Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2019 Edition

by Elizabeth Bear

  “I remember,” I said, stung by his accusation. “And I never asked you to leave.”

  Chrissa quietly patted my hand, as if to say, not now. “Tell me about your other hosts. How come you have so many?”

  “I found pathways to other people. But they didn’t always want me around. So I left them too.”

  “Seven other hosts over ten years?”

  He nodded. “The shortest time I spent with one was three days. But—” he hitched his shoulders up and drew in a shaky breath like he needed air— “the hunter killed her too. Why? She didn’t know who I was. She thought I was a bad dream.”

  “Hunters have to be thorough,” Chrissa said. I choked audibly at that, and she explained, “It’s like an illness. You have to get rid of everything that’s infected.”

  “Like an extermination,” I said tonelessly. I wanted to vomit.

  Chrissa’s lips pursed. She looked more upset than I ever remembered, and that helped with nothing. She turned back to Mirror Boy as I blinked back burning in my eyes. “How about the host you were with the longest.”

  “My last host,” he said. I noticed how much more tired he looked. “Her name was Nur Elisha. She lived alone in Darlingfort. I was with her for seven years. She thought I was her long-lost grandson.”

  I swallowed. Words could not describe the ugly feelings welling up in me now. “Did the hunter kill her too?”

  “He killed her first. And found the others, one by one. Every one I fled to, he killed.”

  Nur Elisha, Nur Elisha. I replayed the name in my head, trying to tease out if and when I saw her in the news. But an elderly woman dying alone in the sewer slums wasn’t important. And wouldn’t be until the third or fourth person killed the same way.

  “I’m going to ask you a question. Please answer it honestly.” Chrissa’s manner towards Mirror Boy was still gentle as a shepherd’s, but I’d never seen her this somber, and that frightened me more than anything else. I was standing chest-high in a sea of uncertainty. It was a sick old feeling. It was a familiar old feeling. “Why didn’t you take any of your hosts over?”

  “Because I didn’t want to,” he said. “I know I’m supposed to. I can feel that call. But I—” He stopped, struggling for words. He had never been the most talkative, my Mirror Boy. “I just wanted to watch. What would I do with their lives?”

  “What, indeed,” Chrissa muttered to herself. To Mirror Boy she asked: “Do you know who your hunter is?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm.” Chrissa had gone uncharacteristically quiet. She told me, “You stay right here,” and vanished into the upper loft.

  With Chrissa gone, Mirror Boy leaned as far as the glass would allow him and hissed: “She can’t help us. Nobody can break what links us. Either you run, or—” He exhaled, and the glass went misty on the inside.

  “Or what?”

  “Or she finds a way to kill me without touching you.”

  “No.”

  “It’s the only way—”

  “No.” I slapped my hand against the glass and he flinched back from it. “Stop saying these things. I don’t want you dead. And I never asked you to leave. Why would you say that?”

  He moved away from the glass. “You didn’t have to say it. I could tell. You were trying to build a life that had no space for me in it. You wanted a normal life. So I let you be normal.”

  “That’s not true,” I insisted. I had been maybe a bit relieved to get my reflection back—to know that it would be my face I saw when I looked in a mirror—but I wasn’t glad. It was just—it was more convenient. Because then I didn’t have to worry about explaining him to other people. Or the fact that I couldn’t see to put on lip gloss. It was just slightly easier.

  But I’d rather have had him. I believed that.

  “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be normal,” Mirror Boy said.

  Chrissa came back downstairs, waving a small velvet box that probably safekept someone’s wedding ring in its previous life. “Luckily for us,” she said, “our hunter-murderer is a bit of a dumbass. I’m guessing an amateur. I asked him for a bunch of things as payment for fixing his scry, including a lock of hair.” She tapped the ring box. “Pro tip: Never give a witch anything that used to be part of you. No matter what the reason.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked. I imagined the curses she could lay upon him on my behalf. She could solve all our problems instantly.

  But of course Chrissa wasn’t that kind of witch. “I’m going to find out who he is.”

