I nod slowly. My mind searches the memory of those illuminating pages, skimmed briefly during my plane ride home.
“Good thinking. Meet me at the car in five minutes.”
***
Alejandro waits beside my car when I arrive.
“You can get in. It’s not locked.”
“Merlo. How can you protect yourself with no locks?”
“You sound like Jen. You know, locks on everything are a very modern invention.” I reverse quickly out of the parking spot and wheel toward the exit.
Alejandro clears his throat, glances at me sidelong, then says, “What will you say to Jen the next time she asks difficult questions?”
I exhale forcefully and lean my head against the headrest.
“Secrets were far simpler before the internet. It was easy to reinvent myself in a new locale. I suppose I’ll have to tell Jen at some point. I wish it could have been at my instigation, but I won’t be that lucky this time.”
I lapse into silence, troubled by thoughts of Jen’s investigation. How much does she know? What conclusions is she drawing?
A faint hum, quiet yet distinct, interrupts the quiet. Is that the car? No—it sounds like the hum in my apartment that Anna couldn’t hear.
“Do you hear that buzzing sound?” I ask Alejandro. He listens briefly.
“I hear the car, nothing else. Are you losing your hearing in your old age?”
I move to clip his head and he ducks with a grin.
“I must be. It’s been in my ears all morning, and neither you nor Anna can hear it.” I signal to turn left and the car behind us, a gray Acura with a scruffy hood, flicks its turn signal on. Nothing is out of the ordinary, yet suddenly I’m uneasy. It could be paranoia, but I’ve learned to trust my instincts over the years.
I dawdle, taking my time on the approach to the light, and sneak through on the end of the amber. The Acura follows by running the red.
“I don’t mean to alarm you, but we might have unwanted company behind us. No, don’t look,” I say when Alejandro turns. “He might not know that we know, yet. I say he, but I can’t tell—the windshield is tinted. Illegal in this province, by the way.”
“What do we do?” Alejandro’s lauvan are tight and jerky with apprehension, and a touch of excitement. First a shooting, then a car chase—Alejandro must feel like he’s in a movie.
“We try to shake the tail, of course. A few red lights ought to do it.”
“Have you done this before?”
I grin, momentarily overtaken by a vision of Braulio laughing wildly, turned in his seat to wave at our pursuers, thrown against the door during one of my more erratic turns.
“Once or twice. Remind me to tell you the story another day.”
A light changes to amber up ahead. I gear down and hit the gas to make the Lotus leap forward. The Acura barely makes the light—honking follows us on the wind.
“He’s tight on our tail now,” I say. “If I weren’t in the city, his car wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“Can you pass those cars?” Alejandro points ahead.
In answer, I speed up. A car is headed in our direction but there’s enough room to pass—just. The Acura is a car behind, until the middle vehicle turns right and the Acura zooms ahead. There’s too much traffic ahead to try again.
“I’m running out of ideas,” I say. “I’ll try another light, then we might have to get out and confront the driver.”
Alejandro’s lauvan twitch in anticipation but not much fear. He’s turning out to have quite the backbone.
There is one more light before we enter Pacific Spirit Park, the expanse of woodland that separates the university from the city. It’s my last chance to shake our follower. I’m not interested in a fight at the moment, not with Alejandro here. Besides, I’d be late for work. I doubt I’d get a good look at my follower, in any event, since he only deals with me from afar.
The light has been green for a while. Here’s my chance. I speed up. The Acura lacks acceleration and falls back briefly. The light turns amber. I drive even faster and speed through a solid red. Brakes squeal behind me as the Acura stops to avoid crossways traffic.
Alejandro thumps his head back into the headrest and breathes out forcefully.
“We lost him.”
“No sweat.”
“Come on, Merlo, you weren’t even a little nervous?”
“I told you I’d done that before.” Alejandro gives me a mildly exasperated look that reminds me of Jen, and I laugh. “Fine, I’ll admit it was intense at times. But we’re all clear now.”
