Stranger Magics

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “Oh, no, we’re not actually going to be making any,” Toula replied. “No, we’d need all kinds of tools, stuff that probably even Rick doesn’t have, and . . . you know.” She cut her eyes to me and muttered, “A halfway decent wizard. No, what we’re going to do is find the ones the Magus hid. Assuming they’re still charged, we might just have enough juice to get the gateway open again—”

  “Pretty big assumption,” I cut in. “I mean, it’s been almost a thousand years, kid.”

  Toula shrugged. “Got a better idea?”

  “No,” I admitted. “And we’ve still got to track down someone from Mab’s court, if you’re reading the enchantment correctly . . .”

  “Let’s hope.” She ran her hands through her short hair. “Here’s the plan, fellows: I’ll stay up tonight and read through this, figure out where the Magus hid his toys. We’ll reassess in the morning. Okay?”

  I tapped the page in front of me bare-handed, earning a look of reproach from Toula. “My Latin is at least as good as yours, if not better. Let me read it, and you get some rest.”

  Joey came around Toula’s side and squinted down at the diary. “Is that even Latin? The letters—”

  “Carolingian miniscule,” I replied. “Easy to read once you have the knack.” He looked at me doubtfully, and I shrugged. “When you’re one of a handful of people in a fifty-mile radius who can read and write, you learn to read and write everything. There are at least two manuscripts at the Bodleian with my handiwork in them.”

  “Seriously?”

  I grinned at his expression. “I’d call myself a bit of a Renaissance man, but I predate the Renaissance.”

  “Cute, Gramps,” said Toula, “but I can handle it.” She stretched her legs out again and bent over the diary. “Besides, someone has to go handle Tink, right?”

  The fire escape remained quiet, and I checked at three that morning to find Robin still outside, smoking a cigarillo. He had dragged a kitchen chair onto the landing, positioning himself so as to catch the sea breeze while avoiding the metal railings. “Nice of you to join us,” I said, leaning against the door frame.

  My brother exhaled a long, thin stream of smoke, then shifted in his chair to face me. “Everything still hurts. That is the last time I fill in for you with spellcraft, understood?”

  “Appreciated.”

  He snorted. “The crone?”

  “Across the street,” I said, pointing to the darkened windows of Tea for Two. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Who’s worried?”

  I watched the glowing tip of his cigarillo wobble in his hand. “You’re twitchy.”

  “I am not,” he muttered, taking a drag.

  “You are. You’re literally twitching.” I grabbed his smoking hand and held it steady. “What’s the matter with you?”

  Robin’s façade of nonchalance couldn’t hide the unease in his eyes. “It’s almost gone,” he said quietly, pulling his hand free. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And you’re not concerned?”

  “Of course I’m concerned,” I said, folding my arms against the night chill. “But fretting about it isn’t going to solve the problem, is it?”

  He took another long drag. “Where in the bloody hell are we supposed to find one of Mab’s people?” he muttered. “They’re impossible to track—the only one I’ve seen in ages is Mab herself, and you see how well that went.”

  “Oh, yes, blame Mab,” I snapped. “This is all her fault.”

  “Well, it is,” he replied sulkily. “I just wanted to destroy you, not close off Faerie.”

  “That makes me feel so much better.”

  Robin flashed a half grin in the kitchen’s glow, then pushed his wind-tousled hair from his eyes. “Seeing as we’re not currently working at cross-purposes, Coileán, I’d be amenable to a temporary arrangement. A cease-fire, if you like.”

  “I’m listening.”

  He stretched his legs, resting his black boots on the railing. “Here’s the situation: I’m willing to do whatever it takes to bring my father back to Faerie. I’m also willing to do whatever it takes to cast Mother out.”

  I shifted against the door frame and mulled that over. “I’m not fundamentally opposed to the former.”

  “Yes, you are,” he said, pointing his cigarillo at my face. “If my father goes back, even as a co-ruler, then you and I will be on equal footing in the realm. And when that happens, you won’t be able to terrorize my people any longer.”

