By some miracle we'd actually managed to deal with the kobold with some evening to spare, so back home I picked up the grimoire my alternate self had and tried to make sense of it. It was tough going. I seemed to have some muscle memory but not actual brain memory. In the end I gave up and shoved it back into the drawer. There was a rattle, and I realised there was was a false bottom.
I pulled out the hidden book. A journal. Seems other me likes keeping track of things too. Except mostly what was in there was concerns about Agnes. We were on the same page, metaphorically as well as literally. I like aunty Agnes a lot, but when it comes down to it, she's hellspawn. We have a tendency to take things to extremes, whether that's violence, love, or anything else.
The next morning as well as checking on the cafe (where Michael was finding himself suddenly having to deal with holiday request forms) I decided to do a bit of experimentation. I'd acquired a belt pouch from somewhere, and even though I hadn't put it on in the morning, I was still wearing it. So that needed investigation. I went out into the woods, partly for privacy, partly in case anything dangerous happened.
What happened was that after concentrating a bit to make some of the armour appear (I just got the shoulder things, which made me feel like a video game character), I reached into the bag and pulled out a tiny demon. Not a hellspawn like me, but the kind of cute little guy who gets assigned as a familiar. At least, I think they're cute. People who weren't brought up with a very literal fear of God might disagree.
There were five of them in there, which was impressive given that the bag definitely wasn't big enough to hold five ten to eleven inch tall demons, but I filed that under more Doctor Who nonsense. They were ready to fight, and were quite disappointed that there was nothing there to fight. I thought about directing them towards the local squirrels, but decided against it and put them back in the bag, telling them maybe next time.
Then there was the matter of the wings. A bit of practice showed that I could teleport anywhere I could see with ease, but I wondered if there was more range on it. I focussed my mind instead on my bedroom, opened my wings, and I was there. Unexpected, but convenient.
I had a text from Adam who wanted to meet up for a chat in the oubliette. I gave him quite a shock when I teleported into the junk yard, but he immediately saw a practical use. He'd had a call from Michael, whose bike had vanished, replaced with a car that he didn't know how to drive. Adam had been going to pick him up in the van, but maybe I could pick him up instead?
Michael was no less surprised to see me, and there was some awkwardness as we tried to figure out the practicalities. I'm not really a hugger outside of extremely stressful situations, plus it was Michael, but we managed to figure it out and a moment later we were at the junk yard in a swirl of leathery wings.
Once Elizabeth had arrived via more conventional means, we all agreed that the next step had to be talking to Rusty again to find out why he'd been sending us into the past in this timeline. I sent him a text, and it seemed like he'd been waiting for me. It took him ten minutes to reply though.
Adam drove us out to the Welcome Break services. Rusty seemed surprised and not entirely happy to see the others with me, so I joined him for a quick private chat while the others ordered at KFC. This version of Rusty seemed as scared of Michael as Michael is of him. I confirmed that he had tried to kill Michael in this reality as well, so I don't really know what his problem is. Unless he knows more about Michael that we do.
Anyway, I convinced him that I did trust the others. Well, I'm still not completely sure I can trust Elizabeth not to do stupid things, but mentioning that would just encourage him. He asked how far back in time we'd gone, and I told him about the village full of gnomes - real ones, rather than the lawn gnomes in the lake. He looked shocked. We were only supposed to go back a few decades, to try to figure out where the convergence of ley lines was in Wicker Valley. What could have caused things to be out by several hundred years? Possibly the convergence of ley lines, Elizabeth suggested. Yeah. That would do it.
There were other problems besides our wibbly wobbly timey wimey issues though. Agnes is demonic like us and Mary is some kind of fae, and our previous encounter with the moss hag showed us how dangerous it is when those things combine. Meanwhile outside the town, tensions are building between our family and the fae. Mary is suspected to be the reason that Agnes has lived a lot longer than our kind normally do. And of course our lot always take things to extremes and have been experimenting on the fae, who naturally responding in kind since they're better at being reasonable than we are and did something unspeakable to cousin Harriet.
Ahh well. I never liked her anyway. There's a reason my arsehole of a brother, who actually winked at Elizabeth while we were leaving, is my favourite family member.
Next stop: the fae courts. Michael had had a vision of armoured fae marching through Wicker Valley and we needed to know more about that. Elizabeth knew how to find them, and led us through some kind of portal out in the countryside near the town. We ran through the rules first. Don't accept gifts. Don't eat or drink. Don't fall asleep. We avoided giving our true names, and didn't eat any of the offered food. But then Adam fell asleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment