“That’s pretty well how I am with magic. And French. And Heiltsuk. The languages, not the people. You know?”
“Now I’m annoyed.”
“Uh, hello. You invited yourself in. You barged in and got all talky.”
“Talky.”
“It’s a word.”
Jared sniffed his tea. He didn’t want to offend her, but he didn’t really trust her, so he fake-sipped it. She watched him like a cat, an unreadable expression that could be boredom or disdain.
“So are we done?” Jared said.
“No.”
“I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“You can tell me everything.”
“Why? Why would you want to know anything about me? There’s a website full of people who’d talk your ear off about their ol’ dad Wee’git. Go bug them.”
“We know all of the 532 people claiming to be or rumoured to be Wee’git’s offspring. You, Jared Martin, we’ve never heard mentioned. Not once.”
“So?”
“We’ve talked to all of them. Every single soul. And not one of them has ever heard Wee’git in their mind. Not one of them answered me when I talked to them mind to mind.”
Jared didn’t like the conclusions she seemed to be drawing. “I’m human.”
“Maybe it’s a witch thing,” Neeka said. “Maybe you’re a baby Trickster. Or maybe you are human. Regardless, you are the closest we’ve gotten to Wee’git in a long time.”
“He won’t come,” Jared said. “No matter what you do to me, he won’t come.”
“I don’t expect him to. He’s a horrible father. Irresponsible. Negligent. He lives for his own pleasure. But he is a curious being and he has odd moments of conscience.”
“So…”
“So we talk. We get to know each other.”
“And then?”
“Do you have a cellphone?”
Neeka stood, bent over and patted his shorts. Jared fought to move, but couldn’t. He couldn’t even twitch his fingers. She took out his iPhone and sat beside him, her thigh against his.
“Password,” she said.
He tried not to think of it, but it became irresistible. As soon as he thought of it, she typed it in and began browsing through his texts.
“You know what’s, like, super rude?” Jared said. “Snooping through someone’s phone in front of them. And kidnapping. But mostly the snooping. Seriously. How is this okay in your books? How do you justify this?”
“Maybe you should go to sleep,” she said.
And he did.
She woke him at suppertime. She’d brought the quilt from his bed and put it over him. His neck had a crick from sleeping on one of the fat throw cushions. He noticed his laptop open to his Facebook messages on the side table by the recliner.
She invited him to the table. She’d made pork chops and mashed potatoes with a side of green beans. She poured him a glass of apple juice. She puttered around the kitchen. He stared miserably at his plate. You weren’t supposed to eat food given to you by unfriendly witches, especially the non-human ones. Spells and poisons, his mom liked to say, are easily delivered through your stomach.
“Eat,” Neeka said.
The chops were very tender. Juicy. Just the right amount of salt and pepper. The mashed potatoes had the perfect amount of garlic. She sat across from him and put a napkin on her lap. They ate in silence. Tonight, the pub at the corner of their street was raucous, the sounds of merrymaking echoing loudly.
She stared at her own phone, typing responses. He thought about all the people he’d texted, all the messages she’d seen. He felt naked. He finished his plate and automatically took it to the sink and rinsed it. A large bowl of fruit salad was on the counter.
“How long are you staying?” Jared said.
“Bring the fruit salad,” she said. She carried her own plate to the sink, scraped the bones into the garbage.
Jared carried the bowl to the table. She brought two dessert bowls and two large spoons. She served them and they ate. Jared couldn’t remember the last time anyone had cooked for him. When he didn’t cook, Mave nuked herself gluten-free non-dairy burritos. She had a case of them in the freezer.
Neeka washed the dishes. Jared dried them and put them away.
“You’re loyal to your family and your friends,” Neeka said. “I like that.”
Jared waited for the rest.
“My sister says your mom is infamous,” Neeka said. “She’s not like other humans. I like her.”
“Not many people do,” Jared said. “She’s an acquired taste.”
“Did she really blow off Wee’git’s head with a shotgun?”
“Yeah, that’s Mom.”
“So that’s why he vanished for all these years. She must have buried him deep. We owe her.”
“She’s into pepperettes more than fruit baskets.”
“She’s powerful. Her spells around you are flawless. You have older ones too. This Sophia, she’s Halayt?”
Jared nodded.
“And you pissed her off and lived. Amazing. Even more amazing, she left her protection on you. The combination of their protection and the remoteness of your hometown kept you off the radar. Until now.”
Jared hadn’t realized Sophia had put protection on him too. Or that she hadn’t taken it off. It made his throat tight, thinking about it. Things would be so different if she really was his grandmother. He felt Neeka watching him. He hated emoting in front of strangers.
“What do you want?” Jared said.
“These are the end times,” Neeka said. “We want to go back to ocean. We want to die in our home.”
“I can’t help you. I can barely help myself.”
“Wee’git must give us back what he took.”
“So you want to use me as bait,” Jared said. “That’s what the other otters wanted. How are you different?”
“We want to be your friends.”
