Heroines and Hellions: a Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Margo Bond Collins

  Aerie had no such pretty comforts. She had only what lay before her.

  She placed the box gently onto the coffee table. She circled her fingers and opened her Holding Plane, reaching in.

  Pulling out the grimoire, she handed it to Finn, who took it wordlessly. Jim was staring at his palm, in which he still held the empty amulet, nestled against that bright pink piece of fleece. Turning it over, he traced the name of his long-lost daughter, finally standing in front of him.

  “I guess this means we’re family.” She blinked away tears, angry with herself for acting so sentimental. She ventured a brave look at him, afraid of his response. “Are we?”

  There was no response. Just a sudden hug from Jim, who wept openly and held her, as if he clung to his very life.

  At first, she felt super awkward. Never big on personal contact, it was an itchy sensation, like breathing stale air and feeling like her entire body had been stuffed into a compression stocking.

  How close was she supposed to stand? Where did she put her hands? Too high? Too low? Was she supposed to do a quick pat or a gentle rub? If they’d been sparring, she could have relied on years of training and her muscle memory to do the work for her.

  But no. She’d never been prepared for this, for an actual willing-participant hug. She raised her arms tentatively and…hugged him back.

  Just hugged. Just let her arms wrap around him the same way he held her. Just let go of the tension and the stance and the readiness to act and just let herself be hugged. It was more than a physical embrace. It was a lowering of her hardest, highest walls. It was an acceptance of what Jim offered. And what he offered was an emotional, complete acceptance of her and all that she was, and a promise that she would always be welcomed and valued and loved.

  All in a simple hug. So much more than she had ever imagined a hug could be.

  She closed her eyes and grinned and rested her cheek against his chest, drinking in the warmth of his shelter and the absolute perfection of belonging.

  She opened them again when Finn jostled her with a good-natured mini shove. He wore that impish smile, though his eyes were unusually bright. “Come here, you jerk.”

  Turned out, brotherly hugs weren’t such a bad thing, either.

  “We are family,” Jim said. “And we will never again be torn asunder.”

  19

  Down in the workroom, Finn pushed a clean space on the broad table while Aerie carefully lifted the grimoire out of her Holding Plane.

  He slow-whistled in disbelief. “Jeez, that’s old.”

  “No fooling.” She lifted the cover, hearing the spine crackle. This thing was, in its own right, an artifact, so she handled it like one. “You don’t have cotton gloves, do you?”

  He shook his head.

  “We just need to be careful. Hand me that.” She pointed to a thin metal spatula on Finn’s side of the table. Carefully, she used the spatula to separate the pages. “I don’t want to give this thing any more flesh memory than it already has.”

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “Look who wrote it.” Jim came over with a glass stirring rod and helped Aerie turn the heavy parchment pages. On the back of the title page had been scrawled a forward, the ink faded and brown with age.

  It was signed John Dee.

  Aerie flicked her gaze up to Finn’s face.

  He rolled his shoulders and rubbed his neck. “Ugh,” he said. “That gave me the willies.”

  “It should,” she said. “This is dark stuff.”

  “Are you sure you should do this?”

  “Do we have a choice?” She met his stare, pouring as much resolution into her expression as possible.

  Finn rubbed his mouth. “No. We really don’t.”

  Aerie and Finn paged through the grimoire, reading over the spells. The language was old and formal and ridiculously awkward; the spindly script twisted letters and made some words nearly indecipherable.

  “This is worse than my metaphysics text book.” Finn paced around to her side. “I can’t even read half of this.”

  “No problem.” Aerie shrugged. “Trevor brought stuff like this home all the time.”

  “You can read it?”

  She nodded. “And I can do it. I just have to memorize it.”

  “Good thing we have all year.”

  Her phone dinged. Beneath her own text of Can you come up to Scranton right away? I need you, Cara had responded.

  I’m on my way.

  She nodded to herself and pocketed her phone. “Nope. We have three hours, more or less, ‘til Cara gets here. That’s why I’m using this.”

