I sighed. “I don’t know. Someone tried to manipulate the Forest of Shadows and the Silver Court into war, in the Other Realm and in our world.. It didn’t add up that the Arcanites could influence things in the Other Realm, or that the Fey could have such influence in our world. But if they were working together—”
“This is crazy,” Sammy said. “The Arcanites want to wipe out the Fey. Why would any Fey work with them?”
“Exactly! I don’t know,” I said. “Probably, each thinks the other side are suckers and plan an oh-so-surprising betrayal. In fact, I think the Fury attack today was maybe the start of that.”
*That sounds likely indeed,* Alynon said in a voice that sounded like a yawn.
Well, look who’s rejoined the party. Enjoy your nap?
*Did you enjoy the protection I won you with the amulet?*
Crap. Yes. Sorry, thank you. I’m not used to you actually helping.
*Well, ’twould have served me little for you to get us both killed.*
Fair enough. So, any thoughts on who might be working with the Arcanites?
*No.*
I waited for more, but Alynon remained silent. I sighed. If only I could compel him to speak the way I could compel a human spirit to.
That thought caused another worry to bubble up to the surface. Why had I not been able to summon the spirit of the Fury’s host?
Hey, Drop Dead Fred, I thought at Alynon. Do you think it’s possible the brightbloods, or at least the Furies, have some way of protecting against my necromancy now?
*Anything is possible, but that is unlikely.*
Because? I prompted.
*Because, should our vassals have some true means to protect against arcana magics, then there are many who would soon rebel against the order of the PAX.*
What about that tattoo you put in my nether region? I asked.
At some point during my exile, Alynon had somehow added a tattoo to my body, hidden inside my butt cheeks.
Among arcana, wizards used tattoos to express their magic, replacing wands and scrolls as the wizard’s method of choice for storing the form and potential of spells. They were totally rad. Think of the most awesome spells in any game or movie such as lightning bolts, fireballs, stoneskin, even stinking cloud, those are the kinds of things a wizard could do.
Way cooler than manipulating spiritual energy or talking to dead people.
But even though I in theory had the wizard’s gift in my blood, my strongest gift by far was necromancy. ARC Law forbade me even a single wizard tattoo as a necromancer, for fear that I might use my necromancy to drain magic from others as fuel for my tattoo, or summon up dead archwizards to learn their most powerful spells.
Yet I had a tattoo after all.
Alynon’s Fey butt tattoo summoned up a shield of sorts that absorbed magical energy attacks directed at me—shoot a fireball my way, and the tattoo would gobble up the energy and then spit it right back at you. Unfortunately, I had no conscious control over it.
Not that I was complaining, exactly. Having a defense against energy attacks didn’t suck. I just wished I knew more about it.
*What about the tattoo?* Alynon asked warily. He had refused to discuss its origin or purpose. And unless I wanted to be stuck in ARC quarantine or to undergo butt cheek replacement surgery, I couldn’t ask anyone for help in figuring it out.
You don’t think the brightbloods maybe have developed something that protects against arcana summoning the way your tattoo protects against energy attacks?
*Very doubtful,* Alynon responded, and after a couple of seconds it was clear he wouldn’t elaborate. Not that he would tell me anyway, I realized. As far as sides went, he was strictly on the Fey’s.
I realized the others had been speaking, and I’d missed several comments.
“What?” I asked.
“I just want to go home,” Mattie said. “I called Dad, told him what happened. He’s activated the house wards and said he’d be ready for us.”
“Good thinking,” I said. Once again, Mattie had shown herself to be way more organized than I could ever hope to be, even after all that had happened to her. Though her extreme self-reliance and organization had begun to concern me as much as if she were an unmotivated slacker.
The ferry’s speaker system beeped, then a voice told all drivers to return to their vehicles as we were close to docking. We made our way down to the car in silence, each lost in our own thoughts.
And then I remembered what Reggie had said about checking my e-mail.
“Smeg!” I said.
