Chapter Text
A part of Hob, the part that could turn from proper soldiering to banditry in a day — though really, there wasn’t much difference between the two, back then — is tempted to just cross the room and snatch the bag of sand off the table, stealing it and damn the consequences. But he doesn’t need Lynna’s warning yip to tell him that’s a bad idea. For one thing, he lives and works here, and it’s never been a smart idea, in any time or place Hob’s ever known, to shit where you eat, as it were. Also, that is a trio of witches, and while Hob knows he just might have some quiet power of his own, he also knows when he’s outclassed.
He just ambles over, as if he’s only a little curious. “Hey, what’s that you three have there?”
Anna Locke actually spent six months bartending for Hob, so he's not surprised that she's the first one to look up. Her squirrel daemon, perched on her shoulder, eyes the way Lynna isn’t wholly able to stop her tail from bristling, and whispers in Anna’s ear. Whatever he says, Anna doesn’t look particularly concerned. "Evy here won this in a Push game, but we've no idea what it does."
"It's got power though," Evy says. Hob likes Evy; she's a tiny little thing, all wild red curls and twinkly blue eyes… and one of the best card sharks Hob has ever met. Since he's one himself, having been playing cards since they came to England — and was actually one of the people making suggestions the night three bored magicians invented Push — that's saying quite a lot. He's not sure what her magic skill set is, but he knows she's powerful, being groomed to take over the coven one day. And even if Hob didn't know that, he thinks of Lady Johanna with her eyes gone white, and that's proof enough that she's definitely not wrong about the bag.
"Why don't I take it off your hands, then?" Hob asks, and his casual tone is practiced, but he's very good at it by now.
"Why would you want it, though?" Alexandra Shepard asks. Damn. Alex has only been by once before, with Anna and Evy. She’s an American here for work or something, and as far as Hob can tell, she doesn't like him one bit. Why, he's not sure, but he's heard Alex's discipline is something necromantic, so he just sort of assumes he hits her radar weirdly given the immortality thing. To be fair, her eyes are a shade of green just a bit too off for a human eye color, and he has a sense of wrongness every time she looks at him. Maybe she knows that.
Still, that doesn't mean he feels he's earned the suspicion in her tone, or her jackal daemon’s beady stare.
Or maybe he has, because, actually, Hob's first instinct is to lie. Partly because he lies a lot, to everyone, whether he likes it or not. And partly because, well… He's never told the Stranger about his supernatural entanglements because he's always felt those stories weren't his to tell. Surely the reverse applies and he shouldn't go around telling three of the local hedge witches about his Stranger?
"Looks like an old artifact that belonged to a friend of mine," Hob says, which is true without giving away any secrets.
"Can't be," Evy says. Her own daemon is some kind of snake, and usually lives wrapped around her wrist. Hob can see his little blue head peeking out at her wrist. "It's been in a private collection since the early 1930s. I guess maybe it used to be part of a matched set with whatever your friend had, I guess. Anyway, there's not much use for it. I can feel the power in it, but it can't be opened. Probably magically bound to its owner or something along those lines."
Since the early 1930s. Oh fuck. That means whatever happened to Hob's Stranger happened a good sixty years ago. Snatching the bag is looking more tempting than ever, but again, Hob knows better. So he allows none of his horror to show, hiding it all behind an old bandit's grin and shifting to lean easily against the wall. "Got any plans for it?"
Evy smiles at him, sharp and bright all at once. Her daemon's tongue flicks out, tasting the air, and Hob feels Lynna's ear twitch against his leg. "That depends. What do you want for it?"
After that, it's a matter of haggling. Hob might have magic and he might not; either way, he doesn't hold a candle to Evy, and he knows it. What he does have is money, and some artifacts of his own, and contacts. Evy is the likely heir to one of London's more powerful hedge covens. They can do business, and after writing a check, going upstairs to fetch a certain amulet he acquired while he was in New Orleans with Jacquetta, and a promise to introduce Evy and Anna to the Dublin branch of the Teagan clan, he has the bag of sand.
Not a bad price, all told.
Two days later, he's on a plane to the States for a consult. He knows a fair number of magicians. He only knows one who's also good with artifacts.
