Witch-Blood

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “Right,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “I’m sorry, I just…long night…”

  “Rage.” I looked at him in confusion, and he said, “When Colin flies off the handle…know what I mean?”

  “Fireworks,” I sighed, knowing exactly what Joey was talking about. Coileán had, with much embarrassed apology, explained it to me after he set a particularly aggravating petitioner’s hair on fire. The half fae knew how to behave in polite society, but if they were pushed too far, someone was liable to end up fried or worse.

  “Bingo,” said Joey. He scowled at the ground, then looked back at me. “So, barring friendly hermit faeries in the woods, what do we do now?”

  I don’t know was on the tip of my tongue, but I froze when a familiar voice whispered in the back of my mind: You are not safe here.

  I squeezed my eyes closed, finally understanding what Coileán had meant about the voice in his head. “Is he coming?” I muttered.

  “Is who coming?” asked Joey.

  Not yet. I showed him nothing to trouble him. A trick, he believes—a prank by one of his sons. You may have a few hours of safety, but I make no guarantees.

  I looked at Joey and pointed to our bags. “Realm says we need to move. We could backtrack.”

  He bent and grabbed his pack. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “If it involves Lailu and a favor,” I replied with a grunt, swinging my bag into position, “then yes, I am.”

  I wasn’t feeling social that long day. I wasn’t feeling much of anything, really. Oh, I was feeling something, but it was too convoluted for me to put a label on it, so I tried to ignore it and concentrated on feeling numb.

  The world around me hadn’t changed. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but the sun rose as usual, the breeze blew, the woods thickened as we crossed the first of the ridges and valleys of the foothills, and something large, unseen, and quite probably predatory screeched at us from a tree as we hiked past. Nothing out of the ordinary there. We’d found water early in the morning, but I was still sore and growing hungrier with each passing hour. The feast of crumbs Astrid had given us only lasted so long, and my stomach restarted its old chorus of complaints. And the magic around us looked no different—it swirled in muted colors like a fog more perceived than seen, the usual kaleidoscope of potential.

  We stopped on a hilltop in the early afternoon, maybe eight miles from the palace, and Joey left me with the gear while he stalked a flock of wild sheep upwind of us on the valley floor. Sitting was a relief, but I was bored, and without thinking, I started trying to move the nearby bits of magic around. As a kid, it had been something I did as a last resort, an almost meditative practice that helped me stay awake. That day, however, the magic did something new: rather than move where I nudged it, it burst into brilliant color…and then a line of fireballs shot out of my fingertip and straight through the nearest tree. I sat there, momentarily stunned by the sudden conflagration, then jumped up, grabbed my half-empty canteen, and tossed the contents onto the blaze.

  But by then, the tree was a goner, and the little water I’d carried seemed to have no effect. I panicked and turned in circles to find a pond before the whole forest caught fire, but we’d stopped in a dry spot. Before I could run back down the hill and look for a place to refill my canteen, the voice spoke to me again: Will it out.

  “How?” I yelled, looking around as if Faerie were going to show up with a fire extinguisher.

  Focus. Fight your fear.

  “Sure, great, no problem,” I snapped. “I’ll just sit here and find my center while I burn up a few acres. How about something helpful?”

  I could have sworn the voice chuckled. Consider the fire. You made it. You can unmake it. It’s simple, just think—

  A pair of wooden buckets appeared at my feet, each filled to the brim with water, and I pushed the voice aside as I tossed their contents at the tree. The flame sputtered, and as I watched, the buckets refilled. By the time Joey ran up to see what all the smoke was about, I’d put out the fire and stood in the wet dirt, panting as my tired arms shook. He took one look at the scene, nodded, and murmured, “Accident?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You all right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay. Take it easy,” he cautioned, and started back down to retrieve his kill.

  I sat down beside another tree and considered my buckets, which had again filled themselves of their own accord, then squeezed my hands into fists and imagined the buckets gone. They vanished without a sound, and I released the breath I’d been holding.

  You know, the voice resumed, you could have just willed the fire out. Simpler, more elegant…

  “It worked, didn’t it?” I muttered to the air.

