Dextra rolled over and slapped the alarm clock just as the first strident beep sounded.
In the renewed quiet, she yawned. With both hands hooked under the headboard and her feet planted firmly farther down the bed, she stretched, then let herself relax, eyes closed. What did she have to do today?
She could see the schedule open on her desk clearly: a normal day at her store, with one palm reading booked for late morning and two for the afternoon, although walk-ins were always possible. She needed to finalize the order for the sarongs and scarves and similar textiles, and start putting together a new one for tumbled gemstones, loose and drilled as beads and already in jewellery, and there should be a shipment coming in today of assorted small figurines and the like. Nicole was scheduled to be on through the bulk of the day, which was good—she was just a bit better than Brooke about efficiently multitasking, although not quite as good at superlative customer service, and neither was as good as Michelle at math and efffective visual layouts for displays.
It was always a balance, finding staff, and she was content just to have a trio who were all at least marginally above average in all skills. She made sure they felt appreciated. She avoided forming personal bonds with her staff, but she valued both skill and stability, and that was worth paying a bit more, a few perks and bonuses, and being a little more flexible and approachable.
She sat up, laced her fingers together and stretched again, then crossed her legs and arranged herself comfortably. A few minutes to meditate always helped her get off to a good start on a busy day, and most of her days were busy. She preferred that.
The ring of the phone in the living room broke the peace, slashing across the early birdsong outside.
Dextra did her best to ignore it and continue her meditation, but it persisted.
Finally, irritably, she got up and stalked out of her bedroom to answer it. “Yes?” She couldn’t quite keep the growl out of her voice. If this was one of Cordell’s business crises, so help her...
“Oh, good, you’re up! I mean, I didn’t wake you, did I?”
Dextra stifled a yawn, but didn’t bother stopping herself from rolling her eyes. “What’s so urgent, Garrett?”
“Something happened last night that absolutely should not have been able to happen.”
“We’re both witches. That is not exactly earth-shaking news.”
“Something broke one of my bindings.”
“Even for you, they must go wrong occasionally.”
“No, a binding can fail if it’s up against sufficient resistance or it isn’t appropriate for the subject or for a few less-common reasons. A properly-laid and established binding does not simply fail, no matter how recalcitrant or intransigent the liminal, without some form of outside interference.”
“And?” Garrett was good, no question—he was the hands-down acknowledged expert in summoning and binding liminals within the Fellowship in this part of the world. He was also not particularly tactful or modest, so there were individuals who would quite enjoy finding ways to annoy him. She could think of several who probably could and would, with a bit of effort, snap a low-level binding just for that reason alone. Technically it broke the rules, but then, technically she’d been awake when he called. It was fuzzy ground not worth contesting.
“It took me fully two weeks to prepare for that summoning and binding, and an extraordinary amount of planning and effort, to say nothing of materials and other expenses! I want to know who it was!” Now he was the one growling.
“Two weeks? Was this the troll?” He’d paid her to track down the nearest, to give him the advantage of a general location—that worked better than searching blindly, for the more powerful liminals. And trolls were, by any scale, powerful.
“Yes, it was the damned troll! Do you think I’d care about some stupid little domestic liminal? Someone attacked the binding last night and completely shattered it. My head has been pounding since it woke me up at something like two in the morning, and the backlash from it was so violent that I’m effectively powerless at the moment! They stole my troll and assaulted me. I want to know who the hell it was so I can report them to the Council. This goes enormously beyond a trivial prank. And while you’re at it, I’d like to know where that troll went, so I can redo that summoning and binding. I had plans for it.”
Dextra sighed and nodded, although he couldn’t see it. Even allowing for a certain amount of exaggeration due to heightened emotion, it sounded frustrating and unpleasant. “I’m supposed to be at the store to open this morning, and I won’t have time until this evening to start. Once I can do some preliminary investigation, I’ll be able to give you some idea of whether this one will be complicated or not and what it’s going to cost.” She braced the phone handset between her jaw and her shoulder, then flattened her hands together, palm to palm.
When she drew them apart, the space between was filled with coloured threads that ran from side to side. Garrett’s, grey and royal blue and a muted plum, was familiar to her. Many other threads ran close to his—he was a real estate agent, so that was a given. Witch threads glowed more brightly, though, and there were fewer of those. A fuschia and aqua and white one, which she identified as belonging to Asima Hadar, one of the five witches on the local Council; quite possibly she was looking for a house, but it might be a more personal connection, given how long the two threads ran in parallel yesterday. There was only one thread within the past day that belonged to a witch and was unfamiliar to her; it was deep amber gold and warm reddish-brown and oak green. Quite likely, that was the witch responsible.
“Whatever it is, I’ll pay it, and get the Council to take it out of their hide once we know who it was.”
It might run a bit steep, depending on what kind of defences this witch had, among other factors, but Garrett was good for it, she knew. He did have good reason, as well, to believe that the Council would demand that the perpetrator pay as part of the penalty.
