I turned to see a girl who looked about my age with long raven hair, copper skin, and Asian features I was inclined to say were Chinese but that covered a lot of groups. She was wearing a pair of shorts, a blue robe that was open in the front, and a shirt with floral patterns. I also saw a pair of unicorn slippers on her feet. It was the ultimate in ‘I don’t give a crap’ wear. Except, I also noticed she was carrying a shotgun too. It was covered in the same sort of sigils as the Merlin Gun. In a room full of powerful objects, it stood out as the strongest.
“Master,” Alex said.
“Dumbass,” Kim Su said. “Deer lady, Wolf lady.”
“Hi!” Emma said, cheerfully.
“You look like a teenager,” I said, trying to avoid drawing attention to the fact she was pointing a gun at us.
“You look like an adult,” Kim Su said, lowering her shotgun. “When I was young, you probably would have five or six kids and then die at thirty in childbirth so your husband could remarry.”
I grimaced. “How old are you?”
Kim Su paused. “Actually, I’m not too sure. Things get a little hazy after the last three thousand years, but it was after the Elder Gods ruled the universe. I recall it still being a novel idea that the Earthmother and Sun had convinced the vampires as well as werewolves to turn against their masters. Most of the New Gods were still new back then.”
“I don’t recall this from my Bulfinch’s Mythology,” I said.
“You wouldn’t.” Kim Su shrugged. “Humanity still has trouble with the idea it’s a fundamentally uninteresting species to the rest of the universe.”
“We are not!” Emma said, indignant.
“I don’t think you’re included in that,” Alex said, correcting her. “Kim Su is of the old school that thinks of humans, mages, shapeshifters, and the undead as all different species.”
“And what are you?” I asked, not really disagreeing with her. Humanity couldn’t get along with itself so why should be a big happy family? Strong fences made good neighbors and wow, that was racist again. I blamed my mother and dad now.
Kim Su stretched her arms out over her head, shotgun in one hand. “I am Kim Su, First of the Magi (as far as you can prove)! Holder of the Akashic Record and Master of So Many Disciplines Even I Don’t Remember Them all! That’s an official title by the way. Grandmistress of the Order of the Sun and former High Priestess of Mia!”
“Mia?” I asked.
“That’s what I call the Earthmother,” Kim Su said. “I like to change her name every few decades after my latest favorite actress. I think her next name will be Snookie.”
Wow, she was already behind the times. “I take it you’re from the ham-and-cheese school of sorcery?”
“I am a wizard, so I can do or say whatever I want,” Kim Su said. “It’s really awesome and you should try it. Being obnoxious and not getting stoned for it is a privilege modern women should not take for granted.”
“Believe me, I’m very appreciative of it but I need your help,” I said, deciding I liked Alex’s mentor.
“Yeah, and yet you came with Alex,” Kim Su said, glancing at him as she rested her shotgun’s barrel on her right shoulder. “My greatest disappointment.”
Alex lowered his head. “I’m sorry.”
I started to defend him. “Alex is—”
“Working for the government!” Kim Su interrupted, her mouth open in mock outrage. “I mean, did you retain nothing of what I taught you? You could have been a drug dealer like your brother, head of a cult, a mass murderer, or a supervillain and it’d make me think more of you. At least tell me you’re having sex with models while using your powers for personal gain.”
Alex did his best to maintain his composure but I could tell he was furious in the way adult children got in the presence of parents. “This is important, Master.”
“You graduated, so it’s Kim Su or Sexy Lady to you,” Kim said. “You stopped being my apprentice when you decided to go out on your own. There was no more I could teach you anyway.”
“Really,” Alex said.
“Oh hell no, I could have taught you new tricks every day until you died but you wouldn’t get to actually use any of them,” Kim Su said. “Besides, some of the stuff you do is impossible, like creating new gods out of TV shows and altering reality. You should stop that as we follow the laws of physics in this store—at least as I define them.”
“My family has been kidnapped,” I said, taking a deep breath.
“Well that sucks,” Kim Su said, walking to the counter and stepping behind it. She plopped her shotgun on the top. “What do you want me to do about it?”
I blinked. “I dunno, help?”
“Sorry, but I don’t get out of bed in the morning unless it’s an Elder God being awakened from its slumber. That’s why I have minions.”
“Minions?” Emma asked, looking at some of the goods in the store. I saw her pick up a handheld shopping basket and start browsing while I talked with Alex’s master.
“It sounds better than apprentices,” Kim Su said.
“It really doesn’t,” Alex said, walking up to her. He looked like he was trying to stay calm but it was clear Kim Su was getting to him. “Master, I beseech you, it was you who taught me to use my powers for good and the benefit of mankind.”
