by P. R. Frost
That leads to total disaster.
Tess needs me tonight. Any test of my skills with time must wait.
Uncle George really needs a comeuppance at game night.
When he feels superior, gloating over a triumph in the game, he searches Tess’ house for her secret stash of cash just so he can afford to get drunk. If we beat him at game night, maybe he’ll go crawl back into his hole and leave the money and my mold alone.
Now what can I do to keep Mom out of here?
I know, I’ll persuade Standish the standoffish ghost to prowl down here rather than in the butler’s pantry. Mom fears that ghost more than any of the others, mostly because he wants to be alone and howls like a werewolf when we disturb him.
Chapter 10
“TERESA!” MY OLD FRIEND Bob Brown greeted me at the miniscule Pascoe Airport.
He enfolded me in a hug worthy of the black bear he resembled, (or was it a Sasquatch, so frequently in the news of late?). Six feet tall, two hundred twenty pounds of muscle, thinning, curly black hair against tanned skin.
For once he’d trimmed his beard. He had a BS in nuclear physics and an MS in health physics. He worked at the local nuclear reservation developing shields against radiation.
“You’ve lost weight, kid. There’s hardly enough of you to gather to my benighted bosom.”
“Forty-seven-and-a-half pounds,” I chortled, still proud of the fact I’d kept off the weight the fever had wasted from my frame. “I think you’re mixing metaphors again, Bobby,” I laughed as I extricated myself from his arms. Tears came to my eyes unbidden. I hadn’t seen my friend since Dill’s funeral. A lot had happened since then. Quite a lot.
“You okay? Dill went so suddenly, and I didn’t hear from you for so long, I was afraid you’d cracked up.”
“I nearly did. But it’s been nearly three years, Bob. I’ve finished grieving and moved on.”
Yeah, right, Scrap mumbled from atop my laptop case.
“Ready to move on to me?” Bob asked hopefully. His nose worked like it itched. “Do you smell cigar smoke?”
“Wishful thinking, Bob. You gave up smoking ten years ago.” I grabbed the handle of the wheeled case and dragged it, and Scrap, toward the baggage claim area. Bob had no choice but to follow.
“How many cons have we been to together since we met freshman year at Providence U, Tess? A hundred? Two? And you still don’t love me enough to marry me.”
“More wishful thinking. You’re my best friend. Let’s not spoil it.” I waved a skycap over.
“You don’t even trust me enough to carry your bags?” He pouted, but a smile tugged at his mouth. We’d known each other too long for us to take such banter seriously.
“I don’t travel light anymore. Especially when you are tipping the skycaps,” I teased.
“You really don’t travel light anymore,” he whistled as I claimed two oversized suitcases and three boxes full of books fresh from the publisher.
“One of those books has your name on it, the rest are for the dealer’s room. There was a warehouse glitch in getting the order here in time.”
“I tried to be easy on you with the schedule, Tess, so we can go filking.” Bob loved sitting up in a ballroom all night swapping parody tunes and Celtic lays with all and sundry. I did, too, once upon a time.
“I haven’t sung since… no, Bob, I’d rather not.”
“Dill was a good man, Tess. Maybe you should sing something in memory of him. Get yourself some real closure.”
“What? ‘There’s a Bimbo on the Cover of my Book’? That was his favorite.”
“Is there a bimbo on the cover of your book?”
“Not this time. My publisher went tasteful for a change. They even spelled my name right.”
For my first five books I’d written as Teresa Newcombe so readers could remember it and spell it correctly, though the copyright had always been as Teresa Noncoiré. When I had reemerged from my self-imposed exile, Teresa Newcombe was a fading memory among the powers that be in the book world. My publisher wanted a new name on the book he promised to push onto the best-seller lists. I decided to stick to my legal name. I’d never planned to take on Dill’s name of Cooper. Fans had no trouble pronouncing or spelling Noncoiré after the book hit five best-seller lists including the NYT.
