Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Book Club book club club.
Speaker 1: Club?
Speaker 2: What it make?
Speaker 1: I was doing more of like a spaghetti western type deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, fortunately we were like really in sync with
Speaker 2: each other, so that's really what that matters.
Speaker 1: That's what made it work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, welcome to Cool Zone Media book Club. The
Speaker 2: only book club that you don't have to do the
Speaker 2: reading for it, because I do the reading for you.
Speaker 2: There might be other book clubs where you don't have
Speaker 2: to do the reading. Actually, every book club I've ever
Speaker 2: been part of as an adult is a book club
Speaker 2: I didn't do the reading for. So I feel like
Speaker 2: this is a we're like, well in line with normal
Speaker 2: book club behavior.
Speaker 1: I think, yes, absolutely, And to keep in line with it,
Speaker 1: I also brought my sword to this book club. Oh
Speaker 1: I'm ready.
Speaker 2: That's a nice sword, thank you.
Speaker 1: It's based off a sword in a novel that I
Speaker 1: read recently for a new fantasy series. Okay that a
Speaker 1: bladesmith I know just happened to also read and made
Speaker 1: this sword, and I said, I will buy this sword,
Speaker 1: and now it's a good sword.
Speaker 2: I recently I did a bunch of episodes about the
Speaker 2: raiders on Harper's Ferry. Besides John Brown, Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: went to Harper's Ferry and I took photos of the
Speaker 2: sword that the Bleeding Kansas sword that he had, yeah,
Speaker 2: or that the other raiders had. And I was like
Speaker 2: talking about the sword and how I thought it was
Speaker 2: this one French artillery sword. But then a listener told
Speaker 2: me that it was actually the American copy of the
Speaker 2: French artillery sword. And I found a place and I
Speaker 2: bought one, and then like two weeks later, I got
Speaker 2: an email telling me that actually they were out of
Speaker 2: them and they were going to give me my money back.
Speaker 1: That's heartbreaking, I know, I know I had actually bought two,
Speaker 1: one for someone else. Well, I am also on a
Speaker 1: John Brown related arms. I'm having my blacksmith put together
Speaker 1: like a short spear with a bowie knife type tip
Speaker 1: to it, a good old pike. Uh, it's more of
Speaker 1: a glave. But yeah, okay, yeah yeah, inspired by the
Speaker 1: John Brown.
Speaker 2: I definitely was looking harder for the John Brown pikes
Speaker 2: than I was for the John Brown sword. But I
Speaker 2: did not find the John Brown pikes.
Speaker 1: Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 2: But what I did it find was my own copy
Speaker 2: of my book. I actually had to go buy the
Speaker 2: e book of my book because I don't know if
Speaker 2: people know this, but when you send a book off
Speaker 2: to a publisher, they do like final edits that are
Speaker 2: not in your file, So you don't have a copy
Speaker 2: of the final book on your own computer. But I
Speaker 2: do now. Anyway, we're on chapter three of The Barrel
Speaker 2: Will Send What It May, the second book in the
Speaker 2: Danielle Kaine series. By the time you're listening to this,
Speaker 2: you missed the kickstarter or participated in the kickstarter for
Speaker 2: this book. But don't worry. There's pre orders for the
Speaker 2: third book in the series. But that's not what we're reading.
Speaker 2: We're reading the second one. Hell yeah, chapter three. Morning
Speaker 2: came too soon for my taste. I'd scarcely been asleep
Speaker 2: before the first birds announced their desire to herald the Dawn.
Speaker 2: Brynn was spooning me, and the idea of staying there
Speaker 2: like that was a lot more interesting than getting up
Speaker 2: to go chase down what a demon, a resurrectionist zombies.
Speaker 2: There'd be coffee, though, if I woke up. Sometimes I
Speaker 2: think I let myself get addicted to coffee, not because
Speaker 2: I liked it, not because caffeine did me any favors,
Speaker 2: but because it takes the urge of a physical addiction
Speaker 2: to provide any kind of upside to getting out of
Speaker 2: bed in the morning. It didn't bother me thinking like that.
Speaker 2: Brynn liked coffee even more than I did, so as
Speaker 2: the dawn light came in through the window, I untangled
Speaker 2: myself from her and went off to figure out the kitchen.
Speaker 2: Vasillis was already there, chopping potatoes. He brought the blade
Speaker 2: down slowly with each cut, working silently so as to
Speaker 2: not wake the house. I found myself the coffee grinder.
