Finn Fancy Necromancy

by Randy Henderson

  Kingston was a “blink and you’ll miss it” town whose main purpose for existing was its ferry dock, which connected the Olympic Peninsula with “mainland” suburbia north of Seattle. Like Port Townsend, it had grown in the past twenty-five years, with a couple of grocery shopping centers and new housing communities spreading along the main road like ivy climbing a post.

  The early-morning sun had just peaked the treetops by the time we neared the location marked on the map, in the heart of Kingston not far from the ferry dock. It looked like the Stepford Wives area of town. I peered up the Króls’ street as we passed, and frowned.

  “This can’t be right.” The street led to a cul-de-sac of Easter-colored houses with perfect lawns, flower gardens, and shiny, boxy vehicles in the drives. I’d expected something more like a stone fortress reached by a craggy cliffside road, possibly with horses that whinnied as lightning flashed overhead. Or at least, something that looked more appropriate for a coven of evil witches. I pulled into the next street, parked, and consulted the map. We had the right spot. “Huh.”

  “Something wrong?” Zeke asked.

  “No. I don’t know. I just expected something different, I guess.”

  Zeke glanced around at the houses. “This feels right to me. Easier for witches to lure in fools with a house of bread and cake than a house of bones, yeah?”

  Of course. Hansel and Gretel. I should have remembered my lessons. These houses would be a bit tough on the teeth, but they were the color of cupcakes, and probably full of families with their 2.5 plump children.

  I resumed driving and parked in the lot of a church several blocks away. We hiked back along the main road, then cut up into the woods as we neared the Króls’ cul-de-sac. No sense in making it too obvious.

  Zeke paused and reached inside his jacket as though digging through an inside pocket. The white jacket and pants became brown and green camouflage, blending with the pine trees and ferns around us.

  “Nice!” I said. “Jacket by Ralph Lothlórien.”

  I’d actually seen a real elven cloak once in the Museum of Necromancy, but it was a cloak made from the skins of elves, and not at all what Tolkien had in mind, I think—though I guess it still would have blended nicely into wooded surroundings.

  Zeke shot me a glare, then continued marching through the woods. I followed.

  We neared the edge of the woods around the cul-de-sac. Zeke pointed to our right and whispered, “I want to circle around. I’m guessing the center house is theirs.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It has gnomes on the lawn.”

  We circled around the cul-de-sac until Zeke held up a hand, signaling for me to stop. I moved behind a nearby tree and waited, peeking around the edge. Zeke knelt down, pulled back the left sleeve of his jacket, and held up his wrist to reveal a silver Casio calculator watch. He moved his arm around, occasionally tapping at the watch.

  Zeke finished whatever he was doing and crept back to my position.

  “Alarm talismans,” he whispered. “See there, where those two branches split?” He pointed up into the tree canopy.

  I squinted and saw something in the crook of the branches, a bundle of sticks perhaps, and what looked like a small animal skull.

  “What do we do?”

  Zeke plopped his duffel down on the ground and pulled out an animal pelt. He turned away from me. “Get on my back,” he whispered over his shoulder.

  “What?”

  “Don’t make me ask again. The pelt will hide us, but it’s not wide enough to cover two people walkin’ side by side.”

  “Uh, sure, okay.” I hopped up on his back, wrapping my arms around his neck and gripping his torso with my legs. He handed me the duffel to hold, then flipped the pelt over both our heads, and lumbered forward.

  Not exactly the most impressive way to charge a den of bad witches, I suppose.

  Speaking of bad witches, riding piggyback reminded me of Pete, who’d often given me piggyback rides when we were younger, which reminded me again that Pete wasn’t with us, which reminded me why he wasn’t with us, which made me sad. It also reminded me of the time I gave barefooted Heather a piggyback ride across a field of gravel while walking her home, which reminded me that she wasn’t talking to me, which again made me sad. That was a lot of bad whiches indeed, which was too bad because I suspected that piggyback rides came along very rarely in adulthood, and it seemed a real shame to not enjoy them. Even the ones given by grumpy Vikings.

