Changeling Justice

by Frank Hurt

  It was rotten to lie to him, but Ember didn’t know how much she could trust Alarik. Certainly, she couldn’t tell him that she was intending on talking with a man who had been dead for over a century. The less he knows, the better for us both.

  “When?”

  Ember stepped around the tree’s trunk, surveying the park, looking for signs that the buzzard may have landed. “Tonight, if at all possible.”

  Alarik cleared his throat again. After a moment, he said, “Okay. I’ll pick you up at six tonight.”

  “Thank you. Oh, and we can’t meet at my apartment, or we’ll be followed. I was thinking I could go for an evening run, and meet you someplace where we might lose my spy?”

  “You’re staying at one of the apartments that the Viceroyalty owns, right? The building with the bakery downstairs?”

  “Yes, in Number 302. But—”

  “I know how I can get you out of there.” Alarik sounded confident. “Just trust me.”

  Ember spent the morning in her office at the embassy, trying to appear busy as she waited for the day to end. Dennis interrupted her thoughts from time to time to ask for hints to the crossword he was working on. She would offer the answer when she had it. He would grunt his appreciation.

  It was Josette who once more came to the rescue, however unintentionally. The phone on Ember’s desk rang, and it was the spa manager on the other end.

  “I know you’re probably super busy today,” Josette said. “But is there any chance I could get you to come into the spa today? I’m already short-handed, and I had a massage therapist call in sick at the last minute. We’ve got clients scheduled.”

  The prospect of breaking up her day—and being away from Dennis for that matter—appealed greatly. “Sure, I can help.”

  “You’re sure? I’m not taking you away from anything pressing?”

  Ember chuckled, “Nothing that can’t wait. When do you need me?”

  “Honestly, in a half hour if you could?” Josette’s voice breathed with relief. “I really owe you.”

  Downstairs, Dennis insisted that he needed to follow Ember into the spa, but it was Josette who stood up to the bearded mountain. “You are not going to be anywhere near clients. You can wait in the lobby if you insist on being such a pest. I’d better not hear that you are bothering Ami, either. Jesus, I mean really, is Ember a prisoner or something?”

  In the end, Josette got her way, and Dennis sulked in the lobby’s reception area. Ember couldn’t help but feel smug. Whatever disturbing games the powerful Elton Higginbotham was playing throughout the rest of the building, on this floor at least it was Josette Hanson who called the shots.

  Ember spent the rest of the day working on clients. Though she had to concentrate on muscle groups and at times carry on conversations with the chattier sort of customers, for the most part, she could let her mind relax while her upper body worked.

  Most of her day’s clients were NonDruws, paying to have their muscle tension eased either by order of their chiropractor or as a treat to themselves.

  Ember did have one Druw client though; a Malvern artist who had injured her arm while unloading crates of her paintings. The injury was significant enough that if it would have happened to a NonDruw, they would have been forced to undergo surgery and follow up therapy. As a Druw, however, the woman was eligible for special treatment.

  As the woman sat reclined in a padded chair, Ember slipped on a ring. The ring was too large, made in a universal size, but its purpose was the large gem attached to it. It was an icy blue Leystone, fully charged from the Ley Line deep in the subbasement of the building. With its power and a simple trapezius and deltoid muscle massage, Ember helped the Malvern woman heal from her injury within minutes.

  “Like new again,” Ember smiled at the artist.

  “You’re a wonderful healer.” The woman returned the smile, though she was looking at her arm as she flexed the repaired muscles.

  “Thank you, but I’m no Healer.” Ember wiggled her fingers, displaying the crystal held in the prongs. The Leystone’s blue hue was slightly diminished from what it was minutes earlier—evidence of its power discharge. “It’s all about the mana.”

  “I wish I could just wear one of those all the time.” The woman continued smiling and flexing as she stood up. “I think I’d be invincible if I did!”

  Ember pulled the ring off and placed it back in its numbered case for Security to retrieve. Though she hadn’t been sleeping and she had felt drained after calling up the ghost last night, she now felt fully refreshed. I think I’ll ask Josette to put me on the schedule more often.

