Witch Creek

by Laura Bickle

  That might have been an understatement, because even as Petra sank further into the embroidered pillows on the couch, Sig had tried to get his entire body onto her lap and had installed his muzzle underneath her arm.

  “I missed him, too.” A lump rose in her throat. She couldn’t imagine what would happen to him if she was gone. But she couldn’t imagine dying without him, locked away in a cold white room. “Look, if stuff doesn’t go well . . .”

  “I’ll take care of Coyote. We both will.” Nine nodded fiercely. “He will always have a home.”

  Petra smiled. Nine never called him Sig, and that was somehow charming. “Last time I talked to Maria, she said that you were doing some work for the animal shelter on the reservation?”

  “Yes.” Nine picked at a bit of fringe, lining it up with others on the scarred hardwood floor. It struck Petra as a transplanted sort of grooming ritual. “There are so many dogs, there. They just need someone to listen.”

  “They call her the Dog Whisperer,” Maria said from the hallway. “She can calm down any wild one. Even one that came in feral last week. He’s now following her around like a puppy.”

  Nine squirmed yet beamed. “Well. I want to feel useful.”

  Petra nodded. “You’re doing great things. Thank both of you guys for taking care of Sig all this time.”

  Sig stuck his cold nose into the thin skin of Petra’s neck, and she yelped.

  “Your bath is ready,” Maria said.

  Petra sighed in happiness. She hadn’t had a bath since she left for treatment. Just showers in the communal shower on the hospital floor. She gratefully followed Maria down the short hall to the bath.

  Maria had drawn the curtains, and the bathroom was in shadow. It smelled amazing, like rosemary and peppermint. Water steamed in the tub, a cheesecloth bag of herbs floating on the surface, slowly tinting the water the color of tea.

  “Fresh towels,” Maria said, pointing to a stack on the countertop, beside a lit candle. “And a robe.” A plush violet velveteen robe hung on a hook. Maria’s handiwork, no doubt.

  “Ahhh. Thank you,” Petra said, but Maria was already gone, having shut the door behind her.

  Petra stripped down, avoiding her reflection in the mirror over the sink. She sank up to her neck in the hot water, hissing as it came into contact with the spot on the inside of her elbow where she’d ripped out her IV. There must have been salt somewhere in the water; she could feel it crunching underneath her skin. It was a good pain, though—a pain that felt like healing after so much pain that was just, well, pain.

  She breathed deeply, feeling the humidity and fragrance dripping into her lungs. In her scientist’s mind, she knew that there was nothing that the herbs, salt, and candlelight could do for her condition. She was beyond any magic Gabe had been able to access, and was beyond any touch of Maria’s kitchen witchery. But it was still soothing. It would still fortify her psychologically for the fight ahead, she reasoned. And she needed whatever edge she could take.

  She remained in the bath until it cooled, then scrubbed herself thoroughly with the soap Maria had left in the soap dish. It looked like it had bits of oats in it, and it felt soft and soothing against her skin. It made her smell like an oatmeal cookie as she scrubbed the blue and red marks that spidered across her body. She took a handful of Maria’s rosemary-scented shampoo that she kept in a wine bottle and scrubbed it through what was left of her hair, feeling the tingling lather penetrate her scalp. Finally, she peeled herself out of the lukewarm water, toweled off, and stood before Maria’s mirror.

  She looked gaunt, fragile—a paper doll of her former self. She grimaced and reached for the robe, not wanting to look at her body. She tried to wrap a towel around her head, but her hair seemed to cling to the towel. She glanced back at the bathtub, seeing long strings of her hair collecting near the drain. She pulled them out and dumped them in the trash, not wanting Maria’s sympathy or to clog her drain.

  She took a breath. She wasn’t a vain woman, but she had to deal with the hair. She opened Maria’s drawers, searching through the combs and brushes until she found a pair of scissors. Feeling like a small, rebellious child, she began to pull out sections of her hair and cut them. She’d never really paid much attention to the skill of haircutting. Instead, she’d usually left hers long enough to pull back in a ponytail, ignoring it except to pop into a walk-in haircutting place maybe twice a year, when it got to a length that it annoyed her or if it got something sticky in it that she couldn’t remove.