Neeka turned out to mean this literally. First, she became Jared’s Facebook friend. Then she added her cell number to his phone. She trimmed his fingernails and tweezed a few of his hairs and put them in a small cloth medicine bag on a leather string around her neck. He did not want her to do that, but she said it was a finding, not a binding, spell. He knew what his mom would say to that. She would be a very unhappy camper.
Neeka went through his clothes, pulling the occasional thread and adding it to the Jared collection in her medicine bag. He protested, but she said she wasn’t disturbing any of his mom’s spells. She studied the faces in the bedroom wall suspiciously. “And they haven’t hurt you?”
“No,” Jared said. “They float around. It’s cool.”
“They float through the room?”
“No. Just in the fog in the painting.”
“That’s disturbing.”
“They’re kind of like goldfish.”
“Do you see them moving now?”
“Do you?”
“So they don’t always move?”
“No. There’s this thing in the wall that sucks toes. It’s like, you know, Gollum, from that Hobbit movie, except it’s mostly a shadow. They warn me when he tries to crawl out. We don’t like him.”
Neeka stepped away from the wall. “This is horrifying.”
“You get used to it.”
“No, this is the path to madness. This is magic run amok.”
“For someone who claims to be an otter, you have a really low weirdness bar.”
One of the painted cars on the floor turned its headlights on and off, and she jumped.
“That’s new,” Jared said.
“It’s spreading,” Neeka said. “Like a contagion.”
“Ooooh, scary headlights.”
“You need to take this seriously.”
“Okay, okay. I like them, though. I don’t want to paint over them.”
“You like them.”
“They’re not—they aren’t hurting anyone. I don’t want to hurt them.”
“You don
’t want to hurt painted faces in the wall.”
“They keep the toe-sucker away. I’m totally cool if you want that one dead. He’s a creep.”
Neeka shook her head. “You have a very strange life.”
“Yeah,” Jared said. She was just the whacked icing on his weirdo cake.
I heard that, she thought.
I know, he thought back.
30
Once upon a time, the continent of North America glittered like a disco ball. Large ponds, small ponds, mega ponds as large as lakes shone like a million tiny mirrors in the sunlight as the world spun. The ponds were created by over 100 million beavers who toiled to build dams, to build their dens and raise their children to transform the landscape as their ancestors had before them.
But then, in much the same way a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a tornado in Texas, a fad for furry hats in Europe caused the near extinction of beavers in North America. From 1550 to 1850, felt hats made from beaver fur were valuable status symbols that told the wearer’s story of wealth, rank and privilege to the casual viewing eye, much the same way a luxury car does these days.
First, beavers were hunted to extinction in most of Europe. When the fur traders arrived in North America, the Great Hunt continued here. Today, beavers have rebounded from near oblivion to ten million strong. Other fur-bearers like the otters generally loathe humans for the genocide they perpetrated and will take human form to lure the unsuspecting to their death. Though beavers have the ability to transform, they have no interest in shape-shifting to exact guerrilla retribution.
Ordinary beavers, like this young couple who are putting the finishing touches on their food cache at the bottom of their new pond on the outskirts of an urban park, work long into the night even as they await their first litter.
“The Creator bid us build, so we build,” the male beaver says.
“Don’t encourage the damn Trickster,” the female beaver says. “Just ignore him until he goes away.”
The male waddles up the shore, dark eyes glittering in the moonlight. The female ducks behind him, protectively smoothing the fur over her belly.
“Her name is Waterlily,” the male says. “And I’m Aspen.”
“Shut it, you ass,” Waterlily says.
“He’s narrating our lives. He might as well get our names right.”
“You! Trickster! Piss off, you troublemaker,” Waterlily says. “Can’t you see we’re working here? Clueless human-lover.”
“Hormones,” Aspen says.
How can they forgive? How do they continue to live as if nothing happened after so much wrong has been done to them? How are they not consumed by hate like everyone else?
“Are you mocking us?” Waterlily says.
“I think he’s drunk.” Aspen stands up on his hind legs. “Yeah, I’m going to have to ask you to leave, buddy.”
Such strength. So noble. The noble beaver.
“I’m this close to slapping you,” Aspen says, raising his tail.
31
Jared studied his biology text on the couch while Dent watched his show, bits of him drifting in an invisible tide. Jared’s phone pinged. His mom sent him a picture of a dog. He wasn’t sure whose dog it was or why she felt like sending it to him. He didn’t want to interrupt her trip, but he didn’t like being moved around like a puppet by Neeka. It was bad enough with David prowling around, waiting for an opportunity to be an asshole, but now otters were back in his life. Maybe it was time for the nuclear option.
Hey, Mom, he texted her. How’s Winnipeg?
She responded instantly. Thinking of selling house. Movin here. Whaddya think?
Really?
Richie’s family likes me. They want me to stay.
She must like it there a lot, he thought. ’Cause she loved her house. She’d fought for that house. She’d sacrificed for that house. He wasn’t so attached to it, but it would be weird without the place he’d spent most of his childhood. He’d planned to ask for some help with Neeka and David, but if she was finally in a good place after so much hell, maybe he needed to deal with his own mess.
If it makes you happy, Mom, u shud do it.
