“Yes,” she said, finally. I had doubted that she would want to remain a virtual prisoner in the house. “What are we going to see there?”
“You could always go see the Stoned Philosophers,” Varsha suggested. There was a mischievous grin on her face. “You would look good as one of them.”
“Perhaps not,” I suggested. New York might have been the capital of American magic, insofar as anywhere deserved that term, but there were places that even I wouldn’t want to visit without major support from the rest of the Guardians and perhaps the Army Mages as well. There were places where the writ of the Mayor and the NYPD barely ran. The Stoned Philosophers were dangerous, although it might be worth looking in at them afterwards. “Anyway, you need to get some sleep. I’ll have to ask you to remain in your room all night, though. This is not a safe house.”
Aylia nodded once. I was mildly impressed. A house belonging to a magic-user could have all kinds of dangers, including some that wouldn’t be in plain sight to anyone, apart from the owner. I’d help take apart a house’s protections once the owner had died and it had taken weeks. It was technically illegal to create wards that would last longer than the caster’s death, but it was a law that was impossible to enforce. I had wondered if Aylia would argue, but she seemed to know just how dangerous the house could be. The wards would react harshly if she tried to enter any of my secure rooms.
“Come on,” I said, and led her upstairs. The guest bedroom was larger than my own – I don’t need a large room, or endless luxuries – but I would have bet good money that it was smaller than Aylia’s own back home. It had a small washroom attached to it and Varsha, I saw, had loaned her a nightgown. “Have a good night’s sleep and I’ll see you in the morning.”
She closed the door behind her and I headed onwards to my own room, checking and soothing the wards as I did so. Varsha waved at me as she went into her own room – I doubted she would be going to sleep at once; it was more likely that she would be watching television or surfing the Internet – and I waved back before slipping into my own room. I didn’t bother to undress. I just hit the sheets and closed my eyes.
I went to sleep with a final thought preying on my mind. The population of the United States was around 305,719,000. A tenth of them, more or less, had some magical abilities, although most of them weren't that significant. There were exactly thirty-three Guardians in the United States…
And had that really been Drak Bibliophile we had seen in Faerie?
Chapter Sixteen
There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.
-Albert Jay Nock
“There’s something I forgot to ask you,” Aylia said, the morning afterwards. “What should I do with this?”
She held up what looked like a heavy silver egg on a thin golden chain. It took me a moment to recognise it as the Beauty Stone and I only recognised it through the faint, but powerful aura of magic surrounding it. In Faerie, it had been a beacon in the night, even hidden in her pockets. In the mundane world, it looked surprisingly…well, mundane. The more I looked at it, however, the more I could sense the unfolding layers of power built into the stone. It wasn’t quite what it appeared to be, but then, the same could be said for the pen I’d carefully placed within my pocket.
“I’m not sure,” I said. I may have looked as if it was an absent issue, but I was watching her carefully. “Do you want to wear it?”
She gave me a reproving look. “I was under the impression that such things come to master us if we give them the chance,” she said. I had to smile at her tone, even though she was right. It was surprisingly effective at commanding attention. She would have made a great teacher. “I don’t want to wear it and…”
Her voice broke. “It was speaking to me in the night,” she added. “It was telling me that I could wear it and I’d be the fairest in the land, leaving every other girl in the shade, and that kings and princes would compete for my hand in marriage. I don’t know…would kings and princes want to marry me?”
“Not once they knew you,” I said, deadpan. She scowled at me, although it was clear that vanity wasn't one of her weaknesses. “On the other hand, there have been plenty of people who made their living out of good looks and charm. Princess Diana, for example, or perhaps that movie drag queen who caused that scandal with the Saudi ambassador.”
“I don’t want it and I do want it,” Aylia said, ignoring my sally. “What should I do with it?”
“It’s yours,” I said. “Technically speaking, it’s a Faerie Gift and taking it from you would be a serious offence. If you want my advice, however, you’d put it in a lockbox, secure it with the strongest locking charms you know, and leave it there. It’s just too dangerous to wear it in public.”
“Perhaps I should,” Aylia agreed. She returned it to her pocket and took a seat at the table. “So, when are we leaving?”
“Once we’ve had breakfast,” I said. I hadn’t missed the fact that she was still carrying the stone with her. That might come back to haunt her later. “So, what would you like to eat?”
An hour later, we said our goodbyes to Varsha and stepped onto the teleport pad. Aylia studied it with interest and finally pronounced that it was a standard pentacle, dressed up a little to confuse the unwary. I was impressed. There weren't many magic-users who would have deduced that particular trick, even though it was a Guardian concept. It kept people confused as to just how powerful we actually were, something that helped keep them in their place. The last thing we wanted or needed was a major confrontation with other magic-users.
“Remember,” I said, as I prepared to begin the spell, “do as I say at all times.”
“I will,” Aylia promised. “You still haven’t told me who we’re going to see.”
