That’s what it still felt like to me. I was standing in Mae’s place, trying to be her and falling so incredibly short of the mark. In all the years I had been coming to River City, I had never once witnessed a meeting between a Mundane being—or ’Dane, as we cool kids called them—and a ’Cane—the down-low way to refer to an Arcane, or supernatural being. I’d managed to screw that one up damn fast.
“That was pretty quick thinking with Mrs. Gundar and the Basajaun,” Sophie said as she straightened out the chairs.
“You think so?”
“Sure.”
“Great. You can figure out what to do about Parvinder’s birthday party, then.” I stalked toward the office.
“Sorry,” she said. Damn. Was that hurt I heard in her voice?
I turned back around. Her face was flushed.
“I guess I should have put him in the back or maybe out by the Dumpsters.”
“Ya think?” Could I not stop my own sarcastic mouth?
The flush spread farther up Sophie’s face and a knot formed in my stomach. I don’t mind being a pain in the ass, but I don’t like being mean and that’s exactly what I’d just been. Mae had never been mean. Occasionally disappointed. Often exasperated. Never mean.
“No, Sophie. I’m sorry. I never thought about making some kind of protocol for handling the creatures that might come here. I’ll think of something so we don’t have another incident like this one.” I gave myself a little kick in the pants. Just because I was feeling defensive about being incompetent didn’t mean I needed to take it out on Sophie. She hadn’t asked for this life any more than I had and was generally a lot more gracious about it.
She smiled. “Thanks. By the way, I do have some ideas about birthday parties. I think they could be fun.”
I stared at her. She was serious. Fun? She thought birthday parties for seven-year-olds could be fun? I knew she was naïve, but this was beyond the pale. Still, I’d already been a bitch once this morning. Perhaps I could learn to have a B.Q. (Bitchy Quotient) of only one per day. That would be livable for everyone, wouldn’t it?
“I’d love to hear about it,” I said. “But right now, I need to do a little research about some deliveries I made.”
She frowned. “What about the axe, then? Will you leave it here? Or do you want me to take it somewhere?”
I thought about that for a minute. I’d let Sophie make a few simple deliveries on her own. Nothing big. She’d taken an envelope to some elves and dropped a package off in the Delta for a water spirit. All close by. All easy. She’d done a great job. This one would be a little trickier. Was she ready for it? “That’s not a bad idea, Soph. The axe is supposed to go to Ginnar the Dwarf.”
“Where does he live?”
“Not sure.” I had a few ideas but nothing definite.
“How am I supposed to find him then?” Her eyebrows drew down.
I gestured for her to follow me into the office. I sat down behind Mae’s desk and then twisted a bit. Mae had been a small woman and while I’m not an Amazon, I am close to five foot eight. Her chair didn’t fit me and I was constantly trying to adjust it. Nothing seemed to work. I was going to have to bite the bullet and buy my own. That would be about number nine hundred and twenty-seven on my priority list, though.
The axe, on the other hand, had made it to about five or six. I moved the
gi
that I’d quickly thrown over it when Mrs. Gundar had started screaming.
“Wow,” Sophie said.
It was a wow-worthy axe. The metal hasp gleamed. Carved runes and dwarven figures intertwined their way down the wooden handle. “It’s going to tell you how to find Ginnar.”
She looked up at me, eyes wide. “It talks?”
Fabulous. She’d believe almost anything these days. I couldn’t really blame her. To suddenly find out that so many things you thought were the product of feverish imaginations and fictional geniuses were actually roaming the earth and possibly next to you on the bus made a person wonder what to believe and not to believe. Sophie had clearly taken the route of acceptance.
“No. It doesn’t talk. At least, not with words.”
She nodded and waited while I tried to find words for what had become innate for me. I’d become a Messenger when I was practically still a toddler. Explaining how to figure out where to make a delivery was like trying to tell someone how to breathe.
“Put your hand on the axe,” I said.
She looked at me, her eyes wide. “Are we going to swear some kind of blood oath?”
I shot her a look. “No. We’re not going to do each other’s nails or give each other facials either. Just put your hand on it.”
