by Frank Hurt
The spread Alarik’s mother made for the Schmitt Family’s weekly brunch was glorious: peppered bacon, whole grain toast with homemade juneberry jelly, scrambled eggs topped by melted Colby-jack mixed with chopped onion and garlic over a bed of tater-tots. Ember’s stomach eagerly grumbled its approval.
Alarik made room for Ember, seating her next to him along one long side of the table. Ronald Schmitt sat on one short end, with his brother Boniface at the other end. Muriel was to Ronald’s left, and on his right was Anna.
Ember nibbled delicately, though she was so hungry she would have used a trowel if it would have been socially acceptable. She felt them watching her, could sense that the usual family conversation was censored due to the surprise guest.
When the food on the plates was half-consumed, Alarik said, “I’ve got an announcement to make. Ember and I are officially dating.”
Ember froze mid-bite with a piece of jellied toast held to her mouth. Her eyes widened.
Everyone but the two children stopped eating. Anna and her golden eagle subform gave Ember a predatory glare that made her feel like she was a tiny rabbit in an open field.
“I should explain.” Alarik was grinning. He was enjoying this. “Yesterday, she got a surprise call from External Relations—”
“Rik, you really shouldn’t.” Ember pushed the bite of toast into her cheek so she could produce her muffled words. “Let’s talk about this.”
“You really shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, sweetie. Besides, sooner or later they’re going to find out that you spent the night at my place.” Alarik winked at Ember as everyone else scowled.
Ember felt the collective wrath of the Schmitt Family burrowing into her. Kill me now.
The twins played with their food and squirmed in their chairs, oblivious to the tension among the adults at the table.
Alarik still wore his silly grin. “Come on, let me tell them.”
She squinted at him but said nothing.
Interpreting her silence as acquiescence, the man sitting next to her told his family about yesterday’s events. From her brush with Director Samson to the interview with Peggy and Kenneth. She involuntarily shuddered when he told them about how she took Kenneth’s hands in hers in some ill-advised attempt at playing Healer. When Alarik pulled Ember away from Kenneth, she threw up all over Peg Barth’s kitchen floor and acted drunk.
When he was done telling his story, everyone was silent for a few minutes. Ember stared at her half-finished breakfast. Her cheek still puffed out from the piece of soggy toast stowed within.
Arnold’s wife pushed her chair back and sat her cloth napkin on the table. She walked around the table to where Ember was seated and wrapped her arms around the Malvern woman, hugging the still-seated Ember from behind. Stephanie sniffled and said, “thank you for helping us.”
Ember swallowed and finally looked up. Everyone else was still silent, but the mood had changed completely. Boniface raised his coffee mug as a salute to her. Muriel dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. Ronald watched, his elbows on the table and his fingers weaved together against his chin. Arnold’s eyes were wet but held a faint smile.
Anna leaned back in her chair, the ferocity in her gaze replaced with an appraising expression. “Well, hell’s bells, Ember. If you wanted the family’s approval to date my brother, there are easier ways to go about it than to get those External Relations jerks involved. A case of beer would’ve been all we needed.”
Alarik gave Ember a wink that she answered with a simper.
The rest of brunch was increasingly lighthearted. When everyone was done eating, Ember helped clear the table.
“Feel like taking a walk with me?” Anna asked as she finished loading the dishwasher.
“I would, thank you.” Ember’s smile felt permanently affixed.
Maxim and Marta joined them for part of the walk until the twins got distracted and ran off into the rows of trees and shrubs which formed the protective shelterbelt. Lucky barked and chased after them, wagging her tail constantly. Anna led Ember to a clapboard-sided building with peeling white paint and green asphalt shingles.
“This is why I don’t have a savings account, and why I still live with my parents.” Anna opened the door to the building and flipped a toggle switch on. “And why I don’t have time for a boyfriend.”
Inside, the small building was cluttered with woodworking tools Ember couldn’t identify. Anna proudly showed off her table saw, a bandsaw, router, planer, and a scroll saw. Stacks of repurposed wood filled shelves mounted to the wall. Beneath the window, her project sat half-assembled on the workbench.
