Hexomancy (7 page)

That idiot
. Her heart had a knife through it and a seeping bullet wound besides, then it had been tossed in a fail blender, thanks to her protectiveness of her friend and her unresolved feelings for the foolhardy, self-righteous jackass she’d just dressed down like he was an army recruit who’d shit his pants.

Ree buzzed Priya’s apartment again and walked back up the stairs when the door opened.

Scaling the steps, Ree remembered to be quiet again, which gave her the time to try to tamp down her rage into something slightly more manageable. If she was going to break the masquerade for Priya, this was going to be a very long night, and Drake wouldn’t be the only one coming off like an asshole.

She’d considered telling all three of the Rhyming Ladies about the turn for the weird her life had taken back during Halloween, but she’d ended up telling only Anya. Then, every adventure, bizarre attack, or weird development in her life became another brick in the wall she’d never meant to build up between her magical life and her real life, with Anya her begrudging partner in the construction job. The time to come clean had passed months ago, so the only thing left was to just put all her cards on the table.

Which was a fucking fantastic thing to do when she was a half-dozen shots into drunk on an empty stomach and had months of accumulated exhaustion. But you played the hand you were dealt—life wasn’t in the habit of handing out Mulligans.

The door was open, and so Ree stepped back inside to dance the Exposition Tango.

Chapter Seven

The Exposition Tango

Closing the door behind her, Ree walked over to pour herself another glass full of vodka, inadvisable though it may be. She nodded to Anya, and said, “First off, I’m sorry. I should have come clean to you and Sandra a long time ago. I’m an idiot, and I hope you’ll forgive me. But what happened tonight was more than enough of a giant neon sign that I can’t pretend holding back is doing anything but hurting you.”

“What’s going on?” Priya asked, back on her perch. Anya stood to the side, her own glass half-empty.

“Back around Halloween, when I got scarce all of a sudden after Jay dumped me, that wasn’t the only thing that was happening. . . .”

Ree laid out that whole week’s worth of zaniness, including telling Anya, then gave a summary version of what her life had become since that week: patrols, Geekomancy, the Dorkcave, Grognard’s, Midnight Market, and more. She left out the real identity of Eastwood’s lost love, lest the news get back to her dad. Dad was far away from all of this bullshit, and Ree could spare him from the crazy and the heartache. That at least was still true.

Then she moved on to explain what had really happened that night, relaying Drake’s account, hoping he hadn’t been whitewashing the situation to make himself look better. Not likely, given what she knew about Drake, but it was all Ree had to work with, barring mind-reading magic, and that was a Costco-size can of worms she was hoping to avoid, especially involving Drake. There might be . . . side effects.

Priya listened attentively, and after one or two bouts of glassy eyes as the Doubt tried to wipe her memory, the reality of the situation stuck with the woman, who grew livid, her cheeks reddening.

“What the ever-loving fuck, Ree?”

Setting the glass down between several piles of gears and a glue gun, Ree raised her hands in the universal sign of “Hold on; please don’t punch me.” “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I was a selfish jackass for keeping this to myself, just like Drake was selfish for not telling you. We didn’t want you to get hurt, which is what happens when you’re in this world. It’s just as scary as it is exciting, and neither of us wanted that for you.”

“I’m a godsdamned adult, Ree. I can make decisions for myself.” Priya turned to Anya. “And you kept this from us the whole time?”

Anya shrank before Priya’s accusation, looking down. “I’m sorry. But Ree’s right. After Halloween, I’ve been carrying a .358 in my purse everywhere I go, and I’m still terrified any time I’m away from crowds.”

“But how is that different from real life?” Priya asked. “Monster or meth-head, getting jumped in an alley is getting jumped in an alley.”

“It is and it isn’t. When monsters and shit know you can see them, they tend to get a hell of a lot more aggressive. But that’s no excuse. Now you know. It doesn’t make what Drake did any better, but now you know the truth, and you can decide what you want to do.”

Priya took another sip, wobbling ever so slightly. “Thank you for finally telling me the truth,” she said, the emphasis on
finally
stabbing like a misericorde straight through Ree’s heart. “And what I want to do now is be alone.”

Anya went over to give Priya a hug, but she brushed the diva off, making her way toward the kitchen.

Taking the cue, Ree and Anya left to the sounds of the triple locks on Priya’s apartment door and walked in silence down to the street.

“That went awesome,” Anya said.

“Could have gone worse,” Ree answered. “She could have disowned us as friends right there.”

“Who says she didn’t?”

“Let’s just go home.” The pair walked to the cross street, Ree keeping a hand on the hilt of her lightsaber even as her vision blurred, lagging behind the movement of her head.

