Mikki poked the candy bar under Sami’s nose.
“No thanks,” Sami waved it away. “But where did you get—”
Sami stopped to look up into the store in front of her.
“And how the heck did we get here?”
Mikki shrugged and offered a bottle of Dr. Pepper. Sami shook her head and looked up into the store. One of the attendants was pushing a mop in the back and glaring out the window at Sami’s car.
“Mikki, what did you do?”
The TikTuk only grinned and handed Sami her debit card.
“Oh, geez.”
She put the car into reverse and started to back out of the parking space. That’s when she felt the hair on her arms stand up on end. The space next to her had a box truck sitting in it and when she backed out enough to see the space opposite it, she could see the magic trail.
It swirled in the air like a heavy, swamp-like fog of purple and blue. Like smoke, it drifted up and down and was beginning to dissipate. A cloud of the signature filled the parking space and it trailed back and away from the lot to the road and toward the interstate. It was heading west. She squealed her car out of the lot and followed the trail onto I-40 East and found that she was driving faster than she would like…but the trail was getting thinner by the second.
At the Gallaher Road exit past Kingston, Sami thought she could see the trail lead off the interstate. But then again, part of it seemed to continue east on I-40. Could wind blow the drifting tendrils of magic? She had no way of knowing. She decided not to take the exit. Even if she was right, she knew the virtual breadcrumbs would dry up and she’d be on a wild goose chase in the middle of nowhere.
“Dammit,” she muttered.
“Daammmitttt,” Mikki imitated.
“Ha!” Sami slapped her hand over her mouth, “Mikki, don’t repeat that. It’s a bad word and I shouldn’t be—”
“Dammmmmit, dammmmmit, dammmmmit,” Mikki had seized on the fact that Sami had laughed and was eager to please her.
Sami giggled, but put her finger to her lips to hush Mikki. She smiled as they drove through the snow that was getting heavier by the second and starting to show signs of sticking to the road. She wasn’t sure what to do next, but they would get to her apartment and settle in for the snow. She picked up her phone and called RayRay.
“Yes, sis,” his voice was distant. “We are all good here. I was going to ride into town with Mom and Dad, but the snow is getting heavy. We are most likely snowed in here.”
“So, you’re sure Matilde is gone?”
“It is not in its case.” His voice carried his guilt, “The White Cloaks left a few minutes ago to get ahead of the storm. They will be reporting back to Boston that I have…misplaced it.”
“It wasn’t misplaced, RayRay. Somebody stole it.”
But who? She thought. Who even knew what the violin was…beyond a simple musical instrument?
“It was under my care when they stole it, therefore, I am to blame.”
“RayRay, I am sure we’ll get it back. The White Cloaks have ways of tracking such things.”
“I hope I learn to track like that when I start the training. If they’ll let me in, that is.”
A wave of shock hit Sami like a splash of cold water.
“Wait…what? What training? What are you talking about, RayRay?”
“I have requested to train to become a White Cloak.”
She was quiet for a long moment. There was so much about what he’d said that scared her…scared the crap out of her.
“But RayRay,” she protested.
“It is okay, sis,” he interrupted her. “I think it is what I have been called to do.”
“But…but…what about school?”
“I will continue my music studies at U.T. because they are related to my Elven ancestry and yours for that matter.”
“RayRay, you know I ain’t got a musical bone in my body,” she laughed.
“It is not in your bones. It is in your blood.”
“You know what I mean,” Sami replied. “Look, you stay safe. I’m gonna hunker down tonight and wait for this to blow over. Maybe the Cloaks will know something in a few days and we’ll get back on the trail to find Matilde.”
“I am sure we will.”
She hung up the phone and a gust of cold wind blasted the side of her car. She gripped the wheel with white knuckles and shivered.
“Hey Mikki, how ‘bout we grab a coffee before we head in for the night. It’ll warm us up.”
“Caaahhhffeeee?”
Sami couldn’t help but laugh. She knew what the caffeine in a soda did to Mikki, but she had no idea what an espresso might do. She headed downtown toward the Old City Java coffee shop hoping she might run into Ricky and Doris there. Her cell phone pinged. She had a text message from Scott.
“At the OCJ,” it read. “Where you at?”
“Perfect.” Sami tapped out her reply, “On my way. Be there in ten minutes.”
“Cool. Be safe.”
She tossed her phone into the seat beside her. Snow flew past her windshield making it look like she’d taken her car to light speed.
“We’ve gone plaid,” she said, quoting the movie, Spaceballs.
Mikki tilted her head to the side with a questioning look.
15
Renegotiation
Elke Anderson watched the security monitor as Artemis Baen drove through the secret entrance gate on the northwest side of the Oak Ridge Wildlife Management Area. Nothing more than a meager gravel driveway was visible outside the four-meter tall wall topped with razor wire. Tonight, the snow was coming in thick and the road was almost invisible in the dusk light. Unbelievably, Artemis only got lost once on his way in. Most visitors never got this close and if they did, the very persuasive advance team made sure they turned around and headed back to town.
