Sunshine (48 page)

“No,” she said. “If whatever had placed this had come here, I would have known it.”

“Then it—they—someone—something can get into a locked car,” I said, the coldness continuing to climb.
Something
, I thought. No, wait—vampires didn't do fetches. Did they?

“Where do these other items come from?”

“Oh—since I was missing those two days, my mother has taken to buying charms for me. They're supposed to be wards. It occurred to me to ask you if any of them was, um, live.”

“Have you no wards on your car at all?”

“Only standard issue—the axles, the steering wheel.” Every car manufacturer in the world had a ward sign worked into its logo, and every car company in the world stamped the center of its steering wheels with its logo. “I did have the door locks warded by the guy who sold it to me, but I guess it didn't work.” I scowled. Oh well. Dave had never claimed to be a ward specialist: he only promised the Wreck would run. “And the car is fifteen years old—they hadn't invented the alloy yet.” Which enabled car manufacturers to ward almost everything. There was a big difference in used car prices pre-and post-alloy. Some of us, including Mel, Dave, and me, thought that the alloy was the latest vehicular version of those skin creams that
guarantee
no wrinkles, those diet plans that
guarantee
a figure like this year's reigning vidstar in thirty days.

Lately the commercial labs were working on a ward that would dissolve in paint, like salt in water, and make every painted surface warded too. When they got it there would be a huge advertising campaign, but it wouldn't be that useful really. Like salt water. If you needed to melt some triffids it was great, but there hadn't been a triffid outbreak in generations. If you had mouth ulcers or a sore throat you were better off with alum or aspirin. If you had vampires the paint on your car might give them a few friction burns, but it wasn't going to stop them breaking the windscreen and dragging you out.

Your best traveling ward unfortunately was still the motion of traveling itself. I didn't like it that Yolande wasn't saying the usual things about the warding power of motion, not to worry, etc., etc. Well: but we'd just proved there was something to worry about. That fetch sure hadn't been undone by riding around in a car.

Yolande had picked up something that looked a lot like a knitting needle—it even had a tiny hook on the end—and was poking at the mess of crochet. There was one pale blue bead that still had a bit of glimmer to it. “I think some of these were live quite recently,” she said. “I think what they have warded is the usefulness of the fetch, which has worn them out. You don't have any idea when you acquired it, I don't suppose? How long have you been stuffing charms into—?”

“The glove compartment,” I said absently. A fetch was usually roughly the shape of the thing to be fetched—something that was trying to find or fetch a person was often a sort of elongated star shape, with a bead or a crystal or a chip at its center for the heart, and smaller beads or crystals or chips for the head, hands, and feet. I was sure I would have noticed my mother giving me a fetch … and besides, she wasn't that stupid. Eight years with my dad had made her less easy to fool than most ordinary people about anything to do with magic, and she was constitutionally hard to fool about anything anyway.

When had I noticed that the clutter, including eight or a dozen loose charms, in the glove compartment had turned into a matted snarl? I'd opened it—when?—to look at a map. I'd been sitting in the driver's seat. Several things had plopped out onto the floor. I'd heard them rustling around, the way charms will, and, still looking at my map, I'd groped around on the floor for them. I picked up one or two, but I could still hear the rustling. They were creeping across the floor under the passenger seat, humping themselves over the drive shaft, and one or two of them had made it under the driver's seat, which was fast moving for charms. I still hadn't paid a lot of attention. I'd scavenged around under the driver's seat and pulled out anything that squirmed, and shoved the whole lot back into the glove compartment without looking at any of it.

But if there'd been a fetch under the driver's seat, then the wards would have mobbed and then tried to disable it.

That had been a day or two or three after I'd taken that inconclusive ride to No Town with Pat and Jesse.

Watch your back
, Pat had said.

“SOF,” I said in disbelief. No, in what I wished was disbelief. In a belief that made me feel like I'd been dropped down an elevator shaft into icy water. “Someone in SOF did this to me. In
SOF
.” And whoever it was wasn't going to like it at all that it hadn't worked. No genuinely innocent member of the human public should be able to denature a fetch.

