7:1 – Act One
“I saw you take the comb.”
Ben looked around the table, determining what his friends were doing and buying himself time to respond to Dempsey’s quiet statement. Gwen was across the way, leaning on the bar and talking to Patti who was pulling pints for them. Prairie sat by the tapestry-covered window, her shoulders hunched beneath her lavender scrub top as she played her fingers over her bone necklace and focused a distracted stare at where the walls and ceiling met above Ivan sitting braced in the corner. Ivan was taking the opportunity presented by her distraction to look at her, framing his goatee with the fingers of his right hand. Ben smiled as Prairie’s gaze focused a moment and darted to look at Ivan, then quickly retargeted the ceiling and the myriad secrets it contained.
A less observant man might not have seen the tiny moue of frustration that twisted Prairie’s mouth before her expression transformed back to its usual placid calm. For sure it seemed like Ivan did not. Those two! A blind man could see their interest in each other and yet they both did a damned good job of completely missing the clue boat themselves.
The door to the entry opened and Dan and Siobhan walked in, Siobhan gesturing to Dan as she explained something. Dempsey, next to Ben, leaned his chair back on its rear legs and braced a foot against the table, keeping his gaze steady on Ben.
Ben worked several answers around in his head before settling on, “So?”
“Did you find someone to assess it?”
Ben pressed down his frustration. “No. My contacts are all still,” air quotes, “away on business.”
“I could look at it.”
“And it could disappear into your stores.” Ben slanted a sideways glance at Dempsey. “Warden.”
Dempsey showed no response to this veiled probe. Ben was about ninety-percent sure he was right in thinking Dempsey was The Warden. His appearance just when the group was starting to figure out the relevance of the items that kept cropping up in this situation, combined with his implied concern about the danger they presented, wasn’t particularly suspect and yet there was something about him that set off Ben’s Spidey Sense. Whether that sense was just a heightened ability to read situations and people or if there was something preternatural about it, his hunches had kept him from making some bad choices in the past and also had helped him make some good ones too. Also helped him find some sweet, sweet loot. Including the comb he’d recovered during the tower rescue of Llora three days ago.
He knew it was wrong to keep an item that might have relevance to their hunt. Okay, on paper, he knew it was wrong, that other people would frown at him for swiping the piece, that Ivan would give him that ‘I’m so disappointed’ look. His friend had perfected that look around the time he’d decided to go legit and double-down on politics. But every time Ivan leveled Ben with that look it just made him want to break something else. Usually a law. Call him contrary. It wasn’t going to make him sad. But, possibly, maybe he might feel sad if this group decided to kick him to the curb. Not that he needed them or anything but- They didn’t totally suck. And they had a knack for finding sweet, sweet loot.
Leading right back to the comb Dempsey asked about. The comb that had been poking at him like the tell-tale heart, beating out a rhythm of “you need to give it to the group” that he found harder to ignore with each passing day.
“Fine.” His tone was grudging as he gave in to his internal argument and Dempsey’s level stare. He reached into his jacket, going to the hidden pocket along the side seam. “It’s right-”
He stopped. Ran his finger up and down the pocket. Reversed his hand and poked at the leather from inside.
“Uh.” Like a squirrel mad for a nut, he started darting his hands into all the interior pockets of his jacket, feeling around through the collection of objects and careful not to slice himself on the concealed blades mixed among the less innocuous things. “It’s-”
He went left to right and left again then around towards the concealed pocket in the waist seam above his kidneys, his motions becoming more frantic with every pass. “Not here.”
Siobhan eyed his jerky movements as she pulled out her customary chair. “Missing something?”
“The comb.”
“The comb?”
“The comb I took from the tower.”
“The comb you took from the tower?”
“Are you an echo?” Ben snapped, his sense of frustration rampant in his tone.
Siobhan reared back, eyebrows lifted. Ben sighed. “Sorry.”
Siobhan waved his apology off. “You took the comb from the tower and now its missing?”
“That about sums it up, yep.”
Ivan rolled his eyes. “Ya know better, son.”
