by P. A. Wilson
“A beer would be nice to go with my lunch.” Cate’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Is that stew the only offering?”
“I think they have a plowman’s of some sort.” I waved at the waiter and Cate put in her order. “Dessert?”
“No, I don’t want to be running around with a full gut tonight when the summons comes.” She held up her glass in salute. “To a successful night.”
I returned the gesture and passed my empty bowl to the waiter. “Did you get some rest?”
“Yes, although Lionel was eager to discuss his progress.” She offered me a wedge of cheese. “This is good, you should try it. You are way too skinny.”
“I didn’t realize you noticed.”
“I did, don’t get too excited.” She seemed to focus on the platter in front of her. “You are kind of cute when you aren’t trying to show off your knowledge.”
“You’re pretty cute too, when you aren’t bossing me around.” I tasted the cheese, it was nutty and mild. “Do you think we’ll get a call tonight?”
“I hope so. Are you sure this information about the killing every three days?”
“It was Olan’s connection. I don’t know who it is, but he seemed to be confident in the information.” I liked this new Cate, she wasn’t trying to knock me down and I didn’t feel the need to fight her.
She shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t really matter, this is all we have, unless someone else volunteers information, we have to trust it.”
“I hate it. I don’t know how you can be so calm. I want to get out there and walk around until we find something. Then I want to kick some ass.”
She pushed the empty platter away and sat back. “How do you manage it? Being a spirit wizard, I mean.”
“You know I didn’t choose. Spirit wizard, it is what I am.” I tried to remember if she had been there when Vollont had told us what we were. “How did you know you were earth?”
“Vollont told me. I didn’t know why he chose that.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I never thought about it. Do you know how he decides?”
“I do. I asked him. Didn’t it occur to you to ask? Maybe it’s different for witches.” I thought witches and wizards were pretty much just the male and female equivalent of the same species.
“I don’t know if it’s different. I showed up at Master Vollont’s when he summoned me. I was so happy he had picked me I just did and learned everything he said.”
I was surprised. She had never seemed like the type to just do as she was told. “Well, he summoned me, and I was proud he did. I showed up and he told me I was a spirit wizard and pointed me to a book. I started reading and questioning what I found.”
She laughed and it lightened my day. “I remember you were always asking questions and challenging him. I know other spirit wizards and they aren’t like you. I guess we bring what we are to the table.” She sat back and stayed silent for a while.
I didn’t say anything to disturb her thoughts. I waved to the waiter, ordered coffee and paid the bill. If the call came, we could just go.
Bank’s was quiet and we sat waiting for almost an hour without anyone disturbing us. We talked about inconsequential topics and I was feeling like we were getting along nicely. Then my skin felt like it was on fire. Cate looked up. “Let’s go. To the east by the feel of it.”
We hurried out and turned right. I followed Cate; she seemed to have a clearer message than I did. All I felt was burning, maybe a little less on one side. Cate was acting like she had been given an address. It was dark and the humans were hurrying home to dinner and television. “Do you see anyone?” I panted, Cate wasn’t running but she was pretty close to it. I know I need to exercise but this was crazy.
“We’re close. I know it. We should see something in a minute.” She slowed and looked around. “I lost the signal. What do you feel?”
“I feel like someone dipped me in itching powder. It’s all over.” I forced myself to keep my hands at my side and not scratching at the burning itch. “How did you know to come here?”
“I was pulled here. Crap.” She spun around “Now I can’t feel any direction but there’s no one here.”
I put a hand out to stop her turning around again. I was getting dizzy for her. “Maybe we are here. Calm down. Let me scope it out.” She did as I asked which surprised me. I looked around, throwing my senses out to see if I could get a hint.
We’d come to a stop at the mouth of an alley, it looked like the kind of place the fairies chose to do their business. I couldn’t see any fairies or humans, or anyone at all. The place was deserted. What I could see was all clear through to the next street. There were doorways and dumpsters that would work for Sidhe hiding places but no one was there.
“Nothing and no one,” I said. “False alarm. We might as well go back to the pub. I can’t feel anything on my skin at all.”
“No, there was something.” Cate walked toward the alley and I followed. You can’t tell what might be in these alleys and junkies are more dangerous than Sidhe. “Let’s just check it out.”
I stepped beside Cate we looked behind the dumpsters and in the first four doorways before we found what Cate was looking for. A dead human woman was propped up against a red metal door. There was a stream of bloody foam hanging from her mouth. This time it was not belladonna. Her arms and legs were covered in scrapes as if she had bounced around the alley as she died.
Cate bent over the body looking closely at the damage. “This is bad. Is this what the other victims looked like?”
“No, the others I saw were belladonna poisoning. They had convulsions but nothing that would cause this damage.”
She looked up. “Do you think they are escalating? Demanding more violence to increase the power of the spirit?”
I didn’t want that to be true. We didn’t need any more pressure. I looked closer at the woman, ignoring the recent damage. “Look here.” I pointed to her arms. “There are marks on her arm. If she was stoned, would it affect what happened with the poison? Maybe give her a bad reaction.”
