“Uh, right,” I said.
“Iself understand,” Sal said. “Iself hope to find a mate who is perfect also.”
“Good.” Dawn smiled. “Well, I’ll leave you boys to it. Have fun.” She swept from the room.
“Uh,” I said, turning back to Sal. “Okay. I’ll need a small bit of your fur.”
Sal plucked a tiny tuft of fur from his arm and handed it to me. It felt like steel wool. I put it into a metal bowl with some water and inserted it into the machine’s interior, then lit the Sterno beneath the bowl.
I pointed to a small crystal ball at the back of the machine. “Place your hand here, on this ball, and think of your desire to find love.”
Sal put one huge finger on the crystal, covering it.
“Good. May I place my hand on yours to work the magic?” I asked. Sal nodded. I placed my hand over his finger and the crystal ball, and focused on the bright locus of magical energy within me. I called up a portion of the energy and formed a summoning. But instead of summoning the spirit once attached to a body, I summoned the spiritual match to Sal. The machine began to hum lightly.
It didn’t take long for the water to begin boiling, sending steam through a complex series of tubes within the machine. It began to ping and clank and sproing. The mechanical arm lowered and drew out a straight line, then lifted. The machine quieted, and I blew out the Sterno.
I took the sheet of paper, and said, “Please wait here. I need to consult my maps to determine the exact location of your true love.”
“That be all and done?” Sal asked.
“That’s it,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
Sal looked skeptical, but sat back down and picked up his knitting.
I closed the sliding doors on the parlor, and with a slight exertion of will backed by another trickle of magical energy from my core, I activated the ward that had been built into the doors for just these types of occasions. Not that I expected trouble, but I’d learned the hard way not to trust my assumptions about people, or beings. The ward wouldn’t stop Sal if he decided to smash his way out of the room for some reason, but it would give him a shock and, more importantly, would set off an alarm. It used to also release a powerful sleep gas, but a key ingredient in sleep gas is nightmare urine, as in the pee of an actual Fey equine-of-the-night. Worse even than cat urine, the smell was as difficult to get rid of as a preconception wrapped in a rabid skunk.
I went to find Mattie. She was in Father’s room, at my mother’s old desk, wearing headphones and typing on her laptop computer. I still had a hard time believing the incredible power of modern computers compared to my trusty old Commodore 64. I had tried to get up to speed on the Internet and everything that had changed while I was away, but it was just overwhelming. I’d felt like a kid transferred from the fourth grade into an advanced high school class mid-semester and told there was a quiz on Everything next week.
Father sat at his own desk, beneath a window overlooking Mother’s garden, or at least the wild tangle it had become now that nobody tended it. Bits and scraps covered his desk, including pieces of broken watches, a variety of crystals and stones, a small collection of polished bones from creatures both mundane and magical (purchased legally, not taken from our customers, of course), and the pieces of an old Robotix set. I’d donated or purchased a lot of the materials, and borrowed the rest from the piles of junk left in Dawn’s yard by her artist ex-boyfriend.
Once upon a time, Father had been a skilled thaumaturge, an inventor and creator of magical artifacts. Married into a family of necromancers, he’d used that skill to create many artifacts that allowed our family to compete with other necromancer families who had more money or influence, artifacts like the Kin Finder 2000; or like the Podium of Politeness, which enhanced a speaker’s ability to say nice things about even the most wretched or boring deceased with full (if temporary) sincerity and belief, making the speaker feel rather good about themselves. He’d also made a number of smaller, non-magical objects he would sell to tourists in the shops on Water Street.
Once upon a time. Before Grandfather used Mother’s ghost to forcefully possess my father and make him do horrible things, driving him mad in the process.
Three months since Mother’s ghost had been exorcised, and no signs that it had helped Father’s madness. But he still had his ability to imbue artifacts with magic, and occasionally the inventor or artist in him peeked through the madness. I was doing everything I could to bring him out fully.
“Finn!” Father said, looking up from his desk. “Finn Fancy, learn to dancey.”
