Chapter 7
Our Hero sees some positive signs, gains an ally and the Smith-Samsons return with a surprise
Two weeks passed without any more ‘events’, the sheriff arrested two of the EEC members and the three dead ones vanished to wherever such men went. Stories of black helicopters and spec ops teams operating in the area to find a terrorist cell, or a major drug smuggling operation, or a secret drug factory, or a network of child pornographers, or.... the list went on and on regarding what people thought was going on. Most were silly, a few plausible but most people figured it was a case of mass hysteria.
The third Sunday of the run started out well, with but the one hiccup, and it was a pleasant one, hopefully,. Kitty ‘accidently’ running into him as he left the library Sunday afternoon invited him to her favorite ‘bistro.’ He’d let her buy him a couple of coffees and they’d talked about the latest mess congress was making of the budgeting process and the Europeans were making of the implosion of another ex colony in Africa.
Deputy Michael’s cruiser happened to drift past not long after they sat down and he was saddened by her irritated frown when she saw him. He’d like to get to know her better but they hadn’t exactly met on his better days so far.
Kitty pointed at a temporary sign outside one of the less desirable storefronts across the street. It read, Great Bear’s Den Planning Committee. “The Claws are really worried this time, the tribe finally dug up, in one case literally, the document trail that shows the Bear’s Den was forfeit for back taxes about fifty years ago and the tribe paid the lien and should own the property. Claw’s going to fight it but it’s pretty cut and dried. Conkling has said he’s willing to trade a court battle for the property his house is on, access and the tribe making most of the outer faces into park like the plan shows.”
“Wow, after all these years?”
“Yeah the tribe hired some big shot Eastern Law firm and then Claw got distracted by that gunfight among his thugs. The lawyers got to someone before he did for a change and that was all they needed.”
“Happy days, I guess, be nice to be rid of the EEC, they’ll have to find some other place for cooking up their meth.” He said it without thinking, it was a common assumption around the Lake.
“The sheriff got an excuse to shake em down pretty thoroughly after the blood bath, nothing or next to nothing. I hear the feds went in with her and came up with nothing either.”
“Big guns for little Black Bear Lake,” She nodded, she twirled the little crystal hanging from her earlobe. Looked down, then back up, and out of nowhere asked, “Do you believe in Magic, Elgin?”
Elgin had been about to take a sip of his coffee, thick with luxurious brown sugar. He hesitated, then took a slow sip.
She smiled, “Sorry, shouldn’t have asked, sounds crazy I know.”
Deep in his mind Cutter-Iffrit spoke musingly, *She is a magic user, we came here because the unfolding of the shadow realms is strongest here. You, we, will have to gather associates, companions and friends as time goes on. We will talk with her.*
“Your charms started to work recently, didn’t they?” Elgin replied quietly at last.
She jumped when she understood what he had said. Her eyes were huge, “Uh, Charms?”
He reached out and touched the little sliver of rock crystal hanging from her ear. The tips of his fingers tingled, and the ‘charm’ or perhaps rather, ‘algorithm’ impressed on it became clear to him, “Very nice work, a lie detector, a general threat detector and a magic detector all in one. It started tingling when I got in the car the other night.”
She pulled back, protesting, “You’re not supposed to be able to do that!”
“What, I’m not supposed to be able to, or in general it’s not supposed to be possible?” She was too flustered to answer, “Well neither is true is it? Generally, reading an imprinted charm without destroying it is difficult, but rarely impossible.”
Biting her lip to get a hold of herself she gave him a straight look, “How, who are you?”
“Elgin Chalmers, you’ve known me for years Kitty, at least seen me. How? That’s hard to say, rather differently than you did. I have a hard time understanding how you could keep practicing the old arts, through all those years when they did nothing and cost so much if others found you trying.”
“They did work, some of them, a little, some of the time.” She replied stubbornly.
“I suppose the collapse of the shadow realms wouldn’t have completely stopped the lowest level works,” the Iffrit mused out loud, “But they would have been next to, sometimes worse than, useless.”
Kitty was white, “You, you sound like Elgin, but not quite.” Her lips were thin her eyes frightened.
“I’m not a demon.” Elgin protested then stopped, in fact that was exactly what an Iffrit was in Middle Eastern mythology, not necessarily evil, but demons. Smoke demons that could appear as men or winged monsters, a pretty good description of one Elgin Campbell Chalmers the fourth these days.
“Some very strange things have been happening,” Kitty replied, she was trying to sit but still be as far away from him as possible.
“And I’ve been involved with all, or most of them, but only because of things others did, I didn’t start any of it.” He couldn’t help but grin, “Now I sound like I’m explaining why I clocked Miller Estay for fondling Mary FourDoe in High School.” He shook his head, “There’s nothing I can do to prove I’m not a threat to you or anyone else Kitty, you’ll either have to take my word for it or not.”
She had relaxed a little at the smile and reference to High School.
“Are you an apprentice to one of the old ones, the ancient mages?”
Elgin sat back, Iffrit-Cutter were stumped, but now he had questions, “Katherine, the device that shut down what we think of as magic on Earth was triggered in about 200BC. No human, even one of the great ancient magic users could live that long in the ‘darkness.’ Your ancient mages, did they date from that period?”
