by C. E. Murphy
"Because witches are human magic." Grace sat back, stretching her legs expansively.
Margrit leaned over to the coffee table, got the bottle, and poured more whiskey for both of them. "Humans aren't supposed to have magic."
"Most of you—us—don't. There are dream-walkers and a couple others, but magic is a thing they do, not a thing they are. The gargoyles and all, the whole lot of them, they can look human on the outside but once you know the truth, you know they've never been and never will be like us. And that makes it all right, in its way. They are magic. Sometimes we have it, but it's a thing inside us, not who and what we are in our bones. That's why witches feel wrong. They're human-born but made of magic, and that's not how human-born things are meant to be."
Margrit looked askance at her. "And how do you know all that?"
Grace pulled a face. "Grace knows lots of things she shouldn't."
"The Serpent's Wisdom." Margrit lifted her glass in a salute.
"So it seems." Grace returned the toast and drank the second glass in as swift a swallow as the first. Margrit, watching, said, "Do you not get drunk?"
Grace arched an eyebrow at the drink Margrit sipped. "Don't tell me you do. Not with all that vampire blood swirling in your veins."
"You know, I haven't tried? Maybe you and I should go on a bender. Drink all the boys under the table. Win a few bets."
"Before I find a way to end this curse."
"Except it's not a curse," Margrit said. "It's a gift. Do you really want to give up immortality?"
"Tony asked that too. Ask me again your own self when you've lived four hundred years."
Margrit smiled. "Implying that you'll be here in four hundred years for me to ask."
"Don't lawyer your way around this one," Grace said severely, and Margrit laughed. "Let's say I get the Tear back. What do I do with a wish, Margrit Knight?"
Margrit sighed, taking a larger swallow of her drink. "I don't know. I've never been able to decide if I should go big or go home, with a wish. There's all the legalese, you know?"
"Only a lawyer thinks wishes have legalese."
"You're wrong, though. There's literalism in wishes. Look at Midas, wishing everything he touched would turn to gold. That's obviously a terrible wish, because he didn't mean everything. He meant he wanted to be able to turn specific items into gold, not that his dinner and his daughter should be included. So when you have three wishes, is the first one 'I wish these would be taken in the spirit they're meant instead of the literal words I say'? Or do you just try to limit the wishes in a smart way? 'I wish, with no changes in my health or circumstances, that I would be the most miserable person in the world?' What are the effects of wishing for something abstract, like happiness? God forbid you should wish for no more conflict. That could kill everybody on the planet. Wishes have consequences. Even 'I wish I wasn't immortal anymore…'. Think about that, Grace. You could die on the spot. So you have to be careful with wishes."
Grace leaned forward and poured herself another drink. "I'd think wishes came along every day, the way you've thought out how they ought to be used. Anybody ever tell you that you think too much?"
"Many people, often." Margrit swirled her whiskey. "If they really came along every day maybe I wouldn't have thought so much about it. They're abstract, this way. And maybe a real wish does respond to intent instead of literalism. That would be…" She smiled. "Well, that would be more wish-like. That would be how magic is supposed to work. Like a dream. Like a wish. You know what I mean."
"I do." A key turned in the front door and Grace's head came up like a startled cat's, wary of what lay beyond.
"It's only Alban," Margrit said, amused. "He lives here too, you know."
"I know a gargoyle in a high-rise apartment seems wrong," Grace muttered, but stayed put as the big gargoyle came around the kitchen corner and paused, surprised, to see her.
"Grace."
"Stoneheart."
"'High-rise' makes it sound fancier than it is." Margrit rose to give the gargoyle—not that he looked the part right now, being in human form—a kiss. "Grace came by for some legal advice. Have you ever heard of a Serpent's Tear?"
Alban's eyes, yellowish even as a human, darkened in thought. "There are whispers about them in the memories. Why?"
"I had one," Grace said succinctly, "and I lost it. Traded it," she amended, because the detail mattered. "I'm wondering if I can get it back."
