by Renée Jaggér
The younger agent asked, “Then why not take her out?”
Velasquez shook his head. “It isn’t like that. She’s...a pretty good person, truth be told. The crap she caused wasn’t intentional. It’s more like her mere existence attracts all kinds of assholes and causes everything to get fucked up beyond all recognition. FUBAR, right?”
Park grunted.
“Thus,” the other continued, “since we can’t justify taking her out, we have no choice but to let her traipse around, exercising her natural talent for, and I guess inalienable right to, attract a metric shit-ton of fuckassery. In a way, she was indirectly responsible for one of our predecessors getting killed—Spall. Lots of other guys, too. Not that I blame her, since we worked with her against the Venatori in the end. Let’s just say it might have been better if she’d stayed a random hick werewolf girl in the mountains instead of becoming the paranormal equivalent of Kanye or whichever other dumbass celebrity is currently making the whole country catch a cold every time they sneeze. Why? Because if she’s involved with something, that means we get to deal with a situation where agents might potentially die. Do you want to die, Park?”
“Not particularly,” the younger man admitted. “I’m not afraid to lay down my life if I have to, but surviving is better than not surviving, yeah.”
Velasquez looked at him and nodded slowly. “Good. You’re a smart man. Since we have all this free time, we can spend it getting damn good at an important skill every agent worth his salt should develop.”
Park looked itchy at the prospect of having activities to focus on. “And what’s that?”
The older man grinned and held up his mobile device. “Pong. Check it out. One of the boys in Tech dug this out of whatever Mayan-era crypt it was buried in. I’ll send it to your phone. The brilliant, elegant simplicity of it almost brings a tear to my eye.”
Park finally laughed, and five minutes later, the two men were engrossed in a desperate struggle of electronic table tennis.
“Yes!” the younger agent cheered. “That’s four out of six for me so far. Are we betting on this?”
“Are you kidding, Park?” asked Velasquez. “Gambling is against the law. Devoted public servants such as us would never lower ourselves to—wait, how much you willing to lose?”
They haggled over terms and eventually decided on a pot of two dollars.
After the games resumed, with Velasquez bringing the roster back to a tie, he muttered more to himself than his new partner, “It has probably been too quiet lately. Makes me wonder if we only got through the first half of Hurricane Bailey and we’re currently in the eye of the storm.”
Park won the next round. “I’m about to be two dollars richer,” he gloated. “Wait, one dollar. You know what I mean.”
“We’ll see about that.” Velasquez returned to the competition at hand, but a notion entered his head that maybe the entire first hurricane was over...and a second, much bigger one was on the way. After all, the girl had technically attained godhood at the end of their last encounter. The next shitstorm might be the Apocalypse.
He pursed his lips as Park defeated him again. “I wonder,” he contemplated, “If I should binge-watch Netflix on my next day off and finish a bunch of shit on my queue while there still is a Netflix to watch.”
Who knew what tomorrow would bring?
“What in the names of all the powers of the multiverse,” Thor wondered, “are we going to do about her? I like her, but I understand the risks. And there are reasons Fenris does not sit on this council. We mustn’t forget that he is the one who’s mentored her.”
Loki stared at the war-god with heavily lidded eyes and a mouth twisted in sardonic exasperation. “Could be worse,” he remarked. “At least she hasn’t tried to solve every problem by hitting it with a hammer.”
“Be silent, Loki,” Freya snapped. The red-bearded giant bristled with antagonism on Loki’s behalf. “We all understand what Thor speaks of. Now, does anyone have anything useful to add to the discussion?”
Coyote made a low sound in his throat and tilted his head to the side before he spoke, his twinkling eyes distant.
“I do not think there is a safe option, but when is anything guaranteed to be entirely safe? If we look only at her raw power, she is not much of a threat to all of us together. Aradia was a lesser deity, and the girl failed to absorb all of her essence, just most of it. If we examine Bailey’s attitude and her actions, she just seems like a pleasant, even rather innocent young woman.”
