Columbine

“No luck, huh?” Robert Newman asked, leaning too casually in his seat, arms crossed, one leg over the other.

Alice was past trying to threaten him into giving her more information. She was starting to believe that Damien really might be dead. There was no way to tell for sure, and the fact that she hadn’t felt it merely meant that it could have happened outside of a one-mile radius.

“Does it look like I’m lucky?” Alice mumbled, staring at the shiny, metallic surface of the table they were sitting at. At this point, she felt like the unluckiest person on the surface of the planet.

Not only was she doing a job she hated and working for the Demataxt against her will to begin with, but now the only person who had made it bearable was probably back in the demonic dimension somewhere, anxiously awaiting a third trip back to Earth.

“So no one at the bar helped you out at all?” Robert Newman pried.

“Oh, they couldn’t wait to help us find a demon hybrid. They were practically stepping over each other to try and help us.” Alice snapped.

“Not a single traitor among the lot, huh?” Robert Newman was obviously fighting the urge to smile. Of course this was good news for him. People were more loyal to the FFH than they would ever be to the Demataxt.

“Why are you so upset anyway?” He asked. “If your friend’s really a demon, they can just summon him back from hell, can’t they?”

“Who’s ‘they’?” Alice snapped again.

“Your people.” Robert Newman clarified. “Don’t they look after their own?”

“Not anymore.” Alice sighed, and looked at the big mechanical clock in the corner. Twenty more minutes to go. It would undoubtedly feel like twenty years.

“What do you mean, not anymore?” Robert Newman asked.

“I mean that nobody cares about demons. If anything, they despise them.” Alice didn’t enjoy saying those words at all. Not only were they true, but they further convinced her that she might not see Damien again. She tried not to think about that.

“Really? I thought you were all in the same boat.” Robert Newman looked oddly fascinated at this information.

“Haven’t you read any newspapers at all in the last five years?” Alice stared. “The Demataxt gave its full history when your governments agreed to cooperate with them.”

“Sorry.” Robert Newman shrugged. “I guess I was distracted.”

Alice sighed. She was too exhausted for this. But then she remembered that the less she thought about Damien, the more time she had before she broke down completely.

“If you think the Demataxt was always so organized, you’re wrong.” She said. “It used to be just mages trying to kill all the demons in the world, except it couldn’t do anything that the demon lords didn’t like, or they’d just be obliterated.”

“Didn’t bullying demons count?” Robert Newman tilted his head.

“Nope. Demon lords only care about themselves and other demon lords. Nobody else.” Alice explained.

“Why didn’t you mages just kill the demon lords?” Robert Newman interrupted again.

“You think it’s that easy?” Alice asked. “If it had been at all possible, it would have been done a long time ago.”

The mention of killing demon lords had made her remember Elizabeth again. God, she missed her. She missed the way Liz could turn any situation into a game, whether it was tricking Alice into buying high heels or throwing down with someone. Did Liz even know about Damien? Alice was sure that if Liz had found out, she’d have been on the next boat to Egypt in a heartbeat.

“Anyway,” Alice continued, “That’s how it was until a few years ago. That was when electricity stopped. It was then that demon lords decided that it was the perfect chance to be globally acknowledged, so they started cooperating fast. Demon attacks pretty much stopped altogether, and mages didn’t have a reason to protect humans any more. It didn’t take long for corruption to set in, as you can probably tell.”

Robert Newman was staring at her, eyes fixed on some random place on her forehead in perfect attention. Alice blinked. Had he actually enjoyed that story?

“I still don’t get why they won’t get your friend back. You said he was cooperating, right?” He asked.

“Doesn’t matter.” Alice sighed. “Mages still hate demons. Would you bother pulling a serial killer out of jail just because he’d started cooperating”

Robert Newman looked down at the table.

“You make it sound like your friend was different.” He said.

“He was different.” Alice said. “He was more humane than your FFH will ever be!”

She realized that she was starting to yell.

“Look, I’m sorry.” Robert Newman said. “The way it went down, what probably happened was that your friend found their headquarters and they had to take him hostage.”

If he thought it was going to make Alice feel better to hear it put that way, he was deeply mistaken.

