Advanced Mythology (31 page)

“Hold your horses,” Mann said, raising his hands. “Don’t spend our money too fast. We’re still going with the architect spots, right?”

“Of course,” Dorothy said, vainly trying to take the meeting back to its original purpose. “On Monday. We’re including the Fairy Footwear girl. She’s got a terrifically animated face, very gamine.”

“She’s a little older than most of the children,” Rita Dulwich said, “but the research shows that we lose a lot of girls in her age group because they don’t have models showing interaction with technology. She’s familiar to the viewing audience. Girls will connect her with fashion, and to be honest but not very PC, they do respond to fashion cues at her age.”

Keith felt a shock. He’d almost forgotten Dola had been cast. “Uh, I don’t know if she’ll be able to do it.”

“Why not?” Dorothy asked, frowning at Keith.

“Well, she’s got school, you know. Second semester is just beginning. I … uh, hate to bring her to Chicago and have her miss out on so much school.”

“You said her parents had no problem,” Doug said, his forehead drawing down. “Is she copping out?”

“Now, now,” Paul said, holding out his hands for peace. “Keith, why don’t you call your…?”

“Cousin,” Keith supplied hastily.

“… Cousin, and we’ll settle this right now.” He pushed the phone toward Keith.

Keith picked up the receiver. A loud dial tone sounded through the room. Immediately, he hit the button that disabled the speakerphone. Jason looked disapproving. Keith put on a sheepish face. “C’mon, Jason, these are my relatives. They still act as if I’m five years old. Do I have to let everybody hear the stuff they might say?”

“Of course not,” Paul said, taking the initiative and nodding at the executive. “We’ll let you save your pride.”

“All right,” Jason said, mollified.

“Too bad,” Dorothy said, a wry expression on her face. “I’d like to hear some stories about you as a kid.”

Keith dialed. He had never felt so nervous in his life. Even though it was only an electronic connection, he didn’t like mixing his everyday life with the elves’. The phone rang only twice before it was answered.

“Who is it?” Keva’s shrill voice came loud and clear through the receiver. Everyone in the room grinned.

“It’s me, er, Aunt … Keva, Keith.” His face felt hot. This was not going to be as private as he’d hoped.

“What do you want? Everyone’s down in the barn!”

“Well, can I talk to Tay? Or Holl? It’s about Dola, er, coming up next week?”

There was a long wait. He heard the receiver being picked up. The next voice on the line was one he wasn’t expecting: the Master.

“Meester Doyle?”

“Uh, hi, uh, uncle.”

“Ah. Ve are being overheard?”

“Not exactly.”

“Your end, then.” To his relief the Headman spoke in his usual low, calm voice. The others seated around him lost interest because they could no longer hear what was being said, and started chatting among themselves.

“Yeah. I, um, called about Dola
not coming
up here next week.”

“Not coming? Vhy should she not? You had our word. Vhy vould you assume she vould not be available? Has something occurred?”

Keith struggled for words, not wanting to say too much. “Uh, well, it’s been pretty busy … in school.”

“Ah, yes. Ve know of your exploits. Mees Londen came to us this ahfternoon and told us all. It has been qvite a difficult time for you, but undertakings have been made, and must be kept.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to cause any problems … with her classwork.”

“You vill cause none,” the Master said firmly. “And you must not seek to diminish contact vit us because of your experiences. It vill do us no harm.”

“Are you sure?” Keith asked, conscious that his voice was threatening to break.

“I am sure. Come back to us,” the Master said. “Your stoicism is admirable, but your absence vill leaf a most unpleasant gap in our lifes.”

“But …”

“But,” the Master put all of his authority into that single syllable and stopped Keith’s protests cold. “You vill make it here safely. Thereafter ve haf our own means of preventing prying eyes. Your classes begin again on Saturday. Therefore it vill be confenient for you to convey Dola back vit you on Monday. She is looking forvard to the experience. Ve look forward to seeing you on Friday efening. Goodbye.” The connection clicked off. Keith stared at the phone for a moment, overwhelmed by the trust the Little Folk were putting in him. He wasn’t sure he was worthy of it.

“Well?” Jason asked.

Fighting with his own uncertainties, Keith looked up at the waiting roomful of people. “She’s in.”

“Good,” Paul said, rubbing his hands together. “Now, let’s get back to business.”

***

Chapter 29

The road to Friday took forever. After the meeting Dorothy dragged Keith back to their office and chewed him out thoroughly for bringing up an idea that hadn’t gone through channels first. He felt he’d been punished enough not only by having it taken away from him,
but by seeing Rollin and Janine gloating about it.

