Stranger Magics

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “Two!”

  “What the hell is going on?” I cried, but before Meggy could respond, the door exploded in a shower of yellow splinters, and in strode Drago, clutching a foot-long wooden rod in his outstretched right hand.

  “Oh, fuck,” I snapped, then shoved Moyna back toward Meggy. “Keep her safe. I’ll take care of it,” I told Moyna, and closed the distance between us as the newcomer lifted his wand. “Kid, you really don’t want to do that,” I began, raising my voice to be heard over his boot chains.

  He glared at me, then mumbled under his breath and flicked his wrist.

  I anticipated the attack and threw up a shield around me, which deflected a portion of his shot back at him. It hit him hard enough to make him take two steps back, more surprised than hurt, but he stared at me like a wolf who’s just realized that the sheep it’s after is packing a rocket launcher.

  The air between us shimmered until I lowered the shield, but the room still smelled like mosquito coils. “Okay, let’s drop the act and be reasonable about this,” I said, advancing while he was disoriented. “Starting with your name . . . your mother doesn’t call you Drago, does she, Stevie?” He cringed, too bewildered to fight the mental attack, and I smiled to myself. “Right, then, Steve. Now, you want to tell me what this is all about?”

  His lips moved for a few seconds before his voice caught up. “Who are you?” he squeaked, cracking on the last syllable.

  I gave him an exaggerated shrug. “I answer to a lot of names. You can call me Colin. Now drop the stick.”

  His fingers tightened, the one part of him that had seemed to rediscover its courage.

  “Drop the stick,” I warned, “or you won’t like what happens next.”

  The little wizard’s stare was momentarily defiant until I threw a very thin, very focused bolt at his right wrist, shattering every bone. He screamed and grabbed his wounded hand, dropping the wand in the process. With a little touch of will, it was in my grip, and I broke it in half over my knee as he watched through streaming eyes. I held the halves of the wand toward him in my palm, then set the mess on fire and smiled with satisfaction as the blue flames consumed it. “So,” I said, dusting the ash out of my gloved palm with a slow swipe, “let’s talk about what you’re doing here, shall we?” I kept my voice deceptively calm. “Because something tells me that Ms. Bellamy didn’t invite you, Stevie boy.”

  He whimpered, all bravado replaced by pain and terror. “Nothing! I’ll go!” he shouted. “Just don’t hurt me, don’t hurt—”

  “You’re a pathetic child, but maybe you’ve learned something here today,” I said, then grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled his face within inches of mine. “What would that be?”

  His jaw quivered. “St . . . stay away . . . don’t bother . . . Bellamy?”

  I released him. “Uh-huh. Smarter than you look, Drago. Drago,” I repeated with a snort. “Is that your little game character’s name, Stevie? Drago the Dark . . . what was it?”

  My eye caught his left hand’s motion toward his pocket, and I seized it. “What’s hiding in your coat?” I murmured. “Silver? Iron? Backup stick?” Before he could twitch, I had set his duster’s pocket on fire, and I ignored his shrieks and let the flames lick at his coat until the little bar inside fell onto the floor. He batted out the last of the spectral fire and stared at me, mouth hanging open.

  I dropped my mask of age, the better to freak him out. “Really,” I tutted, “did you think this was my first fight? I’m guessing it’s yours. Now, want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

  “B-book,” he stuttered. “Need a . . . a book—”

  “Not today. Get the hell off of this property.”

  I’ll give him some credit—he managed to get the motorcycle up and racing away with only one functional hand. When the roar of his engine faded, I stepped back from the hole where the door had been, then waved the pieces into position and sealed them into place before I turned to face Meggy. “So,” I said, crossing my arms, “what about that explanation?”

  Her face seemed almost bloodless as she opened and closed her mouth, searching for her voice, before she finally managed to whisper, “You’re fae.”

  I nodded, though I kicked myself for letting the glamour go. With the illusion gone, Meggy looked a decade my senior, and I was trying to keep the upper hand. “What the hell are you doing with wizards? Those people are dangerous!”

  “You’re fae!”

