Chapter Sixteen Pt2: Fabiana
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-Ovid

Following the witch's cardinal, we went right up to Fabiana's place. You might expect a high-end condo complex to have something in the way of security and accountability, but the front desk guys sent us right up when Val explained that we were here to see her. He gave us one quick glance over and then winked and waved us through, as if this might not be an unusual occurrence.

"Do you remember what floor she's on?"

"The thirteenth, of course," Val said. Okay, yeah, that should have been pretty obvious.

I tapped my foot to Magic Man in the elevator, sharing a glance with Val, who knew the song, and then Simone, who clearly didn't. She shrugged.

"I grew up on gospel music," she explained.

"Sorry."

The doors dinged open to a short, mirror-lined hallway with a dozen or so large condo units. We followed the cardinal down the hallway and to room… you guessed, it: 1313. Witches. The door was slightly ajar, so I gave it a good knock and let it swing open. I sensed that something was wrong - from what I could see, the place was a mess, clothes strewn about, a potted plant tipped over, and boxes of high-end clothing piled off to the side. As I've no doubt mentioned, it's considered extremely rude to undo the wards of another witch, but this was a potential emergency, and they weren't exactly Lily- or Byron Bryce-level wards. I cast them aside with a little piano trill from my fingers and, before I could step inside, Val pushed past me.

"Go on in, won't you?" I muttered.

The witch's cardinal was definitely pointing back into the condo - but, notably, it would still work if its target was dead or gravely injured. I tipped open one of the clothes boxes - it had been emptied. But the clothes about the place all indicated that Fabiana liked to dress pretty well. And they were in at least three different sizes, so the clothes weren't all hers. Interesting. No wonder the doorman hadn't balked at our going upstairs. But the question remained: what had happened to Val's ex?

"Who the fuck are you?" a woman said in slightly-accented English. Before I knew it, two curses were zipping my way - the first caromed of my defenses and toward Simone, who absorbed it with her own shield. The second bounced off me and right back to a very-surprised Fabiana, who fell right over.

"What did you do?" Val cried, rushing over to her.

With Simone's help, I hoisted Fabiana up and rolled her onto the couch. "She's just stunned - good thing she didn't try for more than that."

"M… maldita perra," Fabiana mumbled, her eyes slowly regaining focus. "You… you think you can come into my home and kidnap me?"

I raised my hands - ostensibly to show my benign intentions, though I could just as easily cast another defensive shield to bounce her magic back. "I'm very sorry, Miss…"

"Flores," Val said.

I rolled my eyes - he'd already showed me her business card once before. I wasn't stupid. "Sorry about that, Miss Flores. We saw the mess and thought something was wrong… my name is Natalie Bryce and this is Simone."

"Hello," Simone said.

"And most importantly, this young woman is my cousin Valerie… though you'll know her as Vincent Warner."

And, surprisingly, it didn't take that much to convince Fabiana that this was the case. I guess the ease with which I'd repelled her curses (which, I had to admit, she'd flung out pretty competently) made it hard to deny that we were witches. And, this being the case, it was a lot easier to imagine that Vince had been transformed. After all, witches transformed people all the time, even if we usually didn't change their True Forms.

"Why does this place look like a tornado hit?" Val asked.

"Oh… I had a fashion party here last week, and we went a little crazy with the margaritas. And the maid doesn't come until tomorrow… I suppose I should tidy up, myself, but I've been so beside myself since…" she glared at Vince… "since we broke up. And then when you disappeared, I was beside myself. Believe it or not, but I always cared for you, even after you broke my heart."

"Even after I…" Val calmed herself and moved some blouses out of the way to plop herself next to her ex. "I'm sorry I made you do that," she said, and she swept Fabiana's chestnut hair back to look her in the face. "I'm guessing you didn't have your mail forwarded."

