Grave Dealings

by R. R. Virdi

  And maybe a little girl would never grow up to be a warrior princess.

  I chased after her, wincing as every step sent a shock through my injured leg.

  Anna passed through a mirror.

  I snarled, picking up my pace and pulling a fist back. A dark mass hurtled by at the edge of my vision. I slowed, turning my head and shifting my body to address it.

  The Faust had shambled out of another mirror, heading towards Milo and his mother. Anna was hopping through the reflective objects faster than I could keep up. She closed in on Milo faster than I would have liked.

  I buried the pain in my leg, telling myself I’d deal with it later and set off after Anna.

  Milo saw her coming but he did nothing to avoid her. His lips pressed tight, and his features pulled into a resigned mask of expectancy. He knew what was coming, and didn’t intend to fight it.

  I only wish I knew what was coming.

  Anna raked a hand at him, passing through him like he was nothing but condensed fog. The center of his body parted, and the Faust snapped her jaws as the gaping hole. She tore into his spectral form like a shark gorging on chum. Anna was tearing into the remains of his soul.

  The tendons in my body turned into rebar, refusing to move. My joints froze. It didn’t last. My heart sped up, pumping like an electric arc furnace sending rivulets of hot metal through my veins.

  I raced towards her with renewed vigor as she remained ensconced in the act of devouring a soul. My scream ripped what little moisture I had left in my throat, threatening to tear the lining.

  Anna turned her head towards me. Her eyes were a mix of almost drug-induced ecstasy and wide-eyed confusion.

  I aimed to settle the confusion part for her. I leapt, throwing my fist out with all the weight, anger, and momentum I could. It felt like a brick had come down on my last two knuckles. I winced and followed through with the blow.

  Anna stumbled sideways a couple of steps, relinquishing her hold over Milo.

  Correction: what remained of him. And it wasn’t much. His form had lost all shape and color. It was like looking at tufts of the cheapest cotton shredded and tossed into the wind. Ghostly, pale-blue strands flitted into the air before dissolving entirely.

  My imagination likely fueled the Neravene into showing me the scene unfold that way.

  Anna had killed Milo. She’d taken his soul. Even that little bit was gone now. The Faust had completely removed a person from the life and the afterlife.

  Something snapped in the darker parts of my brain.

  I twisted, sending my left fist into a quick, short uppercut. My fist cracked into the front of her ribs. I repeated the blow before pivoting and sinking my weight as I brought my elbow onto the back of her shoulder.

  She staggered, doubling over further and nearly falling to her knees.

  My throat wasn’t up to another scream. I spat, muttering a curse and driving my heel into the side of her head. “You freak of nature.” I punctuated every word with a kick to her ribs. “You killed him—twice!” The following blow struck her chest with more of my shin than my foot.

  Anna endured the assault in silence. Her body shivered throughout the ordeal. Puffs of air left her nostrils and mouth in staggered succession. They increased in intensity.

  I stepped back, eyes widening as I realized what she was doing. “Stop laughing.” I fell to a knee, bringing my fist down against the back of her skull. My punch drove her face into the ground. I expected the sickening sounds of breaking cartilage and fractured bits of jaw.

  I was wrong.

  Anna laughed harder through the pavement sandwich.

  I took a step back when my anger subsided, and I noticed the rest of her body. Her wings were whole. No clawed-out portions, which I certainly remembered doing. The sides of her snout were fine, whole, and not deformed from the battering.

  She’d been restored.

  “You know”—she laughed harder—“the claims about soul food being good for you aren’t exaggerated.”

  Anna had just made a pun about snuffing out a soul...and a bad pun at that.

  I threw another punch.

  The Faust sprung to her feet in a burst of preternatural speed. She brought an arm up, catching the inside of my forearm against her elbow. Her hand shot out, closing tight around my throat once again. She shifted and pistoned her arm, throwing me without effort.

