Body Surfing

throat. “Is she…I mean, is Michaela in there?”
    Michaela giggled inside him. Where does he think I’d be?
    Jasper smiled at Michaela’s joke. He nodded at Q.
    “The reason it took me so long to call you is that I didn’t want to hurt her. I mean, there isn’t an instruction manual or anything. I just had to go on instinct. Feel my way in. I did okay with Larry, but I think I might’ve messed Jarhead up a bit.”
    “So that was his voice!” Q. said. “I thought I recognized that bray. The cops came to the hospital,” he added in a more serious voice. “They arrested Larry.”
    Jasper nodded. “You were right, though. Sleeping with Sue—”
    There was a protest inside his brain. Who the hell is Sue?
    Not now , Jasper told her. To Q.: “Is there anything we can do for Larry?”
    Q. shrugged. “I have no idea. But I’ve got some money of my own. I can at least get him a good lawyer.”
    “It’s a fucking mess, isn’t it? I mean, all this power, these amazing abilities, and all we can do is screw up people’s lives.”
    You saved me , Michaela said.
    “Yeah, but I can’t spend eternity running around after Leo cleaning up his messes, can I?”
    There was a moment of silence in the car, and then Q. said, “You weren’t talking to me, were you?”
    “Like you said, Q. She’s in here.”
    “Can she hear me?”
    Michaela would’ve rolled her eyes if she controlled them. Instead she said, Roll my eyes, would you, Jasper?
    “We have to stop him, Q. He can’t keep doing this.”
    “He’s been doing it for hundreds of years. Thousands maybe.”
    “I don’t care! We have to stop him.”
    Q. looked over at the passenger seat. His eyes took in both of them. Mogran and host. His living friend, and the friend he had killed. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
    Jasper met his friend’s gaze. “I know what that means.”
    “But how do you make that choice?” Q. said. “How do you decide you have the right to kill an innocent person, just because they’ve been possessed by some asshole demon? Would you kill me if I was Leo’s host? Would you kill Michaela?”
    Jasper was silent for a moment. Q. had made his point. Then: “You were talking about those sigil things before. You said there might be a way to trap the demons in them.”
    Q. shook his head. “That’s just a theory. I have no idea how it would work in practice.”
    “If Solomon could figure it out—”
    Solomon who? Michaela said.
    “King Solomon,” Jasper said out loud.
    Q. laughed. “Michaela again?”
    “I know, it’s confusing me too. Just pretend she’s on the phone.”
    “Right,” Q. said. “So look. I have no idea what King Solomon did or didn’t do. I mean, somehow I doubt he really had seventy-two demons at his beck and call, and that he kept them in a clay jar sealed with beeswax.”
    “Forget Solomon. Think physics. You said you thought we, I mean, the Mogran, are essentially electrical currents.”
    “I said it was a theory. No one knows. I mean, no one’s ever heard of an electrical current attaining consciousness before.”
    “Just because no one’s ever noticed it doesn’t mean that it’s not happening all around us. We just haven’t figured it out yet. What did your book say? ‘Magicians are profound and diligent searchers intoNature who because of their skill know how to anticipate an effect which to the vulgar shall seem a miracle.’”
    “Nice quoting.”
    “Yeah, whatever. Anyway, your theory is the best we’ve got to go on. I mean, if it fails, it fails. But it’s worth a try. The question is, is there some kind of device that absorbs electricity but doesn’t release it?”
    “Sure. A capacitor. Or, you know, a battery. Oh my God!” Q. actually slapped his face. “The Baghdad Battery!”
    The what? Michaela said.
    “My question exactly,” Jasper said. “The what?”
    “In the 1930s, scientists found these funny clay jars in a village outside Baghdad. They were about five inches tall, and they contained a copper tube wrapped around an iron rod, but separated from it by asphalt spacers. I mean, it was a perfect model of an electrical generating device. All you had to do was add some kind of acid to it, lemon juice, vinegar, and poof, you’d start an electrochemical reaction. It was tiny, but it was still enough to give you a good jolt.”
    And?
    “And?” Jasper echoed.
    “Well, you know, all this made sense in theory. I mean, scientists were able to duplicate the