Spellbent

by Lucy A. Snyder

  “Yep, that was a right fine rainstorm,” he said. “Tell Cooper his money’s waiting for him here at the office.”

  “Oh good,” I said. “Can I pick it up this afternoon?”

  “Sure, as long as Cooper comes with you.. . we can’t give the payment to anyone but him.”

  “But he can’t come with me,” I said, trying to keep my frustration out of my voice. “He had to go out of town on an emergency, and I don’t know when he’ll be back. We live together; I can show you the lease with both our names on it. Our rent’s due, and we’re going to be out on the street without that payment.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, miss, but the terms of the contract are that the money is to be paid to Cooper Marron and nobody else.”

  “But I helped him with the spell,” I protested. “You owe me as much as you owe him.”

  “I’m sorry, but your name isn’t on the contract. Rules are rules. I can’t help you.”

  I thanked him, hung up, and sat there with my head in my hand.

  “Bad news?” Pal asked.

  “If I ever get Cooper back, there are going to be a few changes in how he writes up his work contracts,” I said bitterly.

  “Is there anyone who could lend you money for the time being?” Pal asked.

  Well, there’s the Warlock, I thought back. But since he didn’t bother trying to get in touch with me after we didn’t show up at the Panda Inn Sunday night, maybe he’s trying to stay out of all this.

  I punched in his number. A second later, I got a three-tone beep and a recorded female voice announcing, “I’m sorry, the number you have dialed has been disconnected…“

  I hung up, feeling even sicker than before. “That’s not a good sign.”

  “Could you try to open a mirror at the Warlock’s home?” Pal suggested.

  I shook my head. He and Cooper refuse to keep enchanted mirrors around. They say they’re too easy for other Talents to spy through.

  “And telephones aren’t?”

  I shrugged. We all pick and choose. Cell phones are easy, and you can’t play MP3s on a pocket mirror. Or at least the boys have never been able to work that kind of magic.

  I glanced down at my feet. Mr. Jordan’s contract and the quill pen lay a few inches from my left sneaker. Swearing long and hard, I grabbed the contract, balled it up in my hand again, and threw it with as much force as I could muster across the living room.

  “This completely sucks,” I muttered, trying hard not to start weeping.

  “Look, it’s not all bad,” Pal replied. “As Bo said, you have six weeks to avoid eviction.”

  “I suppose so,” I said, taking a deep breath to get hold of myself. “But since Mr. Jordan’s been so kind as to rewrite me as a convicted petty criminal, I don’t think I have much of a chance of finding a job anytime soon. And there’s no way in hell my dad— I mean, my stepfather—would lend me the money. So I figure eviction’s unavoidable at this point.”

  “Well, Cooper owns the house in the woods outright, doesn’t he?” Pal asked.

  Yes, I thought back. He got a load of money from that exorcism he performed up in Cleveland.

  “So if worse comes to worst, you can just move everything into the house, right?” Pal asked.

  Sure, if all our stuff will fit, I replied. My architectural skills are crap; I couldn’t expand it any further.

  “Well, then let’s go to the house and do some old-fashioned measuring, shall we? With the proper charms, I am quite sure you can get most anything into the house.”

  Pal crawled up on my shoulder, and we went upstairs. The steel door to the house was right there on the wall between the master bedroom and the bathroom, huge and red and completely out of place. I stopped. Cooper always made sure to hide the door when we left the apartment, just in case maintenance decided to pay an unexpected visit.

  I know he hid that before we left, I thought to Pal. “I’m sure he did, too.” Pal sniffed the air. “Something’s burning.”

  I went up to the door and put my palm against it. I, too, could smell burned wood and metal. The steel’s warm.

  Bracing myself, I spoke the key to release the lock. The door swung open to a burned wreck of smoldering boards and scorched fieldstones. Nothing of Cooper’s house still stood but the fireplace and chimney. Only an intense fire could have caused this kind of damage, but the flames had not spread to the pines that were only a few yards away.

  Clearly, this was no accident, and no act of a mere vandal. Cooper had been very careful to protect the house against fire. Nobody but a powerful wizard could have countered his spells.

