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Basil had seen lightning strikes, sudden deaths, arson, dry rot, wet rot, and eighteen different types of toxic mold behind a single wall, but the worst thing he had ever seen was his colleague, Ari, blinking innocently and saying, “But why would that come under my purview?”
Nothing in the world was worse than a magic insurance inspector. This was because they received twice the salary as an ordinary insurance inspector for half the caseload. In Ari’s case, it was also because he had the cubicle across from Basil’s, he always had an almond croissant from the cafe down the street, and he chewed very loudly and left little flakes of puff pastry and shaved almonds scattered across the floor. They migrated determinedly over to Basil’s side of the room and the janitor Annabel only vacuumed them up once per week.
Once, Basil had asked Ari why his caseload was so small.
Ari had given him a small but brilliant smile and said, “Magic is a rare and beautiful thing. Exceptionally rare, in fact.”
It had been a particularly long week, immediately after a winter storm that had severed power lines, cracked pipes, and ruined merchandise. Basil had spent the afternoon explaining to a tired recent widow that no, her insurance policy did not cover suicide, and yes, she would have to sell her house or file for bankruptcy as soon as possible. She couldn’t afford to pay someone to get the bloodstains out of the hardwood.
“What use is it to anyone, then?” he had said.
And he and Ari had hated each other ever since. The almond croissants just added fuel to the fire.
“Why would it come under your purview?” Basil said. He was aiming for disparaging, but like anything he said, it came out quiet and slightly monotone. “Oh, I don’t know, it’s only that it’s a magical shop selling—” he checked the claim paperwork— “artisan enchanted stained-glass lampshades, which has reported a magical fire. I’ve no idea why that would require an expert in magic.”
“The client has reported a magical fire,” Ari said. “That doesn’t mean it actually was one.”
“Rainbow-colored flames arcing up from the windows, scattering silver sparks,” Basil read flatly.
“There are all sorts of chemicals that could cause that.”
“If you could pretend for thirty seconds not to be allergic to doing your job, that would be excellent, thank you.”
“Enough,” said Laura, their supervisor. “I’m assigning it to both of you. I expect two separate reports.”
“Mrs Xiao, it is highly unlikely to actually have been a magical fire,” Ari said.
“No, but given the magical nature of the merchandise, you will be needed to assess the damage,” Laura said, adjusting her scarlet cat-eye glasses. “Basil will be there to supervise.”
They both opened their mouths.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it, unless it’s either ‘yes, Laura,’ or ‘yes, Mrs Xiao.’ The two of you are adults. Act like it, and maybe you’ll receive a quarterly bonus for normal human behavior.”
In chorus, they said, “Yes, Mrs Xiao.”
“Better. Now go on, you have a lampshade shop to inspect.”
“This is the wrong trolley,” Ari said.
“We’re taking a detour,” Basil said.
“We’re on the clock.”
“It’s a work detour.”
He got off in front of the great golden dome of the district courthouse. A little to the left, roofs bristled with billboards advertising Vertilax, the city’s biggest pharmaceutical company. Because this part of the city was chock-full of lawyers and judges—and sometimes insurance inspectors, when they came here to be witnesses in cases their company was involved in—the cafe was called Justeaciable. It was picked out in golden cursive across its glimmering glass windows.
Basil picked up three cups of coffee and a box. It was impossible not to know how Ari took his coffee, because he had once tripped and spilled an entire cup of it across Basil’s claim files. It was mostly cream and sugar with a few drops of coffee in it.
“You’re just here to get coffee for yourself?” Ari said. “I thought you were dedicated to the point of complete joylessness. I thought you had a filing cabinet instead of a soul.”
“I thought we weren’t on speaking terms,” Basil said, handing him his coffee. “I liked it better that way. Very calming and peaceful.”
“Just lie back and think of the normal human behavior bonus,” Ari said. “Is this for me?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” Ari said, thrown.
“You have almonds and powdered sugar on your sweater.”
Ari looked down and hastily brushed them off.
The entire front of the shop was completely destroyed. The client, whose name was Mrs Lafayette, waited for them in the wreckage: a very short woman, old enough to be Basil’s grandmother, with thick glasses, very dark brown skin, and her hair in a white puff. Basil was surprised that she was so old. The only wizard he had ever met was Ari, who was thirty-four.
