Traveler (15 page)

The place that Jack and Cisco had chosen to meet was a Chinese restaurant that didn’t deserve the one-star rating it would have gotten in Michelin’s or Fodor’s, had any of the guide books ever found the no-name place down in the maze of narrow streets where it churned out its strange cuisine. The food was bad, the ambience under the fluorescents and Formica was nonexistent, but it had the benefit of not being frequented by anyone that Cisco or Jack was likely to know—cops or criminals. They’d been meeting there for years whenever Jack blew into town.

Chang, the old man who waited tables, showed Jack to his seat with the sort of bowing that was usually reserved for deities or at least their high priests. Jack gave him the finger, a show of disrespect that made the old man laugh and stop his mocking servitude.

“You want to see specials?” the old man asked. It was another joke. The old man always served the same thing, no matter what they ordered.

“Surprise us,” Jack said, slipping into the seat across from Francisco Vega. The old vinyl creaked under his weight but didn’t split. Jack didn’t take off his shades, and Cisco didn’t ask him to.

The old man wandered away chortling. He disappeared behind the bead curtain that spanned the doorway between the large plastic light-up Buddha and the red, broken wall-mounted pay phone that were the restaurant’s only decorative items.

“Wondered if you would show,
amigo,
” Cisco said, pouring out tea for both of them and shoving one of the cups Jack’s way. “Big storm in Goblin Town last night. Somebody must of tread on old Glashtin’s shoes.”

“Wasn’t me,” Jack answered, wondering if it were true. He offered, “Might have been Zayn. He’s been around Goblin Town a lot lately.”

“If it was Zayn, he got out alive last night. Someone saw him bolting through the gates just after dawn like the hounds of Hell were chewing on his skinny ass.”

“I hate when that happens,” Jack answered, his face completely straight.

“Yeah, me too. Probably because I got more ass to chew on than I used to.”

“A lot more,” Jack agreed.

Cisco called him a name. Then, “I suppose it
could have been the gargoyle trouble that pissed Glashtin off and sent Zayn flying.”

“Yeah? What happened?”

“I hear Hille Bingels’s stony pet got loose during the show and bit a few stoned patrons who didn’t figure out it wasn’t a hallucination.”

“Maybe he chewed on Glashtin, too.”

“Maybe. But he’s a dead gargoyle if that’s true. Old Glashtin is supposed to have poison skin and a worse temper.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Jack agreed. “Lots of people around Glashtin end up dead. I hear he’s half curare toad.”

Chang appeared with a large plate of steamed-to-death vegetables and a bowl of sticky rice. They waited until he was gone to begin discussing business.

“So, you weren’t real clear on the cell, but you’ve got something else for me?” Cisco asked, taking up his chopsticks. He and Jack had learned to use them because Chang didn’t bother with standard silverware.

“Yeah.” Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out the two samples of goblin fruit he had wrapped in a bandanna. It had been off the vine for a day and still looked succulent. There was no sign of wilt or rot. “Go ahead and have the boffins test it, but I already know what it is.”

“This is the super-fruit you were looking for?” Cisco eyed the items for a moment and then carefully
stowed them in his own coat pocket. “That’s bad news then.”

“Yep, and I’m afraid that means it’s going to have to be a Sherlock-Holmes-and-Moriarty type of
final solution
, and soon. This is an act of terrorism. There are fields of this stuff down there all ready for picking. If Neveling Lutin is to make his perfume launch date, then they’ll have to begin harvesting shortly.”

“So Lutin is involved.”

“Right up to his antennae,” Jack answered, thinking of Io’s insistence that the goblins really were bugs.

“You’re suddenly smiling, amigo. That always worries me. Is it the girl? The fey you told me about?”

Jack nodded once. His tone was reluctant, but he volunteered “Her name’s Io.”

“Tigre Cypher’s daughter? And you’re letting her in on this party?” Cisco didn’t bother to hide his amazement. “Man, you always did have the biggest
cojones
.”

“She’s nothing like her mother. And I couldn’t stop her—not without…” Jack shrugged. “Anyway, I need her help. She can do some incredible things with even average spells. I’ve never met anyone who fine-tunes the way she does. It’s like putting a killing edge on a knife.”

