Witch-Blood

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “Yep. We’re not calling the priest in yet,” said Rick, who squinted in the noon light as if he’d just rolled out of bed. Then again, considering his profession, he probably had.

  Rufus looked around at the assembled and shook his head. “I realize that a plucky band of underdogs is the American way, but we’re going to need more than pluck. Do you have any—”

  “Wait, wait,” Hel interrupted, holding up her hand to silence him. “You’re telling me you’ve got no court affiliation?”

  “On paper? Sure, I do. In reality, though…” Rufus shrugged and poured a cup of tea. “Look—Helen Carver, yes?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Ms. Carver, I’ll be blunt: I’ve never been to Faerie, I have no desire to relocate there, and the thought of Oberon getting a wild hair and deciding to conquer this realm terrifies me. Whatever’s left of Mab’s court is in shambles, and last I heard, Nath was dealing with her own problems at home. If Coileán’s out of commission, who’s to stop Oberon? I mean, say he does decide to invade—what are we supposed to do, call out the Green Berets? I’m not trying to be flippant, but Kevlar’s no defense to magic.”

  “We?” she asked.

  “Yes, we,” he retorted. “I was born in this country, I work here, I pay taxes—and if we’re going to be picky about it, I’ve lived here quite a bit longer than you have.” He added milk to his cup and swirled it, eschewing the dainty silver teaspoons Mrs. Cooper had provided. “Honestly, I’d rather keep the current system in place, imperfect as it is, because I know what the alternative looks like.”

  “And I thought you said you’d never been to Faerie.”

  His eyes darted to his sister’s. “Our parents are native. We’ve heard plenty.”

  “Mom and Dad haven’t been back since 1423,” Vivi added.

  “For various reasons,” said Rufus, “but that’s immaterial at the moment. The bottom line is that I’m willing to assist you, the Fringe has said it’s willing to help, and, uh…”—he glanced at the would-be wizard in the corner—“Mr. Purcell has volunteered the use of his store.”

  “And any further assistance required,” said Stuart.

  “Generous,” Rufus muttered. “So—one certified wizard, six functional mundanes, two of us who might pass for fae if you squint hard enough, and…Mr. Purcell. Is that the long and short of it?”

  Joey pointed to Georgie and her makeshift bed. “One dragon.”

  “One ensorcelled dragon,” Toula quickly clarified, looking at Stuart, “who is not going to suddenly shapeshift and destroy your shop.”

  Mrs. Cooper clucked her tongue, then pulled a robe from beneath Georgie and covered her up. “Poor little thing’s tuckered out,” she said. “Do you think she’s going to be hungry when she wakes? Growing children have big appetites…”

  “Oh, probably,” Joey sighed, rubbing his forehead.

  “I’ve got some chicken salad in the fridge, if you think she’ll eat it.”

  “Worth a shot,” he replied, looking up to smile at her, then noticed movement below the display table near Georgie and paused. “Hey, Stuart? Why don’t you do us all a favor and hide your cats for now, okay?”

  As it turned out, Georgie did eat chicken salad—about two quarts of it, in fact—and then, declaring herself stuffed, she curled up on her pile of robes again and fell asleep. Joey seemed relieved to see her satiated, but it was a grim sort of satisfaction, tempered by the general frustration of his company.

  The afternoon lengthened, Rick brought over half his top shelf to smooth over frayed nerves, and Vivi made a run for Chinese takeout as night fell, but even food and alcohol did little to improve the mood. We were stuck at square one, and no one could decide on the next step.

  Barging into the palace was easily excluded as a viable solution. “I don’t know what experience the rest of you have with Oberon,” said Toula, “but I don’t want to cross him without a significant advantage in our corner. Marching in and demanding answers looks a lot like suicide to me.”

  “Assuming he’s even there,” Joey muttered. “He could be back in Florida now, for all we know.”

  “If Oberon’s not there, then where the hell is Val?” she countered. “He wouldn’t leave us hanging like this if he were able to get word out.”

