Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free (14 page)

And then there was Barry. He had only moved to town a couple months ago, shortly after my own return, but had quickly charmed his way into being Mister Popular. He had an accent that was hard to place but might be Peruvian, his tan face maintained
Miami Vice
stubble, and his sandy-colored hair always looked artfully messy. He gave off the vibe of an adorable puppy, the kind you'd find on the street and want to take home, and was constantly surrounded by a cloud of patchouli smell. Dawn certainly liked him.

I didn't trust him for a minute. He wasn't wearing an ID ring or a glamour I could detect, and he'd never attacked me or given me another excuse to violate his spiritual privacy, so if he was anything but an obnoxious mundy, I couldn't tell. But there was something about him that just instantly set my teeth on edge.

I did my best to make small talk with Georgie and Amber and Dawn's other friends as we all sat around the table waiting for her to perform. Thankfully, we didn't have long to wait, and once her music started I had the perfect excuse to focus only on her.

How to describe Dawn's music? It was like happy folk music written for a child, with lyrics that never failed to amaze me in the way they laid bare dreams, fears, anxieties, daily struggles, and nightly passions, punctuated with dirty jokes and biting observations as might be worded by an old drunken truck driver.

It was honest, raw, and yet always left you feeling happy somehow when it was done.

After the show, she came down off the stage, her smile radiant.

“You were awesome,” I said, and gave her a kiss.

“Thanks,” she said. “I totally messed up the bridge on ‘Slappy Dance,' though.”

I chuckled. “Nobody noticed, I'm sure.”

Her friends all gave her praise and congratulations, and ordered another round of beers. The next hour passed slowly as they drank and joked and talked about things of which I still had only a passing knowledge.

Sammy and Fatima came over and joined us for a bit, then said their farewells. I stood to give them hugs.

“I'll drop by tomorrow,” Sammy said as she gave me her patented pat-pat hug. “We're house-sitting for a friend in Poulsbo for a couple days, so I'll be around.”

She and Fatima left. I turned back around to find Barry with his hands on Dawn's ears, rubbing the sides of them gently.

“Right there, you feel that?” he said. “It's supposed to totally free up the creative energies.”

I knew every energy pathway in the body, and right then I knew Barry was channeling his bullshit energies.

“Actually, Barry,” I said sharply, feeling on solid ground for the first time all evening, “creative energy is focused in the throat.”

“May be,” Barry replied, still smiling at Dawn. “But let me ask you, brah, weren't you moved by Dawn's music?”

“Of course,” I said. “What does that—”

“So are your emotions, like, in your ears?”

“What? No. But—”

“So, just because creativity doesn't rest in the ears, that don't mean that massaging them can't bring out creative energy, brah. Just like Dawn's awesome voice massaging your ears brings out emotion, dig?”

“No offense, Barry, but that's the dumbest thing I've heard in a while.”

Dawn sighed, and placed her hands on Barry's wrists, stopping him from continuing. “Thanks, Barry. That felt nice, but the only thing it inspired in me was the desire for a real massage.”

“I feel you,” Barry said to her in a meaningful way, and glanced between me and Dawn, as if sharing some inside joke. Heat rose up from my chest as Barry leaned back in his chair and said, “Finn, brah, we're going over to Sarah's house for a little after-party, play some drunk
Rock Band
. You down?”

I managed not to roll my eyes. Barry loved
Rock Band
because he got to show off his drumming skills. Apparently, however, it was difficult for him to stay in a real band for long.

Dawn looked at me a second, then shook her head. “Actually, I think we're going to head home. We've both had a long day.”

“Ah, come on,” Barry said. “It won't be an after-party without you. And it's always groovier playing
Rock Band
with a real rock star.”

“Well, if you meet one then you should ask them,” Dawn said. “No, really, we both need to get to bed before the sun rises this time.”

“So be it,” Barry said. “Guess I'll see you tomorrow at the shelter.”

“Oh, right,” Dawn replied. “See you there.”

