The Left-Hand Path: Runaway

by Barnett,T. S.

  “They only sent two. It was almost insulting. I led them into the greenhouse and left them tangled in the spider ivy.” She looked into the rear view mirror at her father. “Where exactly am I taking this menagerie? Back to the suite?”

  “Cora needs to rest, and I presume all of you lot will want a change of clothes. Then you and I need to have a talk, I think, Mr. Willis.”

  “I think we do,” Elton answered without argument. He kept his eyes on the road ahead, but he held tightly to the thick folder in his lap.

  22

  Nathan carried Cora on his back like a sleepy child as they made their way through the lobby of the hotel, and Elton noted the distinct lack of attention paid to them while they passed the reception desk and the lingering guests. Nathan should have been exhausted after the kind of magic he’d been doing, but he had hidden the whole group with a glamour without Elton even noticing. He supposed using Chris as a living grounding must have taken a lot of the load off.

  Once they were back in the suite, Nathan took Cora into his bedroom and came out a few moments later, shutting the door gently behind him. He had a small stack of clothes in his hands, which he offered to Elton and Thomas. Thomas looked as though he thought the pants might have actually been a snake, but he took the borrowed clothes when Nathan shook them at him. The men excused themselves into the second bedroom to change, though Adelina gave an amused roll of her eyes at their attempt to save her propriety.

  “Adelina,” Nathan said in a low voice, and he took her by the hand as she looked at him. “I suspect that things will get worse from here. Well, ‘worse’ as far as you’re concerned—I’m positively giddy,” he admitted with a chuckle. “But I imagine you still intend to move on?”

  “I do. And you know, for what it’s worth,” she began, squeezing his hand in hers, “I’m sorry I didn’t live up to your expectations, either.”

  “Nonsense, ke mwen. I expected nothing of you but that you be exactly who you are, and in that you have performed exceptionally well. So well, in fact, that you would rather be who you are very far away from me than risk betraying your conscience at my side. I really couldn’t have hoped for more.”

  She laughed softly and lowered her eyes for a moment before looking back at him. “You are a strange person, Nathaniel. I don’t think I’ll ever meet anyone else like you, and I’m both relieved and sad to say it. But I am glad to have traveled with you. I don’t suppose it’s reasonable to ask you to promise not to get your friends into any more trouble than they’re already in?”

  “Completely unreasonable. But I hardly think that’s my fault. They are a pair of troublemakers.”

  Adelina hummed in skeptical agreement and hesitated. “But you do promise to think of me, if you ever decide to settle down? To come back to Haiti?”

  “I promise. I’ll need you to take good care of her for me until then, hm?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Shall I take you to the airport?”

  She shook her head. “With you having just declared war on the Magistrate? You stay and take care of your guests; I’ll slip by before they recover their senses.” She turned her head as the bedroom door opened. Neither Elton nor Thomas fit Nathan’s clothes very well. They seemed like their bodies were a size too big and a size too small, where Nathan himself might have been just right, but Elton looked supremely out of place in the simple jeans and snug-fitting Henley shirt. She hardly recognized him out of his tie.

  “We’ll get your wardrobe sorted out first thing, darling,” Nathan offered, chuckling at the way the former Chaser picked at the hem of the borrowed shirt. “There must be at least one decent bespoke tailor in Toronto.”

  “There are more important things to deal with,” Elton muttered, but he didn’t seem entirely convinced.

  Adelina brushed by the two men to take her suitcase from the bed. She paused in the doorway and looked up at Elton. “You know,” she said quietly, “when we first met, Cora told me that you were one of the good ones. Take care that Nathaniel doesn’t take that from you.”

  “Your hands aren’t exactly clean, either,” he countered. “The Magistrate will be looking for you, if only to lead you to him.”

  “If the Magistrate tries to look for me in Haiti, they may find my home country more trouble than it’s worth,” she said with a subtle lift of her eyebrows. “And me as well.”

