4:1
Another night. Another meet up at Leo’s. It was ten days since they’d rescued Nieve and the other abducted women.
The group was just getting settled at their table, coming in dribs and drabs as they shuffled in from work. Most of them looked worn. Some of them looked worse. In the week since “it” had happened they’d each been burning the candle at both ends, doing their regular jobs by day and then dedicating large portions of the night to their self-appointed tasks regarding the mystery unfolding around them.
This was the first time they’d met as a group, though they had been getting together in smaller ones to bat around theories or help each other puzzle things out. It had been decided that until they had something solid to go on, or another story and person tied to it presented itself, there was better things they could do with their time than have meetings.
You could lose a cat in the dark circles under Kim’s eyes. Gwen’s hair was standing up randomly in places, evidence of her dragging her hands through it again and again. And where you could lose a cat in Kim’s dark eye circles, Gwen’s looked like the door to a haunted house, the one you paid your price to enter then decided ‘nah, that’s okay. I think I’ll just go get a hot cider instead.” Gwen was mainlining coffee, one in her left hand and one in her right which she kept alternately bringing to her mouth to sip from.
At Kim’s confused look, Gwen muttered, “caramel macchiato,” a lift of the left, “Black eye”.
Wow, a drink that not only contained enough caffeine to send the drinker to the moon but also one so evocative of the circles beneath Gwen’s eyes. Kim showed her appreciation with a golf clap which Gwen responded to with a chair bow.
Prairie slid softly into the chair next to Kim. She was still in her scrubs and was wearing cute pink crocs with flowers and cartoon woodland creatures stuck in the holes on the top. “Did I miss anything?”
“Sleep?” Ivan’s question was more of a statement, like the answer wasn’t clear by the paleness of Prairie’s complexion and the slope of her shoulders. But the smile she gave him was so sunny it belied any signs of fatigue.
“Why thank you, Ivan. I did sleep well. And you?”
“I spent a few hours getting all the women situated. I arranged for guards on the floor that they are staying on at the hotel, just in case our ‘friend’,” air quotes, “decides to make another play for them.” His expression darkened. “I would pay good money to know what our mystery guest was doing to the women, if they got what they wanted, or if the women are still in danger. I’m afraid that if they go off to their separate homes they are at risk of abduction or worse again.”
Dan propped his elbow on the table and fingered his upper lip. “It’s the not knowing what they, and I’m going with they because of Mal’s report, are doing or what their end goal is that makes it damned impossible to know what to do.” He thumped the table with his fist and then rammed his fingers through his hair. “I need one detail to follow. Just one. it’s like give me a loose thread and I’ll unravel this thing but I can’t find a single thread.”
Siobhan nodded. “I know. And we’re trying. Ben? Have you come up with anything from your sources.”
“Squat.”
“Prairie. Anything come to you?”
Prairie nodded sad and slow.
Siobhan’s jaw tensed, the only evidence of the frustration she was feeling. Keep it level, she counseled herself. Someone has to stay level. But, damn it! Her dreams had been haunted by those women with their broken bodies and broken minds and, in her dreams, broken souls. And what could she do? She was an alchemist! And a kindergarten teacher. Sometimes she couldn’t figure out why this group of smart people had decided she was their leader. Every damned day she felt under-qualified for the position. But, had to keep up appearances and spirit’s so she just ground her teeth on a smile and kept on plugging.
“Gwen, what happened in there?”
Gwen raised her haunted eyes. “Best I can figure, and I’ve been thinking about it pretty much all night, something was feeding into them. Like, you saw the IVs right?”
Several of them nodded.
“Well, they had another IV that you couldn’t see and it was dripping gloop into them. And I don’t know how that’s possible.”
“So that’s what we ripped out?” Dan asked quietly.
Gwen nodded.
“How did that work? Why did I have to help you?”
“I don’t know. I just know it was failing when I tried and then it just came to me that I needed to have you help. That the gloop or where it was coming from or how it was being fed had more to do with your Magick than mine. I could see the feedy tendril things because I’m pretty sure that was my kind of Magick. Something was feeding into their minds or their souls or whatever so I could see it and see it’s effect. But if I followed the tendrils far enough back they just disappeared into the air.”
