Geekomancy (26 page)

Ree raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a great time.”

“Once I got them calmed down a bit, it
was
great. The next unit is on bisexuality, and this opened things up in a big way. Though I do miss the beginning of the semester, when I got to blow poor freshmen’s minds.” Anya gave a wicked smile, and Ree toasted her friend’s evil.

Anya had to fight tooth and nail to get her teaching appointment, stealing it away from an English-department grad student by sheer force of awesomeness. And lots of recommendation letters. She deserved to enjoy it.

Ah, to be in college again
. College, when Ree had a Mohawk and went to Goth clubs, wrote epic amounts of fanfic, and spent two years dating girls to tragically drama-ridden results.

It wasn’t that she’d lost interest in girls; more like after three messy breakups in a row, she’d decided to take a break from the ladies. Not that going back to guys had served her terribly well of late.

Ree shook her head, banishing the thought. “You know what Priya is up to tonight? I remember her saying something.”

“I think she had a date on the east side.”

“Same guy as last time, or is this Climber Guy?” Ree asked.

“Climber Guy, I think. He invited her to try the wall and then wanted to go to some underground bistro.”

“Literally underground?” Ree thought of all the time she’d spent in the sewers over the last week.

Anya shrugged. Ree heard the sound of shattering and a flash of movement across the room, and her heartbeat raced. When she saw that it was just a server jumping away from a broken glass, she breathed out slowly.

“Are you all right?” Anya asked.

Ree took a long sip of her martini, savoring Andrew’s fantastic pour. “It’s been a hell of a week.”

Anya gave her the eye of suspicion.

“Just a lot of things piling up.”
That sounds so lame. I could tell Anya everything. She probably wouldn’t believe me, but maybe she would.
Ree needed to tell someone, someone who wasn’t already tied up in all of the insanity.
Buffy has the Scoobies, why shouldn’t I?

But Anya didn’t need anyone unloading a huge pile of drama on her. Neither did Priya, Sandra, or anyone.
Who ever needs angst unloaded on them? We do it anyway, when we need to, but do I really need to?

Ree stayed through the martini and another one, cutting herself off before she could get too far into drunk-and-depressed-because-life-had-gone-mad.

•   •   •

Once she was back home, Ree made herself some tea to sober up (peppermint, with local honey) and stared at her phone, trying to figure out how to start a conversation with her dad.

She’d always been close with her dad, and after her mom left, she and her dad had moved around even more, so it was the two of them against the world. Now that the world was kind of against her, there should be no one she could trust more.

Except that he was thousands of miles away and had no reason to believe what she was planning to tell him. And she wasn’t entirely certain she hadn’t cracked and created herself a geeky version of
A Beautiful Mind
.

A calmer part of her brain spoke up.
Just call.

Ree closed her eyes and pressed the dial button. She listened for the rings, still not looking.

Ring.

Come on, Dad, please.

Ring.

Maybe he won’t pick up. That might be better. This is all crazy.

Ring.

What if he’s not home? Do I call Priya, Anya? Just deal?

Ring.

Is he okay?

“Hello?” her dad answered.

Ree exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. “Dad, thanks for picking up.”

“What’s happening, Ree-bee?”

Ree asked, “Can you get a secure line?”

After a beat, “What?”

“Can you get a secure line? There’s some weird stuff going down, Dad.”

“I could call you back from a proxied VoIP line, I guess,” he said, his voice uncertain.

“Could you, please?” Her voice was strained by the emotional hurricane rampaging inside her.

Her dad’s voice settled, hardening. “I’ll call back in a minute. Just stay put.”

She sat down on her bed and focused intently on her tea, trying not to think anymore, to just be in the moment, calm. Failing that, she downed the entire mug of tea and got up to pour herself some more.

Her phone rang as she was pouring. She looked at the phone long enough to see the number listed as [Blocked] before she picked up. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” her dad said. “Are you okay?”

Ree walked back into her room, setting the mug down on her bedside plastic crate. “I’m fine. But this is going to sound crazy, and it’ll probably go better if I just give you the whole story and then we talk about how insane it is after. Is that okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Ah, marine voice. He was taking her seriously.
I love you, Dad.

And so she told him the whole story, starting with Eastwood bursting into the comic shop, then the troll, the Dorkcave, her first attempt at Geekomancy, her visit to the Moorelys’, the rubber-suit Atavist, everything, including realizing Eastwood’s real game and her current conundrum: how to chase down the Muse.

The story took another two mugs’ worth of tea and a bathroom break, but when it was all done, she stopped and waited to see what her dad would say.

A part of her wanted him to swoop in and fix it, to take care of her as he had for so much of her life growing up. She knew she’d have to face it herself, and maybe she could do it, but there was a small part of her that just wanted the problem to disappear as if it had never occurred.

“Well, if you’re pulling my leg, this story definitely needs to be your next screenplay,” he said with a chuckle.

“Cross my heart and hope to die, Dad. It all happened. I may have missed some of the details, but that’s only because I really have no clue what I’m doing.”

Her dad waited a second. “I believe you. I’d rather believe that things I thought were impossible are happening than you’re actively lying. Plus, as far as I can tell, there’s no reason for you to be lying.”

Ree sighed. “It’s all real. Or if it isn’t, I’m going to make some therapist famous.”

