Mist and Magic

by Lindsay Buroker

  “So that should be a celebratory drink rather than a drowning-your-sorrows drink.” Michael arched his eyebrows. “Right?”

  “Yeah. I just keep seeing the kid. And wondering if he’ll try to come hunt me down someday.”

  “How old was he?”

  Another shrug. “Six or seven maybe. It’s hard to tell with trolls.”

  “You’ve got at least six years before he’ll be able to threaten you with more than a slingshot.”

  “Maybe.”

  Michael scrutinized me, maybe guessing that this wasn’t the only thing contributing to my glum mood. Every time I made a new enemy, I worried that it would be as likely to come back to haunt him as me. Was I being selfish by allowing myself the comfort and camaraderie of a relationship?

  “How’s Thad? And Amber?” Michael was the only person who knew about my business and the magical community and who also knew about my previous life. Or maybe it was more appropriate to call it my interim life.

  I’d met and married Thad in the army, and we’d had Amber after getting out, at which point I’d vowed to settle down and lead a normal life, not be anyone’s hired killer. I’d gotten as far as taking business classes from U-Dub, envisioning some future where I balanced books and helped Thad with his software company. Then an influx of magical refugees had come to Seattle, murders had skyrocketed, the police had been flummoxed by their mystical powers, and I’d made the choice to return to this work. As a freelancer this time—not some obedient soldier—able to call my own shots and continue to be a mom and a wife. Or so I’d thought.

  Until the night a pack of werewolves, angry that I’d taken out one of their buddies, tracked me down at my house. They hadn’t cared that he’d been a criminal. They’d come for me anyway. Out in the street in front of our suburban house, I’d fought off six werewolves and nearly died.

  Thad and Amber had slept through it all. I was glad they had, glad that I’d been awake and sensed the shifters approaching before they’d lobbed the grenades they’d carried through the bedroom windows.

  The next week, I’d left. It had been hard to walk away, to file divorce papers, but I’d realized that I couldn’t have a normal life and a family and also be an assassin. I’d had to choose. Years later, I wasn’t positive I’d made the right choice, but I did know that a lot of people were alive today who would have otherwise been dead if I hadn’t stayed in the business. This was what I’d been trained to do, what I had the blood to do. And because I’d left and done my best to make my relationship with Thad and Amber disappear to the public, they were still alive too.

  “Val?” Michael nudged me with his foot under the table, his humor replaced by a frown. “Are they okay?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. As far as I know, they are. I’ve cut all ties to them so nobody can trace them to me. As far as my enemies go, I’m just a single gal with no ties to anyone. Except you.”

  “They know about me?” He rested a hand on his chest. “I’m touched.”

  “You had better not be. Maybe you should wear a pizza-delivery uniform when you come to my apartment.”

  “A lot of pornos start that way.”

  “You’re an aficionado, are you?”

  “Well, I’m male.” He slid the book onto the table and opened it. “And I’m here to take your mind off your worries.”

  “With a book? Are you going to read me bedtime stories?”

  “I could. I’ve been researching magical blades. This book has a whole bunch of famous ones crafted by dwarves thousands of years ago and then lost over the ages. It’s believed that some of them were stolen by refugees fleeing the Cosmic Realms to the wild worlds. Such as Earth.”

  “Are you trying to find one for yourself?”

  “I have been admiring yours.” He gazed at the sword harness draped across an adjacent chair, Chopper sheathed in the scabbard. “It’s quite remarkable. You could probably sell it and fully fund your retirement.”

  “I’d have to go back to the boom-boom method of killing magical bad guys in the interim.” I couldn’t imagine retiring, not while I was still qualified to do this work, not while so few others were.

  “Boom-boom? Did they teach you that in the army?”

  “Absolutely they did. That’s where you throw as many grenades as you can at vampires, zombies, shifters, and the like, and hope that the power of physics overrides the power of magic.”

  “Does it?”

  “Often, but it has a tendency to take down nearby buildings, bridges, and small mountains.”