  Though we were dealing with hypotheticals, that Oberon had established more than a foothold in Faerie seemed like a given by that point, and Toula’s mood only darkened as the hours passed.

  The second idea was received marginally better than the first: open a gate somewhere in the backwoods of Faerie and stay low until we knew the situation. “I’ve been out in the country,” said Joey. “Made rough maps of a good deal of it. I don’t have my notes on me, but if I gave you landmarks, would that be enough to make a gate in the right place?”

  “Conceivable,” said Rufus, tapping his plate with his chopsticks, “but how far out do you suppose we’d have to go?”

  “And you’re forgetting the realm,” I mumbled, then cringed when the others turned to me. I’d never liked being the center of attention—probably because it often ended in pain when I was growing up—and I sank a little in my chair as they waited.

  Rufus put his utensils down and gave me a once-over from across the table. “Speak up,” he said as my shoulders hunched. “No one’s going to bite you, kid. Hell, you’ve got more inside information than at least half of us here,” he added, and Rick and Vivi nodded at the next table over. “Now, what does the realm have to do with anything?”

  I took a deep breath to center myself, then said, “It’s sentient. Coileán says it’s like an alarm system—it tells him when someone crosses over who’s not supposed to be there.”

  His forehead wrinkled in surprise. “Such as?”

  “Wizards. Anyone from Mab’s court. He says it’s not fond of some mortals…I think it’s okay with anyone from his or Oberon’s court, but it’s picky about outsiders.”

  “Colin says it does not like me,” Toula confirmed. “Or her,” she said, cocking her head at Hel.

  Rufus resumed his attack on the tepid chow mein. “What I’m hearing, then, is that if we decide to go over, the two of you are out.”

  “If you want the element of surprise, yeah.” She grabbed the rice carton and a spoon. “And to be safe, I wouldn’t send anyone who hasn’t spent considerable time there already. Don’t give the realm anything new to consider.”

  “So…” said Joey, “that would leave Aid, Georgie, and me.”

  “And that’s a big, fat, no,” Hel snapped as she speared a shrimp.

  “Helen—”

  “No.”

  “Helen,” he tried again, “let’s be reasonable about this—”

  “Reasonable?” she echoed, dropping her fork. “In what universe is it reasonable to send two unarmed mundanes into Faerie alone?”

  “We wouldn’t be unarmed—”

  “Excuse me, two mundanes with a sword between them. Not even a magical sword—a good, old-fashioned, piece of metal. Oh, and let’s not forget Georgie!” she cried in mock amazement. “Why, Faerie is just lousy with dragons. I’m sure no one will think twice if you go flying around—”

  “That’s not what I’m suggesting!”

  “Then what? How is that possibly going to end with anything but a couple of corpses?”

  As the two of them glared at each other and reddened, Mrs. Cooper stepped between them and spread her hands. “You know, y’all don’t have to decide this right now. No one’s going anywhere tonight, so let’s not fight, okay?”

  When her attempted placation proved ineffective, Rick rose from his threadbare armchair by the robe pile and pointed to the staircase. “Carver. Bolin. Upstairs, both of you,” he ordered. “We’re going to have a little chat.”

  They started to sputter, caught the looks the rest of the room was giving them, then grudgingly marched after Rick. When the door slammed, Georgie whimpered in her sleep, and Vivi took Rick’s vacated chair to scratch the dragon’
s head until she calmed.

  While the others took advantage of the silence to put down a few more bites, all ignoring the muffled voices rising in the apartment above us, I pushed my plate back and cleared my throat. “There’s, uh…maybe one thing we could try.” Toula’s eyebrow arched in query as she chewed, and I said, “Grivam. I think he owes Coileán a favor or something.”

  “The merrow king?” asked Rufus. “You want to drag him into this?”

  “There’s an ocean gate into Faerie,” I said, racking my brain for details I’d nearly forgotten. “It’s how the merrow go back and forth. If they’ve been over lately, they might know something.”