"Christ, Rob, where'd you find this?" Brian Teagan asks, peering at the bag through green-lensed glasses that help him see... something magical. Hob's never been clear on what exactly he uses them for, though Brian's got a whole collection of glasses with different lens colors. He's worn three different pairs so far while looking at the bag, and his greyhound daemon sniffed it all over, then pawed at her muzzle like it stung somehow.
"Bought it off one of my local witches," Hob says mildly, fingers scritching between Lynna's ears. "But it belonged to a friend of mine, and it being out in the wild, so to speak, means something's wrong, so I'm trying to track him down." He's a bit jetlagged from the flight, London to Philadelphia, but it's fine. Also, he suspects the sand might have something to do with it. The first day he'd had it, he'd been inexplicably exhausted, and Lynna had gone to sleep even while he was still trying to stay awake, but each day he'd adjusted. Now, a week and a half later, he only feels vaguely tired and that could just be from travel by now.
"Your friend must be powerful, if something like this belonged to him."
"He comes from power, I think, or at least money," Hob says, thinking of the lordling in 1389, and reasoning that it isn't really a lie even if he can't precisely confirm it either. "I once saw him use what's in the bag to... it was some kind of illusion magic, I think. Or..." What had the Stranger said? "He said the person had old ghosts that he was showing to her, I don't know exactly what that meant."
"This friend of yours human, Rob?"
"Does it matter?"
"Not to me. To the magic, maybe."
Shit. Hob shrugs. "I honestly don't know. I've known him for most of my life, though, for what that tells you." The Teagans know him, after all. They know what he is, more or less. So Brian will understand at least part of the situation just from that.
"All right," Brian says. "There's nothing I can do today, but my cousin Kat, she's a magical tracker. She lives in Colorado, so normally that'd be another flight for you but we've got a portal set up that connects to her house, because she also has two children and they need to be raised at least partially within the family. And her power has been very useful to us, I admit. What she can do is rare, and dangerous."
Keeping the assets close. Makes sense, really. Hob knows that the caster clans run a bit like old-school nobility, so that fits. "And she'll help?"
"Well. For a price. Not what I'd usually ask, you being a friend and all, but..."
Hob rolls his eyes, but Brian's been wanting the spellbook he found in Shanghai for six years now, and Hob was always going to give it to him eventually in exchange for something . This is as good a time as any, and better than most.
Hob has never traveled by portal before, and he isn’t sure he likes it. But time is of the essence at the moment and he's already had to do one intercontinental flight, so he’s appropriately grateful to Brian for setting this up. Despite Hob's ongoing connections to both the American and Irish branches of the Teagan clan, Kat Teagan herself is a stranger to him. While listening to Brian talk to her on the phone to make the appointment, Hob got the very real sense that if her cousin hadn't vouched for him, he wouldn't be here now.
Hob can’t say what he expected, but a freckly redhead with a gap-toothed smile, who doesn’t look a day over thirty, certainly isn’t it. Although…
Kat Teagan’s eyes are green. Not quite the inhuman color of Alex Shepard’s eyes, and yet…
And yet, Hob looks at them and sees the green of some deep river, and has the oddest feeling he might drown if he holds her gaze too long. For a moment, he tastes river water, even though the river he was drowned in was more brown than green.
Then he slips a hand into his jacket pocket, fingertips brushing silk-soft leather. Sometimes when he touches the bag, he feels drowsy, but just now, looking into dizzying river eyes, it steadies him instead.
Lynna leans heavily against his ankle, which is when Hob realizes he can’t see Kat Teagan’s daemon. It’s not as shocking as it might be; Hob is old, and he has supernatural connections, so he’s seen stretched bonds before. He and Lynna even have one, though they’re careful to act as if they don’t. He’s even seen the horror of the Severed, and Kat Teagan is certainly not one of those poor empty shells. So it’s not that disturbing.
It does add to the otherworldly feel of the girl, though. Maybe she does it on purpose.
“You must be Rob Garland,” she says. “Or so Bri says, anyway.”
“That’s me,” Hob agrees, though something about her phrasing makes the hair on the back of his neck prickle. This girl seems like she’s trying to do everything she can to be unsettling, which is why the most jarring thing of all is that when Hob steps inside, he finds a perfectly normal looking flat, complete with scattered toys that must belong to her children.
