Stranger Magics

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  Mab’s voice became shrill. “Listen to me, you silly child—”

  But Toula crouched and offered me her hand. “Time to get up, Gramps,” she said, and pulled me to my unsteady feet. I tottered for a moment, seeking my balance, but then, as quickly as it had come, the wave of weakness passed. I was in control of myself again—and everything that entailed.

  I stared at Mab. “What was that about killing me?” I croaked.

  The old queen’s eyes blazed, but I couldn’t be sure whether the rage I saw in them was aimed at Toula or me. An instant later, she flung a bolt of lightning in our direction—a decent bit of enchantment, certainly, but nothing near what she had been able to do at her peak. Toula threw a shield in front of us both, and I risked a glance at her face. Her expression was terrible—a mélange of anger, betrayal, and hurt—and I reached for her hand. She returned my grip, hard enough to make me wince, and glared at her mother.

  “I am many things,” Toula murmured, holding on to me as if clinging to a lifeline, “but I will not be a pawn.”

  Mab’s motherly act dropped like a mask. “You’re a mongrel, nothing more,” she bellowed, hurling a volley of fireballs our way, but they bounced harmlessly off Toula’s shield. “A little mongrel who seems to have outlived her usefulness. Join me now, or I’ll destroy you both.”

  “Hey!”

  The three of us wheeled in the direction of the shout to find Joey glaring from behind the guards’ shield. “The term is ‘witch-blood,’ bitch,” he said, then fired.

  Mab tried, she really did, but there’s nothing as excruciating as an iron burn, and Joey was relentless. All of his shots seemed to find her, and as she collapsed in torment and tried to crawl for the safety of the open gate, he calmly reloaded and walked forward, flanked by wary guards.

  Toula watched impassively as her mother cried out and dragged herself away from us, smoking and blistering in a dozen places. Fear drove Mab on in spite of the pain—palpable fear, intoxicating fear. The realm knew it and fed on it—and showed me what to do.

  I turned to Toula and squeezed her hand to draw her attention. “There are cells here, ones she wouldn’t be able to escape. I could lock her away, if you’d like.”

  “All of this is because of her,” she muttered. “Robin’s dead. Your mother’s dead. I exist.” She shook her head as another nail struck Mab’s thigh. “Did she tell my father to do what he did? Was that part of her plan? Get me into Arcanum custody, make me hate them, use me to get what she wanted? And how many rejected witch-bloods have been born because she wanted to play genetic roulette? How many did she destroy?”

  I flicked a finger, and the gate that had been Mab’s salvation shrank to a pinhole and disappeared. “I’ll do it if you want. Say the word.”

  “She tried to kill me,” she whispered. “Tried to kill us both.” Her eyes—Mab’s eyes—met mine and held them for a long moment, even as Joey continued to advance on the queen.

  With a nod of understanding, I released Toula, took a deep breath to center myself, then felt the power welling up within me. The realm whispered its approval as the enchantment in my mind coalesced into a white-hot flame. I narrowed its focus, reducing it to an impossibly strong bolt, then exhaled and let it fly.

  As if feeling a premonition of her death, Mab tried to throw up a shield at the last moment, but she was too distracted by the burning nails to concentrate, and the shield shattered before my bolt. It pierced her back and embedded itself in her heart, and she collapsed as she breathed her last.

  Toula and I shared a look—we were now bound by assisted matricide, if nothing else—and I turned my attention from Mab’s smoking corpse in time to see Mother’s guards drop to their knees. “Get up,” I ordered, and watched as they stood on shaking legs. “If you want to live, then take me to the prisoner.”

  There was no door to Meggy’s prison, just as there had been none on mine. I simply dissolved the wall as my nervous entourage stood around, then climbed through the hole into the stinking, pitch-black cell. “Meggy!” I called, and listened for her voice.

  She didn’t speak, but I heard her stertorous breathing in the corner of the room.

  I summoned a flame in my hand and held it high, trying to assess her condition. “Aw, shit,” Toula muttered behind me, and she took up the task of lighting the room as I ran to Meggy’s side.

