by Obert Skye
Ozzy and Sigi tried their best to look surprised by the information.
“I think they’re mainly laughing at your pants,” Clark said.
Rin ignored him and Clark looked bothered by the lack of reaction.
“Quarfelt is real,” the wizard said quietly. “I know how unbelievable that might seem to others, but having even one person believe in you makes the challenge surmountable. You don’t know what you did when you picked up that phone and dialed my number,” Rin told Ozzy. “You altered the course of my life and gave me the kind of purpose every wizard needs.”
“That still doesn’t explain the pants,” Clark tried again.
Nobody said anything.
“Dad,” Sigi said, “I’m really sorry I didn’t believe in you before.”
Rin smiled. “Befores are forgotten when the now is so nice.”
Ozzy looked around for a refrigerator magnet or a poster with the saying Rin had just said printed on it.
There weren’t any.
“Hard to forget the before when the now pants are so awful,” Clark tweeted loudly, tired of nobody paying attention to him.
Rin looked at the bird. “Sometimes being quiet is the most impressive thing a person, or a bird, can do.”
Clark tipped his ketchup-topped head. “It’s hard to be quiet when your pants are so loud.” The bird looked around, wondering why Ozzy and Sigi weren’t laughing.
“Pearls before pigeons,” he complained.
Frustrated, Clark began to smear tough-looking circles of mustard around his eyes. Unfortunately, the tips of his wings were not made for precision painting and the thick mustard blinded him.
“I can’t see!” he scream-tweeted.
Confused, the bird jumped up from his nest, flapping his wings madly. He flew up and against the window. With a hard thud, Clark bounced off the glass and fell onto the floor. He thrashed around Ozzy and Sigi’s feet, sending drops of ketchup and mustard everywhere.
“Hold on!” Ozzy yelled while putting his food down. “You’re making it worse!”
The wizard-in-training tried to grab the wailing bird, but Clark was almost completely covered in smeared ketchup and mustard. He slipped through Ozzy’s hands and shot toward Rin. Clark hit the wizard-sized plate of fettuccine hard. Wet creamy noodles flew up into the air and stuck to the ceiling and walls. A dozen strands clung to Clark as he tried frantically to fly.
“What are you doing?” Sigi hollered. “Stop moving!”
Clark’s ear holes were filled with ketchup and alfredo sauce. He twisted through the air and crashed down on the fat end of the ironing board that Rin had used to iron his robe. Ozzy jumped to grab him, but slipped on a mound of floor noodles. The boy slammed forward and onto the pointed end of the ironing board. His force and mass sent the bird rocketing toward the door.
Thwapt!
Clark’s beak stuck into the door like a dart. The bird struggled to get loose, but it was no use. He gave up and hung limply from the back of the door, dripping various goop down onto the floor.
Ozzy looked around at the red-and-yellow speckled room. Noodles hung from the ceiling and walls and laid in random lines on the beds and carpet. With the TV and bird muted, the room was silent.
“See,” Rin said cheerfully. “Sometimes being quiet is—”
A loud knock on the door disturbed the newfound peace.
“Were we expecting more food?” Ozzy asked.
“No,” Rin replied.
“If it’s one of the staff, they’re not going to like what we’ve done to the place,” Sigi said.
“Don’t worry,” Rin said. “It’s not one of the staff. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the beginning of the end.”
“What?” Ozzy and Sigi asked in unison.
“Of course, by my calculations, it’s about a day early.”
The wizard stood up, straightened his hat, and walked to the door.
The wizard stood up, grabbed a small towel from out of the bathroom and quickly wiped bits of goo from his hands and face. He straightened his hat and walked to the door.
There was a second knock, a bit more forceful this time.
“Coming,” Rin said, almost cheerfully.
The second knock caused Clark to vibrate. The bird was still stuck in the back of the door, hanging two inches below the peephole. Rin took the towel he had used and hung it over Clark. The white material covered the twitching metal bird completely. Without taking the time to see who had knocked, the wizard reached out and opened the door. Standing in the hall, wearing the kind of expression a vengeful shark might show a pesky shrimp, was Ty.
Rin tried to look past him to see if there was anyone else, but Ty’s bulk blocked his view and made it difficult to see anything beyond the large man’s shoulders and neck. Despite the sorry view, the wizard didn’t seem surprised.
Ozzy jumped to his feet and tried to lock into Ty’s will, but just like at Rin’s house, his ability didn’t work on the man.
“I thought you were in jail,” Rin said, like a friendly neighbor interested in Ty’s life.
“You’d be surprised what money can get you out of,” Ty said.
“Well, I’d invite you in, but the room’s a mess.”
“Where’s the bird?” Ty asked, stepping into the room.
“He’s indisposed at the moment,” Rin answered. “But if you want to leave your name and a message, I’d—”
Without warning Ty pulled a weapon from under his blue jacket and shot something into the wizard’s neck.
“How many licksch,” Rin slurred as he fell to the ground in a pile of crushed green velvet trousers and yellow terrycloth robe.