Unless it was an independent... that wasn’t impossible, but as far as she knew, it was unlikely. There were no strong summoners among the huge and sprawling Lyndell family or the handful of smaller independent families in this part of the world—for the most part, they had low-level gifts or leaned heavily towards harmless and easily-obfuscated skills, which was why the Fellowship didn’t waste time or effort on trying to convince them to join. She knew of only a single independent family that included summoning prominently among their repertoire, and there had been no trouble from the Terevans within recent memory.
Wasn’t there something about the Terevans that had changed lately? She could check with Cordell. He’d know, and he owed her multiple favours.
“I’ll get you answers as soon as I can, Garrett. Meanwhile, just do the usual. Eat well, rest, and try to keep your stress level low and your mind on something else.”
“I know all that. The one thing that will reduce my stress is knowing who is responsible and laying a formal complaint against that person.”
“I’ll see if I can get anything at all before I head to the store. Talk to you soon.”
* * *
“You’ve reached the home number of Garrett Pascalle. Leave a message after the beep. If it’s urgent, buzz my pager at...”
Dextra waited impatiently through the message.
“It’s Dextra. I’m afraid I have bad news for you and no good news to lighten it. It wasn’t a Fellowship witch that interfered with your binding. It was Seth Terevan’s grandson, who is currently on his own and doing whatever he wants because his parents and grandfather left the continent for an indefinite stay with his mother’s family in Scotland.” She was actually just as happy to be leaving this as a message: she could perhaps have called it a long-standing rivalry between Garrett and Seth, were it not for Seth being oblivious to Garrett’s resentment. In fact, she wasn’t sure Seth was even all that aware of Garrett’s existence, beyond occasional clashes over liminals.
“Unfortunately, there’s no one to claim expenses and damages from. As for the troll... it’s gone. Not dead, though. My guess is that it switched planes. As I understand it, trolls prefer this plane, but I suspect that either it’s still elsewhere, or is back but still in rapid motion, or it came out far enough away that I can’t use previous markers to locate it. Or some combination, of course. I’m really sorry. The same is true for the rest of that family, and I can’t see any more trolls within summoning range. It didn’t really take me all that long to figure any of this out, so I’m going to just call it a freebie for a regular customer. You originally gave me a list of half a dozen kinds of liminals, and we got lucky with the troll. If you’d like me to start searching for the others on the list again, let me know. I wish I had better results for you. Look after yourself. Bye.”
Dextra rolled over and slapped the alarm clock just as the first strident beep sounded.
In the renewed quiet, she yawned. With both hands hooked under the headboard and her feet planted firmly farther down the bed, she stretched, then let herself relax, eyes closed. What did she have to do today?
She could see the schedule open on her desk clearly: a normal day at her store, with one palm reading booked for late morning and two for the afternoon, although walk-ins were always possible. She needed to finalize the order for the sarongs and scarves and similar textiles, and start putting together a new one for tumbled gemstones, loose and drilled as beads and already in jewellery, and there should be a shipment coming in today of assorted small figurines and the like. Nicole was scheduled to be on through the bulk of the day, which was good—she was just a bit better than Brooke about efficiently multitasking, although not quite as good at superlative customer service, and neither was as good as Michelle at math and efffective visual layouts for displays.
It was always a balance, finding staff, and she was content just to have a trio who were all at least marginally above average in all skills. She made sure they felt appreciated. She avoided forming personal bonds with her staff, but she valued both skill and stability, and that was worth paying a bit more, a few perks and bonuses, and being a little more flexible and approachable.
She sat up, laced her fingers together and stretched again, then crossed her legs and arranged herself comfortably. A few minutes to meditate always helped her get off to a good start on a busy day, and most of her days were busy. She preferred that.
The ring of the phone in the living room broke the peace, slashing across the early birdsong outside.
Dextra did her best to ignore it and continue her meditation, but it persisted.
Finally, irritably, she got up and stalked out of her bedroom to answer it. “Yes?” She couldn’t quite keep the growl out of her voice. If this was one of Cordell’s business crises, so help her...
“Oh, good, you’re up! I mean, I didn’t wake you, did I?”
Dextra stifled a yawn, but didn’t bother stopping herself from rolling her eyes. “What’s so urgent, Garrett?”
“Something happened last night that absolutely should not have been able to happen.”
“We’re both witches. That is not exactly earth-shaking news.”
“Something broke one of my bindings.”
“Even for you, they must go wrong occasionally.”
“No, a binding can fail if it’s up against sufficient resistance or it isn’t appropriate for the subject or for a few less-common reasons. A properly-laid and established binding does not simply fail, no matter how recalcitrant or intransigent the liminal, without some form of outside interference.”
