Patricia White - A Wizard Scorned
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A Wizard Scorned
Patricia White
Another one for you, Bill
Copyright 1998, Patricia White
ISBN: 1-58200-021-2
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no
relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. These characters are not even
distantly inspired by any individual(s) known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure
invention.
Go to Chapter:
Prologue|1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 |9 |10 |11 |12 |13 |14 |15 |16 |17 |18 |19 |20 |21|22|23|24|25|26|27|28|29 |
Epilogue
Prologue
The huge cat stretched, yawned widely, showing an impressive set of fangs, and rearranged his wealth
of sleek, black fur, and an even sleeker wealth of underlying muscle, on the dark, sun-warmed surface of
an old lava flow. He did it all, and with great deliberation, before he even attempted to answer the young
man's question.
"Since, this once, you have the brain to ask my advice before you end up fire-dancing in your
bare-feet, I'll give it. Youth, they say, is curable by time and experience; if rash acts don't do you in
beforehand. But, it would seem to me, and my motives may not be the same as yours, that you'd be
making a very large mistake if you do not accept the task these men have offered you. You have the
knowledge and the magic to see it to its end."
The cat's words were plain in his mind, as they always were. The wizard took a deep breath, tried to
marshal and somehow dispel his doubts, to rationalize his fear that the task was beyond his doing. That
the men who had offered him gold had somehow twisted their words, had let their dreams and needs
speak louder than the truth. He couldn't.
To others, Sojourner, the great cat that must forever wander, might be a myth, a winter tale told when
the fire was burned to ashes and embers and the wind sang a sad lament outside the walls. But not to
Will. Will knew the truth; or as much of the truth that could be known. And if this deed was important to
Sojourner, then it had to be-- if Will could make it so.
"Your quest?" Will asked, leaning against the side of the stone, pushing his fingers through his
disordered hair, trying to fight off the memories Sojourner, probably without malice but certainly with
purpose, had invoked. It was a useless battle.
The hot sun blazed in the summer sky, but Will shivered with another cold. The icy cold of a small boy
who stood in the snow and watched, young and helpless, tears of sorrow freezing on his gaunt face, as
his world ended in a roaring fire and the screams of his dying parents. And the great, silver-eyed cat,
coming from nowhere, curling around the child, warming him, guiding him, saving him from...
It had happened long ago, but was eternally bright in Will's memory. It was all there, the grief and the
fear and, above all else, the debt he owned Sojourner. A debt that would not be paid until That Which
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Was Lost could be found or Sojourner was somehow freed from the terrible burden he...
"Young wizard," the big cat's rumbling voice, audible only in Will's mind, sounded infinitely weary as he
said, "time runs too fast. It must be soon or all will be for naught."
"And me fetching the brides will help..."
There was no real answer to the wizard's hesitant question. So many paths spread before them, but
only one would lead to Sojourner's freedom, lifting the dark spell that made him both more and less than
he had been. He sighed.
"Young wizard, all was tangled at my changing, my magic and my memory were torn by the spell. I
cannot see clearly, but, yes, this much I know: the off-world brides have a place in what must be. One of
them is terribly important. How that can be, I know not. Only that she..."
Laying his massive head on his forepaws, he closed his silvery eyes. Sorrow was heavy around him,
but Sojourner was a cat. That, too, was his eternal bane. Grief was a raw and bleeding wound in his soul,
but cats do not weep. They cannot.
"I know not the outcome, young wizard," he said softly," but whether it be for good or ill, this bride
fetching must be done and very soon. That much I can see, well and truly."
It was Will's turn to sigh, but the wizard didn't even try to argue.
ChapterOne
"A wizard?Gathering brides to take to some alternate earth? Really, Maggie! The whole concept is
positively ridiculous! The man is obviously a fraud!" However much the truth rankled in her orderly mind,
Jane Murdock carefully refrained from adding, "And only a fool would believe such blatant hogwash. A
silly romantic fool."
Instead, she sighed-- rather heavily and, if the truth be known, with a strong undertone of irritation.
Taking off her black-rimmed reading glasses, Jane placed them, with rather too much care, on top of the
small stack of file folders on her Queen Anne desk. Then, she switched off the computer, took a deep
breath, and walked, marched might better describe her mode of locomotion, across the wide expanse of
thick white carpet to where her secretary, Maggie Hilton, was standing. The white-and-gold credenza
was to her left, the door to the outer office behind her.
