by Bill Fawcett
“ ... don’t feel like such a freak,” Cathy finished with him. “How do you feel?”
“Fine.” He smiled.
“Good.” Cathy leaned down and kissed him gently on the lips then stood up.
“Even better,” he said.
* * *
Jason and Cathy walked hand-in-hand through the parking garage, he dressed like a zombie, she like a pirate.
“Hey!” someone screamed out. They turned, surprised to see Evan walking towards them in street clothes.
“Evan! Man, we thought you’d fallen off the planet,” Jason said. He let go of Cathy’s hand long enough to hug their old friend. They hadn’t seen him in three years.
Cathy gave him a hug, too. “What have you been up to?”
“You know what ... When I left here I went home and I started cleaning house. I told all my friends to get the fuck out, sold all my Star Trek and B-5 collectables on E-bay, closed out my MySpace account, and went back to college. I got a degree in computer science and got a half-assed job as a programmer. I still couldn’t get a date, and I was lonely as hell, but by God I was all grown up. That’s when I realized being a responsible adult isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I started actually dreaming that I was playing D&D, and then one morning I woke up at like 3:00 a.m. and I had this idea that wouldn’t let me sleep. I worked on it for three months straight, didn’t do much of anything else. I sold the idea to a gaming company and the game premieres here this weekend.”
“What kind of game?” Cathy asked, taking Jason’s hand again. “Well, get this, it’s all because of you guys. It’s called Pirates Versus Zombies.” Jason and Cathy both laughed.
Evan seemed to notice them holding hands then. “So what’s going on with you two?”
“I moved to Atlanta and we got married two years ago,” Cathy supplied, looking up at Jason lovingly.
“We started our own business, too,” Jason said.
“You did?”
“Yeah, turns out there’s a huge demand for theme parties for adults and kids. We have a small catering company. I take the Night of the Living Dead parties, Cathy does the pirate parties.”
Evan laughed. “So you what ... just get to stay in costume all the time now?”
Jason patted Evan’s cheek with his open palm, smiled and said, “Evan, we aren’t ever in costume now.”
Cathy chuckled and they walked away, arms around each other.
“I’M IN NEED of a hero,” a silky voice whispered inside Carmen Rhames’ head. “Would that be you?”
The skin on the back of Cam’s neck crawled under her hair. She stood in one of the few bubbles of empty space in the DragonCon Dealers Room. There wasn’t anybody around close enough to whisper. Her sister Isobel was at the other end of the Elphame Jewels counter, trying not to drool while she haggled over a silver skull pendant she couldn’t afford. Cam’s best friend Megan skulked in the DVD booth across the aisle, pretending she was interested in slasher flicks so she could keep an eye on Cam and her sister.
Megs flatout refused to come any closer. At first Cam thought she was creeped out by the case of fetish gear or the freaky little silver critters skulking around the jewelry in the front counter. But Megs said that was only part of it. What really set off her psychic Spidey sense was the tall woman in green who ran the booth.
Reluctantly, Cam dragged her gaze to the woman’s face. The woman winked. Cam could’ve sworn she heard the little bells dangling over the wooden and glass counters jingle like they were laughing at her. Only the bells weren’t jingling. They weren’t moving at all.
Okay, that did it. Cam was officially spooked. If it had just been her, she would’ve bolted. But she couldn’t leave Isobel. At eighteen, Isobel might be the “adult” of the group, but she was also the Queen of Oblivious. She might as well have a big red “O” painted in the middle of her forehead. And a target on her back.
“Neither foolish nor foolishly fearful—that’s good. The middle road is always best,” the woman said. She sounded exactly like the voice in Cam’s head.
The woman pulled a deck of tarot cards from under the counter and nudged it across the glass in Cam’s direction. “Would you like me to tell your fortune?”
“Is this where you tell me there’s a terrible evil in my future, but you can sell me the spell to fix it?”
“Carmen!” Isobel hissed, still trying to seal a deal.
