Magic 101 (A Diana Tregarde Investigation)

by Mercedes Lackey

  Then six.

  Then three.

  And at last, only the one, which hung in the air, as if stunned.

  Now if this had been a movie, Di would have paused and said something significant, and the thing would have pulled some unexpected ability out of its ectoplasmic ass.

  But it wasn’t a movie and she didn’t give it a microsecond to recover.

  The sword flashed across the intervening space and cut the last of the dybbuks in two. It vanished with a shriek that practically deafened her, and a stink worse than the sulfur that was still fuming.

  And all the power drained out of her at once, as the “door” slammed shut once again.

  She dropped to one knee, exhausted, and Emory ran to Em, who was starting to sit up.

  “Somebody open a window,” she panted. “And put out that damn fire before we all choke.”

  #

  Nobody said a word for a good long time, while the sulfur fumes cleared out and Di stumbled to a chair, laying the sword down next to it as she slumped into it. Emory helped Em to the bathroom, and a moment later, Di heard the shower running. Yeah, after that, the poor girl probably needed a shower. And then a second one to get the sulfur stink out of her hair.

  Marshal, his eyes as big as dinner plates, brought her a beer, then sat down as far from her as he could get, staring at her. Zaak, on the other hand, sat down as close to her as he could get, though he looked at his hands, not her.

  Emory came back with more beers, set them down, and sat down himself. He was the one that finally broke the silence.

  “What the hell just happened?” he asked, quietly.

  Di slumped a little further into the chair and gave Zaak the Evil Glare. “Gandalf there decided that normal detective work wasn’t getting anywhere. Didn’t you, Zaak? What did you try to call? Specifically?”

  “I thought—” Zaak gulped. “I thought I’d get a wandering spirit. Cause, y’know, something like that could go hunting for Melanie—”

  “Give me strength,” she groaned. “Haven’t you ever paid any attention to your own peoples’ folklore?”

  His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “Uh. No?” he said weakly.

  She sat up and pointed at him. “When you do an unspecified summoning, you moron, you get what your heritage calls. And in your case, the only ‘wandering spirits’ that the Jews have, specifically the European Jews, are the dybbuks. And the dybbuks are not particularly cooperative. What did I tell you about thinking things through?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said in a small voice.

  “Well, you had better be sorry. Because the unrestful, unconsecrated spirit of one of your people found himself in the body of a tref-eating shikse, and he was not even remotely happy about that. Which is why he attempted to cleave a pound out of your butt with that knife.” She slumped back down again. “Add to that fact that he and his friends are out and about for reason—said reason being that they were such pieces of crap on earth that they can’t rest, and I trust you get the picture. I’d smack you like your old granny, but I’m too tired.”

  “Wait—” said Emory. “Spirit? Dybbuk? I’m lost.”

  It was going to be a long night.

  Thank gods it’s Friday.

  #

  Be careful what you ask for. You might get it. Di had wanted a little help, now she had more than she had bargained for. Or she would, when the quartet got over being rattled and started to realize that they had just witnessed some real magic, that there was such a thing, and that—because face it, they were all under twenty-five and three of them were laboring under a burden of testosterone—it had been pretty damn exciting.

  Which meant that she wasn’t going to be able to pry them off of her now. Zaak was already a Believer, and the only thing more fanatic than a Believer who gets evidence that he’s right, it’s a Skeptic who gets evidence that the Believers are right. Ah, the zeal of the newly converted.

  Which of course was what Emory and Marshal were. Maybe Em too; for the moment she was being really quiet, and seeing as she was the one whose skin the dybbuk had tried to take over, Di didn’t blame her.

  When she had finally made all of the explanations she cared to, she stumbled down to her own apartment to sleep like a stone, leaving them to clean up the mess. Fortunately there wasn’t much of it.

  She hoped it was Zaak who had to clean up the lion’s share.

  She really, really wanted to go straight to bed, but she knew that if she did, she’d wake up with the whole apartment smelling like sulfur, and it would be weeks before it aired out of the bed-curtains. So she stood under the shower until she started to go all pruney, and then fell into bed with her hair still wrapped in a towel.

