CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Judges and Other Issues

Judge Rassolnik was listening to country music on his computer. Really bad country music. Max was delighted – it gave him another reason to dislike the man.

Blue jeans, black fur

Everybody is a-looking at her

Small town, light beer

This wolfpack is huntin’ for deer

“Oh my god,” said Max from the doorway, “is that a country music werewolf?”

The judge looked up at him. “Lexi Blanc is the latest thing. Where you been sleeping, boy? We forgive her for being a bloody wolf.”

With those selfsame werewolves, as it happens. “I’ve thought over our conversation, Rassolnik.” Max decided that an elderly dude who tried to break into his house in a hoodie should not be dignified with the term judge.

“Have you, now?” Rassolnik’s tone was icy with dislike of either Max or his informality. The judge was a smallish, roundish, baldish man. He might once have been good-looking but had forgotten how sometime in his late teens and never bothered to look it up again. His face was all frown and no smile, and his eyes were brown and cold.

“About you wanting to visit the old place? For my dad’s sake.”

“Indeed.”

“You know it’s enchanted, right?”

“Oh, is it?”

“Don’t be coy. You tried to break in. Hope you didn’t get rid of that hoodie – some kinkster half your age is sure to bounce on your cock in titillated excitement just because of how inappropriate it looks on you.”

“No cause to be crass, boy.”

“No? Why not? Seems to me you come skulking around my house. Then when you can’t get in, you pull weight around my job and pretend to play nice with me when we both know you’re after something.”

“You’re strangely brave, aren’t you, for a sumage?”

“You met my father. Can you imagine being raised by that?”

“Poor little boy, was it awfully rough?” There was no sympathy in his tone.

“I could rescind my offer. Play nice, old man.”

Rassolnik gritted his teeth.

Max couldn’t stop himself from taunting. “I can get inside, did you know?”

The judge looked genuinely surprised. “Takes a real complex enchantment to recognize and allow in one man.”

Two men, but you don’t need that information. “Is that so?”

“Didn’t think Darius was capable of that level of complexity.”

“Strongest Surge of his generation, did you forget?”

“Strong doesn’t mean capable of complexity.”

“Now, that is an odd statement, from a Surge.” Max switched tactics. “You tell me what you want, I’ll go inside the house and bring it out to you. Then you tell everyone else who cares that it’s done. Then I can clean out the bloody place, break the enchantment, and move on with my life.”

“You believe that you can break it?”

Max looked at him, grinning. Fucking Surge, always underestimating other mages. “I’m a sumage, I work with sumages, fucking you all up is kinda what we do. Did you forget?”

“Oh. Ah. Of course. So, why not just do that right now?”

“I’d have to organize it. It’d take a coven of sumages. I hate teamwork. And I still wouldn’t know what you’re after inside.”

“You’re so much like your father.”

Max felt an unaccustomed rage burn his ears. “Ah ah ah. What did I say about playing nice?”

“Why the sudden change in attitude, boy? I know I’m not the first to try getting inside – you left that enchantment untouched for a decade. Living in your little hovel.”

“You know an awful lot about me.”

“Your father was the greatest Surge of his generation.” The judge parroted Max’s own words back at him, but it was as if it the sentence hurt his mouth, slicing the judge’s lips as they moved through. “Which makes you our greatest failure. We all had such high expectations. You were meant to be it, the perfect civic mage, the ultimate combination of genes and ability.”

“Yes, so I was told. Ended up a sumage, gay, and unwilling to procreate. Such a disappointment. Daddy dearest might have tried to spawn again, I suppose, but the radiation turned him sterile. It’s a miracle I happened at all.” Max knew his mouth twisted on the irony of that statement.

“Is that why he only had the one kid? I always wondered. Do you think the radiation made you, you know…”

“A big fat homo? I don’t think it works that way, babycakes.”

“No. Made you sumage.”

“You’d probably know more about that than I do.”

The judge shrugged. “The Barker family has always been cagey about its breeding program.”