Balder, who claimed innocence as part of his symbolic portfolio, raised a finger. “A pleasant young woman who took many lives while waging a war, and killed a divinity, too. Justified it might have been, but she is far from harmless.”
“Yes,” Coyote agreed. “There is about her an aura of disturbance, wrongness, and chaos. It may not be attached to her, but it follows her. It is as though a tear in the fabric of the cosmic order found its way to her little valley, and she leaped into it and travels by way of its movements. I wish no ill to her, but I grow weary of the types of strife she seems to precipitate again and again. Were I able, I would mend the wound in the cosmos around her and leave the girl alone.”
Thor grunted and fluffed his beard. “I do not like this discussion,” he announced; as always, he spoke louder than any other deity present, his volume much greater than necessary. “Makes me feel odd and unmanned. Deciding someone’s fate when they aren’t here to give an account of themselves. Cowardly, I say. It reeks of dung and drips with slime.”
Balder and Freya exchanged glances. The Lady of Sorcery spoke.
“Bailey has been unpredictable, and that alone is hazardous for one of her power.” The green in her eyes sharpened. “And Thor is right about one thing. She has been instructed by—forgive me, Loki—the one who is prophesied to bring about Ragnarök. True, Fenris had done nothing overt to expedite the disaster, nor given any indication that he desires it to happen, but it is part of his mantle. Wherever he goes and whatever he is invested in, our eyes should follow him and watch for anything untoward. We cannot afford the luxury of trust.”
For the moment, the eyes of the other deities went to the one who had fathered the wolf-god.
Loki rolled his eyes and steepled his long fingers. “This again. Haven’t we been over it? The pup is no concern of ours,” he snickered at the pun, “and especially not of mine. What he’s up to is none of our business beyond immediate threats. If Bailey perpetrates some mid-level mischief on the mortal plane, what of it? Why should we care? So be it, I say.”
The trickster god stood up from his chair and made ready to leave. When he was halfway across the white chamber, he turned back and looked at the other five.
“Besides,” he appended, “a little more mischief is worth the trouble. Think about how boring things would become without it. We’ll have a laugh! Far too few of those lately.”
With that, Loki departed, and the remaining gods waited in silence until he had left the room.
Thoth rubbed one broad hand over the other, and the muscles along his square jaw rippled. “We do not need to take drastic action yet,” he intoned, “but the girl should be watched by pupils of ours or people representing our respective pantheons, trusted servants and emissaries and peacekeepers.”
“Yes,” agreed Balder, “that is wise. I know of a certain hero who can go incognito on my behalf into the training town and pose as a fellow inductee. He shall have no orders but to observe.”
Thoth nodded. “I will do the same. And if Bailey is a threat, there might be a way to mitigate the potential damage without causing her unnecessary harm.”
Coyote raised a bushy eyebrow. “Oh? How?”
Chapter Three
The Camaro’s engine purred as the driver shifted into park, then fell silent. The door opened and out stepped Gunney, proprietor of Gunney’s Auto Shop, who stood for a moment admiring the way the vehicle looked on the dusty back lot of his business.
“It’s a
beauty, isn’t it? I almost thought she’d go for red, but hard to go wrong with basic black.”
Roland, who’d just parked his Audi, shrugged. “I would have gone with green. Or white, of course. I might still get the Audi repainted.”
“Meh,” said the short, aging mechanic. He scratched his beard and took off his grimy old baseball cap, allowing the breeze to cool his shaggy head before pulling it back on. “Color’s less important than how it drives, and it handles better than it looks. I would know since Bailey and I practically rebuilt the thing from scratch.”
The wizard rubbed his nose. “I suppose someone has to work on cars. Machines aren’t my thing. They’re like a different kind of magic that I never bothered to study. Anyway, thanks for coming to the car’s rescue. You know how Fenris is. The problems of mere mortals aren’t of much concern when he feels he needs to drag one of them off into a parallel dimension.”
Gunney snorted, shaking his head, and led Roland into the shop office, where the two of them raided the fridge for sodas. They both left the orange pop in glass bottles alone; that was Bailey’s favorite. Roland preferred lemon-lime, and Gunney was a cola man.
