by Scott Duff
I finally spotted Shrank poking around Ethan’s shoulder, reading. I could see him, but I had to be looking. He’d been moving around the room till then and I hadn’t thought about it until he played cell phone. Peter was right about Shrank making a pretty good spy. I just don’t think I could send him out alone into someplace he could get hurt. It just didn’t make sense to me.
I handed the stack of papers to the man standing behind me and Kieran handed me the stack he’d just finished signing. And the round continued. My cell phone rang and pointed out an incorrect account number in a transfer from Kieran to me. I voided the check, circling the account number, and passed it back to Kieran who passed it back to the man behind him who started his own ballet of corrections.
All in all, it was an amazing amount of paperwork with few mistakes that were handled with grace and professionalism. And how Shrank kept up with it all, I had no idea. I don’t think I have ever been that bored in my entire life. And my hand was cramping. The order that things were done in totally confused me, too. For instance, we had to show identification over halfway through the paperwork. The guy who did it looked over everyone’s passports and driver’s licenses very carefully, and knew enough to demand the emancipation documents from me for the contract signing and access to my parent’s money. He took noticeably longer on both Kieran’s and Ethan’s. But he didn’t find fault in Peter’s forgeries. Well, I wasn’t really sure they were forgeries. They were just brand new. Who could say anything about that? He wanted to but signed off on the necessary document and left.
The attorney parade dwindled to nothing and Peter and his dad huddled on one side of the table going over notes and lists. The rest of us got up and stretched. Shrank came out of hiding when it was just the five of us. “Good job on spotting those mistakes, Shrank,” Kieran said, yawning. The pixie literally buzzed and glowed at the compliment.
“Dinner?” asked Mr. Borland of Peter, leaning back in his chair.
“Sure,” agreed Peter, “I think we can finish up over dinner. Anyone want to join us?”
“Yeah, I’ll tag along for safety’s sake,” said Ethan. “And it’ll give the brothers a little alone time.”
A secretary stuck her head in the door looking puzzled, and said, “Did you need me, Mr. Borland?”
“Yes, Edith,” he responded, “Could you order three cars for us, please?”
I turned to gather my belongings and realized I came in with a slim briefcase and was leaving with five large cardboard boxes of copies of documents and no place to keep them. “We signed all of this?” I asked, a little flabbergasted by the volume.
“Oh, no,” said Mr. Borland. “A good deal of that is supporting documentation in addition to what you signed today. I’ll be taking it with me to Alabama when I start setting up your offices for you. You’ll have to decide what to do with it when you get back, though. I’m just helping out while you search for Robert.”
“I didn’t realize you were doing that much,” I said, turning to Mr. Borland. “How can we ever thank you?”
“By doing your best to keep my son alive,” he said with a smile. “Now let’s go get dinner, shall we?”
We filed out of the room that had been our prison for the last nine hours and down through the high rise building. Mr. Borland stopped in the lobby of the office and spoke quietly with Edith for a few moments, thanking her for staying so long into the evening for us. Then he insisted that she walk down with us so that she wasn’t leaving alone. There were three cars waiting for us on the street once we got down there. Mr. Borland put Edith in the first and sent her on her way, then Peter, Ethan, and he got in the second, Kieran and I, the third. It was a quiet ride back to the hotel. Shrank had either been left at the attorney’s or gone with Ethan and Peter. He’d faded into the woodwork around Edith.
Once we were safely ensconced in the suite and our dinner ordered from room service, I let the day’s activity settle and weariness hit. Kieran’s pensive mood seemed to break a little.
“Ethan’s right. We haven’t spent any time together, have we?” he asked.
“There really hasn’t been that much time,” I said, looking up from the television.
“Yeah, but I know more about you through Ethan than I do through you,” he complained.
“Are you sure about that?” I asked him. “Or do you just know more facts about me through Ethan. There’s a difference there, you know.”
