by Danny Bell
Ten minutes later, I had a new-to-me used tire loaded into the back of the van for the low price of thirty-five bucks, but even that price caused me to flinch. At least they hadn’t gotten all four tires. Not that I could afford it, but I gave the workers an even fifty to cover a tip, they were out there working in the rain, after all. We then headed back to The Book’s End and I considered a can of SpaghettiOs for breakfast given my budgetary concerns. My stomach rumbled at the thought. Apparently, the potion did nothing to curb caloric cravings, it just gave you a lot more time to think about them.
Olivia had returned and left again by the time we returned, escorting Jason back to his place to pick up a few things, including his medication. The thought of him leaving the safety of the shop made me tense up, and I was more annoyed than I cared to admit at not being involved in that decision. At least he had Olivia watching his back. Jason had no way to know that I was attacked last night and how close I came to losing this thing right out of the gate, but Olivia did. If anything, Olivia fired a gun at a monster in a warehouse yesterday, and now she was acting like it hadn’t happened at all. I don’t know that I could complain given I’d nearly forgotten as well. It was an absolutely insane moment, but to be fair, it didn’t crack my top five craziest moments this week.
I sighed heavily, looked at the lug wrench in my hand, then at the unattached tire, and then at the void left on my car like a mouth with a missing front tooth. I’m not equipped to handle this. How was I supposed to save the city and keep my friends alive when I couldn’t find the will to put a tire back onto my car?
God, I wish Chalsarda was here.
The lug wrench was suddenly heavy in my hands and I let it hit the ground unceremoniously, my hands absently finding my phone in my pocket. I’d tried her number a couple of times since this all started but, at that moment, as the rain steadily pelted my back, I needed to try once more, even if I knew it was pointless. I just needed to pretend that someone competent might tell me what to do so I could continue to pretend like I wasn’t terrified.
“Elana!” The familiar voice startled me. I had hoped for an answer but really hadn’t expected one. “Thank the creators. I was going to call you.”
“Are you okay?” The words fell out of me. I wasn’t ready for a conversation, and my mind needed a minute to catch up.
“As well as I can be, considering that I was briefly hunted.” Chalsarda sighed. “Given the unnatural storm surrounding the city, I feel I should be asking you the same thing.”
“You can see it?” I dodged her implied question.
Something like a chuckle came through the line. “I imagine it can be seen from space. What’s going on?”
My chest tightened unexpectedly, and I tried all too late to hold back a thick sob. The first one got out, but I sniffed and held back a second. I suddenly didn’t want to be in the rain anymore.
“Elana, what’s wrong?” Chalsarda’s genuine question only reminded me of how angry I’d been with her not that long ago, and I was nearly sick with guilt at the concern in her voice. I stared helplessly at my car, jacked up off the ground as it was, and I knew I couldn’t go back inside like this either.
“I can’t even sit in my car,” I said weakly.
Chalsarda remained quiet.
I wiped away a mixture of tears and rain from my face before I continued. “Just give me a minute.”
I managed to find a spot behind the shop that the rain hadn’t quite touched and I clung to the wall, pulling my knees to my chest. “You still there?”
“I am,” my friend replied. “Are you ready to talk?”
“It’s bad. Like Nuckelavee bad. I have these moments where everything is fine, if not an inconvenience, but then other times I’ll panic or just become overwhelmed by it all, and I don’t even know if that makes sense to you.”
“More sense than you know,” Chalsarda reassured me.
I nodded. “But I can’t get overwhelmed, you know? I need to stay strong because if I lose it, they’re the ones who are going to pay, but I don’t know if I can do it. I just wish you were here.”
“Me? Why?”
“Dude, you’re the strongest one of us,” I replied impatiently. “Are you kidding? We’re all still learning, some of us might never learn, but you’re a leader. We need you. I need you.”
“I see,” Chalsarda said carefully, letting the reply hang in the air for a moment. “Elana, I’m not there, and I don’t know the details of your ordeal, so tell me. What problem do you think I could solve were I there with you?”
