Page 103 of Middlegame

“Alchemists can raise the dead,” says Dodger suddenly.

“Yes,” says Erin. She doesn’t say any of the other things, the things about the costs of such an action, the reasons most people would never dream of doing such a thing. Sometimes when the facts speak for themselves, they do so by telling blatant, beautiful lies. “But if you want to be able to make an alchemist do what you want, you need to manifest. You need to know where we are.”

Dodger looks at her flatly before she reaches across the table and grabs the salt and pepper shakers, removes their lids, and dumps their contents onto the Formica, stirring the mess with her fingers until it has been inextricably mingled. (The resulting blend looks distressingly like the coal dust and ground silver Leigh favors. Dodger doesn’t know this. Erin does, and she shivers.)

“We need to determine the properties of the set in order to define the quadrants,” says Dodger. “You said this is either water or fire, correct?”

“Yes,” says Erin.

“Assigning values to the four possibilities, with water standing as negative two and fire standing at positive two, we begin by subtracting air and earth from each . . .” Dodger’s fingers continue to move as she speaks, drawing lines and equations through the mess she’s made, sinking deeper and deeper into her own little world.

The air around their booth is getting colder. What Dodger is doing isn’t math in the truest sense of the word, and at the same time, it’s a deeper, truer arithmetic than she’s done in years. It is the instinctive math of children weighing parental disapproval against the rapidly setting sun, and the heartbroken math of sailors measuring the holes in their boat against the distance to the shore. This is the math that moves the universe, the measure and countermeasure that dances over and around the numbers. Dodger holds this kind of math in her bones, and her fingers dance through the blend of vegetable and mineral scattered in front of her, separating them from one another with almost thoughtless swipes. Bit by bit, the figures she is pulling from the bone and char blending are becoming paler, losing the charcoal tint of the pepper.

When she’s done, she has separated the salt and the pepper. It should have been impossible. She doesn’t even appear to realize it’s happened. Dodger taps the table beneath her last line of incomprehensible figures and says, “Water. That’s why we’re having this drought, or part of it. Whatever Baker’s enemies—I can’t believe I’m saying this—whatever Baker’s enemies did to unmake her work, it’s still going on, and part of it is trying to deny the quadrants their essential natures. So you take as much of the water away from the place that’s supposed to represent water in the equation as you can, and hope eventually it gets so unbalanced that it can’t hold together anymore.”

“Makes sense,” says Erin. “Baker purified the elements when she divided them. She tied each of them to a concrete anchor point, but nothing in nature wants to be pure for long. If someone wanted to destroy the Impossible City, they’d begin by destabilizing the elements. That’s what Baum was trying to do, with his mixed and muddled Oz. The old bastard.”

“I don’t care about your dead alchemists and their stupid plans,” says Dodger. She stands. This time, no one stops her. “We’re in the element of water, and if you can give me the dimensions of its borders and the alchemical flux that attends them, I can lead you straight to whatever serves as its center. Now can we go?”

“There’s just one more thing we have to do first,” says Erin.

“What?” demands Dodger.

Erin smiles implacably. “I have to pay the check.”

Even under the circumstances, Roger can’t keep from laughing.

* * *

They walk the mile and a half to the BART station, through abandoned business parks and silent residential neighborhoods. Erin takes the lead at first, with Roger behind her and Dodger bringing up the rear. Dodger is muttering to herself, taking quick, tight looks around, like she’s measuring things. Roger keeps looking back at Dodger, reassuring himself that she hasn’t run away. Finally, he turns his face forward and closes his eyes.

“Hey, Dodge.”

The sound of Roger’s voice echoing in her skull is enough to make her jump. He’s still walking. She narrows her eyes. “You’re going to trip and fall.”

“I’m not.” Being this close to his body while he’s in her head gives his words a strange echo effect, inside and outside layering over each other to create something entirely new. “I learned this trick from you. Remember, during the earthquake? You closed your eyes and kept running, because you had mine to look through. It was pretty clever.”

“It’s almost like I’m smart or something,” she says bitterly. “This isn’t the way to have a private conversation. Your girlfriend can still hear us.”

“She’s not my girlfriend anymore,” he says. “I don’t know if she ever was. Dodge . . . we have to find a way to get through this without losing each other. I don’t think I can handle it.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you let her use you to put me on a leash,” she says. “It’s not safe to be around you.”

“I won’t do it again without your permission. I promise.” He pauses. That doesn’t seem like enough. “I swear,” he amends, and it’s more childish, and that makes it more sincere.

“I don’t think that’s a promise you can keep. I don’t want to be apart from you, but I don’t believe you when you say you won’t hurt me. You’re going to hurt me.”

“Of course I am. I’m your brother. I’m going to hurt you and annoy you and drive you crazy, and you’re going to do the same to me. So what if I got super-persuasion powers? You can break time. That’s pretty badass, Dodge. But it only works if we stay together. I’m tired of feeling like something’s missing. I’m tired of wondering what color my apples are. Stay with me. Sure, we’ll probably hurt each other, but no one else will ever hurt us again.” That’s what she’s always wanted, isn’t it? For no one to hurt her.

Dodger is quiet for a moment. Then, in a soft voice, she says, “I’ll kill you if you break your word. I can do it. No matter how strong you get, I can do it.”

“I know.”

She smiles to herself, nods, and says, “Get out of my head.”

Roger opens his eyes and feels her hand slipping into his. He glances to the side and there she is, walking beside him, eyes still fixed front.

“If this Leigh woman is as smart as you say, she’ll be watching for us to get on the BART,” she says. “It’s the easiest way to get around the Bay Area once you give up having a car. So we need to do something else.”