It Never Rhines but It Pours (16 page)

Chapter Sixteen:

Sherlock Holmes and Pookas

“I’m so happy that you are Sarah are spending more time together,” Mom whispered as I waited in the front hall for Sarah to finish putting on her face. Cecily had wandered past me and was watching Pravus and Nana playing a card game on the coffee table.

Cecily had an intense look on her face and one hand was up behind her head grasping the handle of her sword. I saw her lips silently mouth words which I was pretty sure were “You can never trust a witch.” Pravus was doing his best to look calm and ignore her, but even from across the house I could see the tension in the way he was sitting.

“Yeah, Mom,” I was very distracted. “We’re reconnecting.”

“Aha!” Nana yelled, making me jump, “Take that! Look who’s nervous now!”

Pravus tried to smile but caught Cecily’s eye at the wrong time and she flashed him some fang. I closed my eyes and prayed,
please, don’t let my mother see that.
Cecily took a step closer so that she was invading Pravus’ personal space. If she was trying to loom she was doing a good job of it. I don’t think I would be comfortable sitting and pretending that all was normal if I had a homicidal vampire with a twitchy sword looming over me. Pravus was made of stronger stuff. He shifted on the couch but held his place.

“Sarah!” I yelled in desperation. “Time to go!”

“Almost done!” she yelled back.

“No one cares how many pounds of eye makeup you’re wearing!” I yelled. “You can get by with just one or two!”

“Very funny!” came the yell. “Maybe I have to ‘make-up’ for the obvious lack of time
you
spend in front of the mirror!”

“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” I yelled. “Some of us are just naturally good looking.”

“Hardee har har,” she yelled sarcastically. “I’d be there faster if you stopped yelling at me.”

Mom gave me a knowing smile. Sarah could spend hours in front of the mirror. I wore makeup myself. In fact, I wouldn’t go out of the house without it. But I belonged to the school of thought that believed you should look like you weren’t wearing makeup. Sarah believed that eyeliner was to be worn completely circling the eye and drawn with a heavy hand. I called it the raccoon look.

I glanced back into the living room. Cecily had now drawn the sword and was standing in Pravus’ direct line of sight. She hefted the blade in one hand and slapped it into the palm of her other hand, all the while staring freakishly into the witch’s eyes. I saw a bead of sweat drip down his face. Nana saw it too.

“Face it, young man,” she crowed, “I’m winning and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

Cecily mouthed again, “You can never trust a witch.”

Things were getting out of hand. I’d tried to make Cecily stay in the car but she wanted to come in and see that everything was ok. I should have been more insistent. If I’d known that she was going to stand there and taunt him I would have … I don’t know. I’d have done something different. There had been way too much magic in this house lately. I didn’t need a witch/ vampire war breaking out over pinochle.

“Ready,” Sarah announced behind me, acting like she had been waiting for me. I turned just in time to see her face change. “What is she doing?” she whispered looking at Cecily.

“Oh,” Mom answered with an indulgent smile, “Nana’s playing cards with Cousin Richard. Isn’t he so sweet? He’s been taking such good care of her. I’ve never seen her in such a good mood.”

“That’s great, Mom,” I said between gritted teeth. “Cecily! Time to go!”

Cecily slapped the blade across her palm one final time and gave Pravus a toothy grin. She was having way too much fun. With one fluid movement she resheathed the sword behind her back and gracefully walked to the front door. “It was good to see you again,” she said politely to my Mom.

“Have fun girls!” Mom called after us.

“What do you think you were doing?” I hissed at Cecily as soon as the front door closed behind us.

“What?” she asked with an innocent look.

“What! You know what I mean! You drew that stupid sword in my mother’s home!” I was half yelling at her over the roof of the car. She opened her door and got in, forcing me to do the same. “What were you thinking?”

Cecily smiled. “I was just playing with him, Piper.”

“Playing with him! What if he had tried to do something?” I started the car so that we didn’t suffocate in the heat while we fought.

“Then I would have had just cause to decapitate him,” she explained, like it made perfect sense.

“In my mother’s house?” I was incredulous.

“It’s not all about location, Piper,” she said calmly. “Sometimes you just have to take the best opportunity that presents itself.”

“Not in my mother’s house,” I said firmly.

Cecily looked at me and apparently decided that I was serious. “I will try my best to not execute Pravus in your mother’s house,” she promised.

Sarah leaned forward and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Give it up, Piper,” she advised. “That’s the best you’re going to get right now. Don’t we have somewhere to be?”

I gripped the wheel tightly and the decided to let it go. For now. “Fine. Where are we going?”

“Astor, Florida,” Cecily answered. “Get on I-95 north.”

“Where is Astor?” Sarah asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s in the middle of the Ocala National Forest,” Cecily explained. “Population fifteen-hundred.”

“Wow, that’s small,” Sarah remarked. “How long to get there?”

“Two hours,” I said glumly. Riding in the car was not my favorite pastime. There was no Zipline. Apparently not enough people wanted to travel to Astor. Go figure. At least I was driving. In the rearview mirror I saw Sarah put in her earphones.

“Let me know when we’re there,” she said and leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.

“Who are we going to see?” I asked Cecily.

“I told you,” she yawned, reclining the passenger seat, “I think it best for you to have an open mind.”

I snorted, “If my mind were any more open my brain would fall out. Who are we going to see?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” she answered.

“You’re not exactly what?” If we hadn’t been going seventy down the highway I would have pulled the car off the road to stare at her.

“I’m not sure who we will be finding,” she explained, as if that made any sense at all.

“Cecily,” I growled warningly.

I saw her mouth quirk up in a half smile. She was enjoying this. “Let me explain a little of how the USB works and this will make more sense.”

