by Sara Hanover
I knew that home. Mom and I had hoped that that was the house Aunt April would send us to, but instead it was one of the first to sell after we moved. She’d had it for years. I nodded.
“I stored the book in here. I’d forgotten all about it until recently, and with talk that we were visiting the casino, I thought I might have a go at the luck again. Your father had seen me pull it from here, and I thought perhaps he’d put it back before he ran off.”
“Faded, old-fashioned writing?”
“Oh, yes. No one in the family could understand a word of it although we’d had it, for oh, decades and decades.”
I shivered. If that malicious thing had brought any luck to the Andrews family, they must have paid dearly for it, and worse, hadn’t even realized. I caught her wrist and brought her near to hug.
“You don’t need it,” I whispered into her ear. “You truly don’t.”
Aunt April frowned in the shadows. “I blame myself, you know. Your father got into trouble to help me, and it dragged him down. I’ve done what little I can to help the two of you, but I know it’s not enough. I’ll never forgive myself, Tessa. When we planned this little trip, just for a moment, my heart leaped up in my chest, and I thought—I can win again.”
“The casino always wins.”
“But I had hope. I thought, for the last day or two, that I could rescue all of us.”
I’d had that idea, too, when Hiram hired me. Here we were, both of us, chasing pipe dreams. “You don’t need the book, Aunt April. We’ve got Andrews smarts.”
She kissed my cheek before drawing back. “You’re right, I don’t. What silliness to drive me out here to find it! One last fling.”
“Oh, we’ll try a bit tomorrow, but we’ve both got twenty dollar limits. Deal?”
Color sparked back into her cheeks. “Deal,” she said, hugged me, and slipped out the mudroom door. In the kitchen, I could tell by Scout’s ears that she’d gone, as she’d promised, before he put his muzzle down to his water bowl and drank noisily.
Heading to my bedroom, I wondered about the cost of magic, good and bad, and if my father had paid for generations of his family in one fell swoop. If so, getting him back could be far more difficult than I’d hoped. I pulled the curtains shut, so the moon, lamppost, and any other figment of bright light couldn’t bother me.
And one last, troubling thought tickled at my mind as I slipped between the sheets and into bed.
What sort of price was the maelstrom stone getting from me?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
PAYBACKS
I BLAMED EDGAR Allan Poe for seriously interrupting my sleep as, for once not fighting an epic battle and actually getting some quality rest time, a tap-tap-tapping woke me. Actually, the first couple of times the sound was so mild that I thought it couldn’t be real and scarcely opened one eye, let alone two. And then someone bammed on the windowsill and I bolted upright, afraid the glass had split. Both bleary eyes open, I squinted across the room. Something large loomed in the frame, light from the lamppost glaring away the details. Hadn’t I shut the curtains tight? Did I want to go see what stared in through the window at me or not?
I did not. In fact, I clearly remembered closing the curtains securely. Now, however, they stood wide open. So that begged the question: what opened them, how, and why? The maelstrom stone gave me no help whatsoever.
I slipped out of bed, padded out into the hallway and, rubbing my eyes awake, stared at the tell-tales. Only one seemed as awake as I was, more or less, and it stared toward my bedroom but not with petals flung outward in alarm. So. Either the tell-tale knew what it was outside my window and didn’t fear it all that much, or it had no idea at all and had been magicked into ignorance.
“Big help you are,” I muttered and stumbled back to my bed. I had just about sat down when the tap-tap-tapping began again.
I had no wish for whatever it was to wake anyone else. I lunged for the window and plied it open.
Goldie stopped, knuckles paused in mid-rapping, and spat out, “About time.” Her wings beat, holding her in the air, a helicopter of a bird woman.
I wrenched my window open as far as it would go, catching the screen before it fell away. She came halfway in, balancing on one hip, her wings tucked tightly in behind her. She smelled of blood, smoke, and sweat as she braced herself in the frame.
“Are you all right?”
Small, precise stitches gathered close a crescent-shaped wound over one eye. I could see bruising around the eye below, and another on the jawline. Her white-and-gold wings looked bedraggled and dirty. It must have been one heck of a fight. I said so.
Goldie smirked. “I am victorious, so I am more than fine.” She waved off any other concern. “There were traitors in my home.”
Past tense. I decided not to ask exactly what had happened to the traitors. “Congratulations on the victory.”
Goldie gave a lopsided smile, but she reached for my wrist and held me tightly. “Listen now. You’re in grave danger. We were attacked within and without. My nest, my home, is destroyed, and they knew what they were looking for but asked questions about more.”
Her fingers hurt, but I didn’t draw back. “More?”
“They know a phoenix is rising. Brandard can’t hesitate any longer—he must rejuv as soon as possible, or they’ll put an end to him, and that end will affect all of us around the world.”
I tried to imagine the professor being that important and failed, but I understand ripple effects on a pond. His death could be one that set off multitudes. “I’ll tell him.”
“And help him.”
“I am.”
