by Sara Hanover
Our car was a bright (ruby red) and shiny SUV, almost new, and we gave Morty the front seat while we settled in the back. I swear the vehicle settled as if its springs no longer existed.
I tapped Morty on the shoulder. “What do you drive at home?”
“A World War Two Jeep. We have a graveyard of them for parts. A little rugged, but they take to the roads and get me where I need to be.”
That and maybe his own brand of magic. I’d seen no sign of any jeep, vintage or otherwise, when he’d appeared at our house. Then again, I had summoned him. Maybe it was worth leaving him behind, getting to where we were going, and trying that bit again.
Brian sat rubbing the cane nervously between his palms as if he might drill a hole in the floorboards. I reached over and stopped him.
“Sorry.”
“Nervous?”
“Never been on a train before. Or in a car.” Voice down, he looked out the window and quickly looked back.
“The professor has.”
“Mmmm. Sometimes we just aren’t that meshed.” He took a little gulp. “So how far are we going?”
“Train station is about another ten minutes, and the train trip itself should be about three hours. You can sleep but the countryside is pretty. We might even go through a little bit of spring rain. We’ll get there just in time to think about lunch and order a car from the station to the mall.”
“The mall. Isn’t that a shopping place?”
“Not this one. It’s the great park where the monuments are, and green lawns, and a great big serenity pool. More trees. Lots of stonework. The Lincoln Memorial and stuff.”
“Ah.” He had stopped rubbing the cane but now he gripped it so hard his knuckles stood out whitely.
“Close your eyes. Lean back. Let the professor do the thinking for a while.”
“I would but—” Brian swallowed. “His thinking is even scarier than this trip.”
“Oh.” He must be calculating the various dangers and traps we might run into. I patted his knee. “He can worry for all of us, then. I’m enjoying the day off classes.”
And then it hit me.
The invites. I told Evelyn I’d drop them off. I leaned over and frantically went through my backpack. Yup, I had at least stowed them where they were supposed to be. “Detour! I need to make a stop!”
Morty and the driver both twitched in their seats. “How much of a detour?”
“Got to swing by the campus. It’s only four blocks that away.” I pointed my fingers out the window.
The driver, a stoic-looking guy who probably spent his free time trying to audition as a zombie for The Walking Dead’s local filming crews, turned his head to Morty for permission.
“Will we have time?”
“Oh, yeah. I planned for that.”
“As she wishes then.” Morty settled back with a ponderous movement of his shoulders.
The driver knew the college and turned neatly down a side street.
Various classes were in session so the walk to Evelyn’s morning session seemed deserted. She always sat in the back, and she looked up from her desk/chair as I peeked in. I waved the invites and stuffed them into her book bag and backed out without irritating the lecturing professor too much, or so I hoped.
Brian waited by the SUV door to hand me up. “Everything okay?”
“So far.”
And it went smoothly to the station. Brian was only slightly whiter than a sheet of paper when we emerged. I handed the tickets out.
Morty read his briefly. “We go here, then?”
“That’s the plan. I’ll go get your refund.”
He nodded before wrapping his heavy hand around Brian’s elbow and steering him in the general direction they meant to go. I watched them and tried to ignore the tickling feeling at the back of my neck, as if someone eyed me.
I let the two of them sit at the platform while I took his credit card and the ticket meant for Mom back to the window to return it. After a few moments of stark terror, Brian seemed to relax and enjoy the activity around him. I turned on the heel of my sneaker casually, to scan the crowd before leaving them on their own. It wasn’t extremely busy, as the early commuter trains had left hours ago, but a steady stream of people milled about. I don’t know what I expected to see but nothing caught my attention, except a tall figure, casual rock band t-shirt and jeans, who went around a corner about the time I thought I saw him. Carter Phillips? It couldn’t be. I took a couple of steps in that direction but the fleeting vision moved beyond my range. I shrugged to myself. Imagination, though if it was, civilian clothes took years off the guy. He had looked almost normal. I shot a last look at Morty, who nodded at me and shooed me off. He and Brian sat more or less calmly on a bench, waiting. It was I who clutched the black credit card as if my life depended on it until I got to the service window.
I pushed the printout toward the ticket agent. “We had a cancellation. I’d like to get reimbursed for this ticket, back onto the credit card.”
An elegant, long-fingered hand closed over mine and drew it back, twitching the ticket from my possession. “I’m late, dear, but I’m here. No need for that.”
The ticket agent yelled next and I got shoved aside, only to swing about to face Remy.
“You can’t have that. That’s . . . that’s theft.”
“Trust me, you’d never be able to prove it.” Remy stowed her stolen ticket away in a purse that looked terribly familiar. “What did I tell you about the obelisk?”
“Not to go.”
“But here we are.”
“Did you think we’d listen?”
“Oh, I knew you would, and head right there.” Remy smiled, and she looked even prettier when she did. I wanted to take a picture and march into a beauty salon and ask to be made to look just like her. I blinked, hard, and that feeling went away. She continued, “I’m going to follow and do whatever I can to make certain nothing disastrous happens.”
