Got Hope

by Michael Darling

  Finally, she said, “You promised to tell me how you made that bomb disappear.” Her face was intense. Serious.

  “I did,” I replied. “I will. When I can. Let’s talk about keeping you safe first.”

  Hope tilted her head to the side and I took it for a sign she was willing to change the subject. “Let’s go over this again. You don’t know the people who did this to you?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t see their faces?”

  “I never did. They kept me for hours in a dark room, handcuffed to a pipe. It felt like a construction site. Whenever they came in, they wore masks.”

  “Did you recognize their voices? See any tattoos or scars? Any kind of information to identify who they were?”

  Hope’s eyes focused on the table, scanning back and forth as if her memories were written there. “Half the time I was crying and couldn’t see anything. Sometimes they yelled at me but I don’t think I know any of them.”

  “And they told you the plan was to put you in front of Senator Lima’s house?”

  Hope nodded. Her eyes stayed on the table.

  “Did they say why?”

  “No. They said there were enough explosives to kill me and flatten the neighborhood. And they wanted it to be Senator Lima’s house.”

  Poodles. Not much to go on.

  “Let’s pretend this isn’t about Senator Lima. Let’s pretend it’s just about you,” I said. “What can you tell me—”

  Hope leaned back. “I don’t know, Got. You’ve already done a lot. I can’t ask you to keep helping me.”

  In reply, I put the documents I’d brought from my car onto the table: my private investigator’s license and my gun permit. “Hope. I’m trained to help.”

  Hope was incapable of hiding surprise. She looked back and forth at my papers like she was at a tennis match and each successive shot made her happier.

  “Aren’t I a lucky girl?” she said. I looked at the angry red marks that still circled her wrist and felt bad. She wasn’t that lucky.

  “In a way, that’s what has me worried.” I took my papers back. “Let’s stop assuming everything they told you is true.”

  “Okay.” Hope let her smile fade, understanding soberness was needed.

  “Is there anyone who might want to kill you?”

  “My husband, his lordship, the mighty Marcus da Silva. Because I’m divorcing him.”

  “I see. Do you have a reason for, uh, why—”

  “He’s a cheating dirt bag. That’s why me and another cheerleader are always on opposite sides of the field now. And she’s not the first.”

  “Gotcha. But if he’s the cheater, why would he want to kill you? You should be the one wanting to kill him.”

  Hope’s fingers found their way to her wounded wrist. Her fingers gingerly touched the cuts. She had pain enough. On the inside and the outside.

  “The prenuptial agreement.” She pressed her lips together in a thin slash. “If I enforce it, I get twenty-five million dollars. If he can break it, I don’t.”

  Twenty-five million?

  “Is he capable of violence?”

  “He’s hit me. Slapping mostly. He’s more the sneaky kind though.”

  It was important to listen carefully to a client. The things they said often had little clues to things they hadn’t even thought of. Her choice of words was a red flag. “What do you mean ‘sneaky?’”

  “He says he has pictures of me with other men. Having dinner. In a hotel room. He says I’m the one having an affair.”

  “And if he can prove it, the prenuptial agreement is broken?”

  “I think so. I can’t afford a lawyer. This all happened over the last few days. But I don’t know what he’s talking about. I haven’t done any of those things. He seemed confident though. That’s why I think he’s being sneaky.”

  “Sneaky how? It seems it would be difficult to get a woman involved with another man without her knowing about it.”

  Hope sighed. “I know.”

  My muscles and my brain needed room to move. I got up and went to the refrigerator and found some freshly-squeezed juice. Blood orange. So much tastier than plain orange. Pouring two glasses, I mused on a third possibility. There was a chance the bomb wasn’t meant to make an example of Senator Lima and wasn’t an attempt to break Hope’s prenuptial agreement.

  The bomb might have been meant for me.

