Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Allies

by Lydia Sherrer

  “Silent casting is of limited utility compared to the difficulty of learning it. Most modern wizards never have need of it. The technique was more prevalent in historical times, when the ability to remain unnoticed by mundanes was the difference between life and death. I had not yet introduced the technique because it was highly advanced and I didn’t see the need. In light of recent events, of course, it could certainly be useful. But I would advise you to focus your efforts on perfecting your defensive and offensive spells first.”

  “But won’t John Faust have the advantage? Surely he knows the technique?’ Lily asked, brow furrowed.

  “Not that I have witnessed. I certainly did not teach it to him, though I’m sure he is capable of learning it himself, if he had the inclination. Allen did, after all.”

  Lily nodded. “Allen is…amazing. And very odd.”

  Madam Barrington’s face broke into a rare smile. “Indeed. Of the two brothers, the younger is clearly the more skilled. What he lacks in social graces he makes up for in sheer brilliance. I should like to spend a good deal of time with him myself, if we ever get the chance. He has far surpassed my expectations from when I was his tutor many years ago. He always did have a natural intuition when it came to magic that his older brother never displayed. John Faust came at things looking for a way to conquer them, master them, bend them to his will. Allen saw the world as a beautiful mosaic of possibilities that needed to be discovered, nurtured, and understood. He recognized that magic is not simply a servant, or even a tool. Rather it is a part of who we are as creative beings. Both a science, and an art.”

  They fell into silence and Lily spent a long time digesting her mentor’s words. Right now, she saw magic as a raw force to be controlled. Not so much a tool as a wild animal she was still learning to tame. Was she too much like her father? Was she struggling because she tried too hard to control something she hadn’t taken the time to understand? It was food for thought. She just hoped they could save Allen before his brother did any…permanent damage.

  When they finally pulled up to the LeFay estate’s gate, the sun was sinking towards the western horizon. As Lily leaned out the window to push the call button on the gate’s control panel, she kept an eye out for a black, raven-shaped shadow. But Oculus was nowhere to be seen.

  “Please state your name and business,” said a cool, mechanical voice.

  Well, here goes nothing, Lily thought, hoping they wouldn’t be zapped where they sat as soon as she mentioned their names. “Lily Singer and Ethel Barrington. We’re here to see, um, the LeFays.” She decided not to be specific, in case that threw up any red flags.

  There was a long silence. So long that Lily wondered if the device had even registered her response. Then, finally, the voice said, “Thank you. You may proceed.”

  Driving forward through the gates, Lily pushed down a rising feeling of panic. This was not like last time. She was going in eyes open, with Madam Barrington at her back. Several deep breaths helped her maintain an outward semblance of calm, but inside her heart was racing and her skin felt clammy. Madam Barrington shot her a worried look at all the heavy breathing but kept her peace.

  The LeFay mansion was just as gigantic, imposing, and beautiful as she remembered. Unlike last time, Fletcher, the butler, waited for them on the gravel drive, positioned perfectly to open Madam Barrington’s door as soon as Lily pulled to a stop. He helped her out with a bow and a murmured word, then circled around toward the driver’s side. But Lily didn’t give him a chance. She was out of the car before he’d even rounded the hood.

  “Miss Singer,” he said, bowing politely. “It is a pleasure to see you again.”

  Lily eyed him, deciding how to reply. He had helped her escape her father’s clutches, yet there was so much more he could have done. She felt mostly ambivalent toward the lot of them—Fletcher and her grandparents. They’d stood silently by, or simply ignored, John Faust’s inappropriate behavior. Yet, knowing the kind of person her father was, she couldn’t be too hard on them. Sometimes you did your best, and it was not enough. But at least you'd tried.

  She settled for a polite nod, then headed around the car toward the front door in Madam Barrington’s wake. Somehow, Fletcher managed to arrive before them both, holding open the massive doors and directing them to the left, into the west wing’s parlor.

  “Please, right this way. Mr. and Mrs. LeFay are waiting for you.”

