Mulberry Wands (21 page)

“Yeah, sure,” she said. She dragged on her
cigarette and blew a couple rings. “I guess you want to see me do
something?”

“If you would.”

“What do you think, Miles?” she asked the
lizard on her shoulder. He must have replied, because she nodded
and raised her eyebrows as though hearing a good idea. She turned
to Griff. “You psychic?”

“No.”

“Great. Won’t mess it up then.”

She picked up her cigar box and swung open
the screen door on her trailer, letting it bang behind her. Griff
hesitated, then followed her inside.

The inside of the trailer was close and
small, made smaller by the mounds of clutter. It looked as though
it had been purchased cheaply in the seventies and never had any
maintenance done on it. The walls had fake wood paneling, scuffed
in some places, and mildewing in others. The ceiling had been
painted purple at one time, poorly, missing some places and lapping
over onto the aluminum window frame. He couldn’t see what kind of
floor creaked under his feet, because it was covered with trash,
magazines, and clothes. It reeked of pot and incense.

Maggie rummaged around in an open cabinet
until she found a candle. It was an ugly pillar candle, dirty white
wax with pieces of broken wick melted into it. She lit it with her
lighter (not with her mind, which would have been pretty cool). The
candle smoked abominably, making him cough. Even with the air
coming through the screen door, he felt as though he were
suffocating. He reached forward and tried to open the window over
the sink, but it had been painted shut.

Maggie shut the door.

“I can’t breathe,” he said. The smoke from
the candle made the pot and stale incense seem pleasant by
comparison. “I need fresh air.”

“You should have explained to him what you
intended,” Maggie said, except she hadn’t moved her lips and the
voice was coming from behind him.

Griff turned around and saw the lizard
clinging to the screen of the window.

“Ah, you can hear me now,” the lizard said.
“Excellent. My name is Miles.”

Griff wondered if he was high. He’d never
been high before and didn’t know what to expect.

“You heard that?” Maggie asked.

Griff nodded.

“Hot damn!” Maggie whooped. “It worked!”

“Mr. Harrower, I can’t tell you how pleased I
am that you can hear me. Not that Maggie isn’t pleasant company,
but it does get tiresome speaking to the same person all the
time.”

The lizard was definitely speaking. He had
Maggie’s voice, but he skewed her intonation so that he sounded
like a completely different person.

“Can all lizards talk?”

“Miles isn’t really a lizard. He’s a man in a
lizard’s body. Old curse.”

Griff sat down on the edge of the breakfast
table. He was kind of stunned, in a good way. Alex’s wands were
pretty cool, but as far as magical spiffiness went, having a lizard
talk was the equivalent of bumping into a movie star at a
party.

“So, do you think you can make wands?”

“Maybe. I always heard it couldn’t be done.
You know how he did it?”

He explained how Alex made them, as near as
he could remember.

“Ice, huh? Might not be necessary. I never
use ice. Bile is pretty standard. You know more about the potion?
Nevermind. He’s probably not related anyway. You know his last
name?”

Griff suddenly realized he’d never learned
Alex’s last name. “Um, Jake’s last name is Schweitzer.”

Maggie shook her head. “Not a mage
family.”

He still felt lightheaded, so he blew out the
candle and opened the screen door for a little more airflow. She
kept studying the wand, looking a little more serious now. He knew
a friend of his dad’s that was like that with beer. He was a mess
until he had his first sixpack in him, at which point he settled
down and acted like a normal guy. It was ten thirty am and she’d
already smoked half her spliff. He wondered how much pot it took to
get Maggie through the day.

He felt his phone vibrate and looked at the
number. It was Dad. Maybe he had work. He let it go to voicemail,
even though Dad would give him shit about not answering it.

He cleared his throat. “So, um, any idea if
you can make them?”

“Maybe.” Maggie finished her spliff and
ground out the butt in a cereal bowl that had a spoon and a
desiccated fruit loop in it. She blew out smoke before continuing.
“I can figure out how to discharge it. Pretty much everyone uses
bile for that. I used it on a trap once to keep the neighbor’s brat
from breaking into my car. I just gotta tinker with it. The tricky
part is getting the energy in there.”

“How do you figure out how to do a spell you
haven’t done before?” His phone vibrated again. Dad didn’t seem to
understand the point of voicemail.

