The New Improved Sorceress

by Sara Hanover

  My turn. “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “I let her loose.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t think you do. I believe her claim that she was betrayed and then kidnapped. Parker may have had an agreement with a harpy, but it wasn’t the one he imprisoned. That particular harpy was a traitor.”

  “That,” muttered Natalie, “changes things.”

  “It certainly does.” Bialy tapped the tabletop. “How did you even know about Silverbranch?”

  “Two agents, Naziz and Danbury, recruited me and I decided to take a look. I already knew Germanigold was being held somewhere, and the campus seemed a good place to investigate.”

  “Parker isn’t near as clever as he thinks he is,” Natalie commented with some satisfaction. She dropped her purple vial into her purse. “The first person to look for her found her almost immediately.”

  “The question being: why didn’t somebody look sooner?”

  She stood up, so close to me I could smell the very faint scent of Chanel No. 5. Or was that on him? “Our position is to stay neutral. The other races prefer to be quiet and independent. So we stay . . . obscura.”

  “Nice if it works, but it didn’t. At least, the judge is under observation.”

  Bialy stood as well. “Certain you won’t give me a look at that?”

  “And have you join the legions who want to take it from me? I don’t think so.”

  Bialy smiled down at Carter who stayed in his chair. “You walk a dangerous road, Phillips. First the professor and now this one. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to give an accounting.”

  “It’ll have to be later, then. I prefer to know all I can and who is on what side before I present anyone to the Society.”

  “Cynical of you to think there are sides.”

  “Naïve of you to think there aren’t.” Carter watched Natalie pull her purse up onto her wrist and walk to the kitchen threshold. “Being who and what we are, there are always sides. Thanks for the nursing.”

  “Don’t mention it. And we mean that literally. There is enough tension rising now, and we can’t risk confrontation with the elves. We don’t need any rumors that you were elf shot.”

  They left, and the two of us looked at each other. Carter reached out and took my hand.

  We’d have to be extra careful about what we planned to do to get Hiram and the Eye back lest we start a war.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  BOTHER

  THE PROFESSOR CAME out of the stairwell shadows as soon as the door closed on our visitors’ heels.

  “I remember them as being more pompous.”

  “Them in particular or just the Society as a whole?” Carter asked.

  “All of them.”

  I rubbed my hands together. “Should I have let them see the stone, then?”

  “Absolutely not. Carter was right that Bialy would have prepared for the inevitable formal unveiling and that might include suggestions for schooling, usage, perhaps even containment or removal of the item. Better to catch all of them off-balance if and when you have to let them evaluate what you’ve got.” The professor’s excitement reflected in Brian’s faint blush.

  “Be thankful they didn’t start in on you.”

  “Bring it on.”

  That made me snicker and Brian caught it. “Well,” he said, “you know,” sounding as if the professor had abandoned their body and left him holding the karma bag.

  I gathered up the first aid supplies and returned them to the kitchen shelf where we kept them. “Did that stuff work?”

  “Seems to have.” Carter examined the snow-white wrapping. “So far.”

  “Can it, like, break loose again?”

  “It can. Everbleed is an anticoagulant. It can be deadly if the hit is hard enough. Even if not, the constant bleeding isn’t good.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.” I put my hip to the counter. “Does it work on elves, too, or just everyone else?”

  “Anything that bleeds, more or less. It can even affect trees, with sap lines. It’s nasty stuff.”

  “And rare and expensive, which makes one wonder why Devian’s men had it and why they used it against us.” The professor was back.

  “Unless he was bluffing.”

  “Why would you think that?” Brian shifted his weight at Carter’s statement.

  “The arrow you examined disintegrated. A fake. He had a body double. Another fake. Most of those archers could have been mirror illusions.”

  “He can do that?”

  Carter answered me, “That and more. Devian is powerful, and he’s not operating independently. I would question why he’d do it more than if.”

  “Then I’d answer that he’s conserving himself. He plans on bigger battles to fight and hesitation on our parts to do so against an overwhelming force.” Brian began to pace.

  “What is he preparing for?”

  Neither of them answered me. Scout put a paw up, and I shook it absently. “Power. It’s always power, isn’t it?”

  “Usually. Or some version of it.”

  “We need to get Hiram out of there. Is time the same for him behind the arch? All those folk ballads seem to think a hundred years can pass overnight? The Rip Van Winkle effect?”

  “That can happen, but I think Devian has synchronized times, in order to carry out whatever plans he has. He doesn’t want or need for decades to fly by here. I’d be willing to say that if they did, if there was a massive time difference, he’d lose his advantage.”

  “So the skirmish today built his reputation.”

  “He hoped and planned for it, too. We may not have dealt with Devian before this, but neither are we unsophisticated or untrained.”

  I beamed at Carter. “Thanks!”

  “I don’t think he was referring to you.” The professor stopped pacing.

  “You don’t know he wasn’t.”

  Brian started to argue but Carter moved in between us. “Prepared to track Steptoe down? He’s likely allied with Hiram or, if he’s lost his invisibility, imprisoned with him.”

