“They’re an up-and-coming label,” Dawn said, her tone modest. “But I like their music. They really support a positive message, and female artists.”
“But I thought you were a positive artist with a female message,” I said, and nudged her.
“Damn straight I am, but they’re willing to experiment,” she replied.
I frowned. “So why don’t you seem totally excited?”
Dawn shook her head. “I am. I just—we can talk about it later. How’d your thing go? Get your answers?”
“Uh, no.” Reality slammed back into me like a badly timed commercial break. I glanced at Barry, then said, “Can I talk to you real quick in the kitchen?”
Dawn arched her pierced brow, then looked to Mattie. “What do you think are the odds he’s got a giant cake in there for me, and Hugh Jackman is going to jump out of it?”
Mattie shook her head. “Since he doesn’t know who Hugh Jackman is, pretty slim.”
“Yeah. I was afraid of that.” Dawn waved from me to the door. “Lead the way.”
As we passed into the kitchen, I heard Barry saying, “I met Hugh Jackman once, when I was backpacking down the coast—” The door swung closed.
“So what’s Barry doing here?” I asked, and winced. That wasn’t what I’d intended to say.
Dawn arched her eyebrow again. “Mattie invited him, actually. She’s a huge Boingers fan, and Barry roadied for them a couple summers ago. She wanted to ask him questions. Is that really why you brought me in here?”
“No.” I took a deep breath. “I need to reschedule the volunteering session, for the animal shelter.”
“Okay,” Dawn said, and crossed her arms. “And what will you be doing instead?”
“Well, you know that spider creature you told me not to fight? I, uh, need to help capture her.”
Dawn considered me in silence for several long, loud heartbeats.
“Alrighty then. I can have Bear cover my shift, and go with you.”
*Bear? Sounds like someone’s getting cozy with the nicknames and all.*
Shut up, Wesley! “Tomorrow could get ugly,” I said. “If anything happened to you because I allowed you”—Dawn’s raised eyebrow made me change quickly—“because I agreed to take you, well, it would kill me.”
“Look, I know you said the ARC wouldn’t help Silene’s brightbloods, but this creature attacked you, and you’re one of their arcana, right? So shouldn’t the ARC or whoever send an army after her ass?”
“Whoever’s giving her orders may have ears in the ARC.”
“Uh huh,” Dawn said. She crossed her arms, and frowned, rolling her healed shoulder. “And?”
“And, we need answers that only she can give us. We don’t want her being warned away. Or disappeared.”
“And?” Dawn said.
I shrugged. “And that’s it.”
“Really?” Dawn said. “How about and you’re trying to make up for every sucktacular thing your grandfather did to the brightbloods?”
*Wise woman,* Alynon said.
Nobody asked you.
*Uh huh.*
“This isn’t about me trying to balance my family karma or whatever,” I said. “Or at least, not mainly. It’s about helping Silene, and helping Pete and Vee, not to mention the fact this jorōgumo has come after me twice, almost getting you and Heather killed in the process—”
“Heather?” Dawn asked.
Frak.
*La, you screwed up now,* Alynon said.
“Uh, yeah, I was going to tell you, but things have been so crazy—”
“You’ve been seeing Heather?”
“I haven’t been seeing her. She came to me, asked me to help her find a way to avoid exile. So I asked her to help me deal with the alchemist who killed Silene’s clan-mate. But—”
Dawn shook her head. “You’re the butt, butthead.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Damn you, why do you have to be so difficult?”
“I’m sorry, Dawn, really. You know I’m not interested in Heather.”
“Damn you again,” Dawn said. “I trust you, that’s not the problem. You don’t trust me.”
“Yes I do. I—”
“No. You don’t, not really. Maybe you don’t trust what you feel for me. Or maybe you think I’m in love with some Finn that doesn’t exist anymore, and don’t trust that I love you for you. I don’t know. And I don’t know how to get past whatever it is.”
I blinked, surprised. How did she do that? Was there anything about me she didn’t know?
