I read worry on Georgie’s face and realized I wasn’t part of a conversation. “Russell would have hurt Joey,” I told her. “You did the right thing.”
But you’re scared now.
I patted her back and shrugged. “Nothing new around here. Hey, want to watch TV?”
While Joey finished blending and I played with the remote, Georgie leaned against my shoulder and drew her legs onto the cushion. Sunday morning programming was lousy, even with cable, and I had just begun flipping through the movie channels when she perked up and pointed at the black and white picture. What’s that?
“That?” I said, checking the on-screen guide to be sure. “Godzilla.”
Oh. She frowned in thought at the rampage for a moment, then remarked, Doesn’t look very realistic.
“Old movie, bad special effects.”
She snorted. And why is she wrecking that town?
“It’s a he, not a she, and he’s upset about something to do with nuclear bombs, I think.”
No, I’m pretty sure she’s female.
Georgie looked up at me and grinned, but I decided not to argue—I was expecting an angry mob of magi to come barging through the door at any moment, and we still had yet to hear from Val, which boded nothing good. But we were trapped, and so, lacking a better idea, I watched movies with Georgie for the rest of the morning and tried not to think about my impending doom, while Joey wandered in and out of the den, alternately making shakes and brooding.
Just after noon, someone rapped at the front door, and Joey, with a quick glance at me, cracked it open. “Ye—oh. Hello,” he said, stepping back to reveal the grand magus on the threshold. “If you came for lunch, I can offer you a choice of Pringles or a kidney.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bolin, but I’ve eaten,” he replied. “Actually, I was wondering whether your, uh…little friend might like a steak dinner.”
“Probably,” he said, sounding puzzled, and re-asked the question in Fae. Georgie’s eyes lit up, and he nodded at the grand magus. “She’s interested. What’s the catch?”
“None. You may have noticed the herd topside—I think we can spare one.” He stepped back and beckoned to Georgie, and Joey hoisted her onto his back when she struggled to find her footing. “Still a little shaky, I take it?” the grand magus asked.
“Just a little. Aiden, hand me that,” Joey told me, nodding to his sword belt on the kitchen table.
The grand magus’s mouth twitched. “Don’t trust me, do you?”
“I like to be prepared,” he replied, awkwardly fastening it while Georgie clung to his neck. “If you’ve heard about this morning, you might understand why I’m on edge.”
“Of course. You’ll want your coats, too—it’s breezy up there.”
I fetched them and propped up Georgie while Joey dressed, and then the grand magus led us past the guards and toward the surface. The fact that he was taking us without a security detail was momentarily reassuring, but then I remembered that he didn’t need one.
The Arcanum had divided its pastureland into four sections, two at use at any given time and two left to re-grow. Grass could be coaxed up fairly quickly with the right spells, but the neighbors asked fewer difficult questions if the fields were left fallow, and so the cattle were rotated to keep queries to a minimum. Then again, as far as the locals knew, the herd was owned by an old man who lived in a modest farmhouse near the run-down trailer park, a crusty coot who kept to himself and posted trespassing warnings all around his land. Magus Fredericks was indeed a crusty coot, but his house, like the trailer park, was just another surface decoy.
The grass had long since gone to straw that October, but as we hiked to the far pasture, we passed clumps of cows gathered around mysteriously green patches, quietly gorging themselves and ignoring us. Georgie eyed them hungrily, and the grand magus noticed the direction of her stare. “Soon enough,” he told her, but Georgie looked at him blankly, and he held up a hand to stop Joey’s progress. “My Fae has always been iffy,” he said, rubbing his palms together, then pressed his fingertips to Georgie’s temples and whispered, “Logos.”
She yelped and twisted to get out of his grasp, but the grand magus was strong for an old man and held on until her whimpers subsided. “There, now,” he said, stepping back a pace as Joey’s hand inched toward his sword, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Georgie frowned and held her head. That hurt!
“It’s over,” he replied, “and that process can be a little painful. I’m sorry, but I figured you’d prefer to understand the local language, since you’re going to be in this realm for a while—”
It didn’t hurt when Coileán did it, she rebutted.
