There was so much pain and emotion swirling in his eyes, I felt tears spring to mine and didn’t even know why.
“Okay. Okay, but you need to do it soon. And then rest. You look like hammered troll poop, Brother. Seriously.”
“I will. Now give me some privacy. Please.”
I sighed. A huge part of me doubted him, that he would do what needed to be done, or even that he wanted to. But I also needed to give him the chance to do the right thing. For Mattie’s sake and his own.
I nodded, and left the room, closing the door behind me.
I opened the door to the attic stairwell. Sammy stood at the top, and I could hear Mattie’s sobbing voice from above.
“I thought Mom left because I’d clung to her too much. I know Dad had to cut the spiritual cord and … and…”
I started to climb the creaky stairs. Sammy glanced down at the sound, gave me a quick frown and shake of her head. Not a good time, then. I nodded, and went back downstairs.
I found Pete back in the kitchen, Vee holding him and making soothing sounds.
“Pete, you okay?” I asked.
Vee looked at me. “Are you okay?” she said.
“I’m just Grape Ape,” I replied. “Pete, I’m sure Mort was talking out his butt, as usual. Mother and Father wouldn’t have done what he said.”
*You know but the half of it,* Alynon said.
Pete looked up from where he had his head buried in Vee’s shoulder. “You don’t think so?”
“Absolutely not,” I replied, as much to reassure myself as Pete. And you can shut it, I thought at Alynon.
*Ah, willful ignorance and denial,* Alynon replied, *the engines of romance, egos, and spandex sales.*
I heard the back door open and close. “Hello?” Dawn called out.
“Okay,” I said. “Dawn and I are headed to the local ARC headquarters. You guys want to come with? Pete, I know you love the lighthouse.”
Pete and Vee exchanged glances. Vee squeezed his shoulder, and said, “Actually, we just made an appointment with our counselor. Pete’s feeling a bit … upset with everything that’s happened this morning.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Maybe I can—”
My cell phone rang. I pulled it out and looked at it. Reggie.
“Hello?”
“Finn, hey. Look, if you’re going to question that dead feyblood, you’d better get over there and do it fast.”
“What’s going on?”
“Someone’s ordered the body burned, and I’m not sure how much I can delay the order.”
“Frak. Okay, thanks.” I hung up, and looked at Pete. “I’m sorry. Maybe we can talk when I get back? I really need to go.”
Pete shrugged, but did not meet my eyes. “Sure.”
I crossed to him and gave him a tight hug, and said, “I love you, Brother.” Then I nodded to Dawn, and we headed out the back door.
11
The Way It Is
The closest ARC facility sat hidden beneath the New Dungeness Lighthouse near Sequim, located halfway between my home and the Elwha feyblood steading. Most ARC facilities were either under moving water or near a power plant of some kind, or ideally both, since the shifting nature of water and the electromagnetic waves interfered with scrying magics.
The town of Sequim was an extremely flat and sprawling collection of fancy homes and small trailer parks, marked by metal art installations of elk, a prominent Walmart location, and proximity to camping and fishing sites. Dawn drove us through it, and parked in the day visitor lot of the Dungeness campground. A short hike along a forest trail brought us down to the beach.
The lighthouse sat far from shore on an incredibly long spit of rocks and sand, and the only way to reach it, beside by boat, was to walk nearly five miles along that narrow strip. This made for great protection against land assault, but was a pain in the butt when you’re in a hurry to question a dead feyblood before she gets cremated.
Dawn normally kicked my butt at hiking, proving to me again and again that being fit and being skinny were not always the same thing. But as we marched along the spit she stopped frequently to take pictures with her phone, breathing heavily, and I could soon tell she was far from fully recovered from the injury and blood loss of last night. I kept looking at the distant lighthouse, wondering if the feyblood’s body had been destroyed already.
“Dawn, why don’t you stop and rest. You’ll be safe here.”
“You know what?” Dawn said, leaning against a driftwood log, “I think maybe I’ll stop here and rest.” She set the bag with food and sparkling cider she’d brought down on the sand.
