by Kevin Hearne
“Swank,” Buck commented.
“We say swish here,” Ya-ping replied. “Sifu Lin’s house is very swish.”
Ya-ping opened the front door with a key, turned off an alarm system, and asked Buck very politely not to steal or break anything.
“Aww. I was hoping ye’d forget tae ask. Awright, ye have ma word.”
The interior was modern and uncluttered and looked clean enough to show for an open house. There were some stunning pieces of art on the walls, but the furniture was nondescript, as if trying not to be noticed or at least not to distract from the art. My quick impression of the kitchen as we passed through was that it was designed to draw attention to the porcelain tea set, which rested next to the kettle on an island—the stove being installed there, rather than along the wall. Nothing else mattered but the tea set.
Ya-ping led us upstairs without giving us much of a tour, except to say, “The downstairs is where we entertain guests, so it’s kept pretty bare. All the good stuff is upstairs.”
She pointed to closed doors on our left and right once we reached the top floor, emerging in a sort of pleasant reading area with comfy chairs and tables in front of the French doors and balcony we’d seen from outside. “Sifu Lin’s private rooms are to the left, mine to the right. The magic is at the back.”
It was indeed. There was a simply magnificent private library with floor-to-ceiling shelves on all four walls. There was even a line of books placed above the door.
“Ahh, ink and glue and paper.” Buck clapped his hands together in appreciation, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled. “Lots of dusty ideas, but not much actual dust.”
“No, dust is not tolerated here.”
[How is it organized?] I asked, indicating the shelves.
“Author’s home country, then alphabetically. Australian authors kept separate from the UK, Americans, and so on, Taiwan from China, and all the Spanish-language stuff is broken out too. Spain is separate from Mexico, Peru, and so on.”
[I didn’t know Shu-hua was into Spanish literature.]
“Very much so. Are you familiar with the work of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz?” Ya-ping asked, crossing to the opposite wall of books.
[No, sorry.]
“Remarkable woman from the colonial period. Hieronymite nun. Primero Sueño is Sifu Lin’s favorite.”
She plucked out said volume from the stacks, thereby causing the entire bookcase to rotate clockwise, allowing us to see that there was a secret room behind it. “And here is Sifu Lin’s ink-and-sigil room. Please, go ahead.”
Buck spread his arms wide in admiration. “Oh, that’s very fine—pure class. I like the rotating thing. It’s better than yer sliding door, MacBharrais.”
[Outstanding,] I agreed. The room was a white minimalist space with framed art prints of calligraphy on the back side of the bookcase, but those would have to be appreciated later. [Where’s the map?]
Ya-ping pointed to a white-paneled workbench with a wide top drawer of the sort one might store blueprints in. “She keeps it in there.”
[Okay, I’ll be fine here. You can go and get us a van.]
The two of them left and I immediately sought out the map. It was set into the top drawer, as promised, and it was mostly clear at the moment. There were a few green dots in Madagascar, a couple of red ones in Australia, but no telltale white dots that would tip me off to a god nearby. That didn’t mean much; the god could very well still be on the plane. The wards detected the arrivals and departures as a flux in extraplanar energy. Once the flux faded, so did the marker of their whereabouts. The god who’d arrived may have departed and Ya-ping missed it, or they might still be on earth somewhere, perhaps nearby. It was a far-from-perfect system, for all its magic and power; still, it was better than simply wondering.
I shut the drawer; it would not tell me anything new for a while. I turned to see what else I could discover, besides the obvious fact that Shu-hua preferred an immaculate environment.
Her ink cakes, pots, brushes, and pens were on the same wall as the bookcase, though obviously not on the rotating part. The ink was displayed in a wooden lattice of shelves and labeled in Mandarin. Higher up, centered and in a larger space, a porcelain vase that I suspected might be a priceless artifact from one of the old dynasties gleamed under soft light behind a pane of nonreflective glass. It was easy to see and admire, impossible to accidentally knock over or splatter with ink. She had been very careful with its placement. Beneath this wall of open-faced cubbyholes was a flat writing desk and a stack of precut cardstock for creating sigils. She used a bright-white linen fiber rather than the ivory cotton I preferred. Her waxes, matches, melting spoon, and candles were tidily lined up on the right side.
