*You are exorcising me before this fight,* Alynon said. *You have no right to keep risking my life like this.*
We can talk about it after this, I replied.
Clay whistled silently again.
“Summoning your dogs?” I asked.
“Just one, actually,” Clay said. “I believe you know him. He’s provided me with some wonderfully detailed stories about you, and your Negro girlfriend, what is her name? Dawn?”
The undergrowth rustled to my left, and a Yorkshire terrier leaped out of the forest and onto the pavement. Pete growled then stopped. He sniffed at the air with a confused look on his face, and sneezed. The dog padded toward us and transformed, rising up and shifting into a naked man among a cloud of patchouli smell that I now realized helped mask his scent from his fellow waers.
“Barry,” I said, deliberately keeping my eyes on his. “Why am I not surprised you’re a shadowbright?”
“Whoa, brah,” he said. “No need for the heavy negativity. We’re all friends here.”
“Uh, no, we’re not. So, what, you were sent to be a pain in my ass for some reason?”
Barry gave me a pitying smile. “Finn, my friend, you really need to step outside the circle of me me me, brah. One is a lonely number.”
“Yeah, well, tu can be as bad as one. No, scratch that, you’re worse. So, Duck Hunt, what were you doing sniffing around my girlfriend?”
Barry sighed. “You see what I mean?” he said to Clay. “My man here’s totally insecure.”
“Indeed,” Clay replied. “But I didn’t call you here for a reunion. ‘Your man’ has just challenged Kaminari to a dancing contest, and I would like you to stand in as her champion.”
“Wait, what?” I said.
“Whoa,” Barry said. “Totally flattered, Papa Clay, but won’t Kaminari kill me after if I take her place? She’s a little, uh, intense about this whole vengeance thing.”
“Hey!” I said. “What makes you so certain you’re going to win?”
Barry laughed. “That’s the spirit, Fightin’ Finn.” He turned back to Clay. “Seriously though, what about Kaminari?”
“I will handle Kaminari. You handle Fred Astaire here.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Barry winked at me. “Should be fun, huh? When is it?”
“Tonight,” Clay said. “I promised Kaminari that much.”
“Whoa, harsh,” Barry said, looking at me again. “Guess we’re going to totally miss Dawn’s show, huh? ’Course, she’s likely to be more pissed at you than me. But don’t worry, I’ll comfort her after she’s done yelling at your head and all.”
My hands clenched into fists. “So how do we do this?”
29
Giving You the Best That I Got
I didn’t relax until the glow of Bellevue was behind us and we drove along the 405 north for Snoqualmie.
I glanced over at Pete in the passenger seat as the lights of passing cars and streetlamps cast his face in slow waves of light and dark.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay? Really?”
“No,” he said, his voice small.
“Oh.” My heart ached for him. “That was your first time transforming in the wild, wasn’t it? I mean, unbound, outside of the house.”
Pete just nodded.
“Was it scary? Awful?”
“No,” Pete said again. “It was—I don’t know. Do you remember when we went to Disneyland, how it felt like … there was this whole other world that was just for us, that was like what we felt inside, and you just wanted to run away and live in the Family Robinson treehouse and spend every day running through the park having adventures?”
“Uh, sort of,” I said.
“Well, it’s a little like that,” Pete said. “Beating Georgio in that fight, the run through the forest hunting food, and the, um, having Minerva wanting me, it all felt … good.” He looked down at his hands. “Does that mean I’m a Shadows brightblood? Or that I’m … an animal?”
“No!” I said. “No. Pete, the wolf spirit didn’t change your heart, it didn’t change who you are. It just kind of lets your wild side out to play every once in a while. And that’s not a bad thing, not by itself.”
“But, I almost … I almost attacked you,” he said.
“But you didn’t,” I replied.
He was silent for a while. “What if Vee had been there?” he said finally. “What if I had … hunted her.”
“You wouldn’t have,” I said.
