“I don’t know if anything else is here,” the ferret replied. “Why would you think I’d withhold information from you?”
“Let’s see,” I replied. “Cooper’s been sucked away to God-knows-where by some evil force and his little dog’s turned into a monster. Tom, Dick, and Harry on the night cleaning crew just got turned into stew meat. And my familiar suddenly wakes up and starts telling me what to do… yet won’t tell me what it really is. And it can’t tell me the most important thing I need to know, which is whether or not I’ve got some other freak show to deal with besides Hopalong Smaug here.”
“Are you saying you don’t trust me?” The ferret sounded supremely offended.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” I said, stopping. “Fear? Check. Worry? Check. About to pee my pants? Check. Trust in my new mystery familiar? Nope, sorry, just ran out. How do I know you’re not some… some evil spirit who came through the portal to possess the body of my ferret?”
“You’re paranoid,” he said.
“Convince me,” I replied.
“I’m not sure how I can do that,” the ferret said, agitated. “There are spells to prove I’m telling the truth, but I imagine you don’t know them. And we can’t spare the time to perform them.”
“Okay. Go back to the car and wait for me. I’ll come back for you when I’m done.”
“You can’t do this by yourself, you’re not experienced—”
“I know how to shoot. And I know Smoky. Go.” The ferret reluctantly climbed down my back and humped back up the garage ramp into the rainy night.
Did I just do a phenomenally stupid thing? I wondered. He’s right, I can’t do this alone. .. but I guess I’m going to have to try.
I paused. Maybe I didn’t have to do this Palimpsest’s way. Maybe Smoky was still sane enough to listen to me and stay put. Maybe I could find a landline in the building that actually connected to the real world. I could phone Mother Karen to find someone who knew about this kind of stuff and could put things back the way they were supposed to be.
And then we could figure out how to get Cooper back.
Maybe.
chapter two
Slaying the Dragon
I Lifted the shotgun to my shoulder and trotted toward Smoky, who was still sniffing the pieces of shattered door glass. Smoke rose from his nostrils with each exhalation.
I am so about to get myself barbecued, I thought. I wish Cooper were here; he’d know exactly what to do.
Tears welled up in my eyes. Where was he? Was he okay? If he’d been sucked into that black pit of nightmares I’d seen… dammit, I should have insisted we wait another day to summon the rain. We never should have gone out that night.
I could have been curled up on the couch with Cooper, watching an old movie with little terrier-sized Smoky on his lap and my ferret on my lap, eating popcorn and laughing and smiling and kissing instead of being wet and scared and alone and not knowing what the hell I was doing in this stinking parking garage.
I was about a dozen yards from Smoky. Close enough for a clean, strong hit with the shotgun, although I didn’t want to do that. In the yellow lights of the garage, he was truly frightening: part dog, part Asian dragon, part centipede, all wrong. Green slime caked the edges of his lips—blood, poison, or both?
His eyes, I realized, were faceted like an insect’s. Would he recognize me through his new eyes, or would I look as monstrous to him as he did to me?
I set the shotgun muzzle down and leaned the stock against my damp leg so it would be close at hand. While Smoky had never been able to speak to anyone but Cooper, I hoped to get some kind of friendly response, and I figured pointing a firearm at him wasn’t the best tactic.
I whistled at him. “Smoky! Smoky, whatcha looking at there, buddy?”
His head jerked up from the smashed glass, and he stared at me. His lips drew back from his dagger-like teeth in a snarl. Green poison dripped from the tips. A growl like an anvil dragging across concrete rolled out of his throat.
Not the response I’d been hoping for.
“Smoky, don’t be like that. It’s me, Jessie. You know me, I’m your friend. I fed you just this morning. Cooper’s missing, and I need your help if we’re gonna get him back.”
I slowly reached into my pocket, hoping I had a rubber band or hair tie in there, but could only find a loose thread from the stitching. It would have to do. I broke it off and began to chant old words for “bind.”
At the first weak touch of my magic, Smoky lunged at me, fast as a striking cobra.