Goldie’s hand began to relax on my arm. My skin tingled as blood started to flow again. “Now for the other matter. The treasonous ones did not take the Eye, but they spilled information that eventually led to the theft.” Goldie paused. She flexed her jaw a bit till it popped. She gave a tiny wince. “I’m told it may be in the hands of those who would auction it. Not only does that put the Broadstones at great risk because it reveals that object is no longer theirs, but it means the Eye could fall into almost any hands with enough money. The dwarves have traitors, too. The stakes are high, and you’re in danger no matter what you do, as long as you have anything to do with finding it.”
“I’m not going to stop.” I exchanged a long look with her.
Goldie’s wings fluttered a bit. “I thought I tagged you as a fellow warrior. They may have warned us, but they haven’t turned us back.”
“How do I reach you if I need you?”
“Any owl. Tell them my name and yours, and they will remember it until they find me. I’ll know that you sent them.”
“Oh-kay.” I preferred cell phones, but evidently her realm went for the old-fashioned methods of communication. I watched her scull off the eave of the house, wave, and disappear into the night sky. She flew straight, if labored.
I thought of something and leaned out the window. “Wait. Goldie—who is behind all this?”
Too late.
Back in bed, I fell asleep again, although with a lot more trouble. I couldn’t tell if it was my thoughts or lumps in my mattress that bothered me.
* * *
• • •
“Love the dress, but you’re not wearing your bracers with that. Opera length gloves or not.”
“But—”
The tell-tales in the hallway niche drooped with me.
Brian frowned at me. “Seriously? You think that the elves and whoever else we might meet won’t sense those? You did intend to go in secretly, right? Not that you’ll manage it with the stone embedded in you.”
“But—I need a distraction, then.”
He waved a hand imperiously. “No argument. You can wait till Hiram and Carter get here, but you’ll hear the same from them.”
My shoulders slumped. “A
ll right. But if I don’t have anything to bounce bullets away, you’re to blame.”
The professor peered at me from Brian’s mild eyes. “My dear, you have far more to fear than bullets.”
“Gee, thanks. Now I want to go dressed in full-body armor.”
“Which might not be a bad idea, if doable. . . ?” His words trailed away as if he might be pondering working up a spell.
“We haven’t had our talk yet.”
“Indeed. I’d quite forgotten.”
No wonder. He’d spent the day making stink bombs in the garage that made Scout howl and paw at his muzzle, and stopped only long enough to devour an early lunch and tell me that Mrs. Sherman’s cure was “coming around.” I suspected it would float in on a malodorous cloud to announce itself when ready.
“Did Steptoe tell you what I did?”
“Did what? Should he have?”
Great. It was answer a question with a question day. “I blew the tires off an F-150 truck.”
“You don’t say? And how did you manage that?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. I had a little bit of road rage after the driver tried to blow me off the road, and I shook my fist at him.”
His eyes went to my left hand.
“Yup, with that hand.”
“And you’re wondering if you activated the stone as well as your new power within it.”
“That would be it, yup.”
Brian exhaled for a long moment, his cheeks puffed up and gradually deflating as he thought.
“You haven’t really sat me down and explained this whole sorceress business.”
He looked away. “No, I haven’t. A sorceress is a bit tricky to define. The magical opportunities and such as well as responsibilities. Put succinctly, a sorcerer or sorceress has the ability to release the inherent or stored magical qualities of an object.”
“But an object would have to contain magic to do it?”
“Normally.”
“What do you mean?”
“Only that you, Tessa, with the maelstrom stone embedded in you, are far from normal.”
I shifted weight. “Okay. I’ll give you that one.”
“Thank you. The best thing I can do at the moment is urge you to be careful. To realize that every movement, every active thought you have, may have consequences. You’ve gone from having as much magic as a dried stick to being a new, inexperienced sorceress. Someone who could find the magic, buried or inherent, in an object and call it forth, seemingly out of midair. Wizards are always sinking magic into something or other, using objects to function like batteries to be tapped later. I happened to excel at that, once. You can find those things, often unknown or hidden, and unleash them, invited or not, and whether you were the one who charged it or not. Or, like the maelstrom stone, it has sorcery of its own enveloped and swirled in its being and the two of you use each other.” He paused.
“Wow.” That was unsettling. “You make me feel like a live bomb.”
“On a countdown? That would be accurate. I had hoped to have my own rejuvenation farther along so I could be better prepared to teach you, yet here we are—”
“The blind leading the blind, huh?”
“More apt than you know.”
“But how do I release that magic?”
“Will. Will and knowledge.”
“There must be more to it than that.”
“A sorcerer spends many years in study of those things which naturally have magic buried in them. It’s not as easy as it sounds. To gain control of such an object, the sorcerer has to find or create its real and proper name. Its potential has to be seen clearly, and recognized. Once that name is gained, the sorcerer owns that thing. It will be made or unmade as it is told.”
I took a deep breath. “I brought down the visitor grandstand at school.”
“Did you, now? How did you manage that?”