  She must have been so tired she didn’t even move all night, because she woke up in the same position she’d fallen asleep in.

  All righty, then. She lay there, just enjoying the fact that she didn’t have to get up for class, and that although she hurt, it was that good sort of after-workout hurt. She’d done a good job last night.

  Trouble was, it hadn’t been what she’d been Called to do.

  And in the cold light of morning, she knew what she had to do. She had to stop dancing around the situation and stop trying to pretend that there wasn’t some sort of magical connection here.

  She had to visit Tamara.

  With a groan that was strictly internal, she pried herself out of bed and went hunting for some clothes. When you had hair as long as she did, it took some time to brush it out after you’d washed it, and that gave her time to think.

  Occam’s Razor.

  What if the simplest solution was the one that Zaak kept insisting on? What if Tamara was tangled up in the kidnapping? Forget that it had been a male “cop” that took the kid, forget that it didn’t look like there was any connection between Tamara and the Fitzhughs…forget hunting for motives. Motives were what you figured out after you caught the bad guy. Concentrate on finding the kid and catching the bad guy. They were getting it all backwards.

  So she put her hair up in a bun, grabbed a bagel-and-tomato for breakfast, went out and did her shopping at the Star Mart. She was pretty sure that Tamara wasn’t an early riser; most of her kind weren’t.

  Once everything was put away, she took some of her purchases and made a little “special” preparation. A picnic-shaker of salt got consecrated, and so did the water that went into a tiny spray bottle meant for perfume. Then she made a little corsage out of the oak, ash and thorn leaves she’d picked up off the street on the way home and pinned it to the shoulder of her poncho. An iron horse-shoe nail went in one pocket, and a silver crucifix in the other.

  She called the number on Tamara’s card. She wanted to do this before the Scooby-Do team woke up and decided to go with her.

  The woman who answered had a curiously deep and throaty voice, and an accent that was as phony as a plastic flower. Yes, there might be a booking free. She would go and see if someone had canceled. Why, Susan was in luck, one of Tamara’s clients had phoned in to say she was ill. If she hurried, she could just make the appointment. “And bring a fresh egg,” she added.

  Well, well. I know where this is going.

  The first, the very first thing she did was to write out exactly where she was going. She distributed the copies around the apartment. There was one pinned prominently to the bulletin board, one on the kitchen table, and in case something happened to her and Tamara actually figured out her actual address, one under the pillow on the bed, one in the stack of manuscript, and one rolled up and stuck into the laundry hamper. She’d never had much patience for the sort of book or movie where the hero wandered off into danger without telling anyone where he was going.

  Then she called Lavinia and told her.

  With that done, Di got a shoulder-bag bought at Goodwill, and stuck the perfume bottle and the salt-shaker in it, and the egg wrapped in tissue to protect it. Besides that, for verisimilitude, she dropped in a pack of gum from which she removed
two sticks, a new (cheap) lipstick, matching nail polish, a new clean comb, a pack of tissues that she opened first, a used paperback romance, and a bandana with peace signs all over it. Besides those, there were only three things that she actually needed. Enough money for bus fare, and Tamara’s fee, and maybe a cup of coffee and a donut. Her keys. And a wallet with a phony ID. She had a stash of them from when she and Memaw had gone after the phonies. This one was from when she was seventeen—perfect for the purpose now.

  According to her ID, her name was Susan Rutherford and she lived in Boston. In the wallet were more things from those days. When you expected that a crook might be going through your purse, pictures were very important in firming up your faux self. She chose a few from a whole box of photos she’d picked up at flea markets; a kid in a high school football uniform, a generic middle-aged couple, and someone’s granny. She also had a boy’s class ring she’d gotten at the same place, wrapped with angora to make it fit; she wore that on her right hand.