  “Or they might be convinced to find out,” said Toula, putting the rice aside. “I mean, Grivam drives a hard bargain, but if you’re right and Coileán has one on him…”

  Rufus pushed his plate away. “Where’s the gate? And minor detail, but does anyone know how to find Grivam?”

  “I can probably call him,” she replied, “but as for where the gate is…”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Oh, I know, but you’re not going to like it.” She looked around the room and lowered her voice. “Who wants to find out whether Oberon left anyone behind in the Keys?”

  CHAPTER 5

  * * *

  For the second time in under a week, I woke in the middle of the night when someone shook me back to consciousness. But instead of Val, as I’d hoped in the second between sleeping and waking, I found my sister standing over me when I opened my eyes. “Wha—”

  “Get up, we’ve got company,” was all she said before running down to the store.

  I pushed myself off the air mattress Rufus had created for the occasion, blinked in the dim light of the apartment’s den, and listened to the voices rising from the ground floor. Hel had left the door open, and I scrambled downstairs to see what the fuss was about.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, spotting Toula and Rufus standing by the shaded windows. “Who’s there?”

  Before either could explain, an amplified voice from outside the building echoed through the door: “Fotoula Pavli! This is your second warning! Come out with your hands exposed and surrender the prisoners!”

  “Apparently,” Toula muttered, “I’m under arrest.”

  “For what?”

  “The charges were a little muffled, but I’m in trouble with the Arcanum for liberating the three of you.” She mumbled at the wall, and a dim green web appeared around the room, ringing it like a layer of paint. “He left them in place, but they’re on standby,” she said to Rufus, then squinted at the nearest patch of glowing magic. “And if I’m reading this correctly…yeah, this is more for camouflage than defense.”

  “Can you tweak it?” he asked.

  She looked up in annoyance. “It’s one big enchantment! You want me to work with that?”

  “Fotoula Pavli!”

  Rufus tapped the wall and made a face. “Got a better idea? Unless you can re-ward this in the next, say, sixty seconds…”

  She growled low in her throat, but she planted her palms on the door and closed her eyes. “Feed it. I’ll try to patch the wiring, but I don’t have time to rebuild this and power it up.”

  “Roger that.” He took his place beside her and touched the wards, and a brighter green spread from his fingertips as the enchantment came back online. “How long—”

  “Longer if you keep talking.”

  While they were engaged, I sneaked a peek past the closest drawn shade and found a dozen men and women on the sidewalk, all dressed in black jumpsuits. They sported dark helmets as well, obscuring their identities behind smoked polymer visors, and black combat boots. I didn’t need to see their outstretched wands and the active shields around them to identify them as Arcanum, but I noted something troubling about their uniforms. Arcanum security always wore a patch, a star of four crossed wands, marking them as authorized to use force. These wizards had no such markings, and they continued to bellow for Toula to come out.

  A light flicked on in the building behind them—Mrs. Cooper, I realized, seeing her silhouette appear at the curtains. She’d gone home to bed around midnight, as had Rick, Vivi, and Hal, leaving Stuart to host Joey, Georgie, Toula, Rufus, Hel, and me overnight. We were supposed to finalize plans for Florida in the morning, once everyone had a few hours of sleep and Hel and Joey stopped sulking at each other, but this was, putting it mildly, an unexpected wrinkle.

  The wards blazed, and Rufus said, “It’s on. How long—”

  “Just another min—”

  A concentrated blast from the wizards outside blew the front door off its hinges and threw Toula halfway across the store. “Shield!” Hel yelled, stepping into Toula’s position, and Rufus knelt beside her with a wide shield glowing orange as she turned her attention to the unfinished patch. “Damn it, what were you doing?” Hel asked.

  “Workaround,” Toula mumbled, picking herself off the floor and patting the back of her head. “Can’t cast the change directly. Got to cast the enchantment into changing.”

  “Oh…controlled damming, got it. Shit, this is going to take forever—”

  “Li’s Trident. Replicate…”

  “Oh, gotcha…” Her hands danced over the wards as she continued the adjustments. “Joey, is she bleeding?”