No time to finish. I snatched up the shotgun, swung the muzzle up toward Smoky, and squeezed the trigger. It blasted into his open mouth.
Smoky roared and jerked back, shaking his head like a dog with a wasp-stung nose. I pumped the gun, aimed for his eye, and fired again.
Smoky bucked, and I didn’t see his tail flailing toward me until it was too late. The tail slammed into my left shoulder, knocking me off my feet and the shotgun out of my hands.
I tumbled across the Concrete and landed back-first against the cinder-block wall, knocking my head painfully. I lay there, dazed, expecting to feel Smoky’s hot breath on my skin as his jaws clamped down on my prone body—
—but instead I heard glass breaking. I turned my head in time to see Smoky’s tail disappearing through what was left of the doors to the Riffe Center. The shotgun lay ten yards away from me.
“Oh great,” I moaned, awkwardly sitting up. I’d banged up my knees and elbows and hands pretty well during my tumble. “This is going well.”
At least you’re not barbecue, I reminded myself. Or giblet surprise.
I scratched an itch on my left forearm, and my hand came away sticky with blood. Smoky’s tail had torn my T-shirt and opened a three-inch gash in my shoulder. I couldn’t see anything but blood in the wound.
I tried to raise my left arm and was answered with a bright blue spike of pain from the muscles and joint. It even hurt to make a fist. I had to take care of the arm before I could think about tracking down Smoky.
Bracing myself against the wall with my good arm, I climbed to my feet. There was wriggling movement on the floor near the broken glass. I retrieved the shotgun and slowly approached it.
Smoky’s green blood had spattered on the floor, and a strange moss was growing from it. As I watched, the moss sprouted thorny tendrils that wiggled out across the concrete like earthworms seeking dirt. Or tentacles seeking meat.
I stepped back out of tendril reach. You don’t know what that is; don’t even think about touching it, I thought. This ain’t biology class; don’t experiment.
But if a few drops of blood produced this… he was bound to bleed a lot more if I had to kill him. Would the reality warp end with him, or would the moss survive him and sustain it?
I jogged through the broken doors and entered the basement floor of the Riffe Tower. Moss was spreading across the pinkish marble stairs leading to the foyer. I hoped he wouldn’t go too far before I could catch up.
To my right was the locked gate to a little cafeteria; I’d eaten there after I’d been to an art exhibit on the main floor. It wasn’t exactly gourmet dining, but I knew the place would have what I needed.
It took me a couple of minutes of searching for words for “rust” to rot the steel Master Lock enough that I could bash it open with the butt of the shotgun. I heaved the gate out of the way. The kitchen was locked, too, but I was getting better at finding good words for “corrosion.” The doorknob’s comparatively flimsy lock gave after a minute of chanting.
The kitchen was lit in the red glow from the EXIT signs. I set my shotgun down by the door. A white steel medical kit was bolted to the back wall between the grill and one of the prep tables; I opened it and found a roll of gauze and an Ace bandage.
“Mustard, mustard, where are you, mustard… ?“ There it was, right below the prep tables. I pulled the huge plastic jar off its shelf and set it on the steel tabletop.
I
heard a roar and frightened shouts upstairs.
Three firecracker pops of a pistol. Then a loud thumping and shattering glass. The scream of a man in pain.
Girl, you better hurry, I thought.
My arm ached, and my palm had gone numb. Maybe Smoky had put a little something special into my wound. Or maybe his cut had damaged a nerve.
Cooper had shown me how to make a healing poultice out of mustard and onions from our weenie roast fixings when we’d gone swimming at Buckeye Lake and I cut my foot open on a broken bottle. But mustard and onions weren’t much use for poison. Would ginger work? Garlic? My memory pinged: basil. People once used basil in poultices to draw out venom. Hindus? Medieval Europeans? My memory failed. No matter.
I found all the herbs I needed in a cabinet; the powdered garlic was relatively fresh, but the dried basil was sad and stale. I dumped what was left of the tin onto a cutting board, mixed in an equal portion of chopped onions from the refrigerator, a few pinches of dried garlic, and enough mustard to make a paste. I kneaded the mixture as I spoke the ancient words for “health” and “healing,” then pulled up the remains of my T-shirt sleeve and pressed a handful of the paste against the angry wound.