“Good. You’re going to need a lot of help, amigo, if you’re taking on Horroban and all of Goblin Town. And a little extra firepower would help, too.” Cisco spoke persuasively.

“That’s why I’m here,” Jack agreed.

Cisco leaned back, further surprise showing in his dark eyes. “It isn’t like you to be so reasonable. This mess is really that bad then?”

“Yeah. The goblins aren’t kidding.” Jack finally took off his sunglasses and looked his friend in the eye. “We stop it here, or we’re all screwed.”

“You’d better tell me everything. Could they really addict the world with this stuff?”

Jack nodded and began talking.

Io knew that Jack would not be happy with her for answering Zayn’s note and agreeing to this rendezvous while he was gone from town, but she was loaded with enough magic to wipe out a regiment of goblins, including a truth-resistance spell. Surely that was sufficient to protect her from any tricks Zayn might try to get information out of her.

As she walked, she was careful to keep an eye on the imps chattering up in the trees. They were part of the park landscape, though not as charming as squirrels, or as pleasant to look at—and they were certainly more dangerous.

A pitiful screech from the base of a park bench drew her attention. Someone had set a wrought-iron leg down on top of a gray imp’s tail. Probably the imp had been annoying and deserved its fate, but Io found that she couldn’t leave it there suffering to starve or be tormented by the others. If it kept whimpering,
something was going to come along and eat it.

Io put down the two cups of coffee she carried. Flexing her fingers inside her gloves, she bent down and quickly wrapped a hand around the leathery jaw so it couldn’t bite her with those tiny, razor-sharp teeth. She then quickly lifted the bench and pulled the imp out. A fast look assured her that its tail wasn’t broken.

She put it on the ground and, releasing it, stepped back smartly. The imp, though it couldn’t see her, knew she was there and set about repeating the sort of screechy begging that had likely gotten it pinned in the first place.

“Go on, beat it,” she said.

The imp ratcheted up his whining and the others of his kind paused to see what the fuss was about. They began to creep closer.

Sighing in exasperation, Io reached inside her pocket and flipped a stick of gum down onto the sidewalk. The creature would probably devour it, paper and all, but that wouldn’t hurt it. Imps ate anything. They were like buzzards.

Delighted with his minty prize, the imp picked it up and scurried off, his hairless and featherless body shivering with delight. Other imps began chasing after him, shrieking with jealousy.

Io waited for them to rush by her, then picked up the coffee and moved on.

She finally pulled off her invisibility when she
reached the park bench where her fellow agent provocateur waited and there Io sat down next to Zayn. He flinched when she appeared, his whole face twitching.

She had never seen the fey look so nervy.

Io gave him one of the cups of coffee as a peace offering, and then looked into the distance at the beds of dead flowers while he collected himself.

“Okay. Spill it,” she finally said. “Hurry up. It’s cold.”

She pulled her sweater around her with her free hand. The snow had melted, but it was still unseasonably cold in Goblin Town. The sun was well up, but just didn’t seem able to warm things. It was as though the heat of the city was being sucked straight down into the earth.

And maybe it was.

“We had some excitement last night. Hille’s pet gargoyle somehow managed to swallow your dish of ticks along with some bits of tourists when it got loose at Glashtin’s club.” Zayn took a gulp of coffee, wincing at both the heat and the taste. Io didn’t blame him. No one in Goblin Town seemed to have mastered the art of making drinkable java.

“That explains Glashtin’s temper tantrum and the sudden snow.” She was relieved to know it was this and not the foray into the Labyrinth that had been responsible. “I wonder how much he had to lay out in bribes to shut everyone up about the gargoyle feast.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what made him mad. Deke said he went storming out of the club just after midnight and didn’t come back.” Zayn didn’t seem to notice that he named another H.U.G. operative. Or maybe he assumed that Xanthe had told Io who else was working in Goblin Town.

“And then what happened?”

Zayn looked about nervously. There were no shrubs to speak of, and all the trees were bare. There wasn’t any place for a goblin to be hiding, even if they were so bold as to be out during the day, but his eyes kept moving fretfully from trees to shrubbery and back again.

“All but one of the ticks were expelled. I couldn’t figure out at first which signal to follow…” His voice trailed off, and Io had a flash of him stumbling into gargoyle poop while he followed each tracker.

