Magic of Home: an Uncollected Anthology story (2 page)

Twig had been one of those friends right up until the day she decided to leave Moretown Bay.

Now Jocko sat alone at his table, an untouched mug of beer in front of him. He looked at Twig with eyes that appeared to have forgotten laughter existed in the world, and for a moment, she didn’t think he even recognized her.

Then he snorted. “Never thought you’d come back here again,” he said. “I’d tell you to pull up a chair, but you won’t be staying that long.”

“Hello to you, too,” she said.

She turned one of the empty chairs at Jocko’s table around backwards and straddled it, giving herself a moment to listen to the eddies of magic that swirled around one of her oldest friends in Moretown Bay. She sensed no spells at work, no mood dampening hexes or defensive glamours that would account for Jocko’s reaction to her.

He was genuinely annoyed. She’d always heard it said that dwarves had long memories, although among her clan it was more joke than warning. Apparently the saying was true.

Twig wasn’t egotistical enough to believe that Jocko had slipped into a years-long mope just because of her. Something else was going on. Something serious. If Gillfoil hadn’t been on her tail, she could take the time to cajole it out of him, but right now time was a commodity she didn’t have to spend on anybody but the friend who waited patiently for her in the alley.

“Snap out of it,” she said. “I need your help.”

Jocko snorted. “Oh, that’s rich. Waltz in here like it’s yesterday, bring whatever trouble you got into with you. What am I supposed to do about it?” He jerked his head toward the stage. “I’m not in that line of work anymore, in case you haven’t noticed.”

No kidding. “If you were still a cop, I wouldn’t have come to you.”

Jocko had worked Vice until he’d abruptly quit and cashed in his pension. Twig had never seen any of his old cop buddies in the club, and he’d never talked about any of them.

The friends who used to flock to this place had been people like Twig—strays and oddities who called this rough neighborhood home. Once Jocko had made it clear he was no longer in the business of busting their ass for buying a piece of strange on the street or using an unlicensed spell or two, the street people began to trust him. They’d recognized a kindred spirit in the dwarf who stood over six feet tall and never talked about what had to be a singularly unique heritage.

“I need a Merlin,” she said.

His eyes narrowed, the flat emptiness replaced with genuine emotion—anger. “Get the hell out of my club.”

Twig didn’t move.

She was pushing him hard, asking for an introduction to a wizard who worked black market spells, but she didn’t have time for subtle. Jocko knew everyone on the streets. She’d been away for too long to find a Merlin on her own, and she couldn’t afford to have some street snitch remember her face when Gillfoil came around asking about her.

“Please,” she said.

Jocko abruptly turned his head toward the dancers on the stage. Other people might have mistaken the gesture for a dismissal, but Twig knew better.

The oversized dwarf who’d never had his kin’s natural aversion to elves had a soft spot for women in trouble. All sorts of women in trouble, whether they were elves or changelings or goblin gang members tired of being used as a punching bag by their male counterparts. The first dancers he’d hired at the club were former prostitutes, changelings most of them. Jocko gave them a job and kept them on the payroll as long as they kept off the streets.

In those early days Jocko had more wannabe dancers applying for work than he had money to pay them. If he couldn’t hire them, he found a place for them to stay on the cheap and used his street connections to find them other work. He even busted a few abusers’ heads before word got out that trying to get your woman back by crossing the dwarf at Snow’s Palace wasn’t good for your health.

Twig had never worked the stage, never did the bump and grind for dollar bills shoved in a G-string, but she’d been one of the women Jocko had rescued. She’d been grateful, and she’d been his friend, and never once in all the years they’d known each other had she played on his one weakness.

Until now.

He heaved a great sigh that smelled of alcohol and cigarettes. Twig tried not to react. Jocko never used to drink, and he’d never smoked as far as she knew.

“There’s a price,” he said, still not looking at her.

“I’ve got money.” Not a lot, but she hoped it was enough to buy the spell that the wizard on Marlette could have done in his sleep.

“Still haven’t learned, have you?” He gave her a sideways glance. “Not everything’s about money.”

