Mulberry Wands (20 page)

Paul flew back home, where Fox had already
arrived and was in the process of shapeshifting back into her own
form. He was better at it than her, as he was able to fly in the
door, shapeshift back, and close the door with human hands by the
time she had blonde fur again.

“Did you eat her?” Fox asked, when she could
finally speak with her own body again.

“No. I let her go.”

“You should have eaten her. She was
rude.”

“She was terrified. You heard her,” Paul
said. He didn’t really want to discuss it. The incident with the
translator had turned what was supposed to be a fun and exciting
night into something that had left a bad taste in his mouth. “And
she had small children at home. I saw one of them.”

“Well, I can understand wanting to be with
unweaned kits,” Fox said. “But how am I going to learn to
impersonate a human if I don’t have a translator?”

“I’ll stay human when you want to practice. I
can teach you to talk,” Paul said. “I’ll get some clothes for you
too. Seeing you naked makes me want to mate with you.”

Fox laughed, her bark sounding more natural
now that she had her own throat again. “Dog foxes are always in
heat too. I’ll bite you if you try it. Mating with someone not your
species is unnatural.”

Paul stepped into the clothes she’d left on
the floor. They were still warm from her body, and they had a faint
musky smell, almost like a woman but not quite. He straightened and
buttoned his shirt.

Fox was waiting at the door. “I’m hungry. I
want to go hunt before light.”

“Sure,” Paul said. He turned the handle. “I
have some human food here, if you’re interested.”

“My prey has two legs and a need to be taught
a lesson.”

“No, don’t.” He shut the door.

Fox laid her ears back. “The treaty says we
can eat them if they refuse to translate.”

“She can help us.”

Fox sat on her haunches, looking as cynical
as a fox could. “Yeah? How?”

“She knew my name. If she knows my name, she
knows other gossip about Sunwards.”

“And?”

“And if we get in good with them, they can
tell us what’s going on with the owls. Who knows how many secrets
the parliament is keeping from us?”

“They won’t spill se—” Fox stopped, wagged
her tail. Her ears perked up. “The treaty doesn’t say that they
can’t spill secrets, only that they can’t refuse to translate. We
have a hold over this one now. She can’t refuse to talk with
us.”

“They probably don’t like owls any more than
we do,” Paul said. “Who knows what else she might tell us?”

Fox grinned, tongue lolling out imitating a
dog, what she called her happy/stupid face. “See, I knew you were
good for something other than opening doors.”

He opened the door for her. “Happy
hunting.”

Fox slunk out the door.

Griff went to Jake’s house to hang out and
play games, like he did most Friday nights. It would have been a
great way to unwind after a week of hard work, except that he
hadn’t had many hours that week. The week before, either. It would
have been a great place to sell wands too, Chris was coming over,
and he was a pretty good buyer, except that Griff didn’t need to
make more sales, as he had sold all but one of his wands.

So instead of a well-earned respite after a
week, or a networking opportunity, Jake’s house became a place to
hang out and forget his troubles, where he could bum a beer or two
and have a night out away from his roommates.

He wished he didn’t worry about money so
much. A month had passed, and Alex still hadn’t come back. Griff
had called a few other mages, but every one he talked to said that
making wands was impossible, and added that if they knew how to do
it, what would they need him for? So, effectively, his second job
was over unless he could find Alex again.

“Relax, dude,” Jake said, leaning into the
throw as he played Wii bowling. “He’s just on a walkabout or
whatever. He’ll be back soon enough.”

But Griff couldn’t relax. He’d run up credit
cards with the expectation that he’d have money to pay them off.
“He hasn’t called or anything?”

“No, he won’t. He’ll just show up or
whatever.” Jake was shifting back and forth on the couch. He
couldn’t play Wii without moving his whole body. He seemed
incapable of it. “What does it matter, anyway?”

“I was counting on the wand-selling money. My
dad only gave me three jobs last week, and two of them were barely
worth the gas to get there.”

“Tell him to piss off,” Jake said, twisting
his torso to try to make the ball roll better. “Just get a job at
The Home Depot or something. They’ll hire you.”

