Shotgun Sorceress

Chapter ten

Faery

The next morning I got Mother Karen to try another healing poultice on my face. I sat in the rec room watching cartoons with the littler kids for close to an hour with a wet tea towel over a clammy green mudpack that stank like someone had slathered Vicks VapoRub all over a plate of anchovies. It did seem to deaden the ache around my ocularis, at least.

“Well, we’ve got to start getting ready, or we’ll run the risk of being late,” she called from the kitchen as the clock struck ten. “Come into the bathroom, please.”

I followed her into the small half bath off the downstairs guest room. She had me sit on the toilet lid as she wiped the poultice off with a hot washcloth, then turned my head from side to side, frowning.

“Well, that helped a bit, but only a bit.” She poked my cheek. “The scar tissue is better, but these scaly patches really just don’t seem to want to go back to normal.”

“Do you think it’s some kind of curse?” I asked.

“It’s possible.” She wrung out the cloth. “Honestly, this is a bit beyond anything I’ve had to deal with as a healer.”

She glanced down at her watch. “We better start getting dressed. Please wash the rest of that off your face and then come up to the attic; I think I have a formal gown that will fit you.”

I did as she asked, and a few minutes later found her in the gigantic cedar closet she’d installed beneath the eaves.

“Hmm,” she said, shuffling through a rack of dresses and gowns. She pulled out a long strapless dress made of dark green satin with a poofy underskirt of black crinoline. “I think this would fit you. Here, try it on.”

I slipped out of my jeans, T-shirt, and sports bra and wriggled into the dress. Karen zipped me up. I had to do some gyrations and tugging to get the bodice comfortably into place, but it was indeed a passable fit. I hadn’t worn anything like that since Aunt Vicky talked me into going to the senior prom with some friends. The DJ mostly played a bunch of crappy love songs you couldn’t really dance to, so after a while we ditched and went to someone’s house. We played Texas hold ’em and got trashed on peach schnapps. I lost all my pocket money on a bad bluff and somehow ended up having to kiss a cheerleader named Brittany. She was too pretty and rich and stuck-up for me to have wanted to have anything to do with her normally, but I was drunk enough to feel like everybody in the room was made of awesome. At first I thought the two of us were just putting on a little show for the guys, but she got into it like she was trying to find the secret answers to our algebra final in my tonsils.

Over the next couple of weeks, she kept sending me text messages, asking me out. I told her as nicely as I could that I was straight, but she kept pestering me. After that, I began to suspect some kind of setup. You know the deal: she’d lure me to some seemingly private location, get me naked or close to it, and then somebody hiding in the bushes or closet would take a bunch of photos that would show up all over the Web five minutes later. Good times. So finally I just started replying to her texts with animated GIFs of volcanic porn cocks and she got the hint.

So anyhow, now I inevitably associate ball gowns with sickly sweet liquor and suspiciously enthusiastic cheerleaders. I suppose it could be worse.

“Do you think you’re going to come out of that bodice?” Mother Karen asked.

“If a troll runs up to me yelling, ‘Whoo boobies!’ and yanks the front, yes. Otherwise, no, the puppies are safely kenneled.”

Mother Karen laughed. “I doubt that would happen. Unseelies aren’t usually allowed into the tavern.” She paused, scrutinizing the outfit. “I can give you the other opera glove; that will look nice. I think I have some dark heels in your size—”

“Heels? Nuh-uh.”

She frowned. “Heels would look very pretty with this dress.”

“I am not wearing anything I can’t run in. This meet could be a big ol’ trap for all I know, and I want to be prepared.”

She looked over her shoe rack. “All my flats are too small, unless you want Cooper to resize them, and you can’t very well wear sneakers.”

“I’ll just wear the dragon boots. Nobody can say those aren’t expensive enough,” I pointed out.

She made a face, which I suppose was only natural since the last time she’d seen the boots, they’d been on the back porch tarred in dried devil ichor. “Those filthy things? They won’t really match.”

“So I’ll get Cooper to clean them up and put some dark polish on them. The dress will mostly cover them, and anyway, who’s really going to be looking at my feet?”


