“Why?” Barb asked.
“You’re holding that with your bare hands?” the redhead asked. “Your bare hands. Seriously?”
“Mrs. Everette could probably hold anything in the Dark Sector,” Artie said. “In her bare hands. Just put…put it in the bag.”
“Why not?” Barb said. “And why am I putting it in the bag, and, more to the point, who are you people?”
“So what’s so special about her?” the girl asked.
“We’re the people telling you to put the artifact in the bag,” Artie said.
“We’re the people that handle artifacts,” the redhead said. “And what’s so special about her?”
“Artifacts?” Barb asked, still unsure if she should just give up a symbol of evil to rather odd people she’d never even heard of.
“Secret Service,” Karol said. “They handle static items. Artifacts. Power symbols. That sort of thing. FBI, well, we handle nonstatic items.”
“What are non static items?” the redhead asked. “If it’s chopping up oh-my-gods, I’m your girl!”
“You don’t want to know,” Artie said. “Now put it in the bag.”
“You aren’t, in fact, our sort,” Karol said, smiling to relieve the blow. “You, Claudia, are much more a Warehouse type. Trust me on this.”
“But what’s the other type?” Claudia asked.
“People who can deal with nonstatic items,” Artie said. “In. The. BAG!”
“Alright already,” Barb said, dropping the “artifact” into the bag. There was a brief flash of purple light and the feeling of malevolence dropped to nearly nothing. “What is that?”
“None of your concern,” Artie said, putting the bag in the sample case. “We really ought to take that sword as well.”
Barb went to immediate two-handed cat stance.
“Whoa, whoa, sister!” Claudia said. “Friends! Friends! I’m sure he was just kidding, right? Kidding. Right, Artie?”
“I’m sure we’ll end up with it eventually,” Artie said with a sigh. “Although where we’ll find the room…”
“See you next time,” Karol said.
“Drinks?”
“Murphy’s?”
“Friday?”
“Rome. There’s going to be sooo many reports about this one.”
“Have your people call my people. We really need to get together more often.”
“Ciao.”
“But what are nonstatic items…?”
“What warehouse…?”
“Ask Germaine,” Karol said, looking around at the mess. “He’s a Regent. And we really should check on your cohort.”
“Janea!” Barb said. “Just let me…take a dive in the river, I guess.”
CHAPTER ONE
Doris shook her head and looked around the room. For a moment it was like she’d just woken up from a nightmare. There had been pain, so much pain. Then she was here. Wherever “here” was.
It was a large room with medium-height ceilings, brightly lit. It clearly was in a big structure, maybe a hotel. There were various exits and signs, none of which were really penetrating right away. People were entering from a door behind her and going past her in twos and threes, most of them talking excitedly. From somewhere in the room a song was booming an electronic beat.
Today is your birthday
But it might be the last day of your life
What will you do if tomorrow it’s all gone?
You won’t be young forever
It’s only a fraction to the sum
You won’t be young forever
Nor will anyone
She had to think. It was like her brain was filled with cotton wool. She was…
She had a plastic bag in one hand and a backpack over her shoulder. Looking at the bag, it said “Dragon*Con” on the front, with some sort of a symbol. It had…some books and papers in it. There was a sign across the room Hyatt Hotels Welcomes Dragon*Con!”
So…Sure, she was at Dragon*Con. Of course. Bob had told her she could find “people like her” there. People who didn’t think she was weird or ugly or strange.
Come to think of it, some of the people did look sort of strange. The music-she could finally find its source- was coming from over by some tables halfway down the room. The people gathered around them, setting up some sort of booth, certainly fit the bill of “strange.” Uber-Goths with bright-colored hair and black clothes. The girls’ hair was mostly an almost-fluorescent red that bordered on purple, while most of the guys had black. One of the guys had a skater cut with dreadlocks, black eyeliner and a weird, slumped look. Strange. Stranger than her. Not…her sort. Not that there was her sort anywhere.
“Miss, people are trying to walk here,” a heavy-set man said as he dodged around her. He wasn’t impolite about it, just sort of informative.
“Sorry, sorry…” she answered and moved to the side. He’d almost bumped her.
She hugged the wall and looked around. There was a sign that said “Women” down the same wall about halfway across the room. She stayed by the wall and carefully crept into the ladies’, trying not to be noticed.
She finally found the refuge of a stall, slid the bolt and sat on the toilet, trying not to panic. There were just too many people, too much chaos even though the large room had had barely thirty people in it. It was just like school. People meant bullies, boys and girls. The cheerleaders and the football players. The Names and the In- Crowd. The people that made sure she Knew Her Place every single day. And her place was right square at the bottom.
Doris…She knew that much. And Bob had said to go to Dragon*Con. That there were people “like her” there. But most of the rest of it was a blur.
Okay, take stock. She was apparently at Dragon*Con. That was in Atlanta. She had a badge pinned to her shirt. It said “Doris Grisham.”
That was better. Okay, sure. Doris Grisham. She’d grown up in Mt. Union, Alabama. Her dad was a lumber cutter, worked for Weyerhaeuser ’til he got hurt, then mostly just sat in the trailer and drank. Which was what momma did all the time.
She’d gone to Hill Crest High. She knew that much. She’d learned her place fer sure in Hill Crest. The only place she was safe was the library. She’d lived in the library as much as she could.
Nearsighted, too ugly to get a date, too dumb to pass a class. That was Dumb-ass Doris. She was a total loser. A nobody. She Knew Her Place. It was to marry some redneck as dumb-ass as her and push out another passel of useless kids that’d cut wood ’til they got hurt and lived the rest of their life on assistance.
But that was then. Whenever then was. Who was she now? And why couldn’t she remember, when Hill Crest was clear as day?
She opened up the backpack and rummaged through it. Some cheap T-shirts, mostly thin as paper from much washing. Granny underwear that wasn’t much better. The baggy jeans she was wearing had holes, and they weren’t stylish holes at all. Worn running shoes in “guy” colors. A T-shirt three times too large for her. Most of the ones in the bag were XXXL, for that matter.
There was a toothbrush in the bag, and a tube of lipstick. Rolling it out, Doris knew instinctively it would
