Stranger Magics

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “Well, at least going through must have taken the bind off,” she continued, oblivious to my distress. “I’m sure it’ll take some adjustment, but there are worse things than finding out you’re half fae . . .”

  “She’s in the wrong court.”

  Toula paused and cocked her head. “What do you—”

  “I think she’s Oberon’s. Maybe not his, not directly, but no one outside the Three is strong enough to work an undetectable enchantment that strong, and he’s the only redhead among them. Meggy’s family is all dark,” I told her, seeing the realization begin to dawn. “She had to get that hair from someone.”

  “Oh, shit,” Toula whispered, then darted into her room, grabbed a black duffel bag and her purse, and ran for the front door.

  Chapter 8

  “You think that girl is my sister?”

  I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Robin’s eyes narrow. “Did you get a good look at her? Plus, there was a heavy bind on her—enchantment, not spellcraft—and I never noticed.”

  “What a surprise. You’re dense, but what else is new?”

  I checked the side mirror, saw that our would-be Templar was following closely, and noted with relief that he had packed the armor away. His bike was actually a black-and-chrome trike towing an extra luggage trailer, but Joey seemed unabashed by the situation. Whatever the third wheel detracted in terms of coolness was restored by the arming sword strapped to Joey’s back.

  “It’s not his fault,” said Toula. Both of us started—I thought ours had been a private conversation for linguistic reasons—and she smirked and shook her head. “I can read runeworks, you know. Fae’s a walk in the park by comparison.”

  Robin’s lip twitched into a brief snarl. “Your accent’s weird.”

  “And so’s your face, but I’m being polite about it. Jackass,” she muttered, and gave me a look when I cut my eyes to the passenger seat. “It was definitely enchantment. I know the difference. So tell me, genius,” she continued, turning to face Robin, “what are the odds that a redheaded woman from a family of brunettes, a woman with a strong and nearly invisible bind on her, a woman with a serious iron allergy who gets a few years knocked off her face when she runs into Faerie, isn’t kin to you?” She flopped back into her seat and folded her arms. “We should find Oberon and let him know about this. If Meg’s his daughter, then he’d help us save her.”

  Robin chuckled. “Even if you’re right about the woman, which I’m not conceding, why would he trouble himself over her? Do you have any idea how many siblings I’ve had?”

  Toula scowled, then dug in her bag and produced a spiral notebook. After a brief search through the tabs, she said, “Eight hundred seventeen known, possibly up to fourteen hundred. Records get spotty after a certain point.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Father’s had at least one a year since he came of age, as far as I know. Mother’s record is more like one a decade. You might want to update your notes.”

  “You said you were going to give me directions,” I interjected, looking at Toula before she and Robin could start a true fight.

  She waved one hand at the windshield. “It’s up the road a bit, on the coast. Place called Rigby. You know how to get there?”

  “Well, I live there, so yes.”

  Toula frowned. “Rick never told me that. I would have thought he’d known about you. He keeps track of so many halves and . . . uh . . .”

  “Mongrels?” Robin supplied.

  “The polite term is witch-blood,” she snapped. “But if you want to be crass about it, go ahead, you’re not hurting my feelings. Just don’t try it with Rick, or I’ll shove a wand so far up your—”

  “Okay, new car rule,” I interrupted. “You two can’t antagonize each other, no matter how strong the temptation.”

  Toula glowered back at me. “But—”

  “My Honda, my rules. I can’t break up fights and keep us on the road at the same time.”

  “It’s not that difficult,” Robin muttered.

  “It is if you’re not relying on magic to drive your car for you,” I retorted.

  “And this drive is completely unnecessary . . .”

  I let it go. Convincing my brother that we needed to drive in order to preserve what little magic was left took nearly twenty minutes. Yes, making an intra-realm gate would have been a much faster way to get to Rigby, but all three of us could sense the levels dropping, even as we stood in Meggy’s driveway and argued. In the end, Toula’s logic had prevailed. “You have no idea how to undo your mess,” she told Robin, “but I can read the tracers, and to do that, I need a new wand. So you can either sit here and think about what a colossal screwup you’ve made, or you can come with us, our way.”

