Glimmers of Thorns

by Emma Savant

  She shook her hands like she was trying to fling the stupidity of humanity and Glimkind off of her, then stalked back to her desk.

  Maybelle offered me an encouraging smile, then took her drink back to her cubicle. Within seconds, one of the godfathers, Curtis, had stopped by to distract her into another round of gossip and speculation.

  I refilled my water and took it back to my cubicle.

  A memo was on my desk, written on my notepad. I watched as the final silver letters wrote themselves and Lorinda’s name appeared on the bottom with a flourish.

  Aster, Seth, Tabitha, and Olivia, please come to my office at 11, the note said.

  It was 10:45. I refreshed my browser. The computer screen flashed, bringing up new articles, blog posts, tweets, campaigns, and videos. I had a news alert set to anything tagged #DarkForest or #Huntsmen, and the new posts had been coming in thick and fast all morning.

  There was no reason it should have gone viral this quickly. Even I, who knew it was all true, thought Aubrey came across as a conspiracy theorist—so why were the Humdrums listening to her?

  Fringe Group Claims Kidnapped Toddler Victim of Witches, a headline read. The toddler still hadn’t been found, though the rumor mill churned with claims that the little girl’s aunt, a muse who sympathized with the groups pressuring the Oracle, had taken her from her Humdrum father to fully immerse her in the Glimmering world.

  The aunt had to be a powerful muse, though. No one should be able to hide a Humdrum toddler from the legions of skilled Glims looking for her.

  Unless, of course, the aunt had a powerful friend.

  I could practically feel the Oracle watching us through the windows. Her Fountain across the street sat far too close for my comfort.

  A chatty Humdrum news article claimed So-Called “Magic Hunters” Are Keeping Portland Weird, and a popular blog on the JinxNet featured Our Panelists Sound Off on #DarkForest. I skimmed through the article. Most of the panelists hated the hashtag—no surprise there. A few people in favor of exposing us to the Humdrums suggested fighting back with #EnchantedForest, a hashtag meant to show that the Glim world was delightful and not scary at all.

  It was stupid, all of it.

  The Council could do nothing against a barrage like this. They could only glamour so many memories in a day, and the internet was stronger than all of us.

  Portland was full of Glims, but the internet wasn’t confined to Portland. It wasn’t confined to the other cities with large Glim populations, either. The internet was for everyone, everywhere, all the time, and our magic couldn’t keep up. Even hacking into Aubrey’s account and glamouring or deleting her posts had stopped working. Sometime in the last few days, someone had thrown some seriously good electronic magic up to protect her pages.

  The memo on my desk suddenly caught fire, the lilac flames letting me know I was late.

  Lorinda’s office walls were a rich shade of purple over mahogany wainscoting. Photos of her posing with satisfied clients dotted the walls, each in a flower-laden silver frame. The newest photo was of a Cinderella archetype who’d just married into actual English aristocracy. She waved from her new manor in the engagement portrait. The Cinderella looked almost as pleased as Lorinda had the day the case closed.

  Aster was already there, sitting in one of the amethyst-colored chairs. I settled next to her. The silver clock on Lorinda’s desk ticked the seconds by, each click of the second hand a sharp break in the silence.

  “Lorinda went to the bathroom,” Aster said. “She’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  The clock kept ticking.

  Tabitha and Seth came in next. Tabitha waved Seth to take the last open seat. She leaned against the wall, skeletal in a black fringed shawl, and swiped her long-nailed thumb back and forth on her phone. Seth drew his knees together, bounced them, and then held onto them to keep himself still.

  I liked Seth. He was a tall, awkward-looking guy with sandy hair and long fingers. He’d been working at Wishes Fulfilled a little longer than I had, but we’d never had more than a couple of conversations. I’d heard gossip that before becoming a godparent, he’d been an Eraser.

  Lorinda bustled in. Her suit was mint green today. It clashed horribly with the walls.

  Tabitha closed the door behind her.

  “Are you all aware of the situation?” Lorinda said, looking at each of us in turn.