  He bent over Toula and parted her hair. “Not that I can tell—”

  His examination was cut short by a second blast, most of which bounced off Rufus’s shield and ricocheted to shatter a lamppost. “Goddamn it,” Hel snapped, “who authorized lethal force?”

  Toula pushed Joey aside and, with minimal weaving, returned to the door. “Those are assassins. That’s the only kind of force they use.”

  “What?”

  “Assassins,” said Toula, redoubling her work on the wards as Rufus began to sweat. “That ain’t security, sweetheart.”

  Hel began to sputter and stepped back from the door. “But…but to get authorization for an assassination—”

  “—would take an act of the Council,” Toula finished. “Greg said I was the fall guy for this, didn’t he? Maybe we should have expected repercussions.”

  “Assassins over a jailbreak?”

  The look Toula flashed her was almost pitying. “The Council gets a chance to be rid of me, and you don’t think they’ll take it? And…there.” She moved away from the wards, pursed her lips, then nodded. “Right, that should hold for a bit, but we need to evacuate.”

  “And get the Fringe folk out of here,” said Joey, joining the other three by the door. “That means you, Stuart.”

  Our host began to protest, but Toula cut him off with a curt, “No. Go pack a bag, you’re getting out of town until they stop looking for us here, and…oh, shit,” she muttered as the door to Tea for Two opened, “what is she doing?”

  From the shop across the street stepped Mrs. Cooper, wrapped in a fluffy pink bathrobe and sporting a head full of pin curlers. “Excuse me!” she called as she marched into the street. “Just what do you hoodlums think you’re doing? It’s three in the morning, and I’ll have you know we have noise ordinances in this town!”

  “Get inside!” Toula shouted out the hole where our door had been. “Eunice, get back inside!”

  But Mrs. Cooper, who had once fought off faeries with a steel teakettle, ignored her. As the helmeted wizards turned to assess the newcomer, she reached into her robe pocket and extracted a small pistol, which she raised and cocked. “Don’t make me call the police, now,” she said calmly. “Get out of here.”

  “Mrs. Cooper,” Joey tried, “they’re armed, go—”

  She looked past the helmets, straight into our building. “Get out of here,” she repeated, her voice clear and steady, and I realized she wasn’t talking to the wizards between us.

  Toula turned around and ripped open a gate into Mrs. Cooper’s tearoom. “What are you doing?” Rufus demanded. “With the defensive wards active—”

  “Stay here, keep them
safe,” she ordered. “If I can’t get back through my own wardwork, I deserve what’s coming to me. Just try to distract them while I grab—”

  The rest of that thought ended in a scream—high, strong, but brief—and a thud. I whipped back to the window and spotted a pink lump in the road behind the black suits: Mrs. Cooper, sprawled on the asphalt at the wrong end of a wand.

  Stuart, who had witnessed the whole thing from the staircase, gasped and ran for the door. “Auntie Eunice!” he cried. “No, Auntie Eu—”

  Joey grabbed him around the waist before he could bolt from the building and wrestled him to the floor. “You go out there, you’re dead,” he said, unable to hide the tremor in his voice. He sat on Stuart to pin him until he stopped thrashing. “I’m sorry, God, I’m so sorry,” Joey continued as he held Stuart down, “but you can’t help her.”

  The wizards outside, who had certainly noticed our wards by then, continued repeating their demands as if they’d never been interrupted. Toula closed the gate she’d just made, and I cut my eyes to Hel, who stared at the squad in slack-jawed horror. “That…” she whispered, “they can’t do…”

  “Want to bet?” Toula muttered.

  Hel wheeled on her and jabbed her finger toward the street. “They just killed her! Little old lady! Holy…I don’t even, I…what did…”

  Toula grabbed Hel by the shoulders and squeezed until my sister stopped babbling. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” she said quietly. “We’ve got to run, Carver. Taking that squad out first probably won’t stop the Arcanum, but it might buy us a little time. And as I find that I’m suddenly in the mood for blood, I’m going to kill as many of those sons of bitches as I can. Rufus, you in?”