“Hi.”  There was a pause, and a breath taken as if she was going to say something more, but I gave it a brief conversational moment, and nothing happened.

“Hi,” I responded, guardedly.  It always seemed safe to respond with the same wording the other person used.  The mirroring communication techniques were part of some feminism class I’d taken, and while I think I’d forgotten all the history of it, I was at least still putting some of the lessons to use.

She didn’t say anything.  I glanced at the phone in the off-chance that I’d lost connection, but no, the seconds were still ticking by on the phone’s counter.  I shrugged, glanced at Wrecks and said, “OK.  Tell me everything.”  It probably wasn’t a fair question.  I mean, how do you even begin, except with the zen hotdog joke?

“Grandma,” she responded.  Not a bad answer, actually.  I was going to say something more, but she continued.  “Did you know that the Venn diagram between witches and computer programmers has a very wide overlap?”

I grinned.  “I could have guessed.  `Ten, print, Hello world.  Twenty print, This is my book of shadows.'”

“Really?” she asked, sounding exasperated.  “BASIC?  Why not go real old school and draw something out in LOGO?”

“Um, that was the one with the turtle and the directions like a really slow Etch-a-Sketch, right?”

“Yeah.  That’s a registered trademark owned by The Ohio Art Company. But you have the right idea.”

“I guess I could remember enough to draw a pentacle, but only if it did diagonals, and that’s where it would end.  Yeah, it did diagonals.  You could go forward then right 45 degrees then forward again.  So pentacles, totally.”

“You never studied.”

“Is that a ‘Ghostbusters’ reference or are you touting your advanced degree again?”

“Can’t it be both?  Oh wait, you studied how to get drunk, laid, and then sober enough to tell your teacher where to shove her opinions on Ray Bradbury before you walked out.  Did that take a lot of book learning?”

“Hey, what can I say, girls liked a man who could stand up to a tyrant, especially a tyrant who downgraded them when they wore pants on test days.  I was real popular for a while.  That’s not book
learning, that’s book … writing.”  I was smooth, real smooth.

“Real popular with everyone but the parents, if I recall correctly. Anyway, that segues well with my point.  You take a dash of Grandma and mix her in to the general experimentation of college, and you meet a lot of people.  A lot of odd folk, like a group of Numancian demon hunters.  Like Roberto.”

“Newmancy?   New Man-cy kind of Aubry Knight-like?  New mantids? Insects spirits?  Universal Brotherhood types?  I don’t get it.”

She sighed. “They were a Celtiberan settlement at war with Rome. ‘We’d rather die free than slaves,’ types.  It’s complicated and like a lot of things over two millennia has kind of drifted from the original intent.”

“Celtiberan.  Irish-Russian?  No, Irish-Spanish.  You said you owned him,” I recalled.  “That sounds like a slave type.”

“Do you really want to know that much about my sex life?” she asked.

“No, he hinted enough.  Ewww, gross.”

“Now you say it like that and I feel like I’ve got cooties or something.”

“You’re a girl, and related to me.  I thought it was part of the package.”

“Certified cootie-free.  Anyway, I was kidding.  It actually tweaks him a bit, and he got me back by playing idiot studmuffin for the rest of the day.”  She sighed.  “So, once you presume that Grandma was onto something and that there were demons, your worldview kind of grows to envelop all sorts of other possibilities, like the fact that some of your brother’s associates call him ‘Doctor.’  Even though you know he quit school.  ‘Doctor of what?’ you ask innocently, well, innocently enough when you’re wearing nothing but some adequate Victoria’s Secret, and they say, ‘Um, Portal Doctor.’  Probably where you want me to quit this story because you’re squeamish.”

“Well, yeah, and not just because I just realized how kind of dumb it sounds.  At least when you say it,” I teased.

“It’s a gift.”  She sighed.  “Anyway, I’ve not been keeping tabs on you, but our circles sometimes intersect, so I got to know a couple of people who know you.  Including this one guy who is suddenly house sitting for you, named Nen.”

“He gave you his name in the beginning?  I’ve called him Rent-a-Wreck most of the time,” I glanced at the individual who was pouring over the car manual in the pale glow of the streetlight.

“Actually, he gave me some ridiculous poetry, but I grilled him enough to get something I’d actually call him.  Rent-a…?”

“Something he said about sharing the name of my chariot.  Doesn’t matter.”  Wrecks didn’t even grin up at me; he was looking at a diagram that showed how to install the radio.  “So when did you start
helping him?”

“When I realized you weren’t coming home.  He was kind of cute, but clueless about how the world worked.  Like an alien, really. Mom would freak out, plants would die, mass hysteria.  That, by the way, was a Ghostbusters reference.”

“I got it,” I said.  “There’s two things wrong with your conjectures.  One, I came home, and two, there’s no such thing as demons.”

“Are you sure?”  She didn’t believe me.

“About which?  I got stuck in the land of faerie for less than a year and a day, and I know there’s no such thing as demons.  Unless you use the old ‘dimension travellers’ saw, but I think that’s kind of a cop-out.”

She sounded concerned.  “What would need an exorcism, then?”

“Everything,” I said, confidently.  “If the term, ‘Exorcism’ means sending things back where they belong, or more likely, kicking them out of these parts and not caring where they end up as long as it isn’t local.  Local referring to this reality, Earth-1218, or Earth Prime depending on your …referents.”

