Forest Moon Rising (8 page)

“I can’t do it, Scrap. I can’t call him out of the blue. I don’t know what he’s doing, how he’s coping, where he’s living.”

“What if I could show you?” I slip through the computer screen—these new flat pieces are more porous to my kind and it’s easy.

“It’s after midnight. He’s probably sleeping. And I don’t want to see who he’s sleeping with.”

“Not to worry. He’s awake. I promise you we’ll just take a quick peek from the chat room. If things get embarrassing, we’ll dart back home so quick you won’t have time to blush.” I let the barbed tip of my tail glow a little, green with lust. I’d love to see what goes on in that household. If Tess knew what a voyeur I’d become she’d spank my bottom good and hard.

Oooooh, if only Ginkgo would do that!

“I hate the chat room. I’m in no condition to fight whoever is guarding it today ...”

“So stop with the excuses. I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve, dahling. I would never endanger you. I just wish I could lick that wound and make it better.” I pout again. Imp spit works wonders on demon tags and infections. We have a natural antibiotic attuned to our warriors. Sprains, strains, and breaks are beyond our healing ability though.

Only the person who broke a heart can repair that kind of wound.

“Okay.” She gives in reluctantly after a long silent pondering.

I bounce to her shoulder and whisk us through the dimensional portal and into the white nothingness of the chat room before she can change our mind. I spot a few doors here and there, some on the edges in neat rows; some randomly placed above, below, and in the middle. There are glass doors, brass doors, leather curtains, and painted screens. Little ones, human size ones, bigger ones, and giant openings with no visible cover at all. Pick a dimension, any dimension; the chat room opens to all of them, anywhere, anywhen.

Tess stands unsteadily on one foot blinking rapidly. Her cast has paled to a translucent echo of the real thing. Reality twists and fades in the chat room. It also grows big and fast and slams you in the face. You never know.

“Don’t think about the cast, babe. In here you can put your foot down without danger. I can see the bruises and torn muscles. They are healing clean, but slowly.”

“It’s the dragon growing from butterfly size to nearly fill the room I’m scared of.” She points needlessly to the bright blue and yellow scaled beastie.

“Oh, yeah, the J’appel dragons. That skinny Larper quaking on top of his closed portal must have stumbled on the guardian’s real name.”

For the uninitiated, Larper stands for Live Action Roll Playing gamer. They stumble into the chat room all the time without knowing how they got here. Most of them have enough sense to back out by the door they came in by. A few don’t realize they are beyond reality and keep plowing forward, hoping to find Impland—the freeze-dried garbage dump of the Universe. Lots of magical artifacts end up there and are highly prized by critters more dangerous than the J’appel dragons. I’ve given a couple of those artifacts to Tess.

Tess stomps over to the Larper who’s hunkered down with his hands over his head. “What did you say to him?” she demands.

“I ... I ... said ... hello.”

“Crap. That’s what the dragon changed his name to about a minute before you came through. Call his real name and he grows to dragon size until he decides to change his name again. Now get out of here.” She pulls him off the splintery wooden door with chipped white paint and tarnished metal fittings, opens it, then shoves the poor mite back where he came from.

“Um . . . Tess,” I call as I flit over to her shoulder. “I think we need to get out of here. We’ve attracted some unwanted attention.”

“No kidding. Do we have to fight?” She takes up a stance
en garde
.

“Not here, babe. Just follow me.” I lead the way around the perimeter of the room without true dimension. I’m an imp. I know how to use the chat room. I’ve learned a few tricks over the decades. I may be small but I’m tricky.

The dragon lowers his head, swinging it in a wide arc, sniffing. He’s nearsighted. Great. Those are the most dangerous kind. He can smell Tess and me but he can’t see us. So he’s going to flame us just in case we don’t belong here.

At the last possible second I drag Tess into a side corridor I discovered while doing research on that magical diamond Donovan tried to give her as an engagement ring. It’s back in Faery now where it belongs, but, oh, it was a gorgeous ring. Both Tess and I lusted after it.

Dragon flames lick my hind end. “Stop that.” I slap the beast’s nose with my tail. His snout helps me beat the flames down to embers.

He backs off, looking hurt and confused, as if his mother had just reprimanded him for overcooking his dinner.

I’ll have to remember that next time.

“Oh, my!” Tess covers her heart. A tear trickles down her cheek. She’s looking through a little window into Gollum’s home office. He’s staring at his computer. An image of the Nörglein and a lot of text in Italian fill the twenty-four-inch screen. I think that’s the language, though it looks a bit like German. He speaks and reads both—modern and medieval.

Tess half reaches out as if to caress his face, or run her fingers through his fine silver gilt hair.

Her hand lingers, fingers frozen half reaching for him. She forgets to breathe. The single tear gains sisters.

Her other hand clings to the pearls as if to a lifeline.

“I’d forgotten how tall he is,” she whispers. “He needs to fix those glasses. They keep sliding down his nose.”

His hand reaches for the phone.

I grab Tess and drop her back in her own office just as the first chirp comes from her landline.

She stares at the phone as if it’s an alien being singing the “Halleluiah Chorus.”

It might be.

T
HE CALLER ID SHOWED “PRIVATE NAME” and a number with a local area code and exchange.