Her dad chuffed, not seeming to confirm or deny what she’d said. “I don’t know what I can do for you, but Ree, it means a lot to me that you trusted me with something this important. It seems like you’ve taken on a very dangerous task and stayed with it when it would be very easy to walk away.”

A weight sloughed off of Ree’s shoulders, and she smiled.
He better not forget this as soon as we hang up. He can’t. He’s my dad, and that’s its own magic, Doubt-be-damned.

“Thanks, Dad. I’ve been thinking about you the whole time. I wanted to tell you about the crazy things, the cool things. It’s like everything we watched growing up really matters now, like it was secretly training for this whole new life.”

Ree could hear her dad’s smile through the phone. “I guess it was. I think you’re on the right track. You’ve got someone helping you, and you know what this Eastwood is trying to do. You’re doing the right thing, attacking his asset, this spirit.” His marine was showing again.

Ree paced around the room, running her bare feet over the carpet she’d put down. “I sure hope so. Drake is working on some ritual to go into the spirit world, and, well, that sounds scary as hell.”

“Aren’t you the girl who drove herself across the country to go to a college in a town she’d never heard of and got a double major while working the whole time? The girl who saved up for a year, then flew down to L.A. with no contacts and no connections to pound the pavement for a week to start making her writing career happen? The girl who passed her first-degree black belt test with flying side-kick colors?”

“I wish you were here so I could hug you, Dad . . .”

“Me, too, Ree-bee. I’m proud of you. I can’t pretend I understand what you’re going through. It’s so different than anything I did in or out of the military that all I can do is pray for you and offer encouragement every way and place I can. Do you need money? It sounds like you’ve had to skip some shifts.”

Hell, yes, I need money.
“No, I’m fine. It’ll be fine.”

“Ree . . .” her dad said. He knew she was bullshitting him.

“I’ll be fine. If things get much worse, then maybe, maybe I will consider it. But the last time I asked for money, you had to sell one of your guns.”

“So? This is a much better reason than last time.”

“Fair enough,” Ree said. “I guess that’s one benefit. No more distracting boyfriends.”

“What about this Drake? He sounds pretty dashing,” her dad said, a hint of the mischievous in his voice.

“
My
romantic efforts are focused on getting
you
a girlfriend first, and that’s going to have to wait until this whole monster thing is under control, so hold your horses.”

Her dad laughed, a deep-belly laugh. Ree closed her eyes and listened, imagining her dad was right beside her.

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Anytime. Is there anything else I can do?”

“I don’t think so.” Ree’s eyes snapped open as a thought hit her. “Actually, yeah. They might not get here in time, but could you pull a few boxes of my stuff out of storage?”

She had left most of her teenage detritus behind when she went off to college, thinking she’d pick it up eventually or sell it off. But now . . . those old toys and cards and books were worth their weight in Adamantium.

Her dad chuckled. “Sure thing. Want me to look for something in particular?”

“Toy guns, swords. Anything that inflicts imaginary violence, really. And take your allergy meds beforehand.”

“Who’s the parent again?” he asked, still in good humor.

“You are. But that doesn’t make me wrong.”

“It doesn’t. I promise. And in exchange, you promise to be safe.”

Ree nodded to herself. “Yes, sir.”

“All right. Now go get them, hon.”

“I love you, Dad,” Ree said, tearing up.

“I love you, too.”

Ree wiped her eyes and hung up. She felt energized, tired, scared, relieved, but mostly, she felt relieved.

Okay. That could have gone much, much worse.

It felt amazingly, reassuringly good to have her dad’s support. But he was far away, and who knew how much time she had to kill until Drake’s which-what-ever magic was ready.
So, what next?

She could try to go back to Eastwood’s, make him see reason. But she didn’t have much confidence in that working, not while he was on a roll. Maybe if they took out the Muse before it could strike again, he’d be willing to listen to reason. Or, if not reason, impressive amounts of yelling and browbeating. If she had Drake’s help, could they take Eastwood in a fight, or would he pull another ninja vanish?

She looked at the clock on her phone and rolled her head. Though the tea had calmed her through the talk with her dad, she was still sore. Sleep would be the smart thing. But unless she wanted to down some NyQuil, she wasn’t settling into that anytime soon.

Instead, she dialed Drake, hoping he’d have something for her, anything.

He picked up on the third ring. “Ahoy.”

“This is Ree. Any news on the Doors Dimensional Method?”

“Excuse me?” Drake asked.

My pop-culture-reference Rolodex is useless!
Ree thought in a Rainer Wolfcastle “The goggles do nothing!” voice.

“Never mind. How’s the magic going?”

“Beautifully. We will be able to depart presently. But before you arrive, you’ll want to have something to eat.”

“Why’s that?”

“I have the unfortunate fortune of knowing from experience. The fattier, the better. A colleague of mine told me that lipids facilitate the reuptake of several neurotransmitters that are inhibited by aetherial travel. Regardless, a meal would be advisable.”

Ree could see Drake shaking his head as he recognized that he was on a tangent. It was cute.
Too bad half of the things I say make no sense to him.

“Fatty is good. Got it. I’ll grab something on the way and be there by quarter till.”

“Very good. Have you any weapons with you?”

“I have a training
jian,
but that’s it right now. Care to loan a girl a sword?”

“I’ll see what I can do. Winters out.” With that, he hung up.

Winters out? I guess he’s caught up on some action movies, at least.

Ree pocketed her phone and grabbed her jacket.
Fatty, eh? This calls for a Garbage Shake.