Frostbite (Modern Knights Book 1) (11 page)

“Better chance of you meeting someone else. Three.”

“Like the wendigo. Did you want us to meet at the gas station when we did, or did you intend for us to end up someplace else?”

“Place was irrelevant. Four.”

I ran my right hand through my brown mane, absently pulling a few hairs as I did. “Fine, we’ll play it your way. Without adding unnecessary sounds or going outside the range of human hearing, what is the correct pronunciation of your true name?”

Her face instantly filled with panicked, furious thought. “You wouldn’t know how to use it.”

I reached into my jacket and pulled out my gremlin phone. I twirled it slowly while I stared at her. I said nothing.

“What…what is that?”

“Nope. It’s still my turn to ask the questions. You still owe me three answers.”

The business suit, no, the skin suit that was Agent Devereaux sloughed off into a puddle at her feet. What was left could have passed as one of the junior high school girls that had walked by…except for her greenish-blue skin and pointed ears. She was clad in a yellow bikini top with white polka dots and a pair of cut-off denim shorts, a major shift from the pressed and starched Agent Devereaux. “Please, Wizard Fisher, don’t make me say it.”

I crumbled. I had thought I was dealing with a cunning, cold-hearted, arrogant bitch. In retrospect, adolescent snottiness was an equally plausible defense for her attitude.

“Don’t care. Adolescent for a lake spirit, even a man-made lake, is still decades older than you,” my inner voice advised.

Too late, my heart was already softening. “If I un-ask my last question, will you be more cooperative? I’d really rather be friends than bully you around.”

She nodded. “Please un-ask it. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Then I un-ask it. And you should be careful about who you give your word to that you will ‘do whatever they want.’ Some wizards might not feel the same way I do about hurting women and children.”

She paled to a slimy, gray color. “Eek…I’m sorry. I’ve never dealt with a real wizard before. I feel like such a doofus.”

I nodded. “It’s okay. I’m not all that experienced with the fae myself. You’re the first I’ve met in the flesh…well, and recognized you for what you are.”

“I’m a lake spirit. We don’t like being called faeries.”

“Fair enough. Quick timeout from the formal questions: What should I call you? Agent Devereaux doesn’t seem to fit any more.”

“No, that’s her name. I just borrowed her mind when she came out to see your car.”

“And today?”

“Just an illusion…I thought you might be afraid of her.”

“So the real Agent Devereaux is…”

“Should be okay, though I doubt she remembers much. Pretty tough brain for a human.”

“So back to the real questions: You borrowed her because you wanted to see what your handiwork had accomplished?”

“You could say that, yes. My vision gets kind of fuzzy if I try to go pass the crossroads. I just rode along with her to see what had happened after you left. And you can call me T…ummm, Tia? Yeah, Tia works.”

“All right, Tia, I’m Colin.” We shook hands again, a very different experience than shaking Devereaux’s firm hand. Tia’s was soft, delicate, and a little bit slimy. “Explain to me what happened that night.”

“I didn’t want you staying here. It’s not you…I didn’t even know you were a wizard then. It’s that book.”

For half a second, I thought about pretending she meant the Yiddish fairy book, but I knew better than that. “The Necronomicon.”

“Yeah. It’s bad juju. I tried to convince some of the wood sprites to steal it, but they didn’t like all the metal on your car. So I attacked the car myself. I turned the acid in your battery to lake water, then turned on the lights so that you’d think it was by accident. I know all about batteries. Lots of people drain theirs by leaving on the lights or radio on while they…while they, umm …” Her blush was a deep plum purple, mingled under a navy blue background.

“I understand. Did you mean for me to run into the wendigo?”

“The ice cannibal demon…is that its name?”

“Type, I think. You’re a lake spirit; he’s a wendigo.”

