Spellbound

Chapter 9

Ada, Oklahoma

Faye watched the familiar hills out the car window and got more and more uncomfortable with every passing mile. The last time she’d seen these hills she’d been a passenger in a car, only it had been nothing fancy like the Chrysler that Ian had purchased for several hundred dollars cash in Dallas. The last time, she had been in an old Model T, along with her Ma and Pa, all her brothers, and every single thing they owned that could fit inside or could be strapped down to the roof. It had been a long, hot, and dusty drive all the way to California, especially since they’d had to stop to steal food and gasoline along the way.

The land was still dead brown, maybe even browner and deader than she remembered, as if that was scarcely possible. Maybe it was because of the darkness of the sunglasses Whisper had given her. Her memories told her that this area had been green and pretty once, but that had been a long time ago. That had all changed one summer, and walls of dust, black as night, had blown up and covered the whole sky for days at a time. The crops had died. The pigs had died. Pa had gotten madder and meaner, and when he got like that he liked to blame her for having the devil in her, what with her scary grey eyes and her cursed magic. He used to yell a lot, always telling her that she had to be filled with all sorts of wickedness to end up with so much magic that you could see it right through her eyeballs.

Pa hadn’t understood magic very well, but then again, most regular folks didn’t.

The road was open and empty. Most of the houses they passed were abandoned and the fields were bare. The fences were falling down, but there weren’t any animals left for the fences to hold in anyways. It had been four years since she’d left. It wasn’t often that she thought about Oklahoma, because all her memories of living here were sad.

The others had debated and picked their route. It wasn’t the most direct way, but they were trying to keep a low profile. And nobody liked to travel through the Oklahoma wastes if they could help it. Lots of places had bad drought, but there was a swath right up the middle where nothing grew anymore. When she’d heard they were going to drive straight through Ada, she’d kept her mouth shut. It seemed like an unfortunate coincidence. She had to keep reminding herself that this place wasn’t her real home. She’d grown up here, but her real home would always be in El Nido, California, on the Vierra farm, where she’d been taken in and loved and treated nice, and even though the Vierra farm had been burned to the ground, it was still a million times better than here.

“Dreary,” Mr. Bolander said. Faye snapped out of her funk and looked over at him. They were sharing the back seat. Ian was driving and Whisper was in the passenger seat. If anyone asked, she was supposed to remember that Ian was a businessman from New Mexico, on his way to buy a property in Virginia. Whisper was supposed to be his wife, which worked well since Ian was wearing a wedding band anyway and Whisper seemed to have an unending selection of rings available from inside her gigantic purse. Faye was Ian’s young cousin along for the ride, and Mr. Bolander was Ian’s hired man, which was funny to her, since in reality Mr. Bolander was the senior and most experienced knight, but he’d insisted that appearances had to be kept in case they found themselves in a Sundown Town. She had no idea what that meant, but everybody else seemed to, and she hadn’t wanted to look ignorant.

“What?” It had been awhile since anyone had spoken. All that broken-down scenery made folks quiet.

“I meant the view. Dreary. Sad to see a place all shriveled up and dried out. They say that we’re in hard times, but seeing this sure makes that sink in.”

“It’s ugly,” Faye said quietly. It made her miss her green fields full of Holsteins.

“What was that?”

“I suppose I was just mumbling, Mr. Bolander.”

“Call me George, please.”

She turned to look at him. His eyes seemed a little sad as he studied the scene. “I’ve been told that this desert used to be fertile ground… until we ruined it.”

Whisper chimed in. “I’ve heard about this. They spoke of it at university. The bowl of dust, was it not?”

“Dust bowl,” Ian corrected. His need to constantly correct people annoyed Faye, but she bit her tongue.

“They were having a drought. Some bright boys in Washington recruited a mess of Weathermen to try and fix things. Biggest magical alteration of weather patterns in history, they said. Instead they made it a hundred times worse.” George was still talking to her. The nice man had no idea that Faye knew all too well about what had happened. Maybe not about the decisions or the magic used, but she knew all about the awful results. “They tried to use magic like a hammer and ended up wrecking the natural order of things. It’s barely rained here since and there’s a hot wind that sucks the life out of everything.”

“Magic’s always got a price,” Ian said. “Sooner people realize that and quit messing around with things over their heads, the better off we’ll all be.”

Faye turned away. “It’s ugly… ugly and mean.”

“Ugly maybe, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it mean.”

George was wrong. She knew the truth. The darkness of the dust storms that had ruined their skies were nothing compared to the darkness that lived in some men’s hearts. The winds had just exposed that meanness for the rest of the world to see.

