I sighed.  Apparently, I had annoyed some sort of power and they had cursed me with the characterization “girls laugh at me.”  Could be worse.  Could be “smells like pork.”  Bacon’s good, but I already have a problem with attracting strays.

(As a sidepoint, the old adage that dogs are wary of power and cats preen against it is basically a good rule of thumb.  I know lots of canine familiars, but they’re naturally suspicious.  When I was a kid I just thought that they didn’t like me.  It made walking home alone from school kind of an unnerving experience.)

I pushed my fists against my forehead, rubbing that place where the edge of my hair meets the barer skin.  I can’t remember the name of that slice of anatomy right now… oh… scalp… but it’s a soothing gesture.  “I give up.  I can’t expect something that isn’t human to act that way, and I just don’t understand women.”

Sylvia laughed.

I was saved from having to say something else that would no doubt have continued to humiliate me in the eyes of the whole gender by the waiter coming back with some tapas I could distribute.   I asked for a refill of my soda and excused myself to use the men’s room.

I stared in the mirror for a few minutes before washing my hands.  Doloise wasn’t an albatross, exactly.  “Neither fish nor fowl,” I said.  Certainly not kosher, I decided, looking at the sink.  I kept telling myself I couldn’t get involved with her, but wasn’t I already living with her until she worked off her debt?  Neither of us were the type to sit and “talk about our relationship,” for sure.

I rubbed my chin.  Had Mags given me a clue to Matana’s nature when she suggested I shave, or was she just being difficult about the state of my dress? Or something else?  She was a woman – it could have been anything.

I decided I’d avoided my dinner companions as long as was polite and returned to my seat.  I had my refill.  Doloise and Magda had both made it back, and neither were obviously bleeding or burnt.  Maggie was breaking the bread, and Doloise was sipping at her iced tea.  She’d found a crayon somewhere and was idly decorating the paper table-covering with a pretty design of leaves and vines in periwinkle blue.

I insinuated myself into the conversation by asking what they’d been talking about while I was gone.  I’m smooth that way.  Very suave and humble, too, if you’ve forgotten.

“Matana is taking the semester off for these visits,” Sylvia explained, “but I have a full schedule.  I was going for pre-law, but I’m officially undeclared right now.”

“And Matana?” I asked, politely.

“No law for me.  I am not that much of a bloodsucker,” she suggested, wrapping her lips around the word by way of not laughing.  “I was in integrative physiology before they changed the name.”

I tried figuring it but she gave it to me.  “Exercise science.”  She waited for me to make the obvious joke.

“I thought adrenaline ruined the flavour,” I said, because it was expected.

She ignored me.  “I was studying the effects of exercise with the intent to see how it interacted with shapeshifting.  You don’t see a lot of  werewolves… with extra weight, but do they still need to take aerobics classes for their hearts?  What is the actual source of their enhanced strength, and can it improve through weight lifting or other programs?”  She smiled.  “It has been hard work sneaking that focus through, but I have a pretty liberal advisor who just thinks I have a strange sense of humour.  I was also on the track team.”

“Until?” Sylvia asked.

Matana just waved her hand towards her mouth.  “Until another opportunity interfered.  I do not regret it. ” She laughed. “I am a little short for it, anyway.”

“But you tried harder,” I suggested.

“Indeed,” she said, giving me a hard look.

Our plates had the courtesy of arriving at that point.  We passed the things we needed to pass around like we were adults who never made things go widdershins when the proper direction was clockwise.  Or something like that. We were doing a fine job at that when Doloise’s tea spilt across the table and into Matana’s lap.

Doloise did not get up and apologize, but both Maggie and I did.  Matana’s eyes were wide, and I could see there was a problem.  She scooted her chair back.

“I cannot get up.”

I hurried with the napkins while Sylvia called over a waitperson. “What’s wrong?”

“I seem to be stuck to the chair.”

Doloise started laughing.  Her design shone blue for just a second and I felt the -pop!- as it released, Matana making it up off her chair with a half-stumble and a frown.

“That is a petty charm,” she said to Doloise as she finished wiping off her lap.

“A moment’s freeze for the cold one,” she said.  Doloise stood up and asked the confused waiter, “May I have some more?”

Maggie had to do a little dance in getting the table arrangements the way she wanted them.  I’d actually heard of it before at a friend’s wedding, where instead of just above and below the salt there’s some kind of superiourity awarded for being the ones closest to the bride and groom.  I presumed that in Maggie’s mind there was some kind of flowchart involved in who she sat where, so I just hung back and waited for an empty seat.

Seating five is always awkward, anyway.  I think the rule is pretend you’re seating six, and then take a chair away, but I’ve not yet worked at a restaurant.   When I finally grabbed a seat, I figured Maggie had balanced it right.  I sat at the head (or foot – knowing Maggie) of the table.  Maggie was on my left, and Doloise on my right.  Sylvia was on Maggie’s left and Matana on Doloise’s right.  I figured that about balanced cruelty and naïveté.  Who knows, maybe women keep some kind of scoreboard in their heads.  Or maybe she just wanted me farthest in the aisle so I’d be most likely to have someone trip over me.

