The Common King

by Brian Olsen

  “Sorry, Mrs. Liefer. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I know you’re not him. I’m glad you’re safe, Chris.”

  Safe is debatable. I gesture towards the sleeping bags. She’s set one out, but two are still rolled up. “Can I help with those?”

  “Oh, no, that’s all right, thank you. I can manage.” She picks up one of the bags and sighs. “I should put this back downstairs. I took three by habit, but we only need two now.” She rubs the sleeping bag idly. “Our daughter, Claudia, was with us until we moved here. We decided she’d be safer at a distance so we sent her to my sister’s.”

  “You didn’t go with her?” I bite my lip. “Sorry, that was rude.”

  She waves off my embarrassment. “No, it’s all right. I probably should have. Ronald wanted me to. But…no.” She furrows her brow. “I felt like I needed to be here. Like there’s something I need to do.” She laughs and begins unzipping the bag. “I don’t know what that could possibly be. I’m a financial manager, not a magician, and my spreadsheet skills haven’t been of much use so far.”

  “What about…um…” I can’t remember her son’s name. “What about your—”

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Liefer comes in from the hall, carrying two plates stacked with food. “Everything all right?”

  “Fine, fine. Everything’s fine.” Mrs. Liefer takes the plates from him. “You don’t want to eat with everyone else?”

  “They’re retreating to their own dens,” he answers. “I think we’re all getting a little tired of each other’s company. You start, I’ll get us some drinks.” He nods at me. “Chris, why don’t you come with me?”

  “Sure.” I wave at his wife. “Nice talking to you.”

  As I follow Mr. Liefer down the hall, he says, “I’d appreciate it if you’d stay away from my family.”

  “I’m not dangerous, Mr. Liefer.”

  He stops just outside the lobby and gestures for me to pass him. “This is not a discussion.”

  I bite back my reply and walk past him. How am I supposed to stay away from anybody in this place? We’re all on top of one another.

  The food’s been set up in serving dishes on the lobby’s counter. Mr. and Mrs. Green are sitting on stools behind, eating.

  “Ribs!” Mrs. Green pinches one of the sauce-coated chunks of meat between her fingers and sneers. “We’re living in a museum and this man makes barbecue ribs!”

  Mr. Green raises his plate in greeting. He’s a warm, friendly man, with light brown skin and a skinny frame despite his excellent cooking abilities. “Good to see you, Chris. Help yourself, I made plenty.”

  Mrs. Green slides a towering pile of napkins towards me. “Don’t touch any exhibits until you’ve washed your hands! Or the walls. Just don’t touch anything!” She shakes her head. “Ribs.”

  Her husband’s smile is unbroken. “The kids are eating in the office.”

  I grab a paper plate and navigate around Mr. Liefer as we serve ourselves. My plate threatens to buckle under my stack of ribs, potato salad and biscuits, so I slide a second plate underneath. I tuck a can of Coke under my armpit, grab a fork and some napkins, and head behind the counter. Mr. Green reaches back and opens the door to the office for me. Laughter spills out.

  “Close the—! Oh, it’s you.” Nate waves me in. “Come in and close the door.”

  Nate and Alisa are seated at the two desks. Lily and Zane are cross-legged on the floor. Lily is still laughing at whatever they were just talking about, but Zane’s smile fades a little when I come in.

  I kick the door shut behind me and put my dinner down on the desk where Alisa’s sitting, in front of the office’s one remaining chair. This room is pretty small, and with no windows it feels close. My stomach growls from the overwhelmingly delicious smell of food.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “Nate’s suggesting new ways to use my magic word,” Alisa replies.

  Nate kicks off from his desk, sending his rolling chair spinning. “I said she should ask Mr. Liefer if he put that stick up his ass on purpose or if he fell on it.”

  Lily laughs again. “He’d have to tell the truth.”

  “Ask him what he puts in his hair to get it so oily,” Zane adds. “The EPA must have to clean up after him whenever he goes swimming.”

  “What’s it been like?” I take a bite of a biscuit and mumble, “Living with Liefer, I mean.”

