Hexomancy (10 page)

Ree tossed her coat into the closet and went to join the crammed couch. She poured herself some rum, drank, then poured some more.

“I’m sorry. It seemed safer, and it was unfair, and I’m so glad that you know now. I don’t want to keep anything from you three. Never wanted to, won’t ever again.”

“Except weird sex stuff. You keep that shit to yourself,” Anya said.

The laughter was stilted, a bit forced.
This is going to take more booze.

“So, what do we say? I think this calls for dinner. A big, fuck-off amazeballs dinner, just the four of us, get shit back where it’s supposed to be, no magic crap,” Ree said.

“You going to cook?” Sandra asked.

Ree smiled, this one coming more easily. “I just said it was a good idea. If only we had a trained chef among us.”

Sandra raised a hand of correction. “Partially trained.”

“And the three of us put together are at least good enough to be one sous-chef,” Priya said. “Let’s see how ridiculously we can mess up the kitchen and leave it for Ree to clean up.”

“I take it all back,” Ree said, chuckling.

Sandra added, “And we’re telling Darren when he gets back from his conference. I won’t be able to keep the secret, so you should just go ahead and explain it to him, too.”

“And the Scooby gang grows,” Ree said, resigned.

“We’re no Scoobies,” Anya said. “I have no intention of gallivanting around the town with you trying to get ourselves killed, thank you very much.”

Priya nodded. She wasn’t her usually-animated self, still reeling from last night’s drama.

Holy crap, that was only last night
. The reality of it hit Ree like a dodgeball to the face.

Ree threw herself into routine, trying to wrap Priya up in the chatter, the energy of the group, to help throw out a life preserver of love and appreciation.

As someone who’d spent more than her fair share of time treading water in the oceans of Post-Breakup Depression, she knew the look well. Priya would recover in her own time frame, and she didn’t want to push. This amount of time after getting dumped by Jay, Ree had been hurling in the bathroom, so compared to that Priya was doing great. Though who knew what the evening would bring?

Which reminded her that she should call Drake, both to yell at him some more and to tell him what Eastwood had done. Drake could make his own decision about the Geekomancer, but he deserved to know the truth about what had just gone down.

A general truthiness and freedom of information policy seemed like the way to go. Like freely informing him that she was still pissed off at him for how he’d treated Priya. But that freedom didn’t extend to telling him how she’d felt about him right up until he’d dumped Priya. Really she still felt that way, but she was too busy being angry at just that moment. Angry hooking up wasn’t a good idea for either of them, so that would need to be avoided at all costs.

Ree was pretty sure that the impropriety of such an occurrence would lead Drake to spontaneously combust, which helped. Sort of. Not really.

A half hour
later, the kitchen was in full-on Chaotic Joyful mode. Three women tried to scramble around one another, moving between the small dinner table and the kitchen, making a salad, braised chicken, cous-cous, lamb saag, and—Ree’s contribution—take-out crack fries from Turbo’s.

On the way back from Turbo’s, she’d called Drake but got no answer. She left a rambling voicemail:

“Hey, this is Ree. It’s fine if you don’t pick up, though why would you, because this is a voicemail and things don’t work like that anymore. Did you ever have an answering machine? Anyway, Eastwood and I ran across the first of the Promised Strega. Yeah, with capital letters. So anyway, she was a derby girl and had a whole team, and she nearly killed Eastwood, but we won, and then he was all ‘I know how to solve this, I just have to do some creepy magic ritual; that’s fine, right?’ and I was all ‘No, that’s unacceptable!’ and then I went to call Grognard to get my back, and the fucker did it anyway. So then I punched him and said I was done with him, for realz. Grognard came over and then we kicked Connie Clothos-Line out of town, and so here we are.

“Also, I’m still mad at you. But be careful.”

Ree kept the
voicemail to herself when she got back to the house, though it was kind of directly counter to the self-congratulatory truthiness she’d just been thinking about.