“I do not drink wine,” Matana said, passing the list over to Mags.  I almost chuckled.  Actually, unless they were badly integrated, vampires could (and should) drink or eat anything their host could.   That was a little social signpost to see if a vampire had gone pulling too much from Outside; could they eat a hamburger meal from a fastfood joint without any real problems?  I quirked an eyebrow at Matana anyway, placing the passed wine list back on to the table.

“I am well in control of my hungers,” Matana said.  She seemed a little put out.

I didn’t have to imagine the Vampires Anonymous meetings as Wizard Pratchett already had.  (I wished again I could find out who had cursed him.)  Of course, in real life, people only really wear support ribbons when they were going on camera or other special functions.  I smiled.  “Just don’t bite Doloise.  She bites back.”

Doloise made a growl of assent.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked Mags after we ordered our food.  It was one of those waiters, you know, the kind that only listen to one person at the table, and that usually the one of the same gender.  I know it’s a hard job, but I didn’t understand that phenomenon.  I had been at meals where the chosen person had been a woman and no man could get in a word edgewise, even when the chosen woman had repeated the exact same thing I just did about my own order.   Oh well – I had to order for Doloise anyway.

Matana had chosen a salad.

“Matana is an exchange student from a coven back East,” Magda explained, “and we’re inducting Sylvia.  I figure anyone with the kind of control she had deserves a chance to develop the power.”  Sylvia smiled shyly.

“Exchange student?” I asked Matana.

“There are many ways to deal with the infection, my dear gentleman E.   I decided on a course of temperance, and so I learn techniques which flow with the laws of this place rather than the coldness Outside.”  She had beautiful, liquid eyes.  I believed her utterly.

Of course, then I glanced at Doloise, who had one hand playing idly with a fork and the other in a fist just under the table.  “Use the spoon,” I said.

She looked up at me.

“It hurts more.”

She dropped the fork and picked a spoon up instead.

“Sylvia, really, it’s nice to see you.”  I didn’t want to bring up any possible painful memories, so I was suddenly at a loss of what to say.  My back-up mouth kept working, though.  “Sure you’re going to learn the right things from the Mags?”

Maggie kicked me under the table.

“I do want to learn,” she said.  “I am a bit cautious as we are expected to take certain oaths before we are even told what the oaths will mean, but I am anxious to gain control.”  She pointed gently over to Matana.  “For example, I had guessed there was something special about ‘Tana, but I have figured out she’s a vampire from your uncoded language.  I am not sure about your…friend.”

“Doloise isn’t my friend,” the back-up brain said in a hurry.  Doloise leaned back.

“Indeed.  I am his guide and guardian.”

I knew that hurt studied-neutrality face.  I’d seen it on other women.  “That is, she is a friend, but that’s all it is.  Sorry, Doloise.  I didn’t want her to think you were anything…but what you are.”

“And of course, you are correct,” Doloise’s eyes were glowing softly inside her shades. “I am only what I am.”

“Doloise, let’s go take a powder break.  You do, do that, right?”  Maggie stood up and grabbed Doloise’s hand.  “Girls, don’t eat E alive.   We’ll be back in a minute.”

I looked at Sylvia and Matana while they stared at me.  “I know, I know.  It’s not even how I say it.”

Sylvia chuckled, and Matana sighed, shaking her head and smiling.  “You poor, poor man.”

I recognized one of the girls after a moment.  The last time I’d seen her had been in Boulder, where she had invited in a -cubus.  Sylvia was dressed up for the occasion, hair bundled up in some kind of esoteric knot that only women know the name of, short black dress, and some black straps that could laughingly be called heels that criss-crossed all the way up to the knee.  Why, yes, I was looking at her legs.  It was kind of hard to look at her face and remember that she was the last girl who had kissed me.

So I was ready to round on Maggie instead, expecting something in the way of explanations when Doloise went all bristly.  I saw it out of the corner of my eye and trusted my instincts, moving quickly off the bench.

I looked at the third girl.  Straightened black hair, darker skin than Mags, oh, and VAMPIRE.  Doloise towered over her and looked disapproving.  I noticed that when Doloise was angry, she made little fists with her hands.  Never in a kind of “punch” way, unless it was a short, sharp jab.  I wonder if that was something that was hers, or something that was just one of the people inside its head.

Vampires.  Oh, Maggie.

See, the fey and vampires don’t, as a rule, get along.  If you’d asked me, I would say it’s because the niche couldn’t support two predators.  (And leannansidhe are a whole different basket of flowers.  Kettle of fish.  Bucket of blood.  Whatever.)  Part of me just writes them all off as parasites, but the evil of vampires rates a little higher on the chart because they’re more subtle.  Fey come in and have the universe bend over for them.  The universe eventually shakes them off, and they head back to Fairyland or wherever.  Vampires come in, take some servant on, and become a hybrid of their universe and their servant’s.  It comes with a price, of course, as the more otherworldly they are the less this world tolerates them (until things like water and sunlight become classic problems) but they’re still holes in the fabric of my reality, and I am King of the Mothballs.