On the opposite wall, she had jars of ink ingredients that she used to make the finished cakes, and a distilling and brewing setup similar to mine, except that it all looked brand-new. The one nod to modernity was a small Bluetooth speaker so that she could enjoy her playlists while she worked. She was a fan of Indigo Girls, if I recalled correctly.
Where were her other materials? This stash of sigils that Ya-ping mentioned?
I began opening drawers, finding stacks of handmade paper and some correspondence that I ignored. But then I spotted another wide drawer like the one across the room, and when I pulled it open, I discovered an organizational marvel. Rows of bamboo, the thickness of a finger, stretched across the width of the drawer, while columns of much thinner balsa wood formed rectangular compartments. At the top of each compartment, a white label had been placed on the bamboo, indicating in both Mandarin and English which sigil was stored below. Then, inside those compartments, she had her prepared sigils stacked but set flush against the bamboo at the top, leaving a finger’s breadth of blank space at the bottom of each one, allowing her to easily pluck out whichever sigil she needed. She had organized them so that the modern, Irish sigils were on the left-hand side, and the older, Chinese sigils were on the right. She had copies of most every sigil waiting in those compartments, and the ones required for wards were either full or nearly so; the ones for battle were entirely depleted. She had taken everything. That included the contents of the compartment labeled Sigil of Unchained Destruction. That didn’t mean she had one or more on her—she might, like me, be fresh out—but it made it possible. And if Shu-hua thought she needed one of those, then we could have a problem out there too big for the standard bag of tricks.
Which I had already concluded must be the case. I didn’t yet have a full set of pieces to this puzzle, and I didn’t have a convenient reference photo of the big picture, but I had put together enough around the metaphorical edges to know that it was going to be a dire scene when completed. More like Munch’s painting The Scream than A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Seurat. Missing sigil agents and an unnamed god on the loose in the Australian bush were probably not going to be elements of a tranquil tableau.
I Signaled Eli and Diego before I went any further: Unidentified god arrived in the Dandenong Ranges in Australia on Friday. Both Shu-hua and Mei-ling felt the twinge from the Ward of Imbalance and went to investigate. Now both are missing. I’m going in. If I disappear too, do not come after me. Send in the big guns.
Eli’s reply: Yes! Dive into that shit! You’re white! What could go wrong?
Diego’s answer: Hey, Al, can I have all your stuff when you die?
I blinked. Ah, well. Americans.
If a god was involved in this, then any actual confrontation was almost impossible to prepare for. But what I could prepare for was the absolute certainty that regular folks might witness something they couldn’t explain and would need to forget promptly. Paradigm shifts are rough on the psyche, and most adults are unable to process that there’s been a hidden world around them since they were born, that science is only half the story. For their own safety, sanity, and future employment pr
ospects, it would be best for them to unsee what they saw. I borrowed some blank cards, located the proper ink required, along with sealing wax and her dry-ink pad for Postponed Puissance, and even found a number of empty fountain pens without too much difficulty. She had Platinum and Diplomat pens in there, but I selected a Pilot Metropolitan model in turquoise—since they weren’t terribly expensive, she probably did not have a sentimental attachment to it. I filled the converter with the ink from the pot and prepared two dozen Sigils of Lethe River, which would make the target forget the last hour of events and, in the resulting disorientation, be open to the suggestion that they go home and rest. After the gods had battled in a short-lived Ragnarok in Sweden about a year or so ago, I’d had to use plenty of those sigils to keep the story from hitting the mainstream press. They’d done their job, and as a result most of humanity was blissfully unaware of how close they came to being wiped out by an army of draugr. The few who did know either weren’t talking or weren’t believed. If I didn’t wind up using them—well, they were endlessly useful, and I could give them to Shu-hua since it was her ink anyway and represented a good deal of time and effort on her part.
