The kettle always had water in it and the stove always had embers burning inside. He picked up a log from the woodpile out front and tucked it into the stove. Soon the fire was crackling and he put the kettle on to boil. A few minutes later, he steeped the bags and poured a cup. He eased down onto a nearby bean-bag-like cushion and sipped his tea. Another minute later, he was dozing.
Samantha Dawn Proctor eased her red beetle into the small parking lot in front of The Farm’s welcome center. She frowned as she remembered the Hidden Hollow welcome center blowing to smithereens as she unleashed the protection spell. At least that’s what she thought it must be as she had again spoken the words protectas forceras to create a blast of air that emanated out from her in rings or waves of…power. The ability and desire to cast it seemed to be directly related to her desire to protect herself and those near her – about five feet, best she could tell. She knew this because the bathroom she’d been hiding in at Hidden Hollow had been left untouched while the rest of the barn…well, as Scott might say, was tore slap up.
The last few miles she’d driven faster than usual hoping to put some distance between her and the strange men in black overcoats that had been creeping up on her. They would be one more thing to ask her mom and dad about. Mikki had snored the whole rest of the way and Sami thought it would be best to let her rest. The poor little creature had been through a lot the last couple of days.
“Mikki, come on,” she petted her head. “Time to go get some answers.”
Mikki yawned and stretched.
“Mikway? DeePee?”
“No, baby.” Sami smiled. “They don’t have any of that stuff here, just a bunch of veggie food and water.”
Mikki frowned and groaned.
“Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you try it. They make brownies sometimes.”
Mikki raised both her hands up high and grinned showing all of her teeth. Sami was a little surprised to see that they were sharper than she’d thought.
“But they might be a little too much for you to handle.”
The monkey creature dropped her arms, crossing them and frowning.
The Farm brownies had a certain local mushroom, cultivated for exactly this purpose, ground up into the batter. Sometimes they caused hallucinations…sometimes not. Sami couldn’t help but smile remembering the last batch that had made her mom think she was a chicken. She had clucked and pecked and strutted around until Sami and her father were laughing so hard they couldn’t breathe.
“We’ll see what kind of sweets they’ve got in the mess hall. I’m sure they’ll have something you’ll like.”
Mikki looked suspicious, but also curious. Sami unzipped the top of her backpack and held it open toward her.
“Why don’t you ride in here until we’re safe in mom and dad’s place?”
Mikki arched one eyebrow.
“I’m afraid you’ll draw a lot of attention and I want to get home quick without having to explain you to everyone we meet. And besides, every kid in the commune will want to play with you…throw you around like a teddy bear…snuggle you and smother you in kisses—”
Mikki jumped into the backpack and zipped it closed as far as she could from the inside.
“Thank you, Mikki,” Sami laughed and slung the backpack onto her shoulder.
“Theek too,” Mikki hummed from inside the bag.
Fast learner, thought Sami as she chirped the key fob to lock her car. It was clear that Mikki had more sentience than a typical squirrel monkey. Sami wondered how smart the creature was and what she could learn. She walked around the welcome center and jogged through the drizzle down the path that led toward the squat group of buildings that made up The Farm.
A few hundred feet down the road around the first curve, Carter Cross picked up his cell phone and dialed.
“Got her. She’s here at the hippie place. How’d you know she’d be here?”
Elke Anderson, the Swedish-sounding woman on the other end of the call, still had the note of condescension in her voice.
“There is only one place near you that she could be running to if she is trying to hide the violin.”
Carter thought the accent sounded like a put-on, but he didn’t dare make light of it. Everyone knew Elke had a bad temper. He wondered what the hell was so great about a violin, but it wasn’t his place to ask such questions. He also couldn’t figure out why this girl, Sami, kept ducking into these nut-job places like the freaky amusement park she’d blown to high hell or this tree-hugging hippie commune in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee.
Not knowing exactly what to say, Carter licked his lips and grunted, “Thank you, ma’am. Good work.”