Dan shot a glance to Ivan. In Ivan’s eyes was the same memory of the hooded figure disappearing into a rip in reality.
“I don’t know,” Gwen continued, waving her coffee cup in emphasis, “but I think that was your kind of Magick.”
Dan frowned. “Not like anything I’ve seen before.”
“Seems like we’re running into that a lot with this thing.” Ivan ‘s expression darkened further. “You want a thread to pull? Me I just want someone to punch. In the face.”
Dan acknowledged the sentiment with a nod.
“So,” Siobhan was turning to Prairie when someone approached the table.
“Hi. I don’t want to interrupt.” Kelly, a young Magicker that was fairly new to Ourton stood a respectable distance away from the table. She stood with her toes turned in slightly and a knee bent in a stance that spoke of hesitation that matched the tone of her voice. Hands clasped at her waist, fingers working subtly back and forth so her knuckles flexed like the tiles on a Rubik’s cube, completed the impression. “I was hoping maybe I could thank you for something?”
Siobhan boggled a little. “Thank us?’
“Yeah. Uhm.” Kelly looked down at her hands, her dark hair falling to cover her eyes. “I heard about those women you helped yesterday. And I noticed that they looked a lot like me. And I thought ‘Wow, that could have been me.’ You know?”
She released her death grip on her fingers for long enough to shove her hair behind her ear, then went back to the gripping.
Are we that scary? Siobhan wondered.
“I do.” Siobhan said in the gentle tone she used with her more sensitive students. And as she did so she took a visual inventory of Kelly, realizing that, yes, the young woman was right. Young. Pretty. Brunette. With her pale skin and dark hair all she needed was some blood red lipstick, and an unhealthy pallor from a long convalescence, to look an awful lot like the women they’d saved.
Something pinged in the back of her mind. Was that a connection? But… wha…
Well, crap. Snow White. The Nieve story was Snow White. And what were some of Snow White’s defining features? Lips red as blood, skin white as snow, hair dark as pitch.
Siobhan’s gaze went unerringly to Dan who was looking at her with dawning understanding.
“Snow White,” they mouthed to each other.
Not that the revelation meant much. Like how were these women found and targeted? Why were they found and targeted? What was being done to them with the gloop as Gwen called it? Who was doing this? And WHY?
The questions chased around in Siobhan’s mind like chipmunks caught in a garage.
Still. It was a pattern. And where there was a pattern there was a puzzle. And where there was a puzzle there was bound to be a solution. They just needed to figure out how the pattern formed the puzzle and then figure out the key to solving it.
Easy peasy. Siobhan internally rolled her eyes at the glib statement.
Dan turned to Ivan and muttered quietly. “Nieve is snow.”
“Yeah,” Ivan frowned. “Nieve is a word for…” The light turned on. “Snow. Son of a…” Bracing an elbow on the table he placed his hand close to his mouth to hide the movement of his lips. “Do you think they got what they were after?”
Pointing his chin at the table, Dan slipped a toothpick into the corner of his mouth and chewed around the words.
“No. We should warn Chase.”
“Betting he’s being pretty vigilant.”
“Against people who can basically teleport?” Dan slanted a knowing look from beneath lowered brows. “My big concern is it’s been ten days. We may already be too late. No one has made a play on the women at the hotel, right?” He turned to Ivan getting a negative head shake. “So, maybe ‘they’ have tried for Nieve again.”
“Shit!” Ben and Gwen turned to look at Ivan as his voice rose. He made a calming motion of his hand, patting the air near the table, and they turned back to where they were listening to Siobhan and Kelly talking.
“Shit,” Ivan gritted lower. “No. Excuse me a moment?” With that he rose and strode to the bar. A quick word with Patti and he was sliding back into his seat, a nod to Dan conveying it would be handled.
They both turned back to Kelly who still stood hesitantly at the exact same distance from the table. Ivan gave her a encouraging smile and she blushed.
