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“Do you think I’m old enough for a familiar spirit?” Pepper asked Anathema, sucking on her sugar stick.
“It’s not a matter of age,” Anathema replied, smartly. “It’s a matter of, well, inclination. A familiar spirit will find you when you need that familiar spirit.” She paused. “Why do you ask, sweety? Did you see the kittens that Beelzebub and Crowley are raising?”
Pepper laughed. “Yeah. They’re really cute. I like Britney the best.”
“A familiar spirit is not going to come to you if you’re not in a place to keep her,” Anathema said, with a widening grin. “If it’s meant to be, then it’s meant to be.”
“I’m going to ask my mom.”
“Wouldn’t hurt.”
There was a pause. “Have you seen any of John Hastur’s siblings in your shop?” Adam asked.
“No, they’re banned. Why?”
“One of them hit Brian with a wiffle bat,” Adam said, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. “Just walked up and hit him. In the middle of Temple o’ Toys.”
“What did Nero say?” Anathema asked.
“Actually, he held the kid down with his foot and let Brian hit him with a pool noodle,” Wensleydale said.
“Did he?” Anathema asked, taken aback.
“He did,” Pepper confirmed.
“Is that true?” Anathema asked.
Brian looked dazed. He had been looking at something (Pepper didn’t know what) in the magazine section. But, almost in slo-mo, he turned away from it and his eyes found Anathema. They roamed over her and the others. Pepper felt a chill, in spite of her very spicy candy.
“What?” he asked.
“Did you seriously flog one of the pollywogs with a pool noodle? Is that what happened?” Anathema asked. "I'd expect that from her," and Pepper made a face, "but not you, Brian."
“Yeah,” Brian said, and blushed. “I guess I did.”
“What were you staring at?” Anathema asked.
“Oh, there’s someone in the magazines--”
But there was not.
“Was it a man in dark leathers?” Wensleydale asked. “A Black man?”
“No, it was a white...person. I don’t know if it was a boy of a girl,” Brian said. He paused. “Yes, riding leathers, but white. I think they’re going to do something. Something bad.”
“A person in white, right?” Anathema asked, pointing at Brian.
Brian nodded.
“And there was another man? In riding leathers?” Anathema asked. Wensleydale nodded. “In my shop?”
“No, when we were in Temple o’ Toys,” Wensley said. “Actually, there were four of them. The Black one, a lady in red, one who had a helmet like a mirror, and...and a short one with white hair. White motorcycle clothes.”
“Are you both sure?” Anathema asked.
Brian and Wensley both nodded at her. Pepper felt that chill again. Something was wrong. She looked at Adam, whose mouth was a very thin line. He was upset, too.
Anathema walked around her counter, and went to the magazine rack. The Them followed.
“It stinks here,” Pepper said.
And it did. It smelled like petroleum and smoke. Like the chemical plants along the Mississippi when the stacks belched fire twenty or thirty feet up. Like the smell of tarmac at the airport on a hot, hot day.
“I don’t know...” Brian said weakly. “That person...they were here.”
“I believe you,” Anathema said. “And you.” She shot a look at Wensleydale, who had pulled his inhaler out and took a puff.
Pepper shivered. The chill was too much.
There’s two types of purity, Pepper’s ex-crystal-gazer mom had told her once. There’s the purity of something untouched, and the purity of something scrubbed clean.
Pepper knew that life had left her pretty much untouched. She could watch the news at night and see that she never had to worry about half the things that an average kid in New Orleans dealt with. She’d never gone hungry, unlike 40% of children in New Orleans. She wasn’t the one-in-three girls who got molested or raped, and she had a roof over her head. Life hadn’t touched her.
She’d never had to knock on wood. (She knew people who’d had to, Beelzebub, for example. She knew their life had scoured them clean--and she admired them for it.)
But that part of her life--her innocence--was coming to a crashing end. Something in the way that Brian talked about the white person, and Wensleydale (reasonable Wensleydale) spoke so haltingly about his dark stranger...something told her that this would be the last good summer. She couldn’t put it into words.