At Father’s loud greeting, Mattie quickly shut her laptop and looked at me as if caught looking at pornography—something her father apparently did on a regular basis according to our sister, Sammy, who refused to fix Mort’s computer any longer.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Okeemonkey,” Father said.
“Yeah,” Mattie replied. “All good. I was just checking Tumblr.”
“Tumbler. Right. That’s not, uh, something inappropriate for a young lady, is it?” I asked.
Mattie rolled her eyes. “No.”
I’d have to ask Sammy about it. “Okay. Well, I was hoping you could help me with this?” I held up the sheet from the Kin Finder with the line drawn across it. I could use the line in conjunction with Thomas Guide maps to identify where the line pointed to, but I’d never been good at it. “You said you found a better way to do it?”
“Sure!” She took the sheet from me and scanned it using the printer on the desk. “Uncle Finn?”
“Yeah?”
“Could you talk to Dad? I’m worried about him.”
“About what? His fashion choices? Because they worry me, too.”
“No, for reals. He’s been seriously moody lately. And sick a lot.”
“He’s not always like that?” I asked, surprised. In the three months I’d been back, I’d never seen Mort look particularly happy or healthy. The one time I’d tried to ask him about it, he’d told me to mind my own business.
“No. Well, he used to be better, anyway. But it’s been getting worse lately. And he didn’t used to stay in his room all the time. I tried to get him to tell me why, but he won’t.” Mattie finished scanning the document and then began doing something on her laptop.
I could think of a number of possible reasons why Mort would hide in his room. He probably still resented my being back. Or maybe he was afraid Pete would bite him again now that Pete really was a waerwolf, in retaliation for all the years Mort pretended Pete was a waerwolf as a prank.
Or perhaps Mort was just busy breaking his computer again.
Whatever the case, I couldn’t simply ignore Mattie’s request. And if something really was wrong, I couldn’t ignore that, either. Damn it.
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Thank you. Here you go.” Mattie pointed at her screen. A little red dot showed on a map. Thankfully, it wasn’t on the other side of the world—a possibility I’d dreaded. Rather, it was right here in Washington State, and even on the Olympic Peninsula.
“Elwha River. Great! Can you print that for me?”
As Mattie fussed with the printer, I went over to Father. I knelt down beside him and put one hand on his shoulder. “Hi, Father,” I said.
“Look at that!” he said, his tone irritated, and pointed out the window at the wild remains of Mother’s garden. “Where are the flowers? All the flowers have died.”
“We had to prune, remember? So that Mother’s ghost couldn’t be used against you anymore?”
“Your Mother’s going to be mad when she sees what happened to her garden.”
“Mother is—here, look at me, please.” I leaned over to catch his eyes. “What is my name?”
“Phinaeus Gramaraye,” he said with a touch of his old humor, and I saw recognition in his eyes, like I’d suddenly come into focus. “Why, did you want to change it again?”
“Again?”
“Yes
, you wanted to change it to Door at one point, remember?”
Oh. That. I’d read several Xanth novels when I was around eleven, and for some crazy reason I’d briefly wanted to change my name to Dor. I’d also wanted a tattoo of Pee-wee Herman when I was fifteen. Thank the gods my parents had forbidden both. “Yeah, I remember that. I had my nose stuck in those books that whole summer. Remember when we went camping out by Forks that year, and I tried Talking to the spirit of all the inanimate objects—”
Father thrust my old pocket-sized Simon electronic game into my hand. A plastic circle with four different colored push pads, it had been MacGyvered, or as I liked to call it, MacFathered. A small spirit trap sat secured in the center—another twisted metal puzzle that had no solution, with what looked like a bird’s skull in the center, all covered in runes—and crystals protruded from the push pads with copper wire attaching them to the spirit trap.
Father’s eyes found mine, and I could see him making the effort to truly focus on me. “A gift.”
“What does it do?” I asked as I took it.
The left side of Father’s face twitched, and he said, “Over there, other there, criss-cross spirit sauce.”
