Authors: Kaye Thornbrugh
Lee’s voice floated toward him
. “Where do you find
this stuff?” A
moment later, Lee was at the counter, holding
a black dress covered in a
fringe of dark
, glittering
beads
. “
It’s so cool.
”
“A
ll sorts of places,” he said. “I
got that chest
at a garage sale. Some lady was moving into her great-uncle’s house, and she wanted to move out all his old junk. That chest was up in the attic. She couldn’t get the lock open. Alice—this girl that used to live here—she thought it was worth checking out, so
we used a spell to
open
it
.” He smiled a little at the memory. “Alice liked all the dresses and jewelry, so we sealed it up again and bought it cheap.”
Filo crossed to the stil
l-open chest and closed the lid,
wishing there was a spell that could sea
l away his memories of Alice.
* * *
Lee sat on a stool behind the counter in the silent
shop, tracing
a series of complicated swirls into the fine layer of dust.
Filo had already locked up for the night, but she lingered downstairs.
She
wished for her sketchbook, so she could
draw out the day’s events and try to make sense of them.
That would be more constructive than sitting here alone.
Suddenly frustrated, Lee pulled down the sleeve of Nasser’s coat and swiped it across the counter, clearing her tracings. She stood and headed upstairs to the apartment
.
Filo was
standing at
the
cluttered table.
He’d changed into a faded T
-shirt
, and she saw
for the first time that his arms were
covered in scabs and
bruises in various
stages of healing,
crisscrossed by scars and burns.
“Jeezus,” Lee gasped
, approaching him
. “What happened to your arms?”
He glanced
down, then
shrugged. “
Just part
of the job. It doesn’t matter.”
She bit her lip.
“So, is
Flicker the only shop like this around here?”
“Of course not
.” He
was crumbling dried flower heads int
o a bowl. He picked up a pestle, and as he ground them together, she noticed the bracelet on his right wrist: It was made of dark wooden squares connected by braided twine, each square carved with a different symbol.
“How many are there?”
she asked.
“There are two large shops in Bridgestone,” Filo said, opening a bottle of clear liquid and pouring it carefully into the bowl. “One is
Flicker. The other is
Snapdragons,
o
wned and operated by faeries
. They’re actually not bad for a bunch
of fey
. Then there’s Sandpiper,
a little
apothecary
. There are a few independent practitioners around, too
—not Seers
, mind you
—
but none within the city limits
, other than Nasser and Jason
. None of
the others
are fully human
. They’ll work w
ith anyone, human or otherwise.”
“What sort of people do
you
work with?”
“Hum
ans and part humans, mostly. You know—
werecreatures, half-breed
s
. Sometimes full-blooded faeries hire me.
The only creatures I don’t deal with are vampires.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“You can’t trust
a vampire.” Filo jabbed a finger at her to emphasize his words. “You never know when it’ll try to feed on you to get out of paying a bill.”
She made a mental note of that. “
How do you get paid, anyway? What do you charge?”
“Depends on the job. Magical folk pay with things I can use—books, am
ulets
.
Only normals pay in ca
sh,
but
I barely use money.”
“Really?”
“I
f I’m buying
from a normal,
I usually just give them some paper glamoured to loo
k like money,” he said easily.
“But—isn’t that
stealing
?” Lee stammered.
“To you, maybe,”
Filo shrugged. “
It’s not my fault normals are too stupid to know w
hen something’s fake. M
oney’s not worth anything anyway. It’s just paper with numbers on it.”
“Great,” Lee said, sitting down on the bed and putting her chin in her hands. “Just great. I’m stuck here with a thief.”
Filo shook his head and went about his work. She watched him add more ingredients to the bowl, then funnel its contents carefully into a large bottle. The liquid was golden-brown.
“How do you do it?” she asked suddenly.
“
The magic. How do you do it?”
He looked up with a sigh
. “Magic is like gravity,” he said. “It’s a force of the universe. Everything is
at least a little bit magical, e
ven people.
Everyone has
some
magic. M
ost
have so little
that they never realize it’s there. But some
people
happen to have more, or they’re more in tune with what they have, so it
manifests
. That’s where the Sight comes from, and the lesser abilities
, like my gift of tongues
. That’s what makes it possible to cast spells.”
“When you say
everybody has magic
,”
Lee said slowly, “do you
mean
everybod
y?
