Geekomancy (23 page)

As they ascended, she focused on the door to Tomas’s room, or what she imagined was Tomas’s room. She had an ever more vague memory of his face but was sure beyond doubt that she’d recognize him.

Shuffling across the hallway, the woman, Tomas’s grandmother or aunt or whoever she was—the bereaved—opened the door. The woman stood to the side, not looking in. Ree nodded to the woman and stepped inside.

The torrent of curses in Ree’s head spiked in volume, popping the internal speakers of her mind and threatening to drop her to the floor. She steadied herself with a hand on the doorframe as she took in the sight.

The room was different from Angela’s, in small, innocuous ways like the posters on the wall, the arrangement of the bed and dressers, the computer tower covered in skull designs.

And also in one horrible, unforgettable way: The body was still there.

Tomas had fallen from the desk, like in the vision. And she could see the pliers on the floor, stained past all memory of their original metallic color. Ree felt the pizza threaten to come back up all at once, so she stopped in place, focusing on breathing.

As she looked, she saw a shadow move outside the window. That window, the same as in her dream.

Oh, no you don’t, fucker.
Even if she was too late for Tomas, it didn’t matter.

“Winters—downstairs. Head him off!” Ree ran across the room in a second, pushing herself with
Matrix
speed. She heard the pounding of Drake’s boots on the stairs as she reached the window and threw it open.

The shadowed figure was sliding down the roof over the garage. Ree took two steps back, then charged forward and dove through the window, trusting the magic. She flipped in midair with perfect form, hitting the person’s torso with both feet.

“Oof,” it said as they both flew through the air.

Thank you, Trinity.
The magical buzz in Ree’s mind faded as they fell, and Ree hoped it was enough to take the fall.

The two of them tumbled down the roof and off into the space between the garage and the next house. Ree softened the fall as best as she could, folding her legs as she landed and dropping to her side. Her adversary took the impact hard on the left side, and lungs emptying with a pained “oofh.” As she rolled to her feet, she confirmed her suspicion.

No mistaking, this was Eastwood.

Pain stabbed through her leg as she stood, but she bit her lip and continued. “Did you take it—did you? You found him and you just waited for him to kill himself?”

Eastwood scrambled back, pulling himself up on the white fence between the houses. He produced the blaster out of his jacket, training it on Ree as he stood. “It was already done. I came as soon as I could, and he was gone. It’s a horrible loss, but it doesn’t have to be pointless.”

“You could have done something,” she snarled.

She heard the click of a hammer being pulled back. Drake appeared in the corner of her vision, his rifle trained on Eastwood. “Even if you could not help the boy, Mr. Eastwood, you have stolen the most sacred of personal property, and I cannot in good conscience allow you to continue in your endeavors.”

Eastwood shot Drake a nasty look. “Winters, you should have learned enough to do your research before sticking your cravat out for someone. If I recall correctly, your mistress did far worse out in Faerie, so where did you get a leg to stand on?”

“My two legs are more than sufficient.”

Neither Ree nor Eastwood corrected Drake on the missed reference.

“So what now?” Eastwood asked, gun still trained on Ree. The
Matrix
magic was gone, and without it, trying to close the distance and disarm him was a big bet, one that involved going against a guy named Eastwood in a gunfight.

So Ree stood still, poised to move.
You’ve got to do something,
she thought.

Ree flipped through ideas like the Rolodex her dad still kept despite the fact that everyone’s info was in the phone she’d gotten him.

Tangent. Not. Helping. Focus.

“You blast me, Drake kills you, and then no one brings Branwen back and you’ve condemned four souls for no reason,” Ree said.

“Don’t expect me to back down.” Eastwood was talking to Ree, but his eyes were on Drake.

Would he pull the trigger? Could he? This was the problem with being the new kid on the block.
If this were my
tenth
Mexican standoff with these guys, I’d have a better clue.

Eastwood slipped his hand inside his jacket and sighed. “I’m sorry, Ree.”

She heard the sound of glass cracking, and Eastwood vanished in a plume of black smoke. Charging forward, diving through the smoke, she slammed into the fence, thereby proving to herself that he hadn’t just gone invisible.

Ree resisted the urge to kick the fence, instead turning to Drake. The displaced adventurer’s face matched hers, frustrated and surprised.

“What now?” she asked, of the world as much as of Drake. Her track record as lead hero was leaving something to be desired.

Chapter Thirteen

Downtown Dogfight

Drake looked back at the house. “I imagine that we’ll either want to extricate ourselves from the situation to avoid notice, or return to speak with the distraught woman inside and explain ourselves. Somewhat explain ourselves, that is. I don’t imagine she could handle the full truth at this moment, nor would I wish to inflict it upon her.”

Ree made a
hrm
sound, thinking. “Do you have some kind of ‘forget I was here’ mojo you can use? We should really just follow the Muse if we can.”

Drake nodded. “I should be able to push our visit out of her mind, but regardless, I’ll need to go back into the bedroom to reset the goggles and see if I can pick up the trail. Perhaps the shade lingered out of sight during our skirmish.”

Better you than me,
Ree thought, shuddering.

Drake shouldered his rifle and walked back to the front door, leaving Ree with her thoughts. They were constant company, if not always the most pleasant. A wind curled across the alley, and she pulled her jacket tighter, wishing she could go home, make herself a latte, and snuggle up with her laptop for the rest of the day.

Writing was comfort and therapy both, and she needed either that or something to drink. She’d long ago chosen booze as her Writerly Vice of Choice, pretending that caffeine didn’t count. She occasionally subbed in media marathons and self-destructive behavior, just to mix things up.