  “I’ll get on that. It may take more than what I’ve got available.” Brian dodged around both of us and hit the staircase running. Scout caught the fervor and went bounding upstairs as well before turning around and returning to me with a look on his puppy face that seemed to ask what had just happened. “You were faked out,” I told him, and rubbed the top of his head. He didn’t seem to mind.

  Brian leaned over the railing and called down, “I’ll likely not be ready until tomorrow night.” He disappeared before anyone answered.

  “It’s home for me, then. I’ve a full schedule next week, but it’s days.”

  “What are you working on now? Your time seems to be really flexible.”

  He hesitated a smidge. “Undercover.”

  “Narcotics?”

  “Not exactly. I’m dealing with anomalies they don’t know how to handle.”

  “Magic shit they don’t understand or need to know?”

  He shifted his weight uneasily. “Something like that.”

  “And you can’t tell me either.”

  “Tessa . . .”

  I put my palm up. “Believe it or not, I understand. Sorta.”

  “Good. I am worried enough about you. Stay away from Malender if you can.”

  “I have a theory about him.”

  “Wait until this is all handled and discuss it with me.” He waited until I gave a sharp nod. “Classes and practice tomorrow?”

  “Yup. The coach is gonna run my ass off, too. I missed a bonus practice yesterday morning.”

  “Bonus?”

  “Optional.”

  “But if she makes you make up for it . . .”

  “Then it’s not all that optional. Thanks f
or playing!” I grinned at him. “I’ll text you if the prof comes up with anything.”

  “Do that.”

  The house seemed a lot emptier after he went through the door. At the back of the first floor, I could hear the very quiet tapping of Mom on her laptop. That gave me a warm feeling.

  We flopped across my bed and did some thinking. Well, I thought. Scout snored the faint, whistling snores of a puppy. Darkness as complete as it be could surrounded the old house. Had Devian, in some scheme to score the old magic book from the Andrews, plotted my father’s downfall? It seemed likely, but not likely that he’d directly confined him as a ghost between dimensions, or Devian would have been here, trying to find where the book had gone. No, that had come about through some other accident after the book had been hidden away in the old bureau in a forgotten corner of the forgotten cellar. I needed Morty’s journals to know who might have been involved and how it could have happened, and to get those journals, I needed Germanigold to get permission to enter the Broadstone home and retrieve them, and for that I needed Hiram, safe and sound. And the Eye. Mom and I needed the money that rescuing the Eye could earn us. Things seemed to be going around in a spiral.

  And then there was Malender who had somehow earned Devian’s scorn. Those two had evidently squared off against each other before.

  I thought of the little souls that died, in the thousands, each time Malender appeared—but I hadn’t seen that at the casino. Had his manifestation been so quick and uneventful, he hadn’t needed to pull power? But he’d used a wallop of it against Devian, or Devian’s doppelganger, and ought to have needed to replenish it. I hadn’t gotten a straight answer about his cloak, which made me think no one in my gang knew one way or the other.

  So what, then? Had it been Malender or Devian acting against the body double, just to mess with my mind and trust? I couldn’t put it past the elf to be that twisted to have stepped in against himself. And then I had my own and Goldie’s observations about Malender.

  I needed to know. I looked at my phone. It was late to be creeping around outside, but my task seemed important. So I got up, put my shoes back on, and left my dog sleeping soundly on my bed while I went to make my own supernatural preparations.

  * * *

  • • •

  The air hung still and quiet about me. My heartbeat drummed a little too loudly in my ears. Did I dare do this? What if I’d thought things over and came to the wrong conclusion? Would Carter be able to forgive me? But what if I could pull Malender in with us as firepower against Devian? We could use that.

  “Malender,” I whispered. The night drew close, draping itself upon my shoulders, and I knew it listened. Dew crept in to wet my shoes and chill my feet within them. A small breeze began to stir, pulling at my hair and tossing it about my face. “Malender.” The lilac bushes hanging over the backyard fencing rustled and far away an owl hooted, once, before beginning its soundless sweeping flight over the neighborhood. A streetlight buzzed like a hornet before winking out, light expired. Burned-out bulb or . . .

  “Malender.”

  And then he was there, shadows splitting apart to reveal him, in his troubadour garb, the color of his eyes unknowable in the late hour, but night couldn’t hide his slow, answering smile or dampen the stink of the insidious gunk trying to swallow him whole.

  “Tessa of the Salt.”

  “You may or may not forgive me for this.” Without further explanation, I dug my mother’s sugar scoop into the 40-pound bag at my toes and showered it over him and that oily cloud hanging about him. Dip and shovel and shower, dip and shovel and shower.

  “What do you know about my father?”

  He stood pale and still as the crystals assaulted him. “Only what you know,” he answered quietly.

  Another scoopful.

  “Tell me about Devian.” I didn’t know if my actions held him at bay, or if he stood and bore it, but I had far more questions than I had salt, and I’d started with forty pounds of that.

  “Much of my memory is lost in time, but I do know that we are old enemies.”