  Alisa shakes her head at my talking with my mouth full. “It’s been bizarre, Miss Manners.”

  “Camping with our parents and teachers in a museum basement?” Nate takes a sip of Coke and burps. “Yeah. Bizarre is a good word.”

  “Uncomfortable,” Zane adds. “Awkward. Horrible. Mr. Ambrose and my mother loved each other. I was scared I was about to get a new stepdad.”

  “I’ve had a little more practice at hiding out with our teachers.” Lily nudges Zane with her foot. “I’m so glad we’re all on the same side now. You have no idea. When it was just me and Liefer and Ambrose and Andy? I literally wanted to die.”

  “Not ‘literally,’ Lily.” Alisa grabs one of my napkins and wipes some sauce off her hands. “But I agree it’s been hard. Living with all these arguing authority figures has made it difficult to do anything productive. Until we rescued you, we’d just been reactive. All we really did was contact everybody we could remember who the Common King might want to recruit and warned them.”

  “Not that it did much good,” Nate says. “We were too late for Finlay or Dante. We ignored Mrs. Kumar because she wasn’t a logomancer, and Shonda threw in with him anyway.”

  “Who came to get me?” I ask.

  “Ugh, that was a fight,” Lily says. “Not with the bad guys. With our parents.”

  Alisa nods. “They’re not exactly on board with us going out when there might be danger. They want Liefer and the other teachers to go on their own.”

  Lily drops a bone onto her plate. “Honestly, I think my mom is having second thoughts about sticking around.”

  “No way!” Nate spins in his chair again. “If you two leave, my dad will probably take us out to Seattle with my mom and brother.” He stops and points at me. “And he’d make you come with us.”

  “I overheard Andy on the phone, talking to his boyfriend,” Zane says. “He’s thinking of leaving, too. He doesn’t think the Common King is going to come after any of us now that he has what he needs. They want to spend time with the people they love who weren’t around before the Moment. Just in case.”

  “Argh!” Alisa leans back in her chair. “It’s all falling apart! There has to be something we can do. We can’t just give up.”

  Lily cracks her knuckles. “You all know I’m a lover not a fighter, but how about we just kick the king’s ass?”

  I laugh. “Oh, sure. Simple.”

  She swats my shoulder. “I mean it. If we can catch him alone. Catch him by surprise—”

  “No.” Zane slams his Coke down, causing it to fizz over a little. “No, he’s too strong. He’d wipe us all out.”

  Lily blinks in surprise at his vehemence. “We go at night. When he’s weaker.”

  He snorts. “He’s not weaker at night. He just can’t teleport. Alisa, you’re not taking this seriously, are you?”

  Alisa taps the arm of her chair. “Sorry, Lily, I’m with Zane. Too dangerous.”

  “And what would we even do with him if we beat him?” Nate asks. “Kill him?”

  “No!” Lily throws her hands up in surrender. “I don’t know! Geez! It was just an idea.”

  “A bad one,” Zane mumbles. He picks up his Coke and slurps the overrunning liquid from the top of the can.

  Lily kicks his shoe. “You come with up something, then, tough guy.”

  He swallows. “We don’t need him, we need that book.”

  Lily smirks at him. “Find one, we find the other. Alisa, any luck?”

  Alisa shakes her head. “I’ve scried for everything and everybody I
can think to scry for. They’re hidden too well. I’ve tried to reach Shonda and Kenny telepathically. Nothing. I’ve talked to Mrs. Kumar’s husband, Shonda’s parents, Dante’s parents. None of them know the truth about where their people are.”

  “That Find Your Friends app?” I suggest.

  She laughs. “Jasmine wised up to that one. If only there was a way to stop the king from using the book without us having to steal it back.”

  I chew on some rib while I think, then wipe my mouth. “Maybe we don’t stop him. Maybe he stops himself.”

  Alisa sits forward. “You’ve got an idea?”

  “Maybe. He wants to let all the creatures loose to break the Moment. But what if that won’t work?”

  “But it will,” Zane says. “That’s why he’s doing it.”