“I’ve had a lot to figure out since I’ve been back, I know. But I’m getting there, I swear. And a lot of that is thanks to you.”
Dawn rolled her eyes, then sighed. “Well, they did rename the self-help section of the library after me for a reason. But Finn, I’ve barely got my own crap together, I shouldn’t be anyone’s therapist.”
“And I’m not asking you to be. I just need a little more time, that’s all.”
“Time for what exactly?”
“Oh, you know, to figure out who I really am, and what I really want to do with my life. The easy stuff.”
Dawn snorted. “Sure. So, say, until tomorrow?”
“I was hoping more like Tuesday. I also wanted to solve world hunger.” I took her hands in mine. “Really, just … give me a couple of days to get this mess with the brightbloods all settled, and then I’ll be one hundred percent focused on getting my crap together.”
“I just wish you realized you don’t have to do it alone. You idiot.” She pulled me to her, kissed me on the corner of my mouth, and rested her cheek against mine for a second. As we parted I felt a cool spot high on my cheek where the wetness of a tear had pressed between us. “Go deal with your monsters,” she said. “All of them. You know where I’ll be when you’re done, or really ready for my help.”
She turned and left out the back door.
I stared after her a minute.
*Go tell her you love her.*
“She knows I care about her,” I said.
*Perhaps. But perhaps she needs to know that you know. Perhaps she needs to know you understand how your decisions have put you in different worlds—*
“Uh, are we still talking about me?”
There was a slight pause. *Do what you will. You never heed my advice anyway.*
Yeah, that’s because your advice is usually to have sex with whatever is moving.
*And what is wrong with that? Someday, when this bag of meat you call a body gets old, you’re going to regret that you ignored my urgings.*
Yeah. I’m sure that will be my biggest regret.
I considered going after Dawn, not because of Alynon’s words, but because having her unhappy with me felt like a heavy shadow had fallen over my heart, leaving a cold and uneasy feeling where her light normally warmed me.
But if I died tomorrow, maybe this would make the choice to have the ARC remove her memories of all of this, of us, easier for her.
I shivered for some reason, then pushed my way back through the swinging door into the dining room.
Barry, thankfully, was gone.
Pete looked up at me, his face a cherubic model of guilt. “Hey Brother. Um, there was only a little bit of ice cream left, and it was melting, and I didn’t think you’d want it if it melted, so I ate it.”
I smiled. “That’s fine, Petey.”
“You okay, Uncle Finn?” Mattie asked.
Vee looked past me. “Where’s Dawn?”
“She went home,” I said. “Everything’s fine.” I looked at my family, gathered around the table. In the three months since my return from exile, I’d adjusted to the differences between who they were before my exile and who they were now. I still felt out of place most of the time, or perhaps out of time most of the place, but damn it if I didn’t love them all. Even Mort, though I still couldn’t say why.
“Who wants to play a game of Monopoly?” I asked.
Mattie wrinkled her nose. �
�That game’s boring.”
Fifteen minutes later, we were playing Cranium, and I was trying to make a dinosaur out of purple clay and laughing, my many problems and coming dangers not forgotten, but pushed briefly to the corners of my mind at least.
It wasn’t the same without Dawn, though.
* * *
Morning mist clung to the trees and ferns that covered the hillsides above Fort Worden, rolling in off of the Salish Sea. It clung to the clusters of evergreens and twisty madrona branches as if snagged in passing, stretched and torn into thin wispy clouds. It was perfect cover, and the kind of fog that fills epic 80’s music videos. I would not be surprised if Hiromi leaped out of the trees looking like Prince doing the “Batdance.” Terrified, yes. Surprised, no.
I parked at the top of the hill behind the rows of officer housing now turned vacation rentals, and hiked up into the forest. It had not escaped my notice that several of the madrona trees that lined the entrance to the park had been “yarn bombed,” their trunks wrapped in patterns of colored yarn.
