Mist and Magic

by Lindsay Buroker

  His lips curved into a smile, and he patted the bed again. “Ditto.”

  I snorted, certain I’d end up hitting my head on the wall—if not the ceiling—but he had gotten me a gift. Besides, he was so proud of his new acquisition that I would feel bad rejecting it tonight. Tomorrow, I would reject it.

  The tiger cub screeched, pulling me from my memories. It was just as well. With potential enemies about, this wasn’t the time to lose myself in the past.

  “What’s up, kid?” I asked absently, stretching out with my senses to see if the trolls and ogre had moved. They hadn’t. If they were on a boat, they must have dropped anchor. “You thirsty? Hungry?”

  The cub rolled onto its side and pawed at its ears. That gave me the opportunity to invade its privacy with my flashlight and learn that it was a female cub.

  “Good. I don’t have to call you an it now.”

  The next noise was a plaintive mew.

  I grabbed one of Michael’s two bowls—his personal bowl and his guest bowl, as he called them—from an overhead cabinet that hadn’t been disturbed by the ransacking and filled it with water from the little sink.

  “Here, kid.” I put the bowl on the mattress where it—she—could reach it. The floor might have been better, but the cub seemed to like the bed, and I wasn’t inclined to pick her up and move her. The claws weren’t long yet, but they were there.

  “Val?” Julie called, her tone almost as plaintive as the cub’s. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but you can come in.”

  I debated if I wanted to turn on the lights to do a better search. If the ogre—or ogres—had come from that boat out there, someone on it might be watching this spot. Though I couldn’t imagine why. If they were the kidnappers, they already had Michael. I wished I knew why. To question him about some treasure he was hunting? To ransom him to his family? To me? If they knew how little money I had in my bank account, they wouldn’t bother. Besides, we’d broken up almost a year earlier. Someone would have had to do a lot of research to link us together.

  As Julie walked in, I flipped on the lights. I would risk it. There might be answers here in the mess.

  The cub screeched a complaint.

  Julie jumped, cracking her head on the low doorjamb. “What was that? Michael got a cat?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” I pointed her toward the bed while I picked up papers, looking through them as I stacked them on the table. Several had been ripped and crumpled, and a few were stamped with boot prints. Giant boot prints.

  I couldn’t tell if two ogres had been here, but that was my guess. Michael had gotten the best of one, but the other had gotten the best of him. And kidnapped him and carted him off. I hoped that was what had happened, not that he’d been killed and dumped overboard.

  “That’s a hella weird cat,” Julie said. “It looks like a tiger cub. A white tiger cub? Do they start out darker and get lighter?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s magical. Very magical.” A burlap sack slumped in a corner caught my eye, and I picked it up.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s not from Earth, at least not originally.”

  “Oh, I see. It’s a Martian tiger.”

  I shook my head, having no interest in explaining the various worlds in the Cosmic Realms or that powerful magical beings could make portals and travel between them. It wasn’t as if I was an expert. Everything I knew had come via trolls, goblins, orcs, and other beings that showed up here after fleeing trouble in their home worlds. Apparently, our populous planet was an excellent place to hide.

  The burlap sack was empty save for a few short pale hairs—tiger fur?—and a crumpled note at the bottom.

  “You don’t think Michael stole it, do you?” Julie was eyeing the cub. “He wouldn’t steal an animal. He’s not hard up for money. Omma and Appa check on him. His investments do well, even if he’s not making much of himself.” She glowered at me, the suggestion hanging in the air that it was my fault.

  More interested in the note than her speculations, I didn’t answer. It had a scattering of symbols. Words?

  I opened my phone’s translator app, selected detect language, and pointed the camera at the note.

  Unknown language, the app flashed.

  “I figured that would be too easy.”

  “Val?” Julie faced me, now holding the cub to her chest. It was struggling and didn’t look like it wanted to be held. “Do you know anything about this?”

