My Jeep rolled up and down the steep hills from the bridge to the cozy family neighborhood of Noe Valley where both Helen and the Protectorate had homes. Side by side, as it turned out—which was ironic because they despised one another.
I parked at the top of a steep hill three blocks away from both houses and took a moment to put on heavy-rimmed plastic glasses and an Oracle baseball cap and a GoPro sweatshirt. Magical disguise would’ve been more effective under close scrutiny but would also be more likely to draw casual Protectorate attention. A dog-walking twentysomething woman in local regalia—I got the branded tech swag at a Goodwill in Silicon Valley—was as invisible as a wood sprite in Muir Woods.
Helen’s house was a tall, narrow Queen Anne painted pink, purple, and white with aqua trim. Next door, the Protectorate house was a cheerful but generic yellow. Keeping my head down, I pulled Random with me up the dozen slightly uneven wooden steps into the portico and waited in front of the double doors. Helen didn’t have a knocker or doorbell.
The left door swung open with a loud screech.
“Get inside, are you crazy?” Helen grabbed my arm and hauled me inside. After glaring at Random as he trotted in with me, she kicked the door shut behind us. Although the front doors still had their original stained glass windows, the entry hall was dim. Helen didn’t use a lot of electricity, and on a foggy day, the old house didn’t get much sunlight.
“Nobody saw me,” I said.
“Of course they saw you. They don’t know why you’re here, but they saw you and now they’re going to come bother me.”
“Sorry.”
She let out a sigh that was more like a growl. “You brought a dog.”
“Did I?”
“Are you suggesting he brought you?”
“I don’t know.” I waited without saying anything else. My best bet for getting help from Helen was to tempt her with a mystery.
“Huh.” Helen frowned at Random. “How long has he been hanging around?”
“Since Tristan died.”
“Well, he’s not Tristan, I can tell you that. If Tristan were to turn himself into a canine, it would be some kind of pedigreed show dog. Which that mutt ain’t.”
“Is he a dog?”
“Sure looks like a dog,” she said, “but I’ve always leaned to flora over fauna.”
“I call him Random.”
“He stinks.”
“He likes cheese,” I said, hoping that would soften her opinion of him. Helen loved anything with cheese in it.
“And it obviously doesn’t agree with him,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I hope you don’t expect me to adopt him. I don’t want a dog. They mess up the garden.”
“I had a break-in. Two, actually. I need help learning a few new spells.”
“What will you give me in exchange?”
I paused. I’d hoped she would be in a better mood than to demand payment upfront. At least she’d opened the door. “I don’t know how they’re breaking in, so I don’t know how expensive what I’m looking for might be.”
“Who’s breaking in?”
“I don’t know that either,” I said. “Once was my father. I don’t know about the other time.”
“Only one other time?”
“That I know of.”
She pulled her lip between thumb and forefinger, the nails short, the skin discolored with ink or dirt. Not, I hoped, blood. “What kind of herbs were you using?”
I hesitated. I was hoping we could find another way. “I used redwood to reinforce my spells.”
“You planted redwood around the perimeter? A bit large to be called an herb, but the saplings have charm, so to speak—”
“No, I used redwood beads on a silver chain to focus myself when I cast the spell.”
She rolled her eyes. “You people. You’re too lazy to learn the old ways.” She poked me in the stomach, which, being relaxed and unprepared, compressed like rising dough.
“I know I need help,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”
“You know you need my plants.”
“Or whatever you’ve got.”
“I’ve got plants,” she said, shaking her head and walking deeper into the gloomy house. A threadbare runner, once red and now pink, absorbed her heavy footsteps. “Come on, let’s get your animal outside before he pees on the hardwood floor. I haven’t had them refinished in eons, and any urine will get sucked up like a sponge.”
She walked me past the first parlor, the second parlor, a staircase, a dining room, a second staircase, the family room, the kitchen, and finally the deck with her prized glass-roofed conservatory. Everything was crammed with Victorian knickknacks and antiques in velvet, brass, mahogany, stained glass. Below us was the basement I knew well from my days at the Protectorate—for a small fee, she would let novice agents sleep in a storage room and do laundry. Upstairs were the bedrooms, I presumed, though I’d never been invited to see them.
“You caught me at a bad time,” Helen said, gesturing at the deck beyond a pair of sliding glass doors. “I was just digging up the garlic.”
The closeness of the kitchen to the outdoors was like my own house, which was no coincidence. Hearth witches needed easy access to their gardens. Unlike my plot of overgrown weeds, however, Helen’s was a nursery, a well-run commercial enterprise with glassed-in conservatory and potting shed, providing her with the income to support her expensive San Francisco lifestyle. Although to hear her tell it, she was on the verge of destitution at all times, which was why she had to charge Protectorate novices her standard fee of ten bucks a night to sleep on the cold, damp concrete slab in her basement.
“How did you know I was coming?” I asked. “That’s the magic I need. I could deal with unwanted visitors if I had advance notice.”
She paused with her hand on the door, not opening it. “There’s nothing tricky about it. It’s called paying attention.”
