Ms. Maple, Chapter Four

By Garon Whited

We went back to the motel, parked the truck, changed clothes—Bronze included—picked up the dog, and took the BAT-9-mobile to reach the Roy Hurd Airport in record time.  The road in that direction was intact, so we made good time.

“Why the rush?” Melody asked.  She didn’t have to hold on in the BAT-9-mobile.  It had lap-and-shoulder belts, as well as bucket seats.  This was a good thing, as Charlie—the formerly-wounded dog had neither collar nor tags, so I named him—had to sit in her lap.  No back seats.  “I don’t think he has enough people to chase us, much less a car to do it in!”

“He has money,” I countered, as Bronze drove for the airport.  “When he gets to a telephone—his isn’t working—he can arrange for someone to be waiting for us in the hospital.  We’re taking a plane to get there before his personal goons can arrive, so he’ll have to try and get someone local, at the destination.  That will be harder.  Unless he has someone on-call out there, we’ll beat his time.”

“Now I see.  Can’t this thing go any faster?”

“Don’t say th—”

Smoke came from the tires and from under the hood.  Behind us, bluish flames, tinged with yellow, made a hollow roaring sound.  Melody grunted as acceleration hammered her back in her seat.  Charlie barked gleefully at the scenery disappearing behind us.

I told Bronze she was showing off.  Bronze agreed.  She didn’t strike me as being willing to stop until we got there.  When we did, she pulled into the charter plane’s hangar.  There we stopped in much the same way as with a brick wall, but with less crumpling.  The doors opened and the seat belts unlatched on their own.

“Come on,” I suggested.  “We have a plane to catch.”

Charlie leaped out, tail wagging, and danced around excitedly.  Melody climbed out of the car with care, checking to see if she had a nosebleed.  From her slow movements, I inferred whiplash.  She lifted the sack from the footwell and clutched it to her as she headed for the plane.

The pilot was mildly alarmed by the manner of our arrival.  I waved even more money at him and told him we were in a hurry.  After a couple of thousand reasons to continue, he decided anything happening on the ground wasn’t his concern.  Better yet, since I’d told him roughly when to expect us, he had his preflight checks and clearances.  All that remained was to radio the tower and get in the air.

I seated myself midway down the fuselage, between the wings.  It was big plane for us; a Piper six-seater.  I wanted something larger, but the only way to do that would have been to steal one.  I’m not above stealing a plane, but there were air traffic regulations and other complications.  At least this plane would give us extra seats.  Lacking other passengers, my weight wouldn’t be much of an issue.

Once we were in the air and heading west, I turned to look at Melody.

“Now you can ask how fast this thing can go.”

“Isn’t… uh…?”

“No, she’s driving.  Probably playing Tag with some pursuit vehicles as a distraction, diversion, and decoy.  With a vehicle to pursue, Weatherman will have to divide his efforts.”

Melody nodded and moved forward to speak with the pilot.  He shrugged, said, “You’re paying,” and opened his throttles, racing with the night.

I, on the other hand, reclined the seat as far as it would go and tried not to crush the armrests.  It’s not that I don’t like flying.  I do like flying.  I like dirigibles, airliners, spacecraft, and starships.  What I do not like is rattle-trap little aircraft where I can hear every rivet go ping and pop.

Objectively, I shouldn’t worry.  And, when I’m on the ground, I can be objective.

“You don’t like to fly?” Melody asked.

“I can manage.  Still got our friend?”

“Yes,” she answered, still clutching the bag to her chest.  “Do you really think Clyde will have someone waiting outside Roddy’s room?”

“It’s possible.  I suspect not.  We’ll get there in about three hours, maybe a little more.  He has enough official notice surrounding him, demanding answers, so he might not make it to a phone in three hours.  Rest assured, if he does manage to put a group of gorillas in our way, they’re my problem.”

“Your problem?  Why are they your problem?”

“Because I’m already mildly annoyed with him and I’m the only one of us equipped to deal with gorillas.  Your job is to deliver the package.  Speaking of which, have you confirmed she has a wish left?”

“We haven’t spoken.  I saw her inside her rosy crystal thing.”