  “I know that’s not a house cat and that you might not want to try to snuggle it.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I haven’t talked to Michael for a couple of weeks and don’t know what he’s up to right now, no. But if he’d stolen the tiger and someone had come looking for her, you’d think they would have taken the tiger back, not him.” I couldn’t even imagine where one would steal a magical tiger cub from.

  If I couldn’t find any better clues, I was going to have to call Colonel Hobbs, the army officer who commanded a secret unit posted in an anonymous government building in Seattle. He and his soldiers quietly researched and dealt with magical beings that caused trouble in the Pacific Northwest. Hobbs had agents who did nothing but gather data and collate it into handy slide presentations for superior officers and government officials.

  Up until a few months ago, Hobbs had hired me regularly for contract jobs, but for some reason, I hadn’t heard from him lately. As my bank account keenly knew. Freelance gigs were few and far between, unless one was willing to branch out to assassinating humans, which I wasn’t.

  Hopefully, I hadn’t been blacklisted for being a sarcastic smartass. Hobbs had tolerated my acerbic wit, since I was no longer active duty, but the army as a whole wasn’t always into that.

  “Ouch,” Julie blurted and dropped the cub, flinging a hand to a cut on her jaw.

  I dropped the sack and lunged, catching the cub an inch above the floor. Not wanting a swat of my own, I released her promptly. She’d twisted so she would have landed feet-first, as one would expect from a feline, but I wasn’t sure how durable cubs were.

  As soon as I released her, she darted away. I swore and lunged to shut the door—she and the note were my only clues right now—but she went to the sack and tried to burrow into it, kneading the burlap with her claws.

  Julie lowered her hand, frowning at the blood on her fingers. “I’m going to try calling Michael again.”

  It wasn’t clear if her reason was to see if he answered because she was concerned about him, or if she wanted to complain about the cub and her claws.

  “Can you watch the cat for a minute?” I tucked the note in my pocket, intending to visit Hobbs to see if one of his people could translate it.

  A phone rang, and Julie frowned at me. It took me a second to realize it wasn’t her phone that was ringing.

  She climbed across the mattress, stuck her hand between it and the wall, and pulled out a black phone. Michael’s phone.

  “Do you know the code to unlock it?” I asked. “Maybe he’s got some voicemails or notes about what weird things he’s been doing this week.”

  I eyed the cub. She had moved from kneading the sack to investigating the strings on one of my black combat boots. They had been tucked inside. Now, they were in danger of being shredded.

  Julie tried a couple of guesses and shook her head. “Don’t you know it? I’m just his sister, not his lover.”

  “We’re not that anymore.”

  Something she ought to know, though maybe I was glad that he hadn’t given her all the details. Not that it had been messy or mean. Just awkward. We’d managed to remain friends, but it had never been quite the same as before we’d started sleeping together. Life. Always complicated.

  “No? He still talks about you a lot.” Her lips twisted with distaste, and she looked dismissively down my form again.

  “That’s because I’m interesting. Watch the cub, please. I’m going to search the ogre for
clues.” And maybe figure out a way to get to the boat anchored outside of the breakwater.

  The cub tried to follow me out of the cabin. Maybe she thought I could conjure up something more interesting than water.

  “Cats are supposed to be independent,” I told her, though I felt bad shutting the door in her face.

  Earlier, I hadn’t checked the ogre’s pockets. I did so now, as well as patting him down for weapons beyond the obvious club. He had a dagger stuck through his belt—on a human, it would have been more like a sword—but no firearms, nor any magical artifacts that I could detect. I found a note in his pocket.

  “What are the odds that you hold the cipher for decoding the other one?” I muttered, running my flashlight over it.

  Three rows of large chicken scratches were all I got for an answer. They looked nothing like the symbols on the other note, and I was fairly certain I’d seen this language before. Ogre. I tried my translation app in case I was wrong, but once again, it did not recognize the words.

  “Hobbs needs to get one of his people to make an app that detects trollish, elven, ogrish, and the like.”