  Lily hesitated before stepping into the house, wondering if it was a trap. Fletcher hadn’t mentioned John Faust. Was her father hiding somewhere, waiting to jump out and…no, that was silly. Plus, Madam Barrington was here. They would be fine.

  Upon entering the parlor, it took only a second to confirm that John Faust was not present—unless he was hiding behind some sort of cloaking glamour. But looking carefully into all the corners, she didn’t see any of the telltales, so she finally relaxed and turned to face her grandparents.

  Henry stood behind the settee upon which sat his wife, looking much less fashionable than was her habit. Her hair drooped and she had dark circles under her eyes. For some reason, she wore all black, the harsh color contrasting with the lovely cream and embroidered white of the settee. Henry had his hands resting on the back of the piece of furniture, not on his wife’s shoulders. There was a distance between them that spoke volumes. Lily was pretty sure she knew what was coming.

  “Where is John Faust?” Madam Barrington asked coldly, scorning the niceties of small talk or even a polite preamble. Every inch of her exuded steely authority.

  “Not here,” Henry LeFay said. At his words, Ursula gave a loud sniffle, wiping her nose with a wrinkled handkerchief clutched in one bony hand. Ignoring his wife, Henry continued. “I made it clear he was no longer welcome under our roof after what he’d done to our granddaughter, and that it was high time he found somewhere else to live.”

  “You threw him out, my poor baby!” Ursula sobbed into her handkerchief.

  To Lily’s astonishment and amused delight, Henry actually rolled his eyes heavenward, letting out a tiny sigh as if praying for patience.

  “So, where did he go?” Lily asked.

  Henry pursed his lips in displeasure. “I did not ask and do not care to know.”

  “We haven’t heard from him in weeks,” Ursula sniffed, obviously struggling to hold onto her semblance of composure. “He could be—be lying dead in an alley for all we know,” she said, throwing a dirty look over her shoulder at her husband, whose expression remained stony.

  Madam Barrington’s lip quirked upward. “I sincerely doubt that,” she said dryly. “Your older son is more than capable of looking after himself. Your younger one, on the other hand…have you heard from Allen recently?”

  Both of Lily’s grandparents looked away, Ursula hiding her face in her handkerchief as she blew her nose, Henry staring out the window with a weary sigh. Her grandfather was the first to look back, the old scars of guilt and sorrow shadowing his eyes.

  “We haven’t heard from Allen since he left. Why?”

  Lily and Madam Barrington looked at each other, coming to a collective decision. “Because John Faust has him,” Lily said, weariness creeping into her own voice.

  “What?” Henry exclaimed, face more animated than she’d ever seen it. Ursula said nothing because she’d broken down sobbing.

  Madam Barrington took up the tale, editing heavily. “We recently paid Allen a visit, so he could meet Lily. Unfortunately John must have followed us there and took the opportunity to rekindle their old sibling rivalry. He seems bent on punishing Allen for things that happened decades ago.”

  Lily noticed that her mentor hadn’t bothered mentioning Morgan le Fay. But then she supposed it was irrelevant at the moment as far as her grandparents were concerned.

  “They were such good boys,” Ursula wailed, coming up for air. Her tears left streaks through layers of makeup and her handkerchief was stained. “Why couldn’t they just get along? What did we do wrong?”


  Henry finally sidled over, laying a comforting hand on his wife’s shoulder. “John always bullied him. We knew that, Ursula, even if we chose to ignore it,” he said, the frank confession only eliciting a fresh wail from his wife. He didn’t look much better. His shoulders drooped, and his face was worn and drawn.

  As if on cue, Fletcher glided into the parlor, carrying a tray laden with a cup of coffee, two cups of tea, a shot of some amber liquid, and a box of tissues. He offered the cups of tea to Lily and her mentor—they both declined—before turning to present the coffee to Henry. The older man took it gratefully and sipped while his butler coaxed Ursula to take the shot of liquor, blotting her eyes as she sniffed pitifully.

  Lily felt a pang of sympathy. Despite their mistakes, they were still human beings who loved and lost, just like she did. It couldn’t have been easy, trying to parent a child like John Faust. At least they cared, even if they’d done a terrible job of showing it.

