He picked up his recorder and tried to get his mind back on the mysteries of international franchising. He hated to admit it, but the Master had been right when he said Keith might be wearing out under such a heavy schedule. He was. The last couple of Mondays it had been a real challenge to get out of bed to go to his job. If working for PDQ wasn’t so stimulating he’d drop the whole thing and go back to a regular schedule and living off campus. He wouldn’t have to eat crow. Things changed in the business world so often the school had several grad students going up and back every term. The professors wouldn’t mind if he changed back, providing he could make it past the semester break. Just then that respite felt a million miles away. He hoped his good karma with the powers-that-be at PDQ would hold out until he received his MBA. He hated to give up the job completely, for several reasons. Thanks to the generous salary, trickles of money flowed slowly but steadily into his three saving funds: house, ring, and Doris. He was getting valuable work experience. And it was fun. He ought to ask Dorothy what PDQ would think of letting him have a shorter work-week. Some of the really senior creative directors seemed to come in only a couple of times a month, but stars like that were given a lot of leeway. Keith shook his head. He was the most junior person on staff. He’d be pushing it to ask for special favors less than three months in.
He had left the expanse of well-lit interstate freeway miles behind him for the empty, four-lane road that led due south toward Midwestern. The shorn crop fields on both sides of the tarmac looked like a shaggy beige carpet under five or six inches of snow. His headlights, on for safety though it was still daylight, lit up the rooster-tail flurries swirling across his lane. If it got thick enough, he wouldn’t be able to see the lines. There was nowhere to pull off for miles yet. The soft shoulder sloped sharply down into drainage ditches on both sides of the road. He hoped the promised storm rolling in from Iowa would hold off for another hour and a half, until he reached the farm. At least the temperature was cold enough for dry snow rather than sloppily wet. Though the road wasn’t slick, a crunchy, half-inch film of snow had already accumulated, enough to fill tire treads and make the going treacherous.
How lonely it was out here. He couldn’t see another car ahead or behind him. Chicago was wall-to-wall with people, but downstate Illinois, flat as God’s ironing board, was a patchwork of farmland speckled with small towns and cities. Normally Keith enjoyed the endless sky stretching to the horizon. At that moment his world had shrunk to the area his headlights could illumine under lead-gray clouds and worsening snow. It would have been a relief to find a pair of red taillights to follow towards town.
A tiny speck of bright white appeared in his rearview mirror and grew steadily larger. One more car on the road. Keith smiled at the reflection. He always wondered who was in other cars and where they were going. Dola chided him for wanting to care about the business of every person in the world. But why not? he thought with a wry grin. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.
Seventy miles more. He’d be grateful when winter break came and he could stay in Chicago for a few weeks straight. He’d miss Diane and Holl and the others, but they could come up to visit him for a change. Some day, when he was finished altogether with school he’d have to make up his mind where to live. He had almost $5,000 in the house fund already. By spring there ought to be enough for that down payment on at least a modest starter home. Would he and Diane stay near the university, or in Chicago? He’d hate to be too far away from the elves, but it was tough to make a living in advertising in a small city. The major business was in the big cities. But where did she want to live? He wanted her to be happy.
The bright light in his mirror divided into two and continued growing. The other car was coming up pretty fast. Guy must be in a hurry to get where he was going. Keith dropped the recorder and put both hands on the wheel in case he had to maneuver. He pulled into the right lane to give the other room.
The car pulled level with him. Out of the corner of his eye Keith got a glimpse of metallic paint, white or silver, and the silhouettes of at least two men in the car. The passenger, a pale face with dark hair and eyebrows blurry behind the foggy glass, turned to look at him. Keith tipped him a grin and put his attention back to driving. It was kind of nice to have company.
The other car weaved back and forth in its lane, then started over the dashed white line into Keith’s.
“Hey!” he cried, as it came within inches of his fender. “Watch it!” He stomped on the brake, dropping back a length or two. The other car immediately slowed to match his pace, and loomed toward him again, this time clipping the left edge of his bumper. It swerved back, then hit him again with a BANG! The driver must be drunk. Not wanting a worse collision, Keith put his foot down hard on the accelerator. The powerful Mustang engine growled to life, and he shot ahead. His cell phone was beside him on the seat. He ought to call in a drunk driver, but he didn’t want to take either hand off the wheel. The snow was getting thicker.
The white car fell lengths behind him, but started to pull forward, homing in dangerously on Keith’s bumper. What was wrong with those people? Did they want to cause an accident? Keith urged the Mustang onward.
There must have been one mighty engine under the other car’s hood. No matter how Keith tried to maneuver, no matter how fast he drove, the white car kept beside him, and it was gaining ground. Keith slowed. If he could drop back quickly enough, he could pull a bootlegger’s turn across the sunken meridian, and head north toward the nearest town. This was a dangerous driver. He ought to be yanked off the road before he killed someone.
To throw the other off guard, Keith increased his speed past 90 and hung on to the wheel for dear life. With any luck a state police car would spot them as they roared past. Keith might end up with a ticket, but so would the other guy. Glancing in his mirrors to make sure no other vehicle would be endangered by a sudden change of direction, Keith hit the brakes hard, then spun the wheel in a circle. The back end broke loose and fishtailed for a moment, then the car bounded over the uneven grass barrier in the center of the road to the northbound lane. Keith stepped on the gas.