  “Yes, we’ve established that,” I muttered. Moyna’s eyebrow quirked as Meggy sputtered, and I beckoned the girl closer. “Know anything about wards?” I asked her. She nodded, and I pointed to the driveway. “Did you feel anything when we came through?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Go back to the road and see if you can’t find a ward system. It may be in pieces, if it exists at all. Please,” I added before she could protest. “I need a few minutes with your mother, okay?”

  Moyna rolled her eyes, sighed, and headed for the door.

  “And put on something more appropriate, why don’t you?”

  That earned me a withering look, but the corseted dress she had chosen for the occasion shifted into a rough copy of Meggy’s ensemble, albeit all in shades of rose. “Better?”

  “It’ll do. Go on, take your time. Thorough inspection.”

  She took the hint and slipped out the repaired front door, but I waited until the latch caught to release my breath. Feeling the weight of Meggy’s eyes on me, I turned and forced myself to face her.

  Chapter 5

  We stood there in the foyer like idiots, staring at each other until long after Moyna’s footsteps had ceased to echo off the walkway. Suddenly, Meggy’s shocked paralysis broke, and she lunged for the door. I grabbed her arm and tugged her back, nearly pulling her off her feet as she swung around. “Let her go,” I insisted as Meggy continued to strain for the doorknob. “She doesn’t need drama. Just let her go for a few minutes, okay? It’s only the edge of the property.”

  “That’s my baby, you bastard!” she shouted, nearly dislocating her shoulder in an effort to free herself.

  “She doesn’t want to be!”

  She wheeled on me as if struck, eyes wide and cheeks scarlet, and I took her by the shoulders and lowered my voice. “Meggy, listen to me. It’s like Stockholm syndrome or something. All I know is that my mother abducted her and apparently raised her as her own, and then dumped her on my doorstep Thursday night. She wants to go home—to Faerie. She wants her . . . well, the person she thinks of as her mother, and she’s none too pleased with me for dragging her down here. Let her go for a little while, calm down, and we’ll figure out what’s to be done.”

  Her eyes began to fill as she choked out, “She . . . she doesn’t want to be with m-me?”

  “It’s going to take time . . .” Meggy’s tears began to fall, and I squeezed her arms more tightly, wishing I could embrace her. “If I’d known for one second that your daughter had been taken, I’d have done everything in my power to get her back. You’ve got to believe me, Meggy, I didn’t know. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I had no idea your daughter was kidnapped.”

  Her streaming eyes met mine for a long moment. “Our daughter,” she finally murmured. “Olive is . . . she’s . . .”

  I know that Meggy must have broken down then, but all I could focus on was the rushing in my ears like a hurricane and the faint pinpricks of light out of the corners of my eyes.

  It couldn’t be. I’d only been with Meggy for one night, and then only a few times . . .

  But then I remembered everything the little changeling had done. Her clothes. My room. The washcloth on the living room floor, dampening the carpet where it had fallen.

  Things she couldn’t have done without having fae blood.

  My blood.

  “Oh, my God,” I muttered, releasing Meggy abruptly. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” she sniffed. “Olive’s hair was fair like Jack’s . . . still is, I guess,�
�� she amended, “but I knew she couldn’t be his.” She saw my confusion and wiped her eyes. “Jack came home about a month after you ran off. Finally told me the truth. He was diagnosed with cancer at the end of the season, and he’d been going to oncologists and specialists and the like since Christmas. He didn’t want to scare me, so he pretended like everything was okay until he was pretty sure it wasn’t. Then he came home and told me what was going on, and he asked if I still wanted to get married.”

  “Well, of course you did.”

  “Wrong,” she snapped. “I’d thought about breaking off the engagement for months at that point, but what sort of bitch would throw her terminally ill fiancé to the curb, huh? And besides,” she added, glaring at me through red-rimmed eyes, “it’s not like I had an excuse anymore.”

  I felt my stomach begin to twist. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I wanted to be with you. Or with the man I thought you were. Guess he doesn’t exist, does he?” she replied, and began to cry once more.