Good work? What the hell did he say that for? He closed his eyes and waited for her to reprimand him. But she didn’t.
“I expect you to also do good work, Agent Cross. Bring me what I want.”
Carter felt himself smile.
“Yes ma’am.”
He closed the phone and turned to his partner. He still had the cracked sunglasses on and was clicking bullets into the magazine of his Glock. He made Carter as uneasy as food poisoning. At first you thought you had a little heartburn, but soon you’d be spewing from both ends and praying that your stomach would be empty of the demons you’d inadvertently eaten. He wondered how long it would be before he’d be praying to be rid of this guy.
“You can stay in the car if you want.”
The man stopped loading bullets. He froze for a second, staring at his half-full magazine. When he looked up at Carter, the heartburn started getting worse.
“And miss the chance to put the whore down who blew us to kingdom come? Not on your life.”
“We’re here to get the violin, man. It’s nothing personal.”
“Oh, it’s personal now.”
The man pulled his sunglasses down and Carter could see that it wasn’t only the dark lenses that were broken. His left eye was swollen badly and thick, red goo oozed from it. Carter wondered if the eye was damaged beyond repair.
“Yeah. It’s screwed up bad,” the man said as if reading Carter’s mind. “The whore messed me up. She’ll dismiss me once we get back. No more job, no more wife, no more kids. All gone in the blink of an—”
He stopped short and Carter almost laughed…almost.
“So, yeah. I’m going with you and I’m taking my shot when I get it, so don’t get in my way.”
Carter opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it, thinking better of the situation.
“Okay, but I’m point on this mission. If I say stand down, you stand down. Agreed?”
The man put the last bullet into the magazine and rammed it up into his Glock. He racked the slide. He nodded at Carter, but didn’t say anything. Carter licked his lips. This guy was off the rails. He’d report the crazy bastard as soon as possible. Carter stepped down out of the black Suburban and pulled the collar of his overcoat up around his neck. His partner did the same, but kept his gun in his hand. They eased up the road trying their best to look casual…as casual as two guys dressed in all black, exiting a black SUV, with black tinted windows, one of them wearing sunglasses and holding a pistol can look out in the fields of middle Tennessee. The hair on Carter’s neck stood up as they got closer to The Farm. He had a feeling that something bad was about to go down, but he’d seen the girl in action. She was anything but defenseless. He wasn’t sure what kind of explosives she’d been able to use to knock them down back at Hidden Hollow, but it was clear she was a munitions expert of some kind and had seen them coming. He wondered if she was watching them approach now. He hoped she was…
Carter and his partner checked the welcome center, not wanting to duplicate their last experience, and found it locked and empty. They circled around the building and found a path leading into the woods and could see several thatch-roofed buildings in the distance.
“Must be the place,” Carter whispered.
But his partner stalked ahead of him without saying anything. Carter took a deep breat
h and tried to work out a way to call Elke and let her know this guy was not fit for duty. He needed this to go quiet and easy and it didn’t look like either was in the cards.
9
Furry Caulla
Sami walked into the mud-covered building she’d grown up in. She didn’t bother to knock. The residents of The Farm saw knocking as a convention that separated people, rather than brought them together. The commune was a group of people who shared the land and all that was on it. Those who lived there most claimed certain houses, but no one had sole ownership of any one place. If you needed somewhere to crash, open a door and you were there. Inside, she saw two naked people standing in the living room covered in black sludge with bits of rancid vegetables and old potato peels hanging off them. She was shocked to say the least. For a few seconds it was a silent standoff, neither she nor the slime-covered people saying anything. In a nearby bean bag chair, she saw RayRay lying on his back, a half empty teacup dangling from his fingers, his mouth agape. Before she could process the scene, Sami began to draw the power into her fingers. The dark room was filled with showers of orange and yellow light as the familiar symbols fired up and down her forearms. This whole using magic on Earth thing was becoming a bad habit, but it was clear that these two intruders had killed RayRay and they would pay.
