by Obert Skye
“And you just happened to be stuck in the same traffic as we are?”
“No,” Rin said with a wave. “I just happened to be the cause of this traffic. I’m parked across both lanes about a mile down the road.”
“You did this?” Patti said with disgust. “Brian, this is unacceptable.”
“It’s Rin, and it had to be done,” he said cheerfully. “We need Sigi.”
“What?” Patti argued.
“I came to find her,” the wizard said.
Sigi looked pleased.
“Come on,” Rin instructed her. “We’ll run to where I’m parked.”
“Parked?” Patti hollered. “You mean where you’re blocking traffic!”
“Some things can be two things at once,” Rin said, sounding like a third-grade teacher explaining multiplication to his students.
“She’s not going with you!”
“Yes, I am,” Sigi said.
“Then I’m coming too.”
Rin moved around the car so that he was closer to Patti.
“You can’t come,” he said. “I know you and I have our differences, but you have to trust me on this.”
“Differences,” Patti said. “Differences are things like one person liking cilantro when the other one doesn’t. This isn’t a difference; this is a crisis.”
“Wait,” Rin said. “Are you mad because I didn’t like those enchiladas you made with all that cilantro?”
“That was over ten years ago, and no, that’s not what this is about.”
Traffic was backing up even further behind them. The impatient cars were all idling and wondering what the problem was keeping them standing still. Had the ones near Patti’s car rolled down their windows they would have been able to hear the explanation.
“Sigi can’t go with you,” Patti insisted.
Rin smiled.
“We have joint custody,” he reminded her.
“Really?” Patti put her hands on her hips, looking ready for a fight. “You’ve barely been around.”
“Even more reason why I should make things right.”
“Please, Mom,” Sigi said as she stood on the other side of the car. “I won’t do anything stupid.”
“The very fact that you want to go makes me doubt your judgment.”
“We’re going to help Ozzy find what he needs,” Rin said calmly. “I know I’ve provided you with more challenges than most ex-wives get, but this has to happen.”
“Will it be dangerous?” she asked.
“Not at all.”
“I should come.”
“No,” Rin said a bit too quickly, “you need to help Sheriff Wills understand that we’re fine.”
Rin and Sigi began to walk backwards and away from Patti.
“I have no choice?” Patti asked angrily.
“You always have a choice,” the wizard said. “You’re just having to choose the harder one.”
“This is kidnapping,” Patti shouted.
“I’m not a kid,” Sigi yelled as she began to jog off. “Thanks, Mom!”
Patti growled and shouted. “Call me and let me know what’s happening.”
“Of course,” Rin said, beginning to jog as well.
“Not you,” Patti insisted.
The wizard and his daughter took off running down the car-covered road. Everyone had their motors running as they waited for whatever was up ahead to be straightened out so that they could move on.
When they reached the white van, Sigi saw that it was parked in the perfect spot, blocking both lanes and not leaving enough space on either side for cars to get through. People were standing outside of their vehicles talking loudly on their phones, calling anyone they could think of to come move the van.
Rin pressed the button on the key fob and unlocked the doors. As quickly as they could, Rin and Sigi climbed into the van and the wizard started the engine. Everyone in the vicinity began yelling unkind things at them. A man pounded angrily on the front window.
“Hurry,” Sigi yelled.
Rin backed up two feet and then, like a professional driver, twisted the steering wheel and swung the vehicle to the right. With another twist, the van straightened out and shot down the road and toward the ocean.
“I didn’t realize he was running off to get you,” a voice said from the back of the van.
Sigi turned and saw Ozzy sitting on the padded bench. He had been hiding from the rows of traffic the poorly parked van had created.
“Ozzy!” she said happily.
“Hey, what am I? Scrap metal?”
Sigi spotted Clark on the floor and smiled even wider. The bird shot up onto Sigi’s lap and stood on her knees. She put her hand out and the metal bird pecked at her palm.
“I am so happy to see you,” she said excitedly.
“I am fun to look at.”
“You could have told me we were going to get Sigi,” Ozzy complained.
“I told you to squeeze your brain,” the wizard said. “I thought you’d be able to figure out that we can’t move forward if we’re not complete.”
Sigi turned her head and looked at her dad like it was the first time she had ever really seen him. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Yes, yes,” Rin said brushing off the affection, “save that for later. We have more important things to talk about. For starters, how was Harry Potter World?”
Ozzy didn’t let Sigi answer. Instead he filled her in on everything that had happened since she left three days ago. It felt like a world of information, but more than that, it felt otherworldly to have everyone back together.
“So where are we going now?” Sigi asked.
“California,” Rin said.
“What?” Ozzy asked.
“I just came from there,” Sigi reminded him. “We’re not going there just so you can go to Harry Potter World, are we?”
Rin looked hurt. “Of course not. But remember, like things, journeys can have multiple purposes.” Rin sighed. “Not that it matters—we’re not going to that part of California.”
“What part?” Ozzy asked.