  Her desk yielded a sliver of workspace and she got busy, tuning us out of her consciousness. I folded myself to the floor and leaned my head against the cool glass. I wasn’t sure what time it was anymore. I thought: I need to tell Shane I’m not coming back tonight. It’s my turn to cook dinner.

  I closed my eyes. Mirror Boy began to talk. “At the start, I was going to take you over,” he said. “It’s true that is the nature of wraiths. But you, you wanted to live so badly. You burned with so much desire that it frightened me. I didn’t think I could put out that flame. So I stayed and I watched you. And over time I realized I didn’t have to do what my nature demanded of me. So I didn’t.”

  “You’re not like the other wraiths,” I whispered.

  “I suppose I’m not.”

  “What do we really know about wraiths, anyway?” Chrissa said. She was grinding some kind of rock into fine powder in a tiny handheld mortar. “Jack shit. All our current spiritual knowledge is like, a grand total of twenty years old. We make it up as we go along. I bet that in ten years, Mirror Boy, you’re going to be the case study people cite when talking about wraiths.”

  I thought about life ten years in the future and a blanket of exhaustion fell over me. I still had the gauntlet of the next ten days to go through. The next ten hours.

  Mirror Boy leaned against me, shoulder to shoulder, the glass a thin and unbreakable barrier between our worlds. “Are you happy?” he whispered. “Is this the life that you wanted?”

  “Heavy questions, kid,” Chrissa warned from her perch.

  I didn’t know how to answer him. “It’s not a bad life,” I said. “It’s a bit dull. But it’s my life.”

  “It sounds nice,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it more than I did.

  I looked up at Chrissa, framed by the stacks of her grimoires, a figure of pure concentration, and was struck by envy, bone-deep. Chrissa looked like someone who was exactly where she was meant to be. Here was a person who hadn’t just fallen into the grooves of her life like a yellow coat of autumn leaves, but was growing bright and verdant from deep soil that suited her. And she was just sitting there, filled with innocent purpose, with no idea how lucky she was. I wished I had the same kind of untrammeled joy in my life as Chrissa did. I felt almost guilty I didn’t.

  “I’m a pretender,” I said, knowing Mirror Boy was listening. “When I stop to think about my life I get the sense that I’m just borrowing someone else’s. So I don’t.” I shrugged. It was hard to put these sentiments into words. “Like I have all this stuff in my past I can’t talk about. I don’t know.” The events of the past few hours were finally catching up, like a tidal wave about to smother me. “I’m sorry I snapped when you came back. Because it’s like … I was being reminded that I’m only a pretender. Pretending to have this life that isn’t mine.”

  “Your life is your life,” Chrissa said sharply, and when I looked up she was glaring at me over the rims of the bifocals she wore to do near-vision work. “Don’t say shit like that. People deserve to have nice things.”

  “A borrowed life is better than none,” said Mirror Boy.

  I pressed my fingertips to his against the cool glass and felt a smile pushing through my gloom. “I’m not going to argue with you.”

  Exhaustion overtook me then, and I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke to Chrissa gripping me by the shoulders, her face inches from mine. “Did you ever drown?”

 
; I blinked away half-ghosts and dream-fragments. “Yes, once.” I didn’t want to tell her about Alfous, about his cruel fingers or the little red tip of his tongue, or the way the blood bloomed across his neck when I cut it.

  “Was this when you met the kid?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Come have a look.”

  She sauntered to her desk, where a battle-scarred laptop sat whirring. I didn’t want to leave the safety of the charm circle, so I stayed put. Chrissa pointed to the screen. “I worked out your hunter’s name, and I scrubbed the web for it. Look. There we are. There’s your mirror boy.”

  The screen was too far for me to read. I tried to swallow my disbelief. “Mirror Boy’s the hunter?”

  “Kraken’s sake, no. Mirror boy drowned ten years ago. Here it is, in the news. The hunter’s his twin. There’s your motivation sorted out. He’s going after his brother’s wraith. I told you: an amateur.”

  “I don’t have an older brother,” Mirror Boy said. He sounded confused. “I don’t remember him.”

