Reggie moved to the doors, and paused. “Oh, and one more thing. I’m afraid I have to impound your car. You know, as part of the investigation.” He turned and walked out.
“Finn, be careful,” Grayson said after the doors closed. “I shall do what I can to protect you, and find out who’s behind all of this. But while I do, you may still be in danger, and not just from the enforcers.”
“I know.”
Grayson’s brow furrowed. “If you know something, or are involved in any way, I hope you’ll tell me. We all want to resolve this as quickly as possible, and if anyone can or would help you, it’s me.”
“There’s nothing. Really.” At least Grayson couldn’t detect lies like enforcers.
“Very well.”
I walked him to the front door, and looked out into the night as Grayson stepped onto the porch. If nothing else, maybe the enforcers had scared off the Król lurker. Grayson turned back.
“If you do discover anything, or leave the house, please check in with me,” he said. “I can only protect and help you if you trust me, and keep me informed.”
“Okay. Thanks, Jimmy,” I said, protocol be damned, and held out my hand. He may have a stick up his butt, but Grayson had stood up for me, given me the support I’d hoped to find from my family. In fact, it had felt a bit like Grandfather was still alive, fighting to protect me the way he’d always fought to protect our family’s safety and reputation. “Grandfather would be proud of you, and grateful you’re helping me.”
A smile twitched up the corner of Grayson’s mouth, and he took my hand. “He was a great man. And good to me. I’m just glad I have this chance to repay him even a little bit. Get some rest, Finn.”
I closed the door behind him and leaned my back against it, my legs a bit shaky, my whole body jangly with nervous energy. I had Zeke, the Króls, and possibly another enemy all gunning for me, and Felicity’s body just waiting to be identified. And I had three days at most to figure everything out, or they were going to make scrambled eggs of my mind.
Yeah, I’d sleep like a baby tonight.
5
I Feel for You
My family surrounded me a heartbeat after the front door closed.
“So?” Sammy asked. “What was that about?”
“About the problem in the transfer,” I replied, still distracted by the confrontation.
“Problem?” Mort asked.
Crap. “Nothing major,” I said. “Some problems in the Other Realm I guess. Look,” I rubbed at my eyes, “I really appreciate the welcome home party, but it’s been a crazy evening. Is it okay if I just crash in my room and we can all catch up over breakfast?”
Mort shrugged. “I still have work to do anyway.”
“I’ll pass,” Sammy said. “But we’ll hang soon.”
“Breakfast is my favorite!” Pete said.
I exchanged quick hugs with Sammy and Pete, and said good night to Mort.
“Mattie,” he said, “why don’t you show Finn up to his room.”
As if I was a guest, or could forget the way to my own bedroom.
“Sure!” Mattie turned to me. “We should grab you fresh blankets though. I don’t even want to know how long yours have been in there.”
“Sounds good.”
Mattie led the way down the hall. “Wow, this is so weird,” she said. “I’ve heard all about you, so I kind of feel like I know you, but it’s like, I wasn’t even born when you went into exile, you know?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
I followed Mattie to the laundry room, then back to the main stairs and up to my room. On the way I learned an interesting fact—teenage girls can talk without taking a single breath. I didn’t remember this from my own youth, but then neither Heather nor Sammy had been the talkative type, and I’d never felt comfortable enough around other girls to actually test their talking limits.
Bits of Mattie’s continuous monologue were interesting, glimmers of the world I’d returned to, but there was quite a bit in there about some girl at school who kept copying Mattie’s style, and her friend who was allowed to drive already, and other apparently world-ending facts mixed with words and phrases that I could only guess at their meaning.
One thing I did learn, however, was that Mattie was lonely. She hid it well. But maybe this was one of the advantages I had over other adults in her life—I remembered very clearly what it was like to be a young teenage necromancer, having relived all of those awful, awkward, emotional moments of my life for twenty-five years. And though Mattie was a girl, and her world, personality, and experiences all very different from mine, I still recognized something of myself in her.