  It seemed to her that it wasn’t supposed to go like this, pulling out sections and cutting them randomly. But she needed to do something with it. No point shedding all over Maria’s house.

  “Petra.” There was a knock at the door.

  “Yeah?” Petra’s eyebrows worked up.

  The door opened a crack, and Maria rolled her eyes. “Oh, good grief.”

  “What?”

  “Get over here.” Maria hauled Petra out of the bathroom and to the kitchen. She parked Petra in a kitchen chair, throwing a towel over her shoulders. She stomped back to the bathroom.

  Nine popped her head into the kitchen. “Nice haircut,” she said before ducking out again.

  In the reflection of the toaster, she could see that half of it was at her ear, and the rest was a freshly toweled rat’s nest. She shrugged. “It could be worse.”

  “No. It couldn’t.” Maria reappeared with a comb and took the scissors from her. Petra felt like she was eight years old and her mother was cutting her hair. Honestly, there were a lot worse ways to feel. Maria combed out Petra’s thin locks, muttering to herself, and began to snip at what remained with precision. To her credit, she didn’t ask the question Petra’s mother asked when she was eight: “Whatever possessed you to cut your own hair?”

  Nine wandered back into the kitchen to take the teakettle off the stove. She poured boiled water into three mismatched mugs, where tea already waited. She carefully handed Petra a mug and slurped noisily at her own. Petra drank deeply. It tasted of mint—several kinds—a bit of chocolate, and something else she couldn’t identify. Something earthy and bitter. At her feet, Sig chased around bits of her hair clippings, batting them to and from Pearl. The cat carefully selected the largest chunk of hair, delicately took it in her mouth, and vanished down the hall with it. Petra had long suspected that Pearl had built a secret nest somewhere in the house, decorated with ribbons, string, and other such fascinating findings.

  “There.” Maria pulled the towel from her shoulders.

  Petra reached up. It felt short, around her jaw and ears. She slipped back to the bathroom to peer at it.

  “It’s cute, thanks.” And it really was. Maria had taken what was left of her hair and trimmed it into a long shag. Pieces drifted around her face. Petra ran her fingers through it, and it fell in feathered wisps. She hadn’t had hair this short since she was a girl. She looked different with it. Pixieish. Not like herself. But then again, she wasn’t really herself—her body wasn’t hers, anymore. So no use hanging on to the hair. At least now she felt she could go out in public without a hat on.

  “You’re welcome.” Maria grinned at her, picking stray bits of hair from her shoulder.

  Petra took a deep breath. She was about to ask for a notebook, to start planning. And to charge her phone, so she could call Mike and see if he’d run down any leads. Perhaps he’d found some way to execute a bullshit warrant on the Rutherford ranch, to search Sheriff Owen’s house. If not, maybe he had some idea when Owen wasn’t home, if . . .

  Maria took her hand and led her to Maria’s bedroom. The bed was made with layers of quilts and chenille coverlets.

  “Maria. It’s only afternoon. I need to—” But she could feel drowsiness overtaking her. Maria had put something in the tea.

  “You tricky . . .”

  Maria shoveled her into bed and tucked her in, pulling the covers up over her ears. The last thing Petra heard before she drifted off was her command “Sleep.”
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  And she did, falling down the dark spiral of memory and sadness.

  The hours of strongest magic had always been midnight and noon. That had been true since the very beginning of time. Ancient peoples clutched their amulets close at these hours, convinced that evil spirits could wander close to earth at these times, that the movements of the sun and moon opened doorways for chaos to slip in. Vestiges of this knowledge still slipped down in stories of coaches turning into pumpkins at midnight and witches drawing down the moon, images of gunslingers facing off in the street at noon.