“Maybe you should ask, just in case.  Or, to avoid accidentally wishing for something, let me talk to her.  I can’t invoke a wish if I’m not holding the thing, right?”

“That’s my understanding, but I can’t guarantee it.”

“Okay,” I said, sitting up and turning in my seat.  “I’ll be careful.  Even so, you hold her and I’ll talk to her.”

Melody opened the drawstrings and peeled the bag back from a crystal.  It was about the size of my fist, rosy-colored, and a bit smoky.  Inside, I saw a pixie.  She was curled up, legs folded, somewhat scrunched down inside the crystal.

“That’s can’t be comfortable,” I observed.

“It’s not,” she agreed, in the typical high-pitched little voice.

“However did you get stuck in there?”

“It was a djinni!” she snapped, indignantly.  “It grabbed me and stuffed me in here!”

“That’s not very nice.  Why did it do that?”

“I don’t know.  Are you going to let me out?”

“I’m planning on it, but the nice lady holding you?  She needs you to grant a wish.”

“But I don’t want to die!” the pixie protested.

“Die?” Melody asked.

“I already granted two wishes.”

“And the third one will kill you?” I asked.

“Yes,” she answered, drooping.

“What will happen if the third wish kills you?”

“The third wish is final,” she told me.  “When I die, all the wishes come true forever and forever.”

“What if I took you home?  Could you rest up and grant a wish without dying?”

“Sure!”

“I don’t trust this,” Melody interrupted.  “How could we be sure it would come back?  And how long will it take?  Roddy doesn’t have forever.”

I regarded the pixie in the crystal and examined the magic binding it.  She looked out at me with an imploring expression.  I was reminded of the time Trixie was hurt and had to rest in her little diorama house.  I watched her through the Eye of Brahmantia.

“Hmm.”

“Can I come out, please?”

“I’ll make arrangements,” I promised.  “I want you to be alive and free, but I also want Roddy to be okay.  I also want to know more about this djinni you mentioned.  Did the djinni give you to Clyde, or have you been imprisoned for a while and Clyde happened to find you?”

“The djinni brought me to a nasty man.”

“That could be Clyde,” I agreed.  “What did he wish for?”

“I don’t know what the djinni gave him.”

“I mean, what wishes did he make you grant?”

“His first wish made him younger.  His second wish made him healthier.”

“Not the dumbest use of wishes I’ve ever heard.  And you’ve been imprisoned ever since?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.  You try to rest.  I’ll do my best to get you out of there, but it might take a little while.”

“Promise?”

“I promise to do my best.”

“How good is your best?”

“Very, very good.”

“Oh.  Okay.”

I nodded at Melody.  She closed up the bag.

“I don’t know how you’re going to do both,” she said.  “The wish is the only way to cure Roddy.”

“Oh, I don’t know.  There may be other ways.  On the other hand, there might be a way to… I don’t want to say ‘recharge’ the pixie, but a small, intense magical area—like a faerie ring, or something similar—might be enough to let her rest up a bit before she grants a third wish.  Once you get what you want, she’s free to go, right?”

“All I want is Roddy to be okay.”

“Then don’t worry about it.  I’ve got some ideas.  And relax!  I know you’re panicking inwardly about whether or not you can trust me, but didn’t I come through for you?  Would we be on a plane, headed for Roddy, when I could have hit you over the head and taken the bag?  I’m trying to get everybody to have a happy ending.  Well, everyone except Clyde.  You, Roddy, the pixie, and me.”

“True.  You’re going to a lot of trouble if all you want is to release the fairy.  I guess I’m on edge.”

“You’ve got hope,” I told her, and lay back in my seat again.  “That’s always nerve-wracking.”

—

Bronze was somewhere around El Paso when we landed in San Diego, so I hired a cab.  Again, money acted like an accelerant.  We burned rubber to the hospital.

I had him drop us off at a service entrance instead of at the front.  Melody looked anxious, but she didn’t argue.  Charlie wouldn’t have been welcome in the front door, not even in this era, but I had other reasons for wanting to go in through the back way.  I cautioned Charlie to be calm.  He wasn’t a very smart dog, but I made myself very clear.  He agreed to be quiet.

