For instance, you can obtain clothing (both elegant and utilitarian), government-approved (and unapproved) reading material, exotic pets, exotic foods, exotic pets made into exotic food… you name it, it is sold along the Promenade, though some wares only make appearances during that magical time between dusk and curfew. There’s even a booth selling cow’s milk so fresh the cow is tethered behind the counter. All can be had, and once the sun goes down, it usually is.
It was a mostly legal market (except for the after-hours trades, not that I had any firsthand knowledge of such things), but savvy shopkeepers had ways of getting the Peacekeepers to overlook their varied indiscretions. A charred booth or puffy lip served to signify when someone had let their bill languish too long unpaid.
Despite the somewhat illegal nature of certain transactions, this market was a necessary evil of modern life, or rather, of what our lives had become. Since the Magic Wars had ended, there was a dearth of viable storefronts, being that every property with a smidgen of technology had been seized by Peacekeepers and slowly sold back to corporations, once those corporations had been proven to be magic-free. But the farmers and butchers still had crops and meat to bring to market, and the craftspeople had stoneware and cheeses and cloth to sell. So, since there was no place else for them to go, and the crops and goods couldn’t very well be left to rot on the vine (or crack in the kiln), the Promenade Market had sprung up amidst the unused office blocks. Really, compared to the concrete wasteland it had been before, it was an improvement.
Still, I hadn’t really started frequenting the Promenade until high school. My mom grew her vegetables, and we had an apple tree, so we’d never really wanted for fresh produce. Also, my family was one of the few left with money, both old and new, so we could have almost anything we wanted delivered to our doorstep. Not to mention that Mom was convinced that the market was run by evil imps just waiting to drag off unsuspecting children to their lairs.
Then tenth grade rolled around and Juliana and I had been faced with third period study hall, followed by lunch, then fourth period science. Since the study hall took place in an auditorium of hundreds of kids, attendance was never taken, and our science teacher was little more than an experiment in reanimating corpses, we’d felt the immediate and pressing need to take a break from campus.
As for lunch…that was an evil that must not be named.
I was chicken at first, since the government-implanted trackers in our arms would alert the Peacekeepers to our truancy, but Juliana helped me remove mine. (She’d taken her own out years before.) I also balked at her plan of leaving them in our lockers, since wouldn’t they notice that we hadn’t moved, at all, for more than three hours? Again, Juliana was confident, and explained that the Peacekeepers only looked for people being where they were not supposed to be. As long as our signals registered as being on school grounds, it was all good.
So, armed with a camping knife and a filched bottle of wine (which functioned to sterilize the instrument and anesthetize the patient), we cut my tracker out. Make no mistake, it had hurt like hell, and I had a mid-grade infection brewing for a few weeks afterward, but the feeling of freedom had been well worth it. That, and the real food we got to enjoy at the Market, instead of the slop we were used to getting for school lunches, made the lingering numbness all worthwhile.
Remembering those excursions with Juliana made me smile as I wandered amidst the nicer booths. Unlike in my younger days, when I had wanted everything but had to be careful what I brought home in order to keep both Mom and Sadie in the dark about my whereabouts, today I saw lots of interesting things but wanted nothing. I mean, my apartment was small, so I didn’t need any knickknacks or lamps or what have you, and my fridge was stocked, though I could always stuff the cupboards with more dry goods.
And now I was contemplating stocking up on pasta. More evidence of my exciting life.
I sighed and considered stopping by the wine sellers’ tent when I came across a jeweler. I’d never been much interested in jewelry, but something about her booth, maybe the way the sun glinted off the stones and polished metals, drew me in. Her wares were comprised of what seemed to be found objects, like skeleton keys and pebbles, and all were wrapped with wires and shiny beads. Almost without realizing it, I withdrew Micah’s token from my shirt and traced the edges of the oak leaf. It was a perfect, albeit tiny, replica, as was the warm amber acorn. I found myself wondering if they’d fallen from a miniature silver tree that grew in a silver wood.
