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  “I can see that,” Steve said, basing his insight by how conflicted January’s face seemed. He noticed he was being a bit quippy and snarky with this kind old woman, so he told himself he would lay off the sarcasm, if he could handle it.

  January sighed and laid her hands out on the table, palms down. “Master Remington, you are what the people of Mythicus would call a Myth Seeker.”

  It was a new term to Steve, but he finally felt like he was getting somewhere. His curiosity was piqued, to say the least. “What does that entail, Jan? I never sought any of this. It came to me.”

  “Yes, I can see why you’d think that. And in a way you are correct. But in actuality, you are the one who brought that young lady—”

  “Annabel.”

  “—Annabel. You are the one who brought young Annabel to this world—to this plane. The world we call Terrus.”

  “How?”

  “It is your power—your talent—Master Remington.”

  “How did I acquire this talent?”

  “We believe it is hereditary.”

  “We?”

  The Druid nodded. “The ones who study the history of Mythicus.” She arched her hands on the table like they were spiders, pressing her fingertips on the wood to emphasize her point. “When you met young Annabel, you Seared her into this world—your world. Terrus. If you’re wondering why you may have been the only one to recognize her, or see her, it is because you are a Myth Seeker. Normal humans cannot see Mythics who are not yet part of this world. They can only see what’s in front of them—what’s real in their own eyes.”

  Steve blinked rapidly. “So, I’m not crazy?”

  January shook her head.

  “And I wasn’t crazy when I saw Tumbleweed talking to another homeless guy, like my friends thought? It’s like Pancho was invisible to them.”

  January flattened her hands on the table and furrowed her brow. “Pardon? I’m not following. Tumbleweed? What does dead grass have to do with any of what I just said?”

  Steve waved his hand at her. “Never mind,” he said. His brain was working too fast, trying to reformulate all the things that had happened since he’d met Annabel at his father’s funeral.

  After a momentary pause, January recognized the baffled look on Steve’s face, so she continued, trying to simplify things. “Annabel is now Bound to you. What that means is that—”

  “I’m the only one who can help her get home . . .” Steve finished for her, starting to see the whole picture in focus.

  “Precisely.”

  “And how did I Sear Annabel to this world in the first place? Just by talking to her?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Steve glanced at Scarlet and Aiden. “And did I bring you two into this world, too?”

  They both shook their heads.

  Scarlet spoke up, her beautiful lips entrancing Steve as they moved. “We were both Seared to Terrus long before meeting you. Aiden and I are Bound to our own Seekers.”

  Steve cleared his throat, trying to wet his dry mouth. He wasn’t sure if anything Scarlet had just said had registered in his brain, or if he’d remember any of it. She was too damn distracting.

  Another pause filled the room as the three Mythics tried to allow Steve to digest everything he’d just heard—and to come to terms with it all. They gazed at him intently, watching for any cracks in his demeanor.

  “So,” Steve muttered in a low voice. “I am Bel’s only ticket home . . .”

  “Yes,” January said firmly.

  Steve shook his head and clicked his tongue. He was feeling suddenly irritable. “Why now?” he asked, not specifying what he meant.

  “Pardon?”

  He rolled his wrist in a circle. His irritability was making him feel unhinged. In a manic voice he said, “Why did I meet Annabel at my father’s funeral? Did she just happen to be there, or was she looking for me? And how did you two show up out of the blue?” He pointed at Scarlet and Aiden.

  January raised her hands. “Try to stay calm, Master Remington. I know this is a lot to absorb.”

  His heart was racing. He’d expected this conversation to be as elusive and noncommittal as the prior ones he’d had with Shannon and Aiden and Scarlet, but it was becoming anything but. He was actually learning something about himself—something that two days ago he would have laughed off—and he didn’t know how to feel about it all. It made his skin crawl. He felt goose bumps forming on his arms.

  “This is insanity!” he blurted. “I didn’t ask for this responsibility!”