She managed not to smile. It was hard because somehow, in spite of what she and Jack were facing, she found it difficult not to feel wonderful. Bits of the new magic they had built between them still lingered in her body, reminding her of Jack and how spectacular she could feel when her magic was charged with his.

“But the other tick kept moving, so I followed it instead,” Zayn continued.

“That was the one Ferris put on my back, I bet. That wasn’t just a goblin tick. I think that sucker could bore into anything.”

“Probably.” It cost Zayn something to admit the
next statement. “Ferris is a little fanatical and sometimes oversteps the bounds a bit.”

“Yeah, I noticed. So where’d the gargoyle go after it snacked on the tourists?”

“Back to Hille. She finally went down into the basement and started for the lake, so I followed her down below and tracked her—
all the way to Horroban
,” Zayn whispered. His face was white and he kept licking his lips, but his mouth was so parched that there was nothing to moisten them with. He tried a second sip of coffee, being more cautious this time. “I don’t know how you stood it down there. I was only under for a couple of hours and thought I’d die from the heat while I hid in the tunnel and watched the two of them make it.”

Io sat up, ignoring Zayn’s complaining about the heat or watching goblin sex, and she asked urgently. “You saw Horroban? Well, who is he?”

Zayn turned his head to face her. His eyes were huge and looked like broken glass. He was terrified.

Her voice dropped to a whisper as she asked again, “Zayn, who is Horroban? What does he look like?”

Zayn inhaled deeply and then exhaled as though preparing for a deep dive. He inhaled once more, and then said the name of the man expected to win the presidential election that next Tuesday.

Io went white too. Goblins had tried for the White House before, but fortunately for humankind they had never been able to mask their underlying oddity
and therefore hadn’t had any real chance of succeeding. This time, humanity’s luck had seemingly run out.

“Have you told Xanthe yet?” she asked.

Zayn shook his head, the motion jerky and completely lacking his usual grace.

“Don’t tell her, Zayn. You can’t.”

“Why not?” he asked, frustrated. Then “Something is wrong, isn’t it? I can sense it. I almost told her, but at the last minute I…I stopped.”

Io did some deep breathing of her own. She had to make a decision. Did she confide in Zayn, or try to blank his mind? She might be able to bend the truth spell enough to do it.

Or she might not. Zayn carried his own magic, and it was a completely hostile act, a form of rape, to use magic on one another without permission. He would probably fight back.

“Yeah, Zayn. Something is very wrong,” she finally answered. “Xanthe is working with Horroban.”

Zayn looked stricken, as though someone had taken a knife of cold iron and plunged it into his gut, but he didn’t deny her contention.

“Why?” he whispered. “How could she?”

“It’s Chloe,” Io answered, knowing this would upset Zayn even more. He was fond of Xanthe’s little sister.
Very
fond. “Horroban has her, in the underground probably. He’s turned her into a goblin-fruit junkie and is holding her hostage to Xanthe’s good behavior. As long as we go chasing after the jewel,
no problem. But if we get near his crop of goblin fruit or Lutin’s factory, Chloe gets the chop and Xanthe’s reputation gets smeared. Or at least that’s what we believe.”

“That son of a diseased water moccasin!” Red rage bloomed in Zayn’s pale cheeks. He looked at Io with hot eyes that glittered angrily. She had never seen him so passionate about anything. “What are you and Jack going to do?”

Io looked at Zayn and thought some more about how much she should tell him.

Jack headed back for Goblin Town, pleased with the day’s work. He had two new pistols, both made of a light polymer, compact and silenced, and fitted with laser sights. They made him feel a bit more on top of things.

Trolls could batter a man to death, given even half a chance, and goblins liked to strangle. Those were their traditional methods of killing. However, even tradition had to bow before practicality. Guns were a great equalizer when you were smaller than the people you hated, and the goblins had apparently learned that through the years. Jack had seen so firsthand.

He would have worried about bombs from the bugs, too, but he knew they had discovered that technology and magic didn’t go real well together. Goblins got the whole
point-bang
concept, but were less comfortable with finicky timing devices that
tended to blow up when brushed by careless magic.