I bet he made this. Somehow, I could feel the residue of Micah’s magic, a signature that was uniquely him, and I understood that he’d manipulated the silver into the likeness of a leaf. Maybe it was my own magic recognizing his, or maybe it was just my strong attraction to him. Maybe I was just going crazy and reading too much into it.
“That’s a lovely pendant,” the jeweler complimented. She was a middle-aged woman, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. The silver streaks at her temples matched my token. “Did you make it yourself?”
“No. It was a gift.”
“Quite a fine gift.” I nodded; it was a fine gift, wasn’t it? And I had given Micah pennies in return. Beat-up, grungy old pennies.
“Do you also sell supplies?” I asked, suddenly.
“Of course,” she said, smiling ear to ear. Money had that effect on the merchants of the Market. “What were you looking for? I have silver chains, and charms, and—”
“Copper.” I took a deep breath, since the step I was about to take couldn’t be undone. “The metal needs to be copper.”
A short while and a small fortune later, I was the proud owner of a few hundred yards of copper wire in varying thicknesses and finishes, as well as a wide assortment of natural stone beads. Oh, and tools; lots and lots of tiny pliers and wrenches and snippy things with which to create my masterpiece. I’d gone straight to my car after leaving the jeweler’s booth and called Sadie.
“Hey,” was how she answered the phone. She sounded only mildly annoyed, so I figured there wasn’t an exam or paper due in the near future.
“I met a boy,” I said, in lieu of a proper greeting. “He gave me jewelry.”
“When did you meet him?”
“Yesterday.”
“Jewelry already?” Sadie whistled. “Must have been some night.”
“Yeah. It was.” I swore, not at Sadie, but at the dumbass who had cut me off. People seriously needed to learn how to merge.
“Are you driving?” Sadie accused. Before I could defend myself, she continued, “Listen, if you crack up that overpriced piece of metal Mom is gonna freak. Again. Call me later.”
With that, she hung up. I made a face at my phone and tossed it into the passenger seat, then carefully drove the few remaining blocks to my apartment. Not that I was being careful because of Sadie. Once I was inside my apartment, I dumped all the bits and baubles out on the kitchen counter.
Wow. That’s…that’s a lot of stuff. I stared, dumbfounded, at the heap of metal and stone. I’d never made jewelry before, not even a friendship bracelet when I was a kid, and the sheer amount of what I’d purchased was overwhelming. Overwhelming, and ridiculous, and…and stupid. If there was anything I was not, it was creative. There was no way I could take these spools of wire and heaps of beads and turn them into anything other than wire and beads, no matter how many tools I bought.
This was a mistake. I’ll never make anything good enough for Micah. Despondent, I grabbed the trash bin and moved to sweep the mess of it out of my sight when a bit of copper wire brushed against the back of my hand. Its coolness was strangely calming, almost centering. Intrigued, I traced the smooth edge of the wire, feeling the pull of the metal…my metal.
Trash bin forgotten, I set to work twisting and braiding and weaving until the metal strands became a wide cuff. It was amazingly intricate, not only due to the odd sizes of the wire, but also because of the stones I’d added to the overall design. In the center of the cuff, I placed a large piece o
f malachite and surrounded it with smaller bits of amber; the amber was to mirror the acorn Micah had given me, the malachite meant to pay homage to the green dell he lived in. And the copper…the copper was all me. I hoped Micah would like it.
He’ll love it. I stood and stretched, achy and exhausted from the last few hours spent hunched over the counter. I wanted to show Micah the token immediately, but I still didn’t understand how to call him with my dreamself. Not to mention that it was close to midnight, which meant that curfew had been in effect for the past hour; once the government had decided that most magic was done close to the proverbial witching hour, they’d enacted a curfew and begun releasing unmanned drones to patrol the streets at night. All the curfew had managed to do was piss off the bar owners and patrons, and to my knowledge all the drones ever caught were a few drunks stumbling their way home. Still, our government wasn’t one to admit when it had done something wrong, so we kept our eleven o’clock curfew and got the added bonus of daytime drone patrols.
