SPELL TO UNBIND, A

by Laurie, Victoria

  And yes, I’d just taken advantage of Tic’s binding spell, and also only referred to him by the insensitive moniker which might also mark me as someone cruel, but I can assure you, I won the knowledge and language of Tic’s binding fair and square in a poker game where he’d known exactly what the stakes had been. He would’ve been no less cruel to me had the tables been turned.

  “You know what I want,” I said to him.

  His head gave an involuntary jerk and he closed his eyes for a moment, frustration and anger written all over his features. “We need to talk about the terms,” he said, opening his eyes again.

  I shrugged. “I’m working for Elric now, Tic. I’ve got nothing to offer you.”

  “Then give the counterspell!”

  “Sorry, can’t do that. You have information I want.”

  “This is beyond the pale, Esmé. You can’t do this to me!”

  “Ah, but I can. And you knew that I would someday when you set the terms, played the game, and lost.”

  “I still think you cheated,” he said, his eyes narrowing.

  I shrugged again. “I didn’t, but you would completely ignore the fact that we played the game in Madame Solange’s parlor, which made cheating impossible.”

  “I had an unbeatable hand!”

  “Au contraire. You had a hand that was beatable by only one other. Royal flush beats straight flush every time, my friend.”

  Tic’s right cheek began to twitch along with his eye, and a vein in his temple throbbed with the effort to both keep his cool and control the tics. “You’ve taken advantage of me.”

  “Of course I have. As would you if you’d learned my binding spell that night.”

  Tic glared at me for several more seconds, and I arched an eyebrow expectantly.

  But he continued to stand stubbornly mute, so I took it to the next level. “Time’s a-wastin’, Tic. Tick-tock, tick-tock, big hand ticks one more tock.”

  As I lit up Tic with the spell again, he made a sound deep in his throat right before his left leg gave a small involuntary jerk. “Stop it!”

  “Tell me what I want to know,” I said, standing casually and crossing my arms.

  Tic clenched his teeth and curled his hands into fists. He wanted to kill me, I could tell, but he wasn’t sure he could take me on and win, and that doubt was revealed in his eyes. There was also the troublesome problem that if he didn’t manage to kill me and survived my counterattack, if I got away without releasing him from the tics, he’d essentially be sentencing himself to a long, slow, agonizing death.

  “If I have to ask again,” I warned, “I’ll increase the spell tenfold before I leave the park.”

  A little color drained from Tic’s face. “That would kill me.”

  “I’m sure it would.”

  After just another moment’s consideration, Tic finally said, “414 Wolfe Street. In Old Town.”

  A slight smile tugged at my lips. “And what else?”

  Tic’s face flushed with anger again. “No. Absolutely not! Not before you agree to compensate me!”

  “I won’t be fencing the egg, Tic. There’ll be nothing to compensate you with.”

  Tic’s face reddened with rage. “Elric always gives his new thieves considerable signing bonuses. That’s the least you owe me for the information.”

  “Bold words for someone in no position to take advantage and make bargains.”

  “I’m not the one taking advantage, Esmé. You know what that egg is worth. Any of my other contacts would pay me part of the cut.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “But how many of them know your binding spell?”

  He ground his teeth together and glared at me for all he was worth. “I wish I’d known you were applying for a job with Elric. I would’ve told Jacquelyn to use her blue dragon over that lazy ruby-throated one.”

  I smiled wickedly. So Tic was privy to more details than even I’d assumed. And he was right; if Jacquelyn had unleashed her blue at me, I likely wouldn’t have made it out of the room.

  I clapped him hard on the back. “It’s nice to know you were rooting for me, you spiteful toad.”

  He jerked away and rubbed the spot where I’d just whacked him. “When it comes to Elric adding to his despicable forces, I always root for the dragon, you negligibly talented hag.”

  I inhaled a deep breath and considered him. We could stand here all day and trade insults or I could try to find a way to compromise with the little turd. “This isn’t getting either of us anywhere. Let’s negotiate.”