Within moments the other driver turned his vehicle to follow. Keith saw the headlights bob as the white car crossed after him. It was chasing him! Keith peered ahead through the dancing dots of white. How far ahead was that last turnoff?
The other gained on him. Keith held grimly to the wheel. The white car swerved into the other lane, rocketed forward until it was halfway ahead of him, then edged over, forcing him closer to the edge of the road. In a moment they’d both go into the ditch. He tried slowing or speeding, but the stranger had his measure now, and matched him move for move. Keith felt gravel under his right tires as he felt the white car nudge him in the front left fender. He hit the brakes hard and threw down a mental anchor, using the thickest thread of magical sense he could muster, to keep his car from spinning out. He bumped over the loose rocks on the shoulder. A cold stone was in his belly as he heard the drive train drag through the gravel.
The white car didn’t have brakes as good as his, mechanical or magical. Its tires, clogged with snow, skidded on the smooth road. As Keith watched in horror it went off the road and crashed into the ditch, finishing tilted over at a 45-degree angle against a fence. Keith heard the impact as he overshot the site. He hauled his wheel over to the right, rolled to a stop on the shoulder, then threw his car into reverse. He turned to look behind him, steering with one hand, the other outstretched along the top of the car seat. He hoped no one was hurt.
As he got closer, he could see figures staggering up onto the roadside. He thought he saw at least four of them. He could just about fit them into his car while they waited for the tow truck. He’d better call in the accident, then give Hollow Tree a ring just to let them know he was going to be late. But first to find out if anyone had been injured.
Putting his phone in his pocket, Keith pulled on his gloves and got out.
“Are you folks all righ
t?” he called, heading toward them.
Lit by the red glow from his taillights, three of them stood hunched against the cold in short leather jackets and jeans. The tallest man, pale-skinned and pale-eyed, dressed in an expensive overcoat, turned toward him.
“Come here,” he said in a nasal, flat voice that sounded Australian or something.
In one horrible moment Keith recognized him. It was the guy from Buckingham Fountain who’d had the advance copy of the ad. Automatically, Keith started to back away. The tall man stuck his left hand into the front of his coat and brought it out again. Even in the gloom Keith realized he was holding a gun. “Come eeyeh! Naow!”
“Now, wait a minute,” Keith said, alarmed. “I don’t want any trouble. I haven’t got anything you want. The ad’s out. Everyone knows about it.”
“To hell with the ad!” the man yelled. “Where did you find the lingo in the middle?”
The lingo…? The elves’ language? “No place,” Keith said, defiantly stopping where he was. The tall man’s three companions swarmed around him, roughly taking hold of his arms and shoulders. “I made it up.”
“Liar,” Beach said, narrowing his eyes at the boy with a leering grin. “You feel you have something to defend. Now we’re getting somewhere. Maria!”
A slender, black-haired woman appeared from near the car, swathed to the chin in furs. She had dark, intense eyes that even in the gloom bored into Keith’s like diamond drills. Oh, no. He’d watched enough spy movies to know that he ought to be afraid when they brought out the spooky lady. They were going to make her bend his mind until he told them all about the elves and their language. Well, they didn’t know everything about him.
“Maria,” said the tall man, “has he got any of the glamour on him?”
The woman moved closer. Her eyes seemed to glow. “Yes,” she said. “A power, growing … growing … growing …”
The men holding him obviously weren’t too crazy about the spooky lady or her pronouncements either. Keith could feel their grip loosen involuntarily. Good.
With a wiliness borne of years wrestling with a stronger and larger younger brother, Keith ducked down and slipped out of their grasp. At the same time, he used Holl’s favorite trick on them, one the Big student had wheedled his friend into teaching him. He jumped away. They flailed for him, and ended up windmilling their arms, unable to follow because their feet were stuck to the ground. Keith stood just out of reach, panting from the exertion, as they swore at him. Three at once was a lot to deal with, and not a single river of power anywhere to draw upon. He had to do it again, though, because the tall man himself was coming at him now, gun pointed at Keith’s head.
“Come back here, young man,” he commanded. “We haven’t finished our conversation yet.”
“Beach, we are stuck!” the dark-eye-browed man cried.
Keith wasn’t waiting to see what else this Beach had in mind. Summoning up every erg of energy from the depths of his soul, he threw another sticky-spell at the man’s feet and ran for his car. He jumped into the waiting Mustang and gunned it out onto the snowy road.
He didn’t dare turn around and head south again, not here. The charm couldn’t last long on his limited ability, and they’d be after him pretty soon. That is, if their car was drivable. With a sigh Keith reached for his cell phone. No matter if they were trying to pry secrets out of him, they were still people. He couldn’t let them freeze on the Illinois tundra in the middle of the night. He called in the accident to the state police, pulled off on the first secondary road, and began to wind his way slowly toward Hollow Tree Farm.
