Home > Well of Magic (Rosie O'Grady's Paranormal Bar and Grill #4)(2)

Well of Magic (Rosie O'Grady's Paranormal Bar and Grill #4)(2)
Author: B.R. Kingsolver

Despite his alien appearance, I felt drawn to him, maybe even turned on a little, and that sent up red flags.

“Lizzy says you’re in the market for a car,” he said, with a smile every bit as terrifying as that of a hungry vampire.

“Well, I really wasn’t, because I didn’t think I could afford anything decent.”

“You’re probably right,” he said, “if you’re talking about a car you could buy in Westport for three grand.” He shrugged. “I just want to get my money out of it so I can buy a ’56 Corvette that someone discovered in an old barn on a farm east of Portland.”

“Well, let’s see it,” I said.

He led us through his house—a white asymmetric dome-like structure, which was one of the Village’s three discernable architectural types of houses, if you didn’t count the homes inside the trees themselves. We emerged into a garage roofed with branches. In the center was a gleaming, new-looking, coral-colored Volkswagen Beetle.

“It’s a 2000 model,” Oriel said. “The odometer says it has two hundred thousand miles on it, but it’s been completely rebuilt from the ground up—engine, transmission, suspension, the works. New leather upholstery, new tires.”

It was gorgeous. And all that work he’d put in it. There had to be a catch.

“Oriel is a smith,” Lizzy said.

I kind of gave her a double-take look, wondering what in the hell that had to do with anything.

“A Fae smith,” she said, evidently reading my uncomprehending expression.

A Fae smith. A smith. Blacksmith. Metalsmith. Swordsmith. Magical smith.

I turned back to Oriel and carefully asked, “Exactly what did you do to it that a human mechanic wouldn’t do?”

He snorted a laugh. “It had imperfections. You know, from its design and then its manufacture. Anything designed by a committee and then mass produced is going to have errors.” He shrugged. “I just turned it into the car that it should have been from the start. No variances from optimal and tuned for peak performance. I removed the manufacturing defects, you know, that sort of thing.”

“And what kind of magic is incorporated in it?” I asked.

“Oh, none. I used magic to do the work, but there isn’t a trace of magic actually in it. It burns gasoline, and you have to change the oil and the tires when they wear out. The only thing I ask is that you bring it back to me for any mechanical work or maintenance. Taking it to a human mechanic will void the warranty.”

“What warranty?”

“Lifetime labor warranty. Cars wear out eventually, and if you use replacement parts from the store, you’ll be introducing new imperfections.”

“Can I drive it?”

“Of course.” He held out a key. “Just bring it back before sundown. I have a date.”

I took the key, and Lizzy walked around the car to get in the passenger seat. I pulled on the door handle, and the door opened silently and smoothly. It smelled new leather inside, and everything looked like a fancy car in a TV commercial.

“None of this is a glamour?” I asked.

Oriel chuckled. “Nay, lass. Lizzy would sniff that out in an instant, and I think you would, too. Wouldn’t do my reputation any good, either.”

I took a deep breath and turned the key in the ignition. The car started immediately, and the engine purred in a smooth way I had never heard before.

“You’re a smith?”

“Yea.”

“Did you ever make any swords?”

He threw back his head and bellowed out a laugh. “You need a sword? What kind?”

“A Hunter’s arming sword.”

His laughter died. Oriel walked over to the car and leaned down to peer into my face. “You’re the ley line mage,” he said with conviction. “A Hunter’s blade? One would have to know the spells to forge such a sword, and no smith outside the Illuminati has ever duplicated their work.”

I took a deep breath. “If you had the spells, could you cast them?”

His eyes narrowed, and he was silent for some time. “If you had the spells, and they worked, I would forge you a sword and throw in the car as a present.” He briefly raised his gaze to look beyond me at Lizzy, then returned to looking at me.

“You would have to promise to teach the spells to no one else,” I said, shaking inside at the audacity of what I was proposing to do.

Oriel’s lip curled. “The word of a smith. I may only be half-Fae, but even so, I cannot lie. And the word of a smith is worth more than that of a king or a priest. But, that a little girl should have a secret every smith in the world has coveted for ages…” He shook his head. “Bragging is easy. Go drive the car, and speak no more of things you don’t understand.”

He straightened up and backed away from the car. The wall in front of me disappeared, and after a moment or two—so I could buckle my seat belt and collect myself—I put the car in gear and drove out onto the street.