Fuck off, self. Life is complicated.
Plus, she was sparing Priya’s feelings. No one needed to hear about their ex right after a breakup, unless it was along the lines of “Yeah, screw that guy! We never liked him,” which Ree couldn’t muster, even if she was perfectly livid enough to do so.

Too much of her last twenty-four hours had been spent in mortal peril or so angry she could vibrate out of her shoes.

But now she had crack fries, Cole Lutz’s imported and adapted version of a Midwestern locavore’s divine recipe for duck-fat fries with Parmesan, red pepper flakes, cilantro, and something else that Cole wouldn’t say. Not even to Ree, the most beloved of Cole’s broke-ass customers.

Ree offered the fries first to Priya, meaning them to be an olive branch. After all, knowing Drake was all Ree’s fault in the first place.

Priya took a handful of fries and nibbled at them, less zestfully than usual.

But it was a start.

Chapter Ten

Food Means Family

Sandra took a break between bites of crack fries to ask, “How did you, Ms. Can’t Keep Her Mouth Shut About Spoilers of a Show that Aired Twelve Hours Ago, keep all of this craziness from me for a whole year?”

Ree took a sip of her margarita. “It was a sacred duty, or something. I didn’t want you to have to deal with any more of my bullshit than you do already.”

“Appreciated,” Sandra said. Then she raised a finger for a point of correction. “But just because you have to fight monsters doesn’t mean you can get out of cleaning the bathroom or paying your half of the rent.”

Laughter filled the room. Anya held a high C “Buuuurn,” deploying her opera diva powers to drive the point home.
This. More of this, please,
Ree thought, taking mental snapshots of the evening to keep with her through the crappier times.

The four of them sat crammed around the Shithole’s dinner table, which was positively overflowing with food. When Sandra got nervous, she cooked. And discovering that magic was real and that her best friend could do it was cause enough for an early Thanksgiving. Greek salad (a Wilson family recipe), braised chicken, Ree’s contribution of Turbo’s crack fries, a carefully-tended curry from Priya, and heavy pours of alcohol, both vodka and tequila, courtesy of Anya and her seemingly-bottomless pantry of booze.

“It’s all the opera people, I swear,” she said. Anya had been dubbed the hostess for all cast parties, and as a result had a collection of two-thirds-empty bottles that would make a great archaeology or anthropology project someday.

Ree was on her third margarita, relying on booze to help her mitigate the awkwardness of a personal confession and the dropping of the masquerade and turn it into an impromptu party. Not that she wasn’t happy to see everyone, but it was a lot of spotlight on not nearly enough sleep.

“So when you took that catering job, what were you really doing?” Sandra asked.

“Ah, that. There’s a Geekomancer and general magician hangout bar-slash-store underground run by a dude named Grognard. I’ve been working for him. That is, until the place got totaled this summer by the first of what appears to be a quartet of homicidal Fate Witches.”

“So is that why you show up to breakfast looking like you’ve been through a war zone?” Sandra asked.

Ree nodded, taking another sip. “It’s true. Now everyone can stop thinking I’m a raging alcoholic with a propensity for getting into fights at bars.”

Crickets.

“Yeah, I didn’t have much faith in that one, either,” Ree said. That got some laughter. Ree offered a toast, clinking glasses around before she drank again.

“So, are you going to show us some magic, or what?” Anya asked, cheeks red from vodka.

Then a beat. “But don’t, like, burn the place down.”

“It’ll take a minute. I don’t want to go waving a lightsaber around when I’ve had three margaritas.”

Priya, without speaking, held up four fingers.

“No,” Ree said, counting.

“It’s four,” Sandra said.

Ree extricated herself from the table and very intentionally climbed over the couch to the Media Corner, aware of her drunkeness. “My point exactly.”

She loaded
Spider-Man
into the Blu-ray player and skipped forward to the scene where Peter uses his spider-powers to climb up the wall.

