Sorcerer's Luck Read online

  SORCERER’S LUCK

  KATHARINE KERR

  Copyright © 2013 by Katharine Kerr

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce

  this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events

  portrayed in this novel are either fictitious

  or are used fictitiously.

  Ebook formatting: Karen Lofstrom

  Cover design: Laila Parsi

  Bear photo: Soldatnytt

  ELECTRONIC EDITION ISBN

  978 1 61138 264 8

  Sorcerer’s Luck originally published by Osel Press, June 1, 2013

  Book View Café edition, July 16, 2013

  Book View Café

  Dedication

  For Karen Williams and Chaz Brenchley

  Acknowledgement

  A good many people helped me hammer this story into shape,

  but I owe particular thanks to Kate Elliott and Megan Beauchemin

  for sage advice and encouragement.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About the Author

  About Book View Café

  Chapter 1

  I met him at the Alameda County Fair, an oddly wholesome place to meet a sorcerer. I was taking a summer class in portraiture at the art school where I was studying for my BFA. In mid-July, our instructor made arrangements with the fair’s management to let her students set up a booth. We worked in shifts, drawing chalk pastel portrait sketches for ten bucks each, a bargain for our customers and great practice for us. Since our booth sat between the line for the merry-go-round and a ring-toss game, we also learned how to repel kids with sticky hands who wanted to draw on our paper.

  On a hot Saturday afternoon, when the merry-go-round was playing its oom-pah-pah version of “Die Lorelei” for the hundredth time, a man sat himself down in the chair across from me and my drawing board and handed me a ten-dollar bill. A good-looking guy, tall, slender, with sandy-brown hair and brown eyes, he dressed with a total lack of style. He was wearing dirty jeans and a nerdy shirt: brown and white plaid with short sleeves and a big mustard stain on the pocket.

  “Can you leave this out when you draw me?” He pointed to the stain and grinned. He had a cute dimple at the corner of his mouth. “I bought a corn dog. It was a mistake on a couple of counts.”

  “No problem! Would you like full face, profile, or three-quarters?”

  He looked startled, thought about it, then shrugged. “Whatever you feel like drawing,” he said. “You’re the one who knows about art.”

  “Full face, I think, sir.” We’d been told to be polite, you see, and call our customers sir or ma’am. But when I said “sir” I got a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if I’d just turned myself into his servant. From the way he smiled at the word, I knew he saw it the same way.

  I retreated into the drawing process. I’ve always been good at using my art to escape from whatever unpleasantness is going on around me. I learned how when I was a kid and my family was falling apart over my father’s insistence on studying ritual magic, which my mother considered utterly fake and faintly ridiculous. As an adult, I realized that the way they fought about his obsession meant the marriage had other, deeper problems. As a kid, I just shut down.

  My customer made it easy for me to concentrate on the present moment. He sat stone-still, a good model, as I glanced back and forth from his face to the pale cream paper. For this fairground exercise we’d been told to work fast, receive quick impressions, keep the lines loose, sketch in the proportions and then try to capture something of the sitter’s personality. I’d done five successful sketches that afternoon, but as I worked on his, I kept going wrong.

  I’d look at him and get a clear impression. Once I started to chalk in a line defining an eye, say, or the shape of his face, my hand stubbornly refused to draw what I’d seen. I felt like swearing at my fingers as they drew according to some idea of their own.

  When I finished, I had a portrait sketch of someone strange, dangerous, and tormented. The shape of his skull had flattened out on top but pushed forward in front, more animal-like than human. Odd bluish shadows defined his cheekbones. Pain gleamed in his eyes, deep-set and dark, eyes that had looked on terrible things. His lips had drooped from their pleasant smile to a thin, tight, bitter line. I took his ten dollar bill out of our change box and held it up.

  “Here’s your money back, sir,” I said. “This sketch is really bad. I must be tired or something.”

  He laughed and waved the bill aside. “Let me see the picture first,” he said. “Maybe it’s not as bad as you think.”

  “Uh, no. I’ve got an eye for this, and I can tell crummy work when I see it.”

  ’ He grinned and held out his hand. “Ah, come on! It’s not like I’m going to be insulted. You’re being straight with me.”

  I unclipped the sketch from my drawing board and handed it to him. He looked at it and nodded at the image.

  “It’s a perfect likeness,” he said. “You’ve got an eye, all right.”

  I went cold all over. For a split-second his eyes and mouth looked like those in my drawing, although the shape of his head stayed human. He smiled, turned back into a perfectly normal nerdy guy, and said, “Aren’t you gonna spray this with something?”

  “Yeah. Chalk pastels smear like crazy if you don’t fix them.”

  I took the sketch back and stood up. We had a table set up under a beach umbrella where we kept our supplies out of the sun. I found an aerosol can of fixative and treated the drawing. I also managed to convince myself that I was imagining things. He didn’t really look like that drawing. He was just being polite.

  “It’ll take a minute or two to dry,” I said, “and then I’ll roll it up and put it in one of these cardboard tubes.”