  “Inconvenient.” Michael flipped to a bookmarked page in the thick tome. “I was perusing this earlier and thought this one looks a bit like yours. What do you think?”

  Curious, I looked. But the black ink sketch wasn’t detailed. “I doubt Chopper has ever been written up in a book. I got it from a zombie, not a dwarf.”

  “Maybe the zombie got it from a dwarf.”

  “The blade is still sharp. I’m sure it’s not thousands of years old.”

  “Maybe not.” He flipped to another bookmark. “This is one I’m researching. It was reputed to be stolen by gnomish pirates centuries ago and brought to a lush and damp wild world full of forests and buried in a cache by a quiet inlet of the sea. Sounds a bit like Puget Sound, doesn’t it?”

  “Sounds like a ton of places on Earth. And probably even more places in all of the realms.”

  “Maybe.” He shrugged easily, closed the book, and stood.

  “Are you leaving?” A tendril of panic curled around my soul as the memory of the troll boy’s eyes flashed through my mind along with the certainty that I didn’t want to be alone.

  “Do you want me to?” He stopped beside my chair and rested his hand on the back of my head.

  I leaned my forehead against his stomach. I didn’t want to need anyone, but… sometimes I did. “No.”

  “Good. I was just going to get my pizza-delivery uniform.”

  “You’re hilarious.”

  “Someone has to balance out your gloominess, Eeyore.”

  A horn blasted on the freeway, jerking me out of the slumber I hadn’t intended to find. A semitruck roared past, wheels spraying water.

  The dream faded from my mind but not the memory of it, because that conversation had actually happened. It had been more than a year ago, when we’d still been romantically involved, but I wondered if my mind was trying to tell me something in dredging it up.

  Michael had finished his quest for that sword without finding it—though he’d discovered a cache with a few magical trinkets in it, one of which he’d traded to me for a foot massage—and it was hard to imagine it tying in with a baby tiger and maulings in Bellingham, but I would keep my ears open for anything about swords.

  But first, I had Misty Loop Lane to visit. It was still raining but not as hard as before, and visibility had improved, so I pulled back onto the highway and continued north.

  10

  It was three a.m. by the time I reached Bellingham, drove off into the boonies, and found the entrance to the dirt road half hidden by trees and dense undergrowth. There wasn’t a street sign, but the GPS insisted this was the place.

  It had led me astray before, so I didn’t trust it very far. I was already on a gravel road in the middle of nowhere. I hadn’t seen another car for twenty minutes, and it had been miles since I’d passed the last driveway. I’d passed a few old logging roads marked by numbers but little more. The satellite map showed nothing but trees where I was, and I was skeptical that I would find an address up this dirt road.

  Despite the remoteness, the headlights played over fresh tracks in the mud of the turnoff, and a broken branch dangled at the edge of the windshield. Someone had been this way recently. Willard? Ogres in a van driving the kidnapped Michael? Both?

  Glad for the Jeep, I headed up the lumpy, muddy road, turning on the high-beams in the hope that I wouldn’t miss One Cave Misty Loop Lane. I had a feeling there wasn’t going to be an address marker or even a mailbox, bu
t maybe the fresh tracks would remain followable and would lead me to the right spot.

  “Here’s hoping.”

  According to the map, the road meandered and curved through hilly terrain for a few miles before coming out on a forest-service road that eventually led back into town. At least, if I found nothing, I wouldn’t have to turn around and come back the same way.

  The Jeep bumped and tilted as I did my best to avoid the potholes. A plaintive “merow” came from the passenger seat.

  “Sorry,” I told my groggy cub. “I’m afraid the road-maintenance standards out here are low.”

  The cub stretched a paw over and rested it on my thigh. She gazed up at me with those green eyes, eyes that seemed to be asking for a kind of help that I didn’t know how to give. I rested a hand on her head and rubbed a soft ear.

  “Let me know if you sense anything,” I told her. “I’m sure your range extends farther than mine.”

