"You don't have to if you don't want to!" Tyson had hastily attempted to back out.
God! What have I done?
A low, growling chuckle escaped from King Henry, a spark in those plain brown eyes of his that were the color of dried mud. That spark, it was the same spark that drew Tyson to this . . . Dirt Devil. Again and again! Enough that I call him my friend now! A spark that promised chaos and excitement and nothing that had to do with manners or civilization, especially propriety. Instead it promised destruction and explosions and machine guns and fights where you were on the edge of death at any moment and my God, the way your heart beat in your chest and the speed at which your brain worked in your head all to keep you alive!
Tyson kept saying 'yes' to the Dirt Devil. Had just said 'yes' in fact. You want me to help you rebuild your Artificer shop after someone just firebombed it?
Tyson around any other person: Of course not! What would my father say if he found out I invested in a comic shop?
Tyson under the influence of King Henry: Of course I will! How much do you need?
“It was just a joke!”
Tyson couldn't even blame the Mancy, there being no links between electromancers and geomancers that he could decipher from any of the books on the Theory of Anima Personalization. It was just . . . inside of him. Somewhere under all the manners. That need to nod his head at the spark of mischief and danger. Let's do it, Dirt Devil!
Dirt Devil? Not a bad nickname, T-Bone. Can’t say it’s as good as Foul Mouth, but it’s not so bad. I mean, I’m not saying I ever want to be a titty, but if I was a titty, I’d definitely want to be a Double D titty, know what I mean?
No . . . I don’t!
Smaller titty just gets overlooked. Bigger titty just gets smashed all up inside a bra cuz the lard ass who owns it doesn’t want to admit they’re in the fatty zone. Double D is the perfect titty. Unless it belongs to Miranda Daniels, then it’s got freckles and the skin looks like it’s transparent with all them veins showing through. What a poor, poor titty.
. . . Not that I’ve ever actually seen it. Just imagining it, got it?
“Nah,” King Henry led with, making Tyson think that perhaps he had lucked out. Then his hopes were dashed, “Might have been a joke but it’s a good idea, don’t you think?”
“Uh . . .”
It’s a horrible idea!
Why did I say it?
What’s wrong with me?
“I mean, I’d invite you to meet my parents, but . . .”
Tyson knew that look of grief that crossed over King Henry’s face was mostly an act, but still . . . some weak, kindly, easily-manipulated part of Tyson said: he lost his mom! You should be nice to him! “No, that’s okay . . . I understand. If you . . . really want to . . . I mean . . . family dinner is always on Sunday.”
“Tomorrow then?”
“Uh . . .” Tyson considered how the week went together. Why did Sunday have to be tomorrow? One day notice for King Henry’s arrival at Tyson’s childhood home! Only one day for Tyson to somehow come up with a way to wiggle out of it!
“I ain’t busy, so don’t think you’re being inconsiderate of my schedule or nothing. Val’s in Brazil or some shit. Was just going to watch football and play with myself probably. Thinking about Val. In Brazil. Dressed up as one of them dancing carnival girls with feathers up their butts. Yummy.”
Tyson seized this glimmer of hope. “Oh, if you would rather do that instead, I completely understand. I wouldn’t want to—”
“What?” King Henry got mock affronted. “Nah, man, it’s fine. I’ll sacrifice a couple spanks and watching the Raiders lose to meet your folks. It’s the polite thing to do, ain’t it?”
Spark. Spark. Touch me and you get zapped, Tyson.
You touched and I’m zapping.
Still haven’t learned your lesson have you?
“But—”
“Nope. It’s decided. Tomorrow. Dinner. At your folks. What time should I get there? Where’s it even at? It okay I dress like this? I don’t like suits, man, but I do own a tuxedo now . . . got some blood on it that the cleaners never got all the way out, but you can barely even tell.”
