“And you gotta help me again now. You didn’t save my life just to have me waste away, right?”
Vinnie grunted. “Her mana addiction, she means. Mr Swarz said no juice until she recovers – mana or alcohol. Too bad, because she whines like an infant when she is sober.”
Frisk flopped back down onto the countertop. “Vinnie, that’s so hurtful!”
“You see? She proves my point even now.”
“How long until she is recovered?” Daisy asked.
The barkeep shrugged. “I will keep an eye on her aura. When it returns to its full glow, I will let Mr Swarz know.” He leaned over Frisk, saying a little too loudly, “You see? I take care of my kind, even when they whimper like children.”
Frisk flashed her teeth at him, mimicking the expression of a hissing cat. “No. You’re cruel and heartless, and when I die from this headache, they’re gonna put ‘Vinnie’s Fault’ on my tombstone.” Vinnie shook his head with a groan and returned to his task. Daisy also left Frisk to bask in her misery, heading toward the brewery room.
Inside, the glyphs were lit and Mr Swarz and Angel were there, both leaning over a vat of the blue liquid while dressed in ridiculous getups. Daisy was sure it was for safety reasons, but both wore bulky white coats that covered only the front of their bodies, blue face masks, matching rubber gloves, and oversized glass visors to protect their eyes. They both looked up as she entered.
“Good afternoon, Miss Dell,” Mr Swarz said. His voice was muffled under the mask, but the precise enunciation of his speech mannerisms made his words clear as a song. “If you’ll please wait at the entrance there, I’ll be with you in a moment.”
He turned to grab a pair of metal tongs from the worktable behind him and used them to grasp a small glass vial also resting there. Returning to the vat, he lowered the vial in and removed it once it was filled nearly to the lip with shimmering mana. Angel leaned forward and held out a hand. Even through the rubber gloves, a swirling line of color drifted from her fingertips, dancing and twisting as it made its way toward the vial like a wisp of snow on the wind. When it reached the vial, it sunk into the glass and permeated the liquid contents. The mana glowed a sort of lime green for a moment, then faded to its normal cerulean blue. After a moment of silent examination, both Angel and Mr Swarz nodded toward each other, and he dumped the contents of the vial back into the vat.
“Perfect.” Setting aside his tools and pulling off the goggles and the mask, Mr Swarz joined Daisy by the entryway. Angel, meanwhile, lifted a heavy lid to seal the vat. “Apologies for the wait. How are you faring today?”
“Well enough. I slept past lunch yesterday, which was apparently all I needed. After I walked Frisk home, I spent most of the day on laundry. My dress got, uh, a bit messy from that night.”
“But you are uninjured?”
Daisy wasn’t sure why he kept asking that. “Yes, sir. I’m fine.”
There was a tension around his eyes that faded just a bit as she said that. “Good. I’m glad. But we have matters to discuss. I have learned some more about the chaos that ensued two nights ago. It’s important that you hear of it.” He shed the rest of his safety gear, laying it out neatly on one of the tables and grabbing his cane, which had been set against the wall. To her surprise, he appeared to actually need it that morning. He must have noticed her staring, shifting as he leaned on it. “Stress tends to aggravate my physical condition. Nerves, you know. Please, let’s find somewhere to sit and speak.”
Back in the main room of the bar, Vicks had appeared – presenting as a man again – and hovered over his twin sister, rubbing her back while she continued to moan through her withdrawals. Mr Swarz ignored them and led Daisy to the nearest table.
“I inquired with Ann-Marie, the bartender at Walter’s, about the night of your incident. You said you lost one of your charms that night, correct?”
Daisy felt a squirm in her gut. That couldn’t have had anything to do with what happened, surely. “Yes.”
“At Walter’s?”
“I’m not sure, but probably.”
