by Bryan Fields
“Pleased to meet you,” Aerin said.
She held her hand out and I grasped it just on reflex. Right then, it was the best I could do. Once you’ve seen a real live Elf, there’s no mistaking them for anything else, ever. Aerin wasn’t a full-blooded Elf, but she was at least half. I glanced at Josephine, and caught a knowing smirk. If Josephine was Aerin’s aunt…all the crazy behavior by the Llewellyns made a lot more sense.
My train of thought must have showed in my eyes. Angus chuckled and leaned his head toward Aerin. “You’re made.”
Aerin sighed. “Oh, great. Now I have to kill him.”
Chapter Seven
You Can Never Be Cool in Front of Your Parents
“This just isn’t fair,” Geneva said. “I never get to kill anyone anymore.”
“I let you have the guy with the shotgun,” Aerin protested. “A shotgun. Pointed at us. That had to be at least some fun.”
Geneva snorted and looked away. “That was six years ago, and it was just a carjacking. All I got to do was break his arm taking the gun away. He ran before I could get any kind of workout.”
“Don’t you dare kill him,” Josephine snapped. “I need him alive and functional. Why don’t you go kill some street thugs instead? This town is rife with eligible vermin. I’m half-tempted to send the Houseguard out to blow up a few meth labs just to keep in practice.”
Angus glanced around, looking at the number of people around us. “Mmm. It’s a little public, dear.” His voice was deep, rough and gravelly, like massive stones grinding across one another. No wonder—the wound to his neck went right through his larynx. That had to make talking uncomfortable.
Josephine stepped away. “I can see where this is going. You can handle the explanations. I’m going to keep looking around.” She nodded to Aerin and added, “First daughter.”
Aerin gave her a hug. “Second daughter. You take care now.”
I made a mental note to ask Nadia what that little exchange was all about, because Aerin looked far too young to be the older sister.
As Josephine and her entourage moved away, Aerin held her hand up and a blue crystal about the size of a pencil eraser dropped into it. She whispered something, igniting the stone into sparkling blue life. She tossed it into the air and it launched into orbit, surrounding us with a circle of light. “That’ll give us about fifteen minutes. Geneva, remind me about it before the glow fades. What are we talking about?”
“Who gets to kill me,” I said. I looked at Geneva. “This is the secret you were talking about? Elves from another plane living on Earth?”
“That’s most of it. Once we knew you were a plane traveler yourself, you were deemed approachable. Now we know you’ve been to at least two other planes despite being born on this one.”
Aerin rummaged through her purse and pulled out a purple silk bag. “I’m still not convinced he is from around here.” She pulled a framed disk of silver glass out of the bag and held it up to her eye. “Stand still. This won’t hurt unless you’re lying.” She looked me up and down. “Yep, he’s Human.”
She turned the lens on Rose and jumped backward. “Oh, wow. That’s…unexpected.” She passed the lens to Angus.
Rose smiled and tossed her hair as Angus looked her over. “You’d better not be seeing me naked,” she warned.
“That’s a different lens.” Angus raised an eyebrow. “Mmm. Yep. Unexpected.”
I held my hand out to him. “May I?” Angus passed the lens over and I looked at Rose as well. I could see her human form as a pale, translucent ghost image, dwarfed by the Draconic form looming over it. I lowered the lens and looked at Rose’s solid human form. “You look great. Not a scale out of place.”
Rose’s eyes lit up—literally—and she all but pounced on the lens. “A Lens of True Seeing! Oh, I have always wanted one of those! May I try it?” She didn’t wait for an answer; she plucked it out of my hand and began inspecting her own arm. “Mother always told me this was the only item able to pierce our disguises. It’s fascinating.” Rose put her arm down and looked through the lens at Aerin.
After several long seconds, Rose lowered the lens. “What…are you?”
Aerin shrugged. “Billionaire philanthropist, wife, mother, retired adventurer, world traveler. I like to putter. And I don’t need a suit of powered armor to trash a camp full of bandits.”
