by Nova Nelson
“It was an interesting play,” Ezra replied. “Engrossing.”
“Clearly.”
After a moment’s pause, Ezra said, “I never even saw who it was.”
“It was Bron Danann.”
Ezra sucked in air like he’d been punched. After a moment more, he exhaled, his shoulders appearing to deflate. “Ah, poor Bron.”
“You knew him?”
“Not well, but yes. He came in occasionally, and I shared a drink with him once at Pan’s Patio. You remember that old bar?”
Mother Moon, did she. And she remembered some of her times with Ezra there, back before it shut down for “forgetting” to pay taxes for one hundred and fifty years. But instead of indulging in the fond memories he was clearly trying to evoke with the question, she simply said, “I do.”
Ezra continued, “It’s too bad that place ended up burning to the ground.”
“Did you have anything to do with that?”
“Oh sure,” he said, “blame the pyromancer.”
She shrugged a single defiant shoulder. “Why not? Everyone always blames the necromancer.”
“True. But no, I actually had a dream of buying that place and reopening it. But it’s hard to reopen a pile of ashes.”
They fell silent for a moment, and Ruby momentarily forgot why she’d come in the first place.
“If he didn’t see or hear anything, we should get a move on,” Clifford prompted gently.
“Right.” She straightened up but was still a few inches shorter than Ezra, who was not himself a tall witch. She offered him a professional nod. “I’d better get going. Many more people to talk with before we can put this mystery to bed.”
She cringed at the mention of bed around him, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“As always, Ruby, it’s been a pleasure. Come back any time you want. I should be getting an order of gorgeous abalone shells and jet in the next couple of days, if you need to refresh your collection.”
She did love a good abalone shell with its rainbow pearling. She must already have ten of them lying around her home to hold her various sage bundles. But an eleventh wouldn’t hurt…
“If I need any of that, I know where to find you.”
And then she turned and left the shop before she said or did anything further to humiliate herself.
Once she was certain she was out of sight of anyone in the shop, she paused underneath the shade of a large maple to absorb the facts so far. “If he didn’t even know who it was, then it seems unlikely that he knew anything about the writing on the elf’s shirt.” She should have asked him about it directly, but once she had become flustered, all she’d been able to think about was wrapping up the conversation.
“Maybe that means word hasn’t gotten out. Ezra’s usually the first to hear that sort of thing.”
“A girl can hope.”
Clifford sat in the shade next to her, but even so, his ears continued to twitch like radio dishes. “Where to now, boss?”
“A place we’ve never been before.”
“That could be a lot of places.” A fly buzzed around his muzzle, and in a flash, he struck, his teeth clicking together, and the offending pest was dead in his jaws.
“Are you calling me a shut-in?”
He smacked his lips, clearly trying to locate the fly in his cavernous mouth. “I plead the Fifth.”
“I never should have told you about the Constitution. I knew it would come back to bite me.” She paused. “Wait.”
“Oh.” He stopped smacking. He’d just realized what he’d said, too. “Do you think…?”
“I don’t see how it could relate. Elves are from Fallia. I doubt they share a Constitution with the United States.”
“You’re probably right. But still. It’s the right kind of thinking. ‘5th’ could refer to anything.”
He had a point. She would have to keep her mind open, but in the meantime, she had more people to interview.
She’d sent a letter to her next interviewee earlier that morning, and the genie had cheerily agreed to speak with her, so long as she would make the trek to his house.
“You never answered my question,” Clifford said. “Where to next?”
“The home of Liberty Freeman.”
She didn’t miss Clifford’s tail wagging, and if she’d had one herself, it would have been wagging too.
Chapter Five
Ruby checked the address on Liberty’s letter once more. Had he misprinted it? Surely this couldn’t be his address, because it wasn’t even a building.
She was sure she had followed his directions to the letter, though. And yet here she and Clifford were, standing in an open field on the edge of town, facing a single wooden door. No building behind it. Just the door.
It looked like someone had painted it gold years ago, but only a few curling strips of the paint still clung to the wood. She turned in a circle, looking around. Behind her, she could see the edge of the town proper. But between that and where she stood was easily a quarter mile of open field, slightly overgrown except for the footpath that led here, to this lonely door. On the other side of it, more grass, and perhaps fifty yards on, a dense tree line. Bright clumps of sunflowers dappled the land, but she had no mental energy to spare for their beauty.
She walked to the other side of the door. It looked just the same as the front
“I smell him all around here,” said Clifford.
So perhaps Liberty had taken a note out of the elves’ book and made himself an invisible home.
She trusted Clifford’s nose more than she trusted what her eyes could see, so she said, “Either there’s a great bit of magic involved, or I’m about to look like a complete fool.” And then she stepped up to the door and knocked.
And then an even stranger thing happened. From the other side of the door—no, not the other side because that was just more grass—she heard Liberty’s voice. “Come in. It’s open.”
She exchanged a glance with Cliff, and then she turned the old brass doorknob.
When her eyes adjusted to what was through the doorway, her first words were, “Oh, for fang’s sake.”
It was the stark contrast between the serene field and the lively scene that now stood ahead of her that had elicited the response.