  Opening the book to the first spell, she circled her fingers. “Photograph.”

  A flash of light burst from her casting circle, and a ghostly image of the page appeared in front of her, a photographic negative.

  “A photographic memory spell.” He smiled and nodded. “I like it. Not surprised. You always did fight a little dirty.”

  “Not dirty. Just efficiently. Come on. You can turn the pages and I’ll set them to memory.” She grimaced and looked at the thickness of the book. “Three hours might not be enough.”

  The hours passed quickly, and slowly they made their way through the book. Several times, Aerie had to stop, and fan herself, or catch her breath, or pace around the table holding her side. John Dee’s grimoire was no beach read. Consuming the knowledge was physically painful. It was magic’s inherent warning to the mage whose reach exceeded his grasp.

  Page by page, she memorized the book, manipulating the images before her as if she flipped through the pages.

  While they worked, Jim was busy in another section of the work room, quietly. From time to time, Aerie would look over to see what he was doing. He appeared to be crafting a vessel, an urn of sorts.

  She gave a questioning look to Finn.

  He leaned closer and whispered. “Just in case. When we do the release spell, he’s not sure if any…corporeal remains will come through. He just wants to be ready.”

  What an awful thing. She hadn’t even considered that. All she’d focused on was getting the right spell to help Eilis get out of the amulet. She never gave any thought to what she’d come out to.

  Jim was scratching at the lid with an engraver as she walked over to him. Eilis Meehan. He finished without looking up at her and started wrapping the cord.

  “Hey.” She traced the letters with a gentle finger as he put the engraver in a drawer. “Before, when you said ‘you remember.’ What did you mean?”

  “The hole in the air trick.” Jim turned to her and smiled, a little less weary. “Your mother taught you that when you were a toddler. Your first spell. It was her version of playing peek-a-boo with you when you were a baby.”

  “My Holding Plane?” She wrinkled her nose, playfully. “My mother taught me that?”

  “She never taught me,” Finn said, sounding wounded. “She said she would but…”

  “But time ran out,” Jim finished.

  “Yeah, but.” Aerie shrugged. “Not for us. I mean, I can teach you.”

  “You will?”

  “Sure. You just have to admit I’m better than you and—”

  The doorbell rang. “Cara’s here.”

  “You can’t just say that and think I’ll let it go.”

  “I can, I will, and I did.” She opened her Holding Plane, giving Finn only a slightly sassy smirk, and set the book inside.

  “You’re localizing that holding cell,” Jim said. “This room is warded. The magic won’t let it travel with you.”

  “I don’t need it.” She tapped her temple. “I have what I need right here.”

  “Showoff,” Finn said.

  “Kids, please,” Jim said, sounding exasperated. But only for a moment.

  Aerie giggled into her hand. Getting scolded had never sounded so nice before.

  “I need to finish this spell,” Jim said. “I’ll catch up to you. Take everything over to the park.”

 
The doorbell rang again. Cara stood nervously on the porch, looking very relieved when Aerie opened the door. “Thank Poseidon it’s you. I was starting to worry I had the wrong house.”

  Finn closed the door behind him, carrying the chest of mementos. “Sun is setting. We should hurry.”

  The park was a short walk away, down a thickly tree-lined street. Big houses, old trees, a nice neighborhood. What would it have been like growing up here? A different pace. Lemonade stands, maybe. Nice things.

  Not that she didn’t have nice things back in Vanguard. Her life had been her life. It didn’t lose value now simply because of a could-have-been.

  “There.” Finn pointed ahead to a break in the trees, when the golden sun made fire against the changing maple leaves. “That’s the park.”

  His phone dinged and he slid the chest under his arm, maneuvering his phone. Aerie could see the text message.

  I need your help, can you come home?

  “That’s my dad.” Finn put his phone away and handed the chest to Cara. “You guys want to go on ahead? I’ll be right back.”

  “No problem.” Aerie gave him a playful shove and watched Finn double back to the house at a jog.

