Pete won’t have to pledge anywhere. He’s arcana, I said.
*Of course.*
It will not come to that, I said, and knew I was trying to convince myself as much as him. I’ll find a way to keep them free.
*Free like you? Chained to your family business, your guilt, your—*
Drop it.
*Dee Niall isn’t just a lass in Scotland.*
“Whatever,” I muttered.
“What?” Don Faun asked.
“Nothing. Sorry. Just talking to the annoying voice in my head.”
“Oh,” Don said, “you got one of them too?” He looked around us, then cleared his throat and said in a low voice, “Mind if I ask you a question?”
“Uh, sure.”
“Does your voice ever ask you to, ya know, dress up special when you get amorous-like? You know, like maybe a, uh, coyote?”
“Nooo,” I said slowly. “But I don’t think he’d complain if I did.”
*Hell, I’d be fine if you dressed up like a Smurf, long as you got to the amorous part.*
“Oh, yeah, well, mine either,” Don said quickly. “But I’ve heard rumors of others. You know.”
“Of course.”
I reached the car without further incident. On the drive home, I called Reggie, Zeke’s old enforcer partner, and explained the situation to him. His manner of speaking, like his appearance, always reminded me of Louis Gossett Jr.
“Shoot, son, I don’t know what to say. I’ve been trying to find a way to help Pete and Vee since Zeke’s death, and still don’t know how to keep them free. I’ll keep trying, though. As for this feyblood death, I can probably get you a chance to Talk with her spirit. And get you in to speak with those feybloods they just brought in. But that won’t happen until tomorrow morning at the soonest.”
“Can you tell me anything about what happened at the alchemist shop?” I asked.
“It’s an open investigation, so no, I can’t. Officially. But I’ll look into it for you, and give what help I can.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I hesitated. “You doing okay, about Jo, and Zeke and all?”
“It’s getting better, man,” Reggie said. “Thanks for asking. It helps that we are rooting out and tearing down the Arcanites one mad magus at a time.”
“Any sign that Grayson is still alive?”
“You know if there was, you’d be the first person I’d tell. After I beat his ass to a pulp.”
“Yeah. Okay, thanks.”
* * *
I pulled into the driveway of my family’s home, the gravel crunching beneath the tires of the old hearse. The early afternoon sun shone bright but weak, having barely begun its descent toward the madrona and pine trees that screened our yard from the street and our neighbors. I climbed out of the driver’s seat and stood for a minute, looking up at the black and white Ansel Adams clouds of a distant storm.
What mess had I gotten into now?
Maybe I should have run away from magic when I had the chance, instead of sticking around and trying to start a magical dating service. But my family needed me. And even after being home for months, I still had no clue what else I could do.
That worried me more than a little to think that, without magic, I had nothing. Nothing to do. Nothing interesting about me. No—
“Don’t freak out,” a woman’s voice said behind me.
I turned to find Heather, fugitive alchemist and one-time crush, standing in the shadow of the hedges. She wore a long black jacket, and she’d chopped her normally blond hair short and dyed it black, which only served to accentuate the dark circles under her eyes and the shadows of her sunken cheeks. She held a water pistol pointed at me, and I felt pretty sure it wasn’t filled with water.
I freaked out.
6
Every Rose Has Its Thorn
I spun away from Heather to run for the house—and banged my shin against the bumper of the hearse. “Ow!” I hopped and grasped at my shin.
“Way to Harding yourself,” Heather said. “Didn’t I just say don’t freak out?”
I flinched, but no potion splashed over me. I turned back to face her. “You’re an alchemist pointing a water pistol at me. And the last time I saw you, you tried to freeze me.”
“And you shot me. I’d say we’re even.”
“That was an accident. And—never mind. What are you doing here?”
She sighed. “I need your help.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Heather lowered the pistol. “Look, I understand why you wouldn’t exactly trust me—”
“Did I mention you tried to freeze me?”
“We were also friends. And lovers, if only briefly. Do you remember that?”
*I certainly do,* Alynon said. *Think she’d be keen for another round?*
Don’t be a smeghead. “Are you still working for the Arcanites?” I asked.
“I never worked for the Arcanites. I did things for Grayson because he was my boy’s father, and I needed to protect Orion from him. I couldn’t do that from the outside. I had to play along, do what he asked.”
“Is Grayson still alive?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Heather said. “If he is, he hasn’t found me. And I haven’t looked for him. Finn, I was trying to protect you, too, you know that, right? Grayson had feybloods he would have sent after you if I hadn’t promised I could keep you … distracted while he did what he needed. And I only tried to freeze you so you wouldn’t get hurt in the fighting.”
“That wouldn’t have saved Sammy, or Mattie.” Anger swelled in my chest. “It didn’t save Zeke.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here. I want to try and make up for my mistakes.”
“Then tell the ARC everything you know.”
Heather shook her head. “Orion knew more than me. I’m sure he’s already told them everything I could and more. I would just be sent into exile. And I can’t do any good in exile. Surely you can understand that?”
Ah, bat’s breath.
“What do you want then?”
“I—I don’t know. There’s got to be something I can do to make amends.”