“This isn’t a comic book,” she said.  “So, the things Roberto has killed, they’re what, aliens?”

“Yep.  If ‘alien’ refers to something that isn’t naturally a part of this world, and well, of course, presuming he is killing those things.  I mean, I love you like family and all, but are you sure he’s not some kind of psycho killer?  I ask you this as a big brother.”

“Well, he might be some kind of psycho killer, but only of things with weird tentacles and the occasional monologue.”  She let go a breath I didn’t think she knew she’d been holding.  One of those literary phrases that gets a lot of use in my thoughts.  “So, is there a basic vocabulary primer?  You used the term ‘faerie’ and didn’t get clobbered by anything with wings and glitter, right?”

“Hah.  The ‘ABCs of Abracadabra?'” I offered.  “There’d have to be different kinds for each magic type.  Necromancy’s ‘Scratch and Stiff’ for young zombie lovers?  Nah.  I think we get our terms from modern fantasy literature and the occasional pagan gathering.  It’s pretty idiosyncratic.  If you ask, ‘How does anything get done,’ the answer is that mages are solitary creatures, and don’t play well with others, so they rarely sit down and compare notes.  When I have, it’s been a matter of making sure we both think ‘sorcerors’ are the skeevy salesmen wheedling favors in and out of the Beyond, witches making epistolaries of charms and secrets hoarded generation after generation, and then wizards are kind of the jack-of-all-magics.  That sort of thing.”

“I’m busy taking a ton of notes, I hope you know.”

“I won’t call you ‘padawan,’ ever.  Weird tentacles?”

“Yeah, Lovecraft’s followers may have something.  At least, the squiddies are fairly common.  I hate the creepy kids.  I am never going to have children at this rate, and you’re getting too old to pass on the family line.”

“How bad was Mom while I was gone?”  I sighed, closing my eyes and gripping the top of the steering wheel as if to brace myself.

“The usual, lightning bolts in the kitchen and a repair bill or `Do we want her to sit there in the dark?'”  She did the classic New York Yiddish accent, as I thought of it.  “Otherwise, she seemed very calm and didn’t ask a lot of questions.”

“Oh man, now I’m worried,” I said.

“Think she knows something?”

“I know she knows things.  I just never know what.  She’s as flighty as a dragonfly on a sip of Jolt cola, but she’s also darned perceptive.”

“That’s an old, old reference, older brother.  Not many of us would recognize it.  We usually use the coffee terms.  Ferret.  Double espresso.”

“Too imprecise.  You get the caffeine, but you’re not guaranteed the sugar.  Speaking of which, I was making a run for fruit puffs and other terribly unhealthy staples.  My candy bar stash seems suspiciously low.”

“You wouldn’t be accusing me, now, would you?  I import my chocolate from England.”

“Oh, I forgot.  You’re one of the one percent, or whatever it is.  Did people really hang out in tents in the middle of Denver?”

“It was kind of a meld of a hippie commune and a tent city.  People don’t have jobs.  People without jobs need something to do, and there are some people who are gluten-free and afraid of clowns.”

“Gotcha.  I’m going to go stick my head in the sand again and hope that when I pull my head out people will be smarter.”

“Um, that’s a mixed metaphor you didn’t mean, a myth, and a dangerous proposition.”

“Let me tell you about my life sometime.  My life is full of propositioning danger.”

“I’ve got to go vacuum my cat.”

“That’s dangerous too.  No, it’s just what I thought.  Alright.  Will catch up with you later, right?  Don’t go getting slimed by an octopus man.”

“You make it sound like an old slobbery dog living with someone who finds him just adorable despite the way he piddles on the carpet.”

“I wasn’t talking about Roberto.”

“Neither was I.”  She laughed and hung up.

I sighed.  “Alright, Wrecks.  Nen.  Your opinion?”

“I stayed quiet during the call, didn’t I?”

“That means bupkis. I don’t remember the full phrase, but I know what bupkis is.”

“It’s a pastry.  Made from potato flour.”

“Liar.”

He grinned.  “A misdirection, only.”  It seemed important to him, so I gave him the out.  “But I suppose there is no denying that I listened.  Is it important that neither of you told each other the full truth?”

“Hey, she’s family.  Truth is entirely optional.”

“Ah.  That is not what family means to me,” he said.

“I’ve met your sister,” I reminded him.  “The psychological torture is probably the same.”

“It is what you said of consequence; there is no common language for those who do not share their practices.  Your terms absorbed from community and fiction are not any less relevant for their provenance.  Truth is where you find it, and while it is not the whole of the law, it is a major force behind it.”

“Is a lie the same as a broken promise, then?”

“Akin, definitely akin,” he said.  “And a broken vow is a gateway, is it not?”

“Is an omission of truth then the same as a lie?”

“Do you leave someone without the tools they need, you are guilty of having them fail in their quest.  That is a law of Hospitality.”

“Huh,” I grunted.  “Speaking of which, we need to get some groceries.”  I got out, not that the night was much cooler than the day.

“I live on more than sugar and spun sunbeams,” he admitted.  “I wouldn’t turn down a good steak.”

“Hey, you cook it, and it’s yours,” I said.

“Is that a rule like, ‘You kill it, you eat it?'”

“Let’s not go so far as a rule.  I’m not that much of a humanitarian.”

“You say that like people who eat only vegetables are from another star.”

“Very funny.”

