Tracking the Tempest (8 page)

I knew my jaw was hanging open. I'd been waiting for all sorts of shocking things to pop out of Grizzie's usually shocking mouth… but I wasn't ready to find out she was a Daughter of the American Revolution.

Grizzie ignored my reaction and kept talking. “When Boston society became too impure, my family moved to Chicago in order to start afresh in a city whose social milieu they could hand select. They did, and they controlled it with an iron fist until the city grew to a size even they couldn't control. But by then the Bathgates
were
Chicago, at least behind the scenes.”

“How?” I asked simply. What I meant was,
how
had she left?
Why
had she left? Especially when she'd been born into a family so famous in both Chicago society and politics that even I, who lived in the farthest corner of the East Coast, had heard of them?

“It's easy, Jane. Being born a Bathgate wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I was born into a world of pure privilege. And total ignorance. Don't get me wrong; I had the best schools, the best tutors, all of that.” Grizzie grinned, but the smile was sarcastic, bitter. “But I took everything for granted. I never questioned the way I was raised—the benefits I enjoyed—versus the way other people lived. If I thought about the fact that others had less than I, it was merely as a way to determine whether or not they were present to serve me or play with me. ‘Friends' were people whose mothers and fathers inhabited the same tax bracket as mine; everyone else was there to do something for me.”

Beads of sweat were forming on Salim's forehead as he pranced around me, his plump hands darting through the air like corpulent hummingbirds.

“That's how I lived for the first sixteen years of my life,” Grizzie continued, tucking her long legs up under her so she didn't trip the whirling dervish currently shearing me like a sheep.

“I firmly believed, if I thought about it at all, that I deserved everything I had and that people who didn't have everything I did
deserved
to have less. Which is called, what? Classism? And then there's the racism, sexism, and homophobia. Oh, and the hypocrisy. My peers found it perfectly acceptable to bugger their poor, black, or Hispanic gay lovers, but God forbid someone attempt to come out of the closet or say they agreed with affirmative action or suggest that
maybe
, just
maybe,
people from underprivileged backgrounds deserved access to some of the opportunities to which our silver-bespooned births gave
us
access.”

“So what happened when you were sixteen?” I asked, my voice muffled by Salim's gut as he leaned over me to do something to the back of my head that involved a seriously scary number of snips.

“I fell in love with a girl. Which, as you can imagine, went down
really
well with the establishment.”

“Ha!” Salim ejaculated, as he whirled my chair around to face Grizzie. “Went down!”

Grizzie shot him with an imaginary pistol. “Anyway, I fell in love with a girl who was also merely middle class. I don't know which was worse in my parents' eyes.” She grinned. “They banned us from seeing one another, of course. Put me into therapy for ‘inversion,' since in my parents' world it's still the mid-1800s. But of course I rebelled, and eventually my girlfriend and I did what any star-crossed lovers worth their salt do. We emptied my bank account, stole a bunch of my mom's jewelry, and ran away.”

I was literally on the edge of my seat at this point, partly because I was wrapped up in Grizzie's story but also because my body was being dragged forward as my hair self-consciously attempted to escape the Lebanese lunatic assaulting it. I nearly died when Salim cut Grizzie off by starting up the blow-dryer. I blanched as I realized that now was the time on “Sprockets” when I got “cut dry.”

When he was finally finished, Salim picked up a different set of scissors and a comb. I closed my eyes, unable to watch. All courage had failed me.

“And?” I squeaked, prompting Grizzie.

“Obviously, the money that seemed to be
so much
when we stole it lasted about six months. And then the girlfriend went back home. Her parents had joined PFLAG, decorated their house with rainbows, and welcomed her back with open arms. But in running away, I saw the world for what it really was. I was scared, way too young, and in way over my head, but going back home would have required me volunteering for a lobotomy. I literally couldn't conceive of going back to a place that was so… pointless. I realized that all we did, as a social class, was circulate money. And I wanted to
live
.”

Salim's motions were slowing, his snips growing more considered. I knew he was finishing up. But I refused to open my eyes until the bitter end. Then, when I discovered I looked like Vin Diesel, I could burst dramatically into tears and make him feel at least a little guilty.