It was immediately obvious that it hadn’t just been a fire. It had been an explosion that blew out the glass shopfront windows and shattered all of the lampshades in the front display room. Pulverized glass crunched underfoot like multicolored snow.
“I’m sorry this happened,” Basil said, handing her a cup of coffee and the box from Justeaciable, which contained macarons, a habitual attempt to offset his voice’s natural monotone. “Why don’t you tell us everything you know, from the beginning?”
“It’s in the paperwork you had me write up,” said Mrs Lafayette. She wrapped both hands around the coffee cup. “The back is still intact. Come in, it’s freezing out here.”
Basil and Ari followed her into her workshop. Her workbench was untouched, at least: soldering iron resting in its cradle, surrounded by a crown of broken glass in opalescent shades of pink, blue, and purple.
She explained that she had come into work to find the firefighters already finishing their battle with the dying blaze. She had missed the explosion and had no idea what could have caused it; she was always very careful with the soldering iron, and in any case, the fire hadn’t touched her workshop at all.
“Tell us about your work,” Ari said. “What does a lampshade do, and how much do they typically go for?”
“Chandeliers go for tens of thousands of dollars, and can be enchanted for all sorts of effects. Different kinds of light, illusions, summoning ghosts or keeping them away,” Mrs Lafayette said. “Stained glass lampshades are a few hundred to a few thousand, depending on size. One popular one causes plants to grow in the places the light touches. It’s good for keeping bouquets fresh for years.”
Ari made a little delighted noise. She didn’t smile.
“I still don’t really understand what your work looks like,” said Basil, who had never really seen magic and was privately wondering if fresh flowers were worth paying thousands of dollars for.
“I have—ooh, here we go. I keep some of the defective merchandise back here.”
She opened a drawer and took out a dusty, rectangular glass lamp. It had a pattern of irises on it, blue and green and purple and gold, all nearly black because it was unlit. Basil heard Ari’s breath catch. It would be beautiful lit, but now it was unremarkable, and one of the teal background panels had cracked.
“Hold it and think of love,” Mrs Lafayette said.
Basil took it and tried to think of love. There was nothing there. He had loved his parents, but when he called them to mind, it was only their gravestone and not their faces. All he could think of, suddenly, was returning to his empty apartment. The lights would be off, the winter smell slightly stale, cold seeping in from the windows.
“May I?” Ari said, surprisingly gently.
Basil handed him the lantern. He closed his eyes and took it.
Light leapt out from behind the glass, as pure as sunlight, bringing the stained-glass irises to blazing life. It cast star-shaped fragments of light across the walls in sprays and constellations, as strong as summer sunlight. Ari opened his eyes. Basil realized for the first time that they were a deep, clear, red-tinged brown, like black tea in sunlight.
“Beautiful work,” he said, handing it back. The light died, leaving Basil off-balance and strangely bereft.
“Thanks. I can’t sell it because of the crack,” she said, handing it back to Basil. “Keep it, if you’d like. Careful not to cut yourself.”
“Thank you,” Basil said, tucking it into his coat pocket for reasons he couldn’t even articulate to himself. “If we can get back to the cause of the fire…”
It seemed, she said, to have come up from the cellar, at least according to the scorch marks. She didn’t store much down there, only glass, which shouldn’t have been flammable. She hoped whatever had happened was covered by her insurance policy. If it wasn’t, she said, she would have to close up shop. Get a job doing something ordinary, even though she was nearly eighty and the business had been her grandmother’s.
“Please,” she said quietly, not looking at them.
He thought of the front room, and the wreck of all that beauty. He could bring macarons; he couldn’t say that anything would all be alright.
By silent agreement, they went to inspect the cellar. It smelled burnt and chemical. There was a layer of soot over everything which made it feel like walking into a pit, dark and charred. Basil fumbled his flashlight on.
“I’ve never been in a magic shop before,” he said.
Ari smiled in the watery light of the flashlight, although it looked bitter. “Like I said. It’s rare.”
“What makes it so rare? Why can some people do it but not others?”
“Oh, everyone can do it. It just takes years of study, you have to dedicate your life to it, and most people don’t like to look too closely at what magic uses as fuel.”
