Hexomancy

by Michael R. Underwood

  “No way,” Eastwood said. “This has scam written all over it. I just haven’t managed to backtrack any of the IP addresses or POP servers. Whoever’s doing this, they’re good. Had to call a few of my old Wild Wild Web buddies to get some in some help tracking them down.” Eastwood looked to Grognard. “That’s why I was late. No offense intended. Congrats on the reopening.” Eastwood raised a toast, which Grognard met with his own stein of beer. It was his enchanted Nocturnalist Coffee Stout, which had all of the taste and none of the alcohol.

  “Think this is the next Strega?” Grognard asked.

  “Maybe. Weird way of coming at me, though. These lost sales are going to add up, but it’s a big change from waves of gnomes or a squad of homicidal derby girls.”

  Drake approached the bar, stein in hand. “In my travels, each of the Strega had their own methodologies, more different than the same. When I was traveling with the Contessa—”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Eastwood said, cutting Drake off before he could dive into another story about the Contessa of the Lapis Galleon, his Faerie kidnapper-turned-patron/lover from the days when he was adventuring around in the Deep realms of Spirit, science fantasy–style.

  Talon asked, “So you’ve got people on it, and in the meantime, what? Drink?”

  “Not a bad plan. No, in the meantime, I’m buffing up my stock and quintuple-checking my traps. Sooner or later, she’s going to make a run at me, and I’ll be a Cylon’s uncle if I’m going to get caught flat-footed this time.”

  Ree left the conversation and returned to service, buzzing around the store to pick up empties, take orders, and give encouragement to the various gamers, taking care to not offer anything that amounted to scale-tipping advice. It didn’t take much to clue in a player who’d gone astray, but she had no skin in this tournament game, quite intentionally. Didn’t do for anyone associated with the House to be seen playing favorites.

  It also did her good to step away from Drake. After weeks of minimal contact, he was almost new again, like her resistance to his dimples, that accent, and his pleasantly annoying habits had tanked.

  And that wouldn’t be fair to Priya. Friends’ exes were off the table, barring incredibly extenuating circumstances.

  So, temporally displaced handsome inventor-heroes who you knew first counts as extenuating? asked a part of Ree’s mind, sending her mindscape back into a hurricane of mixed feelings.

  Down, girl, she told herself, heading into the kitchen for another round of drop-off-pick-up.

  This was going to become a problem. Flipping out on Drake and then not seeing him had not, as she’d hoped, done a single fucking bit to spoil her feelings for him. She was still angry, but keeping a grudge when Priya had moved on seemed to be nothing more than spiteful.

  Not that she wasn’t down with a little spite here and there, but with Eastwood on her permanent shit list, she needed some adventuring buddies out and about the town. Shade and Talon didn’t patrol, Uncle Joe was done with hero-ing, and Grognard had the store.

  So if she was going to keep up her Urban Fantasy Vigilante act and have someone watching her back, it was basically going to come down to the man whose back she’d like to be watching, even if it made her feel guilty.

  Hulk smash squishy feelings! Ree thought to herself, and got back to work.

  At the stroke of midnight, the again-diminished crowd broke into the two RPG sessions, most of the patrons sticking with Grognard for Pathfinder, the other three heading off with Ree: Drake, Talon, and Uncle Joe.

  After some lead-in and backstory catch up for the premade characters (Drake a Thri-Kreen Monk, Talon a Gladiator, and Uncle Joe a Preserver), they dove into the dirty streets of Tyr for a Noir-inspired bout of back-alley fights, twisted knots of alliances, a hidden stash of steel short swords (worth a fortune on the metal-starved Athas), and some intra-party conflict. Then the clock struck six, marking twelve hours of Grand Reopening awesomeness.

  Ree and Grognard high-fived and toasted to a successful night, then Ree packed it in and made her way home.

  Drake offered to walk with her through the unseasonable cold.

  No ulterior motive there, not at all, Ree thought, layering up as the adventurer waited by the door.

