“You think I hadn’t realized that?” said Robin. “Why did you think I came back, to spend some quality time with you?”
“Oh, now you’ve hurt my feelings,” I replied with a smirk. “So here’s how you’re going to make it up to me: you’re going to take me to Mab, and we’re going to convince her to undo this.”
“I have no idea where she is.”
The wizard bent and stared at his face, then straightened with a little sigh. “He’s not lying.”
He looked up at her in agitation. “Would you lie with a blade at your throat?”
“Depends on how well I could cover it up, Puck,” she shrugged.
“Shut up!” Robin shouted, straining as he fought the obvious urge to throw himself at the wizard.
“He’s kind of sensitive about that name,” I warned her, seeing her flash of malicious delight. “Homicidally sensitive. Bear that in mind.” I considered the situation for a moment. “The Arcanum might be able to read the spell, but I won’t go to them unless it’s dire. We’re dealing with hybrid work, and Greg’s going to want to sit around and analyze this to death before he does anything, I know him. Meanwhile, Meggy and Olive are still on the other side—”
“And Titania’s a capricious bitch,” said the wizard. “Sorry.”
“No offense taken. So . . . I guess . . .”
I didn’t want to say it, but she beat me to it with pleasure. “You need me. Get me a new wand, I’ll read the spell, and we’ll go from there. And we’ll need to bring him,” she said, nudging Robin’s leg with her dirty sneaker. “I don’t want him running back to Mab the instant we’re gone.”
“I told you, I don’t even know where she is!” he protested.
“Yeah, he’s coming along,” I said, “because he wants this gate reopened as much as we do.” I turned back to my brother and shook my head. “Your father’s not going anywhere until this is righted, you understand.”
Robin stared up at me and blinked slowly. “You know, Coileán, I’m not a complete imbecile.”
“Prove it.” I handed the sword back to Joey, who kept his stoic watch. “All right, you, me, him . . .”
“And me,” Joey added. We turned to him as one, and he sheathed his sword. “I mean, all I’m hearing is that there’s two people in trouble,” he explained. “Father Paul would want me to help you. It’s what he would do, right?”
“No, it’s not.”
The kid was taken aback. “But you two—”
“We work together,” I said, “but Paul’s experienced enough to know his limits. He wouldn’t get involved here.”
Joey folded his arms. “Well, I am.”
“This isn’t a game,” I told him, slipping my shirt back on. “If we have to stand against Mab—”
“We die,” said the wizard. “I get it.”
“He doesn’t. Get out of here, Joey.”
He regarded me for a long moment, then shook his head. “You need me.”
“I don’t need a kid playing dress-up.”
“I told you, I know what I’m doing,” he replied.
I never saw his foot coming. In an instant, he had kicked my legs out from under me, and the sword bobbed above my breast. Robin grinned over Joey’s shoulder, and even the wizard smirked. “Not bad,” I allowed. “But I’m not Mab.”
“Father told me what you are,” said Joey, keeping the sword steady. “He gave me his notes on you to study on my trip. I read most of them last night.”
“He has notes on me?”
“They’re largely inherited.” Joey moved the sword and offered me his hand. “What am I supposed to do, just go off to the festival and pretend I saw nothing? What kind of ass would do that?”
Robin shrugged. “The smart kind.”
“Then maybe I’m not that smart.” Joey leaned back, pulling me to my feet. “I’ve got my own wheels, too. Nice little checking account. Knot-tying skills.”
“A claymore,” the wizard offered.
“Arming sword,” he corrected. “A claymore is two handed. So.” He looked around at us, then at the empty house. “Where are we going?”
It took Robin nearly ten minutes to find the trap in the basement—admittedly, I had torn the room up after the gate closed, and our fight hadn’t helped matters—and when he finally located it under a stack of empty shipping boxes, I sent him and Joey away to prepare. “Get together whatever you want for the drive,” I told them. “I don’t know how long this is going to take. And Joey, for the love of all that’s sacred, lose the maille. You look like an idiot.”