  Tic clenched his right fist, attempting to stop the tremors that were slowly inching their way across his whole hand. “You first,” he said.

  “Fine. Stop the clock by one tick-tock.”

  Tic sucked in a breath of surprise, and the jerking emanating from his leg abruptly halted. The other tics remained, however.

  Shaking out his leg a little, he said, “Thank you, Esmé.” But then he remained stubbornly silent again.

  “You have ten seconds before I reverse that effect and add ten more,” I warned. I wasn’t playing. My life depended on Tic’s information being both accurate and forthcoming.

  “It’s not fair that you should reap all the benefits and I end up with nothing,” he complained. “All I ask is for some minor compensation. That’s not unreasonable, given the value of the information I’m passing on to you.”

  I hated to admit it, but he was absolutely right. While I didn’t have any available cash to offer him, I did have something I knew Tic might consider valuable. “Okay,” I said, reaching into the folds of my leather jacket to pull out a brown feather, the end of which was tipped in red.

  Tic’s eyes widened. “Is that …”

  “It is.” The feather was a trinket I’d picked up only the week before. It wasn’t an especially powerful trinket in that it really only worked on the unbound, but it allowed the bearer to scrawl a signature at the bottom of any contract and have it accepted as valid. Mostly it was intended to be used to sign forged checks, and I’d considered using it to sign away the debt on my mortgage, but it was actually more valuable if I traded it to Tic for the information he held. With it, Tic could walk into any bank run by mortals and withdraw as much as he liked as often as he wanted and, using another trinket I knew he possessed, obscure his features for the security cameras.

  The quill had twenty-six uses still in play before it ran out of juice, enough for Tic to get by for a nice stretch.

  Giving it up wasn’t especially hard, because while my own morals were a bit loose by mortal standards, I hadn’t yet needed to use the quill, although I wouldn’t have hesitated if things had gotten desperate before I was granted the interview with SPL.

  My informant’s head jerked involuntarily as the tic that’d begun under his eye continued to spread, only his attention was so focused on the feather that he didn’t even seem to notice. “I accept,” he said greedily. “Grigori takes his tea every Wednesday at noon in the Empress Lounge. He meets a group of friends for a boisterous game of Durak.”

  “Durak?”

  Tic pulled his gaze away from the feather to consider me with a petulant look. “It’s a Russian card game. Grigori is very good, but not quite as good as I am.”

  “Ahhhh,” I said, suddenly understanding how it was that Tic had come to discover Grigori’s whereabouts in the first place. No doubt the long-sought-after Russian had no idea he’d been found out. Tic played the fool very well. He was constantly being underestimated.

  “How long will he be at the card game?” I asked. I’d need time to search Grigori’s residence thoroughly.

  “At least an hour. The commute will add forty minutes each way.”

  “You’re sure he doesn’t carry the egg on his person?”

  “I’m not sure at all,” Tic said. “He very well could, and if he does, you’ll never get it away from him unless you kill him, which, as you know from your Russian history lessons, is next to impossible.”

  That was
true enough. Grigori Rasputin had evaded death at the hands of the tsar’s cousin at least four times, possibly five, all because of a certain enchanted Fabergé egg given to him by the tsarina herself. She probably couldn’t have guessed that she’d one day have a desperate need for it when her entire family was brutally executed. Had she simply held onto it, she could’ve lived, and brought back to life her loved ones.

  That was the power of Grigori’s egg. It gave the holder a second chance—even twenty-four hours after death, it had the power to bring one back to life fully restored, no matter how grave the injuries.

  The egg was similar to Ember in its power to heal, but unlike her, the egg had its limits. If a person had been dead longer than twenty-four hours it wouldn’t work, and if the egg reached the end of twelve uses, it would crumble into small bits of useless shell.

  The merlin Fabergé had created the charmed trinket in the early 1900s, and had always intended for it to go to the Russian royal family, whom he greatly admired, but they were quite mortal, and the tsarina had received the charmed relic without knowing anything about how to use it, although of course she knew of its mystical powers. She had been one of the few thousand mortals in the world privy to mystics and our magic, and it was likely she was brought into the fold only because she was royalty.