  Stay good, Ree, she told herself, then stepped out to the stairwell leading back up to the mundane office building.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Tales of Baron Drakehousen

  Outside, the coastal winds gusted, tossing dusted snow up and at their barely-uncovered faces. Ree’d lost her temperature tolerance after too long in the Northwest, leaving her wearing a balaclava, scarf, and three-quarter-length peacoat, with thermal underwear and four layers of shirts. She felt like a Stay Puft extra in a Bourne movie.

  Drake, on the other hand, looked only marginally uncomfortable, extra layers on top and bottom, but still moving briskly like the sprightly punk he was.

  “Thank you for allowing me to walk you home, Ms. Ree.”

  “Sure. Something you wanted to say that you couldn’t say in the bar?” Ree asked, hoping to focus on the conversation and not on the fact that she was going to be a Geeksicle by the time she made it home in the cobalt-blue predawn, the world not yet awoken on Saturday morning.

  He nodded. “I wished to express, once more, my most sincere apologies to Ms. Priya, and to yourself, for my unconscionable behavior. While I’ve acculturated to many aspects of this world, many of my notions about life and relationships are still firmly ingrained from my youth and life in Avalon. Much responsibility fell on men there, more than was appropriate, as it came at the loss of self-determination for women.

  “This is not meant as a complaint as to my being put-upon, but to indicate that my time here on Earth has shown me that there are no shortage of highly capable women, most of them not interdimensional travelers. I’d thought women such as yourself and the Mistress to be the exception, and I discovered myself sorely mistaken.

  “Instead, I perceived my failure to protect my paramour as a moral failing, rather than as an unfortunate eventuality of life as an adventurer. But regardless of the cause, my behavior following that attack was ruled by, as you call it, Patriarchal Bullshit,” Drake said, her words not fitting his mouth.

  “I get it, man. We’re all carrying around bullshit from the world around us. It’s like the fucking Matrix sometimes. No one’s immune, and for being raised in what might as well be the Victorian era, you’re a damned sight better at being respectful than most of the guys I’ve dated.”

  That’s not how she’d meant that to come out. Too late, then! Moving on.

  “You’ve apologized to Priya, and you’ve apologized to me. But the only way to make it better is to do better, day by day.”

  “Understood. That is my most devoted intent. Disentangling the magical adventures of my life from that which intersects most directly with the unknowing public has proven increasingly difficult, given romantic endeavors.”

  “That’s just romance, man,” Ree said. “You date much before you gallivanted off with the Contessa?”

  “I did not. A studious youth, I made few efforts to make the connections necessary for courting, and my family impressed upon me the need to elevate my station, thus eliminating the social propriety of courting women from the less-affluent working class.

  “Sadly, few women were permitted to be inventors in my day. The coming of the Kadel caused a great deal of disruption, but I was not present to see how the world must have changed in my absence. The Mistress was never able to track down Avalon’s Aetherial Signature after our initial departure.”

  “She said that, did she?” Ree asked, thinking she had a pretty good handle on this woman. The Contessa sounded like a user. Take in a pretty boy to be her sidekick, get what she wants out of him, then kick him to the curb.

  “Of course. She tried for weeks, but we repeatedly ran afoul of tempor
al eddies drawing us off course and back into another adventure.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ree said. Though if he’d gone back home, he’d never have been around to help her, and the world would be less marvelously strange without Drake Winters.

  “But you’ve done a lot of good here,” Ree said. “Remember that. Everyone fucks up, even heroes. I’d say especially heroes, but I’m not one to talk about not beating myself up. If I’d told Priya and company about the magic crap before you two met, who knows what would have happened?”

  They continued chatting on the walk home, trading stories to draw their attention away from snowfall and whorling gusts, courtesy of double-digit-MPH-or-something winds.

  “Fuck you, Winter!” Ree shouted, her voice vanishing into the wind as they reached the front steps of the Shithouse.

  “Patrol tomorrow?” she asked.

  “I would like that. Sleep well, Ms. Ree.”

  “Just Ree is fine.”

  “As you wish,” Drake said.

  Unlike the last times he’d said it, this time Drake winked as he spoke. Or maybe that was just the snow in his eye.