With an effort visible to even the most disinterested of observers, Maggie stood her ground. Trying not
to twist her short-nailed hands together, or not to take a step back or even flee the scene entirely, or not
to betray her great and still growing unease, her breath came a little too fast. No matter her feelings, she
waited for Jane, looking for all the world like a fear-petrified mouse about to be devoured by a very
large, very hungry snake.
"Maggie, listen to me," Jane said quietly, wanting nothing more than to continue her work session, to
complete the presentation for the Morris job. That's what she wanted but she knew, full well and not a
whit happy with the knowledge, that absolutely nothing would be accomplished until she had convinced
the younger woman that what she was planning to do was incredibly stupid . Indeed, it was quite possibly
dangerous as well. "The things this man has promised you can't possibly be true, and, if you'll just use
your head for a moment, think this idiotic premise through, you'll have to concede that. I'm sure that you
will be able to find the flaws this whole silly scheme, if you will just examine carefully what this man, this...
this...ah...so-called wizard has told you."
Red mouth set, unyielding, eyes filled with stubborn resolve, Maggie didn't looked convinced, so Jane
took a new approach. "You are what? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?"
"Twenty-three, almost twenty-four," Maggie said, her chin betraying the slightest of quivers. She took
a quick breath, swallowed hard, blinked, and even sniffled a little, but she still refused to back down,
even an inch.
Jane asked her next question, "And, I assume, since you are very competent in your rather demanding
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job as my personal secretary, you are reasonably well-educated? High school? Business school?"
Maggie nodded.
"Then, you must know that wizards donot exist, have never actually existed. Given that, why would
you, a modern woman, a presumably liberated woman of the 90's, even come close to believing this man
can wave his magic wand, or whatever it is he's going to do. He's not going to transport you to some
wonderful world. Take you to some utopia in some perfect country on some other earth, where men
want wives and aren't afraid of love, commitment, marriage, and all the rest of that garbage he's been
feeding you. Don't you know that he's handing you a line of bull big enough to..."
Several inches too wide in the hips, brown hair wisping down from what was supposed to be a French
roll, brown eyes large in their fringe of dark lashes, olive complexion smooth, but not in the conventional
sense truly attractive, Maggie blushed hotly. Then she gave her employer what could only be described
as a pitying look. And she took in a little hissing breath before she said, sounding both sad and slightly
embarrassed and stubborn enough to give a mule pause, "Ms. Murdock, I didn't really expect you to
believe me. But it is true. Will, he's the wizard, warned us about talking to other people about this. He
told us what they'd think and all. But, that doesn't really matter. It's just that you've been awfully good to
me since I came to work here, and I couldn't just up and leave without telling you where I was going and
why."
More red rushed up to burn crimson spots on her round cheeks and her voice quavered, just a little,
but Maggie went doggedly on, finished what she intended to say in a rush of words. "If I just
disappeared, you know, just went out to lunch today and never came back, I was afraid you might worry
that I'd had an accident, or been kidnapped by terrorist, or something bad like that. I like you too much
to make you worry about me over nothing. It just wouldn't have been right to leave without telling you the
truth."
Jane hadn't gone out of her way to be nice to her secretary. They had been terribly busy for the past
several months and had spent many long days working in each other's company, which led to a certain
superficial intimacy. It wasn't a relationship that Jane had, in any way, fostered.
Her position as Vice President of Smith, Smith, and Melrose, a Fortune 500 management consulting
firm, engendered a lifestyle that was high-powered, demanding, and time- devouring. It was also a
lifestyle that had no room for friendships, casual or otherwise.
Not that Jane had ever had that many friends; her aunt, the one that raised her and cast her out as
soon as humanly possible, had seen to that. She had done it for Jane's own good, or so she said, rather
often and with great sincerity. According to her, work was the only way out of poverty, work coupled
with education and driving ambition. Knowing poverty only too well, Jane had taken her aunt's teaching
to heart-- some, mostly disgruntled competitors, said she had learned the lesson far too well.
Now, for the most part, Jane didn't care what others thought or said about her. Their talk couldn't
actually change anything. She was already on the upper rungs of the ladder to success and had no doubt
that within the next few years she would reach the top. It was a goal, it seemed, she had been working
toward since her parents' death when she was almost four, the time she had gone to live with her aunt in a
walk-up flat in the poorer part of town.
The thirty-three years stretching between the time of her parent's untimely deaths and the present
hadn't, for the most part, been what anyone would call easy or enjoyable. Still, now her bank account
was growing, her stock portfolio was thick and diversified, and she was already a force in her chosen
field. Granted, all the work, dedication, and achievement hadn't left room for much else in her rather
hectic schedule; except maybe a frozen dinner tossed in the microwave and a few hours of sleep.