“What did they want out of it? I always wondered. What was I meant to be? The ultimate warrior? A fucking superhero? There comes a point where it doesn’t matter how much quintessence a Surge controls, all he can do is Surge, and all that Surge can do is blow shit up. What was I meant to be, a quintessence bomb? The nuclear option?”

Rassolnik laughed, a harsh cackle, rusty with disuse. “Darius never told you?”

“No.”

“Get me inside that house and I’ll show you.”

“A bargaining chip? I already told you I’ll get you what you want. I’m done with guarding his secrets.”

“I like to have the upper hand.”

“Of course you do, you’re a Surge.”

“So, we have a deal?”

“Fine. Friday night.”

“Why wait?”

“You want in or not?”

“Friday it is.”

Max turned to stomp out, feeling oddly pleased with himself.

“Mr Barker?”

Max turned back.

“Why now, after ten years?”

“Did you know that I burned my father’s body and scattered his ashes on the ocean? So there would be no ghost.”

Rassolnik winced in sympathetic pain at such a disreputable end for a powerful man, the ultimate insult. It was considered a desecration to any mage’s body, even a sumage, that he not be allowed a chance at being undead. What Max had done was the ultimate fuck you to his father, and no doubt in direct contradiction to his dad’s last wishes. But California was a no-fault state, and inheritance was taken seriously, particularly if there was an enchantment involved. The Barkers were careful, only one heir. So, Max had got the lot despite the fact that, in a way, he had murdered his father’s second chance.

“That’s disgusting,” said the judge.

“I hope you have a good relationship with your children, Rassolnik.” Max gestured with his chin at the framed pictures of the mage and his family scattered about the office.

The man swallowed. “So?”

“So, I was thinking about what I did to prevent his ghost. And I realized, he’s still there. Still haunting me. That stupid house. That dumb enchantment. And I thought, I’m done. I’m done with him. I want him gone. I want you people gone. I want his people gone.”

“Friday.”

“Friday,” agreed Max. “Seven thirty.”

* * *

Biff lounged in the back of the EMT vehicle. He was on ride-along, in case of shifters. It was mind-numbingly dull during the daytime. Shifters were more active at night, and they comprised such a small percentage of the population that Biff’s particular set of savage skills wasn’t needed most of the time. He could help with injured humans, of course, especially if shifter strength was required. Most of the time, however, he hung out in the back of the van and contemplated life.

His phone pinged. Excellent, a distraction.

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: Come by my place tomorrow.

Biff barked out a laugh. He must have left his phone unlocked and alone with Max at some point. The sumage had changed his contact name.

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: I’ve got this judge.

Muscles: Not sure I’m ready for a threesome.

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: Is possessiveness a wolf thing?

Muscles: Maybe. So, this judge? Same one you told me about when drunk, sometimes wears a hoodie?

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: Yeah. I’m gonna give him whatever it is he’s after and spread the word so they stop bothering me. See if he lets slip how to break the enchantment. Then we can start cleaning out the place.

Muscles: Ambitious Friday night plans.

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: You’ll be there?

Muscles: With bells on.

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: Oh yeah, bells where? Actually, I’d prefer fur. If you don’t mind?

Muscles: I get it. You only want me for my tail.

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: We gotta talk about this bestiality thing. It’s too weird. I demand boundaries.

Muscles: You? Boundaries?

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: I might have typed that sentence before I thought about it.

Muscles: So you also type faster than you think?

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: I hate you.

Muscles: I’ll be there at 7.

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: Forget about the bells, wear a butt plug.

Muscles: In wolf form? Are you crazy? How would that even work?

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: I’m an idiot, ignore me. I was trying to flirt. I suck.

Muscles: You suck beautifully. Why don’t YOU wear the plug?

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: Defusing an enchantment while wearing a butt plug? Bit ambitious, even for me.

Muscles: I’m sure that’s someone’s album title.

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: You’re a dick.

Muscles: It that a challenge?

MaxTooSexyForThisPhone: Uh oh.