“So I did a lot of crazy shit to survive. You know where it all ended up: with Dusty Nethers committing unspeakable, if rather titillating, acts of depravity for money. There are a million things that I wish I had done differently, and a thousand things I regret. But I never regret breaking with Amelia's world. Never. Although ‘Amelia' does go back, sometimes, to monitor her trust fund and to pay homage to the womb that bore her.”

“How were you not disowned, Grizzie? Your family can't have accepted who you are now, let alone who you've been?”

Grizzie laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “First of all, you have to understand that my world thrives on appearances and runs on toadying. So who is going to tell my mother a truth she wouldn't want to hear? She'd be more than happy to shoot the messenger. As for my disappearances, she doesn't want to know the truth any more than I want to tell her. So she accepts my lies about doing degrees in Paris, or volunteer work in Africa, and doesn't ask questions. Plus, I am a totally different person when I'm Amelia. A person I don't know if even you, Jane, would recognize. I doubt many people have made the connection between Dusty and Amelia. And, while I'd love for my mother to know Grizelda Montague and her loving wife, Tracy, I also know that's not going to happen. Anyway, I'm glad ‘Dusty' has been shelved. I won't even get into ‘Crystal' or ‘Tyler'; they were just disasters. But now, for most of the time, I get to be me: I get to be Grizzie.”

I opened my eyes to find myself still facing her. She smiled at me, and for a split second, I saw all the women Grizzie had been layered over each other in a complex tapestry of experience. Then they resolved themselves into the woman I knew, sprawled in a salon chair and practically glowing with a sense of place and self-contentment. I blinked back tears.

Granted, it was partly because I'd caught a glimpse of just how much black hair was currently drifting around my feet.

“How?” I asked, keeping my mind off my imminent hair horror. “How did you find Grizzie?”

My friend smiled. “Easy, kid. I found Tracy. I met her when I was really down. I was in that talk-show jargon ‘bad place.' I really wanted out of the industry, but didn't know how. I didn't know how to live as ‘Amelia,' but all my constructs were nearly as disastrous, just in different ways. Then I met Tracy. And she
saw
me. I mean, really
saw
me. I know I sound totally full of bullshit, but it's the truth.” Grizzie blushed, looking down. “I looked in her eyes, and there I was.”

I'd just started to ask a question when Salim tilted my head up to peer at me and then grunted hard. He whisked my chair around so I was facing the mirror, placing another mirror in my hand so I could see three hundred and sixty degrees.

I gasped, awestruck. My hair was
amazing
. It was still long, well past my shoulders, the burned patch camouflaged by the clever cut. Salim had even integrated my mostly grown-out bangs so that my hair was seamless and healthy and lovely. If I hadn't damned well known that he'd dry hump me in response, I would have thrown my arms around my perverted little saviour.

“Salim,” I breathed. “It's beautiful.”

He merely grunted. “Of course. You had doubts? Salim is a genius.” He mopped his brow with a purple silk handkerchief. “I am exhausted. You refresh me?” he inquired, waving his singular, and singularly impressive, eyebrow at me.

“Easy,” Grizzie commanded, unfolding her long frame to stand behind me and play with my new hair. Her eyes met mine in the mirror and she frowned.

“Now we talk about you. And Ryu.”

I blanched, setting the mirror down in my lap.

“Don't worry, hon. You know I don't give advice,” she said. “I've made enough mistakes for four hundred women, and I have no business telling anyone how to live their life.” She paused, thinking. When she started speaking again, her voice was soft. Hesitant. As if she wasn't sure how I'd react.

“You keep saying that things with Ryu are complicated. But I know you really like him. And I know you need time to figure shit out, especially after Jason and everything you've been through. But I don't want you to be afraid to take risks. If it's worth it… If the person in his eyes is the person you want to be, the person you know you could be… then don't be scared. That's all.” She tugged my hair roughly, her deep voice roughening as her confidence reasserted itself.