Anger-drinking while explaining magical bullshit was, in reality, a terrible idea. She’d need a good liter or so of water and several hours before she’d be worth anything to anyone.

After a few minutes’ wait, a cab turned the corner, and they flagged it down.

Anya dozed with her head on Ree’s shoulder as the cab headed toward Anya’s side of town to drop her off first.

All the while, Ree beat herself up mentally, pulling no punches. Months of omissions and deceptions all spilled out at once. It was like ripping a bandage off all at once, only this bandage was one of fifteen, each covering a different psychic wound. The melange of mental bullshit in her life, between Drake and Priya, Eastwood’s paranoia, the ruins of Grognard’s, and the maybe-threat of the Strega was just too much for her emotional RAM to handle.

The cab finally arrived at her street, and Ree forked over half of her remaining money.

Note to self:
Invoice Drake for the booze and that cab ride. When you’re done being too mad to talk to him.

She took the stairs up to the Shithole very, very slowly, now that the enormity of her binge-drinking had hit her like a backpack full of bricks.

Step one was water.

Step two was food.

Steps three through six were more water.

Step seven, if she made it that far, was more sleep.

Ree got as far as step three when her phone lit up again.

“No,” she said, staring at her cell as it displayed Eastwood’s name and picture. “Nope.”

The call went to voicemail, and was quickly followed by a text message.

Come quick. I just got jumped.

“Fuuuck,” Ree said, reading the message.

Myh hoem hlife just blewq up. totally drnkg rught nnw.

She pressed send before seeing how typo-tastic her message was, but she let it slide, since it was an accurate representation of her not-fit-for-duty-ness.

Shit. Get over here as fast as you can, then. I’m going into lockdown. Email when you’re at the door, everything else will be shut off.

The dumbass, headstrong part of her wanted to stomp back downstairs and go on the warpath, but Ree had, in this case, enough self-awareness to know that doing so might just get her killed. And while that might resolve the love triangle that had just jumped in a bucket of gasoline and then started playing with a butane torch, it wouldn’t do Ree any good. Self-immolation solved so few problems, in reality.

Returning to steps three through seven, Ree topped off her oversized plastic cup with more water and tiptoed to her room as best as she could for the sake of her neighbors, only causing two different crashing thumps as she knocked books and a stack of bills to the floor.

Shitshitshitshit
, Ree thought on a loop, sneaking into the bedroom and closing the door behind her.

Ree took up her laptop and earphones and settled into a drunken meditative stupor, guided by last week’s episodes of
The Colbert Report
, downing water as quickly as her stomach could handle.

Five episodes, four refills, and three trips to the bathroom later, Ree felt like she had her shit together enough to go over to Eastwood’s, though she gave herself only even odds as to whether she’d puke if she had to get into a fight anytime before she could sleep again.

The sun was
rising as she walked up to the Dorkcave and thumb-typed an email to Eastwood, announcing her arrival.

She thought 6:15 was a reasonable time to pronounce “getting up early,” so she’d showered and changed into fresh, combat-ready clothes. She felt approximately 67.4 percent human, which was a good 30 percent more than she’d been expecting.

A minute after her email had winged its way through the Internets, the door swung open with its Foley Artist 101 creaking sound.

Ree stomped down the stairs, taking still-a-bit-tipsy joy in the thunderstorm sound.

Crossing through the stacks revealed a bandaged Eastwood and an empty health potion amid the forest of empty soda cans.

“You okay?” she asked.

Eastwood rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve been better. Was my own fault; I shouldn’t have gone out without backup.”

“No, you shouldn’tvead. Should not have,” Ree said, catching her slurred speech and auto-correcting herself.

“Are you okay?” Eastwood asked back.

“Drake and Priya’s relationship just blew up because magic and condescension, so Anya and I have been in triage mode, with bonus exposition. I can’t keep my friends in the dark about this shit anymore. This is my life, and I want them in my life. Ergo . . .”

“Bad idea, kid,” Eastwood said, arms crossed. “That just puts more people into the crosshairs.”

“I am not having the Peter Parker secret identity talk right now. Priority here is getting you to a not-in-imminent-danger place. What happened?”

“Got hit-and-run by a derby girl. But, like, an armored, paramilitary derby girl. Her pads were all metal, and her gloves and skates had razors on them.”

Eastwood waited a beat, for effect. “We’ve got a Strega on our hands. Right on time. I don’t know if this was a planned ambush, string-tugging and all, or if she just caught me unaware and made the most of the situation. Hard to tell with Fate Witches. She got me but good. Would have punched my ticket if I hadn’t BAMF-ed back here with a Nightcrawler card I’ve been carrying around since Lucretia’s trial.”

