Free Mommy Issues of the Dead (Marla Mason) by T.A. Pratt Page B

began.
    “What, so you can lock it in a vault and give me back a duplicate cloak with some shitty temporary enchantments and hope I don’t notice?” Viscarro’s covetousness in regard to magical artifacts was legendary, and he didn’t scruple when it came to acquiring new toys for his vast collection. Obsession like that wasn’t healthy. Doubtless indicative of some deeper psychological flaw. Probably something to do with his upbringing. “I’ll make my own arrangements.”
    #
    Marla caught a pre-dawn flight to the airport in Greensboro North Carolina, and one of Viscarro’s local contacts drove her the two hours or so into the mountains near Sweetwater. The driver was a fairly attractive guy with short blond hair, about Marla’s age, but he had his jaw wired shut, so his conversation was limited mostly to grunts. Marla wondered if the wiring was due to an injury or if Viscarro was just worried about the guy saying things he shouldn’t.
    She’d never been to the mountains before, and she had to admit, the drive had some beautiful moments – the side of the road dropping away to reveal vast chasms of green, with hazy blue mountains in the distance – but for the most part it just made her uncomfortable, especially when hillsides hemmed the road in tight on both sides, exposed rock faces looking like avalanches waiting to happen, and even the scenic lookouts grew disturbing as she contemplated all that... nature, just sitting there, empty and waiting. Marla lived in the heart of a city and loved it, and the only green she saw on a regular basis these days was the occasional windowsill garden and grass growing up through cracks in the asphalt. She felt a little better when they passed antique malls and Christmas tree farms – crass humanity and consumerism made her feel more at home.
    The driver stopped the car in the middle of a curving road crowded by pine trees and pointed at a nearly-hidden steep driveway that wound up the side of a wooded hill. “Bet that driveway’s a bitch to get up in the winter,” she said. “My guy’s up there?”
    The driver nodded and held up two stopwatches, each set for one hour. He pressed their start buttons simultaneously.
    “You’ll be back for me here in an hour, when this runs out?” Marla said.
    Another nod.
    “And if I’m not here, you’ll come back every hour after that until I am here.”
    He couldn’t frown, exactly, but he tried to, and winced at however it felt, and shook his head.
    Marla grinned, reached into her knapsack, and withdrew her favorite dagger. The blade was old, but she kept it sharp. “That wasn’t a question, Jaws. You will be here every hour, or I will come find you after I’m forced to make my own way out of this place. I know all kinds of magic – how to start fires with a word, how to insinuate myself into dreams, how to make myself unseen – but I won’t bother with any of that stuff. I’ll just cut your balls off with this knife. After I do some whittling first to make the blade duller. Understood?”
    Wide-eyed, he nodded, rather more vigorously this time.
    “Excellent. Maybe pick up some doughnuts or something for the drive back, too, huh?” She slipped out of the car and headed up the driveway, and though she was in good shape, she soon felt a burn in muscles she didn’t often use. She’d have to start running up and down stadium bleachers or something – just traveling the relatively flat streets of Felport wasn’t sufficient conditioning, obviously.
    Birds sang, a cool breeze blew – that first nip of autumn in the air – and she had to admit, the fall foliage was pretty, where it peeked out from the zillions of evergreens that mostly surrounded her. The driveway petered out next to a low cinderblock foundation that had probably once supported a mobile home, and she sighed, looked around, and followed what might have been a deer path deeper into the woods. The perpetual motion machine in her bag was heavy as hell, and