by Faith Hunter
Ouch. “Sorry about that,” I said.
“You got a customer in back, though,” Jacey said. She hit a button and a paper strip unrolled from the machine. “I turned on the heat.” I didn’t like the way she said “customer.”
When I stepped into the work space, I found a woman I had passed on the street and at kirk. She was midfifties, face wreathed in wrinkles that had been created by laughter. Dressed in layers, like me, but in proper skirts and blouse, she had thrown her overcoat to the side and stood with hands clasped behind her back, inspecting globs of glass on Jacey’s workbench. She wore pink, which meant she was a reformed or a progressive. I couldn’t remember what her name was. I cleared my throat.
She flushed and looked up with a hesitant—guilty? — smile. Had she been stealing? Thinking about pilfering? Her first words cleared up that question. Hand outstretched, she crossed to me, saying, “I’ve never been to a mage for help before. I hope you’ll forgive me. I don’t know the proper protocol.” At a loss for words, I accepted her hand. She shook mine once, firmly, and let go. “I’m Sarah Schubert. My husband and I own Blue Tick Hound Guns. We want to purchase mage-steel.”
I tried to keep my brows from touching my hairline. “Oh,” I said. Mage-steel was used in blades and other devices that required a strong temper, yet an elastic flexibility. “I can’t help you.” At her blank look, I added, “There are different kinds of mages. You need a metal mage. Specifically a steel mage specialist. I work only in stone.”
“Oh. Well, of course,” she said. “But you have diplomatic contacts at Enclaves.” From her sleeve she pulled a sheaf of papers, tightly rolled. “You can contact a steel mage, send him these drawings, and he can quote us a price. Our go-between. Yes?”
I had no idea. But I was a licensed neomage, with the visa and the GPS bracelet and whatever authority came with them. Traditionally, licensed mages made contracts with the outside world for trade. I realized the silence had stretched too long. “Um. Sure. I can make the contacts.” I hoped. Maybe. Unless I screwed up. I didn’t even know any steel mages. They were a minuscule minority in the small number of metal mages. The skin along my spine started to itch. Seraph stones.
“Look, Sarah, I’m new to this,” I said. “Really new. You would be my first trade negotiation. I might not do it right. I might take longer than someone who’s been doing them for a while. Maybe you better go to someone else.”
“I appreciate your candor. But you’re here. Atlanta is the next closest option.” She rattled the papers in her hand. “Someone else might be faster, but you’re Mineral City’s neomage. You’ll try harder to get us good value for our money.”
Heaven help me. She meant it. She was claiming me for the town. I had been revealed as a mage for a long time, but this was the first time anyone had openly accepted me for what I really was. I couldn’t keep a small flame of delight from igniting in my chest. I took the drawings. “Sure.” The word felt huge, as if it wanted to lodge in my chest. “These aren’t your only copies, are they?”
We agreed that I would handle the trade negotiation via phone, Internet, postal service, and “mage ways,” as she called scrying. And that I’d take expenses and a percentage for my time. Sarah seemed pleased with the four percent I asked, assuring me I could have gotten more. But I had no idea what I was doing. I just hoped Blue Tick was happy to pay me anything once it was all over. When the particulars were settled, we shook on it and Sarah left. Out the back door of the shop, which surprised me.
While I was still getting over the shock of her circuitous egress, a second person knocked on the back door. It was the mortified, blushing, middle-aged wife of a kirk elder, wanting a charm for improving her sex life. Being exposed as a licensed mage, not having gone to jail for it, and having an elder purchase a charm for his wife seemed to have freed the citizens to use my services. But not yet freed them to be up front about it.
After the fourth indirect visitor, I was pretty well ticked off. I wasn’t a whore or a guilty pleasure, so I hung a sign on the back door. “Mage appointments and services will be provided on Monday, noon to three. Enter at front.” After that, I had no more interruptions. I might have no appointments Monday, but at least if I did, I wouldn’t feel shameful.
