Advanced Mythology

by Jody Lynn Nye

  The girl’s lip stopped quivering long enough for her to ask, “What clown?”

  Keith took his handkerchief out of his pocket. He put his two hands together and spread them out with the white cloth in between. On its surface he allowed the image of a jolly, brightly colored clown to appear. Its white face had a bright red nose and mouth and eyes with exaggerated blue lashes around it that matched its bright blue hair. Its baggy costume was covered with spots in all the colors of the rainbow.

  “Look out!” Keith said in mock alarm. “Its spots are going to fall off! Catch them!” He made the dots rain off the clown’s coverall. The little girl put out her hands, but the blobs of color dissolved into air. She giggled, her bruise forgotten. “Whoops!”

  “Are you a magician?” the woman asked, fascinated. She finished the bandaging job as quickly as she could while the child searched her lap and the floor for the missing spots.

  “Wizard in training,” Keith said.

  “Like Harry Potter?” the little girl asked brightly.

  “Not exactly. No owl,” Keith explained. He tapped a finger on the end of the girl’s nose. “See if you can catch the spots next time.” He rose and stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket.

  “Thank you,” the woman called as the two men turned away and climbed the stairs.

  Keith caught Pat looking at him with a peculiar expression on his face. “You know, that is very impressive,” his friend said hoarsely. Keith realized that neither of his roommates saw him do magic very often.

  He waved a dismissive hand. “It’s nothing. Enoch would be all over me for using a background. He thinks all illusions ought to be free-standing.”

  Pat cleared his throat. “Nothing but special effects, eh?”

  “Sort of. I’ve got to get back to work. See you later.”

  “Thanks for the escort and the floor show,” Pat said. He waved to the uniformed black man standing by the glass doors. Recognizing him as one of the cast members, the guard stepped aside to let him in.

  Pat flipped his hand in salute as he disappeared through the auditorium doors. Keith pulled his scarf tighter and hitched his collar up around it. He retraced the route he and Pat had just taken in. To his surprise, there were shops and pushcarts all along the pier. He could have been shopping for little trinkets to give Diane! Oh, well. He could do it on the way out.

  There was just too much on his mind. When classes began again he’d have Entrepreneurship and Business Accounting, two heavy courses. The Master had stated that from Classical philosophers they were moving on to ancient poetry. With Keith’s luck he meant to have them learn it from the original Greek, Latin, and Chinese. He worried that the course load was becoming so heavy he’d have to give up commuting to Chicago or consider transferring to a distance-learning program. Neither would work, he thought, browsing to the next cart, which carried small wooden goods, among them a few baby teething toys made by the elves (Tiron’s and Candlepat’s, by the maker’s marks on the bottom). It was the Midwestern connection he didn’t want to lose. If only Holl could teach him teleportation, and take the commuting time off the table. He grinned, wondering how the cost for power expenditure for a transporter would look on a spreadsheet. No, better not to annoy Dr. Li right off the bat at the start of term.

  Okay, forget school, Keith thought, stopping to turn over earrings on a pushcart display, and let the new Origami ads percolate at the back of his mind for a while. New file folder: Make Diane Happy Week. Dunn’s brother had recommended a good Italian restaurant for a fancy meal, maybe to celebrate finding that perfect ring. Keith had also been scoping out nice places on the Mag Mile. Diane wouldn’t be able to resist the after-Christmas sales. Banners and signs were everywhere trumpeting deep discounts on leftover merchandise. Keith had examined them all with a newly-educated eye, seeing if he could guess which stores were offering real deals. It didn’t really matter. He’d end up going into whichever ones Diane wanted. He might not be in the walking-into-walls stage, but his ladylove could ask for what she wanted. If it was in Keith’s power to grant, it was hers. In the meantime, a pair of blue-green crystal earrings that just matched her eyes would serve as a suitable offering.

  Speaking of walking into walls, the crowd was surprisingly thick for a weekday afternoon. Hordes of grade-school kids crowded the front hall of the Pier, most likely waiting to go upstairs into the Children’s Museum. Keith was jostled by bored children rocketing around the enclosed space, their voices echoing off the high ceiling. Teachers and room parents, in desperate pursuit of their wandering flock, shoved through the crowd.

