Storm Front

On the grass beneath the deck something red gleamed, and I went beneath the deck to retrieve it. It was a plastic film canister, red with a grey cap, the kind you keep a roll of film in when you send it in to the processors. Film canisters were good for holding various ingredients I used, sometimes. I tucked it in my duster’s pocket and continued my inspection.

The place didn’t look much like a family dwelling, really. It looked like a rich man’s love nest, a secluded little getaway nestled back in the trees of the peninsula and safe from spying eyes. Or an ideal location for a novice sorcerer to come to try out his fledgling abilities, safe from interruptions. A good place for Victor Sells to set up shop and practice.

I made a quick circuit of the house, tried the front and rear doors, and even the door up on the deck that led, presumably, to a kitchen. All were locked. Locks really weren’t an obstacle, but Monica Sells hadn’t invited me actually to take a look inside the house, just around it. It’s bad juju to go tromping into people’s houses uninvited. One of the reasons vampires, as a rule, don’t do it – they have enough trouble just holding themselves together, outside of the Nevernever. It isn’t harmful to a human wizard, like me, but it can really impair anything you try to do with magic. Also, it just isn’t polite. Like I said, I’m an old-fashioned sort of guy.

Of course, the TekTronic Securities control panel that I could see through the front window had some say in my decision – not that I couldn’t hex it down to a useless bundle of plastic and wires, but a lot of security systems will cause an alarm with their contact company if they abruptly stop working without notice. It would be a useless exercise, in any case – the real information was to be had elsewhere.

Still, something nagged at me, a sense of not-quite-emptiness to the house. On a hunch, I knocked on the front door, several times. I even rang the bell. No one came to answer the door, and no lights were on, inside. I shrugged and walked back to the rear of the house, passing a number of empty trash cans as I did.

Now that was a bit odd. I mean, I would expect a little something in the trash, even if someone hadn’t been there in a while. Did the garbage truck come all the way down the drive to pick up the trash cans? That didn’t seem likely. If the Sellses came out to the house for the weekend and wanted the trash emptied, it would stand to reason that they’d have to leave it out by the drive near the road as they left. Which would seem to imply that the garbage men would leave the empty trash cans out by the road. Someone must have brought them back to the house.

Of course, it needn’t have been Victor Sells. It could have been a neighbor, or something. Or maybe he tipped the garbagemen to carry the cans back away from the road. But it was something to go on, a little hint that maybe the house hadn’t been empty all week.

I left the house behind me and walked out toward the lake. The night was breezy but clear, and a bit cool. The tall old trees creaked and groaned beneath the wind. It was still early for the mosquitoes to be too bad. The moon was waxing toward full overhead, with the occasional cloud slipping past her like a gauzy veil.

It was a perfect night for catching faeries.

I swept an area of dirt not far from the lakeshore clear of leaves and sticks, and took the silver knife from the backpack. Using the handle, I drew a circle in the earth, then covered it up with leaves and sticks again, marking the location of the circle’s perimeter in my head. I was careful to focus in concentration on the circle, without actually letting any power slip into it and spoil the trap. Then, working carefully, I prepared the bait by setting out the little cup and bowl. I poured a thimbleful of milk into the cup and daubed the bowl full of honey from the little plastic bear in my backpack.

Then I tore a piece of bread from the loaf I had brought with me and pricked my thumb with the knife. In the silver light of the moon, a bit of dark blood welled up against the skin, and I touched it daintily to the underside of the coarse bread, letting it absorb the blood. Then I set the bread, bloody side down, on the tiny plate.

My trap was set. I gathered up my equipment and retreated to the cover of the trees.

There are two parts of magic you have to understand to catch a faery. One of them is the concept of true names. Everything in the whole world has its own name. Names are unique sounds and cadences of words that are attached to one specific individual – sort of like a kind of theme music. If you know something’s name, you can associate yourself with it in a magical sense, almost in the same way a wizard can reach out and touch someone if he possesses a lock of their hair, or fingernail clippings, or blood. If you know something’s name, you can create a magical link to it, just as you can call someone up and talk to them if you know their phone number. Just knowing the name isn’t good enough, though: You have to know exactly how to say it. Ask two John Franklin Smiths to say their names for you, and you’ll get subtle differences in tone and pronunciation, each one unique to its owner. Wizards tend to collect names of creatures, spirits, and people like some kind of huge Rolodex. You never know when it will come in handy.

The other part of magic you need to know is magic-circle theory. Most magic involves a circle of one kind or another. Drawing a circle sets a local limit on what a wizard is trying to do. It helps him refine his magic, focus and direct it more clearly. It does this by creating a sort of screen, defined by the perimeter of the circle, that keeps random magical energy from going past it, containing it within the circle so that it can be used. To make a circle, you draw it out on the ground, or close hands with a bunch of people, or walk about spreading incense, or any of a number of other methods, while focusing on your purpose in drawing it. Then, you invest it with a little spark of energy to close the circuit, and it’s ready.

One other thing such a circle does: It keeps magical creatures, like faeries, or even demons, from getting past it. Neat, huh? Usually, this is used to keep them out. It’s a bit trickier to set up a circle to keep them in. That’s where the blood comes into play. With blood comes power. If you take in some of someone else’s blood, there is a metaphysical significance to it, a sort of energy. It’s minuscule if you aren’t really trying to get energy that way (the way vampires do), but it’s enough to close a circle.

Now you know how it’s done. But I don’t recommend that you try it at home. You don’t know what to do when something goes wrong.

I retreated to the trees and called the name of the particular faery I wanted. It was a rolling series of syllables, quite beautiful, really – especially since the faery went by the name of Toot-toot every time I’d encountered him before. I pushed my will out along with the name, just made it a call, something that would be subtle enough to make him wander this way of his own accord. Or at least, that was the theory.