Speaker 2: It would be fine. Waking up was fine. Over breakfast,
Speaker 2: we worked out our plans. Vulture and Thursday would take
Speaker 2: the library's car, actually the old bookmobile, and head up
Speaker 2: to Glacier for the day see what they could find.
Speaker 2: Doomsday and Vasillis, we're going to go through the library
Speaker 2: see how much information they could dredge up about the
Speaker 2: Book of Barrow and Resurrection. The rest of us, Heather,
Speaker 2: Brann and myself would see what we could find out
Speaker 2: in town. Presumably we'd start by talking to Asola and Gertrude.
Speaker 2: We'd reconvene at sunset or whenever the boys came back
Speaker 2: from Glacier. Now that I was awake, fed and caffeinated.
Speaker 2: I was actually fairly excited to get this thing figured out.
Speaker 2: Everyone likes a good puzzle. Turns out a puzzle with
Speaker 2: magic in it is twice as interesting. Brynn, Heather and
Speaker 2: I hopped on bicycles, janky old cruisers, perfect for a
Speaker 2: town as flat as Pendleton, and went off to find
Speaker 2: a sola. I had my travel pack with me, emptied
Speaker 2: in case we found anything. The few people we saw
Speaker 2: looked friendly enough. Outside the gas station slash grocery store
Speaker 2: slash diner combo, an older fellow waved at Heather, who
Speaker 2: waved back. The tattoo on her arm was fresh. A
Speaker 2: simplified or Aboris this town actually likes its punks, I asked,
Speaker 2: we run the library. Vasillis and a Sola are from
Speaker 2: here too, well, Vasillis is from Greece, but he's been
Speaker 2: here twenty years. People don't really understand us, but they
Speaker 2: also don't really mind that they don't. If that makes sense,
Speaker 2: it did. I'd never really stayed put long enough to
Speaker 2: get that kind of feeling in a town, but I
Speaker 2: had met a few folks who had over the years.
Speaker 2: It sounded nice, a bit lonely, though living in one
Speaker 2: place always sounded kind of lonely to me. It took
Speaker 2: us maybe ten minutes to bike out to the western
Speaker 2: edge of town. It had been a tourist town that
Speaker 2: was easy to see the gateway to the great outdoors
Speaker 2: or some shit. We must have been closer to Glacier
Speaker 2: than I realized. The last block of town held four
Speaker 2: bed and breakfasts in a row. One of them, the
Speaker 2: first we passed, even, looked like it was probably still operational.
Speaker 2: The lawn was maintained, and a little fountain shot water
Speaker 2: up about a foot from some rocks in the front yard.
Speaker 2: The other three b and b's, though, were boarded up
Speaker 2: and overgrown, and to my eye at least all the
Speaker 2: more beautiful for it. This one's it, Heather said, parking
Speaker 2: her bike along the wrought iron fence of the last
Speaker 2: house on the block. The building itself was small, barely
Speaker 2: more than a cottage, but its yard was expansive and
Speaker 2: it backed onto forest. If I was rich, I would
Speaker 2: live somewhere like that, or you know, since I was poor,
Speaker 2: I'd squat someplace like that. It would be nice to
Speaker 2: live somewhere where you didn't have to worry about the
Speaker 2: cops kicking down your door. But the trade off of
Speaker 2: being law abiding didn't sound worth it. We didn't lock
Speaker 2: the bikes. We didn't even have bike locks. You two
Speaker 2: might want to go up there alone, Heather told us.
Speaker 2: I think if a solo wanted to talk to me,
Speaker 2: she would have by now, you know. So, bren and
Speaker 2: I opened the iron gate and started up the front walk.
Speaker 2: Never been on a zombies' doorstep, I said, after I
Speaker 2: rang the doorbell, I figure it's more like Lazarus's doorstep.
Speaker 2: The guy Jesus resurrected. That's the one. What's the story
Speaker 2: with him? I asked, Hell, if I know just that
Speaker 2: Jesus brought him back from the dead, why was he
Speaker 2: so special? Go away? This last bit came from inside
Speaker 2: the house, right on the other side of the door.
Speaker 2: Brenn and I looked at each other. We uh, we
Speaker 2: come in peace, I offered, And if you want to
Speaker 2: come in peace, you should bring a piece offering, a
Speaker 2: piece offering like the things that you can get from Oh.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going at a very different place
Speaker 1: when you said come.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, all of our prosing.
