“I’m not sure what I’m being asked,” she admitted.
There were three other teenagers hanging out with Timson and all three, and Janea, started to explain. It didn’t make heads or tails to Barb.
Apparently the game involved a three-way war between werewolves, vampires and Hunters who were humans with special powers. Everyone in the game had special tags so people knew they were playing around the con, but nobody was supposed to know which you were until you “encountered.” Then they would “battle” by flipping coins or playing, as Janea had, rock-paper-scissors and, based on some points that went right over Barbara’s head, you might be killed, or win, or be able to escape.
“It sounds interesting,” Barb said after the five minute explanation had wound to a close. “But I’m not sure it’s my sort of thing.”
“Well, why don’t you hang around and listen,” Timson said, grinning. “It’s really the most fun to be had.”
Someone had handed Barbara a Coke and one of the girls slid over so Barb could sit down. The kids were friendly at least.
“What do you do, Barb?” Timson asked.
“I’m a homemaker,” Barbara said, automatically. She just realized that what she really was was a Hunter. But in real life.
“I bet you’ve got kids our age,” one of the boys said, shyly.
“A bit younger,” Barb said, trying not to flinch.
“I wish my mom was cool enough to come to cons,” the girl next to her said with a sigh. She was skinnier than the girl who’d been commiserating with the “killed” Hunter but was dressed about the same. “But she’s so uncool it’s, like, crazy making! I had to beg to get the car tonight and she wanted me home by ten. I mean, nothing even starts until midnight. And she wouldn’t let me use the Beamer, I had to bring the Volvo! But with it snowing like it is, she told me I could stay over night.”
“We all have our problems in life,” Timson said, grinning.
“Are you all… teenagers?” Barbara asked.
“You mean living at home?” Timson asked, raising an eyebrow. “Most of the kids at the con are. I’m out of the house, though. I do survey work for a cable company.”
“I go to Virginia Tech,” one of the other boys said. “I’m taking computer engineering.”
“I’m going to college next year,” the girl next to her said. “I can’t wait to get out of the house.”
“Wait until you have to work for a living,” Timson said, grinning. “School sucks so you’re prepared for real life.”
“You don’t like your job?” Barb asked.
“I like it enough,” Timson said, shrugging. “It pays the bills. But if I had my druthers I’d con all the time.”
“This is real life,” one of the boys said, sighing. “We can be ourselves, here.”
“We don’t have to deal with stuck up sorority bitches,” the college boy said. “Or professors.”
“Try dealing with cheerleaders,” the girl said. “I’m sorry, black really does go with anything, thank you.”
“That was a… weird group,” Barbara said after they’d left the room and the group behind. “You really enjoy playing… that game?”
“I think of it as training,” Janea said. “And I was one of those kids when I was in school. I was the geek in the library with the glasses; I didn’t really start to bloom until much later. But I’d never heard of cons or LARPing or the rest of it.” She frowned and shrugged and Barb realized that she knew a lot about the people she’d met at the con, their lives and backgrounds. But she really didn’t know much about Janea.
“I suppose you could think of it as training,” Barbara replied. “But should your hobby be this close to your job?”
“I enjoy it,” Janea said. “And some of the kids are really bright. I’ve had good discussions about the occult with them. You should probably hang out with them more. Of course, some of them are better than others. Timson’s brilliant. I don’t know what he’s doing stuck in that job of his. He never finished college, though. He was working on a degree in anthropology but he said it just got too boring so he quit. He’s one of the ones that can talk about the occult all day and night. I mean, he knows the sixty-seven names of the known daevas and each of their special powers. He can even read ancient Persian as well as Aramaic, Greek and Latin. And he’s conversational in ancient Egyptian. I saw him translate Emily Dickinson’s ‘I’ve Known A Heaven’ on the fly into Egyptian and sing it to ‘Yellow Rose of Texas.’ Now that was bizarre.”
Barbara blinked at the image and then started at the very real sight before her. A man was walking down the hallway carrying, over his shoulder, a very large brown timber. Behind him was another man carrying an identical timber then a woman carrying a smaller… frame perhaps. Then more men and women dragging, rolling and carrying a variety of large boxes and bags.
“God, the snow’s bad!” the man in the lead said, maneuvering past the two women. “ ‘Scuse me.”
“Where are you setting up?” Janea asked, eyeing the second man in the line who was rather handsome and well muscled.
“Rooms three seventeen through twenty-eight,” the man said. “But you’re not my type, sorry.”
“Pity,” Janea said, arching an eyebrow.
Barb waited until the whole group was past and then looked at her “mentor.”
“What in that heck was that all about? And what were those big timbers for? They looked like parts of a cross!”
“They were,” Janea said, clearing her throat and for the first time in Barbara’s experience actually blushing. “They were for St. Andrews crosses.”
“And those are?” Barb asked, suspiciously.
“They’re… big crosses,” Janea said. “And that’s all I’m gonna say. But it’s pretty apparent the Black Rose has turned up in force. I know where I’m going to be hanging out.”
“I think I’ve had about all the bizarre I can take for one night,” Barbara admitted, shaking her head and trying to resist throttling her “mentor.” “I’m going to go see if there are any normal people around.”
“Wait ’til I drag you to DragonCon,” Janea said. “You’ll look great in a corset…”
“So what did you think of the Wharf Rats?” a woman asked as Barb walked down a second floor corridor.
“They were… interesting,” Barbara replied, stopping and looking the woman over. She was about normal height and only slightly plump with a pleasant face and blonde hair. The fuzzy reindeer horns were the only sign she was on the outside edge of normality. Compared to most of the people Barb had been dealing with all night she seemed positively normal.
“Try annoying,” the woman said, grinning. “Might makes right and all that.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that they think might makes right…” Barbara argued as a tall man walked up to the woman. He had long, mid-back length, slightly curly brown hair and was wearing a leather jacket heavy on the studs and buckles.
“You must be talking about the Wharf Rats,” the man said, grimacing. “If it wasn’t for Pier Books, none of those writers would get published at all. They’re fifth rate if that.”