Celebromancy (11 page)

Worry about the love triangle later. There’s weird shit afoot.

God, my life has become a CW drama.

When she was done with the story, she realized her milkshake was gone and she had a brain freeze.
Ow.

Drake’s face was locked in a pensive look, the gravitas of the situation totally undercut by fact that he was slurping a milkshake.

The inventor set down his shake to respond, taking a thoughtful pose with one hand at his chin. “That is an interesting situation.” Drake took to pacing, which, in a kitchen this small, meant he took a tiny step to the left, turned, then took a tiny step to the right as he talked. “I must admit, I am not familiar with this Celebromancy. It was not so known in my age, and I have not had reason to confront or study it in this century.”

Drake pursed his lips. “But if you are again in need of an associate, I would be most happy to assist you . . . tomorrow. Or later tonight. I am afraid I am engaged for a portion of this evening.”

“Oh, really? Got a hot date?” Ree asked, intentionally baiting. If she was wrong, it was a reasonable bit of teasing.

Judging from the shade of pink he turned, Ree realized she’d guessed right, though it did not exactly make her feel like she’d “won” anything.

“Who’s the lucky girl? Or guy,” Ree said, pretty sure that Drake didn’t swing both ways but trying to walk the bisexuality awareness walk.

Drake’s pink turned a shade darker, and he coughed, straightening up. “I will be accompanying your friend Ms. Tharakan to a gallery opening this evening, preceded by dinner at Bites.”

Aha!
Ree knew she recognized that Tupperware of curry. And it would explain why Priya had been AWOL the last couple of nights the Rhyming Ladies had convened for beer and kibitzing at Trollope’s Trollops. She was smart, had good taste in friends, and was neck-deep into contemporary Steampunk, so she and Drake shared a common fictional language, even if they came at it from literally different worlds. They even had a shared hatred of Steampunk model, essayist, and fashion snob Abigail Wickham.

It’s not like Ree could be upset about the two hooking up, considering that she’d never made a move and had in fact just slept with someone else, but all of that trying to be reasonable wasn’t stopping the clenching feeling in her stomach.

“Well, have fun. Priya knows the best parties. And get the southwestern egg rolls. Priya always forgets about them.” She almost went ahead and asked how she and Drake had met, and stopped herself.

Oh, but this is a familiar place
. And not one of the comfortable ones. She’d given dating advice to friends who she had crushes on when they were dating other friends more times than she cared to count, and it was a big, fat awkward sandwich.

Drake nodded, leaning back on his heels and taking a short breath before speaking. “Thank you. And do let me know if you find yourself needing assistance this evening. I have promised to return Ms. Tharakan by midnight to allow her to wake early in the morning for work.”

Oh, yeah. Work.
Ree was scheduled to close Grognard’s, since there was a tournament tonight, with a big prize.

Ree held up a hand, one finger pointing. “I am contractually required to tell you that if you hurt Priya, I will hunt you down and then use your innards for an art project. I expect Sandra and Anya will tell you this soon, if they haven’t already. We made a pact.”

Drake nodded, solemnly. “I swear I will do everything in my power to ensure that she enjoys herself, and will not harm her by malice or negligence.”

Of course you won’t. I almost wish you would. Not really, but maybe. Augh. Time to get out of here before emo music starts playing.

Ree picked up her empty milkshake cup. “In that case, I’ll leave you to the Actuator and your date. Swing by Grognard’s tonight, if you want . . .”

Drake sighed. “I do not imagine there will be time for a visit, but thank you for the invitation.” Ree took a step forward to leave, and they did a short shuffle of a dance so Ree could exit without having to brush by Drake and pour more fuel on the awkward fire. Ree left in a controlled hurry, her stomach still held in a Force Grip.

Set mode to Calm the Fuck Down.

•   •   •

Ree hobbled her way home, thankful for the billionth time that Pearson’s public transportation was speedy and safe.

She could have used her sideboard, pulled out a card to teleport home, but that would have been a waste of resources. Plus, if she just God-Moded through everything, she’d be headed down Willow’s path to Dark Phoenix. Magic didn’t need to solve every problem. Plus, if she blinked into existence in her own room and Sandra was home, it’d take some impressive bullshittery to come up with an excuse as to how she’d apparated.