  To assist her, Fabergé had introduced her to a fellow mystic who was down on his luck at the time, none other than Grigori Rasputin. And he did in fact help the tsarina by using the egg twice to save the life of little Alexi.

  However, shortly after that, the tsarina became convinced that her son was fully cured of his “royal disease”—hemophilia—and in gratitude she’d offered the precious egg to Rasputin. It was largely believed that Grigori had knowingly deceived the tsarina about the state of her son’s health, something for which Fabergé never forgave him. Meanwhile, relatives of the tsar plotted to do away with the meddling mystic and attempted to kill him a few times over. Each time Grigori rose from the dead, ultimately fleeing the country.

  Just months later, the tsar, tsarina, and all five of their children were summarily executed, while Grigori Rasputin slid into exile and anonymity, taking all knowledge of the egg’s whereabouts and available offerings with him.

  So at most, the egg, if it hadn’t already been used up, had five or six offerings left before it could never be used again. And even if it had only one offering left, it would’ve been unthinkable for Grigori to leave the egg behind whenever he left his house.

  Then again, traveling around D.C. with an enchantment that powerful in a city ruled by arguably the two most powerful mystics in the world could also be quite reckless. But then I had to consider that the egg might be too precious for him to take into the city and risk being mugged by a fellow mystic—I was certain the man could more than hold his own against an unbound, but that egg was incredibly valuable on the mystic black market. Any mystic thief wouldn’t think twice about using violence to obtain it.

  Well, except maybe me. I draw the line at physically attacking someone for their magical charms. If I’m attacked first, all bets are off, but I prefer to poach my trinkets honestly—from behind, when no one’s looking.

  And I had to wonder again what had brought Rasputin to the US, and to this city specifically, in the first place. He was certainly tempting fate by being here. Everyone knew he possessed the egg, and I was sure that Elric and Petra had been hunting Europe for him for a hundred years, which gave me a bit of pause.

  “You’re sure you’ve identified him?” I pressed. The last thing I needed was for Tic’s information to come up false. “The Grigori Rasputin?”

  “Positive,” he said confidently, adding, “Although Grigori doesn’t remember it, I met him in 1915 when my father was invited to stay with the tsar and tsarina on our way back to Italy from Prussia. Of course I was only seven at the time, so it’s not surprising he doesn’t recognize me, but I remember the crescent scar on the side of his thumb, which he told me he got when he’d been a lad about my age. He said he’d gotten it when a parrot his mother kept as a pet bit him and nearly broke the bone. He told me that his mother had refused to get rid the bird, claiming she preferred the company of the parrot over that of her children. As you can imagine, I could relate to that.”

  I studied Tic curiously. It was sometimes easy to forget how difficult it’d been for him growing up. Everyone knew about the time, in a jealous rage, his mother had murdered his father right in front of their young son. Petra had then brought Tic to the US and had forced him to live in a place where his life was constantly threatened by her estranged husband, Elric, who wouldn’t hesitate to kill Tic—if he could avoid a war in doing so, that is. Meanwhile Petra appeared to relish dangling her bastard son right under Elric’s nose. Never mind how her son felt about it.

  Petra was a serious bitch.

  Tucking the feather back into my jacket, I heard Tic click his tongue in irritation. “Relax,” I said. “Once I recover the egg, you’ll get the feather.” And then as a show of good faith I added, “Stop the clock by one tick-tock.”

  A slight sigh passed Tic’s lips as the tremor moving up his arm subsided. “It should be mine for simply giving you the information, Esmé,” he said stubbornly. “Why do I have to rely on your thieving skills to get paid?”

  “Because I don’t trust you, Marco,” I said, using his given name and trying to make peace.

  He didn’t appear mollified. He glared at me angrily, but what could he do? I had him at a serious disadvantage, and he knew it. “Fine,” he groused. “Enter through the smallest window at the rear of the house. That’s a bathroom. Grigori has a fetish for goulash, but his bowels don’t handle it well. That bathroom window is nearly always open at least a crack.”