  “You guys are getting along.” Cara’s voice was mild.

  “Yeah, he’s okay. Wait. What are you saying? ‘cause you better not even be saying it.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Yeah well, you won’t say it once I tell you the whole story. We’re related.”

  “You’re kidding. You? And him? No way.”

  “Yes, way. And wait ‘til I tell you about my father—” Aerie paused for dramatic effect. She was going to love telling her this next part.

  “Yeah, how ‘bout it?” Cara said. “I can’t believe your dad let you take his car.”

  Oh, she meant Pop. She snorted in disgust. “Yeah, right. I had to hijack the mystery machine to get here.”

  “Then…why did I see his car back there?” Cara turned to look back the way they’d come. “Unless there’s actually two dark green Pintos with—”

  “You know there isn’t two.” Aerie’s stomach dropped. “Oh, shit.”

  They raced back to the house. Front door was cracked open, spilling a shard of light onto the front porch. Finger on her lips, Aerie raised her hand to slow Cara down. Cautiously Aerie cat-footed up the steps and pushed the door open. Behind her, Cara called up her power, stirring her Elementality. Her hair was swimming and her eyes were starting to lighten.

  Aerie scanned the foyer. Through the archway, she saw a pair of sprawled legs on the dining room floor. Jim. Not moving. Aerie pointed at Jim with two fingers. Cara slipped over and crouched to feel a pulse. Looking back at Aerie, she nodded with a weak smile of relief.

  Aerie nodded once and peeked around the other corner. Living room was empty. She slid down the wall to the next doorway and peered around—

  And drew a sharp breath as something hard pressed into her back. She froze.

  Jels.

  “I missed you, baby. Good thing the van has a GPS tracker.” He covered her mouth with one hand and hoisted her up, half-dragging her. She kicked and fought, landing more than one solid hit. He was oblivious to the beating, pulling he down the hall to Jim’s office. Jels kicked the door wide open and dropped her in a rough heap.

  She hit the ground in a side-roll, coming to rest on her toes and palms, crouched and ready to spring.

  Finn sat in the corner chair, thin-lipped, visibly sweating. When she made eye contact with him, he sagged, looking crushed. He broke his gaze away to look back at the far side of the room. She twisted, following his line of sight.

  Charles sat on the desk, pointing his casting ring at Finn. The ring was charged and ready to cast. An ionic bite in the air made her tongue tingle. That spell packed a lot of energy.

  A kill shot.

  Charles stared her down, wearing that perpetually bored, disappointed expression. Her mouth was so dry it hurt to swallow. “Did you get it, kid?”

  Get it? Get what? She shook her head, no clue what he was getting at.

  “Of course, I did,” Jels said. “She gave it right up.”

  Aerie shot a look at him. Gave what? She patted her pockets furiously. At the same moment she realized what was missing, Jels leers and held something up.

  Eilis’ amulet.

  20

  Jels tossed the amulet to Charles, who plucked it neatly out of the air.

  “Aerie, Aerie, Aerie.” Charles clucked his tongue, slowly shaking his head in a show of infuriatingly familiar disappointment. “You never change, do you?”

  A glint of light sparkled on the gemstone, impotent fire. “You seem to have lost this. Again.”

  “Give it to me. Pop. Please.”

  “Pop.” He laughed. “Never really felt comfortable hearing you call me that. Made me sound so old. It was better than that other word. Dad. But you knew that, didn’t you?”

  Aerie’s chest burned, the air too hot to breathe.

  “Stop it,” she whispered.

  “Why? It’s all out in the open, now. I’m not your dad. I’m not your father.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You know the truth.”

  “Shut up! You are my father. The only dad I ever knew. And you—made me feel awful, all the time. I just wanted you to be like everyone else’s dad. Supportive. Affectionate. Not a dick. I did everything you ever wanted, even though a lot of it wasn’t even close to what I wanted. But I did it. For you. Just so you could see me. See what I could do. What I was worth. And all you ever did was make me feel worthless.”