  It was impossible not to be. We nodded.

  Lorinda sat down behind the desk and leaned toward us, resting her elbows on a messy pile of papers on the polished desk surface. “Then you’re aware we at Godparenting Services are working with the Office of Cross-Cultural Relations and the Department of Tests & Quests to keep surveillance teams on Ms. Aubrey Weston twenty-four/seven.”

  “Surveillance teams consist of two staff members,” Tabitha said. “Four-hour shifts, to keep everyone sharp.”

  “We haven’t been able to do much,” Lorinda said. “Some of our teams have been able to use charms to distract Miss Weston, keeping her from her online vendetta, but she clearly has some powerful magical aid and a great deal of motivation to stick to her distasteful task.” Lorinda’s nose wrinkled. “We have our best web witches on the case, but hacking into her accounts and deleting her posts clearly isn’t a sustainable solution.”

  Aster raised a hand. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said. “But I’m a little lost. Can’t we just let this play out? This has escalated quickly and I’m not sure why everyone’s taking it so seriously at this point. She’s just another lunatic on the internet—and that describes half the internet.”

  Seth shook his head and opened his mouth, but Lorinda replied first.

  “She’s gaining traction faster than any of us could have anticipated,” Lorinda said. “We haven’t seen a political movement like the one surrounding the Oracle take off so quickly in a long time. Miss Weston seems to be stoking the Humdrum side of that fire. Due to these deeply misguided Glim activists, many Humdrums are more suspicious of our presence than any of us would like, and they’re inclined to follow her. There are blogs.”

  “They’re getting onboard with this Huntsmen thing,” Tabitha said. “She’s got people following her online. They’ve nicknamed her ‘Queen of the Forest.’” Her jaw hardened.

  So did mine. That was one of Queen Amani’s many titles.

  “There’s nothing humans like more than joining a mob,” Aster said. The contempt practically dripped off her voice.

  “She’s crazy,” I said.

  All eyes turned on me.

  “I know her,” I said. I glanced around, aware of their eyes on me. “In case anyone hadn’t heard, I’m friends with her ex, so we’ve met a couple of times. She’s crazy. She likes… I don’t know how to explain it.”

  I glanced around. No one read my mind. I pressed on.

  “Aubrey likes to be special,” I said. “If this makes her feel like she knows something no one else does, she’s not going to let it go. She likes making people follow her and share her opinions.”

  I remembered, with painful clarity, what it had been like to go prom dress shopping with her. Every comment had been calculated to let me know that she was gorgeous and I was a tasteless idiot with big hips who should buy only the dress she finally approved.

  I made a mental note to kick Lucas for ever going out with her.

  I still hadn’t told him about any of this. There hadn’t been time. I mentally made another note to catch him up.

  “All the more reason we need to address this problem now, before it gets completely out of control,” Lorinda said. She clucked her tongue. “If I’d told myself a year ago that I’d be expending all this effort over a Humdrum teenager, I’d never have believed myself.”

  “Have you asked the Oracle for help?” Seth said.

  Lorinda waved a hand. “She has her own problems,” she said. She pursed her lips and shifted in her seat.

  Lorinda loved the Oracle. She thought th
ey had a “special relationship.”

  If only she knew.

  I wished Amani would hurry up and tell people already. Even if she wouldn’t or couldn’t do that, I wished she’d hurry up and at least talk to me. I didn’t mind keeping secrets, but I did mind not knowing what was going on.

  “We’re going to try to handle this on our own first,” Lorinda said. “We are, of course, working closely with the Grand Council of Magical Beings. Olivia’s father is overseeing our work.”

  She gave me a significant, deferential nod. I resisted the urge to throw her the world’s most sarcastic double thumbs-up.

  “And the Council’s given us a job,” Tabitha said.

  “In addition to our surveillance work,” Lorinda said. “We learned this morning that a documentary filmmaker will be interviewing Miss Weston.”

  I wished she’d stop calling her Miss Weston. A more appropriate name, like that idiot, would have been plenty.

