Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (20 page)

“There was a Wendy’s back by the highway,” I said hopefully.

He ignored me.

He’d ignored every word I’d said so far. I’d sarcastically told him he was a terrific team member. He’d ignored that too. It was starting to tick me off. The man was on my team. I deserved some respect.

Williams pulled up at the far side of the Crab Caboose lot, where there’d be space to maneuver the trailer, and got out. In the side mirror, I saw him go back to check on the horses. Then he headed toward the restaurant.

I watched him go.

He was huge. I wasn’t a short woman, but he was close to a foot taller than me. More than that, he was massive. I bet he weighed three hundred pounds — none of it fat. Add to that the scars, the scruffy appearance, the surly expression, and the pissed-off
body language, and the guy just screamed “dangerous thug.”

Of course, at the moment he was wearing his half-working disguise, which a friend back in Dorf had christened “Blandy McBlandsville.” Good thing. Otherwise everyone in the Crab Caboose would’ve run out screaming.

He reached the restaurant and went inside.

Well, Crab Caboose it was. I got out of the truck and headed in to use the bathroom.

The place was dark and dingy. I saw Williams at the bar. He was leaning motionless with his head bowed. On him, it looked all broody and antisocial. On his overlaid halfing disguise, the pose just looked tired.

I felt a sudden regret that I couldn’t make an illusion like that. I’d been expecting Lord Cordus to continue my magic training when he returned, but that’d have to wait. Clearly, the thing with Limu was more important.

I headed on into the bathroom. When I came out, Williams was paying the barkeep for a bag of take-out. I kept walking.

Back at the truck, I peeked in the trailer to see if I knew any of the horses we’d brought. Darned if one of them wasn’t Copper. The little appy was really too small to be an ideal mount for me, so there was no way in hell Williams was riding him. I swore under my breath. This was not going to be fun.

Of the other three horses, one I knew well — Bertha, a dark bay Percheron cross. She was a sweetheart. I’d always tried to bring her a carrot when I went to the stables. Now she looked back at me from her position at the front of the trailer and nickered softly. Bertha was a big girl, almost seventeen hands, and well built for carrying weight. She must be for Williams. I felt bad for her.

I heard the pickup’s door close. Speak of the devil.

I went around and climbed back into the truck. There was a take-out box on my seat. Inside I found a crab cake sandwich, steak fries, and slaw. With some trepidation, I bit into the sandwich. It was delicious.

I took another big bite and surreptitiously eyed Williams as I chewed.

He had a new scar running from his right cheek, where it was thick and raised, down his neck, where it was lighter. It ended in a pink, puckered disk of tissue just above his collarbone. It looked like something pointed — a knife, or maybe a claw — had slashed down his face and penetrated at the base of his neck.

Just looking at him pushed my pulse back up.

I set my sandwich aside and focused on not thinking about the confrontation with the Thirsting Ground. Sometimes, repression can be your friend.

We got back on I-95 and continued south, passing right through Richmond. Then we jogged south-southwest and headed into North Carolina. I realized we must be making for the strait Lord Cordus had mentioned.

Maybe we’d be meeting the rest of the team there.

Soon after crossing the state line, we got off the interstate and onto the kind of two-lane rural highways that seemed very familiar to me from Wisconsin.

The poverty of the area struck me immediately. Some homes were well kept, but many were dilapidated. We passed properties crammed with junk, as though the people living there survived by charging others five bucks to dump old appliances. Farms were small and not numerous. I got more of an impression of scattered fields — a spare acre here and there that had been planted to make a little extra money.

It took me a few fields to identify the primary crop as cotton. I’d never seen it growing before. It looked just like cotton balls, fluffy and white, except stuck incongruently to twiggy, browning plants instead of inside a plastic bag.

Signs of habitation were mixed with evidence of abandonment. We passed burned-out buildings and rotting mobile homes. In every patch of woods, I could see old homesteads that had been reclaimed by nature — sometimes an entire cabin with trees growing up through it, sometimes just the remnants of a chimney or an old well. It looked like a place people had been leaving for a long time.

After about half an hour, we hit a tiny town that seemed almost wholly abandoned — every storefront but one was boarded up, and a number of the buildings were in advanced states of disrepair. Incongruously, the streets were clean and the grass mowed. And there were two lovely old churches in fine condition. Clearly, people still lived there — just not enough to keep even a gas station going. What extra money they had, they put into their places of worship.

We drove through the dying town slowly and then continued on another ten minutes or so. Eventually, Williams slowed to a crawl and turned carefully onto a rutted dirt road. The trailer bounced along behind us, making disturbing metal-stress sounds.

The dirt road stretched well back into the trees. After at least a half-mile, it opened up onto what seemed to be a horse farm. There was a big old house, a large stable, a bunch of outbuildings, and quite a bit of fenced pasture land. A bunch of vehicles were parked off to the side among the scattered trees, many with trailers attached.

Williams pulled into an open space and got out. I heard him start unlocking the trailer’s loading ramp. I got out and unloaded my backpack, then stood there uncertainly.

“Well, well,” someone said behind me, making me jump.

I turned to find a wiry, gray-haired African American man. He looked about sixty.

He nodded to me cordially, then turned to Williams. “Hadn’t expected to see you back in these parts anytime soon, son.”

“Yeah,” Williams said, sounding anything but happy.

He came over and shook the older man’s hand. Then the two of them set about unloading the horses. I sat down on my pack and waited.

Once the horses had been stabled, Williams and the older man unloaded a startling amount of stuff from the trailer’s tack room. I watched the pile grow and wondered if all four horses were going to be pack animals.

“You two head on in and call it a day,” the old man said when the pile was finally unloaded. “Kelly and I can sort through all this, get it set up.”

Williams shook his head. “I’ll do it.”

