CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHICKEN
CARTER CALLED BEFORE I left for the morning’s lab class. “How are you doing?”
“Fine. A little leg-weary.”
“Field runs as you expected, then?”
“Oh, yeah.” I shouldered my backpack. “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
“Hmmm . . . why?”
“Because the coach was chasing her.” I checked the time. “I’m just going out for class. Talk to you later?”
“I might be able to. A full moon is coming.”
That sounded as if he thought it significant. “Oh-kay.”
“A good time to breach a portal.” He had thought it important.
“If I can still move after practice today, I’ll consider that.”
“Good.”
The call disconnected, I rubbed Scout’s head good-bye and fingered his wounds lightly. They felt almost entirely healed although the hair in his ruff seemed a little coarser than the rest of his puppy coat. “Don’t beg for a second breakfast,” I told him. “You’re getting chubby.”
He made a disagreeing noise but wagged his tail as I went out the door.
I enjoyed lab, puttering around and taking notes for my partner as well as myself while she got to wear the ugly goggles and gloves and risk smoking the place up. Language lab is a horse of a different color but bound to be useful someday if I ever get to travel to a foreign country where it almost doesn’t matter what language I’ve learned as the hosts know five or six.
And then there was Evelyn, frantic as a chicken with a fox in the henhouse, because Hiram hadn’t called back. I invented a family business top secret diplomatic trip, with phone blackout, to cover for his disappearance. I don’t know if she believed me totally or not, but she stopped checking her messages every five seconds like she had a nervous tic.
Hockey practice, though, was brutal. We started with stretches and then moved into lines, sprinting back and forth and hoping I didn’t blow an ankle doing them while the coach yelled, “Faster!”
Then she held a sparring match and we did okay, Jheri her usual fantastic goalie self on my side, but the coach pulled me over just when I thought we were all done.
“I want to work on your striker technique.”
Since I had gotten into Sky Hawk CC on a partial athletic scholarship because of my abilities, that took me aback. She guided me downfield where hammering and sawing work by the construction class filled the air with raucous noise. Their new project seemed to be rebuilding the grandstand I’d collapsed.
“You’re good,” coach said, “but that number fourteen had you collared last week.”
“I didn’t know a colossus could move that fast.”
“Many can. So what you need to know is a little judo.”
Visions of my doing a Karate Kid on her and flattening her filled my head, immediately followed by lots of whistles from the referees. “Penalties?”
“Not if you handle yourself correctly. Look, she’s going to come straight at you if she can, giving you the perfect opportunity to use her weight and momentum against her. You have to step aside at the last minute, like a matador with a charging bull . . . but you need to put your hip out. You’re a tall, slim girl, but I know you have a butt. You do, don’t you?”
Unless I’d forgotten to slide it into my jeans with the rest of me this morning, you bet I had a butt. I gave the affirmative.
“You angle it this way and when you hit, which you will, let her run push you, and you will also push her thatta way. We don’t hit the way the guys do, their center of gravity is in their shoulders, ours is in the pelvis. I’m going to come at you, and you try it.”
There are few things I’d faced lately more frightening than the sight of my middle-aged coach running at me like a freight train. She intended to steamroll me. I stood my ground, wrapped in my gear and with my stick in hand, thoughts stampeding through my mind, and took a half second to wonder if I were dreaming. Then I could hear her breathing and the thud of her track shoes. Put my hip out, and prepared to pivot away.
A little rough. I staggered more than spun away smoothly, but it worked. She blew by, mostly, and I went off on a side angle, free of her path and on my own. It looked as though I could break relatively free but not being in an actual game, it seemed theoretical.
The coach came trotting back to me. “Not bad. Again.”
And before I could brace myself, she circled off and launched herself at me, twice as hard as before.
I decided she’d been possessed and swore I could see little red flames dancing in the pupils of her eyes as she came at me. Her jaw squared. Her shoulders looked twice as wide as her waist. The noise of her approach even drowned out the busy construction crew at the grandstand.
I had nowhere to hide.
“Run at me! You’re a striker!”
Orders I dared not refuse, I dropped into my familiar mode of intimidating the enemy and quite possibly threatening to bash their head in unless I got the ball and pass. My ears filled with the noise of our headlong rush. Then, before she could knock me aside, I put that hip out and rolled off her body, coming about at an angle she couldn’t possibly follow as she straggled to a halt, defeated.
“Excellent.” Coach grinned at me.
“Thanks.”