  There was no food in the room, no water, no sign that she had been given any sustenance whatsoever in the last ten days except a small, dry jug overturned in the middle of the floor. It didn’t take a genius to see that Mother had given her perhaps that jug of water and left her to starve.

  I scooped her into my arms and held her to my chest, willing her eyes to open. “Hang on, Meggy,” I whispered into her curls. “Hang on. Please, hang on.”

  Chapter 23

  Greg had refused to send backup with us, but when Toula appeared in his office and demanded medics, he had been willing to play Red Cross. Five minutes after I carried Meggy into Mother’s palatial suite and located a suitable bed, Toula was back with a pair of wide-eyed wizards, and I let them take over. The realm protested, but I pushed the little voice to the back of my head; apparently, the realm wasn’t a fan at all of new encounters, and I didn’t have time to try to reason with it.

  As it turned out, the short answer to the question of how one reasons with the soul of Faerie itself is that one doesn’t. The realm broke everything into black and white, acceptable and unacceptable. I tried logic—the wizards were my guests, I insisted, and the realm seemed to like me well enough—but my reasoning fell on deaf ears. Faerie wasn’t going to be happy until they were gone, and I would simply have to deal with its periodic nagging in the interim.

  It also didn’t like the thought of my leaving, but there was no way around that. Hoping that I hadn’t just inherited a homicidally clingy incorporeal entity, I half dragged Joey through a gate into Paul’s rectory and caught the old priest in his study, still in his threadbare red bathrobe. “Well, now,” he said, pushing back from his desk, “nice of you to call before stopping by . . .” He paused, giving us a closer inspection, then pushed his glasses down his nose and frowned. “Okay, someone want to tell me what on God’s green earth is going on?”

  “Can’t talk,” I said as Joey sank onto the study’s well-worn couch, weapons and all. “Meggy’s hurt, I’ve got to make sure the wizards aren’t killing her, I think my daughter’s still unconscious—”

  Paul’s brow furrowed. “You have a daughter?”

  “Technically. And Joey probably needs a sedative.”

  He turned to his seminarian, who was staring at the wall. “What happened?”

  “Shot some faeries,” Joey muttered. “I’m okay.”

  Paul looked back at me, scowling. “All right, Colin, what did you do to him? And why are you glowing?”

  I pulled off one glove, inspected my hand, and consciously tamped down the power. “Sorry, tell you later. Kid’s bike is in my garage, I’ll have the Arcanum send his bag along—”

  “Colin.”

  “I’ve really got to go,” I apologized. “Get Galahad a Valium or something.”

  Before he could protest, I slipped back through the gate and shut it behind me, but found Meggy’s sickroom changed from Mother’s brocaded opulence to white walls and a well-cushioned, if institutional, bed. “I thought it would be easier on her when she wakes,” Toula said, intercepting me before I could question the wizards waving their sticks at Meggy’s side. “Everyone knows what a hospital looks like, right? Maybe she won’t freak out if she realizes she’s safe.”

  I glanced at the IV stand behind her bed. “What—”

  “Just a saline drip,” Toula soothed, pulling me toward the door. “And they even worked up some non-steel needles. She’s in good hands. They said casting had never been this easy,” she added, smirking as she closed the door behind us.

  I stared at the ornately carved wood, so different from the featureless gray plastic on th
e other side. “How is she?”

  “Severely dehydrated,” Toula murmured, steering me down the hall. “No obvious bruising or breaks, so I don’t think she was beaten or anything. The medics are trying to keep her electrolytes regulated and her heart steady, and they keep muttering about kidney issues, but they seem upbeat, all things considered.”

  I clenched my fists. “And Olive?”

  “I took the liberty of keeping her unconscious. Figured you’d want to put out one fire at a time.” She knocked on a door as we passed and added, “I placed her in here for safekeeping. Lets me keep an eye on both of them.”

  “You were comfortable sedating her?”

  “Eh, the blow knocked her out. I’ve got a rudimentary sleep spell going in there . . .” She saw my expression and shrugged. “Go with what you know, right? I could probably have done something a little flashier, but the spell does the trick.” Toula paused at the end of the hall and cocked her head back toward Meggy’s room. “Look, unless we’ve got explosions, I’m going to stay here and supervise. I don’t want anyone stumbling down here by mistake and attacking the medics, you know?”

