by Martha Carr
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this calm.
Before she might have been able to pretend they were not in a relationship, but now they were lovers, and she’d even brought over her favorite crystal skull toothbrush holder. The whole situation was turning dangerously domestic.
Shay ran her fingers through the sleeping man’s hair.
“Guess two fucked-up people like us were bound to end up together, huh, James?” Shay whispered.
A quiet chuckle followed and she smiled, savoring the use of his first name instead of his last.
Their relationship might last a few weeks, or until their deaths. Considering their lifestyles, there was also the distinct possibility that their deaths might only be a few weeks away.
Shay didn’t care. For now, she’d be satisfied to hold onto the small slice of happiness she’d found with James Brownstone.
“Okay, I definitely did not expect that look,” Shay announced as she approached the office.
Peyton sat at his desk, his orange tabby draped over his head like a hat. The researcher turned toward Shay and Osiris leapt to the ground with a loud yowl.
Shay stared down at the cat. “Seriously?”
The cat paused, one front paw in the air for a moment as he watched Shay as if waiting for her to make a move. After a few seconds, he darted through her legs and ran out of the office.
“Aww, he was just getting comfortable.” Peyton sighed.
“Spoil your cat too much, and you’ll regret it.” Shay pointed at the computer. She cleared her throat and asked the question she really wanted to know. “Still no sign?”
Peyton looked up and shook his head. “Nope, no sign of Lily, no sign of trouble. She may just be gone. Gray ghost is in the wind.”
“Maybe it’s for the best.” Shay did her best to shake off the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Did Lily see something in the near future that spooked her? “Got a little side job for you. Something perfect for your skills.”
“Liking the sound of this. Or maybe I should be afraid of the sound of this? Give me the details, and I’ll figure it out.”
Shay shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. Tubal-Cain wants me to find some cousin of his, a gnome named Bosvid. He was last seen on Earth in Europe about three hundred years ago.”
Peyton scoffed. “Oh, only three hundred years ago? Is that all?”
Shay shrugged. “I didn’t say it’d be easy, just that you’d be perfect for it.”
“Okay. And what am I getting paid for this little side job?”
Shay laughed, then blinked. “Wait, you’re serious? You’re not getting paid anything. With the percentage slice I’ve started giving you on jobs you’re making more than enough to keep you in silly clothes and costumes for years, and that’s before I consider how you’ve been fleecing James.”
“It’s just a modest cover charge for services rendered.”
“Did you charge him when you helped him out with the AET?”
“Well, no. That was for you, though, not him.”
Shay patted Peyton on the shoulder. “This is just some research for me. Not asking you to break into any government computers or try and translate weird alien writing. I remember how shortly after I first fake-killed you, you were bragging about your magical research skills. Now you’re whining?”
“I do know a lot of people,” Peyton grumbled, “but I’m not a miracle worker.”
“Never too late in life to pick up new titles.”
“Okay.” Peyton sighed. “And that’s all you have to work from, the name of a gnome who might have been in Europe three hundred years ago?”
“Sure.” Shay walked toward the office door. “I’m gonna be out of town with James visiting Alison this weekend. If you turn up anything important, just text me. I don’t need a play by play. I want to know about it once you’ve located him or his grave, but until then I don’t give a shit.”
Peyton saluted her. “Yes, ma’am.”
7
Peyton’s computer beeped with an alert—another hit for one of his bots. He smiled at the window that popped up on his second monitor.
He wasn’t sure why he’d waited so long to set up another monitor. On some level he’d been convinced Shay would get rid of him, fatally or otherwise. With his apartment and cat, and even Shay’s relationship, everything now felt more stable—or at least as stable as a life could be when a man was hiding in LA after faking his death in New York and working for a tomb raider who had faked her own death.
“That’s what I like to see.” Ten seconds passed as he scrolled through results. “Actually, I’d like to see half of that. Maybe a third. Need to refine these algos more.”
His bots had returned a tsunami of search results to provide the raw material for further processing by various algorithms. Drowning in hits was still a problem, even with the programs and machine-learning tools he had at his disposal.
Finding a gnome in hiding who had been living on Earth for centuries was an interesting challenge that was leaning heavily on his non-technical skills. His searches, automated or otherwise, were focused far more on folklore and legends than simple record searches.
One problem was that human societies had defined magical beings a myriad of ways prior to the full return of magic. An elf from Oriceran might look very different than a gnome, but a small village in eighteenth-century Germany might have run into a gnome and called it an elf. It wasn’t like he could just pop onto Google and type “Bosvid the gnome.”
The rest of his plan was brilliant in its simplicity of idea, if not its execution. Step one: gather raw data with bots using customized algorithms. Step two: cross-reference the gathered data and filter using algorithms and manual inspection. Step three: verify Bosvid’s location. Step four: bask in Shay’s praise of his awesome research skills.
The raw data so far was promising, but a gnome who had hidden for centuries wasn’t going to be listed in some cutesy newspaper article about local characters. Therefore, Peyton had unleashed an army of bots to hit all corners of the web, hidden or otherwise.
