“Here’s the second part you do not know,” she said. “We’re not actually meant to bring her forward in time.”
“What?” I cried. “Then what are we doing here?”
“We’re here to recruit her,” said Gráinne. “Much as I recruited the Fuggers. If she comes forward in time, what do we have? One more witch. But if we leave her here, educated and motivated to pass a family legend down, then we can sculpt her to our needs, and seven generations hence, it’s allies we’ll have in all her dutiful descendants. And if we set her up so that her descendants will be people of power in America, then when we come to them in the twenty-first century, it’s powerful allies we will have. They will have things that we need—because we will arrange now for them to have such things.”
Again, I was utterly gobsmacked—what a very clever and extremely dangerous methodology. And shocking that I had not been told of it. Again, I wondered: Had Tristan? Was he also in the dark, or had he begun to keep secrets from me?
Three banks had already opened in or near Portsmouth Square, and the third bank was owned by the current Mr. Fugger. Gráinne wrote a note to have delivered to him, and after we waited for a few minutes in the brick lobby (brick! In that time and place! Proof these were no ordinary bankers), the gentleman appeared, in very fine and sober attire, and received Gráinne as if she were Santa Claus and he a toddler. They exchanged certain code phrases that she had planted with his ancestor, to reassure each other (or to reassure him; Gráinne had this insouciantly in hand). He was only too happy to follow us back to the St. Francis, where his duty would be to set up Xiu Li as the wealthiest Chinese immigrant in all of California.
I do not know—I suppose I shall never know now—if Gráinne offered him other incentives to fork over a chunk of his private fortune to a total stranger, and a Chinese woman no less. But determined, even eager, was he to fork it over.
“Now,” said Gráinne, as we all stepped lightly across the square, “it’s hopeful I am of this matter being wrapped up quick enough, but ’tis a matter of logistics that we will have a gentleman caller who must be dispatched politely. This may require you to pretend to be Melisande’s companion for an hour.”
Young Fugger regarded me with skepticism but was too polite to express his disappointment. His eyes, however, strayed not infrequently to Gráinne’s curvier shape as we walked back toward the St. Francis.
Back in the upstairs rooms, we found a grim Xiu Li.
“I am not yet resolved to go,” she said, almost pouting—if pouting can be applied to a woman of such mature and majestic bearing.
“There is another way,” said Gráinne. This immediately commanded Xiu Li’s attention. “Yes. There’s always the option to stay here and swap out magic for dosh, if you have that phrase here. Money. This gentleman is an associate of ours, and he will happily set you up for life, and for your children’s lives, and your children’s children’s lives.”
Xiu Li’s bright eyes narrowed, and she looked back and forth between them. I might as well have not been present. “There is always a condition to these matters,” she said. “What is the condition here? Must I marry this Caucasian? I am already the mistress of the Celestial Jong Li.”
Gráinne shook her head. “No condition but that you think well of us—myself and the gentleman here. And that you breed, if you haven’t yet, but choose the man yourself, sure. Then raise your children to think well of our memory, and to raise their children to do likewise, and their children, and so on down the line. One day in the future I might be meeting one of your descendants, and I would have them very well-disposed toward me.”
With a wink to me, as if I were a part of all of this unsettling collusion, she commented, “Worked a wonder with the Fuggers, might as well try it again, isn’t it?”
Xiu Li thought this over. “When magic disappears,” she said, “are witches gone? Do the powers lie dormant through the generations or are they entirely snuffed out?”
“Oh, the magic comes back just fine, so it does,” said Gráinne. “Although it takes the witches a while to get the feel for it.”
“So a distant daughter of mine—”
“—is what I’m saying,” said Gráinne, nodding.
Xiu Li pursed her lips and looked out the window. It seemed to me an eternity passed, and I was not comfortable about this, as time was drawing near for Francis Overstreet to return to “test the wares,” and I did not like the idea of pretending to be a prostitute with Mr. Fugger as my client.
Xiu Li finally turned to us. “I will agree to this. But I want a contract and surety.”
Mr. Fugger raised his handsome leather briefcase. “I’ve got it all arranged here,” he said. “But this is hardly a place to do respectable business, so I’d like to bring you both to supper where my cook will treat you like royalty.”
“Both?” I echoed, now feeling even more invisible, in a manner that was beginning to make my hackles rise. “There are three of us here.”
The gentleman turned to me. “Miss Gráinne said you’d be wanting to return home as soon as possible.”
“Yes, but—”
“There’s no need of you to stay here,” said Gráinne cheerfully. “This was really my DEDE all along, we only needed you to come along to cover my tracks. If I return a few scant hours after you, ’tis no concern of anyone there.” With a wink. “And the longer you stay here the likelier you are to be called to service, not that anyone will be too hot to hoist that skirt up off your bony hips.”
I reviewed my options. Gráinne had entirely commandeered the situation—mostly because I was so unprepared for any of these developments, but it seemed clear enough that Blevins had entrusted her as a DOer. I could not see a benefit to my remaining here any longer. And frankly, it would be helpful to have some time in Cambridge without Gráinne underfoot, to suss out how all of this had come to pass.
“Thank you, yes, I’ll go home now,” I said.
“Excellent,” said Gráinne, and turned to Xiu Li. “Do you have much experience Sending people?”
Xiu Li shrugged. “As children my sisters and I did it as a game, but as magic weakened it became very difficult, the fun not worth the effort.”
“I’ll be refreshing your memory, then,” said Gráinne. “I shall Home Mel, and you, watching me, will then know how to Home me after our agreeable dinner.”
Xiu Li nodded.
“But I need you to be paying particular attention,” said Gráinne, “as a few things will be different. In particular, the coordinates of where we are to end up.”
“How so?” I asked. “We are both returning to the same place.”
“No,” said Gráinne, in an amused-yet-apologetic smile. “We’re not, actually, Melisande Stokes.”