That Ain't Witchcraft

by Seanan McGuire

  “I can’t do this,” I murmured, and that was the complete, achingly honest truth. I didn’t know how my grandfather had been able to do this, to handle the borders of his world narrowing until they weren’t even large enough to encompass his entire house. I’d read his journals, of course—we’d all read the journals—but they showed a level of “stiff upper lip” that I guess we should have expected from a Covenant-trained British man. Grandma might have been able to tell me more, if we’d ever felt like it was safe to ask her.

  That was a fun thought. We could kidnap James and ask him to transfer the ghost wards to Cylia’s car if this didn’t work. She could drive me to Michigan, all of us peeing in bottles and trying not to yearn for showers, James recasting the wards whenever they ran down. We still owned the house where Thomas Price had become a captive of the crossroads. Grandma Alice went there all the time, and we all tried to pretend it was healthy for her to spend her time on Earth in a house that might not hold any ghosts but was absolutely haunted all the same.

  We could put me there. Fix up a bedroom and leave me like a cork in a bottle, one more Price for a house that had already tried and failed to protect our family.

  “Morbid much?” I muttered. I kept picking up books, stacking them on the coffee table with their spines turned away from the door. That was a little piece of habit I’d picked up when I was a kid, a way to keep Verity from commenting on the books I was reading. Privacy had never been plentiful in our house.

  I missed it. I missed knowing there was a good chance any open door would reveal a member of my family, sharpening knives or making out with their latest significant other, or even folding laundry and waiting to dragoon the first person too slow to get away into rolling socks. I missed home.

  In that moment, it was incredibly hard to believe I was ever going home again.

  I was stacking James’ notes in a tidy pile when the doorbell rang. I whipped around, a cascade of papers accompanying the motion, and stared at the door. The doorbell rang again before someone started hammering on the wood.

  Swell. Cylia’s car was in the driveway and the lights were on; there was no way I could slink back to the kitchen and pretend no one was home. Bethany wasn’t likely to ring the bell. Even if she did, she couldn’t get me as long as I stayed behind the wards. I took one quick look around the front room, confirming that nothing really weird was visible, and moved, cautiously, toward the door.

  I pulled it open just as Captain Smith raised his hand to start another round of hammering. He blinked at me. I blinked at him.

  “James isn’t here,” I blurted.

  “May I come in?” he asked, and pushed past me without waiting for an answer, sweeping his eyes over the book-strewn living room. He didn’t seem to realize that most of the books had come from his house: his gaze skipped straight over them, lip slowly curling in a sneer. “He’s been here,” he said.

  “Well, yes, because we were making out for like, an hour, but I don’t see why that’s any of your business.” I crossed my arms, glad Sam wasn’t in the room to hear that particular lie. Although it would have been nice to have the backup. “He’s not here.”

  Belatedly, I realized his bike might still be outside. Oh, well. Too late now.

  “Good.” Captain Smith turned back to me. “I want to talk to you.”

  “And I want you out of my house. Isn’t it fun how we’re both being thwarted today?”

  “You need to stay away from James.”

  “My house. Out of.” Belatedly, it occurred to me that I was speaking not only to the local chief of police, but to the father of the man I was supposedly dating. I added a grudging, “Please.”

  “He’s a delicate boy. He doesn’t need some loose woman coming from out of town and getting him all confused.”

  I blinked. “I . . . what? I don’t know whether to be more offended by you calling James ‘delicate’ or you calling me ‘loose.’ I assure you, I am the opposite of a loose woman. I’m a tightly-wound, sort of prickly woman. Hermione Granger is my Patronus.”

  From the look on Captain Smith’s face, he wasn’t entirely sure I was speaking English. “I don’t think you understand how unpleasant I can make things for you.”

  “I don’t think you understand how little I care.” Rage washed through me, crisp and chemical and oh-so-welcome. Here was a distraction. Here was something I could sink my teeth into. I stepped forward, jabbing a finger in the direction of his chest. “We’ve broken no laws. We’re both adults. Holding hands and kissing is none of your concern. Maybe you should be asking yourself why you’ve never sent him to college. He’s a smart guy. He deserves better than whatever the hell weird obsession you’ve got with keeping him nice and captive and—”

  “He’s never been outside of New Gravesend in his life,” snapped Captain Smith.

  “Whose fault is that?”

  “His mother’s!”

  We both froze, staring at each other. He didn’t look like he’d intended to say that. Interesting.

  “I thought she died,” I said.

  “She did,” he replied. “She became very sick, and then she passed away, and he’s been delicate ever since. He doesn’t need more stress.”

  “College—”

  “Would have been stressful for the boy. He hasn’t even tried to leave town since he was eleven. School field trip. He collapsed at the city limits. He doesn’t understand how fragile he is.”

  I opened my mouth to answer, then stopped, cocking my head and looking at him. Really looking at him, not at James’ idea of him, not at the chief of police, but at the man. The man who’d married a sorcerer and buried her when she should have been in her prime. The man who’d raised a son he didn’t seem to understand or want, but who’d refused to let that child go, when the logical thing would have been to ship James off to the first boarding school that was willing to take him.

