I hadn’t thought I was tired enough to sleep, but the late-morning sunlight streaming through my window put the lie to that. “Oof,” I said, rolling over in the oddly shaped bed, careful not to crush my baby. “And ugh,” I added, catching a whiff of said baby. “Time for a change for you, missy—actually, probably a bath for all of us wouldn’t go amiss.”
“Surely not for me, too, Mistress Callie?” Petrana asked, from her corner.
I turned to look at her. “You aren’t seriously trying to be witty, are you?”
I swear, my golem shrugged. “Do you want me to?”
“I want you to do whatever I ask you to—and beyond that, whatever you want to do.” I thought back to an early conversation we’d had, not long after I’d made her. “Assuming you’ve developed enough to have wants, that is.”
“You appear to enjoy conversations with people,” she said. “In the absence of other people to have conversations with, you could have them with me.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of any of this. It wasn’t like there was a handbook about golems, not about living with them, domestically. Or about having conversations with them. Witty or otherwise.
“Well, the thing I want to do now is bathe myself and this stinky child. You can help me with that.”
“With pleasure, Mistress Callie.”
We crowded my room’s tiny bathroom horribly, even at Petrana’s reduced size. But it was helpful to have four hands to control the slippery, squirmy infant, rather than just two. Rosemary clearly thought it was a great game. She giggled and shrieked as we tried to clean her up. It was a good thing I needed a bath as well, because I was soaked by the time we got her sorted.
Elnor watched the whole effort from a safe distance, in the bathroom doorway. Then she pointedly licked a paw and brushed it across her whiskers.
“Yes, yes, I know,” I told her. “You are the far superior being in every way. No need to rub it in.”
All told, it was a minor miracle that I got us all cleaned, dried, put into decent clothing, and to the Spanish Market by a few minutes before noon.
Helios hadn’t been any more specific than just this market, so I was glad to see that it wasn’t very large: not much more than a smallish city block. I wandered through the stalls, pretending to be a fascinated tourist—which wasn’t hard to do, because I was a fascinated tourist, even as I looked around for the young warlock.
Given the name, I’d expected the wares to be, well, Spanish—colorful shawls, tile and pottery, Mediterranean spices, the like. But, no. This market was crammed with such a random assortment of offerings, I was hard pressed to find any underlying theme. A stall filled with used children’s clothing sat beside one selling donuts; apothecary herbs were hawked next to an old witch offering tarot readings.
I hesitated in front of this last. Logan had run just such a stand, in San Francisco…I had paused just for a moment, but the old auntie noticed, and caught my eye with her steely old one. “Oh, young witch from the land of the new, with your babe in arms,” she said, in a strong, lilting accent. “Tell your fortune, missy?”
“No, thank you,” I said with a polite smile, starting to walk off.
The old witch lifted the first card off her face-down deck and thrust it at me. “See her and tell me that you don’t want to know more.”
It was the eight of Swords: a bound and blindfolded woman, surrounded by a fence of swords stuck into the ground. “I don’t, thank you,” I said, trying not to stammer. At my feet, Elnor gave a low hiss; I felt Petrana standing stock-still by my side, as though coiled, ready to spring to my defense.
This was a card about being trapped, but within your own illusions. In negative thoughts, the self-doubts that weigh us down in the dark hours of the night. Like so many of the individuals featured in the tarot deck, this woman only needed to step out of her own self-made situation, and she would see improvement. (Of course, someone would still have to untie her. But still.)
Or was that just the sort of thing tarot readers wanted you to think? After all, folks seeking wild-magic advice were looking to be told what to do. And if I was being cynical, I’d point out that it would never serve a tarot practitioner to deliver a message of hopelessness to her customers. “Step out from behind the swords, you will find that you are free.” I could almost hear Logan or my mom saying such a thing.
I shook my head and tried again to step away, but the old auntie kept holding me with her gaze. She had never glanced at the face of the card herself, though it was magic of the simplest kind to perceive what was painted on it; probably Rosemary could already do that. Even so, it gave me a bit of the creeps. Had that card been on the top of the deck before I wandered by?
I glanced around again, still not seeing Dr. Spinnaker in the crowd.
The old witch dropped the card on the table and drew up a second one, again holding it to face me. “Oho,” she chuckled.
This time it was The Sun.