  Her way meant my car—Toula’s van had almost overheated on the short drive back to Meggy’s house—and my way meant that Robin rode in the back. Toula had mentioned motion sickness, and I wasn’t about to let her ruin my semi-clean upholstery.

  Despite the empty seat, Joey insisted on taking his trike. He claimed that it couldn’t hurt to have another vehicle on standby, but his twitching eyes made it fairly evident that the idea of spending quality time in an enclosed space with two faeries and a wizard gave him pause.

  Honestly, I was impressed that he hadn’t run off when I gave him the out. I hadn’t lied when I told him that Paul wouldn’t have come along. The priest wasn’t young any longer, and even when he’d had the stamina to stay up for two days at a time, he’d had enough sense to choose his fights. Paul was an excellent associate—calm in times of difficulty, rational in matters outside his faith, and secure enough in himself to ask for assistance when necessary—but beyond the spiritual realm, he had never been a fighter. As I tracked the trike behind us, I wondered about his choice in assistants. Paul was clearly grooming Joey to replace him, but I didn’t yet know the boy well enough to decide what Paul had seen in him, other than a willing helper and a sword arm.

  At least he hadn’t tried to cast any of us into hell yet. Then again, the day was still young.

  I pulled into Rigby’s deserted downtown square shortly after ten that morning. The public parking lots were full, but the town’s old Methodist and Episcopal churches were still in session, and none of the downtown eateries would bother opening for another hour. One didn’t have to attend services in Rigby, but one wouldn’t find much entertainment in town otherwise, especially on a cool morning with clouds rolling in from the sea. Granted, the breakfast place and the coffee shop by the ragged boardwalk were certain to be at least half full, but they were located a respectful five blocks from the heart of the old town and the disapproving stares of the devout.

  As I circled the block, I spotted Mrs. Cooper’s rusting green Continental in its usual spot beside the Methodists’ front door. She had given up on dragging me along several years ago, but I suspected that she still prayed for me to change my mind.

  “Turn right on Third,” Toula directed, “and it’ll be at the corner of Jefferson.”

  I followed her blue-nailed finger with skepticism. “There’s nothing on this end of Jeff but a bar and some empty storefronts,” I told her, making the turn.

  “I know. Head for the bar and let me do the talking, okay? Rick’s not going to be too happy to see me.”

  “What, with your winsome disposition and abundant charm?” said Robin. “I can’t believe that.”

  “Bite me, Tink,” she muttered, and pointed to the half-occupied line of spaces outside of Slim’s. “Park there. Guess the bar opened early . . .”

  I did as bid. “No, these are from last night,” I explained, pulling in between a familiar pair of pickup trucks. “Slim’s decent about taking keys.”

  Her eyebrow arched. “They let him?”

  “The alternative is drinking at the beach bar, and no one wants to put up with that tiki bullshit.” I slid out of the car and stretched my legs as Joey puttered in two trucks down. “Your guy’s hiding around here?”

  She di
dn’t answer, but leaned against the car’s warm hood and pulled her phone out of her purse. “Hey, Rick, it’s Toula,” she said after a minute. “Yeah . . . I’m outside . . . yeah, I’m sorry, this is an emergency . . . I know, I’m trying to put it right . . . No, of course I didn’t do it! Sheesh . . . Yeah, I’m here because this dumbass faerie broke my wand . . .” She glowered at Robin, then stepped away from the car, talking in rapid spurts as she paced away. After a moment, she smiled and headed back toward us. “Aw, Rick, you’re the best. Ta.” She put the phone away and gestured toward the bar’s delivery door. “Give him a minute. He’s probably getting dressed.”

  Five minutes later, the door unlocked, and there stood Slim, baggy eyed and sleep mussed, wearing a tent-like Redskins T-shirt and shorts. He blinked in the morning sunlight, studied the small crowd outside the door, then shook his head and stepped aside. “Motley crew,” he muttered. “Y’all might as well come in. Mind the floor, I mopped last night.”