[FormSpring just isn’t working for me anymore – can’t even get my password, so I wanted to have these questions added somewhere we could reference them again… This also gives me a quick break to get ahead.  Consider it a bit of a bye week.  That said, some of the questions were directed to E, and some to me as author, so I am shifting back and forth as appropriate.  Feel free to ask questions (of either) in the comments!]

Are there demons and angels and devils in E’s world?

As creatures of the Beyond, some will take that shape, yes.  As forces or messengers of the aspects of “Good” or “Evil,” E specifically does not believe in such.  The -cubi, for example, could be messengers of the aspect of Lust, and come from Smutvania with a capital of Pornsville… but just as there are many creatures that hold up what E would consider “deity forms” there’s never been any “Prime Creator” type that he believes has actions upon reality.  “Deity forms” usually are things that are, in effect, small worlds of their own.  A King of its own court, so to speak, and some of them, like the Shadow King, can warp reality to some degree while it has synchronization with it.  That synchronization is a thin thread, though, unless fed by other powers.  Dragons are different; they exist in many places at once, as E discovered, including in some part, our reality.  Does that make them more powerful than gods? Or just different?

Does “the power of belief” shape creatures in E’s world, or do the creatures shape belief?

There is a level of consensus in reality that reflects the nature of the universe as a whole, including its seeming ability to be affected by the observer.  This sounds very quantum and loosey-goosey (wibbly-wobbly if you must) but nevertheless implies a universe capable of change on both micro and macro levels.  In E’s world, Crowley was onto something when he talked about “change in conformance to will,” but the split comes in that magic is changing reality from outside (Beyond) in conformance to will, and belief and the ability of the observer changes it from within, much as exercise changes the body and mind.  Belief and observation change things a lot more slowly, because they’re smaller forces.  Synchronized belief (like the “standardization of sermons” a la the Mormons and such) has a bit more power (much as group prayers for health and healing are effective) because it is making more consensus, much as a bunch of skeptics can somewhat overpower a magical effect because they’re creating a small consensus reality of, shall we say, disbelief.  A more interesting corollary may be the question, “Does spirit exist within reality or as a symbiont from the Beyond anchored to this reality?” In E’s world, it can be both, and that implies that spirit may be a different reality from what we know physically, entirely.  If both truths can co-exist, that means E’s idea of what “primal reality” is might take a shaking.

What are your future plans for Dr. E?

Right now I’m trying to get in ~2000 words a week in the current run, which is actually vaguely plotted out through about the next ~80,000 words, to create what I’m loosely calling “Book Two.”  In the meantime, I am rewriting “Book One.”  When I say, “re-write,” I mean almost entirely.  There are characters and scenes that are similar, and the overall thrust of things seems to be along the same lines, but it’s very, very different.  I also have some other short stories planned (I am thinking around May I’ll release the next so that I can have a few weeks off during our family’s “month o’birthdays”) but those won’t happen until I’m happy with them, and “Da Goblinz” was about two years in the writing and rewriting.)

Is 2000 words all that hard?  Well, yes and no.  It’s a stretch for me because I tend to write in ~750 word bursts, and keeping the coherency for the extended-length entries has been a struggle.  I write far more than that each day, just never on the same topic.  (Well, my co-workers might disagree, but that’s their learning curve at which I’m poking fun.)  It’s harder to plot it out – when it was just a bunch of cliff-hangers I could give a punch to at the end of each, it was a lot easier, and whenever I didn’t contradict myself I gave myself a mental gold star.  Now I am taking it a bit more seriously, and thus it’s more of a challenge.  As long as it’s a challenge and not an obstacle, we’re good.

Are vampires sexy (or glittery) in E’s world?

I did not know that there was strawberry-scented body and hair glitter spray until a moment ago, so thank you for asking.  I love when I learn something new.  It might even make it into the story.  That said, only as much as the original creature the parasite attaches to is “sexy.”  Or glittery, I suppose.  Yes, the parasite can (and as I understand them, they regularly do) impose magical compulsions to impress their food, but the rule with vampires is that the harder the parasite works, the more the original creature (not necessarily human, by the way) is used up, and the more things affect the parasite directly.  So choosing naturally “sexy” (or, glittery, I suppose) creatures is a way to maintain the parasite’s strength.

Tell me about shapeshifters in the E world. Since Matana was studying werewolves, how does the idea that magic comes from the Beyond work with shifting?

Well, E very recently decided he prefers the term “slipskins,” but it’s nowhere a consensus choice.  I see where you’re confused because with Vampires it makes perfect sense; they’re in connection with the Beyond due to the parasite, but with shapeshifters it seems to be a lot more self-contained.  It’s really a lot of the same.  Those that are cursed pretty much have a spell that acts like the parasite: it provides a trigger-related opening to the Beyond, that trigger usually being the state of the moon, but can include a number of other items from emotional distress to the smell of sauerkraut (if that’s not the same thing.  Ahem.)   That leaves items (also usually tied to the Beyond – things like demonic capes and selkie skins and the like, that don’t actually belong in this world therefore they don’t pay attention to the rules – well, the ones of this reality, anyway), creatures actually from the Beyond (which really don’t count), and natural slipskins.  Natural ones obey natural laws and would be exceedingly rare, and for E, downright theoretical.  The idea with them is that there are cells that change, from smooth muscle tissue that innervate, and erectile tissues that allow for the vascular spaces that engorge with blood.  Natural shapeshifters would have a mutation that allows for DNA changes that go forward or backwards on an evolutionary scale.   But, really, that’s science fiction, and E is an urban fantasy.  So it’s more of a mental exercise on his behalf.

