“I’ll miss the metal, but it was way too loud,” I said. I turned to look under the table.
The little girl stared at me with huge eyes, wonder and fear warring there.
I knelt and touched her arm. “It’s okay. We made it all better.”
“You made the monster go away.” Her voice was tiny, like a terrified mouse.
“We did. It’s gone for good,” I said. Tully stood nearby, gaze scouring the area.
An adult version of the young girl rushed up. It had to be the mother.
“Are you okay? Honey, I was so worried!” She looked up from the girl to me and Tully. “Who are you?”
I flipped open my wallet and showed her my R.U.N.E. omni-badge. “Portland Police. We happened to be nearby when the electrical malfunction occurred.”
Tully raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Maybe not the best use of the badge, but I still had two more uses tonight. The omni-badge was a first-order artifact, unlike the other kind. Three uses, and only three uses. Limiting to say the least, but I’d take it over the alternative. Besides, Tully’s badge still had three uses.
Relief washed over the woman’s face. “Thank God!” she said. “I was so worried!” She hustled the little girl away.
Tully walked off to one side, placing a call. He spoke in a low voice, but I could hear everything he said, thanks to the earplugs. He was calling the power company, and verifying that there was a power outage. He said he was a concerned citizen.
Then, his voice ceased speaking in my ear.
The earplugs had been exhausted. They’d not reset until tomorrow night. Dusk to dusk, dawn to dawn, that was the rule.
“The embed is on the way,” Tully said. “That’s who I was contacting, as per procedure.”
“Good.” Nice to know he wasn’t a complete newbie. A poster at the edge of the Winter Market caught my eye. It had a photo of a man and woman, dressed to kill, standing beneath tinsel. Next to the couple were the words, Solstice Charity Ball Tonight, followed by the name of a ritzy downtown hotel. I sighed. Sometimes being a normal, and being able to go to a fundraiser, sounded good. I shook my head. I’d just be bored.
A moment later fire engines and emergency vehicles arrived, followed by an unmarked brown sedan, and two Portland General Electric trucks.
Rescue personnel fanned out, while the PGE trucks drove over to the nearest power pole.
The sedan pulled up to the curb. A middle-aged, balding black man in rumpled clothing emerged from the driver’s side and ambled over to us.
“You must be Marquez and Tully,” he said.
“That obvious?” I asked.
“Yes.” He frowned. “You stand out like a sore thumb, but that’s typical for R.U.N.E. agents.”
Gee thanks. “And you are?” I asked, trying to keep my cool. Annoyance reached in under sixty seconds. Tully didn’t bat an eye, he just looked at me to take the lead. Fine.
“Clinton Simms,” he replied. “Portland contact.”
This was the embed, the local contact between us and everyday world authorities.
“You going to run with an electrical malfunction?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “It’s the obvious choice.” He stepped closer, looked around conspiratorially. “These gremlin whatsitzs are getting out of hand, folks.”
“We’re dealing with it,” I said.
“There’ve been two more in the past half-hour.”
My eyes widened. Tully’s eyebrows shot up.
“You didn’t know.” He whistled softly. “Didn’t your sentinel keep you updated?”
“She’s currently on medical leave.”
“Wow, talk about a case of bad timing. How are you keeping on top of things?” He asked.
“Not very well,” Tully admitted.
I frowned. That answer was only going to worry Simms.
“What do you mean?” Simms crossed his arms over his chest and squinted.
“I mean we are using a backup protocol for this, which has an inherent time delay.” Tully sounded like a technician sorcerer, one of those bookish types who spent all their time in an arcane research library-lab.
Simms rolled his eyes and glanced at me. “Could you translate?”
“He means we’re using a spirit that can only work so fast, and has to send us messengers.”
“Be quicker to call,” he said. “Can’t someone just stay with the spirit?”
I cocked my head, keeping my voice low. “Follow me,” I said, and led the two men away from the fire and rescue action.
“It’s an air spirit. We can’t just walk to it,” I told him.
Simms grunted. “You made a big production of pulling me aside just to tell me this?”
“No. There’s a major arcane crisis going down in Seattle right now. Tully and I were left here to find out what’s caused the gremlin outbreak.”
“You’re not doing such a great job so far,” Simms groused.
I forced myself not to snap a reply. “We’ve only been on this for--,” I pulled out my watch, “--less than two hours.”
Simms’ eyes narrowed. “Isn’t there some urgency to finding out what is going on?” He looked at me like I was a sixth-grader with overdue library books.
That did it. “Listen, pal,” I snapped, “we’re working on it, okay?”
He shrugged. “Fine. But I seem to recall that outbreaks that cross over into daytime are very bad. You want to end this before sunrise.”
“We are aware of that. But we still have lots of time. Ten hours easy.”
Simms gave a little head shake. “I hope you do.”
“We’ll do our best,” Tully said.
“Trust us,” I said. “Meanwhile, maybe you can keep us up to date on any arcane problems you run across.”
A muscle twitched in Simms’ face.
“You know that’s not my bailiwick,” he said. “I keep things in order on the ordinary side. You people deal with the supernatural stuff.”
I nodded. “All I’m asking is to let us know when more weird stuff happens.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. For a second, he actually looked guilty. “I wish I could help you, but honestly, I’d only be telling you where things had already gone all supernatural and the damage was done. After all, it’s not like you tell me what is going on. My job is to deal with the aftermath.” He nodded