  Alarik arrived a quarter to six. Though she was expecting him, the knock on the door startled Ember.

  “I’m a little anxious,” Ember explained as she let him into her apartment.

  He appraised the apartment from just inside the doorway, lifting his head as he breathed in. “Nice place. Roomy. How many people are living here?”

  “How many? This is my apartment alone. Whatever makes you think I have flatmates?”

  Alarik lifted his head once, using his chin to gesture toward the kitchen. “Stack of dishes in the sink, overflowing garbage can, laundry on the couch. Must be, oh, three or four people living here?”

  Ember rolled her eyes and pushed on his chest with her hand. “Let’s go.”

  “What, I don’t get to meet your roommates?” Alarik grinned wolfishly as he stepped back into the hall, allowing himself to be pushed by the short woman. “Nice white lace bra, by the way.”

  “Excuse me?” Ember’s jaw dropped.

  “You had it hanging from the doorknob of your bathroom in there.” He continued grinning. “I couldn’t help but notice.”

  Ember clicked her apartment door shut behind them and shook her blonde mane. She marched toward the elevator.

  “You’re going the wrong way,” Alarik said in a hushed tone. He led her to the stairwell. “This way.”

  Ember hesitated at the top of the stairs. The old staircase was narrow and steep, as was common over a hundred years ago for an old former industrial building as this once was. Built for mountain goats. She crossed her arms. “I’m not going down those bloody stairs.”

  Alarik stopped, already five steps down. He looked up at her, confused. “Why the hell not?”

  “We’ve a perfectly good elevator.”

  “Yes, but I’m taking you to the basement,” Alarik explained. “There’s a passage beneath the streets where we can slip out unseen. The elevator needs a maintenance worker’s key to go to the basement. Unless you have such a key?”

  Ember shook her head.

  “Well, then…” Alarik’s voice trailed off purposely.

  Ember clutched the handrail with both hands and stepped gingerly down the stairs.

  The man watched with growing consternation. “Are you going to be alright?”

  “I hate steep stairs. Especially going down bloody stairs.” Ember glared at him. “I’m not the most graceful person if you must know. I have a habit of falling, and it would really be inconvenient if I twisted my ankle, yeah?”

  Wordlessly, Alarik stood next to Ember. He gripped her arm firmly and guided her, one step at a time. She was perspiring by the time she reached the chilly basement.

  “You really weren’t shitting about being afraid of stairs.”

  “No…shitting…here.” Ember breathed as she shook her head.

  “Minot used to be known as Little Chicago, back during the Prohibition Era,” Alarik explained as he led her by flashlight through a chilly subterranean tunnel. “These tunnels were used by bootleggers to get around the downtown area. I’d imagine in the winter it was especially handy.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “You remember meeting my Uncle Boni? At my folks’ house? Well, he was a moonshiner back in the day. He made a decent living at it, too, for a while.”

  The musty tunnel forked a few hundred feet in. He chose the left passage. Ember had diff
iculty even sensing direction and realized it wouldn’t be difficult to get disoriented underground. She shivered at the thought of being lost in this place. She shivered again when she saw mice running along the edge of the curved walls, fleeing the bright flashlight.

  “Just a few steps upward now,” Alarik said, glancing over his shoulder at her. The flashlight only partially illuminated his face, but she could see he was sincere when he asked if she was doing well.

  “I am. Going up stairs doesn’t bother me too much. I’ve only rarely fallen up stairs.”

  A yellow-painted door was partially ajar at the top of the set of stairs. The door’s hinges squeaked loudly in protest.

  Alarik whispered, “Shhhh! I’ll feed you some squirrel piss next time.”

  “Bloody hell?” Ember frowned. “Please tell me you’re not talking to me.”

  “No, no. I’m talking to the door.”

  “Oh, well that makes more sense.” Ember scoffed. “What’s squirrel piss supposed to be?”

