contain almost 90% gold. Based on the metal alone, at today's prices, it would be worth maybe $450. But that's not the half of it. To a collector it's worth almost $3000."
"How can you be sure?"
"I used to be one."
Michele said nothing for the longest time; she just stared at the coin. Yet even when she finally could speak, she didn't take her eyes from it. "Do you think he knew what he gave us?"
"I don't know, but no matter how you look at it, he certainly paid for his order." It was a lame statement, I know, but what else could be said at a time like that?
It took us nearly 45 minutes to make all the pizzas. We packed them into insulated boxes to keep them warm, six pizza cartons to a "hot" box. Afterwards, I went next door to a liquor store. (We had an agreement with the proprietor to buy beer at a little more than his wholesale price. In that way, Michele didn't need to have a liquor license.) While we worked, I described the man's manner and appearance. Michele informed me that no customer like him had ever visited the store before, but she seemed to recognize the name Caldwell. She seemed certain he had ordered from her at least once. She just couldn't recall the details.
Since I couldn't handle four hot boxes, plus four six-bottle cartons of beer, all by myself, Michele decided to close up the shop and come with me. We loaded my Dodge four-by-four, and then checked a map of Tamarack to see where we were going. The only place where Elmwood and Charles intersected lay at the east end of Greenwood Cemetery. There were houses along both streets, but the man had not given me a house address, which made Michele suspicious. Yet, he had paid, so we were obligated to try to deliver his order. Even so, Michele decided not to take any chances.
The drive to Tamarack was quiet enough and took only ten minutes. A major state road runs north and west between the village and Delasalle, allowing quick and easy access to the nearby interstate highway. Just west of the road, before one reaches the village proper, is a suburban area with its inexpensive single family homes, parks, and schools. On the east side is the "wealthy quarter", with its beautiful mansions that could rival the best on the East Coast. Beyond it, stretching north and further east, is Maria's Lament, an area of marsh set aside as a nature preserve.
Once into the incorporated town itself, however, things change dramatically. Tamarack is not a prosperous town. Though the sister city of Delasalle, it has never been as successful as its sibling. It is nowhere near as decayed and squalid as Seth's Landing to the south, or even as tired and rundown as Stonefort to the north, but it is nonetheless decadent and decrepit. A visitor once described Tamarack as a has-been whore, passed her prime, but still trying to recapture the golden days of her youth with a thick veneer of cheap makeup, all the while deluding herself that there really had been any gold to recapture.
The central, western, and northern quarters of the village are not too bad, since they cater to students who either cannot afford to live in Delasalle or want to experience an impoverished Bohemian atmosphere, but the eastern section that borders on the marsh is by far the worst part of town. The structures there are all extremely old: none are younger than 150 years and some even date back to the arrival of the first settlers, in the middle nineteenth century. Yet they are in varying states of decay and disrepair, even those still occupied.
Their residents are little better. They are a proud, resourceful, and arrogant people who, by virtue of their direct descent from the founding families, considered themselves superior to the "outlander tribes", the villagers who are their neighbors to the west. They keep to themselves, tending their gardens and tiny plots of land, trading with each other for their meager needs, even preferring to marry within their own families. Many take daily journeys into the marsh to hunt or gather firewood, and more than a few actually live there. In turn, they are avoided by the villagers, who tell strange stories about these "marsh folk", which tend to discourage idle curiosity. This suits the marsh folk just fine, who would prefer never to see an unfamiliar face.
Greenwood Cemetery lies at the border of the eastern and central quarters of Tamarack, but the intersection of Elmwood and Charles lies well inside the marsh quarter, and there is no other way of getting to it except through the quarter itself. It took us a half an hour to negotiate the twisting streets, which were badly in need of repair. The houses were all dark. In the beams of my headlights they appeared skull white, with windows black like huge, empty sockets. They looked as if they had been rotted by the acidic soil of that drained bog-land. Occasionally we saw shadows scuttling away from our lights. Like the homes, they appeared tattered and ancient, crippled in form, but swift in their movements. I wondered if the soil could do to people what it did to the buildings. Or maybe it wasn't the soil. There, at night, it seemed easy to believe the stories told by the villagers, that the marsh was filled with a necrosis that saturated soil and atmosphere, putrefying both the homes and their occupants until they bore only the slightest resemblance to the modern town.
