Mulberry Wands (2 page)

Ruby folded her arms and nodded at the portal
mirror. In the other universe, Zoë’s cat jumped onto the desk and
ate the rest of a tuna sandwich the other Susan had left there.
“You said you weren’t gonna do that. That’s not your world
anymore.”

“I’m upset. I need some comfort.”

“Cause of Zoë selling the house?” Ruby asked.
“She’s doing that in the other universe too. Susie threw a hissy
fit over there.”

“So, I’m not the only one who’s spying.”

Ruby smacked her upside the head. “Don’t talk
back to your elders.”

“Sorry,” Susan mumbled. “And it’s not just
that. I found a murder victim today. A gnosti. Dead in the garden.”
She briefly explained.

“Garden fey aren’t your concern. You could
let his kinfolk deal with it.”

Susan frowned, and hung some of the coats
back up. “But what if they don’t? I know it’s not my business, but
I can’t help caring. A person died.”

“Didn’t you just say it wasn’t a human?”

“He looks like a person, and he died, in our
backyard, and I already know the police won’t touch it. What if
whatever type of gnosti he is don’t have police?

Ruby sighed. “I don’t want you to get wrapped
up in someone else’s problems when you have problems of your
own.”

“I don’t have problems this bad. There’s
already one dead, what if there are more? What if I can do
something about it? I can’t turn away when doing so might let
another gnosti get murdered.” She sank down on the floor and made a
seat on the shoe rack.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Ruby folded
her arms and glared at Susan, but she didn’t say no, not that Susan
would have obeyed her anyway.

“Thanks for your support, Ruby.”

Ruby tousled Susan’s hair. “Your heart’s in
the right place, and you got a lot of common sense. I think you
might be shaping up to be the wisest Stillwater woman since your
Great Aunt Mabel. You oughta think about having babies though. I’m
gonna get diluted by stupid when your mom dies, and the Stillwater
line needs some good stock to toughen us up.”

“I need a man for that, and besides, I’m only
twenty-three. There’s plenty of time.”

“Huh. Most of us were mothers three times
over by your age.”

“Or dead from childbirth,” Susan pointed
out.

“The sass from you!” Ruby swiped again at
Susan, but didn’t connect. She wasn’t really mad. A corner of her
mouth was turned up, which for Ruby was a huge grin. “Now, listen
here, got a cousin of yours praying awful hard. Big guy upstairs
ain’t got time, so I offered to field it. You wanna
subcontract?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“She really wants to make the school’s swing
choir so she can be friends with the popular girls. You know her,
third cousin, the one you found the missing diary for.”

“Hadley, right.” Susan adjusted the shoe out
from under her bottom to get more comfortable. “Wants to get into
the swing choir? Hmm … Practice compulsion, anti-clumsiness charm,
and a little self confidence so she’ll realize she doesn’t have to
hang with the clique to have self worth. I could use some pointers
on how to make the practice compulsion singing-specific, but the
rest of it is stuff I’ve handled before.”

“Meditate before you go to bed tonight and
I’ll send you some ideas in your sleep. Ain’t much in it for you,
since all of it’s spells you’ve done before. Hope it’s no
trouble.”

“It’s no trouble helping you. Besides, it’s
good for my karma. Maybe it will help with that ‘finding a good
job’ spell I cast work a little faster, because temping sucks.”

“I already helped you out there,” Ruby
said.

“Susan?” Zoë opened the door to the bedroom
by tapping on it. “Your phone was ringing.”

Susan opened the closet door and peeked her
head out. “I’ll take it here.”

Zoë handed her the phone with an odd look,
but didn’t say anything about why Susan would be sitting on the
floor of her closet. Susan had never figured out if Zoë could see
Ruby or not, and couldn’t come up with a way of asking that didn’t
sound off the wall.

“Hello,” Susan said, trying to sound like the
wisest Stillwater since Great Aunt Mabel. “This is Susan
Stillwater.”

“Hi, Susan, this is Brian from Sun Valley
Investigations. How you doing today?”

“Fine,” Susan replied, warily. Her heart
started a frantic staccato. Was the Magical Investigation Bureau
subcontracting? Did they find out about that illegal summoning her
counterpart was involved in, or worse, the guy she had sort of
murdered?