“Very funny,” I said. “Yes, I am looking for a sun, of sorts.” And where was Helios, anyway? “Cute baby,” I added. The Sun card has to be one of the most cheerful in the deck. An adorable baby rides a gentle white horse past a wall covered in cheerful sunflowers, all under the light—and gaze—of a brilliant, wise sun. Abundance, success, joy and happiness; it was all here.
“Methinks your infant is better adjusted than her mother,” the old witch chortled. “So say the cards, anyway.”
I’d had quite enough of this. “Thank you,” I said, more forcefully this time. “But I must go.” I dropped a coin on her lace tablecloth and marched on, my golem and cat trailing behind me.
I walked through the market four times, up and down every aisle—even past the old tarot witch, who I steadfastly ignored—and still didn’t see Helios Spinnaker. I was about to give up and go find a cup of tea somewhere when I felt a tug on my sleeve.
I turned to see a nondescript middle-aged witch I’d probably passed a few times, and barely noticed. “Psst,” she whispered. “Walk with me.”
Since I was already walking, I just kept on. Petrana stepped closer to me on my other side, but I didn’t feel any threat from this witch. “All right,” I said.
“It’s me,” she whispered, and only then did I look with my witch-sight.
It was Helios, in not only a literal, physical disguise, but also heavily spelled with illusion. My eye had slid right over her—him—without registering. Of course, so many folk here used appearance illusions, I’d almost stopped noticing.
It was kind of brilliant, in its way.
“Ah,” I said. “Fascinating. I had no idea it was you.”
“Good. I didn’t want to make a big production of attracting your attention, especially after you stopped at Wenza’s booth,” Helios said. He kept his voice low, almost a hoarse whisper, likely both to cover its masculine tone and to keep us from being overheard.
“The tarot witch?” I asked.
“None other. Watch out for her. She’s already been banished from most of the city’s major markets.”
“Really? Why?”
He shrugged, clearly uncomfortable. “Tarot isn’t…”
“I know, I know,” I put in. “It’s not real magic. It’s not even ancient, and it’s a human thing.”
“All that is true. But Wenza, she does something more with it.” Helios shivered a little, or maybe that was just his baggy dress moving around on his slender body. “It doesn’t matter. You didn’t let her do a reading, so that’s all to the good.”
I didn’t tell him she’d pulled two cards for me. I hadn’t asked for them, hadn’t wanted them; that was all on her.
“Anyway,” he went on, “I have more answers to your questions. And you did not hear them from me.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that,” I said.
We turned another corner of the market, strolling together down a crowded aisle, pretending to consider the wares. “It wasn’t always this way,” he started, almost too quiet for me to hear. I leaned in closer, as if we were sharing delicious gossip. Petrana fell back a step, but kept up. “Grand Laurel Merenoc is an old, old company, and they’ve always been dedicated to solving the problems that witchkind faces.”
“Like what?” I asked. “What problems, specifically?”
“Any problems. And that’s where it went sour, I think. Mostly biological research, of course; tinkering with the witchkind genome is what made us a separate species from humans in the first place.”
I nodded, trying not to show impatience. “Yes.”
“Anything to do with strengthening our power, lengthening our lives, increasing our resistance to disease—all that kind of thing, that’s what the company works on. We make biological devices that automate breakthrough discoveries. And, I can’t stress this highly enough, our mission has always been to serve and support all of witchkind.”
He was leading me there, so I saw no reason to be coy about it. “So, when someone like Dr. Gregorio Andromedus, the leader of the San Francisco Elders and an ancient, eminent biological researcher in his own right, who has always worked hard to benefit all of witchkind…”
Helios waved his hand in a Yeah, yeah, get on with it motion.
I smiled, though none of this was happy-making. “Someone like him could make a whole lot of breakthrough discoveries for you guys to build automation machines for—even if you didn’t entirely understand what they were doing. He’d, what, send the specs, and you would construct what he asked for?”
“Pretty much. Of course, Dr. Mar and the other senior researchers would always be interested in what Dr. Andromedus was doing. They’d oversee the builds closely, at least as much because they wanted to figure out what clever new innovations he had come up with, as to, well, monitor whatever his intentions might be.”
Well, that was a delicate way of putting it. Again, leave it to the American to be blunt. “So when he asked you guys to build a machine or two to harvest the essence from witches and maybe a few warlocks, and remove their spirits from their bodies, everyone just thought, Oh, what a clever warlock, what will he think of next?”
