Dear Cryptic Son of a Bitch, wrote Maggie. She shook her head and erased it. Dear ASSHOLE. She sighed and erased that too. They were going to read these together later, when she wasn’t feeling so frustrated, and she was no longer certain Erik wouldn’t be traumatized once he’d come this far.
Dear Fool, she wrote. Yes, that would do. WE FOUND YOU, MOTHERFUCKER! I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, or what the hell is wrong with you, but we will figure out how to get you out of there whether you help us or not!
Cousin Violet’s grubby little handprints are all over this, she added, grinning, and I’m positive if Barnaby had any say in it, he set everything up to be as stupidly entertaining as possible. He is doing very well so far. No notes!
She swiped her sleeve under her nose and collected herself with a sniff. Anyway, I bet you’re wondering how I showed up outside your window. I couldn’t tell you, and — for whatever reason — you wouldn’t talk to me. I’m going to write it out now, so you have the whole story. We are going to get you out of there, fool, I just know it. It’s going to be a total shitshow, but we will WIN!
I guess it’s already been a shitshow, she allowed. I don’t know if you were looking when we almost literally ran into you, so I’ll give you a chance to guess. Who do you think found you? If you guessed, “the guy with crippling anxiety who can barely communicate even when he’s not upset,” you know exactly what kinda story this is gonna be…
◆◇◆
Milo was sitting on a bench outside the drugstore, with a bottle of soda and a box of tissues, trying to decompress. He loved talking to Calliope and the kids, really, but it was so much harder to cope with not seeing them when he could hear them. It sounded as if they were standing just outside, as if he could go talk to them like any ordinary day, and give everyone a great big hug.
But he couldn’t, and he had to know that the whole time.
And if — although he did love Ann, Maggie, and Hyacinth very much — he was feeling a bit overwhelmed and he’d rather not talk to Calliope and the kids… There was an incredible amount of pressure to do so anyway and it was difficult for him to express why he might prefer to let Ann talk instead, even to Ann herself. They only wanted to give him whatever family time he was able to have. They only wanted to help him to be brave, so he could be happy.
He didn’t like to upset people. He’d rather upset himself. So he did it anyway, and now he just wanted everyone to leave him in peace, so he could cry some of the pain and frustration out of his body and have some chance at functioning for the rest of the day.
Hyacinth had gone into the store, buying newspapers, along with whatever else she thought looked fun. Maggie and the General were once again patronizing the movie theatre across the street; there were new newsreels almost every day. Nobody else seemed bothered about a man shedding silent tears on a wooden bench and drinking a soda, thank the gods. Oh, if somebody told him to cut that out and act normal, he’d just die.
…or set that person on fire — just as a distraction, you understand — then run away sobbing.
He supposed Hyacinth was taking longer with the newspapers than strictly necessary — so she wouldn’t kill him or invite him to set her on fire.
He sighed. It was so hard for him to cry, even when he wanted to, and he’d just about finished his soda. He was beginning to get bored. He thought he’d better go back inside, and look for her…
Just then, with a sudden squeal of rubber, a black taxi pulled up to the curb in front of him. He did a quick double take, making certain he hadn’t sat down at a taxi stand by mistake, then he slumped down and hid his tearful face behind his near-empty soda bottle. The taxi probably didn’t want him. Perhaps they wouldn’t notice him.
“Oh, it’s just a little one,” said a fussy, unseen voice on the street side of the taxi. “Does it even have more than one screen…?”
The door on the sidewalk side popped open. A medium-warm-brown gentleman stepped out. He had a black domino mask and black hair pulled into a short tail. “I don’t know,” he snapped. “But if you don’t behave yourself this time, we are going to run out of movie theatres willing to put up with…”
A tall man with long black hair and a gold butterfly mask leaned over the top of the taxi. “Just tip them, Johnny! You’re so…”
“They don’t want a tip,” said the man in the domino mask, “they want you to shut up and stop…”
The soda bottle fell out of Milo’s hand and hit the ground with a clatter. He signed slowly, almost imperceptibly: [E]YEBALL…
The taller man regarded Milo with a curled lip. “Johnny, you’re making a scene. Just pay the man and we’ll be on…”
John Green-Tara drew up short and smacked into the taxi as if he expected to fall through it. He clutched a shaking hand to his mouth.
[J]RAINBOW, Milo signed numbly — his name for John ever since the RA had been nothing but a loose organization of young people, handing out cards with phone numbers.
“…our way,” Erik finished, nonplussed. He came around to the curb side of the taxi, peering at Milo. “What…?”
“David, get back in the taxi,” John said.
Erik huffed and tossed his head. “I won’t. You said we could go to the movies. You said you found someplace I hadn’t burned all my bridges. You said they had a full bar! I am not going anywhere without…”
“David, get back in the taxi right now!” John shrieked.
Erik’s pout dissolved into an expression of concern. He turned without another word and went back inside the taxi.
Milo stood up and put out a hand to stop John.
“I’m so sorry, Milo,” John said. He stuffed a hand in his pocket and threw something on the ground at Milo’s feet. For an instant, Milo thought it must be one of those high-bounce balls you could get out of a machine for a sol — it was bright orange and it did bounce somewhat. But then it exploded in an exuberant pale pink splatter and glued his boots to the sidewalk — and his feet in the boots!
