Weasel Montgomery and the Devil of Dallas

1.

Walking back into Ally Security and Protection was one of the last things I ever intended to do. Not something I expected, except in nightmares. I’d sworn – thoroughly and angrily – never to darken Dave’s door ever again. But things change, and sometimes the one place you don’t want to be is the place you need to be.

I walked in, trying to look calm and collected, and took in the all-too-familiar set-up. Nothing had changed in the five years I’d been gone. One giant room, divided by a low rail halfway across the span. On the near side, a large conference table and uncomfortable chairs, and a waiting area with chairs that could be hired out to torturers. On the other side, desks were arranged haphazardly, with chairs that could be – and historically were – moved wherever they were needed. Eighteen desks, twenty-something chairs. Every space on every wall was still taken up with what Dave called ‘souvenirs.’ Trophies, really, from successful jobs. The only clear space was by the conference table, and that now held a white board that was itself covered in writing – jobs taken on, who was being covered, and who was doing the covering. A single door led to Dave’s office – not that he was in it very often.

They were gathered around the conference table, expressions ranging from concerned to outright worried – except for Dave, of course, who was as bland-faced as he’d ever been. Which told me absolutely nothing other than the things I already knew. He hated having to call me, hated having me back in the building. He’d called me, though, so he could stick it where the eternal sunshine never shone.

Edie and Min nodded at me. The others gaped.

“Weasel.” Dave cocked his head in my direction, his voice neutral. He was going for civil, and getting as close as he ever had.

“David.” I’d give him the courtesy of his full name. He’d used mine, after all.

I slid into the seat left open for me, between Edie and some new girl wearing pants with a giant floral print and a striped shirt. All she needed was a massive straw hat with a giant floppy bow and she’d be at home… somewhere… some Disney-fied monstrosity of a tropical jungle maybe.

“You’re Weasel Montgomery?” she asked, eyes wide. I wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but obviously it wasn’t me.

“Yeah.”

“Louise Walker.” She had her mouth open to say more, but Dave cut in. Her mouth snapped shut, expression almost pleading me to talk to her more later.

“If the two of you are done?” Dave asked.

“Sure.” I dug notepad and pen from my bag and settled in as comfortably as I could. No one else seemed ready to take notes, but it was possible they’d already gone over this so many times they had it memorized. I didn’t – so they would have to deal with me taking notes.

“The client calls his stalker The Beast.” Dave’s voice was quiet. There was a dead giveaway if anything – he tended towards histrionic displays when he was bored or tired or just had nothing better to do. This quiet Dave was someone only seen when there was trouble. I didn’t straighten, didn’t meet his eyes, but he nodded just the same. “Client’s name is George La Cantara.” He waited for a response, but I didn’t have one worth stating out loud. “Yeah, the same one,” Dave said anyway. “He is the La Cantara who is author of The Creature of Cincinnati, the Beast of Birmingham, and a couple of other sensationalist books about uber-naturals.”

“So he’s looking for publicity?” Min asked, and I was glad for her words. Maybe Dave hadn’t briefed them yet after all. But it seemed too pat, that this creature should stalk the man known for writing about the things. It seemed too easy.

“It’s nothing we haven’t seen before,” Dave agreed easily. “Hints of glowing eyes, shadows that slip away into darkness like a horror movie villain, the barest glimpse of talons or fangs, the smell of brimstone.” I snorted to myself. That last one was usually a sign. Dave nodded again. “This time, though. It’s not the smell of brimstone. It’s the smell of cinnamon.”

That did bring me up short. No one mentioned the smell of cinnamon. No one. It was the one detail we’d managed to hide, to keep out of circulation. It helped that no one thought twice about that smell – it was food, or cinnamon rolls, which really aren’t a food as much as they are tasty death on a plate – and so no one much discussed it. From Edie’s expression, he hadn’t mentioned that detail to anyone else yet.

Min was pale, and I could understand. She’d almost walked as well five years ago. Only the lack of a pension from her husband had kept her here. She needed money to put those seven kids through school. Still did, apparently. Five years wasn’t long enough for this crap.

Dave proved himself a little more human than I remember by giving us a minute. I got my scattering thoughts back under control and nodded. “So, we’re looking at the real thing this time.”

“Yes.”

“The timing is still odd,” Edie said carefully. “The guy writes books about ubernaturals, and now he’s being stalked by one?”

“I know,” Dave agreed. “But what are we supposed to do – ignore him because he’s a celebrity?”

“Did he go hunting it?” I asked. “Isn’t that what he did with the others – went hunting and wrote about it, whether he found something or not?”

Edie and Dave both nodded. “You think he managed to find it, even if he didn’t realize it?” she asked.

“I think it’s a possibility,” I answered. “Have you traced his path, where he’s been hunting?”

Dave frowned. “That’s not how we work, and you know it.”

“Maybe it’s how we need to work,” I said. “If we want to protect him, we need to know where he could have picked up a stalker, which means finding out where he’s been. Maybe your girl Louise here can go hunting with him, talk him through where he’s looked.”

“Me?” she squeaked.

“Yes, you,” I said. “You’re… not subtle. You look harmless. I am assuming you aren’t, since you’re here. Am I wrong?”

“Oh, she’s a danger, all right,” Edie muttered. “To herself.”

“I’m kind of a klutz,” Louise said, blushing. “No one takes me seriously.”

“Then what do you do here?”

“Research.” She sat up a little straighter. “I am the resident expert on chupacabra, subterranean uber-naturals, and book-lore.”

“And she is not going hunting with La Cantara. None of us are,” Dave admonished. “We’re strictly protection while he’s in town. If the creature should happen to show up, we’ll deal with it then. We are not hunting it down.” He started outlining protection details, where we’d be, who’d be close to the principal and who’d be riding outrigger. “If anyone has an issue with it, walk away now.”

I wasn’t walking away, but Dave and I would be having a talk later. Not like we used to, over chips and salsa and margaritas and friendly-like, but up close and personal. We lost three people to this thing five years ago. I didn’t want to lose anyone else because Dave wouldn’t let us be proactive.

“What is he calling this book?” someone whose name didn’t even register asked.

“The Devil of Dallas.”

“Well, of course he is,” Min sneered. “Because the entire metroplex is Dallas. There’s no other towns around – just Dallas.”

I couldn’t help but snigger at her words. “Now, Min. Gotta understand ‘marketing’ to get how these guys think.”

“Not like it matters that all the Dallas teams actually play in Arlington, right?” she spat.

Dave rolled his eyes and put a hand down on the table. No slamming it down, no fists, just a hand palm down, flat on the table. “Later. First, assignments.”

In an act of pure self-defense, Dave put me and Min on different shifts. We’d cover three shifts, and Min, Edie and I were all pulling different ones. I had third shift. Min grumbled as she got up and grabbed a bag, but she hit the road pretty quick. It was enough of a drive from ASP (in Arlington) to La Cantara’s fancy hotel in downtown Dallas.

The crew shuffled back to their desks, old-timers more obviously putting hands to their backs to work out kinks from the chairs. The low-level hum of leads being followed up on returned the room to its normal state. I prowled around, ignoring the work. Very few of the trophies were new; I’d long since memorized the old ones.

“Weasel.” Dave waved me back to the conference table. “Sit.” I ignored him. I was searching for one particular trophy, and I wasn’t stopping until I’d found it. He sighed. “I took it down, Weasel.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew you’d want it back.” He tossed a box on the conference table. “So it’s yours. Part of the bribe to get you back in here.”

“Better be getting paid, too,” I grumbled, but joined him at the table. I opened the box, tossing the lid back to the table, and ran my hands down the rough-woven black and green baja hoodie inside. It still had the stains from Mike’s blood, where I’d tried my best to keep him alive. I’d managed, at least long enough for Min to see him. I’m still not sure if that was the best thing that could have happened. Min and I didn’t talk for over a year after that, and we’d never been close afterwards. I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t talk to myself nearly as much that year, either, just went through life. I looked up at Dave. “You’ve got something else for me to do,” I ventured.

He nodded. “I know you’ll go hunting. But I am not risking any more of my people.”

I blinked at him, abruptly without words. He’d grown up in the last five years, if he wasn’t willing to risk his people to this uber. Last time he’d been more than willing to hunt it down.

“I blamed you for Mike’s death,” he said quietly. “I was wrong. I sent the two of you up there after it, and you did your best to come back. I’m not willing to do that again. It’s hard enough when my people get shot on a regular protection gig. I don’t want to lose anyone else to an uber-natural. I tried to send him somewhere else, but he wouldn’t go. Camped out here until I finally caved.”

“He knows we were hunting it.”

“Yeah.” He frowned at his hands. “If it weren’t for the smell of cinnamon, I’d’ve held out. But that… he didn’t mention that until the third meeting. He looked shaken, like he’d actually seen it. Smelled it.”

He handed over a tablet, open to photos. I swiped through shots of damage to a window, bits of fur that looked more like obvious fakes than real evidence. A single video walk-around of a car, showing some damage that could have been caused by claws, but could also have been made by knives. I’d seen it before. Nothing that said it was the same uber-natural, or even an uber. Lots of things that suggested it might be a manmade hoax.

“We got the fur. We’re having it tested, of course, but it takes a while.”

“Right.” Private labs were as backed up as the state labs, and there was no way to rush it. “Your guess?”

“Mix of cat and something else. Two different textures, but not undercoat and overcoat.”

It was strange to flow back into the old talk, animosity set aside for the moment. I had no belief that it would last, but for the time being, I’d let go of the distaste I had at being here. I didn’t want to be here, didn’t want anything to do with ASP. I hadn’t trusted Dave too much five years ago, ten years ago, or even fifteen when I’d first come to work for him. He’d been younger – we both had – but in growing, we’d gone in different directions. He wanted to be the hero. I just wanted to get the job done. We’d see if anything had changed. I wouldn’t bet my paycheck on it.

I wouldn’t trust him, or his people – and that included Min and Edie, as much as I hated to think that way – but I would work with them. One last time, and then we were done. I wasn’t going to do it for Dave, or the client. This was purely a personal issue – I’d let the uber get away once before, and it had taken the life of a good friend. This time it wouldn’t get away.

2.

I got the briefing – what it was supposed to look like this time, who the client was, all the usual. Protection from and for uber-naturals was a small portion of ASP’s job, and they didn’t exactly advertise. People who needed that sort of protection in the Dallas-Fort Worth area tended to rely on word of mouth, and it worked. Always had, when it came to uber-naturals. The rest of the time, ASP lived on the scraps of the larger companies; hence, the small building in Arlington.

Ubers. They weren’t supernatural, weren’t superstition. They were more than natural. Some groups called them exo-naturals – outside the normal boundaries of nature – but that was hogwash. They were as natural as humanity, but with closer ties to nature. They were, if anything, more natural than humanity. They had an excess of nature that we didn’t understand, so, uber-naturals.

ASP had been the primary protection service versus ubers since the end of the last century. It had a reputation, one that had been tarnished five years back, when the creature had come out of the woodwork. The creature didn’t attack with any regularity, nor with any pattern that anyone could see. Nothing had changed on that front – it struck wherever in the metroplex that it wanted to, and whoever it wanted to. Nothing tied the victims to one another – gender, race, ethnicity, gender preference, job, time of night, foods last eaten, color of hair, eye, clothing, shoes. Nothing. Each of the seventeen victims over ten years had been reduced to a series of facts, and none of the facts correlated across the board. There just were no over-arching similarities.

I read back through my report from five years before. There hadn’t been much light where we’d been positioned. We’d been alert, but not alert enough. Mike had seen it first, seen something that had caught his eye. I hadn’t known then, and five years hadn’t made the memory any clearer. Mike had seen it clearly, and grabbed for every bit of evidence he could while it was killing him. It hadn’t worked; whatever he had smoldered away, leaving him holding nothing but stone.

I still had one of those stones in my bag. I’d vowed - an outright vow, not a promise or something light, but an outright vow – that I would shove that stone down the uber’s throat and stand and watch it choke to death. If it didn’t, I’d help it die some other way. I touched that rock every day, worn it smooth turning it over in my hand. The others had been checked every which way, and turned out to be nothing but stone – porphyry – reddish purple, with flecks of other stuff. Another one was up on a shelf among Dave’s other trophies, but this one was mine. It had originally had something of a feather texture, but that had worn away. I’d wondered at the time if it had been an aerial uber, but there weren’t many of those, and something man-sized that could fly would be noticeable. I remembered claws, and bright eyes, and the feeling of death, and the heat of something’s breath. And Mike’s screaming, cut off short, returning as a moan. I didn’t remember feathers or flight. My taser had done nothing. Mike’s Beretta had done nothing.

Dave put a hand on my shoulder. “Weasel?”

I opened my eyes, found both hands clenched into fists. “Yeah.”

“I let you run last time. But I need you back, here and now, to help me find this thing.” He shook his head at my glare. “We’ve got some new gear, some new stuff. It’ll be more than a taser and a bulletproof vest this time.” He sat back down in his chair. “You’ve got third shift. Be ready to roll before that. Edie’s team lead for second shift; she’s got the number for this phone.” He handed me a cell. “Keep it charged and on. She’ll call to tell you where they’ll be. Don’t be late.”

I tucked the phone into my bag. “So where’s this gear?”

He smirked at me. “Follow.”

I snarked at the back of his head silently, mimicking him with as much viciousness as I could manage, picking my way between desks. Louise smirked at me as we passed; her desk was littered with bright and colorful objects of all kinds, like she was some sort of color-fixated magpie. She shrugged at my expression, and looked around at the other desks with something like scorn. They were bland and devoid of much personality, and I had to admit I preferred her desk. I wouldn’t want to work at it, but it was much more cheerful to look at.

In the back corner, the desk had been modified and was just a shell. Behind it was a full armory in miniature. “I’ve got a vest of my own,” I said.

“That’s fine. This one’s been blessed by most of the major and half of the minor religions in the area. And been packed with a line of silver.”

I accepted it. No sense in being stubborn about it, after all. He placed three pistols on the desk. At that I shook my head. “Don’t care if they are silver shot, blessed, whatever. Not carrying one. Got my own.” Made my own bullets for it, too. It might not be the fastest thing around, but I could rely on it. “Also got my own blade.”

I’d learned a crap-ton of skills for that – laid every hammer stroke where it had needed to go – and dipped it in my blood to quench it. The blade would answer to no one but me, if I was right. Took me two years to get that much blood stored up, and my freezer had looked like a vampire’s wet dream. But I’d made it, and poured the blood out in a circle around my forge afterwards, poured over a silver chain, making a barrier that only I could pass through unless I invited someone in. I’m not an uber, but I’ve learned some tricks. Anyone who has dealings with them had better, if they expect to survive.

Don’t get me wrong – ubers aren’t evil. They aren’t good either. They just are. They are part of nature, and as such, don’t really think too much about humanity at all, unless humans encroach on ‘their’ turf. That turf is, unfortunately for humanity, an ever-shifting thing, which means that ubers come and go as they please, and do what they please, and don’t care if humans get hurt or helped. But I am human, and I do have to deal with them, and I am going to be prepared when I do. And the knife and the pistol are a good part of that preparation.

He nodded and put the pistols away without complaint. He set a few other odds and ends on the desk and pushed them towards me. “Tablet, hooked into our systems here, secure tech. FLIR camera, in case it generates heat or cold.”

“Heat,” I answered steadily.

He shrugged. “It links to the tablet so you can scan a larger area without being stuck to a small screen. La Cantara has been using the same kind of thing, but right now your best bet is smell, to be honest.”

“Figures. Good thing I don’t have sinus issues,” I grumbled.

“You’re going to be an outrigger. I don’t want him to see you, or even know you’re there. I’ve sworn the others to secrecy. I’ll be lead on third shift, and I will keep you in the loop.”

“Then why bring me in with the others around?”

“In case something does happen, they’ll be looking for you. I don’t expect any trouble until third shift, to be honest. He’s doing his ‘research’ at night, after all. And if it is all a fake, I want it documented.”

I gathered the gear and carried it back to my bag. “I’ll be where I’m needed,” I said, and left. I had some work of my own to do, and the tablet would help.

3.

By ten I was as prepared as I could be. I’d loaded my pistols, done my research on La Cantara, and made sure my SUV had plenty of gas. I’d need it, trolling around the entire Dallas-Fort Worth area. La Cantara hadn’t hit the one place I had expected – the place where Mike had died. Admittedly, that might be because it was hard to get into the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens at night, but given his propensity for breaking into places that MIGHT have ubers, I guessed he just flat-out didn’t know about it. Not yet anyway.

I’d bet cold hard silver dollars that Dave would guide him there.

I laid in wait at the Gardens, lurking where people didn’t often go. I’d shown my ASP id to the guards, and that and some fast talking had them convinced that it was fine to allow me to stay over. I’d be on site before they arrived, if I still could read Dave. I staked out a hidey-hole in the Japanese garden and turned off everything but the phone. It was on vibrate, but I didn’t doubt that if the uber should choose to show up, it would hear that. Maybe I could pretend to be a cricket.

Nothing said that the uber would come back to the same place, but La Cantara was working on a book. He’d be here, to look around, to get “atmosphere” for his book, to see if he could make some snap judgement about the location, and what it meant for the uber. What it meant the uber was.

I’d read The Creature of Cincinnati, and found it lacking in anything approaching solid facts. It was all assumptions, theories that ignored evidence, and evidence that wasn’t even real evidence. I thought even less of La Cantara now than I had before. But it was chock-full of atmosphere, so this would be the most logical place for Dave to bring him.

With luck, the uber would eat La Cantara and Dave before I could kill it.

At 2238 the phone buzzed in my pocket. A text, it told me what I had anticipated. B at Botanical Gardens FTW. Edie lead Me flat tire. Good to know I could still out-guess Dave. I sent a quick affirmative, but didn’t bother to move. It was well and dark, and I wasn’t going to give myself away.

The Japanese gardens were quiet, so I heard them easily before I saw them. They were walking along carrying flashlights, talking in normal voices – not exactly subtle. I settled a little lower so they wouldn’t catch sight of me even if they swung the lights across my hiding place. La Cantara and Edie were strolling along. Dave had a flat? I didn’t believe that for the time it took me to type out my answer. It was far more likely that he just didn’t want to come out to the garden. He hadn’t even showed up that night, when Mike died. He didn’t show up until they’d hauled me off to hospital and I was well and drugged up. I don’t remember much past him showing up, and me flipping several obscene gestures his way.

“Who was the victim here?” La Cantara’s voice was more nasal than I anticipated. His author webpage’s photo had shown a large man, broad-shouldered and lantern-jawed, someone who could play a stereotypical US Marine. The voice just didn’t seem to match.

“His name was Michael Ellis. He worked for ASP.”

“One of your people?”

“Yes.”

“So you’ve been hunting this thing for that long?”

Edie didn’t answer that one. I knew exactly where they were headed. I didn’t have to shift my position at all. They walked without great care, and La Cantara kept talking, keeping up some sort of running narrative, almost as though he were recording for his book. Maybe he was. It didn’t matter. This was purely an atmosphere visit – there wasn’t any hint of the death that had happened here.

“So here, in this dark and abandoned garden, the Devil of Dallas struck down another valiant soldier in the fight against the monsters of our world.” I rolled my eyes. Dark, yes. Abandoned? Hardly. He had to be narrating for himself. It sounded like some of the purple prose from The Creature of Cincinnati. “Here, one man, alone and forgotten, died in the defense of the mundane people who live here, in the sprawling city of Dallas.”

Edie coughed. “Okay, enough. One, this isn’t Dallas. This is Fort Worth. They aren’t the same. Two, he wasn’t alone. There was a small team with him. Third, he has NEVER been forgotten.”

“What happened to the team? Can I talk with the survivors?” La Cantara sounded eager, and not terribly upset about being interrupted with the facts.

“I doubt it.”

“They would be a great source of information!” La Cantara protested. “I must talk with the survivors!”

A faint noise, almost an echo of La Cantara’s voice, made me shift in my makeshift hiding place. Neither he nor Edie heard it. La Cantara kept talking, louder and louder. Didn’t he know this was breaking and entering? Was he not aware that silence was golden – and seriously important when somewhere you weren’t supposed to be?

Light, like a flash of an old-fashioned camera, blinded me. La Cantara and Edie cried out. A heat that hadn’t been there a moment before washed over me. I fell back, my exposed skin burning. I rolled away, coming back to my feet without grace. I staggered out of the dense growth, trying to clear my vision. Three human-sized shapes struggled. I couldn’t see well enough to help. One of the shapes fell, yelling. I darted forward to drag La Cantara away.

It was the uber – the uber was here, attacking. I yanked La Cantara’s shirt, dragging him over sidewalk and gravel, then lunged over him. The uber had Edie. The sweet-sick smell of smoked meat flowed out, turned dense and ugly, like burning brimstone, and the odor of cinnamon over everything. Edie screamed, high and terrified, and unlike Mike’s scream, when it cut off, there was no other sound.

The uber crouched, shedding Edie’s corpse like so much trash. I barely caught her before she hit the ground, and I sank helpless under her weight. The uber would kill us all now.

But it straightened rapidly, thrusting out two great wings. With a down blast of heat, it rose over us and swept away.

“It burns!” La Cantara’s voice was higher now, pained.

“Shut up!” I snarled, reaching for the phone Dave had given me. I knew it wouldn’t work, that the heat had melted it, but it was all I had. With an arm around Edie’s body, I poked at it, and it lit up, dimly, but it lit. I hit speed dial for the office, made my report. Hit speed dial for Dave, got his voice mail.

“Calling 911. It happened again.”

“No!” La Cantara smacked my hand, loosening my hold on the phone. “No 911!”

“She’s dead, you moron!”

“911 won’t help her, then! And we can find out more about the devil!”

The phone buzzed in the grass. La Cantara snatched it up, wincing. “Hello!” He listened a moment, then held the phone out to me. “Here.”

It was Dave. “No 911,” he said. “Get out of there. Get out, get La Cantara to safety.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. Get you and the principal out of there. Go somewhere safe.”

I hung up. Edie was my friend.

I shifted out from underneath her body and stood. “Don’t say a bloody thing,” I growled, and La Cantara took a step back. I hefted Edie’s body onto my shoulder. It wasn’t that far back to the parking lot, and I could get us out without being caught. All I had to do was get us there. Because while I hated it, Dave was right. I had a job to do, and that was to get La Cantara to safety.

We made it to the car without incident. He climbed into the passenger seat even as I was dumping my friend’s corpse in the trunk. I let us out with the key given to me by a security guard who’d probably now lose his job. I drove as calmly as I could, keeping to the speed limit when we were alone on the road, keeping up with traffic when we weren’t. I didn’t want to attract attention. Not now. Not with a dead body in the trunk and an injured man beside me. Not when the local police didn’t even believe in the uber. Not officially, anyway.

“Who are you?” he gasped, tucking his hands in close to his body. “Oh, it burns,” he muttered.

“Working with ASP. Contractor.”

“Where were you? Why weren’t you there to help?” he demanded.

“You’re alive, aren’t you?”

At that, La Cantara fell silent. I wished he had gotten killed instead of Edie, but it hadn’t happened that way. At least she didn’t have anyone she was dating. It was her and three cats. I’d seen the photo on her desk – her and three kittens being kitten-cute. It didn’t look like an old photo, so I’d have to hope they weren’t full grown.

At the office, Dave was just opening the doors. He hurried us inside and locked up behind us. “Where’s Edie?”

“In the trunk.”

He blinked once and nodded. “Right. Injuries?”

“My hands… they’re still burning!”

I grabbed the first aid kit from where Dave still had it on a shelf and thrust it in his direction. “Going to take care of Edie,” I muttered, and left.

4.

As much as I hated to, I had to stage an accident to burn Edie’s corpse. All the outer damage was burns, so staging a fire seemed best. I knew she was still living in her old wooden house in one of the not-as-good parts of town with her cats. It would be the best place to start.

I transferred Edie’s corpse to her own car and drove her home. It wasn’t that hard to get inside; her keys were clearly marked. I shook my head at her naiveté. No one marked their keys – that was just an open invitation for someone to break in and steal everything.

The kittens came running, tails high, but stopped when they saw me. I dumped food into their bowls and started prep. A single cat carrier – they were going to have to share tight quarters for the trip out of here. There was no way I was going to try to wrangle three carriers. That wasn’t subtle. One might not be subtle either, but I could manage. I made note of what kind of food and cat litter she used; I wasn’t toting that out, either. That would look suspicious. Bad enough the cats were going to be missing. But I wouldn’t condemn three kittens to death – they didn’t deserve that any more than Edie had. Edie was dead, but the cats weren’t. And wouldn’t be if I had anything to say about it.

I’d like to say it was difficult to burn down my friend’s – former friend’s? – house with her corpse in it, but it wasn’t. I’ve seen enough crime shows to know what to do, and more importantly, what not to do. I had gloves, so I wore them. I didn’t move things around, just put her body in bed and made the fire happen. There had been a case where the killer deliberately created a short in the wiring at the socket. I remembered how it had been done. Hopefully it would look enough like an accidental short in the old wiring that the fire department wouldn’t look too close.

It was the work of about five minutes, and I was gone in ten, the three cats shoved into one carrier. They were silent, not even hissing at me. I felt a little bad about stealing them, but I’d rather do that than let them die in a fire. At least I could keep them – no shelters for these guys. Or girls. Or whatever they were.

I knew better than to stick around. I wasn’t going to be caught loitering. If there was a fire but it wasn’t hot enough to catch, or if the fire failed, I didn’t want to be anywhere in the area. I made my way home, calling Uber (there was a certain irony there, I supposed) instead of a taxi. They were less likely to ask questions.

The driver did ask, and I spun a tale of my sister finding the kittens and being allergic, and a soft touch for babies, and having to find a home for them. I was several blocks away from Edie’s at that point, so it was a calculated risk. I had him drop me off near a no-kill shelter – look at me, the good Samaritan – and then called Dave.

“Come get me. I need to get back to my car.”

He didn’t argue with me, and thirty minutes later Min drove up. I climbed in with the box of kittens. She stared at the box, but didn’t say a word.

The ride back to the office was silent, except that now the kittens were over their shock and well into unhappy. They whined and mewled miserably until we got to the office. I climbed out of Min’s car with a nod. Her gaze flicked from cat carrier to me, and back. I wasn’t going to explain or apologize. If she didn’t know what was going on, she could take it up with Dave. She thinned her lips at me and drove off, leaving me standing in the parking lot alone with the cats. I hefted them again and headed inside.

I was getting the feeling I’d been lied to from the beginning, and I didn’t like it at all.

Walking into ASP carrying a cat carrier with three unhappy kittens wasn’t the high point of my day. Overall, it was just the last in a long series of low points, to tell the truth. I set the carrier on the conference table.

“Where’s Dave?”

There were few enough people there to ask, but the giant floral girl – Louise – pointed at the single door in the back wall. I wrinkled my nose, but nodded. She watched me thread through the desks and chairs with the air of one waiting for a mine to go off. It wasn’t far off. There would be truth, or I was walking away, taking my new kittens and going home.

I entered without knocking, found Dave and La Cantara sitting on opposite sides of his desk, commiserating. Dave looked up at me. “Yes, Weasel?”

“It’s done. And now we have some truth-talking, or I walk out.”

La Cantara smiled at Dave and stood. “I’ll wait outside.” It was more considerate than I’d expected, so it sent up all the warning flares in my mind. I flopped into the seat he left, not expecting him to do more than listen outside the door.

“Truth-talking?” Dave asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay. How about this. Two people have died on your watch -.”

“Oh, hellsno. That was not My watch. It was yours. Yours. Not Edie’s – she’d been on shift already, and she shouldn’t have been there. You should have. Don’t start that crud with me, Dave.” I leaned forward. “You wanted me there to be talked at. You wanted to be out of the way when La Cantara started asking questions about what happened, because you didn’t want to deal with me. Tough, because you’re going to have to deal with me.”

“And I will, if I have to,” Dave said. He stood and leaned over his desk, trying to intimidate me. “You are the one that made off with Edie’s body. You dealt with it. If there’s a crime, it’s on you. You’ll stick around and do what I tell you to do.”

“You think?” I smirked. “You’re wrong. What makes you think I was dumb enough to leave any kind of evidence behind that I didn’t want to leave?”

He froze. “What?”