I thought about what she said. I knew it was good advice, even if I didn't know exactly what to make of it. I had come a huge way since that night in the cove, so many months ago, when I'd made peace with Jason's death. But I also knew a body didn't recover from something like that overnight. Grizzie was also spot on in calling me out on the fact that my constant reply to questions about Ryu was, “It's complicated.” I sounded like Facebook. But our relationship
was
bloody complicated…

“You okay?” she asked, tugging again on a thick lock of my hair.

“Yeah, Griz. I am. I'm just thinking about what you said. And it makes sense. Thank you.” I leaned my head back so that it nestled in her soft belly, looking up to meet her eyes with my own. “And thank you for telling me your secret. I'll keep it close.”

“I know you will, hon. And you're welcome.” She leaned down to kiss me on the forehead. I closed my eyes, so glad of Grizzie's friendship and the trust she'd just shown in me. She left her lips pressed to my forehead for a few seconds until she rounded out the gesture with a typical Grizzie gesture. As she stood, she swiped her tongue over my forehead, causing me to squirm.

“Ewwww, Griz!”

She snickered, high-fiving Salim. “Quit yer whinin'. And let's go so we can take you to the Sty and show off your new hair, you sassy minx…”

I rubbed my sleeve over my damp forehead, laughing as Grizzie pulled me from the chair. I paid Salim, who gave me the “Grizzie discount,” thank the gods, since the prices on the chart behind him were ridiculous. Then Griz and I headed out the door. It was a beautiful night in Eastport: The sun had set an hour ago, but it still tinged the sky so that around us shone a swathe of sapphire blue. I could hear the sea beckoning, and I promised to join her soon for our nightly frolic. I sighed contentedly. My family was safe; my friends were safe; I was training and growing my magic and working. All was well with the world and, now, with my hair.

What more could a girl ask for?

CHAPTER EIGHT

A
fter work the next day, I went to Nell's to train, as usual. Caleb and Daoud were with my dad. Scheduled to leave tomorrow, they were furiously trying to fit in as many hands of poker as they could to try to recoup their losses, alongside their wounded pride.

Despite, or maybe because of, the threat of Conleth, Nell and I had not stopped our daily meetings. For that first week, while the threat had loomed, we'd worked on beefing up my shields even more, but now that caution had abated, we'd moved to glamours for the last few days. Unfortunately, I'd discovered I sucked at creating them. My brain just couldn't make the connection between forming an image and then projecting that image. Nell told me it was because I was thinking in terms of physical, rather than magical, laws, but I had no idea what the hell she meant.

That said, I may not have been looking forward to training, but I was very much looking forward to getting to the cabin. I'd sucked down a coffee before leaving work, and I was seriously about to pee in my pants. The gnome was going to have to open her house for me, or suffer the consequences.

I hotfooted it through the growing dusk of the evening, up the rocky driveway toward the main door of the cabin. As I mounted the stairs, I noticed that the front door was open, although the screen door was shut. Nell almost never left the doors open, so I didn't try to enter, but walked around the wraparound porch to the back door, as usual. Unusually, however, it was open as well.

“Hello? Nell?” I called, placing a hand on the screen door's handle but not pulling. I could see the bathroom beckoning me, but after what had happened in Boston, I wasn't taking anything for granted.

I peered around the dim interior of the cabin until I thought I saw someone: a large, man-shaped shadow upstairs on the wall of the open loft that was the cabin's only bedroom. I backed away from the door, raising my shields cautiously.

“Nell? Are you there?” I called, suddenly nervous. “Are you okay?”

“Easy, Jane. It's me,” came a growling voice as the dark shadow melted down the loft's stairs and toward the door.

“Anyan.” I grinned, relief flooding through me.

A huge dog padded into the glare of the porch light, his red-tinged black coat as thick and shaggy as I remembered. His tail wagged and his mouth was split in a doggy grin, tongue lolling.

Anyan Barghest lived in the cabin with Nell when he was around, which wasn't often. He would pop in every three weeks or so, stay for a day or two, and then be off again. I think he used to live there full-time, but after what had happened at the Compound last November, Anyan had been mostly MIA.

