Stranger Magics

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  Grivam nodded to her in acknowledgement. “Your willingness is most appreciated,” he said, “but alas, Ilunna is particular in her partners. She wishes a male.”

  At that, the three of us turned to Joey, who had been watching uncomprehendingly as we negotiated. “Shit,” Toula muttered to me, “you want to ask him?”

  I sighed and switched tongues. “Joey, buddy, we need you to do us a favor.”

  “Uh . . . okay.” He kept one eye on Grivam, as if waiting to be attacked.

  “That fellow right there is king of the merrow,” I explained, sliding closer to the boy. “And his little girl is all grown up and looking for new experiences.”

  Joey’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t follow.”

  I tried to choose the most delicate phrasing. “The merrow are kind of a . . . well, a free-loving sort of people, if you get me.” He nodded slowly, and I said, “Having sex, for them, is kind of like giving an extended hug with a chance of long-term complications. It doesn’t have the same sort of baggage for them that it does for . . . you know . . .”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Well, there comes a point in most young merrows’ lives when they start getting a little, uh . . . adventurous, shall we say? I’ve been with a few”—Joey glanced at Grivam in alarm—“and I’m pretty sure that Robin—”

  “Six,” he offered.

  “This isn’t a competition,” I muttered, turning back to Joey. “Look, Grivam’s daughter really wants to get with a human guy. And she wants someone young—I’ve already been shot down,” I hastened to add. “We all have. You’re kind of the last hope for us to get the thing we’ve been driving for two days to retrieve.”

  Joey flushed scarlet. “You’re not really breaking any vows or anything,” I hastened to add. “I mean, she’s not even your species—”

  “That makes it worse!” he managed to shout. “And she . . . I . . . he . . .”

  “They’re shape-shifters,” I explained quietly. “Trust me, whatever comes out of the water isn’t going to look a damn thing like him, okay? And she’s nineteen, so everything’s nice and legal. Please, Joey, I hate to ask, but . . .”

  He gave me a long, hard stare, then barely nodded. “Okay,” he whispered. “But we never speak of this again, understood?”

  I clasped his shoulder, then turned back to Grivam. “He’s willing, just shy. When should we expect her?”

  The old merrow smiled. “She will come ashore at midnight,” he replied, then slipped beneath the waves.

  “Maybe he needs some pointers,” Toula said, sipping on the dregs of the third margarita Vinnie had poured her since our return. “Performance anxiety, you know? I’ve had to walk virgins through it, and trust me, that’s no fun for either party . . .”

  “Who said he’s a virgin?” I replied, knocking back a beer.

  Robin chuckled. “If he’s not, then surely he’s out of practice.”

  “Well, I’m not about to explain anything to him.” I glanced around the bar, which had emptied right on schedule. Oberon had driven his regulars away on some pretense, and even the lovely Vinnie had been relieved of duty for the night. “Maybe we should make sure he’s not having second thoughts,” I began, but then Ilunna appeared in the shallows.

  The lights of the bar gave just enough illumination for me to make out a thin, pale face and long, dark hair. Joey stopped pacing a trench into the sand and stared as she swam closer, then began tottering her way up the slope. He ran into the water to help her, and with slow steps, they made their way onto land, Joey sodden, Ilunna naked and clinging to him as she tested her balance on unsteady feet. She turned her eyes up to him and smiled, and the kid smiled back. It was too dark to see whether he was blushing, but I had my suspicions.

  Robin whistled beside me. “Not bad.”

  “Not bad indeed,” Toula replied, stretching out her glass. They clinked around me and drank, and I shook my head.

  By then, Joey was pointing toward a secluded stretch of beach, and Ilunna nodded. Neither could understand the other, but gesturing seemed to be working for the moment. I watched them stagger off together, pleased with myself for forcing shots upon Joey to build his confidence, then toasted the black horizon. “So, what do we do until they finish?” I asked the others.

  “You can start by paying me for the booze,” said Oberon, appearing from the storeroom. “After that, I don’t care. Watch and learn, if you like.” He shrugged. “This might be amusing.”

