Episode 166: Horrible Medical Need (Greg)

It took every ounce of self control Greg possessed not to use air magic to break his fall. He needed this injury, this excuse to talk to Zero.

He landed with a sickening thwunch that squished his insides and definitely damaged a few important things. Then he used that dragon message system to beg for Zero to help him.

It was actually pretty genuine. This hurt. He’d fallen hard. Two stories from the edge of the roof, plus he’d slid a good ways down it from the ridgepole. Even accounting for friction, that was a lot of momentum before he’d even started the air portion of his fall.

And then the landing.

The things he sacrificed…

For the people around here, it didn’t seem to be about pain. That was just a fact of life, like fleas were a fact of life in apartment buildings in the winter. Nothing to worry about, just a background annoyance to contend with.

Zero rounded the corner of the garden wall and approached Greg with a bag in his hand. “Greg,” he greeted.

He was such a guy. If Greg took a conglomerate of what he thought made someone masculine, Zero had all the best traits, plus a steady calm side that Greg wanted to break down because he bet Zero could be a lot of fun behind his public face.

Zero seemed like a guy who’d made himself into a guy because that’s what he thought guys did.

Greg wanted to know whoever was behind that.

“I fell,” he said. Technically true. Gravity and everything. He looked down at his legs, which weren’t hurting as badly as they’d been a minute ago. That was either really good, or really bad. “I thought it was worse than it is,” he added, because optimism.

“Did you break anything?” Zero asked. “Do you think…”

Greg reconsidered. “I honestly felt like I broke both legs, but that was just a shock pain, I think.” Either that or something had happened to the nerves in his legs, but he didn’t think so. He thought he was healing somehow, without medicine.

He wasn’t about to advertise that fact.

“May I check them?” Zero offered.

“Sure,” Greg said. “The ankles.”

Zero pulled gingerly at the lower hem of Greg’s pants, raising them just enough to expose the ankle. He took it expertly in his hands and examined it without causing further pain.

Greg was begrudgingly impressed.

“How is your day going otherwise?” Zero asked. “Anything exciting on the roof?”

Greg glanced up at the steep tiles above their head. “I wouldn’t recommend it for sunbathing,” he joked.

Zero laughed and let go of his ankle. “You look fine,” he said.

That should have been impossible. “I fell two stories,” he complained. It should have at least earned him a visit to Zero’s office, maybe even being left alone in there for a few minutes.

Zero looked at him and then pressed his lips together. “I need to run a quick test,” he said in a voice that was too deadpan. Curious about something, then. Greg wondered what. “Is that okay?” Zero continued. “You may experience minor discomfort.”

Minor discomfort, such as falling off the roof?

“In your office?” Greg suggested. He needed to see where this life energy stuff was stored.

“It isn’t necessary,” Zero said, and Greg deflated a little. Zero looked out across the garden. “If it would make you more comfortable,” he acquiesced.

Greg liked the word acquiesce. He should use it more, especially with Zero. It was a good word for him. A word like agree made it sound like Zero was on board with running whatever test in his office. Acquiesce made it sound like exactly what it was: Zero was humoring Greg.

That was fine. Greg could handle being humored, for the sake of the heist.

“Being out in the open is a little embarrassing,” Greg lied as an apology.

One of the things Greg was going to have to stop doing, was lying. These were decent people. No one here was trying to manipulate him. It would be hard for him to let go of his distrust of people.

One last time, for the distraction, for the benefit to Aadya, for the fun of it.

If he was right about the underpinnings of Zero’s character, it would be good for him too. Something fun to bond over.

“How are you adjusting? Zero asked as they walked into the palace, through the big entryway with the tile and the columns and the giant ferns.

“I like it here,” Greg admitted. “I thought I’d just pass through, but I may stay.” May stay, meaning, I married your queen. “Have you always lived here?”

“No,” Zero confirmed. “I grew up in Sylem – a wiccan realm. Sylem and Babylon are the closest realms to here.”

Sylem, like Salem. Witch trials. Greg wondered if it was coincidence or if there was a connection.

No, he didn’t wonder. That was too big a coincidence. He’d always figured that was nothing more than a historical social experiment about hysteria and hypocrisy, but maybe there was some merit to the whole thing.

“What brought you all the way here?” he asked. “Your medical practice?”

“My wife,” he said.

