CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHAT FOOLS THESE MORTALS BE
I FELT LIKE I’d met the devil himself at a crossroads and he’d offered me a bargain for my soul. I’d turned it down, hadn’t I? At least, that version of it. I didn’t hear any ominous banjo or fiddle music in my head strumming like a madman played, so I must have. Evelyn turned in her passenger seat, eyes on Goldie in the back, but said nothing. I reached over and patted Evie on the knee.
“I picked up a hitchhiker.”
“I can see that. What I don’t remember is when or where.”
“She helped me move the tree off the road. You were pretty fuzzy then. I think you might have hit the dashboard or maybe the window.”
Her slender hand rubbed the side of her head. “Okay.”
“Goldie, this is Evelyn Statler; Evie, meet our new friend, Germanigold Broadstone.”
“Pleased.” But Evelyn did not offer a handshake. She slumped back in the car’s seat, looking a bit dazed. “Someone tell me why she is wearing Wonder Woman’s Amazon armor.”
“Actually, she is wearing mine, but this is an outfit designed for a fencing and saber group I belong to. My motorcycle petered out and I was walking the road when Tessa spun into the tree. I was glad to help.”
Goldie settled back in her seat then, Steptoe’s jacket now right side out and folded neatly on the bench beside her, reminding me of Malender’s “boon.”
He’d said without strings. Really? I’d agreed to it gratis, right? I wasn’t sure I would take him up on it, after what I’d just witnessed, but could I leave Steptoe helpless? No. So, sometime tonight, after I dropped Evelyn off safely and did whatever I could for Goldie, I’d swing by the house and pick up Steptoe. If I could find him. If the ground hadn’t swallowed him into a sinkhole miles deep. If he wanted to come back.
My hands wrapped themselves about the steering wheel. Should I bring Brian along? Would he help or hinder, or would he simply start sorting through the ruins of his home one last time and let me do what I had to do? And when would I tell him what Malender suggested?
My brain felt too fried for decisions. I decided just driving would be complicated enough for the meanwhile, especially in the rain, until we reached our first destination.
Evelyn stumbled out of the car. Her home, a two-story, Montpelier colonial, rose out of the storm, lit from every corner like a rescue beacon. I got the feeling that her parents wanted to be certain their daughter couldn’t miss it. They could be insanely protective of their only child, which made me feel mildly ashamed for leading her astray now and then. I leaned out after her. “Tell ’em it was from hockey practice. You accidentally caught an elbow. Put ice on it!”
“I will. See you tomorrow.”
Walking like a drunken pirate, she made her way to her front door, fumbled at the doorknob, and eventually got inside. I shifted to ask Goldie to move up, but she was already climbing into place. I could feel her staring at my profile as I switched on the car heater.
“You seem to have a rapport with Malender.”
“You’d be right.”
“I should have come to your defense.”
“He just wanted a talk.” I spent a moment digging my gloves out of my still damp jeans and pulling them on. They’d stayed almost dry. I flexed my fingers and steered away from the curb.
“I should ask how you know of him and how he knows you.”
“He attacked us while we were on a search for some of Professor Brandard’s magical relics. I fended him off with salt. This seems to amuse him, and he shows up every once in a while to keep tabs on me. I don’t know why except that he wants to keep tabs on me. He’s even helped out now and then.”
“He might be building a debt in which you owe him.” She searched my face a moment before leaning back and shaking her head. “He doesn’t own you.”
“He’d better not!” I paused. “I haven’t made any bargains with him and don’t intend to. I don’t even know what he is.”
“He is the best and the worst of us.”
“Now that tells me a lot.”
Goldie scoffed mildly. “None of us know his secrets. None of us still alive, that is. If you wish to remain among the living, never turn your back on him and never seek to learn what he is about. We might wish that he’d never awoken this century. Last century was dire enough without his being in it.”
“That bad, huh?” I could believe it.
“Yes.”
“But you have heard of him.”
“A tale told to frighten the foolish.”
“What kind of tale?”
“One of violence and revenge, generally.” Goldie brushed her hair from her face.
“He unnerves you,” I guessed, but I didn’t know her well enough to know when she felt unsettled. She was a battle harpy, after all, and it should take a lot to make her feel off-balance, but it seemed Malender had.
“Your friend Evelyn.”
“Yes?”
“Does she often prophesy?”
I choked a bit. “Prophesy? Her? Now you’re just messing with me.”
“I’m most serious.”
But she wasn’t. Germanigold couldn’t be. I loved Evie in my own way, and there’s no doubt she had smarts, but a prophet? No. Flat-out impossible.
“A change of subject, then.” I glanced at her. She stared out the windshield as if searching for something she would never find and I wondered if she thought of Mortimer.
“If you must.”