The woman chuckled. “If I pulled stunts like that, the convention would kick me out on my ear. I’m a jeweler, not a gypsy. But I do like to look at the cards of people who interest me.”
Carmen wondered if that made her some kind of psychic peeping Tom. But Isobel was the one who got mad.
“What about me?” she demanded. “I’m the customer here.”
The woman flipped three cards from the top of the deck with her left hand. “First card: Knight of Swords, the one who rushes in where angels fear to tread. That’s you. Your second card, the Moon, says people take advantage of that. They will again, tonight. The person who can save you is number three, the Page of Pence—the student.”
Her gaze flicked to Cam. “That would be you.”
Cam gulped. The words were way too close to the ones she’d heard in her head.
“Whatever,” Isobel said. “If my little sis has to come to my rescue, we’re both in deep shit.”
“Are you done yet?” Cam was proud of how bored she sounded. Not frightened at all. Buffy the Vampire Slayer couldn’t have done it better. “We’re gonna miss the Heroes panel.”
“Oh, all right,” Isobel grumbled. “Everything’s overpriced anyway.
The woman shrugged as Isobel flounced away. When Cam turned to follow, a puff of dust blew out of nowhere. She slapped a hand over her eyes, but it was too late. The grit burned into her right eye like ground jalapeno. Blinded by the sudden, searing pain, she lurched into the counter. The case wobbled against her ribs, then righted itself.
“Here, let me help,” the woman said. Before Cam could stop her, the woman brushed aside Cam’s hand, grabbed her chin and squirted something into her right eye.
The pain vanished. A pearly film washed across her vision. Panic jumped into her throat. What if she had to go to the hospital? That would ruin the weekend for everyone. The tears she could’ve used a minute ago squirted into her eyes.
Hot, lavender-scented hands squeezed her shoulders. Megs’ voice shrilled in her ear, “What did you do to her?”
“She had something in her eye. I flushed it out.”
“With what?” Megs spat.
Cam blinked her vision clear. Instead of getting mad at Megs, the woman looked like she was biting back a smile. The bells were ringing again, only this time Cam saw them move. The woman tilted her head at a small bottle of brand-name eye drops on the countertop. A single drop of clear liquid clung to the tip. It looked okay. Nothing freaky or hallucinogenic about it. Cam practically melted with relief.
“Oh, sorry. My mistake.” Megs added in a tight voice, “Ma’am. Look, chica, we gotta book. People are waiting.”
Only if you counted Isobel as “people.” But Megs wasn’t giving Cam the chance to argue. She put one hand on Cam’s shoulder and the other on her elbow, and frog-marched her down the aisle like they had a date with a firing squad.
Talk about overreacting. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate her best friend charging to her rescue. To be honest, Cam had been scared silly—emphasis on the silly. But she couldn’t help noticing the way Megs kept Cam between her and the counter the whole time. What made it even funnier was Megs was two inches taller than Cam and a lot more coordinated.
Did the woman think it was funny, too? Was that why she smiled? Cam stole another glance at the Elphame booth as they headed out the door. The woman was taking care of other customers, but something was off. It was like two women in green were
standing in the same place behind the counter.
Cam shook her head. It must be the angle. The weapons booth where she’d bought her katana Friday afternoon was about the same distance away, and everything there looked okay.
Things looked pretty normal in the Heroes panel, too. There was a point, when one of the dumber fan girls in the audience managed to piss off the moderator, when it almost looked like their shadows were about to mix it up. Cam put it down to bad lighting and an overactive imagination.
Things didn’t take a sharp turn for the weird until they met Megs’ mom for dinner in the Peachtree Centre Food Court. The scene should’ve been totally mundane. White tile and glass made the place so bright you couldn’t find a shadow. Metal chairs scraped the floor. Plastic trays clattered. Everything smelled like cooking grease, including the people in costume and the ones who weren’t.
But as Cam scanned the crowd to find their table, she noticed more double-image people. Not a lot, and not all in one place. Was there something wrong with her eye after all?