I smiled and said the spell out loud. That was generally considered a tactical mistake by experienced magic-users – someone casting a spell aloud gives the enemy plenty of advance warning – but it didn’t matter in my house. There was a flash of light, a long sensation of falling…and then we were in New York. I retched – most people felt queasy when using a long-range teleport spell, particularly when there was more than one person along – and staggered, before catching myself. Aylia looked just as uneasy, but managed to avoid being sick. I guessed that she actually had experience of using transportation magic from a very early age. She would have been around four when the magic started to arrive. It bothered me that our young children would be growing up and finding the supernatural natural. Doffing the hat to the Faerie would become second nature to them.
“Ouch,” Aylia said, finally, rubbing her chest. I tried not to notice the way it made her breasts heave. “That never gets any easier.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed. “How does your father make money from transportation pendants if that’s the effect?”
“There’s also a slight sedative spell worked in with the transportation magic and a very strong disclaimer,” Aylia admitted. I rolled my eyes. It illustrated perfectly why Vincent Faye was so important. It wasn't just a magic-user, but someone who figured out new and powerful combinations of magic. “Even so, it isn’t a strong-selling line, despite the many benefits. The airlines don’t have that much to worry about from transportation spells.”
I nodded. It was the old problem of supply never meeting demand. I doubted that Faye’s researchers could produce more than a handful of such pendants a year, and there would be a very long waiting list. Half of them were taken by the Government and generally given to the Special Forces – although I believed that the President had one that he was supposed to use to jump right out of trouble – and the remainder were priced in the millions. I’d heard Wilkinson complaining about the price before, but it hadn’t really registered. I didn’t need a pendant to teleport.
/> “Welcome to New York,” I said, standing up and rubbing my back. The aches and pains were rapidly fading, even without the use of healing magic. The aftershocks from teleporting never lasted long. “New York, New York, so good they named it New York.”
Aylia rolled her eyes. “All right,” she said. “We’re in New York and, I assume, we’re going to visit somewhere magical. Where are we going?”
I grinned at her. “Guess.”
“Somewhere magical in New York,” Aylia repeated. She shook her head slowly. I didn’t blame her. There were hundreds of places in New York that fitted that description. “Central Park? Somewhere along Broadway? The Magical Mile?”
“Close enough,” I said. I reached for her hand and took it. “Let’s go for a walk, shall we?”
New York is known, and not without reason, as the capital of American magic. There are thousands of magic-users – and hundreds of frauds – in the city, something the Mayor tolerates because it brings in millions of dollars worth of tourist revenue. It’s also a very dangerous situation. Apart from the usual magical creatures that come out at night, there are greater concentrations of magic-users in one spot than anywhere else – with the possible exception of India – in New York and sometimes they fight, with ordinary citizens being caught up in the crossfire. The NYPD can’t exercise anything, but a vague oversight role, so we have a full-time Guardian assigned to the city. It’s still barely enough to keep the lid on the stew pot. New York might still be a massive tourist trap, but the permanent population has been steadily falling for years. No one wants to spend too much time so close to magic without defences.
I winced as we passed another group of tourists. They looked to be Japanese, waving the latest digital cameras around everywhere as they walked towards Central Park. It used to be populated by drug dealers, muggers, rapists and axe murderers, according to my grandma, but then the magical creatures moved in and slaughtered them all, or at least those who didn’t run fast enough. A year later, reality quaked and a Faerie Mound appeared in the heart of New York. It was a very odd Faerie Mound. The others could be entered, or left, but this one seemed to be completely sealed. We hadn’t even been able to ask the other Faerie about it. They didn’t even admit the possibility of other Courts. The tourists would probably not see the elves human imagination painted in the woods. They’d be lucky if they saw anything, but the Mound itself.
“The Magical Mile,” I announced, as we reached one end of the road. God alone knew what it had been called before the magic arrived, but now it was packed with magic-users, all showing their wares for the tourists. It was a mixture of fairy-tale bazaar and bustling tourist trap, with hundreds of sellers trying to convince people to buy their magic potions and thousands of magical cults trying to recruit new members. There were teachers promising to make some gullible fool a fully-qualified wizard in less than a year of very expensive courses, artists showing off their wares and witches promising curses and hexes on the enemy of your choice. “Let the buyer beware.”
Aylia was looking around with fascinated interest. “Is all of this stuff real?” She asked. “My father would never bring any of us here.”