The grand magus spread his hands. “And that’s enchantment versus spellcraft for you, my dear. Sometimes one is a better tool than the other. Any headache?”
She pulled her hands away, waited, then shook her head.
“Good. Now, then,” he continued, glancing around at the pasture, “there’s one other thing I need to do.”
In an instant, Joey had put a sword length—and a sword—between him and the grand magus, and Georgie watched from her perch with wide eyes. “She was defending me,” he said, his voice low and clipped. “That little shit was armed, and she was defending me. He started it, not Georgie.”
The grand magus looked at the weapon pointed at his gut, then raised his eyes to Joey’s and held his stare. “You mistake me, Mr. Bolin. And you think ill of me, but I suppose I can’t blame you for that. Haven’t given you much cause to think otherwise, to tell you the truth.” He nudged the point of the sword away from him with two fingers but kept his distance. “Toula is excellent at what she does, but there are a few tricks she has yet to learn. That transformation, for example,” he said, pointing to Georgie. “Solid enough, but she didn’t take all of the variables into account. If you leave her as she is, that dragon’s not going to see Thanksgiving. Can’t get enough food down her to keep up with her metabolism—she’s starving to death. But I think you figured this out already, yeah?”
Joey hesitated, then slowly sheathed his sword. “You can fix her?”
Change me back?
“Yes to you,” he replied, pointing to Joey, “and a technical yes to you, too, but it would be a bad idea,” he said to Georgie, who deflated at the news. “But what I can do is slow your systems a bit, put your insides more on par with your outsides.”
Is this going to hurt?
“Maybe,” he admitted, “but it beats starvation, right?”
Joey lowered Georgie until her feet found the ground, then let her lean against him while the grand magus rested his hands on her shoulders. I watched the pale yellow magic swirl around her, interacting with the spell already in place, and she squeezed her eyes shut and cried out before falling to her knees. Joey was on her in a flash, but the grand magus stepped back, seemingly satisfied. “Now,” he said, dusting off his hands, “how about a heifer?”
A few minutes, a short walk, a killing spell, and several judicious sword cuts later, Georgie was up to her elbows in a cow, by turns ripping handfuls free and burying her face in its side. Her shirt was ruined, and she looked like an extra from a slasher movie, but I could hear her contented thoughts as she smacked and snorted over the corpse.
“Well, now,” said the grand magus, who had staked out a spot sufficiently clear of the spatter zone, “that’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Don’t forget to breathe!” Joey called, also standing well out of range of the flying gore. “It’s not going anywhere, Georgie—take your time!”
She dug in and yanked, then pulled the cow’s heart out and sank her teeth into it with relish. A look of bliss crossed her face, and I fought my stomach’s urge to go be sick in the corner. I’d watched Georgie eat hundreds of meals, but she hadn’t been quite so cute the last time she disemboweled her food. When she’d worked a chunk out of the heart, she held it at arm’s length, cocked her head in consideration, then
blew a thin, focused jet of flame at the meat until it blackened. Satisfied with her work, she bit through the charred layer with all the relish of a Girl Scout on s’mores night.
As Georgie moved on to breaking ribs, the grand magus wiped his face with a handkerchief and turned away from the carnage. “I’m sorry it took so long to get y’all out here,” he said to Joey and me. “Council didn’t want to give her a whole cow, but I said she was wasting away without fresh meat.”
“So they caved?” I asked, surprised.
“No. They think I brought her out here to eliminate her.” Seeing our expressions shift, he folded his arms and said, “Come on, gentlemen, how long did you think anyone was going to be happy keeping a dragon down there? Especially after this morning. Russell said you did it, by the way,” he added, glancing at me, “but that notion didn’t take too long to debunk. Grace Mulligan is adamant that Georgie not be allowed back.”
Joey had already gripped his hilt. “And you’re telling us this because—”
“Because I’m trying to make you understand what I’ve been up against,” he said. “And why it’s taken me so long to get you the hell out of there. Now, is there anything you left underground that you absolutely cannot live without?”
We stared at him, neither of us fully comprehending what he was saying, and Georgie belched another stream of flame at her lunch.