Plus x3, the slow walk gave her time to think.

Her apartment, which she shared with Sandra Wilson, another of the Rhyming Ladies, was affectionately called The Shithole. The name was meant to ward off evil spirits of make-the-apartment-crappy-ness. The Shithole was a fifth-floor walk-up, which normally meant Ree got a little extra exercise every day, but with a banged-up leg, it was torture—even with the painkillers.

Maybe I should have just used the teleport after all
, she thought as she passed the third floor.
It’d be even more of a waste to use it now, of course.

She shambled into the apartment and flopped over the couch to die for a few minutes and let her leg stop throbbing.

This is not okay
, she thought. There was no way she could make it through a tournament night at Grognard’s on a bum leg, so she’d have to burn some resources to heal up before she went in for work.

Ree fumbled through her bag for her stack of cards. Gritting her teeth as her leg continued to throb, she scanned cards at the lightning speed she’d developed over a year of card gaming, looking for something applicable.
Gorrammit.
None of the CCGs used damage points. Things got killed or they didn’t. Damage doesn’t linger like that.

But it does in
Descent
. . .
she thought, limping back to her room to fetch the bag that held the main store of her Geekomantic resources. She pawed through for a small plastic bag and dug out a cardboard icon for a healing potion. They were coming out with a new edition anyway, and the potions would lose some of their mojo as gamers upgraded, their emotional investment in the potions switching to the new versions.

One-off props were the instant-gratification approach to Geekomancy. Artifacts had more staying power, with a lightsaber working for minutes straight at times, but when their nostalgia batteries were up, they were just so much plastic and chrome.

The disposable-props model was the fast food of Geekomancy: quick, easy, and hit the spot, but it cost you in the end. Every single comic, DVD, RPG book, or other physical artifact of a cultural property held a bit of the world’s collective emotional investment. It was the first kind of Geekomancy she’d seen, not that she had recognized it that breezy afternoon last October. The problem was that each use destroyed the artifact in question. The disposable model was incredibly useful, but she felt a bit of her soul cry every time she did it.

Ree sat herself down on her bed and tore at the cardboard piece. It wasn’t exactly easy to rip.
Damned sturdy engineering. This is why Eastwood uses real potions.

At some point, the universe decided the tear was enough, and Ree felt a wave of magic rush over her. She focused the energy with the idea of a healing potion, the basic unit of explaining why fantasy adventurers don’t all keel over after an hour, and felt the energy rush down her body to her back and to her leg. In about as much time as it’d take her to chug a real potion, she felt her pain evaporate, and the already-mean-looking bruise on her leg faded away.

Ree exhaled, going limp with relief.
Thank Trogdor.
Ree savored the extreme lack of pain for a minute, then sat up and got back to business. Her apartment was in pretty bad shape, but not so bad that Sandra had declared martial law and called for a cleaning day.

She considered, then decided against, shower beer, as much as it would help the cleansing process and calm her down from the craziness of the day. But the shower was nonnegotiable.

After washing off the funk, she put on a new set of clothes, searching her geeky T-shirt drawer for the Wil Wheaton–designed Roots T-shirt from J!NX that she’d acquired as soon as it had become available. A tiny part of her hoped that she would one day get to meet Wil Wheaton, host of Geek & Sundry’s show
TableTop
, and that he’d invite her to come on the show for a game. She had invested emotionally in that happening about as much as she had in the idea of winning the lottery, but it still made her smile every time she wore the shirt.

She was taking a risk not wearing black, but she always kept spare shirts at the bar, so she’d be fine. She matched the shirt with might-as-well-be-black dark-blue jeans. She tied her hair back in a several-times-looped-over braid, one of the designs she’d started using back when she was a barista at Café Xombi to amuse herself and the fangirl customers.

Her stomach grumbled for something more substantial than a milkshake, and she headed to the fridge to see if Sandra had left her any delicious presents. Her roommate had gone to culinary school long enough to learn several marvelous tricks, which she used to fulfill her
feed people!
instincts. Ree was not above enabling her friend in this matter.

