by Ward Parker
She nodded.
“Let’s go speak to him.”
She followed him out the back door of the shop. He climbed into his open jeep on the jacked-up frame with extra-wide tires.
“Are we driving on the beach today?” She asked.
“No. Wendall is fishing the river today.”
“Then I’ll follow you so I can get on the road back to Jellyfish Beach afterwards.” She had driven northbound in the hours after midnight, timing her arrival for the morning right after Bob opened his store. It was a lengthy trip just to ask questions, and she had to get home to deal with noxious gnomes and vengeful werewolves.
She drove her car behind Bob’s Jeep south along Highway A1A. Dunes covered with sea oats were on the left and wherever the barrier island narrowed, the marshes and oyster bars of Blood River curved inland near the road. Tiny islands dotted the marshes and points of low grass curved near the shore. The oyster bars were dark humps made of jagged oysters cemented together, visible during lower tides.
After a few miles, Bob turned right onto a dirt road that went west. Missy followed. They passed older homes, some of which were on stilts, all of which had boats on trailers in their driveways. One home had a pile of crab traps in the front lawn. The road ended soon at the edge of the marsh.
A sprawling, garage-like building sat by the water’s edge. A few canoes and kayaks lay around the sandy lot. A sign on the building read, “Paddling Around.”
Bob parked by the building, and Missy did the same.
“A little side venture of mine,” Bob said as he hopped out of the Jeep. “Sales, rentals, and lessons. You know how to handle a kayak?”
“Yes.” Though to be honest, it had been a while since she had. Working the graveyard shift to provide healthcare for monsters cuts into your daytime recreation opportunities. Her last serious paddling venture had been in the Everglades when she was helping the dragon.
Bob went into the building and came out dragging two kayaks. He tossed her a flotation vest and a paddle. Then they each dragged the craft down a dirt ramp to the water.
“Hopefully, he’s not too far from here,” Bob said, wading with his kayak into the water and climbing aboard.
Missy did the same, wading up to her calves. The water was on the cool side, but pleasant. She sat in the kayak, pulled her dripping legs aboard, and paddled behind him as they made their way through the shallow marsh. Tiny baitfish scattered out of their path.
They traveled down a wide creek with a maze of smaller ones branching off from it and winding through marsh grass. Soon, the main creek reached the river. A green channel marker to their right indicated it was the Intracoastal Waterway. Bob turned right and paddled past docks that led to waterfront homes.
“Sometimes Wendall fishes the docks around here for sea trout and flounder, but he’s not here. Follow me.”
He turned left into the primary river channel, looked both ways for boat traffic, then quickly paddled across with Missy right behind. They passed through an inlet between two small islands with narrow, sandy beaches, and then into a wide, marshy area like the one where they had launched. It had meandering creeks, tiny islets of spartina grass, and mangrove trees guarding shallow bays where jagged oyster bars barely broke the surface.
“This is an awesome place to paddle because only the fishing guides would dare bring a boat in here. Too shallow.”
They continued west toward a distant line of dark green trees that marked dry land. Missy’s kayak ground to a halt in the shallows twice, and she had to push the boat backwards with her paddle to free it.
“There he is,” Bob said, pointing to a tiny white shape against the brown of a small islet.
Missy would have mistaken the shape for a wading bird. But as they drew closer, she saw it was a man in a white shirt, sitting in a kayak holding a fishing pole.
“Ah, you’re bringing me a witch again,” Wendall said with a smile as they drifted up to him. “Missy Lawthorne, correct?”
“Hi Wendall. Actually, it’s Missy Mindle. I go by my adoptive family’s surname. I didn’t use my husband’s name when I was married.”
“What can I do for you?” Wendall asked. “The redfish don’t seem to be biting today, so I’ll assume you’re here to ask about your father?”
Wendall was a retired wizard who knew Missy’s father when he was one of the Southeast’s most powerful witches. He died when Missy was only an infant, possibly killed by a rival. Missy had always assumed her mother died at the same time until Wendall revealed that she hadn’t and that she had divorced her father prior to his death. Wendall was a genial old fellow with a wide-brimmed hat and a narrow, big-jawed face.
“We’re here because you never answer your cellphone when you’re fishing, dude,” Bob said, “otherwise I would have just called you. We have a question about demon summoning.”
“Oh Lord, I’m not going to give you any help with that,” Wendall said.
“But you know most of the people in the state who know how to do it, right?”
“They all practice black magic so they’re no friends of mine.”
“Someone recently summoned a very obscure demon, one named Caorthannach. And whoever did it instructed the demon to possess garden gnomes and to make them rise up against their human owners.”
Bob barely finished what he was saying when Wendall broke out laughing.
“Garden gnomes? Rising up against humans? That is too rich.”
“It’s true,” Missy said. “And they have to be stopped. People are dying.”
“Really? By golly, that’s insane.”
“Who do you think could have done this?” Bob asked.