John slid back into the taxi and slammed the door. They took off, and all Milo could do was stare after them.
Surely not five minutes later — but it felt like much longer — Milo staggered into the drugstore, barefoot, and found Hyacinth chatting up the girl behind the soda counter in Prokovian.
He snatched the blonde woman by the shoulders of her puffy coat and spun her around. She looked him up and down and said, “Hon, did someone steal your shoes?”
◆◇◆
I got the whole story from Ann, afterwards, so that may be a little flowery, but that’s the gist of it. By the time Hyacinth grabbed Mom and me out of the movies, Milo was melting down like an icicle on a hotplate, and he wasn’t in any shape to tell anyone anything.
He had “I saw Erik!” on a smart card, for Hyacinth, but nothing like “and he was wearing makeup and a gold butterfly mask and a black wig, and John was with him, and they’re heading west in a taxi with the license plate number ДЯ 14-39.” The poor guy can’t fingerspell in Prokovian — he can barely do that in Anglais! He knew you guys were driving away, and it was getting less and less likely we’d find you, and he was standing in the snow with no shoes on — Hyacinth just left him in the alley behind a dumpster because the theatre made her buy a ticket to come get us.
It can’t have taken that long, because we did catch you, but we had no idea how long it was taking. We were all under a lot of pressure and we were not making good decisions, fool.
As soon as Milo saw me, he started trying to talk. He was shaking. It was like he had a stutter. All I could understand was “taxi — Erik — plate” over and over. I wanted to take off and start looking for you right away, but there are a lot of taxis out there. I said, “Milo, I need a number!” and I tried to give him my eyeliner pencil to write it, you know?
She breathed a little snicker into the palm of her hand. She didn’t want to wake anyone.
Yeah. I’m calling you “fool,” but I got so freaked out I forgot how to operate Milo…
◆◇◆
He dropped the pencil on the snowy ground and crammed his coat sleeve into his mouth. He bit down so hard, Maggie saw a fragment of down filling. Then Hyacinth yanked her backwards and shoved a coat at her.
“What?” Maggie said. She bundled up the fabric in her hands. It was Hyacinth’s own practical — and hideous — cranberry red bubble coat. When she looked up from it, she saw Hyacinth snag the zipper at the back of her dress and draw it halfway down.
“Milo, honey, take off the coat,” Hyacinth said, looking down and away. “Come on, I’ll trade you. We need Ann.”
The General tossed back her head. “For gods’ sakes…”
Maggie gave her a light swat. “Cut it out.”
Milo did not let up in his sleeve. He did not seem inclined to take off the coat.
“No one’s going to see… I won’t look!” Hyacinth spun around and began to pull her arm out of one of the simple, grey sleeves.
“Oh, frig, no,” Maggie said. Even if Ann could cram herself into that tiny thing, it wouldn’t work! She threw Hyacinth’s coat at her. “Ann wouldn’t wear that. Cin!” Hyacinth had at least stopped taking the dress off, and Maggie began undoing her own coat. “Ann only wears colours!” she said. She indicated the intricate embroidery around the V-neck of her peasant blouse, which she was quite fond of.
Hyacinth groaned. “And she doesn’t wear pants!”
Maggie winced down at her baggy trousers. “But…”
Slowly, very slowly — although they all knew this was a time-sensitive situation — Maggie, Hyacinth, and Milo swivelled their gazes towards the General, in her black peacoat and dark blue dress.
The General began undoing buttons with a sigh. “Forgive me. I know this is information everyone present already knows, but this is ridiculous. I only bother to mention it in the first place because I might as well say something while I am undressing in an alley behind a movie theatre to help a useless, insane man summon a slightly less useless and insane split personality. If you would please stand a bit closer, Magnificent. I do not think an arrest for public indecency is politic at this time…”
Maggie and Hyacinth, holding their coats, were able to block a wedge-shaped area from view. The dumpster and theatre wall did most of the work. There was a brief scuffle. When Maggie turned to check on them, the General was re-buttoning her coat, with only boots and wool stockings visible beneath — and there was another person with loose, wavy red hair, slumped against the wall in an ill-fitting, knee-length blue dress and no shoes. This person was still wearing Milo’s glasses and shivering, utterly miserable.
“Here, Ann,” Maggie said. She offered the lipstick from her purse, and collected the eyeliner from the ground.
The person in the dress removed their glasses and dabbed on some lipstick, including a blended dot on each cheek, like rouge. One swipe of eyeliner went along each lower lid, by feel. Both hands smoothed back the hair, and the frizzy lack-of-style resolved itself in neat finger-waves.
Ann capped the end of the pencil and handed it back. “Thank you,” she said softly.
“Sure,” said Maggie. “You okay?”
“John and Erik got into a black taxi with an ad for perfume on top, in white and gold,” Ann said.
“John?” said Hyacinth.
Ann put up a hand to hush her and kept talking, “Erik has a god on board, or he did when we saw him. John called him David. He is wearing a gold butterfly mask, makeup, and a long black wig…”
“What the fuck?”
“Er, honestly, they both look like that photo of them we saw in the paper,” Ann said. “They are travelling west on Second Avenue — towards the Gaslamp Quarter — and the license number is A, backwards R, 14-39.”
“Got it,” Maggie said.
There was a tearing sound of air suddenly filling an empty space, and a flash of bright white light. A pair of baggy canvas trousers wafted towards the ground, as a black and white bird winged away.