The elevator opening down the hall caught my attention briefly. I hadn’t realized my attention was so stretched. A room service attendant pushed a cart out of the elevator and toward our room. I started to get hungry.
“I guess you’re right,” Kieran said as the attendant knocked on the door. I ushered her in and let her set the cart up, signing the check with barely a scribble. We sat down to eat our dinner.
“Why is it that you and Ethan seem so much more powerful than anyone else,” I asked. “I mean, you got the Queens of Faery to back down in front of MacNamara, Cahill, and Florian. They were all shocked at that.”
I felt Kieran push against the room, exerting a small amount of power, blocking sound from traveling outward and sealing the room. It was an interesting effect.
“The Queens think that I still hold the Pact,” said Kieran, glancing up at me. “Therefore, they think that I still hold the knowledge of how to destroy them.”
Oh. Well. I had no idea what that meant. Definitely got the implication though.
“The Pact holds the history of the Elves from their beginning to the Great War,” said Kieran. “It has a great many secrets within it, but chief among them is the key to the defeat of the elves. It is an interesting dichotomy that the Queens both do and do not want the Pact destroyed.”
“If it’s the key to their demise,” I asked, “why do they even know about it?”
“They were at its inception,” he said smoothly. “And they are bound by the Original Geas to not speak of it to others. Both Queendoms would fall instantly if they did. Not even the wild Fae would live through the energy of the binding break.”
“That’s harsh,” I said, awed by the severity.
“Trust me when I say they deserve worse,” Kieran said. “You will understand better when you look into the Pact. But understand that they are truly an alien race. Their beliefs and morals do not follow the same structures that ours do, regardless of how similar they appear to us.”
I nodded as if I understood, filing the statement away for when I did actually pierce the veil on that roiling mass of information sitting in my cavern. I was more in awe of it now than before. Millennia of history were stored in a ball in my head. Freaky.
“Still, you and Ethan seem to control your magic so much more easily than even the elves,” I said.
“Oh, you mean much like you are doing,” he said, chuckling. I looked up at him, confused. “You haven’t noticed how you are doing so much instinctively? Just by moving energy around? By what ‘feels’ right?”
I nodded. We’d covered this before and I wasn’t going to keep up the argument that I hadn’t really done anything.
“Magicians, sorcerers, witches,” he said, “whatever word or style of magic used, are products of the universe at large. Through whatever mechanism, these people can control certain aspects of the magic planes. They use metaphors that their minds and souls can manage to control these energies in whatever way they can. In general, their connections to magic are tenuous and slight. Elves are more closely connected and are more able to deal with it. You are closer, still. Ethan and I stand on the planes, me through training and Ethan through what he is.”
“And this is what you’re teaching to us?” I asked.
“Well, I will definitely teach you,” he answered, “We don’t know yet how much Peter will be able to learn.” My head snapped up at that and I nearly choked on cauliflower. “I’m not putting Peter down. If anything, I am chastising Ethan. He should not have progressed so quickly with you. It was quite dangerous, what he
taught you. It saved my life, but it was still dangerous to you.” He looked me in the eye when he said this, clearly making sure I understood what he was saying.
“What did he teach me, then?” I asked. “I really don’t remember him doing much of anything or me doing anything really.”
“Words,” he answered. “That’s one way of looking at it, as words. Or as etchings onto the fabric of reality. Or as twisting of energy into reality. He taught you to see below the froth that dimensions make as they grind together to form worlds. Of course, he couldn’t have taught it at all if you couldn’t do it in the first place. He saw the potential in you and took a desperate move, which obviously I’m quite grateful for.”
“So, what? You give me a dictionary and I become super wizard in a few weeks?” I asked.
He laughed, “Not quite so simply. It took me a long time to come close to mastering the art. After all, words are just sounds and sounds are just vibrations of molecules in a medium. Speaking in Des’Ra’El’s tongue is much more.” The three syllables of the name resonated through me—mind, body and soul.
“Who is that?” I asked, awed by the feeling.
