As the blade my father had forged glinted in the dim corridor, I thought about the kind of mage he had been: supremely powerful and wise. Not someone who depended on luck.
So let’s send the Big Daddy packing without the quotient, hm?
I pressed my back to the wall beside the doorway. Sword and staff clenched in either hand, I peeked inside.
“The hell?” I muttered.
3
I wasn’t looking at a Big Daddy. More like a plus-sized mama.
For a few more moments, I could only stare. The elderly black woman shuffling around the small kitchen on an aluminum walker clutched a can opener and a can of dog food in the same hand. A pile of gray hair stood from her head, while a pink bathrobe wrapped her ample body.
Was this the amateur conjurer? It had to be. The only habitable bedroom in the unit had contained spell books. But the woman shouldn’t have been alive, much less tottering around her kitchen. I watched her drop the can opener into a crowded sink and then, muttering, dig a metal spoon from beneath a pile of plates. She smacked the spoon against the side of the can three times.
“Come and get your breakfast!” she called, her voice strong and maternal.
When she stooped down to shovel the dog food into the last of a row of plastic bowls, the explanation hit me in the gut. Dogs. She’d had dogs. And she was alive because the nether creatures had found them first.
I peered back down the corridor, half expecting to see more of the creatures skittering into view. I needed to get the old woman to safety. I took a step into the kitchen and cleared my throat.
“Ma’am?”
She had finished plopping the food into the bowl, and now she evened out the portions. “I know you don’t like it when your food dries out,” she called, “and this is all you’re getting this morning!”
Damn. I was not looking forward to breaking the news to her.
“Excuse me? Ma’am?” I said louder, sheathing my sword so I wouldn’t appear threatening. My shield continued to hum softly around me.
The woman cocked her head, then labored to straighten her bent back.
“I’m Everson Croft,” I all but shouted. “I heard you had an infestation. I’m here to help.”
She finally turned enough to notice me. I held up a hand to show her I was harmless. She leaned forward, eyes squinting past a pair of thick glasses with smudged lenses. “Said you’re here about an infection?” she asked. “What infection? I don’t know anything about an infection.”
“No, no. An infestation.”
She shook her head in annoyance and jammed a thick finger into her right ear. She twisted the finger one way and then the other until a hearing aid began to whine. Grumbling, she turned it back down.
“All right. Come again?”
“An infestation,” I repeated. “You know … critters that shouldn’t be here.”
She pursed her lower lip and shook her head. “Don’t know about any of those. Only ones here besides me are my babies.” She shouted past me, “You all coming?”
“Yeah … about them—shit!”
I hadn’t spotted the creature crawling over the top of the cabinets until it leapt down. It landed on the floor between us with a clack and snapped its claws at me. It could have been a lobster, except for the tendrils writhing from its mouth. Its name flashed through my mind: a clawdad. Though smaller than the other creatures, it was no less deadly. The woman grunted in what sounded like alarm, causing the creature to scuttle around and jump at her.
With no time to call up a force invocation, I swung my cane like a golf club. I would have liked to think I’d acted on honed reflexes, but my luck quotient had called the shot. Ever since learning I possessed a more active quotient than most magic-users, I’d become increasingly attuned to it. It manifested as a subtle tingling in my gut right before it kicked in. And I’d just felt it.
My cane met the clawdad’s hard exoskeleton mid-jump with a crack. The creature tumbled through the air and smashed into a pantry.
“Stay back!” I shouted over my shoulder.
Canned food rolled from the pantry as I drew my sword and advanced. The woman behind me was trapped, which meant that whatever happened, I couldn’t let the clawdad get past me. A bag of flour fell out next and burst across the floor as the clawdad scuttled around the shelves.
The woman shouted excitedly.
If I could spot the creature, I could trap it like I’d done the riddlers and squeeze it out of existence. I would then perform a final search of the apartment for any remaining creatures and incinerate the offending spell book. I’d leave the other books. Better for the woman to think she could cast from them than to have her go out looking for more.
In the pantry, the clawdad went still.
“Illuminare,” I whispered. It only took a moment for the light from my opal to expose the creature. It was in the back, trying to hide beneath a pile of mac and cheese boxes.
Game over, you little—
Sparks flew from my shield as something came down on the back of my head. Another one? But when I spun, I found the woman standing at her walker behind me. At some point she’d swapped the spoon for a rolling pin. She reared back the rolling pin to strike again.
I threw my arms up. “Are you crazy?”
“Don’t you hurt Buster!”
The rolling pin descended with another crack and shower of sparks.
“B-Buster?” I stammered, backing away. “Lady, that’s not your dog!”
I stole a glance over my shoulder. Great, the clawdad was no longer in the pantry. I looked wildly around the kitchen.
“Who said anything about a dog?” She waved the rolling pin over her head.
I staggered back another step, almost tripping over the bag of flour. That’s when I spotted the clawdad. In the confusion, it had circled the cluttered kitchen and was coming up behind the woman.
“Look out!” I shouted.
She followed my gaze, then lowered the pin.
“There you are, you little rascal.” She reached a hand toward it.
Oh God, she’s half blind, and she thinks that thing’s her puppy.
