Besides the pancakes, there were link sausages, butter, and maple syrup placed in the center of the small rectangular table.
Joe pointed toward one of the chairs. “Have a seat, Tess, and help yourself.”
“Thanks, Joe. Everything smells wonderful,” I said as I pulled out the chair farthest from the oven. I took a couple of the plate-sized pancakes and three of the sausage links. The butter was a stick at room temperature, and it began to melt as soon as I spread it across the top pancake. The syrup was warm, and I glanced around for a microwave but didn’t see one. Then I felt foolish for looking. Neither Joe nor Rafe ever needed a microwave to heat something up.
Joe and Rafe joined me as I was digging in.
“How is everything?” Joe asked.
I swallowed a mouthful of food and nodded. “Great, Joe. Thanks for cooking.”
“It’s the least a host can do for his guests.”
“What’s on the agenda for today, Rafe?” I asked.
“I think we’ll do a little cruise around town and see if we can identify where all the excitement is going to take place,” he said between bites.
“Just cruise around and look? How’s that going to work?” I asked, still unfamiliar with some of the details in how Verðandi handed down her assignments.
Rafe set down his fork and took a sip of coffee. “That’s the way it normally works. Something that Verðandi wants handled is going to happen around here. She doesn’t just come out and say be at the corner of Wahsatch and Platte on the morning of the fifth. Rather, as you must have noticed, you’ll get that feeling that you need to be in Colorado Springs. Then when you get here, you have to drive around until you get a stronger feeling that what you’re looking for is going to take place on this corner at some time in the future, usually no more than a few days. However, there have been times that something is already occurring when I arrive. Like this past summer. I was summoned to the Castle Rock area. When I got there, I found that there had been a few violent deaths in recent days. I checked around and eventually located a Sasquatch that had blundered through a gateway and in his confusion was killing anyone that stumbled upon him.”
“Sasquatch? As in Big-Foot?” I asked.
“One and the same,” Rafe said.
I thought Big-Foot was a recent myth, not more than a couple hundred years old, but Rafe had explained enough about most myths having some basis in reality, even if it wasn’t what I’d call our reality. “How did you handle it?”
“Once I located it, I opened a portal to his world and popped him back through. It took me a couple of days to find the portal that he’d blundered through, but once I did, I locked it down so that nothing else would stumble through.”
“But you didn’t kill the Sasquatch?” I asked.
“There wasn’t any reason to. They aren’t that intelligent, about on par with bears, and aren’t a threat to humans unless something opens a portal between our worlds. That’s the majority of our troubles when it isn’t some rogue magic user.”
“I see. So, we’ll just cruise around until something feels funky?”
Rafe grinned. “Yeah, something like that. I can already tell that it will be north of us, but not the exact distance or how far east or west it might be. We should know before dark.”
I thought about it and finished eating; listening to Joe and Rafe catch up on what was apparently several years without seeing each other.
We cleared the table together. I started doing the dishes, but Joe pushed me out of the kitchen saying his guests didn’t do housework.
Rafe and I took fresh coffees out to the porch that faced northeast. The city was still pretty, but not as much as last night. Interstate 25 wound its way through the middle of town and was bustling with large trucks and smaller vehicles. A mile-long train carrying something that looked like open coal cars was making its way on tracks that ran in the corridor formed by the Interstate and a small river.
“Rafe,” I began.
“Yes?”
“Could we take a little time and see my aunt?” I had mentioned wanting to see her yesterday, and Rafe hadn’t shot me down, but I wasn’t sure how he felt about visiting kinfolk. He hadn’t mentioned having any of his own.
“Sure thing. Didn’t I already say I was fine with you seeing her?”
“Yeah, but then you also made that speech about getting to know people and letting them close.”
“And you’re concerned that you might end up getting your aunt killed?” Rafe asked.
I shrugged. “I guess. I know that losing Laura affected you. Hell, losing her even affected me. I don’t want to endanger Aunt Emily.”
Rafe nodded and gave it some thought. Finally, he said, “I don’t think seeing her once will draw any attention to her. You probably shouldn’t tell her more than you have to, but easing her mind on what happened to you is the decent thing to do.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Do you know how to reach her?” Rafe asked.
“I remember her address; the mapping program in my phone will find her.”
“The phones have a mapping program? How’s that work?”
I couldn’t help grinning. For someone so powerful to not know about modern phones was amusing. “The phone uses the GPS system to identify its location and a mapping app shows you where you are on the map. Then you just plug in an address, and it shows you the best route there.”
Rafe’s brown furrowed. “Are you pulling my leg?”
“What? No, of course not. All the smartphones have that capability. They have for years. I can’t believe you haven’t come across them before.”
“I told you, I haven’t ever had much use for calling anyone. I don’t really keep in touch with