  Well…yes, but the water was unnecessary.

  I sighed and closed my eyes. “You do realize that I don’t know how to handle magic, right? This isn’t some revelation to you, is it?”

  You’re cranky when you’re hungry.

  “That shouldn’t be news to you, either.”

  Eat something, the voice suggested.

  “Joey’s coming back with food,” I said, hoping I could fall asleep for a few minutes and forget about the smoldering tree.

  But she didn’t let up. You don’t need to wait. Make yourself a sandwich. And you need to keep moving—I can’t say whether Oberon will send a party after you.

  “Look,” I muttered, resting my head on my knees, “if I try that right now, the odds are good that I’ll either make myself some nice rat poison or burn the damn forest down. So I’m just going to sit here and wait for lamb, all right?”

  You don’t care for lamb, she pointed out.

  “Better than rat poison.”

  Faerie had nothing to say to that, and so I waited in silence for Joey to return, hoping I could avoid inadvertently conjuring up, say, a swarm of killer bees.

  Joey couldn’t have been a better guide all day, since I was barely holding myself together. He hunted, made fires, found water, and cooked for us both, insisting that I sit and rest while he handled matters. Over leftover lamb that evening, as we nursed our fresh bruises and blisters, he kept the conversation light, pointedly avoiding topics that would circle back to Coileán or our current predicament. He talked about college and the crazier people he’d met in seminary, the one guy who had to pontificate in every class, the other who cracked halfway through the first year and ran off to Amsterdam. He brought up stories from the Ren Faire circuit—summers spent living in an RV parked in fields, subsisting on turkey legs and Pop Tarts, surreptitiously tapping a cask of cheap ale with his friends and drinking himself silly long after the last guests had gone home. He told me about the horse on which he’d learned to ride, a half-blind nag who’d answered to “Widowmaker.” Finally, when the fire had burned low and the stars glittered above us through the trees and the blue smoke haze, he sent me to the tent for the first shift.

  When I was alone in the stillness, the full impact of what I’d done hit me. I lay there in my sleeping bag, paralyzed as wave after wave of guilt and fear and horror crashed over me like a storm tide.

  I’d run off to Faerie to escape my bedroom prison, but I’d done so partly in the hope that the experience would somehow make a wizard out of me. Not a great wizard, not even a good wizard, just a wizard strong enough to merit a wand of my own. Even a dragonscale wand, the crutch of low-talent witches. I didn’t care—all I wanted was to show the Arcanum that I was more than the Carvers’ dud.

  So what had I done? In one moment, I hadn’t just given up on my dream—I’d let the realm suppress the part of me, however weak, that could have been a wizard someday. I’d told Hel I wasn’t turning my back on the Arcanum, but that was exactly what I’d done, wasn’t it? I’d rejected them to become…

  I couldn’t bring myself to finish the thought.

  The Arcanum may not have taught me much about magic, but I knew that faeries were dangerous, evil, and best destroyed. Ev
ery wizard knew that. And that was what the Arcanum stood for, wasn’t it? Not only keeping the world’s wizards in line, but also defending the realm against the horrors that lurked outside its borders? Plain and simple, the only good faerie was a dead one.

  Well, I allowed, maybe not my brother. Maybe not Astrid or Rufus. And Toula…whatever she was, she was all right. I continued to hold out hope for Val, but I couldn’t make a call on him yet.

  But still, exceptions aside, I’d thrown my lot in with the enemy. I was a blood traitor after all. Dad was right about me, he was right about everything, and I was useless, worse than useless, undeniably evil. I wasn’t his son—I was Titania’s.

  He should have left me where Val had dropped me.

  And as for this—well, he would never forgive me. I’d never go home again, never be the wizard he had wanted, and Hel…

  God, Hel.