Ah. Zero had a way of being less interested, the more he cared about something. No wonder Spence was so good at hiding things. The way Zero said my wife, like an ordinary person would have said junk mail, said a ton about their relationship.

Greg tried to remember which one that was, from the meals. The short one with the pageboy haircut and the intense eyes, he thought.

No wonder Spence was such an odd blend of calculating, closed, and vulnerable.

What a family.

“I think I met your son yesterday,” he said. “He showed me around.”

“Spence,” Zero said. Greg had no idea if that was a confirmation or a question or if he just liked saying names to make noise.

“And you’re seeing Aadya?” Zero asked.

Apparently two could play this game, of pretending not to know stuff.

“What gave it away?” Greg goaded.

In the upstairs hallway, not far from where Greg was pretty sure the conference rooms were, Zero unlocked and opened a door that led to a small but well-equipped medical office.

“I’ll let you know in a moment,” Zero said. He gestured for Greg to sit on the examining table. “One small test?” he asked. He slid a thin drawer open and pulled out something silver that he concealed quickly.

“What are you testing?” Greg asked. He was not the world’s most enormous fan of other people’s secrets. His secrets, yes, those were great. Someone else’s? Alarming. Especially when they involved concealed silver things, and Greg.

Zero stepped closer to him. “Your ability to heal,” he replied. “You may have had a strange drink at some point.”

A strange drink? Greg couldn’t remember the last normal thing he’d done. It must have been a long time since Zero’s first visit to a new realm. “Define strange,” Greg requested.

Zero laughed, just barely. “We’ll see?”

He took ahold of Greg’s arm and raised it and then in a flash he’d taken the concealed silver thing – a scalpel – and sliced a cut into Greg’s arm. Not where it would kill him, but deep enough that it would need stitches.

Greg managed not to react, but just barely. Maybe he’d misjudged and Zero was some kind of sick bastard who got off on pain, but…

It was impossible. The seams of skin around the wound Zero had just made, seemed to fuse together on their own. Even the pain was lessened, after just a minute or two.

Aadya had said something. He couldn’t remember her words, but he felt like he should because they mattered. “Is that what she meant,” he muttered. He looked up at Zero. “I can heal from anything?”

He’d gotten fairy magic, somehow. Not the stuff Aadya had deliberately given him, but something to make him essentially a fairy. There were legends about fairy food and drink being dangerous, but there wasn’t anything about fairy food and drink doing this.

Zero got out some kind of sanitizing machine and, after he’d wiped the blade, placed the scalpel in it and started a heating cycle. “Not everything, but most things. There are limits.”

He still needed to almost die, so he could see where Zero kept that life energy.

This wasn’t going to be fun. “Can I see another one of those things?”

Zero took another scalpel out of the same drawer and passed it to him. Greg took a deep breath and swiped it, pressing it deep into the thick of his thigh skin. “Will it heal that?” he asked.

“Yes,” Zero said. If he was surprised by Greg’s actions, he didn’t show it. “I’ve only known one person to die and it required thousands of degrees. He lava surfed as a hobby.”

Whoa. Lava surfing. Add that to his bucket list.

It must have been Drey, again. Somehow, everything came back to Drey. “What was he like?”

“Adventurous, brave, strong-willed.” Zero added the second scalpel to the sanitizer. “I only knew him for a year.”

“That’s 365 days longer than I knew him,” Greg pointed out. He was starting to get the feeling, with all the people at the festival, even with some of the people in the palace, that he was being weighed against the dead hero king who saved the universe.

It was a little irritating.

His leg had stopped gushing blood, so he stood up. “Thanks for your help.”

“Enjoy the perks of your new residency,” Zero commented.

That was a dismissal.

Greg didn’t want to just accept defeat. He didn’t want to get nothing out of this encounter, except evidence that his initial summary of Zero’s character was intact. He strained his mind, and fixed on a possible course: A certain necklace he wanted safe for Molly.

“Oh, one other thing…I have a necklace I’d like to keep safe, and I have Aadya’s magic. Could you show me how to protect it sometime?”

“Konrad may be a better choice. The base three floors are in his control and safe.” Zero said. He got a spray bottle and a towel and wiped down his already-clean countertop.

Deterred again.

The man was an impenetrable wall of politely helpful.

“I want it in my control and safe,” he argued. “There isn’t a spell for that?”

Zero stopped to consider. “There are many,” he said after a moment. “Safe inside a box, or safe while wearing?”

