“What is so delicate about a sandwich place?” Rayya asked me as we entered the deli.

“Is this a riddle or the set-up for a joke?” I asked.

“Neither. The word delicatessen has delicates in it, and the ‘sen’ would indicate ‘son of,’ meaning there is some discernment in the subject. Perhaps they were places frequented by assassins or courtesans or spies?”

“I’m betting it actually comes from ‘delicacies,’ or something of the sort. I know, I’ve got the internet in my pocket and could look it up, but hey, there’s my sister!” I waved an arm in response to her waving hers from where she and Roberto sat, sharing a large pastrami sandwich. Okay, I would give him the pastrami appreciation point.

Rayya and Nen had both elected to join me. There was some kind of conversation I wasn’t privy to prior to the decision, but apparently my protection detail was still a consideration. Spriggan Secret Service. If they got tired of the building of a library dimension (shades of Wizard Pratchett there) maybe they could source out as bodyguards. Diminutive Detail. Significant Sibling Security. Fey FBI. Fey-BI?

“You’re thinking instead of walking again,” Nen noted, passing me. He slid into the booth across from Eve and her squeeze. “I’d like a pastrami, on rye, toasted, swiss cheese, no lettuce, no tomato, mayonnaise and vinegar. Side of chips.”

“Sounds delicious,” I said, catching up.

After we got our sandwiches piled with meat and fixings, and some of the delightful (another potential source of the term ‘deli’) bites had been chewed, swallowed, and well on their way to providing necessary sustenance, I looked around. For a busy place, we’d come somewhere between lunch and early dinner. It was still fairly light out, although starting to turn that golden orange that suggested the cool blue shadow of the mountains would soon extinguish the afternoon.

“The plan is?” Eve asked.

I finished my bite and shrugged. “Go to where he was, try to find out where he went. Unless you have a better one.”

“Because finding one human in a city of 750,000 or so is so easy you could have done it at any time,” she suggested, her sarcasm as thick as the steak fries.

“I feel like I would know if I were around him. If I’m wrong, we’re no worse for it. In fact, we’re better because we had a great meal.”

Eve considered the crumbs Roberto was currently eyeing with an indulgent smile. “I guess there’s that. You took the bus?”

“Still haven’t bought a new car,” I admitted.

“Yeah. You and the kids can ride in back. Where are we going?”

Rayya frowned at being called one of “the kids,” but didn’t argue it. Nen just grinned. I guess if they were used to me, they were fine with my sister.

“Find somewhere around the mall to park, and we’ll take the shuttle.”

I couldn’t remember offhand where Janet had said she was besides “the mall.” And Rivendell, which I would always think of Imladris first, and never Karningul. But despite Rohana having Rohan in her name, I never thought of horses with her. I never actually really thought of horses. I wasn’t a horse girl, after all. Or a brony.

I knew it as we got near, and not just because of the way Rayya and Nen reacted. It was like a cramp in my stomach. It was like smelling something incredibly foul that had been left in the sun, and then hearing someone pounding on piano keys randomly and while scraping the bench across a metal stage. I reeled, grabbing onto a railing while the bus came to a stop. “Here,” I managed to breathe. I caught a nod between Eve and Roberto that mirrored one between the Spriggan Sibs before I stumbled off the shuttle and over a trash can, holding on to the delicious delicacy of the delicatessen through manly gulps of air and a reminder that it was magic, not reality.

Well, when magic is your reality, well, it didn’t matter. One’s brain worked the details, with probably lots of input from visual and chemical cues. There was some amount of disagreement with my gut and my conscious, but I maintained the equilibrium. My party of adventurers spread out, looking for clues.

“I don’t see anything,” Eve complained.

“This would not be something you see with your eyes, but with the heart. It is like you explaining how we used to find planets, with the flickering of shadow between the candle flame of a star. You are feeling the cold chill of lack of light, the absence of a loving God, and the presence of evil. It fills your breath with the miasma of abandonment, the disappointment of a child to an absent parent,” Roberto spoke poetically and with a soft religious fervor. Or so I heard it, but I had to admit I felt the capital letter in the invocation of deity, so I might have considered it a little more zealous than he expected.

“Or like a wind through an open door,” Nen said.

I felt Rayya’s hand on my back. “Come, let us follow the wind, then, secret caller.”

“Huh. You haven’t called me that in a while,” I said, swallowing for a moment. The wind actually picked up for a moment, bringing a cool breeze that refreshed slightly. “It’s ahead of us,” I said. “If it’s this strong when he’s far away, how will I handle it when he’s close?”

“You won’t,” Eve said. “We will.”

“That sounds so final,” I said. “It’s my quest. I’m not the kind of person who steps back and does all the strategy stuff. I generally play tanks.”

Eve rolled her eyes. “Don’t give yourself airs. You’re a support. Roberto will tank. I’ll do DPS, and your weird friends will do whatever your weird friends do.”

“Protec,” Nen said. “And also Attac.”

“Oh goodness, that’s an old meme,” Eve chuckled. “But I guess it comes back around.”

Roberto and I shared a Look that basically agreed that maybe ignorance would be bliss.

“We’ve got one!” I said before my sister could even start her greeting.

“You know, there were films besides Ghostbusters, Aliens, and Mystery Men,” she said, discouragingly.

“Perish the thought. I also quote from GalaxyQuest and occasionally modern shows. You have your squeeze?”

She sighed. “If you mean Roberto, yes, he’s here. We have demon-sign?”