Once we were in shadows, in sight of our entrance, I looked around to make sure we were alone.  I pointed a finger at Melody.

“Now listen,” I began, softly.  “I will lead.  You have the package, so you will follow.  We are going to Roddy’s bed.  There are two things you need to keep in mind.  First, no matter what happens, no matter what you see, you follow me.  If I duck down a side hall, you duck, too.  Don’t ask me why.  Just do it.  If someone leaps out at us with a knife, you are my follower.  I’m in front for a reason.  I will deal with it.  And if you see me take a knife away and break a man’s neck, you don’t flinch, you don’t scream, you don’t question.  You keep following until we are with Roddy and his privacy curtain is around us.  Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Repeat it back to me so I know you understand.”

“I follow you wherever you go, no matter what, and I keep my mouth shut.”

“Good.  Second thing.  Once we’re there, you will talk to me about the specifics of Roddy’s condition.  We will work out exactly what you want.  Do not jump the gun and wish for him to walk again.  He could wind up with magical legs of bone and glass!  The pixie isn’t a malicious creature, but it may not comprehend your intent.  We have to work out the wording so you do not screw this up—not after all this.  Do you understand?”

“Yes.  We get to Roddy and we figure out exactly what to wish for and how.”

“Good.  Follow me.”

I writhed a dark, invisible tendril into the lock.  The service entrance came open with a click.  We were inside in an instant.

I went to the trouble of wearing a Somebody Else’s Problem spell.  It projects a psychic impulse of utter normality and actively deflects attention from the subject.  People see us, but the don’t notice us.  We’re not their problem.  It’s not being invisible.  It’s being unnoticeable and unmemorable.

Sadly, it has some limitations.  If we’re clearly not supposed to be somewhere, people can still notice us.  Usually, they’re a bit puzzled, but go on about their business.  But—for example—if someone is a guard, or otherwise is in the business of detecting intruders, the spell requires a lot of help in the way of costumes.  Appearances matter!  Even so, if a guard is checking identification, the spell won’t get us past.

Night nurses, orderlies, and other hospital personnel ignored us as though we were dressed in hospital uniform.  So far, so good.  We went up two floors and started across a lobby-like area with a nurses’ station.

“Sir!  Madam!” one of them said, rather sharply.  “Visiting hours don’t start until ten!”

I didn’t see anyone with a gun, but maybe those were all waiting for us in the main lobby, downstairs.  We didn’t come in that way, so how would I know?  It was also possible Clyde didn’t get anyone to the hospital ahead of us.  When I examined Roddy before, I also looked for anyone suspicious standing guard and failed to find anyone.  Aside from a nurse or three, we were in business.

“Ma’am,” I acknowledged, smiling and nodding as we approached.  “I understand that.  I’m very sorry to disturb you at this hour, but we were told by the doctor that there might not be another opportunity before… uh…” I trailed off.

The nurse, eldest of the three behind the counter, pursed her lips and sat down again, reaching for a record book.

“Doctor’s name?” she asked, brusquely.  I put a finger to my lips and made a soft, “Shh,” sound.

Even as she opened the book, I insinuated tendrils into all the nurses, slurped vital essence from them, and kept at it, gently reducing them to exhausted slumber.  Nobody fell to the floor, but they slumped in their seats, heads down on the desktops and paperwork.

Melody kept her mouth shut and followed.  We’d talked about proper procedure.  Even Charlie behaved.  He cocked his head, knowing only that something unusual had happened, but not what or how or why.  I assured him he was being a good dog and he wagged his tail.  Understanding was optional, as far as he was concerned, if he was a good dog.

Down the hall, we stopped by Roddy’s bedside.  He was still in the same bed in the terminal ward.  They hadn’t moved him, yet, probably because they didn’t understand what the hell was going on with him.  No doubt they would get around to it as his condition continued to defy expectations.

I already worked on him.  It was necessary to see improvement.  Melody wouldn’t believe me, otherwise.

Aside from the dying people, there was no one else around.  I drew the privacy curtain around the bed and the whole world seemed to go silent.

If I can do it with a bullet, a curtain is child’s play.

Melody moved to his bedside immediately to sit beside him and take his hand.