“What does magic use as fuel?” Basil said, unsettled by the fact that he had never asked. His imagination spun out odd answers: newt’s eyes, virgin’s blood.
It was cold in the cellar, cold trickling in from upstairs with the dust from the ceiling.
“Grief,” Ari said.
“What?”
“It’s why the strongest magic users tend to be elderly. They outlive the greatest number of people,” Ari said. “That, and the younger ones burn out like candles, I don’t know why.”
“Good Lord. Then, who did you—” Basil said, and then bit his tongue. It was none of his business.
“My sister,” Ari said. “It’s why my magic is good at finding things. She wanted to be a detective.”
“Police?”
“Ah, no, of the independently wealthy and famous variety. She died when she was twelve,” Ari said. “I think Mrs Lafayette must have loved someone who loved astronomy, going by all the stars.”
“That seems logical,” Basil said, although he felt heavy and stupid and cold.
“Filing cabinet in place of a soul,” Ari said, shaking his head, but there was no anger in it. It sounded almost fond.
Basil held out his hand. It was pitch black in the back of the room, but there was a draft, raising the hairs on the back of his arm. He followed it. One wall and part of the floor had been blasted outwards: bad for the structural integrity of the building, likely to increase the contractor’s quote. There was a black empty space beyond.
Basil climbed into it, flashlight wavering. Ari followed. It opened into a little cool maintenance tunnel, all concrete with numbers stenciled on the walls. Fifty feet in, they emerged into a burnt-out underground laboratory.
The walls were all cabinets. Basil wrapped a handkerchief around one hand and opened it: rows and rows of white pills, untouched by the explosion. The floor creaked ominously. He recognized the Vertilax logo.
“Look at this,” Ari said.
Basil looked. There was something like a sooty steel operating table, and over it, a sigil smeared with blood.
“What on earth is that?” he said, coming over to look.
The floor creaked ominously again.
“I don’t know,” Ari said. “I can’t tell what they were trying to do. That’s the symbol for fire, though. It might be anti-aging.”
Basil had no idea what those two things had to do with one another. He decided he didn’t want to.
“There’s no way Vertilax is licensed to do any of this.”
Ari met his eyes. “I don’t think anyone is.”
Basil took out his camera and snapped a few photographs, all according to procedure: the operating table, the sigil, the scorch marks, the Vertilax logo. Ari stood unhelpfully nearby saying things like “fascinating!” and murmuring to himself about anti-aging.
Somewhere, there was the sound of a door opening. It sounded deep and heavy and metal, like the door to a safe.
Ari and Basil made horrified eye contact. Footsteps echoed down the concrete corridor.
At the last second, Ari grabbed Basil by the front of his coat and shoved them both into a tiny narrow supply closet, between cabinets. It pressed them together like books in a bookshelf, chest to chest. Basil could have rested his chin in Ari’s hair.
He smelled like almonds and sugar. Basil waited to feel the inevitable wave of annoyance about it. When it came, though, it didn’t feel like annoyance. In the dark, in those ten seconds of absolute privacy, it felt like new grass pushing through an old layer of snow, somewhere in his ribcage. It hurt, but there was something bright about it.
“What a mess,” someone said outside, echoing.
“Someone’s head will roll. Have you decided how to seal the entrance?”
“Dynamite. Shaped charge.”
“Seems violent.”
“Boss’s orders. Besides, no one will feel it from the street.”
Basil could feel Ari’s tension, radiating out like heat. The acoustics in the tunnels were strange. The voices could have been five feet away or five hundred.
Leave and be discovered, or stay and be exploded? They couldn’t talk about it, in case someone heard. Basil put a hand on Ari’s shoulder—not to urge him one way or another, but driven by the same odd impulse that had made him pay for a third coffee. Oddly, Ari relaxed fractionally.
Then there was a blast, louder than anything he had ever heard. The floor crumbled. They fell together into the deeper dark.
When Basil next opened his eyes, the darkness was complete. There was no light coming in from anywhere.
“Ari?” he said softly.
Ari said, wheezing, “I’m here.”
