by Jamie Davis
She smiled, then she brought a small metal case over to her desk and sat, showing Joey a set of gold hoop earrings inside the box. “Joey, what do you see there? Use your viewing spell to see what enchantments these earrings hold.”
She waited as Joey cast a viewing and concentrated on the jewelry. His brow furrowed. He took the box from Winnie and turned the earrings in his hand to get a better look. His expression changed. He looked up at her, confusion in his eyes.
“Well?” She had been right. He could see it. He had the power to see through her inversion.
“There are two charms cast on these,” he said. “The original charm allows the wearer to hear things at a distance. They need to focus on a location in their field of view and then they hear what’s going on. From what I can tell, this charm isn’t broken and never needed repair.”
Winnie nodded. “And the other?”
“The second charm is new. From the way the flows are tied, it looks like … your work. It will translate any language picked up by the original charm into English. It’s also more powerful and draws energy from the user to operate.” He looked from the earrings to his cousin. “That’s Sable, Winnie. What are you doing? Believe me when I tell you to stay away from this stuff. You’ve seen what it’s done to me to cast Sable spells. Hell, I need to cast a Sable spell right now. Except it’s wrong. It eats you up inside, Winnie. Stay away from it.”
“The world changed when the Assembly chose to outlaw all sale and use of any new magic. They made every chanter a criminal just for being who they are. They closed my shop and put me out of business. Artos Merrilyn helped me find a way to stay open, but the repair business won’t support us. There isn’t enough need. Most just don’t need repair. A well-cast charm should last for decades before needing adjustment.”
“Then how are you so busy, Winnie? What are you mixed up with? Does this have something to do with getting me a job with Merrilyn?”
“I told you. Artos found a way to keep the doors open, but at a price. It has nothing to do with you, but I was able to help you out because he needed what I can do. Now people can bring me any magic item, and sometimes non-magic items in for ‘repair,’ and we work on giving them what they really want: more magic.”
“That’s against the law, Winnie. You’ll be locked up. I’ve been locked up. It’s not something you want to experience. The Red Legs at the jail are plain mean.”
“No, Joey, I won’t get locked up. You know what I learned after Resolution 84 passed? Everyone still wants and needs our magic to live their lives. The Assembly and the Temperance Movement can keep passing new laws and rules for us to follow, but that won’t change the truth that the public is still clamoring for our skills.
“Even if I get arrested, who’s going to vote to convict me on a jury when they know in their hearts that they want the magic I’m selling? Look out in the shop. You saw how busy we are. Those people aren’t criminals. They’re housewives and business owners. They want to keep on using the conveniences they’ve grown used to. If we don’t give it to them here, they’ll find someone else to get it from. We’re simply filling a need.”
Joey looked over his shoulder at the exit. “I don’t know, Winnie. Seems so risky. What about the Red Legs? I was here on the last day of the old rules. That constable was pretty adamant that you shut down. How is it that he’s staying away from you now?”
Winnie admitted she didn’t know. To be honest with herself, she was surprised that Constable Holmes hadn’t shown back up to inspect her license and ensure she wasn’t breaking the law. She’d assumed that he was scared off after the encounter with Danny, when she dropped the glasses off with the senator. It was the only answer that made any sense.
“I’ve got that covered. It’s a crazy law enforced only by a few fanatics. The vast majority of middlings want us to keep casting charms. This is our chance for a better life.”
“I don’t know. It scares me.”
“Well, don’t be scared. I need help and you’re the best caster I know. I won’t ask you to cast any Sable spells, but there’s a trick I want to show you. If you can figure out how to do it, too, I can double the output here at the store. I can’t keep up with all of this and still take care of business. Tris is helping when she doesn’t have to work downtown, and Cait is doing all that she can. Army magic isn’t all that helpful for this kind of stuff, but there are some things she can do. You’re a natural. Before Resolution 84, Mom wanted you to work here, anyway. Now, nothing else makes sense.”
Joey looked at the box with the earrings again, turning it in his hands. She knew he was watching the way she’d woven the new charm into the older one’s flows. He was intrigued.
“Hand me the box, Joey. I want to show you what I mean.”
Winnie held out her hand and Joey surrendered the box.
“Watch my flows and tell me what you see. I discovered something new, something that changes everything. It’s how I now we won’t get caught.” Winnie channeled her magic, aiming at intersections between the new charm and old. She’d cast the new charm with those anchors on purpose, making it easy to invert both flows at once and hide the magic from prying eyes. Cait had been unable to learn and Tris was too much of a technician to try something that required an eye for art. Joey might be able to pick it up. She hoped so, at least.
She glanced up in the middle of her work, seeing him staring intently at the earrings in the box and her fingers hovering above them, manipulating the flows. He gasped as she flipped the flows inside out and they disappeared from his viewing spell.
“Do that again,” Joey said. “That was amazing. How did … ? Just do it again. I think I almost caught what you were doing.”