A shiver ran up Twig’s spine.

He was trying to judge how desperate she was. The old-school wizards didn’t take payment in money—they took magic. The Merlin that Jocko had in mind must be old school, which meant he’d want more than her money.

Twig only had one real thing of any value to another magic user—her ears.

She tried to imagine what life would be like without the ability to hear the world of magic around her. To sense its currents and eddies by the tones and harmonies of light and dark magic, and magic that fell somewhere in between. Could she give that up for her friend?

A friend who had been trapped inside a machine for as long as Twig had been alive?

The answer was a no-brainer. She never would have liberated the motorcycle from Gillfoil’s gang if she hadn’t been prepared to do whatever it took to free her friend.

“I know that,” she said. “I’m still asking.”

Jocko sighed again, and Twig waited. She’d said all she could to convince him. He’d either do it for her or not. She couldn’t play on his emotions by telling him the motorcycle’s story. It wouldn’t have mattered, not to Jocko. The being inside the motorcycle wasn’t a woman. Jocko had always said that men could look out for themselves, and he didn’t care if that made him a sexist pig.

The music switched to a different surfer rock song, and the dancers on stage began a new routine that looked like the last routine, only the dancers had switched places. Or the changelings had flowed their bodies to slightly different configurations—bigger breasts, narrower hips—to confuse the drunks. Twig wasn’t sure which. A topless waitress was circling among the patrons, delivering drinks and fending off unwanted caresses.

For the first time Twig saw the club as an outsider must see it—tacky and tawdry and depressing, even with the upbeat music.

She’d never felt depressed here, not back then when this all seemed new and exciting. Had Jocko’s excitement really been that contagious? And was his depression that contagious now?

Jocko stood up, sending his chair skittering backwards across the concrete floor. “Let’s go,” he said.

Let’s?

“All I want is an introduction,” she said.

“And all I wanted was a quiet night so I could sit in my corner and drink myself stupid. Looks like neither of us is going to luck out.”

What the hell had happened to him?

He glared down at her. “I don’t have all night.”

Twig didn’t have to be told twice.

She stood up and turned the chair back around, all in one fluid motion. Jocko headed toward the hallway that led to the offices at the back of the club, and Twig followed like the dutiful child she no doubt appeared.

They were halfway down the back hall when her sensitive ears heard the motorcycle cry out in fear and horror, and she knew they’d run out of time.

Gillfoil had found them.

* * *

Twig slammed out the back door of the club, her feet flying so fast she nearly took to the air. She didn’t know if Jocko was following her, and she didn’t have time to worry about what would happen if he wasn’t.

The door led into a service alley that ran along the back of all the buildings on the block.

Things had died here. Twig could still smell the stench of rot and decay, and she heard the quiet, sorrowful remnants of magic that had belonged to the dead. A Merlin could have called to that magic, used it to augment his own, but Twig wasn’t a Merlin. She was just a headstrong elf who couldn’t admit to herself when she’d been bested.

She’d left her friend at the far end of this alley, tucked behind a trash bin that serviced one of Jocko’s neighboring businesses.

The motorcycle was still there, but it was no longer alone.

Gillfoil stood waiting for her halfway between where his own malevolent motorcycle stood guard over her friend and the back door of Jocko’s club. Magic flowed around him, a storm of anger and triumph.

“Thought you’d get away with it, little girl?” he said, and he grinned at her. “You should know better.”

The enforcer had been human at one time, but that time was long before even Twig’s parents had been born. The demon he’d allowed to possess his body had long since driven what was left of the man insane—a good quality in an enforcer. Not so much in someone you couldn’t beat in a fair fight, and this fight would be anything but fair.

Gillfoil still had the compact, sturdy body of a man used to heavy armor and the hard work of wielding a sword to defend the honor of his king. In this modern age, the only armor he wore was the black leathers of the gang.

His arms hung loose at his sides as he waited for her, dark energy crackling around his fingertips and illuminating his face. Hunger danced in his charcoal eyes.

