Zombie fallout 21, p.24
Vaguely Familiar (Familiar Tales Book 3), page 24
Vaguely Familiar
Alma T. C. Boykin
Copyright © 2018 by Alma T. C. Boykin
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Contents
1. Something Fishy
2. Stones, Bones, and Homes
3. On the Road
4. Ozark Occasions
5. Tracking the Blade
6. The Off-Ramp Ramps Up
7. Charms and Curses
8. Someone Icky This Way Comes
9. When Darkness Calls
10. Shadows and Light
11. Two Ills
About the Author
Also by Alma T. C. Boykin
Chapter 1
Something Fishy
At least Tay waited until the customers left before bursting into laughter so wild that he rolled off the counter. The ring-tailed lemur landed on the anti-fatigue mat with a soft thump, releasing a puff of fur, and giggled a little longer. Lelia rested her head on her arm, carefully, lest she get makeup on her black sleeve. “I cannot—No, I do not want to believe that I heard that,” she managed at last, straightening up and shaking her head.
“You did, I did, the security camera did, heck,” Tay gasped for breath and twirled the end of his long tail. “The entire Internet will probably know before he gets to the end of the block!”
“Do tell,” Arthur Saldovado, the owner of Belle, Book, and Blacklight emerged from the storage area with a carton. He set the carton on the counter. “These are sorted, all but the crystal necklaces. I’ll leave those to you.” He winced a little. “And a shipping barrel arrived, but we are going to open it later. Just in case.”
Lelia pointed to Tay. “A well-meaning young man attempted to exorcize Tay, sir.”
Arthur’s eyebrows climbed to meet the little poof of hair he wore on his forehead. “And yet Mister Tay is still with us.”
The lemur shrugged. “I’m not LDS, sir.”
“Huh. That actually surprises me a little. Please sort these, and make certain that they got the necklaces right this time.” Lelia caught the “or else.” The wholesaler had shorted them, and had sent cut glass for almost a quarter of the order last time. Arthur had read them the riot act, politely but loudly.
“Yes, sir.” Tay followed Lelia’s boss back to the work area to get a drink and “read the newspaper.” Lelia opened the box, removed some of the packing, and found the shipping list, then the large envelopes with the jewelry in them. Half necklaces, a quarter sets of earrings, and some of those tiara-like headbands that were becoming trendy, or so the list claimed. Lelia decided to sort first, then inspect.
Tay returned, hopped up onto the end of the counter and curled into a nap puddle. Lelia worked quickly. The earrings all matched the manifest, three of the tiaras did, but the fourth one… She set it aside for the moment and checked the others. Two of the necklaces did not quite match the shipping list, and three more bothered her for some reason. Lelia finished her counting and got something to drink, then considered where to begin. The necklaces, she decided.
Three were simple quartz or amethyst crystals on leather thongs, the kind so many New Agers liked to wear. “Tay, I need your expertise, please,” Lelia said. Tay sat up and walked closer. “These feel odd.”
“Shield first, then we’ll look.” Lelia reached in for a hint of shadow, pulling from Tay and from herself to make an invisible wall around them and the jewelry. “Good. Let’s have a look at the grey one.” Lelia opened the packet with the smoky quartz and looked at it with her usual sight and her mage sight.
“It has a crack, like something leaked in?” That shouldn’t be visible to either eye.
Tay nodded. “Above our pay grade. Try the others.” The amethyst and a clear quartz passed muster, but the obsidian almost bit her. “Whoa Nellie, that’s got to be cleaned,” Tay yelped.
Lelia cast a shadow ball around it, securing whatever it was. “And it is supposed to be onyx, not obsidian. Can I pour light into it? If we use a casting circle?”
“Um, yeah, that should do it. If not, it will take the problem down to where we can sort it out later.” Tay climbed onto her shoulder. “Finish the rest. Then do that one.”