“No, man, it wouldn’t work. My mom would toss
up a shit storm about letting my dad down if I quit, and my dad
would never talk to me again if I worked for the competition. I
don’t want that kind of drama.”

“Man, your family is fucked up.”

“Tell me about it.” Griff flicked his wrist,
but his ball went in the gutter. He wasn’t playing very well. His
heart wasn’t in it. Maybe he should try with the whole-body
gyrations like Jake did.

“What’s with that hot chick?” Jake asked.
“You still hanging out with her?”

“Fallon? Haven’t heard from her.”

“You call her?” Jake took a sip of his
beer.

“No, she never gave me her phone number.”
Griff missed another spare. He didn’t like Wii bowling very much,
but Jake had become obsessed with it recently. “I don’t know what
was up with her.”

“Maybe she got pissed off that you left her
out in the desert, and caught a ride with my cousin. I bet Alex is
boning both of them in Alaska or something. Road trip of love.”

“I doubt it,” Griff said. “Fallon didn’t seem
that into me. She was kinda weird, actually, asked me weird
questions like she was a spy or something.”

Jake laughed.

“Seriously,” Griff said. It was the tenth
frame. His lackluster score came up, and his little Wiiple looked
dejected because it lost. “The first time we went out, she asked me
about a mage named Susan Stillwater. Thought for some reason I’d
know her.”

“Do you?”

“Nah. Never heard of her. Alex is the only
mage I’ve ever met.”

“Maybe you could track her down. She on
Facebook?”

“Not that I can tell. I found a Maggie
Stillwater who lives here. I got her address. She’s a mage, she
says, does fortune telling sometimes, but she doesn’t have a shop
or anything, just a page with an address. If she’s for real, maybe
she can make wands too.”

Jake started another game of Wii bowling.
Griff didn’t want to play, as it wasn’t much fun and his wrist was
hurting from flicking it. His little Wiiple jumped around with
excitement at the prospect of bowling yet another game.

Griff thought about just going home, but he
didn’t want to. He’d hoped he could have gone by now, but the money
just wasn’t there. He might have to see if he could stay on for a
little while longer, unless he could find a cheap place in the next
couple of weeks.

Either that or face the horrifying prospect
of moving back in with his parents again. Mom would be openly
angling for that if she knew how dire his financial situation was.
Dad, who knew exactly what his financial situation was, seeing as
how he’s the one who signed the paychecks, smugly asked how his job
hunt was going. Griff got so mad at that he rode off on his
motorcycle without saying a word. Mom had already left a voice mail
telling him he needed to apologize for hurting Dad’s feelings by
storming off like that.

He wished, not for the first time, that Eddie
were still alive so that he had a heat shield against this kind of
crap. Eddie had died so long ago that he couldn’t really visualize
what kind of a guy he’d be now, but in his fantasies, Eddie would
mediate, run interference so that Griff could live his own life and
Eddie could be the perfect son that Dad wanted but hadn’t gotten.
Or maybe he would just tell Griff what he needed to hear: that he
wasn’t going to get his problems solved by playing games.

Chris knocked on the door twice and walked in
without waiting for Jake to answer it. “Hey Jake, Griff. What you
playing? Wait, do I even need to ask?”

“Dude’s obsessed,” Griff said, handing Chris
the controller. “You’re up.”

“You leaving?” Jake asked, not turning from
the screen. He leaned so far to the left that Griff thought he
might fall over. “You just got here.”

“Got some stuff to do.”

“Wii bowling?” Chris asked. “Didn’t you just
get the new Call of Duty expansion?

“We’re only in the third frame,” Jake said.
“You can take over Griff’s spot.”

Chris took the seat Griff had left. They both
waved goodbye, then leaned in tandem to the left as another bowling
ball missed its mark.

Griff rode his motorcycle to the tiny trailer
park behind the auto parts shop where Maggie Stillwater lived. He’d
originally gone to Maggie Stillwater’s trailer looking for Susan,
on account of Fallon asking for Susan specifically, but if
mage-craft ran in families, maybe Maggie was a mage too. He’d ask
her if she could make wands, and if she couldn’t, he’d see if he
could convince her to find Alex without cash exchanging hands.
Maybe she needed some shelves hung or a roof patched. He was pretty
sure he couldn’t afford to pay her—mages who did it for a living
must charge huge fees to work spells—but even mages needed a
handyman now and again. He could hire a private investigator too,
but he imagined that they’d charge a lot of money as well, and
they’d probably do a credit check and find out he didn’t have
any.

