“Rolf?”
“Rolf never saw him, didn’t even know what he might be, much less where you would be.” I thought for a few seconds.
“Well, there isn’t anything else.”
“Are you sure? How did you know where to find him?”
“Through Morgan’s vision, of course. But . . .”
Now, that was interesting. She’d seen me; she’d seen Lou; she’d seen the woods. And although she hadn’t seen the Wendigo, she’d certainly felt his presence.
“Exactly,” Eli said, seeing the look of dawning comprehension on my face. “Morgan saw you in the vision. She saw where you would be. She sensed the Wendigo. And the Wendigo has showed himself very comfortable in dimensions of the mind, places that are both of the spirit and of the flesh, places not exactly one or the other. He had no trouble finding Sherwood, remember.
“Visions, true ones, operate on a psychic plane outside of our ordinary space and time. And clearly, that outside perspective is something very familiar to our Wendigo. So when she saw him, and you, he also saw her. And you. And he knew what she knew—your name, for example.”
“And the Wendigo isn’t the only thing she’s had a vision of,” I said, slowly. “She’s seen something else—actually, she didn’t see it, but she sensed it, and it scared the crap out of her, far worse than the Wendigo did. No offense, Ruby—she couldn’t see what it was, either, but unlike you, she could feel it.”
“So either way if there’s something else out there, it’s not only aware of you; it’s aware of her as well,” said Victor. “That’s not good.”
“No, it’s not,” Eli said. “I think this woman might well be in need of some protection.”
“She’s going to be thrilled about that.”
“Can’t be helped. The least we can do is ward her house, so she’ll have a safe haven. Even if it turns out to be a rogue practitioner after all, it can’t hurt.”
“And we’d better get on it,” Victor said. “Ruby, do you want to come along?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve got things to do. But I’m sure you guys can handle it. I still think it’s a practitioner—no matter what this woman saw in her vision, if there were a monster prowling around, there’s no way I wouldn’t feel it. Still, I guess I could be wrong, and it certainly couldn’t hurt to give this woman some protection.”
She left, looking thoughtful and worried.
THE PHONE CONVERSATION WITH MORGAN WAS as awkward as I’d expected. Not surprisingly, the idea she might be in mortal danger didn’t sit well with her. She wasn’t upset with me, however. She was mostly mad at her mom.
“If she hadn’t started spouting off about my being psychic, I wouldn’t have done a reading for you and I wouldn’t be involved with this now,” she said.
“True, but a very close friend of mine wouldn’t have been rescued, either,” I told her. She was less than impressed.
“Good for her; not so good for me,” she said.
She did like the idea of making her home safe, though. Who wouldn’t? When she gave me her address, I was surprised to learn it was over in Bernal Heights, not so far from my own place.
“I thought you lived on the other side of town,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t so sure at first I wanted you to know where I lived. I picked a coffee shop over in my old neighborhood to meet.”
“And I reassured you?”
“Not really, but Louie did. That’s one of the things he’s good at, right?”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “We need to get this done right away.
We’ll be over in an hour or so, if that’s all right.”
“You and Louie?”
“Me and my friends. They’re very good at this sort of thing.”
HER HOUSE IN BERNAL HEIGHTS WAS RIGHT ON Holly Park Circle, across from Holly Park itself. Bernal was once a working-class neighborhood and in many respects still is, although houses there, like everywhere in San Francisco, are now out of the price range of true working people. Way out of the range of a working musician.
At one time Bernal Heights was a favored spot for motorcycle clubs and other counterculture types seeking to keep a low profile. It hasn’t been yuppified as much as the Mission, but it’s getting there. Jimmy’s bar, one of the sketchiest in the city, is located there, as well as the Wild Side West, perhaps the oldest lesbian bar in the city, although it’s hard to tell anymore since the clientele has become so diverse.
There was frantic deep-pitched barking from inside Morgan’s house when I rang the bell. Lou looked interested. The door opened and a huge Rottweiler pushed its way into the doorway, guarding its turf, growling softly. Lou bounded over to sniff noses and it jumped back three feet.
“Beulah, calm down,” she said. Beulah whined and sat down. Morgan sighed. “I originally got her for protection, but that turned out to be a joke. She’s a sweetie, but she’s afraid of her own shadow. Small dogs make her nervous, and she’s terrified of cats.”
Beulah whined again as Lou greeted her. He’s very good with real dogs. He actually enjoys playing doggy games on occasion, and it’s the rare dog who realizes that he’s not really one of them. After the appropriate amount of sniffing, both tails began to wag.
“Morgan, this is Eli and Victor,” I said as we walked inside.
“I recognize you two,” she said. “You’re the ones—” She broke off and glanced over at me.
“The ones you saw in the vision,” I finished. “They’re here to help set up wards around the house, for protection.”
“Oh. How does that work, anyway? Will I feel it, like an electric fence?”
“Not at all,” Eli assured her. “You won’t even be able to tell the wards are there. But they will keep out things that shouldn’t be allowed in.”
Eli and Victor continued their walk-through, examining the back door and the windows. The house was a two-story wooden structure, probably built in the twenties or thirties. Inside, art deco furniture and original artwork crammed every room.
“Very nice,” I said.
“It is, isn’t it. I wish I could take credit for it all, but I inherited the place from my aunt Aida about five years ago.” That explained how she could afford such a place.
“She had excellent taste,” Victor said, looking around approvingly.
“Didn’t she? Not a very nice person, actually, although since she left me the house I shouldn’t say that, but she did have a great eye for things.”