“A filk would be more appropriate for Dill than a hymn or dirge. Just promise to sing at my funeral.” Bob hugged me again.
“Since I plan for you to outlive me by at least a decade, that might be a little hard.”
“Oh, you’ll come back as a ghost to haunt me at every con we’ve ever been to together.”
Laughing, we made our way out to the parking lot, trailed by the overloaded skycap.
Bob drove into the porte cochere of the hotel five minutes from the airport. I got out without waiting for him or the valet to open my door. Eagerly, I arched and stretched my back, checking my surroundings for unexplained shadows as I had been taught by my Sisterhood.
In the still warm night air of the high desert plateau of the Columbia River, I spotted a familiar cream-colored BMW across the parking lot.
Pointedly, I did not look closer. If Donovan Estevez had followed me here, he would find me. But he would not surprise me.
“Bob, are there any anthropology professors at the community college who specialize in local Indian lore?”
I asked as I registered and the bellhop struggled with my luggage.
“Excuse me, I happen to have several anthropology degrees,” a clipped voice remarked at my other elbow.
I closed my eyes a moment to master my irritation.
Scrap bounced around the high counter, blinking shades of neon green.
“Guilford Van der Hoyden-Smythe.” I turned to confront the tall nerd who had stalked me in Portland.
“If you specialized in Pacific Northwest native lore, you might have had answers to my questions three weeks ago.”
My dear friend held out his hand to introduce himself.
“Bob Brown, I’m guest liaison and programming chair for the con.”
“Call me Gollum.” Van der Hoyden-Smythe reached across me and shook Bob’s proffered hand vigorously.
Just then three people, two female, one male, wearing jeans and T-shirts and demon masks sauntered past.
Very good demon masks at that. One had numerous tentacles dangling from wrinkled purple skin. I could not detect where the mask ended and their hair began.
The other two had the furred faces of bats.
Bob draped an arm about my suddenly cold shoulders.
He knew about my phobia. As long as they didn’t show their wings, I’d be okay, though.
Gape-mouthed, Gollum stared at them.
“Don’t worry. That’s rather mild for costuming at this con. Wait until the masquerade on Saturday night.” I patted his arm in reassurance. He kept staring at the con goers.
“Part of the game is for them to stay in character, so don’t be surprised if you hear them speaking nonsense words pretending it’s a demon language.” Bob said straight-faced. But not for long.
We both burst out laughing in memory of the time a Klingon had ordered a beer in Klingon at this very con five years ago. Bob and I had called the puzzled waitress over and suggested she serve the man prune juice. She did. No other Klingon dared order anything in any language but English after that.
I guess imitators aren’t as tough as the real thing.
Prune juice is, after all, a warrior’s drink. They served it every morning at the Citadel of the Sisterhood.
I sobered instantly with that memory.
“I don’t know any anthro profs at the college, but the guy who owns the Stalking Moon brew pub is fullblooded Sanpoil Indian—that’s part of the Colville Confederation. He’s full of tribal stories. We could have dinner and a tankard there,” Bob suggested to both of us.
My senses flared. “Stalking Moon?”
“Yeah. Leonard Stalking Moon owns the place.”
/> “Let the bellhop stow my luggage in my room. I’m starving. Take me to the pub now.” I marched back out to the covered drive knowing both men would follow me.
Scrap landed on my shoulder, chortling and puffing away. I calmly reached up and took the cigar out of his mouth. It dripped pink slime as I tossed it into the bucket of sand placed outside for that purpose.
“Stay quiet, watch, and listen closely,” I whispered to him.
I’ll watch you fend off two admirers any day, he laughed. This is going to be fun.
“This is work,” I whispered back as cold dread swept through me. I was getting closer to a battle with demons. “Special work that we have trained for.”
We are never fully trained until we survive the first full battle.
“We’ve had one battle.”
Fighting off that dog with a fireplace poker was not a true battle. Not a true test of our skills, our lives, and our vocation. But it is coming. Trust me.
