Stranger Magics

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  When the elevator doors closed and we began our slow trip up, Joey murmured, “There are six pissed-off faeries in the area, and I assume all of them know what you look like. We’re unarmed. I can take on one, maybe two, but not a whole pack. So I need you focused and sober, okay? At least until we’re safe.”

  “We lost them back—”

  “They knew where to find us,” he interrupted. “And if it’s one cheap hotel door versus six faeries, I really don’t like the odds.”

  The elevator opened again, and we turned for our room. “They’re powerless right now,” I replied, trying to reassure him. “They’re licking whatever wounds you gave them last night, and even if they were to find us, it’s not like they have access to any source of magic. The sphere’s protected, and if it comes down to it, I can tap it before they know what hit them.”

  He slid his plastic key into the lock and depressed the steel handle. “Magic or no, man, those guys weren’t exactly puny. I told you before, I’m not a brawler.”

  “You’re the next best thing to a knight,” I protested, stepping aside to let him slide the chain latch on.

  “I didn’t bring a sword with me, remember?”

  I frowned at the floral curtain. “There’s probably a gift shop around here with—”

  “Cheap replicas. Europe’s lousy with them. The steel’s weak, and it bends and snaps.” Joey tossed himself onto his bed and groaned into his palms. “Maybe I should have checked a bag and chanced it.”

  I sat on the edge of the other bed and shrugged. “You know, the sharpness and strength aren’t as important as the fact that you’re waving around a big iron stick. Hell,” I said, plucking Joey’s new phone off the nightstand and tossing it at him, “we’ll find another hardware store, and you can get yourself a nice length of iron pipe if it’ll make you feel better. Now call Toula.”

  He rolled up onto his elbow and squinted at the bedside clock. “It’s two a.m. in Virginia. You sure about this?”

  “She’s not the one who got ambushed last night. Dial.”

  He made a face but did as I bid, and after a few seconds, I heard a sleepy voice mumbling incoherently on the other end.

  “Hey, Toula, it’s Joey. How’re . . . Yeah, it’s Galahad. I’m sorry to call so late . . . No, we’re fine, everything’s fine, but is Robin there?”

  I pried the phone from his hand and held it to my ear. “Toula, it’s Colin. Put him on.”

  Joey began to make turning motions beside his head, and I realized the phone was upside down. It didn’t seem to make much difference, however, as I heard springs creak and a door open, and then Toula’s muffled voice said, “Tink? Hey, Tink, come on, wake up, phone call.”

  “Kick him if you have to,” I offered.

  “No need, he’s stirring,” she replied. “Did you find it?”

  “Yes. It’s safe,” I murmured, tracing a crack in the wall with my eyes. “Hey, does this phone have one of those speaker things?”

  There was a pause on the other end, and then Toula said, “I have no idea what you’re using, but I’m on an iPhone. You want it on speaker?”

  “I want you both to hear this,” I replied, and waited while she made the necessary adjustments. When I heard Robin grumble near the phone, I lowered my voice and tried to push down my sleep-and alcohol-deprivation-fueled anger. “Who are your friends, Puck?” I began, waiting for the explosion on the other end.

  None came. “What friends?” he yawned. “And it’s two in the goddamned morning, Coileán—”

  “The six goons you sent after us!” I shouted.

  “What?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, you sick bastard—”

  “What goons? I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

  I heard a moment’s shuffling on the other end, and then Toula said, “I’m pretty sure he’s telling the truth. What happened?”

  I breathed hard, surprised at my own rage, and Joey took the phone back and pressed the necessary buttons. “Toula? You still there?”

  “We both are,” she replied, sounding worried. “Is he okay?”

  “Been a long night,” he said as I slunk off to the bathroom to calm down. “We went after the sphere thing, and six faeries sneaked up on us.”

  “Damn,” she muttered.

  “And they said Robin told them I was coming!” I called, turning on the tap.

  “Give me that,” Robin snapped, and yelled, “Are you there? You’re breaking up!”

