“At least now we know you have a talent,” Rose said. “Glamour. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a Faerie as a familiar.”
“Maybe it would be a terrible idea,” I said. “Because we know how easily glamour can fuck with me, and that would be leverage the familiar could use to take me over. And we know how shoddy my defenses against this magic stuff are. Look at the Briar Girl. Can you not see some familiar getting a hold on me? Fucking me over worse?”
I tapped my connection to the house and used it to find the general direction I needed to go.
“I can see that, yeah,” Rose said. “So? What do we do about it?”
“We make the familiar less of a thing,” I said. “If we’re going to stagger this, use one of the three rituals to get leverage on the next, and use the two established power bases to get leverage for the third ritual, maybe I do the familiar first, after all. An Other that isn’t so strong that she’d be able to mess with me, one that might be able to get us some outside knowledge or power. From there, we start looking at implements, which we’ve already agreed was the easiest call to make.”
“You’re not going to be able to get a Faerie familiar,” I heard a voice behind me.
I turned around, startled.
I didn’t feel a connection. My initial impression was that it was a disembodied voice, a ghost or something in that vein. But he wasn’t. He was very much real. Very alive. Very human.
“Andy, was it?” I asked the witch hunter.
He nodded. “Yes.”
He was unassuming. Bigger than average, but the way he was bundled up in his coat and scarf made me think he wasn’t good at the cold. Hardly a ‘tough guy’. Thick eyebrows, dark brown hair under a hat with earflaps, and a large backpack that seemed stuffed to the brim. He kept shifting his shoulders to adjust the weight distribution of the straps.
No weapon in hand.
I glanced around. I couldn’t feel any connection to anyone nearby, but I still didn’t feel any connection to Andy.
“Eva’s not around,” Andy said. He stared at me, his gaze level. Cold without being harsh or unkind. It was more like he was uncaring.
“Laird sent you?” I asked.
“I’m not trying to reap any extra karma by sharing details with you,” Andy said. “Those other guys are doing the whole ‘play fair’, ‘see the whites of your enemy’s eyes before you doom them forever’, and that ‘announce your intentions before seeing them through’ garbage. If and when I come after you, Thorburn, I’m not doing any of that.”
“What,” I said. “You’ll shoot me in the back?”
He shook his head. “I’m a terrible shot. If there was a magic bullet with your name on it, Eva would be the one to shoot it.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“She’d also be the type to molotov your house, or shiv you from behind while you’re walking down the street. I mean, if I can sneak up on you…”
“She’s a little more talented in that department, huh?” I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, she is.”
He stayed there, silent, not volunteering any more information.
“How did you even find me?”
“Trinkets and some very, very basic investigation techniques.”
“And how are you going to take me out?” I asked. I was tense, and all too aware that even this guy was liable to give me a run for my money. He didn’t seem like a fighter. “More trinkets?”
“Right now? I’m not aiming to take you out,” Andy said. “Take that for what it’s worth. If I was here to kill you I wouldn’t say so. I can lie, after all.”
Another brief pause, as I waited for him to elaborate.
“What do you want, if you’re not here to kill me?”
“Right now, I’m keeping an eye on you. Don’t worry, nobody else is coming.”
“Keeping an eye on me? You going to report on me to Laird?”
He shrugged. “Does it matter what I tell you? I’m just going to lie.”
“You’re clearly not interested in talking,” I said.
“I can talk, if it helps,” he said. “You were talking about Faerie. Court Faerie deal with prominent families and powers. Around here, you’re not getting a Faerie familiar unless you’re a member of the Duchamp family. You could get a fairy, that’s F-A-I-R-Y, but then you’re talking about the witless, minor denizens of their realm. Foot high things with butterfly wings. Going that route would be dumb.”
“You’re helping me, now?” I asked.
“This is more self serving. You’ve already dealt with a head-on attack. If they called Eva and me in to deal with you, I’d probably take point. And I don’t want to kill someone with a fairy -that’s with an R-Y at the end- for a familiar. I’d feel like I was picking on the vulnerable. In this case, it would be the equivalent of murdering the mentally handicapped.”
“People keep going on about that sort of thing. I’m supposedly Blake the fool, the unsturdy rock, the guy that’s going to die within the next five years, no questions asked. Now there’s some implications that I could fit in the same box as the mentally handicapped.”
“If you pick a fairy for a familiar,” he said. “Just to clarify.”
“I was just comparing myself to a rubber boot in my head. But the moment it comes time to decide how dangerous I am, oh, I’m the biggest threat that Jacob’s Bell has ever seen.”
“You can be an idiot and a threat at the same time,” Andy said. “When you’re dealing with these kinds of forces, an idiot is the bigger threat.”
“Unless they’re exceptionally smart,” Rose cut in.
“Oh, it’s the vestige. Hello vestige.”
“Hello Andy.”
“The geniuses are an even bigger threat, yes,” Andy conceded. “And the geniuses are so few and far between they don’t really warrant mentioning. Your grandmother was good. Scary good, but she wasn’t a genius.”
“Is there a middle ground, here?” I asked. “Can I at least build up enough respect for people to start saying, ‘hey, that guy isn’t so dumb and reckless after all’? ‘Maybe he isn’t the bombastic idiot that’s going to retaliate and accidentally plunge Jacob’s Bell into sulfur and hellfire?'”
“If you stand by and let them kill you, you’re clearly crazy,” Andy said. “Maybe dangerously so.”
“If I fight it, I’m reckless,” I retorted. “That’s a catch-22.”
“It sounds like you’ve answered your own question,” Andy said. “About finding the middle ground.”
Not a hint of condescension in his tone.
“Who do you serve?” I asked him.
“The council.”
“Laird and Sandra, primarily, then?”
“Essentially. But if Johannes had a job for me and there weren’t any conflicting orders from the real powers, then I’d obey those orders.”
“Would you obey me?” I asked.
“You’re not on the council, not technically. When Molly turned up, or when she moved into the house, sometime around then, the council held a meeting, and they agreed to remove the Thorburns from the list of affiliated powers.”