“Device, what we think of as magic, are you making fun of me?” She was flustered, uncertain and anger was a protective reaction to his attack on her world view.
He glanced around, picked up a knife, and ran his thumb along the blade, impressing a simple temporary change, The blunt, faintly serrated edge flowed to a razor edge as he finished, what had been a dinner knife was suddenly a razor sharp dagger. He picked up a napkin, and sliced through it with almost frictionless ease. Then the ‘charm’ faded and the knife was as it had been, but the napkin fluttered in two pieces till he put it down.
“What we call magic is real, but it’s not a supernatural force, it’s just that the ‘natural world’ is a self regulating self consistent substrate on which the conscious mind can impress its will under certain circumstances. It can be used to do things that we can also do with our hands, and with our tools made from the substrate. It can also do things that are hard to do ‘naturally,’ though usually quite small things.”
She reached out, touched the napkin, then the knife, jumping when she touched it, She touched the crystal earring. “That was intense! I guess it had to be to make a physical change like that.”
“But it was a one time change, not a permanent one, the usefulness of which is very limited. For a tool I’d be much better off getting a honing stone and spending a couple of hours working in a real edge.”
She opened her mouth then closed it, frowned and then went on, “Was that why the device you mentioned was built, to force humans to depend on the material world, on material tools, and figure out technology, science that sort of thing?”
“Got it in one.”
It was her turn to sit in frowning silence, then she glanced up, “To answer your question about the Mages, they are not Roman era, they were all renaissance and early enlightenment.”
At least they hadn’t claimed to be from the ancient world, maybe they wouldn’t have even if they were, superstition being what it w
as in those times. “Sometime I’d like to look at the records your association has. To make your magic as effective as it is the knowledge has to extend back to the time before the device.”
“Why do you say that?” She frowned.
“The guardians you have set in your store, parts of them could not work when the device was operating.”
She frowned thoughtfully, “There are sections of many spells that have no apparent use but they are so integral that no one had ever been able to unweave them, some thought them spacers of some kind, or secret messages of some kind.”
Elgin glanced at the sun, “I have some jobs to do around the Ranch Kitty, thanks for the coffee and the conversation.”
Kitty looked at him oddly, “You are a mage, and I think a great deal more, but you work as a cowboy and a garage mechanic and a librarian, and probably only just make ends meet. Why not more, why here?”
“Ask your friends, their charms and spells are more reliable and more powerful now, but not like yours. I was chosen because I’ve no ambition to be more than me. I want to be the best Elgin Chalmers I can be, to do my best by folks, but I don’t feel a need for more.” He stood up as he finished.
She stood up as well, “Thank you for telling me this, for trusting me.”
“You’re welcome ma’am, but don’t be too quick with the thanks. I did it because I know you are a magic user, and I may need help as time goes by.”
She nodded, stepped around the table to give him a quick hug and peck on the cheek, “I understand that as well, and thank you for it as well. Have a good day Elgin.” With which she turned away and walked up the street towards the silver Mercedes.
-o-
When Elgin rolled up to the main ranch building he saw the Smith-Samson motor home pulled up next to the main building, already up on its jacks with the pull outs extended. They lived and entertained in the main building but kept the RV as a spare bedroom, in the years before their daughter left home for good, she’d used it as her retreat and bedroom. There were two cars in the carport now, the compact he’d gotten used to seeing fairly frequently and the Smith-Samson’s tow modified hybrid Acura SUV.
Hopping off the bike he checked his mailbox for Saturday mail. On top of the sales cards, a couple of bills and a letter from Fidelity regarding his retirement account, was a small card envelope with his name hand written on it. The Smith-Samsons always invited the crew over for a cookout when they arrived.
The card was for this evening, and it only gave him half an hour to get ready, but for Elgin that was about twenty five minutes more than he needed. A change of shirt to a cotton solid, his newest jeans, his newer riding boots and a bolo tie with a simple clip, and he was in his going to church, a wedding, a funeral or a party clothes.
Sally and Xanda Smith-Samson were from second or third generation wealth, Xanda’s parents had bought the ranch as an investment and vacation getaway when Xanda was in his teens and had been back at least once a year ever since. He often said that he’d live here full time if it didn’t take a day to get to anyplace. They certainly planned to retire here, like his father had, before the original Mrs. Smith-Samson had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, which in the end had killed both of them, her from the side effects, him from grief and exhaustion.
In their late fifties the pair looked the part of high powered east coast apparachniks relaxing with ‘their ranch hands,’ Xanda was dressed a lot like Elgin, Sally in an ankle length blue on white print ranchers wife dress. Xanda had a cook’s apron on and was already in the process of cooking something on the huge gas range built into the patio wall, Sally was speaking with Juan, Josephine and Pedro in fluent Spanish. Juan’s three little hellions were running around in the garden out back playing some form of cowboys and Indians.