A couple of hours later, the emergency babysitters had arrived and we were on the road toward Winesburg in the Warlock’s Land Rover. Pal cruised along overhead, hidden by an invisibility charm, although I could hear the weird calliope music of his flying spell over the engine noise. Cooper had done a great job shining up the boots, and he’d cleaned off the rest of my dragonskins, which I’d stashed in a black JanSport backpack I’d borrowed from one of the teens along with my street clothes, my Leatherman tool, a bottle of water, a couple of PowerBars, a small medical kit, hand sanitizer, and some stray spell ingredients in translucent plastic Fuji film canisters.

Mother Karen had done my makeup—doing her best to camouflage the scars—and had put my hair up in a French braid. I’d gotten wolf whistles from both Cooper and the Warlock when I came downstairs. Still, with my shoulders bare, I felt uncomfortably exposed, and also weirdly felt like I was in drag. I envied the guys being able to wear pants. The Warlock had gone back to his place and found tuxedos for both him and Cooper. Apparently the Warlock had been considerably slimmer in his early twenties, and the old tux wasn’t even that far out of style. The Faeries, I supposed, cared almost nothing about current human fashion and mainly wanted to feel that we’d paid proper respect in our attire.

I also hoped that none of the seelies would take an inordinate interest in Cooper. He looked absolutely delicious in the hand-me-down tuxedo. The satiny jacket accented his broad shoulders and narrow waist, and the pants were just snug enough to nicely show off his buns and package. My inner Old Lady Mabel hated the saggy pants fashion that had reigned over American males seemingly my entire life.

A little while later, the Warlock pulled off the highway onto a dirt road running between two cornfields.

“This should be it,” he said, glancing down at the magic compass he’d brought along. “Karen, you got Riviera’s token?”

“Right here,” she replied, patting the small beaded purse in her lap. She was wearing a long-sleeved sea-green silk gown and long strings of pearls; the outfit must have dated from the 1930s, and it looked good on her.

We got out of the Rover. The ground was soft and damp, so I was glad I wasn’t in high heels. Pal’s calliope was loud overhead. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and began to follow Mother Karen and the Warlock down a corn row.

Cooper nudged my backpack. “You could leave that in the car, you know.”

“If something happens, it’s not going to do me a lot of good if it’s locked in the car a mile away.”

“The seelies are probably just going to make you check it at the door.”

I shrugged. “Checked at the door is still closer than locked in the car.”

We came to a clearing where a battered old scarecrow hung crucified on a couple of rake handles. A cloud of dust rose as Pal touched down, and Cooper spoke an ancient word to turn off his invisibility.

A tin cup had been tied to the straw fingers of the scarecrow’s left hand. When we got within ten feet of the scarecrow, my stone ocularis started to itch in my skull. I blinked through to the gemview that had shown me the invisible door to the drug stash. I saw an odd double image of the scarecrow and a set of bronze-reinforced oak doors big enough to admit an elephant.

Mother Karen dug the token—a small golden coin—out of her purse and stepped up to the scarecrow. She dropped it into the tin cup. The scarecrow shuddered, the tattered old black suit expanding as it filled with ogrish bone and muscle. The creature broke the rake handles like straws and leapt to the ground, glowering at us with coal-black eyes. It dumped the token out into a mottled, callused gray palm.

“Who seeks entry to our realm?” Its voice rolled like thunder.

Mother Karen stepped forward. “Karen Mercedes Sebastián, daughter of Magus Carlos Sebastián and Mistress Beatrice Brumecroft. And associates. We come at the invitation of Maga Riviera Jordan to dine with her at the tavern.”

He turned his baleful face toward me and pointed a long black claw at my ocularis. “We don’t like spies.”

“What? I’m not a spy.” My voice shook.

“Don’t try to be clever with that sight-stone, or someone will pluck it right out of your pretty head.”

I quickly blinked back to the gemview that showed the world simply as my flesh eye did. “Is this better?”

“It is acceptable.”

Still scowling, the scarecrow reached into the air where I had seen the bronze handles on the great oak doors. He pulled, and suddenly the doors were visible to the naked eye, swinging wide to reveal a twilight-dimmed forest lit by a huge harvest moon. A road of ancient silver coins sunk in the damp earth glittered before us. The evergreen trees swayed gently in a brush of night wind, and tiny glowing creatures flitted through the branches.