Or something.

“Whoa, hold on, these are friends,” Magda said.  “E, Sylvia, you’ve met, this is Matana.  And you are… Doloise?”

The Realm stared at her.  “I do not give my name to beasts.”  Wait, there was a capital “B” on that one, according to the tone.  “Beasts.”

Matana smiled.  You couldn’t see its fangs, of course, because they’re only necessary at certain points.  She had a nice smile.  I took a moment to look at her as a person, and not as a creature.  Her hair had been straightened and then curled at the ends.  She wore long painted fingernails with little hints of a curve in them.  Her dress was black with a scarf of reddish orange, the colour of the moon as it drips blood onto the horizon.  Not that I obsess about that whole blood thing (not as opposed to skim blood… no, wait.)  I am a gallon donor locally.   She had long shiny black boots with heels too thin to be used as effective stakes.

Repeating, “Do not obsess,” under your breath does not improve the point.

The Magster was looking like the end of her patience was coming on quickly, so I stepped in for a second.  “Doloise, Magda is not a beast.  Sylvia is not a beast.  Hi, Sylvia.  Matana is what Matana is, and I would reference that she was a lovely woman.”

“Not human, but not a beast,” Matana said.  She offered her hand and I took it gently, kissing above her fingernails.  She showed her teeth again.  “I see.  Magdalena, you were not entirely wrong in speaking about your former gentleman.”

“She is one of the cold ones,” Doloise said, hissing.

“Look on the bright side,” I said to her.  “At least she’s not a Dragon.”

“Well,” Matana’s smile widened, “it is one of the aspects.”  She winked.

Doloise didn’t frown, but that unhappy moue once again adorned her face.  I felt like I had disappointed her somehow, especially as Matana had just gotten me to grin again.  I sighed.

“This isn’t a black thing, is it?” Sylvia asked.

I raised an eyebrow at Magda.  Still corrupting the innocent, were we, old friend?

She shook her head.  “I told you, Sylvie, not everything is as it seems.”

“Ah,” I said.  “Know what they call a group of witches?” I asked Sylvia.

“A…coven?” she asked.  Her eyes were a very pretty blue.

“A conspiracy.  But that may be any group of women,” I allowed.

Maggie hit me in the arm.  “Come on.  Since you’re not going to stake a fellow guest, and Doloise is going to be on her best behaviour, let’s go to dinner.”

“Best behaviour?” I asked Doloise.

“It is a matter of Hospitality,” Mags said, giving me a Look.

The capital letters were out and in full force, I could tell.

“I don’t understand everything you’re saying,” Sylvia acknowledged, “but if I listen I’ll learn.”

I think it was a warning.

Hearing Maggie’s voice actually cheered me up a little in a way I hadn’t expected it would.  I wasn’t lonely, exactly, although Doloise wasn’t the usual kind of company I had over.  I couldn’t explain it, quite.  Doloise didn’t tease me, but she also didn’t laugh at my jokes.  Doloise would be my guide and guardian.  Maggie I could trust only if she gave me her word, and she certainly wouldn’t volunteer to walk into the lion’s den with me.  Or the Dragon’s.  Or whatever those Chinese lion-Dragon things were, for that matter, even if all I really remembered about them is that they liked lettuce.

I really shouldn’t compare the two.  At the same time, how do you avoid it?  They’re the most recent experience with the fairer sex I really have to focus on, and I feel the usual amount of compulsion to have someone of that gender as a companion.   No, really I blamed it on Maggie.  I had the feeling that Doloise wouldn’t complain if I made a move, but it wasn’t right.  To me, Doloise was something that probably had a foreign phrase attached to it – a dangerous infant or something.  Too new to the world, too dangerous to be left alone in it…for the world’s sake, if nothing else.   Not like a daughter or a sister, but still something precious.

She wanted me to save her.  That put her in that funny pedestal place, I guess.  She was sexy if I tried to not think about it.  Maggie was sexy all the time – she moved across a room like it was some personal samba she was performing.  Her dark eyes and wide lips were advertisements that drilled straight into my animal brain.  At the same time, you knew it was deliberate, which could also be kind of off-putting.  On the other hand, if I asked Maggie, she’d say no.

Wait, did she say it “could be” a blind date?  What was she doing?

It wouldn’t be the first time Maggie had tried to set me up with someone.  She had interesting tastes in that regard.

I set Doloise up with some Animal Planet and went into the bedroom.  I had to wear something that balanced impressing Maggie with the cool casual nature of not wanting to put effort into it because of her.  Yeah, right.  I spent some time shaving carefully and reminded myself that I’d have to do laundry tomorrow.  I had a pair of decent black jeans still folded in the drawer.  I found one of my black button-up shirts and a vest that went with it pretty well.  I slicked back my hair and put on a couple of rings.

