So Pete had lost his magic, the magic he had grown up with and saw as part of his connection to Mother and Father and family; and here I was basically rejecting it by choice.
Gods, I was a jerk sometimes. I should have been more sensitive to that, but instead I’d been patting myself on the back for getting him named a Vice-Archon.
“Pete, I’m sorry,” I said.
“You say that a lot,” he said, sounding more sad than angry.
I sighed. “Yeah, I guess I do. But I mean it.”
“Then help Mort. And save the family business. And don’t do dark necromancy!”
I smiled despite myself. “The more you know,” I said.
“And knowing’s half the battle,” Pete replied, a slight smile touching his face.
We marched the rest of the way back to Dawn’s station wagon in silence. Once we reached the car, Pete lowered me to my feet and gave me a bear hug.
I squeezed his shoulder as we stepped apart. “Take care of yourself, little brother. Don’t do anything you don’t want to.”
He shrugged, a resigned shrug, pulled a small cloth pouch out of his pocket, and handed it to me. I guessed it held the spirit trap amulet. Pete said in the saddest voice I’d heard him use in a while, “I don’t think we can do what we want right now.”
I pursed my lips. What could I say that wouldn’t be a lie? In the end I gave what I hoped was an encouraging smile, then said, “Yeah. I guess you’re right. Just be careful.”
“You, too,” Pete said, then turned and lumbered back into the woods, his footsteps heavy with his unhappiness.
Dawn put an arm around my waist as we watched Pete disappear into the forest, and I stuffed the amulet in my pocket. “He’ll be okay,” Dawn said. “He’s strong in lots of ways. And he’s got good people—or, uh, brightbloods—looking out for him.” She gave me a squeeze.
“Yeah,” I said. But I didn’t feel any better, or less guilty for all the ways I’d hurt Pete, or failed to protect him, not only from danger but from all the things that had chipped away at his happy, innocent, caring nature.
“Come on!” Sammy said. “None of this is helping Fatima.”
Right. Back to the fun.
Dawn drove, following Sammy’s directions. Sammy worked on her laptop tethered to her phone, growing more and more agitated with each mile and each failure to get the information she wanted. Sammy had always been the type to go it alone, confident in her own ability to learn any skill or achieve any goal if she just used enough time and effort and the calm, even focus of a Vulcan. But at one point she made as if to throw her laptop out of the car window, and then slapped it back down on her lap with a loud “Aaaaahhh!” of frustration.
I knew better than to ask her if she was okay, or if I could help. I liked my head right where it was, and did not need it to be snapped off.
Though the distraction of having my head removed might have been nice right then, actually.
The low hum of the spirit trap amulet called out to me, and I finally pulled it out of my jeans pocket, feeling it through the rough cloth of the small pouch. The booby-trap spell had been interrupted when they knocked me out. I did not know if Kaminari’s spirit had been destroyed, or if it escaped, but I did not sense it in the trap now. But the residual energy of the trap, and the memory it triggered of consuming both Dunngo’s spirit and Kaminari’s, brought to the fore the urge to consume a spirit, anyone’s spirit, to feed my own energy, to feel that rush of power, of expanded self, just one more time. In fact, if Kaminari’s spirit had merely escaped, I might be able to summon it back into the trap using the resonance of her residual energy within. That hardly seemed wrong at this point.
After all, Kaminari clearly still hated me despite my efforts to help her. She would destroy me if given the chance. And there seemed little value in allowing such a mad, damaged spirit to roam free, or even travel to the beyond. Wouldn’t I just be passing this problem on to whoever or whatever waited beyond the Veil? Wasn’t it better that I use her energy to do some good in our world, to make up for all the damage she’d done? If she were sane, and objective, surely that’s what she would want anyway.
And my own spirit wanted it, so badly.
Dawn placed a hand over mine, the warmth and softness of it contrasting with the cold, hard amulet.
“You okay?”
I focused on her, on her eyes, on her touch, on my love for her. What would she think of me if I destroyed Kaminari? What might I become, what might I do to Dawn, if I let this temptation consume me?
