Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

“Whoever wrecked your place isn’t going to find you here,” Fiona said.

Miki turned to look at her again, a little embarrassed that she was being so transparent.

“Is what’s going on inside my head that obvious?” she asked.

Fiona shook her head. “You wouldn’t be normal if you weren’t worried about that. How would they even know to look for you here?”

“These aren’t your run-of-the-mill, intolerant assholes,” Miki said. “Finding someone who’s trying to hide anywhere in this city is the least of their abilities.”

“This have anything to do with why Hunter wants to contact a Native elder?”

“Pretty much.”

Fiona pulled her feet up onto her chair and wrapped her arms around them, looking at Miki over the tops of her knees.

“No offense,” she said, “but neither you nor Hunter seem much inclined to the spiritual.”

Miki wanted to laugh. Spiritual was the last word she would have used to describe the Gentry. They were so wired into base, earthly concerns that the only thing spiritual about them was their love for Guinness and whiskey. Not quite the spirits Fiona had in mind.

“I guess,” she said. “I can’t really speak for Hunter, but the only experiences I’ve ever had with things not quite of this world have been shite.”

Fiona regarded her for a long moment.

“You mean your place got trashed by bad spirits?” she finally asked. “Like some kind of, what? Poltergeists?”

“Oh, no,” Miki told her. “The Gentry have physical presence. Too bloody much of it, as far as I’m concerned.”

“The Gentry?”

Miki sighed. “It’s a long story,” she said. “But to give you the short version, I had a big fight with Donal last night because he was acting like a stupid little self-centered shite—”

“Or, in other words, he was being himself.”

Miki raised an eyebrow.

“Well, really,” Fiona said. “I mean, I’m sorry, he being your brother and all, but he’s never exactly made himself easy to like, has he? At least not for us. What does he call everyone who doesn’t quite match up to his obviously high standards?”

“Punters?”

“Exactly. Sometimes all he has to do is walk into the store and it’s all I can do to not give him a good smack across the head.”

Miki was so used to the way Donal could be that she never really thought all that much about how negatively other people might view him. She supposed it was because she’d always gotten to see the other side of him, the protective older brother capable of great generosity. Gone now. Lost to her in a welter of Gentry lies and promises.

“He’s not all bad,” she said, surprised that she could still defend him after the past twenty-four hours.

“Neither’s getting sick with a really bad cold—I mean, you do get the time off work—but still, who wants one?”

“Anyway,” Miki went on. “We had this fight and that brought me to the attention of these friends of his who ended up trashing my place.”

“Nice friends.”

Miki nodded. “But what makes it complicated is… well, they’re not exactly human.”

“Say what?”

“I know, I know. It sounds ridiculous.”

“Well, that depends,” Fiona said. “Do you mean not human as in they’re such nasty pieces of work we don’t want to claim them as part of the human race, or are you talking X-Files?”

Miki never watched the show, but you couldn’t have any awareness of contemporary pop culture and not know something about it by now.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Does The X-Files deal with genii loci? We’re talking immortal earth spirits here, bad-tempered ones with a mean streak a mile wide who can change shape and pull your arms and legs off if they happen to get pissed off with you.”

Fiona gave her a considering look. “You mean for real?”

Miki nodded.

“You’re supposed to tell me you’re kidding now,” Fiona said.

“I’m serious.”

“And that’s what’s scaring me,” Fiona said. “I mean, I like getting spooked as much as the next person. A little Anne Rice. Checking out Scream and stuff like that. But then I always have the comfort of knowing that when I close the book, or leave the theater, I’m back in the real world.”

“I’m not going to be able to do that.”

“You’ve actually seen these guys?”

“I’ve been on the periphery of them all my life,” Miki told her. “I guess I was just lucky that I didn’t catch their attention until now.”

“And your brother’s connection is?”

“He thinks they’re going to make him immortal, too. That they’ll give him the power to pay back every wrong that’s ever been done to him, imagined or real, and nobody’ll be able to call him on it because he’ll be this supernatural hard man then, too. Just like them. One of the Gentry.”

“Why do you keep calling them that?”

Miki shrugged. “That’s just the way everybody referred to them when I was growing up. Calling them by their real names is supposed to be bad luck—puts their attention on you and you don’t want that because they’ll turn you into a newt or something.”

“Oh, boy.”

“I know,” Miki said. “It’s a lot to swallow. I’m surprised you haven’t laughed me out of the room by now.”

Fiona gave her a funny look. “I guess,” she said after a moment, “it’s because no matter how rational we think we are, we always suspect that there’s more out there than we can see. It’s like the old boogieman under the bed, as if—right? I know he’s not there, not really, but I still don’t sleep with a foot or a hand hanging over the edge of the bed.”

“But it’s just me telling you about it,” Miki said. “You don’t have any proof that any of it’s true.”

“No. But I’ve worked with you for a long time now and the Miki I’ve always known isn’t the same as the Miki who came into the store with Hunter this morning. I knew something really weird and serious had happened to you and it wasn’t just your apartment getting trashed. You’ve been through a lot of shit and that kind of thing would only piss you off.”

“I was pissed off.”

“Yeah, but you were scared, too.”

Miki nodded. That was true. It was still true.

“And I guess I’m kind of primed for this sort of thing,” Fiona went on. She waved her hand in the general direction of her Anne Rice books and the skull on her mantle. “For it to be, you know, more than just make-believe.”

They fell silent then. Miki returned her attention to the wet streets outside. The last CD they’d been playing had finished, but Fiona didn’t get up to put on a new one.

“So do you really think they’re going to come after you?” Fiona asked. “That they could track you down here?”

“I don’t know. They’re probably not even thinking about me anymore. I’m no threat to them and they made their point in my apartment this morning.”

“Except you hold grudges, too, don’t you?”

Miki shrugged.

“And if they don’t know it, Donal will.” Fiona shook her head. “I know he’s a self-centered little shit, but I can’t believe he’d take sides against you.”

“Yeah. That… hurts.”

More than she could possibly put into words.

“So maybe we should do something,” Fiona said. “Protect ourselves.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. We could call the number Jessica gave me for the Creek woman and ask her advice.”

“I suppose.”

“Or barricade the door. Or—”

At that moment the power died and they both jumped with fright. A sudden stillness settled over the dark apartment. All the normal murmurings of fridges and clocks and the like were gone. And because of the weather, the streets outside echoed that strange oppressive quiet.