Muscles: Tomorrow. Baby.

Biff spent the rest of the day smiling to himself at odd moments and totally freaking out his new coworkers. Happy werewolves were unnerving.

* * *

Friday came both too soon and not soon enough, because Max hadn’t seen Bryan all week, but he also hadn’t seen Judge Rassolnik.

Unfortunately for all concerned, it was the judge he saw first.

“I said seven-thirty. It’s not yet seven.” Max crossed his arms and glared at the portly man in his driveway.

“Thought I’d head over early.” Rassolnik’s car was a large, expensive-looking computer turd – designed by code rather than aesthetics.

“Oh, did you? Well, there are some nice coffee shops in town – why don’t you come back in forty-five minutes?”

The man only stood there, watching Max with a tiny critical smile.

Max absolutely refused to invite Rassolnik inside his apartment for any reason. And he wasn’t going near the enchantment until Bryan got there. He scraped his mind for delaying tactics.

“Couldn’t stay away from my scintillating company? Didn’t know you swung my direction, old man.”

The judge only raised his lip in a sneer. He would not be taunted into action or argument.

Max uncrossed his arms. “Fine. I’ll give you a tour of the grounds, you can tell me how you met the old bastard, or how you met your charming wife, or whatever it is that people talk about when they hate each other and still have to socialize.”

“I don’t hate you, Maximillian.” The man’s smile looked like the grin of a cadaver.

“Could have fooled me. Stay there, I’m gonna put on some boots.” Max gave a desultory glance at his impossibly overgrown yard. “And grab my machete.”

Surprisingly, the man did as he was told. But Max did not miss the air of suppressed impatience.

They toured the yard as slowly as Max could manage. The house, inside its enchanted emptiness, stood toward the front of the property. The rest of the yard was overgrown and wild right up to the collapsing fence – no longer high enough to keep out deer – that backed up against GGNRA and the Marin Headlands. Max supposed he’d have to do something about that once the werewolves moved in. They’d want access to the open space, but would they also want a nice yard? I wonder if werewolves keep out deer? I suppose I could talk to Bryan. Like we’re old married fags. Honey, would you go pee the fence line again? Pretty please? I’m worried about my roses.

Rassolnik walked next to him, a little too close. He chose his words carefully, calculated to interest but not reveal. He mentioned that he’d met Max’s father at university, but nothing more. Max wondered if they took the same quintessence control classes.

“Of course, my heritage is just as noble. Rassolniks, like Barkers, have been Surges since the Saturation.”

“You’re saying that you also come from a long line of asshats?”

“My great-great-grandfather was one of the first.” He let the pride leak out, like pus from a septic wound.

“Yeah, mine too. Well, three greats, I think. Hard to be anything beyond that, I suppose. Before that, mages didn’t exist.”

“Not as they do in modern times. No.”

Max looked at him, eyebrow arched. He was about to make a daring move, open his big mouth. It wasn’t a secret but he wanted to see the man’s face, see if he already knew. “Great-Great-Great-Grandpa Barker was there, you know? He witnessed the Super Saturation.”

No surprise, so Rassolnik knew.

“And he survived,” the judge added.

Max gestured at himself. “Obviously. He wasn’t inside the Sphere. He lived to spawn.”

“Obviously.” Rassolnik’s lip curled as he looked Max up and down.

Max shuddered. It was so long ago, but he still didn’t like to think about it. Very few did. All those deaths. And what was left? A world without. Without the Sphere of Quintessence, without airships, without the thousands who’d been traveling the Sphere the day they accidentally blew the whole thing up.

The judge looked at him, eyes sharp. “Do you regret it?”

“What’s for me to regret? It happened a hundred years ago.”

“I’ve no regrets. It gave me this.” Rassolnik made a swirling motion with his hand.

Max could feel but not quite see the quintessence collecting. His trace lines flared. He prepared to Place, in case the man decided to actually throw it at him. At the same time, he said, with forced flippancy, “Oh yeah, because that does me so much good.”