I enveloped her hand between mine, and forced myself to relive Pete’s disappointment and Sammy’s anger when they discovered I’d destroyed Dunngo.
And I remembered the memories that Kaminari’s sister had shared with me, of Kaminari being horrifically abused as a young jorõgumo, of the horrors she’d witnessed. I had to believe there existed some hope for healing and redemption beyond the Veil.
I shuddered at the strength of my yearning, and handed the amulet to Dawn. “Here. Hold on to this, and don’t give it back to me, even if I ask.”
Dawn took it, and looked at it uncertainly, but didn’t question me. She just nodded, and moved to put it in her guitar case, then visibly thought better of it. “I don’t want bad vibes around Cotten.” Cotten was what she’d named her guitar, after guitarist Elizabeth Cotten, one of her inspirations. Dawn put the amulet instead into her jeans pocket.
I closed my eyes and tried to meditate, seeking balance and calm, and to strengthen my will.
But my thoughts kept circling back around to Mort kicking me out, to Reggie and Fatima being arrested due to my grandfather’s crazed cult, to Pete and Sammy and Silene and Sal and everyone else I seemed to have hurt or let down in some way. It was like trying to nap in the arms of your lover—while they struggled to carry you through the desert because you broke your foot kicking and spilling the last of your water in a tantrum. My guilt and hurt kept demanding attention.
I was jolted out of my semi-meditative doze a couple of hours later when Sammy said, “We’re here.” I glanced blearily at my watch. A little past one A.M.
Outside my window, a giant concrete troll leered at us as we cruised past.
We had driven to Fremont.
Fremont was one of the more quirky neighborhoods of Seattle. Self-proclaimed as the Center of the Universe, with signs pointing the direction and kilometers to other major points in the world and cosmos, it was filled with funky little shops and restaurants and artistic endeavors.
One of its primary attractions was the troll statue. Built four years after my exile, the massive concrete statue served two functions: the first, its publicly stated function, was to fill the space under the Aurora Bridge with something fun and positive rather than garbage heaps and sketchy drug dealers; and second, its less public function, was to commemorate the Great California Migration, when hundreds of gnomes, witches, unicorns, and other Shadows brightbloods, fleeing a mana drought, managed to blast a fairy path open from southern California to Fremont.
Thankfully for us, and unfortunately for them, the same reason that this end of the fairy path anchored here—the dense convergence of ley lines—also made this area popular with local arcana and brightbloods. No sooner had the California brightbloods emerged on this side of the path than a battle raged for the safety and soul of the area. The Washington forces nearly lost the battle due to a swarm of California ant lions. But a local bridge troll, immune to the creatures’ bites, crushed the deadly lion-headed bugs and saved the day.
Since a giant troll statue crushing a swarm of California ant lions wouldn’t have made much sense to mundies, the artists depicted him crushing a VW Bug with California license plates instead.
Sammy directed Dawn a few blocks past the troll statue and the touristy shopping section, and had her park across the street from the Theo Chocolate factory. I didn’t know much about them except that Dawn called their chocolate true magic, but if they were in Fremont I suspected sh
e was probably more right than she knew. Oompa Loompas and Keebler Elves didn’t exist in the literal sense, but they weren’t too far from the truth in some artisan candy factories.
Sammy led us cross-corner from the chocolate factory and through a pay parking lot to the side entrance of a basement garage. A sign declared it as ADD Motorworks. As we approached the door, she paused, and held out her hand for us to stop.
“The lady who’s helping us, she’s a sorcerer, but she’s got a couple of … quirks. She’s not so great with people, and so only talks with folks who can speak her language.”
“Which language?” Dawn asked.
“You’ll see.”
Sammy knocked on the door, and after a minute, it cracked open and a young woman with jaw-length black hair who looked like Phoebe Cates’s slightly mousy sister poked her head out.
“Hey, Helen,” Sammy said.
Helen’s eyes narrowed. “Are you really Sammy?”
