A Host of Furious Fancies

by Mercedes Lackey

  THE PUPPETHEAD

  Bonnie Wing and Kit Duquesne were friends of Beth’s from the old days back in L.A.—Bonnie was a scriptwriter for animated series, and Kit had been a show runner until deciding that the Hollyweird pressure cooker wasn’t for her. By a flukey stroke of luck, a spec script of Kit’s had been auctioned about the time she was deciding to get out, and she’d used the money to put a down payment on a down-at-heels New York apartment building that faced Inwood Hill Park. With her lover Bonnie, Kit had moved back East and started fixing the place up.

  Beth, Kory, and Eric had stayed with the two of them last year when Beth and Kory were getting Eric settled in to his new digs, and Beth had welcomed the opportunity to renew her friendship with the two women. Beth and Kit—a tall regal blonde, equally adept with ritual blade and rattan sword—had been in the same coven back in Los Angeles, and Kit had started another one when she’d moved back East; Kit was the closest thing to a real-life Rupert Giles of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame that Beth knew. If anybody could solve the problem that Chinthliss had set them, it was Kit Duquesne.

  “Beth—and Studly!” Kit stared at them in surprise through the crack in the door. There was a rattle of chains and deadbolts, and then she opened it all the way. “Come in—when did you get back?”

  “We’re just in town for a day or so. We left Maeve with Kory’s family, but we did bring pictures,” Beth answered. “Sorry to just drop in like this. . . .”

  “No! It’s great to see you both! I’ll put on the tea. Bonnie’s on a deadline, for BattleMages or Teddybear Bikers from Hell or some damn thing. She’ll be out in about an hour.”

  Kit walked off to the kitchen, leaving them in the large sunny living room for a moment. Two futon couches were angled to take full advantage of the high windows, and a large air conditioner wheezed and rattled as it did battle with the August heat. Hallow, a very large gray tabby, slept atop it, oblivious to the noise. Two more—a tiny black kitten (new since Beth’s last visit) and a regal long-haired white cat (Mistwraith)—drifted over to inspect the newcomers. Kory knelt down, and the kitten, taking this for an invitation, promptly swarmed up his arm and settled itself on his shoulder, purring noisily.

  “Do you really think she can help us?” Kory asked quietly, straightening up and offering his fingers to the kitten on his shoulder, which promptly bit down with an expression of blissful contentment.

  “I hope so. I don’t know of any Sidhe with the kind of experience we need,” Beth said.

  “And how,” Kory asked her, “will you phrase the question?”

  “Talking secrets?” Kit asked, walking back in carrying a tray. “Bonnie’s been baking—she always does when she’s putting off work—and you reap the fruit of her procrastination. Ah, I see you’ve met Beltane. Don’t let her bully you. Hallow is terrified of her,” she added, indicating the sleeping tabby.

  She set the tray down on the large handmade coffee table in the center of the room. Mistwraith instantly hopped up to investigate, and was set on the floor—several times—by Kit.

  Maeve’s baby pictures were brought out and admired, herb tea and orange muffins were served and consumed, and idle chitchat about the building, Bonnie’s work (in addition to her various cartoon gigs, she also wrote a comic called The Elite, which was starting to gather a following), and various events mainly of interest to New Yorkers occupied several minutes.

  “Now,” Kit said, putting down her empty mug. “What’s the deal? It can’t be love of the Big Apple that brings you here twice in three months. Are you and Studly Do-Right here on the lam again?”

  Beth smiled. “No, but we do have a problem we need some help with. It’s kind of a long story.”

  Kit sat back on the futon couch. “We’ve got all day.”

  Beth looked helplessly at Kory. Coming here had seemed like such a great idea, right up until the time came to tell Kit why she was here. Kory was right. Figuring out what to say was going to be harder than she thought.

  “We need to buy a computer system for a dragon,” Kory said simply, “and we’re not sure what kind will work in his kingdom. Beth thought you might be able to help.”

  Beth’s jaw dropped.

  “Uh-huh,” Kit said, poker-faced. There was a long pause. “What does a dragon need with a computer?”

  “Dragons prize novelty and innovation above all things. Also, he wishes to ‘surf the net,’” Kory added, with the pride of one who has mastered an unfamiliar vocabulary.