  “Do you have any idea where he might be now?” Lily asked, trying to sound gentle, “or where he might have taken Allen?”

  “None,” Henry said with a shake of his head.

  “He never told me anything,” Ursula added miserably between hiccups, “just that it was ‘business.’”

  Sharing another look with her mentor, Lily asked, “Do you mind if we take a look at his workroom?”

  Henry shrugged. “I doubt you’ll find anything of use, but you are welcome to look. He cleaned it out before he left. Took most of our family book collection with him as well.” He scowled in displeasure. “We haven’t touched the room since.”

  They nodded in understanding and headed out of the parlor, leaving Henry and Fletcher to comfort a distraught Ursula.

  As they approached the end of the west wing hall, Lily felt her heartbeat quicken as goosebumps tingled across her skin. She took a few deep, calming breaths, reminding herself that John Faust was gone, and with him the ominous feel of the hallway. The doors leading up to the workroom, one of which had held Lily prisoner only a few weeks ago, looked and felt normal. Gone also was the heavy weight of resistance at his workroom door, the fortress of wards having been removed. It was locked, however, so they fiddled with a spell to trip the mechanism, rather than bothering Henry for a key.

  As they entered, Lily felt the tiniest brush on her face, like a spiderweb. But it was gone the instant she noticed it.

  “Did you feel that?” she asked, her voice echoing in the large, empty space as she stared around the desolate room with its tall windows, vaulted two-story ceiling, and landing in the northeast corner which led to the second floor.

  “Yes. A trigger spell, I would guess. Most likely left to alert John when someone entered the room.”

  Lily felt her stomach churn, nervous despite herself. The place felt eerie, devoid of John Faust’s possessions—the crafting materials, books, papers, experiments and equipment—yet still his presence lingered in the odds and ends littering the floor. The scraps of paper, bits of crafting reagents, and random test tubes scattered around reminded her what the room had been, and it made her shiver.

  While Lily examined the floor, Madam Barrington looked upward, scanning the ceiling and walls. Then, abandoning her observation, she drew close to her student, rummaging in her handbag as if to cover her odd behavior as she spoke softly. “If I am not mistaken, and I rarely am, we are being watched.”

  Lily looked up as well, though she wasn’t really looking with her eyes. Reaching out with her senses she, too, could detect the faint pricks of magic, four of them, spaced around the ceiling’s perimeter. Though not as adept at recognizing spells as her mentor, she could tell they were in the conveyance category, and what else could they be for if not to spy on the comings and goings of the room?

  Taking the proffered handkerchief Madam Barrington had withdrawn from her handbag, Lily blew her nose conspicuously before whispering back, “Do you think he’s watching us right now?”

  “Possibly,” the older woman said. “He rightly assumed we would come looking for him, though I can not imagine what he thinks he will discover by watching us stare at an empty room. Still, let us spend a few minutes carefully checking for anything of interest, and then we can retire and discuss our thoughts in a less…compromised location.”

  Lily did as Madam Barrington had advised, though she was distracted by the prickling sensation on the back of her neck. It was the feeling of being watched.

  After a good ten minutes of going over the room, inch by inch, she’d found nothing of interest and no sign of other spells. The last place for her to check, as Madam Barrington finished her own round of the room, was the landing. The landing where, mere weeks ago, she’d been strapped down, poked, prodded, and studied like a lab rat. By her own father.

  She shuddered, hesitating at the bottom of the stairs. The large contraption to which she’d been strapped—a sort of old-fashioned dentist chair in the center of two vertical rings of metal, set perpendicular to each other and welded together, inscribed with dimmu runes—was gone. A device of John Faust’s own invention, he’d created it to try to locate Morgan le Fay, probably after Allen had absconded with his primary research material on that ancient wizard. John Faust had enchanted the device with some sort of location spell linked to the LeFay bloodline which would enable him to pinpoint the physical location of Morgan herself. To work, however, it needed to be fueled by a direct descendant. And there was the pesky side effect it had on its subject. Nothing too terrible, just probable insanity and possible death.

