Aphrodite was standing next to Margaret now, right hand curling around Margaret’s face, her fingertips tracing the most delicate of lines down her cheek, toward chin and throat. She couldn’t quite control the flesh precisely, and there was a hint of tremor at wrist that matched the pulse Margaret felt in her larynx.
“It's not hard, is it?” Aphrodite whispered, “You’re so proud, but I can hear the part of your mind that wants to love me, kiss me, sing to me.”
Once more, she wasn’t lying. Margaret closed her eyes, wondering if this was what Townsend had felt under her hands, her energy. Though never a god, a witch maintained her own majesty.
“What do you know about Maggi?” Margaret attempted to change the subject.
“Oh, plenty,” Aphrodite shifted, almost completely behind Margaret now, her fingers weaving lines across her neck and into her hair. By her nature Margaret didn’t like that kind of subtle or delicate touch, but Aphrodite’s fingers left burning trails that prickled skin and elicited a dozen more sensations, each greatly more complex than a simple touch. “I know she died with an unpaid debt. I know her grandchildren will facilitate a return to the good old days. The days when gods could walk as they pleased, free of these stinking meat sacks, free to bend reality and grant favors. Haven’t you read the old stories?” Aphrodite’s giggle was a viral infection that swam in the air, clutching the gas light and weaving into a tapestry of mischievous loathing, a joke with no punchline.
“Those children are my students,” Margaret answered, “I won’t let them be harmed.”
“Do you love those two girls?” Somewhere inside Margaret’s mind, Aphrodite could sense desires to be plucked out, one by one, and what felt like claws raked across Margaret’s chest, breaking flesh, demanding the smallest of blood sacrifice. Her body had its own demands and her head shifted back as a low moan escaped her lips. “Would you like to be further reminded of how you are at my mercy and kindness, my affection?”
Margaret cringed, a cautious numb and simmering feeling writhing in her belly.
“At your pleasure, Aphrodite.”
Aphrodite’s right hand clutched the back of Margaret’s skull, left hand slithering up her throat until it reached lips, placing her cigarette near Margaret’s mouth so she could inhale if she chose. She did choose.
“At her death, your mother possessed a trinket that was not hers to keep. The eye that does not see. In her infinite incompetence, she promised that eye to another, for a paltry sum of power. You need to retrieve that bobble, the eye.”
Margaret exhaled the limitless cigarette. It tasted like finest tobacco, mixed with the sting and caress of clove oil. Her lips and tongue turned numb. “Maggi’s grave is a dead volcano.”
“Oh, you think so, do you?” Aphrodite smirked, licking her lips as though they were made of frosting, “You think all the silly things your silly meat-friends speak is true? Find the eye that does not see. You need to be in possession of it.” Aphrodite withdrew her hands, shifting her body and taking a step to face Margaret. Every word that Aphrodite loosed was both torturously seductive and infuriatingly taunting.
“Why would you come to me on this night? Ask me to retrieve an eye that my mother possessed, in order to repay my slight?”
Without releasing the twig, her fingers slid up Margaret’s arms and chest. “Mar-gar-et. Mar-gar-et. I’m a god, and gods don’t help mortals. We merely manipulate them to a path that best suits our desires. We are selfish, and we’ll never love you as much as we love each other. We only offer kindness when the sweet scent of your soul is required to make the magic work, and we only offer suffering when your terror makes the lock turn.”
Aphrodite clutched Margaret’s face in both hands, her expression turning from sultry to sweet, her lips offering a smile that hinted naught for cruelty. It sounded as if waves crashed at rocks, certainly just a few streets over.
Margaret kissed Aphrodite.
As a rule, Margaret preferred the company of men if she was to kiss or be kissed. This; however, transcended the cool, moist compact between lips. It was wholly possible that Margaret had never really known what a kiss was prior to this moment. Her life felt like a stumbling and sad reflection of blind desire in comparison. It was a glimpse at ancient poems and forgotten songs, a melody she couldn’t quite hear past the waves that didn’t quite exist.
Margaret forgot her own name.
