by August Li
If any of what the article said was true, something was going to happen, and maybe happen soon. I had no fear that people would lose their desire for the products I provided because of magic. In fact, the demand might increase. Weapons meant power, maybe the power to stand against oppression—to resist what these people had planned for the rest of us. After I got a few hours of sleep, I had to think about that. I had to get more information, and I might have to prepare.
Chapter Eighteen
CHARLENE WAS fascinated by the contents of the oddly shaped little human building, and I had to admit, I could not blame her. As much as I missed my own lands, with their rolling silvery-green hills and mutable, dusk-lit glades, where the wind and the leaves danced together like ill-fated lovers and the streams and pools were full of nymphs with lovely singing voices, at least this place was interesting. It held the strangest things: rows of chairs roofed with mushroom-like umbrellas, scissors and combs floating in brilliant blue fluid, spongy brightly colored cylinders, and lengths of mortal hair arranged in braids and colored every imaginable shade. It was quite beautiful, despite the obviously abandoned state of the small shrine, or whatever it was. A row of pegs held a few tiny jeweled clips, and these I could not resist. Some resembled butterflies, other birds and flowers, and many were further adorned with ribbons and brilliant colors of spiraled or plaited hair. I sorted through them, choosing some of the best to keep for myself. What could be the harm? The way they were designed, they had clearly been left here as offerings for my people. Besides, this place was soon to be transformed into a facility for serving up the carcasses of sheep. Hideous.
“Blossom!”
I turned toward Inky, irritated at the interruption. “Yes?”
“Care to join us?”
“Maybe in a bit.” I returned my attention to the intricate little treasures, finding a particularly nice one made of bronze filigree and decorated with yellow flowers and a fall of golden locks.
“Let’s just get to it without him,” Dante snapped. “We’re not getting any closer to finding Ros, and it’s fucking freezing in this shithole.”
Now this I could not permit. It would hardly be fair to leave them to muddle through their problems without the insight I could provide, and doing so would only prolong my exile. Although, when I returned to my home, I might make a greater effort to visit this realm in the future. With a longing look at the rack of clips, I went to sit down with the others, who had arranged the mushroom-topped thrones into a circle.
“Mushroom circles mark places where the barriers between worlds are thin.” I waved my hand around our makeshift ring.
The one called Emrys watched me with guarded interest. He was stuffy and dull, and nothing special to look at either. His companion, Jet, however, was far more intriguing. They had a sharp edge that sparkled in the right light like a good sword, and like the most interesting mortals, part of them was somewhere else, seeing things beyond what other mortals could perceive. Inky just scowled at me like a beast I was keeping from rut, and Dante lowered his forehead into his hand.
Jet took a small black rectangle from a satchel near their feet and opened it like a book. Light and color darted across Jet’s face as they looked at it, their fingers moving fast, clicking rhythmically. It surprised me to feel the vibration of magic coming from them, and it was a bizarre kind of magic, all tangled up with and dependent on mechanisms and numbers in different combinations, changing and moving with a cycle as predictable as the seasons—as malleable in the right hands. I leaned a little closer. It had been a very long time since I had experienced anything new… and yet, not new.
“So, here’s where I’m at.” Jet flicked their blue-streaked fringe out of their face. “I used an algorithm, enhanced with a little bit of magic, to determine the most likely make, model, and year of our black Mercedes. Then I sent my Sherlock off looking for it.”
“Sherlock?” Dante asked.
Jet looked up at him and smiled. “It’s a combination of a spell and a program I wrote to help find things, figure things out. Initially it will scour websites and databases for whatever I want it to find. Because it’s not restricted to any particular network, it can look all over: private business records, police and other official files, CCTV, and even cell phone photographs and text messages sent by people who might not have even intentionally mentioned it. It can also adapt its code without me to bypass firewalls and security measures. But the coolest part is that it can gather and interpret the information it finds, and even make rudimentary decisions as to what to do next. Like, if it thinks it found the car we’re looking for, it knows to then infiltrate the GPS records on that vehicle to find out where it’s been.”
