by J M Guillen
“That’s what I do.” I gave him a sunny smile. “Not make trouble.”
“Right.” He scowled. “I’ll drop in on your dad’s shop soon.” He stood. “When I see you next, I’ll have all manner of planning and clever ideas in place.”
“Good.” His confidence was contagious. “So I just have to sit tight.”
“If you can.” He eyed me. “Please don’t…” He waggled one hand again. “Be… you.”
“I’ll do what I can.” I grinned.
“I’ll see you in a couple days.” He raised one eyebrow. “Less than a week. I expect to find you safe and sound. Play games with your little friends or something.”
“I think I can handle that.” I stood as well.
We walked out together.
Hours later, after I had made my way back to my hotel bed that the most obvious question hit me square in the face.
“Wait.” I spoke to the darkness in the room, as I sat up in bed. For a long minute, then two, my mind raced. No matter how I tried to put together what happened the pieces simply didn’t fit.
“How the hell did you know, Simon?” I swung my feet out of the bed, leaned forward, and thought. I recalled all the stories that we’d shared with my friends this evening, and the dozens of others they might never hear. I reviewed all my lessons in the streets of Syracuse, back when I first learned to call the Wind.
My mentor had always been all business. Whenever he showed up, he had a specific lesson to teach me and had been meticulous about remaining on subject. For our entire relationship, Simon had remained aloof, showed no interest in my family or my personal life.
“It’s impossible,” I muttered to myself as I climbed back into bed. No matter how I thought, I couldn’t make his instructions make any kind of sense.
He had been very specific: He wanted me to wear his little trinket. He wanted me to lay low at Dad’s store. He wanted me to keep control over my knack. He wanted me to remain out of the way.
Yet no matter how I considered it, one part of his plan made no sense.
Simon had known exactly what he wanted me to do, but more importantly, he had known where he wanted me to go.
That was the impossible bit.
In all the years I’d known him, I was certain I had never once mentioned my dad’s gaming store.
Not even once.
Roll for Search
“Thanks man.” Baxter handed the cabbie a few crisp bills and slid out the door to stand next to me on the sidewalk.
I stood speechless at the memories the storefront brought back. Around us, the Wind coursed down the street, whispering capriciously.
“Well, we’re here. I still say you should have just flown us,” Bax said with a grin as he took on a lofty tone. “Command the very wind to carry us aloft. Would have been cheaper.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I may have been a bit loopy, but I saw how you threw those knives.”
“My knives are a lot smaller than either of us.” I rolled my eyes at him. “Way easier to hurl around.”
“Science it out,” he reasoned. “If you have less air pressure over you, and more air pressure beneath, you’ll lift off.”
“I think size has something to do with that.” Size, and the fact that Simon hadn’t taught me the proper Empyrean Seal.
“Size matters not.” Baxter’s voice slipped into a mix of falsetto and Muppety croak. “Judge me by my size, do you?”
“I do not.” I glanced at him. “As much as you eat, you should be about three times as big.”
“I could go for something right now to be honest.”
“I know.” I rolled my eyes again. “You kept on about it for the entire ride over.”
“Takes a lot to fuel this tank of genius.”
“Right.”
Absorbed with the shop, I scarcely heard his reply. I hadn’t been to the store in ages, but the front looked exactly as I remembered. Paper notices of games and tournaments clung to the window. Ads for the newest collectible card packs had been taped everywhere. Chipped white letters proclaimed KNUCKLEBONES across the door, clear and extremely easy to read against the blackness of the store interior. Inside that shop, thousands of different adventures awaited.
I felt twelve years old again.
“So, like I said, it was closed last time I tried.” Baxter gestured weakly at the door. “So, head to his apartment?”
“Maybe.” I gave him a sideways glance. “But Dad would probably expect me to find the key and poke my head inside. He might have left a message or something.”
“He keeps a key around here? Really?”
“Well, used to, anyway. He sometimes forgot his so eventually he hid a spare nearby.” I headed for the minuscule rock garden beside the door. While meant to hold some sort of exotic flowers or cacti, it had only ever grown more rocks.
“’Kay. Weird.”
“It’s safe. He has a security alarm too.”
“Right.” Baxter took a step to the side. “Um, hey, so back to the matter of me starving. I didn’t have breakfast.”
“Dad always put the key in a hollow rock.” I frowned at the dusty rocks until I found the one slightly too perfect to be real. I snatched it and turned it over to reveal a circular hole covered with gray plastic. It opened easily enough and I dumped a set of keys into my waiting palm.
Why so many? There’s just the one door.
“You found it; that’s great. Look, I’m just gonna—”
“Bail.” I glanced up at my friend. “You’re just gonna bail on me, aren’t you?”
“Liz…” he protested, chagrined.
“You’re starving. I know. You’re practically a cartoon character when it comes to food. I get it.”
“I’ll come right back! There’s a hot dog guy down the block; I saw him as we pulled up.”
“Uh-huh. Fine. Whatever. Go.” I swept dismissively at him and mock-glared, hand on my hip. “I’m a big girl. I’ll be fine for ten minutes on my own.”
