Advanced Mythology (37 page)

* * *

“Hey, guys,” Jason Allen said. The agency president had been summoned hastily from his corner office to the front desk. He shook hands with Bill Mann, Jennifer Schick, and Theo Lehmann. “Nice to see you. We, er, weren’t expecting you. Were we?” He glanced at Dorothy, who was regarding the Gadfly team with a perplexed smile. Behind the corporate officers were a couple of young men in khakis pushing a stack of plain brown cartons on two-wheeled carts that they wouldn’t let anyone else handle.

“Nope,” Mann said, smiling. “We’re not scheduled to be here for another three weeks, but we just had to come by because we wanted to celebrate. We just received the order for the one-millionth Origami unit!” He held up bottles of champagne in both hands.

“Whee!” Dorothy cried. “That’s fantastic, folks. Congratulations!”

“That is awesome,” Doug Constance said, shaking their hands. “Come down to the conference room. We’ll crack those bottles open there. Hey, Keith, run out and get us some munchies to go with the champagne, will you?”

“You bet,” Keith said. “Fruit, cheese and crackers?”

“That’s my boy.”

Mann stopped him before he could run to the elevator.

“Don’t go yet.” He addressed the agency staff. “Jason, Doug, Peggy, you’re all part of our success. We wanted to show our appreciation with a little gift for everyone on the team. Guys?”

Grinning, the Gadflies pried open the big cartons, and began to hand around gift-wrapped boxes.

Keith thought he recognized the size and shape as one was handed to him.

“This isn’t…?” he said, unable to believe his eyes. “I mean, it’s not really…?”

“Yes, it is,” Mann said, pleased with the dumbfounded expressions of the agency personnel’s faces as they tore off the paper to reveal the very box they had helped to design less than a year before. “We want each of you to have an Origami on us. You’ve done us proud, folks, and we want to say thank you.”

“This is one generous thank you,” Doug Constance said, turning the box over and over. “Say, I’d forgotten how good looking this package is. We did do a hell of a good job on it!”

“Thank you all so much,” Dorothy said, touched, folding the package against her chest. “I am really going to enjoy this.”

“My wife bought me one for Christmas,” Jason Allen said with a boyish grin. “Ever since she saw Keith’s last ad she’s been agitating for me to return the favor. Thanks, Bill.”

“Look at Keith,” Rollin said, holding his gift in both hands. “He’s wanted that thing since you first handed him one. He’s finally speechless!” Janine laughed. Keith shook his head.

“I can’t believe it. Thanks a million. A trillion!”

“Our pleasure,” Mann said. “Now, come on! Let’s download some of this champagne!”

“Yay!” Jen Schick cried, holding a bottle on high.

Keith unwrapped his box and took the unit out of the protective polystyrene cradle. Even without batteries, even before it was programmed with his access numbers and MP3 files, it was already his Doris. He couldn’t wait to get her on line, to start doing all the things that he’d been writing ads about for months now. They were going to take some beautiful notes together. He couldn’t believe he had an Origami at last. Now he didn’t have to wait to buy one. A thought suddenly struck him—a happy thought.

“Dorothy?” he asked. “Can I run out for a minute?”

She looked at him strangely. “What about the champagne?”

“I’ll be back in no time,” Keith promised. “Can I?”

“Okay. Don’t forget about munchies.”

“Sure thing!” Tucking Doris away in his pocket, he ducked into their office just long enough to grab his coat. Not bothering to wait for the elevator, he plunged down the fire-escape stairs to the ground level.

* * *

He all but flew into the local gourmet shop to leave the order. “And next time I can fax it to you on my way out of the office!” he told Sam the owner, a mustachioed man in his fifties who knew all about the Origami and was delighted with Keith’s good fortune.

“I can have this for you in fifteen minutes,” Sam said, grinning at him. “Congrats, Keith.”

“Congratulate me on my engagement,” Keith shouted, swinging out of the door.

The elegant young woman in the jewelry shop looked more alarmed to have a grinning maniac come hurrying into the shop. He rushed to the case containing the engagement rings. He scanned the case, looking for the ring Diane had sighed over but that they didn’t think they could afford: The big, round brilliant flanked by two little trapezoidal diamonds. Now that he had a surplus of a thousand-and-some dollars, he wanted to spend it all on Diane. The ring had looked so beautiful on her hand. He had to have it. If that didn’t say undying love, then nothing would. The fact that she wasn’t talking to him at the moment was merely a detail.