  How was Hel supposed to be the grand magus when her own brother was a damn faerie? When she found out…

  No. Maybe she didn’t have to find out. Maybe I could hide it, play it cool…just never, ever, touch silverware again. We could go out for sushi. Surely someone in Montana made sushi. Yeah. She didn’t have to know what I’d done…

  Oh, who the hell was I kidding? She was bound to find out, one way or another. I’d slip, or Joey would cave in and tell her…and then I’d never see her again. Hel would reject me, too. Even if she forgave me, she’d have to do it.

  When I finally shifted in my bag, I felt the damp spot under my face and realized I’d been crying. I sniffed, rubbed my eyes dry, and crawled outside to join Joey by the fire.

  He didn’t seem surprised to see me. “It’s just hot water,” he said without preamble, passing me his mug, “but I found a Jolly Rancher in this pocket I’d forgotten, so it’s got a little flavor. Nothing to write home about,” he cautioned as I took a test sip, “but it gets the taste of mutton out of your mouth, right?”

  Weak green apple was pretty pathetic as a palate cleanser, but I nodded and handed it back to him. “Decent.”

  “Liar.” He turned to look at me more closely, then did a double take and frowned. “You okay, Aid?”

  “Sure,” I muttered.

  “Your eyes are red…”

  “Smoke.”

  Joey drank his weird concoction and looked away, giving me my privacy. After a long moment, he quietly said, “It’s going to be okay, man. We’re going to hide out here, and we’re going to find someone who can help you, and then we’re going to bust Colin out. Don’t worry about that tree. It’s just a tree—I think we’ve got a few to spare,” he added, twirling one finger at the forest around us. “And if worst comes to worst, we’ll find that lake again and figure out how to get the Tor gate open. Or maybe the piq know of one. We’ll go back, call Rufus, regroup—”

  “What am I going to tell Hel?” I mumbled.

  He grunted. “You won’t be telling her anything. The minute she sees us, she’ll bless us out for pulling this stunt, and maybe we’ll be able to get a word in over the next week or so. But really, it’s going to be a monologue for a long time.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He glanced back at me and sipped. “All right, tell her what? Tell her you were offered talent and immortality and accepted? She’ll understand.”

  “No, she won’t.”

  “Aiden,” he sighed, “she’s been hoping that Faerie would have an effect on you—”

  “Not like this! Not like…” I saw that I was glowing again and paused, then concentrated until the light subsided. “Like that. Not like that.”

  Joey finished his drink and put the mug in the dirt beside him. “You know, I never had a sibling. Only child, heard all the jokes—you know what I mean. So I’ve obviously never been part of a sibling relationship, right, no rivalry, none of that. But I do know enough to know that Helen loves you,” he said, looking me in the eye. “And it’s pretty clear that you love her, too. So I wouldn’t worry too much, if I were you.”

  I remained silent and unconvinced, and Joey lightly punched my arm. “Look, maybe I’m just the interloper here, but I know a bit about Helen by now,” he said. “And you. Which is why I have hope that, you know, someday it won’t be so weird for you that she’s dating me,” he added off-handedly.

  “It’s not—”

  He shook his head, cutting my denial short. “She’s your sister, and I’m the loser moving in on her. Believe me, I get it.”

  I realized that he was trying to change the topic, but I went along with it. “You’re not a loser.”

  “Right, I’m a twenty-six-year-old seminary dropout whose marketable skills include sword fighting and saddling dragons. I have zero savings because my boss bankrolled whatever it was I happened to be doing, at least until last month. And—here’s the good part—I’m dating this incredibly talented wizard, and I can’t even sense magic. No clue where it is.”

  “Joey—”

  “Also, I live in a friggin’ barn because my dragon gets lonely. I mean, there’s a reason I sleep over at Helen’s place more than she does at mine, you know? There’s nothing sexy about barns.”

  “I thought her apartment was tiny.”

  “Still better than a barn. Don’t get me wrong,” he hastily added, “I love Georgie, but the place has a certain, shall we say, funk.” He shifted on his backpack and looked up at the trees. “Helen’s something, and for some reason, she lets me tag along. I don’t get it,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know why I’m this lucky. But…Aiden,” he continued, staring me down again, “I love your sister. Very much. I’ll do just about anything to make her happy. And…you know,” he said, rubbing his neck, “I like you, too, and I’d really like it if things weren’t, uh…awkward…with you and me.”

