Stray Magic

by Kelly Meding

  “I’m so sorry about Julius, Shi. So sorry.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat, then ate the bread. It was warm and sweet, the margarine just melted enough to blend. Heaven. The tears dried up under the medicinal power of comfort food, and I was halfway through a second slice before she asked, “Is that him?”

  “Yeah.”

  She eyed the carrier with a dubious frown. “I have a container like that.”

  “I know.”

  “I may have to throw it out now.”

  I leaned across the counter and curled my hand around hers. She squeezed back, her attention still fixed on the carrier. I studied her as I finished the second piece of bread and realized something—her eyes were puffy. She didn’t have allergies.

  She reached for the carrier, then paused, hand hovering halfway. She reached again, and her fingers brushed the seal.

  “You don’t have to,” I said. “He sleeps when he’s in the dark.” I didn’t want to tell her that Revenant Julius probably wouldn’t remember her, anyway.

  Mom had met Julius once, two years ago, when he threw me a surprise birthday party for no other reason than to piss me off. I’d withheld my actual birth date for years—I’ve always hated big, fussy parties, and yes, it stems from childhood clown trauma—but he found out. And he invited my mother. Seeing her interacting with my team had been amusing, especially her tart way of rebuffing Novak’s advances.

  “Is he in pain?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  She unsealed it anyway and popped off the lid. I flinched, half expecting a waft of something rotting-sweet. Zombies began to rot after a few days, especially in the heat. I hadn’t a clue if revenants rotted. All I got was the scent of warm lettuce and the faded odor of blood. His eyes were closed, his skin sallow and still—like a wax replica of a man’s head.

  “Julius?” Mom asked.

  His eyelids snapped up. Julius gazed at her for several seconds. I waited for confusion.

  “Elspeth,” he said. His recognition surprised me. His next question shocked the shit out of me. “Did we have plans? Did I forget?”

  “No, Jules, no plans.” Her voice had softened, taking on the comforting tones of a patient teacher. Or a tolerant lover. I mean, she couldn’t have been that memorable at my birthday party. Unless—

  “Mom!” I stiffened and pulled my hand away. “You and Julius—you were . . . did you date?”

  “Last year,” she said. Her cheeks reddened, though her tone remained annoyingly nonchalant. “For about six months. He’s a charming man, Shiloh.”

  “He’s my boss, Mom.”

  “He was a charming, handsome, single man my age, Shiloh.”

  Okay, I was being a little bratty. But for crying out loud!

  “Did we have plans, Elspeth?” Julius asked. “Is Shi coming with us?” His eyes rolled back and forth between us, lips curled in confusion. Seeing my mom couldn’t be doing much for his concentration.

  “I wanted to say hi.” Mom touched his cheek with her fingertip. “Shiloh and I are going to spend some mother-daughter time, okay? But I had to say hi first.”

  He smiled affectionately. “Hi.”

  Watching your mother making googly eyes at your boss’s severed head—nine-point-five on the Creep-Out-Meter.

  “Mom,” I said. “We need to go.”

  Julius swiveled his eyes toward me. “You look tired, Shiloh. Get some rest.”

  “In a while.”

  “I can’t feel my legs,” he said.

  “I know. Time to sleep again, okay?”

  He blinked twice in acquiescence. I replaced the lid and pressed, releasing enough air to create that familiar airtight seal. Closing a head up into a cake carrier, preparing to sniff out magic trails with my mother and a Master vampire—my night could not possibly get any more surreal.

  Not that I’d voice such a thing out loud. Murphy’s Law, and all.

  Mom swapped the margarine for a couple bottles of water, which she tossed into a reusable grocery tote. I rolled the rest of the zucchini bread up in a swath of aluminum foil and shoved it in on top of the water. My little trip between worlds had screwed up my internal clock, and I wasn’t going out without some food on hand. Low blood sugar makes me cranky.

  “I can’t believe you dated him and didn’t tell me,” I said as we headed for the front door with the food and the head.

