Cedar Heights

"Who are they? They want something, don't they?"

Jordan followed his sister's strident cries up the stairs, down the hall, and into the kitchen. She was pacing at record speed, around the island counter. Her cute, pink cellphone was plastered to the side of her face, and her eyes were red with tears. Once he stepped into the room, she rounded on him as though he had caused all of this.

"YOU!"

"Sylvie .. " Jordan spoke softly, " .. Sylvie. Hang up the phone. Listen a second."

Any other day, she might have crabbed at him for calling her 'Sylvie.' That name -- in her own words -- had gone out with her Barbie dolls.

But, again, today was not any other day.

"There's a lot of stuff happening downtown, at the Conklin Center. Which means this all has something to do with mom's work." Jordan dropped his gaze to the floor. "And it's everywhere, too. All over the world. Did you try to call dad?"

Their father was the weekend DJ at WSKY, a classic rock station for most of the tri-county area. It was cool, but usually meant that Dan Renar never stopped singing 'all-time favorites' under his breath. Jordan glanced rather urgently at the radio by the sink, but he knew if he were to turn it on, he'd hear the high cold words of Thaddeus Farcry instead of -- "Fly high with double-yewwww sky!"

Sylvia slowly snapped her phone shut. "He's not answering the station line, or his Blackberry." She swallowed, and blinked baleful eyes at her brother. "You really think this has something to do with the Conklin Center?"

"I don't know, Sylvie."

"But do you really think this is about mom? That, like, they're using real magic?"

"I don't know, Sylvie."

"Ashley said there are fires downtown." Sylvia collapsed into a chair, as though all her will to stand had left her. She set her phone aside, and stared ahead blearily. After a breathless pause, she curled her arms together, and buried her head in them. "I'm scared, Jordan. And nothing's really even happened."

" .. I know, Sylvie."

What was he supposed to do? They were usually at each others' throats; everything was upside down. Jordan took a few steps forward, and patted his sister stiffly on the shoulder. She looked up, face now even more red and weepy.

"What are we going to do?" She asked in a delicate, quavering voice. Jordan just stood stock still, stared back at her, hating that he had no answers. "How will we live?"

"You're getting way ahead of yourself." Jordan said in his usual, sensible tone. He sat down at the table, trying his best to sound encouraging. "We're gonna just, like, stay inside. That's what we're gonna do. And not run around. Or jump in front of things."

Jordan glanced at the phone, which winked innocently at them from across the room.

" .. But mostly just hope mom or dad calls."

Sylvia didn't seem entirely impressed with Jordan's words of comfort. She brushed her hair out of her face, dragged her phone closer to her again, and began to scroll through her contacts list once more. Her body shook with an odd hiccough.

"I'll call Nikki." She was no longer crying, and her voice was dark. "S-she'll know what to do. You - you're no help at all, Jordan, did you know that?"

No help at all. He felt his stomach clench. What was he supposed to do? Outfit them in pots and pans, arm them with hockey sticks? Lead them downtown to die like idiots?

"You call Nicole, then." Jordan gave up trying to help her. He scooted his chair back, and stood. He crossed his arms over his broad chest, and tried to sound like he didn't care."You call her, she'll tell you exactly what I just said."

Probably not. He was willing to bet not at all. Girls were always better at this sort of thing. Jordan stared blankly at his sister as she dialed the number, and brought the phone -- trembling -- up to her ear.

The swing in a small playground on Maplewood Avenue squeaked pitifully as it swung backwards and forwards. The playground and street were empty but for a single figure sat upon that swing, staring mournfully at a cyan hat in his lap. With his hair styled up with painstaking care and dressed in designer everything, Matt was considerably overdressed for the end of the world. But of course, when his mother had hawkingly overseen his preparations for the day, she'd been expecting him to be rather more on show than he was now.

He'd have to look his best to stand out from the others, she'd said. Nobody was going to remember the scores of wizards in robes or other silly outfits, but they'd remember the one that looked like a supermodel.

"It's always been about what people thought, hasn't it mom?" Matt muttered, kicking the ground, "About you being better than everyone else, and making sure they know it."

Being a wizard had sounded cool at first, but when his mother had told him that their first order of business was essentially terrorism, Matt had been more than a little turned off from the idea. It was likely she hadn't realised yet that he didn't share her passion for lording it over everyone else, given that he'd always meekly played along with her high-school level scheming to avoid her ire.

He had the feeling most of his wizarding peers shared her viewpoint. It was all about them being better than the 'normals', and how unfair it was that they had to pretend to be so boring and mundane when in reality they were so much more. More embarrassing, maybe. Even before he'd known that they were all wizards, his mother's dinner parties had seemed like something of an occult gathering of the mysteriously-better-than-everyone-else-in-every-way.

Even Matt admitted that there was something to being able to think of himself as 'more' than his peers. He was a wizard, he was powerful. He could make people burst into flames with a flick of his wrist. But unlike some of his mother's clique, he just didn't want to. He hated hurting things - from bugs to feelings. Or as his mother would put it, he was an overly sensitive wet blanket. Sometimes people had to be trodden on to get to the top, but quite frankly Matt was afraid of heights, so he was quite happy on this particular rung of the ladder for the moment, thank you very much.

And so he brooded on. Eventually, he thought, he was going to have to decide what he was going to do next. He certainly wasn't going to go around setting fire to things, he thought, but was he going to do anything else? Maybe he should just keep his head down and then say he'd gone around setting fire to things when everything quieted down (or not, if the wizards lost, he supposed).

He couldn't just sit here, either way. Someone would come by sooner or later and he didn't want to count on them not tattling on him. Sighing, he put his feet on the ground and halted the swing. He shoved his hat back into his backpack and slung it over his shoulder as he stood. Making his way out of the park with apprehension painted plain as day upon his face, Matt started to walk. He had no idea where he was going. He'd probably figure it out when he got there.