“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.”