by P. R. Frost
Gollum slid in behind me.
Scrap returned to the restaurant to slurp up more beer and OJ.
Before I could say a word, I stopped short in the lobby of a small office. Inside the room containing a desk, an oversized swivel chair, and one small, straight, uncomfortable-looking visitor chair, I spotted, hanging on the wall, the most magnificent example of Native American weaving I could imagine.
Something clicked in my memory.
“And the old woman weaves the blanket in the old way. The way it was done before the white man came. She uses wool gathered from the sheddings of wild goats, cedar bark, grasses, and bird feathers. She has nearly completed the blanket except the binding for which she uses porcupine quills. Only the binding remains unfinished…”
“What language are you speaking?” Gollum hissed in my ear.
“English. It’s the only language I know besides French.”
“She speaks a dialect of the Lakota,” Donovan said.
His voice was as tense as his neck. His eyes narrowed to mere slits. “Are you stalking me, Tess Noncoiré?”
My senses sizzled under his scrutiny.
Goddess! He looked sexy, even strained and harassed as he was now.
“I was about to ask you the same question, Donovan Estevez.” I yanked my eyes away from the blanket. But the pattern remained burned into my memory. Grayishbrown background from the goat wool with an abstract design in greens and cedar. Brilliant red, black, and blue from the bird feathers highlighted the arcane symbols within the weaving. I knew they had to be symbols. They just had to be.
“I live and work in this town. You don’t.” Donovan challenged me. He leaned slightly forward as if ready to engage in another duel.
That answered the car question. It was his.
The light from the window behind him made a golden corona around his head. An aura braided with black darker than his hair.
The aura I could explain as a trick of the light. But not the darkness that entwined with it. Was I seeing a true aura that reflected his personality?
I hoped not.
Our gazes locked once more. But I retained control. I clung to the burning anger in the pit of my stomach and the questions teasing my brain rather than succumbing to the weakness in my knees and the warmth in my breast.
“I brought her here as a tourist, to get away from the hotel and the scene of her friend’s death. We had no idea you had any connection to Half Moon Lake.” Gollum edged between me and Donovan, leaving me free to examine the blanket.
“Or the controversial casino,” I added. Laid out flat and held that way by fossilized rocks and pen holders, on the desk that nearly filled the tiny room was a roll of architectural plans labeled “Half Moon Casino.”
“That mob came near to exchanging blows several times in the last hour. Then you show up and they just drift apart as if drugged into a mindless trance. Care to comment on that?” I lifted my eyebrows and stared at him, but kept part of my gaze on those plans. I didn’t dare study the blanket.
If it was what I thought it was, and the unfinished porcupine quill binding led me to believe it was, then the dog and probably Cynthia Stalking Moon couldn’t be far away.
My spine began to tingle. Scrap hovered in the middle of the outer office, mostly recovered and glowing a pale pink.
That stinky man keeps me away from you, he glared at Donovan. You act different around him. Let’s split this scene, babe.
When I met Donovan at the salle back on Cape Cod, Scrap had said that Donovan smelled funny to his imp senses.
The silent guard moved to stand in front of the blanket.
He jerked his head toward the door, then looked pointedly at the plans on the desk.
“This is a private office, Tess. I have to ask you to leave now. But I’ll meet you for dinner at Don Giovanni’s Restaurant at eight. We’ll talk then.”
“I’m going back to Pascoe. If you want dinner, look for me in the hotel coffee garden about six.” I turned on my heel and marched out.
Scrap thudded onto my shoulder the moment I cleared the office.
I got the tape, babe. It’s damaged. But you don’t need it now.
“Gollum needs the tape. He needs to know that he recited the legend in a language he doesn’t know he knows.”
Tough. Scrap winked out again, leaving me with more questions than before.
Chapter 20
MY BABE WOULD be horribly shocked if she ever learns where I found the tape. She would want to go charging into the lion’s den, or rather the nest of the Sasquatch guarding the chat room and the hiding place of the thieves. She is not ready for what I suspect the demons are planning. The entire Sisterhood combined is not ready. The stinky man’s demon children stole the tape for reasons I can only guess. They hid it near the portal to their home dimension.
I don’t know why they didn’t destroy it.
Seems like those super-special masks weren’t masks at all.
They’re half-bloods—Kajiri. Their proximity at the time the dog attacked was why I became the Celestial Blade so easily.
The dog is no demon. The dog is the enemy of demons.
I didn’t recognize one of those demons from imp lore—a dozen tentacles, four inches long at least, dangling from each purple cheek. Maybe Gollum knows. Maybe they’re a whole new kind of demon mixed from several tribes with a bit of human thrown in.
They hid the tape well. I had to wrestle it away from a black Sasquatch who had sworn to protect it with his life. He didn’t die. By tomorrow he will kinda wish he had. I hooked his face with the talon on my wing elbow. He nearly ripped my tail in two. The battle cost me two of my three warts, but it earned me one more.
I am worn to the bone and must recover.
Beer and OJ are nice, but they are not mold. I can’t find a scrap of mold in this entire desert. Oh, for a neglected air conditioner!
Or better yet, a neglected cup of coffee laced with heavy cream.