“Yes, it could depending on what she was taking.” Cate sighed and moved away from the body.
I hated not knowing what was going on. I led Cate out of the alley. We didn’t need to be caught with a dead body. “Even if this was an accident, I think we need to get more aggressive. This will have given the Sidhe ideas. If they can increase the power they get, they will do so.”
“Does the spirit carry addiction?” She glanced back as she spoke.
“Oh no, I don’t know. I hope not. The last thing we need is stoned Sidhe running through the city.”
Chapter Fifteen
We went back to my place. I didn’t have any ideas but we figured it was as good a place as any to regroup. In the workroom I pulled down my top five spell books. “There must be something here we can use.”
“Quinn, it’s not our fault.” She put her hand on my arm.
“What isn’t my fault?”
“What happened to that woman. It isn’t our fault. You couldn’t have anticipated that the fairy would choose a junkie. That there wouldn’t be enough time to get there. Maybe they didn’t even know she was a junkie.”
I heard the words, but they didn’t really mean anything to me. If I had been thinking clearly instead of mooning over Cate, I would have figured out the Sidhe were going to change the rules. “The fairy didn’t choose the woman. The Sidhe choose the victim.”
Cate put her hand on mine. “It’s still not your fault.”
“It doesn’t matter.” It did but I wasn’t ready for Cate to be all sympathetic. “We have to find a way to stop it. I think whoever picked that woman was experimenting. You know Fionuir wouldn’t touch any drugs other than alcohol. She is too afraid of what it would do to her looks.”
“But if she’s running this mad operation to keep power who would have okayed the junkie?”
“Stop calling her that. She was a human. The police won’t care about the drugs
when they start investigating. We can’t have too much time before they get suspicious.” I started flipping through the spell books, hoping something would jump out at me. Something called, A spell to stop mad Sidhe from ending the world.
Cate put her hand flat on the book. “I said stop.” She pulled it away from me. “Take a breath.”
I tried to get the book back, once. She threw fire dust onto my hand before I touched the binding. I kept my eyes on my hand so I could convince my mind that the flesh wasn’t roasting off the bone. It was over in two minutes. But that was two minutes of agony. “You bitch. And to think I was beginning to like you.”
“You were?” She blushed from the neck of her black sweater to the roots of her hair. “Really?”
Oh, damn. Quinn Larson you never know when to keep your mouth shut. “Yes. Can I have my book back now?”
“Maybe. Are you going to flip pages until they fly out of the stitches or are you going to stop and think for a minute?”
“While we think for a minute, who knows what is going on out there?” I flung my hands to the windows.
Cate stepped away from me holding the book in her hands. “You know, I always liked you. Even when you were being an idiot. Like now.”
I stepped forward and grabbed at the spell book. “Setting my hand on fire is not the best way to tell me you like me.”
“It seems to have worked.”
“Woman, give me the damn book.”
She giggled and moved away. “Come take it.”
I lunged for her and she wiggled away at the last second. I reached again and she danced around the room holding the book just out of my reach. After what seemed like an hour, but was probably only a few minutes, I stopped chasing her and held onto the bench while I gasped for breath.
“Are you feeling calmer now?”
I grinned and snaked my arm out to pull the book away from her. “Yes, you win.”
She pushed in beside me and opened the book. “Good. So before we go looking for spells, I think we need to figure out a different way to deal with this.”
“Did you mean it when you said you liked me?” If the world was going to come to an end, I had nothing to lose by asking.
She was looking at the list of spells, running her finger down the right side. She didn’t look up when she said, “Yes, I’ve had a crush on you for a long time. I didn’t think you were ready to hear that until now.”
I opened my mouth to protest when Olan flew in at a breakneck pace. “There you are. I have news.” Then he stopped and looked at both of us. “Ah, I see you’ve noticed you are sweet on each other.”
Cate leaned into me and smothered a laugh.
“Well, we’ll have to deal with that when this crisis is over. We have news too,” I said.
Olan nodded his beak at me. “I would hear your news first.”
I told him about the latest death. “Do the Sidhe react like humans to street drugs?”
Olan paced the length of the table before answering. “I only know of one Sidhe who went down that path. And it was not the same.”
“Good,” I said and turned back to the spell book. “What’s your news?”
“I am not done, wizard.”
“I know,” Cate said. “He has this really bad habit of interrupting.”
I looked at Olan. “Okay, I’m sorry.”
“It is much worse. They lose control of their powers. If I remember correctly, it took four creator spirits to control him. That one took it from a needle. I don’t know what will change if drugs get into the power they are stealing. I’d say we need to be more cautious and act faster.”
Great, just what we needed. “So what news did you bring?”
Olan puffed himself up. “As you know I am an excellent spy.” He waited until we both nodded. “I overheard Iain setting up a meeting down on Nelson and Park Lane tonight. If we go there, maybe you can catch the fairy or the Sidhe. I don’t know.”
“They are really changing the game plan if they have moved operations to the park.” Cate said. “There are a lot of people going through that area every day. Not a good place to leave a body.”