”
“Yeah. Look at Jason—he’s not Sighted, but he can work spells. He doesn’t have all the benefits of the Sight, but he’s good at what he does.”
“So, if I were to practice, then
…
”
“Maybe
,” he allowed.
“
In
theory.
Everyone has magic, but very few can truly
wake it up. It doesn’t happen for everyone.”
“
It’s better than doing nothing!
I won’t just sit here when I could be learning something.”
Filo narrowed his eyes. “I hope
you don’t expect
me
to teach you.”
“But—”
Shaking his head, Filo
corked the bottle and tied a tag
around the neck.
“You don’t
understand, Lee.
People who are in-between, with enough magic to ca
st spells but not enough to manifest the
Sight, are
extremely
rare.”
“Well
,
how can I find out if I have
enough
?”
Filo
seemed to wrestle
with his answer. Finally, he said
admitted
, “Nasser thinks you might have
workable
magic. When he found you at the revel, he thought he sensed some in you.”
Lee’s heart was beginning to beat faster. “Does that mean I have it?”
“It’s
possible. What you have—if anything—isn’t totally awake. But it
was
enough t
o register with Nasser
…
” He sighed, pinchi
ng the bridge of his nose.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Your magic
might have surfaced withou
t you even noticing
.” He frowned. “You don’t play any instruments, do you?”
She blinked. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Art is magical,”
he explained. “Artists,
musicians, ac
tors—they all have magic
, more than average people
. Magic is a live thing, Lee. It moves people who truly have it. It inspires them, creates through them, sometimes against their will. It uses them like an instrument.”
Lee froze, thinking
of the artist, of drifting off and waking to find her sketchbook filled with crazy, beautiful drawings of all the things that floated around inside her head, but could not be coaxed onto paper while she was awake.
“So?” Filo said. “Do you play an instrument?
Sing, dance, anything
?”
“I draw,” Lee said. “And paint.”
“Show me.”
“I don’t have my sketchbook.”
“Tell me, then.
I saw th
e look on your face just now
. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? About being an instrument.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“If you tell me what it’s like, then
I’ll
know.”
Lee paused, thinking back to the last time that the artist had ridden in her skin, taking up her hands and making art with them.
“Sometimes, when I draw,” she began, “I get lost in i
t. It’s like
having a dream where I’m
watching myself draw.
When I wake up, there are all these beautiful sketches in front of me. I know
I drew them,
but
it didn’t feel quite like it was me. It felt like someone else was holding my arm, moving the pencil. Moving
me
.”
When she finished, Filo didn’t speak, just strode across the room and
into the hall. Lee heard him clomp
down the stairs, and she wondered what he had seen in her.
He was ba
ck
a moment later, a small, thic
k book clutched in one hand. I
t was the same book
where he’d found the lock spell. He passed it to her.
She looked
up
at him, bewildered.
“A
re you saying I—”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it was the same with me,” he said
.
“That sort of sl
eepwalking thing you do—I used to get that
, when I was still learning
to control my magic
. Alice
got
it. Jason still
gets
it, when he pla
ys his music.
Really
plays it. Only Nasser never seemed to, but he was always in
really
good control
of his magic
.”
“What does your magic do?” she inquired. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
For a moment, he hesitated. Then, in a tone that implied this was really none of her business, he admitted, “It tells stories.”
“Stories?”
“Ballads
,
poems
,
stories.
Your magic leans toward
art
. Jason’s is musical. Mine is
linguistic
. So w
hen my magic takes over, it makes me tell stories
.
”
Shrugging, he
nodded tow
ard the book in her hands. “Anyway, that
b
ook has pretty basic stuff
. It’s like an introductory course—theory and such, some spells.”
“So I’m going t
o teach myself how to use magic.
”
“You already use magic, Lee, just not on purpose.
That’s
wha
t you’re teaching yourself
.”
“Is that safe?”
“I
f you’re careful. Of course, I can’t guarantee that you won’t hurt yourself.”
“I know that.”
She bit her lip
. “Thank you, Filo. Really.”
He looked suddenly uncomfortabl
e. “I never do this.
I’m not allowed.”
“Why not?”
“
Neman
and
Morgan
don’t really approve of teaching magic to non-Sighted humans, even ones with magic.”
“Humans like Jason?”
“Yeah. So d
on’t mention this to
Nem
and
Morgan
the
next time th
ey come around. I’ll be in
trouble if they find out, more trouble than I was in when they realized you were here.”