  Oberon owned all of the houses on the island, and Robin was able to snag a couch at his father’s place. Knowing better than to ask, Toula curled up in my car, and I kept vigil at the bar, finally turning on the cracked coffeepot I found in the storeroom as the sun rose. By the time the drip stopped, Joey was wandering up the beach, still damp and covered in a fine layer of white sand. “Morning,” I said, handing him a plastic tumbler full of black coffee. “You want a little Irish in that?” He nodded wordlessly, and I topped his drink off with a generous dose of whisky. “Cheers, kid,” I said, lifting my own tumbler, and he tapped his glass against it wearily.

  We sat side by side at the bar in silence, watching the sky lighten. As he finished his coffee, Joey began to brush the sand from his arms. “Sorry, little gritty.”

  “Understandable. We’ll check into a hotel in Key West,” I offered. “Let you shower and, uh . . . sleep?”

  “Haven’t yet. She, um . . . uh . . .”

  “Didn’t stop after round one?”

  “Exactly.”

  I hesitated. “Did everything, uh, work out?”

  He began to blush again. “She wasn’t . . . entirely sure about the mechanics.”

  “First time in that form, I think.”

  “Yeah.” Joey refilled his cup, and he’d reached for the whisky when we heard the sound of a splash and caught a glimpse of a gray tailfin. Something glinted at the water’s edge, and we abandoned our seats to investigate. As I approached, I found the source of the twinkling: a small golden orb, half buried in the sand. I picked it up and felt it thrum in my hands, and Joey stared. “Is that . . . is that what we’re after?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said softly, turning it over and feeling the faint runic lines scratched upon its surface. “And I know where we can find another.”

  I tried to smile at Joey, but the thought of the journey ahead left me feeling ill. It seemed my past was coming back to haunt me in more ways than one that week. There were too many buried memories from Sligo that I had no desire to exhume.

  But what choice did I have?

  Chapter 12

  Oberon opened his front door and leaned against a wooden porch pillar with his tanned arms folded, watching as Joey and I shuffled up the street. My car and Joey’s trike had mysteriously disappeared since dawn, and I was unsurprised to find both vehicles blocking Oberon’s driveway. “They’re in here,” he said, cocking his head toward the door, which the sun had bleached to pale lilac. “The witch went down the highway and bought doughnuts.”

  “That’s all it takes to get in your good graces?” I asked, trying not to drop Joey as we crossed the crabgrass lawn. The kid’s adrenaline had worn off, and with the whisky in his system, he was little better than dead on his feet.

  Oberon chuckled. “Who said anything about that? I want the lot of you out of here within the hour, understood?”

  I grunted, shifting Joey’s weight into a slightly less cumbersome position, then dragged him up the porch. “Mind if I drop the body for a minute?” He spread his hands in a mockery of largesse, and I deposited the kid on a stretch of semi-clean planking. “That’s generous of you, thanks.”

  “I’ve done more than my share already,” he replied, and cut his eyes to my bulging pants pocket with a flicker of interest. “Grivam delivered?”

  “As promised.” I stretched my back, wincing as my spine creaked. “Let me round up the others, and we’ll be off.”

  “Not so fast, Coileán.” He quietly closed the front door and nudged
Joey’s motionless foot with his flip-flop, then nodded to himself and pointed to the empty road. “Walk with me, boy,” he said, leading the way down the porch steps, and for lack of a better idea, I followed.

  We set off side by side down the road, making our slow way into the dawn. Oberon remained silent until we were several houses away from his, then said, as if an afterthought, “You forgot to mention Mab.”

  I kept my eyes on the bright horizon. “Didn’t want to give you anything else to worry about.”

  “I’m not bothered,” he replied, but his voice was tight, and he cleared his throat. “Did Titania ever tell you why we threw her out?”

  “She’s never told me much of anything.”

  “Obviously,” he sighed, squinting down the silent street. “It was the three of us for ages, you know, Titania and Mab and me. And it worked.”

  “What happened?”

