"Hold it! I have a new spell," I yelled, before Gary could call my damage.
Confused expressions lit the faces of my party. I paused long enough to enjoy that before proceeding.
"How about this?" I said, and pulled some twigs from my bag.
"I don"t remember this being part of it," Gary said.
I smiled at that and tossed the sticks at Daryl and Trent. As they tumbled in the air, I muttered a few things and watched the sticks lengthen, fatten, and begin to writhe... and rattle.
Slack jaws and wide eyes grew as hands and arms shot up to protect their faces. It happened pretty fast, but I think they each took four or five bites. "It"s a f.u.c.king game!" they were yelling, as they scrambled out the door.
I never heard their motors start, so I"m thinking good thoughts there.
Brian, of course, wasted little time coming right through the table at me. "You"re an a.s.shole!" he shouted. "Just a crybaby pouter over a stupid magic-user character. Did you ever wonder why we let you take the fall for Stormbringer..." A s.h.i.t-eating grin curled in the pinched face barreling down on me.
As my chair began to topple back, I fished the fireball jawbreaker from my bag and made one easy motion toward Brian"s chest. Heat scorched out from my palm in a blast, singeing the hair on my knuckles and wrist and venting in a lateral geyser, slamming Brian back against the far wall. I hadn"t planned it, but Floyd got caught in the blast. Good fortune.
Their bodies dropped in a flaming heap, the smell of burning flesh already thick in the small room. I took a bit of delight in seeing Daryl and Trent"s character sheets as so much melted plastic and ash.
That"s when I looked over at Gary, hiding behind his Dungeon Master screen. There emblazoned on the two trifolds were matrixes for hits and damage and terrain movement, and they quaked with the fear of a bald DM. The guy who hadn"t had the b.a.l.l.s to call his players on their ethics when they"d left me to die twenty years ago so they could take possession of a f.u.c.king sword.
I mean, for G.o.dssakes, Gary was a school counselor, even then. He should have known better, right? The whole idea of role playing is to better the self. To rise to heroic action you can"t sustain in real life. Didn"t they get that? Even now. Didn"t they just f.u.c.king get it?
I did.
I spent a lifetime making it real.
And someone had to be accountable.
Someone had to do the accounting.
Reunion, indeed. Everyone just the same as twenty years ago... until I was through with them.
I pushed the screens down and caught a sheen off Gary"s sweaty forehead. "Ain"t so funny this time, is it, pal? I mean, what the h.e.l.l was that, you having a character in the d.a.m.n party. Everyone knew you were angling for Mourne Blade, sister sword to Stormbringer. You can"t do both, man! You can"t play and DM. You"re either in or out. You"re either playing or making it happen!"
"You"re not talking about a game anymore, are you? We can talk about that."
"Save the counsel, Gary. The semester of psych won"t work on me. Maybe your twelfth graders, but I graduated from that business twenty years ago..."
Gary sat frozen for a long time, his eyes darting back and forth like a rabbit in a trap. Loved that. Then he asked, "What do you want?"
I knew he was stalling, but I also wanted to tell him. And besides Brian"s burning body, there wasn"t anything else to be distracted by, so I let it out. "I wanted you to take it seriously, man! No bulls.h.i.t pacts with members of the party. You were supposed to be above that!"
"But-"
"You sold me out!"
That"s when I pulled the deli toothpicks from my bag. The ones with the little frayed ends, used to hold large sandwiches in place.
Like little arrows, they are.
I didn"t really notice Gary"s pleas. That"s typical, I imagine, of those receiving a reckoning, right: pleas. I"m pretty sure the a.s.sinians told me that, too. The power of G.o.d manifest to men in the flesh was about reckoning-thus sinners wanting rest.i.tution when they think G.o.d"s a wink away.
So, he was blubbering something, his eyes darting again and again. And in the end, just as I called forth the most inane spell imaginable to put an end to the miserable son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h, I think his face was less concerned with dying and more with something he was looking at.
Magic missile.
Three arrow ""ideas" pulled from smaller forms lit the room and air and dove into Gary"s face and chest. He gurgled a bit as he fell to the floor. I believe he flopped once or twice with indignity.
Liked that, too.
And that"s when the first of two things happened.
As I stood and looked down at Gary"s body, feeling vindication at last, I felt my vision tug around to the place he"d been spying as he prepared to die.