Indeed, she hadn't. I guess that explained that: Fabiana hadn't gotten any of our letters. And wasn't as tidy as Val had indicated. But she'd also known that something was up, which was why she'd placed wards and magical countermeasures around her place. As soon as she'd found out that Vince, who'd been into some questionable shit, had disappeared, she left town and holed up at her old place in Miami - it wasn't too much of a step down from Vince's place an hour north. Then she'd spotted the sombrero negros around town - the gangling men liked to think they were sneaky and subtle, but they were about a subtle as a gorilla with hemorrhoids. So she'd kept a low profile and invited as many witches as she knew - hedge witches and a few of our sisters - for tips on how to stay safe, help with her wards and other magical defenses, and girlfriends to drink margaritas with and make a mess of the place.

"I practiced that curse… a lot," she said. "How did you turn it against me so quickly?"

"I've practiced magical defense a lot," I said.

"You?"

I nodded. "Me. Miss Flores… I'm sure you and Val have some things to talk about. Would you mind if Simone and I take a look at your magical box why you guys, I dunno, catch up?"

She didn't mind, provided we didn't take anything out. Naturally, we wanted to borrow the thing if possible, and if anybody could argue our case for it, it was Val. But, at the very least, we had to compare and contrast it with the one we had. Fabiana showed us back to her study - a neat little area with a pretty well-hidden shelf of occult books that I almost missed. It was hardly the disaster area of the rest of her condo. Fabiana set the box carefully upon her desk - it was very similar to the one I'd purloined from Byron Bryce, though not quite identical, as Val had suggested. Before she left, Fabiana turned to me and waved her hand.

"Tell the truth - has Vince changed? Mentally, I mean…"

I looked her in the eye. "You're going to have to take my word for it because little compulsions don't work on witches who had to fight against them for the first half of their schooling. But yes, I think Vince was pretty ethically compromised, and Val is a lot less so… but she's not an angel."

A hint of worry flashed in her dark eyes. "And you can change him back?"

I shrugged. "I think so… if that's what she wants."

Fabiana strutted back out to her living room while Simone and I got to work, clicking the box's secret latch open and taking inventory of the inside. It was missing a few pieces - that much was immediately clear. No wonder Fabiana hadn't been able to get it to do anything. It was also substantially different on the interior from our curse amplifier. I looked to Simone, who was sketching a diagram on a purloined sheet of printer paper.

"What do you think it does?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Whatever it is, you could fit an inversion coil between these two brackets."

I nodded, tracking the symbols on the parts, including a little quartopus on a brassy-looking plate. My eyes went wide. "Sigmus-quartopus-tempura," I said. "What would that do?"

"Bring two things into temporary sympathy… enough to cast something onto one like you were casting onto both. Two things or two people. You could bypass the need for a True Name, at least mostly, and especially in concert with the dampener…"

I tapped the box with a purple-pink fingernail. "They probably used something like this to change me. But, more pertinent, I think this is what the Gangling Men use to anchor themselves to our world using witches and warlocks. They use the essence of a witch or warlock and use our own stability in this world to anchor themselves - otherwise, they're unstable. Doesn't that make sense? That's why they kidnap witches - to use as new batteries in the world. And that's why they covet powerful witches…"

Simone nodded, scribbling notes onto the paper as fast as she cold. She pointed to a reflector rig. "Right. Their power would be equal to whatever witch or warlock they were bonded with. But that leads to the obvious question - did they stop taking us like they did in the early days because they lost this box? Or is there another reason?"

Neither of us knew, but two things were very clear: we were very lucky that the Gangling Men hadn't found it and we couldn't let Fabiana keep it. Not only did we need it to find where the pale bastards' sanctum was, we couldn't possibly let them get their hands on the artifact. I closed it back up and bit my lip. And, on a hunch, I turned the thing upside-down and inspected the underside. There, in subtle, swirling script on the underside, was an engraved message: Bryce & Co. 1897.

"Well that was unexpected," Simone said.

+++++

We decided, between the two of us, that we would tell Fabiana we were taking the box - it was the honest thing to do and, if she didn't like it, she was welcome to fight us for it. By my reckoning, she was more than a hedge witch but substantially less of a force than, say, Cassie… poor Cassie. Only we went out to the living room to tell her, only to find she wasn't in the living room.