  Obviously, John Faust couldn’t use himself as a subject. He’d already tried Ursula's mother, Vera, hoping her distant relation—most wizard families were distantly related in some way or another—would be enough. It hadn’t been, and the device's side effects had been evidenced by the crazed moaning Lily had heard at night when she’d first been a “guest” at her father’s estate. Apparently they kept the old woman locked up in a room somewhere. The fact that she had been a willing participant, at least according to John Faust, had not made the revelation any less horrifying.

  Now, as she lifted her foot to mount the first step, all Lily could think about was how she’d nearly been the next “subject.” Of course her father hadn’t wanted to damage his own daughter. But when she’d refused to join him, he claimed she’d left him no choice. She would help advance the cause of wizards everywhere whether she wanted to or not. And, he assured her, he’d made the necessary adjustments to make any adverse side effects very unlikely—as if that would make her feel better about being strapped down and experimented on.

  “Lily? Are you quite alright?” Madam Barrington’s voice came from across the room, snapping Lily out of her gruesome recollections.

  Taking a deep breath, she forced her legs to move. “I’m…fine. Thanks. I just want to check out the landing and then I think we can leave.”

  The landing was empty but for the tables and various bits of debris everywhere. Looking down, Lily could see the holes in the fine paneled wood where the device had been bolted to the floor. She took a moment to glance over and under the tables, picking up each scrap of paper in case it had writing on it.

  As she rounded the back edge of the landing that abutted the north wall, she came to the east wall where a door was supposed to open into the upstairs hall of the west wing and thus to the rest of the house. There was an identical door leading to an identical landing on the opposite side of the house where the vaulted ceilings of the family library caught the glorious rays of the rising sun. But unlike that door, this door was shut, locked, and boarded over.

  Reaching between the boards, Lily tried it, just in case. It didn’t budge, of course, and her hand came away covered in a layer of dust. Much like his brother Allen, it appeared John Faust didn’t trust his constructs to come in and clean his precious workshop.

  She stepped back, examining the doorframe. It seemed normal enough, but there was something odd about it. It looked much newer than the surrounding wood, almos
t as if it had been recently replaced or revarnished. Laying a hand on it she closed her eyes and concentrated, reaching out to try to detect any lingering magic.

  What she found was confusing, to say the least. After taking one more, good look, just to be sure, she left the landing. She didn’t want to give whoever was watching a reason to think she’d found anything.

  Meeting Madam Barrington in the middle of the room, she shook her head. “Nothing but trash. Did you find anything?”

  The older woman also shook her head. “There is nothing left. This, at least, is a dead end. Let us not waste any more time here. There are other, more promising leads we should attend to.”

  Lily nodded and they headed out the door. She wasn’t much of an actor, and could only hope their little show had been enough to convince John Faust. Well, she wasn’t sure they had found anything of use, so who knew, maybe the act wasn’t an act at all. She would find out on the drive home.

  2

  When All About You

  Though she rarely held office hours on Saturdays, the start of a new term was always hectic, so Lily usually ended up at McCain Library more Saturdays than not. Today it was to help the beleaguered library staff with the usual start-of-term shenanigans that a host of college freshmen brought into their sacred domain.

  Not above grunt work, that particular morning she was hanging notices of library rules and policies in every reading cubbyhole and study space. Each year there were always those few students who thought the library was their personal playground, the librarians their mothers whose job it was to pick up after them. This year it seemed particularly bad. All week the staff had been finding library books strewn about the place, not just in the cubbyholes or desks but even on the floor in between aisles. It was absolutely scandalous, not to mention irritating. And they were the oddest books, too. Not the normal reference material related to freshman classes or the titles on the required reading list. She’d found a book on elementary education and another on basic linguistics. Not even their children’s section had gone unscathed, with picture books about Moo the Cow and the Adventures of Tiny Tim lying splayed open in front of their shelves. As she hung flyers with many a mutinous grumble, she plotted what punishment she’d inflict on any student she caught in the act. They would be scarred for life when she was done with them.