Peering around the entry to the kitchen were two small faces, both agonized and wanting to run to their father, both afraid to enter the room, frozen in their pain and fear.
I hadn"t known Gary was a dad.
I felt the pain of it hit me. A G.o.dd.a.m.n game. Old Ironsides. Revenge pushing me to Rome and a hundred nights in a dark forest reading and studying the ancient ritual for calling the form from the artifact to impose my will on another.
l.u.s.ts in the body and the blood that might have lain dormant until this friggin" reunion.
It was just a stupid sword.
Why did I care?
Before I could answer, the second thing (the last thing) happened that night.
Dave showed up.
The screen opened slowly-he must have seen Daryl and Trent out on the lawn somewhere-screeching on its hinge. And when he stepped inside, I smiled in spite of myself.
Seeing me standing over Gary"s body, he asked in a calm voice, "What the h.e.l.l happened here?"
"A bit of vengeance a long time in the coming."
Dave looked down at the two kids, who immediately ran for the safety of his strong legs.
It took him only a moment to put it together. "All because of a sword?"
"Your character was asleep, but I think you"d have stopped it. Paladins are Lawful Good."
Which was why I smiled and what made it so ironic that Dave should come late again, tonight. Somewhere along the way, he"d made his own transition from fantasy to reality in the form of a Utah State Patrolman.
And me without anything to do a Knock spell as Dave pulled out his cuffs.
Treasure.
by Leslie Claire Walker.
The blonde girl in the faded green sweatshirt couldn"t have been more than nineteen. She handed over her grandmother"s mirror with the same desperation all Adeline Morgan"s p.a.w.n customers brought into her kitchen.
Despair was Addie"s particular magic, after all. She drew it to her. Held it close. She could smell desperation like dry rot wafting under the scent of the chocolate chip cookies baking in her oven.
Her magic had given her purpose. Once upon a time, she"d had nothing to call her own. Now, among her many treasures: A book of prophecy that only worked if you sacrificed a human heart. A gla.s.s eye that blinded everyone it regarded-in an opaque case, of course. The oldest written love spell in the US of A, on yellowed, brittle paper. It had caused a murder-suicide, last Addie knew.
All of these things were more precious to her than a whole bankful of hundred dollar bills. All of them evil.
This girl"s mirror with the silver waves carved into the back, this prized possession? Evil. If the girl didn"t p.a.w.n it here, it would destroy her life.
Addie gazed into the mirror by the dappled midwinter sunlight that streamed through the window. Her reflection looked exactly fifty years younger than she actually was. Hmm. The Mirror of Memory Lane. Clever, clever. After all, who at her age wouldn"t kill to look twenty-two again? Or to be twenty-two again? Some previous owner of the mirror had probably done just that.
"I"ll give you fifty bucks," Addie said.
"But it"s special."
To the kid, sure. d.a.m.ned if Addie could remember her name. "I"m telling you what it"s worth on the street."
The girl"s eyebrows climbed all the way to her hairline. "You"re gonna sell it?"
Not on a cold day in h.e.l.l. She never sold the items her customers brought her. She kept them here. Safe from their owners, and their owners safe from them.
"You have a month to buy it back," Addie said. "Those are the rules. You knew "em when you came here."
The girl nodded. Jennifer. That was her name.
Jennifer would p.a.w.n her precious, poisonous heirloom. Then she"d forget about it as soon as she walked out the door, like all the rest of them. She"d go on to live a happy life-or whatever life fate had in store for her.
"Seventy-five," Jennifer said.
"Fifty-five. Not a penny more." The timer on the counter buzzed. Addie grabbed a pot holder.
Jennifer glanced away, gaze moving over the small, homey room, its walls of shelves filled with previous acquisitions. "What you saw, that"s not all it does."
Addie wouldn"t be surprised. Still, she shook her head and pulled the sheet of chocolately, gooey goodness from the oven.
"I got rent to pay," the girl said.
How original. "So do I."
The girl rocked forward and craned her neck to take in the narrow hallway off the kitchen that led to the rest of the house. It was much bigger inside than out, deceptively so. In point of fact, the inside of the house went on for nearly a mile. An unwary stranger could (and had) easily become too lost to ever find her way out. Some of them, Addie had never found their gnawed bones.
Jennifer shivered, settled back on her heels, and frowned. "But you"ve lived here forever. That"s what they say."
