The Deavys (10 page)

“It won't matter.” N/Ice's expression, like her tone, was grim. “Mom needs to have the Truth close to her.” She looked at her brother. “We have to get started looking for it right away.”

“In the morning.” Despite being as worried as his sisters, Simwan knew it was incumbent on him to provide rational, sensible instructions. “We're all tired from the trip, we just got here, and we're liable to do more bad than good if we try to go stumbling around the city while we're exhausted. Agreed?”

Troubled but understanding, the two-and-a-half of them nodded.

“Are we going to tell Uncle Herkimer why we're really here?” Rose wondered aloud as she put her phone back in her pack.

“We can't,” Simwan declared firmly. “He's a really sweet dead guy, but he's liable to tell Mom and Dad. If we're going to get back the Truth, we have to be able to operate without parental controls.”

“Yeah,” agreed Amber. “You know Mom.” She proceeded to perfectly mimic Melinda Mae's voice. “‘No invocations, no summoning in front of Ords.'”

“‘No levitating,'” added Rose with mock solemnity.

“‘No slip-sliding between dimensions,'” finished N/Ice, with a certainty that only the sole twelve-year-old girl in Washow County, Pennsylvania, who thought Stephen Hawking's books were travel guides would have.

Simwan nodded. “As far as Uncle Herkimer and Señor Nutt are concerned, we're all here on break, to enjoy the city, have a good time, and help him get ready for All Hallow's. Not that we can't do all that, too,” he added, “but our principal task is to return the Truth to Mr. Gemimmel's store.”

“Well, the Truth isn't worth anything on an empty stomach.” Slipping off the overstuffed bed (without pausing to contemplate what it might be stuffed with, and ignoring the slight, disturbed moan that came from deep, deep within the depths of the mattress as she took her leave), Rose headed for the door. “I'm starving! Let's see what Uncle Herkimer has to eat.”

“For sure,” agreed Amber eagerly. “We haven't had anything to eat except snacks since we left home this morning.”

It was only by coincidence that the yapping and yowling they heard happened to be coming from the kitchen. Both cries were oddly distorted, though at first Simwan could not identify the origin. As he and the coubet entered the cooking area, the source quickly revealed itself.

Initially, it was impossible to tell whether Señor Nutt was chasing Pithfwid, or the other way around. Both were moving so fast that they were little more than a couple of blurs: one pale green and black, the other ebony tipped with crimson. They criss-crossed the limited dimensions of the curtain-darkened kitchen like a pair of runaway electrons, streaking across not only the floor but the table, chairs, appliances, walls, and even the ceiling.

“Stop it, you two!” Simwan shouted. “Pithfwid—Señor Nutt; quit fighting!”

The pair of streaks halted abruptly—on the ceiling. Rose had to step aside as drool from the tongue-lolling, heavily panting, upside-down Chihuahua dripped to spatter on the floor. A few feet in front of the dog, Pithfwid hung downward, his claws dug into the plaster. An indication of the speed at which the cat had been traveling, tiny wisps of smoke rose from the vicinity of his paws.

“We're not fighting,” the cat announced.

“Indeed.” Señor Nutt's oversize, pointed ears cocked downward in the direction of the upward-staring visitors. “We are merely engaging in a little friendly inter-species exercise.” Turning his attention to Pithfwid, he added, “I thank you for the workout. Most of the time I am reduced to chasing my own tail for exercise. Not only is that particular activity inadequate for the purpose to which it is put, but the resultant tornadic vortex, albeit on a small scale, tends to play havoc with the furniture.”

“Don't mention it.” Grudgingly, Pithfwid added, “For a dead dog, you move pretty well.”

“Compliment noted. May I say that your skill at running through objects as well as around them is unprecedented in my long experience?”

“Look,” an exasperated Simwan told them, “I don't care if you two are going to argue, fight, or work out a formal dance routine, but do it on the floor, will you? You're liable to mess up Uncle Herkimer's ceiling.”

Señor Nutt let out a small yip of disdain. Nevertheless, he promptly relinquished his foothold on the ceiling and dropped. At the last possible instant he twisted himself completely around, to land gently and right-side up on all four feet. Completing a successful four-point landing of his own, Pithfwid went entirely pink, sat down, and began licking one overheated paw.

