“I’ve been told that as well. I will telephone you when the moment is come.”
Ree reached up and squeezed Drake’s hand, then collected her things.
Chapter Fourteen
Wait for It . . .
Ree caught the train home and plodded her way up the stairs. The elevator was, of course, broken. Either the universe conspired to have the elevator out of service only when it was particularly annoying, or she never noticed when it didn’t matter. Either way, she tried not to take personal offense and decided to make herself some coffee when she reached The Shithole.
Sandra wasn’t home. Probably out with Darren. Ree mulled over possibilities. Sleep, TV, beer, sleep, video games, call Anya or Priya, sleep.
Sleep was the leading contender, but it was contraindicated with coffee, which was already in process. And wasting good coffee was against her religion. She poured the water into her French press, taking in the steam and the wafting nutty aroma of Bryan’s Dark Dungeons Roast.
She fired up her console and loaded Portal. She’d played the game through a half-dozen times, but the idea of solvable puzzles sounded amazing. Something I can beat, something I’m actually good at, unlike this carnival of kooks.
Zapping doorways into walls and platforms, she did her best to relax, let the caffeine fill the chill from the dogfight and the Muse’s touch. The world fell away, and there was only the cheerful sadism of GLaDOS.
Two hours later, she noticed the apartment was dark save for the glow off the TV. She turned on a couple of lights and fetched her phone to call Anya.
“What’s the word?” Anya asked when she picked up.
“Stir-crazy. You free?” Ree paced around the apartment, walking heel to toe like a tightrope walker. It was one of the many things she did to occupy her mind while on the phone.
“Sure thing. Where should we go?”
“Trollope’s?” Ree suggested.
Anya made an mmh-hh sound. “Sounds good. Meet you there?”
“Say nine?”
“Got it. I’ll bring my hollow leg.”
Ree hung up and went to change. She emerged five minutes later in tights, a dark red skirt, and a loose black top cinched with a wide belt. She grabbed her corduroy blazer out of the closet and checked her phone on the way out the door. No messages.
Commence drinking!
Trollope’s Trollops was packed with students and townies eager to catch the 9:30 burlesque show. Anya was already there, sitting on a stool at the corner of the bar area. She had a pint of cider in front of her; it was her drink of choice for long nights of talking.
Ree weaved her way through the crowd, dodging waitresses with full trays of drinks, shiny shot girls in short skirts and glitter, and beefy barbacks with buckets full of dishes. The tables were full, between college students fueling up to finish the drinking weekend, Woo Girls worshipping at the altar of shots, and a few unassuming regulars drinking quietly at the bar.
Anya stood from her stool, and Ree gave her a hug. Seeing that there weren’t any other stools free, she scanned the room for two open seats together. “Do you see anything?” she asked.
“You’re the tall one here. I’ve got nothing.”
Ree continued to scan. Finding nothing, she turned around and caught Andrew’s attention. Andrew was one of the few males charming and efficient enough to get weekend shifts. Most places in the U-District had 100 percent female bartenders Thursday through Sunday, but Andrew was so good, he might have been a magician. He was six-two and had the muscles of a former barback who never let himself go soft, along with the black T-shirt and shaved head that seemed part of the “male booze enabler” uniform code.
Ree leaned in to the bar, and Andrew appeared in front of her. He grabbed four bottles, scooped up some ice in a glass, and poured the liquor for a Long Island. “Hi, Ree. What’ll you have?”
“Grey Goose martini with a twist, thanks.” She had been ruined on well liquor before she was eighteen, sadly, leaving it along with any possibility of being a cheap date.
Andrew grabbed the well tap and topped off the drink while he reached down and pulled out the lemon. He vanished for a second to deliver the drink and returned, pouring and shaking with speedy ease.
“I say we camp here and wait for a table,” Ree said to Anya.
Anya raised her glass in salute and took a drink.
