The next day, Stephanie came to me and said, “Eric, are you still putting off your conversation with Emily?”
“I, uhh, been busy…so no.”
“Busy? You’ve been watching cartoons with Arduwan!” she scolded.
“Yeah…I know. I just haven’t found a good time to do it.”
“Well, here’s an idea. Why don’t you take these coins into town and sell them with her? You can take Arduwan too. I can use me and Anabel shampooing the carpets as an excuse to say they need to get out of the house for a while. Just let Arduwan float off into her own world for a bit and then talk to her.” she suggested, as she handed me a bag of gold coins thatI had procured in Callist.
“That’s actually a really good idea!”
So, the three of us loaded up in the old Phantom. I drove of course, which honestly, felt pretty good since I hadn’t done it much in the past year. It was still kinda odd for me to drive on the opposite side of the road that I was used to, but still therapeutic to do now and again. Arduwan rode in the passenger seat and Emily sat in the back…understandably.
She was quiet on the way into town, but I could tell she was glad to go out with us. We took care of the bullion trade quickly and then decided to go into a park so Arduwan could play out in the snow for a change. Thankfully, it was a good excuse to get more clothes on her than you could normally get her to wear.
Emily and I stood near a hand railing at the park and overlooked Arduwan as she played with some kids aged ten to eleven. It was almost like we were watching a child of our own playing; despite the fact she was a thirty three year old barbarian woman.
The silence was a bit awkward, but I decided to break it by saying, “so…you and I haven’t spoken much lately.”
“Ya think?” she said, sarcastically, as she reached into her purse for a clove cigarette and fished for her lighter.
“Oh! Hang on a second,” I interrupted as I snapped my finger and produced a small flame by saying, “Ignite.”
Emily smiled a little and said, “that’s pretty handy,” as she leaned into my hand to light her cigarette.
“Yeah. I’ve learned a few cool tricks. They’re simple but I’ll find a way to make them useful.”
The silence was about to get awkward again, so I decided to prevent it by being blunt, “look, I know you’re upset with me because I promised we’d have a talk about us once the fight with Celica was over. I’m sorry, but my mind was just racing. Please forgive me.”
“I have,” she noted, “I tried to just give you your space after what happened. But it's the fact that you just never came back around after that. And it hurt that you ran off to Callist with Arduwan and Wraith so quickly after the funeral.”
“Not never…I’m talking about it now,” I corrected.
“This is true…but two months? Don’t you think that's a little long to keep a girl waiting?”
That flustered me up a little bit and I snarked back, “you know, I don’t think you realize how intimidating you can be. You're so…forward and aggressive about things that I just don’t know how to take you sometimes. That’s great for solving mysteries or coming up with a plan, but how am I supposed to process my feelings when you’re like that? Not to mention the other stuff I’ve got going off in the house…like that.”
I pointed at Arduwan, who had used her Call of the Wild feat to summon a falcon in order to entertain the kids. They loved it and it did lighten the mood a tad between me and Emily. But her smile quickly faded into tears as she leaned on the railing and put out her cigarette.
“I’m sorry. It’s the only way I’ve ever known how to be,” she confessed, “but it’s especially difficult because I don’t know how to be around you. I care about you, Eric. And if I’m being honest, I really would like us to be more than friends. But not just ‘jump in the sack’ more than friends.”
I walked up near her and said, “I do too. But I need to know exactly what we are before taking this any further.”
She turned to me and wiped the tears from her eyes. Her black eyeliner only slightly smudged. She said, “let’s just take this slow. I’ve restrained myself this long. I can reel it in some more for you too. That way we don’t do something stupid.”
“What do you suggest then?” I asked as we both turned our attention to Arduwan and the kids again.
“Let’s be more than friends but less than lovers for a while,” she said as she slipped her hand over and held my own.
“I can deal with that,” I replied.
* * *
After gathering Arduwan from her snowball fight, the three of us drove back home. We weren’t going to advertise anything about our conversation in the park. The others would just have to see things for themselves and allow us to go at our own pace. Afterall, that’s the courtesy we had all extended to Anabel and Stephanie.
Speaking of Anabel and Stephanie, when we came into the house, it was quiet. Eerily quiet. The girls were nowhere to be found. No sign that the carpets had been shampooed. We walked around the ground floor and called upstairs for them but there was no response. We decided to check the basement. It was pretty soundproof down there so they might not have heard us.
When we came downstairs, nothing could have prepared us for the scene of horror that we discovered. There on the floor, near the well, we found Anabel and Stephanie. They had been murdered execution style with shots to the back of the head.
“Oh, no!” I shouted out as I ran over to them.
Emily froze in place and Arduwan started screaming angrily towards the sky. I coddled the lifeless bodies of my dear friends and cried like I had never cried before. Their blood smeared my hands and forearms.
