Stranger Magics

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  Even with the connection broken, my body ached. I stumbled into the kitchen, where I found Joey crouched over his luggage, hurriedly slipping into a clean black shirt and clerical collar. “What are you—” I began, but he shook his head to silence me and pointed to the door. A moment later, he tucked his shirt into his jeans, pulled his crucifix necklace into position, took a deep breath, and cracked the door open. “Yes?” he asked.

  Mrs. Cooper peeked around him and caught a glimpse of my face. “Gracious, Mr. Leffee, you look dreadful!” she cried, covering her well-rouged lips with one hand. “What on earth happened? I saw your car parked downtown this morning, and I . . . well . . . I suppose . . .”

  I suppose you had too much to drink, and that bartender made you take a cab was the end of that thought, but my head felt too fuzzy to come up with a convincing story on the fly. Five minutes with Toula had drained my last reserve, and I leaned against the counter for support, trying not to give her cause to come in and drag me to a doctor.

  Mercifully, Joey stepped into the breach. “I’m terribly sorry, ma’am, but it’s not safe for you to be here right now,” he murmured, sliding between Mrs. Cooper and me. “This is an active exorcism. Please, for your own safety, you need to leave the premises.”

  Mrs. Cooper’s pale eyes widened. “An exorcism?”

  Joey nodded, and I realized he had dropped his voice half an octave when he replied. “I’m Father Joseph Bolin, assistant to Father Paul McGill.”

  Her brow scrunched, and I added, “Top exorcist in the area. Called in specially.”

  Joey glanced at me in acknowledgment, then back at my visitor. “This is a very sensitive case. Brother Colin has been assisting us, but as you see”—he inclined his head in my direction—“the strain is almost too great even for him, and he’s young and strong. We’ve taken a quick break, but you really must go.”

  She stared at us, speechless, and I realized that she was buying it. “The girl,” I said. “The one you found? It was worse than I thought. She . . . poor kid, she . . .”

  Joey put a steadying hand on my shoulder. “The Evil One is never worse than when he preys upon the innocent.”

  Mrs. Cooper twisted her purse’s thin strap between finger and thumb. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “With the Lord’s help, yes.” Joey reached across the threshold and clasped her hands tightly. “Colin tells me you’re strong in the faith. Bless you, sister. The best thing you can do now is pray for her.”

  “I will, I will,” she rushed, her head bobbing like a toy. “Of course. If you need anything . . . I could call Reverend Martin, he’s a wonderful man of God . . .”

  “We’ll let you know,” Joey replied, gently but firmly, and with a final squeeze of reassurance, he sent Mrs. Cooper on her way. When she was speed walking back to her building—Eunice Cooper was a lady, and ladies did not run—he shut and locked the door, then leaned against it and exhaled. “Close, man. And she’s right, you look like shit.”

  I slumped to the floor, succumbing to the vertigo that had been threatening for the last two minutes. “Tough work in there. Want to check on them? I’d go, but the floor’s moving.”

  “Yeah, sure.” He stepped over my legs, then slipped around the cut-out wall into the living room. A moment later, Joey leaned through the window and said, “They’re out cold. Were we expecting this?”

  “No,” I sighed, wishing my building weren’t being tossed at sea.

  “Want me to try to wake them?”

  “Are they breathing?” I mumbled into my palms.

  “Breathing, pulses, but no reaction to light. I held their eyes open, but they didn’t even flinch.”

  “They’re probably just exhausted.”

  “I don’t know about—”

  I forced myself to crane my neck upward and meet his worried eyes. “Big spell. Mediocre wizard. Faerie. Exhausted.”

  Joey shrugged. “If you say so. Go on, get some rest. I’ll take first watch.”

  When I managed to pull myself out of bed again, Joey was sitting alone at the kitchen table, playing solitaire. Half a cold hamburger sat on a plate to his left, forgotten in his concentration on the spread, and he jumped when I cleared my throat. “Any sign of waking?” I asked, heading for the refrigerator.

