by Scott Colby
Recovering quickly from the initial blow, Driff leapt to his feet and swatted the Super Soaker out of Abelia’s hands before Kevin could even blink. The elf’s hand—now a solid shade of green from whatever hex Nella had placed upon him—darted briefly into the pocket of his overcoat and then up past Mrs. Felton’s face. A heaping handful of silver dust exploded around her mouth and nose like a tiny star going supernova. Surprised by the speed and ferocity of her opponent’s counterattack, she inhaled deeply and took what Kevin assumed to be a tremendous dose of the memory-wiping drug. Abelia’s eyes rolled back into her skull as Driff leaned in close to her ear, his jaw working a mile a minute as he whispered instructions.
Kevin was too stunned and frightened to react. He couldn’t hear what the elf said to his mother. Occasionally Abelia’s mouth moved, her lips parting ever so slightly as if she were reading to herself. If she spoke, she did so in a tone too soft for Kevin to hear. Maybe she was answering questions posed by the elf. Maybe the movement of her mouth was a nervous reflex brought on by the dust. Regardless, interrupting a process that altered someone’s mind seemed dangerous, so Kevin refrained from physical or verbal protest. What would happen to her memory if Driff stopped mid-sentence? Would his command simply go unheeded, or would the procedure fail and leave Mrs. Felton catatonic? Kevin didn’t want to find out.
A few minutes later, Driff stopped muttering and Abelia’s eyes rolled forward again. She glanced briefly to the elf and smiled the widest, most genuine smile Kevin had ever seen on her face. Gone was the perfectly manicured, thoroughly practiced smile she’d been favoring people with for years, replaced with a slightly crooked grin dripping with happiness and gratitude. She looked as if she hadn’t a care in the world, as if she’d never known disappointment or tragedy or sadness or fear. She looked as if she’d found the heaven on earth she’d always hoped to create.
And all it had taken to help her find it was a pissed-off elf with a handful of magic dust.
Abelia let the Super Soaker fall from her shoulders, turned abruptly on her heel, and marched off home.
“What the hell?” was all Kevin could manage. His blood had turned to ice, his every nerve blunted. He was the man of the house, the alpha male responsible for his mother’s well-being, and yet he’d been helpless to stop an interloper from rewiring her mind. A disappointment—that’s what he was, useless and afraid and not up to the task.
Driff shrugged and picked up his fallen spectacles. “You don’t have to thank me—just get the job done in the Burg tonight so I can get out of this dump.”
With that, the elf faded away, leaving Kevin alone in a town he hated with friends he couldn’t trust and whatever was left of his mother.
— CHAPTER THIRTEEN —
Kevin spent the rest of the afternoon in his bedroom. Having experienced enough drama the last few days to last him the remainder of his life, he was in no rush to discover what Driff had done to his mother. Despite all of Driff’s talk of ethics and knowing better and racial superiority, the elf was a sadistic son of a bitch; whatever memories he’d torn from Abelia’s mind would surely prove painful to someone. Kevin thought he had a pretty good idea who.
He hid downstairs, abandoning his search for the house’s gnome infestation and skipping dinner and ignoring the sounds of activity echoing down through the floor. Every heavy footstep and groan of moving furniture made Kevin push his nose a little bit deeper into the high school yearbook he’d retrieved from his closet. There were few things Abelia took more pride in than her home. It had taken years of painstaking decorating and shopping and adjusting, but she always crowed about how the interior of her house was exactly the way she’d always wanted it. She hadn’t moved so much as an end table since Kevin’s first year in high school. A wholesale makeover could only mean that something profound had changed in Abelia.
The thought made Kevin want to punch something. Who the hell did Driff think he was, rewiring people’s brains without their permission? Was such a drastic intrusion really the best way to maintain the peace between the races? What controls kept someone in Driff’s position from going too far? Kevin decided he didn’t care. All that mattered was that the elf was a danger to everyone and everything he cared about. Confronting Driff would do no good; he doubted he could beat the elf in a physical confrontation, and the last thing he needed was a snout full of dust and a fucked-up memory. The safest way to get Driff out of Harksburg would be to get Billy back to his reaper duties.
