Lost Magic (The Swift Codex Book 3) (9 page)

Perhaps not exactly phrased like that, but that's the intention.

Legal department. I hated anything dealing with laws, and my recent encounters with the law after being accused of murder or wrongful death made this all the more exciting. Feeling sick to my stomach, I wished the smelly old thing had never been sent. There was no way I could sleep now.

Ripping the paper open, I read the entire contents.

Feraline Swift:

This is in regards to the Fraudulent Account Notification and Order to Refrain from Publication which our legal department received yesterday in reference to the article “Wildwoods Burn After Black Magic, Feys Return to Damaged Home” by Simona Eccles of American Sorcerering Today.

We require a full account of the grounds for this Notification and Order, as well as three (3) forms of identification to confirm the legitimacy of your claim. See Constabulary Guidelines Ch.5 para. 12 for acceptable forms of identification.

Respond within two days.

I dropped the letter and rubbed my forehead. Mordon, who was finishing with a diaper change, snatched the letter off the bed.

“I'm thinking about sending it straight off to Uncle Don. The papers don't have a right to demand that of me, do they?”

It took a couple of minutes for Mordon to reply. “No. They're mining for information, hoping that you'll perjure yourself by giving a legitimate account. Anything you say to them about this is fair game for them to use in their articles.”

“So don't say anything?”

“You can respond with a reminder of who your legal representative is.”

I grunted and stared off at my storage chest, wondering what was clothing clean within it. “Might as well pester them letter for letter. Feel like burning letters for me?”

A few minutes later, it was done, a lot of fuss work and forwarding. While Mordon cooked up some brew and made a fresh batch of Anna's milk, I sat at the communal breakfast table and wrote a record of what happened when and what documents had been sent to whom. Not that anyone had ever told me to do this, it just seemed like a smart idea, a thing I should have done back when my troubles with Cole first started.

Once more I fed Anna in my lap. Before I could finish with my written account in my book—I realized that I was recording this in my poor spellbook,
Skills of the Thaumaturge
—Mordon put a plate down in front of me. Usually he didn't care a great deal for breakfast, but this morning he must have been hungry. I recognized the hash-brown patties which I'd stocked in the freezer months ago, and eggs, and lamb medallions. He'd given me twice as much as I'd eat, so I pushed my book to the side and ate what I wanted. The rest went straight back to Mordon, who had cleaned his plate spotless.

“You must have been worn out from all the activity yesterday,” I said with a smile.

“Hmm?” He was genuinely puzzled until he looked down at the plates. “Well, it did work up an appetite.”

Today I picked out a dress for Anna, standing in front of the closet staring at the piles of clothes with their crisp corners and uniform dimensions. I grabbed something purple and fuzzy. I studied Mordon from the closet. A while back, I had been focused on understanding Mordon's character, figuring out his motives and seeing if we could be compatible. Now I still analyzed him, but it was different somehow. What could I call him? Constant. Precise.

Following Mordon's example yesterday, I dressed Anna on the floor, realizing too late that I'd forgotten to tie my hair back. Mordon gathered my hair and held it, letting his thumb rest against my neck. Kindness comes in many forms, and the littlest things matter as much as the grandest. Odd that I hadn't truly understood this before. The snaps at last finished on her dress, I gave Anna's face a fresh clean-up. She was perpetually sticky and I was beginning to understand all the various reasons behind a burp rag.

“Where is that baby holder sling?” Mordon asked.

I squinted, trying to remember where I had put it down last. By the bed? Was it on the floor? I told him, and he went to go get it. I stayed sitting on the floor, feeling like I'd been squashed by an elephant. I leaned against the bench.

When I opened my eyes, I saw Lilly and Mordon working out how to wrap Anna up to his chest. Lilly was doing it wrong, Mordon had it almost right. Across my shoulders I wore the throw blanket which usually decorated the couch. My muscles hadn't liked the position but I felt better for my nap.

“What's up?” I asked.

The armchair creaked and shifted as Barnes got out of it. He said, “The constabulary has gone through King's Ransom. We're going to help Mordon clean up.”

“I'll come.” I stretched my limbs. “Sure you want to hold Anna?”

“Yes,” Mordon said. “You stayed up all night and morning with her. Sure you don't want to sleep?”

“So my schedule will become nocturnal? I'd rather not.”

Mordon hesitated. I knew that he didn't like tired people doing detail work, he said they made too many mistakes. And he was right about this, so I said, “I can sweep and wipe down counters or whatever. Nothing heavy, nothing like picking up busted pottery.”

He agreed, and as soon as Leif entered the commons lounge, we all descended into the shop.

When I saw what was beyond the door, I felt like someone had smacked me over the back of the head. My ears even started ringing, but it might have been the silence. Broken glass was everywhere, shards shining on top of ripped-up book pages, tangled necklaces littered the floor, hung up on gouges in the wood. Entire shelves toppled over. Vases and urns alike were smashed and their contents scattered. Ghosts stirred from their piles, sucking the warmth from the air as they formed and giving me goosebumps.

Years of bogey busting kicked in. I found myself at the front of the procession, saying, “Be at rest. We are here to clean and put you at peace.”

