Ree smiled. “Can you put on some John Williams?”
Eastwood smiled and pressed a button on a remote she had never noticed him pick up. Luke’s theme started playing on the massive sound system, and a chill washed over Ree.
Okay, this is pretty cool. She had to admit, the prop was damned pretty. The metal was cool to the touch, and its rubber grip was sturdy but flexible in her hands. She found what should be the activation switch, then struck a stance she remembered from The Force Unleashed and flipped the switch. The saber jumped to life with the appropriate sound, but the blade didn’t feel any heavier.
Ree smiled from ear to ear. “Wow.”
Eastwood grinned. “Right?”
“So if I can’t use the Force, how am I supposed to keep from chopping my own hand off?”
“I’ve tweaked it so that it won’t cut through matter, but it will absorb the blasts. Speaking of which.” The drone spun and floated to the left, shooting out a white bolt of energy. Ree tried to bring the blade across her body to parry, but missed. The bolt hit her in the left shoulder, hurting like a bee sting. She let go of the lightsaber with her left hand and curled the arm up in pain.
“Sonofa . . . But this is all stuff you can do with a good animatronics department and a roofie,” she said, not sure she believed herself. Or what to believe at all.
The drone spun and moved to one side, then fired another bolt.
Ree continued trying to block the zaps while Eastwood talked. “Really? Or are you just trying to keep from freaking out? You accepted the troll’s existence when it was about to crush you into smithereens, but now that you’re only getting stunned, you feel like you can play Doubting Thomas.”
Damnit. He was right. There were too many weird-ass things to be able to brush them all off with roofies or David Blaine sneakiness. Eastwood might be a crazy stalker, but he was giving her more answers than she’d had before, and the weird had stacked up way past the level of prank. Was her lingering skepticism good old human logic, or was it all the Doubt?
Ree walked up toward the drone and grabbed it, looking for the off switch. “Okay, that’s enough drilling for now. Keep spilling your guts about these Technomancers, but first go to the part that tells me why you came into the store and why there was a troll in the alley but I’ve never seen anything weird before today.”
“It could be that you’ve never run afoul of any creatures or magicians before today, or maybe someone’s been protecting you, or maybe you’ve had encounters before but this time the Doubt didn’t cover it up . . . What do you think?”
“Is this some kind of test?”
Eastwood shrugged. “I actually don’t know, but I’d like to hear your opinion. In case you didn’t notice, I’m no Dumbledore, and I have better things to do than spend all day educating nascent Geekomancers—but you do intrigue me enough to figure out why you fell through the cracks.”
Ree walked back to the chair, sitting and feeling it roll toward the stacks. She reached out and stopped herself before she hit anything. “Well, for one, I wouldn’t know if someone’s been protecting me, since, to my knowledge, this is the first time I’ve seen something that would make normal people run screaming for Prozac or the psych ward. And what the hell kind of title is ‘Geekomancer’?”
Eastwood shrugged. “The name stuck. It’s no less ridiculous than Bromancer, Plutomancer, Celebromancer, or any of the other schools of magic.”
“How many schools are there?”
“Seems like it changes every day. Blame postmodernity, it’s an easy scapegoat.”
“Really? I’d expect it to be dodgy, full of unstable referents and all.”
Eastwood cracked a smile. “Touché.”
“So what was up with the Grant Morrison trade?”
“I was tracking an oni, and I needed a power boost to follow it up the walls and over the rooftops.”
Ree cocked her head to one side. “So the comic let you climb walls?”
Eastwood nodded. “That’s my thing. I take artifacts and use their power. In a pinch, I can take a manuscript or DVD or tape and break it to take on something from the story. Animal Man trade paperback plus my portable shredder equals instant animal empathy for one hour.”
“Let me parse that for a second. One: Oni are real, like big-gnarly-teeth Japanese-demon oni.”
“Yes.”
“And two: All of the comics in my store might as well be single-serving superpowers as far as you’re concerned.”
