Shotgun Sorceress

by Lucy A. Snyder

  “Well, now.” Riviera had an upper-crust Southern accent, the kind that shows its British roots. “I see you’ve all gathered as I requested. But we’re missing one.”

  She turned toward me, expression still intense but not hostile. “Where’s your familiar, Miss Shimmer?”

  I felt a sudden urge to curtsy; instead I did an awkward little head bob. “He’s too big to fit in the house. Ma’am.”

  “Ah.” She leaned forward slightly. “I do realize that there are most certainly some trust issues on your side as well as on mine, but there are serious issues at hand that we had best discuss in person, and in private. So I have arranged for us to meet tomorrow afternoon on neutral ground: the Seelie Tavern west of Winesburg.”

  My heart beat a little faster; I’d always heard that there was a faery realm hidden near Amish country, but you couldn’t find it unless you were invited. I’d heard all kinds of stories about the hazards mortals face when visiting Faery: those deemed graceless transformed into pigs, those found cocky turned to mice for the cats, those seen as too pretty lulled into spending the night and emerging the next morning to discover that they’d disappeared for a century and aged almost as much. Too quiet and you might become a tree, too loud and you might become a crow. What were we getting into?

  “Please be there promptly at four; I will send another courier with a faery token so the guards will let y’all in. They will be able to accommodate your familiar, I’m sure,” Riviera continued. “But to avoid offending our hosts—and the most serious consequences that y’all might suffer—please be on your best behavior, and dress properly. Old-world formal will do. I expect it will take you perhaps two hours to reach the tavern. So until one-thirty tomorrow, you may travel freely within Franklin County, provided it’s by mundane means. After that, you’ll be safe as long as you’re on the highways traveling in the right direction. If you leave the county, or if you use any form of teleportation, our truce is off and I’ll have to have y’all taken into custody and remanded to the Virtus Regnum.

  “Do y’all have any questions about these arrangements?” she finished.

  “No, ma’am,” we all said.

  “Good,” she said. “I look forward to seeing y’all tomorrow.”

  And with that, the mirror shimmered and fell back to reflecting our worried faces.

  “Dude.” Cooper broke the silence. “Did we just have a meeting about having a meeting?”

  “We sure did,” the Warlock replied. “Welcome to Bureaucratica. Population: us.”

  Pal met me on the patio. “What did she say?”

  “We’re all meeting her tomorrow at four at the Seelie Tavern up near Winesburg.”

  “Oh dear,” he replied. “That seems a somewhat perilous venue. Why Faery?”

  I shrugged. “She said we should meet on neutral territory.”

  “But there are surely faery enclaves within this city—why not meet at one of them?”

  “I’m guessing the idea is that we meet on neutral territory that’s also out in the middle of nowhere,” I replied. “And considering the mess Cooper and I accidentally created downtown, well, keeping us away from large, expensive buildings would seem prudent to her, wouldn’t it? I’m trying real hard not to imagine that there’s a more sinister intent here.”

  A sudden chill breeze ruffled my hair and a voice whispered, “Look skyward, my girl.”

  “What?” I looked around, looked up.

  A small object was plummeting down from the clear blue sky. I stepped aside, and it hit the grass near me, bounced twice, and came to a rest. It was an old brown teddy bear; a small cream-colored card was tied to its middle with a piece of kite string. I hesitated, then picked up the bear. Something about it was familiar; I sniffed it, and immediately remembered playing with the bear in my old room in our Lakewood house. The memory strengthened; it was one of several stuffed toys I’d had since I was a baby, but my stepmother, Deb, deemed it junk and sent it off to Goodwill before our move to Plano.

  Hands shaking a bit, I untied the kite string and unfolded the card. In it was a lock of copper-brown hair and on it a handwritten note:

  I’ve missed you very much. We need to talk.

  —Your dad

  “What’s that?” Pal asked.

  I resisted my sudden, irrational instinct to hide the card and lie; if I betrayed Pal’s trust, it might be a long time before I got it back.

  “It’s a pointer,” I replied. “From my father, or so it says.”

  “Your father?” Pal blinked in surprise. “But the prison records indicated that he was, well …”

  “Dead. I know.” I stared down at the card and lock of hair. “He’s talked to me before this, last night on the front lawn and also at the Warlock’s, but I wasn’t sure it was him.”

  “Can you be sure now?”

  I held up the teddy bear. “This used to be mine, a long time ago. My mom gave it to me when I was a baby; for all I know, my dad might have gotten it for me before I was born.”

  “But for all you know, this could be an elaborate trick conjured up by some dark entity.”

  “That’s true.” I closed my eyes and smelled the dusty bear again; it was like an instant portal back to the happiest time I’d had as a child. A thousand questions about my family and my life crowded around the memories, questions only Ian Shimmer could answer. “But if this really is from my father, I have to talk to him.”

  chapter

  eight

  Mirror, Mirror

  After Cooper and the Warlock left on an errand in the Land Rover, I went looking for Mother Karen in the kids’ playroom. She was arbitrating a fight over a Transformers toy; when she got the two kids settled, I pulled her to the side.

  “Can I borrow the mirror in your study?” I asked.

