by D. R. Perry
“Stop playing and fight!” I threw a punch toward the creature to direct my magic. I wasn’t breaking any rules of the lamp to do it, either. This was the magic I’d grown up with—lightning. It struck, arcing over and around the golem in a blue and yellow honeycomb of lines and spaces.
Its surface rippled, the electricity jolting it. The pit of my stomach dropped when I remembered the Selkie in the water with it, but it was too late to take it back. It’d be too late for much of anything soon. If the golem devoured me with its acidic slime, I’d reform back in the lamp to grant Jeannie’s last two wishes. After that, I’d die. I stood, holding lightning in my hands so at least I’d go down fighting, and maybe even take it with me. And then I heard Jeannie.
“I wish for no one in this entire state to suffer a golem's harm from this moment forward!”
"I call on the Under to help me grant this wish!" I took a deep breath, knowing her attempted wish would be useless. Only one of the Monarchs could make a ban that big and include a construct so powerful.
“My debt to you is paid, Marquess Ismail.” The Goblin King stood between me and the golem. He snapped his fingers and the creature stopped, settling itself back in the lagoon. Whoever was controlling it mustn’t know what to do with it now.
“Debt?” I blinked at his back, noting that he still wore the same dusty brown hunting boots, gray riding pants, and purple leather vest over a frilly shirt as he’d done a hundred years ago. “I had no idea you owed me anything but a place in your Court.”
“Why, yes.” He smirked, tapping the leg of his boot with a riding crop. “Your mistress saved my favorite bard's life, although you couldn’t have known that at the time. That was the reason I gave him my favor, and the reason I can enable you to grant this shifter’s wish tonight.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” I bowed to him as I’d done in the Under after I’d tithed.
“I must warn you, Marquess. You’ll get no more direct help from me for the rest of the evening.” He flicked his long black hair over one shoulder. “I like this new you, Ismail. Fare thee well, and let your heart lead you.” With another snap of his fingers, he vanished much more neatly than I’d ever been able to do.
“Well, that was unexpected.” Maddie emerged from the shadowy corner, holding one end of a big duffel bag. A golden-skinned man in surf shorts held the other. He ran a hand through his slightly singed brown hair and resembled Kimiko so closely that I knew my magic hadn’t seriously injured the Selkie. They dropped articles of clothing near the other shifters so they’d have something to wear as they changed back. I saw what looked like a Sprite dashing toward the hole in the plate-glass window, then rubbed my eyes and looked again.
“That wasn’t really a Sprite I just saw?” I looked around for an answer. Jeannie headed over, wearing a pink sundress. I put my arm around her, but before either of us could say anything, someone else did. We walked together toward the string quartet.
“Good old Ismail, questioning everything no matter what’s happened.” Saul’s strained voice came from behind the Lightning shield I hadn’t dropped yet. I took it down and headed over to him.
“It’s too late for me to heal this, old friend.” I placed my hand on his leg.
“I’ll call an ambulance. This has pockets!” Jeannie grinned and pulled a phone out of the dress. Clearly, the bag was part of some preparation on the part of the Tinfoil Hat pack.
“Thank you.” The lines on Saul’s face lost some of their sharpness. “I know you can’t reverse it after this much time.” He was talking about the Gnomish magic that came with my lamp. One had lived in it before the Monarchs had split, so with a wish, I could have reversed the injury during the first five seconds after it took place. “But what will you do about the golem?”
“I’m not sure.” The thing was still in the middle of Water Place Park. Jeannie sat with Saul and the other two elderly musicians. Saul’s granddaughter was nowhere to be seen.
“Well, we have to do something about it.” Blaine Harcourt hobbled over, wearing a towel and leaning on Kimiko. “It’s draining Professor Watkins and the Headmistress every minute it stays there. Whoever sent it must have done a major group casting before with their help because they’re tapped into it. If we don’t tear that thing down fast, the two of them will die.”
“Does anyone happen to have an Air dragon they can call?” I stood and began pacing the exact dimensions of my lamp out of habit. “Because that was how we did it last time. It’s the only way without a Null Magus.”
