Sounds like a sewer passage. I thought those were all in pipes these days, but who knew where Sindari had ended up. I was too disappointed that he’d lost the elf to worry about it. It wasn’t his fault, but how frustrating that the person who’d bombed us, and might have had something to do with Willard’s mysterious disease, had gotten away. I would have loved to question her, ideally while wringing her neck.
It’s disgusting, not a fitting place for an ambassador.
I know. I pushed my damp braid over my shoulder. Come back, please. If the elf is gone, we’ll have to search for answers the old-fashioned way.
Where?
I thought again of my mother’s books, of how much knowledge—useless knowledge, I’d often considered it—she had on elves. We’d barely spoken in years, and she had strong opinions about my choice to stay away from my daughter, so I didn’t enjoy spending time with her, but she might be able to help.
Maggie screeched again, sounding more like a Halloween banshee than a cat.
My mother also liked animals. Maybe I could foist Maggie off on her while I hunted down Willard’s saboteur.
To visit my mom, I replied.
You have a mother?
Yes.
You’ve never spoken of her.
We don’t have a lot in common.
Does she like tigers?
It hasn’t come up.
Strange.
Yes.
8
It was a lot sunnier and warmer on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains. A lot browner, too, with the densely packed firs and spruce and ferns of the western side of the mountains giving way to more sparsely distributed ponderosa pines and junipers and eventually just sagebrush as I drove down Highway 26 toward Madras. When I’d packed, I’d grabbed my duster, jeans, and durable polyester tops. Maybe shorts and tanks would have been a better choice.
Bend, where my mother lived, was another hour out and six hours total from Seattle. The cat had complained the whole way.
Maggie was part Siamese, a breed, the internet informed me, known for vocalization. Even though the car was climate-controlled, and I’d stopped often to check her food and water, it was clear she did not like her road trip. Or maybe the fact that she was stuck in a cat carrier for it. But I didn’t want to risk her escaping, especially not when I’d seen a coyote cross the highway earlier.
The only good thing about the trip so far was that some of Maggie’s hairs were floating out and nestling themselves into the fabric of the seats. I didn’t know how much longer I would have this car, but the idea of Lieutenant Sudo getting it back covered in cat hair pleased the immature part of my soul.
At a rest stop by a boat launch, I brought Sindari out for company. For the majority of the trip, I’d deliberately avoided doing so, lest his looming tiger presence scare the cat, but there was also the possibility that it would cause Maggie to fall silent. My rattled nerves were frayed after five hours of feline complaints, and an hour of quiet would be blissful.
Have you brought me into this realm to hunt vile enemies? Sindari asked when he formed between the car and a field of waist-high yellow grass with a few meandering trails through it.
No, to babysit the cat and talk to me.
Already, Maggie had fallen silent, though that might only be because I’d opened the passenger door and she could see the roadside wilds.
Babysitting is demeaning. Sindari’s nose twitched. I smell deer.
Which you wouldn’t be able to eat here.
True, but I can still chase prey.
Let’s not terrorize the prey, eh? Here. You can have the whole back seat. I opened the door and patted his spot.
He eyed the back seat of the sedan. This is very small. Your other vehicle was also too small when the roof was on it, but it was better than this.
I know. This is temporary.
Sindari, amid grumbling noises, climbed into the back seat, knocking my sword scabbard, pack, and gun off to make room for himself.
“Get comfortable, will you?” I mumbled.
The small feline rides next to you in the front? Sindari sniffed the ventilation window in the back of the cat carrier.
Maggie hissed.
She has to. You wouldn’t be able to fit up here. You barely fit back there.
This vehicle is not suitable for my large majestic form. It is… Sindari shifted so he could look out the window and toward the sky.
“What is it?” I asked warily, tired of being followed and tired of being surprised.
The sky was blue without a cloud in sight. Just that very large bird.
No, that wasn’t a bird. Nor was it an airplane.
Dread took up residence in my stomach even before it—he—flew close enough for me to sense.
The dragon, Sindari informed me.
Is it the same one?
How many dragons were you expecting?
I wasn’t expecting any, and then he showed up, flambéing a forest to try to get to me.
You did kill his wyvern.
That was my wyvern, damn it.
I stared at the sky, debating what I would do if he landed. Would he? Was he keeping tabs on me and annoyed that I’d come back to Oregon? Did he consider the whole state his territory now? We were more than a four-hour drive from where the wyvern had been, though I supposed that was a much shorter distance as the dragon flew.
