Free Pandaemonium by Ben Macallan

already turned away.
    Too busy to linger, too well-informed to gossip, too well-connected to be impressed: that was Reno, through and through. As instructed, I took my boy away to find him boots.
    Poor Jacey. His day had become a succession of bewilderments, and what he was possibly – probably – thinking now were bad decisions. Especially the big ones: to come with me when I ran, and to let me choose where we ran to. Here he was off balance and unexpectedly out of his depth, feeling disrespected, disregarded, almost dismissed. He wasn’t used to playing second fiddle, to having the girl he was with seem inherently more interesting than he was. He certainly wasn’t used to being called somebody else’s boy.
    And I was no help, leading him around by the hand with my thoughts all too obviously elsewhere, wondering who’d been enquiring for me here, who I needed to be afraid of now. Not the Cathars, or not directly. One of their mercenaries was still a likely choice, but that was also the lazy choice, the one that didn’t trouble to think things through. Occam’s Razor can do that to you. You make quick assumptions and act as if they’re true, and more often than not you’re right, and the times that you’re not – well. Those are the times that you can end up dead.
    Dead or worse, naturally. There’s always something worse.
    So I was thinking mostly about that and hardly at all about Jacey, just tugging him along like a grown-up with a little boy in tow. Until my thoughts stumbled over something I really didn’t want to think about, and that brought my head up and my mind back to where I was and what I was doing, right here and right now. I was taking Jacey utterly for granted, treating him like a tiresome duty while I considered far more important matters in the privacy of my own skull – and he was letting me. Allowing that to happen. Playing along.
    Being good.
    I glanced up at him, and just that little physical gesture was deeply familiar and deeply wrong, both at once: like a sudden startling reminder of how much had changed this morning, between one boy and another. Jordan was shorter than me. And not with me any more, and maybe hunting me by now, and that was what I really didn’t want to think about. So: right here, right now. Think about Jacey instead.
    He was waiting exactly for that glance, that moment when I remembered that he was there, and that he mattered. He met it with a smile, as though I were the one suddenly being good. Living up to expectations, shaving with Occam’s Razor.
    I said, “Why aren’t you spitting mad?”
    He shrugged. “Too easy.” His version of that’s the lazy choice . “And, look.” His hand swung mine back and forth. “You’re here, and we’re having an adventure. That’s got to be worth something. I guess we’ll find out later, just how much.”
    I didn’t think it was worth all his lovely cars and his fancy bikes; I was damn sure it wasn’t worth his life, which was the other thing he’d flung into the balance. Knowingly or not. But, yes. Something. It really hadn’t occurred to me before that perhaps all this time, he’d been missing me as sharply as I missed him. All the time he chased me, all the time I ran. Both of us spinning dizzy around the same black hole.
    I said, “We need to talk,” I needed to tell him everything, I owed him that at least. Lay out the razor and the other blades, see what amounted to a shave. “Not up here, though. This isn’t the place to start claiming private space or special privileges.” Especially not with him. “Come on, boy. Boots.”
     
     
    H ERE WAS ANOTHER door, one with no illuminated sign, nothing to draw the public’s attention. Beside it, though, was another hatch like the ticket-windows, similarly boarded up. This one, its sign said Lost Property.
    Jacey looked up at that, and balked before I could get him through the door. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
    “Nope, not at all.”
    “Second-hand