Maggie for Hire (17 page)

I took off the lid to my drink and blew at the top, testing it gingerly before I took the first swig.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“Yah,” I said.

We sat for a few more moments in silence.

“Care to elaborate?” he asked.

I put down the coffee, “I think I know where the diamond lion might be.”

“In an underground lock box bunker that is impossible to get into?” asked Killian.

If only it was that easy.

“I think my dad found the lion at one of the missions.”

Killian put down his drink, “It is at one of the missions?  This is wonderful!  We should leave immediately!”

“No, Killian,” I replied, slowing him down.  “What I’m trying to say is that’s where it was, but my dad already found it.  And I think he tried to take it to the Other Side.”

“But Xiaoming said you cannot take it across...” Killian said, suddenly GETTING it.  I sort of felt the same way.

“I think he knew that if my uncle found it, our family was dead.  I think Dad tried to take the lion across the boundary to save us.  But I think he got stuck.”

Killian reached out and took my hand, “I am sorry...”

“The thing is...” I continued, trying to freeze frame the memory of a slippery image in my head, “when you were injured, I had to rip open a portal.  It wasn’t neat and tidy.  It was sort of like a tear instead of an incision.  When we went through, though, I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye.  I thought...”

Killian leaned forward.

“I thought I saw a face.  Just for a moment.”

“You think you saw your father...” Killian said, slowly.

“Yah,” I replied.  It hung in the air there for a bit, Killian looking at me and me looking at him, but he didn’t make a move to call the little white men in the little white suits, so I laid out my newly evolving theory.  “My sister told me that she thought she’d seen him, too, and my mom went all weird on me when I told her about it.  I’m starting to think maybe my sister didn’t suddenly come down with ‘the sight’...  I’m starting to think she’s actually been seeing him.”

“You think he is trapped there?”

“I think he went into hiding there.”

I pulled out the bookmark.  Yes, I lifted it from the library.  Bart shouldn’t have left me unattended, “I found this.  It was in the book that told me about the statues.  I think my dad knew that there would be no place safe here on Earth or the Other Side.  I think he knew that my uncle would stop at nothing to control the boundary.  I think my dad chose a self-appointed exile inside the border with the diamond lion to save us.”

I could see the wheels of Killian’s mind starting to spin and put the pieces together like my mind had done.  He slowly began to nod, which was much better than backing slowly away from me and calling me nutters.  Killian looked up at me, “Your theory answers many questions.”

I shook my head.  I suddenly had a very sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.  There was something wrong and all my instincts were screaming at me.

“I think I need to go see my mom,” I said, pushing down an overwhelming feeling of panic.  “I think I need to go right now.”

Chapter 37

I resisted laying on my horn as a speeding hearse almost knocked off my side view mirror.  Asshole funeral directors.

We left my car on Earth because of that damned official portal and the fact it was probably being watched.  My illegal portal wasn’t big enough for a Honda, no matter how compact, but as long as I could get to my car when I needed it without marching all over LA, I was a happy camper.  And that was easy enough.  I parked it by the phone booth, we climbed through dimensions, and hopped back into our waiting elfin jalopy.

I was crawling out of my skin.  I hadn’t filled Killian in on my senseless feeling of dread, almost superstitiously believing that if I didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t come true.

I wished to god that it had just been my overactive imagination.

Unfortunately, I was my mother’s daughter and her gift was one of sight and premonition.

We arrived at my mom’s house and the front door was ajar.

I had my gun in my hand before I even had the car parked.

“Something wrong?”

I nodded at the door.  A shadow fell upon Killian’s face.  He was shoulder to shoulder with me from the moment my feet hit the walkway.  His staff was out and at the ready.  We swept up the side of the house and flanked the front door.  I pushed it open with a toe.  There wasn’t a sound.

Cautiously we entered.  All the lights were off and there was no one home.  Everything seemed in perfect order.  And then I saw the note, a parchment envelope leaning on the fireplace mantel with my name on it.  I picked it up and broke the red wax seal.