  “Best not to provoke the Arcanum,” I agreed. “You’ll call me as soon as she wakes?”

  “Sure, uh . . .” She folded her arms. “How do I find you, exactly?”

  “Here,” I said, and produced a pair of phones in my hand. “Just call me.”

  She took one and rolled her eyes. “Flip phones? This is the best you can do?”

  “Deal with it,” I muttered, and headed back to the throne room.

  I never wanted to be a king. Hell, I’d never really contemplated the notion of my mother’s death beyond an academic exercise. Yes, technically, I’d been her heir, but it wasn’t as if anything would ever happen to one of the Three.

  And then it had—to two of them in one day.

  There was nothing I could do about Mab’s court—I assumed they were somewhere in the Gray Lands, but I had nothing solid. In any case, they would never have accepted me as their leader, just as Oberon’s people would never follow me. I was an outsider to their courts, Titania’s blood—and, lest it be forgotten, the notorious Ironhand. Given my history, I wasn’t even sure that Mother’s court would accept me.

  I suggested to the realm that it might be wiser to choose someone else. I had half siblings in Faerie, and surely one of them would have been more palatable. I could go on my way, I told the little voice, go back to my bookstore in Rigby, do what I’d been doing to keep the more troublesome of my kind in line. Go back to my life.

  But the realm was firm. Titania was dead, so I was king, whether I liked it or not. This was my circus, these were my monkeys, and it was up to me to deal with them now. Besides, thought the voice, do you honestly believe that any of your siblings would allow you to continue to harass Oberon’s people? Titania found you entertaining. Her children have no such reason to permit you to act as you have.

  It had a point. As king, I could order my court to remain in Faerie, thus cutting down on at least a few of the problems back in the mortal realm. And nothing was stopping me from slipping back across to help Paul on occasion, right? If Oberon had a problem with it . . . well, we knew where to find each other. In any case, it was comforting to finally know that my mother wasn’t going to come after me in my sleep—and even if the court didn’t like me, how many of them would be willing to take me on now?

  Still, seeing my unplanned new career as asylum warden stretch out before me, I asked if there was some way that I might abdicate. The realm gave me only one out: Olive would inherit the court on my death. But since I had no desire to pursue suicide, I took a deep breath, made myself presentable, and returned to the throne room to see just what sort of mess I’d gotten myself into.

  Word spread quickly, though I wasn’t sure how. By dawn, the throne room was packed to the walls with guards, Mother’s lackeys, and assorted hangers-on. I spotted a few of my siblings from the dais but waited until the distant doors finally slammed to take Mother’s vacated seat. “So,” I began, cringing inwardly as my voice echoed around the unnaturally quiet room, “I suppose you’ve heard the news.”

  The room erupted in waves of silent nodding, and I waited for the court to still. “Yes. Well. To those of you who don’t know of me, I’m Coileán. To those who do . . . you may be able to guess why I’m sitting here.”

  “What did you do to the queen?” a female voice called out, and I spotted one of Mother’s intimates in the middle of the press.

  “Defended myself,” I replied, trying to keep calm. “She killed my brother unprovoked. She would have killed me. My associates dispatched her before she had the chance.” I pointed to a clump of guards standing in the crowd to my right. “If you want to know what happened to Robin, that black smudge on the floor might give you some idea.”

  The guards spread apart, bumping each other and their neighbors in their haste to get off of the stain.

  I looked around the room—the crystal walls, the extravagant pillars, the cloud-scraping ceiling—and grimaced. In an instant, the walls changed to stone, pierced by jewel-toned glass windows, the pillars took on bulk and twisted into carvings of vines and branches, and the entire room widened by a third, giving the assembled room to breathe. “Anyone want a chair?” I asked. “Be my guest.”

  A few seats of various sizes popped into existence around the modified throne room, and I waited until the crowd shifted and spread. “Right, then,” I continued, glancing at the nearest worried faces, “here’s how this is going to work. You don’t have to like me, but you’re not going to touch me or mine. I’ll take suggestions, but I don’t want a lot of back talk. Bend the knee, and you can stay. Refuse, and you can see if Oberon will take you. I don’t know who’s running Mab’s court at the moment, but I don’t think you’ll like that option any better.” I sat back against the throne—my throne now, an intricately carved wooden chair—and waited.