But, it did have its rewards. A personal shopper bought and coordinated her designer wardrobe. Her
hairdresser,the Jean-Claud of Jean-Claud Salons, made weekly office calls to keep her shorn locks chic
and fashionably gilded. There were drawbacks also; even if they were, at least as far as Jane was
concerned, minor. She had never been in love. The men in her life were strictly clients of the firm, with
business alone on their minds. Jane knew that she was rather lacking in the sex appeal department and
liked it that way; it posed far fewer complications in her work universe. What she considered the worst
drawback to her current position had nothing at all to do with men, or ticking biological clocks, or babies:
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Jane didn't even have time for a cat and she'd always dreamed of having one.
At the thought of the cat a ripple of sadness touched her, but only for the moment. She was too busy
to feel sorry for herself. Far to busy to allow the best personal secretary she had ever had to go haring off
with a self-proclaimed wizard. The kind who, supposedly, worked real magic, the sort of
sizzle-and-crackle, wishes-come-true magic that only existed in children's minds and adults' fantasy
books.
Real wizards, had such a thing actually existed, certainly wouldn't have done what Maggie claimed and
advertised for brides in the classified section of theNew York Times . The whole notion was ridiculous.
Totally ridiculous.
Irritated by the delay, the disruption it was causing in her well-planned day, she was determined to
prove Maggie, and the rest of the so-called "brides" were being conned. But, Jane knew, with only a
whisper of guilt, that her concern was more centered on the fact that she would have to hire and train a
new secretary than on anything else; including Maggie's future happiness or lack thereof. Taking care of
people, and straightening out their incredibly messy lives, wasn't real high on Jane's list of priorities;
especially when they acted, as Maggie was certainly doing, from total stupidity, not reason.
Maggie cleared her throat, made a little gulping sound. "Will is still looking for brides, Ms. Murdock. I
thought maybe you might like to come with me...ah...us," she said softly. She looked at the floor, not at
Jane, and blushing fire engine red, a burning red that brought little drops of sweat to her brow and upper
lip.
Her words were so completely unexpected that Jane was caught off guard, if only for a moment. "Me?
Why on earth would you... I can't believe that you would even imagine that I would even consider such
an asinine proposal, let alone have..."
Despite her excellent secretarial skills, Maggie certainly wasn't listening to her boss' sputter of protest
at that moment. She seemed to listening to her own heart's needs rather than to anything that even
smacked of sanity. Her eyes fixed on some inner vision, her blush faded to a becoming pink and she
smiled. It lit up her face, made her appear far prettier than her usual wont. It was the smile but the tone of
her voice, the longing in her words that gave Jane an almost irresistible urge to grab her by the shoulders
and shake some sense back into her silly head. She was, however, too disciplined to give in to urges. She
gritted her teeth instead. And listened to soppy, romantic words that were little more than drivel; at least
as far as Jane was concerned.
"Babies," Maggie said softly. "I'm going to have a husband that loves me and babies, lots of babies.
We'll have a house, a log house, with a fenced yard and yellow roses climbing all over the big front
porch. Horses. We'll have a herd of horses, and a dog, a big, happy dog. It'll be just like in the old days.
You know, when men loved and protected the women who worked beside them to realize a dream..."
It was too much. Jane snorted in disbelief. "Instead of sounding like a dreamy-eyed
I-don't-know-what, you'd better go to the police and see what you can do about getting your money,
whatever it was you gave this..."
Still smiling, Maggie shook her head. "It isn't like that at all. We didn't give Will any money or anything
else. The men from Will's earth, the ones who ordered brides, did that. They paid for everything. You
know, like Will's magic to get us there and our new wardrobes for there and..."
Grinding her teeth together until the cords stood out in her thin neck, Jane clenched her hands into fists.
Then she counted to ten. Took five deep breaths. And finally allowed herself to say, with a little less
sharpness in her voice than would have actually taken the other woman's head off, but not much less,
"Maggie, how can you be so damned stupid about this? Wizards donot exist. Magic only happens at
magic shows. It's an illusion, a trick carefully designed to fool the mind into believing something that isn't
true. Your so-called magician is a crook, a charlatan, a real phony, and he's getting something out of this.
And whatever it is, you're the one who is being took. And not to some alternative earth either."