  “Not a peep. I covered them up, but your brother’s still on the floor. Didn’t exactly have a place to move him. And are you really making a—”

  “Bloody Mary, yes,” I finished for him, pulling a bag of celery from the crisper. “This is one of life’s great cure-alls, Joey, and you need to respect it.” I held out my empty glass in invitation, but he shook his head. “Not much of a drinker, are you?”

  “Not a fan of tomato juice,” he explained. “But seeing as it’s after five, if you’re pouring . . .”

  I glanced at the microwave clock, then out the kitchen door, where the frosted panes revealed the growing dusk. “Damn. Sorry about that. The spell really took it out of me,” I said, rummaging through the liquor cabinet under the counter. “Where the hell is . . . ah. Good.” I produced a half bottle of Belvedere and poured generously. “What are you drinking?”

  “Guess there’s no chance of a Bellini, is there?”

  I stopped, put the bottle down, and stared at him.

  Joey smiled sheepishly. “Worth a shot, right?”

  He cracked open the can of beer I handed him as I finished my dinner preparations. “Father said you’re a bit of a lush.”

  “Father probably didn’t tell you the half of it. Cheers.” I hoisted my glass and chugged it back, then grimaced as the full force hit. While he returned to the sad remnants of his burger, I began to make a second drink. “You’re taking this whole situation unexpectedly well.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. It took Paul two months to look me in the eye. His predecessor got spooked and ‘accidentally’ spilled a bottle of holy water on me. His predecessor carried around an iron bar for the first decade of our acquaintance, just to be safe. I still have it, actually. Handy little memento.” I stirred, tasted, then added more vodka. “So what’s different about you?”

  Joey took a bite of his dinner and chewed slowly before speaking. “No one’s tried to kill me yet, I suppose. That goes a long way toward establishing a working rapport.”

  “Just keep your eye on Robin. Toula seems level enough for now.” I pulled out the chair beside him. “Any burgers left?”

  “Two in the fridge. I can go for more,” he said, pushing himself up, but I waved the offer away, and he sank back into his seat. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  He wiped his hands and began to clean up the cards. “You guys were saying something about two people trapped in Faerie, right? That’s what all this is about?”

  “Partly.” I created a fire in my hand, but the flame was barely larger than a match. “Magic flows into this realm from Faerie. With the realm sealed off, we’re running out. That’s why those two are still sleeping—we’re working with almost nothing, and the strain of it was awful.”

  “And we . . . want to be connected?”

  That gave me pause. “Yes and no,” I said after a moment of thought. “While I’m almost positive this realm would be better off without faerie intrusions, it’s the price you pay for magic.”

  “But do we need magic?” he asked. “I mean, yeah, I can understand why you three might want it, but it’s not doing much for the rest of us, you know?”

  “And that’s where you’re wrong.” I sighed. “There’s the Gray Lands to consider.”

  “The what?”

  “The Gray Lands. It’s the third known realm, sort of a dark reflection of Faerie. Each has its own set of unpleasant natives—we’re just prettier.” Joey smirked at that, and I shrugged. “It doesn’t take fangs to kill you. But whatever sealed off Faerie didn’t seal off the Gray Lands, and as soon as the juice dries up, the Arcanum’s safeguards on the gates are going to fail.”

  Joe
y grimaced as he stuffed the cards into their box. “So if we don’t get the connection fixed, what happens to you?”

  “Not much. I’m not going to shrivel up and die, if that’s what you were implying. I’m just going to have to move more often, since, you know . . .” I pointed to my face. “I look pretty damn good for my age.”

  He nodded. “And who are the two we’re trying to rescue?”

  I took a long drink. “My daughter,” I said quietly. “And her mother. I barely know the one, and I never stopped loving the other. So here I am.”

  “Meg, right?”

  “Yeah. Meg.”

  “And Toula knows her, too?”

  “So she says, yes.” I drank again, then wiped the thin film of tomato off my mouth. “Look, Joey, you don’t have to do this—”

  “Forget it,” he interrupted. “I’m in. Damsels in distress and all that, you know. Right thing to do. We’ve been over this.” He began to take a bite of his burger, but paused. “Robin wasn’t really planning to wreck your place, was he?”