“Well, no. We don’t have either of those.” Blaine shook his head, eyelids drooping. “Let me guess: my fiery halitosis won’t do it.”
“You’re in no condition to shift right now anyway.” Kimiko squeezed his hand. "It needs extreme cold, not an inferno."
“Perhaps I can be of service.” The vaguely familiar voice came from behind me.
Blaine jerked his head up, straining to try to stand up straight or otherwise look presentable. I recognized who’d just spoken.
“You’re the librarian.” I turned to look at the older man.
“Yes. Taki Waban is my name, and I am an ice dragon. Will that do?” His smile set his black eyes twinkling.
“Even better than Air.” I chuckled. “Wilfred had to use most of his strength to cool the golem enough for me to shatter it. With ice breath, it should go much quicker.”
He walked down the steps to the area in front of the lagoon. In dragon form, Taki Waban was black with a silvery sheen of frost on his scales. He was also bigger than Blaine, but serpentine and able to fit in tighter quarters as a result. He breathed on the golem, freezing it in seconds. I went as far as the second step on the stone staircase, then focused my magic again. My Lightning blast sent bits of it hurtling into the air and then back down to splatter into the water like an extremely localized rainstorm.
Right there, amidst all that confusion, Jeannie stood on the top step, placed her hands on my shoulders, and kissed me. I embraced her, running my hands up her back and then through her hair. She left me so breathless, I almost tumbled down the stairs. We grinned, not caring when some of the strange rain missed the water and fell on us and the patio, too.
“Whahappen?” Headmistress Thurston stirred, reaching out with her hands as though trying to grasp something. She bumped one foot into Neil Redford, who lay there groaning and clutching his head.
Professor Watkins didn’t move. Jeannie returned to my side. We sat and watched his chest barely rise and fall. I put my arm around her again. Kimiko turned the Luck on my lamp back in the right direction. The Redfords went home together. All the shifters got dressed. Maddie called back her shadows. We agreed to stay with the wounded.
When the ambulances got there, the EMEs did their triage. They rushed away with Saul Kazynski and the Headmistress but took their time with Professor Watkins.
“Do you know what that means?” I nodded at the response of the medical people.
“No, but there’s someone we can ask.” Jeannie got up and held a hand down to me. “Come on, Ismail. We’re supposed to meet Lynn about your descendants. It’s a pretty good walk, so we should start now.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jeannie
We got all the way up to Hope Street before he said anything, but Ismail let me hold his hand the entire way.
“You used one of your wishes to protect the entire state, Jeannie.” He didn’t stop walking or even turn his head to look at me. “Why is that?”
“Because I’m a bear. I might have grown up in Boston, but this is the place I picked for myself.” I shrugged. “So I won’t just leave things so some nutcase Extramagus can attack people with something like that whenever they want.”
“Did you know that I can see records of all the wishes made with my lamp?” We walked along in silence for almost a block because I was ashamed to give him the answer.
“No. Didn’t have any idea.” I forced a stiff chuckle. “Can you believe they’re letting
me graduate in a couple of weeks?”
“I doubt anything so complicated as the function of ancient Faerie artifacts was a required subject matter for your major.”
“Still, I feel downright ignorant after dealing with all this.” I sighed. “Like maybe I’m not ready.”
“Are we ever ready, though?” This time, he did look at me. “I graduated from college, tithed and spent my time in the Under. And I thought I was ready for everything. But I wasn’t. I still might not be.”
We turned the corner and walked along the long side of the lot Josh Dennison’s big giant historic house was situated on. I noticed the wrought-iron fencing had all been torn down. It sat in a pile near where Ismail stepped in front of me, stopping so we could finish this conversation before meeting the others.
“Okay, so what’s your point about readiness, then?” I put my hands on my hips. After doing all that work to bring Ismail out of his figurative and literal shell, I felt like I wanted to take a turn in one myself.