  “He’s just getting a drink,” Joey replied, and I popped out of the bathroom with a tumbler of water in my hand.

  “Of course he is,” Robin sighed, then said, “Yeah, Coileán, I called the necessary parties and told them you were heading over, but I told them to leave you alone. I was trying to avoid surprises.”

  I knocked back my drink in two quick sips, giving myself a moment to calm down. Unfortunately, the water tasted vaguely of lemon furniture polish. “There were six of them, all your people.”

  “Look, I told them to leave you be, but I can’t help it if the entire court wants you dead. You know how it is.” He paused, then asked, “You all right?”

  “Only because Joey’s a horse whisperer.”

  Robin whistled softly. “That so?”

  “And handy with a nail gun.”

  There came a moment’s silence, and then Robin asked, “Kid, did you, uh . . . you didn’t shoot my people with a nail gun, did you?”

  Joey’s face was expressionless. “Self-defense.”

  “Shit,” he grunted. “That’s . . . not the kind of thing that’s easily forgiven, you know.”

  “Understandable. So can you call off your dogs or what?”

  “I didn’t loose them in the first place,” Robin replied testily. “Like I said, I warned them you two were coming and told them to keep away. Whatever’s going on isn’t my doing—and no, Coileán,” he said as I reached for the phone, “I can’t stop them from here. What am I supposed to do, threaten them long distance? My father isn’t going to punish them, so what can I do?”

  I took the phone from Joey and held it between us. “Just try to be persuasive,” I said. “We’ll be out of here soon. The sphere’s been shipped to a safe location for now.” I met Joey’s eyes and winked, and he nodded. “Toula, any potential locations?”

  Her voice grew on the other end—I assumed Robin had handed the phone over. “Not yet,” she muttered. “Everything I’ve been able to trace has dead-ended in Arcanum hands. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it might just be faster to ask Harrison.”

  “You want to ask Harrison?” I goggled.

  Toula growled through her nose. “You have no idea how frustrating this diary is.”

  “We’ll talk about it,” I said. “Kid and I will be back as soon as we can.”

  I kept watch with the television during the day as Joey slept, and while I rested in turn that evening, he set off for Mass. “You’re on vacation,” I reminded him as he slipped into his jacket.

  “No excuse. Vigil’s at five, if you’re interested. Just down the block. I think it’s casual, but at least it’s in English.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass. I’m going to try to sleep for a while, all right?”

  “Sure,” Joey nodded, watching as I rolled over to face the wall. “Hey, Colin?”

  “Yeah?” I mumbled.

  “We’re going to find them,” he said quietly. “Keep the faith.”

  The door closed behind him, and I buried my face in the flat pillow and closed my eyes, willing myself not to get attached to the kid. Priests, after all, had an unfortunate tendency to grow old and die.

  Left to my own devices, I drifted off, only to be pulled from chaotic dreams into darkness by a tinny fugue theme. I sat up and blinked groggily at the room until I saw Joey’s phone illuminated on the nightstand beside me. Of Joey there was no sign, but I caught a glimpse of the bedside clock, saw that it was seven, and wondered just how late Mass went around there. I pic
ked up the trumpeting phone, stared at the smooth screen for a moment in confusion, then touched the most likely button and said, “Hello?”

  “Missing something?” a familiar voice asked in Fae.

  I rubbed my eyes for a second before I placed it as the leader of the goon squad. “What do you want, Setile?”

  “Why, you, my lord,” he replied with a smirk in his tone. “We have the boy. If you want him back, you’ll have to fight for him.”

  I stood and opened the drapes to stare out onto the alley. “Robin told you to leave me be, did he not?”

  “Perhaps,” Setile allowed, “but Lord Robin isn’t here to stop us, now is he?”

  “Put the kid on. I want proof that he’s still alive.”

  “As you like.”

  I heard shuffling and muffled voices on the other end, and then Joey said, “Hey, Colin? You there?”

  “What the hell happened?” I muttered, rubbing my forehead.