But how the hell was he going to convince anyone to go out with that miserable little fuck?
Kevin scoured the yearbook for an answer, studying it like a birdwatcher might a field guide. Most of his graduating class still lived in town, and many spent their Friday nights in the Burg. Using the alphabetized array of student photographs as a guide, he made mental lists of the girls he remembered as easy and those who might fall for Billy’s loner schtick. Despite the large number of the former, his count of the latter was dishearteningly small. Harksburg’s women, especially the attractive ones, tended to gravitate toward good ol’ country boys who wouldn’t recognize an emotion beyond “happy,” “drunk,” or “time for NASCAR” if it walked up and slapped them in the face. He took note of the female members of the drama club and moved on.
Next came the page and a half of superlatives. Best Smile? No. Most Likely to Work with Animals? Yeah, right. Friendliest? Definitely not. Most Likely to Become a Vampire? Looks Best in Black? Deepest Thinker? Unfortunately, the yearbook staff hadn’t bothered with those.
Returning to the class photos, Kevin scanned through the men looking for people who might owe him a favor and who he remembered had sisters. He checked the teachers, trying to recall if any of them had been young enough and adventurous enough to show up in the Burg. He read each and every autograph lining the interior of the book’s cover, searching for signs of possible sluttiness or desperation—a lowercase “I” topped with a heart, an overly wordy or effusive well-wishing, a general malaise toward the end of high school. All this work made his head hurt, but he didn’t dare go upstairs to get an aspirin.
Eventually, he found his way to the list of sponsors on the last page. Most classes funded their yearbooks by begging the local businesses for donations. The Harksburg High Class of 2004, however, just asked Ren Roberts, who in turn asked his father, who in turn acquired the entirety of the yearbook’s funding as a donation from his employer, the Tallisker Corporation. Below a quick paragraph thanking the company for its generous contribution, Tallisker’s starburst logo filled the center of the final page, surrounded by the names of its smaller subsidiaries: Banner Holdings, Redmond and Co., the Griffin Group…
The Griffin Group.
The dirty sons of bitches that bought out Noonan, Noonan, and Schmidt and then laid off half the workforce, including a bright young analyst named Kevin Felton. He hadn’t known of their association with Tallisker. He couldn’t explain why, but the connection made the hair on the back of his neck stand straight up. Surely, it was just a coincidence. Surely. Kylie would’ve told him to stop being so damn paranoid; the world didn’t revolve around him, after all. He flipped back to the class photo pages and banished the silly suspicions from his mind.
He napped for a few hours and then showered and shaved in preparation for the evening’s festivities. Donning a black T-shirt, his leather jacket, and a pair of old jeans, Kevin exited through the front door and sat on the porch to await the arrival of his ride. The Burg was a fucking dump; he didn’t want his good shoes touching the floor, he didn’t want his nice pants touching the seats, and most of all he didn’t want it to look like he had put any effort into his appearance. If anyone suspected he cared how he looked, it meant he was doing it wrong.
A cool breeze rustled through Kevin’s hair as he looked up at the stars. He’d never learned the constellations—there wasn’t much use for that kind of knowledge in a place where the local light overwhelmed that of the Milky Way—but as he zipped his jacket a
gainst the chill, he found himself kind of wishing that he had taken the time to do so, that he hadn’t been in such a rush to advance his career at the expense of simpler pleasures.
I’ve got the time now, he thought. When I’m not busy trying to thwart would-be messiahs, or playing matchmaker for Death.
Ren arrived right on time at 7:45 sharp. The green Jag rolled to a stop in front of the Felton residence with effortless grace. Kevin was disappointed to find Driff in the front seat, and not just because of what the elf had done to his mother that afternoon. Despite all the unanswered phone calls, he’d still been hoping to have a private conversation with his friend.
“I didn’t know we were going to have a chaperone,” Kevin growled as he swung himself into the backseat. The car’s interior was ripe with the sharp aroma of Ren’s aftershave—specially imported from Paris, or so its wearer claimed, and supposedly laced with pheromones no female could resist. Kevin thought it smelled like olive oil.
