by K. L. Noone
The Ninepenny Element
By K.L. Noone
Published by JMS Books LLC
Visit jms-books.com for more information.
Copyright 2019 K.L. Noone
ISBN 9781634869812
Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com
Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.
All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
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For my Internet Family, who encouraged this, and for the JMS Books family, too. Happy anniversary!
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The Ninepenny Element
By K.L. Noone
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 1
Verity Friday, standing outside her little brother’s boyfriend’s luxury apartment, grumbled, “I know you know I’m here, you’re psychic, Sparkles,” and nudged the door with one booted foot. The door, having already refused to answer early-morning knocks and aggrieved sighs and an experimental poke of magical energy, sat solid and dark-painted and did nothing.
“Oh, come on.”
Still nothing.
“If you’re having sex in there—”
Running feet, and her brother’s unmistakable rainbow of magical talent, bounded up to the door. Flung it open. Bounced on tiptoes and excitement. “You’re early!”
“And you’re too easily distracted, if you can’t tell when someone’s at your door—” She gave up because Sterling was hugging her, all pocket-sized whirlwind enthusiasm and a rather guilty pair of pajama pants over what’d clearly been nakedness a minute before. She wrapped arms around her brother in turn, dropping her travel bag to do it. She did love him, after all.
Across all the hugging, she spotted Sterling’s boyfriend, assuming the title could be applied two weeks into a relationship. Daniel Rose, bestselling author of ridiculously over-the-top action thrillers, emerged from the kitchen, ran a hand through his dark blond hair, and visibly got flustered about being barefoot in boxers and a loose white shirt; he didn’t retreat, though, only exhaled and glanced at Sterling for cues and waited. Dan, Verity decided, was so far a decent guy.
Sterling let go and grinned at her. “We were totally about to have sex. And don’t call me Sparkles.” With that sleepy-morning fluffy brown hair and those wide grey eyes, he might’ve been utterly innocuous, the most harmless person on the planet.
His mystical tattoos and tiny healed scars argued otherwise, of course. Verity knew. She had her own.
She glanced at Dan again. Wondered how much he knew, what he saw.
She and Sterling had always looked fairly similar, clearly family in a way most of the greater East Coast Family of practitioners in fact weren’t. The family was mainly a metaphor, and one designed to reinforce loyalty and ties; the Fridays, though, were related, and powerfully so. None of them were particularly tall, but Verity had two inches of height and six years of age on her brother; her hair tended slightly more to red-brown waves instead of forest-bark, but they had the same eyes, cool pale grey like moonlight on water.
Nearly the same eyes. She considered Sterling for a second; those sharper silver threads reflected deeper and more double-edged sight as he looked back. Her younger brother was more gifted than anyone in the family, in his own rare and dangerous specialty; he was also startlingly exuberant and generous and self-sacrificial to a fault, the sort of person who’d strip himself bare to give an anguished ghost their peace one moment sooner.
She wasn’t certain she’d trade. Her own witch-gifts might be smaller—that’d been true all their lives—and more practical and less epic, but she didn’t have to hold the hands of spirits and stand at life-and-death thresholds, either.
She said, “I need coffee if I’m going to have to hear about your sex life, Sparkles,” and kicked off her boots. Old and black and worn, they tipped over each other in bestselling author Daniel Rose’s entryway and refused to get shamefaced over the contrast with tidy polished flooring. “I would’ve knocked on your door first, but I knew you weren’t home.”
“Call me that one more time and I’ll sic a poltergeist on you.” Sterling took her bag and tossed it in the direction of the hallway, casual and comfortable in the apartment that wasn’t technically his. “Mom’s worried, isn’t she?”
“Mom. The family. The usual.” Verity shrugged out of her jacket—Dan, still being quiet, possibly intimidated by black leather and chunky boots and the flippant discussion of what was also his sex life, came over and wordlessly took it and put it on a coat-rack—and followed her brother into the apartment.
Nice, she concluded. Big picture windows. Unobtrusively stylish furniture, carefully neutral colors. Lots of space, which said something here in the upscale heart of New York City.
Sterling’s presence was waging war on the tasteful neutrality. A vivid purple scarf lay thrown over a chair-arm, a scatter of herbs in various jars decorated the kitchen table, and someone’d left a half-drunk cup of coffee on the bar.
“Mom,” Sterling said. “And you. I’m fine.” Over his shoulder, a small tangle of obsidian cotton candy rose up from beige sofa-cushions and stretched, suddenly watching Verity with no eyes.
“Right, yeah,” Verity said, “you’re fine, you’re just keeping a ghost—what is that, a puppy?—as a pet, and sending up magical flares that we could see all the way at home, and jumping into bed with the famous writer you met two weeks ago, you’re good,” and pointed a finger at the ghost-puppy. “You sit. Stay.”
Sterling sighed dramatically. The amorphous puppy sank back down.