If we find the Muse, we kill the hell out of it, with optional interrogation if said Aberrant Muse can talk, and assuming we can subdue it and convince it to spill its spectral beans. Just tracking it again won’t be fast enough.
It was already the 30th, so there wasn’t much time left for Eastwood’s deadline.

Ree thought back to the last Halloween, when she and Jay had gone as Johnny and Lisa from
The Room,
which had displaced
Manos: The Hands of Fate
at the top of The Shithole’s official pantheon of Worst Movies Ever. They’d had to explain the costumes to almost everyone at the party, but after that, they’d won Best Duo and a gift card to the Illyrian Theatre, which played classics and foreign films.

She had taken Jay to the Illyrian on their second date, to see
Black Orpheus
. It was, in retrospect, a crap choice for a date movie, one that Jay teased her about for the entirety of their relationship. The old emotions came up like a looming exit sign that read M
EMORY
L
ANE—DEPRESSING RELATIONSHIP THOUGHTS, ½ MILE.

She stopped herself before taking the off-ramp.
Not helping, kiddo.

Hell, I’d rather watch
The Room
again, without being able to make fun, than keep dealing with this shit
.

Another voice answered in her head, sounding half like her father.
Then why don’t you?

She could give up, technically. She wasn’t a cop, wasn’t a social worker. Why didn’t she go home and live her life? It wasn’t like she was made of free time, not like her imagination wasn’t already well trained enough for her to be a writer. Maybe someone in the city would commit suicide before the 31st, even without being pushed by a post-living entity or whatever it was. She didn’t have to do any of this. She could still quit.

But that’s not how you tick, love
. Her dad’s voice again.

Her dad—she could try telling him everything, and he might believe her. Or he might call Sandra and ask her to force Ree to go back to therapy, which would be great except Bryan couldn’t afford health care that good for the café monkeys. And then her dad would insist on paying, and it’d wipe him out for another year.

The person she
could
tell, maybe, possibly, without getting committed, was Bryan. He could fire her for it, but he’d been a devoted Pagan since he was eighteen and was about the most enlightened person this side of wherever the Dalai Lama lived these days. If she brought it up the right way, it might even make her double life something resembling workable. No other super heroes explained their secret lives to their bosses, but then again, she didn’t work for J. Jonah Jameson. Who said her life had to suck as much as Peter Parker’s?

Drake rejoined her, goggles in place.

“Do you have a trail?” she asked.

“Yes, but it’s fading fast. We’ll need to take particular measures to follow. Can you help me unfold?” Drake reached into his coat and pulled out a fist-sized bundle of metallic something.

“Say what?”

Drake set the bundle on the ground and started unfolding little pipes. “At this moment, we have a great need for alacrity, Ms. Ree, so we will be taking my aerothopter. If you would, please help me unfold it so it can return to its proper size.”

Ree squatted down, looking at the jumble of tiny pipes. She leaned over and tried to pick things apart, pulling a spoke here and there, but Drake did most of the work, revealing a one-foot-long mix between an ornithopter and a helicopter. She only knew what an ornithopter looked like because of
Magic: The Gathering.

After she pulled out one last pipe, Drake said, “I would recommend standing back, Ms. Ree.”

He pulled back his glove and twisted a dial on a bracer, and the tiny contraption started to shake, squeak, clank, and hop around, growing in fits and spurts, first one part and then another. It popped out to twice, four times, eventually ten times its original size. Full-grown, it had a brass-and-copper frame, some kind of boiler, twin propellers helicopter-style, and a two-seat cockpit, with levers and a steering wheel in one seat.

“Devices of Faerie are tremendously adaptable, if occasionally unreliable. But this aerothopter hasn’t given out on me in years. In we go.” He patted the side of the cockpit as he stepped into the front seat.

Ree looked around and saw people dodging around the vehicle without even looking at or noticing it. A car was idling just beyond the tail, the driver fiddling with his phone.

Drake pulled levers and pushed buttons with the same efficiency and grace he brought to everything else, despite the goofiness of the gigantic goggles he wore. “We haven’t much time, Ms. Ree.”

“Is this a good time to tell you that I hate flying?”

Drake smiled. “No, I think this a rather inopportune moment. I would prefer if you informed me of that once we have already completed our voyage, at which point I will be properly accommodating.” Drake dropped his smile. “The Muse is getting away, we must depart.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a pair of silver goggles, handing them to her. “You best wear these as well.”

“Here goes nothing,” Ree said, stepping into the copilot’s seat, trying not to dwell on all the laws of physics that they were about to break. Magic was one thing, but this was Ridiculous Steam-Powered Faerie Magic that was going to make her fly around Pearson.

The hot mug of coffee and her laptop were sounding more appealing by the minute.

The aerothopter lurched, and several things popped into or out of place, and she felt heat peeling off from the boiler behind her. She strapped on the goggles and fiddled with them until they approached comfortable.

“Ms. Ree, please take the rifle and keep an eye out for the Muse. And please try not to lean over too far, I haven’t had the chance to install seat belts.” Without notice, the aerothopter popped off the ground, wobbling slightly before ambling up and forward.

Oh shit oh shit oh shit
. The several-times-a-year trips to LAX had been daunting when she started, but she’d gotten used to the routine, the airline psychopomps, gate agents, security, flight attendants, and pilots all protecting her, assuring her. But this, this was insane. There was nothing but air around her, she didn’t have a seat belt, and the whole thing could drop out of the air at any moment like any other capricious bit of Faerie magic.