  Neither of us said anything for a moment, but then a log split with a snapping crackle and a burst of orange sparks, and I cleared my throat. “Joey…I betrayed everything and everyone I’ve ever known in the silo, and you think you’re the loser here?”

  “Come on, you didn’t—”

  “I did. And I still don’t know how I’m going to tell Hel that I’ve officially switched teams,” I muttered. “I mean, what’s this going to do to her career? The Council’s never going to let her have the job as long as I’m in the picture…”

  Joey shrugged. “What job? Last time I checked, she had a warrant hanging over her, remember?” He leaned against the tree behind him and shook his head. “Forget the Arcanum. If they don’t want you, fine. Lord Aiden doesn’t need their shit.”

  “Lord Aiden can’t be trusted not to set random fires when his mind wanders.”

  “Then get some shut-eye, and we’ll hope you can’t enchant in your sleep. Deal?”

  “What about—”

  Joey cut me off with a raised finger. “We’re safer if you’re not asleep on your feet. I mean it, hit the hay. Listen to your elders.”

  I smirked but rose from the campfire. “Sir Percival, was it?”

  “Don’t start with that.”

  “Whatever you say.” I ducked into the tent, but popped my head out a few seconds later. “Hey, Joey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If we get out of this alive, you’d better damn well ask her.”

  He tucked his hands behind his head and grinned, and I returned to my sleeping bag, hoping for a miracle.

  When I next rolled out of bed, the sun was climbing, and Joey had the last of the lamb reheating in his battered skillet over the fire. By then, the lack of regular washing had made the pan almost nonstick. “Well, looks like we’ve survived another night,” he said, flipping the cutlets with a flick of his wrist. “Breakfast?”

  “You realize we’re going to have to stop for a nap at some point,” I replied, but fished out my plate and headed toward the smell of meat.

  “Oh, probably, but I’ve got at least another seven or eight miles in me before then.” He portioned out the food and settled down beside me with his share, and I
caught him absently rubbing his fresh crop of stubble as he waited for the lamb to cool. “Sleep well?”

  “Like the dead.” Physically, I felt fantastic—the muscle stiffness I’d anticipated was almost gone, and my fading bruises had vanished overnight—but I’d awoken with the world still on my mind. “Meant to ask you something.”

  “Shoot.”

  I hesitated briefly to formulate the question. “Are we…okay?”

  He sawed off a fatty corner and popped it in his mouth. “Going to have to be more specific than that, man.”

  “I mean, aside from the random fires, are you, uh…all right with being out here with…you know—”

  “Aiden,” he interrupted, looking at me in disbelief, “are you seriously asking me that?”

  I felt a fresh flush blooming up my neck. “If you’re not, I understand, but—”

  “I work for your brother,” he said, putting his knife down. “The vast majority of my time is spent in Faerie. Honestly, if I had a problem being around people with fae leanings, do you think I’d have lasted here a week?”

  My face burned. “Just…you know, checking.”

  He sighed and resumed his attack on breakfast. “I’m not Arcanum. All that baggage you’re carrying around—I don’t have it. We’re cool.”

  “So you’re not…I mean, with the fireballs…”

  I left the thought unfinished, but he seemed to know where I was heading. “You’re asking me if I’m a little scared of faeries?” he replied. I nodded, and he shrugged. “Of course I am. Only an idiot wouldn’t be wary,” he continued around a bite of meat. “But a healthy respect doesn’t translate to hatred. I’ve known some annoying ones, now,” he admitted. “A few days with the Puck in close quarters was about all I could handle of him, and his old man’s no better. But come on, Aiden,” he said, gesturing with his knife, “you and I have been roaming around together for more than a month, and we haven’t killed each other yet, right? And anyway, I’m not one to let a few fireballs come between friends.”

  Though greasy, his blade flashed in the low fire, and I remembered something else I’d meant to do. “One other thing,” I said as he ate. “You gave me a couple of knives back in Florida. If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to give them back.”