I was incredibly intimidated by driving in Killarney Village, which I’d never done before. The streets were nicely paved in smooth rock but narrow with no straight lines. Every road curved around trees, rocks, and inhuman structures. Nothing ran straight for more than a few yards. There were no traffic signs, just traffic circles when two or more roads met. Luckily, few cars were on the road.

Lizzy directed me out of the Village and back into the real world. About a mile later, she told me to take an on-ramp to the freeway from Portland into Westport.

“Punch it,” she ordered as I drove up the ramp. I did, and the acceleration pinned us back in our seats. We merged onto the freeway doing eighty, and I backed off the gas.

“He does good work,” Lizzy said. “My dad drives a car Oriel reworked. A nineteen fifty-seven Chevy. Goes like a bat out of hell.”

We drove into Westport, past Rosie’s and into downtown, then north across the river and up into the hills. The car climbed the steep roads effortlessly.

On our way back to the Village, Lizzy quietly asked, “Are you going to trade him the spell?”

“There are multiple spells, and I’ll have to copy them. I’ve never cast them, but I assume they’re accurate.”

“You have an Illuminati grimoire?”

I shook my head. “No. I do have a book, though, a history book that contains some spells. But you can’t tell anyone. Lizzy, if word ever got out that I have it, we’d have not only every Hunter and Illuminati in the world but every one of their enemies, including the Fae, descending on me to get hold of that book.”

She grinned. “Not a problem. The funny thing is, my mom probably couldn’t make those spells work, but Oriel and I could because of our human-witch heritage.”

“They’re mage spells, not witch spells,” I said, suddenly concerned.

Lizzy shook her head. “I can do mage spells as well as witch spells. Usually. It’s kind of random sometimes. I can do a lot of Fae magic, but not all of it. Mom and I discover things, simple things, that I can’t do, but any Fae child can. Magic is weird that way.”

We drove a little farther, then Lizzy said, “Erin, be careful. Oriel is of the Winter Court.”

I knew the Fae were divided between the Summer and Winter Courts. Seelie and Unseelie. The Seelie were generally considered to favor humans, while the Unseelie were seen as dark and malevolent. Not evil, but not helpful or friendly.

“Any hints as to what I should be careful about?”

She kind of half-shrugged. “Fae morals aren’t the same as those of humans, and the Unseelie, well, they tend to see humans as a kind of prey. Just keep your guard up, okay?”

We took the car back to Oriel, and I made arrangements to meet with him and bring him the spells. The way he looked at me told me he still wasn’t sure he should believe me, but he promised to hold the car for a week.

When I got home, I checked all my wards, then went into the spare bedroom closet and knelt down against the back wall. I had built a magical box that was hidden behind its own set of wards and invisible even to me. I dissolved the wards, then cast the spell to open the box. Inside was a book, The History of the Illuminati, and my emergency stash of money.

The book was huge and heavy—fourteen inches long, twelve inches wide, and five inches thick—and covered in stiff black leather. The title in Middle High German was embossed in gold letters.

Starting in the fourteenth century, the head of the Order at the time, the Illuminator, chronicled what he considered important. In addition to the Order’s history and details of important events, the book included spells and rituals that were passed down to the next Illuminator and formed the basis of his power. Also included were the locations of Illuminati’s secret lands and houses, treasure hoards, and bank accounts. If I so chose, I could be immensely wealthy by accessing those.

And dead shortly thereafter.

I assumed that Masters of the Order, other than the Illuminator, also knew of that treasure and those banks, but I had no way of knowing who, or if any, of those Masters might still be alive. And there was the rub. If someone, such as the recently deceased Master Rudolf Heine, knew of a bank account but didn’t know the access codes, he could sit and wait for someone with the codes, such as me, to show up.

I could deal with vampires, werewolves, mages, and even other Hunters, but I didn’t fool myself that I could take on a Master. Only luck and help from other mages had kept me alive when confronted with far older, stronger Hunters.

I took the book to my kitchen, set it on the table, and opened it. I had read the entire book less than a year before, so it didn’t take long to find the passage detailing the forging of a Hunter’s sword. Written in small, spiky letters in the later sixteenth century, both the metallurgy and the magecraft were intimately detailed.

I copied all five pages, carefully separating the instructions for smelting the alloy from the spells involved in forging the sword. Then it took me most of the evening to translate them into English. When I was done, I put the book back in its invisible box and took out three thousand dollars, in case Oriel couldn’t make the process work. Then I cast the spells to hide and protect the book and the money again. Maybe Oriel’s magic worked on me as well as on metals, because I really wanted that car.

   
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