Spellcrash (38 page)

“You, on the other hand, growr!” She ran a claw gently from his earlobe down to the point of his jaw, then bounced back to her feet. “Where was I?”

“I have no idea,” said Melchior, “but I liked it.” He looked up at me. “Do we have to go right this instant?”

I laughed and shook my head. “I think it can wait a few minutes.”

“Honey,” said Shara, “I’ve been trapped inside a computer for three months; you’re going to have to wait more than minutes if you want to bring blue-boy with you when you go.” The two of them scampered off to do what goblins do when no one else is watching, and I settled back into my chair. This time, when I heard a rip in the wall of reality, I made sure it was Cerice before I called her by name.

“I take it our evil plan to keep you here another few hours has worked,” she said.

I nodded and offered her a drink. “How does it feel to have Shara as a sister for real?”

“Pretty wonderful, actually.”

“Why did Persephone do it?” asked Fenris. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“She wants to make significant upgrades to the system, and at the moment, Shara is the greatest living expert.”

“That makes sense,” said Fenris.

“But that’s not the only reason, is it?” I’d had a few minutes to digest the idea and felt I had a pretty good guess as to the answer.

“No,” said Cerice. “It’s also to send a message to Fate. Persephone isn’t a real big fan of oppression, especially at the level of the pole powers. She didn’t explicitly tell our family matriarchs to straighten up and fly right, but she did make damned sure to find an excuse to send Shara on an errand to the Temple of Fate within about five seconds of her accepting the job.” I grinned. “Now, that’s a look I wish
I
could have seen.” “I’m sure she’s sharing . . . the video with Melchior even as we speak.”

Cerice winked at me, and I laughed. It was the first time in ages that we had been able to share a moment together that wasn’t fraught with all the baggage we’d collected in the course of our roller-coaster relationship. There were several more such before she got up from the table and gave Fenris a scruff behind the ears.

“I’ve got to go,” she said to me. “Persephone’s honey-do list is a mile long.”

“Thanks for stopping by, Cerice. I would have been sorry to miss the chance for a real good-bye.”

“Me, too.”

I opened my arms, and she stepped forward into them, and the kiss that followed was natural and sweet and said nothing more than good-bye.

Eventually, Shara and Melchior returned, and the kiss
she
gave me said all kinds of things like: Look what you missed out on by being the wrong species, big boy. And, if you ever change your mind, shape-shifter . . .

And then it was just the four of us again, because Shara had to go, and Haemun had said his good-byes hours ago with a plate of cookies and an admonishment to “come back soon,” and was now hiding his tears in the kitchen.

So I reached for Occam, though it was hard to find something I was mad enough about, what with all the comeuppances that had been delivered to deserving souls in the past few days and with the promise of Tisiphone waiting for me at the other end. But somehow I managed it, slicing a hole in the wall of our MythOS.

“Pack!” said Fenris.

“Pack,” I agreed.

Then I shook Laginn’s hand, or really, Laginn, and the moment had truly come.

“Melchior?”

“Ready when you are, Boss.”

“You’re never going to stop calling me that, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Didn’t think so.”

Then it was time for my exit. Or, if you happen to be looking at it from the other side of the door, my entrance.

KELLY MCCULLOUGH
has sold short fiction to publications including
Weird Tales
,
Absolute Magnitude
, and
Cosmic SF
. An illustrated collection of Kelly’s short science fiction, called
Chronicles of the Wandering Star
, is part of InterActions in Physical Science, an NSF-funded middle school science curriculum. He lives in western Wisconsin. Visit his website at

[http://www.kellymccullough.com] www.kellymccullough.com.