“The mana drug that Grayson was using. You created that, right?”
Heather blushed. “Yes. I did a lot of terrible things. I know.”
“Well, that is what you can do for starters. The Arcanites are still using the drug. The feybloods need a cure for the addiction. Do you have one?”
“No,” Heather said.
“Just no? Can’t you create one?”
Heather looked away. “I—something else. Name something else for me to do.”
“What? Why?”
“Too many people in power want to use that drug now. If I provided the cure to it, if I took that weapon away from them, they would make sure I was exiled or worse, no matter what other good I did. Please, just ask me to do something else.”
“Merlin’s beard, Heather! Seriously? This is exactly the kind of thinking that got you in trouble in the first place. You need to just stand up and do the right thing.”
Heather’s face flushed. “Says the overgrown boy who wanted to run away from his responsibilities and make video games.”
“But I didn’t,” I said, feeling my own neck and face heating up. “I stayed.”
“Because you didn’t have much choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” I said, feeling like a hypocrite indeed. “Just like you have a choice now.”
“Gee, thanks, Afterschool Special, now I realize I should have Just Said No.”
“What the hell, Heather? You came to me. Do you want my help or not?”
Heather’s eyes suddenly overflowed with tears. “I’m sorry. I’ve been running, hiding, I don’t know what to do, I just don’t want it to end like this.”
“Then make the cure for the drug, Heather. Please.” I stepped toward her, reached out to hold her arm, to reassure her.
Her hand jerked up with the water gun, and she shot me in the chest.
“Wha—!”
Numbness spread out from my chest, and I fell limp to the ground. I wasn’t frozen, it just felt like every muscle in my arms, legs, and face had gone to sleep.
“I’m sorry!” Heather said. “I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.” She looked around her as if afraid enforcers, or worse, would pounce on her any second. “I can’t make the cure to the feyblood drug. I’m not even sure it’s possible. But if you think of anything else I can do to make amends, to earn your forgiveness, then just … hang some shoes on that silly rope thing of yours.” She waved up at the rope pulley that ran from my bedroom window over the hedge to Dawn’s house, a way to exchange objects and messages when we were teens.
The pins and needles of waking limbs began in every muscle at once. Oh man, recovering was going to suck worse than a Scrappy Doo movie.
“Mmffmumff,” I said as Heather turned away, a bit of drool running down my cheek. Heather faded into the shadows.
Somehow, I doubted she would heed my eloquent final words.
It took several minutes of painful writhing for the effects of the potion to wear off, as I made hopeless attempts to find just the right position where my muscles could wake up with minimal pain. When I could at last move without wincing, I climbed to my feet and stumbled into the safety of the house and its protective wards.
Pete poked his head out of the kitchen, lowering a half-eaten chicken drumstick from his mouth. “Hi Finn!” he said, then gave a guilty look down at the drumstick. Our family had been raised vegetarians, as most necromancer families were—one of the side effects of being able to sense the residual spiritual energy in anything that once had a nervous system. But Pete’s new wolf nature was less discerning.
“Hey Petey, how’re you doing?”
Pete glanced back into the kitchen a second, then crossed through the dining room to join me in the entry hall as the kitchen door swung back and forth behind him. “I—hey, are you okay? You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine, Petey, thanks. What’s up?”
Pete blushed. “Oh. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
I sighed. All I wanted to do was clean up, drink something with lots of caffeine and sugar, and meet Dawn for our date.
“Sure. What’s up?”
Pete looked down and shifted from foot to foot in that golly gawrsh way he had. “I just—I was thinking about asking Vee to marry me.”
“Holy—wow! That’s awesome, dude. And quick. Does this have something to do with what happened this morning?”
“A little, maybe,” Pete said. “But I was thinking about it even before that.”
“Okay. But are you, well, do you know if she’s ready for that?” I asked not just because they’d only been together for three months, but because Vee had spent a good part of her adult life in the Hole, a special facility where noncriminal arcana and feybloods were “cared for” if they were unable to care for themselves, or might be a danger.
“I think she’s ready. She keeps saying she spent too much time waiting for her life to start, she doesn’t want to wait no more.”
They’d been together three months and were ready to marry. I’d known Dawn the same amount of time, at least from my perspective. So why couldn’t I even say “I love you”?
The Kin Finder had confirmed Dawn to be my soul mate, the same as it had confirmed the connection between Pete and Vee. But what did that mean? I had been eager for some clients in my dating service, not only to have some alternative to being a necromancer, but also so I could better see just how the Kin Finder worked. The fact that it had found Sal’s soul mate close by, and near his own stomping grounds, made me wonder if it didn’t so much find your one and only soul mate as just the best match closest by. And how much of the love seeker’s expectation played into that?
When I’d used the artifact, it had been after I’d lost my memories of Dawn, but I had been told that I loved her. Pete already knew he loved Vee when he used it. And Sal, well, why wouldn’t some part of him equate love with the comfort and familiarity of his home territory?
But Pete and Vee truly were a perfect match. And now Pete was ready to propose. This was exactly the kind of thing that made me worried I’d lost more than just memories of Dawn, that I’d lost some important part of me, maybe part of what had made her love me, maybe even my fundamental ability to love her back, to truly love in the way Dawn deserved.
