by Nova Nelson
“Flown the coop?” I asked.
He tilted his head like a confused puppy. “No. There’s no coop.”
“I know, I was just… never mind.”
He sighed, and it sounded like someone shaking a wooden cup full of chalk bits. “Maybe I’m over reacting. Hey, what’s that?” He nodded down at my bag, where the large book was sticking out.
“Just a book I was hoping Bloom would translate for me, but she said she doesn’t have the time.”
“Bloom? It must be in Enochian if you needed her for it.”
I patted it. “Yep. Good old Enochian. But it’s no help to me if I can’t read it, and now I have to carry it around.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
“Sure, go for it.”
I handed it to him and he inspected the navy blue cover quietly for a moment before nodding. “I can see why you’d be interested in a book about Fifth Winds.”
As he made to hand it back to me, it dawned on me what he’d just said. “Wait, how did you know it was about Fifth Winds?”
“I can read Enochian. Speaking it, though”—he chuckled—“that’s a completely different thing. Works on frequencies I can’t seem to make my voice do, no matter how hard I try. Heh.”
I waved off that last bit. “Ted. Want to go for a drink?”
His spine straightened with a crackle. “Sure. But Sheehan’s is still closed. Where—”
“I know the perfect spot.”
Why Echo Chambers felt the need to hire a doorman for Lyre Lounge when it was empty ninety percent of the time was anybody’s guess. But when Ted, Grim, and I arrived, the ogre for hire stopped us before we could enter. “No,” he grunted.
“No?” I asked. “No what?”
I could already hear amplified lute music coming from inside, but that didn’t mean anyone was in there listening.
“No enter.”
“What? Why not?”
The ogre crossed his arms over his barrel chest and in typical taciturn ogre fashion, replied, “Too sloppy.”
Sure, I wasn’t dressed up, but… I looked down at myself.
Okay, I did look pretty sloppy.
“I’ll have you know,” Ted said, “these are some of my finer robes. I bought them at Reap What You Sew in Avalon. They didn’t come cheap, mister!”
“And I’ve been working on my winter coat for weeks now,” Grim protested.
“As anyone who’s seen the drifts of black fur around my bedroom could attest.”
“Not my fault you don’t sweep often enough.”
I imagined a Roomba chasing a terrified Grim around my bedroom and felt much better about his jab. Then I returned my attention to the bouncer. “Just let us talk to Echo. He won’t care if you let us in.”
The door behind the bouncer opened and the satyr stood in it, leaning against the jamb. “Well, if it isn’t the death patrol. I guess my number’s finally up, isn’t it? I knew I should have worked out at least once in my life or maybe not drank wine nonstop. Who would have guessed the healers knew what they were talking about?” He sighed. “Well, come on in then.”
The bouncer begrudgingly stepped to the side and we followed Echo into a—surprise!—empty club. Well, except for all the ghosts. Two transparent couples slow danced to the music, no doubt warming up their non-existence muscles in preparation for the next day’s terrorizing. But Echo couldn’t see those particular guests yet. Better not to tell him.
While I knew that the satyr was managing to keep this business open solely on dirty money Seamus Shaw had given him, I wondered how far that money would stretch and if there wasn’t some other illegal setup helping Echo pay rent or mortgage along with hiring a bouncer.
Talk about not my problem, though.
Grim, who could be eerily light on his feet when he wanted to be, took no precautions as he stomped across the gold floor of the club, leaving giant muddy paw prints behind with each step.
Echo led us to one of the round booths, and Ted and I scooted in while Grim turned circles under the table until he found a comfy spot to plop down. The satyr then crouched on his goat legs until his head was hardly above the table top and said, “Listen, I have a lot of money. If there’s a way we could work this out where I don’t have to die, I’m willing to make a deal.”
Oh. He hadn’t been kidding. “We’re not here to bring you to the afterlife, Echo,” I said.
“Really?”
“Yep,” Ted added.
He looked at each of us in turn, a strange expression on his face. “So you three just… enjoy each other’s company?”
“Yep,” Ted said again, and I added, “We’re here for business.”
“Very well,” Echo added, standing. “Considering your business is death, I’ll leave you to it. Drinks?”
Ted and I each ordered a beer, only to have Echo chuckle airily before saying, “We don’t serve that here, but I’ll find the worst-tasting drink we have and bring that to you instead. That should be a near replacement.” And then he clip-clopped off.
“You should have taken the bribe,” Grim added. “He never would have found out that wasn’t why we were here, and we’d have been richer for it. Maybe you could hire someone to sweep for you then.”
I ignored his unscrupulous advice and pulled the Enochian book from my bag, handing it to Ted. “I already know what it’s about, but if there’s anything you can find about nature’s balance or…” I tried to think of the other things the Culpeppers had mentioned. “Maybe something on portals?”
Portals to my world, I thought. The disparate pieces had been begging to be put together since my chat with Bloom.
These were the things I knew now:
The Culpeppers were worried about a portal.
They wanted me to find this specific book.
This specific book was about Fifth Winds.
All Fifth Winds came from my old world.
And that amounted to this question: Were the Culpeppers hoping I’d find a portal home?