It rang a second time.

I hesitated.

Pick up the damn phone
, Scrap yelled into the middle of my mind.

Okay. I could do this.

A deep breath for courage.

A third ring.

One more and it would go to voice mail. I could return the call.

He might not leave a message.

I’d not hear his clipped tenor voice with hints of upstate New York mellowed by the dozen languages he spoke and read.

Desperate, I grabbed the phone in the middle of the fourth ring. “Hello.” I tried to keep my voice from sounding breathless with anticipation. My heart raced and my teeth nearly chattered.

A long moment of dead air.

“Hello?” I tried again.

“Tess,” he breathed.

“Who is this?” As if I didn’t know.

“It’s me, Guilford ... um, Gollum.” I could almost see him blushing.

“Good morning Dr. Van der Hoyden-Smythe. A little late to be calling.”

“Tess, please. We need to talk. I’ve found some new information about your ... um ... problem.” He rushed through that, as if afraid I might hang up on him.

I thought about it.

“What kind of information?”

“Not over an open line. We need to talk. In private. Before it gets any worse.”

“How could it be worse? Seven women in less than a year.”

“The problem is escalating. Please. Where can I meet you?”

“How did you get this number?” I’d changed it right after leaving Cape Cod.

“JJ and Raquel gave it to me. They said you’re in the book.”

Damn.

Yeah!

What did I really feel?

Anger certainly. Fear. Deep and abiding longing to keep this conversation going forever.

“Tess, where can I meet you? Neutral territory if you like.”

“Do you know Bill’s Café on Bancroft, right off Macadam?” Two blocks away. Surely I could manage to hobble two blocks on my crutches. No way I could drive my car with a stick shift. Maybe I could hotwire Steve’s rental ... No, he was leaving at zero dark thirty and returning the car. Allie was staying with me. I wouldn’t ask her to drive.

“I’ll find it. Eight-thirty tomorrow ... this morning?”

“Why not earlier?” He’d always been an early riser, even after a late night of deep conversation and a bottle of single malt between us.

“I can’t get away until eight when Julia’s nurse is available. Then I have to be back at the college for a ten o’clock class.”

“Back up. Julia? Your wife is with you and not locked up in an insane asylum?” I started shaking with chills that began in my gut and spread outward. My hands grew so cold I almost dropped the phone.

“She’s had a remarkable breakthrough but I’m not comfortable leaving her alone ...”

I dropped the phone back in its cradle, cutting him off.

The phone rang again.

I turned it off without answering.

Too angry to cry, too filled with loneliness to think, eyes too full of tears to see the computer screen, I hauled myself off to my sofa, hugging a pillow so tight I burst the seams. It spewed down feathers, like a snowstorm had vomited all over my living room.

I watched tiny specks of white flutter to the floor at the same speed as the tears dripping off my cheeks.

As dawn crept around the edges of the blinds I turned on the gas log in the fireplace and cleaned up the mess. I had to use a hand broom and dustpan while crawling. Scrap didn’t help much, fluttering around, scattering clumps of feathers to the far corners.

I kept at my silent sweeping. No sense in letting Steve and Allie know how much I hurt.

Or Donovan.

At eight-thirty on the dot I swung up to the front door of Bill’s Café, sweating and limp with fatigue. Manipulating crutches is hard work. I had to stop and breathe deeply before figuring out the awkward process of getting through the heavy swinging door.

A long arm reached from behind and above me to hold the door open.

I knew that hand. Long fingers, hairless knuckles, ink stains on the middle finger.

“Thank you, Gollum.” I had to close my eyes and force air into my lungs.

“I wasn’t sure you’d show up,” he said softly.

I couldn’t not show up.

He looked damp and a bit rumpled. His usual polo shirt and khakis had lost their crispness. I hoped I looked less battered by life than he.

Fat chance.

Bill, the café owner, bustled up and swung the door open further. Balding, middle-aged, once heavy but slimming down nicely from all the hard work of owning, managing, and cooking in his own place, Bill and I had struck up a friendship right after I moved into the neighborhood, a week after he opened.

“Tess, what happened?” He ushered me to a center table and pulled an extra chair over for me to prop my foot on.

“I tripped while jogging.” I followed him very slowly.

“Tsk, tsk. You must be more careful. You’re my best customer. I might have to close down if you stopped coming.”

Fat chance of that. People filled the line of booths under the windows on two walls. The five tables in the middle of the long narrow room were mostly occupied as well.

Big windows offered a glimpse of the river between tall office buildings across the highway, and a good look at the state of the rain. I’d learned that in the Pacific Northwest people depend upon a lot of big windows to let as much light in as possible. We consider the sun a UFO.

Maybe that’s why we have such excellent coffee, to brighten our moods when the sun can’t do it.

“Nothing’s broken. You won’t get rid of me so easily,” I quipped back.

“The regular, Tess?” he asked, helping me settle.

“Yeah, the regular. Black coffee and whole wheat toast with strawberry jam.”

Gollum quirked a questioning eyebrow at me. Then he handed his menu back to Bill without looking at it or sitting. “Pancake sandwich. Eggs over medium, patty sausage. Blackberry syrup if you have it. Coffee with cream and sugar.”