“Stop!”
The voice boomed from behind Sami. The door to her parent’s home was creaking open and two tall–very tall–and skinny--very skinny people were ducking through the door. Sami did not strike out with her magic, but she didn’t let go of it either. They wore long brown robes over lighter tan tunics. Jedi. They looked like a couple of frickin’ Obi Wan Kenobis walking in the door. At least neither of them sported a Gandalf-ian beard or carried a staff with a jewel in the top.
“Honey, look who it is. Isn’t this a wonderful surprise?”
Sami recognized her mother’s voice under the film of ick.
“Well, well, this is a red-letter day for our humble home, isn’t it, dear?”
Her father was the other figure dripping goop onto the floor. A few snuffles and snorts and a yawn from RayRay and he was sitting up cracking joints. RayRay had been asleep, not dead
“Wilmot Proctor,” began one of the tall, thin figures in the doorway, “you were granted special authority over the artifact and it has become clear that we must reassess the situation.”
“And Mary Proctor,” the other figure inhaled, “your daughter has been brandishing her magic in public for all the world to see.”
“Dear?” Mary turned toward Sami. “You’ve been using your magic?”
“Mom, I can explain.”
Sami realized that her arms still glowed and she willed the power to subside. The room sank into darkness, but Sami could see that the goop covering her parent’s naked bodies was thinning as it dripped to the floor.
“But first, why don’t you two grab a towel…or something?”
Wilmot looked down at his midsection and immediately covered himself with his hands. Mary did much the same.
“Mom? Dad? Sami? Strange people in the doorway?” RayRay’s head turned around the room approximating the location of each person, “what’s going on here?”
Wilmot opened his mouth, but Sami spoke first.
“Why don’t we all chill and let mom and dad get dressed? Is there any more of that tea, RayRay?”
“I think so.”
“Okay,” she said turning toward the two tall people, “do you drink tea?”
Exchanging an odd glance, they nodded and walked into the room.
Wilmot and Mary Proctor returned to find Sami, RayRay, and their two odd visitors huddled near the pot-bellied stove sipping mugs of tea.
“I smell fresh people,” RayRay sniffed the air toward his parents.
“Yes, you do, son,” Mary walked over and hugged him.
“There’s more tea on the stove,” Sami said to Wilmot as they pulled cushions near to sit down with the group.
“Well, this is fine.” Wilmot said as he poured his tea. “So happy to have you two back for a visit to The Farm along with our new…friends?”
“White Cloaks, dad,” RayRay whispered, knowing they could hear him.
Wilmot’s mouth opened wide and he looked from one of the visitors to the other. He worked his mouth as if he was speaking, but no words came out.
Sami rescued him.
“This is Meursault,” she motioned to the dark-haired White Cloak first, then to the grey-haired one, “and this is Gouttbd’or.”
“Wait,” Mary’s head cocked to one side, “Meursault? Gouttbd’or? As in…the wine?”
The White Cloaks looked at each other. In a silent debate, they seemed to come to an agreement.
“Okay, those aren’t our real names. We saw them on a poster and we thought we could use those here on Earth to blend in.”
“Ha! To blend in?” Sami exclaimed and then wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
“Those are perfectly normal Earth names, yes?” the one called Meursault looked incredulous.
RayRay snickered and sipped his tea, “Almost as normal as RayRay.”
“You’re among friends here,” Mary jumped into the conversation, “you can use your real names if you wish…or not.”
Meursault spoke first, “I am called Bekkan.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Bekkan,” Mary took his hand.
“And I am Bokaj,” the second man with grey hair nodded.
“Brothers?” Wilmot asked.
Bekkan looked surprised.
“Yes, how did you know?”
“My family followed a similar naming tradition. I am Wilmot and my brother is Warmot.”