“And?” Garrett was good, no question—he was the hands-down acknowledged expert in summoning and binding liminals within the Fellowship in this part of the world. He was also not particularly tactful or modest, so there were individuals who would quite enjoy finding ways to annoy him. She could think of several who probably could and would, with a bit of effort, snap a low-level binding just for that reason alone. Technically it broke the rules, but then, technically she’d been awake when he called. It was fuzzy ground not worth contesting.
“It took me fully two weeks to prepare for that summoning and binding, and an extraordinary amount of planning and effort, to say nothing of materials and other expenses! I want to know who it was!” Now he was the one growling.
“Two weeks? Was this the troll?” He’d paid her to track down the nearest, to give him the advantage of a general location—that worked better than searching blindly, for the more powerful liminals. And trolls were, by any scale, powerful.
“Yes, it was the damned troll! Do you think I’d care about some stupid little domestic liminal? Someone attacked the binding last night and completely shattered it. My head has been pounding since it woke me up at something like two in the morning, and the backlash from it was so violent that I’m effectively powerless at the moment! They stole my troll and assaulted me. I want to know who the hell it was so I can report them to the Council. This goes enormously beyond a trivial prank. And while you’re at it, I’d like to know where that troll went, so I can redo that summoning and binding. I had plans for it.”
Dextra sighed and nodded, although he couldn’t see it. Even allowing for a certain amount of exaggeration due to heightened emotion, it sounded frustrating and unpleasant. “I’m supposed to be at the store to open this morning, and I won’t have time until this evening to start. Once I can do some preliminary investigation, I’ll be able to give you some idea of whether this one will be complicated or not and what it’s going to cost.” She braced the phone handset between her jaw and her shoulder, then flattened her hands together, palm to palm.
When she drew them apart, the space between was filled with coloured threads that ran from side to side. Garrett’s, grey and royal blue and a muted plum, was familiar to her. Many other threads ran close to his—he was a real estate agent, so that was a given. Witch threads glowed more brightly, though, and there were fewer of those. A fuschia and aqua and white one, which she identified as belonging to Asima Hadar, one of the five witches on the local Council; quite possibly she was looking for a house, but it might be a more personal connection, given how long the two threads ran in parallel yesterday. There was only one thread within the past day that belonged to a witch and was unfamiliar to her; it was deep amber gold and warm reddish-brown and oak green. Quite likely, that was the witch responsible.
“Whatever it is, I’ll pay it, and get the Council to take it out of their hide once we know who it was.”
It might run a bit steep, depending on what kind of defences this witch had, among other factors, but Garrett was good for it, she knew. He did have good reason, as well, to believe that the Council would demand that the perpetrator pay as part of the penalty.
Unless it was an independent... that wasn’t impossible, but as far as she knew, it was unlikely. There were no strong summoners among the huge and sprawling Lyndell family or the handful of smaller independent families in this part of the world—for the most part, they had low-level gifts or leaned heavily towards harmless and easily-obfuscated skills, which was why the Fellowship didn’t waste time or effort on trying to convince them to join. She knew of only a single independent family that included summoning prominently among their repertoire, and there had been no trouble from the Terevans within recent memory.
Wasn’t there something about the Terevans that had changed lately? She could check with Cordell. He’d know, and he owed her multiple favours.
“I’ll get you answers as soon as I can, Garrett. Meanwhile, just do the usual. Eat well, rest, and try to keep your stress level low and your mind on something else.”
“I know all that. The one thing that will reduce my stress is knowing who is responsible and laying a formal complaint against that person.”
“I’ll see if I can get anything at all before I head to the store. Talk to you soon.”
* * *
“You’ve reached the home number of Garrett Pascalle. Leave a message after the beep. If it’s urgent, buzz my pager at...”
Dextra waited impatiently through the message.
“It’s Dextra. I’m afraid I have bad news for you and no good news to lighten it. It wasn’t a Fellowship witch that interfered with your binding. It was Seth Terevan’s grandson, who is currently on his own and doing whatever he wants because his parents and grandfather left the continent for an indefinite stay with his mother’s family in Scotland.” She was actually just as happy to be leaving this as a message: she could perhaps have called it a long-standing rivalry between Garrett and Seth, were it not for Seth being oblivious to Garrett’s resentment. In fact, she wasn’t sure Seth was even all that aware of Garrett’s existence, beyond occasional clashes over liminals.
“Unfortunately, there’s no one to claim expenses and damages from. As for the troll... it’s gone. Not dead, though. My guess is that it switched planes. As I understand it, trolls prefer this plane, but I suspect that either it’s still elsewhere, or is back but still in rapid motion, or it came out far enough away that I can’t use previous markers to locate it. Or some combination, of course. I’m really sorry. The same is true for the rest of that family, and I can’t see any more trolls within summoning range. It didn’t really take me all that long to figure any of this out, so I’m going to just call it a freebie for a regular customer. You originally gave me a list of half a dozen kinds of liminals, and we got lucky with the troll. If you’d like me to start searching for the others on the list again, let me know. I wish I had better results for you. Look after yourself. Bye.”
