The Sit-Down
((After some false starts, Grim tells him all about the Rosicrucians.))
Finally, I stopped. The miles had slipped by. I probably had sounded like I was whining, being that I was denied learning.
He asked, “What finally made you leave?”
“They threatened to kill me.”
“Really.”
“Honest to God.”
He glanced at me. “How many people did you hurt?”
I stammered. Okay, if he thought I hurt people, I might be okay. “A few,” I said quietly.
“You must know the exact number.”
“Five, six?”
“You meant to hurt them.”
“They were going to kill me! They tied me to a stake and set fire to it! What was I going to do, let them?”
“You summoned demons.”
“Daemons!” I made sure to put that “a” sound in there. “They’re not what you think.”
“Oh? The Keys of Solomon and the Ars Goetia call them rulers of hell.”
“Hell isn’t infern—hey! You know those books?”
“I’ve read them.”
“So you know that—”
“I know that what you’ve been taught by the ‘Rosy Cross’ is wrong and evil. They can call them minor spirits, guides, or whatever they want, but they’re demons just the same, and you are a sorcerer.”
“But at least I learn something.”
“How? Do you know the last spell you cast? What you did, how you did it? Or did your ‘daemon’ tell you?”
I crossed my arms and looked out the window. It was a harbinger of hell. I could summon it again if I wanted to. I knew the spell…But when I tried to think of it, nothing came to me. Not the words, the motion I made in the air, the tone of voice. The spells only came to me if I needed it, and it was forgotten after that.
“That doesn’t matter,” I said after pouting. “I know any spell I need to know.”
“Then tell me a spell to bend time, so I can get to Mount Auburn before the ambulance.”
I thought, Grimalkin? But she didn’t answer me. So I tried to go back to my learning, but I hadn’t even touched upon that in the Academy.
He said, “You don’t know, do you?” He didn’t say it accusingly. I half expected him to. I read it at first that he did.
“No. I don’t.”
He pressed harder on the petal, I felt the car lurch into a fifth gear. “Do you know why teachers choose apprentices, and knowledge is taught that way?”
“To keep people from learning more than their teachers,” I snapped.
“No. So that the student learns.” The miles disappeared in flashes of light. We were going way too fast. “We don’t hand you the Grand Grimoire and say, ‘Here you are, go have fun with that.’”
“Why not? Why not, really? Don’t give me the ‘because you can’t handle it’ line because I can handle it just fine!”
“Because you won’t learn it. What are the four powers of the sphinx?”
“The what?”
“The four words of the Magus?”
I said nothing. I had no idea what he was talking about.
“They teach you nothing there?”
“Our daemons guide us.”
“So they say.” He eased his foot off the pedal. “They are not true magi.”
“And you are?” I said, I know with a sneer.
“Yes,” he said, and pulled off an exit, not saying another word.
I was too stunned to give a snappy comeback. I suddenly remembered the tarot reading – a man with dark hair and light eyes – reversed, so a tyrant – would be a teacher. Quintin had dark hair and eyes, hidden by thick glasses and his ever-present hat pulled low over his head. Or were they blue eyes, just tinged dark?
We pulled into the driveway just as the ambulance was taking Dottie out. She was still out like a light. “You stay with her,” Quintin said. “Tell them I have all her insurance info. Still want to be called Bob?”
“It’s my middle name,” I said. “Robert.” Though I preferred Robert.
“Okay, Bob.”
I jumped out of the car as he stopped near the ambulance, and then he took off. I had no idea where I was. I went over to the EMT’s and they said, “Are you 18?”
I had turned 17 that April. “Yes,” I lied. They let me follow them.
Inside the warren of the ER, I got immediately lost. And sick to my stomach as I heard someone retching just as we walked in. The smell was of a hospital – antiseptic and sickness. We waited in the hallway for a little while. Finally a nurse said, in passing, “Room sixteen,” and continued on her way.
The EMT’s went there, a glass-enclosed space with curtains around. Curtains were everywhere. We were right across from the nurse’s station.
A nurse came in, glanced at me. I said, “Her boyfriend’s outside with the insurance info—”
“Step outside, please,” she snapped at me.
I put my head down and went out.
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