WOTD: Variorum (short fic)

Word of the Day Prompt

Date: March 11, 2015

Universe: Haskell Investigations

Word of the Day: variorum (adj;1.  Containing different versions of the text by various editors; 2. Containing many notes and commentaries by a number of scholars or critics)

Timeline: post-book one, no major spoilers

A small bubble of panic welled in Rick’s throat.  He’d let go of Az’s hand for one second – just long enough to shield his eyes from the fireball – and lost her.  He stood still in a swarm of firemen, police officers, paramedics, and screaming witches.  Sharp eyes scanned the crowd for a bobbing blonde ponytail.  With the smoke from the fire and the acrid odor of burning herbs, he couldn’t use his enhanced senses to locate her magnolia scent.

Had she gone into the burning building?  Had she been knocked down by the explosion and trampled?  Had one of the witches attacked her?  Az got along with the Sisters of Munificence, but it had been five weeks since their last witch fight.  They were due.

There was no sign of Az in the crowd.  He should have carried her away from the house when the first spark lit up the night.  He should have handcuffed her to his wrist.   He should have locked her in the truck.  He should have left her at home with the rest of the pack.

Rick retrieved a roll of antacids from his pocket and popped two cherry-flavored tablets in his mouth.  The grit stuck to his molars as he chomped on the pills.  The mild cooling sensation did little for his churning gut.  Doc Taylor was on his ass about his blood pressure.  Rick was going to send Az to Doc Taylor for a week to prove that medication was unnecessary.  His blood pressure would return to normal just as soon as he had a void who didn’t run off whenever a thought popped into her pretty, reckless head.

He dug into his other pocket for his phone.  After dialing Az’s number, he jammed one finger into his ear and held the phone up to the other.  One ring.  Two.

His ass vibrated.

Twice.

Anger swiftly replaced the panic. He reached into his back pocket.  The neon pink smartphone was still vibrating.  His face, slack with sleep, filled the screen.  When had she taken the picture?  Why was he listed under “Growly”?  Did she really enjoy running with Greta and him in the mornings?  He’d practically tattooed the rule about phones on her forehead.  Why had she slipped her phone into his pocket?  Why hadn’t he noticed?

Rick popped another antacid before pocketing both phones.  He grabbed the shoulder of a passing uniformed police officer.  “Have you seen Az Stanton?”

The cop’s forehead scrunched up.  After a moment, it smoothed out and a grin slowly spread across his face.  “Cute little blonde thing, right?  Great smile, decent rack, downright sweet ass?  Consults with the supe squad?”

Rick ground the antacid into fine powder.  He balled his fists to keep from wrapping his hands around the cop’s scrawny neck.  The cop didn’t know it yet, but his career was over.  Rick was going to use every iota of influence he held to ensure the cop never guarded anything more than a crosswalk.

A crosswalk in front of a retirement home.

Oblivious to how close he was to certain death, the cop chuckled.  “I haven’t seen her tonight.  Wish I had.  I hear she’s close with witches.  Big explosion like this is bound to be upsetting.  I wouldn’t mind offering up my shoulder for her to cry on.  I could take her mind off this tragedy, if you know what I mean.”

Rick bared sharp, gleaming fangs.  Fur sprouted along the back of his hands.

The cop went ashen.  He finally focused on Rick’s face.  Went even whiter.  He tugged at the collar of his shirt.  “You’re the Alpha of the Pack.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Ms. Stanton is a member of your pack.”

“Yeah, she is.”

“Oh, Jesus.”  Sweat dotted the cop’s forehead.  “Oh, sweet Jesus.”

“Play nice, Ricky!”

At the laughingly-issued command, both men turned away from the house.  A slender, pale figure emerged from the shadow of an ambulance.  Az, hem of her prissy skirt coated with ashes, waggled her finger as she approached.

Rick quickly scanned her for injuries.  There was a small scrape along her left cheek and red handprints on each of her forearms.  He checked her eyes for signs of a magical overload.  The blue gaze locked on to his was sad but clear.