“Can I help you?” the young woman asked at last.

Keith straightened up, stuffing Doris into his back pocket. “Yes, you can,” he said, pointing down through the glass, past the nose and fingerprints he had just left on its surface. “I want that ring.”

***

Chapter 35

“Now, everybody knows what to do, right?” Keith asked the Folk gathered in the farmhouse kitchen, while shrugging into a voluminous robe that Pat had brought from the wardrobe department at the Candlelight Theater. The costume was heavy purple velvet, painted with silver and gold astronomical symbols. Hokey, but you had to give the people what they wanted, as Pat explained. Marcy and Candlepat knelt at his feet, tacking up the hem with safety pins. “Where’s Snake Boy?”

Holl gestured toward the cellar steps. “Asleep in an empty barrel. It wasn’t happy when we shut off the exits through the cellar, but we left an image of you, and it quieted down. I believe it will always respond better to you than to us.”

“He just has to get to know you,” Keith said.

“You are enjoying this way too much,” Pat said, tilting Keith’s head up with one hand while he drew carmine liner on his lower lids and emphasis lines in the creases at the corners of his mouth. “There. You look sinister. The rest of it’s all mental. Are you ready?”

“Yep. I just need to sing and dance, and let my fire-buddy do the rest.”

Borget came hurtling into the room. He skidded to a halt on the polished boards of the floor as all the adults looked at him. “They’re here,” he panted. “Two cars full of Big Folk!”

Keith looked around at the roomful of anxious faces. “Everybody stay out of sight. If this goes wrong, I don’t want anyone in the line of fire. He knows enough about magic to be packing cold iron. Maybe you should all take shelter in the cellar.”

“No way,” Pat said. “I’m not buddying up with that cross between a rattlesnake and a blast furnace.”

Keith grinned. “He’s really nice once you get to know him.”

“Yeah, that’s what I once thought about you.”

“It’s showtime,” Dunn said. “Good …”

“Never say that,” Pat interrupted, putting his hand over his roommate’s mouth. “Break a leg.”

Keith hoisted the long skirts of his robe with both hands. “I just might in this thing. Here goes nothing. You guys stay low.”

“No problemo,” Dunn said. “Good … I mean, break a leg,” he finished, with a glance at Pat.

Keith stumped up stairs, trying to remember the speech he had written. His mind was blank. He only hoped his mouth would remember in time.

Holl accompanied him to the door. “You’re bearing the burdens for my folk again, Keith Doyle,” he said. “It should be one of us confronting this menace, not you.”

“How?” Keith asked. The blunt question betrayed more of his raw-rubbed nerves than his cheerful expression. “One good look at you, and Beach has just what he wants, for real. Let him have a genuine ersatz wizard to pick on. This’ll be fun. Really.”

“No one whistles in the dark like you,” Holl said sincerely. “We owe you more than I can tell you.”

Keith was touched. “You’ve given me plenty, and I’m not talking about lanterns or magic lessons. You know that. Besides, this is at least half my fault. Let me fix it. If he mops up the floor with me you can jump in.”

“I sincerely hope it won’t come to that,” Holl said.

“You and me both.” Keith hitched up the front of his oversized costume, and opened the door.

* * *

“Come out!” Beach shouted at the white farmhouse. Since the last time they’d been there, whatever had held them back from walking onto the property had gone away. The seven of them still could not approach the house. The invisible barrier had retracted inward until it surrounded the cluster of buildings. Maria was mewing to herself like a frantic kitten, running up and back with her pendulum. She was muttering something about the spirits being here, the spirits touching them all, the power everywhere. He knew that, curse it, or he wouldn’t have been standing here in the first place! “Come on, Doyle! We’ve got an appointment! You called me! It’s high noon! Come out!”

There was a creak of tortured hinges as the front door of the house swung open. A dark figure crested with flame shoved open the screen door and emerged, pausing with dramatic effect on the porch. Beach stared at the boy in astonishment. Doyle was clad in a ground-sweeping purple velvet cassock studded with enough rhinestone constellations to make Elvis Presley proud. He almost laughed, but something in the youngster’s expression made the sound die in his throat.

“You are prompt,” Keith said with grand hauteur, walking down the steps with the correct outward kick to get the fabric out of his way.