She set her hand on the hasp and pulled it away as if the thing were hot.
“I take it you felt something?” I sat back in the chair.
Sophie nodded. “What is that?”
Objects of magic contain power. I realize that sounds simplistic, but it’s true. Rarely do they have power of their own, however. They’re like containers. They become imbued with power. Sometimes only one being places the power in the object. Sometimes it’s layered on over generations or heaped on by groups that believe in it. Either way, the farther the objects are from those that imbue them, the less powerful their magic becomes.
The magic in the axe wasn’t strong enough, at this point, to feel across the room, but place your hand right on it and you’d feel the buzz. Well, you would if you were sensitive to such things. I’m pretty sure my brother could have hauled this thing around for weeks and not received a single spark from it. Sophie had certainly felt it, though.
Until now, most of her deliveries had been safely ensconced in packages and envelopes. I hadn’t let her handle too many objects of power mano a mano, as it were. It was wise to be careful about handling these things. They can take power as fast as they give it. “It’s the axe talking to you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not sure I speak its language.”
“You do. Maybe not fluently yet, but you do.” I saw the stubborn set of her chin and felt a little bad. I did know how she felt. Once you become a Messenger—and it’s not like you apply for the job—you discover abilities and information inside yourself that you might not really like or want. I suppose I could have offered some words of understanding or comfort, but they would be meaningless. The reality of the situation was that the universe pretty much said tough cookies to what you wanted. You are what you are, and if you’re a Messenger, you speak fluent Dwarf Axe whether you want to or not.
“Now, scoot. I need to figure some stuff out.” I held the axe out to her to take.
She took it, holding it away from her as if it had cooties or something. “Can I help?”
Her face was so open and so earnest, but she knew nothing. No. The person who generally helped me was gone and I needed to figure out how to handle stuff on my own. “I wish you could, kiddo.”
It would have been nice to have Mae here to talk to right now. What was I supposed to do about this situation with Bossard? I didn’t like that someone had remembered my car, but I’m pretty sure if they’d had the plates, Ted would have done more than make me look at a newspaper article. There might have been discussions with local authorities and other things that didn’t sound like any fun at all to me.
Who was this guy, anyway? Maybe if I knew who Bossard was, I’d be able to figure out who was sending him neatly wrapped little packages with careful block printing on the front. Maybe I’d find that the package had nothing to do with him being spread like peanut butter on toast down Highway 120.
I turned on the computer on Mae’s desk and waited for it to come to life.
It really could be a coincidence. There might be no connection with me or with Kurt Rawley. Come to think of it, I’d better look into him, too. His death looked as accidental as Bossard’s. I think the paper said something about a house fire. If somebody was orchestrating these deaths, they were damn clever.
I typed Neil Bossard’s name and Elmville, California, into the search engine. The usual bazillion results came in the standard nanosecond. The first entry was an account of Bossard’s death in the local newspaper. It didn’t tell me much more than had been in the
Bee
, except it gave the time and place of his memorial service. Tomorrow at three P.M. at the Svoboda Family Mortuary. I jotted the address down. The
Bee
article was listed. Then came Bossard’s MySpace profile and Facebook page.
I logged onto Facebook, but couldn’t access the page without friending Bossard. Since I doubted he would be accepting new friend requests in the near future, I switched over to his MySpace page. Bingo! His profile was hanging out there for everybody to see, including me.
I enlarged the picture. Yep. I was reasonably certain that was the dude who’d scooped the package off the porch and walked into the house in Elmville. At least I’d gotten the right guy.
He was a Libra and he liked Sublime and Bad Religion. That didn’t help much. I scrolled through some of the messages. They were all recent, all posted within the last six weeks. Jbone had posted, “Welcome home, bra! Good times ahead.” Cshelty08 had posted, “Good to see you back, homey. When we gonna hoist some brews?” The other messages ran along the same lines. I checked through his list of friends, but couldn’t find Kurt Rawley.
