The Association

by A. K. Caggiano

  “You think nifolia killed him? I’ve been taking doses of it my whole life, and I’m fine. Well, most of the time.” He looked thoughtful a moment then shook his head. “To do any real damage with it, you’d have to make a really strong concentrate and that would mean harvesting the whole—” Hunter’s face blanched. She didn’t have to even say it, they both knew; that was exactly what had happened to the nifolia in the Proctor’s garden.

  As Ivy closed the book, a final piece of paper slipped out from between the pages and fell to the ground between them. The drawing Penny had done of the two of them kissing lay at their feet. Hunter plucked it off the ground, a smile creeping up on the side of his face.

  Embarrassed, she almost grabbed it out of his hands, but then he frowned. “She wasn’t there, at the vigil, was she?” He chuckled. “Did you tell her?”

  “Penny? No! She gave me that way before—” Ivy’s explanation was interrupted then by a scream piercing the night. It was high, horrified, and human, and it came from just outside the front door.

  Chapter 40

  Pauline’s voice preceded her as she burst from her door out onto the front porch her condo shared with Hunter’s. Ivy stopped her from running off into the night as Hunter tripped over the doorway behind her, tugging on his shirt and tightening the drawstring of his sweatpants. The woman was inconsolable, her eyes wide, voice a garbled mess until Ivy grabbed her shoulders and made her look her in the eyes. It was Penny. The girl was gone.

  “I have to find her!” Pauline screamed, but Ivy guided her back inside her home, knowing it was too dangerous to be shouting outside with an entire pack of lycans roaming the woods.

  “Don’t worry.” Hunter pulled the door shut behind him. “I’ll make some calls, get everyone out looking. We have a phone tree for this exact thing. We’ll find her, we just need to be smart about it.” He started to dial, pacing through her living room, and Ivy managed to get Pauline to sit on the couch, asking for any details she could give.

  “I had to finish up at the bakery,” the mother was saying, her voice like shattered glass, eyes rimmed red. “I sent Penny home with Marci to get her some dinner and into bed. I just went in to check on her, and she was gone!” Pauline broke down into full-on sobbing then, burying her face into her hands.

  Penny had survived the woods on a full moon once, but how lucky would she need to be to do it a second time? Panic rose in Ivy’s chest, but she pushed it back down, rubbing Pauline’s shoulder and letting her eyes wander over the room for a clue.

  Nothing seemed out of place, even Penny’s art corner was tidy with cups full of crayons and pencils in a row, drawings posted up in a straight line above. There was no sign of a struggle, no books strewn on the ground, no broken windows. Penny was young, but surely she wasn’t so young that she didn’t know not to go out by herself on a full moon—not after what had happened to her before—but Hunter’s house looked more the scene of a kidnapping than this.

  Then Ivy’s eyes fell on the artwork poking out of the girl’s desk: the Top Sekrit folder of works that Ivy had been graciously allowed a glimpse into before. She stood from the couch, half listening to Hunter’s voice, steady but tinged with urgency as he gave information to the other end, and crossed to the desk to pull out the folder. She flipped through the pages, her mouth open, but she could not speak.

  There was the picture of 210 Ironwood Place with Ivy’s car, a distinct blue hatchback, out front. Ivy had seen that one before, even commented on it. The drawing of the clubhouse with the most recently planted flowers in bloom and Oakley surrounded by butterflies standing beside it came next. Ivy swallowed as she flipped to the next picture, one she hadn’t seen before, a sea of figures dressed in black looking up at a framed portrait of a smiling man with gleaming, white teeth. With a shaking hand, Ivy flipped the lot over and there on the back was Penny’s big block handwriting in black crayon, her full name, and the date written out on each one. If this was right, Penny had drawn these in the early summer, at least two full months before Ivy first stepped foot in Avalon Estates.

  The drawing of Ivy and Hunter kissing had not been the playful taunting of a little girl—it had been a premonition.

  Ivy paged through the drawings again and pulled out the one of Rufus’s whitewashed brick house. There was a woman standing in the window, just like Ivy remembered, but what she thought before were just black dots surrounding her she now could see had little tails. They were music notes.

