Carver kept coming by and refilling my cup. The cider gave way to wine, and then to something like mead. In my own defense, there are many cultures where it is unforgivably rude to turn down a drink, and how was I to know whether this was one of them? The longer we played, the wilder the music became. Jackie moved closer, happy and relaxed, smiling at the music. And at me. She’d been drinking almost as much as I had, and although she wasn’t showing much effect from it, she had to be three sheets to the wind herself.
I also noticed Lou sitting quietly by the hearth and staring disapprovingly at me. He’d seen me drunk a few times in the past and it usually ended up with breakfast being late the next morning.
Eventually we wound down the music and all crowded around the fire. Jackie wedged herself up against me, more in a friendly manner than a seductive one. Malcolm had vanished, probably off to bed. We all talked music for a while, and then the musicians drifted away as well, leaving the two of us alone.
Jackie turned her back and leaned into me, sitting between my legs and resting her hands on my knees. It didn’t feel simply friendly anymore. Not that it felt unfriendly.
“You know, I like you,” she said, turning her head to look up at me. “I didn’t think I would, but I do.”
“I like you, too,” I said. Not the most brilliant of come-backs, but I was pretty drunk.
“The fire’s dying out,” she said.
“We could put another log on.”
“Or we could go to your room.”
The firelight cast flickering shadows over her face, making her look sweet and innocent one moment and wise beyond her years the next. She was a beautiful woman in any case, and the firelight added another layer to her, making her subtle and mysterious, exotic and as fresh as the girl next door. The mugs of mead I’d consumed didn’t hurt, either.
So on one level that seemed like an excellent idea, but on another it most certainly did not. She was potential trouble, I didn’t really know why I was here, I didn’t know where here was, and the first rule in an unknown situation is to keep your head clear and your guard up. That first boat had already sailed, but the second part was still in force.
And she was young, almost a kid, really, though she wasn’t acting like one. Jessie would probably kill me if she ever found out. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what happened here might have real-world consequences. No, tempting as this might be, it was a bad idea.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
We stumbled upstairs, clinging to each other. The room was cold, but there were quilts piled up on the bed. I pulled off clothes, hers and mine, and in seconds we were naked under the quilts. The length of her body was warm next to mine, and our kisses were a blend of passion, mead, and rum, all mingled together.
Alcohol has the well-known attribute of fueling desire while at the same time impairing performance. But when she put her mouth next to my ear and whispered what she wanted me to do, that was no longer a problem. She rolled over and pulled me on top of her, lips inches from mine, staring into my eyes. Her fingertips traced delicate patterns on my back, making me shiver in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. I pulled her even closer and lost myself in the moment.
My next awareness was of sunlight streaming through the window into my eyes. The shutters had been thrown open. I hadn’t remembered sunlight being that horribly bright. I sat up and immediately regretted it. My head hurt, I felt queasy, a foul taste was in my mouth, and the sun hurt my eyes. Lou was nowhere to be seen.
A plain wooden table stood by the window with a jug on it. I jumped up, quickly ignoring my headache. I rinsed out my mouth with water from the jug and rubbed some on the day’s growth of beard I now had.
Then I remembered. I looked around, but Jackie wasn’t in the room. I couldn’t believe I’d been so reckless. Not for getting drunk and partying, but for letting down my guard. I was with two practitioners I didn’t trust, in a place I didn’t know and might not even be real, and I got blind drunk and fell into bed with one of them.
“I like you,” she’d said, practically dragging me off to bed. Yeah, right. I’m irresistible. I’m no genius but I’m not that stupid, either, not even when I’m drunk. I’d been spelled, no doubt about it.
What was worse, in a way, was that I couldn’t even recall exactly what had happened once we’d landed in the bed. I remembered kissing. I remembered the feel of her body next to mine. But that was about it. If I’m going to make a stupid mistake like that, at least I want to remember the good part. If there had been a good part.
I remembered Jackie’s earlier trick with Lou and the piece of paper slipped under his harness. People, even practitioners, tend to stay in their comfort zones, to stick with what’s worked before. I went carefully through all my pockets until I found a wadded-up scrap of paper with symbols scratched on it, and above, a large smiley face. She must have slipped it to me while we were listening to the music.
A smiley face. This had to be the most embarrassing spell directed against me, ever. But why had she done it? And although I do have my points, I doubt that Jackie had been seized with an uncontrollable lust for my body. When I tore up the note I felt no release of power. It had been a temporary spell and its work was done. Now it was just inert scribbling on paper. I examined my clothes again, more carefully, but found nothing.
So whatever she had planned, it must have involved getting me naked. I inspected every inch of my body that I could see, but again, nothing. A fleeting memory of fingers gently trailing across my back surfaced. I craned my head around as far as I could, but of course you can’t examine your own back. And there were no helpful mirrors in the room, either—this wasn’t the Marriott. But I had little doubt there was something inscribed on my back—and something that wouldn’t wash off easily, if at all.
I smoothed out the top quilt on the bed and centered my talent on it, setting a basic attraction spell over it. It wasn’t as strong as I would have liked since I had nothing outside to draw on. I picked up the jug of water that had been set out and balanced it carefully on top of the quilt. The idea was that the jug wasn’t compatible—a full water jug does not belong on a bed. Again, rather weak, but better than nothing. I wove that difference into the quilt as well.
I lay back onto the quilt and triggered the spell. In theory, whatever didn’t belong on my body would be drawn off of it and into the fabric. For a moment nothing happened, and I was starting to wonder if I wasn’t just being paranoid when I felt it. A tearing sensation, just above my lower back, like a length of tape being pulled off or an old scab finally detaching from skin. So much for paranoia.
