by Rachel Aaron
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Sober me would have noticed the warning in his voice and bailed, but drunk me plowed right on ahead. “Because Shamans aren’t real mages.”
I knew I’d stepped in it the moment the words were out of my mouth. “You know I’m a Shaman, right?” Peter said in a sharp, very un-Peter-like voice.
“Crap,” I breathed, covering my face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“No, you did,” Peter said, calling me on it. “But I’m not surprised. I’ve seen you do magic plenty of times. You’re a textbook-trained Thaumaturge. Those don’t generally think well of Shamanic practice.”
Considering I’d been taught that “Shamanic practice” was just another name for the lunacy people invented because they couldn’t handle the logic of real magic, that was putting it mildly. Seriously, though. With the sole exception of Peter, every self-proclaimed “Shaman” I’d ever met had been one step above street-corner psychic. They didn’t even use spellwork. They just threw magic around willy-nilly. And yeah, I threw it around too, but I was an admittedly bad mage. I knew I was doing it wrong. Shamans claimed their lack of proper casting protocol was due to a superior understanding of the nature of magic, which was just nonsense.
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” I said carefully, trying my best to be tactful without being dishonest. “I’m happy Shamanic magic works for you, but it’s not for me.”
“How do you know?” Peter pressed. “Have you ever tried it?”
Of course not, because I wasn’t delusional. Shamanism might have been popular sixty years ago when magic was still new and people didn’t know any better, but these days it was in the same boat as healing crystals and past-life regression. I didn’t have money to spend on a real doctor. There was no way in hell I was going to Peter’s faith healer, no matter how highly he recommended her.
But while my mind was made up, bickering over magical styles was not how I wanted to end what had otherwise been a very good night. Peter must have been tired of it as well, because when I opened my mouth, he put up his hands.
“Just promise me you’ll do something,” he pleaded. “I don’t know how you’re able to be out and about with your magic in that state. I hurt just looking at you.”
“It’s really not that bad,” I assured him. “I mean, it does hurt a lot, but I’ve already been to two curse breakers, and they both said my magic would heal on its own if I let it rest.”
I didn’t realize what I’d said until Peter’s eyebrows shot up. “Why did you go to curse breakers?”
Damn. Damn damn damn. Stupid alcohol. “It’s nothing.”
Peter crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m starting to wonder what your definition of ‘something’ is if a curse and your wrecked magic both count as ‘nothing.’”
“All right, it’s not nothing,” I said angrily. “But there is nothing I can do about it. Neither of the curse breakers I went to could crack this thing, so I’m just going to have to be stuck.”
“Want me to try?”
My head jerked up. “You’d do that?”
“Sure,” he said, smiling. “You’re a friend. Also, my god has a good opinion of you. That opens a lot of doors.”
The Empty Wind’s help was an angle I hadn’t considered, but I still shook my head. “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think this is something human or spirit magic can handle. I was cursed by a dragon, so it’s going to take a dragon to get it off.”
Now Peter just looked impressed. “How do you get cursed by a dragon?”
“Just lucky, I guess,” I said, dodging the question, but I should have known better. Like most mortals who didn’t have to live with the scaly bastards, Peter’s eyes had lit up the moment I said the word “dragon.”
“Can I see it?” he asked excitedly. “I don’t want to pry, it’s just that I’ve never seen dragon magic up close, so…”
He trailed off with a hopeful smile. I wasn’t nearly as eager, but I didn’t see how he could do any harm, and this felt like a great way to make up for my foot-in-mouth Shaman comment earlier, so I held out my arm. “Knock yourself out.”
Peter grabbed my hand with both of his, folding my fingers between his palms as he closed his eyes. I watched him intently, because while I was thoroughly over dragon magic, I’d never seen a priest cast. It didn’t look like much, to be honest. There was no howling grave-wind or moans of the dead, but my arm did get terribly cold. I was shivering by the time he let go, which wasn’t actually a bad change of pace considering how hot it was tonight. Peter, however, looked very grim.
“That is quite the curse,” he said, impressed.
“Tell me about it,” I grumbled.
“What does it do?”
“So far as I can tell, it makes me have bad luck,” I replied. “With money, specifically. That’s why I teamed up with Nik. He’s doing all of my buying and selling to help me get around it.”
Peter frowned thoughtfully. “Is that working?’
I started to nod. Then I shook my head. “Not really.”
“I didn’t think it would,” he said. “Bringing another person into a curse almost never helps.”
“What do you mean?” Because I’d never heard that.
“It’s too obvious,” he explained authoritatively. “If you’re going to go through all the trouble and danger of putting a curse on someone, you’re not going to leave any easy outs. A good curse thinks several moves ahead and has built-in blocks for all the obvious counters. If the target can just change their behavior to avoid the intended effect, then you took all that risk for nothing.”
I looked at him in awe. “You seem to know a lot about this.”
“I wasn’t always a priest,” Peter said with a shrug. “You’re not the only person with a prejudice against Shamans, and curses are good money if you can’t find other work. I did a lot of magic I’m not proud of in my youth. Fortunately for me, the Empty Wind has a soft spot for lost souls even before they die, so I didn’t go too far down the wrong path.”