◆◇◆
I wasn’t gonna turn around and go back, so I was stuck a magpie until I could get back to my clothes. Mom couldn’t come after me — eagles can’t wear glasses and she’s blind without ‘em.
She paused and glanced over her shoulder, but it was hard to discern if her mother was waiting up or sleeping. It didn’t seem likely that her mother would read any of this.
She flipped the pencil and erased everything after the dash.
Mom couldn’t come after me — it’s not just the eyes, it’s the wingspan. Cyre is built up like crazy, and there are spires all over the place as you head downtown. The tourists love it. I’m sure you have a beautiful view from your window, but it’s not so pretty when you have to fly through it looking for a taxi with a perfume ad on it!…
◆◇◆
Well, thank the gods for traffic, Maggie thought, observing the line of cars eeling their way up Second Avenue. In the better parts of town, it was just as bad as San Rosille. These ancient pre-car city designs didn’t leave a lot of room to drive.
The sky was overcast, shadows were deep, the headlights were on, and the light was low. Night fell with a crash this far north, and seemed to get started just after noon.
Contrast was the trouble, contrast and motion. She wasn’t a raptor like her mom; though she’d be willing to eat a mouse, she didn’t have the acuity to pick one out of a field from a mile up. This corvid body of hers had evolved to be smart, to make tools and plans and memories. Her brain was taking up space that her mom’s bird form could use for eyeballs. She did have a wider field of view than a human, but there were so many things in it!
Awnings and umbrellas shed glittering ice and snow as they flapped in the breeze or bounced down the street in the hands of swift pedestrians. The frozen water between the cobbles and in the gutters gleamed like silver. The engines of the trapped cars snarled stinking exhaust. The traffic lights blinked from red to green, seemingly at random, setting off veritable stampedes at every street-corner. A man with a shiny gold saxophone and an open case played grimly, sometimes even audibly, near a bus stop. A vendor with a steaming cart sold coiled black sausages that smelled amazing. A line of flying international flags on flagpoles indicated some kind of consulate, or a hotel or pub that liked the look of one. The gulls and pigeons were out in droves.
And every last one of the goddamn cars was black!
She should’ve known this from the Arts and Leisure section, and from just walking around, but Prokovia had decided colour was passé. No, ha-ha, it was moche. Anyone rich and fashionable enough to afford a car was going to ask for the most elegant, monochromatic, depressing style possible. Basic black, please, so it flatters my pearls!
The only difference was the size. Most people wanted a practical two-seater with barely enough space in the back to fit a bag of groceries. The truly rich favoured long, sporty chassis with sneering grilles. The taxis were somewhere in between, with lighted wedge-shaped ads on the roof that winked out when they were engaged.
This meant that, unlike the average person, she wanted something other than a taxi with an obvious glowing sign on top of it. She also wanted something in gold, which would look like dim brown, with a picture of perfume on it, and probably a lady’s face or a flower or a butterfly or some shit — she was regretting not giving Ann a little more time to specify.
Dodging trees and trying to keep an eye on a brown bottle-shape that could’ve been perfume, soda, or maple syrup, she zipped around a corner and almost skewered herself on one of the goddamn decorative spires. She lost all her altitude trying to recover and bounced off the hood of a delivery van. The pale driver managed to engage the windshield wipers quickly enough to swat her in the tailfeathers, assisting her descent. She wound up in a slush puddle just off the sidewalk, with oblivious boots trodding past her.
“FACK!” shrieked the magpie, upsetting a high-heeled shoe that twisted and spilled an astonished woman into her male companion’s arms.
Maggie abandoned the romantic-comedy-in-progress and hauled herself into the air again, panting obvious white breaths against the grey sky. She perched on one of the spires, maybe the same one that’d almost made a bird-kabob of her, and observed the cars from a more comfortable, and practically useless, position. This wasn’t going to work. She couldn’t think and look and navigate this mess all at the same time.
Okay, birdbrain, she told herself. You’re supposed to be smart, so let’s strategize.
She puzzled over the bumper-to-bumper traffic, close-knit buildings, and soaring spires. The hoods and bumpers offered her a narrow, zigzagging path that she couldn’t navigate, even with her short wings. The spires at the tops of the buildings, the lampposts and the street trees made everything above about six feet an unpredictable obstacle course. However, the long, winding lanes offered a straight shot for almost three blocks in either direction.
Oh, yeah, Maggie thought. Fuck the perfume ad, we’re doin’ a grid search. Of course, if anyone happened to open their door, she’d slam right into it, but it wasn’t very likely they’d do that in traffic. Come on, Cousin Violet, she thought. I know you like being funny, but I’ve done that. Let me find him.
She whistled a little bugle call like a cavalry charge, took a breath and dove down, building up as much speed as possible, so she wouldn’t have to flap or stall out. A quick zip down the centre lane proved that Cousin Violet and Barnaby hadn’t teamed up to flatten her with a car door, and that she could cover the distance in about two minutes.
Also, every single taxi had a plate beginning in A, backwards R! It was some kind of code!
She climbed, turned, and dove again, in search of 14-39. When she found it, or thought she did, she angled her wings and shot straight upwards, then fluttered back down to confirm. After two false alarms, she caught sight of a perfume ad with a red-lipped female face on her way back down. She gave a little yelp, pulled up short, and dropped onto the roof with a thump.
