by Laura Bickle
If “Anna” could help free him.
“The Mermaid,” Owen said. “What is she?”
“Leave her alone, Owen. She’s not what you think she is.”
“Then tell me what she is.”
“Well, for starters, she’s not human. Though she once was.” Gabe leaned back in his chair, and the chain around his ankle squeaked. “She’s very old.”
“How old?”
“As old as I am.”
“So. She was created by the alchemist of Temperance, Lascaris.”
“Yes. She was actually one of the glittering people at Lascaris’s parties. To the townsfolk, Muirenn was a wonderful singer, a woman with the voice of an angel. Behind closed doors, however, she was a witch, interested in learning from Lascaris.
“Initially, Lascaris was pleased to have the help. I wasn’t sure if she seduced him, or if he seduced her. But the two of them were a force to be reckoned with. She knew the mechanisms of ceremonial magic, and he had a library of alchemical tomes to work from.
“They achieved a number of interesting things, complex operations that Lascaris would not have been able to carry out on his own. When Lascaris discovered that I was a Pinkerton agent sent to investigate him, he had me hanged from the Lunaria.
“Muirenn watched. I still remember those cold dead eyes as she sang me to sleep in the tree.”
Gabe lapsed into silence. It had been eerie, hearing her song over the cartilage in his neck breaking. Like a lullaby from another world, while he flopped and choked like a fish on a line.
“When did she become what she is now?” Owen demanded.
“Like most things, the relationship between Lascaris and Muirenn didn’t last. She had no tolerance for Lascaris’s other dalliances. In a fit of rage, she tried to kill him. She would have been smarter to work behind the scenes, to cast a curse that would drain him slowly, but that wasn’t her style.
“No, Muirenn had a flair for the dramatic. She tried to confront Lascaris in a battle of magic. And truth is, she nearly succeeded in killing him . . . she chased him deep into the backcountry, had followed him on horseback as if he were a fox for three days and nights around Heart Lake.
“But she grew careless. She had him cornered one night at what is now Witch Creek—had run him beneath the horse’s hooves. She could have trampled him, but she decided she wanted the satisfaction of seeing death on his face, close-up.
“Lascaris was strong in his desperation. He pulled her from the stirrup and drowned her. For a week afterward, the creek ran red. He wasn’t finished, though. He took her body back to his laboratory and worked a conjunction process on her with the fish bones and shark teeth he had on hand.”
“A conjunction process?”
Gabe explained patiently. “There are seven stages in classical alchemy—calcination, dissolution, separation, conjunction, fermentation, distillation, and coagulation. The fourth process, conjunction, is the fusing of the sacred feminine and sacred masculine, a rectification of spirit and soul.”
Owen’s eyes glazed, and it was clear he didn’t get it. He tried a different tack anyway. “How did she wind up under the ranch?”
“Lascaris had the Hanged Men build a prison for her. That underground river is restrained by gates to the east and west. Her domain is only a couple of miles of river. When we brought her there, she was furious. She vowed revenge on all of us, especially Lascaris.”
“Well, that explains why she seems to have it in for you.”
“She told you to break our bargain. To bring me here.” Gabe said it without rancor, just seeking a confirmation of the fact.
Owen looked away and wouldn’t answer, which was answer enough for Gabe.
Gabe frowned. “She’s still harmful, imprisoned. When she died, she laid a curse on Lascaris, one that he was never able to escape.”
“What curse?” Owen’s eyes narrowed.
“She swore that he would die at the mercy of the elements. And his house burned down. You do the math.” Gabe shrugged.
Owen rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you think that . . . people . . . change over a couple centuries?”
Gabe considered this. “Yes. And no.”
“What does that mean?”
“We are all our base elements at the core. If we allow ourselves to work the psychological stages of transformation . . . yes. We can change. If not . . . one can become trapped in a stage, stagnant. I have no idea if the Mermaid remains in the conjunction stage, or if she has moved on.” Gabe leaned forward. “She was dangerous then. If she has amassed more power, she could be unstoppable. Be very careful with her, Owen. Whatever you do, whatever she tells you, keep her in her cell.”
