Geekomancy (4 page)

Plus, whom would she pick? She didn’t have a shortage of suitors, but going home with one of the customers at Café Xombi would invariably be read as an invitation for all of the other regulars to ask her out, and then she’d have to kill them all, sleep with them all, or quit. Not a great set of options.

They ordered a pitcher of Urban Ale-ian, a local microbrew, which Darren paid for. Despite being a grad student—the larval form of the notoriously low-earning Professional Academic—Darren had money to throw around because of a gloriously bourgeois family background.

Oh, to have a wealthy family.

Ree had no such family fortune, so instead of a trust fund, she had student loans the size of Mount Rainier. If there was a continuum of financial savvy with Warren Buffett on one end, then Ree lived pretty close to the opposite extreme. Most of the time, she blamed her continued brokenness on budgeting for the L.A. trips, but that was a convenient excuse. No one had come to break her kneecaps yet, so she took it as a win.

Ree sat back, letting Sandra and Darren chatter. She looked over the bar to take in the laid-back energy. She needed to recharge her social batteries, which had been flashing red most of the day, barring Anya’s visit. Priya texted a few minutes into the pitcher, saying she was stuck at home with laundry.

Two beers later, Sandra asked Ree a question, but Ree hadn’t been paying attention.

Ree shook her head. “Sorry, what? I zoned out.”

“Do you want to go down to Turbo’s for a slice?” Their pitcher was empty, and Turbo’s was fantastic drinking/drunk food.

“Is the pope naked in the woods?” Ree said.

Darren raised an eyebrow, but Sandra laughed.

Ree and company donned their coats again and made their way through the bar. Ree licked her lips in anticipation of the pizza.
Why didn’t I think of this earlier?

The trio walked up the stairs to where the bar emptied out into an alley that was as likely to host a game of Hacky Sack as a homeless guy selling tube socks.

As she reached the door, Ree heard a shout.

“Gorram frakking piece of go-se!”

If Ree hadn’t placed the voice by itself (which she did), the dense geek-speak cursing and the fact that there were more strange noises coming from an alleyway were enough to assure her that she was hearing the frantic customer from the afternoon.

Ree ducked around the corner and saw the man from earlier in the alley, holding a prop lightsaber and looking even worse for wear, if that were possible.

And then things got
really
weird.

Facing him was a twelve-foot-tall, green-gray-skinned beast with a bulbous nose and eyes so beady that they deserved their own craft fair. It was, for all Ree could tell, some kind of troll.

Except for the fact that trolls didn’t exist and sure as hell didn’t belong in the University District on a Thursday night when all she wanted to do was find someplace to drink in peace without running into one of her exes or any of the crazy customers from her job.

break
(n—Archaic English)—a thing that cannot be bought by one Rhiannon Anna Maria Reyes.

Darren and Sandra both screamed when they saw the thing. The strange customer stepped forward, raising his lightsaber, which made the whirring hum of a high-end prop. Except that the glow was too good, too bright, for any of the sabers that Ree had ever seen. Ree kept a pretty close eye on the designs on the Web, to see if anything was cooler for practical use than her Force FX, but she hadn’t found anything yet.

And the plastic or glass or whatever on this one was way too thin to be practical—she couldn’t even see it through the glow.

And then the guy twitched forward with a quick kendo slice that cut off the troll’s hand.

What.

The.

Eff.

The troll’s bellow echoed through the alley, shaking dirt from the walls. The other side of the alley was a dead end into a building, so it wasn’t not like she could escape, except back into the bar.

Sandra and Darren screamed from behind her; then Ree heard the door slam shut.

Well, crap.

The troll took a lumbering step toward Ree, and she found her mind split in two. One part of her was so scared that she wanted to dig through the concrete to get away. But another part of her was strangely unimpressed, instead buzzing with excitement, saying,
The troll from that crap movie was better-looking than this thing.

The logical part of her brain said to the suddenly fearless part,
But, self, that thing was on TV, and this one wants to tear your liver out your nose. Run.

Before she could decide, the troll brought down its other massive hand toward her head.

Without thinking, Ree dove into a shoulder roll to the right of the beast’s blow. She composed a letter in her mind as she rolled.

Dear Dad,

Thank you for enrolling me in Taekwondo when I was five and not letting me quit until I had my black belt.

Love, your doting daughter

P.S. Trolls are real. I know, right? Crazy.

Ree rolled up to her feet, wondering how in the wild wild west she was going to joint-lock or jump-kick a twelve-foot-tall monster. Then the increasingly sane-seeming customer jumped forward and slashed again, his lightsaber cutting the troll’s legs off at the knees. The beast howled in pain as it collapsed to the ground. Ree scrambled back and jumped clear of the falling troll’s head, which crashed into the ground at her feet.

Over the troll’s body, she saw the man standing in a perfect Force Unleashed stance. He watched the troll, standing ready. After a moment, he relaxed and touched a button on the lightsaber.

The too-realistic blade blinked out in a moment with the requisite sound. Deactivated, it looked like an expensive prop hilt.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“The
hell
?” she answered, pointing at the maimed troll. It rolled over once, flailing for the man.
Aaah!
she thought, and shuffled away another couple of steps.

The bearded man jumped out of the beast’s reach, unfazed. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

Ree dusted the street off her legs. A few scrapes, nothing bad. “No, but ‘confused as hell’ would apply.”

“Understandable. You’ll want to step back a bit more.”

“Why?” she asked.

A second later, the dying troll popped like a burst balloon and gushed out into a puddle of viscous green-gray goop. Ree hopped back, but the wave of goop caught up to her, lapping over the sides of her boots.