  Elton watched her go with a small frown on his face. Something had changed; was this the same gentle woman who’d invited them into her home in New Orleans? Adelina may still have been sane enough to leave, but being with Nathan had hardened her. He seemed to have that effect on people.

  Nathan embraced her and kissed both of her cheeks as they stood at the entrance to the suite, but he didn’t seem exceptionally upset to close the door behind her. Elton supposed not many things actually upset Nathan. Even for all the teasing and the cat and mouse, if Elton stepped back and refused to play, how quickly would Nathan forget him entirely? They weren’t friends. They weren’t even partners. Nathan had been helpful, and their causes had briefly aligned, but that was all. The dream of being the Chaser to capture and convict the great Nathaniel Moore was far behind him. He’d wasted so much time hunting a myth that he’d been blind to the problems right in front of his face.

  His eyes fell to the folder he’d left on the coffee table. He wasn’t blind anymore.

  “Now, Mr. Willis,” Nathan said as he turned from the door, “whatever could be in that pilfered file you have there?”

  “The next step,” he answered.

  “How mysterious.”

  “Hubbard killed again, and they let him off. I heard some inmates talking about it. He did it because I let him go.”

  “Very true,” Nathan agreed a little too quickly, and Elton scowled at him. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to fix my mistake.”

  Thomas stepped around Elton to look him in the face. “Your mistake?”

  “He’s a killer, Thomas. And the Magistrate isn’t going to punish him. He has to be stopped.”

  “Oh, well this does sound promising,” Nathan mused, a sly smile curling his lips. “Are we off to pay Mr. Hubbard a little follow-up visit?”

  “I am,” Elton clarified. “Can you get Thomas out of town?”

  “Just a moment there, darling.” Nathan folded his arms. “I think you’ve accidentally started making decisions for me. Remember our agreement; I got dear Mr. Proctor here out alive, but he’s a threat to those people as long as he’s breathing.” He spared a glance at Thomas. “You’ll forgive me, Mr. Proctor, if I don’t quite trust your discretion, what with you having already been tracked down and arrested.”

  “I can handle myself,” Thomas objected, and Elton let out a scoffing sigh.

  “Thomas, you’re a lot of things, but good at avoiding the Magistrate isn’t one of them. Let us help you.”

  “I’ve had about enough of your help,” he snapped.

  “Then how about mine?” Nathan stepped forward, his hands falling to his sides, and he moved close enough that Thomas had to tilt his head up slightly to look him in the face. “You’ve put a target on the back of every one of those people,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “When the Magistrate catches up to you—and I wholly believe that they will—your incompetence will be the death of the children whose parents thought they could trust you. So if you want to stay alive long enough to be of use to them, you’ll cooperate with the only person arguing to keep you that way. Won’t you, Mr. Proctor?”

  Thomas looked up into Nathan’s dark eyes and saw the promise in them despite the other man’s calm face. He swallowed his protest and tore his gaze away to give Elton a small nod.

  “Stay with us, then,” Elton agreed. “Until we can figure out the best way to keep you safe.”

  “Are you picking on him already?” Cora spoke up from across the room, drawing the men’s attention as she trudged sleepily toward them. She’d helped her
self to one of Nathan’s shirts, which threatened to slip down one or both shoulders, but she was still wearing her grey prison-issue pants. “Can’t we give this crap a rest? We all got out and everybody’s happy, right? Shouldn’t we be worried about getting the hell out of town, maybe?”

  “Not yet,” Elton said. “First I’m going to see Hubbard.”

  Cora paused for a moment and gave him a long, sleepy look up and down as though she didn’t recognize him. “Elton? Jesus, you’re slumming. You look weird.”

  “Thanks,” he sighed.

  “Why are you going to see Hubbard?”

  “Because I warned him,” Elton answered with a grim frown.

  “I fucking knew you did it,” she laughed, but then she paused. “But wait, then what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to make sure he doesn’t kill again.”

  She hesitated. “What, by killing him? What happened to all that stuff about not just killing people because you feel like it?”

  “He’s a criminal. And nobody’s planning on stopping him. So I will.”

