nancy werlock's diary s01 - episodes 1-7

by Julie Ann Dawson

  Houston steps back into the shop and tilts his head. “This from the same woman that hacked my laptop to get into my Magelite account?”

  “I didn’t hack your laptop! Besides, that was different. I thought you were going to meet a sex-starved succubus and I had to save you.”

  “I’ll see you at home,” he says as he leaves.

  After Anastasia arrives and I give her instructions for the day, I go into the office to get some paperwork done. Houston’s family tree is sitting on top of his closed laptop. It looks like Terri has gotten a lot of work done on the tree already. Houston’s copy just shows Vivika’s lineage and is marked up with his own notes. He too has thrown himself into the project.

  The first thing I notice is that Ruth had had a daughter named April, who was born the day after Vivika died. I can’t even imagine what she must have been going through giving birth the day after her sister died, even if they weren’t close. Particularly since she ended up taking in her nephew. Raising a baby and her sister’s six year old must have been a strain. April died a month before Houston’s motorcycle accident. No wonder he never mentioned her. The girl was only 15.

  I confess that I have felt a lot of animosity toward Ruth since Houston became my apprentice. When he had confronted her about Vivika being a psion, she had thrown him out of the house. Shortly thereafter, she went off the Evangelical deep end of the pool and filed for divorce from Houston’s uncle, claiming he was in liege with the devil since he refused to disown his nephew. It has caused a huge rift in the family. But now her behavior makes more sense to me. She’s in a lot of pain.

  And this family tree is depressing.

  Vivika’s mother, Henrietta, died in childbirth with her, at least according to the death date on the tree. She was 43 when she had Vivika. Must have been a difficult pregnancy at her age. Having grown up without her mother must have been devastating for Vivika. It may explain her obsession with wanting a grandchild to carry on the line.

  It seems the gods enjoy torturing the family, as Henrietta’s mother, Wilma, had died at the age of 47 giving birth to her. Strange. Henrietta also had an older sister, Louise, who like Ruth had no magical ability at all. Houston has a bunch of notes scribbled in the margins regarding Louise’s offspring looking for magical ability. He also has a bright line between Louise and Henrietta that says “26 yrs between kids? WTF? Why?” Inarticulate, but a good question. It does seem like a strange gap between siblings for the time period.

  Wilma’s mother Fiona and her grandmother Elizabeth were both mundanes. The psionic line seems to appear first with Wilma. She was certified as a Rank Four Psion a few years before her death. Henrietta had earned Rank Three before her death. Of course, the prodigal daughter had earned Rank Two before her untimely demise.

  I almost hate to think what kind of power Houston would have wielded if he had been born female.

  It doesn’t appear the matriarch of the clan (at least, insofar as the tree stops with her) was a witch, either. Hannah Monfort did; however, seem to live a colorful life for an early 19th century woman. According to the tree, she was married three times. The first time at the creepy young age of 15 to a man twelve years older than her. He died a year after their child Adele was born. The child didn’t live pass the age of 12. Little Adele did, however, outlive her mother’s second husband, who died in 1828 after only a few years of marriage. Hannah then married again in 1829 to a Louis Monfort.

  Third time the charm, I suppose. Louis actually survived long enough to see his grandchild born. Houston has a question mark next to the missing death date and a note that says “maiden name?” I assume this is what is stymieing their research.

  I suddenly feel like I’m being watched.

  “Feel free to chime in at any time, Vivika,” I say.

  “Tell him to let it go.”

  I jump. I wasn’t actually expecting a response. Not one spoken out loud, at least. I twirl around to see a ghostly female form. I can’t actually make out facial features, but there is no mistaking Vivika’s presence.

  “Why? What don’t you want him to know?”

  “I seem to recall something about him being on a need-to-know leash,” she replies. “Believe me. There are things in the family tree he doesn’t need to know.” Vivika’s form jerks slightly, almost as if she coughs involuntarily. She’s exerting a great deal of power to hold her form together to talk to me.

