35 - Magical Mystical Bullshit Tour

They made it. He parked and they jumped out. The Closed sign was still on the red door, still hung at the exact same angle it had been two days before. Harlan went straight for the door, his temper already out of control. He didn’t slow when he reached the door, just raised a heavy booted foot and kicked the door right in.

“Shit, Harlan!” Mac shouted. “Reel your ass in!”

Mac was ok, but he was no Evie. Harlan didn’t trust him and his decisions implicitly, and therefore, Harlan was not his soldier. Harlan was on rogue-status for now. Just fucking shit up because it needed fucking up.

“Like you had a key,” Harlan said, peering inside. He hadn't felt like standing around for two fucking hours while they waited for a locksmith for legal entry.

“Are you going senile, old man?” Mac shouted, pointing at Rogue who was smiling slightly and pointedly looking away. Staying out of it. Smart. Or maybe she just liked seeing shit destroyed. You never could tell with that one.

Oh. Wait. Rogue could unlock anything with a touch, could work any machine or machinery with ease, with her mind it seemed. Whoops. No Mac, he wasn’t going senile, he was going insane. There’s a difference. It has to do with existential sensing. Or something. “My bad,” he mumbled and headed in through the ruined red door, opening his senses, flipping on lights.

Even with the lights on, the place was dark. He stepped down three stairs, surrounded on both sides by… by crap. There was a nice, wide walkway, but the walls and the window well and the display case and the corners were crammed full of American Pickers stuff, and everyone knew all of that was 99.99% crap.

A stuffed mama bear on her hind legs, pictures everywhere, small appliances like clothes irons you had to stick in a fire, plus garden gnomes everywhere, but most were missing one eye. Just the perfect amount of creepy.

The scents in the place were enough to drive a wolven crazy. He’d been here before. It hadn’t been anything like this. She had a menagerie of stuffed animals all of them small, lining a shelf in one corner. Mammals and birds. A small card proclaimed her to be, “Mrs. White. Amateur Wildlife Artist”.

He pushed away from it, about to start smashing stuff. She’d known they were coming, he could feel it. She was close, maybe even watching them. His eyes snapped to the corners of the room for cameras or wires, as his pack muttered behind him.

A hand-written sign, in the display case.

Harlan bent over the clear glass case to read the paper inside.

“Mother of shit,” he breathed.

“What?” Mac said, coming over, reading over his shoulder.

Harlan read the note out loud, just in case. He couldn’t say for certain what Mac had and hadn’t picked up in school.

Hello children. I can’t help you. Even if I could, I’m really quite booked till summer. Those bearen are some superstitious fools but they’ve got plenty of cash and they never get handsy.

Conri came up from behind them. “Hey!”

Mac hit him on the shoulder. “Offensive, right? This is your Willow Woman?”

Conri shook his head, launching into an explanation. “Not my Willow Woman. A Woman of the Will—”

Harlan cut him off. “Ya’ll cut it. Eyes on me.” In his frustration, he went full-Evie, then waited a beat for them to comply. “That’s right. Good. This Mrs. White, she’s not here. She’s close. I want to find her, and I want to do it, now.”

“We were getting to that shit,” Mac grumbled, but he started spreading everyone out, giving orders, organizing an, I don’t know, an actual fucking investigation. Brilliant. Harlan tried not to break out the cameras.

But Crew wasn’t doing what he’d been told to do. Harlan ran to the truck for equipment and when he’d come back, Crew had been in his quadrant, frowning, rubbing his head, staring at the wall. Fucking Millennials.

“Wait,” Crew said, grabbing his arm. “Was that bear who looks like Bruin fucking with me, or is Eventine really back?”

Harlan tensed. “She’s not back. I might have talked to her. In Leilani’s body. But I might be out of my fucking mind, too, so there’s that.”

Crew made a face. “You ever get tired of throwing tantrums? If I told you Eventine was talking to me right now, what would you say?”

Harlan grabbed Crew by both elbows and slammed him against the wall, making pictures rattle. Whoops, too much. “I would say, ‘What in the fuck is she saying?’” I love you Harlan, I miss you Harlan. Had to be. He held his breath.

Crew nodded. “Ok, so I’m not crazy. Just making sure. She said look in the … the crystal decanter by the fake fireplace?” Crew scooted to the center of the room, looking around. “There.” He grabbed up a glass vase and pulled a rolled up piece of paper out of it. Harlan growled, the sound echoing through the room with too much crap in it. He didn’t have to believe in magic to think it was some unfair fucking bullshit and he didn’t much like it.

Hand-written. Ball point pen. Smooth, small letters.

Seriously. I can’t put her in a coma patient’s body. It doesn’t work like that. That is not a natural process and therefore, only chaos can arrange it.

Realization hit him. He grabbed at Crew, who had handed the letter off to Mac. “Wait, Crew, are you telling me that she can… that Evie can see us right now?”

Crew shrugged. “Seems like it.”

“And that she has been able to see us for the last 30 years?”

Crew shrugged. “Sure, maybe.”