  “Ambushed after Mass,” he said apologetically. “Threw me in the back of the van and everything. Guess they fixed their tires after last night . . .”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Little banged up, nothing major,” he said, keeping his voice light. “But, uh . . . these guys would really like a word with you . . .”

  Joey’s voice cut off. “We’ll kill him if you don’t come to claim him,” Setile resumed, and I heard Joey yelp in time with the sound of flesh striking flesh in the background.

  I took a deep breath and stared at my dark reflection in the dresser mirror. “Go ahead.”

  Setile hesitated. “You think this is some sort of game?”

  “I think this is a blatant attempt on my life,” I snapped, “and I’m not about to walk into whatever you’ve set up.”

  “But the boy—”

  “He knew the risk of running around with me. One less mortal—why should I care?”

  The kidnapper seemed momentarily stumped, then muttered, “Try us, Ironhand. The empty warehouse on the south bank. If we don’t see you by midnight, the kid’s dead.” He held the phone slightly away from his face, then yelled in English, “Hey, boy! He says he doesn’t care if you live or die! Here, my lord,” he continued, lowering his voice, “why don’t you tell him yourself?”

  Joey’s voice returned to the line. “Colin?”

  I tried to keep the cold edge in my tone. “Sorry, kid. Too risky.” Before he could protest, I pushed buttons until the call ended, then stared at Joey’s empty bed.

  Joey was presumably immobilized, so the fight would be six on one. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been a cinch; Setile was the strongest of the lot, and he wasn’t more than a few centuries old. I had beaten him plenty of times before, and I hadn’t had to resort to iron to do it—a faerie’s skill in magic continues to grow over time, and I had a considerable age advantage. Without magic, however, the fight was lopsided in the other direction, and I didn’t like the look of things. Surely, I surmised, they were expecting me to come armed, and they had probably prepared for it.

  In short, I wasn’t going to win that fight. I had no court to call on for assistance—most of Titania’s tolerated me only because they had to—but I couldn’t just leave Joey behind, and for all of my posturing on the phone, I had a feeling that Setile knew a bluff when he heard one.

  So I did the one thing the six of them would never expect, considering our history: I went to the lobby and called the police.

  “The riot gear was a nice touch.”

  Joey looked up from the Styrofoam cup of tea the medic had pressed into his hands and pulled the gray blanket more tightly around his shoulders. I gingerly sat beside him on the back of the ambulance, trying to avoid making contact with the steel all around me. “Anything broken?” I asked.

  “Nah. Like I said, just a little banged up.” His black eye crinkled when he smiled. “I’ve taken worse. You don’t become a seasoned jouster without getting to know the ground.”

  I took up the cold pack he had dropped between us and held it toward him. “Go on, you’re swelling.”

  He touched the pack back to his face, wincing with the temperature shift, and took a sip of tea. “They were so surprised,” he said, grinning again despite his discomfort. “I mean, all they’d been doing for the half hour after they called you was stand by me and bicker, and then the doors flew open and the cops stormed the place. It was pretty sweet.”

  “What were they arguing about?”

  “Damned if I know,” he shrugged. “I don’t speak Irish, remember?”

  “You were probably hearing Fae.”

  “Same difference to me.” He sipped his tea again, grimacing at the taste. “Anyway, you should have heard the screams when the cuffs came out.”

  “I think I would have liked that,” I replied, smiling back at him. “Got them all?”

  “Yep. What do you think will happen to them?”

  I consulted the van’s ceiling. “Well, I doubt any of them has an identity card,” I said, keeping my voice low while the officers on clean-up finished their work. “We tend to play outside the law. They may not have legal identities at all,” I explained, and smiled again. “But that doesn’t mean that they didn’t leave fingerprints all over our rental car.”

  Joey’s teeth flashed in the ambulance’s light. “You’re set if questioned, then?”

  My eyebrow rose. “I’m Colin Leffee of Rigby, Virginia, forty-year-old purveyor of secondhand books, and I’ve got the doctored papers to prove it.”

  “Forty?”

  “Forgot to get my passport changed,” I muttered. “But play along, okay?”