  I braced for the animal skulls in the trees to begin shrieking, but none did. We reached the edge of the woods, and Zeke said, “Off.”

  I slid onto the ground, and Zeke rushed to the side of the nearest house. I copied him, pressing my back against the peach-colored siding.

  He stuffed the pelt back into the bag and shook his arm so that his watch settled down near his hand. He tapped on the calculator keys and held the watch near me, then hit a couple more keys and grunted.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m calculating how annoying your questions are, but my watch doesn’t go that high, fool.”

  He moved along the back of the house to the sliding glass doors, and I followed. Zeke squatted down low and peeked through the doors. After a few seconds he tapped at his watch again, appeared satisfied with whatever the result was, and pulled a skeleton key from beneath his shirt, hung on a leather cord. This was a true skeleton key, made from the enchanted finger-bone of a skilled thief, a rare artifact that combined necromantic and thaumaturgic magic yet was, for some reason, not very popular with thieves.

  Zeke touched the finger bone to the edge of the sliding door, and then pushed gently on the door itself. It slid open.

  “Stay very close to me as we pass through the threshold, dig?” he whispered. He crept forward, and I got as close as I could, my hands on his back. I felt the tingle of wards as we passed over the threshold, but again no alarms sounded.

  We were in what looked like a family room, with a sofa and lounge chairs, a large television, and plastic musical instruments.

  Zeke turned in a slow circle, consulting his watch. I drew the family gun from my jacket pocket, an old revolver loaded with silver bullets.

  “Why didn’t the alarm go off?” I whispered.

  “If I tell you, will you shut up?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  He continued to look at his watch as he muttered, “I measured our magic level, and created a subtraction field around us to cancel it out so the wards didn’t— There. I’m picking up something this way.”

  He led me to a laundry room, and then to the shelves at the back filled with cleaning supplies. He touched his skeleton key to several spots along the shelves and the wall around them, until a soft click sounded, and the shelves swung out from the wall.

  “Let’s see what the Króls have going on,” Zeke whispered. I swung the hidden door fully open, and Zeke led the way into the small room beyond.

  The paraphernalia of dark witchcraft filled the room, including engraved skulls, crucibles, animal bones, silver knives, blood drawing equipment, black candles, and cupcake tins.

  I noted a complete absence of rock albums and D&D modules, however, which would have come as a sore disappointment to our old mundy neighbor, Missus Bumshaw, who’d repeatedly informed me that such items were the gateways to evil and witchcraft. Instead, a desk sat against the back wall, covered in papers. Above it hung a sheet of paper with big red letters printed on it, some crossed out:

  1) Control PTA

  2) Control church

  3) Control Town

  Beneath the list was a collage of tacked-up news clippings from local papers, a map with lots of circles on it, and photos of people with ziplock bags pinned to them containing hair, nail clippings, bits of cloth, and other items. And mixed in with all of that, a lot of recipes for baked goods.

  “Looks like they’ve been busy,” Zeke w
hispered, then spun around, his baton extending and springing into bright white light in his hand.

  I turned and raised the gun, half expecting to see a hex flying at my face. A woman stood in the entrance to the room, her arms crossed. She had square features and thick blond hair and dressed as though her husband was the Republican candidate for president of the United States.

  “Who are you, and why are you in my home?” she asked, without any trace of Austrian accent.

  “Uh,” I said.

  “We have a few questions for you,” Zeke said.

  “Really? I haven’t seen an enforcer dressed like that in, well, quite a while. Somehow, I don’t think you’ve come from the ARC. Which makes me wonder how you’d feel if I called them?”

  “I’d feel great,” Zeke said. “Ask for Enforcer Captain Vickers; tell him his favorite retiree says I’ve got a clan of illegal feybloods I wanna introduce him to.”

  The woman arched an eyebrow. She smiled and took a step into the room. “Very well. What do you want?” Her hand reached out casually to the workbench beside her.