“I left my riding gear at home,” he protested. “It’s a safety thing.”
“We’ll drive slowly.”
Robin draped himself across one of Meggy’s folding chairs. The other, I saw with a pang of remorse, had been splintered in the last hour. “What’s the point of packing?” he said. “Need something, get it.”
“Until the magic dries up, dolt.” The wizard shook her head and started for the staircase. “Lancelot, why don’t you make a grocery run? Colin, I need your help with something back at my place.”
When she was halfway up the stairs, Robin muttered, “That’s not worth the risk.”
“Not everything is about sex,” I replied, giving the bookshelves a quick scan.
“Please,” he scoffed, “that’s the most blatant request I’ve heard in ages. Why just you, hmm? Why not all of us?”
I looked over my shoulder in time to catch his lascivious smirk, then pulled out a small stack of books and turned for the stairs. “Because Joey’s being useful elsewhere, and you broke her stick. Now pack.”
He spread his hands, and a pair of matching purple steamer trunks appeared in the middle of the basement. “Done. What next, O mighty slave driver?”
“Why don’t you just guess what I’m thinking?” I replied, and slammed the door on his laughter.
The wizard drove us to her apartment in a sputtering blue panel van that was one bag of candy away from a search warrant. “It was cheap,” she explained without preamble upon sliding behind the wheel.
Her home turned out to be half of a weather-worn duplex five miles farther back in the woods from Meggy’s house. The other half was clearly uninhabited—the boards over the door and windows made that much apparent—and the wizard hadn’t done much to improve the look of her side. She led us up the short, cracked concrete walk, unlocked her peeling front door on the third try, and waited until I was over the threshold before locking the door behind me.
“Okay,” she said, once she was sure we were alone, “when are we ditching them?”
I blinked. “Who said anything about ditching them? And for that matter, why are you so certain that I want your help?”
“Yeah, whatever, you don’t deal with wizards,” she replied, absently running one hand through her stiff hair. “It’s not like I want you tagging along on this, either, bucko, but I don’t see a better option for the moment. You can’t read spells, and I can’t do the heavy lifting on my own.” She shrugged. “Lancelot and Tinker Bell are superfluous, however.”
“You’re thinking of Galahad, not Lancelot, and really, you’ll want to watch yourself around Robin,” I cautioned. “But as far as heavy lifting goes, he’s nearly my equal, and Joey—”
“Is a civvy.”
“Is a crazy, sword-wielding civvy,” I countered, “and let me be the first to say that I’d be happy to have steel on our side if we’re going up against Mab. Now, what did you need from me?”
“Just that,” she replied. “Though I was hoping for a plan to dump them. Well, you might as well make yourself comfortable,” she said, gesturing to a battered green couch that ran the length of one wall. “Let me get my shit together.”
While the wizard packed, I carefully maneuvered around her sitting room, examining the items on her cluttered bookshelves. Most of the space was occupied by old volumes, many of which I knew by reputation. Interspersed among them were copies of John Grisham paperbacks and
a smattering of VHS tapes with tattered boxes. Her record collection marched along on its own shelf, giving ground to a shorter line of CDs that extended to the end of the wall. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought she had arranged her music chronologically, ignoring the conventional categorization by name and genre. There were no photographs, no framed diplomas—not even a poster, I realized, seeing the bare beige walls around me. The wizard had seemingly limited her décor to the couch, which smelled of fast-food grease, a coffee table picked up at someone’s grandmother’s garage sale, a fat CRT television set with a tiny screen—circa 1990, perhaps—a long strip of flypaper, and half a dozen strategically arranged mousetraps. In short, a dump.
I glanced around her dusty but otherwise spotless kitchen, turned off the dripping faucet, and then noticed a scrap of yellow beside her wall phone, which proved to be a personalized notepad upon inspection. TOULA marched across the top in a bright green script, ornamented with curling leaves and vines.
So the wizard had a name, then.