Words caught in my throat and the question remained unanswered. For just a moment, the rain sounded louder than it had. “We could all use you, you’re always so decisive and smart—”
“But that’s not an answer to my question,” Chalsarda said sagely. “So, then, I’m not really the solution to your problem, am I?”
“I just need you, okay?” I shouted loud enough to compete briefly with the rain. “I can’t do this without you!”
“I’m not going to tell you that you can,” Chalsarda said after a moment. “Because the simple truth of life is that we are not always prepared for what comes for us. But I will tell a key difference between us. When I was recruited by Abarta, he was not interested in my resolve or my curiosity—he needed an elf. That is an unfortunate fact of my life; I was lured, deceived, and robbed of my years because of my physiology, nothing more. I was not the first nor the last, I’m just the one that got away. He would taunt me on rare occasions and remind me as much, though he never meant it in reference to my duty to him. Most of us, those who work for Abarta or others like him, spend their lives at the mercy of someone whose power they cannot comprehend. Now, does that sound like the relationship you had with Abarta?”
“Abarta wanted to be with my mom, that’s it,” I replied ruefully. “He didn’t care about me. Or he did care about me, but his version of it was super messed up.”
“You’re missing it,” Chalsarda said patiently. “He promised to protect you, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, why didn’t he lock you in a dungeon?” Chalsarda asked. “Why did he, instead, allow you to live your life and allow you to fight against impossible odds without him?”
“Because if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have forgiven him,” I said. “You know that.”
“No, that was once you’d found trouble,” Chalsarda explained. “He knew you your whole life, yet he never sent me to kidnap you when you were a child. He didn’t make himself known to you until you found yourself in trouble with the Gardeners.”
A flash of insight struck me at the words she spoke so plainly, like something that had been in front of me this entire time, but I never realized.
“Forget Abarta then, consider Freyja,” Chalsarda continued. “What did she consider special about you in the end? It wasn’t your traveling ability, it was your heart. Everything about you is special enough to change the heart of a goddess. They know something and I know it as well, but you fail to see it.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you have it in you to defy anything that would stand in your way. In this world and in others, there are elves, and wizards, and gods, and monsters, and raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens, and more things than could ever be known, but there is only one Elana Black. And she’s never going to give up on the ones that she loves without doing everything she possibly can, is she?”
I wanted to cry again, but I held it back for fear of being unable to stop. “And you think you don’t have superpowers.” I scoffed.
“I need to end this call soon, I don’t know how long I can stay here, but know this,” Chalsarda said warmly. “I am coming to you as fast as I can, and I will always be there for you and help you however I am able, but I am just one person. I have never done the work for you. I’ve only guided you and assisted you, but you have it in you to stand up on your own. Agreed?”
“Yeah,” I conceded.
&
nbsp; “Let me hear you say it,” she insisted. “Tell me you got this.”
“I got this.” I chuckled through a heavy sniff.
Chalsarda made a small hmm sound of acknowledgement. “That’s good, because I really do need to move soon. I did mention that I’d been hunted earlier, didn’t I?”
“Oh my gosh, you did!” I exclaimed. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Undoubtedly,” Chalsarda dismissed the question. “But there’s no way to know for sure that I got them all, so I’ll need to keep moving until I can return home.”
It warmed my heart a little to hear her say it like that. Home. “Don’t worry about me, I’ll figure it out. I’m glad you’re alive and, you know, yeah. You just get back here safe and sound, okay?”
“As you wish,” she replied.
I could feel Chalsarda close to hanging up and I quickly said, “Hey, before you go, I just…this really helped, you know?”
“Of course it did!” Chalsarda replied haughtily. “I am very, very inspiring.”
The phone abruptly hung up, and I laughed in spite of myself, feeling suddenly like I could breathe again. I stood up and stretched, ready to get back to that tire. As I rounded the corner though, I was caught off guard by the presence of three people; a stocky man in a turtleneck flanked by two women in expensive-looking raincoats, all staring holes through me from under their umbrellas.