I took the lens from Rose and had a look at Aerin. I had no idea what I was seeing, but she was lit up like the Strip. Layers of light pulsed and glowed inside her, leaving little vapors of light trailing in the air behind her. The mongoose on her shoulder appeared to be composed of scrolling lines of magical runes written in silver flame—he had to be her familiar.
Given the number of glowing items Aerin was carrying, I’m pretty sure she was loaded for bear. The most bizarre thing was the absolute cloud of small stones, crystals, and cut gems orbiting around her. Most stayed in a halo around her head, moving around to dodge nearby objects. A few had wider orbits, or went off on their own to scout around the area before returning to the halo.
I handed the lens back to Aerin. “That’s…quite impressive. If you don’t mind my asking, why are you here?”
Aerin made a look around gesture. “Attending the convention. We decided to come when Nadia said her company was going to be exhibiting. Which reminds me…” She turned to Nadia. “Which one is your boss? The one Josephine is so bent out of shape about?”
Geneva stepped forward and tapped her fingers on Aerin’s left wrist. “David is Nadia’s employer. He’s the one engaged to the Dragon.” She kept her voice quiet and pitched low.
Aerin nodded. “Sorry. Bullet to the skull during a bar fight. See?” She pulled her hair back, revealing a puckered, crescent-shaped scar on her right temple. I could also see that her ear tapered to a delicate point. She stopped and dropped her hair back into place. “Or did I already show you that?”
I shook my head. “No, but Nadia mentioned you had been injured. I actually meant, why are you on Earth? You and the Llewellyns?”
Angus said, “We’re tourists. They’re refugees. We helped them get settled.”
“Sandra and Richard Llewellyn emigrated from Cardiff to Vancouver after the end of the first World War,” I said. “So sayeth the company website. Is that time travel I smell?”
Angus shrugged. “Why not? The Internet is never wrong, after all.”
“Home doesn’t have flush toilets,” Aerin said. “Flush toilets are wonderful. And showers. I love showers.”
Geneva glanced at her watch. “We’re running short on time. I suggest we continue this over dinner.”
“The exhibition hall closes at eight,” I said. “How about afterward?”
Nadia asked, “Do you have an extra keycard? I can bring them up and we can have dinner delivered.”
“Dinner on the patio, then. The elevator to the suite is through the door behind the VIP check in.” As Aerin was talking, Geneva pulled a gold keycard out of her pocket and passed it to Nadia. Aerin paused while the mongoose chittered in her ear. “Oh, that’s right. Danya and Willow are here, too, so they’ll probably join us as well.”
“How…delightful.” Nadia hesitated, trying to contain the expression one gets when asked to eat a slice of thrice-gifted fruitcake. “Is Natasha here?”
“No, she’s in…Monaco?” Aerin glanced at Geneva and received a confirming nod. “Someone got a yacht for his birthday, so she and the Glitter Ponies are helping him break it in.”
Nadia snorted. “Of course. Those leeches can smell an open bar half a world away. Why is Danya here?”
“Saving the world through art, as usual.” Aerin pointed to the art charity booth. “She’s spending the weekend teaching kids to draw pandas for charity.”
Rose’s eyebrows shot up. “Danya…Cullan? The fantasy artist? Lives in Hawaii? That Danya Cullan?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Your daughter illustrated my books? I cannot accept that as mere coincidence. What is going on?”
Angus leaned close to Aerin and said something in what sounded like Scots Gaelic. Aerin nodded and said something brief in the same language. Angus growled and stood back, shaking his head.
Geneva’s watch chimed an alarm. She switched it off and tapped Aerin on the wrist. “Your ‘everybody ignore us’ spell is about to wear off.”
“Thank you, Geneva.” Aerin looked back at us with an apologetic smile. “Everyone get ready to act normal. Rose, I’m pretty sure Danya doing your illustrations wasn’t a coincidence. Someone wanted us to meet and arranged things so we’d eventually run into each other.”
Rose snorted, blowing tiny smoke rings out of her nostrils. “And that would have been Josephine, I suppose?”
The glowing blue gem racing around us slowed to a stop and lost its glow. Aerin caught the stone, and at her touch it faded from view. She made a little tossing gesture and looked back at Rose, shaking her head. “No, it wasn’t Josephine. She’s not that subtle. It was probably Crom.”