  A man pushed close to Keith. He tried to make room, guessing that the other wanted to get past to the bookstore, but the man hung close until they were past the door. Wondering if he was about to have his pocket picked, Keith tried to dodge away toward the Information desk in the center of the atrium. A grip like a steel manacle closed around his upper arm.

  “You’re tough to locate, pal,” a harsh voice said in his ear. Keith tried to tilt his head to see his captor’s face, but his scarf and hat prevented him from turning that far. The man jabbed him in the ribs again, this time with a blunt cylinder. “Don’t try to yell. I’ve got a silencer. They’ll never know why you dropped. Move. Out the door.”

  Keith’s heart pounded. He’d forgotten to put his invisibility spell back on! If he could just slip away in the crowd he could put it on again, but the man had a solid grip on him. He had to get away. The Information desk was within reach of his fingertips. If he could get loose he could vault the edge and explain to the security guards when he wasn’t in danger of being shot. He didn’t want anyone else hurt, either. The pier was so crowded, with all those children. He couldn’t disable the gun, but he could stop the thug from going anywhere. He worked his arm around until it was pointing toward the floor, and fired off a quick charm.

  The guy jerked to a halt as his feet stuck fast in place, but he didn’t let go. Keith felt cold metal jab him in the back of the neck, just under the edge of his scarf.

  “Undo it or I’ll kill you right here,” the man growled in his ear. “You’re not going to pull that on me again.”

  So it was one of the guys Beach had with him downstate, Keith realized. Reluctantly he closed his fist, releasing the glue spell. The grip on his arm propelled him forward again.

  Keith sensed the presence of another, larger man coming up alongside his captor. He heard the sound of electronic beeps, the new man dialing a cell phone. His voice was deeper than the first. “Yeah. Got him. Pull up.”

  “How’d you find me?” Keith asked, resisting an impulse to hold his hands in the air.

  “Shut up.”

  They emerged into the cold January day and stood huddled in a knot on the curb. Keith felt his mind spinning as he tried to calculate how he could get away from the pair of thugs without getting shot. His nerves were so strung out he almost burst into laughter when the car that zipped in to the curb in front of them was a black Volkswagen Beetle with dark-tinted windows. It hardly looked like a gangster’s ride.

  “Get in,” said the first man. He pulled open the door and pointed with his elbow, a gesture that allowed him to keep the gun in his hand concealed. He yanked open the door, pulled the seat forward, and shoved Keith at the back seat.

  “Come on, guys,” Keith said, looking up at his captors. He tried valiantly to keep his feet on terra firma. The moment he got into the car he was lost. “You must have the wrong guy. You want Harry Potter, right? He lives in England. I can’t give you his address, but …”

  A hand holding a white cloth emerged from the front seat and smothered the rest of his sentence. Something wet and medicinal-smelling smeared his face. Keith opened his mouth to complain about the odor, but he had trouble forming words. The world blurred into a mosaic of dark and light. Something hard hit him in the cheek and barked against his knees.

  He heard a thread of music. It was his cell phone ringing. Answering it seemed like the most i
mportant thing in the world, but he couldn’t work up the strength to take the kingfisher-colored phone out of his inside coat pocket. So nice of the second big man to do it for him.

  “Take a message, huh?” Keith muttered through his gag, as his leaden eyelids drooped closed.

  “Sorry,” Wysinski said, holding down the POWER button until the phone turned off. Vasques grabbed the unconscious Keith by the belt and shoved him into the back seat. “I don’t do secretarial work.”

  * * *

  Paul Meier put the receiver back in its cradle.

  “No answer,” he said. “He told me he was going to lunch with a buddy who’s in a play on Navy Pier. Probably you can’t get a decent connection inside the building.”

  “I don’t like it,” Dorothy said, tapping her long, coral fingernails on the tabletop. “The client likes his style. I hate to go on with the meeting without him. This meeting’s to clear an ad budget for five different trade shows all spring and summer. I left it in his hands. He knows these i-business ads backwards and forwards. I’m not sure which is which. Maybe we ought to cancel.”