“You better hope my plan works, Dave, or the cops will come looking for you. Not me, you.” I was lying through my teeth, but he didn’t know that. “You brought me back into this mess for a reason. Why don’t you tell me why? No more lies.”

“La Cantara will tell -.”

“That man will probably tell whatever makes the best story,” I said. “And if that means that he takes all of us down, he will. You tried to keep your hands clean, but you’re failing every which way. La Cantara will sing whatever song will make him the most money. What’s a better story – a peon taking the blame, or the head of a supposedly respectable professional protection service making a real living trying to protect people from monsters? Which will play better in paperback? Or in the movies?” I leaned back, looking up at him, unimpressed by his looming.

“You don’t meet standard clients here. You meet them in a more… professional… setting. That he’s still here means you’ve let him in on a lot of things that very few other people know. You think he’ll be satisfied with me? The only thing I’ve got is an unusual name. You’ve got the trophies, the souvenirs from all those cases, all that research that he won’t have to do. You are now his witch.”

Dave gaped at me for a good three seconds before collapsing back into his chair. “Drat.”

“So. Tell me the truth about why you brought me back.” I stood slowly. “Or I am done.”

He shot upright in his chair and held out a hand. “Wait.” I stopped at the door but did not turn. Through the frosted glass I could see two shapes by the conference table – one had to be La Cantara, the other, Louise the floral girl. If she was keeping him occupied away from the door, I might have misjudged her. I’d find out one way or the other.

I counted silently in my head, old fashioned, not by seconds but by hippopotami. I reached fifty-two hippopotami before Dave sighed.

“I had to,” he said, and his voice sounded resigned. “You were there. You’ve got the most experience with this thing, whatever it is. It’s eluded me at every turn. I didn’t know where else to turn. No one else really believed – just you, me, Min and Edie.”

I turned back toward his desk, but didn’t walk away from the door. “Why?”

“You’re right about how we make our real living – ASP mostly makes money off protecting people from the thing that goes bump in the night.”

“Real or otherwise,” I said.

“Yes. We know they exist – don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mean to make a career off of uber-naturals. I didn’t. But… it’s relatively easy money, and it provides a living for people who couldn’t otherwise get a job.”

“Uh-huh.” Skepticism flavored my voice.

“But when this thing showed up five years ago, I knew I wasn’t just running a con game. I wasn’t. I really was providing a service. But it went wrong. No one will hire me – not now. Not anymore. They say I get people killed. So I eke out a living protecting people from things that don’t really exist – things that they want to be real, but aren’t. People pay me to protect them from the boogey man.”

I bit my tongue to keep silent.

“I thought if we could find it, we’d all be set. We could be the heroes. The ones that were right. I thought La Cantara would dig up enough for us to go after the creature. I didn’t think it would show.”

“And why me?”

He gestured tiredly at the door. “Because I knew he’d hire us if you were around. Because he wants to find it as much as I do. You’re the only one who’s survived one of that thing’s attacks, and now even more so. You were right there.”

He was working up to it slowly, trying not to say the words I wanted him to say. Yes, it was petty and mean. Yes, I can be like that.

“I need you, because you’ll keep me honest. You’ll keep me from running. You’re my conscience, for better or worse, and I need your help to find this thing and kill it. Please.”

I kept any triumph off my face. “Fine. But we do things my way from here on out.”

“All right.” He was just beaten-down enough to be believable.

5.

I walked out into the main room, closing the door quietly behind me. On the conference table, three kittens scurried around, playing like their world hadn’t been turned upside-down. I might have envied them for a second. Maybe. Flower-girl Louise and La Cantara were both dragging things around the table, and neither was aware of my approach.

“Having fun?”

La Cantara jumped, but flower-girl just looked up with a smile. “I love kittens,” she said.

La Cantara shoved his hands into his pockets. “So… truth-telling time?” he asked.

“Yup. Time to add you to the mix. Back in the office. I’ll be right there.” He shrugged and headed for Dave’s office. I eyed flower-girl. “Can you do me a favor and go get litter and food?” I handed her the names of the litter and food I’d seen in Edie’s house. “I know it’s late night, but if I’m keeping them, I need stuff, and I don’t want them to be without.”

She nodded. “Sure.” Her eyes cut over to Edie’s desk and the picture standing there. Even though it was facing away from us, I still felt like Edie was staring at me. “They’re cute.”

“Yeah.”

“Glad nothing bad happened to them. You like cats?”

“Yeah. Been a while since I’ve had any, but I like ‘em. Easier than dogs.”

“That’s the truth.” She waved away my money. “I’ll get it, have it for you when you’re done with Davey.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “David.”

I shrugged. “I’ve always just called him Dave. It pisses him off, too.”

She dropped her hand and laughed. “I’ll have stuff for you before you get back. And... I gave them a little milk – it was mine, so I know it’s not been in the fridge forever and a day.”

“Thanks.” We got the kittens back in the carrier, and they looked ready to settle down for a nap. Worked for me. I headed for the office.

The two men were sitting in silence. I settled on the edge of Dave’s desk, as much to annoy him as anything else. Dave glared at me, but finally broke the silence.

“La Cantara, you’re looking for the next big story, right?”

He nodded, rubbing his right hand along a thin burn mark on the back of his left. “Yes,” he said. “I didn’t expect it to find me quite so spectacularly, though.” He looked cowed, and more than a little afraid. I let him fester for a few. Dave seemed content to do the same thing, and we sat without speaking for several minutes.

“I lied about it stalking me.” La Cantara spoke abruptly, as one ripping off a bandage.

“We figured,” I answered. “The hairs didn’t match anything – but looked like cat and something else. No one else who has reported the thing ever said anything about scratches on a car, and the creature doesn’t seem to be the type to look in windows of upscale hotels.”

He flushed. “Then why did you take the job?”

Dave spoke up. “You did have one detail that we’d managed to keep quiet.” He shook his head. “What was different about the last one – you were scared after that?”

“It was hot, and out of nowhere. I hadn’t done anything different, been prowling downtown Dallas, but that night, it felt like something really was there. I’ve been stalked by ubers and by normal people before, so I know what it feels like. This… was… slightly different. There was a heat in the air that hadn’t been there before. I stopped at a diner to eat, and when I came out, I smelled cinnamon. Strong. Like I’d walked into a pantry filled with spices, but mostly cinnamon.” His eyes opened wider. “That’s what you were hiding from everyone. That’s what no one would tell me! The cinnamon – that’s your detail!”

“Yes.” Dave kept his voice sharp. “That’s it. That was what made me take you seriously. That was enough to get Weasel here to help.”

“Is your name really Weasel?” La Cantara asked, facing me fully for the first time.

“Yes.”

“But –.”

“I know. It’s unusual. No one ever names their daughter Weasel. But my parents did. It’s my birth name, my legal name, blah blah. Not a nickname.” I rolled my eyes. “Move on.”

“Right.” He was discomfited by my lack of embarrassment. “So now we can go find it? The Devil of Dallas? We can find it and capture it – at least on film?”

“Kill it,” Dave said. “We’re going to find it and kill it. If you want to write about it, you can write about its death, about the triumph of humanity against the monsters that are hunting us. Isn’t that what your career is built on – lifting humanity above the ubers?” There was a hardness about his voice that was uncommon, and I sat back to watch the coming explosion. All of La Cantara’s previous book had been a defense of the uber supposedly haunting Cincinnati, blaming humanity for invading their territory.

The writer sighed, still running fingers along his new burn. “You expect me to argue with you?” he asked softly. “This is a new experience for me – almost being killed by an uber. I’ve never even been fortunate enough to see one before now. I started this in an attempt to see one – if I got lucky, to touch one, to experience what it’s like. They are the ultimate in rare creatures.” He shook his head. “But this one attacked without reason. We weren’t doing anything.”

“So?”
“Bears who learn to scavenge from landfills are either moved or killed. Lions who learn that people are easy prey get killed. I think this one has learned that humanity is easy pickings. Creatures like that, ubers or otherwise, need to be put down.” He raised his face. “I want to be in on the hunt.”

“You don’t get in the way,” Dave said.

“No. Strictly observer.” He held up his hands. “Not in the way. No.”

Dave looked my way. “You want to take it from here?” I rolled my eyes at him. Just like him to step out when things got difficult.

“No. But I will report back to you. You can hide here if you want. But I’ll pick the people I work with.” I wasn’t making any concessions – he’d lied to me enough. “I’ll take La Cantara with me, sure, but I’m also taking Flower Girl out there – Louise,” I corrected myself. “Min can stay back – she can’t be any happier about this mess than I can.”

“You’re based out of here.”

“Fine.” He’d spend most of his time out of office, of that I was sure.

“And you’ll answer to me.”

“Only if you’ll start taking the responsibility. Otherwise, I keep you in the loop.” I stood up. “La Cantara – I’ll take you back to your hotel. We’ll move you to a new one, and you can try to get some sleep. Keep away from windows, and don’t go out until I come get you. We’ll find it, but part of our job is still keeping you safe.” I stood once more, impatient to be gone. “Grab anything you brought with you.”

He patted the bag still hanging at his side. “I’m ready. Ready for painkillers and bed, and hopefully sleep without nightmares.”

We walked out, leaving Dave alone in his office.

Louise was just coming back through the door. She nodded politely. “I got everything,” she said. “Charged it to ASP.”

I grinned at her. “Good job. I’m taking La Cantara to a new hideout, and then coming back. I’ll pick up the kittens and their stuff then. You be here?”

She shrugged. “Sure, unless insomnia takes a hike.”

It took longer than I would have liked to move La Cantara from his swanky hotel to another swanky hotel, but the sun wasn’t up yet when I finally got back to the office. Louise was still there, babysitting the kittens and poking at a tablet. “Heya,” she greeted. “Min called in sick – no surprise – and Dave went home.”

“You going home anytime soon?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Meh. Maybe. It depends. Got anything else I can look for – about the uber?”

“It flies. It’s shaped like a man, but it flies. Puts out a lot of heat. Give me your number and I’ll text you as things occur to me.”

“Good deal.”

I headed out a few minutes later, heading home at last. I needed sleep, I needed to plan, and I needed food. Probably in that order.

6.

I woke much later than I’d intended, the sun streaking through my dirty windows. The kittens were curled up together at the foot of the bed, and I spared a moment’s thought to pet them and put down food. I’d managed to get the litter situation taken care of, but I’d be damned if I were going to turn into a crazy cat lady.

Three times I’d messaged Louise with more information; she’d responded every time. Made me a little nervous about how little sleep she actually got. Not enough to do anything about it – she was an adult, and could take care of herself.

But it was later, and I had to hit the road. A cup of coffee – made at home, because I’m cheap – and on the way. I called La Cantara, warning him I was coming. Another call to Louise, and when she answered, she sounded awake enough.

“When you get here, I think I might have some things for you,” she said. “Are you bringing the author guy?”

“Yes.”

“Come to the office – Dave already called in sick. You’re shocked, I’m sure.”

“Oh, of course I am.” The sarcasm flowed unchecked. “Anything you need?” Hadn’t intended to ask, but she’d been nice enough to run errands for me, and do research for me. I could do the same.

“Maybe grab some breakfast? I’ve got plenty of coffee.” She was particular about her breakfast of choice, but I’d offered. I warned her about the turnaround time, and she didn’t seem to care. “And add a sweet tea,” she said before she disconnected.

The drive was quiet - as quiet as metroplex roads ever were – and it only took thirty minutes to get to the hotel. Another thirty back to the office, pausing for food and drinks. La Cantara hung onto the seatbelt like it was the only thing keeping him from panicking. If my driving was enough to make him panic, he was in the wrong line of work, and definitely in the wrong city. He calmed a little once we left Dallas traffic behind, but downtown Fort Worth made him tense again. I thought he was going to cry once, but I’m a pro at slipping between cars when I need to. It’s defensive driving, Texas style.

He followed me into the office and sank into a chair at the conference table. I waved Louise over and passed her both the tea and the bag of food. I’d eaten mine one handed while driving.

Maybe that was why La Cantara had been quiet. I shrugged mentally. Not my problem.

Louise, dressed today in a tunic shirt with black and purple diagonal stripes, wolfed down her breakfast and drank about half the sweet tea before she said a word. I frowned at her while she ate, trying to decide what she had done. Once she was done, she met my eyes.

“The purple streaks don’t work?”

I shrugged. “It’s subtle.” And it was. In her brown hair, they barely showed.

She grinned. “It’s kool-aid. It’ll wash out tonight.”

“Convenient.”

“Yup.” She stretched and groaned. “How’re the kittens?”

“Settling in.”

“Good. Okay. So you want to know what I found out. Grand total of nothing certain.” I sagged a little at her words. I had hoped. “But,” she held up a finger. “I did find some things that might help. A few things that are contradictory, mind you, but I think we can work it out.” She laid her tablet on the table. “The smell of cinnamon is usually associated with the phoenix, as is the heat you mentioned, although it’s only really ever mentioned when they are building their funeral pyres. And you said it flew, right?”

Both La Cantara and I nodded.

“But.” She tapped the tablet, and it showed a grainy security camera recording. A dark shape flapped hard and soared away from the garden. It quickly vanished. “The phoenix is also fairly obvious. Hard to hide all that fire. And nothing shows here.”

“Are there any reputable reports of a phoenix anywhere?”

Louise was already shaking her head. La Cantara shrugged. “Depends on what you mean by reputable.”

“In other words, no. No evidence that couldn’t have been planted.”

“No.”

“Great.”

Louise shoved the tablet towards me. “Hit play on the next video.”

I obeyed, and was rewarded with a slightly better recording of a creature in full flight. “Where?”

“Over Pantego,” she said. “Three years ago. There was a series of arson-related fires.” I nodded; I vaguely remembered them. “A few people stayed up to see if they could catch the arsonist, and others set up security cameras. This was caught during that time.”

The video showed the creature – obviously an uber – working with less effort to get airborne. The flickering of flames could be seen distantly below it, as though it had lifted off out of the fire. But this was no phoenix. This was… something else entirely. It was man-shaped, and the religious would probably have called it a demon, even though the wings did not look leathery.

“Police talk to the guy who recorded it?”

She shrugged. “I’ve tried to find out who got the shots, but no one’s talking. I didn’t find it in a police report, that much I know.”

“Most people who report uber sightings are considered low-reliability sources,” La Cantara sighed. “No matter what kind of person they are, even though people are starting to realize that ubers are real, reporting one automatically gets you labeled as crazy.” He spoke with the conviction of one who’d been labeled, and I could see why. He made a living on the things that seemed crazy.

But so did I, so I had no room to throw stones.

I frowned. “Stones. Were there any stones at the garden… where Edie… where it attacked?” I wasn’t certain why I was shying away from the word ‘died,’ but I didn’t want to deal with it right now.

“Stones? Yeah… but it’s a garden.”

“No. Where she was.” I shook my head. “Did no one go back to check the site?”

Louise shrugged. “I don’t know if David did or not.”

I swore. “No way. And they will have cleaned up by now.” I flung myself from the chair and paced. “Last time it happened there were stones, like something had been compressed.” I crossed to a shelf and grabbed the ones Dave had kept. I flung one on the table; it clattered across to land in front of La Cantara. “I had it checked. It’s porphyry. Nothing special.”

He turned the rock over slowly before reaching into his bag. He pulled out his phone. He flicked through it quickly, finally stopping to lay the phone on the table. “There. A pile of broken stone.” He shrugged. “The guy who sent me the pic said it was left behind by the uber when it attacked him.”

“Did you see it in person?”

“I couldn’t get in touch with him. Apparently he died between the time he sent me the pic and when I was able to go looking for him. He was one of the first to alert me to the uber here. I was still in Cincinnati when I got the pic. I told him I’d call when I could, but things didn’t work out that way. When I could, I got down here, but he’d already died, and his family didn’t want to talk to me.” He shrugged. “That happens a lot – the people not wanting to talk to me, not the people dying before I talk to them.” He essayed a small smile. It was a pleasant smile, even if his voice still irritated me.

Louise frowned. “What was his name?”

“Donald Blake.”

“Really. You do know that’s Thor’s alias?”

La Cantara gaped at her. “What?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a fake name.”

“No. I spoke to his wife,” La Cantara protested.

“Was her name Jane?”

“Yes….”

Louise laughed. “Give me the number they used. I’ll see what I can dig up.” He wrote down a number – a local area code, at least. She took it, still shaking her head, and went back to her desk. “Honestly. You’d think people didn’t read comic books anymore. Or even watch movies.”

He transferred his look to me. “What is she talking about?”

I shrugged. I didn’t read comics anymore and I’d never been terribly into the adventures of a some-time Norse god. “If she gets something, it’ll be good. For now, tell me who you’ve talked to, and where you’ve gone while you were here.”

He started talking, but I felt he was omitting a decent amount. I’d get it from him one way or the other. Right now, it was time for soft soap – being gentle. Or at least as gentle as I could.

“Let me see the picture again.”

He shoved the phone to me. “There’s not enough showing to give me location,” he said.

“But the stone looks the same,” I said. “The same purple-red as this. So it could be another authentic sighting. Louise – where are the files on this thing?”

“Dave’s office, I guess.” She barely looked up from her computer.

“Thanks.”

It took a moment’s work to jimmy the lock on the door. He should have expected it, should have just left the door open. It wouldn’t have saved much time, but it was like he was going out of his way to piss me off.

I rifled his personal files. As always, he was anal retentive – he kept every bill, every receipt, every piece of paper he ever had, with notations to show when he paid the bills. Good business sense there, but that was about the only good sense he had. He was behind on the bills – no shock there. He always ran a little behind. The standard business files showed only three jobs, with people out on them. That was good, although it meant I’d have to watch out for them showing up. At least he wasn’t just pretending to run a business. I moved on to the other files – the ones on the real business, the money-making portion. Surprisingly, those files were actually thinner than the official side. Four people out on assignment, running in six-hour shifts, to protect some businessman from a voodoo curse. I didn’t recognize any of the names, but that wasn’t a huge shock. I’d cut ties well and good when I left.

There wasn’t a file on La Cantara. Did Dave take it with him? If he had, I needed it. Which meant paying Dave a visit. That sounded like a terrible idea.

“Louise. When you’re done with that, could you call Dave and ask for the file? It’s not in here.”

“Sure.” I heard her chatter under her breath for a moment. “Hey, David!” Her voice was strangely perky. “Did you happen to take home the file on La Cantara? Yeah? Can I come by and grab it? I need to check some stuff, and you didn’t leave a copy here. Shame on you, breaking company rules.” She laughed lightly and hung up. “Okay, I’ll run by and pick it up,” she called back to me. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do while I’m gone.”

La Cantara hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know what good this will do. We should be out talking to people. I have several contacts here we could be trying.”

“So call one and set up a meeting,” I shrugged. I’d kept my own notes, of course, hardcopy only, and they were in my bag. I pulled out the notebook and started to look through. There were no locations in common except the botanical gardens. As far as I knew, that was the only place the uber had gone more than once.

Why the botanical gardens? Why the same spot? What was special about that spot?

I thrust the notebook back into my bag and scribbled a quick note to Louise. “C’mon, La Cantara.”

“You can call me George, y’know.”

“Fine. George. Let’s go.”

“Where to? I haven’t gotten in touch -.”

“Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. I want to see it in daylight.”

7.

We paid our admissions and entered the botanical gardens. La Cantara – George – trailed along beside me. The Japanese garden was elegant and clean, with as few people as I’d see here before. It was green and tidy, with no signs of whatever had happened last night.

Last night. I closed my eyes briefly.

“You can’t tell that anything happened,” he whispered.

“Not a bit,” I agreed. “Except that.” I pounced on a small pile of rocks, dark maroon, almost purple, that had been swept off to one side. I picked through them – they were irregular, almost like drops of blood solidified into stone – and then swept them into my hand. They went easily into my bag. La Cantara – George – watched me do it.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because they look like the ones left behind last time.” I stood, scanning the area. “I waited for you there,” I pointed at my place of concealment. “Dave didn’t tell me, but I knew he’d bring you here.” He stayed silent, listening. “Two people I considered to be my friends died here.” I stamped the ground. “I want to find what did it, and I want to stop it. If I have to, I will feed you to it. So. Tell me the truth. Why is it hunting you?”

“I don’t know!” he hissed. He flopped onto the ground with a sigh. “I wish I did. I wish I knew. I just wanted to write another best-seller. I didn’t want to get hunted by an uber. I didn’t want to watch someone die. I didn’t want to get involved in all of this.”

“Why did you contact Dave?” I was listening, but at the same time I was watching the surrounding area, looking for anything – spoor, signs of a nest, anything that might give me direction. I wasn’t going to be idle, lounging about on the ground. I wanted to be able to move if something started – even if I doubted it. Almost all the attacks had come during the night, and all of those that I considered reputable had. Those that happened during the day had almost all turned out to be hoaxes. There was only one that hadn’t been properly explained away, but I had doubts. The uber only came out at night. It felt safer that way, or it was easier for it to hunt.

“Because I needed protection,” he said. “And because his name was whispered as someone who might know more.” He slouched, staring at the ground. The back of his hand was still red, but more like a bad sunburn. “I didn’t realize it would go like this.”

“Who whispered his name to you?”

“A man named Manny Edwards.”

I shook my head. The name meant nothing, but I’d ask Louise later. I didn’t see a nest, didn’t see anything that would make this an ideal place for the uber to hang out at night. It was beginning to feel as though it wasn’t a random attack. It felt more like a deliberate attack.

I frowned at the thought. If the uber was attacking deliberately, that would indicate a human intelligence, or something similar, which would make this one of the more clever ubers I had heard of. I didn’t like that idea very well at all. But how would it have known La Cantara was here? Had it followed them from somewhere else?

A glint of something on the roof of the tea house caught my attention. I squinted, trying to bring it into focus without success. I sighed and reached into my bag for a camera – I was a terrible photographer, but people ignore you if you have a camera in places like this, and it had a good lens for distance. I focused on the roof, snapping a couple of pictures before finally making out what the object was. A twisted piece of copper-colored metal with symbols engraved into it. They weren’t Japanese, so I was willing to bet it had come from the uber somehow.

All I had to do was get it down from the roof.

“Anyone watching?” I asked.

La Cantara –George – shook his head. “Nope. We’re almost alone out here.”

“Good. Warn me if people start paying attention.” I handed him the camera. “Take photos. Just look busy.”

“Okay,” he answered slowly, dragging the word out doubtfully.

I stretched. I hadn’t gone climbing like this for a while – clambering onto people’s roofs had stopped being a hobby when I hit college – but I managed, dragging myself onto the roof. I knew there would be people inside, so I made it as fast as possible. I reached up and grabbed at the metal piece, then slid down the roof to land on the ground. I hustled back to George’s side and elbowed him.

“Look that way,” I whispered, and pointed. We were looking down a random path when the doors of the teahouse opened and three women came out.

“Did you see someone-.”

“He was crazy – he just jumped up on the roof!” I said, feigning excitement. “Todd almost got a picture of him, but missed him! He was like a squirrel – up! – and then back down! He ran off that way!”

George nodded without speaking, his eyes wide.

The women checked the roof over and headed back inside, grumbling.

I took the camera back, stowed it and headed down a different path. “Let’s look at the koi. I hear that you can pet some of them if you feed them.”

We sat down on the side of the koi pond.

“I didn’t think they’d believe that,” he whispered.

“People believe what they want to,” I shrugged. “Nothing got damaged.” I turned the piece of metal over, revealing the symbols. The first was made up of three horizontal parallel lines. The center line was shorter, and had two dots that ended the line. Over the lines was an x that crossed all three out.

“Alchemy,” George said softly.

I groaned. Alchemy? Great. “What’s the first one mean?”

“It’s the sign for copper.”

I shook my head. “So, the symbol for copper on a copper band. What do the others mean?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know all of them.”

More to research. Fortunately, that research I could do on my own, at home. I had an alchemical dictionary of sorts. I’d needed it to figure out how to make my knife and modify my pistols. I flipped the band over several times – it had rivet holes at both ends, but no rivet. Once upon a time it had been riveted around something. Out of curiosity, I pulled up the leg of my jeans and tested it around my ankle. It was about right – maybe a little big, but I wasn’t a large woman. I reached over and tugged up La Cantara’s pant leg and fitted it around his ankle. It was a little small, and would pinch if I tried to squeeze it shut. We were looking at something between the two of us, size-wise.

“Like a tag on a bird,” he said quietly. He tossed some food to the koi who swam lazily by. They swarmed, forcing their way over one another to get to the food. I nodded, trailing my fingers in the water. Outwardly we must have looked a pensive couple spending time together.

A leg tag. Unless the uber had created the tag itself, as some sort of alchemical protection, that would mean someone else was in charge of it. Now we were possibly looking at a whole other layer of strangeness.

“This uber really is killing people,” George whispered.

I cast a dark look his way.

He raised one hand. “I know… but I’ve never… none of the others I’ve looked into have ever actually been proven to kill humans. None of them. We know this one is responsible for at least two deaths. Probably more.” He swallowed. “Manny Edwards runs a haunted house. He said he went to school with David, that David could help me, that he knew more about ubers than anyone else around. He said David had helped him out of a spot a couple of years ago. I don’t know if it’s important, but nothing happened until I talked to him. The stuff before that was fake, like you said.”

It wasn’t much, but it was a place to start. “All right. You’re coming with me.”

8.

I texted Louise, but didn’t expect a response immediately. She was already burdened with things she was doing for me. So when no answer came, it wasn’t worrying. George sat quietly in the passenger side, offering no more information.

I couldn’t take us back to the office yet. I needed my research books first, and that meant going home. But since I couldn’t just abandon George, I had to take him with me. I wasn’t thrilled, but it kept him under my eye.

He frowned at the small house when I pulled up to the curb. “Where’re we?”

“My place. Come on.”

He trailed after me up the brick walk. I was proud of my house – a 1920’s Craftsman house. I was fond of the deep porch that kept the house cool in summer. Apparently it wasn’t what he expected from me, from the looks he shot in my direction. I walked in, making certain the kittens weren’t going to make a run for it. I shouldn’t have worried; they were curled up on top of the footstool I used as a coffee table, all three of them tangled together in comfort. One raised a head and mewled sleepily, but none of them moved otherwise.

I waved George to a seat on the sofa – also Craftsman style, because if I was going to have the house, I was going to have the furniture to match. It was just taking longer than I liked to get everything. I headed for the built-in bookshelves around the fireplace and scanned quickly. I hadn’t used the book since I’d finished my gear, but it was still here.

It took only a moment to lay hands on the book, and I carried it to the sofa. One of the kittens had unwrapped itself from the others and made its way to George’s lap. His expression would have made me laugh if we weren’t dealing with death and ubers, and I couldn’t stop a small smirk at his expression of surprise and uncertainty.

“Allergic?” I asked.

“No. Just. It wasn’t there, then it was.”

“Cats are like that.” I laid the book down between us. “Alchemical basics – has most of the symbols I’ve seen, and those that I hadn’t, I added.”

“I wouldn’t have pictured you as an alchemist,” he said, eyeing me nervously.

“I’m not,” I shrugged. “Just wanted to have gear that could defend me against ubers, and alchemy seemed to be the way to go.” He didn’t have an answer to that, so we turned to the book and started hunting symbols, trying to piece together the meaning of the band.

At the end of it, we had a handful of symbols that seemed to indicate a union of fire and earth, and separation based on the time of day or night. It added up to absolutely nothing. The last symbol was one of purification by flame, which didn’t bode well at all.

“It’s not a dragon, is it?” George asked.

“Hope not,” I answered with a grimace. My blade and pistols would not be of use against a dragon powered by alchemy. It was beginning to look like it might be, though. Flame and heat, and a small dragon – or wyvern – might be mistaken in the dark for a human with wings. But there hadn’t been visible flame. I didn’t like to think that there might be a dragon of any sort with a flame too hot to be seen with the naked eye. That would be… there wasn’t a word to explain how bad that would be.

But whatever had worn the band wasn’t wearing it now. It was unbanded, and I didn’t know if that was good or bad. If the band kept the thing in check, it was bad. If the band held the uber together, preventing it from splitting into its component parts, then that was a good thing.

We weren’t much further along, except to realize that someone else was probably controlling the uber – someone well trained in alchemy. I had a few contacts, but I wasn’t sure they would turn on their own.

They were going to have to, though, or more people were going to die. At the very least, I had something else to sic Louise on.

