seymoure

Chapter 20
“Car Hopgoblin”

Harriett Dante was tired. She had spent the entire day rushing from one plane to another and to and from airports. That wasn’t the kind of work she really got into this business to do. That was a whole lot more like a regular job than anything she ever wanted to be a part of, and she hoped never to do it again.

Now, just when she thought she could stop by Gremalgrin’s bar and let her hair down, Claus called again.

He needed any and all information that could be dug up on the recently passed Mage named Damien Kane. This was a name that was familiar, but not terribly so, to Dante. She had heard he was a big time operator in Europe and not one to be trifled with. She also recalled some connection between him and the war in Kosovo, but nothing tangible came to mind.

She decided that Gemalgrin’s was still a good idea, and that she could start her data mining there. It was a tital pool of the spirit world at the worst time, and at the best it was a fountain of information.

She climbed back into her Mazda Protégé and was glad to be this close to home. Then the drumbeats started.

“Okay, Chief, what have you got for me?” She asked in the kind of disinterested way that drove the spirit crazy.

“You wouldn’t treat the Ghost of Da Vinci that way would you Dante? Is it an Italian thing? Just don’t want to Pow Wow with the great Native spirit?” Came the voice (that sounded far too much like Robin Williams for her to take seriously).

“I am tired and I want to get some answers and then just get drunk and go to bed, okay Chief?” she said as she turned the key in the ignition. The little red car hummed to life and she backed out onto the street.

“Is that the way you ask for aid?” The thundering voice of W.C. Fields came back.

“I really would like to get this over with . . .” she insisted.

“Call me by my name and all will be yours” came the voice of Jay Silverheels, echoing through the cavernous interior of the tiny car.

“Oh, mighty Chief Pontiac, what boon have you for this lowly mortal?”

“That’ll do it” came Robin Williams again.

“Chief Pontiac” had been, in life, William Wetfoot, an Ogallala Sioux stand up comic (and not a very successful one, if truth be known). When he passed he found his spirit caught in a Pontiac station wagon in Detroit. It seems someone had purloined an artifact that his family had been attached to, and he had gone along. When his appearance in the car had sent the driver off the road and into a bridge abutment he migrated to the first car that passed by, a Mazda Protégé. He had taken the name “Chief Pontiac” as a joke, but found that in the world of spirits jokes last for eternity.

Harriett found the car while on a case, and was happy to take it off the hands of a librarian from Chicago who was about to go out of her mind. Chief Pontiac was not a good car pool buddy.

He was never endingly annoying, but it was rare one could have a conduit to the netherworld in the form of a drive-through.

And she did love the car. It was red and responsive got her where she needed to go.

“I have spoken to those in the world of unending night, and they have all agreed on one thing.”

“And that is, oh mighty warrior spirit?” Harriett put forward.

“Oh, I like that.” Came the happy response. Harriett worried that this would be added to their conversations from now on. Damn her sarcastic mouth!

“What I have to tell you is a secret that the living have no way of knowing. What I can tell you is this. This guy is not, nor had he ever been what he was thought to be,” The voice told Harriett.

“Dead?” Harriett said with a snear.

“That’s just it,” Wetfoot said.

“Meaning?” She said.

“How can you be dead when you were never alive?” Robin said, setting up the punch line.

Her foot hit the brake.

“What?”

“There is not now, nor has there ever been a Damien Kane, at least no human one. Reaching back to the time before humans walked upright, this entity did not exist. Isn’t that a stitch?”

Harriett thought that this was all getting more complicated than any of them had expected.