by Jamie Wyman
“Please, Miss Sharp. I need the veil.”
“What kind of veil are we talking about here?” I asked. “A wedding veil? Dance of the Seven Veils? I can’t help you with either. I’m single-not-looking and have two left feet.”
Grey brought his hands together then apart again with a stage magician’s flourish. In one palm, a stack of glittering silver coins winked in the moonlight. “I can make it worth your while.”
“Oh, and let me guess… There are probably thirty pieces just for me.”
He grinned, genuinely pleased at my quip. “I can offer more.”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “I don’t have it. Never heard of it. No clue what you’re talking about.”
“Come now, Miss Sharp. Lies do not become you. You needn’t cover for the thief.”
“Thief?”
“I know you’re on good terms with him, but you owe him nothing. I assure you the veil is better suited in my hands than his. I represent the rightful owners of the veil, and I will see it back where it belongs.”
“Seriously?” I mused for the second time tonight, chuffing an annoyed laugh. I’d never seen this guy’s veil. I didn’t care about it, either, but Creepy Magic Money Man didn’t seem to be getting out of my way anytime soon. Clearly, the guy possessed power, what with the shadows and silver. His magic felt foreign to me, the subtle energy pulsing around him did so in a language I couldn’t understand. This alien nature led me to the conclusion that I wasn’t dealing with a technomage like me. Without any idea what other punches this guy could pack, I needed a way out. Quickly.
“Look, man,” I said in my most diplomatic voice, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. As far as thieves go, you’ll have to be more specific. I know a few too many of those between the Fae, my boss, and some of my ex-coworkers. More importantly, though, I’ve never heard of you or your veil. I can’t help you. Now, if you’d like to show yourself out, I’ll be going home.”
I buried my hands in my pockets, got a firm grip on one of Loki’s mistletoe darts, and made to shoulder past him. Still holding that stack of coins in one hand, he lashed out with the free one, snatched my wrist and yanked me back.
“Now, now, Cat. We were just getting to know one another.”
My shoes scuffed against the sidewalk as I struggled to get out of his iron grip. “Let go of me,” I growled.
“Give me the veil.”
“I told you, I don’t have it.”
“Then give me the thief. I know he has contacted you. He has been seen at your home recently. Tell me where I can find him.”
I gulped down real fear at the idea of people watching my house. Cold sweat beaded on my forehead, and my palms went slick.
“If you mean Loki,” I said, unable to keep the quiver from my voice, “I can’t help. I don’t know where he goes between our meetings.” I didn’t mention that even if I did have that knowledge, it wasn’t worth a few shiny coins to introduce this guy to the god with a hold on my soul. I might be stubborn, but I’m not stupid.
“I grow weary of this,” he spat.
The silver in his hand melted like mercury and began to reshape itself into a long, thin blade. The tip came to rest against my throat. I drew in a breath and struggled to escape his grip, but he kept me locked in too-close proximity to his knife.
“I’d rather be friends, Miss Sharp. There are many things I could offer you for your cooperation. Alliances. Riches. Wonders. Power beyond your comprehension. But if you will not aid me willingly, I see no reason why I shouldn’t just cut the answers out of you.”
“Cathy?”
I cringed, and not just at the sound of that nickname. I heard the clank-rattle of metal and plastic, the sandy shuffle of soft slippers on pavement. I didn’t have to look to know the source of those noises. Behind me, my little old Fraggle of a landlady, Mrs. McIntyre, tried to push her walker at a speed that would keep up with the panic in her voice.
“Cathy, are you all right?”
When she let out a bleat of terror, I whipped around to see that the metal frame of her walker had melted beneath her. Mrs. M crumpled to the ground, scrapes opening up on her knees and hands. The tennis balls around the feet of her walker exploded as spikes shoved out, tearing through the fuzzy rubber. Blades curved and aimed at my landlady.
“Mrs. M!” I shouted.
Grey yanked me so that my back slammed against his chest. He pinned me there with one ropy arm, the point of his knife still a cold statement at my throat. “Miss Sharp,” he hissed in my ear, “I’d hate to ruin that woman’s lovely housecoat, wouldn’t you?”