“I must. Hiram has asked me to look for the Eye of Nimora, and it seems you were the last one in possession of it.”
She flinched as if I’d stuck a needle in her. “The Eye is missing?”
“Yes.”
“It can’t be. I had it hidden away, safe and secure. It’s vital to the clans.”
“Word is that it’s gone.”
“No.” She shook her head in finality. “I’ll take you to it.”
I looked at the dashboard clock. “I have something to do, but first I need to check in with my mother.”
“No phone?”
“I can use that, but I think she’d rather see me and inspect me head to toe and make sure I’m mostly in one piece, the way things have been going around here. And I’d like to change shoes. These are squishy.” I wiggled my toes and my sneakers made awful sounds. “And we have to make a stop on the way to wherever.”
“Another stop?”
“Steptoe needs a hand.”
“Oh. Is that why you have his coat?”
“Something like that.”
She folded her arms over her corset. “Maybe we could grab a hamburger and fries, too. I’m hungry.”
“Deal.” Who knew harpies ate fast food?
Someday if I ever get to be a mom, I hope I can do it as gracefully as my mom does. I let Germanigold know that my mother knew quite a bit more of magic than most people, although I didn’t share everything with her. We came in bearing gifts, fragrant bags of fresh fries and three char-broiled hamburgers, medium rare, with crisp lettuce and homegrown tomatoes crowning them, and we ate. She gave one or two curious looks at Goldie, settled when we told her who she was (and even gave Germanigold a sympathy hug for Mortimer’s passing) and shared our dinner.
Oh, she had questions. I could see them bouncing around inside her head, but she wouldn’t pester me with them now, not in front of guests. They could wait until later. She had this unwritten rule about hospitality that few people dared to break, and I didn’t intend to start.
Goldie did answer a few of those queries without being asked, out of obligation or explanation, I couldn’t tell. “Mortimer married out of the Iron Dwarf clan when he married me,” she told my mother, passing the information around even as she handed over the ketchup bottle.
“I gather that was unusual.”
“Very.”
“That must have been difficult for both of you.”
“It was, then. There are few of us in the unknown races, and mixing blood is frowned upon. We were narrow-minded then and not much different today. What we are accepts differences minutely, big changes even slower.” She wiped her fingers on a napkin. “I loved Morty. I’m fairly certain he loved me as well. Because our life spans are different than yours, there were years, even decades we spent apart, but we never lost touch and we never lost how we cared for each other. That might seem strange to you.”
My mom smiled a bit. “A little, but understandable, given the circumstances. And you had no family?”
“No, ours was a second marriage. Morty already had the children he wanted, and we couldn’t have any together. I had sister-eggs set aside for my future.” Goldie blushed slightly, a pretty rose hue to her fair skin. “My apologies, I might have said too much.”
Her expression flashed a bit of surprise before going back to neutral, and my mom leaned forward. “You’re among friends here.”
“Thank you, I’ve noticed that. We’re a different people, even from each other, and it can be difficult to understand one another.” Goldie reached out and covered my right hand with her left. “You have an outstanding daughter.”
I sat, still drying, my brunette hair recovering as it lay over my shoulders. “I look like I’ve been out standing in the weather.”
They both laughed. Goldie gathered herself. “We have another mission or two this evening. I can drive if you’re worried about Tessa.”
“I do, and that would be nice.” Mom looked at me. “How far are you going and how late will you be?”
I shrugged at Goldie. “How far?”
“Toward the coast. Maybe a three-hour roundtrip? Plus getting Steptoe on the way.”
Mom frowned as she checked her watch. “It would be eleven when you get back. Late, but if you stay off your phone,” and she looked down her nose at me as if she still had her reading glasses on, “you should still get to sleep about the same time.” She added, “And don’t you think you should take Brian?”
“No,” we said together.
“All right then. I’m not sure he’s in. He can be very quiet.”
He could, but he mostly wasn’t. When the professor was in charge, you could hear the bluster all the way to the rear fence. My mother looked down. “What about Scout?”
My pup looked up, hope glistening in his brown eyes. Goldie shook her head, very slightly.
“Nope, not this time. I need you to guard the basement,” I told Scout.
Goldie let her curiosity out when we’d finished, washed up, and said good-bye.
“What about the basement needs guarding?”
“Some of the professor’s goods.”
“His stuff survived the fire?”
It seems she was familiar with phoenix wizard rituals. “Not much, but a few odds and ends.” I felt a little uneasy telling her, so I skimped on the details. I could remember the conversation I’d accidentally eavesdropped on, and he hadn’t had much confidence in her then. He had his prejudices, though, and I gathered true love was one of them.
Goldie dropped the car keys in my hand. “Drive to Steptoe and I’ll take over from there.”