  Kit looked at Beth. Beth smiled weakly. Somehow, telling the simple truth had not been on her list of approaches to the problem of getting Kit to help them.

  “Joke?” Kit asked, when it became apparent that Beth wasn’t going to say anything.

  “No joke.” Beth sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. . . . “Kory, it might help if you showed her.”

  Kory glanced at her, eyebrows raised, then dispelled the glamour that made him look like nothing more exotic than a very tall human. Beltane purred harder, and Mistwraith jumped up into his lap.

  Kit stared at Kory and said nothing—very eloquently—for several minutes. “Bright Court or Dark?” she said at last.

  “Bright,” Kory said, sounding faintly miffed.

  And that’s a hell of a first question for someone who ought to never have seen an elf before, Beth thought.

  “That’s all right, then,” Kit said. “And you aren’t planning to start a War of the Oaks in Central Park, or anything like that?”

  “Why does everyone ask that?” Kory wondered plaintively.

  “It’s a book,” Beth explained. “Several books, actually. No, we’re just passing through, Kit, honest. Most Sidhe don’t want to have anything to do with New York. There’s too much Cold Iron here for them.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kit said again, still in that noncommittal tone. Whether she believed them or not, Beth still wasn’t sure. “So, you want a computer that will work in Elfland? It won’t be cheap, I can tell you that.”

  “No problem,” Kory said.

  The story of whatever experience it was that had made Kit so ready to believe in elves would be a tale for another time. Kit didn’t go into it and Beth wasn’t sure she wanted to ask right now; Kit simply accepted Kory and moved on to a series of questions about the computer. Beth wasn’t sure whether she was disappointed or not. Over the years, she’d kind of gotten used to people being weirded out by the idea of Real Live Elves, and here Kit was taking it far more calmly than she’d taken the news that Beth was going to have a baby.

  And if Beth had hoped for more dramatics from Bonnie, she was to be disappointed there as well. When Bonnie finally emerged from her office (looking rumpled and distant, most of her mind still obviously on her writing) and saw Kory—who had seen no reason to restore his human-seeming—she barely blinked. Bonnie was petite and dark, her classic Oriental beauty making her look fragile and innocent. This impression usually lingered with new acquaintances until they saw her fight.

  “SFX?” Bonnie asked Kit in the shorthand of long partnership.

  “Nope. True gen: Sidhe,” Kit had replied. By now she was surrounded by reference books, in which she was looking up this and that esoteric factoid.

  “More of them?” Bonnie asked in disbelief, as though she were talking about tourists or butterflies. Dearly as Beth would have loved to chase down that remark, she was not to be given the chance. Bonnie had her workout bag over her shoulder, and was obviously on her way to the dojo. “Grins. Bang-boom. Later?”

  “Yeah. Gonna take ’em down to see Ray. Deep pockets for this one. Script done?”

  “Bang. Boom,” Bonnie said. “Kiss-kiss.” She waved to Beth. “Late. Toodles.” Explanation delivered, she left.

  “‘Ray’?” Beth asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Friend of mine,” Kit said. “Tenant, too. Knows way more about all this stuff than I do, but that’s not the point here. I know enough spelltech and psionics to figure out that side of it, but I know jack about compu
ters. Meanwhile, we can decide what to do about dinner. Bon eats out on class nights, so we don’t have to wait for her.”

  Over dinner preparations, Kit told the two of them a little more. Ray—Azrael Arcane if you were being formal—lived on the floor below Kit and Bonnie and built special-needs computer systems—and if Beth’s project wasn’t a special-needs system, Kit said, she didn’t know what was. She’d inherited him from the previous owner of the building, and as far as she knew, he never left his apartment. He wouldn’t be available until a few hours after sundown, Kit explained, so they made spaghetti and garlic bread, in between bouts of rescuing Hallow from Beltane and insuring that Mistwraith remained a white cat and not a tomato-colored one.

  Beth found herself relaxing, because now the big secret was out and nobody seemed to care—and Kory had the Sidhe knack of easy charm, which he exercised in full measure.

  “Is that name for real?” Beth said, returning to the subject of their evening’s appointment following a luxurious dessert of strawberries in crème fraiche. Kit had wanted to serve them tiramisu, but the coffee and chocolate it contained would have been deadly to Kory.