  She shifted her paw from my thigh to the keys dangling out of the ignition and batted at the Princess Bride keychain that read, Have fun storming the castle!

  “Careful with that. That’s a priceless artifact from my childhood.”

  “Merow?”

  “It’s from one of the first movies I ever saw. Mom had to raise me alone and never had much money, so she fixed up an old school bus into a home. We spent a lot of time camping out on state land until I was ten and one of her friends let us park the bus in their back yard. Then I got to play inside with her girls and experience television and the VCR—like a normal kid. Mom never got into movies, but I watched The Princess Bride about five hundred times. I even named my gun after Fezzik from the movie.” I tapped the holster, though the cub was far more interested in the keychain than my story. “The sword was named after the junkyard dog in Stand By Me. Chopper, sic balls. That’s what counts as a memorable line when you’re ten.”

  As I drove and rambled, more trying to keep myself awake and entertain the cub than out of any expectation of interaction, I scanned the moss-draped branches and dense undergrowth encroaching from either side of the dirt road. A few more years, and the road would likely disappear altogether.

  Between the rain and the dark, my headlights seemed insufficient for a search. Since I had a charm that allowed me to see in the dark, I turned them off and activated it, hoping that more would become apparent. But the dense forest was much the same. I could just see it better.

  The lack of side roads surprised me, especially if this had originally been a logging area. Signs or an indication that anything was back here were equally lacking.

  “I have a feeling it might take magic to find this address.”

  Even though I could sense magical artifacts and beings, that might not be enough. That thought grew stronger and stronger as I continued without seeing anything. The fresh tire marks in the mud also continued, but I decided that whoever had come before me had likely driven all the way through without finding anything.

  That was when light grew noticeable, coming from around a bend ahead. Since any type of illumination flared intensely bright when the charm was working, I deactivated it, but I didn’t turn on my headlights.

  I sensed something magical in the same direction as that light. Not a person but a tool or weapon, perhaps. It felt similar to Fezzik.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t sense ogres or any other magical beings that might have hinted I was on the right track.

  The headlights of an SUV came into view, and I winced at their brightness, then did my best to pull off to the side so it could pass. Instead, the SUV stopped, and the door opened. The driver left the headlights on, the vehicle positioned so they blinded me if I looked at it. That meant I couldn’t identify who was coming, beyond the outline of a long coat and a rain hat.

  Though I suspected it was Willard—who else would be out here?—I unholstered Fezzik and rested my finger on the trigger.

  “That look like Willard to you?” I asked my seatmate as I rolled down the window.

  “Merow?”

  “You met her. Though she halfway accused you of mauling people up here, so maybe it wasn’t the best introduction.”

  “That you skulking in the dark, Thorvald?” Willard’s southern drawl came from under the hat. Her hand was also resting on a firearm, though it wasn’t the source of the magic I’d sensed.

  “I’m driving, not skulking.”

  “With your lights off?”

  “I have a charm that lets me see in the dark. Unless someone’s headlights are blinding me.”

  “Handy.”

  “Not at the current moment, no. You find anything out here?”

  Willard stopped by the side mirror and studied me, but with the lights at her back, I couldn’t read her expression. “I’m guessing from your question that you haven’t,” she said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Nothing magical out here that any of your charms can sense?”

  “Just whatever’s in your car.”

  She hesitated, either because she didn’t want to tell me what it was, or she wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Captain Rodriguez has magical bullets for his magical gun,” she eventually said.

  “Is it aimed at me?”

  “In your general direction.”

  “Comforting.”

  “I figured it was you, since Reynolds said he gave you the address.” Willard didn’t sound like she approved or wanted me here. Tough.

  “I got a translation on my own from the ogres at Shoreview Park, so I was coming one way or another.”

