Chapter 11: Strange Bedfellows (Part I)

“What? I repaired the hole,” Elaine said as she sat impatiently on the table, kicking her feet.

“You shouldn’t have taken that branch before Hadaly scouted it, is all,” Frog said. “I just wouldn’t want you to break your neck or something.”

They had co-opted one of the massage rooms outside of the gymnasium—Frog had keys because she would often come early before fencing practice. The fall had bruised Elaine’s arm in several places and caused her “to overextend the rotator cuff of her right arm,” so said Frog. And this was why she had to sit still while Frog wrapped her arm with an Ace bandage.

“You sound like my father,” Elaine griped. “The Enoch has a catfall protocol that kicks in when it detects sudden acceleration.”

“Right, and why didn’t it kick in right then?”

“It has bugs?”

“You can pull your shirt on now.” Frog held the limp, black material up in front of Elaine and waited while she pulled it on; Frog had to help her get it over that shoulder, as she winced and groaned. “If this is still hurting in two days you will need to go see a doctor. Uh uh, Hadaly cannot try to fix it. And don’t you use magick. Computers and human bodies do not mix.”

“I will.”

The escape of the gremlins did irk her a little. There were two of them. More than she’d ever seen in one place over the past year. The vents and ceilings in Manzinita dormitory were beginning to age, but they should have been able to support her weight down the entire vent-way. There must have been a lot of fatigue from gremlin activity to allow that to happen. This meant they were hanging around there a lot. Perhaps something was attracting them.

The catfall program should have run when the ceiling broke. The fact that it failed to execute meant something had interfered with the Enoch. The boy in that room probably didn’t know it, but he was sitting in the middle of a gremlin infestation. Even though the hunt had nothing to do with her current case, she would have to come back and see him again. If she could clean that out for him she’d be able to make a lot of money on the gremlins, and he would save a lot of money on burnt out light bulbs.

“Does Residence Life replace dead lights?”

She felt extremely tired. Sleep would be needed soon.

“You sound groggy,” Frog said. “We should get you back to your room before anything else strange happens. Come on.”

Elaine slid off of the table and followed Frog from the building dutifully. They passed through silent rooms, weaving between silver shining gym machines, and out the front doors into the cold, dry night.

Frog stopped to lock the door behind them.

The stars were up in the dark, clear sky, airbrushed and twinkling against the deepened black. The desert night scent swirled around her as she tried not to rub at her sore shoulder. Frog had done an excellent job of wrapping it, the throbbing at least had died down with the aspirin.

“This afternoon,” Frog said as they walked away, “you didn’t update me on how far you’ve progressed in your case.”

“Ah,” Elaine said. “You remember Zane and I retrieved some images from Emily’s phone that looked a little bit creepy? Well, I decided to take this all a step further and started interrogating Emily’s public life for links in this chain. Those images all seemed to be from social functions—I think something is going on between her and Tom Barrett.”

“Aren’t they political opponents?”

“Yes.”

“Strange bedfellows…”

“You think the going on is an intimate relationship?” asked Elaine. The thought had crossed her mind, but from what Hadaly had discovered on the phone there was nothing to prove that point. It was totally conjecture—of course, Frog had leapt to that conclusion without the slightest hint or conjecture. Transference, perhaps, but Elaine had long found Frog’s insights into courtship behaviors to be peerless in prediction.

Frog shrugged. “Emily may have been here for a few years, but she’s essentially new to the city. Tom’s family has been around forever. The Barretts own some land way up in Scottsdale, in the mountains…they even have a school named after them. They move in the same circles.” A wry grin played across her face. “It only stands to reason the country girl fell into bed with the slick city boy.”

Elaine found herself staring too intently at Frog’s lips when she smiled and accidentally bounced off her after making a misstep. Balance had been affected…by the bruised arm? Frog caught her deftly with strong arms and carefully angled her to upright again; Elaine mumbled and apology and they hobbled a little bit further with Frog offering support.

“Maybe, uh, you hit your head when you fell,” her friend said. “I’m going to spend the night with you to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’ll be fine,” Elaine grumbled. “’Sides, Hadaly can monitor me.”

“I’d feel better if I knew you were getting actual sleep and not tinkering with something.”

It was hard to dismiss her dedication so Elaine decided not to.

“They probably think we’re drunk,” she commented to Frog after a pair of boys walked past, tossing furtive glances their way.

“Let them,” she said. “It’s not like what they think of us changes anything.”

Elaine nodded. That certainly fit Frog’s philosophy of everything.

“Did you know that Emily saved someone’s life when she was a freshman?”

“No. Do you think it’s relevant to the case?”

“Well,” Elaine said, “I’m not sure. Her staff certainly don’t want that little tidbit getting out for some reason. You’d think it would be a campaign item for her, but when one of the volunteers told me about it today one of the upper-ups shut her down. Kristian Something.”