  Paul shook his head. “You’ve got the keylines. The preliminaries were already approved. Pitch ’em for all you’re worth. I’ll help out. We’ve got the final of the new commercial to show. That always cheers ’em up. Don’t worry. Keith’ll probably waltz in here fifteen minutes late with a weird excuse, a box of doughnuts, and a bad joke.”

  ***

  Chapter 26

  Wasn’t that his belt buckle? Keith wondered, staring at the mysterious, square silver object in front of his eyes. Why did his head hurt so much? And who was groaning like that? The sound made it hard for him to think. He tried to rub his temples to drive away the pain, but his hands were stuck. Trying to tug them loose, he discovered they were tied behind his back. And his feet were attached to the legs of the chair he was sitting in. He was freezing. Where were his coat and hat?

  “Awake at last?” Beach’s supercilious voice asked from somewhere behind him. A hand grabbed the back of his neck and dragged his head up, away from the familiar buckle to a face he’d seen a couple of times before: the scary lady, crouching before him. She was dressed in a cheap-looking fur-trimmed coat with a hood that framed her narrow face, and fur-trimmed gloves. No, one glove. The bare fist grasped a gold chain. Keith peered at the object dangling at the chain’s end. It looked like a golden plumber’s weight.

  “He is aware,” she said, staring at Keith avidly. He couldn’t put his finger on her accent. She sounded like Dracula’s younger sister. With those burning eyes, she could have been Dracula’s younger sister. He turned away from her gaze, trying to figure out where he was. He was not going to give Beach and his minions the satisfaction of the usual question.

  The concrete ceiling of the chilly room was low, with water stains visible in the corners. One bulb, protected by a wire cage, burned in the center of the ceiling. The sealed concrete floor was divided by a long metal grate a foot wide that ran the length of the room. The room smelled strongly of chemicals. Cleaning supplies, a metal pail on wheels and a cluster of brooms were propped against the walls. A few feet away was an ancient and filthy industrial sink with a rag slung over the lip. Some kind of janitor’s closet? Maybe, but it was a strange janitor’s station with the noise of car engines so close. But the ratiocination helped him to gather his wits. He saw the shadowy forms of two men in the corners in front of him, flanking the only door he could see in the cinderblock walls. Besides Beach, he could hear someone breathing behind him.

  “Now,” Beach said, pulling a chair up in front of Keith and swinging it around so he could sit with his arms propped on the back, “let’s talk.”

  “Can’t,” Keith said promptly, though his lips were stiff with cold. “I’m late for work.”

  Beach pursed his lips wryly. The boy had seen too many spy pictures. He thought that by acting manly and holding out he would keep his secrets. Beach shook his head.

  “I’m only civilized up to a point, Keith,” he said. “I thought you were a nitwit when I first met you, but there’s deeper thoughts going on in that noggin of yours.” He thumped Keith on the top of the head with his knuckles. “It looked like a fluke—what could a lad like you know about the higher powers? And then we found this in your stuff.” He nodded, and the dark-eye-browed man stepped forward with a bag. From it he drew Keith’s magic lantern.

  “Hey, that’s private property,” Keith protested.

  “So we stole it,” Beach said with a nasty grin. “This, too.” The man with black eyebrows produced the candle lantern and lit it. “Goes on with a breath. Goes out with a breath. Do you have anything to tell me about how it works?”

  “What about it?” Keith asked nonchalantly. “’S a space-age chemical that’s carbon-dioxide activated.”

  “Yeah, I might have fallen for that explanation if it wasn’t that I’ve seen the very same design before. Stefan?”

  Stefan had one more item in his bag, another lantern. He turned it in his hands as if it was a priceless gem. In spite of himself Keith leaned in close to see it. The ornamental carving, fluted pillars and a complicated band of beading top and bottom, didn’t match any of the elves’ styles, and there was no maker’s mark on the bottom. “Where did you get that?”

  “Not space-age technology, lad,” Beach said pityingly. “It’s hundreds of years old. Found in backwoods Romania. But it still works.” To prove it, he breathed on the wick. It burst into flame. “Now, would you mind just telling me how you come by a lamp that’s the absolute replica of one that dates from the Renaissance?”

  “I bought it,” Keith said.