  She shielded herself to a fare-thee well. No way she was going to walk into that snake-den without every protection she could muster. She even had her atheme tucked into the top of her boot. She hoped she wouldn’t need it, because it would be bloody awkward to get at if she did, with the boots being under the bell bottoms of her jeans. Still, it wouldn’t show that way, at least.

  Simple turtleneck sweater, black of course. Nondescript gabardine jacket. And gloves, the all-important gloves. If she managed to get some evidence she didn’t want her own fingerprints on it, and it was cold enough that thin gloves wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. One thing she totally refused to do, not even to complete the disguise of being a high school senior. There was no way in hell she was going to totter around on a pair of three inch platform shoes.

  So Susan got on the bus, and read her used romance book all the way to her stop while thinking very hard about being Susan.

  If Tamara’s house had been creepy before, she had to force herself up the steps now. And that made her wonder…what had changed? Was it just that the woman was sucking so much misery off Chris Fitzhugh that she was getting more powerful by the day? Or was there something else going on?

  The door was answered by someone who could only be Tamara herself, and she ushered Di into a non-descript entryway, maybe five by five, painted beige, with a little bench too narrow for anyone to sit on against one wall. And if there was a Richter Scale for “something weird,” Tamara pegged it at 10.

  Physically, she wasn’t tall, but she gave the impression of being tall. She had shoulder-length black hair cut in a Mary Tyler Moore flip, square, Slavic features, and deep-set dark eyes. She wore a purple turtle-neck tunic over a calf-length Gypsy-hippy skirt with a print of tiny purple flowers on black, over black moccasin-boots. She had a fringed purple sash around her waist, a tangle of “amulet” necklaces and love-beads around her neck, big gold hoop earrings, and a dozen Indian bangle bracelets on each wrist.

  She was a fraud. The fact she had asked for the egg proved it.

  It wasn’t just that—There was no doubt about it, Di could already sense the emotional whirlpool there, the woman was a psychic vampire. And it wasn’t just that she was no more a Gypsy than Di was. Nor that there was a whiff—just a hint—of real magic about her, and it was not nice.

  There was something else that was completely off about her. And Di, normally able to put her finger on the cause of any weirdness, could not pinpoint this.

  Tamara looked at her for several minutes in absolute silence. Then without a word, she crooked her finger at Di and led her into the “consultation room,” which in any other house would be the living room.

  As Di had expected, it was dim, lit by candles, the curtains were drawn across the windows, the air was smoky and thick with patchouli incense. The only way in which it really differed from far too many rooms of the same sort that Di had been in over the course of her life, was that this room had been decorated in purple, rather than the usual red.

  And what Di noticed, which very few people other than someone like Marshal would have, was the strategic placement of mirrors behind her, near the ceiling. In the dim light, and with all that dark purple, it was very difficult to spot them unless you were looking for them. But with the way that the few lights were placed, anything in the “client’s” hands would reflect very nicely in them.

  The table, covered with a purple cloth, was bare except for an egg-cup and a white saucer set to the side. Those were for later.

  “Please,” Tamara said, with a toothy smile. “Sit.”

  Di sat in the indicated chair, and put her purse on the table next to her. Tamara looked at it with arch significance, and Di pulled out her wallet and put the requested fee on the table. It was quite modest, only ten dollars, but of course, Tamara expected to make a good deal more from this particular pigeon. Tamara nodded, took the two five-dollar bills (which Di had marked, though Tamara wouldn’t know that), and tucked them somewhere under the tablecloth.

  What, not down your cleavage? You missed one of the Gypsy clichés? You haven’t been watching nearly enough bad horror movies. Of course the cleavage would be hard to reach wearing a turtleneck.

  “I would like you to take out of your bag some object that means much to you, and the problem you have come to me about,” Tamara continued. “But do not show it to me. Merely hold it in your hand in a way that I cannot see it. The spirits will tell me all that I need to know.”

  That, and the mirror behind me.