“Nowadays, most witches and wizards who practice black magic are interested in necromancy, bringing the dead back to life. There’s not as much interest in demons as there was in earlier centuries. Those who do summon demons choose the well-known ones, such as Agares, Asmodeus, Astaroth. These demons aren’t too powerful to control and they’re so accustomed to being summoned that they know what’s expected of them.”
“Which is what?” Missy asked.
“Sometimes to do the things you can do naturally with your earth magick, like protect a person or find something. Usually it’s something bad, like kill an enemy. This case of possessing gnomes,” he couldn’t finish his sentence with his chuckling breaking out.
“Who do you know who has the knowledge and ability to summon a demon that most people have never heard of when there are no known instructions for reaching this particular demon?” Missy asked.
“Bob, you know as well as I do,” Wendall said.
“I didn’t want to say until I heard your take on it.”
They both looked at Missy.
“What? Why are you looking at me?”
“The only person I can think of who could pull this off,” Wendall said, “is your mother.”
Missy felt dizzy. She was afraid she’d faint and capsize her kayak. She had been shocked a few months ago to learn from Wendall that the mother she had never known, whom she had always thought was dead, was in fact alive. Or at least was alive when Missy was adopted by another family, by her father’s cousin and his wife.
But to hear that her mother practiced black magic and summoned demons? That sent her entire world reeling.
“Are you okay, young lady?” Wendall asked.
“I don’t know. And I’m not a young lady. I’m forty-six.”
“What I would trade to be in my forties again,” Wendall said.
“How can you be certain my mother did this?”
“Oh, I never said I was certain, did I? Nope. People practicing the black arts don’t keep public records of what they’re up to, that’s for sure. I was making a reasonable guess based on my knowledge of what it would take to summon a demon like that and who could do it.”
“But why would she do it?”
“You’d have to ask her yourself.”
Even after she had found out that her m
other hadn’t died alongside her father, Missy didn’t know if she was alive today. Searching public records on the internet brought up no information at all. Her mother had probably taken a new name.
So, not knowing if she was alive, Missy had decided to assume she wasn’t. Even if she was alive, Missy didn’t want to find her. After all, the woman must have given up custody of her when she divorced her father. And after her father was killed, her mother didn’t take in her infant daughter. So why would she want to meet this woman?
And the thought of doing so was even more unattractive now that she knew her mother practiced black magic.
Yet the question truly nagged her: Why did she choose Missy’s gnome to possess? That meant she knew about Missy and where she lived. She knew she had a gnome in her garage. And she decided to spare Missy’s life. So far.
This really freaked her out, the feeling of being lied to, spied upon, and manipulated. She realized, like it or not, she would have to find this supposed mother of hers.
And stop her.
“Do you know where my mother might live?” She asked Wendall.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t. All I know is that she was living in Orlando at the time your father died. That was a long time ago.”
“Forty-six years ago,” Missy said. “A very, very long time.”
The three of them paddled back to the launch together. Missy peppered Wendall and Bob with questions about how to look for her mother.
“If she lived in Northeast Florida, I would know about it,” Bob said. “That’s why the Guild was established nearly two hundred years ago. We keep track of witches, wizards, and other magicians and make sure they don’t use their magic for evil ends.”
Missy cut in front of his kayak with hers and gave him a sharp look.
“Okay, sometimes there’s a gray line between evil intentions and selfish ones,” Bob said.
“There’s nothing gray about assault and abuse,” she said in a firm voice.
“What are you two talking about?” Wendall asked.
“Something I’m going to spend a long time atoning for,” Bob said.
“Black magic sorcerers are hard to find,” Wendall said. “They tend to be solitary. Unless they’re involved in some satanic religious group, but most of those bozos don’t know jack about magic.”
“I have someone working for me who could help you,” Bob said. “He’s an enforcer.”
“I don’t need a thug,” Missy said.
“No, he’s not a thug. He’s like an internal affairs detective in a police department. He’s who the Guild uses to find and bust wrongdoers. He works only in the counties we administer, but I can send him around the state to search for your mother.”
“I don’t know. It feels weird.”
“You said people are dying. That has to be stopped.”
“I don’t want someone else stopping her. That’s my responsibility.”
“Then the enforcer will help you find her, and the rest is up to you.”
“Okay,” Missy said, resigned to following this path. “I accept your offer.”
“It’s contingent on one thing,” Bob said. “That you send me the photocopies or scans of the addendum to the grimoire.”
Missy sighed. “Deal.”
15
Jack the Ogre
The white panel van parked in Missy’s driveway. It was a generic van with no signage on it, the kind workmen used all over the country. She hadn’t called a workman, though. She peered through the curtains and waited to see who got out.
It was a large man. Very large. He wasn’t fat, though he had a belly roll. He was Caucasian. Well, actually he had a greenish tint to his skin. His head was shaved and he wore a blue blazer, white dress shirt, and gray slacks. He had hands like oven mitts. His black dress shoes looked much too small for a man of his size and stature. He lumbered toward her front door. Well over six feet tall and probably close to 300 pounds, he could have been an NFL lineman or a villain in professional wrestling.