I stifled the first thought that came to mind and asked, “Crom who?”
As though explaining something to a child, Aerin said, “The god Crom.”
What do you know? I was right the first time.
“Mmm. Let’s do explanations later,” Angus said. “Time to meet Danya. See you tonight.”
Rose said, “I’ll come with you. I’ve wanted to meet Danya for some time. We’ve emailed and spoken on the phone several times, so meeting in person is overdue.”
“Just don’t interrupt her when she’s drawing,” Angus said. “Introductions this way.” The group moved off, cutting through traffic to cross the aisle.
I went back to showing people our demo. In retrospect, finding out Danya had Elven blood made an odd sort of sense. It was the elements of classic Elven style in her artwork that had attracted Rose’s attention in the first place.
Ten minutes later, Nadia came back by herself. “Rose is joining one of Danya’s drawing classes. She started getting a bit…ah…giddy when we got over there.”
Oh, great. “Kids make her high. Their energy is like catnip for her.”
“It does the same thing to me. Catnip, I mean.” Nadia smirked and shook her head. “Not that I ever inhaled or anything.”
“Catnip is a narcotic for Elves?”
“No, of course not, and I’m ninety percent Human anyway. Even for Elves, catnip just causes a mild euphoria.” She blushed and looked away. “Annnd…it can make other activities more…intense. It’s not illegal as much as embarrassing. At least for consenting adults.”
“Ah. I think I’ll leave that line of questioning alone. What does A’Tavi mean? I heard the boys saying it to Josephine.”
“Literally? ‘Higher step’, as in steps on a ladder. Colloquially, it’s used with anyone who outranks you in the family.”
I nodded, and decided to venture into delicate territory. “Speaking of family, it sounds like you have a sister you don’t get along with. I can relate to that.”
Nadia made the fruitcake face again. “Natasha is my twin sister. Her goal in life is to be a celebrity, so she runs around with a pack of B-list movie star kids, chasing from party to party hoping the paparazzi develop an interest in them. She’s like a rainbow-colored shark with a bunch of glittering lampreys clamped on to her ass.”
With that image filling my head, I got called away to have the package-slider discussion with a customer. A group of ladies wanted their guy to, and I quote, “bring it like a ballet dancer”. Showing them the picture of Mitch’s wardrobe malfunction made it worse. I freely conceded their point that this was an institutional double standard, but pointed out that we were as constrained by it as anyone else.
I managed to turn the question around and asked the ladies what we should do, given the pros and cons of each option.
“You’re not giving us any viable options,” one exclaimed. “All you’re giving us are no-win scenarios. That’s not fair.”
I spread my hands. “That’s the point. There is no answer which will satisfy everybody. Sometimes you have to go with the proposal which equally offends the smallest number of people. Nobody likes to hear that answer, though, so I stick with my first answer—we give our players as many choices as we can responsibly allow them to have.”
The woman pulled a pen out of her pocket and spoke into the end of it. “This is Bev Orison, Game World Online, speaking with David Fraser of Curious Diversions. David, this interview will appear at a future date in my column, Bev’s Devs. Will you please give me your verbal consent as well as signing the release my friend Esther is holding?”
Oh, yay. The gaming industry’s answer to Alan Funt. I smiled, signed, and kept smiling as she wandered into the Spartan booth. Declining Bev’s “interviews” usually resulted in a humiliating hatchet job, and she was damn thorough about verifying her facts. My buddy Neil made that mistake, and Bev became his ex-wife’s new best friend. I’ll pass on the rectal probe, thanks.
Rose returned from TCAI’s booth with two other women, both in their mid-forties, one dark-haired, and the other blonde. As I expected, Danya was the dark-haired woman, and the blonde was her wife, Willow. The fact that Danya appeared twice as old as her mother would take some getting used to.
Rose said, “I wanted to let you know I’ll be doing the book reading for the next hour or so. One of the homeless kids Danya was working with ran into some gang trouble last night. Danya’s going to the hospital to pick her up.”
