The Left-Hand Path: Runaway

by Barnett,T. S.

  “We aren’t storming the magistrate,” Elton cut in.

  “The hell we aren’t,” Nathan scoffed. “You’re naive if you think Cora won’t get the cuimne for attacking a Chaser. I’m not sitting idly by while they torture her.”

  “We need a plan,” Elton countered. “We’re getting Thomas out, too. He doesn’t deserve to be there.”

  “Still carrying a torch, darling? You’ll make me jealous.”

  “We need a way to get inside,” Elton muttered around his cigarette, ignoring Nathan’s teasing.

  “They keep the cells and such in the basement usually, don’t they? So they’ll be safe enough if we burn the building down.”

  “We’re not burning the building down. We’d attract too much attention, from the mundanes as well.”

  “So,” Nathan sighed, “we go in and kill everyone more politely, and we leave the building intact.”

  “Do you even hear yourself, psychopath? We can’t kill everyone inside on a whim, even if we had that kind of firepower. I know you think you’re invincible, but that’s a whole station full of Chasers you’re talking about.”

  Nathan tucked his cigarette into his lips and idly dug through a basket of varied stones on a shelf. “So we take a hostage and make them do what we want. We can use whatshisname,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward Chris. “Since you don’t want to kill him, for some reason.”

  “I would in general prefer not to wreak wanton havoc on the entire Toronto Magistrate, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “So,” Nathan snorted, “you just want to break in, release two inmates, and get back out again without causing too much of a bother? You don’t seem particularly committed to this decision, darling.”

  “I pushed Thomas to this,” Elton argued. “They aren’t going to let him out again now. I destroyed the evidence you gave me, but they’ll get the information from him one way or another.”

  Nathan paused as though this hadn’t occurred to him, and he dropped the stone he’d been turning in his fingers. “Then we don’t have time to sit here making plans,” he said grimly. “The Magistrate won’t abide his little underground railroad. What do you think they’ll do now that they have their hands on Harry Tubman? They’re going to find his escapees and put them through exactly the torture he was trying to keep them from.”

  “Now you’re concerned? You’re the one who tried to get me to turn him in in the first place!”

  “Oh, nonsense. You weren’t going to turn him in. But now that you went and got him caught anyway, the stakes are higher than just keeping him and Cora from the cuimne.”

  “Since when do you care about stakes? Especially ones that aren’t to do with Cora?”

  Nathan snorted out smoke. “They killed Genevieve, Elton. They killed Adelina’s mother and let my daughter—mine—grow up in some Magistrate boarding school. You think she was better off?”

  Elton glanced guiltily over Nathan’s shoulder at Adelina, but the woman only lowered her eyes and stayed quiet. “Nathan, that was forty years ago,” he said softly.

  “It’s today!” Nathan snapped. “They’ll do it to people just like her. They’ll take children from their parents and they’ll kill people who only wanted to live their lives. I’ll accept a lot of things from your precious Magistrate, Elton, but I will not accept such a cavalier attitude toward the mass production of orphans.”

  Elton paused, frowning faintly across at Nathan. He’d thrown his lot in with this man, and he’d thought he understood his nature—but he was as unpredictable as always. Elton hadn't expected to happen upon something Nathan actually cared about. “What do you suggest, then?”

  “We get inside however we can, right now, before they can get any answers out of poor Mr. Proctor. Kill him so that they can’t go after the others.”

  “No,” Elton said immediately. “Thomas is non-negotiable.”

  “You always have to complicate things,” he huffed.

  “We need a plan, Nathan.” Elton took a breath. He needed to think clearly. If they rushed in without thinking, they would only cause more trouble. He checked the watch on his wrist. “We have some time. It’s almost five o’clock, and they only just took them a little while ago. Toronto’s a big city; I’m sure they aren’t the only people being held. Thomas is a non-violent criminal, and Cora’s a minor first-time offense. They aren’t going to drag them into the building and put them under right away. There will be pounds of paperwork to be done, for one thing. And generally the Controllers work during the day.” He folded his arms and paused to take a pensive pull from his cigarette. “They’ll book them tonight, but it’ll be morning before they question either of them. They’ll probably search this place and Thomas’s home first. More paperwork. I’d say we have at least a day before either of them actually do more than sit in a cell—more if Toronto’s as busy as Vancouver was. Sometimes people would be held for a week or more before any sort of judgment was handed down, just because we were understaffed.”