“Well, no shit!” His face blended offended hurt and sarcasm. “I never said you wouldn’t be. You’re the one with all the weird juju that isn’t magic.”
“Go already! I’ll be here.” I held up the keys.
“Won’t be but a sec, Liz.” He flashed a grin.
“Take more than that. You’ll have time to chew. Not that you ever do.”
“Yeah, right.” Baxter took off.
I studied the keys, selected the one with the bright-orange plastic housing, and tried the door. It opened easily, so I slipped inside.
The door swept closed behind me and the pair of large bells on the inside handle jingled. To the side, a bank of switches waited next to a security panel.
“Eight, eleven, nineteen seventy six.” I punched in Dad’s security code—my birthday—then flipped all the switches, flooding the room with florescent light.
I turned to face my father’s shop and let my eyes roam over walls painted with larger than life comic book characters, wire-rack shelves of plastic and pewter figurines, and wooden displays of comics.
“Liz couldn’t believe how much her father’s shop had grown.” I stared, stunned at my surroundings. The unfamiliar layout felt all wrong. Did he rent more space? He must have, since the place had doubled or more. No way he could’ve built an addition. Not in Manhattan!
The comics caught my eye again. My fingers itched to rifle through them and finally catch up on all my favorites.
I’d actually taken a few steps and reached out to caress the colorfully inked covers before I caught myself and withdrew my arm.
No.
“No side quests.” I’d already split the party, after all. I needed to keep on track.
I totally could, I knew. Dad owned the whole damned place, right down to the last d4. He’d let me rifle through anything I wanted without a second thought. I could dive into the hip-high wooden box of loose dice and burrow into it like a ball-pit if I wanted to.
The thought made me stifle a giggle, though no one would have heard.
My eyes danced over comics and board games and dice and rule books and…
I let my eyes flutter shut as I drew in a deep breath. Old paper, dry and slightly sweet with an earthy hint of must, hit me first. Tobacco teased my nose next, only partially covered by vanilla incense and old, waxed wood.
Dad’s cigar. He only smoked during games. Helped him relax during tough sessions, he said.
I blew out my breath.
Nothing unexpected.
I had to find him.
Letting my fingers graze the protective covering of the comics, I started my tour of my father’s once-familiar shop.
My footsteps barely made any noise on the hardwood as I took casual note of the inventory. Mini figs in fearsome poses waited in plastic bubbles attached to cardboard backing. On a table just below, stood some painted examples while gray-hued others waited next to tiny pots of acrylic paint.
“No way.” I bent to examine one, a beast-headed monstrosity with tentacles spewing out of its stomach, and shook my head.
Tentacle monsters were not my style.
Taking a step back, I nearly bumped into a display case, which housed an eighteen-inch, fully posable figure clothed in wizard robes and a crow-beaked plague doctor mask.
His plastic visage regarded my clumsiness haughtily.
Further on, a wealth of board games had been stacked atop each other on shelves nailed all the way to the ceiling. Titles I’d never heard of tempted me, but I moved on with barely a pause.
Saving throw made.
Slipping past two tables full of boxes—a brief rifle proved them to be full of back issues of popular comics—I rounded a set of bookshelves arranged back to back to form a maze of stubby walls.
Four glass cases held collectible cards and matching dice sets. They formed a hollow island in the middle of the room that guarded a couple of registers.
How had he expanded so much? The store was far larger than I’d dreamed it ever could be. The rent must be astronomical.
I glanced over the register-fortress and noted the ledger and notebooks on the shelf beneath. “There, maybe?” I walked over to the registers and poked into the books.
Dad kept extensive inventory notes there but little else.
Turning a slow circle, I saw the mini-library of bookshelves that guarded a short hallway stretching behind me.
“The office has to be back there.” I nodded. “And an office means papers, and papers might mean answers.”
Four doors lined the passage, all shut. A bathroom, maybe, and an office and… what? A backroom? Storage? Broom closet?
I tried the first one and found it locked. Shit.
Good thing I had keys.
After a few fumbles, I found the correct one and opened the door.
A riot of color greeted me.
“Oh wow! Dad.” Painting after painting of men, women, and mutants in candy colors warred across the walls of an all but empty room. A long wooden table, scarred and battered, took up most of the available space. Mismatched chairs, all their cushions stained and worn, surrounded it. Ghosts of food, cigar smoke, and comradery swirled around.
“A gaming room? You have a whole room just for people to game in now? How cool is that!” I exclaimed to my distant father.
Hurriedly, I scrambled to open the other rooms.
“My mistake.” I shook my head as I opened the second door. “Two gaming rooms.”
The second room proved to be much the same, though the characters on the walls gamboled and flitted across fairy-tale forests and castles. A particularly busty young woman with dragon wings, horns, and a thick but short tail stood on the edge of a cliff to observe the aerial antics of scantily clad angels as they floated across the ceiling.
While cool, still not an office.
“Oh well, third time’s the charm.”
I brandished my set of keys and stepped across the hallway.