(Also, the whole place is full of the sharp almost-scent of magic, and Hob doesn’t think all of it is from the adult resident of the home, but that last part’s just a guess.)
Somehow, the very normalcy of it all spooks Hob a little, but he sets that aside. “Brian says you’re a tracker, but he didn’t really clarify what he meant by that,” he says, sat in Kat Teagan’s sunny kitchen with a cup of coffee in a moment very much not helping his general sense of incongruity. “Are you like a magical homing beacon?”
Kat Teagan laughs. “In a way. What I do is something between telepathy and second sight. I map psychic trails — often quite literally.”
Well, psychic explains the strangely trippy gaze she’s got. Before Hob can say anything else, though, a hawk — no, a hawk daemon — soars through the open kitchen window to land on Kat Teagan’s shoulder. His feathers are an unusual silvery-grey, his eyes yellow and fierce. One fixes on Hob as the hawk preens his human’s hair, gentle with that wicked-sharp beak. Lynna leaps up into Hob’s lap, sitting tall so she can peer over the tabletop and meet the hawk’s stare dead-on.
“Your path is an interesting one,” the hawk says after a moment, his voice high like most bird daemons but with an odd rasp to it.
“We’re not here for us,” Lynna retorts.
“Is that what you think,” the hawk drawls. His human taps his foot sharply.
“Enough, Alsandair,” she says. “Of course their road crosses with the trail they want to find, or they wouldn’t want to find it. Don’t be a brat.” She smiles at Hob and Lynna. “Brian said you have some token that I can use as a focus?”
Now that the moment’s here, Hob feels strangely… reluctant to hand over the bag of sand. But that’s both stupid and counterproductive, so he pulls it out of his pocket. “Be careful,” he warns. “The — my friend, who this belongs to, he once used what’s in it to knock someone out, and people who handle it tend to get drowsy.”
“But when you touched it earlier, it kicked me right out of testing you psychically,” Kat Teagan says casually. Hob considers being angry or offended now that he knows just what the hell was going at the door, but he decides not to bother. She probably does that as routinely as he sizes people up for potential in a fist fight or how many places they could be carrying concealed weapons.
“Is that what you were up to?” he asks mildly.
“More or less. A true telepath would get more out of it, but it does me good too.”
“And what did you find out?” Hob pretends to take a sip of his coffee, but he doesn’t actually drink. Nothing can kill him, but —
“You can still be hurt, or captured.”
— He and Lynna have never forgotten those words. Perhaps all this is happening because the Stranger and Pasithea did forget, but that’s all the more reason for Hob and Lynna not to. And magicians are as dangerous as scientists, the ones who know what they’re doing, anyway. Hob can understand Kat Teagan magically checking him over, but on the off-chance she’s in the business of kidnapping, he’s not going to eat or drink anything here if he can help it.
Fae rules aren’t the worst option, dealing with unfamiliar magicians.
Kat Teagan shrugs. “Well, you’re older than you look, and the name you bear isn’t your real one, but neither of those are particularly unusual.” She brushes her fingertips over the bag, her blue nail polish vivid against the black leather. “What is unusual is the mark of Otherness on you. A pair of deities, maybe, or something else on a similar level, they have an interest in you. And you in at least one of them — the feel of the energy on this matches some of what clings to you. No surprise, high priest.”
Lynna yips in surprise. Hob curls his fingers in her ruff. “What did you call me?”
Kat Teagan looks at him with eyes gone an inhuman shade of yellow-green. Her hawk’s eye that Hob can see is the exact same color, as if their eyes were somehow merging. That, he’s never seen before, and his grip on Lynna tightens. “You didn’t know,” she says, sounding more sympathetic than surprised. “But I can see where your path has led, and where it’s going. You built yourself a sanctuary, but you built him a temple, and you would wait forever if it was just a matter of patience, wouldn’t you?”
Hob could deny all of it. But he knew he’d done something with the New Inn, and as for the rest of it… Well, the rest is just true, God and all the angels help him. All he says, in the end, is “It’s not just about patience, though, or I wouldn’t be here.”