Hunger for her soul, and to take back what had never been his to steal in the first place.

He held no weapon. He didn’t need to. Gillfoil commanded enough dark magic to kill her with a flick of his fingers.

Twig’s only weapon was a small iron knife hidden in a concealed pocket of her leathers between her shoulder blades. It wasn’t a throwing knife. She’d never learned that particular skill. She’d have to get close to use it.

She sprinted down the alley straight at Gillfoil.

He brought his hands up, not to ward her off—he would never be frightened of someone like her—but to begin to focus his energy.

That was her cue.

She turned, using the momentum she’d built up to run halfway up the side of a building.

She launched herself off the rough brick wall and flipped her body backwards over Gillfoil’s head.

He’d never seen her fight like this. Her skills at sensing hidden magic had been more valuable to the gang than whatever small assistance she could offer in a fight. She’d made herself indispensable, a shining star among their other old ladies, when in truth the only reason she’d spent so long in their company was to earn the trust of the being held captive in the motorcycle.

She hadn’t been able to tell Jocko when she’d left the real reason she’d joined the gang. She hadn’t told anyone for fear that the gang would destroy the motorcycle rather than allow anyone to release the being inside.

She unsheathed her knife as she flipped over Gillfoil’s head, reaching out to slice at his unprotected neck.

The cut didn’t have to be accurate. The iron in the blade would do most of the work for her.

But she hadn’t fooled him at all.

He swatted her away like an annoying fly before the knife could nick his flesh.

She fell hard. The knife flew out of her hand and landed in a pile of trash surrounding a group of overflowing garbage cans.

Twig channeled the energy from the fall into a roll that brought her to her feet just in time to feel a surge of magical energy strike her in the middle of her back.

Pain shot down her spine, white hot heat that set her nerves on fire and brought her to her knees.

Gillfoil laughed.

Twig didn’t know what hurt most—the physical pain or his gloating laughter.

She struggled back to her feet. She wouldn’t die on her knees, not in front of this creature.

Stop!
The motorcycle’s voice shrieked in her head, loud enough that she knew Gillfoil had to hear it.
I will go back!

“No, you won’t,” Twig muttered through clenched teeth.

To go back meant punishment followed by a slow death for her friend.

“You heard,” Gillfoil said. “That sure sounded like a voluntary surrender to me.”

“But not to me,” a familiar voice growled.

Even with her sensitive ears, Twig hadn’t known that Jocko followed her into the alley.

Gillfoil hadn’t known either, not if the way he whirled toward Jocko was any indication.

Jocko stood near the back door of his club, and he wasn’t alone. Twig heard the same magic that she’d sensed from the changelings who’d been on stage, only now they’d morphed themselves into trolls.

Huge trolls.

Huge angry trolls who weren’t afraid to use dark magic. The maces they wielded practically crackled with dark energy.

Jocko didn’t have that kind of magic. What he had was an iron axe.

Even with the strength gifted her kind, Twig didn’t think she could have lifted the thing, it was that massive. She had no idea where Jocko kept a weapon like that so it would be in easy reach. She’d never seen him use anything other than a gun or a nightstick, just like every other cop.

Gillfoil didn’t hesitate.

Energy crackled from his outstretched fingers toward the changelings. They swung their maces and intercepted Gillfoil’s magic with magic of their own, and the alley erupted in sparking light so intense it nearly blinded her.

Jocko charged into the battle with a roar that nearly drowned out the bellows from the trolls, ax raised over his head.

Twig couldn’t stand on the sidelines and let Jocko and the changelings fight her war.

She rummaged through the garbage until she found her own knife. She snarled as she launched herself into the fight.

Gillfoil never even turned to face her—she was that unimportant to him—until she slammed her knife into his back, burying the blade to the hilt.

He screamed, pain and surprise warring on his face as he clawed at his back, but he didn’t have the flexibility of an elf. He wouldn’t be able to pull the knife from his body. Twig had made sure to strike him where he couldn’t reach.

The energy crackling from his fingertips turned an ugly, sick green as the iron worked its way into his system.