“Yeah, I had to have help finding the place. The cab driver was a real wiz.”
Me?
“I’d have to check…Fisher Cabs, I think.”
Definitely about me.
“I don’t have to. He’s still sitting out front waiting. It’s hard to find a good cabbie in this state.”
Veruca walked over to me, her hand outstretched to offer me the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”
I shook my head. “I really don’t do cell...”
“This time you do. You don’t say no to him.” She held it up against my ear.
“Hello?” I grabbed the phone and Veruca draped her arm across my chest as she dropped down on the bed behind me.
”Mr. Fisher, I must say this is a surprise. Miss Wakefield is treating you well, I presume?” Lucien Valente’s voice came through crystal clear.
“Yes, sir. Umm…but I don’t know much about art.”
He grunted. “Ignore all that. I keep trying to tell her that these phones can’t be tapped, but old habits die hard. You can speak freely.”
“Can’t be tapped? Could they intercept the signal?”
“Only if they knew what they were listening for. I’m not an R&D guy any more than I am a magic guy, but the designer assures me nobody else on the planet is using this type. You can say whatever you want. How did you meet up with Miss Wakefield? Last I talked to her, she was taking a few days vacation time.”
I tugged at my collar and tried to ignore Veruca purring over my shoulder. “Miss Deluce bet me I couldn’t conjure up her phone number. I called Miss Wakefield up and we hit it off, once I got past all the death threats.”
“Called her? I wasn’t aware she was carrying a regular phone. Let me talk to her again.”
I slid the phone behind me. “Yes, sir.” Pause. “Yes, this line.” Pause. “No clue. Aren’t you glad I’m still just your art buyer?”
She handed the phone back. Valente sounded both puzzled and irritated. “Fisher? How the hell did you pull that off? These things can only call each other, not regular phones.”
My voice cracked as I responded. “Magic. I used a gremlin-built cellphone and told it I needed to talk to Veruca Wakefield, Inner Circle of Valente International. The fairies took care of the rest.” Veruca nibbling on my neck was not making conversation easy.
The silence that followed was long enough to convince me my anti-cellular juju had caught up to me. But eventually Lucien said, “My compliments, Mr. Fisher. You used magic to find the woman who cursed me? Fairies help you with that as well?”
“No, sir. A basic tracking spell. Probability magic, actually. A lake spirit clued me in as to where to start looking, but the spell took over from there. Do you want the details?”
“No, Mr. Fisher. That won’t be necessary. Do we owe the fae anything for the phone call or the tip?”
“No, sir. I don’t get in debt with them. I pay as I go.”
He sounded genuinely impressed. “Finally, a little competence. You wouldn’t believe what the Seelies tried to charge me for a deal one of my past wizards made with them.”
“Kids?” I guessed.
More silence. “Maybe you would believe.” He paused. “So where are we on the curse? Is it over?”
“No, sir. I killed one of the wendigoes, but it’s a family: mother, father, and child. I took out the adult male.”
“Are you sure it’s dead? From what I know of most supernatural beasts, they are remarkably resilient.”
I had to stifle a laugh as Veruca’s fingers probed my ticklish vulnerabilities. “Yes, I’m sure. I took its head, if you’d like it mounted for a souvenir.”
He did laugh. “I think I would. Tell Miss Wakefield to send it to me. She’ll know where and how without attracting unwanted attention.”
I relayed that to her. She huffed, but obediently hopped off the bed to find it. Valente continued. “Tell me how it died, Mr. Fisher, and what plans you have for the other two.”
I did, though I was selective about what I said regarding Tia or the Eye of Winter. “That’s about it, Mr. Valente. Duchess is setting up the company picnic for Tuesday night. I’m sure the wendigoes will want to eat, but they’ll give my sanctuary a wide berth. I’ll work out something else, though.”
“No, you won’t, Mr. Fisher. I think your role in this particular adventure is at an end.”
I choked on that. “I’m fired?”