Steam was pouring out from the open hood of the Chrysler. George and Ian had their heads inside and they were poking at the engine. Faye had no idea what they were doing in there. Grandpa had always managed to fix the tractor when it had broken down, but she had never been much help at that except for fetching different-sized wrenches from his toolbox.

They had passed through Ada less than half an hour before, and Faye had been extremely glad when they had only stopped briefly to pump some gas at a weathered little station owned by a stern Chickasaw man. Faye had kept her head down, her glasses and big straw hat on, but even then it was doubtful that anybody would recognize her. Whisper had asked if they could stop for lunch, but everyone else had been eager to keep going. There was still plenty of daylight left, and even then the Chrysler had good headlights. Besides, they needed to get out of the bad zone before the night winds came. Faye was happy that they would be well away from her old home before they stopped to sleep.

But that wasn’t looking too likely anymore.

“Doggone it.” George mopped his sweaty face with his handkerchief. “I’ve got no idea. Plenty of fluid. No leaks. Radiator appears to be in good shape.”

“None of you happen to be a Tinker?” Ian asked.

“Call them Fixers where I’m from. I’m a Crackler,” George answered. “You want me to charge the battery, I can. Other than that”-he shrugged-“sorry.”

“Traveler,” Faye said, but everybody already knew all about her.

“Infernal thing.” Ian stepped back and kicked the bumper. “Well, I sure as hell can’t Summon a mechanic.”

Whisper got out of the passenger side, scowled at the sun, then went back for her umbrella. She popped it open and walked over to examine the engine. “Is it broken?” Ian glared at her, as if the boiling steam cloud should have been explanation enough. Whisper, however, was either immune to his jerkiness or just plain didn’t care enough to notice. “Well?”

“It overheated and died on us. Is there anything you can do?”

“I do not know much about automobiles.” Whisper frowned at the engine. “I believe that touching it would soil my dress.”

Ian sighed. “I meant magically.”

“You would like for me to set it on fire?”

George laughed with genuine amusement. “Fine lot we are. Four powerful wizards and yet we’re easily defeated by the internal combustion engine.”

“Yeah, the Imperium best watch out for us…” Ian muttered. He glanced up and down the road. There wasn’t another car in sight. “I saw a garage back in that town. It looked to still be open.” Which was saying something since most everything else in Ada had been boarded up and abandoned.

“Everyone wore comfortable shoes, I hope,” George said. “It’s only a couple of miles.”

“Lock the car up,” Faye told Ian, and then to the others, “Anything you don’t want stolen, take it with you.”

“Is that necessary to-” Whisper began.

“Trust me.” Faye got her. 45 out of the car and stuck it into the special pocket in her traveling dress. The knife Lance had made for her went on the other side. Sure, her family had moved to California, but she knew how desperate folks around these parts could be. Other than Mr. Browning’s pistol and Lance’s knife, everything else was replaceable.

They set out for Ada, which put Faye into a very sour mood.

There was nothing but dirt for miles. The trees were all dead. The only other feature was the telephone poles running alongside the road, and it was so desolate that there weren’t even any birds sitting on the wires. The afternoon wasn’t too hot, but the wind was harsh and dry. She had to hold onto her hat to keep from losing it. Whisper’s fancy umbrella got turned inside out in the first mile. She complained about that, called it her favorite parasol, and ended up chucking it into a ditch.

Ian made an attempt at conversation. “So, this telephone call that Jake Sullivan supposedly took…”

Faye was about worn out with this guy’s attitude. “What do you mean ‘supposedly’?”

“I’m not saying it didn’t happen, just how do we know it was the Chairman’s ghost?”

“Because Mr. Sullivan said so.”

“Maybe it was a trick. I mean, Sullivan’s a Heavy. Everybody knows Heavies aren’t very bright.”

George realized the hole that Ian was digging for himself much faster than Ian did, and tried to intervene. “Normally, when I hear someone say ‘everybody knows,’ what follows shortly after tends to be wrong.”

“Sullivan’s only been in the Society for what, less than a year? But because he’s had some dream about actually seeing the Power, we’re all supposed to hop to when he tells us something crazy?”

“That’s not true at all,” Faye snapped. “Mr. Sullivan is super smart. He’s just not a show-off about it like some folks.”

“We’re taking the fall for an assassination attempt, but instead of spending our time figuring out who set us up, we’re spinning our wheels trying to talk to Iron Guards about some being that probably doesn’t even exist.”

Faye stopped abruptly. The others made it a few more steps before they realized she was no longer keeping up. She waited while they turned back to her. Faye put her hands on her hips and gave Ian the look normally reserved for people she was about to murder. “You better shut up.”