Ree looked over to one of the stacks and saw a dusty pile of individual comics issues, including three beat-up copies of Marvelman. Ree restrained the urge to swipe one and stow it in her coat. She’d never read it in paper, only scans.
“Not just that,” Eastwood said. “They can be used in rituals, too. It’s slower, but you get more bang for your book.”
Ree took a breath and voiced a question. “So why don’t you just carry copies of Superman around and channel Kryptonian badassery all the time?”
Eastwood nodded, thoughtful. “You can do that, but even with the artifacts, you’re still channeling power. An average collector-level issue is good for at best one post-Crisis Kryptonian punch. To get any kind of sustained power, you need ridiculously important artifacts. I saw someone rip up an Action Comics #15 for power once.” A doofy grin passed over his face. “It was astonishing.”
Ree opened her eyes wide as her mind contemplated the possibilities. This is either the coolest or the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me. Probably both.
“So the bigger-league the power you want to channel, the less uses you get? Like magic item charges or a mana pool?”
Eastwood nodded. “Exactly. If you have a larger supply, you can learn to squeeze more out of an artifact over time. I don’t want to think about the number of Star Wars special-edition DVDs I’ve melted in my crucible.”
Ree laughed. “Well, in that case you’re doing the world a great service.”
“Not a fan of the fiddling?”
Eyebrow raised, Ree asked, “Have you met anyone who is?”
Eastwood shrugged. “Lots, actually. Mostly Cinemancers—they’ll tweak movies to get different effects out of them.”
“So what’s the difference between you and a Cinemancer, then?” Ree felt a headache coming on from all the weirdness. It was worse than watching a David Lynch film. Maybe I should be taking notes.
Then she remembered that she was and pulled her phone out of her pocket, seeing the clock run on the recording. She stopped it and started a new one; it’d be easier to load them back onto her laptop that way.
Eastwood said, “They’re more specialized, I’m more a generalist. And I focus more on artifacts and memorabilia; they play more in celluloid and iMovie.”
“And you called me a Geekomancer, too. What makes you think I can do any of this?”
“How many trolls have you fought before?”
“None, but I do have a black belt in Taekwondo and Hapkido.”
He nodded, processing. “And what was the last movie you watched?”
Some zombie flick from last night, before the drinking. No, it had been that Syfy troll movie, playing in the background while she waited for Sandra.
“Why does that matter?”
“It’s rare, but one of the strongest effects of Geekomancy can be genre emulation—watch a movie and you can replicate the powers or skills of a character. If you’d watched Star Wars before coming here, you could have blocked every one of that drone’s bolts with a little bit of the right focus.”
“Why haven’t I been doing it before?” Ree asked.
“Probably the same reason you’ve never seen a troll before. When people affected by the Doubt do magic, they never remember it. Anyone passionate about something can be a magician, focus their emotional energy into impossible effects. They might never remember it, write it off as luck, or rewrite their memory so that it doesn’t break their brain.”
Eastwood paced over to the edge o
f his desk, then turned around and continued back, talking to the air more than to her. “Some types of magic are harder than others. Genre emulation is rare, from what I’ve seen. Like some of the more powerful talents, it seems to run in bloodlines, sometimes lying dormant for several generations. There’s more magic in the world than you’d think, which is actually really cool.” Eastwood turned the corner and walked down an aisle, still talking. “If people knew the effect they were having on the world, it’d be pretty amazing—then again, magic isn’t all sparkles and rainbows up your pi gu, so maybe it’s not so bad.”
He emerged from the aisle holding a comb-clip-bound manuscript, paging through it while humming a song that Ree half-remembered from her youth—’80s TV show, maybe?
“What now?” Ree asked.
“Good question. I don’t take apprentices, as a general rule, but I do need help with something, so I’m willing to make a trade. I show you the ropes, you help me with this case.”
“The oni?”
Eastwood shook his head and grabbed a newspaper off his desk. He handed it to Ree and said, “That was a one-off. This is my real problem.”
A short article below the fold on the cover was circled.
