Chapter Forty-Nine • Perks • Damien
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The digs in the VIP lounge are nice. I’d be stoked as hell if I wasn’t, you know, fearing for the life of the woman I love. It’s bizarrely empty, though.
The warm mahoganies and golds of the space feel a little odd paired with the smell of faux leather and furniture polish.
There are a set of tables that look like they might usually have a line of buffet-style dishes set up on them, when it’s not the middle of the night, and there are refrigerated vending machines that don’t actually require money to get a drink from.
A twenty-four-hour news station mumbles inanely on the large flatscreen, mounted high enough off the ground that no one can fuss with the controls and change it to a sportscast or a political thriller or something.
Normally, this would be the perfect place to have a seat on a massaging recliner, and crack open a ThinkPad for some good-ole-fashioned emailing on unsecure, free Wi-Fi while en route to one’s next hostile takeover.
There are even frosted windows to protect the wealthy from the prying eyes of all the peasants and plebeians outside.
But now? It’s about to become a summoning circle.
“We have to clear enough room for Aemon to actually take up the space and make a proper circle in the center,” Fletcher instructs us. “And we’ll need some items to represent the five elements.”
“Like what?” I ask.
There’s a clunking sound from the vending machine while Satoshi gets himself a bottle of water. Wren beams.
“Great idea!” she says, snatching it out of his hand. “We’ve got water.”
“I was going to... you know what? Never mind,” he grumbles sheepishly.
“We’ll need a flame of some kind,” Fletcher says. “Then something for earth and air and spirit.”
“Fire? In an airport?” Roxie asks. “I’m sorry, could we avoid being put on the no-fly list maybe?”
“We’re about to make a summoning circle in a VIP lounge, and you’re worried about homeland security?” Oren asks dryly.
“Frankly, yes. I’m not taking a boat every time I need to leave the country,” they gripe.
Oren produces his matte black zippo locket from his pocket and hands it to Fletcher. “Remember how to use it?” He asks the fae. Fletcher flushes beneath his freckles and nods. I have no idea what the fuck that’s about. But I chalk it up to not being my business.
“Alright, fire and water accounted for,” Fletcher says. “Earth, spirit and air, then.”
“How the fuck do you represent air?” Satoshi asks.
“You’re always blowing hot air up your own ass, maybe you rip one and that will work,” I say.
“Ew,” Roxie and Wren say at the same time.
“Wait, I know,” Fletcher says suddenly, rising up to his feet and going to his carry-on bag. He riffles around in it for a moment before producing a... a fucking arrow? And no, I don’t mean an arrowhead. An entire-ass arrow.
“What the fuck? How did you get that through TSA?” Satoshi balks.
“Glamour magic,” he says simply, undoing the feather from the tail of the arrow. He holds up a single feather and grins. “Air.”
“Do you... Are you an archer?” Oren asks, baffled.
“Where do you think I came up with the name ‘Fletcher’?” he asks, rolling his eyes.
Oren nods, looking equal parts unnerved and impressed.
Roxie plucks a carnation out of one of the plastic vases on the table, rubbing their thumb across it. “Hey, this flower is real. Would that work for earth?”
“Perfect,” Fletcher says, grinning. “Then that just leaves the most difficult one. Spirit.”
“Yeah, please explain that one to the class,” I say.
“Well, normally, you’d want to have something that corresponds with the person who is summoning the familiar. But obviously Lillith isn’t here, and Aemon is her familiar. I don’t suppose you have formed a bond with the guy have you, Dame?” Fletcher asks me.
“Uhhh, no,” I say. “Can’t say I’ve wanted to spend any time with the asshat who was supposed to marry my girlfriend and kept her confined to her own home for the last three months.”
“Thought so,” Fletcher says with a sigh.
“Uh, well—I have,” Wren says sheepishly.
“Have you? It must be a real bond. Not some flimsy acquaintanceship?” Fletcher asks.
Satoshi frowns at her and Wren meets his lingering, disapproving look with a challenging one.
“What?” Wren asks. “Spit it out.”
His lips work a moment, like he really does want to say something. Instead, he pouts, slipping his hands into his pockets and crossing the room to sit in one of the massage chairs. “Not my business,” he says, turning the thing on.
Her gaze lingers on him for a while until she shakes off the frustration. “We’ve been getting to know each other,” she finally tells Fletcher. “I think I can act as a taglock for him.”
Fletcher nods and sighs. “Good,” he says. “Now I just need something to draw the circle with.”
Roxie reaches into the phanny pack they always have on when we’re traveling together. They produce a tube of lipstick from its depths, blue and sparkly. “Would this work?” they ask, offering it to Fletcher.
Fletcher chuckles, accepting it. “This is the strangest summoning rite I’ve ever performed, that’s for certain,” he says. “But aye. It should work.”
After that, like most magic, the process is shockingly simple.
Fletcher draws a circle that’s about six feet across, give or take a few inches.
Inside the circle, he draws a series of lines and symbols that don’t mean much to me.
I think I recognize a few letters of Faelish from when Lillith and I hung out in The Buried City, but it’s hard to know for sure.
In the end, it looks sort of like an art nouveau star within the confines of the circle.
Fletcher and Wren work together to place the four elements at the proper points of the star, and when they’re done, Fletcher nods toward the tip of the star. “You feeling well enough to sit there and help bring him through?”
Wren nods. “Sure,” she says. “I got enough rest to replenish a bit, I think.”
She sits in the specified spot and Fletcher kneels directly across from her so that they’re facing each other.
He claps his hands before shaking them out a bit.
He tucks his lips between his teeth—a habit I’ve seen from him when he’s feeling anxious or unsure.
Hesitation straightens the lines of his body and makes his movements awkward as he places his hands on the blue, sparkly circle.
“You alright Fletch?” I ask.
He forces a quick smile and nods without looking at me. “Just haven’t done any magic in a while,” he says. He tilts his head as he checks in with Wren—a silent question.
She gives him a firm nod, answering it just as silently.
The air in the lounge takes on a sort of ozonic quality as we clear the area, each of us feeling subconsciously that we should be far out of the way.
The hair on my arms sticks up on end, not because I feel a chill, but because static electricity in the room is building.
A few sparks flash over the space of the circle.
I wince as my ears pop, a dull ache building that feels like it might rupture my eardrums that Wren barely managed to heal.
The lights in the room flicker, fluorescent bulbs popping and adding the acrid stench of ballast to the aquatic tang of the ozone in the air.
It’s strange: even with no magic in my body, I can feel the overwhelming build of energy in the room—a feeling of impending action, a foregone conclusion about to come to fruition.
A loud clap sounds, as violent as thunder rolling right overhead during an electrical storm.
Everyone in the room flinches, except for Fletcher and Wren, who have their eyes closed now.
Glass from the remaining fluorescent bulbs falls like a bridal veil over the now-dark room.
I smell sulfur and spent matches as a cloud of black smoke parts, revealing a very unimpressed looking Aemon, wearing... well... pajamas.
At least, I think that’s what they are. They’re a blood-colored satin set with black detailing and buttons.
He looks all around at us before lifting an eyebrow at Fletcher, now that his freaky magic disguise is gone.
“Alright,” he says with a put-upon sigh. “What the fuck?”