I squinted as I tried to extend my shield’s protection to encompass her. I was sure I would be too slow, that the next sound would be the creature’s claw crunching through her fingers.
I was too slow, but in the instant before the shield took form around her, the old woman scratched the clawdad’s head—and the clawdad let her. The creature skipped back, surprised by the shield.
“Mama’s right here,” the woman said in her maternal voice. “Oh yes she is.”
As the old woman faced me again, her rolling pin in striking position, the clawdad peered at me from behind her legs.
“Ma’am, do you know what that thing is?”
“’Course I do,” she snapped back. “I’m not blind.” She peered past me. “Now where are my other babies?”
That’s when the full understanding hit me.
Not only had she conjured the creatures, but she’d been raising them as house pets. I opened my wizard’s senses. No supernatural aura around her. The woman was as mortal as they came.
I dropped my gaze to the small clawdad. It must have been the creature most recently conjured. How the wards had missed the others, I wasn’t sure. I’d have to check them out.
The woman saw me watching her and her creature warily from across the kitchen. “He’s harmless,” she said, then added with a sigh, “and looks like the only one that’s gonna get breakfast this morning.”
She tossed the rolling pin toward the sink and pulled a knife from a chopping block. I drew back, but the knife wasn’t meant for me. As she turned toward the food bowls, the clawdad leapt up and down. I dropped the woman’s protection to see what would happen, ready to throw it back in place the instant the clawdad turned aggressive. But it only scurried around her feet like a puppy anticipating a treat.
The old woman opened the fridge door, pulled a small blood-t
ransfusion bag from a stack of them, and inserted the tip of the knife into the tube. She twisted the knife while holding the bag over the bowls.
“There you go,” she said as blood dribbled onto the chunks of dog food. The clawdad squealed and rushed forward. It set upon the bowl, heaping the dog food past its writhing tendrils.
I counted the food bowls. Five. Which meant this was the final creature.
I thought about spearing the clawdad while it and the woman were distracted. But when I caught the loving look in the woman’s eyes, I found myself notching my sword back in the cane. The woman released a soft chuckle and placed the empty transfusion bag in the trash. When our eyes met again, she squinted slightly as though trying to place me.
“How long have you been raising these things?” I asked.
She squinted at me another moment, this time mouthing my name. Her eyes widened behind her glasses. “Say, aren’t you that boy who helped the mayor last year? The wizard?”
My role in the mayor’s eradication program was no secret, but in a metropolis where the churn of headlines was endless, my name and face had all but faded into the archives. It had been months since anyone had recognized me in public.
“Yeah…?” I replied.
Her mouth broke into a huge smile. “Well, why didn’t you say so? I’m one of your biggest fans.”
“You are?”
“Have a seat over here and let me fix you up some coffee.” She shuffled to a small circular table heaped with newspapers, kitchenware, and other odds and ends, shook a chair to empty it of a magazine stack, and beckoned for me to sit. The clawdad, which had finished eating, scurried up the woman’s robe and perched on her shoulder. It held up its claws at me in warning.
“Be nice, Buster,” the woman said. Then to me, “Go on.”
I eyed the clawdad as it chattered. I couldn’t leave here without destroying it.
“Go on,” the woman repeated, nodding for me to sit.
This should be interesting.
“Thanks,” I said, and took a seat.
“You asked how long I’ve been raising my babies?” the woman said as she fussed with a coffee maker. “Buster’s a new arrival, but I’ve had the others going back six months.”
I’d angled my chair so I was facing her broad back. The clawdad continued to watch me from the woman’s shoulder.
“Six months, huh?”
She must have heard the distaste in my voice. “I know they’re not much to look at, but they’re the best pets I’ve ever owned. Loving, loyal. Make good watch dogs, too. Had an attempted break-in a couple months back.” The woman chuckled. “One of my babies buried a hook so deep inside the man’s butt cheek, you could’ve heard him scream clear to the two hundreds.”
I smiled in fake appreciation. I was still puzzling over how the woman continued to breathe with five lethal nether creatures for housemates. And had she called them loving?
“I’m surprised they didn’t try sinking anything into you,” she finished, then peered over a shoulder. “Don’t know why they’re being so timid all of a sudden. You all coming?”
I swallowed. Euthanizing Buster was going to be hard enough without the woman knowing what I’d done to her other babies. I changed the subject. “You know, I never got your name.”
“You can call me Mae.”
“What got you into conjuring, Mae?”
“You did.”
I stared at her. “Me?”
“That’s right.” Mae chuckled and snapped the switch on the coffee maker. As the machine began to gurgle, she came over and joined me at the table. The clawdad scurried around to her far shoulder and chattered at me some more.
“But let me back up,” she said. “I was a veterinarian for more than thirty years. Had a practice over on Amsterdam Avenue. I’ve always adored animals, and they always seemed to take to me. I was the woman you’d see walking half a dozen dogs down to the park. Had twice that many cats back in the apartment. But after losing everything in the Crash, my husband and I ended up in this rent control. Maybe you saw the sign in the lobby? No dogs or cats? Broke my heart to give them away. Then my husband passed.” Her eyes went misty behind her glasses.