So it was Maggie then. He’d show her his last
wand and see if she could make more just like it. First impression
of her said Maggie was the kind of person who couldn’t be trusted
to feed a parking meter, but Alex wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the
box either, and he was starting to think that went with the
territory.

As he pulled into the trailer park and found
a spot for his motorcycle, Maggie was standing on the porch of her
trailer, pulling blossoms off an oleander bush. The bush towered
over her, easily the height of the trailer, with pink blossoms
dropping all over the porch. She was gathering the buds with her
right hand, and holding them in her left. He’d always been warned
never to touch oleander, as it was deadly poisonous, but he figured
she was old enough to know better.

Maggie looked like she was at least forty, a
hard forty, with a worn face and breasts that had spent too many
years outside of a bra. She wore a shapeless spaghetti-strapped
dress and Birkenstocks. Her hair was curly and wild, decorated with
a purple tie-dyed headband, hoop earrings, and a lizard. He thought
the lizard was an ornate hair clip until it moved.

“Oh, hey,” Maggie said, like she recognized
him but didn’t remember his name well enough to chance calling it
out. “You’re that guy.”

“Griff Harrower,” he said, extending his
hand.

“Yeah, yeah,” Maggie said, and opened the
door.

He was going to follow her inside, but
instead of going in, she just leaned over and grabbed something off
the counter. Then she turned over a record, and music started
playing. Griff didn’t know the artist (he’d been raised on country,
and converted to alternative rock in college), but it was a song
that they always played in those Vietnam movies.

The porch had one lawn chair, and she sat in
it. Another one leaned against the side of the trailer, and she
tried to grab it, but her hands were full of blossoms and a small
cigar box, and as soon as Griff saw what she was trying to do, he
opened it himself. The straps of the lawn chair had dirt and leaves
caked into them. He tapped it on the ground to shake most of the
dirt off, and a lizard fell free, peering around as if too shaken
to go anywhere.

“Hey, Miles,” Maggie said to the lizard in
her hair. “Your cousin?” She laughed then, as if the lizard had
said something funny in reply.

Griff shook some of the dirt off the chair,
and sat as close to the edge of the seat as he could without it
collapsing. “So, um, I have a business proposition for you.”

“Susie turned you down, huh?” Maggie dropped
the blossoms on the rickety metal table next to her and rooted
through the cigar box. She pulled out what appeared to be dried
oleander blossoms and started breaking them into pieces. “Not
surprised. She don’t do mage-craft for anyone but Ruby these days.
Whatcha have in mind?”

Griff pulled the last wand out of his back
pocket and explained the arrangement that he and Alex had, leaving
out nothing except what had happened with the owls and that he’d
only been getting a twenty-five percent commission.

“So what I need to know, is, can you make
more of these, and if so, would you willing to go into business
with me? I’ve got the contacts to sell them, but I need more
product.”

He held out the wand for her to take, but she
nodded at the table for him to set it down, as her hands were full.
A moment later, she finished rolling her spliff and tucked it in
the corner of her mouth, then she wiped her hands on her dress and
picked up the wand.

“Well, I’ll be,” she said, peering at the
mulberry wand. She waved it experimentally, then pointed it at a
car in the parking lot. “You say this has a charge in it?”

Griff plucked it from her grasp. “I’d like
you to not discharge it, as it’s the only one I have left, and I
had something in mind for it.”

“Yeah, no doubt,” Maggie said to the lizard
on her shoulder. She pulled a lighter out of the folds of her dress
and lit the spliff between her lips. It may have looked like she
was putting oleander blossoms in there, but even Griff could
recognize marijuana when he smelled it.

“You are a mage, right?” Griff asked. Not
everyone who talked to invisible creatures had the sight. Some of
them had just done a lot of drugs. “I mean, I heard that you
were.”