by Renée Jaggér
“We can let you try again if you want. You know, to heal the wound in your ego or whatever before we dive in.”
He grimaced for a second, but his usual laid-back confidence returned quickly enough. “No, that’s fine,” he said. “I’m just happy to leave. And of course, I’m happy to plunge into your tunnel anytime.”
She looked fast, stepping toward the portal so he wouldn’t see her blush. The bastard had done a good job of coming back from her barb.
Now they just needed to know if the portal went where it was supposed to go. Roland pressed in behind her as she stepped through, and the faintly illumined arcanoplasm, like melted amethyst, closed around her with its familiar chill.
Chapter Seven
Both the werewitch and the wizard were mildly surprised to discover that more than two days had passed since they’d last seen Earth. They knew time passed differently in the Other, and it had seemed like their most recent training session had been exceptionally long, but they’d never been in a parallel universe for this long.
“Shit,” Bailey murmured as they stood blinking in the woods. It was a cloudless day, and shafts of bright sunlight filtered between the trees, hurting their eyes after the endless gloom of the Other.
Roland snapped his fingers. “There must be some kind of direct relationship between time in there and time out here,” he pointed out. “Since I know we were in there for longer than before. We might not be able to perceive the speed at which it passes, but the Other doesn’t cause time to move backward or anything like that.”
The werewitch nodded as she examined the area for any sign of Fenris, but he didn’t seem to be around. “True. We’ll have to keep that in mind. Anyway, I don’t see the old man, so let’s go back to my place, how about? He knows where to find us when he finally shows up. And if he gets mad at us, well, at this point, it’s his own damn fault for not checking in.”
“Agreed.” Roland almost smirked. Clearly, he enjoyed having Bailey on his side for something like this, given his objections to Marcus’ training methods.
They started to walk, but they were far enough out in the forest that getting to the Nordin house might take as much as an hour, which seemed excessive.
So they levitated. Once both were airborne, Bailey focused on keeping them that way, and Roland wove a cloaking spell as they flew over the treetops and down the slopes. The town was unaware of their presence in its sky as the buildings hove closer.
It was late afternoon when they reached the family’s backyard. Bailey, allowing gravity to regain some of its hold on them but not all, lowered them to the damp grass beside the pole barn while Roland terminated the cloaking spell. To a casual observer, it would have looked like they’d snapped into existence just then.
Bailey put her hands on her hips. “Don’t usually approach the house from behind. Well, make lots of noise as we approach so Jacob can hear us and they don’t get startled. Unless they’re not here.”
Roland ran a hand through his hair. “The ground’s too soft to stomp on properly, but I’ll see what I can do as far as sloshing through mud and swishing the grass nice and loud.”
The back door opened when they were about halfway across the yard, revealing Jacob, whose eyes were wider than usual.
“Hey there. We were getting worried. And why the hell are you coming from that direction?”
Bailey shrugged. “We took a shortcut.”
“Okay, whatever,” her brother countered. “Just want to make sure that some demon didn’t replace you guys while you were in that…place…and send doppelgangers after us. Especially since I just got back from a short trip of my own and brought some fried chicken with me. Bit early for dinner, but I didn’t think you’d complain.”
Roland quipped, “Hell, no. I think we forgot what food even is. And if no one’s made coffee yet, I’d say it’s a Russell kind of day for it.”
Russell appeared behind Jacob as the wizard spoke. He was almost half a foot taller than the other Nordin boys at six foot seven and the darkest and least talkative. “That bad, huh? Okay, fine.” He walked into the kitchen toward the coffee pot.
Kurt, the youngest of the brothers, was waiting for them, leaning against the wall in the short hall between the living room and dining room. He was Jacob’s height, but slightly thinner and smoother of face. “Who are you people? I can’t remember seeing you around these parts.”
Bailey flicked her hand and sent a puff of wind that messed up his hair. “Shut up, Kurt. Take pictures next time and mount them with a damn caption if you need to.”