  I flailed, struggling to adjust for the fall. The back of my heels touched the ground, and I tumbled backwards, twisting to take the brunt of the landing across the broad of my back and shoulders. My body cried out as the jarring impact rattled through me. I rolled over completely. My knees banged against one another as I came to my side. I lay within arm’s reach of the mirror I’d entered the Neravene through.

  Unlike the bat freak, my injuries hadn’t recovered. I bled well enough to do what I needed. I groaned, clawing at the ground, and hauled myself within a hand’s breadth of the mirror.

  Swearing beneath my breath, I brought my right hand to the bleeding tissue beneath my shoulder and neck. The blood had turned sap-like, not quite dried. It’d have to do.

  I traced a finger against the lowest corner of the mirror that was obscured by my body. The symbol from my journal waned from the mental image I tried to keep in my mind. I shut my eyes tight, fighting to keep the picture clear. It was more of a psychosomatic action than anything else. But it helped.

  My finger shook in a mix of fatigue and pain as I dragged it along to create the intricate details of the symbol.

  “I wanted to offer you something. A chance to have a life.” Anna’s voice was tinged with smoke and heat. She sounded pissed I’d spurned her offer.

  Oh well.

  “You didn’t have to be so stubborn. You could have avoided this.”

  I rolled over, pressing my back to the mirror. My lips spread into a toothy, blood tinged smile. “Maybe I’m a tough negotiator?” I widened my smile and shifted to hide the symbol behind my lower back. My index finger continued to scrawl away. It wasn’t easy trying to replicate the design while facing in the other direction.

  “You’re so funny.” Her tone implied she thought I was anything but. She lifted her foot and kicked out.

  Three points of acute heat blossomed over a tight cluster on my chest. The tips of her talons tore my flesh.

  She leaned into me.

  The talons dug deeper.

  “Ffft.” I bit down on my tongue to choke off the pained cry.

  “I could have given you answers. You could have had a normal life—a new one, if you wanted. All you had to do was give up something—a state of being you’re not even enjoying. Do you like living this?” She put more weight against me, talons burrowing deeper into the muscle of my chest.

  I winced, panting before I could dredge up a reply. “A little roughhousing can be fun.” I gave her a toothy smile and winked.

  Anna ground her foot against me.

  I screamed.

  “You’re not funny. You’re irritating, irrational—maddening!”

  I coughed hard in pain and an effort to clear my throat. “First, you hit on me. Then, you hit me. Now, you’re flattering me. You’ll confuse a guy.”

  She wrenched her foot away, her talons hurting nearly as much on the way out as they did in.

  I stayed silent, letting the agony fuel the glare I shot her.

  Come on. Stop throwing a hissy fit and look into the mirror.

  A deep burble formed in Anna’s throat, one she swallowed. She bent and grabbed my jaw and hauled.

  The place where my spine met my skull cried like it was going to snap. I lashed out with a kick to the inside of one of her thighs.

  She took the blow without any signs of discomfort.

  I guess chowing down on Milo topped off her tank.

  Her fingers squeezed my lower jaw with enough strength for me to worry about her turning bone to dust. She loosened her hold, transferring her grip to hold me by the top of my throat. “Got anyth
ing funny to say now?”

  “Heh. I know you are, but what am I?”

  She slammed me against the mirror, my head ricocheting off it with a crack that surely came more from me than the glass. Anna pulled me close enough to breathe on me. “What happens when I kill you? Will your little soul flit away to another body? Will you die for real? Maybe, maybe if I kill you here—in my domain—maybe you’ll stay here. Wouldn’t that be fun? Just you and me, repeating this all over again. Except, this time, you’ll be a little less resilient.” She pressed her thumb to one of my puncture wounds and ground.

  I gritted my teeth and stared her down. “I’d still kick your ass.”

  “Still? Is that what you think has happened here?”

  I flashed her a crooked smile. “Looks that way to me.”

  “Hm. I’ll tell you what it looks like.”

  Indulge me, freak.

  “It looks like you’ve lost. That you’re stalling, trying to catch a second wind that won’t do you any good. But let me tell you what I see.”

  This should be good.