Seeing Tupperware in the fridge made her stomach clench again, but she deluded herself by insisting it was just her being hungry.

Goddamnit, heart. You could have made this clear before things got stupidly complicated. Now the best I can hope for is that Drake and Priya live happily ever after and make brilliant, brilliant gadget babies together.

Fortunately, there was leftover pizza for Ree to use to improve her mood.

Turbo’s pizza wasn’t nearly as good reheated, but it was still a damned sight better than most of the pie in town, and plus, it was right there.

Ree tossed a couple of slices in the toaster oven and made herself some more coffee. As the percolator worked its magic, her phone started playing “Piano Man,” the ringtone she’d assigned to her dad.

Ree scampered over to her phone and picked up.

“Dad!”

“Hey, Ree-bee. Are you all right? I’ve seen some scary news.”

“I’m fine. Just doing my thing. Shall I be vague, or do you want to do the Encryption Tango?”

Ree cradled the phone between her face and shoulder as she poured a mug of coffee.

Her dad laughed on the other side of the line. “Sure thing. I’ll call you right back.” He hung up, and Ree waited. Her dad had been a communications tech, and actually kept up with the wild world of IT, so he’d taken to using encrypted lines when they needed to talk about her far-beyond-the-norm adventures.

She still hadn’t told him about her mom—his wife—who had disappeared over a decade ago. It’d taken him years to get over her disappearance, and he was doing his best to move on with his life. Ree had decided to live with the guilt of withholding the secret rather than facing the emotional carpet-bombing sharing the truth would effect.

Holding back from him was getting a bit easier, and she didn’t like that, either.

A minute later, her phone rang again, but the caller ID showed
Unknown
. She picked up again, saying, “Hello?”

Her dad answered, “The squid inks at midnight.”

Ree bit back the same urge she felt every call to just go ahead and spill. Instead, she swallowed the bile of guilt and stuck to the latest crazy thing in her life.

“Great. So here’s the story,” she said, and launched into her latest travails, again skipping the sexytimes and focusing on the attack in the night and the trouble she’d gotten herself into since.

“So, are all stars Celebromancers or whatever? Is that how the industry works?” her dad asked.

“I don’t think so. It seems like only the Big-Leaguers have that much mojo. Though maybe some producers and directors do it for other actors. Yancy wasn’t clear about that.”

“How does that work with fans and your Geekomancy? Do they take away your power, like kryptonite?”

“Nope, not that I’ve noticed,” Ree said. “I think that the fandom that powers my stuff isn’t mutually exclusive from the power they get from fans.”

“That’s good. I’d hate to have to find and rip up your Jane Konrad fan club card.”

“Dad!” Ree said in the same complaining tone she’d used since forever when he was embarrassing her. “It doesn’t work like that. And don’t you dare touch that card.”

She’d remembered getting that sad piece of cardboard shortly after mom left, which only made her think of what she wasn’t telling her dad. She half-started to speak again, her resolve going out like the low tide when her dad chuckled on the other side of the line.

Then he cleared his voice and asked, “So what are you going to do now?”

Ree grabbed ahold of his question and pushed back the guilt. “I’ll need to come up with a different way to make a run at MacKenzie, maybe catch her off-set instead of going directly into the belly of the beast. Or find a different ticket in. Maybe I can borrow the psychic paper from Eastwood.”

Her dad inhaled. “Isn’t he still persona non grata in magic-town?”

“Yes, but he’s also Hercules with labors left to complete. He’s been paying off his karmic debt bit by bit, mostly by being a reckless sumbitch and running around like Kick-Ass with a lightsaber.”

“That sounds like a terrible idea.”

“For sure. But he hasn’t exactly been open to debate. He charges in, blows stuff up, then scowls and storms off.”

Her dad waited a second. “So should I be worried by what I’m hearing about you and Jane? It seems like she’s trouble.” He said
hearing about
in that generous parental way that meant
I know perfectly well what’s going on but will give you the chance to explain
.