5

I knocked his hand away and turned on him. “Got a reason for that?” I said angrily. He walked over to a point about ten feet from the door and pointed at the ground. I looked closely but didn't see anything. As if he could read my mind, he said, “Use your sight, Ms. Fatelli.” I gritted my teeth and focused. A shimmering half-bubble came into view around the door. “An alarm. Break the the shell, and they know you are here.” he said in a neutral tone, like a schoolteacher lecturing a especially dense student.
I looked the door over and saw the focus was a largish nail driven into the door, with mistletoe wrapped around it. It wasn't a faerie spell then, but that left a lot of choices. I abandoned the idea of a back entrance, and held my sight up as we walked around the outside of the building. All the first floor windows were covered the same way, yellowish hemispheres around the mistletoe wrapped iron nails. The only location not covered was the glass front door.
Most likely it wasn't warded the same way as there was no wood to drive a nail into. Cobb stayed back from the door, like before. “This seems the only way in, what you want to be there's something nasty inside?” I snarled rhetorically. I was nervous and impatient. Cobb shrugged elaborately and waited to see what I would do. I waited for a moment and looked around. “I don't like waiting, and if we're going in, we might as well announce it”
I went back to my car and got out the possibles bag. I got my pistol out and put it on, then put on the chicken plate. I strapped the machete to my hip, picked up the baseball bat, and then went back to the door. I picked up a rock and threw it at the front door, cracking the painted over glass. Cobb lost his composure and snarled viciously at me. “My daughter is in there human!” “So go get her!" I yelled back as I used the baseball bat to hammer at the glass. Two quick swings opened up a jagged hole that I could slip through.
I didn't wait for Cobb, speed was more important to me now. I looked down the short, narrow hallway with my sight to spot any traps. There was some greenish glow about 10 feet ahead of me hovering near the center of the hallway. I threw the bat at it, and flattened myself against the wall, anticipating some kind of effect. The bat flew through the cloud and there was a blistering pulse of heat, and the bat landed on the other side of the cloud badly charred.
The cloud had dissipated almost to nothing, so I charged through it, and got singed as it pulsed with heat but nowhere near what the bat had taken. I heard someone crying further in. Cobb's daughter most likely. I scanned my surroundings. The hallway ended twenty feet further on at an interior door. Bathroom doors were on the left side of the hall just before the end door. I left the smoking baseball bat and charged the door, hoping I had enough momentum to pop the door open, and just about dislocated my shoulder when I hit it. It was a metal door with a wood veneer.

New Year's resolutions

Well, we'll see how these go.

1. Write a page a day.
2. Find a regular job. School isn't working.
3. Offer my opinions more. I need to let people know what I'm thinking.
4. write one novel length story outside of NaNoWriMo.
5. Get back into shape. Life's more fun without the extra around my hips and tummy.

We'll see how that goes.

4

He went over to the plastic rod and handed it to Mr. Cobb. “Hold it and turn slowly” Larry said. “When you are pointing in your daughter's direction, the light will move to the end of the rod towards her. Once your done with it, break the stick and the spell will break.” He held up a hand before either of us could speak. “This has an effective range of about a mile, so you'll have to do a lot of moving around. There is no price, but just think well of me and mine. That will be enough.” I was so startled I gaped at him. Larry was a good guy and all but I've never seen where he'd do a spell for free. Mr. Cobb said “I always remember my friends, and my friends will never stand alone.”
That made sense suddenly. Larry just got a favor from the fae, and that probably is worth more than money. I smiled. Larry could have been a con-man and a good one. He ushered us out and began to clean up the room so no residual magics could cause problems. Mr. Cobb and I went back to my little car, and took off into the Dayning suburb of Halifax. Mr. Cobb held the wand out and swept it in a one hundred eighty degree arc to our front, hoping to capture a glimmer that told us which direction she might be.
We had been driving for an hour when we got a glimmer of movement from the mote of light in the rod. Cobb extended the rod past my face in the direction had flickered. “That way! She's That way!” he practically screamed in my ear. His face was transformed by hope, and the change was amazing. I had to tear my eyes away from him to make the turn and head more or less in the direction we wanted to go.
We followed in the general direction the wand indicated, which took us deep into Dayning. It led us into a area populated by Hamref. Hamref are about five feet tall, and look like a stiff breeze would break them in two, they're so emaciated looking. They are put together pretty much like a humanoid biped, two legs, two arms one head. But the differences are eerie. For starter's their nostrils are at the edge of each cheek, just about an inch below their eyes. Their eyes are huge, which one would expect from a night-loving species.
You'd be wrong. Their eyesight is just fine, day or night. In fact, they're supposed to have the equivalent of 6-power binocular vision. Their bodies were hard skinned, Fawn had talked about having watched 9mm pistol rounds ricochet off of them. Their hands were four-fingered claws. The one thing though that bothered me most was that every joint of theirs was almost three hundred sixty degrees of movement. They were incredibly flexible and able to contort though openings that an escape-artist could only envy.
They were predators, but weak ones. Any human could easily best one. Trouble is they attacked in groups. I may have felt nervous about being out amongst all the Hamrefs, but that was mine own human prejudice about so odd-looking a creature. Hamref were scrupulously honest.
I drove us up to an old post office building and parked the car. The street was empty except for a few cars that drove by as we exited mine. The building stood at the corner, a whitewashed bygone of earlier times. Windows were boarded over and painted with the same whitewash. I spotted a narrow alley to our left as we faced the building. It separated the post office and the adjoining building. We walked up to the front door. It was a typical glass door that had the glass painted over, and which had been padlocked. The chain and lock were both old and rusted, but still strong as a quick tug told me.
Cobb stayed a good ten feet away as I tested the chains, Fae and iron don't play well together. Failing to open the door, we walked down the alley to the back side of the building to see if there might be another way in. As we moved, Cobb checked the wand, and it indicated that his daughter was inside. I spotted another door in the back, and moved towards it. As I did Cobb hissed and suddenly grabbed me and dragged me back a few feet.