Raising her head to look directly at Jane and taking a huge liberty, Maggie put her hand on the sleeve
of Jane's watermelon-red silk jacket. She didn't exactly beg, but there was definitely a note of pleading in
her voice when she said, "Ms. Murdock, even if you are rich and famous and all that, you're still a
woman. You have a woman's dreams and a woman's heart. And I know you have to want more out of
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life than you're getting now, something real and lasting, like love, instead of all this cold-blooded business
junk. Please, won't you just come with me and talk to Will and..." Her voice wavered, died. Her hand
tightened for just a second before it dropped away from Jane's arm, but Maggie's eyes never wavered--
and neither did the pity and concern and real caring that was so apparent in their depths.
Perhaps it was her own irritation simmering into something very close to fury. It certainly wasn't the
younger woman's misplaced pity that made Jane say, "I can see that we aren't going to accomplish a thing
until this is settled. Go get your purse, re-schedule my luncheon appointment, and leave word with the
receptionist that we will be out of the office for an hour or so. If anything important comes up, she can
beep me."
Her secretary, beaming happily, was scarcely out the door before Jane, falling prey to a marauding
band of second thoughts, opened her mouth to call Maggie back, to cancel the wizard visit. But, Jane
had never backed out on a promise in her life. And, even if this current venture was an exercise in futility,
she had no intention of starting now.
Straightening her shoulders, she walked, with unyielding determination in every step, to her desk. After
she cleared the top of folders, Jane retrieved her own surprisingly large bag, from the desk drawer,
added her reading glasses to the diverse and multitudinous collection of things inside, and was ready to
go.
Or almost. Holding the black purse by the shoulder strap, she took a moment to look around the
sunny office. She admired the lush ferns, the view of New York from the sixty-third floor, the clean,
uncluttered expanse of very expensive carpeting and even more expensive furnishings. Fighting off the
odd feeling that she was bidding the whole place a final farewell, Jane slid the bag onto her shoulder,
stepped into Maggie's office, and firmly closed the door to her own private domain behind her.
Their cab was fighting the traffic on Fifth Avenue before Jane said a word, and then she only asked,
"Are you sure you want to go through with this, Maggie? You could save us both a lot of trouble if you'd
just forget all this nonsense. If we go on, I can assure you it won't be pleasant. Men, like this phony
wizard of yours, who prey on women aren't exactly the most savory..." Jane shook her head.
Smiling gently, Maggie didn't try to argue, she just said, "Please, don't worry about being hurt or
anything, Ms. Murdock. Will isn't at all like you think. He's different than any man I've ever...I don't
know. He's got brown hair that sort of flops down in his eyes. It makes you want to brush it back and...
His smile is...well, he isn't handsome exactly, but he is somebody that you can really trust. He's... You'll
see."
Jane considered herself a master at reading faces, voices, and what she heard in Maggie's gave her
pause. The young woman was obviously enamored with Will, and that fact alone was enough to cause
even more complications. The man was not only a phony, but if she was getting all the clues, he was also
a bounder and a cad, a man who was intent on leading a whole group of young women astray.
"You'll like him," Maggie said again. "I know you don't trust him now, but you will. You'll see."
She saw all right, but what Jane saw certainly wasn't what she had expected when she followed
Maggie up to the door of a tall, narrow, brownstone on Forty-Second Street. At least, that's where Jane
though it was, but for some reason the actual location kept eluding her mind-- not that it mattered, she
certainly didn't need to find it again.
According to the few fantasy flicks Jane had seen, and regarded not only as a waste of time but also
as a waste of film, Maggie's wizard wasn't exactly dressed-for-success in his chosen profession. Jane's
expectations of flowing gowns, peaked hats, and long white beards weren't met. Will was wearing shiny
black cowboy boots, faded blue jeans (the cheap kind with no labels), and a western shirt, blue-plaid
with pearl snaps down the front when he opened the door.
Jane blinked, but nothing changed as he stepped back and invited them in. The a room was nearly
filled with chalky symbols drawn on a shabby brown carpet and a plethora of flaming candles and
burning incense. There were, at least, twenty young women, not a single one of whom would ever grace
the cover ofVogue. But each and every one of them had a look of anticipation, of energy, eagerness,
aliveness that made them far more than just pretty.
It was a look that Jane Murdock came very close to envying-- and would never, not even in the
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hidden places in her own mind, have admitted.
