Crown Yourself Dead: Mudflat Magic, #8

By Phoebe Matthews

A museum in Mudflat is a last straw in the battle to avoid attention and it brings out the worst in the residents. Claire knows the dangers of swords and guns and black magic, but is there really such a thing as death by digital?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phoebe Matthews
• Release date: Sep 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536531701

Phoebe Matthews

Phoebe Matthews is currently writing three urban fantasy series. Her novels have been published by Avon, Dark Quest, Dell, Holt, LostLoves, Putnam, Silhouette, and Scholastic.

Book preview

Table of Contents

CROWN YOURSELF DEAD | Mudflat Magic 8 | Phoebe Matthews | LostLoves Books

CROWN YOURSELF DEAD

Mudflat Magic 8

Phoebe Matthews

LostLoves Books

Copyright © 2016 by Phoebe Matthews

Cover Design Copyright © 2016 by LostLoves Books

This is a work of fiction. With the exception of well-known historical personages, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

––––––––

CHAPTER 1

Tarvik and I were at home with the TV tuned to a country western concert and Tar singing the words in my ear as we danced. Once he hears a song he knows it forever, both lyrics and tune, and honestly, the guy is worth keeping just to hear him sing. He has a soft voice, kind of mid-range, maybe the word is mellow, that sinks right through me to warm my heart.

With the lamps off in the front room and nothing more than the fading light of early evening through the windows, I was all wrapped up in his arms with my eyes half closed and my thoughts drifting.

That’s when I saw a moving dot of light on the wall behind him.

It slid across the wall, disappeared, then reappeared, a small green dot the size you see on TV on the forehead of a character who is about to get shot, except those dots are red. They mark the target.

Not being an expert on targeting, I guessed maybe green dots did the same thing.

I hissed, Down! Fast!

Although I knew of no one who would be shooting at us this week, Tarvik and I get shot at so often you’d think we are either cops or robbers. Gotta tell ya, we are neither.

What we are is people who get mixed up in other people’s problems way more often than I want to. Okay, although the guy half of this couple likes an occasional battle, he tries to confine his fights to the soccer field where bumping and tripping are part of the game, he tells me. For anything more serious, his choice of weapon is never a gun. He’s good with his fists. He also loves a sword fight when he can find an opponent who is into swords. Don’t ask how a pacifist, which I try to be, ended up in this combo.

Back to guns, the last time one pointed in our direction it was Tarvik who ended up covered in blood.

This time he dropped to his knees fast, taking me with him, then did his usual hero thing, arranged me flat on the floor, his hand under the back of my head because he’s been watching the sports news reports on concussion, and covered me with his own body.

Where? What? he whispered.

I twisted my neck and peered up at the wall and there it was again, that dot of green light. Tarvik looked where I was looking and saw what I saw. The light flickered, disappeared, reappeared, disappeared again. Nothing but dark wall in our front room.

Could it be someone with a gun?

In our backyard? Why?

And then I recognized the stupid light and said, Oh crap.

His forehead scrunched into worry lines. Did I hurt you when we dropped?

No, what hurt was having our evening interrupted by the green dot. I’m fine, Tarvy. And that stupid light is Sergei Brown. He’s in our backyard. Okay, so a light can’t be stupid. Sergei Brown, local mage, is an unfortunate mixture of brilliant and stupid.

Are you sure?

Who else has a light like that?

Sergei is a recluse with a big curiosity bump, a combination that forces him to occasionally go wandering around the neighborhood at night holding a weird little green flashlight and snoop for answers to whatever he thinks he should know.

Sitting back on his heels, Tarvik rose gracefully, then lifted clumsy me. He set me on my feet and paused to brush my long hair out of my face. And then, of course, he gave me a quick kiss. That’s the advantage of being the same height, he says, that it makes me easy to kiss. With his arm around my waist, he turned us both toward the French doors that open onto the back deck.

Oh yes. I see him, Claire. Over by the gate.

I squinted into the shadows. Autumn in the northwest rapidly shortens each day and casts long shadows. Do you? What’s he doing?

There is only one way to find out. Maybe he has come to visit us.

Do you know how many times in my whole life Sergei Brown has come to visit me? Yeah, you got it, in twenty-three years, fast approaching twenty-four, which is as long as I have lived, and all of it in the same neighborhood, I have often called on Sergei Brown. Those calls to spooky old Sergei in his spooky old house are rarely my idea. I get sent there by Madeline, my boss. I mean, he is not someone I would want as a BFF, not even as a BF, not even as a plain friend.

