Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free (46 page)

She patted at her loose silver hair and said, “Yes, quite.”

I led Verna down the hallway to Father's door, and knocked before I cracked it open. Father sat at his desk, tinkering.

“Father?” I said, and opened the door. “I have someone who wants to meet you. Verna, this is my father, Arlyn. Father, this is Verna. She's an ARC thaumaturge.”

Verna crossed to Father and held out her hand. “It's a real pleasure, Arlyn. I was quite impressed with the Summoning Simon artifact you created. I'd love to discuss it with you.”

Father's hand twitched, and he said without looking up, “The secret's in the sauce. It has scrubbing bubbles!” He made popping sounds with his mouth.

“Bubbles?” Verna asked.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I tried to explain on the way here—”

“Oh, yes, I see.” Verna cocked her head. “Are you referring to the phenomena of quantum-auratic foam, where the permeable energy layer of our universe is agitated by the product of magical decay in the Other Realm?”

Father dropped the object he was tinkering with and looked up at Verna. “Thirty-two flavors, scratch and sniff but don't go licking the jelly!”

Verna nodded excitedly. “Of course! A human spirit interacting in the Other Realm would create a different ‘flavor' of auratic decay, and—brilliant. Oh, I must write this down.” She felt in her hair, then in her lab coat pocket, but both were empty of pens.

Father held up a pen. He had tears in his eyes, and a huge grin.

“Oh perfect, thank you!” Verna said, and went to Mother's old desk. She pulled an old pad of stationary from the corner of the desk, and held it up. “Do you mind?”

Father shook his head, and she began rapidly scribbling on the pad. “This is quite exciting. I hadn't considered—” She looked up at me. “Oh, did you need help with the equipment? I really would love to speak with your father some more.”

“I'll get it unloaded and set up as best I can,” I said, my own eyes filling with tears at the look of joy on Father's face. “I'll come back when I'm ready to attempt the exorcism.”

“Very good,” Verna said, already scribbling again, her tone distracted.

I turned to leave, and Father said, “Finn Fancy.”

I turned back. “Yeah?”

He went to speak further, but the left side of his face twitched and he shook his head. He just patted at his chest.

I nodded. “I love you, too, Dad.”

I left quickly, wiping my eyes, and went upstairs to signal for Heather.

 

30

With or Without You

I hung my pair of red Chuck Taylors from the rope between my bedroom window and Dawn's house. As I stepped back into the hall, I thought I felt a trace of spiritual energy, as of a disembodied spirit.

My eyes snapped to Mort's room.

I moved as quietly as I could up the hall, still sensing the spiritual presence.

*Please, tell me that Mistress Suck a Bus has returned!* Alynon said.

Dude, you need frakking aversion therapy,
I thought.

The floorboard gave out a loud, obnoxious creak, as only real wood floors in very old houses can.

“Bat's breath.” I hurried to Mort's door, and felt for the presence of a spirit, but detected nothing. I gave a gentle knock. “Mort?”

No response. Which meant he was refusing to answer.

Or incapable.

I tried the doorknob but it was locked. “Mort, if you don't let me know you're alive, I'll have to break this door down.”

“Break down my door, and I'll break your face,” Mort said from behind the closed door. “I'm trying to work.”

His voice sounded off.

I pulled the skeleton key from around my neck, and touched it to the doorknob.

A ward symbol glowed orange on the door above the knob, and the door remained locked.

Crap.

“Mort, if you're still summoning that succubus, you're an idiot,” I said. “And suicidal. Get some help before it's too late.”

“I'm not—” Mort began, but I didn't stay to listen. There was only so much I could do to help someone who wouldn't help themselves. At least, not when I had a difficult exorcism to perform and a dance battle to prepare for. But even as I walked away I knew I'd be back to try and deal with Mort later.

Bat's breath.

I went downstairs, and Pete helped me to move Verna's equipment into the basement. We set up the containment circle, and the focusing ring from the Kin Finder 2000 that was meant to seek out resonance between two spirits from the same bloodline.