On rare occasions, a trolley from the synchronous firefly experience campground would get turned around in the dark and wander up this way. The tour guides were familiar with the secretive nature surrounding all of the nuclear research labs in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, so when they were urged to go back, they would do so in a hurry.
Tonight, the gate guards had instructions to allow the rusty green Jeep past the checkpoint. Artemis had asked what the password was and Elke had obliged and told him it was stultus, which loosely translates from the original Latin as dumbass. He whispered it to the guard with pride, who also did not know the translation, but waved Artemis through in spite of the fact.
“He’s here.” The guard’s voice crackled over the walkie-talkie as the Jeep rumbled down the gravel road inside the wall.
“Good. No one else comes in. Seal it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Elke dialed his phone and had to resist the temptation to hang up and have him shot when Artemis answered saying, “This is Smart. Maxwell Smart, Agent 86.”
She sighed and remembered that he was delivering the artifact that she had been trying to find for over one hundred years. She could’ve had the guards seize it and kill Artemis, but he could prove useful once the artifact was properly played. If nothing else, they might need a patsy or fall guy if anything was discovered by the authorities. Artemis would be perfect for that. Most of the locals had at least some knowledge of his run-ins with the law in the past.
“Proceed forward. You will see a steel lift plate in the road. Pull your car onto it and wait. I will see you soon.”
She clicked her phone off and tracked his progress down the gravel road until he parked his car on the plate. What he did not know was this was an elevator that would lower him ten stories into the ground into her secret lab. What he also had no way of knowing was this put him very close to the city under the Caulla at Oak Ridge Wildlife Management Area, a city of very powerful magic.
Elke was surprised no one had discovered it yet with all the obvious signs of magic around it. Most people thought the urban legend of the two-headed deer inhabiting the woods was a horrifi
c result of the radiation coming from the nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory, not so. Others thought the synchronous fireflies in the area were only another cool anomaly of nature. And still more were sure the location chosen for the Manhattan Project, a place called Site X during World War II, was capable of producing nuclear miracles because they had the world’s greatest scientists on the job. Elke knew it was much more than that. The Caulla here emanated magic. She was counting on that magic to help her unlock the secrets of eternal youth and immortality hidden inside the artifact that Artemis was carrying down the hall now.
He was displaying a plastic tag attached to a bright yellow lanyard that hung from his neck like a badge of honor. Elke rolled her eyes. It was a parking pass to the firefly show happening some hundred feet above them. To be such an intelligent man, Artemis could sometimes be so clueless. He probably thought the synchronous fireflies were a natural phenomenon as well. She wondered if there would be many visitors on this snowy night…probably not.
A loud rapping echoed on her stainless steel door. He was here. The artifact was here.
“Come.”
He opened the door and strolled in looking like he had hopped off a Crosby, Stills, and Nash tour bus. He smelled of marijuana and his eyes were bloodshot. In his arms, he held a cardboard box. Oddly, his hair looked…sticky…and matted to his head. She shook her head and stood to welcome him.
“You have done well, Mr. Baen,” she motioned for him to sit down in a hard leather club chair.
“All good,” he nodded and smiled.
An awkward moment of silence passed between them. Elke leaned against the front of her desk and crossed her arms. She licked her lips and could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Not more than three feet away, resting in a box labeled Hungry Root, was the artifact. The instrument that produced waves of magic, when properly played, that could not only stop the aging process of the player, but also to a lesser extent those who heard the music. But due to the recent procurement of an ancient tome from the Azurian Athenaeum, Elke had more aggressive ambitions. As she pictured the ancient leather-bound book resting in her secret safe behind the fifty-five inch, wall-mounted computer display, she almost grinned remembering a line from Star Wars, many Bothans died to bring us this information.
“Well?” she finally asked, her odd accent intensifying in the moment and nodded toward the box, “May I see it?”
“Oh, sure,” Artemis tapped the top of the cardboard box, “but let’s get a few details worked out about payment.”
“Yes, of course,” Elke sniffed, leaned over and pushed a button on her phone, “Mishka, could you please bring in Mister Baen’s check.”
He held up a hand to interrupt her.
“Actually, I was hoping we could discuss the matter before we make the exchange.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, I’m thinking of something I’d rather have than that measly old check.”
Elke looked dumbfounded, “There are not many people who would call half a million dollars a measly sum.”
Artemis smiled and inhaled, “Yeah. Well, that’s probably ‘cause those people haven’t heard of Azuria and the magic that this artifact holds.”
Elke licked her lips and considered calling her personal security guard to dispense with this man.
“Negotiation for more money is not acceptable at this time.”
Baen threw his head back and laughed. He laughed so hard that he started coughing and devolved into a full on spasming fit. When he finally caught his breath, he chose his words with care.
“Actually, more money isn’t what I’m after. You see, Elke, I’m an older man. It’s hard to tell now, but I’m over ninety years old.”
Elke started to say something, but decided to wait to hear what he had to say.
He stood, pulled his wallet out and handed her a black and white, yellowed, cracking photograph. It was a picture of a young couple.
“That picture was taken in 1925.”
Elke said nothing.
“It’s a picture of my wife and I, a few days after our honeymoon.”
“But—”
“I know. I don’t look a day over sixty.”