Her friends watched, mostly silent, only occasionally interrupting with the sounds of ice against glass as they drank. Ree zoomed in on the feeling of adulation, the sheer joy of discovery as Peter explored his powers. When she felt the rush of energy, she kicked off her shoes and started climbing, hands and feet sticking to the wall. She took three short steps up the wall, then hung from the ceiling by her fingertips and knees.

Her friends whooped and cheered and applauded. Ree’s stomach churned, and she scrambled back down the wall and dropped to the couch, the power fizzing out between the short exposure and her booze-undermined focus.

“Ta da!” Ree said, taking a bow in her seat.

More applause.

“Next time, I’m not doing that after three . . . okay, four margaritas.”

As they settled back into their food, Anya asked, “How you doing, Pri?”

Priya raised her glass and drank again by way of response. “Shitty, but I’ve had way worse. I think you’re the next one scheduled for heartbreak, though.”

“As the keeper of the chart, I’m afraid that is so. But you know what?” Anya said. “Fuck the chart. I’m declaring a moratorium on shitty relationships. Only good ones from here on in.”

“If only I knew the magic to make that happen,” Ree said.

“Enough of that crap,” Priya said, wobbling to her feet. “Another round?”

All of the women raised their hands. Even drunk, the women had years of experience making drinks for one another, though as the evening went on, the drinks tended more and more to just be booze on the rocks or straight up.

And so the evening went, with laughter, stories, and food. Oh so much food. Eventually, the group collapsed on the chairs and couches, settling in for a viewing of
The Avengers
.

“I don’t understand how people don’t understand that Black Widow is the most effective character in this entire movie,” Sandra said. “She outsmarts Trickster God, outfights her better-armed colleague without hurting him when he was going for the kill, takes down dozens of Chitauri using nothing more than handguns and a cool taser, and then brings the whole invasion to a close.”

“I think people just got distracted by all the abs,” Ree said.

“True that,” Priya said. “But you’ve got to give it up for the girl, she kicked some major ass. When are we getting her movie?”

Ree grumbled.

Priya chuckled. “I take that as a ‘not scheduled,’ then?”

“Yep,” Sandra said.

Twenty minutes later, as the Avengers headed into NYC, Priya nodded off, and Anya volunteered to take her home after the group emerged from their post-prandial-cinematic coma around 1 AM.

After a round of hugs for the departing duo—vigorous with Anya, awkward with Priya—Ree saluted Sandra and plodded off to bed. Her world was three kinds of messed up, but, at last, her home life was not one of those kinds. Things would be awkward with Priya for a while, but they’d been friends years before Ree knew anything about Geekomancy and had come through worse situations.

She had three text messages from Eastwood, one angry, one apologetic, and one saying just “Be careful.” Which was really Eastwood in a nutshell.

But he wasn’t her problem anymore. Grognard’s would be up and running soon, and her life could go back to its weird version of normal until the solstice brought another Strega and another round of Hexomancy Cage Match.

But for now, bed.

Chapter Eleven

Grognard’s Returns

Winter

Grognard’s Grog and Games held its Grand Reopening on the last Friday in October, with tournaments, giveaways, and the christening of the Wall of Heroes.

The brewmaster and host had taken the opportunity afforded by the total gutting and renovation to add in a few new features.

For one, the new wards were triple-layered, carved, painted, and woven into the front and back doors. Grognard had laid in a backup generator, extra emergency rations, and had seeded weapons into the tables, some of the chairs, and into the bar itself.

Ree thought he was going a bit overboard, but this was the man’s home, for all intents and purposes. And when someone fucks with your home, it is reasonable to arm the fuck up. Most patrons didn’t know the extent of the retrofit, but Ree had helped him put most of this together, back to working after they’d kicked Derby Strega out of town.

A cheer rose up from the new modular tournament table, three tables latched together for extra stability. Ree knew that they also had handles on the bottom, and could be detached from their bases to become shields.

Dude had gone all out. When one had being out of a job for six months and the violation of his safe space to get angry about, the mind could go to interesting lengths.