* * *
“No, we did not foresee the incident,” Holl said, offering Keith hot cider in his unicorn mug at one thirty in the morning. Keith’s frenzied pounding on the door had awakened most of the household. Everyone had gone back to bed but Holl, Keva and Dola, who was sitting next to her granduncle with wide eyes. “But you are right: it is a good thing that Dola was not with you.”
“We’d just be coming back from her commercial shoot,” Keith said, taking a long, deep sip. Ah. The icicles in his bloodstream began to thaw. He slumped with his elbows on the table. Exhaustion weighed down every limb. The drive along unfamiliar, narrow lanes steadily clogging with snow had shredded his nerves. “If we’d been talking I might not have paid attention to those people until they’d run me into a fence. It’s bad enough they banged up my bumper. That’s going to have to be pounded out. So, it’s better you didn’t come, sweetheart.” He reached over and tugged a lock of her blond hair.
Dola was not mollified. She tossed her head, tilting one pointed ear toward her uncle. “I might have been able to help you, Keith Doyle. You say you nearly ran out of strength.”
“Just about,” Keith admitted. Circles were etched in the pale skin under his eyes, which were muddy green with exhaustion. “I was woozy for the next twenty miles, and driving through a blizzard, that’s not too smart.”
“You did amazingly well for a Big Person,” Holl said seriously. “Holding down four grown men, one with cold steel in his fist, is a worthy accomplishment.”
“Shucks, it was nothing,” Keith said, pleased at the compliment. “So when this man, Beach, came up to me in the park it wasn’t about the ad itself. I shouldn’t have had to worry about PDQ or my job. That’s a relief. But this is worse!” he exclaimed, sitting up suddenly. “This guy could be after you!”
Holl nodded. “But they cannot find us. Our land is surrounded by many protections, not the least of which is the ‘electric fence’ you like to complain about. But there will be those who will say you’ve given us undesirable exposure to the public, by publishing your invitation.”
“I know,” Keith said, his shoulders sagging. “I’m sorry. It just seemed like the easiest thing to do. But it’s working! I’ve gotten about twelve responses so far. From what, I have no idea, but I’ve got the RSVPs. The Niall sounded really happy about it. I thought you guys liked it, too.”
“We do.” Holl smiled. “Pay the growlers no mind. They also believe we will bring down all of modern civilization on our heads by putting out a mailbox on the main road. But I’m curious: How did those Big Folk come to associate our written language with … what did the man call it, the glamour?”
“An old word for magic,” Keith acknowledged. “He didn’t say, and I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. But this Beach isn’t going to leave me alone. Following me over a hundred miles from Chicago to ask me a question means he’s serious. What can I do?”
Holl tilted his own head to regard his friend. His carroty coloring was distinctive enough, but his native enthusiasm drew the eye regardless. “You are difficult to lose in a crowd. Ah, well, you were asking Enoch for a lesson. He won’t mind if I take this task on myself.”
In spite of his exhaustion, Keith perked up. “What is it?”
“Our means for avoiding sight. It’s a skill of misdirection more than invisibility, so don’t get your hopes up, you overexcited infant.” Holl grinned at him. Working at the sink, Keva let out a sharp exclamation. She came over to stick a dripping forefinger in her younger brother’s face.
“Don’t you dare teach him about the pulses of the earth,” she said in their own language. “It’s not appropriate for a Big Person to know!”
“He may need to know it one day,” Holl argued. “I thought you trusted him.”
Keva smacked a tray down on the table and dried it with rough strokes of a towel. “To a point! He’s still a Big Person!”
“He kept our secret despite the risk to his own safety,” Holl said. “We owe him what protection we can give him.”
“I don’t like it. I wouldn’t do it.” She spun on her heel and went back to her dishes.
Holl scowled at his sister, then turned to Keith, who had been watching them curiously. He probably guessed that he was being discussed, but was too well-mannered to say so. “In any case you’re in no shape to absorb the information now, Keith Doyle,” he s
aid in English. “Go to sleep. You’ve got your classes to attend in the morning.”
Keith groaned and looked at the clock. Only six hours until he had to be awake again. “I’ll call and tell them I died,” he said.
“Not yet,” Holl assured him, taking the mug out of his hands. “Come on. Do you need help getting down to the barn?”
Keith made a face. “I’m not dead yet. Wait until morning.”
* * *
Beach sat in the cab of the wrecker, waiting for the two men in boiler suits to winch his car out of the ditch. Though they weren’t pleased to have to come out to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, they showed the concern of decent people for the four passengers who needed help. They had been sent by the highway patrol, they told him, who were informed by an anonymous phone call. Someone had seen them go off the road. The boy, Beach thought. His mind went back over the events of three hours before, replaying them again and again. He still could not believe what seemed to have occurred. The four of them had been glued to the ground while their quarry ran away.
“What did he do?” he asked Maria for the fiftieth or sixtieth time.
The psychic was huddled against the door, staring out into the snowy night. “I do not know. Suddenly there was a feeling. My spirits tell me the earth is his friend … but I know no more than that.”
Beach frowned. He wanted to know more, and right that very minute, preferably with illustrations and footnotes. “But what is it? A hereditary skill? Or did he learn it somewhere? How? And from who?”
Advanced Mythology Page 24