  “I know where Penny is.”

  Ivy ran as fast as her legs could take her down the stairs. In the darkness, they rounded the condos and fled out to the flat grasses of the lake bank, coming to a stop right on the shore. Pauline was pressing for more information while Hunter protested them being outside at all, but Ivy held up a hand to silence them.

  The black waters sparkled with the reflection of a full moon and a chill wind blew through the trees, rustling dry leaves and muffling a howl from somewhere off in the distance. The lake was huge, but at the far end of it there was a glow, otherworldly, pulsing. And then she heard it. Faint at first, the song rose up from the water just before they saw the movement across the surface at the lake’s far end.

  “Victoria Jiang.”

  She was too far off to see or hear them, invested in her slow ascent from the water, and Ivy would not have been able to identify her had she not already known, but there was no longer a question in her mind. “She killed Rufus. Not the morning of, but the night before when she pretended to make amends with him. She poisoned him with the nifolia she stole from Mae’s garden, passed it off as tea.”

  “Victoria?” Pauline gasped. “Why?”

  “Control? Power? Does it matter? She did it. And she killed Evan too.” Ivy felt her insides turn over. “And now—”

  The figure shifted then, moving quicker. Victoria Jiang’s body morphed smoothly in the shadows of the night, elongating and growing until in her place was something wholly different than her human appearance. Ivy swallowed, another of Penny’s drawings come to life.

  “What the hell?” Hunter’s voice was in Ivy’s ear as he stepped up behind her.

  Long and smooth, the creature slid across the bank far ahead of them, but the thing was big. Monstrously big.

  Pauline’s hand gripped onto Ivy’s shoulder. “Victoria can change? I didn’t think sirens could…not anymore.”

  Ivy whipped around to Hunter. “Take Pauline, and go find Penny. She’s out on the other side of the lake where that glow is, I just know it. I’ll distract Victoria.”

  “You’ll what?” His face blanched paler than it already was. “There’s no way. What are you going to do up against that thing? I’ll distract her, you take Pauline.”

  Ivy was already shaking her head. “Penny’s probably stuck with some spell or curse that I’m not going to understand at all. I won’t be able to get her out, but between you and Pauline—”

  “You’re human!” he yelled, and Ivy felt Pauline start at her side. His eyes were wide as he grabbed her shoulders. “She’ll kill you!”

  “I stopped you, didn’t I?” Before he could blurt out how different he thought that was, she just kept going. “Victoria has tried to kill me twice before, and she failed. If I get poisoned again, I’m sure you have something to wake me up.”

  His eyes flicked over to the monster basking on the edge of the lake. His voice was taut, afraid. “Ivy, it’s not going to be like that this time.”

  Pauline was already grabbing Hunter’s arm and pulling him toward the other side of the lake, making it easy for Ivy to shake out from under his grasp. She took a step back, away from them both. “Now it’s your turn to trust me.” And she turned to run in the opposite direction.

  “Hey! Hey, you!” It was hard to believe what she was running toward even after chasing a fire-breathing cockatrice, trying to shake a giant spider’s hand, and medicating a belligerent werewolf, but Ivy found it within herself to speed toward the serpent slithering out of the lake
even as it seemed to get bigger with every step she took.

  But when its eyes fell on Ivy, she slowed to a stop. Venomously green with a jet black slice running through the center, the eyes cut into her, holding her to the spot. The world slowed down around her while trapped in its gaze, the breeze on her skin lingering longer, the waves on the lake reluctant to break. Even her heart, which had just been racing, calmed. And then there was a sound, a song, the far off humming of something pleasant and lovely, and if she would just go to it, everything would be much better than all of this.

  “Well, well.” Ivy heard Victoria Jiang’s voice, but it rattled directly inside her brain as the serpent’s tongue jutted out of its mouth. “Ivy Sylvan, Avalon Estate’s resident liar.”

  “Better a liar than a murderer,” she snarled back, pulling herself from the hazy thoughts.

