Fennen was in a severe predicament. Stark naked in front of his disapproving apprentice, he was in desperate need of a pair of trousers. This wouldn’t have been too difficult if not for the corpse that Candice Feathers had shoved into his closet. He couldn’t just stand there, but he couldn’t go through the regular trouser-finding process, either. Deciding that talk would distract Athanasius from his nudity, Fennen opened his mouth, only to hear the crooning of a satisfied baby. Somewhere in the back of his mind, beneath layers of perplexity and embarrassment, Eskarne was shouting. A hand brushed his cheek, prompting Athanasius to melt away into images of teenage indiscretion. Then, the pain started, and delicate memories were abandoned for wakefulness.
“Ftswdl!” he shouted, smacking his attacker. “Sldl!”
In the orange light, he could make out a tall, bulky patch of darkness reaching for his bedside lamp. Aha, Fennen thought as he grabbed his pillow. The man swung, catching only air—Fennen had jumped off the bed. He turned and made close acquaintance with the pillow. Pressed against the wall with a pillow to his face, the attacker tried to pull it away. Fennen took the opportunity to knee him in the crotch. He grunted. A few seconds later, he’d punched Fennen in the stomach and thrown the pillow to the ground.
It’s going to have to be magic, you idiot, Eskarne said. He’s stronger than you.
“Plbw,” Fennen muttered darkly. He didn’t like for it to come to this. Once the heat on his fingers grew unbearable, Fennen released the fireball in his attacker’s direction. The man ducked the first one, but an unexpected second caught him in the chest. Time stood still as the man waited to burn. He had already floated halfway to the window by the time he realised that that was not going to happen. Fennen watched danger hovering away, perplexed and picturesque in the growing light of dawn.
He’s not going to be too happy when he gets back from Iqaluit, Eskarne pointed out.
He’ll see some great sights, Fennen answered. And I couldn’t kill him. You know how I get about killing, Eskarne. Out loud, he said, “Swmpl.”
He continued staring out the window until the attacker had dwindled into a tiny black dot in the distance. The effort of keeping him flying all the way to Iqaluit would give him a bad headache for the rest of the day, but it was worth it. It wasn’t often that Fennen felt the need to use magic. When he did, people never bothered him again—and it wasn’t because they were dead. When a magician is really determined to stay alive, killing him becomes a bit of an undertaking. Making life annoying was comparatively much easier, and didn’t pull Fennen towards the path of megalomania.
The world had had quite enough of Evil Fennen. As he rummaged through his closet, Fennen noted that it was a lot easier to be nasty. The clothes were cooler, too. It would be nice to wear a billowing black cape with red silk lining, and those knee-high boots that clicked ominously as he walked, but that would be accepting the little maniac inside him. He couldn’t go there again. If he didn’t kill himself, the MagRIA would, and Fennen had no desire to be bested by Clarence Phillips.
From the top of the stairs, Fennen surveyed his shop. Everything was as usual, except for a door behind the counter. It was open. Clearly, his attacker had been one of those unfortunate magicians who he’d shoved through a portal door. Fennen went downstairs and peered carefully into the portal, gently redirectiong the foggy hands that grasped at his coat. He withdrew his head when he caught sight of a Globbly floating aimlessly through the greyish mist. Slowly, so as not to alert the creature to his presence, Fennen muttered the spell to close the portal. It was no use. The Globbly, feeling a general tightening in the atmosphere, turned and caught sight of the magician. In the blink of an eye, it had zoomed right into Fennen’s body.
“Fdr!”
A taxi turned into Allaway Street. It drove past the plaza and the park, stopping in front of a row of red brick townhouses. Inside, a woman consulted her notebook. She snapped it shut and shoved it into her purse, then rummaged for a ten-dollar bill. Fare paid, the woman stepped out and climbed up the steps to the door. Halfway down the street, a young man stared in disbelief. He was almost certain that the woman was wearing a sword at her side, but before he could make sure, she had disappeared into the house.
“Lovely to see you,” said Candice Feathers, leading her guest through the living room and out the french windows. “Such a pretty dress you have, dear, though I didn’t know swords were in fashion.”
“Perhaps it will become fat,” the woman replied. She sat down, apparently unaware of her host’s confusion.
Candice sat across from the woman, still trying to puzzle through the apparent non sequitur. “Did you mean a fad, darling?”