  “No Myth Seeker ever asked for the power, Master Remington. You are just one of the lucky ones.”

  “Lucky? You call turning my life upside-down lucky?”

  January ignored his ranting. As if trying to change the subject, she said, “To answer your question, you met Annabel at that moment because your power had been lying dormant until then. We believe it takes a traumatic event to set off your Seeking abilities.”

  “And can I turn it off? What if I never want to see another Mythic in my life?”

  January smirked, glancing at her daughter beside her. “No, Master Remington, you can’t turn it off. Your abilities stay with you. Believe me, I’ve wanted the same thing at times. But you’ll see, hopefully with time, what a blessing this power can be.”

  Now Steve was laughing. He could hear himself laughing, maniacal and crazy-sounding, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was like he’d been separated from his own body. When he finally calmed down a little, he said through his laughing spurts, “You’ve—hah—got to be—hah—kidding me.”

  “I’m afraid not. Since it sounds like a recent event—your father’s funeral—I think it’s safe to assume your abilities were lying dormant until your father passed away. That is why it seems like more and more Mythics are popping up out of nowhere for you . . . it’s just easier for you to see them now.”

  “And why am I learning all this now? Why didn’t you come searching for me?”

  January frowned. “With all due respect, it’s not my job to seek you out. It’s your job to seek us out, if you so choose. Hence your title. I knew you would end up here eventually, with the right guidance.”

  Steve put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. He’d heard enough. “There has to be a drug for this,” he said, shaking his head. His mania was not yet finished. He couldn’t seem to get a hold of himself. “I’m sorry, but this is too much.”

  January nodded solemnly, as if she understood—as if she’d given this speech a thousand times before.

  Steve stood abruptly, nearly knocking his chair over. “I-I have to go,” he heard himself say.

  January closed her eyes and bowed her head slightly. “Of course, Master Remington. I have another reading to do at 10:30, anyway.”

  Steve turned to flee the scene.

  Before he left the room, he heard January’s final words call out to him: “You know where to find me when you have more questions, Master Remington. I hope you’ll learn to embrace your newfound abilities—that you won’t do anything rash or drastic!”

  Then he was outside on the sidewalk, the sun warming his bones and the cars whizzing by on the road in front of him. Back in reality—the concrete world he knew. There was a 7/11 across the street, where he could buy cigarettes and booze—and goddamn did he ever want booze right now. A Wells Fargo Bank to his right, where he could pull out money from an actual ATM machine. A tattoo parlor to his left, where he could spice up his own body—something that would be permanent and real.

  Permanent and real like this crazy nightmare he seemed to have fallen into.

  As much as he wanted to deny the Druid’s words, they seemed to make too much sense considering all that had been happening around him.

  He was no longer Steve Remington, studio owner and band manager.

  He was Steve Remington, Myth Seeker.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Steve’s hands shook as he started his car and peeled away from the tar
ot shop, into traffic. To stop the trembling, he white-knuckled the steering wheel during the whole drive. He headed back toward his studio, to pick up Annabel. He had just as many questions for January Amos, the Druid, as he had when he’d arrived. But the questions he had now were of a different nature—from a different angle.

  Can I take everything she said at face value? he first thought, as he started to weave around a car that had stopped in the middle of the street for no apparent reason.

  Why should I trust her? He jerked his hands on the wheel and corrected his steering after swerving around the Jeep. He shook his head. What reason does she have to lie to me, though?

  It seemed like the three Mythics from the tarot shop were all on the same side: Aiden the unlucky leprechaun, Scarlet the deviant succubus, and her mom, January the wise Druid. But he hadn’t actually learned if January was a Mythic at all . . . it seemed like she considered herself more of an historian of the mythological people and their world.

  It didn’t really matter, in the end.

  “Smoke on the Water” started playing and he reached in his pocket and glanced down. Dale was calling him.

