Unknotted

The Enchantress and Her Coat

Georgie

The entrance to the factory, a utilitarian design of concrete and steel, had four sets of sliding doors. Toolboxes in hand and caps hiding our faces from the prying cameras, Peth, with Jik tucked into her collar, and I entered the drab lobby. A troll several inches taller than Peth, a foot and a half taller than me, sat by a counter and a pair of metal detectors. The detectors also scanned for potions or enchantments, neither of which worked without the tide.

Standing, the troll guard appraised our threat level, seemed to conclude it was low—the fool—and sat again. “You the mechanics?” His words slurred, as was common among male trolls due to their larger tusks. This troll kept his longer than most, allowing them to curl until they almost brushed his cheekbones.

“Handywomen, actually. We work on more than just machines.” I winked, causing him to raise a thick brow.

Setting our toolboxes and belts on the counter, we passed through the detectors without setting off any alarms. The guard shuffled through our toolboxes. He was being more thorough than I had anticipated. As his inspection dragged on, Peth tapped her fingers anxiously against her thighs while I tried not to stare too much at my toolbelt. If he went through all of those pockets, there was bound to be items I couldn’t explain away.

He picked up an item from my box and held it out. “What’s this?”

I squinted at the object. “A battery for my drill.”

“And this?” He held up another object.

“Head lamp in case I have to crawl through the vents. That’s what the rope is for too.” I shoved his monstrous, snooping hands away from my toolbox and snapped the lid closed. “If you’re going to ask what everything in that box is, we’re going to leave. I was promised double pay to have this place up and running in a certain amount of time. It’s hardly fair for me to spend half that time explaining tools to someone who could put the monkey in monkey wrench.” I turned to Peth. “Let’s go.”

“Wait! You’re here!” An enchantress rapidly approached from the hall that led toward the factory floor, the click of her heels bouncing down the gray hallway. Her hair was combed and sprayed into a perfect wave around her face. In her sky-high heels, sleek white pencil skirt, and flowery blouse, the willowy enchantress looked out of place in the dull factory. “Onyx is an oaf. Come with—”

She paused, taking in my deceiving eyes. My sclera were white and my irises lacked the sheen found in enchanter and gravita eyes.

“You’re a hybrid,” she accused.

Hands in my pockets, I rocked back on my heels. “Yep.”

Peth took a half step in front of me. “Got a problem with that?”

The enchantress’s lips pursed, then curled into a vicious smile. “Not at all.”

“Great.” I returned her smile with a sharp one of my own. “Now because you and your oaf have wasted our time, we get five more minutes.”

“The time I have given you is sufficient.” Her eyes glimmered like faceted stones in a jewelry case, overly bright and brilliant. Surrounding her irises, her sclera was darkened to black—a sign of a powerful enchanter. That would have been intimidating, had the tide been in.

I met her haunting gaze and raised an eyebrow. “Ten more minutes or we leave.”

“Very well.” She spun on heel and marched back down the hall. She never bothered to offer a name or ask for ours, which was pretty typical of these gigs. Knowing a troll’s and a hybrid’s names seemed to be beneath most dynamists, especially enchanters. It worked for me. The less beings I had to give a pseudo name to, the better.

Peth and I, fastening on our toolbelts and collecting our boxes, followed. The hall opened to a room filled with pipes, gears, wheels, wires, half-made military vehicles, and an entire mess of machinery that was frankly overwhelming. I knew my way around any home repairs and systems—that kind of stuff was part of my day job after all, but factories were Jik’s cup of cocoa.

More enchanters lounged in seats behind dashboards of buttons and switches beside the stalled assembly line. Unlike the enchantress, their sclera were light to medium gray, indicating their enthralling abilities were minimal. Among them, gremlins in oil-stained overalls hurried around the floor, checking this or that in an attempt to appear competent. Unlike Jik, most relied on their magic to diagnose and fix mechanical and electrical problems. Without it, most gremlins were useless in these situations.

A tap on my shoulder drew my attention. It was only Jik jumping from Peth to me. He slid behind my ear and whispered, “Tell her you want to start at the ground floor and work your way up.”

“Where’s the basement?” I asked.

The woman narrowed her eyes. “I thought you would start here.”

I shook my head as Jik fed me an excuse. “With how quickly everything shut down, the problem is likely downstairs.”

I locked eyes with her, silently accusing her for what I would find in the factory’s underbelly. The enchantress drew up and peered down her slim nose. It made her look almost cross-eyed. She was several inches taller than me, but without the fear of being enthralled, I allowed myself to match her stare.

A spark of humor entered her eyes. On this hemisphere, dynamists voted with their dollars. No family had more votes than the Broshots. Who would believe a nobody hybrid like me or troll like Peth, if we spoke out against this family’s atrocities? “You’ll need to sign a nondisclosure agreement,” she said.

“Of course.” My teeth gritted together.

The enchantress led us toward an office with giant mirrored glass windows that oversaw the main floor. As we passed a room filled with security screens, Jik jumped off my back. His jet pack buzzed like a fly as he zipped into the room.

The enchantress scanned the air, brows pinched.

I waved a hand before my face and cringed. “That was a huge roach. I can give you a discount if you need exterminator services as well.”

She only frowned at my smile and a led Peth and me into the office to sign the documents. She turned to a small closet by the office door and shrugged into a fur trench coat that nearly brushed the ground. My eyes caught on that coat and heat hotter than a Sparker’s spit ignited in my belly. Ink pooled under my pen, poised halfway through scribbling one of my pseudo identity names: Randa Vey.

The pen snapped in Peth’s hand. She was also glaring at the coat, her lips draw tight against her tusks.

Noticing our stares and the splatter of ink from Peth’s broken pen, the enchantress flicked up her hood and smiled. “Like my coat? Bet you’ve never seen anything so fine.”

I swallowed back my venomous reaction, handed Peth a new pen, and forced my lips to curl into a smile. “It’s lovely. What kind of fur is that?”

She combed her fingers through it. “Some kind of desert fox enchanted to resist the heat. It’s blasted hot in the boiler room, you know.”

“I would imagine so.” I scribbled off the rest of my fake signature, grabbed Peth’s papers, and handed the documents to the enchantress. My anger was trembling through my muscles so hard that if I didn’t start moving soon, I would vibrate right out of my skin.

“Regular desert fox fur?” Peth pried, each word enunciated with careful control. “Must have taken at least fifteen foxes to make a coat so long.”

“How should I know? I didn’t make it.” She led us back onto the factory floor, the tail of her blood-money coat swaying in her wake. The enchantress knew blasted well that fifteen desert foxes didn’t die for that coat. Typical animal skins wouldn’t hold enchantments of that caliber. Only those entrenched with the Shadow Market, or those working to bring it down, those like me and the Ebbing Society, would know exactly who had to die so this enchantress could have the comfort of not sweating in the boiler room.

Hybrids had to die.

If killed in our beasts form while the tides were in, our heightened abilities would infuse our corpses. Harvest our organs and bones fast enough, enchant them, and poachers could create all sorts of trinkets, clothing, and potions that held magic, even when the tides were out.

“Sorry, I don’t have a coat for you.” The enchantress glanced at Peth whose tools were starting to rattle in their box in time with her trembling anger. “They don’t make them in your size.”

My hands were quivering too. Only through sheer force of will did I not swing my toolbox into her head. I forced a polite smile to my face. “I believe you were taking us to the boiler room, ma’am.”