TTYL
TTFN
Mave wandered out of her room with her headphones on, her music bleeding through. She stood in front of the bathroom door for a long time, frowning, before she turned and went into the kitchen, eventually meandering back to her bedroom munching on an unpeeled carrot with the leafy part bobbing, reminding Jared of Bugs Bunny.
“So weird,” Dent said. “If she didn’t have such a great cable package, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Can’t you just, I dunno, put yourself in the TV or something?”
Dent rolled his eyes. “That’s not how it works.”
“Really? Can’t you go to the end of the series and binge-watch Doctor Who from there?”
“Being dead doesn’t make me a Time Lord, you Muggle,” Dent said.
“How did you die?”
“I was eaten by Tribbles.”
“Nice.”
“Jared, get lost. Please.”
He read some more of his biology text, and then asked Dent, “If you were me, what would you do about your stalker?”
“Tell Hank,” Dent said.
“Really? Even though he annoys the crap out of you?”
Dent let out a frustrated sigh. “It’s simple. Hank wants to help you but in a way you don’t like. David wants to run you over. Your call. For the record, you can’t haunt this apartment. We’re full up with ghosts and spirits.”
“Fine, fine,” Jared said. “I’ll talk to Hank.”
Jared went to the nearest convenience store to grab a breakfast sausage bun. He didn’t see David following him anywhere. No pictures appeared on his cellphone. Maybe David was getting bored. Or it was too early. Maybe he was slowing down and would lose interest. Maybe Jared wouldn’t have to do anything.
When he returned home, he heard Justice laughing in Mave’s bedroom. When he poked his head in to say howdy, she tried to convince him to go to brunch with them. He begged off, saying he had to study, and went to his bedroom. The dolphins were having a traffic jam. The painted heads in the wall talked soundlessly to each other, like neighbours, except for one of the child heads, which tumbled happily, following Jared as he dumped his backpack on the desk, plugged his phone into the charger and then flopped in bed. The kid stuck his tongue out.
“Hey,” Jared said.
The kid rolled away. Jared had no idea what to do about Neeka. She didn’t seem to want to hurt him, despite the whole puppet thing. Maybe if he was super boring, she’d lose interest. Or maybe he could tell her he loved her. That seemed to do the trick when it came to him and women.
He would talk to Hank if things got worse. The thought of asking him for help made his shoulders hunch. There had to be another way. You know, other than the police or Mave. He had to come up with a better plan. One that didn’t involve Hank.
Jared broke out his textbooks again and studied at the table. He ran through his notecards and worked through some equations. Dent was supposed to help him with a practice mid-term this morning, but his ghost friend had left the apartment.
How’d it go with Neeka? Olive texted him. She’s so pretty!
Our fearless leader wants U @ her Dance Group 2nite, Pat messaged him.
The apartment buzzer rang.
“Hello, Jared,” Neeka said when he pressed the intercom.
Good gravy. “Seriously? You just left.”
“Buzz me up.”
When he opened the apartment door, she handed him a latte and a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie. The part of him that was pleased she’d gone to the trouble was drowned out by the part of him that knew she’d read his mind.
“What are we doing today?” Neeka said.
“I don’t know if you know this about friendship, but there are boundaries. And you’re stomping all over mine.”
She came right up t
o him and stood nose to nose. He could feel her breath on his face.
“You’ll forgive me,” she said. “That’s what you do.”
“Are all otters this aggro?”
“Give me your phone.”
He glared at her, but handed it over before she froze him and took it. “This is not how friends behave.”
Neeka tapped in his PIN and then scrolled through his texts. “Why didn’t your mother bury this David Thompson?” she said.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but she’d be the first suspect. She has priors.”
“Have you told her what he’s been doing since you posted about him on Facebook?”
Jared fumed. He wanted his phone back. Now. And he wanted Neeka not to tell his mom anything, but he didn’t know how to stop her.
“It’s a dangerous world for a baby Trickster.” Neeka grinned.
“Not funny,” Jared said. “Really not funny.”
Neeka made salmon patties and wild rice for lunch. After they ate, she continued to nose through his phone, poking through his private business while he pretended she wasn’t there.
Dent drifted through the ceiling, yawning and stretching. He stopped when he saw Neeka.
“Woah,” he said. “Who’s the hot chick?”
“Dent, this is Neeka. Neeka, this is Dent.”
Neeka looked up from his phone. “Your spirit familiar is faint today.”
“Holy Time Lord,” Dent said, tightening the belt on his robe then running a hand through his hair. “She can see me?”
“Yeah,” Jared said. “She can see you.”
“You hear him,” she said, raising her head to look at Jared. “You hear the dead.”
“You can’t?” Jared said.
“No,” Neeka said. “He’s beyond the veil.”
Jared squinted. “He’s wearing a bathrobe.”
“She’s being metaphorical,” Dent said. “It’s a layman’s term for interdimensional space.”
“What?” Jared said.
“What did the spirit say?” she said.
“He thinks you’re hot,” Jared said.
“For the love of— Don’t tell her that!” Dent shouted at him.
Trickster Drift Page 24
