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I was mortal and he wasn’t.
Neither was Ryodan.
Or Mac.
Or Barrons.
None of my crew was.
They were all going to live forever and I’d be dead in—given the intensity and velocity at which I lived my life—probably long before a ripe old age.
As a teen I used to say I didn’t want to live long enough to get old and wrinkly and fall apart, but I had two sudden horrid images: me living until I was old and wrinkly and falling apart, hanging out with my ageless, immortal friends who were going to go on forever having epic adventures and saving the world, and me dying tomorrow and leaving Shazam alone.
He’d be lost without me. He’d go off the deep end. Who would take care of him? Who would be able to handle him? Who would love him like I did? Who would understand his quicksilver moods, his consuming depressions, his bombastic nature, his kaleidoscopic emotions?
Dancer, with his fragile heart, had refused the Queen of the Fae’s Elixir of Life that would have healed his compromised organ and bestowed immortality at the eventual price of his soul. He died once, when he was eight, had seen something, believed in something, and hadn’t been willing to sacrifice his immortal soul.
The existence of my immortal soul was debatable as far as I was concerned. Furthermore, if I lost my soul, I’d adapt. I always do. Adaptation is my specialty. I practically invented the word.
I removed Shazam’s paws from his ears, ignoring the explosion of wails and hisses. “Shazzy,” I said firmly, “I will not die on you. I promise.”
He snarled around hiccupping sobs, “Can’t make that promise!”
“You know Mac, right?”
“Thinks I’m fat and hates Hel-Cats,” he spat.
“She does not. She’ll give me the elixir of immortality. I’ll ask her for it.” And if for some unfathomable reason, she wouldn’t or couldn’t, there was always Ryodan. Or Lor, or whichever of the Nine I had to coax, bully, or keep killing until they did for me what they did for Dageus. “I will not die,” I said sternly.
He squirmed in my lap and peered up at me with teary violet eyes, sniffing. “Promise?”
“Promise. I won’t leave you alone. Not ever. Pinky swear.”
“Pinky swear is everything,” he said, awed, blinking back tears.
I’d taught him well. “It is. And I’m pinky swearing right now. Show me one of those adorable toes.”
He raised a paw and spread fat, velvety, black-padded appendages. I hooked the pinky of my right hand around his toe—
“Not that one. Other,” he said impatiently.
“It’s black. It blows people up.”
“Not me.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m me,” he said smugly. “Better, smarter, more.”
Oh, yes, we belonged together, ego to ego, emotion to emotion, God, I loved this little beast! Laughing, I hooked finger to toe and said, “Shazam O’Malley, I do hereby solemnly swear I am going to love you for all of forever.”
“Then nine million more days?” he demanded.
Smiling, I finished the vow we’d taken long ago, Silverside. “Uh-huh. Because not even all of forever will be enough time to love you.”
“I die,” he gushed, and fell over on his back, paws in the air, lolling happily.
“Never leaving you, best friend. You can count on that.”
