by Scott Duff
A man in white with a large red plus sign emblazoned on the back came running up with a large orange tackle box. Dropping the box, he dropped to his knees beside her, flipped open the box, grabbed a pair of rounded scissors, and hurriedly cut away her bloody shirt. He washed the wound with water from a squirt bottle, scrunching his face at the lack of damage to explain her condition. The wound was a long but minor cut. He bandaged it quickly then pulled out a stethoscope and stopped. There was no way in MacNamara’s green realm that he could hear her heart or lungs through that thing right then. We still couldn’t hold even a yelled conversation over the crowd. He’d have to trust his magic or other methods. We left him to it.
A warden stood before Kieran and beckoned so we followed. He led us off the field and back to the locker room we occupied the few minutes before the, well, before the battle. My ears were ringing all the way back.
“So what’ll we do now?” Peter asked. He sort of yawned, cocking his jaw to one side, then the other. I had no idea what he was trying to do with his face there.
“Wait to be congratulated,” Kieran said cheerfully. “But I have no idea what the elf’s humor will be. I kind of feel like we cheated.”
“What did you do to them, anyway?” I asked him, getting a mug of water from the table near the door.
“Basically electrocuted them. Just a few seconds, long enough to keep them out for a while,” Kieran said. Deciding he was hungry, he headed to the table, too. Ethan and Peter found an uncomfortable bench and sat, content for the moment.
A knock at the door forewarned MacNamara’s arrival by a half-second as he stormed into the room like a silk hurricane. MacNamara, alone, stopped in front of Kieran as he calmly bit into the sandwich he’d just finished putting together.
Granted, I didn’t have much experience with elves, but when MacNamara spoke, he spoke in the lowest tone I’ve heard an elf speak. It sounded ominous to me until I processed the actual words.
“In all the years I have spent hosting the games here, that by far is the shortest, least violent, and funniest of finals I have ever seen.”
“Thank you. It was Seth’s idea,” Kieran said equably. He was still quite happy about not having to kill everyone.
The elf laughed and it hurt. The pitch drove in through our skulls and down our backbones and really, really hurt. The Stone quickly threw up sound baffles for me, relieving the pain, and I replicated the shield pattern around the others as quickly as I realized what happened, hopefully in time to save an eardrum or two.
“How,” gasped MacNamara between fits of giggles, “How did you do it?”
“It was a simple energy manipulation,” Kieran said humbly. “Seth merely noted that most combatants waited until the contest was well under way before protecting themselves. He thought we might take advantage of that and strike first. It appears that was an intelligent consideration.”
MacNamara thought about it for a moment. “The spell you used required knowing where they were.”
“Yes,” responded Kieran, taking another bite of his sandwich. When Shrank did this to him in the garage, he threatened the pixie’s life.
“How did you know where they were through the barrier?” MacNamara asked suspiciously.
“Didn’t you?” I asked, trying to draw the elf away from Kieran.
“Yes,” he answered curtly, turning to me. “But I watched them from the moment they entered the field to the second they carted the last man off on a stretcher.”
“We lost interest once they fell down,” I said, shrugging.
“How?” he asked more insistently.
“I apologize, Lord MacNamara,” I said as formally as possibly, standing straight and bowing slightly to him. “I don’t know how to answer that question more completely without sounding tremendously sarcastic. We merely looked and they were there.” He didn’t want to believe me, but he couldn’t see a way around it without outright calling me on it. It was too simple an explanation for him. Behind him, Kieran was having a hard time holding back his own snickers at the exchange. We’d be in serious trouble if he could read our auras.
A knock at the door relieved the pressure when an agent of MacNamara came in with Ferrin in tow. MacNamara brightened a touch at the sight of the black-clad bleached-blonde. Ferrin tried to exude the same sneering self-confidence he had on the day we met, but he didn’t quite make it across the bridge from “Oh my God, these guys can squash me like bug!” mode yet. It was a reasonable cover, nothing obvious and on the surface, but he was definitely nervous to be around all of us by himself.
“Ah, Mr. Ferrin, good of you to join us,” cooed the elf. “I thought perhaps we could all go out together for the final presentations. This way, gentlemen…”
It was a good thing none of us objected to leaving because he wouldn’t have heard us—he was halfway down the hall before we stood up and we had to jog to catch up with his nearly eight foot lankiness. Not that any of us objected. All of us wanted this done and over with, including Ferrin.
And this was indicative of the next several hours. After the, to me, surprisingly short award ceremony in which we received an elegantly scripted announcement of our accomplishment and a short stack of bearer bonds drawn on a Swiss bank. Ferrin received a similar compensation package with his presentation. It was all very quick and the elf whisked us away through the cheering crowds.
MacNamara kept us running from one gathering to another, showing the five of us off like prize-winning poodles. Kieran kept Ferrin in front of us the whole time, mistrusting him still. He needn’t have bothered. Ferrin’s attitude and energy level deflated with each change of party, growing sullen by the fourth. Couldn’t blame him. I was pretty bored, too. Occasionally, Peter would greet someone by name and I saw two people I’d seen with my parents but didn’t know their names.