I checked the phone, spurred by the thought. Still no answer from Louise. Not a word. Checking the time, I realized we’d been working on decoding the band for two hours. Surely it hadn’t taken Louise that long to get to Dave’s and back with the file?

“C’mon. We gotta go.”

“Where to this time? And can we get food? I’m starving.”

I displaced the kitten who’d moved to sprawl on the alchemy book. “Yes, we can get food, and we’re heading back to the office.”

A quick stop for burgers and we were on the road again. Smoke rose from the industrial section where the office was tucked away, and I could hear fire trucks. I groaned inwardly. Surely we couldn’t be that unlucky?

The road in was blocked by police cars, and I could see people milling around aimlessly. I parked and climbed out of the SUV, dragging George with me. I grabbed a person at random. “What’s going on?”

“One of the buildings caught fire. They cleared us all out.”

“Which one?”

“Three? I think?” Where ASP was. I wasn’t betting on coincidence. Not with fire involved. I glanced over the crowd of people, but didn’t see the purple tunic or hair. I didn’t see Dave either. I made a quick call, but it went to voice mail.

“Damnutall,” I muttered. “Come on, Dave, answer.”

Another call to Louise went unanswered as well. I shot her off a text, warning her about the fire, just in case, even though my stomach was convinced she was in the building when it caught. It wouldn’t have taken her that long to get the file from Dave and bring it back.

I grabbed at a police officer. “My company’s in that building! ASP Protection and Security? Did everyone get out? I can’t get in touch with my boss, or with one of my co-workers that should have been there!” It didn’t take much to imitate worry. He laid a hand on my shoulder and led me further away.

“I’m sure they got out just fine, ma’am. I’m sure. The fire fighters are just trying to get the flames down, but nobody’s said anything about a body, and nobody’s called for an ambulance.” I suppose it was meant to be reassuring, but it wasn’t. I wanted to slip past him and go check for myself, but I didn’t dare.I didn’t need to get arrested.

“Hey – there’s David!” George pulled at my sleeve. He pointed past into the crowd. Dave looked angry, but not worried.

I thanked the officer and headed for Dave. He didn’t see me coming, or he would have run. People moved aside for me, and I could dimly hear George pattering along beside me. “Why are you angry at him?” he asked.

“Dave.”

He turned and saw me. He backed up a step before holding his ground. “Weasel! Where have you been? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you!”

“Your phone went to voicemail,” I said. “I left messages for you. I’ve had my phone on me the entire time, and it never rang, never buzzed. Where’s Louise?”

“What?”

“Louise. Where is she? She was coming to your place to get a file for me. The one for him.” I jerked my thumb at George. “She was going to call when she had it. I haven’t heard from her, either.”

“Well don’t blame me!” Dave snapped. “My phone works just fine!”

I took a deep breath and coughed on the smoky air. “Did she come get the file?”

“No. She never came to see me,” he snarled. “I was coming into the office and saw this,” he waved his hand at the cars and lights and crowd. “They won’t let me back in there. And all my files are in the office. Or were, anyway. I never take files home.”

“Not even that one?”

“No.”

“I ransacked your files, and it wasn’t there.”

“Well, no. Edie had it in her desk.” He frowned. “Louise should have known that.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand. Do you think this is all connected to the uber?”

“Do you honestly think it isn’t?” I snapped back. “Too many fires recently, too much lost to flame and heat.” I held out the copper band. “We found this at the garden.”

He took it from me. “Let’s get out of the public eye,” he mumbled, and led the way to a quieter area. He examined the band. “What does it mean?”

I explained it, and he humphed softly. “I’ve seen a few of these before,” he confessed.

“Where?”

“Louise has some tattoos. I’ve seen these. They were tattoo’d on her left shoulder.” He tapped the two that indicated purification by fire. “They had a dragon curled around them.”

Beside me, George whimpered.

9.

We left, George and I, heading back to the car. I had to know. Had to know for certain. Would Louise be our alchemist? Dave handed over her address, his face showing his shock. I snatched back the band from his hand, and he didn’t protest. I don’t think he knew how. That one of his own people had done this? He did tell me how he’d gotten her – she’d been a walk-in, someone who knew about ubers, who knew how to dig up information about them. It should have been a warning sign, that she was perfect for the job he needed done, but he’d hired her without thinking twice. Now Edie was dead and Min? No one had heard from her, either. She was supposed to be in the office that morning. It was likely she was dead as well.

“Why would she be involved?” George asked. “I don’t understand!”

“Neither do I, but when we get to her place, we’ll find out one way or the other,” I growled back. After that, he shut up and held on. She lived on the other side of Fort Worth from the office, in the newer-developed areas. The traffic was worse here, too much construction, not enough infrastructure. The story of the metroplex, really.

Her house was in a neighborhood that had been there longer than everything else around it – it was old and run down, like the people who lived here had given up. The grass was weedy and thin, the trees almost non-existent, driveways cracked, and the paint on the houses peeling away. Two cars were in the driveway. I parked in front of the house – better for a quick getaway, if need be - and climbed out. The grass crunched underfoot. I heard George behind me, but he was still silent.

I knocked on the door, ignoring the doorbell. After a moment, I heard shuffling behind the door. A muffled swearword, and the door was opened. A painfully thin woman eyed us uncertainly. “What?”

“I’m looking for Louise. Is she here?”

She shook her head. “No. Went to work.” She coughed. “Sorry. Been sick.” She backed up a step. “She swung by earlier with my meds, but said she was going back to do her thing.”

“When was that?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I dunno. Just… sometime after the sun came up.”

Another woman appeared in the doorway behind her. “Meg, what are you doing out of bed? Get back in bed; I’ll handle this.” She glared at us over the younger woman’s shoulder. Once the other had vanished down a hallway, she focused fully on us. “Who are you?”

“We work with Louise for ASP. There was a fire, and no one can find Louise.”

She frowned, thinking. “Her phone?”

“No one answers. I’ve texted her several times.”

“Who are you?” she asked again.

“Name’s Weasel Montgomery. This is George La Cantara.”

She nodded and backed into the house. “Come in. She mentioned you.” With a glance, we followed her into the house.

The inside was no better than the outside; wide cracks ran up the walls, proving that the foundation was in bad shape. The living room was packed with furniture. We threaded our way through and stayed standing while the woman sorted through a pile of papers. “I know she said something about it,” she muttered to herself. “Ah.” She held up a battered folder. “Here.” She thrust it in my general direction. “She left this when she left Meg’s meds.”

I took it and flipped the cover open. The first page was a transcription of a phone conversation – between Dave and George. It was the file that I had sent her after. “Thanks,” I said, and meant it. “If she gets in touch with you, let me know. Give me your number and I will do the same.”

“Thanks.” I hesitated. “Can you tell me if Louise knows anything about alchemy?”

The woman broke into a tired grin. “Just a bit,” she said. “You haven’t been around her for long if you have to ask – Lou is fair obsessed about it. She thinks it is the best way to fuse tech and supernatural – excuse me, uber-natural items.” She snorted. “Follow me.” She led us down a narrow hallway and pushed open a door. The bedroom beyond was tiny and cramped – a king-sized bed took up most of the space, and every surface was covered with books and tech of various sorts. Most of the tech had alchemical symbols written on them, some carved into the tops. But no bubbling beakers, none of the other trappings of alchemy. Unless she was into some weird high-tech alchemy, there wasn’t enough gear here to control dragons or any other kind of uber.

“Does she do everything here?” George asked.

“Yeah. We kicked her out of the kitchen after the third fire,” the woman answered with a roll of her eyes. “No more of that crap. She almost burned us down the last time. And the smoke? Let’s not even go there. There’s still green stains on the ceiling, and we can’t afford to repaint.” But no stains on the ceiling here, and none in the closet when I pried the door open. Just a whole lot of clothes, all of them in bright colors.

We took our leave and moved back to the SUV. I spread the file out between us. Transcripts of the phone calls, the interview between George and Dave, and all the notes we’d collected over the span of the first case. Lab reports. Any leads we ever had. None of them had gone anywhere.

“I don’t understand. Why did David say he didn’t have them?” George asked.

“He might not have,” I pointed out, as much as it pained me to be even-minded about Dave. “He said they were Edie’s desk. If Louise knew that, she could have grabbed it.”

“Why bring it here then?” he asked.

“We don’t know if this is the complete file,” I answered. “But we can do some comparing.” I summoned up a grin and started the car again. He hastily reassembled the file and snapped his seatbelt on.

Halfway home my phone buzzed – a text message. I flipped the phone to George. “Check it.”

He obeyed. “Louise.”

I cut across three lanes of traffic to pull off the highway, ignoring horns and the squealing of tires. George paled and fumbled the phone. It clattered on the floorboards.

I slewed into the first parking lot I saw and whipped into a parking spot. George was wide-eyed and vaguely green, so I popped off my seatbelt and grabbed for my phone.

“Had to leave fast. Roommates have file. Will contact when I can.”

I shot her a quick message back. “Where meet?”

A delay, and then a response. “Not yet. Will tell you. Researching.”

I texted again. “Fire at office. You okay?”

A longer delay. “Fire? All safe?”

“Thought you were inside. Min still missing.”

“I wasn’t there. Was doing research. Not hurt. Min wasn’t there when I was. Gotta go. Will call.” My next text went unanswered, and I growled. “So she’s alive – assuming it’s her on the other end. I don’t know her well enough to tell.”

He sighed. “Can you drive a little calmer this time? I was in a bad wreck years ago, and this… this just isn’t helping.”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

It took longer than I would have liked to get home, but at least George was calmer, and capable of carrying on a coherent conversation. I picked his brains about the ubers he’d researched, and why he got involved in the first place.

“The car wreck? It was me and my wife. We were in the middle of nowhere, driving to see her folks. We hadn’t seen them in years, and were only going back for her dad’s funeral. Neither of us were looking forward to it – he hadn’t liked her marrying me and never forgave her. We were running late, and it was overcast, all gray and sometimes raining.” His hands closed into fists. “Something stumbled out of the treeline and onto the road. It was slick from rain. I slammed the brakes. We didn’t stop, just slid. The car got sideways, and slammed into the… whatever it was… on my wife’s side.

“She died instantly, the police told me.” He stared at his fists. “But whatever it was that I hit? It wasn’t there when help arrived. Like it had never been. Just… the car sitting in the middle of a two-lane road in the middle of nowhere, looking like I’d wrapped it around a telephone pole.” He transferred his stare to the windshield. He wasn’t seeing the traffic around us. That much I could tell.

“The police couldn’t explain it, other than I might have hit a cow or something.”

“You don’t believe so?”

“No. The only blood on the car belonged to my wife.” He spoke blandly. “I knew it couldn’t be a cow. Cows don’t walk on two legs. I wanted to find out what had killed my wife. So I started hunting ubers. I didn’t know what they were, then. Didn’t know they were everywhere.”

“Did you ever find out what it was?”

He shook his head. “No. I will, though. I’ll find it. And I will make it pay for my wife’s death.”

The rest of the ride was silent. I parked in front of the house and brought him back in. The kittens came careening out of the kitchen, and both of us scrambled to keep them inside. We dropped them back on the ottoman and I went on into the kitchen.

“Coffee? Tea? Something else to drink?”

“Whatever you’ve got,” he called back.

I shrugged and fired up the coffee maker. I was going to need caffeine. While I was at it, I threw food into the crockpot and started it. Just because I was going to be busy didn’t mean I couldn’t eat. I would be starving later, and the crockpot would make enough to feed me and George, and Louise if she proved to be trustworthy, and not a mad alchemist.

10.

George sat back, rolling over the kitten sitting in his lap. It squeaked, but went back to sleep. It was dark, and we were still in the living room, surrounded by papers and books. Everything from the file was spread out, as well as my personal notes.

“I’m impressed,” he said, turning over a page of my notes. “You keep very detailed notes. When this is all over, want to help me track down the uber that killed my wife? I could use your help.”

“Not if you’re going to write about it.”

He gave a faint smile. “Somehow this has changed everything. I didn’t expect to find this uber, and I never expected it would try to kill me.”

The smallest of the kittens bailed off the hearth where it had been lounging and headed for the map I’d spread out on the floor. It was a map of the metroplex – not the best one, maybe, but it was a place to start. Not that we hadn’t done this before, but maybe this time we would get somewhere. I’d slapped sticky notes on each location of the various sightings with times and incidents. They didn’t make an obvious pattern, but the only place that had been visited twice was indeed the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens.

I snagged the kitten and tossed it lightly on the sofa. It crawled into George’s lap and punked out, yawning once before falling asleep. He smiled down at it.

“Do we have any patterns at all?” he asked, running a finger along the kitten’s back.

“There’s a clump around Pantego,” I answered. “Now that I have access to Dave’s reports, I can tell you that much. It looks like a slew of arson cases – I do remember hearing about that, but I didn’t know there was an uber connection.”

“So we need to talk to people who live in the area.”

“Wait… something you said about talking to people before….” I ran my fingers along the map. He’d spoken so much, spewed so many words. “Oh. Right. You had a contact that Louise mocked the name of.”

“Donald Blake. He died.”

“How many of your contacts have you actually been able to get in touch with?”

He pulled out his phone and started poking and scrolling. I turned my attention back to the map. A series of fires in Pantego, two attacks on the same site in Fort Worth, and a smattering of sightings elsewhere: Arlington, Frisco, Plano, Grand Prairie: all over the map, but none of them in Dallas proper. At that I had to smile; George would have to change the title of his book.

Very few of the sightings had mentioned wings, and only a handful had mentioned heat or brimstone and cinnamon. I started marking those that had, and those where fire was involved. I added in the ones where the stones had been discovered.

“Okay, I got in touch with seven. Three of them died between contacting me and me getting back to them.”

I pointed at the laptop. “Look for obits online. I have the beginnings of an idea.” I stood and went to the kitchen. I retrieved more drinks and food, doling out bowls of stew and grabbing crackers and cheese. I set a bowl and spoon down beside him. “Here. Eat.”

“I should probably go back to the hotel,” he said. “Grab some sleep.”

I nodded. “I’ll take you back after we eat, call Dave to take over.”

My phone rang in the middle of George’s second bowl. I had it before it could ring a second time. “Yeah?” I was expecting Louise.

“Weasel. Please tell me La Cantara is with you.”

It was Dave. I hesitated. “Yeah, he’s with me. We’re getting food before I take him back to the hotel. I was about to call you.”

“Don’t take him back. There’s been a fire at the hotel.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Where are you? I’ll come meet you, pick him up and keep him safe.”

“How bad was the fire? Do you think it was the uber?” I asked in lieu of telling him our location. “Any recordings?”

“I was there. I’d gone to meet there – I expected to see you there. Louise called, left a message that you’d be there.” He sounded stressed. “I saw it. Felt the heat. Smelled the cinnamon and brimstone. It was the uber. It knows where La Cantara was staying. It’s got to be Louise. She’s trying to get us all now. She knew I’d be at the hotel waiting.”

A combination of tech and alchemy, her roommate had said. A cell phone with symbols scrawled on its case. The phone I was using was from Dave’s office. Somewhere Louise had easy access.

“Hang up. I’ll get in touch with you. Stay off your work phone. I’ll keep La Cantara safe.” I hung up and stood, beckoning George after me with a jerk of my head. He set the kittens aside and followed, leaving the bowl of soup on the kitchen counter. The phone rang again, but I refused to answer it. I wasn’t sure my preparations would work, but I had to pin my hopes to them right now. I unlocked the workshop in the backyard with the brass and iron key. George stopped a handful of steps outside the door, frowning. “Come on in,” I told him, and he moved.

“What in the world? It was like I couldn’t move any further.”

I nodded. It had worked. That was a good thing. I slapped the phone down inside the circle I’d scribed on the concrete floor with acid, closed the circle with a swipe of my finger. There was enough sweat there to trigger the alchemical protection. The phone flashed once and beeped, but nothing else changed.

“It should be blocked now,” I said.

“Wait. How?”

“It’s been screwed with. Alchemy and technology. Someone with skill could track us alchemically, just by tracking the phone. They might be able to listen, to intercept messages.”

“Alchemical bugging?”

“Yeah.”

“But-.”

“More later. I need to trigger a few other things. Go back inside and keep the kittens close. I’m going to close the circle around the house. It won’t take long, but you need to be inside. We won’t be able to leave until I break the circle. I won’t get mail either, but I don’t get much more than junk mail anyway.”

“Will it keep us safe from burning?”

“It should.” It had better. I wasn’t losing my house to a dragon, or any other uber. I’d worked too hard on it.

He headed inside and I traced the circle of brick walkway laid around the house. It had already been in place, but I’d made it a protective circle five years ago. I liked to be prepared. A combination of spit and sweat would serve to activate the circle, so I stooped at each brick and tapped the circles of metal set into them. The circles I had done myself, a series of iron, silver, brass, copper, and tin badges that had been worked in the workshop. I was pinning a lot of faith in them. They’d never been tested before, and I hoped they would keep us safe.

I locked the doors behind me when I entered. “We’re as safe as I can make us,” I told George. He was standing at the sink washing our bowls and spoons.

“I’ve never met an alchemist,” he said. “Not that I knew of.”

“I’m not one,” I shrugged. “I just like to be prepared. There’s also blessings from several religions on the house. I believe in a good defense. And if an uber can really be held at bay by that sort of thing, I’m all for it.”

“Can they?”

At that, I had to shrug. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

Around midnight, my phone rang. I rolled over in bed and grabbed it. An unknown number.

“What?”

“Weasel? Where are you?” It was Louise this time, and she sounded small. “Did you get the file? Are you okay?”

“I’m safe. La Cantara’s safe, too. Where are you?”

“I tried to get in touch with you earlier – I couldn’t get through. You have to tell me where you are – I’ve got good solid information!” She was trying to be quiet.

I slid out of bed. I’d slept in my shirt, and I threw my hoodie over the top. I’d worry about a bra later – I wasn’t a large enough cup size to worry about it. By the time I got into the hallway, George was there as well, awakened by the phone. He was in a pair of sweats I’d dug out of the bottom drawer of my dresser, and nothing else. I waved him to silence.

“We can’t go anywhere yet, Louise. I got the file. Where was it?”

“I got it from Dave, like you said to do.”

“Can you get home safely? You need sleep,” I told her.

“I can’t go back there. Not yet. It’s not safe. Wherever you are, you need to be careful!”

“I will be. We will be. You need to be careful, too. Go underground, if you have to. Get somewhere anonymous and safe. Did you call Dave?”

“No. I couldn’t reach anyone. I finally dug your personal cell number up. I can’t get in touch with anyone!”

“Are you on your work phone?”

“No. It stopped working.”

I hoped I was making the right decision. If not, someone was going to die, and this time it would be my fault. The other times I could make myself believe it wasn’t, but if this was a bad call, it would be.

“There’s a house in Weatherford.” I gave her the address to the house west of Fort Worth. “Go there. Stay there tonight. I’ll meet you out there tomorrow morning. It’s a safe house. The key is with the next door neighbor. He’ll be up. Tell him that Sissy sent you.”

“Okay…” she was hesitant, but hung up.

“Sissy?” George asked.

I shrugged. “My brother lives next door. He’ll be up – he doesn’t sleep much. It’s a family house, on my mother’s side. Owned by her maternal uncle, so the name won’t pop up on a casual search. If she’s clean, she’ll be safe there. If not, we’ll find out.”

“You don’t believe her?”

I stepped over the kittens and headed for the kitchen. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe right now. Except that I believe I need more coffee.”

“Um. You’re not wearing pants.”

I looked down. The hoodie covered the important bits, so I shrugged. “You’re wearing the ones I usually wear to bed. If it bothers you, I can grab jeans.” I started the coffee again. If we didn’t take care of this soon, I’d have to go shopping.

“No… doesn’t bother me.” He blushed. “I… my wife was the last person… I.” He subsided, looking out the window at the near-darkness. It was never completely dark in my neighborhood, any more than it was anywhere in the metroplex.

“I’ll go put on my jeans.”

11.

We sat and drank coffee until dawn, talking desultorily about not much – anything other than ubers and fire. My house, his wife, that sort of thing.

As I was washing out the coffee cups, he sighed. “Why did you quit working for ASP?”

“Dave. And Mike’s death.”

“Your partner?”

“Yeah. He died a lot like Edie did, but it took longer.” I stared out the window at the workshop. “Dave wanted me to just continue on.” The cool water from the faucet kept me grounded in the present. I didn’t use hot water these days, hadn’t since that night. “I was burned, too. Not like Mike or Edie. More like you were. Just tagged. But I needed time to heal and deal. Dave didn’t want to give it to me. He thought I should just keep working through it.”

“Did leaving work?”

I smiled at my reflection in the window. “As much as anything could, I suppose.”

“What did you do between then and now? Work for another protection company?”

I shook my head. “No. I went back to school.” His silence was enough to make me turn around. I met his frankly curious gaze with a grin. “Forensic accounting.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Working on my CFE now. Almost there; would’ve been able to sit the exam if it weren’t for Dave dragging me back into this.”

“Why forensic accounting?”

I shrugged. “Numbers are logical. And you can turn up evidence of fraud just as well through finances as through trailing a suspect. Like the people who talk to you. How many of them want money to talk to you?”

“Better than half,” he admitted.

“How many of them come up with more information once they get paid?”

He nodded. “I don’t pay for information any longer,” he said. “But yeah… for the first book, people would come back for more money with ‘new’ information.”

“They’re committing a form of fraud, though probably not one you could take to court, because other people would say that your books constitute fraud of a sort – making up things and displaying them as truth for money.” I shrugged. “Accountant, not a lawyer, though, so take it with a grain of salt.” I rolled my shoulders. “Go get a shower and get dressed, and we’ll get started on the day. Towels are in the bathroom.”

He vanished into the living room, and I heard him moving around in the bathroom. As soon as the water started, I sat down at the kitchen table. His voice wasn’t as annoying now, and that was a warning sign if there ever was one. I didn’t need that sort of mess – I’d just adopted three kittens, I didn’t need a man as well. But well-toned arms and a good chest were fairly high on my list of wants in a man, right behind intelligent and open-minded. I’m superficial; I can admit that.

On top of that, we had a problem to take care of. And once the problem was solved, he’d be moving on to the next uber. I wasn’t giving up my house just to trail after some moderately-attractive man with a dead wife obsession. Talk about unhealthy relationships.

I yawned. Not enough sleep; that was my real problem. Once this was done, I’d sleep for a week, if the kittens would let me. Then I’d go on and take my certification exams, and move on with my life. No more ubers, no more security work. I’d sink into the world of forensic accounting and not come back out. But until then, I’d have to push through. Solve the problem first.

I opened the circle gently, wishing I were one of those people who could supposedly feel magic and alchemy. Then I would at least have the added cushion of safety – I’d KNOW if my preparations worked or not. A simple touch of grease remover, of all things, to clean my fingerprints and sweat from the tin circle in front of the house, and the circle was down. Assuming it was up in the first place.

By the time he was showered and dressed I’d packed a bag of things we might need. This time I included my pistols. They were alchemically altered, and hardly subtle, but in my limited experience, aggressive alchemy had nothing to do with subtlety.

A stop at Taco Cabana for breakfast tacos and we were once more on the road, this time west out of the metroplex.

Less than an hour later we pulled into the town of Weatherford. A few turns brought us to my brother’s street. It was another old neighborhood, but clean, and quiet. I slid up against the curb in front of Zeb’s house. “C’mon.”

George followed me silently.

The door opened before I reached it, and Zeb leaned out. “Sh. Babies are asleep.”

“Girl come by last night?” I asked.

“Yeah. Want breakfast?”

“Nah, we ate. What did you think?”

“She’s scared.” He shrugged. “Going back to the trenches, Weasie?” I wrinkled my nose at him; I hated the nickname.

“Yeah, Bu. I am.” One good family nickname deserves another. “One last ride, and I am done.”

“Sure.” He shrugged. “Go on over.” He flipped me the back-up key. “I’d invite you in, but the girls have been sick, and they need their sleep. Besides, Cai’s coming over later, and I didn’t think you’d prefer to be here.”

“Truth.” I shuddered theatrically, and he smiled. “I’ll keep in touch, Zeb.”

He waved a hand as he closed the door.

George didn’t ask questions, though his gaze was heavy on my back. I marched to the house next door, pulling him along in my wake. I knocked before sticking the key in the lock.

“Louise? It’s Weasel and La Cantara. We’re coming in.”

She was awake, sitting curled up on the sofa, when we hit the living room. She looked like she’d spent a sleepless night. Her computer and her tablet we on the coffee table in front of her, and her phone was on the arm of the sofa beside her. She was paying attention to none of it, reading through a paper file instead.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” she whispered.

“I wasn’t going to abandon you,” I answered sharply. Whether I trusted her or not was at this second irrelevant. She had called me for help. I had to give it to her.

“There’s something weird going on. More than I thought,” she said. “I got the file from David. But it wasn’t all of it.”

I sat down on the edge of a chair, waving George to a seat as well. He looked about as comfortable as I felt. We could be speaking to the one who’d controlled the uber.

“I wondered about that. It was an awful thin file for more than 5 years’ work,” I commented. “But Dave said he left it with Min, that he didn’t take it home.”

She shook her head. “No, I promise! I got it from him!” She took a breath. “But then I went to Min’s house. I knew she had another file – I didn’t know if it were a duplicate or not, but it could be useful.” She shook the papers in her lap. “This is them. But… she wasn’t there, either.” She bit her lip. “I kinda broke into her house.”

My snort of laughter almost covered George’s panicked “What?”

Louise looked down and blushed. “There wasn’t anyone there, but the back door was open. I wasn’t thinking. I just went in. I called out, but no one answered. The file was there, open, like she’d been looking through it. There were notes, so I grabbed those, too.” She swallowed. “And then I saw something.”

I was beginning to think I knew what she’d seen. Her next words just confirmed it for me.

“A shoe, on its side. It didn’t look right – her house is so neat and tidy. So I went to look. And Min’s foot was still in the shoe. She was in the hall. Someone killed her – she was dead.” Louise’s voice rose as she spoke, louder and shriller. I leaned forward.

“Louise. Stop.” I made my voice hard. I didn’t have time for hysterics. She flinched back and wiped the beginnings of tears from her eyes. “Describe the scene. Don’t use names, just describe the scene.”

She drew a shaky breath and nodded. “She.. it… the body,” she hesitated, and I nodded for her to continue. “The body was in the hall. Blood on the floor, but not a whole lot. She… it didn’t look like she was running away, just… in the hall. No drag marks, nothing obvious. I didn’t roll… the body… over. Didn’t want to touch it. Not burned. It didn’t smell unusual, except like someone had left meat out for too long.” She clapped a hand over her mouth and her eyes grew big. The smell of a corpse. “Um.” She swallowed hard. “The body… it looked like she’d just fallen. There was blood on her back, and on the floor around her.”

“Where on her back? High or low?”

“High.” She reached around herself and slapped between her shoulder blades. “Like here.”

I nodded. There was probably blood higher, too. I wasn’t going to go look, but I’d bet on a single gunshot. She’d been taking someone back to show them something, and been shot.

“What did you do?”

“Squeaked,” she answered. “When I get scared, I can’t scream.” She shrugged, her eyes still showing near-panic. “I ran back to the living room, gathered up the file and ran. Well, walked fast. I always thought running attracted more attention than walking.”

She was right about that, but I didn’t doubt that someone had seen her anyway.

But unless she was the best actress ever, I couldn’t believe that she was behind this mess. Unless it had gotten further out of hand than she’d intended. But Min’s death didn’t fit the pattern so far. It wasn’t by fire and heat. There were no mentions of little purple-red stones. This sounded like a gunshot.

“And then my phone wouldn’t work, and I couldn’t call anyone – not even David – and no one was answering at work, and I didn’t know what to do. When Meg called, I knew I could leave David’s folder there and you’d get it. But I didn’t know what to do with the rest of it. So I ran and hid. And then there was the fire. And it feels like someone’s out to get us, and I don’t want to die!”

“Me, neither,” George said quietly. “Weasel? Now what?”

“Now Louise tells me everything she knows about alchemy.” I dug in my bag and tossed the copper band to her. “Explain this.”

12.

She frowned at the band. “It looks like it’s meant to stabilize something. To keep it under control.”