"Ask Janx. He's as close as anyone is to the Serpent." Alban retreated to the kitchen to get his own crystal tumbler, and even poured himself whiskey when he returned to the living room to sit, but didn't drink any of it. Grace watched the chair he took sink under his weight, but didn't offer to trade places with him. Margrit got her own glass and perched on the wide arm of his chair, bird-like in comparison to his bulk. They looked well together, though, as if they'd been designed to be aesthetically pleasing: Margrit, small and brown-skinned with a wealth of loose curls highlighted with gold that brushed the collar of a comfortable, bright shirt. Alban was over a foot taller and nearly that much broader than she, hewn of straight lines and pale shades beside her, alabaster skin and white-blonde hair falling down his spine in a simple ponytail incongruous with the grey suit he wore. Grace smiled, and Margrit lifted an eyebrow. "What?"
"You two should have a portrait done. A painting, not a photograph. Janx left the city months ago." She muttered, "Besides, Grace tastes good with ketchup," to herself, and though Alban looked baffled, Margrit laughed aloud.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons. I don't think you've got much choice, though, Grace. Not if you want the Tear back. You need some kind of advantage. She traded it to a witch," Margrit said to Alban. A remarkable—for a gargoyle—expression of you're fucked crossed the big man's face.
To her own surprise, Grace laughed. "Stoneheart thinks I haven't a chance of recovering it."
Margrit twisted to look at Alban, eyebrows lifted in curious amusement. "Doesn't she?"
"Witches don't easily give up what they've taken."
"But the gargoyle memories might know something about Fúamnach. As much as anyone else might. Could you look?"
Alban lowered his gaze to the drink he hadn't sipped from, then lifted it again to meet Grace's eyes. "Is it a sign of friendship that you just ask me, or a sign you think I'm easily taken advantage of? You wouldn't ask Janx so directly. You'd sidle around, looking for a way to make him offer, or for it to seem like an advantage to him, and Daisani—"
"Daisani I wouldn't ask at all," Grace said with a shudder. "I'll wheedle and deal if you want me to, Stoneheart. You do owe me one, and I'll call that favor in if I must."
Interest glittered in Margrit's eyes, though she left the question unspoken. Alban, though, cast an edged smile at his drink. "If I were a wiser man I'd insist on it."
"But you're not a man at all." Grace flung herself back in the sofa, arms spread wide. "So you'll do it."
"I already have." Alban shook his big head once. "There are whispers, here and there. Memories of a memory. Not about Fúamnach, but about the birthing of witches. It may be that contained somewhere in the stone we have all their secrets, but despite our best efforts—despite our vaunted beliefs—even the gestalt has suffered. We're so few now that we remember less than we should."
"Some good you are," Grace said without heat, then, more slowly, "I suppose it's Janx, then."
"You could find out what Fúamnach wants now," Margrit said from contemplation of her glass. Grace frowned and the lawyer lifted her gaze. "Everybody wants something. Find out what Fúamnach wants now. Get it. Trade for it. The Tear for her newest desire."
"What could a witch want more than a wish-granting rock?"
"She can't use the Tear. Not for more than siphoning power, anyway. Which is good, as far as it goes, but she'll never be able to wish on it. Maybe there's something she wants more."
"Dragon's blood," Grace muttered. "A virgin's tears."
"Eye of newt,
" Margrit agreed. "There's a lot out there Grace can find, that someone else couldn't."
Grace drew her face long, giving Margrit a severe look that made her laugh. "I'm sorry. Are you the only one allowed to talk about yourself in the third person?"
"Grace is the only one who spent fifty years as the O'Malley. Try half a century of a title like that and then four hundred years of a half-life and see if you don't get a little strange with how you refer to yourself."
"Negotiator," Alban rumbled so quietly it was almost inaudible, but Margrit's spine straightened and she cast him a look that held an opinion or two about the use of that name. She didn't say anything else, though, and Grace rose.
"You've given me a path or two to follow, at least. I thank you for that. Alban, I'll call our debt even, for your efforts."
"That's generous," Alban said in a tone that suggested he expected loopholes. Grace didn't disabuse him of the notion, and let herself out through the front door like a normal person might, though the idea of wafting through a wall and giving Margrit Knight the willies stayed with and amused her as she returned home.
