Nice Dragons Finish Last (Heartstrikers)

by Rachel Aaron

  She’d certainly done that, Julius thought, looking over the tiny island of order and cleanliness she’d carved from the vast, disgusting sea of trash and cats. In addition to the mini fridge and the lamp, she’d acquired a couch and a gigantic wooden wardrobe that looked like it might contain Narnia. There was also a large, open square of floor off to the side that was covered in chalk casting circles, which he assumed must be her workspace. Not bad at all for someone who’d only been here…

  “Wait,” Julius said. “Tuesday? Like, three days ago?” When she nodded, he cursed himself for an insensitive idiot. “My condolences for the loss of your father.”

  Marci’s face fell for a split second, but then she was right back to business, throwing open the doors of the huge wardrobe to reveal, sadly not fur coats and a snowy forest with a lamppost, but a neatly organized collection of magical paraphernalia, which was far more useful at the moment. “Thanks,” she said. “I miss him a lot. But hey, at least I haven’t had time to dwell on it, right? Hard to be sad when you’re under an endless siege of cats.”

  Her voice was bright and cheery, but Julius’s ears were tuned for dragons, and he could hear the falseness of her words clear as a bell. But it was neither his problem nor his place to call out her deception, so he let it go. He had to, anyway, because Marci was shoving an intricately carved wooden box into his face. “Hold this a sec.”

  He did, using both hands when the box proved much heavier than it looked. It was also vibrating slightly, the little motions making the paper seal on the lid flutter like a flag in a high wind. Julius grimaced and moved the box to arm’s length. Family competition aside, this sort of creepiness was the other reason he’d stayed away from serious magic.

  “So,” he said as Marci climbed up into the wardrobe to grab a meticulously labeled box of multicolored casting chalk off the top shelf. “You’re from Nevada?”

  “Las Vegas,” she said proudly. “My dad and I used to have a magical solutions business there.”

  That explained her card. “What kind of solutions?”

  “All kinds,” Marci said. “Though we specialized in curse breaking. Las Vegas is a vengeful town, and that makes good business for both sides of the curse market.” She paused. “I was also going to school at UNLV for my doctorate in Thaumaturgical theory, but I had to quit when my dad died.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  She shrugged. “Nothing to be done. It was probably for the best, though. I was getting tired of the limits of academic magic.”

  The false ring in her voice was back again when she said this, and again, Julius ignored it. He didn’t think she was lying outright this time, more like telling only half the story. That was still enough to make him uneasy, but considering he hadn’t told her a hundredth of his story, it was far simpler to just let it lie. He kept his mouth shut as he followed her over to the interlocking magical circles she’d drawn on the cement.

  “Give me a moment to redraw these and we’ll get started,” she said, grabbing a dry mop from the corner and using it like an eraser, scrubbing the circles off the cement with a few deft strokes.

  “What was wrong with the old ones?”

  “Totally inappropriate initial casting parameters,” Marci said, putting the mop away and selecting a fresh piece of gold-colored chalk from the box she’d pulled out of the wardrobe. “Is this your first time watching Thaumaturgy in action?”

  This was his first time watching a human cast anything, but before he could say as much, Marci charged right ahead.

  “Thaumaturgy is the best form of magic,” she said in the bright, excited tone of someone getting a chance to explain something she truly loved. “It’s the process of using logical spell notation to create detailed instructions that tell the magic how to behave. Watch, it all starts with a circle.”

  She grabbed a metal folding chair leaning against the wall and taped the stick of chalk to its leg. Before Julius could ask why, she unfolded the chair halfway, stamped the back leg down, and then, using the half-folded chair like a protractor, she touched the foot with the chalk taped to it against the cement floor and spun the chair like a top, drawing a perfect circle. Julius watched, dumbstruck. Apparently, Marci Novalli’s ability to make do extended to all sorts of things.

  “There,” she said, setting the chair back against the wall. “Now we have a place for the magic to gather before we use it, sort of like a holding tank.” She looked up expectantly, which Julius took as his cue to nod. This earned him a brilliant smile and the resumption of the impromptu lesson. “So, now that we’ve got a place for the magic to pool, it’s time to put down the instructions that will tell it what to do.”

