Golem in My Glovebox

by R. L. Naquin

  She picked up a red crayon and snapped it in half. “I didn’t do this! He did. And then left me to fend for myself!”

  Careful, Zoey. Don’t push too hard and scare her off. Slow and easy.

  I waited a few beats, continuing to stroke the colored wax across the paper in a soothing rhythm. Finally, I quirked an eyebrow and looked at her. “Maybe he’ll undo it if we ask.”

  She shook her head. “A deal’s a deal. He won’t undo it.”

  “Maybe if I asked him for you?”

  She looked at me and laughed, a terrible sound, both girlish and jaded. “Don’t be stupid. You’re an Aegis. He hates Aegises.”

  I frowned. “Is that the deal you made? He’d make you young again if you killed all the Aegises?”

  She gave me a long look while she chewed her bottom lip. Having decided not to tell me anything, she went back to coloring without answering.

  “Katy?”

  Nothing.

  “Kathleen.”

  She colored harder, the pressure darkening the pigment on the page.

  “Kathleen Valentine, you look at me this instant.”

  Her head came up in slow motion. “You do not speak to me that way.”

  I brought my face close to hers. “You made a deal, but you weren’t clear enough in your wording. He made you young again. Way younger than you’d planned, because you didn’t think it through.”

  “Shut up.”

  “What is he? A djinn granting wishes?”

  She laughed in my face, splattering me with spit and cookie crumbs. “Way older.”

  “Zoey?” My mother sat with her arms midair, knitting needles buried in pink yarn. Her face was tense, but the expression in her eyes was her own. She knew me and she loved me. “Be careful, Zoey. She’s dangerous.” Her expression changed so fast it was difficult to track it. Her eyes grew sad and she slipped one of the needles from the blob of knitting. “I’ll never be a good enough mother for Katy. She deserves so much better.”

  She jabbed herself in the leg with the needle. Her face never changed, and she never cried out. She stabbed the other leg.

  I moved across the room to take away the needles, but both surfers grabbed me by the arms. I struggled, tried to twist free. I nailed one of them between the legs with my knee, but he didn’t react. Katy didn’t want him to. They pressed me down into a chair and held me there.

  My mother stabbed herself again, and blood pooled around her feet.

  Katy watched the whole scene, her face impassive. Beneath my hair, Gris banged on my neck with tiny fists to get my attention. To make me focus.

  I took the reminder. This was why we were here. This was why it could only be me facing this terrible child-woman. I stopped fighting the men holding my arms and went inside myself instead.

  The metaphysical bricks that made up my protective walls held strong and thick. I nudged them outward in an effort to encompass the surfers. As it had happened with Rob Cavendish, I bumped hard against the walls Katy had built around them. I shoved at them, but her influence was far stronger than mine.

  I reached out for Gris empathically, and his emotions bolstered mine, amplifying the power. Shoving my hardest, I still couldn’t gain purchase against Katy.

  Katy laughed. The sound no longer held even a pretense of childhood innocence. It rang through the small room with the weight of over half a century of lonely, solitary incarceration. It echoed with power gone monkey-shit crazy. It stopped as suddenly as it started, which was more terrifying than the actual laughter had been.

  In my effort to concentrate and visualize my own power, I’d made the mistake of closing my eyes. When I opened them, Katy’s face hovered an inch in front of mine.

  “I thought you would be more fun than this,” she said. Her breath smelled like sour milk and burnt chocolate. “Everybody said you were so powerful and so kind. You’re nobody. You can’t even keep me from killing someone you love right in front of you.”

  She was right. How could I have thought I was any match for her? She may look like a child, but in terms of power, I was the child here. I’d had all of a year to learn about my empath powers. She’d had over a hundred years. I’d made a terrible, awful, foolish mistake, and my mother would pay for it with her life.

  Katy pulled away from me and sneered. Behind her, my mother rose from her seat and moved to the center of the room. I don’t know where the shard of colored glass had come from, but she gripped it in her hand as if it might try to escape.

  Blood pattered to the floor from her palm and fingers. It ran in rivulets from the punctures in her legs. She held up her arm and held the broken glass against her wrist.

  I struggled to go to her, but the surfers didn’t loosen their iron grip. I shoved at her with my wall, to no avail. Katy had her sealed up tight.

  Sobbing, I closed my eyes again and concentrated on my mother’s face. On how she looked when I was a child. On how she’d smelled like the ocean, and how soft her hair felt against my cheek when she kissed me good night.

  My own barriers melted away. I let them go. I felt Gris’s devotion and admiration and swept it up with my own love and strength. Rather than push against Katy’s walls, I stopped resisting and flowed into them and through them. As I passed through her barriers, they felt wrong somehow, as if she’d built them out of papier-mâché and chewed-up erasers—sticky and covered with fingerprints and wet dog hair. How long had she lived inside these walls she’d built out of loneliness and insanity?

  The surfers were closest, and when I seeped into their barriers, I saw them as they were—frightened, alone, appalled at their lack of control over their own emotions—and their walls melted away with mine. I moved outward toward my mother—terrified, in pain, worried for my safety—and flowed over her barrier. Katy’s influence sagged, then dissolved, and I heard the clunk of a large chunk of glass hitting the thinly carpeted hardwood floor.

