Fireshaper's Doom (3 page)

Alec stared at him for an instant, then checked his own timepiece. “What
is
this, Sullivan? It’s not like we’ve got a deadline or anything.”

“Well, if you’ve got to know, I want to check the mail one more time before we leave the county.” He picked up the abandoned comic and stuffed it in his right hip pocket.

Alec shrugged. “So check it in the morning.”

“But that would be out of the way,” David observed. “And thereby lose you most of your precious reprieve from the Mustang of Death.”

“Well, David, my lad,” Alec sighed, as he closed the remaining suitcase, “I may be wrong, but I suspect there’s a woman at the bottom of this. And I just bet I know what her name is.”

David’s response was to wiggle his eyebrows like Groucho Marx, flick the ashes off an imaginary cigar with one hand, hoist the backpack with the other, and stalk toward the doorway.

*

Alec tugged his seat belt a fraction tighter and dared a glance at the highway ahead. Nothing had changed: the white dashes of centerline were still disappearing beneath the expanse of red Mustang hood far too rapidly for either his nerves or his stomach’s liking. A quick check through the window showed the staccato pattern of flashing pine trees that was common to much of rural north Georgia. The current batch masked any sign of the looming mountains. “Ride of the Valkyries” thundered from the cassette player in harmony with the rumble of dual exhausts.

“I really miss Liz,” he shouted above the music, as gee-forces pushed his right shoulder against the black vinyl door panel.

In the driver’s seat beside him, David reached over and turned the volume down a fraction.
“
You
miss Liz? How do you think
I
feel?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Why’d you bring it up, then?”

“I
miss her because of the unseemly haste her absence seems to provoke in you at the most inconvenient moments.”

“God, you sound pompous, McLean. Too much
Masterpiece Theater’s
rotted your mind. Either that, or yo’ papa really
has
managed to corrupt you.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“The point
is,
fool of a Scotsman, that I need to get to the Post Office before they close, and I’ve got”—he checked his watch—“three minutes and twelve seconds to do it in.”

Alec gulped as the Mustang hit a straightaway and picked up even more speed. “Thought you guys were on the route, man. You’re not looking for anything in
particular,
are you?” He cocked a knowing eyebrow.

David cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Well, I was sort of expecting a package
from…
from Liz, as a matter of fact.”

Alec’s eyes glittered wickedly. “I’d be interested in knowing what term you intended to place in that moment of hesitant reconsideration I thought I just detected. The one right before ‘from Liz.’”

David glared at him. “Okay, Alistair, stuff it.”

Alec nodded and folded his arms in smug satisfaction. “Yep, I
figured
your lady was involved in this somehow.”

“Somehow I doubt she’d appreciate that, Alec. Nobody owns Liz Hughes but herself, and I’m not even sure about that!”

“Well,” Alec replied pragmatically, “if you don’t get off your butt and do something, what to call her may not be a problem too much longer. I mean, you may be the only guy in Enotah County that fills her prescription, but what with her living down in Gainesville with her dad for the last nine months or so, she’s had a bigger drugstore to shop in lately. You might not measure up.”

“Watch it!”
David warned, suddenly only too aware of how close Alec had come to one of his own secret insecurities.

Alec would not be swayed. “Okay, okay. Now granted, she’s not exactly been available,” he continued. “But still, she’s not been what you’d call inaccessible, either—especially not to somebody with a car and a tendency to run the highways.”

“I’ve seen her, Alec, you know that: Christmas, my birthday, Easter, Memorial Day, the weekends she doesn’t have to work, which isn’t very many.”

“At which times I’m certain you’ve unburdened your soul in preference to your hormones,” Alec inserted quickly. “Which I doubt is really satisfactory to either of you.”

David slapped a hand on his friend’s denimed thigh and started squeezing. “You know that for a
fact,
McLean? Been spyin’ on me,
boy
?”
The grip tightened on every word.

Alec gasped and turned pale. “I’d prefer you kept that on the
wheel,
kiddo.”

David’s voice softened into an exaggerated meld of mountain twang and coastal drawl as he went on obliviously. “Spyin’, huh? Betrayed, more like it. Betrayed by mah closest friend. I knowed them flatland ferriners in MacTyrie’d ruin you.”

“I don’t have to spy,” Alec gritted. “Because, number one, I know you, and I know you’d have told me if anything happened; you’d have been unable to resist. And, two, I know Liz—and while I doubt she’d relay such intimate details to the likes of me, I think I could tell anyway, just by the way she’d look.”

David removed the hand to further soften the music—which had begun “Brunhilda’s Immolation.”

“And how might that be, sir?”

Alec grinned and punched David’s shoulder in a quick one-two. “Like real happy-like.”

“A lot
you
know about it.”

“More than you think, Sullivan; I got eyes and ears. But don’t try to change the subject. Liz won’t wait forever. And besides, you’ve got less than a year before you reach your sexual peak, and then it’s all downhill. You’ll have wasted—”

“Bunch of crap.”

“Use it or lose it.”

“I
do
use it.”

“Not, however, as the Lord intended.”

“You should talk. You’re the only person I know whose right hand complains of headaches.”

Alec stared at him askance, his face deadly calm. “I haven’t noticed any signs of atrophy in
your
nimble fingers, either, Mr. Sullivan. But as I was saying,” he continued more lightly,
“
you
should talk. To Liz. Soon, and then often. And not about the weather.”

“Real hard to do when she’s in California,” David observed sullenly.

Alec nodded in sympathy. “It really is too bad she couldn’t make it back before we headed out.”

“Yeah, and that really pisses me off, too. I mean she
said
she’d be back from Gainesville at the beginning of summer—but is she? Hell no! It’s out of Lakeview Thursday night, and hop a jet for a month in Frisco Friday morning.”