Beach had to back up hastily as Doyle strode directly through the wall he’d unable to penetrate, and stood almost nose to nose with him. It took him a moment to regain his composure.

“What is with the costume?” Beach asked.

Doyle lifted a golden-red eyebrow. He held up his arms so the huge sleeves fell back, revealing his bare wrists. “This old thing? You and the rest of civilization only see me in my mundane appearance most of the time. Here, I can throw off the trappings of the modern world and just be myself. Do you like it? I only wear it around the house.”

“It looks like you’ve been robbing Dame Edna Everage’s closet,” Beach said, his voice expressionless. The boy looked disappointed. “But I’m not here to chit-chat. Let’s do business. I have certain advantages; so do you. You have certain things you don’t want revealed to the world at large. I believe that gives me the right to make the first demand.”

“If you say so. Make it,” Keith said, folding his arms. The five big men behind Beach spread out, prepared to close the distance and jump him, but a quelling glance from him made each of them back up a pace. That proved he had nothing to fear from them.

Beach beckoned to the scary lady. She approached, her black eyes huge, almost glowing. At her employer’s nod she raised her pendulum and let it describe an arc over her other palm. Beach eyed Keith speculatively.

“First some questions. Maria will tell me if you speak the truth. Where do you get your power?”

The boy paused, looking him up and down, as if assessing whether or not he could understand the answer. “From a … distant relative.”

Maria exclaimed to herself. “He speaks truth.”

Beach almost crowed for joy. “I thought it was something that had to be passed down through the generations. Hereditary, then?”

“Yes. And no,” Keith said. “In my case I had the talent, but I had help, er, learning what to do with it. Freezing people in place, and so on.”

“Ri-iight,” Beach said, breathing out slowly. “So it
can
be taught.”

“Absolutely. And it can be augmented, almost to infinity!” Keith let his voice ring through the hollow. It impressed Beach’s men, but not Beach himself.

“If you’re capable of wielding infinite power, then why in heaven’s name do you make nasty little toys and housewares?”

Keith imagined he could hear the elves sputtering in indignation as their work was impugned. Carefully, he kept his own ire capped.

“Tradition,” he shrugged. “They’ve always been made. They’re useful. I’m benevolent. Why shouldn’t the rest of the world have the benefit of my … talent? For a price, that is. You notice my goods are for sale.”

“You’re out of your mind, do you know that?”

“I prefer to think of myself as pleasantly eccentric.”

Beach regarded him with narrowed eyes. “I’ve discovered more of your secrets. You’re not in this alone, are you? You’ve got a workforce making your little toys for you. Perhaps—
elves
?”

Keith’s eyebrows shot up.

“Elves? Are
you
nuts?” he asked. “Where am I going to find elves?”

“I saw them,” Beach said. “I saw them with my own eyes through that very window, and scurrying around the property. Are you going to deny you have a whole building full of little people carving wood for you?”

“You want to meet my workforce?” Keith asked, with bored insouciance. “Fine. Nothing up my sleeves!” He whipped out the Origami from a pocket hidden among the robe’s folds. Beach looked skeptical at the high tech device in his hands. “We’re very high tech nowadays, you know.”

“
Om whaddayacallem particularum om!
” he shouted, while tapping in, “Holl, now!” on the tiny screen’s virtual keyboard. He hit SEND. The electrical fence spell lowered slowly and majestically. None of the other Big Folk was directly aware of its passage except the scary lady, who got very excited. Her eyes tracked its descent to the ground. Keith was impressed. She had a remarkable natural talent. Too bad she was working for these losers.

“It goes!” Maria cried. “The spirits are here!”

“Come forth!” Keith cried out in a terrible voice, as Pat had coached him.

He stood facing Beach with his arms folded. He didn’t look behind. He knew that from the house a stream of elves, only the ones without beards or gray hair, was approaching, solemn and silent. It was more fun seeing the reaction of the intruders. They were gawking, mouths open.

“What are they?” Beach asked avidly. “Elves, brownies, baby Vulcans,
what
?”

“Yeah, right,” Keith said, grabbing Holl, who came up only a few feet away. He swept off Holl’s favorite red baseball cap. “I told you not to wear that.”

“Sorry, sir,” Holl said in a properly chastened voice. Underneath the cap his ears were rounded and small.

“They are … children,” Maria said in disbelief.

Beach shook himself almost visibly, as he broke out of the haze of expectation into the reality before him. “
Children
?”

