Strange Brew

by P. N. Elrod

  The whisper was quiet, but it almost made me jump out of my skin all the same. A child’s voice, harsh with fear. “Help us. . . .”

  It was at times like this that I really wished I smoked. A lighter would have solved the whole blindness problem in a heartbeat. “Who’s there?” I hissed.

  “We’re locked up,” the voice said plaintively. “Let us out.”

  Oh, holy crap, I whispered to myself. This was either going to be really sick or really bad. Either way, I wasn’t going to end the night without a trauma moment.

  The kid—or whatever it was—started to cry. “I wanna go home!”

  “O-okay,” I stuttered, taking a step toward the shadows. “Let’s just think about this for a minute.”

  As soon as my foot touched the earth in the center of the round room, I felt it. Magick grabbed me like thorns in a briar patch, got under my skin, and wouldn’t let go.

  Pain exploded behind my eyes, and my legs turned into rubbery spaghetti, dropping me in the dirt without ceremony. I retched as the binding wrapped around me, tighter and tighter, until I had the illusion it was squeezing out my air.

  The lights came on, not that I could see anything, and footsteps came toward me, not that I could pick out how many over the amount I was screaming.

  “Stop that,” a voice ordered me crossly. “No one can hear you.”

  Hands dragged me into the shadow, the magick following me, holding me in place and stamping out anything I might have been able to pull down myself. As a final insult, the hands wrenched my purse away, taking my caster with it.

  Luna’s purse. Luna’s dress, muddy. She was going to kill me, if whoever had caught me in their binding didn’t get to the job first.

  I thought about that, and I started to cry in earnest, not from pain but from a pure cold fear that ate at me from the inside.

  When I woke up, the binding was still on me, sticky on the skin like mostly dried blood.

  I felt around a little bit for magick, but it was dead to me. Okay, so this one was going to be a wits-only sort of deal. Fantastic.

  The lights were on, at least. Across the round space under the earth, a metal table held a bank of CCTV monitors and a keyboard. A surgical table sat in the center of a casting circle with padded restraints, like they use on mental patients. And all around the perimeter of the room were cages. Old rusted iron bars and fat padlocks. The cages, I could see most clearly.

  I was in one.

  AFTER I GOT done freaking out, yelling and rattling the bars with the little strength I had left, I curled in the corner and put my forehead on my knees. Luna would come for me. My radio and camera had to be dead this far underground, and she and Mac would storm the place, find the tunnel, and get me back. I just had to wait. Wait, and not go crazy.

  I was able to convince myself of that for maybe an hour. Then I started hitting the bars again. “Let me out! I’m a fucking human being! What’s the matter with you people!”

  “They never answer.” The papery voice came from across the room. The figure in the cage was small—maybe ten or eleven at the most. I squinted and saw that most of the other cages were occupied by kids, some barely out of training pants and some almost teenagers. They were all dirty, skinny, and scared as I was.

  “Who are they?”

  The little girl who had talked to me shrank back. “We call her Ginger. She gets upset if you say her real name.”

  I grabbed the bars to steady my hands, which were shaking so hard, they vibrated. “What’s your name?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “We don’t have names down here.”

  “I’m Sunny. You must have had one before you were . . . here.”

  After a minute she bit her lip and whispered, “Madison.”

  “Hi, Madison. I’m going to get you all out of here, all right?” How was the part that didn’t exactly work yet. It was a Luna thing to promise—crazy and risky and grandiose. I didn’t even know if I could still use magick. There was a chance the binding had burned me out, killed my ability to use magick for good. My guts lurched.

  I couldn’t think like that. I had to get us out of here. I was the grown-up. The wussy, freaking-out grown-up.

  “When is Ginger coming back?” I asked Madison. She shook her head.

  “Soon. I don’t like it when she’s here. You gotta be quiet or else she gets mean.”

  “Great,” I sighed. “She sounds like a real princess.”

  The door to the tunnel banged open. “I’m no princess,” ASA Nielsen said. “What I am is the boss.”

  To say I was gobsmacked would be like saying Luna gets sort of cranky on the full moon. I stared at the woman, in what I’m sure was a comical gape-jawed fashion.

