Ollie walked the half-block back to his Chief, hopped in and pulled out onto the street, headed toward the north end of Eureka. At a stop sign, he checked his face in the rearview mirror, running his fingers through his beard as he did.
“No leftovers?” Grika emerged from his tarp-covered lair.
“We ate everything.”
“Everything?” Grika’s voice rose an octave or two. “Even the bread?” Ollie nodded. “What about salad? Sometimes there’s a few pieces of lettuce left over.”
“I didn’t get salad.”
Grika crossed his arms. “You never get salad,” he grumbled, “even though you need one.”
Ollie scowled. He reached into his jacket and produced the small takeout container he’d been hiding. “Just remember, you don’t deserve this.”
He tossed it down to the pygmy, who caught it with willing hands.
“You dirty little liar,” Grika said, happily opening it up. “Maybe I won’t kill you in your sleep tonight.”
Ollie put his hand over his heart. “Grika, you shouldn’t say such things. I might think you care.” He looked up to see his turn approaching. He swerved into it on purpose, jostling them both a bit. Grika clutched the takeout container and then squinted at Ollie, who grinned.
“Where we going?” Grika asked with a chunk of crust in his mouth.
“Need to see Bobo. I need to get creative to catch this goblin, and he dabbles in a few things I can use.”
“Didn’t you say Bobo was ‘a few circuits short of a circuit?’”
Ollie shrugged. “He’s not a bad guy. Not really. And it’s not like I have many friends.”
“Sorry,” Grika pointed at his food, “I was busy chewing. Did you say ‘many’ or ‘any’? Sounded like you said ‘any.’” Ollie frowned and turned on the radio to drown out the little pygmy. Grika continued, undeterred. “I may have misheard you, though. I do have these tiny ears.”
Ollie turned the radio up a couple more notches.
*
Kimmie waited in her car, her fingers rhythmically tapping the center console as she stared at her front door. A glance at the dashboard clock told her she’d been sitting here for a good ten minutes. Ten minutes of quietly debating whether she wanted to go back into her own house.
A tainted house.
Ollie’s warnings had hammered away at her on the drive home. He wanted her to stop being so reckless, so gung-ho. But she hadn’t listened. She’d drawn goblins to her backyard, and goblins – along with her articles – had drawn hunters. Potentially bad ones.
She’d put on a brave face for Ollie, mostly because he’d already lectured her enough about running toward danger instead of away from it. What she needed now was less ‘I told you so’ and more ‘Everything will be okay.’
Mariah and David’s VW was gone, along with Wendy and Albert’s little SUV. Everyone was out for the day. That meant she didn’t have to worry about putting on more brave faces. She didn’t want to pretend to be happy right now. She wanted to know who had been in her home.
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
Bentley’s head appeared in the window by the door. The dogs heard her pull up, and were probably tearing up the rug with their pacing. She decided she’d kept them waiting long enough. She turned off her car, a white Prius, and climbed out of the seat, determined to stifle her fear and think about this whole thing rationally. When that goblin found her, she hadn’t run from the problem. She’d attacked it.
Eventually.
Tank and Bentley swarmed her as soon as she walked through the front door. She kneeled and embraced them, burying herself in their fur. These two mutts usually made her feel safe, but then she’d wondered on the drive home how some hunter got her back into her house without alerting the dogs. Had they been put to sleep, too? Or were they not paying attention? That was a horrifying thought.
She ushered them out, and they scampered across the driveway to the tall grass on the far side, looking for a place to relieve themselves. She closed the door. They could use some outside time. She needed some inside time, anyway, to investigate.
She started with the back door. Since this was where she usually let the dogs in and out at night, she rarely kept it locked. And she lived far enough away from town that she didn’t feel the need to. But how would some random hunter in the woods know that? Had someone been spying on her? Had they tested the doors beforehand?
She locked the door, feeling better for doing so. But then a strange compulsion took over and she unlocked it. She wasn’t going to change because of what someone else did.
Kimmie walked back to the living room, intending to check the side door that led to the garage, only to stop in her tracks. Something was different. She sniffed the air. The smell was faint, but familiar, an earthy scent, kind of like fresh flowers. It reminded her of her childhood, before she’d come to live here. That was a weird thing to think of. A strange smell in her house that made her think of being a kid.
She gasped as a thought occurred to her. She hurried to her room, closing the door behind her out of habit. She opened the bottom drawer of her dresser, pushed away the socks and hosiery and lifted out the false bottom, revealing a scattering of old journal pages, notebooks, and various old pictures of ancient Japanese myths and creatures. In the middle of them all was a thick, leather-bound book full of faded yellow parchment. It had the look of a ledger recovered from an old Spanish galleon, only the cover had undecipherable Japanese symbols embossed in the leather. It felt even older than it looked. And it hummed with magic. She put her hand on it, reassuring herself that it was still there. She wasn’t sure why she thought it would be gone, but her anxiety lessened seeing it still in place.
She didn’t need Ollie to confirm what she already knew. Just like only female goblins could use magic, only female humans could reliably use it, too. Something she’d learned long ago, if unintentionally. Magic also left a residue that other magically-inclined people could feel. Some spells left behind a smell, usually, associated with some element of the spell’s creation. That’s what she’d been told, by someone she trusted in this regard. Ollie’s warning about magic stuck with her more than he realized. She’d seen firsthand the effects of using magic without understanding it. That’s why she’d only used the book once. One time had been all the lesson she’d needed.
She returned the drawer to its original state and closed it. She left her room and spent the afternoon busying herself with chores, house cleaning, and doing some prep work for tomorrow’s breakfast and dinner, anything to occupy her mind. Both couples were eating out tonight, but she wanted to keep herself busy, and getting an early start on tomorrow’s meals sounded like the perfect distraction.
Eventually, the dogs barked outside and Kimmie glanced out the side window in time to see Ollie’s truck driving up the road. The wall clock read 8:05 PM. Almost sundown. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and steeled herself for tonight’s mission.
She walked out to meet him, then froze once he stepped out of the truck.
“You shaved,” she said, almost entirely at a loss for words.
He rubbed his smooth chin self-consciously. “I do that every few months or so.”
The transformation was remarkable. Gone was the scruffy vagrant who looked like he’d stowed away on a train to get here. In his place was a handsome young man with a strong jaw and inviting eyes. She remembered a moment too late to pick her jaw up from the ground.
“You clean up nice for a man who spends his nights lurking around in the woods.”
He shrugged in that nonchalant way of his. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll go hunting in formal wear. I’m sure I can rent a tux somewhere in this town.”
“I’ll break out my old prom dress.”
He smiled, looking at the ground to cover up the fact that he was blushing a tiny bit, then held up a small bag. “I got some new toys for tonight. Gonna change things up and be a bit more proactive.”
Kimmie nodded in reply. Being proactive sounded exactly like what she needed.