ChapterTwo
Lanky, not-quite-finished-looking, taller than Jane, but not by more than a scant inch, and, at the very
least, a good decade younger, Will, the so-calledwizard, smiled and waved Jane and Maggie toward
two unoccupied chairs. Ignoring the soft-voiced whispering of the other brides, and Jane, he said, his
approving gaze for Maggie alone, "Maggie, I was afraid you weren't going... I'm glad you're here. We'll
be leaving shortly-- as soon as the last two of the wizard-order brides arrive."
He paused for breath before he asked, with a bare, disinterested glance in Jane's direction, "Is this a
friend come to see you off?"
Blushing, rather prettily, Maggie shook her head, gnawed on her lower lip, and said, guilt tingeing her
explanation, "I know you said not to tell anyone we were leaving, Will, but, I couldn't just... I don't have
any family, but Ms. Murdock, Jane, is my boss. She came with me to...to...she thinks you are doing
something wrong. I let her come because I wanted her to go with us to your world. She doesn't believe
that you're who you said were, or anything like that, but I thought if she just met you, listened to you talk,
then she'd know you were telling the truth about the other world and everything..."
"Shhh, Maggie, it's all right. You've done nothing wrong," he said, forgiveness in every syllable, before
he turned to face Jane who was standing several steps closer to the front door than was her contrite
secretary.
It was then that Jane got her second really good look at him. He might not fit her mental image of a
wizard, but he damned sure wasn't handsome either-- not unless your tastes, which Jane's didn't, ran to
callow boys. By a narrow stretch of the imagination, he might be considered wholesome-looking, but
only after he got his mop of rough-looking, brownish hair cut and styled and conditioned. His eyes, blue
and piercing, might pass muster-- they even had an honest, somewhat worried look, which didn't quite fit
with his con.
Unless, of course, Jane thought, he was just the front man in a larger scheme-- one that boded no
good for the young women involved.
Will didn't want to look at Ms. Murdock, not when just looking at Maggie gave him so much pleasure,
but there was something about the woman that demanded his attention. What, he didn't really know, but
her figure would have put a bean pole to shame and her face, especially those burning black eyes,
wouldn't find her a husband even in a place as woman-starved as...
He shook his head and, surprisingly, really meant it when he said, "I'm really sorry, ma'am, but I can't
take you with us. I'd like to, but I'm afraid you don't meet the specifications."
Maggie came close, the light, flowery fragrance of her perfume tickled the inside of his nostrils, her
nearness made him almost breathless-- and it certainly diminished Ms. Murdock's importance in his own
particular scheme of things.
"She's only thirty-six or so, not nearly as old as she looks," Maggie said softly. "And she's not sick or
anything, you know, like anorexic. She'd fatten up if she just would just stop working long enough to eat.
Her hair is really... It'll grow and..."
He wanted to please Maggie-- far more than he had any right to-- but magic, even if it was by his own
doing, had its rules. His particular preference couldn't come into play-- if it did, Maggie would never
marry one of...
Will wouldn't allow himself to finish that thought. He was just a struggling young wizard with nothing to
offer in the way of a home or worldly goods or even... And that's why Maggie was going with him, that's
what she wanted: a loving husband, a home, and babies. That's what he had promised, on his wizard's
honor, to give her.
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Strangely, and certainly against his better judgment, he was already more than half in love with her, so
he knew he could give her one of the three easy enough, but not the others, not a home and babies. Not
now, possibly not ever. Will sighed, but he was intent on doing his duty and doing it as painlessly as
possible. And doing his duty meant letting Ms. Murdock down as quickly as he could, without hurting her
feelings, or making her angry, and getting on with activating the travel spell that was almost ready to go.
"I'm truly sorry, ma'am," Will said, reaching out to pat Jane's silk-clad shoulder, "but my employers
gave me a fairly rigid set of qualifications and you just don't..."
Fire ran from her shoulder up his hand and arm, and for just an instant he saw a pair of silver eyes,
looking not at him, but at her, and a longing that transcended time and space, was...
Jane jerked away.
Will shook his head and rubbed at the burning that still ached in his fingers. She couldn't be the one
Sojourner had foreseen. She just flat-out couldn't be. Jane Murdock was tall, gaunt, nearly ugly, and as
arrogant and self-centered as anyone it had ever been his displeasure to meet.
But, despite all that, there was something about her, something...
His touch still smarting and burning on her shoulder, Jane blinked away what had had to be a
hallucination. She took another step away from Will and said, fury making her voice cold, enunciating
each word clearly, making sure that both Will and Maggie understood exactly what she was saying, "My
looks, or lack thereof, are not a matter up for discussion. I am not here to become one of your...your
women. I neither need nor want babies, a husband, or whatever else you're pretending to peddle to
complete my life.