A clock on the wall ticked with militaristic precision, clicking and clacking into the sterile room. Elke looked up from the photograph. It was odd. The photo could’ve been Baen. He looked older than the boy in the photo, but he hadn’t aged enough for the photo to have been taken in 1925. He should’ve looked like an old man, a really old man.
“How?”
He took the photograph back and tucked it back into his pocket.
“You know I’ve spent my adult life searching for the scientific solution to aging. Hell, I scienced the hell out of some mice and practically had them living forever. You remember that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, it seems that I was searching the wrong discipline for the answer.”
“I’m not following.”
“Yeah. It took me a while to get it too. You see, I was trying to use the methods of Earth science to figure out the old Ponce de Leon conundrum. And that got me a long way with mice. But, as you know, with humans, not so much.”
Artemis opened the box and eased the violin out. Elke gasped, unable to control her sudden thrill at seeing the artifact. Only through sheer, icy determination, she was able to regain her composure enough to continue their conversation without murdering him on the spot.
“Go on,” her voice distant, Baen only a peripheral nuisance of a buzz in her ear.
“But it wasn’t science that I needed to study. It was magic.”
As he spoke, he pulled the bow out of the box. He laid it on the strings and started to pull it.
“Stop!” Elke held out a hand. “Stop. You don’t know what you’re doing. The effect of a non-magic user could be devastating.”
“I’ve seen it,” Baen remembered the short term youthful look in the mirror at the truck stop, “it’s pretty cool, but far from permanent.”
Fool, Elke thought. He played the thing without knowing the consequences.
“That is because you were missing a few of the most important elements necessary for lasting changes.”
“And that brings me to our renegotiation.”
She arched an eyebrow. “I’m listening.”
“I don’t want your check, you can tear it up. All I want is to be around when you have a true master play it.”
Elke almost smiled.
“You see, I was on The Farm for all those years, listening to Wil Proctor and then his son, RayRay play that violin and wouldn’t you know it…I stopped aging so much. I never got any younger, but hell, I didn’t get any older either.”
“Interesting. Did anyone else experience this effect?”
“Hard to tell with Wilmot and Mary…being Solarian Elves and all. And not many of the other humans were around The Farm long enough to get the effect on a regular basis. Lots of turnover, ya know?”
She stood and took the bow off the strings. He relaxed his grip on it and let her have it. She grinned in a way that sent a shiver up his spine.
“Mister Baen, I insist that you stay for the playing of the artifact.”
16
Old Friends
Sami pulled into the snow-blanketed parking lot of the Old City Java as the glow of the sun disappeared behind the Knoxville skyline. The familiar shape of the Sunsphere glittered with the last light of the day. Sami wondered if they had repaired the missing glass yet. She couldn’t tell in the growing darkness. A few cars outside meant it was still open for business as she jogged across the lot with Mikki tucked in her backpack, snoring away. The tall mahogany and glass door slammed shut behind her with a gust of icy wind.
Gilroy Parrish was to her left at one of the tables serving two guys wearing torn hoodies, mismatched clothes, dirty coats, and heavy boots. Homeless. Gilroy was handing them two paper cups with steam wafting from the top. That had always been his way and
Sami loved him and his little coffee shop for it. Most likely, Gilroy would let the men stay inside for the night. They’d have to sleep on the floor, but the alternative was a bench covered with newspapers downtown, maybe at the World’s Fair Park.
The thought brought back the glass shattering night and her brazen use of magic in public at the Sunsphere. Nothing much seemed to have come out of that. She hadn’t seen her picture in the papers or on the local news. The White Cloaks might have had something to do with that. She guessed they had canvassed the area and likely cast some kind of forget spell on them.
Praetereo aeternum, she thought.
The words came into her mind unbidden and without conscious thought, but she knew right away that was the incantation they had used much like she had used on the black sunglasses dude. She wondered how long the spell lasted.
“Hey there, sexy mama,” a voice broke her out of her thoughts, “ain’t seen you in a tick or two.”
“Now, you know better than that, Ricky,” an older voice chimed in. “You speak to a lady with respect!”
Ricky Boshears and Doris Miller were sitting at their usual table. As Sami walked closer, she was not surprised that Ricky wasn’t dressed much different than the two homeless guys at the front. He had an old red Tommy Hilfiger puffer jacket that had a patch missing from the sleeve, his usual riveted blue jeans with his name hand-painted down the leg, and black combat boots. A dirty army cap topped the look off with perfection. Doris seemed to have dressed for a weekly bridge game, dusty pink pantsuit with a cream-colored knit scarf tucked around her neck. She wore tight leather gloves that were the exact same shade of pink as her suit. Her bluish-white hair hid under what Sami thought might’ve been a clear plastic shower cap.
On the opposite side of the table from them sat Scott Montgomery. His clothes were straight up “jock.” Fitted Lucky Brand jeans, bright orange UT hoodie under his football Letterman’s jacket. On his head, as if to prove he wasn’t a stereotypical frat-boy college kid, he wore a black and red plaid flannel Woolrich hunting cap with fuzzy Sherpa flaps folded up on the side. He jumped up when he recognized Sami.
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