By the time she emerged from her bedroom in jeans and a thin brown sweater, I had resigned myself to the odd-smelling couch and the old television. “All done?” I asked, watching her pad to the kitchen.
I heard the sound of a soda can open, and she returned a moment later with a Tab. “Almost. Did you screw with my stuff?”
“Would I tell you if I had?”
“Probably not,” she concluded. “Thirsty?”
“Not for that. So, Toula, is it?”
She nodded and took a long sip of her vile drink.
“Why won’t the Arcanum take you?”
She started, swallowed the wrong way, then almost spit her soda across the room. “None of your business,” she choked out between coughs. “And who says they won’t take me?”
I pushed myself out of the cushion depression and studied her. “You’re not Arcanum—you’d have their tchotchkes around if you were. And they tend to conform to a certain mold, which you . . . an iconoclast, perhaps,” I offered, seeing her eyes darken.
Toula played with the pop tab on her can. “Why would I want to be in the Arcanum? They suck.”
“Now you just sound childish,” I countered, propping my elbow on the stained armrest. “I’ve seen your work. Highly technical.” Her expression shifted toward suspicion, and I said, “The wards. I mean, the spellwork was tight.”
“Thanks, I guess,” she mumbled.
“You’ve got the craft down. You just don’t have the power to keep it intact.” She shrugged halfheartedly and turned to the television, which I’d tuned to PBS, one of the three stations she received without cable and the only one not showing a church service. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” I offered. “Not every wizard’s born for the big leagues. But I am curious as to what you were planning to do with the Magus’s diary.”
She whipped around, eyes wide. “Who said—”
“Meggy told me. She had the book waiting for you. I assume that’s why you dropped by this morning, right?”
She tried to hide her anxiety with nonchalance. “So what if I ordered it? I collect old books—you might have seen them behind you.”
“I did. But come on, kid. Meggy might not have known what she had, but you and I both know the Arcanum would give a fortune for that book. So what’s it to you?” I asked, tucking my hands behind my head as I leaned into the couch. “You can’t expect anything in that diary to work for you, not if you can’t even keep a ward system up. A barter, then? You give it to Greg, he gives you your membership card?” Toula glared back at me, and I shook my head. “I’m not going anywhere with you until I know your game. The last wizard who came to me for that book threatened to kill Meggy over it, and she was just my salesclerk at the time.”
She didn’t blink for half a minute, but her fist slowly crushed her soda can. “I’m bound, okay?” she muttered. “Harrison did it when I was a baby. I want free.”
I tried to ignore the wave of guilt. “You don’t feel bound . . .”
“Only because it’s not complete. He left me a little. How generous. Pay attention and you’ll see it.”
“I can’t see magic. You smell wizard-ish enough.”
“You’re a nose, eh?” she replied. “Weird. I’d show you the spell, but I’m currently down one wand. Anyway, you can probably smell the bind. And since we’re playing twenty questions, now you get to answer something for me,” she added, taking a seat on the coffee table, which creaked in warning even with her slight weight.
“Just a minute,” I said, leaning toward her across the gap. “Why, exactly, are you bound? What could you possibly have done as an infant to scare the Arcanum?”
Toula pursed her lips. “My last name is Pavli. Clear enough?”
“As in . . . ?”
She nodded, and I made a face. Pavli wasn’t an old wizard family name—the only one who came to mind was Apollonios, a Greek wizard who’d turned on the Arcanum in the late seventies and blown up forty-odd of its members at a training session outside Chicago, the single worst act of wizard-on-wizard violence in nearly a millennium. Anyone in the magical community who’d spent time in the mortal realm in recent decades knew about him. Sure, I’d killed more wizards than Pavli had over the years, but I’d acted in self-defense. Mass murder was a different matter entirely, especially when perpetrated by their own kind.
“Understood,” I murmured. “Never knew he’d had a daughter.”
“Yeah, well,” she muttered, “they don’t exactly parade me around.”
“Your question, then?”
“Who bound Meg, and why?”
