Play Dead (39 page)

The rain had stopped and the sky had partially cleared. It was now early evening and there was even a bit of sunlight as the sun made a brief appearance, glinting off the water and dancing from wave to wave.

I stood up, still cautious, and looked around. Victor and Jessie were still lying on the beach, out cold, but Sherwood was stirring and Eli was already up and about, bending over first one, then the other. He glanced over at me.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“All right, I guess.” I looked around. “Where’s Lou?”

“He’s fine. He was sitting next to you, standing guard when I woke up.”

Victor suddenly opened his eyes, lay quietly for a moment assessing the situation, and then sat up quickly. It looked like we all were going to come through this okay after all.

“How do you feel?” Eli asked him, in exactly the same tone he’d used with me.

A faint unease started nibbling around the edges of my consciousness. Victor stretched, flexed his hands, got to his feet, and took several deep breaths, considering.

“I feel ... different,” he said.

The minute he said that, I realized I felt different as well. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was; I didn’t feel bad, but there was a sense of something not quite right, something missing. Like Victor, I felt ... different. Eli nodded gravely.

“I think I know what you mean,” he said. He pointed his hand at a piece of driftwood washed up by the waves. “I tried to change that, but I’m not very good at that sort of thing anyway. Maybe you still can.”

I didn’t like the implications of what he was saying, and neither did Victor. He concentrated, gestured quickly, and the driftwood remained obstinately unchanged. The unease that had been nibbling around the edges of my mind became full-fledged anxiety. I reached out and used some talent to whip up a little sand funnel, a beach dirt devil. But when I reached, there was nothing there. The level sand stretched away, serene and untroubled.

I tried another trick, then another, then a simple illusion. Absolutely nothing. Victor was doing the same, but stopped at the same time I did.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

The realization slowly dawned. We’d all lost our talent. The magical energy wave had been broken up and dispersed. Practitioner society was safe, unaffected—but we weren’t. We’d been caught in the fallout when it broke up.

Jessie was now awake, too, and watching us. She made a quick gesture, with no result. She nodded her head and walked away from us down the beach without a word. Victor started after her, but Sherwood grabbed his arm and shook her head.

“Not the time,” she said. “Leave her alone. How would you feel? In a single moment she lost everything—her talent, her Ifrit, and, worst of all, her own daughter.”

“But she saved everyone else,” Eli said. “All of us.”

“True. But I imagine that will be a grim solace.”

Sherwood was right. I felt bad for Jessie, but honestly I was more concerned with myself than I was with her.

“Do you think it’s permanent?” I asked Eli. “Losing our talent, I mean.”

“There’s no way to know for sure,” he said. “Time will tell. But given the nature of that awesome display of power, if I had to guess, I’d say it’s quite possible. But I just don’t know for sure.”

I couldn’t quite take it in. It was like unexpectedly hearing about the death of a loved one; for a while your mind is blank, unable to comprehend anything so huge and monstrous. Only later does it sink in and become all too real. And what about Lou? I remembered wondering what the Ifrits would do if their practitioners lost their talent. I looked around, but he was still nowhere in sight.

“You said you saw Lou?” I asked Eli again. He nodded.

“He was sitting right next to you.”

Well, he wasn’t next to me anymore. Maybe he’d been disoriented by the talent storm; even an Ifrit might have been affected by that awesome power. Maybe he was just around the rocky point, tending to some Ifrit business of his own.

I sat down on a rock, well away from the water’s edge. I looked out over the water at the setting sun that turned the sky from blue to red and gold. The waves rushed in, gentle now and soothing, speaking of eternal tides and ancient shores. I knew Lou, as well as I know myself. He would never abandon me, no matter what. I calmly watched the sea and waited for him to return.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Levitt grew up in New York City. After a stint at the University of Chicago, he traveled around the country and ended up running light shows for bands in San Francisco. Eventually, he moved to the Wasatch Mountains and worked at a ski lodge in Alta, Utah. After a number of years as a ski bum, he joined the Salt Lake City Police Department, where for eight years he worked as a patrol officer and later as an investigator. His experiences on the job formed the background for two mystery novels,
Carnivores
and
Ten of Swords
. For the last few years, he has split his time between Alta, where he manages the Alta Lodge, and San Francisco. When he’s not working or writing, he plays guitar with the SF rock band The Procrastinistas and also plays the occasional jazz gig. He owns no dogs, although his girlfriend now has four.

You can visit him on the Web at
www.jlevitt.com
.

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