After the werewitch and the wizard took a few minutes to use the bathroom and freshen up, they all sat down to an early dinner.
“Jacob,” Bailey said, “just wanna commend you on getting the biggest bucket of chicken they had along with the extra sides since I’m pretty sure I’m about to eat half of this entire feast. That way, the rest of you won’t starve, splitting the rest.”
Kurt narrowed his eyes. “We’ll see about that. Just try it.” His hand leapt out with surprising speed and deposited a breast onto his plate. “Your fiendish sorcery is no match for my highly-developed reflexes.”
Jacob leaned back in his chair. “See that? Kurt finally got his hand on a breast. Might be years before it happens again.”
“Silence,” the younger boy snapped, hoisting a mug of Russell’s coffee, which was strong enough to be hazardous to small children and the elderly.
After they’d all destroyed a healthy initial portion of the food, conversation welled up. The brothers mentioned that their dad had stopped by, but was currently out meeting with the leaders of their pack for some official function pertaining to the full moon.
“Oh, right,” Bailey recalled. “They only do it every season now. Used to be every moon.”
Roland waved a hand. “That’s the modern world for you. People have jobs to go to and Netflix series to waste entire days watching. Makes it hard for even werewolves to do wolf stuff under the glare of Luna.”
Jacob half-frowned. “You got that right. Speaking of which…”
The girl inhaled; she knew this was coming—the discussion of their training and everything that had happened on her and Roland’s end. It would be good to talk it over with her family, but part of her didn’t want to dwell on it right now. She’d rather decompress and talk about something fun instead of feeling obliged to deliver a progress report.
She leapt in with, “We haven’t seen Marcus in, I dunno, a while. Again, we can’t judge time in there. But he never showed up, not even when frickin’ Baldur did. Let alone when that other pack popped in. And we never know if that shit is part of the training process or random weirdness that even he couldn’t have predicted. I know I can handle it in the end, but it’s wearing me down, honestly. All the uncertainty and chaos.”
Her shoulder slumped at admitting that. But thankfully, she had deflected the discussion.
Roland quickly added, “I second that motion. After we’re done eating, I might have to stumble out to the pole barn and sleep for about twelve hours.”
Russell made a low grunting sound. “Tell him.”
Before Bailey could ask him to clarify what that meant, Jacob agreed. “Yeah, Marcus—or Fenris, if we’re supposed to call him that now—needs to know he can’t just leave you guys dangling, even as tough as you are. I mean, yeah, sometimes when you teach someone something, they need to figure things out for themselves, but it’s different when gods are showing up left and right and some Weres still think you’re the bad guy in all this.”
The girl shook her head. “Pack politics never end. If I do end up as this great and mighty shaman, I’m probably gonna have to mediate that crap. I guess someone has to, and at least I can bring a different perspective to it.”
“Right,” Kurt remarked. “You can remind them of that other monthly cycle, besides just the moon.”
Russell threw a thigh bone at him, but he caught it.
“See?” Kurt beamed. “R
eflexes.”
“You know,” interjected Jacob, “that reminds me. Something else I wanted to tell you, and it kinda relates to the pack politics stuff.”
Bailey spread her hands. “Okay, shoot.”
Jacob had taken a bite of chicken while she responded, and he spent a moment chewing before he was able to speak. When he did, he gestured vaguely with the half-devoured drumstick in his hand.
“Those assholes running the trafficking ring?” he began. “The cops finally caught the rest of them. Well, most of ‘em, anyway. There were stories about it on the news and stuff. They captured the ringleaders and most of the surviving foot-soldier guys, as well as—they’re pretty sure—most of the buyers. They said something about how it was possible, at least partially thanks to ‘disorganization in the wake of a conflict with a concerned citizen.’ Meaning you, obviously. But yeah, everyone’s talking about it.”