  Lev was far removed from these things, from the fear of noon demons combing fields for peasants to cull. But he respected those hours on a marrow-deep level. He was never not in bed by midnight, and was always awake before noon. Even in the modern world, there was no reason not to be vigilant. Lev spread rosemary oil on the lintel of the door to the bar. It smelled sharp and crisp, a blessing in plant form. He smeared the oil over the elaborately carved door that had once belonged to a church. In fact, the whole bar, now called the Compostela, had been a church in a former life. There were no religious services held here, just beers served by the only remaining confessor, Lev. Any oaths sworn at the bar were easily broken. As the owner and the bartender, he’d seen and heard enough in the small town of Temperance to make him cautious. And as he had for many years, he rubbed the oil deep into the wood with a clean white cloth and his callused hands. The oil had given the wood a sheen and a scent that even managed to temporarily overpower the smell of spilled liquor. There was something meditative about this, the washing of the door every day at noon.

  And the ghosts knew, they always knew it was noon. It was like a bell was rung in the spirit world, and they stirred, turning their faces to the sun.

  A woman in a Victorian-era dress perched on a bar stool. Her Gibson-girl hair had gone slightly askew, and her dress was unbuttoned a bit lower than it should have been. She smoked a cigarette in a holder, and the smell of smoke drifted from her. Wilma. Wilma was a ghost. She’d come with the bar. She preferred the term “adventuress” to “prostitute.” He wasn’t about to argue with a dead woman.

  She closed her eyes, as if listening to that invisible bell. “Another day, another fucking dollar,” she muttered.

  Father Caleb stood beside her, his hands folded in prayer. He visibly winced at Wilma’s swearing. Light glinted off his round, 1930s-era glasses. Father Caleb had also come with the bar. He prayed each noon and midnight.

  “You know, He ain’t listening to your pathetic ass,” Wilma told him, tapping out spectral ash on the bar.

  Caleb opened one eye.

  “Your God. He’s not listening. Never fucking did, even when you scream.”

  “He hears all of us.”

  “And doesn’t do a damn thing.”

  “It’s not up to us to question His motives or His love, Wilma.”

  “Eh. If He’s up there, He enjoys our suffering. Maybe He gets off on it.”

  Lev let them bicker. They’d been doing it forever. Lev thought that arguing was why they stuck around and hadn’t moved on. That, and the fact that the both of them had been murdered here. By the same man, oddly enough, who was later run over by a train. Apparently, that hadn’t been enough to appease their restless spirits. Some days, though, Lev thought they stuck around because they were really in love with each other, and if they moved on, they’d be moving on to separate places. So they stayed here, just to bicker like an old married couple and annoy Lev as much as he would let them.

  Lev pressed his hands to the closed door. The wood was warm from sunshine on the other side. This place had a soul of its own, a soul that he respected and nurtured, despite the quirks that it housed. It had stood for more than a century and a half, and Lev thought of it as rooted in this place. Though Lev had only been here for a few decades, he knew each creak of the floorboards and sigh of the rafters by heart. He knew the exact count of glasses behind the bar and the thickness of the plaster. He knew everything under its vaulted roof, natural and supernatural.

  It was familiar. It was home.

  He stepped away from the door, the ritual complete. He took two steps back and had turned to tell Wilma and Caleb to shut up . . .

  . . . when the door flew open, slamming against the interior wall. A wind rushed in, rattling the lights above the bar in the apse.

  Lev stood his ground. The wind pushed in dust and litter as it swept in, curling around cut-up pews that served as patron seating. The gust smelled like stagnant water and black rot and whipped Lev’s ponytail against his jaw.

  The wind seemed to sigh, and then dissipated.

  The ghosts were frozen at the bar. Wilma was still perched on a stool, sunlight shining through her translucent skirts. Caleb had stopped wagging a finger in her face, his glasses half-slid down his nose. He dropped his rosary beads.

  “What the hell was that?” Wilma finally squeaked, breaking the silence. She patted her hair.

  Caleb crossed himself.

  The ghosts were used to being the primary supernatural forces around the Compostela. When any mischief happened that they didn’t cause, all spectral eyes turned to Lev for explanation.

  Lev walked calmly to the door. There was no one there. He looked up and down the empty street.

  He carefully closed the door, making sure that it still fit properly in its antique frame, and locked it. He ran his fingers over the wood, examining it for splits, and inspected the hinges for warping.

  “What the hell was it?” Wilma demanded again.

  Lev thought a moment. “It’s a sign. An omen.”