“You didn’t expect me to spend my Friday night sitting at home by myself, did you?” Driff asked.
“I figured you’d be busy stealing someone’s memories,” Kevin snarled as the Jag pulled back away from the curb, “and I’m not particularly thrilled about the prospect of bringing you into the Burg. You’re an outsider. You’re going to draw a lot of attention.”
“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” the elf replied. “I’ll leave you two experts to do your jobs. I’m going along to protect my superiors’ investment.”
“If it’s any consolation, he’s footing the tab,” Ren said happily.
“What a guy.”
“It’s the least I can do,” Driff said dryly. “Now buck up. I’m not familiar with the mating habits of the average American, but I doubt sulking and pouting is going to help you three with the local ladies.”
“Tell that to Billy,” Kevin replied.
“It got him into your blue girlfriend’s pants,” Ren said. “Assuming she ever bothers with pants.”
Kevin rolled his eyes, shook his head, and bit back a retort about that time at one of Jim Jimeson’s parties when he’d actually caught Ren wearing a girl’s panties. It had been part of a dare, or so Ren claimed, and although Kevin didn’t doubt it, he also wasn’t one to give up an advantage when he had one. Normally Kevin wouldn’t have held back even though Ren could occasionally be a prickly sort. His friend was known to get bent out of shape over things and avoid whoever he was mad at for a few days before suddenly showing up again as if nothing had ever happened. Pissing Ren off wouldn’t help his situation any. He needed his friend’s help with the reaper—and he needed answers he suspected only Ren could provide.
Ignoring the two men in the front seat and their continued conversation, Kevin watched the town roll past. The Jag eased around the elliptical town common and bore left to continue along Main Street. Harksburg’s financial district—as town officials called this area, somehow managing to keep a straight face—was aglow with harsh halogen light streaming through the windows of Hucky’s Gas-n-Go. Across the street, all five parking spaces in front of the squat general-store-like building that housed Big D’s Liquors were filled with pickup trucks waiting for their masters to return with supplies for the evening’s festivities. The town library next door stood dark and empty, abandoned for the weekend. Kevin couldn’t help feeling that there was a bit of social commentary in the scene, but he dismissed the thought when he realized that he wouldn’t be caught dead in the library on a Friday night either.
The view through the Jag’s window darkened again, lit only occasionally when they passed a house with its lights on. Population density dropped dramatically outside the center of town, especially when traveling west toward the less respectable communities that rubbed up against Harksburg like the smelly homeless people who had always liked to stand too close to Kevin on Chicago’s subway. The homes here along West Main were smaller—single-story ranches, simple split-levels—and older than those on Plastic Hill, inhabited mainly by people who’d spent all or most of their lives in Harksburg and likely weren’t leaving anytime soon. Most of Kevin’s local friends lived here. Narrow streets sprung off from the main artery every quarter of a mile or so, tunneling off into the woods and the labyrinthine network of even narrower streets therein. Neither nice nor dumpy, this area of town just kind of always was, always had been, and always would be. Those on Plastic Hill treated it as a sort of buffer, a DMZ between their idyllic existence and the riffraff in Norton and Edgartown.
A passing motorist who forgot to turn off his high beams snapped Kevin back to reality. Ren laid on the horn and flipped the other driver off.
“They have asshole drivers where you come from?” Ren asked Driff.
“Not really,” the elf replied. “Evitankari’s small, even compared to Harksburg, so we typically walk everywhere. And some of our more powerful mages can teleport themselves and others short distances.”
“So there aren’t any vehicles? At all?”
“There is one jerk who thinks it’s funny to speed around town on a four-wheeler blasting classic rock from a boombox at four in the morning when he’s had too much to drink.”
“Sounds like one of the local losers.”
“He’s our highest ranking general, actually.”
It distressed Kevin to see how well Ren and Driff got along. He had to admit that there was an element of jealousy to it; he and Ren had been best friends forever, but now Ren was telling the elf secrets he wouldn’t tell Kevin. Driff had stormed into Harksburg and upended both of their lives, but Ren was treating him like an old friend. It didn’t make sense.