“I’d say from the professor’s point of view, it can’t get much worse.”
She drew me aside from the crowd. “It can.” An open newspaper covered the pavement under our feet, footsteps marking it where passersby had trod over it, and she pointed down.
MYSTERIOUS DIE-OFF OF FISH ON THE TIDE
Thousands of bodies found drifting.
I read the headline three times. “Stranger than fiction?”
Her lips closed into a line before she said, “We talked about this.”
“That—that’s him? Drawing power?”
“And that means he’s here. He made the coast. Before, he was extending his reach. Now . . .” her voice trailed off.
“Are you following to help us or him?”
“The Society would like not to have to take sides.”
“Oh, come on!”
Remy made a face. “Professor Brandard has always been independent, outside our purview and struggle, set on neither helping us nor hindering us, and we have returned those favors. But now.” She stopped dead in her tracks. Or words. Whatever.
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Precisely. Some members of our Society have always been favorable to the dark side of power, and our body appears to be fracturing.”
“That’s what you meant by old alliances and stuff.”
“Yes. Unfortunately.”
“So which half is telling you what to do?”
One side of her curved mouth smiled at that. “Tessa . . . it is Tessa, isn’t it? No one tells me what to do.”
She was taller than me. Much, much prettier and wiser than me, but she didn’t intimidate me like she had at first. “I bet,” I told Remy, “that someone is making some pretty strong suggestions.”
She bent forward. “I’ll be on the train. We shall see what we shall see.”
And she whirled a
way, disappearing into the crowd, even as the loudspeaker called out our route and boarding information. I hurried to catch up with Morty and Brian, still unsure of where Remy stood in the scheme of things. We boarded, and although I expected the shocks on the train car to sag or complain at Morty’s weight, they didn’t. This must be one of those times when he managed his size. As I found a seat and took it, I decided that Remy wanted her alliances foggy so that she could observe and make whatever choices she had to make when it was most advantageous. No sense to decide to jump over the cliff before reaching it.
Brian buried himself in magazines someone had left in the seat pocket until he relaxed enough to join in seeing the sights. After storing his returned credit card carefully, Morty settled into a kind of half slumber without the oceanic deep whale calls of the evening before, and I just watched the trees whipping by and tried not to think of a tide of pale, belly-up fish bodies floating onto the shore.
After a while, thinking of all that salt water made me thirsty, and I planned a trip to the dining and vending car. I took orders from the two of them and said, “I’ve got this, but you’re not getting beer or ale, I’m underage. Soda for all of us.”
Morty grumbled and waved me on. Brian looked at me.
“Need company?”
I shook my head. He grinned, making his dimple wink, picked up a magazine, and went back to learning about Fantasy League Football.
The train swayed from side to side but barely noticeably as I made my way through three passenger cars. I didn’t see Remy, although I wasn’t sure if I could, even if I stared right at her. If magic was that magical.
I had just about decided the jury was still out on that when a voice with a strong cockney accent spoke just behind my shoulder while I stood at the drink counter. I jumped and a hand reached out to steady me as I came down.
“Steady, luv. Car is full o’ people. Might get yourself trampled.” Steptoe smiled broadly as I spun around.
“What are you doing here?”
“Ah, well that.” He put a finger alongside his nose. “Would be tellin’.”
I didn’t even try not to roll my eyes.
“A’right. I put a little burr onto your jumper.”
“My jumper? A burr?”
He cleared his throat. “Hoodie that would be. And a tiny patch of a tracker.”
“On my hoodie.”
“That’s whut I said.” He was smiling again. “I thought you lot might be movin’ about, travelin’ a spot here and there, and it might be useful t’ know whereabouts.” He lowered his voice a tad. “Remy is hereabouts too.”
“That, I know.”
“Do you? Oh, good. Th’ lot of you are sharper than I thought.”
“And I read about the tide and the dead fish.”
“Ah. Even sharper!”
I decided not to take credit for that one. “Remy pointed it out.”
“Did she, now? More helpful than I figured she’d be.”
My turn at the counter was near. “I think everyone is still trying to figure out which side to be on.”
“Don’t doubt that, not a bit. Safer that way.”
“For you or me?”
“Both o’ us, both.” He pointed behind me. “Order up.”
I ordered four Cokes and pushed one into Steptoe’s hand as I left. He trailed at my elbow.
“Well, now, that’s a right gesture. Good on ya.”
“Thanks.” I sipped at my straw. Chilled sugar and caffeine rushed down my throat like a blessing while I pondered his friendly demeanor. “Got any burrs you could lend me? Protective ones, maybe?”
His coal-dark eyes measured the thoughts flowing through his mind. “Throw m’ luck in wi’ you?”
“You’ve already suggested as much.”