Mr Swarz glanced down where he folded his hands on the table. “I see. It may be nothing, but Ann-Marie reports that after you all left, there was another patron poking around the area where you had been sitting – a short woman with dark hair and skin, perhaps of Gao or Pheje descent. Apparently, she picked some tiny object up off the floor and fussed with it for a little while before asking to use a phone. She left shortly after that. Ann-Marie says she had never seen the woman before, and she didn’t display the symptoms of mana addiction. In fact, Ann-Marie said the woman didn’t even order alcohol, just coffee.”
Daisy kept quiet, feeling guilty but unsure if Mr Swarz was accusing her of anything – or what he was getting at in general, really.
“One of Regina’s friends from Walter’s also said he saw this woman. Shortly after you left, he went outside to smoke and take a stroll, and he saw her meet up with a lanky man a few streets down. Both were wearing long coats and plain brown hats. He says they stood by a car’s open trunk and whispered to each other for a while before leaving, but he couldn’t say where they were headed. Do any of these descriptions seem familiar to you?”
Daisy recalled a lone woman matching Mr Swarz’s description sitting at the bar at Walter’s. She told him this, but the feeling in her gut grew sour to the point of sickening. Was this her fault?
“Mage-hunters, almost certainly,” Mr Swarz said, nodding to himself after she confirmed having seen one of these people. He looked Daisy in the eye, studying her. “But were they merely opportunistic, or after something in particular?”
“Does it matter?” Daisy asked, feeling ashamed of herself for her carelessness and – much to her own surprise – protective of her coworkers. In her lap, her hands curled instinctively into claws that were at once defensive and self-eviscerating. “Their motives don’t make the Gin Fountain any less trashed.”
“It might matter.” His gaze scanned her face, neck, and arms, and just as she was about to ask why, he frowned. “No artifacts today?”
“Not necessarily.” It hadn’t been the warmest of afternoons, and Daisy had her enchanted garter on under her skirt. “What about them?”
Mr Swarz sat up straighter, flexing his right hand as though it pained him, an absent attention to a lingering agony. “If your artifact is what was used to trace you, it is possible that these mage-hunters are interested in your brand of magic in particular. Maybe even you as an individual.”
Daisy’s blood chilled. She had had professors and classmates at the women’s college who had been standoffish with her, but that was about as close as she had ever come to having an enemy.
“Who would want to hunt me?”
“Someone who wants to know the secrets of your magic, I suspect. I told you what that kind of information would mean to magicians in Ashland. Other factions, including those who seek to destroy our kind, can gain leverage from learning those same secrets. Conservative pearl-clutchers can be quite a bit more dangerous than their neat little cardigans would suggest.” His hand stilled, and he leaned forward. “I hate to push the matter – I know we are still coming to trust each other – but if mage-hunters are out to unpuzzle your type of magic, it may put our company at too high a risk. I must know what is at stake, here. Please, I need you to explain to me how your artifacts function. How does one use them, and how are they created?”
Daisy flinched. She would have rather been personally blamed for all that had happened than to have him request such a thing. “Mr Swarz, I can’t replicate the creation of these trinkets. My grandmother knew how, but I… I never learned.” He scowled, needing no chicken phoenix trinket to tell that she was lying. “I’ve never done it before myself, at least. I can’t.” That much was true.
“Miss Dell, I want you to understand that you are a part of this company now, and as such I will see to it that no harm comes to you. But if these mage-hunters are after you, or your grandmother’
s secrets, I will need to know all I can in order to keep ahead of them and adequately protect you.”
“Are you sure you’re not just after those secrets?”
Mr Swarz recoiled, his mouth pressing into a thin line. She expected him to look outraged by the question, but instead he seemed… hurt. “You said you would be willing to share with me. Again, I do not wish to press the matter so early in our partnership, as I understand that we both still have reason to distrust each other, but it seemed clear to me that you intended to be forthright with this information eventually. I am not seeking to obtain anything that either of us did not expect that I would be given at some point or another. And I hope you don’t think so little of me that you believe I would use the violence wielded against you and the others as an opportunity to trick you.”