“Hey, man,” I said, putting up my hands. “I’m the last person who’ll ever fault you for doing what you had to do.” Especially considering what I’d done with Dr. Lyle’s hand. “But I actually think this is great. Those other two curse breakers were just people I found online. I have no idea if they were actually good other than their positive customer reviews, but I know you’re solid. Can you help me with this thing?”
“I can’t take it off,” he said apologetically. “I couldn’t even see the spell until you told me it was there. The magic’s just too different.”
I sighed. That was the same thing the others had said, but Peter’s words still gave me hope. “That’s okay,” I told him. “I’ve given up on getting out of it, but I’m interested in what you said about counters. If cursing someone requires the caster to think several steps ahead, that implies there are ways to get around curses without breaking them. Otherwise, why would you need to build in blocks? Could there be something like that in my curse? You know, a loophole?” Because if there was, I was going to abuse the hell out of it.
Peter took my hand again, his freezing magic fluttering over mine as he probed my dad’s spell. Now that I knew what to look for, I could actually feel the curse twitch when he touched it, the fang-sharp magic hissing like a viper. It happened a few more times, and then Peter let me go with a sigh.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
I sighed in defeat. “Thanks for trying.”
“Just because I can’t find it doesn’t mean there isn’t one,” he said quickly. “I can’t see any exploits because dragon magic isn’t human magic, but curses are still just spells. Dragons are incredibly powerful, far more so than any human, but if they actually had the ability to doom someone forever with no limits, all the powerful people in the world would be under their control, and humanity would have been herded into feed pens centuries ago.”
That was
a very good point. “So you think there’s a way around?”
“There would have to be,” Peter replied. “No matter how sophisticated or complex you make it, there’s no such thing as a perfect spell. Even a dragon can’t think of everything, right?”
Absolutely not. That was how I’d tricked my dad into agreeing to my debt plan in the first place. I’d abused his pride and his preconceptions about my abilities to make him assume I was going one way, and then I’d done something totally different. There was no reason I couldn’t do that again. Honestly, I was ashamed I hadn’t thought to try before now. Specific knowledge of curses aside, what Peter was saying was nothing new. I’d gone to college for magic. I knew damn well that all spells had restrictions. Hell, even Nik had realized that when he’d suggested we work together. Why was I the only one who hadn’t thought of this?
The answer was immediate and damning: I hadn’t found a way around the curse because I’d never actually looked. I’d fallen back into the same trap I always did of thinking my dad was infallible, an all-knowing, supernaturally superior foe that I had no hope of defeating.
In my defense, he was a two-thousand-year-old dragon I’d been raised to look up to as a god. That said, if my dad was really as unbeatable as he appeared, he wouldn’t have needed to curse me in the first place. He’d only resorted to magic because I’d gotten so close to the finish line that he’d had to cheat and trip me. But that was all this was: a stumble, a blip. If I could just figure out how to get up again, I could get back in the race and win. The freedom I’d connived for was still there, still in reach. I just had to grab it.
“What do I do?”
Peter considered the question for a moment. “I’d say your first step is to figure out exactly how the curse works. You said it makes you unlucky with money, but what mechanisms does it use to achieve that result? Does it trick you into buying bad units? Do the things you try to sell inexplicably break? Does it sabotage your attempts to find good buyers? How does the magic actually take your money away?”
“I…I don’t know,” I said, cheeks flushing as I realized just how little thought I’d put into this. Everything Peter had mentioned had happened at some point, but I didn’t know which ones were the curse and which were just the normal downs of a famously up-and-down job.
“Well, my advice is to find out,” Peter said when I explained this. “Thaumaturges treat magic like science, right? So get scientific. Do some experiments, pin down exactly how this thing functions.” He smiled at me. “I know you’re no stranger to getting around the rules. Once you know what you’re up against, I’d bet money you’ll find a way to break it.”
I perked up. “How much money?”
“Nice try,” he said, laughing. “Take it as a sign of my faith that I’m not willing to risk even my meager salary betting against you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said with a grin. Then I smiled even wider. “Thanks for everything, Peter. You’ve been a huge help.”
“I live to give comfort to others,” Peter said serenely. “Usually to the dead, but I take the living when I can get them. And speaking of living, do you need help getting home?”
It was very kind of him to offer. Given how drunk I was, I probably should have taken him up on it. If I let Peter escort me home, though, politeness demanded that I invite him up, and I really didn’t want him to see what my mom had done to my apartment. I’d die if he thought the reason I was broke all the time was because I wasted my money on stupid white furniture, so I told him I’d be fine, and we said our goodbyes, both getting into separate auto-cabs from the long line that was always waiting at the bottom of the Corkscrew.
The moment I shut my door, I called Nik.
As always when I called him, he picked up by the second ring, his voice sharp and gruff over the speaker. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said excitedly. “Believe it or not, things might actually be going right! Are you busy?”
“I am.”
My soaring hopes plummeted. “Oh.”
“But that doesn’t mean I can’t get unbusy,” he said quickly. “What’s up?”