“So,” she dug her toe into the floor, bashful to the core, “I was thinking. I know that your group is pretty solid and stuff but maybe…” she stopped then continued in a rush with her words tumbling over each other. “ifyoueverneededhelpmaybeIcouldhelpyou?”
She cringed and looked hard at her hands.
Ben turned in his chair to give her his full attention. And a rascal’s grin for good measure. It was wasted on the top of her head.
“Hey,” he said, trying to catch her attention.
She looked up. “Yes?”
“If you want to help we need to know what you can do?”
It wasn’t totally cool to ask a Magicker what flavor of Magick they called but then again she had opened the door by asking if she could join them.
“Coherent light.”
“Come again?”
Instead of answering in words Kelly released the death wringing of her hands and held up her left one, palm up. A haze shimmered over it then formed into something resembling a glittery super ball. She bounced it delicately, showing it’s density and solidity. Then her nose scrunched and it morphed into a cube.
“Wow.” Kim’s mouth gaped slightly. “Like Dazzler.”
Every Magicker showed a certain affinity towards the X-Men. Shocker.
While Magickers couldn’t have TVs or stream movies and even going to movie theaters was a game of chance, drive-up theaters with their wide open skies and spaces were a Magicker haven. And you better bet every Marvel movie got massive numbers of ticket sales. Were most of the X-Men movies disappointing and so far from the superior source materials? Yes. Were they still sold out at the Ourton Drive-In? You better believe it.
Kelly, showing an admirable understanding of said far superior source materials, wrinkled her nose. “No music. Just the light show.”
“We could add the music.” Gwen paused with the right hand cup hovering in front of her mouth and scatted the opening bars of Yaz’s ‘Don’t Go’, “Ba doo doo doo doo doo doo doo,” while shifting her shoulders to the rhythm.
Ben tapped the bottom of the cup, pushing it towards her lips. “More coffee. Less scat, Ella.”
Kim leaned forward, her gaze intent. “Can you make lasers?”
“Yes.” Kelly said, then shook her head vigorously in the negative. “No.” She wobbled her head side-to-side. “I haven’t tried but I think maybe I could. Not like you mean. Weaponized. Someday. Not now. This is what I do now. I could produce something close to what they use at registers to scan bar codes, but not the ‘pew pew’ kind.”
“Hey, the value of having a clean light at the table should not go unappreciated.” Ben said.
“Can you throw that?” Kim pressed.
A nod. “I can.”
“What’s it do when it hit’s?” Clearly Kim was considering the merit’s of the addition of another offensive caster to their ranks.
“Hurts?”
Siobhan snorted. “How are you at puzzles?”
Kelly shrugged. “Like crossword puzzles?”
“No. Like ciphers. Codes. Logic puzzles. Pattern guessing.”
“Math,” Ivan picked up the thread. “Riddles. Trivia.”
“Acrosstics. Mazes.” Kim counted off on her fingers. “Merkle’s. Pentomino. Tiling.”
Dan dropped his hand onto of hers. “You’re overwhelming her.” He turned his attention back to Kelly. “There are lots of kind of puzzles. What can you do?”
“I’m not sure what some of those were but,” she shrugged, “I’m pretty good at math and logic puzzles. And the pattern thing, probably?”
“Are you good at solving math on the fly? Maybe even with things flying at your head?” Ben asked
Kelly nodded.
Siobhan looked at Kim who looked at Gwen who looked at Ivan, until “the look” went all the way around the table. Then she smiled at Kelly.
“We might be open to taking you along at some point. Right now we’re kind of in the early stages.”
Again Kelly tucked her hair behind her ear, then spoke to her feet. “Oh. Okay. Well, if you need me I’m here a lot.”
Kim leaned around Dan to say. “I’ll find you later. Give you a few puzzles. Not that it’s a test or an entry exam or anything but maybe they’d be fun?”
Seeing puzzles as fun was a huge plus to everyone at the table so they waited for Kelly’s response with different attitudes of interest.
Kelly lifted her head and the smile she gave Kim was like a ray of sunlight cutting through a bank of clouds. Kind of a compliment to her Magick. Interesting. “I think so.”