  “Or more?” Adelina asked in disbelief. “Imprisoned and held before anyone’s even decided they’re guilty of anything?”

  “Don’t underestimate the inefficiency of government,” Elton shrugged.

  Nathan took a last drag from his cigarette and snuffed it out on the remaining glass of the countertop. “Fine,” he said in a cloud of smoke. “But if we do it your way, slow and careful, they’re going to get what they want out of your friend. So I want a promise from you.”

  “A promise?”

  “Yes. I want your word that you’ll come with me and put a stop to this genocide before they tear apart a hundred families. That you’ll fight your Magistrate and protect people who actually deserve it. That’s my price for your friend’s life.”

  Elton searched the other man’s face for any sign of teasing and found none. Adelina said nothing, but the soft frown in her eyes turned Elton’s stomach with guilt. “All right,” he said. “If it comes to that. I promise.”

  “I’ll hold you to it, Mr. Willis,” Nathan said in a low voice. “I left Cora in your care, and now she’s in a Magistrate basement because you let this waste of witchcraft get the drop on you.” He nodded toward Chris and locked Elton in a dark stare. “You must stop thinking like a Chaser if you want to be of any use.”

  Elton bristled at the very idea of Nathan scolding him, but he kept his mouth shut. He was right. He’d let Chris get the better of him, and Cora and Thomas were going to suffer for it. Elton supposed he should be grateful he had an ally in Nathan, even if it was only for the girl’s sake.

  “Arguing about whose fault it is isn’t helping,” Adelina added, interrupting the tense silence. “The best way to get them out of the Magistrate without simply invading the building is from the inside, isn’t it? So the first step is, how do we get inside?”

  “Every Magistrate office in the country is heavily warded,” Elton said, pausing to take a pull from his cigarette. “Protections against glamors, curses, crossings—sneaking in is going to be difficult. There are wards set up at every entry to guard against dorche of any kind.”

  “This is why we should just burn the building down,” Nathan sighed, but Adelina touched the sleeve of his jacket with her knuckles.

  “Maybe we don’t have to sneak in at all. Don’t we have a Chaser here? If we prepare beforehand, can’t we just let him do his job? Then Elton will be inside. Assuming you’re willing to be arrested,” she said with a slight tilt of her head as she looked at him.

  “Oh, kè mwen, you’re a genius,” Nathan laughed. “We do have a perfectly good Chaser. We should use him.” He crouched down beside Chris and ran his fingers down the other man’s trembling hand as though inspecting it. “I’m going to need to do some shopping.”

  “Shopping?” Elton leaned to watch as Nathan tucked his hand into Chris’s jacket to put his palm over the Chaser’s heart.

  “May take some improvising,” he mused. He turned to look over his shoulder at Adelina. “Did you happen
to see any crapaud de mer when we were in that market?”

  The blood seemed to drain from Adelina’s face. “Nathaniel, no.”

  “Pa enkyete, kè mwen.” He pushed to his feet and counted silently on his fingers, apparently making a list in his head.

  “What is happening, exactly?” Elton interrupted, and Adelina answered before Nathan could open his mouth in his own defense.

  “He wants to make him a zombi.”

  “What? You’re joking, right?”

  “It’s the simplest solution,” Nathan countered. “Would you rather have an ally or an enemy?”

  “But you can’t just—you can’t do that to people.”

  “He’ll only be mostly dead. And I’ll let him loose once we’re done, hardly any worse for wear. The care and feeding of a servant is more responsibility than I’m prepared for.”

  “Mostly dead? Are you actually crazy? No. I can’t let you do this.”

  “Nathaniel, it’s dangerous,” Adelina said, curling her fingers into his sleeve. “For you and for him.”