Pete began to sob. Great, shaking sobs that caused the entire car to bounce lightly and I would have had to shout to be heard, which I knew wouldn’t be comforting at all.
I took the next exit and parked on the side of the road. I slid over on the seat, and held Pete, let him cry it out. When there came a lull in the sobs, where it sounded like he was hyperventilating, I said, “Petey, man, you would never hurt Vee. Don’t you remember what made you stop growling at me? I mentioned Vee. Just her name was enough to calm you down. If anything, Vee is the one person you should always want to have around you. You love her. She loves you. We all love you, Pete, wolf or no wolf.”
Pete’s sobs settled into sniffles. “Really?”
“Really.”
He sniffled a little longer, wiping at his face with his shirtsleeves, then said, “I still want to marry her.”
“Well I should hope so. I’ve been thinking of what to do at your bachelor party.”
“Oh. I forgot about that. I, uh, I’m not sure Vee would want me to watch naked women dancing. Not even nymphs.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that,” I said. “I’m pretty sure there aren’t any naked women at Enchanted Village.”
“Enchanted Village?” Pete asked, perking up a bit. “Could we take Mort? And Mattie? And Vee? She’s never been.”
“Uh, sure. It’s your bachelor party, I guess you can invite whoever you want.” I smiled. “I love you, Brother. Everything’s going to be okay.”
He nodded, and I slid back into the driver’s seat, buckled up, and drove north once again.
I hoped I wasn’t lying to him, hoped everything really would be okay. I had to beat Barry in this dance off, and end this cycle of clan war before it escalated. Or instead of organizing a bachelor party, I might have to watch from beyond the cold distance of death’s veil as Pete and Vee fought for their lives.
* * *
After a quick stop at the ARC headquarters under Snoqualmie Falls, Pete took over driving and we headed home with Verna in the seat between us. Her portal equipment rattled in the spacious back of the hearse.
*Thank you,* Alynon said for the fiftieth time.
Stop thanking me, I replied. I want to send you home as bad as you want to go.
Verna still wore her ink-stained lab coat, but had let her hair down into a wild silver halo. She blinked at the passing streetlights through her thick glasses, and rattled on about the exciting possibilities of Father’s spirit-bridging artifact. I quickly learned that I didn’t really need to do much to hold up my end of a conversation with her, just give the occasional sound of interest, or say “Really?” She apologized at one point for rambling.
“I just don’t get out of the lab very often.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re not rambling. Mattie, my niece, now she knows how to ramble.”
“A niece! How nice,” Verna said, pushing her glasses up. “Frederick, that was my husband, never wanted children, you know. I thought about trying to modify the portal magics to peek into parallel dimensions to see what my children might have been like, but the power requirements were far too great. And there was a small chance it would turn all life on the planet into eggplants. The equations were very tricky.”
“Uh, well, that’s too bad,” I said, and wondered, had the power requirements not been so huge, might she have given it a try anyway?
Verna continued to ramble as Pete drove us over the floating bridge. The sight of Lake Washington passing beneath and ready to swallow us ma
de me nauseous, so I closed my eyes and focused on finding a way to explain things to Dawn.
Hi Dawn, I came home safe like I promised, but I’m going to be in a dance contest to the death with your good friend Barry the waerdog, and might miss your show due to my lack of having a head.
No explanation I imagined led to a happy ending.
* * *
We arrived home an hour and a half later, just past 9:00 A.M. A dozen cherry walnut waffles from Hudson Point Café warmed my lap through the takeout boxes, their delicious scent driving me crazy.
I’d called home well ahead, so pretty much the entire family sat gathered around the long oak dining table. Sammy and Mattie looked up from working on their laptops, their expressions of relief bathed in the pale glow of the screens, looking like sisters rather than aunt and niece. Sammy’s girlfriend, Fatima, sat barefoot and cross-legged on her chair, sketching in her sketch pad, and pushed her long black hair out of her face as we entered. And Mort had the necrotorium’s appointment book and payment ledger on the table, frowning at them and making an obvious show of ignoring our entrance. Father was absent, most likely in his room.
