* * *
• • •
The next day, as I put together a Jetta that someone had tried to rewire themselves, I thought about connections. Making a car run smoothly was all about connections: fuel, air, coolant, electric.
I wondered if I was becoming a conspiracy theorist because the web I was building from bits and pieces was truly Byzantine. And if all the things that seemed to be connected were, then a family of witches I’d never heard of had been responsible for an awful lot of chaos in my life for the last four years or more.
Maybe things would become more clear when Stefan got back to me with information about Frost.
I finished the Jetta and pulled a sputtering Rabbit into the garage. It died about four feet from where I needed it to be.
“You need help with that?” asked Zee as I got out of the car.
“Nope,” I said.
“Gut,” said Zee shortly. “The boy and I are busy.”
I laughed and pushed the Rabbit until it was rolling, then hopped in to hit the brakes before it traveled too far. Pushing cars wasn’t a new thing for me. I propped up the hood and contemplated the engine compartment. It was surprisingly pristine given the age of the car and left me feeling a little nostalgic for my Rabbit.
My cell phone rang as I pulled the cover off the air filter. The filter material, which should have been whitish but more often in the Tri-Cities was brownish with dust, was an astonishingly bright orange.
Staring at the orange air filter, I answered my cell without checking ID.
“This is Tory Abbot,” said Senator Campbell’s assistant, who smelled like the zombie-making witch. Darn it, “zombie witch” was easier and it flowed off the tongue better—even if it left the impression that the witch was a zombie. So “zombie witch” it was.
“What can I do for you?”
“I have some documents for you to take to the fae. We need a complete list of which fae will be there—names, attributes, and all of that.”
I pulled the phone away from my face and gave it an incredulous look. “Paperwork for the Gray Lords to fill out,” I said slowly. “Huh. That’s an interesting proposition. But they won’t do it.”
“They will if they want a meeting,” he said. “I’ll drop them by your . . . place of business this afternoon.” He said the last as if he just noticed that my place of business was a garage and not, say, a lawyer’s office.
“You can if you want to,” I told him. “But I won’t pass them on.”
“I’m afraid this is nonnegotiable,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell them that the meeting is off. And I’ll tell them why. You can explain to the president and the secretary of state why this meeting that they were so hot to have was canceled by your grandstanding. But maybe they will agree with you. That without some pieces of paper—that your side would have filled with lies if you were the fae—this meeting should not be held. Even though it is the first step in a process that might keep our country from being at war with the fae. You can start, maybe, by informing Senator Campbell.”
A short silence fell. I think he was waiting for me to continue my rant.
“Ms. Hauptman,” Abbot began, “I know that you are overset by the bombing. Maybe you should pass on your duties to someone more experienced and less obstructionist.”
“Okay,” I said. “Give me the name of someone the fae won’t object to.”
“Adam Hauptman,” he said.
“Someone made sure that Adam had a job for this meeting,” I said. “He won’t renege on an agreement he has already made.” I decided I wasn’t really interested in helping him with his hunt for my replacement. “And if you think I am an obstructionist, you should try him. Good luck with your search.”
I hit the red button and went back to the mystery of the Rabbit’s air filter. Experimentally I brought it to my nose because it looked like someone had dusted the whole filter with cheese powder from a macaroni and cheese box. But it didn’t have a smell.
I took an air hose and used it to blow off the filter, half expecting orange powder to fill the air—but nothing happened. The substance looked powdery, but it clung to the filter as if it were glue.
I poked at it with my finger. I was still wearing gloves when I worked, though Adam’s ex-wife was back in Eugene and not around to make little pointed remarks about the grease I couldn’t get out from under my nails. I hated the way my hands sweated in them. But that was made up for by the way my skin was less dry and cracked because I wasn’t using as much caustic soap on them to get the grease off. Christy had done me a favor.
There was no orange residue on my gloves.
“Hey, Zee?” I asked, holding up the filter.
“Was,” he said, perched on the edge of an engine compartment with a limberness that belied his elderly appearance. “I am busy,” he added.
“I have a bright orange air filter,” I singsonged. “Don’t you want to give it a look?”
