Storm Cursed

by Patricia Briggs

  “I wanted her to have a good explanation,” he said.

  “I know,” I told him.

  “I wanted her to be . . . different than she is.”

  “I know,” I said.

  He looked at me, his face stark. “She was one of mine,” he said.

  I slid into his arms and wrapped mine around his waist. “You can’t force people to make the right choice, Adam.”

  He drew in a breath. “Every time I have ever asked her for help, she has come. She came to face down Bonarata because I asked her to.”

  I nodded and just held him. Sometimes there is no way to make things better. There is only making it through. I couldn’t make Adam not hurt; I could only let him know he wasn’t alone.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next day, as I put together a Jetta that someone had tried to rewire themselves, I thought about connections. Making a car run smoothly was all about connections: fuel, air, coolant, electric.

  I wondered if I was becoming a conspiracy theorist because the web I was building from bits and pieces was truly Byzantine. And if all the things that seemed to be connected were, then a family of witches I’d never heard of had been responsible for an awful lot of chaos in my life for the last four years or more.

  Maybe things would become more clear when Stefan got back to me with information about Frost.

  I finished the Jetta and pulled a sputtering Rabbit into the garage. It died about four feet from where I needed it to be.

  “You need help with that?” asked Zee as I got out of the car.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Gut,” said Zee shortly. “The boy and I are busy.”

  I laughed and pushed the Rabbit until it was rolling, then hopped in to hit the brakes before it traveled too far. Pushing cars wasn’t a new thing for me. I propped up the hood and contemplated the engine compartment. It was surprisingly pristine given the age of the car and left me feeling a little nostalgic for my Rabbit.

  My cell phone rang as I pulled the cover off the air filter. The filter material, which should have been whitish but more often in the Tri-Cities was brownish with dust, was an astonishingly bright orange.

  Staring at the orange air filter, I answered my cell without checking ID.

  “This is Tory Abbot,” said Senator Campbell’s assistant, who smelled like the zombie-making witch. Darn it, “zombie witch” was easier and it flowed off the tongue better—even if it left the impression that the witch was a zombie. So “zombie witch” it was.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I have some documents for you to take to the fae. We need a complete list of which fae will be there—names, attributes, and all of that.”

  I pulled the phone away from my face and gave it an incredulous look. “Paperwork for the Gray Lords to fill out,” I said slowly. “Huh. That’s an interesting proposition. But they won’t do it.”

  “They will if they want a meeting,” he said. “I’ll drop them by your . . . place of business this afternoon.” He said the last as if he just noticed that my place of business was a garage and not, say, a lawyer’s office.

  “You can if you want to,” I told him. “But I won’t pass them on.”

  “I’m afraid this is nonnegotiable,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell them that the meeting is off. And I’ll tell them why. You can explain to the president and the secretary of state why this meeting that they were so hot to have was canceled by your grandstanding. But maybe they will agree with you. That without some pieces of paper—that your side would have filled with lies if you were the fae—this meeting should not be held. Even though it is the first step in a process that might keep our country from being at war with the fae. You can start, maybe, by informing Senator Campbell.”

  A short silence fell. I think he was waiting for me to continue my rant.

  “Ms. Hauptman,” Abbot began, “I know that you are overset by the bombing. Maybe you should pass on your duties to someone more experienced and less obstructionist.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Give me the name of someone the fae won’t object to.”

  “Adam Hauptman,” he said.

  “Someone made sure that Adam had a job for this meeting,” I said. “He won’t renege on an agreement he has already made.” I decided I wasn’t really interested in helping him with his hunt for my replacement. “And if you think I am an obstructionist, you should try him. Good luck with your search.”

  I hit the red button and went back to the mystery of the Rabbit’s air filter. Experimentally I brought it to my nose because it looked like someone had dusted the whole filter with cheese powder from a macaroni and cheese box. But it didn’t have a smell.

  I took an air hose and used it to blow off the filter, half expecting orange powder to fill the air—but nothing happened. The substance looked powdery, but it clung to the filter as if it were glue.

  I poked at it with my finger. I was still wearing gloves when I worked, though Adam’s ex-wife was back in Eugene and not around to make little pointed remarks about the grease I couldn’t get out from under my nails. I hated the way my hands sweated in them. But that was made up for by the way my skin was less dry and cracked because I wasn’t using as much caustic soap on them to get the grease off. Christy had done me a favor.

  There was no orange residue on my gloves.

  “Hey, Zee?” I asked, holding up the filter.

  “Was,” he said, perched on the edge of an engine compartment with a limberness that belied his elderly appearance. “I am busy,” he added.

  “I have a bright orange air filter,” I singsonged. “Don’t you want to give it a look?”

  There was the buzz of hard rubber on cement and Tad slid out from under Zee’s car, a flashlight in his hand. “Orange?” he said.

  “Bah,” said Zee. “You’ve distracted the boy, Mercy.”

  “What is orange and keeps air from flowing—and why would someone dump that all over an air filter?” I asked.

  Tad took the air filter and stared at it. He looked at the Rabbit.

  “What was supposed to be wrong with the car?” he asked.