She had to confirm the plate, but she couldn’t let them see her. John had run from Milo, for whatever reason. If they fled the taxi in the middle of the street, she might never find them again.
They would be riding in the back, looking forward or out the side windows. Maybe they’d heard her land on the roof. She gave it a couple minutes, standing as still as possible, with both feet gripping the peak of the dim ad. Then she stepped off, crept to the back of the taxi, and slid down the back window like she was fooling around on a playground back home. A young face observing from a nearby side window laughed and applauded, but inaudibly. She rolled over and flopped onto the fender, and then the bumper.
There, big as a billboard, was the license plate: ДЯ 14-39!
Almost smugly, but with a faint thread of anxiety, she took off again, landed atop the perfume ad, and waited for the taxi to get all three of them to their destination.
◆◇◆
John ran us all straight home, fool. Either he was hoping we’d follow you back somehow, or he’s an idiot and he didn’t think to do anything to lose me. She paused and tapped the eraser on the page. Okay, I know he’s an idiot, but that makes it very difficult for me to guess his motivation.
I took off and sat in a tree so he wouldn’t see me, but he wasn’t looking. He practically fell out of that taxi, and he dragged you and the god into the hotel. It was all glass in front, so I stood on the street and watched. That lady at the front desk did not seem to be happy to see you. I don’t think she minds John, but she threw that big white book at you, and I think she was aiming for your head. You signed it, and John shoved you into the elevator.
I tried to get into the lobby, as soon as the doors closed, but it’s two push doors and one revolving one, nothing automatic. I had to wait for someone to open a door for me, and try to sneak in. Of course, I tried to walk in and found myself walking out again, and I thought — Aha! An intent line! (Yeah. Wouldn’t it have been nice if that were all?) Well, I couldn’t turn back into a human and try to break it or get through it with no pants. In retrospect, it’s probably just as well I didn’t, but I’m still not sure what’s going on with you, so I’m not sure about that, either.
There was nothing to do but go back to the others and tell them you were definitely staying somewhere in the Hotel Vesely, and we decided we were gonna need Uncle Mordecai to help get us inside…
◆◇◆
He shuddered back to life and, in lieu of his standard freakout, he sat up right away and said, “Oh, gods, what happened?”
They all started trying to talk at once, even Milo, with shaking hands and a damp set of drugstore slipper-socks still clinging to his half-frozen feet.
“Shut up! Shut the hell up!” Once they had, the red man pointed a single finger at Maggie. “You. Talk.”
“We found Erik, he’s staying with John in a hotel, but we can’t get to him because there’s an intent line around the whole building.”
“An intent line?” he cried. “That can’t be all!”
“One presumes a spell of protection that will prevent us from summoning Erik, detecting him, or breaking in through an alternate entrance,” said the General. “Inasmuch as we have been unable to summon or detect him and still cannot. All we can say for certain is that the spell preventing entry through the front door behaves like an intent line. And, unfortunately, this is a high stress situation which makes it unlikely we can banish the thought of reaching Erik from our minds.”
“Presume?” said Mordecai. “Didn’t you check?”
“My daughter…”
“Are you,” he overrode her, “or are you not, one of the Marselline Army’s premiere countermagical virtuosos? Have you been running an elaborate con game for the past two decades? Are you, perhaps, insane? Why do you need me to frig up…” He groped mutely for a moment, but not long enough to let anyone else find a word to say. “…Two… Two… Maybe not even two lines of metaphysical code that says ‘if you want to find Erik then go bye-bye’?”
Maggie straightened to her full height and put a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “We are not fighting a war, Uncle Mordecai,” she said tightly. “We are conducting a stealth operation in a hostile foreign country. An intent line is not two lines of code, and the spell of protection on that building that includes it is certainly not.
“Now, yes, we could start screwing around with the magic, and possibly set off all kinds of alarms and failsafes, and get all of us thrown in a gulag or killed. I thought we wanted to go home and live the rest of our lives in peace, but I’m always open to suggestions.
“Or!” she declared. “Or! You can hypnotize the most suggestible man on the planet, send him up to the front desk to open a guest register I saw Erik sign not forty-five minutes ago, and find us a room number, leaving everything intact and undisturbed so we can actually do some fucking investigation like responsible adults. Does that sound like a better plan to you?”
He didn’t even bother to stand. He twisted his whole body sideways and looked up at Milo. “Ann told me never to do that again! Does she know about this ‘plan’?”
Milo nodded frantically. He dug into his coat pocket and deposited a whole handful of change in Mordecai’s lap.
They’d broken a bill of some denomination and asked for two of each coin Prokovia made. There had to be a suitable shiny object in there somewhere.
Mordecai looked down, gape-mouthed, then looked back up again, more pained. “How far away is this hotel?”
“On the other side of downtown,” Maggie said. “It looks like hell, but it might’ve been respectable at some point.”
“I am not going to hypnotize the most suggestible man on the planet and send him on a forty-five-minute cab ride through downtown!” said Mordecai. “In what fever dream do you see that not going to hell in a handbasket the very instant one of you says something like ‘go jump in a lake’? And that doughnut wench has been teaching him Prokovian!”
“Tell him to only listen to you,” said Hyacinth.