“Hey, wait a sec-”

“No. You listen, and you listen good. This big critter is real and it isn’t messing around. When it shows up, nothing else is going to matter. If you don’t believe that, then you’re the stupid one.”

Ian’s face turned red and he started to respond, but Whisper cut him off. “But how do you know this, Faye?”

How could she explain? “It’s right there, right outside of the real world. It’s pushing on the door, getting heavier and heavier, and pretty soon the hinges are going to give and then it’s coming inside. When I listen, when it’s real quiet, like when I’m trying to sleep.. I can hear it.”

Ian threw his hands in the air. “You’re off your rocker.”

George put one hand on Ian’s arm to shush him. “Faye, how come you didn’t say this to the elders?”

“I did… They didn’t believe me either. I don’t know how I know. I don’t know how come my Power is different than yours. It just is. I just do. I can feel it, okay?”

“But-”

Faye was frustrated. She didn’t want to argue with a bunch of people who just couldn’t understand. She checked her head map and scouted the road for danger, clear, and Traveled. The soles of her shoes hit asphalt a hundred yards away. It was about as far as she could manage lately, a frustratingly useless little amount of distance compared to what she’d done before. She stood there in the dust and waited for the others to catch up. It gave her a chance to collect herself.

Of course the others didn’t understand. Nobody else had a connection to the Power like she did. They got drips of water coming out of a faucet and she had a mighty river… or at least she had before. Now she was down to a small stream, but on the Tokugawa, it had been a river. She didn’t know how she’d gotten so strong so fast, though the elders had kept poking and asking questions, trying to figure it out. They had seemed more worried about how she’d managed to Travel the entire Tempest than they were about the Enemy coming. They tried not to show it, but she could tell they didn’t trust her. It was shaking Faye’s confidence.

It was this place. Ada made her upset. Just being close to her old house made her feel like crying angry tears.

I’m stronger than that. I’m better than that. When she was a little girl, she’d had to live inside her own head, because it was the only safe place. But she wasn’t a scared little girl anymore, that nobody loved because they all thought she’d been possessed by the devil. She was Sally Faye Vierra, knight of the Grimnoir. She’d saved lives, battled the Imperium, and been a hero. She’d thought that she had put the miserable sad part of her life behind her, but apparently it was still there. It would always be there until she buried it once and for all.

She knew what she had to do.

Ian got to her first. “What’s your deal?”

“Fix the car. I’ll catch up.” And then she Traveled away.

Ian Wright watched the Traveler blink out of existence. He looked around the wastes, but Faye was nowhere to be seen. “Well, damn it all to hell.”

George and Whisper caught up a moment later. “Where did she run off to?”

“Personal business, I imagine,” Whisper said. “You should not have insulted her.”

Ian grunted. “Yeah, I was pretty dumb.”

“You were rude,” George pointed out.

“Not that. I wish I would’ve realized that she could’ve just Traveled back to town and saved us the walk.”

It took many long hops to reach home.

The old homestead was smaller than she remembered. She hadn’t realized it would seem so tiny. Maybe she’d just gotten used to being in cities with buildings that absolutely towered overhead, or maybe she’d spent too much time living in homes that made this place look like the shack it was… Or maybe she’d just gotten taller over the last four years.

The fences had been made out of scrap lumber and weaved-together branches. They’d been too poor to buy good wire even before the dust had come. The pigs had gotten loose all the time, but they had never wandered too far. Then they had all died when the air turned to poison and everyone had taken to wearing masks to protect their faces. The outhouse had collapsed into a heap of splinters.

The ground was a lifeless grey color and the entire yard had been smoothed perfectly flat by the constant wind. There were two metal poles in front of the old shack. Ma’s clothesline had run between those. Faye remembered running and playing between the hanging clothes. Whenever she’d forget herself in the moment and accidentally Traveled, she’d receive a beating. Traveling had been so much fun, though, that it had still been worth it. Now, one of the clothes poles had fallen down. The other stuck out of the ground at an angle, like something had crashed into it.

The house itself was also at a slight angle. She’d like to say the wind had done that, but more than likely, Pa had been a little drunk when he’d built the place. The front door was missing. Probably taken by a neighbor to use for firewood. The doorway was a black, gaping hole. She couldn’t do it. Faye told herself she was being silly. She’d fought the Chairman, why was this so difficult?

It took her nearly half an hour of standing in the yard before she screwed up enough courage to walk inside.

Beams of sunlight came through the tiny windows and a few holes in the wall and roof. There was no glass in the windows, but then again, there never had been. In the winter they’d just hung old canvas over the narrow slits to hold in the heat. During the dust storms, they’d tried that, but nothing could keep out the choking silt. The floor was dirt. Faye remembered using her fingers and drawing pretty designs in that dirt. It used to make her mad when the others would walk on them, but since there was only the one room to share, it was to be expected.