“My dear,” said Yolande. “Large organizations are inevitably corrupt. The more powerful the organization, the more dangerous the corruption. When I was young I wanted to belong to one of the big wardcraft corporations—Zammit, or Drusilla, if I proved skillful enough. Several of my master's apprentices went to such places, and he was always gloomy and preoccupied for weeks—months—after he'd ‘lost' one of us. That was always how he'd describe it—that he'd lost Benedict, he'd lost Ancilla. I was lucky; I was a slow learner. By the time I was ready to choose how I would pursue my vocation, I was ready to stay where I was, and go on working with my master. There were only three of us for many years: Chrysogon, Hippolyte, and myself, other than our master, and a few apprentices who came and went.”

Note, I thought, the next time I meet someone with a really strange name, ask them if they're a wardskeeper.

“It is still better that SOF exist than it not exist. One must also earn a living; there is no equivalent in the SOF world for my master's small group of wardskeepers.”

She was right there. The Sentinel Guild are pretty sad and the Vindicators are worse.

“The SOF fellow who came here once: he is your friend.”

“Pat,” I said. “Is he?”

“He is not perfect,” she said. “But nor am I. Nor are you. Nor is your dark companion. But yes, he is your friend. He wishes the defeat of the evil of the dark, as do we all.”

Depends, I thought, on what you mean by the evil of the dark. Or maybe by “we.”

“Pat is not only interested in—in what you can do for SOF. Or for his career.”

“Don't forget my cinnamon rolls, which make strong men weak and strong women run from the bus station in high heels over our cobblestones to get to Charlie's in time. If you know all that, can you tell me who planted the fetch?”

“No, I'm afraid not. I know about Pat because he sat in one place waiting for you for twenty minutes once, and that place happens to lie under the remit of one of my more ambitious wardings, and it went on taking—er—notes as long as he sat there.”

I doubted I could persuade the goddess to come sit quietly under the oak at the end of Yolande's drive for twenty minutes.

“I told you I had spoken to my master about you. I also spoke to Chrysogon. We believe we can create something for you but it would be better, stronger, if—”

“You want blood,” I said, resignedly. Most wardcrafters made do with something like a dirty apron, which I was sure was what my mother had been using. A few of the more determined or well-established ones will ask for hair or fingernail clippings. But there's an
enormous
black market in things like hair and fingernail clippings and the more you're likely to want a charm the less safe you're going to feel passing out bits of yourself. Blood's the worst. Not only is it blood, which is by far the most powerful bit you can hand over for all sorts of purposes, but any concept that contains “magic” and “blood” together makes the majority of the human population think “vampires” and freak out. This is actually totally stupid, since vampires aren't interested in teeny wardcrafter vials of blood, and a vampire that wipes out a wardcrafter's shop isn't going to jones for you because they've had this tiny hit like an ice cream stand flavor-of-the-month sample and cross continents till they've found you and had the rest of you. But the paranoia behind the general principle is valid.

“Yes,” said Yolande.

I'd never met a wardskeeper, though, let alone had one do up a personalized ward for me. And as concepts go, one that contains “Yolande” and “black market” is going to disintegrate on contact. So that should be fine, right? Except I have this thing about blood, and Con's little healing number on me hadn't helped it.

“Um,” I said.

Yolande was smiling. “You may close your eyes,” she said.

“Okay.”

“If you would hold out your hands palm up, and extend both forefingers, and then I am going to prick the center of your forehead.”

The chain round my neck had begun to warm up before I closed my eyes, and I could feel a gentle warmth against both legs as well. Oh, gods, guys, I said to my talismans, isn't this
way
below your dignity? I flinched at the sting in my forehead, but the fingers were easy, even for me.

I touched the warm chain with one hand, and fished in my pocket with the other. “Maybe you can translate something else for me. I found this at the bottom of a crumbly box of old books at a garage sale.”