The new vigilance Keith had to employ wherever he went was tiring him. Long before he got home every night he was worn out from the mechanics of keeping the charm going and looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was taking notice of him in spite of it. For the elves’ sake he needed to keep his wits about him. He didn’t go out anywhere unless he had to. He felt lonely and isolated, all the more because Diane never answered his phone calls. She had even set her e-mail account to bounce his messages back to him. Dunn suggested that he go to an Internet café and use a house computer to try again, but Keith didn’t like the idea of tricking Diane. He’d see her when he went down to Midwestern and have the discussion both of them had avoided so soon after his assault. It wasn’t going to be easy, but he wanted things to go back to normal between them.

Dunn had helped him get his car without attracting extra attention. Keith climbed into the back seat while his roommate drove to the grocery store. Dunn waited for a few minutes to make sure no one had followed him into the parking lot, then went inside, leaving the keys in the ignition. Keith rolled over the front seat and started the engine, feeling like a thief stealing his own car. Thanks to the spell dozens of people probably got the impression that there was no one in the driver’s seat. He took a circuitous route out of town. By the time he was headed southward, he was certain there was no one behind him.

He never risked the interstate highway, instead taking the side roads through endless little towns he hadn’t known existed. It took a couple extra hours to drive all the way to the farm.

The twinkling lanterns on the side of the house glittered with the same promise as Peter Pan’s second star to the right. He devoured the sight like a starving man. It had been a terrible week, thinking that he would never come back to the farmhouse. Inside, like the most precious and anticipated birthday present, were all of his friends, safe and happy.

Keith pulled the car in and rolled to a halt, more tired than he wanted to admit. He was thanking his lucky stars that it was the first week of term and he didn’t have any work to turn in. It wasn’t until he walked in the kitchen door and saw the Master standing there with his hands on his hips to realize guiltily that he
did
have more homework that he should have done, and that not a single word of it was written.

“Well, Meester Doyle?” the Master said, peering at him over the top of his glasses.

“Well, sir?” Keith asked nervously, as a thousand excuses jumbled themselves in his mind.

The red mustache parted in a wide smile. “Velcome back.”

“Thank you, sir,” Keith said. His muscles sagged with relief.

His other friends hurried forward to take his bag. Borget grabbed a cloak off the peg and raced out the door behind him. Dennet and Aylmer brought Keith to the dinner table where Keva plied him with food and fresh bread. Marm’s round face shone as he poured a mug of cider.

“Tapped just today,” he informed Keith.

“It’s great,” Keith said, too overwhelmed to say more. Dola huddled in on the bench beside him as he ate and drank. “Thank you. Thank you all.”

“A sacrifice deserves recognition,” the Master said. “Mees Londen told us eferything.”

The door opened. Borget, his cheeks pink with effort and the cold, stepped aside to let Holl enter. Holl came over to grasp Keith’s hand.

“I was putting Asrai to bed. We didn’t know when you’d arrive.” The blond elf’s voice was hoarse. Keith swallowed, feeling a lump in his own throat.

“You were sure I would come? I’m still not certain I should be here.”

Holl gripped his hand tightly before letting it go. “Where else should you be? Wherever we are is a home to you, now and forever.”

Gifts on top of gifts. Keith bent his head over his plate, taking in the good feelings along with the good food. He didn’t trust his voice for a while. The others must have known how he felt, for they filled the air with stories while he ate.

“I made a butterfly,” Dola said, producing a folded triangle of colored paper. “It even flies. See?” She let it go, and it began to flutter over the table.

“Take it
away, girl,” her great-grandmother snapped, snatching it out of the air. “The man’s trying to eat.”

“It’s okay,” Keith assured them. “It’s beautiful.”

“The cow calved two days ago.”

“Tim’s Craft Hut bought tventy lanterns.”

“Asrai’s cutting a new tooth.”

“Candlepat has a new dress. The Conservatives are scandalized.”

“Vhy vear a garment vun can see through?”

Keith just let the news wash over him. More serious matters could come in a while. For the moment, he just wanted to enjoy being with his friends again.

* * *

“Turn
up
the electric fence?” Holl asked, astonished, when Keith brought up the subject Sunday morning. “When you were complaining endlessly and forever that you wanted it turned down? Whatever for?”

“I told you those creeps are snooping around,” Keith said. “It’s you they want, not me. I don’t want them even getting a glance at you.”

“We have protection,” Holl assured him. “And you have your defense.”

“And I use it, even if it knocks me out by the end of the day. I’m afraid even to sleep without it on. I’ve learned to fine-tune it so it only affects people in the immediate area. But focus like that is extra-tiring. Beach found me because he was looking for me. He knows where I work, where I go. Are you sure you want me to take Dola to Chicago under those circumstances? With me half-invisible all the time? If the SAG representative thinks a minor is on the set alone he might call Child Welfare.”