Doloise looked at me, distracted by my movement from the TV show she was watching.  She made a strange noise.

“What?”

She shook her head and went back to watching a meerkat soap opera.

I got myself a tall glass of soda and checked my e-mail and a few torrents that had finished.   I examined the rings – one of them had been enchanted by a friend a while back to grow somewhat warm in the presence of, for lack of a better term, vulgar magic.  Nothing quite on the level of a Chernobyl leakage of a spell, but when something is sloppy it would pick up the ambient background level and use it to transmit a mild heat.  I liked it because it was witchmoss agate with natural hints that kind of looked like a skull.

I started picking up.  After the order Doloise imposed on my shelves, I spent some time getting my other books to match.   Doloise asked me a few questions about fleas.  I looked them up on the internet.  I did the dishes.  I didn’t kill time, but I fired an opening salvo in its direction.

I parked in all-night pay lot.  I pointed out some gargoyles to Doloise.  Most weren’t sentient, but there’s always a few in every city.  We made it to the bus station just as the last rays of sunlight painted their golden-red lances through the windows.  The mall was cloaked with the blue-ash shadows of the buildings.  The nocturnal forces were waking up although they had yet to have their coffee.

I waved Maggie and the two girls with her over to where Doloise and I sat on a bench, people-watching.

“Well, it makes a kind of sense,” I reflected.  I looked back in my memory as to what Nellie had said or done.  “There was the weirdness in the parking lot back there, where she was probably cursing me or something.  She raised the amulet to you, as if to tell you not to tell when we walked in – you pushed me down on the floor, in fact.”  I didn’t look at Doloise.  Because I was busy driving.  That’s it. “She was the one who took control and `told the story,’ if I recall correctly, but then she would have lied to me about the heart thing.”

Doloise continued to drink her milkshake. 

“Maybe it wasn’t a lie.  What did she say?  Her husband spent 3 days in the place of the dead, and something of that place will not leave him.”  I frowned.  “Then she looked me in the eyes, and said that they thought I could close that door.”

I hit the steering wheel again.  “Forget it.  I can’t understand women, let alone women who might be Dragons.  Did she want me to succeed or fail?  Was it a set-up?  Are all of the Red Poets part of the Dragon?  Did they want to prevent me from closing the door in Ivan?  Are Ivan and the being we call Nellie even related?”

I caught Doloise shaking in the corner of my eye, and I glanced at her.  It’s not like there was any traffic.

She was laughing.  Silently, but unmistakenably.  Um.  That’s not a word, but it doesn’t matter because she was definitely laughing.

At me.

“Alright, what’s so funny?”

“It cannot,” she broke off for another wave of silent shaking, “be explained.”

“I said I’d never understand women.  Or fairies.  Or Dragons.  Heck, just throw in the whole world because I can barely even understand myself, or why I’m not making you just walk,” I grumbled, waiting for the light.

It turned green and I continued down the street.  Off to my right was a tattoo and piercing place I had had recommended to me.  On the left, an Ethiopian restaurant I wanted to try sometime.   I tried to concentrate on the sheer niftyness that was Colfax and ignore my concerns for at least another minute or two.

My phone rang, and I nearly hit my head on the roof of the car from sheer surprise. 

I fished it out from where I put it in the console and put it on speakerphone.  “E.”

“What are you doing tonight?” it was Maggie.

“Um.”  Is there a Dummy’s Guide to “How To Tell Your Ex-Girlfriend That You Are Busy Fighting The Forces of Darkness Without Her?”  If not, maybe someone should write one so I can buy it.

“Nothing?  Great.  Come out to eat with me and a couple of friends.”

“Is this a blind date?” I asked.

“Could be,” she decided.  “Why, you’re not involved with anyone, are you?”

“Um.”  And the follow-up guide, “How To Tell Your Ex-Girlfriend You’re Being Chaperoned By An Otherworldly Being.”  “Not exactly, but I have someone I’d have to take with me.”  Or was I the chaperone?

“Does this someone have a name?”

I sighed.  “Yes.”

“Good.  You’ll have to tell me it sometime.  Does this someone have…a beard?”

“Doloise, and no, is that a problem?  Or are you trying to find out if my companion is a guy?  You know I prefer women.” 

“Remember to shave.    And a preference isn’t a rule, dear.  Is Doloise…” she thought about the name, I could tell. Good, I could ask her about it since I wasn’t able to look it up.  “Of drinking age?”

“Um.”  How about a guide on telling your ex-girlfriend anything?  I mean, just because Doloise probably had a personal existence of two weeks material, and thousands of years through her creators… oh well, fey and alcohol was a bad mix anyway.  “Yes.”

“It sounds complicated.  That’s definitely not your type.  Anyway, meet us downtown at the mall & Market Street just after sundown, unless you’re off fighting Dragons or something.”

“Um.”

“That wasn’t funny.”

“You have no idea.  See you then.” 

“You, my dear, are going to owe me some answers.  Bye.”  She hung up. 