The air from the forest smelled of midnight’s denizens, deep dark earth, and night blooms headier than any liquor.

“Follow the silver path to the tavern,” the ogrish guardian ordered. “Stray from it at your own peril.”

“We better hold hands,” Cooper said. “Things can get pretty weird in Faery.”

We followed Mother Karen and the Warlock inside; Pal followed along behind us. The scarecrow shut the door after my familiar stepped onto the path, and almost instantly, the darkness seemed to solidify around us like a crush of unseen bodies just beyond arm’s reach, the breeze like soft cold fingers brushing across my shoulders and the nape of my neck. Cooper’s hand tightened around mine; I could tell he felt it, too.

“Girl …” a voice whispered.

I turned toward the sound, the will to simply not look somehow beyond me. A golden-haired young man stood in the trees, slender and pale, dressed only in a kilt of sheer material that left just enough to my imagination. I felt a dizzying, primal lust for him; he was everything I found physically sexy about Cooper amplified and intensified a dozen times over.

“Come here,” Golden-Hair said with a smile that made my legs turn to water. He knelt and plucked a dandelion and blew the feathery seeds at me. “I’ve got something to show you.”

Cooper’s hand was growing slick with sweat. I glanced at his face; he was turning red as he stared at Golden-Hair, looking equally embarrassed and angry. “Don’t listen to her,” he whispered, pulling me along.

“Don’t,” echoed Golden-Hair, suddenly appearing from behind a tree in front of us, his voice like wind-chimes. “Don’t just walk away … don’t you want to see what your man sees? Don’t you want to see what delightful things we could be doing, the three of us? All you have to do is take a little peek.”

“Don’t listen to it,” Pal warned inside my head. “It’s a trick. Stick to the path, no matter what.”

What are you seeing when you look at it? I asked Pal.

“I’d rather not say,” he replied.

Golden-Hair popped up in the wildflowers a few feet away from me, sitting cross-legged. “Boots? You wore nasty ol’ boots!” he cackled. “Who dressed you this morning, your father? He should have tied a bell around your neck, because you lumber like a dimwitted cow. I’ll bet your mother was some plow-pulling beast of burden your father turned into the shape of a woman after he couldn’t stop himself from rutting on her in the barn. I bet the Virtus Regnum cut her into steaks and ate her after they killed her.”

He paused, staring intently at the trails of smoke curling from my opera glove. My pulse was pounding in my head despite my attempt to breathe slowly and stay calm.

“Ooh, everyone hide, the cowgirl’s angry now! Stop chewing your cud and come over here! Show me who’s boss, Bossie. Come over and try to shut me up.”

For a long second, I thought about taking him up on his offer. My ocularis was itching like mad, but the scarecrow’s warning stopped me from blinking for a better look, stopped me from leaving the path. We weren’t here for me to get into a fight and endanger everyone else.

Golden-Hair kept after me, whispering seductions one moment and mockeries the next. I kept my gaze focused on the lost treasures embedded in the path: ancient drachms of Hermaeus and Menander, shining argentus nummus, Ottoman akçe and Indian rupees, mottled Liberty dollars, plus dozens of exotic coins stamped with the pale faces of dead kings I’d never seen in any book.

Finally, the path ended at what at first looked like vine-covered walls, but then I realized that the vines were the walls. The front door was a tall, thick oval mat of purple-flowered clematis lianas hinged on living tendrils; it swung open with a swish of leaves and a creak of green wood, and we filed into the tavern, everyone looking relieved to be free of Golden-Hair.

I quickly realized that the entire tavern was built from still-living plants enchanted or artfully cultivated to form a functional architecture, although certainly not one that had much use for straight lines and ninety-degree angles. The interior walls and floor were formed by smooth, densely woven strangler figs. Ivory-barked trees rose like support columns for the leafy ceiling high above us, and luminous bracket fungi growing on the trunks cast a soft golden light throughout the rooms and passageways. Redwood-size tree stumps served as tables, and the woody figs rose from the floor to form trestle benches and stools.