“Listen, we got your résumé forwarded to us
from the temp agency, and we want you to come in for an
interview.”

“Investigations?”

“Assisting, until you finish your training
and background check, but yeah. It’s a permanent full-time
position, starting next week, and I think we can offer the salary
the temp agency said you were looking for, if you’re the right
person for the job.”

“Great, what time?” Susan said. She looked
over her shoulder to give Ruby the thumbs up, but Ruby had
disappeared.

In real life, Griff was a handsome man,
rather short, with a levelheaded gaze, muscular frame, and hands
coated with coarse hair. In the game, he played a seven foot tall
minotaur, with a two-headed axe and enough armor to survive nearly
anything. Anything but fire. Griff forgot to wear his amulet of
fire resistance, and got killed by a fire trap in the first hour of
the game. He would have suspected that Jake had done it on purpose,
except for the look of apology on Jake’s face when he rolled the
ten-sided die and looked up the chart to announce the trap had the
one thing that Griff’s character lacked immunity in.

“You gotta be shitting me,” Griff said.
“Fire?”

“Sorry, man,” Jake said.

Griff crumpled up his character sheet and
tossed it towards the garbage can. “What time is it?”

“Eight ten,” Jake said. “They having another
party?”

“Yeah,” Griff said. “At least until
midnight.”

“You oughta get a new place to live,” Jake
said.

“Can’t afford it yet,” Griff said. “Got any
beer?”

“Help yourself.” Jake jerked his thumb
towards the fridge.

Griff grabbed a beer from the fridge in the
garage, then headed for the screened-in back porch that Jake called
an Arizona room. He slid open the door, shutting it behind him with
the hand not holding the beer, and let his eyes adjust to the dim
light of the screened-in porch. Jake had one good chair, a La-Z-Boy
recliner with a blanket on it to cover the worn spring, but a
stranger had already claimed it.

The stranger didn’t have his legs up. In
fact, he rested with his heels underneath him, rocking back and
forth with a rhythmic squeaking. His head, covered by a backwards
ball cap, alternately shaded and revealed the halogen light behind
him, making an uncomfortable strobe effect.

Through the arcadia door behind him was the
hiss of soda cans opening and the rattle of dice as the other
players prepared for battle. The door had been shut on account of
the air conditioning, but it was the middle of October, and the
nights were finally starting to get down to the low eighties.
Crickets chirped in the darkness beyond the screen walls, but he
could barely hear it over the frantic squeaking of the chair.

Griff took a seat in the plastic molded
chair. He tossed the cap of the Corona into the trash in the
corner, then took a swig of beer. He glanced at the stranger, who
was probably Jake’s squirrelly cousin, rumored to be living in the
third bedroom. He had a twitchy look about him, and a scruffy beard
that did nothing to improve his pointed chin. The stranger kept
rocking back and forth, faster and faster. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
Squeaksqueaksqueaksqueak.

“Hey, knock it off.” Griff said.

“Sorry.” The question seemed to break him out
of a deep thought. The stranger launched himself out of the chair
and began to pace, tugging at his tiny goatee. He had
short-fingered hands, with nails bitten to the quick. He wore jeans
and a black leather jacket so worn it looked as though it had been
dragged behind a truck with someone in it.

“You Alex?” Griff asked.

“What? Yeah. Alex.”

He stopped, turned to face Griff, tugged at
his goatee one more time, then nodded, as though making a difficult
decision on the fly. “Wanna see something cool?”

Griff shrugged and drank some more beer by
way of assent.

Alex pulled out a pack of cigarettes and
placed one between his lips, then stuffed the rest of the pack
inside the jacket. He started to take the jacket off, then stopped,
and patted himself down before fishing a stick out of the back
pocket of his jeans. “Check it out. It’s a magic wand.”

“A magic wand.” Griff drenched his tone with
skepticism.

A lot of people claimed to know someone who
could do magic, but he’d never met any who actually did. Most of
his friends had tried to learn at some point. It was almost a rite
of passage for the smart kids at his school, to check out Psionics
for Dummies or The Idiot’s Guide to Thaumaturgy, and study it with
twice the diligence needed to gain them an A in any school subject.
Usually the enthusiasm would taper off when the would-be mage
realized that any of the branches of mage-craft took either a
lifetime of study, or being born into a mage family where your
direct ancestors had done most of the work for you. Alex wasn’t old
enough to have studied for a lifetime. “Are you from a mage
family?”

