Feral Magic

by Nicolette Jinks

  “How will Lilly take the news?” I asked.

  “Mmm,” Leif cut himself off as Lilly came back with a clutch purse. She dug in it and dropped a small jar of salve on the table.

  “Start with that on your cuts,” Lilly instructed, not looking at me. I screwed the top off the jar and applied a syrupy salve to my wounds. As soon as I moved to a new cut, the old cut became pink skin, then my ivory tone.

  “Thank you, doctor, I feel fantastic considering what I’ve been through,” I said dryly, in an attempt to bring her out of her brooding.

  Lilly sighed and straightened out her robes with flushed cheeks, “It’s just been such a long day, then the thing with Mordon and the stuff he brings home—no offense.”

  “No offense, Lil,” I said casually, causing her to pinch her cheeks up in confusion, “I think you’re taking this all very well. It isn’t every day you see a ghost from ten years ago.”

  She squinted, leaning forward and staring, her face all lines as she scrunched up her face while trying to place me. Then the lines went away. Lilly’s face paled, her eyes opened wide, and her gaze darted up at me, over to Leif, back to me, to Leif, then me, and finally she turned and rested her eyes on Mordon. For a few seconds, nobody moved.

  “You can’t be,” she said. I nodded. Lilly spoke again, her voice higher, “No, you can’t be! Fera...Fera would never in her life wear that.” She motioned to my dress and heels, and I found myself agreeing with her, and within seconds I felt heat rise on me cheeks.

  “Railey would have,” I said, remembering a warning my parents had given me about living with a ghost. They were memories, they were imprints of life, and when they spent enough time with a living person, that person would gain the ghost’s stronger traits. Railey had been subject to the whims of style.

  “Railey?”

  “Has been my partner for the last ten years.” I should have said had been.

  Lilly seemed to have stopped breathing. “Sure, of course she has been. And there haven’t been any photos or way to identify Ferline, so who could say that you are who you say you are?”

  “I can,” said Leif. “And she is.”

  Then Lilly faced me again, her eyes brimming. She launched herself through the distance between chairs, into arms. Her chest rose and fell like she was sobbing.

  “Lilly?” I asked. She looked up and I realized she was half-laughing, half-crying.

  “You’re here—you’re finally here.” Lilly pushed herself up, sitting on my legs without any concern for them. She motioned to a door behind Leif, “We kept a room empty for you—maybe too empty, it isn’t decorated, but I thought you wouldn’t be interested anymore in having everything burnt orange and lime green and maybe you would have more adult tastes now but it’s super pretty anyhow and there’s a door for a balcony though no balcony yet and you’ve got this gorgeous garden outside and—furniture! We need to go shopping for furniture first chance we get! Though there’s a bed, a fluffy, gigantic bed with a massive feather comforter and a bed skirt!”

  Barnes’ barking laugh rattled over the table. He said, “Heal while you talk, little one.”

  Lilly blushed harder, bright red spots appearing over her already pink skin. Dabbing the syrupy goo on cuts I’d missed, Lilly said, “What have you been up to these last...I’d say about, three days? You have more spells on you than you have cuts! Drink this.”

  She pulled a vial from her purse. I gave it a long, studying gaze before I raised my eyes to her and asked, “This isn’t going to be like the time you mixed tomato sauce and baking soda and told me to drink it?”

  Lilly rolled her eyes. I drank.

  She pressed, “Where have you been?...not that it matters, Leif’s been keeping me up to date whenever he found a new article in the Tribune. I bet that one of your cases bumped you into us.” She pulled from her purse a dozen cut out articles that had been carefully read, folded, unfolded, and read again many times.

  I scanned through the articles. They were written as though they were a miniature detective novel, and I knew the cases even though the names of people and places had been changed. Well, all the names but my last name, and the real names of the creatures. I didn’t recognize the pen name of the author, but I had a hunch it was a woman who bought my groceries in exchange for stories; it was something we did about three times a year, and I wasn’t surprised she published the tales, but I was surprised they were a hit. One of the articles still had the header on it. Thaumaturgical Tribune, it read.

  “You, err...Miss Swift...has quite the fan base!” said Lilly, “Though everyone thinks its fiction, you know. It’s how it’s written.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Three years or so,” said Leif. That did make sense, it was about when I met her. Leif continued. “I was privately assured the stories were accurate. Are they?”

  I nodded. Leif winked, “What’s the story that got you entangled with Mordon? One word, what is one word to describe it?”

  Barnes and Mordon had been watching with only lukewarm interest up until now; Mordon was stroking his chin, as though wondering if I was an adventurer and journalist, or if I had been leading him on. I was not looking forward to sorting out my story with him. Barnes leaned forward just a little, and Lilly watched me with sparkling eyes.

  In one word? I sighed mentally. Leif knew exactly how to cut to the heart of the matter with me.