Unless—and, as crazy as it sounded, it wouldn’t be out of character for Ren—it was all an act. Unless Ren was playing Driff. Unless he saw some advantage in befriending the elf, something that could improve his own situation. Attempting to play someone as dangerous as Driff would take either a serious set of balls or a serious case of stupidity. Kevin had seen Ren excel in both roles. He disliked this possibility even more than he disliked the idea of his oldest friend and the elf becoming legitimate pals. Just one more thing to ask Ren about. The way things were going, Kevin was going to have to start writing all these questions down. He needed a damn drink.
Luckily for Kevin, the Harksburg Bar and Grill was waiting for them around the next bend. The Jag negotiated the deadly turn easily, giving Kevin a great view of the battered guard rail along the edge of the curve that had stopped more than its share of drunk drivers from plowing into the forest beyond. The Chaperone, they called it, because everything in Harksburg needed a fucking nickname. Kevin wondered how long it would be before the nicknames started getting nicknames and the original titles of things were lost forever.
The bright lights of the Burg filled the windshield. Kevin’s vision cleared a few blinks later, revealing a silver structure of gently sloping lines trimmed in flashing bulbs. Neon signs blazed in every window, competing with each other for the rights to every patron’s shitty beer budget. The Burg had begun life in the fifties as a diner, a narrow, streamlined former train car packed tight with a bar, a few booths, and a tiny grill. Fran Kesky acquired it in the seventies and began adding pieces and parts. First came the sign, a garish neon affair he would’ve built thirty feet higher and ten feet wider if the town hadn’t put a stop to it for reasons of “taste.” Next came the addition, a squat, square building tacked onto the back side of the original dining car that added a full kitchen, another bar, ten tables, a dance floor, and room for three pool tables and a dart board. Early in the 90s he added a patio with a mechanical bull and three pinball machines. The Burg was a garish, ridiculous monster of a bar and grill, the kind of place that didn’t belong in a small town like Harksburg but would’ve been laughed right out of most bigger cities. The locals had nowhere else to go unless they wanted to go to lesser bars in Norton or Edgartown or drive an hour to Chicago—as most of the transplants living on Plastic Hill preferred—and so the Burg did a brisk, reg
ular business in spite of the fact that everyone but Fran Kesky thought it was a dump with disgusting food, a shitty beer selection, and the kind of bathrooms you only use when it’s too cold or too rainy to duck out into the woods. Ren occasionally did good business selling toilet paper and hand sanitizer in the parking lot across the street.
“Billy beat us here,” Driff said as Ren turned into the parking lot. Mr. Pemberton’s big black Lincoln sat idling on the curb right in front of the Burg.
“Hopefully that means he’s excited,” Ren said. “This’ll go easier if he’s in a good mood.”
Kevin suspected the reaper’s punctuality had more to do with Mr. Pemberton than with Billy’s emotional state, but he kept his mouth shut. Billy in a good mood? Right. That miserable son of a bitch wouldn’t know happy if it walked up and bit him in the ass.
The lot mostly full, Ren parked the Jag in the far corner, several spots away from any of the other vehicles. The spot wouldn’t be convenient for a quick getaway, but Ren cared more about his paint job than he did about potential escape routes or the walking distance to their destination.
“Any last words of advice?” Ren asked the elf as everyone unbuckled.
“No,” came Driff’s disembodied reply from the front seat. He’d gone invisible already. “I’ll be watching.”
Kevin rolled his eyes as he clambered out of the vehicle. He didn’t like the idea of not knowing exactly where that asshole was and what he was up to, but at least Driff’s disappearing act would make it easier to pretend the elf wasn’t around. The passenger door opened briefly and then slammed back shut seemingly of its own accord.
Ren and Kevin fell into step beside each other as they crossed the parking lot. It wasn’t a walk they’d made often—three or four times a year, perhaps, when Kevin came home to visit—but it felt familiar nonetheless. Neither man had an actual brother, so each filled that role for the other. They were co-conspirators embarking on a familiar con, thieves returning to the scene of countless crimes. This time the excitement was gone, replaced by an unfamiliar tension that removed any sense of anticipation and boiled the event down to little more than a business transaction.