Brisbane wanted into the elf’s travel sacks and wouldn’t leave them alone for the turnip. Once Law explained the porcupine’s stubbornness, Snow produced a saenori out of the packs. The peach-like fruit wouldn’t be ripe in Pittsburgh for another month. It meant Snow had probably recently come from the Easternlands, where Elvish settlements were farther south than those in the Westernlands.
Law’s phone rang with Crazy Lady’s number again. Law accepted the call and said, “I found her. I think. I found a female elf. I’m not sure what her name…”
Crazy Lady cut her off with “Did you get the door?”
“The door?” Law echoed in confusion.
“The white door,” Crazy Lady said. “Get it and take it with you.”
“Really?” Law was running late and running out of patience.
“People will die if you don’t get this right,” Crazy Lady stated calmly. “Probably starting with you.”
“I’m getting the door.”
A quart of white exterior paint was just inside the door still with Wollerton’s price tag and an uncleaned paintbrush dried to a solid slab of white. Both looked brand new. The door, though, obviously had hung in place for years. Luckily she had a cordless screwdriver. Doctor Who would approve. After she stowed the door in the back of her pickup, she nabbed the paint can, too.
She wanted to shortcut through Windgap and McKees Rock to get to downtown. It turned out harder than she expected it to be. After the third “fallen” tree, it was obvious that someone had recently used magic to block the streets. Anyone entering the area would be funneled straight to the house where Snow had been. But why?
She was trying to decide whether to backtrack or go cross-country, when her phone rang again. This time it was her mom. Her monkeys. Her circus.
Sighing, Law answered the call. “Hello, Mother.”
“Twenty-four years I’ve been telling you to call me Flo.”
“You’re my mother—or at least, that’s what my birth certificate claims.”
“You’ve checked?”
“Multiple times.” She kept hoping it was some kind of mistake. Since her mother had saddled her with a boy’s name, she’d gone as far as getting a copy of her birth certificate off of the city. The paperwork ruled out adoption but not switched at birth. The mirror, however, said that was impossible. The older she got, the more she looked like her paternal grandfather; a fact that made neither one of them happy since he had never approved of her mother. “What is it, mother? I’m busy.”
“People with real jobs are busy. People that play around and call it work are not.”
“Mother, we are not having this discussion again.”
“We will continue having this conversation until you realize that you are wasting your life. But that’s not why I called.”
“It’s not?” Law held out the phone to eye it with suspicion. Her mother rarely passed up the opportunity to beat the job thing into the ground in hopes of getting Law to agree just to shut her mother up.
“You will never guess what just showed up at the Scheidemantles’ this morning.”
“Who?”
“The Scheidemantles. They live down the road, just across of Ginny Czernowski.”
“I thought she got married.”
“If I said Virginia Mary Elizabeth Frankenwald, you wouldn’t know who I was talking about.” And people said elves had long complicated names. “She married an accountant that she met in college. They moved into the Donaldsons’ old place. They had a little girl last week. They named her Mercy.”
With every life accomplishment that her mother listed for her classmate, Law knew that what she really was ticking off were things that Law was lacking in her life. A college education on Earth. A job as a dental hygienist. An accountant husband. Home ownership. Children.
Law had no interest in any of that; especially the whole dental hygienist thing. If you were going to school for something, why pick something that required you sticking your hands in other people’s mouths all day?
“Mother, why are you calling me?”
Her mother huffed. “A moving van showed up at the Scheidemantles’ this morning. They are moving back to Earth!”
Law almost asked “Who are the Scheidemantles?” but then remembered that they lived down the street from her mother. Had lived. Apparently weren’t going to live there anymore. “And?”
“They have that lovely Cape Cod. It’s a four bed…”
“No.”
“You can’t keep living in that drafty old barn.”
“Yes, I can.”
“You’re going to freeze to death one of these winters.”
Law knew from experience that her mother wouldn’t listen to any of the sane logical reasons why she picked the barn, starting with its being as far as possible from her mother as she could live in Pittsburgh. There was no way she would choose a house just down the street from her. “I have a Tarzan swing in my living room.”
And her mother hung up on her.
“Let me get this straight.” Ellen McMicking was a customer and good friend. She shared many of Law’s views on how to live one’s life. She owned two gypsy caravans. One was home to her and her three-legged bobcat, Rigel. (Cool, unusual home: check. Odd pet: check.) The other was set up as a food truck. (Own boss: check.) Normally she parked at the Library light-rail station’s vast parking lot. The day before Shutdown, though, she’d moved them into an empty lot in the Strip District. “You stole an elf and a door?”
“I did not steal her!” Law set up her scales while Ellen lined up her coolers. Said elf was in Ellen’s little house, eating a second round of breakfast as if she hadn’t had food for a week. The hot steel-cut oatmeal with warm berry compote was simply delicious, but Law couldn’t imagine having a second big bowl. (By now, though, Snow probably was getting the impression that all humans had very odd pets.) “You don’t steal people! You steal things like…”
“Doors?”
“Yes.” Law was unrepentant about stealing the door; the house obviously had been abandoned years ago. A quick coat of paint did not establish ownership in her book.
“So you kidnapped her?”
“No! She came with me willingly enough.” Still, the female seemed slightly leery, deflecting direct questions with a continuous barrage of questions of her own. The thirty-minute ride into town had been one “What’s this?” after another. Still, she hadn’t asked for help or to be taken anyplace or to anyone.
Ellen giggled, having entirely too much fun with the situation. “Only you, Lawry, would get yourself into this kind of mess.”
“You didn’t find it so funny when it was you that I was bailing out of trouble.”
Ellen pressed both hands to her chest. “And I’m eternally grateful to you. Oh, those look lovely.” She cooed at the waewaeli. “I’m going to honey-fry them.”
“Fish and chips?”
Ellen sighed. “No chips. My potato supplier from stateside let me down last Shutdown and even if he gets me some this one, I won’t have time to prep them. I’ve spent the last three days making bread. I’m going with sandwiches. I will have parmesan zucchini fries for the adventurous.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Yes, but you’re adventurous.”
“Most Pittsburghers will eat anything that doesn’t try to eat them first.”
“Yes, but it’s the truck drivers from Earth whose rigs are being unloaded that have the time and cash to blow. Please tell me that I can have this whole cooler.”
“It’s yours.” Law was glad she caught the last fish.