There was the buzz of hard rubber on cement and Tad slid out from under Zee’s car, a flashlight in his hand. “Orange?” he said.
“Bah,” said Zee. “You’ve distracted the boy, Mercy.”
“What is orange and keeps air from flowing—and why would someone dump that all over an air filter?” I asked.
Tad took the air filter and stared at it. He looked at the Rabbit.
“What was supposed to be wrong with the car?” he asked.
I looked at the repair sheet I’d filled out while I’d been in exile on the front desk. “Sputters and dies,” I said.
“I guess I know why,” Tad said. And then he dropped the filter like it was a hot potato and jumped back.
“Dad?” he said in a semipanicked voice, holding up his hands. The skin on his fingers, where he’d touched the air filter, was blistering and cracking. As I watched, the tips of his fingers blackened.
Zee grabbed Tad’s hands, muttered something foul, and hauled Tad to the sink. I got there just before them and turned the water on full force. Zee held Tad’s hands under the flow of water and then SPOKE.
Wasser, Freund mir sei,
komm und steh mir bei.
Fließe, wasche, binde, fasse,
Löse Fluch, trag ihn hinfort,
Lass ab von Hand und diesem Ort.
The power in his voice made my ears ring. And that made me realize that whatever was on the air filter wasn’t caustic—which was what I’d thought when I’d seen Tad’s skin—but magic. And as Zee’s power touched it, something that cloaked that magic washed away and the whole shop smelled of witchcraft.
I thought of Elizaveta’s explanation of what the witches had done to disguise the trap in my basement, and figured that they had done something like that here.
“How is he?” I asked.
“He is angry at himself for being so careless. His hands smart a bit, but they will heal up just fine now that his dad has made the bad magic go poof. And he is able to evaluate himself, thank you very much,” said Tad crossly.
“He is fine,” said Zee. “Grumpy as usual.”
“That’s a little ‘pot calling kettle’ of you, don’t you think?” asked Tad.
Zee grunted, frowned, and tipped his head to the side. He sniffed loudly.
“I smell it, too,” I said. “It’s not just the air filter. If it were the air filter emitting that much magic, Tad wouldn’t have any hands left.”
“Hey,” said Tad. “Thanks for that thought.”
“Serves you right for being so careless,” said Zee. “Mercy, this new shop of yours, it is equipped with fire suppression, no? Do you know if it is foam or water?”
“Water,” I said. “Water was easier.”
“Ja,” he said. “And useless in a grease fire.”
“We dealt with building codes, not practical matters,” I said. “Building codes said sprinkler system. But the fire extinguishers will take on grease fires.” We had lots of extinguishers.
“The sprinklers are good news for us,” he said. “But maybe not for a fire. Mercy, help me get the vehicles opened up.”
So we opened hoods and air filter covers and any other kind of covers that Zee thought useful. Tad unplugged and collected various electronics and covered them with plastic—something he could do with minimal use of his poor hands.
Zee inspected the computers, cell phones, and computational equipment and gave a reluctant nod. “Those have not been affected yet. We can let them stay out of the water.”
Then Zee stalked over to the test lever for the water suppression system and pulled it down. As he did, he SPOKE again.
Wasser, Freund mir sei,
komm und steh mir bei.
Fließe, löse, binde, fasse,
Hexenwerk verfange dich,
Schwinde Fluch, zersetz den Spruch,
nimm’s hinweg, erhöre mich.
This time, since Tad wasn’t writhing in pain, I paid more attention to what Zee said. My German wasn’t good enough for a full poetic translation (and it sounded like poetry) but I got the rough gist of it. He called upon water—the element, I thought—and entreated it to wash away the witchcraft.
Nothing different happened after he spoke, until he pulled out his pocketknife and nicked the back of his hand, letting his blood wash into the water.
Black smoke filled the air, and the water hissed and steamed as it came down. Some of the foulness was from the water that had been sitting for months in the tanks that supplied the system, but most of it was magic-born.
“This is a cursing,” Zee told me, grabbing a clean rag to stanch his hand. “The last time I saw something like this was . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t remember how long ago. But it doesn’t matter. If we do not take care of it now, right now—it will spread from the shop, from us, from everything here, like a virus. Gaining power from the misery it causes.”