Speaker 1: Oh, we are we advertising for hymns again? Right? That's right,
Speaker 1: and there are other product them's which I'm very excited
Speaker 1: to see hit the market.
Speaker 2: And here are the ads for that. And we're back.
Speaker 2: We're not cops or nothing. Brnn added, Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 2: think the two crosspunks at the door were cops. But
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to talk to anyone. Why not, I asked,
Speaker 2: that's a shitty question to ask, and I knew it.
Speaker 2: Sola wanted to be left alone. She'd made that clear
Speaker 2: in a thousand ways, Yet here we were prying. I'm
Speaker 2: going to open the door, but only because I'm too
Speaker 2: tired to yell through it. As Sola said, you can't
Speaker 2: come in, all right, Brina greed. The door swung open.
Speaker 2: I don't know why I expected her to look like
Speaker 2: a zombie or something. I mean, i'd met Gertrude already
Speaker 2: and she looked normal enough, But I legit assumed a
Speaker 2: Sola was going to look like a zombie. A Sola
Speaker 2: didn't look like a zombie. She looked instead like well,
Speaker 2: one of us. She wore a slip dress that showed
Speaker 2: off her full figure, and her hair was tied up
Speaker 2: in a loose bun, revealing tattoos across her neck. Even
Speaker 2: though she probably wasn't a day over twenty two. She
Speaker 2: had a claw hammer in her hand. No, wait, both hands.
Speaker 2: She had a claw hammer in each hand. It's just
Speaker 2: that only one of the two was raised. Instant friend, crush,
Speaker 2: what are you doing here? She asked, You're going to
Speaker 2: get yourself killed on a long enough timeline. Brina agreed.
Speaker 2: She had her hand hovering near the folding baton on
Speaker 2: her belt. No, I mean, if anyone sees me talking
Speaker 2: to you, I don't know what's going to happen, you
Speaker 2: might wind up dead. That's an argument for letting us inside.
Speaker 2: Then I offered, that's an argument for y'all leaving. She countered, true,
Speaker 2: I agreed, but we didn't go. Who would kill us? Barrow?
Speaker 2: I don't know. She thought about it. No, not Barrow.
Speaker 2: What happened to you and everyone up at Glacier?
Speaker 1: I asked.
Speaker 2: She put the hammer down and met my gaze unflinching. Somehow,
Speaker 2: this was even more intimidating than when she had the
Speaker 2: weapon raised. We all die. Okay, that's all I'm gonna
Speaker 2: say about it. Okay. I waited for her to tell
Speaker 2: me more. Anyway, Look, you're wasting your time talking to me,
Speaker 2: who should we talk to? Then I asked Gertrude what
Speaker 2: she got to do with it? No, No, Gertrude's innocent.
Speaker 2: I don't think she knows anything. A soul aside. Then
Speaker 2: set the hammers down on a table near the door. Look,
Speaker 2: if I tell you where to look next, I am
Speaker 2: guessing you'll die. Magic is too fucked up to be
Speaker 2: safe at all for anyone hunting down mad men with
Speaker 2: access to it. That's worse. You really really should just
Speaker 2: skip town and never look back. Forget the name Barrow,
Speaker 2: forget the name Pendleton, Forget me, Forget Gertrude. Ain't gonna happen, though,
Speaker 2: Brenn said. You want to know what's going on, you
Speaker 2: want a man named Sebastian Miller, Gertrude's husband ex husband.
Speaker 2: A Sola said, he runs the gift shop on the
Speaker 2: east edge of town with the dinosaurs, I asked, with
Speaker 2: the dinosaurs. Don't confront him, don't let him know you're
Speaker 2: investigating him, don't let him know you exist, don't tell
Speaker 2: him I talk to you. Thank you, I said. She
Speaker 2: started to close the door. Wait, I said, I still
Speaker 2: have so many questions to ask. Yeah, well, I've got
Speaker 2: about three more seasons of Xena. I planned to watch
Speaker 2: while I pretend like I don't exist. So I'm afraid
Speaker 2: I'm too busy for questions. I'm sorry, bryn said, as
Speaker 2: the door was closing. I'm sorry about whatever happened to you.