I typed Rawley’s name and Elmville into the MySpace search. He popped up, too. Did these children have no concept of protecting their own privacy? I’d made his delivery long enough ago that I didn’t have as clear of a mental picture of who had picked up the package. It definitely looked like the right guy, though I couldn’t swear to it. He was just your standard white boy.
Rawley’s page had several “welcome home” messages and a few “good to see you on MySpace” messages, too. I looked at the message dates; they were all from this summer. I’d made Rawley’s delivery a couple of months later and he was dead within a few weeks. He liked some of the same bands as Bossard and he was a Cancer.
I drummed my fingers trying to figure out the connection. I looked at the messages again. There were a couple of “happy birthdays” mixed in with the “welcome homes.” Kurt Rawley had turned twenty-one on July 18. I flipped back to Neil Bossard’s page. He’d turned twenty-one in October.
Okay. They were the same age and lived in the same town. They must have known each other; Elmville wasn’t that big. If nothing else, they would have gone to the same high school. Elmville only had one.
I scrolled through the messages on Rawley’s page again. Hot damn. Jbone and Cshelty08 had left messages on both boys’ pages. I clicked to their pages. Both Jbone and Cshelty08 had graduated from Elmville High and had gone on to Modesto Junior College. I’m not sure their mamas would have been too happy to see exactly how they’d celebrated their accomplishments. At least, my mother would have been horrified to see me with a beer bong, but she was a tad on the old-fashioned side.
I clicked back to Bossard’s page. Nope. No graduation photos and nothing about where he’d been going to school. Come to think of it, there was nothing about where he was being welcomed back from. How far away could a kid his age go?
I clicked back to Rawley. It was the same deal. No graduation information and no word on where he was returning from either.
Crap. There was going to be a connection between these two and whatever it was, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like it.
2
BY THE TIME I LEFT RIVER CITY, I WAS TIRED, HUNGRY AND A little bit cranky. Plus, T.J. Hamilton, in an effort to prove once and for all that he was the biggest swinging dick at the dojo, had left a bruise the size of a football on my thigh when we were sparring.
It had been a close thing. I was pretty sure actually killing a student wouldn’t be a good thing for the dojo. I’d call it one of Mae’s unwritten rules or perhaps a universal assumption.
I knew how to control myself. I had to. I’d spent years at the dojo not letting my fighting skills show completely. I had to fight well enough to win the respect of my fellow students and to justify being Mae’s pet, which I obviously was to anyone with half a brain. But I couldn’t fight inexplicably well, and left to my own devices, I do fight way better than most people would assume.
It’s not like I’m not fit, but I’m a girl, which is one strike against me in the very macho and masculine world of martial arts. I also look a little younger than I am. I’m guessing it’s part of the Messenger gig. I heal fast. I move fast. I’m likely to still be getting carded when I’m forty, assuming I live that long.
Most of the students at the dojo had accepted me as Mae’s successor, if not her replacement, when I’d inherited the dojo. I was still fighting for recognition from a few of them. T.J. would be among that few and it was starting to get on my nerves.
To be honest, those nerves were already a bit frayed anyway. Between the studio, my job at the hospital, Sophie, Norah and my regular Messenger duties, I was stretched thinner than a supermodel during Fashion Week. When T.J. landed his kick to my thigh, it was everything I could do to keep myself from taking him out right there and then.
It wouldn’t have been hard to do. He had six inches on me and probably close to one hundred pounds, but that just made him cocky. I had to content myself with a leg sweep that left him on his back gasping for air. He was lucky I hadn’t snapped completely and broken his larynx while he was down. It was my first instinct and my hands had been in motion when I’d stopped myself.
Clearly, I needed a vacation.
I was not going to get it, though. Instead, on my day off, I was going to Elmville to attend Neil Bossard’s memorial service. I didn’t think I was going to find too much more on the Internet. It was a wondrous place, the World Wide Web, but it did have its limits. This smelled distinctly like something that was going to require some actual sniffing around. I was pretty sure the best time and place for that was going to be Bossard’s memorial service on Sunday. Don’t TV cops always go to the victim’s funeral?