“No, that’s true,” Kat Teagan agrees. “There are so many paths attached to this… I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
Hob doesn’t like the sound of that one bit, but he keeps quiet, focusing on the feel of Lynna’s fur under his fingers. That’s an old trick for calming himself, but it works. He can feel the magic rising in the room like a prickle under his skin, Lynna trembling slightly under his hand. But when Kat Teagan continues to say nothing, Hob takes a deep breath. “Where is he?”
She blinks once, twice — and then her eyes slip closed and don’t open again. She sways on her feet and Hob pushes back from the table, ready to hurry over and steady her. Before he can get to his feet, though, her eyes fly open, glowing green like the last flash of sun over a horizon at sea, before —
Hob’s vision fills with that same green light, before it turns the pale blue of his Stranger’s eyes, then to an inky night sky filled with stars in every color and shade he can name, and many he can’t.
(Later, Hob and Lynna will conclude that they might not even be able to see some of those colors with normal sight.)
He blinks, and he’s in Kat Teagan’s kitchen. Lynna is still on his lap, the weight of her warm and familiar and comforting. Kat’s eyes are the clear river-green they were at the start, her daemon statue-still on her shoulder. Hob would think nothing had changed, except he and Kat are now holding the bag together, their fingers wrapped around it and half-tangled together. Hob should let go, because she’s supposed to be using the bag, but he can’t bring himself to do it. It’s not his, but it belongs to his Stranger, Hob should be keeping it for him until he can give it back, he shouldn’t have handed it over to this girl or to anyone else.
A noise at the doorway breaks Hob from his spiraling thoughts, though he still doesn’t manage to make himself let go. Kat does instead, and even though it’s not sensible, Hob puts the bag back in his pocket. He feels like he can breathe again, knowing it’s safe and hidden from prying eyes. And speaking of prying eyes, the noise turns out to be children. Twin girls, identical, maybe about ten years old, with red-gold hair shades paler than their mother’s and wide green eyes shades darker than hers.
They’re staring at their mother and Hob with their eyes gone a little glassy, their daemons tiger cubs at their heels, one white and one orange. Hob has the oddest sense that, young as the girls are, they caught more than a little of whatever magic passed between him and their mother just now. And he finds he’s staring right back at them. He likes children, but he’s feeling raw after whatever the fuck just happened, and these two are… unnerving, somehow.
“Aislinn, Maureen, go to your room,” Kat says sharply.
“But Mom, we felt —” one twin says, the white tiger’s ears going back.
“I know, sweetheart, but this is adult magic. We’ll work on your shields once Mom’s done with her client, all right?” The twins nod and shuffle away, dejected as only children can be. It makes Hob smile slightly, and feel a little bad for finding them unsettling. Still, shields. Psychic shields, presumably. Those two will be a force to be reckoned with someday, most likely, if they’re already strong enough to need that. And they’re Teagans, so Hob might even get to see a bit of it.
With her children gone, Kat looks at Hob again. “I can’t give you exact directions,” she admits. “Normally it’d be easy, but there’s just so much there, and the location itself is full of magic. I got that much, at least. Most recently it’s cheap, half-amateur work, but something older and more refined before that. One of England’s caster clans, maybe, or a family of classical magicians, hard to say exactly.”
“Well, then what am I supposed to do?” Hob bursts out.
Kat sighs. “The sand itself will guide you if you let it, high priest. It wants to go back to its rightful owner at least as much as you want to find whoever it is. And it’s not… I’ve never seen an artifact quite like this before, if I’m being honest. Maybe I could get more if I was working with someone whose magic was more object-based… but then, maybe not. Mixing disciplines is tricky at best when it comes to tracking. But there’s a presence to the sand, like it’s almost a part of someone, not just an object or a magical tool. It’s like… Have you read Lord of the Rings ?”
“Yes, and I don’t like that implication,” Hob says warily, thinking of evil Rings and Dark Lords. He doesn’t believe that of the Stranger and Cat, but he still doesn’t like how that sounds.
“No, I don’t mean — well, I do mean the Ring and Sauron, but not the evil part. Just the connected part. There’s a connection, and all you have to do is follow it.”