  “Robin,” I said quietly, “no matter who’s in power in Faerie, I will always have iron and the stomach to employ it. Tell your people to leave the mortals alone, and you and I will have no quarrel.”

  He blew concentric smoke rings into the night. “Why should I?”

  “You speak of terrorizing, but what do you think your people are doing? Or Mother’s people, for that matter? I’ve convinced most of them to keep their distance, but you’re impossible!”

  “Keep your voice down,” he said, nodding toward Mrs. Cooper’s building. “Unless you wanted to see your girlfriend again.”

  “Look, I understand that you’re bored. I understand that your entire court is bored. But making life hell for people who wouldn’t know how to defend themselves if they even knew what they were fighting? You’re shooting fish in a barrel. Where’s the sport in that?”

  “As you say,” he replied, “we’re bored.”

  “I thought you had a place in Hollywood these days.”

  “I do. Nice little mansion. Fantastic parties. As many beautiful would-be actresses as I want.”

  My eyebrow rose. “And?”

  “Still bored.”

  “So if we get Faerie open again, and if we were to somehow give your court leave to return . . .”

  Robin sat up, faintly smirking. “That might alleviate some of your problems.”

  “I could live with that.”

  “Mother couldn’t.”

  “Forget her for the time being,” I muttered. “Want a drink?”

  He shook his head and smoked in silence for a long moment, and we listened to the distant ocean crash upon the sand. “What’s the girl to you?” he asked.

  “Which one?”

  Robin’s eyes narrowed. “Which do you think, halfwit? The child’s your blood, I understand that. What about her mother?”

  “Your half sister, you mean?” I retorted.

  “We don’t know that for sure . . .”

  “It’s a fair assumption, is it not?”

  Robin shrugged.

  “She worked for me when she was starting out. I fell hard,” I told him. “If anything happens to her before we get the gate open . . .”

  I left the thought unfinished, and Robin knocked his ashes over the railing. “Message received.” He sighed, then rested his elbow over the back of the chair and stared up at me. “I suppose I should pity you, shouldn’t I? You invested yourself in the life of a girl who you thought to be nothing more than mortal. That’s . . . pathetic, Coileán.”

  “It’s not pathetic,” I mumbled.

  “It is.” He stood, took a long last draw, then stubbed the cigarillo out and threw it toward the street. “You’re a high lord of Faerie,” he said, clasping my shoulder. “Try to act like it. Right now—and I’m quite serious about this—you’re embarrassing me.”

  Before I could respond, Toula popped into the kitchen, scowling. “Someone is trying to work, here, guys. Want to keep it down?”

  “I told you,” I said, “I’m willing to take over—”

  “And I told you I’ve got it, but it’s kind of tricky to figure out what the hell the Magus was going on about when all I can hear is you two fighting.” She rubbed at the bags under her eyes. “Look, no one wants to be here, okay? Can we just try to get along until we get Tink’s mess cleaned up?”

  “It’s not entirely my mess,” Robin began, but I shut him up with a look.

  “We’ll be quiet,” I told To
ula. “Anything hidden close by?”

  She began rummaging through the pantry, her voice slightly muffled. “You know that these hiding places are probably out of date, right?”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  She emerged with a box of saltines and unwrapped a new sleeve. “Okay. So I know the Arcanum has one—it’s their backup generator. I just don’t know which one it is. These are stale, man.”

  I shrugged. “I never promised gourmet cuisine. What else do you have?”

  “Well”—she bit into an unusually chewy cracker and made a face—“he gave one to the merrow.”

  “Meaning that they probably still have it,” said Robin, dragging his chair back inside. “They’re usually off the Keys this time of year—Father showed me where they come ashore.” I turned to stare at him, and he shrugged. “He’s been down in the Keys for years. You’re not the world’s greatest detective, you know.”

  Toula set the disappointing crackers aside. “I haven’t had any dealings with the merrow.”

  “We have,” I replied, and Robin nodded. “They’re not impossible to work with if you’re polite and amenable to their terms. Though I don’t know how to summon them, not with the current conditions . . .”