  Di pretended to fumble through the purse, going through the photos until she came to the one of the boy. She pulled it out of the bag and held it in her hand, shielded from Tamara’s direct gaze—but no doubt visible in the mirror mounted above and behind her seat. Tamara gazed over her head, as if off in the distance. But of course Di was well aware that she was looking in the mirror.

  “You have a lovely grandmother, and loving parents,” said Tamara. “They care much for you. So much, that they are concerned about your love for a boy. No?”

  Di “gasped.” “They want me to go to college,” she whispered. “But if I do—he’s not going, he has to go to work for his dad. If I go away, will he forget me?”

  So she had just told the Gypsy that there was money enough to send her to college. That would probably be bait she could not resist. Tamara closed her eyes and began to sway. “There is another, a rival to you,” she intoned.

  Di allowed a tiny whimper to escape.

  “She has designs on this boy. She is not good for him, this girl. She does not love him. She only wants the things he will have, when he takes his father’s business. But he does not see this.” There was a sly little smile on Tamara’s lips.

  Di really, really, did not like her. If there was ever a story designed to make a young girl paranoid and fearful, it was one like that. It didn’t even matter if there was no other girl in the picture. Given a story like this, the victim would find someone she knew that matched the description of a man-stealer.

  “Oh, and she is, is not good for this boy. She will get him to do things that are wrong. To steal from his father so he can buy her presents. To go to places with her that he should not. You are a good girl; she will make him to think that good girls are dull. You know her, she is taller than you, not so pretty, sly, and—“ Tamara made a cupping gesture at her own breasts that seemed faintly obscene. “Big bosoms.”

  “Juliet Whately!” Di exclaimed, making up the name on the spot.

  “Yes…yes…but there is more…” Tamara frowned. “The spirits tell me there is more about this girl than you know. She has bad blood. Bad Gypsy blood. There is good Gypsy blood, and bad Gypsy blood, and hers is bad, bad, bad…”

  Okay, here it comes.

  “This girl—bad things follow her. Bad things come when she calls. That is how she will get this boy, not just with her bosoms and letting him do what he wants with them. No, no. She has more.” Tamara leaned over the table now, and stared into Di’s eyes. “She is evil! Q
uick, take out the egg I told you to bring, and the spirits will show you!”

  Di fumbled out the egg and handed it to Tamara. And Tamara was as good or better than Marshal; Di didn’t see it when she swapped it for the egg she had prepared earlier.

  But Di had no doubt that it was Tamara’s egg, and not her own, that was placed in the incongruous little egg-cup on the table between them, with the white saucer to one side.

  “Think about the boy!” Tamara urged. “Think about the girl! The spirits will show us if he is in danger!”

  Di clutched the picture hard enough to crease it, and stared at the egg as Tamara chanted. And it was all she could do to keep from breaking up laughing when she recognized the words.

  “Ue o muite arukō, namida ga kobore nai yō ni, omoidasu haru no hi, hitori bocchi no yoru.”

  Ten years ago she’d learned that song. The only song sung in Japanese to ever hit the bestseller charts in the US. “Sukiyaki,” was the nonsensical title they had given it, probably since that was one of the few Japanese words that Americans would recognize in 1963. Di supposed that, droned as the words were and without a tune, there weren’t too many people who would realize where they came from.

  All they would know was that it sounded exotic, nothing like any language they’d ever heard. Tamara was supposed to be a Gypsy, they would assume it was a Gypsy spell, and not that she’d learned the words from some sheet music she’d probably picked up at a used book store.

  Tamara repeated the words three times more, each time getting louder, and on last time, picked up the egg, and on the final yoru cracked it into the saucer.

  DI faked a shriek, as any teenager would have, seeing the blood, the black sludgy stuff, and the hairy fibers along with the half-formed chicken embryo splayed out over the white china. Most teenagers from the heart of Cambridge wouldn’t even know that it was a chicken embryo; all they would see would be something fetus-like.

  “You see! You see!” Tamara said in triumph. “Already she has him! Already she places her curse on you and your love for him, and on him to draw him to her! Oh, you are in danger, and he is in danger, terrible, terrible danger!”