It was empty except for spiderwebs and trash. Their cobbled together furniture was missing. She hadn’t known why she’d expected otherwise.

There was lots of broken glass left over from Pa’s bottles. She kicked those out of the way and made some space. Not worried about getting her sturdy dress dirty, Faye sat cross-legged in the middle of the room. She closed her eyes and sat still and quiet for a long time.

The memories came flooding back. When her eyes turned grey and her Power showed up, people had become scared of her and what she could do. Her pa had hated her for it. Her ma was always wringing her hands and crying. Life had already been mean and hard, and her becoming different had just made it worse for everyone. Any bad luck that happened, and there had been plenty, had been blamed on her.

She remembered listening in on one of her parents’ whispered conversations late one night when they’d thought that everyone else had been asleep. They’d talked about maybe drowning her in the well. Ma said that nobody would ever have to know. Pa had said no, because murdering her would be a sin, besides, she’d probably just Travel out of the water, and tattle on them to the sheriff. Ma had said that the sheriff would never believe a devil child. Pa had put his foot down and told her to go to sleep.

Not everyone had been like that, though. Some folks in town had been friendly. Nice as could be, and even interested in what she could do, except Ma always shooed her away from those people with their crazy notions. There had only been one other person with magic in Ada. He could make things freeze, until he got run over by a tractor and killed. Then she’d been the only cursed oddball around.

Good thing I’m not odd anymore. She had quit being odd the day that Pa had sold her for ten dollars to her new family.

Opening her eyes, Faye came to a very profound realization: This was an empty house. It didn’t mean anything to her. The scared little Okie girl didn’t exist anymore. She had important things to do, like solve a big crime and then save the world from a horrible monster from outer space. There was no time for moping.

Faye usually kept a packet of matches in her pocket. Unlike many of her associates, she didn’t smoke, but you never knew when you might need to set something on fire. She pushed up all the garbage into one corner, found a piece of old newspaper, and struck the match. The trash pile quickly caught as she walked back into the sunshine.

The wood was so dry that it went right up. She marveled at how fast the place was consumed. It was like all that stored-up anger and sadness burned extra hot. Faye leaned on the fence and watched her old house burn to the ground.

OCI Headquarters

Crow was studying a gigantic map of the country when the office phone rang. He let one of the men answer it. He was too busy puzzling over the logistical issues related to the overall mission of the OCI, and didn’t want to interrupt his train of thought. Using the 1930 census data, there were approximately one hundred and twenty-five million Americans. The estimate was that about one in a hundred of those had some small measure of magical affinity, which put that at a staggering one and a quarter million people. Luckily, he didn’t need to worry about them yet. They would come later, after the country was used to the idea of controlling magic. The boss was clever like that.

His current issue was the one in a thousand that was an actual Active, with access to magic capable of causing serious problems. One-hundred-and-twenty-five thousand people would need to register, and many of them wouldn’t want to. Those holdouts would be his problem.

The law had not even been read in Congress yet, but the boss knew that it was going to pass. It was too early to begin implementing the plan, but it was common knowledge that some specific Actives would cause trouble. They were Crow’s red flags, and there were a lot of red flags on that map. Too many of those flags had question marks drawn on them. The goal was to neutralize as many of those as possible to ensure a smooth transition. Then there were the gold flags. Those were the special cases. There were very few gold flags on his map, but-the ones that the boss had big plans for.

The agent that had answered the phone called out to him. “Mr. Crow, we’ve got a trip wire in Ada, Oklahoma.”

There were a few men under his command capable of drawing spells. He’d had them out tagging specific locations with magical wards. He didn’t like having question marks on any of his flags. They’d warded homes, schools, friends, family, that sort of thing, and if a powerful enough Active got close, it would set off the alarm. It had been an expensive long shot, but a few of the trip wires had paid off so far. Crow checked the map. Gold flag. Question mark. “The Traveler?”

“Confirmed.”

“Excellent.” For her, he’d had trip wires placed at a burned dairy farm in California, the remains of the Stuyvesant mansion in Mar Pacifica, and what they believed was the shack she’d grown up in. This one was very important to the boss, probably in the top five most important Actives out there. She needed to be taken alive.

OCI was still a small agency. That would change soon enough, but for now his resources were rather limited. He had no men in Oklahoma City. He was hesitant to involve the locals: first, they could be untrustworthy and it was too early to risk developing a backlash against the OCI’s authority; and second, from what his intelligence said about the Traveler, she would slaughter anyone that took her on without a nullifier. The team in Dallas had one of the precious Dymaxions, but he didn’t want to risk letting her escape by the time they could get there.