He’s a gnome, not some DOD White Hat. It’s not like he’d even think to take measures to hide his presence from computer searches until recently.
Peyton grinned, the thought buoying his confidence. His fingers ran across the keyboard as he passed a batch of search results through his first set of filtering algorithms.
Shay’d been wrong when she’d described the job. When someone searched for a person on the internet who didn’t want to be found, it often led to hacking into servers. Passive data collection wouldn’t cut it.
People in the government had known about Oriceran before the general public had, which meant at least some of them might have access to hidden information concerning the wayward gnome.
Project Houdini had been mentioned in some of the Project Nephilim files. Peyton couldn’t be sure, but the name made him think it had something to do with magic. He doubted the government was spending a lot of money refining escape artistry. A few probes into governmental systems wouldn’t hurt.
Osiris stepped into the room and stretched before curling up in the corner near a floor vent.
Peyton smiled at the cat. “You got any ideas? Can you hunt out the gnome for me?”
The tabby meowed.
The researcher’s phone chimed. “Oh, yeah, forgot about that. Don’t want to get my priorities messed up.” He picked up the phone.
His eyes widened. The message on the screen was far more important than the location of a gnome.
“I got a response, Osiris!” Peyton cheered.
His cat rested his head on his paws. He didn’t even bother to look up at the man, as if signaling his utter apathy toward the human’s excitement.
Peyton couldn’t wipe the grin off his face as looked at his important message…from a dating app.
Hi. It says we’re supposed to be a good match, and I liked your message. Sure, I think we could go out for drinks sometime.<
br />
After his last disastrous attempts at dating, Peyton had almost given up and convinced himself that dating wasn’t a possibility. That he’d have to sacrifice it to stay alive. He’d even convinced himself that Shay had been right, and maybe he should be hiding in the warehouse.
But that was bullshit.
Shay had pissed off far more people than he had in both of her lives, and was living a full life. She traveled, operated in public, went out with friends, and was even dating a famous bounty hunter. If she could have a life, he could have a life.
Not that she needed to know about his life.
Another alert popped up from a different dating app. Much like searching for a missing gnome, finding the right woman required patience and a wide variety of tools.
Peyton dashed off a few quick messages. He didn’t want to get himself too excited until he’d verified that the dating responses weren’t from bots, but it was a good start.
He set the phone down and returned his attention to his computer. Several filtered results filled a small window on his second monitor.
Peyton nodded. “Okay, these are definitely looking promising. Huh, what’s this? Guess it’s time to take a poke around a few National Reconnaissance Office servers.”
Peyton yawned and looked at the two side-by-side satellite photos before clicking over to the next comparison set.
A day of gathering and filtering data had already yielded a few possibilities. A few research strands had suggested that someone named Bosvid had come to the United States from Germany right after the end of the American Civil War, but the only proof of that was a few lines on some county tax records in Maine.
That would be easy to ignore, but a trail of unusual events and legends starting in Maine and heading west corresponded with the years following the arrival of Bosvid. Those were revealed not by Peyton’s searching or the Project Houdini information, but by a file recovered from a hidden IRS server—a document entitled The Difficult Issue of Magical Tax Evasion: A Historical Perspective.
No matter how much the world changed, death and taxes remained constant.
Peyton chuckled at the thought as he continued looking at the satellite photos.
Several convergent lines of evidence from archaeologists, historians, and government sources pointed him toward Iowa, not all that far outside of Des Moines. He magnified a few sections of the satellite photos and clicked to inspect images taken on different dates.
Too perfect. The images hadn’t changed. He’d managed to gather dozens of satellite images of what was allegedly a large farm, but all the images looked exactly the same, regardless of the date or the source satellite, including the layout and density of the rows of corn and the exact positions of the vehicles.
Even if the farmers parked the same place every night, he’d expect at least one daytime picture of the vehicles out in the field. The presence of non-fallow fields argued against the idea the farm was abandoned.
Suspicious. Damned suspicious.
Peyton brought up another picture, an aerial photograph taken in the 1950s. The closer distance changed aspects of the image, but the layout of the buildings and corn remained the same.
He narrowed his eyes. Other than the angle, everything else was identical. He ran an image comparison analysis between the 1950s photo and the satellite images.
Chance of match: 96.5%.
Peyton isolated only the vehicles in the older photo and then compared them to the satellite images.
Chance of match: 99.7%.
He chuckled. A farmer might take good care of his equipment, but he doubted he was using the same trucks and tractors for eighty years.
“Iowa, though?” Peyton shook his head. “Why would the gnome be in Iowa?”
Shay probably wouldn’t care if she found out I was dating, as long as I made it clear I was lying to the women. She’s let me move out of the warehouse.
Maybe Brownstone knows someone? Then again, Brownstone is dating Shay, so I don’t think I want him to try and hook me up with anyone. I couldn’t handle a woman like Shay.
Peyton shuddered at the thought.