He pushed open the screen door with his broad head. “C'mon in. Nell will be here soon.”

I walked inside, eagerly inhaling the cabin's delicious scent of lemon wax and cardamom. I hadn't been inside in a while, but everything was the same. A huge kitchen dominated one half of the cabin, replete with a gorgeous Wolf restaurant range and equally impressive Sub-Zero fridge and freezer. The rest of the cabin contained a rectangular trestle table that would probably seat twenty and a seating area full of comfy, overstuffed furniture covered in battered brown leather.

I jumped when Anyan nuzzled his cold nose into my fingers, and then laughed as he maneuvered his head under my hand. Obligingly, I scratched the base of his fuzzy, erect ears, the tips of which were just about level with my breasts. I might be a small woman, but he was one giant dog. For a second, I considered throwing my leg over him and riding him like a pony. Then I thought better of that idea.

“How have you been?” he asked.

“Oh, fine. Busy. How about you?”

“Fine,” he chuckled. “Busy. I got back as soon as I could, when I got Ryu's messages. But all seems quiet?”

I nodded, scratching downward from his ear, down the ticklish crevice where his cheek met his neck, and then underneath to his chin.

“It's good to be home,” he panted, helping my quest by tilting his head, obligingly.

“When did you get back?” I asked, just as I hit a sensitive spot and he closed his eyes and growled in doggy pleasure. He did love a good scratching.

“Just a few hours ago. I was napping.”

I thought of the big shape upstairs. The big man shape.

“Oh,” I said, withdrawing my hand, feeling my face flush. Anyan was a barghest, a two-formed like my mother. Only he could shape-shift between a dog and a man. And by dog, I meant the hellhound whose ears I'd just been scratching. And by man, I meant a huge, very muscular, rugby-thighed, gorgeously gadonked, throw-you-over-his-shoulder male. And I know this because I had been thrown over his shoulder, while he was naked, where I got a good gander of the whole thighs-slash-gadonk combo.

We'd never talked about what happened at the Compound, and I'd dealt with everything by convincing myself that man-Anyan and dog-Anyan were two entirely different entities. Which I knew was inaccurate, but it was also an easy delusion to maintain, as I never saw man-Anyan. I'd met Anyan when he was furry, and I had only seen him furry since, except for that time he'd saved my life at the Compound. Because of this, I had no trouble forgetting there was a man inside the gargantuan puppy that played Frisbee and liked his belly rubbed. Every once in a while, however, I was reminded of the truth, which made things decidedly weird.

“Are you all right?” he rumbled, scanning my black eyes with his gray ones, until he leaned down to nuzzle my fingers again. “You look tired.”

I smiled. “Just busy. And I hate glamours, by the way.”

He chuckled, a gravelly sound that should have sounded abrasive but didn't. “They're tough. You'll get it.”

I sighed. “I hope so. 'Cause they're killing me right now.” Suddenly, a stabbing pain emitted from my bladder as it reminded me, brutally, of its existence. “But I really need to pee. I mean, I need to use the ladies' room. Excuse me.”

Mortified, I waddled off, practically cross-legged. I placed my messenger bag on the granite worktop of the kitchen's island before leaping toward the bathroom off the kitchen.

While washing my hands, I admired the huge piece of ironwork that I could see reflected in the mirror from the opposite wall. I loved all the art with which Nell had decorated her cabin—the gnome had oodles of good taste crammed into her tiny body. Most of the work had, I think, been done by the same artist, as many of the pieces showed consistent use of color, and there was something about the way the artist drew those big, liquid eyes that made me think it was all done by the same person. That said, the styles were very different, ranging from stuff that seemed really classical and old to really new stuff that looked almost like Japanese manga. But my favorite piece was this one, hanging in the bathroom. It was like an iron version of a graphic novel: full of strange little caricatures doing fantastical things. I didn't recognize any of the characters, but from what I could tell, it told the story of one group of odd beasties and people getting the better of another group of odd beasties and people—sometimes through trickery, sometimes in battle, and sometimes apparently by accident. It was massive, taking up the entire space of the large wall it hung on, and I loved how it was like the fine-art version of a magazine rack next to the toilet.

