Plate loaded up with greasy goodness, I returned to my home office ready to multitask. Filling my mind and my belly at the same time. If I accidentally stabbed my self in the gums with the fork on occasion, so be it.
It was an angle to make Pythagoras dizzy. It didn’t seem right for a hill to be so steep, but it was still only the fifth strangest thing Rhys had seen that morning. His primary concern at that moment was for the Emperor, the old Bentley’s suspension not what it had once been. Despite being technically street-legal.
“Watch me soar,” Rhys whispered.
The Bentley wafted into a spot in the long term parking. His foot nowhere near the gas.
It was a pleasant scent, familiar. Like cookies cooling on a counter. Rhys hadn’t been expecting to detect magic on the ferry. The rules were clear that it was for mortals, paras arriving by portal. Not that he was one to freak out over the unexpected.
Following his nose, the smell, similar to cooking mushrooms, getting stronger with each step, he spotted the source.
She was beautiful. Dark and exotic, dressed modestly in a peasant dress and sandals. Her eyes closed as she seemed to draw. Most would wonder how that was possible. Rhys recognized her instantly as an Oracle. One of the subtler para subsets, connected to mind witches, it was usually very easy for them to pass as mortal. Particularly if they were raised has human. He had no intention of outing her.
The submarine sounds pulled me back to the real world. Very much against my will. My attitude to the interruption softened, however, when I saw the name on the alert.
“Hey, rebel girl.”
“Maya! I thought you were in Rome.”
“Oh, I was. Turned out to be a bore. I skipped to Amsterdam for a couple of weeks and decided I might as well come back.”
Maya Domingo was my best friend by default. We never officially decreed each other as such. Not even when we were younger, but we didn’t really have to.
We’d grown up together, her house next to mine in our old neighborhood in Catalonia. A key point of overlap, and the basis of our relationship, was a shared sense of wanderlust. One that entailed an interest interest in English.
We could certainly be hardheaded in some ways. Despite my lack of computer, let alone the internet, Maya’s parents never denied her anything. No matter how strange it might sound to them.
So, when their little princess said she wanted to learn English, they got her the best, non-digital system they could find. Internet connection not a problem for the Domingos. Many where the hours we would spend in her room, deciphering the strange looking symbols and sounds until they made sense to us. There were many advantages to being two of the few English speakers in town.
One of the greatest advantages to the alien tongues was that it served as a sort of code. Keeping our secrets from our parents as well as our classmates. More than once we embarrassed a teacher who intercepted a note we’d passed with the intention of reading it out to the class. Most of them stopped trying after a while.
“How’s the job search going, working girl?
“You could make me sound less like a prostitute,” I giggled.
“Right, sorry.
“It’s stopped actually. I’m still a bit dumbfounded, but I got a post at Boucher Books.
“Boucher, as in Hugo Boucher?
“The same. He even sent me the acceptance himself.
If there was one word to describe Maya Domingo, it would be unaffected. She never put up any sort of front, what you saw was what you got. I also had no memory of her getting flustered. Yet, in that moment, she gasped.
“It’s not that strange,” I said, her reaction confusing me.
“You know he’s been in hiding, right?”
“Like from the police?
“Oh, no, nothing like that.”
“Oh, thank goodness. Thought maybe he pulled a Polanski or something.
“Not that I know of. No one really knows for sure, what happened. He just disappeared one day, about five years ago. The rumor is he’s living at his vineyard upstate. Runs the publishing house over email.
Just when I though Hugo Boucher couldn’t get any more mysterious and fascinating, Maya goes and tells me that.
“Interesting,” I stammered hoarsely, trying to hide my surprise.
“Kinda sexy though, yes? Makes him even more mysterious.
I couldn’t admit it right then. My trained shyness getting in the way of my natural curiosity. If I was honest, even only with myself, Maya was absolutely correct. It wasn’t much of a surprise to me that he disappeared.
He’d always been media shy, even at the best of times. I always thought it was to maintain his mystique. Maybe he just genuinely disliked the attention. He would hardly be the first. Plenty of creatives withdrew from public life.
As much as a contradiction as it might sound, building fame only to hide from it.