by J. B. Garner
The barrel of a man daintily finished placing the now-finished eclairs under a cake dome, ready to be placed out in the shop. “Oh, don’t be that way, Ms. Stone. While we would naturally feel obligated to report anything that was to come up to the boss, we were kind enough to both take you in under such duress and to tell you about our allegiance before you said too much.”
Beaks took up the cake dome from his partner. “Yeah, consider it a professional courtesy to yose for all yose done, eh?” With that, he ambled out through the free-swinging door to the storefront.
“Do you require anything else this moment?” Blythe asked, hefting the larger tray of croissants. “Or shall I give you a moment of privacy? We do need to get ready to open, after all.”
A faint smile graced my lips as my worry about the pair washed away. They might still owe so much to Sinclair, a lot of people I was starting to know in the Figment community did, but they still wanted to do me a solid. Likely, this whole Patches thing and whatever the blue moon was didn’t involve Sinclair at all, but I wanted to keep his scaly claws out of as many potentially dangerous magical situations as possible.
Call it principle or something.
“You go ahead, Blythe,” I answered. “I’m feeling as good as anyone could expect. I just need to call Aelfie and let him know I’m okay. Don’t want him to worry, you know?”
“Eminently responsible of you. I will leave you to that.” He pushed the door open with one hand, the tray carefully balanced in his other gorilla-sized mitt, and disappeared into the front of the bakery.
My smile lingered for a moment as, with a wince of pain, I pulled my legs up as I turned in place. Repositioning to sit cross-legged on the table, I tapped Aelfread’s name on my phone as I fumbled with the manila envelope with my free hand. It barely rang once before Aelfie answered.
“By my father’s crown, Mary, where have you been?” There was no trace of the suave façade the Elf usually put on; there was only concern and nigh-panic. “Are you all right?”
Taken aback by the onslaught of worry, my still-somewhat addled mind realized that it was getting on towards four in the morning. “I’m sorry, Aelfie, I should have called sooner. I’m doing okay, still out with Bunny on that job.”
“You do not sound ‘okay’, as you would put it.” That’s what I got for trying to bullshit a bullshitter. “What calamity and woe has our Huntress dragged you into? I should never have let you go on this assignment alone.”
“Well, I’ve been worse, that much I can say for sure,” I mumbled. My thick fingers managed to get the envelope open as I dumped the contents onto my smudged skirts. “I guess it’s safe to say that what Bunny thought would be a simple missing person case got really complicated really quickly.”
The sounds of the Easy-E-Mart echoed in the background of Aelfie’s voice. “I knew that rabbit wouldn’t hire you for some simple task. Your talents are far too multi-faceted to be wasted on simple endeavors, and Bunny knows that.” Annoyance was replacing the worry now. “Perhaps you can convince our long-eared friend to bring my expertise into this case!”
What Mother had given us was a mismatched collection of receipts, hand-written notes, and other odds-and-ends of ticket stubs, matchbooks, and the like. I began to sift through them, looking for anything that caught my eye, as I continued talking to Aelfread. “Though I respect Bunny, I want your help regardless of her intentions,” – I hurried up to cut off Aelfie’s inevitable reply – “but not out in the field.”
“Gods above and below, do not tell me you want me to continue to keep an eye on the store.” The quick-witted Elf realized what he had let slip the moment he did and added, “Not that I would mind, to be clear. I realize the vital importance of that role but … I am simply eager to help you conclude this job so you can avoid any more danger. Don’t deny there has been some.” His deep and abiding concern for me came back strong then. “I know the timbre of your voice when you’re in pain, sweet Mary, and the most likely source of your pain would be some bout of danger.”
While I trusted Blythe and Beaks to not only be busy but respect my privacy, for now, I still decided it was prudent to switch to Truespeech as I moved to more sensitive topics. While Blythe spoke it haltingly, Beaks was totally ignorant of it.