  “An omen? What’s it saying?”

  “That something dead is coming.”

  He reached for a broom to sweep the dirt from the floor.

  Chapter 3

  Waiting and Other Exquisite Tortures

  She waited in the cold and the darkness, her fingers wound in soft silt. Her breath was slow and shallow, drawing in frigid water that passed over her gills and into her lungs. It was like being in a trance, this waiting, locked in weightlessness. Though a distant warm spring fed these waters and kept them from freezing in winter, it was cool enough for her heartbeat to slow to only a few beats per minute. There was no light, no sound, only the churn of her memories and plans moving behind her eyes. In this darkness, she saw much. It granted her patience. It granted her strength.

  Muirenn was very good at waiting.

  Eventually, as she knew it would, a light pierced the darkness. Distant, like a star, it moved above her. She sensed this slight disruption in pressure, her black eyes dilating even farther as her eyelids rushed open. Rain at the surface of the water had shifted a bit, an air current interrupted.

  She watched the star as it moved in the black, reducing some of it to tatters of rotten grey.

  She pushed up from the bottom of the river, skimming close to the shore. Looking up, she could see the beam of a flashlight soaring above her, shattered into bits by the incessant rain in this place. She took it in, and she stilled for some minutes, not wanting to seem too eager.

  “Hello?” a muffled voice sunk into the depths of the water.

  Muirenn lifted her head, and the misty air felt sharp on her brow and cheeks. Rain peppered them. She looked up at the man on the riverbank. She swallowed a mouthful of water before she spoke. When she did, it was with a chiming lilt, like the tremor of copper wind chimes. She intended to sound that way: “You came.”

  “Yeah. How could I not?” The man stood on the bank, but out of immediate reach. He was wary. Muirenn didn’t blame him. Eel-like, she paddled a bit farther away to put him at ease. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “You will.” She lifted her chin and smiled with her mouth closed. “You are the king of all this. The inheritor.”

  His eyes tightened at that. “Sounds like a hell of a set of shoes to fill.”

  A laugh burbled behind her tongue. “Many wonders await you.” She flicked her fingers through the water
, fast as minnows. Her skin had gone green over time, the color of sea glass and nearly as translucent. Her fingers sketched out a bit of mist above the water. It resolved into shapes, shapes from the man’s imagining and her own nudging: vast fields under a sun that never set, a skeleton made of gold, dusty tomes with disintegrating paper.

  The man leaned closer, peering. He was fascinated. Good. She swam closer to him.

  “It’s all yours now, Owen.”

  He glanced down at her. “Things like that look like they have a high price.”

  “One that you’ve already paid. Many times over. This is your reward.” She lifted her cupped hands up, slowly, and offered their contents to him: pearls, dozens of them. The smallest was the size of a pea, the largest, the size of her eyeball. She carefully poured them into Owen’s outstretched hands. He gaped at the dripping mass of them, rain dribbling down his face.

  Pearls were easy enough. They took some time, but all she had was time. She stretched her shoulders back. A delicate chain mail of smaller pearls covered her chest, lacy and thick with nacre.

  “Wow,” Owen blurted. “Thank you.”

  “An offering. To the new king.” Muirenn nodded. “And did you bring what I asked you to?”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” Owen dug into his jacket pocket and came up with a set of tarnished metal keys on a brass ring. “It was right where you said it would be, buried under the stone shaped like a head in the west field, wrapped in oilcloth. Took some doing to get it out, but . . . this is it.”

  “Very good, Owen.” Muirenn peered at the keys as he extended the brass ring. “Very good, indeed.”

  She scooted into the shallows and lifted her tail out of the water. Where her ankles once were, ragged fins blossomed. Above that joint, a heavy manacle was fastened, with a chain leading away into the dark. The chain was very long—she had measured it, link by link, many times, as she searched for a weakness. One mile exactly. Generous enough to allow her movement, just enough to show her that she was truly trapped. Her scales were red and infected above and below the manacle. It had been forged for her by the Hanged Men, and every cell in her body had tried to reject it. Many years ago, she had tried to cut off the fins with a sharp rock to release herself, but had been unsuccessful.