Saffron Wilds by Kai Butler
CHAPTER TWO
For a moment,I wondered how much charisma it would take to convince Frankie Vaughn that I hadn’t been in his house to begin with. Not sure what you’re talking about. This bear you combined with an anaconda kidnapped me while I was out jogging.
No. That wasn’t going to work.
What I needed was to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear, but to spin the tale out long enough that Vaughn and I would still be there when the cops arrived. His accusation of me stealing from him came back to me.
“There is a new dealer in town. He wanted to see what you have.” Around me, the snake’s tail tightened and loosened.
Vaughn reached next to him and tossed the bear a strawberry. It caught it in midair, making a soft whuffing noise as it ate it in an instant.
“Who?” he asked.
“You’ll never get me to talk,” I said, taking the line straight out of a mobster movie.
The thing about saying you’ll never get me to talk is that every single person wants to get you to talk. There’s not a single person who says, Gosh, you don’t want to say anything? Okay. I guess there’s no point in trying. I’ll just kill you now.
Instead, it makes the person want the information more. You don’t want to tell me what you know? Fine. I’ll make you tell me.
The chimera relaxed further, and I was able to press my palm to the floor beneath me. Around me, I felt the spirits of the house. The wood in the walls, the concrete pad beneath our feet. I felt the wood reverberating up the walls into the attic above us.
The long beams were cranky because of the itch of dry rot and the intrusive digging of termites. Grousing unhappily, they told me he hadn’t even bothered to get them checked every ten years the way the owner before had.
Vaughn was still monologuing at me. He was the best in the business. He was the only dealer San Amaro needed. Everyone else was small-scale compared to him.
“You know, no one else thinks about how to make things special for buyers. I do. That’s why so many come back. Where else are they going to get the familiars they want?”
“They come back for multiple familiars?” Under my breath, I murmured to the wood. It was right. It was upset that Vaughn was letting it rot when he should be getting it treated. “A familiar is supposed to last a lifetime.”
“Yeah, well…some of my buyers aren’t careful with their familiars.”
I huffed out a breath as the bear relaxed even further, its breathing settling into sleep. The heavy anaconda muscle relaxed as it slept, which was almost worse than being squeezed, because it was heavy, and there was no way I could move it off me.
“What’s with the bear?” I managed, pushing the words out from under hundreds of pounds of snake tail.
“Winnie? Oh, she’s a sweetheart. She was one of my first attempts at…” Vaughn narrowed his eyes at me suspiciously. Then he shrugged as though to say I wasn’t going to live much longer anyway. He might as well tell me what was up. “She was one of my first attempts. I got her when she was only a cub. Mixing her with the snake was the hard part. I wasn’t good enough at the magic then. Something had to give.”
“Her eyesight,” I said. Because of course Vaughn wouldn’t sacrifice something from himself for the magic. Instead, he would hurt the poor cub. “Wait. You named your bear after Winnie the Pooh?”
“Yeah,” Vaughn said defensively. “What’s wrong with that? He’s the best bear. And she’s the best girl.”
Then Vaughn reached into a bowl on the floor next to him, coating his entire hand in thick honey. He held it out to Winnie, and she woke instantly. Nosing at his palm, she began to lick it clean. He crooned at her lovingly.
“You know,” I murmured to the wood. “You don’t have to be a house. Clearly, he doesn’t respect you as a house. If you could be anything you wanted, what would you be instead?”
I was getting on uncertain footing. But it was the best chance I had of getting free. I had been working with Clayton Cross on the magic he knew how to do. He had turned his entire apartment building into a massive tree, each beam of wood twisting together to create the trunk and branches.
Unfortunately for both of us, all the teaching smarts had gone to Hartwell Monroe, while all the creative magic design had gone to Queen Aster’s surviving student. I was pretty sure I understood the concept behind his magic, although this would be my first time practicing it in a real setting.
The wood answered back after a long, thoughtful pause. No one had ever asked the wood what it wanted to be before, and much like the kid in the back of class who never raises his hand, never offers an answer, there was more going on beneath the surface.
When the answer finally came through, it was simple. If it could be anything in the world, the wood wanted to be a boat.
