“That’s barbaric,” I said finally when I could find my voice.
“You’re not the only girl who thinks so, but what can you do? It’s the way things work, the way they’ve always worked. My family would love to get a baby on you,” he said as if all this weren’t disturbingly disgusting, though I suppose by definition, disgusting was disturbing. “But of course, we don’t have the money or other considerations to compete. You’re way out of the Sharpentier league.”
I stopped and faced him. “I am not somebody’s incubator and genetic WalMart. If and when I ever have a child, it’s going to be because I want one and because I love the father. Understand? Feel free to e-mail blast that out. In fact, give me your phone and I’ll do it myself.”
He laughed and dug in his pocket, tapping on his phone. “You’re one tough chick, you know? I think I’m going to like you a lot.”
“So long as you keep your dick to yourself, I might let you hang out.”
He laughed again and passed me his phone. The e-mail was open, and the cursor blinked in the subject line. I typed in Urgent and then tabbed into the body.
I hesitated. Did I go polite or get straight to telling them all to go fuck themselves? I elected to go the middle ground.
To Whom It May Concern:
I have less than no interest in having anybody’s children. Try to get into my uterus and I will castrate you and stuff your balls up your nose.
With all due respect,
Beck Wyatt
I hit the send button and handed the phone back to Ben. He read my e-mail and his mouth fell open, and then he started laughing again, having a hard time catching his breath.
“Oh my God,” he said. “The prim and propers are going to shit bricks.”
“Prim and propers?” I asked, but my thoughts went instantly to Mason and Aunty Mommy. That pretty much covered both of them.
“Generation moldy,” he said. “The ones who run everything.” He made a face.
“Why do you let them?” I asked as I started walking again.
He frowned then shrugged. “Nothing I can do about it.”
“Just say no?” I asked.
“They’d cut me off.”
“So what?”
That made him think a moment. “I don’t know. Probably wouldn’t be so bad. I mean, once I get out of college and get a job. But your friends would have to pretty much shun you. Same with the rest of the family. Plus, they would probably have some magical punishments.”
“Does anybody ever say no?”
“Not really. I mean, not and goes through with it. Like I said, it’s what we do.”
I snorted. “You don’t. The girls do. All you men do is get your rocks off. I’m surprised the women in your families haven’t revolted. I sure as hell would have.”
He sobered. “There’s a lot of pressure put on them. All of us. To strengthen the bloodlines so we’re prepared.”
“Prepared for what?”
“The histories talk about a split that happened centuries ago, where the ruling families got into a fight, and just when war was about to break out, one side managed to destroy many of their opponents. Some lost their magic; others, their lives. The losers who survived were cursed never to be able to have more children. Their lines would end with them. The winners went back to business as usual. But then, on her deathbed, Olirya Siddiqui had a vision. She was a powerful seer. She said that in the future, those we thought we destroyed would rise again and with them would come pain and destruction.”
“So everybody believed her, and all the leftover families got together and decided to breed for magical strength so when the other team shows up, you can overwhelm them before they cause all sorts of mayhem,” I said, seeing where he was going.
“Pretty much.”
“And your whole life, you’re told that the fate of the world rests on your cooperation and participation.”
He nodded. “Especially since a magic war would bleed over into the mundane world and cause all sorts of disasters. The cursed-bloods never cared about ordinary people and didn’t mind slaughtering them.”
“Did it not occur to anybody that this Olirya might have had a tumor or a stroke or Alzheimer’s?”
“The writings of everybody who was there say she was coherent to the last.”
“All the same, you people are seriously fucked up,” I said. “Now I know where Aunty Mommy got it from. You’re all demented.”
“Aunty Mommy?”
“The bitch who stole me and tortured me all my life,” I said. “Adriane Wyler Symms is her real name, I guess. She told me she was my mother, but turns out she was my aunt. Hence, Aunty Mommy.”
He nodded. “The e-mail this morning said something about that. Up until then, nobody knew you existed or that Adriane had taken you when she disappeared.”
I wondered what my sperm donor had said when he found out I was gone. Or even if he asked. Since I was his special secret, how could he demand they produce me?
We walked a little bit with neither of us speaking.
“Listen,” Ben said. “I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but you should really think about shielding yourself if you don’t want everybody descending on you like, well, like me.”
“I’m in the phonebook,” I said dryly. “It’s not like I’m that difficult to find. And anyway, I don’t know how to shield.”
His eyes popped wide. “Seriously? You don’t know how? But that’s the first thing any of us learn, practically before we’re out of the cradle.”
I shrugged, not wanting to explain that I’d hidden my magic from Aunty Mommy and that even if she’d known about it, she wouldn’t have taught me anything. Not if she could help it.
“Can you show me this shielding thing?” I asked.
“Sure. I guess.”
I stopped again, sitting down on a bench in front of a little bistro. Ajax flopped down beneath me. “Show me now.”
“Okay. Well, there’s no one way to do it. The best way is to cast a spell and anchor it to something you carry around. A necklace or a bracelet or a ring or something. That way it keeps working and you don’t have to pay much attention to it except to recharge it every so often.”