“I am better, bruh,” Ben replied, his expression setting in mulish lines. “I know I put it in my pocket when I left the dock.”
“Maybe someone stole it?” Dempsey suggested.
Ben shook his head. “People don’t steal from me.”
“You dropped it?”
This time Ben let his glower comment for him. “It was here. It isn’t now.” He eyed Dempsey. “Funny, it was there until I sat down next to you.”
Dempsey didn’t deign to show any concern over Ben’s accusation. “And I asked about it why?”
Before Ben could really dig in, Kim breezed up and plunked down the bag she was carrying on the table near Ben, effectively breaking his train of thought with the concussive force.
Ben frowned at the bag. “What do you have in that thing?”
Kim shrugged. “Stuff. Can you watch that?” she pointed at the bag, “I need to pee.”
So saying she headed for the lavatories, making a quick detour to wave to Gwen and Patti and then to Sass who scurried to the end of its shelf to “peep!” at her. When the mouse waved its arms, she shot it a peace-sign and continued on her way.
At the table Siobhan picked up her conversation with Dan. “Have you had a chance to have someone look at that?” She waved at the word Hope on his fingers.
Dan shook his head. “Every Bibliomancer I’ve asked has theories about it but nothing but that.” He flexed his knuckles, staring down at the word. “It seems like its something new.”
“May I?” Dempsey asked, waving at Dan’s hand.
“Sure.” Dan stretched his arm across the table, putting his hand near Dempsey who spent a minute examining it visually then sat back.
“Have you talked to a tattoo artist?”
“It’s not a tattoo.”
“It’s not a mundane tattoo,” Dempsey emphasized the ‘mundane’. “Nothing says it isn’t a Magickal one.”
“That’s a thing?” Siobhan asked.
“Yeah.” Dempsey looked around the table, his expression quizzical. “None of you has seen Magickal tattoos?”
Ben frowned. “I know guys that say their tattoos do things, like give them luck, but that’s just superstition.”
Dempsey shook his head ‘no’. “Some of it is. Probably most is,” he shrugged. “But I know someone who has Magickal tattoos.”
Dan’s expression turned inwards. He worked his toothpick for a moment, then slowly said, “Is it a form of Bibliomancy?”
Dempsey shrugged. “I don’t know. You can ask the person if they decide to talk to you.”
“Can you get them now?”
“Yeah, let me just dial them up on my cell phone.” Dempsey rolled his eyes. “I can send a messenger if it’s important?”
Dan jerked a nod, his gaze going back to the word on his skin. Dempsey got up from the table and walked out the front door. He returned a minute later. “Sent. We’ll see if they are interested. No guarantee. They like to keep it low, but they owe me a favor. Which reminds me.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a rectangular package wrapped in soft leather and placed it in front of Dan before taking his seat again.
Dan lifted his eyes from the tattoo and grabbed the package to pull it in front of him. “The book?”
Dempsey tapped the table in front of the book with one broad finger. “The book. As promised.”
Dan unwrapped the leather, reverently peeling it back from the book which he left lying in the protective material. He rubbed his fingertips together as he eyed the book. “This is-” he nodded to Dempsey. “Yeah.” Without touching the book, he carefully rewrapped it in the leather, tying it off with several suede cords he pulled out of his pocket before slipping it into his vest.
Each balancing trays stacked with pitchers and glasses, Gwen and Patti left the bar for the table. They were almost to the group when a woman strolled over from the bathroom area and stopped Patti. “Patti, there’s water coming out of the Ladies’ Room. Thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks,” Patti said in a distracted voice, turning her head towards the bathrooms before finishing her walk to the table and placing her tray down near Ivan. “I need to check something out,” she told him, jerking her heads towards the bathrooms. “Was Kim going to the Ladies’?”
Ivan looked that way and nodded. “Think so?”
“Huh.” Patti turned and headed for the bathroom.
Ivan rose and hurried to catch up to her. “Huh, what?”
“There’s water coming out of the Ladies’ Room. You’d think she would have come and told me.”
Ivan frowned, picking up speed to quickly outpace Patti. “She would.”
