Song of the Day | Palo Alto by Jack River| Spotify | YouTube
They ended up driving across San Francisco, north and east from where they were, up through the city proper, and over the Oakland Bay bridge. Soda stared out the window as they sailed past iconic hills tessellated with glorious pastel terrace houses, taquerias (shutters rolled down tightly), and the infamous tech district downtown, glass towers rising out of fresh concrete, growing across the older parts like a fungus.
As they drove across the Bay bridge, Soda thought she spotted something in the water. Strange shapes surged in the grey-black depths… and was that a… tentacle whipping towards the surface? She gulped, but it slid away, surely the size of a tall building, its many limbs fluid and muscular. She made to take a picture of it, then remembered her phone was off because she was apparently in a spy movie.
She decided that if the kraken wasn’t bothered about her, she wouldn’t be bothered about it.
“Hey so, how come all the mythical beasts and whatnot just stay in their realms and aren’t here like, all the time? Were they ever?”
“Ah! History!" Red's fuzzy face lit up.
“Oh Seven Hells Soda, now you’ve got him started." Rowan rolled her eyes.
“Shut up."
He planted his paws on the windowsill of the back seat, looking out. If Soda didn’t look back, she could almost imagine a man back there. Almost. She wondered what he looked like. Big and red-headed, probably.
“Right so, there’s always been all the different realms, or at least, there’s some creation story that sets them all up, you can pick your favourite. And in the early days, there was a fair bit of free passage back and forth. Humans aren’t naturally magical creatures, like say, unicorns or dragons–”
“Oh my god are dragons real?”
“Yes. You also shut up. I’ll lose my place and have to start again.”
“Right, sorry.”
“Alright so humans aren’t naturally magical, and so they’re pretty low in the pecking order, prone to worshipping powerful bein's and having their children eaten and such. You usually have to be shown how to be magical, it’s pretty rare for humans to figure it out on their own, though they do occasionally of course, in an explosive, accidental kind of way. No, the thing that makes us special is technology. We use tools to make our brains bigger, and we’re really good at that. Better than creatures who can call on magic to solve problems easily. So we advance rapidly, and magical creatures don’t. No need to advance rapidly when you live for a long time, and you can magic whatever you need."
"I guess that does make sense when I think about it."
"Right. Then, there’s an inflection point in what regular historians call the Dark Ages, lots of magical wars. Pretty exhausting for everybody, and bad for the cosmic balance, throwing around all that magic. The more unpleasant realms start… leaking.” He paused. “Blimey, was that a kraken? You ever encountered one of those, Rowan?”
“No, not much for seafaring,” said Rowan, apparently unbothered by the idea of a huge monster from the fathomless depths. “Is it rising?”
“No, looks like it’s headed south. Anyhow, then there’s a big consortium of the world’s most powerful magical people, and they agree to a contract to be better behaved and to stop trying to destroy everything. Of course, nobody really trusts anybody else, so they perform a big piece of world-altering group magic to seal the deal. The inter-realm gateways are firmed up, everyone agrees to some terms, et cetera. We call it the Covenant. But it’s not just a contract on paper. It’s written into the fabric of our reality now. Rules that prevent us from doing really big magic, exactly the kind that it took to make the Covenant in the first place. The last piece of Greater Magic. It’s not perfect, but nobody’s succeeded in causing this kind of chaos until now.”
“Wow, that’s a big deal!” said Soda. “And then came the Enclave?”
“That’s right!”
“I think I remember you saying that Outsider people aren’t protected by the Covenant though. What’s stopping us from just going on a rampage?”
“Yeah, good catch. There’s a magical element to the Covenant, which is only really about world-endin' kind of stuff, and forced secrecy to protect magical communities and regular humans from each other. Then separately there’s a bunch of boring regular laws which are always changing and only really serve to further the interests of those in power, the usual lawmaking stuff. The Covenant is unbreakable, but Enclave laws are just as fallible as regular ones. It all gets called the Covenant still. Words have their own power."
“Not so unbreakable, apparently,” interjected Rowan in a troubled voice. “Evangeline has had fifty years alone with the Book, who knows what she’s capable of now?”