“I wonder,” Roland mused as he sipped, relishing the cool evening breeze that had begun to dispel the day’s heat, “what the hell she’s getting up to? I don’t like leaving her alone, though I’m not sure two gods need my help.”
The older man raised his eyebrows. “Probably not. I still can hardly believe it. It’s strange; I’ve lived in this town for years, and right from the start, I somehow knew things here were different. A detail here, a glimpse of an oddity there, and one day I came to realize that I believed in frickin’ werewolves and didn’t mind having them as neighbors.
“But these last few months? Shit on a shingle. Witch wars and alternate universes and gods dying and being born. We’ve gone beyond the Twilight Zone all the way to the funny farm.”
The wizard stretched his long legs. “Something like that, yeah.”
“Anyhow,” Gunney went on, “want to take your mind off all this crap by tinkering with a few cars? Might be educational.”
Roland laughed. “Uh, thanks, but I’d advise against that. With my skill or lack thereof, your shop would become less of a car hospital and more of a car torture chamber.”
The mechanic let out a short bark of laughter. “Fair enough. What’ll you do instead?”
Both men knew that he meant, what would he do to help Bailey in her absence?
The wizard dropped his empty soda bottle into the recycle bin.
“Admittedly, I’m unsure at this point. In the past, I had an inkling of an idea, a starting point from which to proceed. At present, I’m fumbling around in the dark. Fenris popped in and said some vague portentous doomy shit, then both of them hopped through a portal and were gone. I don’t know where they went or if she needs anything. With things having been so peaceful, I was hoping she and I could spend more time together, so I’m bitter and curmudgeonly about the whole thing.”
Gunney thought it over for a couple of seconds. “You could go tell her brothers what happened. They deserve to know. That’d be a good start.”
“Yes,” Roland acceded, “I’ll do that, for starters. And maybe, say, reach out to our friends around the region, since we haven’t seen half of them since the conclusion of the whole Aradia affair. It wouldn’t hurt to have them thinking kindly of us in case we need them to leap to our aid.”
The mechanic shot him a meaningful look. “That’s borderline Machiavellian, but it’s a good idea. You’ve helped them, and they’ve helped you. Get to it, city boy. I’ll hold the fort.”
Roland waved and headed back to his new car, reflecting that Gunney’s shop had been used as a fort during two different attacks by the Venatori. The damage from those ugly incidents had been repaired, and no real signs remained of the sleepy town’s brief status as a war zone.
He drove the few minutes to the far northwest corner of Greenhearth, where the Nordin family house awaited. Their pole barn had become his permanent guest room, and though he had no plans to leave Bailey, he wondered if he ought to get a proper job and acquire his own place.
Or perhaps he and Bailey could get a place together.
It was an old farmhouse in decent condition at the edge of a residential neighborhood, and the grass at the rear of the lot rose with the foothills to blend with the wooded mountains beyond. Jacob, the eldest of Bailey’s three younger brothers, held the front door open as he approached.
“Hi,” Jacob greeted him. “Where’s Bailey?”
“Oh, the usual,” said Roland. “A big guy stepped out of a purple hole in the sky and made her come with him to talk to some gods or something. You know how it goes.”
The young werewolf did not fail to believe him, and once the wizard was inside, he related the whole story to the three of them. Besides Jacob, Russell and Kurt, the middle and youngest brothers, respectively, were home. All were tall and craggy and stubbly, though Russell was tallest and darkest of the three and Kurt the thinnest.
Russell grunted. “Sounds bad.”
“Well,” Roland elaborated, “Fenris said that the other deities were in the middle of their little teachers’ conference already, so he didn’t want to waste time. Bailey said she’d send word if she needed help. Not sure how.”
“Usually,” Kurt snarked in his usual smartass fashion, “it’s other people who need help because of her. If we’re really worried, we can always pray to her.”
Jacob threw a beer can at his younger brother’s head.
“Ow,” said Kurt.