Tarvik considers everyone in the world his friend unless they give him a reason to consider them his enemy.

These were my choices. I could stand around dithering until Tarvik’s two cousins who live with us arrived home from their jobs at the local nail shop and flipped on the lights and turned the TV to some noisy show, or I could go out and hope all Sergei wanted was a fast answer to a question, which would leave time to get in another slow dance with my hunky guy.

As I wanted said guy to go on thinking of me as a woman worth loving, I bit back my annoyance and pushed open the door. Sergei? Is that you?

The light moved toward us, bouncing across the garden. We went to the edge of the deck, leaned against the railing and looked down at the shadowy shape of the old man huddled in, huh, I wasn’t sure what, but in the dusk it looked suspiciously like a cape. The occasional times I see him outside, he is usually wearing a rain jacket with a hood.

The kindly one of us said, Come inside, sir, and let me fix you a drink.

Sergei shook his head. No, no, I have a question for Miss Carmody and then I must leave.

Once there were three mages in the neighborhood, three old men, and they did visit each other. I have never heard of Sergei entering the home of anyone else. Now the others are dead. I do feel sorry for him, though I would never tell him so. I call him Sergei. He calls me Miss Carmody. That sums up our relationship.

Miss Carmody, he continued, who has moved into Julian’s house now?

What?

There was a moving van at Julian Zerkle’s house today. Rock saw it.

Huh. My intelligent reply gave me a few seconds to think over the past day. Rock Decko is Mudflat’s smash wizard, and so far he is flunking self control, so, by request of the neighborhood council, Sergei is Rock’s mentor on an occasional basis. Apparently today was one of those occasions when Sergei was willing to let Rock into his house. I don’t know, Sergei.

Find out and come tell me.

Typical. He gives orders. Never says why. Never says thank you. Sure, I knew the answer to why. He wanted to know if the newcomer in the Zerkle house was an outsider. Anyone with no magic and no relationship to the Mudflat families is an outsider.

I had been wishing for the interruption to my evening to be brief and at least I got that wish. The mage turned off his green light and disappeared into the shadows. We heard the gate to the alley close behind him.

What is that green light he carries? It doesn’t work like most flashlights, Tarvik said.

My guess? He’s bespelled it and it has magic of some sort. It isn’t enough to light his way in the dark, so maybe that little dot can knock out a would-be attacker? Or maybe it’s an insect repellent.

We went back inside to dance but the mood was gone. Thinking someone is about to take potshots at you does that, even when it turns out you’re wrong. Tarvik flipped on the kitchen light and poured a glass of wine for me and grabbed a can of beer for himself. And I stood and admired him because, hey, if I ever drop dead from being shot by a green light, I want to check out with the image of Tar in my mind. He is a blond hunk, all muscle, good looking, oh yeah, with sky blue eyes, an elegant nose and a killer smile. We are the same height, five and a half feet tall, and right after that we are opposites. I am dark haired and thin and not nearly as kind and forgiving as he is.

We carried our drinks outside and sat on the kitchen steps discussing Sergei and admiring the white flowers in the back garden. They glowed in the fading light. The back yard used to be a flat boring patch of unloved grass, but last spring Tarvik took over the yard work. He had never done any gardening before he moved in with me, but he is artistic and loves color, plus he is good friends with Roger, the troll who rents our basement apartment. With advice from a neighbor who has a beautiful garden, Tar and Roger turned our small back yard into a colorful garden of flowers and veggies.

The house Sergei mentioned used to belong to another mage, Julian Zerkle. After Julian’s death it was inherited by a nephew who lives in California. An outsider from California had rented it for a while. Now it was empty again. Or not.

You could ask Madeline who moved into the Zerkle house, Tarvik said.

If Madeline knows there is a new tenant in the house, she would have phoned me by now and asked me to go tell Sergei. She must not know.

No one ever bothers phoning Sergei any more. He has a phone and occasionally phones others if he is desperate for information. If anyone phones him, he doesn’t answer. Used to. But after some unpleasant encounters, he has become much more secretive and twice the recluse he used to be. He has an old rotary phone. It lacks a panel that could tell him who is phoning, not that he cares. He is hermit to the core.

Don’t ask about the rotary phone. It is not a modern copy. It is ancient. That’s the thing about mages. They can make stuff keep working that shouldn’t. And can’t make things work that should.

Why does it matter to Sergei? Tarvik asked.

