Page 32 of Up in Smoke

“You know what? I don’t even know. You’re beautiful with clothes and without clothes. I have plans to send my mother a thank you card to go with my therapy bill for the fright she gave me when you went on auction.”

“Can I be your therapist?”

“Absolutely, but I’m going to be a very tough case. You’re going to have to spend many hours nursing me back to good health.”

I giggled at the thought of billing Sandro’s mother for participating in ‘therapy’ with him. “I’m not sure we have enough condoms for the type of intensive therapy you need, Sandro.”

“I packed a lot of condoms, Jade.”

I grinned at him. “So did I, and I just don’t think we’re going to have enough. You need intensive therapy. It’s going to be tough being your therapist, coping with a bedridden patient.”

Sandro snickered. “I made a mistake.”

“Oh? What mistake?”

“I insisted we read for an hour first,” he complained.

“There is something to be said for anticipation,” I replied with a smile, turning on my e-reader and going on a hunt for a good book before I was scheduled for a ritual cleansing.

Monday, June 15, 2043.

Darwin, Oklahoma.

The Alley.

Storms,the kind spawned and directed by a choir in the South, kept us in Darwin for two days. To escape the cellar, Sandro needed to write a rather potent poem, the kind capable of reducing an entire building to rubble. Dusting off his hands, he opened the door while a fine, gray powder rained down onto the steps. “Want to bet this is the edge of their termination zone for Tulsa and the surrounding region?”

I snorted. “You couldn’t pay me to make that bet, Sandro. Honestly, I’m impressed the plumbing still worked after that show.”

“The whole system is probably underground, safe from the twisters. I’ll clean up the other cellars to make sure others coming behind us are able to find shelter.” Sandro climbed out, shaking his head over the destruction of the already ruined town. “I just don’t understand why he’d target local infrastructure. Doesn’t he understand basic regional economics?”

“Honestly, I don’t understand regional economics. I just look for stuff left behind during storms and sell it so I can eat.”

“I’m guessing Mansfield is in love with the idea of being a ruler without having any actual idea what is involved with ruling over a thriving area. He’s not all that skilled with making money, I don’t think he really understands logistics—he has underlings to do that sort of work for him. He’s all about his ideas. He doesn’t necessarily think through the consequences of his ideas. I mean, his initial plans for Asylum lacked support columns. Fortunately, he was smart enough to listen to people when they said the ceiling needed some serious supports to keep it from collapsing.”

“You think he would understand with how he has to bring in supplies by train. And then the stupid bastard cut off his own damned train routes.” I shook my head, went back down into the cellar, and began the tedious work of hauling the wagon up the steps. “If he had left an exclusion zone from his destruction, he could have formed his precious utopia without killing so many people.”

“I think his plan is probably to resettle outside of Tulsa once the city is populated only with the people he wants living there,” Sandro admitted. “That thought makes me sick, and honestly, I just want to write the bastard a poem. It’ll have an explosive finale.”

“How is your poetry compared to your singing, anyway?”

“I’m good here. Better than most. Motivation and intent really matter. I am also very good at memorizing a bunch of different poems for different purposes. Most think poetry is pure evocation. By that, I mean destruction of some sort. In reality, I can do a lot with my poetry, but leaving people believing I can whisper a few words and incinerate them generally keeps the idiots at a reasonable distance.”

“What sorts of things can you do with your poetry that isn’t destructive?”

“The columns weren’t just carved. I created stone in places for it, and I reinforced or changed the base material to make it stronger and better capable of supporting the ceiling. I can also whisper a poem in your ear that will make you take off your clothes.”

I laughed at the idea of him whispering sweet nothings in poetry format to get me naked. “We can try that once we’re somewhere questionably safe.”

“I like how you are willing to take a few risks to see how I plan on getting you to take your clothes off.”

“Honestly, if your poem was something along the lines of ‘I plan to scatter bits of Mansfield across this field’ I would totally just start stripping. I hate that man that much at this point.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. For now, let’s try to get to Tulsa while the weather holds. If it holds.”

I had my doubts, but I kept my thoughts to myself. I could only hope that the Voodoo queens could beat the clock and silence the choir before Tulsa paid the price for their sins.