Roland burst out laughing. “Concerned citizen! Ha! They don’t want to admit that Bailey and I blew the doors off the operation for them to walk in and do the rest. That’d make them look bad, plus it might encourage the average schmuck to start taking the law into their own hands, and then there’d be chaos. Oh, that is rich!”
“Hey, now,” Kurt jumped in. “At least Sheriff Browne sent us a thank-you card and some donuts. Remember that? Those were damn good donuts.”
The wizard frowned. “I must have been sleeping. You guys ate them all while I was asleep, didn’t you?”
“Okay,” Bailey interjected. “Thanks for your input and all, but let’s get back to the main subject matter here. Jacob, you said everyone’s talking about it. What are they saying?”
He shrugged. “What I just said—that you were the one who made the whole thing possible. It kinda silenced the last of the dumbasses who doubted you, y’know? Like, I don’t think there’s much of anyone in the valley at this point who still believes those stupid rumors about you.”
The girl nodded. “That’s good. The valley isn’t that big, though. It ain’t the whole world. Those guys from down south obviously did believe the rumors. Where were they from again? Roland, do you remember?”
“Uh,” he replied, squinting, “some creek. Whitcomb Creek, that was it. Between Salem and Eugene.”
Kurt rubbed his eyes. “Word travels fast. Well, you said you told those guys off, so they’ll tell everyone else downstate, right?”
Bailey took a swig of coffee. “That’s the hope.”
The eldest of her brothers rubbed his stubbly chin. “Yeah, clearly the dumbassery isn’t over with yet. We’ll talk to some other guys to see if there’s any other rumors spreading or anything coming down the grapevine. It’s been a couple days now, and a lot can happen in a short time.”
Roland acknowledged him with a raised spoonful of mashed potatoes. “True that.”
For a minute or two, no one spoke as they finished the last of their meal and debated whether to get up.
“So,” Kurt burst out, “how about them Seahawks?”
Russell frowned. “Fuck the Seahawks.”
* * *
After they’d cleaned up their plates and cups and utensils, Russell and Kurt flipped a coin to determine who would end up with dishwashing duty. The logic went that Kurt deserved it for his “monthly cycles” comment, but Russell also deserved it for cursing the Pacific Northwest’s only NFL team, even if they were based in Washington rather than Oregon.
Kurt won the honor and complained all the way to the sink.
Then Roland made good on his vow to stumble out back and pass out, while Bailey decided that she needed to get out of the house. Maybe head to the auto body shop.
“Okay,” Jacob said. “Just be careful. You got your phone? Call us if anything happens.”
“The hell?” Bailey teased him. “You’re my younger brother. Besides, I’m the one with the superhuman powers and shit. But thanks. I’ll be in touch if anything gets weird.”
They hugged, then the girl hopped into her truck and drove off to see Gunney.
His shop lay up a hill near the edge of town, a little way off the main highway that went through the center of Greenhearth. It was now about five o’clock, meaning that the place was still open for business, although if things were slow, the employees might have gone home. Gunney was almost guaranteed to still be there, though.
As the girl pulled her black Tundra into the parking lot, she saw that a light was still on within the rightmost of the three bays, confirming her suspicions. She hopped out of the truck and strolled over.
The older man’s voice wafted from somewhere within. “Hi, Bailey. Good to see you again. It’d be nice to see you during business hours for once, but I know you got things going on.”
She frowned at that. Technically, she worked here. Until fairly recently, she’d been on the fuller side of part-time, picking up twenty-five to thirty hours a week. Ever since Roland had appeared in her life and all the other stuff had happened, she’d been more like a temp.
“Hi,” she replied. “Well, you know I’m willing to help outside of proper hours, at least.”
“That’s true.” He wandered out from behind the car sitting on the lift, a Camaro. “Come on in. Help yourself to one of the orange sodas in the office fridge. You weren’t gone long enough for the fuckers to switch from glass to plastic bottles, so don’t worry about that.”