Sami’s head jerked toward her father. This was the first she’d heard of old Uncle Warmot. Another item to add to the list of things to ask mom and dad about. RayRay decided to ask about it now.
“Dad, you have a brother?”
“I do, son,” Wilmot said and then went enigmatically quiet.
Sami turned to the White Cloaks.
“Mr. Bekkan and Mr. Bokaj,” she broke the awkwardness, “you must’ve seen that I used magic only when I had to. I swear on my life I would never do anything like that aga—”
“Three times in the last forty-eight hours,” Bekkan produced a small notebook from the folds of his Jedi master sleeves, “one time in the presence of twenty-two eyewitnesses best we can tell, all of whom have been persuaded to forget the event.”
Sami knew he meant that they had intervened, likely with magic, to make the witnesses’ memory of the event fade. She thought this was hypocritical and ironic, using magic to cover up magic, but she didn’t say that out loud.
“I couldn’t help that.” She shrugged her shoulders. “The children–I had to protect the children.”
Bokaj put his hand on Bekkan’s arm and nodded, “We know this, of course, and we have made note of it. That’s not exactly why we are here. We’re more interested in the magic used to drop that massive piece of glass on you.”
Sami’s mouth gaped, dumbfounded. She thought back and pictured the moment she saw the tumbling object hurtling down from the Sunsphere at her and realized that she had seen an aura around it. The edges of the glass had been glowing orange and yellow as it burst free from the giant World’s Fair Park monument and fell toward them. Magic. She hadn’t taken the time to absorb the full meaning of that until now. Someone had used magic to try to kill her.
“But who?” she asked, “and why?”
“We do not know for sure,” Bekkan leaned forward, “but we do know that it was someone very powerful. We used every spell at our disposal to track the caster and…well, we found nothing. The person who did this to you is a mystery to us. We cannot track them. They are likely using magic to cover their path.”
Sami slumped back into her beanbag chair.
“So, mom,” RayRay broke in, “what is it going to be?”
“Huh?”
“I need to use the facilit
ies and I am wondering,” RayRay stood up and put his teacup aside, “am I now supposed to leave the toilet lid up…or down? Who won the challenge?”
“Just…put it down, son,” Wilmot grumbled.
Sami shook her head. She didn’t have a clue what that was all about, but she had bigger things on her mind. RayRay bowed his head and walked out of the room.
Their search had been slow and trudging work and though they did have overcoats on, Agent Carter Cross was wet, soaked to the bone when they finally found the Proctor’s place. The one good thing about the rain and the dark was that their approach to the squat stucco building was completely silent and invisible. Peering into one of the circular windows, Carter made a quick head count. The girl, Sami, two older white people with tie-dyed shirts and long, wispy grey hair and two…well, two people who looked like monks sat in a small circle huddled hear a wood-burning stove. His partner looked at him under slimy wet hair strands and made a pistol motion with his empty hand as if to ask if Carter had seen any weapons. Impossible to know, he thought, the girl had nothing on her, neither did the hippies – who were probably against guns anyway, but the monks…they could have something under their robes. But aren’t monks pacifists too? Surely. He shook his head to indicate that he had seen no weapons. His colleague grinned and held up his fingers inquiring whether there were two or three people inside. Carter held up his open hand and mouthed the word, five.
Without hesitation, Carter’s partner rounded the house to the front door and raised his foot toward the handle.
He leaned his head back and roared, “LEROOOYYYY JENKIIINNSSS!!!”
“Dude, wait,” Carter held up a hand, but it was too late.
The man slammed his foot into the door and sent it splintering inward. He leapt inside. Carter had no choice but to follow him. He wondered if they would get blown to smithereens by some hidden munitions that the girl had hidden nearby. No time to worry about that now. This had gone from a recon and retrieval mission to damage control.
“EVERYBODY FREEZE!” his partner was screaming and the two hippy people scurried backward and fell off their cushions.
Spell Song: An Enchanting Urban Fantasy Page 6