As soon as she was within reach, he looped an arm around her waist and dragged her to his side.  Aware that the frightened cop was watching, Rick let his lips linger on the warm curve of her cheek before resting his chin on top of her head.

“Oh, Jesus,” the cop muttered, backpedaling.  He stumbled over his own feet.  “I’m sorry.”

He melted into the crowd.  Rick let him go.  He’d memorized the cop’s badge number.  Retribution could wait.  His attention turned to the woman snuggled up against him.  He dragged her away from the swarm of first responders.  The heat from the fire was only fueling his simmering rage.

“There are no words for how much trouble you’re in, Astraea.”

Az sighed.  Her fingers dipped into his back pocket, but she didn’t immediately grab her phone.  “Somehow, I doubt that.  You always find the words.”

His growl made the ground beneath their feet rumble.  “There isn’t enough cute in the world to get you out of this one, either.”

“I’d be willing to test that theory.”  She flashed a small, seductive smile.  “I’ve been reading this book on -.”

“You disappeared.  Before we got out of the damn truck, I told you to stay with me.  It was an order.  Not a suggestion.  But what did you do as soon as I let go?  You disappeared.  Not a word.  Not a warning.  Nothing.  Just poof.”

“Rick, I -.”

“And then,” he snarled, “you left your phone with me!  What have I told you a thousand times about that damn phone?”

“Rick’s electronic leash law,” she said, smile slipping away.  “I don’t have pockets and you made me leave my purse in the car.”

“Then maybe you should think of that before you pull another ridiculously impractical outfit from your closet.”  Rick’s angry glare pinned her in place.  “If you’re serious about this shit, Az, then you have to start obeying me.  All the time.  Not just when it’s convenient for you.  Probation period is over, sweetheart.  Time to prove you’re ready to be pack.”

“I am ready!”

“Prove it.”  Rick shook his head disgustedly.  “Sometimes I swear you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

Az stiffened against him.  Stilled.  Her chin dropped to her chest.  Rick felt the tremble of her shoulders.  His anger cooled instantly.  Ah, hell.  He’d let his fear-driven fury get the better of him. At times his tongue could be sharper than his claws, and Az pushed his buttons like no one else.

“You don’t mean that,” Az said softly, hesitantly.  It was more question than statement.

“No, I don’t.”  Rick wrapped both arms around her to cradle her against his chest.  He buried his face in her soft hair.  “Of course I don’t mean it, sweetheart.  You know how I feel.  But you have to stop doing this to me.  You make me crazy.”

“I’m sorry.  I needed to get away from the house.  I was trying to avoid the Sisters of Munificence.  I warned them that this would happen.  I warned them every chance I got.  I had to get away, clear my head.  I thought I was good, but then I ran into Matron Laurie.”  She sighed again, melted against him.  “It was ugly.”

Rick remembered the marks on her arms.  Marks he was more than willing to repay on Matron Laurie.  “She hurt you.  She’s an empath, and she felt your guilt.  Two of her girls died; she took it out on you.”

Az swallowed.  Her hands settled on the small of Rick’s back.  Her nose pressed against his sternum.  Rick gently stroked his hands up and down her spine.  There were no tears soaking into his shirt, yet.  His poor, compassionate void took her responsibilities far too seriously.  She considered every misstep by a witch as a personal failure on her part.  The deaths of two witches would haunt her for weeks.  He’d have to watch her closely – make sure she didn’t fall into a funk.  He was going to be on nightmare duty, too.

“It’s not your fault, Princess.  The Sisters of Munificence are notorious for resisting change. You could have talked until you were blue in the face and it wouldn’t have done a lick of good.  Laurie’s a third-gen Matron.  She should have known better.  It’s not your fault.”

“Damn straight it’s not.”  Az pushed back just far enough to scowl up at Rick.   “I told that obstinate hag that she was playing with fire.  Literal fire.  She didn’t listen.  This is on her.”

Rick floundered for a moment.  She didn’t feel guilty?  She was angry?  At the witches?  “Huh?”