  “Take care of my son, Warlock.” She vanishes.

  That distinctly sounded like a threat.

  The Gremlin

  July 3rd

  “Our tax dollars at work,” says Houston as we walk toward the annex building where the city stores its Fourth of July fireworks.

  “Better safe than sorry,” I respond. I wave at the Superintendent of the Public Works as he comes toward us. “Hey, Carl!”

  “Nancy, great to see you,” he says as he shakes my hand. “The boys were a little worried that you wouldn’t do it. They’re a superstitious lot, and with your mother passed on they were getting nervous. God rest her soul.”

  “I wouldn’t leave you guys hanging even if I wasn’t running the shop. Everyone is out, right?”

  “Yep, they know the drill.”

  For the last twelve years, my Mom had performed a cleansing on the annex just before the Fourth of July celebration to chase away gremlins. Not that the city has ever been the victim of gremlins. The worst issue involved teenagers sneaking into the building to smoke pot. Which, around explosives, is still a problem. But not nearly the problem of having actual gremlins.

  “Officially, I’m here as a consultant. Nobody ever questioned what Mom was exactly consulting on. But it isn’t like you can put “gremlin exorcism” on a city ledger.

  The tradition started after some of the workers noticed unusual prints around the annex building. The prints didn’t match the normal critters you find in South Jersey. A couple of the guys started worrying it was a gremlin (though we learned later it had been an escape pet serval). Carl’s aunt had hired Mom once to perform a house cleansing after her grandmother had died in a house. So he decided to bring her in just to calm the workers down. Ever since then, the workers wouldn’t touch the fireworks until Mom made sure the gremlins were chased away.

  “So, they just let us wander around in the annex, alone, with the explosives? Isn’t there some sort of security protocol we should be following?” asks Houston. “I mean, aren’t there laws about this sort of stuff?”

  “We are following protocols. We aren’t taking any candles into the annex. No open light sources.”

  “They didn’t even search us or anything. I have to take my shoes off to get on an airplane but I can wander around fireworks?”

  “Welcome to small town, USA.”

  “Doesn’t it feel weird to you, though? Being paid to exorcise things that you know aren’t here?”

  “We’ve had this discussion. Sometimes it is more important to focus on what the client thinks is true than what is actually true. These guys are under a lot of stress during these events. Nobody thinks about the logistics of small town parades and firework displays. But there is a lot that the city has to plan in advance to make sure these events go off safely. Particularly in today’s world where the real threats aren’t demons from the outer planes but terrorists with book bags.”

  “We sell peace of mind. Maintaining the tradition reinforces a sense of security. Got it, Boss.”

  I hand Houston small satchel filled with flour, ground white pepper, and dried basil. “Start the circle.”

  He starts walking around the building, sprinkling the mixture on the ground. I pull a pair of brass bells from my pack and follow him. “People are going to wonder what the hell we’re doing,” he says.

  “They can’t see us from the road because of the overgrowth on the fence.”

  “So I don’t remember any of this from my demonology studies.”

  “Gremlins aren’t demons. They’re fae. We didn’t really talk muc
h about fae since you were cramping for your trials.”

  “So we need to be careful not to get them wet?”

  “No, not those gremlins. That’s a movie. You know better. If gremlins bred just by pouring water on them, the world would be overrun with them.”

  “OK, so educate my on real gremlins, then.”

  “Gremlins are one of the worker classes of fae. Brownies work in households. Hobs work on farms. Gremlins started appearing during the Industrial Revolution.”

  “So they just spontaneously appeared one day?”

  “Most of the research suggests a natural evolution. Brownies and hobs have lived side by side with humans for so long, it was natural progression.”

  “So they aren’t just these little destructive monsters sabotaging airplanes?”

  “Oh, they can be if they are insulted. Just like other fae. You think I have a temper. They tend to be passive-aggressive when angry. They don’t directly attack. But instead sabotage projects. A brownie would cause all the milk to spoil. A Hob would open the barn door and let the horses out. And gremlins cut wires.”