And, since I only knew of two places where the veil was thin, and since neither place was in my apartment building, this curfew meant no visiting the Otherworld on foot, either.
Since it had worked once before, I opened my bedroom window, hoping that Micah would somehow find his way inside. After a moment’s hesitation, I placed the cuff on the sill, and then lay down on my bed for a short nap. As I drifted off, I wondered if Micah would come to me as a dream, or in the flesh. Flesh. Hopefully, flesh.
chapter 6
When I woke, my first thought was to wonder why my alarm hadn’t gone off. Slowly, my muddy brain remembered that I hadn’t set it. I had assumed Micah would wake me once he got here, and I hadn’t intended to sleep all night. Well, morning light was streaming into the room, though a quick glance at the clock told me that it was still a bit too early to get up for work. I sighed, assuming that displaying a copper cuff on the windowsill wasn’t the proper way to call a silver elf, and moved to shut the window. When I saw the empty sill, I froze.
The cuff was gone.
My eyes flew to the floor below the window, but the cuff wasn’t there. I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled under my bed, then looked in my closet and in my dresser drawers; I even went so far as to look under the couch in the living room. No cuff. I went to the kitchen and picked through the leavings from its creation yesterday; there was nothing but the leftover bits of wire.
I ran out of my apartment, down the stairs, and to the alley outside my window, in case the cuff had fallen outside. The asphalt was pristinely scrubbed, which made it easy to see that the cuff wasn’t on the sidewalk, nor in the road, nor had it rolled under the communal dumpster. Briefly, I wondered if it had been stolen, when a cold knot formed in my stomach. I’d gone to bed after curfew, which meant that only drones had been left patrolling the streets. A dumb robot would have no more use for a piece of jewelry than a kitten.
The cuff was gone, and Micah wasn’t here.
I ran back to my apartment, snatched my keys, and flew back out the door, a hundred scenarios playing across my mind, each worse than the last. Mom was convinced that the three of us were constantly being watched, but Sadie and I had always told her she was paranoid. But the drones…
The drones, motorized robots that hovered about on the pretense of safety, patrolled all public areas during the day, but they came out in force after curfew. Even Peacekeepers weren’t allowed outside after curfew fell, unless they were apprehending some ne’er-do-well. The drones were theoretically harmless, being that they supposedly didn’t carry any weaponry, but they all carried cameras and voice recorders in order to document and punish the guilty. What if one had happened by my window just as Micah had arrived? What if there was an official government document of an elf hopping through my bedroom window? Would the Peacekeepers punish only me, or Mom and Sadie, too?
What if they’d taken Micah, just like they’d taken Max?
I clutched the wheel, white-knuckled, as my car careened across town. The rational part of my mind was somewhat amazed I wasn’t stopped for speeding, or reckless driving, or operating a mechanical under the influence of magic. When I turned onto Real Estate Row, the street REES was located on, I almost had a heart attack.
There was a full squadron of Peacekeepers blocking the street.
I skidded to a halt, since mowing down the men with guns would not improve my situation in the slightest. While I tried to get my breathing under control, I searched for a way around them. The sidewalks were blocked too, and I saw a separate squad in my rearview mirror blocking off the adjoining street. For a moment, I entertained the notion of leaving the car and making a run for the Otherworld, but then I noticed the drones overhead. Like a swarm of metal mosquitos, they buzzed away, recording everything with their state of the art surveillance equipment.
Yeah. I wasn’t going anywhere.
And a Peacekeeper was walking toward me.
They know! They have Micah, and now they’re here for me! Sweat bloomed across my back and neck, and my stomach plummeted to the floorboards. Why else would they be here, if not to apprehend me? Why would a full squadron of Peacekeepers be blocking the entrance to my employer, unless they were lying in wait to capture me?