“Then what are you going to do if something else happens and you need to snap him out of it?”
“So come with us,” said Hyacinth.
Now he stood up, and he flung a disgusted gesture at all of himself. “Like this? With nothing but a fake passport you and your protégé in crime forged on the kitchen table? They kill people like me around here!”
“Erik’s running around all over town in makeup, a mask, and a wig,” Hyacinth said. “You don’t even need the wig, you’re old enough to pass with white hair.”
“What?”
Milo swatted an urgent hand on the suitcase, making them all jump. He signed at them: I HAVE MACHINE [PERFECTX3, CERTAINX3] «i have the very thing!»
◆◇◆
…It’s called “Sheer Perfection with Red Detect,” which is a Marselline trademark. I’m looking at the bottle on the desk right now, and we’ve got enough left for maybe one more field trip, if it should come to that. Ann gets it at Hennessy’s, and it looks expensive as hell. The applicator has a goddamn crystal ball on the end.
It is smudge-proof, waterproof, “perfectly sheer,” and I’m sure they killed a lot of very posh animals to develop it. It corrects for “Blushing, Flushing, Mild Burns and Scratches, Bug Bites, and Mild to Moderate Rosacea — Anything Red!” And I can tell you, they aren’t kidding…
◆◇◆
“Oh, gods!” he was complaining, as Maggie came back in with a knit cap and scarf she’d bartered from the tourists down the hall, and two borrowed pairs of boots. His ears had proven resistant, but Milo had covered everything down to his throat, even his mouth. One might call this look Anemic Chic, but it was better than Guy in Inexplicably Bright Red Lipstick.
“I look like a soda cracker!” he moaned. “Is there any reason this racist makeup needs to make me this white?”
Milo made a narrow, irritated frown and folded his arms.
“It’s Ann and Milo’s shade, just be glad it works,” Maggie said. “Here, I traded some of those souvenir pens for ‘em; two birds, one stone.” She tugged the hat on his head, covering his ears, and wrapped the scarf around his neck and mouth. She took a step back, startled and blinking. “Gods, that’s weird.”
Milo beamed and signed proudly: DAD.
Mordecai leaned in towards his plausibly non-magical reflection and turned his head from side to side. “Somebody do something stupid right now. Please. Remind me we’re idiots with no idea what we’re doing.”
“Are you trying to be funny or having a stroke?” said Hyacinth. “Let’s see you smile.”
Remarkably, he did. “Maybe both? I’m starting to think this might actually work.”
◆◇◆
…We stuffed him in the suitcase and sneaked him out of the hotel. The day clerk is a holy terror, but I prefer her to the night clerk. He talks too much. We walked right past the old lady and she didn’t say a word; she doesn’t care why we want to drag that suitcase everywhere, she already knows we’re nuts.
There’s a nice little coffee shop across the street from your hotel, with a big window and one whole toilet with a door that locks. It’s open all night! It is super convenient for surveillance purposes, and the pie isn’t bad. Mom and I sat by the window and ate, while Milo and Hyacinth unboxed Mordecai in the bathroom.
There were people going in and out of the Vesely, just like normal, but nobody used the revolving door. We were pretty sure it was just broken, nothing to do with the spell. (Milo fixed it later, so that’s a “definitely” on the door being broken. Your hotel is worse than ours, Erik.) Nobody else got turned by the line, or whatever it was, so it was a good chance we were dealing with something very specific, and maybe a little light mind control would beat it.
Then Milo came out of the bathroom all creepy and smiling, you know? I don’t want to be mean, but that’s not him, that’s never been him, that’s Ann. I love him and I want him to be happy, but I don’t want him to be Ann.
I guess Ann must be why he’s the most suggestible man on the planet. You remember how your uncle tried to get her to go for like an hour and she couldn’t? Then he tried Milo and he was out like a light. It’s like how Calliope says Milo got all the magic in the settlement. He got all the weird, too.
She flipped to the eraser. Milo and Ann might see this.
But Milo and Ann didn’t mind being weird, she didn’t think. It was a compliment. She left it like that and went on:
He went out the door and he didn’t even wave goodbye. He was just this totally ordinary human being who’d been born in the bathroom a couple minutes ago. He wanted to go get a soda at the bar at that hotel across the street, and he had no other context or identity to get in the way. A perfect intent-line-beating machine. So we hung back at the café and let him.
She stifled a snicker against her hand.
Yeah. So he went right for the revolving door that doesn’t work…
◆◇◆
Maggie clutched the blossom of braids at the top of her head, pulling in frustration. “Aw, frig. Frig!”
Milo had taken a step back and seemed annoyed that the door had the nerve to deny him his only wish: a simple soda. He tried it again.
“What’s the problem?” said Hyacinth.
“It seems most likely that the revolving door has experienced a mechanical failure,” said the General. “Magical interference is not impossible…”
Milo had backed up and attempted a running head start. The door didn’t budge.
“…but, most likely, it is simply broken.”
Milo was still trying to push his way through the door. Maybe it had budged a little. Enough to give him hope.
“Uncle Mordecai,” Maggie said quickly, “does he still have a human brain capable of innovation or is this like you wound up a toy?”
“I don’t know!” he replied. “I haven’t done it since Ann said I almost erased him!”
Milo backed up, huffed a visible sigh, and sized up the stubborn door from a comfortable distance. He approached again with his head down, determined.