She got a better look at his face as he reached her front porch steps. Oversized lower jaw, tiny pug nose, giant protruding brow, a slight pointiness to his tiny ears, no neck visible. And there was that green skin tone. She recognized right away what he was.
An ogre.
She had one patient through her home-health nursing agency who was an ogre. The agency, Acceptance Home Care, specialized in customers who couldn’t use the regular health system for their needs because they weren’t human, or were only partially human. Most of Missy’s patients were vampires and werewolves. She cared for a few elves, but elves tended to retire in places other than Florida. And she had her ogre patient who lived near the beach where her other patients lived. Since this was Florida, and these patients needed home care, they were all seniors.
The door shook from the ogre’s knocks. Apparently, ogres don’t use doorbells.
“Good morning,” Missy said upon opening the door.
“You the witch Missy Mindle?” The ogre asked in a rumbling voice tinged with a New Jersey accent.
“That’s me.”
“I’m Jack. Bob sent me.”
“Wow. You got here quickly.” She had emailed Bob the scans of the grimoire only the previous day.
“I drove down here overnight. I need to hurry. Powerful witches can sense when they’re being hunted, ruining my chances of surprising them.”
“Please come in,” Missy said. “Can I make you some coffee or tea?”
“Coffee. Lots of sugar.”
He followed her to the kitchen. Missy drank tea, so she had to pull an old coffee maker from a cabinet and set it up. She found a bag of coffee in the back of the fridge. She gestured for Jack to take a seat at the kitchen table but was afraid he’d crush the chair. He remained standing beside the island counter.
“So, you’re Bob’s . . . enforcer?”
“I’m mostly a tracker. It ain’t steady work, though. Not many evil witches and wizards in Northeast Florida nowadays. They’re usually in Tallahassee or Washington D.C. So mainly I got a moving and storage business.”
This guy could probably lift a couch with one hand, Missy thought.
“You know where this witch lives?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” she said. That would be too easy.
“Then I need a sample of her magic so I can track her.”
“How does that work?” She wished she knew how to do it herself.
“Arch-Mage Bob trained me. The procedure’s a kind of magic mixed with religious ritual. It’s what the Spanish Inquisition used.”
“I thought they didn’t go after actual witches. They only accused innocent people of being witches and heretics.”
“That, too. But they found plenty of real witches. Most were good ones, though.”
“Back to your request, the only sample of her magic I have keeps on escaping from me. He disappeared last night. I’ll have to use a spell to get him back. He’s a garden gnome.”
“A garden gnome?”
“Yes. Little fellow about a foot tall.”
The enormous man started laughing. “A garden gnome!” He pounded the island with amusement with a hand the size of a slab of beef. She worried he would crack the counter in half.
“I’ll excuse myself and take care of that spell. Back soon.”
She didn’t want to perform magic in front of this guy and his Inquisition trappings. It would creep her out. So, safely out of his view, she retrieved the Red Dragon from the litter box and carried it into the garage. Like most Floridians, her garage contained everything but a car. Lacking basements because of the high water table, Floridians used their garages to store the junk they couldn’t do without and a lot of the junk they should do without. They stuffed yard tools inside as well.
There was very little open floor space, but she found enough room to draw a magic circle with chalk on the concrete floor. She repeated the spell Don Mateo had taught her, grasped the talisman, and called her gnome h
ome.
The garage’s side window shattered, the gnome pressed into the impact-resistant glass.
“Oh my, another window bites the dust.” She wondered what the total price tag would be.
She went outside and circled the garage. When she came to the window, she was surprised the see the gnome was wearing a purple lei around its neck.
“C’mon,” she said, “your partying days are over.”
She pried the gnome from the window and carried him into the kitchen. She placed him in his usual spot atop the island.
“He’s a cute gnome,” Jack said, “with his little lei.” Then he started laughing.
“Okay, enough of the gnome mockery.” Missy was beginning to sympathize with the indignity the lawn ornaments must feel. What they felt when they were animated demonically, that is.
Jack set his coffee down with his freakishly large hand and picked up the gnome. Then he sniffed it all over.
“What are you doing?” Missy asked.
“What does it look like? I’m picking up the scent of the magic.”
“That’s what the Spanish Inquisition did? They sniffed people?”
“No. That’s what ogres do. We have a better sense of smell than any other creature. I can smell all sorts of magic. Then I use my ritual to locate where it came from.”
“Ah, I see. I never knew magic had a scent.”
“Wow,” he said. “This is some serious stuff.”
“It’s a demon named Caorthannach. She’s possessing other gnomes that this one comes into contact with.”
“I smell the demon, but there’s also the scent of the spell that binds her to the gnome. It’s a doozy of a spell. That’s what I’ll use to track her.”
“How? Sniff around until you find her trail like a hound dog?”