The trail was an uneven path of dirt and stone and the occasional tree root, rising steeply up until it branched out. One branch would continue on to the concrete bunkers, and eventually meander down the far side of the bluff to the coastline. The other branch did not want to be seen. I felt a compulsion to continue along the mundane path, to look up at the distracting beauty of fog and light playing in the treetops. But I focused my will, and the hidden path became clear. I turned down it, and hiked until it opened up onto a grassy bluff with a stone ring near the edge.
The ring looked like it might have been a giant fire pit, with blocky stones each the size of a basketball forming a wall around the edge, stacked high as a man’s knees. The stones look charred as if by a fire, the runes covering them long obscured.
This ring of stones had been part of the spell Katherine Verona used to end the last Fey-Arcana war. There were other rings and structures like it around the fort, one of which being the place I’d first met Sal several months ago, but this one I knew was special. Perhaps that was why I’d so rarely visited it. The magic around these sites that compelled anyone nearing them to take a different path was, in some ways, tied to the emotional energy of the site, almost like a ghost, and there were few sites in the fort where I imagined the emotional resonance was as strong, or as full of pain and loss, as here.
Between that, and the active wards the ARC maintained on the ring to prevent any brightbloods desecrating it, Hiromi should not be able to touch anyone inside the ring, which made it an excellent retreat option if things went sideways.
I stepped out of the tree line onto the dew-soaked grass. My jeans quickly became damp up to my knees as I strode through the uncut grass and weeds and stopped at the near edge of the ring. I held the bottle of jorōgumo protection potion in my left hand. My right hand rested on the nylon pack strapped to my waist, and the hard outline of the family’s revolver—which I was in theory allowed to use in self-defense while officially assisting Reggie in the capture of a dangerous criminal brightblood. I would have actually preferred a good wand, something certain to freeze or bind Hiromi in one shot without killing her. But wands were outside my price range, bullets were not.
I turned and faced the forested hillside, and uncorked the potion.
The jorōgumo could be anywhere in those trees. But then, so could Sal. A sasquatch’s glamour was strongest in the forest, working with the natural patterns of light playing between branches and leaves, using the beautifully chaotic architecture of nature to trick the eyes of observers. A jorōgumo’s glamour played more on shadows and darkness, on the unpleasant or frightening corners of the landscape that thousands of years of evolution conditioned us to avoid for fear of deadly creatures, poisonous gasses, and foul stenches.
Looking at a glamoured jorōgumo was a bit like popping in a movie and finding your parents had recorded a sex tape over it in which they vigorously role-play Jabba and Leia: your eyes turn away before your brain can even fully register what you’ve seen, and you feel a sudden dark stain on your soul and the urge to flee.
A dryad’s camouflage, on the other hand, was simplicity itself.
Silene emerged from a cedar tree on the edge of the clearing, shimmering into site.
“Greetings, dryad,” I said.
Silene crossed the grass to me and the stone ring. “Your message said I might confront the one responsible for Veirai’s death?”
“Yes,” I said. “Though I worried that Romey might’ve been waiting at your steading to finish what she started at the DFM compound.”
“If she had, I think she would have been disappointed.”
“Would I?” Romey said, and emerged from the shadows of the tree line.
Now we come to it. “I thought you might show up,” I said, and rested my free hand on the reassuring cold steel of the revolver.
Romey sneered. “You remain clueless, arcana. I told you to stay out of brightblood affairs. Now, you will pay the price.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Just three easy payments of nineteen ninety-nine?”
For response, Romey transformed. Except she did not change into a large fox. She became the jorōgumo. Spider legs burst out of her back, growing out and down to touch the ground, then lifting her body up suspended in the air even as that body itself transformed, the waist narrowing, the hips widening, her face molding into the features of a beautiful Japanese woman.
A look of fury swept across Silene’s features. “A shadowbright spy?”
Hiromi leaped at me.
I drank the alchemist’s jorōgumo protection potion in quick, desperate gulps.