There was no time to lose; we needed to get hunting, and I had seen all I needed to see— Wait. I checked the map one more time to see if it had updated, and it had. The Fae dots had darkened, indicating their exit from Madagascar. Probably a raid on vanilla beans; Brighid liked homemade ice cream and had been sending faeries to fetch her ingredients ever since humans had invented the process—she actually had an Official Ice Cream Ogre with the unfortunate name of Yark. But nothing new in Australia. I did not believe for one second, however, that there wasn’t a problem here just because I couldn’t see it yet. The map did have its limits, and we routinely missed comings and goings.
Carefully attempting to put everything back precisely the way it was and knowing that I was failing, I resolved to simply apologize to Shu-hua for the terrible mess and hope she forgave me. I replaced the volume of Primero Sueño, the bookcase rotated closed, and I thought it best to go outside to see if Buck and Ya-ping had enjoyed any success.
They had.
A tall black tradie van with Kaufman Electric emblazoned on its side sat parked in the driveway.
Buck was dancing in his excitement. “Oh, good, ye’re here. Lookit this beautiful canvas, ol’ man! We can make this so wizard. Do ye want a pointy hat?”
[I’m not the wizard, Buck. You are.]
“…I am?”
[You’re the one who has innate actual magic. So make this your wizard van.]
“Are ye serious?”
“Do it fast, please,” Ya-ping said. “Anyone could see it here and report it later.”
That was an excellent point. With the van parked outside the garage and parallel to the street, the logo was plainly visible. The iron fence with occasional low brick columns did nothing to conceal it from drivers or pedestrians.
“Right, right.” Buck clapped his hands together, then rubbed them in a fit of glee. “First the disguise, then we tackle the interior. But registration first, eh? That’s how they find ye. See, MacBharrais? I listen to yer rules and bollocks sometimes.”
He separated his hands and curled his fingers toward the rear bumper. The numbers on the license plate shifted and changed in response.
“There. Now, a background—I know just the place. The Glasgow Necropolis. Victorian boneyard for the win! And a threatening sky, a circling of clouds that might be a tornado forming or a portal to a plane of horrors.”
He made a noise that sounded something like Zoop! and contorted his arms and legs, spun about, then leapt in a series of twirling kicks, his hand shooting out. Entire sections of the van’s side suddenly appeared fully painted by an exceptional artist. It was a view of a gloomy necropolis, and not the logo of Kaufman Electric. To look at it from the outside, this van couldn’t possibly be the recently stolen one that authorities would soon be looking for. It was remarkable and eye-catching, though.
[Buck—that’s art right there. It’s beautiful.]
“Aw, g’wan now, ol’ man. I’m just getting started. How can it be beautiful yet if I’m no on there? Zoop!” He flailed his arms again, then shot them out, held close together with the palms open toward the target, like a popular martial-arts videogame move. As a result, a painted Buck—dressed incongruously like a seventeenth-century musketeer—appeared on top of a sculpted tombstone, his right arm raised and fingers clutching as if to pull down lightning from the sky, for that is what he did. His expression, lit by pure electricity, was noble and righteous, and that too was incongruous.
[That’s fantastic,] I told him. [What is that thing you keep saying? Zoop?]
He scowled, casting his eyes sideways at me. “Ye cannae ask me that. Zooping is very private.”
[What? Zooping is not even a thing.]
“It’s a private thing. A hobgoblin thing. But the details are juicy, just like yer maw.”
[Fine.] I knew what this was. He’d promised to get me back for that small matter of the death curse, and pretending to have a sacred secret so that I’d worry about it or waste my time on it was just an overture to the aria of his revenge.
Buck turned to Ya-ping, whose mouth had dropped open in shock. “Wot? No, don’t bother tae float any moralizing meward for talkin’ tae him that way. Now, look, ye’re a part of this, so ye need tae be in the picture. What do ye want tae be wearin’?”