  Mom paused long enough to scoop a blue canvas overnight bag off the floor by the door. “I didn’t need your blessing or your permission, sweetheart,” she replied coolly. She sounded more amused than annoyed.

  “Well, no, but . . .”

  She stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “But?”

  “He’s not just a man I know . . . he’s my boss!”

  “You already said that he was your boss. He was also a very good lover.”

  “Okay, I’m definitely done talking about this.” If my hands had been free, I would have clamped them down over my ears for effect. Yes, my mother brings out my childish side. Whose doesn’t?

  Tennyson had taken up residence in one of the white plastic patio chairs occupying the left side of the porch. He stood as we exited the house. If he’d been listening to our conversation, he made no indication. He opened the passenger side door for my mother. She gave him a disdainful sniff and climbed in.

  I rolled my eyes, put the cake carrier and tote in the backseat, and settled in up front. The back door shut with a bang and the familiar, empty black cloak appeared in my mirror.

  “Necromancy is powerful magic,” Mom said as I got us back on the road. “Even with my echo sense, powerful magic can be harder to pin down than weak magic. It tends to bounce around like a pinball, instead of staying localized to one place. Normally, what we’re trying to do would only get us within a dozen miles of the point of origin.”

  “Normally,” I said. “What’s different?”

  “Your necromancer made a mistake by sending the revenant back to you,” Tennyson said. Apparently he caught on to magical goings-on faster than me.

  “Exactly,” Mom replied.

  I negotiated a turn and angled us back toward the highway. As much as I wanted to puzzle it out on my own, I wanted simple answers. “How’s that help?”

  “Think of Julius as a magnet, Shi,” Mom said, “and the magic as iron filings. The closer we get to the point of origin, the more magic will be drawn to him, and the more I’ll sense it.”

  “Is the reverse also true?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The closer we get to the necromancer,” I said. “Will he be able to sense Julius and know we’re coming?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I glanced into the rearview—for all the good it did me. “Tennyson?”

  “It’s likely.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “I’m sorry, no. This is not my area of expertise.”

  I swore I heard sarcasm. “So Julius could be a warning beacon for his maker, as much as a heat-seeking missile for us.”

  No one spoke to confirm or deny my statement. It didn’t help my nervous stomach. At least my headache had come and gone during the drive to Mom’s. Maybe my little cross-dimensional trip had taken the edge off the potential migraine.

  Five miles down the highway, it occurred to me I still hadn’t returned Vincent’s call. I wasn’t ignoring him, but my love life was at the very bottom of the priority list. It’s why our relationship was casual, instead of serious. And he hadn’t left a voice message, so it couldn’t have been urgent. Still, I felt irrationally less uneasy talking to him now that I wasn’t alone with Tennyson.

  I palmed my Raspberry and speed-dialed his number. It rang half a dozen times before switching over to voice mail. His familiar baritone spoke with the noise of rap music in the background—“It’s Vince, talk to me after the beep.”

  “It’s me,” I said. “I had a missed call from you, and I wanted to say hey. I’ll be working for a few
days, but I’ll . . .” What? I searched for something to say. “We’ll talk later. Bye.”

  Dork, thy name is Shiloh.

  “How is Vincent doing?” Mom asked.

  I tossed her a sideways glare. “Not talking about him.”

  “Okay.”

  A few more miles down the highway, I asked, “So any thoughts on a direction? Or should I just drive?”

  “Keep going south,” Mom replied. “The echo is extremely faint, but it’s definitely south of here.”

  “South it is.”

  Three hours south, as it turned out. I stopped once around eleven for a bathroom break and some bad gas station coffee. Mom bought a ginger ale. Tennyson made a phone call to a vampire named Drayden, his second in line and the man in charge of the hostage takeover. It sounded like a status report. The vamps were behaving, the residents were still scared, but quiet. None of the police had made a move against them.