“And how do we do that?” Lynna asks before Hob can. Kat Teagan’s daemon fluffs his feathers, but doesn’t reply, and Kat sighs.
“I’m not sure if you’re a magician or not. I don’t think you are either. If you are, it’s in some kind of way that doesn’t normally exist anymore, which I’ve heard of, but I don’t know much about. I just have academics in my extended family and friend groups. But people have different theories about magic. The one I hold to, though, is that it’s about the will, in the end. Magic isn’t simple, but in some ways using it is. At the end of the day, it comes down to focus, and will, and knowing what you want. Using the sand is just another type of magic.”
Hob doesn’t know what to do with that, but he gets the feeling it’s the best advice Kat Teagan has for him.
Magic is about the will, she says. Fair enough. There's just one problem.
Hob, as a general rule, doesn't mind that he can't do the most basic of spells. If he has magic, it's of a kind that works more quietly, through the things his hands shape. He's met a few people and heard of more who are like that, who grow magical plants or raise magical animals, and a fair number of potioneers, who work more or less the same way. In some ways, he and Lynna like not knowing for sure. It feels somehow right.
But just now...
"We can't will something to work if we can't cast a tracking spell," he tells Lynna after the third one they've tried simply fails to catch. It's like being with Kit and Hemera in the early days again, only worse, because back then all that had been on the line was pride.
"And we're not psychic enough to let it guide us," Lynna sighs, flopping onto her stomach with her head resting on her front paws. "Maybe we're missing something."
"Obviously, but how do we find it?"
"Well, we've tapped our magician contacts, but there's one thing we didn't try yet. Fancy a trip over to Soho?"
"I've been wondering if it might come to that," Hob says ruefully. But in truth, he doesn't really mind.
There are other immortal beings in the world. Vampires like Jacquetta, humans who just won't die, like Hob himself and Mad Hettie. Various kinds of magical creatures or part-human hybrids are around too, though Hob doesn't know much about them except what he's heard secondhand from the magic handlers he's known. And then there's the redheaded bloke with the Bentley and the sunglasses Hob runs into at a pub every couple decades since 1862, and the Soho bookseller whose shop has been passed down the family line since 1800. Except the 'family line' is the same man, over and over. And both of these characters have shape-changing daemons.
But Fell --- that's the bookseller --- has a reputation. Several, actually, but the one Hob's interested in at the moment is that he's not only immortal but definitely not human. Human immortals are far from common, but they happen. Hob and Lynna themselves for one, Mad Hettie and her crow daemon for two. Even vampires at least used to be human, and the thing about the kinds of part-humans who turn out immortal is, of course, that they are also part human.
Immortals who everyone is fairly sure never were even a little bit human are a bit more alarming, and Fell is one of those. He's always seemed mostly harmless, fond of books and old wine, but the first time Hob ever saw the man was in Billy Caxton's shop, and the second time was at Elizabeth's early days court when Robert Dudley was everywhere about and his marten was always scandalously close to the new Queen's hawk. Though Hob doesn't think Fell knows that. He also noticed how, after that day Fell's daemon --- a dove, then --- sat with the marten and the hawk for a while, no one seemed to care about their closeness anymore. Hob never had cared, which is probably why whatever it was didn't change his opinion.
Maybe. Who knows? Hardly matters now, when Elizabeth and Leicester are dust in their graves and practically legends in their own ways. He's seen some of the movies, and they're all bloody terrible.
So Hob and Lynna scope out A.Z. Fell and Co. It takes scoping out because even by old bookshop standards, Fell keeps the weirdest goddamn hours Hob's ever seen, and he likes old bookshops. They remind him of... well, a little of the library he had as a lord, but more of the print shops he'd worked in, and both of those are good memories for different reasons. And he's liked books since he learned to read, likes the feel of older volumes in his hands even if he prefers the sleek new option for a lot of other things. He's even been in Fell's before, it just takes work.
Well, unless you're a redheaded flash bastard with a truly gorgeous classic car, anyway, because apparently then you can just walk right in even when the door should have been locked. Hob actually hadn't known his occasional drinking buddy knew Fell, and that's kind of interesting, but it doesn't exactly help.