“So, no fighting Dragons tonight,” I told Doloise. 

“Was that your squire?” Doloise asked.

This time, I was the one who shook with laughter.

Doloise stood in the doorway behind us.

“I am your Guardian and Guide,” is all she said to me.

I took a look at her.  It had been a slow transition, but while she was still wearing outrageous heels and amber glasses, something about her outfits had changed.  Instead of sharp (and dangerous!) curves, there were more balanced looks to them, cuts that suggested more conservative considerations.  Was she growing up or changing or (more disturbing) fitting my particular needs?

“Even into the mouth of a Dragon?” I asked.  I meant it to be funny, but she just nodded sharply.

I watched her as she turned around, pushing open the door.  I smiled at Ivan.  “I’ll be in touch.  Don’t sniff the fewmets or get into any arguments with the undead, alright?”  I made it sound like I gave that kind of advice every day and then hurried to catch up with Doloise.

Funny, usually I led.

She walked back to the car.  Nellie was no where to be seen, which, of course, made me temporarily concerned that Doloise had, I don’t know, eaten her.   I looked around the parking lot which seemed somewhat empty for a Saturday afternoon.  Well, maybe they’d have a large dinner crowd.  Actually, for being such a main thoroughfare, Colfax itself seemed kind of devoid of traffic.  Was there a game on or something that I’d missed?

That feeling of oppression, maybe – a lot of people could be sensitive to such, and decide to stay home.  I guessed that was it.  But a lot more people were completely blank to it, so why not have a steady stream of cars out on the road?

I frowned and got in behind the wheel.

“The sorceress would see your bones ground into bread,” Doloise said.

“I bet she tells that to all the fellows,” I replied, mostly on automatic.  Where were people?

A few birds fluttered on the phone lines.  “You are not concerned to become a pastry, I take it.”

“You are what you eat.  It’s only my fabulous metabolism that’s kept me from being slow enough to be dipped in sprinkles.”  Well, I could still go to the gym.

“She is sorceress enough to do it.  I do not understand her…animosity.”

“I am like her husband, waking up things that ought to have died long ago.”  I started the car up.  I wasn’t actually in a hurry to go home, but I wasn’t sure exactly where to go.  I was wound up in a strange way.  I figured I’d just head east and see what interested me on the way.

There are a lot of places for bands to play along Colfax.  The Tattered Cover cast her siren’s song but I was too wired to actually look for books.  Lots of opportunities to buy used goods or get liquored up, but it seemed kind of early and unkind for that.   Maybe not in that order.  I could buy cheap cellphone service at almost every other corner, kind of like the proliferation of sweet coffee places.

“How will I get in touch with a Dragon?” I asked Doloise.

“You call them.”

“I don’t think they’re in the phone book,” I sighed.  I pulled into a drive-through and bought us both some vanilla shakes.   “The Questor?”

“He would know,” she agreed.

“I have a feeling that it isn’t so much of a Quest, yet, though.  Maybe I just find a name and speak it three times.”

“That is a law of Will,” she seemed to be amiable to it.  She slurped a little with her straw.  I chuckled.

“You are not helping.  Are you not supposed to be Guardian and Guide?”

“You merely had to ask.  I would prefer not to do it in your transportation as it may make for discomfort.”  She didn’t set down the shake but I could hear faint harmonics.

“No, no, you’re right.  Need to find the right place and time.  Position of strength, find out what it is a Dragon wants except to grind my bones and make them bread.  Wait.”  I literally hit my brakes – good thing there was no one behind me for a couple of blocks.

“Nellya.  Why hadn’t I seen it?”  I hit the steering wheel with my hand.  “She’s the Dragon.”

No one has ever told me to get lost.  The funny thing about that is, I might be able to… certainly, I wander off pretty far when talking on the cellphone.  I need to pace while chatting, and while I used to be tethered to the wall, depending on who I am talking with I might wander a mile, two miles.

I’m great with maps.  I can fold them faster than Princess Glovebox if necessary.

It isn’t about me, because the magic isn’t about me.  It’s about what you need to find.

The first day I sat at my desk I didn’t know what to expect.  I didn’t know exactly what I had been hired for, although I know I was desperate for a job.  I had a desk calendar and a heavy black phone with actual push-buttons, some odds and ends pens and paperclips.  I figured I’d answer the phone if it rang and do my best to delay folks until they gave me the hint as to what I was doing.

Out of the hallway I thought led to the restrooms came a striking fellow in blue.  He was just under 7 feet tall, and he leaned on a black spear.  His long white hair was bound in the back with black ribbons.

“I seek the Goblin Castle,” he said, standing in front of my desk.

I’d been to a few science fiction conventions, so I figured this was just a great costume.  And the question?  I’d seen “Labyrinth” no less than 20 times, courtesy of my wife and children.

I was about to tell him, “Don’t go THAT way, no one ever goes THAT way,” when something entirely different came out of my mouth.  “You must pass the field of flowers like yellow bones bounded by three roads.  Upon the crest is a bridge of silvered stone.  Three times must you walk across it before they will open the door to the warrior lost, and then three times tested before the King will honor what he owes you.”