Basil fumbled around for his flashlight. He found it by touch: the long cylindrical body, and then a circle of shattered glass. It was broken beyond hope. His camera seemed alright, at least, and when he checked his inner pocket, Mrs Lafayette’s iris lantern seemed no more broken than it had been before.
He took it out in the complete darkness and turned it over and over in his hands, checking for new cracks. He couldn’t feel any.
“I can’t find my flashlight. You?” Ari said, strangely muted.
“It’s broken.”
“Ah.”
They sat for a moment.
“It’s illegal, what Vertilax is doing,” Basil said.
“Absolutely it is,” Ari said. “Why?”
“The only criminal activity covered by Mrs Lafayette’s insurance policy is theft and arson,” Basil said. “We’re going to have to deny her claim.”
“The people involved in that unlicensed magical experiment will likely go to prison,” Ari said.
“What good does that do her? She’ll lose her business either way,” Basil said.
He shifted and caught his palm on the broken flashlight. The pain tugged at something in his chest, and he burst unexpectedly into tears, just like a child. It wasn’t quiet. Ari shifted, obviously disconcerted.
“It’s a magic shop,” Ari said.
“What does that matter?”
“You hate magic.”
Had Basil said something like that? Possibly. He couldn’t remember now.
“What is the point of insurance?” he said, instead of bothering to respond.
“We protect our clients against unexpected future losses?” Ari said.
“Right. Exactly. For a reasonable fee, we tell them that no matter what happens, they’ll recover. Everything will be more or less okay. When something bad happens, and something bad always happens, we spread out the cost among a wider group of people and soften the blow. We take their money and we promise them the future.”
“The future is never promised,” Ari said gently.
“Then it should be!” Basil said, something between a whisper and a shout. “We should be able to make things a little better, even if it’s just a little. Even if it’s just money. We should be able to help.”
Complete silence, complete darkness. He couldn’t hear Ari breathe.
Then Ari inhaled sharply, and said, “I am going to touch your shoulders. It’s very dark, so I may miss. Is that alright?”
“What? Fine,” Basil said, strangled because he was still crying.
As gently as a snowflake falling, Ari patted Basil’s knee, and then his shoulder, and then he pulled him forward into an awkward hug. Basil sobbed into Ari’s collar, inhaling the smell of starch and puff pastry and cologne he had never been close enough to notice before, warm and full of winter spices.
It was humiliating to be held. But nothing was easy, and he would have to tell Mrs Lafayette that she would lose her business. Outside, the streets were gray and plastered with Vertilax advertisements. If they ever made it out, he would return to his empty apartment with its hollow rooms and stale winter air. It had been February for at least a year. And here, now, Ari’s hand came to rest in the small of his back.
Ari said, “I didn’t know you cared.”
“I really try not to,” Basil said. “It never seems to work.”
“No. I like that about you.” Ari held him at arm’s length. “Did you ever really hate me, or were you just having a long series of bad days?”
“I never hated you,” Basil said.
It was just that the world was at least half awful, all the time, but the world was a moving target. Ari was always right there, in the next cubicle over. He didn’t know how to say that, though.
“We can’t start liking each other now, though. We’re too set in our ways,” Ari said seriously.
“Oh, of course. Imagine if we went around liking each other.”
“Civilization would collapse,” Ari said.
“Still,” Basil said, wiping his eyes, “with this important diplomatic development, the normal human behavior bonus may be within reach.”
“That’s something. I’m sorry we can’t help Mrs Lafayette.”
“It’s how it goes. If we insured against everything, we wouldn’t be able to charge reasonable rates,” Basil said.
“But you hate it,” Ari said.
Basil took a deep breath, then said, “Yes.”
By some strange magic, he felt better for admitting it.
“I hate to say this,” Ari said, “but what do we do now? Shout? Wait for the fire department to dig us out?”
Basil turned the iris lantern over in his hands, thinking. It was hard to focus on the problem. All he could think was that he was glad it was Ari here, rather than anyone else.
He thought about Ari, with his identical pastries and his love for magic and his casual cheer and his lifelong grief. They hadn’t been as kind as they could have been to each other. They were learning now, though.
In his hands, the iris lantern blazed suddenly gold, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. The room lit up like daylight, projected star patterns dancing on the walls. Colors leapt to life, reflecting on Ari’s tie pin and his messy black hair.