“What a great idea,” I said, smiling. “And feel free to eat if you’re hungry. I’m going to be a couple of hours.”
“Don’t go sneaking off on any adventures without me,” she said.
“I won’t. I’m done with adventures, trust me.”
We kissed, a soft, lingering kiss, then she slapped me on the butt and sent me on my way.
It took nearly forty-five minutes hiking at my best speed along the sandy spit to reach the lighthouse, which rose from the center of a bright white house, and was accompanied by a couple of smaller outbuildings with matching red roofs, all on a perfectly maintained green square of lawn. It looked very Technicolor and pristine. I moved to the smaller outbuilding, no bigger than a tool shed, and went inside. I knelt down and pressed my persona ring against the concrete floor. “Aperire Ostium.”
A passage opened up, revealing a descending stairwell. I followed the stairs down, and the entrance closed behind me.
A young enforcer in his black suit waited for me at the bottom of the stairs. He had the traditional enforcer moustache, but the silver beads were woven into a braid behind each ear. It must be the new fashion.
“Finn Gramaraye,” he said. “We weren’t expecting you for a couple of hours.”
“Yes, well, you know, I was just wandering along the spit anyway, had some seashells to pick up, thought I’d drop in.”
“Right. I’ll need you to put this on.” From inside his suit jacket, he pulled out a black blindfold that had thaumaturgic symbols sewn in silver thread across it.
“What? Why?”
“It’s just a precaution, sir,” the enforcer said.
*I don’t think you are their concern,* Alynon said.
“Oh.” Of course. I had a Fey spirit stuck in my head, and the ARC didn’t want him learning the layout or details of the facility.
I sighed, but took the blindfold and put it on. Just to try, I reached out with my arcana senses to detect magic, and then my spirit senses to find the enforcer’s spirit, but both senses were as blinded as my eyes.
“This way,” he said, grabbing my elbow firmly and pulling me forward.
We walked a series of halls, turns, and stairways, until the enforcer had me stop and remove the blindfold.
I blinked against the yellow light. Arcana avoid using fluorescent lighting since discovering that it slowly leaches away both one’s magic and life energy. In fact, some prominent arcana are still trying to prove that both fluorescent lighting and cubicles—which box in and prevent the natural flow of energy—were introduced to our world as part of a Fey conspiracy.
We stood in a small morgue, where the ARC brought bodies for autopsies and magical investigation. It looked much like my family’s own body prep room: stainless steel tables with drainage channels, machinery for draining and pumping fluids, glass-faced cabinets with medical equipment and supplies. Containment rings. Spirit traps. A captive bolt pistol in case of zombie emergency. The usual.
On one table lay a naked woman with skin that appeared pale and rubbery like raw calamari, and dirty blond hair that had an almost greenish tint to it and might have been wild and curly in life, but now wilted limp and stringy onto the metal table. I focused on her face out of habit and respect, but nothing I’d seen of her body gave me sufficient clue as to her magical nature.
Surrounding the table were a number of a
rtifacts and devices covered in thaumaturgy symbols, or holding vials of alchemical potions, whose purpose were beyond me but probably had some investigative purpose.
Or experimentation purpose.
“That’s the feyblood killed at the alchemist shop?” I asked the enforcer. “Veirai?”
“Yes. And we have instructions that nobody’s to mess with the body until they cremate it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to step outside and be distracted for exactly ten minutes.”
“Oh, uh, thanks?”
“Don’t thank me. Thank Knight-Captain Reginald, and the fact that I trust his judgment more than a feyblood’s orders.”
“Feyblood’s orders?”
“Yeah, it was the local Silver Court Archon who ordered the body destroyed.”
I frowned. “Has anyone else Talked to her?”
“No,” the enforcer said. “What necromancer would want to give up some of their own life to verify the guilt of an already dead feyblood?” His tone suggested he had the same question for me.