“True that. I might have a few pebbles.” He felt around in his natty suit coat pocket for a second and pulled out three pebbles. He poured them into my free hand. “Defensive but a bit of a flash-bang, if you get my drift. Use one at a time. Don’t be wasting them.” He closed my fingers around them. “An’ don’t be tellin’ Remy. I’m circumspect about that lady.”
“So am I. And thanks.”
He lifted his drink. “A trade for a kindness.” Steptoe winked. “Magic works that way.”
He spun about and headed for the other end of the train car, leaving me thinking: Did it now? Did that mean Remy owed me something for the train ticket?
They reached eagerly for their cold drinks when I got back to the seats. I sat down gingerly with mine, having filled each and every one to the last frothy drop I could get in the waxed cups.
“News,” I announced. “Remy and Steptoe are both on the train.”
“Both! That’s calamitous.”
“Not necessarily. Both seem to be on the helpful side.”
Brian stared at me with the hurt look a puppy has when he’d been told no. He folded his arms and looked stoically out the window.
“She betrayed him once,” Morty offered.
Brian snorted. “More than once.” He turned about again. “She’s a beautiful woman who convinced a . . . a mature man that she loved him, when obviously she did not.”
“Now then.” Morty cleared his throat, yellow-white goatee waggling a bit. “By then she’d cast her lot with the Society and you hadn’t joined it with her, and she was pressured by that.”
“I found her with another man.”
“As I recollect, you told me she was training with another wizard, and that sort of circumstance was to be expected. She wanted to climb ranks and take you with her.”
“I didn’t mention what kind of training!” Brian’s face flushed, and I found myself glad that the professor now inhabited a young body, because if he hadn’t, he’d have blown a gasket.
I’m no fan of gossip, having been surrounded by it the last few years. I put my hand up. “Can we agree that she was ambitious and acted accordingly?”
Brian made a noise and I took it for agreement, so I wrenched the subject around to Steptoe. “What about Simon?”
“Simon’s partnership has always been consistently suspect. He’s a minor demon, so that bends him down a certain road.”
I sipped my soda to hide the reaction I had to the word demon. I swallowed carefully. “I got the feeling he’s looking for a bit of redemption.”
“Could be, and in fact, that may very well be probable. His actions will judge him louder than his words.”
“Okay, then we’ll keep an eye on him. Remy pointed out a headline to me, about many dead fish on the tide, and said Malender had come ashore.”
Morty shifted on the train’s bench, and I thought for a moment that the entire car swayed and hoped it was my imagination. “There is thought to be a great darkness awakening. Malender may well fit that role, and his being about is definitely worrisome. The old professor could have handled him, but now—”
Brian squeezed his eyes shut a moment before opening them wide. “I’ve got it, already. I screwed up monumentally and now we’re all in a jam.”
From his words, I knew that the professor had retreated like a coward, leaving his successor holding the bag, and that we wouldn’t accomplish much more at the moment.
I looked out the window from my side. “We’ve got a few hours, might as well rest a bit. Washington is always a busy town.”
* * *
• • •
Despite the caffeine, Brian settled back almost immediately and closed his eyes. I wanted to shake him awake, to look at the country we sped through, but decided he looked like he needed the rest. I left my seat and went up to join Morty, sitting across from him in one of those configurations where the seats faced each other in case the passengers wanted to talk or play cards or whatever. My knees touched his as I did.
“He’s out.”
Morty
nodded. “Good.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Did you have something to do with that?”
He turned one of his mittlike hands over. “It is more like a sense. Think of the earth as a vast cradle, holding you safe, rocking you, with its own deep and pulsing heartbeat. Wrap that thought about you and it will carry you away.”
“Wow. Which kind of makes sense until you think about earthquakes and avalanches and tornadoes and stuff.”
He grunted. “Every dream has nightmares.”
“No kidding.” I leaned a little forward. “I wanted to tell you I couldn’t get your money back on the extra ticket.”
“Oh?”
“Remy showed up and kind of took it from me. That’s how she got on our train.”
“And you let her.”
“I know. Shouldn’t have but she took me by surprise, and then I didn’t think my starting a brawl in the middle of the station would help much.”
“True.” He considered a moment. “I cannot be certain if her taking the ticket puts her in our debt or not. If you’d given it to her, then certainly.”
“And we’d want that?”
“It would give us a certain advantage. That’s how hospitality works among our folks. Did you look for Remy when you went for the drinks?”
“Didn’t spot her. She’s on board somewhere; I haven’t seen her since the station. Do you know her as well as the professor?”
“Almost. In our community, alliances once made are often lifelong.”
“No wonder he seems bitter. That’s a commitment.”
“Indeed, but one forged after many years of trust and experience. Remy and Brandard, well, most of us figured that bond would be unbreakable. Not like mine.”
“Your wife who was taken?”
A hurt expression went through his eyes, darting by so quickly I almost didn’t see it, but I did.
“Who could have done that?”
“I don’t know. If I did, I would take their house apart stone by stone, stick by stick, and root by root.”