There's a new coffee shop just opened across the street, though, which is nicely convenient for spending time in while he watches. Hob gets to know the staff, and he's not the only one who shows up to do a stakeout on the bookshop, apparently. No surprise there. In the 60s he remembers vaguely that there'd been a bar catty-corner to the bookshop where people used to do the same thing. Also a tailor that was actually a front for a hedge coven, but that's another story and Hob doesn't like to remember times where he ended up mildly singed and covered in soot, thanks.
A week and a half after he took up bookshop watching, Hob is just considering switching to decaf for his next cup when Lynna yips an alert. Sure enough, when he looks up, Fell's just flipping the sign to open. Hob is glad he's already paid for everything, because it makes jumping out of his seat and heading across the street that much easier.
He's the only customer, and Fell looks up from the book he's reading with a scowl on his face that softens to only a frown when he recognizes Hob. "Robert, it's been some time."
"Got a line on a Marlowe for you," Hob says, because he did come prepared. He's got a knack for finding Marlowe volumes in particular, thanks to having been the man's patron for a while. He has a better idea of what to look for. "But I need a favor --- a look at your occult section. Not to buy," he adds quickly, because he knows Fell. "But I need some way to do magical tracking and all of the standard stuff hasn't worked."
Fell looks thoughtful. "I don't believe I have much on that. My interests run more to wardwork, quite frankly. What are you trying to do?" Fell's calico cat wanders out from among the shelves, coming up almost nose to nose with Lynna. Lynna sniffs, then tips her head up toward Hob. And the thing is, up till now they've played their cards close to their chest, because the situation is tricky, but...
But Fell's been around forever. Most of the rumors suggest whatever kind of cryptid thing he is, he's a mostly benevolent one. And being cagey has gotten him this far, but for all he knows, maybe if he'd been willing to tell Kat Teagan what little he knows about his Stranger, she might have had more clues for him. "You know, first time I saw you was in Billy Caxton's print shop. You took a Bible that'd gotten messed up, which I remembered because it was odd," Hob says at last, Lynna resting against his ankle like her weight is holding him up. It doesn't work like that, but it feels like it does.
"I'm sure I don't ---"
"Look, I know you've been around as long or longer than me," Hob cuts him off. "Don't know what you are, don't care. I don't die, or I don't stay dead, whatever, because one night I met a stranger in a pub when he overheard me telling my mates I was never going to die. Every hundred years, we met, because he wanted to know about my experience. I still know so little about him, but he missed our last appointment, and --- I thought it was because we'd fought, but I just acquired something I know is his, and that he doesn't have it means something's actually wrong. So I have to find him."
"Also, the last magician we consulted said that building our pub because the one where we used to meet our Stranger and his Cat made it an accidental temple we're the high priest of, so we even have a right to go find them," Lynna chimes in, and Fell's cat's ears twitch, her tail lashing the air. Hob reaches into his pocket and takes out the bag of sand. Fell studies him for a moment, then the bag, blinks rapidly a few times, and then snaps his fingers. The sign on the door flips to Closed, and Fell glances up at the ceiling briefly at the same time Hob realizes that ring of his looks like wings.
He's... not going to dwell on that one, actually.
"You should know, first, that I am not... I have supervisors to whom I answer, and it was impressed upon me to stay out of this situation," Fell says carefully, and the idea of immortal cryptid bosses is also something Hob isn't going to dwell on, thanks. "I was not to intervene, but I wasn't given any directions as to what I ought to do if someone came asking the sorts of questions you have, so I believe I'm in the clear, as it were."
"What Azira means to say is, we have a loophole, and we're taking it. We're good at those," Fell's cat says cheerfully.
"Yes, thank you, Lia," Fell says crisply, tugging sharply on his worn velvet waistcoat. "Now, Robert. The bag of sand is Dr-"
"No," Hob says hoarsely, surprising even himself. It's just that he and Lynna know the Cat's name, because she told Lynna, and he doesn't want... "Do I need his name, for whatever it is I'm supposed to do?"
"No," Fell says slowly, looking puzzled. "But don't you want to know?"