  “Nice to see you again, Sunny,” she said, tilting her head to the side. Her copper hair caught the light and turned molten. I bet she dyed it. That bitch.

  “You . . . what . . .” I was not the most eloquent captive, just then.

  “Yes, I am a witch. No, I don’t intend to let you go. Yes, I had Bentley call you and no, your cousin with the body-hair problem won’t be coming to your rescue. That about cover everything your little brain was trying to put out?” She pulled up a CCTV picture, and there I was, at the party, gossiping and laughing with a martini glass in my hands.

  I hit the bars and drew blood from my knuckles. I had never been so angry. “You took my blood for that glamour! You had to!”

  “Not only that,” said Nielsen, “but your microphone and camera are broadcasting a loopback signal. No one knows anything at all is wrong.”

  “Blood witch bitch,” I hissed. Nielsen blinked.

  “Oh, please. Bentley is the blood. I’m a caster, like you. Pure.”

  “That makes this whole locking-me-in-a-cage thing so much easier to take. Not to mention you torturing these kids. What the Hex is the matter with you people? Why are you doing this?”

  “We’ll talk more in the morning,” said Nielsen. “In the meantime . . . say good night, children.”

  “Good night,” they chorused miserably. Nielsen smiled like she’d just won Mother of the Year.

  “And to you, Ms. Swann . . . don’t try anything stupid.”

  I slumped. Luna had to come. But until that moment, I was the default mastermind of our escape.

  The lights went off again, and I immediately tried every stupid thing I could think of. There were no weak spots in the bars, and the floor was clay, so I couldn’t dig my way out. The door was locked with a padlock, so no more picking, even if I had my purse still.

  I was stuck down here, with a psychotic caster witch and a bunch of kidnapped children.

  That did it. I started to cry. Muffling my sobs into my hands, but shaking like I was convulsing. Fat, panicked tears rolled down my face.

  “Sunny?” Madison whispered.

  I sniffed. “I’m fine.”

  “You stop crying after the first few nights,” she said. “But it’s okay if you want to. I did.”

  Oh, gods. Here I was being cheered up by an abducted, abused ten-year-old. I was some big hero.

  “Madison?” I said, gripping the bars and letting the cold metal flow calm through me.

  “Yeah?”

  “Get some rest. Tomorrow, we’re getting out of here.”

  I DIDN’T SLEEP. I went over and over what had happened in my head. Nielsen tried to kill Trotter. She was a caster witch, trying to fill the void left by the O’Halloran clan. She was damn powerful, ruthless, and completely off her rocker.

  None of this explained why she’d snatched me. Was I the last piece of some puzzle I hadn’t gotten a look at? Would I be treated to a Bondian monologue about how soon Nielsen would rule zee vurld?

  The lights snapped on, and I heard the far-off basement door of the Hanover mansion rolling back. Nielsen and Bentley came in, Bentley swinging a pair of prison shackles from his right hand.

  “If you think you’re putting those on me, you’re in for a surprise,” I told him. He smiled at
me and adjusted his glasses.

  “I’ve tasted your blood, Rhoda. Do you really want to take such an aggressive tone with me? Just think what I could do to all of the blood still in you.”

  I backed down. He was right, the bastard. No one raised practicing witchcraft picks a fight with a blood witch if they can help it. They’re nasty and mean and don’t need a caster to pull magick down to them. Fortunately, they also have a much higher death rate. Casting black magick spells in blood tends to go down the “horrible accident” road. Go figure.

  Nielsen walked the perimeter of the room, pointing to children every so often. Bentley followed her and unlocked their cages with a fat ring of keys. The kids were docile to a man, lining up in the center of the floor. Neilsen paused when she hit my cage.

  “Are you going to play nice, Ms. Swann?”

  I glared up at her. She was wearing a summer-green linen suit today, and her hair was done up in a chignon. How dare she look so good when I’d spent the night in a freaking cage?

  “Ms. Swann?” she prompted. “Are we going to cooperate?”

  “Don’t bet on it,” I snapped. Hex me, I was starting to sound like my cousin.