“Hey, Slugger,” she said, squeezing.  Roddy blinked and yawned, then squirmed a little to sit up more.  I was pleased to see how much progress my healing spells were making.  I pulled a chair over to the bed and urged Charlie up on it.  He sat on it, looking at Roddy.

“Hey, Mom.”

“How are you feeling?” she asked, trying to conceal her shock.

“I feel great!”  He sat up and put his arms around her neck.  Melody sucked in a surprised breath, but managed to put her arms around his skinny little body.  She squeezed him for quite a while.

“You’re doing better,” she choked, eventually.

“Lots!  Look!”  Roddy pulled back from her, struggling a bit to get loose.  I handed her a handkerchief.  She took it while Roddy pulled the covers toward his chin to expose his feet.  He wiggled his toes.  “I can’t walk, yet, but I can feel my toes!”

“So I see!”  Melody turned away, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and handed the handkerchief back to me.  She wiggled his toes for him, one by one, and he giggled as she counted the Little Piggies.  When the last little piggie went wee-wee-wee all the way home, she shot me a look.  I nodded.

“I told you I’d find you something to help,” Melody went on, speaking to Roddy but still looking at me.

“Yeah!  And its working!  What did you find, Mom?”

“I’m not sure what to call it,” she admitted, still looking at me.

“I can answer that,” I said, stepping close and keeping my voice low.  “Hi, Roddy.  I’m Doctor Goodfellow.  You can call me Robin.”  Melody straightened up suddenly and her nostrils flared.  I ignored her and went on talking to Roddy.  “I’ve been working with your mother.  Have you been cooperating with the other doctors and the nurses?”

“Yessir.”

“I’m glad.  We’ve got to get you cured, then build up your muscles!  You can’t expect to run around if your legs haven’t been used.  You’re out of practice, so you’ll have to exercise to get strong.  Okay?”

“Okay.”

“To help with your exercise, I’ve brought you a friend.  He’s looking forward to running with you.  His name is Charlie.”

Charlie, hearing his name, woofed softly and put a paw on the bed.  Roddy took the paw and shook it.  Charlie moved forward, putting both paws on the bed and licking Roddy’s face.  Roddy laughed out loud and Charlie barked in delight.

“Hush,” Melody said, quieting the both of them.  “People are sleeping.”

“I’ll be quiet,” Roddy assured her.  He helped Charlie onto the bed and Charlie laid down next to him.  Roddy petted him with one hand.  With the other, he held his mother’s hand.  “I missed you, Mom.”

“I missed you, too, sweetie.”  Melody hugged her son again and I waited, patiently, for quite some time.  At last, Melody wiped her eyes and pulled back.  “Roddy, I have to talk to the doctor about some stuff.  I just wanted to give you a hug because I’ve been so busy, but I should be around a lot more.  Soon.  Okay?”

“Okay, Mom.”

“You try to go back to sleep.  I’ll be here in the morning,” she said, glancing at me.  I nodded.

“I’ll try.  G’night, Mom.”

“Goodnight, baby.”  She kissed his forehead and tucked him in again, covering his feet carefully.  I drew back the curtain and we quietly moved down to the nurses’ station.  One of them was snoring.

I held out my hand.  Melody hesitated for a long second before she met my eyes.  Mine were black as night and deep as wells.

She handed me the bag.

“Is that all you want?” she asked, softly.  “Is that… all I… owe you?”

“Who says you owe me anything?” I asked, cradling the bag in both hands.  “I did what I did because it pleased me to do it.  Although I am pleased to accept your gift.”

Melody looked back down the darkened rows of beds.

“He’s going to live?”

“You’re asking if he will survive.  Yes, and more.  He will live.  He’s going to run, climb trees, go swimming, play ball, and, I hope, he will live as long as he may wish and love as long as he lives.  I’ve done all I can to make that happen.  Everything else is in other hands than mine.”

“That’s all I ever wanted.”

“No, that’s what you needed,” I corrected.  I didn’t explain.  “I do have a question, though, if you’re willing to answer it.”

“What do you want to know?”

“This Clyde.  Did you ever tell him you needed powerful magic to save the life of your little boy?”

