Chapter 37 — Friendly Neighborhood Wizard

  Lana let out a little whoop as she cranked the finicky gears into second after a brief stop and rapid acceleration, peeling out from behind the alley to my shop and home. I gripped the handlebars as delicately as I could, thankful the jeep had so many. The stiffening of my muscles hurt every wound I had, but I was impressed with the speed Lana could coax out of the old Jeep.

  “I forgot how fun these could be!” Lana yelled, her dark-tinted maroon hair dancing as we whipped past the streetlights.

  I didn’t reply, my focus fully on staying alive and inside my jeep. The gapping open doors now more of a threat despite my flimsy sun-rotted seatbelt. The cold air and injuries also made my muscles tighten in the most uncomfortable way around possibly broken ribs.

  Lana slowed as we approached her house but she decided to do some ‘off roading’ last minute and missed her driveway, instead rolling up over the curb and some gravel and grass to one side of her house before laughing and pulling back onto the asphalt in the drive. The lurching bump bounced me in the seat and if I wasn’t with such wonderful company, I would have passed out and slept there in the jeep uncaring if I lost fingers or a limb to the cold.

  “Nice ride Cal,” she said, lightly tossing me the keys.

  I didn’t bother trying to catch them and simply let them bounce off my jacket and land in my lap on the jeans Lana had helped me put on.

  “I will never again question you about your driving skills,” I wheezed, then rushed. “I-learned-my-lesson.”

  “Best remember it. Now let me help get your poor, frail body down from the Jeep.”

  “I can walk. I have my dignity—And I only said that because of how tight the pants you picked out were… and you were kind of manhandling me,” This night was making me feel washed in masculine energy and very secure about myself, I thought dryly.

  “Nothing compared to Rex’s.” Lana said, hopping out of the driver’s side door more chipper than ever. I was glad she could keep that joy, despite what we’d both witnessed today.

  I hurried to get out of the jeep without help, the simple act of getting out of passenger seat required using all my wizard training to focus through the pain. Perhaps my ribs and injuries were worse than I thought?

  “Follow me,” Lana said, turning from circling the jeep once she saw she was not needed to help me out. I saw the wicked gleam in her eyes and was only partially thankful I’d been able to manage on my own.

  I reached into the jeep, and pulled my backpack free which held my wallet, my iron weapons, and my extra winter gear like gloves and a beanie which I probably should have been wearing in the first place.

  I followed Lana into the backyard to discover the wrap around porch continued back here. It was raised from the yard about four feet with stairs extending straight down into the back yard which was met by grass and a firepit another ten feet out with soft chairs circled around it.

  “Grab a chair and I’ll get a fire started,” Lana said, running up a few steps towards the back door of her home up on the porch. “I don’t trust you around all the electronics after what I saw today.”

  “I was good this morning—And warm inside my house.” I shouted playfully, but her concerns were right. I really needed to make a suppression item to limit my effects on electrical things.

  It was a cold night, but the wind was blocked by the home. The rustling trees in the yard concealed the nearby homes and drowned out the sounds of the city. It made me feel like I was in the woods, one of my favorite places under normal circumstances. At times, I felt a primal need to be in the forest. It was probably from to my earth affinity but who was to say. I knew nothing magically that would require that connection.

  Lana returned with a box of matches and loose newspaper. She went around the corner of her house, and I hopped up to follow. Set on the far side of the house was a small, awning by the fence line with stacked wood. We each grabbed a few pieces and returned to the fire pit. I had more than enough juice recovered to start a few fires, but sometimes doing things the slow way was preferrable. We both jokingly debated the best way to get it alight with Lana telling me I needed to sit back and watch.

  When the fire began to burn in truth it quickly staved off the night chill, the heat gathering in the still area enough I could unzip my jacket. We watched the flames for a while, deep in our own thoughts, and likely thinking of what we’d say tonight.

  “So… what did Chris say?” Lana broached. “Things have seemed a little different tonight, and I assume it was from that.”

  I contemplated where to start, somewhat surprised she knew exactly the topic I wanted to discuss.

  “First things first—He’s a dick,” I said, to Lana’s light peals of laughter. I looked up at the starry night for a moment, the cool air and sight of the vast cosmos clearing my mind.

  “He can be,” She admitted.

  “I broke his recorder… or well my aura did.”