"Oh! Mmmm… yes!" came the moans from the bedroom.

I tiptoed over and, sure enough, there Val was, nestled between Fabiana's legs and eating her fill. Fabiana seemed quite amenable to the situation, her head thrown back and bleating out full-throated cries as her fingers ran through Val's thick, red hair. And Val was naked, her peach of an ass bare and wavering back and forth as she lapped away at her ex(?)-fiancée. I just stared at her ass, biting my lip and going wobbly at the knees. Yes, she was my cousin, but if I had an ass half that delectable…

"Gross!" Simone hissed. She grabbed my arm and dragged me out of the way. "That's your cousin, Natalie! You don't look at her that way…"

"Clearly, you haven't been exposed to much pornography," I said, flapping at the fabric of my skirt. "Fine. We'll give these love birds some time to reconnect. I saw a café across the street. What do you say we have a little snack and a little drink and then see if a freshly-fucked Fabiana is fairly-disposed to our borrowing her box. The one that Val isn't currently eating out of."

Simone's smoke-gray eyes rolled back. "Sometimes, it's really obvious you used to be a dude."

I tossed my hair. "I don’t know what you mean. I'm classy AF."

We went back down and across the street to the café which, the hostess informed us, would be getting transitioned over to a nightclub in an hour. That was fine - we would probably only be staying for half that. We sat at the table and enjoyed the breeze coming in from the ocean. When nobody was watching, Simone relaxed her hair and then tightened it up into long box braids while I brooded over appetizers. And, as we waited for our order, we talked about Fabiana - whoever she was, she had more talent and more connections than any hedge witch I'd ever heard of. But nor was she in the Sisterhood of the Starry Night - so where was she from?

"Isn't there a Western-style coven in South America? Not super big, but I think they've got two or three hundred members, and a school in…"

"In Argentina, isn't it?" I said. "Somewhere out in the Pampas?"

"That makes sense," Simone said. "So I wonder what she's doing in Florida?"

I was about to propose that we just ask her, when our little tête-à-tête was interrupted. My conch fritters hadn't even arrived yet when a man far too conservatively dressed for the Miami bayside spotted us. If he even was a man - he was a man of the gangling variety.

"That is our box!" he hissed, pointing to the little jeweled box by my feet.

With a wave of his hand, he animated a nearby table cloth, sending a vase and the silverware scattering and whipping it toward the box, so as to take it. We could have fought over the damn thing, but I decided to cut out the middle man by vaulting over the patio railing (yay gymnastics!) and slapping my hand against his face, dispelling him in one go. The people around us started freaking out, some of them calling 9-1-1 or taking pictures with their phones. Understandable, given that in the space of about five seconds, the guy had gone from 'creepy Mennonite' to 'very angry' to 'a pile of rags'. Simone scrambled to retrieve the box and stepped over the railing, herself - we'd have to give the café an IOU.

"Look!" Simone pointed to the front of Fabiana's condo. Four black and chrome SUVs of the gangling police variety had pulled up sometime in the past few minutes, and it didn't take two brilliant witches to figure out where the fuckers were headed.

We dashed into the building, past the doorman, and into the elevator. And, at this point (f you are not an adept), you may be asking yourself: why didn't they just fly up to Fabiana's place? Don't witches fly around on brooms? To which the answer is: no, we do not. At some point, we witches had the ability to do so - and, to the best of my knowledge, warlocks never did. That's why there are stories of witches flying around on brooms, but not warlocks shooting through the sky on shovels or something. In any case, by now I had a pretty good idea of how to make a flying broom, but I wasn't about to test it out while Val and Fabiana were busy getting killed, kidnapped, etc. by the Gangling Men.

I dashed into the elevator, glaring at the woman attempting to board with us, and then pushed Simone out and mashed the 'door close' button.

"Take the box back to St. Circe's!" I shouted. "That's the most important thing."

