Page 138 of Junk Magic

“You know, I couldn’t figure you out, back at the house. Here you are, Laurentia of Lobizon’s daughter, a noble of one of the oldest houses out there, yet you’re slumming in Vegas with a vargulf and a crew of street rats. When I first heard about you, I assumed you were one of those women who go gaga over a guy and trash their lives running after him. But when we met . . . you didn’t fit the bill.”

“Thanks.”

He inclined his head. “You looked like the poster child for a Were noble, yet you opened your house to a bunch of outcastes. You chatted with us, ate with us, sympathized with us—and with that stray cat from the magical community and her crazy pack of friends. And it wasn’t the usual do-gooder dynamic, not that vargulfs see a lot of that. Mages don’t like us ‘cause we’re Weres and bad ones to boot; wolves don’t like us, well, because we’re inconvenient. Losers who get in the way of the nice world they’ve built for themselves.

“Yet there you were, taking us in. Didn’t make sense—until today. When the news broke about your unfortunate affliction. Then a lightbulb went on, and I got it.”

He sat up and leaned closer. “You like us because you are us, and even worse as far as the posh types down there are concerned. They’ll exile and revile us, but if we stay out of their way, they’ll let us live. But not you—”

“Does this have a point?” I asked, and hated that my voice was hoarse with emotion when I said it.

But it only made him smile more. “Yes. The point you were asking about, in fact. I realized that you understood what it’s like to be outcast, rejected, persecuted. You’d done nothing wrong to deserve your fate—neither had I. Neither have a lot of us.”

He paused to take a drag on his cigarette. “You know, being made vargulf used to be a rare thing, reserved only for the most heinous deeds. There weren’t a handful made every year, if any. But now? There are hundreds turned out of their clans every year; thousands every decade. Thousands of people left friendless and alone, cut off from others of our kind, abused, taken advantage of, even killed—and no one cares.”

“And you do?” I asked. “You were turning boys over to that bastard Jenkins. You must have known what he was doing with them!”

He didn’t answer for a moment, looking up again at the field of non-existent stars. It suddenly felt oppressive, that unnaturally darkened bowl. I began to understand what he’d meant.

“Yes, I knew,” he finally said. “But say I hadn’t helped them. Say I’d taken them in instead, begun a fake clan like Cyrus. How many could I have saved? A dozen, maybe a couple hundred over my lifetime? I’m playing for more than that.

“We don’t need charity, Lia, we need change. Real, lasting, meaningful.

“Lia,” he said again, rolling my name around on his tongue. “You don’t use Accalia, the name of a Were noblewoman, because you aren’t one. You couldn’t be; you were outcaste from birth. Instead, it’s Lia, a human sounding name. Because that’s all you are, all they’ll let you be.

“Like this is all they let me be. They turned me into this—whatever I am anymore.”

He had been facing me, leaning forward, as if trying to recruit me as he had all those boys. And I could see why they’d gone with him, trusted him. He had charisma, dirty jeans and all.

But now he half turned his face away. “I know how it is to lose a name. I lost mine; I lost everything. That story I told you in your backyard? It was true, every word of it. But I didn’t tell you the rest.”

“And what is the rest?” I found myself asking.

“The reason this has to change, has to burn down, right to the ground—all of it. Every last goddamned piece of the tradition they use like a lash to beat us with.”

“Like they beat your father?” I guessed.

He turned back to me then. “No, I wouldn’t be here for that, for a mere beating. But he did go to see them, after we lost everything—after it was stolen from us. He went to beg the council at a session just like this one. They allow that, you know, on the last day? They allow the little people to present grievances . . . only most never do, knowing the wrath they’ll face from their clans if they dare to make them look bad.

“But we didn’t have a clan anymore. My parents raged at the leaders after I was outcast, and thus became outcasts themselves. But that didn’t stop my father. He went to Wolf’s Head, a vargulf daring to enter those great jaws, and not only that, but to petition the council. It was a small group that day, just a rump they call it, but enough to make a ruling. Enough to hear him, or so he thought.

“But they didn’t hear. They killed him instead. He had no badge of office to protect him, no noble blood in his veins, no friends or money or anything they respected. Just a simple man asking for justice, and they spilled his blood on those sands instead.”

“That’s why you did it there,” I said, understanding.

He nodded savagely. “They should have died there, all of them! And not just for my father, but for the rest of us. There will never be lasting change until they’re gone, Lia. You talk about Sebastian, but he won’t do anything. Oh, he’ll try,” he said, when I opened my mouth to protest. “Perhaps even sincerely. But he’ll fail.

“They’ll throw everything in his path—procedure, tradition, and worst of all, procrastination. Yes, they’ll say, and you’re right, and of course . . . yet nothing will be done. Or it will be some surface change that doesn’t do shit, because it doesn’t apply to them. And if it doesn’t apply to them, it doesn’t count.

“So, we make it apply to them.”

“Make it . . . how?” I asked, starting to get a very bad feeling.

He smiled. “I think you already know. I knew, as soon as I realized what Jenkins was doing, what he wanted with all those boys. I’m the one who persuaded the clan to start brewing up some punch for me to sell on the streets. Very hush hush kind of thing, just to humans, why should the mage make all the profit when you’re doing all the hard work?

“It was easy.”

“But you didn’t sell it,” I said.

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