Alex nodded. He played with the wand,
twirling it in his fingers like a majorette. He tossed it into the
air, then caught it awkwardly, and set it down on the end table as
though he had just remembered that it was fragile or dangerous.
“So, how much would you pay for a magic wand?”

“I’m broke, man.”

Alex waved his hand. “I’m not asking you to
buy one, I’m asking you how much you would pay for one.”

Griff took a sip of his beer and leaned back,
resolved to being an audience for a shill. “I dunno. Twenty
bucks?”

Alex started pacing again, mouthing “twenty
bucks, twenty bucks” to himself. He sat down in the chair and
picked up the magic wand again, worrying it with his fingers. “I
can’t sell them that cheap.”

“Did you make it?”

Alex nodded, then shook his head. “Not this
one. I made others. My grandma showed me how. I want to sell them,
go into business for myself. I need a partner. You interested?”

“I might be interested,” Griff drawled his
response around a Corona, so as not to seem too enthusiastic.

Alex went back to the La-Z-Boy and started
rocking again. Griff drank his beer and waited for Alex to tell him
more about the wands. Several minutes later, Alex leapt off the
chair and did a doubletake, as though he’d just now seen Griff.
“Come with me to my car. I wanna show you something.”

Griff considered telling him to screw
himself, but he got up out of the chair. It wasn’t like he had
anything else to do.

Alex led Griff through the party, where the
role-players stood hunched over the table, rattling dice and
munching Doritos. Griff grabbed a handful as he passed. Max wagged
his tail hopefully and followed them as they walked across the tile
to the front door, but when they didn’t reach for the leash or drop
any chips, the dog went back to the game room. Griff put his hands
in his pockets as Alex led him around the corner. There was
something off about Alex, his aura of normalcy even weaker than
most of Griff’s gaming circle. He wasn’t a geek like Jake, who had
named his multiple computers after anime heroines. He wasn’t
socially maladapted as much as the guy playing the sorceress, whose
Tourette’s-like bursts of laughter after every comment made him
unwelcome at most social gatherings (but a very convenient extra
player for any game, no matter what the schedule.) No, there was
something about Alex that fit in neither Griff’s daytime world of
plumbing issues and leaky roofs nor in the nighttime one of
warriors and cardboard navies. Maybe he really was a mage.

Alex reached his car, an old hatchback with
windows so dirty they were nearly opaque. He patted his pockets
twice each before abandoning the search for keys and opening the
unlocked front door. Even though Alex was sleeping on the couch at
Jake’s house, judging by the interior of this car, he had all his
belongings ready to go at a moment’s notice. Clothes, a pair of
speakers, an electric fan, and several boxes of loose papers and
notebooks filled the back seat and the floor of the passenger seat
as well.

“You sure you wanna leave your car unlocked
with all your stuff inside?” Griff asked.

“It’s locked,” Alex said. He drew several
cardboard boxes out and set them on the ground. “Just not with
keys.”

Alex rummaged around for several minutes
before he found what he was looking for. He pulled a shoebox out
from under a stack of clothes hangers. He placed his hand on the
lid and looked up at Griff. “Before I show you what’s inside, I
gotta know something.”

“No, I’m not afraid of snakes,” Griff
replied, trying to guess that’s what was in the box.

Alex frowned quizzically, but didn’t laugh.
“This isn’t a snake. It’s better than that. My own invention. I’m
gonna sell them and make a million, but I don’t want anyone to
steal my idea. I’m only going to show you this if you’re going to
go into business with me, help me sell them.”

“Okay,” said Griff, putting his hands in his
pockets again. Why not? He could use the extra money; that was for
sure. “Yeah. Sure. Let’s do business together.”

Alex looked up at Griff and down at the box
three or four times before finally lifting the lid. Inside were a
bunch of sticks. Twigs, really, no more than ½ inch in diameter.
They ranged from about five inches to about a foot in length. The
ends were neatly trimmed, and the wood still had gray bark.