  --> When I handed him the tube, he took it with a little nod of his head, smiled, and flipped the tube up to hold it vertically in front of him, like a dueling pistol in one of those historical flicks. For a moment he looked startled. His gaze caught mine and held me speechless in a web of pure desire. If he’d asked me to take off my clothes and have sex with him right there in public, I would have.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

  He turned and hurried away as if he’d scared himself, too. I was trembling so hard that I had to sit down. Maya, I told myself, you’ve got to get out of here. Now. My heartbeat pounded the message: out out out.

  Getting out, however, presented a problem. I had to wait till the next person showed up for her shift because I had to guard the cash box and our supplies. Brittany tended to run late. I waited for an hour before she came waltzing up. She flopped her backpack down on the table and flipped her long blonde hair back from her face.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I had to wait for Buster’s new parents to pick him up.”

  “Who? Oh! One of your dog rescues?”

  “Yeah. A Rottie. He’s got his forever home.” She paused to look at me. “Are you okay? You didn’t eat any of the garbage they’re selling here, did you?”

  “No, thank you very much, Miss Pure Organic.”

  “Well, sor-ree! What’s wrong with you?”

  “You’re late, and—” I hesitated. You don’t tell someone that you need to run away from a sorcerer you’ve just met. “I’
ve got cramps.”

  “Oh.” She stopped pouting and looked guilty. “Ohmigawd, I’m sorry, really sorry. What you need is some pennyroyal tea. I’ve got a couple of packets right here—”

  “Uh, thanks, but I’d hurl. Anyway, here’s the cash box and the other stuff. Your turn. I’ve got to find a porta-potty.”

  I grabbed my backpack and my hoodie and trotted off. I glanced back to see Brittany changing the name plate. We’d set up a miniature easel where we could place a piece of cardboard with the current artist’s name. Mine, the “Maya L. Cantescu” card, had sat in full view while I’d drawn him. He knew my name. I wanted to run or maybe vaporize.

  I had to work my way through the crowds on the fairway. Kids ran in front of me. Adults bumped into me. A couple of drunk guys blocked my way and leered. When I stepped around them, one of them laid a hand on my butt. As I twisted away from him, I snatched some of his energy in return. He deserved the loss, the creep!

  I thought I was heading for the exits, but somehow I got turned around. I walked for what seemed like half a mile only to end up on the other side of the merry-go-round from the art booth. I swore under my breath, took a sighting down the line of game booths, and headed for the gate again.

  This time I ended up stuck between a toddler-sized ride that featured cars shaped like ladybugs and a stand selling soda pop. I could see the merry-go-round just one row over and hear that rotten Lorelei song, too. I knew then that the sorcerer was keeping me from leaving. I couldn’t waste any more energy on running around the damned fair. I’d used up too much already. I bought myself a small lemon-lime soda with extra ice, wandered over to watch the ladybugs go round, and waited.

  He came strolling up a few minutes later, as nerdy as you’d want in his jeans and stained shirt. He smiled and said, “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

  “No. I’m not going anywhere with you.” I looked down and studied the ice in my soda.

  “Please? I want to offer you a job.”

  This I had never expected. “A job?”

  “Yeah. Spotting magical illusions.”

  “I get it now. You’re crazy, aren’t you? You should go back to your halfway house and leave me alone.”

  He laughed, a remarkably pleasant laugh, as soft as slow water running over stones. I looked up, and once again his eyes changed. This time I knew what was going to happen. When he tossed his sexy web over me, I threw the soda into his face. The spell shattered. I turned and ran. He yelped but stayed where he was.

  I ran all the way to the exit, which appeared in its proper place, and hurried out to the parking lot. My beaten-up old green Chevy sat where I’d left it. Before I got in, I checked the back seat: no sorcerer, nor did he appear before I drove off.

  As soon as I’d gotten a safe distance away, I pulled over to the side of the road. For a few minutes I just sat there and breathed, trying to summon energy from the air. As usual, I failed, but at least I got a little rest. I fished my cell phone out of my backpack and called the portrait class instructor. I told her I was having a bad period and couldn’t work the booth on Sunday. She assured me that someone else would take my shift.

  I was living in Oakland in a minimally furnished basement studio, a knocked-together long room with a tiny bathroom at one end, separated from an equally small kitchen area by a partition. Unsanitary, yeah, and illegal, too, but it was all that I could afford. At the other end of the room I had a twin bed, a floor lamp, and an armchair. That was it, no TV, no table, nothing else except a narrow closet for what clothes I owned and a cardboard box for stuff like underwear.

  Even though I had a full scholarship, I was dead-broke and in debt up to my ears thanks to miscellaneous fees, the cost of art supplies, and my unfortunate habit of needing to eat now and then. I owned a laptop only because the school required it and my scholarship paid for it. My one indulgence was a smartphone. I’d considered giving up the phone, even, because of the monthly fee, but with my health problems I needed to be able to call my friends in an emergency.

  Through the only window, high up on the wall, a cold gray light seeped in to illuminate my squalor. My job was flipping burgers—minimum wage and one free meal on the days I worked. Tiring work, but I’d never found anything better or safer. Students are a dime a dozen in the East Bay. The competition for part-time work is fierce.

