Geekomancy (22 page)

Drake shook his head. “We would only need to be within ten yards or so to allow me to utilize the satellite connection.”

Ree didn’t know much about satellites, but that seemed unlikely. “Really?”

“The joys of a worldview that conflates magic and technology. At the moment, contemporary understanding of science has as much bearing on my work as I wish it to.”

“So you get to cheat?”

Drake smiled. “I rather prefer to think of it as a creative reinterpretation of rules that I never agreed to in the first place.”

“Then why do you need to bother learning about modern tech if you can just cheat?”

“As with many pursuits, one must know the rules in order to confidently break them.”

“Fair enough. What can I do to help?” Ree asked.

Drake set a box of beakers on the table before him and stopped a moment to consider. “How would you evaluate your knowledge of physical chemistry?”

“I got an A-minus in AP Chem in high school, but that was about a decade ago. I’m pretty sure I can still operate a Bunsen burner without hurting myself.”

“Brilliant. If you don’t mind, I will have you perform some simple procedures while I work on adjusting the aetheric goggles. I can talk you through the steps. Please interrupt me if I am spouting nonsense or if you have problems. Especially if something explodes.”

Drake talked her through several reactions that sparked vague shadows of memory from her time in AP Chem, back when she’d been carrying a torch for Andy Ritcher, who was not only a point guard on the basketball team but the captain of the Academic Decathalon team. He’d been beloved by girls throughout the school. But when he showed up one cold Friday morning and stripped his sweater to reveal a Kingdom Come Superman T-shirt, Ree was doomed.

Musing on Andy Ritcher’s shoulders, she almost added too much phosphorus and spilled some on the table, prompting a string of cursing and some rapid towel application.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” Ree sputtered and continued to wipe down the counter with all the desperate speed of a backed-up Monday-morning rush. Her cleaning done, she returned to the procedures, resisting the urge to put on a pair of safety goggles and give her best Mad Scientist maniacal laugh. Instead, she played it out in her head and channeled the glee.

Several minutes of mixing and measuring and heating and one small explosion later, Ree had prepared the necessary supplements, and Drake had done whatever calibration he had to do on his big honking goggles.

Drake Winters: Victorian Pulp Adventurer, Steampunk Mad Scientist, and Neighborhood Quixotic Curiosity.

Ree wondered if she could fit that on a business card, blocking out the text in her mind while trying to fit an artsy brass gear on an oiled but burnished background.

“Done!” she said, pulling the thermometer out of the last solution upon seeing it settle at 175 degrees.

Drake whirled into action, plucking up beakers and tubes of solution and assorted chemicals. He mixed and applied and coated the ingredients with the deftness of a ballet dancer and the deliberation of a painter. Ree stood back in amused awe as he worked and then clicked the filters into place and declared, “Huzzah!”

“Huzzah?” Ree asked. “Isn’t that a little old-school even for you?”

Drake gave a rakish smile. “I’ve always been fond of ‘huzzah’ as a triumphant declarative.”

Ree nodded.
Fair enough.
“So, are we good to go?”

“Indeed. Our first step will take us to the satellite signal, and from there we should be able to pick up the trail of our Aberrant Muse, presuming it
is
an Aberrant Muse. I’d feel rather foolish if we’ve spent all this time only to discover that the fiend in question was a Boggard or a Brer Ghast.”

Boggard she knew, but the other . . . “Brer Ghast?” She returned to the kitchen and stared longingly at the pizza.

“A localized breed of post-living psychophage.”

“Gesundheit,” Ree said.

Drake looked around discreetly, as if there were actually someone who had sneezed.
Such hilarious manners. Today’s adventure brought to you by
Kate and Leopold.

“Sorry?” Drake asked as he cleaned up the workspace. On their way out, he picked up his rifle again and strapped a bag to his belt.

“Joke. So, do you just walk around town with that thing?” Ree had gotten away with some weird costumes for Halloween or cons, but that gun was far too, well, gunlike for him to be able to walk around town.

She’d hate to drop $30 on what amounted to three slices eaten, but she couldn’t exactly carry a pizza box around while hunting a supernatural entity that pushed the depressed into suicide. Or could she?
No, that’s dumb.
Instead, Ree pulled out a slice and fished a freezer bag from her purse while Drake talked.
Hu-mothereffing-zzah
. Now to make sure the bag didn’t get smashed to bursting in a fight.

Drake locked the door to the apartment as he explained. “The rifle, being primarily supernal in nature, tends to be ignored by those who are affected by the Doubt. I’m told they view it as a rather unconvincing prop by an Arab craftsman by the name of Neruf?”

Ree chuckled as they walked down the stairs.

•   •   •

The sun was slouching behind the tops of the skyscrapers and was well on its way to the coastal horizon by the time Ree and Drake reached the alley beside Café Xombi.

Ree had suggested that they round the block to approach from the alleyside, to make absolutely sure no one saw her. She would have to figure out how to keep her job, but this wasn’t that time.

Had it been daytime in her vision? Thinking back, she couldn’t clearly remember. The room had been lit, but whether that was via sunlight or boy-cave lamps, she couldn’t tell.

Drake prowled through the alley, trying to find the best sliver of signal, holding up a brass-and-copper box with antennae that danced as he moved, twitching their frequency until Drake stopped in place, fiddling with the box and his goggles at the same time. A minute later, he bounced in place with a small “Huzzah” and strode out of the alley, saying, “Follow me.”

“You don’t need to stay in range of the XM?” Ree asked, still confused.

“Negative. I needed only use the satellite signal to scan the entire city. Now that I have pinpointed the appropriate signal, this device can accurately track relative direction and distance.”