  “Yeah, he was pretty peeved about that after you left. Gregory gave him a hard time about it, it makes him look incompetent on the report and he hates being viewed as incompetent.” She mimed Gregory’s voice, “‘Interviewed the lead suspect but recording was lost due to malfunction’.”

  It made me smile.

  “Any bureaucrat or conspiracy theorist won’t believe his tape recorder happened to break in the interview. His higher ups are going to be pissed.” Her voice dropped a little, “Chris did say he didn’t think you were the murderer, to me, personally anyway.”

  “He told me a bit about your dad,” I said after a brief pause, not sure how to dive into the questions I wanted to ask.

  Lana went still. Her face lit in flickering shades of amber light from the fire. She looked tired, younger than she came off normally. Vulnerable. I looked like she was holding her breath.

  “What did he say?” She whispered.

  “That he was an amazing guy who had had run-ins with the supernatural. That he met with Seekers from the Grimm brotherhood.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Lana nodded. “He did. I heard stories and… he told me there was a whole other world out there he wanted to protect people from. He changed a lot the last few years, before…”

  I nodded. Not wanting to get into the seekers not being the best source of information, but then I couldn’t really judge, everything I knew was second hand. My chest tightened as I had to ask the question that might break the fragile friendship and relationship we had begun. “Is that why you didn’t run… when you found out about me? —What happened that first day that changed me from a friend to…to this? Is it that I might have information your father was looking for? Answer questions you’ve had?”

  “No, No.” Lana said quickly, her concern turning into more of a relieved smile.

  “Are you sure?” I said, my tense shoulders refusing to relax, “Most people who learn about the real me take off. I never see them again.”

  “Would you believe me if I said you weren’t the weirdest guy I’ve dated?”

  “All of this? The past few days, really isn’t the weirdest?” I said, my voice not concealing my lack of belief.

  “Top three for sure,” Lana said, rubbing her chin and looking up into the starry night. “There was one guy with a rubber ducky fetish.” She said with her signature impish grin. “You know what, he also had a jeep.”

  “I stand corrected,” I said, and we both laughed for a time until we feel back into companionable silence. I waited for Lana to say more, to truly answer my question. I could tell she was building up to it, but had to settle her own mind.

  “My dad had something happen to him on one of his deployments.” I watched as her hands fidgeted in her lap, her words coming slowly. “Half his squad didn’t come back. He changed after that; it was like the world wasn’t the place that it had been before. I thought it was PTSD, at first. Or him struggling to cope with the loss.”

  She pulled her knees up in the char, hugging them with an arms. “Later, he realized a few of his surviving friends had begun going missing. They lived all over the country, a few even disappeared from military bases. One at a time. He was… well, he grew sure they were being hunted.” She pulled her legs closer, a tremor of cold, or something else passing over her.

  “After that we moved a lot. Didn’t use phones or the internet. We lived out of a motor home traveling for months at a time on the road while he was on leave, long before influencers made that lifestyle seem glamorous.” She smiled bitterly.

  I watched her, felt the dread she felt.

  “He grew more and more paranoid. Then he found some people he referred to as Seekers. He started going out with them on training missions. We traveled several states with a small group. His joy seemed to return, so I didn’t ask too many questions. Through that time, he trained me, or if we were in any place for longer than a week or two I took fighting classes. I learned to shoot and spar. He met with dozens of people, from the FBI, CIA, law enforcement, even random people who clearly had no military training, but he always kept me at a distance from them.”

  “After about six months of that he grew more secure, and I thought he was getting back to normal. He bought us a house in Arizona when his leave ended. I started school and thought life was back to normal until I found one of his journals. He’d left it out and I was curious, so I poked around in it. He was investigating supernatural sightings.” She stopped for a moment; her eyes boring into the flames of the fire. “I confronted him and asked why. He’d never kept anything from me until those last few months,” she let out a soft bittersweet laugh. “It wrecked me for a while.”

  Lana took a deep breath, “It took some work on his part to prove it. I thought he’d had a psychotic break and reacted to it the way you probably assumed I would when you told me you are a wizard. Eventually he got me to listen to the full story. And I believed him.”