  He paused on the side of the road and held up his fingers and thumbs in a triangle. “Three sides, all pushing on each other. As long as they push equally, nothing changes. That was us, all of us wanting more of Faerie, none of us strong enough to take it over the others.” He moved his thumbs out of the way and arched his eyebrow. “Take one of the three out of the equation, and the whole thing falls apart.”

  I nodded. “Mab grew too strong?”

  “No. I said to hell with it all.” He began to walk again, and I jogged a few steps to catch up. “Coileán, do you have any idea how infuriating it is to deal with a court? Everyone wants something, half of them are picking fights with the other half, and you never have a moment’s peace. It doesn’t stop.” A little breeze began to pick up from the sea, and Oberon absently pushed his tousled hair from his eyes. “I grew weary of it all. Mab sensed it—she wanted my place—and Titania couldn’t have that. If the two of them fought for power, they’d have ripped Faerie apart again, and honestly, I was too old to deal with that shit a second time.”

  “Why did you side with Titania?”

  Oberon shrugged slowly. “The sex was better.”

  “You . . .” I paused, rubbing my head. “You cast Mab’s entire court out of Faerie—”

  “For the sex, yes. That was part of it,” he replied. “Titania got what she wanted, I dealt with my court for as long as I could, and then I left.”

  “And took them with you.”

  “They could have defected to Titania’s court.”

  “Oh, come on,” I protested, “you know that wouldn’t have worked!”

  “Probably not. But they were free to try.” His foot sent a beer can careening off in the direction of a dead crab.

  I shaded my eyes with one hand, wishing I’d brought my sunglasses along on this stroll. “Robin’s desperate to go back, you realize.”

  “I do.” A bleached fast-food cup rolled along to join the can.

  “He’s doing his damnedest to get you back on the throne,” I pressed.

  Oberon shook his head. “A persistent fool is still a fool. I’m not going back.”

  “Then why not give it up?” I tried. “Pass the court to your eldest, let Robin and me work with him, and we’ll see if we can’t get the court back into Faerie . . .”

  I let my voice die when he started laughing. “My eldest?” he chortled, grinning as he cut his eyes to mine. “Robin is my eldest still living. If you think I’m giving him the court, you’ve lost all sense.”

  I made a face as I tried to imagine a world in which my brother wielded Oberon’s authority. “Understood,” I muttered. “But isn’t there someone else—”

  “Do you have any idea of my power?” he interrupted, pausing in his trek to face me. “Any real sense? That was rhetorical, Coileán, you don’t.” I closed my mouth, and Oberon rolled his eyes. “Faerie knows me. It knows who and what I am. It knows your mother and Mab in the same way. The realm itself gives us more than enough power to keep the peace. And that power, boy, is something that you cannot begin to imagine. Moon and stars,” he added with a snort, “why would I surrender that?”

  For the good of your court was on the tip of my tongue, but I recalled whom I was speaking with and kept my mouth shut.

  Oberon’s lips twitched as he gave me a quick stare of appraisal. “I’ve often wondered why Titania hasn’t killed you yet,” he said, abruptly turning to head back to the house. “She could, you know. You wouldn’t be the first of her children to predecease her.”

  I thought of Áedán, and of Mother’s eyes when I stood prisoner before her, how they had flashed like summer thunderheads with the promise of pain to come.

  “I suspect that I’m more fun to her alive and provokable,” I replied.

  He patted my shoulder. “Probably. So, boy, you think you can really get Faerie open again?”

  “I’m counting on it,” I muttered, feeling the slight weight in my pocket where the Magus’s device rested. It shifted against my leg as I walked, slightly warm to the touch and practically vibrating with magical potential. The impulse to draw from it that second was strong, but I suspected that we’d need every drop if we were to undo Mab’s work—especially if she had the power of Faerie itself in her corner.

  “Well, good luck,” said the old king. “You’ve got half an hour to vacate the premises.”

  As I showed the others our prize, I explained that I thought I knew where to find another in Ireland. After a bit of negotiation, we decided that Toula and Robin would stay at my apartment while I took a quick jaunt abroad, Toula to work on the diary and Robin to hold anything unsavory at bay. Since Robin had rummaged through Joey’s gear and found a fairly new passport, the kid would come with me—assuming that he didn’t run away the moment his hangover wore off, naturally.

