by John Conroe
Safely tucked into her microscopic office, she used the towel to hold both ends of the shaker while she twisted it apart. Hand carved from oak, the shaker was a little larger than a can of soda. The top two-thirds held the cinnamon-sugar mixture and the bottom third held twenty-four miniature discs of wood, each cut from the same tree branch, the bark still on. In fact, they had all come from a fresh-cut limb of the Rowan tree outside our dining room window.
Each disc had a separate figure carved into its face—a rune.
“We’ll draw five, we will. I’ll draw first, as I was first to meet the lasses, then you draw the next three, then I’ll pick last, got it?” she asked. This was her area of expertise and she knew far more about it than I, so I would normally never question her, but I had a piece of information that she didn’t.
“Actually, I saw them coast into the parking lot when I was taking out the trash. Not sure if that counts?”
“Did you lay eyes on the both of them then, or just the auto?”
Feeling my face flush, I nodded as I answered, “I saw them both. Never saw the car before, so I was curious,” I added. She studied me with bright blue eyes that matched my own, nodding after a moment.
“That changes it. You draw one, I the next, then two for you and one last for me own.”
I closed my eyes and settled my mind, breathing in slowly through my nose and out through my mouth. When I had wrestled my unruly brain into a modest semblance of calm, I reached my left hand into the container of rune cover discs. As my fingers brushed the chips of wood, I pulled up the fresh memory of seeing the girl and her mother through the windshield of their car. Seemingly of their own accord, my fingers found a tiny branch segment and picked it up. I set it down on my aunt’s desktop before us and contemplated the rune scored into its surface. It had an upside down mutated F on it, the twin horizontal lines jutting up at a diagonal rather than straight.
“Feoh reversed. Slavery or bondage,” Aunt Ashling intoned. She reached into the wooden shaker bottom and pulled another rune. It looked like a poorly drawn, lower-case p, with the vertical line extending up too high. It was backward as well.
“The Thorn, also reversed. Danger,” she said before giving me a nod.
I pulled out an R with sharply drawn angular lines. It was right side up.
“Rad—a journey,” she said with a sharp nod to herself.
My next rune looked like an hourglass that was missing its top line and turned on its side like a C. “Peor—female, hidden change.”
Aunt Ashling’s final draw was a simple line, an I.
“Is, also called Ice. Treachery,” she said, her tone dropping into instructor mode. I already knew this, but I nodded anyway, waiting for her to pull her reading together.
“These two are on the run… fleeing captivity. True danger stalks them. The girl has a secret, or maybe she is the secret. Hard to know. They’ve journeyed far,” she said, still studying the five runes lined up in front of us.
“The car’s plates were from Colorado, and there wasn’t a whole lot in it,” I noted.
She turned her head abruptly, auburn tresses swinging around her face as she locked her gaze onto mine.
“Make no mistake, Declan me lad, these ladies are not fleeing some abusive husband or father. There is something uncanny about them, something more than a wee bit off,” she warned.
“I touched the girl’s wrist, Aunt Ash, by accident. I hadn’t wiped off my hand and still had Cen drawn on it. I got the weirdest flash from her, real short and sharp. It wasn’t the sort of thing I’ve ever gotten off a person, more like the feel of tech.”
She cocked her head to one side, eyebrows up in question.
“I can’t really explain it. Kinda like a computer or smartphone, but not. I don’t know… just weird.”
She looked worried. “Declan, the girl’s to start at your school tomorrow. I think you should keep an eye on her and maybe, if she needs it, help her out,” she said, sounding a bit uncertain.
“Help her out? With what? How much help? And just who are you and what have you done with my aunt?” I asked, blown away by the direction she was taking.
She smiled a thin, pressed-lip kind of smile. “I know I’ve hounded ye to keep your head down and all. But when we’re called to help, then help we must!”
Despite her constant preaching about flying under the radar, I knew my aunt had used her own gifts to help innocents from time to time. It was how she had met her partner, Darci. She had found a lost boy twelve years ago who would most likely have died of exposure to harsh Vermont weather. His searchers had been looking in all the wrong areas. Since then, she had helped a number of other times, working through Darci and her fellow deputies. A couple of missing college kids on a hike, a child kidnapped by her estranged father, and one runaway all owed their safety to my aunt, who had avoided any and all recognition of her contributions.
But she had been very steadfast in hiding me and my talents. I’ve never been allowed to use my true abilities, so really, what’s the point in having them? Now, if I was being directed to help, she was getting more from this reading than she was telling me.
“Declan, me lad, as cliché as it sounds I feel something coming… and it feels like a storm,” she said, looking up from the five rounds of wood.
Readings were her thing and she was very good at them, but storms, at least certain storms, were my thing and in that respect of my Craft, I had no equal.