I knew that I had fun with Dawn, and loved to spend time with her. And she certainly knew me, perhaps even better than I knew myself. But—
Pete slumped. “You think it’s a bad idea,” he said, sadly.
“What? Oh, no, sorry Pete. I was having a pity party in my head. Look, I—marriage is a pretty big deal, you know. Are you sure you’re ready for that?”
Pete nodded. “Our counselor says we’re good for each other, even though, you know, I sometimes want to eat her.” He blushed again.
“Counselor?”
“Brightblood relationship counselor. We’ve been seeing one for a few weeks now.”
“Oh! You didn’t say anything.”
Pete shrunk in on himself, and said in a soft voice, “Everybody is already scared of me. I don’t like to remind you of what I am now.”
“Petey, we’re not—” I stopped. I wanted to say we weren’t afraid of him, or at least that I wasn’t afraid of him. But that wasn’t true. I realized then how far from him I was standing, that when he’d entered the entry hall I’d actually taken a step back to maintain that space.
“Nobody lets me cook anymore,” Pete said. “Like I’m going to spit in the food or something. And you haven’t come to my house to play games with me and Vee, or watch movies, even though I keep asking you.”
“Oh man, Petey. Come here.” I pulled him into a tight hug, and slapped him on the back as we stepped apart. “I’m sorry. How about tomorrow morning you make us breakfast, and we can watch Saturday-morning cartoons?”
“They don’t have Saturday-morning cartoons anymore,” Pete said.
“I know. But I’ll bet Mattie can help us find some on her computer, or something we can watch, some of the good ones. Bugs Bunny. Thundarr the Barbarian. Superfriends. Whatever you want.”
Pete’s mouth squished to the side as he considered it.
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Pete said at last.
“Fine. We’ll make up our own tradition. Sundurday Morning Cartoons.”
Pete’s last reservations collapsed beneath the wave of a huge smile sweeping across his face. “That sounds fun.”
“Okay. It’s a plan. And as for Vee, I agree with your counselor. You two make a great pair. If you think you’re both ready, I say go for it.” And if they were married, maybe it would be harder for anyone to split them up. Of course, it might also make it easier for any Demesne to reject them both.
“Thanks, Brother,” Pete said. He gave me another hug, then returned to the kitchen, gnawing enthusiastically on the drumstick as he went. I was tempted to check for chicken stains on my back, but I was going to clean up anyway, so it didn’t really matter.
I checked in on Father, who was happily distracted assembling knickknacks and working his way through a bag of saltwater taffies from Elevated. Mattie had left a note on her desk asking if I’d pick her up after Arcana School that evening.
I checked the time. Nearly one. Just over an hour until I was supposed to meet Dawn for our date. Our first real date, at that. We’d hung out plenty, usually around her shows or at each other’s jobs, or at hurried meals at home; but all the catch-up since my return and our crazy schedules had made it difficult to do an actual planned activity together.
I hurried upstairs to get ready. In lieu of a shower, I used one of the magical stones we used to sanitize bodies for the major cleaning work, and a damp washcloth to refresh.
Dawn stood waiting for me when I stepped out of the bathroom in my threadbare blue bathrobe, her hair now a vibrant purple cloud of finger twists.
“
You look amazing,” I said.
“Aw, you’re going to make me blush. So, how’d things go with Sal the sasquatch? Did you find his true love?”
“I think so,” I replied. “But there were some … complications. I’ll figure it out, though.”
“I want to hear all about it. You ready for this friggin’ classy date you promised me?”
“Almost,” I said. “But you’re not. You’re going to want to get dressed up, I think.”
* * *
The Port Gamble renaissance fair was not the largest in the area, but it lacked nothing in enthusiasm, and had at least a sampling of anything you might expect from such a fair put on by The Society for Creative Anachronism. I noted with particular interest a pay-to-play arena where groups of visitors beat each other with padded weapons, each group competing to win a stuffed dragon that looked suspiciously like someone had stitched wings onto an Eeyore knockoff.
Plenty of people wore costumes that spanned several centuries of medieval and renaissance history—sometimes all at once. I hadn’t gone for accuracy myself, wearing my old Dragon’s Lair T-shirt, plus a gray plastic conical helmet and white canvas backpack.
Dawn had outdone me. She wore a blue long-sleeved shirt, a brown leather vest, and brown leather pants. A mandolin lay slung across her back, she had clipped a small white feather on either side of her lavender hair, and a plastic sword swung at her side.
Around us, white canvas tents and booths offered everything from swords and leather armor to elephant ears and potion bottles full of dragon ale. It was pretty easy to tell the area residents come to shop or entertain their children versus the folks who would happily live in a renaissance fair if given the choice.
Less easy was telling the difference between mundies, arcana, and feybloods.
Dawn and I stopped beside a fairy sitting in the shade of a tree. Not a real fairy, at least not that I could detect, but a woman wearing costume wings, with glitter paint on her face and flowers in her hair. She sat on a blanket where she displayed handmade bracelets, and languidly wove a new one.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you know where the musical instruments are being sold?”
Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free Page 8