  “Of course you don’t. You’re not a spirit. Just loose energy from when someone died before their time, given shape and direction. How do you find your hosts, kid?”

  Mirror Boy licked his lips. “In the water, on the verge of passing.”

  “There, see? You’re following the path of that boy’s death.”

  “But I’m not him,” Mirror Boy said. “I don’t know him. I’m not—”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Chrissa clicked the laptop shut. “Look, obviously this guy is serious. Amateur hunters like him do it because they’re fanatics. You can’t reason with them. I know this too well.” She sighed and tangled her hands in her hair. “And there’s no known way to separate a wraith from its host. Once you infect a person, it’s permanent. No take-backsies.” She started pacing in a tiny circle, which she only did when she was frustrated. “That’s why hunters kill hosts. It’s cruel, but it’s better than letting the wraith spread, because most wraiths are legit nightmares. I don’t say that lightly. I’ve had to clean up before. When wraiths possess people, they turn into psychopaths. Like flesh-dungeon, cannibal-horror psychopaths.”

  “But he’s not like that,” I said. “You know he’s not like that. He’s not.”

  “I know. He … loves you. I think that’s the difference.” She looked between the two of us, helpless. “Honey, I’m sorry. This is out of my depth. I’m out of ideas. I don’t know what to do.”

  “That’s not good enough. We have to do something.” I looked at Mirror Boy, trapped in his bubble of a world. I’d spent the last ten years scraping this life I had together, but he couldn’t leave the glass-bound existence he was chained to. So maybe my life wasn’t perfect, maybe it was dull and not a hundred percent what I would have hoped for. But it was mine. And it was more than he had. It wasn’t fair. He deserved better. We deserved better.

  “We have to do something,” I repeated.

  THE HUNTER

  Leviathan forgive me. I stand here in Your eternal sight, a sinner beyond redemption, my hands stained as Kraken’s ink and my heart cold and dead as Kraken’s eyes. Ten years ago the greater part of my soul drowned in the water with my brother. It was my fault that those men mistook him for me, and a stain upon my being that I was not there to stop it from happening. But it will be over soon. Tonight, or tomorrow, or sometime this week, I will kill the last of his hosts, and then it will be done. This job will be done, and I can fade away.

  The girl has corralled herself in the building where the witch lives. I don’t know if they’re friends, but the scry lies heavy and dormant in my hand. Something protects her and hides her from my sight. The knife weighs my belt down, waiting and patient. It has tasted the blood of seven, and it wants more. I detest it. I detest its heft, its hunger. I regret the day I had it forged. But it’s too late. If I stop now, at this one last step I need to end this wraith, then all the death that came before will be for nothing.

  In the old days this would be easier. You’d dig up the grave, salt the bones, then burn them. But the sea is my brother’s grave, and it has thickened his bones with salt, and no fire shall ever touch them.

  It was Leviathan who guided me. It was They who sent Bastian to me. Sweet Bastian, with his soft cheeks and honeyed lips. He spoke of the year his reflection showed someone else, dark haired and dark eyed, skin warm as almond husks. He said: “At first, I thought you were him. You look exactly alike.” I told him about my dead twin, the drowned boy, and between our tellings the events that had followed my brother’s death became clear. By then I had spent years in penance, knees pressed to the cold temple floors, hot blood dripping into sacrificial chalices, praying for my sins to be cleansed by the stringent purity of saltwater. For the mercy of Leviathan to pass through me and leave me bleached and bare. That night, I knew that I was beyond the redemption of even the Great Finned One, but They had blessed me still with a chance to atone for the life I had led.

  From there everything unraveled: the nights combing through the mausoleums of old libraries, the days spent pulling secrets out of witches and priests. And then the knowledge, and then the knife, and then the first of the blood. The old woman who lived alone in a coffin box, among stacks of decaying photographs and the flat faces of mirrors.

  Until then, I didn’t think I could do it. Until the moment the knife punctured her chest I believed I would fail on the path Leviathan had set me upon. But the old woman died and I was baptized in her blood, reborn as Leviathan’s blade. Great Leviathan, I am Your will and Your flesh in the realm of mortals, doing Your bidding as I may. I stain myself in Your name. I condemn myself so that I may bring peace to Your domain.