“What now?” Dawn asked.
“I forgot something is all.” I climbed into the car, and pulled out my phone.
I opened e-mail, and spotted a message from “AuntyEntity”—Tina Turner’s character from Beyond Thunderdome. That had to be Reggie.
I clicked on the video icon inside the e-mail, and after a second a video began to play on my phone as everyone but Dawn craned to see it. Dawn watched my reactions in her rearview though as she waited her turn to debark the ferry.
From the running time code in the corner, the grainy quality, and the fact that we appeared to be looking down on the scene from the upper corner of a room, I guessed it was security footage.
The spare, concrete room had clearly been built as a necrotorium or alchemist’s lab based on channels in the floor to drain bodily or other fluids away from work areas. But there were no necrotorium tables or alchemist equipment. In their place stood a single metal table in the room’s center with chairs on either side, as I’d seen up close in interrogation rooms.
At the table sat a hunched man who appeared to have been severely beaten, possibly over a long period of time given the overlapping and mottled shading of his bruises and wounds. He shifted, and I saw that he wore one of the restraining collars put on brightbloods and Fey changelings to prevent them from using their magic.
A young Asian man hung from the wall by chained manacles. He didn’t look damaged, but also wore a restraining collar.
The sound of a door opening, and three men entered the room from below the camera’s angle. The first was Grandfather in Justin’s body, though he looked much younger than when I’d seen him today. Deputy Dolph was with him in an official enforcer suit, and together they escorted an older Asian man I recognized as an ARC magus from my visits to the Snoqualmie ARC headquarters, but didn’t know his name or department. His hands were bound, and I guessed the binding restricted his magic as well.
“There is your son, Jing,” Grandfather said. “Or at least, the filthy Fey changeling who’s using his body.”
“Stephen!” Magus Jing said, and crossed the room to his son’s possessed body.
Dolph moved to grab him, but Grandfather raised a hand and shook his head.
Jing looked back over his shoulder. “Why is my son chained up here?” He seemed then to really see the man sitting at the table, to register his battered state. Jing blanched. “What is going on here, Gavriel?”
So he knew Grandfather’s real identity.
“A little experiment,” Grandfather said. Grandfather crossed to the bottom left corner of the screen, working with something just out of sight. He began to chant softly.
A line of energy shot suddenly to magus Jing from whatever Grandfather was working on, and remained flickering in the air. And from Jing, it leaped to his son’s body.
Magus Jing fell to his knees, his eyes going wide, and his mouth opened in a silent scream.
The Stephen changeling yanked at his chains. “What are you doing to me?” he demanded. His voice held concern, but not pain, or terror. The ritual had no visible effect on him other than his distress.
Grandfather ignored his question.
When the ritual finally ended, the lines of energy faded, and Jing fell forward onto his chest. The fall turned his head to the side, and I could tell he was dead from his staring, vacant eyes.
Grandfather swayed and put a hand to his head. He clenched his other fist
, and steadied himself, then said to the bruised and broken changeling at the table, “Now, dog. You may feed on his memories.”
“Thank you, master,” the changeling said, and rose as though afraid something might strike his head if he stood too erect, proceeding in a slightly hunched manner to the Stephen changeling. Grandfather had somehow broken him.
“What is this?” Changeling Stephen demanded. “Whatever you plan, it is in violation of the PAX. Cousin, if you harm me, your Demesne will demand—”
The broken changeling reached Changeling Stephen, and placed a hand on his head. Changeling Stephen’s eyes went wide.
“What—stop. Those memories are mine! Don’t—”
Then both changelings began to scream, and writhe. Broken Changeling fell to the ground, twitching and howling and scratching at his face until fresh blood began to run down onto the floor. Stephen Changeling flopped and kicked and wailed against the wall.
And then they both fell silent. Dead.
“It works,” Dolph said.
Grandfather nodded. “We can poison the very energy that holds them together. It will spread like a plague.”