Owen pinched the bridge of his nose.“Well . . .”
Damn him. Gabe closed his eyes. “Then your fate is sealed. And mine. And so many more.”
Chapter 6
Letters from the Past
Home was a tin can on wheels. But it sure beat being imprisoned in a hospital cell.
Petra rolled up to her Airstream trailer when sunset was bleeding across the horizon. Sig bounced beside her on the passenger seat of the Bronco, excited to be home, a sentiment Petra agreed with wholeheartedly. His fur was still wet from the bath he’d been given at Maria’s house, further dampening the seats that had been hastily hosed off in the yard. Sig smelled like rosemary. The truck, however, did not. The floor mats were still squishy on the floorboards. She’d leave the windows down, and it would dry out in a couple days. Hopefully. At least it didn’t look like the Swamp Thing had rolled around on her upholstery anymore.
Gabe’s truck was parked in front of the Airstream. For a moment, her heart leaped, and she thought that he might have come home . . . then, she remembered that Mike had said that the truck had been found at the bus station. Likely, Mike had it towed here after he’d finished with it. She’d owe him a beer.
She popped the door on the Bronco and climbed down.
“Home sweet home.” Despite her depression at what they hadn’t found at the Rutherford Ranch, Petra was cheered a bit by the prospect of being able to sleep in her own bed, humble as the futon inside was.
Sig clambered up the steps to the trailer and smeared his nose on the screen door.
“Hold your horses,” Petra muttered. She hauled her bags out of the back seat, full of Maria’s potions and hand-me-down clothes that smelled like lavender. Hoisting a bag on each shoulder, she shuffled to the mailbox.
The mailbox was crammed full of several weeks’ accumulated mail. She jammed the bundle of paper under her arm, nudged past Sig, and unlocked the front door. She flipped on the kitchen light.
Sig bounded into the trailer with a yodel of glee. He launched himself across the linoleum floor of the kitchen and flopped onto the futon bed. He rolled blissfully in the unmade covers, making hrrmphs of delight. Petra snorted. Little dude acted as if he hadn’t been allowed to sleep in beds at Maria’s house.
Parking the mail on the kitchen table, Petra wrinkled her nose. It smelled funny in here. Not bad, just . . . weird. Not like home.
She circled the trailer, opening windows to the oncoming spring night. Everything looked as she’d left it, her sparse belongings taking up little room. She unpacked her bags full of Maria’s clothes, more dark tunics and leggings, and put them in the dresser drawers. She shoved to the side her usual T-shirts and cargo pants, then changed her mind and jammed them all in the bottom drawer, out of sight and mind. She had to deal with her body as it was now, not how it had been, or how she wished it to be.
She lined up Maria’s potion bottles on the kitchen counter. Maria’s flowery handwriting spelled out instructions on a piece of legal paper, and she anchored that page of paper on the counter under a dark blue glass bottle. The bottles were pretty, bits of plant matter swimming like shadows underneath the caps. Whether or not they made her physically feel better, they made Petra feel cared for. And that was something.
She peered in the fridge and made a face
. Just a few ketchup packets, a couple of beers, and a jar of pickles. Her stomach growled.
Those pickles were probably no good. And the beer was probably the last thing her fading body really needed. She opened a cabinet and pulled down a box of crackers. She slathered some peanut butter on them and crunched quietly, looking through the window over the sink.
The field spread out in growing darkness beyond the window. She remembered Gabe standing there, months before, trying to court ravens with bottle caps and cat food. Her stomach knotted. She would find him. Somehow. The Lunaria knew more than it was telling. It was protecting something, or working at the behest of someone. Sal had ruled the ranch from a position of bullish ignorance. She knew that Owen had more of a taste for the hidden side of life. Had he discovered enough secrets to get the magic of the place to do his bidding? Or was there enough life left in the tree that it was running its own pissed-off agenda?