  “And you wanted to hire a brownie, why?”

  “You hire them through an agency instead of off the street you’re fine. They do background checks and all of that. OK, now counter-clockwise.”

  Houston starts to retrace his steps around the circle. “OK, so…” He stops and looks around as if listening for something. “What was that?”

  I hear something scurry across the roof. “Raccoon maybe?” Houston shakes his head. I activate my Third Eye incantation and pick up a residual trail. “That’s not good. What was that?” We hear a board break and rush inside the annex. Something darts behind a storage crate.

  “Where are the fireworks?” asks Houston. I look around and point to a fire cabinet on the other side of the room. Houston moves toward the fire cabinet as I move around the crate.

  As I walk toward the crate, a tiny, scaly, biped shoots off across the room. It isn’t more than two feet tall and has a shock of yellow and tan hair on the top of its head. Houston rushes it, but it barely evades his grasp. It jumps up onto a cabinet and then jumps from cabinet to cabinet as we chase it.

  “Hey! It kind of looks like a movie gremlin, don’t you think?” says Houston as he makes a leap to try to grab it. It takes a swipe at him with a claw but misses.

  “Catch it! It’s a friggin’ Thought-Beast!”

  “Oh…crap!”

  “Thought-Beasts are the manifestation of a community’s collective consciousness. If enough people in an area believe in something, and the Veil in the area is thin enough, or if there is a big enough influx of arcane power, a Thought-Beast can take form. A Thought-Beast adopts the properties that the community associates with the creature. There are all sorts of scholarly papers that discuss the ramifications of a Thought-Beast’s existence and its true nature. Right now, none of that matters.

  We have a Hollywood-style gremlin on the loose in a building full of explosives.

  Houston has positioned himself between the Thought-Beast and the fire cabinet. It keeps looking back at me, and then at Houston, trying to discern a path to its goal. I pull silver-threaded lariat from my bag. “And this is why we go through all the rites and procedures even when we don’t think there is anything there,” I say.

  “Lesson learned.”

  When it tries to make a break around Houston, I throw the lariat at the creature and snag it around the neck. It lets out a high pitch screech as it tries to claw at the thread around its neck. Houston takes the opportunity to grapple it to the floor, taking a claw to the cheek for his troubles but otherwise pinning it to the ground.

  We quickly bind the creature and throw it in the bag of binding.

  We search the annex for any more of them. Thankfully, only the one appears to have manifested. We finish the protection ritual with special earnest.

  “Put this in the back seat of the car, and sit back there with it so it doesn’t try to get out,” I say to Houston. The creature struggles in the bag and Houston has to hold the bag closed with both hands. “I have to go tell Carl everything is done.”

  “What are you going to tell him?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  “What are we going to do with this thing?”

  “We’ll take it to the guild hall. Let them deal with it.”

  “They aren’t going to kill it, are they?”

  “Don’t make that face,” I say as I walk by him.

  “They’re gonna kill it!”

  “It’s a Thought-Beast, Houston.”

  “But…”

  “Car! Now! We’ll discuss it later.”

  I head over to Carl’s office across the street. “Everything done?” he asks.

  “Yeah, all secured. No gremlins.”

  “You OK? You look a little winded.”

  “You had a…raccoon in the building. We chased it out. But you probably want to get one of the guys from animal control.”

  Carl hands me my check and I head back to the car. Houston is sitting in the back seat with the creature still thankfully in the bag. He’s gently patting the bag and talking softly to it to keep it calm. It sounds like it is mewing.

  “It’s scared,” he says as I start the car.

  “It’s going to the guild hall.”

  “It didn’t do anything. We stopped it.”

  “It tried to scratch your eyes out and set off the explosives.”

  “Maybe we can…”

  “We are not keeping it!”

  “It seems smart. We could train it to…”

  “We are not keeping it.”