“In a box works,” Greg said. “Maybe in my apartment,” he added. He closed his mouth, shocked with himself. Yes, he’d married Aadya, but she’d never specifically tapped one of the dressers or bedside tables or drawers in the bathroom and told him they were his to use as he liked.

And it definitely wasn’t anyone else’s business whether he’d moved in there or not, which technically he hadn’t.

And he shouldn’t have felt so at home there after so short a time, except he did.

Zero smiled, slightly, at Greg’s shock. It was so slight that Greg bet most people wouldn’t notice, except probably Spence and Mister Butterfly. And his wife, she seemed like the type that noticed everything.

Zero checked his watch. “We can make a fresh spell. Do you want to learn how or have it delivered? And what level of protection?”

Greg was going to be polite-ed to death with this heist.

“The highest possible,” he insisted. “The necklace is a commodity. I would love to learn how.”

Otherwise, the exercise would be futile. The idea was to see how it was done so Greg could use research and intuition to figure out how to either reverse the process, or break into it.

“I have enough time now,” Zero offered. “You’ll need to accept a pet.”

He opened his cabinets, which were filled with jars and packets of plant trimmings, organized in some way Greg didn’t understand but suspected would teach him as much about wicca magic as any textbook. Zero seemed to sort them by use, not alphabetically or according to some other system.

He made one mix and asked Greg to drop a fingernail into it, and a second later a racoon sat on the counter, chittering for a second before it ran its paws down its snout to wipe its face.

She, not it.

Zojei. It was the closest anglification he could come up with for her name.

He whispered it, his index finger curled under her chin, and greeted her. She jumped up onto his shoulder. He felt like he knew her already: Dextrous, capable, loyal, so smart, a little rough around the edges, scrappy.

Perfect.

Zero got a textbook from the shelf by the door and directed Greg’s attention to the pages, working him through the second spell for protecting the necklace. He explained each step, rather than have Greg do it in the office, and then passed him the supplies and a photocopy of the spell’s instructions.

It wasn’t easy. It was exacting, like picking a complex lock, but he suspected it would be just as rewarding to complete.

“Thanks for your help,” Greg said. He was finally optimistic that he’d made some headway towards this heist. And he had Zojei.

He felt like he could flex her, as an extension of himself, and he had a pretty good idea that she’d be useful to have around.

“I’m happy to,” Zero said. Greg guessed they were back to death by politeness.

“So you know we got married,” Greg started. “I don’t think she was planning to share that yet. It was for protection, with the attack.”

“The only ones who I would tell will know by necessity soon enough,” Zero said, cryptically. Greg wondered what the hell that meant, and what Zero thought of the fact of their wedding. He didn’t sound too enthusiastic about it, which annoyed Greg because it really wasn’t any of his business.

“Your wife is involved as well?” Greg asked. It was partly to annoy Zero, since Zero had annoyed him, but it was partly to make sure Zero knew that Aadya expected to die too. Greg suspected she hadn’t been inclined to share that tidbit with anyone so far today.

“She is,” Zero confirmed. “I didn’t know Aadya was, too.”

There. He’d found a way to do something halfway decent for Aadya. Wherever Zero kept his life magic and all his spells stuff, he’d be more prepared to help everyone the more he knew.

“She said something changed,” he explained, “but she wants those babies to be heirs.”

Zero nodded his head and promised, “I won’t share it unless necessary.” He paused and flexed his hands once before he added, more warmly, “And welcome to the family.”

Greg covered his surprise with a quick, “Thank you.” He honestly hadn’t expected that. It made him feel instantly guilty about the heist. “I know some of the people around here like pranks. Have they ever pulled any on you?” he asked.

He suspected at some point, the barn guy whose babies Aadya carried would find a way to mess with Greg, but for now the barn guy seemed preoccupied with his own mess of problems.

“Not often,” Zero said, with new interest. “But I’ve done my share to others.” He sounded amused, pleased with himself.

Maybe Greg and Zero could get themselves into a little prank war.

It would be fun. Especially if his wife and Aadya got involved too.

“I caught wind of one someone’s planning, as a head’s up,” Greg warned, with a bit of a challenge. “All in good fun.”

Mister Polite somehow morphed into Mister Smug. “Hopefully they have a good sense of humor.”

Greg grinned. “One can hope.” The game was on.

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