonna tell us?"

JC just blinked. "Joey and I aren't living together. Well, I mean, I'm staying here, but we're not, like, living together living together."

Chris snorted. JC was amused to realize he could picture the expression on Chris's face perfectly. "So, tell me about this gossip column blind item I'm looking at here."

"Why don't you tell me about it?" JC pulled the curtain away from the window and peered out at the street. It looked like a pretty day, the kind where he'd like to go outside and lounge on a lawn somewhere in the sunshine to take a nap. Maybe he would. "I mean, if you're the one who actually saw it."

Chris cleared his throat. It was the familiar preface to a dramatic reading, usually applied to really bad magazine interviews or Justin's old history textbook, which Chris had pronounced fit only for burning. "'They may have said bye, bye, bye to the touring life, but our sources tell us two members of the music scene appear to be co-paying rent.' Ha, I bet they think that's clever. 'We're curious to know what the one hunk's long-term girlfriend thinks about this development.'"

JC groaned. "They must have seen me coming out of here a few days running, or something. No, no, no. We told you that you had to stop reading those things. I'm just staying here while I deal with some stuff that came up."

"Huh." Chris's voice turned muffled, as though he'd put a hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. "Look out for that truck, he's going to try to merge -- yes, I know you're driving -- okay, fine, I'm shutting up now." He came back. "What kind of stuff? Are we talking, like, things with big teeth coming to eat you kind of stuff, or stupid idiots thinking they've found the secret to life kind of stuff?"

"We're talking about people keep turning up dead stuff, and I really wish you wouldn't talk about this shit in front of other people." JC sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "We called Diane. She got in yesterday morning, and she's looking over some things for me. I don't know what's going to go down, but I've got this creepy crawly feeling in the back of my head."

"Huh," Chris repeated. "Are you being careful?"

"Yes, Chris, I'm being careful. I'm also looking both ways before I cross the street, washing my hands after I use the bathroom, and eating all my vegetables." JC stopped himself, closed his eyes, and breathed. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm just getting tired of people telling me to be careful."

"Stop trying to sound like Lance on a bad day. You don't have the requisite years of experience at being a pissy bitch to be able to carry it off." JC could hear the honking of a horn and Chris's muffled swearing. "Told you -- okay, okay, shutting up. Anyway. C. I just worry about you."

"Many people do." JC sighed. "No, I know, you're just worried. It's okay. I'm fine, though. Really."

"Just don't get so caught up in trying to live Lance's life that you forget to live your own," Chris said, and hung up the phone.

*

JC was thankful for his dark sunglasses; they had been intended to make him harder to recognize, but New York September sunlight, reflected off the sidewalks, was bright. He sipped at his coffee, which was nowhere near as good as the cafe's prices should imply, and tried to avoid looking over at Diane.

"I've spoken to Lance," she said. "And a few of the people I know here. My colleague and I went back over to the scene of the latest incident, and I did what I could to lift some kind of signature from the work. I was mostly unsuccessful -- though mostly because you had cleaned up nearly everything by the time I got there."

"I couldn't leave that lying around. It would have made the building completely unlivable."

Diane made a small gesture. "No, I know. I'm not blaming you for that. It was a better cleanup job than I would have expected from someone who doesn't have as much experience as is usually necessary for things like that." JC wondered if that was supposed to have been a compliment. "We didn't -- Actually, hold on a moment."

She set her coffee down on the table with a soft click and twisted her fingers together briefly, then dipped them into the coffee and flicked them out, sky-wards. JC felt the power shift and settle around them, and then the air took on a thick and heavy sense of stillness. The foulness of the coffee was just as well, he realized, because he knew everyone's eyes, including the waiter's, would simply gloss right over them no matter how much he was trying to signal for a refill.

"Anyway," Diane said, picking her mug back up and sipping from it. "Even if I'd been there, I don't imagine there would have been any power-signature anyway. I think your guess was right, and this isn't someone who's doing it just for the power amplification. There's another purpose here. Reis and I have set up a net over most of southern Manhattan to see if we can spot any signs of someone using the power they took from that poor boy. We don't really expect to find anything, because if whoever did this was smart enough to clean the signature traces off of what he was doing, he'll be smart enough to clean the signature traces off the power he took before he uses it. But it's the first step, with a case like this."

JC drew his eyebrows together. "You can do something like that?"

Diane frowned. "Yes, you can. You didn't know? I thought you simply hadn't done it because you couldn't get enough of a trace on the first victim."