“Duh,” Keith said scornfully, as if this should have been obvious to them. “Who did you think? They’ve been working for me for ages. They’re terrific on details. They work for very little. I’ve never had to give them a dime.” All of this was exactly true, and calculated to inflame Beach to the very end of his patience.

“Child labor? You filthy bastard! You … you
capitalist
!”

Keith was stung by the insult, but remembered it was only make believe. He sneered at Beach.

“Yeah, I’m a capitalist and I’m proud of it. You’ve got to do anything necessary to make big money. You’re right, I don’t want the government to know about it—just as you don’t want anyone to know what you’re really doing in this country.” Keith continued winging it, trying to remember anything he could from the threat sequences in old Mission: Impossible episodes. “There are plenty of sweatshops in this country. Mine’s just a little nicer than most. I can do whatever I wish. No one can stop me.”

“
Why
?
Why do it when you have the power yourself?”

“You know power corrupts,” Keith said. “And absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He opened the circle of his hand and made fire spring up right in front of Enoch, who jumped backward five feet with a look on his face that boded no good for Keith later on.

“You disgust me,” Beach spat. “It’ll be a pleasure to rob you of your advantage.”

“You think you can?” Keith asked, flicking another flame into existence in the palm of his hand. Beach clapped his own hand over it, extinguishing it. He shook a forefinger under Keith’s nose.

“You’d better bet I do, sonny. We have a deal. If you don’t turn over your power to me, right now, then I’ll report what I know to the authorities. My men all have cell phones. You can’t knock off all of us at once.”

“I have no choice,” Keith said heavily. “I want to keep my secret. And my wealth.”

“You can have them as long as I get the power,” Beach said, mentally rubbing his hands together.

“Swear it!” Keith demanded. “When you leave here, it’s the last we will ever see of each other, forever.”

“Done,” Beach said. Keith put out a hand. Beach looked reluctant to touch him, now aware that he was a corrupt child-exploiter, but he clasped the offered hand. Keith made a huge spark fly between their fingers. He could hear a few of the Folk behind him murmuring their approval.

“Very well, then! I command the genius of my power to appear before me in the shape of my familiar!”

A collective gasp rose from Beach and his minions as Snake Boy slithered out of the ground and lay coiled at Keith’s feet, glowing like a blast furnace. It flicked its tongue at Beach, and shook the rattles on its tail. Beach’s men seemed frozen in place by its beady black eyes.

Beach swallowed hard, determined not to seem cowed. “Well, give it to me,” he demanded.

“Are you truly ready?” Keith asked.

“Yes, yes! Get on with it!”

“You’d better
be
ready,” Keith warned him. “Taking power is simple. Holding onto it isn’t so easy.” He addressed the heavens, raising his Origami on high, and pointed at Beach. “I release my power, and hand it over to that man over there. Ready? Catch it! Hurry! The one who takes hold of it will control the magic!”

The glowing snake shot forward along the ground. Beach made a grab for it. He yelped as its burning sides scorched his finger. It twisted away from him. He dashed after it.

Keith’s last statement had not been lost on Beach’s employees. Power would belong to the one who could take it. Stefan, suddenly seeing an opportunity to become supreme boss for himself, made a dive for it. So did the rest of the henchmen. Snake Boy eluded them all and dove into the earth just as they converged on it.

“Where did it go?” Beach shouted, looking all around him.

“It is there!” Maria cried, pointing. A few feet away, Snake Boy surfaced for a moment, as though to say “nyah nyah nyah NYAH nyah!” and dove again out of sight.

“Is the magic gone from
here?
”
Beach demanded. He pointed at Keith. “Is he stripped of power?”

“It is gone,” Maria exclaimed. “All is open and ordinary. The fire that was here went that way!” She pointed to the northwest.

“Good.” He strode up to Keith and socked him in the jaw. Taken by surprise, the young man tottered backward. His knees folded up and he hit the ground. Beach stood over him, glaring. “That’s for leading me on a merry chase all these months.” He gave him a kick in the side. “And that’s for the kiddies. I hope the authorities lock you up for a century, you exploitative monster. It won’t be me, I gave my word, but you’re going to get yours in the end.”

Beach hauled the protesting psychic to his car and shoved her in. Stefan ran after him, clambered into the rear seat. The car roared down the drive and up onto the road, rooster-tailing to the left. The second car zoomed away behind it.