  Rather than dealing with that question, Ree charged up the stairs to the Shithole.

  De-wintering took the better part of ten minutes, Ree trying very hard not to wake Sandra on a weekend. She’d been working long hours at her new gig as an assistant for a catering company. Ironically, she was doing the actual work that Ree had been pretending to be doing when she was covering for her job at Grognard’s.

  I should bring them by, sometime, Ree thought, though she’d tried to keep her worlds as separate as she could. Cross-pollinating all of your social circles could be really convenient, but it made taking refuge from one group’s drama with another all but impossible.

  She managed to set her alarm for 1, then collapsed into bed.

  Her hateful, rage-inducing alarm snatched her from the warm embrace of slumber, and so Ree stumbled her way into wakefulness, going about the morning (afternoon) at a relaxed pace. She was on for Grognard’s that night, so patrolling would need to be done by 6 so she could get to the bar for opening.

  There were leftovers from Sandra’s catering gig left on the communal shelf, so Ree helped herself to a breakfast of hors d’oeuvres and coffee, which only worked due to sheer force of will on Ree’s part.

  Sitting on the couch, she took a lap around the Internet while catching up on Thursday’s The Daily Show and making a note to herself of the TV shows she’d have to binge-watch in the future to get current: Person of Interest, Grimm, Supernatural.

  Ree ran through her day to make sure she wouldn’t need a time-turner. Start patrolling at 3, done by 5:30, shower and down to Grognard’s, done at 3. Sunday she had off, thank God.

  A quick scan of the weather showed that it was still below freezing out. She draped her coat and thermal underwear over the heater, preheating it so there’d be some extra juice to help her bony ass fight off the weather.

  She texted Drake to confirm the time for their patrol.

  3 PM at the Shithole, done by 5:30?

  The response came a minute later.

  Message received and confirmed. Until then, I remain your humble servant,

  Drake Winters.

  He couldn’t be cuter or odder if he tried.

  Ree spent the rest of her free time putting together her patrol gear and laying out that evening’s work clothes, more black on black. Grognard wasn’t formal, but server’s wisdom dictated black for covering up various and sundry stains, discolorations, and other bullshit. She left her makeup pencil out on top of the pile, in case she had time for a Daily Design, a little affectation that she practiced whenever there was time, wearing a pattern or drawn-on tattoo for the shift, taken from whatever was inspiring her that day (or, just as often, what was cool or easy. The Eye of Horus was very popular, as was Death from Sandman’s facial art).

  Bundling herself up again, Ree kept her lightsaber, blaster, and sideboard handy, opting for thinner, capacitive-touch gloves so she could use her phone. She’d been using thicker mittens for patrolling in the winter wonderland Pearson had become. But with those, she’d have to take them off to use her phone, so the warmth would come with a notable Geekomantic delay.

  A snowflake drifted into her eye, sneaking around her lashes.

  If it turned out that the Strega had anything to do with this Capital-W Winter, she was going to punch that jackass so hard her ancestors would feel it.

  When she came stomping down the steps in front of her building at 3:01, Drake stood at the ready, his rifle held over his shoulder like an umbrella, which is what his glamour was currently disguising it as. Most people didn’t react kindly to weird people carting around rifles, even if they looked comically fake, as Drake’s did, being a contraption of Avalonian Steampunkery.

  Drake’s oddity wasn’t the least bit muted by his winter clothes, though Ree was convinced he had some kind of charm to ward off the cold. There was no way a boy that skinny could stay that warm. Then again, they’d be running and jumping their way across the city, so as long as she kept moving, she should be fine, too, right?

  Keep wishing, kid, she told herself.

  “Ready for a run?” Ree asked, winking.

  Patrolling in winter was bullshit. Teeth-chattering, ear-burning bullshit. In real weather, she and Drake could make their way from rooftop to rooftop, boosted by Drake’s newfangled jump boots and Ree’s genre emulation (I heart you, Spider-Man). But when the roofs were slick and stacked high with snow (no one shoveled the tops of buildings unless the owner was super-rich and/or fastidious) the whole thing got a bit too dangerous.