The grand magus moved close to us, lowered his voice to a bare murmur, and said, “It’s taken a few days to get the arrangements in place, and I kept you in the dark for your own safety. You’re going to Virginia. Toula and Helen are meeting you there. It’ll be up to you to figure out what’s happened in Faerie—and I’m sorry, I can’t help you—but at least you’ll be free to move about.”
“You’re…I’m sorry, what?” Joey asked in disbelief.
“The Council has a stick up its ass and its head in the sand,” said the grand magus. “They’re adamant that we not get mixed up in court affairs. This is none of our business, as far as they see it. But as I see it, if something’s happened to Coileán, then the only power left in Faerie is Oberon—and I do not want to live in a world in which his power’s unchecked. Old boy gets bored, and we’re toast.” He looked into our eyes in turn, then nodded. “So here’s what’s going to happen. In a few minutes, a gate will appear from nowhere, and you three will make a run for it while I’m distracted. Toula will take the fall for now. You can’t trust a Pavli, you know.”
I raised my voice slightly to be heard over the sounds of Georgie’s rooting. “And there’s some reason why you couldn’t have told us this plan, like, four days ago?”
“Security, Mr. Carver.” He paused as Georgie began systematically burning the hair off the cow, then said, “There are certain highly complex spells protecting my office—security measures, all overseen by a select group of wizards trusted by the Council. And, I fear, loyal to the Council. I’m not entirely convinced, but I think my office may be bugged. No need to take that risk when—”
A rip in reality opened beside us, and I recognized the alley behind Coileán’s old building in Rigby…which had been Meggy’s building until their daughter ran off to the Gray Lands, and Meggy came back a corpse.
The grand magus smiled tautly as the hole widened. “Right on time. Georgie, dear, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave the rest of that here.”
She looked up and saw the gate, then patted her bloated stomach, leaving bloody handprints on her shirt. I’m set.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Toula muttered from the other side, covering her mouth as she stared at Georgie. “Carver!” she called over her shoulder. “Incoming! Someone’s going to need a bath, stat!”
Joey helped Georgie to her feet, then gave the grand magus a quick nod and carried her through the gate. I looked from the ruined cow to the old man, and I saw the weariness in his eyes. “Grand Magus—”
“Go,” he interrupted, patting my shoulder. “Do what you need to do.”
I had one foot in Virginia when he said, “And Lord Aiden?”
Turning back, I found him watching grimly beside the cow. “Yes, sir?”
“Be careful, son,” he said, and shooed me on.
Hel apologized to Georgie, but there was no way, short of another spell, to avoid the garden hose. She ensorcelled it to spray warm water, but October was October, even in Virginia, and Georgie was shivering by the end of her shower. The runoff ran red to the gutter behind Coileán’s building—now Stuart Purcell’s building, I reminded myself, still half-expecting to see the familiar book racks in the shop instead of Stuart’s displays of dried sage and candles and healing wind chimes. Rigby’s self-professed white wizard was as magically gifted as a plastic wand from the discount bin, but my brother had come to have a grudging almost-fondness for the weirdo. “Wizard Stu” was mundane, misguided, and possibly a touch deranged—having seen true magic, he was on a fool’s quest to teach himself how to wield it—but he firmly believed that civilians should be protected from eldritch horrors and that it was his solemn duty to step into the breach. Thus, when Toula had shown up on his doorstep and explained the situation, Stuart was more than willing to let us crash on his couch.
He was less than enthusiastic at the sight of Georgie in all her gory splendor—I think he came close to passing out, to be honest—but he warmed to her once she was hosed down. For the first time in days, Georgie seemed content, full and clean and dry, and she curled up on a pile of polyester ceremonial robes and fell asleep as Stuart’s terrified cats watched from beneath a draped table. Mrs. Cooper, Stuart’s great-aunt and Coileán’s matronly former neighbor, had wandered across the street from her shop with tea and cookies, and Joey and I took over the tea nook with Toula and Hel to catch each other up.
We’d just covered Georgie’s performance that morning when someone rang the after-hours doorbell, and Stuart jumped up to unlock the front door. “Expecting company?” Joey asked, reaching for his sword.
Hel waved him back into his chair and stood when the door swung open. “Over here!” she called, waving to the trio of newcomers. “Tea’s on, and I will cut you if you hog the oatmeal raisins again, Vivi.”