“Suit yourself,” the older man said, reaching for my pack.

I hefted the thing. “I got it.”

“No, ma’am,” he said, and took it out of my hands.

We walked toward the house.

“I’m Beth Ryder.”

“Nice to meet you. Bill Gates.”

“Bill Gates?”

“No relation to the computer fellow,” he said, and flashed me a smile that had more to do with his eyes than his mouth. “The name’s been mine a good bit longer.”

I smiled back. “Is this your farm?”

“Yes, ma’am. Been here a long time.”

“Is there a strait, here?”

“Sure enough. Right over there.” He pointed toward a paddock east of the house. “Pretty big one — well used. Lots of buying and selling between the worlds, through here.”

He was probably surprised I couldn’t sense the strait’s presence. I chose not to explain. My anomalous development wasn’t everyone’s business.

“Is anyone here to meet us?”

He looked surprised. “No, not a soul. Not expecting anyone else, either.”

That was perplexing. Williams couldn’t be the entire team. Teams always had healers, for instance. Even on safe trips, accidents happen. Williams couldn’t do jack shit in that department, as far as I knew. And lord knows, we needed someone with better language skills than mine.

I realized I was worrying for no reason. Lord Cordus wouldn’t send me to the S-Em with a team of one. He just wouldn’t. It wasn’t safe.

It occurred to me that he was probably just keeping things under wraps. It wouldn’t do for Limu to get wind of what I was up to. The team would show up.

We reached the house. Mr. Gates pushed the front door open and stepped back, holding the screen open for me.

I went inside. The entryway was dark and cramped, but the living room off to the left looked welcoming and comfortable, as did the kitchen down the hall. A couple people were in there eating — a man and a woman. They both glanced up but didn’t introduce themselves. The man did take a minute to very obviously check me out, which was annoying. Mr. Gates made a disapproving noise and stepped in front of me, blocking the view.

Amazing
, I thought.
There are some gentlemen left in the world
.

He showed me to a small bedroom upstairs. It was nice and homey.

After he left, I sat on the bed for a while, wondering what to do with myself.

I decided to go through my massive backpack and see what the staffers had sent along with me.

The thing seemed to have a dozen different compartments. A big one on the front held a gun case. Inside were two revolvers — a snub-nosed .38 and a .44. Another compartment was loaded with boxes of ammunition.

Given what Lord Cordus had said about the safety of the trip, I was surprised.

I sat there, troubled, palming the compact weight of the .38.

The warm memory of Lord Cordus’s trust and confidence surfaced in my mind.

Well, okay. Even in safe areas, you could encounter bad guys. Hadn’t I always kept a gun in my bedside table, back in Dorf? A crime wave in Dorf was generally some kids taking out a bunch of mailboxes with a baseball bat, but I’d still wanted some protection at hand. This was no different.

I put the .38 back in the case and ran my fingers over the .44’s silver barrel. It was a nice piece.

Back in Wisconsin, the guys at the range always said a .44 was too much for a girl. When I’d repeated that to Gwen, she shook her head and laughed. Then she’d taken me out to practice. Turned out the guys at the range were morons.

I closed the case and went back to unpacking.

In the central compartment, a large, sheathed hunting knife rested atop my suede chaps. Under the chaps I found serious cold-weather gear — a full mountaineering suit, some pricey-looking mittens, a couple face masks, ice axes, crampons, boots.

That all made sense. It was autumn. Fur would be starting to get really cold, this time of year.

There was also what looked like hot-weather gear: moisture-wicking clothing, a brimmed hat, sun screen, bug spray, a rain jacket, hiking boots, cotton socks, and so forth. Apparently, one of the strata we’d be traveling through was tropical.

No wonder the pack weighed so much.

Mixed in with the clothes were a first-aid kit, a hairbrush, and a mountain of brand-new toothbrushes.

I laid the toothbrushes on the floor and counted them. Fifty-two.

That didn’t make sense.

Stupidly, I counted them again, as though the total would somehow be markedly different. It wasn’t.

What the hell?

Was I the official toothbrush-carrier for the entire team, or something?

I sat there, staring at the multicolored plastic monument. A pointy little jab of fear penetrated my joy and excitement.

No point in freaking out
.

It was just a mistake. Or a joke. Right. The staff’s idea of a joke. Or Kara’s. The toothbrushes had been right next to the first-aid kit, and she must’ve assembled that.

Trying to ignore my jitters, I pulled out two and carried the others down the hall to Mr. Gates’s bathroom. He’d just hit an oral hygiene bonanza. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

At the very bottom of the pack, I found a package wrapped in brown paper and addressed to me. It was sealed not with tape, but with blobs of red wax, like an old-time letter. Each was stamped with an ornately decorated “C.”

I opened the package and found three books. Opening the one on top, I saw that the margins and flyleaves were filled with notes in Lord Cordus’s hand. They were all like that, and the largest book had extra pages of notes folded up and stuck in the back. The notes were in English, but the books themselves were in Baasha. I turned to the title page of the largest.

A Study of the Origins and Designs of the Ever-Living Goddess, in Whose Hands We Rest, as Discerned by a Lowly Servant, Consumed These Many Years in Learning and Worship
.

What a strange title.

I began reading the first chapter. The language seemed archaic. A lot of the vocabulary was beyond me. I read most of the page before I realized the book was about Eye of the Heavens.

I checked the others. All three of them were about Eye of the Heavens.

Lord Cordus had given me his research notes. The originals. Maybe the only copies.

My pride swelled so much I teared up a bit. What a vote of confidence.

Repacking everything took ages, but after I was done, I still had time on my hands before dark. I went down to the kitchen, which was blessedly empty, and scrounged up a sandwich. I ate it in the living room, which looked out on the lower pasture.