Geekomancy (21 page)

Would binge eating make the problems go away? No. Would it be delicious and distracting? Yes.

“And a bottle of the chianti Ruffino, to come out with the pie, please.”

Cole cracked his half-smile. “You I know, but I have to card this gentleman.” Ree’s smile dropped as she realized that Drake might not have an ID.

Drake pulled a leather billfold out of his coat and showed it to Cole. Ree was somewhat disappointed to see that it was a standard state-issue identification card. In the picture, Drake looked somewhat annoyed, staring off-center.

The pizza master scanned the ID and nodded. “Crack fries coming right up.”

Ree rolled her shoulders, shrugging, and when she looked back, the dough-slinging sprite was gone.

“Okay. Here goes.” Ree launched into a retelling of her misadventures with Eastwood, focusing on the suicides and the cauldron-borne vision, ending with Eastwood’s confession and her storming off. Drake listened politely, stifling several questions she saw grow on his face and get set aside.

Her story finished, she leaned back, sipping on the water that Joni had apparated onto the table while Ree was talking about getting attacked by gnomes.

Drake took a drink of his own, furrowed his eyebrows, and gave a thoughtful “Hmm. Several thoughts.”

Ree nodded. “Please.”

“Eastwood is a noted member of the local magical community. His reputation since Ms. Catrin’s disappearance has slid more toward that of the curmudgeon, but he is universally regarded as being on the side of the angels.”

“Literal or figurative?”

“Figurative,” Drake responded without missing a beat. “I think. I’ve not encountered any angels myself, but I would not rule them out. I’ve seen beings as strange, terrifying, and wonderful in my travels through Faerie.”

“So—can you help? I need to find this Tomas, figure out a way to protect him from whatever that thing was.”

“If my suspicions are correct, it was most likely an Aberrant Muse.”

“It inspired the White Wolf Iron Age Superhero RPG?” she asked.

Drake cocked his head to the side, regarding her for a second, then shook his head and resumed. “There are many varieties of muses. We mostly know the Greek muses, who inspired artists and philosophers. They were the more positive muses, nine singular entities that governed art. The Aberrant Muses were their dark reflections: numerous, cruel, and persistent. Far darker than even Melpomene, who governed tragedy, the Aberrant Muses inspire sorrow, hatred, jealousy, and so on. If I am correct, this phantom would be a muse of despair.”

Ree asked, “And it could be responsible for the string of suicides?”

“Easily. I would surmise that this Muse was part of a colony under the control of, or at least the influence of, the Duke, sent to Pearson to create the opportunities for young Master Eastwood. The Muse pushes the poor youths into the deepest despair, then Eastwood arrives to collect the souls and condemn himself as part of his desire to rescue his True Love.”

Undercutting the somberness of the conversation, Cole appeared around the corner with the bowl of crack fries. Ree took a long smell, letting the spices and heat and cheese hit her senses, prompting an eat-your-heart-out-Pavlov’s-dog response.

Ree started to tear in, then stopped herself. “You first. Otherwise they’ll all be gone before you get the chance to join the cult of the crack fries.”

Drake raised an eyebrow. “Cult?”

Ree waved a hand reassuringly. “Joke. They’re delicious, try them.”

Eyebrow still up, Drake ate a fry. He chewed thoughtfully. The suspicion dropped, and then so did his hand, reaching for more. “These are marvelous! I’ve not had a treat its equal since the Mistress and I were guests in the grand hall of Count Dabbalio.”

They feasted on fries while Ree considered implications, happy to have the food take her mind partially off the depth of what they were discussing. “Can you locate Aberrant Muses, track them at all? Maybe we could follow this one and cut it off before it reaches Tomas.”

Drake wiped crack spices from his mouth and took a drink of water. “I could attempt to isolate its aetheric signature based on Dr. Woolenstein’s inferences on the residual frequencies of post-living entities.”