He chuckled. “No, quite to the contrary. You’ve proven too valuable an asset to risk in combat. Will any fire and steel suffice or is magical ground also a prerequisite to killing them?”
“Any fire and steel. You have to burn off the ice cloud that surrounds them. That makes them about as dangerous as any large wolf. But, sir…they’re fast and they’re good at sneaking up on people. They like to retreat if things aren’t going their way. I wouldn’t want to see Veruca try to take them alone.”
“Veruca is likewise too valuable. I’m sending a Corporate Response Team to you. You will brief them and they will handle things during the party. Keep it simple for them, they are former military, but you don’t have to pretend the wendigoes are just normal animals. They’ve faced supernatural-level threats before. Make sure the team understands their tactics, their tendencies, and the importance of fire and steel. The CRT will handle the rest.”
“And then what?” Truth be told, I was a little disappointed. I still wanted a piece of the monsters for what they did to Dorothy.
“After you brief the CRT, come home to Boston. I need you here. I’ve needed the advice of a real wizard for some time now.”
That prompted me to ask something that had been gnawing at me. “Sir, with all due respect, why did you hire so many fakes before me? I mean, I haven’t heard Duchess or Veruca say a single nice thing about any of them.”
“A valid question, Mr. Fisher. The fae courts insisted on it. They refused to treat with my emissaries unless they were wizards, something about ancient traditions to keep. Most of the talented ones are already in the employ of the military, so I had to make do with what I could find.” The short silence that followed felt contemplative, as if Lucien was debating how much to tell me. “I can’t afford to lose the fae courts, Colin. FBI, CIA, Interpol, they could turn on me and I could handle it. On the other hand, the faeries scare the hell out of me.”
My mind returned to the forgotten whispers of the Eye of Winter. I shivered despite the heat radiating from Veruca’s body. “Me too, Lucien. To tell the truth, I would think anyone who isn’t frightened by them is either a liar or an idiot.”
Veruca kissed my shoulder. “Let me talk to him, Colin.”
His voice came from my other side. “I heard that. Put her on.”
Veruca leaned back as she took the phone from me, but her legs snaked up around my stomach, preventing me from leaving or turning around to face her. She wasn’t applying pressure, but I got the feeling she could make this hurt if she wanted to. “So are we keeping him?”
A second passed. “Good.”
Another. “Absolutely. Not a doubt, sir. He’s the real deal. He downplays himself, but I suspect he could go rounds with any of the guys Cell Thirteen is using.”
This time Lucien’s response must have been longer. “Understood, though I may have trouble getting him on the plane. He’s a little bit technophobic…and he has a smoking car. It would be a shame to leave her here.”
Her grip loosened, her big toe absently stroking my thigh. “Actually, sir, remember that favor you owe me? I’d like to collect. Let me act as his bodyguard whenever you don’t need me elsewhere. I’ll drive back with him and make sure nothing unfortunate happens to him.”
I would’ve given the rest of my chocolate supply to hear whatever Valente said in response. “Yes, sir, that favor.”
A pause. “It’s not a little thing. Not to me.”
The pause that followed nearly drove me insane. “Yes.”
“Insanity is a short drive for us.”
The phone appeared over my shoulder again. “He wants to say goodbye to you.” Coming from his private assassin that phrase scared me, but I didn’t feel in mortal danger.
“Yes, sir?”
Lucien’s voice sounded deeply impressed. “We will talk when you get here, Mr. Fisher. Whatever it takes to keep you in my employ, it can be arranged.”
“I already told you my terms, Mr. Valente. Freedom of conscience and Sarai. The paycheck is just the icing on top.”
“I will have a file ready for you when you arrive with everything I can find on the girl. Do you need your second check deposited before you arrive?”
“No, sir. It can wait.”
He laughed. “Sorry, that wasn’t what I meant to ask. I’m afraid Miss Wakefield has me a little flustered. Her request caught me by surprise…you haven’t bewitched her mind, have you?”
“No, sir. I wouldn’t. I think she just has that effect on people.”