“Well, most times my ancestral goddess gives
me guidance, except lately my ancestral goddess is being a little
bitch.” She held the wand up and rotated it so she was looking at
the cut end. “Not sure about the ice, but burying it gives my
spells durability too, so I’ll use that. I usually wrap them in
cloth before I bury it. Doesn’t work otherwise. My daughter Jess
had to use calico.”

“Calico?” he said, even though he didn’t
really care. His phone vibrated again, which meant that he was in
for some drama once he called back. “What’s that?”

“You know, quilt cloth. If she used check her
spells lasted longer than if it was a floral print. Damnedest
thing.”

“Uh huh,” Griff said. His phone vibrated for
the fourth time. “Hey, I gotta go soon.”

“You sure you don’t know what was in the
potion? Must have been something odd, cause otherwise how come he
knew how to do what no one else can figure out? He use any animals?
Any blood magic?”

“He didn’t say anything about blood magic,
but he did use some kind of garden fey, I think.”

“Garden fey. Hmm. Never used garden fey in a
spell before.” Maggie looked at him askance. “Did he kill them?
Blood magic is illegal.”

“I have no idea.” Illegal? What if he did use
blood magic? He felt a little sick.

“What kind of garden fey was it?”

“I don’t know what it looked like. I can’t
see gnosti. He said something about porcupines though. He called
them the little porcupine ones.”

“Rumblers?” She tapped her lips with the wand
and stared off into space. Maybe she was lost in thought, or maybe
she was just spacing out.

His phone vibrated again. He reached forward
and took the wand out of her hand. “You know what? It’s probably
impossible, if you’re right about no one else doing it.”

“Nah, I can do it.” She snapped out of her
reverie and took the wand back. “I’ve done booby traps that release
a lot of focused energy when someone touches it. What you want is
unfocused energy that is released and focused by the same person.
Just, I always used hexelmoths. They’re kinda small.”

“So you’ve done this before?”

“Sort of. Susan did it, which means I can do
it if I use the same spell, except that Susan doesn’t like the idea
of killing animals for magic. I told her she ate meat, so she was
kind of a hypocrite, but Sue’s got a pickle in her ass about some
stuff and you can’t change her mind.”

“Is it illegal?”

“Not to kill animals, not really. Well, maybe
a little, but no one cares. Anyway, I got no problem with killing
animals if it’s for a good reason. My grandpa used to get money by
collecting the bounty on coyotes and you never heard me boo hoo
about it. We wouldn’t have had any school clothes if it weren’t for
his traps.” She leaned over and picked up a pen off the floor, then
snatched an old phone bill to write on. “Need a special trap for
garden fey though. Rumblers can go right through ordinary
metal.”

Griff took the paper she’d written on.
“What’s this?”

“Susan’s new address. She’s got a
silver-plated cat trap, and I think she’s got some untainted honey
too. I need you to go over there and get it.”

“She doesn’t know me. Why would she give it
to me?”

“Well I’m not gonna do it. I’m not talking to
her until she apologizes. Figure out something to tell her. Just
don’t tell her about the wands. I need money more than she
does.”

“What did she do?”

“Oh, I had this really sweet gig going, and
Susan got all high and mighty about something stupid and ruined it.
Since then I’ve been waiting for an apology and I haven’t got one.
I went over to help her move, you know, just to be the bigger
person and let it go, but then when I told her I needed to go to
Vegas for a little R&R, Susan said she had some expenses, and
all she gave me was a measly fifty bucks. How far is fifty bucks
going to go if Susan wasn’t even gonna let me use her car to drive
there? That car used to be mine, you know.”

“Uh huh.” Griff was now sorry he’d asked.

“I miss Jess and Christopher. They weren’t so
uptight as their sister is. Course, their dad wasn’t so much of an
asshole as Susan’s dad was, so it figures.” Maggie shrugged. “So
anyway, I’m pissed off at her, and I’m still waiting for her to say
she’s sorry, but it’s been about a month and she hasn’t
called.”

“If I get the trap, can you make the wands?”
He had enough drama with his own family, he didn’t want to take on
someone else’s.