One ghost wavered, but the others continued to gather power. Mordon repeated the message in Saxon, then Leif in Latin. All of the last ghosts shrunk back to their ashes, except for one.

“What is it doing?” Lilly whispered, hiding behind me a little bit and walking in exactly the same places that I did.

“Probably ensuring that we're not being disrespectful or causing trouble. They had a big shock with the grotesque and the reaction from the shop wards. It was a traumatic event,” I said, speaking loud enough that the ghost could hear me if he wanted, yet still slowly and calmly.

“But why does it care?”

“Every ghost is as individual as living people are. If they appear to be irrational, it could be because they're old or have had a bad day. For the most part, they are no more good nor evil than you or I. Why it cares is impossible to know. Maybe he was a law enforcement officer. Or a decent person, one who doesn't like to be messed around with.”

I must have drawn too close to the ghost because Lilly wasn't behind me any longer as I crouched to search through the rubble for suitable vessels to place ashes within. One pile was obviously on its own, spilling from a busted urn. Gently as I could, I started to scrape the ashes into a vase, keeping an eye on the ghost who was a little close.

“I need another replacement urn for the next pile,” I said, accepting another vase and advancing slowly to a scattering of ashes which had been rolled in. Handling human remains was not high up there on my comfort list. If I started to think about what I was handling—the burnt remains of a human body which had once moved and breathed and lived—I began to feel lightheaded and my mouth would go dry. So I started to hum. Singing seemed like a bad idea, both by opening my mouth around ashes and with the possibility of blowing the ashes away. Which was what gave me the idea to use my wind magic to sweep the ashes into the containers.

All the while the last ghost stood watch while I hoped he would not turn violent. A violent ghost could burn and scratch and grasp throats. That gave me bad memories. He—it was impossible to tell for certain, as the form hadn't solidified enough to be sure—just stood guard as Barnes and I put any remains we could find into new containers. When the ashes were taken care of, the final ghost faded away.

With him gone, the rest of the shop laid out before me, presenting a long, arduous cleaning task. Not merely for the simple reason of the mess, either. As Mordon collected and sold antiquities instead of antiques, a great deal of the items had enchantments or curses which had been released to do their worst. Wards had kept anything from leaving the confines of the shop, but that meant that they were all here in tight concentrations for me to fix.

Not that I was supposed to be the one doing the fixing, but I soon realized I was the person who had the best knowledge of what to do.

Lilly demonstrated this when she lifted a box and out of it came a loud buzzing. She stood there, her brows pinched together in confusion, then we both placed the noise at the same time.

“Bees!”

Lilly dropped the book she'd been holding and grasped her arm. A red, angry welt formed. She said, “I never saw it.”

Then Leif was stung, and Lilly was stung four more times while we hopped through the shop, trying to see where their hive was. When I closed my eyes and felt the air, I felt their little bodies humming this way and that.

“They're invisible,” I said, stunned. “Can someone make this place cold, like cold enough to see my breath? It'll slow them down.”

Barnes stepped forward and said, “
Frigus locus.”

I watched as frost formed on the surface of the shelves and across the backs of books, spreading through the entire shop at a rapid pace. Shivering, we all watched as the bees became visible by the frost on their bodies. They fell to the ground.

“C
ongregabo apes,
” Leif said, holding a box open. The spell gathered all the bees together and shuffled them into the box, where he folded the flaps and added, “
Calor
.”

At Lilly's surprised expression, he shrugged. “I know a beekeeper. He'll take them. They'll be a novelty.”

“Succenderetur locus
,” Barnes said, and the frost began to melt then evaporate.

Leif took the bees away, to the relief of everyone who had been stung.

The rest of the day wore on and on. It was one thing after another after another. With Leif gone, our productivity slid, particularly as Lilly had an allergic reaction to invisible bees when she claimed to not have a reaction to normal bees. Her face puffed up and her eyes watered so she couldn't see.

While she was gone giving herself medication, we encountered other troubles. Most memorably, a
rag which dripped water at the rate of a leaky sink, and a spell which acted like a cat which was particularly fond of clawing its way up a person's legs and perching on their shoulders.

Barnes was the only other person who could find and take care of the broken item so that its spell stopped bothering us. Despite my promise to Mordon not to take care of any detail work, I found that was what I was doing. Things which would have confused me a few years ago, I had no problem in tracking and tending to. As the coven had been accustomed to thinking of Barnes as being a professional, they were awed to see me in action.

Lilly returned to us in good health except for a slight puffiness about the cheeks and a purple welt at the site of each sting. Much to the relief of everyone, she brought food and had acquired Leif along the way.

“You know this is what I usually did when I was busting bogies,” I said when we stopped for a sandwich lunch. The bread tasted like gummy dough, but I ate it anyway, same as Mordon.

“I thought so. That's what you've told us, anyway. But I never realized how good you were at it,” Leif said. He was sitting on a folding chair he'd conjured up out of thin air, one chair for us each.

“I'm just glad the grotesque had enough sense to leave the sarcophagus alone, that would have been a frightening thing to contain again.”

“What was the worst?” Lilly asked.