"No," JC said. "I never knew. That it was even possible."

Diane looked at him for a long minute, and then took another sip of her coffee and set it down. "Well, that's why you called me in, I suppose. Reis and I will take care of it from here. I'm sure you have other things you need to be doing."

"I can't just walk away from this one, Diane," JC said. He was baffled that she thought he would. "I need to be in on this. I need to know that I'm doing something to stop this from happening again."

"JC." Diane leaned across the table. He got the uncomfortable feeling that she was looking directly into his eyes, even behind the sunglasses. "This isn't your job. Leave it to people who have more experience."

"Of course it's my job." JC could feel his fingers curling into fists under the table, and deliberately straightened them out and spread his hands out on his thighs. "It's what I signed up for. To take care of these things while Lance was gone. It's what all of this is about. I need to help."

"No, JC, you really don't." Diane shook her head. JC was suddenly reminded of nights in Germany, when Diane had been able to look right through them and figure out the minute that they were lying to her or to Lynn. "You're very good at a limited sub-set of what we do. I won't deny that. If we were dealing with a dybbuk in the refrigerator or a grimoire that needed to be sent back to where it came from, I'd have no problems letting you handle it. But you've only been doing this for a very short time, and no matter what you and Lance did, it doesn't change the fact that you weren't born to it the way that we were. Let us handle this. There are some things that need to be done by the people who are supposed to be doing them."

"I," JC started, and then stopped. He couldn't find a way to convey the need that itched under his skin. He didn't know where it had come from, because it hadn't always been there.

The first call is going to be the worst. You're going to think you're going crazy. After that, it gets a little easier to live with it. Never easy, but easier.

"Listen to me, JC. You think I disapprove of what you and Lance did because it was drawing on the forbidden magic. That's not it. You know as well as I do that there is a time and a place to use most of those tools, and as long as they're used properly, there's nothing inherently wrong with them." Diane shook her head. "That's not it," she repeated. "Lance was born with this for a reason. He's the first person in our family to have the magic this strongly for generations. He's the first person any of us can remember having it this strongly in living memory. He deals with things on a level that the rest of us can barely conceptualize. What he gave you -- it might not be much, comparatively speaking, but what he gave you took something from him. And he had it for a reason. You get precisely as much ability as you need, for what you're supposed to do. The fact that he gave some of that to you is going to turn around and bite him someday, and I worry that it might tip the balance when it comes to something particularly nasty."

JC blinked. "He didn't -- I didn't -- he didn't tell me that."

Diane rubbed a hand across her face. "I know he didn't. I know you wouldn't have done it if you thought you were doing something that would put him in danger. At least, I know you well enough to think you wouldn't have done it. You've got a good mind for all of this, JC. You're organized and mathematical and musical enough to be able to think in the ways you have to, in order to handle this sort of thing. If you'd been born with the talent, I'd have no problems with welcoming you with open arms." She shook her head again. "But you weren't. And that's not something you can ever make up for."

JC dug his fingernails into his thighs. The spot across his chest where Lance had drawn the runes itched and burned, even though no traces of the marks remained. He wondered if Diane had ever considered the fact that maybe Lance had been given so much power precisely to give some of it to him, and then dismissed the thought as nothing more than ego. "So you're telling me I'm pretty much useless."

Diane sighed and closed her eyes. "No. That's not what I'm saying at all, and if that's how it's coming out, I'm sorry. You are helping. We can always use another pair of hands with the work. If nothing else, it's good for Lance to have someone around who can give him an occasional minor hand. I'm just saying that for situations like this, with so much at stake, it's better to leave it to someone who has experience. Let Reis and me handle it. We might not have the same raw power Lance does -- the power he gave you -- but we've both dealt with this sort of thing before, and experience counts for more than simple brute strength when dealing with a lot of these issues."

JC opened his mouth, stopped, and then closed it again.

"Go back to LA for a while, JC," Diane said softly. "Go back and do the things you need to do for your life. Go back and do the things you're leaving undone in order to sit here in New York and deal with a world you'd never even heard of a year and a half ago. If whoever is doing this can be found, Reis and I will find him."

*

Joey came home to find JC, his lips pressed together and his eyes stormy, throwing clothes into his suitcase. "Whoa," Joey said, leaning against the doorframe. "What the hell happened?"

"I had coffee with Diane this evening," JC said. He dumped two pairs of shoes on top of his pants. "She told me in no uncertain terms that it was time I went back to LA and got out of her hair."