“Elana Black?” the man in the center asked flatly.
“No, I’m not Elana Black,” I lied smoothly. “Elana Black moved to Nebraska to play bagpipes. I’m Janice Collins, dinosaur expert.”
The man impatiently made a grunting noise that could have belonged to a barn animal. “I was sent here to find Elana Black and you match her description.”
All three of them looked at me knowingly then, blocking the entrance to the street. Finally, the man continued, “So, if you are her, then I suggest we stop wasting each other’s time and we get right into it, Elana.”
Chapter Seventeen
I stared the three of them down for a second that felt stretched into eternity. I had no tools, no weapons, and even the rain would interfere with my base access to magical energies. If they were a tenth as strong as the one I had faced in Mar Vista, I had no idea how I would walk away from this. It was made worse by the fact that most of the people I loved were conveniently gift-wrapped for them inside, mere feet from us. I needed time to figure that part out.
“You can’t attack me here,” I bluffed, knowing full well that their very presence meant that they were throwing the rules out the window. “You can’t even stand here without my say so, this is mutually agreed upon neutral territory for our purposes. So, do us both a favor, yeah? Piss off and leave a tip.”
The three of them eyed me quizzically. “Attack you?” he asked with something approaching pity. “Oh, honey, I think the elements are doing enough of that for all of us. Rhonda, you go look for that other one—Ann Bancroft, and let Wilma know that if her clients are high or intoxicated, we are charging her extra, no ifs, ands, or buts. Especially not this one.”
One of the women nodded and turned away toward the store, the other close behind her. He was studying me now in a way that made me feel like a used car in a dealership.
“Hold up a minute, did you say Wilma? And, dude, quit eyeing me like that.”
“Come, come, we have all day, but we don’t have all day, you know?” he asked with an accent I was starting to recognize as Greek. “I’m Georgio and, I guess to some people, that means miracle worker. This hair is going to be just an absolute nightmare, isn’t it?”
“Georgio, I’m pretty sure you’re not an immortal snake sorcerer, but you’re making my skin crawl all the same,” I fumed. “So, if the next words out of your mouth are not a perfectly plain explanation of who you are and how you know me, then your next words after that will be ‘Help, oh help. Elana is beating me to death with a lug wrench.’”
“Well, you’re just a ball of cinnamon, aren’t you?” He almost sounded impressed in his response. “I’ll go slowly, are you ready? We. Are here. To get you. Ready for the ball. You pumpkin!”
I exhaled a sigh of relief. Wilma said she’d secure our passage to the hotel tonight; I hadn’t realized that included a personal stylist. “The pumpkin was the carriage, not the…” I began, then caught his gaze and stopped myself. “You meant to call me a pumpkin. Right. Screw you, buddy. I’ve got a tire to change.”
Georgio rolled his eyes. “Not anymore you don’t, it’s already going to take far too much of our day to exfoliate that skin as it is. My god, woman, do you bathe with dish soap?”
“Not since college,” I shot back, and Georgio gave me an unreadable expression.
Ann came out of the store just then flanked by the two women, one of whom I presumed was named Rhonda. “Dude! We get to be fancy!” My friend exclaimed, then as an afterthought, she added. “Oh, and Claire warmed up some SpaghettiOs for you. With meatballs.”
I turned my attention to Georgio and said, “If you’ll excuse me, I have SpaghettiOs to attend to.”
I went to walk inside when Georgio blocked my path. “Oh no you don’t, we have a lot of—”
“Georgio, my dude, you remember earlier when I was being facetious about beating you with a wrench?” I asked, exaggeratedly waving said wrench for effect. “You caught me at a real bad moment and, if you try and keep me from my warm bowl of almost pasta, shit’s about to get literal.”
The stylist wisely moved out of my way, but not without comment. “You’re just nasty, aren’t you?”