  There were people who would love to see me take the express train to the afterlife. They’d be willing to stoke the engine and buy me a first-class ticket. It would better explain why Hope had been dropped off in the wrong place. The wrong place might have been the right place. There’s no way I was going to tell Hope any of this. Not until I was sure.

  She accepted my offer of juice with half a smile.

  “By now the bad guys have to be wondering what happened.” I checked my watch. “They were expecting an explosion at ten o’clock. They were expecting news coverage by eleven. It’s noon now and they have nothing.”

  “I saw the van outside. What did they want?”

  “They wanted to know if I was the owner of the house and if I’d seen a girl with a briefcase bomb. Someone called it in.”

  “Omigosh. What did you tell them?”

  “Not much. I didn’t want to be on camera telling a lie. I avoided answering.”

  “Those people are persistent. Especially if there’s a scandal.”

  “I didn’t show you my other license. I’m a Professional Annoyance.”

  Hope nodded sagely. “I can see that.”

  Her reaction made me smile. “Since the press showed up and not the police, I’m thinking the people who took you are the people who called the station. They want publicity.”

  Hope looked at the table again, hands wrapped around her glass of juice. She wasn’t sifting memories this time. Her feet bounced on the tile but she was nervous.

  “Think about what you want to do, Hope. I can help you disappear and it would be a smart choice. There’s no shame in staying alive. I can get you away from all this and nobody will ever find you. I’m guessing you don’t have any children to care for. You would have told me about any kids by now.”

  Hope shook her head. Just a turn to the right and then back to center. “What if this really is about the Senator though? If he was really their target. I’ll be safe, right?”

  She was still in denial. “Just in case, let’s assume the worst. Is there any reason we shouldn’t have a plan to get you to safety? Any reason you couldn’t go away?”

  She sighed. “My daddy.” She put her fingers against her nose like she was trying to hold sadness in, her hands shaking. She’d been able to pretend this wasn’t happening for a little while and it had been important for her to feel that slice of normal. Now the situation was becoming real again.

  I sat back down and touched her arm, avoiding the ugly red wounds.

  “Daddy needs me. The money is to take care of him and I’m not going to give up. I can’t leave my dad.”

  “It’s a worthy cause. He’d be proud of you.” That earned me a weak smile. “We could try the police.”

  “Except you lost the bomb,” Hope said, with a pointed look. “Or whatever.”

  Yup. Whatever.

  “I have friends on the force who will listen to me. If I can talk to them, they’ll take you to a safe house and keep an eye on you while I gather more information.”

  “Or it will give the bad guys time to get away.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Will you be my bodyguard?” The words tumbled out in a rush of syllables. She blinked six times in a row. “I guess I can’t keep telling myself everything’s all right but I don’t know who to trust. You seem honest. I don’t have a lot of money right now but I will later. After the divorce. If you don’t mind waiting, I can pay you.”

  I thought about saying no. This was a police matter, but I had little evidence. How could I turn her away? “Don’t worry about it,” I said.
She glanced into my eyes and tried to swallow. Whatever she had caught in her throat didn’t go down easy. Softly, I said, “You don’t have to pay me. I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

  She looked to the window. The green grass and the blue sky. “They’re out there, right?”

  “If we’re going to fight, we have to do it smart. You should stay inside as much as you can. But if you have to be somewhere, and it’s important, I’ll take you.”

  Her eyes drifted back to the table. Back to her glass of juice. “Okay.”

  “It’s possible they won’t come after you at all. They failed once. It will be twice as hard to try again. I’ll do everything I can to make sure it will cost them to even think about it. You’ll just have to stay where I can do that.”

  Hope gave a dry mini-smile. “You should know the last guy I moved in with after just meeting him, I married.”

  “Good to know. I think. Tell you what, promise to live up to your name and I promise to live up to mine.”

  She nodded. “Hope and Luck.” Saying it out loud helped her grin for real.

  Crossing my fingers, I said, “This is us, okay? Team Hope and Luck.”