You are cordially invited to a welcome home party hosted by my dear friend, Master Vaclav.  Time and location to be announced.  He will be taking good care of your mother until then.  An excellent housewarming gift would be a diamond lion statue.

With great affection,

Your Uncle Ulrich.

P.S.  I’m back.

Chapter 38

I put my hands on my thighs and tried to breathe in deep gulps of air.  Little stars were swimming before my eyeballs.  It felt like a punch to the gut.  Like a great big vise was squeezing my adrenal glands and causing my heart to beat at fifty times the rate it was supposed to.

Mom.

My uncle had made it through.

And he had her.

Killian had left my side and came back with a paper bag.  He handed it to me and I placed it over my mouth and nose, trying to focus on inhaling regularly.  I know he was rubbing my back and stroking my hair in a comforting manner.

Next thing I know, I’m staring up at him and he’s smacking my face, saying, “Wake up!”

“I’m awake!” I muttered.  “I’m awake.”

It took me a second to figure out where I was and what was going on, but then it came rushing back with Technicolor clarity.

“No...” I began to cry, “No...”

Killian gathered me up in to his arms and held me there against his chest as I wept, seemingly unaffected by the snot bubbles coming out of my nose and streams of water leaking out of my eyes.

“We will get her back,” he murmured.  “We will get her back.”

Slowly I was able to pull myself together.  I wiped my face on the back of my sleeve and looked at Killian apologetically, “Sorry about your shirt.”

He laughed and brushed back a sweaty hair from my blotchy red face, “I shall run a load of laundry before we kick the bad guys’ asses.”

I hiccupped out a laugh, “Wouldn’t want to get your shirt dirtied up before it got vampire guts all over it.”

He gave me another hug, “You are going to be okay.”

I gave him a nod.  I wasn’t, but I was as okay as I was going to be under present conditions.

He helped me up to my feet.  I had a banger of a headache.

“Get cleaned up. See if anything comes to you.  I will look around for clues.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he turned me around and pushed me towards my mom’s over-decorated guest bathroom, “No arguments.  Go.  You are of no use to me like this.”

I gave him a grateful smile and he kissed me on the top of my head, “Go.”

I ran the cold water and hoped that it would chase the red from my face and eyes.  I leaned my hands against the side of the sink and tried not to think about the fact my mom might be getting tortured or killed or turned at that moment.

How could she have not seen this coming?

I needed to calm down.  I was going to become sloppy and miss something important if I didn’t get my emotions under wrap.  I splashed the water on my face.

Uncle Ulrich made it across the border somehow.  Yet despite the fact that he finally made it, despite the fact he had my mom, he still wanted that damned diamond lion.

And unfortunately, he and the vampires were under the false belief that I had it.  Even more unfortunate, Dad had taken that lion and I couldn’t get it back. 

I started to shiver and it wasn’t from the cold.

I slammed off the water.  The more I thought, the pissier I got.

How dare they?  They made me leave Earth.  They took my dad away from me.  They destroyed my family.  Now they had my mom.  I started getting so angry I was shaking.

Mad was better.

Mad I could use.

Mad made me want to punch someone in the nose and right now all that ire was aimed at a guy whose name began with “U” and rhymed with “Ulrich”.

I grabbed a clean towel off of the rack.  It smelled of rose soap.

“I swear I’ll find you,” I vowed to any gods who might be listening.

I was my mother’s daughter and I wouldn’t rest until I got her back.  Any undead being that thought they could get away with something like this obviously didn’t know the women in my family.

Chapter 39

When I emerged, Killian was busy loading up a bunch of my mom’s spice jars into a grocery bag.

“You ready?” he asked, looking up.

“Yah,” I replied.

He grabbed the clanking bag and followed me outside.

I shut the door behind us, promising that the next person to open it would be my mom.

We got into the car and drove to my place.  I brought in the manila folders about the vampire attacks and pulled a bunch of maps out of the back of my coat closet.  Within minutes, I had a war room set up on my dining table, the local area laid out like a game of Stratego.  I was so focused, even my cat knew not to come sit in the middle of my work.