  Nielsen sighed. “Bentley, put the chains on her.”

  He was a lot stronger than he looked, and manhandled me out of the cell and into shackles before I could uncramp my muscles enough to even think about trying to fight. My magick still buzzed like a busy signal when I tried to pull it.

  Nielsen stroked her necklace. “Neither of us can call workings as long as this stays on. I’d hate to see some hamfisted escape attempt. It would be beneath someone with your talents.” She smiled and licked her lips. “And also, Bentley would flay your skin off one inch at a time.”

  With that charming pronouncement, she turned and strode to a door in the far wall. It closely matched the brick, and Nielsen opened it with a few charm words.

  Bentley shoved me. “Move.”

  “You’re a nasty little man,” I said. “And I’m getting pretty tempted to give your nasty little groin a kick.”

  “Blood,” he reminded me, and then leaned over and licked up the side of my neck. “Ohhh. Fresh is so much better than scattered all over a courtroom.”

  I shied away, my stomach jigging violently. Nielsen clapped her hands. “Bentley! I hardly think Ms. Swann is your type. Get her moving. I’ll get the children.”

  We frog-marched into the next room, another low round hump under the earth, bricked over and slimy with mold and plant growth. “Where are we?” I demanded.

  “China tunnels,” Bentley said. When I looked blank he heaved a sigh. “Sailors get shanghaied? For ships in port? They took them through here. It lets out at the harbor. After that, it was girls and bootlegging until the Hex Riots closed the old sewer system down. Now it’s just us down here, and a few ghosts.”

  He pulled a switch to an overhead lamp, and I let out a yelp.

  Matthew’s body lay on the floor.

  I shied away from it, quivering, and Bentley laughed. “Don’t act so scared. That’s just the original. The improved model is alive and well. You met him at the party last night.”

  “I . . . I did?” The prosecutor’s body was bloated from the damp, and a fine spray of mold had crept from the corners of his nose and mouth. A congealed red-black gash in his neck spoke to his last moments at Bentley’s hands.

  “You did,” Nielsen agreed. “And I must say, he was quite taken with you.”

  “He’s got three more days, maximum,” Bentley reminded her in a bored tone. “And that blood in the rotter there isn’t going to be any good for a new spell.”

  Nielsen strolled across the room like she was on a runway and kicked at the body with the toe of her Jimmy Choo. “Hm. You’re right. Fortunately, I think I can convince Judge Battleaxe to declare a mistrial. What with the bombing and all. Matthew won’t have to show up in public much longer. And then a car crash, I think. Tragic, nothing drunken or debauched. A fire to destroy all the exterior spell markings.”

  “Oh, dear gods!” I exclaimed, my voice bouncing off the bricks. “You’re replacing people with your glamour constructs! That’s disgusting!”

  “The shoe drops,” said Nielsen. “We like to keep them alive, but Matthew here was untenable. He gave Bentley quite a fight.”

  Leaving me to chew over that, Nielsen went to an intercom box on the wall and snapped, “Get down here. We’re all waiting on you.”

  Bentley herded the children around the perimeter of the room, and then jerked my shackles, bringing me to the center. I looked down at the black paint traveling over the floor. I was in the center of an enormous working circle.

  Terrific.

  An ancient pulley-operated elevator groaned to a stop, and three of the vapid socialites I recognized from the party last night—tonight? I had lost all sense of time underground—stepped out, clad in plain white cotton pants and tunics, with bare feet. It was all very Jonestown. I hoped the Kool-Aid was cold.

  “Bentley.” Nielsen snapped her fingers, and her little toady scurried forward with three vials of blood.

  “What on the Hexed black earth are you planning?” I asked Nielsen. She wagged her finger at me.

  “Now, now, Miss Swann. I know better than to spell and tell.”

  “Oh, you are too cute. I might vomit,” I muttered. Bentley shoved me to my knees in the center of the circle.

  Nielsen carefully lifted the emerald off her neck and set it to one side. I felt the magick in the room spike—Bentley’s tainted blood-fueled power, Nielsen’s hard, glittering brand of caster magick, and the children, every one of them, bright as candle flames in the dark. The three puppets waiting patiently at the edge of the paint ring had a few echoes, nothing special—just enough to hold down a charm or two.

