Christopher Golden - The Nimble Man

Conan Doyle and Ceridwen waited silently as the limousine pulled away. When its red taillights blended with the mist they retreated together to the door of the Ferricks' home.

"I'll take the living room," she said. "You'll take the dining room, I assume?"

"Fine," he agreed.

Danny and his mother were waiting in the living room. When Conan Doyle and Ceridwen entered, Julia Ferrick drew in a quick breath, as though she had to summon her courage or her self-control, or perhaps both. When she spoke to him, her tone made it clear that her opinion of him had suffered greatly these past few minutes.

"I understand you need my help," she said.

"I'm not sure I need it," Conan Doyle answered truthfully. "But it is always wise to have someone watching over me when I place myself in a meditative state. If there is an attack here, you could wake me, and the same if I seem unduly troubled in my trance, if I convulse or wounds begin to spontaneously appear upon my flesh."

Ceridwen sighed and the two females exchanged a meaningful look. "In other words, he does need your help. He simply wouldn't choose to phrase it that way."

"He must be loads of fun on a date," Julia muttered.

Neither Conan Doyle nor Ceridwen responded to that. After an awkward moment, Conan Doyle simply nodded to Ceridwen and then gestured toward the Ferricks to proceed with him toward the dining room.

But he found he could not leave Ceridwen to her work without pausing. He stood at the arched entry that led to the house's main corridor and looked back at her. Her fingers had begun to scratch at the air, to dart and weave and paint sigils. The ground rumbled and shifted slightly beneath the foundations of the house and the temperature in the living room dropped twenty degrees in a matter of seconds, and continued to go down.

The ice sphere upon her staff glowed more brightly, and the blue mist that wreathed it began to spin around it in a pulsing ring.

"Ceri," Conan Doyle whispered.

She started at the sound of his voice. Slowly, she turned to face him, her features sharp as shattered glass, eyes bright with magick and pain.

"Don't call me that," she said.

Conan Doyle nodded in apology and regret. "I just wanted to tell you to be careful."

"I don't need you to worry for me, Arthur," Ceridwen said coldly, snapping off each word. Instantly, she seemed to regret it. She went back to preparing her spell, lips moving soundlessly, fingers sketching at nothing. Then, without looking at him, she half-turned and she spoke again, and this time her voice was intimate with the memories they shared.

"But I… I am glad that you do."

Julia Ferrick had stepped into a dream.

That was untrue, of course, and she knew it. Even so, that thought ran through her mind time and time again. "It was like a dream." How many times had she heard that expressiona? Hundreds? Thousands? It was funny in a nauseating way, because there was nothing remotely dream-like about the things she had experienced in the previous twelve hours.

There were monsters in her house. A vampire woman whose name and comments implied she might be so much more. A man who could be anyone or anything, wear any face. A goblin with a foul mouth, crass and yet somehow comforting. An elf, or fairy or — and here an insane little giggle threatened to bubble out between her lips — whatever Ceridwen was. Conan Doyle… a magician. A real magician, who also claimed to be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a man who had been dead as long as Julia's grandmother had been alive.

And her son. Her own son.

Daniel. Oh, sweet God, Danny.

According to Conan Doyle, he wasn't even remotely human. And yet he was. He was her son, damn it.

Again that mad giggle tried to escape her lips and she raised a hand to cover the smile it brought, not wanting it to be misinterpreted. This wasn't a dream or a nightmare; it wasn't Julia through the looking glass. She was wide awake, and there was no doubt in her mind that her senses were reporting accurately. The things she saw and heard and smelled and touched were real. All of her assumptions about the world — taught to her by generations of human society — were wrong. Were lies.

Her mind wanted to reject it all, wanted to retreat to the protection of ignorance. But the contents of Pandora's Box could never be returned to their place. The truth could not be undone.

Julia blamed Conan Doyle for that. She knew it was absurd, knew that the man was trying to combat the dark forces that were at work upon the world. But he was also aloof and distant and had known the truth about her son for years yet kept it secret from her. And the way he had spoken to Danny in the dining room… Julia was glad Conan Doyle wouldn't allow Danny to accompany the others; he was safer here. But Conan Doyle didn't know her boy. As tormented as he had been in recent years, dealing with the physical changes they had initially thought of as some kind of affliction, Danny was a good kid. Conan Doyle's suggestion that Danny was not to be trusted because of what he was infuriated her. What mattered wasn't what he was, but who he was.

Conan Doyle sat at the far end of the dining room table. He had done away with the filthy pipe he had been smoking and now simply steepled his fingers beneath his chin, leaning back in his chair. He almost seemed not to notice her, his eyes closing, his chest rising and falling in a rhythm that gradually slowed.

"Mrs. Ferrick?" he said, sounding disoriented.

"Yes?"

"I wish things could have been different for you," he said, barely above a whisper, so that she was not at all certain if she had heard him correctly.

And then, "Wake me at any sign of trouble."

Julia stared at Conan Doyle as his breathing slowed further. His face seemed almost jaundiced in the candlelight. Soon he inhaled only once or twice a minute, and his eyes were partway open, revealing only the whites beneath.

He was gone. And Julia found herself feeling more charitable toward Conan Doyle than she had previously. For though his body was here, his mind was clearly elsewhere, and without him the walls seemed closer and the crimson mist more ominous. She was more aware than before that out there on the streets of her city the dead were walking. Without Conan Doyle's reassuring presence, she felt afraid.

It made her hate him all the more.

"Mom?"

Startled, Julia turned to see Danny standing in the corridor, just outside the room. He had been silent since they had joined Conan Doyle for this meditation, or whatever it really was. She smiled wanly at her son, wanting to believe his assertion that the truth had made him happy. Plainly there was more to it than that. To know that she and her bastard ex were not his biological parents had to have hurt Danny, but she could understand that it helped him to know that he was different for a reason. That he might have a purpose beyond being the freak the other kids stared at in the high school hallways.

"You look tired, honey," Julia said. "Why don't you get some rest? Nothing else is going to happen until they come back."

"That's what I was going to say," Danny told her. "Yell if you need anything, or if anything, y'know, happens." He gestured at Conan Doyle.

"I will," she promised.

Then Danny was gone from the doorway and she was left alone with the hollow husk of Arthur Conan Doyle and the flickering glow of candles.

Ceridwen was taken aback by how much it still pained her.

Standing in the center of the Ferricks' living room while attempting to establish communications with the elemental forces of this withered world, the sorceress was forced to deal with emotions she had thought to be callused over long, long ago. They were feelings buried so deeply that she had underestimated their devastating strength, believing that after all this time, she had surely grown stronger than they, the overwhelming sadness and fiery anger that had come as a result of Arthur Conan Doyle leaving her life.