“I don’t know how to cast spells. What’s another way?”
He blinked his surprise at my confession but didn’t freak out, which saved him from having me kick him in the shins. I got the point. I was a magical mutant. Get over it already.
“You make a bubble of magic around yourself and then tell it to keep you hidden from a magical search.”
“Just like that.” I snapped my fingers.
He shrugged. “Mostly magic is in the intent—you know, focusing your desires and excluding all your other thoughts. That’s really tough to do. I mean, have you ever tried meditating? Your mind is always running off in interesting directions and you have to drag yourself back to clearing your head. Magic is the same way.”
“Oh.” In fact, most of the time I just decided what I wanted to do and made it happen and didn’t really think about how or why it worked. I guessed I had good natural focus.
“Now there are two things to remember. You have to make sure that your magic encloses all of you. A lot of beginners just stop at the ground and forget the bottoms of their feet. Second, you have to keep feeding the shield with magic or it will vanish on you.”
“I can chew gum and walk at the same time.”
“Don’t worry if you don’t get it at first. It can take weeks to master. Most of us learn young so our parents or minders can’t find us when we don’t want them to.”
“Minders?”
“You know—nannies, tutors, babysitters—that sort of thing.”
“Oh. Sure.” I was beginning to be less annoyed that I’d been kidnapped from his world. At least I’d had a reasonably normal childhood ... if you didn’t count the torture stuff.
“Try it,” he said. “Wait.” He looked around. Pedestrians strolled the sidewalks, and the li
ttle courtyard of the bistro behind us was full. “You should wait until you’re in private. You don’t want people to see you doing it. They tend to freak.”
I frowned. “What’s to see?”
I let magic flow out around my feet, and in a gesture that looked a little bit like a ballerina, I dropped my hands down to my sides and raised them up until my fingers met. The magic rose with it and swirled together. I dropped my arms and lifted my feet one at a time to close the bubble.
Okay, then. One part down. I narrowed my gaze, concentrating on the notion of shielding myself from other magic. Ben was right. Once you wanted to concentrate, you started thinking of everything else, such as the itch on the bottom of your foot and how exciting it was going to be to try to put back together a bunch of gargoyle penises.
I made myself focus again. It took me a minute or two, but I finally felt something sort of snick into place. The bubble around me expanded and then contracted against my skin.
“Wow!” Ben leaned back, wide eyed. “That’s really cool. Your magic is invisible.”
“Yeah, well, everybody knows that now you’ve practically shouted it to the world,” I said. A couple walking toward us was giving us a wary look, probably looking for errant pentacles and a tattooed 666 on my forehead.
“Oh, right. Sorry,” he said, flushing. “But wow. It worked too. I can’t pick you up anymore. You’re pretty talented, but then you’d have to be with your bloodlines.”
I was starting to feel a lot like a broodmare. Not going to happen. “How close do you have to be to someone to find them with magic if they aren’t shielding?”
“Depends on the practitioner. I can be a few miles away. Other people have to be within a hundred feet, and others could be a hundred miles away.”
“So I keep feeding it. Do I have to keep telling it what to do?”
“Shouldn’t. Not so long as you don’t let it collapse. If you do that, you have to start all over again. It will disappear on you when you go to sleep or pass out. That’s one reason to use a spell. Those don’t shut off when you sleep.”
“Good to know.” I stood. “Thanks for the help, but I have to get back.”
He looked disappointed. “Already? But we’ve only just met.”
I had to wonder why he was so interested in me. Probably he wanted more juicy details to relay to friends and family.
It had only been an hour and a half or so since Mason and Damon had gone shopping. I doubted they were back yet. It was still quite some time before sundown.
“I could use some coffee,” I said finally.
We walked up to a little coffee cart and then ambled along with Ajax in between us. He really didn’t like Ben being too close.
“You’re going to college?” I asked.
“Pre-med,” he said. “If I can make the grades, anyhow. Then I want to get into neurosurgery.”
“Wow. Impressive.”
“Not if you ask my grandmother and mother. I don’t need the money and anything I can do with a scalpel I can do with magic, so why bother?”
I glanced at him. “Is that true? I mean, healing with magic being just as good as using a scalpel.”
“No. Healing is hard and takes a lot out of you. I couldn’t do that for too many people before I’d be in a coma myself. Plus, I’m pretty sure if I knew what I was doing medically, I’d be able to use magic more effectively. I think I could pair magic with surgical skills and really do some good work.”
His enthusiasm was obvious. “But your mother and grandmother don’t think it’s worthwhile?”
Ben’s face fell. “They don’t see the point. We all share the world with mundane people, and we protect them from magic, but other than that, nobody thinks they’re worth anything. I like people and I really want to help them. If I can save people, make their lives better, and keep their families from heartbreak, I want to do it.”
I smiled at him and patted his shoulder. “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”
He flushed. “You don’t think it’s stupid?”
“I think it’s pretty damned awesome. The world needs more people like you. Your family ought to be proud of you. I’ve only known you less than an hour, and I know I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks,” he said and looked away, and I swear he was tearing up. Poor kid. His mother and grandmother needed a come-to-Jesus meeting.