  Her grin went lopsided. She couldn’t tell if I was joking or if I was just weird. I pressed on. “But you’re the quarterback. Get that notebook and write down your schedule for the next two weeks. Where you need to be. Who you need to talk to. Times. Dates. Locations. People. We’ll make a plan. I’ll check a few things and be back in a while.”

  I figured it would come down to this. Hope was tough but she was going to need someone to watch her back. I was going to need someone to watch mine too, and that meant I’d need to call my partner at some point. Before I called Nat, I needed to do one very important thing: find out if that bomb had actually gone off.

  The urge to check wouldn’t be ignored. It would only take a minute.

  I went back to my portal room.

  The pattern I’d used before was still set in the silver circle.

  It’d be hilarious to find out that the bomb had been a dud. It would also give me a much easier way to explain everything that had happened this morning.

  The paranoid part of my brain toyed with the idea that the bomb was waiting for me to open the portal so it could go off in my face since time ran differently there. Silly brain. I pulled a drop of power into my hand and sent it into the silver circle. Just in case, I scrunched my eyes shut and said, “Oscailte.”

  The portal fell open.

  No boom.

  I unscrunched my eyes, one at a time, and peeked over the edge.

  The bomb had gone off all right.

  The Behindbeyond is also called An Taobh Thiar Agus Níos Faide by those who live there. It had taken me three months to learn how to say it. My accent was crap, though, so I was stuck with the Behindbeyond.

  The connection between the mortal realm and the realm of the Fae was magical, and I’d stopped trying to figure out how it worked in terms of physics and geography. It was, however, literally perpendicular. Going from one realm to the other was like walking around a corner, vertically.

  Tilting from my house through the portal, I stepped into destruction.

  The peak where I stood was devoid of trees. If there had been any, they would have been blasted and burned. The bomb had left a crater the size of a house and turned a pristine mountain peak into a pit of rubble dusted with blackened dirt and snow.

  I took a walk around the crater, looking for remains of the briefcase. There was a scraped-up piece of the handcuffs. A reinforced corner with a hinge hanging intact. I wouldn’t have been able to guess they’d been part of a briefcase except I’d seen the briefcase before it had been ‘splodered. I wondered how many bits and pieces Hope and I would have been in if we had been ‘splodered too. The thought gave me a shiver.

  The pieces were more evidence. I put them in my pocket.

  I had saved Hope’s life. That was the important thing. As far as I could tell, nothing had died in her place. I took a deep breath through my nose. The air carried the scent of plastic explosives. Now I had to come up with a rational explanation for what happened to give Hope.

  My portal had appeared in this realm on unstable ground. When I came out, some of the loose rock shifted, leaving my portal floating in the middle of the air. It was kinda cool.

  I admired the magic for a moment then scrambled up the slope to make my way home.

  The rocks slid out from under me. More rocks farther upslope slid to take their place. The whole slope turned into shifting rocks. With a rumble, the floor of the crater dropped. I tried to keep my balance but the rolling scree sent me down. By the time the ground stopped moving, I had scrapes on my knees and elbows. Nothing was broken, but the scrapes stung.

  My portal was floating even higher. It wasn’t so high that I couldn’t grab the rim and pull myself through. I half-crawled, half-scrambled toward it. I needed to get home. I’d told Hope I’d be back.

  The portal flickered and vanished.

  Son of a salmonella.

  Chapter Four: The Raven and the Crown

  My way back home vanished.

  Why?

  A portal is connected to its destination in a way that is magical but also physical. Maybe when the land had fallen out from under the portal, the connection had been lost. I didn’t know if that was the actual reason or not, but I didn’t like unanswered questions and my guesstimation had a certain logic.

  Maybe I could ask Keeper about it, next time I saw him.

  Regardless, I didn’t know how to make a portal going the other way. I was stranded.