"Iam here to tell you that if you don't quit whatever it is you are doing with Maggie and the rest of
these young women, I am going to the police. I will have you arrested for white slavery or pimping or
procuring or pandering or..."
Consternation, mixed with what too closely resembled pity, was written plainly on his young face,
giving him an almost comic look. Will took a step back, then two more, stopping when the outer edge of
a small, dusty piecrust table, its top fairly covered with burning candles, touched his thigh. "I am deeply
sorry that I have offended you, ma'am, but you don't honestly understand what it is you're planning on
doing. I have given these women my word of honor, and that means a good deal to a wizard, that they
will find love, marriages, and homes in my land. That is important to them and me, so I can't allow you
to..."
"Will, or whatever your real name is, you don't have any say in the matter," Jane snapped. "Con artists
like you make me sick, promising these gullible women the world and then having them end up in some
house of..."
He ran his fingers through his hair, disrupting what little order it possessed. But his voice held only
puzzlement when he said, "I know it must be difficult to have reached your age without acquiring a
husband and a family, ma'am, but I truly don't understand why you're reacting this way. I didn't mean to
hurt your feelings-- I really didn't draw up the list of requirements. The men who hired me to bring back
the brides were adamant in their need for healthy, pretty young women of childbearing..."
"What you're doing is illegal!" Jane all but shouted. "You can't just waltz in here and..."
"Ma'am," he answered, bowing ever so slightly, acting as if she were well over-the-hill and in need of
cosseting, humoring, and careful explanations, given in words she should have no trouble understanding,
even in her state of advanced senility. "I assure you that what I am doing is well within the laws of your
land. If you care to examine them, I have a business license and all the necessary export permits.
"Besides, this particular business has a long history in your country. In fact, it was a very respectable
thing when your own West was still young and untamed and good women were beyond price."
The door opened, two young women hurried in, stepping around Jane, smiling at Will, murmuring
apologies for being late, causing a whirl and billow of incense and a bending of candle flames.
While Will was greeting the newcomers and seating them and Maggie in the three empty chairs left in
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the circle, Jane began edging toward the closed door to the outer, saner world of honking horns,
screaming sirens, and roaring subways. She fully intended to escape from the madhouse, and the
madman in charge, and run, not walk, to the nearest police station.
Will reached the door before Jane did. Although how that was possible, she didn't know. He put his
hand on the knob, held it tight as he confronted her, tried to finish his rather feeble explanation of what he
was doing in New York.
"Mail-order brides have long been a tradition in your land, ma'am. Just because a regular mail route
hasn't been established between my land and yours doesn't mean that what I am trying to do is illegal.
And, I can assure you it will not be detrimental to either the morals or..."
Whatever else he intended to say was lost in the theatrical and, in Jane's estimation, totally overdone,
billow-of-smoke, spectral-blue-light, crash-of-thunder entrance-- from out of the nowhere into here-- of
one of the most beautiful women Jane had ever seen.
The woman was dressed in what looked to be state-of-the-art wizard robes. They were complete
with cabalistic designs in a shimmering gold and a tall, peaked hat-- it, like the robe, was of the purest of
whites and sort of glimmered and gleamed with inner light.
Dainty as an angel, waist-length hair so fair it only hinted at being yellow, she stepped into the middle
of the room, carrying a long, bark-peeled, willow switch. Her smile was anything but angelic when she
looked from Will to the seated brides-- her green-eyed gaze passing over Jane as if she were some
slick-tailed, smelly rodent too insignificant for existence, and too repugnant to be stomped.
"I am Cordelia," she said, acting as if the pronouncement should mean something-- it didn't to Jane,
and as far she could tell, it didn't seem to be making a big dent in Will's memory either.
He gave the newcomer an awkward bow and said, sounding polite but more than a little apprehensive,
"Pleased, Cordelia. I am Will. How may I serve you?"
"So, Will," she said, her voice as smoky as the room and heavily ladened with scorn, "ignorant fools
that they are, they actually thought a no-talent, freshly hatched wizard likeyou could circumvent my spell?
I can assure you that it is not going to happen. Not now, not ever; unless Max comes to his senses. And
then, the interdict will no longer exist, so it really makes no difference. Does it?"
The woman smiled and Jane was hard put not to shiver.
Will gave his head a slight shake, as if he were trying to make sense out of odd bits of nonsense.