Winnie had expected the request. She pulled at a single strand like the loose end of a shoelace and it untied the inversion. The charms were revealed to Joey again. He smiled as he saw them reappear, still overlaying each other. Winnie went back to the beginning, tying the charms at their anchor points, then, slower this time, flipping the knots and inverting the flows.
“That’s incredible. I can still sort of see … something. But if I wasn’t looking for it, I’d probably miss the charm on these earrings altogether.” He looked at Winnie. “Can I try?”
“Sure.” She pulled the single strand again and the flows were again visible under a simple viewing spell. She handed him the box with the charmed earrings, and he eyed them from several angles before starting.
He worked slowly at first. She could see he knew what to do and that he’d get faster with practice, already twisting and manipulating the flows with his fingers until with a final twist of his hand, they all disappeared.
“Excellent job, Joey.”
“Thanks! That’s one of the most complex spells things I’ve ever done, and it didn’t feel like Sable casting does, even though I was affecting a Sable charm. How did you figure out how to do that?”
“I was fooling around with the way I could see the flows during a casting. They’re flat, but wide, like a ribbon. If you turn them on their edge, they’re almost invisible. I thought about that and found a way to always show the thin edge after it’s cast. I call it ‘inversion’ because of how the weave is flipped in the final moment. The best part is the spell is invisible to those new Red Legs cameras. That’s how I know we’ll get away with it. As long as everything we sell comes with this special weave added to it, the charms will be undetectable.”
“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. It could change the way we all cast our spells.”
“That’s the point, and why I need your help. You’re the first person I’ve shown this to who can make it work.” Winnie paused and took a deep breath. “I don’t want this getting out to everyone. I want this to be just our secret.”
“It isn’t easy to do. I went a lot slower than you did.”
“You’ll get faster with practice. I did.”
Joey turned the box in his hand, admiring his handiwork. “I can still see the f
lows if I look at it a certain way, but no one can detect it if they don’t know how.”
“So, what’s your answer? Are you in?”
Joey looked from the box to Winnie, his eyes alive. “Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER 22
Winnie pulled her jacket around her tighter against the night chill. She looked across the street and saw Cait in the alley’s shadows. She’d never been in this neighborhood before and didn’t know a soul. She had Cait along for muscle if things went south, but she didn’t want that to happen. Violence wasn’t good for business. She preferred to finesse her way through difficulties.
Winnie glanced at her watch again and realized that her contact was late. She only had a description of her connection and was eyeing the few passersby on the sidewalks. None matched her guy.
Maybe something had happened and they had to reschedule. She checked her phone for new messages or email but saw nothing. Another five minutes, then she’d signal Cait to back off and head home.
Five minutes passed in a long, cold forever. Winnie was about to send Cait a message when a gate in the construction site fence opened to her left. A man in a gray overcoat and fedora walked out, looking like something from an old movie, matching her contact’s description. Winnie watched the person’s approach, and as the figure got closer, was shocked to realize it was a woman wearing a man’s clothes.
“Miss Durham, I presume,” she said, stopping in front of Winnie.
“You surprised me. I was expecting a man.”
“Good. Hopefully any watching Red Legs will see me as a man as well, in case something goes wrong.”
“It won’t. I’m careful.” Winnie nodded across the street. “See the woman in the shadows? She’s on guard and with me. We’ll know if there’s trouble in plenty of time.”
“Do you have the items?”
“I do. Do you have the money?”
“Yes.” The woman slipped her hand into the overcoat and withdrew a brown paper package about the size of a brick. Winnie pulled out a common drugstore makeup bag. She’d taken special care with this project since the makeup itself was to hold the charms. If this project worked as planned, it would give her a whole new market to explore. Makeup was commodity that was used up as it was applied. Anyone who bought these types of charms would have to come back for more. Continuity: the perfect business model.
The two women traded packages. Winnie opened the paper at one end and flicked her fingers across the stack of bills to make sure they were all real. The woman unzipped the makeup bag to verify the contents.
“You know where to contact me if you run out. There’s more where that came from.” Winnie was excited. This was one of her biggest sales yet. Even with Merrilyn’s cut and a share to Cait, she would still be landing a sizable payday. Business was growing faster than she or the crew could keep up.
The other woman nodded then tucked the makeup bag inside her overcoat, heading back the way she came, opening the gate in the wooden construction fence and disappearing from view as she closed it behind her.
Winnie signaled to Cait, then the two of them walked down the street towards the bus stop, heading back to the shop for another delivery.
“What did she say?” Cait asked. “The two of you talked about something.”
“You noticed it was a woman?”
“Something about her walk didn’t look like a guy. I cast a spell to magnify her image and saw the disguise. Up close, you could see right through it. How did you get hooked up with this one again?”
“Danny referred her to us. A friend of a friend who needed something special for her job.” Winnie stopped talking as a woman passed by on the sidewalk. After she moved on down the street, Winnie continued. “I was reluctant to do it at first, but we don’t have any connections in this part of town. If things work out with this woman, we could open a whole new market for our stuff.”