  “No problem there,” said Joey, forcing another sip of tea down. “Seeing as the truth would get me locked up and sedated, right?”

  I patted his shoulder. “You’re learning, kid.”

  As soon as the medics cleared Joey, I walked him back to the hotel, then slipped out to the off-license down the street for a bottle of Johnnie Black. By the time I returned, Joey had called down to the lobby bar to send up a sandwich and fries, which he ate from a tray incongruously decorated with a porcelain bud vase holding a pink rose and a spray of baby’s breath. “Got your dinner?” he asked as I locked the door.

  I held up the bottle and smiled tightly. “I’m set.”

  He shook his head and turned back to his food. “Ever think about cutting back?”

  “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Paul,” I replied, taking one of the water tumblers from the dresser. “It serves a purpose, and I don’t want to hear about it.”

  Joey chewed a fry slowly, watching me pour. “What are you trying to forget?”

  My hand clenched around the bottle, but I put the whisky aside and met his gaze. Contrary to my expectations, his expression bore no reproach, but it was otherwise inscrutable. “Too much, kid. Cheers.”

  “Whatever’s in that glass isn’t going to make it go away,” he murmured, returning to his sandwich.

  I put my drink down and stared at him until he grew uncomfortable enough to look up. “Maybe not,” I said quietly, “but it makes the memories a little duller for a time, and that’s really all I can ask for.”

  “That and cirrhosis.”

  “Fortunately enough, I seem to be immune,” I replied, and drank again, watching him watch me. “Let me guess, alcoholic in the family?”

  He nodded. “My granddad drank himself to death after Grandma died. Got wasted and drove into a tree when I was eight.”

  “I’m sorry. Is he the only person you’ve lost?”

  Joey mulled it over for a moment. “Yeah. Only one I remember, at least.”

  “You’re fortunate, then,” I replied, and stared into my glass. “Everyone I have ever loved has died on me. That’s something you don’t just get over, you know—there’s no therapy for someone like me, there’s no grief counseling. You deal with it the best you can, and you go on, knowing full well that the hole that person left behind is never going to close. By rights, I sh
ould have drunk myself to death a hundred times by now, but I keep waking up, and I keep pressing on. And when the memories come back too quickly, I drink them down again.”

  “I understand—”

  “You don’t. You can’t.” I realized I was descending into self-pity, but I was too tired to drag myself back from the brink. “I mean, look at you,” I said, gesturing at him with the half-emptied glass. “Sure, you lose people along the way, but you blindly trust that in another seventy-five years or so, you’re going to meet up with everyone again in this beautiful wonderland of harps and fluffy clouds. I don’t have that luxury.”

  Joey pushed his tray aside and folded his arms on the table. “You don’t believe in an afterlife?”

  “Never really saw the point. And if you’re right, then whatever’s coming to me is fairly depressing.” I put my glass down and mirrored his posture. “Going to try to convert me to the One True Faith now? I warn you, I’ve heard most of the pitches.”

  He slowly shook his head. “Nope. Just going to remind you that Meg and your daughter aren’t dead yet.”

  “Might be,” I mumbled.

  “Live in hope,” he replied, picking up a fry. “So what’s your daughter’s name, anyway?”

  “Her mother named her Olive Marie. My mother called her Moyna.”

  “Well, that’s confusing. What does she go by?”

  “Moyna,” I sighed, recognizing Joey’s attempt at a diversion. “I’m not sure what she hates more, the fact that she’s partly human or that she’s related to me.” He remained silent, and I filled the space. “She’s sixteen. Little younger than you. Thinks she’s the queen of the universe, from the sound of it.”

  He bit off the top of his fry. “A lot of that could have to do with being sixteen, man. I mean, I was this close to a juvenile record a few times as a teenager, and I turned out fine.”

  I stared at him as he ate. “This is fine? You, me, merrow, horse theft—this is fine?”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “Still on vacation, Colin.”

  “You’re going to make one hell of a priest, kid,” I replied with a snort, and rose. “I’m going for a walk. Get some rest, eh?”