Chapter 2-Miseri
Twenty-six-hundred miles and three time zones to the
southwest, Felix Martinez glanced at the clock in the lower left of his computer monitor and noted the late hour. These rush jobs always seemed to turn into all-nighters. He finished filling in the data fields for the California DMV license form, then saved the page. After waiting a long moment for the website to update, he noted with satisfaction that an official California driver’s license was now entered in the name he had been given to work with.
Setting up false identification was a constantly evolving business. Some parts involved identity theft, some bribing low-paid government workers for their access codes, some involved researching names and social securities of people dead for decades, and lastly, there was always a little fiction writing to give a decent backstory.
A loud noise in the outer office caught his ear. It was quickly followed by another thud. Felix grabbed the 9mm semi-automatic that clung to a powerful magnet under his desk and moved to the doorway of his office. Opening the door, he looked into the reception area of what was ostensibly a tax preparation and bookkeeping business. A thirty-something-year-old woman was standing at the reception counter, smiling at him. Dressed in jeans and a light-colored blouse, she appeared attractive and pleasant, but something about her didn’t seem right. Felix stepped through into the outer office, automatically looking to the left where his assistant, Manny, should have been. At the same time, he tucked the gun behind his right leg, hiding it from the woman’s view.
Manny wasn’t at his desk, but after shifting stance slightly, Felix suddenly spotted a brown, shoe-clad foot on the floor behind the chair and desk. Alarmed, he started to move, but a steel band closed about his right wrist and squeezed hard enough to break bone.
Confused and in enormous pain, Felix felt his arm hauled over his head, pulling him up on his toes. At the same time, he became aware of a huge, looming presence at his side. The person holding him plucked the gun from his powerless hand and swung his body to face the woman.
Still smiling pleasantly, she nodded at him as if they were meeting for lunch. “Hi, Felix. I’m Miseri, and my associate is Clay. We have questions for you regarding some recent clients,” she said.
Barely able to speak through the pain in his arm and wrist, Felix still managed to bring up the most important information he had.
“I never meet my clients. I only do pieces of their overall identification package, not the whole thing. I doubt I can help you,” he said, his mind racing throu
gh everything he could do to survive this.
“Oh, I’m certain you can help us. I only need a few bits of information,” she said sweetly, pulling a long, thin dagger from behind her back. “In fact, I’m certain you’re going to be more help than you realize,” she finished.
An hour and seven minutes later, the woman who called herself Miseri left the small, one-story building on the outskirts of Phoenix, her huge companion at her back. The sun was starting its climb and promised to provide a full day of legendary Arizona heat.
Walking unhurriedly toward a silver Honda Accord, she spoke over her shoulder. “Clay, I will meet you later, after I check in. Be a dear and clean that up back there.”
The silent giant nodded and moved back into the building, pulling several small, rectangular black objects from his messenger bag as he did.
Miseri continued her nonchalant stroll but stopped suddenly when she detected movement at the mouth of an alley. It was only a cat, a kitten really, ginger-colored and very thin. The tiny creature stared up at the woman, shaking in hunger. It mewed, but the cry was almost silent.
“Oh little hunter! You’ve fallen on hard times,” the woman said, squatting down to rub the kitten’s head. The tiny predator butted her other hand with his head, then licked a small red spot from the back of her hand. “Thank you, little one! I must have missed that drop. It spatters so, but then, I imagine you know that already.”
The woman came to a decision, scooping up the cat and continuing on her way. “You will come with me. But what to call you?”
The kitten didn’t struggle but instead began to knead the shoulder he was pressed against, his sharp claws easily penetrating the woman’s blouse.
“Oh, that’s it! You will be Talon,” she said, keyfobbing her car door. Climbing into the late model Honda, the woman deposited the small feline on the seat next to her, then carefully buckled her seatbelt before driving away.
Behind her, the small building she had just left suddenly blossomed into a near-silent ball of harsh white light, the thermite and white phosphorus incendiaries hot enough to melt brick and bone, but she barely noticed. Instead, she was dialing a number on her smartphone.
“Central, this is Miseri. The name is Williams. First names are Rachel and Sarah. The source had little further information.”
“Confirmed, Agent Misericord. You and Agent Claymore are to await further orders.”
“Just let me know when you get a hit,” she replied.
“In the last five seconds, we’ve already gotten seventy-seven returns from those names, and the search is still running. We will filter and advise. Clear?”
“Clear, Central, but under no circumstances should your watchers approach the target. That cat has serious claws,” she said, hanging up the phone. “That gives us plenty of time to get you some food, Talon.”
The tiny orange cat purred and settled on the car seat, its half-lidded eyes watching its new human protector. The car continued away from the fiercely burning building as sirens rose in volume across the sprawling city.
Chapter 3- Declan
Ah, Monday mornings at Castlebury High. The noise, the confusion, the sullen glares, the gossipy girls, clowning boys, and all those oh, so public displays of affection. What joy to look forward to.