“Cool. I’ll find you later.”
Kelly read the dismissal for what it was, said a quiet goodbye, and stepped away from the table.
“Snow White!” Ben burst out as soon as she was out of earshot.
“We should have someone watch her,” Gwen suggested. So, she’d caught the resemblance to and the possible danger Kelly could be in.
Ivan nodded and looked at Dan. Dan looked at Ben. Ben looked at nothing, because he had taken that moment to start rolling dice on the table. What? It helped him think!
“Ben?”
At Ivan’s question Ben looked up but his hands continued to roll the dice. Clatter, clatter, clatter. Clatter.
“I already planned to get a few of my boys on it. That girl needs a friend.”
Prairie spoke up quietly. “I could be her friend. She seems nice.”
“No,” Gwen said, “You seem nice.”
Prairie lowered her brows and gave Gwen the side-eye to which Gwen lifted a cup to her mouth and took a hearty swallow of coffee.
“Not enough coffee,” she mumbled, tilting her arm so she could wipe her mouth without letting go of the cup.
Before they could say more Patti climbed the stairs to the stage. Respect for her talent and anticipation for what she might sing dropped a veil of silence over the table. There was a mystery to solve but they could take a break.
Stepping up to the front of the stage Patti said, “Mike check. Mike, mike check.”
Four men called out, “Here!”
It was an in-joke at Leo’s that elicited a smile more for the sense of familiarity and community it enhanced than the joke itself.
Patti didn’t actually need a mike. The woman had pipes on her. Pipes she exercised as she pitched her voice to carry and called, “Siobhan?”
Siobhan gave a dubious look and said in a drawn out fashion, “Yeees?”
“I got a piano and no player. Do you know Mood Indigo?”
Siobhan scratched a brow. “Duke Ellington’s version do?”
“You know it!”
Siobhan responded like it was a question. “I do.”
Patti swept a hand across the stage to the piano situated at the back. “Then get up here.”
Siobhan excused herself and navigated the chairs and tables dotting the floor. As she stepped up on the stage Patti snagged her wrist. “I don’t suppose you know the Nina Simone version instead?”
Siobhan smiled and nodded. “I do. Good choice for your voice.”
Patti shrugged. “I know my instrument.”
Siobhan sat at the piano, gathered herself, then laid her fingers to the keys. And then Patti hit the first note and she almost forgot to keep going.
“You…” Patti held the note like Nina did, long, like you thought she had a magic well of air. Made sense, Siobhan thought, she just stole it from everyone else. That single drawn-out note cut through the low conversations still going on in pockets around the room. It cut through the air like a demand that people pay her some mind. It was magic. No, it was Magick.
Just when you’d think Patti would pass out if she didn’t draw a breath she hit the next words. Hair rising on her arms Siobhan played with her eyes closed and her heart open. Finally when Patti hit the last note the room took a collective breath. Literally the Magick of the connection made by Patti’s voice made them all draw breath at the same time. And then they exhaled. And rose to their feet, clapping until their hands hurt.
Tears unabashedly poured down Siobhan’s cheeks as she carefully closed the cover over the keys and rose. Sidling over to Patti she said real low, “I need a bard.”
Until that moment she hadn’t known she *needed* a bard but now it felt as obvious as the nose on her face. No, she corrected, *they* needed a bard.
“I charge two fifty for kid’s parties.” At Siobhan’s quick look Patti added, “What? They throw cake. Have you ever tried to get blue frosting out of your hair.”
Siobhan lifted her brows and gave Patti a knowing look. “I’m a kindergarten teacher.”
“So,” Patti lifted her shoulders, “you get it. I need two fiddy.”
“How do you feel about being paid in challenges and an overall sense of frustration that eventually, if you’re really lucky, amounts in a deep feeling of satisfaction and doing the right thing?”
“Does doing the right thing pay?”
“Not even a little.”
“Well, damn, you make a really strong sales pitch.” Patti jerked her head towards where the rest of the crew were taking their seats. “Let’s talk.”
Enter The Woods 