komm und steh mir bei.

Flie?e, wasche, binde, fasse,

L?se Fluch, trag ihn hinfort,

Lass ab von Hand und diesem Ort.

The power in his voice made my ears ring. And that made me realize that whatever was on the air filter wasn’t caustic—which was what I’d thought when I’d seen Tad’s skin—but magic. And as Zee’s power touched it, something that cloaked that magic washed away and the whole shop smelled of witchcraft.

I thought of Elizaveta’s explanation of what the witches had done to disguise the trap in my basement, and figured that they had done something like that here.

“How is he?” I asked.

“He is angry at himself for being so careless. His hands smart a bit, but they will heal up just fine now that his dad has made the bad magic go poof. And he is able to evaluate himself, thank you very much,” said Tad crossly.

“He is fine,” said Zee. “Grumpy as usual.”

“That’s a little ‘pot calling kettle’ of you, don’t you think?” asked Tad.

Zee grunted, frowned, and tipped his head to the side. He sniffed loudly.

“I smell it, too,” I said. “It’s not just the air filter. If it were the air filter emitting that much magic, Tad wouldn’t have any hands left.”

“Hey,” said Tad. “Thanks for that thought.”

“Serves you right for being so careless,” said Zee. “Mercy, this new shop of yours, it is equipped with fire suppression, no? Do you know if it is foam or water?”

“Water,” I said. “Water was easier.”

“Ja,” he said. “And useless in a grease fire.”

“We dealt with building codes, not practical matters,” I said. “Building codes said sprinkler system. But the fire extinguishers will take on grease fires.” We had lots of extinguishers.

“The sprinklers are good news for us,” he said. “But maybe not for a fire. Mercy, help me get the vehicles opened up.”

So we opened hoods and air filter covers and any other kind of covers that Zee thought useful. Tad unplugged and collected various electronics and covered them with plastic—something he could do with minimal use of his poor hands.

Zee inspected the computers, cell phones, and computational equipment and gave a reluctant nod. “Those have not been affected yet. We can let them stay out of the water.”

Then Zee stalked over to the test lever for the water suppression system and pulled it down. As he did, he SPOKE again.

    Wasser, Freund mir sei,

komm und steh mir bei.

Flie?e, l?se, binde, fasse,

Hexenwerk verfange dich,

Schwinde Fluch, zersetz den Spruch,

nimm’s hinweg, erh?re mich.

This time, since Tad wasn’t writhing in pain, I paid more attention to what Zee said. My German wasn’t good enough for a full poetic translation (and it sounded like poetry) but I got the rough gist of it. He called upon water—the element, I thought—and entreated it to wash away the witchcraft.

Nothing different happened after he spoke, until he pulled out his pocketknife and nicked the back of his hand, letting his blood wash into the water.

Black smoke filled the air, and the water hissed and steamed as it came down. Some of the foulness was from the water that had been sitting for months in the tanks that supplied the system, but most of it was magic-born.

“This is a cursing,” Zee told me, grabbing a clean rag to stanch his hand. “The last time I saw something like this was . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t remember how long ago. But it doesn’t matter. If we do not take care of it now, right now—it will spread from the shop, from us, from everything here, like a virus. Gaining power from the misery it causes.”

I put up the Closed sign and locked the door.

When the water had finished its job in the shop, Zee ran us—clothes and all—into the shower for the same treatment.

Finally, wet and shivering with nerves, I dug my phone out and called Elizaveta, just as if nothing had changed in our relationship.

I don’t know that I trusted her—and I was really, really glad that Zee had been here so I didn’t need to trust her with everything. But calling her for help beat calling in Wulfe, the witchblood (or something magic using, anyway) vampire.

Elizaveta, black magic and all, was preferable to Wulfe. Besides, it was daytime, so I had no choice.

Then I called Adam.

“I heard you gave up your position as organizer,” he said.

“Was that what I was?” I asked. “I thought I was message girl. Yes. Abbot wanted me to get the fae to supply a list of the attending fae, by name, and what their powers were.”

“Ah,” he said. “And you told Abbot it wouldn’t fly.”

“And he said then there would be no talks,” I agreed. “So it wasn’t so much that I resigned as it was that if I continued in my position, there would be no talks.”

“And you wouldn’t have a position,” Adam said dryly.

“Exactly,” I agreed. “But I think he fired me anyway.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “It will be a lot less work.”

“Might shorten the life span of everyone living in the US by a decade or so, but less work is good,” I agreed.

He laughed. “The fae would never fill out paperwork for a meeting,” he said.

“Or supply real names,” I said. “Or fill out the sheets with lies. Better all the way around to establish what is possible and what is not possible before all hell breaks loose.”

Back when the fae first went into the reservations, the government had required the fae to give names and tell them what kind of fae they were. I don’t know about the other fae, but I know that Zee gave them the name he was going by right now—and the human-made category of gremlin. That probably fit him as well as anything else, but it trivialized the kind of power he could manifest. The one thing I did know was that none of the fae who filled out those forms were Gray Lords.

“So if you weren’t calling about that,” Adam said, “what are you calling about? And does it have anything to do with the reason my people tell me that the fire suppression system in your shop has been drained?”

“Yep,” I said. “The shop was cursed.”

“I will be right there,” he said. Then he said, in a low tone, “Did you call Elizaveta?”

“It was either her or Wulfe,” I said.

“And it’s daytime,” he agreed. “I’m leaving now.”

8

“It started with this?” asked Elizaveta, holding up the air filter.

She had been stalking around the garage for five minutes, muttering about the puddles everywhere. I was actually surprised that there wasn’t more water—but she hadn’t been here during the deluge.

Tad was in the office calling (with his poor sore fingers) the clients whose cars we had doused with water. We were offering them the repairs free of charge, but not delivering the cars until tomorrow or the next day, depending on how long cleanup took us. A problem, I could hear Tad explaining, with the new fire suppression system.

I’d found a spot near the wall that separated garage from office, and Adam had taken up a station next to me, where he proceeded to ignore Elizaveta’s doings and answer texts and e-mails on his phone. Or maybe he was planning world domination—with Adam’s phone it was hard to tell.

Zee took my other side, leaving the garage at large to Elizaveta.

My cell went off again. But the caller ID was blocked and my policy was that I didn’t pick up on blocked-ID calls just after I got off the hook for a nonpaying government job I didn’t want.

“Yes,” I said. “The air filter was the first thing we found.”

She made a noise and began examining it minutely. The bright orange substance had changed to something that looked a lot more like (and maybe was) the caked-on dirt I sometimes find in cars that belong to people who do a lot of driving on dirt roads around here. A lot of our dirt is powder-fine and coats everything in its path.

“So,” I said, “do you think that the cheese-colored magic plague let loose in my shop is the Hardesty witches? I know it’s an obvious question, but I figured I should ask it anyway.”

“Could be,” drawled Adam. “Unless you’ve been out annoying other witches without telling me.”

“The Hardestys are like . . . the Borgia family. There is seldom only one way for them to win,” counseled Elizaveta absently as she continued to examine the air filter. “Their goal always is to consolidate their power. Judging by their actions, if the meetings do not take place, they win. If they take place and they blow up—literally or figuratively—they win. If you spread a mysterious and fatal magical plague wherever you go, they triumph on all fronts.”