“To lie would be unbecoming, dear prince. Indeed, some of these previously mentioned complications are dire.” I sorted all the stubs and miscellaneous items to the table in a neat pile to concentrate on the written notes. These days, I found that my expertise with runes bled over into the written word in general. Cyphers, codes, innuendo of any kind seemed to come clear to me quickly. “That is why I wish to ask you to accomplish a task I believe only you can do of all those I know, but it is not something that can be done at my side.”
Aelfread instinctively dropped into Truespeech as well, a bit of the self-assured con man coming back into his voice. “Ask away, then, and you shall have said task done.”
The notes that were handwritten showed two commonalities. First, the scrawling letters all looked and, as odd as it is to say, felt as if they came from the same hand. Second, they were all written on torn-off scraps from a yellow legal pad. Sure, those facts weren’t too intriguing off the bat, but they did tell me that they all came from one source. That was a start.
“This will sound vague, and it most certainly is,” I explained, “but bear with me. Our collar is a Garou Chien named Patches Sanderson. He disappeared seemingly of his own accord, but he worked for the Garou Council.” I made sure to use the exact, precise word for it as opposed to the more common Truespeech word. “He made some references to a blue moon before he vanished and to add to the difficulty of the matter, several Garou ruffians, rats this time, attempted to waylay us in their own search for Patches.”
“A pack of sycophants and ne’er-do-wells to the last one of them, the Council,” he said with an almost cheery tone. “I am well familiar with many of their members, and I would concur with the implication that their involvement speaks to skullduggery of the first order. Whatever your Patches is involved in is undoubtedly related to some scheme of theirs.”
I scanned the first few notes as Aelfread confirmed my suspicions. They were all short and written in Truespeech, simple job requests for Patches to track someone or deliver a package, innocuous on the surface. It was telling that the sender of these messages never put their name to paper. There was something else, though, the occasional peculiarity of capitalization in a few of the notes, that made me continue parsing them.
“Indeed,” I agreed. “Bunny said as much, though she emphasized more their weakness in relation to our dear friend Governor Sinclair than their criminal nature.”
“Well, not every branch of the Council is as crooked as ours here in majestic Saginaw,” Aelfread noted, the sounds of the Easy-E-Mart fading. He must have gone into the backroom or perhaps down into the old Dwarven bootlegger tunnels that connected the Mart to the apartment building we called home. “As for Bunny’s opinion, well, we all wish to see our own kin in the best of lights. If pressed, dear lady, I would find ways to make my dear father sound much saintlier than he truly is. For all that I know she dislikes her own kind, I doubt Bunny has purged all loyalty to them. It’s simply not in our natures as Figments.”
With all the folded scraps of yellow paper smoothed out and arrayed in my lap, those errant letters seemed to pop vividly before me as the whispers of my unknown Dwarven ancestors echoed in my ears. My fingers moved half on instinct and half on reason, reordering the notes and their hidden fragments of code into a more logical order.
“What this ultimately leads me to ask, my charming prince, is about this blue moon.” My voice was distant, even to me, as I continued to decipher what was laid out before me. “By one astronomical measure, there is one due tonight and who knows what that means regarding arcane rite and ritual? Bunny believes that the mystic connection between lunar cycles and the Garou is a myth, yet even she concedes that this may be cause for conc
ern.”
It was evident already that what I was getting from the scattered letters wasn’t a sentence but a name. As I finished with the last pieces I had, Aelfread let out a thoughtful hum. “While on a surface level our Huntress is not wrong, she does not have the extensive schooling that I have undergone. As all aspects of the Great Game are played with nuggets of truth, the foundation of all good lies, I have taken it upon myself to know as much as possible about a far-ranging variety of magic.
“Astronomical events can have any number of influences on magic. Magical energy ebbs and flows with the constant dance of the cosmos and the Earth’s relation in that dance. More importantly, in this case, are the rituals of humanity. There is nothing unnatural per se about a blue moon. It only has significance due to the calendar we invented to order time.”