I could almost hear Helios swallowing. “Well. Of course, um. It was never exactly that, er, apparent.”
“What did you think those machines were supposed to be doing?”
“I’m risking a lot to even come here, not to mention telling you any of this,” he said, testily. He took a few quicker steps, moving ahead of me. I let him, and put a hand on Petrana’s arm as she moved forward, as if to detain him.
“I understand,” I said quietly. “I appreciate your doing this, and I’m not blaming you.”
He walked on, but more slowly. Listening. Cooling down, too, no doubt. Finally, he slowed more, and I caught up with him.
“I haven’t felt good about things for a while now,” he murmured. “I haven’t understood it all—I don’t have the centuries of experience in the lab that he does, that any of them do. So at first, I figured I was misinterpreting things. I admired Dr. Andromedus so much…” He trailed off, looking away.
You and me both, honey, I wanted to say.
“I don’t know what he said exactly—those conversations happened at higher levels than any I ever got to participate in—but I was given to understand that there is a new syndrome popping up in the Americas. That, because of excessive fraternization with humans, witchkind is in danger of becoming diluted.”
My heart leapt in fear at this; it hit rather too close to the bone for me. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not clear what exactly the mechanism was supposed to be, because of course witchkind and humans can’t cross-breed, but that somehow, too much intimate proximity was draining our essence? I don’t know, it sounds foolish to say it aloud, but there was a strong sense that we needed to develop the means to measure and isolate essence.”
The big wallop of adrenaline was still dissipating through my system. On my chest, Rosemary woke up and started to wiggle around, reaching for me. At least she wasn’t reaching for my hair this time. “That, um, does sound pretty foolish, you’re right,” I told Helios. “What, our essence is just supposed to leak out of our pores or something when we spend too much time with humans?”
He snorted softly. “I don’t know. Like I said, I didn’t get to sit in on the high-level meetings. But I did participate in building several enchins that were able to extract essence. Just for calibration purposes, of course; but it occurred to me that it would be easy to misuse the technology.”
“To not put the essence back.” I felt sick to my stomach. This very thing had happened to Logan…and in my house. How had Gregorio done it? He hadn’t hauled a huge machine into my formal dining room.
Well, he’d done it somehow. And I was going to figure this out.
“Right.” Helios sounded as ill as I felt. “And I…” He paused, shaking his head. “I fear that I contributed one of the most pernicious elements to an already pernicious design.”
“What did you do?” We turned another corner and started down an aisle we’d been down too many times already; someone was going to notice. I grabbed his sleeve and added, “Let’s go this way. Can we just walk down the street? By the river maybe?”
“I suppose,” he said, distractedly, but he followed me. We left the Spanish Market and went down a narrow, cobblestoned street. It got quieter around us. He dropped his voice even lower. “It occurred to me that the spirit, the soul, might be in danger during the process of removing and measuring the essence. So I, I,” he swallowed, “I designed a device to extract the soul and hold it safe. It looks a bit like a bell jar…”
I sucked in a breath. “The enchin aberra.”
“Exactly.” He shook his head, gazing straight ahead. Even in his nondescript-witch disguise, I could see the anguish on his face. “I was trying to protect witchkind. You must understand, you must believe me.”
“I do.” And I did, so help me.
“I never imagined it would be put to such, such wicked use, and that is on me. I was naïve, foolish,” he said bitterly. “Dr. Andromedus was so impressed with my contribution! He heaped praise upon me, and it blinded my eyes to what he really wanted to happen. I didn’t even see it.”
“He fooled a lot of us,” I said, patting his arm.
Helios pulled his arm away from me, almost recoiling. It felt like self-loathing, especially as he went on: “Dr. Andromedus even intimated that he might invite me to study with him in his laboratory in America. I’ve always wanted to go to America! The Old Country…” He waved his arms around, indicating the picturesque city street we were walking down, the ancient houses crowded together, the trees leaning over the river. “Witches here don’t even pretend that warlocks are important anymore.” He gulped and glanced nervously at me. “I mean, no offense, but—”
I had to laugh, but I tried to keep it gentle. “No, stop, I do under-stand. Warlocks have spent so much time thinking they’re at the top of the heap…and I say this with all affection and kindness…it’s going to be an adjustment, learning to share the world with witches.”