  “The interview takes place this evening,” Lorinda said. “I’m sending all three of you to her house before the filmmaker arrives.”

  “I thought Olivia couldn’t work with Aubrey,” Aster said. She glanced over at me.

  “Not until now, no,” Lorinda said. She clasped her hands together on the desk. “But the time has come for more direct measures than simple surveillance, and Olivia is perhaps the best one to get the three of you in the door.”

  And then she laid out the plan. Aster, Seth, and I would go to Aubrey’s house. We’d knock on her door, me visible and Aster and Seth glamoured so that she couldn’t see them.

  “The enchantments on her property are strong,” Lorinda explained. “However, we believe they’re conventional.”

  “Meaning we can get in if we’re invited,” Aster said.

  Lorinda tapped her nose.

  “Once inside, you, Olivia, will talk Aubrey into taking you to her room, or somewhere else with some privacy. You’ll cast a spell to keep her family and any friends away so Aster and Seth can get to work. Seth—”

  “I’ll Erase,” Seth said.

  “Not all her memories,” Tabitha said. “Just enough that she can’t quite connect the pieces.”

  “Aster will provide security,” Lorinda said.

  I glanced over at Aster. “Security” wasn’t the first word that came to mind when I looked at her, but I knew better than to judge by appearances. Aster was a hell of a faerie.

  “The Glims who are helping her will probably be close by,” Seth said.

  Aster leaned back in her seat. “I can handle her.”

  “We don’t think any of them are actually with her right now,” Tabitha said. “Whoever they are, whatever help they provide is in the form of enchanting the property and keeping her posts online.”

  Seth cut in. “You still don’t know who they are?”

  “We have a few names,” Lorinda said. “But not nearly enough.”

  Once Seth had done his work, he and Aster would switch places. Together, while I stood guard and alerted them to trouble, Aster would enchant Aubrey, planting new memories and loading her with jinxes that would make her seem completely off her rocker when the filmmaker came by.

  “And then he’ll broadcast the message that Aubrey can’t be trusted,” Lorinda finished. She smiled, though the expression looked stretched. “In the end, he and Miss Weston will do all our work for us.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I hated traveling by pixie dust.

  It wasn’t like flying on a carpet. The pixie dust acted like helium, lifting my body into the air but giving me only about half the control I wanted.

  The rooftop garden over Wishes Fulfilled seemed to sway beneath me. Overgrown branches tangled together. They were brown and damp in the light January rain, jumbled in a way that made my stomach shift. I looked up, but that only made the dizzy feeling worse.

  Aster pulled her wand out of her inside jacket pocket.

  “Try this,” she said.

  She hovered gracefully a few inches above me, as relaxed in the air as if she’d been floating in a pool. A green fleece beanie held down her pale hair. She pointed the wand to her left. A stream of bubbles shot from its tip, and she drifted to the right.

  “Bubbles?” I said. “Seriously?”

  My wand had been holding my messy bun together on the back of my head. I tapped its handle, shot some magic into my hair so it would stay, and pulled my wand out.

  “Bubbles are gentle,” Aster said. “You could try straight air but I don’t think you’d like it.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” I said.

  I focused my energy on where my fingers met the handle of my wand. The smooth silver seemed to pulse beneath my fingertips, and a stream of small bubbles blew from the tip. I drifted a few inches to the right.

  “We need to get moving,” Seth said. He floated up alongside us like it was nothing.

  “Cool your jets,” Aster said. She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Olivia, just follow behind us, okay? If you need help, holler.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I shot a stream of bubbles toward the ground and floated a few more inches up.

  A few feet later, the Glimmering roads shimmered into view. The traffic here was shielded from Hums and Glims alike by powerful enchantments. But above the glamour line, three thin rainbow roads were fully visible, stacked on top of each other like a triple-decker bridge.

  Rush hour was over, and the usual mad crush of carpets and carriages had slowed to just a few vehicles. We merged onto the lowest road, which was reserved for pixie dust, enchanted bicycles, and other modes of faster-than-walking but slower-than-driving transportation. Above my head, a golden carriage being drawn by two white horses clopped past us.