  She turned me around and thrust me against the mirror.

  I twisted to avoid crashing into it face first. One of my cheeks smashed against the glass, and my temple throbbed from the impact.

  “Look in the mirror.”

  I struggled, placing a hand on the glass surface to push away from it.

  Anna figured out what I was going for and used her other hand to grab me by the wrist. She pulled my arm, straightening it out and shoving me harder against the mirror.

  “Look!”

  “I’ve got this funny feeling if I do, I’ll see a hideous batty monster.”

  My face pulled away from the mirror before crashing back into it. I almost saw stars.

  Guess Anna didn’t appreciate the lip, so she settled for trying to split mine.

  “I’ll tell you what I see.” The surface of the mirror flashed like it harbored an inner light. “I’m going to step through this and leave you here. I’m going to find Eddie and tear him apart, slowly. You’re going to watch his soul end up in this place right before I devour it. Then, I’m going to go back and fetch your friend Ortiz. Can you guess what I’m going to do to her?”

  I grunted and struggled in her grip. “Maybe you should look closer in the mirror, and I’ll tell you what I see!” I pulled hard, slipping my extended arm free from her grip. I snaked it behind her waist and pushed. The sudden maneuver caught her off-guard, and her skull bounced off the mirror. Her hold on my neck broke and I stepped behind her, pressing her forehead against the mirror so she’d look straight into it.

  Anna thrashed and placed a hand against the glass to push against it. Her hand stuck like it was bonded to the surface. She huffed in agitation and pushed. The mirror acted like a pool of silvery glue. It refused to let go. She pulled against it. Tendrils of liquid glass peeled away from the mirror before snapping back, taking Anna’s arm with them. She slammed into the mirror.

  “What did you do?”

  I pointed to the symbol I’d scrawled on the bottom left corner. “I got to thinking about what you said. The eyes are the windows to the soul, right? Lore says that mirrors are reflections of more than just our physical imagery. They’re reflections of what’s inside of us—the good, the bad. Things like our desires and our thoughts. Things like our souls.”

  Anna put her other hand on the mirror out of instinct. She pressed hard and leaned back.

  It didn’t do her any good.

  The mirror fought back, pulling her arm in like it was mercury-colored quicksand.

  “No. No-no-no.” Anna’s shook her upper body, thrashing around like the act of doing so would deny her fate.

  “It didn’t take me long to put it together. If Fausts can pass through mirrors and if mirrors hold that level of significance in lore, it stands to reasons you can trap one of your kind in them. After all, what can be opened, what can be passed through, can be shut and locked. The rest is what you gave me. The bit about taking souls through eyes. I figured if I could get a Faust to look in a mirror with a seal, well, your own magic would trap you in your own doorway. Neat, huh?”

  She shook her arms, still fighting in futility. “Stop this, please!”

  Please? That was rich.

  I placed my foot against the small of her back and pushed. “Uh, I’m going to go with a big ‘No’ on that one.” I pushed harder.

  “I can save Eddie!”

  I stopped and pulled my foot back. It wasn’t much to help her predicament, but she noticed it. “I’m listening. Talk fast, before you end up as a talking novelty mirror.”

  “I can cancel his contract. I can free him!”

  I had a feeling she could do that.

  But at what cost?

  Her freedom, likely. Meaning she’d no doubt ensnare someone else down the line. Knowing her, there’d be no end of people. Back to square one. One soul damned to this place in exchange for keeping Anna from snagging countless more. It wasn’t good math, no matter how I looked at it.

  After all, what’s the worth of one immortal soul?

  Anna slipped further into the mirror. She kicked it and leaned back. Her foot stuck to the surface and followed suit with her arms. “Help me. Help Eddie. Think about it.”

  I did and took a step back.

  The mirror pulled half of Anna’s body into itself.

  “Help.” Her pleas grew weaker. It was almost like she was begging.

  I wondered how many people had given her that same line. I wondered how many she’d ignored while delighting in taking the last bit of their individuality—their existence—from them.