  Robin took up Toula’s discarded snack. “I told you, my father knows them. He could help us.”

  The wizard’s visible discomfort intensified. “Dragging one of the Three into this . . .”

  “Robin and I will handle it,” I told her, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “What about the other devices?”

  She sighed wearily. “I’ve got initial locations, and I think I’ve got them plotted, but this would all be a lot simpler if someone had Wi-Fi.” I looked at her blankly, and Toula rolled her eyes. “Internet access, Gramps. I’ve been cross-referencing on my phone all night, and my data plan’s not that generous. And what’s the carrier situation here, anyway? I’m barely getting 3G speeds.”

  I blinked slowly, trying to process the words coming from her mouth, then shook my head. “Moving on. I propose that you reach a stopping point and rest, because we’re going to have a long drive tomorrow.”

  Robin began to protest, then shut his mouth, his shoulders slumping as the realization hit. “There is no faster way, is there?” he mumbled.

  “Not unless you have a helicopter on the roof. The atlas is in my car . . .”

  But Toula had already headed back toward the living room. “I’ll just Google it,” she called over her shoulder. “Hey, Tink, where’s your dad hang out? Got an address?”

  Once she’d routed the trip to her satisfaction, Toula fell into a deep sleep on the couch, curling up until she was nothing but a mess of black spikes poking from beneath the plaid afghan. I packed away the diary and cut the lights, then rejoined Robin in the kitchen. “You’re showing remarkable restraint,” I whispered, cleaning up the mess.

  “In what sense?” he replied.

  “The wizard’s been nicknaming everyone, and you haven’t tried to strangle her yet. Well, at least not in the last few hours,” I amended, opening the dishwasher. “I’m almost proud of you.”

  He leaned back, bemused. “What’s the problem? She’s been respectful.”

  “Ti . . . oh, no,” I muttered, rubbing my forehead. “Not Ti’ank. Tink.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You honestly thought she would call you ‘the mighty one’?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, “her accent’s weird. So what is she—”

  “It’s probably best if you don’t know, okay? Just do us all a favor and let it slide.”

  “But what—”

  “Please, Robin.”

  “Fine,” he huffed. “For now. But you’re going to tell me eventually, or so help me . . .”

  I threw a dish towel at his face and wandered back to my bedroom, where Joey lay fast asleep on the bed. Stretching out on the carpet, I locked my hands behind my head and waited in the darkness for morning, wondering just how many hours we could drive before someone mutinied.

  And whether Meggy and Olive were still alive to be rescued.

  Chapter 11

  We struck out shortly after sunrise, Toula and Robin riding with me and Joey soloing close behind. By ten that morning, the radio had cycled through six pop stations, and the incessant bass was killing my head. Toula insisted upon playing DJ, while Robin lounged across the entire back bench, periodically giving my seat little kicks. He swore that the jostling was unintentional, but his smirk said otherwise.

  By noon, my passengers were shouting at each other over some triviality—the merits of a program I’d never seen due to basic cable and lack of interest—and I called a halt for food at a forlorn McDonald’s on the side of I-95 deep in South Carolina. My head was pounding, my eyes were glazing over, and the stress of watching for hidden cops had knotted my back and shoulders. The enchantment protecting my car had finally failed, and I was torn between the need to make good time and my paranoia, which saw headlights peeking out behind every bush in the median.

  Joey parked beside me, then slid off his trike on shaky legs and pulled his helmet free. “How much farther?” he asked.

  I consulted Toula’s handwritten backup directions. “Another eleven hours or so. How’s your gas?”

  “Nearly empty,” he replied, massaging a kink from his leg. “Look, you weren’t planning on making this trip in one day, were you?”

  Truth be told, I’d been planning just that when we left Rigby, but I wasn’t sure how many more hours of chauffeuring I could take before driving myself off a bridge. “We can stop for the night in north Florida,” I suggested. “That should put us well within a day of the Keys.”

  I handed Joey my road atlas and pointed at the route. His shoulders slumped, but he nodded and headed inside.