Reggie stood and leaped out from the stone ring behind me, his camouflaged uniform making the world seem to bend around him, and threw his arms around Silene.
My mouth went dry. A bone-like crust sprang up over my skin, a thousand shards of razor-sharp fossils overlapping like scales. My clothes shredded, and the belt holding the pack and revolver fell away. I tried to grasp it, but my thickened, crusty fingers were too clumsy.
The jorōgumo crashed into me, her arms wrapping around me. We tumbled across the wet grass.
She screamed in pain, and flung me aside.
I hit the ground hard and rolled to a stop, tearing up grass and mossy sod, the fossilized skin protecting me from abrasions but not from bruising. My shredded clothes formed a trail behind me.
I pushed myself to my knees.
Reggie had pulled Silene back within the protection of the stone ring, granting her passage through its wards.
Hiromi twitched to her feet, her skin lacerated, oozing dark fluid from countless small cuts—fluid she needed to operate her spider legs, if I remembered my biology lessons correctly.
She lifted up on those legs, not injured enough to be out of commission yet. But she did not leap at me again. She skittered sideways, away from the rune circle and Reggie, her black eyes fixed on me.
“Clever defense,” she said. “But that will not save you.”
“Hiromi,” I said, rising to my feet. “Why are you doing this? We don’t need to be enemies.” I moved slowly to place Hiromi between myself and the tree line.
“Of course we do,” she replied. “We are different, and difference always leads to conflict. Or enslavement.”
I eyed the pack with the revolver, and then flexed my fossil-covered hands. I wasn’t sure I could fit my finger through the trigger guard even if I could reach the gun before Hiromi struck me down.
“You sound like my grandfather,” I said.
“Then he is right,” she hissed back.
“He’s dead. He tried to start a war, but arcana and brightbloods, we fought together to stop him.”
“Then you only delayed the inevitable!” Hiromi flicked one of her legs up, and a stone the size of oh-my-god-that’s-going-to-hurt flew at me. I tried to dodge, but it slammed into my gut like a dodgeball from hell.
A great cloud of white dust and the sound of
shattering fossils exploded up from the point of impact, and I flew off my feet. The impact with the ground knocked out whatever air I had left, and pain flooded my chest and abdomen. I curled up on the damp grass and moaned, clutching my stomach.
*Get up!* Alynon screamed in my head.
I groaned, and struggled up, expecting to see another stone flying at my head and not sure I could dodge it any better than the last.
Instead, I heard Reggie shout “Dormio!” and the jorōgumo disappeared with a Thwump! of imploding air as a glowing missile like a miniature photon torpedo flew through the space where she’d been standing.
I blinked, and looked over at Reggie. He stood inside the rune circle, a wand pointed where Hiromi had been. He cursed and tossed the wand aside, drawing a silver automatic pistol from beneath his jacket.
“Where’d she go?” I managed to say, and thought better of saying anything more as the pain of speaking burned in my chest. Had she gone invisible somehow?
*She transformed into a true spider,* Alynon replied.
Ah crap. I took a step back, looking down at my feet, though I knew she could not have covered the distance to me so quickly, not as a tiny spider.
There was another pop of displaced air, and Hiromi reappeared several feet to the side of where she’d been. She made a flinging motion, and from her belly shot streams of glistening, milky threads at Reggie.
I expected him to counter with a fireball, or lightning, or something equally devastating. Instead, he fired the pistol at her, and Hiromi jerked and screamed in pain, but her webbing struck Reggie and entangled him. Hiromi gave three hard pulls on the threads, and Reggie jerked forward to slam into the edge of the stone ring three times. His suit flashed with blue light at the impacts and protected him from the worst of the damage, but his eyes still fluttered closed.
Reggie slumped down into the pit, entangled in webbing, and didn’t move. A jorōgumo’s webbing sedated its victims.
Hiromi turned to me, and her smile did not promise anything pleasant.
18
Heart and Soul
Hiromi shifted on her spider legs to face me, her grin spreading wide.
Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free Page 20