“Whoa,” Dante said. Though most of what Jet had said sounded like gibberish to me, he looked impressed. “And did it? Did it find the car and then get into the GPS?”
Jet winked. “Of course it did. My kung fu’s the best. But that isn’t all.” They clicked some more with their fingers. “It was able to find the car, confirm that it was in this immediate area on the date you specified, track it to the car service it belongs to, and even tell me who was driving and what he had for lunch. Burger King, actually. At 1:13 p.m. And he was hungry. Ate two Angry Whoppers, an order of onion rings, extra Zesty Sauce, and a dutch apple pie. Ugh. That actually sounds really good.”
“It sounds horrifying,” I hurried to say. “The apples here are sad and tasteless, while the ones that grow at my estate are so perfect, when the juice touches your tongue, you can feel the lives of all of those who are buried in the soil that feeds the tree.”
“Interesting,” Emrys said.
“Whatever,” Dante spat, his fingers digging into the stuffed horse he held. “Who cares? 1:13 is after Blaker gave my sister to this asshole limo driver. He tricked her into going with him by saying he was taking her to breakfast, and he kept her through the night. So that would have been morning.”
Jet nodded. “The car was here from 10:05 a.m. until about twenty after.”
“So?” Dante’s fists were balled on the horse’s plush hide, the skin stretched tight over his knuckles. “Where did they go after that?”
“That’s when it gets a little weird,” Jet said. “The GPS shows a bunch of nonsense: Newark; Boston; Ocean City, Maryland…. It took me a while to identify the spell someone had used to scramble it. It was good, but not ESM good…. Took even longer to negate it, but by then the real data was lost. The only way to find it at this point would be to use an equation to determine the car’s possible range by using the locations it was known to have visited, traffic conditions, some stuff like that.”
“Which of course you did,” Emrys said. Fondly, I noted.
“Which of course I did. Once I had an area, I was able to extrapolate….”
By Nuada’s silver hand, the tedium of it! I stared out the window but couldn’t see much beyond the frost and grime coating the glass. The winds were lazy today, and the water in the air gathered high in the sky, scraping against the breeze with its crystalline edges like strangers brushing shoulders as they passed each other in a corridor. The earth was heavy with sleep. It slept a lot more now, its vibrancy sapped by the bad things growing inside it like lesions, the poison placed there by the mortals in their pursuit of wealth and power. It groaned in its slumber, old bones grating together, unhappy to be disturbed.
What are the humans doing, faerie friend? Charlene asked as she hopped into my lap and rubbed the top of her head along my jaw.
Talking about things that are boring and nonsensical.
Why?
Dante’s sister is missing. She could be in trouble. Though I don’t imagine this foolishness will get us any closer to finding her.
I remember the nice little girl. She wanted to pet me, and she had kind eyes. I will help you look for her.
That is something that might actually yield some results.
“That’s several miles of territory,” Inky was saying. “Dozens of buildi
ngs. Maybe hundreds. How can we check them all?”
“Charlene will help us,” I told them. “She has offered.”
“Who’s Charlene?” Emrys asked.
“Jesus.” Dante pushed his fists against his eyes. “Charlene is the cat.”
Inky clicked to her, and I glowered when she scampered over, jumped onto his thighs, and climbed inside his coat to curl up. He crossed his arms over her and said to Dante, “Don’t dismiss her. We wouldn’t have found you and your sister without her help.”
I took one of the jeweled clips from my pocket and moved it around so the green gem caught and reflected the light. “Rosalind Mayfield’s magic influenced the cats. It called them to her aid whether she intended that result or not. If the girl is in danger or afraid, her magic will likely be working to bring her a rescuer as it attempted to bring me to her. Charlene, do you think you could find that thread of enchantment again?”