“See?” Aphrodite whispered as she pulled away, the warmth of breath covering her lips in mania, “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
She wasn’t fully aware that Aphrodite had left until her body’s perfume faded and vanished, and her eyes could refocus on the physical world. Breathing hard, Margaret looked behind her, then ahead. She was alone. Only now did it occur to her how strange that was, that the capital of all Northern California would be so quiet in the youngest morning hours.
She wanted to taste Aphrodite’s lips again, and she wanted to understand depthless desire. She wanted to return to Townsend, to whisper, “Wake up,” and run her fingertips across his face.
That was against the rules of course.
Margaret knelt and retrieved her corset and pistol, draping one over the other, and returned to the path she walked.
8:30pm January 11th, 39 Veilfall
Stockton, California
Margaret stood in the shadows, a dwindling cigarette engulfing her with pungent smoke. Lamp light crackled and snapped, illuminating cobble and concrete with a twisting orange glow. San Joaquin Street Station was empty, solitary, except for an occasional ghost, reflected memories caught in the light of her eyes.
Margaret gagged on her cigarette.
She’d never enjoyed smoking, but touch was dangerously familiar for a witch, and the act of physical sex was critically intimate. Surface dreams, desires, and addictions leached into the skin like a charcoal stain.
Margaret heard a train whistle, echoing in the distance.
She licked her lips, residue tart on her tongue, and cast aside the butt with loathing and affection. She heard her heartbeat and studied her hands in dim light to distract her imagination. Margaret’s fingers were small, short, perhaps even stumpy. The lines that didn’t cross her face had accumulated at the edges of her thumbs and wrists. They were ugly hands, she thought to herself, milky white scars raised over freckled flesh, records of a life dedicated to violence.
When the westbound train arrived, she was big, black, a steam locomotive. Old rail lines of wood and iron had been restored by House Owens, long before she and her brother came to this place. One company had begun building new steam engines, back home in Pennsylvania, but this one was an antique. Two-hundred years old, her rust scraped off, her iron blackened with grease. She belched steam from her wheels, and a flaming heart washed the night in soot and heat. No machine that old wouldn’t find itself an imbued creature after centuries. Not intelligent, not like a person, rather it had more in common with a great old wolf, chest puffed up and paws heavy, acrid drool dripping from maw, feral eyes glancing at Margaret with suspicion, asking her why she slouched in the shadows.
She could hear whispers from a shade near the corner of her eye. A man painted sepia strutted along, smart hat, and briefcase at his hand. He had to catch the train, otherwise he’d be late. Gotta catch the train, can’t be late.
Alone, in places like this, Margaret always wondered what kind of ghost she might become. Would she traipse along walkways in the dim, remembering all the places she had to be? Or would she flutter free and visit locations that life had denied her?
Slowly the iron wolf came to a stop, brakes screeching, cars creaking and groaning as a thousand nails tried to detract from their wooden prisons. Only a handful of passengers disembarked. They were mostly Imperials coming from the east, perhaps here to do business, or make new contracts with various Stockton farmers. They were dressed in the mottled grays of east coast fashion, one lady’s long dress embroidered with Antecedent spirals, black leather stitched onto stone
cotton.
The last to depart the train was a young woman, only a teenager, alone. Her head was held high. Margaret waited for other passengers to walk past, then tip-toeing in their minds, reminded them that they shouldn’t glance into the shadows, perhaps the shadows might glance back. No one gave her away, not one eye quivered or darted. Her barriers were stout, clean, and wrapped tight against her skin with all the subtlety of carbonation on a warm, summer day.
The girl’s skin was glowing with youth and vigor. Her sable hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a black knee length pencil skirt with a deep gray jacket cut to flatter her wasp waist and accentuate her bosom. She walked like nobility and worked her hips with a sauntering grace. When Margaret turned to chase the girl, her own feet were bare and black with street grime, shadows pulled and tugged like taffy around her, cool on her neck, forgiving. She didn’t raise her hands, snap fingers, or flail her arms. None of her mother’s theatrical tricks. Instead, she quieted the world around her, and faded into the forgotten moments.