“Dispatch the team in Dallas.” On the other hand, she was less than a thousand miles away from OCI headquarters as the crow flies. That turn of phrase made Crow chuckle. He could be there himself in a few hours, and have enough Power to spare to use his single greatest weapon. It would be incredibly draining, but if he caught the Traveler, it would be worth it. “They’ll take care of detainment and transport. I’ll handle the Traveler personally.”

Ada, Oklahoma

Faye was off doing who knew what. That was the hard part about being assigned to follow a Traveler. There really was no way to keep up. The other two Grimnoir had no idea what was really going on and were busy having the car towed into town for repairs. Volunteering to find their group lodging had given the final knight an opportunity to do some investigating.

The knight’s orders had been simple: find out if Faye Vierra really was the Spellbound. How to do that had been left up to the knight’s discretion. The original plan had been to observe Faye’s behavior and abilities, but when they’d left the Minotaur, a new opportunity had presented itself.

Talking the others into taking this particular route had been easy enough. Luckily, Faye had kept her mouth shut about her connection to the area. All of the information that had been gathered by the elders had indicated that the girl was ashamed of her upbringing. The knight had hoped that stopping here would have agitated her enough to ascertain if she was, in fact, the one they were waiting for. When they had not stopped, the knight had been forced to sabotage their car. Perhaps if they were forced to stay for a while, Faye would provide some clues. Unfortunately, that’s when the Traveler had run off like a spoiled brat.

Why do these assignments always have to be so difficult?

One of the signs seen along the walk back into Ada had given the knight an idea. As a rule of thumb, when an alternative method of investigation presented itself, it never hurt to check it out, even if it was a long shot. This time the knight had been in luck. There was only one doctor still residing in the dying town, but he had been there for a very long time.

Doctor Lincoln was an ancient man, who insisted on going by ‘Doc.’ He was a gregarious sort, and happy enough for pleasant company that he was not even slightly suspicious about the line of questioning. The knight had found him in his office, reading a big-city newspaper that was several days old. After purchasing some headache powders, the knight had struck up a conversation about Ada, and what, if any, interesting things the good doctor had seen during his many decades working there. A few interesting diseases, several horrific farm injuries, a large fire, and then the inevitable outbreaks of sickness as a result of the dust storms. The knight pretended to be interested until the subject could be turned back on point.

“Fascinating… Lucky for these people to have a doctor of your skill. You seem very experienced. Have you ever had any cases relating to magic?”

“Why, yes. A few. Back in oh-nine the Hickmans had a boy with superstrength. He ran off and joined the circus. One of the Ebert kids was an Icebox. Amazing thing. Poor child was crushed in a farm accident. Then there was the McCullum girl around the same time.”

The knight leaned forward until the chair creaked. “What did she do?”

“Oh, she was quite the rabble-rouser as she got older. Always managing to get into the oddest places and predicaments. Strangest and cutest little thing. She belonged to this backwards family, real poor, working scut land so nasty even the Indians didn’t want it. They didn’t come into town too often, had all their babies at home, too poor to hire a midwife, let alone having any trust in medicine, but the father came into my office one day, all shook up. He said that their daughter’s eyes had turned funny all of a sudden.”

“Funny?”

“Grey. They turned grey. They actually glowed a little in the dark if you looked at them just right. Turned out that the girl was a Traveler! Can you believe it?”

“Those are scarce,” the knight agreed. Now they were getting somewhere.

“Indeed. I tried to comfort those poor parents, telling them what a miracle this was for them, but they’d have none of it, the superstitious fools. I especially remember, because I consulted a journal article about the physiological aspects of Actives when they brought her in, but since the entry on Travelers was incorrect, I had to write the journal a correction letter.”

“What was so different?”

“It said that though Travelers didn’t begin to exercise their abilities until their brains were more formed, all known Travelers had the grey eyes even at birth. This child had blue eyes, then one day- bam — grey and shiny as could be.”

What luck! This could be it. “Do you happen to know what date this child’s eyes changed?”

“That’s an odd question,” Doc Lincoln replied.

“I’m a student of astronomy,” the knight answered quickly. “I would be curious if there would perhaps have been any peculiar alignments of the stars or planets that day that could have caused such a thing.”

“Huh? Well… Hadn’t ever given that much thought.”

“It is a more recent line of thinking on the possible origins of magic,” the knight lied.

