American Quest (17 page)

Forte patted him on the shoulder. “Relax, buddy! We got time. It’s a full day’s drive.”

“What!”

“That’s fine,” Jamie said quickly, her hand gripping the steering wheel. “We were looking for a new direction.” She glanced over at Bruce and then back to Forte. “How long have you been playing guitar?”

Forte shrugged. “Started playing when I was three. Got my first gig when I was ten. Pretty much been on the road ever since.”

“Has anyone offered you a record deal yet?” Bruce asked him.

Forte shook his head quickly. “Contract offers come along every
now and then. One’s half decent, another one’s not. When I know it’s right, I’ll sign. Right now the road is what’s right.”

“Sounds like you’re waiting for the skies to open up,” Bruce said.

“I’m not really waiting for anything, to tell you the truth. My girlfriend says I should just go for it. I don’t know, though. I could put out my stuff now, but it’s not ready yet. You know, right? You heard it last night.”

Jamie glanced over her shoulder. “I thought it was pretty hot.”

“Thank you. But I can do better. I feel like I’m just outside of where I need to be. Just barely outside. When I do the record contract, I want to make sure I got something that’s gonna hold the fire a hundred years from now. It’d be stupid to go through the motions just to get paid when I’m so close. Anything I put out, my name’s on it. Forever.”

“That’s actually very commendable,” Jamie said.

Forte lifted his shoulders. “Whatever. You want to know the truth? It ain’t time. I don’t know why, but it just ain’t time yet.”

Jamie’s eyes found Forte in the rearview mirror and Bruce swiveled to look at him.

“You know, don’t you?” Jamie said.

Forte returned a blank expression, and for a moment Bruce thought he was going to plead ignorance. Then his lips parted and he fixed his gaze on the window.

Finally, he spoke. “The extra ‘Stairway’ lyrics came one night. Right around Cinco de Mayo last year. My buddy was into all this silly shit. He called it ‘automatic writing.’ So I’m like, ‘Okay. Whatever.’ He gave me the pen and told me what to do. I let it fly. I’m thinkin’, ‘Okay, you know. This is where the road takes me.’ I write down some shit and it’s weird, I mean, I wasn’t expecting to feel so slapped around by it. But it was like I’d been run over by a train after.”

He nodded at Jamie in the driver’s seat. “And now here we are a year later with you singing back to me the stuff I wrote that night.”

He laughed, an easy, inviting laugh, and his eyes traveled with the mile-markers moving past on the road beyond.

Bruce sat on edge. Jamie was right—Forte’s gig was probably exactly where they were supposed to be going. Bruce hoped. He looked out the window, watching the rows of crops that sped past in strobe.
This is taking me somewhere
, he thought.
At least I pray it is
.

“I’ve been trying to figure it out, ever since last night,” Forte said. “I just don’t get it. I figured I’d talk to you guys this morning on the road cuz everything always comes clear on the road. Figured I’d get it. But I still don’t get it. And for some reason I get the feeling it’s okay, I got all I need to know for right now, and it’s cool I’m just sitting here shooting the shit with you guys. Something’s going down here. Something serious. And I don’t believe it’s just girlfriend trouble.”

Bruce looked at Jamie. Her eyes showed hope, but he could see she wanted him to keep quiet. Last night she’d privately told him they should wait until they got to know Forte before telling him anything about their plans. Bruce no longer agreed.

“Here’s the thing,” Bruce said.

He took a breath and then told Forte everything that had happened. He left nothing out. Not even the stuff about Enervata that he barely comprehended himself. He knew by the way she white-knuckled the steering wheel that Jamie was worried. She probably figured he was sounding a little too strange for the peripatetic rocker—that Forte would make a mad dash at the next rest stop. Bruce didn’t care. If Forte thought they were crazy, then fine. They need not waste any more time with the guy.