My employer stood in the shadows behind me, petting one of the cats who wandered about the place.

The gaunt blue man, (who I noticed had long pointed blue ears) bowed before me, and then stalked back into the hallway.

I got up from the desk and went down the hall.  It kind of had a 1970’s feel with the linoleum on the floor, an aged yellow light, and doors marked “Women” and “Men” on the side.  An exit sign hung askew, fastened by a single screw over a door that claimed to be attached to a fire alarm.  I had not heard any of the doors open.

I peeked into the bathrooms.  They smelled like industrial soap, same scent as at the hospital.  No tall blue men, no one, in fact, inside.

The fire door kept me back the first day.

The second day the calendar and the pens and paperclips were gone.  The phone remained, a silent sentinel.

Three women of varying ages, long red hair on all of them, stood before me.  White ribbons were twined around their wrists.  The middle aged one was in a business suit, the youngest in a summer dress, and the eldest wore something kind of like a kimono and something you’d see at a Renaissance Faire.

“We are looking for the King of Earth and Light,” the youngest said.

“Or his brother of Evergreen,” the eldest said.

“Or their brother Snow,” the one in the middle explained.

I felt the words take form through me.   It was not like an entity answering them, but more like knowledge being poured into my head like some kind of light.

“The Kings share this place.  One has left, seeking in sorrow his Queen.  One wrestles for summer, the other feels his heart grow frost.  They stare at the moon wondering why so few still seek the stars.  Follow the sun for a season and you may find a footprint.  They cannot hide from their mother, and the one with the quick laugh sometimes wears feathers in his hair.”

I didn’t know what it meant, but it sure got the girls excited.  They thanked me and went back through the hallway.

That day I tried the door, and no alarm sounded.  Outside was an alley.  No girls, no blue elves, no signs of anything but a trashcan with some broken down boxes and plastic flowing in the sunlight.  A regular alleyway.

The third day, the phone was gone, and I was called the Questor.

That’s who I’ve been for some time, now.  I don’t know how my employer handles the requests, how they’re brought in and how they pay.  I have faced down the Stormcrow.  I have understood that my employer has motives that may not align with mine.  I suspect she simply isn’t human.  But I get paid via a company, and I go home to my wife and kids and cats and we are happy.

When the Portal Doctor came in, he had been one of the first humans I’d met, and, at that, a fellow with a sense of humour about all this weirdness.  I hated sending him into darkness.

My wife told me I should find him again and invite him to dinner.

I gave Ivan a few minutes to compose himself.   To be completely honest, I would have to say I probably would have wiped away a tear, myself, if I hadn’t been a total jerk.  I mean, I was pressed to fault his logic, such as it was.  I could think of no other reason, myself, to leave my heart in the lands of the dead.

I had doubt, then.  Doubt is an insidious worm at the best of times, destroying what love and faith have made glorious.   The Serpent in the Garden was doubt, I am certain.  Part of it was a very personal doubt, that I would ever love anything so much as to be willing to do something that significant between our worlds for that reason, and part of it was doubt about my job here.

If I closed the gateway, there was only one way for Ivan to be reunited with his heart.

Possibilities flashed before my eyes, and I kept coming to the question: did Nellie love Ivan so much as to have him without his heart?  Was the safety of the Red Poets so much more important than her love that she wanted him cured first, and sacrifice her relationship second?  What would Ivan’s life be like, heartless as it was?

He wouldn’t be the first – it’s practically a fairytale trope (for which there ought be a whole ‘nother Wiki) to hide one’s heart somewhere else.  Perhaps there were support groups.  “Hi, my name is Ivan, and I have hidden my heart.” “Hi Ivan!” “I first lost my ability to care about other people when I traded it for the ability to speak the tongue of the dead.”

I focused after a moment.  I liked Ivan.  He was still in touch with his heart, or he wouldn’t be so likeable, would he?

Was this even my decision to make?  I was hired for a particular job.  I could just “follow orders.”

Yeah, that sticks in my craw, too.

“So?” Ivan turned around and asked.  It was a challenging tone.  “Do your…hocus-pocus, heh.”  He waved his hand as if he had no care in the world.

“Tell me first of dragons,” I said, suddenly.  I looked for Doloise without turning my head, but couldn’t feel her under the pressure of the situation.  Maybe she was behind me.  I wasn’t going to worry.

“Ah,” he said, as if I had suddenly earned a point, or at least some kind of respite.   He sat down again, his enormous frame fitting into the booth with the ease of practice.  He looked at me, squinting for a moment.  His hands moved in a way that indicated something specific, and he made words with the movement of his mouth.  “First, tell me why you ask.”

I felt the spell seize up the air around us.  It both relieved and intensified the oppressive sensation I’d been feeling since before I’d woken up.  It was a lovely privacy curtain, excellently delivered.  Ivan wasn’t just one of the Red Poets, he was at least a middle-weight champ.  I knew heavy-hitters who would have been hard put to do that with so little effort.