I am willing to try. I will ask the others to help me. We know of places. Secret places. We can hide and watch without being seen. We can see and hear many things.
I nodded. “Good. Very good.”
“You can talk to her?” Jet asked. “Wow!”
“What does she say?” Emrys asked.
“She will help us, and the other cats of this human city will as well.”
“In the meantime, the rest of us should get searching,” Inky said with a defeated shake of his head. “We have a lot of ground to cover.”
“Yeah, but some locations are more likely than others. I used a magical program to calculate—”
Dante stood. “No. That’s a huge waste of time. It’s obvious what we need to do.”
“What?” Emrys asked, looking at Dante like he might suddenly erupt in flames.
Dante turned to Jet. “You said you know everything about this guy, the driver. The Burger King eater. Do you know where he lives?”
Jet raised their chin and crossed their arms over their chest. “I know how many days of school this guy missed in third grade. I can tell you whether he’s circumcised, if you really want to know.”
“I just want to know where I can find him,” Dante said. “Because I’m going to go to wherever he is, and I’m going to make him tell me where he took my sister.”
“What if he won’t talk?” Emrys asked.
Dante smiled, but there was no joy in it. “He will. Eventually.”
I hurried to stand, hurried to follow Dante as he stomped toward the door while Jet packed up their supplies—among them, I noticed, the computer Dante had found in that filthy cabin in the mountains. I was still bitter that I’d been prevented from amusing myself further with the coarse men inhabiting it. This was likely to be the most fun I would have for what could be a long time.
Gradually the others joined us in the charcoal-encrusted snow outside. “You must let Charlene go,” I said to Inky.
“Look, mate, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He pulled his coat closed around the kitten until only her white snout and black nose poked out. “She’s just a baby.”
“She wanted to help. Insisted on it,” I said, but he still looked stricken. I wondered if he would cry. What would that be like? “I will cast a spell of protection over her.”
“Well… I mean…. Yeah, all right,” he finally said, reaching into his coat to hand Charlene to me.
As I worked the magic over her, I felt a cold sensation, like blunted iron dragged over my back. When I finished the spell and looked up, Jet was watching me intently, and as they did, a blue filament bisected their left eye for less than a heartbeat before disappearing again. Our gazes met, and they offered me a grin and a wink. Of all the mortals here, Jet alone did not fear me. And wasn’t that potentially interesting?
I set Charlene down and wished her good fortune. She assured me she would be back within a few evenings to tell me what she had found.
“Okay,” Dante said. “Who is this guy and where is he now?”
Jet looked at their wrist, where some symbols flashed across one of several clunky bracelets they wore. “Juan Lucero. I downloaded his schedule; he should be at work now. GPS tracking says the car should be at the Logan Hotel.”
“Let’s go,” Dante said.
“How?” Inky asked. “All of us won’t fit in the truck, and that’s all the way downtown.”
“I don’t need all of us,” Dante said. “I can do it myself.”
Emrys reached for Dante’s shoulder but drew his hand back at the feral look on Dante’s face. “I’d feel better if you would let us come. You don’t know what you’re walking into, and we might have to change our plans. That will be quicker and easier if we’re already together, in case things don’t work out with your… method.”
I laughed. “They will work out. I will make this man tell us what we want to know.”
“You will keep your pale, skinny arse in the car where there’s not a chance of every mage in this city seeing you!” Inky shouted.
Jet slipped on a pair of dark glasses and pulled a hat with fur-lined flaps over their head. “He’s right, you know. I can’t imagine what the mages would do if they found out there was a faerie here. They’d go to great lengths to get their hands on you. Sekhet-Aaru in particular has been jerking off to the idea of faerie servants for the last couple hundred years. And you don’t want them getting ahold of you. They’re assholes. Listen, we’ll take my car and follow you. The hotel only has valet parking, so if we can’t find a spot close by, we’ll meet you at the main entrance.” Surprisingly, Jet reached out and took my hand. “You should go someplace safe.”