Meanwhile, N/Ice had moved to the refrigerator. It was a surprisingly massive affair, its stainless-steel, double-doored front suggesting a commercial rather than a home model. The hum from its powerful compressor was deep and steady. The oversize unit was obviously maintained in markedly better condition than the ancient, dirty white electric stove and mold-encrusted sink that comprised the remainder of the major kitchen appliances.

“I'll have tuna, if you please,” Pithfwid volunteered helpfully as Simwan tugged open the left-side door.

A hard young man to shock, the senior Deavy present nonetheless stumbled backward in astonishment and let out a small yelp of surprise.

Though the bulb inside the refrigerator had long since burned out, there was ample light in the room to show that there were no shelves. Occupying the entire compartment was a single solitary figure. As the girls came closer for a better look and Simwan held his ground, the figure's eyes snapped open to regard them.

“Just taking a little nap.” Uncle Herkimer lowered the arms that had been crossed over his chest. Stepping out, he closed the door behind him and stretched slightly.

“You sleep in the refrigerator?” Amber asked him, slightly wide-eyed.

“Well, of course.” Herkimer smiled. “How else do you think I keep this long-demised body in shape? I tell you, in July, there are those in this city among the living who would dearly love to do likewise, if only they could get around the awkward business of needing to breathe. As you know, I don't have that problem.”

“Then where do you keep your food?” N/Ice leaned forward to peer into the empty, lightly padded refrigerator compartment.

“I don't have that problem, either,” he told her.

Putting her hands on her hips, Rose regarded her half a sister. “Well,
duh
! I mean, he's dead.”

N/Ice was defiant. “That doesn't mean he isn't interested in a snack now and then, just for memory's sake.”

“Not really.” Herkimer moved toward the table and folded his crumbling corpus into one of the old chairs. “Food's not much fun when your sense of taste has been gone more than a hundred years, and being a ghoul never really appealed to me.” He shook his head distastefully. “All that moaning and wailing and bawling mournfully in the middle of the night. Too much like politics.” He brightened. “But there's a nice neighborhood market a couple of blocks away, in the direction of the South Street Seaport. You can buy whatever you want there and cook it here.” He indicated the monolithic fridge. “Plenty of storage room on the other side.”

“So we'd keep our food in—with you?” Amber considered the prospect. “Eewww—that sounds great!”

“And this is New York,” Herkimer reminded them yet again. “There are interesting places to eat on every block, on every street. Just be careful that anything you buy hasn't been dead too long. As non-Ords, you'll be offered all sorts of exotic dishes. Some of them with food on them.”

“We'll be careful, Uncle Herkimer.” Drifting upward, a dreamily diaphanous N/Ice fell to an examination of the kitchen ceiling where Pithfwid and Señor Nutt had been gamboling. “A little glue and a simple blending spell and I think I can fix this.”

Amber made a disgusted noise. “The only blending spell you know is the one Mom showed us for Socratic mousse.”

Her sister peered down at her, defiantly. “So? I happen to think it will work for wallpaper, too. The constituent organic components …”

While his sisters energetically debated the merits of paste-summoning and ceiling repair, Simwan settled himself into a chair next to his uncle. Fiddling with his left ear, which was threatening to fall off at any moment, Herkimer smiled through horrifically bad teeth.

“So, nephew, what do you kids want to see first? The Museum of Natural History? The Metropolitan Museum of Art? The Empire State Building? The Efferwhere of Sensorlium? Or maybe you'd like to go shopping? There's always Macy's, though I guess that'd be more for the girls. You—you'd probably like the Shop of All Worlds. I'm told there's a really nice little restaurant next door: Mirabilis Southwest. Specializes in Tex-Mex-Hex.” Folding his moldering hands, he rested them on the table. “Myself, I never was big on spicy food.”

“That all sounds great, Uncle Herkimer. But first …”

“But first,” Señor Nutt piped up from next to him, pausing in his race with Pithfwid, “there's something I have to know. Something that's intrigued me ever since Herkimer told me who was coming to visit.”