*Thank you,* Alynon said finally as I checked that everything was in place. *I—after what I did in the Bright Realm, I would have understood—just thank you.*

“You're welcome,” I replied as I aligned the Kin Finder ring with the circle of Verna's portal equipment. “But mostly I'm doing this because I don't want to be responsible for your death if I lose to Barry.”

*Whatever your reasons, I thank you,* Alynon said. *Though if I could ask but one more favor?*

I stood straight, and sighed. “What is it?”

*Could you perhaps use the other ring, the one meant to find one's true love? If I'm going to return to the Other Realm, I do not wish to show up in the Colloquy. At this point, I know not if any side will take me. I just wish to be with Velorain.*

I sighed. “I suppose it should still work, assuming Velorain really is your true love, and not just another true lust.”

*It is true love.*

“Okay then. Love it is,” I said. I swapped out the rings.

Pete returned with Verna.

“Your father is a brilliant man,” she said. “And quite charming.” She blushed a bit, and patted at her hair. “How he never worked for the ARC is quite beyond me.”

“He just wanted to be with his family,” I said. “I've set up the equipment as best I could, but—”

“Oh, yes, well, you have this backward.” She hurried to her portal equipment and made some adjustments. “There. Ready to go.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I thought I was going to have to open an illegal portal, so this helps more than you can know.”

“Oh, happy to do it,” Verna said. “What you're doing could prove quite useful in banishing Fey spirits from our world should we need to.”

*If it doesn't kill us both,* Alynon said.

Do you want to try this or not?

*Of course. I am desperate enough at this point that I'd try anything.*

Okay, Mikey. Well, if it is any comfort, the changes I've made after seeing Father's Simon artifact in action should hopefully keep us both from being lobotomized.

*Let's just do it before I talk myself out of it.*

“Here's to meddling with powers we can't possibly understand,” I said, and settled cross-legged on the floor at the center of the circle. No need for big speeches or preparing my soul or anything. Like Alynon, I just wanted to get this done with, one way or another. “Pete, Verna, whenever you're ready.”

“I'm ready,” Pete said, holding the ritual in his hands. I'd typed it up in Paperclip and printed it out for him, just to be safe.

“Okeedokee,” Verna said. “Here we go.”

She flipped a switch. The lights in the basement dimmed and flickered, and then a portal opened up in Verna's rune-covered ring.

“Here's to not getting lobotomized,” I muttered. Otherwise, Silene would have to choose a champion to take my place in the dance contest. And my family would have to get on without me once again. And Dawn—

I placed my hand on the crystal ball at the back of the Kin Finder 2000 before I could talk myself out of it, and looked at the portal through the KF2K's focus ring. I poured magic into it.

Go into the light,
I thought at Alynon, and willed him to be gone from my body, to travel through the portal.

*I'm trying,* he said.

Pete cleared his throat. “Alynon Infedriel, Knight of the Silver Court, I summon you, and banish you to the Other Realm. By my will I compel you.” He continued in Latin, using an incantation I'd tweaked for this purpose. I wasn't sure it would do any good, but hopefully it would make Pete believe it would work, and that could make all the difference.

I sensed something being drawn from inside me, like a rubbery membrane had been wrapped around my brain and was now being pulled toward the portal. But it felt like my entire brain was being pulled with it.

I pressed my free hand against my temple, tried to squeeze the pain away with counterpressure. “Something's … happening!” I said. “Keep going!”

Alynon screamed in my head, *Something's wrong! I feel like I'm being torn apart! I—Ahhh!*

The pain became unbearable, like someone was beating my head with a screaming baby made of blinding sunlight and steel. I felt myself fading.

My hand fell from the crystal ball. I closed my eyes, and threw up my barriers of will and spirit.

The world lurched, and the arcane energies surrounding me jumped.

There came a terrible, terrified scream. I opened my eyes to find Brianne, Mort's spirit lover, being drawn toward the portal backward, her hands scrabbling at the air as if trying to find some purchase in our world to keep her from sliding back into that pool of energy.

“Pete! Verna!” I shouted.

But it was too late. Brianne disappeared into the portal just as Verna slammed it off, and Pete stopped his incantation.

In the moment of sudden, complete quiet that followed, my mind raced to understand what had just happened.

