Stranger Magics

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  When I went down to the shop to check on our resident Templar, I found Joey pacing in front of the plate-glass window with his sword drawn. Having recovered his gear from its storage place in my garage, he appeared to be in no hurry to relinquish it again. He covered a yawn with the back of his hand, and I pointed to the dusty pendulum clock ticking on the wall. “It’s almost one, kid. Get some sleep.”

  “Nah,” he replied, jingling as he leaned against the counter. “They might come back. Someone should keep an eye out, right?”

  “And if they do, you’ll what, skewer them?”

  “If I have to.”

  I started to grip his shoulder, but reconsidered; Joey was still wearing his maille, and that much steel gave me pause, even with gloves on. “Listen to me,” I said quietly. “Listen to yourself. I know this has been one hell of a week for you, but kid—try to remember who you are. Joseph Bolin, priest-in-training, not Sir Galahad, Slayer of the Unseelie.”

  His face twisted briefly into a half smile. “Am I?”

  “Are you what?”

  He met my eyes, but his expression was inscrutable. “Am I Joseph, masquerading as Galahad, or Galahad, masquerading as Joseph? Quite honestly, I don’t know right now.”

  “That’s an easy one . . .”

  “You’d think,” he muttered. “But you know, I’m not really certain anymore. I’ve been wrestling with this for a while . . .”

  I gritted my teeth and grabbed his arm, hoping the leather would suffice for protection. “You’ve had one bad week, kid. Let’s not be hasty.”

  “I’m not,” he replied, shrugging me off. “I’ve always had doubts, right . . . concerns, questions. And I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching over the last few years. I mean, you have to with this sort of calling.” Joey paused and straightened his scabbard’s strap as he stared out at the empty, night-dark sidewalk. “I thought working with Father was going to be what I needed,” he continued softly, folding his arms. “Maybe it was, for a little while.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “But I have never felt more alive than I have this week, and . . . I don’t know,” he sighed, almost hugging himself. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means you’re coming down off an overdose of adrenaline, exacerbated by a lack of sleep. Go back to school, get a week or two of classes under your belt, and you’ll be back to normal—”

  “Will I?” he snapped. “And do I even want normal?”

  “Trust me,” I murmured, “it’s better than the alternative.”

  “Is it?”

  I would have given almost anything at that moment to see what was swirling behind his dark eyes. “I’ve had my nose pressed to the glass for a long time,” I replied. “After a while, you get tired of looking in.” I paused, trying to judge his mood, then said, “You need to go home. Not because I don’t want you here—and I do, kid, you’re great,” I hastened to add, “but for your own sake. This business isn’t . . . good for you, Joey.”

  He began to protest, but I silenced him with a raised hand. “Let me finish. This isn’t just me trying to assuage my conscience about all the shit I’ve asked you to do. This is . . .” I struggled for the best explanation, then settled on, “If we want to find one of Mab’s people, we may have to do some unsavory things. Truly unsavory. Toula would probably call it black magic.”

  Joey’s forehead crinkled. “A locator spell’s that bad?”

  “No—it’s where the spell will point that worries me.” I stepped toward him and lowered my voice. “Rumor has it that Mab may have been camping over in the Gray Lands of late. If her court is there, then I may need to make the trip, and opening a gate to the Gray Lands . . .” I shook my head. “If it comes to that, I don’t want you anywhere near me. Get it?”

  His jaw tightened. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Not against some of the things that come out of there, you can’t. Iron doesn’t faze them, and they’ll use that nice little necklace of yours as a toothpick.”

  Joey’s hand went to the silver crucifix under his maille.

  “And it’s not just the Gray Lands I’m worried about,” I continued. “Assume we get one of Mab’s people to cooperate and find enough spheres to open the gate—you’re just planning to stroll into Faerie?”

  “I’ll go armed—”

  “Which will be useless if Mother electrocutes you from across the room.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead, trying to make Áed’s face recede into my memory. “Joey . . . I can defend myself against magic to a point, but I’m not Mother’s equal. Neither is Robin. Even if I tried to protect you, I couldn’t promise that you’d walk out alive.”