He nodded to himself as he pulled off the highway in his rented Toyota SUV. He hit a country road leading to what was supposed to be Morris Farms. Their web presence was non-existent, something that made Peyton just twitch thinking about it. He only knew the name because of local property tax records.
Someone was hiding something at Morris Farms, and they’d gone through the trouble to use magic or technology to hide from satellites—which meant they knew what they were doing.
The road grew bumpier, and Peyton blew out a breath. Shay might understand about him dating someone and hanging out in LA, but running off to Iowa by himself would probably earn him another death threat or the return of the cubicle apartment.
“She doesn’t need to know,” he murmured. “It’s not like she’s going to demand I lead her through the search process point by point.”
He nodded to himself, satisfied with the need for a little lie-by-omission. Shay kept plenty of things from him. She was even keeping secrets from her boyfriend. A few secrets and lies here and there helped the world spin smoother.
Fifteen minutes of driving brought Peyton farther down the bumpy country road and within five miles of Morris Farms according to his GPS. He hadn’t seen a sign or another vehicle for the last ten minutes.
This is as good as time as any.
Peyton slowed his SUV and pulled to the side of the road. Driving straight into a farm that might be hidden by magic and asking around would probably end with him being turned into a toad.
He killed the engine and pressed a button to open the back hatch. Whistling, Peyton wandered to the back to pull out one of the drones he’d brought. Whatever magic was being used to shield the farm obviously worked from thousands of feet up, but he suspected a closer inspection might reveal the truth.
“Just here for a few photos,” Peyton murmured to himself. “In and out. No fuss, no muss, no guns, no getting turned into a toad. No guy calling me bad names in German.”
A few minutes later the drone buzzed away from Peyton, flying low to the ground. He sat inside the car taking deep breaths, his attention focused on the feed on his phone.
What if the gnome has some sort of spell where he can zap me through the drone?
Peyton’s stomach tightened and he swallowed, remembering how he’d almost ended up getting killed in a parking lot in Madison on a previous venture outside LA.
Surviving the experience had only reinforced in Peyton’s mind that he harbored no hidden danger fetish. Shay could fight crazy Australian monsters in the desert, but he’d mostly stick to his computer.
Peyton slapped a hand to his forehead. “What the fuck am I doing? The Midwest is my kryptonite.” He took several deep breaths and shook his head. “Nope. Keep it together. Sometimes you just have to verify things on site. I just won’t get near them. There have been no mysterious deaths reported in the area, so it’s not like the gnomes are killing everyone who snoops around them.” He winced. “Unless they covered up the deaths with magic. Oh, shit. Maybe I will die a toad.”
The drone continued zooming along fifty feet off the ground. Few trees lined the road, and the open, flat land offered nowhere to hide. After a couple of miles, Peyton stopped the drone’s advance and increased its altitude.
Being closer to the farm would have been preferable, but the custom camera he’d installed would get him decent images even at a distance. He was there to verify the presence of the gnome, not sell pictures to tabloids.
Peyton magnified and enhanced the image of the farm. He saw nothing but the pure excitement of rows and rows of corn, along with ancient trucks and tractors.
Peyton focused on one of the trucks and then a tractor. The old designs were consistent with what he could make out in the satellite photos, but the vehicles looked spotless, as if they’d been sitting in a vault for decades and had been deployed to the farm the day
before.
“Yeah, that’s not suspicious at all.”
The image shimmered for a moment.
“What the hell was that?” He repositioned the drone, but the shimmer didn’t reappear.
Shay has to concentrate to find the gnome’s shop in the mall, and she said the gate at Alison’s school screws with people’s minds. There are tons of other examples of mental and physical illusion magic that can be beaten by knowing what you are looking for. Could the gnome be pulling that off even through a drone feed?
Peyton gritted his teeth and stared at the image, ignoring the feel of the phone in his hand and the flight data. He let his eyes grow unfocused like he was trying to spot a hidden picture in a colorful pattern, but kept his mind on the idea of gnomes and Bosvid.
Something moved on the phone, breaking his concentration. He wasn’t even sure what he’d seen since the feed revealed the same boring eternally-unchanged farm as before. That might be proof of something strange, but it wasn’t proof of a hidden gnome.
Peyton rewound the drone footage. A distortion had hit the feed, but he had no idea of the source. He rewound the footage again and started advancing it frame by frame.
Corn, tractors, trucks…nothing special. There wasn’t even a fake human or two in the images.
“What the hell?”
Peyton blinked at a single frozen frame. If he backed up or advanced one frame, there was nothing but the same unchanging farm. The image in between was a slice of a different reality.
Dozens of gnomes wandered the farm, many sitting around long tables that didn’t appear in any of the other images. Although some of the rows of corn remained, many newer buildings with odd curving designs stood in what should have been corn fields. There were no tractors or trucks.
“Huh,” Peyton murmured. “So I didn’t just find Bosvid, I found an entire hidden gnome colony.” He grinned. “I’m so damned good.”
8