The judge shook his head and dropped his hand. The quintessence returned to its liminal state, disappeared to wherever it went in between uses. “You’re actually not very much like him, are you?”

Max felt a rush of unprecedented warmth for the man. “That may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

Rassolnik looked startled, then smiled like a cadaver once more. “You’ve more of your mother than Darius would have liked. You know rumor was she had kitsune blood?”

“How is that even possible?” Max wondered.

“She was very beautiful. And small.”

“You knew her?”

“I was at their wedding. A powerful alliance.”

“And yielding up such a profound disappointment.”

“Yes. You.”

A growl met that statement.

Unobserved, Max’s werewolf had made his way through the overgrowth. The speckling of the setting sun made him difficult to see, even after hearing him, until he growled again and showed huge white teeth.

“What the hell?” The judge jumped back.

Max couldn’t stifle a swell of pride and affection. Mine. My predator. My protector. My joy.

Max put out a hand, and the wolf padded to him, pressed up against him, warm and comforting. Max loved the silken softness of his ears.

“That your dog? Looks like a big wolf. I’d almost say werewolf, but I know there’re no packs in the Bay Area. One of the draws of moving here, if you ask me. I hate werewolves.”

Max looked fondly down at Bryan. “He’s got wolf in him, probably some Irish wolfhound and a bit of Samoyed. He’s protective. You met him last time you visited. Remember?”

Rassolnik looked like he wanted to throw something at the wolf. “Oh, I remember, nasty piece of work.”

“Only to trespassers. Come on. It’s probably safe to try the enchantment now.”

“Safe? Now? What does that mean?”

Max gave him an enigmatic smile. Sometimes, Bryan was right, silence was best. Let the judge stew a little. Let him think Max knew something important.

The house was as before, enchantment unchanged for all it had let Max and his wolf visit last week. With a cheeky grin, Max put his hand to Bryan’s furry head and simply walked in and through the door. His wolf stuck close, tensed as they crossed the threshold. Woozy tingling overtook Max. He wondered if Bryan felt it too. Max let the wolf’s presence comfort and soothe, as if Max were a confused compass needle and Bryan his true north.

“Well? Come on, then.” Max looked back at the judge, knowing he was being a cheeky asshole.

Rassolnik swallowed and approached. He didn’t even get as a far as the threshold. The enchantment did something to him as he tried to cross the point where the earth became bare.

It was difficult to tell what – an electric shock, an exacerbated version of the tingle-nausea, something else? Whatever it was caused the man to stumble back, swearing.

“You little turd.” He reacted as expected, curling one hand, collecting quintessence and activating it to energy – intending to hurl and to harm.

Max laughed. “You think that will fare any better than last time? Like my father wouldn’t prepare for a Surge attack. That’s all he cared about. That’s all he would prepare for.” He crossed his arms and looked at the judge from his fortified position. “You got any other bright ideas?”

Rassolnik frowned at him. “Have you tried to Place it?”

“No.”

“But you thought about it.”

Max shrugged. “I figure it’d take two Plugs, two Pinchers, and two Placers to take it down. Or maybe just one Placer – after all, Dad is dead.”

“To counterbalance the dispersal. That’s a good idea.”

“Don’t strain something praising a sumage.”

“So, why haven’t you done it?”

“That’s a lot to ask of my coworkers. It hurts, remember.”

“As a savage judge, I could order them to do it.”

“I don’t think DURPS is about to authorize the destruction of an inherited enchantment just because you want inside.”

“So, let me in, then. I’ll get what I came for, tell you what you want to know, and then it won’t be an issue.”

Max looked at Bryan. The wolf shook his head, slowly. He could read Max’s intent and he didn’t think it was a good idea.

Max said, “I am so tired of this being my problem. Of my father coming back to haunt me. I thought I put him to rest permanently.”

The werewolf sighed.