The enforcer chuckled. “Shit, we’ll be able to walk right in over their corpses and take control of the entire Other Realm.”
“And then, we will be the immortals,” Grandfather said. “We will control the magic.”
The video ended.
Everyone in the car remained silent.
*Blessed Aal,* Alynon whispered at last. *He must be stopped.*
First we have to figure out how, I replied. And we will.
We had to. Otherwise, Grandfather really would rule the world.
And that would seriously suck.
* * *
My Casio read 5:27 P.M. as we drove into the small seaside town of Port Townsend. The late-afternoon light cast the town in a rich amber glow, not that the town needed much help to appear magical. You couldn’t throw a fairy without hitting a quaint Victorian home, castle-like building, or wild garden; and the thriving arts community and wooden boat culture ensured plenty of creative flourishes everywhere you looked.
Port Townsend’s founders envisioned it as one of the biggest port cities in Washington; at least until the Great Depression, unfinished railroad connections, and a nasty infestation of gremlins killed that dream. But when most mundies abandoned the town, the area’s rich and important magical history made it an ideal home for arcana. Then the town got revitalized with the addition of a paper mill, and around the time I was born there came the influx of wealthy retirees and ex-hippies. During my exile, the town had shifted mostly to a tourism economy.
I still felt unsettled by the changes, and occasionally groused like an old man about the good old days when families would gather down at the tavern for cheap meals, when most of the town freely bartered with each other, and when the arcana community, though hidden, nonetheless celebrated the great turning of the wheel and our unique culture together. But it was also nice that the town had jobs, and the ability to support itself. And in some ways, the focus on tourism had helped the town to preserve some of its uniqueness. If Waterfront Pizza or Elevated Ice Cream were ever replaced with chain restaurants, then I would know that Ragnarok must soon be upon us.
Mattie called her father again to make sure the coast remained clear at home, and I could hear Mort’s annoyed tone vibrating out of the phone’s speaker, if not his words. Mattie gave the thumbs-up sign, and Dawn drove to her own home, which stood next door to my family’s. We all climbed out of the car, and stretched, then walked through the break in the hedge to my family home.
Home. I felt a weight lift off of me at the sight of the large Victorian house. With everything that had changed in the world during my exile, with all of the uncertainty about my future, and the enemies I’d somehow made, this old house was a solid piece of continuity, of peace and safety.
We made our way past Mother’s wild and tangled garden, overgrown and grumpy since her death, and up to the back door.
Boxes had been stacked on the back porch while we were gone—boxes filled with my stuff. I saw my books, my game journals, my Commodore 64, Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, my Star Wars alarm clock, everything.
“What the hell?” I said.
The back door opened, and Mort stood behind the screen door, his hand on the handle. He’d regained some weight and health since being severed from his tie to Brianne, his succubus “spirit wife.” He once again resembled Leonard Nimoy in his original Spock days, though with way more product spiking up his receding hairline, and a fashion sense that reinforced the worst stereotypes of necromancers.
“Dad?” Mattie asked.
Sammy waved at the boxes. “What ass-hattery are you up to now?”
“Sorry Finn,” Mort said, and crossed his arms. “But you’re no longer welcome here.”
6
MAN IN THE BOX
I fought the urge to check on my Commodore to make sure Mort hadn’t damaged it, and instead stepped up to the screen door, anger building as I reached for the handle. “Damn it, Mort, I—”
My hand hit the house wards and rebounded with a firecracker shock, like touching a doorknob after skidding in Raiden’s socks across Tesla’s carpet. “OW!”
“Sorry if that hurt,” Mort said in a tone that sounded like he’d been taking non-apology lessons from Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.
I just stared at him, stunned more by surprise than the wards. If you have never come to that place that fundamentally represents home and comfort and safety in your mind, in your dreams, in your heart, and found yourself locked out and unwanted there, I can’t begin to explain the feelings that swirled through me.
“Mort, this is the worst time for a stupid fight,” I snapped.