Daisy was panged with shame again, and she glanced away from his dark eyes. It was true that she had reasons not to entirely trust him – she was not used to trusting anyone outside of her family, and his line of business plus his personality in general did not inspire great faith in his intentions – but her jibing question had been motivated more by panic than logical caution. It had been crueler than necessary.
“I’m sorry, Mr Swarz. This whole situation is just… alarming. I…” She swallowed, trying to clear her thoughts and feelings. She didn’t want to hurt Mr Swarz, but she certainly wasn’t going to allow him to emotionally manipulate her into doing anything, either. She needed clarity to ensure that the decision she made was the best she could make.
Mr Swarz had already shown concern for her in light of all this. She still did not understand the reason why, but it was clear that he desired to keep her safe. And, as she had also learned from the night of the attack, he could be a level-headed and competent man in the face of disaster. She was sure she could place her physical protection, if nothing else, in his care.
“I’ll tell you whatever it is you need to know.”
He let out a slow breath. His eyes were distant, staring at the table top like he had been waiting for bad news from the doctor. “Thank you. Now, please.” He lifted his gaze to meet hers. “I know that your artifacts don’t require mana to operate, but you said that there was a price to the magic. What price would that be, exactly?”
Chapter 6
Mr Swarz showed a remarkable amount of trust in Daisy as he drove through the woods in the hills to the west of the city’s limit, passing under bare branches on a narrow road. It had been long enough since the volcanoes’ last chain of eruptions that the land was habitable again, but it would be a couple more centuries before these trees could grow as large and lush as nature would otherwise have them. Until then, they stood as lanky, leafless sentinels in the wilderness of Ashland. Trees in lower lands, closer to the city, tended to be better recovered, without clouds of ash hanging so low and thick over them and blocking their access to the sun. There was a deathly eeriness to the bare trees of the hills, Daisy thought, or maybe it was only her association with the region.
Her grandmother had taken her up only twice before to the location that she now directed Mr Swarz toward. After learning the truth of Sparrow’s powers, Daisy wished never to see the place again. She had thought she would have no reason to. As Mr Swarz’s car rolled across the packed dirt roads, she tried to tell herself over and over that the visit did not have to result in any sin. She knew what to do, and she knew that Mr Swarz would press her to show as much as she could. There was a threshold she would not cross, but she had to steel herself for everything that stood before that point.
In her lap was a bag of supplies, and she clutched at it as she tried to steady the frantic beat of her heart. Mr Swarz occasionally glanced over when she did this. She had not told him what the bag held. She only told him where to drive.
As they rolled through the grey, framed on either side of the road by dry and colorless forest, muffled music from the radio cut through the uncomfortable silence. It was a mournful trumpet song with piano and drums in the background giving it a jazzy beat, a musical expression of the composer’s anxiety. Mr Swarz kept the volume down, but the gentle fuzz and scratch of sound waves was better than the wordless void they would be otherwise left with. It was an even greater relief to finally reach their destination. At the end of an ill-kept dirt road in the wooded foothills was a rickety farmhouse, two stories tall and long since abandoned.
“This is the place?” Mr Swarz asked. Daisy nodded, and he put the car in park.
When they stepped out, Daisy didn’t waste time explaining anything to her employer. Instead, she made her way directly around the side of the house, stopping at the edge of what she sought. Mr Swarz followed, coming to stand by Daisy’s side and frowning at the sight.
“What is this?” In the dusty, dry grass was a ring of mushrooms, their caps showcasing a range of dark blue to an almost silvery grey. The circle was wide enough that either Daisy or Mr Swarz could have laid out flat inside its circumference.
“A faerie ring.” Daisy set down the bag and began digging around in it for her supplies. Mr Swarz took a step closer to her as she did.
“I think it’s time you begin explaining.” It was clear from the edge in his voice that he didn’t care for being left in the dark, and Daisy imagined he had more reason to fear than she did in that moment.
“You know much about faeries, Mr Swarz?” From her bag, she removed two fistfuls of cheap, shiny objects she had picked up from a flea market that morning – a fake-gold bracelet, a thin length of chain, several spoons, and about a dozen glittering glass buttons. She stepped into the ring and dropped them in the center.