  I made coffee while Meggy tried to pull herself together. Under the circumstances, it seemed to be the only thing left that made sense.

  “What do you want to know?” I asked her once she’d taken a few sips. “I’ll tell you whatever I can, Meggy—about Olive, me, whatever. Name it.”

  She regarded me over the rim of her cup, her jaw set. “First thing, I wish you’d stop looking like that.”

  “Like what?” I said, taken aback.

  “Like you’re my kid brother or something.”

  I shifted back into the glamour I’d used at the door. “Better?”

  Meggy gave me a quick up-and-down and frowned, but nodded. “Yeah. I guess that’s better.” She hesitated, then asked, “How old are you, anyway?”

  I thought for a moment, running the math. “Eight hundred and . . . twelve? Maybe?”

  “Maybe?”

  “I was born in Faerie! That’s the best I can do. They haven’t exactly adopted the Gregorian calendar.”

  She leaned back into the couch and cupped her hands around her mug. “And you’re really Colin? My Colin?”

  I nodded. “I would have told you a long time ago, but you didn’t need to know—”

  “Didn’t need to know?” she echoed, jabbing the mug toward my face. “I had sex with you! How was this something I didn’t need to know?”

  “And that was a terrible thing I did to you,” I replied, reddening with the memory. “I’m sorry, Meggy—I betrayed your trust in the basest way possible, and I don’t know how to make it right—”

  “You didn’t betray my trust,” she interrupted, and took a sip of coffee. “Honestly, I was wondering what took you so long.”

  I sputtered for a moment before managing, “You were engaged.”

  “I loved you!” she blurted, then looked away, embarrassed.

  Cautiously, trying to avoid a face covered in hot coffee, I took her free hand. “And I loved you, too, Meggy. I still do. That’s why I left.” Her angry eyes snapped back to mine. “I thought you wanted to be with Jack, and that what . . . happened with us was just a terrible, drunken mistake. You couldn’t even speak to me—”

  “I was trying to process everything. Deciding how I was going to break it off with Jack, and what my parents were going to say, and—”

  “I thought I was doing the right thing,” I said lamely. “That’s all. I . . . you were with him, I didn’t want to get in the way . . .”

  “You could have talked to me about it like an adult!”

  I started to counter that, gave up, tried again, and finally realized that it was futile. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  The hurt had begun to overpower her anger. “Do you have any idea how many times I called Father Paul, trying to find you? And then he left, too, and that was it, no note, no number, no way to track you down. And I was stuck.” She looked away. “Don’t get me wrong, I liked Jack. He was a sweet guy, and we . . . well, we made the best of the time he had left. We got married that September—poor thing had to wear a wig, but he was hopeful that the treatment would work. And Jack was thrilled when I told him I was pregnant. He thought we were having a miracle baby, and I didn’t have it in me to tell him otherwise.” Meggy’s eyes softened. “But he loved Olive so much. Did everything he could for her, at least for those two weeks we had her. And then we woke up one morning, and she was gone. Not a trace. Nothing. He tried so hard to live long enough to see her home, but he didn’t make it. And I . . .” She sighed. “I couldn’t stay in Coleridge once Jack was gone. Moved east, dropped his name, tried to find my daughter, tried to move on.”

  Meggy looked back at me, her lip trembling. “I used to imagine that she’d come home, just turn up one day, and everything would be wonderful. And that you’d find me, and we’d . . . you know, be a family.” She blushed even as she said it, and the tears began to fall. “Stupid, huh?”

  “No, that’s not stupid . . .”

  I tried to pull her to me, but she stiffened and freed herself from my grasp, then set her mug on the coffee table and wiped her face with her sleeve. “It was stupid,” she insisted. “I loved a lie, and you . . .” Her lip began to work in spite of her best efforts. “I don’t even know your real name.”

  “Coileán,” I said quietly. “It’s just an older version of Colin. I . . . it was easier, with the spelling . . .”

  She nodded. “Leffee. Le Fay.”

  I glanced at the ceiling to avoid her stare. “Needed something in a pinch, and it worked. I’d spent a lot of time in Ireland, and it sounded plausible to anyone who didn’t know better.”