  Anna’s face touched the mirror. Her body spasmed in the kind of frenzy a drowning man would exhibit.

  I’d know.

  A second later, she passed wholly into the mirror. Anna’s form didn’t look much different. She stared at me, seething. “I’ll kill you for this.”

  I tapped a finger to the mirror. “Yeah, I don’t think so. But, maybe, if you play nice, we can see about letting you out.”

  She threw her head back and scoffed. “Forget it. You had your chance to save Eddie. We’ll still get his soul. He and everyone else is ours. We made the deals. We set them up. We’re going to collect.”

  We. She had said, “We.”

  The last piece fell into place.

  There were two of them.

  Ortiz and everyone else was vulnerable.

  And I’d trapped Anna in my only way out.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “Shit.” I put my hands to the side of my head, rubbing my temples.

  “Just figured it out, did you? You’re stuck. That gives us all the time in the world to sit and talk. Maybe make a deal? How long do you think has passed, by the way, in the mortal world? A day? A week? Long enough for the rest of your friends to end up here? Maybe—”

  “Shut up.” I banged the base of my fist against the mirror. My anger wasn’t in the blow. It was to make a point.

  Anna didn’t get it. “Strike a nerve? It’s not easy to pass down our deals, you know? Not when we’re handing everything someone’s wanted on a platter. People can’t turn that down. They rarely do in fact.”

  “Shut. Up.” I slammed my fist harder, punctuating each word with a bang.

  The surface of the mirror flexed like weak plastic, and Anna’s eyes flicked from side-to-side. She made the effort to suppress a shiver.

  The Faust had been freaked before when I battered a mirror she was on the other side of, but she’d been safe in someone’s home then. She was nothing more than a fixture in one now.

  I smiled. “You’re right; we should talk.”

  Anna matched my smile, pressing herself against the glass.

  I took a step back. That wasn’t an image I needed to see.

  She picked up on that. “Sorry, is this better?” Her features rippled, and muscles flexed like snakes under her skin. It was like watching a contortionist wriggle every bone and
sinew at once. Milk-white sap oozed from her pores, covering the entirety of her body. The fluid constricted her mass, and fleshy tones bled through it.

  Anna stood in the mirror as I’d first seen her. Well, sans the clothing.

  It wasn’t a bad view. But given that I knew what lay underneath, I couldn’t exactly appreciate it.

  “Uh, beauty is definitely skin-deep in your case, Anna. But kudos on the nifty Skin Sheath.”

  “Superficialist.” Anna turned and gave me a chiding look over her shoulder.

  “Only on the outside.” I pinched my borrowed cheeks and pulled them.

  “Mhm. Let’s skip the witty banter and get onto what’s really on your mind—deals. You want something. I want out. Talk.”

  “Aw, but the witty banter is the best part. Can’t make deals without a little foreplay.”

  Anna’s smile thinned.

  “Alright, fine.” I cleared my throat. “You want out, and I want Eddie’s contract nixed. Oh, throw in a Way out of here too.”

  Her smile vanished, and she shook her head. “No deal.”

  “What?” I gawked at her.

  “One or the other. You’re not getting both. You can save Eddie and make yourself comfortable here. Or you get a way out of here, let me out, and maybe, if you’re lucky, save your friends. Your mistake is thinking you have a lot more leverage than you do. You don’t. I won’t be trapped here forever. You know that. You’re not the only one who can let me out.” Her smile returned with a hungry light coloring her eyes.

  Damn. She was right.

  I exhaled and leaned against the glass, forcing a smile on my face. “Yeah, but will you get out in time?”

  Her face went flat, and she shot me an oblique stare. “In time for what?”

  I clenched my jaw, bracing for the pain to come. My fist rocketed into the glass. The mirror vibrated and flexed without giving.

  Anna’s eyes shot wide. “What are you doing?”

  “Testing a theory.” I slammed my fist into the glass again. “What happens if I break a mirror with a Faust inside? I’ve got a feeling it’s more than a few years of bad luck for you.” I winked.