Why does anything matter to that crazy man? I’ll stop by and do my ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ speech at the Zerkle house tomorrow and see what I can find out.

I’ll come with you. Tarvik isn’t nosey about people. What he is, he is a wee bit overprotective of me, and did he imagine the newcomer might be someone too dangerous for me to call on by myself? In the morning? That was so sweet of him, worrying about me, I kissed him and we sat smooching on the back steps until a voice said,

Excuse me, are you Claire?

A girl stood in the driveway, a thin girl in tee shirt and jeans, about the height of Tarvik’s cousin Nance but younger. Her face was half hidden by her long hair and by huge round glasses, the lenses as thick as the bases of coke bottles. She looked slightly familiar. I knew she lived in the neighborhood, but I couldn’t quite place her.

She didn’t wait for me to place her. She walked right up to me and said, Does your computer work?

Uh, yeah.

Point me to it.

Who are you?

Pixie Rosenblatt. I need to use your computer. Now. Mine’s quit.

Okay. I knew the name. The Rosenblatts live next door to the Zerkle house and their kids are teenagers. The oldest, a boy, has a touch of magic, according to the rumors, nothing impressive yet. The second, a girl, plays on the high school basketball team. Pixie is the youngest and I have never heard anything about her except her name.

My computer is down. I have to get online, she said.

Computers tolerate Mudflat, but they don’t much tolerate going online. I take my laptop to the library when I want to use the internet, I said. It won’t work here.

She gave an annoyed sigh. It will for me. Where is it?

As Sergei had already spoiled our evening, I said, Okay, come on in, and led her through the kitchen to my desk in the far corner of the front room. I pulled my laptop computer out of the drawer, set it on the desk, opened it, and started to turn it on.

Pixie slid past me into the chair. Don’t bother. I have to change a couple things to get on the internet.

I don’t have wifi.

I do, she said, and put her face so close to the screen, her nose almost touched it. The screen lit up and so did her face. Not bad. Slow, but I can fix that, too. To my surprise, the screen filled with characters rushing around dressed in medieval costumes and brandishing swords. It looked like a scene from a movie, set in the days of kings and queens and fairy tales. A snake slithered out from the forest in the background and Pixie hissed, Gotcha.

What is all that?

A game. I was right on the edge of capturing the knight and stealing his crown when my computer quit.

I didn’t know my computer had enough memory for games. I have simple games, like Scrabble, on it. The game she was playing was one of those complicated ones with amazingly lifelike characters. Gamers play online against other gamers rather than against the computer. They play against people who can be total strangers and thousands of miles away.

It doesn’t, she said, never once moving her nose back from the screen. Her fingers flew across the keys. Not a problem. I’ve increased it.

Huh?

Don’t worry, it’ll go away when I do. I just need to finish this battle.

Uh, I keep files on my computer, stuff I don’t want to lose.

She nodded and went right on typing. A battle of some sort roared back and forth on the screen. The characters in the game weren’t cartoons. They were very realistic and moved with complicated actions. Some of them wore chain link armor. Most of them were dressed in cloth costumes and wore odd metal helmets and carried swords that looked like the sort of things designed to prevent serious injuries at Medieval Fairs. One of them had a gold crown on the top of his head. Faces popped out between trees. Swords clashed. A hand reached in from the side and grabbed the crown off the warrior’s head.

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha! Pushing the chair back from the desk, Pixie shut down my computer, closed the lid, and stood up. I don’t suppose I could borrow this for the night?

I don’t suppose you could, I said.

She nodded and hurried past me to the back door where she paused long enough to say, Thank you.

Tarvik was standing in the kitchen, watching her. It’s getting late, he said. I’ll walk home with you.

Pixie looked startled. All she said was, No thank you. And with that she was gone.

He is totally nonthreatening, or at least, that’s what people think who have never seen him in a fight. True, he has a firm jaw and a stubborn chin and he’s solid muscle, but what people see first is his friendly smile.

Should she be out alone like that? I know it isn’t late, but it’s already dark. She’s such a small girl. Where does she live?

Next door to the Zerkle house.

Hmm. I think I’ll watch, he said and walked down the driveway to the street. I trailed after. Pixie is thin and short. He was right, she didn’t look capable of defending herself against a mosquito.

Can you see her?

Not sure. There is someone a couple of blocks away. It might be her.

Dark night, small girl, yeah, she was probably running. We followed after until we were at the block where she lived, then stopped at the corner and peered along the dimly lit street.

