Eileen Wilks: Originally Human

Erin was staring at him. "If you had a fever, there wouldn't be anything mysterious about it. Not with those wounds. What—"

"Shh! Michael, until our visitor leaves, speak Gaelic." I jerked the door open and sang out a cheery, "Good morning!" to the stranger on my stoop.

He was alone, so he wasn't from the Mormons. Probably not a salesman, either, not in that suit—gray wool, not top-of-the-line but not shabby, either. Either a Baptist or a business clone, I concluded. Probably the latter. Houston was only forty-five minutes away, and the dress-for-successers there wore suits in spite of our subtropical weather. This was not a testament to endurance; they simply never experienced more than a nibble of it, moving as they did between air-conditioned house, air-conditioned car, and tall, chilly office building.

Or maybe they were icing down the parking garages now, too. "Such nice weather we're having," I told him.

"Lovely," he agreed politely. He was about thirty, with seriously thick lenses on his gold-rimmed glasses. "I need to speak with you a few minutes, ma'am."

"This isn't a good time. Have they started air-conditioning the parking garages yet?"

"Uh… not to my knowledge. Perhaps I should introduce myself." He reached into a breast pocket, then held out a leather case. "Agent Rawlins. FBI."

Going back to bed was sounding better all the time. "A real FBI agent," I said weakly. "How exciting. Are you looking for kidnappers? Terrorists? The Mob?"

"Not today. May I come in?"

"Oh, dear. I don't think my nephew is contagious anymore…"

"Pete?" Erin said from behind me. "Is that you?"

The professionally stern face startled. "Lady? I mean—Erin?"

" Ná hinis faic dhó ," said the naked man on my couch.

I sighed and stood aside. "Never mind, Michael. Either someone here has some very odd karma, or God is feeling playful. It seems Agent Rawlins is in Erin's coven."

"THANK you, ma'am." Pete took the mug of coffee I held out. He was sitting on one of the bench seats at my dinette, looking uncomfortable. "Lady—Erin—I need to know why you're here."

"So do I," she said, accepting her mug from me.

He blinked.

"You performed a truth spell on Michael," I told her, settling cross-legged beside Michael on the couch—which put me next to Pete as well, since my couch butts up against the dinette on one side. My quarters are small. "He has amnesia, too, but rather more thoroughly than you."

"You learned I was telling the truth about that," Michael said.

I nodded. "And then you took the spell deeper, trying to unearth those buried memories. But something went wrong. He broke the circle—"

"I was trying to stop the—the—I can't find the word," he said, frustrated. "It slapped Erin away and she passed out. It's supposed to protect me, keep me from being read without permission."

Erin's brows drew down. "I had your permission."

"You remember!" I cried.

"Some of it," she said grudgingly, and sighed. "Most of it, I suppose. I'm pretty sure he's not evil, not inherently. But he's barricaded like crazy. I never saw such shields." She sipped from her mug. "Molly, you make the best coffee. The fumes alone are curing my headache."

"I helped." Michael was pleased.

Pete was lost. "Who are you?"

"Michael."

"Last name?"

"Not yet." He looked at me inquiringly. "Do you wish to gift me with one?"

"We'll worry about that later. Pete—"

"I'm here as Agent Rawlins."

"Don't be stuffy," Erin told him. "We have a situation here. We could use some help. Probably it would be best if you started by telling us why you're here."

Pete frowned at his coffee. "I can't tell you that."

"You're putting him in a difficult position, Erin," I said. "He owes you truth and all reasonable assistance, but he has a duty to the FBI, too. Pete, perhaps you could ask me whatever you came to ask, and I'll be a difficult witness or informant or whatever and insist on knowing more before I answer. Then we can trade information. Will that work?"

He started laughing. It transformed his face, waking a spark of interest in me. I hadn't supped, as Michael put it, in a couple days. Not long enough to be a problem normally, but my appetite had been roused by Michael's presence. And Pete was really quite attractive when he forgot to wear his official face…

Erin poked me in the ribs.

Pete shook his head, still smiling. "I've fallen down the rabbit hole, haven't I? Okay, we'll give it a try, though I can't promise to tell you everything."

"That's all right." I leaned towards him and patted his hand. "I doubt we'll tell you everything, either."

PETE was quite forthcoming about himself. He'd been bom into a Wiccan family, but had inherited only a modest Gift—little more, he said, than many people unknowingly possessed. But that little had been well-trained, which made him valuable to the FBI. All of which Erin already knew, so his frankness didn't earn him any return information.

He was much vaguer about his reason for knocking on my door. He was speaking to everyone at the Village, he said, because of a report of possible sorcerous activity. He glanced at Erin when he said that, troubled.

"For goodness sakes, Erin didn't do it," I said. "As you ought to know. Not that there has there been any sorcery—at least, a node was involved, which I suppose is what you mean. But that isn't sorcery in and of itself. The current legal definition is absurdly broad."

"How is sorcery defined?" Michael asked curiously.

Pete cleared his throat. "Sorcery is magic that is sourced outside the performer."

I grimaced. "An accountant's way of seeing the world. Follow the funding, ignore everything else." Technically, the law would consider me a sorcerer—if it admitted I existed, which it doesn't. Which is ridiculous. My abilities and disabilities are innate, not learned.

"There was a time when all forms of magic were illegal," Erin said dryly. "As certain of my relatives could have testified, had they survived the flames. It's hard to argue against outlawing sorcery, though."

"All of it?" Michael was startled. "You mean that all forms of sorcery are illegal here?"

"Sorcery is black magic," Pete said firmly. "The blackest."

Michael looked confused. Apparently the bits of knowledge he could remember about our world didn't include much in the way of history.

"Most people associate sorcery strictly with death magic," I explained. "Which, of course, some sorcerers have practiced, especially since the Codex Arcanum was lost during the Purge, preventing them from—"

"Lost?" He sat bolt upright. "The Codex?"

Pete's eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Schoolchildren learn about the Purge in the third grade."

Michael didn't answer. His face was blank, his attention turned inward like one who has been dealt a great shock.

"He isn't from here," I told our FBI agent, and went on to explain, sorting out what needed to be shared, what kept close, as I went. For example, I didn't mention my nature. That was none of his business—and I doubt he would have believed me, not without proof. According to the best authorities, I'm not possible. Nor did I tell him about the snippets Erin had unearthed before she passed out. Which left Pete with the story of a man who appeared out of nowhere, naked, amnesiac, and wounded. A man not from our world.

He didn't buy it. He saw the wounds, so he accepted that part. He also accepted that Michael wasn't lying, because Erin had tested him. But he considered most of our account a mixture of conjecture, confusion, and delusion.

Michael was less offended by this than I. "Delusion is a reasonable explanation, from your point of view. You are interested in facts, not subjective analyses of the situation."