Roughly three hours later, we stopped outside our apartment without warning. On the balcony, Shrank waited for us atop a small bundle of clean laundry. The brownies had laundered our clothes for us. All of our belongings, mostly our cell phones, sat in small piles next to them where Shrank had collected them.
“Unless you’d prefer to stay the night…?” suggested MacNamara, trilling a little high on the last word. The second, orange iris in his eyes flared slightly when he said that, putting me on edge and making me sort of itch all over. Ferrin was relieved at the thought that this was over and he’d be leaving, too. He perked up considerably, got downright cheerful even.
“While we appreciate the offer, your Grace, the young ones have been away from their homes long enough already,” Kieran responded, smiling broadly. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but it sounded condescending, like babies needing their blankies.
“Should we change?” I asked, eyeing my stack of belongings and noticing the more casual silks on the bottom of each stack.
“If you desire,” MacNamara purred. “But you may keep the clothing provided to you. I’m certain your Master would prefer it be destroyed lest it fall into the wrong hands.”
“Just so, your Grace,” Kieran said, bowing his head slightly and smiling.
We passed through the gate and grabbed our stuff while he talked to the elf. Shrank hopped onto my shoulder, going as invisible as possible as well as leaning as far back as he could, almost hanging off my neck. He was still nervous of MacNamara’s attention.
The mad trek through the Arena began again seconds after we filed in behind Kieran. The contrast now was amazing: everyone was gone but us, everyone. There wasn’t a soul left in the entire Arena that I could see. The elf led us through a door into darkness and quickly through to another door out onto the wide promenade outside.
The grounds were completely empty, too. Not one tent or pavilion still stood and no evidence of them existing prior but minor bare spots on the ground in some places. Not one piece of litter of any kind marred the grass or roads. MacNamara’s cleaning and maintenance crews were phenomenal. A canvas rucksack sat on the left of the road on the
fourth ring. Ferrin snatched it up without slowing down and slung it over his shoulder. MacNamara had us through his front gate in moments.
Ferrin stepped forward at the elf’s gesture toward the fuzzy portal opening just past the gate. He turned to the elf and said, “It has been an honor, Lord MacNamara.” Then he turned and walked into the portal, vanishing from sight.
“He will be an interesting one to watch,” MacNamara said as he turned to us. “As I would say of you, but you make that very difficult to do.”
“As do you, Lord,” Kieran said smiling.
The elf trilled a giggle at him. “But I’m hardly worth watching in my little fiefdom of Faery.”
“As if you never step outside its bounds,” Kieran chastised the elf lightly.
“Fare thee well, Ehran McClure,” MacNamara said, gesturing to the shimmering doorway, giggling. “Until we meet again.”
“Farewell, Lord Elf,” Kieran said, politely half-bowing himself. He was talking to himself, though. MacNamara had vanished. He let out a heavy sigh of relief. “Let’s go home, boys.”
MacNamara’s door opened at the front of the fake hardware store. My car sat in the parking lot, untouched except by a light coating of dust and pollen. My key remote wouldn’t open the doors and none of the phones would power up, but once I unlocked the car with the key and Peter changed the batteries in the phones with the backups from his briefcase, everything started up without a hitch. The phones couldn’t get a signal at the time, but the car’s clock read a few minutes after noon. We changed out of the green silks into our cleaned street clothes and started for home.
Chapter 29
The trip home was uneventful, just long. We couldn’t skip through space like we did before; Peter and Kieran needed the phone time. Between attorneys, accountants, and bankers, we needed as much of a head start as we could get. Our biggest stumbling block was going to be papers for Kieran and Ethan, but Peter assured us that we’d have everything we needed for that by Monday. Having never done anything illegal before, I just nodded and kept driving. For the sake of the papers, they decided to make Kieran his own son and Ethan his brother, making the whole ordeal seem incestuous. Thankfully, there wasn’t a need to create backstory for paperwork, but it did make me wonder if the whole stereotype of Southerners marrying close relatives wasn’t really the work of magic users covering their tracks poorly.
They were able to get an amazing amount of work done over the phone. Mr. Borland had already started a number of legal matters that basically needed our permission and statements to proceed on. Ethan set up several different accounts through money transfers on one of the laptops using the accounts and passwords Colbert’s records supplied for us. At this point, we weren’t particularly worried with covering our tracks so much as getting the job done. We really needed to get out of the country as quickly as possible. We ate lunch on the road, mainly because it gave us the opportunity to skip through some distance and get closer to home.
Once we pulled through the ward at the edge of the property, the now-familiar tingle of awareness flowed over me and I relaxed. It felt like home.
We only had a week here though. Ireland sounded a siren’s call and so did the attorneys in New York. The weekend was a little lazy since we couldn’t get any business done, but that didn’t stop Kieran from pressing us into drills. He taught Peter to see in truth and both of us several different chameleon spells that would hide us even further from prying eyes in the mundane world. By Monday morning, he and Ethan had taught us two more levels of their martial art form. I wouldn’t say we were proficient at those levels, but they built on each other and like the first levels, you knew when you got it right. It felt right when you did.