Lelia sorted the headbands and didn’t find anything too bad. “Ugh. Really? I don’t think that was necessary,” she wrinkled her nose. “A repulsion intention? Just the colors would be enough, I’d think.”
Tay giggled again. “I don’t know. Traffic-cone orange, lime green, fluorescent pink, and pea-green are so in right now.” Lelia worked a little magical energy into the headband, unravelling the not-quite-curse and dissolving the malice. I wonder who or what irritated the maker as she worked? That was a stout little intention. Everything else was present and accounted for, so she re-packaged everything but the obsidian necklet and grey quartz and slid the box under the counter.
Lelia folded her skirts to pad her knees as she knelt. Tay hopped down and she pulled a length of white cord out of her belt-bag. Tay took one end and they made a circle. She closed her eyes and asked for discernment and strength. Then she set the necklace in the center of the ring. A solid shield rose from the cord, protecting everything outside of the ring. Tay took north, facing her, rose onto his hind legs and spread his forefeet. Lelia copied him and pulled energy through him into herself, then looked at the stone. Instead of a crystal on floor tiles, she saw a larger piece of obsidian lying in a pool of blood. “Ick.”
“Oh boy,” Tay groaned quietly. “We can clean it, but we need to tell Mrs. Lorraine and Smiley.”
“Yes, sir.” Lelia closed her eyes and saw a dome forming over the circle. A light glowed at the top of the dome, shining down on the necklace, bathing the stone in pure blue-white. The stone fought, then faded until it turned clear. Lelia allowed the light to fade, then opened her eyes. One now-harmless obsidian necklace lay in the middle of the ring. Tay sat firmly on the floor, drooping a little. Lelia released the shield and sent the power back to him, then wound the cord back onto its holder and replaced it in her belt bag. She wiped the stone and mount on a bit of polishing cloth, bagged them, then sat on the stool behind the counter. “Whunf.”
Once she caught her breath, Lelia pulled the “Familiar Recharge Sack” out from under the far end of the counter and poured Tay some sports-drink with extra salt. She had a large water and a handful’s worth of nuts and dried fruit before he devoured the rest of the baggie of nuts and fruit. “Now I’m very happy we never got another shipment of divination tools and Tarot cards,” she sighed.
“Amen. I’ve heard stories, and none of them were very good.” Tay shook all over, finished the rest of the bottle of sports drink, and sneezed. “We need to find out where that stone came from, because the rest of it is probably just as bad.”
“Rest of—” Lelia stopped, closed her mouth, and nodded. The fragment had remembered being part of a large dagger. If each piece held that kind of residual power… She made a face. “I think I liked it better when magic was unicorns and rainbows and kittens with wings, and frogs who turned into princes.”
Tay rolled copper-colored eyes and finished devouring the dried fruit. “I’ve heard stories about those days, but apparently they predate the little Apple Incident in the garden of Eden,” he said after he sipped more water. He carried the empty bottle and baggie to the garbage and tossed them in, scratched, and then jumped onto the counter once more. “The smoke quartz.”
Lelia wrinkled her nose. “I wonder.” She took it out of the little plastic envelope and carried it over to the small case of fine jewelry. Her boss had arranged a spotlight from the ceiling onto the case, and Lelia held the stone by the mount, studying it. Ah! The pendant she wore had a magnifying glass in it, a little cheap one but it might work. Lelia managed to slide the glass out one-handed and squinted at the quartz through the lens, peering as she turned the stone this way and that. “The crack is physical as well,” she called to Tay. “We can’t accept this piece.” He sat on his hind legs and clasped his forefeet over his head, leaning from side to side like the winner of a boxing match.
Would that all her problems could be solved so easily. Lelia returned the quartz necklace to its baggie, taped a piece of paper to it with a note about the crack, and added the item number from the invoice. Task done for the moment, and no customers in sight, she sat on the stool behind the counter and wiggled her toes. She definitely needed to get these boots re-soled and probably buy a pair of insoles, the cushy kind. And to find an apartment that tolerated Familiars. She only had another month in the transitional apartments. She’d finally paid off all her back taxes and fines, so the governments were no longer garnishing her wages, but no one wanted a Familiar and mage as tenants.