  “Then someone had better offer a counter-proposal pretty much right now, since every moment we talk about it is another moment closer to the Magistrate digging around in Cora’s brain.” He looked expectantly between Elton and Adelina, and when neither of them spoke, he snorted. “I thought so. I’ll go to the market.”

  “We shouldn’t stay here,” Elton added. “The Chasers will come back looking for evidence.”

  “Then you come and stay with us,” Nathan answered immediately. “Dingy hotels never suited you in any case. You can take him, can’t you, kè mwen? Keep an eye on him for me?”

  She sighed and released his jacket. “Yes. If this is the only way.”

  “It’s the best way,” Nathan clarified, and he touched a gentle hand to her cheek. He spared a glance at Elton on his way to the door. “Hands to yourself, Mr. Willis,” he warned, and then the door eased shut behind him as he disappeared onto the street.

  16

  Adelina helped herself to some supplies around Thomas’s shop while Elton finished his talismans, and she followed him with her eyes as he checked behind the counter, searching through drawers and shuffling papers.

  “What are you looking for?” she called, and he straightened with a single key on a Vancouver Canucks keychain in his hand.

  “If I know Thomas, he’s kept all the best stuff for himself. In there.” He pointed to the back of the shop at a locked door marked “Employees Only.” Elton stepped across the cluttered floor and turned the key in the lock. “We should see if there’s anything we can use.”

  Adelina followed him up the dark staircase behind the door and into the small apartment above. She stood by the entrance as Elton started his search in the narrow kitchen, listening to him open and close cabinets in quick succession. The apartment was cozy and well lived-in, with heavy throw blankets on the couch and chairs and a thick brown rug covering the center of the creaky wooden floor. The whole place seemed warm, and the scent of amber incense filled her nostrils as she took a step farther inside. She knew better than to touch any of the knick-knacks and curios strewn about the witch’s apartment—especially since some of them seemed to have Enochian script carved into them—but Thomas had a strange collection. He had things any witch who had attended a Magistrate school would be expected to have, like oil burners, collections of different types of wood, and candle holders covered in dried wax, but there were also small statuettes of gruesome creatures she couldn’t identify. She could hazard a guess that they were related to the Enochian trinkets, so she happily left them be.

  Elton returned from the kitchen empty-handed and glanced at the statue on the shelf in front of her. He’d seen it before. He’d told Thomas to get rid of it before. With an irritated sigh, he walked past Adelina toward a closed door across the room. He poked his head into the tidy bathroom, then tried the door beside it and let himself into the bedroom. Thomas’s room was cluttered with small boxes and piles of books, which Elton scanned briefly, but he paused as he stepped over the worn rug in the center of the room. That didn't feel quite right. He looked down at the floor with a crease between his brows and crouched to flip up one corner of the rug to reveal an intricate circle of twisting letters and symbols burned black into the wood floor.

  “Damn it, Thomas,” he murmured. He’d warned his friend when they were in school, and many times again before they parted ways. Evocation—the summoning of demons and spirits to do your bidding—was strictly forbidden, but Thomas had repeatedly insisted that he knew what he was doing. While Elton didn’t doubt that was the case, being skilled in demon-summoning didn’t make it any less illegal.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Adelina asked, leaning over Elton’s shoulder to get a better look at the markings.

  “If you think it's a binding circle, it’s exactly what you think it is.” He pushed to his feet and kicked the rug back into place, knowing it wouldn’t be enough to keep the circle hidden from even the most cursory Chaser search. “Good to know Thomas has kept up his idiotic practice of breaking the law while he’s breaking the law.” He hesitated. He remembered enough about the sort of magic Thomas did to know how much preparation went into it—when they were in school, and Thomas had only begun to explore the possibilities of spirit-summoning, Elton had watched him perform rituals that took days. It seemed a little like too much work to Elton, but in exchange, Thomas had been able to use his charms to do a broader variety of magic than should have been possible with such simple tokens. He would definitely be annoyed if he had to recreate some of the more intricate pieces, and Elton suspected he would need him at his most useful very soon.