But for now, the table was filled with a gigantic game of
Warmachine
, five players and their armies arrayed across the handmade terrain, a gift from miniatures specialist Chandra for the reopening.

Uncle Joe had donated several thousand dollars’ worth of singles (arranged alphabetically by artist, as was the man’s fashion). Eastwood had sent over a set of
Star Wars
rebel soldier blasters, which adorned the Wall of Heroes, alongside Talon’s set of matching seaxes and targe shields, one for each of the group Grognard had pronounced “Grognard’s Heroes,” the six who had stood up with him that summer against Lucretia’s assault:

Ree, Eastwood, Drake Winters, Chandra, Uncle Joe, and Talon. Ree had asked to be omitted, since she’d been on the clock. That had gotten a round of laughter and a scowl, which was basically as praise-y as Grognard could get. Shade had turned down the offer of being named among them, since he was embarrassed to have been unconscious basically the whole time. And “Lieutenant” Abigail Wickham had been disqualified on account of betrayal, natch.

Each of the Heroes had a special-ordered stein from a friend of Grognard’s. The steins displayed the hero’s name in painted script, along with an art nouveau–style portrait of the hero in their element. Ree’s showed her in her Grognard’s server garb, wielding both her lightsaber and a tray full of drinks.

The whole thing was an embarrassingly kind gesture, but Ree knew that it was as much for Grognard as it was for anyone else. The sanctity of this place had been violated, and now he was arraying tradition against the ghosts of fear and failure.

Also, beer.
So much beer
. The steins came with a lifetime supply of Grognard’s home brew (the nonmagical variety. Dude still had to make a living).

Ree swung by the
Warmachine
table, grabbed up empty glasses, retrieved Chandra and Talon’s steins for refills, and cleared off a plate of mozzarella sticks that had sat forgotten for two hours, solidifying into a fried mass.

Grognard cleared his throat, and stepped out from the bar. The crowd went silent.

“Everyone, get your drinks ready. We’ve got some toasting to do.”

Ree went into overdrive to prepare the room for the toast. She’d gotten herself back into bartender practice over the last week, which had helped Grognard with his “Oh God, will anyone come back?” nerves. She’d never known Grognard to be one for nervousness, but people could surprise you.

After she’d poured six beers, mixed three different drinks, and opened yet another bottle of wine, everyone had their drinks ready, Ree included, her personal stein loaded with the Critical Hit Ale.

Grognard stepped over to the Wall of Heroes and put a hand on the portraits of Tomas, Alexi, and Siobhan, all three in black and white, beneath a hand-calligraphied poster (courtesy of Drake) that said “The Fallen.”

“First, we raise a glass to those who died while within my hospitality. They were part of us, and they will not be forgotten.”

“To the victorious dead!” he shouted, filling the room.

As one, they echoed, “To the victorious dead!” then drank.

Grognard waited a moment. “I want to thank you all for coming. It means a lot to me. Grognard’s Grog and Games is safer and stronger than ever, and so are the drinks.”

Pause for laughter.

“
Warmachine
now,
Magic
next, and there will be an all-night tabletop D&D for anyone who wants to stick around. We get more than seven, and Ree will run a second game. Dark Sun, right?” he asked.

“Hell yeah. High adventure on the steamy sands of Athas, unlike this Hoth bullshit upstairs.”

Where Pearson usually got a snowfall over the course of winter, maybe four to eight inches, this year there’d been a freak blizzard, dumping more than a foot on the city in the last week, confounding everyone who wasn’t a magician preparing for the arrival of another Strega with a blood feud on their mind.

“But for now, keep playing, keep drinking, and welcome back.” Another round of cheers.

Grognard was in better spirits than she’d seen in months. Everything was right again in his world.