She didn’t even have the benefit of having my mother and father as parents—at least, not as they used to be. She’d had only Mort. From her stories, I could tell Morty gave her whatever she needed, except for time and attention. And the occasional visit with Aunt Sammy couldn’t make up for that.
The door to my bedroom had a license plate with my name on it. Mattie opened it and preceded me inside. “Should be just like you left it,” she said.
Well, not exactly as I left it, I hoped. I could do without Felicity’s bleeding and unconscious body on the floor. But other than that, the room was indeed as I’d left it. Posters and music magazine cutouts covered the walls, and familiar faces greeted me—The Smiths, The Cure, Talking Heads, Prince; Buckaroo Banzai, The Terminator, Indiana Jones, and The Goonies.
A bed, a bookshelf, and a small desk were the only furniture. My worn and creased paperbacks lined the shelves like old friends waiting for my return. My Commodore 64 called to me from the desk, and lined up beside it stood my notebooks full of dungeon maps, character stats, and game ideas.
In fact, the room was so much the same that I felt a second of panic. Was I still in the Other Realm? Was everything I’d experienced tonight just illusion, the cruel joke of some bored Fey lord or lady manipulating my memories like their own personal playground?
I focused on the differences: the plain blue blanket Mattie swept over the bed in place of my threadbare Star Wars comforter; the complete lack of ants in my ant farm; Mattie herself. I’d never seen her before. I’d relived every memory of my life enough to be certain of that, and the Fey only played with the stuff of real memories.
I flipped the power switch on the Commodore and turned on the monitor. After a few seconds, the blue screen cast the room in a comforting, familiar glow.
**** COMMODORE 64 BASIC X2 ****
64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE
READY.
Ah, what a beautiful sight. My fingers itched to begin typing on those plastic brown keys.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” Mattie said. “Uncle Pete’s always telling stories about how much fun you were.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure how long I’ll be here,” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was lie to Mattie and set her up for disappointment three days later.
“You’re not leaving leaving, are you?” Mattie asked. “You just got here. And we haven’t even had a chance to talk or anything, not really. Ooo, and I was hoping to see what Papa G’s present was for!”
I’d forgotten about the ring. I touched its outline in the little coin pocket of my jeans. One more mystery to solve.
“I’m not sure what I’m doing yet,” I said. “But I won’t be going anywhere for at least a couple days, I promise.”
“You’d better—oh, sorry, hang on.” She pulled a black rectangle the size of a thick playing card out of her pocket and touched it. Light bathed her face.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Just my phone. Didn’t your changeling know about cell phones?”
“Uh, yeah, I just hadn’t seen one myself yet.”
“Oh, well,” she turned so I could see the phone. It had a small video screen on it.
“So it’s a, uh, video phone?”
“Well, I use it mostly for texting, but sometimes I play games or watch videos, so yeah
, I guess. Oh, I’ve so got to show you this ‘She Wants Revenge’ video. The music’s so eighties, like that one group … Bauhaus? And the girl in the video could totally be a feyblood. You’ll love it!”
“That tiny thing, it does all of that?” I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach.
“Oh yeah, that, and e-mail, and plays music and stuff. The camera’s pretty weaksauce, though.”
I could see why Sammy laughed at me. I glanced between my Commodore and Mattie’s phone. I couldn’t even imagine the code it would take to make that thing work. It was like a supercomputer in the palm of her hand.
“How about a nice game of global thermonuclear war?” I muttered.
“What?”
“Sorry. Nothing. I just—I could really use some time alone now.”
“Oh, of course. I should go check on Papa G anyway.” She moved to the door. “Good night, Uncle Finn. Welcome home.” She left.
I stared at the closed door. What now?
Three days. Three days to figure out who was after me or it was exile with a side of brain scramble.
The first step was to give my enemy a name. Things were always easier to deal with when they had a name. Enemy, I name thee … Romulans? The Gamalons?
Legion of Doom. Yeah, that worked.
