The trouble with magic a.., p.3
The Trouble with Magic and Faery Curses, page 3
“Why did you run away to this realm?” Cary asked Borir. “You couldn’t have expected me either. And the hobgoblins were obviously able to follow.”
Borir said something. Renee said something back, her eyebrows rising high over her star-filled eyes.
Then she said, “He’s looking for…Jaxer.” Renee met Cary’s gaze. “He seems to think Jaxer can save him and all of Faery.”
He came looking for Jaxer to be his savior? Jaxer who’d abandoned his position in Faery several centuries ago? Who had disavowed his links to two European courts so he could work with Cary’s bosses training Protectors? Jaxer who didn’t want anything to do with the Old World Fae anymore?
Borir expected Jaxer to save Faery?
Oh boy.
3
“Guess I have to go find Jaxer, then,” Cary said with a sigh.
She hadn’t seen him in at least two months. He wasn’t supposed to be helping her with her test year. He wasn’t supposed to interfere or aid her. Yet for the first few months, he’d been around a lot—and he’d helped her. But always with excuses. He’d been trying to track down the wizard out to kill her because the wizard’s vendetta had started before the Seventh Year test began. He’d helped her—at the Nags’ behest—with a dangerous magical weapon. And he’d helped her with some vampire troubles. All of which he had excuses her bosses couldn’t gainsay.
He’d also told her he loved her.
She didn’t share his feelings. Not romantically. She loved him as a friend and mentor, but not as anything more. And those conversations had been heartbreaking.
Since then, of course, things had been strange and not always comfortable, even though they’d been trying to get back to a place of friendship. He’d pulled back more and more, as he was supposed to during this year, so she couldn’t be too upset by that. It was the distance in their friendship that made her sad. She supposed he had to put some space between them for his own sake. She couldn’t blame him for that. Still, she missed her friend.
She had no idea what he’d been up to since the last time she’d seen him. For all she knew, he’d moved on to training another Protector. And she wasn’t entirely sure how to find him. She had an idea where to start. She just wasn’t sure it would work.
There was also the added difficulty of Borir and what to do with him while she went looking for Jaxer. She could hardly drag the poor brownie all around Portland, even if her end goal was a wild place. He’d had a hard enough time just getting here. She didn’t want to go back to the spot the hobgoblins had attacked them—too easy for them to find him there again. She needed to get to a wooded area, but a place isolated enough to get Jaxer’s attention was probably going to require a drive. And if she couldn’t track down Jaxer directly, she was going to have to go through the Nags. That would also require a car trip back to her house.
She definitely couldn’t put the brownie through all that.
She frowned at the little guy as he sat down on the counter, his shoulders slumped and the frantic chatter and gestures finally stilled. He looked exhausted.
“He can stay here,” Renee said gently, resting a hand on the brownie’s shoulder.
He leaned into her and closed his eyes.
“He’ll be safe,” Renee assured. “No one causes trouble in my store.”
Cary smiled at that. Except for that one time, Renee was right. Cary was endlessly amazed at the different beings that frequented the Bookstore without starting wars with each other. She still couldn’t get over the prey shifters and predator shifters co-existing in the same space, sometimes perusing shelves right next to each other, without any outward tensions. The Bookstore truly was amazing.
“Faery won’t be a problem?” Cary asked.
“Not in my shop. Not if any of the Fae want to use the place ever again.”
“Do you get a lot of the Fae here? I mean, with them being immortal, don’t they…know most of this stuff already?”
Renee smiled. “You’d be surprised. Especially the highborns. So few ever leave Faery these days, there’s a lot they don’t know.” She shrugged. “Probably for the best. Wouldn’t want some of them to be too in touch with your modern world. Or some of the other worlds for that matter.”
“Fair enough.” Cary knew just enough about Faery and the highborn Fae to agree with Renee. “Thanks for letting him rest here.” She nodded to Borir. “And for getting his name. I couldn’t even understand that, but I felt bad just calling him ‘the brownie’ all the time.”
“No problem.” Renee looked fondly at Borir as he curled up into a little ball in the middle of her wooden counter, snoring quietly. The brownie blended in so seamlessly with the wood that Cary kept having to blink and concentrate on the spot she knew he was resting to actually see him.
“I’ll be back soon,” Cary said. “If I can’t find Jaxer in the next hour, I’ll see if my bosses can track him down. I’ll probably need their permission to get his help anyway.” She let out a long sigh and groaned.
“Yeah, the Seventh Year rules are complicated,” Renee said. “I’m sure there’s a book on them somewhere, but I’ve never seen it. Be worth a lot if I could get my hands on one, though.” She wagged her slim eyebrows.
Cary chuckled, then turned to go, but Renee stopped her with a gentle word.
“I should warn you, that kid, the one whose teacher is trying to kill you? He was in here the other day.”
“Sheldon?” Cary turned back to the counter.