I recognized two of them—Vivian Stowe and her fiancé, Hal Perryman, the Fringe’s rising star and the coach of Rigby High’s doomed football team, respectively. Though the product of half-fae parents, Vivi, the lone unfortunate among her siblings, had turned out mortal—her thick-framed glasses and steel wristwatch were proof enough of that—but she made up for her magical shortcomings with technical expertise. Hal was as mundane as they come, but the elders Stowes had apparently decided that he was good enough for their little girl, and the Fringe had offered him what amounted to junior membership. As a support organization for those with even the barest smidgeon of magical ability, the Fringe wasn’t overly picky about its recruits.
“Can it, Hermione,” Vivi called back to my sister. “I lick it, it’s mine. Deal with it.”
“Whatever happened to sharing, huh?”
“Sharing,” said the stranger with Vivi and Hal, a black-haired, youthful-looking man in a tweed blazer and tailored jeans, “goes out the window when you’re in a pack of thirteen.”
“You should have seen the pumpkin pie last year,” Hal muttered. “Horrible, I tell you.”
The man elbowed him in the side, and Hal shoved him back good-naturedly. “Mr. Purcell, good to see you again,” the stranger continued, nodding at Stuart, “and Mrs. Cooper—radiant as ever, how do you do it?”
“And you, sir, are a shameless, lying flirt,” she replied, swatting him on the arm, but her smile lines broke through her shellac of foundation.
Vivi rolled her eyes and cocked her thumb toward him. “Folks, my idiot brother. Idiot brother, you figure it out.”
“Rufus Stowe,” he said, casting a glance at our table. “And let me guess: that one’s the wizard, the one with the spiked hair is Toula, the guy with the damn broadsword must be Joey, so that makes you…Lord Aiden, is it?” he as
ked me.
“Only if you’re feeling fancy,” I replied.
He grinned at that. “Good. I was rather concerned that a high lord with an Arcanum pedigree would be an insufferable ass, but maybe you’ll prove me wrong.”
“And maybe you’ll tell us what you’re doing here,” Joey interjected as he stood. “Correct me if I’m mistaken, Vivi, but I thought your family’s allegiance was to Oberon.”
“Well, technically,” said Rufus, “but ‘allegiance’ is such a strong word.” He helped himself to Mrs. Cooper’s cookie tray and leaned against a wall of dreamcatchers. “Vivi gave me the skinny. I want to help you.”
“And what’s in it for you?”
“Preservation, I suppose,” he replied, sounding surprised at the enquiry. “Check if you doubt me,” he added, tapping his head. “I’m not leading you into an ambush, if that’s what you thought.” A second later, he jerked, almost dropped his cookie, and stared at Toula open-mouthed. “You checked?” he said, sounding hurt. “You actually checked!”
“I’m not an idiot, sweetcheeks,” she replied, wrapping her hands around her teacup. “And he’s legit. Stand down, Percival.”
Joey gave Rufus a long look, then released his grip on his sword and sat. “For the record, it’s an arming sword, not a broadsword. Different hilt.”
“I’m not a medievalist,” Rufus protested, “so why don’t we settle for ‘anachronistically employed pointy thing’?”
“It does the trick.” Joey smirked, then tapped the tabletop. “If you’re in, then you’d better pull up a chair.”
He looked around at Stuart’s offerings—mismatched patio furniture of painted steel—then produced a wooden chair from the ether, flipped it backward, and bellied up to the table. “So, what do you know about current events?”
“Little and less,” said Hel. “You’re the one with the in with Oberon, you tell us.”
Rufus sighed and steepled his fingers in front of his face. “That’s the problem—I don’t have an in with him.” Hel’s brow furrowed, and as Vivi and Hal squeezed in, he explained, “I’ve never met the man. Our parents have done an excellent job avoiding the rest of the court. They may still have some allegiance to Oberon, but as far as I’m concerned…well, I didn’t vote for him.” He paused when the doorbell rang again, then raised a finger in greeting as Stuart admitted Rick Matherson, a Fringe coordinator and one of Rigby’s resident bartenders. “That’s the last of us?”
Witch-Blood Page 7