“I told them to stop being so damn tight-fisted and buy unadulterated copies of their spellbooks.  Variorums are cheaper, but something gets lost with all those commentaries and unnecessary edits.  This was a disaster waiting to happen.”

Rick shook his head and tried not to laugh.  Az took her books seriously.  She couldn’t understand that not everyone shared her passion.  Especially not cost-cutting witches.

“So what happened to your arms?”

“Matron Laurie started screaming about sabotage or an attack.  It pissed me off.  We just got tensions down to a reasonable level.  The last thing we need is someone from another coven to hear her running her mouth and firing things up again.”

“A fair point.  That doesn’t explain what happened to your arms.”

Az lifted her chin.  “Matron Laurie wouldn’t shut up.  I asked politely.”

Rick reached for another antacid.  Evasiveness meant that he wasn’t going to like what she had to say.  “What.  Did. You.  Do?”

“Punched that old biddy in the collagen-enhanced mouth.  It took three of her witches to keep me from breaking her hook of a nose.”

Rick knew he should discourage her occasional bursts of violence.  She was usually the even-tempered, diplomatic half of their team, but every now and then she gave into the anger.  He needed to teach her his breathing and meditation techniques.  The witches she had to deal with on a weekly basis were enough to try the patience of a saint.

He should discourage violence, but he was a Shifter.  Violence was as much as part of him as breathing or eating.  Az wasn’t a Shifter, but she was pack.  And her violence made him proud.

He dropped a kiss on the top of her head.  “That’s my girl.”

Sweet Ride - Normalcy

While I work on Sometimes It is Rocket Science and The Art of War and Werewolves, I've been decompressing and coming down from my Ashwood-haze with a series of shorts.  The title is Sweet Ride and the tagline, in a nutshell, is "A series of shorts on life, love, and the pursuit of aliens."

Be prepared for a whole lotta silliness.

The backdoor exploded open. Splintered wood littered the kitchen floor. Heart pounding so hard it hurt her chest, sixteen-year-old Sarah Johansen reached for the small stun gun concealed in the cutlery drawer. Sweat dotted her forehead. Her arm trembled.

"Towels! Lots of them!" a female voice barked out. A slender, medium-height figure covered in blue goo appeared on the threshold.

Sarah's shoulders sagged in relief. Tears gathered in the corners of her brown eyes as she said a mental thank you to whichever deity protected teenage girls who were home alone. She caught a whiff of sour milk before dashing off to the laundry room. By the time she returned, the figure had moved into the kitchen and was dripping goo onto the bamboo floor. She tossed two towels on the floor and threw a stained, pink towel at the figure.

"Why didn't you hose off outside first?" she asked, using a fourth towel to wipe at the goo covering the figure's back. The goo was thick and sticky. It smelled worse up close.

"Uh, because it's cold?" A swipe of the pink towel across the figure's face revealed the smooth cheeks, slightly crooked nose, and slate blue eyes of Sarah's aunt and guardian Astra Johansen.

"Don't get this stuff in your nose or mouth. It's hell on the mucus membranes."

Sarah dropped the towel she'd been using and took a large, hasty step backwards. Her soft-soled sneakers had no traction on the slick floor. Her feet flew out from under her; she landed flat on her back, head inches from a barstool. Cold blue goo soaked into the seat of her jeans and stained her hands.

"This isn't going to turn me into a Smurf or anything is it?"

"Nope. No Smurfette for you." Astra paused, eyes going soft and unfocused. "Well, probably not. Nothing that won't fade away by Monday, at least."

"Except I have a date tomorrow night." Sarah crawled across the floor to the round table in the breakfast nook and used the edge of the table to haul herself to her feet. "You did this on purpose, didn't you? You don't like Matt Barker."

Astra wrapped a towel around her head before crouching down to unlace her goo-coated running shoes. "Oh, I like Mr. Barker just fine. He's a polite boy and a hell of a field goal kicker. I do wish he'd pay more attention to his grades, but other than that he's a surprisingly normal teenage boy."

"Ah. Normal." Bitterness dripped from Sarah's words. "I forgot what a crime being normal was."

