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“So do your fighting skills, but you don’t see me bitching about them.” He smirked. “Oh wait. I just did.”
Dad looked between us open-mouthed as purple tendrils of energy surged from Herald’s skin to mine, probing my body on a cellular level to stitch together the shallow, torn flesh in my cut.
“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” he croaked.
“Where to start?” Herald said, his eyes turned up to the ceiling. “Let’s see. A psychotic sorceress faked your son’s death, thereby triggering his latent arcane abilities. He turned into a kind of magical sneak thief – not a criminal, mind you, he works on the side of good. Well, mostly. And now he fights evil on a regular basis, including the thing that attacked and knocked you out.” He pushed his glasses up his nose, watching me with more than a little smugness. “That about enough to bring him up to speed?”
“More or less,” I grumbled. I gave dad a tight smile. “That sums it up. This is my job now. Mainly it’s to secure enchanted artifacts so that my boss – this immortal wizard guy – can research them and make sure they stay out of the wrong hands. I live in a pocket dimension with a werewolf and a vampire. Also a Filipino dude who happens to be a necromancer.”
Dad stared at me mouth agape, his forehead knitted into bewildered creases.
Herald sighed. “Easiest way is to show him, Dust.”
I shrugged. This was the second time I was asked to show off my talents in as many days, but lest we forget, I’m totally okay with being the center of attention. And if it meant helping m
y dad understand my new situation, well, so much the better.
“Dad? Don’t freak out, okay? I’m about to show you what I can do.”
He lifted a finger. “Hold that thought.” He turned for the fridge, pulled out a beer, somehow snapped off the top with his bare hand, and took a long, delicious pull. He slammed the bottle on the counter, half of it already gone, then nodded. “Okay. I think I’m ready. Wait. Probably not, but I don’t really have much choice, do I?”
I smiled and shook my head. “Here goes.”
This was second nature by now, and the shortness of my jaunt meant that it was as easy as breathing or blinking. I melted into my own shadow on the ground, the top of my head sinking into the floor just as I heard my father gasping.
I did a brisk jog through the Dark Room, following the pinpoint of light that I knew would bring me over to the shadow by the refrigerator. I emerged there, the fridge humming quietly beside me, then cleared my throat.
Dad’s mouth hung open in shock over my disappearance. He gave off a noise somewhere between a grunt and a yelp. His eyes flitted from my hair to my feet, then back again. Shaking his head, dad lifted his beer to his mouth and tossed back the rest of it.
“Wow,” I said. “You need to control your drinking a little bit.”
Dad ran the back of his hand across his lips, then rubbed it on his shirt. “Depending on where this is going, I might actually start drinking even more.”
“Dad, c’mon.”
“Bad joke. I’m sorry.” He clasped his hands together, pushing his knuckles into his forehead, before he looked at me again, studying me for a moment. “So this is who you are now? This is what you do?”
I shrugged and tried on a little smile. “Hey. It’s a living.” I stared at my thumb. “You’re not mad, are you?”
He frowned. “All these months I thought you were dead. You’ve got friends, a job, a home. I couldn’t be happier. I won’t pretend to fully understand what you do, but I’m proud of you.” He cleared the room in two strides, looking as big as he did when I was a child, like someone who would always take care of me. He wrapped his arms around me, cuffing one hand behind my neck, and pulled tight. “I can’t believe you’re back, Dust. I thought I lost my son. I couldn’t be luckier. I love you.”
I squeezed back, feeling smaller, letting myself be enveloped in the warmth of the only parent I had left. God but I didn’t know how much I’d missed being around him. I choked out a little laugh, fighting to stifle the sob in my throat.
“Love you too, dad.”
He stepped back, clapping me by the shoulders, then fixed me with the same blue eyes that I saw every time I looked in the mirror. “I don’t know what you are, exactly, but I’m proud of you.”
I ran a finger under my eye, sniffled, then chuckled. “I’m not sure what I am, either, but I think it has something to do with this thing that mom left behind.”
I pulled the amulet out of my pocket, lifting it up to our faces. The pendant spun on its axis, the garnet glinting like a red eye. Across the room, Herald folded his arms, watching the amulet intensely.
Dad made a face, his lips pursing, as if he’d just tasted something awful. “She was attached to that thing, but it always creeped me the hell out. Didn’t know why she kept it around. It has no value, as far as we’ve checked. It’s just as cheap and worthless as the others.”
The stifling silence from Herald’s end of the room made me look. His eyes were burning into me with grim understanding. I watched dad warily.
“The – the others, you say?”
“I only held onto them as keepsakes, but I have them tucked under the bed. Never look at them, you know? Like I said. It all freaks me out. Something about the way they’re designed. All those curls, they look like tentacles. Like squid or something.”