We walked through the house to the kitchen, where the back door opened out onto a wooden deck and stairs ran down to a garden below. Victor was the one who would set up the wards—lots of practitioners can contribute, but the actual warding tends to be a one-man job. Everyone has their own style in setting up protection, and often two people working together don’t mesh. Two differing approaches can result in discontinuities, and the warding often ends up weaker than it would with either person working alone. Victor was the logical choice to do it; his talent is better suited and he’s a stronger practitioner than I am anyway. Eli’s expertise is invaluable, but he doesn’t always have the power to implement his own ideas.
Sometimes practitioners can work together. Victor’s mansion is the best-protected house on the West Coast, a fortress of interlocking grids of energy. Nothing gets in or out unless he wants it to. It has to be that way, since he’s made serious enemies in his day, practitioners who bear him no love at all. That’s what happens when your job is chief enforcer of magical behavior, and your moral code leans toward the ethically rigid.
Quite a few practitioners worked on the warding of that house, and it now looks like a power substation when viewed on the psychic plane. But they’d had weeks to work on it, plenty of time to fine-tune and check every magical seam and rivet where there was a possibility of conflict.
Victor started on the front door, throwing out a line of energy that limned the edges of the doorway with pale green. Of course it wasn’t really green; it wasn’t strictly a color at all. Green is just a metaphor for what could be perceived on the psychic plane. He wove in several other lines, mostly in blacks and grays, then moved on to the windows. Around the back, upstairs, and finally the fireplace in the front room, something I might have overlooked if I’d been doing it.
Morgan followed him around, wide-eyed, although of course she couldn’t see anything of what he had done. Except, she could.
“Why are most of those lines black?” she asked. Eli looked at her sharply.
“You can see them?”
“Well, not really see them, not with my eyes. More like what happens when I get a vision.”
This was unexpected. She was a psychic, to be sure, but she shouldn’t have been able to see the wards. Unless she had more than a touch of the talent herself. This was an interesting development.
“When this is settled, we’ll need to have a talk,” Eli said.
Victor finally finished sitting up the wards and sat down heavily at the kitchen table. Warding an entire house on short notice will take a lot out of you, even if you’re Victor.
“Is it safe now?” Morgan asked.
“As safe as I can make it,” Victor said. “Nothing’s getting in here.”
“Nothing?”
“Well, nothing of the magical variety. No practitioners. No creatures. You’ll still need locks against burglars.”
“What about Mason? Can he come in if I want him to?”
“Sure, as long as you invite him in. The wards are attuned to you.”
“You mean like a vampire movie? He can’t come in unless I invite him?”
“Not the metaphor I would have chosen,” I said. “But, yes, basically.”
“That’s kind of cool, actually.” She looked out a window at the backyard. “What about the backyard? I spend a lot of time out there, in the garden. Do I have to stay in the house all the time?”
“It’s hard to properly ward an open area,” Eli said. “We could make it safer, though, strong enough to slow something down and give you time to get inside.”
Victor looked over at me.
“Do you think you could handle that?” he said.
I was stunned. First, that he was admitting, at least implicitly, that he was worn-out. And second, that he would even think of trusting me to do something like that. Luckily, both he and Eli had taught me a lot about warding last year when my own place had needed serious protection. And since the yard was a separate area my work wouldn’t interfere with Victor’s house wards.
“Sure,” I said.
I wasn’t sure at all, but it wouldn’t help Morgan’s peace of mind if I hemmed and hawed. I walked down the back stairs, and I liked what I saw. A tall ivy-covered fence surrounded the entire yard, no breaks, nice and even. On either side, the fence came right up to the house. I could attach the wards in the yard to the warded house, and the even height of the fence made warding the rest of the yard an easy task.
Most of my talent is the improvisational sort, but I have learned some other skills. I didn’t have enough power to properly ward the entire fence, so I laid a tiny line of force around the top of it, like a guide wire. I poured all the energy I had into one corner and bound it up with the ivy growing on the fence. It sat there quietly glowing. So now, although the rest of fence was basically unprotected, the minute anything tried to climb over or break through, the bound force would travel along the guide wire to the appropriate spot and stop it cold. In effect, the entire fence was now protected as strongly as the small section where I’d put all my focus. Eli was observing, and he smiled approvingly.
“A very elegant solution. You’re learning, boy.”
Morgan was appreciative of our help, but at the same time was understandably disturbed. Eli assured her it was just a precaution.
“You don’t have to hide inside the house all the time,” he said. “Just be careful—don’t go out alone late at night, for example.”
“Like as if I had a stalker.”
“Yes, something like that. And if you’re spooked about anything, give one of us a call.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “I will.”
I WENT HOME FOR A WELL-DESERVED REST, BUT had barely managed to sit down when Ruby called.
“Good, you’re home,” she said. “I think I’m onto something. Or maybe something’s onto me. I’m sitting at a café, over on Valencia and Twentieth, enjoying a soy latte.”
“I’m not sure that counts as a grand discovery, but it does sounds nice.”
“At a table in the back, there’s a practitioner watching me. He’s been shadowing me all day, but he’s been shielding and I could never get a good look at him—until now. He’s still shielding, but just hiding his talent, so I wouldn’t spot him as a practitioner.”
“You think he knows you’re hip to him?”
“I doubt it. He’s just reading the paper, pretending to be just another Mission hipster.”
“What does he look like?”
“Quite striking, actually. Medium height, youngish, with a mass of flaming curly red hair.”