by Joshua Bader
“Eminently, though…you had the accent right on all the words. I may have to get you to swear at me if you’re that practiced at it. Do you actually speak Korean?”
“When I have to.”
“Hmm. Intriguing.” The valley girl quality was gone from her voice. “Good day, Mr. Fisher.”
“Good morning, Miss Wakefield.”
The earpiece retracted itself, apparently sensing the call was over.
Duchess’ jaw still dangled loose, just as it had from the second wave of Veruca’s message to her. When the muscle around it finally started working again, all she said was, “Monkey’s uncle. Lucien finally found himself a real wizard.”
7
After I collected on my bet with Duchess by way of a few strands of her hair, I took her out to breakfast. The victory had taken the sting out of my injury, but by the time I was done eating, pain had crept back in. I thanked Duchess for bringing the items I had asked Valente for and said goodbye. I stopped by Walgreen’s to grab a bottle of painkillers, hung the Do Not Disturb sign on my hotel room door, and lay down to take a nap while I waited for the pills to kick in.
No dreams came and by ten-thirty I was as pain-free as I was likely to get. I spent a half-hour straightening up the room, though there was little I could do about the broken mirror. I planned on leaving the Do Not Disturb sign up, but I didn’t need an overzealous maid getting me kicked out. Inspecting my work, I thought the room had been upgraded from terrorist aftermath to post-drunken bender.
“Quit stalling,” my inner voice warned.
“Yeah, I know. Our real problem is the wendigo. It’s just so much easier to deal with the mundane,” I admitted.
“Magically exploding telephones are mundane?”
“For this week, yes, yes they are. There hasn’t been anything normal about this week. The most “normal” disaster this week was me accidentally bumping Dorothy’s light controls out at the lake. I haven’t done anything that harebrained since…wait a sec.”
“Do I smell an idea?”
“Wild paranoia-slash-conspiracy-theory, but maybe it’s an idea: What if I didn’t turn Dorothy’s headlights on?”
“Umm, you must have. I mean, who else was there? Oh...”
“Starting to see my point?”
“You don’t think we ended up in that gas station by accident.”
“Nope, it would make a great Murder, She Wrote plot, but I’m not Jessica Fletcher. A wizard is the first person at the scene of a magical homicide by coincidence? Something wanted me there.”
“So they sabotaged the car. You might be on to something.”
“Only one way to find out.” I decided. “We’re going back out to the lake.”
8
In the afternoon sun, it was hot enough that I had to shed not only my jacket, but my t-shirt as well. Only an Oklahoma October could swing so wildly between sweltering during the day and freezing at night. I hung both jacket and shirt over the driver’s side mirror to keep them from getting dirty. Now, it was a matter of lying out on Dorothy’s hood, soaking up the last warm rays of the year, and waiting. If I was right, I wouldn’t have to wait long.
“Nice tattoos,” a girl’s voice said.
They really are, or at least, I think so. I restricted my body art to places that can’t be seen when I’m fully dressed, on the theory that this helps with traffic stops and job interviews. None of them were the result of drinking or peer pressure and most were my own design. I was particularly proud of the chest piece: A Celtic cross with a sun, moon, and stars worked in. Along the arms of the cross was my true name spelled out in characters that were archaic before the Bible was ever written.
I waved at the pair of teenage girls. “Thanks.” They continued on their way along the shoreline, but their giggles drifted back to me. Once upon a time, I would have given anything to make young ladies giggle like that. I was always too awkward and gangly when I was of an appropriate age where I could have considered pursuing those two.
True names are a tough magic to appreciate. Reflecting on it, Lucien was very careful not to say his own name out loud in front of me. Likely, he had been told that a wizard could do things if he knew a victim’s true name from their own lips. That may be, but most people aren’t even aware of their true name. Even if they were, the exact pronunciation required an effort of will. I had even heard of cases where a person’s true name changed over time. I was still working on figuring out exactly what mine meant. Part of it derived from the Babylonian for “sworn-sword,” while another portion meant “far-wanderer”. Taken together, I told people that my tattoo means I was an honorary Knight of the Gypsy Moon. If only there were more than one member, we could have gone on a wendigo-killing crusade together.
“Returning to the scene of the crime, Mr. Fisher?”
I didn’t even turn to look. I had half-expected her and was pleased to find that my intuition was not completely broken. “Oh, a crime was committed here, all right. Somebody assassinated my battery. Care to investigate that one, Agent Devereaux?”
“Battery murder? No, that’s what happens when you leave your headlights on. I’m more interested in the real murder that took place three miles north of here.”
“That? If you’ve got handcuffs that will fit a wendigo, by all means go arrest it.”
“What the hell is a wendigo?” she growled. “Are you withholding...”
I sat upright and spun to face her with fierceness. “Don’t play with me, Devereaux. I may not be much of a combat mage, but angry wizards have other ways of expressing their displeasure. Something about ‘for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup’.”
She stood there wearing the same suit I had last seen her in, a blank expression on her face. After a good minute, she said, “I think that’s supposed to be about dragons, not wizards.”
“Yeah, well, there’s some strange stuff going on around here and if I don’t start getting some answers, maybe I’ll try to summon a dragon tonight. Now…why did you kill my car?”