“And what are you capable of now? What did you do to yourself, eh? I know you’re different. Are you even the same Rowan?” Red's fur was standing on end again.
That strange tension fizzed in the car. Soda realised she must be feeling really powerful magic. Nobody else crackled like Rowan. Not even Lune or Dawn, who by all accounts were very strong, very old magical creatures.
After a loaded moment she said: “I am not the same Rowan.”
There was a sadness there that Soda didn't understand. She thought there’d be another fight, but Rowan seemed a bit deflated. The fizzing died down.
“We’ve arrived.”
Rowan pulled into a street park in front of a shopfront that turned out to be a seedy-looking pawn shop. It was as closed as everything else, its roller door shut tight. Rowan headed around to the side of the building and found the back door in the alley. It was locked with both a barred screen door and a heavy-looking wooden one. She rapped a few times on the frame.
After a few moments, approaching footsteps echoed on a concrete floor. A pair of heavily made-up eyes appeared at the viewing hatch. They heard the sound of many locks and latches being undone, finishing with a little plum-coloured flourish of magic that poofed lightly around the door's edges.
Behind the door was a much younger woman than Soda expected, more around her age. She was short and big-hipped, with a face full of piercings, wearing a big black Megadeth t-shirt with a belt over the top, black gypsy style skirt, and scruffy high-heeled Doc Martens. She had such a sweet pink-cheeked face, the effect made her rather like a goth hamster. She didn’t say anything, just stared at Rowan and stood back so they could all come in. She shut the doors behind them, and started locking them up again. Her hands were clearly trembling and she kept slipping and fumbling. Finally, red-faced, she said:
“Um, can you please just… go out front for a sec?”
Soda, Rowan and Big Red filed through the narrow storeroom and into the shop. It was dim with the roller door down. A few dirty lamps had been turned on. It was exactly like every other pawn shop Soda had been into, which admittedly wasn’t too many. Glass cabinets full of dusty electronics, old electric keyboards upright in rows below guitars hanging on the walls, and a seemingly endless amount of worthless old bric-a-brac. She was reminded of Frank.
Speaking of Frank's place: a sudden thought struck her. She blinked furiously and rubbed her eyes. It was kind of like trying to do one of those magic-eye puzzles from when she was a kid. If she just… looked at it a certain way…
All the strange things started resolving themselves. A bucket full of old walking sticks and umbrellas became swords in scabbards. The piles of books, CDs and DVDs on some shelves became arcane leather tomes with weathered pages. Under the glass counter, instead of a range of Parker pens, were wands of various lengths and shapes, some with gemstones, some plain and natural-looking. Soda opened her mouth to ask the others about it, then closed it again as the young woman joined them at last.
“Well, that was a pretty embarrassing introduction." She laughed a pink-faced, jolly laugh.
Soda found herself laughing too, mostly to ease the tension, and then the others joined in.
“Uh so, my name is Penny and this is my shop. Dawn said you guys need some help?”
Now that she was behind the counter, a sort of customer service efficiency came over her.
“A pleasure, Penny. Thank you for helping us. I’m Rowan and these are my associates. Soda Jones and Lying Scum.”
“Oh sure that’s real nice that is, and I presume you’re Saint Jerome, never uttered an untruth in your life!” Red’s tail puffed up.
“I never lied to you! You were supposed to be my best friend!”
“Great job bestie, you just forgot to fuckin’ call for ten years eh?”
Rowan stuck an accusing finger in the cat’s face. “I had good reasons for doing what I did!”
“I’ve heard that one before! From Evangeline!” Red was starting to hiss and spit in his rage.
“How dare you!” Rowan went bright red under her haystack hair, practically vibrating with indignation. Soda sighed deeply and wandered over to Penny.
“Look, this could go on for a while. Do you have any idea what we’re here for?”
Penny cocked one brow, grinning. "This sounds like really juicy drama though!”
“Mate I dunno, the insults are entertaining for the first few minutes but they’ve been at this all morning and I’m tired.”