  “Silly child. I always knew your worth. I knew your mother’s worth, and for a brief time I owned it. You were…too little. No training. Raw potential by the boatload. You needed time to mature. And once you were ready, I would harness you, too.”

  He swung the amulet before his eyes, admiring its angry glint. “You know what? I knew you were close. I mean, that last repo you did was epic. People are talking, you know. They’re afraid you’ll come for them next. I got a package yesterday, did I tell you? A loaded crystal, one of the next items to be repo’d. The guy just mailed it to me with a note that said, ‘Don’t send your kid after me. Here, just take it’.”

  He laughed but the humor ran from his expression. “And now, I have this.”

  He held the amulet aloft. “I’m sure you have the book, too, somewhere. Probably in that hidey spot of yours. I wanted to kill you when you lost them. To put my hands around your throat and choke you to death. But that’s a crime. I’d already spun our history out too far to make you disappear. Good thing that you had so many friends.”

  “Damn straight, she does,” Cara said from the doorway. She was in full-blown Undine mode. Eyes blue, hair floating—even her skin had the sheen of silver-blue scales. She rushed up, the air crashing around her in a turbulence of energy, and stood at Aerie’s side. “We’re her real family.”

  “Not you,” Charles said, his voice dripping with bored contempt. “Your first best friend.”

  Jels strolled over to stand beside Charles, still leering, his eyes dead and unfeeling. Charles clapped him on the back. “Remember how inseparable you two were? It was easy to turn him. To train him. To encourage him to show his…affections.”

  Her face burned with humiliation. An even hotter flame ignited deep inside her. The memories, flooding back. Affections, he called them. The hurt, the shame, the grief. The anger—

  Charles watched the pain that flashed over her expression with keen interest, eyes glinting, a cruel smile turning the corners of his mouth. “Jels is a marvelous wizard and a loyal ally. In a way, I’m glad you retrieved the amulet. I would have hated for him to have gotten killed.”

  She faced him, fists tight, every muscle screaming to be launched into action. She ached to attack. It took all her discipline to stand in place. All that she’d endured—to hear it from Pop’s own mouth—part of her brain refused to believe it. It had to be a test of
some sort. He was always testing her, always pushing her. There had to be something she’d missed. “And me?”

  “You know what they say. If I can’t have you…” He lifted the amulet. Light caught the empty gem, flashing a cold light. Reaching behind himself, he grabbed something from the desk. “I’ll just take someone else.”

  Finn groaned. He knew what Charles had. If he knew, she knew—

  Ciaran’s amulet. Finn had been carrying it.

  Charles lifted both amulets and clicked them together, snapping them into place. He shouted a spell, and thrust his empty hand out toward Finn, casting ring crackling with energy.

  That spell. She’d read it only a few short hours ago. It was the entrapment verse.

  Smoke rose from the ground beneath Finn’s chair. He grunted and strained to move but he was rooted. “Let me go!”

  “Pop, no!”

  Within seconds, Finn was enveloped in a column of smoke, a bitter-smelling cloud of sulfured soot. The Asmodeus amulet could draw from only one kind of ley, and that ley left a stain on all it touched. The smoke twisted into a rope-like stream and snaked its way toward Charles, slithering into the amulet. Finn’s voice, still shouting, faded as the smoke was absorbed.

  Aerie’s temper boiled over. All the rage, the pain, the hate she’d felt during her possession—now, it was hers. The air was still acrid with the trace of brimstone-laced smoke and it hurt to breathe, hurt more to talk. “I’ll kill you.”

  “Aerie. You can’t.” Cara’s voice was low and steady. Reasonable. She knew how to break through auditory exclusion, the deafness that came with adrenaline overload. Aerie had trained her how to do it, how to help her through adrenaline stress when training.

  Aerie was past reason. “Look what he’s done!”

  Charles swung the conjoined amulets on their chains, playfully confident. “Try to kill me, and I’ll smash the amulet. He’ll be lost forever. You want that on your conscience, too? Think it will sting worse than losing some old book?”