It wanted to see the world. It wanted to know what water felt like slapping against its shaped hull.
I shoved down my confusion. “Okay. You should do that.”
Taking a deep breath, I sent all the magic I could afford to into the wood.
When I should have run dry, I didn’t. It was strange, like something was dumping more magic into me, feeding it to me like the snow caps fed rushing spring rivers.
The half of the chimera that was a snake twisted around me tighter, then loosened again. I shivered. Okay. My magic wasn’t coming from nowhere. Apparently, the chimera had decided to help.
I guessed it was a familiar, even if it was the oddest one I’d ever seen. It loosened its scales further, and if I had to, I would be able to wiggle out.
Time to see what the wood in this house could do. Funneling more magic from the bear into the wood, the house around us began to shake.
“What—” Vaughn looked around.
“Earthquake?” I suggested. “How did you get an animal like this anyway?”
“That’s a trade secret.” Vaughn squinted around us. “I don’t know what you’re trying, but it won’t work. If I wouldn’t let the dark circus have her, there’s no way I’m going to let some two-bit knockoff trader take her from me.”
“What circus?” I asked.
Vaughn squinted at me. But just then, the surrounding wood began to grow and twist. It only had a vague idea of what a sailboat looked like, and what it began forming reminded me of a small child drawing a boat from memory. The hull was long but uneven. An enormous mast grew so high that the nascent boat tipped over onto its side, ripping apart interior walls. The shifting wood left the room filled with familiars exposed, and the bear moaned in confusion.
I wiggled free onto the ground around Vaughn’s feet. Grabbing a handful of leaves from my satchel, I threw them down. Using my magic, I searched for the one I wanted.
Within moments, a thick blackberry bramble grew around Vaughn, the vines sharp with thorns. Feeding them with my magic, I made the points so sharp they could pierce armor. Enormous blackberries burst to life, growing as large as my palm. The bear sniffed them, reaching down to grab one free and bite into it. She moaned in pleasure, and I felt her magic seep from her skin into the bramble.
“What are you doing?” Vaughn demanded. “Winnie. Come here.”
The bear ignored him, instead snuffling through the brush to find more of the fist-sized clumps of berries.
“If you climb him, you will be closer to the light,” I coaxed the bramble. Vaughn let out a horrified shriek, his terror clear on his face as the vines swirled around him, wrapping him up like a tornado made entirely of thorns.
It wasn’t even a lie. The sun was showing through enormous holes in the ceiling where the beams were simply coming away.
Something crashed to the ground, and I realized that as the ceiling was coming apart, it revealed Vaughn’s secret workshop.
I’d assumed the attic above us was empty, but that answered where Vaughn and Winnie had come from. Vials of fluorescent liquid crashed around us. Tomes of witchcraft thumped to the ground, the pages exploding out of the delicate, aging spines.
The debris of witchcraft rained around me: different kinds of wood, baskets of chalk, ingredients for spells housed in glass jars.
I swore. Because this wasn’t a normal laboratory. This was where Vaughn created his chimeras.
Creatures straight out of a nightmare dropped down onto the ground around me. One of them had the body of a lion, its hind legs made of scaled claws as though Vaughn had stitched the feline together with a massive iguana.
It prowled toward me, its eyes blinking vertically. I stepped back, and Vaughn screamed in rage.
“Get him!”
The creature leapt at me, its front paws doing more work than its back ones.
“I’m sorry.” I knelt down and drew the bramble around me, creating a thick wall.
The creature howled in rage, and I winced. It didn’t deserve this. Just as I had that thought, something wrapped around my ankle, a thick furry tail with more flexibility than a mammal’s tail should have.
Searching for the cause, I spied something with a pig’s head and a pig’s fleshy tone but the long, sinuous body of a snake. It snapped at me, its teeth sharp.
I tried to step away but tripped in a bramble of my own making, going down hard and slicing open my arm.
Winnie snuffled close, nudging at me. For a moment, I thought she was going to help, but then I realized I was sitting on top of a feast of blackberries. Getting out of her way before she tried to move me herself, I fumbled in my bag and pulled out a small bottle of baby oil.
