CHAPTER FIVE

HOME AND HEARTH

SCOUT DID HIS usual riotous welcome home dance when I unlocked the door and entered, his youngish body with gangly long legs in jeopardy of tripping both of us up before I convinced him to go out the back door and run around the yard. I watched him, a little in disbelief so much time had passed, but it had. My hands itched to pull the journal out, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to read it easily in the dusk. Outside, as night fell, smudging the corners of our yard in shadows, my pup ran about in big loops, with an occasional return to nudge my hand with his cold nose and then to race off again. If we were being watched, he gave no sign of it, and despite his half-grown puppyhood status, Scout was a great watchdog. So whatever it was escaped his senses. What could a dog not smell or hear?

I fed him his dinner kibble and went upstairs as he ate noisily, the hard chunks rattling around in his stainless-steel bowl with great commotion. Upstairs, in their vase standing in a hallway niche, the tell-tales brightened at seeing me, little magical rose faces turning up to me without alarm as well. I shook a finger at them. “I hear someone’s been watching the house. How could you not tell me?” I’d only been alerted that one, awful time.

The roses reacted very little. If there was a danger, the tell-tales seemed unaware as well, which made me wonder how they had reacted so strongly that once.

I knew the professor and Carter both had wards on the house. I didn’t know if they faded with time or distance (no one knew where the professor could possibly be, not even Simon whose demon tail had an intimate binding with the wizard after having been used as a relic in a bonding ritual). I decided to ask many questions of several people because Goldie’s warning had seemed solemn and important.

I checked my phone to see when Mom would be home. Not long from now . . . her office work and staff meetings finished, she had only her dissertation group to get through and she’d be home. Dinner was on me tonight, then, and I headed down to the kitchen to rummage through the fridge to see what I could fix without too much trouble that would please both of us. I wrinkled my nose as I came across a container half-filled with blueberries that needed to go out in the trash, their little round buttons dotted with white. I shoved them over on the counter and found the fixings for chili, a mix we didn’t often eat, and which would be welcome to stave off the winter chill. Also, about as easy to make as I could hope. Mind occupied by worries, I chopped onions and a not too hot pepper, and mixed them into browned hamburger along with chili pepper. Then I threw everything together in a deep pot with a can of diced tomatoes and set it on a back burner to simmer for an hour or so as rich smells filled the kitchen. Scout occupied a corner, his belly to the floor and his front paws crossed in sincere yellow Lab interest in our dinner as well. I paced around him.

“What could possibly have been out there that slipped past you?”

Scout’s ears went back as though I’d insulted him. I stared at him. “Don’t give me that look. Goldie informed me. What we need to do now is find out who or what and run it off.”

He shook his head energetically, ears flapping.

“No?”

I raised my palm at him, and he snuffled in response. “Point that somewhere else?” I considered Scout’s silent advice. “I suppose I could sit in the window all evening with my hand hanging out and see what the stone sees. That doesn’t sound the least bit practical.” I dropped my arm. “Maybe the Society will have an idea if I can figure out an oblique way to ask them without revealing much on my side. This being a sorceress has got to have some advantages, right?”

Scout sneezed. It meant nothing particular to me except that perhaps the aroma of freshly chopped onions on the air got to his sinuses. I laughed at him and set to making corn bread to accompany the chili.

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•   •   •

I was deep into my laptop, going over the course catalog—not for this upcoming semester but for summer and fall—when my mother straggled in, her hair wind-tangled and her briefcase bag hanging precariously off one arm and carrying her laptop case in the other. I jumped up to rescue the bag before it spilled her paperwork all over.

“Thanks, hon,” she got out as I followed her to her downstairs office.

“Tough day?”

“Not really, but they want me to teach one class this semester.”

“I thought your sabbatical was approved?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “The committee giveth and the committee taketh away.”

“How did the read-through go?”

She dumped her laptop on her desk and reached for the bag I held. “It didn’t.”