"Oh." Joey watched for a minute in silence; JC refused to look back at him, even though he could feel Joey's eyes itching between his shoulderblades. "Okay, I'll bite. Why would she do that?"

"Because I'm interfering with the sacred duty and don't know what I'm doing and messing around with things that are out of my control and blah blah fucking blah." JC slammed the suitcase shut and zipped it up with a little more force than was absolutely necessary. A little more force than it could handle, apparently, because the edge of the zipper tore away from the fabric, and he stopped and just forced himself to breathe.

"Lemme get you a safety pin for that," Joey said quietly, and disappeared into the hallway. JC took the chance to breathe some more, reaching for the calm places inside of him. It took him longer than usual to find them.

"I hate to say it," Joey said when he returned, holding out a safety pin as though it were a peace offering, "but. I think it might be a good idea for you to go back to LA for a while. Go hang out with Dallas or something, do something that doesn't involve, you know, dead bodies in strange living rooms. Handle what you can out there, but just -- You know. Take some time for yourself."

"Not you too," JC said, and turned around. Joey folded his arms across his chest and stared back at JC, looking like he wasn't going to give an inch, and JC finally sighed and let go of some of the anger. He knew they were both right -- he wasn't experienced enough to come up against something this big, this evil, not alone -- but that knowledge conflicted with the inner voice telling him this is your fight and he knew it would be a bad idea to ignore it. "It's just not right, Joey. It feels -- wrong. Like you guys are trying to make me agree to something that's against everything I know is right." He paused and licked his lips. "There are people dying out there. I know there are people dying out there, and I know why -- or, okay, I know a little bit about why. And I can't just walk around and pretend that isn't happening while I go to parties in LA."

Joey came across the room and sat down on the bed. He reached out and took the safety pin back from JC. It was a little easier, JC thought, with Joey's eyes off of him. "Okay," Joey said after a minute, tugging lightly on the edges of the rip and pulling them together. "I see where you're coming from. But." He took a deep breath. "There's shit that needs you everywhere, right?"

JC watched him. "Yeah," he said, dubiously.

"And from what I get, you guys are really spread thin." Joey worked the ripped edges together and speared them with the pin.

"Yeah."

"So. Diane's out here, and she can take care of it. Okay, so she's pissing you off -- hell, she was pissing me off. But she's here, so she's got New York covered. And if you go back to LA, you'll be able to fix things there, where there isn't anyone right now. Is there?"

JC sighed. Trust Joey to be the logical one. "Well, there are people. But not -- yeah. Not really. Yeah."

"So." Joey tugged on the pin and, satisfied that it would hold, looked up. "If you go out there, you're really doing more good than you would be doing here, because you wouldn't be duplicating effort. Make sense?"

JC just looked at him for a minute, and then sighed again. "I hate it when you're right, you know."

"I know." Joey smiled. "Go take care of Justin while you're out there, too. He could use someone to remind him to eat."

"Yeah," JC said, and went to call a car to the airport.

*

It took JC a few days to get back into the swing of anything in LA, much less his life. His house out there was big, too big for just him and Carlos, really, especially when Carlos was out of town, but he kept it full of noise; Radiohead and Aerosmith and The Cure and Coldplay, all mixed together on the stereo system that broadcast into any room in the house.

The phone rang after he'd been holed up for nearly a week, scowling at his piano and trying to coax something, anything, out of it. He ignored it the first two times, but after the third set of rings in under ten minutes, he sighed and went to go find where he'd left it. For some reason, it was in his left shoe, in the foyer, and he picked it up just as it was about to ring through to voicemail.

Lance. "Bad news," he said, and his voice was tight.

JC sat down on the bottom step and frowned, feeling the adrenalin start to rush through him. "What? Did someone else die?"

"What -- Oh. No. No, I just got word from the program directors. There's something fucked up going on about money or something, I don't know." Lance's voice was crisp, but JC could hear the anger behind it. "I'm off the mission for October."

JC shook his head, slowly. "I thought that was just a rumor. I mean, I heard it earlier in the week, and you said it was just a rumor."

"Yeah, well. I'm trying to figure out what's going on. Trying to work a deal with them. I just wanted to let you guys know, before you hear it from the tabloids or something."

"Lance," JC said. "If you need anything --" He meant money, yeah, because what good was it to have money if you couldn't use it to help one of your best friends out, but he meant a lot more than money, and he hoped Lance knew it too. "Anything at all."