I remembered how Helen was as particular about precise language as a tutor at the Protectorate. “All right then, would you please teach me how to pay attention?”
She grimaced. “Listen to you. So polite. Back when you were a newbie at the Protectorate, you never would’ve let me bully you so easily.”
Sadly, it was true. I would come over and give her hell, arguing with her and calling her names, and she lapped it up like a sprite with a bucket of springwater. “I crashed and burned, that’s what happened.”
“They squashed your confidence.” She clucked her tongue. “Such a shame. Just because you can’t kill demons doesn’t mean you should be walking around with your tail between your legs.”
“Just because I’m being polite doesn’t mean I’m afraid of you.”
“That’s good. You shouldn’t be afraid of me. I’m one of the Bright. Your buddies over there”—she pointed at the Protectorate house next door—“need help remembering we’re on the same side. I can tell that Lorne would love to accuse me of being a Freewitch. Just because I don’t fall to my knees and grovel when he walks by, he thinks I’m a radical separatist plotting his downfall.”
“Have they been bothering you again?”
“No more than usual,” she said. “You’re the one in their sights now, Alma. They talk about you.”
The hairs rose on the back of my neck. “How do you know that?”
“Same way I knew you were coming. Same way I heard about Tristan and that ugly necklace that went missing.” She glanced at the house next door again. “I could use a secrecy spell on you, but I’d rather just ask you to keep my methods to yourself.” Then she added under her breath, “And it would probably be more effective in the long run.”
“I promise to keep it to myself,” I said.
She ran her hand through her short white hair, plucking at the strands to make them stick straight up, a mannerism some novices thought was a cognitive binding spell but I suspected was just a compulsive habit. “I’ll show you. You’ll understand. And please keep your mouth shut.” She gave Random
the side-eye. “You too, dog.”
He hung his head.
Helen opened the sliding glass door and walked us across the deck to the narrow entrance to her conservatory. The air inside was thick, warm, humid, smelling of rich earth, fertilizer, nectar, life. She closed us inside and walked past a row of tables heavy with flats of seedlings and pointed at a padded patio chair, a footstool, and a small table with a magazine, box of chocolates, coffee cup, and a short segment of white PVC pipe about a foot long and two inches in diameter.
She gestured for me to sit and took Random’s leash from me. I sat, felt myself sink low into the cushions of the obviously well-used seat, and leaned back. I could see she was waiting for me to figure it out, and I did have a pretty good idea, so I looked at the objects on the table, picked up the pipe, and held it to my ear. Just to my left was the glass wall of the conservatory. I leaned the pipe against it and listened.
Rolling her eyes, she reached over me and slid the window to one side, dislodging the pipe from my ear.
Ah. Beyond a narrow gap between the houses was another window, painted black and tightly shut. Old houses in San Francisco were built inches from one another. I leaned over with the pipe and rested it gently against the blacked-out glass of the neighbor house’s window.
“I asked for black beans, not refried,” a man was complaining, his voice low and hoarse from decades of smoking.
My eyebrows shot up into my head. Helen grinned at me.
Lorne, I mouthed at her. My old supervisor’s voice was unforgettable.
Helen crossed her arms over her chest, smirking.
“You’ll pay for a new one yourself,” Lorne continued. “And don’t ask anyone to transform it for you. I want the real thing from the taqueria. I’ll know the difference.”
A mumbled reply, a slamming door, and then, “They get more confused about their place in the world with each cycle of the earth around the sun. It’s a new century, a new millennium, but it’s not a new world. It’s the same world. Witches today are wrong to think anything’s different today than it was a thousand years ago.”
A woman’s voice, faintly audible, said something about California.
“It’s just as bad in New York. Even Tokyo, Cape Town, Berlin, Santiago. They’ve forgotten our mission, our purpose, and their place in the world, which is not a democracy and never can be.”
Helen tapped the pipe, eyebrows raised inquisitively. I put it in my lap, closed the window, and stood up while Helen took a sage-green leaf from a wreath tied around her wrist and sprinkled it in the air between the houses.
“It never would’ve worked with the witch who had that office before him,” Helen said.
“Why not?”
“She was smart,” Helen said. “This guy hasn’t added anything to the spells the Protectorate has on the building, which don’t stop me from a little harmless information gathering.”
“I’m not sure he would know how. The rumor is he’s got very limited power, utterly dependent on a few pieces he wears under his suit. Thick silver, a few stones, some piercings.”
“Relying on hard magic has atrophied whatever natural gifts he was born with.” Helen pointed at the white pipe. “What did you overhear? Your face lit up with some of that bad attitude I remember you had before they squeezed it out of you.”
“He’s complaining about novice agents wanting to be treated with kindness and respect,” I said. “I heard that speech many times.”
“He does go on.” Helen pulled at her hair again and gestured for me to follow her back inside. She didn’t lock Random outside, instead bringing him with us into the kitchen, where she dropped the leash and walked over to the antique stove. “Hearing that blowhard blathering is enough to turn one’s stomach. I’ll make us ginger tea.”