Pepper felt the chill leave her. She felt warm inside. Not a pleasant warm, but hot, like a fever. Sticky and gross as she sucked on her cinnamon-flavored sugar stick.
Something was coming. Something dreadful.
Anathema would never dismiss their concerns. She would always believe them. Besides, the scent of cheap cigarettes and exhaust lingered at the magazine rack.
“I think you kids should head to the pet store,” Anathema said, and she sounded nervous.
“Are you sure?” Adam asked. “We could stick around.”
“I’m sure,” Anathema said. “I think I may call Newt to look around. And he can’t find you here.”
“He’d throw us out,” Adam said, glumly.
“That’s his job, Adam,” Anathema countered.
“C’mon, Adam,” Brian said, now firmly back from whatever plane of existence that he had seen his weird leather ghost on.
“Yeah,” Pepper agreed. “Let’s go.”
Anathema reached out and hugged Adam. “Go pet the bunnies for me, okay?”
Adam relented, and Pepper could see it. Then again, Anathema Device could ask him to put the sun in his pocket for her, and he’d find a way.
“We were going to get something from the food court,” Adam said.
“Go on, then. I’ll give you a few minutes before I call Newt.”
“Thanks, Anathema.” Adam released her, and she kissed the top of his head.
“I’m going to ask my mom about that kitten,” Pepper said.
“You do that. I wish you luck!” Anathema said.
They filed out of the shop, and Pepper felt her whole person sink. Something weighed on her. It made her feet move more slowly, and her heart sank down to her socks.
Adam turned around and walked backwards in front of the group.
“Is anybody even hungry?” he asked.
“Actually, we weren’t at Temple o’ Toys for very long,” Wensleydale said. “And we were only at Anathema’s for a few minutes. I’m still full from Center Court Coffees.”
“Truth,” Brian said.
“I could eat,” Pepper said. “Or I could wait.” She shrugged.
“Maybe we could find Warlock,” Wensleydale said.
“Warlock?” Adam asked. “You saw him?”
“Just before I saw the stranger,” Wensley confirmed. “I think he’s hiding from his mom.”
“Crowley won’t kick us out if we’re with Warlock,” Adam said. “Y’know, he’s probably at the information kiosk...”
“We could check,” Wensleydale suggested.
“Yeah!” Brian said.
Pepper was about to exclaim her own agreement, but she caught a bit of motion out of the corner of her eye. Creepy Sandalphon--who kept showing up in the Hot Topic asking for hugs from Beelzebub, the dude that Adam once told her to NEVER be alone with--had set the GAP’s long hook against the wall while he drank from the water fountain. Cat-quick, she snatched it up and swept around Sandy.
Sandy had not noticed.
Adam watched her give it a twirl.
“Wicked!” Adam exclaimed.
Pepper gave the hook another twirl, and it was snatched from her hands by a woman in red riding leathers.
“This is not a toy,” she said, testing the weight in her hands. “Run away, little girl.”
On the other side of Pepper, the man in black--the one with the very sharp, very straight teeth, that man walked past her to join the woman in red.
Behind her, she heard a low voice say, “Doesn’t that look useful?”
Pepper whipped around and saw the white person, small and ethereal, stinking of smoke and looking lethal in the shimmering summer sun.
“You’re real,” Pepper said, absurdly.
It WAS absurd, because Pepper had never (not for one moment) doubted her friends. They said that they saw these people, and she believed them.
But.
But there was something supernatural about this red woman. She was the one who seemed unreal. Pepper’s hand itched for the sword that her mother never allowed her to hold. (“Couldn’t you be interested in something more...ladylike?”)
She longed for Beelzebub, who would certainly know how to handle this woman and this situation. Looking at this woman was like looking at Pepper’s own death. It hurt to meet her very blue eyes.
“Run away, children,” the red woman laughed. “It might get too dangerous for you.”
Adam was about to say something, but Pepper cut him off.
“Give that back!” she said.
“Take it,” the red woman said. Her eyes sparkled, and the words were an open invitation.
Her eyes were an open wound.
“No,” Wensleydale said, very suddenly. And then, he was shoving Pepper.
“Hey!” she exclaimed, but Wensley was still shoving.