  “You think she’ll try to kill you?”

  “Probably not, she prefers to make my life hell. But you’re superfluous, and if you walk in dressed like that, you’re going to be a superfluous annoyance, understand?”

  Joey was silent for a long moment, and then he murmured, “She can really shoot lightning?”

  “She doesn’t need to.”

  “Shit.” He sighed, but then he frowned and nodded to himself. “I’m still in, Colin.”

  “Joseph—”

  “You can’t even work the e-ticket consoles,” he said with disdain. “If you’re planning to go to Montana tomorrow—”

  “Today, actually.”

  “Whatever. You need me.”

  “We have Toula to push the buttons, remember?” He crossed his arms and glared at me, and I threw up my hands. “You want to come along? Fine. But as soon as this gets ugly, I’m going to sic a pack of wizards on you for your own good, got it?”

  He smirked in victory. “Didn’t know you cared, man.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said, turning toward the staircase back to my apartment, “I’m just trying to keep you alive.”

  “Likewise,” he called after me.

  I paused at the foot of the stairs, then glanced back at Joey. “Think you can build another of those nail guns?”

  “Sure, but why? They’re wizards, iron doesn’t bother them.”

  “A nail to the chest is a nail to the chest,” I said, heading upstairs.

  By three, I had packed and finished the gin, Toula was asleep on the couch, and Joey had ended his self-imposed watch and shoved his armor and weapon into my largest spare suitcase. Robin was awake—I could smell the telltale smoke wafting from my bedroom—but only Mrs. Cooper and I remained in the kitchen, she with her endless tea and me with my thoughts. I had long given up on convincing her to return home that evening; she claimed she was worried about Toula after her ordeal, but the tight-lipped looks she gave the kitchen door pointed to a deeper fear, and I wasn’t about to kick her out. She had brought up a badly dog-eared paperback romance from my bargain bin around two and sat across from me in companionable silence, reading as I brooded.

  So lost was I in my thoughts that I jumped when her hand landed on my wrist. “You can’t let yourself despair, dear,” she murmured, flipping the book over on the table to save her spot.

  “I’m not—”

  “I know that place,” she continued, overlooking my aborted protestation. “It’s dark and it’s lonely, and once you’re in, you wander around for ages until you find your way out again.”

  Her eyes were soft but haunted.

  “I almost killed myself when I lost Mr. Cooper,” she said, her voice low and monotonic. “He was my only close family, you know—we never had any children, and my parents are long deceased. My only brother was dead, as was my only niece. He was my everything, and then he was gone.”

  She swirled the last dregs of her most recent mug of tea, then set it aside. “I didn’t leave my apartment for three months after I buried him. Some of the girls at church came by to look in on me, and when that didn’t work, Reverend Martin insisted on driving me to counseling until I opened the curtains again.” Her grip on my wrist tightened. “It was despair, and it almost killed me. And I see you heading in the same direction,” she continued, cockin
g her head. “You’ve given up.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t know my mother—”

  “No, but I can hope. Maybe that’s all I can do,” she admitted, releasing me with a pat, “but someone needs to. Now, why don’t you try to sleep?” she said, pointing to the empty patch on the rug beside Joey. “I don’t like the thought of you driving after an all-nighter, dear. It’s not safe, and you’ve had an awful lot to drink.”

  “So have you,” I replied with a little grin, tapping the side of her mug.

  “Oh, honey,” she scoffed, “I’ve been spiking my tea for years. Go on, now, get some shut-eye.”

  There was no arguing with her logic, and I rose to retrieve a blanket from the hall closet. When I returned, she had already resumed reading with a fresh cup of tea beside her, and I shook my head as I passed. “Good night, Eunice. That one’s on the house.”

  “I figured you wouldn’t miss it,” she replied without looking up. “Good night, Colin. I’ll rally the troops at dawn.”

