Wally tried to smile again, then busied himself with his keyboard. The mica window looked onto the glade, empty save for trees and the flitting passage of a bird whose plumage was as purely blue as the summer sky. Howard watched the scientist, and he watched images on the mica; but more compelling than those, he listened through the curtains at his back to the sound of Robert Strange's voice chanting.
Howard felt the hairs lift from his body. Where those of his chest touched the loose caftan they tickled like the feeling at the back of a dry throat that you can't seem to swallow away. Violet haze blurred the air beyond the mica.
Genie Strange screamed.
Howard turned. The door to Genie's room was closed?closed and latched. The drapes around Strange and his activities bulged outward.
Genie hopped through and fell, dragging a section of the velvet down. The scarf used to gag her had slipped out of her mouth; it was the only garment she was wearing. Her wrists and ankles were tied together behind her back, but she'd managed to undo the cord that'd bound her to the drain.
Robert Strange, his face as hard and contorted as that of a marble demon, stepped out behind her. He grabbed a handful of Genie's black hair with his free hand.
"Hey!" Howard said. There was a bank of equipment between him and the Stranges. As gracefully as if he'd been practicing all his life, Howard took two running steps, planted his right palm on the rack, and leaped over with his legs swung off to his left side. Even the Thief of Baghdad would be impressed?
Until the caftan's billowing hem caught the chassis full of plug-in circuits on top of the rack. As Howard's legs straightened, the tightening cloth spilled him like a lassoed steer. Strange looked at him without expression.
Howard sprang up. The torn caftan, bunched now around his ankles, tripped him again.
Strange lifted Genie's head, avoiding her attempts to bite him. He poised the curved dagger in his right hand over her throat. Howard grabbed the sides of the rug on which he'd fallen and jerked with all his strength, snatching Strange's feet out from under him.
"You…!" shouted Strange as he toppled backward. Genie'd tossed her short hair free of his grip, but he didn't lose the dagger in his other hand. It was underneath when the Wizard of Fast Food hit the concrete.
The chassis that Howard'd dragged to the floor with him was popping and spluttering, but he wasn't prepared for the flash of violet light that filled the interior of the lab. It was so intense that Howard only vaguely noticed the accompanying thunderclap. He heard Wally cry out and turned.
Wally wasn't there. His clothing, from brown shoes to the pair of reading glasses he wore tilted up on his forehead, lay in the middle of the hexagram. The hundred and twenty-three pounds of Wally Popple had vanished.
Except for an image in the mica window.
Howard lifted Genie before he remembered that her stepfather and the dagger might be of more immediate concern. He looked back.
He'd been right the first time. Strange's face was turned toward Howard. He looked absolutely furious. He'd managed to thrash into a prone position while dying, but the silver hilt projecting from the middle of his back showed that dying was certainly what he'd done.
The transformer on the far left of the line shorted out. The one next to it went a heartbeat later, and when the third failed it showered the room with blobs of flaming tar. One of them slapped the mica window, and shattered it like a bomb.
"Can you please untie me, Howard?" asked the girl in his arms. "Though the way things are starting to happen in here, maybe that could wait till we're outside."
"Right!" said Howard. "Right!"
He paused to shrug off what was left of the caftan; it had started to burn as well. Somehow he couldn't get concerned about what the guards thought of him now.
Because he and Genie were going to be gone for at least three weeks and a fourth besides if the Chinese authorities agreed to open Tibet to Strangeco?which they would, Howard Jones wasn't called the Swashbuckler of Fast Food for nothing?Howard stopped by the mansion's former garage for a moment. He liked to, well, keep an eye on how things were going.
He'd had the big room cleaned and nearly emptied immediately after the wedding, but he still smelled the bitterness of burned insulation. He supposed it was mostly in his mind by now.
Genie'd wanted to tear the garage down completely since it held nothing but bad memories for her, but she'd agreed to let Howard keep the room so long as he'd had the door into her old suite welded shut. She wasn't the sort of girl to object to the whim of the man who'd saved her life; besides, she loved her husband.
Howard went to the skeletal apparatus on the one rack remaining in the room. Three hair-fine filaments were still attached to the top edge of a piece of mica no bigger than a quarter.
Howard bent to peer into it. If you looked carefully at the right times, you could see images in the mica.
The focus wandered. Howard hadn't tried to adjust the apparatus himself or let anybody else take a look at it. Mostly all there was to see was snow, but this time he was in luck.
The peephole looked out at the spring where couples used to cavort. Wally was there with his entourage, checking the generating turbine he'd built to power the first electric lights in his new home. If Howard understood the preparations he'd seen going on in the royal palace last week, telephones were about to follow.
When Wally turned with a satisfied expression, Howard waved. He knew the little fellow couldn't see him, but it made Howard feel he was sort of keeping in touch. Wally walked out of the image area surrounded by courtiers.
Howard checked his watch and sighed; he needed to get moving. He'd promised the company fencing team that he and Genie would at least drop in on their match with Princeton. After Howard instituted morning unity-building fencing exercises throughout Strangeco, a number of the employees had become fencing enthusiasts.
Howard took a last look at the pool in the other world. He'd never seen Wally take a sip of the water, and it didn't seem likely that he ever would.
After all, a powerful wizard like Master Popple had to beat off beautiful women with a stick.
The Ensorcelled ATM
Michael F. Flynn
The saloon had been done up remarkably well in its time, but its time was now demonstrably past. Years ago, when Gavagan bought the building, it had been even more run-down, drawing its clientele from the lowest strata of society, and was not at all the sort of place where a respectable man would take his thirst. Gavagan had renovated the place, having it in mind to cater to a more intellectual patronage. He did not quite achieve that lofty goal, but he at least lifted the saloon from its long decay.
Time, of course, had softened the renovations, and the odors of a great many beers had left their memory in the wood. The flooring was scuffed and planed from the passage of countless feet. Even the dark, rich surface of the bar had accumulated its share of nicks and scratches. A stuffed owl mounted on the back wall had a seedy appearance; and in the far corner near the ceiling could be seen the frayed straw of a nest, as if a bird had taken up residence.
The stranger at the far end of the bar, near the window, was a middle-aged man, though of uncertain years, for his gray hair seemed older than the rest of him. The three-piece suit marked him as a man of consequence, although the jacket had come off and the vest was unbuttoned. He'd had two cocktails already, but was not yet what you would call "under the weather." His face bore the soft look of far-off concentration.
The brass blonde, seated at the table with two gentlemen, tipped her head toward him and said, "Now there's a fellow with a few problems."
"We should all be so lucky, Mrs. Jonas," young Keating answered, "to have only a few of those."
Mr. Witherwax paid no attention to the interruption, for interruption it was. "All I said is that the neighborhood is changing. That's all I said." He was drinking boilermakers.