Margaret already had her hand on the 9mm pistol lodged in her cleavage. Bigger than the subcompact, there was no concealing it. The weapon was drawn and out, pointed at the back of the young girl’s ponytail.
The night around Margret twisted open, a flower greeting morning sun. Ink drew up from the station concrete, a black secretion wholly void of any energy or power. There was no warning. Margaret had not the slightest flutter of ill in her sternum. One moment she was alone, quiet as death, scampering on naked toes; the next she was captive between four obsidian silhouettes, blurring, sharpening, and taking manifest shape.
The girl and her ponytail spun on a heel. Lithe and acrobatic, her barriers snapped awake around her, flutters of green and yellow reflect off flesh and tarmac.
She was holding her own pistol, leveled directly at Margaret.
“Pinche perra,” the girl swore, shrill, nasal. Her sidearm tilted to the ground.
Lower your weapon. The liquid shades around Margaret were ghosts, but they felt more like hollow shells. Their impact on the physical world felt lonely, as if she’d entered an empty home to find family photos left on the walls, but no furniture or belongings. They didn’t smell like the man who had to catch the train. Eyes watched with pulsing nerves, nerves long dead.
“You’ve gotten quick.” Margaret smiled, replacing her weapon in tightly wrapped linen that kept her bosom up and out of the way. She tried to ignore the shades. They looked like old-world soldiers when they flickered or sharpened, their gear part and parcel of a lost era.
“Yes, I remember,” The girl was replacing her weapon at the small of her back, up and under her dark jacket. “One good bullet, that’s all it takes.”
“No witch can take a gunshot to the skull.” Margaret quoted her mother, “Come here.”
Ramona Lopez jumped forward and wrapped her slender arms around Margaret, then pulled her off the ground, past tip-toes. Margaret remembered when she would lift Ramona, a child of no more than four or five years old. She smelled like the Atlantic Ocean, sweet wine, and crisp peppers. Her eyes were big and dark, with thick lashes and brows. Her lips were a little too full, and the shade of her skin was much like a summer beach, the same as her mother. Unlike the last time Margaret saw her; however, there was a magnetic draw, a deeply planted foundation somewhere in her spine that latched around Margaret. It felt familiar.
“Bodyguards?” Margaret turned away from her niece to study one of them. This was a puzzle that defied all of Margaret’s education, they were souls wrapped up in a non-corporal specter. They weren’t mirrors, or mimics of lost memories, there was no anchor about them, they simply felt empty, devoid of history.
“Father calls them poltergeists,” Ramona gestured to the one closest to Margaret, “They’ve been enhanced beyond the bounds of any conventional ghost, their bones are engraved and painted in the Chaldean sigils.”
Margaret couldn’t see the soldier’s eyes, but he was watching her, something like pupils drilling into her mind. “Free will?”
Ramona laughed. It was not her childhood laugh, it's more mature, self-centered and cynical, “Of course not! Why would dead men protect the living? All of us, father, Amihan, and myself, have them.”
Ghosts couldn’t impact the physical world, they couldn’t do more than lay a cold hand on the living or cast objects about. How dangerous could these poltergeists be? Margaret wondered to herself, then forced a smile, “I’ve been away a while, I suppose.”
Ramona smirked, “You tucked me in bed and left for Saint Louis, if I remember.”
Margaret had trained Ramona and her sister, until her brother’s first push pass the Mississippi river. As a young girl Ramona’s energy poured across her skin like a warm rain. There was something different now, something colder and tighter at the edges. Her mind, closed as it was, clicked in a rhythm that the girl previously never exuded.
“Let me grab my coat,” Margaret withdrew. As she did, the four guards evaporated in a thick, black mist. It was ice cold on the skin, dry rain falling back to the ground. The soldiers had followed a procedural guide, an operating schedule, but there was also a memory of sorrow that crossed Margaret’s mind.
“You’re still barefoot,” Ramona shook her head, almost laughing, sputtering a sound like a hiccup as she waved off Margaret.
“Stockton’s streets aren’t as dirty as Crafton’s,” Margaret answered, returning to her niece’s side, pulling the coat over her shoulders. The exterior was bright yellow tweed with black fasteners and cuffs.