Can I trust the “facts” I get out of this series?

Not sure what you mean by that question, but if you were asking, say, why putting a condom in your wallet is a bad idea, that kind of thing I wouldn’t skimp on.  If you were asking if all women were witches, no, that’s E’s aspect (in a Fate sense) talking.  If you were asking, “If I open a door, could something bad come inside,” I would say that leaving such an exercise to the student would be a cute phrase but not one I could in all compassion leave alone.  The answer then is simply, “Yes.”

Knowing your author is a Shirley Jackson fan and the House in the Haunting of Hill House closes its own doors, how does something like that work in your world?

Honestly, in my world, the House acts as its own parasite dimension [for lack of a better term] off of the Reality I know. You have to enter its threshold for it to act on you, and its existence in the town bends the local reality because of the weight of its Otherness. It wants to be closed off, and whatever walks there went mad long ago. It wants to be alone. It closes doors because it’s being pulled towards self-implosion. This suggests that there are numerous sites like that which, for whatever reason, have pulled themselves out of the World. What’s important to know is that Reality does tend to heal itself of these pimples, reverting to the inexorable tide of consensus. The scabs of these places generally dry up and are reborn into the natural flow, but sometimes Things grow powerful in them. (It’s probably bad form to call vampires “the pus in the pimples of reality,” but tact is optional with monsters, right?)

How many fey courts are there, really?

Really? Really? Seriously, there’s no real answer to this question that would satisfy, if you’re hoping for some kind of “Seelie versus Unseileigh” or “Sidhe versus Garuda” or “Summer versus Winter” kind of breakdown. Frankly, I think the rule is anytime one of the fey manages to gain enough power, chutzpah, cottage cheese… (it’s the fey – who can tell?) to manipulate a demesne of whatever materials lie Beyond… a Court is born. (So you can have a Court of Flowers, a Court of Cottage Cheese, a Court of Red-tipped Sunflowers that Lie Beyond the Reach of Dawn…) and there will be multiple fealties and connections between them. Just as witches need a system of roots, the Courts need to be recognized by others to have efficacy. Larger courts would be Empires, recognizing a number of smaller courts and their royalty. Remember the rules of Hospitality; you treat a foreign King differently than your own, and a King different than a Knight, and a Knight different than a man on the road. Because the fey get their power from rules, an unsworn fey would be an odd thing indeed. Oathbreaking can unmake such a creature, so its position in a web of favours owing-and-owed is a significant sign of power and purpose. Still, some realms are more solid and/or attractive than others, so their names (Arcadia, Tír inna n-Óc, Valhalla, Ydalar, all places Beyond) filter into our conscious as their anchors become more solid to our reality.

I’ve been watching Fringe, and I think that Dr. E’s universe is an alternate universe in the tradition of that show. Besides the existence of Doors and all that it implies, what other differences exist between E’s world and ours?

The first difference, of course, is that we don’t have “Fringe.” (Truth be told, I, like a number of others with a genre preference, have been burned so many times by the networks that I figure until I’m convinced it will come to a fair conclusion that watching any such program is just a path to heartbreak. And don’t get me started on the inanities of Certain Shows That Shall Not Be Named in regards to putting on a production based on stream-of-consciousness associations. At least *I* admit I’m a rough draft.)

This ends up being a null set from my perspective. I live in a world of magic and modernity, where a Dragon looks like a hit-and-run accident, where covens consolidate power, where Google is slowly converting Books of Shadows, where I can get a direct deposit via a Russian sorcerer, and where you can start on one of the eight corners of Monaco and Colfax via public transportation and end up somewhere completely else once you’ve passed the other streets.

Maybe the question is, “Where do the interstices fail?” I still need to make a living. The places I refer to exist or have existed in time. The Questor and his wife have names and an address. Once you accept the first part (that there can be Doors and they can be Opened and Closed) I don’t think much of the rest is that outlandish. Or maybe it’s just a really slippery slope I don’t notice anymore.

OK, making it past downtown Boulder in forty minutes from the eastern side of Aurora… well, if you’re not worried about speeding tickets, and you’ve got a clear shot on a summer’s night, that’s maybe plausible. But I was pushing it.

What character does Dr. E play on gaming nights? And in what system?

Answering the second part first, because it does put the first part into perspective… The GM does a homebrew system that’s evolved over about twenty years of play and now doesn’t really fit the boundaries of the original D&D game it started as, especially as the GM likes to write inflammatory messages on story gaming boards and occasionally absorb some of their lessons.  It’s a bit more Talislanta.

I play two characters (at one point we split into two groups in the same world) but my oldest character is a Witch Hunter who was a halfbreed raised in the warm seasons with his Clan and in the cold seasons with his mother in the mage school. He’s now making a move towards being a Prince of a conquered land, but his love interest is amongst the conquered peoples and isn’t entirely happy with this plan.

The second character is a failed Bard who took up piracy and then found he had a significant magical talent (that had nothing to do with musical ability) and he’s trying to find a mentor that will let him balance the needs of his crew with the call of his magic.

Like most game fiction, it’s better “in the moment” than written, and so it should stay that way.

Are there any zombies in the Dr. E universe?

Let’s just drop virus and alien types immediately, because those are outside my playground.