“How did you figure that out?”
“Your eyes. They’re the same color as the lake. They were bugging me the whole interrogation, like a pair of really unnatural contacts. And you kept bringing it back around to the book. Little things, but once I caught up on my sleep, I started doing the math. I hope the real Agent Devereaux isn’t hurting too bad.”
“No, I just borrowed her for a little bit.” She eyed me warily. “What are you...”
I held up my hand to interrupt her. “Nope, you already got to interrogate me once. Now it’s my turn, right? Trade for trade, I answered yours, so now you have to answer mine. Or should I call up the faerie queens and kings and tell them you reneged?”
“You wouldn’t.” Her words said, but her pale expression said she thought I might. “You don’t have that kind of juice. They’d eat you alive.”
“Maybe I don’t. But Lucien Valente does. Should I send out invitations in my boss’s name?”
She gulped. I was curious to see what kind of pull his name would have with supernatural creatures not in his employ. I had expected indifference or grudging respect. What I saw in Devereaux’s face was fear. “No. You are right. I am in your debt. Will you agree to seven answers?”
“I suspect I gave you more than that…but I will accept seven as a fair trade. I didn’t lie to you, so you’ll have to be honest with me as well. Those are the terms. Do you agree?”
“Yes, one.”
She had me: I did phrase it as a question. “Why did you turn my car’s headlights on to bright?”
“I didn’t want you to be suspicious about why you had a dead battery. Two.”
Her grin made me think thunderous dark thoughts. She was going to run out her debt while giving me as little as possible to work with. “I see. You wanted my battery dead, so that my car wouldn’t work, so that I’d have to walk instead of drive. Why did you want me walking that night?”
“Better chance of you meeting some
one else. Three.”
“Like the wendigo. Did you want us to meet at the gas station when we did, or did you intend for us to end up someplace else?”
“Place was irrelevant. Four.”
I ran my right hand through my brown mane, absently pulling a few hairs as I did. “Fine, we’ll play it your way. Without adding unnecessary sounds or going outside the range of human hearing, what is the correct pronunciation of your true name?”
Her face instantly filled with panicked, furious thought. “You wouldn’t know how to use it.”
I reached into my jacket and pulled out my gremlin phone. I twirled it slowly while I stared at her. I said nothing.
“What…what is that?”
“Nope. It’s still my turn to ask the questions. You still owe me three answers.”
The business suit, no, the skin suit that was Agent Devereaux sloughed off into a puddle at her feet. What was left could have passed as one of the junior high school girls that had walked by…except for her greenish-blue skin and pointed ears. She was clad in a yellow bikini top with white polka dots and a pair of cut-off denim shorts, a major shift from the pressed and starched Agent Devereaux. “Please, Wizard Fisher, don’t make me say it.”
I crumbled. I had thought I was dealing with a cunning, cold-hearted, arrogant bitch. In retrospect, adolescent snottiness was an equally plausible defense for her attitude.
“Don’t care. Adolescent for a lake spirit, even a man-made lake, is still decades older than you,” my inner voice advised.
Too late, my heart was already softening. “If I un-ask my last question, will you be more cooperative? I’d really rather be friends than bully you around.”
She nodded. “Please un-ask it. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Then I un-ask it. And you should be careful about who you give your word to that you will ‘do whatever they want.’ Some wizards might not feel the same way I do about hurting women and children.”
She paled to a slimy, gray color. “Eek…I’m sorry. I’ve never dealt with a real wizard before. I feel like such a doofus.”
I nodded. “It’s okay. I’m not all that experienced with the fae myself. You’re the first I’ve met in the flesh…well, and recognized you for what you are.”
“I’m a lake spirit. We don’t like being called faeries.”
“Fair enough. Quick timeout from the formal questions: What should I call you? Agent Devereaux doesn’t seem to fit any more.”
“No, that’s her name. I just borrowed her mind when she came out to see your car.”
“And today?”
“Just an illusion…I thought you might be afraid of her.”
“So the real Agent Devereaux is…”
“Should be okay, though I doubt she remembers much. Pretty tough brain for a human.”
“So back to the real questions: You borrowed her because you wanted to see what your handiwork had accomplished?”
“You could say that, yes. My vision gets kind of fuzzy if I try to go pass the crossroads. I just rode along with her to see what had happened after you left. And you can call me T…ummm, Tia? Yeah, Tia works.”
“All right, Tia, I’m Colin.” We shook hands again, a very different experience than shaking Devereaux’s firm hand. Tia’s was soft, delicate, and a little bit slimy. “Explain to me what happened that night.”
“I didn’t want you staying here. It’s not you…I didn’t even know you were a wizard then. It’s that book.”
For half a second, I thought about pretending she meant the Yiddish fairy book, but I knew better than that. “The Necronomicon.”
“Yeah. It’s bad juju. I tried to convince some of the wood sprites to steal it, but they didn’t like all the metal on your car. So I attacked the car myself. I turned the acid in your battery to lake water, then turned on the lights so that you’d think it was by accident. I know all about batteries. Lots of people drain theirs by leaving on the lights or radio on while they…while they, umm …” Her blush was a deep plum purple, mingled under a navy blue background.