  “It’s on his rent checks. And you’re a fine one to talk, Miss If-It’s-Tuesday-I-Must-Have-A-New-Alias,” Kit teased.

  Kit was one of the few people who Beth had kept in touch with following the Griffith Park Massacre, and one of the few who knew anything about the real situation of Beth’s life, though of course Beth had been careful about what she’d told her. Now, she wondered if she’d needed to bother. Kit obviously didn’t boggle at elves. “That’s different,” Beth said defensively. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Yeah, sometime you’re going to have to tell me the whole story—the whole story—about that. It just seems a little too X-Files to believe—you know, the government being after witches?”

  “Psychics, really. And you’re a fine one to talk. You don’t even blink at seeing Kory, and you think a government conspiracy is too weird?”

  “Not too weird. Too done-to-death. You’d think even the government would be bored with conspiracies by now,” Kit amplified, tossing strawberry hulls for the cats to chase. “If you want conspiracy theory, talk to Ray. He’s up on all of them from Gemstone to Trapdoor.”

  “Is he Wiccan?” Beth asked, because Kit spoke as if she knew him well.

  “He’s . . . eccentric,” Kit said measuringly. “But systems designers can afford to be. I think he can help you, and he owes me a favor. Beyond that, there are things that woman was not meant to know. It’s late enough now. Let me go call and see if he’s around.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said,” Beth commented to Kory when Kit had left the room.

  “I suppose it is presumptuous to ask sorcerers to be commonplace,” Kory said musingly. “Like Bards, their lives are their art.”

  “Eric’s normal,” Beth said, stung by the implication.

  “In Bards, such normalcy is eccentricity beyond compare,” Kory pointed out inarguably. “I love and value him, but Eric strives for the commonplace as others quest for dreams and far enchantments—much as if I were to drive a taxi and live in Queens.”

  “I’d love to see that,” Beth muttered under her breath.

  “The doctor is in,” Kit announced, returning from her call. “C’mon. I’ll take you down.”

  After what both Kit and Kory had said, Beth thought she was braced for every possible sort of Earth-plane weirdness—or at least, for the sort of theatrics and eccentricity she’d grown used to from her New Age acquaintanceship. But Azrael’s bizarrerie was of an entirely different order.

  There was a keypad lock affixed to his door in place of the usual sort of key and cylinder lock, and Kit tapped out a quick nine digits then pushed the door open into darkness. The hall lights illuminated a long hallway with floor, walls, and ceiling painted matte black. Kit ushered them in and closed the door behind her.

  “Don’t mind this. The light hurts his eyes, so he keeps the place pretty dark.” She led them down the hall and into the living room, which was lit by a faint red glow.

  It, too, was painted flat black, making Beth feel as if she were floating in a vast empty space. It was disorienting, but comforting, too—on a level far below consciousness, she was aware that nothing could harm her here. Despite its outré appearance, this was a safe place, a good place.

  As her eyes adjusted, she could make out more details of her surroundings, and spared a pang of envy for Kory’s natural advantages—elf-sight could see everything as plain as if it were broad day. There were several computers racked against the far wall, but all the screens were dark; the green and amber status lights giving the only sign that they were powered up. She could make out a sectional sofa—also black—that lined two walls, and the window was covered with heavy blackout drapes, drawn against the mild summer night. Despite this, the air was cool and fresh—somewhere a very quiet air conditioner and ozone generator must be running. The only illumination came from a strip of red neon that ran all the way around the ceiling.

  “Hello, Kit. You must be Kory and Beth. Welcome.”

  And in all this, he wears dark glasses, Beth thought in disbelief, seeing their host at last. The self-styled Azrael Arcane got to his feet and came over to them, leaning heavily on a silver-headed cane. He was indeed wearing dark glasses: square-lensed, faintly antique-looking things, whose lenses appeared entirely black in the weird scarlet light. He had long straight hair, as pale as Kory’s—though in the neon it looked candy-apple red—that fell straight down his back, and was wearing an open-collared Poet Shirt beneath a dark suit of the Earlier Victorian period. He was barefoot. The whole effect was exotic in the extreme.

  He held out his hand for Beth to shake. Seeing the darkness of her skin against his, she realized what the eccentric lighting was designed to conceal—Azrael Arcane was an albino.