  “Rats,” I said aloud. “Maybe I should have asked him about that job.”

  Fail! I recognized it the second I said it, even before he knocked. I went up the steps and opened the door to the street only as far as the chain would allow, about three inches, and eyed him through the crack. He’d put a frayed gray sweatshirt on over the shirt. At least it hid the mustard stain.

  “Uh, look.” He sounded honestly miserable. “I’ve got to apologize for that transmission spell. I’m real sorry. I never should have made you feel what I was feeling. I mean, it wasn’t any better than that jerk pawing you, was it?”

  “No, it certainly wasn’t. Hey! You saw that?”

  “I was trying to reach you to deal with him, but the crowd slowed me down.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for him to go on.

  “Look,” he said, “I’ll go away and leave you alone. I’m not a stalker, honest. I got carried away this afternoon. But that’s not an excuse. I’m glad you threw that ice in my face. It woke me up.”

  He was either a top-quality actor or sincere. I figured the latter because I’d never seen him on TV.

  “I know I was wrong,” he went on. “Maybe about a couple of things.”

  “Okay, enough,” I said. “I forgive you.”

  “Thank you. That means a lot to me. You’re really beautiful, you know.”

  It had been a long time since any guy had called me that.

  “Well, you are.” He dropped the guilt and smiled. “You must have gypsy blood, with those dark eyes and that hair. Raven hair, I’d call it, glistening like wings spread in the sunlight.”

  “Spare me the poetry! No romantic gypsies in the family tree.” I laid a hand on my cheek. “I get this coloring from my mother. Her family came from Indonesia, but there was some Dutch blood in there somewhere, too.”

  “Cool.” He hesitated as if he were trying to think of things to say. “Uh well, thanks for forgiving me.”

  I refused to answer. His eyes—I risked a look and saw the grim, tormented eyes of my drawing, but this time I felt nothing. He was keeping his word. He reached into his jeans pocket and brought out a shabby leather billfold.

  “Let me give you my card,” he said. “If you change your mind about the job, please, you can call me.”

  I took the card, then shut the door and slid the deadbolt. I glanced at the card and opened the door again. He was already about ten feet away, walking down the sidewalk, hands shoved in the sweatshirt pouch, head bent.

  “Hey,” I called out. “There’s no phone number on this.”

  He swung around and gave me his ‘only a nerd with a cute dimple’ smile. “You won’t need a phone to call me,” he said. “Just my name.”

  He turned around again and walked off. When he reached the cross-street, he vanished.

  His card said Torvald Thorlaksson, Runemaster. I considered tearing it up or even burning it, but in the end I put it into the zipper pocket of my backpack. Maybe I’d need to check that job out one day. When you live on the edge, you don’t waste chances at extra income.

  The portraiture class lasted for four hours every morning, Monday to Friday. After Tuesday’s class, I went out to lunch with a couple of my friends: Brittany, who despite her flakiness showed real talent with fiber arts, and Cynthia, who was taking the animation curriculum and doing some painting on the side. They looked like a pair of opposites, Brittany so thin and pale, Cynthia so solid, with curly brown hair she wore pulled back in a rainbow scrunchie. They thought like opposites, too, about most things, but somehow we all got along. On class days we all dressed pretty much alike: paint-spattered jeans and
old T-shirts or decrepit blouses.

  Our usual cafe had a big front window looking out onto a tree-lined street. That afternoon we lucked out and got one of the nice wooden tables in front of the window. I sat right opposite the window while Brittany and Cynthia took the chairs to either side.

  My friends ordered food. I could only spare enough money for coffee. When their plates arrived, loaded with sandwiches and salad, my stomach rumbled loudly enough to be heard. I buried my nose in my water glass and pretended not to notice. Ice water can take the edge off your appetite, or so I’d learned over the years.

  Cynthia gave me a wry smile, put half her sandwich onto a paper napkin, and slid it over to me. “Eat,” she said. “I can’t possibly finish all this.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Oh come on, Maya! We all admire how hard you work to stay in school. We know you’re not a freeloader. So, eat.”

  “You push yourself too hard,” Brittany put in. “You really do. We all see it, your friends I mean.”

  “Ah c’mon,” Cynthia said. “I honestly won’t be able to eat all of this.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I picked up the sandwich and tried not to drool. “I really appreciate it. But I can pay you back when I get paid. That’ll be next week.”

  “No, don’t worry about it. Good grief! It’s only half a sandwich.”

  “Have some salad.” Brittany slid her plate closer to me and handed me a plastic fork. “This kind of lettuce is a particularly good source for vitamin A.”

  If my mouth hadn’t been full of ham sandwich, I would have cried in sheer gratitude. I swallowed the bite and said “Thanks, thank you both.”

  They just smiled for an answer. For a few minutes we ate in silence. Standing at an easel for four hours brings on your appetite. Eventually Brittany turned to me. “How’s your brother doing?”

  “Same as always,” I said. “Badly. He keeps hitting me up for money for drugs.”

  “Well, don’t give him any,” Cynthia put in. “It’ll only make things worse.”