The whole crew was there, Mitch and Betty were in the uniform of jeans, ‘western’ shirt and riding boots. Then Elgin realized there was one more person here than he could account for, next to Xanda a slender dark haired woman in mid calf plain skirt cinched by a broad ‘cowboy belt’ and topped by a silky creamy gold shirt, form fitting but with puffy sleeves. She was standing very close to Xanda, their heads were almost touching. Elgin realized it must by their daughter Zephyr, who he hadn’t seen in something like fifteen years, when she was seventeen and he’d been thirteen and still hurting from his mother vanishing.
While outgoing on the surface the Smith-Samsons were also quite private and other than saying that Zephy was doing well at university they’d never said much about her.
She had to be about thirty two now, Elgin was surprised there was no sign of a husband. And then he frowned, the only other car in the carport was the compact he’d seen here since the beginning of spring, was that hers? Had the daughter been hiding out here, or maybe holed up writing the next great American novel or blockbuster screen play?
The she turned and he stopped, it was Deputy Michaels, not Zephyr Smith-Samson.
She caught him staring dumb struck at her and hesitated, frowning at him, before making what looked like a little, shushing sign and moved on to talk to her Sally. And Elgin realized she had to be Zephyr Smith-Samson when Sally gave Deputy Michaels a peck on the cheek as she took the tray of appetizers. Though the name was wrong, the face, though unfamiliar in detail, had familiar features, her mother’s hair and her father’s eyes and nose, her mother’s poise, her father’s unwavering gaze.
But she was apparently living off her parents, or renting off them, called Michaels, driving a nondescript compact, working as a poorly paid country deputy; none of those connected to the arrogant, gawky and somewhat spotty Zephyr Smith-Samson he’d last met. But then a lot happened between leaving for college and your thirtieth birthday.
Elgin shrugged it off, he’d learn more as the evening went on.
Sally and Xanda did introduce Zephyr as their daughter, who was staying in Beauty for a while, and how excited they were to be able to spend time with her, but that was it. He had a beer and some wonderful appetizers, then a fabulous steak with a baked sweet potato and a small side salad and then several different tiny desserts someone had whipped up, or brought in from someplace Elgin didn’t know about. The coffee was good after he put in six packs of the good brown sugar, which earned him his second frown of the evening from Deputy Michaels.
At ten the party broke up, all of the crew offered to help clean up, Elgin ended up doing the dishes in the outside sink, with Zephyr Michaels nee Smith-Samson drying. The others had finished up and trailed out leaving Elgin and the deputy with the last pots pans and silverwear.
Elgin, seeing that the drying board was full, pulled his hands out of the suds and walked around the deputy, drying his hands on a towel, which he flipped over his shoulder and he started transferring the glassware back to the cabinet it spent most of its life in.
“Good of your parents to have this cookout every year.”
“They like to meet everyone. They like people. But it’s not all Ma and Pa stuff.” She laughed, “I used to get into really bad arguments with dad about it, its almost like they feel it's a Laird’s duty to do this for the ‘little people.’ Not in a bad way but there’s arrogance in it as well as kindness.”
“Nothing in this life is pure Deputy Michaels, even a baby’s love is driven by self preservation.”
“Now that is cold Mr. Chalmers.” She hesitated, “And Mr. Chalmers I would really prefer it if you wouldn’t call me that here, Deputy I mean,” Another pause, “Uh, my parents think I’m up here writing, taking a break from the East Coast for a while.”
“As you will ma’am,” he put the last of the glasses away and moved back to the tub.
“Thank you.”
“But the Michaels thing is okay?”
“Its my name now, I haven’t applied to have it changed back yet.” She rubbed rather savagely at a spot on a pot and put it on the rack.
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Not as sorry as I am to hav
e lived it,” she replied bitterly.
She obviously wanted to talk about it, “He cheat on you ma’am?”
This got a snort, “Just about everyone in the world but me Elgin. We lived a good life, a life I thought we were earning with our hard work and smarts. Him at a private bank, me at the partnership, though it was going to be years before I made partner.”
“Then one evening the FBI came calling,” She sighed, “I just stopped the coward from taking a swan dive from the fortieth floor and killing some poor schmuck on the street below.” There was not a shred of concern for the man that apparently she’d loved up until that moment, “He’d been skimming client accounts to the tune of hundreds of thousands a year, when he got caught by some unsavory types, they blackmailed him into running a money laundering scheme. That was why the FBI were there, to flip him and use him in a sting, in exchange, we could go into witness protection when it was all over.”
“And you weren’t interested.”
“It’s not like on TV, you don’t really get a lot of choices. He saved me and probably others a lot of trouble by succeeding in killing himself the next day.”
“Sorry to hear that ma’am,” he said for the second time in a few minutes.
“Meh, it’s over, was over quickly.” She dried several more pans, glanced his way, “Call me Zephy, El. I promise not to call you Eel like I did when we were kids.
“Uh, thanks, that stuck you know.” It had hurt a lot too.
“Sorry.” She touched his arm in apology.
“Worse things in life, now only my friends call me by it, the others learnt the errors of their ways.”
“Ohh, mister tough cowboy man!” she said in a friendly mocking tone of voice.
“That’s me.” He picked up the griddles and put them in the soapy water, “Almost done.”
They finished the washing up and he said goodnight and walked back to his trailer.