  “Sure.” She dug in her jumper pocket for the key and handed it to me.

  “Um.” I stared down at the key. “Does your mirror have any … security enchantments? To protect against magical spycraft or identity spoofing, if that kind of thing happens?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “It has some protections against demons and malicious spells, yes. Who or what exactly are you planning to contact?”

  “My father. My real one, I mean, not my step. I think. I haven’t ever met him, and it’s all super-weird and hard to explain, but if it’s him I really need to talk to him.”

  “Well.” She pursed her lips. “Just don’t give out any sensitive personal information, unless you’re absolutely certain he’s who he says he is. Saying ‘oblittero’ will cut off the connection if you need to; so will clapping your hands or stomping your foot twice if you can’t speak.”

  I thanked her and went into the study, latching the door behind me. Mother Karen would surely be able to get into her own study without the key, but I didn’t want any of her kids coming in there in case there was trouble. What kind of trouble could come from contacting someone (or something) that claimed to be my father, but wasn’t? I didn’t have a clear idea, but having spent some quality time in a hell, my imagination was supplying plenty of dire scenarios. At least two of them involved hooked chains, rusty razor blades, and a TV stuck on a Jerry Springer marathon.

  I sat on Karen’s couch and stared down at the card, mentally doing a dare-I-eat-a-peach dance with myself. In the end, it seemed better to try to get answers than to spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been. So I went to the antique mirror, stuck the card under the frame, and spoke the opening charm.

  Nothing happened right away, so for a few moments I wondered if I’d done it wrong. And then the reflection changed to show an empty tall-backed wooden chair, and behind that an arcane-looking workshop that appeared to occupy an old-fashioned domed observatory. In addition to a big telescope, I saw several antique brass solar system models, an alchemical apparatus of glass tubes and distillation flasks for potions on a long table, and chalkboard walls with a mixture of spell glyphs and complicated mathematical equations written on them
in the same neat, precise handwriting as on the note.

  “Um … hello? Anyone there?” I called.

  “Oh!” The reply was a deep, pleasant baritone—nothing like the somewhat sinister whisper I’d heard before—somewhere off to the side where I couldn’t see. The speaker had a slight accent, maybe German? I heard a chair scoot across the wooden floor. “Is that you, Jessie?”

  “Yes, it is,” I replied.

  I heard the sound of feet slapping across the floor in flip-flops. A tall, strongly built man with long, wavy, penny-brown hair and a full beard stepped into the mirror view and sat down in the chair. His face was deeply tan. He was wearing bright orange Thai fisherman’s pants and a long madras patchwork jacket over a black T-shirt with white Courier lettering: “I Void Warranties.” I began to suspect that my disinterest in fashion was probably genetic.

  “It’s so good to see you.” He beamed at me, and I realized that if someone fattened him up a bit, gave him a pair of wire-framed glasses and a red suit, and aged him twenty years, he’d easily be able to pass himself off as Santa Claus.

  “It’s, um, good to see you, too.” I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen next.

  “I imagine you have questions.” He sat back in his chair, looking perfectly relaxed. “Ask anything. Ask away!”

  “Okay. Well.” I paused, wondering if “ask anything” actually meant anything. I supposed I didn’t really have that much to lose by being blunt (not that I ever have much luck trying to be delicate). “So I heard you died in prison?”

  He laughed, sounding a bit embarrassed, and tugged at his beard. I realized that his hands were spotted and gaunt, looked considerably older than his face. “Well, if you get sent to prison for life, you might as well die and get it over with, right?”

  “So you, what … died and got better?”

  “Oh, come on. By now you of all people should know that resurrection magic is entirely doable, even if the powers that be tell us otherwise. Death never stopped a Shimmer.”

  He paused. “Though mine did put me out of commission longer than I’d hoped. By the time my friends finally got to my body, it was too late for me to save your mother. Fortunately she was able to save you before the Virtii’s minions took her from us.”

  To save you. Benedict Jordan had told me that I’d been diagnosed with untreatable cancer when I was a child, and that my mother stole the life energy of a boy awaiting a heart transplant in the hospital in her spell to cure me. He said she was forbidden from using any magic, much less grand necromancy, so she’d been quietly put to death soon after. I remembered finding my mom dead on the floor; the coroner told us it was an undiagnosed aneurysm. She couldn’t really have done what Jordan claimed, could she? I had to know.

  “Jordan said she murdered a kid to save me,” I said.

  “That boy was going to suffer a slow, painful death from his illness,” Shimmer replied gently. “What your mother did for him was a mercy.”

  “But she could have saved him.” I hadn’t expected I’d be so contrary with him, hadn’t expected to be suddenly feeling so much anger and sadness over what had happened so long ago. “She had that power, didn’t she?”

  “She had the power to save exactly one child before she would be killed for the sin of using her natural gifts. Would you expect a mother to save a stranger’s dying child rather than her own? Would you rather she betrayed you, let you suffer and die of cancer to preserve that sick young boy? Would you rather be dead?”

  “No. I wouldn’t,” I replied. The admission made me feel dirty, like I’d personally murdered the boy I’d never even met. “So how much more of that kind of ‘mercy’ has there been? Was that what landed you in prison?”