“Right.” I didn’t feel like explaining myself. “Thanks.”
The enforcer shrugged and left the room, and I crossed to the table and the dead feyblood, running through the mental exercises Grandfather had taught me to clear my head of distracting thoughts, to bring my emotions to a neutral hum. I saw the note on the toe tag—SIREN.
That was lucky.
Each feyblood was a blending of an “earthly” spirit from our world and some diluted, descended form of Fey spirit from the Other Realm. But when necromancers summon the spirit of a dead feyblood, what comes through is only the “earthly” spirit tied to the biological part of their nature. Any Fey aspect tied to their magical nature is missing. This sometimes had little effect, especially in feybloods whose magical natures weren’t as critical a part of their existence—a siren, for example, who was largely human except for the power her voice held. Try to summon the spirit of a goblin or chimera, however, and you got a mad entity too damaged or incomplete to safely communicate with or command. Imagine Animal in The Muppets Take PCP, and you start to get the idea.
I looked at Veirai’s face and touched her hand. I could feel the resonance of her spirit. Her human spirit, at least.
“Veirai, I summon you, and compel you to speak true.”
I felt an immediate connection.
Veirai wailed, though her mouth remained closed, her body unmoving. The sound was despair given form. It failed to compel me or drive me mad, thankfully, with the Fey siren power being absent.
“Veirai, I need to ask you some questions, and quickly. Silene sent me.”
Veirai’s wail died away. “Silene? I must warn her! I—wait. Am I, like … dead?”
“Yes,” I replied. “And I need to know what happened. How did you die?”
“I—it is coming back. I think … oh my gods. Silene. She pulled me aside, and told me to drink a potion, said it would allow my powers to, like, work on the alchemist through whatever protections he had. I could totally persuade him to confess his crimes to the ARC and give us—” She fell silent.
“Give you the cure to Grayson’s Curse.”
“Yes.”
“So what happened?”
“I … I think I went a little crazy, like full on diva-meets-bridezilla. I remember wanting to smash up his shop, to sing and make him drown himself in his own potions. I charged into his shop, but … as soon as I passed through the doorway, the crazy feeling just, like, went away. I started to turn back, to leave, and … the alchemist, he totally fired some kind of tranquilizer gun at me! Except it wasn’t tranquilizer—wait, if Silene sent you, are you here to destroy my spirit, to silence me?”
“No. She sent me to Talk to you.” Actually, I had offered, Silene hadn’t asked. But she’d said yes. Which still didn’t make sense if she was the one really responsible for what had happened. Perhaps she’d just wanted to get me out of her steading, and then had done what she could to prevent me from Talking to Veirai. Either way, I’d gotten what I could out of Veirai, and time was life.
“Veirai, thank you. May your spirit find peace.”
“Wait!” Veirai said. “I finally got an audition for Rent on Sunday. Isn’t there some way you can just, like, animate me or something? Even for a day? If Jenny gets that part, I’ll just kill myse—oh my god, well, you know what I mean.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t. And I must release you now. Go in peace.”
I released my summoning. Dizziness rushed over me. Thank goodness I hadn’t eaten yet.
I took several deep, slow breaths until the worst of the dizziness passed. Had Silene been willing to sacrifice Veirai for her cause? Was she willing to sacrifice the four feybloods that the DFM arrested as well? She’d said the lightning strike woke her up, changed her. Had that change made her a cold, determined militant?
Whether or not Silene had intended for Veirai to attack the alchemist, it seemed the alchemist had killed Veirai after all. Even if in self-defense, there were a thousand things a skilled alchemist could have done to defend himself short of killing, especially in a shop filled with his own potions. He needed to be held responsible for that at least, especially if he was working with the Arcanites to produce Grayson’s Curse.
“Something still doesn’t feel right, though,” I whispered.
*What doesn’t?*
“I don’t know. But the last thing I need is for the ARC to go starting a war with the feybloods because I shared what Veirai said, especially since I suspect that’s exactly what somebody out there wants.”
