Kevin Hearne - Tricked

“Not so good,” she admitted. “Kind of clueless, actually. Do I need to get a clue?”

“If you want to be able to do the sort of thing I’ll be showing you here, yes. Normally you’d go get some nightshade and let nature do all the work for you. Not that poisoning caltrops to take out madly fast shape-shifters is normal. But we don’t have the time to do this conventionally. I can’t shift across to Europe from here and get back before this evening. So what I’m going to do is look at the structure of these alkaloids, synthesize copies, and then distribute them in an oil base, creating a deadly ointment for our skinwalkers.”

“You’re doing this down at the molecular level?” she asked.

“Yep. Much of what I do in the physical world is at that level. Take the engine sabotage as an example. To fuse the pistons to the cylinder walls, I first unbind the steel on the surfaces of both, letting the elements mix a bit, then I rebind them so that it becomes a solid piece. There’s a lot of molecules involved in that, but you can make it go faster by using macrobindings that determine shape and allowed molecular structures.”

“A macro? So what you do is craft one binding that executes multiple tasks?”

“Exactly. Macros are your friends. If I had to bind everything individually, we’d be here forever, right? But I’m going to create three macros to make this poison and you’ll see.”

“Oh, so”—she pointed a finger at my necklace and waggled it around—“your charms are like macros.”

“Yes. Except they execute far faster than they would if I had to speak them aloud. I took the trouble to make them because I’m paranoid and I’m always looking for an edge. They’re bound to trigger words in my Old Irish headspace; I think the command and it happens. If I need a target for a spell like camouflage or night vision, then I add that, but otherwise it targets me by default. And the shape-shifting ones all include the macro to shrink or expand the necklace, depending on the form I choose.”

“That is legit, sensei. I know what these do over here on this side,” she said, indicating my right, where all the shape-shifting charms were, “but what’s over here on the other side of your amulet?”

She put her hand gently on the left side of my face. “Turn your head so I can see them better.” She squinted and leaned in closer, examining the tiny hammered patterns in the silver charms. It brought the top of her head close to my jaw, and I admired the sun-kissed vermilion highlights in her hair and the scent of strawberries and damn I wished the Diamondbacks would get a lights-out closer, because they kept losing all those close games by one or two runs due to a shoddy bullpen. She trailed her fingers down the side of my neck, and I reflected that I didn’t like the swimming-pool remodel at Chase Field very much; the old tile pattern was much more attractive while the pool area was under the sponsorship of a different company.

“These little patterns are neat, sensei, but I don’t know what they mean.” Her fingers left my skin and she leaned back, and I nearly sighed with relief. It’s tough to think about baseball when it’s not in season. Spring training wasn’t for another couple of months.

“Okay, starting from the amulet and going outward, you have camouflage, night vision, faerie specs, healing, and I don’t have a name for the last one. Soulcatcher, maybe.”

“Soulcatcher?”

“I’ve never used it,” I admitted. “I don’t even know if it works.”

“What is it supposed to do?”

“It’s supposed to save my life. But in order to test it, I’d have to die.”

“Oh!” she laughed. “Well, I can see how you’d be reluctant to give that one a test-drive.” She frowned abruptly as something occurred to her. “Why have it at all, then? I mean, why not put on a different charm, like one for unbinding vampires?”

“I think I’m going to pursue that,” I said. “Recent events have pointed out how useful a charm like that would be. But still, if I start now, even with all the experience I’ve had, it’ll be at least fifty years before I can complete it.”

“Why so long?”

“Trial and error. I have to construct those macrobindings to execute from a silver charm via mental command in close proximity to a cold iron amulet. There are no instructions in Druidic lore to guide me through how to craft such a thing. Each of these charms is unique. So each time I test it, I’ll have to have a vampire in front of me to target. That’s going to be a bit dangerous. I didn’t realize how dangerous they were, honestly. I’d always avoided them as a matter of course in my efforts to keep myself inconspicuous whenever I tried to settle somewhere. But to answer your earlier question, I mostly keep the soulcatcher around because I worry about accidental deaths. When I began working on it, the Morrigan and I weren’t quite as chummy as we are now, and Aenghus Óg was still a dire threat.”

“I see. Do you think it’ll work?”

“Honestly? Considering how many times I’ve failed with other charms, no. I had to test them multiple times and change the bindings until I figured out something that worked. This hasn’t been tested at all. It’s kind of a Hail Mary.”

Granuaile smiled. “But you’ve hailed Mary before.”

“Not through my own efforts,” I reminded her. “Ready for poison?” I darted a quick finger at the mixing bowl.

“Yep. Let’s do this.”

I spoke the binding that allowed Granuaile to see with my eyes in the magical spectrum, and then I gradually zoomed in my focus until I could see the various alkaloids on the molecular level — or, rather, a magical proxy for them. I couldn’t really zoom in my eyes like a microscope.

“Okay, have you ever worked with design software where you can do a series of actions, record them, and then bundle them together for later use?”

“Yeah, I’ve done that. Photoshop.”

“Exactly. So that’s what I’m going to do here. See this molecule? That’s atropine. This one’s scopolamine, and this is hyoscyamine. It’s all just carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen in a specific configuration. We have plenty of those elements around. The inactive ingredients in the pills, which form the majority of the material you see in the bowl, are full of those same elements. So we construct a macro that says to rebind the available material here until it’s all one of those three poisons.”

“Won’t there be leftover stuff?”

“Yes. A few bits of carbon or hydrogen. Neutral non-active ingredients.”

I painstakingly constructed the macros and then, before energizing them, zoomed back out and turned off the magical spectrum so that Granuaile could see what happened.

“Watch closely.”

“Watching.”

I energized the bindings and the powder in the bowl stirred and poofed a wee bit.

“Wait. Is that all?” Granuaile said. “Nothing happened.”

“Everything happened. That was a bowl of three percent poison and ninety-seven percent random crap that they put in pills to make you feel like the price you’re paying is worth it. Now it’s almost one hundred percent poison. I never would have been able to do that before I took chemistry.”

“You got a degree?”

“No, I sat camouflaged in the classes and bought the texts. This is now an extremely toxic mixing bowl. Would you mind terribly opening a bottle of olive oil? I don’t want to risk tearing these gloves at all.” She returned shortly with an opened bottle for me. “Pour slowly while I stir?”