The house looked still and grim as we pulled up and parked. New bright yellow “Danger Do Not Cross” tape wrapped about the place, fluttering in the evening breeze. The clouds had thinned out while we ate, and the moon peeked from behind one, its glow getting stronger and stronger. If Brian wasn’t at our place, he could be here, doing last minute sifting through the wreckage. With my worry about how he felt about Goldie, I didn’t want to run into the wizard, but neither did I want Steptoe to stay captive if I could free him.
Carrying his jacket in hand, I took Goldie around through the side yard, after whispering to her that we needed not to attract attention from the neighbors. We stopped short when we reached our objective. The backyard looked as if it had been bombed. Not the professor’s little arbor area, but the grassy lawn leading off the sun porch, away from the house toward the deep rear footage, yawned with holes everywhere. Gophers would have been in awe.
I’d fled, but Steptoe must have put up more of a battle than I’d seen, surfacing and being pulled back down again and again with each crater. I gulped at the sight and held his coat to my chest. Had he even survived? Or had Malender had a bit of fun at my naiveté?
I whispered at Goldie’s shoulder. “Brandard might be in the house, but I don’t think we should disturb him.”
“I’ll keep watch. Tackle him if necessary.” She gave a half-grin as if she hoped it might be necessary.
I went to the center of the area and, down on one knee, stripped my glove off and put my hand stone downward onto the ground at a yawning edge of one of the bigger holes. Nothing happened for several long breaths except I could feel my pulse slow to a reasonable heartbeat. Rain had made the grass slippery and cool, and an odor rose from it that carried the familiar stink of the glop. I wondered if it roamed below and would reach up and grab me. A sudden fear of grasping tentacles ran through me. Dust-bunnies-under-the-bed nightmares had nothing on this beastie.
Just in case, I drew both legs up under me so I could dodge or dart if I had to, and the maelstrom heated a little. Goldie watched me briefly and then took her own alert stance, cued by mine.
The ruins creaked a little. I couldn’t see a light within, so I didn’t know if Brian moved through there or not. I watched it warily for a few moments and trained my sense of smell in case the glop stench got markedly stronger. It did not.
“Simon Steptoe,” I whispered lowly. Three times, right? I repeated it two more times. “You’re free. Come meet me.”
The stone in my palm does not loosen, ever, but it can pulse now and then. It’s not a pleasant feeling, but at least it reacts, and it did now. Like a heartbeat, pulsating and quickening, like a creature waking up.
“Come on,” I urged. “Wake up, my friend.”
The ground rippled under me, like a carpet being yanked up. I fought to keep on my feet, and Goldie merely jumped up and hung in the air for a moment as if her wings held her aloft. She didn’t manifest her feathers, but her body reacted as if she had. She lowered after a breath or two.
The dirt buckled under me. I jumped back with a muffled squeak, startled and expecting the glop. Instead, a very pale hand reached up.
I reached down and grabbed it, thinking that it had better be Steptoe. I said so. “Steptoe?”
Cold but alive, it yanked and pulled me down to the grassy blades, chin to the ground. I gritted my teeth and pulled back, rearing up, playing tug o’ war with whatever/whoever lay below. It gave, bit by bit, inch by inch, until I could see a man’s head and then his shoulders and shirtsleeves and arms, and he spit out a mouthful of roots and dirt, sputtering.
“Keep hold, luv!”
“I’m not letting go.”
Steptoe peered up at me, one eye closed by a terrible swelling, and muttered, “I might.”
“No, you’re not. Come on. I’ve got your coat and things to do tonight.”
Our voices: hushed and urgent. Our hands: tight and clinging. I dug in my heels and reeled him in as though he were a prize 175-pound catfish until he floundered to a stop in front of me, heaving and fighting for breath. I slapped him on the back once or twice until he rolled over, looking at the sky.
“Stars,” Steptoe observed. “Thank the heavens. That’s a bit of all right.” His accent thickened.
“Get up and thank everyone later.” I helped him up and dusted him down, mud and earthworms sloughing off him. “I should have brought towels. You’re a mess.”
Goldie fell in behind us as I marched him to the car.
“Give me my coat.” And he wrenched it from my hands with a little half-growl, a tiny red light in his black eyes, a reminder of his feral beginnings. I hoped I hadn’t saved the wrong being. He snapped his coat in the air. A long hair fell off it and I grabbed for it, shoving it into my pocket.
Steptoe took a deep breath, wiped the back of one hand across his mouth, smudging a bit of dirt at the corner, and hugged his clothing a second. The moment he shrugged the coat on, he stood clean and dapper looking and dry, if weary beyond words. Even his swollen eye looked nearly healed.
“Just pour me in and I’ll get a few winks.”
Goldie held the door for him, but I don’t think he even noticed her before stretching out, somewhat, on the compact back seat and falling asleep, his arms crossed over his chest to hold his suit jacket tight.