Interlude
A WARRIOR IN TRAINING sends out pheromones that will attract every imp who can squeeze through the portal and all those on the loose. A kind of mating ritual was about to begin. But this joining of two beings had nothing to do with marriage and propagation. It had everything to do with survival.
Normally all the available imps will gather around the training field. The candidate bouts with her Sisters. She works up a sweat, straining muscles and ingenuity to score, something opens in her mind, and she will see an imp. Not all of them yet. But one. The special one she is most suited to meld with.
I had to be that imp. I had to fight off my bigger brethren so that I was the only imp on the field that day.
The imps who came to the choosing field that day were all fully grown, aware of their powers and their need to meld with a warrior. For imps are incomplete and without honor if they cannot bond.
But I am older than all of them. Stunted I may be in body, the runt of Mum’s litters. My mind and ingenuity are far more developed than theirs. How else could I sur vive my one hundred two siblings? And Mum.
Life among imps is harsh. It has to be. Only the best survive.
My sibs learned that from me the hard way. I knew I was something special because I had survived though I should have died a century ago when I failed to grow to full size.
Imps expect their brethren to fight fair. But life isn’t fair.
Demons don’t fight fair. I pulled every dirty trick I could think of: gouging eyes, tying tails in knots to destroy balance, shredding wings with my hind claws while I dug out warts on faces.
Whatever eliminated my competition.
When Tess walked onto the training field that day, strong, fit, and fully recovered, but inexorably scarred by the imp flu, only I awaited her. A torn ear, nearly severed tail, and beautiful bruises all over (two new glorious warts) but I was there.
“So this Citadel sits directly upon a portal between reality and the demon world,” I said with a straight face.
The night I had witnessed the Goddess in the sky had convinced me. The warrior Sisterhood had some serious enemies. But I had yet to see any evidence those enemies were demons and not mortal predators.
Sisters Paige, Mary, and Electra nodded.
“And we are from the world of mortals, but this Citadel exists in neither that realm nor the one of demons; somewhere in between,” I continued. Just to make certain I had the facts straight, as weird and unbelievable as they might seem. Seem to them. I had yet to be convinced.
I had to concentrate. My mind had already begun constructing a new book, an entire series based upon what was going on here.
I’d started writing it on a lined spiral notebook with a stubby pencil. In the evenings, I told stories to the Sisters, making them a part of the story. Some thoroughly enjoyed the novelty. Others… ? Most of the older Sisters, especially Sister Gert, the leader, and those so entrenched in the life here and so long cut off from the world they had lost most of their memories of reality, scoffed and scorned and tried to get me to stop my tales.
Those Sisters had no use for books, fiction or non. They had no television, no computers. No electricity to run them. And only a primitive plumbing system to provide sanitation.
I was bored out of my gourd except for my new book!
And I’d only been on my feet and training a month. A total of three months here. How was I supposed to remain here the rest of my life and stay sane?
We occupied our days with training. This morning I stood easily in the middle of a sandy square, about five meters to the side, in the middle of the Citadel courtyard.
The three arms mistresses all looked alike to me: medium height and stocky build with lots of muscles in arms, legs, and torsos. Not a bit of fat on any of them.
But then, I didn’t have any fat left on my body either.
The fever had eaten it away and no matter how much I ate, I’d only regained about two of the fifty pounds I had lost.
After only a month of working out, my entire body had become whipcord lean and strong.
For the first time in my life I was not pudgy. In fact I was downright skinny. Ten pounds underweight instead of forty over. To my eyes I looked positively anorexic.
But I was strong. And gaining fitness and stamina by the day.
Paige, on my left, had a shock of black hair pulled back into a tight bun. Mary’s wispy blond curls framed her face like an angelic halo. Electra had a bigger bust and lots of fiery red hair that clashed with her bloodred workout clothes. All three had long scars from temple to jaw to match mine. Theirs had faded to a thin white line. Mine still looked red, raw, and angry.