  “Unwrittens.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  I spent the next couple of hours enduring a variety of spells to check my head, Barnes demanding to know information about Coles and the Unwrittens, and Mordon thrusting books under my nose to make me point out the symbols that were used.

  “These spells have strange results,” grumbled Lilly, searching for another, more reliable spell.

  “Are you sure that was how the room was laid out?” pestered Barnes, I couldn’t tell if he was testing my consistency or if he was doubting my memory.

  “What about this page?” Mordon dropped another book on the books already on my lap. I shifted in my chair and they all tumbled to the floor.

  “I think I have another idea, Lilly,” called Leif, holding a book from Mordon’s stash and pulling out his wand again.

  “Would everybody leave me alone!” I said, though it came out as a shout that rattled glass against glass. I had never spoken that loud before, nor lost my temper so quickly. I was on my feet before I knew it, and I felt their magic raise up in alarm. Belatedly, I realized the air in the shop had gone deathly still, as though waiting for my command.

  I was on the edge of becoming feral again.

  Sitting, I huffed out a breath and played with the hem of my dress. At least the others had decided to let me have breathing space. “Lil, get for me yesterday’s Tribune. Mordon, do you have any disenchanted parchment?”

  “You’re going to write down the Unwritten,” said Leif, his eyes meeting mine briefly. Disenchanted parchment, or anything disenchanted, was expensive and put through a long process to make it non-responsive to magic. I wondered if the concept could be applied to a person—like me. It would explain why no one had been able to help me.

  “I didn’t think,” Lilly paused, as though she were worried she would hurt my feelings, “I didn’t know that you could read spells that well.”

  She handed me the paper, and I absently sorted through it as I said, “Reading implies that you understand the material, and it does take me extra time to translate the symbols to their meanings. So, no, I don’t understand what this spell says. But I do remember it.”

  “Well enough to accurately transcribe them?” asked Barnes, skeptical. I nodded. He frowned. “It’s not a very human trait.”

  “Her mom’s fey, or part fey,” said Leif. He was mindful who he shared the information with, but Mother did not do a good job of lying low. Everywhere she went, flowers bloomed, trees walked, and woodland critters came out of hiding to play with her. I envied her green thumb, as I mostly mana
ged to slowly murder each and every household plant unless she came in time to rescue them.

  “Humph, that explains her trickery,” growled Barnes, as though he had been on the wrong side of the feys before. But feys weren’t known for memory. Whimsicality, yes, but not memory.

  “Lilly,” I handed her the Tribune, pointing to an article with my wild mugshot, “Did you read this?”

  Mordon gave me two sheets of paper and a roll of parchment; it had a sterile scent to it, and felt like it could not be folded with breaking in half. I accepted a quill from him as well—inkless, I noted and was relieved, since I always managed to make a royal mess out of ink wells. The pen behaved like a graphite pencil, leaving trails of ink despite never needing to be loaded. I took a breath, then started to write on the scroll, imagining Cole’s wall in front of me and that I was tracing it.

  Lilly finished the article and passed it onto Leif wordlessly, and I sensed that the others were standing around, watching me carefully and keeping their surprise to each other. Once I was done with the colonial demonic section, I went in the margins up top and wrote in the other spells that had been in the room. Done with that, I rolled it up and handed it back to Mordon, then took a sheet paper and wrote what I had seen in the mirror.

  “This one needs to be a mirror image,” I said.

  “Mind blank, please,” said Leif. Even with disenchanted paper, just the very motions could cause the spell to take effect and I knew how to keep a blank mind while doing this. Thankfully, it was hard to use the artistic side of the brain without forfeiting a degree of the thinking side.

  I finished with this one sooner—it was not as lengthy as the other, and I had learned the strokes from the first spell. I gave it to Mordon, who I saw was passing them onto Barnes.

  Barnes tapped the paper with a finger and it went blank; he whispered a word and the paper evaporated into flames. He saw me watching and explained, “Private secret vault.”

  “Sure it’s safe?”

  He shrugged. “It’s more secure than the Swiss dragon lairs.”

  If it wasn’t safe there, it wouldn’t be safe anywhere—which was what I was afraid of. Leif was less interested in the spells now, and was now smiling at the paper. Mordon glanced at the article and gave me a confused glance.

  “That was the case you were trying to find out about from us.” He stated. I nodded. “You aren’t a reporter.” I shook my head, and he raised his eyebrows, “Then why do you care about it?”

  “I don’t understand it, either,” said Lilly.

  “I thought it was interesting,” I said. “That’s all.”

  Leif nodded. “Any more leads, Barnes?”

  Barnes twitched his mustache, and it raised almost up to his cap when he snarled silently and refused to say a word.

  Lilly advanced on me with another spell, “I think this one should work—Pasteur’s Diagnostic Enchantment.”

  “I think that is quite enough for one day,” said Leif, tapping my back and encouraging me to go with him. “With all the spells she came to us wearing, then our spells to cast them off, then all these diagnosing spells, I think it is no wonder we are having mixed results. Come along, you must be exhausted. I’ll show you to your suite.”