“Yes.  The first time, I couldn’t risk telling him.  He would have been suspicious of me.  The second time, when he had me brought back?  He wanted to know what and why.  I explained.”

“And what did he have to say?”

“He told me there wasn’t a hope in Hell he would assist me.”

“You were quite clear about a child’s life being on the line?  You made sure he understood why you stole a pixie—effectively, stole one wish from him?  And he refused you?”

“Yes.  Why?”

“I wasn’t sure if he was aware of the circumstances.  It changes how I view him.”

“Does it matter?”

“It might.”  I handed her the car keys.  “Your former clunker is in the parking lot.  Maroon color.  White trim.  You won’t recognize it, but if the keys fit, you have the right car.”

I turned to go and took two steps before I paused.  I looked back.

“And this time, look in the trunk.”

I left her there to be mystified.  She’d figure it out when she saw the suitcase full of cash.

She mentioned debts.  What’s the point of saving the child if his mother is going to prison and he’s going into foster care?  Besides, she has a dog to feed.

Meanwhile, I had my own mysteries to investigate.

—

Time zones are tricky things when you have a part-time allergy to sunlight.  In another hour, the Sun would be rising on Odessa.  What I wanted was to find a nice spot where I could unlock a crystal without being interrupted.  To do this, I would have to start after my morning transformation, or chase the sunset around the world.  In San Diego I had about three hours.  In Hawaii I would have about six.  Or, if I wanted to pop over to, say, Peoria, I could sit back, wait for sunrise up front, then only have to worry about being caught in a sunset.

But who would choose Peoria over Hawaii?  I mean, there’s nothing actually wrong, as such, with Peoria…

So I checked into a very nice hotel in Hilo, drew the room curtains, and settled down at the room’s built-in desk.  I un-sacked the pixie crystal and laid it on the blotter.

“You okay?”

“I’m squished,” she piped.

“I see that.  I’m going to get you out of there.  Before I start, there’s a very important question I like to ask whenever I’m about to deal with a magical containment device.  Do you know how to open it?”

“No.”

“I had to ask.  This could take a little bit.  Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable while I work?”

“I don’t know.  Is there?”

“I don’t know, either.  I was asking you.”

“I don’t know what you can do.”

“That’s fair.  I’ll just get to work.”

I grabbed a complimentary pen and started sketching on the desktop blotter.  The crystal’s magical effect was a quasi-physical containment, both to keep the crystal intact, but also to keep the energies of the pixie from leaving.  One could argue the Fair Folk are made of magic, existing as sapient patterns of energy.  While this explanation has some truth to it, it’s not a complete description.  You might as well say humans are made of contaminated water.  While true, it doesn’t paint a complete picture.

Getting the pixie out of the crystal was an exercise.  It was a fun exercise, though.  I hadn’t had to deal with someone else’s idea of a spell in far too long.  Eventually, I managed to find just the right line, pop it, and let the crystal fall into a rose-colored powder.  The powder disintegrated, sublimating into a wisp of vapor, and was gone.

The pixie, lying on the blotter in the middle of my drawings, unfolded herself and sat up.  She put one hand to her head, swayed a little as she rippled and fluttered her wings, and took a deep breath.

“It’s so cold,” she observed.

“I know.  This Earth doesn’t have much in the way of magic.”

“Where is a portal?”

“I don’t know where the nearest natural portal to Faerie might be, but I’ll send you home through one of my own.  How’s that?”

“Yes, please.”

So I did.  I’m a pretty decent wizard, if I do say so myself.  And I have some power-gathering tricks most mortals don’t understand.  Drawing a wizardry version of a fairy ring on the blotter, I zapped the pixie from my desk to Faerie.  It was a little time-consuming, but not difficult.  Most of it was charging up the spell.

With the pixie safely zapped into a magical land of unicorns and rainbows, I tore off the top three sheets of the desk blotter and stuffed them into the infinite depths of my coat pocket.  It’s really a pocket universe, only accessible at night.  I’ve never concerned myself with exactly what happens to anything I put in there.  I know it never comes back, and that’s sufficient.