  They gave up after the third time one or the other of them slipped trying to get up to a jog, and instead climbed their frozen asses back down to street level, wandering around the neighborhood, talking about everything and nothing, keeping far enough away from other bystanders so that they could talk mostly freely.

  “So Anya’s got the lead in La Traviata, and no matter what Madame Wesselman pulls, Anya just rolls with it. I snuck into a rehearsal last week, and Anya’s killing it. You should come to a show when it goes up. I’ll make sure we can alternate nights so Priya won’t have to worry.”

  Drake’s expression darkened at that.

  “Just ex-boyfriend protocol, man. No offense.”

  “Of course. But I would be delighted to partake. La Traviata is not unlike a drama we have in Avalon, known in the lingua franca as ‘The Revelation.’ I had the fortune of seeing it once during a break from classes at the Institute. . . .”

  And so Drake launched into another one of his stories about Avalon, which she preferred vastly to the admittedly crazy-pants but always enraging stories about the Contessa, his Mistress. It was very clear that she had worn the adventurer’s pants in that relationship, as well as the whip, and not in a healthy way. Woman sounded like the pulp adventure poster child for selfishness and unchecked borderline personality disorder if ever there was one.

  But whenever Ree even poked at the edges of criticizing the Contessa on account of the dozens of times that she had abandoned Drake in order to go do something insane and impossible to save the day, or her countless dalliances with other men (and women, and agender beings) during their adventures, or any of her other crazy-ass shit, Drake would leap straight to her defense.

  Most everyone had that One Ex that still had their claws in them. For Ree, it was Jay, who seemed to have been happy with his petit bourgeois lifestyle upgrade, since Ree had never heard back from him. But when her heart skipped several beats just looking at his Facebook updates, she’d let Sandra unfriend the bastard so Ree could try to move on with her life.

  It mostly worked, except for Facebook’s friend-of-a-friend update bullcrap, which dropped Jay into Ree’s feed again and again. Thanks, Zuckerberg.

  Drake wrapped up his story, leaving room for
Ree to respond. Over the year and change she’d known Drake, she’d learned to apply her server’s ability to partition her brain, listening and processing Drake’s stories while letting her mind wander. Which was particularly handy on patrols.

  And for seeing monsters.

  She reached out and grabbed Drake’s shoulder.

  “You see that?” she asked, deathly still. Something black and purple had flashed around the corner, catching on the setting winter sun.

  “I’m afraid not. Shall we?” he asked, hefting his not-umbrella.

  “We shall.”

  They moved carefully into the alley, walking shoulder-to-shoulder. Ree had one hand on her blaster, the other wrapped around her sideboard of cards.

  As they crossed into the alley, a purple-black panther looked down at them from the wall, three claws buried in the concrete. It hissed, then jumped.

  The two split apart, a practiced motion constrained by the limited size of the alley and by Ree’s extra layers of poof. She drew the blaster and shot, missing on the quick-draw. Drake backed off and brought his rifle up to a firing position.

  The panther hit the ground where they’d been standing not a second ago, and whirled in place, realizing that all of a sudden, it was flanked at ten and two. A true 180-degree flank was no good when firearms were involved, because Friendly Fire Isn’t.

  Ree unloaded another burst from her phaser, aiming down so a miss didn’t have the chance of randomly vaporizing a bystander across the street. The time it took to adjust the shot let the panther dodge, leaping at Drake. The adventurer tucked and rolled under the panther, the beast’s claws scraping along his reinforced coat without gaining purchase.

  Dropping the phaser, Ree pulled out her lightsaber and thumbed it on. In an instant, the metal-and-plastic prop hilt sprung to life, blue blade almost white in the weak light of winter. Ree cut forward in a figure-eight pattern, drawing the panther’s attention away from Drake. The monster leaped, sinking its claws into the wall. It turned in place and climbed horizontally. The creature bound across the ten-foot alleyway to the opposite side, then leaped over Ree’s head, twisting in the air, as if to land with all four paws in her back.