with your real face and your real name, and you tell them exactly what to make of you? It throws them off their game.
Yes, occasionally, they’ll repay your honesty with a magical ass-kicking. (I’m probably never going to have kids, because I owe at least three imps my firstborn.) But often they find it refreshing! There’s a hinkypunk in my mom’s subdivision who just likes to complain to me about her migraines.
Who else will listen?
Who else wants to hear their stories?
There are trolls who’ve spent the last two hundred years sitting alone under a bridge. If you can get past the bluster and the wooden clubs, if you bring them a little bone broth, they’re just grateful to have a sympathetic ear.
If you tell them that you mean no harm, and then you never do any harm …
They start to like you. They start to look forward to you coming around.
I’m not saying this approach would work for everyone. I’m not saying it isn’t dangerous.…
It’s not worth trying to charm something truly dark. And sometimes you can’t tell if they’re truly dark. Sometimes you give them your real name, and they never give it back.
And sometimes they just ignore you.…
Magicians are the worst.
They call themselves “magicians.” Everybody else calls them “Speakers.”
A jackalope broke it down for me once: “It’s like—we’re all technically magicians, right? We’ve all got magic. But they took it for their name. Imagine acting like you’re the only species who drinks water! Or breathes air! ‘Look at us! We’re the air-breathers!’”
Magicians think they’re the only ones with magic because they’re the only ones who can control it. All the other spirits and creatures have rules they have to follow—true limitations. But the magicians can do anything they find words for.
Most of what I know about magicians I’ve heard from other Maybes. Speakers are hard to track down. You can’t just meet one by hanging out at the neighborhood watering hole. You can’t plant some yarrow and valerian and wait for one to drop by.
Usually you don’t even know when you’ve met one. They go out of their way to look Normal—which is such a mindfuck because they think of real Normals as livestock. Beasts of jargon.
Even if you do find Speakers and identify them as such, they rarely feel like talking. They don’t want any of their power to trickle down. They don’t want anyone to learn their tricks.
I thought maybe these three were different. They are different. What’s a vampire doing with a magic wand? What kind of devil is that Simon guy? (Is he a devil? Or just some kind of sphinx I’ve never seen before? There’s so much I haven’t seen.…)
But my no-scheme scheme isn’t working on them.
They’re going to lose me as soon as they don’t need me anymore. And then I’ll never know their story.…
* * *
We stop at a motel on the outskirts of Denver. I was worried about who we were going to send into the lobby—the black guy, the white devil, the Middle Eastern girl, or the pungent vampire. (Probably the white devil, right?)
But it’s one of those dives where every room has its own external door. The witch girl picks a room, puts her hand on the doorknob, and says, “Open Sesame!” It’s that easy.
Then she tries to magic the skunk funk off her friends. Both of them reeked of it when they got out of the truck.
I stand back and watch. “Do you have a tomato-soup spell? That’s the only thing that works on skunk spray.”
“Skunk…” the Simon one says. “That makes so much more sense than badger.”
Once we get in the room, the girl and the vampire collapse onto one of the beds together. (Which I did not see coming, but all right.) And Winged Victory settles on the carpet, against the door. (Maybe his kind doesn’t need sleep.) That’s when I realize I’m their prisoner. Which … fair enough. I’ve been in this situation before. I can still talk my way out of it.
Problem is, I still want to talk my way into it.
I sit down on a sunken brown couch. “I can take first watch,” I say after a while, when I think the girl and the vampire are asleep. (I did not know vampires need sleep; I’ve never gotten this close before. Maybe this one is a hybrid. Can you be half vampire? Can you catch a mild case? Maybe he’s one of the Next Blood. All the High Plains Maybes are worried