  “And what about not becoming the villain you want to fight?” she asked in a softer voice, and Elton’s brow furrowed slightly.

  “I’m not as good a person as Thomas is.” He turned his attention to Nathan’s amused face. “Can I borrow some groundings?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” Nathan slipped back into the bedroom and returned a moment later. He reached out to drop a heavy silver ring into Elton’s palm. “A spare I picked up,” he explained when Elton gave him a questioning look. “I’m sure you know how best to make use of it.”

  Elton frowned down at the ring. It was etched with familiar markings, and it felt cold against his skin. Who had it belonged to before Nathan had stolen it?

  “Don’t worry,” Nathan assured him. “We’ll have you stripped of all vestments of Chaserdom soon enough. This will do for now.”

  Elton let out a small sigh through his nose as he slipped the ring onto his finger. Only for now. He moved past the others and picked Nathan’s jacket from the hook by the door, pulling it over his shoulders. “When I get back,” he said, stopping with his hand on the door to look back at Nathan, “we can talk about the next step. We have a lot of people to protect, and I have a long list to get through.”

  “Elton—” Cora began, but he was already through the door.

  Elton realized when he hit the street that he didn’t have any money. He didn’t have his phone or his wallet—both had been taken from him at the Magistrate office. He patted the pockets of Nathan’s jacket, but all he found there was a single Toonie and a packet of brown powder that he could identify by smell as Ferula root. Useful for preventing sickness, but not so much for hunting murderers.

  Reluctantly, he turned the ring on his finger and lifted his hand to hail a taxi. He couldn’t be on the street. Not with the Magistrate looking for him. He asked the driver to take him to Hubbard’s address, and when they stopped, he paid him with the Toonie, a quick whisper of the word scaíle forcing him to believe it was enough. Elton could picture the smug look on Nathan’s face if he found out Elton had paid for something with a glamor, but he didn’t have a choice. He would make it up somehow, he told himself.

  Hubbard’s building was quiet. Elton took a deep breath as he stood at the corner. It was getting late, and he hadn’t exactly had a restful day. He could feel the ache in his hands from the spells he’d cast—not to mention his scraped knuckles and the cut in his lip. He wasn’t in the best shape for picking fights with young, murderous witches. But if he waited, Hubbard might be shipped off to Ottawa, and Elton would have to track him all over again. He wasn’t going to risk letting him slip away. Not this time.

  A truck parked at the side of the street had been momentarily abandoned mid-unloading, and a crate sat on the lowered deck, half pried open by the crowbar set just inside the truck. That would do. Elton scooped it up on his way by, swinging it gently at his side as he stepped up to the building. He approached the condo door and gave it a firm knock, sliding a paper talisman from his back pocket while he waited. As soon as Hubbard opened the door, he gave a cry of alarm and tried to slam it shut again, but Elton blocked its movement with the crowbar and forced his way inside, slapping the talisman on the inside wall as soon as he could reach it. He pushed the door shut behind him while Hubbard scrambled away, and he sealed the spell, silencing them from the outside world.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Hubbard shouted. He snapped out a spell to trap Elton in place, but it was hasty and fragile. Elton broke it with a single word and reached his hand toward the younger man.

  “Adrig,” he said simply, and Hubbard’s knees hit the floor hard, his body doubling over against his will. “You know why I’m here. No second warnings.”

  Elton stepped close to him and swung the iron bar without hesitation, catching the prone man in the temple and sending him sprawling onto the wood floor. Hubbard sobbed out a pained cry and managed to break the binding with a panicked word, but he only crawled halfway to the back door of the apartment before Elton dropped the curved edge of the crowbar onto the back of his knee. A strangled scream got caught in the man’s throat, and he turned onto his back to better push himself away by his hands, his useless knee seeping blood into the pale denim of his jeans.

  “What the hell do you want?” Hubbard panted, squinting through the blood dripping into his eye from the wound on his head. “My father—he has money. Protection. Whatever you want.”