“Who’s fighting?” he said. “Mattie, come on inside. Sammy, you’re welcome, too. Finn, you can take your stuff over to Dawn’s if she’ll have you, though I think it would be shitty of you to keep putting her in danger.”
I ignored the accusation and said, “Father’s still out with Verna, I take it?” Verna was a thaumaturge like Father, a creator of magical artifacts, and they had been spending a lot of time together these past couple of months.
Mort nodded. “And Pete and Vee are out at Elwha, playing at being Vice-Archons with the feybloods.”
Great. The timing couldn’t be worse. Not only was I worried about them being in danger, but that meant there wasn’t much I could do about Mort’s decisions right now. Sammy had long removed herself from the family decisions, especially ones about the home or business. Mort was the oldest family member beside Father, and I’d pretty much signed over control of the business to him. I just never thought he’d actually kick me out of the family home.
How long had he been waiting for just such an opportunity, just such an excuse?
Sammy crossed her arms. “Who do you think you are, Mort? Father—”
“If Father understood anything that was going on, he’d do this himself. Finn’s brought nothing but danger to our family.”
Sammy looked at me, one eyebrow arched. “Most of that wasn’t his fault. He—”
Sammy’s phone rang. She pulled it out, and answered it. “Fates, where are—” Her face went pale, and she activated the speakerphone.
A man’s voice projected into the evening air, “… make us use force.”
“I don’t understand,” Fatima replied. “Why am I under arrest? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“We have evidence otherwise,” the man said. “For the last time, hold out your hands, or we will subdue you.” His tone and orders made clear he was an enforcer.
“Fine. But when my father hears of this—”
“What makes you think your father will protect you?” the enforcer asked, and I heard the sound of metal clicking. “When he has failed his duty to protect us all?”
“What?” Fatima asked. “Hey, what are you—?” Her voice grew distant as she moved away from her phone. She must
have set it somewhere hidden from the view of the enforcers.
“Put the evidence in the freezer,” the enforcer’s voice said to someone closer to the phone. “Make it look convincing.”
There was the noise of people moving around for a minute, then the sound of a door closing, then silence.
Sammy stared at the phone, as if waiting for someone to announce it had all been a joke. But after a minute, the only sound was the soft mewling of a cat and what sounded like scratching at the door.
Sammy hung up her phone with a shaking hand, and looked at me. “You said she’d be safe.” Her voice vibrated with panic.
“I didn’t know—” I shook my head. “This doesn’t make sense.”
“You said she’d be safe!” Sammy said again.
“You see—” Mort began, but Sammy wheeled on him.
“Shut the hell up and let us all in, Mort, or I swear on my soul I’m going to kick your balls into the Other Realm!”
Mort skipped right past frowning to scowling, then said, “You don’t scare me, Samantha. You can’t even touch magic without breaking out in hives, so don’t—”
“Magic?” Sammy snorted. “I don’t need magic to drain your bank accounts, destroy your credit score, and make you the poster boy for necrophilia in every search engine and criminal database ever. Don’t fuck with me, brother.”
Mort glared at Sammy as if prepared to engage in the most epic sibling staring contest ever.
“Dad!” Mattie said. “Please! Stop this!”
Mort blinked, and looked at Mattie. His shoulders slumped slightly, and he shook his head. “I can’t, Mattie. You just have to trust me, this is for the best. Enforcers were already here looking for him.” He nodded at me.
“Now you tell us this?” I said.
“What, like it’s any surprise?” Mort responded. “I’d be more surprised if we went a month without you getting us all into some kind of trouble.”
I had no good response to that, so I turned to Dawn. “Is it okay if we figure things out at your place?”
“Of course,” Dawn said. “I’ll, uh, go clean up a bit.” A good idea, given that she tended to leave most things laying wherever they landed after being used. She looked up at Mort. “You’re being an ass, by the way.” She marched off toward her house.
Smells Like Finn Spirit Page 5