When I'd finished up in the bathroom, I went back into the kitchen. I was standing there, contemplating how the hell tiny little Nell could reach any of the massive appliances, when Anyan called from the porch that he and the gnome were ready.

I walked outside warily, afraid Nell would pull one of her favorite tricks and ambush me with her tiny mage balls. She was on her best behavior, however, sitting on her little rocker in the circumference of the porch's light and chatting with Anyan and Trill while the last dregs of dusk filtered out from the night sky.

When they were finished, we started working. And just like the past three days, I kept fucking it up. I would have what I wanted to do in my mind, but it just wouldn't translate into effect. I was trying to make myself unseen, which was the most common type of glamour. I wasn't supposed to make myself invisible, but to make myself… unnoticeable. No matter how many times I tried, however, I remained utterly tangible, totally visible, and increasingly hacked off.

“Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!” I shouted, finally, as I felt the little bubble of power I'd accumulated burst within me, creating a little sparkle in the air around me, but nothing more.

Nell sighed, and even she looked pissed. The damned gnome had a perpetual smile plastered on her face, so for
her
to lose patience told me just how crappy I was at glamouring.

She looked like she was about to give me a dressing down when Anyan interrupted.

“Nell, may I?”

The gnome nodded, giving Anyan a look that clearly said, “Good luck, sucker.”

“Sit down, Jane,” the big dog instructed. I did so, cross-legged, happy to take a load off. I'd been standing there
not glamouring
for well over an hour.

Anyan sauntered over and then sat directly in front of me, so close that the tips of his paws brushed the front of my shins. His intense gray eyes stared into mine, and I forced myself not to look away.

“You're focusing too much on what you want to see. This isn't about sight; it's about perception.”

My brow furrowed, but before I could protest that I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, he asked me to shut my eyes.

“And keep them shut. Don't try to see; don't think in terms of sight. Just open yourself and feel me. Feel what I do.”

So I did, and I
did
. Anyan's strong magic pulled me inward, and I felt what he was doing. With my eyelids shutting out my reflexive reliance on visual imagery, it suddenly all made sense. His magic didn't make an image; it didn't try to do some
Predator
chameleon thing, or Kevin Bacon's
Invisible Man
watery silhouette, both movie images I'd had in mind when I thought “unnoticeable.” Anyan didn't try to look like anything at all. Instead, he just deflected interest. He had a type of barrier, built just like a defensive shield, but this one wasn't about deflecting weapons. Instead, it emanated a bored whisper of
bland, boring, nothing to see here
.

I shifted my own power, imitating his. It took me a while, and knowing what I was supposed to do was never the same as actually doing it. Eventually, however, I felt it. I felt myself blanketed in a power that wearily insisted on my status as a nonentity. I opened my eyes, slowly, to find the barghest still watching me, his tongue lolling as he smiled, doggy-style. I smiled back, my heart filled with that fierce joy that comes when something formidable has finally been conquered.

Anyan and I were so wrapped up in our little moment that we didn't hear the first scream. But we heard the second. Trill's shriek of pain cut through our reverie, and suddenly I noticed she was on fire. Then she was rolling, putting herself out, and above her Nell was floating in midair, power crackling around her tiny form like she was one of those static-energy balls they have in science museums.

The barghest crouched in front of me, ready to fight. We raised our shields almost simultaneously and then seamlessly blended them together, my water flowing through his combined air and earth to create a wall of elemental force that was virtually impenetrable.

Which was lucky, as right then a blast of fire streaked across the pasture toward Anyan. It was red and angry, and it was backed up by a pummeling wave of power so fierce that, even behind our übershield, I staggered under its onslaught.

I went to one knee but no farther, for Anyan was there, bracing me with his massive shoulder. Engulfed in fire, we barely kept it at bay with our shields. We were as yet unharmed, but fire and snapping energy were everywhere.

Only then did my dazzled brain put together what had just happened.

I may have fled Boston for my own safety, but all I'd accomplished was bringing danger directly to Rockabill and the people I loved.