“That’s interesting. Makes about as much sense as anything else I’ve heard.” Doc Lincoln got up from behind his desk and shuffled over to a bookshelf. He scanned down the spines. “I kept the issue they printed my response letter in. Only thing I’ve ever had published in anything more prestigious than the local paper, back before it folded up of course. Let’s see…” He pulled out one of the thin journals and opened it to the front. “Here it is… Blah, blah, blah. I was long winded as a younger man. Let’s see, the child’s symptoms appeared on September 18, 1918.”

It was a date that the knight could never forget. There was the answer.

“Oh, would you look at the time,” the knight said without looking at any clock. “I really must be going. It was a pleasure, Doctor.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” He slid the journal back into place. “And remember, don’t take too much of that powder at once. With your delicate complexion it could cause blemishes.”

The knight politely escaped the doctor’s office and headed for the only boardinghouse still open in Ada. Rooms had already been rented for the evening. The proprietor greeted the knight politely, as there was far too little business these days. There was a single washroom with a full length mirror, but luckily the door had a lock. The communication spell was hastily prepared.

The elder that had given this particular assignment materialized on the other side of the glass. When the elder saw who was calling, deep lines of worry appeared on his face. “Is it so? Is she the one?”

The knight spoke carefully. Lives were at stake. “Yes, Jacques. I have confirmed that her eyes turned Traveler’s grey on September 18, 1918.” Only a handful of people knew about the dangers of the Spellbound, which was one of the reasons this knight in particular had been chosen. “During Second Somme.”

“The day Warlock died…”

“As feared, it was not destroyed. The spell never left Earth. It chose her. I am certain Faye is the Spellbound.”

“I prayed this day would never come.” The elder looked away, distressed. There were some hard decisions to be made. “The other elders are hesitant. They wouldn’t dream of hurting this girl. You and I however, we know better… We have seen what she is destined to become with our own eyes.”

“I will do what I must. I understand the consequences far better than they can. What would you have me do?”

He hesitated. “For now, wait. Stay close to her. I will bring you new orders.”

In other words, don’t kill her- Yet.

Faye felt a whole lot better after burning down the house, like a great big weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Being careful to make sure nobody saw her Traveling, she popped back over to Ada and found their automobile being worked on in the shop. When she asked what was wrong, the nice mechanic said that it was the darndest thing he’d ever seen an engine do, and then he used a bunch of mechanical words that Faye didn’t understand to try to explain why. She still didn’t grasp it, so finally he explained that some important part had simply got real hot and melted, which it didn’t normally do, but that he’d have it replaced in no time.

The mechanic told her that her friends had gone over to the local boardinghouse to get supper. He gave her directions, and said to tell them that they would be able to leave tonight if they wanted, but that they were probably better off sleeping here and leaving in the morning. The winds tended to get worse at night and that was a fool’s time to try to drive across the wastes.

Faye decided to walk to the boardinghouse. It wasn’t far. Ada had changed a lot, but not for the better. It was a ghost town, only some of the ghosts hadn’t realized it yet. Most folks had given up and moved on, but the stubborn or desperate were still here, scraping out a living in a place that had been ruined by magic. There weren’t very many businesses left either. The seed store had burned down, but it wasn’t like anybody would miss it in a place where nothing could grow. The wind had eaten the paint off of the buildings, giving everything a worn-out and faded look. Only a few people were out and about, and there were only a handful of beat-up cars on the dusty street.

Some children were playing baseball in the road. They were all barefoot, the ball was a rock, and the bat was a stick. The pitcher was probably the oldest, maybe twelve, and judging from his broken front teeth he’d stopped a few flying rocks with his mouth. He quit smiling when he saw her. The game stopped and the players watched her as she walked by. She was an outsider, and therefore interesting and suspicious.

A woman was coming down her porch, wiping her hands on an apron. She shouted into the road. “Hey, you kids best get on home. Gonna be a real howler tonight.” The kids scattered like she was somebody they were used to taking orders from. Then she saw Faye and smiled. “Well, howdy, missy.”

“Ma’am,” Faye dipped her straw hat in greeting. Faye realized that this woman was familiar. She was the schoolteacher, not that Faye had been allowed to go to school, but she had been jealous of the kids that had. The schoolteacher lady had always struck Faye as kind when she’d seen her around town. Faye was thankful for Whisper’s big dark glasses, because surely the teacher wouldn’t recognize her. “Evening.”

“Good evening to you, stranger.” The teacher cocked her head to the side. Like everybody that still lived in Ada, she looked dried out and sunburned. The wind was blowing her ponytail around. “We don’t get many new folks in Ada.”

“Our car broke down,” Faye said, keeping her head down.

“Breaking down is the way of things around these parts.” The teacher was curious, like Faye reasoned all good teachers probably were. “You look familiar. Have you been around before?”