  “Have I ever told you that you’re fabulous?” Toula replied, sweeping past him into the dark bar.

  “Only when you need something.” He saw my confusion and nodded. “Missed you last night, Colin.”

  I forced my drooping jaw to rise. “Morning, uh . . . Rick?”

  “I answer to a few names,” he said, casting a wary eye on my brother as he followed Toula inside. “But you know how that game goes.” He waited until Joey crossed the threshold, then leaned closer to me, frowning. “Isn’t that the priest’s buddy?”

  “Seminarian,” I replied absently, trying to reconcile my quietly attentive bartender with the witch-blood craftsman Toula had promised.

  Slim snorted. “He’s cool with all of this?”

  “Still a little shocked, I think.”

  “Hmm. Well,” he said, heading for the door, “I usually have a strict limit of one faerie lord at a time in here, but I guess I can make an exception this once.”

  I smirked and followed him. “Do you, now?”

  “Absolutely. The premiums on this place would double otherwise.” He closed the door and locked it, then muttered, “Please tell me you have him on some sort of leash.”

  I cast my eye toward the bar and spotted Robin sitting happily in front of a

  bottle of Glenfiddich and a pint glass. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  Slim grunted and turned his attention to Toula, who had taken a seat on the splintering lip of the karaoke stage. “Total loss?”

  “Total,” she replied, glaring at Robin, who was too engrossed with his whisky and a jar of cocktail onions to notice. “There wasn’t even a core to salvage. I’m sorry . . .”

  He waved her apology aside and, with a weary sigh, headed behind the bar. “It’s fine. I’ve got enough in reserve to make you a sufficient core.”

  She stood and rubbed the back of her neck. “I, uh . . . I’m a little short on funds at the moment, Rick . . .”

  “The installment plan is fine. Colin, come with me,” he ordered, hoisting the trapdoor to the beer cellar.

  Toula and I exchanged a quick look. “I beg your pardon?” I said.

  Slim beckoned me toward the hole with two doughy fingers. “You and I need to settle your tab before you run off and get yourself killed,” he explained. “My ledger’s downstairs. Fotoula, you stay here and take care of your, um . . . associates, okay?”

  She cringed at the name. “Can’t I just—”

  “How many times do I have to say delicate process before it sinks in, girl?” he interrupted. “Colin’s not going to mess up the energy down there. You are. So make yourself useful and . . . you know.” He cocked his thumb in Robin’s direction. “Keep an eye on my top shelf, yeah?”

  Slim descended into the basement without another word, leaving me little choice but to follow him into the darkness. At the foot of the stairs, my loafer touched concrete, and Slim pulled the cord for the bare bulb hanging above us. “Clear off,” he instructed, waiting until I had stepped away from the staircase before pressing a button in the wall. With a slight mechanical whine, the trapdoor in the ceiling closed and locked, and the staircase folded upward to bar the exit. “I don’t want to be disturbed,” he said, heading for a second trapdoor on the far side of the room, directly under the stage.

  I stumbled after him, wishing for one of the newfangled cell phones with their large, glowing screens. Aside from the problem of the rapidly dwindling reserve of magic, I surmised that it would be in poor form to create a fire in a craftsman’s workshop.

  As if sensing my thoughts, he pulled another cord at the bottom of the second wooden staircase, and the red ceiling bulb revealed the chaos of his office. Heavily laden oak shelves, no two units alike, lined both of the walls and stretched back into the shadows. A long, well-scuffed table occupied the middle of the room, supporting half a hardware store’s worth of saws, knives, and instruments I couldn’t name. A fat, leather-bound book rose on a low stand over the clutter—probably handwritten, I thought, glancing at the script, and at least a few centuries old—while a black boom box with early nineties bulk and angles squatted silently at the far end of the table. The unventilated room, packed to the ceiling with magic-channeling materials, reeked of citronella so strongly that I coughed.

  “Sorry about the light,” said Slim, heading for a cluster of wooden rods on the nearest shelf. “Some of the shit down here is photosensitive, and red’s the color least likely to set off an explosion. Also good for photography development,” he added, pointing to an empty clothesline strung up between the two walls of shelves. “Haven’t done much lately, but when I do, this place is great. Ah, here we go.” He held a thin rod to the light, squinted, then nodded. “White pine. Not my first choice, but it’ll do in a pinch.”