(It made me think of spy movies from the Cold War period, however irrelevant to the current situation.  What had Ivan been before he became a cook?)

“It has been weighing on my mind,” I tried to explain.  “Something about the way you referred to Doloise.  Was Artur trying to give me a hint?  The amulet that your Nellya wears.  Some ideas that just popped up in my head.”

He squinted at me again.  “You are a small wizard.”  He made that pinching motion with his fingers one uses to indicate distance.  It was not flattering.  “Andrei has good words for you.”   He leans back.  “And you come with daughter of Dragon to ask questions to one the Dragon has spit back!  You are small wizard, but parts of you are very big!  Hah!”

I didn’t ask him to elaborate.

“There are many routes to the lands of the dead.  I asked a Dragon to take me there.”

Oh.  “Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons.  I am crunchy and good with ketchup.”

“Pfah.  Ketchup!”  He gestured at the side of the table.  “We do not use it here!  But point! small wizard.  Dragons do not like each other.  Not even to,” and he made a motion with his hands that left very little to the imagination.  Might be why there’s so few of them left, really.

Ivan continued.  “I spent three days dead.  I spoke with many guardians of that land and ours and made deal for passage.   They were not all fair, but passed them I did.  I thought of my Nellya, and would return.”

He sighed, deflating.  “To return, I said, was part of the bargain.  The Dragon agreed, but wanted to choose his time.  I held my way.  He said he would then hold on to something to summon me at his need.  I agreed.  He took my heart.”

He smiled and pulled up his shirt.  In the middle of all the pasty flesh was something my eyes refused to focus on – I’ve told you, I can’t see gates.  But something from it still smoked.

“Once marked by Dragon’s blood, marked forever.  I do not know how a small wizard like you can fix it.”

I could close it.   I heard the sound, and it was not  a complicated pattern.  I felt the openness, the wrongness of the portal, and I wanted to, I really did.  So why were the words, “I guess that means we need to talk to the Dragon,” what came out of my mouth?

I looked it up, and it’s a fair shake that a tightrope walker is constantly feeling ahead with their feet already.  It’s a terribly contrived metaphor, but I do follow-up on these things.  Apparently one learns first to stand on the rope, and then attempts movement, and then the learning how to turn.   Not that I was feeling like trying it, but wouldn’t it be an awesome kind of magic if you could just read something like that and then do it perfectly? Some kind of physical adept, perhaps?

Alas, sometimes my imagination is bigger than magic, I think.

Doloise followed me in her tailored tie-influenced suit.  The tell-tale hart was probably only obvious to anything that had scoped out my closet, and since the Dragon Princess wasn’t the useful kind of fey (you know, like a brownie who would clean my house or give me a deal on Girl Scout cookies or something) I expected those things to be few and far between, like girlfriends.

Nellie met us outside the restaurant.  “He is inside,” she said.  She grabbed my hands.  “He would not sleep.  He spoke cold words that raised bones in the kitchen, and had them seek life’s blood.  I do not know–” she broke off.

“If you could bind him?  No, better not.  Not if you still love him,” I said, looking into her eyes for a moment.  I knew whatever support I could offer was going to be broken in my next question.  “Who died?”

I had thought over how I would ask it on the car ride, and it didn’t come out as smoothly as I’d hoped.  She broke away from me, and looked any direction but the one I was in.  I sighed, letting my breath out slowly in the humid afternoon.  It was hot, and I could feel a sweat beginning to build.

“You would judge, and you could not know,” she said.

“But you judge without giving me the opportunity,” I fought back, suddenly.  “Look, just tell me if it’s important.  If it’s not, if you know it won’t be part of what keeps the cold inside him, tell me that.  I don’t want your life story.  I want to do my job, get paid, and go home.  If you’re happier after that, great, fine, shiny, but I’m not a therapist, I’m not a real doctor, I’m not some white knight, I’m just a guy who kicks doors closed when he sees them open.”

She looked at me, then, and said something I didn’t understand.  Her eyes glittered black for a moment, and a rumble of thunder followed her pronouncement.

I couldn’t tell if she had prophesied or cursed me.  I just pointed at the restaurant.  “He’s in there?” I confirmed without waiting for an answer.  I didn’t care if Doloise followed or punched Nellie in the gut or if I was walking head on into some kind of obscure trap, I just opened the door with a wide sweep of my hand and waited for my eyes to adjust.

“O! Angel of death, I await you here, heh, heh, heh,” Ivan said.  I could tell from his voice that his “heh”s weren’t up to their usual vigor.  “Do your duty, but Ivan’s neck is thick!  It will take more than one blow from your tiny axe.”

“I am not the angel of death, nor do I play it on TV,” I said.  “What ails you, Ivan the Great and Terrible?”

“Ah, to feel that Ivan again!  I left him behind in the place where the bones clack and play their unhappy songs.”