I want to just say, “No,” but that’s disingenuous at best.

Are there creatures whose volition has been warped by magic? Yes, but under that broad umbrella you could say anything from vampires to wizards count, too. (I believe that magic is addictive in some fashion and the use of it does change you.) Empty shells filled with negative “undead” energy or simply the overwhelming command to replicate the state? Not so much. Yes, I am convinced there are forms of magical slavery that will bind your will against you, but I understand that there are rules for how and when they’re used. At least, I hope so. Humanity has a lot of advantages against that which lies Beyond, and I don’t want anyone thinking that home ground is the least of them.

I stared at the closed door for a moment, getting my bearings.  I pushed my sleeves up halfway to my elbow, and took a deep breath.  I started shaking my head.  A part of me thought about just passing them on the steps and heading to the car, letting them handle their issues themselves, but alas, someone here had to be the grown-up.

I don’t know how that role got transferred to me, but it had.

I opened the door again.

“Nen, Peredur,” I said, trying to channel my grandmother’s tone of voice and her way of implying how something was utterly ridiculous and should be stopped immediately just by the way she said our names.  I chose my grandmother because she had presence and power, and, well, it wasn’t unmanly at all.  If I recalled correctly, she had a bit of a moustache.

Peredur’s eyes flashed to me, like a spark of orange and yellow, before going back to the wee man with a hand at his throat.  He lifted one hand as if in a gesture that said, “I’d be happy to desist, only, you see,” and I sighed.

“Nen.  If the Dragon wanted to eat me, I’d have been kibble long before now,” I said, with a sigh.

“It’s not his appetite with which I’ve a concern, Door-closer.”

“If it’s his breath, I’ve got mints in the console.”

Wrecks cracked a smile.  “You’ll be wanting to know why he’s here, I suppose.  Ha’en’t you ever heard the phrase about curiosity being the death of ye?”

“I’m no cat,” I said.  “But yeah, I have to admit I’m kind of curious.”

“I’ll be taking my hand off yer throat, Dragon.  Know that the King has not lifted the ban,” Nen said, seriously.  He backed off a step, letting Peredur go.

“We do not follow any law but our own,” Peredur said, after a moment of composing himself.

“So you said then, and so ye say now.” Nen shrugged. “But I am a-playin’ by the Small Kingdom’s rules.”

“Good, he needs protection,” Peredur said, and his eyes glanced at me again, full of their own light in hints and pieces.

“I thought a Dragon sent you to watch me,” I said to Wrecks.

“Indeed,” the small fellow said.  A little smile played on his face.

“The Seven King is a Dragon?”

Peredur sniffed in such a way that might have been a chuckle, or might have been something worse.  “What memento of yours did she gain?” he asked me.

I tried to think if I had left anything behind.  Well, yeah, a pair of pants and a shirt, but I didn’t think that’s what the Dragon meant.  “The pleasure of my company, I suppose,” I said, slowly.

“Eighty parts mortal arrogance, ten lucky guess, and ten percent a certain tenacity to your chosen reality, then?” Peredur asked.

“The ancient pest may have you pegged,” Wrecks suggested, with a wry grin.

“Hey, only seventy percent arrogance, and I know at least three percent would totally have boned her, but the ninety-seven percent of ‘Ain’t stickin’ it in,’ won.”  I sighed.  “If you have to know.  Why is everyone so intent on getting me laid by the faerie chick?  Couldn’t you use your magic to maybe let me date a nice, sane girl?”

Wrecks chuckled.

“A child would have complicated things,” Peredur said, smoothly.

“A child?” I think I squeaked a little.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m aware of the Facts of Life, but I take precautions. I know they’re not one-hundred percent guaranteed, but I like to think there’s a good mathematical premise that people who take less chances have better odds.

“A child with enough mortality and enough royalty to anchor the Small Realms closer to the real you’ve known was the prize for which the King made her play.”  Peredur shrugged in a casual way.  It was one of those shrugs that was amazingly graceful and dismissive at the same time.

“So, now that she’s rolled the critical failure, what’s her next action?” I asked.

“The King may wish Thomas’ child, but he has made a different bargain.”  Peredur’s eyes had their own light as he glanced towards Nen.  Part of my brain wondered how that worked, if all Peredur saw was golden and blinding, or if he used vision at all, or if it just was a neat effect or if I had his eyes they could be used to light up a room.  That last thought was a little disturbing, even for me, and my superego quashed it with a grimace.

The small gentleman shook his head.  “Her Thomas is oracle, and that protects him.”

I felt a little better, but not like my question was answered.  I waited for them to continue.

“Then she is committed?”

“Not yet,” I perked up, “but I do suggest some form of multiple personalities as a diagnosis.  Definitely spotty and a bit haunted.”

Nen shrugged.  It wasn’t as graceful as Peredur’s.  “Dryden.  `Kings fight for empires, madmen for applause.'”

I wanted to interrupt, to say that Thomas was true, not mad, but Peredur looked concerned.

“Shelley said, ‘To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be…'” Peredur paused in his quotation, giving it the benefit of a segue, “‘Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign.'”

“All kings is mostly rapscallions,” I retorted, unwilling to be left out.  “Mark Twain.”

“Then Demogorgon notes,” Wrecks says, tilting his head slightly, “All spirits are enslaved that serve evil things, but so are all things subject to eternal love.  A kind of slavery.”  He glanced at me as if seeing if I knew the reference (I had no clue), or possibly a warning, or maybe an opening in the conversation.

