Smoke & Silver

The knock on the door sounded like the drums of war. I snarled and pulled the pillow over my head. I heard the muffled sound of the door opening and someone crossing to my side. A gentle hand rested on my arm.

“Georgia, it's time to get up.” Isaac said.

I snarled something offensive about his mother.

“Get up or we'll get you up.” That was John.

I said something equally unintelligible but twice as offensive.

“You were warned.” Isaac sighed.

A pillow fight later, and we were all laughing our way down the stairs to the dining room.

“You're both bastards, you know.” I said. Isaac chuckled and reached over to pull a feather from my hair.

“You love us anyway.”

We sat down to a breakfast that would have cured any hangover and reminisced more about the years we'd been apart. Isaac and I had kept in touch after his accident. John still felt guilty, since Isaac had been with him on a trip when it happened.

I'd never heard much of the story, but I noticed that Isaac had the cane with him today. Sometimes, the prosthetic worked for him just fine. Of course, he did help it along with a little magic on occasion, but this morning, he had leaned heavily on it as we made our way to breakfast. He could have been getting into character for our meeting later. For their meeting.

I finished off my cup of coffee, (black with too much sugar,) and reached in the pocket of the robe I'd been lent for a cigarette. Isaac laughed loudly at a joke that John had told, accidentally knocking over his cane.

John went suddenly silent, reaching to pick it up and handing it to Isaac with a dark look in his eye. Isaac smiled and shrugged him off, taking the cane and turning back to me, intent on ignoring the expression on John's face.

“I never heard the whole story.” I said, risking a pointed glance at the cane, “ I know that a trip went wrong, and there was a troll, but...”

“Can we not talk about it?” John asked, draining his coffee cup like there was booze at the bottom. There might have been, for all I knew.

“It's fine, John. Really. And she should hear it. I can't believe I never told you, Georgia.” Isaac folded his napkin and placed it beside his plate.

“Well, you know that we were looking for an edition of the Poetic Edda.” He began. I nodded. “We'd managed to track it to an abandoned Austrian monastery, but managed to wake up a troll that had taken up residence sometime in the five years previous.”

“The only damned reason that it was able to stay there was because the place had been ransacked and defiled somewhere around the Twelfth Century. And then the damned Nazis-” John put a hand to his hip absently, looking for the flask of gin he usually kept there. We'd emptied it last night and he had gone to bed before remembering to refill it. Isaac looked at him, half with pity and half with a sad familiarity before continuing,

“Anyway, we were expecting something to be there. Not a troll, certainly. Maybe a couple of goblins or even a domovoi, but definitely not a troll.”

“We hoped it was a domovoi. I even brought keys for it to hide.” John sounded like a child robbed of a game of make-believe. Isaac ignored his expression and drew in breath to continue, but John held up a hand.

“I leaned on what I thought was a rock. That's why I still blame myself. If I had just been paying attention, I wouldn't have woken the troll up in the first place.”

“John. I've told you a thousand times, it wasn't your fault.”

“If I hadn't been careless, you'd still have your leg.”

“My prosthetic has given you something to tinker with in your spare time though. You've finally got a magic project you can play around with, no matter where you are.”

I sipped my coffee and watched as the men regressed into college boys again, with barbs and insults and good-natured teasing.

After we finished breakfast, we dressed and headed out to the car. My men sat in the back seat while I drove. The trip took the better part of two hours, made longer by the moody silence rolling off of my boys in the backseat. We chain smoked cigarettes out of open windows and didn't speak a word until I put the car in park.

The rendezvous point was a dock at the edge of a filthy city. Seagulls screamed overhead and the salty, fishy smell of the harbor made my stomach roll like the waves that crashed against the pier. The sky was dark with heavy clouds that brooded above us. It seemed like I hadn't been able to escape the rain these last few weeks. I reached again for my pack of Marlboros in the console as a sea wind buffeted the small sedan.

When I put my hand on the door handle to get out, John's voice lashed out at me, as sharp and sudden as the crack of lightning that arced across the sky.

“What do you think you're doing? You're staying in the car.” He snapped.

“I'm staying with the car. Not in it.” I snapped back, reaching into the pockets of my blouse for my lighter. He slammed the back passenger door harder than necessary. I rolled my eyes at him and jumped when Isaac put a gentle hand on my wrist so he could light my smoke for me.

“He's just tense. He's afraid something might happen to you and he'll never forgive himself if it does. You think he feels guilty about what happened to me? Imagine how surly he'd be if he let something happen to you. If we let something happen to you.” He implored softly.

The hard line of my mouth stayed set, even around the filter of the Marlboro.

“I know Georgie. Trust me.” He said, planting a kiss on my brow before hobbling off to catch up with John. I noticed that he was playing up his limp today. Probably so that whoever they were meeting would overestimate the damage and underestimate his real agility. Either that, or the old wound was acting up because of the fussy weather. I hoped it was the former.

I glowered by the car in the mid-day dusk. The oppressive humidity clung to the white linen of my button-down blouse and sweated through to my thighs in my black slacks, leaving my skin clammy and chilled. It felt like the men were in the building forever, although I only had time to smoke three cigarettes while I waited.

John's mood hadn't improved at all during the meeting. If anything, it had gotten worse with the coming storm. He barged out, Isaac's calming hand on his shoulder. Isaac himself looked grim. I started the car and waited nervously for them to get in. Isaac surprised me by joining me, opening the front passenger door and sliding into the seat without a word. He told me to stay quiet with a glance, looking over to John and then to me again as both warning and apology.

If I'd thought the first slam of John's door was loud, this time, it was unearthly. I jumped, although I had expected it. Isaac put a steady hand on my shoulder and whispered, "Drive."

I did as he asked. John opened his flask in the backseat, and from the way it sloshed, this wasn't the first swig he'd taken today. Isaac reached for the knob on the radio, cutting his eyes to mine. He wasn't asking permission so much as warning me that John may start in with some more of his trademark anger. I nodded once, feeling my grip on the wheel tighten.

John began muttering under his breath when the music began, an oldies station that I didn't know even existed.

"Let's go to the bar."

I glanced at Isaac, not sure if he'd actually spoken or if I'd imagined it.

"He'll come out of it in a bit, but he's gonna rant for a bit."

I nodded. The accelerator hit the floor as I sped off to my bar.