  Victoria’s voice only laughed in her head. “I think that’s dependent on getting caught. When they find out you’re human, and come the morning everyone will know that little bit of truth, they’ll be out for the blood of the pest that infiltrated their community.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Awfully suspicious how you showed up pretending to be their savior, and then those two lycans died.” The serpent was already turning away. “Lucky for me, of course, but awfully suspicious for you. Cheers, little fly.”

  Victoria was headed back along the shore toward the farthest side of the lake and the wall where that odd glow was. The damaged wall. The one she’d insisted on keeping the dwarves away from and having fixed herself.

  Ivy panicked. Hunter and Pauline had run off around the lake’s other side but were headed to the same place, and in that form Victoria could cross the water in minutes. “Hey, wait! Where do you think you’re going?” When there was no response, Ivy shouted again for her to stop.

  The giant snake’s form was still traveling away from her, moonlight glinting off the scales like they were metallic. Victoria had killed Rufus and Evan, no doubt, but she wasn’t done. There was still something she needed to finish. Something she was after.

  Ivy’s eyes went wide. Of course.

  “You still don’t have it yet,” Ivy called, cupping her hands around her mouth, her voice trailing after the serpent.

  Victoria stopped.

  “Don’t you want this?” When the snake glanced back, she only let her see a glow emanate from her bag for an instant, but that’s all it took. “That’s right: I have the orb!”

  “How?” Victoria’s voice hissed in her mind. “The little halfsie girl, she had every sign of absorbing the thing.”

  Absorbing it? Ivy tried to not let the confusion show on her face. “But she didn’t actually have it when you took her, did she?” Ivy teetered on the edge of what she thought she knew.

  There was a moment hanging between the two when Ivy worried she wouldn’t buy it, that the serpent would turn away again and continue carrying out whatever she had planned for Penny, but it passed when the snake’s eyes narrowed, and before the voice could cloud her mind once more, Ivy turned and fled.

  The forest looked like it was miles away, but Ivy pumped her legs as hard as she could up a steady, barren hill toward it. The trees were dense and black, but it was all she could hope for. Victoria had made herself too big and cumbersome to navigate the density of the forest as easily as Ivy had so recently done. And this time she was wearing shoes.

  The serpent was just behind her, and she felt the wind off of its jaws as it snapped at her heels just as she burst through the tree line and went tumbling down a steep ridge. Branches reached out and tore at her as she broke past them, rolling to a stop at the ridge’s bottom.

  She rocked herself onto her side, dizzy, sticks and leaves cutting into her hands. The darkness was all encompassing, the trees casting themselves as long shadows against the misty blue of the rest of the place. But it was quiet save for the crickets and a gust of autumn wind, strange yet even more frightening than if she’d heard the snake cutting through the trees to come after her. She was alone.

  Ivy eased up onto her feet, looking about. The forest floor glimmered in spots where the full moon carved down through the trees, highlighting a path forward, seemingly deliberate. She took a step into one of the brighter spots and could see another just ahead but hesitated.

  Behind her a sound cut through the air, a branch snapping. She held her breath, looking back over her shoulder. In the dark blues of the forest there was a different glow, a flash that caught the light and reflected back at her. It blinked.

  Then there was a howl. Ivy’s blood froze colder than the freezing wind around her. Another animal called back to the first somewhere far off, and a third answered. The forest swelled with the cries of lycans, and even as a human she understood what they were saying: dinner.

  Ivy took off for a second time, fleeing through the forest, jumping over logs and tripping every other step, but she managed to keep following the only path she could see. She didn’t know where the spots of eerie blue moonlight were leading her, catching herself on each tree and stumbling over every rock, but she knew she would be spit out eventually. Even with the sound of many creatures somewhere off behind her, picking up her scent, following, she knew she could make it to the other side. And finally she did.

  Ivy stared up at Rufus’s house for a moment longer than she should have, feeling the frigid air hit her as she exited the forest. She tried to catch her breath, woozy and exhausted, then with a little yelp at the sound of something not very far behind her, she again took off through the open backyard, nearly stumbling over a glint of shimmering green pecking about.

