The trouble with magic a.., p.2
The Trouble with Magic and Faery Curses, page 2
He’d finally been able to stay away from her for a few days at a time and not be super dangerous, so long as his mother was somewhere in the vicinity to help him control his leopard. He’d gone back to work full time last month, which she’d wanted to celebrate. He’d been pretty meh about the whole thing. And he definitely hadn’t wanted to go away on this business trip. But she’d encouraged it. She loved having Deacon around and in her life, but frankly, the fact that she loved it so much scared the crap out of her. The fact that she felt his absence physically was equally disturbing. The mate business was new to her and because she wasn’t a shifter it affected her differently than it did him, but she was still affected by it. In ways that made her distinctly uncomfortable sometimes.
Her reluctance to be away from him was one of the major “sometimes.” Her inability to keep her hands off him…she minded that a lot less.
Without a handy shifter partner to do the running for her, though, she had to figure out a way to get the brownie away from the hobgoblins on her own, to somewhere safe, where she could translate his language. They needed to talk about this secret he’d discovered so she could figure out a way to keep him permanently safe. Which was the job she’d been sent to do. Without help from her mentor or the Nags—her maybe a little too on-the-nose nickname for her bosses.
If she was going to do her job, she needed to figure out what the brownie was trying to tell her.
More glass shattered around her as she considered the options. The number of bottles seemed to be increasing in frequency. Geez, how many magic potions did the hobgoblin have in that bag?
She glanced at him long enough to say, “You can stop now. You’re wasting your magic.”
The hobgoblin grunted and tossed another bottle at her.
She shook her head as it shattered a foot away, this time leaving a smear of rainbow color on the seemingly empty air where her shield resided. The color turned a deep purple black before sliding down to the ground where it sizzled in the dirt and grass like acid. That particular potion left a cloud of rotten eggs and piss stench in the air. Gross.
“Are you done yet?” she asked.
The hobgoblin with the bottles grunted something and turned to consult with his associates. She returned to her problem of where to take the brownie.
Her home was out of the question, at least in the immediate future. Too far and complicated. She needed to get somewhere nearby. Who did she know in this part of the city who might be able to translate brownie? Within walking distance? Who wouldn’t be upset about her waking them up at this early hour?
She visualized where she was on her mental map of the city, and a perfect solution dropped onto that map like a little red flashing location pin.
The Bookstore!
2
The hobgoblins threw one last bottle of potion at them, this one not even pretending at sparkles and color. It just burst into a sickly green and black cloud of poison. There must have been a smell element to it, because suddenly Cary couldn’t smell anything anymore. Just the small circle of grass and dirt and trees behind her shield.
She waited for the cloud to clear, then met the lead hobgoblin’s eyes. He snarled at her, revealing some wickedly jagged green teeth and barked something in yet another language she didn’t understand.
But in perfect, if guttural and accented English, he said, “This isn’t done, human. We’ll be back for the criminal. You have made an enemy in Faery.”
“Why do bad guys always say ‘this isn’t done’?” she asked both the hobgoblins and the brownie. “I mean they always say something just like that. It gets really monotonous after hearing it for years.”
“Bitch,” the bald hobgoblin barked at her.
She grinned at him.
The hobgoblin with the long black hair dragged his sharp curved gray nail over the air and tore open a hole into Faery. All three leapt through, the bottle tossing leader the last to go. He held her gaze as he passed out of her realm and into his. The hole in reality separating them closed while he continued to stare at her.
“Well,” she said with a little head shake to hide her discomfort. “That was interesting.”
She faced the brownie again. “We need to get to a safer location where I can figure out what you’re trying to tell me. My home is too far away but there’s a super cool bookstore nearby, and I’m sure we can find help there. Is that okay? Will you stick with me for a bit longer?”
The brownie looked pointedly at the place where the hobgoblins had gone and then nodded emphatically.
She got the feeling there was some annoyance in that gesture, like she was being an idiot to assume he wouldn’t stick with his source of safety.
“Hey, I don’t want to assume,” she said defensively. “Some people are in a hurry to walk into danger.”
The brownie swept his thin arm out in an “after you” gesture, which made her snort in amusement. She turned toward the road, but stuck to the trees lining the roadside so the brownie could remain walking on dirt as long as possible. The more they could keep him in contact with soil and trees, the better he’d be.
The Bookstore was one of those places you had to know about in order to find. The first time she’d gone, Jaxer had given her directions, and she’d stood outside the door of a shop that looked boarded up and closed for a long time before finally pushing inside. Over the years since then, the “door” into the Bookstore had moved a few times. It wasn’t a place confined to space. Or time for that matter. And entrances into the place popped up where they needed to be at any given point.
Most creatures from most of the realms were allowed into the Bookstore, so long as they minded their manners. There were a few spells on the place to help with that, too, ensuring natural enemies could coexist without, say, destroying the store and everyone inside. Only a very few realms were banned from accessing the Bookstore. Cary had never learned exactly what happened to initiate those bans, but since one of the realms was a particularly nasty demon realm, she had ideas.