Yes, there she is, Claire. I see her. She’s turning in where you said. That’s all right, then. He put his arm around me and we walked slowly back home and up the driveway. Odd girl.

If I remember right, she’s the Rosenblatt’s youngest. About fourteen, I think.

Is she part pixie?

Of course he would ask. Tarvik is one fourth elf, something few people here know, and I work hard to keep it that way. Living in a neighborhood of families with inherited weak magic in their genes, our part of town sometimes attracts strong magic in the form of bad guys, the kind who are always looking for ways to increase their powers. That type are willing to try whatever, including adding anything from eyelashes or fingernails or blood to their potions. Not their own eyelashes and fingernails and blood or whatever. Oh no, they get their ingredients from anyone they think has any kind of magic, because that’s what people do who dabble in black magic.

Yeah, they think elves are magic. Tarvik thinks it’s a cool idea but wrong, as he has never had any magic he’s aware of. However, magic or not, he does know his father was half elf, which makes him a fourth elf, and so he believes any of the creatures mentioned in movies or books may possibly exist.

No, she is not a pixie. I think pixies are make believe, Tar. She has a long name, something close to Penelopeanne. Whatever it is, she was called Pixie when she was a toddler and the nickname stuck. Odd about that game. She was playing it online even though I don’t have a wifi connection. Wish I knew how to make wifi work here for me.

Or maybe she is a pixie? Get real. The explanation had to be that she has wifi at her house and somehow hooked me to it while she was using my computer. The other possibility was that she has a small amount of magic and it works on electronic stuff. Oh lord, the younger they are, the better they are at using internet devices and is that now genetic?

Playing games is at the bottom of my wish list. Not having to carry my laptop to the library every time I want to go online is near the top.

When Tarvik’s two cousins came home from their jobs at the nail shop, my cousin came trailing in after them. I asked the one to which I am unfortunately related if he had ever heard of a way to connect to the internet without having an account. If there is a way to get anything free that you’re supposed to be paying for, my scudzy cousin Jimmy probably knows it.

Like you do at the library? You’re using their account, he said.

How about at home? Could I somehow use a neighbor’s account?

I’ve heard of people in apartment buildings doing that if an account doesn’t require a password. Why?

How about an account of someone who lives a few blocks away?

He shrugged. Got no idea. And having done all that heavy thinking, Jimmy helped himself to a beer.

Tar’s cousins, two pretty blond women, which is why Jimmy tails after them all the time, joined him at the open refrigerator door and unloaded the fixings for a late supper. Actually, it is Nance, the seventeen year old, that Jimmy trails after. As she is seventeen and he is my age, that’s all he is allowed to do, trail, until she turns eighteen, Claire’s rules. The second he steps over the line, he will be permanently banished from my house and he knows it.

The other woman, Alakar, is Tar’s age and doesn’t need anyone protecting her. She would never waste her perfect self on the likes of my chronically unemployed cousin.

Why do you care about internet connections? Jimmy asked.

While we sat around the kitchen table eating supper, I told them about the visit from Pixie Rosenblatt. As none of them are gamers, they looked at me blank faced for a few seconds and then got busy discussing with each other which TV show they wanted to spend the evening watching.

CHAPTER 2

When it comes to doing favors for Sergei Brown, the quicker done, the happier I am. Sergei hanging around in my head nagging me is nothing I want to prolong. First thing the next morning Tarvik and I walked to Zerkle’s old house. Well, okay, maybe not the first thing. First thing was Tarvik going out at some ungodly hour like six AM and jogging miles with his younger cousin, Nance, and then coming home to make breakfast.

By the time I got my eyelids unglued and stumbled into the kitchen, the place smelled of coffee and I could think about waking up. I mean it was barely six-thirty and way too early to be awake, well, a half hour too early for me.

Tarvik pressed a mug filled with hot coffee into my hands.

Aren’t you up earlier than usual? Nance slid a plate of buttered toast in front of me. Neither of them, Tar or Nance, trust me to do anything for myself in the morning. Good thing they are both so lovable. Otherwise I could resent their cheery morning smiles.

I promised Sergei I would find out who is moving into the Zerkle house.

Tarvik said, We jogged by the Zerkle house just now. Sergei is right. There’s a car in the driveway. And a ladder and some paint cans on the porch. The house looks good. Fresh paint on all the trim.

Okay, that woke up my curiosity.

By the time we all pounded on the bathroom door and shouted for Alakar, his unlovable cousin, to get herself out of the shower, and then took fast turns