Magical Misfire Read Online Free PDF Page B

suppose you want to know what I did to that lot and why. It was their fault. Some of the lads, good and steady customers, took me out for a sea cruise. The merrow tribe didn’t care for that.”
    “Why not?” Bryn asked. “How would they have even known that you had magic if you were on the deck of a boat?”
    “I set off a few fireworks. I used to entertain the lads with magic tricks. Well, they thought they were tricks,” she said with a laugh. “When the water danced with bits of flame on its surface though, it drew the merrows, nasty bastards. Merrows are magic, too. When they swim in circles around a ship, they can pull it off course and send waves sloshing onto the deck. They’re like a rainless storm, they are. I lost my temper.”
    “And shrunk them?”
    “I plucked them from the sea with magic and shrunk them to the size of goldfish. I had to do a sleight of hand to get them into a bucket unbeknownst to the fellows. At the end of the night, I took the merrows back to my room in the ladies’ boarding house.”
    “They must’ve been tricky to conceal in a boarding house with visitors coming and going constantly and the women living in close quarters. There can’t have been much privacy,” Bryn said.
    Sally smiled. “You’re a bright one, aren’t you? And quite right, you are. There were some who knew I kept a trio of special fish. But no one in that house would’ve crossed me. They needed me.”
    Bryn raised a brow.
    “Merrow scales. I brewed a tea with the scales and poured it into the bath of any who came down with a pox on her privates. Or any who got taken with fever after visiting the abortionist. Back then it wasn’t like it is now. Today there’s medicine that works. A girl can get it at any clinic or hospital. If she’s taken with fever or bleeding and doesn’t have money to pay a doctor, she’s not turned away. But in those days, there wasn’t much to be done that really worked. I clutched a girl and pulled her back from the jaws of death more than once.” She smiled. “They were grateful to me, but feared me, too.”
    “Did you charge for your cures?” Bryn asked.
    Sally’s grin widened. “No, but the girls gave me bits and bobs. Pretty new combs for my hair, bolts of lace for a new dress. They could afford it. We took in the richest customers because our place was the cleanest, and by that I don’t just mean we did the washing up regular.”
    “So everyone was happy,” Bryn said. “Except the merrows.”
    I cast a glance at Bryn. I thought he was being a little hard on Sal, considering his own daddy had caught and kept a merrow once for its healing properties.
    “I didn’t give a bob for the cares of merrows, so for me it was all grand for a time, true enough. But I’ve my vices, too. Sailors loved to lie with me, not just because I was a woman with all the parts in pretty proportion, but also because in bed I move like a sea nymph riding the waves. I’m part water witch. No naval bloke could resist me. I had my pick of rich merchants and powerful politicians, but I passed plenty of hours with sailors and at my whim, they rowed me out to sea and snuck me onto their ships.”
    “The merrows must have wanted their kinsmen back. And revenge upon the witch who’d abducted them?” I said, my dress rustling as I moved.
    “They surely did, and since I had no intention of returning anyone, I was careful not to raise their attention. I cloaked my magic when on the water.”
    “But?” Bryn asked, brows rising.
    Sally let out a heavy phantom sigh. “I had a bit of ale one night and let some magic slip while walking on the docks near sunup. A bogle grabbed me.”
    “What’s a bogle?” I asked.
    “Fae, halfway between spirit and flesh. This one was beholden to the Unseelie court and came from north Texas, where the dark court had settled after losing the war on the isles. I was abducted into a carriage that smelled of smoke and onions and taken far from Galveston. A