Red and Rowan were going hammer and tongs now, screaming insults at each other.
Penny’s voice dropped. “But you know these guys are famous right? Trial of the century! It was an absolute sensation. Everyone thinks Big Red is dead!”
“Yeah, I heard something about this. It sounds mostly like petty interpersonal bullshit is going to cause the end of the world.”
Soda rubbed her face vigorously. Penny looked nervous.
“What’s going on, really?”
“I dunno. Something something, First Sorceress, magic artefacts, Evangeline Lorenze. End of the world.”
“No shit. The Artefacts of the First?”
“Yeah.” Soda paused, seeing the expression on Penny’s face. “Why? What do you know?”
“Well.” Penny glanced over at the others, but they were still going hard. She continued so quietly Soda could barely hear her. “Some goons showed up here a few weeks ago. Big dudes with some gnarly body mods. One had a literal bull’s head! Really fancy work, I… well anyway, they worked for Evangeline, and they were looking for a book. An obscure book of legends about the First Sorceress.”
“Oh shit,” Soda breathed.
“Yeah! But get this! I did have the book. I had it for years and years! Some old weird dialect, I couldn’t read it. Sat around, never sold. Then out of the blue, the day before Minotaur and his buddies show up, some Enclave dude comes in looking for it specifically. Says he’s studying myths and legends. So I sell it to him for fifty bucks!”
“That’s a wild coincidence."
“Probably not. You coming here makes three. That’s a mystical number.”
Soda frowned. “Big Red warned me about this. He said things will coalesce.”
Penny nodded. “Serious coalescing going on right now.”
“You better tell Rowan all of this.”
“Alright, are you sure she’s… you know… trustworthy? Dawn says she didn’t do it but…”
Soda thought about this. It sounded like what Penny was actually saying instead of ‘trustworthy’ was sane. Is she sane? Probably not…
“I have no idea, honestly. She tried to kill me yesterday, but she’s been pretty upfront about her reasons why, and she did apologise."
“I suppose that’s all you can really ask of anyone,” said Penny faintly after a moment.
"Dawn seems to trust her. She says she's trying to stop this, you know, temporal thingo."
"And how did you get involved? Aren't you Australian?"
"Yeah I just found out my dead dad was a warlock and he dragged me into it from beyond the grave. I'm from a place people apparently go to hide out from the Fed."
"Damn! That's a lot to deal with."
"Tell me about it mate, tell me about it. At least I'll have some new stuff to tell my therapist."
Penny laughed. The other two seemed to show no signs of slowing.
“So this is your shop? That’s pretty cool. What kind of stuff do you sell?”
“Oh, you know. Spell regents, small magics, ritual candles, books… My real passion is Artificing though.” She lit up when she said this, looking flushed and round and lovely.
“Cool, uh, what’s Artificing? I don't know anything about anything yet.”
“Oh right, Dawn said that. Well, welcome! I’m an Artificer, which means I do magic on tools and machines and stuff. Used to be all magic swords and wands and bows,” she gestured to the bucket of swords and the wands under the counter, “but these days I do just as much work on smart phones and televisions.”
Soda was impressed. “That is cool. What does a magic TV do?”
Penny looked ready to launch into an energetic explanation, but then they both noticed the silence. Red was stalking off through to the back, nose high in the air, tail twitching angrily. Rowan turned to them, brushed her hair back from her face, straightened her suit slightly, and let out a little huff.
“So, I hear you’re the best Artificer outside of the Enclave.”
Penny grinned shyly, her whole body turning pink. “I’m not bad."
Rowan gave her a thousand-watt smile that might knock someone out cold. God, what a weapon that smile was! Hard to believe she was a foul-mouthed screeching mess a few moments ago.
“Excellent,” continued Rowan smoothly, “because I need some help. Apparently we all carry phones around in our pockets these days, what an unexpected novelty. I need one. Tell me, do you call people so often? What do you talk about?”
Penny laughed, then stopped when she saw Rowan’s expression. “Sorry. I’m not making fun of you. It’s funny because I rarely use my phone to call anybody ever, which must sound very strange.”