Alynon?
I asked.

*Still here,* he replied quietly, his tone a mixture of relief and disappointment.

When the summoning and banishment had lost its hold on Alynon, it must have jumped to the next nearest spirit not attached to a body. Which meant Mort had summoned Brianne, despite everything. And she had been pulled into the portal.

“Verna, is she—was she transported to the Other Realm?” I asked.

Verna, her wide eyes appearing owl-like behind her glasses, shook her head. “I don't know. They were expecting Alynon, but—” She looked at the portal.

Somewhere in the Other Realm, an insane succubus had just popped up in a Fey body. Or her spirit had been destroyed, disintegrating on the barrier between worlds. Only the Fey knew which.

A distant cry could be heard, a heart-wrenching howling. It took me a second to recognize it as human.

“Mort. Oh gods.” I struggled to my feet, and almost fell back down. Wooziness from the botched exorcism and backlash of energies spun through my head.

Pete ran up the basement stairs. I led Verna after him as quickly as I could manage.

When I reached Mort's bedroom, Pete and Vee stood on either side of Mort's bed, trying to hold him down. Mort writhed, his limbs tangled in black sheets, his face pale and sweaty and his eyes wild as he bucked against Pete and Vee's hold. “Let me go! Let me go! I have to find her! Something's wrong!”

“Finn?” Pete called as I entered the room.

“Mort!” I said. “Mort, listen! You need to calm down.”

“Where's Brianne?” he demanded.

Mattie rushed into the room and pushed a perfume spritzer into my hands. “Here!”

Calming spray. We used it to help calm grieving customers we thought might go wild in their pain. I went over and spritzed some onto Mort's pillow beside his head. Okay, I spritzed a lot onto his pillow.

“Mort, calm down!” I shouted. “You're going to hurt yourself.”

Mort's struggles slowed, until he lay panting on the bed.

“Better,” I said.

“Where's Brianne?” he asked. “I can't sense her.”

I exchanged looks with Pete, and said, “We—I sent her away so you could get some rest.”

Mort tried to look at me, but appeared unable to focus. “Sent her where?”

“Away,” I said. “We'll talk about it more when you're better.” From the looks of him, Mort was lucky that the accident happened. Luckier than Brianne.

His eyes drooped as he struggled against passing out. “If I find out you hurt her,” he said, his words slurred, “I'll never forgive you.”

I sighed, and muttered, “Get in line.”

I glanced at the clock on Mort's bedside. I had maybe a few hours at most before I had to head out to the Elwha steading.

I turned, and saw the anguished look on Mattie's face. “Oh, Mat-cat, everything's going to be okay,” I said, and pulled her into a hug. “We'll take care of your dad.”

“I know,” she said. “I know.”

Verna stood in the doorway. “You have quite a … complicated family,” she said. “A very chaotic system.”

“Yeah,” I said, and didn't offer any further clarification. “Come on, let's let Mort get some rest.”

We all shuffled out into the hallway, and closed the door just as Mort began to snore.

Mattie wiped at her face. “I'll watch after Dad.”

“You don't have to do it alone,” I said.

Vee put an arm around Mattie. “Of course not.” She looked at me.

Dawn put her hand on my shoulder. “But you have things to do, don't you? Like get your shoes back?”

“What?”

“Your shoes, that you left hanging outside,” she replied. “They're gone.”

“Oh. Right.” Crap. “Yeah, I suppose I do.”

Dawn hooked her arm through mine. “Don't worry, love, I've got your back.”

“We've all got each other's backs,” Vee said, pulling Mattie into a hug. “Come on, sweetie, let's go get you some tea.”

I watched as Pete and Vee led Mattie down the hall to the stairs, pulling Verna along.

“So,” Dawn said. “Let's go chat with your old crush, shall we?”

 

31

Lips Like Sugar

We stepped out of the side door into late-morning light that appeared defiantly cheery and vibrant for a day already filled with so much darkness, though the temperature remained stubbornly cool. I tilted my head back, let the sun's promise of warmth soak into my face. Might as well enjoy it. I led the way around to the back of the house, and along the path into the heart of Mother's overgrown garden.