Pain jagged from the wound down my arm and into my chest. I managed to keep from screaming, kept up my chant as I tried to think cool thoughts, healing thoughts. I visualized the pain and poison leaving my body and my flesh closing beneath my fingers.
It was done. I pulled my hand away. The wound had knitted into a red seam. It looked like it might not even scar. As a precaution against the wound being pulled open, I wrapped my shoulder in gauze and then the Ace bandage, then flexed my arm. I felt a twinge when I rotated the arm backward, but all things considered the joint felt pretty solid.
There was a phone bolted to the wall near the door; would I be able to get through to anybody on a landline? I lifted the receiver and put it to my ear. Instead of a dial tone, I heard a hollow, faint roar.
I jiggled the cradle. “Hello?”
“I need to get warm.” My aunt’s voice was thin, barely more than a whisper. “It’s so cold in here. Let me warm up inside you. I can slip in through your ear and you’ll hardly know I’m there at all—”
Shit.
I slammed the receiver back in its cradle, grabbed the shotgun, and headed back to the stairway.
Then stopped.
The marble steps were completely covered in waving, curling vines and meat-purple fern-like fronds. The vines shuddered and stretched out toward me, yearning for my heat or blood or both.
I backed off and ran down the corridor to the other set of stairs that led up to the first floor. I jogged up the steps and peeked out around the corner.
The entire floor between the basement stairway and the entrance to the art gallery was covered in a jungle of undulating fronds. A viney lump twitched in the middle of the floor. The vines shifted, and I saw a section of white uniform shirt. A walkie-talkie crackled.
I forced my gaze from the dying security guard and realized that half a dozen round pods were growing near his body. They looked like football-sized red grapes. As I stared at the translucent pods, I realized I was seeing tiny embryos like curled eels growing inside. Thick, thorny umbilical vines pulsed between the guard’s body and the pods.
Oh hell. How fast were Smoky’s pups growing? I raised my shotgun and took aim.. . then lowered it. Jesus. I didn’t have enough ammo if every drop of his blood was going to turn into a hungry, babyspawning briar patch.
On the bright side, I wouldn’t have to worry about trying to contact anyone if this got much worse. The entire downtown would look like an inferno of bad magic to anyone even remotely sensitive.
Surely the governing circle knew what was going on by now, and would do something to help. They are a group of seven powerful witches and wizards who act as the local government for the Talents in Columbus and a few counties beyond. They arbitrate disputes, set policies, and enforce the laws set forth by the Virtii, ancient air spirits who had been tasked by the powers that be with overseeing Talented humankind.
Past that, I was stupidly hazy on the details, like who was part of the circle, how many people worked for them, how much power they had, and how quickly they could turn my life to utter shit if I pissed them off. The circle doesn’t shine a very strong light on its activities, but my ignorance was mostly my own fault. I’d never been much for paying attention to local politics, and my understanding of our laws was pretty much at a kindergarten “white magic good, necromancy bad” level. But I wasn’t living in abject ignorance—at least I did know that Benedict Jordan was their leader.
Mr. Jordan pretty much owned Columbus. He was a direct descendant of the two most powerful Talented families who’d founded the city, and he had been head of the governing circle for at least twenty years. He was also the controlling partner of the Jordan, Jankowitz Jones law firm downtown and sat on the city council. Rumor had it that he was worth billions; he owned the high-end clothing store chain The Exclusive, and it seemed like he owned half the buildings in the trendy Short North.
So, I figured with so much trouble downtown, and him having so much money tied up in it, he would be bound to send the cavalry out to help us tout de suite. Yeah. I seriously needed to work on my clairvoyance.
Smoky had smashed through the plate-glass doors; vines were devouring the glass where his blood had smeared.
I stared down at the shotgun in my hands. It was like trying to stop a forest fire with a can of gasoline. And unless I found a piece of rope or a good intact spiderweb, another try at a binding spell would probably be useless. What on Earth could I use to stop Smoky that wouldn’t involve him shedding more blood?