  A grunt wafted over the water, my keener than average hearing picking it up over the lapping of waves. I also heard what sounded like oars dipping rhythmically into the water. My senses told me the ogre and a troll were heading to the marina.

  I pocketed the ogre’s note and drew Fezzik. It was time to get some answers.

  3

  The troll and ogre were cutting through the fog in a rowboat, as if this were 1820 and motors hadn’t been invented yet. Maybe they didn’t want to make any noise.

  Before I could see them, my senses told me they were angling for another dock, not the one where Michael’s boat was. That might mean they had nothing to do with him. It might also mean they couldn’t see where they were going in the fog and planned to dock at the closest spot and then walk.

  Why they would be coming back, I didn’t know, but I had questions for them. I left Julie and the cub on the boat and trotted soundlessly back to land, then headed to the last dock that jutted out into the harbor.

  A car was idling in the parking lot with its lights off. That almost made me pause, but neither of the men smoking inside, the red tips of their cigarettes visible in the dark, registered as magical to me. Right now, I was far more interested in ogres.

  The rowboat was coming into an empty slip. I ran out on the dock, tapping my cloaking charm as I went. I also activated the charm dangling next to it, one that would translate anything they spoke in their native tongues into English. Too bad it didn’t work on written text.

  From this dock, I could make out the dark outline of a barge beyond the breakwater. The fog still shrouded it, but my senses told me it was where the other trolls were. As I’d suspected, they were running with their lights off. These guys were definitely up to no good.

  The ogre clambered out of the rowboat first, the craft rocking wildly as his smaller companion cursed at him. Smaller was relative. The blue-skinned troll was more than seven feet tall with the shoulders of a defensive lineman.

  Because he was lifting a box out of the boat, the ogre had his back to me. I swapped my firearm for my sword and glided in to rest the blade against the back of his neck while his hands were full. The side of his neck against his jugular would have been better, but he was too tall for me to reach that without standing on a stepladder.

  The ogre dropped the box and started to turn, but I pressed the tip of my sword in and drew blood. Chopper’s blade always glowed a faint blue, but it flared brighter at the promise of battle.

  The ogre froze, and the troll lunged to his feet, spotting me through the magic of my charm. But even if he had a weapon, I’d placed myself fully behind the ogre.

  “Don’t,” I warned him, then addressed both. “What did you idiots do with Michael Kwon?”

  Most magical beings who took refuge on Earth learned enough of the local language to get by, but the ogre only cursed again and barked, “Who the fuck are you?” in his native language.

  No, I realized as my brain caught up to what I was hearing and what my charm was translating. That was Russian, not ogrish.

  “It’s a woman,” the troll said—he was speaking in his native tongue. “With a sword.”

  “No shit,” the ogre said, switching to the troll language. These guys could be translators for the UN if they turned their efforts to good instead of evil.

  “Where’s Michael Kwon?” I repeated, though I was starting to fear they didn’t understand English. If they’d come over from Russia, that would make sense.

  The ogre spun. Before I could decide if I wanted to cut him further and risk killing him, he lunged and threw a punch at me.

  I had some of my elven father’s agility and dodged the powerful blow. A good thing because an ogre punch could knock a person’s head off.

  He snarled and drew a knife. I swept Chopper up to defend against a stab, annoyed with myself for hesitating and letting him take the offensive. But I hadn’t come to kill these guys, just talk to them. Unless the bastards had killed Michael. Then all bets were off.

  The clangs of our blades meeting rang out in the night, though the mist muffled the sounds. He pressed me back, trying to angle me off the dock on the far side, but I danced away, not letting him trap me.

  He was stronger than I was but slower, and it wasn’t difficult to evade his reach. Getting past those long arms and close enough to strike a blow was another matter. When his arm was extended toward the end of an angry slash at my head, I ducked and flowed under his arm. Chopper sliced through his leather jerkin and cut into his side as I ran past.