Max wasn’t sure if it would work, but he and Bryan moved back outside the enchantment together. There he shuddered but grabbed Rassolnik by the hand, a fat, cold, meaty thing, and tugged him after. He kept contact through the tingle, his other hand firmly gripping his wolf’s furry ruff.

There was a strange bubbly popping sensation, as if they were pulling a cork from a bottle of champagne, and then all three were inside the enchantment. Max dropped Rassolnik’s hand and quickly backed away.

The nausea clearly had a greater effect on the judge. He folded to his knees just over the threshold and dry-heaved.

“Don’t you dare! I’ll make you clean it up,” threatened Max.

The man managed to keep it down. He sat back on his heels and took a few deep breaths. Standing at last, he glanced around. “It looks exactly the same as when I was last here, when your father was alive.”

Max glared at the stunning opulence of the late ‘80s on display. “I know, hideous, isn’t it? I must speak to my interior decorator.”

The judge didn’t respond. His expression had turned covetous and faintly crazed.

“So,” said Max in a singsong tone, “where is the thing?”

Rassolnik, trancelike, led Max into the study, one of the front rooms, just off the entranceway. It had been Max’s father’s domain, a place that Max saw but only during discipline. Was there a safe I never knew about? That’d be very like dear old Dad.

No. Not that.

The judge was approaching a small marble pedestal in the far corner of the room. Max knew it well – it was partly hidden behind his dad’s favorite wingback chair.

On top of the pedestal was a lead box, and on top of that was an urn with a long-dead plant inside. The judge lifted off the plant. His movements were jerky with purpose, and he no longer tried for avuncular small talk.

Rassolnik pressed the hidden button, and Max watched without surprise as the lead box folded itself away in an eerie articulated manner to reveal a leaded glass display case underneath.

That’s why the plant was there, after all. It’s not as if his father was a profound horticulturalist. The plant was a canary in a coal mine. For inside that case was an innocent-looking circular book that was not at all innocent.

Max frowned and crossed his arms, backing away slowly. “You want my father’s Saturation Codex? But why? That one is irradiated. There are plenty of copies around that won’t make you sick.”

Next to him, the wolf tensed. Bryan’s nostrils flared as if he could smell the radiation. Or perhaps the box leaked some other scent beyond human capacities. Max supposed the codex might reek of quintessence, more coolant than anything else, ever. It was infused with the stuff in an irradiated form, kept outside of liminal, active yet still neither energy nor matter, just toxic.

Max explained for the benefit of his werewolf. “That’s my several-times-great-grandfather’s personal copy. He witnessed Super Saturation. Caught some of the radiation too, as well as gaining a fully activated quintessence ability. He was on the front lines as an observer. The very first Surge Barker. The family was so proud.”

Rassolnik ignored this. The judge was scrabbling at the glass box ineffectually, his hands shaking as he fumbled about the base, trying to figure out how to detach the box and carry the codex away safely. The leaded glass container was bolted to the pedestal, which was in turn fastened to the floor.

Which made Max understand at last what was happening. “You want my ancestor’s notes, the ones in the margins. Did he see something important?”

Rassolnik continued to ignore Max, getting more and more frantic.

“Does this have to do with the Order?” Max wondered.

The judge visibly flinched.

Max’s wolf growled his confusion.

“Secret society,” Max explained, wondering if the judge thought him crazy since he kept explaining things to his dog. “Dad told me about it. Before I failed, of course. The Order was made up of quintessence scientists. My premier ancestor was there to observe the war, and when they bombed the beacon, he noted the consequences.”

Rassolnik said, absently, “He was there to observe the beacon, not the war.”

Max sighed, “You’re never going to get it out like that. You have to break the glass and risk exposure or leave it be. Or come back later with a bulldozer or something, after we start tearing apart the place. Take the whole pedestal then.”

“We?” The judge looked up.

“Oh, did I not tell you? I’m renting this house to a pack of werewolves. Father hated them too, just like you do. And I so love irony. This here is one of them – say hi, honey.”

And with that, he gave Bryan a nudge. His wolf charged.