The coolest thing about the Bookstore was that once you’d found it, it remembered your DNA—which apparently it scanned when you walked through the door. You always left into the same time and place from which you entered. A nice side effect of that was that the store couldn’t be used as a passthrough to other realms or times. But mostly, she loved that she never had to worry about getting lost.
And when the Bookstore moved, she could always find it again.
Which was handy in her present circumstance, because it was actually closer to her current location than it had been the last time she’d gone.
At the base of the road, when they moved back onto sidewalk-lined city streets, she ended up having to carry the brownie. The minute he stepped too close to a car parked on the roadside, he started to shiver and whine in pain. The whole experience was going to be miserable for the poor guy. Cary just hoped he could go inside the Bookstore without issue. She couldn’t recall having seen any brownies there, but she had seen a gnome once who hadn’t seemed overly bothered by her surroundings, and gnomes had a pretty bad allergy, too.
“Almost there,” she reassured the brownie as he wrapped his thin arms around her neck and buried his face against her shoulder.
She knew, in the logical part of her brain, that the brownie—being immortal and all—was likely older than her by several centuries. But in that moment and given his size in her arms, it was super hard not to think of him as a child in need. That just triggered her protective instincts even more and made her determined to get to the bottom of the threat against him so she could keep him safe.
The entrance to the Bookstore was located on a side street with limited traffic amidst a row of doors into small trendy coffee shops, restaurants, and clothing stores. The store next to the Bookstore had t-shirts in the window sporting funny sayings and pictures of the latest video game characters—most of which she didn’t have the first clue about. She’d have to ask her niece who was the family gamer. The Bookstore’s front windows looked empty and there were two boards across the larger of the two windows and a crack in the glass. Etched in white on the swinging glass front door were the words The Bookstore in a pretty, elegant script. But other than that signage, there was nothing indicating this particular shop was currently occupied.
The brownie chattered at her, making a gesture at the door.
She assumed he was asking the obvious question. “Yes, this is the right place. Trust me.”
She pushed at the front door. There was a moment’s pause, then a slight click, then the door swung opened.
A cool waft of air brushed her face as she stepped into the temperature-controlled interior. She wondered how it felt to those coming in from colder climates. Was it a warm burst of air as they stepped out of the snow? For her, it felt like the loveliest of air conditioners and she was grateful. The sun was up, the air already starting to warm. So far it was pleasant enough, but by the time she left the store, it was going to be hot.
And she’d left her car parked a few miles away.
Ah well. That’s what taxis were for. Except, of course, she’d likely still have the little brownie with her.
One worry at a time. First, they had to figure out what was going on. If he’d fled Faery for her realm, he couldn’t go back yet. That meant she had to keep him safe in her realm until he could.
The shelves and book-covered tables, the scent of paper and lemon-scented furniture polish, the soothing lighting and bright atmosphere always made Cary feel both overwhelmed and calm. She loved this place. Even the stack marked Demonology and Phylogeny seemed soothing. A place to find answers where no one would try to kill her.
Well, except for that one time. But literally that had been the only time anyone had tried to kill anyone while she’d been in the Bookstore.
There were only a few patrons circulating at that moment, which was kind of nice. It was usually pretty packed. Cary scanned the various creatures—a shifter in his human form (she could spot them by the way they moved), two vampires she didn’t know (which was good as she’d had trouble with vampires a few months back and didn’t need any right now) on opposite sides of the store, a creature with a tail and horns but who didn’t seem particularly demonic hovered near the section on ancient religions, a being with three eyes and a squid-shaped body lounged at the back seeming to read three books at once, and a few more human-shaped people she couldn’t identify as anything but human. That didn’t mean they were human. They could just be very good at disguising their natures.
So long as they weren’t the particular wizard—or wizards since Sheldon was still alive last she’d heard—trying to kill her, she didn’t really care what they were.
Only the shifter and one of the vampires paid any attention to Cary and the brownie as they moved toward the central counter, and those were just passing glances. Everyone else was fully absorbed in their own business. Behind the u-shaped wooden desk that served as the checkout counter, the Bookstore’s owner and proprietor stood smiling at her.
Renee had switched from a more seventies Earth era look to nineties grunge in the last month. Torn jeans and an oversized red flannel shirt suited her tall, thin frame. She’d kept her hair in an afro but had cut it a little tighter to her head. She wasn’t wearing any jewelry, but then she rarely did. And her makeup was muted and complimented her dark skin nicely.
The only thing that marked Renee as being not quite human were her eyes—black with sparkles of white like stars in them. After all these years, Cary still wasn’t entirely sure what Renee was. Jaxer had hinted that she might be a god of some sort even though Renee wouldn’t call herself one. Sometimes Cary wondered if she was an alien—she did have green blood. Wasn’t that supposed to be a sign of being an alien?
In the end, what Renee was didn’t really matter. She kept the Bookstore going, ensured it was safe, and always had a friendly smile for her customers. Plus, she seemed to know everything. Which made her one of Cary’s favorite people.
“I need some help,” she said without preamble.