I sighed. I couldn’t make sense of his words, but Father had a small touch of prophecy, and when I’d returned from exile he’d gifted me the ring that made the Kin Finder locate true love. That gift, and a few seemingly mad words, had helped me to put an end to Grandfather’s plotting. So I held on to a growing collection of Father’s gifted objects for fear that the one I chose to dismiss as just a product of his madness would be the object that could save my life somehow.
“Thanks, Father.”
Father blinked one eye spastically several times. “Edwin?” he said. “Where’s Father?”
It was like a steel shutter slamming down over the window, cutting off the light. For a brief moment, my father had been back. And now, he was lost to me. Again.
“I’m not your brother,” I said, my voice thick with sudden emotion. I cleared my throat. “I’m your son, Finn. Father, concentrate. Please.”
Father waggled his finger at me. “Please and thanks, or you’ll upset the ranks.”
He turned back to his desk and began picking up random objects, turning them over and pressing them together as if trying to fit puzzle pieces.
I patted him on the back. “I’ll bring you some food.” I took the map printout from Mattie with a quick nod of thanks and left the room.
I gently closed the door behind me and stood for a second, my hand resting on the doorknob.
“You okay?” Dawn asked behind me.
I turned, and put on my best smile. “Do bears bare? Do bees be?”
Dawn’s eyes narrowed. “Uh huh. Want to try that again?”
“Weren’t you making second breakfasts?”
“Weren’t you about to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Really, I’m fine—” I said.
“Sure. Get your stubborn man butt over here.” Before I could protest, Dawn pulled me into a hug.
I gave a resigned sigh, and returned the hug as much to humor her as anything. But as I stood there holding her, being held, tears leaked out.
“I understand, you know,” Dawn said. “Well, kind of. It wasn’t easy, watching Dad fade away.” Her own voice took on the edge of tears. “But at least your father is healthy. And you have Vee to help read his memories. And potions, and all kinds of real magic I don’t even know about yet. I’m sure you’ll find a way to help him.”
I kneaded my fingers into her shoulder in acknowledgment, then took a deep breath of her candy and coconut scent, exhaled slowly, and stepped back.
“About our date today—” I began.
“Oh no,” Dawn said. “Don’t go trying to sneak your way out of our plans now, it was hard enough agreeing on a time to begin with.”
“That’s because you have twenty-seven jobs.”
“I only have one job, sir,” Dawn said. “And I’m well on my way to being named café queen in charge of making all the granola, thank you very much. Who needs more than that?”
“Well, you have the animal shelter, and reading Tarot, I consider those jobs. And—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Dawn put her hands on her hips in a dramatic manner. “And don’t forget that I keep the streets safe at night as Awesome Girl, too.”
“Hey!” I said. “You’re not supposed to tell me that! You’re supposed to protect me by keeping me ignorant of your identity. Well, until I’m kidnapped to use against you that is.”
“Damn. You’re right. And you would look adorable in a short skirt and wet T-shirt, tied up and oh-so-helpless, waiting for rescue.” Dawn got a mischievous grin. “Hmmm. If you don’t have something better planned, I think I have an idea of what we could do later.” She waggled her eyebrows at me.
“I’m not sure I have a skirt that would work,” I replied.
“Are you sure? Don’t lie on my account, I’m totally fine if you do. I seem to remember you wearing eyeliner and dangling earrings in high school.”
“That was the eighties, and it was cool,” I said, crossing my arms.
“Uh huh,” Dawn replied. “Well, I have plenty of skirts for you.”
“And a superhero costume for yourself?”
“Are you kidding?” Dawn said, thrusting out her chest and lifting her chin. “I have three.”
I laughed. “Of course you do. Okay. The date is still on. But I’m not sure how long this thing with Sal will take.”
“That’s fine. I have an appointment with Dewanda anyway.”
Dawn’s hair appointments were never a quick thing. There were no places close to home that knew how to deal with her natural hair and passion for colors, and the process itself was time consuming.