Andrew set Ree’s martini in front of her with a smile, then vanished again. It’s good to be known. She’d been coming to Trollope’s for years, and that kind of loyalty bought you a certain amount of trust from the staff. Sometimes the leeway included free drinks. Mostly, she enjoyed being known, being in her comfort zone.
“So what’s up? You haven’t been at the café much this week,” Anya said.
Ree sighed. Divulging my new secret Urban Fantasy life is probably not advised. “Stuff has come up, and I was hella-sick for a day. What about you?”
Anya shrugged. “Still banging my head against my theory essay, but at least I got to show Chasing Amy in section. That was a riot.”
“Actual riot?”
“Close. I’ve got three students who should probably drop the class but seem like they’ve decided to dig in and start arguments instead. One guy asked how a lesbian could fall for a guy, and then one of my lesbians started tearing into the movie, talking about how it was crap because bisexuality was a lie, and then this bi guy jumped in to rage against her . . .”
Ree raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a great time.”
“Once I got them calmed down a bit, it was great. The next unit is on bisexuality, and this opened things up in a big way. Though I do miss the beginning of the semester, when I got to blow poor freshmen’s minds.” Anya gave a wicked smile, and Ree toasted her friend’s evil.
Anya had to fight tooth and nail to get her teaching appointment, stealing it away from an English-department grad student by sheer force of awesomeness. And lots of recommendation letters. She deserved to enjoy it.
Ah, to be in college again. College, when Ree had a Mohawk and went to Goth clubs, wrote epic amounts of fanfic, and spent two years dating girls to tragically drama-ridden results.
It wasn’t that she’d lost interest in girls; more like after three messy breakups in a row, she’d decided to take a break from the ladies. Not that going back to guys had served her terribly well of late.
Ree shook her head, banishing the thought. “You know what Priya is up to tonight? I remember her saying something.”
“I think she had a date on the east side.”
“Same guy as last time, or is this Climber Guy?” Ree asked.
“Climber Guy, I think. He invited her to try the wall and then wanted to go to some underground bistro.”
“Literally underground?” Ree thought of all the time she’d spent in the sewers over the last week.
Anya shrugged. Ree heard the sound of shattering and a flash of movement across the room, and her heartbeat raced. When she saw that it was just a server jumping away from a broken glass, she breathed out slowly.
“Are you all right?” Anya asked.
Ree took a long sip of her martini, savoring Andrew’s fantastic pour. “It’s been a hell of a week.”
Anya gave her the eye of suspicion.
“Just a lot of things piling up.” That sounds so lame. I could tell Anya everything. She probably wouldn’t believe me, but maybe she would. Ree needed to tell someone, someone who wasn’t already tied up in all of the insanity. Buffy has the Scoobies, why shouldn’t I?
But Anya didn’t need anyone unloading a huge pile of drama on her. Neither did Priya, Sandra, or anyone. Who ever needs angst unloaded on them? We do it anyway, when we need to, but do I really need to?
Ree stayed through the martini and another one, cutting herself off before she could get too far into drunk-and-depressed-because-life-had-gone-mad.
• • •
Once she was back home, Ree made herself some tea to sober up (peppermint, with loca
l honey) and stared at her phone, trying to figure out how to start a conversation with her dad.
She’d always been close with her dad, and after her mom left, she and her dad had moved around even more, so it was the two of them against the world. Now that the world was kind of against her, there should be no one she could trust more.
Except that he was thousands of miles away and had no reason to believe what she was planning to tell him. And she wasn’t entirely certain she hadn’t cracked and created herself a geeky version of A Beautiful Mind.
A calmer part of her brain spoke up. Just call.
Ree closed her eyes and pressed the dial button. She listened for the rings, still not looking.
Ring.
Come on, Dad, please.
Ring.
Maybe he won’t pick up. That might be better. This is all crazy.
Ring.
What if he’s not home? Do I call Priya, Anya? Just deal?
Ring.
Is he okay?