  Someone honked at him. He looked back up and realized he was gliding into oncoming traffic. He jerked his hand again and was back in his lane. He answered the call and pressed the speaker phone button, resting the phone on his lap.

  “Fats, what is it?”

  “Morning to you, too, Steve-o.” Dale still sounded slightly inebriated.

  “It’s eleven o’clock. Hardly morning.”

  Dale scoffed. Steve could practically feel the spittle flying from his bottom lip on the other end of the phone.

  “Jeez, someone must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed,” Dale said.

  “Sorry . . . I’ve just learned some . . . disconcerting news.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No, Fats. I need to think.” Steve paused as he put his foot on the brakes and came rolling up to a red light. He was only three or so blocks from his studio. When his car was still he picked up his phone, pushed the speaker phone button, and put the phone up to his ear. “Why did you call me, Fats?”

  A pause.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dale said at last. “Annabel wants to know where you are. She says you have a meeting with Mister Henry in an hour.”

  Steve furrowed his brow. “God, don’t you have your own place? You two have been getting mighty comfortable squatting at my studio.”

  The annoying, crunching sound of someone eating on the other end filled Steve’s ear. Dale said, through a full mouth, “We’ve had songs to work on, man. It’s been necessary.”

  “We finished the songs, Dale.”

  Another pause.

  Then, in a low voice, “I got evicted.”

  The light turned green and Steve was rolling again. “What?!” he exclaimed. He rolled down the window, cradled the phone between his shoulder and tilted cheek, and reached for a cigarette from the pack on the passenger seat, next to the newly minted $53 parking ticket.

  Quite the multitasker.

  He shoved the butt of the cigarette in his mouth. “When the hell did that happen? And when were you planning on telling me?”

  Dale said, “I just told you right now. We can talk about it when you’re home.”

  “Home? It’s my home, Fats, not yours. Operative word being ‘mine’ . . . I mean ‘my.’ ”

  “Yeah, I was hoping we could discuss that . . .”

  “What’s there to discuss?”

  “Well, I was thinking I might move in for a while . . . until I get back on my feet. You know, I could just surf your couch for a bit.”

  “Does part of your plan consist of you paying rent?” Steve asked, trying to stay calm. His day had already been long enough, and it wasn’t even noon.

  “Of course!”

  “If you couldn’t pay for your own place, how will you help pay for mine?”

  Dale made another crunching sound and Steve tore the phone away from his ear. He realized then he’d been talking out the corner of his mouth and hadn’t even lit his cigarette yet. He lit it while trying to find a parking spot near his studio.

  “And what the hell are you eating?” he asked incredulously.

  “A pickle.”

  “I have pickles?”

  “A waiter at Buddy’s diner gave me one.”

  Steve rolled his eyes. “You’re already pestering the neighborhood restaurant for free food? I don’t want to get on their bad side, man!”

  “It’s just a fucking pickle, Steve! Jesus! What’s going on with you?”

  Steve found a spot half a block down from the studio. It was easy to find a parking place around eleven on a Wednesday because all the normal people were at work. The non-Myth Seekers . . .

  “I don’t know, I think I’m losing my mind,” Steve said, turning off his car and opening the door to get out.

  “What else is new? I could have told you that,” Dale replied.

  “Dammit—”

  “I’m kidding, Steve-o. Just breathe. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “I’m coming in right now.” Steve ended the call.

  “SO . . . YOU’RE SOME type of mythical figure, then?” Dale was awestruck. He and Annabel were sitting on the couch in the lobby, watching and listening as Steve paced the floor and rambled about his meeting with January Amos.

  Music was blaring from one of the recording rooms. There was a band practicing some terrible metal music in the room—not that all metal was terrible, in Steve’s opinion, just this particular band was. Using the rooms as rehearsal spaces was one of the ways Steve paid his rent. He had heard his fair share of shitty metal bands come through the doors of Remington Studios, but this one took the iron cake.

  The metal music wasn’t calming down his roaring brain, either.