“Do you think the manager could have been a little more obvious this morning?” she asked at last.
Tay stuck his tongue out. “Only if she’d used one of those giant flashing highway signs, outlined in neon, with a chorus line standing along the bottom.”
The woman’s line about “Unless the contents of that carrier are a dog less than fifteen pounds, or a domesticated cat, the animal does not fit our requirements and may n ot reside in one of our units,” had seriously rankled. The black-clad woman had enunciated the words with painful precision, a delighted expression on her face, as if thrilled by having found an excuse to reject Lelia and Tay.
“I should have let you out so you could have swung on the light fixture, then shed on her black tablecloth,” Lelia sighed.
Tay flipped his black-and-white ringed tail over his head and groomed the tip. “What was with all that black, anyway? The inside of the goth club looked more cheerful.”
“No idea. I wouldn’t want to keep it clean, though, thanks.” Getting all of Tay’s fur off her clothes was enough of a challenge. Lelia wiggled her toes once more, then stood. “Different topic, sir. What should I tell Morgana and Smiley about the necklace?”
Tay flipped the tip of his tail at her. “We. We tell them exactly what we did and saw, nothing more or less. We did our job, at the level you are safe doing it. They can pursue the problem from here on.” He flowed off the counter and into the basket by the far end of the counter, where he was supposed to stay. Lelia removed the box from under the counter as Arthur walked up.
“Any problems?”
“Two, sir. One of the smoky quartz pieces has a crack in it. I could see it with a magnifier. And what is supposed to be onyx is obsidian.” Lelia handed him the packets off the top of the box. She pointed to the invoice as well, showing him the marks. “One of the headbands is a slightly different color than listed, but just more blue-green than bright blue, nothing really bad.”
Arthur fluffed the little poof of hair that he wore on his forehead. “Re-label the black one and we’ll sell it as is, same price. The quartz goes back.”
“Yes, sir.”
He made a shooing motion with both hands. “Take a break. I need to stand and not look at numbers for a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir!” Lelia and Tay hurried to the back of the shop. She needed to visit the wash-room, and he probably out to be let out to “read the newspaper” as he referred to it. As Tay took care of business, Lelia glanced through her messages. She didn’t recognize one of the names on the phone. Alan Cypher, CPA? She couldn’t return the call, but she didn’t delete it, either. After Tay returned and Lelia had stretched her back and shoulders, she said, “Do you know an Alan Cypher? CPA?”
Tay clambered onto some boxes, teetered, then hopped onto her shoulder. “He’s an accountant-to-mages. And witches, and sorcerers. He does tax stuff, has some magic of his own but he’s not a mage or warlock per se. More of a numbers-wizard. Smiley was telling me that the guy is pretty good. Morgana may have passed him your name, since you are going to get to start doing taxes again this year.” He bared his teeth in a fake smile. “Lucky you.”
She’d already been “doing taxes” until her drug and alcohol problems had gotten her a trip to the emergency room, then arrested for theft. Lelia considered saying something to that effect, but the shipping barrel distracted her.
Arthur had left it in the middle of the storage area, well away from anything else. Lelia walked around it, studying the waist-high metal and fiber-board shipping container. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. Neither did that other barrel, Lelia reminded herself. She took a deep breath and shifted her mind so she could see magic as well as usual things. The barrel did not change. “I don’t see anything,” she told Tay.
“Umph.” His non-committal grunt did not reassure her.
Right. What was that thing Mr. Lee did to just see spells without actually touching them? Oh, yeah. Lelia got closer and held her hands an inch or so from the side of the barrel. She half-closed her eyes and concentrated on trying to feel any energy or intent still “stuck” on the tan and silver container. A vague feeling of irritation drifted past, but not affixed to the barrel specifically. “I think… Um, either the Dude in Brown or whoever packed the order was having a bad day,” Lelia told Tay.