But at the same time, of course Liberty Freeman lived in a tropical oasis. He was a magical genie. Why wouldn’t he?
She’d never been to Las Vegas in her old world, but she’d seen pictures of the over-the-top hotels and casinos with sparkling interiors, replicas of classical art and sculpture, fountains that shot up toward the ceiling, and gold, gold, gold over everything. But those were all facades—plastic made to look like metal, gold-colored acrylic paint, and so forth. Meanwhile, she had a feeling that everything in Liberty’s expansive property was the real deal.
Once Clifford was in, she shut the door, which, on this side appeared to be a tall, ornately carved slab of marble. When she took a step back to get a better look at it, there was an entire scene depicted on its surface. It was too much to take in, but she could definitely make out Liberty himself standing at the center of the image, arms outspread, his riotous grin easily recognizable.
“This is quite something,” said the hellhound in his usual understatement.
“Indeed.”
Nothing about the dimensions of the space they now found themselves matched up with the one they’d just left, so Ruby let that expectation drop completely. Instead, she simply marveled at the foyer—was that even the right word for something this large?—in which they stood. Beneath their feet was a checkerboard pattern of violet and ivory marble tiles, and to either side ran long rectangular slabs of what looked like onyx, each with a steady wall of water shooting up from the center like little mohawks. But the mohawks kept her from seeing much beyond them to her left or right, so instead she focused her attention ahead, toward the enormous circular fountain that seemed to shoot tendrils of liquid gold rather than water. Or perhaps that was
just the effect of the sun streaming down on it through the marvelous glass ceiling above.
“No wonder he’s always in a good mood,” she mumbled to Clifford.
As they started forward, she jumped when a dolphin leaped up out of the fountain then plummeted gleefully back in.
Liberty had dolphins. Noted.
A curvaceous woman appeared around the end of one of the long runner fountains. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight top knot and the various layers of her teal silk dress clung to her sensually. “Welcome,” she said. Her voice was deep and rich. “Liberty is expecting you in the tearoom.”
Ruby found the idea of a tearoom done to this level of extravagance thrilling. Would it be extra cozy? How many flavors of tea would the genie have on hand? Ooh! Would he be able to match the perfect blend to her present mood? There was a whole branch of magic on that particular skillset, but she hadn’t yet gotten around to studying it.
“My name is Ellysia,” said the woman as she led them around the central fountain. She wore no shoes, simply padded barefoot, which she made seem like the most erotic way to walk. “If you need anything while you’re visiting, simply say my name and I’ll appear. No need to yell it. Simply say it with the intent of summoning me.”
Ruby glanced down at her own feet and frowned. Her boots weren’t what she would normally call dirty, but in this pristine environment, they looked like nothing short of a serious health hazard. “Should I, um, take my shoes off?”
“It’s not necessary, but if that would make you more comfortable, I can assist you.”
She imagined sitting on the edge of the fountain while Ellysia untied her boots and pulled them off like a mother would her child’s. “No, thank you.”
Behind the fountain lay two wide staircases branching off in different directions with a balcony connecting them on the second story. The railings resembled giant serpents with jewel-encrusted scales. And below the balcony, nestled between the staircases, was a long hallway sloping downward and out of sight. That was the route they took.
By the time Ellysia announced that they had arrived at the tearoom, Ruby had long forgotten why she’d even come. She’d seen so many marvelous things already that her mind was in another place. An elf falling from a clock tower seemed paltry and mundane by comparison.
“Welcome!” announced Liberty, as Ellysia held open the door for Ruby and Cliff.
He rose from a large wingback chair by a fire and approached with his arms open wide. Ruby hardly registered that, though, as she took in the tearoom. It was amazing!
But then her view of it was obscured as the genie wrapped her in his large, muscular arms, and her face pressed against his sternum.
“Mm-mm-mm!” he said, flexing with each grunt. Finally, he let her go, and she felt strangely exposed. She cleared her throat and patted her hair back into place as Liberty high-fived Clifford then gave him a few noggin scratches.
“Thank you, Ellysia,” he said, and the voluptuous assistant nodded and shut the door behind them. “Come on in! I knew the moment you wrote that I absolutely had to show you this room. I said to myself, ‘No one will appreciate it like Ruby True!’ and if your expression tells the tale, I was right.”
“It’s… quite something,” she said. But ‘quite something’ was both highly accurate and grossly inaccurate.
Unlike the brilliantly lit foyer, this room had low ceilings—not so low that Liberty was forced to crouch, but low enough to give the space a sheltered feeling. In fact, upon further inspection, she discovered that the ceiling was the roof of a cave, though without any hazardous stalactites dangling from it.
She wouldn’t let herself get hung up on that detail, though, because the rest of the room was equally, if not more magnificent. Wingbacks and loveseats and day beds and even a papasan were scattered around at intervals, each with a perfectly shaped side table next to it that had multiple shelves built to house however many books one might want to stash alongside them for the day’s reading hours. And above each of these seats floated a small glowing orb, something she’d never encountered until Eastwind but had since grown quite used to. Each orb emitted enough soft light to read by, but not so much as to disrupt the dim and cozy feel of the space. The orbs reminded her of the fireflies she used to watch back in Illinois on hot summer days.