  With my eyes closed, I felt hostility radiating at me from across the table. I focused on Katy, and let myself drift around her, surrounding her with comfort and acceptance. So much had been done to her. No one had taken the time to understand her. Being an empath was not an easy thing. And when it drove her mad, they’d locked her up by herself where madness could only grow stronger. And now she was caught between child and wise elder, having made a deal she already regretted to get revenge on people who were already long dead. I understood why she killed all the Board members now. They may not have been the ones who locked her up all those years ago, but they represented those people. And none of the new ones, besides Bernice, had even bothered to visit her.

  She fought my emotional intrusion, of course. Her only method of dealing with people for so long had been aggression, so she had no idea how to receive affection or kindness.

  I didn’t fight her back. I remained fluid around her, a cloud of forgiveness, acceptance and peace, bolstered by Gris pouring his energy into the mix. Her turbulent emotions spun and kicked, but gained no purchase. Her walls meant nothing. Her strength was useless. At last, she quieted, and I opened my eyes to see her crying softly.

  “They left me alone,” she whispered.

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  Her breath hitched. “They were all dead by the time I convinced Bernice to free me, so I couldn’t punish them. But someone had to pay.”

  “It’s done. You have to let it go.”

  “Killing the new Board members didn’t feel as good as I’d hoped.” A tear rolled down her cheek.

  “Revenge never does.”

  “He said I could start over.”

  “You can start over. We’ll figure something out.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t complete the deal. He won’t let me start over.”

  I frowned. “Katy, who’s ‘he’? Who made
you kill the Aegises?”

  Her lips curled in a peaceful smile, though fear trickled from her eyes like tears. “He has had many names. He is The Tale Weaver, The First Light, The Prime Spark, and The Whisper Born. Since man first painted on walls, his grace has shone upon us and created the Hidden. Soon he will choose a new name for a new age, and he will take a form from Story. He was there from the first, and he shall be the last.” Her smile faded, and she frowned. “I failed him. He wanted all the Aegises gone in exchange for my youth and freedom. But I can’t finish. The deal is off.”

  I reached out to take her hand. My response was automatic. No matter what she’d done, I couldn’t stand to see someone hurting without trying to comfort her. My hand was inches from her skin—

  “No! Zoey, stop!” Gris screamed at me, then dove from my shoulder, wedging his body between my fingers and Katy’s.

  Glass shattered in a deafening explosion, and lightning arced through the window, striking Katy between the shoulder blades. She threw her head back, and golden curls smoked and burned. Her eyes rolled up, and she collapsed sideways off her chair.

  It happened so quickly, I didn’t have time to pull my hand back. I didn’t need to. Gris had known, somehow. He’d thrown his tiny wooden body in the way to keep the electricity from skipping over to me.

  He’d saved my life.

  And judging by the charred, smoking hole running through him, he’d given up his own life to do it.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The room stank of ozone and burnt hair and flesh.

  And fresh blood, though it took me a minute to pull myself together enough to notice it.

  The surfer guys stood wide-eyed, trying to get their bearings. “Dude,” Blondie said. “She doesn’t look very good.”

  I pried my eyes away from Katy’s blistered figure. They weren’t talking about her. They were talking about my mother.

  Without Katy’s control, my mother had collapsed in the middle of the floor, blood loss having taken its toll. Thankfully, she hadn’t slit her wrist. I’d stopped that from happening. Her hand was a bloody pulp, and the punctures in her legs continued to flow in small but steady trickles.

  Heavy thuds came from the hallway, and I threw myself in front of my mother, to protect her from whoever was coming.

  Darius appeared, taking up the entire doorway. Both surfers stepped as far away from him as they could.

  “We don’t want any trouble, dude. We didn’t know what we were doing.”

  The mothman ignored them. “Where’s Clara?”

  I took a step to the side so he could see her, then fell to my knees next to my mother’s unconscious body. “I think the bleeding has almost stopped. She’s lost a lot of blood, though. We have to get her to a hospital fast.”

  “The nearest hospital is the one we came from.” He lifted her in his arms, more gently than I could ever have imagined he was capable. “We’ll take your car. There’s more room for her.” He glanced around the room, took in the two surfers huddled together in the corner and Katy’s scorched body. Tendrils of smoke rose from her figure. “You two stay here until I send someone. Do you understand? If you move from that spot, I will know and I will find you.”

  Blondie gulped hard, and Soul Patch nodded. I scooped Gris from the table, my heart aching, and placed him in my purse. The purse would protect him until I could figure out what to do. Maybe Bernice could repair him. Maybe the Blue Fairy would show up and turn him into a real boy.

  I didn’t know much about my mother’s powers. What I did know was that of all the freaky gifts I’d run across, hers was the one we needed right now. As I understood it, a necrofoil could hold off death until help arrived. I didn’t know if she had to be awake to do it or even if she could do whatever she did on herself. I had to assume the answer to those questions was no, and that I needed to drive faster than I’d ever driven in my life.