Ree asked, “Is that a yes?”

“It’s a maybe, mademoiselle. But if your fears are correct, then time is of the essence.” Drake took another handful of fries and stood up, munching. It was hard to look dashing and intrepid while chowing down on french fries, but he made a valiant effort.

“We haven’t even had the pizza yet,” Ree protested.

“Ask for a canine box. If we are to save this young man’s life, then we must let science be our guide, lest we arrive too late. We shall not leave him to your former mentor and condemnation in the torture tournaments of the Duke of Pwn!”

People were staring. Ree laughed and flagged down Joni to ask for the pizza in a carryout box and to cancel the wine. She unfolded a twenty and a ten, doing the mental math based on a hundred visits and dozens of order combinations.
Fifteen for the pizza, eight for the fries, generous tip including tipping on the bottle of wine we’re not actually going to drink just in case they already popped the cork. This heroing is expensive. Okay, I should have skipped the wine.

Ree and Drake waited for three minutes, then he said, “I will go ahead and make preparations. When you have the pizza, reach me on the cellular telephone and I will provide directions.”

With that, he turned, jacket flaring. He strode out with the determination of a hundred action-movie heroes.

Ree distracted herself with fries and a lap around the Internet on her phone until the pizza came out fifteen minutes later. She smelled the gloriousness and resisted the urge to open it up and have a slice as she walked.

Drake’s phone rang three times before he picked up. “Hello?”

“It’s Ree. Have pizza, will travel.”

“I assume so.”

He rattled off directions, but she stopped him. “Is it an actual address or something weird?”

“Weird?” he asked.

“Do I have to go down a set of stairs that shouldn’t exist, knock three times, and then close my left eye as I open the door?”

Beat. “No, none of that nonsense. It’s Apartment 7E. Master Grognard located the apartment for me and assisted in its acquisition. I did not, however, inform the landlady of my scientific endeavors. Fortunately, I have constructed sophisticated ventilation systems and have evaded notice thus far.”

Ree chuckled, balancing the pizza box in one arm as she held the phone to her ear. The streets were getting busier as people wrapped up their errands, preparing for party night.
While
my
plans are shaping up to preventing a suicide or picking a fight with my magical mentor. Awesome.

“Got it. See you soon.” Ree hung up, then reset her armful of pizza, dodging through the crowds, trying to stay positive instead of wondering with every step whether she was too late, if Eastwood was one soul closer to going all Robert Johnson and the Crossroads. Even worse, since Eastwood would be using stolen chips.

Jackass.

Chapter Twelve

Marconi’s Nerdy Granddaughter

Ree reached the building after a short train ride and was happy to find a buzzer intercom. Pleasantly normal. She set the pizza on the flat top of the concrete railing and buzzed 7E. No answer. She waited a few seconds, then buzzed again.

The voice was scrambled by static, but she still recognized Drake on the other end. “Yes?”

“It’s Ree.”

“Entre-vous, mademoiselle.” The door opened. Ree retrieved the pizza and made her way up the stairs, through hallways with cracked paint and worn wooden rails to a poorly lit hallway with dirty tiled floor, all the way to 7E. Arms still full, she knocked with her elbow.

She heard three locks click, slide, and unhinge, and then the door opened, revealing Drake Winters, who, in addition to the outfit he’d been wearing when they met—leather jacket over a fine shirt and sturdy britches, brass-tastic goggles on the forehead—now had a rifle slung over his shoulder and an impressive laboratory behind him.

The lab took up the entire living room. Beakers, boilers, racks of herbs and ingredients, tubes and wires plugged into everything. And on the ceiling: fans, filters, and unnameable ridiculous devices that shouldn’t work and therefore probably were the most important. She’d been to a Steamcon, and they had pretty good decorations. Drake’s laboratory put them all to shame. With an ear-to-ear smile of wonder, she walked inside, taking it all in.