“The point is, whether you feel ready or not, you can’t stop.” He held his hands out in front of him, palms up at waist height. “You can’t run away, either, because the fear’s inside. It’ll just follow you wherever you go. So when you say you’re not ready, I say it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be ready, you only have to keep moving forward. You helped me learn that, Jeannie La Montagne. And that’s only one of the things I love about you.”
I dropped my hands off my hips, then reached out to take both of his. As our fingertips touched, a flare of light blinded me. All I could see was a slim silhouette of someone with what looked like a cane, but I was wrong about that last bit.
“Lovely speech. Excellent last words.” I’d never heard that voice before but I knew right away it was male. “I’ve finally gotten one over on you meddling kids, and I didn’t even have to use a spell to do it.”
The part of the figure I’d mistaken for a cane turned out to be one of the iron spikes. I realized that when the bloody end of it protruded from Ismail’s chest. I stared at the figure again, but it vanished with the light. Spots and shapes danced in front of my eyes, and my stomach fell like an elevator with a severed cable. I sank to the ground holding Ismail and screaming.
“I wish this never happened!” My tears wet Ismail’s face along with the blood at the corner of his mouth.
“Your wish, my command.” He smiled and closed his eyes. I couldn’t look away. The bloody tinge around his teeth turned pink, then vanished. I heard a metallic clang and turned my head to see the fence post drop back on top of the pile with the rest. When I looked back, every trace of the fatal wound was gone. The only way I knew it hadn’t just been my imagination was the fact that we were both on the sidewalk instead of standing.
“Oh, no.” I put my hands on my cheeks, head rushing with the gravity of my mistake. “Oh, now I’ve done it.”
“Done what?”
“Trapped you in that lamp forever. And after we’ve gone and fallen in love.” I sniffled. Couldn’t help it. The Extramagus had probably wanted me to watch Ismail die, but watching him lose his freedom forever because of me was almost as bad.
“We still have one hour before I’m trapped forever.” Ismail got up and dusted himself off. It was his turn to give me a hand up, like I’d done for him back at Water Place Park. “It’s not over yet. Let’s see what your friend has for us.”
“Which friend?” Josh Dennison looked from me to Ismail and back again. “You’ve got about ten of them up there at the house. And what was that light? Wait, never mind. Tell me up there because they’ll all want to know, and it’s no fun repeating a story that many times.”
We followed him to the basement. Everyone was there. Ismail stopped on the threshold. I realized that not even the Ball had been this crowded. At least there, we’d been under an open sky. Here, every seat was taken, and every surface in use somehow, from drinks on the bar to a study station set up on a board atop the billiards table.
“You okay?”
“I used Gnomish powers from my lamp to time reverse an iron bar through my gut, and you ask if I’m okay walking into a crowded room.” Ismail’s chuckle was tiny and soft, but still there.
“I just wanted to be sure you could handle it.”
“Of course. I’m with you.”
Josh cleared his throat three times before the room quieted down enough for Ismail and me to tell them all what had happened on the sidewalk just over the Dennison property line. When we finished, I counted to three before the room erupted in outrage.
“—actually did that to a Djinn!”
“—timey-wimey mojo or he’d be—”
“Who even uses iron bars anymore, I mean seriously…”
“—drop flaming fewmets on his head!”
“—sure it’s a dude now, thank Lady Luck.”
“—should check him for iron fragments anyway—”
“Leaping Luna!”
“—liverwurst sandwich down his throat and pitch him headfirst into the Under!”
“And after the Goblin King showed up…”
“—just glad he’s alive.”
It all stopped when a sound like a gunshot rang out through the room. Everyone turned to look. Tony Gitano stood holding a broken pool cue and quivering with anger. I wondered how breaking a stick could have sounded remotely like a shotgun. Before I could figure it out, he spat two words.
“Shut. Up.” The thinner end of the cue dropped out of Tony’s right hand. He hefted the larger in his left, flipping it so he held the jagged end in his palm. “You all are forgetting something.” He pointed the cue at me. “Miss Perfect here just sent her boyfriend up Shit Creek without a paddle and you’re all acting like a typical bunch of spooked Millenials. Cut. It. Out!” He hit a barstool, a chair, and the pool table with each word.