  I stepped out of his way as he carried the rod toward the one stool pulled up to the table. “So . . . how bad’s my damage?”

  Slim’s bulk overflowed the stool when he sank onto it, but he paid the creaking wood no mind. “About a grand and a half,” he said, strapping a magnifier to his head with a Velcro band, then fitted the rod into an angled holster with its fat end raised toward his face. “Don’t worry, you haven’t beggared me yet.”

  I reached for my wallet, but hesitated. It would be simple enough to create the money, as I usually did—Slim never made a peep when I paid him in stacks of new twenties and fifties, even if the serial numbers all tended to match—but with the situation, prudence called for me to dip into my bank account. That was well and good, but I hadn’t brought a check with me, and I didn’t see anything in the workshop that could read my seldom-used bank card. “I don’t have the cash today,” I began, “but would you take a check? I could run back to my place . . .”

  He flipped the magnifying lenses over his eyes and picked up a tiny hand drill. “The money’s not important right now,” he muttered, applying the drill to the base of the wooden rod—an embryonic wand, I gathered. “We need to have a little chat about your posse upstairs.”

  I looked around for a stool, found none, and resigned myself to leaning against an almost clean section of the table, far from Slim’s metal drills. “Toula explained the situation?”

  “Roughly,” he replied, raising his voice slightly as the drill did its work. “Didn’t need much. I felt it when Faerie closed. Like a silent concussion, you know?” he added, sparing me a quick look. “I take it you were there? How bad was it locally?”

  I swiped a bit of sawdust onto the floor. “Honestly, I was too preoccupied to notice much. And I plowed into a chair headfirst at about that moment, so I suppose I overlooked the etheric event.”

  Slim grunted. “Well, I felt it, and I guarantee you that anyone with the slightest sensitivity on the East Coast did, too. Hell, this thing probably registered worldwide. You’re going to have the Arcanum up your ass in short order, you know.”

  “I was planning on avoiding them until we right this.”

  He paused, blew the dust from the rod, then frowned and recommenced drilling.
“And how, pray tell, is that going to go down?”

  “Won’t know until we get the magic read, will we?”

  Slim stopped working and gave me a puzzled stare, his fat lenses glowing red in the naked bulb’s light like the eyes of a demonic owl.

  “Toula was reading the traces of it before her wand was ruined,” I told him. “She said that whatever closed the gates looked like a mixture of spellcraft and enchantment.”

  “I’d trust that reading,” he said, bending back to his task. “Kid’s got a solid head on her shoulders—from a technical standpoint, she’s fantastic.”

  “And bound.”

  He stopped again, but he put the drill aside that time. “She tell you why?”

  “Apollonios Pavli?”

  Slim whistled softly. “Yeah. Daddy Dearest.”

  “Who’s the mother?”

  “One of his assistants, I heard. She dropped the kid and ran once the Arcanum caught him. It was either kill the baby or bind her, and Harrison’s not the type to kill without good cause.” He plucked the wand from its holster, examined the core he had drilled, then nodded to himself and reached for a little baby food jar across the table. “Toula was a good kid. Arcanum reared her. Never any trouble.”

  “But the bind stays?”

  He unscrewed the jar’s top. “A hand-reared wolf is still a wolf, Colin. If you’re going to be dealing with her, don’t forget that.” He produced a tiny metal scoop from the detritus on the table and began to carefully transfer the brown powder in the jar into the hollowed-out wand, one infinitesimal spoonful at a time. “I’m the only craftsman authorized to make wands for her, and that’s only because Harrison knows I can keep my mouth shut.”

  “About her?”

  “About this.” He tapped the scoop against the side of the jar. “Know what’s in here?”

  I peered at the faded label. “Guessing that’s not sweet potatoes.”

  Slim’s lips twitched into a brief smirk, the closest he ever came to a smile. “Close enough. You ever see Dumbo?”