But when Bruce finished the story, the musician only shook his head. “So, we’re on a quest, huh?” Forte crossed his arms and nodded, a slow, rocker-wise kind of nod. His eyes flickered across the front seat of the van. “I should get some really good tunes out of this.”

“Got a bit of a situation, haven’t we, master?” Glueg tapped his fingers along his pint jar.

Enervata turned. “What is it?”

Rafe held his breath, certain that the brothers had discovered their secret and were about to expose it.

Hedon piped in. “We’ve a small opportunity ’ere. An unexpected
development, isn’t it? Overseas, yes, there’s a prince and a duchess who’ve gone made eyes at each other. No one notorious, not in the dailies. But it’s a pair-normale any way you look at it.”

Rafe let out his breath in a slow, inaudible stream. He noted the slightest relaxation in Isolde’s posture as well.

Glueg continued where Hedon left off. “So this pair-normale, with the right kind of encouragement, could cause a minor international incident, you understand? Maybe even a war. Somethin’ to think about, yes? She were to play a part in it, our Sileny would be right fat as a toad now, wouldn’t she? I know you said our primary focus should be the bond-recherché, but under the circumstances . . .”

Shadows danced over Enervata’s bronze face. He turned and smiled at Hedon and Glueg.

The other Pravus took a step backward.

“A small war,” Enervata said with a twitch in his tail. “How delightful. How satisfying. How utterly . . . distracting.”

Hedon and Glueg began to roll in their seats, muttering affirmations into their jars of honey wine.

Enervata curled his lip, narrowing his eyes at the brothers. The pint jars flashed suddenly and then shattered in their hands. They sat back in surprise. Enervata grabbed Glueg by the throat and yanked him out of his seat, speaking his words slowly, deliberately, as Glueg gulped for air.

“Now hear this. All of you. No more distractions. No errors. The sluggish pace is trying my patience.”

His face hovered inches from Glueg’s. “As for you two, I warned you that I wasn’t to hear another word on any matter unrelated to the bond-recherché. I said you are to watch my enemies. Focus on Kolt.”

They nodded with vigor.

“You sots can never seem to devote your attention until blood is shed.”

He released Glueg, who then fell to his knees, coughing, eyes bulging. Glueg spread his hands and apologized profusely.

Enervata glowered at Sileny and the brothers.

“Rafe and Isolde seem to be the only ones who can carry out their instructions. At least the quest is stymied and we need not concern ourselves with interference from the young man Bruce. As for you, Glueg, on your feet.”

Glueg’s eyes grew wide. “Master? On my word, I’ll not trouble you again.”

“No, you will not. I shall see to that. On your feet.”

Glueg began to weep. He pointed at Hedon. “Please! It’s his fault. Me brother don’t know when to let it go, he don’t! I told him you wouldn’t approve! Have mercy on me, master! Take me brother instead!”

Hedon gaped, his blood-crusted piggish nostrils flaring, and his face grew deathly pale. He uttered not a word.

Enervata growled. “I said, on your feet!”

Glueg lurched to his feet as if grasped by an invisible force. He wailed and thrashed. And then he rose higher, feet dangling just above the floor. He clawed at his own neck. A snaking trail of steam escaped from his clothing and he began to shriek.

Glueg smoldered and burned. Not in the morphing indigo flame that had transformed Rafe and Isolde, but in the manner of a witch at the stake. He burned rapidly, wholly incinerated in a matter of moments until all that remained of him was the lingering stench of charred hair.

Hedon’s gaze rested somewhere else, the slightest tremor to his right hand.

Rafe’s throat clenched. His eyes flicked to Isolde, who showed no expression.

They would survive at least another day.

“HELLO ALL YOU CATS AND KITTENS. Shannon Power here. Are you ready to shake it up and rock it out?”

Bruce and Jamie grinned at Forte, then returned their attention to the stage where the sparkling choppy-haired brunette was making the introductions. They’d been listening to this Shannon Power, the local DJ, on the way up and finally Forte confessed she’d been his girlfriend for the past year. Bruce could tell by the way Forte was watching the stage that he was inside out, head over heels for her.