The room was of an irregular shape, with the walls curved that made it seem like she and Clifford were actually in a cave that had once held water to slowly wear its edges smooth with time. And perhaps that’s exactly where they were. Eastwind was built over a spring anyway. But more than likely, the room was a result of the same magic Liberty had used to construct this entire luxury complex.
Along the walls were a series of custom bookshelves, each one bending to fit the curvature of the wall against which it stood.
It was a fantastic collection of books already, but what took it from good to great was that when Liberty pressed a flat palm against the edge of one, it rotated, and in its place another bookshelf of the same shape appeared. How exactly that worked within the dimensions of space Ruby was familiar with, she couldn’t explain. But magic, as she understood it, worked in many more dimensions than the four she interacted with on a regular basis.
He pressed his palm to the shelf again, and it rotated once more. “Each one rotates a thousand and one times, if I fill it with that many books.”
Ruby’s eyebrows shot up. “Each one?” She did a quick estimate of the number of bookshelves and found it must be at least two dozen. If each one held around a hundred books…
The mental math was beyond her, but she knew it to be a very large number of books.
Liberty chuckled. “What else does one do in this town except work and read?”
She shook her head ruefully. “You’re asking the wrong person if you expect an answer.”
“I knew you’d appreciate this. One last thing: tea! And then you can ask me whatever you like.”
He led her over to a small empty shelf, and with a snap of his fingers, a piping hot kettle appeared on a metal tray with two copper teacups and one sausage, still sizzling. She knew who the latter was for.
A small metal tea box had also appeared on the shelf next to the tray, and Liberty nodded toward it. “Go ahead and open it. It should have the perfect blend for you in your present state, all ready to go.”
Her heart leaped in her chest. This was literally her dream come true.
For a moment, she wondered if a genie like Liberty could ever go for a witch like her. She and Clifford could certainly find a way to adjust to this life. And after all, she would be dead in less than fifty years, and what was half a century to an immortal being like Liberty? They wouldn’t even need to be intimate. She could just live here and chat about books with him. Surely that would earn her keep.
“I don’t show my house to many people because I worry that they’ll start devising ways to never leave,” Liberty said cheerfully.
Ruby’s head snapped around to look at him. “Oh. That would just be… silly. The thought never even crossed my mind.”
Had he read her thoughts? Could genies do that? It was always hard to know what they could and couldn’t do, since they were rarely known to show their hands, but it was a safe bet to just assume they could do anything. She’d have to be more disciplined with her imagination until she left.
She opened the metal tin and discovered not only a decadently fragrant teabag, but a tiny flask. She held it up to examine it in the low light. “What’s in it?”
Liberty shrugged. “Whatever you need at the moment. Hey, don’t worry. I’m not judging.” He grinned.
“Well,” she said, feeling a slight thrill run through her, “I would certainly hate to reject what I need at this moment.” She unscrewed the top and sniffed it. She would recognize the sweet smell of bourbon anywhere.
She popped the teabag into her cup and set it and the flask on the tray. Once Liberty had also received his tea recommendation, they headed over to two
wingback chairs by the fire. The tray floated along behind, landing gently on a small brass table between them without spilling a drop.
Once their tea was steeping, he crossed one leg over another and said, “What can I help you with, Ruby?”
“This tea is certainly a good start.” Just the mere fumes of the alcohol burning off in the hot water were enough to make her feel quite good. “But I’m afraid I’m also here to see what you know of Bron Danann. Did you know him?”
The mention of the dead man didn’t appear to dampen the genie’s mood, and for the first time, it occurred to her that he might be intentionally distracting her with the dazzling display of his home. Did he know the effect it would have on her? Was that part of a scheme?
“I did,” he admitted, “but not well. Very few people seemed to know him beyond acquaintanceship. He was friendly but mostly kept to himself. He moved to Eastwind a few hundred years ago with a small group of elves, and they kept each other’s confidences.”
“Any idea what he did for work?”
Liberty sipped his tea then said, “Nothing, as far as I know. He was wealthy. Perhaps he did something up on Tearnanock, trading or some such, but I don’t visit there. I know this may appear a bit hypocritical coming from someone who lives in an invisible house, but I don’t completely love the way the Tearnanock elves have shut themselves off from everyone else. Some view diversity as something to tolerate, but I truly believe that it makes for a healthier community. I assume most people who come from somewhat homogenous realms would agree.”
Ruby thought of Gabby Bloom, who’d left Heaven just to escape the monotony of a bunch of smug angels. In the brief silence, she heard Clifford’s slobbery jowls continue to smack, even though he’d undoubtedly finished off his treat mere seconds after she’d given it to him. “How did you know him?”
“I helped them get set up. Tearnanock Estates didn’t exist when he and his friends came to Eastwind, so he moved into Erin Park. But when he heard about my set up”—he gestured broadly to the surroundings—“he got the idea in his head that he would like to live in an invisible home, too. And then some of his other elf friends thought that might be nice, too, and the idea spread, but only among the elves.”