I gave serious thought as to whether or not I needed to do anything else.  Did I want to get into this any deeper?  I was done with Melody, Roddy, and the pixie.  Did I have any beef with Clyde?

Yeah, I did.  The pixie said a djinni grabbed her.  I inferred the djinni captured the pixie and locked her in a magic crystal.  If Clyde started with a djinni and the customary three wishes, it seemed as though one of the wishes was to capture a faerie creature for the purpose of having more wishes.  You can’t wish for more wishes, obviously, but can you wish for lesser creatures that can still grant wishes?  Are a djinni’s wish-granting abilities on par with a pixies?  Is there a hierarchy of such things?  How long can we stretch out this idea of getting lesser wish-granters as the result of a greater wish?

I recall a story about a powerful djinni in a lamp and a lesser djinni in a ring.  If I have the lamp, can I use one wish so the powerful djinni will bring me three of the less powerful ring-type djinn?  According to the story, their wishes weren’t as far-reaching as the big ones of the first djinn.  Even so, having more wishes for more specific things would give the owner more options.

Following the theory, could each of those lesser wishes summon an even lesser form of bound djinn?  At what point do these wishes of diminishing power result in grabbing imprisoned pixies?  What were the limits on wishes—in numbers, and in individual effects?  Were the pixie wishes the least powerful, although there were more of them?  How, exactly did this whole wishing business work?

I don’t know the details.  It might be nice to find out, if only so I can avoid irritating faerie creatures and djinn!

I went to the bathroom and sat down in the shower.  A beautiful sunrise was dawning in the east and I didn’t want anything to do with it.

—

With a hearty breakfast inside me and a lovely day shaping up, I lounged by the pool and watched the world go by.  I rested up until I had the strength to tackle lunch.

Later, in my room, I made use of one of the decorative wall mirrors and checked up on Clyde.  Given how Melody stole a car and it turned into a clunker, I was curious how the loss of the pixie who granted his wishes affected him.

As far as I could tell, everything was fine.  And I do mean everything.  The house was intact.  The other buildings were undamaged.  There were no bodies, no bloodstains, no bullet marks, not even tread tracks in the lawn.  Trucks were in the garages.  Men patrolled the immaculate grounds.

The estate did, however, now have a ha-ha.  Viewed from within, a low brick wall surrounded the place—no more than three feet high—but on the outer face, the ground was dug out, moat-like, with the wall covering one face of it like a retaining wall.  This artificial outer ditch was both wide and deep, making the wall, effectively, nearly twelve feet high on the outside.

Clearly, Clyde did not appreciate having people drive over his lawn.  I wondered what the ha-ha would be like after a good thunderstorm.  Would it flood?  Would it fill?  Would it turn into an actual moat, eventually?  Or would it dry up between rains?  And how many times would it have to rain before the wet ground oozed slowly downhill to partially fill it in?  Was Clyde failing to think long-term?  Or was this what the creature granting his repair wish came up with?

All this overnight repair work had to be the result of a wish.  I couldn’t have fixed all the damage so quickly.  “Clean this place up and make it defensible” might be a single wish, depending on who or what was granting it.  If it was a single wish, would a more directed wish—e.g., “I want my estate to be a fortress!”—have resulted in a castle?  How powerful were these wishes?  And did he have any left?  If he did, how many?  If he had one wish left, he would be extremely reluctant to use it.  If he had three or four more, a wish along the lines of, “Destroy this guy!” might be on the table.

I don’t know if a pixie can zap me into oblivion.  I doubt it.  On the other hand, how powerful a wish do djinn grant?  If legend is any guide, they can vary in power.  There might even be the potential for catastrophic disintegration!

I’ve heard djinn are not able to grant a wish for someone’s death, but it’s not the sort of thing one wants to test.  Not directly.  It’s like checking to see if the gun is loaded by looking down the barrel.

Okay.  Clyde had a djinni.  The pixie told me so, and, given their ability to retain information, it was a significant fact.  Clyde used at least one wish to obtain or imprison less-powerful creatures still capable of granting wishes.  Given how he’s thrown around wish-magic to fix things immediately that could be fixed by money and time, he had at least two wishes left.  He has to have at least one wish left.  He wouldn’t waste his last wish just to avoid legal annoyances and property damage.  That’s the minimum.  He may have more, spread among an unknown number of imprisoned pixies!