  I stared at the ashes where our library used to be. Dizzy, I fell to my knees in the doorway. “Oh God. Some of those books were older than Moses… they didn’t exist anywhere else.”

  “I don’t think they burned,” Pal said. “There would be magical residue from their destruction, and I don’t sense anything. Whoever did this absconded with anything of real value before they burned the house.”

  “Whoever”? I don’t think there’s any question about who did this, I thought grimly. Why’d he bother leaving the apartment intact? Why not just burn it, too?

  “He wouldn’t want that much collateral damage to the community,” Pal replied. “Better to show you he can find your secrets and defeat your master’s magic. Better to force you into eviction and break your will to oppose him.”

  The fitful wind was blowing smoke into the apartment; our bedroom fire detector started beeping shrilly. I shut the door and spoke the word to hide it, then hurried over to the detector to hit the reset button.

  Jordan sure didn’t waste his time putting the screws to us, did he? I thought as I opened the bedroom window to air the apartment out.

  “No, he didn’t. I am surprised at how far he’s gone to pressure you, and how quickly he’s put things in motion,” Pal replied. “A man in his position needs the approval of a Virtus for such extreme actions. He must have convinced at least one of them that Cooper poses a serious threat.”

  But why? I asked. What threat could he possibly pose to anyone?

  “I’m as much at a loss as you are,” Pal said. “There’s more to this than I can fathom right now. Even if Mr. Jordan was driven out of sheer sadism to torment you… well, he didn’t rise to his current position through self-indulgence. He’s committed nontrivial magical resources to breaking your will.”

  Well, Jordan can go screw himself, I thought. If he thinks he can bully me, hes got another think coming.

  “If the Virtii approved of arson, they may approve of murder,” Pal warned. “That’s a rare and serious step, but it could happen.”

  Well, they didn’t burn down this lousy wreck of an apartment complex, I replied. So I guess they’re not ready to kill anybody over this yet. At least nobody but Cooper.

  I looked around the bedroom. A few of the jewelry cases on my dresser looked as though they’d been moved slightly, but I couldn’t be sure. Jordan’s goon squad went through this entire apartment, didn’t they? I asked Pal.

  “I can’t be certain, but given the circumstances I’d say you’ll probably find anything of any magical power to be mysteriously gone,” he replied.

  Well, if Jordan’s got the keys to this place, and if I’m going to get evicted, I’m sure not going to stay here, I thought. Let me take a nap, and then let’s get this place packed up.

  “Where will we go?”

  Someplace where Jordan can’t find us, that’s for sure.

  chapter nine

  Supersonic Butterfly

  I woke up groggy, socket and stump throbbing, as Pal poked my neck with his sharp little nose.

  “What now?” I mumbled.

  “Think to me, don’t talk,” he warned. “We need to find someplace else to stay as soon as possible.”

  I sat up, looking around the bedroom. Everything seemed pretty quiet. What’s happened?

  “My overseer summoned me to his lair,” Pal replied. “They want me to aband
on you and take an assignment with a new master.”

  So you’re getting pressured, too? Swell.

  I flopped back on the bed, then immediately regretted jostling my stump. As I rolled over onto my good side, I felt something crinkle beneath me. It was Mr. Jordan’s parchment and the quill. Again. I shoved them off the bed.

  “No, you don’t understand,” Pal insisted. “This is unheard of. We familiars are supposed to be above any local political trouble a Talent might get into. We can be recalled if a master is formally convicted of a crime and banned from using magic, but this… this under-the-table coercion isn’t supposed to happen. Ever.”

  I frowned. So how much are they pressuring you? “Quite a lot, actually.”

  That definitely wasn’t good news. Are you going to leave me?

  Pal looked at me as if I was slightly crazy. “Of course not! First, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do, and second, if that scaly bastard thinks he can treat me like a slave… well, I suppose I am a slave … but still.”

  Scaly bastard?

  “My overseer is a white wyrm. I’ve had to suffer through his supercilious, egotistical twattery for nearly three centuries. I’ll be damned if I let him get the upper hand in this.”