  “That’s what my Uncle Boni likes to call WD-40.”

  “WD-40? Like, a lubricant?”

  “Yup,” Alarik said, his voice still hushed. “But between having to explain it to you and the way you say ‘lubricant,’ the joke isn’t as funny.”

  Ember smiled. “You might consider that it wasn’t too funny to start, yeah?”

  They emerged in a large, unlit room. Rows of banquet tables were lined with steel folding chairs.

  Alarik clicked his flashlight off and whispered, “Nobody should be here right now, but let’s not take any chances.” He took her hand and led her through the darkened building, up yet more narrow stairs, and finally through a steel door to the outside street. He seemed to have no trouble finding his way in the near-dark. The flashlight had been more for her benefit, given the superior night vision his canine eyes afforded him.

  He unlocked and opened the door to a large Ford Super Duty pickup parked at the curb. The pickup’s front end was mounted with the biggest grill guard Ember had ever seen. She accepted his help getting up into the pickup.

  As he walked around to the driver’s side, Ember glanced back at the building they had just exited. It was a large church, with a white-capped steeple barely visible from her angle.

  “St. Leo’s Catholic Church,” he explained. “It’ll be locked if we get back late, but I have a key. Are we going to be getting back late, you think?”

  “I don’t know. Probably, I suppose.”

  Surrey wasn’t more than ten miles east of Minot, but she used the time to ask about him and his family. His was a farming family, and he seeded some acres of his own, along with helping his father and Uncle Boniface with their operations. Alarik never married (“no time,” he explained). He spent most of his days building Schmitt Brothers Welding, plying his trade at job sites across northwestern North Dakota.

  “I noticed that you had a different lorry with your welding tools,” Ember said. “Business must be brisk to afford more than one?”

  “Lorry?” Alarik scrunched up his nose and laughed. “We say, ‘truck’ here, Englishwoman. Or better still, ‘pickup,’ unless you’re from the city. If you say ‘lorry’ you’re talking about a woman.”

  “Mmhmm, I see. Just so we’re reading from the same menu, you are lecturing an Englishwoman on…English? Is that about right?”

  “Yup.” He grinned wide, showing her his pearly white incisors. “Yup, that’s about right.”

  She convinced Alarik to wait in his pickup a few hundred yards away from the cemetery’s edge by telling him that she was meeting her contact for the first time. It wasn’t a lie, not completely.

  It would be a couple of hours before the sun set. She wouldn’t have to call this particular ghost in the dark, nor be stuck communing with him in the same. Talking with dead people was one thing, but doing so while alone at night in a cemetery, that was something she preferred to avoid.

  Ember found the headstone quickly enough. It was a prominent block of rock, framed by two junipers. The weathered, etched letters were rough but readable:

  Barnaby Harrison

  Died 1898

  “Convenient that they left your birth date off, Mr. Harrison. No need to lie about it, this way.” Ember traced the capitalized letters with her fingertips. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and muttered, “I hope you’re easier to talk to than the last bloke. Please speak with me, Barnaby Harrison.”

  The first thing Ember noticed was the precipitous drop in temperature. Though the evening sun still shone, it felt like she had just stepped into a walk-in freezer. She exhaled and saw her breath misting before her eyes. The golden-orange sunlight was joined by a shimmering blue-white fog around the grave site. Within the center of the fog, a man’s silhouette formed.

  “Tedious...girl.” This ghost’s voice was dismissive and unfriendly. If words could be formed by pouring coarse sand over a sheet of aluminum foil, this is what the spirit of Barnaby Harrison sounded like to Ember’s ears.

  “Mr. Harrison? Barnaby Harrison?” Ember cupped her sweating hands over her ears. Bugger, it feels like my head is vibrating when he speaks. “Barnaby Harrison, can you hear me, sir?”