  “Of course he was,” I replied, leaning back in my chair. “He’s been waiting for the opportunity for years. Little bastard’s one of the reasons why I built wards in the first place.”

  “Oh. Then I suppose all of that talk about killing him . . .”

  “Never make a threat you don’t mean to carry out.”

  Before Joey could ask another question, Toula slunk into the room. “Got the spell,” she muttered, heading for the sink.

  I waited while she downed about a quart of water. “Great. How do we break it? Or is it going to fail first?”

  “Not going to fail. It’s the only thing with a connection to Faerie at the moment.” Ignoring my quiet profanity, she put the glass in the sink, belched, then rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “Wake Tink. He’s going to love this.”

  Robin slept like the dead that evening, but when a few strong shakes wouldn’t rouse him, Joey got creative. “No one push me,” he warned, pulling his sword from its scabbard. “I don’t want to actually touch him, but if I get close enough . . .”

  He held the blade half an inch from Robin’s hand, and my brother began to twitch in his sleep. After a moment, his eyes cracked open, and seeing the cause of his discomfort, he jerked his hand away and rolled toward the television. “What the hell are you doing?” he snapped as Joey put the sword up.

  “Sorry,” I said, stepping between them as Robin scrambled to his feet. “Toula wants to talk to us. You wouldn’t wake up.”

  He stared at me, aghast. “A slap in the face, Coileán. A bucket of water. Maybe a light electric jolt. But moon and stars, a damn sword?”

  “Kid wasn’t going to touch you,” I replied. “That’s why he was holding it instead of Toula. Or me.” Smiling, I flopped onto the couch. “But now that you’re awake, let’s see what we’re dealing with, eh?”

  Muttering curses in Fae, Robin slunk to the far side of the couch, and Joey pulled up a chair. Toula, who stood by the coffee table, picked up the black box and began passing it from hand to hand. “It took some doing, but I think I was able to dissect the trap.”

  “Oh, let’s hope,” said Robin, folding his arms. “Because if I did that for nothing—”

  “God, you complain,” she huffed. “Here’s the sitch, guys. The spellcraft component of that mess was primarily aimed at Faerie—it’s like a wall between the realms. A second skin.”

  “Can you do that with a spell?” I asked, frowning.

  “Not a spell. There’s about thirty different ones working in tandem—it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and it’s a massive construction. Punching through it would take work and a considerable amount of power, and at the rate things are going, we have neither of those, so we have no choice but to try to work on the enchantment component, because they’re connected. Don’t ask me how the parties responsible for this disaster got that much enchantment and spellcraft working together without turning their workshop into a crater, but they did it. The one feeds the other—the enchantment is the portion drawing power from Faerie, and the spell’s siphoning power off the enchantment. Seriously,” she added, bouncing the box in her palm, “this thing needs to be studied and taught.”

  “Assuming we live that long,” I replied. “Okay, how do we break the enchantment? Can’t punch through it either, can we?”

  “Not a chance,” she agreed. “But there’s a lock built into it.”

  “A lock?” asked Joey.

  She nodded. “Think of the fairy tales you know—the spell’s broken with true love’s kiss, or whatever. Yeah?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “That’s a lock,” Toula explained. “The key is the kiss. Now, ordinarily, we don’t build locks into our work—we just use enough power to overload the spell and break it apart. But if you’re dealing with a massive spell that you can’t easily overpower, you build a lock in as a safety measure. It’s like having an emergency shutdown button.”

  “And what’s the key in this case?” I interjected.

  “Again, this in the enchantment portion, so I can only guess I’ve read it correctly . . .” She sighed. “It’ll take one of you from each court. If we can find someone to stand for each, plus a decent amount of magic, you’ll be able to open the lock. Once that happens, the enchantment will fall apart, and the binding spells will go down. Dominoes.”