  Ivy scooped up the cockatrice, neither having a moment to think twice about what was happening, and tucked him under her arm as she ran. Just as she reached the dead man’s porch, she glanced back to see countless eyes staring at her from the forest and the hulking forms of bipedal beasts emerging from the wood. To her surprise, the door gave way, and Ivy fell into the house.

  Chapter 41

  Slamming the door shut, Ivy locked the knob, the deadbolt, and the chain, dropping the cockatrice onto the floor in a frenzy of flapping, leathery wings. He gave her an indignant little cluck as he traipsed away into the kitchen, and Ivy scrambled through her bag for her phone, dialing Safiya. As she listened to it ring, she moved to the window, pushing back the curtain. Outside, the forms of the lycans skulked at the edge of the wood up on two legs with shoulders wider than two men together, so unlike what she’d seen Hunter become. Their eyes reflected back silvery moonlight as they considered the house.

  Voice mail. Ivy grunted as Safiya’s message played, then exploded, “It’s Victoria!” She sprinted through the kitchen to get a better look out another window. “She killed Rufus and Evan, and she’s been poisoning me! I don’t know what she’s up to, but she can turn into this big snake thing, and—oh, my god, there’s no Bob at all! She’s the damn lake monster! Anyway, I’m at Rufus’s house, got chased here by lycans. It’s been a rough night.”

  Some of the wolves had ducked back into the forest, two setting up post just at the edge of the trees. Ivy turned away from the window, her heart racing. “I think she kidnapped Penny because she’s after the orb, but I—”

  Victoria Jiang stood in the arched entry to the kitchen, her head cocked as she listened, smiling. Ivy’s throat closed around her heart as it jumped up into it, and her phone slid from her hand, smashing into the tile floor, broken pieces scattering everywhere.

  “I just don’t know what to do!” Victoria’s mouth moved, but Ivy heard her own voice coming from the woman’s lips. “I mean, I’m just a weak, stupid, little human, and I’m trapped in this big house all alone with a murderer, and no one’s coming to save me. Not this time.”

  Ivy stuttered, the pieces all coming together. “You poisoned Rufus the night before. You stole his phone to send messages to Calla and to call Safiya using his voice—a dead man’s voice—to make yourself look innocent, and t
hen you got Allyson to bring the phone back and plant it in the house.”

  “So clever, aren’t I?” The woman spoke in her familiar, sing-songy lilt, though now it was tinged with a sadistic joy as she glanced about at the kitchen. “He had too much faith in my good-will offering. Everyone does though. You know he doesn’t even like tea? But it’s terribly impolite to turn down a homemade brew.”

  Ivy moved slowly to the side, thankful for the counter island between them. “But why’d you do it?”

  “Dear, you can’t possibly begin to understand this world and the things in it. You should have run long ago.”

  “Everyone else had a better reason: business, an affair, money, but you’re just…vindictive.” They both came around the counter so that they were on opposite sides again.

  “Hardly.” The woman waved her hand, and the faucet burst off of the sink flying past Ivy’s head and slamming into the wall behind her. The room was showered in water and Ivy screamed, but Victoria only laughed. “I wanted what I wanted, and I’ve been around long enough that it was time to get it.”

  Ivy pushed wet hair away from her face. She had to know why, especially if she was going to die because of it. “What could possibly be worth two men’s lives?”

  Victoria moved so that she was under the fall of water. “What I want is freedom.” The woman closed her eyes as her skin and clothes soaked in the downpour. “Freedom to be what I am. The lycans were the key to that, the few among us who don’t shy away from their hexed nature, but Rufus could not see what he could become. He couldn’t fathom being what others would call a monster and being in control. He would have rather been an animal locked up in a cage, neutered by some high and mighty witch’s potion instead of embracing his true form.”

  Ivy thought back to the book she’d bought and the terrifying images sketched out on its pages. There were all sorts of possibilities within it, each more frightening than the last. “You mean the lycans can change even more? Like you?”