It seemed likely.
But why? Why would I need to find that portal? Did it have something to do with nature’s balance being off?
… Or was this all one big ploy to get me out of Eastwind to keep me from dating their son?
No, of course not. That was silly. But points for insecurity!
Ted cleared his throat and turned a page, shaking his head slowly as he did.
“What? What is it?” I had to speak loudly above the totally unnecessary lute music.
Echo appeared with our drinks and set them in front of each of us. Sloshing slightly in the crystal martini glasses, they looked more like radioactive sludge than something to take the edge off.
“Can you turn down the music?” I shouted.
“No.”
Ted looked up from the book suddenly, aiming his dark, hooded face at the satyr and said, “For the love of Death! Do what the lady asks of you! Turn down the music, or I’ll drag you out of here!”
One of Echo’s hands shot up to cover his gasping mouth, and he recoiled while his eyebrows disappeared into his mop of dark, curly hair. “Thunder’s crack!” he swore, and then scurried off. A moment later, the music was turned down.
The dancing ghosts grumbled about the interruption before floating out through the front wall.
I stared at Ted feeling a swell of pride and maybe a little bit of fear.
“Heh,” he began, “I would never really drag him off. But you know, for someone who deals in death, it’s amazing how often I have to use my serious voice for anyone to listen to me.”
“Ted is my new hero,” said Grim. “Ask him if he wants a familiar. Preferably a grim who used to live in the Deadwoods and is happy to share under-the-table bacon at Medium Rare.”
“What’s in the book?” I asked, changing the subject. As he answered, I took a sip of the drink and regretted it the second the overpoweringly sweet and sour tastes hit my tongue. I spit it back into the glass without a bit of shame.
/> “It’s essentially a field guide to Fifth Winds, like you said, but this chapter I’m looking at now… well, Enochian can be tricky, and I’m self-taught, but I think this section explains how to manually open a portal to the realm of the Fifth Winds and then close it back.”
“That’s possible? Portals can be opened and closed on command just like that?” I had a feeling it was possible, but that was different from having an angel’s word on it.
“Seems so.” Ted grabbed the stem of his glass and tossed back the entire drink in a single gulp without so much as a flinch. “But tell me you’re not thinking of doing that. For one, I’d miss you if you left, and for another, doing it incorrectly could kill you and everyone you love.”
I blinked. “The second one seems like the most relevant.”
“I agree,” said Ted lightheartedly. “Especially since I’d be the one to clean it all up. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: I’d hate to have to carry off your mangled corpse, Nora.”
“That’s so sweet of you, Ted. Thanks.”
When Echo trotted by, Ted waved him down and ordered another one of the bright green drinks. Then the reaper said, “You mentioned something about balance, and it’s got me thinking. Could what you’re talking about—a dangerous imbalance—be related to the Winds of Change?”
“I suppose so, but why do you say that?”
“Well, it’s simple, isn’t it? Change and balance can’t exist at the same time. Change necessarily causes an imbalance. The more change occurs, the more lopsided the imbalance. So, if you’re worried about a great imbalance in nature, one might assume it has some tie to the blistering Winds of Change that have been building over the last few months.”
“That does make sense.”
“And what’s more, if you were looking for a way to restore balance, you would likely want to trace the Winds of Change back to their source.”
“They have a specific source?” Maybe it seemed like a dumb question, but I always imagined that winds just kind of kept blowing from one place to another. No beginning and no end.
What? I’m not a meteorologist.
“Of course they do. Don’t you remember? We had this conversation. I was sitting in the booth at Medium Rare, I hadn’t gotten more than a wink of sleep, and you asked about it. I told you the Winds of Change were howling outside my house all night.”
“Ohhh… I do remember. But wait. That means that the origin of the Winds is in the Deadwoods.”
Grim’s head shot up from where it rested on his paws. “I’m in! Let’s go now! I’ve heard there is a bloodthirsty pack of Hidebehinds that have been growing restless. Can you imagine if I caught one? Those stupid hellhounds would never hear the end of it because I wouldn’t let them.”
“It’s likely,” said Ted. “Either the Deadwoods or somewhere just beyond. Let’s hope that’s not the case, because the Deadwoods look like a playground compared to the Murderswamp.”
I nearly choked on my own spit. “Come again?”
Echo arrived at the table with another drink and appeared highly displeased to have found himself in a service position. Ted thanked him and took a little sip before replying. “The Murderswamp. You go far enough into the Deadwoods, and the trees thin a bit and it’s all Murderswamp from there.” He downed his drink while I tried not to think too hard about what would have to happen to earn a location that name, then he said, “Very few Eastwinders know about that place, because you’d have to be insane to travel that far into the Deadwoods if you weren’t, you know, a grim reaper or one of the predators that prowl the area.”
“I went there once,” said Grim. “Not much to look at, really. Just bubbling sludge and dragons battling harpies in midair.”
“You consider that ‘not much to look at’?”
But I dropped it rather than opening that can of worms. There were more important matters at hand, and I had no intention of ever visiting the Murderswamp myself anyway.
Everything was starting to come together, but just enough that I could tell where there were still crucial pieces missing.