“Okay. Well, I didn’t like him any more than I liked the book. So I tried to lead him to the book. I figured they’d kill each other. But the ice demon kept veering off the trail I left for him. When I saw you were both heading the same way, I stopped trying to distract it. Then the police came and I made sure they took the book away with them.” She looked nervously towards Dorothy’s back seat. “But now it’s back again.”

I ignored her dislike for the book and stored away for future reference her belief that the book could possibly be a match against a homicidal wendigo. I knew why she didn’t care for it. Heck, I hated the thing myself, but I needed it. The lake spirit had tried to lead the wendigo here, to me, to my book…but the wendigo curse was targeted only at employees of Lucien Valente. The curse must have kept pulling it off the fairy’s trail. Once it got loose, it went after the nearest such victim, the drug-dealing gas station attendant. When I interrupted, it wanted to attack me as an interloper. If I hadn’t been there, it couldn’t touch me: I wasn’t a Valente employee back then.

“We are now.”

Returning to the immediate problem, I gestured toward the book. “It’ll go away soon. I won’t bring it back here to your domain again without permission, Lady Tia.”

“Thank you, Wizard Colin.”

I caught up her hand, took a knee, and lightly brushed my lips across her third knuckle. “No, milady, ’tis my pleasure to honor you. You’ve been quite helpful today.” For what I had in mind now, it wouldn’t hurt to lay it on a little thick.

She laughed as I rose, then remembered her manners and curtsied. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you. I was just scared. It’s a really bad book.”

“You are forgiven, Tia.”

“Lady Tia.”

“Very well. You are forgiven, Lady Tia.” I paused. “Have you ever felt the ice demon’s presence before?”

She nodded. “A few times. He always comes from that way.” She pointed east by southeast.

A clue. Never mind that twenty percent of the United States stretched out in that general direction. It was a narrower search area than I had previously. “If he came back again, and I was here, could you lead him to me?”

“But, Wizard Colin, he would kill you. I don’t want to kill my first wizard friend.” She paused. “You are my friend, yes?”

“I would like to be, Lady Tia. And you are right: the wendigo will most likely kill me. But if I were able to face him on the ground of my choosing, with proper preparation…”

Her eyes went wide as she understood. “I think I know just the place. May I show it to you?”

9

“I
don’t like it,” my inner voice warned.

“What’s not to like? If I have to fight a cannibal ice demon, that is. I don’t like that part, either.”

“The part where the most powerful spellbook we have gets left behind at the hotel room. I know you’re feeling your wizardly Wheaties right now, but
…
”

“The book stays away. If I bring it back out here, Tia won’t help us.

“You’ve got her wrapped around your little finger. Tell her you need it to slay the demon.”

“Weren’t you the one telling me how much more ancient and powerful than me she is? I told her it wouldn’t come back without her say-so. And I don’t want her to be distracted by its presence while she’s baiting the wendigo. I can’t have my first fairy—sorry, lake spirit princess—getting eaten while she’s doing a favor for me.”

“Pfui. You’ll wish you had it. If the wendigo shows. She’s only seen it a few times and it’s been active in the area for at least six months.”

“I think I can make it show up. But what do you think about Tia’s choice of location?”

“It’ll do. It just might work. That still doesn’t mean I like it.”

The muddy bank she took me to was a triangular wedge, fifteen feet wide by twenty feet deep. Along the wide end, the mud dipped down to the waterline of the lake. The western side was a rocky wall of giant boulders. It was accessible with some trouble, but the path leading up to the boulders was overgrown enough to discourage the effort. The eastern edge of the triangle was a steep dirt slope rising up towards the trees. The combined effect of slope, rock, and water was that this spot very rarely received two-legged visitors. Unlike the rest of the shoreline, I didn’t see any discarded bottles, cans, or condoms.

There was a faint buzzing of power in the area, but that could have been the Excedrin wearing off. The mud was dry enough to hold a shape well, promising the possibility of a good magic circle. So long as it wasn’t pouring rain, the circle would hold. All I have to do is trap the wendigo inside of it and it would be game, set, point.