Barry and the others stood and left. Once they were gone, I asked, “Barry volunteers at the animal shelter now?”

“Yeah,” Dawn said, gathering up her things. “Started last week. The dogs love him, the cats not so much.”

“Smart cats,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. So, you guys sure seem to have a lot in common.”

Dawn arched an eyebrow at me. “You have no reason to be jealous of Barry.”

“Of course not.”

“You know I'd love for you to work at the shelter with me. I've asked you before.”

“I know. Okay. How about tomorrow?”

“Wow.” Dawn grinned. “If jealousy gets you this competitive, maybe I should have Barry take me on a weekend cruise, really up the stakes.”

“Hilarious. And I'm not jealous. I really do want to volunteer with you.”

“Uh huh.” We headed for the door. “Okay,” Dawn said. “But not tomorrow, they aren't interviewing until the day after. And if you flake out on me again—”

“I won't flake. I promise to go with you on Monday.”

“Come on, Romeo,” Dawn said, holding the door open for me. “Let's go home and you can rub my ears if you want. For starters.”

We left the Undertown and climbed the uphill slope of Washington Street, holding hands in silence. The storefronts fell behind us, replaced by houses and ivy-covered walls.

Dawn smiled. “Remember Mister Gibson?”

“Algebra teacher who completely abused his power in class?”

“That's the one.” She pointed at the small white church that sat on the bluff. “You don't remember, probably, but you and I, we crashed his wedding there, and hinted to the guests that we were his secret illegitimate children.”

I burst out laughing. “No! Really?”

“Yup. It was all your idea.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Oh, fine, maybe it was mine. But you were always willing to get into trouble with me.”

“Well, if you were anything then like you are now, I don't know if I had much choice. You're like a force of nature. Like, you know, a really beautiful hurricane. A tsexami?”

“Aw, you say the sweetest things.” Dawn grabbed my arm, bringing us both to a stop, and stepped in close. “I think even back then, I wanted to do this.”

She leaned in for a kiss.

I caught the flicker of movement from the corner of my eye.

I shoved Dawn back just as a charging black bear crashed into me, slamming me to the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of me, and concrete and gravel scraped painfully into my elbows and palms.

The bear pinned me to the sidewalk with its paws on my shoulders. It had a white V of fur on its chest, and eyes that looked too human.

“Good-bye, meddling magus,” it said with a roughened female voice. Her mouth gaped wide, and she leaned in for my neck with fangs that would give a vampire compensation issues.

 

9

Bad

I dug my hands into the waerbear's fur, and tried to focus my will enough to summon her spirit.

I was not going to be fast enough.

A rock the size of my fist hit the bear in the cheek, jerking her head to the side, but not knocking her off of me.

“Hey, Sexual Harassment Panda!” Dawn shouted. “Nobody eats him but me.”

The distraction, and the surge of fear for Dawn, gave me the time and push I needed. My will snapped into focus, I pulled from the locus of magical energy just below my chest, and summoned the bear's spirit.

Summoning the spirit of someone still alive would not actually rip out the person's “soul”—not unless the necromancer was insanely powerful, or used dark necromancy—but it hurt like hell for both the victim and the summoner. It's like placing your ear against the speaker at a Spinal Tap concert during the guitar feedback. Even knowing what was coming, I hadn't fully prepared myself. The explosion of sharp pain in my head, like I'd shotgunned a dozen milkshakes and then stabbed myself between the eyes with a screaming baby, caused the summoning to disintegrate. But it was enough. The bear roared in pain, and fell to the side.

The bear shimmered, and shifted into the form of a beautiful Japanese woman with eight spider legs growing out of her back.

A jorōgumo, a shapeshifting spider feyblood. Not good.

Creepy as hell, yes, but definitely not good.

“Run,” I shouted at Dawn as I struggled to my feet. “The post office.”

Dawn instead helped me to my feet, then we made a run for it together.

I glanced back. The jorōgumo still lay on her back, twitching. It would take longer for her to recover as the victim of the spirit yanking, but not long enough for us to reach any warded home in the neighborhood I knew of.