“Oh? Oh. Uh. Well, I don’t think you should be able to see my face. People might recognize me because I live here. So maybe something with a mask.”
“And yer sai?”
“Oh, yes.”
[What sai?]
Buck zooped again and Ya-ping appeared in her current clothing—no historical anachronisms or superhero outfit—holding sai in a defensive position as she faced the unknown threat in the sky. She had a simple black mask over her eyes and nose, her lips pressed together in grim determination.
“That’s brilliant,” Ya-ping said.
“In’t it, though?” To me, Buck explained, “I asked her what she’d bring tae a fight in case we got caught boosting the van. She said she’d use sai if she had them.”
[Oh! Are you proficient?]
“Yes. And I think I should get them before we go—they’re inside.”
“Aye, but not yet; the van’s no finished. We have two heroic figures here, but we need a contrast tae set them off, a sidekick who can spotlight their bravery with his cowardice. Zoop!”
I abruptly appeared on the side of the van, behind Buck and Ya-ping and wearing my black derby hat. My mouth yawned in terror as I pointed to some horror in the sky. And I was nearly buried in a pile of something: Only my head and my pointing arm were visible.
[What is that? Coal?]
“Naw, turds. Ye’re up tae yer neck in shite and screaming, which is an apt summary of how most days go for ye by noon.”
[I don’t think I scream very much,] I said, but had little defense for the first accusation.
“Awright, I know ye’re in a hurry tae get moving, but the inside of this thing is basically metal and plastic and a significant copper-recycling opportunity. We need tae fix that too. So I’m gonnay get some appropriate furnishings and I need you two tae clean out all the sparky bollocks.”
“And put it where?” Ya-ping demanded.
“It doesnae matter. Don’t worry ’bout the polis; ol man’s got a goat that’ll get them out of our hair pronto.”
“What did you even say just now?”
“Ta!” the hobgoblin said, and popped away somewhere, leaving me to explain.
[He meant we shouldn’t have to worry about the police; my goatskin sigils will take care of them.]
Ya-ping sighed, but then fairly hopped into the van. “I’ll grab a couple of things now, but I’m going to get some boxes from the ga
rage. We can just cram it all in there.”
I don’t hop anymore unless I’m enjoying the aid of a Sigil of Agile Grace, but once I got myself up into the rear of the van and Ya-ping brought some boxes, I filled them with parts and tools and wires while Ya-ping shuttled them to the garage. Her two-seater car was parked in there.
Buck reappeared briefly to dump a glossy black pleather loveseat on the lawn. He was breathing hard but promised he just needed one more trip.
“Wait! Where did you get that?” Ya-ping asked.
“Furniture-store showroom, so it’s only been sat on by showroom arses, only five tae seven farts on it at most—practically new!” He was gone again before Ya-ping could muster a reply. He’d need some time to recover after depleting himself so much, and I was worried that he might not get any. I thought he was spending an awful lot of his juice on a frivolous undertaking, but if I voiced that concern, he’d tell me to shut it and then argue that it was absolutely vital to have a proper wizard van, and we’d just waste more time in the process. He was, at least, trying to be quick, and for a hobgoblin, this was extraordinarily helpful behavior. Apart from depicting me up to my neck in a pile of jobbies.
I began a sporadic conversation with Ya-ping while we divested the van of its electronic components and waited for Buck to return. The next time she came back with an empty box, only to haul away another, I had a sentence or three ready on my phone and pressed PLAY.
[I lost my wife in an automobile accident too. Thirteen years ago. Not precisely the same thing, of course, but I can empathize with the suddenness of the loss and the disorientation of it.]
“Oh,” she said. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Mr. MacBharrais.”
I nodded in acknowledgment, and she took away the next box while I began filling the empty one. When she returned, she had a question, as I thought she might. She looked down into the empty box as she spoke and pushed it gently toward me, filling it with words.