If Simone objected, I didn't see it, because the elevator doors closed at that point. I mashed my finger on the floor button and then paced around the elevator for an interminable forty-five seconds as it ascended to the thirteenth floor. Where elevators always that slow? How could I have been so stupid? Hey, Val, I can see you and your ex are having make-up sex, so I'ma run across the street for some conch fritters with Simone and this super important magical artifact! I was angry at myself, but angrier at the pale fucks. I was so angry that, when I got off at the thirteenth floor, my fingers were twitching with magical malice. As I've no doubt mentioned, I'm a maniac when it comes to studying all things witchcraft, and my symbology had become so rehearsed that I often think in magical 'syllables' rather than individual symbols, and my fingers just twitch them out like a musician playing scales without thinking about the individual notes - only, instead of pleasant musical progressions, spells happen.

I didn't want to knock Fabiana's door off the hinges, since I didn't know where she or Val were - they might retreat right into my attack. With a wave of my hand and the twitch of my fingers, the door hinges melted and the door fell off with a clap and a crack. A pale man stood in the now-legitimately-ruined living room, his hand outstretched while something growled and cracked in the next room. The couch was on fire and the balcony window was shattered, the curtains flapping out over Brickell Avenue. Of course, the guy heard the door fall off, so his attention was immediately drawn to me and away from whatever horrible shit was transpiring in the bedroom.

"You! The girl who took our ring, who rigged our contest, who knows how to banish our kind. We trade your life for your friend's," he hissed. And, in the moment, the meaning of that vague phrase completely escaped me - for some reason, I thought the guy was offering to spare me in return for letting them kill my friends. Perhaps that wasn't the best way to parse the statement, but that's how I took it.

"I've lost track of how many of you fuckers I've dispelled… but I'm about to add one more to 'a lot'," I snorted. Maybe not the best threatening quip, but it's what I said.

He tried to wrap me in magical bindings and, when that didn't work, shot out a bolt to stun or kill. And, when that didn't work, his beady dark eyes went wide, and he snapped his fingers. With a mixture between a growl and a croak, a horrible slick mass paced in from the living room, blood and ichor dripping down its maw.

"Kill," the Gangling Man hissed. With a delighted gurgle, the beast leapt into action as the man retreated to the shattered window.

He leapt out the window - I don't know whether he floated out (as I've seen their kind do) or just dropped to the ground, but it probably doesn't matter. A fall, no matter how far, is unlikely to kill a Gangling Man, and I had more important things to worry about. Namely, the dark wolf/frog thing burbling its way toward me. I dodged my way out of its first leap and rolled behind the burnt remains of the couch. Raising my hands, I looked into its glassy eyes.

"Your master is gone," I said. "And I am a friend to toads. Leave me be, and I will always leave the porch light low for your brethren."

It took a shuddering step toward me, blinked with its filmy membrane-eyelids, and then licked my palm with a huge, gooey tongue. It blinked again, croaked happily, and leapt out the destroyed window. Since there were no reports of a huge frog/wolf hybrid landing on the evening traffic of Brickell Avenue, I assume it found its way away. Let that be a word to the novice summoner: be kind to your summoned creatures and they will return the favor.

I dashed into the bedroom and found Fabiana there, bloody, naked, and groaning. My beastly friend had done a number on her, raking several deep gashes with its claws and taking at least one gravely serious bite at her midsection. She was still losing blood… without immediate attention, she was definitely going to die. I crouched down beside her, tapping her cheek with my hand.

"Fabiana, I'm taking you to get help. Do you have a car?"

She nodded weakly, her eyes losing focus. "S-silver… BMW…"

+++++

I have to hand it to the cops in downtown Miami: their shit is on point. They were on my ass the minute I screeched out of the condo parking garage doing three over the limit. I'd managed to haul Fabiana into the passenger seat and buckle her in place - good thing, too, because she passed out about five seconds after, her head lolling about with the screeches and turns of the car. Two police cars were on my tail, and a third one, a police SUV, joined in a few seconds later. Tough shit - I wasn't stopping until I got through a ley and to Lily's place.

Even with the seat all the way forward, it was hard for me to reach things - being short can suck. Fortunately, I'd thought ahead and brought a throw pillow to sit on for enough boost to make driving doable. We were maybe half-way to the nearest major ley when the police got serious. The car right behind me nudged the bumper and nearly got me to crash into the guardrail.