My first order of business is to find out.  So I set about it.  I went back to my motel room, divided the mirror over the sink into four parts—neatly, because I’m considerate—and started looking over the Weatherman estate.

The outer view was as I described.  The buildings were once again intact and the guards were alive.  I recognized one whose head I’d mostly blown off.  He seemed perfectly intact as he happily took apart and maintained a Thompson submachinegun.

I continued to look around at the rest of the buildings, inside and out.  Once I had the full layout—including any basements!—I would start over with much more complex scrying spells.  I wanted to take a closer look at Captain Decapitant.  If he was really raised from the dead, that was one thing.  If he was an animated, albeit well-repaired, corpse, he would have to be under a powerful glamour.

The layout scans added to my map of the place.  The garage was no big deal.  A couple of small, low-security sheds, full of lawn and garden equipment, were even less so.  Everything was perfectly normal until I probed the house.

The scrying spell saw the house perfectly.  I could look in the windows with my usual air-refraction lensing acting as a telescopic function.  To all appearances, it was a very nice house and completely normal in every respect.

Then I moved a scrying sensor into the house and the image went to hell.

Not literally.  Just thought I should specify.

The image in the connected mirror rippled strangely, almost as though the mirror was a disturbed pool of mercury.  The ripples seemed to fluctuate back and forth between different images, as though the scrying sensor was trying to see two places at once.  Human eyes wouldn’t be able to distinguish them.  It would take a high-resolution camera with a super-slow-motion setting.  Or it would take eyes like mine.

On the one hand, the interior of the house matched what I saw through the windows.  It was intact, clean, even polished.  There was no sign of the violence recently done to people, woodwork, and walls.

On the other hand, it was a shack.  Two rooms and a semi-detached outhouse.  Dirt floor.  The roof was a single-slope arrangement, covered in rusty tin.  Inside, a ladder led up to an angled storage space just under the roof.  A little of the furniture was makeshift—a wooden spool, normally carrying wire for big construction projects, was empty and served as a table.  The rest was more regular furniture, salvaged from street corners and dumpsters, repaired just enough to restore functionality.

I pulled the scrying sensor out.  It hurt my head to look at the images for more than a second or two.

It took me a while to cast a better scrying spell.  I went with the quick and simple versions for the overall look, but now it was time to do more detailed analyses.  If the house was under the effect of faerie magic—as, presumably, the clunker Melody stole was—then I wanted to look at everything again, harder, deeper, and longer.

Man, that just sounds dirty.

By piloting my multi-phase scrying spell around the main house, I could scan in much greater detail.  Yes, there was considerable power tied up in the building, but, as with most faerie magic, it was hard to tell exactly what it was doing.  A glamour, certainly, to change the appearance of things, but what else?  If it was a minor glamour, it would only alter the sense of sight.  This was considerably more powerful.  This was the effect of a wish—an expenditure of a portion of a faerie’s very essence.

Such a powerful glamour would be impenetrable to most second sight.  It would be resistant to most magical probes, as well, as it was an ongoing alteration of reality.  Until such a major glamour was pierced, there was no practical way to determine what was actually there.  And it would be highly resistant to most forms of attack.  Penetrating Faerie magic can be fairly simple, with the right incantation or enough iron.  This, on the other hand, would require either highly-specialized measures or an extremely high-level magical attack.

In the meantime, anything that seemed to be there would have to be treated as though it was actually there.  If a major glamour says an iguana is actually a fifty-meter, fire-breathing dragon, you better bring more than a shield of rowan wood.

Well… damn.

Turning my attention to the man I head-shotted, I determined he was under a powerful glamour, as well.  If it was part of the estate’s magic, rather than an effect specific to him, penetrating one small part of the glamour might be easier.  If it was a completely separate effect, focused solely on one man, it would be at least as tough.

Under normal circumstances, I would open a small gate, reach through it, and whack the target with a powerful burst of magic to disrupt the spell.  Unfortunately, faerie magic doesn’t work the same as the more formal spells.  While their works are fueled by magic, their methods are alien to anybody who doesn’t have faerie blood in them.