  “If you ask the authorities, they will tell you I was put in prison for grand necromancy and murder. But since you’re asking me, I will tell you I was imprisoned because I dared to study the magic of time and probability, magic that the Virtii feel is their sole domain. If I had been a good little wizard who sat at the back of the bus when I was told to, I never would have been prosecuted.”

  “But did you commit murder?”

  “I killed a pair of cockroaches who happened to look like men. They tried to rape your mother, and I cut them down. Given the same circumstances, I would gladly do it again. It was my right as a man, and my duty as a husband. Had I used a gun or a sword instead of a killing word—well. Unfortunately my lack of a pistol gave my enemies more ammunition than I expected.”

  I did some quick math in my head. “So you were freed and resurrected … when I was eleven?”

  “Yes. And I’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since.” He beamed at me again, his slightly gap-toothed smile declaring Aw, my widdle girl is all growed up and ain’t I proud!

  I thought back on the horrible months I’d suffered through when my powers began and I didn’t know what was happening to me. My cheeks flushed hot, and I suddenly wanted to smack that smile off his face.

  “That was a dozen years ago,” I said, my voice shaking from my sudden anger. “If you care so much about me, why did you wait so long to contact me?”

  He blinked at me, apparently confused at my change of tone. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “No, not really.”

  “I’m an outlaw,” he said. “If the authorities had any inkling that I was in contact with you, they would have used you as a pawn, made your life miserable—”

  “Miserable? What, you mean like being raised by people who act like you’re some bad debt they’re stuck paying off? You mean like having your powers come on without anyone around to tell you what they are or how to handle them, so when you inevitably set shit on fire, everyone thinks you’re some kind of sociopath who belongs in the nuthouse? That kind of miserable?”

  “You have no idea how sorry I am that you had to go through that; I contacted Victoria as soon as I could to let her know what was happening—”

  “You had Vicky call my stepfather?”

  Shimmer spread his hands. “She was no Talent, Jessie; she had no way of knowing what was happening to you otherwise. You thought she just miraculously decided to call your stepfather the day before you were going to be committed to a mental institution?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck with my flesh hand. “Yeah, I guess I kind of did.”

  He shook his head, a half-smile playing on his lips. “For a girl who claims to despise Fate, you seem to accept tremendous coincidence without much question.”

  His gentle joke rankled like mockery, and I felt my blood rise again. “So why am I graced with your fatherly attention now, after all these years of not knowing you even existed?”

  “Again, isn’t it obvious? You’ve gotten yourself into so much trouble that my presence in your life can’t possibly make things any worse.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “I’ve studied Fate and probability and chaos magic more than any human alive, so … yes, I’m very sure. Before you got the attention of the Virtii, it was best you didn’t even know about me. But now that you’ve killed one of them—oh, and well done, by the way—it’s quite a different story. I’d like to continue to help you, if you’ll let me.”

  “Wait just a minute,” I said, doing a little more mental math about his previous “help” and not liking the sum. I touched the scarred flesh beneath my stone eye. “This ocularis was your doing, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded. “I gave it a compulsion charm tuned to you and arranged for the Warlock to find it, yes.”

  “You arranged for him to find it … when I was eleven.”

  He blinked. “Yes, once I realized your mother was beyond my help, I did an extensive set of probability divinations to try to see where your life might take you. I picked up on Cooper Marron’s thread, and the opportunity arose to get the ocularis into his brother’s hands, so I took it. It seemed to be the most prudent course of action.”

  “The most prudent course …” My voice failed for a moment. My face felt like
you could cook an egg on it. The only way he could have thought that the ocularis would be any help to me was if he’d been pretty sure I was going to be seriously mangled and lose at least one eye. “You knew all that shit was going to happen from the beginning and you didn’t warn me?”

  “There was only a forty percent chance—”

  “How hard would it be to send me a note saying, ‘Oh, hi, don’t go calling the rainstorm tonight, there’s a forty percent chance you’ll lose your fucking eye!’ ”

  “The threads were very complex, I couldn’t risk—”

  “You couldn’t risk? You didn’t risk anything! Five people died that night, you jackass!” I screamed at the mirror. I yanked the glove off and shoved my flames at the glass. “I nearly died. Cooper nearly died. We nearly lost everything. You didn’t do shit!”

  Hot tears were streaming down my face. “You’re as bad as that rat-bastard Jordan. Worse.”

  “Jessie, I can explain—”

  “Save it. Oblittero.” I yanked the pointer card out of the mirror’s frame and threw it down toward the fireplace. I didn’t look to see if it burned or not.

  The mirror went back to reflecting my own furious, red-eyed face. The scaly scars around my left eye socket were livid, inhuman, the ocularis a cold cat’s eye faintly reflecting the firelight. I leaned my forehead against the cool marble mantel and wept.

  chapter

  nine

  Cooper

  The guys stumbled through the front door as I was coming down the stairs. Cooper was leaning heavily on the Warlock’s shoulder, his eyes even more bloodshot than they’d been when he’d awoken from his potion-induced sleep the night before. I felt myself getting furious all over again.