A gust of wind hits the car with gale force. The Lotus swerves wildly before I regain control. Luckily, no other cars are nearby.
“What was that?” I crane my neck backward to see if there is anything on the road. An incredible roaring fills my ears.
“Merlo! Look ahead!” Alejandro points forward, all his lauvan frozen in place. My eyes follow his finger and I instinctively brake with a tremendous squeal of tires.
A whirling tube of dust and debris spins in the air no more than twenty paces down the road. It’s a tornado about to touch down. A tornado, in a region where they are unheard of. It’s not a giant, but it’s large enough for some small-scale destruction. I don’t want to get in its way but I might not have a choice. Drew is behind this, which means it’s coming for me.
Trees whip their branches frantically around us, and whole limbs break and fly through the air. The noise is unbelievable, even more so when the funnel reaches the pavement. Inevitably, the tornado slowly moves in our direction.
“Merlo!” Alejandro screams. I grit my teeth and push the gearshift roughly in reverse. The Lotus shoots backward with a squeal but the tornado picks up pace. We round a corner and I slam on my brakes. The Acura sits crossways on the road, blocking our path. The door is open and the front seat is empty.
“Get out of the car!” I shout. Alejandro needs no further encouragement and rolls out promptly. I fling myself out of the door and run sideways onto the median. The tornado shifts to follow me.
“Stay back,” I yell at Alejandro from a distance. I don’t know if he can hear me over the roar, but he stays where he is. Grit stings my streaming eyes and dust fills my lungs. I suppress a cough with a gargantuan effort and spread my arms. It’s time to see if I can harness the wind myself.
The tornado is a whirling mass of silvery lauvan, and the air between it and me is thick with them. They fling past me with a mild electric sensation every time one makes contact with my own lauvan. I spread my hands, each finger splayed for maximum coverage, and let the air lauvan run through them.
The tornado is too close, now. With a swift motion, I close my hands and yank the lauvan. The tornado shudders slightly but continues its remorseless advance. My feet back up a few paces involuntarily. That wasn’t enough. I need more. Feverishly, I rake through the air and collect fistfuls of lauvan. They’re so fragile—no more than a quarter survive my rough handling. The rest break away to fly free. I gather as many as I can before the tornado is upon me, and give a great yank.
The tornado wobbles. A mighty quaver reverberates up the column to the pulsating purple clouds above. It spins like an off-balance top, round and round in ever-widening elliptical loops. I watch intently, ready to collect more lauvan if needed, or simply run. Finally, the circling column extends too far and the whole structure disintegrates with dying winds and an explosion of free-floating air lauvan. Almost instantly, the road is quiet once more. Branches lay littered over the pavement and the poor hail-battered Lotus has a fresh coat of green leaves. A car comes from the other direction, the driver gaping at the foliar carnage.
I calm my breathing on my way to the car. Alejandro slides into the passenger’s seat and we both take a silent moment to contemplate. “How’s your vacation so far?” I finally ask.
“I think I will need a vacation from my vacation.” Alejandro looks at me when I turn the ignition and ease the car forward. “Is your
life always this crazy?”
“Not always. Would you believe I once spent ten years in a Buddhist monastery under a vow of silence?”
“No.”
“It’s true. I tried to find enlightenment. I ended up with a raspy voice and a terrible thirst for beer.”
Alejandro begins to laugh, and I join him.
***
Alejandro wanders off in the direction of the campus biodiversity museum with the promise to meet me after class. I want to speak to Wayne, hear if he’s found anything about Drew. I know more after speaking with Anna, but I’m still no closer to finding him. And yet, he’s uncannily good at tracking me.
The chatter of students when I walk into the lecture room mercifully drowns out the persistent buzzing that has followed me since last night. I even checked the lauvan around my ears in the mirror in case my hearing was somehow affected, but all looked normal.
“Settle down, everyone,” I say mildly and a hush instantly falls. Years of practice and performance has gifted me with the ability to command a room. I’ve used that skill for much more critical reasons in the past, but it’s handy in any situation.
