“There’s this stocky little bald dude with a seriously spooky vibe standing in the entry hall with a kid, maybe twenty. Says he knows you and needs to talk.”
“Mort?” I groaned. My lats were on fire. “Mort Lindquist?”
“Yeah, I think,” Bear said.
“Almost…nnnngh…done.”
“Yeah, those twenty-fives are doing you dirty, Mighty Mouse.”
“Bite…mmmmngh…me.”
“You’re all bone. Be like eating sparrow wings.”
I had a snappy comeback, honest I did, but I didn’t have enough breath to give it to her. So I worked until my body was too full ofexhaustion for me to notice my mind and heart, and when I finished the last set with a pair of fives, I had to use hip action to get them back up onto the damned rack.
Bear tossed me a worn but clean towel, and I mopped at my face with it, the chill of the castle, a steady fifty-five degrees, even in the heat of summer, settling over my sweat-soaked body almost instantly. It felt fantastic. By the time I looked up, Bear was handing me a canteen full of cold water, and I drank down half of it before I said, “Thanks.”
“I been to the bad place a few times,” she said. “Seen a lot of men there. Tough fight?”
I thought of the sound of falling buildings and the sight of smashed baby carriages. Then the direct psychic exposure to the mind-ripping hatred of a Titan. “Little bit. Memories.”
“Those are burdens,” she said, her voice serious. “Lot of times, they never get any lighter.”
“Yeah,” I said. “So I’ll get bigger.”
The Valkyrie gave me an approving nod. “You hang in there, string bean,” she said. “You’re on the right road. Hey, what’s the kitchen making for lunch?”
—
I went down to my office, which had been a rather large cleaning supply closet a few weeks before. Now it had room for a small desk with a chair, a couple of filing cabinets, and one chair for a visitor. I finished the rest of the canteen of water on the way, and in a few minutes Bear appeared with Mort Lindquist.
Mort was only a little taller than Will, and his thickness had more to do with age than muscle. His usually bald head had grown out some stubble, and his eyes looked sunken and tired. He wore his black suit and black shirt, but they hung a little loose on him. Well. Pretty much everyone in town except Bear was getting thinner.
Mort had a young man with him, and I recognized Fitz immediately from my days being mostly dead. He’d grown maybe three inches in that time, and filled out with more muscle. He had sort of reddish hair and came from a heritage more mixed than a barrel of bar nuts. He, too,wore black, though with him it was black jeans and a black hoodie, so that he looked a bit like the shadow Morty might cast behind him from a low-angle light.
Fitz had been a street kid. No parents. Mixed up with bad company in his day. I knew he’d been hanging around with Mort in the years since, but there was something about him that reminded me of a feral cat. He stood with a kind of constant, restless wariness, with one eye always on the door, showing about as much trust in his safety as a plate of cookies in a kindergarten.
I leaned across the desk to shake hands with both of them, and Fitz said, “Finally I can put a face to the voice.”
“Heh,” I said. “I heard you’d taken up with Mort as an apprentice ectomancer,” I said.
Fitz glanced back and forth between me and Mort uncertainly.
“Yeah,” Mort said. “About that.” He took a deep breath. “Harry, you know I don’t screw around with the White Council. There are seriously scary people there.”
The White Council of Wizardry had kicked me out on my ass in the aftermath of the battle. Apparently they found a rogue wizard with his own city-killing Titan in a Poké Ball a little intimidating. They were not notable for their kindness and tolerance.
“Yeah, I’ve got to watch my step with them myself these days,” I said. “What have they got to do with your visit?”
Mort hooked a thumb over his shoulder at Fitz as he sat down. “The kid bloomed.”
I tilted my head and studied them both. Fitz’s talent had been minor and erratic at best, the last I checked. “In ectomancy?”
Mort shook his head slowly. “In everything. I think he’s Council material.”
I settled back in my seat and let out a low whistle. “That so, kid?”
Fitz shrugged uncomfortably. “Things just kept getting easier. And during the battle, things went nuts and there was this old couple running away from this Uruk-hai-looking thing and I”—he waved a hand vaguely—“set it on fire.”