  I wipe my fingers some more, then get up and open the door. The Greens turn to look, as does Mr. Ambrose, who’s come for seconds. Perfect. “Mr. Ambrose? Can you come in for a second?”

  “Sure, Chris.”

  He puts his plate down and follows me into the office. I leave the door open and Mr. and Mrs. Green stand in the doorway to listen.

  I rest my hands on the back of the chair I had been sitting in. “You planned the original spell that created the Moment, right? You and Liefer?”

  “Mr. Liefer,” he corrects me. “Yes. We mapped out whose words we’d need. Why?”

  “How specific did you need to be? Like, a word for every little thing you needed it to do?”

  “Oh, no.” He perches on the edge of one of the desks. “Talented logomancers can combine their words in ways that go far beyond what they could achieve on their own. The combination of words that split you off from the Common King, for example.”

  I tap the back of the chair. “If we wanted to make a change to the Moment, do you think we have the right words?”

  He takes a deep breath, then blows it all out. “I don’t know. Depends on what we wanted to do. It would be hard without Kenny.”

  “But not impossible?”

  He shrugs. “Again. Depends. What are you suggesting, Chris?”

  “Finishing what we started.” I look at Alisa. “Before the Common King took me over, we were trying to find a way to free all the magical species from their artifacts.”

  “Yes, but safely. Not all at once.”

  “Right, right. But we couldn’t do it. They always get sucked back in.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Ambrose says. “Because of the Moment. Even if you use the book, or I use my word, to keep them out. Sooner or later our non-magical world rejects them, and their artifacts are the only places they can survive.”

  “So what if we change that?” I suggest. “We don’t break the Moment. We tweak it. We don’t rewrite history again, but we tell our world to accept the magical species.”

  Alisa nods. “And make it so they can survive outside their artifacts.”

  “People will still freak out when they see all those magical creatures,” Nate points out. “It’ll be worldwide panic.”

  I smack my hands down on the back of the chair. “But if we do this right, that panic won’t break the Moment! And if the Common King knows it won’t break the Moment, he’ll have no reason to release the creatures in the first place!”

  Lily curls her lip. “That’s a lot of ifs.”

  “Do you have a better idea?” I ask.

  She smiles. “Nope. Sounds good to me.”

  Mr. Ambrose scratches his chin. “It’s possible, in theory. But many logomancers came together to create the Moment, most of whom are still living their new lives, oblivious. I don’t know if we have the right words to change it.”

  “What do you think we need?” Zane asks.

  He pinches his lip. “Alisa’s word will be useful, obviously. Mr. Liefer’s. Mine, since we’re disrupting the original spell. Zane and Lily can add strength to the spell, but their words won’t help all that much.”

  “Gee, thanks a lot,” Lily says.

  “Everyone does their part, Lily, everyone does their part.” Mr. Ambrose frowns. “The focus of this spell is the magical creatures. So we could use someone with a word that relates to them somehow.”

  Alisa slumps. “Mr. Finlay’s out. And I don’t remember anybody else in Charlesville with a word like his.”

  Hm. A word related to magical creatures.

  “Not exactly like his.” I pick up my Coke. “And not in Charlesville. But we know somebody who might help us.” I take a sip. “If she doesn’t kill us first.”

  Twelve

  Traveling through Zane’s shadows is a weird sensation. When Mr. Liefer or I teleport there’s no feeling of movement. You’re in one place one second, and another place the next. With Zane, you step into a shadow that he’s created, and you move through some cold, dark, creepy place before stepping out into the light somewhere else. Everyone seems used to it but it gives me the willies.

  Zane, Alisa, Nate, Tannyl and I step out of a shadow into a sunny side street in London. It’s morning here, but still dark in America. The Common King can only teleport during the day, so we’re hoping we can find the person we’re looking for before sunrise back home. He’s probably not keeping tabs on her, but Jasmine knows where to find her as well as we do, so better safe than sorry.

  We stroll down Cecil Court, past a bunch of cute little bookshops. It’s much busier than the last time we were here, about two months ago. It’s a sunny summer day, and there are plenty of locals and tourists browsing for the rare or unusual books that the stores on this street specialize in.

