The Blue Amber Spell

by Amanda Hartford

  I remembered how proud Minerva was the first time she summoned the baboon in my presence. She’d finally found another creature as vicious as she was. Charlie was right: he was in way over his head.

  I closed the lid of the box and pulled a Faraday bag from my desk drawer. The metallic bag blocks electromagnetic signals from reaching the object inside. Ordinary people use them to protect their electronic devices from being wiped or hacked. Anyone familiar with Faraday bags would find this one to be very unusual. It was made from the usual plastics, aluminum, and polyester, but it had a layer of fine calf leather on the outside that made it look prettier, and also carried an enclosing spell. It was also twice as thick as the usual Faraday bag because it was actually two bags, one within the other. The inner bag had been turned inside out. It wasn’t meant to keep the vibes out—it was designed to keep them in.

  I carefully put the ring box inside the Faraday bag, pushing it all the way to the bottom. I placed the bag on top of the pawn declaration that Charlie had signed, giving me ownership of the tooth. I peeked inside the bag to be sure that the ring box had not opened—I really didn’t want to put my hand down on that tooth—and slid my right hand inside the bag. I rested my fingers on top of the box. I placed my other hand on Charlie’s signature on the pawn declaration.

  I recited the usual incantation, requiring the tooth to acknowledge my ownership. At first, there was nothing: no twitch, no shimmy. Sometimes, they take a little more convincing. There’s a second incantation I like to use for stubborn applications. It’s a little longer and a bit of a tongue twister but usually gets results. I recited it quickly, wary for any sensation in my fingers that would indicate the box was starting to open on its own. Getting bit by that thing would be no fun.

  For a moment, I thought the second incantation had failed, too. But then, I felt the ring box twitch, just a bit, and then lay still.

  I quickly removed my hand from the box before the tooth could have second thoughts. When I picked up the Faraday bag, it felt lighter. Whatever crazy spell Minerva had tried to put on the tooth, it was gone. All that remained was one ordinary, but still very nasty, baboon fang. I folded the bag’s flap and secured it.

  Lissa was still busy at the counter, so I decided to pop down to the vault myself. Having Mr. Portiere’s badly behaved baboon tooth, even in its Faraday bag, on my desk made me uneasy.

  The success of my business relies on good security—both the physical and the magical kind. As a physicist, I have a pretty good grasp of the physical properties of magical objects. After all, Pentacle Pawn specializes in organic magical goods. This leaves out crystal balls, bewitched swords and that pot-metal button that your grandfather swore he took from the body of a dead leprechaun. The objects we handle—and we try not to handle them too much—are made from materials that once were part of a living thing. They are powerful, and so are the people who use them. I take precautions.

  The basement of Pentacle Pawn is actually two separate rooms with no connecting door. The front basement is reached by a stairway behind the counter of the street-front store. A steel door at the bottom of that staircase secures the retail shop’s storage area outside of office hours.

  The alley shop’s half of the basement—we call it the vault—is totally inaccessible by normal means. It has no door or other openings from either outside or inside the building. It is reached by entering my office and sitting in the Eames chair across from my desk. If you know the key incantation, you will suddenly be sitting in an identical chair in the room below. You need to know both the key and the incantation to access the vault. Otherwise, I hope you brought a book because you’re not going anywhere. And, of course, there’s the added layer of security provided by the front door. If it doesn’t know you, then having the key and incantation will do you no good at all.

  The wording of the vault key, usually a sentence from literature in whatever language I fancy that week, is changed each week. Lissa and I know it, of course, and I text it to my Chatelaines, a small group of trusted women who hold this and a few other secrets for me just in case I get taken out by a drunk driver on the way home from the casino some night. It never hurts to have a backup.