Holl waved away the concern. “You won’t let that happen. You’ll cope. We have faith in your endless creativity. Keep your ears open, as you have, and act as wisdom dictates.”

“Wisdom, huh?” Keith grumbled good-naturedly, following Holl down the hill to the barn for class.

“Or imitation thereof,” Holl said, grinning back at him over his shoulder. “We trust you.”

Keith glanced around uncomfortably. He was the only one who didn’t have a paper on his desk. Holl sat at his ease, sanding the arms of a wooden doll for his daughter, giving Keith an occasional glance. None of the others looked his way, especially Diane, who arrived late and, despite Keith’s frantic semaphoring to her to sit by him, placed herself as far away from him as possible.

The Master wrote a word in Greek on his easel blackboard and tapped it with his fingertip. “
Agape.
Eferyvun has reviewed the poetry ve discussed from last veek?” All of the students, Little Folk and Big Folk nodded, except Keith. Here it came. “Fery good. Meester Doyle?”

Keith rose to his feet to explain why he didn’t have his paper, a subject he had been avoiding all weekend. But the Master forestalled him.

“Meester Doyle has been vorking on a long-term project in comparative sociology in vhich he is making contact vit other non-human beings. Perhaps he vould care to bring us up to date on that?”

Keith felt his mouth drop open. The others turned to him with fascinated faces. Keith met Diane’s eyes. She gave him an encouraging nod. Did he even spot a hint of softening in her expression? She might have been mad at him, but she was still on his side.

“Um, yeah,” he began awkwardly, but warmed at once to his subject. “Well, for years I’ve been thinking about throwing a party. It’s planned for the beginning of May. You’re all invited. I have to tell you about a couple of the guests I just met a week ago. Their names are Rily and Liri. They’re sidhe.…”

* * *

Vasques threw himself into the desk chair in Beach’s hotel room. “Nothing,” he said, disgustedly. “We searched that entire garage a hundred times. We didn’t find a trace of Doyle or a clue as to how he got out of there. We even got the city workers in on it.”

“How’d you do that?” Beach asked curiously.

“Told ’em we’d lost a bag of diamonds,” Wyszinski said with an evil grin. “They opened every door and turned over every floor plate in the place.”

“Devious,” Beach said, pacing to the window. “Like that boy. Damn him, he’s gone to ground again. He has to be using some kind of spell or device to keep out of sight.”

“Well, we can’t find someone who’s magically invisible,” Vasques said. He looked at his partner and tapped his temple, schooling his face into innocence just as their employer turned around again. “Miller and O’Dell kept a lookout on the apartment. A girl slept in his room all weekend. No sign of Doyle, though. He must not have gone back there. What do you want us to do now?”

“We’ll have to hunt him down from the other end,” Beach said, after giving his operatives a hard look. “The artifact in his apartment came from somewhere, as did the one that Maria and Stefan bought. Did he find a hidden hoard, or is he making them?”

“These are new,” Stefan said. He sat in a corner between the others and Maria. Oblivious to the rest of the world, the psychic was communing with her pendulum. Stefan’s job was to protect her from interruption when the spirits spoke. She wouldn’t have heard a gun go off next to her head. “That was what made us excited.”

“So the chances are that he made it. How? Is he the heir to a long history of spell-crafting?”

“There wasn’t any sign of woodworking tools in the apartment,” Vasques pointed out.

“What if he just makes them as a hobby?” Wyszinski asked. “One or two at a time?”

“We’ll have to discover that,” Beach said. “But if he is, he must be working somewhere. That one was for sale. There are probably more. I must know the source. A factory—no, there’s the cold-iron issue with machinery.”

“The boy did not burn when we put the handcuffs on him,” Stefan pointed out.

Beach looked amused. “He’s not a fairy, Stefan. But
magic
is affected by it. Therefore it’s not a large operation. A workshop of some kind.”

“Chicago is full of artisan workshops,” Vasques pointed out. “It could take years to locate the right one.”

“Ah, but we have three things in our favor: you, my investigating friends, Ming, and Maria, who located our quarry the moment he put a magical foot wrong. Keep your eyes open, darling.” The psychic nodded at his words without looking up. “Ming will search the web for public records of any facility rented in his name. The rest of you, legwork. I want observation on his usual haunts, but I want you to hunt down anywhere else that he has sold more of these artifacts. Get on the phone. Make friends. Sooner or later he’s bound to return to one of those places, and then …” Beach narrowed his pale eyes, “we will have him.”

***