  Robin slipped out of the car and stretched. “If we were going to ditch him—”

  “If you give me one more word on the matter,” I muttered, “then so help me, you’re walking the rest of the way.”

  I followed Joey into the restaurant, leaving my passengers to continue their bickering in peace. My stomach craved grease, my head craved at least a rum and Coke, and what little sense I still had at that moment warned me that telling Robin his hated freckles were back wouldn’t be prudent. As much as I relished the thought of seeing his face when he learned that his personal glamour had fallen, I realized the implications all too well, and I couldn’t bear his whining on top of everything else.

  Sleep at the hotel in Jacksonville where we’d finally crashed came only in brief bursts, despite the fact that I had booked us into four rooms on different floors, and was completely exhausted.

  When I tired of staring at the ceiling and wandered down to the lobby around one in the morning, I spied Joey sitting alone at one of the breakfast tables in a T-shirt and black flannel pants, drinking something from a foam cup and holding a piece of flat plastic a few inches from his face. “Couldn’t sleep either?” I asked, crossing the lobby.

  He startled, then put the plastic down and nodded. “And my upstairs neighbors are apparently honeymooning. It was getting awkward in there.”

  “My condolences. I’m going out. Need anything?” He shook his head, and I pointed to the black plastic. “What’s that?”

  “Just a tablet,” he replied, flipping it around to reveal a computer screen. “Cheap model. I wanted a reader and e-mail, and this was the best bargain I could find. Here, take a look,” he offered, holding it toward me, but I stepped backward and shook my head.

  “No thanks. Doing your homework on vacation, hmm?”

  Joey flushed and put the tablet aside. “No. Some personal reading.”

  “Oh? What?”

  He smiled weakly. “Yeats.”

  I sighed, feeling my headache threaten once more. “The Celtic Twilight?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Joey,” I muttered, “if you have questions, just ask, yeah? Now come on, I need air.”

 
; He began to protest, but I pulled him from his chair and half dragged him out of the hotel and into my car. “I’m not dressed,” he mumbled as he buckled his seat belt.

  “This is Florida. Shoes are optional. You have pants on, so you’re fine.” I tore out onto the empty highway. “Think I saw a late-night shop about ten miles down the road, and that seems to be as good a destination as any. Ask away.”

  Joey fidgeted for a moment, leaning back in the seat and staring out at the potholed asphalt, avoiding my side glance. “Okay . . . sídhe.”

  “Yes?”

  “What about them?”

  I cranked up the air-conditioning, grateful for the breeze against my gloves. Humidity and leather were proving to be a poor combination. “First, the current version of the word is pronounced shee, not sid-he.” The boy’s sudden embarrassment was almost palpable. “Secondly, the proper term is aes sídhe—’people of the mounds.’ Sídhe just means ‘mounds.’”

  “So . . . they’re a kind of faerie, right?”

  “Not exactly.” I glanced at him, saw the gooseflesh on his arms, and played with the temperature controls again. “It’s an old term for a race of magical, easily annoyed beings gallivanting around Ireland. They don’t per se exist.”

  “Then what—”

  “You’re seeing the evolution of fact into folklore and mythology, kid. The aes sídhe are what happened when faerie encounters reached a critical mass and mortals got creative in the retelling. Magical and easily annoyed, yes; mounds, no.”

  He nodded. “Seelie and unseelie courts?”

  “Pure bullshit. And you can burn your Yeats—if he believed half of what he wrote, the man was delusional.”

  “Nothing to burn,” said Joey. “I downloaded it.”

  He frowned out at the night, wrestling with his thoughts, and though I hated to waste the magic, I stole a look in his head. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream is largely Robin’s fault,” I said, answering the unspoken question.

  Joey whipped around as if I had struck him. “How did you—”

  “Magic. Anyway, Mother has never cared for Robin, Oberon’s not the most attentive parent, and my brother is nothing if not a whore for attention. The way I heard it, he found this young playwright, got staggeringly drunk with him, and then told him all of these details about Faerie—he was aiming for some great tribute to his parents and himself, I suppose. You know how the play turned out.”