The patrons seated at the nearby tables were dressed in antique finery from various eras; they scarcely gave us a second glance. Viewed straight on, they appeared perfectly human; glimpsed from the corner of my flesh eye, some became large insects, creatures of twisted bone, or strange fungal conglomerations. It was just a little unnerving.

A tall, beautiful woman in a diaphanous Aegean-blue chiton stepped toward us. Maybe she floated; I couldn’t really see her feet. She was like a nymph straight out of Greek mythology: her glossy black hair was piled in ringlets atop her head, and her skin was sun-bronzed. Her eyes were the color of storm clouds rolling over the ocean. She glanced briefly at my backpack, but didn’t seem the least bit concerned about it.

“Please follow me,” she said, her voice a rush of sea breeze through a mountain olive grove. “Your party awaits.”

She led us through a winding passage to a room with an enormous tree-table. Riviera Jordan, dressed in a silver gown and shawl, sat on the opposite side of the table, flanked by six Governing Circle agents in crisp black tuxedos.

“Y’all have a seat,” Riviera said, rising from her strangler fig bench. “We have a lot to talk about.”

We took our places at the table. At each setting was a single white, highly polished plate; there were no glasses, no cutlery, no napkins. I at first assumed the plate in front of me was porcelain before I saw the fine concentric grain beneath the shine.

“Wood?” I asked Cooper.

“Probably,” he replied. “Or maybe some kind of gourd or tuber.”

Riviera was busy looking over some papers in her lap, so as quickly and surreptitiously as I could, I lifted my plate and licked the edge.

Instantly, I was standing on a windblown hill, rearing back to shake off the horrible jabbering prairie apes clinging to my shaggy fur, trumpeting my anger and frustration to the sky as one of them scurried between my front legs and jabbed a sharpened stick up between my ribs—

—I managed to stifle a gasp as I came out of the death-memory.

“It’s wooly mammoth tusk,” I told Cooper. “Very old.”

“Oh. Wow.” He gazed down at his plate, looking impressed. “I’ll be careful with it.”

And then I nearly dropped my plate when it spoke to me: “Now really, it doesn’t seem very useful to lick me before the food’s been served, does it?”

An amused elfin face was staring at me from the surface of the plate. I quickly set it back down on the table.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I was just trying to see what you were made of—”

“Rather nosy of you, don’t you think?”

“I’m very sorry. I wasn’t expecting sentient tableware.”

Plateface sighed dramatically and rolled its ivory eyes. “Apology accepted, I suppose. Beverage?”

“What?”

“A drink? You know, something liquid that helps the food go down and prevents unsightly choking?”

“Oh. Uh. Water will be fine.”

Another eye roll. “Boring, yet vague. Do you want it hot? Iced? Room temperature? Sparkling? Paris bottled? Detroit municipal? Dipped from a Mongolian horse trough and filtered through a wool sock?”

I frowned. “I’ll take Evian natural spring water, no ice, forty degrees Fahrenheit.”

There came a faint cracking noise from the table. A straight green tendril sprouted from the polished surface. It quickly formed a large bud that elongated and split open to unfurl a spiral of waxy lavender leaves that fused and rose up into a vaselike hollow flower. The remains of the bud shell thickened into a sturdy green calyx base supporting the flower, which quickly filled with a clear liquid.

“Your water, mademoiselle,” said Plateface. “And for your meal you’d like …?”

I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head; I suppose I was partly jonesing for more of what I’d had for breakfast and partly channeling my wish to escape: “A Monte Cristo.”

Plateface sighed. “Still very, very vague. Do you want the whole sandwich dipped in batter and fried, or just the bread? And what kind of cheese?”

“Just the bread … and Swiss. No, wait, Gruyère.”

“Since you seem indecisive, I’ll give you both. And the usual assortment of condiments.”

Plateface vanished, leaving me staring at the shiny blank ivory.

The table cracked again as a woody sprout erupted beside the plate. In the space of a few seconds, it grew into a small bush that produced one large red bud and three smaller purplish buds. The buds flowered into pretty blossoms that quickly shriveled, overtaken by swelling fruits covered in thick, veined skins. The big red fruit expanded like a balloon, steam rising from its green veins, until it ruptured with a pop! and a hot, sugar-dusted Monte Cristo sandwich toppled out onto my plate. The other, smaller fruits dropped off the bush beside the sandwich and split open, revealing what looked like strawberry jam, honey mustard, and clotted cream. A small branch I hadn’t noticed fell off the bush and dropped beside the plate; it had a single long, serrated, bladelike leaf at its tip, and I realized it was meant to serve as a dinner knife. A large, velvety leaf sprouted on the plant and fell beside the twig knife: a napkin.

