Patricia Briggs: Strange Brew

"You're a cop, too, aren't you?" She finished her coffee, but if she was waiting for a reaction, she wasn't going to get one. He'd seen the «all-knowing» witch act before. Her lips turned up as she set the empty cup on the counter. "It's not magic. Cops are easy to spot—suspicious is your middle name. Fair enough."

She pulled off her glasses, and he saw that he'd been wrong. He'd been pretty sure she was blind—the other reason women wore wraparound sunglasses at night. And she was. But that wasn't why she wore the sunglasses.

Her left eye was Swamp Thing-green without pupil or white. Her right eye was gone, and it looked as though it had been removed by someone who wasn't too good with a knife. It was horrible—and he'd seen some horrible things.

"Sacrifice is good for power," she said again. "But it works best if you can manage to make the sacrifice your own."

Jesus. She'd done it to herself.

She might not be able to see him, but she read his reaction just fine. She smiled tightly. "There were some extenuating circumstances," she continued. "You aren't going to see witches cutting off their fingers to power their spells—it doesn't work that way. But this worked for me." She tapped the scar tissue around her right eye. "Kouros did the other one first. That's why I'm willing to take them on. I've done it before and survived—and I still owe them a few." She replaced her sunglasses, and he watched her relax as they settled into place.

Tom Franklin hadn't brought a car, and for obvious reasons, she didn't drive. He said the phone was only a couple of miles from her apartment, and neither wanted to wait around for a cab. So they walked. She felt his start of surprise when she tucked her arm in his, but he didn't object. At least he didn't jump away from her and say "ick," like the last person who'd seen what she'd done to herself.

"You'll have to tell me when we come to curbs or if there's something in the way," she told him. "Or you can amuse yourself when I fall on my face. I can find my way around my apartment, but out here I'm at your mercy."

He said, with sober humor, "I imagine watching you trip over a few curbs would be a good way to get you to help Jon. Why don't you get a guide dog?"

"Small apartments aren't a good place for big dogs," she told him. "It's not fair to the dog."

They walked a few blocks in silence, the rain drizzling unhappily down the back of her neck and soaking the bottoms of the jeans she'd put on before they started out. Seattle was living up to its reputation. He guided her as if he'd done it before, unobtrusively but clearly, as if they were waltzing instead of walking down the street. She relaxed and walked faster.

"Wendy." He broke the companionable silence with the voice of One Who Suddenly Comprehends. "It's worse than I thought. I was stuck on Casper the Friendly Ghost and Wendy the Good Little Witch. But Wendy Moira… I bet it's Wendy Moira Angela, isn't it?"

She gave him a mock scowl. "I don't have a kiss for you, and I can't fly—not even with fairy dust. And I hate Peter Pan , the play, and all the movies."

His arm moved, and she could tell he was laughing to himself. "I bet."

"It could be worse, Toto," she told him. "I could belong to the Emerald City Pack."

He laughed out loud at that, a softer sound than she'd expected, given the rough grumble of his voice. "You know, I've never thought of it that way. It seemed logical, Seattle being the Emerald City."

She might have said something, but he suddenly picked up his pace like a hunting dog spotting his prey. She kept her hand tight on his arm and did her best to keep up. He stopped at last. "Here."

She felt his tension, the desire for action of some sort. Hopefully she'd be able to provide him the opportunity. She released his arm and stepped to the side.

"All right," she told him, falling into the comfortable patter she adopted with most of her clients—erasing the odd intimacy that had sprung up between them. "I know the girl on your brother's phone—her name used to be Molly, but I think she goes by something like Spearmint or Peppermint, somethingmint. I'm going to call for things that belong to her—a hair, a cigarette—anything will do. You'll have to do the looking. Whatever it is will glow, but it might be very small, easy to overlook."

"What if I don't see anything?"

"Then they didn't leave anything behind, and I'll figure out something else to try."

She set aside her worries, shedding them like a duck would shed the cool Seattle rain. Closing her senses to the outside world, she reached into her well of power and drew out a bucketful and threw it out in a circle around her as she called to the essence that was Molly. She hadn't done this spell since she could see out of both eyes—but there was no reason she couldn't do it now. Once learned, spells came to her hand like trained spaniels, and this one was no exception.

"What do you see?" she asked. The vibration of power warmed her against the cold fall drizzle that began to fall. There was something here; she could feel it.

"Nothing," his voice told her he'd put a lot of hope into this working.

"There's something," she said, sensations crawling up her arms and over her shoulders. She held out her right hand, her left being otherwise occupied with the workings of her spell. "Touching me might help you see."

Warmth flooded her as his hand touched hers… and she could see the faint traces Molly had left behind. She froze.

"Moira?"

She couldn't see anything else. Just bright bits of pink light sparkling from the ground, giving her a little bit of an idea what the landscape looked like. She let go of his hand and the light disappeared, leaving her in darkness again.

"Did you see anything?" she asked, her voice hoarse. The oddity of seeing anything… She craved it too much, and it made her wary because she didn't know how it worked.

"No."

He wanted his brother and she wanted to see. Just for a moment. She held her hand out. "Touch me again."

… and the sparkles returned like glitter scattered in front of her. Small bits of skin and hair, too small for what she needed. But there was something…

She followed the glittering trail, and as if it had been hidden, a small wad of something blazed like a bonfire.

"Is there a wall just to our right?" she asked.

"A building and an alley." His voice was tight, but she ignored it. She had other business first.

They'd waited for Tom's brother in the alley. Maybe Jon came to the pay phone here often.

She led Tom to the blaze and bent to pick it up: soft and sticky, gum. Better, she thought, better than she could have hoped. Saliva would make a stronger guide than hair or fingernails could. She released his hand reluctantly.

"What did you find?"

"Molly's gum." She allowed her magic to loosen the last spell and slide back to her, hissing as the power warmed her skin almost to the point of burning. The next spell would be easier, even if it might eventually need more power. Sympathetic magic—which used the connections between like things—was one of those affinities that ran through her father's bloodlines into her.

But before she tried any more magic, she needed to figure out what Tom had done to her spell. How touching him allowed her to see .

She looked unearthly. A violent wind he had not felt, not even when she'd fastened on to his hand with fierce strength, had blown her hair away from her face. The skin on her hands was reddened, as if she held them too close to a fire. He wanted to soothe them—but he firmly intended never to touch her again.

He had no idea what she'd done to him while she held on to him and made his body burn and tremble. He didn't like surprises, and she'd told him that he would have to look, not that she'd use him to see . He especially didn't like it that as long as she was touching him, he hadn't wanted her to let him go.