Patti amped up so she could keep up with Ivan. They both hit the bathroom at the same time. Water wasn’t just seeping from the inside, it was pooled and the pool was quickly spreading. Ivan turned his head to Patti at the same time she turned hers to look at him. They shared a wide-eyed look and then Ivan flung the door open or as flung as he could as the water heeded the movement of the door, causing waves in the pool of water that continued to pour out, flooding over their feet.
Patti frowned. “There’s not that much water in the pipes.”
“There is if an Elemental Magicker is in trouble,” Ivan corrected as he drew his sword and sloshed into the bathroom yelling “Kim?”
Patti was torn between “yeah, that’s going to scare anyone peeing in there” and “Why am I not carrying my cudgel?”. Not that anyone probably was peeing in there. The amount of water on the floor should have driven anyone in there fleeing with their pants or skirts held high.
The green flocked couch against the wall facing the door had probably an inch, inch and a half, of water swirling around its curved wood legs. The basins of the sinks to the left overflowed, water cascading off the white marble counter to splash into the water which seemed to actually have a slight current.
Ivan shoved open the wooden door of the farthest stall, the movement hindered by the water lapping at it, then came splashing back out and hit the door next to it. Patti pressed herself against the door frame, keeping as far back as she could from Ivan’s increasingly frantic movements.
Only after all four stalls had been opened and searched did Ivan state what had been obvious to Patti from the moment they charged into the room. “She’s not here.”
Patti carefully tiptoed through the water, sidling along the wall to turn the faucet on the closest sink. It just spun, doing nothing to stop the flow of water. She tried the next and the next. Ivan looked at her, his sword dropped so the tip of it rested in the water swirling around his boots. “The fuck?”
Patti moved onto the next faucet and the next. Same results.
“What the-?” Gwen’s voice proceeded her by three seconds as she came sloshing through the puddle outside the door. “Did the pipes burst?”
Ivan turned, a little wild-eyed. “She’s not here.”
“Not an answer to the question I asked but okay,” Gwen said, raising her hand in a placating motion. “Who is not here.”
“Kim.” Ivan snapped. “Kim is not here.”
“She’s probably at the table.” Gwen jerked her thumb over her shoulder then carefully sloshed out the door to look over at where the group sat.
Dempsey, who at some point had moved from the table to the bathroom area, eyed the water. “You need a mop.”
“You!” Gwen poked him in the chest then pointed towards the table. “Is Kim over there?”
“Uh. No.”
Gwen splashed and sloshed her way out of the growing puddle then started to dash towards the table, only to have her wet feet slip on the stone floor. Dempsey grabbed her elbow, keeping her from taking a dump on her ass and receiving a glower as she yanked her arm free and went for the table at a slightly more sedate pace.
Reaching the table, she braced her hands on the edge and looked wildly around at those sitting there. It wasn’t really a challenge to determine Kim was not, in fact, there.
“Where’s Kim?” Gwen panted once she had her breath.
Ben frowned. “The bathroom?” He rose from his seat to look in the direction of the bathroom, his head cocked as he saw Ivan sloshing out of it. “Not the bathroom?”
“Not the bathroom.” Gwen affirmed.
Siobhan’s features went slack and her eyes wide as she flicked her attention from Gwen to Ivan to Patti emerging from the bathroom to the bathroom door then back to Gwen.
“Maybe she stepped outside?” Dan ventured.
“Maybe?” Prairie rose to her feet and hurried towards the door, Dan right behind her.
“She’s not outside.” Siobhan said with certainty, a slight tremor in her voice. She visibly swallowed and pulled a strained breath through her nose. “You aren’t going to find her. They took her.”
“We don’t know that!” Gwen’s voice rose in volume and then she visibly tamped it down, nearly whispering the next, “We don’t know that.”
Dan and Prairie came rushing back in from the front entrance. “She didn’t go out that way.”
By then Ivan, Ben, Dempsey, and Patti had made their way back to the table.