So, I needed to figure out who the Legion were and stop them from ruining my life. But what could I do that the enforcers and the Arcana Ruling Council, with all their power and ability, could not?
Well, I could launch my own investigation into what really happened twenty-five years ago. The ARC might consider that a closed case, but I knew better, and the enforcers didn’t know about Felicity’s death, at least not yet. Surely the two attacks were related.
But where to start?
Mort. I could dig a little deeper into what my brother was up to. He was my only potential lead at this point. Well, other than the Króls, but I wasn’t eager to chase after a clan of vengeful witches if I had another option.
Three days.
The room felt suddenly too small, the walls pressing in. I opened the window, took a deep breath of the cool night air, and finally turned to look at the floor. A throw rug covered the spot where Felicity had laid, no bloodstains to be seen. But I could still see her unconscious body, my memory filling in a ghostly image of it.
“Who attacked you?” I whispered. “And why frame me for it?”
She wouldn’t answer. I could try Talking to her until I felt as if my head would explode like in Scanners. But I knew from experience there was no Talking to a warded spirit.
Tears burned at the back of my eyes. I paced the small space of my room for a minute, trying to shake the growing fury, and finally plopped down at my desk. Maybe a quick game of Wizball would make me feel better, help me feel a little of the joy of homecoming. But I found myself rearranging my books and notebooks in order of size, as my mind fixed on Mattie’s tiny little phone computer. A computer that fit in her hand. Amazing. And for some reason, it was the straw that humped the camel’s dam.
“WHY?” I shouted. I leaped back up and paced rapidly, my thoughts scratching at me like an angry cat demanding attention.
Twenty-five years, gone. My father, my family, my life, so many changes. Raw emotion boiled up inside me. All of the anger I’d pushed down, told myself wouldn’t help anything, it all erupted back up into my chest now. Twenty-five years. I’d convinced myself it was a good thing, dreaming of a life with Heather, a life free from the magic that had become a curse, and of the ARC who’d thrown me into exile to be fed on by the Fey. Free, and in control of my own life.
Except now I was back, and I realized how much I’d lost. I realized how much my Other Realm dreams were lies I told to keep myself sane. My obligations and choices were the same as they ever were, but I would have to struggle even harder to make my place anywhere, to find happiness anywhere. Assuming I wasn’t mind-humped and sent back into exile in three days, of course.
If my room weren’t so small, I might have danced the Footloose anger dance, punching at the air, literally flipping out. I settled for beating the crap out of my pillow until the muscles in my arms burned.
A knock on my door.
I stood panting for a second, feeling hot, and sweaty, and a tiny bit better. Another knock.
“Yes?” I called, my voice thick. I rubbed my face and eyes dry.
“It’s me, Pete.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before saying, “Come in.”
Pete entered the room, making it feel considerably smaller.
“Hey,” he said. “I was thinking, maybe you could sleep in my room tonight? Then we could talk and stuff.”
I glanced back down at the floor where Felicity had lain, then at the bed I hadn’t slept in for twenty-five years.
“That might be nice, actually.” In fact, if someone wanted to try to attack me again, or place Felicity’s body on my floor again tonight, it might not hurt to be someplace they wouldn’t expect. If I were careful about it, not even Mort would know I’d changed rooms.
Petey’s round face broke into a grin. I grabbed the blue blanket, and a pair of my old pajamas out of the dresser. There, waiting in the drawer where I’d left it, sat my persona ring. A simple-looking silver ring with a small black stone, it might have been mistaken for a mood ring. But every arcana over twelve had one. They were the official ID of the arcana world, containing information about my identity, my arcana gifts, my ranking in the arcana hierarchy. And the color marked me as a necromancer, my dominant gift, though my family had at least a touch of the wizardry, sorcery, and thaumaturgy gifts as well. The only one of the five branches of human magic our family hadn’t manifested at some point was alchemy.
I closed the drawer without taking the ring, and followed Pete outside.
I dashed through the cool night air between the main house and the mother-in-law cottage, searching the dark for any signs of danger. The dark was signless.