“This is awesome!” Ree said, looking for a place to put the pizza box where it wouldn’t be melted, electrified, or otherwise rendered less tasty.

Seeing her look around, Drake beckoned her to follow as he walked through the room. “We best take the food to the kitchen.”

For all that the living room was overfull, the kitchen was nearly empty.
Not a chef, then.

Drake opened a cupboard, revealing a stack of paper plates and several plastic cups from Pizza U, the best of the local delivery joints.

She sliced up the pizza and ripped a still-steaming piece from the pie. She introduced the slice to a paper plate with about as much brevity and intent as a sorority girl introducing the black-sheep sister at a party, then started devouring it.

She bit through juicy chunks of tomato, chewed on succulent spinach, and crunched on the perfectly baked crust. The world went away for the third time in the day, but in the happy I-love-food-screw-the-world kind of way rather than the significantly less awesome here-comes-or-goes-a-dream-premonition kind of way.

Ree hoped not to add to her index of Ways That the World Falls Away to a Pure World of Sensation. The existing three on the index were mostly positive (the third being good sex, naturally), and she’d rather keep it that way.

Her first slice was gone before Drake could get his piece extricated from the pie and onto the plate. Half of his slice had slid off and slopped onto the table. Drake applied a spatula and attempted to re-dress the slice. “Rather problematic,” he said, his nose curled up in a face that was both cute and ridiculous.

“If you need to use a fork, I won’t think you less of a man,” she said.

Drake gave an unself-conscious smile and retrieved a fork and knife from a drawer.

Ree walked with her second slice back out into the living room, tiptoeing her way through the maze of lab equipment. With pizza in hand, she was far less tempted to reach out and touch things, so she just took a mental inventory, speculating to herself what various devices could or would do. She turned and saw Drake cut a large bite and pop it into his mouth.

“What do we have to do to track the Muses?” she asked, smiling at her successful timing.

Drake’s eyebrows scrunched up, possibly in annoyance over having been questioned with food in his mouth. Ree kept a round of cackling on the inside and waited for Drake to finish chewing.

“I understand now why you were insistent on acquiring this supper, Ms. Ree. It is quite phenomenal. It reminds me of the grand feast put out by the Pirate King of Barkeria, who ruled over an archipelago of mad islands, each stranger than the last.”

Ree beamed. “We don’t know each other so well, but let me give you some advice. Always trust me when it comes to three things.” She held up a finger for each point. “1) Obscure trivia of post-crisis DC Comics continuity; 2) my gaydar; and 3) where to find the best pizza in every neighborhood I’ve ever lived or worked.”

Drake cocked his head to the side. “Gaydar?”

Ree shook her head. “Never mind. Muses?”

Drake crossed in front of her to set his greasy plate down next to a burner.
That won’t become a problem, nope. No risk of grease fires here.

“It’s a question of frequencies, so I will need to use my aetheric goggles to create the proper filter. I will then attach the filter in one of the goggles’ settings, and we should be able to detect any traces of Aberrant Muses.”

Drake crouched down and started rummaging through a box of parts, still talking. “Do you know anything else about where this young Tomas may live? There may be several Aberrant Muses in a city this size, though given the particularity of this Muse’s taste, and following with Spengler’s theory of niche distinction in post-living entities, we may be able to distinguish between different signatures across the emotional spectrum. Do you have access to any radio or satellite arrays?”

“You know about satellites?”

“I made communication technology a priority in my acculturation, given my technological predispositions.”

“Okay. I don’t have any radio hookups. A friend of mine on the north side has satellite Internet through work. Wait, would satellite radio work?”

“XM?” he asked.

Ree nodded, taking another bite.

“That should be sufficient, depending on the signal.”

She stumbled upon a burst of excitement, immediately balanced by annoyance and a little dab of shame. “Now all we have to do is go back to Café Xombi and explain why I’m running around playing scavenger hunt but couldn’t come in to work.”