  I shot a jet of bubbles behind me and pulsed forward.

  “Try to stay on the road,” Aster said, as the next jet took me way too far to the left. I wouldn’t fall down into Humdrum traffic—which was always a big risk on these roads, second only to being run over by a Glim on the wrong level—but I tried to straighten anyway.

  After a while, it started to make sense. Shoot bubbles, pulse forward, and shoot again. Soon I was skimming along with Aster and Seth. The sun had just set behind the gray wall of clouds, and I watched as the lights of the city twinkled on below us. The rainbows gave off their own faint light as their colors stretched into the distance.

  A large frog in a tricorn hat passed on my left, riding a penny-farthing bicycle that was much too big for him. I tried not to stare.

  I spent the entire journey mentally rehearsing what I was going to say. I didn’t have long. Aubrey lived in an artsy district not too far from downtown. When we were still a few blocks away, Seth caught my eye and shone a laser light down onto the roof of a dark green Victorian home. From the rainbow, its most prominent features were the russet-colored shingles and the weather vane that topped a turret.

  Seth surveyed the neighborhood and nodded that the coast was clear. Anyone stepping off the rainbow was protected by a glamour, of course, but it was better to be careful. Aster had calculated the amount of pixie dust exactly, and I felt the last bits wear off the moment my foot touched the ground.

  It was impossible to overstate how much I wanted to be somewhere else. Filing papers and even taking on actual cases at Wishes Fulfilled was one thing. Sneaking into my least favorite person’s house in order to mess with her brain was something else entirely.

  But what choice did I have? We had to get in, and my connection with Aubrey was the easiest way. She seemed capable of doing more damage than I would have thought possible. I might not be crazy about the Glimmering world, but I did care about some of the people in it, and I wanted them to stay safe and hidden.

  Landscaped flower beds marched around the front porch. A small white dog sat on the top step, watching the neighborhood while sheltered from the light sprinkling rain.

  Aster and Seth followed me up the walkway to the house, their invisibility glamours securely in place. The do
g jumped up. Its tail began wagging wildly.

  My stomach flipped over.

  How had I gotten here?

  It seemed like I’d done nothing but ask myself that question for a year. The dog sniffed around Aster’s ankles as I rang the doorbell.

  I felt the family inside before anyone came to the door. A mom, appearance-conscious and annoyed; a dad, good at concentrating but not good at seeing what went on around him; the nastiness that was Aubrey; and two boys, probably teenagers, who mostly wanted to be left alone. And then footsteps, and the sound of a muffled voice.

  Aubrey’s mom opened the door. She shared Aubrey’s same halo of auburn hair and big eyes. Her makeup was polished, her eyebrows perfectly plucked, and she wore a bead-studded green blouse and large gold-faced watch. I smiled at her and wished I’d thought to put on a glamour that would make me come across as even halfway put-together.

  “Hi,” I said, forcing confidence into my voice. “Is Aubrey home?”

  The woman smiled, and I had no idea whether it was genuine or not. “She is,” she said. “Who can I tell her is calling?”

  “My name’s Olivia,” I said.

  She waited, like she expected more details, but I pressed my lips together. She brushed her hands on her jeans and opened the door wider.

  “Come in and I’ll go fetch her,” she said with another big, unclear smile.

  I shuffled inside, with Aster and Seth close behind. The dog scooted in, too. The tag on its collar jingled as it stepped inside. Aubrey’s mom gave it a critical look, as if it should have wiped its paws first, but didn’t say anything.

  The foyer was gorgeous, with original details carefully restored. I studied the pattern of the rug while Aubrey’s mom jogged up the intricately carved wooden stairs. Aster and Seth stood motionless beside me. Their invisibility glamour would prevent anyone from hearing them move or speak, too, but I got the feeling they didn’t want to push their luck.

  It was easy to get absorbed in the architecture, and I was almost surprised when I heard footsteps and looked up to see Aubrey coming down the stairs.