At last we spotted the gates of the cemetery. They stood open, though their quantity of rust suggested that they had not been used in over a hundred years. Beyond them, a thick mist shrouded the graveyard. My headlights bounced off the cloud, making it look like a solid, whitewashed wall; we couldn't even see the nearest headstones. Pulling off to the side of the road, I parked, but left the motor idling. I turned the headlights off so that we could look for our customer, and blackness descended, as if a blanket had been thrown over the jeep.
After a moment, our eyes adjusted to the change, though little more than the gate and the nearer houses could be seen. Unfortunately, there appeared to be no one around to greet us and neither Michele nor I wanted to get out and start knocking on doors. Yet we were not willing to immediately leave. So we simply sat there, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
From "Differential Damsel"
Differel crept up the trail towards the wall as Eile and Sunny followed. The ruins were part of an ancient manor abandoned long ago, and while most of the buildings had long since collapsed and fallen into rubble, the protective curtain wall remained largely intact, except for a handful of breaches. The trail led to one, and she stopped on one side, keeping out of sight of the interior. The Girls fell in behind her as she took off her glasses. They were really a fashion statement; though myopic in the Waking World, she had perfect vision in the Dreamlands. But there could be a danger they would reflect light.
She peered in a cautious manner around the broken masonry into the central courtyard, fingering one of her wheellock pistols just in case. A few rods away four Men of Leng sat around a fire beside one of the few intact buildings, eating, drinking, and telling stories as they whiled away the evening before going to sleep. Though they wore dark-colored tunics and traveling coats, the flames illuminated their bulbous turbans and round faces in the growing twilight, with their wide frog-like mouths and wicked grinning leers. From the way they talked and laughed, she figured they were well pleased with the progress of their adventure so far.
But she felt less concern about them than the man they held captive. Strung up by his wrists inside the building's open doorway and stripped to the waist, Victor looked none the worst for his ordeal.
Which is good, she thought. She had resolved before she arrived that if they had harmed her husband in any way, she would kill them instead of take them captive. She was a crack marksman, and at that distance could pick them off easily, even with her primitive firearms.
She stepped back from the gap and turned to look at the Girls. They had volunteered without hesitation when she asked for their help, and she had been glad of it. She would rather have them at her back than an SAS troop in full battle gear. They were her friends in the Waking World as well as the Dreamlands, and called themselves Team Girl in both places.
She held up four fingers, and they nodded. She pointed at Sunny and motioned for her to remain behind. She crinkled her azure-blue eyes behind her granny glasses and smiled, then slipped off and strung her reflex composite bow
. The Mercutio of the pair, she called herself White-lion in the Dreamworld, though she seemed more golden with her huge mane of gamboge hair and her buff complexion. She preferred comfortable traveling clothes, such as a long skirt, a sleeveless shirt that bared her midriff, and an open jacket, all of which did little to hide her voluptuous figure, along with leather boots and gloves, and a Robin Hood hat with a large golden plume. Her costume often led assailants to underestimate her, but her prowess with the bow and her magical talent prevented most attackers from getting close, and those few who did discovered she was equally adept with a quarterstaff or dagger.
Differel removed her hat and passed it to Sunny. The broad floppy brim provided excellent shading from the sun, but it would be more of a hindrance than a help in clandestine activity. She focused on Eile and indicated for her to start before her. Eile responded with a grin and a wink of an indigo-blue eye. Differel gave them both an a-okay sign as she pulled out a pistol, before turning and darting across the opening of the break to the other side. When she looked back, she saw Eile