  The man who lived in the most crossroads-touched town I’d ever seen, who tried to keep the law functioning there, and who couldn’t possibly be as oblivious as his son assumed he had to be. There was just no way.

  “You knew she was a sorcerer, didn’t you?” I asked.

  He looked away. That was answer enough.

  “What did you do?” I asked, in a very small voice.

  “It’s not what I did,” he said. “It’s what James’ great-great-great-great-grandfather did.”

  Dammit. “James’ mother,” I said. “She got sick when James was a kid. Did she know she was going to get sick?”

  He nodded.

  “Did she know she was going to die?”

  He nodded again.

  “Did the same thing happen to one of her parents?”

  A third nod. “She was an only child. They’re always only children on her side of the family, and they always see one of their parents die when they’re eleven or twelve years old. Old enough for it to hurt.”

  I was pretty sure losing a parent would hurt no matter how old somebody was when it happened, but I didn’t say that. “Why?”

  “Because some ancestor of hers decided his magic,” there was a bitter twist to the word that was almost more shocking than hearing the word at all, “was more important than his family, and he made a deal to make sure it would always breed true. Apparently, it doesn’t a lot of the time, for magic folks.”

  “It skips generations,” I said, in as neutral a tone as I could manage.

  “It does,” said Captain Smith, and frowned. “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “Because I’m not,” I said. “One of James’ ancestors made a deal with the crossroads to guarantee all his descendants would be sorcerers and had worded it in such a way that when each new member of the family began to come into their magic, the previous member of the family would die a sudden and unavoidable death. That’s pretty straightforward. What keeps him here in town?”<
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  “The bargain included the phrase ‘that New Gravesend should always be protected against the dangers of the unseen world,’” said Captain Smith.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Of course it did. All right. First, you should talk to your son, because he has no idea you know any of this, and he’s a sorcerer, so telling him you know magic exists wouldn’t be the worst idea you ever had. And you don’t break a crossroads bargain by making sure someone is ignorant of the fact that it affects them.” Was he ignorant? Truly?

  He had to be. He would have said something if not, or recognized that he could be contesting his family’s bargain, rather than Sally’s: there’s nothing like an old family debt that you didn’t volunteer for and can’t get away from to make a case for systemic unfairness.

  Captain Smith’s cheeks reddened. “I didn’t come here to be told how to raise my son.”

  “Uh, you already raised him. He’s an adult. The only reason he hasn’t been clawing the walls down trying to get out of this town is because he’s been trying to get justice for Sally, but one day he’s going to give up, or he’s going to decide he needs to consult with somebody who knows more about this shit than he does. He’s going to take whatever he’s been able to save from his shitty job and buy a bus ticket for anywhere but here, and then what? He crosses the city limits and dies of a massive coronary? You’re doing him no favors and a lot of future harm by keeping him in the dark. So no, I will not stay away from your son, and no, I will not help you do a better job of lying to him, and I would like you to get out of my house now, please.”

  Captain Smith regarded me levelly for several seconds. “I could make life in this town very difficult for you.”

  “Life in this town is already difficult enough. Leave, please.”

  He started for the door. Then he paused, turning to give me a thoughtful look. “How do you know all this about magic?”

  “Oh, didn’t I mention? I’m a sorcerer, too.” I raised my hand, fingers poised like I was going to snap and, I don’t know, blow us both to Kingdom Come. “Leave, please. I don’t want to explain why you’re here when James comes back.”

  Captain Smith gave me a look that was half anger, half fear before bolting for the door. I ran after him, slamming it so hard the windows rattled and flipping the deadbolt home. My heart was pounding; my skin felt two sizes too small.

  “Get it together, Annie,” I whispered, leaning my forehead against the doorframe and forcing myself to breathe. “Get it together.”

  The crossroads hated sorcerers. That wasn’t a surprise. But how many of us had it destroyed, limited, confined, all for the sake of avoiding the confrontation I was trying to help kick off? This was too much. This was too big. We weren’t going to win. The crossroads had destroyed generations of people just like me, and it was hubris to think we were going to be any different. James wasn’t going to get away. I wasn’t going to get away. It was over. We’d lost.

  I looked longingly toward Cylia’s purse, still sitting on the floor by the end of the couch. She had a prepaid burner cell. I knew she did because I’d been there when she bought it. Having a phone number was essential if she wanted to set up and pay for things like utilities.

  I could call home. One last time. I could tell my mother I loved her. I could tell my father I was sorry. I could tell my mice they were going to need to prepare a new set of catechisms soon, rituals I was never going to be a part of, because we were going to lose bad. We were all going to die here, so damn far away from home, and I hated it, and it wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right, and I could call home if I wanted to. I could say good-bye.

  Or I could win. I could tell the odds and the crossroads to go fuck themselves, and I could win. It seemed impossible. It seemed more than impossible. It was still the better option.

  Reluctantly, I pushed away from the door and walked toward the kitchen, leaving Cylia’s purse alone. The curtains were drawn across the kitchen window. I pushed them aside, and shouted in dismay as Sam’s face appeared, all but pressed against the glass.

