Strange Aeons [Book 1]

25. Doomsday [I][part I]

After the explosions, and Staccato's unmasking, the evening had gone very south, very fast. Nobody had understood what had happened, and the Pollos had had all the time to disappear from the walkways. River had, in a very chivalrous way, helped a pale and suddenly incredibly sick Banshee out from the room, passing through the flood of running people with all of his might. He has deposited her out of the theatre and then, with a look that was half apologetic half disappointed had excused himself, turned into a crow, and flown away in the night.

Banshee didn't want to wait for the others. She remembered walking into an alley, half-blinded by confusion, and then she was right in her living room.

She felt a sense of suffocation at the bottom of her throat, and her stomach spinning and turning with the utmost violence. She hurriedly crawled out of the dress that was downright killing her, and back into her tank top and comfortable house shorts.

When Garaham appeared in the center of the room, she had already emptied a whiskey bottle, and her stomach in the meantime, at least two times, in the paper bin beside the couch where she was lying.

«Woman! Whatever possessed you for not answering your phone? We've been looking for you everywhere!» Garaham snarled, snatching the bottle from her fingers. She could barely protest, her head still spinning.

«I had to lie down.»

«From what I have the disgrace to be able to see, you had to gulp down! Look at this bottle. You're shameful!» he put it away, in the proper glass bin. «You came home just to get drunk? Don't you all, usually, ruin your livers together then patch them up with magic like girls in a slumber party?»

«That was Brunswick.» Banshee said. «Surgeon Egon Brunswick. The best heart surgeon in Boston. And, incidentally, the man who saved me hide, ten years ago.»

«Chinese food incoming!» Chico and Vopros entered, and a cloud of fry food smell followed them like hunting follows its prey. They had four bags from a good Chinese restaurant downtown, and big ones, at that. «Sorry we're late, we thought you were hambrientos like us! I could eat an elephant!»

Banshee started to rise up, trying to make up her mind about the food. Some part of her was famished, some just wanted to throw up again.

Garaham was still looking at her with the widest eyes.

«What? Did we interrupt something?» Chico laughed. Then he saw them exchanging a gaze. He panicked. «Ay de mi, we did?»

«No, no. Banshee was just telling me about it... you know, Staccato.» Garaham said, his composure rapidly regained.

«Uh right! That was... man! Who could imagine? At this point, I was really convinced he was Jägermann! What a shock!» Chico went on, without stopping to think, starting to put the food on the table, while Vopros took on his shoulders to put the alcohol.

«Little doctor was always with Grasshopper. Seems we have just made little error.» Vopros pointed out, putting down the glasses.

«Who could imagine the other one was a mage as well? Grasshopper does find himself surrounded by them.» Chico nodded. «Banshee, why are you so white? And why the living room smells like your room on a Saturday morning?»

«I thought you'd go out on Saturdays, like all the young people in town.» Garaham looked at her from up-down. She snorted, and fetched a chair, sitting down at the table.

«I have mass on Sundays if I got at church with a hangover Father Browning bites me head off.» she grumbled.

«Oh, right. You miss all the high Cs.» Garaham said, absent-mindedly. She turned towards him, an eyebrow raised.