Maggie Get Your Gun (7 page)

The light was blinking on my messages and I turned on the
speaker phone.

“Maggie MacKay,” came a stilted Chinese voice I only knew
too well.  The sandwich caught in my throat.  “You come now.  Your father bring
werewolves to my house.  You come NOW.”

It was Xiaoming, this cranky Asian dude who lived in
Chinatown.  He might have helped me track down my dad and also maybe disposed
of a magical artifact for me that would have destroyed several worlds.  I
probably owed him.

The thing is, he also had eerie magical powers and
controlled two concrete, guardian lions statues that came to life whenever he
was in trouble, so I knew it had to be bad.

I grabbed the phone and hit redial.  It rang a couple times
and Xiaoming picked up the line.

“Xiaoming?  It’s Maggie.  What’s…”

“Where you been?  It been three hours!”

“Sorry, I was taking down a genie…”

“You stop making excuses!  Your father come here looking
for vampire information.  Werewolves find him.  They wake my lions.”

A little seed of panic rose in my belly, “Where’s my dad,
Xiaoming?  Put him on the line.”

“He gone now.”

“WHAT?  Where?”

“He gone.  You come now.”

“Where did he go, Xiaoming?”

The line went dead.  He hung up on me. 

I rested my head in my hands and then picked up the
receiver.  I pounded Dad’s number into the phone.  He didn’t pick up.  Like
always.  I tried again.  Straight to voice mail.  I ended up leaving him three
messages but knew he had probably already forgotten his pass code.

I got up and paced around the office.  I knew what I had to
do, but man, a girl shouldn’t have to make those sorts of calls twice in one
lifetime.   I would have gladly faced a horde of vampires at this moment rather
than pick up the phone.  But I knew I didn’t have a choice.  I pulled together
all my courage and dialed the number.

“Hello, Mom?  I think I lost Dad again…”

Chapter 11

I finally made the jump from The Other Side to Earth after
a stupid long wait in line to get through the one official portal that could actually
fit my car.  It dumped me out on Mulholland, right above the Hollywood Bowl,
which is convenient to nothing.  Rush hour in Los Angeles was in full force and
the freeway from Hollywood to downtown was bumper-to-bumper.  Everyone and
their mother was between me and where I needed to go.

I finally pulled in front of Xiaoming's place in Chinatown
and checked my watch.  He was going to be so cranky...

I got out, marched up his sun-baked steps, and knocked on
his flimsy metal screen door.  Xiaoming’s concrete lions were looking a little
worse for wear.  They were displaying some new cracks and their nails looked
like they could use a good manicure.

“Sorry, guys,” I apologized.  “I have no idea what is going
on.”

The lions gave me the silent treatment.

Xiaoming shuffled over in his ratty old robe and open-toed
terry slippers and undid the door.  He grunted at me from behind the long ash
of his cigarette.  His entire apartment smelled of old fry oil, stale smoke,
and chrysanthemum tea.  I followed him through the beaded curtain into the
kitchen and sat down at the table.

Mom had been terrifyingly quiet on the phone with me.  I
knew I wouldn’t be getting any presents from Santa if I didn’t find Dad and get
him home before the street lights came on.

“What happened to my dad?” I asked.

Xiaoming pointed at a folder I had seen my dad looking
through earlier.  I picked it up and flipped through.  There, on the top page,
was a crime sheet on a certain dude named “Vaclav”.

My dad had decided to start hunting down Vaclav and not
tell me about it.

Vaclav was the head of the vampires.  The Big Bad.  Vaclav
wanted to take over Earth and celebrate with a champagne pyramid, except
instead of champagne, it would be the blood of every man, woman, and child on
the planet.

He and I were not friends.

He and my dad were not friends.

And, despite the fact my dad and I had agreed that we
weren't going to take any more jobs from the old man, behind the crime sheet
was Mr. Smith's envelope, the one he had given to me when he mentioned he'd
like to keep some choice magical artifacts out of the hands of the bad guys.

This led me to believe that Vaclav and Mr. Smith were not
friends, either.

And it looked like my dad had decided to let Vaclav know he
wasn't going to be getting any love letters from our crew.

“Shit.”

“You not a lady.  You swear too much.”

“Xiaoming, I swear just the right amount,” I said, “Tell me
what happened.”

“Your father come looking for information on a vampire.  Says
man needs him to find jade comb.  Only your father bring werewolves with him to
my house.  They fight.”

“Werewolves need a full moon, Xiaoming.”

“You know nothing.  Why you so stupid?  They just need moon
in sky.  It there right now.  You look up sometime, then you not say dumb
things.”

I could think of a lot of dumb things I wanted to say in
that moment, but I figured I should find out what happened to my dad first.

“Okay, Xiaoming, my dad came here looking for a comb…”

“Your father show me that envelope and said old man Mr.
Smith need comb to fight vampires.”

So my hunch was right.  Mr. Smith was behind this latest
dust-up.  I was going to have to get him a trophy to let him know he had made
the Top 10 on my shit list.

“So what did you tell him?” I asked.

“I tell him jade comb belong to Empress.”

Xiaoming glared at me over the table as if this was all the
information a person could possibly need to go find out why werewolves had
attacked in broad daylight and why dads disappeared.

“Dude, you’ve got to give me a little more to work on.”

Xiaoming shook his head like I was a disappointment to my
ancestors, which I probably was.

“How you not know about jade comb?  You world walkers in
America are so stupid.  You not even read your own history?”

“I sucked at reading, Xiaoming.  It’s why I punch things.”

Xiaoming sat back and took a long drag off his cigarette,
settling in to tell what I was sure to be a fascinating tale.