Somehow, Peter had managed to get passports for both Ehran and Ethan delivered to the house on Monday. By Wednesday morning, we were flying out of Huntsville for New York to meet with the attorneys. We’d been going back and forth with them over the phone since last Wednesday so this was a formality of signing contracts and a half million other documents. It also helped immensely that Peter’s father met us there.
The plane trip was the first time the four of us had flown commercially and we were all nervous. I’d never seen a problem before—my parents flew fairly often, at least I thought they did—but now that I knew our “sparks” could interfere with the plane, I worried more. The trip to New York was our chance to experiment on minimizing the risks.
According to Mr. Borland, mages eschewed flight in general as being too risky. More than a few planes have dropped from the sky, causing more damage and loss of life on the non magical side. We could generally protect ourselves from the fall, it seemed. Those that flew often had smaller, specially designed planes with redundant systems and experienced pilots. The cabins were heavily lined with crystals to collect any errant energy discharges. Still, there were times even that wasn’t enough, and we didn’t have the time to learn other ways to get to another continent. We had to rely on mass transit.
Ethan came up with an idea to try on the New York leg of the trip: a Faraday cage. It was a simple idea that would keep the two of us tied up the whole time, but the advantage of keeping everyone alive far outweighed keeping us in conversations. He’d scout ahead of us and map out our flight plan and I would adjust the field around the plane as we went. With enough practice, we might even be able to do this in the future with more ease, too. The short hop to New York was a little too short to let me feel completely comfortable about the experience, though, but it worked fine that time.
It was a shocked reunion at the attorney’s office. Pulling us into a conference room, Mr. Borland stared at his son for some time in disbelief. Peter hadn’t changed physically, but he wasn’t visible to his father anymore. That had to be disturbing to Mr. Borland. Peter had been preparing him for it over the phone, but the reality of it was still difficult, almost like his son had turned into a zombie. To top it off, he was seeing his son change from “I don’t know what to do with my life” to business mogul and power player. Peter was quite suddenly part of a team that won a major magical contest. Something Mr. Borland knew personally was tremendously dangerous. Not to mention he’d almost died. Now he was about to sign papers that would incorporate him into a multimillion-dollar company. Mr. Borland was a miasma of conflicting emotions, but happiness for his son won out.
Both Borlands beamed in pride as Peter introduced Kieran as Ehran to his father, then Ethan. Mr. Borland was on pins and needles by the time I came round. Nervous, obviously, he gave in to his wants and crushed me in a bear hug, whispering in my ear, “You boys had me so scared.”
“Us, too,” I said, softly, hugging him back. “I wouldn’t have made it without Peter.”
He pulled back, smiling disarmingly at me. “The way you look out for him, I have no worries now.”
A knock at the door interrupted further conversation and started the barrage of attorneys. They were actually from two different firms, one agreeing to meet at the other’s office due to our schedules. I’m sure there was a hefty fee on the bill for it, too. It was during the second wave of contract signing that Shrank made his presence known to the room.
Ethan’s cell phone rang as he flipped through incorporation contracts, not really reading them, since we’d read through them before. But there were two things particularly odd about Ethan’s cell phone ringing—first, everyone that would be calling Ethan was sitting at the table with him, and second, Ethan didn’t have a cell phone on him. He looked up confused, but the attorneys paid no attention to it. He excused himself from the table and fumbled around with his pants pocket in the corner, faking a phone call. Shrank chirped in his ear. From the table, we couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Ethan came back to the table and started pulling the contract apart separating pages in front of him into piles. “Wow, when you are right, you are right,” he muttered.
“No, these will not do,” Ethan said, more loudly. “At no time will control of the finances and a
ccounts be unavailable to any of the executive members. We agreed on that some time ago. There are several exclusions in the language here. There are several other loopholes that need to be closed as well.”
“Does that strike all of these?” I asked, looking down transfer agreements I was about to sign and thinking about the ones I’d already done. Could I undo all that?
“Maybe not,” muttered the attorney, Steadman was his name, pulling a slim laptop out of his briefcase. “What are you objecting to?” His secretary stepped out of the room and came back a moment later with two other women. One stayed by the door while the other two went to stand ready for the attorney. Apparently, he brought the file up with a few quick taps because he stood and went to stand beside Ethan. The secretary quickly took his place, ready to type. I watched the ballet while I continued to sign transfers that matched our plans. Everything I had was correct.
Ethan pointed out the first of the language he wanted changed and even gave a suggestion for changing it. Steadman used almost exactly the same verbiage, changing only two phrases. He was extremely apologetic when he changed it but pointed out the same language used in several places, saying it was the preferred style. He didn’t see that Ethan really didn’t care—he was channeling a pixie anyway, and even then, Shrank didn’t care.
He worked hard to redeem himself by showing how well he knew the contract. He and his secretary rewrote it while he and Ethan talked. They jumped back and forth through the document citing page and line numbers to each other fairly quietly. They tweaked a few other places as well as removing completely one unsalvageable section. They started it printing somewhere and the secretary by the door left. Ten minutes later, she was back with freshly printed contracts for Ethan to read. An hour long bump in the road.