Sheldon was the protégé of the wizard who’d been trying to kill Cary for months now. It was thanks to Sheldon—and Jaxer—that Cary had met Deacon. She’d had to rescue him from Sheldon, who, as far as Cary could judge from their brief interaction, was an evil little shit. She and Deacon had thought he’d killed himself when one of his spells had rebounded off Cary’s shields and back onto him. Turned out, Sheldon hadn’t been killed. But—and Cary hadn’t even known this was possible at the time—Cary had absorbed almost all of his powers during that attack.
Apparently, Sheldon was no longer able to do much in the way of wizardry, which was probably for the best since that whole evil-little-shit thing was going to cause trouble for the world at large if he could. But his teacher, his wizard master, hadn’t taken well to his pupil becoming a useless and mostly ordinary teenager. The wizard had discovered Cary’s secrets, both the secret of her ability to absorb magic—which she herself hadn’t known until recently—and the fact that she was a Protector. Which meant he knew how to kill her and had spent months trying. Fortunately, he’d also spent months failing.
Unfortunately, the spiteful bastard had then gone and revealed her secrets to the Master vampire of Portland. Which had coincidentally revealed the secret she hadn’t even known about herself to her. That part at least was…good? Probably good. Better to know than not. But she wasn’t pleased all the local vampires knew. If not for the fact that the previous master was now dead and replaced by someone mostly willing to leave her alone and uphold the rules that kept her out of vampire business, she’d have been in real trouble there.
Since the whole vampire thing, though, she hadn’t seen any signs of the wizard or Sheldon. To be fair, she hadn’t actually seen Sheldon at all since last Halloween, except for that one time. But she’d been in the middle of trying to stop an army of supernatural bad guys so she’d been a little preoccupied and had assumed she’d imagined seeing him. She only knew for sure Sheldon was alive because the wizard had confirmed it. And Renee had described a young man coming to the Bookstore that they were all sure was Sheldon.
“What was he looking for?” she asked Renee. “What did he want?”
“He didn’t ask to see the back room again,” Renee said, referring the room full of special books that she couldn’t sell for one reason or another—mostly because they were too magical or too powerful and couldn’t be contained outside of the Bookstore. That was the room in which the book about Cary’s powers could be found. It was a small book. Most people like Cary ended up dead very early in life. There wasn’t a lot of information about them. “He stuck to the shelves on healing and witchcraft. Given he was a wizard before losing his powers, his looking around the witchcraft shelves struck me as…interesting.”
“Yeah. Interesting.”
Wizard magic and witch magic were two different things even though they tended to get conflated in pop culture. Wizards and witches could be male or female or anything in between. The words weren’t gendered names for the same talents. They were both basically humans with powers, but their powers spanned different ranges and had different requirements.
Witches tended to use spells, potions, and earth-based magic. Their rituals to call power involved calling on the elements and spirits of the earth and nature. They used nature-based props like wood, candles, incense, and salt. If you came across a magical potion, it was more than a little likely that a witch had made it. Her friend Angie was a witch—also a psychic and she had some ties to the demon hunting world that she refused to talk about even to her best friends, but those skills were outside her natural witchy talents.
Wizard magic tapped more into the electro-magnetic field. They controlled things like fire and energy bolts, power they used as weapons. They used brute force and raw magic drawn from their internal stores rather than spells and powers outside themselves likes witches. Wizards did also use rituals, but theirs tended to involve blood (the good wizards just used a few drops of their own) and some sort of sacrifice (again, good wizards made personal sacrifices, like giving up something they loved—an object or a pursuit—in exchange for the successful completion of the ritual). And if there was a metal-based object infused with magic, you could pretty much guarantee a wizard was responsible for it.
Cary tended to think of wizards as more dangerous than witches, but that was only because one of her best friends was a witch with a lot of restraint. Angie had blocked and defeated a few wizards in her day, so underestimating witches was a bad idea. Something Angie regularly reminded Cary when she let her biases show.
One of the biggest differences between the two, though, was that having some sort of innate magic as part of your biology was required for a wizard. Witches could be perfectly ordinary humans who learned to use spells and potions to create magic—though some of them also had innate magic, like Angie; it just wasn’t required. Wizards had to have an internal store of magic to be wizards. You couldn’t be a wizard, couldn’t command and control the elements of power that wizards controlled, without that core of magic. You couldn’t do wizardy things without it.
Sheldon’s magic had, apparently, been almost entirely drained off in his fight with Cary. He’d thrown so much out in his spell, there hadn’t been very much left when he’d recovered. At least, that was what his teacher had implied, and what Renee had confirmed after she’d met Sheldon.
“You suppose he’s looking for another way to access magic?” Cary asked. “That probably wouldn’t be good, given what he tried to do with his magic when he had some.”
“Got me,” Renee said. “He didn’t end up buying anything to do with witchcraft. He only got one book. A general education volume on the various kinds of magic healers.”
Cary filed the information away. She should find out what Sheldon was up to, but first she had to help Borir. The brownie snuffled a little and curled into a tighter ball. The movement allowed her to see him easily for a few seconds before he blended back into the wooden countertop.
“Thanks for letting me know about Sheldon,” Cary said. “I’ll be back soon. You’re sure it’s okay for Borir to be here?”
“No problem.” Renee smiled at the sleeping fae. “He has official sanctuary.”