I’d been so focused on Plateface and my lunch plants that I hadn’t been paying any attention to how the others were faring. Beside me, Cooper was pulling the purple skin off a huge berry of shrimp carbonara; he had red wine in his drinking flower. The Warlock had a T-bone and a baked potato, and Mother Karen’s plant was dropping perfect little cucumber and smoked salmon tea sandwiches onto her plate. Pal was already gnawing on a large joint of some roast beast. Across the table, Riviera Jordan’s plant was growing and shedding a variety of leaves and vegetables to fill her plate with salad; her bodyguards had gotten burgers and other sandwiches.

I nudged Cooper and pointed at the crispy bits of bacon scattered among the shrimp on his fettuccine noodles. “Aren’t you worried about getting a death vision off those?”

“No more than you are, I guess.”

“What?”

He nodded at my sandwich. “That’s a Monte Cristo?”

“Yes?”

“Ham. Turkey.”

I stared at it. “Oh, crap, I forgot. I only remembered it had cheese on it.”

He laughed. “It’s faery food … I wouldn’t worry about it.”

I cut my sandwich in half with the twig knife and blew on it to cool it a little. The bread was fluffy and moist under the crispy egg batter, and the inside was stuffed with cheese and turkey and shaved ham. I bit off a corner, expecting a kick of pain, but felt absolutely nothing. It certainly looked and tasted like meat, but I might as well have been eating a napkin for all the spiritual residue it contained.

We finished our meals in relative silence. When most of us were finished, a handsome young man in a kilt of ivy leaves shuffled into the room. Each of his eyes was covered with a bright red poppy blossom, and his face was frozen in a smile. He began to uproot the spent dinner plants onto the dirty plates and clear the table. His hands moved fluidly one moment, jerkily the next.

Mother Karen stifled a gasp when the young man took her plate; I gave her a quizzical look.

“It’s Rick Wisecroft,” she mouthed at me.

Her prodigal foster son? No wonder he’d left her house so abruptly. Clearly he’d crossed the wrong people. I watched him more closely as he gathered up my plate; he moved like a marionette, and I saw thin silver chains on his wrists.

Mother Karen was staring at Rick, her face flushed, tears welling in her eyes; clearly she wanted to do something to rescue him from his slavery, but she couldn’t do anything without risking her own freedom and probably ours as well. I felt myself getting angry again. Given our warm reception in the woods, I doubted that getting Rick as our busboy was any accident. The seelies really seemed intent on provoking us. Part of me wondered how they’d cope with a little incendiary ectoplasm, but the rest of me considered Rick’s predicament and realized that was a bad, bad idea.

Riviera Jordan stood up and rapped on the table for our attention. Her eyes flickered from Mother Karen to Rick; clearly she knew something was amiss, but I could tell from her expression that she wasn’t about to let it sidetrack the meeting.

“Well, now, it looks like everyone has had a chance to finish the fine lunch our hosts have provided for us,” Riviera said. “And so it’s time to get down to bare boards, as it were.”

She paused. “As head of the Governing Circle, my primary duty is to ensure the welfare of the Talented families under my jurisdiction. A large part of that involves enforcing the laws set down for us by the Virtus Regnum; that part’s usually pretty easy. But sometimes the law and our community’s welfare are at odds with each other … and that’s when things get difficult.

“I was head of the Circle for over fifty years, but after half a century of being responsible for thousands of often-ungrateful lives, I was ready to spend some quality time in my garden. My nephew Benedict seemed to want the job, seemed to be entirely qualified to do it, so we all put it to a vote, and twelve years ago, he took the reins. Everything seemed to be going fine under his watch, until last week when some well-intentioned but frankly very poor decisions blew up in all our faces.”