Near eleven, I finally pulled my one-piece work uniform on over my clothes and settled to work on a double fist of dark green aventurine. Overhead, a new CDS disc played, an ancient, Pre-Ap rock-and-roll singer named Rod Stew-art. He had a smoky, rough voice, but with a pathos I liked. The crystal digital storage disc had been released in a batch of Pre-Apocalyptic music, and my partners and I had been listening to new, but long-dead, artists every chance we got.
For decades rock and roll had been prohibited, though no one knew what the Administration of ArchSeraphs had against the music. Rod’s rough voice seemed made for cutting stone. Jacey had come to appreciate a guy named Sting, and Rupert was currently listening to the Eagles, a band called Traffic, and Casting Crowns.
I secured the large hunk of rough into a vise and turned on the wet saw, showering water and wet stone dust all over me with the first cut, and excising shapes that I would later carve and link into a necklace of overlapping leaves. The diamond-tipped blade roaring in the saw, I slowly removed roughly triangular shapes from the motherstone. The matrix was stable and tightly grained, a pleasure to work with.
I had learned to inspect the crystalline matrix of the rock with my mage-senses as I worked, sending a skim into the heart of the stone. The aventurine responded, a green-glowing resonance, an echo of power, though I hadn’t charged it with anything yet.
Maybe I could use a bit of the stone for the kirk elder’s wife’s sex charm. Something carved into an orchid, a bloom that looked like a male sex organ. I grinned as I worked, imagining her expression when she saw it. She’d never wear it in plain view.
As the hours passed, I relaxed into working stone, my affront fading as I cut and shaped leaves, and then worked some rose quartz for another necklace of overlapping roses, a commissioned piece for an out-of-town customer. It was cool, and I was glad of my extra layers, wishing Rupert and Jacey were working with me, their flames and braziers helping warm the room. My hands were icy when I finally stopped for lunch. There were customers in the front and so I ate alone, juice and yogurt, while sitting at my workbench. When I went back to cutting stone, I was marginally aware that Jacey, and then Rupert, stopped for lunch too, though we didn’t speak.
Near five thirty the light dimmed. My shoulders were aching, muscles bunched and tight from the hours of work. I had excised enough stones for a half-dozen necklaces, and several large pieces that would work up into nice focal stones. Others would consider my day boring, but I thought it was wonderful.
I went to bed early, the previous sleepless night catching up with me. In Pre-Ap times, town activities might have kept a sleepy person awake, but, like all small towns, Mineral City now pretty much died at nightfall. Big cities could afford streetlights and mage-shields, and the citizens found protection in sheer numbers—places like Atlanta, Mobile, Daytona, and Boca Raton. But in the rest of the world, not much happens after dark, not since the coming of Darkness. So the town went silent as night fell, and I went to sleep.
I knew I was dreaming when I found myself in Enclave and sane, alone inside my own mind. I was sitting with Lolo, who rocked back and forth in candlelight, positioned on a pile of pillows in the big front room in her house. I thought I might be able to wake myself, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to see what would happen next. And I liked the free-floating sensation of this dream. It was soothing and tranquil.
The priestess’ home was near the corner of Bourbon and St. Louis Streets, a two-story house with a black, wrought-iron balcony and tall windows with working shutters. The night was mild, a breeze billowing the gauze curtains, flickering the candle flames. The room was large, with scattered tables and chairs, fans turning lazily twelve feet overhead, casting shadows on the pressed tin ceiling. My dre
ams painted the room a deep rose with pale pink trim, and made the pillows a hundred shades from dusky rose to dark wine.
Nearby, a flute played in a minor key, and drums beat a soft, steady cadence. They followed the tune of a distant trumpet that came through the windows, playing a mournful melody. On her pillows, Lolo swayed to the beat, eyes closed, her ancient skin hanging in folds, her skull nearly bald, brown skin shining through sparse, corked strands. She was alone but for the flutist and drummer, her wrinkled face smooth and relaxed.
The room spun slowly, and I was the one sitting on the pillows. I opened my eyes, seeing the walls and fluttering curtains in a wash of power. Bowls and vases of flowers scented the air. Night-blooming jasmine and lilacs flamed with bright pink and blue energies, their very scents power I could bend and use. I held up my hands, seeing smooth, young, dark-skinned flesh and slender fingers. Not my hands. Not Thorn’s. Someone else’s hands.