  I wasn’t shy about eavesdropping on the conversation. For some reason, seeing Tennyson with a cell phone became a source of amusement for me. It seemed way too modern for someone so blessed old. And old-fashioned.

  We were back on the road for another hour before Mom started choking.

  I was too busy trying to stay awake after twenty-four-plus hours, so I didn’t pay attention to the way her hands were gripping her knees. Or her new, tense posture. Those things were discarded by my conscious mind as unimportant details. Then Tennyson shifted forward between the front seats.

  “Your mother reeks of fear,” he said, speaking for the first time since we left the gas station.

  I glanced over at Mom, and all of those peripheral details became crystal clear—death grip on her knees, red cheeks, straight back, open mouth. Tiny little mewling sounds, so faint I thought I imagined them, tore from her constricting throat.

  “Mom? Mom!” I slammed on the brakes. We were alone on the highway, so no one saw my crazy swerving onto the shoulder.

  Tennyson was out and dragging Mom through her open door before I could properly shift into Park. His arms looped around her waist and he held her close against his chest. Panic set in—distrust and old fears—and I was certain he was going to bite her. I scrambled across the seat and tumbled out the passenger door, fear tangling my limbs. I hit the gravel shoulder hard on my palms, scraping them both raw.

  “Mom!”

  She whimpered. I reached for my gun.

  Tennyson balled his right fist, cupped his left hand around it, and jerked both upward against my mom’s stomach. Hand on the grip of my sidearm, I realized what he was doing. He wasn’t attacking her while she was vulnerable. He was trying the Heimlich maneuver.

  I used the car to stand up, afraid my legs wouldn’t support me. Mom’s face had turned dark red. Her thick-lashed eyes were as wide as I’ve ever seen them and rimmed with tears. She locked her gaze with mine, and I saw defeat in her eyes.

  “No!” More than ever, I wished for my dad’s strength in magic. For the power to save my mother, who was slowly choking to death in front of me.

  Tennyson didn’t relent. I gathered what will I possessed, each tendril of magic in my body, the strength and solidity of the earth djinn, and cast it at my mom’s dying body. It wasn’t much.

  It was timed with one more pump from Tennyson. She retched up something and it spewed from her mouth in a lump of twisting, writhing black. The walnut-sized thing hit the side of the Element and bounced to the gravel, before trying to skitter away. I slammed my foot down. It crunched like a rice cereal treat.

  I lifted my foot, my entire body shaking with adrenaline. Twisted legs stuck out of its smashed body, and a line of greenish goo clung to the bottom of my boot. It looked like a blessed spider.

  Mom’s choking sobs stole my attention. She was still in Tennyson’s arms, and both had crouched to the ground. She shook and sobbed against him, sucking in great lungfuls of air. He stroked her back with his free hand, silent. I went to my knees next to them and touched her shoulder.

  She looked up, tears streaking her flaming cheeks, and fell into my arms. I held my mom like she’d held me so many times, through nightmares and skinned knees and childish teasing. As I held her and urged my own pounding heart to calm, I realized something awful—someone had tried to kill her tonight, and it was my fault.

  You don’t swallow a spider by accident while driving in a car going sixty-five miles an hour. Someone sends it to you. She wouldn’t have been targeted if I had left her at home, instead of getting her involved in my work.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “So sorry.”

  “This wasn’t your fault,” Tennyson said.

  “I brought her out here. It is my fault.”

  “No, sweetheart,” Mom said, her voice barely a croak. “It was a booby trap. We’re close.”

  “Booby trap?”

  She sat up and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. Her color was almost back to normal, and her breaths came in steady inhales and exhales. “I felt the moment I triggered it. It’s like a magical snare, set to snap when a certain kind of counter-magic comes into contact with it. Counter-magic like my echo sense.”

  I’d never heard of such a thing. “The snare stuffs a magic spider down your throat?”

  “As the trapper wishes.” She snuffled. A white handkerchief appeared in front of her. She took it from Tennyson with a nod and blew her nose.