"Who's Max," he asked.
Not bothering to answer, Cordelia raised her switch, brought it slashing down, whistling with power,
sparkling with some sort of glowing dust.
"Cordelia, don't!" Will shouted, lunging toward the intruder, and knocking Jane down and falling on
top of her in his headlong rush to prevent whatever it was Cordelia was going to do. "My transport spell
is set. If you're not careful you'll kill the brides and..."
Jane landed flat on her back, and not without pain, loss of breath, and a sudden, brief but very curious
blurring of her vision. And an odd feeling that someone, or some silver-eyed something, was watching
and, just maybe, reaching out to her, whispering a name that might have been hers. But couldn't have
been, of course. Any reasonable person knew better than to rely on feelings when reason was a much
more reliable tool.
She wasn't frightened; Jane was too furious for that, furious at both Will and Cordelia. But most of her
anger was directed at the man who seemed all elbows and knees as he lay where he had landed on top
of her. He couldn't seem to be able to do anything but struggle fruitlessly, poking Jane in various of her
body parts in the process of trying to regain his footing.
"Damn it, get off me!" Fighting to catch her breath, she pushed at the self-proclaimed wizard, and tried
not to see what was going on, tried to believe that the scene beyond Will's shoulder was all smoke and
mirrors, stage magic, illusion. It had to be.
What was happening couldn't be real, not in New York City, not in a run-down brownstone. The
brides, Maggie included, couldn't, positively could not be popping out of existence, one by one, like blips
on an old video game. Cordelia couldn't be lifting the switch to bring it down on Will's unprotected back.
Acting on instinct, not on any deep-seated need to protect the man, Jane's right hand went up to ward
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off the blow. The stinging switch struck them both.
Cordelia's cold, mocking laughter and anything but fond farewell were ringing in her ears when Jane,
and the young man sprawled on top of her, did some existence popping on their own. It was not an
illusion.
Sojourner looked deep, caught a single glimpse of a woman's face and ice ran through his veins, froze
him in place, stole his breath. She was all fire, black fire, shot with green, to his seeing, and he longed for
her as he never longed for another human. And even before the seeing broke, fragmented, leaving him
alone, the great cat knew her name, whispered it once in his mind.Jane . And with the naming came the
fear-- for her, or for himself? Sojourner didn't know-- and not even the warm sun could take the cold
from his bones, from his heart.
She was coming. He wasn't ready-- perhaps he would never be ready. He tried to look again, to
probe the future for what-would-be. It yielded nothing.
Jane didn't know exactly what had happened to her, but she doubted, most sincerely, it was a magical
illusion. She didn't know what to think of the silvery-eyed presence that had haunted her dreams. If that
had actually happened. But she did know that the smelly bed that cradled her when she woke, thankfully
alone, was only too real.
Nose wrinkling at the musty, musky odor, Jane wasted no time scrambling out of the bed and brushing
bits of lint and other specks of unknown nastiness off her jacket and knee- length skirt. That done, she
took stock.
She had been asleep; that was a given. Although she felt no after-effects and her clothes betrayed no
evidence of any great time period having passed, she still concluded she must somehow have been
drugged and transported to some third- world country or something.
And, from the looks of things, she was not only going to have to rescue herself but Maggie as well;
that's presuming she could even find her secretary. But first, she had to assess the situation and try to
make some plans. She had to know what she was going to do. It certainly wasn't the moment to turn into
Chicken-Little and run around screaming her head off. Even if she did feel like the sky had fallen right in
the middle of her tidy, ordered life and that a good scream or two wouldn't be entirely amiss.
Her modest heels catching in the braided rug, Jane began a cautious circuit of the small room, stopping
frequently to rub her eyes and shake her head. It was like a room in a museum of Old West artifacts--
one that had been setup as a very life-like diorama, accurate to the last tawdry detail. Mentally, she
ticked off the items that had no place in her real life. The slop jar, for used wash water, perched on the
lower shelf in the rough wood washstand which was topped with a plain white pitcher and a basin to
match. The lidded chamber pot, the so-called thunder mug of yore, under the edge of the iron bedstead.
The soiled, and rather racy-looking, wrappers hanging on a row of wooden pegs beside the curtained
doorway. The oil lamp, with a yellow flame burning inside its smoked glass globe, on a stand beside the
bed. The billowing muslin that was the ceiling. The moss-and-mud chinking between the huge logs that
formed two walls of the room.