“Hello?” her dad answered.
Ree exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. “Dad, thanks for picking up.”
“What’s happening, Ree-bee?”
Ree asked, “Can you get a secure line?”
After a beat, “What?”
“Can you get a secure line? There’s some weird stuff going down, Dad.”
“I could call you back from a proxied VoIP line, I guess,” he said, his voice uncertain.
“Could you, please?” Her voice was strained by the emotional hurricane rampaging inside her.
Her dad’s voice settled, hardening. “I’ll call back in a minute. Just stay put.”
She sat down on her bed and focused intently on her tea, trying not to think anymore, to just be in the moment, calm. Failing that, she downed the entire mug of tea and got up to pour herself some more.
Her phone rang as she was pouring. She looked at the phone long enough to see the number listed as [Blocked] before she picked up. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” her dad said. “Are you okay?”
Ree walked back into her room, setting the mug down on her bedside plastic crate. “I’m fine. But this is going to sound crazy, and it’ll probably go better if I just give you the whole story and then we talk about how insane it is after. Is that okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ah, marine voice. He was taking her seriously. I love you, Dad.
And so she told him the whole story, starting with Eastwood bursting into the comic shop, then the troll, the Dorkcave, her first attempt at Geekomancy, her visit to the Moorelys’, the rubber-suit Atavist, everything, including realizing Eastwood’s real game and her current conundrum: how to chase down the Muse.
The story took another two mugs’ worth of tea and a bathroom break, but when it was all done, she stopped and waited to see what her dad would say.
A part of her wanted him to swoop in and fix it, to take care of her as he had for so much of her life growing up. She knew she’d have to face it herself, and maybe she could do it, but there was a small part of her that just wanted the problem to disappear as if it had never occurred.
“Well, if you’re pulling my leg, this story definitely needs to be your next screenplay,” he said with a chuckle.
“Cross my heart and hope to die, Dad. It all happened. I may have missed some of the details, but that’s only because I really have no clue what I’m doing.”
Her dad waited a second. “I believe you. I’d rather believe that things I thought were impossible are happening than you’re actively lying. Plus, as far as I can tell, there’s no reason for you to be lying.”
Ree sighed. “It’s all real. Or if it isn’t, I’m going to make some therapist famous.”
Her dad chuffed, not seeming to confirm or deny what she’d said. “I don’t know what I can do for you, but Ree, it means a lot to me that you trusted me with something this important. It seems like you’ve taken on a very dangerous task and stayed with it when it would be very easy to walk away.”
A weight sloughed off of Ree’s shoulders, and she smiled. He better not forget this as soon as we hang up. He can’t. He’s my dad, and that’s its own magic, Doubt-be-damned.
“Thanks, Dad. I’ve been thinking about you the whole time. I wanted to tell you about the crazy things, the cool things. It’s like everything we watched growing up really matters now, like it was secretly training for this whole new life.”
Ree could hear her dad’s smile through the phone. “I guess it was. I think you’re on the right track. You’ve got someone helping you, and you know what this Eastwood is trying to do. You’re doing the right thing, attacking his asset, this spirit.” His marine was showing again.
Ree paced around the room, running her bare feet over the carpet she’d put down. “I sure hope so. Drake is working on some ritual to go into the spirit world, and, well, that sounds scary as hell.”
“Aren’t you the girl who drove herself across the country to go to a college in a town she’d never heard of and got a double major while working the whole time? The girl who saved up for a year, then flew down to L.A. with no contacts and no connections to pound the pavement for a week to start making her writing career happen? The girl who passed her first-degree black belt test with flying side-kick colors?”
“I wish you were here so I could hug you, Dad . . .”
“Me, too, Ree-bee. I’m proud of you. I can’t pretend I understand what you’re going through. It’s so different than anything I did in or out of the military that all I can do is pray for you and offer encouragement every way and place I can. Do you need money? It sounds like you’ve had to skip some shifts.”