The post office loomed above the street like a four-story Romanesque castle made of carved sandstone bricks, complete with tower and arched windows. It hadn't changed much, on the outside at least, since it had been built as a U.S. Customs office over a hundred years earlier.

“It's closed,” Dawn said between panting breaths.

“Lucky for us,” I replied, and led her around to the back entrance by the loading dock. I turned my persona ring around on my finger and placed the black stone into a small indent in the archway.

A click, and the metal door swung open. “Come on,” I said, and pushed my way inside. I heard a skittering sound behind me that caused the hairs on my arms to stand up. I slammed the door shut behind us.

The jorōgumo, or perhaps a small rhinoceros, crashed into the door, causing a hellish squealing noise as brick dust sifted down from the wall above.

“Ah crap, follow me.”

I led Dawn up the stairs to the main hall. We ran down the worn marble floor past a row of teller windows held in an ornate wooden structure. It looked like the kind of place where Bonnie and Clyde might have tried to rob George Bailey, and smelled of damp wood and paper. Another loud crash boomed from the back door as we rounded the corner into the room of post office boxes.

Hand-sized rectangles of tarnished brass with multi-hued number plates covered one entire wall, matching the honey-colored wood surrounding them. I hurried over to the wall, searching for the correct two boxes.

Dawn raised her eyebrows. “I assume you have something magical up your sleeve and aren't just checking your mail?”

“Actually,” I said, “I forgot I'd ordered an Oingo Boingo tape before exile and want to see if it's still here.”

“So, let you concentrate, then?”

“Wouldn't hurt.” I found the numbers I needed—the dates of two major Fey-Arcana wars. I touched the two plates, summoned up more magical energy, and said, “
Aperire Ostium
!”

A series of soft clanks and clicks vibrated the floor beneath me, and several rows of floor tiles began sinking at the floor's center, slowly forming a staircase.

Too slowly.

A loud crash echoed through the post office, followed by the clanging of the door bouncing across the floor, and a screech of triumph. I pointed to the stairs. “As soon as those stop moving, run down them and touch the metal plate on the wall at the bottom.”

“But—”

“Dawn, just do it! Please!”

I ran back into the main hall. The jorōgumo skittered toward me, her spider legs carrying her human form suspended above the floor.

Dawn wouldn't escape if we fled together. I had to stop the creature so she had time to get away.

I placed my hand on the nearby wall, and summoned the building's spirit.

This was going to leave me with a Tetsuo-sized headache.

Not every building has a spirit, at least not one strong or cohesive enough to be summoned. And spirit might not be the best word. It isn't really the same as with a living being, whose spirit grows and changes with them based on their choices and experiences. The spirit of an old building like this was more a built-up residue of often-repeated emotions and strong thoughts, which after enough time formed a kind of patchwork ghost.

The building's presence manifested, rolling over me like the heat wave from an opened oven, if what was being baked in that oven was a triple-layer emotion cake. Impatience, anticipation, dread, hope, frustration—I nearly staggered beneath the weight of it all.

“Spirit!” I said, Talking to the post office. Life and magic both drained from me, a sensation like spiritual peeing, except it was not very relieving to have my life trickling away bit by bit. Such was the cost of Talking to spirits.

There was no response. I'd feared as much. It was too much to hope that the building would understand human speech.

I took my fear for Dawn and myself and projected it at the spirit. And I focused that fear around the jorōgumo, and then imagined fire, and earthquake, and rats, and wild children with hammers, and real estate developers—anything I thought a building might fear.

The spirit rolled over me, past me, and I could sense it descending on the jorōgumo, concentrating its overwhelming presence on that creature.

The jorōgumo stumbled and fell, its eight legs entangling and curling inward. She put her hands to her head, and screamed.

“Come on!” Dawn said behind me.

I spun around. “Dawn! Damn it! Run!”

Dawn held a brass pole normally used to support a rope barrier, wielding it like a club. “We leave together.”