Bells draped around my neck tinkled with my movement. In the mirror across from me, I was beautiful, dusky-skinned, and power surged around me like the waves of an incoming tide swirling around coral reefs. I was Lolo. Lolo when I—she—was young.
The seraph stepped toward me, wings folded back, his hair too long, worn loose on the breeze, silvered by moonlight. He was naked, aroused. I trailed my gaze up his body, my lips full and bruised, much kissed. I lifted a hand, holding a stem of lilac in my fingers. I waved it toward him, seeing the strength of an incantation swirl into the air like yellow butterflies.
The sense of his gaze was no dream, but solid and real, a memory or a vision. I couldn’t remember if I had ever been old. Surrounded by my conjure, Raziel—no. Not Raziel. Another. One with iridescent green feathers and desire on his face. He moved across the room and knelt on the cushions, one hand on my shoulder.
His wings lifted and brushed along my body, raising my flesh into prickles of tight peaks. His head lowered and I reached for him. Something clanked, capturing my hands. I caught it and pulled it over my head. Heat blossomed up like a garden blooming all at once, perfuming the air with desire. His nevus gleamed silver like moonlight, like his hair. A silver glow that pulsed with life.
No. That wasn’t right. Not growing things. But like a wave of magma, rising, burning its way toward the surface. I cupped his face with one hand, and lower I found his need, guiding him to me. His body glowed, fulgent in the moonlight. The seraph fell on me, his mouth on my breasts. I arched up to meet him, screaming, “Now. Now!”
I woke, still screaming. Mage-heat locked itself in my body, demanding, the wave of lava still rising. I rolled over, reaching for the seraph. He was nowhere to be found. I was alone in my bed, in the bitter, frozen Appalachian Mountains. My hand encountered something hard, and a morsel of my mind returned to me, fighting through the waves of need. The scent of flowers altered, sour, like funeral lilies, dying.
I gasped a breath of frigid air and looked down at myself. I was myself, not the woman in the dream that hadn’t been a dream. My amulet necklace lay tangled in the sheets.
A cry beckoned through the windows—the lynx, its voice coarse and low. From farther off, a wolf called plaintively. I pulled the necklace over my head. With it in place, I was able to separate the foul scent from the smell of flowers. Mold and dead leaves.
I gripped the hilt of the walking stick and rolled from the bed. Except for the smell, I was alone. The lynx called again, the sound seeming to come from the front of the loft rather than the back, where it usually appeared. Barefoot, naked, not knowing or caring where my nightclothes had disappeared to, I crossed the room to the front windows. They were arched, like the windows in my dream. Like the windows that memory told me were in Lolo’s house in New Orleans. How had I lived here for so long without noticing the similarity? Had I unconsciously chosen this place for that reason? Tall ceilings and arched windows—
Banishing the thought, I lifted a tanto from the kitchen table where I had left it for a thorough cleaning. One blade before me, one held backhanded, pointing to the rear, I reached the front windows and stared at the silent street. A gibbous moon hung in a black sky, silvering puffs of low clouds, rimming the buildings with pale light. Windows were dark. Churned, crusted snow and mud were rutted in the street. The smell of mold grew.
A form moved from the shadows of the bakery across the street. Bareheaded in the night, his long coat unbuttoned, Thadd stared up at me, the angle allowing him to see me from the waist up. Though it was dark, I knew he saw me standing there, blade raised, naked but for my amulets. I could sense his heat, his need, desire stronger even than the seraph’s in my dream. My body responded to the fire in his eyes, nipples tightening.
He was refusing the kylen transformation, fighting it. So what was Thadd becoming? What would happen if I, if we, gave in to the attraction between us and fell on the bed, as the seraph and I had fallen together in my dream?
Thadd’s hand lifted. Asking what? To come inside?
The scent thickened. It wasn’t the aroma of Thaddeus Bartholomew, kylen and cop, nor was it the smell of seraph. I broke our gaze and turned to my loft. Opening mage-sight, I swept the open space, seeking. I had done just that only a day past and had seen nothing out of the ordinary. Now, near the back door that led out onto the small back porch, I saw a spark of reddish brown swirling with black. My nostrils flared, and beneath the smell of flowers and mold and rotting vegetation, I caught the stink of brimstone.