“I need your help with an experiment,” I said, reeling from the ups and downs. “Peter gave me an idea for a new angle on my curse, and I want to try it out.”
“Right now?”
“It’s only nine,” I said flippantly. “That’s just getting started for a Saturday night! And there’s no auctions on Sunday, so we’ve got tomorrow off.”
“You’ve got tomorrow off,” he grumbled. But then, just when I was sure he was about to tell me to go to bed, Nik said, “Where should I meet you?”
I broke into a triumphant grin. “Can you pick me up at my place?”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
I nodded excitedly at the phone, which was stupid because he couldn’t see me. But hey, drunk. “Meet you out front.”
Nik made an affirmative noise and hung up, leaving me free to close my eyes and dream of all the ways I was going to stick it to my dad.
Chapter 3
When Nik’s sleek black sports car pulled into my apartment’s parking lot exactly fifteen minutes later, I was ready and waiting at the curb with a giant black trash bag slung over my shoulder like a low-rent Santa Claus. I jumped in the moment he rolled to a stop. Since he normally started driving again the second I sat down, the first thing I did after tossing my bag into the back was slam the door and buckle my seat belt. I was still pretty drunk, so it took me a few tries to get the metal clip into the buckle. By the time I got the belt arranged over my chest so it wasn’t strangling me, though, we were still idling at the curb. When I looked over to see why we hadn’t moved, Nik was staring at me as if I was a stranger who’d gotten into the wrong car.
“What?” I asked nervously.
Nik didn’t reply. He just kept staring, his face caught somewhere between shock and wonder. It was weird behavior even for him, and I waved my hand in front of his eyes. “Are you okay?”
He jumped, head whipping around as he started us forward, but his eyes kept drifting back to me.
“Is that for Peter?”
“Is what for Peter?”
“That,” he said, waving his gloved hand in the general direction of my body. “I thought you were going out to dinner. Why do you look like you just got back from a wedding?”
“What are you talking—Oh!” I looked down at my designer duds, which I’d completely forgotten about in my excitement. “This isn’t—I mean, I did wear this to dinner, but not on purpose. I’m only dressed this way because my mom threw out all my other clothes.”
It was hard to tell in the dark car, but I would have sworn Nik looked relieved. “So you’re not wearing that for Peter?”
“Pfft, no way.” I plucked distastefully at my ruffled raw-silk top. “The yacht-club-wife look is soooooo not my style. Even if it was, I’d never wear it down here. Do you know how stressful it is to wear high-maintenance fabrics in the Underground?”
“You do look like you’re auditioning for a chance to get mugged,” Nik agreed, looking me over one last time before finally turning his attention to the road. “You look nice, though.”
I smiled in surprise. “Thanks.”
“Not that you don’t look nice usually,” Nik added quickly, looking so determinedly forward you’d think he’d added a steel bar for his neck to all his other cyberware. “I’ve just never seen you with makeup and stuff before. It makes you look different. You know, fancy.”
I’d better look fancy considering I was wearing more than a thousand bucks’ worth of designer clothing and a full face of product, but I told myself to shut up and enjoy the compliment. Nik wasn’t the sort who said things just to be polite. If he told me I looked nice, he meant it, and that made me happy. After my mother’s reminder of just how abysmally I failed to meet expectations, it was nice to know that Nik at least thought I made the cut.
“So,” he said, clear
ing his throat. “What are we doing that couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”
“Experiments!” I said excitedly, reaching back to open the trash bag so he could see all the clothes I’d stuffed inside. “I want to pin down exactly how the bad luck in my curse works. I decided to start with clothes since designer labels are always reliable sellers.”
I grabbed my phone out of my purse, fumbling it into my lap before I managed to bring up the spreadsheet I’d thrown together while I was waiting for Nik.
“I’ve made a list of what I think all this stuff should be worth given the prices things are going for online,” I said, leaning over so he could see the screen as well. “If I compare those prices to what I actually get tonight, I should be able to figure out exactly how much my curse is costing me. Going by what I’ve experienced over the last five months, I hypothesize that the curse sinks my profits by twenty to thirty percent, but what I’m really interested in is how it sinks them. Will I just get a bunch of bad sales? Will I trip and drop all my clothes in a puddle? That kind of thing. I also want to try having you sell stuff for me to see if that lessens the effect.”
I glanced up to make sure Nik was following all of this only to find him staring at me again. This time, though, he looked as if he was trying very hard not to laugh.
“Are you drunk?”
“Well, yeah,” I said, shoving my hair—which was so glossy it refused to stay properly put behind my ears—out of my face. “But that doesn’t mean this isn’t a good idea! We’ve been trying to get around my stupid curse all week. But while it’s obvious that something’s happening, since I’ve been actually making money with you, I have no idea what or why. There’s just too many variables involved when you’re Cleaning a unit, but reselling clothing is a simple goods-for-money transaction. There’s not too many ways bad luck can screw that up, so if we do it over and over and over again, a pattern will have to emerge. Once we know exactly how my bad luck functions, we can figure out a way to avoid it, and I can go back to making money again!”
I finished with a flourish, but Nik still looked skeptical. “Do you really need to do all this? You just said you were making money with me.”