  Willard looked back at her SUV and made a patting motion, hopefully telling her officer that he didn’t need to hold his gun on me. “We went through here once and were going to make another pass in case we missed something, then head into town and study the USGS maps we got by better light. The GPS directed us here, so we thought this would be it, but…”

  “Mine thinks this is Misty Loop Lane too.”

  Her phone rang, and she moved away from me to answer it.

  “Who’s calling you at 3:30 in the morning?” I asked.

  “Colonel Willard,” she answered, ignoring me.

  I caught a few words from the caller—a medical examiner saying she’d finished an autopsy. For Willard’s missing agent? Or was this someone who’d been killed by the feline claws? Whoever the subject of the procedure had been, his heart had stopped.

  “That shouldn’t be possible,” Willard said. “He was barely thirty and fit.”

  “…might have been electrocuted.”

  “Electrocuted?” Willard scowled down at the ground. “When he was found next to someone whose throat was torn out by a tiger?”

  “Tiger?” I mouthed, glancing at the cub. She’d stopped playing with the keychain and was sniffing at the damp air wafting in through my open window.

  I missed whatever the medical examiner said, but Willard’s next words were, “I know, I know, it’s bigger than a tiger. Whatever it is, we’ll find it.”

  “We also found something on your man. I don’t know if it’s more than a souvenir knickknack, but you’ll probably want to see it.”

  “I’ll be there in an hour,” Willard said.

  “Bring coffee.”

  “Always.” She hung up and returned to my window. “Why don’t you keep hunting around here, and let me know if you find anything?”

  “I want to go see the body and whatever the medical examiner found.” I would be willing to come back here once it got light and I had a better shot at seeing evidence of people—or ogres—leaving the road, but the mystery with the body and some unnamed item sounded like a better lead.

  “You’re not on the case.”

  “And yet here I am.”

  “Annoyingly, yes.”

  “You could use my help.”

  “I told you before,” Willard said. “I looked at your record. You’re a reckless maverick who doesn’t think the rules apply to her. Even when you were in the army, you frequently failed to obe
y your superiors and ended up with more disciplinary actions than a drunken sailor on his first shore leave in a year.”

  “Only because my superiors didn’t understand me and nurture my creative streak.”

  “I’m sure I would side with your superiors.”

  “I’m sure you would, too, but look, if some magic was used to kill your agent, I might be able to detect it.”

  “Your record failed to mention that you’re an eavesdropper.”

  “You have to read further. It’s in the appendix.”

  Willard shook her head and stepped back. “You’re not coming, Thorvald. I can’t stop you from looking for your friend, but you’re not on my team.”

  “Fine, but I’m going to look next for my friend at the morgue.”

  “We don’t need your help.”

  “He does.”

  She glowered over her shoulder at me as she stalked back to her SUV. “You’ll find that the front door is locked to random civilians.”

  “I have a lock-picking charm too,” I called after her.

  “Merow?” the cub inquired.

  “It’s true,” I told her, though I doubted that was truly a comment on the conversation. “I’ve been collecting this stuff for years.” I waved at charms on my leather thong, then put the Jeep back into gear.

  Feeling a touch peevish, I drove past Willard as she was getting in, gave her a cheerful wave, and plugged in the address for the Whatcom County Medical Examiner, determined to beat them there. I hadn’t mentioned my stealth charm to Willard. Even if she called ahead and tried to warn someone that I was coming, it wouldn’t keep me out.

  In the rear-view mirror, the SUV turned around quickly but awkwardly on the narrow road, then came after me. But my Jeep had more clearance and better tires for off-roading, and I smirked as I outpaced them.

  “Time to find out how stopped hearts, giant tigers, and murders are tied in with Michael’s disappearance,” I murmured.

  11

  As I’d promised Willard, I had little trouble sneaking into the building without being seen. The back door was unlocked, and there weren’t any security or police officers waiting to apprehend me. Since the rain had picked up again, I was glad there weren’t any obstacles to bypass, though I had expected Willard to warn someone that an interloper might show up. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to risk putting anybody in my maverick path. Or maybe she secretly believed that I could help.