I laughed at the absurdity. “What are you talking about? Meggy’s never been anything but normal, she’s not bound—”
Toula’s spikes bounced, cutting short my denial. “It’s not visible, and obviously, you didn’t pick up on it. But it’s there, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
I stared at her, bewildered.
She slumped toward me, resting her elbows on her knees, and lowered her voice. “Meg and I met ten years ago—she was willing to try anything to find Olive, and I guess magic made as much sense as the psychic she’d been paying. I showed her what I could do—didn’t mention the Arcanum—and tried every spell I knew, everything I could find, to locate that child. I’ve been trying,” she added, nodding to the bookcase behind me. “I don’t have the oomph to do blood traces. But I couldn’t even get a hint of Meg’s baby, no matter what I did. Of course, if she was in Faerie, that would make a lot of sense.
“Early on, when everything was failing, I thought I’d dig back into Meg’s past, see if she remembered anything odd from that night. It’s a simple spell—put someone in a trance, then get them to remember. One step up from basic hypnotism,” she explained. “Well, I got her into a trance easily enough, but when I tried to work the spell, it blew up on me. Tried again, same thing. And then I had enough sense to do to Meg what I did to the spell in the basement this morning.”
I felt my insides roil. “And?”
“She lit up like a Christmas tree. And it sure wasn’t spellcraft on her. It was pretty, and it was subtle, but it was definitely enchantment, hidden deep in her aura. I’d never have picked it out unless I’d amplified it like that. So tell me,” she said, glaring holes into my face, “which one of you bound Meg?”
I had no answer for her. If the wizard had indeed seen an enchantment that extreme on Meggy . . .
. . . and the metal allergy, her contact dermatitis . . .
. . . and her face, how much younger she had seemed at Mother’s feet . . .
. . . her hair, those beautiful red curls . . .
“Oh, no,” I muttered. “No, no, shit, this is bad, this is very bad.” I pushed myself out of the couch and began pacing the length of Toula’s sitting room, trying to think of a better explanation than the one staring me in the face, but it was the only one that made sense.
Meggy had changed when she passed through the gate. That meant tha
t something had been on her, aging her. But I had felt nothing—not a hint, for all of those years!—meaning that whatever was there had been put on her by someone not only stronger than me, but far more practiced. I had learned to make my work more technically precise, but that was the end result of trial over centuries. So whoever had bound Meggy had to be older than me . . .
Three candidates came to mind.
I was almost positive that Mother wasn’t involved—she would have had no cause to torture Meggy until I entered the picture. Mab was a cipher. But then there was Oberon. I knew a little of the man—I’d seen him occasionally as a child, and I saw plenty of him in Robin—but what had always stuck out to me about him was his coloring.
Red hair is even rarer among the fae than among mortals. Oberon had been a bizarre genetic anomaly, and most of the redheaded faeries I’ve known can trace themselves to him—his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren ad infinitum. Robin bore his hair and our mother’s brown eyes, which had never seemed to please her. Little about Robin ever did.
Meggy’s eyes were blue, not green like Oberon’s, but . . .
Sandra Bellamy’s Floridian fling with a bartender . . .
Toula shot out one arm, stopping me in my circuit with a chop to the stomach. “Got a name?”
I nodded reluctantly. “I think she’s half fae,” I mumbled, trying again to push Meggy’s terrified eyes from my mind. “I mean, the skin thing could just be an allergy, but she got younger when she went through the gate.”
“If by ‘the skin thing’ you mean her glaringly evident aversion to iron and silver, then yeah, I’m with you,” said Toula. “That’s not a normal allergy. Nickel, sure, but iron and silver? I’d stake good money on fae blood in that mix.”
“Olive’s sensitive,” I said, “and she’s only a quarter . . . oh, wait, no. If Meggy’s a half, too, then Olive—”
“Could be more fae than either of you,” Toula finished. “If you’re right about Meg. And I guess whatever was on her is off now, since she’s on the other side. She did de-age?”
“A bit.” This couldn’t be happening.
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