“But I know how these people work.” He continued. “They would make demands using a captive as leverage. If they haven’t made demands, something must have gone wrong.”

“Oh, you mean like having a killed the hostage?” Alice sneered. Robert Newman shook his head.

“They’d still pretend he was alive.” Robert Newman informed her.

Alice was starting to think that he was trying to calm her down. It would never work. Whatever the situation was, the anxiety wasn’t going away just because Damien’s fingers hadn’t arrived in the mail.

“So what could have gone so wrong that they’d waste such a valuable find?” Alice asked.

“Don’t know.” Robert Newman shrugged. “He can’t have escaped, since he’s not here. I guess the only other option is that they don’t have him.”

At this information, Alice sat bolt upright.

“Don’t have him?” She asked, eyes going wide. “Well, then who the hell does?”

“Exactly.” Robert Newman said.

There was no concrete evidence that this was the true situation, but it would definitely fit into the puzzle. If some of the members of the FFH had decided that they wanted out, then giving them back Damien would certainly count in their favor at their appeal for an official pardon.

“See?” Robert Newman said. “Your friend might still be alive.”

Alice got up from her chair and started pacing. She ignored the dull pain in her leg. Finally she had something concrete to tell the man in charge.

“Thank you.” She said. “You’ve been a big help.”

Robert Newman didn’t look as proud of that fact as he should have. But then Alice remembered that he had no reason to be proud of himself. Helping the Demataxt was probably excruciating for him every step of the way.

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Don’t mention it.”

“Helping me doesn’t make you a bad person, you know.” Alice felt inclined to inform him. Robert Newman didn’t say anything to that. He actually seemed to feel worse after hearing those words.

“Do you even want to know the human side of the story?” He asked. Alice blinked.

“And what would the human side be?” She asked, finally sitting down.

“We’re all freaked out, that’s what.” Robert Newman said. “Not only did electricity just disappear, but then all you freaks just decided it was your time to shine. Who said we even wanted your help? We’d have pulled through on our own just fine!”

It was clear by now that this was a rant.

“Not to mention,” Robert Newman continued, “you mages obviously think we’re shit. You wouldn’t treat your own like you treat us -- using your freak powers on them if they even breathe the wrong way! You don’t even give us a fair trial before passing a sentence, and it’s always death.”

Alice had no idea how to respond. While true that she’d been aware of this for a long time, she couldn’t exactly do much about it, nor could she act as some kind of spokesperson for the Demataxt as a whole.

“You’re nothing like I expected, you know that?” Robert Newman said. “You’re worse. Do you know why? It’s because you look the other way while all this shit happens to us and then go crying to your big, fancy, paid-for room because you have such a big, bleeding heart.”

Alice hadn’t expected this at all. She felt herself go pale at these fresh insults. Words like ‘freak’ seemed like nothing compared to this. What hurt her the most was that there was some truth in it. It was a truth that she’d known for a while, but no one had ever said it out loud to her. Now that they had, it seemed more real than ever.

“Anything else you’d like to say to me?” Alice asked once Robert Newman had finished.

The part about having a fancy room to go to was utterly false, but she didn’t feel like explaining it to someone that didn’t care.

“Why don’t you try to change things?” Robert Newman asked. “You’re already a mage. The least you can do is work the system.”

“You actually think I’ve got a chance to try helping people like you?” Alice snapped. “I’m already helping keep you alive by not signing a stupid slip of paper. What the hell else do you want?”

This shut Robert Newman up for a moment. Alice didn’t know what compelled her to keep going, but she went on a tirade of her own.

“And there is no way I could ever ‘work the system’, as you so effectively advise me to.” She said. “Do you even know why I have this shit job with a rank of less than five? It’s because my family never joined the Demataxt in five goddamn generations! The only system that it knows is history and loyalty. I have no history or loyalty, therefore I have no say in what goes on here.”

Robert Newman stared at her. Alice took a deep breath and swallowed, hoping that she could bring her pulse down that way.

She hadn’t felt this angry in a long time. She’d been sad plenty of times, but never actually enraged. She looked at the clock and was relieved to see that their time was up. She grabbed her papers and stalked, fuming, out of the room.