Copper Ravens(57)

Mike Armstrong – Pre-Election Rally To Be Held Saturday, 12:00 PM


Hm. It just happened to be Saturday morning, and here I was with nothing to do.

I found Max in his immaculately clean bedroom, scanning the tabletops for stray particles of dust. It both irritated and confounded me that the same person who tracked mud and other detritus across Shep’s gleaming floors would also have a conniption if someone wore shoes inside his room.

Max looked up and cocked an eyebrow, his way of inquiring why I’d dared to enter his space. By way of explaining what I was up to, I tossed the newspaper onto the table in front of him. “Want to go?”

“Micah won’t like it,” he said, after a quick glance at the headline. So yeah, he was in.

“I can call him back from the Golden Court and ask him to glamour us,” I said, but Max shook his head.

“We don’t need him to disguise ourselves.” I stared at Max, wondering if he’d forgotten that our images were playing on vid chips all over the Promenade, and who knew where else. If we went to the Mundane realm unglamoured, we might as well ask Sadie to get started baking a cake with a file in it. Of course, that was assuming that the Peacekeepers would let us have visitors. And baked goods. Then Max smirked his “I’m the brilliant older brother” smirk, and produced a few knitted caps.

“Where did you get these?” I asked. The hats, black and burgundy respectively, were a bit lumpy, and the seams were puckered in places.

“Sadie made them.” That explained the lumpiness. She’d gone through a knitting phase while in high school, which meant that Mom and I had been temporarily sentenced to wearing asymmetrical sweaters in varying shades of brown and puke.

“You think a couple of hats will be enough to conceal our identities?” I asked. I mean, my plan to go to the rally was crazy enough, but this was beyond the pale. Even for Max, this was reckless.

“Nah. I’ve got sunglasses, too.”

I stared at my insane brother, then at the hat in my hands, mentally listing everything that could go wrong. Danger, capture, torture, death…the reasons for just staying put in the Otherworld were all sound. Still, I had to see for myself if this Dr. Armstrong was also the Uncle Mike I remembered, the fat guy who tried to be jolly but never quite got it, who had grilled hot dogs while wearing a “Kiss the Cook” apron. I know, I’d seen all those magazines with his image on the cover, but those were just pictures. I needed to see this with my own two eyes.

“How could I have never noticed that he was such an evil man?”

“Because he didn’t know you were an Elemental,” Max said softly. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud. “And, once he found out, he used you, just like he uses everyone else.”

“Do you think he used Juliana?” I asked.

“I know it.” Max jerked his head to the side, and I followed him out of his room, down the stairs and away from the manor. We made our way to the edge of the Whispering Dell, and one portal hop later, we were skulking around the streets of Capitol City, wearing our impenetrable disguises of knitted caps and dark glasses. It was a sunny autumn day on the Mundane side, in stark contrast to the spring currently being experienced in the Otherworld. I would have remarked on the opposite seasons, but it was hot as frickin’ hell, thus making these stupid hats even stupider, and making us in our winter wear stick out like sore thumbs among the sandal- and tank-top-clad masses. We should have just portaled right into a jail cell and saved everyone the bother. At least our dark glasses were somewhat appropriate. Then we turned a corner onto the main thoroughfare, and the sight before me shocked the snark right off my lips.

There had to be hundreds—no, make that thousands—of people gathered on the lawn before the steps of Government Headquarters. There were so many that even the Peacekeepers who manned the barriers looked a little on edge, despite the fact that they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, each one of them clad in riot gear and armed to the teeth. I noticed that they carried the same plastic guns I’d been shot with at the Institute, though these had blinking red lights rather than green. Dozens of drones buzzed away overhead, and I wondered how they avoided having midair collisions.

Near the edge of the crowd was a candidate running under the Mirland party. Mirlanders espoused the belief that Mundanes could, and should, live in harmony with Elementals. They preached a dogma that was full of symbiotic relationships, illustrating how the two races complemented, even needed, one another. You would think that, since they hadn’t won an election in years, they would have altered their platform somewhat, but Mirlanders are stubborn folk.