The Culpeppers had warned of an imbalance.
The Winds of Change seemed to be blowing to a crescendo.
And the Winds had started in the Deadwoods.
Then there was the matter of the portal…
Was it the same one Donovan, Grim, and I had passed through? Had we crossed over into my world without realizing it? It certainly hadn’t felt like my world, though I couldn’t describe how I knew that.
Another possibility, and one I wasn’t keen on admitting made a lot of sense, was that when we’d crossed into that other realm, whether it was mine or not, we’d somehow set off this unfortunate chain of events.
So, while the last thing I wanted was to enter back into the Deadwoods, it looked like that might be just what I had to do to finish whatever it was I’d started.
Chapter Nine
On the short walk from Lyre Lounge to Franco’s Pizza, I resolutely ignored the ghosts swarming me, each with his or her requests for my assistance, and tried to focus on my next step—both figuratively and literally since it was dark out.
Ted had left me with a bit to think about, and while I was tempted to spend all night at the booth, making him translate the book in a narcissistic frenzy to learn more about myself, time wasn’t on my side for that. It would be midnight before long, and then it would officially be Halloween, and I knew nothing would be any easier once that was the case.
Perhaps it was my Insight, but I had a feeling that Halloween was somehow the make-or-break moment for whatever the Culpeppers had tasked me with fixing.
The moment I stepped into Franco’s Pizza, my eyes landed on Donovan behind the bar. He shivered visibly before he noticed me, then he rolled his eyes.
“I should’ve known who’d arrived on a death chill,” he said as I approached the bar and pulled out a stool. The restaurant was unusually busy for this time, but that likely had something to do with Sheehan’s being closed. And as I took a better look at the clientele, my guess was all but confirmed when I spotted some of the older Sheehan’s regulars huddled in booths around the perimeter, in deep conversation with one another around the romantically candlelit tables.
“Can you see them yet?” I asked as he grabbed a clean pint glass, poured me a beer from the tap, and set it on the counter in front of me.
“The air around you is a little squiggly, and the chill makes me want to jump out of my skin, but that’s it. I’m not exactly in a hurry to see a bunch of ghosts, though.” He leaned forward, his forearms crossed on the counter. “You just need a drink, or are you hoping for my stellar company as well?”
“I could definitely use a beer after the alcoholic plutonium Echo Chambers tried to serve me.” He arched an eyebrow, but I didn’t bother elaborating on what in the spell I was doing at Lyre Lounge. “But I also have a request.”
He nodded like he already knew. “You’re wondering how to break it off with Tanner.”
“You’re such an ass. No, of course not. I’m wondering… The thing is… Do you think you could arrange a time for me to meet with your parents?”
He chuckled. “Ah. So it’s just as I thought. You are going to break up with Tanner and propose to me, but you need their permission first.”
I took a swipe at him, but he jumped out of the way before my fist could make contact with his shoulder. “You better watch it. You have a girlfriend, idiot. You can’t keep flirting with me.”
He gasped, faking shock. “Me flirt with you? You’re the one coming in here asking for my parents’ blessing.”
I rolled my eyes. This was going about as pleasantly as I’d imagined it would.
“Fine, fine,” he said, relenting. “I’ll talk to them. But mind if I ask why they’re suddenly so popular? You’re the second person who’s asked to speak with them in the last hour.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I just got a message from Tanner about it.
Ooh! Maybe you two can go together. Like the world’s weirdest date.”
I took a long sip from my beer. “Sounds great. Speaking of dates, how’s Eva?”
Donovan cleared his throat and quickly grabbed a rag and began wiping down the counter. It was something he could have done with magic, so the fact that he didn’t indicated he needed something to do with his hands.
I’d clearly touched a nerve.
“Great. She’s great.”
I shouldn’t have pried. But the urge was too strong. I convinced myself it was on account of both of them being a part of my circle rather than anything else.
“But?” I said.
He sent the dirty rag flying into a wash bin with his wand and leaned back on the counter. “But she seems angry at me all the time.”
I nodded sympathetically. “That’s probably because you’re a jerk.”
He shot me a scorching look and I held up my hands in surrender. “Sorry, sorry. Go on. I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
“She seems preoccupied lately, and I don’t know why. It’s like… she’s somewhere else. Do you”—he cringed, and the simple moment of vulnerability broke my heart—“do you think she’s thinking about someone else?”
“Like who?”
“Who do you think?”
I frowned. “I have no idea. I only ever see her giving you the eyes.”
“Think about it, Nora. I bring up moving in together and she won’t even consider it. But it would just make more sense for her to. Once Medium Rare opens up again, she’ll have a much shorter walk to work each day than staying up on Fluke Mountain. The only thing I can see that might be keeping her there is—”
“Darius,” I said. “You think she might have a thing for Darius Pine?” If she did, I wouldn’t blame her. The leader of the Eastwind werebears sure wasn’t hard on the eyes. He owned the cabins up on Fluke Mountain where she rented, and lived in one himself. Easier access to the woods up there where he could shift into his bear form when needed and go for a romp outside the city. I guess sometimes a werebear just wanted to run wild where there was no risk of gory death, like there was in the Deadwoods.