But strange as her surroundings were, it was the stack of dingy towels on the wash stand and the bowl
of what looked like lard on the bedside table that made her realize where she was. And it afforded her no
satisfaction to know that her suspicions of Will were all true.
The young man had, indeed, been lying to the women he had recruited in New York. There were no
husbands waiting for them, no rose-covered picket fences, no cooing babies; there were only places like
this.
Houses of ill-repute.
ChapterThree
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Depending on her mind, her powers of logic and reason, as she had done her entire life, Jane wasn't
one to jump to hasty conclusions. Especially those based on too little evidence, but this was one
conclusion that didn't require that sort of effort on her part. It was a house of ill- repute, or, to be
perfectly accurate, a room in a bawdy house. Given the givens, that's all it could be.
Added to that was another irrefutable fact-- she, Jane Murdock, was the tawdry room's present
occupant, the resident whore, as it were. And, despite the odd jumps and descents in whimsy her mind
seemed to be taking, Jane was far from being amused.
And, judging from the loud shouts and drunken laughter coming from somewhere beyond the curtained
doorway, the room was very much in service. Jane, with a shudder of revulsion, knew she was, more
than probably, on the current bill of fare. It had all the aspects of a melodrama, but there was no noble
hero waiting off stage to save her.
Indeed, what would a noble, virtuous, and lily-pure hero be doing in a place like this? Hell, heroes
weren't even supposed to know places like this even existed, were they?
Making herself take a deep breath, of not exactly pollution free air, Jane straightened her back and
tried to straighten her errant thoughts, to make them stop skittering and jumping, making weird
connections, and flittering on to something else. It wasn't something she could allow, especially under the
present circumstances.
If she was going to get out of this particular predicament, she was going to have to do what she had
always done and save herself. And if the sound of feet climbing up a creaking stair was a viable
indication, she was going to have to do her saving pretty damned quick.
But how? There wasn't a single window in the room; the only light came from the flickering flame in the
oil lamp. She turned abruptly, feeling the solid thump of her black shoulder bag against the jut of her hip,
and walked to the door. She pulled aside the curtain to peek into a shadowy hallway before she took a
tentative step out of the room. Despite the oddly pooled areas of dark, there was still light enough-- and
it seemed to have no real source-- for her to see the man who had ascended the stair.
Every smear of dirt on his whiskery face, every patch on his filthy shirt, every speck of dried sweat
and ingrained grime on the man himself grew increasingly plain as he came toward her. He rubbed his
hands together in obvious glee while he grinned in what could only be described as anticipatory delight.
Jane stood her ground. His grin faded when he got his first glimpse of her.
Stopping short, he stared at her, shook his head. "I might'a knowed. Cordelia said she brought us a
present, but..."
He pulled a flat, brown bottle from his hip pocket, lifted it to his mouth, and took a healthy swig of
what had to be, from the smell that was joining the general stench in the air, rot-gut whiskey.
"Oh, well," he said, more to himself than to Jane, "I won the toss, and to my thinking, a skinny old
whore is better'n nothing. 'Sides that, Cordelia gets a mite riled iffen her presents ain't rightly appreciated
and it's a right chancy thing to rile a wizard. 'Deed it is."
After taking another pull from the bottle, he staggered toward Jane, arms outstretched, evidently
intending to embrace her or to do something equally repulsive.
Disbelief and growing horror smothering the swarm of questions in her mind, Jane backed through the
doorway and into the bedroom. She knew full well it wasn't the smartest move to make, but not seeing
any other way out of the present confrontation.
Jerking aside the soiled curtain, he followed her into the small room, pausing just inside the doorway to
lean forward and peer at her. "You be more'n a sight peaked. You ain't be having the whore pox or
nothing bad like that, be you?"
She didn't know what whore pox was, but she wasn't about to demand an explanation. Explanations
weren't first on her list of priorities, getting away from him was. "Certainly not! Get away from me!"
Jane took another step back, fumbled in her purse, trying to find one of the cans of pepper spray she
knew was in there somewhere. She'd bought two canisters yesterday, or what seemed like yesterday,
and dropped them both in her purse. She was certain she had done exactly that, but she couldn't seem to
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AWizardScornedPatriciaWhiteAnotheroneforyou,BillCopyright1998,PatriciaWhiteISBN:1-58200-021-2Allcharactersinthisbookhavenoexistenceoutsidetheimaginationoftheauthor,andhavenorelationwhatsoevertoanyonebearingthesamenameornames.Thesecharactersarenotevendistantlyinspiredbyanyindividual(s)knownorunknownt...
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