  Elton moved to the night stand and checked the drawer, where he found exactly what he expected—carefully wrapped black silk hiding a triangular prism of hazel wood, marked on each side with Enochian symbols written in blood. Thomas had held onto it all this time. Presumably because making it had involved three days of fasting, cutting the branch himself from a tree that didn’t even grow anywhere west of Manitoba, doing it at a certain time of a certain day, using his own blood to mark it, and all the while not speaking a word to anyone. Elton had covered for him when he missed class to take his little field trip. Elton himself had never studied evocation in depth, but he could feel the pulse of magic in the wood as he covered it again. He took it with him when he shut the drawer.

  “We aren’t going to find anything here that I know how to use,” he said. “And I don’t suppose you know anything about evocation?”

  “Can’t say that I do.”

  Elton gave a sigh and gestured toward the door to let Adelina out of the room first. “Then this will have to do. We should get going. If you’re ready.”

  “We certainly don’t want to keep Nathaniel waiting,” she agreed with a touch of resignation in her voice, and she led the way back down the stairs into the shop. Elton hesitated by the front counter, and he lingered while Adelina approached the front door.

  “Give me just a few minutes, will you?” he asked. She pursed her lips at him curiously. “I just need to make a phone call.”

  Adelina regarded him with skepticism, but she put a hand on the front door and pushed it open. “I’ll find a taxi.”

  Elton waited until the door had swung shut again before he stepped behind the cracked glass counter to the telephone. If he used his cell phone, she would see the number and ignore it for sure. But he hoped she would pick up a number she didn’t recognize. He forced his hand to dial Jocelyn’s number, and he gripped the receiver tightly while it rang against his ear.

  “Hello?”

  A weight seemed to lift itself from his shoulders at the sound of her voice, but he didn’t let himself enjoy it. He reminded himself that she wasn’t going to be happy to hear from him. “Hey, Jo,” he said, grateful that his voice was steadier than his heart. “Please don’t hang up.”

  The beat of silence that passed between them went on for a lifetime. “When did th
ey let you out?” she finally asked.

  “Just a few days ago.”

  “Are you...okay?”

  He smiled at the floor. She wasn’t angry. “I’m fine. They sent me to Toronto to go after Moore, but it’s...not going well. I wanted to call because I don’t know if they’re going to contact you or not. The Magistrate.”

  “Why would they contact me?”

  “Because we’re still married, technically, and because...well, I just quit, and as soon as word gets back to them, they’re going to want to arrest me again. I wanted to warn you, in case they come looking for me through you.”

  “Elton, what do you mean, you quit? Quit the Magistrate? What happened?”

  “I...ran into Thomas. He was in trouble again.”

  “Oh,” she answered softly. He was glad he didn’t have to say anything more.

  “I want you to take what’s left in the joint account before they try to seize it. I know we’ve got another six months to go on the separation. I don’t want your life to be on hold because of me, so I’ll do what I can to contact you again then. Assuming I’m not in prison. In which case I’ll be easy to find, I guess,” he finished with a soft chuckle.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I think it’s probably better if I don’t tell you.”

  “Elton,” she sighed.

  “Listen, Jo, I...I made a lot of mistakes. I’m not going to ask you to forgive me. I wasn’t as good to you as I should have been; I know that. I just hope you know that I regret it, and that I want you to be happy even if it isn’t with me. So, I hope you are. Whoever that guy is, he makes you happy, doesn’t he?”

  “He does,” she admitted after a moment’s pause.

  “Then...that’s fine. Just tell him that if he ever fucks it up, and I hear about it, he’ll be spitting out his own teeth.”

  “I’ll pass it along,” she said dryly, but he could hear the smile in her voice.

  Elton hesitated to speak again. He could see Adelina watching him impatiently through the shop window, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up the sound of Jocelyn breathing softly through the phone. His life may have stalled since he last spoke to her, but she’d been living her new life for six whole months. It was hard to wrap his head around. “Do your parents like him?” he asked, and she made that little snorting sound, a half-laugh she used to save only for him.