We gathered in the Wicker Stop the next morning. Alabaster wasn't there - I suspected a magic hangover - but Robin was back. He'd had to pay a visit to his old 'company' to convince the higher ups that the members who'd lost some 'product' in a failed delivery weren't making it up when they claimed to have been attacked by a werewolf. I don't know why he's so cagey about his past. Adam used to work for the Foundation, after all, and I'm...who I am. A biker gang doesn't seem too bad in comparison.
We were just started to talk about werewolves when something weird happened to Michael. One moment he was gliding around the cafe on his rollerskates like normal and the next he'd frozen and gone crashing into a wall. There didn't seem to be anything wrong with him, but I took him back to the basket room all the same. He'd had a vision, it sounded like, where he'd been stabbed with a kitchen knife. One of his mum's, probably.
Robin then suddenly transformed into...well, a wolf man, I guess? He had a whole new nose and ears. Which certainly answered some of the questions I'd had about him recently. He said he could smell two of Michael. Hah, I thought. If Alabaster was here he'd immediately want to do some magic to reveal hidden creatures. Which wasn't actually a bad idea, now I came to think about it. I silently thanked the absent Alabaster and sent Adam to the kitchen to get the salt and a bag of flour.
Through the combination of magic and flour, I brought the second Michael into view. Except it wasn't a second Michael. It was our Michael, but displaced in time. By about, oh, twelve hours or so. Which meant...
Well, it meant I didn't plan on letting Michael out of my sight, or near any kitchen knives, for at least the next twelve hours, and Robin went off to find a spare motorcycle jacket for him to give him a bit of protection. We still had our shift to finish at the cafe but we planned to meet up again at the junkyard afterwards.
Except I'd just handed over to the next shift and taken off my apron when I spotted a very familiar face sitting at a cafe table. And actually ordering jam buns from Michael. I stood staring at him until Michael interrupted me to tell me the new customer said the buns were great, just like the ones his sister used to make.
I waited until Michael was out of the way, then went and slid into the seat opposite. He had some nerve coming here, I told him, but he wasn't interested. I tried to steer him off talking about Michael, brushing it off as nothing more than coworkers. I don't know if he bought it. We always did see right through each other.
Thankfully he moved on to his actual reason for being here. The amount of weird bollocks, as Adam now has me calling it, in town was getting the family's attention. I assured him that the coin and associated entity had been dealt with, and I was trying to keep things quiet, but he pointed out that the construction site on the edge of town was having occult symbols built right into it. And if that carried on we could have aunties showing up right in town.
I can't remember if I thanked him for the tip, although I probably should have done. He's an arsehole, but having him show up in town is a whole different matter to the rest of the family. At least he's still partly human.
Back at the junkyard, Adam had something to show us. I was wondering how we were going to get around after the state the combination of stone dogs, battery acid and magic had left his van in, but he revealed a brand new van! And when I say brand new, I mean entirely constructed out of scrap. I don't think there was a single unused part on the thing. But it looked pretty cool, and had plenty of room and space for weapon storage. There was some debate about the name. The Mystery Machine was a popular choice, although given the way he keeps referring to me and Robin as Batman and Robin I was surprised it wasn't the Batmobile. Vanessa was also considered for a while.
I think we might have settled on the Batvan. We'll see how it goes.
I didn't tell the others about my visitor, but did tell them that we needed to revisit the construction site and see exactly what was going on there, also pointing out that it would likely be free of kitchen knives. Michael looked great in the motorcycle jacket but I was too stressed to properly appreciate it. So we piled into the Batvan and drove to the site.
Things were moving fast now the moss hag was gone. A bunch of houses were already built or close to being built, and getting in undetected was going to be a bigger challenge. There were people there though, being walked around by staff, which gave me an idea. I asked Adam if he had any hi vis jackets and hard hats in the van. He didn't, but knew exactly where to find some at the junkyard. So a short time later, in we went, with Robin playing the sales rep, Michael and me as the young couple thinking about buying their first home, and Adam as the uncle who would be financing it.
Between the site plan and a look at the place, it was pretty clear that there were indeed family symbols being built into this place. The main road layout was in the shape of the summoning totem we'd encountered before. Which meant this entire estate could be one massive summoning circle.
We caught up with one of the real reps and asked for a talk. Marketing people always want to tell you stories about brands and logos and stuff, so I figured this would be no different, especially with the aid of the voice of temptation. And so we got the story of how the land had belonged to an old woman called Agnes, who had sold it on the condition that the roads were laid out in this way.
Michael called Gillian, who told him about Aunty Agnes, who wasn't really an aunty, but had known her mum. And suddenly the pieces started to fit together in my mind. Aunties. Had an Aunty Agnes been mentioned in the cafe? I wasn't sure, and it's not like I have a comprehensive knowledge of my family members, but Gillian's mum had owned a bunch of books with our family crest on and she had to have got them from somewhere after all. Was this all a cunning ploy on the part of one of my aunts to get herself summoned? I had a horrifying image of exactly what could end up manifesting in the middle of the housing estate.
At least there were some vaguely concrete things we could do. Find out as much as possible about Aunty Agnes, find out exactly what was in the contract regarding the estate, and then - and this was going to be the difficult part - change the plans.
No comments:
Post a Comment