“What are—” Sigi was going to protest her father’s treatment, but she too was stopped by another ogre in a blue suit who slipped into the room through the adjoining door and injected her with something that knocked her out.
Unlike the other two, Ozzy didn’t even get the chance to try to talk. He was ambushed by a third ogre who shot a dart into the side of his neck without Ozzy ever seeing him.
The boy fell with a thump to the ketchup-, mustard-, and fettuccine-covered floor right next to Sigi.
Two more men entered the room. Ozzy, Sigi, and Rin were all picked up and whisked away like a trio of old rugs. Then Ty quickly searched the space for any sign of Clark. He checked the drawers, the bathroom, and inside the ice buckets. He checked under the blankets and behind the nightstands. Seeing no sign of the bird, Ty signaled for his men to follow him. The lurch of blue ogres slipped out of the room and down the hall.
Ty smiled, feeling as if things were finally running smoothly.
His smile might have been lessened had he known what his search had failed to discover.
Sheriff Wills sat on a chair in Patti’s front room. Patti was sitting next to the dirty couch facing him. He glanced her way and smiled sincerely. The sheriff felt sorry for her. Patti had married a wizard by mistake, and now she and her daughter and her house were paying the price for it.
“You still haven’t heard from them?” Wills asked.
“I haven’t,” she said. “I’m not trying to keep anything from you. I want my daughter back and I want Rin to get the help he needs.”
“He didn’t say anything about where he was heading?”
“No. He just caused a traffic jam, took Sigi, and ran off.”
Patti’s short brown hair wasn’t as neat as it usually was. Her eyes weren’t as bright, and her smile was missing in the same fashion as her daughter, her ex-husband, and Ozzy.
“I didn’t think things would get so out of hand,” Patti insisted.
“If you had to guess,” the sheriff asked, “where do you think Rin took them?”
“It’s Brian,” Patti said angrily. “I’m not going to feed his delusion anymore.”
“Okay, where do you think Brian took them?”
“To a magic shop?” she said sarcastically and out of her mind with a lack of sleep and an abundance of worry. “To a bathrobe factory?”
Sheriff Wills pretended to write something down in his notebook to give Patti the time she needed to breathe.
“We’ll find them,” he finally said calmly.
Patti looked at the sheriff. Her dark eyelids closed and opened quickly. The expression on her face was one of defeat mixed with a new understanding.
“This must be one of the strangest cases you’ve worked on,” she said, sounding as if the thought had only just occurred to her.
Wills smiled. “Yeah. I really don’t know what to make of it.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve pushed in the past,” Patti said. “I honestly don’t know the right course of action a mother should take in a situation like this. I only want them all to be safe.”
“They’re lucky to have you looking out for them.”
“It’s not done Sigi much good.”
“Who’s to say?” Wills said. “You might have done exactly what you should have.”
Patti smiled weakly.
“I’ll tell you this—I have to believe that despite Rin’s condition, he’s not going to harm them.” Sheriff Wills stopped to consider his own words. “Not intentionally, at least.”
“Do they know how the fire started?” Patti asked. “Did Rin start it? He burnt down Ozzy’s home, you know”
The sheriff nodded.
“I’d love to blame him for your garage as well, but my officers never saw anyone other than Ozzy. And the fire marshal still hasn’t found the cause.”
“What about Jon?”
“He’s still missing,” Wills said. “But I wouldn’t worry about him too much. I have a feeling he’s cleared out for good.”
Patti stared at the sheriff until he felt self-conscious.
“What?”
“Remember, years ago, when Brian first started telling people he was a wizard?”
Wills nodded.
“Wasn’t it you who told me not to worry because it was just a phase?”
Wills nodded again.
“It’s been a long phase,” Patti said, her voice filled with exhaustion.
“I don’t get everything right,” Sheriff Wills admitted. “But I’m going to do my best to bring this phase to a safe ending.”
Patti stood up.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I can make you something before you leave.”
“If it’s not a lot of trouble.”
“No trouble,” she said. “And I’m starving. What do you like? And don’t say breakfast.”
“It’s my least favorite meal.”
Patti fixed her and the sheriff a sandwich. She ate hers there and he ate his in the car as he drove back to the station to make more calls, attempting to connect a few more dots.
Ozzy thought he could hear the soft sound of the ocean. The noise was comforting but wrong. It was like hearing a Christmas song in July. The ocean in his head turned into a far less pleasant ringing in his ears.
Ozzy opened his grey eyes and instantly knew what the problem was. He wasn’t lying on the sand watching the waves come in. He was tied to a chair in a fancy room with low lighting. On his right, he could see Sigi tied up, not moving, her head hanging down in front of her. To his left, he saw Rin, also tied to a chair, white rope wrapped around his arms and torso in a way that gave very little room for circulation and even less room for breaking free. Unlike Sigi, Rin was awake. He wasn’t wearing his hat and his long hair and beard looked more mountain-man than magical.
“My head is ringing,” Ozzy mumbled. “Where are we?”
“Reality,” Rin answered.