“Like I’m bringing Garbage Pail Kids back in style,” I remarked, walking past him. “Ann, a word?”
Ann followed me into the shop but seemed intent on joining the ever-growing number of people who wanted to tell me what to do. “Hey, just so you know, when people call you crazy, you don’t, like, have to prove them right.”
I shed my coat and completely ignored her in favor of my meal. “Oh my god, you really did heat them up. Claire, you’re an angel.”
I spied Teague off in the corner, thumbing through a book, as I collected the bowl in my hands, the heat just shy of being painful. She seemed to be holding the paperback just a little bit harder than she needed to but not so that it was noticeable enough to point out. There was a different energy around her, not good or bad or even describable. Just different. “We good?” I asked.
“We’re good,” Teague replied without looking up, in a voice that didn’t convince anyone, likely not even herself.
“Good,” I confirmed through a spoonful of canned meat. Whether I believed her or not, I was contented to give my friend the benefit of the doubt, given everything else I had to worry about. I’d likely have words with her when this was over, one way or another, but for now good had to be good enough.
“You’re welcome,” Claire said just late enough for it to approach awkward. “What’s up with the twins from The Shining?”
“They’re new people,” I replied, already halfway finished with the bowl. “And I’d like to propose a moratorium on meeting new people starting now. I’m starting to become hostile to the notion. New people suck.”
“You literally bargained for those new people!”
Disappointment set in as I spooned that last of the viscous pasta sauce into my mouth, even as the warmth of it comforted me to my soul. “God damn, that’s better,” I said to myself as goosebumps traveled down my body. I turned to Ann, suppressed a burp, and said, “Nah, I bartered for passage to some one-percenter ball and Wilma decided to be extra, which, fine! That’s generous and all, but you’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to let some Tim Gunn superfan call me fat and tell me to get into a car with him. And what kind of bullshit insult is calling me a ball of cinnamon anyway? I like cinnamon, I don’t want him ruining seasonal spices for me!”
Teague barked a quick laugh from the corner, repeating the word cinnamon and said nothing more, looking back to her book with a wide grin tha
t betrayed her demeanor from just seconds ago.
Ann scrunched up her nose and continued her point. “Yeah, this group is weird as hell, but we’re not exactly sterling examples of normalcy ourselves. So, maybe get your head in the game and realize that, if we even want a chance at not standing out on what is effectively a recon mission, we should probably at least look the part.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong, but screw that dude,” I said, rinsing out my bowl in the sink. “Let him work on our time, not his.”
“He’s changing your tire,” Claire remarked, looking out the window.
I almost dropped the bowl at her words. No one touches Big Sister without my permission. I sighed and grabbed my jacket, ready to threaten him with a wrench beating for a third time. “Goddamnit.”
* * *
I really, really hated to admit it, but the whole beautification process, as Georgio so cringingly called it, was dope. Also, I guess I’m calling things dope now, that’s new.
The whole experience was what I always assumed rich people lived like. We were driven to a house in the Hollywood Hills that I couldn’t lead you back to if my life depended on it. It was apparent pretty quickly that no one lived there; the whole house was dedicated to spa services and wardrobe. Though I couldn’t swear to it, I was reasonably confident I saw three elf women leaving with a Kardashian as we arrived. I was confident about the elves, not the Kardashian. I’m an L.A. native and, it goes without saying, that means I have spent a lot more time thinking and caring about one of those things more than the other.
Elves. I’m pretty clearly talking about elves.
The service they provided was, quite literally, transformative. For as enjoyable the pampering may have been, I couldn’t help but worry about the price tag this whole ordeal would carry, and I didn’t mean monetarily. When I made my deal with Wilma, I thought tickets inside would command a high enough price as it was. Maybe she’d make a phone call or two to get us on the guest list. All of this was something else entirely. Places like this didn’t just appear on Yelp; you had to know somebody. Wilma seemed to know some especially important somebodies, and I became increasingly nervous about those deliveries I agreed to.