Forest Moon Rising (44 page)

Now it seems I can fly into dark rooms and down halls. I peek in on the girls. They are still obsessed with their games. Not a plant in sight.

Back in the dealers’ room I find the book dealer wrapping up a stack of books for Squishy and her lady. No sign of the good doctor.

I sniff for his Winter Pine aftershave and find him in the hospitality suite checking out the box of donuts with a large can of cola in his hand.

Double huh. I did not expect this.

I should have expected Gollum to arrive at the panel early with a stack of reference texts and a power point multimedia projector.

“Why should I even bother sitting on the panel?” I slumped against the doorjamb, arms crossed. I had to bite my cheeks to suppress the wave of joy that swamped me.

I kept trying to tell myself I had moved on with Sean. I wanted a real life, not the depressed pining I’d endured for a year and a half.

Just thinking about Gollum made my heart flip. The sight of him and his inevitable laptop took my breath away.

He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and peered at me across the room, a gentle smile softened the worry lines radiating out from his eyes and mouth.

I needed to smooth those lines away.

Before I could act on my impulse a half dozen people pressed behind me, eager to weigh in with their own opinions on the discussion.

I flowed forward with the surge, letting their momentum carry me toward the long table at the front of the room. To mask my emotions, I fussed with pouring myself a glass of ice water from the carafe, setting up my table tent and a small display of book covers and bookmarks.

We started a little late. The sparse audience remained sparse—it was early on the first day of the con.

“Star Wars
is a retelling of the Arthurian legends in a milieu that speaks to modern audiences,” I said about twenty minutes later in the midst of a discussion on the value of ancient legends to a diverse and multicultural society.

“No way!” Gollum protested. “Light Sabers are Samurai Swords. Look at the two-handed fighting stance . . .”

“The story is about more than your fascination with swords,” I returned. “We have to look at the story and the moral lessons imparted.”

A fluster of movement in the back of the room captured my attention. A bigger audience maybe?

Squishy and her lady took seats in the back row. They held hands and leaned their heads close. A sense of intimacy isolated them from the rest of the room.

Gollum froze, mouth half open, his retort swallowed.

I had no more reason to wonder if Squishy’s lady was Julia. I knew.

I opened the discussion to the audience, letting Gollum retreat into unnatural silence, power point presentation forgotten.

“S
ORRY I FLAKED OUT ON YOU, TESS,” Gollum said quietly as I dismissed the audience five minutes before the hour. I’d have gladly let them go half an hour before.

“No problem.” The other author on the panel flashed me a grin. Somewhat shy about butting into a discussion, she’d managed to insert more of her opinions than usual with only me sharing time with her.

“Tess, I owe you an explanation.” Gollum stopped me with a hand on my arm from clearing my nice display.

A couple from the audience dashed forward and snatched some bookmarks before I could put them away.

“No, you don’t, Gollum. She owes you an explanation. I think the three of you need to go find someplace private and talk. Don’t let either of them dance around the issues.”

“You knew?”

“I suspected when I saw them at Holly’s concert a few weeks ago. And I don’t know that Pat is Julia’s first flirtation. Now go talk to them and let me continue with the con. I’ll cover your next panel with the power point if you want.”

“Thanks. But the panel on dragon evolution isn’t until tomorrow afternoon. If you could stash this stuff in the Green Room I’d appreciate it. And I’ll let you know if I can’t get back.” Awkwardly, he moved behind me and used his long legs to eat the distance between him and his wife and her lover where they lingered in the back corner. They left with a minimum of discourse. All three walked as if treading on dragon scales, not wanting to awaken the beast.

I occupied my curious mind and imagination with packing up the power point stuff rather than speculating on the conversation taking place elsewhere. Then I could always think about Sophia and my girls. There was plenty to occupy my thoughts without speculation about Gollum and the ladies.

“Scrap, how are the girls?” I whispered.

Still okay and still no sign of plants
. He darted out of the room and back again in an eye blink.
Heads up, babe. New crop of demon tats filling the doorway.

“Shit. Where’s the Nörglein getting them?” Five young men in their late teens blocked the entrance. They all wore expensive leather jackets and ragged jeans. Their grimy T-shirts smelled of compost, heavy on the manure.

No sign of Blondie with his pendant to match his tattoo.

What grabbed my attention about the new group were new tattoos of a pentagram around a skull. The placement on the insides of their wrists had to hurt more than inserting the ink on the back of their arms. To my eye, the ink pulsed red around the black lines. That was raw infection from the recent and inexpert application. I couldn’t see any sign of other dimensional origins to the ink.