“It’s just across the border. Should take us a little over four hours to get there.”
“Sheriff Wills will be looking for us,” Ozzy said.
“Not where we’re going.”
Ozzy glanced around the van. There was a wizard driving, the girl he liked most in the world in the passenger seat, and a metal bird that finally resembled the one he had grown up with sitting in her lap.
Clark looked at Ozzy.
“You okay?” the bird asked. “You look strange.”
“I’m fine,” he answered honestly. “I was just—”
“I think Ozzy needs to stop for one of those water seats,” Clark chirped.
“You mean a toilet?” Rin asked.
“Humans really mislabel a lot of their stuff,” the bird complained.
Rin pulled off at the next exit to get gas, visit the water seat, and stock up on snacks.
It was seven p.m. when they finally crossed over the border between Oregon and California. And it was seven-seventeen when Rin drove the white van thorough the Yeltin Cemetery gates.
“We’re at a cemetery?” Sigi asked needlessly. “Again?”
Rin stopped the vehicle and they all got out.
“This way.”
The boy, the girl, and the bird all followed the wizard.
It was a small cemetery with only a few hundred graves. There were trees surrounding the gates and trees shooting up between some headstones. There were also a few granite benches and a single mausoleum. A couple of the graves had dead flowers on them from loved ones who had been there recently, but not that recently. The grass between the graves was well trimmed and speckled with small yellow flowers. There were no other people aroun
d, and the sky was beginning to grow dark.
There were no people, but there were plenty of bugs.
Everyone swatted at their arms and faces as Rin led them to a grave located in the northeast corner of the cemetery, near one of the granite benches. The wizard stood in front of a plain gray headstone and watched Ozzy approach.
Ozzy knew what was happening—no words had been said, no explanation given, but as a wizard-in-training, or as a human with more than two brain cells, he had figured out where they were and what he was walking up to.
“My father’s grave,” he said to Rin before even looking at the headstone.
Rin slapped his neck and nodded.
Ozzy looked down and read the words chiseled into the granite headstone.
E. O. Toffy
“No dates?” Sigi asked, swatting away a bug almost as big as Clark.
“That’s not right,” Ozzy said softly. “Doesn’t that mean he’s still alive?”
“No,” Rin said kindly. “He is the opposite of alive.” Not liking the way he’d phrased it the wizard tried again. “He is no longer undead? Wait, that’s worse. How about, like old food, he is perished?”
“Wow,” Clark said. “I always forget how bad you are at some things. Luckily, you constantly remind me of that fact.”
Ignoring Clark and wanting to get it right, Rin took another solemn stab at it. “Ashes to ashes, butt to dust.”
“Seriously, Dad,” Sigi begged. “Stop talking.”
Rin was sweating now, much to the delight of the mosquitos. “What I’m trying to say is that your father is resting in places—in place. He is resting in this place.”
“Beautiful,” Clark said sarcastically.
Rin nodded proudly.
Sigi apologized for both Ozzy’s father’s death, and her father’s poor choice of words.
“I don’t understand,” Ozzy said as they looked at the headstone with so little information on it. “This could be for someone named Ed Otto Toffy. How do you know it’s my dad?”
“I was here last week. I talked to the grave-digging man who buried him,” Rin said as he put a hand on Ozzy’s shoulder. “He had the paperwork with the details and dates. It was requested that nothing but his initials and last name be on the stone.”
“Who requested that?”
“Your mother,” Rin said, sounding like he was telling a joke.
“Burn,” Clark chirped, not realizing he wasn’t.
Sigi picked up Clark and carefully held his beak closed.
“I don’t understand,” Ozzy said angrily. “You said he died three years ago.”
Rin swatted and nodded.
“That means three years ago, my mother was right here. She was four hours away from me as I sat in the Cloaked House alone? Why didn’t she go there? Why didn’t she bury my dad at the place he was taken from?”
“Your mother informed Mr. Gravedigger that it had been your father’s wish to be buried in California.”
“Why California?” Ozzy asked. “I don’t remember them having a connection to this state.”
“Digger said that your mother seemed confused. She paid double what the grave and burial usually cost and left the moment your father was lowered down. I don’t think your mother is well.”
“Another sick burn,” Clark chirped.
Sigi clamped back down on the beak.
“Ozzy, I don’t think your mother is well,” Rin repeated apologetically.
“How can you know that?” the boy said forcefully. “We don’t even know for sure that she’s alive. It was three years ago that my dad was buried—she could be dead too.”
Ozzy sat down on the granite bench and Sigi joined him.
“You’re not wrong,” Rin said respectfully. “I know that for years after your parents were taken from you, Charles and Ray forced them to work on the serum. When they continued to fail, they were used as test subjects, injecting the serums into themselves to see if they worked. They never got it right, and over time they became ill from the effects and were then disposed of by Ray. By that point they were no longer themselves. Their brains were addled, and their ambitions and desires had poisoned them from wanting anything other than the control of other minds. The Cloaked House wasn’t the only safe house they had set up. They went there to get away from Ray the first time. But they also had a lab in Colorado, and a submarine off the coast of Oregon. I think at that point they were hoping to recreate the formula so that they could best Ray. But they had forgotten too many things. Their minds no longer remembered the Cloaked House or the tapes with the formula. Or . . .” Rin paused. “Or you, Ozzy.”