“Yeah,” Ozzy said. “This looks like my reality.”
The room was a circle with no windows. It had a high ceiling and the wall was covered with a burlap material. The carpet was beige and a large round table was in the middle of the room. The table had nine wooden chairs with high backs. The chairs that Rin, Sigi, and Ozzy were tied to matched the set.
“You can’t always tell,” Rin said. “Round rooms are more of a Quarfelt thing. Wizards hate corners.”
Ozzy struggled with the rope around his body.
“I can’t move.”
“Yeah, someone knows their knots.”
Sigi started to stir.
“Where are we?”
“In a round room,” Ozzy answered.
“Are we still in Oregon?” she asked.
Ozzy hadn’t thought about it. The idea that they could have been transported somewhere far away had never crossed his mind.
“I’m not sure,” the boy admitted.
“Uncertainty is intoxicating,” Rin said.
“Not to me,” Sigi told him.
“Is this like a dining room for the knights of the round table?” Ozzy asked.
“They did business at a round table,” Rin informed the boy. “You know, quest updates and pillage reports. But they ate at rectangular ones just like the next guy.”
A space in the wall opened, revealing a hidden door. Ty stepped through the opening and approached the captives.
“Where’s the bird?” he asked bluntly.
“It’s nice to see you love animals,” Rin said. “You must have a kind heart after all.”
“I hate animals,” Ty insisted. “But that bird is something Mr. Dench is interested in.”
“Ornithology can be very enjoyable.”
Ty didn’t smile.
“Where are we?” Sigi asked bravely.
“Does it matter?” Ty said. “Wherever you are, you’re out of luck. Now, I need to talk to the boy.”
“We’d plug our ears,” Rin said. “But our hands are tied.”
Ty grabbed the bottom of the chair Ozzy was tied to and picked it and the boy up as if they were nothing more than a duffel bag filled with wind and air.
“Wait,” Rin said. “Where are you taking him?”
Ty didn’t answer. He just carried Ozzy and his chair out of the room and let the hidden door slide quietly closed behind him. The wizard’s daughter was beside herself.
“This is bad! Why would they take just him?”
Rin’s eyes were closed.
“Are you going to do something?” Sigi pleaded. “He’s in trouble.”
“We’re all in some sort of trouble,” the wizard said wisely. “Be it a tiny ding, or the sting of death, we all have reason to worry.”
“What? Change into something!”
Rin looked confused. “I didn’t bring other clothes.”
“No, no, change into something. Like you did in the ocean. You have to help Ozzy.”
Rin stared at his daughter.
“Ozzy can take care of himself,” he said proudly. “I’ve taught him everything he needs to know. Yes, it looks as if the student has become the—the student has become the—”
“Teacher!” Sigi said exasperated. “You should know that word. It’s what you used to be before you decided to put our lives in danger!”
Rin didn’t reply. His eyes were shut, and his head tipped slightly to the left. Hearing the word teacher had done something to him.
“What are you doing?” Sigi demanded. “Come on!”
The wizard didn’t move. His hair didn’t blow, his eyes didn’t blink, and his expression didn’t change. After a full minute he opened his eyes and showed his daughter a look of panic she had not seen him have before.
“Ozzy’s in trouble,” Rin said seriously.
“What? How do you know that?”
“Some things are too obvious to ignore.”
Rin closed his eyes again as his daughter continued to shout and shake in fear.
Bennett had only worked at the downtown Portland Marriott for three weeks. He had recently moved from Missoula, Montana, where he had worked cleaning rooms for Holiday Inn Express. So far, the job in Portland had been similar—you clean up after other people, act courteous when anyone passes you in the hall, and occasionally get a tip.
Room 321 had been a different story. It was the first room of the day, and it was also the worst one he’d ever encountered. The guests had left without finishing their food and after knotting up blankets in a complicated ring on one of the beds. They had also spent some time redecorating the place with ketchup, mustard, and noodles. The dried pasta on the ceiling was the hardest to get off. It took hours to get the room looking like it was supposed to.
“People are the worst,” Bennett said, still needing to vacuum and put out the new bedding. “All that and not even a tip.”
He scrubbed a rogue bit of alfredo sauce off the baseboard, and as he stood up, he noticed a small towel hanging on the back of the door. He pulled the towel off the hook and gasped.
“That is the ugliest hook I’ve ever seen.”
Bennett adjusted his glasses and studied the piece of hardware. The hook was large, bird shaped, and smeared with dried condiments. The beak of the bird was strongly adhered to the door and the body hung straight down. There was a small strip of silver on the odd hook.
Bennett stuck his head out into the hall.
“Mary!” he yelled.
His co-worker had been co-working on a room across the hall. She stopped what she was doing to check out what Bennett had found.
“Weird,” she said, adding little to the discussion.
“Is it supposed to be there?” Bennett asked. “Is this like, the bird room?”
“We don’t have a bird room.”
Mary turned her headphones back on and returned to the room across the hall to continue her work.
“What’s your story?” Bennett asked the hook.