“I hope so. I’m wearing her underwear.”
Helen looked past Sammy at us, and then peered around as if we might be hiding a SWAT team in the shadows.
“Password?” she asked.
“Joshua,” Sammy replied.
Helen nodded, and waved us inside. A Persona ID ring flashed as she did, holding an azurite stone, marking her as a sorceress, an illusionist like Kaitlin from BOAT.
As we stepped inside, the door slammed shut behind us, and fire sprang up between us and Helen, caging us in.
10
CONNECTED
The heat of the flames caused us all to flinch back, closing into a tight knot. Beyond the flames I got the impression of a garage with mopeds in various stages of assembly, and walls lined with cubbies that held parts and tools. But the brightness and heat of the flame wall made it hard to concentrate on anything except not being burned.
Illusions or not, it would hurt like hell if those flames touched us, possibly even kill us.
“Want to play a game?” Helen asked.
I looked from her to Sammy, and said, “Uh … the only way to win is not to play?”
Helen’s eyebrows rose, and she looked at Sammy. “Is leet?”
“No, he’s just a geek.”
“Hey!” I said, then nearly coughed as the heat rushed into my lungs. Clearing my throat, I added weakly, “I’m not just a geek.”
Sammy gave a noncommittal shrug, and scratched absently at her forearm. “He also hasn’t seen any movie that’s come out in the last twenty years or so, so you got doubly lucky.”
Helen frowned at me through the flames, as if not sure what to do with me. She looked at Dawn, and Dawn’s Acolyte ring, and her eyebrows rose. “Girl’s standing over there listening and you’re telling him about our back doors?”
Sammy put a hand on Dawn’s arm. “Hey, Miss Potato Head, I vouch for her.”
Helen shook her head as if she’d just been tricked, and backed slowly toward the nearest open doorway. “You’re fucking up my chi.”
Sammy stepped between me and Helen, close enough to the flame wall that I could smell burning hair, and raised her hands. “Surprised that a girl with an IQ over seventy can give you a hard on?”
This oddly seemed to calm Helen down a little. She waved her hand, and the flames disappeared as quickly as they’d appeared.
I could see the room clearly now, with its curved bar-like counter to our right and a square metal table in the center of the room. It smelled of gas and chemicals. In the corner sat a red Nintendo cabinet that looked like a Star Wars droid and a Nintendo game system had spawned a love child. Two open doorways led to a back area, and I spotted a Ms. Pac-Man arcade cabinet through the nearest.
Helen eyed us suspiciously. “All of my filth is arranged in alphabetical order,” she said, and waved at the old Nintendo arcade cabinet in the corner. “This, for instance, is under ‘H’ for ‘toy.’”
Sammy waved her hand dismissively. “We won’t mess with your stuff, promise. But I need the equipment I asked for.” Helen began to get twitchy again, and Sammy quickly added, “A Sino-logic 16, Sogo 7 Data Gloves … you know the rest. Or at least, your version of it all.”
Helen gave a single quick nod, and waved for Sammy to follow. She crossed the room, and opened what looked like an old iron-bound wooden door mounted a bit high in the wall. I spotted electronic equipment just inside the door, stacked along one side of what looked like a storage space that had pipes and levers running along its walls. Helen nodded sideways at the equipment. “We’re sitting on the most perfect beach in the world, and all we can think about is …”
“Where I can hook up my modem?” Sammy replied, picking up the first item, a black box with several input jacks on it.
Helen nodded, and pointed down the nearest hall toward the back of the building.
“You’re the best, Helen,” Sammy said. “You sure the guys don’t mind me squatting in their garage for the night?”
Helen shook her head. “So, what would you little maniacs like to do first?”
“Well, the beauty of the Gatekeeper system is that we can get in and out of the ARC like it’s the public library.”
“So it’s both immoral and unethical?” Helen asked.
“Pretty much. We won’t involve you, though.”
Helen nodded, and climbed up into the narrow storage space, stepping over and around the equipment. She fiddled with the pipes and levers, and a hidden door popped open in the back of the space. I caught a glimpse of what looked like an old supercomputer.