  Our vault contains floor-to-ceiling oak bookcases on all four walls. The shelves are a foot deep, and each shelf holds six carbon fiber bins. In the old days, we used lead, but it was ridiculously heavy to carry around and not particularly healthy to handle on a daily basis. One must keep up, you know. Each bin is engraved with its case and shelf number. The old bins had brass labels, but we found that proximity to such a reactive metal had an adverse effect on some of our pawned items. It is disconcerting at the very least to pop downstairs and find that two ordinary cat’s-eye marbles have shifted into a rather unpleasant saber-tooth cat.

  We store larger items in a dozen stainless steel cages, set in a horseshoe in the middle of the vault. Each cage is a wire cube, three feet on a side. It looks a bit like the kennels you find at a veterinarian’s office, except that nothing is supposed to be alive down there. At least, that’s the rule. Just in case, each cage is secured both with the appropriate spell and a good old-fashioned padlock.

  In the middle of the horseshoe of cages, facing the Eames chair, is a cute little Victorian writing desk and a battered vinyl recliner. There are times when we need to check paperwork downstairs, and it’s nice to have a good writing surface and a comfortable chair.

  I checked the log and found an empty bin. I secured the Faraday bag containing the baboon tooth with a small spell and a big padlock and popped back upstairs.

  ◆◆◆

  My next appointment was a childhood friend of Lissa’s. Hannah Carter was in her late teens or early 20s but looked much younger. She was mousy and timid, but I suspected that she could hold her own.

  She reached into her purse and removed a square cedar box, the kind my mother’s people called a jewelry casket. It was about the size of a cigar box, but beautifully crafted and bound in brass and with a tiny gold lock. Hannah wore the key around her neck, and when she unlocked the casket, she revealed an uncut stone the size of my fist, cushioned inside the padded, velvet-lined case. The matrix was gray, encasing a giant translucent amber. It was the color of honey; the surface felt waxy.

  She noticed the black light flashlight at the corner of my desk. “Take a look,” she said.

  I switched on the black light and switched off the desk lamp. Before I even passed the black light over it, the amber was glowing. Fully into the black light, the stone was a dramatic sky-blue with swirls of sea green. The corona at its edge was neon red.

  “Blue amber,” I said in awe.

  “It’s Dominican, of course,” she said. “A rather nice piece, I think.”

  “I’ve never seen color like that.”

  “That’s how you can tell it’s the real thing,” Hannah said, gesturing at the black light. “All amber fluoresces a little, of course, but this is particularly vivid. It’s because of the forest fires.”

  I switched off the black light and turned on the desk lamp again. Hannah explained that amber has been found wherever ancient forests grew, from Prussia to New Zealand. These days, most of the world’s amber comes from areas around the Baltic Sea. Amber is actually prehistoric tree resin that became buried beneath miles of sediment. Over time the heat and weight transformed it into the soft gemstone I held in my hand. Because it began as a sticky gel, amber very often has inclusions, which are simply the twigs, leaves, pollen and other debris that’s found on tree limbs, then and now. Some amber also contains tiny bugs and other creatures that got trapped in the goo. This stone had no inclusions—it was the size of a chicken egg and as transparent as bottle glass.

  She could tell I didn’t understand. “Baltic amber usually contains litter from the ancient conifers that produce the resin, but blue amber comes from a tropical tree that was an ancient relative of the pea family. But the trees that produced the resin that became this amber were consumed by fire. A gemolog
ist told me that the resin dripped from the trees when the heat hit it. Any organic matter it might’ve touched was burned off. That’s why this is so clear.”

  She misread the look on my face. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m a bit of a nerd.”

  “Works for me.” I was finding all this to be fascinating. “So, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m hoping I can leave this with you for a while. My mother passed away a month ago and left it to me.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said, and I meant it. I hadn’t known Deborah Carter, but she’d had a reputation in the magical community as a powerful and ethical practitioner. I was surprised Penelope hadn’t mentioned her passing, but things have been pretty busy around here lately. The snowbirds were back for the winter season, and the shop had been jumping

  “Thank you,” Hannah said automatically. She shook the thought away. “I had a break-in when I was away for the weekend. Nothing was taken, and the police couldn’t figure out how the guy got in. I’d feel a lot better if this...” she patted the top of the cedar box “... was out of the house until we get things sorted out.”