  This peak was charming because it was quiet and remote. And beautiful. Correction. It had been beautiful. The bomb had given it a black eye that marred its looks but hadn’t done anything to make it less remote. A hike of twelve miles to the nearest circle of traveling stones would have been great any other day, but today I didn’t have that kind of time.

  I looked up into the sky and called, “Midnight Dreary.”

  She’d be here in a minute.

  Midnight Dreary was the name I’d given my raven who lived in the Behindbeyond. She had been a gift from my father, the Alder King. If anyone knew of a quicker way back home, she would. She was smart enough to know her way around the vast world of the kingdoms. She was also smart enough to make fun of me when the occasion called for it.

  I started off in the direction of the liagán circle, which is where I could use one of the traveling stones to get back home if I couldn’t find a faster way.

  Time in the Behindbeyond was different, and I was grateful for that. My visits here could go on for hours but I always found that when I returned to the mortal realm, only a few minutes had passed. Maybe it had something to do with time moving at different rates. Maybe it was more like you were in the Fae realm for as long as needed and then you could go back to the mortal realm before you’d be missed.

  Magic.

  Max and Sandretta would take good care of Hope in my absence, but she was my responsibility and I couldn’t leave it to someone else. I had to get back. Muy pronto.

  It took thirty minutes to reach the tree line. The workout kept me from getting chilled in the cold air but I found myself scanning the skies frequently. It had never taken Midnight Dreary this long to find me before.

  There was an enormous fallen spruce near the edge of the forest. I kicked it. Hard. To relieve my increasing frustration but also to look for bugs. Midnight Dreary had grown accustomed to getting snacks when I came. I found some nice fat larvae by cracking a hunk of bark off the tree and, nearby, some wild raspberries for dessert.

  “Midnight Dreary!” I called.

  For another mile, I had berries in one hand and larvae in the other. The bugs got warm and squirmy so I wrapped them in a large leaf.

  The liagán circle was about eight miles farther downstream. At least the river was right where I’d left it. My cheeks felt flushed from more than the hike. I put my face in the water and dran
k then followed the river some more. A pressure continued building up inside me. It made me want to stomp on the bugs. Squash them into paste. These feelings rose from somewhere deep and dark and I didn’t like it. It wasn’t like me to treat life callously. Granted, the bugs were destined for a deep, dark gullet inside a big black bird, but that was a circle of life kind of thing rather than me venting my anger.

  There was no time for meditation, but there was a need.

  Breathing deeply and enjoying the view helped a little. There were all kinds of Pacific Northwest style scenery to look at. Spruce trees. A rolling river with just enough drops and falls to make a decent murmuring sound. Dragonflies dipping and diving near the banks.

  Whenever I let myself listen—really listen—to the world around me, the power of the Earth called to my being. It always had. In that soothing moment, I saw Midnight Dreary.

  She was a large bird, even for a raven, with a wingspan of at least five feet. She tilted her head like she’d be waiting for me.

  “Hello,” I said. She flew to my shoulder. I always felt cool when she did that. Like I was a pirate with street cred. I unwrapped her presents and held them in my hand where she could reach them.

  She put the tip of her beak in my palm and deposited a silver pendant on a chain.

  “What’s this? You got me a nicer present than I got you?”

  Midnight Dreary didn’t respond but went straight for the biggest grub in the litter, picked it up with the tip of her beak, and chucked to the back of her throat. I didn’t move my hand while she ate. I knew what the pendant on the chain would do. I’d used similar jewelry before. The first time, the pendant had been a silver lion. This time it was a silver crown.

  “No hurry,” I said. Although I needed to get home, and getting to dad’s castle would get me closer, I wasn’t excited about using the pendant. My raven had earned her snack. I was sure the delay in her finding me hadn’t been her fault, since she’d been forced into courier service by my father. Thus, the crown pendant.

  The pendant was as good as a royal summons. While everyone accepted me as the son of the Alder King, he hadn’t acknowledged me as his offspring. I was the heir apparent, heavy on the apparent.