Recent String of Teen Suicides—Parents Panicked
Ree scanned the article. Three teenagers in Pearson had committed suicide within the last month, but they weren’t homeless, and all had tested negative for drugs. To the parents’ knowledge, none of them had been bullied.
Ree handed the paper back to Eastwood. “Okay, so this is horrible, but what does it have to do with your mountain of memorabilia?” She gestured to the stacks behind her.
“I’ve psychic-papered my way onto the crime scenes, and there’s been a stink of magic at each site. And I’ve dug up another link between the kids—they all had breakups within a week of their suicide.”
“Who would benefit from making people kill themselves? Some demon worshipper?”
A shadow passed over Eastwood’s face. “There are . . . a lot of people who might take an interest in this—which is why I could use some help. I think someone’s following me, but they might not be able to follow you at the same time. I want you to go to the family of the third suicide. Angela Moorely, 4710 Washington. See what you can find out about her, especially the details of her breakup. I can’t help but feel that there are some other connections between the kids that I haven’t cracked yet.”
Ree stood up and gave Eastwood the quoi? eyebrow. “And how I am supposed to get them to talk to me?”
Eastwood pulled a leather-bound wallet from his coat, then opened it toward Ree. At first it was blank. Ree blinked and saw lettering fade in as a gold badge appeared on the other side, identifying Anthony Eastwood as a detective lieutenant with the Pearson PD.
“Psychic paper.”
Eastwood nodded. “It’ll work for you, too. When you show it to someone, just focus on making them believe that you belong.”
“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” Ree said.
“Except this time, you are the droid they’re looking for.”
“I have to pose as an android detective? Will the ID say Deckard?”
“Are you capable of ever not being snarky?” Eastwood asked.
“Only if I try really hard. Plus, this situation is so preposterous, this is the only way I can keep from freaking out.”
“Call me when you’ve had the chance to talk to the Moorelys, and we’ll go from there. In the meantime, watch an action movie where the main character never gets hurt, or maybe a Looney Tunes. Something to make you tough—until we can do more training.”
Ree checked her watch and did the mental math of how much sleep she’d be able to get before rising from the dead in the morning to open Café Xombi. Less than six hours. Not great. But weren’t all the best detectives insomniacs, anyway? Maybe it would help.
She slipped the papers into her coat and left the basement lair. Outside, the chill winds of autumn had picked up. They sliced at her face and legs on the way home as she pondered.
So, am I actually going to do this? Question the families of suicides, tag along with a possibly mad magician?
That can be Future Ree’s problem. Right now, bed.
By the time she reached The Shithole, she was rubbing her face to get the feeling back in her nose. It wasn’t supposed to get this cold in the Northwest, not unless you were way inland. Portent or random vagary of weather? Ree harrumphed at the fact that such questions were now a valid part of her life. There were no lights on in the apartment, except a crack of white at the bottom of Sandra’s door. Ree poured a glass of water and took it to bed, placing bets with herself on what crazy-ass dreams she’d have from the day’s insanity.
Chapter Four
A Study in Sherlock
When the air-raid-siren alarm on her phone went off in the morning, the first thing Ree did was grab the phone to paw at the snooze button.
The second thing she did was groan in dissatisfaction at having to be up at an hour that was beyond monstrous, beyond unearthly: It was Shift-X painful. During college, Ree had been the No Classes Before 10 AM sort, finding that her natural hours for sleep were 2–9 AM. After that, the barista schedule tried both body and soul.
The third thing she did was stare at the leather fold-over that contained the slip of seemingly psychic paper.
Which meant the whole thing was in fact not a dream, and that she had for realz fallen through the cracks in the world and discovered that magic works and trolls lurk in alleys.
Clearly, the only thing to do was take a shower.
As the paper was still there when she was done with her shower, she accepted unreality and dressed for work. She slipped on a pair of work jeans and a black cami, then a Superman Kingdom Come T-shirt, and a hoodie over that. Layers, kid, layers. That was one of the first lessons she’d learned when she moved to the Northwest with her dad, after he’d moved them around from job to job and place to place before landing in his current cosmetics cooperative. She topped off her outfit with a Wonder Woman beret to hold back her hair.