Her Familiar hooked one foreleg around her neck and leaned forward, hanging on by her high collar as he waved his other forefoot over the metal-reinforced top of the crate. “Agreed. I don’t sense anything but what you are reading.” He heaved himself back onto her shoulder. “Unless whatever is inside is so heavily shielded that all you can sense is an overlay, I don’t think this one will be as exciting as the last one.”
Lelia relaxed, shook a little, blinked, and saw that Arthur had not even ventured to open the plastic envelope/baggie with the Bill of Lading in it. Well, he was the one who got knocked unconscious by the cursed puzzle-ball in the last barrel. It wasn’t paranoia if someone really was out to get you, as Officer Macbeth’s Familiar had said more than once. Lelia fished the little knife out of her skirt-pocket and opened the envelope, then pulled out the papers. She unfolded the shipping list and held it where Tay could see it as well.
“Tables?” He sounded confused. “Tables in a can?”
Lelia thought as she re-folded the Bill of Lading and set it on top of the tan and silver barrel. “I think they are the short ones with inlay that were in the catalogue.”
“Inlaid tea-tables from Vietnam, but done like the one from Indonesia that was in the museum,” Arthur confirmed when Lelia relieved him of counter duty. “I did not care for the patterns on the Indonesian ones in the catalogue, but these should be safe. Did you open the barrel?”
“No, sir, we just checked it for any traces of magic and looked at the papers. It feels clean, nothing at all like the attack-barrel,” Lelia said.
“Good!” Lelia bit the inside of her cheek so she wouldn’t laugh at her boss’s fervent exclamation. Then he sighed. “Back to the number mine. Keep your eyes open. That family of shoplifters has been reported in the area again.”
Lelia had already collided with them once at her previous job. “Yes, sir.” After Arthur returned to the office, Lelia thought back to the encounter. “Tay, if it is the same people as last time, there is something odd about them.”
“Hmm?” came from his basket.
“They made my eyes itch. Not the too much perfume and incense itch,” she added quickly. “But something about them bothered my eyes. I don’t remember anyone else saying anything.” Of course, since the other woman working that day had been stoned, and Lelia had already knocked back at least two shots of cheap vodka before the people had come in, she didn’t trust her memory completely.
“Hmm.” Tay didn’t say anything more, so Lelia shrugged and set about tidying the shop. The latest batch of shawls refused to stay on their hangars for some reason, and she planted her hands on her hips, glaring at the colorful disorder. When the squares of fabric failed to return to their proper places, she glanced up at the ceiling and started re-folding and re-clipping them. Maybe it was the shiny stuff in this lot, she decided. They had a dark metallic shimmer in the pattern, and perhaps that didn’t work with the hangar clips. The shawls and scarves stayed neater and cleaner on hangars than folded and resting on shelves, so she just dealt with it. She shouldn’t complain since they sold well.
After she finished with the fabric, Lelia set out the new necklets and other jewelry. Then she cleaned the finger prints off the fine-jewelry case, straightened that shelf of books that never, ever stayed tidy, and put an instrumental remix CD back where it belonged. “Goth Classics – Remix? Ye bats and belfries,” she grumbled. “I feel old.” She shook her head, then stretched her neck left and right, forwards and back. A blot had appeared on the ceiling. Lelia blinked and blinked again. The blotch remained, darker than the cream-colored ceiling tiles. As she watched, something detached from the corner of one tile and fell to the floor, making a spot on the entry mat. “Boss,” she called, backing out from under the dark patch. “Boss? I think there’s a leak upstairs.”
Arthur appeared so fast Lelia wondered if he’d been spell-transported. She pointed up. He looked, mouthed something Anglo-Saxon and then something else that looked rude, and ordered, “Move everything out from under that part of the ceiling. Push the racks that will roll, and hand-carry everything else. I’ll call upstairs, and then see if I can shut off the water.”