  “How awful for you,” I said. “Of course—we’ll be happy to keep it safe for you.” I pulled a dollar out of my desk and started the paperwork. I noticed that Hannah kept her hand on the little cedar casket the whole time, reluctant to let it out of her sight. “Really,” I told her, patting her hand. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Hannah picked up her purse and stood to leave. Her face was impossibly sad. Lissa gave her a big hug, as I sat in the Eames chair and popped downstairs to secure her family treasure.

  Chapter Two

  Hannah must have just left, because Lissa was still walking back to the counter after seeing her friend off as I emerged from the vault.

  Just as I sat in my chair, the front door chimed and opened. I’d totally forgotten my 1 a.m. appointment, a referral from the Paris shop. A tall, elegant man stepped across the threshold.

  He was a stranger, but someone I might be willing to get to know a little better. I don’t allow myself to be distracted like that very often, and that little voice in the back of my head said get your mind back on business. But he really was my type: tweedy without being sloppy, like he was right at home in a library or at the front of some college class teaching—what?—maybe medieval English literature? He had high cheekbones, the right amount of gray at his temples, and sparkling green eyes that were set off by just enough smile lines. I inwardly laughed at myself; I was sounding like some cheap romance novel. I’d been widowed for more than two years now. Maybe it was time to start getting out a little more.

  The stranger extended his hand. “Simon Sterling,” he said. I thought I detected a slight Scottish burr.

  I introduced myself. His handshake was warm and firm without being overbearing. “What may I do for you, Mr. Sterling?” I asked, inviting him to sit in the Eames chair.

  He removed a small leather pouch from his inside coat pocket. “I’m told I might be able to leave this with you for safekeeping. I’m going to be working here in the United States for a few months and I have no way to secure it while I’m traveling.”

  “Certainly, if it meets our qualifications. You understand: we have to restrict the items we allow on the premises for the safety of our staff and patrons.”

  “That’s very wise, and I absolutely understand.” He fingered the straps of the pouch. “It’s harmless—I assure you. May I?”

  I nodded, and he loosened the thongs and poured a man’s gold ring out onto the velour jewelry pad. I picked the ring up and examined the setting: a lovely scrimshaw cameo. “Mastodon?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Siberian. I’m told the cameo is my great aunt, several times removed. She had a rather scandalous affair with a sailor from a whaling vessel. She rejected him, of course...”

  “Of course,” I said, playing along.

  “So he carved this portrait. I’m told he wore it till the day he died, and then had the ring sent back to her.”

  I wondered how I would feel to get such a posthumous gift from a spurned lover.

  He was reading my thoughts, and he grinned. “She was horrified. She locked it away in the safe and never looked at it again. It got handed down through the family until it came to my mother. She was working on a spell that required ivory, and of course with the international ban...”

  I finished the sentence for him. “... she used what was at hand.”

  He had a lovely smile. “That, she did.”

  I picked the ring up and looked at it through the loupe. The carving was delicate, much more detailed than I would’ve expected from a folk craftsman. The cameo was of a beautiful woman with a haughty expression.

  “So, it’s a binder?”

  “I’m still trying to work that out,” he said. “I suspect it’s a finder, but I don’t have the spell. My mother’s spellbooks went missing after she passed—you know how it is in large families. For the time being, I just like having it with me as a reminder of her. You understand.”

  I did, but I wasn’t sure I could help him. “We aren’t actually a storage facility,” I explained, “but we do hold items long-term for clients in our vault when they are here on pawn. I’m sure Penelope explained this to you.”

  He looked amused. “She did. That’s fine with me.”

  “How long will you need to leave it with us?”

  “My current project will probably take six to eight weeks. Can I extend the pawn if it becomes necessary?” He said the word as if it was a private joke between us.