  Guards, lackeys, lords and ladies—all knelt in a cacophony of rustling fabric and creaking furniture.

  They didn’t like me, I knew in my gut, but they didn’t have to. The one thing a faerie fears above all else is a stronger opponent, and I had just undone Titania’s creation around them.

  I didn’t know if I would keep the pseudo-Gothic architecture, I mused as the throng went to its knees. But for the moment, it did the trick.

  Magic. You’ve got to love it when it works.

  I spent the next two days seeing various would-be dignitaries in my office—I had modified Mother’s into a rough copy of Greg’s for the sake of convenience—and sneaked away between every few visitors to check on Meggy. Toula’s report was always the same, however, and she suggested that I catch some sleep. Instead, I did shots by myself to steady my worn nerves and fought the urge to scare off the unending line of visitors with lightning bolts.

  I had shooed the last of my staff off shortly after midnight when my phone began to ring. Pushing the bottle aside, I pulled the phone from my pocket and flipped it open. “And?”

  “She’s awake,” said Toula. “Scared out of her mind, but awake.”

  I didn’t bother with the walk, but instead opened a short gate between our rooms and stepped through to Meggy’s bedside, still clutching my phone. “Meggy,” I whispered, and almost laughed with relief to see her eyes open. “Welcome back . . .” I reached for her hand, but she pulled away, wide-eyed and trembling, and I paused. “It’s me. It’s just me,” I soothed, backing up a few paces until she relaxed. “Everything’s going to be fine. She can’t hurt you again.”

  “Hey, Megs,” said Toula, coming around the other side of the bed, “it’s okay. No one’s going to hurt you, babe.”

  Meggy stared down at the IV taped in her arm.

  “The Arcanum sent some folks to help you,” Toula continued, interpreting her gaze. “See? Over by the wall?” The two wizards waved, their sticks safely tucked out of sight, but Meggy continued to cower in silence. “I know you’ve been
through hell,” Toula pressed on, “but it’s all over. Titania’s dead. She can’t hurt you, and Olive—”

  Meggy’s eyes shot up at the name. “Where is she?”

  “Next door, sleeping. She’s safe, too.”

  She relaxed fractionally, but then she turned back to me, and I saw anger and terror competing in her eyes. “What did you do to me?” she demanded.

  I held up my hands—ungloved for once, as there was no need for precautions in a land singularly devoid of offensive metals—and shook my head. “Nothing, Meggy. What are you—”

  She yanked a handheld mirror off the bedside table and held it in front of her face. “To me! What did you do to me?”

  The age shift, I realized, and deduced that she must have just become aware of her face’s missing decade. I met Toula’s eyes across the bed, and Meggy watched us silently weigh our options.

  “Is someone going to tell me what the hell is going on?” she snapped.

  Toula touched the side of her nose and stepped back from the bed, and I sighed. “Meggy,” I said quietly, waiting until her eyes flipped back to mine, “I don’t really know how to tell you this, but, uh . . . we found your father. Your actual father, not Charlie.”

  She crossed her arms with care, avoiding the IV line, and waited.

  “He’s, uh . . . Oberon. You’re half fae.”

  “Welcome to the club,” Toula muttered. “I think we need T-shirts. Or therapy. No, and therapy . . .”

  Meggy stared up at me in confusion, and I hurriedly explained, “He bound you before you were even born. Like . . . you know, what we were talking about. For Olive.” Toula grunted her disapproval, but I carried on. “You’ve got the talent, just like I do—”

  “More or less,” Toula added.

  I glared at her in exasperation, and she held up her hands, surrendering. “You obviously don’t know how to use it right now,” I said to Meggy, “but I could teach you, it’d be easy. And you could stay here,” I continued, letting the words spill out. “I don’t think I can go back to Rigby, not on a full-time basis, but you and Olive could stay here, be safe . . . anything you want, just name it.” Before she could pull away again, I took her hand in mine and smiled. “Don’t you see, Meggy? We can be a family—you, me, and Olive. We can be together—”