She smiled and heeded his suggestion. Oddly, she didn’t drink orange soda (in glass bottles) anywhere else, but the shop wouldn’t be the same without it.
Having drunk half the bottle, she ambled back into the work area. “Okay,” she began, “what we up to tonight?”
The Camaro was a ’72 and pretty much beat to hell. Bailey felt her mouth drooping along with her spirits at the sight of such a beautiful classic car in ravaged condition. It was mostly a dull burgundy color, with white stripes up the front. She’d have chosen a different hue, but it was still a nice model. The front quarter panels were wrecked from what looked like a combination of collision damage on top of years of rust, and the grill was warped and partially broken.
If the old thing was going to have a second chance at life, it was in pretty much the best possible place.
Gunney wiped his big, callused hands on a dirty rag. “I bought it from the wrecker’s,” he stated. “Business is a tad slow these last couple days, so I’m working on this one for the hell of it. One day, it might be another gem in my collection, almost on par with the Trans Am.”
He smiled, staring lovingly at the vehicle. Knowing him, he was probably looking forward to all the labor that would go into rescuing it.
“Nice,” said Bailey. “I’ll help. But to be honest, I kinda wanted advice. Things ain’t getting any easier with F…with Marcus. I know training isn’t supposed to be easy, but it’s been weird, not just difficult.”
Gunney threw her a brief glance. Then he removed his battered old baseball cap to let his scalp breathe, and his shaggy hair spilled across his face.
“You’re alive, aren’t you? That right there means you must be doing something right. You can talk about it, but before you do, one piece of advice I’ll give is that tinkering with a car might be the best thing you could do right now. Takes your mind off things.”
She smiled, and they set to work replacing the panels.
Getting them off didn’t take long, and the mechanic had spares ready to go. As they affixed them, Bailey summarized what had happened, leaving out the juiciest and most implausible details. She didn’t mention Baldur. Gunney had seen a lot of things in his time and could be open-minded, but even he might have trouble with the notion of a Norse god showing up.
She did, however, make it clear that the training on top of all the pack drama was on the verge of overwhelming her.
The older man listened. He mostly kept his eyes on the car and didn’t say much, but they’d known each other long enough that it wasn’t necessary for him to keep reminding her of his attention.
“I see,” he comm
ented when she’d reached the end of her spiel. He’d begun sanding the paint off the vehicle by hand. “Here, help me with this.”
He passed her a sander and they passed the simple tools over the vehicle, scraping away the old paint. Using repetitive motions was mildly tiring but soothing as well.
“So,” she asked, “is this some kind of wax-on, wax-off thing? Sorry, lame joke.”
Gunney chuckled. “Not what I had in mind, but close enough. This damn paint does need to come off, that’s for sure. And getting it off is a simpler matter than the rest of the crap you just told me about.”
“No shit,” she muttered, conscious of her gloomy tone of voice.
The conversation drifted to mundane things—local gossip, TV shows, and the ever-popular weather, which had been relatively nice lately by PNW standards.
“See,” the mechanic went on, “there’s always something going on, and it does sound like you’re going through a rough spot. You’ve dealt with everything so far, though. You always do. This too will pass. Just take it one step at a time and let yourself get absorbed and in the, uh, zone or flow state or whatever those motivational types are talking about these days, and it’ll happen. Before you know it, you’ll be on the upside of half the bullshit, and the other half won’t seem so bad.”
In fact, they were almost done with the first stage of the paint removal. Time had flown.
“See?” he pointed out. He squinted at the vehicle. “Not a deep sand, but it’s a damn good start. We made progress, and the rest will sort itself out.”
They whiled away the evening, touching up the Camaro and talking about random stuff. They’d done that for years, long before any witches had shown up, and long before Bailey had even the slightest thought of becoming a were-shaman.
A bit before nine o’clock, they realized they were both famished. Bailey’d had dinner a few hours ago but was hungry again, and Gunney hadn’t eaten since lunch.