Renee glanced at the brownie still in Cary’s arms and nodded. “Language problem?” she asked.
“How did you know?”
“Brownies are good at understanding other languages but their ability to speak them is notoriously bad.” Renee switched to talking in a series of chattering high-pitched words that sounded a lot like the brownie’s language from earlier, though with a different accent. The brownie jumped from Cary’s arms to the counter and turned animated in his rapid-fire rush to explain what Cary hadn’t been able to understand.
Well, that was easy, she thought, watching the conversation in bemusement.
“Ah,” Renee said. Then went back to the brownie’s language.
Cary tried to wait patiently. She wasn’t a particularly patient person. But she did try.
After about ten minutes, she finally said, “So, what’s happened? Did he explain why a bunch of hobgoblins chased him into this realm and tried to kill him?”
“He’s getting to that part,” Renee assured.
Just getting to it? What had they been talking about up to now?
Another ten minutes passed—or was it an eternity? Cary watched the conversation, tapping her toes inside her hiking boots and working hard not to rush them. Whatever the brownie was saying, it had creases forming on Renee’s otherwise smooth forehead as she nodded.
“Okay, well.” Renee looked up at Cary. “That’s not good.”
“What? What?”
“Seems he was tending to one of his trees in the royal palace…” She paused as the brownie said something else. Nodded. Then, “Sorry, yes, the English royal palace.” Renee shrugged. “So many Faery courts. Have to specify or it gets confusing.”
Cary nodded. That, at least, she remembered. But only because Jaxer was related to both the English court and the Irish court in ways he’d never explained to her. The added complexity of her boss’s relationship to the rest of Faery only confused the matter. The North American Fae and the European Fae had some…issues apparently. But the source of those issues was complicated and not well examined in the literature. Cary suspected it had to do with the Europeans moving out to colonize other places and devastating the native peoples, but neither the Nags nor Jaxer would confirm that suspicion for her.
“He says he wasn’t listening to the two highborns on purpose,” Renee continued. “They were walking the gardens. He made an effort to blend into his surroundings so as not to disturb them. That’s part of his job—to look after his particular section of the gardens and keep everything growing and healthy but without anyone noticing him.” As an aside, Renee said, “Brownies are really good at tending formal gardens. Renowned for it even outside Faery.”
“Cool,” Cary said because it seemed like she should say something to that fact.
“Anyway, he overheard the highborn Fae talking and…” She paused to confer with the brownie again. “And Borir says they were discussing treason. Which, to be fair, isn’t particularly unusual among the highborns at court either. Any of the courts. The English court seems to be the worst for it. Lots of plotting and potential coups in the works all the time. Tatiana and Oberon usually sort it all out without much trouble,” Renee said this last as another aside.
The fact that the queen and king of the English court were still Tatiana and Oberon after all these centuries was pretty damned impressive, and proof they were good at stopping coup plots.
“Apparently,” Renee continued, “something these particular Fae said struck Borir as being quite worrisome.” She looked back to the brownie and asked another question. The brownie—Borir apparently—answered with a lot of hand gestures. “Yes, they were talking about a…spell or a weapon that could destroy Faery. Something that Borir, and most Fae, think is a myth. The word isn’t translating well, so I can’t be sure if it’s an actual physical weapon, or a spell, or a bespelled weapon.” She tried to clarify with Borir, but then shook her head. “No, the word in Brownie could mean any of those things. He doesn’t know how to define it any better.”
“But whatever it is, it could end Faery? That seems…kind of huge.”
“Yes, it does,” Renee agreed. “And not something I’ve heard of before.”
“Which makes it a pretty serious secret whatever it is.”
“Exactly.”
“Does he know who the highborns were?” Cary asked, leaning in a little to rest her hands on the counter near Borir. She met his huge brown eyes. “Could you give us their names?”
He shook his head and said something that Renee translated as, “He doesn’t get involved with the highborns because it’s safer not to. Most of the brownies stick to themselves and only concern themselves with brownie politics, which is generally pretty straightforward. Not a lot of subterfuge and secret machinations. They don’t like the deceptions inherent in highborn politics, so they just don’t concern themselves with it. So long as the brownies can continue on about their business, they don’t need to know who the highborns are.”
“Damn.” Cary rubbed a hand over her face. “But they must have thought you could identify them, or they wouldn’t have sent someone after you to kill you.”
“He’d know them again if he saw them,” Renee said. “Brownies have excellent memories and can see through glamour magic—it helps them do their job tending to magical plants.”
“Ah,” Cary said. That was interesting, actually. Her mentor was known for his superb glamour skills. Borir would see through it, though, which meant putting Jaxer in the same room with Borir could be really interesting. For Cary anyway.
“Even without their names,” Renee said, “Borir would eventually be able to point them out to the king and queen.”
“So the conspirators decided to kill him,” Cary said.
“They tried anyway. I suppose they weren’t expecting him to find help.” Renee smiled at Cary. They never really discussed it, but Renee was aware of Protectors and what they could and couldn’t do. And that Cary was one.