Ember marveled at the details of the doll-sized barn, tracing the scroll work with her fingertips. She peered into the window of the unfinished building, noting feed troughs and stalls, a hayloft, and doors mounted on tiny brass hinges.
“This is positively brilliant, Anna!” Ember was careful not to tip over a closed can of red paint, in case the lid wasn’t tight. “And you have other little buildings, too!”
Anna beamed with pride. “I make a full set: farmhouse, barn, grain bin, corrals, chicken coop, windmill. And then no farm is complete without these.” Anna’s dusky eagle eyes turned upward, and her chin raised shortly after. She opened a cabinet and pulled out a box. Within were dozens of farm animals, all hand-carved and painted.
“Oh, my! These are exquisite!” Ember brought a Jersey milk cow up to her face for closer inspection. “How much do you sell these for?”
Anna laughed, “I don’t. These are gifts. I made a set for Marta and Max. This one is going to some neighbor kids down the road.”
“Anna, you need to sell these! The level of detail is amazing.”
“Who would buy them?” Anna shrugged and stretched her neck, leaning her head on one shoulder and then the other. “You can buy plastic toys so cheaply. So many hours go into each set, I can’t imagine anyone willing to pay enough to make it worth my time. No, it’s just a hobby. An expensive hobby.”
“You would be surprised.” Ember traded the cow for a chicken. “You even carved its little toes! That’s incredible. You could set up a website, market these to collectors. Not as children’s toys, but as high-end collectibles.”
Anna’s lips quirked, unconvinced but basking in Ember’s enthusiasm for her handiwork. She looked up at the rafters in a futile attempt at stretching her muscles. “Besides that, it’s brutal on my neck and back, doing all this carving. So many hours crouched over a workbench is hell to pay.”
Ember watched Anna stretch. “That’s caused by poor ergonomics. You’re overworking your trapezius and sternocleidomastoid.”
The woman stopped stretching and looked at Ember bemusedly. “My whaty-whatius? Are you having a stroke? Do you smell burning toast?”
Ember laughed. “No, not today anyway. I became a licensed massage therapist as a cover job. You should stop by the Magic City Spa and let me work you over. I’m legitimate and all, despite it being a part-time gig.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” The woman looked at Ember appraisingly. “You really do like helping people, don’t you? Come on, we’d better get back to the house.”
Most of the afternoon was spent on the porch, sipping cold drinks and swapping stories. Ember felt somewhat disappointed when Alarik finally declared that it was time for him to take her home. Part of her felt like she was already there.
Ronald Schmitt walked with Ember back to his son’s pickup as Alarik gave his niece and nephew hugs.
“You have a really lovely place here, Mr. Schmitt. Thank you for letting me intrude on your Sunday.”
“You call me Ronald, you hear? And you’re welcome here anytime. You’re no intrusion at all.” He opened the passenger door and offered his leathery hand to help her climb in.
Ember accepted, feeling his rough calluses and strong grip. “That’s really sweet of you, Ronald. Thank you for being so welcoming.”
“I’m gonna tell you something, Ember. You made an impression here tod
ay, don’t you think otherwise. Not too many Malverns go out of their way to break bread with changelings, you know. It’s like we’re animals to them.”
Ember cast her gaze aside. “I know, and it’s not right. It shouldn’t be that way.”
“No, it shouldn’t. But that’s the way it is.” The elder Schmitt scratched his chin, the way his son tended to do. “I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that for a long time, we’ve been trying to find answers for Arnie. We’ve fought, we’ve complained, we’ve prayed. Nobody in the embassy showed any hint of giving a damn.”
She swallowed, feeling the weight of his words. Ember looked back at him and said, “There’s a lot working against us—a whole machine of bureaucracy in our way. I can’t promise I’ll be successful. I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.”