  Darius slid into the back seat with her. I didn’t protest when he reached behind his seat into one of my bags and grabbed my hoodie to rip into bandages. “She’s bleeding again,” he said.

  I nodded without comment and pulled onto the road. I drove like my mother’s life depended on it. Because I was pretty sure it did. Had we been nabbed for speeding, I think I might have ignored the flashing lights and kept going.

  Darius was far less freaked out than I was. I probably should have taken that as a clue that he expected Mom to be all right. He managed to call Kam and give her a quick rundown while I navigated the blind curves and the very real possibility of moose crossing in front of me.

  “We’ve got Clara,” he said. “But she’s injured. Tell the E.R. we’re coming so they’ll have a team ready. She’s lost a lot of blood. And call the local overseer. We need an O.G.R.E. team out there to clean up the mess. They need to deal with two—no, four—guys out there, plus get Kathleen’s body sent back to headquarters.”

  He grunted into the phone at whatever she said to him, then hung up.

  I wanted to ask if my mom would be okay. I wanted to thank him for showing up.

  I wanted to tell him that Gris had died to save me.

  There were no words for me to use. I just wanted my mother to stay alive. I wanted her back, with no influence from evil auctioneers or bitter empaths.

  I wanted so many things, but really, just the one. I wanted my mother to live.

  Kam came through for us. When we pulled up next to the E.R. entrance, a team of people dressed in scrubs stood ready with a gurney. They opened the back door, slid her out of Darius’s arms and hurried into the hospital with her.

  Darius and I sat alone in the car for a moment, watching her go.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror and realized Darius wasn’t moving. He’d been so efficient and strong a few minutes before. Watching them wheel my mother into the emergency room must have made him snap.

  “Darius,” I said, my voice soft. “I have to go in there and talk to them. They’ll need her name and they’ll want to know what happened. I need you to park the car for me, okay? Will you do that for me?”

  He moved his head slowly to look at me, then nodded. “I can do that, Aegis.” We climbed out of the car, and I ran into the chaos of an emergency room.

  Again, my lame cover story about how she’d fallen and accidentally stabbed herself with knitting needles was accepted by the hospital staff. I finally realized there was some sort of mojo going on, similar to what the O.G.R.E.s used when cleaning up after a Hidden sighting. It wasn’t an empath thing, so it had to be an Aegis power. I was learning. Maybe, once my mom was better, she could teach me all the things I didn’t know. I sent a silent prayer out to the universe that, after all we’d been through, I could have this one thing.

  The needles had missed the major veins and arteries—a thing I found out later was on purpose. She couldn’t stop the urge to stab herself, but a tiny part of Mom’s brain had managed to direct the stabs where they’d do less damage. She’d lost a lot of blood, but not so much that she’d been in danger of bleeding out.

  When she woke up, I was there beside her, waiting. I didn’t mind. I’d already waited for her for over twenty years. Another hour or so was nothing.

  I sat in an uncomfortable chair, looking at the pictures in some fashion magazine. The articles seemed vapid to me, and I couldn’t concentrate to read. Mom’s hand curled in mine, and I looked up at the movement. Her dark brown eyes stared into mine, and she smiled.

  “Zoey,” she whispered.

  My voice cracked. “Mom.” The magazine fell to the floor when I rose and put my arms around her, careful of the tubes connected to her.

  We stayed that way for I don’t know how long, silent tears flowing, arms locked around each other. When we finally pulled apart, we didn’t let go. I sat on the edge of the bed and held still while she touched my hair, my
face, my arms. The wonder in her eyes probably matched my own.

  She was smaller than she seemed when I was a child, and gray streaked her dark red hair. Lines creased her forehead and the corners of her eyes, but she was still young. The last two years had probably aged her more than the previous eighteen. She was beautiful.

  Once she’d satisfied herself that I was real and whole and sitting there with her, she took both my hands in hers and sighed. “You saved me.”

  I paused, my heart filled with guilt for what Katy had done to her. “I’m sorry. I should have taken you with me when I found you with the Collector.”

  She shook her head. “You’re an Aegis now. So many more lives were in danger. And you couldn’t know Kathleen would take the Aegises while you saved everyone else.” She squeezed my hand. “You did the right thing, sweetheart. I’m so proud of you.”

  And that was pretty much all any girl wanted to hear from her mother.

  “I’m not great at it, though,” I said, sorrow squeezing my heart. “I keep losing people I love.” I glanced at my purse sitting on the table.

  She gave me a puzzled look. Gris had stayed hidden until the last second, and by then, Mom had been on the floor out of view.

  I opened my bag and my breath caught. Gris lay so still inside, a small wooden doll with no life and a scorched hole through his chest. I cradled him in my hand and showed her. “I don’t know much about how a necrofoil works, but it’s probably too late for him. Isn’t it?”

  She held out her hand, fingers spread, and lay her palm across his chest. After a moment, she shook her head. “I’m sorry, baby. He’s a golem. They don’t have souls. He’s just a piece of wood.”

  I shook my head. “No. He’s more than that, Mom. Please. Try again.”

  Her brow creased in concentration, then rose in surprise. “There’s...something. It’s so tiny, though. I don’t know what to make of it.”