“Control what, though?” George asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s some weird hybrid, if I am looking at this right. Someone’s trying to combine fire and stone, and control it. But there’s some other symbols here, on the back, and those don’t make any sense.” She ran her finger along the band. “See here? You can barely make them out – it’s easier to feel them than to see them. If we had an acid, we might be able to bring them up more.”

“How strong?” I sat back. “How long have you been into alchemy?”

She fingered the band. “Since I was ten and my parents divorced,” she said. “It was a way of working through my issues.” She looked up. “It was an ugly divorce, and they both tried to use me as a pawn against the other. Alchemy let me re-create myself so I didn’t have to be that person anymore.” She tugged at the shoulder of her tunic. “See this? I got the tattoo on my eighteenth birthday. It reminds me that I have remade myself, that I don’t have to be what anyone else wants me to be. I went through hell, and came out the other side purified. I can stand up to anything now, because the person they wanted me to be has been burned away.” She was half-defiant, half pleading, and I didn’t think she’d come as far as she’d hoped to.

But it made sense. It didn’t make her the uber’s controller, if there was one.

“And the alchemical symbols on all your tech?”

She shrugged, pulling her tunic back over the tattoo. “I started researching it once I found out about ubers. Everyone says that ubers have been around longer than man, but if so, why don’t we know more about them? Why aren’t they in zoos and stuff? No one heard of them – other than the usual Bigfoot, Yeti and Nessie sightings – until relatively recently. Until alchemy was proven viable. It started happening around the same time. So, they have to be related. Alchemy first worked as a weapon in the 1940’s, right?”

“That we know of,” George said. “Assuming the stories are true.”

“Sure. And the first uber?”

“Gremlins, in WW2,” I answered.

“So I think they’re tied. I think that ubers are alchemically created. Maybe not on purpose, and maybe not anymore.” She flapped a hand. “That whole ‘life will find a way’ thing. But I think originally they were created by mankind. They’ve just… adapted. Gone feral. Gone wild. People created them –or maybe re-created them, I don’t know. But it seemed like a logical connection to me. So I started studying alchemy in earnest. I don’t know if it works for me or not, but if I can prove it, we can work at proving the existence of ubers, and find ways to protect both us and them.”

It was a long speech for her, and she was enthusiastic about it. It was also logical – as logical as anything about alchemy could be.

“At any rate. Alchemy is a science – not a very exact one sometimes – but a science. Which means it should be compatible with tech. I talked about this with David when he hired me. He was interested for a while, but I guess it was too far off the norm for him.” She shrugged. “I’ve been toying with finding a way to alchemically link two pieces of tech. Mostly so I won’t keep losing things. I’ve gone through more phones than I can remember. But I don’t know if I’ve gotten it right, because it hasn’t actually worked. Although I haven’t lost a phone recently, either.”

She rooted in her purse for a moment and pulled out a pencil. She rubbed it against the back of the band. “See? More symbols. I don’t know these, though. They don’t have the same look to them – they’re different from the ones on the front.”

Squinting, I could just see faint images stamped into the metal. Louise sketched them on a scrap of paper while I watched, and George moved to stand behind us.

“If my tech would work, I’d check the alchemical database,” Louise said. “But it all quit on me. Everything except my personal phone, and it’s not real good for hardcore research.”

Zeb had a computer, but I didn’t want to expose my brother to more danger than I had to. We could go back to my place, but I wouldn’t bet on my tech either. So, either go buy something new or see if David was still among the land of the living. He, at least, would understand the risk. And we could make sure he was still alive. If he weren’t, I didn’t know what I’d do next.

One thing was becoming more certain. We were going to have to find out who to find out why. If it were just us, I could start with the why. But this didn’t start with us. It started with other people, and now encompassed us.

“Get dressed and get in the car. We’re going to see Dave.” She nodded and hauled herself off the couch. She stumbled down the hallway toward the bathroom.
George put a hand on my arm. “Is that wise?” he asked quietly.

“Probably not,” I admitted. “But we’re going to find out which of them is lying about the files. And once we have that, we will be closer to finding out who’s behind all this.”

He sighed and nodded.

“Relax,” I told him. “Just think of the book you’ll be able to write.”

“If I’m alive to write it,” he grumbled back.

Louise continued to flip through the file she’d stolen from Min’s house. “I don’t like this,” she said abruptly. George half-turned in his seat, clinging to the seatbelt.

“Like what?”

“There’s gaps here that don’t make sense. Like there’s information that Min deliberately left out.”

“Can you extrapolate?” I asked over my shoulder.

“Maybe… there’s a transcription that’s been redacted. It’s part of a conversation I had with David about alchemy and tech. But there’s stuff I know we talked about that isn’t here.”

“Like what?” I didn’t like where it was leading my thoughts.

“Like tracking tech and using it as an alchemical focus – purely an idea on my part, but I remember rambling on about it for a long time. And none of that is in here anywhere.” I heard her flipping through pages. “Huh. Didn’t see this last night.”

She handed something up to George. A narrow gold band – someone’s wedding ring. George turned it, and read aloud the inscription inside.

“Forever, beyond death, made one.”

It was Min’s ring. I’d been there for the wedding, and remembered those words. They had repeated them to each other.

“Looks like someone tried to scratch out the engraving,” George answered. “There’s another one in here, too.”

“What does it say?” I asked, although I was almost certain I knew.

“Minds.”

“Minds?” Not what I was expecting. I lost my train of ideas with a sigh.

We pulled up in front of David’s apartment. He’d changed locations several times over the years, and only Louise had the most recent one. I’d expected a house, not this cheap apartment in a cheap area. Dave had always wanted to look more like money. The uber attacks had brought him low, apparently. We climbed the stairs, and I knocked. Louise and George stood off to one side, where I’d left them.

Dave answered the door. He looked exhausted. “Come in.”

It was a mark of my thoughtlessness that I did. I’d disliked him for so long, but part of me still trusted him. Louise and George followed me in; Dave looked startled by their appearance, but it didn’t hold for long. He invited them in belatedly and waved them to seats. Louise sat, but I opted to stand. George seemed to be willing to take his cues from me; he remained standing.

Surprisingly, Louise opened. “Why did you lie about the file? I came and got it from you!”

Dave backed up a step. “What?” he demanded. “I didn’t say you hadn’t gotten it from me.”

Both of them turned to look at me. I cocked my head to one side. “I spoke with you on the phone. You told me the file was at the office, in Min’s desk,” I answered calmly. “You said you never took files home.”

“And I don’t,” he snapped.

“Sure you do,” Louise said. “You do it all the time. You keep telling me you’ll do research from home, that you’ll bring them back in the morning. You usually do.”

He glared at her. “Don’t be stupid. Why would I lie about something that stupid?”

Why would he? But why would she?

“Min’s dead,” I said. George and Louise knew already, but Dave? Dave shouldn’t. But the eyes he turned on me held no surprise.

“What?” He floundered, trying to cover.

“You expected Louise to be in the office. I bet if we managed to get close, we’d find some alchemical barrier,” I said slowly. “Something that you crafted.”

“Don’t be stupid, Weasel. Why would I do that?”

“I’m working on that,” I snapped. “But no one but you would be able to get close enough to Min. She didn’t like many people after Mike died, and trusted fewer. But she trusted you. She had your initials in her ring. Not minds,” I said to George. “Min was short for Millicent Inez Navarez. And David Stuart. She trusted you. Enough to let you in and turn her back on you. I don’t know anyone else she would have done that for.”

“Why would I shoot Min? We were lovers – that’s why my initials were in her ring!”

“No one said she was shot,” George whispered.

Dave paled. It was such an obvious ploy, and it shouldn’t have worked. I found myself disgusted with Dave.

“You lost control of your creature, didn’t you?” I asked. “What is it? Dragon?”

He drew a pistol, and from the symbols etched into it, I knew it had been altered. “Not a dragon,” he said. “You are so far off it won’t matter, though. I wanted you to help me, Weasel, in the beginning. The others didn’t matter. Not really. But it god Mike, and you left. I had to bring you back in.”

“Why?”

“To kill you. You weren’t supposed to survive in the first place. You were supposed to die. You hadn’t been helpful before, and so you had to die.” He smirked at me. “I should have just shot you.”

“Like you shot Min?”

“She balked at killing Louise. Said it was unnecessary. It just showed she didn’t understand.”

George moved slightly, and the pistol swung about. “Don’t try to be a hero. You’d make a bad one,” Dave warned.

I shifted, drawing his attention again. I didn’t have a plan, but I had to do something. Louise acted first. She swung her bag, catching Dave in the arm, knocking the gun up. I ducked as it went off.

“Grab him!”

Dave aimed a punch at my head with his free hand and tried to get the pistol back in line. I grabbed for it. Louise came off the couch, and she and George piled on. He lost the pistol, and we were reduced to a brawl, fists and feet and elbows. My bag tore open, contents spilling across the floor.

A flash of copper and a burned-meat smell, and we all fell back, the floor around us empty. Dave was gone.

13.

We stared at the empty space for several minutes, until I heard sounds from neighboring apartments. Someone pounded on the door. “That’s it, Stuart! I’m going to management this time! Right now! You’re getting evicted, if I have anything to say about it!”

No one spoke until we heard footsteps thumping away. I scrambled to my feet. “Check the apartment. Anything that might be useful. Alchemy gear or books. Anything.” I started throwing things back into my torn bag.

Louise nodded and hauled herself upright. “I’ll check the bedroom.”

“I’ll get the kitchen” George offered. Either he was adapting quickly to a more adventurous life, or he was going to break down later. At the moment, I didn’t care which, as long as he could function.

I started searching the living room. The apartment was small enough that even a thorough search wouldn’t take long. The question was could we manage before the annoyed neighbor came back with management. Management meant keys to the apartment, and possible interruption. I ransacked bookshelves and flipped cushions – not that I expected to find anything there. There wasn’t time for subtlety. It could look like a robbery; I didn’t care. As long as we were gone before anyone came looking, it didn’t matter.

Louise re-appeared with a small suitcase on wheels. “It was the easiest thing to tote stuff in,” she shrugged, and I nodded.

I added a locked wooden box and three thin alchemy books to the stack by the front door. In the kitchen, George was pushing things around in the cabinets. “I’m finding nothing,” he said.

“Then it’s time to go.” I knew we could be missing a lot, but we didn’t have time. I knew it was running out; we’d already been here longer than I wanted. We needed to be gone. If nothing else, Dave knew we were here, and knew we’d search the place. “Come on, let’s go.”

Fire alarms sounded. I swore loudly as several places on the wall began to smolder. Alchemical booby traps? Didn’t matter – time to leave.

More fire alarms in the near distance. Someone screamed, high and panicked. Louise stuttered into motion, jerkily making her way to the door. I grabbed George’s arm and tugged. He stumbled after me; smoke spread swiftly through the apartment. I fumbled with the door, and we hurried out to join others in the breezeway. I snatched the suitcase from the entry and thrust the books at Louise. She took them and we hurried away, blending in with the crowd that was also fleeing towards cars.

It took longer than I would have liked to get away, because everyone else had the same idea. Anyone who was home was fleeing, trying to get cars to safety, or just panicked enough to be dumb. We weaved between other cars, and once I ran up onto the sidewalk to get around someone. Sirens were getting closer. I whipped out onto the street as the firetrucks blew over a hill, sirens and horns blaring. When they turned into the complex, we were on the street proper, almost a block away.

“Getting tired of fire,” I growled.

Behind me, in the back seat, Louise sputtered before breaking into laughter. It might have been hysterical, but it was laughter. George snorted, but didn’t hold back a grin. I met his eyes and looked heavenward; that was enough to set him off. Shaking my head, I drove on. We were safely away. Let them laugh; it was stress relief, nothing more.

“Where to now, boss?” Louise asked finally, gasping for air.

Dave knew where I lived. We didn’t have many choices, though. I wasn’t willing to cower under cover while Dave ran around doing whatever he wanted. “We need to track him down. He may have lost the uber, but I am guessing he has plenty of other options.”

“But how?”

I blew my breath out slow, like an old movie star blowing cigarette smoke. “Back to my place. Call you roommates, tell them you’re leaving town for a few weeks. Tell them to let anyone who calls know, so Dave doesn’t try to get you there.” I shook my head at her in the rearview mirror. “He may think he got us, but he’ll be watching the news, waiting for some sign of life from us.”

“And your house is safe?” she asked.

“Enough. I’ll explain when we get there.”

She shrugged and pulled out her phone. “I’ll text.”

Back at the house, I resealed the circle. I wasn’t certain how overlapping alchemical circles would work, but hopefully we would still be able to access my workshop, because we were going to need it.

“So explain why this place is safer than my house,” Louise said.

“For one, you have a sick roommate. For another, there are protections worked into this house.” I showed her the alchemical circle outside. “No crossing it. It should defend us.”

“Paranoid much?” she asked archly.

I shrugged. “Depends on if something happens tonight.”

“So… why here? Dave knows where you live. If he’s the alchemist who made, or bred, or whatever, the uber, then he’s fairly well-versed in alchemy. You think you can beat him?”

“Maybe. But I did some studying of my own – like you, for my own reasons. But instead of melding it into tech, I put it into defense. Mostly.” I pointed at the workshop. “So you and I are going to go out there and muck about with the alchemy, try to find a way to track either Dave or the uber. We have to take care of both.”

“What do you want me to do?” George asked.

“We’ve got more evidence to go through. I am willing to bet that what Dave had is going to be the real evidence, not hoaxes and not delusions. He wouldn’t bother to keep that information. I need you to sort through the good stuff, and see what you can add to the map. If you don’t mind,” I added, mostly out of politeness. My parents had done their best to raise me right, and sometimes it came back to me.

“I can do that,” he answered with a nod. “I’m good at sorting through evidence. And now that I know the true signs, I can sort through faster.”

“Good. Louise and I will be back as soon as we can.”

In the workshop, Louise shook her head. “You really think we can find a way to track the uber? Or David?”

“Got any better ideas?”

She sighed. “Let me see what you’ve got.”

I dumped out my bag on the workbench. A handful of useful items, including Dave’s handgun, fell out. I frowned at the pile. “The band. The copper band is missing.”

She pushed things around, felt inside my bag. “I saw a flash of light, something like copper, before he vanished,” she said. “Think he took it back?”

“Damnit. I bet he can use it to find the uber and get it back under his control.”

“So we need to concentrate on finding him.”

“Let’s get to it. I’ve got the phone he gave me and his handgun. Either of them work to track him?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I told you, I don’t know if it works or not.”

I shoved both toward her. “Time to find out. I’ll be back in a sec.”

I went back inside, leaving Louise to work on her alchemical tech, George was on the floor, map spread out beside him , kittens weighing down the corners. He smiled up at me. “They’re sleeping. I don’t think it will last long.”

“Find anything?”

“I did.” He waved a hand over the map – more self-stick notes had been attached to it. “Look. All of these locations were in David’s notes.” All the locations were on the Dallas side of the metroplex. “Looks like I can call it the Devil of Dallas after all!”

14.

Back in the workshop, I helped Louise research. She explained in great detail what she’d done to try to track her own phone, and I followed most of it. Not all. She was far deeper into alchemy than I was. But I would have to take her word for it. I was still smarting over the loss of the copper band – if it was a way to control the uber, we’d as good as handed it back to Dave.

I wound my hair into a bun and stabbed it with a screwdriver to keep it in place. It wasn’t pretty, but it would work to keep it out of the way of chemicals and alchemy. I pulled gear out of drawers that hadn’t been opened in three years and spread it out on the workbench. While I did, we debated tracking him using the pistol or the phone. It seemed the phone would be easier, but it might work both ways. We opted for the gun instead. I knew well how intimate a relationship that was, how much we worked with our pistols to make them part of us, extensions that we could control. It bound them to us in a way most people didn’t understand. It was alchemy without the magic part.

Magic was a sensitive word these days. Alchemy had only been around since the thirties, really, as far as people could tell. Whether it was splitting the atom that did it, or something else, or if it just roiled up like a long-overdue earthquake no one really knew. Most people avoided the word magic, even those that admitted to the ubers and the alchemy. And that was still a small segment of most populations. Gradually that would change. Dave had been banking on that. But people didn’t like the idea of magic that could be corralled and tamed, like everything else had been. But I didn’t spend my time trying to understand all the ins and outs. Magic was a perfectly useful word to describe it.

I disassembled his pistol, field stripping it as though I were going to clean it. In some ways we were going to – but only enough to place our own alchemy there. While I did so, Louise sorted through my raw materials. Some were out of date, but would have to suffice. Alchemy – the only magic that comes with an expiration date on materials. All we needed to do was track him, not call him to us, not summon him. We were just looking for information. If we were right, we could dowse for him using his pistol.

I made molds of several parts. It wouldn’t be a firing weapon after this, but it would look like normal – as long as you didn’t look too closely. While the molds were drying, we talked theory. This was a side of my life I didn’t talk to people about, so it was weirdly refreshing. How would we use the gun to track him? How would we know when we were close? Could we fire an alchemical round from the pistol? Would it explode in the hands of whoever used it?

I laid my own back-up pistol on the workbench. Louise gaped at it. “You carry a derringer? How much good will that do?”

“As much as I need it to, I hope.” I field stripped it, showing her the markings and the changes made. “I’ve never had to fire it, but it’s ready if I do.”

“Why?”

“I promised myself and Mike – who may have been married to Min, but was my partner first – that I would find the thing that killed him and kill it. Send it to him as a present after he died. Since it was an uber, I made a guess that normal weapons won’t kill it. That seems to be a common thread among them.”

She nodded. “Agreed – that’s why I think that alchemy spawned them.”

“I upgraded my gear, so when we find it, I can kill it.”

“How?”

“A lot of work, a lot of study, and a lot of my own blood.”

She whistled low. “That’s scary. Impressive, but scary. You’re single-minded, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. We’ll assume that it will work, that we’ll be able to track him. How’re the molds?” And back to work we went. Alchemy isn’t a fast process – at least, not that I’ve found. We were deep into it when the door opened and George entered.

“Can you stop for dinner?” he asked.

“Food? Food is good,” Louise answered.

“I threw together a quick meal from what you’ve got. Sorry,” he apologized, looking vaguely ashamed. “It’s not much.”

I eyed the plates of food – some sort of baked chicken, mashed potatoes and bread. Who was I to complain? “You found all this in my house?”

He laughed at that. “Yes. You have stuff in the freezer.”

I shook my head. “I’m impressed.” I didn’t know how old the chicken was – possible old enough to vote, and certainly old enough to be in daycare, but I wasn’t complaining. Louise was right. Food is good.

We washed up and settled back on the benches with plates. He’d brought three plates, I was glad to see, and he leaned against the workbench to eat. “Figured out to track the uber?”

“Or Dave. Whichever we can get a lead on first. Any sort of lead. We are going to try tracking Dave through his gear.” I indicated the pistol. “He’s already messed with it, alchemically speaking, so we’re just going to turn it to our own uses.”

The chicken was good, no matter how old it was.

“How did you get mixed up in all of this?” George asked. “Louise got into alchemy as a series of symbols initially, and fell into ubers after that. I had a run in with an uber. How did you get involved in the world of ubers and alchemy? You seem… level-headed. Not someone who is a dreamer. No offense.”

I had to smile. “No. I was always the practical one. I don’t know that I ever chased my dreams. I have useful skills, and I made use of them. I got into it by working crap jobs until I met Dave. He offered me an income when I needed one, protecting people from the boogeyman. It was an easy job. It gave me time to do what I wanted on my time off, without having to worry too much about losing my house.” I looked at the derringer lying on the bench. “I didn’t believe in ubers until Mike and I were attacked. I did my fair share of mocking people who believed.” That disbelief had fallen away hard and fast when it went, leaving me licking emotional wounds as well as physical ones. “You know what they say – late converts tend to be the strongest believers.” I shrugged.

“You helped him take money for nothing?” George asked. “That doesn’t seem….” He hesitated.

“Moral? Right? Upstanding?” I grinned at him, not my nice smile, but the more feral one that came naturally. “I have a nice house now. But ten years ago I had nothing. I have five siblings. While I have a good relationship with them, they have their own lives. My family is very big on self-sufficiency. Very big. When I was ten my father took me out into the woods in East Texas and left me there with a compass, a knife and a pistol. I had three days to get to civilization on my own – civilization being the campsite he’d set up somewhere out around the oil fields. No cell phone. No radio. Just me, and the gear I had on me. I made it, in less time than he’d expected.” The bitterness that still occasionally rose up in me tinged my voice, and I realized I’d risen from the stool. I sat back down. “I have me. That’s it. So yes, ten years ago I was willing to help him fleece the gullible people with too much money. Five years ago I discovered that it was true, and left. I just wanted out.”

“It was okay to fleece the fakers, but not to help those who really needed help?” Louise asked.

I shook my head. “It wasn’t quite that simple. Yes, I wanted out. I’d held my partner while he was dying, and no one did anything. I swore that I would do something, and Dave wasn’t going to. Now I know why – but then it was a matter of getting out and healing, and rearranging my worldview.”

“But you came back.”

“I still haven’t fulfilled my promise.”

George put out a hand and set it on my arm. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories,” he apologized. “I truly didn’t.”

I shrugged. “Fair’s fair. You asked the question, and you deserved the answer.” I pushed the last of the chicken around the plate. “We’d better finish up here.” The molds were hard and the alchemically-altered metal ready to pour. I poured with a careful hand, and Louise embedded lining from the suitcase from Dave’s apartment. It had been in contact with Dave – reasonably close contact, even if it would be secondary transfer – and would have to serve as the focus for the alchemy. We’d find him using his own gear. There was a certain satisfaction in that.

It would need to set overnight. Come morning, it would be ready to re-assemble. I reassembled my derringer and slipped it back into the holster in the pocket of my hoodie.

Something like wind blew through the trees overhead, but the wind was almost dead. I swore. “Stay in here.” I ducked low and barreled through the door, pulling it shut behind me. I was still in the workshop’s alchemical circle, so nothing should be able to touch me. Should be safe.

Should.

15.

It was dead quiet outside. No wind, no crickets, no nothing. No dogs barking, which in this area was either a miracle or a sign of the apocalypse. Something shuffled overhead, high in the pecan tree that sheltered the house. I looked up. A man-sized shape edged along a massive branch, but came no closer, made no aggressive moves.

My hand was on my derringer in the pocket of my hoodie. I didn’t think it would stop the uber, but it might. Maybe. At least it might wing it. I was going to need a larger caliber to truly bring it down.

Either Dave had re-taken the uber, or it had decided on its own that we were a threat. I was betting my life that it was the former.

“Go back to your master. Tell him he failed. Again.” I pitched my voice to carry up to the tree, and just hoped that the neighbors weren’t outside. We had a decent relationship, and I’d like to keep it that way. I’d also rather they didn’t become the next victims of this thing. Of course, I’d also rather they didn’t think I was crazy, but they might already think that. “Get.”

I didn’t expect it to work, so when the uber launched itself from the limb, spreading its wings, I flinched and drew the derringer. The uber arced downwards, not even flapping the giant wings. I raised the derringer; I needed closer range than I would like – all the things that occur to me at the last second. I needed a better gun for this. I needed better clothes for this – I was going to die in a baja hoodie that still had dust from hanging on the wall for five years. I should have done laundry. I should have said no to Dave. I should have shot him the day I met him.

I fired twice, both shots, and rolled to one side. The rounds shrieked like a movie monster’s death cry. I slammed into the ground hard, breath knocked out of my lungs. Right. Stones. I hadn’t actually cleared all the stones from the backyard yet. The uber let out a screech that deafened me and made the rounds’ sound nothing more than a whimper in the dark. It flapped hard, skimming across the top of an invisible barrier – the alchemical circle was holding. Talons scraped across the barrier; the uber cried out again. It flapped harder, finally gaining altitude. My lungs finally eased and I could breathe again. I lay on my back until my body decided it would co-operate again. Only then did I rise from the grass.

Dogs were barking all over the neighborhood now, and people were stirring. I stowed the derringer back in the pocket of my hoodie, resolving to dress better next time. And carry a bigger gun. And shoot Dave the next time I saw him.

“Holy – did you kill it?” Louise had the door open before I got there.

“No.” My voice came out thinner than I would like, and my back would be bruised tomorrow. Or later tonight. But the barking of the dogs, normally an annoyance, let me know we were safe for the moment. “But I hit it. Once, maybe with both shots. Hard to tell.”

“What was the first scream?” George asked. “And are you all right?”

“The ammo.”

“If you hit it, we should be able to track it!” Louise grabbed me by the shoulders. “We can find it! Do you have spare ammo?”

I may have winced. George peeled her hands off of me and sat me on the stool. “Yeah,” I managed. Bruises tomorrow? Nope, these were happening now. Or shock. Who knew? Not me. “That drawer.” I pointed at the correct one. “There should be a box of it. Hand me two rounds, will you?”

George retrieved the box and poured two into his hand before passing the box to Louise. She started sorting through the gear again. I felt something drape around me, and focused enough to take note of the man’s jacket now around my shoulders.

“You should be inside,” he said quietly.

“I’m staying here,” I answered. “Now I know I can hurt it. I’ll do it again if it comes back.” It was an effort to load the derringer again, and when I was done I found myself leaning on the workbench. George was standing beside me, an arm around my shoulders, holding me as upright as I was. Louise had left off working at the apparatus to stare at me.

“Maybe we should finish this in the morning,” she said. “If you winged it, odds are it won’t be back tonight.”

As much as I hated to agree, I had to. I felt like crap smashed under someone’s boot, and I probably smelled as bad, too. All I could smell was flame and blood and wet stone. I pushed myself upright and that was all it took. George’s arms snapped around me, but after that, I didn’t know anything.

I woke on the couch in my living room. A blanket had been tossed over me, and the kittens had moved in afterwards. One was grooming my ear, the other two were sleeping peacefully on my stomach. Which otherwise felt like someone had punched me. I dislodged kitten number one and sat up, depositing it with its siblings in my lap. Louise and George were sitting on the floor talking quietly.

George looked up. “Oh, good. We were starting to wonder if we needed to call 911.”

“Don’t tell me I fainted,” I protested.

“No… not really. Kinda, but more in an alchemical way,” Louise said. She flapped a hand to clear the air. “Okay, let me try that again.” She scooted closer to the ottoman. “You put your own blood into those bullets, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. The way that your notes read, it looks like because you drew the blood using alchemy equipment, it didn’t actually cause any aftereffects – that’s built into what alchemy is. That’s why some places use alchemical hypos – they don’t have unpleasant aftereffects until much later. Not until the blood was spent did you feel the effects of the draw.”

“Huh. So every time I fire one, I’ll feel the blood loss, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“That should be fun. I’ll just have to have some orange juice handy, I guess.” I made a joke of it, but this was one side effect that I hadn’t planned for. Passing out every time I had to shoot the uber wasn’t going to be good for my health. “Can we track it?”

“Yes. Easier than we can Dave, I think,” she said. “Since you shot it with your blood, all we have to do is track your blood alchemically. It will be relatively easy. We can re-use most of the gear we had set up to chase David down. I used one of the bullets as a source – kind of a scent for the tracker to lock in on, like a tracking dog does. Give it a sample, and let it go.”

“Even if the uber is flying?”

“I did say relatively easy. It won’t be a piece of cake, that’s for sure.”

George hauled himself up. “We can’t start tracking it until morning, and it might be good to lay low for a bit. The police cars were up and down the street several times, and I imagine they’ll be back. We had the lights out, but still. They might come back by. I don’t know that it would be good for them to see you all pale like this.”

“Pale?”

“You look like you’re sick,” Louise said with a shrug. “I told you. Alchemical blood-loss.”

“So if they stop by, I tell them I am sick. We still need to figure a place to start looking.” I leaned against the arm of the sofa. “Where’s the map?”

I was asleep again before they had unrolled it on the floor.

“Should we wake her up?” It was obviously Louise’s voice, even though she was trying to be quiet. George managed more successfully; his response was too quiet to understand. “Okay, a couple more hours. She might want to know what we found, though.”

“No.” This time it was fully comprehensible. I shifted a little on the couch, trying to fully wake up. The blanket was tucked a little tighter around me, and George’s voice was closer. “She needs to sleep. It’s only 4:00. There’s still time to rest. The creature hasn’t come back, and I don’t think it will. Get some sleep, Louise. I’ll keep an eye on things.”

It shouldn’t have made me feel as safe as it did, but I drifted back off to sleep.

“Now?”