He scratched his whiskers and cleared his throat. “You know, before I taught Rik and Arnie how to weld, long before they went off to Wahpeton to get certified as welders, I showed them how to break down iron using an acetylene torch. In a good day, the two of them could tear apart a 400-barrel steel tank and turn it into nice, neat sheets of scrap that could be loaded in a dump trailer and taken to town for recycling.”
Ronald leveled his gaze at her. “I need you to know that whatever comes of this, you’ve given us the first spark of justice we’ve had for Arnie. Make no mind, I know it’s nothing more than a spark. But you know, when you light a torch all it takes is a little spark.”
18
Expect a Lonely Existence
They were nearly to Minot when she asked him to take her to the Church of Brethren Cemetery instead of her apartment.’
“Haven’t you had a long enough weekend yet?” Alarik asked. “I thought you’d be eager to get home.”
She couldn’t deny that she was exhausted, so she told the truth. “Your father told me a little story, right as we were leaving. I don’t know if he intended it, but he reminded me of why I got involved in the first place. I have too many questions, which I hope my contact has some answers to.”
“Your contact? The same I took you to meet last week, you’re meeting him tonight? How did you manage to get a meeting scheduled with him? I’ve been with you this whole weekend.”
“It’s complicated. Look, Rik, there’s a lot going on that I can’t tell you, I’m sorry. We just need to learn to trust one another. Do you trust me?”
“More than yesterday.” He grumbled. “But eventually, trust means letting me in on what’s going on.” He flipped the Ford’s turn signal and prepared to drive east, toward the town of Surrey.
“You are telling me…that the changeling’s aura was deformed, his subform was completely absent, and he was possessed by—what—an…evil spirit? Little girl, have you been sampling laudanum?”
Ember would never get comfortable with the ghost of Barnaby Harrison. It was difficult to know which was more abrasive: his sand-over-sheet-metal voice or his condescension towards her.
“Laudanum? I don’t even know if they make that stuff anymore. You mean to ask if I’m hallucinating? I assure you, I’m not. I say this knowing full well how ironic it is that I’m talking to a ghost.” She hugged herself against the chilled air and wished she had brought a jacket.
Barnaby puffed out his chest. “An Inquisitor talking to the dead may only seem ironic to the ignorant.”
She would need to try a different tack if she was to glean answers from the ghost. “No, I get it. You’ve never seen what I’m describing, so it mustn’t exist. Irony is you calling me ignorant. I don’t know why I thought a Grand Inquisitor would be able to help me.”
“Oh, your tart words bruise me so.” Barnaby clutched his chest with a transparent right hand. “Or they might if your opinion was of any consequence to me.”
“I’m sorry, I thought you might still care about serving justice.” She tilted her head and narrowed her gaze as an idea emerged. “You know, I could help serve justice to your killer, whoever he was.”
“Billy would be…long dead by now. It has been over a century since he pushed me from that ledge. He was not much younger than I was.” Barnaby dragged his fingers across the inscription on his headstone. “1898. I was…only 193 years old.”
“Billy? You’ve remembered your murderer’s name, yeah?”
Barnaby continued gazing at his headstone. His rough voice was melancholy. “I have. Billy Colton. We were friends...or so I had wrongly convinced myself. I was foolish to think we could have been.”
“Billy Colton. Even his name sounds villainous. Why did he kill you?”
“That, I cannot fathom.”
She tapped her chin with an index finger. “Barnaby, I’ll find out what became of this Colton bloke. If he did get away without being charged with your murder, I can at least be sure to set the records straight.”
“You would? How would you do that?”
Ember shook her head. “I’m not sure yet. I’m resourceful. I’ll figure something out. So, will you help me?”
“It might be best if you start from the beginning.” The apparition propped his elbows against his headstone. “How did you encounter this…evil spirit, as you deem it?”
She told Barnaby of Wallace sending her to the Magic City to check in on his friend, Duncan Heywood. Ember told him of how the Senior Investigator and the rest of the Investigators were all “infected” with a shadowy blight.