*You think Silene’s being set up?*
“Maybe. Or used. Either way, I want to know more before I throw her to the wolves.”
I needed to force the hand of whoever was behind all of this. At this point, all signs pointed to that being Silene, or perhaps her Archon. If it wasn’t them, then I’d need to prove that, too. And I needed to do so where I’d have both enforcer and feyblood witnesses.
I had an idea. A dumb idea, but then, I excelled at dumb ideas.
* * *
Two g-mails—gnome mails, I had to remember not to call them g-mails anymore—and an exhausting hike later, I found Dawn making a small sculpture of driftwood, stones, and seashells on the narrow strip of beach, next to a collection of empty Tupperware and an equally empty bottle of sparkling cider.
“How’d it go?” she asked, putting the final stone on the stack and taking a picture with her phone.
“Three guesses.”
“You left with more questions than you came here with?”
I sighed. “Yup. Come on.”
“Where next?” She gathered her things.
“We’re going to get yak slobber on your car.”
“Ugh. You’re determined to make me regret coming along, aren’t you?”
“I hope not,” I said as we began the trek back to her car. “Hopefully, the only thing we’ll have to regret is getting milk shakes on the way home.” Oh deadly dairy delight, how I craved thee.
“Holy frell, a milk shake does sound good,” Dawn said, shaking her head. “And full of delicious creamy regret indeed, especially if I get stuck in a close space with you.”
What can I say, the ill-effects of milk shakes were just one of the many sad realities I’d had to adjust to after returning to a forty-year-old body.
*You’re just determined to ruin all my hard work,* Alynon said.
I sighed.
Alynon had done a nice job of keeping my body fit while I was in exile, but I hadn’t done much to maintain the results of his hard work and was, admittedly, getting a bit of a spare tire.
Whatever, I thought back. Milk shakes are totally worth a little flab.
*You could have milk shakes and do sit-ups, you know.*
You could be quiet and do shut-ups, you know.
*We shall see if you still feel that way when next your back is aching. Or you get punched in the stomach.*
“We built this city—” I san
g to Dawn.
“We built this city on rock and roll,” she sang back.
*No!* Alynon said. *Okay, I’m sorry, don’t—*
“We built this city—” I continued, and Dawn picked it up. She understood exactly why we were singing it.
We continued to sing the song together as we held hands and strolled along the spit, with Alynon screaming protest in my head, then begging mercy, then finally falling silent.
* * *
The Olympic Game Farm was just a few minutes’ drive from the Dungeness spit, and provided a convenient cover for the ARC’s Department of Feyblood Management. Founded in partnership with Disney as a home for the large animals, such as bears and cougars, featured in their nature films, the farm now held public driving tours. The true highlight was the near-death thrill of being surrounded by herds of buffalo and other beasts standing taller than your car and with enough mass to knock it over if they wanted. Mostly, however, they just wanted bread, and left a generous dose of slobber all over your vehicle in exchange. For the waeryak, that joke never got old, I guess.
The waerbears, however, lauded as the “waving bears” for their “amazing” ability to wave at the tourists, mostly preferred to play endless rounds of Chinese checkers and watch soap operas, with their game boards and televisions hidden from public sight deep inside their man-made caves.
We bypassed the normal tour loop and took an AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY road up to a stone retaining wall. I hopped out, and said, “Feel free to take a spin around the loop. I’ll be here when you get back.”
Dawn sighed. “Seriously, why can’t I just come inside, and then we can do the loop together? Who am I going to tell about any of this?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “They don’t even trust me as long as Aly’s in my head. And we don’t want to remind them—”
“—that I know about them, or they might decide I’m a risk,” Dawn said. “Yeah, yeah. Okay, I’ll be back in a bit.”
Her car rattled off, Dawn’s disappointment trailing palpably behind her like the car exhaust.
“You can come out, Sal,” I called.
Sal the sasquatch stepped out from behind a nearby tree, the shimmer of his glamour fading away.
Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free Page 13