“I’m awake,” I muttered. “What did you figure out?” That was what I intended to say. I’m not sure what I did say, but silence met my words. I cranked my eyes open and tried again. “Found something?”

Louise nodded. She waved a cup of coffee in greeting – I could smell it from across the room – and looked back down at the map. “Yes. At least, I think so. Possibly.”

“Tell.” I stuck a hand out. “Help me up.”

She smirked at me, but put down the coffee and came over. Together we untucked me from three layers of blankets. “George is in the shower,” she said. “He promised me breakfast and a shopping trip after you woke up. I need clothes, and shampoo, and food. Mostly food.”

“Right. Let me get some coffee and we’ll see what we can manage.”

16.

I broke us out of the interlocking alchemical circles and we headed for the car. “Food, and then clothing,” Louise announced. “I want diner food.”

“Any diner in particular?”

“Yeah. The Diner.”

I rolled my eyes, but I knew which one she meant. We were driving to the Dallas side of the world. Not a massive surprise, really. We were bound to wind up there sooner or later.

We hit it between the breakfast and lunch rushes, so we managed to snag a corner booth. As soon as our drinks were doled out and our food ordered, the waitress left us alone. George pulled a notebook out of Louise’s bag and slid it over the table to me. “Here. We made notes on a lot of things while you were out. You look better, by the way.”

I smiled a little in reply, but most of my attention was taken up by the notebook. Dates and places. Some of the dates were starred. George laid a fingertip on one of the stars. “These are instances that we know really happened – either the news reported on fire or there were several witnesses. Several of whom have now vanished. We’re trying to find a link, but failing so far. Do you think your accounting can help?”

“If I had access to everyone’s finances, sure. But we don’t. But we might have access to some of Dave’s.”

I tapped one of the starred entries. “Dave used to live there.”

“Really? It wasn’t in his employee file,” Louise said.

I nodded. “Yeah. That was where he was living when I met him. He was renting it, I think? Owner was a jerk, think he evicted Dave in the middle of the night. Non-payment, so I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it. But harsh one way or the other.” I frowned at the page. “Crap. He threatened to sue Dave to get his money. But nothing ever came of it.”

“Old news story said the owner died in a house fire,” Louise said, looking up from her phone. “When did he get kicked out?”

I blew my breath out in a huff. “I don’t remember. It was ten years ago, give or take.”

She nodded. “Wouldn’t surprise me if this were one of the first attacks.”

“We’re suggesting that David is doing this out of some sort of revenge for personal slights?” George asked, eyebrows raised almost to his hairline. “That’s a little far-fetched, isn’t it?”

I put my coffee cup down. “You ask that after we’ve been attacked twice by the uber? I’m not sure far-fetched is an appropriate phrase.”

He blushed and ducked his head. “That’s fair.”

“It makes as much sense as anything else,” Louise said with a shrug.

We fell silent as the food arrived, and for several minutes no one spoke. We were all hungry, and the uber was injured and not likely to come hunting us in mid-morning. None of us bothered with grace; we all ate like starving soldiers, shoveling food in as fast as we could. While I ate, I looked over the list, seeing if anything else triggered a memory. Several did. Dave was not quiet about people who had wronged him, and we’d checked out several of the people on the list over the five years I’d been there.

“These guys pissed Dave off too,” I said between bites. “And that guy.” All of them had died in fires. “I think we are looking at old grudges being taken care of.”

“Geez,” Louise said. “I can hold a grudge, too, but that’s a little over the top.”

“A little?” George asked, shaking his head.

“Are we assuming that Dave is now hiding somewhere in the Dallas area?” I asked. “You chose over here for a reason – something other than the food.”

Louise grinned and nodded. “Oh, yes. I have a friend at the phone company – the same carrier Dave uses. So I have his calls, and better yet, I have where his phone pings on cell towers. I can pinpoint him to a small-ish area of Dallas-ish.”

“Small-ish? How small-ish are we talking?” I asked.

“Within a square mile or two.” At my glare she shrugged. “But a lot of calls came from that area. Once we’re within the area, we should be able to use the two alchemical trackers to find the exact location.” She dug her tablet out and pulled up an app. “Now, I modified this from tracking my phone to tracking the alchemical symbols, so hopefully this will work. But it should, honestly. I played with it some while you were sleeping, so I know if we get close enough we can find it. It’s just a matter of what is close enough.”

“Then we’d best get moving.” George slapped money on the table. “The sooner, the better.” He caught me eying the money and smiled. “I can claim it as business expenses for my book. The publisher won’t mind.”

“You still intend to write the thing?” I asked.

“Sure.” He shrugged. “It will just be a little different from my last few. More honest, for one. And more frightening.”

I laughed at that, and we moved on.

“It’s in this area,” Louise spoke from the backseat. “My tracker just pinged.”

We were cruising down 35E, in one of the most construction-filled areas. Naturally. I fought my way across traffic, ignoring how George still grabbed for his seatbelt. I headed west on a side road, just for somewhere to go, and soon Louise was telling me to turn around. “Wrong way.”

“Fifty-fifty shot at it,” I shrugged, and made a sharp U-turn in front of several cars. When in Dallas, drive like a Dallasite – like a maniac.

We crossed under the interstate and headed into a light industrial area. Once it had held a large number of small warehouses; most of them were empty now. A few held small businesses that were struggling along as the interstate grew wider and wider. Most would fail from lack of access before too long, if the interstate didn’t eat them up.

“Turn north,” Louise called forward.

I obeyed, turning deeper into the old warehouses.

“Closer,” she said.

George peered at the warehouses as we passed them, at the ice rink. “Ice rink?” he asked. “Texas is strange. Didn’t expect to find that here.”

Louise started to protest, but cut herself off. She smacked the back of my seat. “Here. Turn here. Here. Left.”

I did, growling. Surely it wouldn’t be that simple? I wouldn’t believe it until we found Dave or the uber. For all we knew, we were walking right into a trap.

“There. It’s there.”

Whatever ‘it’ was. I pulled into the parking lot of what had been the warehouse for a chain of used bookstores. The warehouse had relocated somewhere nicer, I guess, because this building was run down – beyond shabby. Bricks were molting off the building like it had some sort of architectural mange. No one had painted in years.

I parked for an easy escape. We climbed out and headed for the door. “Hang on,” I said quietly. “Hang back a sec.” I checked my derringer. I didn’t look forward to firing it, but I would if I had to. “Either of you armed?”

“Pepper spray?” Louise asked, holding up a small can attached to her keyring.

I sighed. “Okay. Stay back. George, you ever handle firearms?”

“Yes. I was army.”

Well, it explained the build, if nothing else. I dug out my spare derringer and handed it over butt first. “It’s small, but it’s,” I gestured at the one I held. “Special.”

“Right. Don’t fire unless I need to.”

“Preferably,” I responded.

We advanced on the warehouse. We must have looked ridiculous, moving slowly and with vaguely militant intent, in the middle of the day. Fortunately, Dallas is good at looking the other way. For all they knew, we were playing the newest war game. Not that anyone cared. As long as no shots were fired at them, most people wouldn’t look twice.

The door was locked, but not fitted to the jamb anymore. I took it in, decided George could use his muscles. I waved him up, indicated the door. “Open?”

He grinned at me and set his shoulder low, close to the deadbolt. He braced his feet and shoved hard. I heard a crack and readied myself. Another crack. If there was anyone inside, they knew we were coming. I prepped myself behind him; I’d go over him when the door gave in. With one more shove and a growl from George, the door separated from the jamb and fell open. As I’d expected, he went down on hands and knees. I went over him, into the darkness of the warehouse.

17.

The smell rolling up out of the empty warehouse was one of a zoo gone bad. I tried to breathe through my mouth, but that was somehow worse. I settled for breathing as shallowly as I could and hoping I would be able to function. Or go nose-blind quickly.

The first room was small – entry-way small, and empty of anything except building dust. I moved on into the room beyond. The stink grew, but there was no smell of blood or heat. The daylight from outside reached only a few feet, but I could tell that nothing had been here for a while. Dust hung in the air, drifting through drafts. Behind me, I heard George scramble to his feet.

Shelves had been knocked down and dragged over to one corner. I approached slowly. Nothing moved, but I wasn’t ruling out a trap. Something had built a nest of sorts, covering the wood with paper and fabric. Nothing matched, and most of it looked like garbage. I shifted the derringer to my off hand and reached out to the nest. It was cold, but smelled like a fireplace. The uber had been here at one time.

“Stinks,” Louise said, and as soft as she spoke it was like a gunshot. I flinched, and from the sound of someone hitting the wall, George reacted the same way.

“Not like cinnamon,” he added, voice tense.

“No. More like old wet wood.” Louise brought out a flashlight and ran it slowly around the room. “No uber here, though. I don’t understand.”

“How accurately can that thing pinpoint?” I asked over my shoulder. I was still staring at the nest.

“Don’t know,” she confessed. “Never actually had to use it before.”

“Come over here. Carefully.”

She picked her way across the floor to join me at the nest. “What’s up?” The tablet in her hand chirped loudly. She jumped, skittering sideways and slapped her free hand over the app, silencing it. “It’s there!”

I knelt to sift through the nest. It didn’t take long to find pieces of the spent round. Someone had removed it – not expertly, and maybe not all of it – and left it here. That implied a certain level of intelligence and ability. “It was here.” I held up the bullet fragment. “But I hit it, and probably pretty good. I don’t know much about uber healing, but I’m going to guess infection is still a possibility.” I still wanted to shove a rock down its throat and watch it die, but I could deal with killing it any old way. As long as it was dead at the end of the day.

George advanced past us into the next room. “Looks like it was a base of ops for a while,” he called. Before I could stop him, he flicked a switch and lights came on in the next room.

I tucked the pieces of bullet into my pocket. “C’mon.” I poked Louise, but she shook her head.

“Going to see what I can find out here.”

“Be careful. Anything weird, sing out.” She nodded at my words and waved me on. I strode into the now-lit room, intending to rip George a new hole, but stopped short. He was standing in the middle of the room, cell phone in hand, taking pictures of a full-fledged alchemy lab. If it weren’t for the circumstances, it could almost have passed for a chem lab. The circumstances, the filth, and the shelves of metals and stones. However, there was a filing cabinet. I opted to jimmy the drawer open over chewing out George.

It wasn’t as hard as I’d feared – it was a cheap one, slightly battered. Like most people on the alchemy side of things, it appeared that someone had cheapened out on extraneous gear. I worked in an old woodshop, Louise in her kitchen and bedroom, and someone else – possibly Dave – in an old warehouse. All of us were working with found items. It kept you off the radar, for one. Kept you off the crazy list.

My cry of victory might have been a little premature, but it still brought George to my side. I laid out the first file. “Dave’s handwriting.”

“So he is behind this.”

“Ransack the files. We’ll take everything.” I didn’t want to linger here any longer than necessary. Even if the uber wasn’t coming back, files meant that Dave might, and I didn’t want to face him until I was ready.

“Guys?” Louise called from the other room. “This is important.”

George started dragging files out of the drawer. “Go.” I went.

She was standing inside the nest, holding something. Her face glittered in the darkness. As I drew closer, I saw tears on her cheeks. She thrust the object out at me. I looked down and recoiled. She held a deformed fetus, part human and part… something. An uber fetus. I took a step back, and she followed me, boiling mad.

“It gave birth. It’s a mother, and its baby died!”

Her voice grew louder. George appeared in the doorway between the rooms. He took one look at the thing and ducked back out of sight. I considered following him, but he reappeared with a piece of fabric. “Here. Give it here.”

Louise laid the thing in the fabric and they wrapped it up with more care than I would have given it. Louise sniffed. “It had a baby.”

“It might have more than one,” I pointed out. “But it’s still an uber that’s been killing people.”

“On someone else’s orders!”

“We don’t know that’s entirely true,” George put in. “But it does put a different spin on it.”

I threw up my hands. “How? How does this change things? Would it make a difference to you if it had killed your roommates?” Louise looked away. “How is it different?”

“I guess it doesn’t,” she said quietly.

“Good. Glad we’re in agreement. Get the files, George. If you have to bring that, fine. Just make sure the files are there. If there’s any real financial info there, I might be able to track Dave my way.” I stalked back into the lab. I wanted nothing to do with the dead uber fetus. I’d sort through Dave’s materials, see if I could determine anything else from what he kept here.

“If we’re going to find out anything else about the uber, we should do it here.” George appeared once again at my shoulder, and I twitched. He put a hand on my arm. “Weasel. I don’t know what’s going on, but we have a chance to see exactly what has been done, what the uber is. It might give us a better chance at stopping it.”

“You want to autopsy it?”

“Yeah. At least to see what we can find out.” He nudged me. “Doesn’t alchemy play with things that shouldn’t be played with? Animal bits?”

“Not the alchemy I am familiar with,” I growled back.

“We need to know more,” he insisted.

“This is for your book,” I snapped back.

“Sure, if we survive this,” he agreed. “But I’m serious about getting more information. Wouldn’t it be good to know what we’re facing?”

“You can tell that from the autopsy of a fetus?” I demanded. “What can you tell me about it? Can you tell me anything?”

“It’s not a fetus. It was born,” Louise spoke from the doorway. “It lived for a little while. Someone abandoned it here.”

“You want to – go for it. You do your thing, I’ll do mine.” I snatched files from his hand and marched to the filing cabinet. I would focus there. Not on some uber-child. I was an accountant at heart now. Once I was done with this uber, that would be it. No more alchemy, no more ubers, none of it. Just me and my house and three cats.

I leafed through the files, ignoring the other two as they worked. I could hear the soft click of the camera on George’s phone, but I ignored that as well. I found what I was looking for – financial records. Dave hadn’t expected us to find this location. Which meant he might come back here. Why he wasn’t here right now I couldn’t begin to guess, so I wouldn’t even try. I’d keep to my research, keep working on tracking down his other hiding places. There had to be at least one more, somewhere he could keep the uber away from people. I cast a quick look about; the ceilings were reasonably high here, but it would be hard for the uber to get any altitude. Not to mention the fact that it would be hard for it to escape from here unnoticed.

I delved deeper, made a few notes, blocking out everything they were doing to the dead uber offspring. Interesting. U-Haul rental slips. I made a note of the size of the truck; plenty big to move a human-sized uber around. Maybe not in comfort, but I didn’t think Dave cared much about that. He was as obsessive about keeping records here as he was at the office, except that these bills were all noted as paid. That surprised me a little, though it shouldn’t have. Everything he could pay in cash was. The rest went on a credit card – though not one in his name. Min’s. Of course. He could still be using it, until someone notified the credit card company that she was dead.

Dave had even noted how many miles he’d traveled, so he could put the exact amount of gasoline back in the trucks he rented. That would give us a range, if nothing else. We might be able to match receipts with fires or deaths. Anything left over would be either something we didn’t know about yet, or a hiding place. He had to be able to move it back and forth from here fairly often, so we might locate several of the same distance. I flipped through them, and sure enough, eighteen were for the same distance, give or take a quarter mile. That had to be the other hiding place. But I’d have to know where the trucks were turned in. Unless it was always the same one. Mileage would only give us a rough start. We needed more.

Another rental fee, maybe? A lease agreement? Anything?

I delved back into the files.

“Weasel?” Louise sounded nervous.

“Yes?” I didn’t look back.

“We’re done.”

“Good. So am I.” I turned to see their handiwork. They both looked back at me sheepishly. The uber corpse was wrapped once more. “Well?”

“We couldn’t do it,” Louise confessed. “I just. I couldn’t. So we took pictures and made notes. No cutting.”

“Okay.” I was packing up the files into a manageable stack when a car door sounded outside. A heavy door, not a car. A truck. Damnation. “Hide. Find a place and hide. Now.”

They moved, not wasting the time to argue.

18.

I didn’t bother hiding, but slid out of immediate sight. Whoever it was would have to enter the room to spot me. I would only have a second.

I didn’t even get that. The doorway burst into flame. Dave strolled through, unharmed, smiling. “Hello, Weasel! I know you’re in here – your SUV is obvious. No point in trying to hide!”

I stepped into view. “Dave.”

“You found my staging point.”

“Always master of the obvious,” I sniped.

He looked unarmed, but if he’d lit the fires alchemically, he wasn’t. He had a weapon somewhere, even if it were just a lighter. This place was probably rigged to go, just like his apartment was. The difference here was that he was protected from the fire and I wasn’t. I’d have to go through him to get out.

“Where are the other meddlers?”

“Not here. La Cantara’s hiding in some hole of a motel. Something a little less obvious,” I sneered. “And Louise? Who knows – she’d be hard to lose, but I managed. Sent her packing. Didn’t want others in the line of fire.”

“Always the secret altruist,” he mocked me. “Or the one who has to have the glory. But not this time. I don’t know how you survived the first time, but this time you’re done. No more. You’re dead. I’ll stand here and watch you burn.” He swaggered forward a bit, and his jacket opened to reveal body armor. So he wasn’t invulnerable.

I shifted a little closer. Maybe he was fireproof, and maybe he was armored against my derringer, but I still had a chance. Bullet proof didn’t mean stab proof. All I had to do was get close enough.

“I don’t even need my creature to kill you. This place will go up like tinder!”

I sighed. “Seriously. Now is the time you pick to taunt me? You have to have your great reveal? When did you become a supervillain?” I slapped myself on the forehead. “Oh, wait, that’s right. Fake callers – Donald Blake and his wife Jane? Right out of Thor comic books?”

He glowered at me, and the flames grew. “You deserve to die. And once you’re gone, I’ll go after those other two!”

“And then the next person to offend you. Got it.” I had to cut him off before he got too wound up. I lunged at him, drawing my knife as I did. He side-stepped, but I still managed to shoulder-check him into a wall. He scrambled to pull a weapon. My knife was already out, and I stabbed at his armpit. He blocked, and the blade slid up his arm. He hissed at me, but shoved back, trying to get enough room to pull his weapon. I couldn’t afford that. I twisted under his arm; he retaliated by dragging me in close, choking me with his forearm.

I couldn’t get to his armpit with the knife, but I could get to his face.

He cried out and tensed sharply. I lashed out again with the knife. I felt like my body was on fire, and I could hear voices screaming. Vision faded to a tunnel of heat and darkness. I kept stabbing. This hadn’t been my greatest plan.

“Weasel!” I heard George’s voice, far away.

I wanted to tell him to run, to get Louise out and run. I failed.

I woke.

That in and of itself was a shock. That I wasn’t burned to a crisp was a second shock. That I was alone… that, not so much. The quiet and the coolness were welcome; the pain in my throat, not. I rolled myself over, expecting to be in the ruins of the warehouse.

I was not that lucky.

A quick look around gave me three stone walls and one with wrought iron bars – the decorative type, like you might have around a cemetery in a gothic horror story. They went all the way to the stone ceiling. Who had stone ceilings? The floor was a gritty dark wood, but pounding on it just told me it was solid as it could be and left me with rock and wood chips in my palms.

No doors that I could see, but if Dave had managed to – somehow – work teleportation into alchemy, he didn’t need doors. The other side of the iron bars held the mirror image of my own cell, save that it also held a nest and smelled of cinnamon and brimstone. Great. Wonderful. I’d found the uber’s lair the hard way, and didn’t seem to have much of a way out. And I didn’t know where Louise or George were. Or even if they we alive.

I finally pushed myself to my feet and stretched. I hurt, all over, but not enough to keep me from moving around. My throat was bruised – I could tell that just by touch, but I could breathe, and with an effort, probably speak. I coughed experimentally, and yeah, that hurt.

A narrow stone bench – not that I’d been left on it – would provide some sort of sleeping platform, set into the wall as it was. It was dry here, at least. No stereotypical damp dark dungeon this… it was a dry dim dungeon. Much better. No hidden doors, no trapdoors in the ceiling. Just blank walls. How the hells did they build this thing? There was probably a trap door somewhere, but wherever it was, I couldn’t find it. I sat down on the bench and contemplated myself. I didn’t have my knife or my derringer, but I did have my hoodie and my wallet. Hooray. Oh, and my keys. And a phone without any reception. I was really doing well. I could sit and play stupid phone games until the uber came back, or I could get busy doing something. Anything.

I prowled the cell one more time, testing each bar, every stone I could reach. It was exhausting, and by the time I was done I had lost track of how long I’d been here.

A thin whistling sound brought me back to the bars. Squinting, I could see a speaker high in one corner on the opposite side of the barrier. I stepped back; that was a call if I ever heard one.

Part of the wall faded away and the uber entered. I backed away to the far corner of my cell. It might have been human-sized, but it was in no way human. Neither was it something I recognized from myths or tacky fiction. It was… winged and feathered, with a bird’s beak, but a lizard’s body and head. It moved like a movie dinosaur, all sleek and smooth, head continuously shifting about on the long neck. It looked like an overgrown archaeopteryx. With longer teeth. And a rooster’s comb. All of it in a shaded red-to-yellow spectrum that looked as hot as the area was getting, darkening to a solid gray-black at mid-body.

The long tail was coated in feathers as well, and it swished along the wood floor with what could have been agitation. It knew I was here. The uber stepped closed to the nest and stooped to sniff. It made some sort of sound, somewhere between a chirp and a hiss, and settled into the nest. It did not sleep, though. Rather, it fixed its eyes on the bars. I felt the floor grit cling to my palms from sweat. Did it know exactly where I was?

“Hello, Weasel.” Dave’s voice came over the speaker. The uber flinched and feathers ruffled, making it seem larger. “No more talk. You had to be nosy and actually keep looking. You should have run away, like you did last time. At least then you would have died unaware of your fate.”

My mouth twisted. Very dramatic speeches, but I wasn’t ready to go just yet. The uber would not find me easy prey. I guessed that the bars would drop somehow, some mechanism I had missed. When it did, I would kill it – even if it meant me dying too. Talk about dramatic. I rolled my eyes at myself. I slowly rooted in my hoodie pocket. There it was. Between the phone and the wallet, there was my rock. I had it, at least. One rock, somehow left behind by this creature, would bring it down.

“Don’t worry. I won’t watch. I never do.” A slight click, and then a loud whistle. The uber reared up in its nest, protesting with a warble of its own. It sprang from the rough pile of wood and fabric to pace the wood. I expected sparks from its wingtips – wings that looked like a feathered dinosaur, half arm, half wing. It lunged at the bars, snapping with its toothed beak. I froze again.

It made a guttural raven noise and raised its wing-arms. The heat rose. The boards of the floor began to smolder.

19.

My phone was useless to me here. I pulled it out of my pocket. I might get one good shot at it. If I could stun it, I could… what? Drag it closer to the bars and bash its brains in? Hang out and wait to starve? I uncurled from the bench, set my feet on the floor, and stood. At least I’d die on my feet – though what difference that made I didn’t know.

The uber was pacing, and everywhere it stepped the floor crackled. As soon as I stood it whipped about and glared at me. Its mouth opened and it made the raven-chittering noise again, scaling up into grackle-whistle-call octaves. I froze again. It cocked its head at me and lunged. I didn’t move. It froze at the bars and backed away without touching them.

Interesting. It didn’t like the bars? Was it really afraid of iron? See how it liked cell phones.

I wound up to throw– sure, I throw like a girl. With reasonable accuracy, if not greater speed. But I needed accuracy right now.

The phone shot between the bars and pegged the uber between the eyes. It reared back, but did not fall. Maybe brute strength and speed would be nice, too.

“That’s it! I’m getting out of here one way or the other, y’great honking horror!” I yelled. It fluffed up, as insulted as a bird-uber-dinosaur-lizard thing could look. It swept one wing-arm back and hesitated, then swept the arm forward again. A fist-sized rock pinged off the bar. “Y’missed!” I snapped. It swung again, and this time the rock flew between the bars. It landed on the far side of the cell; I scurried across and snatched it off the ground. Other than a faint warmth, it was just a rock, and I threw it back, bouncing it off the creature’s skull. It whistled at me and retreated a step.

I advanced and scooped up the next one to make it through the bars. I was in some weird game of dodgeball with an uber. My life….

I rushed the bars to snatch another rock off the floor, and the uber lunged forward, ducking down so it was looking me in the eye. I met its gaze without flinching. After a moment it cocked its head again and withdrew, feathers settling. The heat faded as the uber retreated back to its nest.

Sweating, I followed its lead, returning to the bench to rest. I wasn’t too winded, but the heat made it hard to breathe, and with my throat and neck already injured, I didn’t need to make things worse than they were.

The uber watched me from its nest. It eyed me, then broke contact and scrabbled in the nest. It looked back up, saw me still watching, and looked down. The smell of cinnamon filled the air. After several minutes of heavy breathing, I sat up straighter. The uber hunched its way out of the nest, and I prepared to renew the battle. Game. Time-waster. Whatever we were doing. The uber slithered forward and reached through the bars with a rock clasped in its talons. Claws. Whatever.

Instead of throwing the rock, it rolled it toward me and settled down to watch. I left the bench and inched to where the rock sat. Hesitantly, ready to drop the thing in a second, I reached out. The rock was lighter than I’d expected. I eyed it uncertainly. As I shifted it in my palm, it split into two pieces. Liquid spilled out over my hand, warm and thick, but not painful. It felt like a raw egg flowing over my skin. I stared at it. That’s exactly what it was. It had rolled an egg at me.

The uber met my eyes.

“Why?” I asked, even though I didn’t expect any sort of answer.

It lowered its head and whistled low, then rolled another one my way. I sat down cross-legged and caught it as it wobbled across the floor. Like the first, it broke in my hand, spilling its innards onto my skin. I cradled the shells, still watching the uber. “Why are you doing this?” Surely the egg yolks wouldn’t hurt me?

My hands tingled, and I put the shells down on the floor. I wiped my hands on my jeans, but nothing else happened. I turned the shells over carefully; nothing. The uber didn’t move. An ant crept across the floor. Out of some sense of surrealistic amusement, I dropped one of the shells over it. Give it a place to hide, or food to eat. Something. I was bored, despite sitting across from an uber with unknown abilities and motivations.

A faint pop, like a match being lit, and the ant was larger, and armored, and the eggshell was missing. The ant trundled across the floor, apparently unharmed by the change. I watched it, frozen to the floor in shock. The uber made a soft sound, like a basso chirp, but did not move a wing. I dumped another shell piece on top of the larger ant. Its armor seemed to absorb the shell, layering on more armor. Again it grew, this time to the size of a small dog. I expected to see it collapse under its own weight, but it continued on in the same direction, still completed unconcerned.

The only change I could see, other than size, was that its footprints burned for a second before fading away. I snickered. “Great. I’ve created a fire ant.”

Another egg rolled my way. I was beginning to get the kernel of an idea. I didn’t know if it would work, but the uber no longer seemed hostile. If anything, it was like an overgrown winged great dane – helpful in a clumsy sort of way. I watched the ant, and after a few minutes of milling around, it shed the size and armor like it was molting, and returned to normal ant size. It continued on its way, unfazed by the ashes falling around it to add to the grit on the floor.

I pushed at the ashes, testing them. It was the same as the other ash and grit on the floor. So the uber could be playing a game – convince the human to use the egg to escape, and watch them burn up? That made no sense. Nothing said that ubers had that much intelligence. Nothing. No one had made that claim. At best they were dog-smart. Trainable, like the gremlins of WWII, but nothing more.

If I was going to die one way or the other, I might as well go with some style. I settled one of the eggshells on the back of my off hand – no point in being silly about it after all – I might need my left hand. The tingling returned, and turned to burning. Before I could flip my hand over and knock the shell loose, my hand was armored. Covered in stone. Living rock. I made a fist and opened it again, and my palm was hot and bright, as though lava flowed through my veins.

I grasped the last egg in my good hand and let it fall apart. Standing, I prepped myself. We’d see how hot this could get. I advanced on the bars and set my stone hand on one. With a deep breath, I dropped the two shell pieces on the hand. It took only a moment for the hand to harden further. The heat in my palm flared hotter. I grabbed the bar and squeezed. I might not have gained any strength, but I had heat on my side now.

The uber reared up and retreated back to its nest. I felt heat flow into the bar, saw it turn red, then white. I shoved, but it did not move. It wasn’t enough. I moved my hand, letting another section of bar heat. I pressed hard; I didn’t know how long the heat would last.The two heat flares joined and the bar glowed white-hot. I pushed hard and the bar oozed aside. One more good push and there was enough room for me to squeeze through to the uber’s side. That was a foolish act, but the only way out I’d seen was on its side. I shouldered my way through, feeling a light singe on my face and smelling burned hair where my head brushed the still-hot bar.