  With Joey indisposed in the backseat of my car, Robin took over the trike duties, leaving me with Toula for company. As he sped north, she grabbed the keys from my hand and pointed to the passenger side. “You haven’t slept in at least twenty-four hours,” she reminded me.

  “No one drives my car but me,” I protested, but she wouldn’t hear it.

  “I drove the damn car halfway to Key West and back for breakfast,” she pointed out. “I think I can get us to I-95 in one piece.”

  She had a point; I was weary and growing wearier by the hour, and so I grudgingly slid into the passenger seat and held my breath as Toula eased us out of Oberon’s sand-crusted driveway.

  When we reached the Overseas Highway, she glanced over her shoulder and clucked her tongue. “Dead to the world. What did you do to him?”

  “Irish coffee,” I yawned, leaning against the window.

  She gave no reply for a long moment, then mumbled, “I feel really bad about this, you know?”

  “How so?”

  She looked at me in exasperation. “We asked our priest to pleasure a mermaid. What part of that don’t you feel bad about?”

  “Technically,” I said, “he’s not a priest yet. He’s still a seminarian.”

  “Yeah, fine,” she huffed, “but isn’t there something about a vow of celibacy in there?”

  “Probably.” I shifted in my seat, trying to get comfortable.

  Toula remained unappeased. “So what’s this going to do to him? I mean, how long’s his dry spell been? Is this going to throw a major wrench in his life plan or something?”

  “No clue,” I mumbled, closing my eyes. “He can probably say some Hail Marys or something—”

  “Colin,” she snapped, slapping me on the arm until I opened my eyes again. “I’m serious! He may have just broken some major vow, and we coerced him into doing it. Please tell me that doesn’t sit easily with you, because if it does . . .”

  “It doesn’t,” I admitted. “At all. But it’s done, I can’t undo it, and he should feel better once he sleeps.” I sighed and leaned into the headrest. “Damn picky merrow . . .”

  “Tell me about it. What I could see of her was cute.”

  She fell silent, and I tried in vain to sense her thoughts without magic. Finally, I said, �
�You gave Grivam your full name last night. Why?”

  Toula drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and said nothing. I was about to close my eyes again and attempt to nap when she murmured, “It commands a certain amount of respect. That’s all. Whatever else he did, he was a talented wizard. But I’m not my father, okay?”

  The tension in her voice spoke volumes. “I never said you were.”

  “Good.” She popped open the gum cup I kept in the console and helped herself to a piece. “What was your dad like?”

  “Don’t really know,” I said quietly. “I only met him once. Why?”

  “I saw mine once a year—a two-hour visit on my birthday. That’s all Harrison would give me. Guess he didn’t want me to get contaminated,” she added. “So yeah, I never really knew him, either.”

  I hesitated, looking for the right words. “I’m, uh . . . sorry . . .”

  “Save it,” she interrupted, waving her hand as if to push my condolences away. “He was a shitty father, anyway. My fosters would dress me up and take me to his cell, and I’d sit outside the bars and try to talk to this . . . stranger . . . and he’d tell me to show him what I could do with my wand, and I’d get flustered and screw up, and he . . .” She stopped the rapid flow and sighed. “He was always disappointed. I mean, I’m bound—what did he expect, miracles?”

  “He was Apollonios Pavli,” I replied with a shrug. “No offense to you, but I don’t think he was the most rational of men. It takes a special kind of crazy to throw bombs at the Arcanum.”

  Toula seemed not to have heard me. “I sent him letters, too, when I was a kid. Drawings, stories, stuff like that. School projects. Harrison let me have his personal effects once they . . . carried out the sentence,” she said, drumming faster. “I went through everything.”

  “He kept your letters, huh?”

  “No. Not a one. No drawings, nothing of mine. Not even my school pictures.” Her jaw clenched. “Like I said, I was a disappointment. So I packed up the little I wanted and threw the rest away. Not like my mother was coming for it,” she muttered.