Hell, yes, I need money. “No, I’m fine. It’ll be fine.”
“Ree . . .” her dad said. He knew she was bullshitting him.
“I’ll be fine. If things get much worse, then maybe, maybe I will consider it. But the last time I asked for money, you had to sell one of your guns.”
“So? This is a much better reason than last time.”
“Fair enough,” Ree said. “I guess that’s one benefit. No more distracting boyfriends.”
“What about this Drake? He sounds pretty dashing,” her dad said, a hint of the mischievous in his voice.
“My romantic efforts are focused on getting you a girlfriend first, and that’s going to have to wait until this whole monster thing is under control, so hold your horses.”
Her dad laughed, a deep-belly laugh. Ree closed her eyes and listened, imagining her dad was right beside her.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Anytime. Is there anything else I can do?”
“I don’t think so.” Ree’s eyes snapped open as a thought hit her. “Actually, yeah. They might not get here in time, but could you pull a few boxes of my stuff out of storage?”
She had left most of her teenage detritus behind when she went off to college, thinking she’d pick it up eventually or sell it off. But now . . . those old toys and cards and books were worth their weight in Adamantium.
Her dad chuckled. “Sure thing. Want me to look for something in particular?”
“Toy guns, swords. Anything that inflicts imaginary violence, really. And take your allergy meds beforehand.”
“Who’s the parent again?” he asked, still in good humor.
“You are. But that doesn’t make me wrong.”
“It doesn’t. I promise. And in exchange, you promise to be safe.”
Ree nodded to herself. “Yes, sir.”
“All right. Now go get them, hon.”
“I love you, Dad,” Ree said, tearing up.
“I love you, too.”
Ree wiped her eyes and hung up. She felt energized, tired, scared, relieved, but mostly, she felt relieved.
Okay. That could have gone much, much worse.
It felt amazingly, reassuringly good to have her dad’s support. But he was far away, and who knew how much time she had to kill until Drake’s which-what-ever magic
was ready. So, what next?
She could try to go back to Eastwood’s, make him see reason. But she didn’t have much confidence in that working, not while he was on a roll. Maybe if they took out the Muse before it could strike again, he’d be willing to listen to reason. Or, if not reason, impressive amounts of yelling and browbeating. If she had Drake’s help, could they take Eastwood in a fight, or would he pull another ninja vanish?
She looked at the clock on her phone and rolled her head. Though the tea had calmed her through the talk with her dad, she was still sore. Sleep would be the smart thing. But unless she wanted to down some NyQuil, she wasn’t settling into that anytime soon.
Instead, she dialed Drake, hoping he’d have something for her, anything.
He picked up on the third ring. “Ahoy.”
“This is Ree. Any news on the Doors Dimensional Method?”
“Excuse me?” Drake asked.
My pop-culture-reference Rolodex is useless! Ree thought in a Rainer Wolfcastle “The goggles do nothing!” voice.
“Never mind. How’s the magic going?”
“Beautifully. We will be able to depart presently. But before you arrive, you’ll want to have something to eat.”
“Why’s that?”
“I have the unfortunate fortune of knowing from experience. The fattier, the better. A colleague of mine told me that lipids facilitate the reuptake of several neurotransmitters that are inhibited by aetherial travel. Regardless, a meal would be advisable.”
Ree could see Drake shaking his head as he recognized that he was on a tangent. It was cute. Too bad half of the things I say make no sense to him.
“Fatty is good. Got it. I’ll grab something on the way and be there by quarter till.”
“Very good. Have you any weapons with you?”
“I have a training jian, but that’s it right now. Care to loan a girl a sword?”
“I’ll see what I can do. Winters out.” With that, he hung up.
Winters out? I guess he’s caught up on some action movies, at least.
Ree pocketed her phone and grabbed her jacket. Fatty, eh? This calls for a Garbage Shake.
Geekomancy Page 18