  “There you are,” he mouthed, words silenced by the thick, storm-ready pane. He disappeared. The door opened a moment later, and he stuck his head inside.

  “James says the circle is close enough to perfect as makes no difference, and he wants you to come have a look before we get ready to start the summons,” he said. “Leonard should be at the crossroads by now. Think they’ll eat him? Could we get that lucky?”

  “Talk to Cylia if it’s luck you’re looking for,” I said, and took a deep breath before muttering, “Here goes nothing,” and stepping out the back door.

  Bethany didn’t appear. I allowed my shoulders to unlock.

  Sam nodded. “See? We’re doing this.” Then he grabbed my wrist with one still-human hand and tugged me off the porch, heading across the field toward the distant shadow of the boathouse.

  I’ve never been the most outdoorsy member of my family, but I’ve never been on the verge of losing everything outside my bedroom walls before. The world seemed to have become supersaturated during my short time inside, the colors growing brighter, the smells growing more intense. I looked around as much as I dared as we trotted through the field, not quite running, but more than walking fast.

  Fern was waiting just outside the boathouse. “What took you so long?” she asked.

  “I got distracted cleaning up.” I could tell them about Captain Smith later, when Mary was back and we were going up against the crossroads directly. James would need to know. He didn’t deserve to be blindsided by the news that one of his ancestors had guaranteed his mother’s death, or that his father had been lying to him for his entire life.

  Sometimes, good intentions do more damage than all the wicked plots in all the world.

  Inside, someone—probably Cylia—had strung a bunch of white hazard lights around the edges of the boathouse, casting a cool white light over the circle sketched in chalk, salt, and little white feathers across the majority of the floor. I stopped, frowning.

  “Where did you get that many white feathers?” I asked. “Did somebody kill a goose?”

  “No, we killed a pillow,” said Cylia. “Our landlord has good taste in linens. James did most of the work of drawing the summoning circle. The rest of us just handed him feathers when he asked for them.”

  That was good. Anyone can draw a summoning circle, but they work best when drawn by someone with actual power. I walked a slow loop around the edge, checking for breaks, checking for places where the lines were narrower, or shallower, or anything else that could lead to us getting something other than what we bargained for. To his credit, James watched me but didn’t say anything about the inspection. It’s a fool who argues about a second set of eyes on a complicated problem, whether you’re talking calculus or demonology.

  The candles were placed with precision. The semiprecious stones, which were mostly quartz and appeared to have been gathered from the edge of the lake, were properly nestled in their cradles of salt. I bent to adjust a few of them, moving their angles more into alignment with the rest of the scene, and didn’t say a word. This was going to work or it wasn’t. We were going to get one of our allies back—one of our weapons back—or we weren’t.

  Only one way to know for sure.

  I straightened, looking slowly around the room. My motley crew of allies and oddities looked back, waiting for the word.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

  Twenty

  “People who say that right and wrong are all about absolutes are usually getting ready to stab someone for looking at things differently. Try to stab them first.”

  –Enid Healy

  In a somewhat decrepit boathouse, preparing to do something genuinely foolish

  WE ARRAYED OURSELVES AROUND the circle, standing as evenly spaced as possible, our hands outstretched and our fingers splayed,
not quite touching one another. Sam’s arms were long enough in his fūri form that he could have reached the people to either side of him—me and Cylia—but that wasn’t the point. We were sketching a phantom connection as part of our snare to catch a ghost, and actual contact would have interfered.

  The rules of magic are complicated, confusing, and sometimes contradictory. Magic is basically the English language of universal constants.

  “Mary Dunlavy, we call to you from across the void,” I said. “You have duties yet unfinished and promises yet unfulfilled here upon this mortal plane, and you will answer me, or give good reason why.”

  “Wouldn’t giving good reason be an answer?” Fern asked, sounding faintly baffled.

  I didn’t answer. It didn’t matter if she spoke. Cylia and Sam were similarly unlimited. Only James and I had to stay completely on task. We were the ones who supposedly knew what we were doing. And hey, James had never called a ghost before, and I was distracted by the fact that the fresh new wards on the boathouse were of necessity less complete than the ones on the house, since we needed to be able to pull Mary through them, but at least we’d read the back of the cereal box. Or something.

  “Mary Dunlavy, you are needed,” said James. “Your work is not yet done. Your time is not yet finished. Your allies call to you, and will not go unheard.”

  The air in the boathouse began to chill. Whether that was because the calling was starting to work or because James was nervous enough to be freezing the air around him was anybody’s guess.

  “Mary, come to me.” I let some of the solemnity slip from my voice, replaced by raw pleading. “I’m not done with you yet. You’re not going to be my babysitter forever, and that means I should enjoy the time I have left.”

  “Everybody should have a dead aunt,” said Sam.

  I resisted the urge to glare at him.

  The candles flickered. The air kept getting colder, chilling around us degree by degree. I glanced at James, who shook his head while mouthing “not me.” Okay. Something was coming to answer our summons. Whether it was Mary or something worse had yet to be determined.