“What did she look like? You get a picture?”

A shake of the head said not only no, but hell no. “I mostly saw her from the back, after she plowed me over and opened me up like a filet. Her uniform was green and silver, the skates were black with the metal cops, and she had black hair tied up into a bun under the helmet. Middle Eastern, bigger, probably five eleven, two hundred pounds. I’d know her if I saw her again, I think. Definitely would if she’s in her gear.”

“Not a lot of derby girls with steel-plated pads, last time I checked,” Ree said. Though armored roller derby did sound like an awesome, terrible idea. Definitely not a lethal, insurance-nightmare-inducing idea. Maybe something for the directors of
Bloodsport
to circle the wagons around and use to try to make a triumphant return. “So, you want to go after her now, or try to do some tracking mojo? What’s the plan?” she asked.

“A quick check to make sure she isn’t laying C4 in the outside wall of the building wouldn’t go unappreciated. Short patrol, maybe, with one earbud plugged into my security systems here, in case she wanted to draw us out in order to trap the place up.”

“That’d be pretty dumb, though. If she’s heard about you from Lucretia, what with the Wile E. Coyote setup here.” Ree gestured to the half-dozen traps, loaded crossbows, trip wires, and other security systems Eastwood had laid in over the last several months as he spiraled deeper into paranoia.

“Yes, but Lucretia doesn’t know about this,” Eastwood answered, patting his trap master (a modded Xbox 360 wireless controller).

Ree picked up the Wonder Woman bracers she’d used during the fight last Halloween. She should just ask him to keep these. But that’d be a month’s worth of wages, and she couldn’t deflect bills with them, just bullets. “Or we could hang out here and let her try to make a run at the base. Home field advantage and all.”

“I doubt she’s that bold.”

“So bold enough to try to shiv you on the street, but not so bold she’d break into your house? How’s that again?”

“One is bold and slightly stupid. The other is very bold and incredibly stupid.”

“So out we go,” Ree said. “Power-up first?”

“Go for it. The con is yours.”

And by “the con,” Eastwood meant his ten-petabyte media database of films, TV, cartoons, and odd video clips from all around the world. It was the closest thing Ree had ever seen to a complete media library, which made it the Geekomantic equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. Minus the burning.

Ree kicked off her mental algorithm, brainstorming the most appropriate power and source for the situation.

The Strega was on wheels, so she’d be fast, but somewhat bound by momentum, and not as good over rough ground. Spider powers would be a good counter—speed, three-dimensional movement abilities, webbing would gum up skates pretty damned well. But if Lucretia’s been informing, they’ll expect that.

What else?

Ree ran a search query and saw that Eastwood had the short-lived ’90s
Flash
TV show, so that was an option. Meet speed with super-speed. But that level of power would burn through her charge really damned fast. For Ree, the Geekomantic sweet spot was the the perfect middle ground between:

1) Properties she loved

2) Versatile but not ginormous powers

3) Abilities that combined well with the props and tools she had on hand

Which at that moment were her lightsaber, the phaser, and her standard sideboard. However, she was standing in the middle of a Geekomantic Fort Knox.

“You got some cards or props for glue traps or grease spells?” Ree asked.

Eastwood grunted in the affirmative, and made his way to the stacks.

“What are you thinking of, power-wise?” he asked, his voice bouncing off the far wall and echoing back, hollow.

“Spider-Man’s the obvious choice, but probably too obvious, since twenty bucks says Lucretia was keeping tabs on us during the fights at Grognard’s.”

“Fair bet. What about Static Shock? Close, but sufficiently distinct . . .”

“To be just different enough. You got an appropriate flying-thingie board?”

“That might be the rub.”

Tumblers in her brain still spinning, she turned back to the media library.

“If you don’t have a good flyer, I’ve got a fun alternative.” She called up
Captain America: The First Avenger
, and selected forward to Cap’s first mission, rescuing the POWs, which was quickly followed by a montage of awesome. Plenty to get excited about (and not just Chris Evans’s abs, Hayley Atwell’s lips, or Sebastian Stan’s brooding brows). And the Captain America power suite overlapped with Spidey’s just enough—speed, strength enough to overpower a woman who outmassed her by no small margin.

“You got a decent Cap shield?” she yelled over her shoulder.

“I have a half-decent one. Won’t those bracers do?”

“Better resonance with the movie if I can have the actual shield. At least, that’s what Talon says.”