“Well, she really couldn’t afford to miss the opportunity.”

“Oh, sure.” David sighed. “I understand—rationally. But dammit, we’ll be graduating in another year and who knows what’ll happen then.”

“Yeah, I know, man. But you’ve got to admit that logically it was the best thing for her, and she’s basically a logical person. Lakeview’s a lot better school than Enotah County High, and for photography, it’s no contest. She’d never have won the award she did by hanging around here.”

David frowned and sucked his lips. “I know that too, Alec. But she
knew
we’d be gone to Governors Honors most of the summer. Surely to goodness she could have put off California by one bloody day.”

“She didn’t make the plans, as I recall. It was a graduation present from her aunt one year early.”

“Well, damn her aunt, then.”

Alec braced himself and pointed through the windshield. “Better damn that traffic light up there instead—’cause if it turns red, you’re in trouble.”

“No way, man!” David laughed as he floored the accelerator and flashed through the light at about twice the posted speed limit. It was the only one in Enotah County and easy to forget—especially as only a month or so had passed since the familiar caution light had been replaced with a full-fledged red/yellow/green.
One more intrusion of so-called civilization into the mountains,
David thought.

The black glass cube of the Enotah Municipal Post Office was a block off the main square, right between the prickly mass of ancient Gothic courthouse—abandoned now, though thankfully not slated for destruction—and the bold planes and angles of the brand-new one. Old Mr. Peterman the postmaster was coming through the front door when David screeched into the parking lot. He looked up, smiled, and shook his balding head. A ray of stray sunlight reflecting off the polished surface behind him gave his remaining hair the appearance of a wispy halo.

“Hey, Davy, what’s up?” he asked as David bounded up the two stone steps from the sidewalk.

David found himself unexpectedly out of breath. “Am I too late to check the mail?” he panted. “What about packages—you got any packages? I’m leaving tomorrow for six weeks, so do you think you could, like, check and see if anything came in the afternoon stuff? It wasn’t sorted when I was by on my way to MacTyrie, and I’ll be gone before it runs tomorrow.”

Behind David’s back Alec shot the postmaster a conspiratorial wink.

The old man pursed his lips, but his eyes twinkled merrily. “Five o’clock, boy.”

David checked his watch. “Four fifty-nine,” he countered, with his most ingratiating smile. Suddenly he felt very foolish.

Mr. Peterman pointed to his wrist. “Government issue. Never wrong.”

“Oh, come on! Couldn’t you just check?”

“How long you been living here?”

David vented an exasperated sigh. “Seventeen years.”

“And how long has the Enotah Post Office closed at five?”

“How should I know?”

“Longer’n that!”

David’s face fell. “No package then?”

The postmaster reached inside the door and picked up a large flat parcel from behind the glass front wall. “Not unless it might be this’un.” He grinned triumphantly and started to hand it to David, then at the last possible instant whisked it from the boy’s eager fingers, staring at the address label like a mischievous child. “Wait a minute. This says, ‘David Sullivan
Esquire.
’”
He cocked his head sideways, “You ain’t no ‘esquire,’ are you?”

David rolled his eyes desperately.

“Well, that’s what it
says
here,” Mr. Peterman went on guilelessly, thumping the package with a stubby finger. “Must not be you after all. Reckon I’ll have to put this back inside.” He started to turn.

David was bouncing from foot to foot. “Give me a break, man!”

“Okay, so maybe it is you. You don’t know any L. Hughes in California, do you?”

“That’s Liz Hughes, my—” He shot a glance at Alec. “My friend.”

“Well, if you’re
sure
…I
guess
I can pass this on.”

David reached once more for the package, but the old man stuck it quickly behind his back, forcing David to dodge first left, then right. On the second left feint David snagged it.

“You knew I’d be by, didn’t you?”

The old man shook his head. “Not really, but I knew you were leaving tomorrow, so I thought I’d just drop this off at your house on my way home. Glad you saved me the trouble.”

“Yeah, sure,” said David. “Thanks a bunch!”

“Right on, boy, no hard feelings, hear?”

Alec poked David in the ribs as they returned to the car. “Did he just say ‘right on’?”

“Hell if I know.” David shrugged as he lowered himself into the seat, leaving the door open as he attacked the package. Within the brown paper was a second wrapping of white, and within that a file-folder box. David pried off the lid and examined the contents: a somewhat stained and dog-eared book at least two inches thick, bound in dark blue fabric; a fat white legal-sized envelope almost the same thickness; and a pair of beige T-shirts bearing a more or less circular design from the
Book of Kells
silk-screened on the front in bright, rich colors and perfect registration.

“One for each of us, I’d imagine,” Alec observed over his friend’s shoulder.

David fixed him with a level stare. “You imagine a great deal, sir.”

“Well, they’re different sizes, for one thing: a medium and a small. What’s the book?”

David fished it out and studied it curiously.
“The Fairy-faith in Celtic Countries,
by somebody named Evans-Wentz. I’ve heard of it. Supposed to have a bunch of stuff about you-know-who and you-know-what in it.”

“God, more of that crap. Don’t you ever get tired of the Otherworld, Sullivan?”

David ignored him and began flipping through the pages. “Ho! What’s this?” he cried, as a folded slip of paper fell into his lap. He opened it and scanned it quickly, then read it aloud. ‘“Found this at the local used book store and thought it looked interesting, especially in relation to certain
privileged
information of ours. Some tidbits of folklore in it you might want to look into, and a tiny bit about Nuada. Apparently the Ailill they talk about’s not the same one we know—if you can call it knowing. A bit about changelings and the Sight that ought to ring some familiar bells.’”