  But don’t you have to do what he tells you to do?

  “I have to make him think I’m doing as I’m told, yes,” he said. “But unless you complain to him, or unless Mr. Jordan’s agents catch you doing something illegal, he’s none the wiser. During the first century of my sentence, I was directly monitored, and most everything I said or did with my master was recorded. My master joined a group of other witches and wizards who objected to the invasion of their privacy, and they lobbied the Virtii until the rules were changed to eliminate the eavesdropping.”

  Pal drew himself up proudly. “I have kept my nose impeccably clean until now. I have earned my right to privacy, and I will continue to use it to do what I believe is the morally correct course of action. Which is to help you out of this mess.”

  But what about the governing circle?

  “Ah, see, that’s the blind spot. The Virtii have never given local governing circles the right to track or interfere with familiars, and we trust-boon familiars are only subject to renewed monitoring if local officials can provide conclusive evidence of misdeeds. So if they don’t catch you doing anything illegal, they won’t catch me, either.”

  Pal cocked his head, seeming to consider his own words, and his whiskers twitched nervously. He jumped off the bed and hopped up on the windowsill, peering out anxiously as if scanning for strangers watching the apartment. “But therein lies the rub— unless we’re very careful, you are likely to be caught doing something they can declare is illegal. I don’t like what’s happened here at all. Mt Jordan couldn’t have managed all this in the space of just a few days… he’s had to gain influence in some very high, very specific places. I think he planned for all this a long time ago.”

  Are you saying that Jordan caused the accident at the park? I asked, dumbfounded.

  “No,” Pal replied. “I don’t think that at all. It was far too messy and destructive. But I do think that Mr. Jordan suspected something like this might happen, and he put in place a contingency plan to deal with you very aggressively in case it did.”

  If he thought Cooper was going to do something, why did he let it happen at all? I wondered. Why not simply warn us?

  “I don’t know,” Pal said. “But for both our sakes, we’ve got to figure it out. Did Cooper ever speak of Mr. Jordan?”

  No, never. He only met him once at a big to-do downtown, as far as I know. They never had anything to do with each other.

  “Well, we should get this apartment sorted,” Pal replied. “Do you know any packing charms?”

  No, not really.. . we mostly did things the mundane way when we moved in here.

  “Strictly speaking I’m not supposed to show you that kind of thing, though it’s really not that hard… but first, you need to box up all your smaller breakables.”

  We didn’t keep any of our moving boxes, but Bo might have something at his place, I replied. I need to see if he wants our food anyhow.

  We went downstairs and into the kitchen. A sour, funky smell assaulted my nose; had Cooper left the milk sitting out again? No, the counters just had a couple of dirty plates, and we’d emptied the trash the previous day.

  I pulled open the fridge, and the stench made me gag. My jar of gherkins were covered in fuzzy mold. The milk we’d bought three days ago was solid gray-green sludge in its translucent plastic jug. The plastic bag of baby carrots had turned to rotting brown goop. And the bag of Mrs. Sanchez’s tamales—oh God.

  I quickly shut the door, swallowing bile.

  “There goes my damage deposit,” I coughed.

  “We can clean that with a spell,” Pal said.

  “Not if it means having to open the fridge again.” My eye was watering.

  Clearly, whoever had torched the shack had decided to add that extra little bit of spite and spoil our food. Probably they accelerated time within the refrigerator. I opened up the cabinets to check our dry goods. The soup and tuna cans bulged with botulism gas, and the oatmeal teemed with weevils.

  “Rat bastard sons of bitches.”

  The only food the goon squad had left untouched in the kitchen was the forty-pound bag of Smoky’s Science Diet. My mood sank even lower when I saw the dog kibble. Poor Smoky…

  No. I blinked down the tears welling in my eye. I couldn’t afford to get depressed. I swept the ruined spices, cans, and boxes into the kitchen garbage can.

  I probably can’t trust my toothpaste or lotions or anything like that, can I? I thought to Pal.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it,” he replied.