“This can’t be,” I wailed, “how could this have happened?! Stephanie…my best friend.
And Anabel. Sweet loving Anabel. Who did this to you?”
Arduwan stood there snarling with her fists at the ready and her teeth clenched before belting out an angry scream. Emily had taken to scouring the room. Her calm demeanor took over. I just sat there and sobbed.
“Stephanie…this is what I had hoped to avoid the most by getting you involved. And Anabel…it’s not supposed to be this way. We were supposed to get you that puppy you wanted.”
“Eric, look,” Emily interjected. She pointed at the floor near the well. Six of the stones were there. Someone must have pried open the safe and got them out.
“There’s one down in the well,” she continued, “a red one. Eric, did you put your fathers journal back in the safe after the other day's incident?”
I walked over and looked at the stones, “No. It’s up in my room. But why? Do you think the MI5 agents did this?”
“I don't," she said. They would have no reason to act so brashly when they could just take us all in very easily.”
She climbed into the well and fished out the red stone. It had the markings of Brasshaven, the Steampunk world, on it.
“But how? That was a green stone that my father had taken care of long ago.” “Check the other green stones,” she said.
There were five of them. The sixth stone was red. The numbers lined up. But wait a second! One of the green stones…was impossible. It was the stone from Murk! Emily’s world. “Do you think it’s possible?” I asked Emily.
She said, “let’s check something out quickly. Arduwan. Stay right here. Kill anyone besides me or Eric that comes up out of this well.”
Emily and I submerged ourselves quickly into the well with the Murk stone. Once on the other side, we climbed our way out of the sewer and found a payphone. Rain was pouring down around us. Emily used a quarter from my world and thankfully it worked. She called D.A. Ralph.
“Emily! Great to hear from you. Are you back in town?” he asked.
“Only for the moment. Listen, I need you to give me an update on Alabaster Creole.”
“You hadn’t heard?” He mentioned, “Alabaster got out of jail last week.”
“Last week? I had figured he’d get out on good behavior after two or three years but it’s only been eight months.”
“Yeah, I know. His corruption has reached the city council and the judiciary. He filed an appeal and got out early. I’m actually running for Mayor in order to put a stop to all this nonsense. Say, you better be careful. I’m certain he’s got men looking for you.”
“He does. I’m going to disappear again for a while so it may be a while before you hear from me again. Good luck with the campaign though. I know you can make a difference if you win.”
She got off the phone and looked sharply at me.
“You can’t be serious?” I uttered, “Alabaster found out about the well and came to my world looking for you?”
“It would appear so.” she replied.
The two of us went back into the well and came home. We found Arduwan sitting on the floor near our fallen friends. It was almost as if she was protecting their remains.
“I don’t get it, Emily. If he did come looking for you, then why did he kill Anabel and Stephanie? And why would he go into Brasshaven? Wouldn’t he at least stay here and wait for us to get back home?”
She looked around a little bit and said, “Perhaps he did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at their entrance wounds. They were murdered by two different weapons. The calibers are different,” she noted.
“So, Alabaster brought some lackeys.”
“Correct. One of them may still be here.”
Arduwan sprang to her feet and looked around the room.
“Come on, let’s go upstairs…carefully,” she added.
The three of us made our way upstairs and Emily pointed out that the carpet near the staircase to the second floor had wet footprints. They were likely from the shoes of whoever came out of the well. Emily stayed well behind us as Arduwan and I crept upstairs and began checking closets.
In my room, we found a thirty something year old man in a suit wearing dark shades cowering. Before he could turn his pistol on us, Arduwan pulled him up by his shirt and started slamming him against the wall.
I retrieved his pistol and said, “hang on, Arduwan. We need some information from him.”
Emily stepped up and started with the questions, “how did you find this place?”
The man quivered in fear as Arduwan lowered him to his knees and clutched his shoulder. He responded, “A-al-alabaster had you followed the day of the trial. His informant told him he saw you go into the sewer and not come back up. When he got out of jail, he decided to check it out for himself.”
“Okay, now why did he use another one of the stones?” she continued with her interrogation.
“I don’t know. He just said he was broadening his horizons.”
“Now, why were you up here cowering instead of waiting to ambush us?”
“I saw you come home out the window and when I saw the giantess, I got nervous, so I hid. I was gonna wait for you to come up out of the basement, but when she started screaming like that, it terrified me.”
Arduwan’s Berserker howl had that effect on weaker opponents.
“If you’re done, Emily. I’ve got one more question for him,” I said.
She motioned for me to proceed.
“Which one of my friends did you kill?” I asked.
The man just looked up at me and quivered.
“Which one did you kill?!”
Arduwan kneed him in the back and tightened her grip on his shoulder.
“Ahh,” he wrenched out in pain, “the blonde. I shot the blonde.”
Tears balled up into my eyes and a moment later, I raised the pistol and shot him in the head.