"Shit!" I shrieked to nobody. I hoped Simone got back to St. Circe's with the box.

I reached traffic and weaved in and out as competently as I could (which was moderately). My closest pursuer managed to nudge me again, and I swerved right into a Prius - not Jameson's, I hope - but glanced off with only modest crumpling and kept going. I heard crunching and squealing behind me and, glancing in the rear view, saw the cars behind me parting and flipping up like Moses parting the Red Sea for the Isrealites. Only these weren't Hebrews - they were Gangling Men, a train of three or four black-and-chrome SUVs. I don't know if the creepy fucks have anything like an organized religion, but I'm fairly certain that they aren't Jewish. The police car behind me flipped up to the side, and the black SUV took its place, inching forward, the back of Fabiana's car wobbling with the force of their enchantment… I wasn't going to make it to the ley in time…

"Fuck!" I shrieked, also to nobody. But I traced the symbol of unbinding and cast it backward as quickly and strongly as I could. The rear window of Fabiana's BMW blew out, the windshield of the SUV cracked, and the chauffae behind the wheel of the SUV was whisked back to wherever she'd come from. The SUV veered wildly off course, giving me the three seconds I needed to reach the ley. With a careful hand movement, I traced the circle and slapped the Black Lily against my palm.

"Fuck!" I shrieked (as was becoming customary, to nobody) and slammed on the brakes. The little road through Lily's sanctuary wasn't meant for 70 mph traffic. I nearly veered off the road but managed to slow enough to avoid swerving off into the trees. Still doing a decent clip, I caromed down the remaining road, pulling in front of Lily's in Fabiana's pretty rough-looking BMW.

For a moment, I thought Fabiana had died, but her breathing was just very shallow. It felt very counterintuitive, but I left the quickly-dying Fabiana in her car and dashed into Lily's and, politesse be damned, cast her wards aside and made a bee-line for her study, where I grabbed her home copy of her sympathetic notebook and opened it to the most recent page.

Emergency! - I have an important artifact, please help, Simone had messaged. Hopefully, that meant Lily was now attuned to the book. Right below that, I wrote:
MEDICAL EMERGENCY - PLEASE COME TO YOUR SANCTUARY

Either she'd get the message or she wouldn't. In the meanwhile, I had to get Fabiana to Lily's potion bench. I knew enough about potions to make some medically-useful things for her, though I didn't know near enough to save her life. But it might buy her enough time for Lily to drive back from St. Circe's and save the day. I struggled to drag Fabiana up the porch stairs and inside - I was strong for my size, but she had about thirty pounds on me (which is a lot when your weight is ninety pounds). I didn't even get her to the potion bench - Fabiana stopped breathing when I was half-way through the parlor and I felt no pulse, so I rolled her onto her back and started performing CPR.

"Please don't die," I whispered. I didn't know Fabiana that well, but I didn't want anybody, let alone Val's witchy boo, to die on my watch. I'm pretty sure she was almost, kind of, basically family.

Then the whole parlor started shaking. I'm pretty sure the whole house started shaking. The chandelier above us swung wildly, shadows wheeling about the room. Then the lights popped all at once, lightning struck about seven feet to my left, and suddenly a panic-stricken Lily was in the parlor.

"Natalie! Natalie! Are you…" Seeing that I was performing CPR on somebody else, Lily decided that 'are you all right' wasn't an especially pertinent question. "Keep going. Give me two minutes."

True to her word, Lily, somehow, had a handful of potions to deploy a minute later, administering them with calm expertise while she had me use bedsheets to staunch the bleeding (which was now pretty slow, given that Fabiana's heart was pretty close to stopped). Simone arrived a few minutes later with Nurse Argent from the campus infirmary in tow, and the serious medicinal witchcraft started. After a few minutes, they had Fabiana stabilized enough to bring her out to Lily's circle for a stronger healing ritual. She was going to be all right. She…

"Natalie? Where's Val?" Simone asked.

Shit.

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