I parked my Toyota in the spot that was fast becoming its usual place, the back of the Senior parking lot in the shade of an old oak. September in Vermont is still capable of hot days, and I loathe getting into a stifling car. Plus, it keeps my Beast far from the popular crowd’s cars. No use tempting fate. Most of the school would leave my car alone, but there are a few, a small number of individuals whose mental capacity is so low that they probably view common sense as a super power. One or two of those might fall prey to peer pressure or might attempt to show off for the higher-status kids. It’s happened before, although not for quite some time.
The last incident was about a year ago, when I had just gotten my car back from the body shop, which is about the time that Rory started to call it the Beast. The Junior car lot is a bit more secluded, and in my excitement over the metallic green paint that gleamed over every inch of my rebuilt Cruiser, I foolishly thought Junior year would be different.
Colin Sefert, acting no doubt on a suggestion of Trey Johnson’s, had showered my car with a full dozen eggs. He showed a little cunning in that he did it during a fire drill, when everyone was crowded at the front of the building. I had known something was up when Rory and I crossed the lot at the end of the day and the whole popular gang was hanging around, trying to act nonchalant. They had laughed long and hard at the look on my face when I saw the crushed eggshells and yellow yolks all over the Cruiser. When all the parking lot lights suddenly turned on in the bright daylight, they had fled the scene, still laughing, but a few of them seriously spooked. Trey was the last to leave, with his girlfriend, Jessica Connors. Shaking his head in mock dismay, he still couldn’t hide a tiny smirk. Jessica, on the other hand, looked truly mortified, which made me wonder at her choice of friends for maybe the six hundredth time.
Of course, Colin, being a cretin, hadn’t really thought about the fact that the kid who fixes most of the school’s computers would be able to access the security camera footage. After that, Colin began to have cell phone trouble. Quite a bit, actually. His expensive smartphone failed rather spectacularly, losing all his photos, contacts, and favorite apps in the middle of English class, which I happened to share with him. So did the next three replacement phones, almost as soon as he got them—and all in the same English class, where I got to watch. I heard that when his family’s cell plan had started charging full price for replacements, his father made him use his little sister’s old phone, a much older model that had been lovingly decorated with rhinestones and flower stickers. Never actually saw him use it, though.
My car was left alone for the rest of the year.
“Another day in Paradise,” Rory Tessing said as he climbed out of the passenger side of the Cruiser. It was a bit rigorous for him, as he’s only a hair over five feet tall and built on the slim side of gaunt.
“Awesome,” I agreed.
Inside, we split up, heading to our lockers, which were half a school apart. Rounding a corner, I saw a single figure standing in the middle of the corridor, kids swirling around her as she studied the rows of lockers.
“Having trouble?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
The girl from the restaurant, Sarah, looked up, frowning. She was wearing the same jeans and running shoes as the day before, a long-sleeved black t-shirt that had Terratex, Inc. emblazoned in white letters across the back, and absolutely no makeup.
“These lockers do not appear to be laid out in any organized manner,” she said.
I laughed. “They installed the lockers in blocks two years ago, and the contractors mixed them up. By the time they figured out something was wrong, school was due to start and they just left them that way. What number do you have?”
“B2233,” she said, frowning even more at my explanation.
I thought about that for a moment, then led her around the corner, where the lockers started at B2100, and over one wing more to where the B2200s were. “Instead of putting them in sequentially, they put each block in a separate wing before going back and installing the next batches.”
“That’s absurd,” she said, looking offended.
I laughed again. “Welcome to the backend of nowhere.”
She frowned again, then moved to her locker and dialed the combination without looking at her papers, opening it on the first try.
“Do you need help figuring out where your classes are?” I asked, thinking I would be helpful.
“Do I look like a complete moron? I saw the school map, I know where all the rooms are,” she said, her voice sharp.
“Whoa there. Just asking. Have a nice day,” I replied, locking down the words I really wanted to say.
I left her and headed to my own locker, trying to rein in my te
mper. Kids in the hallway took one look at my face and veered quickly out of my path – except one girl who deliberately stepped in front of me.
She was arguably the hottest girl in the Senior Class and captain of the cheerleading teams… all of them.
“Declan, you alright? You look pissed,” she commented. Not many people would ask me that.
“Hi, Jessica. Just having a morning. What can I do for you?” I asked. She smiled, and I lost some of my anger. Jessica Connors has always had that effect on me despite the fact that I had no shot with her.
“My dad bought me a new iPad and it’s not synching with my Cloud. Would you take a look at it?” she asked, holding out the offending tablet, which was sporting a light blue cover.
“Sure Jess. Same passwords?” I asked, taking the tablet.
“Yup. Thanks, D.”
I nodded and headed past her and her flock of cheer girls. Behind me, one of the girls, Chloe Bledsoe, piped up loud enough for me to hear. “You let him know your passwords?”