“Is it possible you have erased him again?” the General said.
“I’ll go get him,” Mordecai said. Before he could reach the café door, there was an explosion of pink glitter at Milo’s approximate location. It filled the wedge-shaped segment he was occupying, entirely. The revolving door did the full three-sixty and deposited Milo, and his glitter cloud, back onto the sidewalk.
The cloud dissipated quickly, revealing a man clutching an orange fireball and making a series of angry gestures at the door — which was still somehow refusing to allow him a soda!
They all (save the General, who seemed intelligent enough to realize a total exodus would look like a dine-and-dash) ran out to get him. Milo managed one more three-sixty, threatening the door with the fireball (it did not capitulate), then they grabbed him and dragged him into the alley to the right of the entrance.
Milo made a signed, eloquent plea for a soda, his life’s only purpose!
Mordecai grabbed him and shook the hell out of him. “Wake up, goddammit! Wake up!”
Milo gave a little gasp and covered it. DOOR [BROKEN, ASK]? he signed.
NO, Maggie replied. She leaned out of the alley and checked on the fallout at the front of the building. A small woman in a blazer, probably the same one who smacked Erik with the white book, had come out of the revolving door. She looked from side to side, then she also pushed her way back in and did the full three-sixty. She gave a timid, bewildered laugh, then vanished through the door. She did not return.
WE’RE OK, Maggie signed.
“And whatever happens, it’s not your fault,” she added.
Milo cringed, wide-eyed and almost too worried to function. Right back to normal!
“However,” Maggie said, “since we’ve already started pitching magic at it…” She folded her hands and bent back the fingers, stretching them. “It can’t do any more harm to have a look at the damn thing.” She put a hand on the damp brick of the building and closed her eyes. “Show ONLY me.”
◆◇◆
…I sure am glad Mom finally gave in and fixed “show me” to work without the blinky light bars. Took her a couple decades to acknowledge we’re not having a war at the moment! — that I am aware of, she added, diplomatically. It’s way harder to figure out what’s going on when you’re not getting any information visually. But, on the other hand, nobody will call the cops on you for an unauthorized magic lightshow.
Anyway, that cage you’re stuck in is huge, and complicated, and above all else, sensibly and logically constructed. That is not your kitchen-type magic, fool, and so far as I can tell, John barely knows any. Somebody blocked off the whole building all the way down to the sewer pipes, it seems to be running on the ambient, and as far as I can tell, whoever did it banned us, specifically — by age, name, basic physical traits (bird and human!!), and personality. Forget you and John, a human being is not capable of such a thing!
So as soon as I switch off the magic and I’ve got room in my brain to think again, I look at your uncle and go, “A god did this.”
And he says, “Maggie, the police are here.”
That was not my fault. The blazer-lady must’ve called them about Milo attacking the door. We all sneaked back across the street to hash things out at the café, and wait for the joint to cool off…
◆◇◆
“How do you mean ‘super logical’?” Mordecai said, absently dunking his panini in his coffee, which was improving neither.
“Mom, don’t take this the wrong way,” Maggie said, “but this is beyond even you. I mean, like, designing entirely new non-Euclidean structures so you can pack the squares and the circles together as neatly as possible. This is inhuman efficiency. This being could, and would, neaten the way the Earth rotates around the Sun, and it would work better.”
“Well, it sure as hell isn’t David,” muttered Hyacinth. “Is your sandwich wet enough yet?”
Mordecai regarded what he’d done to his coffee, abandoned the panini with a single sad corner poking up, and pushed the cup away. “I shouldn’t be eating in this getup anyway.” He covered the whole mess with his napkin and pulled the scarf a bit tighter.
“It can’t be who I’m thinking, that’s all,” he said. “I just can’t get past her and think of anyone else. Mad Bartholomew could, and would, but it wouldn’t look like that. He likes people to know when he’s done something clever. It would light up and shoot fireworks into the air or something…”
“Go on and tell us the other one it isn’t,” said Hyacinth. “Get it out of your system.”
He sighed. “Esmerelda Virgo. ‘Inhuman efficiency’ describes her perfectly, when she’s willing to work. She does as little magic as possible and it just… Somehow it works perfectly, every time. But the thing is, she has an extremely human morality. It’s eerie, because most of them don’t. I don’t think it’s out of malice, not with most of them, I think they just don’t understand. But she seems like she does.”
He shook his head, looking down. “No. I mean, when we used her during the siege…” He looked up, pained. “She thinks like me. I knew right away when we could call her and she’d help us, because she thinks like me. She wouldn’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and I would not lock two young men in a shitty hotel in a foreign country so their families can’t come help them!”
“It’s not John’s family, it’s just us,” Maggie said. “And Calliope, and the kids, and her family… Everyone back home we might conceivably bring along to help. Even Soup and Cerise.”
“And Ann and Milo as one person,” Mordecai said.
Maggie nodded.
He sat back and laced his hands behind his head. “That’s the hell of it. She didn’t have any patience for… I’m sorry, Milo — and Ann — but she didn’t have any patience for nonsense. I’ve changed my understanding since the siege, but they seem like they’re frozen somehow. She’d probably neaten you into one person as an afterthought, if she could.”
Milo shuddered and curled up in the corner of the booth, shaking his head.