  “On his last deployment, half his squad had been killed by something moving faster than should have been possible, something he knows he shot yet it wouldn’t die. Then as his surviving friends and comrades began to disappear, he was certain it was hunting them. He felt like he’d gathered enough information and was planning on killing the creature. He left with a few seekers and friends from the military to ‘take care of it’… and I never heard from him again. He disappeared.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, scooting my chair closer to sit beside hers. I clasped her hands in mine. Hers were shaking. She had tears, big silent droplets falling from each eye.

  “He disappeared. He never came back,” she whispered. “He sent me to my grandmothers before he left which was our routine. It was supposed to be a short stay, a weekend. But days passed. I began to worry. I stayed by my grandmother’s phone for four days and nights straight waiting for him to call.” Her watery eyes met mine, glistening in the firelight, “He never did. He never came home. Weeks passed, and I knew something was wrong.” She took a small quick breath, as if gathering her strength for her next words. “I never found out what happened to him or the creature. A few weeks later I turned 18 and went back home to Arizona on my own. I wanted to see if I could figure out what happened. Find out where he went by looking at his journals or meeting with the people he had interacted with in Arizona. I only had to find them myself. I took a job with the park rangers and spent most of my free time and money looking for anyone who might know anything. I tried to piece together what he’d found, where he’d gone. He told me so much, but nothing about what was chasing him, nothing about where he was going, nothing about what to do if he failed.”

  I felt the tenseness in her arm and hands as I held them.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. It took a few moments for Lana’s body to calm. The recounting had been difficult for her. More pieces of her life story fell into place within my mind.

  “Chris was one of those I met in Arizona. His dad and mine met a lot so we hung out a bit. He was already in the FBI and helped me try to find the people my dad had. After about a year we dated… but it didn’t last long.”

  “And you’re sure your dad is dead?”

  Lana stiffened, “As sure as I can be. It’s been almost four years. He said it was a very dangerous mission, but he’d be back soon.”

  I sighed. Four years was a long time, especially for someone resourceful like Lana’s father clearly been. He would have returned if he could or sent word. The lack of closure was clearly a festering wound for her.

  We sat, still, watching the flames slowly burn down. Our hands clasped. I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound trite, but I could see my company was enough. Lana had needed to get this off her chest to someone.

  “As for you, I was interested in you at the gym,” Lana said, wiping away lingering tears. “If that helps with anything. Things didn’t suddenly change when you told me about all the supernatural stuff, it just… made it easier. I knew I wouldn’t have to hide anything I believed from you.”

  “You said you only wanted a friend when you came over? And if I remember correctly, you were leaving after I told you the truth, until Officer Vance showed up.”

  “It sounded too far-fetched. I’ve searched down people who said they were wizards, but they weren’t legitimate. I… I thought you might be like them. But I did come over the day we met. Your cute.” She said, her nose scrunching in the firelight, shadows exaggerating the cute quirk. “And everyone around here loves you. Rex, Sarah, Kate. People with a lot of red flags don’t have groups around them like that.”

  I chuckled, “If only Rex knew the truth.”

  “He knows. Not everything, but he knows your different. It doesn’t faze him. Now quit doubting and asking why I would like you—Yes, you’ve got some quirks. Yes, I wanted a little more time to think things over last night before the police arrived, but then I found out you’ve been nothing but honest and trustworthy.” Her voice fell, “Even when I didn’t believe you. You had everything to lose, yet your concern was for me. You didn’t lash out. You treat others well. You are surrounded by hardships but are trying to make the world better. Literally trying to protect people.”

  Her eyes bore into mine, brooking no argument, “Don’t question it, just know, I like you. I just do. It’s been a damn long time since I found someone I instinctively liked and felt like I could relax and be myself around. Lots of men don’t like a strong woman. They don’t like someone who can out drive, outshoot, and out fight them.”

  “—Hey, you haven’t seen me shoot.”

  “I don’t need to,” she said with a smug grin.

  “Yeah… You probably don’t.”

  My heart swelled. Lana had shown me over and over in our brief time knowing each other that she was someone I could trust. She’d spoken on my behalf with Chris, stayed when the police had questioned me when the smart thing would have been to run. When she was attacked at my home and learned about the supernatural, she had handled it well, wanting more—not running for the hills. I could extend her some trust as she was extending trust to me.

  “Now, tell me about your past?” Lana said, shifting in her seat so her shoulder bumped into mine. “Tell me what brings you here and why you’re doing what you do? How did Cal become the friendly neighborhood wizard?”