“Oh, clever, I forgot you had that,” Ari said brightly, not at all like he’d guessed what Basil had been thinking about.
There was a gap in the wall, and a way out.
Outside, February was very cold. The sun was a lemony streak of light against the horizon, bright in a world of gray. It had little echoes of light in the icicles.
Basil took the film from his camera to a photo shop to get it developed.
“Three copies, please,” he said wearily. One for the insurance company, one for Mrs Lafayette, and one for the prosecutor’s office.
“Make it four,” Ari said. Then, to Basil, “We’ll expense it.”
“You have a plan of some sort,” Basil said.
Ari said, “Maybe.”
Rather than go home, or report back to work, Ari walked back towards the cafe called Justeaciable, then further, where all the law offices were. He stopped below one that said A. Ramos Gutierrez, Attorney at Law and rang the doorbell.
“She’s a plaintiff’s-side attorney,” he said, hands in his pockets, breath steaming in the cold. “A brilliant one.”
Basil felt slightly lighter. “So then—“
“Criminal law can’t help Mrs Lafayette,” Ari said. “But civil law might. There’s a chance that she could recover the cost of the damage to her shop, and more, minus Ms Ramos’s fees. I know she takes clients on a contingency fee basis. Mrs Lafayette will only have to pay her if they win.”
“And she’ll take the case, and they will win,” Basil said slowly, “because there’s clear evidence that Vertilax was at fault.”
“Well, the future is never promised,” Ari said. “But I think the odds are good.”
Ms Ramos buzzed them in. Ari and Basil took a narrow wooden staircase up to a small office, full of potted plants and warmth blazing off a radiator. Ms Ramos put down her teacup and raised an eyebrow at all the soot they were tracking in.
“Ari,” she said. “Always a pleasure to see you when you’re not an expert witness for my opposing counsel. What can I do for you?”
“How would you like to take on Vertilax on behalf of the residents of Kalanchoe Street?” Ari said.
“I think,” she said, starting to smile, “that I would like that very much indeed.”
An hour later, they had arranged a meeting with Mrs Lafayette and Ms Ramos. Ari had been the one to tell Mrs Lafayette that the company wouldn’t cover her losses, largely because he could see that Basil didn’t want to do it.
Outside, it started to snow, huge feathery flakes that lit up gold under the streetlights. Ari breathed on his hands, streetlights reflecting bright in his eyes.
“We can’t always help people,” he said. “But sometimes we can.”
“That’s not exactly within the scope of our role,” Basil said, but he felt much lighter than before.
“I’m just angling for the normal human behavior bonus,” Ari said.
Basil laughed. For once, it was easy.
“Come to dinner,” Ari said, too quickly, like it was involuntary. “At my apartment. I’ll make soup.”
“Alright,” Basil said, in spite of everything.
He went straight there, and Ari lent him a change of clothes and a towel. He took a shower, watching the gold patterns the streetlights made in the frosted glass and Ari’s lemon-yellow rubber duck. The mirror fogged. The tension in his shoulders melted.
He got out, changed, and took the iris lantern out of his old soot-stained clothes. Ari’s clothes were much too small—his wrists stuck out and the buttons strained over his stomach—but he was decent, at least. Ari smiled at him in the kitchen.
“It’s broccoli cheddar,” he said.
“Life-saving,” Basil said, and meant it.
He hung the iris lantern in Ari’s window and touched it gently. He thought of Ari, and then—as if love was a machine that needed a rolling start—his parents, friends from college, friends from childhood who had died or moved away. The light kindled at once, and stayed.
He wondered if that was the trick to magic: putting the despair aside just enough so that a memory could be mostly love instead of mostly sadness. Ari was right, then. That was something worth learning.
Ari was watching him, quiet and hopeful, as if he was developing suspicions about how Basil had made the lantern work. He finished making the soup, though, and ladled it into mismatched bowls. Basil’s had a blue china iris on it.
When Ari kissed him, later, something about it felt like a question. He kissed back like he was trying to answer. Outside, snow accumulated slowly and inevitably, like grief. Inside, the radiator turned on, and the lantern spilled blue and gold light across the room, and just for a little while, everything was a little easier than before.