I would know heaven if only I could have a fat layer of mold growing atop a thick layer of real cream.
“Well, we found the blanket. But where is the dog?” Gollum asked as we headed south down State Highway 17.
“More important, where is Cynthia?” I replied, hugging myself against an autumnal chill that only I felt.
Scrap had not returned to me. Or if he did, I could not see or sense him. Without him, I’m not whole, and I don’t think properly.
There was something important just on the edge of my perceptions that I couldn’t grasp. I needed Scrap, dammit!
“Cynthia is with the dog,” Gollum stated with some authority.
I looked at him sharply. “How do you know that?”
“Logic. If Dog needs to find someone to continue weaving the blanket, and he’s gone after Cynthia twice, then she is his choice. Dog needs to get Cynthia and the blanket together.” He shrugged and fiddled with the radio.
“Cynthia has shaman blood in her. Leonard admitted as much. It must be very strong for the dog to want her so badly.”
Gollum’s older van had a tape deck rather than a CD player. I fished the damaged tape out of my sweater pocket where Scrap had dumped it. Without bothering to look too closely, I plugged in the tape and turned on the machine.
Sputters and pops came out of the speakers for many long minutes. Then Gollum’s trance-induced voice came through speaking the alien language.
He cocked his head and listened closely. “Are you sure that’s me?”
“Very sure. I was there.” Some of the phrases sounded familiar.
Then my voice came through asking him what he’d said.
His voice returned in English for about two sentences.
Then nothing but the whirring of the tape player trying to forward a damaged tape that no longer wanted to feed through.
“Know anyone who can fix that?” I asked.
“Not here. Back in Seattle.”
“Bob will… would know.” Damn.
“W
hat’s your connection to Seattle?”
“Are you sure the blanket is the one we want?”
We asked at the same time.
“You first,” he said as he swung around a slowmoving pickup loaded with hay.
“My mom raised me to be a proper French housewife. I can cook when I want. Sew when I have to. But I also know a lot about knitting and crocheting. I can even do la frivolité.”
He quirked an eyebrow in question.
“Make tatted lace.” I had to search for the English word. Mom never used it if she could pound the French one into me. “In short, I know about textiles. I recognized the porcupine quill band that is unfinished. And that thing wasn’t woven on a modern loom.”
“Okay. In answer to your question, I taught for a year at UW in Seattle. Adjunct work, no tenure track. Stayed on for a while because I like the city.”
“Where’s home?”
“Upstate New York when I can’t go anywhere else.”
I laughed. I had similar sentiments about Cape Cod.
More because of my relatives than the place. “Dysfunctional family?”
“Dysfunctional mother. She wanted me to become a financial advisor for her family’s investment group. I chose to follow my father’s family business.”
“Which is?”
He clamped his mouth shut.
He passed another car, this one going over the speed limit, rather than answer.
“You know a lot about me, even without me telling you. How about some equally shared information,” I demanded.
“Your Sisterhood didn’t tell you about the archivists?”
“No.”
“Ask them.” He punched the eject button repeatedly on the tape player until it spat out the damaged tape.
Then he tuned the radio to a country and western station—the only thing we could receive out in the middle of nowhere. He turned up the volume so loud we couldn’t converse if we wanted to. And he clearly didn’t want to.
One thing I’d learned during my travels: when in doubt take it to the con com.
The convention committee was still in the middle of packing up from the long weekend. The computer gamers clung to their last few minutes of screen time. I poked my nose into the secluded conference room they had made their home.
“Anyone know someone who can salvage a damaged dictation tape?”
A bevy of techno-geeks swarmed around me, all begging for the chance to prove themselves the geekiest.
Three of the eight were female. The gender ratios had changed in the last decade. Most were under the age of twenty.
“Hey, weren’t you the babe hanging out with Bob the other day?” asked a middle-aged man with a very round belly and thinning hair, the only “adult” in the crowd.
“Yes,” I replied hesitantly. Of all the children consulting over the damaged tape, he seemed the most stable.
“I worked with Bob. He was a good guy.” The man shook his head and frowned. “Dave Corlucci.” He offered me his hand.
“Tess Noncoiré.” I shook Dave’s hand with conviction.
“Yes, Bob was a good man. A good friend.”
“This got anything to do with the beast that mauled Bob?” one of the kids asked. He poked his head up out of the huddle for a moment.
“Perhaps.”
“Then we gotta do this. We gotta crack the tape for Bob’s sake.” He dove back into the consultation.
“We’ll have this for you tonight.” Dave gave me a thumbs up and joined the consultation that made its way over to one of the computers en masse.
“Tonight? So soon?” I edged closer to the blob of helpers.
“No prob,” one of the female voices piped up. She couldn’t be over fifteen, with black lipstick, exaggerated black eyeliner, and ragged black T-shirt and jeans. She meandered off into a spate of techno babble that left me more confused than when I came in.
With the tape safe in their hands, I made my way back to my new room—considerably smaller than the suite—and put in a call to MoonFeather. I took the coward’s way out and had my aunt tell Mom why I wouldn’t be home tonight. I had no doubt that any leftovers in my fridge would find their way into the hands of one relative or the other. Dad paid my bills online for me, out of my checking account. He also kept track of my few investments.