The uber chirruped at me again, but did not leave its nest. I advanced slowly. It was a killer, but it was like a dog, trained to kill. Who knew? It might turn on me once I let my guard down, like a circus lion. It was a wild animal, no matter how many tricks it might have learned. I couldn’t trust it. But to get out I’d have to look about for a way to trigger the door. And that meant turning my back on the uber.

The entrance it had used was away from the nest, so that was where I headed. I knelt long enough to grab my phone, which by some freak miracle hadn’t shattered when it hit the floor. The uber hissed at me, but stayed where it was. I shivered a little as the stone surrounding my hand turned to ash and fell off, leaving me unharmed but cool. I tugged the hood up on my hoodie, and heard the uber rattle behind me. I turned, and it was flared up in its nest, mouth wide and wings spread.

I jerked the hood off.

The uber subsided again. “Okay,” I drawled. “No hood. Got it.” I’d have to deal with being chilly for now. Once I was out of here, though, I was wearing the damnnable thing. I was cold, and that was one thing I couldn’t deal with.

20.

The door on the other side wasn’t terribly well hidden, but it did take the ability to find the small ring that served as a knob. I guess it didn’t have to be subtle; the uber probably couldn’t manipulate the ring well enough to pull the door to one side. I saw no hinges, but up close it looked like the door slid into the wall. A pocket door – great. Those were harder to lock securely. I pulled, but it didn’t move more than a few centimeters. I tugged, but didn’t move it any more.

Finally I turned my back on the uber and peered through the gap. A narrow piece of metal hooked the door to the wall. From the looks of it, alchemy had been employed here. Which left me with nothing, in theory. I shrugged. Since I had nothing, I could try anything. I slipped my index finger into the gap and tested the metal. It did just hook on. It would be strong side to side, but it might just… lift.

It did, and the door slid open easily. The uber shifted, chirruping at me. I turned my attention back to it. It hadn’t left the nest yet, but was watching expectantly.

“It would help if we could communicate,” I said softly. “I still don’t trust you. So you get to stay here.”

I slipped out of the doorway and pulled it closed behind me. I heard something like an indignant squall behind me, but I wasn’t going back. If it was angry about it, too bad. I wasn’t letting it out.

The hallway that stretched beyond the door was bright – almost too bright after the dim cell. I pulled the hood up again; it wouldn’t protect me from Dave’s eyes, but it would keep me a little warmer. And right now that was just as important. My right arm was cold. I wondered if ants got cold, and if they did, what would happen to the one I’d experimented on. I hoped it didn’t spread any further. I’d need both hands to get out of this madhouse.

The walls here were also stone, old-fashioned looking. The hall had no other doors, so I kept moving in the only direction available. After several twists and turns, where the hall doubled back on itself, there was finally another door. Unlike the pen, this one was not a pocket door, but also unlike the pen door, this one wasn’t locked. I paused with my hand on the latch; surely there were guards of some sort – some sort of security? As soon as I stepped out I would be vulnerable. I had no idea what the terrain would be like. I considered my options, as few as they were. Go back, stay here, or keep moving. None were good. I had keys, phone and a few other trinkets.

I pulled my phone back out. It was still functional, but still no reception. But it might just provide me with a little detail of the area on the other side of the door. I hunkered down and reached up to pop the door open. I should be below the sight of any close camera. I thrust the phone out through the narrow gap with the video recording. I turned it slowly, trying to move with such sloth that cameras might not pick up the motion. When I had made a 180 degree revolution I pulled the phone back in and slid the door closed. Curled up in the corner, I watched the video.

A long and wide hallway, with stone railing on the far side, as though I were in a castle. The floor was polished… something… maybe marble, and padded benches and narrow tables lined the near side of the hall. The far side had benches dotted along the railing, but nothing else. I saw what looked like the top of a staircase at a gap in the railing. Fancy, wherever I was. There were shadows that were probably doorways in the distance down the hall, but I couldn’t make them out well enough to be certain. It was a manor of some sort, but not entirely of the western world.

There was no way I was going to make it out unseen. Even if I had a clue where I was, I would be a little obvious sauntering through the halls.

On the other hand, I’d made it so far.

I stood, pushed the door open and walked out into the hallway.

As I’d half-expected, it was a balcony of sorts, looking down onto an open grand ballroom. Or something similar. No one moved through the room below, but the place didn’t feel abandoned. It felt… temporarily free of people, a building holding its breath. Eventually it would breathe in and people would appear. I shivered even in my hoodie. But I could either waste my time worrying about it or I could move.

I eased toward the staircase, feeling as out of place as I ever could. I didn’t belong in this place of polished marble and high-gloss wood. My place was the ticky-tacky office and a slightly battered Craftsman style home. I shook myself. I could go where I wanted. I straightened up from the half-crouch I found myself in and strode down the stairs. I had to find the way out. I eyed my surroundings as I descended from one marbled balcony to another, and finally to the floor of the great hall. A heavy stone fireplace sat at one end, and the other was a series of French doors. I made for the French doors. The outside beckoned.

Except that it couldn’t be that easy. The French doors led to another room. I opened the nearest door and passed through. No one was here, either, but there was only a single door in the far wall. This room was as large as the first, but far more intimate. Furniture was crowded into it, making numerous smaller conversation areas, with pathways winding between them. An immense fireplace dominated one wall, filled with wood but unlit. I could have climbed inside and hidden behind the bonfire-sized pile had I needed to. Fortunately, that was not a problem currently.

I wound my way to the far side and opened the door. Another long and wide hall spread out before me. I muffled a sigh and moved on. It felt as though the hallway sloped upwards, but with no windows to look out of, it was hard to tell. I frowned; there had been no windows anywhere as of yet. None.

A set of double doors met me at the other end. Again, there were no other doors. No way to hide should someone appear. It felt more and more like an elaborate set, not a real building. I had no idea what this would open onto, but hopefully there would at least be windows.

I shoved my way through the doors.

The vibration of my phone was loud in the silence.

I yanked it out. A text. Louise – or at least her phone.

PLeaseplease answer. Where are you?

I texted back. Alive. Don’t know where yet. U and George?

A long pause and my phone rattled to life again. OMG we’re safe got out of fire.we have your car. Will find you. Battery on phone good? Track that way.

Phone good. I didn’t intend to wait around to be rescued. Plus, I wasn’t certain it really was Louise. Why didn’t Dave take them too? Why just leave them there? Could they be involved? Or could just Louise be involved? I shrugged away the questions. Right now, get out of wherever I was and see what came next.

That part would be easy. Find Dave and kill him, and then go back for the uber.

A noise to one side caught my attention. A door, swinging shut, and for the first time I looked around. A castle. I was in a fracking castle.

Really?

Honestly?

A broom stood against the wall beside a bench. It was the matter of a moment to step over to it. With my hood up, maybe I could at least look like a member of the cleaning crew. If they didn’t wear uniforms. I snatched the broom up and was busily whisking my way down the broad hallway when the door opened again.

I didn’t look up. I had to look like I belonged here.

“You. Why are you sweeping here?” It was a woman’s voice, haughty and imperious. Very Bette Davis mingled with Katherine Hepburn.

“Dirty, ma’am,” I mumbled, keeping my head down. “Not right to be dirty.”

She snorted, not delicately. “That is true. Very well. But be swift about it. The Pari will be here soon, and it must be perfect.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She swept away, footsteps almost silent on the marble floor. I clung to the broom for stability for a moment, then moved on. She’d fallen for it? Maybe it wouldn’t be as hard as I expected. I felt more people brush past me, but kept my head down and kept sweeping. I’d heard some of my friends say that no one notices the cleaning staff, but I’d never believed it quite as thoroughly as I did in those moments. They treated me like something beneath their feet, little better than a cheap rug, not fit for words.

“Hst.” The call came from a corner, where a young woman sat on a bench as far from foot traffic as she could. She beckoned me closer. “Come here.”

Not like the cleaning lady could disobey, so I moved toward her, expecting some command about cleaning the corners better. I’m only a so-so housekeeper, but in that moment I would be the best I’d ever been, even if it meant scrubbing toilets.

“The Pari is coming,” she said quietly. “You must leave before he arrives.”

I bobbed my head in answer. “Yes, ma’am.”

She laughed softly. “Do not try to hide from me,” she whispered. “I do not suffer from the glamor of this place. It cannot hold me from seeing what is.” My head snapped up. She was staring past me, at something I didn’t dare turn toward. “You should leave, human.” There was a fondness in her voice. “The Pari sees through glamor as well. He will see you as you are.”

“I don’t understand.”

She gestured at a mirror near the bench. “Look.”

I stepped to the side and looked at myself in the mirror. I was not me. I was a pale wraith-like form, barely solid. I gaped.

“That is what the glamor makes you,” she said. “But those who can see past it will see the human in the strange hooded coat. They will see what you are, and you will suffer for it.” She smiled. “Sweep that way, to that door, and pass through. That will bring you to the gardens.”

“If you aren’t human, what are you?”

“I am pari.”

“You said the Pari was on his way.”

She shook her head. “The Pari leads us. We are all pari.”

“If he’s your leader, why are you helping me?” I didn’t know for certain that she was helping, merely that she wanted me to leave through a certain door.

“Because it amuses me. And because he does not speak for all.” She gestured. “Go. You have an imagination. Use it. Believe what you wish us to see.”

I returned to my sweeping, heart pounding.

21.

No one called out for me to stop at the door, so I opened it a crack and slipped through onto a stone terrace. It overlooked an ornate garden that was about as formal as it could be. I felt out of place, but if I was supposed to act like I belonged here, so be it. I would. I padded down the stairs, looking nervously at those gathered below. One raised her eyes to look at me and sighed.

“Oh, go on. Join the other young ones.” She sounded frustrated, like someone who’d hoped to have more time to rest, one more cigarette, before going back to work, but saw the boss beckoning. She waved me toward a garden arch. I passed under carefully, mindful of the eyes on me.

A small gaggle of children were playing in longer grass. I crouched, almost unseen, to take a quick breath. I still hurt, and I needed a break. Even if I were close to getting out, which I doubted, I needed a stop. My phone buzzed, and I edged to a cross-legged position. Sure, it was vulnerable, but it kept me below eye-level for most of the people here.

Tracked you within a mile.

I texted back. Good. Still have no clue where I am, but am outside.

South of Maypearl, came the immediate response. We are on our way. Get away from danger and lay low. Call when safe.

Will do.

South of Maypearl. I was out in the middle of nowhere North Texas. There wasn’t anything out here but county roads and fields. A castle would stand out.

I shook my head. Didn’t matter. Getting out mattered.

I got to my feet and wandered through the children’s garden – it was obviously that, because the greenery was more natural here. I avoided the trees, though. Something about them felt odd, like they were watching me. The children ignored me, playing their own game, and I finally took the moment to look up at the sky. It was still daylight (or daylight again), and since I had no clue which direction I was facing, I couldn’t tell if it were morning or afternoon. I was tired, that was for sure, and I needed a nice long nap. Maybe I’d get it, maybe not.

I hoped my house was still standing.

Three gates led out of the area, one of them through what appeared to be an outer wall. I didn’t have any hopes of passing through it, and I didn’t have a way of burning through the gate. I might be able to go over the wall, but it would take work. And time. And gear.

I glared at the trees. Several of them were tall enough and strong enough to actually reach to the wall. If I could climb one without it killing me, I might be able to squirrel over to the wall and go over. I wouldn’t make it without being noticed, but at least outside the walls I might be able to find cover. If I could climb a hostile tree.

Hostile tree. This is what my life had come to. I shrugged mentally and made for the tree with the greatest chance of reaching the wall. I patted it awkwardly, drawing a “Leave the trees alone – you know better than that,” from one of the adults supposedly tending the children. I slid around the tree, putting it between me and the adult pari. Paris?

The bark was rough enough to scrape up my hands, but I’d climbed mesquite trees in my youth; rough bark and thorns didn’t deter me. I reached up as high as I could easily and started the climb. The tree shivered under my hands. I jerked back, tumbling back to the ground. The children were watching me without being obvious about it; no one pointed, laughed, or tried to warn anyone. They just watched.

I wiped my hands on my hoodie and took a couple of steps back. If I got a running start…. I did just that, getting a little more momentum, a little more height. I managed to grab hold of a low-hanging branch and haul myself up. The tree protested with a shudder. I cursed it softly, trying to get all of me in the tree, hiding in the leaves. Whippy branches slapped at me like someone’s maiden aunt in a melodrama; I ducked my head and kept climbing.

Protests rose from the adult area, and I looked down to see the children scatter. The adults were coming. I climbed faster. I stopped long enough to pull the hood further up over my face. It turned out to be a mixed blessing; the thorns couldn’t reach my face, but they seemed to aim for my hands. I let them slap; I’d had worse. I kept climbing.

“Come down immediately!” A voice boomed below me. There was an air of command about it, and I guessed no child had ever ignored it. I did. A muffled curse, and the man below knocked three times on the tree.

The tree re-doubled its efforts to shake me loose. It was climbing in an earthquake, a hurricane, and a tornado all at once. The branches flailed madly, striking every inch of me. I could feel every impact, knew I’d have thorns buried in my flesh despite the hoodie – or maybe because of it, given the loose weave of the average baja hoodie. But I had to keep climbing. I risked glancing up. The wall seemed further away than it had been originally. I closed my eyes and kept moving, picking my way from limb to limb.

“Just stop it,” I grumbled at the tree. “I’m leaving, and that’s that.” It ignored me as much as I ignored it, and a particularly thin twig snapped into my cheek, splitting it open. Oh, for that flaming grip now. It would be lovely to just be able to singe the tree just a little. Burn off a couple of thorns. Or a thousand.

I felt the branches growing thinner under my grip and chanced one more look. The wall appeared to be as far away as ever, but I knew better. The woman in the hallway had spoken of glamor – it finally clicked. Glamor. Not fashion. The supposed ability of legendary fairies and elves and such to make people see what wasn’t there or didn’t exist. I smiled to myself. If that was the case, we’d see how good my spatial awareness really was. I was banking my life on it being good, because even if I could fool the people here on sight, I wasn’t counting on being able to defend myself against them putting their hands on me. At that point, it would be all over for me. So, onward and upward.

The tree had extended to the wall’s top and a bit beyond with strong limbs. It was almost like an escape route for those who could deal with being beaten by a tree. I could tell the girth of the branches under my hands. A groan ran through the tree and I clung fiercely, setting my face next to the bark. Mistake number one. Thorns erupted under my face. I jerked back, clinging with my legs. The branch stabbed more thorns into my legs and hands.

“Get down here now!”

I shook my head, and the tree in retaliation shook itself, almost dislodging me. It was only getting worse. I had to keep moving.

I heard the branch scrape against stone and smiled. “Gotcha,” I whispered. I reached out, felt the flat of the wall under my palm. I scurried forward, ignoring the thrashing of the tree. One last solid hit sent me spinning across the wall. I grabbed at it, but between thorns and my own hood, I couldn’t see a damnable thing, and I slid right across the top. The roughness of the stone slowed me, scraping the rest of the skin from my palms, and over the far edge I went.

There was no prepping myself for the landing; I had no idea of the wall’s height or what was waiting for me below. I tried to relax, meet the ground as it came.

When it did, it was a hard shock. I crashed through low scrub in a far shorter time than I anticipated. I rolled hard over hard ground, coming up against another round of scrubby bushes. I forced my body to get moving; I didn’t know if they’d come after me or not. I scrambled to my feet and limp-ran to heavier cover. I couldn’t get too far, that was certain. I was too banged up to not leave a massive trail behind me.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to. I rolled into deeper shrubbery and dug my phone out. This time I called. “I’m out. Wherever I am.”

Louise answered on the first ring. “Go north. Maps show a creek. Get across that and there’s a road not far beyond. We’ll be on that.”

“Gotcha.” I took a look at the time on my phone. Late afternoon. Better than I expected, really. Could have been much worse. Or maybe not. I had no clue what day it was. I felt like I’d lost a lot of time, but right now, I needed to make tracks. I oriented myself, west to my left, and headed off, looking for a creek and the road beyond.

22.

I staggered out of the bushes after dark. Out here you could barely see the arc of light on the horizon that was Dallas-Fort Worth, and you could see stars. It took a moment to register that the ground’s texture had changed. I’d found the narrow limestone road. “Road,” I texted, and that was it. I was too exhausted to move any more. If I sat down I wouldn’t stand back up.

Headlights stabbed through the darkness. I didn’t bother moving back into the shrubs. I hadn’t heard any signs of pursuit, and if they’d known where I was going, I would’ve been recaptured by now. So either they weren’t interested, or they knew where I’d go and had decided to pick me up later. Or now. I was too tired, thirsty, hungry, and thirsty to care. I hurt all over. Revenge for my dead friends and vengeance against Dave would have to wait until I’d gotten some sleep.

“Weasel!” George’s voice reached me a second before he did. My head snapped up, and I managed one step back before he could touch me.

“Wait.” My voice was not as strong as I would have liked, but in the grand scheme of things, it was just one more pain. “Don’t touch.”

He slowed and lowered his hand. “What happened?”

“Talk later. Home. Bath. Band-aids.”

He guided me back to my vehicle gently, a hand at the small of my back. I allowed it, because it was one of the few areas that didn’t seem to have thorns in it. I curled up in the backseat, ignoring seatbelts. George slid in beside me and shut the door. “Go, Louise.”

He caught me as the suv shot forward, pulled me in to lean against his shoulder. “An hour or less, we’ll be back at your place. Unless you want to go somewhere else?”

“Home,” I repeated as firmly as I could.

“Okay,” he soothed. I would have taken offense at the tone of voice, but right now I just wanted to close my eyes. So I did.

I felt the car stop and the engine shut off. It was an effort to pry my eyes open, but I did. We were home, and Louise had parked like I usually did, right against the curb, ready to roll out again. I staggered up the walk and opened the door with keys I’d somehow held onto. Only then did I frown at Louise.

“How did you start my car?”

She looked away. “Long story.”

“Later.” I waved it away, and she caught my wrist carefully.

“Weasel….” Her voice was hurt on my behalf. I tugged free.

“Shower. Food. You get food. I get shower.”

“Bath,” Louise corrected. “You’ll need help, and I don’t think you can stand on your own for a shower.”

“Have been so far.”

She sighed. “George, can you grab food? I’ll take care of her.”

“Don’t need caretakers.”

“Yeah, I’m beginning to think you do,” George disagreed, his voice fading into the kitchen.

Louise laughed beside me. “C’mon, let’s get you taken care of.” When I staggered trying to break free of her renewed hold, I gave in and let her help. Stubborn is one thing. Too stubborn can get you in trouble.

She winced when she helped pull off my hoodie. “Oh, ow.”

I avoided the mirror as she slowly helped my undress. I wasn’t ashamed of my body. It was just the thing that housed me, and right now it wasn’t in very good condition. She ran water in the tub. I saw the steam curling up and shook my head. “No. Too hot.”

She eyed me with concern, but shrugged and turned the cold tap on. Once the steam faded, she helped me slither into the tub. “No drowning while I’m out,” she said. “I’ll be right back. Where do you keep first aid supplies?”

“Kit’s in the kitchen.”

“Right.”

I kept my eyes on my arms; red and black spotted them, and even the backs of my hands had holes that seeped blood into the too-warm water. I reached for soap. Might as well clean them out.

Louise found me trying to pick out a thorn with my fingernails. She pulled my hand back and stuck a bottle of water in it. While I drank, she attacked the thorn with tweezers. She was not overly gentle, but neither was she deliberately harsh. Somewhere along the way I grew numb. The water around me turned pink. Louise drained water and added more.

“You look terrible,” she told me matter of factly. “No offense, but you look like you lost a fight with a porcupine.”
“Feel like a pincushion,” I admitted.

“No shock there.” I looked up, and she grinned. “I took thirty-three thorns out.” She indicated a small pile of thorns on the side of the tub. “But I think I got them all, unless you’ve got them in private and personal places.”

I managed a laugh. “No. No thorns to the crotch, thank goodness. Just the limbs and face.”

She winced, nodding. “Let’s get you out of the tub before you turn into a prune.”

“Y’calling me old, Louise?”

She laughed at me. “No. Just bigger than a raisin.” She extended a hand to me, and I reluctantly accepted it. I’d never get out on my own.

I was out of the tub and wrapped in both a towel and a robe before I fully registered her strength. I glanced down at her arm, saw the muscles working to keep me upright. The inner arm was covered with pockmarks that resembled tiny stab wounds. Adrenaline shot through my veins, waking me fully. I wrenched free and backed up against the far wall. “Hands off.”

“Weasel?” Her face was puzzled.

“Show me your arms.”

Wordlessly she turned them over to show me both arms. They were both pocked with the same marks. The same scars that would eventually show on my arms. “It’s not what you think.”

“You know that how?” I demanded, my voice harsh in the bathroom. “You knew where I was. You knew how I would get out!”

She shifted, raising both hands pleadingly. “I didn’t know for sure, no…. Please. Can I just explain?”

“Explain what? That you and Dave are working together?”

“No!” Her face shifted to anger. “We are not!” Her hands closed into fists. “We are NOT working together!”

The door opened and George entered, knife in one hand. “What’s with the yelling?”

Louise lowered her hands with a sigh. “Can we just sit down before you fall over, Weasel? Please? I promise I am not working for or with David.”

“You tell us what you know about him, and about the place I was held prisoner.”

She nodded. “I will.” She brushed past George, who took a step towards me, tucking the knife into his belt.

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ll get dressed and come out.” I wasn’t tired anymore, but I was still hungry. There would be a lot to discuss with Miss Louise Walker before I would rest at all.

He backed out of the bathroom. I leaned against the wall for a moment, gathering my wits, and shoved off to head to my bedroom. I grabbed the hoodie, picking thorns out of the loose weave as I walked down the hall.

Food was ready and spread out on the ottoman when I emerged, once more dressed. I’d put band-aids on the worst of the thorn marks, and smeared antibiotic ointment all over everything. I stank of it, but if it kept me from scarring up enough to frighten the cats, I’d be happy. I wasn’t overly-enamored of my own face anyway. I tied my hair back and flopped on the couch. Louise was sitting with her hands between her knees, looking lost.

George sat next to me on the sofa, his eyes locked on Louise. He was uncomfortable, and confused, but he didn’t speak as I reached for food.

“I’m really not working for David,” Louise said softly.

“Then tell me everything. You knew where to find me. You knew where I’d come out. You knew a lot of things. You worked for Dave; why shouldn’t you still be?”

“You used to work for him, too,” she shot back. “But… you’re right. I do know more… I climbed the trees to get out, too. It’s really the only way, unless you go through the gate. And if you go through the gate, you’ve got permission.”

“You didn’t?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m technically too young to be out and about. I’m supposed to be cloistered for the next five years. Then I could be trusted to pass beneath the gate.”

George handed me more food, holding his tongue.

“Keep talking. Tell me about the pari.”

She sighed. “The pari are what you consider ubers.”

“Ubers aren’t intelligent!” George protested, then snapped his mouth shut again.

“Not all of us, no. Any more than all natural creatures are intelligent. But some are. The pari are among them.” She shrugged. “We’re not the apex of the ubers, but we’re by no means on the bottom rungs. We’re just people, but with a few differences from human people.”

“Like?” George asked.

“Glamor.” I dropped that word into her silence.

She nodded. “And magic. Not alchemy. Magic. We normally keep a low profile. We’re just people, and we just want to live. It’s not like we hate humanity. A lot of us live among you.” She sighed. “But recently our culture is doing what yours is: getting more conservative, more insular, less accepting of others. And they’ve started closing the gates to the wild summer.”

“The what?”

I gestured at her, content to let George ask the questions while I fed my face.

“That’s what it translates to. The Wild Summer. It’s like being Amish, and being allowed a year away to decide where you want to spend your life. But we’re being denied it now, because the new Pari – our leader, with a capital P, says we shouldn’t want such things.”

“What should you want?”

“Vengeance on all the subs – the humans – who have ever hurt one of our own. An uber,” she corrected herself. “Anyone who has ever offended one of us.”

“And Dave is taking that to heart.”

She nodded. “I came to see if I could get enough evidence to take back to the paria – the elders – to show them what is going on. But instead I had to go over the wall, which means I can’t come back without formal permission from either the Pari or the paria.”

She sagged back into the chair. “I’ve been out here for five years, trying to find out what was going on. I’ve lost a number of friends, and I’m kind of an outcast now. I’m not working for him. At this point, he’s just trying to kill anyone who gets in his way.”

I had more questions, but they were going to have to wait. I was sagging against George and against the sofa’s back at the same time.

“I promise I’m not working for him, Weasel.”

I actually believed her. I nodded. “Okay. You can stay. Go close the circle.”

She sat upright, face transforming with a smile. “Really?”

“Yes.”

She skipped out of the house. George leaned closer. “Do you think it’s a good idea?”

“No, but I’m fresh out. I need to sleep, and I’d rather have her where we know where she is. And I believe she isn’t working for Dave.” I swore softly. I didn’t want to waste time sleeping, but my body was having none of it. It was time to sleep, like it or not.

23.

I woke still on the sofa, still leaving against George. He was also sound asleep, snoring quietly. I blushed and wished I was still wearing my hoodie. I hadn’t been this close to another human being in a long time. Five years or so, my brain reminded me. I hissed out loud, trying to silence my own thoughts. I didn’t need to think about that now. Or ever. It was done and over with. Mike had been a good part of my life. One of the only good parts, if I were being honest. My friendship with Min had suffered, and I’d put a strain on their marriage, but he loved Min and those kids. He’d never have left her, and I’d never have asked. We both knew it was wrong. The abrupt ending to the ‘us’ just hammered in how wrong it had been.

But I’d not woken up next to anyone since, not fallen asleep next to someone.

His warmth was nice, and I didn’t really want to move anyway.

“Breakfast!”

George and I both sat upright, tangling in the blanket someone had wrapped around both of us. He caught me before I rolled off the sofa.

“Caught you,” he said in my ear. I shivered.

“Awww… you two are cute!” Louise had her phone out and snapped a picture before we could move. George flushed and helped me up before untwining himself. “You are!” Louise said, tossing me the phone.

I glanced at the picture, and had to admit that if it hadn’t been me in the photo, I’d’ve thought it was amusing. I lobbed the phone to George, who snorted at the image. Louise ducked past me and snatched the phone from him. “I’ll send it to you after breakfast.”

We sat down in the kitchen for the first time, crowded around my table that was really only meant for one. The kittens wandered between our feet, mewling until they were picked up and placed in a lap. They didn’t seem to care whose lap it was. Little furry traitors.

“My car. How did you get in? For that matter, my house – how did you get in?” I asked.

Louise pointed at George. “That’s all him.”

He blushed. “Once he nailed you, he left. Like he did in the apartment. I guess he really didn’t know we were there. We escaped with only light singeing, and smoke inhalation.”

I got the feeling there was more to the story than that, but he wasn’t going to enlighten me just yet.

“We hot-wired a car and drove it here, I broke in and found your spare keys. I drove us back and we put the stolen car back where we found it. Your car had the garage door opener in it, which let us back into the house without having to break in a second time.”

I never used the garage, except for storage, so that was one way that I honestly never thought about. “Wait. You broke in?”

He held up a hand. “I picked the lock on the back door. You need better locks.” Of course I did. It was on the list, underlined even, hanging on the refrigerator door. I pointed at it, and he smiled. “I know. That’s why I knew I could probably pick yours.”

“And the hot-wiring?”

“Misspent youth,” he shrugged. “You’ve got an older suv. They’re easier to deal with. I’ve had practice with them.”

“I don’t believe this,” I muttered. “An author with untapped skills, a researcher who is researching things she already knows, and me. How is this my life?”

“Just lucky, I guess,” Louise snarked.

I laughed. “Fair enough.” Despite myself, I liked these two people. Mind you, I’d liked Min, too, but we’d had our issues.

“So now what?” George asked, voicing the question that I was sure we’d all been pondering. “As much as I’d like to walk away from this, I don’t think it’s going to happen. Once Dave finds out that you’re not… that you are still around, he’s going to try again.”

“And we’re on his list now, too,” Louise said. “He won’t be happy.”

“Why didn’t he know you were like him?” I asked. “A pari?”