Kim Su furrowed her brow. “That doesn’t sound like me. You must be thinking of some other kickass archmage.”
Alex looked like he was ready to throttle her but managed to keep a straight face. “Jane is the woman I told you about. Her potential is immense and she could be a force for good in the world if she had your assistance. That’s not going to happen, though, if the local demon brings her family to harm.”
“The local demon has kidnapped them, that’s already bringing them to harm,” I corrected, walking up to her. “I can return the Merlin Gun to you if you do.”
Kim sat down in a stool that made her stand face-to-face with Alex. “You mean, return my stolen property to me in exchange for a reward even though you received it from the guy who stole it?”
“Yeah?” I suggested.
“Keep it,” Kim said, patting her shotgun. “I’ve got like three. The weapons crave violence and sending souls to Hell. It’s what you get when you make them out of angelic metal and summon an Ophanim into one.”
I recognized that as a Christian angel type, that caused me to blink a bit. My gun had an angel inside it? That was a little unsettling. “Uh-huh. Well, what would make you want to help me?”
Kim Su paused and conjured a pair of glasses before leaning over the counter to look at me intently. “You claim to be a weredeer, right?”
“Claim?” I asked.
“Yeah, they’re shamans lately,” Kim Su said. “That’s new. I want you to prove it.”
“Okay,” I said, ready to turn into a deer. “Just point to where you want me to transform.”
“No, no, that can be faked by magic. I need you to do something more substantial.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Make a pun,” Kim Su said. “A good one.”
“What?” I said, angry she was joking around like this when my family was endangered.
“Oh Lord,” Alex said, covering his face.
“We don’t have time for this,” I said, balling my fists. “People have died.”
Kim Su sighed. “My dear, I have born witness to more murder, genocide, and raping than you could possibly imagine. I drove a spike into a Persian king’s head to save the Jewish people, gave Arthaeus a sword that could cut through steel, and managed to sneak in Nazi Germany to make sure Hitler’s plan to sacrifice all of Berlin to become a god failed. The Merlin Gun made it look like a suicide since I shot him right against the side of his head after forcing cyanide down his throat. His vampire lover too. Believe me, I’m aware people have died. They always died but if my ways sound strange, it’s because I know what I’m doing.”
My eyes widened. “You did all of that?”
“Maybe,” Kim Su said, straightening her back. “I could also be saying complete deershit but you’ll never know.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose to ward off a migraine. “And if I do this, you’ll help?”
“Maybe,” Kim Su said, crossing her arms.
I took a deep breath. “Okay, I was going out one day wearing a slinky dress with a purse full of mushrooms when my mother came out and said, ‘You can’t go out like that.’ I asked, ‘Why?’ Then my mother said, ‘Because you don’t want people to think you’re a deer of loose morels.’”
Kim Su stared at me.
“Because deer eat a fungus called morels,” I said.
Kim Su raised an eyebrow.
“All weredeer are not good at puns!” I snapped at her.
“Why is the purse full of mushrooms?” Emma asked, calling from a table containing a stack of autographed Farrah Fawcett photos. No idea why those were there.
“It’s a joke, it doesn’t have to make sense,” I said.
“So the cents are in your purse?” Emma asked.
“Who is the weredeer here?” Kim Su asked.
I frowned. “Lady, I do not appreciate your pressuring me to conform. Being a weredeer is hard! Not only do I have to put up with the puns, every other woman in my race has long legs and can walk in stiletto heels without difficulty. Every guy constantly wants to butt heads with each other. Also, things are never salty enough. That includes salt.”
“Now I believe you.” Kim Su grinned and pulled out a sheet of white paper from a ’90s-style printer behind her then picked up a Sharpie to write on it.
“You didn’t before?” I asked, exasperated.
“No, I did,” Kim Su said, shrugging. “I just have so few amusements in my old age. Also, I regenerate any wound so don’t talk to me about shoes. I’m incapable of building callouses on my feet, so they’re permanently tender.”
“Ouch,” I said. “Emma doesn’t wear heels because her feet are permanently padded.”
“They are not!” Emma shouted as she picked up a Bionic Woman action figure.
Alex looked like he could barely suppress laughing aloud.
Kim chuckled. “Have a look around and see if you find anything you’d think would help. I’ll also write you a spell that will allow you to banish a god.”
“Alex said he didn’t have the juice to do it,” I said, blinking. I was trying to figure out exactly what was needed to save my family and didn’t need to be distracted by Kim Su’s desire to make us put on a show. “Juice?”
“Magic is like building up a muscle. A lot of it is hard work but some of it is genetics. Alex punches like Bruce Lee, but that doesn’t mean much compared to some of what is out there.”
