Forest Moon Rising (18 page)

Tess might come here and learn that the magic ring she gave back to the faeries connects her by blood to Lady Lucia, a demon masquerading as a vampire. But that’s another story I’m not going to tell her.

Without landmarks I have no sense of time or distance. But with each painful slide forward the pressure from the door lessens and the floor becomes more solid. If I can just find the main room I’ll be able to pop back to Tess. We can heal together.

While I languish in this half state of living so will she.

I woke up abruptly to the sounds of blue jays squabbling over a morsel of stolen food—blue jays always steal food and they always squabble—and the smell of stale coffee and burned toast. My own rather ripe and unwashed body added to the pungent mix.

“A hospital would smell better.” I must have mumbled out loud. The sound of my own voice startled me. My throat felt as if I’d torn each word from a fixed position inside it.

“You’re alive!” Gollum whispered. His hands encased one of my own, and his head rested on the side of my bed within the cradle of his arms. He looked up, blinking blearily at me without his glasses. For once I could truly see his emotions through the mild blue irises. He smiled a bit. “You’re alive,” he said somewhat louder.

I reached over and caressed his fair hair as if I had the right to touch him so intimately and lovingly.

“Did you say something?” Allie peeked in. She wore a maroon suit, complete with flared skirt, matching blazer, and a pink blouse.

“You look like me at a publisher’s lunch,” I said, somewhat surprised.

“Job interview. Welcome back to the land of the living. I’ve got to run, Gollum. You okay alone with her?”

“Of course.” He removed one of his big hands from atop mine and fumbled for his glasses.

I found them next to my pillow and handed them back, though I’d miss the honesty of his expression without the disguising lenses.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, when he was safely hiding behind his glasses once more.

“Yes, I should.” He raised my hand and kissed my fingertips.

“What about ... Julia?” I couldn’t bring myself to call her his wife.

“Pat is with her.”

“The nurse?”

He nodded as he checked my brow for fever with the inside of his wrist.

“But Pat works nights and you’ve been here all night.”

“Don’t worry about me and mine. I need to know what happened to you. You’ve been in a kind of coma.”

“I don’t know. I think Scrap is hurt. My back aches like it’s been hit with a two by four.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I told him to leave me alone and let me work. So he left. Sometime later I couldn’t keep my eyes open.” I tried to recall those lost hours. “I think I dreamed about some Gypsies and a crystal ball.”

“Why?”

“I ...” After gulping and organizing my thoughts a bit I told him about the ball of beryllium.

He didn’t question why I had refused the price.

“Try calling Scrap with your mind. He might respond to a direct order to return to your side.”

“If he can.”

Gollum raised his eyebrows in mute question.

“I think I also dreamed of death. Something about a big heavy door that leads to a dimension from which there is no return.”

“Try calling him. You are alive and awake, therefore, he must be also.”

Yeah, yeah, I’m coming. Hold your horses.
A perfect donut ring of cigar smoke preceded him. He poked his head through a crack in reality, wearing the ring like a lei.

“You can stop playing games now. I was worried about you.”

You were worried? I was worried,
he snarled sarcastically.
Catch me!
He popped through, landing on my belly with a whoosh.

My breath expelled explosively.

“You’re heavy,” I complained when I could breathe again. “You’re heavy? You don’t weigh anything in this dimension. How could you knock the breath out of me?” I reached to hug him.

Relief at his reappearance outweighed my discomfort.

He mumbled and grumbled and waddled around until his back was to me.

“Nice wart on your spine,” I complimented him.

He humphed and grumphed.

“Oh, your wings are ... a bit droopy.” The cartilage on the up-sweep had lost stiffness and the barbed joints looked a bit dull and twisted.

“Tell me about it,” I soothed him. I ran a gentle hand along the outside of the wings, amazed that I could feel the suedelike texture.

“Good to see you in the flesh, buddy,” Gollum said, peering at my usually invisible imp. “You’ve grown a bit since I last saw you. Got a few new warts too. What can I do to make you feel better?”

Mold. And lots of it.
Scrap thought a minute.
And some beer and OJ. And could I please have my favorite pink boa?

“You got it. Coffee for you, Tess?”

I nodded. “Hey, how come you can see
and
hear him?”

“Ask him while I get some fortification for both of you.” He exited with his usual long stride.

“Talk, Scrap.”

Don’t wanna
.

“Nothing to eat until you tell me why we both almost died.”

I guess.
He sounded like a recalcitrant teenager caught playing hooky or with a stash of marijuana.

“Talk. I won’t judge you.”

More mumbles and grumbles. And then the story of his time in the chat room with the Politbutts came out in one long burst with hardly a breath.

Gollum came back in with a tray of treats and drinks about the time Scrap speculated how the bodies and souls of dead imps made up the chat room. Professor Van der Hoyden-Smythe nodded sagely and reached for his everything in one cell phone to take notes. His glasses started slipping down his long nose.