#
Tony woke up when she came home, instantly more coherent than he ought to be in the small hours of the morning. "It's hanging around with you inhuman creatures," he said when Grace commented. "I think it's rubbing off."
"I think you need more sleep, love." Grace dropped a kiss on him as she drifted through the chamber, looking for things that weren't there. She'd owned and lost, or rid herself of, a lot in her life: not much was left now. Not much to show she'd lived four centuries, but that was the idea. It was hard enough to gain teenage trust; carrying around loot a hundred years out of date only made her seem stranger than she was, and she had plenty of that going on already. So, although she still had the now-pitted blade she had carried as the O'Malley, it lay tucked in a teak chest at the foot of her bed, as did everything else from her youth. The concrete and brick room beneath the city streets reflected someone who lived sparsely: a bed, candles for light, a scattering of books. She'd seen Alban's lair before it was raided, and her own life didn't look so different, save she walked the world day and night alike, and the gargoyle was bound to night. She rarely felt the lack of things, but tonight, with dawn breaking above the city and only artificial light here to mark the difference between night and day, her world felt empty.
But that was the shock of revelations talking, for all that she didn't show much of it on the outside. A clan leader had to keep her own counsel, and a ghost even more so. Only she wasn't a ghost at all, but a creature half-damned by good intentions. Someone else might have wept and wailed and rent her breast; Grace O'Malley was made of sterner stuff. Or at least more inured to the improbable than most, by dint of having lived through more of it, if nothing else. Still, beneath the surface lay a whirlpool that could draw her down if she let it: not even centuries of existence made it easy to reconcile the idea that she'd been misled about the circumstances of that life for most of that life.
A rueful smile pulled at her mouth and she turned to look at the detective sitting on her bed. His black hair was tousled and the sheets were rumpled around his waist, his arms looped around his knees. She ought to be telling him all of this, not keeping it tamped down inside. Easier thought than done, though, for when she opened her mouth to speak again, what she said was, "Your lawyer had a lot of ideas," rather than offer any hint of her turmoil.
"Were any of them good?" Tony asked dryly. "She has a lot of bad ideas."
"She has a lot of dangerous ideas," Grace disagreed. "Most of them turn out well enough in the end. All of these were dangerous," she added after a moment's thought. "Would you take Janx or Daisani, if you had to choose?"
"Janx," Tony said without missing a beat. He scooted to the side of the bed and swung his legs over, reaching for his slacks. "I know he's a dragon, but I spent years on a task force trying to bring the man down. I understand some of how he works. Daisani…" He shook his head and stood, buttoning his slacks. "The high finance world is a whole different kind of evil, never mind the vampire part of it." He reached for his shirt and Grace, amused, said, "Do you have to get dressed?"
He lifted his eyebrows. "You didn't come to bed when you came home, which means you're not going to, not before I have to get to work. So I'm up and I'm listening. Are we going after Janx?"
Grace stopped the we? that tried to cross her lips, grateful and bemused by the offer all at once. "I've a witch to find, first, and a bargain to undo."
"Can you even do that? Blood oaths, and everything?"
Grace chuckled and knelt in front of the chest that lay at the foot of her bed. Tony tried not to watch too avidly as she opened it; she'd never done that before in his presence, and trusted he respected her enough to not have gone digging around in it himself. She took out a small, soft bundle of cloth, unwrapped a vial of ancient glass from within its folds, and shook the rusty dust inside the glass. "I can return her blood, if that's what she wants."
Fascinated horror paled Tony's face. "That's—that's—is that four-hundred-year-old witch's blood?"
"It is so."
Tony dropped to his knees beside her, an awful, wonderful grin twisting his mouth. "I bet you could sell that for a fortune on the internet."
Grace laughed. "How would I prove what it was? And if I did, how would I return it to the old bitch to gain her favor?"
"I don't know, but it just seems—" Tony reached for the vial, stopped himself, and crushed his hand between his thigh and calf to keep himself from doing it again. "It seems like you should hold on to some of it. Just in case."
"Magic isn't done with eye of newt and toe of frog, love."
Tony's eyebrows shot up. "Are you sure about that?"