It was a name all right, one I didn’t know, but I was sure either Bunny or Aelfie would. I was just about finished with it now, only a letter or two to go. “So, if I am following along, you are implying that it may not be the actual blue moon that may be important, but an attachment to the blue moon added to a ritual or spell of some kind devised by a human or a Figment?”
“Something like that.” Aelfie sounded pleased that I was still with him on this. “You know the law of intent, Mary. If some bit of enchantment or a prepared ritual is wrought with the intent to only be active on a particular date or during a particular cosmic occurrence, the magic will conform to that intent.”
Well, at least Bunny wouldn’t be entirely wrong. This job might be taking more than a night, but it seemed now that by its very nature that it would be over in two, whether we liked it or not. My free hand clenched involuntarily. I promised myself that the Sandersons weren’t going to lose a father and a mate. By my million ancestors, they weren’t.
“If it is at all possible, Aelfie, research this through any resources you may have.” Maybe he could uncover more while Bunny and I kept up the search directly. My eyes scanned the decoded message, now complete, as I prayed that I pronounced what I guessed to be the German name correctly, “Klaus Smaragd. Does that name strike a familiar chord in you?”
There was a momentary pause, almost making me think our call had been dropped. Aelfread came back, though, a tinge of seriousness mixing into his tone. “Oh, I do not simply know of Klaus; I have done quite a bit of business with him in the old days. Klaus is a Gnome, a purveyor of mundane oddities and not-so-mundane ones. In the eyes of the human world, he is what you would call a pawnbroker, or perhaps in certain circles, a fence would be the better term to use.”
“From the messages here and what you have just said, it is fair to say that he is a part of this as well,” I sighed as I collected all the scraps of paper together. There were still the other bits of possible evidence to sort through, but this was a great start.
“All right then, would you please do as I asked first and look more into the possible magical connotations of the blue moon? Do not go to Klaus yet and certainly not alone. I will share this with Bunny and see what else she has learned. With all the information in one place, we will then call you to coordinate a plan.”
I could feel the force of Aelfread’s magnificent smile through the phone and through his voice. “You can depend on me, my dearest! Do impress on Bunny that it would be best to confront Klaus with me joining you. While he may take offense at a Huntress intruding on his business, I am certain he will be nothing but joyful at the sight of me, one of his most frequent customers back in the day.”
Nodding to no one but myself, I smiled. “I will and thank you, Aelfread. Take care, and I love you.”
“And I you, sweet Mary. Goodbye for now.”
I looked down at the phone as he hung up, a picture of his handsome face smiling next to his name. The sight of him combined with his words warmed my heart up and made the aches and pains easier to bear as I hopped off of the table to go find Bunny. Hopefully, her luck with Mr. Gray and Mr. Sinclair was as good as mine had been with Aelfie.
11
Bunny wasn’t hard to find. Heading out the door she exited by led me into a short hallway that ended in a clearly marked emergency exit before cutting right. Passing by that doorway, I could see three more doors further down. One to my left was obviously another entrance to the kitchen areas while the door at the end of this section has a faded ‘Stairs Up’ plastic sign screwed to it. The last door on the left between these other two was slightly ajar and marked ‘Storeroom’, so even if I hadn’t heard Bunny’s familiar voice growling in that same animalistic language as before, it would have been my guess as to where to go next.
Her voice had stopped by the time I clopped to the end of the hallway, trying to ignore every new prod of pain or jostling of a bruised joint. Pushing the door open, I saw that not only was this room labeled correctly, but Bunny was indeed inside, leaning against the wall nearest the door. Arms crossed over her bountiful chest, her pretty face was fully molded into ‘bad cop’ mode. A new streak of blood adorned her right hand, though the injury that caused it was gone. Her blue eyes shot daggers at the deep Pyrex mixing bowl that lay on a wheeled cart not five paces from her.