Killian disappeared into the kitchen with his bag.  I heard him rattling around, but it wasn’t until I smelled something positively awful in the air about an hour later that I went in to see what he was up to.

My mom’s jars with their curlicue labels were all over the counter.  Killian was putting a pinch of this and a sprinkle of that into the little Pyrex glass bowl I usually reserved for salsa or nuking eggs.

I was never really good with potions or magic.  Across the board, my life skills pretty much end at “innate ability”.  I can barely bake a cake from start to finish without screwing something up.  The first of any recipe always turns out great because I follow the steps word for word.  But after that, I like to pretend I am a master chef who doesn’t need a stinking cookbook.  It never ends well.

I made the decision that if I couldn’t work some sensory magic with a little flour and eggs, I was categorically banned from experimenting with ingredients that could actually mess up something important.

Killian’s mixture slowly began to glow.

He turned to me, “May I borrow your hand?”

He took me by the wrist and picked up a sewing needle.

“Whoa!  Whoa!  Whoa!  I am not cool with black magic there, bucko!” I said pulling back.

He shook his head, “It is not.  Uncle Ulrich’s invitation will let the magic know who we want to find, but we need to let the magic know that you are the seeker.”

If I wasn’t looking for my mom, my answer would have consisted of two words, one being “no” and the other beginning with the letter “f”, but since it was my mom, I held out my arm.  I looked up at the ceiling while he poked me and squeezed out three drops into the potion.

He rotated my hand so that it was now palm down and dipped my fingers into the mix.  He muttered something in elfish and then used my hand like a paintbrush across the ransom note.  I left trails of light with every stroke.

When every last bit had been covered on the page, he let go of my hand.

Killian laid the note out on my dish drainer, “It has been spelled with light to find your mother.  When we are facing the right way, it will glow brighter.  When we are faced the wrong way, it will dim.  We just need a general area to get started.”

“We’re playing ‘Hotter/Colder’ with my mom’s life?”

“Yes.”

At least he was telling it to me straight.  I stuck my finger in my mouth to stop the blood with my tongue and waved Killian into the dining room.

I motioned to the map, “It looks like we have a concentration of attacks close to the eastern border.”

Killian looked over my shoulder and traced the roads we needed to follow to get there, “Do you believe we should leave before dark?”

“I don’t think we can afford to wait.”

He didn’t have to say a word for me to know he agreed.

Chapter 40

Yah, we headed in the right direction all right.  We had driven through the night, guided by the glow of Uncle Ulrich’s macabre party invitation.  The road wound out of the city and into the countryside.

As the sun began to rise, we drove into a tiny village town hunkered down at the base of a completely sinister mountain.  It was a quaint little place with thatched buildings and Tudor styled architecture.  It even had a little fountain in the cobblestoned square.  But every eave was covered in garlic bulbs and flowerbeds had been replaced with stakes poking out of the ground for easy access.

I pulled our now not-so-out-of-place car in front of an inn.  The windows were shuttered and the doors locked.

“Looks like they might have had some experience with vampire types,” I muttered as I stepped out of the car.

“Your keen observational skills would put a Dark Elf to shame,” replied Killian dryly, his eyes scanning the sky for trouble.

I pulled a crossbow out of the trunk and strapped it to my back, “I think I deserve a raise.”

“Done,” said Killian.

The door to the inn opened and the proprietor cautiously stuck his head out, white horseshoe hair sticking up like he had just rolled out of bed.  He startled at the sight of Killian and me.  He might have been old, but before I could even twitch, he had a crossbow aimed at my heart with the safety off.  I mean, I know after our all night journey we probably looked like hell, but that doesn’t mean we were actually FROM hell.

I put my hands up, “Just travelers.”

“Many say that,” he stated matter-of-factly, “but you were here before sunrise.”

“That’s true...”

“I’ll need you to take a drink from the fountain,” he said, motioning to font in the center of town.