Leo bit his lip, running one hand through already rumpled hair. “I can’t just sell up. It isn’t only that the business has been in the family for three generations. I’m one of the biggest employers in the area; if I shut down, where will my people get work? They depend on me, on this place. Your condos aren’t going to provide jobs for more than a few gardeners and maids. I can’t do it, I tell you.” The piece of iron he’d been toying with slipped through his fingers and fell unnoticed onto the gouged linoleum floor.
“Oh, I am certain we could find employment for a few of your workers,” Kesh said with a leer. “I noticed a number of reasonably attractive women when I came through before. I have a new venture—floating casinos located on boats just over the line into international waters. They are proving to be surprisingly profitable, and I can always use pretty women to provide entertainment to my predominantly male and wealthy clientele.”
“You want to use my workers as prostitutes?” Leo got up so fast his chair fell over with a clatter. “You’re crazy!”
Kesh lifted his hands in the air. “How is being a paid companion any worse than cleaning fish for a living?” He rose in a more leisurely fashion and headed for the door, turning around before he went out to add, “It would be best to accept my offer sooner rather than later, Mr. Koetke. The price will go down every day you wait. And I do not believe you have much time left.”
He shut the door softly behind him and stopped to wink at the cute redhead sitting at the reception desk. She blushed a becoming pink that matched the strand of little pearls she wore around her neck. Her fingers reached up involuntarily to touch them.
“Good meeting, Mr. Kesh?” she asked.
“All my meetings are good,” he said with a grin, laying on the charm even thicker than usual. “I wouldn’t have it any other way, darlin’.”
The secretary giggled and gazed up at him with open admiration. “I guess that’s why you’re so successful, huh?”
Kesh leaned over and kissed her lightly on crimson lips. “It helps to have friends in all the right places,” he said, barely managing to conceal his distaste. The woman was far below him, and not his type, but an endless font of useful information.
She giggled again. “Will I be seeing you again soon? That last restaurant you took me to was so fancy.” She sighed in memory.
“You can be sure you will, darlin’,” Kesh said. And you can also be sure that you will be the first one I send to work on the casino boats after I raze this dump to the ground. “You have no idea how much I am looking forward to it.”
*
FINALLY, IT WAS Sunday, and that meant the Wily Serpent wouldn’t be going out. She’d told Kesh last night that she needed the day to herself to do some magical work, and he’d agreed, however reluctantly, to give her some space.
So first thing after the breakfast of toast and tea that was all her twitchy stomach seemed willing to tolerate these days, she’d pulled out a bunch of arcane supplies, the bits and pieces she needed to work with the powers of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, and a dozen tiny glass dishes filled with the various samples she’d collected over the last week. Chewie sat off to the side to “supervise” (she’d made him stay at least three feet away from her during complicated magical workings ever since the time he sneezed and melted the enchanted necklace she’d been making as a wedding gift for Barbara).
Most of the magic that a Baba Yaga did was instantaneous and relatively effortless; the snap of her fingers could summon a book from across the room or turn a cloudy day into instant rain. But she was trying to achieve something much more delicate, examining the essence of each frond of seaweed or fish’s fin, so she’d decided to go the more traditional route of casting a ritual circle to contain and focus her power and whatever showed up during her explorations.
It would have been easier to have done the work outside, in a larger space, but Beka wasn’t in the mood to drag everything out to someplace private and then do even more magic to ensure that some tourist didn’t stumble upon her and get the surprise of his or her life. (The windows of the bus were already enchanted so that no one could see in; a hand-me-down from her mentor Brenna.)
So she just made do with the patch of clear floor in front of the sofa, sprinkling sea salt around herself and her supplies to create a ritual circle. Once that was in place, she sealed it with a drop of her blood by using one of her sharpest knives to prick her thumb, letting the salt in her own fluids join the beginning and the end of the white crystals.
A humming in her bones, too low to hear, told her that the circle was in place. That meant it was safe to call in the elementals: the swirling red-hot salamander that represented Fire, the mythical golden Bird of Paradise who represented Air, the tiny goat-legged faun who represented Earth, and a delicate sea horse swimming in its own bubble of seawater that stood for Water.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, bowing slightly to the elementals. “You are welcome here.”
All the small creatures bowed back from their places at the quarters: Air in the east, Water in the west, Fire in the south, and Earth in the north.