And she waved me off the field with everyone else, me trotting in after because not only had she taught me something a little new, but she gave me an idea.
At week’s end, we conspirators gathered to make plans on Friday after the away game—and eat pulled pork sandwiches laced with bourbon BBQ sauce and baked beans. I’d also made about a dozen or so deviled eggs which I put atop a little green salad plate for each of us. Sky Hawk had won again, which put us squarely at the top of our division, but only by half a game. Fourteen was right that we’d probably meet in the playoffs. Hunger banged at my ribs and I sat down eagerly to devour the last flavors of an Indian summer. Brian and Carter ate heartily, but I saw no sign of my mother. Unexpected office hours? That could, and did, happen from time to time, so I fell into supper with the rest of them, missing Hiram and Steptoe more than usual.
After dishes were cleared (bless paper plates), I said, “I think I can produce the book. Give me the silver globe, and I think I can cut the binding ties.”
“Not a good idea.”
“I can’t think of any reason Devian would agree to meet with us otherwise. Other than a feline tendency to toy with us.”
Brian tapped the back of my left wrist. “You’re too vulnerable with this.”
“I don’t think so. Because you two are making a fundamental mistake.”
Carter wiped a touch of bbq sauce away from the corner of his mouth. “What mistake?”
“That it’s just a stone.”
“We know it’s not just a stone, it’s an elemental of chaos, charged, and capable—very—of absorbing more.” He wadded up his napkin and dropped it.
“That’s not it.”
Brian made an impatient gesture. “What, then?”
“It thinks. It partners with me, it reacts, and it often works with me. Yet it’s a stone and an inanimate object when it’s not part of me.”
“When it wishes. I don’t buy that it’s sentient. It’s . . . instinctive.”
I shifted a bit uneasily. “That’s true. But it didn’t absorb the book, just a bolt from it, and it might be just as enticed by the possibility of more power as Devian is.”
“Tessa, you can’t play ‘button, button who’s got the button’ with both the elf and the maelstrom stone. You’re playing with fire.”
“I think if we retrieve that dimensional cage Brian and Steptoe made for the book, and I carry that, the stone will unleash it at my command.” More probably, I’d cut it loose, but they didn’t need to know that part of it. I added helpfully, “To get a better sense of it, if nothing else.”
“Good gods.” Brian sat back, looking as stunned as he possibly felt. “You’re talking about dangling a fish in front of a great white shark.”
“Not quite. The stone answers to me.”
“Until it’s taken or is ready to move on. What makes you think that Devian’s power alone isn’t enough to entice it to leave you and go to him? What if Devian offers more?”
“Because it thrives on chaos, and whose life has been more disrupted than mine? Every day I bounce off a new crisis. Losing my father, my chance at a good college, plunging into debt, trying to keep my head above water, falling into magic . . . the list goes on.”
Carter said quietly, “It’s not been all bad.”
“It’s been a roller coaster, and I love where I am now, but this stone craves possibilities, the more out of the norm, the better. As I see it, I offer an infinite number of them. A foot in two crazed worlds.”
“Let’s see what you’ve got, then.”
We adjourned to the backyard, for safety’s sake. I rubbed my bare hands together as the night’s edge toward winter fell around us. I set my feet and extended my palm, willing the stone to produce the frayed, leather volume of the old book. I could see it in my mind’s eye as well as if I held it and expected to see it materialize in my fingers. I could smell the musty scent of it, hear the slightly crisp pages crackle as I turned them, see faded ink that made deciphering its language even tougher.
Nothing.
I rubbed my stone lightly, feeling like a gambler at a craps table rubbing his dice. That made me grin a little. The casino had sunk deeper into my blood than I knew. I blew gently across the marble surface. “Come on. Work with me.”
I put my hand out again to summon up the book or at least a reasonable illusion of it, not caring if I had the real thing or a fake. I didn’t intend to let Devian get hold of it, let alone keep it. Perhaps the anarchic bent of the object would entertain the idea of faking Devian out. The stone grew heavy. I don’t remember its weight becoming terrible before, but now my entire arm and shoulder ached and trembled as I stretched out. My whole body quivered with the effort. Was it testing me? I squared myself off. “I have to be able to do it.”
