But that wasn’t looking too likely anymore.
“Doggone it.” George mopped his sweaty face with his handkerchief. “I’ve got no idea. Plenty of fluid. No leaks. Radiator appears to be in good shape.”
“None of you happen to be a Tinker?” Ian asked.
“Call them Fixers where I’m from. I’m a Crackler,” George answered. “You want me to charge the battery, I can. Other than that”-he shrugged-“sorry.”
“Traveler,” Faye said, but everybody already knew all about her.
“Infernal thing.” Ian stepped back and kicked the bumper. “Well, I sure as hell can’t Summon a mechanic.”
Whisper got out of the passenger side, scowled at the sun, then went back for her umbrella. She popped it open and walked over to examine the engine. “Is it broken?” Ian glared at her, as if the boiling steam cloud should have been explanation enough. Whisper, however, was either immune to his jerkiness or just plain didn’t care enough to notice. “Well?”
“It overheated and died on us. Is there anything you can do?”
“I do not know much about automobiles.” Whisper frowned at the engine. “I believe that touching it would soil my dress.”
Ian sighed. “I meant magically.”
“You would like for me to set it on fire?”
George laughed with genuine amusement. “Fine lot we are. Four powerful wizards and yet we’re easily defeated by the internal combustion engine.”
“Yeah, the Imperium best watch out for us…” Ian muttered. He glanced up and down the road. There wasn’t another car in sight. “I saw a garage back in that town. It looked to still be open.” Which was saying something since most everything else in Ada had been boarded up and abandoned.
“Everyone wore comfortable shoes, I hope,” George said. “It’s only a couple of miles.”
“Lock the car up,” Faye told Ian, and then to the others, “Anything you don’t want stolen, take it with you.”
“Is that necessary to-” Whisper began.
“Trust me.” Faye got her. 45 out of the car and stuck it into the special pocket in her traveling dress. The knife Lance had made for her went on the other side. Sure, her family had moved to California, but she knew how desperate folks around these parts could be. Other than Mr. Browning’s pistol and Lance’s knife, everything else was replaceable.
They set out for Ada, which put Faye into a very sour mood.
There was nothing but dirt for miles. The trees were all dead. The only other feature was the telephone poles running alongside the road, and it was so desolate that there weren’t even any birds sitting on the wires. The afternoon wasn’t too hot, but the wind was harsh and dry. She had to hold onto her hat to keep from losing it. Whisper’s fancy umbrella got turned inside out in the first mile. She complained about that, called it her favorite parasol, and ended up chucking it into a ditch.
Ian made an attempt at conversation. “So, this telephone call that Jake Sullivan supposedly took…”
Faye was about worn out with this guy’s attitude. “What do you mean ‘supposedly’?”
“I’m not saying it didn’t happen, just how do we know it was the Chairman’s ghost?”
“Because Mr. Sullivan said so.”
“Maybe it was a trick. I mean, Sullivan’s a Heavy. Everybody knows Heavies aren’t very bright.”
George realized the hole that Ian was digging for himself much faster than Ian did, and tried to intervene. “Normally, when I hear someone say ‘everybody knows,’ what follows shortly after tends to be wrong.”
“Sullivan’s only been in the Society for what, less than a year? But because he’s had some dream about actually seeing the Power, we’re all supposed to hop to when he tells us something crazy?”
“That’s not true at all,” Faye snapped. “Mr. Sullivan is super smart. He’s just not a show-off about it like some folks.”
“We’re taking the fall for an assassination attempt, but instead of spending our time figuring out who set us up, we’re spinning our wheels trying to talk to Iron Guards about some being that probably doesn’t even exist.”
Faye stopped abruptly. The others made it a few more steps before they realized she was no longer keeping up. She waited while they turned back to her. Faye put her hands on her hips and gave Ian the look normally reserved for people she was about to murder. “You better shut up.”
“Hey, wait a sec-”
“No. You listen, and you listen good. This big critter is real and it isn’t messing around. When it shows up, nothing else is going to matter. If you don’t believe that, then you’re the stupid one.”
Ian’s face turned red and he started to respond, but Whisper cut him off. “But how do you know this, Faye?”
How could she explain? “It’s right there, right outside of the real world. It’s pushing on the door, getting heavier and heavier, and pretty soon the hinges are going to give and then it’s coming inside. When I listen, when it’s real quiet, like when I’m trying to sleep.. I can hear it.”
Ian threw his hands in the air. “You’re off your rocker.”
George put one hand on Ian’s arm to shush him. “Faye, how come you didn’t say this to the elders?”
“I did… They didn’t believe me either. I don’t know how I know. I don’t know how come my Power is different than yours. It just is. I just do. I can feel it, okay?”
“But-”
Faye was frustrated. She didn’t want to argue with a bunch of people who just couldn’t understand. She checked her head map and scouted the road for danger, clear, and Traveled. The soles of her shoes hit asphalt a hundred yards away. It was about as far as she could manage lately, a frustratingly useless little amount of distance compared to what she’d done before. She stood there in the dust and waited for the others to catch up. It gave her a chance to collect herself.
Of course the others didn’t understand. Nobody else had a connection to the Power like she did. They got drips of water coming out of a faucet and she had a mighty river… or at least she had before. Now she was down to a small stream, but on the Tokugawa, it had been a river. She didn’t know how she’d gotten so strong so fast, though the elders had kept poking and asking questions, trying to figure it out. They had seemed more worried about how she’d managed to Travel the entire Tempest than they were about the Enemy coming. They tried not to show it, but she could tell they didn’t trust her. It was shaking Faye’s confidence.
It was this place. Ada made her upset. Just being close to her old house made her feel like crying angry tears.
I’m stronger than that. I’m better than that. When she was a little girl, she’d had to live inside her own head, because it was the only safe place. But she wasn’t a scared little girl anymore, that nobody loved because they all thought she’d been possessed by the devil. She was Sally Faye Vierra, knight of the Grimnoir. She’d saved lives, battled the Imperium, and been a hero. She’d thought that she had put the miserable sad part of her life behind her, but apparently it was still there. It would always be there until she buried it once and for all.
She knew what she had to do.
Ian got to her first. “What’s your deal?”
“Fix the car. I’ll catch up.” And then she Traveled away.
Ian Wright watched the Traveler blink out of existence. He looked around the wastes, but Faye was nowhere to be seen. “Well, damn it all to hell.”
George and Whisper caught up a moment later. “Where did she run off to?”
“Personal business, I imagine,” Whisper said. “You should not have insulted her.”
Ian grunted. “Yeah, I was pretty dumb.”
“You were rude,” George pointed out.