Rowan relaxed a little. “The outside world continues to be hostile and baffling, it’s true. What do you do with it?”
Penny pulled a smart phone out of the glass cabinet and turned it on.
“Easier to show you, I think. Did you interact with any computers before you went away?”
Soda was pretty surprised by the bluntness of the question, but Rowan didn’t seem to mind.
“Not really. But if it helps, I do like a bit of science fiction. Do you know the television show Star Trek?”
Both Soda and Penny smiled, and Penny nodded encouragingly. “Yeah, imagine a communicator. And a camera, video recorder, GPS system, stereo… We mostly send written text messages to each other, which is why we don’t call much. Instant texts.”
Rowan was staring at the phone screen in fascination and horror.
“Seven Hells,” was all she could manage. “And you use magic to make these?”
“Actually no, there’s no magic at all in these yet. All that stuff is just what every phone does these days.”
“Gods, what else could you stuff in there? Are we sure these things aren’t disrupting the cosmic balance? This seems against the laws of nature…”
Penny explained that Artificers created magical receptors and added them to the hardware, which enabled access to private networks run only by magic users. Soda found out there were magic TV channels, magic apps, and magic libraries. She didn’t know why she felt so shocked. Maybe because in the books she liked, magic and technology never mixed well.
“But doesn’t magic fuck with physics too much for all this to work?”
“Nope, magic is physics, physics is magic. It all works together well,” Penny assured her. “Or,” she qualified, “put it this way. Magic problems can be a bit more… creative and interesting than regular physics problems. Bugs in the software can sometimes be a bit literal, you get me? So we try to minimise the amount of actual magic needed. No need to use pure magic to forge a sword when steel is pretty great. Make sense?”
“Absolutely not,” Soda said, feeling the now-familiar pain between her eyebrows.
Penny chuckled. “It must be so weird to be new to all this." She sounded wistful.
“When did you start?”
“Oh, my mother is a witch, so I’ve always been one.” Penny turned off the phone and put it away. She turned to Rowan. “It’ll take a few minutes to map the phone to you and make it secure, um, Ms Ash–"
“Gods, just Rowan if you don’t mind.”
“–Right, sorry, um, Rowan. My workshop is just back through here, but it’s a bit small, so um, only you can come."
“You heard the lady,” said Rowan to Soda. “Wait here and don’t break anything.”
They both disappeared into the storeroom, leaving Soda alone in the shop. She spotted a chair and collapsed into it. Red appeared from nowhere and hopped into her lap.
“I think this is weird now."
But she scratched him behind the ears like she used to, and he closed his eyes and purred gently.
“What were you two whisperin' about?”
“I’m surprised you noticed! You were too busy doing your best feral cat impression.”
“I might be busted up but I’m not totally broken down yet. I can do two things at once. Looked like it was pretty juicy, based on the lass’s expression.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” agreed Soda, and told him about the book, the Enclave visitor and the bull-man.
“Christ, this sounds like a mess.” Big Red rubbed his face with one paw in a very human gesture.
Soda dropped her voice to a murmur. “Hey, do you think we can trust Rowan?”
Red looked troubled. “Hard to say. My heart wants to say yes. But there’s definitely something wrong with her. I think we should just trust each other, until further notice.”
Soda nodded uneasily. They sat in silence for a while, with the faint sound of low voices muffled through the wall. The arcane clutter of the shop got her thinking about Frank again, and she sighed a big, sad sigh.
“Alright kid?”
“This room reminds me of Dad, and home,” she admitted. “I really, really want to go home and just like, hide. Get really stoned and pretend like this isn’t happening.”
Red shuffled with a few grunts and complaints so he could face her. “Here’s the thing about going home,” he said gently. “Our home is in danger. And maybe we have the power to do something. So if we want to have a home to go to, we need to do something.”
He was right, of course. She nodded, and tried to set her face into stern determination. It didn’t last long, but some of it stayed with her at least.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said suddenly, giving the big cat a quick squeeze. He struggled against it.
“Nooo! I’m British!”