Riviera looked at me. “When I came into the house Friday night and saw what you’d done to Benny, I was ready to kill you on sight, my dear. When I saw what you’d done to Angus and Eugene in the alleyway, I was ready to clap you in irons and drop you to the bottom of the sea. But then the butler told me what he’d overheard and I learned about the babies … and I realized I needed to put my judgments back on the shelf until I had my facts straight. And you’re most fortunate, young lady, that you didn’t destroy my nephew’s mind completely, or else we’d have never been able to recover memories of his that cast your actions in a rather better light than we’d have ever guessed.”

“I never meant—” I began, but she held up a hand to silence me.

“Please let me finish; you’ll have your time to speak. This is a little difficult for me, and I want to get it all out here on the table.”

She took a deep breath. “I told you I stepped down because I was tired. That’s not the whole truth. My son Reggie … you know that he killed himself, Jessie. And you know why, probably better than I do. I never laid eyes on the hell my brother Lake made for himself and his family, and that’s my failure, as a sister, a mother, and a governor. That’s my mortal sin, one I’ll carry to my grave.

“The day Reggie died … well, I hope none of you ever feel the way I felt. I told myself I wasn’t fit to protect the city if I couldn’t protect my own son. And I crumbled, I simply crumbled. Benny told me that he would take care of everything, and I took him at his word. But instead of dealing with Lake’s hell, he simply kept covering it up.”

“Didn’t you know that my brothers were trapped in the hell?” Cooper asked, sounding deeply suspicious.

She shook her head. “Until you brought them back, I didn’t even know they’d been born. When Reggie took Benedict to the farmhouse and he discovered Lake and Siobhan dead in the basement and the blood in the ritual circle … Reggie misjudged what had happened. He never saw the other children; the devil had probably already pulled them into its realm. Or maybe he saw the babies but couldn’t bring himself to tell me about them. By then, the mundane authorities had found Cooper and his baby brother. Until last night, I thought the Warlock and Siobhan were the only sacrificial victims. Benny, it turns out, knew the truth from the beginning, but never told me.

“I should have dropped everything to investigate my brother’s atrocities myself, but the Circle was in the middle of a crisis; several of the founding families were demanding we secede from the Regnum and withdraw entirely from the mundane world, and things were getting violent here,” Riviera said, then looked at Mother Karen: “You lived here then, didn’t you?”

“That was a bad time for the city,” Mother Karen agreed. “A lot of children were orphaned. And so I hung up my wand and went into fostering full time.”

“Your service to our community has been much appreciated,” Riviera said to her, then faced Cooper and me. “I was convinced that if the news of Lake’s madness became public, the secessionists would have turned it into a scandal to paint our whole family as closet necromancers.”

Riviera paused. “So I told my son to burn the farmhouse and stay quiet.”

“What would have happened if the Circle had voted to secede?” I asked.

“We would have gone to war with the Virtus Regnum,” she replied. “And we would have lost. Badly. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of people would have died. I had visions of entire families being wiped out.”

“What happens now?” I asked. “Is Pal or Mother Karen or the Warlock in trouble for helping me? Am I going to jail?”

“There are certainly a variety of local criminal charges that could be brought to bear,” Riviera replied. “But, having reviewed my nephew’s memories, it’s clear he abused his power in appalling ways. He evidently commissioned some kind of third-party psychological profile on you that convinced him that you would fold under pressure, and the more you didn’t do what he expected you to, the more he tried to force you … Well, he’s as much to blame for what happened as anyone, I think.

“So, right now I’m not inclined to press any charges against any of you, provided y’all continue to work with me and the Circle in a good-faith effort to remedy the damage that’s been done. And, Jessie, seeing as you didn’t respond in anger against our hosts’ provocations on the silver path, I do have faith that we can work together.”

I frowned. Had she set Golden-Hair on us—on me—as some kind of a test?

Riviera must have read the change in my expression. “I didn’t ask our hosts to harass you, but I’ve been to Faery many times before and I know how they treat newcomers,” she said. “And I had to know that you’re able to rise above that kind of provocation when the situation calls for restraint rather than going in spells ablaze.”

“But if I’d screwed up, we all might have been enslaved here,” I protested. “And what would have become of the kids back at Mother Karen’s house? You risked their safety just to see if I could ignore a Faery’s ‘yo mama’? Really?”