Dribbling it on my leg, I coaxed it quietly. “You are so slick. People use you to get tar off the bottom of their feet. Nothing sticks to you. As soon as I have you on, I’m untouchable. Everything will slip off.”
The baby oil considered this for a moment, but it was familiar with me and trusted me. The pig-snake tried to wrap further around me, but its tail slipped, and I kicked it off. Something small landed on my head, delicate baby claws digging into my shoulder.
I shook it off and saw a kitten with a falcon’s wings grafted onto its back drop to the floor.
“Do you like my pets?” Vaughn shouted. “Because I have more where they came from!”
“I’ve seen better,” I said. “I mean, the circus wouldn’t even take these.”
I backed up, heading for the front door. As I cleared the blackberry bramble, I got a good look at the scene. Baby oil was still coating the pig, and it couldn’t slide with the oil on its stomach. It kept flopping helplessly. Winnie was still satisfied with her berry buffet, feeding magic to the surrounding vines. I wasn’t even sure if she was aware of it or if she just knew the more magic she expended, the more berries she got to eat.
The kitten had gotten lost under the tangle of vines, although I heard it mewling helplessly. One wing lay trapped as though it wasn’t quite sure how to move with the massive weight on its shoulders.
That left someone missing. Who was missing?
“The circus!” Vaughn laughed hysterically. “The night circus took three of my babies. Paid me in silver. Even the fae love these creatures.”
That caught my attention, but before I could press Vaughn for more information, I realized who was missing. A reptilian tail hit me across the stomach, batting me to the side of the room, where I slammed my head against the wall. The drywall was considerably more forgiving than the door had been, but I still took a moment to blink myself back into corporeality before standing.
The lion-lizard growled at me, deep scratches streaking her hide, and I couldn’t tell if it was blood or blackberry juice staining her coat.
“I’m sorry. Whatever he did to you, I’m sorry. But…”
The creature leapt, and I slid left along the wall, grabbing hold of the front door and throwing it open. I tumbled out, sprinting down the steps, nearly falling as I pulled out my cell phone.
Nick was already calling me, and I picked up his call as I spun, turning back to face the house. Drawing a hand in front of me, I gasped, trying to make a shield out of the air.
The air didn’t listen, having little patience for someone who couldn’t hold their breath. The lion-lizard prowled out from what was left of the house. At that point, it was mostly shards of lumber torn apart, half of the boat’s hull formed and most of the deck.
I saw the doorway joining its fellows, becoming more and more like a boat. The lion-lizard slid along the warping front porch, trying to keep its bearings on something changing its shape.
It leapt again, heading straight for me.
“Parker, duck!” Nick yelled through the phone.
I dropped down to my stomach just as something flew over my head and the lion hit a glowing green circle. The lion stuck there for a moment, a fly trapped in a spider’s web.
A car screeched behind me, driving halfway onto the curb before stopping. I pushed myself up to my feet and backed up so I was level with the cop car.
Nick’s door flew open, and he came out of the passenger side, one hand drawing another spell off his notepad.
“That was close,” Nick said.
“I knew you had my back,” I panted. “There’s at least three more chimeras inside. The bear is probably the most dangerous, but right now she’s snacking on blackberries. I’m pretty sure as long as we don’t bug her, she’ll be calm.”
Three more cop cars pulled up, the officers leaping out, weapons raised. Holding up my hands, I said, “If they attack her…”
“Keep your cool!” Zahide shouted, stepping out of the driver’s side of the car Nick had been in.
“Is that…” One of the officers looked young, blond hair and wide brown eyes. His weapon trembled as he got the full view of the chimera trapped in Nick’s circle.
“Keep calm,” Zahide bit out.
The house continued to shift and break, its hull becoming almost seaworthy. As it did, I felt the blackberry bramble being torn apart, half going with one side of the hull and the other half with the other side. I heard an angry roar from inside. The entire front of the house twisted apart, revealing the living room.
Winnie pushed on her tail, snarling and snapping after a patch of blackberries she had been feasting on. With the entire front wall gone, the scene inside was visible.
Screaming in terror, the young cop fired.