“You didn’t get to present what you have so far?”

My mom took a moment both to collect herself and finger-comb her blonde hair away from her face. “I did present . . . the first chapter. But we only had half the review group show, and they stopped me. Tessa, their faces were like stone. I have no idea if they liked or even understood what I’d written. I let them know I’d finished all four chapters and wanted to make whatever changes they deemed necessary, rewrite, and publish in the next three months. Four chapters don’t sound like much, but I’m talking 130 pages of work and citations. Not to mention that I suspect each of them has an agenda and wants to see me express it.”

“No reaction to that, either?”

“None. I’d have gotten more reaction out of a statue.”

“Then that’s their problem.”

She leaned on the desk and looked across at me. “Do you think it’s the magic?”

I paused to consider that thoroughly. Having read her paper at least once, I knew that she didn’t draw heavily on magic’s actuality, at least not in the first three parts of her examination and argument. Instead, she traced the history of magic realism in storytelling, oral and written, through the past to the present. Rather like saying: If there’s smoke, will there be fire? I finally answered, “I don’t know. It could be, but shouldn’t be. Are you facing a stubbornly conservative review group?”

“All academia tends to be conservative, even if they’re liberals. They have the school’s reputation to consider, as well as their own, when it comes to degrees and publication.” My mother sat down heavily with a sigh. Her eyebrow, however, ticked up. “What did you cook that smells so good?”

“Chili. With cornbread.”

“Oh, I’m in! Start some tea for me, too, please. I’ll be in soon as I put my laptop in to charge.”

“Tea’s already made, but I’ll get it piping hot.”

“Thank goodness.”

I left to the sounds of her fiddling with her computer.

Because she worried, I did. After semesters of nagging for her to finish her dissertation, now they (or someone) balked at giving her the time to do so and had gone back on the sabbatical agreement. That sounded political to me, and although my mother kept her job worries fairly quiet, I still had a good idea of some of the situations. If the professor were here, I’d rope him in to actively help her, for he’d retired from the university in extremely good standing and influence. I’d have to find him first to manage that, though.

I set the kettle back onto high after fishing out the tea leaf infuser. The chili went back on simmer and the corn bread had kept nice and warm in the quilted basket for baked goods, so all I had to do was set her place at the kitchen table. I thought about it for half a minute and set a third place, just in case.

When she joined me, I’d already scooped out a second bowl and wedge for myself and she’d scrubbed her face clean of makeup for the day and put on a moisturizer that gave her a glow despite the fatigue in her eyes. She’d barely begun to eat when a knock came at the kitchen back door, and our visitor didn’t wait for us to let him in.

Simon approached the table, tugging on his suit coat to make himself absolutely presentable. He looked like a chimney sweep, regardless, dark old-fashioned clothing and often a bowler hat. “That smells fabulous, ducks. Which one made it?” His tail twitched from side to side, rather like a cat approving of the sensory information about him.

“I did. Place all ready for you.”

He helped himself and when he sat, he took a deep draught of the tea before anything else and leaned back in his chair. “Ah, that’s a good one for a cold night. Might add a bit of brandy to it . . .”

“No brandy.” My mother gave the dapper lesser demon in his suit, tail and all, a look that stopped any protests. “If it’s too cold out there in the garage, Simon, you might want to consider sleeping in here. Or perhaps in the basement.”

“Basement? No.” He shuddered. “Too warded for the likes of me. Although I might consider bunking around here somewhere—” He looked about. “Might be some room in the mudroom?”

“But that’s where the dog crate is . . .” And we all turned at once to look at Scout who perked one ear up innocently.

“Aye, but that begs the question, doesn’t it? Does the pup ever sleep in it?” And Steptoe twisted about and stared at me as if he knew perfectly well the answer to that question. He probably did because the tell-tales undoubtedly told him all that happened that they could sense in the upper hallway, including visitors in and out of my bedroom. That would be me and my dog and occasionally my mother.