“The bathroom is completely flooded,” Patti announced, then looked to the bar. Clutching her hands close to her middle she rubbed the knuckles of one with the fingertips of the other. “I need to get a mop. Some buckets. The water won’t stop flowing. We need a plumber and Leo needs-”
“Did anyone find a story?” Siobhan asked, her voice without inflection cutting into Patti’s rapidly worded list of tasks.
Patti stopped her litany, her eyes wide. “No.”
“So, maybe she wasn’t taken.” Dan suggested.
“Or we missed something,” Ben said, already turning to head back to the flooded bathroom.
Dempsey followed close behind him. “What’s with the water?”
Ben shrugged then carefully stepped into the puddle, heel first then toe to maximize his balance on the slick floor. “A guess? Magick.”
A look dawned on Dempsey’s face. “Elemental Magick.” He nodded in understanding.
Ben edged through the water and into the bathroom. “Elemental Magick.”
“We’re going to find a story, aren’t we?”
Ben’s shoulders rounded then he straightened his posture as he slid walked towards the sinks. “Think so. Can you look in the stalls?”
“Got it.” Dempsey rubbed the back of his neck. “This is nice.” He indicated the couch at the far end, the chair rail that separated the dark green tiles of the upper walls from the white of the lower, the color scheme repeated in the floor. He pushed open the door to the first of the wood cubicles that neatly separated the toilets from the rest of the room. “I didn’t realize women’s bathrooms were so different then guys.”
At Ben’s frown, he ducked into the stall. “I get it inappropriate.”
“Is cool,” Ben said, ducking to look under the sink without actually shoving his face into the water that cascaded from the overflowing basins. “It is way nicer than the men’s crapper, for sure. Nothing here.”
“Nothing here either,” Dempsey said, emerging from the first stall after replacing the toilet lid he’d lifted to look inside the tank.
Ben splashed across the floor towards the next stall, leaving Dempsey to leapfrog to the one beyond. They gave each a thorough search before emerging. Dempsey went into the last one and Ben made his way carefully over to the green upholstered couch. He sat down and started poking between the cushions.
“Got something!” Dempsey came out of the stall as Ben extracted a roll of paper from where it had wedged between the back cushion and the base of the couch. He unrolled the papers, scanned the top page, cursed, and rerolled them.
“Story?” Dempsey asked.
Ben nodded. “Story. Let’s get out of here.”
Dempsey and he sloshed their way out of the bathroom and headed for the table where the rest of the group were agitating. Siobhan’s gaze focused on the roll of papers Ben held, drawn like a magnet. For a moment her shoulders slumped and she lowered her head, but then she straightened, smoothed her expression, and waited for him to reach the table before demanding, “Give them here.”
Ben’s head reared back at the sharp tone, his hand going out before he consciously processed the request. “Here.”
Siobhan placed the roll in front of her on the table and folded her hands. “Everyone might as well sit down before I start this.”
“I can’t,” Ivan said, propping his arm on the wall and looking through the crack where the tapestry covering the window met the paneling. “Just read it.”
Prairie rested her hand delicately on his back. She started to say something then shook her head and lowered her hand as she stepped away from him. She gently touched Patti’s upper arm, directing the other woman to take the seat next to hers. Dan grabbed the chair next to Siobhan, turning it so he could straddle it with his folded arms on the back. Gwen stood, swaying on her feet, her head moving with her darting gaze.
At Siobhan’s, “Gwen?” she stopped her movement and looked up, her expression lost. “What?”
Siobhan nodded to the chair next to Prairie. “Sit.”
Gwen nodded sharply and pulled the chair out but she didn’t sit. Instead she just hovered, her hand pressed to the support of the back and blinked. Apparently that was close enough for Siobhan who picked up the roll of paper, unrolled it, and smoothed out the pages.
Dempsey and Ben took their seats as she started to read, “Kim. A carbon nanot-” only to stop and draw a harsh breath through her nostrils.
“Here,” Dan said, reaching over to gently take the papers from Siobhan’s hands. “Let me.”
Siobhan’s hands fell slack to the table as Dan spread the pages in front of himself, leaned forward slightly, and began to read.
Enter The Woods 