“Wouldn’t it be faster to send a cab?”
“Faster than a normal car,” Danya said. Her voice sounded far too young for her appearance and had a light Scottish burr to it. “Not faster than a Lamborghini with a DGI field.”
“DGI?”
“Don’t Get Involved.” Danya wrote out a quick note and handed it to Nadia. “Just to let Mother know I’m borrowing her car.”
“Fill it up before you bring it back,” Nadia replied.
Danya kissed Willow goodbye while giving Nadia the finger over her shoulder. She caressed Willow’s cheek before turning and charging into the crowd at a full run. The crowd didn’t seem to part or thin, but Danya cut through it as though running through smoke.
Willow watched her leave, a look of pain on her face. “Fifty years is too short for this crap. I’m going to get something to eat.” She looked at the exhibition hall exit, turned around, and went toward the small food court at the back of the hall.
Nadia shook her head as Willow walked off. “I feel for her, but moping isn’t going to change anything.” She started resetting one of the recently used systems back to the intro screen. “Willow’s having age issues. There’s not much even we can do to prolong life. For any of us. She’s angry because she’s going to die of old age and Danya’s still going to look young and beautiful. She knows Danya’s going to keep on living, move on, and find someone else to love.”
Nadia paused and wiped a stray tear away. “I feel the same way. When I die, Mother will be there to bury me, and she won’t look a day older than she does today.”
I patted her shoulder. “Rose and I are in the same situation. I just can’t think about it. Dragonbound are programmed not to.” I started resetting another system and decided to change the subject.
“Is a Don’t Get Involved field the same thing as a Somebody Else’s Problem?” Even as I asked it, I thought it was a silly question. I just wanted a different conversation.
“It works on the same principle,” Nadia replied. “DGI is just more powerful. Instead of just not noticing you, DGI creates an active aversion that causes people to move out of your way. Mother developed it after her first trip to Los Angeles. She tried driving around using a Somebody Else’s Problem charm and it made the traffic worse for her.”
“Is there a spell more powerful than DGI?”
“Yep. Canción de los Mariachis. People think you’re a four-piece mariachi band who won’t stop following them around and playing music until they’ve given you all their
cash.”
I stopped in my tracks. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Mom created it as a joke, but it’s a real spell.”
“That has to be a good story…” I paused, hoping she’d take the bait.
She did. “Mom got the idea after we visited this goofy-ass Mexican restaurant in Denver during a family road trip back when I was a kid...”
A lump of suspicion grew in my chest. “Big pink building with a clocktower?”
“Oh, yes.” Nadia couldn’t suppress a quick shudder. “We were driving out to an event in Pennsylvania with a bunch of other folks. The other families had made this trip before, and liked to stop at this crazy restaurant so the kids could run and play after a full day of driving. So, we stopped for dinner. It was great! All the kids went tear-assing around the place, playing adventurers. Alissa, my foster-sister, tried to pick the lock on the door leading to the cliff-diver’s platform, but Mother caught us.”
“Oh, busted!”
She chuckled. “Yeah, and for taking too long, we all got extra practice with blindfolded lock picking.” She laughed again, shaking her head. “We only went that one time. Angus said that restaurant reminded him too much of home. Crazy places to explore, random murders in the streets, swarms of street urchins, and, of course, coin-hungry bards.”
“Aha.”
“Yeah. The band saw Angus tip the waitstaff a couple of hundreds and they were on him for almost an hour.”
I started laughing. “Rookie mistake. How did you get rid of them?”
“He found a nice dark spot and dropped his disguise.”
I waited to see if there was more to her statement. “That’s it? That was enough to scare them off? What, is he a troll or something?”
“Dokk Alfar. Drow. Dark Elf. Obsidian skin, white hair. When they’re angry, sometimes their eyes turn red and start glowing.” She snickered. “The musicians got a good look, dropped their instruments, and ran for their lives. Angus wouldn’t have hurt them, of course; he wasn’t even armed.” She checked her watch and shook her head. “I hope Danya didn’t run into trouble. The kid she’s working with has some severe issues.”