The tiny, rational voice in the back of my head said that I was freaking out over nothing. If the Peacekeepers had wanted me, they would have barged into my apartment and taken me from my bed. They wouldn’t have let me have access to my car, with which I could potentially make my escape. Unless they wanted to hunt me down…
No, no, that would be silly. That would be a waste of resources. Still, they were here, and Micah wasn’t in my room when I woke, and…and…
Gods. I hoped Micah was okay.
Finally, the Peacekeeper reached my car. Being the dutiful citizen that I am, I promptly rolled down my window and handed over my paperwork.
“What’s your name?” he asked, even though it was printed on the card in front of him.
“Sara Corbeau.”
“What’s the E. stand for?”
Oh, so he can read. “Elizabeth.”
“Is that your mother’s name?”
Yeah, that’s also listed on the card. “No. Her name is Maeve Connor Corbeau. I don’t know how she came up with Elizabeth.”
The goon smiled at that. “I feel ya. My middle name’s pretty horrible.” He lowered his sunglasses, and met my eyes. “Jerome.”
“That’s not so bad.”
“That’s not my middle name. You need to earn that.” Then the creep winked at me. All at once, I was shocked, disgusted, and scared in a whole new way. My emotions must have been plain, because Jerome straightened up and handed me back my identification.
“You came around that corner pretty fast, Sara,” he stated.
“I know. I’m sorry about that.” He looked at me expectantly, so I elaborated, “I work right over there, at Real Estate Evaluation Services. I wanted to get in early, for overtime. The end of the month’s coming, you know.”
Peacekeeper Jerome nodded at that. The last day of the month was when our tax payments were due, and everyone paid the same amount, regardless of their income. Yeah, it was unfair to make the poor pay the same price as the rich, but the government did not see it that way. After all, we all had access to the same government services, so shouldn’t we all pay the same share? So, in the name of fairness, we all scrambled to work as much as possible to make these unwieldy payments by the end of the month, and were dirt poor the following week, or at least until our next paychecks came in.
From the set of Jerome’s jaw, I guessed that Peacekeepers were not exempt from taxes, either. He leaned closer, whether to share financial advice or hit on me further I couldn’t tell, but he was interrupted by a commotion down the street. A man I vaguely recognized as working at one of the other real estate firms was being forcibly escorted to a waiting transport. The side of his face was bruised, and he was bleeding pretty badly from the shoulder.
“W-what did he do?” I asked.
“Something he shouldn’t have,” Jerome replied. He stepped away as a second Peacekeeper approached, and briefed him on the capture. It seemed that the prisoner in question, one Malcolm Hernandez, had been selling charms. They didn’t know how long it had been going on, but being that he’d gotten bold enough to sell them in the office cafeteria, Jerome said that they were going to assume that the illegal activity had gone on for over five years, and their commander would recommend the maximum sentence. Death.
The second Peacekeeper went off to relay Jerome’s orders, and Jerome sauntered back to me. “We’ll have all this cleaned up in no time,” he murmured, leaning on my door. “I won’t keep you from work much longer, little lady.”
Really? Little lady? I forced a smile and hoped Jerome would think I was nervous rather than disgusted. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“So, what time do you get off?”
“Eight,” I lied. My workday ends at five, and I hardly ever stay for overtime. I wouldn’t want happy hour to think I didn’t love it anymore.
“That’s an awfully long day.”
“Overtime, you know,” I said quickly. “Taxes and all.”
“Well, maybe I’ll swing by around then,” Jerome suggested. I smiled a bit wider, so much so that my cheeks ached. Thankfully, another Peacekeeper shouted to Jerome that they were ready to transport the prisoner. “Till then,” he said, patting the hood of my car.
“Till then,” I echoed. I kept the ridiculous clown smile plastered across my face as they drove off, Jerome waving and nudging his buddies. Once they were out of sight I exhaled heavily and rested my forehead against the steering wheel. First, I was going to wash his slimy handprints off my car. Second, I was never, ever going to get to work until eight ever again, overtime be damned. It wasn’t like I needed the money, anyway, and—
Copper Girl Page 4