I took the latter option. “She said…” I wracked my brain, “that `We do not love that we are loved.’  And Thomas had said that ‘Love we speak and love we waste,’ but Thomas spoke of the importance of it.”  I shook my head.   “Does love bind the King?”

“Did I say ten parts tenacity? You blunder into luck, small wizard.”  Peredur was amused.

It was luck that I didn’t mention that Sir Darius had called him a “dandelion fluff-head,” yet, too.  Luck and some kind of unusual sense of self-preservation.  Restraint, perhaps.

He continued.  “I owed you three protections, and I have given you two.  The third will pay for all, and any more will put you in my debt.”

I didn’t try to figure them out – he might have been watching out for me and giving me good parking and counted it as some kind of mystic interference.  “Hey, I don’t recall asking you for any of it,” I said.  “I don’t want you suddenly taking the initiative and then putting me on the hot seat for it.”

Maybe “hot seat” wasn’t a good way to put it to a Dragon.  He remained calm and aloof in body language, but the air between us warmed up and I could see a puff of smoke from his nostrils, despite the waning heat of the day.  “Your point is noted,” he said.

“Good.  As long as we understand each other,” I said, gruffly.

He laughed.  It sounded… well, I guess I had expected his laugh to be a little more human, and less of a roar of some sort.  I found that my evolutionary niche still had instincts about such sort of sounds, as I didn’t quite cringe, but I did push myself back against the door as if I were going to duck inside and find safety.  And if that was a laugh, it might explain why the memory of him saying, “Flee!” was something I hadn’t been able to really focus on in the last few days.

But the reminder came up, anyway, and the paralysis wasn’t as bad this time, even if the blood rushing in my head and the shaking in my arms started as soon as I said, “What was I running from?”

There weren’t enough gold stars for how proud of myself I was for saying the words aloud.

Peredur smiled, and his teeth were never human enough, and yet, this time I noticed there was one missing.  I put my hand in my coat pocket, running my fingers across the heavy lump there.

“Third time pays for all,” he repeated.  There was a whiff of woodsmoke, a wave of heat, and he was gone into the night.  I thought I heard the sound of wings.

I banged my head into the doorframe, closing my eyes.

“Does it help?” Wrecks asked, sounding amused.

“The old joke says that it feels good when I stop,” I said.  “I was doing something.  I was getting groceries.  What the heck was that all about?  Isn’t the magic grapevine all a-light with everything that happened?  Isn’t some arcane weekly keeping track of it?  Doesn’t he talk to the great eagles and find out or, heck, sylphs with ears to the cellular transmissions or something?”

Wrecks laughed, and his laugh was pleasant to listen to, at least, except for the almost bark-like bits.  Basis of comparison counts for a lot.  “He wanted to see for himself where you stood.”

“On two feet, thanks to millions of years of evolution,” I snarled.

“He sees more than that.  You were not claimed by the Seven King.  You have not committed to any side of the war.  He is still in your debt, Dragons-bane.”

“Bane.  Is that an herb, like wolvesbane?  Is someone having a laugh calling me a vegetable?” I banged my head against the frame again.  “Any side, not ‘either’ side.  How many sides are there?”

“How many opinions might one have about the same subject?” he asked, with a shrug.  “Come, let us get comestibles.”

I closed the door and locked it behind us.  “What,” I tried sounding light about it, “is the subject at hand?  I thought it was a power grab, but there’s fire and passion and witches and war.”

He looked glum.  “If the root cause was a simple one, there might be a simple answer,” he said after a moment or two.  He followed me to the car.  “There are a number of things that collided at once, and each has a claim of value.”

“Huh,” I said, letting him in.  I was pleased to see that the car started after all this time, but I was going to want to get it checked out, just in case.  I started driving, letting the silence draw out.

“You’re not going to tell me much more?” I kind of made it a question.

He shrugged.  “I have named some of the players as your enemies.”

“And some as my friends, am I right?” I hoped, turning the car towards the driveway of the local supermarket.

“I can say that you are correct, although some of your friends are traditionally neutral parties.”

“Like the Questor, but not, I’d guess, his wife.  Wizards are meddlers by nature, or they wouldn’t be wizards,” I sighed.

“I’m not likely to argue too hard versus your presumption,” he admitted.

“Okay.”  I turned off the engine and sat back into the seat.  “Can you do a little warmer-colder game with this?  I know straight talk is like a terrible allergy to your kind, so let me blunder by luck into something,” I suggested.

“Mayhap,” he said, guardedly.

“Denver is traditionally fairly neutral because its location has so much at conflict,” I said.  “Urban infrastructure versus rural memories.  The Small Folk are at the cusp between, or you wouldn’t be as well read and snarky as you are.”  He didn’t comment, so I continued.  “No one seems to have an upper hand, but we’ve got more than a handful of wizards, and a whole heck of a lot of witches because they’re drawn to the confrontation of energies.  We have Peredur’s interest, and Naul was here because of…love, I guess.  Which is something I want to program back into the earlier conversation when I’ve got the cycles for it.  So at least two Dragons.  We’ve got minor vampire activity; Matana didn’t have to apply for passports or whatever the parasites use to track each other, but that’s fine because like a lot of predators they have huge territories and don’t like being around others when they can avoid it.  I know of a few cases of slipskins, people who can take on one other form, although even they cringe at the word ‘werewolf.’  Plus, the ones I know aren’t wolves.  There’s one couple who shift into parrots.”  I shook my head.  “There’s a mad unicorn.  There’s the -cubi.  The Shadow King.  A witch with a fascination for snakes.”  I sighed.  “There’s me.”