“I forgot,” I said. “And you have the gig tonight. Are you sure—”
“It’ll be fine,” she said, and I caught that momentary flash of sadness I’d seen all week whenever the topic of her gig came up. Then she punched me in the shoulder. “Jesus, make a girl feel wanted why don’t you?”
“What? No! Sorry. I’ll try to be back here and ready to go no later than, say…” I glanced at my Pac-Man watch: Almost nine A.M. “Two o’clock?”
Dawn scrunched her hair between her fingers. “That should work.”
“I think you’re going to like what I have planned.”
“Is it gonna be frickin’ classy?” Dawn asked. “’Cause I’m a girl with refined tastes, you know.”
“Oh, it’s going to be classy like you won’t believe,” I said. “You’re with me, baby, and I only fart through silk.”
“Wow,” Dawn said in a most unimpressed tone. “I am a lucky lady. I can already tell this date’s going to be hotter than Jake Gyllenhaal nude sunbathing on the Sands of Time while drinking a double-hot spicy chai.”
“You know it,” I replied. I wasn’t sure who Jake whats-his-name was, but I waggled my eyebrows anyway.
Sadness drifted briefly across Dawn’s face like the shadow of a swift-moving cloud.
Damn it.
I knew what that meant—there was some response she’d expected from the old days, or some word game we used to play, perhaps, that I’d forgotten when I lost my memories of us.
Another reminder that maybe I wasn’t really the guy she thought she was in love with.
“Dawn, I—”
She waved a hand dismissively. “It’s cool. I’ll get some food for your dad, you go back to your matchmaking, Emma.”
Her Emma reference caused my own pang of sadness as I remembered a similar joke Zeke had made. I didn’t want to end the conversation on a down note, but I didn’t know what more to say. And I did have a sasquatch sitting in my parlor.
I gave Dawn a quick kiss on her cheek, and headed back to the viewing parlor.
Sal looked up when I opened the doors; he was still sitting awkwardly on the folding chair and knitting away.
“Youself know who is my heart-love?” he asked.
“Not yet. But I know where they’re at. On the Elwha River.”
Sal’s eyebrows rose. “Iself grow up near Elwha. And a Silver Court steading is yon-there.”
“Well, there you go. Maybe your love’s the, uh, sasquatch next door.” Like Dawn. Being the girl next door, not a sasquatch. “So I can meet you at the river in, say, about two hours?”
“Iself can fastwalk there much sooner,” he said, with the tone of a child asking if he can open a present on Christmas Eve.
“Unfortunately, I can’t,” I replied. Humans couldn’t walk the fairy paths without going mad. “It will take me some time to get there. But I’ll bring the Kin Finder so we can confirm—”
The doorbell rang.
“Now what?” I muttered. “Sal, I’ll be right back.” I closed the parlor doors, and crossed to the front door. I swung it open, and froze.
A man stood on the porch, easily identified as an enforcer by the black suit and tie also popular with the FBI, missionaries, and hip movie stars, and by the handlebar moustache that held a silver bead braided into either side. He held a small white television dangling from one hand, and a piece of parchment in the other, with a suitcase leaning against his leg. A silver ring glinted on his right hand—a persona ring, the arcana world’s equivalent of government-issued ID—and its red stone identified him as a wizard, but that was unsurprising as most enforcers were wizards. I noted, however, that his suit stretched to accommodate his ample belly, his face appeared lined more with weariness than wisdom, and he had that aura about him seen on police officers forced to choose between inventory duty in the basement or midnight guard duty at a downtown grocery store.
The two women who flanked him were another matter. The one on the left stood a head taller than me and wore a leather jacket that was more biker gang than New York fashion, and with her short-cropped red hair she looked like Red Sonja gone punk. The Hispanic woman on the right wore a fitted suit and looked like a district attorney ready to put away the city’s major crime boss for life, even if she had to go vigilante to do so, damn it.
I did not see persona rings on the women’s hands, which meant they were likely feybloods.
Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free Page 3