“Not much. They are reclusive, but I’ve read that prior to the volcanic eruptions, they used to visit the mortal plane more frequently. It was my understanding that they’ve only been seen since then in Boltivic.” That country, across the ocean to the west, was where Vinnie had been born, judging from his accent. Daisy didn’t know much about his family, but presumably his grandmother and little brother that Jonas had once mentioned to her had also emigrated from there with him.
“Not quite. I know only about this ring, but there are bound to be others in Ashland. These formations are the only way they can cross into our world, as far as I know, though of course you’ve got to give them a reason.” She returned to the bag and grabbed more of her supplies – several bars of chocolate wrapped in wax paper and a bright purple scrap of cloth. Laying out the cloth and peeling back the wax paper, she broke off squares of the candy and laid them out on the fabric. There were a few more bars remaining in the bag, in case she needed them.
“Are you summoning an otherworldly entity or a child?” Mr Swarz asked. She knew he meant it as a dry joke, but his voice wavered with the slightest vibrato.
“Faeries have a different appreciation of existence. Makes sense, considering that they live in another dimension. In some ways they are more complicated than humans, and in other ways they are simpler. Plus, everyone loves chocolate, right?”
Andre didn’t laugh or so much as smirk, instead watching the offering she left there. “And this all has to do with your ritual magic?”
Daisy didn’t reply, both because the answer was too obvious and because he was getting closer to a truth that she would have rather let decay with her grandmother in her grave. But he was right that they would be able to better prepare against anyone coming after Daisy or her trinkets if he knew the full scope of what she dealt with.
“Will it just appear, then?”
Daisy settled on the ground before her offering, reaching up to touch her bronze pendant. She hoped that wouldn’t be so shiny as to draw the faerie’s notice. “No. The treats will keep its attention, but I need magic to catch it.” Focusing her will through the trinket, she used it to grab and levitate one of the spoons, allowing it to drift lazily upward. Mr Swarz was wise enough to stand outside the edge of the faerie ring and watch in silence.
They waited as the spoon floated in the air, about level with Daisy’s
forehead. After several minutes, Daisy began to wonder if she had done something wrong. She had barely been twelve years old the last time Sparrow brought her to that spot, so perhaps she misremembered. Just as disappointment began to pull on her heart, her little trick of magic was met with a pulse like a beat of deep bass, and a shimmer appeared before her beyond the spoon.
It was just a crack at first, thin and white, almost invisible against the backdrop of sparse, colorless woods. The crack grew, as cracks are apt to do, and began to separate, opening up a portal of swirling blue and green and other colors that Daisy did not recognize from the mortal world’s simple rainbows. She heard a quiet gasp from Mr Swarz behind her, but she kept her eyes locked on the portal. A limb reached out from it – slender and almost human, if one ignored the feathery fringes along the elbow or the shining cyan skin – and snatched the spoon. The portal grew larger, and a torso attached to the other end of the arm leaned out. Daisy could feel a tension in the air that had nothing to do with magic, but she didn’t look back to see what Mr Swarz was doing. He could pull the blade from his cane, or any knives or guns he might have had tucked under his coat, but so long as he did not yet step inside the ring, it didn’t matter. The faerie would ignore him while there were treats to take.
The being stepped further out of its portal, settling both feet on the mortal side. The faerie was a lanky thing – surprisingly similar in its anatomy to a human, which Daisy had always found odd – and was covered in that pale blue-green skin. Fluffed down lined his elbows, ankles, hips, and jaws, and something between that and human hair hung from his skull down to the small of his back. His face was almost human, too – the nose was less defined, more just a shallow bump down the center, and his eyes were too wide and all black, but his cheekbones were no sharper than Frisk’s and his chin no more pointed than Mr Swarz’s. The cyan-skinned creature lifted the spoon to examine it with those dark eyes, and his near lipless mouth pulled into a razor-toothed grin.
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