Harlan’s mind went blessedly blank for once in his life. Not a thought in it. Only a strange mix of shame and guilt that he never thought he would have to deal with in his life. It was so strong, he couldn’t move for a minute or two. Rogue and Mac had their heads together, talking, while Conri and Crew kept searching.

Harlan stepped closer to the wall. He didn’t know why until he took a picture off of it. An 8x10. It was an older picture of a woman holding a baby with a big head, from the 1920s probably, by the look of the clothes and hair of the woman and baby. He picked a spot on the floor and he spun that picture frame right into the painted concrete. Crash! Glass flew. Harlan took one big step and ground the picture under his heel. Viciously. Right on the woman’s face. No salvaging that piece of paper. Harlan hoped it had been vintage, a classic, really fucking old and worth thousands of dollars.

He was going to tear this fucking place apart. He picked up a crystal clock. Pretty. Heavy. Crunchy bits on the floor. Ground under his heel again. Dismantle it, board by board, he thought loudly. Trinket by trinket. This place would be dust when he was done with it, did she hear? Was she magic enough to hear the thoughts in his head? She could obviously see them. So just how magical was she?

“We are not fucking playing with you,” Harlan growled, quietly, under his breath, hoping the others couldn’t hear. “This is life and death, witch. Light and dark. Everything and all forever, and I swear to anything that you find holy that if you do not say something useful in the next 2.5 seconds this hovel you call a business will be nothing but a hole in the ground.”

Rogue, Mac, Crew, and Conri were all staring at him, open-mouthed. Whoops, ok, maybe he wasn’t as quiet as he thought. He didn’t give a flying squirrel’s ass. Stare. This was between him and the foxen. He found a book. It looked old. He opened the cover and ripped out the first page. Oh look, there had been a signature on it. Harlan shoved that stupid fucking piece of paper in his mouth, chewed and swallowed. It tasted wordy. He forced a burp.

The cash register popped open with a, “ding!”

Harlan tore another page out, cuz momentum was a bitch, but he didn’t eat it. He’d made his point and he already had enough fiber in his diet. Fucking carrots. He pitched the book and page to the floor and strolled to the cash register. Mac and Rogue, who were closest to him, both took a step back. Good. Except Mac was going to take away his range rights for sure now.

Harlan grabbed up the note in the register tray and read it.

What about her own body? You have a time traveler, do you not? All you need is her body at the moment of death, an antidote to the poison, and the halfling can do the rest.

Halfling? Was that Evie? Someone else, Boeson maybe? Jaggar? He was half and half. The witch was telling them to time travel? Evie’s body. He couldn’t take it. Danger, Danger Will Robinson. Mental breakdown complete. He could do a killer Robby the Robot impression that very moment, arms flailing, brain nothing but scrap metal. Her own body. Back from the past. This wasn’t happening. He ripped a whole row of pictures off the wall, smashed them on the display case. Smash! Flying glass showered Mac and Rogue. Mac growled, Rogue swore, Crew tried to move in close to him, calm him. “Harlan, hang on, wolf…”

Fuck that. He would never be calm again. Harlan reached around for more to smash, to grab, to destroy. Mac made a grab at him which he neatly side-stepped, flipping Mac the bird. “You do not want to fuck with me right now, Mac. Not now.”

That stopped Mac. Crew grabbed Mac by the shoulder and pushed him away from Harlan. Good. Crew knew what was up, how serious this was. He’d been there. He’d been young, he’d been under for a lot of it, dealing with his own demons, yes, but he’d been there. Mac hadn’t been around. Crew had known Evie. “Harlan, it’s cool, calm down, we’ll figure it out. I don’t know what’s going on, but stay calm, we will find Mrs. White, we will get it straight. If we can get her back, we’ll get her back, I swear. You know we’ll do whatever we can. I don’t see how it’s possible, but I’ll still try. All of us will.”

Harlan ripped another something off the wall and heaved it into the glass display case, rupturing another portion of it with a harsh noise that made everyone wince but Harlan. “You don’t understand,” he said, punctuating the understand with another grab and whip. Crash. Glass everywhere. Satisfying. “I cheated on her. Been cheating on her regularly since she’s been gone.”

Crew shook his head and Rogue shot Mac a look. “You didn’t cheat on her Harlan, she’s been dead for 30 years!”

Harlan shook his head, his fingers searching for something else to throw. It would not be a proper fit until someone got hurt. Hopefully him. “I knew she was coming back. She told me. Her dad told me. Her renqua was a fucking phoenix for fucks sake!” He whirled on Mac, like Mac was personally at fault for what he was about to reveal. It wasn’t Mac’s fault, but Harlan was on a roll. “I went to the ruts,” he hissed.

Harlan recognized he was being a fool. Could not stop himself. No matter how this all turned out, he deserved to throw a fit or two. It was fucked up, more fucked up than her dying in the first place. His heart had healed over, at least a little. Shit, in another 30 years, he would have been right as rain. But now? His scab was ripped clean and someone had stuck their finger right in his wound. Who?

Mac looked dumbfounded. “It’s not cheating if she’s dead, whether she said she was coming back or not,” he almost-whispered.

Harlan wished he could believe that. He stopped, bent at the waist, pressed both hands to his temples… and the room went blessedly dark.