Tyson looked over King Henry’s usual ensemble of jeans, a t-shirt, and an opened geomancer’s coat of rich brown fabric. It was all rumpled and very . . . lived in. No ironing at all. Not . . . presentable. You must be presentable, son. For yourself and for whoever happens to see you during the day. Your best face to show them who you are and what you believe in.
Tyson supposed that while it might not be his best face, what King Henry wore did show people who he was and what he believed in. Chaos in action! Death to civilization!
“It’s fine. Just . . . clean ones?”
“Sure thing, man! Anything for your folks!”
Oh God . . . this can’t be happening.
“Don’t worry; I’ll be on my best behavior.”
The wild grin on King Henry’s face said otherwise.
Mostly because even King Henry’s best behavior wasn’t good.
*
“I have done a horrible, horrible, horrible, very stupid, not-good thing!” Tyson yelled into his phone a few minutes later.
He had attempted to leave King Henry’s Artificer shop—now being reconstructed for the second time in a year, thanks to a booby trap causing a fire—quickly, while forgetting to leave his parents’ address for King Henry.
But King Henry hadn’t given him an opening for this sudden, face-saving lapse in memory.
He even made Tyson show him the address on Google Maps. Made Tyson click ‘street view’ so King Henry would immediately recognize the house while driving by it. “Wow, that’s a nice place there,” King Henry commented. “You grow up there too? Before the Asylum?”
“Partly. We moved in a couple years before,” Tyson found himself answering in a sort of numb haze. How could I be so careless? Why did it just slip out? He screamed inside his own head. Outwardly, he faked not being totally freaked out, “I also lived there for three years after I graduated . . . before I made enough to afford my own place. I . . . I think of it as home.”
King Henry Price is going to be inside my mom’s living room. The room with all her antique teapots in it. He’s going to have a thirty-minute-pool because he always has a thirty-minute-pool nowadays. Thirty-minute-pools that spray stray anima all over the place if you try to split them.
What could possibly go wrong?
Tyson wasn’t quite sure what to think about their discoveries on anima and how the teachers had kept the skills away from the graduate students. He wasn’t nearly as optimistic as King Henry was about it all. They were dangerous. Especially this new skill of holding a pool after you let a piece of it loose.
As a good student and someone who craved understanding, Tyson was interested in experimenting. But he also felt the teachers and the Learning Council had their reasons for keeping the skills away from them until they were older, more experienced, and in some cases: more mature. The little I’ve been able to get out of King Henry about his argument with Miss Dale makes it seem like they will train us eventually. So they aren’t completely hiding it from us . . . just making sure we’re smart enough to live long enough to use it correctly.
Older and wiser.
Two things that King Henry would never wait for . . . and might never ever be.
“Ain’t that sweet,” King Henry said about the house. “Look at that patio . . . and a pool . . . and it’s got a porch. Shit . . . it’s like five minutes away from the Fresno Vampire Embassy too. Think we should drop by after dinner and say ‘howdy’ to all the sun-fuckers out there?”
“Don’t even joke about that, please”
It was an open point of debate over which of the two had taken the experience in Los Angeles worse. Tyson wasn’t used to being attacked by vampires and Annie B knocking him unconscious wasn’t a pleasant memory, but King Henry . . . he seemed shaken by it all. Tyson could only make semi-educated guesses
at some of what they had heard while they were spying. King Henry seemed to understand more of it.
And just like Miss Dale, he’s not sharing. But does he see the hypocrisy? No!
Tyson was left to guess for the most part. Other than Mr. Root working for this Divine Inanina. Tyson had a hard time believing that, but the evidence was obvious. Unless he’s spying for the Learning Council somehow, but . . . that seems unlikely. There had been much more than Root. Words and phrases and revelations that had caused the horrible fight between Ceinwyn Dale and King Henry. Something about dragons and realms . . . and a World-Breaker . . . I’m pretty sure that’s the earthquake artifact he keeps hidden in the floor. I know that much.