Cary blinked at the more formal statement but let it go.
She had to go find a faery.
4
By the time she’d walked back to her car and driven up high into Forest Park the day’s heat was heavy and oppressive. Even the woods were overly warm, despite the green shade. The air was thick with the scents of cedar and maple and heated earth, which might have been nice if there’d been a breeze to cut the temperature.
After living in the Pacific Northwest for most of her life, she just wasn’t used to these rare heatwaves. She fluttered her shirt, trying to cool some of the sweat as she wandered deeper into the trees along a narrow hiking path.
She’d never been able to get in touch with Jaxer directly, but up to a few months ago, she’d never needed to. He’d always just been around. Sometimes more than she liked. He just showed up. All the time. So it hadn’t even occurred to her that she couldn’t track him down if she needed him until right before the start of her Seventh Year trial.
Deacon had actually been the one to show her the trick of it. Go to a wild place and Jaxer would appear. Deacon had demonstrated this by walking her into a wooded area near his parents’ house and Jaxer had just walked out from behind a tree.
She still had some hurt feelings over that, that Jaxer hadn’t been the one to tell her. But at this stage, she was learning to let those feelings go. Things between her and Jaxer were just always going to be a little complicated.
“You’re looking for me?” Jaxer said from behind her, sounding a little smug and also a little confused. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
She faced him and made a show of scowling. Truthfully, she was glad to see him. Since meeting him, this was the longest they’d gone without contact. It felt incredibly weird not to have him in her life.
As usual, he was dressed in clothes that showed off his well-muscled physique. A shirt that gaped open at the neck, fitted pants, boots that were snug to his calves. His blond hair was longer than the last time she’d seen him and was pulled back into a low tail. She wasn’t sure if his hair was really longer, though, or if that was just his glamour at work. He was as shockingly handsome as always, but he also looked a little tired, with a tightness around his green-blue eyes.
Maybe that was her imagination. Jaxer’s greatest magic was glamour, the ability to make people see and experience exactly what he wanted them too. He showed her precisely what he wanted her to see, nothing more and nothing less. And because he was vain, he usually showed her an extremely handsome exterior with no discernable flaws.
She’d always suspected, though, that he tamped down on his actual beauty just to keep the humans in his life from being overwhelmed.
“You could have just stepped out in front of me,” she said. “Sneaking up behind me is a little rude.”
He grinned. “Sorry.”
“You’re not sorry even a little bit,” she said, just to be grumpy about it. He chuckled, as she’d hoped he would.
The one thing he didn’t do was step close and wrap an arm around her or kiss her cheek. That was a recent change. He’d always been touchy-feely with her, from the very first time they’d met. And for a long time, she’d just assumed that was the way Jaxer was so she’d let it go. Turned out, there was more to his physical affection than she’d guessed. Once she was aware of his feelings, she’d asked him to stop with all the hugging and kissing. And he’d honored her request. That went a long way toward her being able to maintain a friendship with him.
“What do you need?” he asked softly, his expression friendly but guarded.
“So, I had an interesting start to the day.” She went on to tell him about Borir, the hobgoblins, and Renee’s translation of the problem. Ending with the fact that Borir was here to find Jaxer for help.
“My help?” Jaxer frowned, his gaze moving inward as he settled his hands on his hips.
Cary couldn’t read his expression, not well, but she got the distinct impression he was confused.
“I haven’t been to the English court in centuries,” he murmured. “I’m surprised a brownie would even know my name.”
She wanted to say something but wasn’t sure exactly what. Her curiosity urged her to question him about his history with the court. Part of her wanted to joke about his being a famous faery. Still another part was worried about him and what returning would mean for him. She settled on silence, in the end.
“Borir? Doesn’t sound familiar,” he murmured, talking mostly to himself. He finally met her gaze. “What the hell does he think I can do?”
“Got me.” She lifted her hands in a shrug. “But Renee double checked. He is definitely here to find you.” She pursed her lips as she considered him. “The Nags sent me to help Borir. Would they know he was here to find you? Is that something that…comes up in a premonition?”
“Not usually. Motivations are always fuzzier than actions.”
Her bosses used premonitions, some magic they never discussed with her, and old-fashioned research in their efforts to direct the Protectors to likely places where they were needed. Obviously, the system wasn’t perfect or there’d never be another horrendous crime in the world. There were only so many Protectors scattered across the country. And there was only so much that magic, premonitions, and research could do to find the people that needed Protector help.
The fact that the Nags tried, that they kept creating Protectors and training them and paying them to try and help as many people as possible, was one of the reasons Cary continued to do this job. They’d tricked her into it, she hadn’t intended to become a Kevlar vest superhero—she’d intended to become a veterinary technician, although she’d been rethinking that when she got tricked into doing this—but because they tried to help, year in and year out, she continued to try as well.
“Since Borir is here looking for you, I’m allowed to talk with you. Right?” She was sure this was allowed. But a part of her worried she’d break the Seventh Year rules beyond repair and the Nags would leave her defenseless against the myriad enemies she’d managed to accumulate over the last six and a half years.
She had a real love-hate relationship with her bosses.
