Free Contractor by Andrew Ball Page A

sigils, or
    structured spells—just keep his mind sharp
    and his thoughts clear. In terms of magic, he
    was more Klide than human.
    Something sharp and dark cut at
    Daniel’s senses. He clenched up even
    tighter, balling his knees into his chest.
    It faded.
    Daniel kept himself wrapped in his
    blankets and his powers. He stared at the
    clock on the wall. For thirty long minutes, the
    wall-mounted device became a terrible
    machine counting his time away.
    Click. Clack.
    Click. Clack.
    Click. Cla-
    The dark edge came again.
    It was like the sheen of an oil slick at
    night—black, but viewed at the right angle,
    suddenly reflective, the colors oddly twisted
    and warped. And there was a sort of stench
    that hung over it, somewhere between bad
    gas and old car engines, that made you think
    you’d never breath fresh air again. An oil
    spill on the fabric of reality.
    And then it was gone.
    Daniel couldn’t fall asleep, but he
    wouldn’t want to anyway. He waited another
    hour, eyes peeled, senses as keen as he could
    make them.
    Nothing happened.
    He crawled out of bed and checked his
    brother’s room. Felix was tangled up in his
    comforter. His breath was the small, even
    wisps of deep sleep. Safe and sound.
    Daniel slipped back to his bed. He slept
    in fits and starts, twenty minutes there, ten
    minutes here. The ticking of the clock echoed
    in his head. Even when he dozed, he could
    still hear it, a constant, glaring clatter that
    wouldn’t leave him alone. When his alarm
    finally sounded, he felt like he’d been staring
    at the wall all night.
    The morning tumbled into an exhausted
    blur. Hot water from a shower. Dressed.
    Bowl of cereal. Then school. Lockers
    slamming. Glaring fluorescent lights. Pale
    yellow hallways.
    History class came, and he finally
    unloaded that paper on Mrs. Faldey’s desk.
    He trudged to the back of the room and
    slumped into his chair.
    His classmates babbled. Everyone
    flipped out notebooks and pens and pencils.
    The normality of the sounds was like a
    lullaby. He was half asleep by the time Mrs.
    Faldey’s voice squeaked through the air.
    "Good morning, good morning! Hope
    nobody’s caught senioritis at the last
    minute!"
    For a moment, Daniel felt a flash of ugly
    annoyance at being shaken back to the
    present, but he couldn’t stay mad at her. He
    rubbed his eyes, then blinked to clear the
    bleary haze.
    Mrs. Faldey had to turn sideways to fit
    her love handles through the door; her bright
    red dress was big enough to substitute for a
    circus tent. Her eyes quickly found the
    towering stack of history reports leaning off
    her desk. "I see I’ve got some light reading
    ahead of me. Everyone turned in their paper?
    Anything after today is a letter grade off the
    top!"
    Daniel’s thoughts trailed back to
    immediate concerns as she began her usual
    lecture. Xik claimed he would need less
    sleep, but apparently that hadn’t kicked in
    yet. He was too tired to care.
    But not even Mrs. Faldey’s vibrating
    soprano could keep him awake for long. His
    head bobbed, then nodded, then found a
    lovely pillow in the form of his folded arms.
    He was enveloped in a dreamless nap.
    The bell clanged in Daniel’s ears. His
    eyes shot open. For a moment, he wasn’t sure
    where he was, and then his brain restarted.
    School. History class. Tired.
    Daniel peeled his face off a bit of drool
    that had accumulated on his desk. He
    automatically moved to jam his notebook in
    his bag, but he hadn’t even gotten it out in the
    first place. He shook his head to clear the
    cobwebs, and after a slow recovery, he
    ended up at the back of the pack leaving
    class.
    Mrs. Faldey cleared her throat as he
    went by. "I saw you sleeping back there, Mr.
    Fitzgerald. Have a late night writing my
    paper?"
    He shook his head. "No, something
    else."
    "Oh, really? I expect your usual
    precision, then!"
    Daniel started to turn away. Something
    in him skittered. He blinked a few times,
    hard.
    A white haze surrounded her