Faye quickly shook her head no and started walking.

“Now hold on.” Ingrained manners forced Faye to stop. “You got a place to stay, honey? Because I think it’s gonna be a hard one. You don’t want to get caught outside on a storm night. It’s liable to peel your skin off.”

“We’re at the boardinghouse, ma’am.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” The teacher was trying to get a better look at her face. “That’s a nice place. You staying long?”

“Passin’ through.” Faye realized that the lady was trying to remember where she’d seen her before. In fact, she was trying to get a look at her eyes… Faye reminded herself that she needed to think like a proper fugitive. It was time to get out of here. “I best be going. Evening, ma’am.”

“‘Bye then.” The teacher nervously put her hands together. Faye had made it nearly to the corner when the woman shouted after her. “You know not everybody here blames the wizards!”

Faye froze. She knew. “What was that?”

“I’m just saying… The wastes. The drought. Some of us know they were trying to help when they broke Mother Nature. The wizards were just doing what they were told. Not all magic people are bad.”

“I hear most of them are regular folks,” Faye answered.

“It wouldn’t be right to be angry at somebody that didn’t do nothing wrong to begin with. Not right at all.” Suddenly embarrassed at saying so much, the lady turned and walked quickly up her porch. “Have a safe journey, child.”

Faye waved goodbye.

A block later, she found the address that the mechanic had given her. There was a sign in front of the old two-story home, but the wind had eaten all the words off. A nice old lady with blue hair answered the door. The way she squinted so hard told Faye that she was mostly blind, and by the way she shouted all her words and kept saying “Eh?” she was hard of hearing too, but she eventually ushered Faye inside. The other knights were eating supper in the plain dining room downstairs. There was a pot of stew in the middle of the table. The smell made Faye’s stomach rumble embarrassingly loud.

“Look who decided to grace us with her presence,” Ian said. “What’ve you been up to?”

“Burning something,” Whisper suggested. Of course, Whisper was a Torch. Her strange fire magic had probably told her what Faye had doing. Whisper wrinkled her nose. “You smell like smoke.” Or maybe not.

Faye was embarrassed. “I had some things to do. See, I grew up near here…” She crossed her arms nervously. Being recognized by a local made her feel stupid. “And, well…”

“It don’t matter.” George got up and pulled out a chair for her. “I’ve been doing this for twenty years now and I’ve yet to meet a knight that didn’t have some things they didn’t feel like sharing.”

“Thank you.” Faye sat down. The old lady brought her a bowl and spoon, shouted a few questions about if the stew was good or not, said “Eh?” and cupped her hand over her ear when Ian tried to answer that everything was fine, and then shuffled back into the kitchen. “She seems nice.”

“Anytime a proprietor is willing to serve me without making a scene,” George said, “I’ll take it.”

“She’s blind as a bat and deaf as a stone. She probably thinks you’re white as snow. When everybody’s equally blurry, you don’t discriminate,” Ian said. “On the bright side, that means we can talk business.”

“The car is almost done. We can leave tonight if we want,” Faye reported as she scooped herself some stew. “The winds get worse at night, and if it’s bad you can’t hardly see until you drive into a ditch.”

“I say we leave in the morning then,” George said. “Did he say what was wrong with it?”

“Some doohickey melted,” Faye said between shoveling stew into her mouth. It was mostly potatoes and carrots, flavorless, like they’d been buried for quite a few seasons and then boiled until they were chewable. “What about Lance and them?”

Ian seemed cranky as usual. “Last we heard, they’re hunkering down for a bit, so they won’t miss us for another day. They made a real mess with the Iron Guard. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll be asked to do something useful instead.”

Faye was tired of his negative attitude. “You’re not going to be happy until I Travel your tongue someplace without the rest of your head, are you? What is your problem?”

George tried to intercede. “Now, you two-”

“My problem?” Ian raised his voice slightly. “I think this is a wild goose chase. We don’t know that this creature of yours is even real. Knights have stooped to consulting with Iron Guards! No good can come of that. Meanwhile, our organization is being slandered and our members arrested-”

“And what do you propose we should be doing about that?” George asked with the utmost calm.

“Find out who framed us!”

“Others are working on that. We’re-”

Ian cut him off. “We’re scared of what the answer is going to be if we poke too deep. Japan, Russia, and a dozen other nations have used every excuse in the book to enslave their Actives. You think America is different?”

George’s expression barely changed, but a little bit of anger crept in. “My father was born a slave. You really want to get all preachy at me?”

“Are you nostalgic for the institution then?” Ian furiously pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “Because mark my words, Actives will be property if we don’t fight back now. We have to assert our place before we’re trampled into history.”