“We’ll finish our look at Shakespeare’s Tempest today with a discussion about the relationship between Prospero, the magician angling for a dukedom, and Ariel, a spirit of the air whom Prospero controls.” I pause to listen to my own words. I’ve never given Ariel a serious thought before, but with current events unfolding, I’m intrigued. “Ariel says, ‘All hail, great master! Grave sir, hail! I come to answer thy best pleasure; be’t to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the curl’d clouds, to thy strong bidding task Ariel and all his quality.’ Prospero returns, ‘Hast thou, spirit, perform’d to point the tempest that I bade thee?’”
I stop fully here. Anna spelled it out for me, but I didn’t understand the full import of her words. Drew does nothing, has no special abilities of his own. But what he does do is direct the spirit currently residing in his body. Drew has given it directions to thwart me, and from the attacks to date, it would seem that the spirit is an elemental. The fog, birds, hail, tornado—it’s a spirit of the air.
That changes everything. I was focusing my tactics on finding Drew and protecting myself against a human, even an augmented one. But Drew is not the issue here. I need to prevent a spirit from attacking. My mind whirls and I desperately want to scour Braulio’s notebook for information on elementals. There has to be something of use in there. Luckily, Alejandro suggested I bring it today.
“Dr. Lytton? Are you okay?”
I come back to myself to find my students staring at me in curiosity. Whoops. How long did I leave them waiting?
“Apologies. As I was saying…”
My lauvan dance with impatience, but I maintain my composure until class is finished. There are the customary students who like to chat and ask questions after class, but before they can leave their seats I grab my satchel and dash from the room. I’ll meet Alejandro, then we can sit and look through the notebook.
“Merry! I’ve been wanting a word.” Wayne sidles up beside me in the hallway. “Although you might want it a private one.”
“You found something?” I’m momentarily distracted.
“Sort of.”
“Come with me, I’m meeting a friend outside. He knows. We can talk there.”
Wayne pushes open the outer glass doors, and I spot Alejandro to my left, leaning against a railing. He’s not alone.
“Jen? What are you doing here?”
“I have a few days off until my next job, so I thought I’d come say hi.”
“She was worried about you,” Alejandro says in a mock-whisper. Jen pushes Alejandro’s shoulder in a familiar way. Their lauvan intermingle in a similarly acquainted manner.
“You’re not very good at keeping secrets, are you?” She turns to me. “Alejandro told me about—this morning. Are you okay?”
“What happened?” Wayne asks. Jen looks flustered. I cover for Jen’s slip.
“I wasn’t feeling well.” A strange feeling passes through me, a rippling sensation across all my lauvan. Hairs rise on the back of my neck, and I scan the sky. For what, I don’t know.
“Hi, I’m Jen, Merry’s friend, and this is Alejandro, who’s visiting Merry from Costa Rica.”
The sky above the furthest building shimmers oddly, as if the blue were boiling like water.
“I’m Wayne, instructor for the history department.”
The boiling grows larger and spreads across the building as it approaches.
“What courses do you teach?”
It finally makes sense, what I’m seeing. It’s a writhing mass of translucent air lauvan coming straight for us. For me.
“Everyone inside!” I yell. I grab Jen’s arm and yank the door open, then push her through. Alejandro leaps through after—he’s obviously on high alert after this morning. Wayne stares at me, baffled, so I take his forearm and propel his dense frame through the door before I follow and force it shut.
The wind slams into our building like a mighty wave. The doors rattle on their hinges, and the glass of one cracks under the strain. A whirlwind of air lauvan beats against the glass like sand in a desert storm. Even the floor beneath our feet vibrates with the force of the wind that hits the building. The roar fills my head.
Until it stops, abruptly and completely. The frenzy of air lauvan that beats against the doors disappears entirely. The sun continues to shine, unaware of the recent turmoil on the ground.
Jen touches my arm with trembling fingers, and I nod reassurance at her. Alejandro looks pale but resolute. Wayne’s brow is furrowed in a perplexed frown.