Ree’s? Not so much. She hadn’t said, emailed, or texted a word to Eastwood since the throwdown with Connie Clothos-Line. She’d talked with Drake, but it was more awkward and stilted than it’d ever been. They’d gotten on better the first time they ever met than since he and Priya had broken up. Priya was doing fine, throwing herself into her role as the props and costume mistress for a local film that had been overfunded by 75 percent on Kickstarter.

Drake, on the other hand, was still moping. Hence why he was sitting in the corner rather than partaking of the festivities.

Ree wandered over, seeing that his stein was empty.

“Need another drink, Hero?”

Drake Winters (Strength 12, Dexterity 15, Stamina 13, Will 15, IQ 16, Charisma 15—Inventor 5 / Gentleman 2 / Steampunk 7 / Fae-Touched 3) looked up from his notebook. His dishwater-blond hair had grown out to the point where he looked like a K-pop bad boy. It constantly needed to be brushed back from covering his vision, until Drake had used his goggles as a headband to tie it back.

He wore his standard Man Out of Time uniform: brown duster over Victorian-esque pants and collared shirt, belt and bandolier adorned with gadgets and weapons. He’d been getting a good sulk on for a few hours now, and it was depressing even Ree. Her rage had faded as she saw Priya move on, and now Drake was just beating himself up, stuck in a loop of guilt. With the weather, he had an extra vest on over the shirt, and a fur cloak shoved in the corner of the booth.

Drake looked up and forced a polite smile. “I am fine as is, Ms. Ree. I would not be here if it weren’t for Grognard’s strict insistence.”

“You don’t need to keep yourself in jail forever, you know,” Ree said, the two beers she’d allowed herself loosening her lips.

Drake winced as much as he smiled at the comment. “What I need to do and what I wish to do needn’t be the same. How is Ms. Tharakan?”

“She’s doing great. New projects, conventions, the whole deal. You screwed up, you apologized, you parted ways. One decision like that doesn’t have to define your whole life.”

“Not three months ago, you were berating me for the high-handed arrogance of my actions. Has that changed?”

“You were an ass. Everyone’s an ass, sometimes. Sulking just means you keep yourself from doing anything new, and get to keep remembering how you’ve been an ass. Think about it,” Ree said, then headed back to the kitchen.

Grognard’s new chef, Ji-min, was whirring over the stoves, hair tied back as she managed the fryers and grill, both working at capacity. Grognard offered to get her help for the opening, but she refused on a point of pride.

“How you doing?” Ree asked.

“Just fine. Burgers up in one minute. New mozz is there.” The woman indicated the plate with a sideways jut of the head, hands a whirlwind of seasoning and stirring.

Ree was not entirely certain that Ji-min was baseline human, given how fast she worked. But the woman knew her way around a kitchen, and that was all that mattered. Ree dropped the dishes into the basin, where Habib scrubbed away, his hands prunier than a retirement colony. Habib sighed as the sudsy water overflowed with the additions.

“Shit, sorry,” Ree said.

“Not your fault. They keep eating, I keep working. I’m fine, okay?”

Ree grabbed the new plates, took a breath, and then hip-checked her way back into the bar.

Three hours later,
the crowd had thinned out by a third, most settling down into the
Magic
tournament or a few tables nearby. A pair played a pickup game of
Warmachine
over in the store section. Drake had emerged from his funk enough to sit at the bar, chatting with Grognard and Talon.

Still no sign of Eastwood, which suited Ree just fine.

“Anyone heard from Eastwood?” Talon looked to Grognard. “Thought you threatened him with gross bodily harm if he skipped out on tonight.”

As if in response, the front door opened without issue, indicating it was being opened by someone who bore an invitation poker chip. The chips were all-new, with the bar’s logo on one side,
INVITED
on the other.

Eastwood burst through, his face reddened. But for a change, he looked unharmed. Just pissed.

“There he is!” Grognard said, throwing his arms open, his mood unassailable.

Dutifully, Ree pulled down Eastwood’s stein and set it in front of him at the bar. “Drink?” she asked as he settled onto a bar stool.

“Jack. By the fistful.”