  Neilsen pulled a sleek ivory caster from her pocket and held it, turning it concentrically in her fingers. She started to pull down power and it lay over me like a wet wool blanket, hard to breathe, musty with the edge of deceit in her workings.

  “I see the future,” she said. “I see what should be. Do you see?”

  “We do,” the three at the edge returned. Nielsen cracked an eye.

  “Children, what do we say to Ginger?”

  “We see for you,” they chorused unevenly. Their concentration sharpened, poured into her power well. Those poor kids. One of them swayed and fainted. Bentley scurried over and slapped him awake.

  Nielsen unstoppered the blood vials and dipped her finger into each one, smearing it down her face. “I take the power to shape the world to what I see,” she said. “I take it now.”

  One by one, the three witches came forward and let Nielsen anoint their heads. The air around them shimmered as the glamour fought with reality, bruise-purple. I shivered. Blood and caster magick should never combine like this. It was filthy.

  “Gets you going, doesn’t it?” Bentley hissed. “Imagine what I did with your blood, Glinda.”

  “Go Hex yourself,” I hissed back at him.

  The witches groaned and cried out as the glamour took hold, and their bodies changed. One grew tall and bulging like Fisk, the defense attorney, one turned into a prison guard in a uniform, and one turned into Trotter.

  Nielsen stepped back, lowering her caster and surveying her work. “You’ll do.” She passed the guard a keycard. “That will get you into the ad-sec wing at Los Altos. Make sure to keep your face out of the cameras.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the witch in a high female voice. Nielsen sighed, and I felt her power spike again. The glamours cemented, all the little details sliding into place—bags under the eyes, messy hair, suits missing a cuff button.

  Nielsen was good. Too bad she was such a bitch.

  She turned back to me. “We’ll just freshen you up, Miss Swann, and then we’ll be done here.”

  Whether or not Done here ended with me lying next to poor Matthew, she didn’t give away. I decided that I couldn’t let her get to that point. Bentley produced
a knife, sliding the blade open and locking it. “You were tough, I want you to know,” Nielsen said. “Not only looking right, but smelling right. You and that stupid mangy cousin of yours.”

  “Gee, I’m so glad I provided a challenge for you,” I said, shying from Bentley’s blade. “My biggest ambition in life, you know.” I was going to have one shot at this, while the magick was up and I had to make it count. Fortunately, I needed only a little, hardly enough for an ego case like Nielsen to notice.

  I pulled the magick down to me, feeling it spiral from my forehead down to my fingers. I shut my eyes and thought about locks. Bentley grabbed my wrist and exposed the underside, the veins, and I felt the swoop of air as the knife came down.

  Locks. Open. My locks. How I wished I’d paid more attention to Luna. . . .

  Focus. The pin, the tumbler, the latch. The magick found the mechanisms of the handcuffs, struggled in amongst them—gods, I wished I had the kind of memory Luna did for details—and formed my magick into a key.

  The shackles snapped open and I let go, twisting in Bentley’s grip and bringing my other fist around to whack him right below the belt buckle. It wasn’t the kick I’d wanted, but it would do.

  He let go of me, air singing out of him. The knife dropped. Nielsen reached for her necklace instead of her magick. I wasn’t about to tell her that if she’d just pulled down more power, she could have dropped me. She was stronger and a hell of a lot more skilled.

  I let her grab for the spell-jammer instead. I was too busy running.

  UP THE ELEVATOR, the pulleys groaning as I hit the lever and set them free, down a maze of hallways through the Hanover house, and out onto the street.

  Bluish morning, the sun not quite up yet. Cars and delivery vans poking through the street. I ran into the middle of the road and flapped my arms like a lunatic, attracting the attention of the nearest van driver. “You okay, sweetie?” he called.

  “No!” I shrieked. “I need the police!”

  The delivery guy lent me his cell phone and I called the precinct, getting Rick, the desk sergeant and then Lieutenant McAllister.