Maggie put out a hand to touch him and thought better of it. “No, we won’t let that happen,” she said. “That lady called the cops on you, anyway. You are done for today. You can change or… or even go home, if you…”
He shook his head, lifting the suitcase. Ann’s dress and makeup bag were inside.
Maggie stood to let him out of the booth. He paused beside her and signed, HUG OK, shakily.
Maggie put both arms around him and did so, gently. Then she let him go and sat back down. “Maybe it doesn’t matter,” she said. “We can’t break it or get through it, so…”
Mordecai exploded, though quietly, almost wretchedly, “What if we’ve stumbled into some fucked up situation where kidnapping two people and forcing them to call gods is the least wrong thing to do? Do you think that might matter?”
They were quiet, for a time.
“Maybe,” said Hyacinth, “but we can’t do anything about it until we know what the situation is. We want that big white book on the front desk, right? We get a room number, knock on the window, and see what happens?”
“Something like that,” Maggie said. “But we can’t get in.”
Hyacinth smiled sweetly and patted her on the head. “That’s what growing up un-wealthy does to your brain, you poor kid. This is actually very simple.” She stood, opened her purse, and began offering to pay the various diners at each table, if they’d go into the hotel across the street and steal a book.
◆◇◆
Long story short, Hyacinth watched through one of the side doors and turned and walked away very suddenly, with her head up and her hands in her pockets like a cartoon character, and we all ducked back into the alley before the security guys threw the book thief out. Turns out your average coffee-drinker isn’t so hot at sleight-of-hand, and Milo made the blazer-lady paranoid.
So, growing up rich isn’t exactly good for your brain, either, just so you know. Lacking a connection with the Cyre criminal underworld, we had to get convoluted…
◆◇◆
“That is enough!” said the General, silencing the calumny in the alleyway. “We cannot enter the building, we cannot summon the book to us, we must distract the woman at the front desk to even have a chance, and there is no amount of money in the world that will persuade a random stranger to participate in a scheme at our level of zaniness — have I defined the parameters of this absurd situation?”
“Pretty much,” Maggie allowed.
“I need a moment,” said the General. She turned and faced the brick wall, disengaging from them.
Ann opened her mouth to comment and Maggie swatted her arm. There were no further attempts at interruption.
A few minutes later, without turning, the General said, “Magnificent, are you still performing crawl spells at or above the level you managed in March of 1376?”
She meant the walking Yule tree they’d stolen from MacArthur Park.
Maggie shook her head. “Yeah, Mom, but crawl spells are, like, a prank…”
“I doubt an entity that performs magic with inhuman efficiency made any allowance for pranks,” said the General. “Do you concur, Mr. Eidel?”
He nodded. “It’s pure nonsense, sir.”
Maggie was still shaking her head. “…and I’ve got to boogie-woogie like I’m landing an airship to direct the thing, you guys.” She waved her hands and angled her whole body left, and then right, demonstrating. “From where I can see it. She’ll see me, and she already called the cops on us once!”
“I doubt that will be an issue,” said the General. “Miss Rose, are you still in possession of the miniature tape recorder which we are using to defraud the phone company?”
“Just a moment…” Milo’s things were in the suitcase. Ann stirred a hand inside and a moment later confirmed, “Right here!”
“Does it play music?”
Ann pulled up the silver radio antenna. “It does if Prokovia does!”
“We will also require a hat, or a handkerchief.”
Mordecai was wearing an obvious hat, but he needed it to cover his ears. Ann was happy to offer her toque, with the pompom, but the General rejected its softness and shape.
Annoyed, Ann matter-of-factly pulled a perfumed silk hanky out of the top of her dress — she used them for padding, and emergency sneezes. “What about this, then?”
The General collected the object, as she had done the toque, spread it open, and measured its length between her hands.
“It will do. Weigh it down with a few small stones, place one or two coins in the centre, turn on the music, and you may ‘boogie-woogie,’” the quote marks were audible, “to your heart’s content. If it is possible to make your appearance even more loud and obnoxious, I recommend doing so, but it may not be strictly necessary.”
She bowed in dismissal, turned from them, and began walking towards the back of the alley, away from the street. “Hyacinth,” she called back, “in order to keep the chaos to a minimum, I am assigning you a task. Please help me locate a back door or window to this establishment, and a suitable object to set on fire. Is that destructive enough for you?”
Hyacinth grinned and rubbed her palms together greedily. “Oh, hell yeah.”
Maggie claimed Mordecai and began dragging him towards the street. “Come on, help me look plausible!” She paused and pushed Ann back into the alley, “Don’t let anyone see you. If we get ourselves arrested, you grab the night clerk to translate and come bail us out, got it?”
“With all speed,” Ann replied, nodding.
“Here, and hold onto my coat!”
◆◇◆
Uncle Mordecai told me how to set up, once I told him what we were doing. I opened the hanky on the ground and weighed it down with a rock in each corner. I redid my hair in rainbow colours, that’s not a big deal, it’s just optical magic. I switched on the radio, so I’d be ready with some music when the sprinklers and the fire alarm — I assumed a hotel must have those — went off.
I was pretty sure, up until this point, that Cousin Violet was running this shitshow. Well, the first station I found with music was playing “Rasputin,” by Boney M., and that’s how I knew she was sitting somewhere with Barnaby, eating popcorn and laughing at us. I laughed a little, too. I knew they’d let me find you, eventually. And they did. They just have really sick senses of humour.