Inside that bowl, held in by a dented serving tray weighed down by a fifty-pound sack of flour, was Mr. Grey, still in rat form, scratching furiously at the sides of the bowl, the dish above him, whatever he could, faintly squeaking the whole time.
I observed this for a moment as I scratched my bearded chin. “He bit you, didn’t he?”
“That he did, the little arse,” Bunny growled, her eyes tinting red for a moment. “It’s not like I can’t deduce who sent you,” she directed at the bowl, “so you should do yourself a big favor and come clean!”
It didn’t take a genius to see how this alongside every other event this past night had gone the exact opposite of how Bunny planned it. I knew her long enough to know she was a professional and more than that, a perfectionist. As she had told me soon after our first encounter, it was how she overcame the prejudices that came with her appearance, both the bubble-headed blonde stereotype of her human form and the innate goofiness of her rabbit shape.
This was a kick in the uprights to that side of her and that immense frustration was shining through.
“Bunny,” I ventured, keeping my voice low, calm, and even, “I don’t think our friend is going anywhere. Maybe you should let him stew in his own juices for a moment, step away, and catch your breath.”
Bunny almost growled at my continued interruption. If I had been just about anyone else butting in, she would likely have cuffed me in the back of the head. Even with me, her gaze shot over and down at me, making the bubbling tempest behind those eyes all the more apparent. “Mary, you’re the one that should still be resting. Me, I’m fine,” – she swiveled her head back towards our collar – “but this jerk isn’t if he doesn’t start to spill this instant.”
“Okay, Huntress,” I muttered with a shake of my head, “you’re not leaving me much choice.” I didn’t have to stretch to reach Bunny’s bent elbow in her human form. She didn’t have a chance to react as I snatched her by the elbow. My left hand solidly locked around her arm, I began to drag her off towards the hallway. “Come on, now, we need to talk.”
Unprepared and off-balance, all that Bunny could do was stay upright and go along with me, sputtering the whole time. From the weird ripple of muscle under my hand, I figured she almost shifted then and there, only holding off with the realization of who was dragging her around. Mr. Grey enjoyed the sight of it at least, our exit punctuated by his chittering laughter.
By the time I maneuvered us out into the hallway, Bunny was digging in her heels. That was fine, I had her where I wanted her, so I let her go as I closed the door behind us.
“What the hell was that for?” Bunny said, glowering down at me, not that she had much of a size advantage in her human form. “Are you trying to make me look like an idiot in front of that perp?”
What had resulted from the last argument we had a
mere hour ago was fresh in my mind as I looked up at her, staying firm but not crossing the line into combative. “I’m sorry about that, but you needed to get out of there. Look, it’s obvious to me that you’re completely flustered, no matter what face you’re showing, and I doubt I’m the only one who can sense it.”
Her carefully crafted act cracked under that. She let out a shuddering sigh as she shifted from hovering over me to leaning back against the storage room door, tapping the back of her head against it a few times. “You’re right.”
Bunny’s eyes shifted down again, but the seething was replaced by confusion. “I’m scrambling around like someone fresh out of their apprenticeship. Everything is going wrong. I got us kidnapped, which led to you getting hurt, and even if I’m right about who sent these rats after us, I can’t get a peep out of this kid.” She bit her lip to keep the frustration from welling up again. “And that pisses me off the most. He’s practically a bed-wetter, and I can’t make him flip. Am I losing my touch? Do they just see the fluffy rabbit now? Have I not broken enough bones lately that the crooks think I’ve gone soft?”
The questions gushed out like a flood, but I managed to cut off the next deluge with a raised hand. “Now, hold up, Bunny. You’re making the problem pretty clear to me right now, but it’s easy to fix.” I had her full attention now as I continued. “Look, this isn’t some big issue. You’re still Reba Kincaid, the best Huntress this city has seen. You simply had one bad night, made one or two small mistakes that were inevitable, not to mention as much my fault as yours, and it’s your frantic attempts to fix things that are making it worse.”
