snippet – Page 8

12/01/2024 Snippet, TIMMY AND THE BAD PLACE.

TIMMY!

“I am uncertain of this assignment, young Mister Timothy.”

That made Timmy jerk his head up. The Headmaster didn’t use that word a lot. As he liked to say, it was his job to know what was really going on.

The Headmaster didn’t mind being asked questions, as long as you understood that he didn’t care if you liked the answers or not. “Is it because of me, or the task?”

“Oh, the task, I assure you.” The Headmaster gave a smile that Timmy at least found reassuring, and not at all nightmarish. “If I thought you were incapable of handling an operation this simple, you wouldn’t be here in the first place.”

“It did seem pretty easy. There’s somebody where he shouldn’t be, we need to yank him out of the realm he’s in, and the people running the place don’t even want him there, so I can just go in.” Timmy frowned. “Oh. It’s too easy?”

11/26/2024 Snippet, BANSHEE BEACH.

I have blocked out all the chapters and will be assembling and adding from this point out. Hopefully this will speed things up.

So instead of gibbering, I went with polite conversation. “So, Betty. Here for the sun, the surf, or the sights?”

‘Betty’ dimpled at me, as the waiter set down our desserts. “Oh, the thought of doing the beach down here sounded divine, Mr. Vargas!” Damned if I know why I was expecting the Banshee to bobble her response. “Cinderella is so industrious, honestly. It’s all so full of commerce and enterprise, and while that is lovely, I could get all of that at home.”

She waited until we were alone again. “And that’s really the answer. Mostly.”

“Mostly?” I took a bite of my chocolate cake, and raised an eyebrow.

“Problem?” asked the Banshee as I took a healthy slug of water. At least, I hoped it was healthy. Better to find out now if it wasn’t.

“The cook added cayenne pepper,” I told her. “It ain’t bad, but my mouth wasn’t expecting to get bitten back.”

She looked at her own cake, shrugged, and speared herself a deliberate hunk of it. “Cayenne and cinnamon,” she noted after a deliberate bite. “No arsenic, though. Shame: it always adds a bit of piquancy to a dish.”

I surprised her then — by laughing. “Nice try. Arsenic doesn’t have a taste.”

11/25/2024 Snippet, BANSHEE BEACH.

Will need to make this a bit harder on Tom in the next pass-through.

I’d gotten instructed by Old Man McGavin himself. It sounds like more of an honor when you’ve never actually met the guy. He was one of the luckiest monster-hunters we’ve ever had, only he couldn’t ever explain why he was lucky because he just was, all right? Worse, he had a bad habit of oversimplifying. Like these buggers: all I could remember of the lecture right now was Don’t get hit.

Yeah, big help there, McGavin. Like, would it have hurt you to tell me that the yapokvil’s tail was all bendy?

I only figured that out when the freaking tail-barb smacked my impromptu club right out of my hands, dripping nasty crap on them for good measure. While I was still gaping at that, the tail came back for a swipe across my gut that sent me rolling into what suddenly became a stinking pile of hay. At first I was glad there wasn’t a pitchfork in there. Then I wished that there was, because a nice long pole with spikes on the end would’ve been handy.

The yapokvil should’ve come right after me, but it was one of those monsters that liked to play with its food. Well, I assume. I didn’t ask. All I know is, when I came out of that pile again, it was still scuttling about a little, like it wanted to find the perfect angle for gnawing on my intestines. It didn’t care like I might have my own views on the subject, either.

Fair enough. I felt just the same about its opinions.

11/24/2024 Snippet, BANSHEE BEACH.

Comeuppance!

“So those are your tourists?” Lucas asked Catty. He did try to keep the smirk out of his voice, but not very hard.

“Not as much as you, gramps,” Catty replied, in a voice sweet enough to make your teeth ache. Lucas’s smirk popped like a soap bubble — well, that’s a lie. Some of it decided to visit my face. “And they ain’t my tourists, neither. These aren’t the usual flounders, come slumming. They’re…” she broke off, frowning.

That got my attention. When a teenager starts giving off looks like that, a lot of times it’s because somebody hadn’t been friendly to her lately. Or they’d tried to be too friendly, too soon. Girls and boys grow up quick in New California, but not that quick.

Lucas must have picked up on that, too, because he choked out his incoming snit-fit and got his head on the job. If this was one. “These guys can’t take a hint, Catalina? Even when it’s swung at their heads?”

11/20/2024 Snippet, SUICIDE PLAGUE.

This suddenly got a lot more ominous.

The strainer was alientech, and Norm hated it. It worked, and it didn’t hurt, so it was probably being used for something like its original use. That wasn’t nothing. In fact, when it came to gizmos from the dead Galactic Amalgamation, ‘did the job with no side effects’ was the germanium standard.

Wriggling through the shimmering film that somehow managed to soak through his cleanroom suit, regular clothes, and even outer epidermis, leaving behind all the muck and dirt? It was just flat out disgusting. He still did it, because he knew it was safe, but there was always that moment where you had to wonder whether the film was going to let you through, this time. The techies claimed the strainer ‘fed’ itself through regular dust and cosmic rays, somehow, but what if they had gotten it wrong? They couldn’t begin to tell you how the damned thing operated.

Just like all the other alientech out there.