“Umm, Colin. If we lure it down here, aren’t we trapped too? I mean, unless you know how to fly or can swim faster than a wendigo can?”

“I guess we’ll just have to make sure the circle works right the first time around, then.”

“Thank you, Lady Tia.” I bowed to her. “May I make what preparations I’ll need here?”

“You may, Wizard Colin. Shall I see if I can find the ice demon?”

“Not yet. It’s Saturday, right?” I did some mental math. “Four nights from now, I think. If I need to change it, I’ll let you know. I would not have you say that you did this for me just because I trapped you in a word game. I will pay you for your service, trade for trade.”

She shook her head. “Would you buy me like a common girl, wizard? I see much of that along my shores. Is that all you would treat me as? I do not need your payment.”

“I told you she was sharper than she looks. Don’t let puppy dog eyes fool you.”

“A moment ago you were saying she was wrapped around my pinky.”

“No, milady. But valiant heroines deserve a prize when the battle is won.”

Her laughter rippled over me in a wave. “Aye. And if the wendigo will talk to you, it is doomed. No demon can possibly outmatch you at the game of tongues.”

“I do not plan to talk, but to kill.”

Her look was pensive as she stared across the waters of her home. “I wish it were for tongues, Wizard Colin. The ice demon is fierce. Are you sure you will win?”

“No,” I confessed. “But I know the odds are better with you on my side. And I must try. I have given my word.”

“Very well, Wizard Colin. I shall accept a reward once the creature is dead.”

I bowed to her and sat down, Indian style, with my back against the western rock. “And now, adieu, Lady Tia. I must prepare the field.”

I blinked for a moment and she was gone. My head was spinning with all things fae. Even the weaker ones, a gremlin and a lake-spirit of a man-made lake, were uncanny with a sense of power the fairy tales couldn’t capture. Tia took over the body of an FBI profiler, presumably a strong, disciplined mind, just because she didn’t like a book I was carrying. Never mind that she had an intuitive sense of everything that happened near her lake or that she could vanish soundlessly in an instant. If I was this impressed by the low-level pawns, how on Earth was I ever going to serve as an emissary to the fae courts where the big boys and girls played?

“One disaster at a time,” the voice said.

“Right you are, though I hate to admit it.”

I spent the next hour simply sitting there, my eyes slowly taking in the terrain around me. If I was going to claim home court advantage, I really needed to know the lay of the land: every bump, root, and twig. I took it all in, slowly perfecting my mental picture of the area, changing it with each visual sweep until my psychic model was identical to the physical location.

When I was confident in my mental re-creation, I rose, then sank to one knee, in the position of devotion. I gathered up my energy into the model, rolling the two into a ball the same color as the mud nearest the rock. I moved it up inside of me until it was just below the top of my head, the crown chakra. I took a deep breath and squeezed on the sphere till it burst, the exploding energy filling every nook and cranny of both my sanctuary and me.

“I claim this land as mine. I am your lord and you are my soil, my rocks, my plants, my hill. This is my dominion and I am its master, its steward, its guardian.” I paused to let the words roll over and under every leaf, every blade of grass. “Will any dispute my claim? Speak now or forever hold peace.”

“None, Lord Wizard,” Tia’s voice surprised me. I hadn’t realized she was still around. “I gift right of this place to you for a year and a day.”

Her presence flustered me, even though she supported my claim. The sanctuary ritual was designed to conquer, not receive in gift. I needed her help, though, so I adapted as best I could. “Will any dispute the lady’s right to give thee as gift?”

A silent minute passed. The energy I sent out returned to me and with it, a sense of belonging and purpose. This was my land now and both the dirt and I knew it. But what did that mean? I understood the concept of sanctuary, but I had never claimed one before. It was time to experiment and find out. In my mind, I imagined a circle being traced out in the mud in front of me. It took more effort than thought should, but I quickly saw where the extra energy was going. As the psychic circle drew itself out in my head, a matching one appeared in the physical earth at my feet.