Brian and Carter watched me like hawks on a field mouse in a cornfield. I could feel their intensity while, even in the cooling night, sweat dripped from my right temple and slipped down to my neck. Instead of my inner self seeing the book, I looked into a mass of dancing light and shining obsidian, folding in and out of itself over and over. Was that me? My confusion or knowledge? The thought made me sweat more, and the stone heavier, and the night oppressive. The stone hadn’t felt this way when I called on it at the casino. Was it being stubborn? Or did it now have a darker purpose? Or was I looking into my own soul, which, heaven knew, had its black corners?
That thought stung. I quickly pulled my hand back and tucked it into my waistband for a moment, till the muscle fatigue left. My observers said nothing although Brian searched for and found his pipe. Again, he didn’t light it but stuck it in the corner of his mouth and clamped down on it. I shook both arms out, trying to loosen the tightness I’d begun to feel.
Then I considered the maelstrom stone again. I had to get this done. It was the best, perhaps the only, bait we could offer Devian for another meet. He wouldn’t be too eager to let go of Hiram in his role of mineral prospector, but this book . . . he’d mentioned it himself. He’d been looking for it. He wanted it.
And I wanted to be able to dangle it in front of him. Only the guys wouldn’t let me attempt to free the real thing. Therefore, I had to create its essence out of nothing. No, not quite right. I knew the sight of it, the feel, the ominous mood that descended on me when I’d tried to read it, and the smell of old ink, old paper, and the brown wrapper that held it.
This time a slow cloud of steam, condensation against the evening as if I’d breathed it out, formed. And as it turned, it gained a rectangular form. I could hear the professor chomp on his pipe stem.
“She’s almost got it.”
“Not near good enough. It’s only fog.” Carter folded his arms across his chest. He didn’t look happy.
“She’ll get there.”
With my second hand, I traced the edges of the illusion, correcting the shape of it, and whispering to the stone that I wanted leather, aged brown leather. For a brief, fleeting moment, I had exactly what I needed floating above my hands.
Then, poof!—and it was gone.
“You did it.”
Sweat glued my hair to the back of my neck and threatened to make my eyesight blurry. Swiping my wrist over my face, I tried to clear my eyes. “Would it fool him?”
“If you can hold it for a good three or four minutes, I think so. That was closer to twenty seconds.”
“I’ll work on it.” I inhaled deeply. “What if I had the cage in my pocket?”
Carter and the professor said “No” in unison.
“But—”
“We can’t afford for it to be returned from its location, not until you yourself are stronger and trained. It wants you far more than you want it.”
Brian’s words sent a shiver down my back. “It’s hunting me.”
“If it is freed, it will be.”
Not a question from me, but a statement. “It’s that powerful.”
Brian and Carter traded a look before the professor told me, “Not nearly as powerful as the stone, but we can’t discount the effect it could have on you. It acted to enhance you, and now it needs to possess you. The stone, on the other hand, has always been a sort of partner, not a possessor.”
“Then I have to perfect the book and hope the elf thinks I’m giving it over. He’ll come to a meet for that.”
“If you’re right, and I don’t concede that you are, how would that stop Devian?”
“While he’s looking at me, you two have to hit him with everything you’ve got. I’m the decoy, you’re the attack.”
Brian twitched an eyebrow. “Not likely to kill him, but yes, we could very well knock him from one side of Faerie to another, with the power of an exploding portal behind us. Delay him for a few years on whatever he has planned. What about Hiram and the Eye of Nimora?”
“He’d have to produce them before I show the book. Once outside the arch, Hiram can take care of himself, right?”
“Likely.”
I watched him fidget slightly. Was Brian ready for an epic confrontation?
Carter shook his head. “I don’t like you being within reach of Devian. Or whatever doppelganger he might be using, or near an edged weapon with everbleed, or—” He halted abruptly.
“That’s where my coach comes in. I learned a little lesson earlier this week.” And I told them what else I had in mind. They were listening closely when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the phone number.
It was my mother. When I answered, she said tersely, “Put it on speaker.”
“Where are you?”
“Do as you’re told, Tessa.”
So I did.
My mother’s voice choked up, then Devian’s voice came over the line smoothly. “Good evening, all . . . I assume I’m speaking to your little cadre? If not, I trust you’ll relay all the pertinent information. It’s a new moon coming at week’s end, an auspicious omen for many projects, particularly new starts. I suggest we meet accordingly. I’ll text the location and timing. And precisely what it is I expect you to trade.”
I didn’t want to sound eager, so I answered, “What if I’m not ready?”
“Then get ready. I have both Mary and April Andrews with me, and—frankly—I don’t think they’re enjoying themselves.” The phone went silent.