  “Right, then, we work quickly,” I said. “I can stand for Titania, and Robin’s clearly with Oberon. Slim told me his father was from Mab’s court . . .”

  But Toula shook her head. “We need three who can control the power it’ll take to open the way. Rick’s useless on that count. You’re going to need at least a half faerie, not a witch-blood.”

  “Damn it,” I muttered. “And even if we do find the third, where are we supposed to get enough magic to unlock this, anyway?”

  The wizard smirked and folded her arms. “Want to tell me where you hid the diary?”

  Chapter 10

  When I rummaged through the books I had taken from Meggy’s house, I had a moment’s fleeting panic that the diary, somehow knowing that I planned to give it to a person who could use it, would hide itself from me. But it sat where I had left it, wedged between two thick bestiaries of creatures that hadn’t been seen in that realm since Rome fell. The smell of magic was definite but faint, like an odor more remembered than sensed. Whatever protection had been placed on the diary was failing along with my wards.

  And the wizard’s bind, the soft voice in the back of my mind insisted, but I pushed it aside and brought Toula her prize.

  She sat on the couch, wrapped in a plaid afghan, and took the box from my hands with as much reverence as if I’d just offered her a stone tablet from Sinai. “Do you have gloves?” she asked. “I don’t want to get oil all over this.”

  I pulled a pair of white reading gloves and a set of foam blocks from my desk, and Toula gently unpacked the diary. Joey had pulled my desk chair closer but kept his distance from Toula, while Robin had stalked off to the fire escape to sulk about his rude awakening.

  “I’ve lost days in the Arcanum’s library,” she said, carefully flipping through the front pages. “This is nice vellum—you can barely see the pores.” She ran a gloved finger over the hide. “Whoever made this got all the hair off, too, thank God. I hate furry books. Creeps me out.”

  Joey leaned closer, his curiosity piqued, but my attention was caught by the neat lines of black ink covering the page Toula had revealed. “That was blank the last time I saw it,” I murmured.

  She glanced up from her work and nodded. “Protective spells are failing. Want a look?”

  I slid next to her on the couch and peered at the script. “At least he wrote in Latin. I was afraid he’d have gone with something more exotic for security.”

  “This was Simon Magus, not da Vinci,” she replied. “With the spells on this, he wouldn’t have needed to write upside down and backward.”

  “I’m sorry, whose diar
y is this?” Joey interjected, retreating slightly from the book.

  Toula smirked. “Simon Magus the Younger, not the one you’re thinking of. He served as grand magus during the Great War.”

  The boy’s brow wrinkled. “Then why was he writing on vellum?”

  “Wrong Great War,” I explained, seeing his confusion. “Not World War I.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” said Toula. “The Great War spanned the first half of the eleventh century. Basically, all of these little arcana had been fighting each other for power until the Arcanum started to take over, and so they fought against consolidation for fifty-odd years. The Magus was instrumental in the Arcanum’s victory.”

  Toula cracked her knuckles and turned the page. “The man was a genius. The official version of the story is that the Arcanum won the war because of the nobility of our cause, the rightness of our hearts, et cetera.” I snorted at that, but Toula ignored it. “The real reason they won is that the Magus built about a dozen instruments that were capable of containing and releasing magic—not energy, but pure, raw magic.” Joey cocked his head, so Toula explained, “Say that you have two bands of wizards standing out in a field, throwing lightning at each other. They’re going to be set for a time, but eventually, the rate of magic expenditure in that localized area will surpass the flow rate of magic. It’s like drawing from a reservoir during a drought—you’re taking water faster than you replace it. Get it?”

  Joey frowned. “I guess. And these devices . . .”

  “Deployed on our side when the levels reached a critical low. When the two sides could no longer fight effectively, the Arcanum brought out the batteries and smoked the opposition. Maybe not the most sporting way of waging a war, but it was pretty damn effective. And this”—she gingerly patted the open diary—“should tell us how to make them.”

  The boy’s frown deepened. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but if the magic . . . reservoir . . . is almost gone as it stands . . .”