“Come on, come on,” he said, and Pepper saw what he was shoving them away from.
Sandalphon had noticed his missing hook, and was barreling through the crowd. Wensley had pushed the group far enough away that Sandalphon didn’t see them as he waded through the shoppers and loiterers.
Pepper watched him go, and watched the red woman and the stranger walk away, vaguely in the direction of the Center Court. The white person had faded into the crowd.
“Now what?” Brian asked.
“I think we should find Warlock,” Adam said.
“Actually, I agree,” Wensley said.
“Quick thinking, getting us away from Sandalphon,” Pepper said. And then, “Thanks.”
Wensleydale flushed. “I just...I saw him, and I didn’t want him to hurt you.”
“If he wants that hook back, he can get it from Red,” Pepper said.
“Think we could get around them, like through the Food Court?” Brian asked.
“I think so,” Adam agreed, sotto. “Let’s try.”
By the time they were creeping up on the Center Court, the woman in red was flirting with some jerk in a Kappa Alpha shirt and an LSU hat.
Gross, Pepper thought.
Kappa Alpha meant Klan, and if the red woman was friends with a Black man, she shouldn’t be flirting with one of those human crapsacks.
The white person showed their face just to the right of the red woman, and took the long hook from her hands. The white person stepped away and did the most peculiar thing. They looked up, at something behind The Them, a circle winking in the corner of the mall. Then, they blew a kiss.
“What’s up there?” Pepper asked, pointing.
“Security camera,” Brian said with a shrug. “Why?”
There was shout, and Pepper saw that the Black man had his arms around the red woman. The frat boy was yelling filthy words, slurs, at both of them.
Pepper felt hot and cold all at the same time. This was the avalanche, pouring down the mountain.
The stranger and the red woman laughed at the frat boy.
Peals of laughter, rich and throaty.
The frat boy balled up his fist, and threw himself at them.
They dodged and he hit a woman standing behind them.
Her husband was in the frat boy’s face, screaming many, many bad words. The frat boy apologized, but then his ego muscled forward. They were snarling at each other, words half-formed and swallowed down as hands shoved chests.
As the woman’s husband landed a solid punch on the frat guy’s cheek.
As he stumbled back, and then flew forward--a bit unsteady, maybe drunk or hurt--and landed a hit on a weedy-looking teenager.
The whole world exploded then. Adults and teenagers throwing punches, screaming, and hitting.
A minute passed, and then another.
“What do we do?” Brian cried out.
“I don’t know!” Pepper replied.
“Hey! Hey!” someone called.
It was Warlock.
He tossed a handful of wiffle bats at The Them. He had the whole box from Temple o’ Toys.
And he smiled as he did it.
“Thanks,” Adam called. And then he said to The Them, “Let’s get them!”
Pepper clutched her bat close to her body and entered the fray with a wild cry. She shoved her way through the crowd, up to the Center Court where Spike and Will watched the chaos from the safety of their counter.
The red woman watched the fight from the raised dais of the Center Court. The Black man stood beside her, and the man in the helmet waited not far away. They spoke to each other quietly, occasionally pointing and laughing.
Pepper arrived behind the red woman and struck the back of her knees as hard as she could.
The red woman cried out, and the stranger reached for her. But Brian and Wensleydale were on him. Adam swung for the man with the helmet.
Pepper lost track of her friends as she rained a flurry of blows on the woman in red. The woman in red fought back, but a wiffle bat in the hands of a determined eleven-year-old is a fairly devastating weapon.
The woman in red took a strike to the face, and her nose began to gush. Pepper did not stop, did not let up. If anything, her hits came faster and harder.
She let out a scream that was so fierce and primal that she did not realize it was her own voice. The woman in red lost a tooth and Pepper swung down. Again, and again.
Pippin Galadriel Moonchild did not stop striking the woman in red until Aziraphale DiAngelo yanked her up and shouted, “That is quite enough, young lady!”
Pepper stopped swinging, and her bloody wiffle bat fell from her nerveless hands. She may be the avalanche, but the boy holding her was the mountain. He cradled her to his chest, like a baby.
For no reason at all, Pepper curled into him and began to sob.