Vee rushed to Pete with a worried expression and examined his torn shirt. “What happened?”
Pete gave an uncomfortable shrug.
At the same time, Dawn grabbed the takeout boxes out of my hand, threw them on the table, and punched me in the shoulder, hard, which wrenched the other shoulder that the redcap had struck with his staff.
“Ow!” I winced and held both shoulders. “What? I told you I was going—”
“That’s for almost getting stuck in the Other Realm!” Dawn said. “But you’re back now, and you took care of Silene’s whatever issue, I assume. Mission accomplished, right?” She stopped and looked at my filthy clothes. “Why are you doing a Pig-Pen imitation?”
Vee pointed to Pete’s shirt. “And why does it look like Pete transformed?”
“We, uh, went to the Shadows Archon about stopping an attack on the Elwha steading. There was a little misunderstanding with his brightbloods. But everything is fine now.”
Dawn took a step back. “Define fine.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Vee said to Pete. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Pete gave a mournful look at the waffles. “But—”
“You’ll get your waffles,” she said. “But first you need to clean up, and give me a few minutes to appreciate you not being hurt.” She took his arm and led him from the room.
Sammy crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “If everything really was fine, you wouldn’t have called a family meeting after going to see that vampire. And who’s your guest?”
“Vampire!” Dawn said as I looked at Verna, who stood holding a large piece of her portal equipment in the doorway.
“Oh geez. Sorry. Here, I’ll take that.” I lifted the portal equipment from Verna’s hands and set it in the corner, then quickly introduced her to everyone. “Verna’s going to help me with Alynon, hopefully.”
“Hello,” Verna said awkwardly.
Dawn crossed her arms. “Nice to meet you, Verna.” She glared at me. “Now, back to how you got in a fight with a vampire?”
Right. “I think we managed to stop the Forest of Shadows and Silver Court from going to war, at least for now. But there’s still some tensions between their brightbloods that needed to be worked out, so—”
Dawn sighed. “Why do I feel like you promised to try and fix it all again?”
“Uh—” I said. At the look on Dawn’s face, I found I just couldn’t tell her the truth about the dance off. If for no other reason than she might cancel her show to be with me, record company reps or not, and that was the last thing I wanted. Bad enough she couldn’t play the guitar—for now, I willed to the Universe—I wasn’t going to risk her dreams any further.
But she could tell I’d gotten involved somehow by my hesitation.
“Damn it, Finn!” she said. “I love you, but let’s just recap previous episodes, shall we? You took Sal to meet his true love, and got caught up in Silene’s troubles instead. So you just had to go talk to her dead friend real quick, and everything was supposed to get better. But then you got into a fight at the game farm and promised Silene—”
“You were there,” I said. “You agreed I should help them.”
“Help, yes. Use yourself as bait to catch a spider witch, hells no. And once again, that didn’t solve the problem, so you decided to go to the Other Realm—”
“It’s not like I wanted to!” I said.
“And now, the brightbloods are fighting, and you run off and get in a fight with Count Dracula? I love you and your big ole heart, but I’m beginning to think you really do have a problem here. So, out with it. What did you promise this time?”
I sighed, and looked between Sammy and Mattie. They didn’t know Heather had returned yet, and now didn’t seem the time to bring it up. “I, uh, promised I’d try to get an alchemist to go to the Elwha steading, to help them out so they can defend themselves properly.”
Dawn looked at me for a second like I was that record company guy who’d passed on signing The Beatles. “I want to talk to you alone for a second,” she said, and grabbed my hand.
“Okay, but—” I began, then was pulled after her.
Dawn led me back to the library. I felt a growing knot of discomfort in my gut as we walked. She’d finally had enough. I had to convince her that I loved her, that I knew she was right, that I wanted to be with her.
And that I still needed to do this one last thing.