“You know he doesn’t,” Mom said patiently. “Why don’t we store that in the garage and . . . well, what would make you happy?”

“A little cot of my own. I’ve got a nice down comforter, I have, to put on it.”

“No pillow?”

He winked at me. “Wouldn’t mind a little pillow. Nothing fancy.”

“I’m sure I have extras in the upstairs closet. Move yourself in soon as you’re finished with supper.” Mother picked up her spoon again. “Now eat before it goes cold.”

So he did. Where his tail went, I never quite saw. Unlike a cat, he didn’t sit with it curled about him. I had the feeling it came and went as it pleased. He hadn’t had it for centuries, and now that he’d recovered it, it seemed to have gained a certain independence from its owner. We ate until the chili pot was scraped clean, much to Scout’s disappointment, and all but the last half of cornbread wedges which Steptoe crumbled into his bowl, on top of the last spoonful of chili. Then he put it down on the floor for Scout.

“What?” he said defensively as Mother frowned. “I’m dispossessing him of his crate and mudroom. I think he deserves a sop for that, doesn’t he?”

“No more than that. I don’t want to deal with a dog and chili gas all night.”

Steptoe roared a laugh at that and cleared the table for us, rolling up his suit coat sleeves so he could wash the pot.

“Who would think a demon would have such good manners?”

He tossed us a look over his elbow. “Maybe it’s because I grew up in Britain where they are generally a polite group, except for that lot in Parliament. Come t’ think of it, Canadians are polite, too.”

He got a smile from my mother as she left the room, and I tossed a silent thank you at him for that. “No worries.”

“Sure you’ll be warm enough in the mudroom?”

“More than. Might even send a bit of heat throughout the entire house. That’s how I got ’ere, you know.”

“Oh?”

“Bit of a cold, cold winter even for Scotland that year.” He scratched his eyebrow, cockney accent fading a bit as he talked. “A handful of hedge witches got together and decided to conjure up a fire imp, to keep the home fires burning a bit easier. They managed to open a tiny hole—and who popped through but me. I’ll admit my mistress on the other side at the time gave me a boot in the arse to push me through, but they were taken aback and didn’t keep ahold of me like they intended. Thus I was free to work my mischief in the world. I wandered down to old London soon enough and, as the years went by, shipped to the new world. Eventually,” and he stopped to rub the side of his nose. “Eventually, Brandard and I ran afoul of each other and he bested me. Took my tail and bound me to this great city and that blessed church. Enough years of that and I decided, takin’ a look about me, that I needed to be changing sides. So I have, and ’ere I am.”

I blinked. Decades of history all swiped right, as it were, and my fingers itched a little. To have some idea of what he’d seen, what he might have meddled in, settled about me . . . but it was not something to be done now. When, and if, Steptoe wanted to talk, he would, and hopefully I would be able to listen. Yet he’d never given any sign at all that he knew anything about my father. Ran in different circles, I suppose. I wanted to get upstairs alone to look through Morty’s precious journal.

He dried the pot and set it in the cabinet under the stove top. “Your mom is a bit down in the mouth.”

“College politics.”

“Politics is everywhere. If Brandard were ’ere, would it help?”

“Might. He’s about somewhere.”

I hadn’t mentioned the professor, but Simon thought the same as I did, evidently. It would be nice to have the old guy as an ally.

Since our missing phoenix wizard had bound Simon to the earthly plane by taking his tail from him and performing some ritual or other, more or less nailing Simon in place, that observance from the lesser demon was about as reliable as we were going to get, unless the professor decided to phone home.

“You’re sure.”

“Positive. My bond would be gone if he were lost to th’ world.”

“But you can’t tell me where,” I sighed.

Simon shrugged a shoulder and rolled down his sleeves. “I try what I can, ducks.”

“I know.” I pushed away from the table, made a hand sign to Scout to head back outside, and as we went out the door, I found a lone figure sitting on the steps. My heart beat a little faster as I recognized his silhouette in the evening light.