“Sure, sure. Take me a little while. Ice,
bile, wands, rose petals, rumblers. Never thought about using
garden fey before. Heard of a guy once who used graebnors in
curses, but I never did it. I’m a little out of the mage scene. Too
many uptight people out there, and you never knew who was working
for the MIB. It wasn’t like it used to be.”

“Right, I’ll just go and see about this trap
then.”

Griff waved goodbye and left, preferring to
ride around searching for the address than try to get directions
from Maggie. His clothes probably stunk, and if he saw Dad while he
was still smelling like this, he’d never hear the end of it. He
called home, but it hadn’t been Dad telling him about a job, it was
mom asking if he’d do some yardwork for her. He mumbled a
halfhearted almost-promise, enough to get him off the phone, then
said he had to go because he was looking for an address.

Susan’s new house wasn’t far, still in
Hayden’s Ferry, about a mile and a half from the townhouse he was
living in. It was a two-story house built in the sixties, which in
Hayden’s Ferry meant that it was in one of the older
neighborhoods.

As he pulled up in front of the house, he
looked around for tasks that needed doing. It had become something
of a habit of his. It had a lawn with some evergreen shrubs, the
default landscaping for people who had a yard service. Judging by
the dead grass, half the sprinklers had broken or become clogged.
Maybe he could fix that. There was also a dead mulberry tree which
had to come out, and if Maggie were mage enough to make wands, he
could certainly use the wood. The house itself was badly in need of
painting. Even the door was cracked and peeling.

The doorbell was busted too. He had plenty to
barter with. Griff knocked.

The woman who answered it was short, a few
inches shorter than him even. She was pale, with platinum blonde
hair black at the tips. Her nose, ears, and eyebrows glittered with
diamond studs. She wore thigh-high black vinyl boots, a vinyl
miniskirt, and a leather top so tight it could have stayed up even
without its spaghetti straps. Griff swallowed and completely forgot
what he was going to say.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked, with shiny
red lips.

“I um. I’m looking for Susan Stillwater?” He
really hoped this was Susan.

“Are you a friend of hers?” Sexy Vinyl asked.
She sounded wary, like she thought maybe Griff was from the
IRS.

“No, I just want to talk to her. About
mage-craft.”

A dark brown arm reached over her shoulder
and swung the door open wider. The guy standing behind her looked
young, long-limbed and skinny. He had a mass of white hair, bushy
and fluffy like the stuffing from a teddy bear. He wore boxers and
a ratty t-shirt, which probably meant he lived there, except Griff
couldn’t quite picture him and Sexy Vinyl as a couple.

“What do you want with Susan?” The
white-haired teenager sounded more than a little wary. He sounded
pissed off. “You from the MIB?”

“No, my name is Griff Harrower.”

“Susan had your business card on her desk,”
Sexy Vinyl said. “Did Susan call you before she disappeared?”

“Susan disappeared too?” Griff asked. “My
business partner was a mage, and he disappeared a month ago.”

Sexy Vinyl and the teenager exchanged
glances.

“Why don’t you come in?” she said.

Zoë and Darius introduced themselves and led
Griff on a tour of the house, exactly as if he were an investigator
they’d hired to find their missing mage. The living room had an
avocado green shag that lapped up the stairs and halfway down the
hallway. It petered out into brown linoleum tile, then into dirty
plywood subfloor. Upstairs, the smell of fresh sawdust overwhelmed
the smell of old carpeting and new paint. A crowbar and a claw
hammer were hung over the banister, and a box of finishing nails
and a countersink awl lay on the floor underneath them. At the end
of the hall were two bedrooms. The one on the left had a new maple
floor, strewn here and there with pieces of wood, empty cardboard
boxes and strips of foam that had probably protected the
floorboards in shipping. The walls were unpainted, white smudged
with hammer marks and dotted here and there with patched plaster.
The baseboards were missing, and the blinds from the window had
been taken down and leaned up against a wall in the closet. The
only furniture was a small table, which had a miter saw on it.

The other room had threadbare carpeting and
dated wallpaper. It had a bed, unmade as though someone had slept
there, but covered in a layer of cat hair as though the sheets and
blankets hadn’t been touched. A skinny black cat was curled up on
the pillow, and when they walked in, it raised its head and meowed,
watching them with blue eyes.