She cursed absently, walking over to the man. “So who are you?”

“Call me Eastwood,” the man said.

Ree put her hands on her hips, thoroughly past “unamused” and approaching “HULK SMASH.”

“First name Clint?” she asked, one eyebrow raised.

“It’s a nickname.”

Taking another step toward Eastwood, Ree said, “I’d like to return to my earlier question: The hell?”

Eastwood gestured with his head to an open manhole in the street. “It was a troll, came out of the sewer.”

Ree gave him a skeptical look. There was no way something that big could fit through a manhole. Not to mention that she still hadn’t gotten a good explanation on the whole “trolls exist” fact.

Eastwood nodded. “You have questions, and I can provide answers. The fact that I’ve saved your life means you owe me the chance to explain, something I intend on doing.” He took another look around the alley. “Looks clear. Come with me now before the Doubt settles in.”

He pronounced
Doubt
with a capital letter, much the same way that her dad could say “Rhiannon Anna Maria Reyes, come here Now” when she was in trouble. Which happened a lot, between her childhood science experiments, Nerf war escalation, and the avant-garde haircuts she gave their golden retriever, Booster.

She said, “My friends are back there, so I’m not leaving. You can explain right here or I can call the cops.”

Eastwood harrumphed. “In less than five minutes, they won’t remember this happened at all. That’s what the Doubt does. But it won’t affect you. I can explain why I came into your store and why the troll was here, but we need to get out of this alley before something worse arrives.” He looked over his shoulder again, scanning the street.

Ree snorted. “Are you some kind of ghetto Kenobi? Come to teach me the ways of the Force so I can become a Jedi like my father?”

Eastwood flashed her a surprised look, then shook it off and pulled the lightsaber prop from his coat. “It’s what I had on hand.”

“Either you’re drunk or I am. Wait here,” she said, not waiting for him to respond.
But only one of us just came out of a bar, Ree,
she told herself.
Bah.

Ree turned and opened the door again. Sandra and Darren weren’t in the stairwell, so she walked down the stairs to see them looking around the entranceway of the bar. Sandra looked up and said, “Oh! I thought you were still in the bathroom. Ready for pizza?”

Not to sound like a broken record, but the
hell
?

“What are you talking about? We were just outside, it was kind of memorable?”

Darren gave a wordless humph of bemusement. “That joke wasn’t that good, Ree. FOX is dumb for canceling
Firefly,
we get it.”

You’ve got to be kidding me,
she thought. “The troll, remember?”

Two blank faces looked back up at her. They didn’t remember. Which meant Eastwood was either not totally crazy, or crazy but not entirely wrong. One way or another, it looked like the rabbit hole was inevitable. That or a padded room. Not a terribly appealing choice, really.

“Sure thing.” Ree scaled the stairs two at a time and returned to the alley to see Eastwood using a cartoon mop to soak up the troll goop.

Huh,
she thought, her mind the model of erudition.

“So?” he asked.

“Not now. Gimme your cell number,” Ree said.

He laughed. “Just meet me outside Café Xombi at midnight, and we’ll go from there.”

“I have to work tomorrow. Gimme your cell and I’ll call. My life isn’t so crappy that I’m going to fall over myself asking for the blue pill, okay?”

Eastwood smiled and produced a smartphone. He pressed one button, and a second later, her phone started ringing.

Ree looked down, and the phone showed [Blocked]. She held it up to check with Eastwood that it was, in fact, him calling, but he’d pulled a Batman, vanished without a trace.

Ree turned to the door of the bar but jumped back as it opened quickly, revealing Darren and Sandra with confused looks on their faces.

And Fanboy somehow has my cell phone number. Great.

Stalker has the lead over Kenobi, 4–1, but the pool is still open.

Chapter Three

As You Know, Bob

Shaking off the insanity of the alley, Ree accompanied Sandra and Darren to Turbo’s so they could all enjoy a glorious communion with the gods of pizza as incarnated in the basil pesto, tomato, Italian sausage, mozzarella, and feta pie. When they were done, Ree kissed Sandra goodbye and wandered down the street. Ever since the time Ree had gotten frustrated and shouted the couple’s scores through the bedroom wall in a Russian accent, Ree had taken to lagging behind and giving the two some privacy. And this time, it was a convenient excuse.

When they were gone, she called Eastwood. The phone rang three times.

“Here’s what you do,” he said.

Ree recoiled from the phone. “Hello to you, too.”

“Go south on Wilco ten blocks from Main, then turn left three times and knock on the first door on the right.”

“Give me an address. I’ll Google it.”

He scoffed. “No go, girlie. That’d do you less good than telling it to give you a walking route from Hokkaido to Beijing.”

Sighing, Ree said, “Whatever. Text me the directions.”

“If you really want the scoop, Ms. Digital Native, you’ll remember the
frelling
directions.”

“Are you always this much of an ass?” Ree asked.

“This is my nice side,
mei-mei
.”

“I’m not your sister.”

“Just follow the directions.”

And then he hung up. Ree stared at her phone, wrinkled her face in annoyance, and started walking.

She pulled her collar up as she crossed the street. If she were smart, she’d just go to a café and have some tea, then head home and pretend that the whole bullshit episode hadn’t happened. Sandra and Darren had apparently blacked out the sight of the troll, but Ree couldn’t help but see the damned thing every time she closed her eyes. She could still hear the pitch-perfect hum of the lightsaber as it cut through the monster’s knees, so she continued following the directions Captain Analog had spouted. There was something seriously screwed up in Pearson, and investigating it was way better than going home and wallowing in misery, though possibly just as bad for her mental well-being.