"Yeah." JC knew the dismissal in Lance's tone really covered a "thank you", but he didn't press, because he knew Lance didn't really want to hear it. "Tell me you're making some progress over there, at least."

JC shook his head. "I haven't heard back from your mom yet," he said. He'd tried to call, three days ago and again the day before, but the phone had just rung through to voicemail and he'd never gotten a call back. "I'm in LA. It's quiet out here. Too quiet, really."

Lance sighed. "Well, keep your eyes open. Let me know. You know the deal by now. I'm going to go call the other guys, okay? I'll tell Mom to call you and give you an update."

"Okay," JC said, picking at a stray thread in his jeans. There weren't any words for it. How could you say I feel like half of myself is halfway across the world, come home soon without sounding like an overdramatic teenager? "Love you. Good luck."

"Love you too," Lance said, distracted, and hung up.

JC spent another two days trying to turn out four measures he could put next to each other without them sucking, and gave up when it became clear that all he was doing was re-writing stuff he'd thrown out years ago for being crap already. He flew out to Orlando to hold Tony's hand backstage at a show; Tony talked him into coming out and making the girls in the audience scream. While he was in Orlando, he banished two succubi (being sure to tell them to say hello to Malachai, before he finished the spell, because he had to confess, he did sometimes miss the guy) and rescued a house-wight whose building was slated for demolition, moving her -- well, it, really, but JC still had to think of them as female, maybe it was the ears -- into Joey and Kelly's house. The baby could always use someone else looking after her, and house-wights were, if nothing more, excellent babysitters.

And then it was back to LA and the piano that stared at him balefully and accusingly and the parties that, really, kind of sucked a whole lot when he stopped to think about it. Alex dropped by a few times, making noises about co-writing, and all JC could tell him was "sorry, man, just isn't flowing right now".

Justin got over the being-terrified stage of pre-album-drop and started in on the wanting-to-talk-about-it-constantly stage. JC put up with it for as long as he could, and then invented excuses to hang up the phone. "Man," Justin said, after one of those nights, after some awards show or another that JC hadn't been invited to, "you need to get out of the house more often, I think you're starting to grow mold."

"Fuck you," JC said, but it wasn't really bitchy, just automatic and weary.

Diane didn't call. JC cleaned out his kitchen and found the set of shot glasses he'd thought he'd lost in Orlando, then promptly forgot where he put them. Tara dragged him out to some party up in the hills, where he amused himself by breaking the tiny glamors some of the beautiful people were wearing. He still hadn't figured out where they were coming from, but they weren't malicious, so he didn't really care. When he got bored with that, he went out for a walk, where he wound up turning down two street hookers and talking for forty-five minutes about nothing in particular with a phooka who was sitting outside a bar and smoking. He got the phooka's number. Never know when you might need one. Diane still didn't call. He began to wonder if he'd forgotten to pay his cell phone bill.

He dreamed about being on a bus that broke down just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. He wasn't even sure in the dream why he was trying to go to Lincoln, Nebraska, because he'd been there a few times and there really was no there there, but the dream went on for what felt like forever, sitting on the side of the road and waiting for the tow truck to show up. It never did. He woke up and took a shower and jerked off, but it was automatic and he didn't really pay much attention to what he was doing. Joey left long and rambling messages on JC's voicemail, asking for help with some Latin translations. Tara took him shopping so he could hold her bags. Thirteen fifteen-year-old girls tried to summon a lesser demon and got the spirit of a dead televangelist instead. JC had always suspected there was something funny going on there. He had lunch with Lynn. She smoked a lot and talked about contracts. He tried to avoid coughing.

He was at another party, some friend of Alex's, some up-and-coming indie artist nobody'd ever heard of, when something sliced through the cotton-wool like a scalpel. He dropped the drink he was holding, barely even noticing as the glass shattered on the stone floor, and pressed a hand to his temple, struggling to fight the pain. The model he'd been talking to looked at him with mild curiosity and asked if he'd like a Valium.

"No," JC said. "I. I need to go home now. I'll see you sometime. Sometime later. Okay?"

He barely remembered enough to pull the mantle of don't-notice-me around himself as he made his way out the door into the fresh air. He stumbled past a couple making out under one of the trees, then stopped. Close. It was close.

Too close; he should have felt it.

The house next door was dark and cold and silent; most of the neighborhood had either fled for the weekend or been invited to the party. JC stood outside the back door and tried to remember how to breathe. The minute before you opened the door was always the worst part.