"Sure enough." Grace dropped the cloth back into the trunk, closed it, and rose, eyes sparkling, with the vial still in hand. "Maybe we'll save a wee bit of it for ourselves. Just in case."
Sheer youthful delight brightened Tony's features. "Awesome. How did you even keep it this long? Shouldn't it have disintegrated?"
"I scraped it still wet from the bowl, stoppered it, and never opened it again." Grace gave the vial another little shake. "And perhaps there's a bit of magic in it, too. I don't know, love. I've never tried keeping anyone else's blood for nigh unto half a millennia."
"That…is just as well." Tony made a face as Grace tucked the vial away again for safe-keeping, this time in a bag that would do for traveling.
"It is. And if you're up for it, I thought on our way to Ireland we might pay a visit to the Serpent."
"We?" An incredulous note broke in the small word, more, even, than Grace would have put in it herself, had she said it.
"Unless you're not up for it, Detective."
"No, I just—can I? You're—" Tony made a swift gesture that encompassed Grace and, it seemed, the whole of her world. "You're magic, Grace. I'm just…me."
"I don't know," Grace admitted. "But I'd like you with me as far as you can go. If you're willing."
A smile lit Tony's brown eyes. "I wouldn't miss it for the world. How do we call on a mythical monster at the heart of the sea?"
Grace shrugged. "The only way I know is to drown."
#
"And you said Margrit's plans were dangerous." Tony Pulcella stood on the stern of a ship, bundled in a winter jacket and still crossing his arms over his chest like he could contain another degree or two of warmth by doing so. Grace, beside him in her black leathers, didn't feel the cold, but then, she hadn't for centuries. She didn't even wear a hat, her blonde hair glowing in the autumnal sea sunlight, and Tony glowered at her like it might warm him up.
"We talked about this," Grace said with more patience than she felt.
Tony sighed explosively. "Talking about it is different than standing here watching you get ready to dive off the back end of a cargo ship, Grace."
"You took a month off work so we could do it. What did you think Grace would do, lose heart?"
&n
bsp; A chuckle broke through Tony's scowl, obviously despite his best efforts. "I don't think that's even in your vocabulary." He leaned on the railing, cheeks scoured ruddy by the wind, and rubbed his hands together. "I still don't really…understand…."
"I told you." Grace's voice gentled. "I'm hard to see, Tony. Unless I want to be seen, I'm…"
"A ghost." Tony looked over his shoulder, not at Grace, but toward the bulk of the ship, where, somewhere, a small crew kept the behemoth running. He had taken a month off work, a vacation long enough to require real finagling to achieve, and he had bought only a single ticket for the cargo ship's handful of private berths. His passport had been updated and stamped on the way out of the harbor, but Grace herself had simply slipped aboard, unnoticed, while Tony dealt with the formalities. She had waited for him in his berth to let him know she was there, but the call of the sea was stronger than she'd imagined, and on the giant ship she couldn't feel the waves moving her at all. Once Tony was marginally settled, she'd abandoned him for the upper decks, barely willing to return to the berth at night: at night, she could see the stars unimpeded, as she hadn't in centuries, not in New York.
The truth was she could have stowed away even as a wholly ordinary, living human being, and she didn't see how the crew could have found her. Not as long as she brought food of some kind, at least. The ship was preposterously enormous, like a city block set on the sea. Shipping containers of all hues were stacked high, their size dwarfed by the ship, and the comparative handful of crew unimaginably small in the midst of it all. It had taken fifty men to sail one of her galleons; this ship, vastly larger, was staffed by barely half that. They were specks, and as a normal stowaway she would only have been one more, crawling over the ship's surface.
As she was, though, she was less than that, even. Grace O'Malley had become a street legend for a reason: always slipping in and out of places she shouldn't be, never caught by cops even when they swore half a second before they'd been staring right at her. They were right, too, but that was the ghost in her, able to fade away in a moment. Save that it wasn't ghostliness at all, but Fúamnach's draw on the Tear, stealing precious bits of tangibility from Grace, half a world away. "It hardly matters," she said aloud, and Tony looked surprised.