Wrecks started to say something, but was cut off at the sound of my phone ringing.  “And my sister,” I sighed.  I answered it; what else was I to do?

“I’m keeping you around,” I announced, generously.  “Not only do you have my back, but you make my muddling around sound good.”

“Muddling?” he asked.  He seemed pleased, though.

“Yeah. I was just trying to figure everything out, you know, get one step ahead of the competition.  You made me sound like a fast food meal described by a gourmet restaurant.  You know, instead of, ‘Meatballs with red sauce and cheap overcooked noodles,’ I’m ‘prime Kobe sirloin ground rounds nestled in a savory sauce made of fire roasted tomatoes, sauteed garlic, with a hint of organic basil on a platter of angelhair pasta served al dente.’  Or something like that.”

“I guess it’s better than `acerbic beefcake with dreads.'”

“Totally not my type,” I said, amused.  It was an immediate retort but I was reminded of my gold star. I sighed, getting up from the table and putting the rest of the pizza in the refrigerator.

“You continue to overthink it,” Wrecks said. “And that much garlic will give you bad dreams.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Nah.” He made a noise.  “Would you categorize this as part of the Lovecraftian mythos?” he waved Foucault’s Pendulum towards me.

I shook my head. “Not without a spoiler alert. I always think of Templars as anti-magic warriors.”

“You’re ruined by popular culture,” he sniffed.

“Or made by it into a god,” I said, majestically raising my arms as if filled with inner power. I laughed, after a moment.  “Alright.  I have things to do.  Answers to seek.”

“Quests to conquer?” he asked.  “Fair maidens to rescue?”

“The next line is likely ‘Dragons to slay,’ and I’m out of that business,” I said.

“Really?” he repeated my question back at me.

I did not slam the bedroom door, but only because it would mean he won.

I slept fine, although I spent extra time with the toothbrush getting the garlic out. Even without girls to impress, maiden or not.  I did not dream.

I woke up once in the night, as I heard a loud warbling noise, like a nearby siren.  I listened to see if it would continue, but the doppler faded, and so did my consciousness.

In the morning, I did most of my ablutions, decided to skip shaving, and got dressed.  I made some calls, re-activating myself at the temporary agency, some odds and ends.  The things of life.  The bits of the adventures that aren’t played through in the games unless that one guy is there insisting on telling everyone how he makes a toothbrush out of an aromatic root, and how he’s making sure to eat the rations that give him regular bowel movements.  It’s always a guy.  I did play once with a lady who discussed breastfeeding at the table, but she was playing a character who made it work, especially with the demigod baby strapped to her back.  Good times.

Wrecks was passed out on top of the books.  I growled when I noted he was bending the cover of my signed copy of Imajica.  I guessed he wasn’t the useful kind of fey who cleaned up after himself.  I gently moved his leg and pulled the novel out from under his knee.   I took some time to pick things up.  “Some bodyguard you are,” I muttered under my breath.

I suddenly felt like a thousand little eyes were staring at me.  This is an uncomfortable feeling.  It’s like paranoia that makes itself known with electricity.  I looked around slowly.  Nothing seemed to be there, but the feeling continued long enough for me to decide it wasn’t born of guilt.  I heard the sounds of things moving, bits of paper, the crinkling of a plastic bag, all like you’re just about to fall asleep and something in your room moves… despite there being no wind.  The feeling receded.

Wrecks opened one eye at me, lazily.  “I have to rest sometime, man,” he said.

“What was that?” I asked.  “It was really disturbing.”

“Friend of mine.  Poltergeist… kind of.  They don’t like anything mortal …and sane.”

“Guess we’re all good friends, here.”

Wrecks snickered.  “You said it, not me.”

“You can tell by the company I keep,” I added.  I sat at the computer chair and wrote a message to my sister.  It was a variant on the requests she’d made for me to call, but a lot less demanding, if you asked me.  I had manners and she was never a genteel lady. I probably could have left out the, “Still with…what was the disposable’s name? Roberto?” comment.

I kept bringing up pictures of the fires. Waldo Canyon. High Park. Flagstaff. More than five hundred homes.  Families.  I looked around my apartment.  All my stuff was here.  My comfort.  My activities.  My small reminders of things that had happened in my life.  Trinkets and bits.  The promise ring I never gave Maggie.  Ten years of anchoring the topsoil before mudslides would stop being a problem.  Those were just the big ones in my state; there were plenty of lightning strikes and large fires all over the country.

“What’s a derecho?” I asked aloud.

“It sounds like a reminder that you haven’t had breakfast,” Wrecks said.

“Thanks, mom.  I wasn’t hungry yet, but now that you mention it,” I went and heated up the last of the pizza.  I spent the morning looking at scientific explanations for the fires, while Wrecks ate his share and started in on the Wild Cards series.

The phone went off in my bedroom on one of my generic ringtones.  I didn’t recognize the number, and I didn’t catch it in time.  It was a local number, not one of those Caribbean Cruise folks who would fill up my voicemail if I let them.  I kept meaning to take down the “remove me from your call list” number, and eventually I’d be mad enough to do it.  After a moment, the phone rang again.