“What was that? And how did you know it was coming?”
I look at Jen, who shrugs nervously, then at Alejandro, who nods eagerly. I suppose it’s time. I hope this goes well.
“Come to my office, everyone. Let’s have some privacy.”
Once everyone squeezes into my tiny office, I shut the door. Jen perches on the stool I keep for office hours and Alejandro leans against the only wall without bookshelves or window. Wayne sits in the office chair once I wave him toward it and I balance on my desk with Braulio’s notebook in my lap. All three gaze expectantly my way. A thought strikes me.
“Jen, would you like to do the honors? It might sound more sensible explained by someone who isn’t so bound up in it.”
“In what?” Wayne says.
“Oh!” Jen looks taken aback. “Umm, okay.” She thinks for a minute and I take the opportunity to flip through the notebook. Time does not appear to be on my side, with attacks occurring as soon as I step foot outdoors.
“Merry is—special,” Jen says. I snort and she throws me a dirty look. “Would you rather explain?”
“Sorry, sorry.”
Ah ha, the section on air elementals. Does Braulio talk about spirits gone rogue? Are there any protection methods?
“Merry can see things no one else can. There are strands that float around anything with energy, like a bouncing ball or a hot pan or a person. He can grab the strands—he calls them lauvan—and affect the properties of the thing.”
The element of air is weakest in the environment of its opposite, the element of earth. How can I use that?
“Okay,” Wayne says with an air of patient incredulity. “Assume I understand, or believe. Carry on.”
Jen gives an exasperated sigh and kicks me gently on the leg.
“Not easy, is it?” I say without looking up from the notebook. “Let me know when you need a demonstration.”
“A few weeks ago, Merry got in the way of a shadow organization named Potestas, up a mountain near Wallerton. Did you hear about Mt Linnigan?”
“Yeah, the not-so-dormant volcano.”
“Potestas has some connection to the spirit world—”
“What spirit world?”
“We’re not sure, it’s all new to us too.” Jen wrings her hands. “Anyway, they wanted to blow up the mountain for a deal t
hey have with some rogue spirits—oh man, it’s complicated. Basically, Merry stopped their plans for world domination, and now they’re pissed off. Especially this Drew guy.”
“And he is currently possessed by an air elemental, giving him abilities far beyond his own to hunt me down and take me out.” I slam the notebook shut. “But now that I know, I might have a chance at some protection, and hopefully do some fighting back of my own.”
“How did you find that out?” Alejandro asks.
“Anna, Braulio’s notebook, and my own immense wisdom.”
“Wait a minute,” Wayne says. He shakes his head. “You two are on board with Merry’s invisible strings?”
“I forgot a demonstration. My apologies, Wayne. May I, Alejandro?”
“Okay?” Alejandro’s eyes are apprehensive. I wink at him and raise my hands to his head. I work quickly and before many seconds have passed, Alejandro’s hair becomes a vibrant shade of tomato red. Wayne’s eyebrows rise halfway up his forehead, then he shrugs.
“Now I’ve seen it all. So, what’s the plan?”
“Truly? That’s your reaction?” I share a bemused glance with Jen. “You’re in a vanishingly small minority.”
“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’” Wayne gives a lopsided grin. “I find it best to roll with the punches and get back in the fight as quickly as possible.”
“Spoken like a true warrior.” I pat him on the back. “And nicely done, quoting Shakespeare to the literature instructor. As for next steps, Alejandro and I can’t stay in my apartment until I find a way to protect it from the elementals.”
“Stay at my place,” Wayne says. “I have a couple of sofas. It’s not the Ritz, but it will do for a few days.”
“Thanks, Wayne. Much appreciated. You said you had intel, earlier.”
“Yes. I did some digging on Drew Mordecai. I have a friend in the Vancouver police, and she looked him up for me. Apparently, he’s been busted three times for breaking and entering and twice for drug possession. The last conviction was overturned on appeal when he hired one of the top lawyers in the city.”
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