“It brought to America by washer woman working on
railroad," he began, "With jade comb, you can jump cities.  She get
comb in China, jump, jump, she is in San Francisco.”

This guy was ridiculous.  What he was saying was
impossible.

"Xiaoming, I have been jumping dimensions since I was
old enough to wear a training bra.  You can’t jump locations in the same
world.”

“You can with jade comb.  Dimensions like hair of beautiful
concubine.  Comb wraps worlds around its teeth and you can jump one teeth to
next teeth.  Same world, threaded through comb.”

So, here’s how the whole dimension jumping thing works. 
Imagine each dimension is a sheet of paper and you have a ream of it in your
hands.  As a world walker, I’m like a hole puncher and can poke a hole in any
piece of paper and go up or down to the pages above or below.  But you can’t
jump in the same dimension.  You can walk (or drive or bus or whatever) from
one end of the paper to the next.  But in order to jump in the same world,
you’d have to fold the whole ream of paper in half and bore holes through every
piece of paper to get to the other side of the one you’re on. 

What Xiaoming was saying is that this comb could take a
single sheet and fold it like a fan.  Then, you could punch through the fold
and get to a different spot on the same page.  If this comb could do what he
said it could do... and the vampires got it first… I believe the proper phrase
is “a world of hurt”.

“Where was this comb last seen, Xiaoming?” I asked.

“I do not know.  She hid it.  But washerwoman work in
silver mining town called Calico.  Her tub now is a place for stupid tourists
to stand next to and take dumb picture for online photo album.”

Two magical hair accessories in one week and it wasn’t even
prom.  And it was all going down in Calico.  Something was up.

“Wait, Xiaoming,” I said holding up my hands.  “I was just
there.  We picked up a brass comb…”

“Brass comb to make army.  Jade comb to transport army.  Quartz
comb to protect army from silver weapons…”

“THERE IS ANOTHER FUCKING COMB?!?!”

“…and necklace to control army.”

“Wait… necklace?”

“It is very stinky.  It is made of brimstone.  It smells
like gassy old man eating old eggs.  It all supposed to make the Empress
invincible.  She is not good woman.  But washerwoman stole combs from her and
came to America to hide them.  She hide in railroad camps, but Empress came after
her.  So she went to place with silver in the ground.  Empress’s tracker could
not find her there.  Too much silver.”

The pieces all started to put themselves together.

“Wait, I just was talking to someone on The Other Side who
owned a stinky necklace.  She said it was just stolen.”

“Empress necklace has been stolen from washerwoman's
granddaughter?” yelled Xiaoming.  He let loose on a string of expletives that
I’m sure would have been jarring to even my delicate ears if I spoke Cantonese. 
I breathed deep as he paused long enough to light up another smoke.

“I’ll get it back, dude,” I said, holding up my palms to
try and get him to chill the fuck out.  "The police have me on the case. 
I'm tracking it down.  I already got the genie who was after it."

Xiaoming exhaled an angry plume, "Hopefully genie
stole it and will take it to The Dark Dimension where belong.  That magic never
supposed to be on Earth.  That is why washerwoman granddaughter was supposed to
keep it safe on Other Side.  She shames her family."

"I'll make sure to pass that along to her," I
said.  “Listen, hopefully this is all nothing.  My dad is probably off picking
up the jade comb or the quartz comb or whatever and I'll get the necklace and
that will be that.”

Xiaoming picked a tobacco leaf off his tongue and wiped it
on the tablecloth before continuing, “He bring werewolves to my apartment.”

“Sorry about that,” I said, not quite sure what he expected
me to do.  “I'm glad you weren't bitten."

"My lions are best protectors in China.  They would
not let stupid werewolf bite me."

"Well, that's great," I said, trying to figure
out how to get this conversation back on the track of where my dad might be,
"So, the werewolves came and they fought and then my dad…?”

“Poof!  He gone.”

“That doesn’t help a whole lot, Xiaoming.  Poof?  Was he
injured?  Did he say where he was going?”

“He fine.  My lions fight werewolves.  He leave.  They
leave.  Now, you leave.  Go find combs and hide them.  Get Empress necklace
back and give it to washerwoman’s granddaughter or to genie.”

“How about I find my dad and make sure he’s okay first,
Xiaoming…” I offered.

“This is your fault.  You must make better.”

“This is totally NOT my fault.”

“I help you and your father and you bring werewolves to my
house and make lions angry.  You get the combs and necklace of Empress.”

“How about YOU get the combs and necklace of Empress,
Xiaoming.”

“I am portal to China.  If I leave, portal will collapse.”

"Xiaoming, you are full of moo shu pork."

"You know so much about portal to China, wise guy?  You
not even know how to jump in same world.  You going to tell me how it
works?" he glared at me.

I pointed out, "You left your apartment just a few
weeks ago to haul Killian and I out of Chinatown on your silver handcart.  You
can leave just fine."

"That different."

"You head out to play poker with my priest, Father
Killarney, on a regular basis."

"I am on schedule now."

"Oh, so you're suddenly on some sort of important
portal schedule?"

"It my shift.  If I leave, portal to China will collapse."

I wasn’t going to argue with him, it was a losing battle, “Okay,
Xiaoming, I’ll find the fucking combs.  AND the necklace.  Where would you
suggest I begin?”

“Where washerwoman hid them.”

“Xiaoming, she hid those combs over a hundred years ago.”

“Then you start looking now, lazy.”

Chapter 12

There was no way I’d get all the way out to Calico before
nightfall just to see if I could catch some 100-year old magical trail which
may or may not be there.  Besides, after the little incident with the mummies,
I felt the need for backup before I went driving out into the middle of nowhere
to track down a "harmless" hair ornament.  Just as I was getting into
my car, though, my phone rang.  It was Dad.