“Pay back time, lady,” the first one through the door growled. His buddies made an impenetrable phalanx behind him, crowding out the surge of con members trying to get in for the next panel.

“Scrap, get to the girls. Don’t let Tree Daddy near them while I’m distracted.”

“Just a little pink around the edges. Get your ass over to my daughters. I can handle these guys.” To prove it, I took an
en garde
stance and looked for a mundane weapon.

“Hey, Tess.” A semi-familiar voiced piped up from the doorway. “Use this!” A fan I recognized from last year’s con tossed me an unsharpened broadsword from his Conan costume. It had a plastic band around the grip indicating his “Peace Bond” or promise not to draw the weapon while at the con.

I plucked the sword out of the air by the grip, flipped it expertly, and readied to fight my way out of this mess.

“Call security!” I called to anyone listening.

“On their way. These guys have fake badges.”

“Ghosts as well as bad ass and ugly,” I sneered.

“We ain’t dead yet.” The leader advanced one step.

I whopped him upside the head with the flat of the blade. “Ghosts are scumbags who don’t bother to pay for their memberships,” I explained whirling to catch the next two with a side kick to the groin and an elbow to the nose.

“The attitude and the smell I could cope with. Forging a con badge? That’s unforgivable.”

My combatants staggered into the audience and got shoved back and forth for their trouble. Off-balance and confused, the leader dropped to his knees right in front of the chain mail clad giant who wore a bright red ribbon on his badge that proclaimed to the world “Security.”

He hauled that one up by the collar of his pricey leather jacket, caught another by his belt, and marched them out. My friend, Conan, grabbed another one and followed.

The other two, the ones I hadn’t engaged in combat, fled.

“Incompetent newbies,” I muttered. “You’d think Tree Daddy would give them a bit of training before turning them loose. Demon tats don’t protect minions like they used to.”

Or maybe Tree Daddy had run out of goodwill with the higher ups and had to use his own dwindling magic to demonize the tattoos. The bespelled ink wasn’t as strong or as effective as the real thing.

Scrap had destroyed his hat, taking with it a power reserve.

If that were the case, he’d be getting desperate to get his girls back and begin inbreeding to strengthen the elf DNA.

I dashed to catch up to Conan and return the sword. “No one saw me draw this, right?” I called back to the room at large.

“What sword?” someone yelled.

“Could someone get the power point stuff back to the Green Room for me?”

“Sure thing, Tess.”

“Anything for our Tess!”

Goddess, I love a con. Where else could I trust strangers to provide me with a weapon, and return expensive audio visual equipment to a secure location? Strangers in wild costumes. But then the costumed ones are loyal, come back every year, and thrive on the con culture. At a con everyone is your new best friend, especially when crowding into an elevator drives us to more intimate than casual contact.

And I had to get down to the gaming rooms to make sure nothing terrible happened to my daughters that would close down the con prematurely. I didn’t want two thousand fans angry at me.

“Scrap, report!”

“About time you showed up,” I squawk to Tess as she dashes down the winding steps to the garden café, makes a screeching turn past Lady Lucia, scanning briefly to make sure Sophia was still there, and into the suddenly murky corridor.

“Fuck!” she screams as she barks her shin against an abandoned redwood tub. Rich soil spills out of it. I smell dirt filling the air, clouding the lights, making the place inhospitable to all but the most determined.

In short, it smells of Nörglein.

I can see traces of a masculine footprint tracking dirt on the vinyl flooring. A bare foot, no shoes.

“Had to have been Fir,” I tell Tess. “He was masquerading as a Norfolk Pine but he looked more like a grand fir to me.” My voice comes out an octave higher as my body stretches.

Hot blood quickens in my veins. My wing tips are near scorching. My tail gives off a pulsing red glow.

I fly just ahead of Tess, guiding her to the gaming rooms.

“Oh, hi, Cedar,” Phonetia says blithely, as if we didn’t know that the tree boys have become her enemies. “Pull up a chair. I think we can roll you into the scene in about three moves.”

The stocky—or is that stalky—boy bites his lips, eyeing the game board avariciously.

Fir stretches tall and peeks over his brother’s shoulders. “Can I play too? I think I can pick up where I left off at High Desert Con.”

An addiction in action. Is it stronger than the compulsion their father laid upon them?

Some of the heat bleeds off my extremities. I’m still ready to taste blood, if only my babe will command me.

But we are in a public place. Not good to reveal ourselves just yet.