"It's not just him, kiddo. It's his parents. The lawyer and the doctor. Who both have time to make it to every PTA meeting and participate in the booster club and bake sales. They look so perfect it makes my teeth itch."

"Matt says they never fight. So what if his family is normal?"

"Anyone who tells you their family is normal is lying or an alien. Even then they're probably lying."

"Not everyone has a closet full of skeletons, Aunt Az."

Astra eyed her niece for a long moment. She let out a reluctant sigh and slung an arm across Sarah's shoulder. "You're right, kiddo. I'm sorry. I'll go easy on your Mr. Barker."

"But you'd still like it if I brought him by for a quick scan, wouldn't you?"

"Better safe than a Pfrashan's midnight snack."

"Can you do it without drawing blood this time? It always makes the rest of the date awkward."

Astra released Sarah. On her toes, Astra hurried back to the door and snagged a strap on the goo spattered backpack just inside the doorway. She plopped the pack on the granite countertop. Glass rattled and something beeped.

Sarah carefully made her way across the kitchen, glanced at the chicken sauteing in the pan, and leaned against the counter with her arms crossed. "Dinner's going to be ready in ten minutes. If you blow the kitchen up, you're ordering the pizza."

Astra scowled at her niece. She unzipped the center compartment of the pack. She stuck her hand into the dark recesses of the pack. When she was elbow-deep in the pack, she let out a soft, triumphant laugh. "Got it!"

"I want pepperoni and mushroom. And breadsticks."

Astra held up her find. What looked like an old Polaroid camera dangled from a weathered black leather strap. She cradled it in her hands, stroked the grimy lens with blue fingers.

"So you're going to take his picture and see whether or not he shows up on film? I thought you were afraid he was an alien, not a vampire." Sarah knew better than to touch the device. Alien tech always looked benign but usually did nasty things like burn your fingers or make you hallucinate for two days.

"Nope." Astra popped the 'p', grinned. "This is a Virah scanner. I found it in one of the Institute's closets. Terrible xenophobes, the Virahs. Their security forces use these scanners on anyone who passes through their ports. It'll tell you a person's planet of birth, their year of birth in relative time, which solar system their parents are from, the last five planets they've visited, and which immunizations they've had."

"Scan me."

Astra stilled. Her eyes went dark and cold. She blinked and that horrible stillness was gone. The plastic smile that stretched across her face sent a shiver down Sarah's spine. "No can do, kiddo. Don't know how much charge is left in the power cell."

"Okay." Sarah could feel the goo solidifying on her skin. It was cold and hard as concrete. "I'm going to wash my hands and change clothes. Can you watch dinner until I get back?"

"Of course."

Sarah hesitated. Take down squads of rampaging, or just hungry, aliens? Her aunt could do that with one arm tied behind her back. Cook a meal that was nutritious and tasty? Not even with Julia Child standing over her shoulder. "Are you sure?"

"Positive, kiddo. Go wash up before you have to wear gloves to tomorrow's date."

Sarah washed her hands three times with the scrubby antibacterial soap Astra brought home from the Powell Institute, the shadowy quasi-government agency tasked with protecting the US from aliens, and in some cases protecting the aliens from US citizens. To her relief, the blue washed away and she was left with pink, steamy skin. She tossed her jeans in the hamper and pulled on a pair of soft black sweatpants.

By the time she returned to the kitchen, Astra had taken the chicken out of the pan and zapped a bag of frozen vegetables in the microwave. The individual cups of brown rice Sarah had nuked earlier were already on the table. The back door had been closed but there was a gap between the jamb and the door.

"Your turn," Sarah said, sliding the meat thermometer into the nearest chicken breast. She ignored the gold cylinder sticking out of the other breast. Alien tech was good for self defense or verifying that one's potential boyfriend was as human as he looked. It wasn't necessarily good for testing the readiness of poultry.

Astra pressed her lips to the top of Sarah's head. "Back in a flash." She disappeared down the hallway.