  Tannyl, Alisa’s elf boyfriend, claps me on the back. “It is good to see you looking like yourself, Chris.”

  “Good you see you too, Tannyl. I’m glad you’re not stuck in the necklace.”

  Alisa takes his hand. “Me, too.”

  Tannyl’s a good guy. Handsome as hell – no, “pretty” is probably a better word. A cap hides his pointed ears, but his pale gray eyes hint at his non-human heritage. He was suspicious of me at first, but I count him a good friend now. He’s the elf queen’s representative in the human world, tasked in part with stopping me by any means necessary if I showed signs of turning into the Common King. That didn’t go so well, obviously, but the queen must have forgiven him because he’s still with us.

  He and Alisa were a couple before the Moment, but Alisa’s patchy memory made things a little rocky when they reunited after. Alisa’s demisexual, only attracted to people she feels a strong emotional bond with, and that was only just starting to happen with Tannyl when I took my little vacation in the floating room. Looks like they’ve progressed since then.

  Zane squints into the bright sunlight. “We’d better be quick. We told Mr. Ambrose we’d wait and talk to Liefer before coming here. He’s gonna know we lied soon and come after us.”

  “Lily will cover for us as long as she can,” I say. “She’ll buy us some time.”

  Nate bites his lip. “My dad’s gonna be pissed when he realizes we’re gone.”

  Alisa shrugs. “If we wait for the adults to agree, we’ll never get anything done.”

  “Are you certain you should be with us?” Tannyl asks me. “She did not react well to your presence last time. And you did not part on good terms.”

  That’s an understatement. “Yeah. But it won’t go any better if you take her back to the museum and I surprise her there. Better to get it over with.”

  “Here it is.” Nate lightly taps a large store window. Behind it is a display shelf, filled with books about our post-Moment worlds’ versions of magic and magical creatures. “Magic Words Bookshop. Looks open.”

  We’re here to find Mrs. Wollard, the woman who runs this bookstore, and persuade her to help us modify the Moment. Her word is “wolf,” and she can transform into a werewolf, which I figure counts as a magical creature. She’s also got a strong affinity with elves and fairies and other woodland magical folk. I’m hoping those two qualities will work together to make her a good fit for the spell we
want to cast.

  Unfortunately, in the world before, Mrs. Wollard was terrified of the Common King, and when Jasmine restored her memories she turned a bunch of Londoners – plus Nate – into wolves, and used them to try to kill me. I beat her, but the Common King’s personality was maybe bleeding through into mine a little by that point and I wasn’t exactly magnanimous in my victory. I may possibly have told her I’d kill her if I ever saw her again. Something like that.

  I’m sure this’ll be fine.

  Magic Words Bookshop is painted a cheery yellow on the outside. A couple of people are window shopping, but when we push open the door, ringing the little bell above it, we find only one customer inside. He’s an older South Asian man, short and paunchy, with a receding hairline and a thick beard. He’s standing at the counter talking to the proprietor.

  Mrs. Wollard looks like the Platonic ideal of a white English grandmother, in her powder blue cardigan with granny glasses hanging around her neck from a delicate silver chain and her gray hair tied up in a neat bun. She’s got a kind and loving face, but it clouds over when my friends and I enter the shop.

  She cuts off whatever the customer was saying. “Yes,” she says to him. “Yes, I think you’ll find what you’re looking for in that section.” She points to the back of the store.

  The shop isn’t very large. At the front, on the opposite side of the door from the counter, is the display window. The two walls running front to back are stacked with shelves, and a single double-sided row of shelves runs down the middle between them. At the rear, between more shelves, is a plain black curtain leading to a private area.

  The customer looks a little confused. “But I wanted—”

  Mrs. Wollard waggles her finger. “Yes, yes, right back there. I’ll come and help you after I’ve finished with these young people.”

  He looks at us, frowns, and then heads down the aisle to the back of the shop. He crouches low and begins scanning a shelf.

  The elderly shopkeeper smiles at us as we gather in front of her counter. “May I help you?”