Magda lit a small light in her palm before Silas could muster the energy to do so. He gave her a nod of appreciation. “We’ll want to move on soon.” He cocked his head, listening for any further noise from his mentor’s old house. “Incidentally, no, the house was sold to regular folks, and may have changed hands again since then.”
“It’s far from the worst place we could’ve landed,” Jasper pointed out.
“True.” They were in the right country and state, in the right town, even. Not on some mountaintop in Greenland, or the church he’d once visited in France.
“I feel very odd.” Xsing’s voice sounded thin and raspy. “Very… squeezed.”
Pip hurried over to put his paws on Jasper’s leg, looking up at him. “I bet it’s your camouflage spell starting to work. It’s supposed to happen right away when you reach Earth, but we’re taught how to give it a push if it doesn’t. Oooh, I wonder what yours will pick.”
Darien asked, “How does that work, anyway?”
Silas peeked out around the corner of the garage and shushed them with a motion. All the lights were coming on in the house they’d left, and the neighbor on the far side could be seen striding that way, a baseball bat in hand. Silas murmured, “We need to get out of here before that woman convinces her neighbors to start hunting down home intruders. Come this way. Around the corner and two blocks down, there’s a row of shops and a phone booth. We won’t stand out so much.”
Grim said softly, “We should wait for Xsing.”
Silas glanced over his shoulder. The little scientist had wriggled out of Jasper’s grasp and lowered himself to the ground as his body twisted and changed.
“Try not to choose a rat,” Grim muttered. “I have a reputation to maintain.”
With a shimmer of colors, Xsing’s face gained a long snout, his body thickened, eyes receded. After a moment, a slightly chubby raccoon sat blinking in the dirt in the orange glow of Magda’s light.
Xsing raised a front paw, put it down, lifted it again and tried to take a step, tangled himself up, and fell over. He struggled to his feet. “I’m not familiar with this form of locomotion…”
From over by the house, louder male voices could be heard. Silas said, “Can you carry him, Jasper? Come on, everyone. Magda, douse that light.”
He led the way to the street, expecting at any moment to hear a shout behind them. When they reached the sidewalk, he turned at a brisk pace toward the shopping thoroughfare. No running. Act casual. Six houses down, across an intersection, and still no pursuit could be heard. He heaved a sigh of relief.
After another block, they reached the small row of stores, all shuttered in the dark evening. He wondered what time it was. His watch had stopped running at some point in their adventures. Late enough to leave the street deserted, other than us. He couldn’t decide if that was a bonus or made them more likely to be noticed.
A familiar phone booth still stood waiting at the end of the block in front of the greengrocer. He folded the door open eagerly. Someone had stolen the phone book from its hanger, but that hardly mattered. He knew most important numbers by heart. Except— “Does anyone have a dime?”
It was Jasper who unearthed a handful of change from his pants pocket and held it out. “Who are you calling?” He held Xsing cradled in his other arm, blinking beady raccoon eyes rapidly.
“Mrs. Vaughn first.” Worry curdled in Silas’s gut over what being on the rebound end of the gate might’ve done to her, when they cut that first portal in the Void. He dropped the dime and dialed his own number. The phone rang and rang, and maybe she’d gone home once the gate was gone, especially if the demon map had also failed, or maybe—
He pulled down the cradle and his dime dropped back into the box. “I’ll try her place.” This time, it only took two rings to get an answer.
“Hello. Who is it?” Troy’s harsh parrot voice was a welcome sound. If Troy made it through, hopefully the backlash wasn’t too bad.
“It’s Silas.”
“Silas! Did you all survive?”
“Yes. We’re fine. Magda’s with us. How’s Mrs. Vaughn?”
“Alive and in her right mind. No thanks to you. And asleep.” The dial tone echoed as Troy hung up. Silas took the phone away from his ear and stared at it.
“Well?” Darien demanded.
“Alive and probably all right, according to Troy.” Silas thought about calling back, but he wasn’t in a mood to deal with Troy right now. Alive and in her right mind would have to do till he could visit in person. “Now for some transportation.”
“Who can we call?”
That was a good question. After considering locations, vehicles, and the likelihood of someone actually coming to get them, he narrowed it down to… “Ferngold.”
“Seriously?”
“His older car will hold all of us, and he’s curious enough and proprietary enough to want to come and hear our story and give us a piece of his mind for not asking permission first.”
Darien’s lip curled like he was tasting something bitter. “He’s going to be insufferable.”
“If he gets us home, I can tune out just about anything.” Silas sorted out another dime from Jasper’s coins, fed it into the slot, and paused. I know his number. It’s… It’s… His brain spun its wheels in the mud, not dredging up the right digits.
“Hunter-six, twenty-eight oh-two,” Magda told him.
“Thank you.” This was the home stretch. He glanced around at three bedraggled humans, a dog, a cat, and yeah, Xsing was definitely a raccoon, and then dialed.
“Ferngold.” The elderly sorcerer sounded tired. “This had better be important.”
“It’s Silas Thornwood.”
“Thornwood! Where have you been? Do you have any idea what we’ve been dealing with for the last three days while you waltzed off to who-knows-where? Demons, Thornwood, a plague of demons and where were you? You—”
“I was dealing with the problem at its source,” Silas interrupted. “We should see an improvement, for now, though the job’s not completed yet.”
“Explain yourself.”
“Gladly,” Silas lied. “But we need you to come pick us up, before the local humans get too curious.”
“Who’s we? What local humans?”
“That’s a long, fascinating story,” Silas said. “We’re on the pavement in front of Williams’ Greengrocers on North Street at Broadway. Four of us and three familiars, who’re starting to attract attention.” Well, they aren’t yet, they might soon. So not really a lie.
Whatever else you might say about Ferngold— and Silas could say quite a lot— he did take his role as guardian of the local magic community’s privacy seriously. He hesitated only a moment. “Very well, I shall be there in about fifteen minutes. But you’d better have a good explanation. Do try to keep yourselves inconspicuous until then, Thornwood.”
Silas replaced the receiver on the cradle and looked around. They could try to lurk in the shadows beside the building or back in the alley, but if they were spotted, they’d look worse than ever. Especially if the locals were looking for burglars. He eyed the options. “Window shopping.”