Donovan did not show for dinner. Why was I disappointed?
In my head I should have dismissed the man as a lost cause romantically. Another part of me yearned for his touch.
Gollum disappeared in search of a library, and possibly Leonard Stalking Moon.
I retreated into my work.
Once again, I fell asleep over my laptop. This time I awoke in the wee small hours of the night. I wasn’t alone.
Dill, my ghostly husband, sat on the edge of the bed, not three feet from my armchair at the round table by the window.
“Have you deserted me already?” he asked.
“Wh… what?” I pushed tangled hair out of my eyes (I’d dispensed with the comb hours ago) and peered at him, trying to find some point of reference; something, anything that would tell me if the love of my life was truly there, or just a dream. Nightmare.
“Dill…” I reached out to him.
He scooted away from me.
“Don’t touch me. You are tainted by that… that halfling.” He sounded nearly hysterical. Dill, always calm, logical, organized; hysterical?
“Halfling? What are you talking about?” The only reference I could dredge up from my tired brain was hobbits.
J.R.R. Tolkien had referred to hobbits as halflings.
“Don’t go near him, Tess. Beloved, Tess, I can’t stand to watch you ruin yourself with him,” Dill pleaded.
These extreme emotions could not come from the man I loved.
Then another half-memory clicked in. Donovan owned Halfling Gaming Company.
“Are you talking about Donovan Estevez?”
“Don’t even say his name. He’s tainted. He’s selfish. He’s a traitor to everyone. He lies. Don’t believe a word he says.”
I’d already come to a similar conclusion but didn’t want to believe it.
Either my face showed my reaction, or Dill’s ghost read my mind. He calmed down instantly. “You know the truth in your heart, Tess.” He caressed my hair with a translucent hand.
Frissons of otherworldly energy tingled through my body. I forced myself not to shudder. This was Dill. He’d never hurt me. He loved me.
And I loved him. Still. Even after three years of separation by death.
“Let me stay with you, Tess,” he begged. “I can watch your back better than the imp. I can take care of you. If you just accept me, the veil of death will no longer separate us.”
I did not want to explore that. Somehow bringing him back to life seemed a violation of… of life, fate, the natural order of things. That was the stuff of romantic fantasies.
Even I didn’t write that nonsense.
“Can you lead me to the dog and Cynthia?” I asked the only practical question I could think of when all my heart wanted was to accept his proposal.
He disappeared without a backward glance.
Someone knocked loudly on the door.
“Hey, is this some kind of demon language?” the blackclad girl geek asked before I’d opened the door all the way. She and her clones surged into my room without further invitation.
“No, it’s not a demon language. It’s a subdialect of Lakota,” Gollum said, right behind them. He had on his “teacher” face, and I knew he’d spout a lot more information given the chance. Subjects, he’d talk about. Himself, he would not.
Dave Corlucci planted a laptop computer next to mine; a much fancier and slimmer one than mine. I was sure it had all the bells and whistles available at the moment.
It booted up in a matter of seconds rather than moments. Then with a flourish and many grand gestures, he took a CD from the girl who had been first through the door and inserted the disk into his computer.
It slurped up the CD like consuming a gourmet meal.
Before I had time to banish lingering questions about ghostly Dill, Gollum’s disembodied voice came through the computer. I heard once again the gibberish, trying to make sense of the syllables.
Gollum made rapid notes into his PDA, shaking his head. “I don’t remember any of this. How?” He looked up at me in disbelief.
“You were drunk,” I replied.
Then the voice on the machine switched to English.
Gollum listened more intently, still making notes.
“Interesting. I remember seeing a Masonic jewel once. It had a carved head of Isis, in black onyx, set in an ivory crescent moon. Below that, dangling within the curve of the moon, was a five-pointed star representing Sirius— the Dog Star. Isis, a form of the Mother Goddess full of wisdom, like the old woman weaving the blanket. And Sirius, connected to the dog-headed god Anubis; the god who first taught mankind language, astronomy, music, medicine and the ways of worship. This legend smacks of Universal Truth.”
“Cool,” from the Geek Chorus. Happy smiles spread among them along with many high-five hand slaps and other arcane gestures.
“May I keep the CD?” I asked.
“Of course. We’ve got a backup,” Dave chortled.
“What do I owe you for this? It’s wonderful.”
“This was for Bob,” Dave said hesitantly.
“How about autographed copies of your book?” one of the boys asked.
“One for each of us?” one of the girls looked at me hopefully.
A small enough price with my discount on the surplus books. That much less weight to haul home. “They’re yours.” I dug eight copies out from the box stored by the door. The dealers at the con had made a considerable dent in the copies I’d brought with me, but I still had half a box left after giving out the eight.
I signed the books and ushered the wonderful computer whiz kids out the door. The moment the latch clicked, Gollum replayed the CD.
“What am I listening for?” I asked quietly.
“This.” He turned up the volume.
At the moment his voice switched to English in the background I heard the door open quietly.
I had to look to make sure the noise was on the CD and not the actual door to my room.