“A rival player had me on the ground and was thinking of breaking a leg. I panicked. Next thing I know, the ground is buckling and the stand with it.”
“Do you remember calling on the earth? The wood? The nails and braces? Anything?”
“All I remember is not wanting to get pummeled.”
“But you did not activate your shield?”
I hadn’t thought of it then, and the realization now shocked me a bit. It should have been second nature. If I keep getting attacked, and it isn’t second nature, I could get demolished. I shook my head. “Too panicked.”
“So the stone activated on its own, in response, and what it did was . . .” The professor in him paused. “It reached into the earth itself, upsetting the foundation of the grandstands . . . what would call that up?” His eyebrows beetled. “Ah. Ley lines. It grabbed for whatever power it could, and tapped into those. It must be. I’ll have to research my maps later to prove it—”
“Ley lines?”
“Naturally occurring power around the world. Think of them like a net, covering earth, with lines holding force.”
“Not a string of orchids.”
“What?” He stared for a moment and then sputtered. “Of course not. No. Like magnetic resonance or sound waves that travel through rock and stone . . . but this is power we would term magic, for lack of a more scientific explanation. They are not frequent, but ley lines do exist.”
“And a sorceress could touch them.”
“And draw upon them, yes.” He cleared his throat. Checked his watch.
“One last thing, and probably the most important.”
“Oh?”
“Goldie dropped by last night.”
And now his “oh” was more of an impatient grunt. He brushed a hand through the air. “Unimportant.”
“It is not! Her nest was attacked and wiped out. Traitors who’d given away the Eye’s location got exposed, but the raiders were looking for information on the phoenix. She says you need to finish your ritual as soon as possible. You’re needed.”
“Hmmm.” He straightened. “We’ll all be needed.”
“Maybe you should stay home tonight and review the ritual. You haven’t worked on it much, lately.”
“I have done far more than you realize, young lady! Under the circumstances.”
“Still.”
His upper lip waggled as if he still carried his bushy mustache on it, which he didn’t, but I guess the waggle stays a habit. “My journal suggests that I need to obtain a pinch of pixie dust. I can’t think of a better place to obtain that than from an elf. So my coming along is necessary.”
“Pixie dust? What do you need that for?”
“It is highly recommended for the pain.”
“Pain of—oh.” Burning to death might hurt a lot. I tried to recover. “You’re sure you need elves for that?”
“Very. One thing at a time. We both need to make ready for this evening. I hope to disguise that rock of yours in some way.”
I took the opportunity to turn on my heel and go back to my room, pull off my bracers, and set them back on the windowsill to bathe in the sunlight. When I came back out, Brian had disappeared, presumably to work on his own appearance and incantations. Mom had found some dress slacks for him and a nice, blue patterned shirt to go with them. I imagined a bottomless closet somewhere, where all Dad’s things had gone to live, despite the bags we’d taken to various thrift shops when we decided he was never coming back. Mom had only spoken to his ghost three or four times since I found him last spring. Whatever strength he expended in materializing, he’d become less and less able to use it. My efforts to find out what happened and how to reverse it gave me few answers. But she’d saved a few outfits, obviously. I noticed that Brian rarely went into the basement (that I knew about—when I went to campus, who knew what he was up to?) but wondered if Dad ever recognized the outfits. Did he think Brian had somehow replaced him?<
br />
I shook that awful idea out of my head and rattled downstairs, strappy heels in one hand and dress gloves in the other. The look would blend retro with contemporary, but I could think of no other way to inconspicuously hide the stone. Where I went, the stone went, and no matter what the professor said about the bracers, it seemed the maelstrom stone would be even more outstanding to anyone sensitive. I looked at my palm for a long moment. “Shield yourself,” I suggested strongly. Nothing seemed to happen and, frankly, I had no idea if it could work.
Scout met me at the bottom of the stairs, tail in ultimate windup mode, snuffling wherever I would let him, although I batted his nose away a few times to avoid wet nose prints. At that, he sneezed and sat down, although his butt kept wiggling. I massaged his head and ears. He no longer talked, to my great relief, but I could read his body language easily. “You need to be on guard. Not sure if we’ll start a problem tonight or not.” Who knew, with elves? If I could discover if they were the ones responsible for turning Goldie’s beach home to ashes and might have stolen the Eye of Nimora while they were at it, not to mention destroyed the harpy nest, there could definitely be fireworks. I’d need evidence before I could accuse anyone of anything, though. Once I had said evidence, unless it was the Eye itself, would I take it before the Society? I’d probably have to. And if I did, what could possibly go wrong? I know, right?
Maybe I should just go and enjoy the munificent buffet and gamble my twenty and come home before the complications began.
I could hear Aunt April chatting brightly with my mom in the kitchen. The guys had all elected to go in Hiram’s SUV together and my mother was driving us. Carter, Hiram, Brian, and Steptoe had decided en masse that none of them could escort us because they would be a dead giveaway. As soon as I appeared, Carter gave me a look, first, at the dress. “Still a knockout.”