Mrs. M lay on the ground, eyes shut tight in pain as she reached down to her knees. She moaned and shook, jarred by her fall. I worried that she’d broken more than her paper-thin skin. She hadn’t even noticed that her walker had turned into a nest of blades.
“The veil,” Grey said. He tightened his hold, fingers forming a fist around my jacket. “Or the thief. Now.”
I’d never heard of Francis Grey or his stupid veil, and I didn’t know what thief he expected me to hand over. But seeing Mrs. M on the ground, crying and hurt, was enough for me to know that I hated the bastard.
“You’d better hope to every god that she didn’t break her hip again,” I said through my teeth. With a grunt and a prayer, I sent my fist flying over my shoulder. The choked scream from Grey let me know I’d scored a hit and gave me just enough time to struggle out of his grip.
I ran to Mrs. M and kicked away the rack of knives that had once been her walker. It tumbled along the concrete and into the crabgrass. Knowing she was safe for the moment but hoping to keep her oblivious to my technomage talents, I turned my attention back to Grey and let loose one of Loki’s darts. I didn’t expect I’d be lucky enough to score a shot to the eye, but I was pleased to see my dart buried just beneath his collarbone.
When it landed in the mage’s flesh, leaves of green sprouted out of its mistletoe shaft and began to unfold, the telltale white berries spreading like spores over the wound. If he smashed just one, the juice would poison him. If he left the dart alone, those leaves would work their way around his throat like a verdant noose.
Grey grimaced at the pain but didn’t try to remove the dart. Instead, he closed his eyes. The air around him shimmered like hot asphalt as he drew power to him. Before my eyes, the wooden shaft of my dart fell to the ground, greenery trailing around it.
“Mrs. M,” I pleaded, tugging at her arms as gently as I could under the circumstances. “Come on, get up.” She moaned, shaking as she stared at her walker.
The air quivered again, and once more I wondered if an invisible giant beast had just inhaled. Grey’s mouth twisted, those silvery eyes locked on me. Without breaking the stare, he spat something to the ground. I cast a furtive glance to see the metal tip of my dart.
Shit.
I blinked, agog and otherwise in a sick sort of awe of that particular bit of magic.
“Loki’s old tricks are nothing to me,” he said, his voice too calm.
Then I remembered the live lines coursing beneath our feet. I quickly reached into the ether and tapped into the electricity flowing into the lamppost and to the stacked apartments behind me. At my silent command, cables shot up out of the ground, buckling the sidewalk. I watched as they looped around the mage, constricting him like amorous snakes.
“Really, Miss Sharp?”
The lines went slack, and the courtyard plunged into darkness. The lamppost, the security lights on each doorstep, even the lights in the homes snuffed out at once. I drew from the only power source I had left: the cell phones in my pockets. Sweat slicking my body and rank with fear, I worked one of the more sophisticated tricks my magic would allow. Current from the phone gushed through my blood. As my veins began to glow, I concentrated, vaguely registering the sound of my own voice humming along with the flow of power. Wraithlike wisps of light trickled out of my fingertips, swirling and coalescing into a focus
ed ball. Panting, I poured everything I could into that little orb, began the work of reshaping it as the glow intensified. In the wan light of my magic I could see the smirk on Grey’s face.
Mrs. McIntyre screamed as metal clashed against stone. I followed her horrified stare to see her walker come to life. Using four blades as legs, it skittered over the gravel with insect-like precision.
“Shit,” I whispered.
“The veil,” Grey said. His gaunt face was ghastly white, drawn with malice. “Now!”
The walker reared back on its hind legs, two gleaming knives ready to plunge down into the softness of Mrs. M and her pink terrycloth robe. I released my hold on the orb of energy and sent it careening toward Grey. Light splashed over him in a vibrant corona as he screamed. I dove on top of Mrs. McIntyre and shielded her body with my own. Shoving my fingers into my pocket, I gripped the last tool in my kit—a smooth plastic key fob with a single button.
A one-shot spell loaded by the most badass technomage I know.
I thumbed the panic button, and orange light swirled around us, white filaments of power forming a pulsing cocoon as the transportation spell began to work.