The house had an alarm system, tastefully announced by a sticker in the side window, which JC had never really understood, because really, if you had an alarm, why would you want people to know it so they could figure out the best way to get around it -- He stopped and shook his head. Focus, dammit. He whispered a few words in Latin and rested the tips of his fingers against the door, and then stopped dead, because it didn't fucking work.

JC had been sleepwalking for two weeks and never once noticed it and he wasn't fucking sleepwalking now, his pulse racing in his throat and his breath sharp in his own ears. He fought it down as hard as he could and reached for the holy magic instead of the sorcery. If he was sent here for some reason, it had to let him in, didn't it?

"Chushah le'ezrathiy 'Adhonai teshu'athiy." He stumbled on the consonants, the way he always did. He hummed, one line laid down as foundation, another layered on top of it to build the walls. His voice cracked halfway through and it crumbled. He stopped, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and didn't think, most carefully didn't think, didn't motherfucking think of the fact that there were two hundred people a thousand feet to his left and he was standing out here alone.

One line for the foundation. Another on top of it for the walls. He kept his eyes closed so he could see it, so he didn't have to squint against the pale and washed-out light of the moon to watch the lines of the spell. He built it up around the door, the door that should not have been able to keep him out, and reached out again to strike the pads of all five fingertips against it, sharply. Open.

It clicked open.

The thing to do when you're terrified is to walk forward, because if you don't, you never will, Lance said in his ear, in his memory. JC threw up another layer of protections around himself, knowing they were sloppy, not caring, and stepped inside. There was a red light flashing on the wall, security system trying to decide if it detected an intruder or not, and JC threw a tendril of power at it before he even really knew what he was doing. It flashed again, once, and then sputtered to a weak halt.

Quiet in here. Too quiet, JC caught himself thinking, and then stopped himself, because he'd seen those movies and he knew what it meant when someone said that. It pulled him up the stairs, and every step felt like he was struggling against someone else's don't-notice-me. He stopped on the sixth stair and caught his breath again. Get a grip. It's just a house. It's just --

Something brushed past his feet, and he nearly fell against the wall. A pair of golden eyes looked up at him, and he huffed out the breath he'd drawn. A cat. Just a cat, glaring up at him, wondering what he was doing there. He was beginning to wonder the same himself. But it was here, whatever had pulled him, whatever had yanked him. It was here.

And then he walked up the stairs, and it all started to fall into place.

She was -- had been -- in her late forties, in the way everyone in LA in their late forties looked like they were really thirty-one, and she was lying on her back across the marble floor of her workroom in a pool of her own blood. The protections of her workroom had been shattered, gutted, left in a thousand pieces on the floor. JC noticed, without really noticing, that the shelves of her workroom had been full of oils and herbs, which had been pulled down and broken across the floor. The protections he'd had to work through in order to get into the house had been her own, and that scared him even more, because they'd been full-strength and whatever had done this, whoever had done this, had somehow walked through them without breaking them at all. Or had broken them, and put them back up again with her own power-signature, he thought. Which was, in a way, even worse.

The lines, the diagrams, of the spell drawn in her blood on the floor were almost starting to be familiar now. JC reached for the notebook in his back pocket and then stopped, because he didn't have it; he'd left it at home, because nothing was fucking happening. He fixed them in his mind the best he could, cursing himself the entire way, and knelt down at her side to try and get the sense of her.

Then he nearly fainted, because her eyes opened and stared directly at him, full and glazed with pain. "Shit," he said, "shit, shit," and dropped his fingers to the curve of her throat to search for the pulse. He found it, weak and thready but still there, dammit, still there. Looking closer, he could see that her wounds were not as serious as the others' had been; they were long and many, but shallow, as though whoever had done this had been toying with her. "Are you -- can you hear me?"

JC fumbled for his cell phone with one hand, intending to dial 911 and the hell with it, he could fucking make their computers forget he'd ever called once the ambulance got there and someone had taken care of her. "Hold on," he said to her, reaching for the well of power within him, reaching out with the healing magic Lance had insisted he learn first and really, he was awfully fucking glad of it, reaching to pour the power into her and convince her body it wanted to heal itself --

And stopped.

She wasn't there.

She was right underneath his hand. He could feel her, he could feel her skin and the slippery and unctuous gloss of her blood, he could see her eyes and they were open and she was breathing, just a little but she was breathing. And she wasn't there. The place where she'd been, her consciousness, her power, her soul, was nothing but a ragged hole, a gaping black maw that had been and now was not.