Speaker 2: The door hesitated, thank you. The door closed. We reconvened
Speaker 2: with Heather out by the street and told her what
Speaker 2: we'd learned. Hey, that's more than I've gotten out of her,
Speaker 2: Heather said, And we used to live together, so Sebastian
Speaker 2: Miller I said, I bet he's at Dawson's right now,
Speaker 2: the diner or grocery store or whatever. He's there most weekdays,
Speaker 2: only opens the gift shop on the weekends. Do we
Speaker 2: go to Dawson's or the gift shop? I asked, Are
Speaker 2: you kidding? Brynne asked, A SOULO is pretty clear about that.
Speaker 2: We'll go to his place now while he's not home
Speaker 2: and just break in. Heather asked, yeah, Brent said. Heather
Speaker 2: seemed to think that over for a minute. All right.
Speaker 2: We had to bike down side streets to avoid Dawson's,
Speaker 2: but it still didn't take us longer than maybe ten minutes.
Speaker 2: Everyone we passed looked friendly, but riding through town during
Speaker 2: the day, you could tell that the town was poor destitute.
Speaker 2: Maybe about a third of the houses were abandoned and
Speaker 2: most of the rest were poorly maintained. Every road but
Speaker 2: the main one, was full of potholes. They were probably
Speaker 2: maintaining the main road for the sake of tourists if
Speaker 2: one day the tourists came back, or maybe they were
Speaker 2: maintaining the main road for their own sake, for their
Speaker 2: own dignity. It was hard to tell. We cut through
Speaker 2: an alley, the small town kind that goes between backyards
Speaker 2: instead of brick buildings, to approach the gift shop. From
Speaker 2: the back it was easy to pick out the right place.
Speaker 2: A twenty foot tall brontosaurus with purple paint shipping off
Speaker 2: its concrete kept watch over the backyard. How will we
Speaker 2: get in, Heather asked, what are we looking for? I asked,
Speaker 2: don't know and don't know. Bryn said, well, know and
Speaker 2: we see it. To both questions. The building was a
Speaker 2: plane cube, two stories tall and peppered with windows. I
Speaker 2: went to the closest one, popped the screen out and
Speaker 2: tried to lift the glass locked. I put the screen
Speaker 2: back in and went to the next one. You get
Speaker 2: much crime in Pendleton, Brenne asked, no, not really. Heather answered,
Speaker 2: no cops in town either. Sometimes the cam sheriff comes
Speaker 2: in to handle something, but we're pretty much on her own.
Speaker 2: People usually lock their windows. I asked, the next window
Speaker 2: was locked too, No, Heather said, acol is something to hide.
Speaker 2: Brynn said, I mean we are trying to break in.
Speaker 2: I said, kind of justifies as paranoia. Help me up.
Speaker 2: This a potosaurus? Brynn said. It was deceptively hard to
Speaker 2: get a hold of, since the ridge of its back
Speaker 2: was just out of reach from the ground and the
Speaker 2: whole belly of the thing was round. I think it's
Speaker 2: a brontosaurus, I said. I gave her a boost with
Speaker 2: my good arm, and she straddled the beast like she
Speaker 2: was riding it. Vulture would have wanted a photo for
Speaker 2: his Instagram. Help. I wanted a photo because Brynn looked
Speaker 2: awesome as a crosspunk Dinah writing Cowboy. But you know
Speaker 2: you're not supposed to take pictures of yourself at the
Speaker 2: scene of any given crime in progress. I thought brontos
Speaker 2: weren't real, Brynn said, I thought they were all a
Speaker 2: Potosaurus is now Nope. My youngest niece had been obsessed
Speaker 2: with dinosaurs. Last time i'd gone to see her in Illinois,
Speaker 2: she'd schooled me good when I tried to say that
Speaker 2: brontos weren't real. They count as real dinosaurs. Again. This,
Speaker 2: by the way, unrelated is how I feel about Pluto.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel strongly this way about brontosauruses. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it's one of the dinosaurs that I used to know
Speaker 1: all of the dinosaurs, Margaret. When I was like a
Speaker 1: little six year old kid, I had an eight hundred
Speaker 1: page dinosaur encyclopedia, not a kid's book, like very small print,
Speaker 1: and every dinosaur in that book I knew I could
Speaker 1: recognize them from their skulls. Elliet, I can name my
Speaker 1: four dinosaurs today. It's like all the Latin I learned,
Speaker 1: it's just gone, you know. I as a teenager, I
Speaker 1: was translating the fucking a neeod into English, and I
Speaker 1: have like four words now.
Speaker 2: See, I took careers a lot, and then I only
Speaker 2: learned four words the whole time. But yeah, I'm more
Speaker 2: to do with the teacher who.