“I still don’t understand how you knew I was coming,” I said. “Were they talking about me? Are they having me followed?”
Not answering, she filled the kettle with liquid—I hope it was water—from a large mason jar on the counter, placed two handmade earthenware mugs on the counter, then came over to me and set her hand over mine. “Yes, they’ve got their eye on you because of the torc. But I’ve already given you enough for nothing. What are you going to give me to tell you more?”
A warm current of power buzzed between our knuckles. She was touching my thoughts the way a pickpocket brushes against a well-dressed tourist in a crowded market, not sure what she’ll find but always looking for something she could use, with no compunction about taking what wasn’t hers.
I made a point of not touching my redwood necklace as I sent out a virtual knife and sliced off her probing psychic fingers. Her eyes went wide.
“Nice,” she said, then laughed.
“I did give you something. I told you about Lorne being a weak witch.”
“You said it was a rumor. The boss is bound to have jealous, unhappy critics telling nasty stories about him.”
“All right,” I said, “it’s not just a rumor. I felt it for myself when I worked for him.”
With a nod, she opened a canister, scooped out a spoonful of dried ginger, and dumped it in a teapot before pouring the boiling water over it. “I suspected but wasn’t sure. His carelessness with guarding spells could’ve been his overconfidence.”
“He relies on his apps for everything,” I said, “and uses nonmag tech to hide it.”
“Figures. I bet he’ll be promoted.” A moment later she set a lumpy brown mug, no handle, in front of me. “Drink up.”
“Is it safe?”
“Funny of you to ask. If it isn’t, you’ll never know. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
Chapter Fourteen
I picked up the mug, this time wrapping my left hand around the beads at my throat, and probed the liquid for danger. “This is a test, isn’t it? One sip and I turn into a frog.”
“A newt would be more useful. You could eat the snails in the garden that eat my basil. And then lick up all the little ants on my kitchen counter.”
“Your tea parties are just as fun as ever,” I said, bringing the mug to my lips.
She stuck out her tongue and made slurping noises.
I waited a moment to make sure my body didn’t morph into something slimy before taking a second sip. It seemed to be ginger tea, sweetened with a little honey, nothing else. “I should pity you for having to listen to Lorne all day.”
“I neither do so nor have to do so,” she said. “I have better things to occupy my time.”
“You heard about Tristan though?”
She lifted the second mug and blew the steam into a spiral pattern that swirled to the ceiling in impossible symmetry. “I was sorry to hear about Tristan and especially disgusted when Lorne seemed to be more upset about the theft of some trinket than a Protector getting run over.”
“Why do they care about the torc so much?”
“Because they always care about trinkets too much. It’s all stone and metal with those witches. They’ve forgotten the flora, the fauna, the elements. They’re as bad as nonmagical humanity, obsessed with their machines, always copying and stealing from one another.”
“I’ve heard your speech before, so you can save your breath,” I said. “What does this particular trinket do?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
“They think my father stole it.”
“I think your father stole it.”
I set down my tea and turned away. “I think I’d rather be a newt than have to defend him again.”
“You’re screwed, that’s for sure. Families stick together, especially magical ones, and they’ll expect him to involve you somehow, which he always does.”
“At the very least I need to keep him out of my house.”
“As I said before, I’m just a poor old lady here and can’t be working for free.”
“You’re loaded. I’m unemployed.” I held out my arm and shook my wrist, surrounded by a triple strand of carved wood charms. “But I
did bring one of my best pieces for you. Redwood, cedar, blue—”
“Give me the vials,” Helen said.
I avoided her gaze, which might see more than I wanted her to see, looking instead down at Random, who was using my foot as a pillow. “Whatever you can give me will be worth far less than even one drop of what might be in one of those vials I may or may not have with me.”
“One vial and I’ll give you five items that should repel any witch, fae, or demon with ill intent.”
“What about nonmag humans with ill intent?” I asked.
“That goes without saying.”
“Say it anyway.”
She shrugged. “It might work on them.”
“Might? For all I know the last break-in was a nonmag transient looking to score some food.”
“Then put out a few snacks and lock your doors.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You’re impractical,” she said.
“What about animals? This dog walked right in through an open window.”
“I would worry if he’d walked through a closed one.”
I stifled the urge to inflict her with a butt-pimple spell. “Will you be able to help me with animals of ill intent?”
She pursed her lips. “Depends how you define ill intent. If it’s in their nature, like a mouse or spider, I doubt it. But if they’re twisted by fae or Shadow to do you harm, then my items should help.” She paused, then added, “I’m sure they will. So you can give me two vials.”
“One vial,” I said. “Which is way more than enough.”
“I’ll take the one vial. Little old ladies have no hope of acquiring wellspring water on their own. Think of it as an act of charity.”
I had feared she would demand both—I’d brought two, just in case, as she’d divined—but I would’ve preferred giving her the bracelet. Knowing blue was her favorite color, I’d threaded lapis beads in with the redwood ones, but nothing could compete with springwater.
I took one of the vials out of my bra and set it on the counter.
“Doesn’t that jacket have pockets?” she asked.
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