“So, you’re one of those,” George grumbled. “Thinking that Actives are better than Normals, not equals. I should have known.”

“I’m no Active supremacist. Don’t you dare put words in my mouth, Bolander!”

“ That’s why you spoke up for Harkeness and Rawls,” Faye said quietly.

“I’m sorry for what they did to General Pershing and your friends,” Ian said quickly. “But those two men struck the greatest blow against tyranny that any of our people have ever accomplished. Through killing the Chairman, how many millions of lives did they spare?”

Faye’s voice was deadly. “That’s easy to say when it wasn’t your grandpa getting shot down like a dog.”

“I didn’t mean…” Ian’s face turned red. “Fine. You know what? I’m one of the best Summoners the Society has ever seen. I should be using my Power to hunt our real enemies, not the imaginary ones.” He stormed out in a huff.

“Can I kill him now?” Faye asked. “Pretty please?”

The look on George’s face indicated that he couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. Just in case, he said, “No.”

Whisper had not spoken during the argument. She waited for a door to slam upstairs. “Ian and I have worked together for a long time. Please do not judge him too harshly. He has had to face some difficult things recently.”

Faye had just burned down the horrible shack that she’d been raised in. She had a pretty high standard for what she considered difficult. “Whisper, I-”

“Ian’s wife was taken by the Imperium.”

“Oh… I didn’t know that.”

“I was very fond of her. Everyone was.” Whisper stirred her stew absently. “Despite Ian’s family’s disapproval, they wed young. She was one of us, Grimnoir. In fact, that is how the two of them met. His family is rather wealthy, aristocrats even, and they saw her as unworthy, their love, scandalous. He was gladly disowned to be with her.”

“How come?” Faye asked.

“She was a quadroon.”

Faye didn’t know what that meant, but George nodded in understanding. “She had a black grandparent, Faye. That can cause some

… legal issues most places.”

“Among other things. It did not matter. She was truly the light of Ian’s life. Her name was Beatrice and they were everything to each other. Such love… it was like a story.”

The French had a way of making things sound extra romantic. For the briefest second, Faye thought that sounded a bit like how she secretly hoped Francis felt about her, but then she decided she was just being silly. “What happened?”

“Several years ago… was it four, five now? How time flies when you’re battling evil… She was pregnant with their first child, residing at home while Ian was away. We do not know how the Iron Guard found her, but they did, and they took her. Oh, how we chased them, but they eluded us. The trail was cold, but Ian would never give up. He went all the way to China, following even the vaguest hints from the spirits he could Summon, but he was too late.. Beatrice had been given to Unit 731.”

Just saying the name of the Imperium’s experimentation unit made Faye’s stomach turn.

“The bastards,” George hissed. “I’ve seen their work.”

“They did horrible, awful things to her. Ian could not save her, so instead he used his Summoned to end her life, to spare her any more indignities at the hands of the Chairman’s Cogs.”

“That’s awful,” Faye said quietly. That would sour anyone. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course not. He never talks about it, but I know it changed him. He used to have the soul of an artist, even his Summoned were beautiful, graceful, heavenly things, yet now they are misshapen, cumbersome beasts. The form of a Summoned is a window into the soul of the man that commands them. He would certainly be upset to know I had told you of this”-Whisper leaned in conspiratorially- “but there is another thing you must know. I believe you have also met some of Beatrice’s family.”

“Really?” Faye hadn’t met that many Grimnoir, and those that she knew well had confided to her about their losses. “Who?”

“It would have been brief. Just long enough to wring the secrets from you. I’m speaking of Isaiah Rawls…” Whisper seemed to enjoy the look of surprise that appeared on Faye’s face. “Oh, close your mouth before you catch a bug. Do you think that those villainous conspirators came to trouble you on a whim? No? I believe Isaiah’s granddaughter’s death was what pushed him to such drastic measures to destroy the Imperium. Yet, by betraying the Society, he dishonored the name of all those who had followed him as well. As General Pershing was your leader here, Isaiah was ours.”

“He was a traitor,” Faye insisted.

“To some, and to others, a hero.”

“And to you?” Faye liked Whisper, so dreaded the answer.

“There is no doubt to me that Isaiah was a traitor, but sometimes a trust must be betrayed to serve the greater good. Such distinctions can be difficult. However, it was no accident that Ian volunteered to join the American knights. Maybe he is seeking to atone for deeds done on his behalf… I do not know.”

George was leaning back in his chair, appearing deep in thought. “And why did you volunteer?”

“Me?” Whisper’s smile was mischievous. “I go where the excitement is.”