“If there is a portal, why can’t it be sealed?” I asked.
“And what’s to keep demons from finding and opening another?” I needed those answers to satisfy my own curiosity as well as to plot the next scene in the new book.
The arms mistresses looked at each other. Some silent communication passed between them. “No questions,” they spoke in unison.
Electra stepped forward one pace, the obvious spokeswoman of the group. “You’ll stop talking and learn to fight properly when you face a Kajiri demon head-on with only a Celestial Blade for a weapon.” She tossed me a quarterstaff with strange hooked ends.
I caught the thing easily. It balanced well in one hand.
“What kind of wood is this?” I asked, fascinated with it. The curved blades on either end seemed just as sharp as a steel sword.
“We call it imp wood. It is an exact replica of the weapon that will come to you when you face a demon. We are here to teach you how to use it.” Paige picked up her own weapon, a duplicate of mine, from a nest of them at the edge of the sandy workout plot. She took a stance, feet spread, knees bent, back straight, staff balanced easily in both hands.
I mimicked her pose.
“Copy me move for move,” Paige said. She raised the right end of her staff and thrust it forward.
My move blocked hers.
“Good. Again.”
We played with the staffs for a good twenty minutes, increasing the speed and force of each move until we were both covered with sweat and my arms shook with the unaccustomed activity. The most exercise I’d had since I nearly failed physical education my freshman year at Providence U.
Then Mary jumped into the square with her own staff. The two of them went at me in unison. I barely had time to wipe the sweat out of my eyes when Electra took over for the two of them. She put me through my paces at twice the speed and ferocity of the other two combined.
My knees trembled, my heart beat overtime, and my lungs labored before she let me call a halt.
She’ll do, a strangely accented voice called from behind my left foot.
I looked. No one stood behind me.
“Lower,” Sister Gert, the head of the Sisterhood, commanded me. She sounded… disappointed or disapproving.
I couldn’t tell which. But then she didn’t much like me because I wanted to know everything and anything
about this place and the people here, all at once.
I looked at my feet.
A translucent imp, tinged with the same green as the fresh flower sprouts two plots over, stared back at me with huge eyes. His bat-wing ears flapped, showing off a rippled rainbow of colors along the serrated and torn edges. He grinned, showing pointed teeth beneath his snub nose. He rested his taloned paws on his pot belly.
His tiny wings fluttered in the slight breeze.
“What is that?” I raised my staff ready to smite the thing.
“No, don’t.” Electra grabbed the staff away from me.
“That’s your imp. You need to ask his name.”
“My what?” I rounded on the three. Each had a similar being perched on their shoulders. The imps took on shades of lavender. They looked larger, more fully formed than the little thing at my feet. And they all had full-sized wings that rose above their heads in sharp and hooked points. The tips of the appendages dipped well down the backs of the women whose shoulders they sat upon.
Even Sister Gert had one. Bigger than all the rest.
“We all have them,” Paige explained. “Our imps.”
“That sorry excuse for an imp is the only one that showed up to claim you,” Sister Gert snorted, as if the imp reflected the sort of Sister I would make.
My knees gave out, and I plunked onto the churned sand at my feet. Between fatigue and shock I was done in, incapable of absorbing anything more.
The little imp hopped into my lap and stared at me in frank appraisal. I couldn’t even feel his weight he was so insubstantial. Can’t fight demons sitting down, babe.
“Oh, shut up!” I buried my face in my hands, unsure if I should cry or laugh out loud.
“Ask his name!” Mary said quietly. “He’s not fully yours until you exchange names, and we can’t get on with your training until you have an imp.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What’s your name, imp?”
Scrap will do for now, he said, or sneered. I couldn’t be sure which.
“Scrap? Because you’re just a scrap of an imp?” The ridiculousness of the situation and my total exhaustion took me. I rolled on the ground unable to contain my laughter.