Properly equipped for the day, Ree grabbed the wallet off her dresser and stuffed it into a pocket to keep it safe. And maybe a little to let her prove she wasn’t crazy.
There wasn’t any use in having breakfast at home, since there would be pastries to eat at work. But in deference to “healthiness,” she poured herself a bowl of cereal and wolfed it down to the dulcet dorkiness of the last night’s Daily Show on her laptop while catching up on email.
While Ree was eating, Sandra emerged from her turn in the shower, and they talked for a few minutes in that glorious sliver of time while the world was waking up, before the day started in earnest and the weights of life came dropping down like globs of snow falling off trees during a thaw.
• • •
Bryan was already at the café when Ree arrived, oven wafting the comforting smells of sugary carbs throughout the room. Xombi’s owner and manager was a fairly typical geeky guy of fortyish, with bushy brown hair, a full beard, and a bit of a paunch that had expanded in the last few years alongside his family’s expansion from one child to three with the arrival of the twins. His wife, Amy, worked for a restaurant goods wholesaler, currently selling from home so she could stay with little Luke and Leia full-time.
As Ree walked through the door, keys jingling, Bryan greeted her. His warm voice was always reassuring. “Good morning. Looks like it was a slow day yesterday?”
Ree nodded. “Steady morning, then practically nothing in the afternoon.”
Except the crazy guy who came in for a graphic novel and sent my life spiraling into crazytown.
But Bryan didn’t need to hear about that. Who did need to hear about it? Was she going to tell anyone about this? Would anyone believe her? She didn’t know how much of anything worked on the Flip Side.
They Might Be Giants played on the stereo, the two Johns serenading her with scientific singsong about the sun. R
ee settled into the café’s routine, baking and brewing and then serving and squeezing through the tiny service area as she and Bryan dodged each other to accommodate the Friday-morning rush. The chatter about comics and movies and the latest political dustup helped Ree find her feet again, get grounded in the rhythm of the real world.
At 3 PM, Bryan’s eldest walked in, dumped his backpack on an empty table, and stepped up to the counter for a drink.
“Hola,” Ree said.
Aidan Blin (Strength 12, Dexterity 11, Stamina 11, IQ 16, Will 14, and Charisma 15—Geek 3 / Prodigy 1) took after his dad, standing just on the tall side of average, neither skinny nor thick, with a mop of unruly oak-brown hair and an easy smile. He also kicked academic ass and took names, having become a high school senior at the ripe age of sixteen.
Aidan gave her the half-smile (also inherited from his father), then asked, “Can I get a vanilla Italian soda with one shot of strawberry?”
Ree nodded, spinning in place to make the drink. She talked over her shoulder as she worked, hands remembering where everything was and leaving her brain free to chat. “Any word from Stanford?”
Aidan and his girlfriend had both applied to Stanford for early decision. The responses were due by the end of the month, and over the last week Aidan had turned into a coiled bundle of nerves.
Aidan responded as he returned to his table. “Nothing. I can barely pay attention in class, and I got my phone confiscated during math for checking email.”
“You’re not supposed to be using your smartphone during classes anyway,” Bryan said.
Aidan rolled his eyes. “You didn’t have the temptation of instant gratification when you were in high school, Dad.”
“Thank the goddess I didn’t. I’d have been a nervous wreck!” Bryan said, laughing. Aidan huffed.
That’s what you get when you have a trickster for a dad, Ree thought, suppressing a laugh.
Aidan looked down to his laptop screen, clicked at something, then sighed again.
Oh, the Joy of the Endless Refresh, Ree thought. Aidan had a high standard to live up to. He’d been in Gifted & Talented programs his whole life, had skipped 8th grade, and was intending to declare pre-law. Ree had never had a plan like that—“become a famous screenwriter” was both more nebulous and more unrealistic, though she could pursue it on her own time frame.
Geekomancy Page 4