Fortunately, the dragon kept flying and soon soared out of sight.
“Let’s hope it’s a coincidence,” I muttered.
Hissing came from Maggie’s carrier.
I frowned at Sindari. “Are you doing something to that cat?”
Absolutely not.
Why is she hissing?
She finds my size and magnificence intimidating, a reminder of her small and diminutive stature, which would put her at the mercy of wolves and cougars if she were in the wilds.
Or maybe she just doesn’t like you.
Another hiss came from the cat carrier.
As any feline will tell you, it is more important to be respected than to be liked.
I got into the car. As I headed back to the highway, Maggie hunkered down in her carrier. She switched from hissing to glaring frostily through the grate toward Sindari.
Even though it was the silence I’d hoped for, I felt bad about cowing the cat.
“You’ll like my mother’s house,” I told her. “It’s got all kinds of bookcases to climb on, and there’s a loft with tons of junk in it. She’s got a golden retriever, but you should get along fine. Rocket likes everybody. Cats, rats, squirrels, people. Everybody.”
Tigers?
We’ll see.
As I drove the car onto the highway, I realized something with a sinking feeling. We were heading in the same direction the dragon had been flying.
My mom had lived in the same log cabin in Bend since I’d left home at eighteen and joined the army. Back then, she’d been on the outskirts of town with a pine-tree-filled acre of land along the river. Since then, town had moved out to her and far beyond, with subdivisions full of expensive houses on tiny lots sprouting up like mushrooms after a rain. Fortunately for her sanity, her street hadn’t changed that much, other than that half the little homes had been replaced by boxy four-thousand-square-foot monstrosities with walls of windows.
She hadn’t cleared any of the trees on her lot, and a lava-rock cliff rose up behind the cabin, so it was still relatively private and unchanged by time, or at least it had been three years earlier, the last time I had visited. Now, as I drove down her road toward the end, a tingle raised the hairs on my arms, a warning of a magical being or perhaps magical artifacts. I hoped my mom didn’t have a witch or a werewolf for a neighbor.
I turned off the paved street and onto her long gravel driveway and frowned. There was a beat-up orange camper van parked in the dirt that didn’t look anything like her Subaru SUV. Was it hers? I’d spent the first twelve years of my life living in a school bus that she’d converted into a house on wheels, long before the term “tiny home” had become trendy. But after settling here, she’d seemed to give up her itchy-footed ways.
Stranger than the van were the new lawn ornaments—stands of metal flowers, miniature windmills, bears holding fish like bazookas, and peacocks made out of rusty bicycle parts. They were all over the patches of grass that managed to thrive in the splotches of sun between the trees. Not only were the ornaments of dubious design, but they oozed magic, much like the charms on my necklace. They were what I’d sensed from up the street.
“Did she move? Without telling me?” I stared around.
The log cabin itself hadn’t changed much, with the roof still in need of pressure-washing—though the moss growing up there would surely object to such an activity—and the greenhouse and garden beds in use. There was a blue kayak mounted on the side of the one-car log garage that might have been there last time, but I couldn’t remember.
What makes you wonder that? Sindari had figured out how the automatic windows worked, and his big furry silver head was hanging out from the back seat. The magic?
The magic and the, uh, flavor of the magic. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Mom was collecting elven artifacts, but it was hard to imagine an elven or even half-elven hand involved in the making of the rusty recycled art. Can you tell what those yard ornaments do?
No. Maybe your mother acquired a mate.
That’s impossible.
Is she not sexually active?
No! I mean, I don’t know. She’s seventy-one. I knew people of all ages enjoyed sex, but this was my mom we were talking about. She’d never dated anyone the whole time I’d lived with her. She always said that her elf—my father—was her one true love, and that she would never fall for another.
That sounds lonely.
Yeah, tell me about it. Not that I did any better in the romance department. I’d never even had a true love. My ex-husband was… a nice guy, but I’d fooled myself into believing I was passionately in love with him and wanted to settle down and lead a normal life. That delusion had worn away quickly after we’d married. But unlike another man I’d had a relationship with, he was still alive, so maybe it was for the best that I’d left.
My chest grew uncomfortably tight as I surveyed the changes to Mom’s property. The situation, or maybe the yellow juniper pollen dusting the street behind us, had me wanting to reach for that inhaler again. I felt like a drug addict needing her daily hit.