JC fought back the nausea and cast about himself, looking for some sign of it, some sign of where she'd gone. He'd seen cases where someone had been so traumatized, so hurt, that they'd retreated into themselves and not come out again. This wasn't one of them. She was just gone, as if she'd never been there; her chest rose, her chest fell, and there was nothing there to indicate where she'd once been or had gone.

--to walk forward, Lance whispered, and JC held his breath and sang ateh Malkuth and dove after.

Every time Lance had taken JC to one of the other planes it had looked different, like someone had come through and redecorated, re-arranged, since the last time he'd been there. This time it was an exact replica of the room he was in, right down to the cool chill of the marble beneath his knees, only the shelves were repaired and the blood wasn't there. She was stretched out beneath his fingers still, except her body -- astral-body, dream-body -- was faded and insubstantial. JC slid his hands that were not hands down to her chest, intending to try and coax some hint, some clue out of her essence of self, and then his hand slipped and slid into the hole that shot through her chest, here, in this world.

The outline of her body seemed to skip half a frame, like a movie that was out of joint, and then crumbled to dust, like it had been nothing more than a desiccated shell waiting for the impetus to blow away. The jolt of it shocked him back to his own body, back into the physical world, where he could feel the soft throb of her pulse under his fingers still, and he closed his eyes and took another breath and tried to keep from screaming.

JC's training took over, and thank all the names of the Holiest of Holies that it did, because he really was half an inch away from a complete and total nervous fucking breakdown, but he had it under control and by God that control would not slip. He stood up, praying that his knees would hold him, and shoved his cell phone back in his pocket, because he wouldn't need it now. Holding his hands out, palms tipped upwards, he sang the line of it and waited.

It came trickling slowly into him, piece by piece, fraction by fraction, struggling through her wards and her protections. Each little fragment of power that had ever been used in this house, in this workroom. He got the sense of her from it, far too late, far too late to do any good. The friend -- lover? male, less powerful than she, warm and affectionate and solid -- who lent her aid when it was needed. The collected hundreds of guests, of visitors, who had come in and out since she had moved in, leaving little traces of themselves as they went. The cat, sitting just outside the door now, watching him and wondering what he was doing, wondering what was wrong. He pulled them all to him, eyes shut, flipping through each with clumsy and awkward "fingers", touching each one and identifying it until he knew, and then he stopped, because none of them had been the one to do this.

JC dropped his arms again, and pulled his cell phone back out, and when it rang through to voicemail again he started swearing and didn't stop until he heard the beep. "Your brilliant fucking idea to send me back to fucking LA didn't fucking work," he said, and he knew he should watch his mouth, but he could feel the anger threatening to overwhelm him. "I've got another dead woman here, except she's not dead. Something has, however, pulled her soul right out of her, along with every scrap of power or talent she might have ever fucking had, and the runes are in the same damn handwriting, and there's sweet fuck-all in terms of power signature. Is that enough to make you fucking call me back this time?"

He dropped the cell phone back in his pocket, bent down to kneel beside the poor woman again, and ran his hands through her hair, collecting the few strands that came loose and tucking them into his wallet, since he didn't have his backpack with him, where there would have been Ziploc baggies. And a lot of other things, all of which would have been useful, but no point thinking of that now. No salt, no holy water, no nothing, but JC was angry enough that it didn't really matter. He bent over and rubbed his palm over one of the lines of runes, feeling it break, feeling the dark magic shatter -- and I hadn't even noticed it until right then, he realized, and that means he's still got the wards up, and I'll fucking worry about that when I get the hell out of here -- and let the power explode from his hands, sharp white fire burning it all away.

Qumah'Adonai qaddemah phanayv hakhriy'ehu pallethah naphshiy merasha'charbekha mimthiym yadhekha Adonai mimthiym mecheledh chelqambachayyiym utsephiynkha temalle' bhithnam yisbe'u bhaniymvehinniychu yithram le'oleleyhem 'aniy betsedheq 'echezeh phaneykha'esbe'ah bhehaqiyts temunathekha.

The words fell from his tongue without the usual hesitation. One of the vials of oil on the floor behind him, one that had miraculously survived the destruction, fragmented from the sheer amount of it all. JC ignored it, ignored everything but the need to get rid of it, clean away the crawling fetid evil that left no clues, no way of tracing it or tracking it. Get rid of the clues that would point the police at him, too, because the last thing he needed was some smartass forensics department lifting his prints or tracking his shoes. When he was done, he felt hollow, like he'd run a marathon on no sleep and without having eaten anything in three days, and he closed his eyes and tried to remember how to breathe.