“He was my teacher,” Kieran said, softly. He had a faraway look in his eyes now, somewhat lost in reverie. “But that was a long time ago.” He sighed and brought himself back, smiling. “I’ll tell you more about him later in Ireland, when we can have a more isolated chamber. There are some things that need to be said quietly in the universe and his story is without a doubt one of those.”
“He sounds like quite a man,” I said, trying to keep his melancholy to a minimum.
“Oh, he was not a man,” Kieran snorted. “Definitely not a man, but later is better.”
He changed the subject then, asking me about places my parents took me to around the world, places we’d seen in common, others we didn’t. The conversation degenerated into aimlessness but it lasted for hours. Peter and Ethan came in with Shrank and joined us for another hour. We all headed for bed around two with a wake-up call set for seven. All in all, it was a good day for all of us.
Chapter 30
The next morning, we had breakfast with Mr. Borland then left for the airport. We allocated plenty of time to process through Customs, and it would have been enough even with the lines at that time of day, but we got singled out for, well, let’s be honest, we were on a “list.” And that meant “pick on us.” Peter was already reaching for his cell phone to call attorneys when a cookie-cutter-dressed Marshal lightly touched his arm and said, “Please, Mr. Borland, this really isn’t as it seems. If you would accompany me, we’ll have you on your way to Ireland shortly.”
Peter glared at him for a moment through heavy-lidded eyes then nodded once, keeping his phone in his hand. I felt a light flutter of air on my neck that told me Shrank had moved to me for support and safety. I raised my body sense to include him so I wouldn’t squish him by just moving. A steward loaded our luggage onto a cart for us then the blue suit led us through an unmarked door and into a warren of hallways. At one juncture, he had the steward stay behind and moved us another turn down a hall and knocked on a door, entering without waiting for a response.
We were greeted by the most unwelcome sight of Deputy Harris seated at the long conference table in the room. He looked up as we came in, his anxiety level doubled and redoubled almost instantly. To his right sat Señor Florian with two Hispanic men and a woman, all dressed in expensive business suits and all quite a bit more relaxed than Harris. Everyone in the room wore identification badges with Florian and his group showing diplomatic markings and Harris’ group showing US Marshal identifications. Florian rose quickly.
“Gentlemen, I had not expected to see you again so quickly,” he said to us, smiling broadly and moving around the table to shake our hands. “Please allow me to introduce you to Carlos Madero, Porfiro Huerta, and Maria Calla. Mr. Huerta will be traveling with us today. It is a pleasure to see you all again!”
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, too, Diego, but, traveling with us…?” Kieran asked, head tilted slightly.
“Yes, well, it appears that our mutual acquaintance,” said Florian, sweeping his hand back to indicate Harris, “learned only this morning the specifics of your travel plans. At that point, he realized that you probably don’t recognize the dangers of air travel for people of our persuasion and felt it necessary to step in and be accommodating.”
“Didn’t we have this exact conversation a week ago?” Ethan asked grinning and looking at Peter.
“Yes, I do believe we did. It was the day we discovered Seth’s aura had disappeared,” Peter answered. “And now that you mention it, I see what you mean by ‘sparks.’”
“‘Sparks’?” Harris said his first word. We ignored him.
“Do I still give off as much as before?” Peter asked Ethan.
“No, you don’t, come to think of it,” Ethan said, looking at Peter intently. “You’re actually very tight and controlled now.”
“What ‘sparks’?” Harris asked again. He was getting frustrated, not used to being ignored, I’m sure.
“Conflicts between a wizard’s innate energy presentation and the normal universe,” I said calmly. “It manifests to us as sparks.”
“Why can’t I see these things?” he asked.
“It suggests that there is a difference between the astral plane and the energy plane,” I countered, “and you can’t see onto the energy planes. Just a thought, though, seeing as I’m just a ‘prentice.” I smiled just a little for him on that.
He glowered a bit and scribbled something in a little notebook he had open on the table to his left. A southpaw, I noticed. Señora Calla made a similar note.