  The ogre roared, spun, and flung himself at me like a sumo wrestler. His rage gave him speed, and I barely escaped his grasp as he smashed chest-first to the dock. Sturdy cement pilings shuddered, and it felt like an earthquake. Had I been caught under him, he would have crushed every one of my ribs.

  Before he could rise, I rushed in and jabbed Chopper’s point into the side of his neck.

  “Stop,” I growled, keeping myself from digging in too deep. “I just want to question you.”

  “Fuck you,” he snarled in Russian and grabbed for my foot, determined to pull me down with him.

  I jumped over the grasping hand. I might have leaped away again, but with the ogre flat on his belly, the troll in the rowboat had a clear line of fire at me now. He hefted a Dragunov sniper rifle with both arms and took aim at me.

  These guys did not want to talk.

  I slashed into the back of the ogre’s neck, knowing I couldn’t trade blows with him when the troll was shooting at me, then dove and rolled across the hard dock a split second before the troll fired. As I rolled, I yanked out Fezzik. Bullets sprayed the air where I’d been and cracked against the breakwater beyond the docks.

  Coming up on one knee, I fired three times at the troll, magical rounds leaving a blue trail in the air as they slammed into his chest. Even from my knees, my aim was true. The Russian rifle tumbled out of the troll’s hands as he pitched backward, almost falling out of the rowboat.

  Tires squealed in the parking lot, startling me until I remembered the two men in the car. Had they been contacts here to meet the troll and ogre?

  The car peeled through the fog toward the marina exit. I sprang to my feet, but there was no way I would catch it.

  Or so I thought. Sirens wailed and police lights flashed to life. Unmarked cars drove in, heading off the vehicle attempting to flee. Tires squealed again as the civilian car wheeled and roared deeper into the lot. I gaped as the police cars chased after it.

  What the hell had I stumbled into? Or what had Michael stumbled into?

  I thought about disappearing, but I’d helped the police numerous times with magical criminals they didn’t have the resources to capture, so they should believe me if I told them I had acted in self-defense. And I had—sort of. I felt a twinge of guilt since I’d started the confrontation by threatening the ogre with
my sword, but it was clear they were involved in something criminal.

  The fleeing car crashed into a parked car. Its doors sprang open, and the two men raced out.

  Between the fog and the distance, I didn’t have a shot at seeing their faces, but the police were sure they wanted them. More car doors opened, and uniformed officers raced after them as the two men sprinted toward the buildings of the marina. One policeman shouted the customary Stop. Seattle police, but to no avail.

  Curious about what was in the box, I climbed into the rowboat to take a peek. If it held another note in a language I couldn’t read, I would kick it overboard.

  Instead, it was full of dozens and dozens of small round cans, tuna-fish sized, stacked twelve deep and surrounded by dry ice. They weren’t labeled, but I pried one open. Then wrinkled my nose at the fishy scent.

  “Fish eggs? Caviar?” I poked my finger into one in disbelief, then shined my flashlight onto the little black eggs to verify that I wasn’t wrong.

  There had to be fifty pounds of the stuff in the box. My stomach started to sink as I realized this had to be some kind of smuggling operation. It was probably good that I’d helped stop it, but I seriously doubted this was the kind of thing Michael would be wrapped up in.

  Gunshots fired over by the buildings. Another police car rolled toward the dock I was on and stopped.

  The thought of disappearing popped into my mind again, but there were probably cameras around that had caught the fight, so I walked out to talk to them. Maybe they would trade information with me.

  A male and female officer got out of the car as I stepped onto land.

  “Ma’am.” The woman held up a hand. “We’ve got an arrest in progress. We need you to go back to your boat.”

  They looked me over but didn’t see my weapons. Both the sword—which I’d won in a battle with a zombie lord—and the gun—which a weapons-crafter acquaintance had made—were enchanted so that mundane humans didn’t see them as long as they were on my person. I could remove them and show them off, but I rarely did.

  “Caviar smugglers?” I asked.