Even pouring my own power into the spell, the effect lagged long enough that I could glare at Francis Grey. I’d scored his face with my magic. Five black lines drew pain up his cheek, each of those furrows gleaming with wisps of white power. Though I smiled ruefully, Grey wasn’t quite as sanguine about the whole thing. With a wordless roar, he thrust his hands forward. Bullets soared at us, but tiny pinpoints of light winked against the temporary shield as the spell took hold.
With a flash of amber, the courtyard disappeared.
Chapter Three
“Falling Down”
Teleporting with this particular magic was like diving into solar flare. Orange, red, and white light wrapped around us in a wormhole of fire. My heart beat a frenzied rhythm in my chest, and my head swam, torn between feelings of weightlessness and acceleration. Pain speared through my side, my arms. I clung to Mrs. McIntyre and screamed, but no sound came out. The vortex remained silent, as deep and impenetrable as a black hole.
Gravity sprang back into being, and I jerked, falling gracelessly to the hard floor. My screaming erupted into reality, a trembling bleat that soon died away into ragged coughs. Beneath me, Mrs. M shuddered and moaned. I sat up quickly, and my side protested. All right, it felt like my skin was being ripped open, but I just wanted Mrs. M to be okay. She huddled there on the floor, a fuzzy, frail old woman. My heart broke as I watched her toothless mouth quiver with a soft rasp, a muttering cry that seemed to go on forever.
“Mrs. M? Mrs. McIntyre, are you all right?” I called.
Raising her withered hands to her face, she moaned again. Her sunken cheeks puffed up in the universal sign for, Oh shit, I’m going to puke. Before I could even think of getting a trash can—let alone hauling her into the bathroom—she let loose with a meager spray of vomit.
I tossed my panic button to the bedside table and looked around the small room I kept beneath YmFy, a technomancer bar masquerading as a derelict warehouse. Only a scarce few of the exclusive clientele knew about the labyrinth of rooms and treasures under the thumping dance floor. But because my pseudosibling Flynn created and owned YmFy, he granted me my own room in the catacomb-like halls below. Little more than a bed, a dorm-sized refrigerator, and four black walls comprised the bolt-hole. Beyond stocking the attached bathroom with necessities and stashing a bugout bag in the panel behind the wall, I hadn’t taken the time to do much with the space.
Still sprawled on the floor, Mrs. M continued to moan and whimper, her hands smeared with red. Blood was seeping from a dozen tiny cuts on her arms and one or two on her cheeks. She curled in on herself. Though I tried to open her arms to examine her for further injury, those frail bones locked in front of her chest.
As gently as I could, I eased Mrs. M to her feet and shuffled with her the few steps to the bed. Each movement sent fresh pangs of agony through my side, but I got her settled. Then I checked her over. The knives and bullets had missed my landlady’s chest. The scrapes were evident, but any internal damage or broken bones…well, that was beyond me.
Mrs. M lay there with her hands over her eyes, shaking. Every now and again she let out a plaintive murmur, but otherwise she rocked herself quietly to something resembling sleep.
She might be an arthritic Fraggle, but dammit, she’s my arthritic Fraggle.
I should get her to a hospital.
Which meant I needed Flynn’s help.
With my landlady as comfortable as I could make her, I turned my attention to myself. My right flank was flayed opened with a crimson slash, and I was bleeding like a son of a bitch. Apparently, the shield of the transportation spell worked against bullets, but only enough to sheer them into tiny bits of shrapnel. And one of the blades from Grey’s twisted walker-monster had scored the gash beneath my ribs. Though I could cover it with my hand, the wound felt about as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon. My pulse throbbed under my palm as I pressed against it to stanch the flow. Other tiny cuts marred my arms, but I couldn’t even feel them.
I slogged to the bathroom and wadded up a towel against my side. Everything stung like hell. Mrs. McIntyre would probably wash my mouth out with lye if she’d heard the things I was hissing at that point.
I took stock of what needed to happen. Adrenaline might be good at turning mere mortals into superbeings, but running on fumes, my thoughts bleeding out of my wound in red gushes, I struggled to form a coherent sentence.