Speaker 1: Love us cheat right right right? Yes or yes?
Speaker 2: Kicked out of the school for acting inappropriately, but that's
Speaker 2: besides the point. Ah, we all liked him. He let
Speaker 2: us cheat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my best teacher also got kicked out of the
Speaker 1: school for something away. He broke the law, but not
Speaker 1: that way, so it's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is this like, there's a completely normal thing that
Speaker 2: if you go to high school at something wishing to
Speaker 2: drug dealers. Yeah, like yeah, yeah, we had a teacher
Speaker 2: who was the art teacher was stealing kids paintings and
Speaker 2: putting his own name on them and selling them.
Speaker 1: That is that's actually kind of awesome, and that's that's fun.
Speaker 1: He was a good grift.
Speaker 2: He was passing. I don't think he knew any art,
Speaker 2: and he was passing like he would print out from
Speaker 2: course catalogs from colleges their art and put it up
Speaker 2: on the wall as like his art as an example
Speaker 2: of what we should do.
Speaker 1: Amazing, you know.
Speaker 2: And then when he got kicked out, everyone like through
Speaker 2: a well he actually got kicked out for another inappropriate thing.
Speaker 2: He was doing students right.
Speaker 1: Right, of course, Yeah, that seems obvious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, something about bronosauruses. So oh jeez, okay, well
Speaker 2: I didn't look at the next line. Uh huh, next
Speaker 2: thing you'll tell me that Pluto is a planet. Bryn
Speaker 2: reached down to help me up, but I waved her away.
Speaker 2: My shoulder was way too still stitched up to climb
Speaker 2: something like that. Brynn started to climb up the beast's
Speaker 2: neck towards the building. You think it'll hold, I asked,
Speaker 2: by which I meant I don't think it'll hold. But
Speaker 2: in a second she had scrambled up to the little
Speaker 2: brono head and was looking at the wall of the building,
Speaker 2: about five maybe six feet away. She was gonna jump,
Speaker 2: She would have had to cross the distance and get
Speaker 2: a hold of the narrow window ledge pull herself up,
Speaker 2: then hope the window was unlocked, because there was no
Speaker 2: other logical way down. Hey, uh, I started, I'd really
Speaker 2: rather you didn't, Heather shouted. Brynn jumped. Time didn't slow
Speaker 2: down or anything. Maybe it's sped up one second, I
Speaker 2: was yelling. In the next second, No, the same second
Speaker 2: was clinging to the window sill, which couldn't have been
Speaker 2: more than three inches deep. She pulled herself up and
Speaker 2: crouched on the sill. Brinn should have been a cat burglar. Actually,
Speaker 2: for all I knew, she was a cat burglar. She
Speaker 2: got the window open and disappeared inside. What do we do,
Speaker 2: Heather asked, unspoken. Do we try to follow her? Because
Speaker 2: I don't want to. No, I said, answering her unspoken
Speaker 2: question instead of her spoken one. I went to the
Speaker 2: closest window. About ten seconds later, Brynn was on the
Speaker 2: other side of it and let us in. And what
Speaker 2: was inside, Robert Evans, was the most amazing deals.
Speaker 1: Just oh yeah, yeah, I mean like, yes, yeah. I
Speaker 1: didn't have anything funny to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, probably please, here we go.
Speaker 1: Gambling. I love gambling. Yeah, sports, gambling, good idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gambling.
Speaker 1: You always what is people? They said, gamble on everything.
Speaker 2: People who gamble all the time, always doing great. That's
Speaker 2: what everyone says.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. It's a good thing to do constantly, every
Speaker 1: hour of every day that you're away.
Speaker 2: Here's that, and we're back. I lost ten thousand dollars
Speaker 2: during the ad break because I had a gambling machine
Speaker 2: in my pocket.
Speaker 1: But on the upside, you continued your addiction to dopamine,
Speaker 1: that's true, which is constantly spiking every like six seconds
Speaker 1: as a result of all of the different compulsion devices
Speaker 1: that have been forced into your life.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. So with the story, I wonder
Speaker 2: what was going through the head of the person who
Speaker 2: decided that the world needed hundreds of shot glasses with
Speaker 2: the words Pendleton, Montana emblazoned on the side. Because I
Speaker 2: didn't air that particular opinion, But what do I know.
Speaker 2: Maybe they'd moved thousands of them already. I pocketed one,
Speaker 2: then spent a full minute having an ethical argument with myself.