The eldest turned to Roland. “I’m worried too, but there’s not much we can do. She’s capable of taking care of herself, and Fenris usually knows what’s best. Let’s wait and see how things look by tomorrow. You crashing here tonight?”
“Uh, maybe,” Roland waffled. “I want to talk to some of our pals in Seattle first and check in with them. Then I’ll decide.”
Jacob shrugged, and the wizard bid the three farewell.
“Careful,” Russell growled. He meant well; growling was his normal way of speaking.
For no particular reason, Roland got back into his car and drove out to an isolated spot in the woods a quarter-mile off the main highway. It wasn’t far from where he and Bailey had been jumped by about twenty asshole Weres in league with the crime ring they’d antagonized months ago. The pricks had messed his face up, but his magic, combined with the wonders of modern medicine, had undone the damage quite nicely.
The wizard sat in the growing shadows, then pulled out his phone and dialed Dante Viari, a fellow caster he’d met up in Rain City five or six weeks ago in the runup to the fight with Aradia. They’d kept in touch extensively at first, but it had been a good two weeks since their last conversation.
Dante picked up. “Hello. Roland?”
“Yeah, it’s me. I wanted to, like, check in on how things are going with the whole witch community in the Pacific Northwest and if things are still cool with our furry friends. Anything interesting come over the grapevine? You’re the man to ask.”
The other wizard audibly inhaled through his nose. “Umm, no, things are okay for the most part. I did hear about some witches who went missing in Portland, but that’s a bit of a drive from Seattle, and I just got it from the local gossip today. I haven’t checked it out yet.”
Roland frowned in the gathering darkness.
“But,” Dante’s voice went on, “definitely no more fuckheads targeting Weres, so all quiet on that front. People are getting along fine; the worst of the tension is gone. No reason to suspect it’ll change.”
The older caster sighed, unbuckled his seatbelt, and stepped out of the car, pacing along the damp earth as he talked. “Okay, good. Regarding the missing witches, were you planning on looking into it?”
“Yep,” replied Dante. “Why, you and Bailey wanna help?”
“Bailey’s busy, but I’d be happy to get out of town for a while.” He s
miled, thinking that it would also be an opportunity to rebuild goodwill with the sorcerous community. He’d practically gone native among Weres since he met Bailey. “In fact, if you’re up to meeting me in Portland tonight, we can do that, or tomorrow’s fine.”
Dante considered. “Tomorrow. I’ll try to get up early. It’s about three times farther to Portland for me than for you. I’ll text you when I’m on my way.”
“Sounds good. Bye.” Roland hung up. It was true, the Rose City was only about an hour and twenty minutes from Greenhearth.
As such, he figured he’d get the drive out of the way tonight. Heading over there on a nice peaceful evening reminded him of the day he and Bailey had met. He decided he’d even spend the night in the motel they’d rented.
“Christ,” he mumbled under his breath as he started up the engine, “she’s only been gone for, like, six hours, not six weeks. Get hold of yourself, man.”
Bailey’s eyes fluttered open. The bed in her room in the stone manor was probably the most comfortable she’d ever slept on. She yawned, stretched, and sat up.
Fenris was seated at the small wooden table within the room, a steaming pot of tea and two cups before him. “I thought you’d rise soon,” he commented.
The girl rubbed her eyes and trudged over to the table. “Thanks. I’m more of a coffee girl, but tea gets the job done okay. And you make it well.”
He poured her a cup. She’d drunk about half of it when there were knocks on several doors throughout the hallway, including hers.
A valet shouted, presumably speaking to multiple rooms, “All trainees and new wards of the castle are to assemble for orientation at once.”
Bailey walked to the door and opened it. The same man who’d escorted her yesterday was standing in the corridor, watching other people shuffle out of their rooms. He glared at Bailey, who hesitated.
The girl looked at Fenris, arching an eyebrow.
“Go,” said the wolf-god. “I am famished, and you know the food of civilized people isn’t to my taste. I’ll hunt in the woods for my breakfast. It’s guaranteed fresh that way.” He smiled with his teeth, showing off his inner wolf.