  “You don’t have to, I—” said Lilly, but Leif cut her off with a nod and a wave.

  “It’s your night to make dinner, and I won’t have you skip out on it.”

  Leif showed me through the door that blended into the wainscot wall, where a set of stairs lead us up into the kitchen.

  Around the counter was the breakfast nook and the living space, and from there were five doors, each painted their own colors. Lilly’s door was cream with peach trim, I had no doubt about it. Leif’s door was plain white, next to her’s. Across the room was a tan door with a lever handle, and next to that was an arch-topped door that was eggshell, and at the head of the room was a set of glass french doors pouring light past gauzy curtains.

  “Tan door is Barnes’, the slightly-medieval one is Mordon’s.”

  “Really?” I teased, “I thought the french doors looked like Barnes. So light and bubbly.”

  Leif snorted, then motioned me into my door. The living room was basically a sunroom with cobblestone flooring and plants that rose up to the top, curving when they reached the glass ceiling. It should take me a maximum of two months to murder all these lovelies with my poisonous care; maybe Lilly would tend to them for me. I did not have much time to think, for Leif had that serious look written all over his face, pulling out his elfin heritage. The Tribune was in a roll, scrunched in his fist, my wild eyes staring up at me from the folds of the paper.

  “How feral are you?” His voice was light and airy, but cold and piercing.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I can’t have you here if you lose it under pressure. And I can’t risk the lives of my people by hosting a member who keeps deadly secrets.”

  I swallowed, knowing all too well how true his words were—and that truth stuck me deeper than his words alone. I could never forgive myself if I were to bring harm to him or Lilly.

  “Leif, I...”

  “Will listen for two more minutes. Lilly thinks with her heart, Barnes is stubbornly independent, and Mordon does whatever he wishes without warning. Right now, my team is divided into pairs. The law-abiders and the rogues. If you can fit in here—and I hope you can—I will need someone who can unite us.”

  I came closer to him, leaning my elbow against the window pane. “Why didn’t you pick your people more carefully?”

  He sighed. “Have you ever tried to do something, then find yourself doing something radically different?”

  Who hasn’t? “What’s the story behind Barnes and Mordon?”

  Leif laughed, a choppy, stressed sort of laugh. “Barnes transferred to Merlyn’s Market shortly after I became a market judge—that is another story, too full of bureaucracy to be entertaining—and we glued together out of necessity. Three law officers who refuse bribery and deal out honesty make enemies. My fellow judge collapsed under pressure and I dismissed him. I should have listened to you on that personal character judgment.”

  “Who?”

  He winced. “Our old friend.”

  “Griff.”

  “Yes. Anyway, I appointed Lilly to be my fellow judge. She accepted, but I had to forfeit guardianship over her, so Barnes offered.”

  Most sorceresses found it a very good idea to take a guardian; the old Magic Laws are very chauvinistic and those who worshiped the laws took liberties that women of any time found reprehensible. If I was going to stay in the sorcering community, I would be wise to pick a guardian—and soon.

  Leif continued, a smile breaking over his face. “We got in a stupid bet with Barnes about out drinking him on his Ambrosia Brandywine—don’t try it—and next thing we’re casting spells and someone transports us to Mordon’s hibernation cave. We wake him up, he’s a dragon and very snappish, we get into a fight, we beat him, and he transforms to human and demands that we form a circle together. Drakes would rather form alliances than have enemies running around who could defeat them. That’s about the story of it. He re-opened his shop and set us all up here.”

  I considered this, then said, “You have four very capable individuals and two stellar teams, but you lack that glue that makes you a cohesive circle.”

  “And if we integrate a fifth capable individual, we could fly apart.”

  To form a circle was to take an oath; the sorcerers became family, and when that family was broken, it had a shatter effect that marred each person for quite some time. I huffed out a breath, fogging the window. “I lost two days being feral, but I’ve been able to keep my senses for almost one full day so far...when I encountered Eliza, she said I was half feral. I don’t know how accurate that is.”

  “Elizabeth the vampire?” he asked. I nodded. Leif shrugged, “That is the best estimation you will receive; she hasn’t been undead for three centuries for nothing...it is p
ossible for you to remain a productive member of society, though you will need to work hard to strike a balance especially these next few weeks until you can establish a routine.”

  “Three weeks?” I asked, “Can you give me three week with the circle, to see how we work together and if I can keep from going feral again?” I didn’t know why I felt so urgent about this; the logical part of me calmly said that I was capable and fine by myself, that I did not need others in my life past who I already had. But that part of me, that wild part of me who went on a terrorizing spree ripping bones out of the ground, was convinced that I needed this family—or that I needed to try. I wondered, was this wild part of me really wild, or was it simply a deep connection with the magic that surrounded me? Had anyone else been brought back to life by Death’s Merlot? What impact did that have on a sorceress’ magic? I knew I had some research to do in Mordon’s shop.