“I’m really sorry,” I said.
“To be honest, there didn’t seem much point in going on. A horrible thing to say, but it’s the truth. Then I saw you on the news.” Her face broke into another of her warm smiles. “The things you could do. It all just seemed so … so miraculous. I cut out the articles they ran about you in the papers. They’re around here somewhere.” She peered over a shoulder as if she might spot one. “I can’t explain quite how, but your magic spoke to me. I wanted so much to talk to you, to ask you how you learned to do that stuff. Then I said to myself, ‘Mae, if you want something bad enough, you’ve got to get out of this funk and do it yourself.’ So I went out that very day and bought every book on magic I could find and started practicing. Nothing much happened, until I found this one old book at a store in Queens.”
“The Khafji Scrolls,” I said.
She stopped and blinked at me. “How’d you know?” But she immediately broke into laughter. “Well, of course you know. You’re a wizard!”
I gave a modest shrug.
“Anyway, one of the spells in there was supposed to call up a god. Sort of a hunk from the way the book described him.” She laughed and shook her head. “I know how that probably sounds, but I’m old, not dead. And I was doing it more for the powers than anything.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” I said, to keep her talking. But I was thinking of everything that should have gone wrong.
“Well, the critter that popped out of that circle was no god, and it sure as sin wasn’t handsome. Had about twenty legs and a face so ugly you wanted to forget you ever saw it. But I’d brought it into the world, and that was that. I looked after it like it was my own.”
“And it never tried to hurt you?”
“Hurt me?” She looked at me in honest surprise. “It crawled right up under my bosom that first night and snuggled there like I was its mother.”
I considered what she was telling me while trying my hardest not to visualize it. I opened my wizard’s senses again. An ink-like energy surrounded the clawdad, but I still wasn’t picking up anything on Mae. The maternal aura she gave off was natural. I was beginning to wonder if the nether creatures sensed it too, interpreting her, not as sustenance, but protection.
Regardless, the important thing was figuring out why the wards hadn’t alerted me.
“Do you remember the date the first one came into the world?” I asked.
“I never forget my babies’ birth dates. March the twenty-second of this year.”
I pulled out my small notepad and pencil and jotted down the information. “And the others?”
She recited each of their birthdates proudly. “And finally little Buster, who came into the world two weeks back. He’ll probably be the last. Apartment is crowded enough as it is. He’s a cutie, though, isn’t he?” The clawdad’s tendrils undulated as she scratched its head.
“Sure…” I said.
We were definitely looking at a malfunction in the ward grid. It had failed to detect the first four manifestations and was two weeks late on the fifth. I’d have to let the Order know. In the meantime…
I put the pencil and pad away and took a deep breath. The clawdad shrank back, as if sensing what was coming.
“Mae, I’m going to be frank.”
“Hold that thought,” she said. “Coffee’s ready.”
She stood and shuffled back to the machine. As she poured out two mugs, the smell of the fresh brew filled the kitchen in a warm wave. She manipulated the walker with her thighs on the return trip in order to carry the mugs, making me wonder why she used the device in the first place.
“Here you go,” she said, handing me mine. “There’s a container of sugar on the table, if you can find it.”
As sweet as Mae seemed, and as much as I liked coffe
e, I couldn’t entirely trust someone who kept nether creatures as pets and garnished their meals with blood. I blew politely on the mug and then set it on the table’s edge. Mae took a sip from her own cup and sighed contentedly.
“Yep,” she said, “it’s just me and my babies now. And I’m happier than I’ve ever been since my husband passed.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Happier than some of the years we were together, but that’s just between you and me. All those thoughts of giving up?” She waved a hand. “Long gone. And I have you to thank. I never would’ve gone looking for that spell book if you hadn’t shown up on my TV. I keep at it, and I believe I will be like you someday. Hey, maybe we can even work together!”
Oh boy.
She took another sip. “So, what was it you wanted to tell me?”
“Well…” I shifted uncomfortably. How would my father have handled something like this? “When I came in earlier, your babies…”
Mae’s forehead collapsed in concern. “They didn’t get out, did they?”
Before I knew what I was doing, my head began to nod. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, they did. Bolted in every direction.” I made a running motion with my fingers.
“All of them?” she demanded. Buster’s tendrils wriggled in excitement and he ran back and forth across her shoulders. In my mind’s eye, I saw his four siblings exploding.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Well, you have to find them!” Mae was standing now. “They don’t know how to survive out there on their own!”
I glanced down at my mechanical watch. Crap, class in thirty minutes. I stood in front of Mae and started to reach for her shoulder to reassure her (of what? my lie?) when the clawdad hissed and snapped his claws. I jerked my hand back and searched for something to say.
“I’ll, ah, I’ll do my best.”
“No, I need better than that, Everson. Those are my babies.”
“Mae, listen. They really shouldn’t be in our world in the first place.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “What are you trying to say?”
“That, um, maybe they’re better off…” I watched her eyes narrow further until they looked sharp enough to cut me. “Maybe they’re better off staying inside from now on.”
Black Luck (Prof Croft Book 5) Page 2