“That is what they call it?” she asked, looking mildly uninterested. “I will remember it next time, maybe.” There was a vase of flowers on the table, which she examined carefully. After sniffing them delicately, she pulled off a few petals and ate them. “Not so tasty,” she remarked, swallowing.
“So,” Candice said slowly, “how are you finding it here?” To her horror, the woman continued eating the flowers.
“It is nice,” she answered. “Not like home.”
“Oh, no. Born in the desert, weren’t you, love? It seems like so romantic—being born in the cold, starry desert night, and then growing up so close to an emperor.” Candice sighed. “It must have been so lovely. Wasn’t it lovely, dear?” Her visitor was staring at her with blank, blue eyes. A second later, she spat a clump of chewed petals and saliva on to the lawn. “Er, so, have you found your daughter, darling?” Candice asked weakly.
“No. You say Fennen know where she is?”
“Yes, bu—”
“And you know where Fennen is?”
“Oh, well, I used to know, dear, but I am getting older, and things do slip my mind terribly. I would love to tell you, if only I could remember, and, oh!” She glanced at the money that her visitor had placed on the table. “It’s just on the tip of my tongue, dear. Just on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t, for the love of me—well, yes, I do think it was on, yes, Tipperton Street.” The woman pulled out a few extra bills. “Yes, thirteen twenty-four Tipperton Street. It’s a bookstore.”
“Thank you,” Redlin said, standing up. She pulled her sword out and stared at it for a moment, watching the sunlight reflected in the blade. Candice could see that it was a rather old sword. Not dull, definitely not dull, but almost certainly a sword that had seen some use. To her relief, Redlin slid it back into the sheath and pulled a notebook from her handbag. “You will write it down?”
Candice found a pen and scribbled quickly. She pushed the book away. “There you are, dear.”
Nobody spoke as they passed through the living room and into the front hall. As Candice watched the former empress walking down the street, she felt an intense sense of relief—as if she’d been a hair’s breadth from death during the interview. That day, after shutting the door, Candice Feathers resigned herself to gardening and educating her three grandchildren. The Off-World crowd was simply too dangerous for her to deal with.
Fennen was trying hard not to panic. When the Globbly flew at him, he had thought it was attacking him. That, according to the literature, was what they did. He had the exact section from Creatures of the Earth in front of him, and in any case, he knew it by heart—well, the basic gist of it, anyway. Globblies most emphatically did not disappear into human bodies. They did not mesh with their victim’s soul, or fill them with thoughts on tables, or magnify previous magic-related headaches to ungodly proportions. That sort of thing simply did not happen.
Well, no. It did happen, because it had just happened to Fennen. The real question was not the possibility of the thing, but rather, how he would deal with it. His attacker was currently floating over Hudson Bay, so releasing him was out of the question. Nothing could be done to alleviate his ear-splitting headache. He would have to eject the Globbly as-is, with a headache and a complete lack of references. If Fennen survived, he’d be in history books as another Great Pioneer.
And if we don’t survive, we’ll be tomato paste, Eskarne said. For Gods’ sake, do some—
TABLE TABLE TABLE TABLE TABLE, the Globbly interrupted cheerfully. This was the most intellectual stimulation that he had had in a very long time. TABLE TABLE.
I don’t know what to do! Fennen told Eskarne, as he pored over Creatures of the Earth again.
Downstairs, the door jingled open. “Mr Fennen?”
“Flopett?”
“Yes, Mr Fennen?”
Damn, he thought. What do I do with him?
TABLE TABLE? Globbly suggested.
Fennen considered the idea, but soon discarded it for something more practical. “Go do the groceries, Flopett!”
“Yes, sir!” Five minutes later, he heard the bells jingle as Athanasius pulled the door shut. Fennen was quite proud of himself—he had led his apprentice away from potential danger without giving him an inkling of what was wrong, and he would get his groceries done, too. Decisions like that always reminded him that he was a wise centenarian, and not the twenty-five-year-old twit he appeared to be. He was glowing with pride when Eskarne brought him back on track.
Solutions, O Wise One?
This isn’t a situation for wise, Fennen answered sharply. This is a time for clever.
If Eskarne had eyes, she would have been rolling them. As it was, she just filled him with her disapproval. By the way, Globbly’s gone to have a dig through your—
PHILLIPS PHILLIPS PHILLIPS PHILLIPS.
—memories, she finished.
Fennen bit back a scream. If he didn’t want to go insane, he would have to deal with this. Desperate, he flipped through a book on demons. There was no way he was going to try and get used to this.