I answered it.

“E, we have to talk.”

“Maggie.”  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.  “No, we don’t,” I said.

“I disagree.”

“No surprise there,” I retorted quickly.

“Do you even want to know what it’s about?” she asked.

“Not really.  I know if you’re involved, it’s not good.”

“It’s about your sister.”

I banged my knee against the desk and spent the next 15 seconds in an agony that really deserved all the words that came spilling out.  I took another deep breath.  “Fine.  You have thirty seconds.  Don’t think I’m not staring at a clock.”

“Gossip has it that there’s something big and bad looking for her.  I can’t help you.  I’m trying to keep my people out of the line of fire, as it were, but I thought you ought to know.”

“I thought you were wrapped up tight with the Shadow King,” I said.  I hadn’t meant to say anything, but it kind of came out.

“You never trusted me enough, E.  Do you think we wanted this?”

“Your name comes up on a list of significant beings with power that are arrayed against me,” I said.

“And you trust the… the keeper of these names?”

I thought about it, and then laughed.  “I guess I believed you when you said you were all that.  So hearing someone else say you were all that and a bunch of evil dips, I was willing to believe.”

“Your confidence in me is astounding. You are an idiot.”  She hung up.

I glanced wryly at Wrecks.  “Well?  Ready to slap some arcane wisdom on me that doesn’t actually help?”

“I can’t help you with your women problems, Door-closer.”

I looked him up and down.  “I can’t imagine that you could,” I said, with a grin.  “But is the use of my title a hint?”

“Why haven’t you shut the door on your relationship with her?” he asked, seriously.

“Because I’m an idiot,” I said.  “Can I do that?”

“She’s a witch.  Look up on yon magic internetty box and find a thousand spells to cut a relationship clean.  You’ve got to know how to use your power, wizard-friend.  Secret-caller.” He looked amused.

I considered it.  “What do you know about my power?”

He sat back, and his expression changed.  “Now you’re talking.  I’m your bodyguard, not your tutor.  You need to utilize your resources, and get a better teacher.”

“What am I looking for?  A wizard?”

“You could,” he said.  “A wizard, however, would teach you to be a wizard.  And you, no need to repeat yourself, do not want that.”

I nodded.  “So I need to find another door-closer?”

“Take baby steps.  Is your magic an inherent power or is it a result of ritual, opening yourself to other forces?”

“Huh,” I grunted. “I expect a Closer doesn’t open himself.  So it’s inherent.”

“Where does it come from?” he asked.

“Do you mean, is it like genetic?  Am I a mutant and I’m looking for a Professor X?”

“Where does your power come from?” he asked again, sounding each word out as if he was looking for something.

“My soul? My experiences? My good looks?  My folks?  My having my fingers slammed by a radioactive door when I was but a wee lad?”  I growled.  “I don’t know what you’re looking for.  Give me a hint.”

He sighed.  “I am what I am.  You are not.”  He went back to his book.

“This isn’t helping.  I’d rather find out what Dragon is responsible and what it means to the war effort, and what is going on with my sister.  Why my sister?” I asked aloud.  “I mean, better than my mom,” I pointed out.

“Flame-bright, power-spark, she lights the path of what is dark. Secret-keeper, Closer’s blood, she sprouts the seeds of the flood,” he said, turning a page somewhat…flippingly.

“Is that her song?”

“Mayhap.”  He sounded grumbly.

“I didn’t know that maybe was an option.  Could I add a chorus and maybe a snappy bridge to mine?”

“No.”  He brought his knees up to hold the book there.  “And it doesn’t need a guitar solo.”

“Bummer.”  I sighed.  “Seeds of the flood?  Do floods come from storm seeds?  Is this the Biblical kind of flood, or like a woman’s thing?”

He ignored me, so I went back to my research.  Now that I understood the science more, it was time to look up the magical side.

After about an hour, I gave up.  “I can’t do this without real fuel.  You want anything from the store?” I asked.

“I must attend you,” he said, sliding a Tattered Cover bookmark between the pages.

“Do you need a booster seat?  Should I put you up front in the cart, or maybe get one of those ones with the plastic cars attached?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes.  “I am not of this world. I do not need to be coddled as if I were the visage I have taken.”  He frowned.  “Get your shoes on.”

I did as he asked only because it was my next stop, anyway.  I tied the laces, wondering about the frown.  When I came out of my room, I didn’t see him.  The room was also, somewhat, more picked up.  The dishes were put away in the sink.  There was a pillow on the couch I didn’t recognize.  The TV screen had been dusted.

“Wrecks?” I asked.  I felt silly using that name, and it sounded weird in the silence.  “I mean, Nen?”

I kept bracing myself for the creepy sensation, the thousand eyes making the hairs on my arms and neck rise with a lightning prickle.  It wasn’t there.  “Nen?” I asked again.

The door made a noise, opening slightly.  I crept up behind it, and then grabbed a ruler from the various gaming supplies I kept on the shelf beneath my octopus cup.  I propped the door open, backing up with it as it swept towards me.  I heard the yowling of a neighborhood cat, but other than that it was silent.  Too silent.

Wrecks had his hand around Peredur’s neck, and they weren’t moving.  Smoke drifted from Peredur’s nostrils.  Wreck seemed to strain, while the Dragon didn’t seem too uncomfortable.

I let the door close with a sigh.