Trailing cracker crumbs across the linoleum, she fingered through the mail. Lots of advertisements for stores at the county seat, a good hour away from Temperance. Sales on linens, furniture, cars, tans, and tires. Most of them had expired. If she was into long-range planning at this point in her life, she would have given consideration to the tire ad, but she chucked it into the trash can with the others.
Her fingers paused on a plain white business envelope. No return address. The postmark was two weeks ago. Her name and address were written on the front in a familiar copperplate hand—Gabe’s.
She ripped it open and unfolded a letter written on plain lined paper:
Dear Petra:
I wish I could ask you to come with me, but I have to leave. I’m sorry.
Gabe
“What the hell?”
Rage boiled up in her throat. To get dumped in her dying hours . . . and by letter? Three freaking lines?
She wadded up the paper, took a deep breath.
From his perch on the bed, Sig whined.
This wasn’t Gabe. She spread out the paper again on the kitchen table, smoothing the wrinkles. He wouldn’t have written to her like that. For all his faults, he was an honorable man. He would not have left her voluntarily. And even if he had, he would have had the spine to tell her in person. Not in some half-assed note. He would not have copped out in order to save himself discomfort.
She crossed her arms, staring out the front window at Gabe’s pickup truck. Maybe Mike was right. Maybe the truck had been staged, and the letter was part of it. With a note on record, the cops could close the books and say definitively that he’d gone away of his own volition, that he hadn’t been abducted. They could wash their hands and say, “Oh, well. Sorry for your luck.”
Someone was playing a game. They wanted Gabe never to be found.
And the setup was smelling like the player knew the game well. In her gut, Petra felt it was Sheriff Owen. But was he acting alone, or did he have help?
Petra headed to the bedroom to a loose piece of faux-wood paneling on the wall above her bed. She peeled it back, revealing a void in the wall where she kept all her valuables. She pulled out a wad of cash and set it on the bed, a gun belt with two antique pistols, and then a golden pendant. The pendant had been given to her by her father. It was an alchemical symbol: a lion devouring the sun. She’d been told that the green lion devouring the sun was the key to all alchemical secrets. She set it on top of the money. She had worn it every day before going into treatment, and it had felt a part of her then.
She experimentally put it on around her neck. It felt heavy, foreign. It had been weeks since she’d worn it. She took it off and put it on top of the money.
She returned her attention to the makeshift safe. After some digging into the hole, she came up with a golden compass-shaped object, engraved with alchemical symbols. The Locus.
Sig whined.
“Hey,” she said. “You found it.” Sig had found the Locus, digging in Petra’s backyard, the first night she’d come to Temperance. Over time, she’d discovered that the Locus was a magic locator—it could detect the presence of the supernatural. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been of any use to her so far in finding Gabe—as a mortal man, Gabe had nothing of the supernatural about him now. But if Owen was playing games, perhaps he had supernatural help. It would be good to know for certain, to apprehend how big and dangerous the problem she faced could be.
Only problem was, the Locus ran on blood, and it wasn’t like she was a paragon of health at the moment. There was nothing to be done for it, though—she had to try.
Petra stuffed the cash and pendant back into the void and buttoned it up. She muttered to herself as she headed to the kitchen, digging a paring knife out of a drawer. She poked at her fingers, but her chemo-addled blood was determined not to flow. She finally picked at the scab of the blown-out IV line inside her elbow, and that dripped freely. She dropped a few runnels of blood into a groove circumscribing the outside of the Locus before trying to stanch the flow with a paper towel.
She held her hand to her shoulder, pressing the paper towel tight in the crevice of her elbow, and held her breath. For all she knew, the Locus might reject her blood as too inferior to run, if it recognized it as blood at all. There were, after all, such arcane poisons as arsenic in her chemotherapy lines.
The Locus seemed to take its own sweet time thinking about it, tasting the blood. The blood seeped around the groove, looking for all the world like a cranberry juice ring from a juice glass on a coffee table.