The scent of bleach wafted out of door number three before I’d hit the light switch inside. The bathroom within was cleaned and well stocked, with duplicates of several cleaners stashed among imperfect war orcs on a high shelf.
“Dad never struck me as the obsessively clean type before,” I mused. “He must have a clean-freak employee. Who, though? Maybe they know where he went.”
Paper towels, toilet supplies, brooms, mops, a second kind of paper towel, sponges, and a bucket had all been stacked to the side of a neatly maintained sink and stall arrangement. Blocks and pipes in primary colors had been painted on the walls around the sink and mirror.
“Okay, so three’s not my lucky number. That just leaves you.” I rounded on the last door.
Unlocked, I flipped the light on a massive room. Far larger than the two gaming rooms combined, the place had been divided into two main sections. Off to the left, a small kitchen sat entrenched in a battle for space and cleanliness. The tiny counter next to the fridge was covered with far more microwaves than it was meant to hold, toasters, boxes of plastic forks, stacks of Styrofoam cups, and mountains of paper napkins.
A battered picnic-table-turned-concession-stand watched over the mess, itself guarded by two giant, economy-size trash cans.
Nearly a dozen computers all lashed together by thick cables dominated the other half of the room.
Comfortably worn office chairs sat, pushed neatly into place.
Surge protectors had been taped to the cement, and plastic mats covered floor and cables alike for the ultimate in rolling chair protection.
Giant robots of all kinds—mech suits, composites of cars, even stylized lions contorted into metallic limbs—marched stoically across the walls.
“A LAN room,” I breathed. “Oh, Dad!” A thought hit me. “This must be why you asked Baxter to come down here.” It’d make sense. Bax knew all sorts of things about how to hook gaming computers together.
Not even considering the rent on their giant space, the computers alone must have cost thousands. How was any of this possible? They looked brand new; for all I could tell, they’d never been turned on.
I flipped off the light, slipped back through the door, and retraced my steps to the front. I had just reached the hallway when I heard a tinkle from the front door.
“We’re closed!” I yelled.
“I know!” Baxter replied. “Find anything?”
“No,” I groused and walked back up to the cash registers. “I can’t even find his office.”
“Did you look upstairs?”
“Upstairs?” I eyed him. “In a gaming store?”
“I’m serious!”
“There aren’t any stairs.”
“Well, no, but there’s—” He glanced around a bit wildly, then pointed toward the corridor. “There’s the pull-string for the attic.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me.” It might have been a while, but I didn’t remember an attic. “An attic? Since when does Dad’s store have an attic?”
I strolled to the string I’d entirely overlooked, dangling from the ceiling. So much for my spot check.
“Yeah, I know. I thought it was weird too. Your dad had a hook thing he used to pull it down…” Baxter cast about. “I’d show you, but I can’t find the pole for it.”
“I don’t need it.” I stalked the string and eyeballed the distance.
“Size matters not,” he croaked again and wriggled his eyebrows. He obviously expected to see me sling some weirdness.
“It’s just a regular jump, Bax. Natural twenty, coming up.”
I surged into the air, arm raised overhead, a demented combination of superhero and rocket ship. My vision narrowed to a single point of concentration as I stretched up to the string.
It cut into my palm as I grasped the rough rope.
I clung to it and hung in mid-air for a split second before gravity caught up and slammed me back to the ground.
The loud creak I expected failed to make an appearan
ce as the attic-ladder slid smoothly out of the now-open trap door.
“Incredible,” Baxter breathed at last. “No juju?”
“No, I caught it without my awesome cosmic powers.”
He stared, still stunned by my amazing physical prowess.
“Are you coming up?” I asked, resisting batting my eyes innocently with a will check.
“Yeah.” He trudged over, shaking his head in disbelief.
2
Stained and scuffed wooden floorboards stretched seemingly forever into the distance. Worn rag-rugs wrinkled into piles around the edges of the room somehow emphasized rather than masked its length. The mismatched bookshelves lining the place didn’t help either.
I climbed fully into the room and edged close to a wall.
The plywood bookshelf sagged with the weight of stack upon stack of paper. Reams of the stuff: loose, bound into tiny booklets, professional looking memo books, leather-bound day-journals, spiral notebooks. Paper of every weight and color littered the room in tidy piles covering every surface.
Baxter entered behind me and sidled over.
“Wh-what is all this?” I stammered. “It’s the size of an auditorium!”
He shrugged.
“It’s impossible. The entire building isn’t nearly this big!”
“I have no idea, Liz.” He gazed into the distance, his eyes wide. “Never been here.”
“You—” I stared. “You’ve never been up here? Seriously? You were the one saying I should come up here to find the office!”
“I thought this might be it?” He cringed and gave me a shaky smile. “What? I’ve seen your dad come up several times!”
I let my head drop back and let out a loud groan.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I waved him off. “We might as well look around while we’re here.”
A quick glance revealed a light switch above a hip-high, stained wood bookshelf. I wandered over and flipped it. Strands of fairy lights wound around the tops of the tallest bookshelves twinkled into cheerful life.
“Um,” I elocuted, “alright.”