“It’d better,” I muttered, “I’m not driving two hours to podunkville for fun.”

“Oh, this should be fun,” her eyes sparkled. “At least, it has the potential to be.”

“Fun I can do without,” I grumbled, “Helpful in finding the real killer would be preferable.”

“To find the impossible, you must first eliminate the improbable,” she paraphrased.

I ran it through my brain a few times. “I don’t think that means the same thing that Sherlock Holmes said.” I racked my brain a bit more and came up with the proper quote, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Cecily shrugged, “I like my way better. Besides, Edgar Allen Poe said it first.”

“No, Arthur Conan Doyle said it in
The Sign of the Four
,” I argued. I was somewhat of a Sherlock Holmes buff.

“He paraphrased Poe’s detective, Dupin, the very detective that Sherlock Holmes was based upon.” Cecily seemed sure of her facts.

“Fine, what was the original quote?”

“Something along the lines of: It’s not the reasoner’s job to reject solutions based on apparent impossibilities. It is our job to prove that those apparent impossibilities are not really impossible,” she quoted.

“Well,” I grumped, “No wonder everyone attributes it to Holmes, that didn’t sound anywhere near as clever.”

“Trust me,” Cecily said seriously, “Edgar was a very clever man.”

I blinked. I had forgotten who I was talking to. I was about to ask if she had really met him when I realized that we had traveled a long way down a rabbit trail away from my original question.

“Who are we going to meet?”

Cecily sighed. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a one track brain?”

“Who are we going to meet?” I’ve often found that to get fast answers you sometimes have to repeat the original question without allowing yourself to be deviated by non-relevant comments. For example:

“Why is your sister crying?” I might ask.

“She bit me, Mommy!” A classic attempt to move the blame onto another party.

“Why is your sister crying?” I stick to the main question.

“She said she doesn’t like me!” Again, another attempt to focus blame elsewhere.

“Why is your sister crying?” I refuse to be distracted by the ploy and ask the question again.

“Okay, okay, I hit her with a toy!” Finally, the truth comes out when the guilty party runs out of subterfuge. When you’re dealing with four year-olds this can happen quite quickly. They are not nearly as imaginative as adults.

I tried to give Cecily the evil eye while keeping both eyes on the road. It’s a lot harder to do than it sounds, but I think she got the point.

She leaned her seat back farther, causing Sarah to have to shift her feet in the back seat. Throwing one arm across her face to block the sun, she said, “I was getting ready to explain when you went off on Sherlock Holmes.”

“I didn’t go off on Sherlock Holmes. I merely corrected your inaccurate quoting.”

“Whatever. Do you want an answer or not?”

“Answer away!” I pulled into the right lane to pass a car doing fifty. As expected, the driver was senior and female.

“To become a member of the USB you have to meet two major requirements,” Cecily began.

“Which are?” I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.

“Which I was about to explain before you interrupted,” she huffed.

“Fine. I’ll be quiet. Just leave out all the dramatic pauses.” I pretended that I couldn’t see the glare she was shooting at my head.

“Two major requirements,” she began again. “One, you have to have some sort of magical ability. Two, you have to pass as human.” She paused again.

“What does ‘pass as human’ mean?” I had to ask, pretty sure that she was waiting for the question.

“It means that you can walk around with other humans and not have them suspect that you are different.”

“I know some
humans
who can’t even do that!” I joked.

“The point I am trying to make,” Cecily said, “is that there are many, many other beings that qualify for the first requirement, but not the second.”

I thought about that for a bit. “You mean, things that don’t look human? Like the Loch Ness Monster?”

“Yes. Or trolls, kelpies, things of that nature.”

I had a thought, “What about pookas?” My dog, Harvey, was named after one.

“Of course,” Cecily said, as if six-foot rabbits were totally the norm.

It was the perfect time to try out my Jimmy Stewart voice. “He’s a pooka!”

“What?” Cecily was puzzled.

Obviously my impersonation needed some work. “He’s a pooka!” I tried again.

“Oh,” she shook her head. “Actually that wasn’t a pooka.”

“Yes it was!” I loved that movie.

“No, it was white. Pooka’s are black.”

“Why are they black?”

“For the same reason that black swans are black,” she replied.

“Which is?”

“Because they wouldn’t be
black
swans if they weren’t!” It seemed to make perfect sense to her.

“Whatever,” I muttered under my breath. “Harvey was a pooka.”

“The point is,” Cecily said frigidly, “that a pooka would not pass as a human and thus could not join the USB.”

“Why is that important?” I tried to steer the conversation back on track.

“Because, having non-humanoid, supernatural creatures running around poses a serious threat to the safety and secrecy of the USB. Which is why we keep an eye on them.”

I was about to ask what would happen if a troll set up shop under the Brooklyn Bridge, but then thought better of it. For one, it would probably send us off on another tangent. For another, I had a feeling I knew what the answer would be. Anything that threatened the USB was quickly and quietly disposed of.

“How do you keep an eye on them?” I asked instead.

“Most of the creatures like to stay hidden. Of course, every once in awhile we have to go put down some Mongolian death worms, and there was a mothman a few years ago that caused a bit of an uproar in the press and had to be convinced to be more discreet in its traveling.”

“Of course,” I remarked snidely. “I hate it when mothmen are flying around in plain sight.”

“Each member species of the USB is assigned an area to keep under control. Any creature in that area is the responsibility of the assigned species. It’s mostly red tape and paper work. If humans start talking about chupacabras or zombies or whatever, you have to investigate and turn in a ton of paperwork. Then you either eliminate the threat or clean up the incident so that it disappears.”