  No wonder it’s so dark in here. If his albinism is acute, he’s practically blind in strong sunlight. Well, that explains a lot.

  I think.

  Maybe.

  He shook hands with Kory as well, who had resumed his human disguise, and motioned them toward the couch. “Sit down, please. Kit tells me you need to consult about the specs for a special needs computer system. Environment or user?”

  “Environment,” Beth said, remembering that Chinthliss could look perfectly human when he chose, and so would not need something that could be operated by someone the size of a small aircraft. “What we really need is a top of the line, newer than tomorrow system that’s totally self-contained. No outside power source, no hookup to phone lines—” let Chinthliss figure out his local ISP; that part wasn’t her problem “—and it has to be stable in . . .” She faltered. Just how did you describe the physical conditions of Underhill without describing Underhill itself?

  “In Between-the-Worlds conditions,” Kit supplied smoothly.

  “You want to run a computer in a Circle without interfering with the raised power?” Azrael asked. “Why not just do your computing after you take the Circle down?”

  “We can’t,” Beth said quickly. “This is a sort of . . . permanent Circle.” She looked at Kory, who nodded agreement.

  Now why didn’t I come up with that explanation earlier? Not that Kit would have bought it for a New York minute. Elves would have had to come into it somewhere.

  But Azrael didn’t seem inclined to pry, taking the explanation—and the parameters—at face value. “Well, it can be done, of course,” he said, sounding puzzled. “But it will take a lot of space, and a lot of money, and it’ll eat batteries like nobody’s business. Your best bet might be a small gas-powered generator—”

  “This must be done without Cold Iron,” Kory said. “As much as possible.”

  Azrael glanced at Kit, and some unspoken communication passed between them. “You like a challenge,” she reminded him.

  “Hm. Well, some of the new Lithium-Ion batteries have a pretty long life, or you might want to ru
n it off solar; the new ones run on what comes through on a cloudy day. If you use solar cells to charge your LION pack, you can recharge while you’re not using the computer. Is iron-free your only restriction?”

  Beth glanced at Kit, who seemed to know where Azrael was going with this and was able to translate. “That’s all. We don’t have to worry about planetary influences with the other metals.”

  “And price is no object?” Azrael asked. “We’re talking thousands, here. Several thousands—possibly several ten thousands, even waiving my usual exorbitant fees.”

  Kit looked at them.

  “None,” Kory said firmly. “And we will be happy to pay your fees as well.”

  There was enough kenned gold on deposit in a special bank account that Elfhame Misthold used for its World Above purchases to cover almost any need, and when funds ran low the elves could always ken more gold. There was no fraud involved, for the gold was good—true metal, not faerie gold, to vanish when the spell dissolved.

  “No, this is a favor to Kit. Okay. If you can give me a day or so to make some calls, I can give you a set of plans for the cage, and a shopping list for the computer. Your best bet is probably to hit up Comdex next month and pick up something there. You said top of the line?”

  “The newest and most fancy,” Beth said, on secure ground when it came to shopping. “But . . . what cage?”

  “A Faraday Cage, of course,” Azrael said. “Named for the magneto-optic effect in which the polarization plane of an electromagnetic wave is rotated under the influence of a magnetic field parallel to the direction of propagation.”

  Beth blinked, having gotten lost somewhere around “magneto-optic.” Azrael smiled and took pity on her.

  “Michael Faraday was a nineteenth-century inventor who discovered that an electrical discharge, such as lightning, would flow outside and around a metal cage to go to ground. This is the reason airplanes and cars can be struck by lightning without harm to the occupants: they’re a type of Faraday Cage. But when you build one out of copper or some equivalent neutral conductor and run a current through it, it cancels out all electromagnetic field energy. Cages of this type are used to shield delicate electronic equipment from stray EMF fields, and when J. B. Rhine was doing his ESP experiments at Duke University back in the last century, he discovered that his subjects’ accuracy tended to skyrocket when they were placed in a Faraday Cage, leading to the theory that psionics—and, by extension, magic—involves some kind of manipulation of electromagnetic or bioelectric fields. What this means for you is that the computer’s magnetic field and sphere of influence will stay inside the cage, and the magical energy will stay outside the cage, and never the twain will meet.”