  We pull up to the guild hall. Gatekeeper stops the vehicle. Normally, he would just wave me in. But he senses an unusual presence in the car. “What manner of denizen rides with you?” he says in Latin.

  “We have a Thought-Beast that we captured,” reply. I need to take it to Evoker Geoffrey as per protocols.

  Gatekeeper looks in the back seat. Houston isn’t paying attention to him. Instead, he’s leaned over the burlap bag, telling the creature that everything is going to be fine. Gatekeeper looks back at me. “Does he not know what is to happen to it?”

  “He hasn’t even taken his Rank Five trial yet.”

  Gatekeeper nods and goes back to his booth. A moment later, he opens the gate and lets us pass. I take the bag out of the back seat. “Stay in the car,” I say to Houston as I lug the bag toward the building.

  “Shouldn’t I come with you?” he says. “In case it gives you trouble.”

  “Even if it got out of the bag, it would never get out the front gate pass Gatekeeper. I’m just going to run in and give this to Evoker Geoffrey.”

  “What’s he going to do with it?”

  “Houston, stay in the car.” I walk up to the guild hall. Evoker Geoffrey is waiting for me in the lobby with two young people about Anastasia’s age. The creature starts struggling and hissing inside the bag.

  “Excellent work, Madame Warlock,” he says as he takes the bag from me. “Students, this is Rank Three Warlock Nancy Werlock.”

  “Ma’am,” they say in unison, though they don’t take their eyes off the burlap bag.

  “Feisty little thing. You know this is the third one this year?”

  “Something wrong with the cairn?”

  “When is there not? I don’t believe this is cairn related. Veil’s been thin ever since the 13th Baktun ended. There has been increased activity all over the place. This will be a great study tool. It’s a recent manifestation, correct?”

  “Probably just happened today would be my guess.”

  “Amazing. The other two were killed so we only had corpses to study. So rare to have a live specimen.”

  “So, what are you going to do with it?”

  “Put it in quarantine and observe it to start. What’s it based on?”

  “Pretty sure it’s based on the movie Gremlins. Has the look of one that ate after midnight.”

 
; “Maybe we’ll see if we can breed it.”

  “Evoker Geoffrey, you have seen the movie, correct?”

  “Oh, yes. This will be a marvelous opportunity to see exactly how close the manifestation coincides with the fiction that spawned it.” He chuckles and nods. “Don’t worry. We have protocols in place. And Gatekeeper will be on alert. We housed a balor here at one point. We can deal with a gremlin.”

  I go back out to the car. Houston has moved into the front passenger seat. “Evoker Geoffrey says he’s going to put your little friend in quarantine and study him. He’ll be fine.”

  “They aren’t going to kill it?” Houston says hopefully.

  “Not at this point. He wants to study it. He wants to see how close this creature mimics the creatures in the movie. Use it as a learning tool for the students. It will probably end up eventually at the reserve at the Nexus.”

  “Oh, OK. I feel better now.”

  “Houston, you know that we can’t make friends with every preternatural creature that we come across. Just because something is cute in a hideous sort of way doesn’t mean it won’t rip out your spleen if given the chance.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you? Do you really understand? The Lemure. The Thought-Beast. Do you really understand how dangerous these things can be? This isn’t an episode of Charmed or whatever cheesy variant of magic is popular on TV now. The College of Evocation is the front line of defense protecting the material plane from everything else. Defendere Velo. Defend the Veil. It’s because of the work that goes on in that building and elsewhere that mundanes can go about their lives and not be attacked by demons and djinn and whatever else tries to come across.”

  He nods but stays silent until we cross the bridge back into New Jersey. “So is it cool if I post about this on WitchNet?”

  “Yeah, go for it. In fact, Evoker Geoffrey said there had been an increase in Thought-Beast manifestations this year. Maybe you can compare notes with some others who have run across some. Give you some context.”

  “That was exciting. And I can’t believe you lassoed that thing on the first try. Like Wonder Woman and her magic lasso.”