Helen disappeared on the other side and closed the rear door.
“Uh … what was that?” I asked.
Sammy started to carefully sort and stack the equipment. “Helen was one of the sorcerers who helped develop the infomancer layer, before they figured out exactly how to interface their magic with the tech. Between using herself to test the dangerously flawed early constructs, and finding out how her creation was being used, it … broke her brain a little, I think. Now, she just likes to hang out here and help keep the infomancers in check.”
Dawn’s face took on that look she got whenever she saw a living creature in need. “That girl needs some loving human contact, not to be locked up with those dumb machines in a basement.”
Sammy shook her head. “Humans aren’t so great.”
“We got our problems,” Dawn acknowledged, “but I’d rather have a real live friend I can hug and have coffee with than some words on a computer screen any day. We’re social creatures, babe, ain’t no way around it.”
Sammy snorted. “Anything bad you can think to say about computers is really just about the humans using them. Internet trolls, data collection, the infomancer layer, that’s not problems of technology, that’s problems of people being asshats and greedholes.”
“Exactly,” Dawn said. “And that’s why having friends and loved ones is so important, to keep us from losing our shit, and keep us—”
Sammy rubbed briskly at her eyes and grabbed one of her neat stacks of equipment.
“Oh, shit sweetie,” Dawn said. “Sorry. We’ll get Fatima back.”
Sammy just said, “Come on, there should be some food in the back. I can set up there. Grab some of this stuff, and be careful with it.”
We hauled the stuff into the back area, and I blinked in surprise.
Classic arcade games and pinball machines filled the space.
“What kind of garage is this?” I asked.
“The kind they’re turning into an arcade, from what I hear,” Sammy said. “Though I question their sanity.” She nodded behind us at the wall we’d just passed. I looked back, and saw a mural of Patrick Swayze’s face floating in outer space.
“Are you kidding?” I asked. “This place is awesome!”
“You would think so,” Sammy muttered as she began hooking up the various pieces of equipment to each other. She waved over at a mini fridge. “Fix me a mac and cheese while I take care of this, will you?”
“Yes, your majesty.”<
br />
As I began to move toward the fridge, Sammy set out a large visor and what looked like a modified Nintendo Power Glove, then continued to set up and connect the various modules.
“What’re those for?” I asked, resisting the urge to pick them up—Sammy did not like anyone touching her toys, that much hadn’t changed since childhood.
“I’m going into the infomancer layer.”
I frowned. “Normally you just do something fancy with Google. What’s with the Lawnmower Man getup?”
“What I did for you before was just a simple data search. If there’s a conspiracy going on, I’m going to have to get inside the Infomancer Core. These,” she waved at the glove and visor, “will allow me to mimic the abilities of a sorcerer, at least enough to access the core and interact with its matrix.”
“Uh … cool,” I said. “But it uses magic?”
“Indirectly,” she said, sliding a twisted gold headband over her hair. If the Borg invaded Final Fantasy and assimilated Rydia, she might wear something like it, with several inset red crystals and green microchips, and a cord dangling down behind her left ear. Sammy plugged the headband into a small black box now attached to her laptop. “I’ve found a way to route it through enough tech buffers that it doesn’t set my allergies blazing, though I’ll be needing some serious Visine when I’m done.” She finished connecting all of the pieces together, and sat down. “Lesson time’s over. Mac and cheese?”
I sighed. “Sure.” I went to the long counter that lined the wall. A couple of silver beer kegs were stacked on one end. A microwave and a half-empty box of peanut butter and chocolate PowerBars covered the other. I opened the mini fridge beneath the counter. Sure enough, it had several boxes of Stouffer’s mac and cheese in the freezer section. I grabbed one, opened it and popped it into the microwave as Sammy powered on her setup and slid on the visor and glove.
“So, what does it look like?” I asked. “Is it like Gibson’s matrix, or—”
Smells Like Finn Spirit Page 10