“In any event,” said Florian, stealing back control of the conversation. “Mr. Harris has gone to some trouble to make your travel easier, providing Diplomatic Passports and, at least for this trip, a private jet with a specialized cabin that has dampening features that soften the difficulties and dangers of intercontinental flights.”
At the end of the table, facing us sat four new passports. As new as the ones we already had for Kieran and Ethan, anyway, except these had us as part of the Diplomatic Corps of the State Department. Peter looked at his without picking it up.
“I’m a Canadian citizen, Mr. Harris,” he said simply.
“And now you have Diplomatic status with your government and dual citizenship with mine,” Harris said. “It is a very complicated arrangement, Mr. Borland, not at all similar to your father’s. One of your seven attorneys, Mr. Cruz I believe, has been notified of it and its National Security classification. Please feel free to contact him. There are no strings attached to this, gentlemen. I just don’t want a 747 going down in the Atlantic Ocean and contrary to many indications, I do not want you as enemies. For very obvious reasons.”
Ethan smirked as we picked up the passports and clipped the id badges to our shirts. Harris didn’t appear to be lying about this. The flare of green and orange that flashed from his groin to his sternum was a good indication that he remembered his humiliation at Ferrin’s hands.
“There are more than a few ways to travel without using planes,” said Harris. “Mr. Florian and Cahill can provide you with a list of methods, as well as myself. I did not want to intrude on your search for your father or a visit to Seth’s mother.”
“Very magnanimous of you,” I said curtly. Nope, I wasn’t giving him an inch. His frustration level was rising. Considering how Kieran felt about him, though, I wasn’t worried about his frustration so much as his mortality.
“Mr. Calhoun will escort you to your plane, then,” said Harris, standing up and gathering the few items from the table in front of him. “Have a safe journey and feel free to call my office if I can aid you in any way.
The door opened behind us. The first blue suit stepped back in. “Gentlemen, if you will follow me, I will take you to embarkation,” he said. He led; we followed, leaving Harris, Calla, and Madero behind.
Halfway down the first hallway, Ethan called out to Peter, who was just behind Huerta, “Hey, Peter, I just realized something else. Everybody we’ve dealt with has flunkies. We need to get us some flunkies.”
Peter laughed. “Come on! Seth had problems with brownies. You think he’s gonna do better with people?”
“I got over it!” I said defensively. “They turned out to be really nice people, er, whatevers.”
“Language, gentlemen,” warned Calhoun as we entered a more public area.
We attracted minor attention as we tramped through the hallways. I was already lost, but it wouldn’t have been too hard to find the main concourse from where we were. Kieran, Florian, and Huerta chatted in Spanish, idly passing the time. Calhoun passed through an exit onto the tarmac, ushering us into a van while our luggage was loaded into the back. Then he drove us, interminably slowly, through the airport to some backwater hanger where a jet sat waiting for us. Two men in orange jumpsuits and huge ear protection ran out from the hangar to load our luggage into the plane while Calhoun supervised loading us onto the plane. We were met by a lone hostess, who asked us to sit slightly behind the wings, the back and center of the plane. That didn’t really make much sense to me, but I didn’t really know anything about airplane architecture.
I dipped quickly down into my cavern and asked the Stone if it could shield the cabin from sparks. The foundation Stone just sat there, holding everything up. Effectively it just stared dumbly at me. They all did. I felt like they were saying, “You do it this time.” Okay then, we follow the plan.
“Hey, Shrank, come on out and take a nap,” I called, not too loudly. He was sitting on my shoulder, after all. I said it more for Calhoun.
“Yes, Master Seth,” he said, flitting into view and landing on the armrest as I buckled my seat belt. Calhoun jumped a little, shying away from the pixie. Of course, Shrank giggled and pointed. “You should see the shiny things he can make appear! They’ll knock your socks off!” He giggled some more and fell off the armrest laughing.