Speaker 2: I don't have any particular issue justifying theft of necessities
Speaker 2: or from big box stores. But a shot glass wasn't food,
Speaker 2: and this wasn't exactly a Walmart. The store looked like
Speaker 2: any roadside bullshit gift store anywhere. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: the guy who owned the place was probably a bad man.
Speaker 2: Isn't that why we'd broken into his place? That was
Speaker 2: terrible logic. That was state logic. A man wasn't guilty
Speaker 2: just because he was being investigated. I put the shotglass back.
Speaker 2: I am pretty sure eighteen year old me would have
Speaker 2: laughed at twenty eight year old me, But eighteen year
Speaker 2: old me was kind of an asshole, so I didn't
Speaker 2: really hold myself responsible to her. I also didn't need
Speaker 2: a shot glass there wasn't much. We could imagine him
Speaker 2: hiding inside the store itself, so after the briefest of searches,
Speaker 2: we went up the stairs to his apartment. Heather took
Speaker 2: while by the front window, since she knew what the
Speaker 2: guy looked like and the truck he drove. Brynn and
Speaker 2: I combed through the apartment, careful to set everything back
Speaker 2: into its right place, since we weren't wearing gloves. We
Speaker 2: absolutely should have been wearing gloves. We wanted to make
Speaker 2: sure he never even suspected we were there. It was frustrating,
Speaker 2: anxious work. One slip up could land us in prison.
Speaker 2: Even the natural joy of snooping was diminished by how
Speaker 2: careful we had to be. There were two photos framed
Speaker 2: on the wall, one of Gertrude and a man who
Speaker 2: must be Sebastian, holding hands on a mountaintop with a
Speaker 2: valley and a river in the distance below. He was
Speaker 2: an unremarkable old white man, hard to distinguish from any other.
Speaker 2: The other photo was of a younger couple in the
Speaker 2: same place, probably the two of them thirty years earlier. Younger,
Speaker 2: he looked happy and handsome. The difference between the two
Speaker 2: made me sad. Happy old couples give me a sort
Speaker 2: of hope. But by these photos the happiness had been
Speaker 2: gone for decades. There were glaciers in the background of
Speaker 2: the older photo, but they had melted by the time
Speaker 2: the newer one had been taken. More sadness. Why should
Speaker 2: the march of time be inherently melancholic? It didn't seem fair.
Speaker 2: I opened the frames carefully, no hidden notes, not even
Speaker 2: a date written on the corner to sate my curiosity.
Speaker 2: I hadn't done snooping like this more than a handful
Speaker 2: of times. The first time, a couple of us had
Speaker 2: robbed some rich asshole's house and sold his stuff for food.
Speaker 2: I was young, reckless, and I'd never been to jail,
Speaker 2: so it was just kind of fun. The second time,
Speaker 2: the whole affair had been deadly serious. My friend's mother
Speaker 2: had been trapped in an abusive relationship, so we'd broken
Speaker 2: into the man's summer home for blackmail to hold over
Speaker 2: his head so that she could leave him in comparative safety.
Speaker 2: That time, the stakes were too epic for it to
Speaker 2: be thrilling, but righteousness imparts a kind of high of
Speaker 2: its own. Both of those men had had entertaining secrets
Speaker 2: like embarrassingly crass porn collections or a false bottom drawer
Speaker 2: with cheesy ninja weapons hidden inside. Sebastian Miller had an
Speaker 2: easy chair, a bed, a bookshelf full of mediocre but
Speaker 2: not embarrassing books, and a fuck off big TV, a
Speaker 2: mounted deer nothing impressive, and a run of the mill
Speaker 2: hunting rifle hung on the wall. My pack stayed empty.
Speaker 2: Their a basement, I asked, at last, after I checked
Speaker 2: every damn horror book on his shelf for a hidden compartment.
Speaker 2: Maybe through the office downstairs. Heather said, okay, office basement,
Speaker 2: and then I give up. We'll find something. Heather said,
Speaker 2: what's he like? I asked, he weird or anything. I
Speaker 2: never thought twice about him until Gertrude came back. Heather said,
Speaker 2: he drives a nineteen fifties truck. That's about the most
Speaker 2: interesting thing about him. He used to come by the
Speaker 2: live sometimes check out thrillers for himself, romance for Gertrude,
Speaker 2: called her Gertie. He was the only one in town
Speaker 2: who called her that. I don't think she liked it.