I swear I heard a ding. One brief ding. Then this rusty green crap that might have been water started leaking out of the ceiling, and this huge electric spark LEAPED out of the wall near the front desk. There was a big red disk over there with smoke POURING out of it.
Now, it turned out, Mom and Hyacinth found a lovely air conditioner at the back to light up, so, uh, your hotel’s sprinkler system shorted out the fire alarm and started a small, secondary, electrical fire with no help from them. I would fill out a comment card about that, but I can’t get into the goddamn building.
The blazer-lady ran off. Everyone in the lobby made for the exits, the people from the bar kinda wandered around, looking confused, and I don’t think anyone else in the building had any idea. I wasn’t going to wait for them to clear out, not with Cousin Violet playing “Rasputin” for me. I cranked up the volume on the radio and hit that big white book with the spell.
Then I started to dance!
◆◇◆
Mordecai wandered by and placed a few coins in the hanky, for added realism, but he drew up short and dropped the act as soon as he saw the total lack of fire safety going on in the lobby: “Is that supposed to be the sprinkler system?”
“No idea, stranger!” Maggie replied, beaming. Some of the folks outside might understand them, these people were tourists. She spun around once, quickly, and checked on the progress of the white book. The distraction was having some unfortunate side effects — there was a bit of an obstacle course in the lobby, and the people who were wandering away from the sprinkler drool were all standing around and watching her “busk.” She began to clap her hands, encouraging him and the rest of her audience, “Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!”
The displaced guests responded readily enough. She had no idea how Prokovia felt about Rasputin, politically, but its tourists seemed to enjoy the song. “Hey! Hey! Hey!”
“Hey,” Mordecai managed, weakly, staring into the death trap that Erik was calling home. Amid the dripping green water, and a few confused drunks, a large white book was inching its way along the tile floor, caterpillar-style. It still had about ten feet to go, and it was not getting good traction. There were a lot of puddles in the way, which Maggie was trying to avoid. They needed to be able to read the damn signatures.
A few more people threw coins into the hanky. Several raised their hands in an attempt to bestow a magic-assisted payment, which the ostensible busker refused with a shake of her head. She had to be careful — she had a Fyver account, if she raised her hand like that, the transfers might clear, and she didn’t want to show up on any records!
Maggie leaned hard to the right, and the book tried to mirror the motion. Lacking tires or even feet, its turning radius was pitiful. It swept a slow, graceful arc, and narrowly avoided the damp shoes of a man who was peering, bewildered, at the ceiling, as sprinkler water dripped into his umbrella drink. Maggie put all her weight on her right leg and hopped in a circle, shooing the book to course-correct for the door with both hands. To sell it (and because she’d overcorrected, and the book was about to plow straight into a potted plant) she shifted abruptly to the left and added a jumping roundhouse kick. “Hey!”
That got her some cheers, applause, and more coins. Also, the book was now headed straight for the revolving door.
“Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!” Maggie said, clapping to the beat and shimmying in place. “Books! Can’t! Work! Doors! They! Need! More! Mass!”
Mordecai gave a little start and looked down. The book had found its way into the revolving door and was hunching futilely against the glass.
“Three-sixty, Maggie,” he muttered, aside.
She knew. If he went in, he was going to come right back out again. “Try! To! Walk! Slow!”
He nodded, took a breath, and pushed into the door. She heard him call out, “Does anyone have change for a sinq? Of course you don’t! Don’t know why I even asked!”
He was on his way back around, and the book had gained almost enough clearance to exit the building. She aimed another kick at the book, to the sound of further cheers, caught the corner of it, and launched it into a snowbank at the edge of the street. It burrowed inside, crawling on automatic. Mordecai spilled back onto the sidewalk. The blazer-lady doused the fire alarm with a foam extinguisher. And Boney M. lamented, “Poor Prokovia!”
Maggie clicked off the radio, collected the handkerchief, and addressed the crowd as she dug frantically through the snowbank, one-handed, “Thank you! You’ve been a wonderful audience! I don’t think any of you speak Anglais, but this hotel is trying to kill you! For love of the gods, go stay somewhere else! No stars! No stars! Okay! I got it! Let’s go!”
She took off without checking to see if he’d followed her, but as soon as she’d reached the relative safely of the alley, she heard his ragged voice right behind her, “I appreciate the irony, but Erik needs that fire alarm to live!”
Hyacinth and the General, job already done, were waiting with Ann. They all said, “What?”
Maggie, more sensibly, leaned against the wall and began flipping through the book, skimming the time and date column for a signature of today’s vintage, at around one PM.
“You mean to tell me the fire alarms in that place are FLAMMABLE?” cried Mordecai. He doubled over coughing.
“Uh, you guys?” Maggie said weakly. “Uh…” She really didn’t think she could wait for him to stop. She held up the book and showed them the page. The signature was insolently large, taking up three whole lines: David Valentine! Room: 1409! Time In: 1:25 P!M! Time Out: 2:47 P!M!
“Ah-ha,” said Hyacinth. She took the book and examined it quite closely. “Mordecai, if you’re choking to death over there, please let David know I’d like him to pay me a visit and explain himself, when you see him. And if you should happen to live, do you mind explaining to me just how in the ever-loving fuck something like this is possible?”