A guy who looked like Silent Bob from Dogma caught her squinting at him. He wiggled his fingers in a little wave and rolled away. He couldn’t have been walking. His head didn’t bounce. He zoomed over floor like he was riding a Segway under his floppy coat. Only he wasn’t holding on to anything. He was working the mic on his headset and the buttons of the two-way radio sticking out of his coat pocket. Cam dropped her tray the last inch to the table, sloshing her Coke.
“What’s wrong?” Megs asked as she helped Cam blot up the mess. “Is it your eye?”
“That again,” Isobel said, disgusted. “Give it a rest. She got dust in her eye. End of story.”
“Well, I’m sorry it’s not all about you.”
Isobel lifted one perfectly groomed eyebrow. Her eyes glinted like she was spoiling for a fight. “Excuse me, who found the paramedics? Who made them check her sister out? And who was standing around like a dork, freaking about fairies and magic eye drops?”
“I didn’t say fairies. The booth was called Elphame. That’s Elf Land.” Megs bared her teeth as if she could barely restrain herself from adding “you moron” in front of her mom. “Didn’t you ever read ‘Thomas the Rhymer’ or anything about Lord of the Rings that didn’t involve Orlando Bloom?”
Mrs. Owens started coughing as soon as Isobel mentioned fairies, so it took her a few seconds to wade in. “Whoa, back up, girls,” she said. “What happened to Carmen’s eye and when were you planning to tell me about it?”
Cam, Megs and Isobel hunched into their shoulders like turtles. As parents went, Megs’ mom was pretty cool. She’d been to DragonCon before, and she was the one who convinced Cam’s parents to let her go with Megs. She let Isobel stay in the room with them, even though it meant she had to share a bed. And Isobel could’ve commuted from Georgia State.
But the three of them had an unspoken agreement not to tell Mrs. Owens anything that would make her think they couldn’t take care of themselves. Cam and Megs were fifteen. They were in tenth grade. They didn’t want Megs’ mom running after them like they were kids or dragging them to all the “classic” Eighties TV panels she’d circled in her pocket program. They didn’t want to be stuck with Isobel, either.
What was worse, the story she screwed out of them sounded so lame. Cam would’ve forgotten all about it if she didn’t keep seeing things like the girl with the bat wings sticking out the back of her Darth Maul costume. That was when Cam looked out of her right eye. If she looked out of both eyes, it was the double-image deal—a winged woman with hooves for feet superimposed over a short, round-faced Darth Maul. When Cam covered her right eye, all she saw was Darth Maul flipping a chair around so she could straddle it backwards ... and leave room to spread the wings she didn’t have. None of the Star Wars Stormtroopers at the table with her seemed to notice anything off. Everybody was laughing and having a great time, including the girl with the wings.
It was the same story wherever she looked. Weird and mundane rubbed shoulders like it was the most natural thing in the world. A fox hiding under the skin of an Asian-American guy who was dressed as a pirate teased the totally human girl stealing his fries. The forehead ridges on at least two of the Klingons in line at the chicken place were the real deal. Omigod, Megs was right. Something magic had happened to her. Oh wow! This was too cool—and it happened to her! She had to clamp her knees together to keep from wiggling in her chair.
Was it just DragonCon, or was the whole world a lot stranger than anybody let on? She wanted to run outside and check the street. She couldn’t wait to see what things looked like in her neighborhood or her dad’s office at Fort Stewart. She’d bet money his CO was some kind of monster.
If she still had The Sight—or any kind of sight in her right eye—by the time she got back. The little bit of pizza she’d eaten curdled in her stomach. Megs wasn’t the only one who read too many fairy tales. Folklore theme: fairy ointment. Stupid girl loses an eye because she admits she can see fairies at a fair. Maybe if she didn’t say anything no one would know. Telling Megs—like she was dying to—wasn’t worth the cost of her eye.
Mrs. Owens rubbed her forehead and groaned. “Megan, please, listen to yourself. Even your grandmother doesn’t believe in elves. I’m not thrilled a strange woman used her eye drops in Carmen’s eye. But under the circumstances I don’t know what else she could do. And it worked, right?” she asked Cam.