I moved through the dark apartment with ease, the overhead fans blowing icy air over my bare skin. At the back door, behind a privacy screen, was a woven reed basket of folded sheets. The glow came from within it.
I lifted the sheets. On the bottom of the basket was an egg-sized piece of wood, river-carved and smoothed. An earth amulet. Its foul stink roiled out.
In mage-sight, the Dark conjure caught in the cells of the wood appeared as an intricate web of shadow and orange light. I didn’t touch it, but I recognized an incantation spelled to stimulate heat. Someone had put it in my loft. Someone had climbed the loft stairs from the shop or crept along the back of the building and up the stairs to the porch. I checked the door. It was locked. How did he, or she, get in?
I turned on a light and placed the blades on the foot of the bed. I had several stone jars filled with used salt, and I took one. Opening the top of the jar with a glove, I shoved the driftwood amulet inside, deep into the salt, and closed the lid.
Only then did I put on a robe and return to the front windows. Thadd was gone but the stink remained. Had Thadd put the amulet here? One of the townsfolk? I knew the scent of the conjure that had trapped me in the dream memory. It reeked of incubus.
Chapter 15
Before I climbed back into the now-cold bed, I had to ward my home or I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Pulling on a robe, I carted my silver bowl from window to window, gathering the stones that protected me. Stones that had not been enough security against whatever or whoever had entered my loft. When the bowl was uncomfortably heavy, I carried it to the kitchen and shoved the table to the side with my hip. I placed the stone spheres and eggs—agates, quartz, marble in shades of pink, white, brown, and green—on the floor and sat beside them, clicking a circle around me. I was so exhausted that, if I tried to pour a salt ring and conjure a proper circle, I might incinerate myself, but even using a stored circle, I could do a quick-and-dirty protection that would get me through the night. I hoped.
Filling stones with power was the work of hours, unless I used a shortcut. It might not be a terribly safe shortcut—throwing around creation energies when tired, cold, and horny as a burning bunny was never wise—but it was what I had.
Mages in Enclave didn’t have to worry about their protection, and if they needed a lot of power, they could call on one another for assistance, or they could draw quickly from the power sink stored deep in the earth below them. I had discovered that distance made it harder for me to utilize that source. Living on my own, I had learned to bend the rules.
; But this is different, a warning voice whispered inside my head.
I closed my eyes, blew out a tension-filled breath, and drew in a calming one. Serenity fluttered just out of reach, distanced by exhaustion, and by a niggling doubt as to the wisdom of this. I had been thinking about this kind of conjure, but I hadn’t tried it before. And using a portable circle meant that I located and used power in different, less controlled ways. But I was so tired. And I knew I could do this. I knew I could. I breathed out my tension.
Crossing my legs, I let my back slump. The floor was icy beneath my bottom, chilling my thighs. I hadn’t bothered with candles. This would be nothing but power and stone.
Again I breathed. Calm slid closer. The silence of the loft settled about me, only the black-pig clock ticking over my shoulder, soothing, a part of the stillness. Calm finally rested on me, heavy, enticing me toward sleep. My breath smoothed. Peace entered me with each inhalation and wrapped itself around me, warm, thawing the cold tiles beneath me.
My heart beat a slow, methodical rhythm. Behind my closed lids, I saw the gentle radiance of my own flesh, the brighter glow of my childhood scars like a horrible map of old pain down my legs and arms. I opened my eyes, seeing with mage-sight.
The loft pulsed with power: bath, bed, fireplaces, every window, the floor; all glowed, charged with pale energy. To enter here would cause Darkness terrible pain. Except for near the back door. There I saw a dull black stain, where something had conjured an opening. It hadn’t come fully inside, but had knelt and touched the laundry basket. It had made contact with the door in three places. Scuffed traces of its fingers were on the basket. The mark of Darkness was already fading, but my breathing sped at the sight.
My skin burned brighter than the apartment, a pearl sheen with the hotter radiance of scars. The amulet necklace I wore was a bright constellation of power, resting on my chest.