They found seats at the bar. Sterling regarded the previous half-consumed coffee with moderate surprise. Dan reappeared and traded it for three new steaming mugs and leaned elbows on the bar across from them. “Sparkles?”
“You can forget you ever heard that,” Sterling complained. “You try cleansing a haunted nightclub without getting covered in glitter, sometime…”
“You went in wearing glitter.”
“True.”
“Anyway, I’m not really here to yell at you.” She took a sip. Raised eyebrows. Famous author Daniel Rose made fantastic coffee. “More to…evaluate.”
“Really?” Sterling scrunched up that pixie nose. “Do you have to?”
“She means me.” Dan curled hands around his own coffee and gazed at her calmly. Those writer’s eyes evaluated her right back, taking in details and recording them behind clear hazel. The city morning stretched out chilly and sunlit around them, poised amid possibilities. “Whether I’m good enough for you. Right?”
“Something like that.” She tipped the co
ffee-mug his way. “Points in your favor, so far.”
“The coffee?”
“The awesome coffee, and you put up with my little brother, and you didn’t run screaming from ghosts. Though maybe that one’s a serious lack of common sense.”
“Which part?” Dan said, “The not running away when Sterling needed help, you mean?” He met her gaze without flinching.
Sterling put out a hand. Found Dan’s, across the bar. Squeezed. Just in case anyone hadn’t got the message, a stripe of sunshine slipped through the kitchen window to land over their fingers.
Verity, watching, felt that sunshine like a spear in her heart: unexpected, through and through, so sudden the impact couldn’t hurt.
She wasn’t envious. She wasn’t.
She never had been. Not over all the years: knowing she’d be a good mid-level witch, steady and even-handed with the flow of energy, good at measured casting, not a terribly deep reservoir. Reliable, which the family needed: someone without a once-in-a-lifetime dazzling painful talent, someone who could stand as an anchor or build sturdy shields. She didn’t crave Sterling’s gifts. And she loved their family: the blazing joy in their cousin Robert’s eyes when calling storms, the aching poignant tragedy of the last great magical fight in Paris that’d left another cousin so badly wounded, their mother’s steel-and-satin straight-backed command of the bones of the earth and the loyalty of their fellow witches.
She’d always had a place. She’d had friends, occasional lovers, laughter, plus general fretting over her little brother and explosive-but-exhausting psychic abilities. She’d never wanted anything more.
But she found herself wanting more now.
Something in that touch. In the ease of it: the way they reached out and found and held onto each other without even looking, knowing the other person would be there, thinking the same.
It wasn’t even about the relationship, not exactly. It was the belonging. They belonged together.
And Verity, who’d always thought she did belong—to the family, to the magical warding of the world, to the cause of Sterling’s protection—found herself trying to breathe around the skewer in her chest. Sunshine and coffee, and a realization like a stab.
“So you’re here to evaluate us.” Sterling, being clairvoyant rather than telepathic, hadn’t quite heard those thoughts, and gulped down half his new coffee before adding, “You know I basically live here now, right? I mean, you can stay at my place, but I won’t be there much and I don’t know where my spare—”
“Your spare keys are here,” Dan said. “Along with your actual keys. On the hooks by the door, with the labels.”
“Labels?” Verity said. “Have you met my brother?”
“Oh, I have.” Dan took a sip of coffee. With meaning.
Verity reevaluated Sterling’s new boyfriend yet again. Famous, unpretentious, quiet, and a pretty damn good match for her haphazard brother, so far.
“You can stay with us here,” Dan said. “As long as you don’t mind Soot keeping us company—” This, from context and the perking-up of black ghostly fluff from the sofa, meant the ghost-puppy. “—or me sometimes talking to myself when I’m working on dialogue. Or weird writer-brain hours. How long are you staying?”
“About a week, I thought.” She turned the coffee-mug around in both hands. Let the heat warm her palms, fingertips, bare skin. She’d worn layers—her leather jacket, now hanging up, plus a black hoodie with a shooting star across the back, her favorite cozy-weather pink-and-black striped shirt, black jeans—but somehow her hands felt cold.
In perverse defiance of the cold, she pushed up sleeves, left and right; she let her tattoos show, the blue-patterned stars over her right wrist, the triple ray of light along her left forearm. Sterling, who might’ve had some psychic insight, gazed at her and said nothing; Dan said, “Sure, we’re happy to have you, I’ve been curious about his family,” and got refills.
She wouldn’t need a week. She wanted to get to know her brother’s boyfriend; she wanted to officially report that everything was fine and nobody’d be a threat to the family. Her instincts were generally good, and they suggested she trust Dan; she also trusted Sterling, mostly. Her little brother liked sex and liked having a good time, but—being psychic—was a decent judge of character. When not getting distracted by the aforementioned good time. Or exhausted from overwork.
She could go back to the sprawling family home upstate right now, and report that Dan Rose was a good man and Sterling was doing fine. It’d all be true. She’d be willing to stand by that.