I sat up and studied the place on the quilt where I’d been lying. Three marks discolored the material, all dark red. Blood, or blood-based, I’d guess. Two of them were unfamiliar, though they reminded me of the glimpse I’d had of Malcolm’s tattoos. The third one I recognized from the brief study of such things Eli had insisted on when I was younger. It was a binding rune, used for stasis or control. A simple triggering word and I’d either be frozen in place or compelled to obey on command, depending on how the other two marks interacted with it.
So. Jackie had installed an insurance plan. But now it was an insurance plan for me—when she tried to implement the spell, she’d be in for an unpleasant surprise.
It had taken a while to straighten all this out. By the time I went downstairs Malcolm was already sitting at a table in the front room eating breakfast, looking alert and rested. Lou was sitting next to him as if he’d found a new best friend. One with breakfast.
“Fresh baked bread,” he said as I came in. “Have some.” He held out a slice and my stomach lurched warningly.
“Maybe later,” I said.
Malcolm handed the slice to Lou, who gobbled it up and pretended I wasn’t there. Jackie came in from outside looking fit and happy. She looked me over critically, giving no indication anything had happened between us.
“My, but you look chipper this morning,” she said.
“Please. Put me out of my misery.”
She seemed to be considering it. I sniffed the air. At least this place had coffee. Carver the barkeep, now a provider of breakfast, appeared with a large mug of it, which I took gratefully.
“Ready to do some exploring?” Malcolm asked. The coffee was working its soothing magic, which was all that kept me from snarling at him.
“Where?” I asked.
“Nowhere in particular. I just want to get a feel for the place.”
“You’re in no hurry to get back.”
“Nope. Why? Are you?”
I wasn’t, especially since I still had no clue as to what he and Jackie were up to. One thing was for sure: they hadn’t come here for a sightseeing tour, nor were they much concerned about my take on things. So far I’d played along, but now it was time for some hardball.
“Not really,” I said. “Of course, I’ve got Lou. I don’t have to worry about getting back. Unlike the two of you.” Malcolm gave me a wary look.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, this has been fun and all, but now I want to know why we’re here. You’re searching for something. You’ve been asking around. What is it, and why are you looking for it?”
Malcolm put on a baffled expression. He was good at it; if I hadn’t known better, I might have bought it.
“I have no idea—”
“Yeah, you do. First of all, I don’t understand exactly what this place is, but I don’t think you created it—not by yourself. It’s way too complex. I think you accessed it; you knew it was here. I don’t care how amazing that book of Richter’s is; there’s no way you simply read it and came up with this.
“Second, you’ve been hitting up everyone in the place, asking for information. So you’re looking for something. Or someone.
“And third, if you don’t tell me what this is really about, right now, I’ll leave you here. I’ll take Lou, go home, and you two can find your own way back.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Jackie said. “I know you better than that.”
“No? You didn’t have any problem leaving me in that singularity you devised, and that was a lot less pleasant than this one.” I left out the trick she had pulled on me last night. “And if you did your due diligence, which I’d guess you did, then you know a little something about me. You know I’ve run up against dark practitioners before, and some of them are now dead. So don’t try me.”
I was being melodramatic, but neither of them knew me well enough to be sure of that. The stuff about dead black practitioners was true, but I’d only killed one of them. And that one had been doing his level best to kill me at the time. And the others weren’t my fault at all, not really. I wouldn’t actually leave Jackie and Malcolm stranded here, but they couldn’t be sure of that. But Malcolm just shook his head sadly, determined to play it out.
“Mason, honest to God, you’ve got it all—”
I whistled at Lou. “Let’s go,” I said, and headed toward the door.
“Malcolm, tell him,” Jackie said. “It’s okay.”
Malcolm looked at her with annoyance. Underneath that bland exterior was a tough individual and a good judge of character; I think he would have let me walk out and taken his chances that I was bluffing. But unfortunately Jackie had now let the cat out of the bag. Malcolm could no longer pretend to be wide-eyed and innocent.
“Come back,” he said. “Sit down. This will take a while.”
I was more than happy to return since I hadn’t any backup plan once I’d walked out. Plus, I hadn’t had a chance to finish my coffee yet. I sat back down and waited.
“Okay,” Malcolm finally said. “First of all, you’re right about one thing. I didn’t create this place; it’s been here all along. Creating it from scratch would be impossible, even with the book. But I didn’t just access it, either. I added to it—we all did, in a sense; that’s what donating some blood was all about.”
Score one for me.
“Almost like a wiki,” said Jackie. “It’s already in place, but anyone can make changes to it, and sometimes those changes can be extensive.”
“So who set it up in the first place? Richter?”
Malcolm shrugged. “Who can say? It’s complex enough so that it may have been created and then added to over the centuries, way before his time. But he put his own stamp on it, for sure; if you knew more about him, you would see that instantly. Richter was in love with an idealized concept of the ‘old days,’ of pre-industrial Europe. Although from our standpoint, his era was almost pre-industrial itself.
“So this jolly inn, the quirky innkeeper, the peasants, the casual acceptance of magic—these are all an idealized version of his own take on history. He was a great lover of tales, and a friend of Jacob Grimm, although Grimm was an old man before they crossed paths. Still, those stories of magic, ogres, and dark woods didn’t all come from folklore—some of them came from Richter himself, things he’d seen or experienced, disguised as tales he’d heard in childhood.”
That was what I’d been trying to put a finger on, why this world seemed not quite real, despite its detail and complexity. It wasn’t Disney; it was the Brothers Grimm. That gave me a new appreciation for the place, and a warning as well. Those stories were seldom entirely benign.