After King Henry broke all contact with Miss Dale, Tyson had felt compelled to do the same. “I’m his friend. When it was to help keep him safe and he didn’t mind it . . . even then, this was never right. I won’t report to you any more, Miss Dale, not unless you mend fences with King Henry. Is it so difficult to give him a little of what he wants? Just . . . this is all so silly! He wants to trust you! Give him a reason!”
It had been over the phone and still Tyson saw ageless blue eyes judging his words. The silence was almost cutting. There had been very little of her usual playfulness with him. Just cold, calm judgment that made the woman seem . . . divine, not mortal. Eventually she said, “This whole time I’ve been helping him, Tyson. Trying to give him the tidbits he seeks while keeping him as safe as I could and now . . . no, it’s too much, too fast. Maybe that was my original mistake . . . thinking I could protect him from it, thinking I could save him some of the pain and control his usual drive for secret knowledge all the way until it was legal. Bending the rules, Tyson. Not crushing them. No. This is too important to give in over some childish pouting. Better he learns that there are lines you can’t cross with me, instead of with one of the Divines. It will hurt him, but . . . I’ll be there to pick up the pieces. Better broken pieces than nothing but dust in the wind.”
Stubborn, the both of them. Why can’t they see they both have good points in the argument and find a middle ground they can both live with? “I know whatever was said hurt both of you and I don’t want to choose a side,” Tyson hedged, “But if it’s him or you . . . and someone has to keep an eye out for him. Even if it’s under my own volition this time.”
A laugh . . . a quick ‘ha!’ that barked hard through the phone. “Keep him safe then, Tyson . . . if you can. I wish you more success than I had at it.”
She hung up.
“Well . . . at least she didn’t yell at me,” Tyson said to dead air.
How did I go from LA, to that conversation with Miss Dale, to partnering with King Henry, to him coming to my parents’ house?
“Horrible, very stupid, not-good thing!” Tyson yelled one last time.
The person on the other end of the phone gave a little hum of thought.
“Not-good thing! Save me!”
“Well, at the very least this explains the text I just received from my boyfriend,” Valentine Ward finally spoke.
“Save me! You’re the only one who can save me!” Tyson pleaded.
Valentine Ward was King Henry’s girlfriend. Tyson wasn’t sure how, but both of them admitted to the relationship and even seemed to enjoy the relationship, maybe even were better for the relationship. If you took King Henry and created a significant other for him then Valentine Ward was the last person you would craft for such a challenging—and often lecherous—creature.
Valentine was a brilliant woman; a powerful Firestarter, self-confident, in-charge, and quite friendly as well. She was blond but not blue-eyed, tall but not waifish, and . . . well . . . very attractive. She could have her pick of any man on the planet really and many a man would happily pick her as well, if they could beat back the competition. Yet given this vast choice, she had chosen King Henry Price.
Lots of women did.
It confused Tyson.
He spent long hours ruminating on the why and how of it.
King Henry talked about Valentine as if she was some type of goddess. She was impressive and Tyson quite liked her, but he often wondered about Valentine’s strange mixed personality, where approachability warred with an almost cruel casual aloofness at times. It was very hard to get a feel for her and even harder to pierce her exterior into some real emotion. Almost as if she feared those connections, feared getting too close, and played it all off with likability and friendliness and . . .
Valentine often felt more like a force of nature than a person and Tyson wondered what that did to the actual real person at the center of the storm. If one day they wouldn’t just . . . break under the strain of being. If they could really keep existing as they were. As King Henry often told Tyson . . . the universe was a very evil place. Could something as positive as Valentine Ward survive it for long?
And what will it do to King Henry if she doesn’t?
Tyson hoped he was on another continent if that day ever materialized.
Force of nature or not, Valentine Ward had a very real job as a Recruiter, working for Miss Dale attempting to find potential mancers across the face of the world. She was a star pupil, a Recruiter on the rise, and this fact was the largest point of conflict between King Henry and Valentine. The argument in London hasn’t helped. Boyfriend on one side, mentor on the other.