  She retrieved her chalk as she said this, kneeling at the circle’s edge to begin writing a line of Greek symbols, numbers, and abbreviated words along the inner curve. “I use Socratic notation because it’s the most precise and I like it the best, but there are several other spellwork languages that all do basically the same thing. The idea is to create a progressive series of algorithms that tell the magic how to behave, kind of like writing a computer program. Once the spellwork is finished, all I have to do is pull the magic through the circle and voila, the spell is cast.” She glanced up at him. “Speaking of which, have you decided what kind of mage you want to be?”

  He considered the question. “Well, it’s a shaman party, so probably a shaman of some sort. Preferably something quiet.” Because if anyone actually tried to talked to him about magic, he’d be revealed as a fraud in no time.

  Marci thought for a moment, and then bent back over her circle. “I’ve got a good one,” she said, clicking chalk across the cement floor in deft strokes. “Just let me get it down and we’ll be golden.”

  Julius nodded and settled in to wait, watching in fascination as Marci worked. He’d always thought of magic symbols as just that: random mystical shapes that controlled magic. Now that she’d explained what those long lines of spellwork actual did, though, he was surprised to see it really did look like code. Parts of it even looked almost readable. He was about to kneel down for a better look when something cold brushed against his leg.

  He jumped before he could stop himself and glanced down to see a large, fluffy white cat. And then he jumped again, not just because this cat was inside the ward where cats weren’t supposed to be, but because this cat’s body was transparent. It was glowing, too, shining with its own strange, blue-white light, almost like a—

  “Ghost!”

  He looked up to see Marci kneeling with her hands on her hips and a furious scowl on her face. “You know you’re not supposed to bother customers,” she said firmly, pointing at the far side of the basement. “Go on! Get out of here!”

  The transparent cat gave her a disgusted look and stalked off toward the couch. He turned his back on them when he got there, silently grooming his paws like this relocation business had been entirely his idea.

  “Marci,” Julius said, very slowly. “Why do you have a ghost cat?”

  “Technically, he’s not a ghost,” Marci said, going back to her spellwork. “That’s just his name. He’s actually a death spirit. You probably noticed Mrs. Hurst had a bit of a cat problem?”

  Julius glanced over at the wall of reflective eyes peering at them from the shadowy mountains of trash on the other side of the yellow plastic ward. “I noticed.”

  Marci shook her head. “Nice old lady, but way too soft-hearted. She told me she couldn’t stand to turn away strays but never had the money to get them fixed, so naturally the house began to fill up. They’ve had the run of the place for years, which sadly means a lot of dead cats hidden in the garbage, and dead bodies bring death spirits.”

  Julius looked at the transparent cat sitting on the couch with a cold shudder. “You’re saying he’s the job you did for the lady who owned this place? The one you traded for free rent?”

  “Yep,” Marci replied. “I was going through the public job boards when I saw this listing from an old lady
who swore that a ghost cat was trying to kill her. I don’t normally take crazy jobs, but no one else had answered it and I needed the money bad, so I told her I’d come over and check it out. When I arrived, I found Ghost there sitting on top of my future client’s chest. He’d nearly sucked her dry by that point, and I ended up having to bind him just to make him detach.”

  Julius recoiled. “That’s horrific.”

  “You’re telling me,” Marci said, laughing. “I had to dodge furious cats the whole way in, and that was before I knew I’d be doing a binding.”

  “But why did you bind him?” Julius asked. “Why not banish him?” He didn’t know much about human magic, but he knew binding was a serious commitment that tied spirit and mage for life. That didn’t sound like the sort of thing you did on the fly with something as openly hostile as a death spirit.

  “I thought about that,” she said. “But if I banished him, he’d just come back again and bother someone else. Besides, he’s a bit of a rare specimen. It’s been hypothesized that cats have more natural magic than other domesticated animals, but this is the first time I’ve seen or heard of a death spirit specific to the species. He’ll be a great thesis topic if I ever get a chance to go back and finish my doctorate.”