  “Effective snare,” Tennyson said.

  “Did you feel it?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  Suddenly my entire knowledge base of magic seemed grossly inadequate. “Who knows how to lay snares like this?”

  Something very close to annoyance peeked through on his face. “The snare itself is not as unusual as you may think. Versions of them occur naturally around homes and sacred places such as churches and holy ground. The sort of snare that befell your mother, however, requires willful desire to injure or destroy.”

  “Okay, information useful,” I said, “but not narrowing down the suspect list. Our necromancer?”

  “Likely.”

  His tone spoke volumes. “But you don’t think so?”

  “I have not committed myself to a single explanation for recent events. The necromancer may be directly involved in the kidnapping of my people, or he may yet be a pawn in a larger game. This is why we’re investigating, no?”

  “Yeah, okay.” I glanced at the green-and-black mess now smushed into the shoulder of the road. “Will the snare activate again?”

  “Unlikely,” he replied. “However, the trapper will know his trap has been sprung. We should move quickly now that our presence is known.”

  “Great.”

  I stood up and helped Mom to her feet. My adrenaline was waning, leaving my own limbs a bit shaky—no stopping the eventual side effects this time, I felt it all the way through me. Sheer panic born of nearly losing your mother does that.

  She tried to look at my scraped palms. I jerked my hands away, loaded her into the front seat, then walked around to get in on my side. Always faster than me, Tennyson was inside and offering Mom a bottle of water before I could get buckled up. She sipped at it, grimacing.

  A car sped by in the opposite direction, its headlights gleaming silver light at us. We were just over the line into Virginia, about an hour and a half from the end of the peninsula and the Bay Bridge Tunnel.

  Time to get moving.

  We passed through a small town. It didn’t consist of much from the highway—a few houses, a church, and a lot of billboards. The kind of place most people drove through on their way elsewhere. A few miles later, Mom grabbed the back of my seat.

  “Turn around,” she said.

  I went up to the next turnaround and switched to the northbound lane. After a few more miles, she said, “Slow down.”

  I did, down to forty, glad we were still very alone on the road. Half a mile or so ahead was a stoplight intersection, with gas stations on either side, and a restaurant on one corner. A right-pointi
ng sign announced we were close to Chincoteague Island and its wild pony attractions—something I’ve never bothered investigating. Horses dislike most magical creatures. My djinn half would probably give those ponies fits.

  “Turn right.”

  We were nearly on top of the intersection, so I hung a sharp right down that street, putting the restaurant on my left and gas station on my right. A gas station, diner, video rental combo—definitely a tourist trap disguised as a locals’ place. Less than a quarter mile down on the left was a storage unit facility.

  It’s where Mom pointed as she said, “In there.”

  I turned and idled in front of the gate. It was the middle of the night. Floodlights cast an awful yellow glow on us from spaced intervals along the ten-foot-high perimeter fence. It was simple chain-link, topped with curling barbed wire. I eyed the office building and the fence itself—no cameras. At least, none that I could see.

  “They used a rented storage unit for this?” I asked.

  “My echo sense is pointing me here, Shi. This is where Julius was killed.”

  It didn’t seem terribly private, but whatever. “Tennyson? Can you help with the gate?”

  He slid out of the vehicle. The gate had a single padlock, which he twisted and snapped with minimal effort. He gave the gate a push, and it trundled sideways on a track until we had just enough room to drive through. He closed it again after us. I parked halfway down the rows of the storage units, far enough from the road to prevent passersby from spotting the Element.

  Loose gravel crunched underfoot as Mom and I joined Tennyson by the car’s rear. She had the cake carrier tight against her chest, hugging it like a safety blanket, paler than was healthy.

  “Mom, you want to wait in the car?” I asked as I slipped my gun from its holster.

  “No.” It was her ask me again and I’ll brain you voice, so I left it alone.

  Tennyson paused to sniff the night air. “Blood,” he said. “This way.”