And then, before he left to go back to his place and use those bits of the woman's hair to try and forge some connection with her, try to find out where she'd gone -- gone, or been taken -- he knelt beside her again, gathered the last little reserve he'd saved for this very purpose, let the magic flow from his fingertips, and reached in and stopped the body's heart.

*

The adrenaline wore off halfway across town, and JC had to pull over and just shake for a minute. Cars whooshed by him on Sunset, and he wondered whether any of them had any idea what was going on. He could feel himself starting to go into shock, because he'd used far more power than he should have, far too quickly, without having been ready for it. The headache started right behind his eyes and went all the way down.

Gatorade was useful for more than just post-show re-hydration, though, and at Lance's advice, JC had thrown a few bottles into the backseat of his car and let them rattle around. He pulled one out now, cracked it open, and sipped from it, not wanting to send his system into overload. He'd figured out pretty quickly that Lance had been right about the refined sugar thing, too, so he pulled out the bag of gummi bears he kept in the glove compartment. He breathed from his diaphragm and bit the feet off the gummi bears first and tried to shut his brain up for a while. It didn't work all that well.

By the time he got home he was feeling better, more or less, and he checked his answering machine automatically even though anyone who knew him knew his cell phone was a much better way to get in touch. No messages. Lance had a workroom in his house, but JC didn't yet, even though he'd been idly planning to add one. He'd done some work to one of the spare bedrooms, though, to make it suit, and it was there that he headed, before he'd done anything more than kick off his shoes and grab a few necessities.

Lance had said, once, that in a lot of cases the "ritual" part of "ritual mage" was really more to suit the magician than the magic. Unless you're dealing with something from another plane, in which case it's safest to follow all the rules, because with that we really don't know what's necessary and what's just been tacked on over the years. Other than that, if it works, just do it, and don't worry about whether or not it's traditional. JC could remember the way Lance had been distracted, irritated, flipping through his books and his papers, looking for something. That had been right at the very beginning. And that's going to make the traditionalists hate you even more if they ever find out I'm telling you this, because to some of them it's more important that something look right than work right. But if it works for you, use it.

JC thought he understood how that could happen. Someone comes up with something and it's the way they want to do it -- and some of the people he'd met had been the type to dot every i and cross every t -- and when it gets passed down, nobody tries to separate out what's necessary from what's simply a matter of preference. Lance didn't hold with most of it. JC had seen him boil a twenty-minute incantation down into "point, gesture, mumble", and it worked. JC hadn't been able to do that, not at first, not when he couldn't sense any of it and had to rely on the rote repetition to make sure he was doing anything, much less something right. Something had changed after That Night, though -- he always thought of it that way, in capital letters -- and he'd started to realize that Lance had been right. Once you could sense it, the ritual almost started to be a hindrance.

He loved it nonetheless, when he had the time and leisure to do it. Working magic off-the-cuff, the way Lance tended to do, burned power at a far greater rate than if things had been set up properly. That was what the ritual had been designed to do, originally. JC's training had been light on the ritual theory and heavy on the practical application, but there'd been enough of the former for him to understand that much. Lance said he himself didn't need to worry about it, that he had enough power to be able to burn a fraction of it on doing things fast instead of traditionally, but JC sometimes wondered if that attitude was precisely why Lance always seemed to be more tired than he should be.

Ritual had another helpful side-effect, too. Walking through it, in the proper order, in the proper steps, calmed him. JC could feel the unease in the back of his mind settling as he walked the circle, called the protections, laid out the lines of the Sephirotic Tree and blessed and consecrated the space for the hundredth time. It was familiar; doing it put him in the right mindspace.

Once he'd satisfied himself that the room was as safe as he could make it -- which was pretty damn safe; wards were one of the things that just made sense to him -- he sat down on the cushion on the floor, his one concession to comfort over tradition, and closed his eyes. Reach out, then in, blessing and peace all at once, and he could feel the power filling him back up. He tended to think of it like the life bar on one of Chris or Justin's video games. He'd told Lance that, once, and Lance had laughed and said he could have come up with worse analogies.