Ree backed off as if struck, Eastwood’s negativity as thick as a tidal wave.

“Not it,” Ree said, sliding behind Grognard. She got a squint of disapproval, but the big man slid over, grabbing the bottle of Gentleman Jack in one smooth motion.

“Glad you could make it,” Grognard said. “Everything okay at the Dorkcave?”

“The hell it is. I just got stiffed on three more orders. The payments went through, I shipped the goods, then when I do my end-of-week numbers, the money’s gone, the charges reversed. That’s the fifth time this month. Five thousand dollars’ worth of gear. And when I ping the accounts to collect, they bounce.

“Someone is frakking with me.”

“You sure it isn’t just holiday orders going awry?” asked Talon, who operated her own sword smithy and mail-order shop. Patricia Talon (Strength 16, Dexterity 15, Stamina 13, Will 16, IQ 13, Charisma 10—Geek 3 / Blacksmith 5 / Swordswoman 5) was the kind of woman you almost never saw on film or television, only in weirdo movies like
A Knight’s Tale
—muscled, beautiful, and constantly covered in soot. She came from SCA stock, and had been fighting with swords since before she was potty-trained, to hear her tell it.

“No way,” Eastwood said. “This has scam written all over it. I just haven’t managed to backtrack any of the IP addresses or POP servers. Whoever’s doing this, they’re good. Had to call a few of my old Wild Wild Web buddies to get some in some help tracking them down.” Eastwood looked to Grognard. “That’s why I was late. No offense intended. Congrats on the reopening.” Eastwood raised a toast, which Grognard met with his own stein of beer. It was his enchanted Nocturnalist Coffee Stout, which had all of the taste and none of the alcohol.

“Think this is the next Strega?” Grognard asked.

“Maybe. Weird way of coming at me, though. These lost sales are going to add up, but it’s a big change from waves of gnomes or a squad of homicidal derby girls.”

Drake approached the bar, stein in hand. “In my travels, each of the Strega had their own methodologies, more different than the same. When I was traveling with the Contessa—”

“Yeah, I get that,” Eastwood said, cutting Drake off before he could dive into another story about the Contessa of the Lapis Galleon, his Faerie kidnapper-turned-patron/lover from the days when he was adventuring around in the Deep realms of Spirit, science fantasy–style.

Talon asked, “So you’ve got people on it, and in the meantime, what? Drink?”

“Not a bad plan. No, in the meantime, I’m buffing up my stock and quintuple-checking my traps. Sooner or later, she’s going to make a run at me, and I’ll be a Cylon’s uncle if I’m going to get caught flat-footed this time.”

Ree left the conversation and returned to service, buzzing around the store to pick up empties, take orders, and give encouragement to the various gamers, taking care to not offer anything that amounted to scale-tipping advice. It didn’t take much to clue in a player who’d gone astray, but she had no skin in this tournament game, quite intentionally. Didn’t do for anyone associated with the House to be seen playing favorites.

It also did her good to step away from Drake. After weeks of minimal contact, he was almost new again, like her resistance to his dimples, that accent, and his pleasantly annoying habits had tanked.

And that wouldn’t be fair to Priya. Friends’ exes were off the table, barring incredibly extenuating circumstances.

So, temporally displaced handsome inventor-heroes who you knew first counts as extenuating?
asked a part of Ree’s mind, sending her mindscape back into a hurricane of mixed feelings.

Down, girl
, she told herself, heading into the kitchen for another round of drop-off-pick-up.

This was going to become a problem. Flipping out on Drake and then not seeing him had not, as she’d hoped, done a single fucking bit to spoil her feelings for him. She was still angry, but keeping a grudge when Priya had moved on seemed to be nothing more than spiteful.

Not that she wasn’t down with a little spite here and there, but with Eastwood on her permanent shit list, she needed some adventuring buddies out and about the town. Shade and Talon didn’t patrol, Uncle Joe was done with hero-ing, and Grognard had the store.