Gee, maybe if I swore real hard he’d faint, I thought darkly. Or maybe I could jump into his mouth and hope he chokes on me?
Then my mind flashed on Cooper’s brief lecture on the uses of goose droppings. Offal could always be used to control the creature that produced it… if you could just figure out how. And Smoky had left plenty of fur on the car seats and some hide on the grass.
“I’m an idiot.” I ran back down the stairs.
The lights went off just as I entered the tunnel leading to the garage. I hunted vainly in my thigh pockets for my penlight, found nothing but a wad of dryer lint. Fortunately, Cooper had showed me lots of dryer lint tricks during our hours of shame at the Laundromat. I used the wad and a dead word for “cold flame” to light a green faery fire in the palm of my left hand. It didn’t cast much illumination, but it was enough to let me hurry through the dark and tremendously forbidding garage.
Cooper wouldn’t need to use these crappy little props for rink y-dink spells, Old Lady Mabel complained as I skirted the starving thatch of Smoky’s vines. He’d be calling down the ghost of Thomas Edison to juice the whole building and light it up like Christmas. He’d have shrunk Smoky right back down before he left the park. We’d be at the Panda Inn by now.
As I emerged from the garage, I realized something was terribly wrong with the sky. The slate-gray clouds had become a pearly white flatness streaked with ruby highlights. The air hung still and dead. The white of the sky cascaded down like an ethereal waterfall at the edge of the Grove; I could barely see the trees beyond.
“Motherfucker,” I whispered, shivering with a mixture of frustration and fear.
Someone—presumably a wizard employed by the governing circle—had cast an isolation sphere on the entire downtown area. I’d done a paper on isolation spheres in my freshman enchantments class at OSU, so I knew in painful detail what kind of trouble I was in. The sphere would be invisible to any mundanes outside it, but anyone attempting to approach the barrier would find himself with a sudden compulsion to turn around and go back the way he’d come. Inside, the sphere was much like trapping a spider under a jar, and I the unlucky cricket trapped with it.
The white color of the sky meant we were totally locked down. Nothing could get in or out, not man nor spirit nor spel
l nor electrical signal. But that wasn’t the bad part.
The ruby highlights meant the governing circle mages had hugely sped up time within the globe. And that meant that the governing circle had sensed the reality tear and had decided the easiest way of dealing with it was to isolate it, time-accelerate it, and wait an hour to see if whatever was causing trouble starved or died in the years that had passed within the globe. They’d be able to call a tornado in to mask any magical destruction to the city. Apparently Mr. Jordan had decided to go for an insurance write-off.
The cavalry wasn’t coming to save me or anyone else.
“Goddammit, this isn’t fair! I need help down here!” I screamed at the blank sky.
“Be quiet,” the ferret fussed. “They’ll hear you.” Palimpsest was sitting on the hood of the Dinosaur. I hurried across the Street.
“‘They’? It’s a ‘they’ now, for certain?” I asked. “I thought you didn’t want my help,” Pal replied crossly.
“Mostly I need your nose. Help me find where Smoky left his skin. This”—I shook the shotgun at him—”was a very, very bad idea. I need to work an old-fashioned control spell.”
“I might not know everything—”
“No! Really?”
“—but I don’t think you’re ready for an incantation of that complexity, which is why I suggested the shotgun in the first place.”
“And your suggestion got us this lovely bit of helpful intervention from the local pointy-hats.” I jabbed my middle finger toward the sky. “So if I can’t take care of this my ownself, you’re going to be here for a very, very long time. So try to be a little supportive, please?” I asked.
The ferret seemed to shrink into himself. “I’m sure now that Smoky is tracking something, but I don’t yet know what it is. I caught smells of rage and pain and hunger… I think it did kill those men in the garage.”
“How?”
“Malevolent spirits will often attempt to possess the bodies of weaker creatures. But if the spirits are especially powerful and uncontrolled, the hosts often experience violent, fatal physical reactions.”
Spellbent Page 4