Sarah used the towels to wipe up as much goo from the floor as possible. The steam mop took care of the goo that remained. She dumped the towels in the washing machine but didn't turn it on. There was no telling what the goo was. Astra would have to determine which laundry soap they used: the regular detergent or the Institute detergent.

She set Astra's backpack on the built-in desk near the oven. There was something beeping inside, but Sarah knew better than to go looking for the source of the sound. There were dangerous objects in Astra's impossibly deep pack. Items so dangerous Astra refused to leave them in the Institute archives.

The rice was starting to go cold when Astra returned. She was dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a University of Alabama sweatshirt, but her skin held a faint blue tinge and her damp, normally blonde, hair was a startling shade of indigo.

"Either you have a bomb with the longest timer in the world in your bag or your comm unit is going off," Sarah said before Astra could sit at the table.

"I have not brought home a bomb in over two years. I think it's time to let it go, Sare."

Sarah arched a dark eyebrow, flipped the end of her chestnut ponytail over her shoulder. "'Better safe than missing fingers,'" she parroted.

"You know, that copycat thing was cute when you were five. Now, not so much." Astra dug into her pack and emerged with a silver sphere. It was dented and showed signs of having been burned. Astra held up the device, which put out nearly imperceptible telepathic waves, to her temple. She frowned, slipped the device into her pocket.

"Do you have to go back out?" It would be disappointing, but not unusual. Though her aunt tried to conform to something of a regular schedule, Sarah often ate dinner alone.

"Nope. Just a reminder about Monday's meeting." Astra collapsed in her usual chair, gestured at the chair across from hers. "Let's eat before it gets even colder."

In between bites, they traded stories of English assignments and alien sightings. While having to analyze Lord of the Flies wasn't quite on the same scale as negotiating with notoriously long-winded and pompous Losas, Sarah appreciated Astra's attempt to commiserate. She spread out her trigonometry homework while Astra loaded the dishes in the dishwasher.

"It's an alien conspiracy to take over the planet by turning our brains to mush, isn't it?"

"Reality TV? I thought we already had this discussion."

"No, trig." Sarah glared at her textbook, hoping to set it ablaze with the force of her hatred. "All these sines and cosines and tangents. It's confusing."

"Wait 'til you get to spherical trig, kiddo. I thought I was going to have to tattoo the haversine formula on my arm."

"Not helping, Aunt Az."

"Sorry."

The last dish in the washer, Astra nudged the door closed with her foot and rinsed her hands at the sink. She studied Sarah the way Sarah imagined the geeks at the Institute studied bits of space detritus. Just as Sarah braced herself to ask what was wrong, Astra strode forward and sank onto the chair beside Sarah. Astra placed a hand on Sarah's arm, the blue of her fingers lost in dark fabric of Sarah's sweater.

"What we were talking about earlier - the normalcy your Mr. Barker has- is that something you… want?"

A flippant remark was on the tip of Sarah's tongue, but the seriousness etched on Astra's face forced her to swallow it back. She considered the question. For a time she'd envied the friends who had two parents with normal jobs who didn't race out in the middle of dinners or award ceremonies. She'd resented not being able to have sleepovers in case her guardian came home covered in alien goo or with more injuries than she could explain away. Her friends thought her aunt was a cool spy and that was for the best. The truth was too strange for anyone on the outside to truly understand.

She no longer minded finding random pieces of alien tech in the living room or the garage or the freezer. She knew how to use the stun gun and how to call for help. She knew that her aunt wanted her to join the Institute and she was, more or less, okay with that. She'd accepted that the aliens and weird tech and secrecy and the explosions every other Tuesday were normal.

It meant a lot, though, that her aunt was willing to change her life, the life she'd had long before Sarah was even conceived, for her. She let her mechanical pencil fall to the table and launched herself into Astra's arms.

"No, strange as this life is, I think it's just about perfect."

Warm lips pressed against Sarah's temple. Her aunt's voice was high and bright. "I think so, too."

Sarah's eyes fell on the broken door. It would be the third they had to replace in a month. "Next time you go running after a stray pack of Evirs, could you just knock or call ahead? Mr. Haversham at the hardware store is starting to get suspicious."