"Desperately," Hob says, and it occurs to him that even having decided to be honest, he's saying a bit more than he'd like. But then, one of the rumors about Fell is that he tends to adopt the queer crowd, and also the star-crossed lover sorts. Maybe he's got an influence on it all, or something. Encouraging honesty in matters of the heart. That could get awkward. "But I want him to tell me. That make sense?"
"I suppose it does," Fell says. "Well, at any rate, the sand is one of his tools of power. I'm not familiar with the full breadth of the sand's function, but I know he uses it to travel from place to place. Given your... inadvertent metaphysical connection to him, you should be able to use it, at least briefly, without coming to harm."
Oh. Well, fuck. That actually goes along with what Kat said, doesn't it? "The tracker magician I spoke to said that it wants to get back to him. That all I had to do was follow it."
"Yes, exactly. Open the bag, and will it to take you to where its creator is. Magic in humans has more complicated triggers, but at the core of all supernatural ability is the will. You have to want it, Robert, but in this case the sand itself should help."
"Not much I want more, just now," Hob says without thinking about it.
He hands over the contact information so Fell can buy that Marlowe. Fell takes it, reading it over, then looks up sharply. "Robert. You should know, your... friend is old. Older even than I am, and I'm older than this world is. Attachments to his sort are... difficult. You should be careful."
"Speaking from experience?" Hob asks, and he doesn't know why. Little scraps, from over the years, they seem to feel different just now.
"My experiences require a... different sort of caution, I'm afraid. Good luck."
"Thanks, Fell."
It's not as though the advice comes as a shock, though Hob supposes maybe he should be worried about the details. He'll figure that out later, once he gets his Stranger out of whatever tangle he's gotten into.
Hob still has weapons. Of course he does. For more of the years he's lived than not, most smart people did carry at least something. A hideout blade, at the very least. He doesn't have much opinion about the back and forth of weapons laws in the modern world, except that frankly anyone who has one ought to know how to use it, and if they don't they've no business playing around. Still, he does care about not landing in jail, even if there's enough of the bandit in him to not care about laws in particular. It's more that going to jail is another one of those things that are a very bad idea for an immortal. Even if the sentence isn't long enough to make it clear he's not aging, there are other ways he could get caught out.
Which means that a lot of the more serious weapons he's collected are... not exactly within easy access. Also, he has no idea what he's walking into, which means his best bet is probably not to go in there looking like a soldier. He's at his best in tavern brawls and street fights anyway, using what comes to hand. Or everyday things that he can bring with him. Like a tire iron. And a heavy torch that can double as a club if he needs it to.
Then there are the knives. Hob admittedly likes his knives. He's got a hunting knife at the small of his back, and several butterfly knives tucked away about himself. But the point of them is that they aren't blatantly obvious, and on the off chance he doesn't walk right into a fight, that's ideal. The tire iron's a bit of a giveaway but he's got it in a pocket deep enough that it won't be immediately obvious he has one.
And just in case he runs into something magical, he's got luck knots around his neck and both wrists, and a few bottles of something that's basically a smoke bomb potion, only it'll work on most magical beings as well as humans. One of his knives is silver-coated, one is cold iron, and so is the tire iron, actually. "Well, we're as ready as we're going to be," Hob says, looking down at Lynna. "You should be as close to me as possible."
"I think you should pick me up, just in case."
"Can't argue with that." So Hob tucks Lynna under his right arm, which is how he usually carries her when it's necessary. It means that he has to fish the sand out of his pocket with his left hand, but he drops it into his right hand and is surprised at how easy it is to get open one-handed. "Must be easy draw," he murmurs, and Lynna makes one of her chuffing laugh sounds.
Hob isn't really sure how to do this, but he remembers that night in 1789, the way his Stranger blew a cloud of sand toward Lady Johanna. When Hob opens the bag, there's no such cloud, just... Just that scent like petrichor and lightning one moment, like lavender, chamomile, poppy another. Powerful smells, and smells for... sleep? He doesn't understand that combination, but he doesn't have to, does he? All he has to do is reach into the bag, spilling sand in a circle around himself.
Take me to him, Hob thinks. You want to go back to your master, well, I want to find him, so take me there.
The sand swirls and billows up into a giant cloud, and the world vanishes.