“She saved my life once.” He paused to compose his thoughts. “Apparently, staying attached to you is worth my life, as she has decided to call in the debt. Is that acceptable to you?”
I turned around to face her and her upper thighs loosened their grip to let me. I stared down into her eyes, watching them shift from a silvery blue to a deep emerald. We each knew what the other was, but neither was pulling away. It wasn’t love, but then again, maybe that’s what love really is: knowing and staying anyway. I kissed her lightly on the lips, before bringing the phone back up to my mouth. “Yes, sir, that’s acceptable.”
9
T
he room was darker when I woke up. Veruca must have drawn the curtains shut, because no evidence of the coming full moon penetrated into the room. I sat up, planning on stumbling blindly towards the hotel room’s bathroom. That attempt at motion signaled to me just how much was horribly wrong in the room. I know, after the week I was having, I should have been quicker on the uptake.
Slender arms, not Veruca’s, were clutching at me. The girl on the bed next to me was wide-eyed, the whites of her eyes bright with fear. By their pale light, I could make out a mess of blond curls framing a face too young to be sharing a bed with me. I renewed my efforts to sit up, but the bed under me was unstable. The girl fell into my arms. “Shh, Teddy. If we make noise, he might come back.
My vision flickered, blurred, as if I were looking beyond her for an aura. The world split in two and I was simultaneously a resident of both. In one, the tangible world where a little girl no more than twelve clung to me, I was not a man, but a dark-furred teddy bear with kind, round eyes, a sewn nose, but no mouth. In the other, the world where the bed had shifted and collapsed, I was me, but the bed was a pile of dead bodies. The frame had decayed into skeletons. The box spring was full of feminine corpses in varying stages of decay. All were older than the girl, but most were still younger than me. The mattress was a jumble of teenage beauty queens, all naked, most in the last stages of dying. It might have been easier on me if they had been dead, not gasping with putrid bursts for one last breath. The pillow the bear rested upon was, in this shadow world, a fifteen-year-old red head with a syringe sticking out of her jugular. If she was still alive, I was grateful she wasn’t moving.
I stifled a scream. I sensed that if I did yell, it would mean horrible things for the child who held me. He would return and that would be bad, very bad. I tried to whisper to her, to tell her I would help, that I would get her out of here before the bad man could hurt her again. I couldn’t; the teddy bear had no mouth. I struggled but I couldn’t force out anything through those missing lips. By default, I did what teddy bears do: I held her.
It was a dream, just a dream. If I could just close my eyes and ignore the stench and the writhing, I would wake up in a hotel room in Oklahoma. It was just a dream.
“Not for them, my love. Not for her.” I knew that voice. Somewhere between a dusky soprano and a high alto, hers was meant for romantic suspense on Broadway. Hearing it comforted me, confirmed the dream state, and yet simultaneously made the bed of corpses more solid, more real. Details of the girls’ faces, skin tones, and manner of demise were noticeable now.
I answered in my that-realm voice, where the lips moved…if I could ignore the dying girl’s hair in my mouth. I couldn’t turn my head without breaking the physical link to the motionless teddy bear. “What’s killing them? A serial killer?”
“Criminal neglect,” Dream-Sarai answered. “I need you to listen, my love, my hope. Our time is short.”
I took in a deep breath, pressed the stuffed animal closer to the girl, and closed my eyes. “Hurry.”
“You won’t save them, my love. Maybe you could, but you won’t. You need to save her, though. Whenever you’re distracted, whenever you’re tempted to call it splits, remember the one clutching the teddy bear. Save her and the rest will be avenged at least.”
“It’s just a dream, Sarai. I’m a stuffed animal. How can I save her?” My voice was weak and tired, like I was speaking in the real world, but hearing the faint echoes of it in dreamland.
“It’s real for her, my love. Her father is horribly abusive. Tomorrow, she will run away. The day after and the week after, there is nothing you can do for her. Even the year after, the world will still be a terrible place. But when the time comes, when she holds you again as she clutches you now—save her, save the world.”
“Save the world?” I mumbled, more awake than asleep now.