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CHAPTER ONE

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My strange times have become very normal. I mean, my normal times are consistently strange, and that’s very normal. Very not normal, that is. For me. It’s normal for me. Which is strange.

Let me go back.

I used to be a very normal person, but a lot of people thought I was strange. I had strange hobbies. I wanted to be a knight, for example. I used to dress up in faux-armor and a tabard that my mom stitched for me by hand, and go to public parks with a bunch of other people who also wanted to be knights, and maidens (gender-inclusive), and bards (mostly drunk), and pirates (rarely sober), and puppeteers (verdict out on sobriety, but the puppets were always plastered) and other interesting people. And together, we would pretend to be those things, and it was a lot of fun. But none of it was real.

And then, one day, it got about as real as it gets. I found out the mundane world was just the shiny wrapper meant for public consumption, and underneath that wrapper was an Unreal world of dragons, demons, knights, and wizards. It was pretty swell, right up until my best friend, Eric, almost killed me, and my ex-girlfriend Chesa Lozaro turned into an elven ranger-princess, and I . . . well, I almost became a knight. I met a whole team of people who really were the things I dreamed about being: the heroic swordsman, the enigmatic mage, the stealthy assassin, the blissed-out cleric. They called themselves Knight Watch, and they were in the hero business, protecting the mundane world from the Unreal, and vice versa. And now (after a bit of a rough interview period that involved driving my mom’s car through a dragon’s brainpan) I’m in the hero business, too.

It’s still a lot of fun. But it’s also dangerous, and sometimes you find yourself in some very strange situations. Which is perfectly normal.

But today was getting weird.

“John! Sir John Rast! Earth to John!” Chesa bellowed at the top of her very pretty little lungs. She was standing just inside the doors to the Mickleville Community Center and Water Park, just past the bored as hell ticket agent, blocking the flow of traffic in and out of the convention. Tembo’s smooth black head was barely visible above the crowds of wizard hats and spaceman helmets. The new guy, who had replaced our swordsman Clarence when he retired to a life of draconic ease, was already gone, carried away by the river of enthusiastic con-goers. Saint Matthew, our super-chill healer with eyes like diamonds, was nowhere to be seen. For the saint, though, that was because he was back at HQ, lounging in his domain with the angels. Something about medium-high holidays, and the Mayan calendar, and a long overdue vacation. We each have a domain, a metaphysical home where we recharge our magical powers. Without them, we’re just posers in expensive costumes, so it’s important for the healer to stay topped up, in case something bad happens. Which it often did.

It’s just that I hated it when the healer didn’t show up for a mission. Bad things always happened. Usually to me.

“John!” Chesa repeated. “What the hell are you doing?”

“They misspelled Renaissance,” I said, pointing at the banner that hung over the door. “Ren-Yay-Ssaince. Doesn’t even make sense.”

“These guys aren’t exactly Guild-certified,” Chesa said. “Now stop gawking like an idiot and get your butt inside.”

“Ren-yay-ssaince,” I muttered under my breath as I strolled toward the double doors of the Mickleville CC&WP. “I swear, these people have no respect for the language.”

“From the smell of the place, they don’t have a lot of respect for deodorant, either,” Chesa said. She was dressed in her low-fantasy elf get-up today, not the high-Tolkien starsilver armor with matching crown and elderwood longbow that was her usual outfit. This was a simple leather jerkin and breeches, stained the color of deep forest shadows, with a cloak that shifted color and pattern as the light played across it, and boots that could have walked from Mordor to Tar Valon, with a quick stop in Arborlon for good measure. She wore a crescent-shaped blade at her hip, and a brace of throwing daggers close to her vest, all as real and as sharp as her tongue. Chesa’s eyes were the color of uncut emeralds, and the tips of her tan ears poked out of the complicated braids of her hair. Professional cosplayers would have been really impressed with how realistic both the eyes and ears looked, but only because Chesa was cheating. Those were her actual features, now that she’d assumed the role of Forest Queen of the Everealm. Hardly seemed fair.

Standing next to Chesa, I felt like a pauper. My clothes were simple and comfortable, the plain tunic and tabard displaying a golden dragon rampant against a quartered field of red and black, with breeches the color of spilled wine and leather pauldrons that were more for show than they were for turning a blade. If it came to a fight, I would depend on the clever shield strapped to my back, and the sword swinging from my belt. Both were already peace-knotted, but our friendly assassin Bethany had done the knotting. The ropes would slip off at the proper touch, a trick she had taught me by tying me up and then laughing as I hopped around, trying to work my way free. A proper comedian, our Bethany, not at all concerned with being funny or making other people laugh. As long as she was amused, that was joke enough for her.

The guard at the door barely glanced at my weapons as I passed. I wasn’t sure if that was the work of the knots or simply the fact that members of Knight Watch were so Unreal as to seem mundane. We usually flew around in a Viking longship made out of toenail clippings, and that hardly drew a second glance. Reality worked overtime trying to convince normal people that we weren’t there at all, just a figment of the imagination. Really helpful when you’re walking through a convention center in full medieval battle rattle.

“Alright,” I said as I joined Chesa, “what are we looking for in here? Hidden djinn? A coven of harpies? Undercover goblins operating a gold-laundering scheme?” I planted my fists firmly on my hips and peered around suspiciously. “Presbyterians?”

“The Anomaly Actuator couldn’t really get a fix,” Chesa said, doing her best to act like we weren’t together, even though we were walking side by side and, theoretically at least, holding a conversation. Ex-girlfriends are like that sometimes. “There’s too much interference in this place. But something’s out of place.”