“Well! How extraordinary. This is a—a Straight Way: very clear and plain. Clean and—old—very untainted for a ward so old. It represents the forces of day, of daylight. The sun itself is at the top, then an animal, then a tree. Interesting—the animal is a deer, I think; usually it is a fierce creature, a lion is the most common. This is not only a deer, it has no antlers, and is therefore perhaps a doe. And then round it, round the edge of the seal, do you see the thin wavy line? That is water. With these things you can resist the forces of darkness, or they cannot defeat you. Of course this is only a ward.”

“The peanut-butter sandwich you throw over your shoulder at the ogre,” I said. “So maybe you'll make it over the fence if he stops to eat it.”

“But this found you. That is important. The forces of day is not a very uncommon ward, but this is simply and exquisitely done and—it found you. Keep it near you and keep it safe. My heart lifts that this thing found you. It is good news.”

Don't tell me how much I need some good news, I thought. “When do you think your, um, ward will be ready?”

“Soon. Please—please ask your dark ally to wait till it is ready. It will not be more than a day or two.”

Back to the bad news. Yolande and her wardskeeper friends thought Con and I were going to face Bo that soon. Well, I suppose I thought so too.

L
ATER
. U
PSTAIRS
. T
HE
balcony door open; candles burning; I sat cross-legged, hands on knees. I wasn't going anywhere. I just wanted a word.

How soon
.

Not tonight. Not.… next night. Then
…

No sooner. Yolande
…
ward
… me

It was going to take a lot of work before this alignment business replaced the telephone. But I wouldn't be around to see it, since it looked like I had two days to live.

And I'd been complaining about waiting.

S
O, WHAT DO
you do when you know you have two days to live? Wait a minute, haven't I been here before? No. I was only pretending, last time. I hadn't known that I was sure Con would save me, last time, till this time, when I knew he wouldn't. But I had been here before: I was still finding out I had more stuff to lose by losing it. And I already knew I thought this was a triple carthaginian hell of a system.

So, where was I? Right. What you do when you know you have two days to live. Not a lot different than if you didn't know. Six months you could do something with. Two days? Hmph. Eat an
entire
Bitter Chocolate Death all by yourself. (Actually I bombed on this. Mel had to eat the last slab. A pan of Bitter Chocolate Death isn't very large, but it is
intense.)
Reread your favorite novel, the one you only let yourself read any more when you're sick in bed. I might have enjoyed this more, since I'm never sick, if death didn't seem like a very bad trade-off. Buy eight dozen roses from the best florist in town—the super expensive ones, the ones that smell like roses rather than merely looking like them—and put them all over your apartment. I bought five dozen red and three dozen white. I have one vase and one iced tea pitcher, which has regularly spent more of its time holding cut flowers than iced tea. After I used these, and the two twinkly-gold-flecked tumblers and two cheap champagne flutes plus the best of my limited and motley collection of water and wine glasses, I emptied out my shampoo bottle—which was tall and rather a nice shape, even if it was plastic—into a jam jar, and put a few in it. I cut most of the rest of them off at the base of the flower and floated them in whatever else I had that would hold water, including the bathtub. I decided this had been one of my better ideas. The last three—two red, one white—I tied together and hung upside down from the rearview mirror of the Wreck. Better than fuzzy dice.

Take a good long look at everyone you love—everyone local; you've only got two days. And don't tell anybody. You don't need to be surrounded by a lot of depressed people; you're already depressed enough for everybody.

Of course in my case I couldn't tell anybody because either they wouldn't believe me or they'd try to stop me.

I thought about being rude to Mr. Cagney. It was something I had been longing to do for years, and I somehow managed to be behind the counter on the second morning when he needed someone to complain to. But I looked at his scrunched-up, petulant face and decided, rather regretfully, that I had better things to do with my last morning on earth. So I said “mm-hmm” a few times, refilled his coffee cup (which he changed tack to tell me was cold: okay, I'm not Mary, but it was
not
cold) and left him to Charlie, who didn't know it was my last morning on earth, and was hastening over from cranking down the awning to stop me from being rude.