  “Of course. Shall we say a hundred a week? We can bill you weekly or monthly.”

  He took out a Prada leather wallet and extracted five one-hundred dollar bills. “That should get you started.”

  I thanked him and quickly completed the paperwork. We placed the pawn value of the ring at a thousand dollars. I removed a single dollar bill from my desk and handed it to him.

  “What’s that?”

  “Ownership of the item must be transferred to me for the time it’s on the premises. This is value exchanged for that transaction.”

  He seemed troubled by the idea. “Another of our rules, I’m afraid,” I said. “It’s a safety issue. I have to be able to control the items entrusted to me.”

  He picked up the stone and contemplated it. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. It appears Penelope has given me some bad information. I’m so sorry to have troubled you.” He slipped the stone back into its pouch, and the pouch into his inside coat pocket again.

  I could tell I was blushing, but there didn’t seem to be any way to save this transaction. “I’m so sorry for the misunderstanding,” I said, handing him his hundred-dollar bills.

  He was smiling again. He wrapped his fingers around mine, closing the cash inside my palm. “No, you keep that for your trouble.”

  I placed the money on the counter in front of him. “Not necessary. I’m pleased to have met you.”

  He hesitated a moment before putting the bills back in his wallet. “Well, at least let me buy you dinner tomorrow. It’s the least I could do.”

  That, I could do.

  ◆◆◆

  “I think I’ll duck out and grab a late supper,” I told Lissa just before 4 a.m. One of the things I love most about living in a resort town is that even the really good restaurants are open late. “Do you want me to bring something back for you?”

  Right on cue, Lissa’s mother appeared with a red-enameled stoneware baking dish tucked into a quilted carrying bag. Lissa’s supper had arrived.

  Penelope Silver is not physically imposing — in fact, I thought she looked rather ordinary the first time I met her — but she is an intimidating woman who wraps herself in the armor of her persona. Penny is a generalist, an enormously powerful white witch who is competent in all of the aspects of common magic from herbalism to arcane spells. Even the regular folks of our fair city understand that there is something formidable about her, but
they’d be hard-pressed to explain what it is that makes them cautious in her presence. Those in my community, of course, understand.

  Penelope was the ultimate helicopter mom when Lissa was little. She volunteered as a room mother in every class that Lissa was in from kindergarten to middle school. When Lissa hit second grade, Penelope became her Brownie troop leader. Penelope, who always appears with perfectly lacquered nails and a coiffure held together with a binding spell instead of hairspray, has always hated sports of any kind, but she coached Lissa’s middle school girls’ soccer team to a district title. Lissa got quieter and quieter with every passing school year.

  High school is traditionally the time when even obedient girls go to war with their mothers, fighting to establish their own blossoming identities. Penelope wasn’t having it. She refused to let Lissa have a drivers license, insisting that she was happy to drive her daughter anywhere she wanted—all she had to do was ask. Lissa was a straight-A student, but Penelope hired tutors for her in every subject and required them to report back to her on a weekly basis. As far as Lissa was concerned, there were spies everywhere.

  Boyfriends were out of the question. Penelope felt that it was important that Lissa take part in high school social life, but her daughter attended every dance, prom and football game in the company of boys who were the sons of Penelope’s friends and business associates. None of them would have dared even to try to steal a kiss.

  Newton’s third law applies, in particular, to teenagers: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The day Lissa turned 18, she moved out. The first Penelope knew of it was that night, when Lissa texted her that she wouldn’t be home for supper—ever again, and provided her new address without further comment.

  Lissa has been out on her own for a couple of years now, and she and Penelope have established a fragile truce. She makes concessions to her mother; after all, it’s never a great idea to get sideways with a witch as powerful as Penelope. Lissa answers the phone when her mother calls or texts, and she goes to Sunday dinner at her mother’s house without fail. Lissa thinks of these gestures as damage control.