Soda laughed and squeezed again. “Nah, no stiff upper lip allowed when you don’t have lips!”
“Well isn’t this cute."
Rowan and Penny had returned. Soda let Red go, then felt mad about being made to feel awkward.
“You need a weapon. What are you better with? Knives? Guns? Any good with a bow?”
Soda started snorting and spluttering. “Lady, I have never even held a gun, let alone fired one. The closest I’ve ever come to stabbing anybody was when I stabbed my classmate with a plastic fork when we were nine.”
“So… no to the bow then?” Rowan grinned, but Soda wasn’t smiling. She was feeling deeply anxious about the likelihood of more fighting.
“I have a bunch of switchblades if that suits you better?” Penny gestured to a cabinet from behind Rowan.
“Yeah look okay, I could go a switchblade I guess. Also I still have most of a case full of those… potion bombs, or whatever they were. The, um, you know.” Soda trailed off and cringed a little.
Rowan’s grin immediately died.
“That sent me and my car to Mongolia,” she said sourly.
“Yeah, sorry. I didn’t know it would do that! But also you were trying to kill me.” Soda got up to go look at knives. Knives! The very idea…
“Well, poor decision-making yesterday, we’re going to be better today! Get your knife for children and let’s go.” Rowan was already on her way towards the back door.
Penny opened a drawer revealing dozens of switchblades rattling around. Soda chose one with a pearly white handle and smooth release action, and gave it an experimental thrust.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” she muttered. “I am definitely not going to try to stab anybody! Christ.”
“Yeah, about that,” said Penny, her voice dropping. “You’re messing with some serious stuff you know? If you find yourself up against any of these people who are after you… you just run. Don’t even think about it. Run as hard as you can. That’s what the rest of us do.”
Soda put the knife in her pocket and nodded.
“I agree with that wholeheartedly. Thanks. Oh hey, before I go, do you have anything that will protect an ordinary phone from like… spying and shit? This sounds so dumb, sorry."
“It’s okay, it’s not dumb. Because yes! Enchanted phone case. It works very well on regular snooping, and pretty good on magical snooping. So still be careful. I’ll throw it in for thirty bucks.”
She grabbed an ordinary-looking phone case from a box in the corner, and as her back was to Rowan, she fixed Soda with a very intense look and mouthed the words be careful. Soda blinked and looked away, trying not to show any expression at all. She paid, said her goodbyes to Penny (including a promise to hook up on social media), and followed Rowan back to the car. What was Penny getting at? Just when she felt like maybe she was getting some footing… Once they were in the car, she put her phone in the enchanted case and turned it back on. Notifications pinged so aggressively it seemed like the phone was having a seizure.
“Coming here was no accident,” said Rowan gravely.
“Yeah, cos you drove us here?” It came out before Soda could stop herself.
Red snorted.
Rowan pursed her lips. “No, I mean, we’ve been given a gift. And it’s nothing to do with phones.”
“Ohhhhh, did Penny tell you about the book?”
“She did.”
“Cool, so what do we need to do then? Sounds like the Feds have it.”
“Yes, a fairly irritating situation. I don’t see myself breaking into the Orleans estate without making a big mess. And they’re bound to have it very secure.”
“Who says they don’t already have the missing Artefact?”
“I can’t say,” Rowan admitted. “We don’t even know if the book has the information. Better go see the twins I guess."
She looked hesitant, which surprised Soda. Who would make Rowan hesitate?
“Who are the twins anyway?” Soda was torn between curiosity and dread.
“The twins are more of Lune and Dawn’s siblings,” Red explained. “They uhh… like people a lot less. Have been known to feast upon unwelcome visitors, sometimes. But they run a very special library. They'll probably have a copy of the book.”
“Jesus, so which is more appealing? Getting arrested and or shot by the Fed, or getting eaten by ancient monsters?”
Rowan drove in silence for a little while, contemplating with a deep frown.
“Alright, they'll listen better to Lune, Dawn is too annoying. Ring Lune, if your phone still works as a phone.”
Chapter Nine: An Irregular Pawn Shop
What's kraken, understanding the Covenant, mounting coincidences