It took him longer than usual to feel like he was at full strength again -- he'd pushed it down to the absolute line, far enough that if Lance had been there he would have gotten a lecture about always keeping something in reserve, but it had been necessary -- but once he was there, he took a deep breath and opened his eyes. The room had that peculiar shimmer around the edges that indicated that by warding and protecting it, he'd managed to drag the space at least slightly out-of-phase with the rest of the world, into that space somewhere between Yezirah and Beriyah.

JC took a moment just to breathe, once he'd filled himself with that pure clean power again. Out of everything involved with this shit, this was the part that made it bearable, the moment when he touched the well of something so far beyond his knowing that he had no words to even describe it. If that was God -- and Lance was curiously silent on that topic -- JC finally understood the mystic's lifestyle.

But he couldn't linger; he knew that much. He unfolded his legs from underneath him and pulled out the strands of hair he'd taken from the victim. He'd put a low table in the middle of the circle, just somewhere he could leave things he was working with, and he spread them out over the table, smoothing them with his fingertips. "Okay," he said, "talk to me, and let's see if we can figure out who did this to you. So I can track him down and make sure he gets what's coming to him."

The hair didn't answer him, but he wasn't expecting it to. He stroked his fingers over it, reached inside of himself for that still small knowing, and threw himself after the thread of connection.

It always disoriented him to go looking like this, but it had never been this bad before. Lance had been the one to take him, before, the one to pull him along and bring him safely through. Freed of that anchor, it was as though he was buffeted by a thousand winds, whisked and pulled and torn from one thread to another. He clung to the sense of the woman (Katrina, it whispered to him, not the name she was born with, but the name by which she was known to us) and held onto his goal with the singularity of determination.

You're going to be better at this than I am, someday, Lance had told him once. You've got the patience for it that I don't. JC didn't feel very patient, but he held onto his sense of himself with both hands and sorted through all the impressions as best he could. Wrecked room, dead body, his own personal signature threading into the picture and he breathed through it all, because the connection through the hair was the connection to the body, not the soul. He'd thought it would have been, but he hadn't been sure. He'd never seen a case where body and soul weren't in the same place to begin with.

Show me, he said to that sense of her, show me where she has gone, so I can find who has done this and start setting things right. Those senses he could not explain, could not quantify, shifted and stuttered and then swirled, beginning to follow. Beginning to trace the steps across the link from body to soul, a link that had been severed but the ghost of which still remained.

JC held on with metaphorical fingernails, clung to the threads of it, clung to his own self and that connection with the undefined ineffable radiant presence that always watched over his shoulder when he was doing things like this, watched over him to keep him safe. He was being tossed on the waves, blown through the storm, and then it all settled and --

The book was thick and heavy, bound with some dark hide, the edges of the pages rough-cut and ragged. The man placed it back on the shelf, running his hand over the spine the way one might touch the skin of a lover, and turned away. The room was well-lit, comfortable, the sort of place one might go to enjoy an after-dinner cigar and glass of brandy, turning pages in the books that lined the shelves and contemplating the secrets held within.

He crossed the room and sank back down in the chair, then stopped, as though he sensed something. He picked up his head and surveyed the room, slowly, looking for the source of the disturbance, and then he seemed to know. His eyes widened slightly. JC could not hear him as he spoke through the rushing sound in his own ears, but the man's lips moved, and that was enough.

You.

He lifted one hand and the silver rings on each finger glinted in the firelight, as he waved it, and JC found himself back in his own body, in his own workroom, with what felt like someone driving a rail-spike through his temples, curled up on the floor and trying not to retch. He breathed, holding on, holding on, and it took a long minute before he could think anything but fuck.

He hadn't been able to get a good enough grasp on the power signature, but he'd felt it. Sensed it, dimly, wrapped around the man, wrapped around the room. Thick and dark and fetid and yet oh, so familiar, because he knew that magic, he knew it. It was their magic. It was the magic Lance burned with, the magic that slept underneath his own skin. It was the true magic, the holy magic, the magic that came from the power of that Power: warped, twisted, perverted, re-fashioned and made to serve human purpose, not divine.

Whoever was doing this was one of them.

JC dropped the cell phone three times before he managed to hit memory two. It rang through to voicemail and he listened to Lance's voice explaining that he was probably in training, leave a message. His voice was shaky in his own ears. "Lance," he managed to get out, "it's JC, call me the second you get this message," and hung up.

Oh God, he thought, and he couldn't tell if it was prayer or despair. Oh God oh God--

I'm in over my head. Help me. Please, help me.

ii. it's all dirty flesh digging through to find the pearl

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