  “That doesn’t put either of you on the side of good.”

  He swayed. “No. It does not.”

  I moved as quickly as I could, trying not to give him a chance to duck or back away or retreat altogether, and he did not. His breathing roughened, and he curled in upon himself slightly, but he endured. Salt crystals bounced everywhere until the ground looked as though a hail storm had opened up on a four-foot patch. Grass wasn’t going to grow there again for a very long time, I thought, regardless of whether the Romans actually salted Carthage in its defeat or not. Salt, invaluable then, and cheap now . . . I’d paid about $7.00 for my bag of crystal salt . . . had never lost its storied punch against evil.

  “I can’t ask you to do this.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “But you won’t tell me not to.”

  He shook his head weakly.

  I’d gotten a few more questions asked, and terse answers that helped me not at all. The bag lay exhausted, nearly empty, when I realized the last shower bounced off Malender’s wavy hair and shoulders, avalanching down his leather coat and pants, trailing off his boots. His inky cloak covered him no longer.

  He stood, withdrawn, shoulders tense and arms pulled close to his sides, face lowered, as if hiding and in pain, but wordless.

  “No ooze.”

  He looked up. Put his arms out and turned his hands up and over, stretching, examining. He stomped his boots on the ground, and more salt crystals cascaded off him, and he shook his head, then his whole body like Scout after his bath. Tiny white rocks bounced everywhere. His eyes widened.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?”

  “I hope I do.” I dropped the sugar scoop. I let him have my theory and hopes full force. “That gunky stuff wasn’t you, wasn’t your emanation as a being of nastiness . . . that was your prison? You broke away from your anchor, but you couldn’t wash that away. And all the souls that got sucked in, that wasn’t you drinking them down for power, that was the prison renewing itself? Perpetuating itself, keeping you bound. And the salt working on it all, because that’s what salt does, ate away at it anyhow, partly because of its properties and, I hope, because of my intention to fight the malevolence of your very presence. Naïve, on my part, but maybe that’s what ate away at the curse. A kind of innocence. At least, that’s what I reasoned out because you kept seeking me out. So I decided on an all-out assault. And if I’m not right, if I just did away with an essential part of you, I’m really sorry.” My words faltered because he didn’t answer me. He just stood quietly, his gaze on me, and I couldn’t tell what he thought at all because the night still shadowed him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  DUEL

  I BALANCED ON my chilled toes, ready to run, although the idea swept over me that there really wouldn’t be any safe place to go.

  He reached a hand out toward me, then withdrew it, and instead brushed his hair away from his forehead and deep-set jade eyes. As salt rained down, he chuckled faintly and shook himself again. He half-turned about. “I must go.”

  Had I expected a thank you? You bet your barbecuing reputation I did, but it obviously wasn’t forthcoming. “Did it work?”

  “I believe so. My prison fed off my own essence as well, so I am greatly weakened. I cannot stay, Tessa of the Salt. Nor will I be of much use to you.”

  “What was that thing?”

  He hesitated as if he wanted to withhold his answer. “A vampiric cloak. It fed off me and whatever life essences it could grab. I am, perhaps, even more surprised than you that salt would have had any effect on it and eternally grateful it did.”

  “But you’re free now.”

  “Let us both hope so.”

  I persisted, saying, “I need your help. At least your knowledge about Devian—”

  He wavered and
for a moment, I could see right through him as if he did not exist. “I have no help to offer but the one idea I gifted you, and you have only to remember it to have all you need. I am not a being you choose to take your side. Remember that of me, if you recall nothing else.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you cannot call on me as you do the sun lion and the phoenix and the demon.”

  “Oh, that’s great. You left out Hiram.”

  “Good-bye for now, Tessa. You have my gratitude.”

  And then he left, shimmering apart like a soap bubble bursting, transparent and prismatic one second and gone the next.

  I picked up the limp plastic bag of salt remnants. “I’m buying another bag,” I told the thin air. “Just in case.”

  I couldn’t count it as a win, but it didn’t seem like a total loss either. He said he’d left me something if I could remember it. Great.

  My dreams that night didn’t involve a fight for my life although I thought I heard Steptoe whispering, not once but twice, “Hurry, ducks. Hurry.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Coming out of the mudroom, I heard muted voices from my mother’s study. For a wild moment I thought my father had broken free of his basement prison and had come upstairs to talk with her, the talk sounding intimate. But as I approached, I recognized the professor speaking to my mom.

  “I’ve read the last few pages, Mary. It’s encouraging that you’ve had a break-through and the paper is progressing well . . .”

  “But.”

  “Yes. But. You’re taking a stance that ultimately could be very harmful.”

  “And it’s obvious from the casino incident that you won’t be rushing in to save anyone.”

  “Yes, well, as to that—I’m not at full strength, and even if I were, magic has its limits.”

  “Courage appears to be one of them.” A sound came from the laptop being pushed along her desk slightly, and I could sense her leaning back in her chair and giving him a look. One of those “you let me down and you know who you are” looks. A momentary silence followed.