“Close the door,” Dawn said as we entered the library. While I closed the door, she went to the bookshelf nearest the door.
“Look, Dawn, I know—”
“Here,” Dawn said, pulling a book off the shelf. “I got you a little present.” She held it out to me.
I blinked at it. “You—oh, um, thanks?” I took the book. A thick, hardbound copy of The Odyssey. I quickly ran through possible reasons, including birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays, but I had missed none that I knew of. My relief was short-lived, however, when I considered it might be a fabulous parting gift. “Uh, what’s this for?”
“Open it.”
I opened the book. A square hollow had been cut out in the center of the book’s pages, and within sat what looked like a Star Trek: The Next Generation phaser, and an amulet—a real amulet. I could sense the magical energy in it.
“What—where did you get this?” I lifted out the amulet.
“Sammy helped me get that. The Taser, I bought in Sequim.”
“Wow. I don’t know what to say.” I held up the amulet and examined the wizard symbols engraved on its silver surface. Something to do with alchemy and balance.
Dawn stepped closer, looked at the symbols with me. “It’s supposed to make it so people, or creatures, they can’t mess with your body chemistry. You know, put you to sleep, or use love potions on you, that kind of thing. Sammy said it would need to be recharged after you use it. Like the Taser, I guess.”
I lowered the amulet and looked at her. “I thought you were bringing me back here to yell at me. Which I totally deserve.”
Dawn put her hands on her hips. “Damn straight you do. But I’m just too sweet to yell.”
“Uh huh. And?”
“And, you may be risking your life more than I like, and getting into all kinds of trouble, but you’re not doing it to hurt or disrespect me, I see that. You’re doing it to help your family, and help others, and because you feel you have to.”
“I really am,” I said.
“I get that, Finn.” Her hands dropped, and she looked less confident now. “As for you and me, well, I also get that it’s only been three months for you, and you’ve had a lot to deal with. I still think it was pretty sucky of you to let that anubis spirit take your memories of me—”
“I didn’t know he would do that. I thought—”
“—he was going to take your Talker gift, I know. St
ill hurts though. And whatever you say, I think this magic stuff is going to keep putting you in danger.”
“I don’t plan—” I began, then stopped. I didn’t plan to keep getting involved in these battles and conspiracies. Hell, I still dreamed, in my private quiet hours, of somehow leaving the necromancy behind entirely. But the Arcanites were still out there pursuing my grandfather’s vision of arcana supremacy, and still using Grayson’s drug. Hell, my grandfather might still be out there, alive. And if Pete or Vee, or even Mort, really needed my help, I’d give it, even if it was dangerous. “You’re right. It’s not what I want, but I have no idea what might happen in the future.”
“Exactly. So, I can either decide it’s too much for me and walk away. Or I can choose to look at this like I’ve learned my boyfriend’s a spy, or better yet, Doctor Strange, and decide whether I want to go all in despite his need to keep running into danger.”
“And which did you choose?” I asked, not daring to hope too much.
“Until you give me a real reason to think otherwise, I think you’re worth going all in.”
I felt as though the entire room, entire house, hell, the entire world had been holding its breath, and now let out a long sigh. I set the book and Taser onto the nearby table, grabbed Dawn around the waist with one hand, buried my other hand in the soft violet curls covering the nape of her neck, and pulled her into a kiss.
It was a long kiss, a perfect kiss, a homecoming.
When our lips parted, we stood a second with our lips barely touching, our eyes closed and warm breath mingling. I felt her lips curve into a smile.
I opened my eyes, and looked into hers. “I’m dang lucky.”
“You’re dang straight,” Dawn replied. We stepped apart. I picked the amulet back up, slipped it over my head, then examined the Taser.
“These are great. Thank you.”
“I expect you to gear me up, too, you know,” Dawn said. “And I want us to take some classes together. Martial arts. And sword fighting. Or do they teach sword fighting in martial arts?”
*At last!* Alynon said.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe. I thought you wanted me to take that massage class with you.”
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