She didn’t want to go home. She wasn’t certain why.
The sunbeam brushed her hand, commiserative as a friendly kitten.
She said, “You’ve been resting. After this job.” Not a question. An order, in case Sterling hadn’t.
Her brother stuck out his tongue at her and tried to drown himself in the rest of his coffee.
Dan said, “He slept a lot, after the—the exorcism? Is that right? Well, after taking care of this building and the ghosts, anyway. He seemed fine after a day or so.” His voice wanted to be matter-of-fact but wasn’t, quite; he eyed Sterling over the countertop. “You said you were fine the very next morning, and I knew that wasn’t true, not with that headache, but I thought you felt better a while after that.”
“I did. I am.” Sterling surfaced from the coffee-dwelling mug-cave. “They worry too much. It’s funny, though. I think I’m even better than I was at home. Like…the more I do, the more I can do. Kind of fun.” The silver in his eyes glittered, then faded. “In a good way, I mean, helping spirits. That part’s good. I’m not going to turn all evil or anything.”
“No.” Verity watched him: her younger brother, her assignment. Her family. “I don’t think you would.” Their eyes met; they both remembered the last dark warlock, in Paris, ten years ago. They remembered that in different ways; Verity had been present—having just barely turned nineteen—but kept in reserve.
Sterling, only thirteen then, had been too young for the fight. He’d been at home, though, when the wounded witches had returned; when their cousin Victoire remained voiceless and physically shattered and lost. He’d tried to reach her. He’d been trying for years. And he was the best they had.
They’d both known about evil, and consequences, after that.
“I also have to work tomorrow.” Sterling had moved on, flippant and distractible as ever; the lightness covered up the soul-deep knowledge of pain in his eyes. “I have a job, did I tell you that? A real actual job, that people pay me real actual money for. I mean, it’s more or less just being me. But I do get paid. I’m an Interior Design Flow and Ambiance Special Consultant. Which I totally made up, but a lot of people want to give me a lot of money to come over and give their hotels or their corporate buildings or their mansions better energy, and I’m pretty good at doing that, obviously, without explaining outright what I’m doing, also obviously, but they do feel better afterward, the rooms and the people, and they keep recommending me to other clients. Which is also fun, and I like not living around witches who’ve known me since before I was born, and I like talking to new people.”
“So,” Verity said, “you really are okay.”
“Told you so.”
“You can stay as long as you want.” Dan ran that hand through his hair again; Verity watched his eyes flicker over Sterling and guessed that the reminder of Sterling being less than okay—even if only for a day or two—had hit a raw spot. “Um. Did you want breakfast? I’m kind of not a great cook, but I’m really good at ordering food. Or we could go out.”
“I vote for going out,” Sterling offered. “There’s that place that does those waffle towers? With the bananas and caramel and maple whipped cream?”
“You gave him sugar?” Verity said. “And you still want to date him?”
“I can hear you.”
Dan gave her a little shrug: one-shouldered, helplessly surrendered, bright with it. “I love him.”
“He loves me enough to buy me waffles,” Sterling said. “And I love him. And bananas. Are we going out, then?”
“Only if you put clothes on,” Verity said. “Both of you.”
Sterling opened his mouth. Dan said, “Yes, that’s generally a thing we do in public,” and Sterling didn’t argue, only shook his head a little and laughed, gaze holding love like sunshine in silver.
And Verity saw the way they fit; saw it all over again, and smiled for them, even as that same sunlit stab twisted more. Not envy. Not jealousy over her little brother’s happiness. She wanted Sterling to be happy.
She picked up her coffee and took another sip.
Chapter 2
After two days, Verity had reconsidered her stance on staying with her brother and her brother’s boyfriend. The coffee was a point in favor, though. She’d miss it.
She wandered over to the apartment’s big picture window. Below, New York blossomed in riotous color: brick and pavement, trees and tourists, emerald and dusty red and smoky glass and rainbow jackets and scarves and camera-flashes. She ran a hand through her hair, scrunched up waves, let them tumble.
She watched a woman in an improbable peacock-feathered hat hail a taxi and nearly lose the hat while getting in. She wondered briefly whether the woman might’ve sought out a charm, a spell, a word to keep the hat in place; the angle seemed to defy gravity.
She wanted to go out into the sunshine and ask. Or if not, at least to talk to someone. To do something.
Because she wasn’t doing anything. And that felt wrong.
No family asking for assistance. No job to help with. No problems with Dan. Sterling was at work and did not need her.
For possibly the first time in her life, Verity looked out at the world and wasn’t sure what to do.
She did not like this feeling. She contemplated the existence of museums, bars, out-of-the-way city-witch herb-dressed shops. She felt an itch under her skin, a need to throw on her leather jacket and boots and go out and order some decent whiskey and smile at someone with pretty eyes who liked tattoos and hands sliding up to encircle wrists and pin them against a wall.