  “The dead…hear you…foolish girl. What right…have you…to call on me?” The lethargic voice had a bite to it, and it echoed in Ember’s skull. The shimmering silhouette began to form details: a stout old man, dressed in a formal suit. His grey, woolen jacket was unbuttoned, revealing beneath it a brass-buttoned black vest to match his dress slacks. A necktie framed a white shirt, the collar which jutted up to meet the man’s snowy mutton chops. His nose was prominent, and his brows formed a glare, though the man’s eyes were completely transparent—she could see the trees behind him through those empty eye sockets. Topping Barnaby’s head was a smart beaver skin hat with a pheasant feather tucked into its band.

  Ember pressed her hands flat against her ears when he spoke. This doesn’t feel right. The power I feel from him. It’s like he’s in my bloody head. “Oh, my god!” She hadn’t intended to say that aloud.

  “No, but…close enough, woman.” Barnaby looked around the cemetery. “Where the hell…am I?”

  Ember kept her hands over her ears, but she heard the metal-aggregate voice bounce across her eardrum just the same. He’s coalescing in form and voice much faster than Rufus did. All the more amazing for how long he has been dead.

  The ghost turned sharply to look at her. His voice boomed. “Little girl, do not…make me ask twice!”

  “Surrey, sir!” Ember winced, and though she knew she was groveling, she couldn’t help herself. “Surrey, North Dakota. You’re in a cemetery, sir. You’ve been dead some 112 years.”

  The ghost looked then at his own grave marker. His transparent hand reached out for the stone. He did something then that in dozens—scores, even—of talks she had had with ghosts, Ember had never seen: he swept a leaf off the headstone with his fingers.

  Ember’s mouth was agape as she watched the translucent shape of a man walking casually around his grave site, inspecting the ground. He clapped his hands, and birds fled in response. It wasn’t much, but the fact that he was able to directly interact with the physical world at all unsettled her greatly.

  “Sir,” Ember’s mouth was dry and she had to swallow to form the words. “Mr. Harrison, sir, I really need your help.”

  The ghost swirled around and stepped up to her. The air grew colder still as he approached. Empty eye sockets glared down at her and the sound of pouring sand began again. “You! How dare you make demands of me, tart! Who taught you these parlor tricks? Answer me now!”

  Ember shrank. She dropped her gaze and noticed his feet made impressions in the grass where he walked. She managed a hoarse whisper. “Nobody. Nobody taught me. I’m an Investigator. Please, sir, I need your help. I have no other Investigators I can trust. Not here, anyway.”

  The ghost’s laughter echoed in Ember’s head. “You really are a foolish little girl, if you confuse a Grand
Inquisitor with a mere Investigator. The dead care not about the petty machinations of the living.”

  Ember looked up, forcing her eyes to meet his. She looked through the swirling fog where his eyes once were, mustered her courage, and said, “I care. And I need to ask you some questions.”

  The ghost grew with rage. Its frosty presence slammed into her. “Release me!”

  She felt her eyes roll up into her head. A whimper forced its way from her lips. She stumbled backward, tripping against the uneven ground and falling onto her ass. She looked up to see the imposing ghost leering over her. Ember scrambled, crab-walking away from the enraged spirit. She backed up against the juniper’s trunk. She rolled over and clung to the rough bark, breathing the tree’s gin aroma as she involuntarily sobbed.

  The fury of Barnaby’s spirit spoke within her head. “You…will…release me, now!”

  Ember opened her eyes and tears streamed down the side of her cheek. She looked over the cemetery, seeing the setting sun and wondering if it would be the last she would see. Far down the street, closer to the small town of Surrey, she saw the vehicle that delivered her to this hell. She thought of Alarik, of his brother, and of their family and the nine other families affected by whatever happened to them nine years ago in Mandaree.

  “No.” She clutched the tree, using it to help steady her as her feet found purchase to stand. She said it louder now. “No, I will not release you, Barnaby Harrison.”

  The ghost screamed in her head. It swirled around her, its fury forming a whirlwind that transcended the plane of the dead to reach the physical dimension. Leaves and tiny, blue-grey berries blew off the juniper to rain over Ember’s body. But she didn’t back down. She didn’t even blink.