  I looked at the repair sheet I’d filled out while I’d been in exile on the front desk. “Sputters and dies,” I said.

  “I guess I know why,” Tad said. And then he dropped the filter like it was a hot potato and jumped back.

  “Dad?” he said in a semipanicked voice, holding up his hands. The skin on his fingers, where he’d touched the air filter, was blistering and cracking. As I watched, the tips of his fingers blackened.

  Zee grabbed Tad’s hands, muttered something foul, and hauled Tad to the sink. I got there just before them and turned the water on full force. Zee held Tad’s hands under the flow of water and then SPOKE.

  Wasser, Freund mir sei,

  komm und steh mir bei.

  Fließe, wasche, binde, fasse,

  Löse Fluch, trag ihn hinfort,

  Lass ab von Hand und diesem Ort.

  The power in his voice made my ears ring. And that made me realize that whatever was on the air filter wasn’t caustic—which was what I’d thought when I’d seen Tad’s skin—but magic. And as Zee’s power touched it, something that cloaked that magic washed away and the whole shop smelled of witchcraft.

  I thought of Elizaveta’s explanation of what the witches had done to disguise the trap in my basement, and figured that they had done something like that here.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “He is angry at himself for being so careless. His hands smart a bit, but they will heal up just fine now that his dad has made the bad magic go poof. And he is able to evaluate himself, thank you very much,” said Tad crossly.

  “He is fine,” said Zee. “Grumpy as usual.”

  “That�
��s a little ‘pot calling kettle’ of you, don’t you think?” asked Tad.

  Zee grunted, frowned, and tipped his head to the side. He sniffed loudly.

  “I smell it, too,” I said. “It’s not just the air filter. If it were the air filter emitting that much magic, Tad wouldn’t have any hands left.”

  “Hey,” said Tad. “Thanks for that thought.”

  “Serves you right for being so careless,” said Zee. “Mercy, this new shop of yours, it is equipped with fire suppression, no? Do you know if it is foam or water?”

  “Water,” I said. “Water was easier.”

  “Ja,” he said. “And useless in a grease fire.”

  “We dealt with building codes, not practical matters,” I said. “Building codes said sprinkler system. But the fire extinguishers will take on grease fires.” We had lots of extinguishers.

  “The sprinklers are good news for us,” he said. “But maybe not for a fire. Mercy, help me get the vehicles opened up.”

  So we opened hoods and air filter covers and any other kind of covers that Zee thought useful. Tad unplugged and collected various electronics and covered them with plastic—something he could do with minimal use of his poor hands.

  Zee inspected the computers, cell phones, and computational equipment and gave a reluctant nod. “Those have not been affected yet. We can let them stay out of the water.”

  Then Zee stalked over to the test lever for the water suppression system and pulled it down. As he did, he SPOKE again.

  Wasser, Freund mir sei,

  komm und steh mir bei.

  Fließe, löse, binde, fasse,

  Hexenwerk verfange dich,

  Schwinde Fluch, zersetz den Spruch,

  nimm’s hinweg, erhöre mich.

  This time, since Tad wasn’t writhing in pain, I paid more attention to what Zee said. My German wasn’t good enough for a full poetic translation (and it sounded like poetry) but I got the rough gist of it. He called upon water—the element, I thought—and entreated it to wash away the witchcraft.

  Nothing different happened after he spoke, until he pulled out his pocketknife and nicked the back of his hand, letting his blood wash into the water.

  Black smoke filled the air, and the water hissed and steamed as it came down. Some of the foulness was from the water that had been sitting for months in the tanks that supplied the system, but most of it was magic-born.

  “This is a cursing,” Zee told me, grabbing a clean rag to stanch his hand. “The last time I saw something like this was . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t remember how long ago. But it doesn’t matter. If we do not take care of it now, right now—it will spread from the shop, from us, from everything here, like a virus. Gaining power from the misery it causes.”

  I put up the Closed sign and locked the door.

  When the water had finished its job in the shop, Zee ran us—clothes and all—into the shower for the same treatment.

  Finally, wet and shivering with nerves, I dug my phone out and called Elizaveta, just as if nothing had changed in our relationship.

  I don’t know that I trusted her—and I was really, really glad that Zee had been here so I didn’t need to trust her with everything. But calling her for help beat calling in Wulfe, the witchblood (or something magic using, anyway) vampire.

  Elizaveta, black magic and all, was preferable to Wulfe. Besides, it was daytime, so I had no choice.

  Then I called Adam.

  “I heard you gave up your position as organizer,” he said.

  “Was that what I was?” I asked. “I thought I was message girl. Yes. Abbot wanted me to get the fae to supply a list of the attending fae, by name, and what their powers were.”

  “Ah,” he said. “And you told Abbot it wouldn’t fly.”

  “And he said then there would be no talks,” I agreed. “So it wasn’t so much that I resigned as it was that if I continued in my position, there would be no talks.”

  “And you wouldn’t have a position,” Adam said dryly.

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “But I think he fired me anyway.”

  “Sounds good to me,” he said. “It will be a lot less work.”