The geek I fell in love with was back in true form.

“You going to get an academic paper out of this?” I asked.

Scrap finished his tale with his long slow crawl back home. Before the last word dribbled from his mouth, he scooped up a glob of mold—from the balcony baseboards judging by the color and texture—plucked out a tiny spider and swallowed it in one gulp. Then he chased his tidbit with a long slurp of beer mixed half and half with orange juice.

His skin turned bright orange and began to fade.

“Is he still here?” Gollum asked, staring right at Scrap. Or maybe staring through him.

“Of course. He must be feeling better to go transparent. I wonder why he was so visible when he was hurt.”

“Probably an instinct thing. So you could care for him.”

Hey, I’m still here. I can hear every word you say
.

“We know that, Scrap. Why don’t you take a nap. Your eyes look very heavy.”

Stay with me.
He waddled up to the spare pillow and curled up in a ball with his wings spread out over him. In seconds he began snoring.

“He’s sleeping,” I whispered. “I didn’t know he did sleep.”

“All creatures need sleep to heal.” Gollum knelt beside the bed and captured my hand again. “I am very relieved that you are both safe now.”

“Thank you for keeping vigil. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have beside me if I died.” My throat started to close. I had to look away, knowing what I had to do, no matter how much it hurt.

“I had to be here.”

“And now that we are healing, you need to go.”

“Tess, you can’t keep on doing this by yourself. You’ve gotten hurt too many times this last year. You need backup. You need help.”

“I do what I have to do, the way I have to do it.” A stubborn wall of hurt pride rose up around me.

“Tess, I ...”

“Go. Please, go now, while I can still release you to your obligations.”

“We may not be able to be together as a couple, Tess. Not the way we want to. But I am your archivist. You are as much my responsibility as Julia. You need help. I am always available.”

“But not to love. Just go. Before I make a fool of myself and both of us sorry you came at all.” I turned my head to the wall so I wouldn’t have to watch him leave. Again.

T
HREE MORE DAYS I LINGERED, half awake, aching all over, gorging on any food Allie fixed or left in the fridge while she went about her business.

I noticed new smells with every turn of my head. Was my own sense increasingly sensitive? More likely, my bond with Scrap deepened as he glued himself to my shoulder. His thoughts became my thoughts. His hunger my hunger. His keen nose spilled over into my own.

During the day I wrote, reverting to older habits. When the going gets tough the tough keep writing. I’d been someone else in my depression, letting my frantic lack of accomplishment rule and push me into a self-defeating loop.

I stared out the windows toward the river a lot, absorbing the life and routine of passing barges, and the venturesome few who took out sailboats or tried water skiing this late in the year. The honking of migrating geese invaded my soul with a restlessness my body couldn’t keep up with.

The damp grass and falling leaves smelled of sleep and quiet.

My thoughts wandered back over the events of my life. What could I have changed? Did I make the right decisions? Where did I go from here?

Gollum’s absence gnawed at me like a sore tooth.

A car backfired on Macadam Avenue. I jumped and crouched with my hands over my head.

Once more I was back in the chat room, reliving the reverberating door knocker on the portal that led to the Powers That Be.

“You ask a lot,” a reedy voice intoned as I stood before the high judicial bench. I thought the voice came from the huge creature hovering behind the panel. It alone did not sit in a thronelike chair. Maybe it was just too big for the available furniture. An occasional questing tentacle reminded me of the Cthulu demon on guard outside.

Scrap kept a very low profile close to the door. He looked like he wanted to flee, but as long as I remained, he had to remain as well.

His nose twitched constantly, seeking a whiff of danger.

“I ask for no more than what you want,” I told the court, forcing my fears down into a tight knot behind my heart. The same place where I bottled up my grief over my mother’s murder. “My home on Cape Cod is on neutral ground. Sacred in its neutrality. It has always been neutral since before the coming of humans to that land. You want it to remain neutral.”

“You are decidedly not neutral, Warrior of the Celestial Blade,” the booming bass voice flowed out of the deep hood on my left.

“I propose a compromise.”

Seven cowled heads turned toward each other, bent in some silent communication.

“Explain,” said a new voice, definitely female, with musical undertones and an accent that might have originated in Faery. This being sat dead center, more senior than the others. Her vote weighed more than all the others as well.

I addressed her directly.

“My father and his partner wish to buy the house from me and turn it into a Bed and Breakfast, a kind of an inn. They are neutral. Neither Warrior nor demon. They are normal, without power or interest in rogue portals. ”

The faery nodded in agreement. The others remained silent in their grim mysterious secrecy.

“But the energies around the house make it vulnerable to the opening of a rogue portal. It’s a kind of vortex that attracts ghosts, faeries, and demons. I have no fear of the ghosts or faeries. I do fear the demons.”