  Elton didn’t answer him. He stepped forward and planted one foot on Hubbard’s chest, pinning him to the floor, and then he swung the bar again, sending a splatter of blood from the younger man’s mouth. Hubbard went limp, his jaw forced into an unnatural angle, and he went silent as Elton hit him again, raising the iron above his head to strike him with the hard edge. It only took four blows before Hubbard was still, his fingertips giving a final twitch of life as Elton stepped off of him. He stood looking down at the man’s body for a moment, expecting his heart to beat faster than it did. But he was calm.

  He let the crowbar clatter to the floor at his feet and turned toward the door. He brushed his hand over the paper talisman on the wall to burn it away with a word when he passed it, and he tugged off the borrowed silver ring and dropped it to the floor. He wasn’t going to use one again. He shut the apartment door behind him and tucked his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he started back down the street.

  Hubbard was a killer. A murderer who preyed on the weak and hid behind his father’s corruption. There was only one option for people like that.

  “Remember the rule of reciprocity,” he could hear Li Jie’s brother telling the boys while they sat at the restaurant, the three of them nursing their beers after a particularly bloody job. “If someone does you a favor, give a greater favor back to them. But if they hurt you, don’t offer them the other cheek. If they insult you, punch them. If they punch you, break their arm. If they break your arm, break their leg. And if they break your leg, put them in a coffin. That’s the way you have to live in this world,” he’d said with grim sincerity. “Don’t let them take a single inch from you. Not anyone.”

  Elton wasn’t going to allow anyone else to slip through the Magistrate’s cracks. If no one else was going to give them what they’d earned, he was more than willing to take up that job. It may not have been how he imagined helping when he’d joined the Magistrate years ago, but it was the only good he knew how to do.

  When he arrived back at the suite, he found Nathan and Cora lazing on the sofa watching Trailer Park Boys while Thomas lingered uncomfortably in the kitchen on the pretense of making coffee. Nathan sat up at the sound of the door and smiled expectantly over the back of the couch, his eyes focused on the blood spattered across the thighs of Elton’s jeans.

  “You did do him a naughty, didn’t you?” he asked, shifting Cora’s legs out of his lap as he twisted to kneel backwards on the cushions.

  Elton
pulled off the jacket and hung it back on its hook without looking at him. “What do you plan to do from here?” he asked. “You said you want to help those people, but what exactly do you hope to do?”

  “All business, hm?” Nathan lifted one shoulder in a shrug while Thomas peered out at them from the entrance to the kitchen. “Mostly, I plan to find them before the Magistrate does, and I plan to do a better job of hiding them than your Mr. Proctor did. And if we run into any Chasers along the way, perhaps I’ll gently persuade them that pursuing these fine people isn’t worth their time.”

  Cora sat up on her elbows. “That sounds suspiciously like a good deed, Nathan. A lot of good deeds. Over a prolonged period of time.”

  “Well, I can’t promise I won’t get bored with the whole thing, I suppose.”

  “No.” Elton stepped closer to the sofa, and Nathan looked up at him curiously. “You said the price of Thomas’s life was my help. If you want me to throw my lot in with you, you have to follow through. No getting bored, no giving up, and no changing your mind. You commit to finding every one of the people Thomas helped and finishing what we set out to do. In return,” he went on when Nathan opened his mouth to argue, “I go with you with no complaints. And I let you in on taking down the people in that file.”

  Nathan snorted out a laugh. “My compensation for helping you is that I get to help you? My, but you’re generous, darling.”

  “Don’t you want anything more than this?” Elton lifted his hands to gesture around the suite and let them slap back to his sides. “Just having fun, pissing around, never making an impact on the world? All the power at your fingertips, and you want to use it tricking cashiers out of designer jeans? Adelina said she was going to use her magic to do good. Like you showed her to. I want to do the same.”

  “Me too,” Cora spoke up, sitting up properly and tucking her legs underneath her. “I helped that man at the library because you taught me how. I helped get Thomas out of the Magistrate because you helped me. When I first came with you, you told me not to squander my gift. I want to do like you taught me.”