  Julius stared at her, mouth open, an expression that was rapidly becoming his default around Marci. “You mean you bound a death spirit to yourself for all time on the off-chance you can write a paper about him if you go back to school?”

  “Well, he’s also pretty useful,” she said, brushing the chalk off her hands as she stood up. “When I can get him to obey, that is. Would you hand me the box, please?”

  Julius did as she asked, silently handing her the shaking wooden box he’d brought over from the wardrobe. The soft rattling stopped when Marci broke the paper seal, and she reached inside to pull out something long, black, and slightly ridged, like an animal horn. “What’s that?”

  “Chimera tusk,” Marci said proudly, holding the black object out for him to see. “And before you ask, it’s from a licensed humane farm in Canada. I don’t buy from factory mills. It taints the magic.”

  Julius hadn’t been about to ask, mostly because it had never even occurred to him there would be chimera farms in Canada. He was, however, suddenly feeling very uneasy about this spell. “Why do you need a chimera tusk?”

  “Well, I don’t need it,” Marci said, placing the tusk squarely in the center of her palm. “But it takes a lot of magic to do two illusions thick enough to trick a room full of mages, and since I’m pretty sure you don’t want to stand around here all night waiting while I pull down that much power manually, I thought I’d employ an outside source. Think of it as using a battery.” She looked down critically at the tusk in her hand. “Besides, this one’s getting kind of old. Better to use it up now than wait and risk losing potency, you know?”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Julius said. “But why are you doing two illusions?”

  “Because I’m coming with you.” Marci gave him a sideways look. “What? You didn’t think I’d let you go alone, did you?”

  “Well,” Julius began. “I—”

  “You’re my client,” she said, clearly appalled. “I can’t let you just go in without backup. What if you get dispelled? Also, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but you talk like a total null. It doesn’t matter how good a cover I slap on you, you’ll be outed in a second if you don’t have someone standing by to feed you lines.”

  Julius couldn’t argue there. “I’d be happy to have you along, but I still don’t understand why you need a disguise. You’re already a mage.”

  Marci’s eyes widened like he’d just called her a dirty name. “Weren’t you listening? I’m a Socratic Thaumaturge. You know, logical thinking, repeatable results, known best practices, all the tenets of real sorcery? We’re sneaking you into a shaman party. Shamans consider themselves artists at best, spiritual gurus at worst. Most of them just throw magic around and hope it works out. There probably won’t be a single person in that place who could write out a spell in proper notation if their life depended on it. They’ll take one look at my personal magic and know what I am for sure. The real challenge will be masking my well-maintained aura in enough random nonsense that they don’t see the good stuff underneath.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult you,” Julius said quickly. “I’m sure your way is better, but theirs can’t be all bad. I mean, they might not do magic the way you do, but there are a lot of shamans around.” Including a guy he’d been in a gaming guild with last year who’d been really decent, if a little odd. “They must be doing something right, or they wouldn’t keep getting work.”

  Marci made a face. “I guess you could say that shamans are better at casting on the fly. Thaumaturgy does require some set-up time since we’re not just, you know, making things up as we go along. For the sort of illusion you need, though, Thaumaturgy is waaaaaay better.”

  Julius had the feeling Marci would claim Thaumaturgy was better for everything, but he was perfectly ready to let it lie. “I’m lucky you found me, then.”

  She rewarded him with a beaming smile as she placed the bit of chimera tusk into the middle of the meticulously marked chalk circle. “Ready?”

  Julius nodded and stepped into the circle where she indicated. He felt the hum of her magic as soon as his body crossed the chalk, an intense vibration that sang like a tuning fork against his bones before fading to a pleasant buzz.

  Marci put her hands on his shoulders and moved him around until he was standing directly over the bit of tusk in the center. “I’m going to start pulling magic through,” she warned him, stepping out of the circle. “You might feel a little pressure.”

  He took a deep breath. “Go for it.”

