“I got an elk while picking blueberries,” Alton said. “I figured I’d come out and check on you.”
Alton made a living by foraging for fruits and nuts that grew wild now that half the farms in Pittsburgh were abandoned. He sold his finds to the elf enclaves and the handful of restaurants still in business. When it started to snow, he’d switch to hunting big game. It was early in the year for him to bag an elk; the midsummer heat made it difficult to properly age the meat. What he wasn’t saying was that he needed to borrow her garage which been converted out of Hyeholde’s old springhouse.
Jane nodded but added terms. “I want some of the blueberries and meat.”
Alton put out his hand to seal the deal with a fist bump. “Brandy said you’re working with a new crew.” He pitched the last as a question, tilting his head toward the Chased by Monsters production truck. “Is Hal okay? I heard he set himself on fire.”
“He’s fine.” Jane glanced into the back of his pickup. A young red elk bull filled the truck’s bed. The big male was a cousin to the Eastern Elk, which had gone extinct in Pennsylvania in 1877. She hadn’t known that fact until she and Hal had done a Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden episode on a young bull that was terrorizing Observatory Hill. A herd of elk might make a good show for Chased by Monsters. The oni were suppressing information out of Pittsburgh in preparation for a guerilla war with the elves. To build human support for the city, Jane and her crews needed to show the interesting upside of living on Elfhome. Bountiful big game would win the hunters over. “Where did you bag it?”
“Down by Brownsville, almost to the Rim. There’s a mated pair of saurus with little ones or a warg pack or something pushing herds into the South Hills. I could have dropped two or three but I’m not sure where I’d age all the meat. Want me to bag you one?”
She shook her head. “I want to film a herd.”
“Ah, okay.” He circled back to the start of the conversation. “So why does Brandy want me to sit on you?”
There was no avoiding it so she might as jump to the truth like ripping off a bandage. “I found out who took Boo and where they were holding her.”
“What?” he shouted. “What are we doing here? Why haven’t you gone after her? Why didn’t you call us? Why would Brandy want me to sit on you?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Jane was glad that she’d left her brothers out of the rescue mission. “I need you to calm down and promise me…”
“No,” Alton snapped. “I’m going after her, with or without you.”
Jane punched him in the stomach. He clamped down on a cry of pain and took a swing at her but she’d already ducked out of his reach. He really needed to learn to keep his guard up. “Listen to me.”
He unleashed a string of curses as he staggered back, rubbing his stomach.
“And stop swearing; you sound like a whore. I’ve already went after her.”
“Oh, freaking hell, Jane, you could have started with it was another false lead!”
“Shut up and listen. I need you to promise me that you won’t tell a soul about Boo.”
“What?”
“You need to keep your mouth shut. No one can know about Boo and Joey. Promise me.”
“Who the hell is Joey?”
Jane sighed. It would be easier to explain this only once to all of her family but that was a recipe for sheer chaos. “You’ve been listening to the news? Did you hear that besides Earth and Elfhome with the elves, there’s a third parallel universe where the world is Onihida and its people are called oni. There used to be ways to go from universe to universe via caves.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He made a motion that she should jump to her point. “Magic resonance through the rocks, blah blah blah, same effect that transfers Pittsburgh to Elfhome. Wormholes between mirror worlds. Some with magic, some without. Wait? You mean the oni took Boo?”
Jane signaled for him to wait. “The oni and the elves had a war three hundred years ago. It started on Onihida but it spilled onto Earth in China. The oni managed to push a small army through their pathway before the elves pulled down the caves. Part of that force were tengu; humans who had been merged with crows as punishment.”
“The tengu took Boo too? Why? I could see them taking Tinker now that she’s a…”
“Just shut up and listen!” Jane cried. “The tengu had been normal humans. They couldn’t easily find their way back and forth between the two worlds, but they were doing it. Onihida was like the Aladdin’s treasure cave and giant’s castle in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and every fairy tale you ever heard. It was filled with monsters but if you were cunning and brave, there was gold and treasure. Or at least, that’s the legend that lured the tengu to Onihida.”
“What does this have to do with Boo?”
“Do you want hit again?”
“No!” He backed away from her, hands up. “I just don’t see where you’re going with this fairy-tale stuff.”
“It matters. Trust me.”
“Fine. Can we string up my elk while you tell me ‘once upon a time’ bullshit?”
Hyeholde been built by hand by Jane’s great-grandparents in 1930s stones and timbers salvaged from a big old barn. The sprawling house looked like a castle and the old springhouse had been built to match. Thus it had been built with two-foot-thick foundation stones and a vaulted ceiling that could double as a hayloft. Most of the year it was a perfect place to hang deer and boar to age. The heat of mid-July, though, meant that Alton would need to break the elk down to something that could fit into a walk-in cooler.
While they used his truck’s hoist and a pulley anchored to one of the roof joists to lift the half-ton beast, Jane explained who Joey Shoji was.
“So this guy Joey…”
“He’s six, Alton. He’s a little boy, not a guy.”
This made her younger brother look even more confused. “So this little boy is like a prince of the tengu.”
“More or less. His uncle Jin is the Chosen One.” Jane was a little unclear what all that entailed beyond making Jin something like the pope, only more so. “If his uncle dies, then Joey or one of his cousins will become the next Chosen One. Apparently selection isn’t as simple as oldest inherits; it sounds like a roll of the dice. One in four it’s Joey. Maybe one in five.” The oni had used magic to transform Boo into a tengu; specifically they’d made her part of the Chosen bloodline by using Joey as a blueprint. The boy seemed sure that made Boo a valid candidate.
“Okay.” Alton meant he was still completely lost but didn’t want to admit it. “But why can’t I tell anyone this shit? Why the hell would I even want to? And what does this have to do with Boo?”
“Promise me that you’ll keep your mouth shut. You can’t even tell our cousins. Just us can know.”
“Know what?”
“I found Boo, and I killed people to get her back.”
He worked his mouth, too stunned to form a coherent word, then finally forced out, “What? You? Where?”
“Promise me. You know what will happen to me if I’m arrested? I’ll get sent to Earth and locked up.” Maybe even executed, but she didn’t want to put that on him. Once he got over the shock he’d fall into “oldest male syndrome.” He’d alternate between being pissed off that she didn’t call him and feeling guilty that he wasn’t the one that found Boo.
“Fucking hell, of course I’ll keep my mouth shut. You really killed someone? Where did you find her? Where is she now?”
“In my living room, watching a movie.”