Finally, the blood sluggishly began to turn, a small bubble.
“Aha,” she breathed. Carefully cupping the Locus in her hands, she carried it outside to the Bronco.
In the dimming red light of sunset, the Locus seemed to take strength. The blood swished around the circle, and a runnel of it dripped off the rim in the direction of Gabe’s pickup.
She knew that Mike had already searched the truck for earthly evidence. Maybe there was something he missed. Maybe some residue of magic . . .
Magic had been there. Petra’s mouth tightened. She approached the pickup and opened the door. Mike had left a file folder of paperwork for her about the tow on the passenger seat. She brushed it aside and placed the Locus on the seat. The blood churned lazily, indecisive.
Petra tore into the glove box. She flipped through registration and repair records, jabbing herself on a piece of loose bailing wire in the process. Under the passenger’s seat, she found a dead flashlight. She shoved the seat back to find a dry canteen. She peered inside it to be certain before chucking it aside.
There needed to be something here, aside from crusty mud and loose change. As she ran her fingers underneath the driver’s seat, she thought she felt something wedged between the seat frame and the well of the console. She dug around until her knuckles bled, unearthing two stale french fries, a wad of calcified gum, and a copper penny before she got the object loose.
“Oh,” she said, blinking at the thing in her bloody palm.
It was a pearl. Looked like one, anyway, though it had a soft blue sheen that made her think it could be fake. There were no drill marks, nothing to indicate that it had come from a setting. She rubbed it against her front tooth, and it felt gritty. Likely real, then.
As she turned it around in her hands to examine under the dome light, the Locus burped a burble of blood.
Magic. It was magic. Now, to figure out where it had come from.
She had some suspicions. Months ago, she’d been pursuing a ghost in the Yellowstone backcountry with Gabe. Owen had chased them down, and he’d spent a good deal of time babbling about the supernatural shit he’d stirred up on the Rutherford Ranch: about the Hanged Men, ghosts . . . and a mermaid. Her brow wrinkled. She knew that Gabe had told him to leave the Mermaid alone. Had Owen listened? Or was he mixed up in something even stranger, now that he had full run of the ranch and a questionable grip on sanity?
Petra knew that all information in Temperance passed through the town bar. Maybe if she made the right inquiries, something
would shake loose. If no one had seen Gabe, that was one thing. But maybe someone could speak to this mysterious pearl.
Petra locked up the truck and headed back to the trailer. She hid the Locus away and bound up her arm properly. She grabbed her jacket and stuffed her wallet into the coat pocket. She was increasingly annoyed that the women’s clothes that Maria had given her—soft black velvet leggings, knee-high boots, and a black sweater—had no fucking pockets.
“You hold down the fort, Sig,” Petra said to the coyote, who had wormed his way underneath his favorite blanket. Only his tail showed. He slapped it against the mattress. “I’m going to the Compostela.”
The coyote huffed and burrowed farther underneath the blanket, disappearing.
Petra locked the door behind her and moved carefully down the steps. Night had fallen swiftly, bringing with it a violet sky with pinpricks of stars. In the distance, frogs had begun to chirp. A stiff breeze swept in from the mountains, stirring the new grasses sprouting in the field surrounding the trailer.
Once upon a time, this had been where the first alchemist of Temperance had lived. The town founder, Lascaris, had built a house upon this land. It had burned to nothing and sunk into history. Though Lascaris was long gone, his power was still felt. The Locus had been one of his creations. As were the Hanged Men. Petra wondered if anyone who came here ever escaped his influence.
She set forth on the gravel road toward lights in the distance. The town of Temperance was only a short hike away; she could see the red glow of its single stoplight, always set on flashing red, from here. On an ordinary day, a spring-night walk might have felt invigorating.
But she felt tired. Tired, angry, and completely ineffectual. She thought about turning around and joining Sig in bed. But it was a Friday night; there was no time like the present to pump the locals for information.