  Zeke tapped a nearby jar containing a tentacled something in green liquid. It crashed to the floor. “Oops,” he said. “Maybe we should step away from the dark magics and talk someplace less dangerous?”

  The woman glared murder at Zeke, but she raised her hands, backed through the door, and continued to walk in deliberate steps backward through the laundry room. Zeke moved in pace with her, and I followed suit. She stepped out into the family room, far enough so we could follow.

  Zeke put out his arm, stopping me from leaving the laundry room. “This is defensible,” he whispered back at me.

  “Is there a problem?” the woman asked.

  “Uh, no,” I said. “We just really like your laundry room; it’s comfy and smells good. What kind of softener do you use?”

  “Dryad tears, if you must know,” the woman said. “But as long as we’re discussing comfort, can I offer you something? Some beer perhaps? Or muffins?”

  “I ain’t no sucker, to take food from a witch,” Zeke said.

  “Of course not. But you’re guests in my home, and it would’ve been rude not to offer.”

  Her home? Facts clicked together in my head. Literally, I hear facts clicking together in my head sometimes. I don’t know if it’s just my overactive imagination, or some heightened sensitivity to the life energy behind neurons firing, but either way it is a rather annoying and smug sound.

  If this was her home, that made her the clan matriarch, though she hardly looked old enough for the role. “You’re Aunt Giselle.”

  “I think if you were my nephew, I’d know it.”

  “No, I meant— I knew Felicity. You’re her aunt Giselle, right?”

  “Ah, of course, I see now.” She crossed her arms. “You’re Phinaeus Gramaraye. Is this your brother Paeteri, then? I’d heard reports that he was … meaty.”

  “Do we really look like brothers?” I asked, choosing to ignore her choice of words.

  Giselle shrugged. “Magic works many changes, not all of them unseen. Who can say what the manner of your conception begat?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Enough distractions,” Zeke said. “We know you’ve made several attacks on the Gramaraye family and tried to get Finn exiled. What’s your game?”

  “Well, you certainly know a lot,” Giselle said. “Unfortunately, none of it is true.”

  Footsteps and children’s voices sounded on the stairs to our right, and a boy and girl appeared. They looked to be about twelve. They were almost too cute for words. But only almost, so the words would probably be “eugenics” and “Village of the Damned.”

  “The Andersons are bringing their brats over,” the boy said to Giselle.

  “About time too,” the girl said. “I’m starv—”

  “Children,” Giselle said sharply. “We have guests. I believe you’ve met?” She nodded in the direction of Zeke and me.

  The children froze on the bottom steps for a second, looking at us. Then the girl turned and ran up the stairs.

  “Stop!” Zeke shouted, to no effect.

  The boy moved to stand beside Giselle and shimmered as he moved, expanded, until the man who attacked me at the restaurant and stalked my house the night of my return stood there glowering at me.

  “And now,” Giselle said, her eyes fixed on Zeke. “It’s time you pay the cost of invading our home.” She lifted an object that looked like a dead mouse with a bird skull attached. The veins along her arms and neck went black against her pale skin, and droplets of red appeared on her fingers and lips.

  The amulet against my chest grew warm.

  I pointed the pistol at Giselle, and Zeke reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a grenade. He yanked the pin free.

  “Go ahead!” he said. “Make another move, and I’ll toss this back into your little room of fun.”

  “No!” Giselle said. “Wait!” She lowered the talisman and held up her empty hand instead. The signs of blood magic vanished from her skin. “We can talk.”

  “Good,” Zeke said. “Let’s try this again. Why don’t you tell us exactly what you’ve done to attack Finn here?”

  “Nothing,” Giselle said. “We’ve never attacked him, I swear.”

  Zeke gave a surprised grunt. “She ain’t lying, not that I can tell.”

  I waved the revolver at the man. “But your family tried to poison me in the restaurant last night.”

  “That wasn’t poison,” the man said, his Austrian accent returned. “We only wanted to talk to you.”

  “You tried to slip me a witch’s brew.”

  “Ya, just a little something to make you more … cooperative, to answer our questions.”