Speaker 2: The office door behind the checkout counter of the gift
Speaker 2: shop was locked with a dead bolt. I got out
Speaker 2: my tools. I keep attention wrench and a basic rake
Speaker 2: and a hidden pouch on the waistbelt of my pack,
Speaker 2: usually to break into dumpsters for food and set to work.
Speaker 2: Who the hell are you people, Heather asked, climbing into
Speaker 2: second story windows busting out lock picks like it's nothing.
Speaker 2: Brynn laughed in that out of character giggle of hers.
Speaker 2: We told you we're demon hunters. We should get a
Speaker 2: crew name. I said, the eulixeans. Brynn said, without hesitating,
Speaker 2: we can't name ourselves after a demon we banished. I said, no, no,
Speaker 2: think about it. Brynn said, Eulixe wasn't bad because of
Speaker 2: what he did, stopping those who wheeled power over others.
Speaker 2: He was bad because he was a single manifestation of
Speaker 2: that ideal. We could do the same work, but as
Speaker 2: people not omnipotent, it doesn't really roll off the tongue.
Speaker 2: Heather said, fine. Brynn said fine. The tension wrench gave
Speaker 2: way in my hand, The lock turned over, and I
Speaker 2: opened the door. Just an office, well, an office straight
Speaker 2: out of the eighties or nineties or whatever. Big ugly
Speaker 2: monitor on a big ugly desk, and the carpet was
Speaker 2: about twice as thick as could be reasonably justified. There
Speaker 2: were two other doors on the far wall, one of
Speaker 2: you a hack or two, Heather asked. I shrugged, sure,
Speaker 2: Brynn said, vulture is. We went through the drawers found
Speaker 2: nothing but business receipts and junk mail. To be honest,
Speaker 2: I don't think we'll find anything on the computer either,
Speaker 2: I said. I think this whole thing is a bust.
Speaker 2: I opened one of the two doors, a closet with
Speaker 2: cleaning supplies and office supplies. I opened the other door.
Speaker 2: Now here was something interesting. The door led to a
Speaker 2: short hallway about ten feet long, with another door at
Speaker 2: the other end. Above the door, someone had crudely carved
Speaker 2: in Greek letters to Pota's ontana den parasai brene and
Speaker 2: I stared blankly. Uh, Heather said, squinting to Poto's ontana
Speaker 2: den tha parasi, What does that mean? I asked, No clue.
Speaker 2: I can't really speak Greek. I just learned how to
Speaker 2: sound it out a couple of years ago. Bacillis's Greek.
Speaker 2: I think I was trying to impress him. How long
Speaker 2: have you and him? Brent started to ask, I don't
Speaker 2: know if she trailed off because she was shy to
Speaker 2: ask with me around, or she realized it wasn't the
Speaker 2: time and place five years. Heather said, it's good mostly.
Speaker 2: She opened the door. A set of plain wooden steps
Speaker 2: led down into darkness. I sometimes wish, I don't know,
Speaker 2: Heather said, I wish things were easier between us, more relaxed.
Speaker 2: He's not controlling, but somehow I just I wish I
Speaker 2: felt more free. She took a step through the doorway.
Speaker 2: This time, my perception of time slowed down. I saw
Speaker 2: her hand move and green light rippled out across something
Speaker 2: like someone had strung an invisible window screen across the doorway.
Speaker 2: Her whole arm pierced that veil, and she screamed. She
Speaker 2: didn't have time to stop. Momentum carried her forward. Every
Speaker 2: bit of her on the far side of the doorway
Speaker 2: glowed with green fire. I grabbed for her the fingers
Speaker 2: of my hand, my goat bitten hand went right through
Speaker 2: the doorway, and it tingled. My wrist though passed through
Speaker 2: and it hurt like fire. While most of the times
Speaker 2: I've gotten burned, fire only hurt later once the nerve
Speaker 2: ending started growing back or whatever. This time, it hurt immediately,
Speaker 2: like how fire hurts left. I got a hold of
Speaker 2: her jacket and yanked back. She fell on top of me.
Speaker 2: She stopped screaming. If she was breathing, it was too
Speaker 2: faint to hear. Dune dun dun.
Speaker 1: Whooo.
Speaker 2: That's the end of chapter three.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, Well what an episode.
Speaker 2: It's a book, all right, See you all next week.
Speaker 1: Huh, see you all next week for more chapter It
Speaker 1: Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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