Cam nodded. Giggling hysterically was probably a bad idea. People would want her to explain, and even if she could, Mrs. O wouldn’t want to hear it. If she had a problem with elves, think what would happen if Cam told her about the bug-eyed, egg-headed alien harmonizing “Scarborough Fair” with the guys in kilts over by the Information Desk.
“And if elves really did exist,” Isobel said, “they wouldn’t let that old d-bag in the club. Did you hear the stupid fortune she gave me?”
“You’re just pissed because she didn’t say anything about the guy from the Werewolf game you’ve been crushing on,” Cam said.
“Am not. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to see him again after Monday. He goes to college in Florida.”
Isobel said “Florida” like it was on the other side of the universe, instead of the next state. It wasn’t like she’d have any problem reeling him in. Cam would never say it to her face, but her sister was a knock-out. She could be pretty nice too, when she put her mind to it.
Something was eating her, though. She picked at her nail polish and chewed her lip gloss instead of her food. When Mrs. Owens asked if she’d be playing Werewolf again that evening, Isobel took her time answering.
“The game’s going to start later tonight,” she said. “The guys didn’t want to miss the Dawn Masquerade.”
“Oh, maybe we’ll see them there. I’d love to meet them,” Mrs. O said brightly.
Cam and Megs exchanged smirks.
“We might.” Isobel didn’t sound too happy about it. “If you get to meet them, could I head out after the show?”
“Depends on what time the Masquerade gets over. You know what I promised your parents: everybody in the room by one.”
“But that was before you said I could stay with you,” Isobel wheedled. “If I’d stayed in the dorm this wouldn’t even come up.”
“Yeah, you’d just have to find a cab at two o’clock in the morning. And pay for it yourself,” Cam said.
“You’re not helping,” Isobel huffed. She turned back to Meg’s mom. “Look, Mrs. O, it’s not like I’m going to get drunk and crazy. We’ll be down in the basement playing a card game. There’ll be people filking in the room next to us the whole time.”
Meg’s mom shook her head. “Sorry. My room, my rules.”
And that was that. “Mom” trumped “cool” every time. To give Isobel credit, she let it go. She even painted three perfect Dawn tears on everybody’s cheeks so they could really get in
to the mood. By the time they got back to the Hyatt, she and Mrs. O were bonding over Johnny Depp like nothing ever happened.
Cam let them pull ahead, and covered her left eye. The Hyatt atrium was Con Central Station, and she wanted to see everything it had to offer for as long as she could.
Her breath hitched in her throat. The people (and others) were only part of the show. Strands of light in every color of the rainbow formed a dazzling cat’s cradle stretching from the large, sectioned circle twenty stories overhead to the lacy metal parasol suspended over the escalators. More stained-glass ribbons fanned from the spars of the parasol. Others exploded from the branches of the metal tree in front of the lobby restaurant. Colored light shot through walls and floors like laser beams. But they didn’t seem to be hurting anything. Not at all.
Dust motes glittered in the strands. People passing through the web picked up bits of the sparkle. Pixie dust? Cam wondered.
There had to be some kind of mojo at work on the crowd. Not changing them exactly—Elevator Hell was real and populated by asshats—but nobody was screaming, swearing mad. Anybody who was smiling when they entered the lobby usually stayed that way. Those who looked tense tended to relax a little by the time they made it from the door to the escalators.
But where would you get enough pixie dust to cover a crowd this big? How would you keep it in play? Wouldn’t it run out or get blown out the doors? Unless there was some way of recycling or recharging it. Was that what the lines did? Was it possible to draw a magic spell in light and space?
“Trying out an eye patch for the Pirates Ball?” Megs asked.
Cam squealed and dropped her hand. Megs seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. The last time Cam saw her, she’d been trailing after her mom and Isobel, arguing about magic and superpowers. “Scare me to death, why don’t you?”
“I’ll do a lot more unless you tell me what’s going on,” Megs said. “Since when do you vanish and leave me to cover with Mom?”