  “Oh, well, that’s okay, then,” I said, then remembered that witches were immune to sarcasm. “That is, it wasn’t okay at all. What questions?”

  Giselle exchanged glances with the man, then said, “We wish to know who was Felicity’s lover?”

  Felicity had a lover? That was a surprise, but my brain started turning over the possibilities. “I don’t understand. Why do you want to know about her lover?”

  “Because we think her lover was the same person who attacked her, and forced her into hiding.”

  Would that mean my father had been Felicity’s lover? No, I refused to believe that. He had loved Mother too much, even after her death. But maybe the Króls were right, maybe Felicity’s lover was the person who controlled my father. In which case, we were both after the same thing.

  “What do you know about this lover of hers?” I asked.

  The man beside Giselle said, “He must be someone of influence. He took Felicity away from us, and continued to block our attempts to immigrate here after you were exiled.”

  “Why did he want Felicity, exactly?” Zeke asked.

  I’d never really thought about it before but realized what an important question that was. If the person who brought Felicity to America was the same person who killed her, why go through all that trouble? Why not just use an au pair from closer to home?

  “She was beautiful in the eyes of men,” Giselle said, the disgust thinly disguised in her tone. “She refused to use her blood gifts, so was not blessed with the markings of our craft.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” Zeke said. “You witches tend to eat your own if they don’t follow your ways.”

  “She had … other uses,” Giselle said. “We require many materials, and she possessed great skill at obtaining them, particularly plants.”

  The man snorted. “That’s all she ever wanted to do, play with her plants.”

  Giselle smiled at me, an unpleasant smile. “Men desire women who appear beautiful, innocent, pure. They desire to possess such girls as Felicity, to corrupt them, it is in the darkest corner of every man’s heart. I understand the one who took her away from us. He was more our kin than Felicity, in some ways. But he must pay nonetheless.”

  “
Do you know anything else about him?”

  “Only that her lover was someone in your family,” Giselle said. “In your house.”

  “How do you know it was— Wait. What makes you so sure I wasn’t her lover, then?” I felt oddly offended.

  Giselle laughed. “Because we smelled the virginity on you, at the trial.” She cocked her head. “Interesting. You’re not a virgin now, though. You’ve been busy since your return.” She sounded disappointed, and I didn’t think it was because she’d hoped to be my first. Unicorns and blood witches both loved virgins, and for similar reasons. There was some kind of power in virgin blood. Apparently powerful enough to smell even through a wall of laundry scents.

  I wrestled with the possibility that the Króls might be right. Who in our family might have been Felicity’s lover?

  Petey had been too young, so that wasn’t a worry at least.

  Sammy? Possible, if unlikely. True, she’d never felt she was part of the family, never liked the family business or much of anything for that matter, and she did resent Felicity for taking Mother’s place. But even though I could almost believe her capable of attacking Felicity, I couldn’t imagine her pretending to love someone she hated, or hurting someone who was her lover, and I certainly refused to believe she would frame me. Besides, the attack had involved magic, which Sammy was allergic to.

  Grandfather—no, just because—ewww! And while he’d supported the decision to hire an au pair, he’d also died before Felicity’s attack. I supposed it was possible that his was the spirit that possessed Father, but only if summoned by someone else, and even then, why attack Felicity? And who then blocked the Króls’ immigration? Who’d been attacking me since my return from exile? Even if Grandfather did manage to somehow exert his will once from beyond the grave for some unknowable reason, he could not have done everything else.

  Father? Age difference aside, he’d truly loved Mother. And why would he have himself possessed, attack Felicity, and frame me?

  Once again, I was back to Mort. If someone in my family really had been Felicity’s lover and attacker, I hoped it was Mort. Not because I wanted to believe he was guilty, but just because I wanted even less to believe my father or anyone else in the family was guilty. And I could almost believe it, except for three things: He’d passed Zeke’s truth-sensing test, I didn’t want it to be true for Mattie’s sake, and of course, if he’d slept with Felicity, there’s no way he’d have been able to stop himself from bragging about it.