“What do you punch like?” I asked.
“Albert Einstein,” Kim Su said, scribbling something on the paper. “It took me three hundred years to gather enough magic to make this device. Unlike most of our kind, I refuse to engage in pacts with spirits or feed off a cult. I have more knowledge than most any other mage alive, but I’m not the most powerful magic user in the world, not by a long shot.”
“What about me?” I asked.
“You’re a shapeshifter of a lineage that has cultivated magic within itself for a few millennia, so you should be fine. It’s really the question of how much you’re willing to sacrifice to the magic that will determine how powerful you can become.”
I made a whoosh gesture over my head.
Kim Su smiled. “Magic isn’t like science. It doesn’t continue to exist independent of you and regardless of your feelings. You use magic to change the world, it changes you back.”
“That’s not always a bad thing,” Alex said.
“Spirits love you,” Kim Su said, folding up the piece of paper and sliding it across the counter. “Good ones and some bad. You’re also devoted to a cause. I prefer to own my soul free and clear.”
“Maybe that’s why I had to leave,” Alex said.
“You’re not just here because you like it,” I said, looking around the room. “You’re here because you’re hiding.”
“When you try and make the world a better place, you make enemies.” Kim Su sighed. “Azazel, Aleister Crowley, the Ultralogists, the Cult of Transcendent Ones, and more than a few vampire Old Ones. Being one of the few genuinely immortal beings out there, I can usually just take a few decades off every century or so to let them die off or get themselves killed fighting each other. I made a mistake in the eighties and if I leave my home then I’m likely to get found by people who would make a fight with me look like Bambi versus Godzilla. No offense.”
“I like Godzilla,” I said.
“He reminds me too much of Lucien,” Alex said.
I snorted and opened the envelope. It read “GET OUT” in big black letters. “Wait a minute, what the hell is this?”
“The spell for exorcising Clara O’Henry,” Kim Su said. “That will be five ninety-nine.”
“‘GET OUT’?” I said, no longer finding her antics amusing.
“You can say it in Latin if you want to,” Kim Su said.
Alex felt his head. “Kim?”
“The magic is in her not any chants or books,” Kim said, sighing. “You know that better than anyone, Alex. The charts, words, and astrology help. You can even borrow magic from spirits when you’re a regular human to make rituals work if you know the right names but at the end of the day, magic is will plus belief plus lineage times juice equals niftiness.”
“Thanks,” I said, growling. Unfortunately, being a deer, it didn’t really work for me and I sounded adorable rather than threatening.
Kim sighed and gestured for me. “Come here.”
I reluctantly leaned over the counter.
Kim put her finger to my forehead. “Understand.”
The next thing I knew, I was on the ground foaming at the mouth and shaking. Alex and Emma were by my side.
“Ugh!” I said, choking and spitting to one side.
Kim was sitting behind her counter still, now reading an Italian copy of Glamour. “You’re welcome.”
“What the hell?” Emma shouted, calling to her.
“Ask her,” Kim Su said.
I climbed on my feet and almost launched myself over the counter before pausing in mid-step. “Huh, I know how to exorcise people.”
Kind of. I understood vaguely how the process worked in the same way I knew how to breathe without thinking about it. I could summon my will and inner strength to do it but it would be without any subtlety or form. Just raw power. It was like she’d added a third Gift to my visions and psychometry.
Wow.
“Yes, I have taught you one spell,” Kim Su said, giving a mischievous smile. “The Keanu Reeves way. I don’t recommend doing it again. I mean, it only has a small chance of liquefying your brain every time but those odds are not ones I’d like to test.”
“No kidding,” I said, needing to catch myself on the countertop.
“Oh don’t be a baby, you didn’t even wet yourself,” Kim Su said. “I could tell you about some of my apprentices who—”
Alex pulled out a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it over. “Thank you, Kim. I don’t think we’ll need anything else.”
Kim rung it up and handed him over the change. “A word of caution, Alex. The Red Wolf isn’t just a small-time spirit. It is the manifested spirit of Bright Falls and a child of both the Earth as well as sky. You can kill it and probably should but there will be consequences to it. All the defenses it has placed around this town will be pulled away and there will be a rush to replace them. Nature abhors a vacuum.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Alex said, placing his hand over his heart. “Better to fight evil than leave it to continue harming the innocent.”
“Because that attitude has never gotten America in trouble before,” Kim said.
She had a point there.
Emma looked torn between saying something and accepting the spell Kim Su had worked on me was for my own good. Instead, she lifted her hand basket full of scented candles and handed over her debit card.
I gave her a sideways look. “Really?”
“What?” Emma said. “She has sandalwood and cherry.”
I rolled my eyes.