“I don’t blame him,” I said. The table advertising love potions and instant cures would have attracted both of his daughters. I ran my senses over it and muttered a curse under my breath. There were spells woven into the potion that would do more than just make someone fall in love for a short period of time; the effect would be, to all intents and purposes, near-permanent. It would certainly require a lot of very expensive effort to fix. Love potions are considered illegal, but there is a vast underground market involved in producing and distributing them. “Some of it is real, some of it is not…”
I made a note of the seller’s name – the assumed magic name, but it would still be possible to use it to trace her – for the Guardian who was supposed to be overseeing New York and led Aylia further down the road. I was dismayed to see a magical zoo a little further onwards, with a man claiming that he had captured all of the creatures personally. Some of them might have looked dangerous – there was a creature that was a cross between a hedgehog and a cat – but I knew that most of them were harmless. The handful of Pixies floating in a cage barely large enough for a very small bird were even charming. They were definitely a big hit with the tourist crowd, even though looking at them has always made me feel vaguely dirty. They were very tiny naked women, perfect in every detail, apart from the gossamer wings that held them aloof. It seemed hard to believe that people hunted them for the dust that could be made from their bodies, but there were people who would hunt anything these days, even dragons. At least most of the hunters who tried to go after dragons ended up never coming home.
“Poor things,” Aylia said, catching the eye of one of the little creatures. Why can’t…what the hell is that?”
I followed her pointing finger. There was a…creature sitting in a pool of shadow on one of the tables. There was no cage, but one wasn't necessary. If it had stepped out of the shadow, it would be dead within a heartbeat. It looked like a tiny grey child, the ugliest child in the world, but it was very far from human. I had seen some of the Imps before; they were inhumanly strong, despite their size, and hated humanity with a passion. A handful had somehow been invited into homes and had promptly started to torment the inhabitants, who were unable to defend themselves. Shooting the damned creatures wouldn’t do more than irritate them…and, in any case, they moved so quickly that they couldn’t be hit easily. Cold Iron hurt them, at least, and it could used to stop them, but it was far from easy. They were clever little bastards. The only saving grace was that they couldn’t come out in the sunlight, so they ruled the night instead. God help anyone who fell into their clutches during the night.
It seemed to sense us looking at it and yawned at us, revealing a mouth that had hundreds of jaggy teeth, a thoroughly disgusting sight. The crowd made noises of appreciation, but no one seemed to want to go near it. I couldn’t blame them. The Imp wasn't perfectly restrained and would quite happily disembowel anyone who got too close. I stared at the showman and made a mental note to see to it that another Guardian had a few words with him about his menagerie. Just by bringing the Imp here, he was exposing the crowds to hideous danger.
We passed a large temple belonging to the Druids of the Sacred Grove – a group that believes that their teachings show the only path to true understanding, a fairly common delusion – and walked onwards. A handful of Druids were performing fairly simply magic tricks with a patch of ground they’d turned into a garden, but only the tourists were watching. It wasn't that complex a trick. A group of their rivals from the Bloody Path to Enlightenment were jeering at the Druids and throwing fireballs towards them, hoping to set their robes on fire. The Druids were doing nothing, on the surface, but I couldn’t help noticing that none of the fireballs went anywhere near a Druid.
“Stay back,” I said. In a mundane world, I could have arrested the fireball-throwers, but they’d be out of jail within the hour. The tourists loved them. As we proceeded to the next temple, it was easy to see why. It was filled with naked men and women performing penances. They were on their knees, bent over in prostration, and the acolytes were whipping them into submission. There was nothing holding them there, but their own desire for punishment, a desire that the Bloody Path to Enlightenment was more than happy to satisfy. The handful of real magic-users at the core of the organisation used the emotions released as a power supply.
Aylia looked honestly shocked. I doubted that she’d seen anything like it before. I hadn’t seen anything like it myself, outside of a handful of extreme pornographic movies I’d downloaded when I’d been bored and rather jaded. Those actresses had been paid to scream on cue, but the men and women in the temple meant every bit of their penance. At least, I decided, there was no devaluation of sin here. A hundred Hail Mary prayers wouldn’t have had quite the same effect.
“Religious freedom,” I said, when she aske
d. There had been lawsuits by concerned family members, and other religious groups, but the Bloody Path to Enlightenment had claimed that they were a religion. No one had been able to prove that there were people who went involuntarily into their penance – even as we watched, a bleeding woman stood up and stumbled out of the punishment ground, with no one raising a hand to stop her – and besides, they drew in the perverted crowd. “We can’t stop them.”
My eyes narrowed as we walked onto the next set of stalls. “That, on the other hand, I can stop,” I added. “What the hell does he think he’s doing?”
It was a mundane table, with only a single item perched on it. It was a severed head and, as I watched, the head opened its eyes and looked at me. It was dead, I knew instantly, and yet alive, a zombie. Where vampires retain some memory of being human, and are even able to play at being human for long periods, a zombie cannot be mistaken for human. Unless bound by the strongest spells, a newly-created zombie will just shamble around, hunting for people to eat. Once bitten, the victim becomes a zombie themselves. Haiti uses them as slave labour, but everywhere else bans them, religious freedom or not. A single bite from those dead lips would create a new zombie and, if done to the wrong person, would start a whole new zombie plague.
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