  Beach hauled back his fist and drove it into Keith’s cheekbone. Keith gasped. His chair rocked onto two legs, and settled down again, while his head rang from the blow. “Wrong answer. Let’s try a different one. What’s this thing do?” He held up the magic lantern.

  “It’s a toy,” Keith said. “A replica of the old movie projectors from the turn of the century. It doesn’t do anything.”

  The scary lady made a noise. Beach glanced at her with raised eyebrows and turned back to Keith. “Maria thinks you’re lying. What’s it do?”

  “It shows a picture,” Keith said with the greatest reluctance. “Anyone can use it. Just hold it flat on your hand and look at the screen.”

  Beach followed his instructions. The image of Dunn as a second-grader appeared on the light gauze. Maria let out a fascinated coo.

  “How’s it work?” the Australian demanded, nearly shoving the box in his face.

  “I don’t know how it works,” Keith said. It was nearly the truth: he didn’t know how it worked, just that it did. Beach drew back his hand again. Keith recoiled to the extremes of his bonds.

  “You do know something,” Beach said. “You made us stick to the ground like glue. You did it again at the pier. What was that?”

  “Would you believe hypnotism?” Keith suggested, not very hopefully. “The power of positive thinking. I didn’t want you to move, and you couldn’t.”

  Beach shook his head, narrowing his gaze on Keith. “It doesn’t make any sense, lad, and I’ll tell you why: I don’t believe in coincidence. I should have twigged it when you ran away from the advert I showed you. You knew what that writing was. No, don’t try to tell a lie,” he said as Keith choked out a protest. “I can’t find anybody else who even reacts to it except to say that it’s pretty. You bugged out like a rabbit with a firecracker under your scut. I’ve been chasing that lingo for years, now.” He poked Keith in the chest with a forefinger. “I know it’s got something to do with magic. Real magic. You’ve proved twice now, and maybe more, that you’re tied in in some way. And you’ve got the goods, the candle, and this magic lantern. You can’t tell me that it’s just chance that put all three of those elements together. Now,” he said dangerously, leaning close and lowering his voice, “I’ll be reasonable if you will be. Who taught you to do that?”

  “I just picked it u
p,” Keith said. “You can get books on anything these days. I practice.”

  “Oh? What were the names of the books?”

  Keith shrugged, as far as his pinioned arms would let him. “I don’t know. Something I got out of the library.” Well, that was true, but it didn’t satisfy his tormentor. Beach grabbed hold of Keith’s left ear and twisted it. Keith yelped.

  “You think someone would write this stuff down? You think I’m stupid? Hasn’t it occurred to you what might happen to you if you don’t cooperate?”

  Keith ground his back teeth together as images of trap doors into the Chicago River and machine-gun massacres in garages popped up in his mind. “I can guess.”

  “Yeah,” Beach said with amusement, as if he could see for himself what Keith was thinking. “You’re the one who’s seen too many pictures. Fine. Let your imagination go wild. I know everything about you. I know where you live. I’ve read your mail and listened to your phone conversations. I know if you tell a lie. I’m a businessman. I can make it worth your while to help me. I want the power. Take me to wherever you learned what you know. Is whoever taught you still alive?” The cool eyes watched Keith, who was determined to give away no information. “We’ve been watching you, you know. We’ve tapped your phones, read your e-mail, gone through your stuff. You’ve got no secrets from us. Yes,” he said, watching as the boy tried to remember every single contact he’d had for the last several months, “if you’ve got something it’d be better to tell us when it’s easy to do it.” He got up. The chair legs emitted a horrible groan as they scooted across the floor. Keith winced. “I’ll give you a while to think about cooperating.”

  * * *

  “This kid’s got rocks in his head,” Wyszinski complained. “It’s two in the morning. We’ve been asking him the same questions for hours. He’s not going to give it up.”

  “No, he’s a wily one,” Beach insisted. “He can’t hold out forever. Pretty soon he’s going to want to eat and use the toilet. He’ll want to sleep. We won’t let him. We’ll see how long his resolve is good for once he starts feeling miserable. He’s a nice guy. He wants people to like him. He’s had a soft life. That kind’s got no stamina. Knock him around a little more, reason with him prettily in between, and he’ll be begging to tell us what he knows.”