“Now who’s doing it? If you stack a bunch of demons you could have a demon-striation, right?” I mused.

“Possibly. What does… oh. Yeah, I don’t think the pun quite hit it.”

“I was hoping it rocked.” I waited for the mental bah-dump-dump-ching sound, and continued. “Seriously, though, yeah. Sixteenth street mall, Denver, maybe an hour ago.”

“In this traffic?” she asked. “That might as well have been last Tuesday.”

“Last Tuesday we hadn’t gotten confirmation that it was my ex-‘s friend’s ex-boyfriend.”

“That’s a tenuous connection, I’d say. Like you know a dude who knows a dude.” She punched the open channel key, also known as speakerphone.

“Yes, but can’t we use that?” I asked. I got a half-shrug from Nen. “Isn’t it a wart on the first law?”

“Thou shalt not rile up a woman because she’ll go have sex with djinn and angels and you’ll be like uncle to a billion deadly sins? Or Newton, an object at rest rarely gets motivated to do anything else but slouch around? ”

“Is that the first law? I was thinking similarity. Contagion. That sort of thing.”

“Oh, THAT first law.” I heard Roberto say something, but they must have been outside, because traffic overwhelmed whatever he had to say. “Fine,” my sister responded. “There are lots of first laws. It’s like primo uno in spades. Or something like that. Let’s not number the laws, okay? Or rules. I think Gibbs had two number ones, too. And don’t go there. Toilet humour is so 3rd grade it’s poopy.”

I tried to restrain a snort.

“The first law is of that of naming,” Rayya said, late to the conversation. Or maybe she was just trying to be helpful and remind me.

“I’m more surprised no one argued my wart comment, and explained that it was a polyp or a strange cyst-like growth. That isn’t an invitation, by the way. Magda had a way of tracking people, and it’s a staple of magical fiction. Can you do that, only tracking the tracker?”

“I think you meant a corollary, and got caught up in the net of capillary instead. Um. Isn’t the law of similarity an artistic conceit of gestalt psychology?”

I rolled my eyes. Sometimes I forgot my sister was, well, my sister. “Point taken. Can you do it?”

“I don’t think so. It’s too tenuous. That’s wizard territory, really. If it were my own bloodline, then it’s a real maybe.” She sounded disappointed.

I tried cheering her up. “So I should never try and hide from you?”

She laughed. “You never could. Remember trick or treating that year you were dressed in a thrift store tux?”

I groaned. “Oh please, don’t remind me.”

She chortled and then sighed. “I will remind you whenever I need to threaten you. What’s plan B?”

“An option when Plan A fails,” I fired off, trying to give myself a second to formulate one. “Find something that can sniff out a demon and run the hounds on it?”

“That’s kind of just Plan A with three little letter ‘I’s after it. Know a pious skinshifter?” she asked, off-handedly.

“Not to my knowledge, but then again, why would I?” I meant it both ways. Why would I know one, and why would I know they were one.

“You have weird friends,” was all she said.

I couldn’t deny that. “A wizard, you say?” Was I in debt to one, did one owe me a favour? I tried to add up the balance sheet real quick, but found myself probably even with the Questor’s wife. Misko. I finally had a use name for her, and I should use it.

“You know one?” she asked, suddenly interested.

“A weird friend,” I said, vaguely.

“Oh,” she said.

I couldn’t interpret that one, so I left it. “I don’t know if she’d be willing to get involved, or what I would have to pay her, though. She’s the kind who might get involved if she were interested, but I have a feeling this is maybe a bit more dangerous now that I am thinking about it and she has kids.” I was half-thinking aloud, so I wasn’t going to worry about my sister’s grammatical sensitivities. “The feeling I’ve had around the guy is like he’s a maw of infinite space.”

“Bound by a nutshell of bad dreams?” she asked.

“Should I be hoping it’s a hard nut to crack?” Back to banter. It was safer than thinking about that feeling. It made me want to shudder and sweat. It didn’t get better on repeat, but worse.

“You ever think you’re the bad guy, E?” she asked.

The question seemed like a huge non-sequitur from our conversation, and it completely derailed my thinking. “Um, only when it comes to people calling me a dragon slayer, or, well,” I thought of a few times I’d done bad things. Maybe I didn’t have a huge catalog of them, but there were always enough. It was the lazy path to humility, the stumble that led to a great Fall. “Why?”

“Just thinking aloud,” she said, brushing me off. “So, great dragon slayer, you going to call your weird wizard friend, or are we going downtown? I could do with some nosh.”

“Since when do you use ‘nosh’ as a term?” I demanded.

“Since I was chatting with mom earlier. She was making a sweet kugel. If you make a kegel joke I will hit you.”

“Never even crossed my mind.” Truth, for once.

“So, dinner and maybe demons downtown?”

“Definitely a date.”

“Ew.”

“Ew! You’re my sister. I was just alliterating.”

“Well, pick up your a-litter, trash boy.”

“That… doesn’t even make sense.”

“Neither do you. See you at the deli near the Historical Society?”

“Probably bringing the sibs.”

“I thought I heard sins, and I was going to tell you to pray for them, but you might pray for those weird friends of yours, too. I’m probably,” she dripped sarcasm into the word, “bringing this guy, although he has no appreciation for good food.”

“He probably thinks a knish is a low-class empanada. If he can’t appreciate a really good pastrami, dump him.”

“I heard that,” I heard, and then with a chuckle, the call ended.