Shannon draped a hand over the mic stand. “I know folks. You want me to tell ya something good. Well get ready cuz I got something good to tell ya. Yessir, we got one hot rocker in Ann Arbor tonight.”

The audience cheered.

She looked offstage to where the sound guy was replacing some connections. The stage manager shook his head and gave her a thumbs-down.

She tossed her hair and looked back at the audience. “Okay, in just a couple of minutes we’ll bring that cat on up here. He’s probably the only cat won’t make me sneeze, neither.”

A ripple of laughter from the crowd.

Someone shouted, “Give us your one-minute Fashion Statements, Shannon!”

And from someone else, “Talk to us, Shannon!”

She grinned. “All right. Speakin’ of cats, my roommate’s got one.
That thing can tell I got serious feline issues, too. Probably why I got cats on the mind tonight. It ain’t that I don’t like cats, ya know? Cats are fine. It’s just that they make me sneeze and break out in hives! My roommate’s cat comes in and allasudden I’m the one hacking up a hairball. It thinks I’m nuts. It also thinks my shoe makes a good litter box.”

Jamie snickered.

Shannon Power eyed the stage manager and continued. “You know what I paid for those shoes? I’ll tell you what, cost more’n my car. That’s like, what, fifty bucks?”

A ripple of laughter from the audience.

“I got my revenge, though, on both of’m. Yesterday I got to help my roommate give the kitty its pills.” She grinned, wiggling her brows. “My roommate says, ‘You hold the kitty, and I’ll pop the pill in its mouth.’”

Shannon wagged her finger. “I’m all, ‘No no no. You hold the kitty and I’ll cram the pill in its little mouth.’ So we tried it, and the kitty shredded her blouse, spat out the pill, and scratched two Xs on her arm. Kitty gives her the injurious aspect, the evil eye.”

She paused. Jamie and Bruce looked at each other.

Shannon continued. “With that malevolent lip . . .”

She stopped again, blinking as if she hadn’t intended to say those words.

Jamie squeezed Bruce’s hand and whispered, “The malevolent lip, the sorcerer spry!”

Onstage, the DJ shook her head. “Anyway. So my roommate got a new blouse and we tried it again. This time she put kitty in a pillowcase with her head sticking out. Kitty shredded the pillow case then shredded the new blouse, spat out the pill, and bit two holes in her arm.”

The audience guffawed. Forte jogged over to where the sound guy was working.

“So my roommate said to me, ‘You want to try it one more time?’ And I said, ‘Why not. Kitty gets one more shot at an X-scratch or O-bite and you’ll have tic-tac-toe.’”

The crowed clapped and cheered.

Shannon grinned. “I said to her, ‘What’s the pill for, anyway?’ You know what she told me? She said . . .”

She paused, backing away from the microphone as she laughed and
shook her head. She put her lips close to the mic and continued, “It’s for anxiety.”

The audience roared. She shook her head and spread her hands. “I’m all, ‘Anxiety? Kitty’s anxious? Maybe it’s because we’re stuffing it in a pillowcase. Can’t you just give it a little catnip tea or something? Bake some catnip into special brownies?’”

Forte jogged back to his position and both the sound guy and stage manager gave her the thumbs-up.

“All right, here we go ladies and gentleman. Somethin’ to make you purr. Whenever I see this next rock-and-roller, I know I purr. Rrrrrrowrr!”

Her voice grew jubilant. “Let’s show our love for Mister Charles Forte!”

She jumped and raised her hands over her head to applaud. When she did, her leather jacket opened slightly to reveal her T-shirt underneath. Red with a yellow heart in the center.

The audience whooped and Forte launched right in with a smoking guitar solo.

Bruce and Jamie zeroed their sites on Shannon Power as she left the stage.