  “Might shorten the life span of everyone living in the US by a decade or so, but less work is good,” I agreed.

  He laughed. “The fae would never fill out paperwork for a meeting,” he said.

  “Or supply real names,” I said. “Or fill out the sheets with lies. Better all the way around to establish what is possible and what is not possible before all hell breaks loose.”

  Back when the fae first went into the reservations, the government had required the fae to give names and tell them what kind of fae they were. I don’t know about the other fae, but I know that Zee gave them the name he was going by right now—and the human-made category of gremlin. That probably fit him as well as anything else, but it trivialized the kind of power he could manifest. The one thing I did know was that none of the fae who filled out those forms were Gray Lords.

  “So if you weren’t calling about that,” Adam said, “what are you calling about? And does it have anything to do with the reason my people tell me that the fire suppression system in your shop has been drained?”

  “Yep,” I said. “The shop was cursed.”

  “I will be right there,” he said. Then he said, in a low tone, “Did you call Elizaveta?”

  “It was either her or Wulfe,” I said.

  “And it’s daytime,” he agreed. “I’m leaving now.”

  8

  “It started with this?” asked Elizaveta, holding up the air filter.

  She had been stalking around the garage for five minutes, muttering about the puddles everywhere. I was actually surprised that there wasn’t more water—but she hadn’t been here during the deluge.

  Tad was in the office calling (with his poor sore fingers) the clients whose cars we had doused with water. We were offering them the repairs free of charge, but not delivering the cars until tomorrow or the next day, depending on how long cleanup took us. A problem, I could hear Tad explaining, with the new fire suppression system.

  I’d found a spot near the wall that separated garage from office, and Adam had taken up a station next to me, where he proceeded to ignore Elizaveta’s doings and answer texts and e-mails on his phone. Or maybe he was planning world domination—with Adam’s phone it was hard to tell.

  Zee took my other side, leaving the garage at large to Elizaveta.

  My cell went off again. But the caller ID was blocked and my policy was that I didn’t pick up on blocked-ID calls just after I got off the hook for a nonpaying government job I didn’t want.

  “Yes,” I said. “The air filter was the first thing we found.”

  She made a noise and began examining it minutely. The bright orange substance had changed to something that looked a lot more like (and maybe was) the caked-on dirt I sometimes find in cars that belong to people who do a lot of driving on dirt roads around here. A lot of our dirt is powder-fine and coats everything in its path.

  “So,” I said, “do you think that the cheese-colored magic plague let loose in my shop is the Hardesty witches? I know it’s an obvious question, but I figured I should ask it anyway.”

  “Could be,” drawled Adam. “Unless you’ve been out annoying other witches without telling me.”

  “The Hardestys are like . . . the Borgia family. There is seldom only one way for them to win,” counseled Elizaveta absently as she continued to examine the air filter. “Their goal always is to consolidate their power. Judging by their actions, if the meetings do not take place, they win. If they take place and they blow up—literally or figuratively—they win. If you spread a mysterious and fatal magical plague wherever you go, they triumph on all fronts.”

  My phone rang again and she gave me an irritated l
ook as if it were my fault that someone was calling me. There was no caller ID so I refused that call, too.

  Elizaveta turned back to Adam. “The attack on your home . . . a zombie werewolf would be a treasure for a witch family, something not easily replaced. They did not expect you to defeat it. They expected it to kill whoever triggered the trap—maybe everyone in the house when it was triggered. It would not have destroyed the pack, unless they got lucky and it killed you, Adam. But if you had lost more pack members . . . I think that the meeting between you and the government would not be so important to you.”

  She frowned again at the air filter. “They do seem to want badly to stop it, don’t they? I wonder why they do not want the government and the fae to make peace.”

  “If the witches are trying to stop it, maybe we should fight a little harder to see that the meeting does take place,” Adam said. “To that end, Mercy, I have a dozen or so texts that tell me that you should answer your phone.”

  I frowned at him, but the blocked caller started calling my phone again. Adam’s eyes on me, I answered the phone.

  “Ms. Hauptman,” said the rough-hewn voice of the man everyone thought was about to declare his candidacy for president. “This is Jake Campbell. How are you?”

  “Wet and cranky,” I told him. “My fire suppression system just went off and doused both me and my place of business. What can I do for you?”

  There was a brief pause. “You can step back into the shoes that my assistant tried to force you out of. I have explained matters to him, and you’ll be dealing directly with my personal assistant, Ruth Gillman, after this. Ruth, you will find, is a very good listener.”

  “Look,” I told him. “Fae are what they are. The ones you will be dealing with—assuming they send anyone who can actually make a deal or has any authority—are very old. They won’t give you true names because true names have power. Even names that are old, true or not, have power. They won’t tell you what they can or cannot do. First, it is rude. Second, most of them do not have the kind of power that they used to before Christianity and iron swept over their territory, and that is a very sore spot for most of them. Asking them about their power, about their names, could inspire one of them to demonstrate on the spot just how much power they still do have. I have a business to run and a very happy marriage. I am not interested in being squashed like a bug because someone else wants me to do something stupid.”