“Have you got any more family? Besides your grandmother and mother?”
His father was also a sperm donor, and he had five sisters and brothers, all with different fathers. He also had half a dozen aunts and uncles and a bunch of cousins, plus some nephews and nieces. “Of course, that doesn’t include anybody who was contracted out to another family,” he said. “I grew up mostly in Connecticut, but the family has houses in other places. I live in the City. I go to school at UCSF.”
In northern California, ‘the City’ always referred to San Francisco, as if it were the only one. I was willing to bet that in New York, the City was always New York City. Likewise with Chicago in Illinois and Seattle in Washington.
“Tough school,” I said.
“One of the best. But so far I’ve pulled straight A’s, except for a B in Latin.”
“Latin?”
“A lot of medical terminology is Latin based, so I figured it would be useful.”
“Why the B and not an A?” I ask curiously.
He sighed. “I missed the midterm when my mom called with an emergency.”
From the sound of his voice, I could tell he was angry about it.”
“What was the emergency?”
“Meeting a potential contract.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“How did that go?”
“She’s eight years older than me, and this would be her fifth kid. It would belong to my family.”
“You’d have to leave school to raise the kid?”
He shook his head. “Not according to my mom, but if I’m going to have a kid, I’m going to raise it.”
“Good for you.”
I had to admire him. He was absolutely dedicated and clearly not an ounce of meanness in his body. He also wasn’t selfish, and he clearly had a big heart.
“I’m glad you came to meet me,” I said. “You’re all right.”
He flashed a smile at me. “I’m glad too.”
We wandered back toward the hotel. By the time we got there, I was pretty sure he and I were going to be good friends.
We stopped outside the hotel.
“This is my stop.”
“When can I see you again?”
“What the hell is going on?” Damon came bursting out of the doors. “Where have you been? I thought you—” He glared at Ben. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m a Sharpentier,” Ben said, not backing down from Damon’s dominating presence. “Who are you?”
“Matrovani.” Damon turned to me. His face was tight with emotion, his eyes churning. “I told you not to leave.”
“Ajax needed a walk.” I had a hand knotted in his ruff in case he decided to attack Damon again.
“You should have let him pee in the damned suite. How can you be so stupid?”
The last was nearly shouted. Despite the fact that the question burned through me like a bullet, I didn’t flinch.
Ben started to step between us. Damon planted a hand in the center of his chest and shoved.
“Get the hell away from her.”
People were stopping to rubberneck. I was so angry, I could barely see straight. Ingrained habit pulled it inside and shaped it into walls. I wrapped my heart around the pain of his words and the bitterness of my anger and let them strengthen me the way they’d always carried me through Aunty Mommy’s tortures.
I turned to Ben. “It was good to meet you, and thank you for the lesson.”
With that, I turned around and walked away. Damon caught my arm to pull me around, and Ajax lunged, snapping and growling. I pulled him back before he could b
ite.
“No, Ajax,” I said and I felt magic roll off me. He stilled but stared at Damon, warning in his eyes. I’d stopped him, but I knew if Damon came at me again in anger, Ajax would attack and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
“I’m leaving,” I said. “You can go to hell.”
I started walking again. I had no idea where exactly I planned to go. I had my phone, though. Stacey was working, but Jen and Lorraine would both come and get me.
Damon dodged around me and blocked my path. “Beck. Stop.” His anger had mixed with something else. Concern maybe. Didn’t justify anything.
“I’ve got nothing left to say to you.” My voice sounded dead. It was the same one I’d always used with Aunty Mommy. If I didn’t have emotions, she couldn’t read what hurt and what didn’t; she couldn’t figure out when her attacks were successful and not.
“I was worried,” Damon said. “All of a sudden you vanished off the radar, and I couldn’t find you. I didn’t know if someone had taken you or if you’d been killed.”
The shield. That had to be what he was talking about. Still didn’t justify anything.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ve got to go.” I started to step around him again. He sidestepped but was smart enough not to touch me.
“Please listen to me. Please try to understand.”
“You know, I get that you think I’m helpless and that the Big Bad Wolf is lying in wait around every corner. I get that you think you know better than I do how to live my life. That I’m too stupid to survive in the big bad world of magic. I don’t agree, but I get it. But you seem to think all that entitles you to actually run my life for me, and you don’t give a shit how I feel about it. For you, the end justifies the means no matter the cost. I’m tired of being the cost. I’m done with it. Get out of my life, and stay out of it.”
The words hurt to say. I liked Damon. I liked him a lot. Maybe more than I wanted to admit. But I wasn’t going to be a pawn in the genetic contracts game, and I didn’t need another bully shoving me around. I understood there was danger. I really would be stupid if I didn’t believe that, not after Aunty Mommy’s curse, the destruction of my shop, and the avalanche of gargoyles. That didn’t mean I was going to spend the rest of my life jumping at every shadow and hiding in a hotel room. When I’d taken Ajax out, I’d considered the danger and decided with a lot of people around and during the daylight, I was reasonably safe. Especially with Ajax at my side and my own magic to defend myself.
Putting the Fun in Funeral Page 24