“Makes sense. There’s an awful lot going on, isn’t there?” I asked as I took in the sights. The Ren-yay-ssaince convention was an unsubtle blending of fandoms and lifestyle choices, from the traditional medieval reenactors, to grimdark science fiction cosplayers, to fully immersed book nerds, and everything in between. There were booths stuffed with uncomfortable-looking corsets for men and women, stacks upon stacks of new and used books that smelled like mildew and imagination, enough jewelry to choke a rust monster, and at least three chandlers hawking dice-scented candles. About half the people crowding the aisles were dressed like some character from the far reaches of the imaginary world, while the rest wore sweatpants and clever black T-shirts that said things like My other body is Charisma 20 and Cold Screaming Void for President. I would have fit right in before my induction into Knight Watch. Hell, I fit in now.

The problem with all this cleverness was that it made it difficult for the Anomaly Actuator to get a bead. Knight Watch has a machine back at HQ, left over from World War II, that can detect Unreal intrusions into the mundane world. Whenever a selkie decides to screw around with fishing lanes in the North Sea, or a vampire discards their mortal disguise and starts feeding on isolated goths in some small midwestern town, the Actuator lights up like a Christmas tree, and Knight Watch rolls out to set things right. And at the moment, the Actuator was signalling a major incursion here at the Mickleville Community Center, but there was so much interference from the various fandoms at play, it was impossible to know what we were looking for. That meant getting hand-stitched leather boots on the ground and keeping an eye peeled for anything unusual.

“I joined Knight Watch to get away from this kind of scene,” Chesa grumbled at my side. “It’s supposed to be all elven villages and demonic lairs. Not . . .” She gestured broadly at the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the visible funk of body odor shimmering in the air, and the hordes of anachronistic costuming. “Not this nonsense.”

“’Tis a perilous job, my lady,” I said. “One that requires nerves of steel and razor-sharp reflexes. Sometimes we face dragons”—I killed a dragon once, and make a point to mention it at every opportunity—“sometimes we descend into the depths of shadowy darkness, to shine the light of—”

“You’re starting to sound like Eric,” Chesa said dismissively. Eric, my friend who used to be a villain until we put him back in his right mind, was also a writer. Mostly a writer of adjectives. Long, complicated, sussurating adjectives. I blushed.

I was just about to continue when a young man dressed in a black cloak muscled his way between us. He wore a semi-military-looking uniform under the cloak, and his face was covered by a cheap white mask made to look like a cracked human skull. He stepped on my toe as he passed, and elbowed Chesa quite solidly in the boob.

“Hey, asshole!” she snapped, grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around. “Watch where you’re going!”

The guy stared at us, his pale blue eyes blinking quickly behind the mask.

“Yeah, you really should apologize,” I said. He looked over at me, then back to Chesa.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “That you’re such losers.”

“Oh, no you didn’t,” Chesa said. Her hand went to the crescent-shaped blade, one finger flicking the peace knot onto the floor. “Try that again, before I open you up and feed you your own liver.”

“Ches, we’re here to stop an anomaly, not start one,” I said under my breath. The dude’s eyes had gone wide, and he was grinning crookedly beneath the mask. He swept his cloak back, revealing a sword that looked like a cross between gothic architecture and a costume piece from a German propaganda poster from the Second World War. I cleared my throat and stepped between Chesa and the guy she was about to kill. “Just clear off, you pathetic man-child.”

He snorted, then swept dramatically around and bullied his way through the crowd. Chesa shook me off.

“I think that guy might have been an actual Nazi,” she said.

“There has been an uptick of that stuff recently,” I answered. “Anyway. What was I saying? Oh, right. The point is the job sometimes calls for heroic stuff in distant castles. And sometimes it calls for not beating up some guy at a convention just because he doesn’t know how to make friends.”

“I don’t beat you up,” she said. “And you clearly don’t know how to make friends.”

“I have friends,” I protested. “Just . . . not real ones. It’s fine. Whatever.”

“Whatever,” she agreed.

“If the two of you are finished with your lovers’ quarrel, we have work to do.” The voice was clear and sterling, the kind of voice you’d expect from the male lead of a romance novel. I sighed. Chesa sighed. Our sighs were completely different.

Gregory Chastain de Beuregard d’Haute slipped into view, his armor polished to a mirror shine, his oiled locks spilling down his shoulders like a cascade of fine silk. He smiled, and the small crowd of girls who had been following him giggled. Gregory struck an appreciative pose, bowed to the nearest girl, and swept her hand briefly to his lips. She melted.

This was the new guy. We were not real friends.

“Dearest Chesa,” he said, turning to us and completely forgetting about the chorus of girls in his wake. “I was so worried that I had lost track of you. It would not do for us to be separated by circumstance or peril. Come, I will escort you to the food court, and stand watch while you refresh yourself before our mission continues.”

“The mission doesn’t call for a food court, or refreshing,” I said. “This is serious stuff, Greg—”

“Sir Gregory d’Haute,” he said to me, without ever taking his pale blue eyes off Chesa. “If you don’t mind. John.” He managed to say John the same way most people said septic backup. I bristled. Chesa put a hand on my wrist, which I suddenly realized was already on my sword.

“We’re here to stop an anomaly, John,” she reminded me. “Not start one.”

“Yes, yes. Hero stuff,” Gregory d’Whatever said. He offered Chesa his arm. “The food court, my lady?”

“I suppose the food court needs patrolling just as much as the rest of this place,” Chesa said, lightly placing her hand on Greg’s steely forearm. “John, see if you can find anything among the board games.”

“I just—” But they were already off. The chorus of girls gave me half a look, then wheeled around and followed Greg. I sighed again, just for good measure, and headed toward the gaming tables.

The sound of Chesa’s laughter carried over the crowds. Just to be clear, I joined Knight Watch to get away from the real world of popular kids and awkward silences. The real world just seemed determined to follow me around.


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