“It is a Deference Spell that you are describing. It is a…dark sort of magic, not generally taught. Strongly discouraged, in fact.”
“What does it do?” She had some guesses.
“As implied; it allows the caster—this Director of Wellness as you named him—to control the actions of those under his spell. You said that you saw an image of the Senior Investigator, Heywood, reaching out…when you spoke to him?”
Ember shivered as she remembered. “Though Duncan simply sat in his office, the darkness around him grew and grew. It felt like the shadow was surrounding me, trying to bloody grab me.”
Barnaby shook his head. “The Deference Spell was not interested in you, it…doesn’t work that way. What you were witnessing was the spell fighting to contain Duncan’s aura, his will, and his thoughts. He was trying, desperately it seems, to tell you something. The Deference Spell prevented him from doing so.”
“He knows something about the Mandaree Incident.” Ember’s voice trailed off. She felt like light was starting to show through the cracks in this conspiracy, and she was splitting those cracks just a little bit wider. “Duncan knows something. He wanted to tell me. Elton Higginbotham is keeping the Investigators under his control, as they know the truth.”
“If they don’t already, they would be inclined to pursue the truth. It is what Investigators are born to do.” Barnaby paced the cemetery grounds, leaving footprints in the prairie grass. “This Higginbotham fellow is a formidable mage if he is able to hold sway over so many at once without exhausting his mana.”
“He can’t be too formidable; he wasn’t able to get me. He tried, but the spell wore off in a half hour or so.”
Barnaby stopped pacing. “Higginbotham cast a Deference Spell on you?”
“He did. It made me sick, and I vomited it out. The spell came out of me when I chundered.”
“You have it backward; the nausea, the vomiting…those are side effects of repulsion. You drew the spell out of yourself. If you had been properly trained, you would have been able to resist the Deference Spell altogether. Since you were not, you somehow managed to exorcise yourself. That is admirable, girl. This is more proof that you are indeed…an Inquisitor.”
She grinned. “It almost sounds like you’re proud of me. If I didn’t know any better.”
“I am not, and you do not. Proceed with your tale, if you are finished admiring your reflection.”
Ember sighed. There was no point in arguing with him. She told him about Arnie, about the other changelings who were sent into scout the toxic cloud surrounding Mandaree in 2001. She outl
ined what they had told her, and how they were each suffering from the same nightmare and various medical issues.
“That brings us to when you came in contact with the…evil spirit? Describe it to me again, girl.”
Ember described the sentient, alien presence she felt when she had tried healing Kenny, and how that oily slime responded to her with such malcontent.
Barnaby paced circles around his grave. “Truly, what you describe is foreign to me. I will admit it.”
“I was really hoping you were holding out on me.” Ember ran her fingers through her hair. A light mist was forming in the air, bringing a heavy dew with it. “I don’t know how I’m going to help them.”
“You were not even assigned the case for these changelings.” It was no question.
“No, I wasn’t. I don’t even think there is a case. Not formally. It’s more like, I don’t know, I see how they are being mistreated, and I can’t help but think I might be able to help. I can’t just stand by—”
“While an injustice exists.” Barnaby’s empty eye sockets glowed as he spoke. “That is the hallmark of an Inquisitor. It is why we are trusted with such responsibility. Our authority is a burden to us because we would be driven mad rather than allow corruption to exist. It is why a lone Supreme Inquisitor has always been held as an equal counter-balance to the rest of the High Council; because he or she will not—can not—permit injustice to persist.”
“Then that might explain why you were killed by Billy. And maybe all other Inquisitors were murdered, too?” It was Ember’s turn to pace. “But how could an entire generation of Druws forget that Inquisitors even existed? It’s like history has been rewritten to suit some vile aim.”
“That may be exactly what happened.” Barnaby conceded her theory with a nod. “I do not know how anyone could perform such a vast coup. It would take more than one evildoer. Many more. Though you are young and naïve, you must trust your instincts. Your Investigator’s Instinct…indeed, that is all you can trust.”