Addie"d been here so long this part of Houston had not only grown up but gentrified around her. From the outside, her little shotgun house on its small overgrown lot with its peeling brown paint was an eyesore. The city kept trying to tear it down. Bulldoze a house of magic? Good luck.
She put the tea kettle on to boil. "The devil doesn"t care whether the mortgage on this place is paid off, missy. Fifty-five. Take it or leave it."
In the end, the girl walked out clutching her worthless claim receipt, with cash in hand and a complimentary cookie. And Addie spent her teatime sipping on Earl Grey, munching, and gazing at her younger self, dropping crumbs onto the looking gla.s.s.
Once upon a time, she"d had auburn hair that fell in thick waves to the shoulders, dusky olive skin, bright brown eyes that turned near to black when she got angry. She"d have been a beauty if not for the bruises, the too-hollow cheeks, the track marks she couldn"t see in the mirror but knew were there on her twenty-two-year-old arms nonetheless.
She"d wanted to save up money back then. To get out of the neighborhood, find a nice apartment, have a little fun. She never got the chance. Instead, she got booted from home and every place she stayed after that until Hot Corner Fred became the only person she could turn to. She turned tricks for him, and she got high when he wanted or he tuned her up.
He made her cringe. He made her feel like a coward.
She saw a ripple in the mirror and blinked. Her reflection had changed-it wasn"t even hers anymore.
Fred"s image filled the looking gla.s.s. Chin raised into the wind. Lips curved. Mean baby blues. Hadn"t he been something? Yes, he had. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d.
What comes around goes around, even if it took a few lifetimes for fate to catch up. He"d gotten his, hadn"t he? She"d made sure of it.
The reflection rippled again. Addie held her breath, waiting to see which face from her past would come clear next. Slowly, she picked out the new features.
Eyes: too shiny green, with the whitest whites she"d ever seen. Like a doll"s. Nose: acorn. Mouth: a st.i.tched, uneven line of black thread, cross-hatched with little black thread Xs. It had stick arms and legs and hands and feet. Fingers crafted of brown and black safety-pinned b.u.t.tons. It wore a yellow baby bonnet, a yellow polka-dotted matching shirt and bloomers.
She"d made that thing. Created it on the worst night of her life. The night she fell into the pit of h.e.l.l and clawed her way out. She"d made a deal with the Fae. She"d s.n.a.t.c.hed a baby. Kidnapped a human child and replaced it with a changeling, that stick figure in the mirror, Fae-charmed to resemble the human child in every detail.
The Fae told her she wouldn"t regret it. She"d never see the baby or the changeling again. None of it would come back to haunt her. And she"d believed him. After all, remorse had never been her strong suit.
What freaked her out the most? Not only could she see the poppet, the poppet saw her. It glared at her, in point of fact.
It couldn"t be a coincidence that this mirror found its way to her. Coincidences didn"t happen to people like her. No. Her past had come back to haunt her.
If so, she was in way over her head. She needed help. Asking for it could get her killed-or worse. Bargains with the Fae required absolute adherence to the letter of the agreement. Breaking the contract resulted in a fate worse than death. No mercy.
She"d vowed never to tell a soul. That she"d allow no one to find out what she"d done.
She trusted exactly one person enough to go to him with this. Michael. He had a strong, true gift for seeing into people and things. What"s more, he could gauge patterns and motivations.
She"d known him since grade school, when they"d been best friends. h.e.l.l, they"d been only friends. They"d lost track of each other after high school. She"d always counted that a blessing. He never knew the things that"d happened to her. The things she"d done to survive. It was better that way.
That way, she"d always be the girl who lived around the way, the one who traded him bologna sandwiches at lunch, whose laugh made him smile.
He was the only person in the world to whom she"d ever come close to confessing what she"d done or why. In the end she hadn"t because of what would happen to her if she broke her end of the Fae bargain-and because he just plain didn"t need to know. He would"ve fallen out of love with her faster than she could blink.
Even so, when the Fae came calling again to ask for another "favor," Mike protected her. Although he didn"t ask her direct questions, he asked plenty of indirect ones. The kind she could answer without breaking oaths.
He figured out too much. Put himself in danger. Her, too. She couldn"t have that. If he wouldn"t stay out of her business for their own good, she"d put him out. She married him because of his bravado-and divorced him for it, too.
They stayed close after they split. He brought her things. Half the treasures on her shelves, in fact. They did business together, too, sometimes. Traded information.