“Please keep me posted,” Mariner said to Rune, who simply nodded. Seemingly satisfied, Mariner turned to me.
“Nice meeting you, Jim,” he said. “Hopefully you won’t find the job of being Rune’s laamuffal too onerous.”
A moment later, he and Sayo simply vanished, leaving no evidence — not even a drop of water — that they’d ever been present.
Chapter 7
“There’s that word again,” I said after our two visitors were gone. “Laamuffal. You’ll be happy to know that I’ve found out what it means, no thanks to you.”
Rune’s eyebrows rose momentarily in surprise, and then I saw understanding dawn in his eyes.
“Sayo,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” I stated with a nod.
“So what did she say?”
“Enough for me to figure out that a laamuffal is basically a sycophant.”
“Whoa,” he grumbled. “That’s kind of harsh, don’t you think?”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head adamantly. “Harsh is your fellow Incarnate brainwashing a young girl into thinking that waiting on him hand and foot is her divine purpose.”
“She’s not young,” Rune shot back.
“What?” I blurted out, not sure what he was talking about.
“Sayo,” he clarified. “She was born in Japan over two thousand years ago, contrary to your theory about being young and brainwashed.”
“So he took her from a time period and culture where women were already subservient,” I noted. “In essence, he didn’t have to do any brainwashing. Society had already done it for him.”
Rune seem to bristle at this. “Well, while you’re up on your high horse, you might want to consider the fact that serving an Incarnate has resulted in her being gifted with an incredibly long life, as well as seeing wonders that most people have never even imagined.”
“Oh, so instead of living only a single lifetime of indentured servitude — say, fifty years — she should be turning cartwheels that she got to serve for forty of them?”
“What is this, some new superpower you’ve developed?” Rune practically demanded. “The ability to twist pros into cons, and recast positive attributes as negative traits? Because I swear, it was not on your résumé.”
We stared at each other for a moment — and then both burst out laughing. Although the conversation had seemed to be getting heated, it was pretty clear that neither of us was taking it too seriously.
“Look,” Rune said, after taking a few moments to compose himself. “I appreciate what you’re saying, but I brought you here to be Sherlock Holmes, not Susan B. Anthony. So put away the suffrage bonnet and put on your detective hat.”
“Fine,” I said. “By the way, here’s a question that’s been bugging me: why me?”
Rune’s brow furrowed. “Why you what?”
“How’d you settle on me to help you with this? I mean, I can follow the logic of you guys needing a hand because — due to your powers — you don’t think the right way for detective work. But why not just scoop up a real detective for this stuff — some cop who’s been working homicide for twenty years and has well-honed instincts about murder and suspects? Or better yet, why not someone like Mouse?”
At the thought of him, I reflected on the fact that Mouse would probably be perfect for this. He was not only the leader of the Alpha League (as well as my League-assigned mentor), but he was quite possibly the smartest man who ever lived. He’d probably have solved Gamma’s murder in an hour.
“It would take a regular detective forever just to get up to speed on the concept of Incarnates, let alone things like this place being outside of space and time — assuming he could wrap his mind around them. You, on the other hand, already had basic knowledge about Incarnates, you’ve been to places like this before, and–”
“A place,” I interjected. “I’ve been to a place like this before.”
“Still, that’s more than most others can say.”
“So I’ve got the requisite background and experience,” I summed up.
“Yes,” he said with a nod. “In addition, we’re dealing with a murderous Incarnate. Thus, even if we rounded up an experienced detective, there would be concern about his welfare.”
“You mean that the guilty party might kill him if he started getting too close.”
“In a nutshell.”
“But you people are Incarnates,” I stressed. “Wouldn’t you be able to protect him?”
“Did you forget that one of us has been killed?” he asked. “Apparently we can’t even protect ourselves.”
“So you need someone with powers,” I deduced.
“We prefer someone with powers,” he corrected.
“Does that even matter?” I asked. “Is having powers going to protect them from a killer Incarnate?”
“Probably not,” Rune admitted. “But we’d like to think we’re not just setting up a turkey shoot.”
“Is that why you struck Mouse off the list?” I asked. “Because he lacks superpowers?”
“Ha!” Rune bellowed, letting out a bark of laughter. “Mouse has powers, and they make him formidable. However, he’s busy with another issue.”
His statement caused me to raise an eyebrow. Mouse and I had just finished dealing with a matter involving a clone of me shortly before I’d allowed Rune to whisk me away. I found it bothersome that another problem had seemingly landed on his doorstep almost immediately — then almost laughed at the irony, considering that the same thing had essentially happened to me. (I shelved for later discussion the comment about Mouse’s powers, although it was the most intriguing thing Rune had said due to the fact that I’d never seen Mouse exhibit any abilities I’d define as “super.”)
“Okay,” I said, “even with Mouse off your short list, why not go with a full-fledged member of the Alpha League instead of someone like me, who’s just a part of the teen affiliate? Alpha Prime, for instance.”
Rune shook his head. “He may be the most powerful superhero on Earth and generally a good guy, but your old man’s not right