“So, what do you think we should do then, Tony?” Even leaning against the bar, Josh’s entire stance dripped authority.
“Actually solve some problems for once. Oh, and maybe quit freaking out and slacking off.”
“Hey!” Lynn stared daggers and Tony sure as Hell felt it.
“I wasn’t talking about you, Frampton.” Tony waved his free hand in her general direction. “I may not like your nosy methods, but you’re the only one besides me who isn’t too scared or lazy to do something constructive.”
“Shut up, Puss-In-Converse!” The smoke around Blaine’s head looked like Mount St. Helen’s. “You have no right to tell me how to act. You haven’t lost anyone!”
“Exactly. My. Point.” He slapped the pool cue against his hand this time. “And none of you have any idea what I’ve been doing.”
“You keep mentioning a point, Tony, so get to it.” Josh thrummed his fingertips on the top of the bar. I saw that an empty beer bottle was in easy reach of his free hand.
“You all gotta do more than what you have been.” He turned his back on Josh, “Here’s the list of casualties so far, in case you haven’t been keeping track. Two vampires, killed by the Grim. Professor Brodsky’s sanity. Wilfred Harcourt, who should have been immortal. Kazynski’s hip. Ismail’s freedom. Professor Watkins.”
“Wait, what?” Lynn blinked back tears. My own eyes stung, too.
“No!” Nox stood up. “That can’t be true.”
“I’ve been monitoring CB all night because I’m not fooling around here.” Tony tapped the Bluetooth earpiece he always wore. “He’s in a vegetative state. Brodsky’s trial is this fall. If we can get more dirt on the Extramagus than that he’s got cajones instead of teats, that’s evidence. We could undo a little of the damage, at least, and prevent that slippery twit from killing anyone else.”
“Granted.” Josh nodded at Tony. “We’ll step things up. Exams are almost over, and we’re all free this summer. But what’s this about Ismail’s freedom? I thought our brainiac was on that.”
“There isn’t anyone.” Lynn sighed, resting her head in her hands. “Ismail’s only living relative is a
shifter. Unless someone has a pure Faerie in their pocket, the Extramagus won on that front.”
“Wait a minute.” Henry smiled, which was like someone jumping out of a box at the Factory of Terror haunted house up in Fall River. Vampires got their blood from hospitals and Henry Baxter took pains to be sure he was well-fed at all times, but his fangs were still pretty unsettling. What he said next made me think he looked like an angel. “I actually have one of those.”
“You don’t mean Gee Nome?” Ren Ichiro shook his head. “There’s no way Gee’d agree to live in a lamp forever. They like sneaking around too much.”
“And it would definitely be forever, too, if a pure Faerie took my place.” Ismail sighed. “They don’t technically have relatives, so there’s no way out unless both Monarchs agree to release them.”
“No, not Gee. Ren’s right, and besides, I like having that Gnome around.” Henry chuckled. Maddie rushed to his side and hugged him.
“Oh, Henry, it’s the perfect idea!” She bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, her wide, bright smile gleaming out from the dusky skin of her face. Maddie May was easily the happiest looking Goth girl I’d ever seen.
“Hoo, boy.” Olivia’s excitement got swallowed by her yawn. “ The Spite. I mean, the ex-Spite. I mean the Sprite, they’re a Sprite now, right? The one hiding from the Queen?”
“Yup.” Henry grinned this time, more aware now of the effect his smile had on the rest of the room. "I’ll call them. Even gave them a name so we wouldn’t have to say ‘hey, you.’ Hey, Sparky,” he called, “come out and have a chat with me.”
A spindly-limbed creature crawled out from under the billiards table. They had tawny skin and wore what looked like one of Josh’s old PPC Security t-shirts, altered to fit. Two holes in the back let their wings out, but everyone could see the Sprite couldn’t exactly fly anymore. The poor thing had only ragged tatters left where the delicate membranes of nearly transparent skin should have been. The Sprite held an ornately carved wooden box under one arm.