I knew the Sidhe were going to get too arrogant to be careful. “What did you hear, exactly?” I hoped Olan had misunderstood, knowing it was a blind hope because Olan was an expert eavesdropper.
“Iain was talking to a Sidhe woman. She asked him if he really thought this was wise. I didn’t hear what ‘this’ was. Iain said. ‘Yes, he will be worth it’. I think they are planning to get someone important, or powerful.”
I grabbed my leather coat and motioned for Olan to lead the way. Cate followed Olan and I locked the doors after us.
It was a short walk to the park, so we were there in ten minutes. This intersection was one of the entrances to Stanley Park, the tennis courts and the lagoon were a short walk in either direction.
“It they’ve decided to jump on the drugs bandwagon, this is the place.” Cate jerked her head slightly toward three men standing near a bench. They had their hands in their pockets and Bluetooth receivers in their ears.
“Are you sure this is the place?” I asked Olan who was sitting on my shoulder, making me feel like a pirate.
He turned his eye to me and nodded. I realized he would be keeping silent as long as humans were around.
I turned to Cate and led her to a bench some ten feet closer to the streetlights than the drug dealer’s station. “Can you sense any Sidhe?”
She closed her eyes for a minute. “Fifteen feet, maybe a bit more, into the trees. No fairies, though. None at all.”
“We must be early.” I really hoped so, one death a day is enough. If we could catch the Sidhe, one of us could let the fairy know that the deal was off. “Stand still and I’ll disguise us.”
It would be pretty easy to slip past the drug dealers. I’d watched them before. They were looking for customers and as long as we didn’t look like competition, they would let us pass. I gave myself a glamour of long bushy hair, to hide Olan. And I hid Cate’s red hair under a hood, filling in the curves of her clothing to create a short chubby man silhouette.
She looked down at her new body. “Couldn’t you find a better disguise for me?”
“I don’t think we want to parade a pretty red haired witch past the three musketeers.” I cut my eyes toward the group who were ogling a street walker as she strutted by with a client.
“Good idea.” She dropped her voice from contralto to tenor. “Thanks for thinking I’m pretty.”
“Don’t go all girly on me.” I laughed and motioned for her to stand. “Let’s get to that Sidhe.”
We made it past the three dealers with only one offer of drugs. Cate led us through a few bushes to a clearing just out of sight of the main path. It looks like the Sidhe were not as reckless as I first feared. A body could rest in here for a while before someone stumbled on it. Although there was not going to be another body. We were here to make sure of that.
Cate held her finger to her lips. Even though I wasn’t planning on chatting I pushed my lips together to show I understood. She pointed toward an ancient oak and cupped her other hand behind her ear. I moved closer and realized I could hear quiet voices from the other side.
“Did you find the right human?” That was Iain. Interesting, it never occurred to me that he would be anything other than a go between.
“Of course.” I didn’t recognize the other voice, but the accent said Sidhe. “It is almost time.”
“I’m ready.”
Cate and I looked at each other; I didn’t feel any fairy presence. I flapped my hands like wings and raised my eyebrow. She shook her head. And I noticed the absence of bird sounds too.
I gestured with my hands and a tiny web formed between them. Cate nodded. A snare spell would be the easiest. I pushed more power in the spell and felt some draining from Olan. The web was large enough to hold two fully grown Sidhe.
I pointed at the left side of the tree and then Cate. She moved in
to place. We were going to rush around the tree and I would fling the web at the first being I saw. We would get our captive and make the best of it and the chosen victim would be safe. Just before I gave the signal to go, Olan flapped off my shoulders and disappeared into the night.
I nodded and both of us moved around the tree. I held up my hand to cast the web and stopped. There was a human woman on the ground, her back arched in a convulsion, her lips an unnatural color. I saw her fingers tearing into the ground. Her eyes were staring at the tree canopy with no light of comprehension.
Cate stood frozen on the other side of the tree trunk. I took one step toward the woman as she sighed and collapsed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the swirl of a cloak and a sudden absence of something that had been standing in the shadow of another oak.
I dismissed the spell and grabbed Cate’s arm. We ran in the direction of the motion.
I heard a series of chirps from above as we entered a clearing at the edge of the park. Only a few tall rhododendrons hid us from the street. I turned to see Cate step into the clearing, her disguise gone. Her eyes widened she opened her mouth. I spun to see what had shocked her.
Ten Sidhe males stepped out of the bushes and we were surrounded.
Chapter Sixteen
I stepped toward Cate and she turned so that we stood back to back facing the Sidhe. “Sorry,” I said over my shoulder.
“No problem. This isn’t your fault either.”
I felt her shoulders move and realized she was forming a spell as she talked. I called back the web, it was an easy spell and I figured the first step was to decrease the number of attackers. “What have you got?”
“A stun spell. I figure a spirit wizard would be uncomfortable with fatal spells and I didn’t want you stopping to lecture me in the middle of a fight.”
“Funny.” I appreciated her thoughtfulness. It would help if we could capture one of the Sidhe alive.
Olan flew to the center of the circle. “Damn, I thought I could leave you to this.”