Free The Weirdness by Jeremy P. Bushnell

beckons,” Lucifer says. “It beckons endlessly. It does not require a source of energy. This makes it”—he pauses to contemplate—“abhorrent to this world’s thermodynamic laws. Once fully in this world the Neko’s surplus energy will be givenoff as heat. Since the Neko has, effectively, an infinite amount of surplus energy, it has the potential to produce an infinite amount of heat.”
    “Infinite heat is bad?” Billy asks.
    “Infinite heat means that you are starting a fire which can be neither extinguished nor contained.”
    “That sounds bad.”
    “Nothing could stop such a fire,” Lucifer says. “It will burn until it has consumed the entire atmosphere. It will burn until it has consumed the combustible matter that constitutes this planet and the life on it.”
    “Oh,” Billy says.
    He takes a moment and tries to let this sink in. He momentarily reviews all the things in the world that qualify as combustible matter, tries to think about them vanishing into fire. Vietnamese spring rolls. The Black Flag T-shirt he bought fifteen years ago, which is now the most comfortable item of clothing he owns. Anil’s Xbox. Anil himself. Denver. Everyone. And at that point his capacity to imagine the annihilation of all earthly endeavor fails.
    “Why would somebody want to do that?” he asks, quietly. “Torch the world?”
    “I do not know what he hopes to gain,” Lucifer says. “It could be some sort of necromantic rite, a bid to attain godlike supremacy. The thanatotic power released by murdering a world would be substantial; Ollard may be able to put it to some use. But his ultimate aim is obscure to me.”
    “So, wait, why aren’t we dead right now? Like—is Chelsea on fire right this second, or will it take a while to really get going?” Billy asks, hoping that maybe he can add
supernatural fire
to thelist of things that might kill him at some point in the future but that are out of the range of his direct control, like global warming, or the world’s collective failure to develop a superpowered laser to blow up giant earth-threatening asteroids.
    “The Neko has a set of protective defenses. When taken out of Hell, a set of six seals sprang into place around it. Until those seals are dispelled the Neko technically has not entered this world; it exists effectively in a sort of limbo. Over the last two weeks Ollard has dispelled four of these six seals.”
    “Four?” Billy says. His stoned brain tries to calculate a percentage. “That’s a lot,” is what he ends up with.
    “The remaining two are—challenging,” Lucifer says. “They may thwart him. They will, at the very least, slow him down.”
    “Slow him down?” Billy says. “Can’t you—stop him?” A pleading note that he isn’t entirely fond of has entered his voice.
    “I intend to stop him.”
    Billy feels a surge of hope. “You’re going to save the world,” he says.
    “There are challenges involved. Ollard knows that I seek the return of the Neko, and he has prepared accordingly. He has thrice-warded the tower against me. I can’t enter it. I can’t get within five hundred feet of it.”
    “So—” Billy says. And then he stops. He does not plan to be the one who completes this thought.
    “So that’s where I need you,” says Lucifer. He clicks again and a picture of Billy comes up. It’s from earlier that night: Billy standing on the subway platform, with Lucifer’s business card in his hand. Billy jumps a little in his chair, seeing this.
    “William Harrison Ridgeway,” Lucifer intones. “I task youwith this objective. Enter Timothy Ollard’s tower, retrieve the Neko, and return it to me. At the completion of this objective you will be rewarded. The challenges involved will be minimal.”
    “Minimal?” Billy says. “The most powerful warlock in the eastern United States, and the challenges will be
minimal
? He’s powerful enough to make an ugly tower invisible to eight million New Yorkers? Powerful enough