An uncertain Simwan braced himself. Had he and his sisters overlooked something in the course of their careful planning? Something this uncanny dog had sniffed out? “Uh, sure, Señor Nutt. What is it you need to know?”

“How did your parents ever come up with a name like Simwan for a nice boy like yourself?”

Simwan sighed. It wasn't the first time he'd been asked that question, and he doubted it would be the last. “It was all an accident. The name, I mean: not me. As I was told it, the nurse attending the ward where they put me after I was born was from the Old Country. Nobody ever said which Old Country. The story is that she was always kind of hard to understand at the best of times, and not real careful with her magic, and on that night she'd had a lot to drink. Whenever anyone came to visit and to see the new Deavy baby, she got kinda confused when she was trying to point me out, and kept saying, ‘Someone's right there for you. Someone's right there in that bed.' Intentionally or not, she enchanted the name right onto me. The Ords who ran hospital administration were unsure about it, but by then it was too late, and you have to keep in mind that this was rural Pennsylvania. There's lots of unusual ethnic names in rural Pennsylvania.” He shifted his backside on the kitchen chair, trying to ignore the subtle, crawling movements within the seat.

“After that, the name kind of stuck. I say ‘kind of' because my parents couldn't just name me ‘Someone.' I mean, how would that work out? People would be looking for ‘someone,' and they'd invariably come after me. Or a person reporting a crime wouldn't be able to identify the perpetrator, so they'd say ‘Well, all I know is that someone did this,' and the police would come looking for me.” Tired of having to tell the story of his name yet again, he found himself using one finger to trace circles on the tabletop. He would erase them later.

“So my parents settled on Simwan, which sounded enough like the name the nurse had imprinted on me not to cause confusion, but different enough to keep me from having to deal with constant misunderstandings all my life.”

As the explanation lapsed, Herkimer took over again. “Now then: back to your vacation. Where do you want to go and what do you and your sisters want to see first?”

Simwan considered how best to reply. He and the coubet had already decided that they couldn't tell their uncle why they had really come to New York. Just as they had when they were convincing their parents to let them make the trip, they had to pretend that they were there to sightsee, and get educated. At the same time, Uncle Herkimer had been so accommodating and so sweet that it pained Simwan to have to lie. He had an idea.

“Actually, we're not really sure. I guess what we need to do first is check everything out and then make some decisions.” He made a show of scrutinizing his surroundings, even though he knew what he was about to ask for was not likely to be found in the kitchen. “Do you have a guidebook?”

“Why certainly!” Herkimer rose, tottering no more than usual, and beckoned for Simwan to follow him into the front room. “Your parents didn't send one along with you?”

“I have the
Metaphysician's Manual for New York
on my tablet, but that's not exactly the same thing as a regular tourist guidebook. It's mostly about the right places for a visiting non-Ord to sleep, eat, and invoke.”

“Quite so. Well, let's see what we can scare up.”

As the two of them entered the front room, a pair of streaking shapes rocketed past Simwan's legs, one on either side. A pair of very small sonic booms followed in their wake.

“Señor Nutt, Pithfwid—don't you two break anything, now!” Herkimer shook a warning finger in the general direction of the two disappearing streaks as he approached a bookcase filled with moldering, cobweb-clad tomes. “Pets—I tell you, sometimes I wonder if they're worth it.”

Simwan was struck by a sudden thought. Fortunately, it was a small, relatively soft thought, and so left no mark. “Where does Señor Nutt sleep?”

“On the other side of the refrigerator, of course.” Bending low, his back creaking audibly with the effort, Herkimer studied a shelf of books, using an index finger to move from one title to the next. “But don't worry—he won't eat your food. He doesn't eat any more than I do, and his bed doesn't take up any more space than a frozen pizza. Ah, here we are.” Pulling out a slim, blue-bound volume, he passed it to Simwan.

It was exactly what his uncle had promised:
A Compleat and Thorough Guide to All of New York City, Including Its Boroughs and the Surrounding Countryside
. Simwan flipped to the back of the title page. It required an effort not to smile.