Jordan ran a rag over the inside of a beer glass, giving it one last polish before setting it back in the cabinet. The bar wasn’t going to open for another couple of hours, but she liked getting the easy chores finished early, before she started in on some of the orders for charms and potions and other bits of magic that were still outstanding.She tossed the rag over her shoulder and gazed out at the room, checking over her domain. Everything looked good: The floors were swept and mopped, the chairs straightened, the mirror behind the bar polished to gleaming. Cleaning was mindless work, but that was what she liked about it—magic forced her to dive too deeply into her own thoughts sometimes, like she was pulling herself inside out.The air tightened, squeezed, and exhaled. A prickle of energy rushed over Jordan’s skin. She cursed under her breath.Something had tripped the protection charms.Such charms were strewn all over Bar Vodnář, a hodgepodge of magic that Jordan had assembled over the years. Some were twisted into the walls of the building itself, family heirlooms that had been here since the beginning. Others, less permanent, were made to look like decorations: bunches of dried herbs in a chipped vase, polished stones scattered around the tables. She used a blend of some staid Ice magic and a few select Flame spells, as well as some of the homey folk magic she’d picked up in her travels. It was an effective arrangement, and it didn’t miss much.It was still thrumming. More strongly, now, more insistent.Jordan sighed and slapped the rag down. She sidled up to the window and peered out, catching a glimpse of a pair of men strolling down the sidewalk. She frowned. Then she reached into the cabinet below the bar. She pulled out a strand of wooden beads, each one carved with a different alchemical symbol, and draped it around her neck. Then she grabbed the little velvet bag of offensive charms and tucked it into her pocket. It wasn’t much, but she wasn’t going out there completely unarmed.The air buzzed and sparked against her skin: an eerie sensation, but not exactly unpleasant. This wasn’t Gabe’s damned golem, at least. Something smaller. Something she could probably handle.She did a quick reconnaissance of the inside of the bar, checking the upstairs seating area and then the labyrinthine back rooms. Nothing. She assumed whoever it was hadn’t gotten inside yet—the charms would have been screaming if that were the case—but Jordan was a cautious woman, and sorcerers, whether Ice or Flame, were slippery sorts. They found their way through the cracks.Jordan approached the alley exit tucked away in the corner of the bar. She put one hand on the doorknob and gathered the wooden beads in the other, tugging the necklace against the back of her neck. She closed her eyes and murmured ancient words very softly. Magic bolted through her. If anyone tried to attack her unawares, they wouldn’t get her on the first shot. Maybe not the second, either. No guarantees on the third.She pushed the door open.Cold February wind swept inside, blustery and still holding on to winter. Jordan let go of the beads and stepped out into the street.“Who are you?” she shouted. “I know you’re here. I can feel you.”Voices. A whiff of cigarette smoke. Jordan followed the building up the alley to the main street. A pair of men leaned against the lamppost in front of the bar. They glanced up at the sound of her footsteps but didn’t say anything. The smoker lifted his cigarette away from his lips and blew out a cloud of smoke.The protective charm pulsed. Jordan stomped forward. “Bar doesn’t open till noon.”The two men glanced at each other. Jordan had never seen either of them before, but they had a toughness to their features that you didn’t usually find in the Ice. The Flame selected by talent and skill and loyalty to the cause; the Ice selected by pedigree.“We heard good things about this place.” The smoker gestured toward the front entrance with his cigarette. “Wanted to see it for ourselves.”“I told you,” Jordan said. “I’m not open.” She didn’t reach for her charms. Not yet. If they were just scouts, she didn’t want to start anything she didn’t have to. She’d try to chase them off the mundane way first.“Great location.” The second man peeled himself away from the light pole and ambled toward her. Jordan tensed. “An excellent intersection, don’t you think?”The bar’s location was shit, actually, tucked in between ornate buildings housing government bureaucracies. Most of the people around here weren’t the sort to frequent a place like Bar Vodnář. But there was another reason you might say this place had a great location, and it was burning in invisible rivers beneath their feet, a nexus of power that converged directly under the room where the lonely and downtrodden and desperate of Prague sat down to have a drink every night.These two gazma were Flame, then.“I told you, we’re not open yet.” Jordan took a step forward.The smoker flicked his cigarette out into the street.“And I’m not letting you in until noon,” she continued. “You want to drink, you come back then. You want something else from me—” She fixed them both with a stone-cold stare. “Don’t bother. I don’t have what you’re looking for.”The smoker grinned. “I don’t know about that, Miss Rhemes.”“Well, I’m not offering it. That better?” Jordan jerked her head down the street. “Leave. If you stick around out here, you’re gonna freeze to death before we open.”The two men exchanged glances, and then they shifted, their movements slow, casual, vaguely menacing. Jordan stared at them, chin lifted. These two were low on the chain; she could take them if she had to.They shifted their weight, kicked at the old ice in the snow.“We don’t freeze,” the smoker said as he walked past. “You’d do best to remember that.”Jordan watched them go. They meandered down the sidewalk. The smoker kept throwing glances her way, but they eventually rounded the corner and disappeared. Off to report to their Flame bosses, no doubt.Jordan went back inside through the alley entrance. The protection charms had quieted and stilled. For a moment she stood beside the door, breathing in the scent of sage from her charms and the lemony glow of her cleaning solutions. It was difficult to do serious magic without support from the two factions, but Jordan had managed all this time because of the ley lines converging under her bar. She could feel them now, like lines of electricity.The Flame were up to something. First those two university professors had stopped by, and now there were men skulking around like a pair of hungry dogs. This was about the ley lines, about the kind of magic you couldn’t do alone.She did not like it.Jordan double-checked the lock and then stepped into the first of the back rooms, past the storage shelves and into her office. The familiar scent of dried herbs washed over her, and for a moment she stood and considered her options. The Flame had approached her before about access to Bar Vodnář, but this encounter made her nervous in a way the previous one hadn’t. Before, they’d at least pretended to be genteel. This aggression had the stink of desperation about it.With quick, practiced movements, Jordan began pulling supplies from the shelves. Bits of stone, boxes of matches, twists of twine—she selected each item from memory, then laid them out on her desk. Studied them. Then she unlocked the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out her grimoire, a book she had sewn together herself many years ago, chanting softly as the thread wound through the paper. Now, she thumbed through the pages until she came to the section she needed.For Fighting, it read in Arabic, written out in the looping handwriting of her youth. She hardly recognized it all these years later, hardly connected that writing to the person she’d become.She selected a charm from the table of contents, and then she set to work.
