XII

The next morning, Mage went out for a cup of coffee. She didn’t pretend to read the paper or write down notes. At a table for two, she sipped an Americano, hoping it would be strong enough to put her mind into the right frame for solving her supernatural crisis. Nameless people walked in and out while she examined the situation, explored a question, then repeated the cycle while occasionally mumbling to herself.

The question she kept coming back to was, how long until the nanny didn’t need her alive anymore? Because clearly she needed her. Otherwise, why hadn’t she ambushed her when Mage was taking care of the other duplicate? Why did she lure Henry there instead?

Another sip of the Americano danced through her lips.

Approaching the dilemma from different angles, she realized she had gotten something wrong. Henry and the children were in danger.

If the nanny needed Mage alive, but just out of the way, she could frame her for a crime. Like the murder of her family. But then the nanny would need a new identity, and that would be difficult to arrange. That’s probably why she’d gone silent. She was finalizing the last stages of her plan.

Unless it was Henry she needed alive.

Or wanted alive.

All to herself.

There was no way to tell. Mage didn’t have any facts. Only fears. She needed to do something besides imagining another worst-case scenario.

This was the moment she conceded the world of dark magic was too complicated to understand alone. She was going to need an expert to navigate her out of the ordeal.

Which is when she met the fortune-teller. Or, rather, he introduced himself to her.

“I know the look of someone playing chess,” said a voice in an unfamiliar accent.

Mage looked up from her Americano. A short old man with a smile was waiting for her reply. He wore vintage formal clothes that were so well cared for, they looked new. They made an attempt to cover his belly. His hair was parted, slick and orderly, but his face belonged to a sales rep who had been through several bad years.

“Oh, are you talking to me?”

“Of course, you are the one playing the game, aren’t you?”

There was nothing on Mage’s table that could be even remotely confused with a chess set.

“Um… there’s not a board.”

“You may not be playing a game, but you are certainly considering your next move.”

Mage found his double meaning. She waited for the sales pitch, assuming it would be vacuum cleaners or insurance.

“Mage is it?” he asked as he pulled up the chair across from her.

This weirdo had crossed a line. He was doing research behind the scenes. Almost like a repo man. She had perfectly good credit, so what could this guy want? The coffee turned bitter in her stomach as she realized he might be here to collect on her outstanding debt for her spell. But that didn’t make sense, because she thought her physical change was the cost. She pulled out a phrase that didn’t need forcing.

“Yes, have we met?”

“Yesterday. Or maybe it wasn’t you.”

“It definitely wasn’t. You’re a memorable individual. I bet you leave quite the impression.”

The man shrugged and pouted out his lower lip, then said, “Could have been the other you.”

Mage didn’t know what to say or how to act, she just sat there, dumbfounded, while the coffee started crawling up into the back of her throat.

The man let a moment pass before he broke the silence. “She is considering her next move too.”

Several things about the encounter were distressing to Mage, but the fact he spoke without any sort of regard to anyone who might overhear was something she wouldn’t play along with.

She leaned over the table and whispered, “How do you know about us?”

“I am what you would call a fortune-teller.”

“Why are you here?”

“I want to sell you something.”

“My fortune?”

“No, I’m selling a solution to your problem with your duplicate.”

“You can really help me?”

“For a price.”

“I need proof.”

“Ha, I think you’ve all the proof you need. You did the impossible. You found the thing that wasn’t supposed to exist. You pulled back the veil of doubt and found fantasy on equal footing with reality. You cast a spell that worked. You, Mage, are the proof.”

This was too easy. Something didn’t sit right with Mage.

“Did she pay you? Are you helping her?”

“You are accusing me of playing both sides? Would someone in that position tell his clients he was speaking to their opponents?”

“Why can’t you give me a yes or no answer?”

“Why can’t you accept the opportunity you’ve been offered?”

“Because some things are too good to be true.”

“Ha, if you followed that advice, you’d never have agreed to the terms of the spell that condemned you to some unspeakable fate.”

“It’s not so bad. I’ll adjust to the new appearance, and I can take things to manage the pain.”

The fortune-teller laughed. “That is not your cost. That is her casting a spell on you. You still haven’t had your reckoning.”

She almost dismissed him, but it dawned on her that had she been in the same position as the nanny, she would have done the same thing.

The man smiled, seeing that she had accepted his observation.

Mage had gotten caught doing something she’d suspected was wrong from the start. She figured a lecture or some sort of punishment would be coming shortly, but instead the fortune-teller told her a story.

“You’ve only just glimpsed the smallest fragment of magic, and I can’t tell you everything all at once, but I’ll start with the djinn. Or genies, as you have probably heard them called. Magical creatures born of a smokeless fire. Long ago, they walked the desert and occasionally interfered with humanity.

“Until the day when one of them decided to make life very difficult for one man, a fortune-teller not so different from myself. Indeed, the djinn convinced the village the man was a fraud, and they imprisoned him at night to execute in the morning. In his cell, the fortune-teller constructed a trap out of a simple ring that was powerful enough to contain a djinn.

“In the morning, the prisoner was taken out into the public market to meet his end, and just as he suspected, the djinn was there in disguise to witness his demise. And if you are familiar with how djinn disguise themselves, as the fortune-teller was, it is not difficult to spot them.

“The man threw his ring at the djinn, and the disguise was revealed before the crowd. They screamed in panic only to watch the djinn be pulled into the trap. The fortune-teller was released, and the ring put in a safe place where the djinn would need to fulfill a life of servitude by granting wishes and could only earn his freedom when someone had wished him free.”

Mage waited for the story to turn, but that was it.

“I don’t get it. What was the point of your story?”

“The point is, the world has heard variations of this story for centuries, but the only thing anyone remembers is that if they find the artifact they can get their wishes granted. No one talks about the fact that a mortal was able to construct a trap in one night powerful enough to contain a magical creature.”

Mage thought she got it now. She wasn’t being scolded. The fortune-teller was sincere.

“And do you know how to make a trap like that one?”

“Yes. But not in one night, mind you. I mean, maybe. If my life was in the balance.”

“How much time would you need?”

“Let’s talk price before we talk details.”