“We can’t take care of the orders we have now. We’re already a week or more behind. How do you expect to fill orders for another surge from all the way over here? There’s only four of us. Where will we find enough resources to create the charms required to meet demand?”
“Artos will provide them for us. We’ll have to give him a larger cut of the gross, but that’s better than turning people away.” The bus turned onto their street and Winnie stepped up to the curb to wait for it. “Come on. We can get at least one more run in tonight before the busses stop running. Then we can hold a meeting with our team tomorrow and see what everyone thinks. I want all of your input on this before we go further.”
The bus creaked to a stop and the two chanter women climbed aboard, paying their tolls and claiming their seats in silence. Cait was concerned that they were growing too fast; they were taking too many risks and security was on her shoulders. It was simple enough to sell goods through the shop. But for some of the items, especially in cases where there wasn’t any way to fake the need for repair, they had to deliver to the customer directly. As the bus rumbled on its route, Winnie wondered how Tris and Joey were doing on their run.
Joey was supposed to finish working on inverting the flows to hide the magic of a number of different charmed items. Once finished, he was to catch the bus to meet with Tris in the Carter Building where she worked downtown as a magic HVAC tech. She’d made contacts in the building with some of the middling executives. Winnie remembered from her brief stint there as a housekeeper that all the businesses had plenty of money to spend. They all wanted magic and were willing to pay a pretty penny for any items that would give them an advantage over their coworkers.
It should be a cake walk for them both. The items were undetectable once Joey inverted the flows the way she had taught him. Tris had vetted the buyers to make sure they weren’t working for the Red Legs. As long as they both followed the protocols agreed to by the crew, nothing could go wrong.
Winnie let her worry slip away as other prospective buyers and new charm ideas entered her mind. The bus continued its run back to the Enclave while Winnie thought about other plans.
Of course, her friends would be fine.
CHAPTER 23
Joey was running late. He’d overslept that Tuesday morning after staying up to work on a new set of charms for Winnie the night before. He’d completed the basic spells but had fallen asleep before getting a chance to invert the flows. But Joey didn’t worry. No one paid him any mind when he showed up at Tristan’s job for lunch. People assumed he was her boyfriend, not that he was delivering illegal charms for her to distribute in the building. He should have called ahead and told her he’d be late, or cancelled the trip. Instead, he did neither.
Joey hopped off the bus like always, his backpack slung over one shoulder. It was a full load this morning, bulging with the extra items. He slipped his other arm into the strap and settled the pack in place before starting off to the deli to pick up sandwiches for himself and Tris. He had to keep up appearances for her coworkers.
It was in the line at the deli where Joey first noticed the man in the baseball cap. He thought it must be his imagination, but the guy seemed to be watching him. But when he looked back, the guy turned around and started scanning the menu. Joey kept watch a while longer, then shrugged and stepped up to place his order. He ordered Tris a Reuben, her favorite from this place, and a rare roast beef on rye. Then he paid, picked up the bag, and left the deli, looking for the guy in the baseball cap on his way out and seeing him nowhere.
Joey started on the four-block walk to the Carter building. He took his time. Cait had taught him to not hurry. That drew attention to him. She’d also taught him to occasionally stop and look behind him. On one such stop, as he pretended to inspect the wares in a jewelry store window, he froze.
The man in the cap was now ahead of Joey and looking back at him. Their eyes met. He was just across the intersection from Joey, traffic blocking the way between them.
Joey turned and started back towards the deli and bus stop. If he could get on the bus and h
ead back to the shop, he could tell Cait about the guy tailing him. She would look into it and decide on a new security plan.
Joey picked up the pace then looked up and saw Red Legs approaching from the other direction. He was stuck between them. They were still half a block away, but looking right at him. One pointed at him and a chill licked his spine.
They know who I am.
He tried not to panic. There was an alley just ahead — a narrow walkway between two buildings. He kept walking forward then turned at the opening and ran. He had to get distance between him and the officers.
There was shouting behind. Joey ran faster.
He knocked over some garbage cans to block his pursuers, then snaked through the maze between buildings, twisting and turning with no clue as to where he’d emerge. He dropped the bag of sandwiches and shrugged out of his backpack. He had to find somewhere to stash the charms or, better yet, hide with them so he could finish inverting the flows. If he could manage that, then they wouldn’t have anything on him. He’d just be a guy with a backpack full of random personal items and office supplies.
Joey saw a stairway leading down to a basement door and decided to try it. If he could get inside, he could finish last night’s work. He heard shouts coming closer as he tried the door. It opened. He went inside and closed it behind him.
The room was dark and Joey couldn’t see much with the only light coming in via the tiny windows set high in the basement walls. There were crates and old abandoned equipment all around. He worked his way through the junk, towards the stairs to the first floor at the room’s other end. He was halfway there when the door at the top of the stairs opened and light shined down the floor from above. Joey heard voices and sat behind a crate to hide.
His fingers fumbled at the zippers as he pulled his pack open. He grabbed a silver pen and pencil set, focused his vision and started working to invert the flows, fingers flying as he mumbled the spell. Then, he moved to the next one.