  Fine. Makes packing simpler, anyway. -

  I pulled a handful of garbage bags out of the box and stomped through the apartment bagging tubes of cream, tins of powder, and bottles of soap, shampoo, and lotion. Even the brand-new bag of ferret chow we’d bought for Pal was moldy. It took me most of an hour, and at the end I had three bags to haul out to the Dumpster.

  Bastards probably blanked all our DVDs, I thought bitterly as I heaved the bags into the top of the steel bin. My stump hurt worse than ever, and my good arm and lower back ached. They probably zapped our electronics and crapped spyware all over my hard drive.

  “Well, once the wards are deactivated, burning a building and spoiling food are fairly easy,” Pal replied. “They might have left the rest alone. Pack everything you want to keep unless something seems obviously compromised.”

  I pondered the bag of dog food when I went back into the kitchen. Do you think that’s really okay? I wouldn’t want to give it to Bo and have Gee get sick, but I wouldn’t want to waste it, either.

  Pal crawled down off my shoulder and hopped onto the bag. He sniffed at the kibble, licked a piece, then bit into it.

  “It’s not very tasty, but I don’t think it’s been tampered with,” he said.

  Why’d they leave the dog food alone? I wondered. “So they could say that technically they didn’t leave us to starve.”

  “Creeps.”

  I hefted the bag against my hip and went next door, Pal following behind. Bo answered my knock.

  “Hey, you okay? You lookin’ kinda pale,” Bo said. “I think so.” I couldn’t hold the bag up any longer, so I let it slide down my leg to the concrete porch. “Hey, can Gee, eat this brand? Smoky, urn, he… he didn’t make it the other night.”

  “Your little dog got killed? Man. I sure am sorry to hear that.” Bo shook his head.

  “Yeah, me, too.” I couldn’t fight back the tears this time, couldn’t fight back the soul-deep fatigue of everything I’d been through. My vision swam, and my knees buckled.

  “Whoa, got you!” Bo exclaimed, catching me before I could pitch backward.

  I clung to his broad shoulders, tried to pull myself up, got a whiff of his aftershave and sweat that suddenly reminded me so much
of Cooper, reminded me so much of what I’d lost and might never have again, and before I knew it I was weeping like a child into Bo’s T-shirted chest.

  He held me and patted my back awkwardly. “That’s okay. You been through a lot. Let it all out.”

  I was finally able to take a deep, ragged breath and stand up. I’d left the wet outline of my nose and eye on his green shirt. “I got snot on you.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “If that’s the worst I get on me today, then it’s a pretty good day.”

  My socket and arm were hurting worse than ever. “I hate to ask, but do you have any ibuprofen?”

  “Like Advil? Yeah, I got that. You look like you could use somethin’ to eat, too.”

  “I sure would appreciate it,” I replied. “The creeps trashed all our food while I was gone, except for this.” I nudged the dog food bag with the toe of my sneaker. “Everything else is rotten.”

  Bo frowned. “Why they do that?”

  “Showing me who’s boss. Trying to scare me away from looking for Cooper, I guess.”

  “That ain’t cool,” replied Bo. “You’d think they got better things to do.”

  “Yeah, you’d think,” I agreed.

  “Well, come on in,” Bo said, lifting the dog food easily. “I ain’t got no more tamales, but I can make you a ham sandwich.”

  “Does he have any eggs?” Pal asked. “I’m feeling a bit peckish myself.”

  “Do you have a raw or hard-boiled egg I could give to my ferret in a little bowl?” I asked as I followed Bo into his apartment.

  “I think I got some left.. . you go on, have a sit on the couch.”

  I went into his living room, stepping over toy trucks and wrestling action figures. “Are your kids with you this week?”

  “No, they with their mama,” Bo replied, sticking his head out the kitchen pass-through. “I guess I should gather up all those toys, but I kinda like havin’ ‘em out. It’s like my boys is still here even though they ain’t, ya know?”

  “Yes, I think I do,” I replied.

  The coffee table was strewn with empty Zima bottles and Subway sandwich wrappers. Playboy magazines were scattered across the threadbare tan couch; I stacked a few of them to the side and sat down.