  Her face screwed up. “Why Ireland?”

  “My father was Irish. It . . . seemed as good a place as any. Like Coleridge.”

  “Wait, are you saying your dad was—”

  “Mortal, yeah. Normal, if you prefer. I’m only half fae.”

  “And he hooked up with a faerie?” she pressed.

  I grimaced. “Not knowingly. It’s complicated.”

  “Huh. Like mother, like son, I guess.”

  The comment stung, but I tried not to show it. “Meggy, I’m sorry—”

  “Because, speaking as the mortal in this relationship, that’s something I would have liked to know up front.”

  “I swear to you, I didn’t take you to California to get in your pants.”

  Her smirk proved the lie. “Maybe not, but you didn’t seem to mind once we started.”

  “That’s . . . fair, I suppose,” I muttered, my face burning more than I thought possible.

  “Oh, come on, I was young, not blind. But all that’s history, I guess.” She picked up her coffee again and stared into its depths. “You said your mother kidnapped Olive. Why would she do that?”

  “She’s trying to get to me. There’s a lot of bad blood between us. I think she’s using Olive as a pawn.”

  Meggy frowned at that. “But now she’s returned her. What’s that supposed to mean, she got tired of the whole plan and gave up?”

  “No. She took a spoiled little girl who grew up with anything she could possibly want, tossed her out on the streets of Rigby, and told her not to come back unless she brought something Mother wants—which I can only suppose is me. And Olive is desperate to go home.”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  “Mother raised her as her own. Olive wants to go back there, where everything is lovely and fluffy and pink.”

  Meggy put the mug back on its coaster and pushed it away, then folded her arms. “I want justice. That bitch stole my child. I want her to suffer.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible—”

  “She stole your child, too!” she protested. “You’re not just going to let her get away with it, are you?” She stood and began to pace across the living room. “I mean, she’s your mom, I understand that, but it doesn’t seem like the two of you are close—”

  “Believe me, we’re not.”

  “All the better. So she’s of Tita
nia’s court, yes? If she was hiding Olive in Faerie, she’d have to be.” Meggy glanced at my face, mistook my expression for surprise, and said, “You deal with enough wizards, you begin to pick a few things up. I know a bit about the courts. So I guess the next step would be . . . go to Titania? Drag your mom in and get a confession out of her? Help me out, here.”

  “You’d be right, except for one problem,” I said, trying to ignore the look of hope in her eyes. “My mother is Titania. There’s no one who can hold her in check.”

  Meggy stared at me, mouth slightly agape, then shouted, “Your mother is the fucking faerie queen? Christ, Colin, I did not sign up for . . .” She suddenly paused in her rant, looked at me queerly, then headed for the bookcase on the far side of the room. Squatting down, she rummaged through the detritus of the bottom shelf, then pulled out a scuffed black binder and began to flip through the pages.

  “What’s that?” I asked, standing for a better look and seeing nothing but tabs.

  “Guide,” she muttered. “My friend put it together for me . . . people to avoid in my work . . .”

  “Which is?”

  “Magical books,” she replied absently, continuing to hunt in her binder. “Picked up the gist of the bookselling thing from you, and my friend set me up with this niche market. Ah, here.” She paused, then turned the binder around to show me a copy of a manuscript page with a sketch I had seen many times before, usually in the hands of an irate wizard. “Recognize this?”

  I made a face. “It was the fifteenth century, and he couldn’t draw for shit.”

  “That’s you, though?” I nodded, and she took the binder back, avoiding the steel rings in the spine. Time, apparently, hadn’t made Meggy’s allergy any less severe. “Coileán Ironhand,” she said, glancing at the next page of typed notes. “‘Fae—son of Titania and unknown father. Very dangerous. Can be deadly if provoked. Do not attempt’—and that bit’s underlined—’do not attempt to use him as an agent, no matter how difficult the search. Does not deal with wizards, will probably know if you try to hide it. Best avoided. Unknown motives.’” She closed the binder and met my stare. “Well? Care to rebut?”