Riviera held up her hands. “My people have been watching the house; the children were never in any danger. We have foster parents lined up to take care of all of them in an emergency, and I was prepared to negotiate for your release if it came to that.”

“But no guarantees that you’d succeed, right?” I replied.

“And who were you planning to hand my baby brothers over to?” Cooper asked sharply. “They’re more than just a handful; they’ve got full-blown magical powers.”

I leaned forward toward Riviera. “I’m pretty sure ol’ Benny would have locked them up like they were all just a bunch of demons; how were you planning to do right by those kids?”

“That’s the most important thing we have to talk about here today,” she replied, nodding vigorously. “Obviously it’s crucial that the Marron brothers be placed in loving, supportive homes where they can safely learn to control their powers. It’s equally important that they get as much psychological care as they need to overcome any evil tendencies they may have picked up in the hell—”

“I don’t want them dosed with magebane,” Cooper said, his voice carrying a threat that made even me nervous. “They’re way too young; it could hurt their brain development.”

“It wouldn’t be my first choice, either,” Riviera replied gently, “but I can’t guarantee that wouldn’t happen.”

“If my brothers get hurt—”

“The safety of the foster families has to come first, you know that,” Riviera replied, her voice rising to match his. “I think we can both agree that blunting the boys’ powers would be better than locking them away should they become violent.”

“No.” Cooper’s face was red, his hands clenched against the edge of the table. I hadn’t seen that kind of sudden fury in him in a long time, not since his days of waking from bad nightmares to go drinking and looking for fights in dive bars.

“I won’t let them near anyone who would even think of giving them that poisonous shit.” He rose from his chair, scowling at Riviera. “I won’t see my brothers turned into obedient little half-mundane zombies just for some country-club Talent’s convenience! I can take care of them myself!”

“Cooper, please,” Mother Karen said. “I’m against the magebane, too, but we don’t have the resources to care for them all properly. It’s been just a few days and I’ve barely slept, and my other kids are starting to wonder where I’ve gone. No offense, but I’ve been doing most of the heavy lifting for you so far, and I just can’t keep doing it. I know you have the best intentions, but I really don’t think you can do this all by yourself.”

Karen turned to the Warlock. “Not unless you have other ideas?”

The Warlock shook his head, looking uncomfortable. “I want to help my brothers, honest I do, but my house just isn’t a place for human babies. Opal ain’t ready to be a momma.”

Riviera met Cooper’s furious glare with collected calmness. “You have my word that I will personally make sure that your brothers get the best care possible. As Circle head, I must also say that while your desire to protect your family and raise your brothers yourself is honorable, I am convinced the boys will be better off with more experienced parents, at least until they’re a little bit older and you have a stable living situation.”

Cooper sat down, reluctantly conceding her point with a noncommittal nod. “So which foster families did you have in mind?”

“My cousin Sylvia and her husband, Nikolai, have offered to take one of the boys; they have teen daughters at home who can help with child care. Rowland Nachtcroft from the Governing Circle has offered to take another; two of his young sons have hereditary lycanthropy, so his family already has a nanny at the house who’s skilled with special-needs children. Chione Gastaphar and her sisters have offered to take another, and Horatio Fox and his wife, Acacia, have also offered to serve as foster parents.”

“Isn’t Horatio a little old for fostering a baby?” Mother Karen asked. “He turned one hundred and fifty recently, didn’t he?”

“One hundred and seventy,” Riviera replied. “He still spends his weekends camping and running up and down hills at Civil War reenactments, so he seems to have the energy for it. Acacia is considerably younger, and a skilled healer; I’m willing to give them a chance if you are.”

“How will you handle psychological counseling for the children?” Karen asked.

“All the prospective foster parents have agreed to bring the children in for regular therapy sessions; we’re planning to use one therapist for all the boys, but we haven’t decided who’ll be handling that yet.”

“I’d recommend Dr. Aboab Hopkinson,” Karen said. “He’s done well with my kids when they’ve been troubled.”

“Dr. Hopkinson is high on our list, but he isn’t sure yet if he can take on the Marron brothers without diminishing the care he gives to his other patients,” Riviera replied. “The other candidates are equally qualified. No matter which families the boys go to, they’ll get frequent play dates, and if they do well, we may be able to bring them back together in the same household after a while.”