“Because he wasn’t looking too close. I told you, we’re a lot like humans, except that we don’t interbreed and have what you consider magic.”

“Don’t or can’t?” George asked.

She shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. I never asked, because I was never interested in breeding. Might be now, but I still don’t know.” She waggled her eyebrows at George, who laughed and glanced away. “Wanna give it a try, George?”

“Um.. no? No offense?”

She shrugged. “None taken. Don’t want to get too close to the subject?”

He gaped at her. “No! Just… it’s not really time for any of that….”

She waved a hand. “Just messing with you, George. You’re safe from me.” She leaned back in the chair, tickling a kitten under its chin. “The problem is that if I do anything… not human… he will spot me a mile away, and then I’m sunk. If he can train a whatever it is to do what he commands, he’s way more powerful than I am. And that’s not good, because he’ll win in a magic v magic competition. That’s one reason I came out to the human world – because I am not terribly good with magic, and I needed more resources for alchemy and tech. It’s the only way I can stay even with the rest of my family.” She focused on the cat for a moment. “Not that I can ever go back if anyone finds out I am working against Dave. That’s treason. So either way I’m in trouble unless we stop David without the Pari finding out. If they do, I’m crowsmeat.”

“Crowsmeat?”

“Dead and unburied. Not worth the trouble to bury,” she said sadly. “My uncle was crowsmeat. They just threw him over the wall and let him rot. Let the naturals take him. Coyotes,” she added. “Sorry.”

“Guessing naturals is an insult?” I ventured. She nodded.

“And the thing used to scare the young into behaving. People like you don’t help,” she said with a shrug. “Trying to hunt down the things you don’t understand.”

I sighed. “If it wasn’t trying to kill me, I wouldn’t be trying to kill it.”

She looked away. “I understand that. But there’s years and years of people like you, killing off those of us who are not human or natural. Although the term ubernatural is at least not insulting. More natural? I can live with that.”

I poured more coffee. “Look. I don’t care particularly about your people. If they aren’t hurting my people, there’s no issue.” I waved aside her next words. “If they don’t like me defending myself and mine, too bad. I’ll take the fight to them. Just so you know. If you want to head home to your little palace-castle thing, you should go now.”

“I can’t. If I show myself, David will kill me. I can’t go back until he’s dead.” She turned her face aside. “I have to help you kill one of my own, and go against the Pari and the paria.”

I put a hand on her shoulder. “You could run, lay low. Use what alchemy and magic you have to hide.”

She shook her head. “No. That won’t work. I’d like to be able to go home one day, and that means I have to see him dead. And I’m limited in what I can do… limited to alchemy and tech. No magic. I can’t do it.” She sighed. “I’m in, whether I like it or not.”

I hoped she was telling the truth. For now, I’d have to trust her. I liked her, even if she was an uber. Beside me, George nodded hesitantly.

“I’m in. There’s no way I can stay out of his way. He goes down or we do.”

At that we all nodded. We needed a plan, and we needed it quick. It wouldn’t be too long before Dave tried to take the two of them out for good. And once he found out I was alive, all bets were off.

24.

It turned out more than a day had passed while I was underground. Louise confirmed reluctantly that time could pass “in a non-traditional manner, according to human standards” in the pari palace. There were also other ways in and out, but only by going over the wall or through the gate could one pass into the human world. Other ways led to parts of the ubernatural world. Which was considerably more varied than I’d ever expected. I didn’t like that much, but there wasn’t a damnable thing I could do about it.

“Dave’s got the uber – whatever it is – locked up under the palace,” I said slowly. “How can others not know about it?”

Louise shrugged. “They may. They may not care, or they may think the Pari is right and humans should be wiped out.”

“Lovely. I don’t really want a species war on my hands,” I muttered. “Is there any way to negotiate with the Pari?”

She rocked back, bursting into laughter. She laughed until tears fell from her eyes. “Really, Weasel? Would you negotiate with a chimpanzee?” The kitten on her lap abandoned her to curl up on the ottoman next to its siblings, all of them watching her closely.

I bridled at her words. George shot up from the sofa and left the room entirely. I stood to follow him. Louise caught the movement and tried to calm herself. She sniffed hard and wiped her eyes, but I did not stop. She kept breaking into giggles.

In the kitchen, George was staring out the back window. “Chimpanzees,” he repeated. “If that’s how they see us – funny little creatures in the wild or zoos – how can we succeed? They’ll come down on us like several tons of bricks.”

I bumped his shoulder with mine. “Chimps are tool-users. If a chimp had a gun, hells yes I would negotiate with it. Chimps are also intelligent and team players. They communicate, have emotions, and solve puzzles for fun.” I grinned ferally. “They can also kill to protect their own. There are worse fates than being compared to a chimp.”

He stared at me. I shrugged. “My parents love animals. How do you think I wound up with a name like Weasel?”

At that he smiled. “Fair enough.”

We made more coffee and stood at the back door looking out at the yard. After very few minutes there was silence in the living room. We didn’t go back. “You really do need new locks,” George said.

“I know. But I need a lot of other things, too. The fireplace needs help, I’d like to find some stained glass to replace the windows, and new doors, really.” I ran a hand along the counter beside me. “There’s still a lot of work to do. I’ve spent the last 5 years working on it, and I’ve still got a long way to go.” It was silly conversation, not at all important considering what was going on, but it was harmless.

“I’m jealous,” he said with a faint smile. “I’ve lived most of my life in apartments. I like this – it’s soothing. Well, except for the whole person trying to kill us thing.”

I laughed softly at that. “Truth.”

Footsteps behind us drove us back into silence. “I’m sorry,” Louise apologized. “That was uncalled for.”

I exchanged glances with George. Neither of us turned.

“I’m… I really am sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

“Because it’s how you see us,” George said, and his voice was harder than I’d heard yet. “Little more than monkeys.”

“That’s not how I see you,” Louise protested. “Just….” She trailed off into silence, unwilling to commit to an explanation.

“That’s how the pari see us. We see ubernaturals as the enemy, they see us as lower life forms,” I finished for her. “We get that. People or chimps – which side are you on?”

She blew a raspberry behind me. “There’s no good way to answer that, and you know it. I’ve already made my choices. It’s not like this is easy for me.”

“You chose to explore the human world, to use what we have to make you more powerful. Time to see if you’ve really learned anything.” George was still angry; it showed in his voice and around his eyes. I placed a hand on his arm. “It’s just hard to be thought of as a lesser species.”

“Think about how the chimps would feel about it,” I said, straight-faced.

He cocked his head at me, then sniggered. “Truth,” he said, mocking my earlier word. He turned to face Louise. I shifted to look at her as well. She was calmer now, and looked abashed. I didn’t believe it for a moment. “What now? I assume that negotiating is out.”

Louise bit her lip. “I’m afraid so,” she agreed. A hint of remorse showed in her eyes. “I really am sorry.”

“You said,” I replied. “If they won’t negotiate, that means we go back in, or lure Dave out, and kill him. That’s pretty much the only other option I can think of. We can’t get him convicted in a human court. He’d just vanish and keep sending his pet out. The pari obviously don’t care one way or the other. So we kill him.” It was their turn to be silent. I wasn’t looking forward to it, to be honest, but it was a thing that had to be done. George nodded slowly. Louise was more hesitant, but nodded as well. “First we need to find out where he is when he isn’t in the palace. If we can’t, we’re sunk. I also need my derringer back, since Dave took mine.”

George roused himself. “Right. I’ll get it. Oh, and we managed to save the paperwork at the warehouse, too.”

I could have hugged him. Instead, I rested my hand on his arm again and offered a smile. “Thank you.” He blushed and nodded before ducking out.

I prodded Louise back into the living room. George returned a moment later with piles of files. He laid them out on the ottoman. “Here. We managed to rescue almost all of it. Think that forensic accounting will come in handy?”

“Oh, yes.” I rubbed my hands together.

He laid my spare derringer on top. “And here.”

“Can we do anything to help?” Louise asked, subdued now. “Another pistol, maybe?”

I shook my head. I didn’t have time for that, unfortunately. “Grab my ammo and bring it in. If there’s anything you can think of that will help, go for it. But nothing that will draw his eye. He’s probably going to drive by a couple of times to see if anyone’s here.”

“Then we hide the suv,” George said, and grabbed keys to do just that. “Where should I put it? I know it won’t fit in the garage.”

“Go open the side gate,” I ordered Louise. “Park it around back. I’ll worry about the grass later.”

The heavy front drapes would keep him from seeing in, but if he had other ways of telling, we were screwed. I’d have to fire up the alchemical circle again and hope it held without drawing his attention. But first, I needed to sort the papers. Financial papers were all that I needed.

Forensic accounting is not as thrilling as it might seem. My heroes have always been the quiet people in the background, the ones that get the work done. People like Frank Wilson, who my mother claimed was a distant relative somehow; he’d been the one to take down Al Capone. Not Eliot Ness, but a balding revenue investigator. I even had his picture up in the home office I used only for storage. If this worked, I would move his picture to the mantle and light a candle beside it in thanks.

I parsed through records, ignoring the comings and goings of George and Louise. I did note that she was never in the house without him, as though he were keeping an eye on her. They interrupted me for lunch, but once the sandwich was gone, they vanished again.

I filled a spreadsheet with information, cross-checking and corroborating information. Normally this sort of thing would take months, but I didn’t have months. Besides, Dave wasn’t really trying to hide his money. We’d just not known this information was there. So I noted and added and moved things around until I had three locations to check. I threw my pencil across the room with a quiet victory cry. One of the kittens immediately pounced on it and started chewing. I rescued the pencil and held the kitten close. “I think we’ve got him, kiddo. We’ll get some payback for your momma’s death. And hopefully you’ll be happy here.”

I sent my three locations to my phone and got up to track down Louise and George.

25.

I wasn’t shocked to find both Louise and George in the workshop. They were working on a small series of glass flasks. George glanced up and smiled. “Making eternal flames,” he said. “I’m learning the basics of alchemy.”

“Handy,” I commented, and brandished my phone at them. “I’ve got three locations he could be – other than the palace. Anyone want to come along?”

Both of them straightened up. “Yes, yes, and yes,” Louise said. “Let me finish this real quick.” She fed small pieces of burning solid into the flasks and stoppered them. Almost immediately the flames died out. She passed one to me. “As soon as you open it, the flames will come back,” she said. “Might come in handy.”

She indicated a reinforced bag. “I found this in the miscellanea. It’s an alchemy bag – solid sides, padded, the whole bit. We can grab gear to take with, in case we need it.” She tucked one of the flasks into a padded slot. Other bottles already filled most of the locations. “We made a number of things that could be handy to have. Stuff for flames, to put out flames, to summon the winds, and to change the structure of things – rock to liquid, that sort of thing. Liquid to rock, too. Just a matter of what we need. I’ve marked them all with pictures.” She pulled one out, showed me the hand-marked label: a picture of a lumpy rock-ish shape, an arrow pointing to a drop. Rock to liquid. Okay. It would have to do. She handed me a smaller bag. “I cobbled this one together. More of the same.”

“And your ammunition,” George added, handing over the box. “Try not to use it more than you have to, obviously.” He frowned at the box. “What will happen if Dave uses your derringer or your knife?”

“The derringer? No clue. The knife? He shouldn’t be able to. I hope.” I shrugged the worries away. I’d know if he fired the derringer with my ammunition in it. Beyond that, I had no clue. Strangely, someone taking my weapons away hadn’t actually figured into my plans. I needed to revise my plans, obviously.

We hit the road, heading north into The Colony. It was one of the enclaves of the moneyed, but not the up-and-coming. It had once been far north, but was now enveloped by other cities. We wound through the streets, looking at the ever-larger houses. I made one final turn and slowed. No other traffic was on the street, so we could go as slowly as we wanted. We arced around with the street, following the elegant curve to its dead end, and the house sitting between two empty lots. Scrub and flood-plain backed up behind the lot, and the house itself looked empty.

“Here’s number one. Let’s go.”

We moved quickly – as quickly as three people who hadn’t practiced assault maneuvers can – hurrying up the walkway. A faint hesitation, like pushing through jello, made us slow, but in a heartbeat we were through. The house was no longer empty-looking. Now it was well and lushly decorated. The front door was heavy and obviously solid. We weren’t getting in that way.

I’d risk the alarms. I didn’t think Dave would bother hooking up a security system that would call the cops. He was turning out to be the guy who liked to solve his problems himself. That meant the direct way. I heaved a chunk of limestone out of the ground where it was lining out a neatly-trimmed flower bed. I heard a protest behind me, but I wasn’t stopping. George stepped up and took the stone from my hands.

“Allow me,” he said, eyes bright.

Louise giggled. “So gallant,” she teased softly.

I rolled my eyes, and George blushed. “I’m stronger,” he pointed out, and hefted the stone.

It took two blows to break the window open. We didn’t hear an alarm, but we knew if anyone was home, they’d hear. George cleared the window with a long-sleeved arm and entered. I was right at his heels, with Louise behind.

We spread out, but there were no sounds in the house. No one moving, no alarms. Every surface was dusty. We kicked up tiny dust devils as we passed through the house. We opened every drawer, every door. Even the bathroom got a thorough search. No signs that he had ever been here.

“Not a thing,” Louise said in disgust. “Not even food or toilet paper. He’s not here. Doesn’t come here.”

I shrugged. “We’ve got two more to hit. Let’s go.” I wanted to move out quickly. Dave would know someone was here, and it wouldn’t take too long for retaliation to hit.

We were gone before the house went up in flames, well down the tollway, heading east. The next location was north and east, in the remains of a tiny town north of Plano. There would be as few people about, but they were more likely to pay attention to strangers showing up in town. We’d have to be a little more subtle the second time.

Westminister had never been a large town, but it had been more than a town square and a handful of houses. Now it was just that – a biker bar, biker gear, and all about the motorcycles. A few houses fallen in due to decay and rot, and not much else. The plot that I’d found Dave’s name on was a little outside of town, a little more private. We went up a steep hill and around a curve, and there it was. I rolled into the long gravel road like I belonged there, but beside me George was checking the bag Louise had handed me. I stopped just inside the gate and turned the car off. “Time to go on foot.”

Again, the feeling of jello barring our way. We pushed through, but this time it left all of us breathless. I coughed several times, my lungs choosing now to remind me that I’d been nearly choked to death. My lungs burned, and I could see by George’s expression he wasn’t much better off. Louise gagged once or twice, but still managed to pat me firmly on the back until I waved for her to stop, arcing my back to get away.

“I think he’s here,” she whispered.

The building here was more of a castle-in-progress, walls going up at haphazard rates, gaping holes where doors should hang, and doors stacked up against stone walls waiting to plug those holes. I halted us among the underbrush, looking for signs of movement – builders, Dave, guards, anything. I pulled the hood of my hoodie up to hide my face – the green and black should blend in with the background colors easily enough – and blinked in shock.

Half-seen figures moved about, transferring insubstantial worked stone from place to place. I felt my eyebrows shoot towards my hairline and turned to face Louise. “You see that?”

She nodded. “Lesser pani. Workers. Ghost builders.”

“What are you talking about?” George asked in a hiss.

“There’s… something there. Moving ghostly stone,” I said.

Louise nodded. “You can’t see them, because you’ve not interacted with our… with the ubernatural world. The lesser pani are laborers. They create structures in their realm, and then release them into ours. It’s a much faster way of building.”

“That makes no sense,” George grumbled.

“Anything else does, recently?” I snarked back. “Why does it take the hood being up? I couldn’t see them before.”

She shrugged. “Don’t know. Worry about it later?”

“Sure.”

The winds kicked up, and we ducked down. I held onto the hood, trying to keep an eye on the workers. They were entirely unaffected by the wind. A quick glance up showed clouds to the north, black as they could be. Looked like summer was about to be over, and about time. The breeze made things less muggy, and might just help cover the noise of our advance.

A door already in place opened and Dave came out. He looked around as though searching. None of us moved, frozen in place as though turned to stone. I could almost see him squinting. He knew we were here – or he knew someone had breached his barrier. I readied my derringer. He wasn’t getting away from me this time. I’d have to get a lot closer, but I was willing to do that.

He stooped stiffly, holding one hand to his side, and drew on the ground, drawing through the workmen. They seemed unaffected at first, but I saw one stagger and collapse under the stone. The stone became fully solid, half-buried in the ground. Dave did not even look. The other workmen did not alter their paths. “Can they not see him?” I whispered.

“No,” Louise whispered back. “They’re like trained animals who happen to be good at building. They don’t think on their own, they aren’t that self-aware.”

Whatever Dave drew on the ground glowed fire-bright for an instant. Three more workmen vanished. A hole opened up in the ground. Dave beckoned savagely, calling forth a reluctant something.

Wing-tips appeared first. A full spread of feathered wings, and a cockscomb of garish red. The uber. He’d called the uber out. I didn’t know if it would recognize me, or if it would even make a difference, but I had to stop both the uber and Dave. The only advantage I had was that he might have actually been injured when I fought him. The way he was holding himself, I’d managed to nick him more than a little. I grinned.

“Let’s do it.” I moved to ease closer, but the uber reared up and took to the air. “Oop. Time to book!” I charged Dave. I danced between the workmen – no need to make their lives any weirder than they were, and I really didn’t want them passing through me. Dave threw himself awkwardly to one side, landing hard. I stood over him, the derringer ready to fire. I squeezed the trigger. A loud pop, and a feeling of being punched in the gut. Dave wailed with pain. *MORE*

I charged, dodging between workmen. The uber flared up, a burst of heat spreading out. The dinosaur-ish head whipped about and locked on me. Dave barked out a command, and it fell forward onto all fours, the wing-arms propelling it swiftly along the ground.

It flowed through the workmen without slowing, and they did react to it, throwing themselves aside. Those that failed were trampled, or became suddenly solid. I raised my derringer to fire, only to be bowled over by the creature. I rolled, trying to avoid being flattened. There wasn’t time to get off a shot.

I heard a yell; Louise’s voice. Her form hurtled across the open space between trees and castle. The uber scraped me aside and lunged for her.

26.

The uber’s tail struck me, knocking me further aside. I rolled through workmen, who were now panicking. I staggered to my feet, spinning to look for either Dave or the uber.

Dave was fleeing, heading for the gaping hole that the uber had come out of. I ran after him, scrabbling for a weapon. The derringer was gone, and my hand ached. I tackled him before he reached the hole. He kicked back, catching me hard on the top of my shoulder. I let go, and he rolled into the hole, dropping away.

Screaming drew me upright again, spun me around. Louise was confronting the uber, flinging bottles of some alchemy at it. It stood on its hind legs, rearing up and spreading wing-arms out. Its head cocked and struck out, but it did not bite. Instead, it hissed at her, and she froze. I watched as her skin grayed.

Another bottle slammed into the uber’s face, splattering Louise as well. She fell back, dropping to the ground on her back, the scream dying off. It was too similar to what Mike had sounded like. I charged the uber from behind, striking it between the wings. It went back down on all fours and turned to face me. Over its back I saw George dragging Louise away. It lashed out again with its head, trying to knock me over. I ducked, and rose to meet it eye to eye. It met my glare with one of its own. When it reared up again, I ducked low and charged. It flailed with its wing-arms to keep its balance. The heat was spreading fast, and I expected to be flambéed any second.

“No more,” I growled. “You take no more people.” I swung the alchemy bag at the creature, and it shrieked. The glass in the bag shattered with a crunch. The bag itself burst into flame, splattering everything, including the uber and me, with fire. I dropped to the ground again, and the other bottles went off. The uber screamed louder and ran over me. The flames were doused, the heat gone.

“Weasel! Get up! Move!” George’s voice drew me back to my hands and knees. I threw myself towards his voice, felt hands grab me and drag me back towards the scrub line. Branches tangled in my hair, but I didn’t care.

“Where is it? Where did it go?” I demanded.

“Back down the hole. Back where it came from,” he answered. He pulled me upright against his body. “It’s gone. Dave’s gone.”

“damnit. We didn’t get either of them?”

“You wounded both of them,” he said. “They’re on the run. Whatever you did to the uber, it left in a hurry.” I finally wiped dirt and goo from my face. The workers were gone, too, the stones they’d been moving now abandoned and solid. The castle was already beginning to lean precariously. Several corpses, skin gray and cold-looking, lay among the scattered stones. The hole was gone.

“What about Louise? Where is she? And what happened to the hole?” I tried to twist around to look, but my ribs protested the movement. I’d had better days, that was for sure.

“I’m here.” Her voice was quiet, and pained. I nudged George, and he turned so I could see her. Slowly I pulled away and dropped down beside her.

“What happened?”

She gave me a wan smile. “Well, I can tell you what kind of creature it is.” She shivered, her skin still pale, with a gray cast. I put hand out to touch her arm, found it smooth and cold. “It looks like a phoenix, but it’s also part cockatrice.” She put a hand to her now-purple hair, which broke off and clattered to the ground as purple stone dust.

“Are you… how?”

“George doused me with the stone to liquid. Apparently it was enough to break the cockatrice’s gaze and keep me from turning entirely to stone.” She gave me a wry grin. “I can still move… it’s just hard. I feel weird. And I guess I get that haircut I’ve been avoiding.”

“We need to get her back to the house,” George insisted.

“No.” the protest came from Louise. “I’m still alive, and I’m moving. We can deal with it afterwards. Right now, we need to get him. If I’m right, he went back to the palace. There won’t be any luring him out. He knows Weasel’s alive, and knows she still has help. We can’t waste time trying to find a cure right now.” She frowned at both of us. “Besides, now I’m angry. He doesn’t care who he hurts. He killed pani workmen, and would have let it kill me. He doesn’t care.”

I stifled my sigh. If my day was bad, Louise’s had gone straight to terrible. She was allowed the moment of casual arrogance. Humans might not matter to her, but the other members of the uber world… at least she now understood how dangerous Dave was. “Let’s search the castle before it falls down completely. Maybe we’ll find something to help.”

George helped lever Louise back to her feet and we all staggered through an open doorway. The rooms beyond were only half built. It was a maze, a labyrinth built by mad ants, with no reason to it. Doors stood where one day there might be stone walls, and a roaring fire waited for a chimney that now wouldn’t be built. Furniture sat in tidy arrangements in the middle of empty spaces, on bare grass, and bookshelves leaned haphazardly where walls should have supported them. One bookcase had half a wall and part of a staircase behind it.

Louise pointed stiffly at another open doorway. “There.” I would say her voice was gravelly, but that would be unkind. I ducked my head until I could lose the grin. We entered without checking things out – a stupid, amateur move that cost us.

Three men were working behind a full-sized wall. They saw us and immediately drew… sticks? Wands? Itty bitty wooden sticks? I shrugged and once more leapt to the offense. The first one went down to a single punch. The second went down hard when George hit him with both fists. The third tried to bolt, but Louise blocked his way and let him stun himself against her stone-like body. I finished him off by slapping his head into the wall.

“What are those?” I demanded, toeing a stick.

“Enta,” Louise said. “Like wands, but they just focus… nature?”

“Those little sticks?”

“Yes.” Louise lowered herself to the floor with a groan. “I gotta lose weight,” she moaned. “This is ridiculous. And while I love purple, the whole purple stone hair thing? This sucks.”

“Can anyone use an enta?”

She shook her head slowly. “No. You have to be connected to nature to use an ente. A pari or one of the other higher races.” She shrugged at our looks. “That’s what we’ve always referred to ourselves as. What do you want me to do about it?”

I shrugged. “Fair enough. So useless to us. Just twigs.” At her nod I stepped down on the closest one and broke it. There was a decent amount of alchemical gear spread in this area, but no books, nothing that would prove a guide to us, nothing that would offer a hint as to how to turn Louise back from stone.

“We don’t need to waste any more time. He’ll come back,” she said. “Please, let’s just go.” She ran a gray hand up her arm. “Please. If it comes back, I don’t know what will happen.”

The concern and outright worry in her voice made us collect what we could and head out. “What now? We can’t go home,” George said. “We can’t just wait around.”

Louise shook her head. “Right now, we call the people we care about and tell them to get out for a few days. Then we go to Maypearl and get inside the palace.”

“I thought you weren’t allowed back?” I asked, helping her walk slowly.

“I’m not. But only the Pari can help me – he’s got access to more magic than anyone else. If I can get in and show what Dave has done, he’ll be more likely to help me out. And maybe even stop Dave.”

It took three tries to get her into the suv, and I tried not to wince at how low my poor vehicle sat. George rested a hand on my back. “You okay?”

I stretched, wincing at the new ache in my shoulder. “Been better,” I answered. “But in the grand scheme of things, I’m okay. Thanks for the quick thinking with the alchemy.”

He rubbed my back. “I wish I’d been faster. I can’t believe this stuff is real. I mean, I knew it, but this is way more than I ever expected. I’m not letting an uber kill anybody else. They took my wife, and that’s all I’m giving them.” The hand at my back turned into a fist before it vanished, leaving a cool spot where there had been warmth. He climbed into the passenger side and closed the door firmly.

I slid behind the steering wheel, wishing there were time – time to plan, to arm ourselves, to gather allies. But we had none of that. We had to get Dave before he got us. That was what it all boiled down to now. Us versus him.

We left without looking back. A quick stop for drinks and gas, and we rolled out one last time. We didn’t have much choice now. We’d hit the pari palace, and either succeed in killing Dave and the uber, or we’d die. Either way, this would end it. Either way, tomorrow would be a vastly different day.

I found myself wishing I’d found a better home for the kittens. Maybe family would drop by and find them if I didn’t come back.

27.

We didn’t have to waste time making a plan. It would be simple – get in, find Dave, kill him, kill the uber, and get out. Simple plan, impossible execution. We made it to the highway before the rain caught up, driving us further south with its fury. I couldn’t worry about anything but traffic; Dallas in the rain makes for entertaining driving. People either go the typical ten miles over the speed limit, or settle down to a crawl of 15 under. I was one of the former today. We flew through the downtown traffic, slithering into whatever holes in traffic I could find. Hopefully we’d beat the worst gridlock. Louise’s shifting moved the suv, but I couldn’t exactly complain. Not unless it made us change lanes; then we’d have it out. As if she knew what I was thinking, she scooted to the middle of the seat and slumped. I nodded at her in the rearview mirror, and she gave me a wan smile. George clung to his seatbelt with his eyes closed, but made no complaints.

It’s usually an hour and a half without traffic to get from Westminster to Waxahachie, but this time we had plenty of traffic to deal with, and weather. I made it in two hours flat, leaving a lot of swearing drivers behind me.

Two hours gave Dave plenty of time to plan, to hide, to find another hideout. We were assuming he’d go to the palace. I hoped we were right. I slowed as we hit Maypearl.

“Where to? I wasn’t driving last time.”

Louise nodded, cracking a grin. She directed me towards our goal, and before I knew it – and well before I was mentally prepared – we were back on the dirt road where they’d picked me up. I tucked the suv among the scrub as best I could, and locked it tight once everyone was out. Between the scrub and the rain, it was fairly well hidden. Not that it would make much of a difference, but it made me feel better. Louise led the way, squishing through the uneven ground. Her footsteps would be easy to track. I needn’t have bothered hiding the suv. George followed my gaze and snorted softly. Stealthy we were not. It took all three of us to get Louise out of the streambed. What had been a dry bed was now running fast. While Louise served as an excellent anchor to keep up from being washed away, she couldn’t get out of the creek on her own. We struggled and fought, eventually wearing a groove in the ground that she was able to ooze up. George and I were soaked through by the time we managed to get her on level ground again. Louise herself was only moderately wet, a slightly darker gray.

“Next time we try something like this, we bring rope,” Louise muttered. “All good adventurers have rope.”

“I’ll remember that,” George promised, and I settled for shaking the water out of my eyes. There wouldn’t be a next time. There might not even be a this time, if we didn’t get a move on. We were running out of time, and we were in the open.

“Where’s the palace?” George asked in a whisper. Looking ahead, all I could see was a small house with a barbed wire fence ahead. Since I hadn’t looked back when I was running away, I couldn’t tell him anything.

Louise bent over, breathing hard. “It’s there,” she said. “There’s a glamor over it right now. Once we get closer it should fade. You might put your hood up, see if that helps,” she told me. “It did before.”

I pulled the hood up, regretting it almost immediately. Wet hair under a wet hood. But looking back up proved it did make a difference. What had been a house was now a palatial estate with a great bloody wall where the barbed wire fence had been. Stinkin’ glamor. The wall was solid, vast, and gray, with overtones of that blasted purple to it. I was getting tired of that color.