Looking up in case of falling death meteors or swooping terrors, I did see that a cable still ran from outside my bedroom window and disappeared over the hedge bordering this side of our yard. Many video games, cassettes, notes, candies and other oddities had been sent back and forth along that cable between my window and the window of Next Door Dawn’s room. Or at least, her room when we were teenagers.
Dawn was a mundy, and Grandfather didn’t allow mundies in our house except on business. The rope system was just one of the many small ways I got around that. By the time of my exile, I probably spent more time with Dawn each day than anyone except Heather and my siblings. She was like my second sister. I wondered where she lived now, what her life was like. It didn’t feel quite like a homecoming without seeing her.
I began to ask Pete about her, but stopped. It felt like even a whisper would carry loudly in the night air. And if the news of Dawn was bad, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it, not tonight.
Pete bounced with excitement as we entered his tiny home.
The cottage used to be Mother’s escape from us children. She didn’t call it that, of course. She called it her office, and it used to be mostly filled with gardening supplies. But she’d also had a chair and reading lamp, a futon, and a small still in the bathroom for making her home brew. Now it looked like a proper apartment with all the standard furnishings, and a simple kitchenette. What really marked the space as Pete’s were the Rubik’s cubes and similar puzzle games piled on his dresser and shelves. That, and the walls were covered nearly floor to ceiling in paint by number paintings, most featuring wolves. He’d always had a gift for space and numbers that itself bordered on magical.
Pete hung his head and shuffled from foot to foot in that golly-gawrsh way he had, and said, “Do you like it?”
“I think it’s awesome, dude. You’ve gotten really good at the paintings.”
Pete beamed at me and said, “I’ll make us some hot cider.”
I changed in the tiny bathroom—the Speed Racer pajama bottoms had tha
t softness that comes only from long wear, but they were a bit snug and short now that I’d fully grown. I considered just sleeping in my boxers, but I wanted to be a bit more clothed if someone attacked during the night, and I’d never been able to sleep well wearing jeans.
As I changed, I also noticed that I’d become extremely hairy. Before exile, I wished for enough facial hair to grow even a Prince mustache. Now I had enough hair on my back alone for a small beard. Not cool.
Once changed, I set myself up on the sofa. Pete served up the hot cider and crawled into his bed.
“Finn?” Pete said. “What was it like? In the Other Realm?”
“Lonely,” I said, hoping he’d let it lie at that.
“But what were the Fey like?”
“I didn’t exactly hang out and play games with them, Petey,” I said, irritation creeping into my tone. “I was just food to them. They came, they got what they wanted, and they left.”
Pete’s face fell, and I felt like a jerk. Of course he still thought of the Fey as some wondrous fairy beings. And why shouldn’t he? They had, after all, begun as just that, manifested from the dreams and fears and imaginings of all those ancient shamans, oracles, and wise women whose vision quests and spirit journeys took their minds into the Other Realm. And many people still idealized the Fey, spoke of them like they hadn’t changed or committed terrible acts.
But in fact they had long since become sentient individuals with their own petty drives and needs, dividing up by their nature into Demesnes and warring against humans when not fighting among themselves. I had wished a thousand times in the Other Realm that I could go back in time and prevent the bastards from ever being created. And I understood Grandfather’s dislike of the Fey and feybloods now, though before my exile I had just chalked it up to him being prejudiced from the last Fey-Arcana war.
I certainly didn’t feel like maintaining the lie of Fey wonder and shininess. But I felt even less like letting my own anger hurt Pete.
“Well, actually, there was this one Fey, Blobby McPheron, or at least that’s what I called him ’cause he kept telling me to not worry, that happiness was a state of mind and my mind was everything I had. He was cool for a Fey, would thank me, and tell me jokes or stories in return for the memories he viewed.” Blobby had helped me stay sane those first few years. But he’d been an exception, not the rule. “I really missed you though, dude. I’m glad to be home.”
Finn Fancy Necromancy Page 5