“I want unlimited visitation rights,” Cooper said. “If I get a notion that I want to see my brothers at 3 A.M., I want to be let into the house to see them, no arguments from you or the family they’re with or anyone.”

Riviera pursed her lips. “The foster parents have a right to privacy that I won’t see violated frivolously. I’ll agree to your terms, if you promise not to abuse your visitation privileges.”

Cooper nodded.

Riviera set a quill pen atop a set of papers and pushed them across the table to him. “The details of our foster care proposal—such as have been worked out—are all here, including the full list of potential therapists. If this looks like a workable arrangement to you, please sign, and after the meeting we can introduce the boys to their new homes.”

Cooper frowned as he studied the proposal, then passed the papers over to Mother Karen so she could take a look. They exchanged glances; Karen pushed the papers back to Cooper with a hopeful nod.

“I guess I can live with this,” Cooper finally said.

“I don’t suppose you had people falling all over themselves offering to become foster parents, did you?” Karen asked.

“There wasn’t an overabundance of volunteers, no,” Riviera replied.

“There never is when there’s a real need, is there?” Karen shook her head as Cooper signed his name on the dotted line.

“Well, now.” Riviera looked from me to the Warlock. “Does this meet with you folks’ approval as well?”

“If Coop’s okay with it, then I am, too,” the Warlock said.

“I don’t know any of those people, but if Mother Karen thinks they’re good parents, then I’m fine with them taking care of the kids, too,” I replied.

“Did you have any more questions for me?” Riviera asked.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “There’s the little detail that your nephew burned down Cooper’s shack and took all our spellbooks and guns.”

“The house in Athens County is being rebuilt; the confiscated books and weapons will be put back where they were found once construction is complete. And you’ll be compensated for any other damages.”

She pulled another paper from her stack and pushed it across the table toward me and Cooper along with a quill pen; it appeared to be a list of everything that had been taken or destroyed by Benedict Jordan’s agents. “Does that seem to be an accurate account?”

“It looks like it, yeah,” I replied. The Governing Circle’s accountant had totaled the damages at ten thousand dollars, partly to compensate for my lost job and garnished final paycheck, withheld by my boss because he thought I’d stolen from him.

“Will you take a direct bank transfer?” she asked.

“I’d kinda prefer cash,” I replied.

“Cash, definitely,” Cooper agreed.

Riviera gave us a look. “Given everything that’s happened recently, are y’all absolutely certain that y’all want to be walking around with a great big wad of greenbacks in your pockets? If y’all lose physical money, I’m afraid the rules say I can’t replace it, but if the electronic transaction fails or gets hijacked, we can fix it.”

She reached into her purse and pulled out an iPhone. “I can show you the transaction right here.”

I looked at Cooper. “What do you think?”

He shrugged. “I guess imaginary money will spend just the same in the end.”

I signed the document, then passed it to Cooper. After he inked his name, Riviera logged into what I supposed was the Circle’s Ohioana Bank account, and then showed us that she’d transferred the money to Cooper’s checking account.

“What about my surprise criminal record, and our eviction?” I asked.

“The eviction has been remedied, and the fabricated conviction has been removed from the mundane criminal justice records,” she replied.

“Any ideas about what to do about this?” I raised my left hand, still gloved. Thin tendrils of smoke wafted from the cuff.

“I myself am no expert on curse removal, so I have arranged for you to meet with Madame Robichaud next Wednesday at her parlor.”

I knew Madame Robichaud by reputation; she was an accomplished Santeria priestess who’d moved north from New Orleans to help take care of her grandchildren. “Sounds good. What about Pal’s overseers, and the Virtus Regnum?” I asked.

“Since Friday night, we have sent several messages to the Regnum concerning you and Palimpsest, but they have not replied to or even acknowledged our communications.” Riviera looked solemn. “I will surely put in a good word for the two of you if I have the chance, but I don’t know if that will happen.”

That wasn’t a good sign. But if they weren’t talking to her, they weren’t talking to her. I believed what Riviera had been telling me so far; I guessed I would just have to wait and see what the Virtii had in store for me.