“Many a man has given something up for wisdom,” I said, slipping into the booth across from him.  “An eye, a drink from a cauldron, their firstborn child.  Does anyone ever come back with more than, `Boy, that was a dumb deal?'”

He slammed a meaty hand on the table.  “You do not make a funny!”

Well, I try, but sometimes I miss.  “Tell Ivan to come home.  His Nellya misses him.”

He lurched over me faster than I thought he could move.  “He cannot.  The veil is there for a reason!  We are not to see!”

“But you did.  And you speak the tongue of the dead.  What do you say to them, Ivan?  What is it that was so important to leave behind your heart?”

“Ha-ha!  Small wizard, you have a point!”  He pulled me by my collar so close I could smell his breath.  “There is only one thing ever worth saying,” I was as pinned down by his gaze as his hand at my neck.  “You tell them you loved them.”

He let me go and I fell back onto the bench.   He turned away from me and I don’t know if I was going to see him cry.

I should really catch up on my recorded shows, but I’m a skimmer.  I took a few screenwriting courses in college which actually spoilt much of my enjoyment of TV and movies for a while as I carefully analyzed them for where the punch would hit.  I had my viewing of 45 minute shows down to between seventeen and twenty-three minutes depending on how much I liked the dialogue writers.  I don’t quite always get the “websurfing” metaphor when it was much more what I did on the couch (futon, yes) that was like riding the crest of a wave before crashing down into what always seemed to me to be a suspicious quagmire of commercials.

(You also get those on the radio – you hit your first button, commercial… then you hit all the rest just to find out that except for the last stanza of “Sweet Home Alabama,” which you’re really beginning to hate as a song for its being overplayed there’s no music on, just one of those points where everyone’s playing an ad.  Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t wield the big guns – I think that if I had control over the forces of the universe I might just change that.  Of course, it probably represents a deal between some forces or powers – “I’ll give needy children the power of love, but when you get a commercial on x, every other decent station will be running a commercial, too.”  Where x is your station of choice.  And this is not just an FM thing – it goes into the AM spectrum, too.  I just have to avoid tuning in in the middle of the day on my talk radio for fear of running into some stinky cheese show hosts.)

I was sliding between plot points and avoiding the Disney channel when I looked up at Doloise, who was busy poking at the one plant I have in my apartment, a very neglected Chlorophytum comosum.  (Random trivia here – did you know that two of the easiest plants to keep are the Dragon tree bamboo and the Aspidistra elatior, or Cast Iron plant.  If they had something called “Warlock’s Tongue” I’d just be inviting spirits of irony, right?)  The spider plant trailed a baby around the pot – it was a cute little ceramic toad with a wide-open mouth that I think Maggie potted.  It was a gift “for luck” from a lady who had a mild case of the gnomes.

“Are you…talking to it?” I asked.

I deserved the look I got.

“If it should happen to hold wisdom that makes my task easier to bear, I shall inquire of it.  What will you do with the dark marked sorceror?”

For a moment I wondered if she had read my Harry Potter books, but then I realized she was being literal-minded again, and I focused back on Ivan.  There was a connection I couldn’t see, but I could feel it.  It was frustrating, like walking an invisible tightrope might be if you were, say, the type of person to walk tightropes and found one become invisible.   The metaphor was stretched, yes.  Suffice it to say, I suspected it to be fine if the tightrope that became invisible was one you were used to and didn’t otherwise change in any fashion, but it would still be disconcerting.  I didn’t know how much tightrope walkers could ‘feel ahead,’ and Doloise was in my computer chair so I’d have to look it up later.

Regardless, I was frustrated.  So I broke it back into some simple steps.  Ivan had wanted to speak to the dead.  This would not likely be a matter of mere curiosity, but of a burning need to talk to someone or something that had died.  He was willing to give up a great deal of his life energy for this purpose, and now the dead have a conduit to him. Fair’s fair, a bargain’s a bargain, but his fellow sorcerors, including his wife, are concerned.

Let’s step back again.  Why do I call them sorcerors rather than wizards?  Because theirs is a magic of ritual, taught into families, and not very prone to improvisation.  They make deals with ethereal beings.  That’s why the half-a-day prep to destroy a city.  So they may have made ritual with each other in some fashion, meaning, does Ivan’s bargain affect them all?  I’ll consider the premise, but I won’t bank on it.

Feeling the dead in her husband, Nellie wants him back whole.  I don’t know if I can do that – once having experience what he had, Ivan will be changed.  That’s the nature of touching things on the outside.  It’s why I can’t have a normal girlfriend or nice things.  Well, I can blame it on Doloise right now, but there’s a like-calls-to-like in here.

Is Nellie jealous of whoever it is Ivan felt he had to speak with so badly?  Could it be an ex-girlfriend?  A mentor?  A lost child?  Find that out, and use that as my anchor to the power it holds over him.

I went back into the room and grabbed the card.  There was nothing on TV, and Doloise was going to bend the spines on my graphic novels if I left her to them.  It was an easy call to make.