  “I’m not . . . well, I don’t know if I’m a Mythic. I mean, I was born on this planet, right?”

  “Jury’s still out on that one,” Dale said.

  Steve glared at him. Annabel giggled.

  Steve’s eyes shot over to Annabel. “Oh, I’m glad you’re enjoying this,” he spat, half-heartedly. “I hope my suffering is entertaining you two.”

  Dale and Annabel shared a look with each other, shrugged, then nodded, smiles on their faces.

  “You are rather high strung, Mister Steve,” Annabel said.

  “And it is pretty funny watching you suffer,” Dale added.

  Steve tried to ignore them. He couldn’t win with these two, especially when they were ganging up on him all buddy-buddy like.

  He finally stopped pacing and faced the couch and its occupants. “What should I do?”

  Dale raised his hand like he was a student in class. “Go to CVS,” he said, “meet with a doctor, and get some blood pressure pills.”

  Steve put his hands on his hips. Annabel was giggling again.

  “I’m serious, guys,” Steve said. “I think someone is still trying to kill me.”

  Dammit! Steve thought. In his haste to flee the tarot shop, he’d forgotten to ask if someone was still trying to kill him. Sort of an important tidbit to leave out.

  “Or you,” he added, pointing at Annabel. When Annabel’s smile faded, and her face froze in fear, a pang of guilt swept through Steve’s body and he said, “I’m not sure though, Bel. I could be wrong. I’m probably wrong.”

  “But you’re the only one who can bring me home, right?” Annabel asked.

  Steve nodded.

  “Just as my parents thought . . .” she added, trailing off.

  “You are Bound to me. Whatever that means,” Steve said.

  Dale leaned back in the couch. It looked like he was becoming one with the leathery fabric. He pointed at Steve and said, “So you’re like her . . . slave-master?”—then at Annabel next to him—“And she’s your slave?”

  Steve guffawed, and Annabel snorted, in unison.

  “She’s not my slave!” Steve shouted.

 
; But Dale wasn’t listening—he already had the idea in his mind. “Kinky,” he muttered, rubbing his chins.

  “And how are we Bound?” Annabel asked.

  Steve scratched the top of his head. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, if we’re locked together . . . what’s binding us?”

  Steve opened his mouth to speak, but then realized he didn’t have the answer. “Hmm,” he muttered. “Next time you need to come with me. I have no idea what’s binding us together.”

  “Should I write all this stuff down?” Dale asked. He pantomimed writing with a pen on his palm. “‘Who’s trying to kill me and my slave? What’s binding me together with my slave? Leather and chains?’ Are there any other questions you have for the mystical oracle?”

  Steve sighed. “Shut up, Fats.”

  “Better not let the FBI see that list!”

  “You’re not helping, man.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” Dale said. He groaned and pushed himself off the couch. “I’m gonna get something to eat.”

  Steve said, “What, you don’t want to go meet with Henry to go over the exciting paperwork?”

  “You mean the alcoholic lawyer that doesn’t drink anymore? Yeah, sounds real fun, Steve-o.”

  Then Dale was out the door, heading toward Buddy’s.

  Steve checked his phone. “If we’re gonna make it by noon, we’d better go, too.”

  Annabel stood from the couch. Then she clamped her eyes shut and put her hand to her forehead. “Ooh, I think I stood up too quickly.”

  “Still hungover?”

  “I think I’m still drunk,” she said.

  “Good,” Steve said, heading for the door. “That should make this more bearable.”

  HENRY’S—FIRST NAME only—law firm was in La Jolla, next to a 24-Hour Fitness and a new Juice Caboose smoothie place. It was in the middle of all the hubbub, which made parking within a mile of the place a nightmare.

  Luckily, Steve found a parking spot right out front of Henry’s four-story building. It wasn’t Henry’s building. He wasn’t that successful. His firm only took up one small room of the big place.

  Steve considered the convenient parking spot the first win of the afternoon.