  Chapter 20

  The snow I had feared we’d find in Billings proved to be nothing but my own catastrophizing, a few fifty-times-refrozen gray hillocks on the side of the highway, long since plowed out of the way and forgotten. The north wind nipped through my jacket, however, and I hurried across the parking lot to the red Yukon I had selected out of an abundance of caution. To me, the vehicle spoke more of over-quaffed soccer moms than of serious business, but the clerk promised four-wheel drive and new tires, and I decided that Joey could take the third-row bench and keep Robin in line as we made the trek into the wilderness.

  If my brother had thoughts about the SUV, he kept them to himself, but then Robin had said virtually nothing to any of us that morning. I suspected that the burn stretching across half his face accounted for some of his unwillingness to speak, but a large part of his reticence was surely due to the threats Toula and Joey silently communicated with every glare. I could have told them that the vigilance was unnecessary—knowing Robin, I believed his explanation that the temporary takeover had been a decision born of a moment’s impulse—but I held my tongue. Watching him squirm had given me something to do on the flight.

  Even though I was reasonably comfortable that Robin wouldn’t try anything requiring an air marshal, I still had to reassure Mrs. Cooper before she let us leave for the airport. “He’s never really been a long-term thinker,” I had confided as I escorted her and her kettle back across the street. “If something halfway promising pops up, he takes it, and damn the consequences. That’s why we’re in this mess right now—Mab dangled something shiny in front of him, and he didn’t stop to ponder the ramifications.”

  She had still seemed uneasy when I left her, but she promised to keep an eye on my place until I returned. “If they come back,” she told me, pocketing her binoculars, “I’ll have the police out in a jiffy. Don’t you worry about a thing here, dear.”

  “Just keep the kettle close,” I said, and took my leave. I could feel her watching through her lace curtains as we drove out of Rigby.

  Eight hours later, as we finished loading the Yukon, I pulled my atlas out of my suitcase and flipped to the Montana spread. “Okay, we’re here,” I said, pointing to the city’s dot as Toula looked on. “Now, what’s the fastest way to the silo?”

  “Head to Glasgow and veer north.”

  I frowned at the map. “So . . . 87 north, and then . . .”

  She cleared her throat and held up her telephone, which displayed a list of directions. “Try to remember that GPS isn’t the enemy,” she said, elbowing me for good measure, then hopped into the shotgun seat.

  As I closed my atlas and tried to hold on to my dignity, Joey walked up with his phone poised and ready. “Found a Home Depot on the way. Here, I’ve got the directions . . .”

  “Talk to Toula,” I muttered, and glanced at the cloudless sky. The spring sun was still weak that far north, and with the afternoon already upon us, I doubted we’d reach the Arcanum’s hideout before nightfall.

  Joey was in and out of the hardware store in twenty minutes, his arms loaded down with plastic bags, and he set to work in the backseat as Robin edged forward, distancing himself from stray metal shards. Toula landed on a station playing nothing but overprocessed pop, but I didn’t have the fight in me to protest. The gates had been closed for eight days. Try as I did to keep Mrs. Cooper’s warnings in focus, thoughts of Meggy’s tortured corpse kept flashing across my mind. I could barely recall the details of the dream from which Mrs. Cooper had shaken me awake that morning, but from the drawn look on her face, I knew they couldn’t have been good.

  I desperately wanted to believe that Meggy and Olive weren’t dead, but nothing about the situation inspired my confidence. And so I silently drove north to the sound of synthesizers and the clanking of metal tools, staring out at the still-brown grasslands as the sun made its slow descent out my window.

  Nearly five hours later, long after Toula’s phone ceased to be of navigational assistance along the back roads, I located the hamlet of Wright’s Mill, pulled up in front of a split-rail fence, and surveyed the ramshackle trailer park on the other side. The circular drive’s gravel glinted in the white light of the security lamps, though it didn’t extend as far as any resident’s driveway. Ringing the road, set back more or less into the weeds at odd intervals, were single wides in various states of disrepair, their paint peeling, their skirts mildewed and rotting away. A few sickly daffodils made a brave stand beside the nearest, growing up in the shadow of a plastic flamingo and what appeared to be an oversized ceramic squirrel. One resident had put a rusty pickup on cement blocks in his yard, while another had pinned a Confederate flag in his window. It glowed as it filtered the light from inside the trailer onto the scraggly grass, a warning to the unwary.