  “Got it,” I said. “I should be finished by four o’clock.”

  Tic’s eyes widened. “You can’t leave me like this all afternoon!”

  I considered that. “Stop the clock by one tick-tock.”

  Tic sighed in relief, shaking out his hand before pointing to his face. “Thank you. Now how about this last one as a show of good faith?”

  I laughed lightly. “No deal. And if your info comes back as false or you sent me into some kind of a deathtrap, then know you’ll be signing your own death warrant.”

  “I’m aware of the consequences,” he snapped. “And my information is accurate, but I shouldn’t be held responsible for whatever mess you blunder into. Grigori’s house will have an assortment of enchantments standing guard. If you step into one of his traps, why should I end up paying for it?”

  “Sorry,” I said without an ounce of sympathy. “That’s just how this has to play out today, Tic. If I let you go, you could head to your mother, and she’d send an army of minions to cut me off at the pass.”

  “I could’ve gone straight to Mommy Dearest with my intel, Esmé, but instead I sent word to you.”

  “True, but she wouldn’t have given you a thing for the info, and that’s the real reason you came to me first.”

  “I’m still not getting anything for it.”

  “You’ll get the quill, Marco. I promise. As long as I get the egg.”

  “This is the worst deal I’ve ever struck.”

  I gave him a much friendlier pat on the back this time. “Buck up, little camper. The day is still young. There might be time to strike up a worse deal before the sun sets.”

  Tic stared furiously at me, and the tic under his eye was now taking command of his cheek muscle. “I hate you, Esmé Bellerose.”

  “Aww, and here I thought we were gonna be besties.”

  For a long moment we simply stared hard at each other, but then Tic said, “You’ll need to remove the last tic no later than four o’clock.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said with a lazy wave of my hand. “Where can I find you? Here?”

  “I’ll leave word with that goon you insist on keeping company with,” he said.

  I eyed Tic curiously. “You’ve got his number?”<
br />
  Tic snickered. “We’re friends on Facebook.”

  That actually gave me a chuckle. No mystic would ever risk having a profile on social media, because no mystic would ever allow any of their personal thoughts or information anywhere they believed another mystic could easily access it. In the mystic world, personal information was power, which again made me wonder how Tic planned on getting ahold of Dex. I wanted to press him on it, but then I realized I didn’t really care. By four o’clock, Tic was going to be a mess of misfiring synapses. He’d be lucky to get his fingers to work well enough to send a text message, let alone speak into a phone. If he wanted to keep me in the dark about his whereabouts until then … fine. It was his risk to take.

  “Have it your way,” I said, turning away.

  “Wait!” Tic called.

  “No time,” I told him, quickening my pace to an easy jog.

  “I’ll be here, Esmé!”

  I waved casually over my shoulder, but there was a slight smirk on my face.

  I’d left him with one tic, which would grow in magnitude over the course of the next few hours. It was the only way to ensure that he wasn’t sending me into a trap.

  Of course, Grigori Rasputin’s home was guaranteed to be loaded with traps, but I didn’t need any extra set out just for sweet little ol’ me.

  Heading to the car, I glanced at the clock on my dash. I had just enough time to get my butt over to Wolfe Street in Old Town and hunt for the egg for an hour or so before I’d have to get out of there to avoid the risk of running into Grigori.

  Of course, if Tic’s information was incorrect, and the house I’d be searching wasn’t owned by the Grigori Rasputin or, if he’d taken the Fabergé egg with him, I was likely a dead woman.

  I tried not to focus on that.

  Chapter Four

  Day 1

  Soon after leaving the park, I was cruising down a street in Old Town, which is the most historic part of Alexandria. It’s a quaint if crowded place, and homes here are arranged in the most efficient manner possible. The structures themselves tend to be deeply narrow rectangles with no surrounding yard to speak of, and space between homes was down to a mere few feet.