Ree nodded. “If you say so. You don’t happen to have an extra pair of those goggles?” she asked as they wandered through the U-District. A block away from the café, Drake crossed against traffic and was nearly run over by a Suburban.

Great. I’ve traded the socially ignorant silicon cowboy for an absentminded professor. Note to self, schedule self-reflection time with the theme: “Why do I always end up playing second fiddle to bizarre and variously broken men?” Reference abandonment issues and Elektra complex. Tomorrow on
Dr. Phil
.

The oil baron’s wet dream of a car missed Drake by slamming on the brakes. It slowed enough so that Ree could push Drake out of the way, shouting at him to move. The driver stopped, leaning out of his car to spout profanities at Drake, then at Ree, every third word referring to one or another of their orifices and what he was angrily going to do to them.

Ree desperately wanted to stop and chew this asshole out for several minutes, but they had better things to do. So she just led Drake across the street, hurrying to get out of view of the jackass in the Suburban. Drake ground his feet, boots skidding on the sidewalk.

“Not quite so fast,” he said. “The goggles are incapable at calibrating at this speed.”

Ree took a long breath and let Drake proceed, fiddling with the top button on her jacket as the man in the Suburban gave up and drove away.

They continued for another half-dozen blocks, Drake following the trail while Ree stalked like a panther on a leash. The sun continued to drift westward, the sky shifting toward orange-red. If she were someone to believe in omens, she’d take this as a bad one. She never used to believe in that shit, but who the hell knew how things worked anymore?
Not me, not Leftenant Anachronism here, for all his quixotic chivalry. Captain Hubris knows, but now that I know he’s
Empire Strikes Back
Lando instead of
Return of the Jedi
Lando, screw him and his Dorkcave that smells like feet and old booster packs.

As the orange bled into rose-red, they reached a residential neighborhood, and Drake’s pace quickened. “The trail has strengthened. We must needs hurry now, I believe. Have you weaponry of your own?”

She’d left the
tanto
behind at the Dorkcave and hadn’t brought anything from home.
And
her media battery was long-empty. This was why Batman had a TiVo. She wasn’t Batman, but she did have a smartphone with streaming video.

“Ha!” she said.

“Is that an affirmative?” Drake asked.

Fortunately, there was almost no one around them on the sidewalk, but Ree imagined they were still about the most ridiculous thing anyone in Queensland had seen in at least a week. She pulled out her phone and started to load a video.

“Not right now, but I’m about to get way more badass.”
Thank Asimov
The Matrix
is on streaming this month.

She followed Drake around several corners as they spiraled in toward the Muses’ target, though she feared they’d need to speed up to beat her. Him. It? (
Do Aberrant Muses have gender? The Greek ones were female . . .
)

She hoped that whatever fight they found wouldn’t take long, because by the time she reached the part of the film where Trinity and Smith raced for the telephone booth, Drake had stopped in front of a two-story midcentury house. It was blue with white trim, looking purple and pink in the fading light.

“This is it?” she asked, seeing the world in a slightly greener hue à la
The Matrix
applying its color filter to her vision.

Woah,
she thought in her best Keanu Reeves voice.

“By my best estimation, the trail ends inside the house.”

There were lights on both upstairs and on the ground level. Ree checked her purse, mind racing.
C’mon, c’mon, please . . .

She still had the psychic paper folder.
Sweet.

All she really wanted was to bust down the door and run upstairs.
How do you talk your way into a house that has a potential suicide?

Ree looked to Drake. “Do you have an idea of how we should approach this?”

“My preference would be to smash down the door and charge up the stairs, but I imagine that the directness of my former adventures in Faerie may be inappropriate in this regard.”

“Sadly,” Ree agreed.

A hundred possibilities played out in her head, but none of them seemed actually “good,” so she walked up the stairs and knocked. She tried to remember the carriage she’d used when she visited the Moorelys, but instead of channeling Sherlock, she tapped into her inner Agent Smith.

Answering the door was an older woman, probably somewhere in her sixties, with silver hair cut short and swept above her left eye. If not for the tears and puffy eyes, she’d probably be lovely.

Shit. Shitdamnfuckpleaseno.

The woman sniffed back a sob. “Hello?”

Ree produced the psychic paper, and the woman nodded. “You’re earlier than expected. The dispatcher said it’d be an hour or more.”

Ree’s brain filled with a constant stream of curses, like a half-static radio station that wouldn’t slide into a real signal but neither would it fade out. She leaned against the curses with the methodical mojo from emulating
The Matrix
and found her balance.

“I’m Agent Reyes. This is Agent Winters.” She gestured to Drake, hoping whatever magic it was that hid his weapons applied to his outfit as well. “May we come in?”
Shit, I never got their last name.

The woman nodded and opened the door for them.

“We’d like to see him, if that’s all right.”

At Ree’s request, the woman looked like she’d taken a hammer to the spine, visibly shaken. She curled her lips inward, and her eyes darkened. “Yes.”

If the woman had time to call the police, Ree worried they’d be too late to intercept Eastwood. Even if she couldn’t save the boy, she didn’t want him left to whatever fate Eastwood would condemn him to. But if she did catch up with Eastwood, what would he do? What would she do?

Ree was getting used to flying by the seat of her pants, but that didn’t mean it didn’t blow goat chunks.

The woman moved without urgency, scaling the stairs at a slow, resigned pace. Ree saw the house and its decorations but didn’t take them in. The house was a shell, holding a husk that was probably already robbed of whatever spark Eastwood needed for his deal.