  The words were barely out of his mouth before the chalk circle flared up like phosphorus. Magic landed on him at the same time, nearly sending him to his knees.

  The sudden panic at being buried by foreign magic almost caused Julius to throw it off with his own. He stopped the reflex just in time, clutching his magic tight and breathing through the pressure until it felt more like a wave than a landslide. When he was sure he could take it, he opened his eyes again to find Marci giving him a funny look.

  “Did you ever get tested to see if you could be a mage?” she asked, moving her hands through the air between them like she was conducting an invisible orchestra. Every time she moved, another line of the notation she’d written on the floor lit up, and the magic pulled tighter around him. The process felt uncomfortably like being tied up, and it took Julius several seconds before he got himself together enough to shake his head.

  “Maybe you should. You have a surprising amount of natural magic. Your curse seems to be warping it, though. I’ve never worked with magic that feels like yours.” She gave him a concerned look. “Are you sure you don’t want me to try breaking it? Because that can’t be healthy.”

  “Positive,” Julius said. Now that he’d felt Marci’s magic, he was more sure than ever that she couldn’t break his mother’s seal. Their magic was just too different, and trying would likely only end up with Marci getting hurt, not to mention blow his cover. That said, the seal was actually working out astonishingly in his favor right now. It was much easier to let Marci assume that his magic felt odd because of a curse and not because he wasn’t actually human.

  She didn’t look happy with his answer, but she didn’t press again. She just kept working until, at last, she lowered her hands, and Julius felt the magic lock around him like a buckle clicking into place. “All done,” she said with a proud smile. “What do you think?”

  Julius looked down… and saw he was exactly the same. “Um, did it work?”

  “Of course it worked,” Marci said. “If anyone looks at your magic, you’ll look like a rock. That’s what I made you, a stone shaman: flat, boring, and naturally silent. Will that do?”

  He blinked and looked again. He saw magic naturally as a dragon, s
o he’d never bothered learning how to do it as a human. It turned out to be surprisingly difficult, but if he squinted, he could just make out the haze of Marci’s magic hanging over his own like a golden curtain, and the more he looked at it, the more he saw that she was right. He did look like a rock.

  “I thought I’d go for a badger shaman, myself,” Marci said, motioning for him to step out of the circle. “Something nice and nasty no one will want to mess with.”

  As she bent down to rub out the end of the spellwork notation and rewrite it for herself, Julius stepped back a bit to focus on getting used to the weight of Marci’s illusion. To his surprise, it was actually fairly pleasant once he’d adjusted. Dragon spells tended to be as sharp as their fangs, but Marci’s magic was soft and thick, like a heavy blanket.

  He was just starting to settle into it when a flash of light caught his attention, and he looked up in time to see Marci lower her hands with a thrust that blasted the chalk circle at her feet into a cloud of dust. “There,” she said, turning around. “What do you think?”

  She didn’t look terribly different, but her short brown hair was now black with two white stripes, just like a badger. She’d also changed out her sparkly vest for an illusion of a long duster that looked decidedly homemade and replaced her boots with sandals that tied up her feet with rainbow ribbons. “I think the shoes are bit much.”

  “Then you clearly don’t hang out with many shamans,” she said, wiggling her toes, which were also rainbow-painted. “I’m positively sedate. Now let’s get out of here. We’re already ten minutes late.”

  Julius cursed under his breath. Between cats and ghosts and costuming, he’d completely lost track of time. Fortunately, Marci was ready to go in three minutes, though she insisted on stopping to lock the basement door behind them. This seemed pointless to Julius since the wooden door was so rotted he could have pulled the lock out with his hand, but when he saw the flare of a ward settling into place as she turned the key, her insistence on locking up suddenly made a lot more sense. It also made two wards of Marci’s he’d seen, counting the yellow tape, and he was ready to bet she had more he hadn’t noticed. This, in turn, made Julius wonder just how many thousands of dollars worth of magical work Marci had sunk into making her cat hole livable. It didn’t seem worth it to him, but then, he wasn’t in her situation. When magic was all you had, magic was what you used.