The only gate was guarded by a gatehouse, and I could see several guards patrolling. No one had noticed us yet; for all I knew, they normally ignored humans and other ‘subnatural’ creatures. To my surprise, Louise led us to a path heading straight to the gatehouse. The guards straightened up and watched us warily. Louise pounded on the gate.

“I demand entry, succor in time of need, home for one who has no home!” From the formality, I guessed the words were rote, meant as an opening gambit.

My hunch was proved correct by the response. “You seek succor, you who left us in a time of want, and you seek home, who abandoned your home? Rash child, young one, you make demands when you should appeal. You bring enemies to our gates, and demand we permit them enter?”

She placed both hands flat against the gate. I wondered what George was seeing, but he kept his eyes on the ground. Louise’s voice was stronger, louder. “I do demand. I will not appeal, nor will I beg. I demand entry, demand the right of a victim to face her attacker before the Pari, to battle if necessary. I demand this, and I bring with me my seconds, those who have assisted and protected me.” She looked up through a slit in the ceiling above us and spoke more quietly. “And Carine, if you don’t let me in, I will announce to all who can hear my voice exactly how the tree is tamed, and how many you have helped over the wall against the will of the Pari.”

Whispered words drifted down to us. “She gave a valid reason,” one hissed. “I’m letting her in.” I guessed it was the apparently-cowed Carine. Either way, a series of heavy clanks sounded from behind the gate, and it slowly swung open.

I was not at all surprised to find a small flock of military-looking individuals waiting for us. Louise frowned at them. “What?” they shifted nervously once they got a look at her, but did not break and run.

“You are to come before the Pari. Your companion will be detained.”

“No. We all go together,” she said.

“Very well. You and your sister may bring the sub, if it is needful.”

Sister? Before I could open my mouth, George nudged me with his shoulder. Louise was looking at me fiercely. Oh. The glamor somehow made them think I was one of them. Worked for me. Wasn’t going to argue it.

We were surrounded and marched with decent haste through the same marble halls I’d seen earlier.***MARBLE HALLS, PARI = DEAD PEOPLE???***** George started, earning a shove from behind.

“What the hells?”

“See it now?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s… lovely, in a creepy kind of way.” I couldn’t argue it, so I didn’t bother. A gentler hand at my back propelled me on. They were being kinder to their own, from their point of view. George, as a subnatural, didn’t count. We’d see about that. “Still got the bag?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” I risked a smile at him. He brightened.

Instead of down, we went up several levels. I hadn’t seen any of the new floors, but they looked almost exactly like the other floors. Marble, with long open hallways and open doorways into lush but bland rooms. So much marble and stone, with carvings deep in every surface. Some of them were alchemical in nature, but many of them I didn’t recognize. The stairs were long-used, with smooth spots worn on the edge of each step, evidence of years and years of use. It was the home of the rich and powerful, who never had to replace anything. They had everything they needed. These were the true old money – so rich they never bought anything, because they had it all. Nothing here would age any faster than the marble, I guessed. There was no telling how old Louise truly was, or how old she would grow to be.

We were deposited on benches outside the only closed door on the level. The door itself was dark and heavy wood, smoothed almost to satin with the touch of years and years of hands. Here and there small spots of metal dotted the surface. Each spot, the size of a large nail head, had a symbol engraved into it. Many were worn almost completely away. Others looked brand-new, the etching deep and sharp. Every one of the new ones was marked with the same symbol, a snake rearing to strike.

“What’re those?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

“Symbols of the Pari. The newest one has an asp for his symbol,” Louise whispered back. Well, if that wasn’t just the most comforting thing I’d ever heard.

I sighed. “Great. I am guessing you have a plan?”

“Yeah. Throw myself on pari law, and face my attacker. That should give us a chance at Dave.” She shrugged. “I don’t know how else to find him.”

“Great. This is shaping up to be an absolutely fabulous day.” I held up a hand when she started to protest. “No, it’s a good idea, and a hell of a lot better than just wandering around trying to find him.” I slouched against George, ready to spend some time waiting. “What about you, George? Eager to write this book still?”

He laughed softly. “Not the way I’d intended to, no. But it would make one whale of a tale. I’d have to write it as fiction, though. No one would believe it.” He patted my shoulder. “I don’t know that I’ll get the chance, but thanks for thinking about it.”

I put my hand over his. “We’ll manage,” I said, and nothing more.

28.

I don’t know how long we waited. After a while Louise broke out her phone and started playing games. George, spurred to motion, got out his own. He snapped photos of our surroundings. I didn’t know if any of them would be decent shots, or even reveal anything at all, but it kept him occupied. He didn’t seem overly concerned, so it might just be something for him to do to pass the time.

I continued to slouch against him; he was warm against my back, and the warmth felt good. I sat up at that thought. I’d avoided warmth since Mike’s death. My showers were lukewarm at best, my clothes air-dried, my coffee room temperature or iced. Warmth and heat were things to be avoided. But now I was soaking it up like some touch-starved dog.

He put his phone down and looked at me. “You okay?”

I forced myself to sit upright. “Fine. Just… fine.” I knew it wouldn’t tell him anything, and might make him wonder, but this was hardly the time and place to discuss history and my worries about warmth. I knew the fear of heat was irrational after so many years, but it was also a hard habit to shake. I shivered as I sat up, wondering why they kept things so cool in this palace. Maybe the pari weren’t worried about the cold marble floors and walls, but it was getting downright unpleasant in here.

“The Pari is coming.” Louise put her phone up and straightened up. “He’s not happy.”

“Is that why it’s getting colder in here?” George asked, shivering beside me.

She nodded. “He’s very unhappy.”

“Great.”

The doors opened, the metal pieces popping from the cold. Three guards in deep blood red coats marched out and stamped to stand before us. We rose without argument. They fell in around us, one leading the way, one in the back, and the other to our left.

“Well, this is dramatic,” George muttered.

“Just remember the details for your book,” I muttered back at him.

The guards didn’t bother to tell us to be silent; we found out why as we entered. What we’d assumed was a throne room of sorts turned out to be an arena, complete with tiers upon tiers of seating that made me dizzy to look on. There was no way this was real – even glamor couldn’t do this – there had to be another way to explain where we were and what I was seeing.

The crowds were gathered, chattering noisily, dressed in the garb of thousands of cultures, and combinations of them. It was a riot of color and movement and distraction, with a loud roar of voices that half-deafened me. The guards led us to the center of the arena. They let us cluster together and then just evaporated in puffs of cold air. Even Louise twitched, her shoulder knocking against mine.

“What’s going on?”

“I thought we’d be allowed to talk to the Pari first… and maybe we will,” she said. “But we’re in the challenge pit, so we may not get to plead our case.”

“Lovely. What do we have for weapons?”

“I’ve got the bag. There’s still some flasks in here,” George offered. “And my phone, and my keys, whatever use they may be.”

“Phone, bag, tablet, lots of tech but nothing in the way of weapons. Except me,” Louise added.

We were in trouble. I wasn’t going to assume they’d arm us for this. Even if they did, what were the odds we could use whatever weapons they did offer?

Three loud thumps echoed throughout the arena. Gradually the crowd grew silent, and all faces turned to one end of the oval arena. A viewing box was set aside for someone important – and now that person was standing to talk. He wasn’t important-looking, just a guy, with a pug face and lanky hair that looked like someone had tried to braid him cornrows and failed miserably. He held up one hand and the last of the noise cut off sharply.

“Loycia. You demanded entry. Demanded the right to face he who has done this to you. I grant you that right. The right shall be judged now.”

“Oh, crap.” Louise took a step forward. “Pari! I would speak!”

“No. You have violated the trust of your people. Earn it back.” His voice was colder than the air around us, and almost immediately half of the crowd took to catcalling.

That only half did impressed me. Maybe we stood a vague, half-assed chance after all. The woman in the hall had said that not everyone approved of the new Pari. Well, that he did not speak for everyone, at least.

“Dayvith. Come forth with your seconds.”

No gates opened, no doors appeared. But in a heartbeat we’d gone from three people in the middle of the arena to five people and the uber. “Scatter!” George snapped, and we did.

“Don’t let it look you in the eyes!” Louise screamed. “Cockatrice!”

It wasn’t going to be a fair set of fights, no one-on-one politeness. No, this was going to be a beat-down whoever is closest and work down the list kind of fight. A true melee, beating the crap out of whatever or whoever was closest. Worked for me. I knew Dave – dirty fighter and planner – and I could guess the uber. That left the newcomer, the one I hadn’t seen before. He was wearing a hood and gloves, and I was really only guessing at gender. He, for lack of a more definite term, charged after Louise. George took off after them.

That left the uber and Dave to me. Hooray. But taking Dave out might just confuse the uber. After all, it hadn’t hurt me before. Not seriously. I had to ignore it as much as possible to kill Dave. I had nothing but a phone and keys, and a rock. It would have to suffice.

Dave was busy issuing commands to the uber, propelling it toward me. I held my ground. It was faster than me. I couldn’t avoid it. I whipped my phone out of my pocket and flung it at the uber. It struck it in the head, and it paused. That moment was what I needed. I rushed past it and flung myself at Dave. He dodged. I followed. He continued to call out in a language I didn’t know. I didn’t care; I just had to shut him up.

My phone was gone, so I was down to keys, stone and me. I heard the uber chitter-squall behind me. Dave’s eyes flickered to the side. I dived and got him around the knees. The uber’s head struck over me, jaws closing on air. Dave rolled, at the same time kicking at me. I crawled up his legs and elbowed him in the gut. He huffed into silence. A roar went up from the crowd. I rolled over to put Dave on top of me. The uber’s talons scraped down his back. His eyes bugged out.

He raised up enough to drive his forehead into mine. I saw stars and lost my grip. He rose up, going for a weapon. I kicked out at one of the versions of him that I could see, sweeping my leg. He danced back. I scrambled to my feet and put my back against the wall.

Dave snapped a command to the uber, which turned away to attack one of the others. My vision was clearing, but not fast enough. Something glinted in his hand; I made a guess at knife. He got hold of my hoodie and dragged me away from the wall. I wrapped both hands around his other arm. I needed control of that knife.

“You’re going to die, Weasel,” he announced. “Then I will tend to your friends!”

I gave up on breaking free. I pushed off the ground, getting just enough height to kick him in the gut with both feet. He dropped me; I hit the wall again, but stayed upright. If anything, my head was clearer now.

Clear enough to see that my friends were in trouble. Dave recovered first and stabbed at me. He missed, the blow glancing off the hoodie. I whipped the hood back; I needed vision more than anything else. The crowd erupted again, louder than ever. Apparently they had still been under the impression I was one of them. Now the tide of the audience was turning against us.

I ducked under the knife blow. I slammed my body against Dave’s. He fell back, but kept his grip on the blade. I twisted away, but he grabbed my hair and dragged me back. Haircut. I needed a haircut. I went with the pull, but this time he spun me around, avoiding the kick. He put the knife to my neck and turned me to face the combat. “Look at that,” he purred into my ear. “Your friends are going to die. Once they do, you’ll be proof in my arguments that we need to take the humans out, kill them all. We don’t need them. This was once our land, and it will be again. It won’t be that hard. I’ve bred the cockatrice and the phoenix, I’ve learned to control it. I can lead his armies across the globe.” The uber was advancing on my friends. They were pinned down by the other pari, who was wielding an ente against them. The sheer energy of it could be felt from across the arena. “You’re going to watch them die, turned to stone and then crushed.”

29.

Cockatrice. Phoenix. Both the heat and the stone made sense. I dipped a hand into my hoodie’s pocket and grasped the piece of stone I’d managed to hang onto. I couldn’t shove it down the uber’s throat maybe, but it would still be useful. I dragged it out, making sure it was partially concealed in my fist. I needed as much force as I could get. Assuming I could get this done without slitting my own throat.

I felt the knife press harder against my throat. I jerked my fist up, stone protruding beside my thumb. I was aiming for his eye. By a freak miracle, I hit it. He yanked back. I thought I was done for. The knife dropped out of his hand and he staggered back, swearing in several languages. I ducked for the knife and took off running. I’d faced down the blasted thing at least four times in my life. It wasn’t going to kill me now.

I slammed into the uber. It squalled again and went over, thrashing on the ground. One wing beat at me. I kicked it hard, and something in the wing snapped. The uber whined and turned attack into escape.

The other pari turned on me, swinging the ente about. As he did, he pulled back his hood. “Heya, Weasel.”

All my forward momentum died. “Mike?”

He grinned at me, that same infuriating grin, that same quirk of the eyebrows. “Long time no see, huh?”

I was stunned, unable to move, like I’d been turned to stone. “Whatthebloodybluehells?” He reached out to me, and for a split second I gravitated toward him. I jerked back at the last second. “Glamor.”

“Oh, no, Weasie,” he said, still grinning. “I’m all me. I’m like Dave and Louise. All pari, all the time. Always was.” He dropped his hand. “Come here, woman.” It was what he said every time he wanted to kiss me.

George appeared beside him, grabbed him by the face and slammed him into the ground. I snapped out of it.

Dave was striding across the dark soil of the arena. The uber was limping towards us, and Mike struggled to his feet. I tapped Louise and swapped sides with her. George was bloodied, his eyes wild. I handed him the knife, hoping it would be enough. “Take it,” I said. He nodded and accepted it, shifting it in his much larger hand. We were all bloody now except Louise, and even she had some dark substance drooling down her side. I moved first, impatience driving me forward. The uber reared up. I got up close to it again, ignoring the heat of its body, and thrust its head up. It writhed, but I held on, keeping it from locking eyes with anyone.

The crowd above us screamed, the tone shifting from bloody murder to fear. I didn’t look; I couldn’t, but it couldn’t be good. I felt the cold of the guards arriving; they poked down at both the uber and me with spears. I let go of the uber to grasp at a spearhead and yank. The guard wavered, over-balanced, and dropped into the arena with us. I snatched the spear from his hand and backed away. The guard raised up and met the uber’s eyes. Both froze for a moment, and then the guard’s skin grayed. He stiffened, turning to stone. The uber lashed out with its good wing-arm and the stone shattered, sending pieces across the arena. The screaming grew louder. I could hear the echo of the Pari’s voice, calling for more guards. Despite our situation, I smirked. Looked like they were learning just how little control Dave really had.

I turned the spear’s point toward the uber just as it dropped back to the ground. It smacked me with the side of its head, pushing me to one side like a playful horse, but it was all teeth and murderous intent. Once again our eyes met, and I remembered Louise’s warning. But too late. I couldn’t tear my gaze away. I felt something stirring, almost like glitter rising in a breeze, but nothing more. I didn’t stiffen, I didn’t turn to stone, living or otherwise. I stabbed at the uber, drawing blood, and it yanked back. I followed, plying the spear as much like a stick as anything else.

“Weasel!”

I turned. George was holding his own against Dave for the moment, but Louise was losing ground. I swung at the uber one more time before sprinting away. It roared and followed. I managed to get a smack in at Dave as I raced past. George actually had a moment to laugh. He followed through with a kick that knocked Dave into the uber’s path. It trampled right over him, driving him into the torn-up dirt.

I jabbed forward with the spear, missing Mike’s arm. He ripped away from me, right into Louise’s stone-hard fist. He reeled back towards me. I swung the spear like a baseball bat, connecting with his head. He went down hard, the crack echoing even over the screaming of the crowd. We turned to face the remaining two enemies. Dave was back up on his feet. George still had the knife, but it didn’t seem to be doing him any good.

I ducked the uber again, and Louise once again swung. She connected with its neck. I heard bones break, and it flopped. A sad croak came out of its mouth. For a moment I felt sorry for it. I edged closer, and it bit at me. I kicked it hard in the snout. It stilled.

Louise, panting hard, shoved past me. Above us, the audience was going quiet. We’d downed two of them, and all three of us were still standing. Even as I thought it, even as I fought to get enough air to continue the fight, George went down. Still the audience was muted. The knife skittered away across the ground. Dave ducked under Louise’s arm and dived for the knife. He rose with it in his hands. Louise plowed into him, knocking him back over. He rolled with it, coming up just as I got to him. He lunged at me, driving the knife forward. I couldn’t stop, couldn’t get the spear in the way, couldn’t block.

Dave yelled in triumph as I doubled over. I collapsed to the ground, sinking to my knees in the thick soil. I gagged for air, wondering why it wasn’t the sharp pain of a stab. My hands were clasped over my wound, and they were cold, not coated in hot blood. Something wasn’t quite right.

I wasn’t bleeding.

George and Louise both cried out, but George was the only one to act. He rushed Dave from behind, lifting him bodily off the ground. With a toss, Dave flew to land on the uber, which only squeaked. George dropped to his knees beside me. “Weasel!”

I risked a glance up. His eyes were wide. I managed a smile for him. I wasn’t bleeding. I wasn’t dying. I’d taken the equivalent of a hard punch, and I’d be sore in the morning, but I was still alive. “Help me up,” I hissed.

He obeyed, worry turning to confusion. My hand closed on the spear at the last minute. I thrust it into his hands. “Here. You’ll need this.” I saw the knife, unattended, and gestured for it as I rose. He released me for one perilous moment and retrieved it. He pressed it into my hand and then pulled me close against him.

I straightened, and there was silence in the arena above us. Dave rolled off the uber and slapped Mike back to his feet. They glanced up and stilled.

I looked down at the knife. It was my knife. The knife I’d labored over for months, gathered blood for over two years’ time. The knife that I’d hammered all my anger and my vengeance and my loss into. The knife that alchemy said would work for no one but me. I’d risked so much on it. It worked.

Louise shambled over to join us. “What happened?”

Above us, the pari viewers were beginning to ask the same thing. I shifted my grin to her. “I’m fine,” I said. “No injuries.”

I flipped the knife in my hand, showing off just a little. Louise began to laugh – a little hysterically, perhaps, but enough to silence the watchers. George looked at her with worry, but neither of us wanted to slap sense into her. “Louise?”

“Oh, oh… I get it. I just get it.” She pointed at the uber. It still twitched on the dirt, and I felt sorry for it. “It can’t hurt you. It never will. It can’t.”

“Why?” George asked, showing remarkable patience.

Dave and Mike were listening, too. I saw it in their eyes. They stopped moving to hear her out.

“Don’t you know? No, no, you don’t.” Her hysteria calmed somewhat. “There’s only one animal immune to the cockatrice’s gaze. Every creature has a weakness, and the cockatrice can only be defeated by one animal.” She hiccupped. “The cockatrice can only be defeated by a weasel!” She smothered her giggles in her hands.

George cocked his head to one side, as though reconsidering slapping her. I sighed. “Don’t put that in your book.”

He laughed outright. “I am SO putting that in my book,” he snarked back.

I rolled my eyes. Mike stepped forward in front of Dave. “Weasel. Can we talk?”

“No. I thought you were dead. Min thought you were dead. Your kids think you’re dead!”

He shrugged. “My kids are here with me. I had to leave them with Min for a while, but they came to me recently.” He gestured up the audience. “They’re watching. They always liked you, Weasel. Always. Way more than Min. They always wanted you for a mother.”

George and Louise both stared at me. “You? And him?” Louise said.

I stepped closer. “I missed you for a long time, Mike,” I said. “Poured all my grief, and my shame, and my hurt into making something that would avenge you. Something that could never be taken away from me, never used against me. I thought you loved me like that – without limits.”

“I do,” he said, grinning. “Always have.” He shimmered briefly. Glamor. He was trying to make himself more appealing.

“No. You’re just trying to fool me.” I jammed the knife into his midsection, angled up. He fell forward, doubled over the blade. I shoved harder, twisted, and yanked the blade out. It came out smeared with blood. “You fooled me before, lied to me all along, just like you lied to Min, and to everyone else. You’re a coward.” I’d been a coward, hiding grief behind vengeance. I’d never seen how little I really mattered to him. Not until now. He was the distraction, so Dave could attack. I swung hard, punching him with all my strength. It hurt like hades, but he went down and stayed down.

30.

Dave grabbed for my wrist, twisting the knife away from himself. Then George and Louise were with me, and between us, we overwhelmed him. It was no time before he was on the ground, hogtied with George’s belt. He was alive, but I had no intention of leaving him that way.

“He should stand trial,” George insisted.

“He is,” Louise answered. “Right now. Right here. If he lives, he’s innocent.”

George frowned at her. “Harsh.”

She shrugged. “Truth. They’ll let him go. Do you think human law will convict him? Even if it did, think it could hold him?”

He shook his head slowly. “No. There’s no way.” Dave wriggled under his hands, growling. “And then he’d come back after us.” The look on Dave’s face told us George was correct.

The crowd around us was still silent, their amusement long gone. It was finally occurring to them that we were not easy pickings, maybe. Or maybe they were just waiting for the final blow. I turned my eyes to the arena, saw people lining the walls, watching closely. A glance at the Pari showed a man who was not at all interested, outwardly. He made no gestures, made no effort to end anything. This was to the death, then.

I turned the knife in my hands. The lives of my friends depended on his death. The lives of anyone who offended him depended on his death. Didn’t mean it would be easy.

George put a hand on my shoulder. “Let me.” He shifted his grip on the spear. “You’ve had to do enough.” The spear was sharp, and Dave’s flesh parted easily enough. He cried out at the pain. Louise and I stood and watched, refusing to look away. George drove the spear up into Dave’s body, angling upwards as I had against Mike. The crack of breaking bone startled me, but I held my ground. Dave gagged and fought to get away. Louise put her foot on his leg, trapping him in place. The pari above us moaned when his breathing slowed. One last thrust from George drove the spear point out Dave’s back with another popping sound, and into the dirt beyond.

I stepped over Dave then, made my way to Mike. He was still alive, but fading fast, and I crouched down before him. “I loved you,” I whispered. “Once upon a time. Isn’t that how fairy tales start?” I felt my lip curl. “I guess this one ends now. No happily ever after. Just… once upon a time.” I shifted to sit down and wait for his death. It didn’t take long.

When he was gone, I stood and walked to flop down beside the uber. I’d hated it for so long, and it was just a trained animal. Not the uber’s fault at all. I stroked its unbroken wing. “Sorry,” I whispered. “You’re the only one I’m sorry about.” The warmth was fading fast, and it did not move under my hand. All the hate and love had been for the wrong creatures.

On impulse I stripped several feathers from the wing and held them tightly in my fist. It would remind me in the future not to judge ubers. Only then did I stand and turn to face the Pari.

“It’s done,” I called, and my words echoed.

Only then did he stand and nod. “Loycia. You have proven your attacker guilty.” I rolled my eyes; he was going to completely ignore me. I guess given that I wasn’t pari, I didn’t matter to him.

She and George came to flank me. “And re-earned my place here?” she demanded.

There was a long hesitation before he spoke again. “No. You brought subs into our midst, disguising one of them as pari. You have cast your allegiance with the subnaturals.”

“What??”

I put a hand on her arm. “Wait.”

“However,” the Pari continued, as though no one had interrupted him. “We will permit you access to the byways and travel paths, so long as you show them not to the subs.”

“What about this?” Louise demanded, spreading her arms out. “I’ve been turned to living stone! Because of him! I demand reparations!”

Several mutters started in the audience, but I wasn’t able to tell if they were supporting Louise or not. The Pari cocked his head, listening to the whispers. The arena grew colder again. “You demand?” he asked. “You, of lowly birth and lower kin, demand from me? You demand, who violated our laws?”

“I am victor of the battle!” Louise yelled back. “Yes, I demand!”

The Pari turned away, flicking out a hand. A single man appeared beside us. He held his empty hands out before him. “I am unarmed,” he said quickly. “The Pari sends me to do what may be done.”

“What do you mean what may be done?” George asked.

The man ignored him, running hands down Louise’s shoulders. He withdrew an ente from somewhere in his long drab coat. He ran it down Louise’s arm, frowning. “This cannot be undone by our magics.”

“Why not?” I asked, and to my surprise, he actually answered.

“Because this is subnatural alchemy. This is not our way. This is… both magic and alchemy, and there is little I can do.”

“What can you do?” Louise asked, and there was an air of pleading about her now.

He concentrated on her, turning the ente sideways and rolling it along her body, top to toe. Louise held still, almost breathless. Gradually her hair faded to natural, and her skin lightened. The man sighed. “That is all I can do, Loycia. Nothing more. The rest must be undone by alchemy.”

She moved experimentally. “I’m lighter now.” For that my car would be grateful. “And I have hair. But that’s it?”

“You will need to drink, though food will not be needed,” the man told her. “Sleep will still be required.”

“Well that just bites,” she grumbled.

“We’ll find a solution,” I said, speaking before I had time to think. “We’ll fix it.”

She turned to me, the beginnings of a smile forming. “Really?”

“Yeah. We’ll go through my stuff, yours, and Dave’s. We’ll find a fix.”

“Count me in, too,” George said. “I’m not leaving.”

The man vanished as easily as he’d arrived, and I looked up to see the arena emptying of people. The Pari was long gone. We’d survived, but I didn’t think it was over yet. I sure as heck still had questions.

Spirals of air spun into pari guards, these wearing a deep gray-green. “We have come to escort you out,” one said. None of us had the energy to fight them. We fell into step with them, and were escorted from the arena. A small group of female pari, dressed in similar long coats, met us in the waiting room. “We will take them now,” one said, and I recognized her voice.

She met my eyes and smiled faintly. The male guards fell away with nods, and we continued on. As we did, the female guards chatted quietly among themselves.

“I did tell you not all agreed with the Pari,” the apparent leader whispered.

I dipped my chin in response.

“There will be repercussions from this. But you have gained yourselves time, so well done.” We turned down a different hall and were propelled into a more normal-sized room. “Sit.” We obeyed. The women arrayed themselves around the room, leaving the one to speak with us. “Loycia. I tried to warn you that you would regret leaving.”

“I don’t regret it,” Louise shot back. “I don’t like what’s happened, but I don’t regret leaving.” She shifted. “What do you want Karae?”

“As I told your companion, not all of us agree with the Pari. He does not speak for all of us.” She smiled impishly. “So we are going to have fun!”

I put a hand back on my knife. Fun didn’t sound good right now. She waved a hand at me. “No, silly one. I mean we will have fun with the Pari. He’s too… pushy. He thinks to change everything. Small change is good. Large change, not so much. He sent Davith and Maik out to start that change. Now he knows that subtle will not suffice.”

“Maik. Mike? He was pari?” I knew it, but it still hit hard. The woman – Karae – threw me a sympathetic glance and nodded. “Great.” She reached over and patted my hand.

“One of the Pari’s finest spies, if not his finest fighter. You confused them, Weasel Montgomery. To their loss. The next wave will not be so easily quelled. Davith over-acted, over-reached. But I give you several gifts to help you.” She gestured to the women, and several stepped forward. “To stop the glamor, to guard against magic of ill-intent, and a special gift, found in Davith’s rooms. We got there before the Pari,” she added with a grin.

We were each handed a small box, and to me they handed a larger and heavier box with a handle. “Do not open it until you are safely home,” the woman holding it warned.

“One last thing.” Karae’s humor vanished. “You are no longer welcome here. Do not attempt to return. That we will obey. This place is closed to you, Loycia. You disgrace your family and further kin. We will have to fight to regain our places.”

Louise nodded, her expression downcast.

“Until such time as there is a new Pari,” Karae whispered, offering a sliver of hope.

She gestured, and we stood beside the narrow road, not far from my suv. We trekked to it in silence, climbed in (without the shocks protesting this time), and headed out. We were alive, Dave was dead, but there was still too much to process.

31.

“You’ve got to be joking!” I snapped. I’d opened the box finally, after Louise had gone home to her roommates, hoping a little glamor would prevent questions. George was camped out on the sofa, and I’d taken the box to the kitchen to open it.

“What?”

“You’ve GOT to be KIDDING me!”

He appeared in the doorway, corralling a kitten. “What?”

The box held a wee, hissing baby uber. It was completely hideous, in a terribly dinosaur-cute kind of way. It looked like the adult I’d killed.

“What do I do with this?” I asked. “I can’t… what… great.”

“What is it?” George asked.

“A baby uber. Like the big one.”

He groaned. “Alive?”

“Yeah.”

I met its gaze, and it chirruped, oversize head wobbling on its skinny neck. I reached in and tickled it under the beak. It nipped at me. “Great. Guess I’ve got another pet?”