“It's snowing back home. In Crafton.” When Ramona spoke, it was not just her voice that echoed across the lonely train station, it was a distant sound like a spring yawn following a bleak winter, a trait she’d carried since she was a baby. “How can you wear a coat out here? It's hot!”
Margaret didn’t answer.
Instead, she removed a magazine from a back pocket of her pants and loaded it into the 9mm withdrawn once more from her cleavage. She racked the slide once, chambering a round, and replaced the weapon between her breasts. “Stay with me. I have a guest bed, and I have missed you.”
Ramona stopped, mouth half-open and looked at Margaret for a second, beads of sweat at her forehead. “I have a room reserved at the Grand California, near Old Downtown. I suppose I can stay there tomorrow night. We should catch up on the years.”
Stockton was a city unlike most. Great walls rose up around her, a concrete tidal wave, every inch painted in murals and works of nationalist art. After sundown a hundred types of illumination brought the city to life. Gas lamps, electric sodium, torches and moonlight, mixed to make the paintings dance, giving the city a strange illusion of fluttering movement. “This was once the capital of House Owens,” Margaret gestured. “I can show you around.”
Tiny varmints, something like goblins, or half-dog creatures, rustled through the garbage, raced with rats in the gutters, all intent on stripping the world bare of forgotten refuse, cast offs, sewage, and horse shit. Buildings rose from wooden sidewalks, leaning at suspicious angles like drunk men holding themselves aloft. Many stores were closed, though street vendors peddled boiled cabbage or slightly off sausage sticks, red and yellow from a deep array of fried spices.
“Stockton is much more civilized than I had anticipated,” Ramona nodded at the streets, “I’d heard House Owens was a proud place.”
“It still is,” Margaret chuckled, “the former heir actually turned me down.”
“You?” Ramona replied, her shock genuine.
“Me,” Margaret shrugged and stretched her back, “I’m getting old, I suppose.”
No wall, no entryway, no fence or facade lacked an expansive mural, and in the flickering shadows, even the most cheerful painting evolved into a grim sideshow, just like Ramona’s face now. “Old enough to consider retirement, I’m told.”
Margaret paused, head tilted back, watching the sky above. Stockton wasn’t bright enough to drown out the stars, whi
ch gazed back, waiting for her to speak.
“I am retiring.”
Ramona didn’t answer, but her eyes carved into the smaller woman like a hungry child might cut up his roast beef. Margaret returned her gaze to the Earthly world and shook her head, “We set out to conquer a continent, and didn’t we do that? My brother and the 1st Army are in the southwest now, unifying what’s left. I want to see this land we captured. I want to walk on the dirt and mud with my bare feet, and I want to get drunk on silence.”
Margaret had already sent word to her brother the autumn before. By 40 Veilfall, she planned to step down as lead battlewitch of the Empire. There were a thousand reasons that she was done being the creature Maggi Lopez groomed her to be, and she supposed that Ramona would understand none of them.
“You always had Aphrodite’s favor.” Ramona didn’t stutter or pause, she blurted the words out like a foreign phrase that she’d been told to repeat as part of a practical joke.
“Aphrodite? What do you know about Aphrodite?”
Ramona turned, a few feet away, showing Margaret her back. “Nothing, I suppose.”
The words were cool and hollow, intentionally stripped of all emotion. Ramona may as well have been a child again, hiding her face, caught in a fib.
“I didn’t become an old witch eating lies up like sugar,” Margaret’s voice lowered, and she wanted to scold her former student for playing such a juvenile game, “If you’d like to tell me something, turn around and say it like a Lopez would.”
“Fine,” Ramona threw her hands up, “I chose to worship Aphrodite last year. It was hard after mother died, you and father on this endless campaign. I’ve been my own woman for a while, and it was my choice to make.”
“You took a god just because you were lonely?” Margaret shouted, more in exasperation than rage. “A fool favors one god over others. The queen of damn fool witches worships that god!”
Avoiding contractual ties with the ancients was in the first page of The World According to Maggi Lopez, core principles that she’d hammered into Margaret’s head since she was old enough to listen.
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