“I understand. Did you mean for me to run into the wendigo?”
“The ice cannibal demon…is that its name?”
“Type, I think. You’re a lake spirit; he’s a wendigo.”
“Okay. Well, I didn’t like him any more than I liked the book. So I tried to lead him to the book. I figured they’d kill each other. But the ice demon kept veering off the trail I left for him. When I saw you were both heading the same way, I stopped trying to distract it. Then the police came and I made sure they took the book away with them.” She looked nervously towards Dorothy’s back seat. “But now it’s back again.”
I ignored her dislike for the book and stored away for future reference her belief that the book could possibly be a match against a homicidal wendigo. I knew why she didn’t care for it. Heck, I hated the thing myself, but I needed it. The lake spirit had tried to lead the wendigo here, to me, to my book…but the wendigo curse was targeted only at employees of Lucien Valente. The curse must have kept pulling it off the fairy’s trail. Once it got loose, it went after the nearest such victim, the drug-dealing gas station attendant. When I interrupted, it wanted to attack me as an interloper. If I hadn’t been there, it couldn’t touch me: I wasn’t a Valente employee back then.
“We are now.”
Returning to the immediate problem, I gestured toward the book. “It’ll go away soon. I won’t bring it back here to your domain again without permission, Lady Tia.”
“Thank you, Wizard Colin.”
I caught up her hand, took a knee, and lightly brushed my lips across her third knuckle. “No, milady, ’tis my pleasure to honor you. You’ve been quite helpful today.” For what I had in mind now, it wouldn’t hurt to lay it on a little thick.
She laughed as I rose, then remembered her manners and curtsied. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you. I was just scared. It’s a really bad book.”
“You are forgiven, Tia.”
“Lady Tia.”
“Very well. You are forgiven, Lady Tia.” I paused. “Have you ever felt the ice demon’s presence before?”
She nodded. “A few times. He always comes from that way.” She pointed east by southeast.
A clue. Never mind that twenty percent of the United States stretched out in that general direction. It was a narrower search area than I had previously. “If he came back again, and I was here, could you lead him to me?”
“But, Wizard Colin, he would kill you. I don’t want to kill my first wizard friend.” She paused. “You are my friend, yes?”
“I would like to be, Lady Tia. And you are right: the wendigo will most likely kill me. But if I were able to face him on the ground of my choosing, with proper preparation…”
Her eyes went wide as she understood. “I think I know just the place. May I show it to you?”
9
“I don’t like it,” my inner voice warned.
“What’s not to like? If I have to fight a cannibal ice demon, that is. I don’t like that part, either.”
“The part where the most powerful spellbook we have gets left behind at the hotel room. I know you’re feeling your wizardly Wheaties right now, but…”
“The book stays away. If I bring it back out here, Tia won’t help us.
“You’ve got her wrapped around your little finger. Tell her you need it to slay the demon.”
“Weren’t you the one telling me how much more ancient and powerful than me she is? I told her it wouldn’t come back without her say-so. And I don’t want her to be distracted by its presence while she’s baiting the wendigo. I can’t have my first fairy—sorry, lake spirit princess—getting eaten while she’s doing a favor for me.”
“Pfui. You’ll wish you had it. If the wendigo shows. She’s only seen it a few times and it’s been active in the area for at least six months.”
“I think I can make it show up. But what do you think about Tia’s choice of location?”
The muddy bank she took me to was a triangular wedge, fifteen feet wide by twenty feet deep. Along the wide end, the mud dipped down to the waterline of the lake. The western side was a rocky wall of giant boulders. It was accessible with some trouble, but the path leading up to the boulders was overgrown enough to discourage the effort. The eastern edge of the triangle was a steep dirt slope rising up towards the trees. The combined effect of slope, rock, and water was that this spot very rarely received two-legged visitors. Unlike the rest of the shoreline, I didn’t see any discarded bottles, cans, or condoms.
There was a faint buzzing of power in the area, but that could have been the Excedrin wearing off. The mud was dry enough to hold a shape well, promising the possibility of a good magic circle. So long as it wasn’t pouring rain, the circle would hold. All I have to do is trap the wendigo inside of it and it would be game, set, point.
“Umm, Colin. If we lure it down here, aren’t we trapped too? I mean, unless you know how to fly or can swim faster than a wendigo can?”
“I guess we’ll just have to make sure the circle works right the first time around, then.”
“Thank you, Lady Tia.” I bowed to her. “May I make what preparations I’ll need here?”
“You may, Wizard Colin. Shall I see if I can find the ice demon?”
“Not yet. It’s Saturday, right?” I did some mental math. “Four nights from now, I think. If I need to change it, I’ll let you know. I would not have you say that you did this for me just because I trapped you in a word game. I will pay you for your service, trade for trade.”
She shook her head. “Would you buy me like a common girl, wizard? I see much of that along my shores. Is that all you would treat me as? I do not need your payment.”
“I told you she was sharper than she looks. Don’t let puppy dog eyes fool you.”
“A moment ago you were saying she was wrapped around my pinky.”