“Hospital, Cat,” I said aloud to myself. “Get Mrs. M and yourself to a doctor. To do that, you need a car. Yours is at the apartment. Get Flynn.”
Just thinking of making the walk down the hall to Flynn’s room felt like a Herculean task, so I pulled out my cell to call him. The phone sat idle as a stone in my hand. My techs-ploits with Grey drained the battery, and I had no juice left in me to power the device.
“Okay,” I muttered. “We do this the old-fashioned way and walk. Joy.”
By the time I got to Flynn’s room, black spots dotted my vision and someone had jacked my horizontal hold. The hall seemed to spiral around me like something out of a Twilight Zone rerun. I knocked and fell against the door, dizzy and exhausted.
“Flynn,” I said. My own voice sounded far away.
Leaning against the door, I pressed up to my feet with more colorful language at the searing pain in my side. I pawed at the knob and let myself in.
Colors pulsed along the sleek walls in a slow throb, purples shifting to pinks and blues and on through the spectrum. A wink of silver drew my attention to the bed. Flynn’s piercings cast back the light in shafts and flickers of white. The tattoos along his arms glowed as orange as living flame. That light illuminated his whole body…which, I soon realized, was quite naked.
But the horror of seeing my brother from another mother in the buff didn’t end there. Oh no. Indelible as his tattoos, the image of Flynn thrusting himself into the arching, dark form of an equally nude woman etched itself in my brain.
I eeped with shocked embarrassment. Backing out the way I’d come—arrived!—I closed my eyes tight and slurred out a series of apologies. “Shit! I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry.”
Because the gods mock me, I proceeded to back into the door, the knob barking me at the base of my spine. I shouted out an epithet or four and opened my eyes in surprise. Inky black seeped into my vision from the edges, sliding toward the golden center. When the haze cleared, I was met with full-frontal Flynn.
The cycle of self-injury and horrified, embarrassed yelling continued as I fumbled with the damned knob.
“Cat!” he called. “You’re bleeding!”
“You’re naked!” I shrieked. “And not alone! And your door doesn’t work so I can’t get the hell out of here and let you finish…what…or who…you’re doing.”
“Cat, look at me.”
“No, thanks.”
“
Dammit, Cat, I’m covered, okay?”
I opened one eye to see that the walls no longer pulsed with color. The room now glowed with a steady amber light that gradually brightened so as not to blind anyone. Flynn stood in front of me wearing a pair of jeans—the belt and button undone—and a concerned expression on his flushed face.
I tried to ignore the fine layer of sweat and all that it entailed, but I failed. Horribly.
Over his shoulder, the woman pulled herself up from the bed and twined herself in the sheet, all in one graceful motion. She was striking. Piercings dotted her café au lait skin—one at each eyebrow, several on her ears, and one mimicking Marilyn Monroe’s beauty mark. Two pink bows had been tattooed on either side of her chest, just beneath her collar bones. And sweet gods, her hair! Thick, tight corkscrew curls fell past her shoulders in a lavender cloud.
Her eyes focused on me with drill bit precision.
“What happened?” she asked. Her voice, though a bubbly soprano, held all the authority of a general on the battlefield.
“Attacked,” I said between breaths. The pain made it harder to get enough air. “Outside my apartment. My landlady is in my room.”
“Mrs. M?” Flynn bleated.
I nodded. “Nothing serious that I can see. Minor cuts. Worried, though. She had a bad fall.”
Taking my towel away from me, Flynn bent to examine the gash in my side. The woman glided across the room, unhindered by the sheet around her legs.
“And you?” she asked.
“Knife. A few bullets. Maybe.”
Flynn’s hazel eyes bugged out of his head like a Looney Tune. “Jesus Christ, Cat! What the hell?”
“Long story.”
The woman shoved Flynn out of the way and lifted my T-shirt to get a better look at the worst of my wounds. I hissed and may have called her a name she didn’t deserve. She took it in stride.
“This needs stitches.” She pressed the towel back to my side and forced Flynn’s hand against it with about a graviton of pressure. “Hold this here,” she ordered. “I’ll be right back to suture her up, and then I’ll tend to the landlady.”