  Yesterday it was Bastian’s turn. The smell of his blood lingers on my collar where his hands touched it, his questing fingers tightening, then losing their grip. I dread the thought of washing my shirt. It’s all I have left of him.

  The scry comes to life, the coral glowing with bioluminescence. The urchin-spike needle spins. The girl has emerged from her den of safety.

  Soon it will be over.

  By the time I park the boat and enter the building, her footsteps are echoing on the steps several floors above me. I take my shoes off. Barefoot and silent, I slip upwards, the knife ready in my hand.

  The girl comes to a stop at midlevel, leaning by the gangway to the next building. She’s slender and fashionable, an ocean of curls resting on her shoulders. In another time, I might have offered her something else: a drink, a taste of salt. Her shaking hands fumble with a lighter and cigarette. In the end, it’s our vices that will lead to our downfall. I creep up from behind.

  Soon it will be over.

  Something creaks. She turns, catches sight of me, and recoils in fear. I spring forward, but she is already fleeing down the gangway into the waiting night.

  I give chase. The girl shines like a deer in the woods, a memory from the time I was too small to know speech. She vanishes into the shelter of the next building, which exists as a dismal wreck, boarded-up and empty even of squatters. The midlevel floor, formerly a studio or warehouse, challenges me with a maze of metal cabinets, heaving with rotting boxes and bloated white tins.

  The girl slips between the cabinets, her breathing harsh. I trip over a metal rod jutting between two shelves and land palm-first in the dust. As I scramble to get up I hear a deep crash, then another. A chorus of deadly groans—metallic, ringing. The girl. She’s pushed a shelf over and now they’re all coming down, an army of avenging dominoes.

  The floor doesn’t hold. Eaten through with mold and termites, it ruptures under the weight of the falling shelves. Wood and metal plunge towards the waiting water, meeting their doom with dull sounds. I barely escape the devouring chasm in time. I watch a whole cabinet tip to its death, its insides spilling like butchered intestines.

  A skittering sound to my left. It’s the girl, leaping over rubble and ruin. I realize I’ve dropped the knife and it’s nowhere to be found.


  The girl has it. She’s run to the far end of the room, and the knife glints in a shard of moonlight as she holds it up. I speak to the wraith of my brother who resides in her: “Are you going to do it for me, Vincent?” I ask. “Will you end your own life? End this torment?”

  “I’m not him,” she says, in a voice high and clear as a songbird’s. “I’m not your dead brother. No one is.” She cuts into her palm; blood runs over her wrist and down her elbow. “Look. I bleed red. I’m human.”

  I shake my head. None of the other hosts bled wraith-black either. Sometimes the literature is wrong. But now the girl has put obstacles between us. She is clever; I have to be careful.

  “Look,” she says. “You seem like a nice man. It doesn’t have to be like this. We could be friends. I want to be your friend. Don’t you want to know your brother?”

  Her eyes are luminous, the way I remember deer eyes reflected the light. The shape of her legs shows under her shift, and I imagine the warmth between them and the soft places I can sink into. I imagine taking her down by the neck and having her right here, on the dying floorboards of a dying building. I imagine killing her as she comes, my brother’s wraith spilling like black vomit from her lips.

  A shiver passes through me, and I know at once that this is Kraken’s corruption. Kraken with Its tentacles that turn flesh to temptation and minds to ruin. Kraken who lives to frustrate the will of Leviathan. No. I cannot be fooled. I will not be thwarted.

  I seize a metal rod from the ground, its end a series of ragged points. The knife is only a tool; anything will work as well. “Don’t try to trick me, you witch.”

  The girl runs.

  By Leviathan’s grace I cross the room without falling through. The girl has vanished up the concrete stairwell with roof access, but that’s a mistake. This building is too short to connect to rooflevel, so she’ll be trapped. I burst through the door to find her standing at the roof edge, staring across the blank space of the canal, elbows tight to her waist.