“We’ll drop you off at Corazón’s house,” Inky said.
“No! I will not sit idle while the rest of you go off and have fun without me.”
“You will if you want to get home,” Inky said, and unfortunately, I couldn’t argue. This world was dotted with diversions, pretty things scattered amongst all the detritus, but I certainly did not want to stay here forever. I’d perish of boredom.
I GROANED as I watched the sleek men and women in their snug business suits hurrying along the downtown sidewalks. Despite the cold, the long, slender legs of the women taunted me, their muscles displayed in just the right way by their high heels. Their desires washed over me as each one passed us: Mocha-chip Frappuccino, the guy in the mailroom with the ginger goatee, the girl in accounting with the gap in her teeth, the UPS driver with the great set of tits…. I want a three-way. I want to experiment with sensual bondage. I just want someone to do the laundry so I can stay in bed and eat Oreos and read…. For a second, each one influenced me as I tried to latch on, tried to be exactly what each person wanted. I could’ve done it too. Done it so fucking well. Damn, these stuffed-shirt types were always into the wildest shit. I wish my girlfriend would stick a carrot up my ass…. I read about something called electrostimulation…. As every new person came close enough to affect me, I decided he or she was the best thing I’d ever seen, with the best fantasies, the best needs to shape me into the best me. Until the next one happened by. It was excruciating, like each of them took a little chunk of me with them. An endless damned buffet behind bulletproof glass.
“You gonna be all right, man?” Dante asked, leaning against one of the columns that supported the stone pergola in front of the posh hotel’s entrance.
“I don’t know,” I told him. I couldn’t see any reason to bullshit him. “I’m used to being what people want. Without that to guide me, I lack definition, and I feel scattered and pulled in every direction. I need to be with somebody so I know what to be.”
“Just be what you want.”
“What I want is to be what someone wants me to be. I need that.”
“You’re hurting my fucking head, Inky.”
A middle-aged woman in a Burberry tweed coat gave Dante a foul look, but I didn’t think he noticed and I knew he didn’t care. I supposed I could be what he needed for a while, let him shape me. But I’d had a taste of that back when we’d talked to that B
laker twat, and it was honestly fucking scary. Dante was angry, and not just angry because his sister was missing—he had a hard-on for the whole damned world. He hated everything, and at nineteen, he was already tired of life. He was strata upon strata of broken glass, ice, and ashes all packed tight but still ready to crumble. I didn’t want that, didn’t want to remember what that felt like in fifty or a hundred years.
Too bad I already would. Funny thing was, all I wanted was to show him life could be good, wonderful even. I wanted him to have something to look forward to for once, to want something for himself and bloody get it.
And where the hell did that come from? Who wanted me to want that? Not Dante. None of the people around us. But the desire had to come from somewhere.
I was saved from thinking on it too much by Emrys and Jet finally showing up.
“Parking is a nightmare in this city.” Emrys shook his head apologetically and pushed his hands into the pockets of his brown wool coat. They must’ve had a bit of a walk, because the cold had nipped his nose and cheeks red.
“Especially on the weekends.” Jet didn’t seem to mind the weather. They wore something between a kilt and a skirt, with a row of plastic buckles up the side, over a pair of leggings printed with stars and planets, but above their canvas trainers, their ankles were bare. Their blue-and-black striped hoodie didn’t look very warm either.
“Right.” Dante nodded once. “Where do we find this asshole?”
A couple coming out of the hotel sneered at his language, and he seemed to realize our merry little band of fuckups was in serious danger of being asked to leave, because he canted his head toward the walkway. Beside us, a Jaguar pulled up to the curb, and a man handed his keys to one of the valets. Emrys pointed after the vehicle with his chin. “The parking garage is as good a place as any to start looking for our driver.”
“Yeah, but there’s two guys hanging out by the entrance,” Dante noted. “I doubt they’ll just let us walk in. Can one of you… I don’t know. Do a spell or something?”