Sigi put her arm around the boy she had first met years ago on the beach. He was so much taller and wiser—and much more wounded. She leaned against him and squeezed her fingers around his arm while waving away a bug with her other hand.
“I realize it does nothing to help,” Rin said softly, “but I want you to know that when I first told you that the answers we might find won’t always be warm, I was not thinking they’d be this cold.”
Ozzy raised his head and stuck out his chin. His dark hair blew softly into his eyes as he looked out at the dying light. His grey eyes matched the color of the granite bench and made his insides look rigid and rock-like.
“How do you know all of this?” he asked Rin.
“I found their lab in Colorado,” he answered. “There were countless papers and books. What they didn’t tell me, your mother did.”
“You’ve met my mother?” the boy said with a face full of shock.
The wizard nodded.
Ozzy was speechless.
“I can’t believe it,” Sigi said in disbelief. “You found her? You were hired to locate her, and you did?”
Another wizardly nod.
“Why didn’t you bring her back?” Ozzy asked.
“I tried.” For the first time since Ozzy had known Rin, he saw tears in the wizard’s eyes. “She’s not well. She disappeared before I could get her to come with me.”
Clark hopped onto Ozzy’s right shoulder and patted his forehead with his right wing. The bird, the wizard, and the girl all knew that it was a moment to not speak. After a few minutes, the bird forgot that.
“I can’t remember a lot about your parents,” Clark said as he jumped off Ozzy’s shoulder and onto the top of the headstone. “I know your mother was kind to your father. And I know that your father could get so caught up in his work that he’d have to shelve me away to think clearly. But I know that they must have been amazing to have a person like you. And even if he’s dead . . .” Clark pointed down to the grave with his left wing. “And she’s lost it, that doesn’t take away from the fact that at one point you were loved and that is more than most objects or humans ever have.”
Clark flew onto Ozzy’s lap.
The bird’s words seemed to lighten the mood in a small way.
“This is it?” Ozzy finally asked. “You’ve done what you were hired to do, Rin. You found my parents. And like Clark said, one’s dead, and the other’s lost and doesn’t remember me.”
Rin and Sigi and Clark stared at the trainee as he tried to process everything. Ozzy glanced up at Rin.
“Thanks, Rin,” the boy said sincerely.
Sigi watched her dad, her own eyes filled with worry.
“It’s okay,” Ozzy continued. “You told me that the answers might be more painful than not knowing. But you were wrong.” The boy sat up straight. “I would rather know everything as it is than be left in the dark. I know my parents loved me when they were taken. I know they were changed by the greed and power the serum caused. And I know I want to be like them in good ways, but I don’t have to continue with any of the evil they put into the world.”
Ozzy looked around at the cemetery as the night grew another shade darker.
“Can I at least get a ride back to Otter Rock?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Sigi said.
“You two have done enough.”
“Two?” Clark complained.
“You three,” Ozzy corrected himself. “But I was planning to take you with me.”
“Hold on,” Rin said. “This isn’t over. I’m not going to close the case and go off to Quarfelt to relax. We’re going to finish this by taking Ray down and saving the world.”
“No,” Ozzy said, “it’s too dangerous. I need to just go away.”
“You don’t run away from problems,” the wizard counseled. “You run toward solutions.”
“Well, my solution is to run,” Ozzy insisted. “Let me go and you’ll never have to deal with this again.”
“Do you not understand how family works?” Rin asked. “Do you think Sigi and Clark and Patti and I are just here for you to bump into while you try to figure life out? No. Wrong. You are more important to me than the family I was assigned in Quarfelt.”
“They assign you families?” Clark complained.
“Yes,” Rin said, “and I did not do well.”
“You don’t need to do this,” Ozzy said. “If I’m gone, the formula is lost forever.”
“And so are you,” Sigi pointed out. “We’re not letting you go. And if you sneak off, Clark will find us and rat you out.”
“That’s true,” Clark said. “I’m not good at minding my own business.”
“And remember . . .” The dying light was behind Rin’s back, making the wizard’s silhouette tall and commanding. It also had the effect of making his voice sound more intimidating than usual. “You are a wizard-in-training. I must see you through. And you’ll need every ounce of magic you can muster. It won’t hurt to have someone with experience along for the ride.”
“And that’s you?” Ozzy asked.
“You know I hate to brag,” Rin said humbly.
Clark was confused. “Nobody knows that.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone else,” the boy said, looking at Sigi. “I don’t want anything else to burn down, or be torn apart, or to die because of me. I don’t want to control anyone’s will. It tears me apart.”
“How about you give me until the end of the week?” Rin said. “If you’re not happy with the results you can have your money back.”