  I suspected that the locals didn’t ask too many questions of their neighbors.

  “This is it?” Joey asked from the back seat. “Seriously? You’ve got the top wizards in the world, and this is the absolute best you can do?”

  Toula swiveled in her seat. “Ever hear of a decoy, Galahad? The silo’s underground—most of those trailers are covering air-exchange equipment.” She rolled down the window and closed her eyes, then nodded. “Security’s still strong, I feel it. Guys?”

  “Yeah,” Robin murmured, moving closer to the door. “The wards must still be operational.”

  The night breeze carried with it the unmistakably sharp odor of not-citronella, and I realized how badly I’d missed it. But the longer I smelled the active magic, the angrier I became. We were in a crisis, the Arcanum had obviously found a few of the spheres, and they were wasting them on wards? How long had they been running on battery power? More important, was there still enough in reserve to get us into Faerie? I gripped the steering wheel harder as I tried to wrestle my temper under control.

  “We can get into the complex,” Toula said, rolling the window back up. “The school bus sometimes turned around in there when I was living here. But to get underground, we’re going to need permission.” She pointed to the faux manager’s office, a slightly nicer trailer at the far end of the circle. “Park there. I’ll try to sweet-talk us downstairs.”

  I inched the SUV around the crunching drive, keeping an eye out for sentries, but the complex seemed abandoned. At Toula’s direction, I parked in front of the weather-grayed Sorry, No Vacancy sign, then stepped out into the night and waited as my passengers disembarked. Robin came empty-handed, but Joey had slung his sword over his shoulder and slipped his new nail gun in its duct-tape holster.

  “That’s subtle,” I remarked, grabbing my backpack.

  Joey shrugged. “Hey, this place looks like it’s home to mutant redneck cannibals. I’m not taking any chances.”

  “Suit yourself,” I replied, noting the telltale bulge in the back of Toula’s shirt from the wand stuffed into her jeans. “Right, then, where’s the welcoming party?”

  “Here,” said a familiar baritone from the
shack’s porch, and I squinted as the building’s lights suddenly flicked on. I spotted the grand magus standing on the steps in a red fleece jacket, his arms folded against the chill, and a small phalanx of armed wizards lurking behind him. He leaned against a rotting porch pillar and surveyed the scene. “You’re a long way from home.”

  Toula stepped into the light and held up her empty hands. “We need to talk to you. I know how to break the spell, but I need juice to do it.”

  Greg’s white eyebrows met above his glasses. “Do you, now, Ms. Pavli?”

  A few of the guards began to mutter, having recognized Toula, but she kept her cool. “I studied the trap that set it off. It’s a hybrid construction, and there’s a lot of enchantment to work around, but there’s a way to unlock it. Mind if we come in out of the cold?”

  The nearest guard stepped forward, wand at the ready, and I snorted. “You can put the sticks away, kids,” I said. “The only magic in this place is running the wards.”

  The guard still held his position, and Greg pulled a familiar golden sphere from his jacket pocket. “That’s not quite accurate,” he replied, “though I’d rather not use this. We’ve only got a few in reserve, and the one powering the wards isn’t going to last another twenty-four hours.”

  “Sir,” the guard protested, but Greg shook his head and gestured toward me with the sphere.

  “Lord Coileán wouldn’t darken my door without good cause,” he continued, “and the company he’s keeping makes me believe that cause must be excellent.” He straightened and tucked his sphere away. “Well, this isn’t getting it done. Have y’all eaten?”

  “Doritos,” Joey offered, moving into the light with his sword drawn.

  Greg gave him a slow once-over, studied Robin’s burns, then flicked his eyes back to mine. “Shit, old timer,” he muttered, his accent deepening with every syllable, “you’re traveling with all of that? What the hell happened?”