Free Crossroads by Stephen Kenson

divination to try and get a better idea of what’s going on. I’m afraid it wasn’t very helpful.”
    “Oh. Too bad.”
    “Tell me some more about your Mr. Johnson . . . Garnoff, right?” I said.
    “Sure, what do you want to know?”
    “Did he tell you why he wanted a jacket on Jase?”
    “Nope, but then I didn’t need to know that. He just wanted me to check up on this guy and then on you. Ours is not to reason why . . .” Ours is but to do or die. She left the rest of the quote unsaid.
    “Did he want you to keep checking on Jase, too?”
    “Hmmm, no. When I told him I was sure that Vale was dead, he told me to concentrate on you.”
    “Because of my connection to Jase?”
    “Hey, you said the guy was your teacher, right? Maybe Garnoff is looking for something that Vale knew that he might of taught you.”
    I thought about that for a second and shook my head.
    “Secrets of the ages? I doubt it. I didn’t get much more than my basic magical training from Jase. I learned most of my real magical stuff at the Institute and afterward on the streets.”
    “How about something he owned?”
    "Maybe. Most of Jase’s stuff got sold or trashed after he died. I’ve still got a few things, mostly books, but none of them are worth anything really. They’re not rare or anything like that.”
    ‘‘Maybe something he didn’t tell you about?”
    I shrugged. “Anything’s possible, but if that’s the case, then Garnoff is going to be pretty disappointed, because I don't know what he could be after.” I put away my Tarot deck and folded up the tray table with a sigh, then resumed my staring out the window.
    “I remember seeing in the Knight Errant report that Vale was killed in a gang incident, right?”
    I nodded without looking back at her, so she continued. “Garnoff’s got some local gang working for him. Maybe there’s a connection there.”
    I shook my head. “Couldn’t be the same gang.”
    “Are you sure?” she asked. “Why not?”
    The lights of the sprawl glittered below, so serene and beautiful, but I had seen first-hand the kind of ugliness that hid in the shadows of those clean, bright lights. I turned back to Trouble. “Because I killed them.”
    The awkward silence hung in the air until the intercom beeped and the captain announced that we would be landing at Logan Airport in about fifteen minutes. Trouble busied herself with her portable data-reader, scanning a couple of chips holding all the data Jane had managed to dig up. I went back to staring out the window, rubbing a narrow white scar on my hand and remembering.
    I recalled the day Jase died like it had happened yesterday. It was so stupid, not like the dramatic and heroic deaths of the tragic characters in the sims or on the trideo. He used a public telecom to make a call on the street while we were at the local Stuffer Shack, and a group of gangers called the Asphalt Rats felt like inflicting a little random violence that night. Hitting the streets and messing up anyone who got in their way. At the first sound of the gunfire I ran outside, but I was too late. All I could do was watch the Rats roar off on their bikes and hold Jase while he died, his blood all over the sidewalk and the wall and my clothes.
    The next couple of hours were a blur, but I remember being surprised at how many people in the area were willing to help. I had no idea Jase had so many friends and people he’d helped, folks who he’d done a little healing magic for, or a simple banishment or some such. Sister Margaret from St. Patrick’s kept leading me around like a zombie. I couldn’t seem to get over the shock. Jase died like an extra in a bad sim, only he wasn’t a faceless actor, he had a life ... he was important to people, to me.
    We had to cremate him. It seemed right somehow to do it that way. Jase was SINless, so Knight Errant wasn’t interested in wasting any time dealing with the whole mess beyond getting names and dates for their files. They