None of this showed in Norm’s face as he glooped his way through the strainer. Whining or gibbering never helped. Getting on with things did.

11/19/2024 Snippet, SUICIDE PLAGUE.

Not what I wanted to do today, but I had to get something done. A lot of catchup to get to this point, and tomorrow is a time of errands. So it goes.

April 23, 2112

This bunch had really worked out how they were all going to kill themselves.

It wasn’t just that they had prepped the space. Norm knew that most suicide cults could be counted on doing that, putting up whatever crazy ritual crap they thought they’d need to Traverse the Great Beyond or Meet The Amalgamated Masters or whatever. These guys had also prepped themselves. The thirteen corpses were all dressed in clean and luxurious robes, with fresh haircuts and manicures. Not every cultist was wearing makeup, but the ones who did had all applied them with care and skill.

The room smelled sweet, even through the filters on his whole-face mask. That was surprising. In Norm’s experience, suicide sites started stinking right away. “Nita, whatcha got?” he asked the field tech. “It safe to take off the damn masks?”

“Absolutely not, Agent Baker.” That got him paying attention. Juanita Reyes might have been F-SOB, just like him, but the techies were looser about protocol. If she was suddenly going formal, this site wasn’t as kindergarten as it looked.

That oddly made him feel a little better.

10/30/2024 Snippet, NEVER RETURN.

I’m going to try to finish this tomorrow. Fortunately, I already did my short story for the month on Patreon, so there’s that.

The ghost screamed again, this time a howl of protest that made the air visibly shiver and smashed glass. But even as it screamed, it also receded, pulling itself into itself until it was a globe of black that imploded as I watched.

At least, I assumed it imploded. I did not see directly, as I was diving behind the sofa at the time. Judging from the sudden psychic wind that pulsed above my head, that was wise of me. The stink of curdled magic is wretchedly difficult to get out of one’s hair or clothes.

Curwin popped his head up at the same time I did (he had flipped the shoddy table in the even shoddier kitchen). “So,” he managed after a moment. “What was that, then?”

10/29/2024 Snippet, NEVER RETURN.

It’s getting close to being done.

The first warning I had — a faint crinkling as windows and mirrors cracked — had my fingers up in a defensive ward before I quite realized what had happened. That kept the sudden biting cold from gnawing on my brain, which would do until I could lock and reinforce the ward.

Curwin blinked, then shivered as he instinctively moved to my side. I found myself quite glad of his proximity; defensive charm or not, the windowpanes were growing hoarfrost at an alarming rate.

“How long before it happens?” Curwin’s voice was surprisingly loud in the room, and I noticed that his tonfa was glowing, again. I oddly wondered how often the Boston police replaced them.

“If it had been a spell, it’d have happened and been done by now.” I shook my head, grunting in the most ladylike manner possible as I locked the ward in place. “But this is a manifestation, so it depends on how powerful the spirit is.”

“Right, not a ghost.” Curwin sounded in good humor, thankfully, and I presumed through an enviable ignorance. “They can’t generate this kind of cold for long.”

“Well, technically it is just sucking heat out of the area — ah, perhaps later.” An entity was unfolding itself in the air above the pile of books I had turned into an impromptu focus. I frowned at the energies, which felt different somehow, and yet familiar…

10/28/2024 Snippet, NEVER RETURN.

This story needs more action.

A search of the room revealed quite the collection of volumes, maps, and ephemera from Boston’s millennium and more of history, including a remarkable number of pre-Discovery maps of the Antiquity. Some of those did look like they were originals, but they were in excellent condition all the same. “I assume this was what he was using for his ghost hunts,” Curwin observed, and I shrugged. It seemed reasonable.

But there were no obviously arcane artifacts, except for the ones that any educated citizen of the Republic might reasonably have. We were looking for something more powerful than charms against toothache or lost buttons, however, and it worried me that we found nothing. Why on Earth had Shane gone down there? A ghostlegger would presumably know where he could set up his traps. His murder at least suggested that he had a reason for his actions.

It was Curwin who discovered our first real clue. “Hold up,” he said after a half hour’s useless searching. “Maybe we’re looking at this wrong.”

“We are certainly not looking at this right,” I admitted. “Go ahead. Even if you’re still feeling out what is nagging at you.”

10/27/2024 Snippet, NEVER RETURN.

I kind of like these characters.

“I would have thought the wages of sin would have stretched farther,” I observed as Curwin and I assessed the late David Shane’s apartment. No, that is not true. I sniffed, and regretted it instantly. I have an inclination to dismiss, and I dislike that about me. It is a bad state of mind for a necromancer to fall into.

Fortunately, Curwin did not notice. Or else he agreed with me, because indeed this was not a very imposing domicile. This part of Boston was hardly fashionable; a hundred years ago it was just past the edge of the suburbian wildness that we are still clearing, seven hundred years after the end of the First Republic. Now it was a collection of badly-aging cheap apartments and stolid factories, providing shelter, wages, and nothing more. Not the sort of place I would associate with an antiquarian, however self-taught.

Curwin chuckled when I pointed that out. “Think of it this way, Mistress Dexter. For every dollar he saved on rent, he could buy another book.” He opened the door to what I thought was a bedroom, and whistled. “Many, many books.”