He was silent.
I went on, “I mean, what did the warlocks think, letting witches have control of gender selection and letting conception become so darn hard? Of course we were always going to choose to have daughters.”
“Ma-ma-ma-ma,” Rose put in, tapping more insistently at my breasts.
“Do you mind?” I asked Helios, even as I was unbuttoning my blouse and shifting Rosemary so she could reach a nipple.
“No, of course not,” he said, but he turned away, his cheeks reddening.
Well, I couldn’t worry about his delicate sensitivities. I had a hungry baby here.
Once she was suckling, I tucked my blouse over her as best I could and said to Helios, “So, where are the souls?”
“What do you mean?”
I looked at him. “The souls that your machine extracted. I found a whole room full of spiritless bodies in Gregorio’s laboratory building. Witches and warlocks who had gone missing.” And my best friend. “Dead-but-not-dead, essence and spirit drained, bodies mysteriously still alive. Like suspended animation. I came here to get to the bottom of it—and to find the souls.”
His eyes widened. “I don’t know. To the best of my knowledge, that capability was never used.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure it was,” I said, trying not to pour too much sarcasm in my voice.
He nodded. “Yes. I see. Er, yes. That’s terrible.”
“It is.”
We walked in silence for a minute while I let him digest the news. It couldn’t have been a complete surprise to him, but it’s one thing to suspect something awful, and quite another to learn that it actually came to pass.
Eventually, he gave a deep sigh. It was starting to weird me out a little, that he still looked like a middle-aged witch, but oh well. “There’s an old building on the Grand Laurel Merenoc property that would be the first place I’d look, were I searching for a collection of lost souls,” he said, as if casually.
I perked up. “Oh?”
“It’s very old, actually; it was the first, the original. When we built the new manufactory, the one you visited last night, the operation moved, but we never tore down the old building. It’s used mostly for storage now, but…” He glanced away, at the river. Clearly deciding how much to tell me. “Well, I’d look there.”
“Can you get me in?” Before he could answer, I added, “No, Dr. Mar will have the whole property guarded, I’d trigger something the moment I set foot across the boundary line.”
“I’m afraid so.”
We strolled on. I shifted Rosemary to the other breast; she settled in contentedly. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to pop in and have a look around for me, would you?” I gave him a hopeful smile.
“Calendula, I’m taking enough of a risk already. And only because…” He shook his head.
“You really do want to leave here, don’t you?” I asked.
“I don’t know what I want anymore.” His voice was full of dull despair. “I thought…I’d thought everything was different. But the world isn’t at all as I’d been told, as I’d always understood it to be.”
I knew that despair. Knew it very well. “I’m sorry,” I told him, “I really, truly am—you have no idea. I’m at least as disillusioned as you are, about—well, a lot of things. But I’m doing something. That’s why I’m here: I’m not giving up. I’m trying to solve this mystery and make a new life.”
He gave a sad chuckle. “You’ve already made a new life,” he said, nodding at my daughter at my breast. “And she gives you something to live for—something to fight for.”
“You must have something too,” I insisted. “You just, I don’t know, haven’t figured it out yet.” An idea hit me. “So you don’t want to stay here, and coming to work for Dr. Andromedus has lost its luster, but Zchellenin and San Francisco aren’t the only two places in the world. I passed through a really interesting community in Canada on my way here. Just as an example.”
“Canada?”
“Yeah, big country, north of the United States, lots of snow—”
He snickered. “I’ve heard of Canada, yes. I just never considered emigrating there.”
“Well, of course not. That’s my point. There’s a whole world out there. You had one idea, and it’s not working out. That’s not the end of the story.”
“I suppose.”
Rosemary finished nursing. I gently extracted her and covered back up, then turned to Petrana, still ambling along behind us. “Do you mind carrying her for a while? I could use a little break.”
“Of course, Mistress Callie.” She stepped forward and took the baby in her arms. Rose, already half-asleep, nodded off.
Watching Helios Spinnaker, disguised as a witch, watch my golem, set wheels spinning in my head. I’d already laid glamour and illusion over Petrana before, many times, so she could walk in public without attracting attention. And we were magically connected, could already communicate silently: I could likely rig up a system where I could see through her eyes.
“I have an idea,” I said.
Helios turned to me. “I don’t even know you—I met you yesterday—but I already know I don’t like that look on your face.”