Still . . . she understood the ball of rage and repression that was King Henry Price and could handle him better than anyone else, just as King Henry seemed to be one of the few people on the planet that could pierce that unknowable shell to see inside Valentine Ward. It all worked . . . broken though it was.
Tyson tried to handle King Henry at times and occasionally he stopped wars and murders and thefts, but for general mischief he had never been able to dissuade King Henry from having a bit of fun. Valentine could though . . . if she wanted to. Infuriatingly enough . . . she often didn’t want to. She could control him, but she didn’t. She only did when he overstepped himself and actually hurt someone in his rush to chaos.
What kind of girlfriend doesn’t try to control what you do even a little bit? Tyson thought before catching himself. That was horribly sexist! King Henry must be influencing me! First the question! Now this!
What’s happening to my life?
Why did King Henry and Miss Dale have to fight?
Why does Valentine have to be in Brazil?
Why do I have to live in Fresno?
What is the meaning of life?
The Universe?
Everything?
“Tyson, you need to calm down,” Valentine said slowly and with a very soothing tone. “You sound like you’re about to hyperventilate . . . or have an asthma attack.”
Tyson pulled his inhaler out of his pocket and took a couple puffs.
“Feeling better?”
He put his inhaler away. “All I feel like is a geek stereotype.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“Unless King Henry is around.”
“He’d bring it up and make you admit the foolishness of the situation, but I doubt there would be any malice in it, there almost never is. Unless a bully is involved . . .”
Tyson considered this. Mostly true, although he wondered if perhaps just like King Henry placed Valentine on a pedestal, if maybe Valentine didn’t see King Henry’s actions as far more noble than they often were.
“Would you care to explain something?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“What does ‘T-Bone made a huge fucking mistake, gonna teach him a lesson about the unintended consequences of good manners tomorrow night’ mean?”
“I’m going to throw up,” Tyson said instead.
“I’m sure that whatever is happening, it will be fine.”
“We signed the business contract for my buy-in . . . I . . . I invited him to meet my family since we’re partners now.”
“Is that all?”
Is that all? King Henry Price meeting my parents? King He
nry Price in my childhood room with the . . . this is disaster!!!
.
.
.
“Did I say all that out loud?”
“Yes.”
“I apologize.”
“Tyson,” Valentine tried soothing once again, “You’ve known him for two years. Yes, he has pushed you into situations that were dangerous. He’s always doing that, but . . . we come out of them, don’t we? We always worry about him embarrassing us and he always surprises us with the outcome.
“I was scared about him meeting my family too, so scared that I put off going to him when he was the first person I should have asked to talk with Christmas. Maybe if I had, then all that mess with the Curator might have been avoided, since she would have been enrolled at the Asylum when she was supposed to be.”
“Then you wouldn’t have found the three mancer kids. Or found out about him stealing mancer kids so the Recruiters could be on the lookout. And without the adrenaline of all the action you probably wouldn’t have . . . become a couple.”
Valentine laughed at that. She had a great laugh. It was more inclusive than the rest of her. Like a ray of sunshine peeking out of a cloud. At its sound, the unknowable became known . . . just before it was all forgotten again. “Playing What If probably isn’t a good idea with that bit of adventure.”
“I’d rather have more Coyotes with machine guns than King Henry at my house,” Tyson admitted.
“It was a bit rough at the start for me, but it did turn out okay. Better than okay. Even my mom approves of him. Though I do have to keep hearing her stories about guys with motorcycles . . . it’s damaging my psyche a little bit every time she brings it up.”
Tyson tried to imagine his mother having a conversation with King Henry about . . . science or history or . . . British Mysteries. “I don’t think I have to worry about that.”
“See, it’ll be fine.”
“Please save me,” Tyson begged one last time.
*
Tyson arrived at his parents’ house three hours early for dinner.
King Henry Short Pack One (The King Henry Tapes) Page 17