Yes, yes, yes.  Technically, I have faerie blood in me.  I’m a vampire.  Blood crawls to me and soaks in.  I’ve encountered faerie magic plenty of times, but I haven’t taken the time out to make a formal study of it, okay?

The point is, the standard spells to disrupt other spells don’t work as well on faerie magic, or glamour.  Unless the disruption spell is pretty powerful, it usually doesn’t work at all.

On the other hand, even if I didn’t break the glamour, it might be possible to see through it, at least for a moment, to the underlying, base level of reality.  The “reality” of the glamour could be penetrated, rather than dispelled, to give me a better idea of what was going on.

I got together a number of things and readied my spells.

First, scrying spells, all focused on the target and ready to probe like aliens on a joyride in the country.

Second, a disruption spell.  A hefty one.  I might not break a glamour, but I might flatten it to the point it wasn’t masking what lay beneath very well.  A plastic bag can conceal what’s inside it, but if you push it flat you can at least get the outline!

Third, stuff.  Iron, reduced to dust.  St. John’s Wort powder.  Butterwort blossoms.  Things like that.

And finally, a gate spell.  One big enough to reach through.  Tossing a magic-disrupting spell through a magical portal is, to say the least, tricky.  It’s like trying to throw a stick of dynamite at a target on the far side of a flaming hoop.  Easier by far to reach through before tossing it.

So, scrying spells, zap.  Gate, poof.  Powders and flower petals, whoosh.  Disruption spell, wham.  I snatch my hand back, the gate snaps closed, and I check my fingers to make sure I can still count on them.  And by then, the scrying spells have shut down.

Let’s check the recording crystals.

The former dead guy, cleaning his submachine gun, had a fistful of iron, sawdust, and flower petals smack into the back of his neck, instantly dispersing into a cloud.  His image in the replay flickered, only for an instant, like a stubborn candle in a windstorm.  He then leaped up, spitting and coughing and swearing, wiping at the back of his neck and brushing at his clothes, none the worse for wear.

I played the image back again, slower.  During that one flickering instant, the man was a formless blob of multicolored light.  He didn’t look material at all.  Since I had full-spectrum scrying spells running, I looked at him in several energy types.  Overall, he was simply magic.  Not a zombie with an illusion.  Not a creature of any sort.  He was a construct made of magic.  Or, if you like, the illusion of a soldier, complex enough to simulate one and solid enough to function like one.

Not all of the personnel had to be magical constructs.  I suspected most, if not all, of the gun-toting sorts were.  It seemed likely several of the house servants would be, too.  When you wish for a fortified mansion, complete with staff, you get the cooks and the maids, as well as the guards.

Did they respawn after being killed?  Did they rise up and pull themselves together at every sunrise?  Or did they gradually regenerate over time, taking hours to do so?  Or were they expended when “killed,” requiring a new wish to restore or replace them?

However it worked, it took power.  Lots of power.  More power, I felt sure, than any pixie could provide.  Well, in one wish, anyway.

Could a djinni do it?  Possibly.  I don’t know enough about djinn.

Come to think of it, there were multiple types of magic involved, here.  Faerie magic, obviously, but the crystal holding the now-rescued pixie wasn’t Faerie magic.  The work of a djinni, perhaps?  It was a containment structure and I recognized it as such.  I didn’t know what methods put it together.

Regardless, there was a high probability of Faerie creatures being held captive in there, to be used for their power, consumed to their destruction.  And I happen to like pixies.  I don’t particularly like greedy, callous people.  You would think a man with enormous riches would be more generous.  All too frequently, the richer one becomes, the more determined one is to hold on to it.

I checked in on Phoebe.  The night was still young at our house.  She was sleeping peacefully with Mister Stuffins and Gus.  Firebrand reported no difficulties.

I closed my check-in gate and let the time-ticker go back to abusing the relative time differential.  I shouldn’t have any problem finishing this up before breakfast, Phoebe-local time.

I did take a moment to grab my saber, though.  My fingernails—talons—are perfectly functional, but sometimes it’s nice to have a three-foot razor blade in hand.