by Annie Bellet
“Ji-hoon says you have nowhere to go?” she asks.
“No,” I say. I wonder if they will call the cops. I wonder if I care anymore.
“Why?” she asks.
Screw this, I think, but I decide to answer her. “My family kicked me out, because I’m not like them.” I give her my best hard stare. She can have the truth, but no one will ever get my tears. Not ever, not over this.
She glances at the other woman and they seem to telepathically decide something as she nods. “I’m Kayla,” she says. “That’s Sophie. We’re not like anyone else, either.”
Then she smiles, and weirdly I know that life has changed, and for the first time in a year, the sun comes out in my heart.
The unicorn’s power fed on mine, drinking in my memory, my moments of true relief and joy. Magic—mine, his, I wasn’t sure—cascaded through both of us like a tidal wave of glitter. I was barely in control, hanging onto my magic through will alone, unaware of anything outside myself and the unicorn.
The filth burned away as though we’d thrown a match onto gasoline. I felt bones knitting together, wounds closing. Then the wave ebbed and the unicorn let me go. Reality came back to me in stages. First it was touch, my hand still clutching soft fur. Laughter, voices exclaiming, a sense of deep relief replacing the anger and tension. Cautiously I opened my eyes.
The unicorn breathed again, his dark eye closed, but his nostrils flaring gently with each easy breath. Blood still stained his coat, red now instead of inky black, but the gashes were closed and only deep pink scars remained where the gaping wounds had been.
“You saved him,” Yosemite said as he ran a sweaty hand through his dark red curls. “Thank you.” His tone made it pretty clear he hadn’t thought I could. I remembered that Brie was his sister or something and wondered what she’d said about me.
“I think he mostly saved himself,” I said, stroking the unicorn’s fur gently. I didn’t want to stop touching him, to release myself from the joy, but I made myself let go. My chest hurt and my legs barely wanted to hold me up as I got slowly to my feet. “What did this to him?”
Yosemite gently laid the unicorn’s head on the stall bedding and unfolded himself. He was definitely taller than Alek. “We should talk inside,” he said, motioning with his head toward the house.
Rosie and Junebug had joined the crowd outside the stall, but everyone took the cue and made their way to the house, except for Max, who said he wanted to stay and keep an eye on the unicorn after he brought the horses back in. It was a sign how subdued everyone was that both Levi and Harper missed an obvious joke about virgins as we left the barn.
“They went crazy when Yosemite showed up with the unicorn like that,” Harper explained about the horses as we walked up to the Henhouse.
“Unicorns are guardians of the wild things,” Yosemite said in a deep, smooth voice behind me. “The whole forest will be going mad over what has happened. It was good we were able to save one.”
I waited until coats and boots were off and we were settled in the living room before I asked him what he meant by “save one.”
Vivian passed me her phone as she and the mountain man exchanged dark looks filled with grief. On it were pictures, flashes of horror taken with a cellphone camera in the dark. Unicorns, at least three, ripped to pieces, their bodies black with filth and gore.
“The Bitterroot pack is guarding their bodies,” Yosemite said. “I will have to try to lay them to rest, though I do not know if the forest will allow it.”
“Aurelio? I mean, Softpaw?” I said, surprised. “I figured he and his would be long gone from here.”
“They were, but dark things have been stirring in the wilds, beasts slain for cruel sport instead of food, spore from creatures that we’ve never seen before. He found me and we were tracking a pack of whatever did this when the forest went mad and I followed the treesong to the unicorns. The stallion was the only one still alive. I tried to use my knowledge to help, but this was far beyond my power.” Yosemite’s hands clenched into fists in his lap.
I looked closely at him, really looked, now that he wasn’t bundled into a thick jacket and I had a moment. His skin was tanned and freckled, his arms covered in red-gold hair, but his tattoos were visible and looked very old, faded and blue. I made out shapes of animals, a fish, something like a cat, a stylized wolf’s head, and spirals mixed in. It reminded me of the tattoos on a Celtic woman they’d found in a bog, her body preserved for a couple thousand years. I reached out magically, touching him with the lightest brush of my power, and felt the answering thrum of his own, smelling to my metaphysical senses like pine needles and the air before a snowstorm.
He looked into my eyes with a suddenly ancient gaze and I let my magic go, lifting a shoulder in a half-shrug of apology. “You are a druid,” I said. Hey, if there were unicorns, why not druids? I’d always thought that Brie might be one. “Brie is your sister?”
He laughed, a quick bark that died as soon as it was out. “No, she’s not my sister. But I am a druid. Taking care of the Frank is my charge.” He looked away, staring into a middle distance, seeing none of us. “And I am failing.”
I looked at the phone in my hands, glad the screen had gone dark, and could find nothing to say.
“Hey,” Ezee said. He’d taken a seat on the couch next to the druid and now scooted over the scant distance between them, putting a hand on Yosemite’s arm. “The unicorn will live, right? And now you have not only the Bitterroot pack to help, but all of us.”
“It’s true,” Harper said. “We’ve vanquished a little evil in our time, for sure.”
Rosie made a noise in the back of her throat, threw up her hands in dramatic fashion, and mumbled something about making tea as she left the room. If I had to guess, I’d say that the idea of all of us, her real and adopted family, running out into the woods to fight evil didn’t sit well with her. But she wouldn’t stop us, either. After seeing Vivian’s pictures, after feeling that filth clotting and killing the unicorn’s wild purity, I was ready to go lay down some serious pain on whatever had done it.
A whining voice in the back of my mind told me it might be my fault. This couldn’t be coincidence. I didn’t believe in it, couldn’t afford to after everything. Somehow this would be tied to Samir. I felt it in my exhausted bones. I still mentally shut that voice into the closet, however. Nothing I could do but fight whatever came and try to protect the people I loved.
I leaned into Alek’s warmth as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
“Do you want help burying them?” he asked Yosemite. “I can dig.”
“There will be no digging,” Yosemite said. “I will ask the earth to take her children inside of her. If they are too tainted, we will have to burn them instead.”
Ezee squeezed Yosemite’s arm and the druid slid his hand over Ezee’s own. I realized that they must know each other, though neither Ezee nor Levi had ever said anything to me about the mountain man. He’d never really come up, since his visits to town were pretty rare from what I knew. There was a familiarity between them, the kind people only get after years of knowing someone. Or the kind you get between lovers. I raised an eyebrow at Ezee and he raised one back, his expression clearly telling me we could talk later.
Rosie brought out tea and we mostly drank it in silence. The mood was grim despite the miracle I’d pulled off with the unicorn and I had trouble keeping my eyes open after few minutes as the aftermath of using power like that hit me. I knew I’d be fine come morning with a little sleep and food in me; my recovery times were getting shorter and shorter as I got stronger. Didn’t help the exhaustion now.
Alek and I said our goodbyes with a promise to come check on the unicorn tomorrow. Yosemite promised to keep us advised of the situation in the wilderness and call upon me again for help if he needed. We drove home in near silence and I found myself drifting off in the warmth of the truck cab. Alek touched my knee gently as he parked.
“There’s someone
sitting at the top of your steps,” he said softly.
I could barely make out the shape of a person as I squinted through the windshield at the figure under the porch light. The figure was seated, but stood as Alek shut the truck down. It was a woman, in a thin coat that looked like leather, with a thick ponytail of hair spilling off the back of her head. Her face was in shadow as the porch light backlit her, but she didn’t seem familiar.
“Want to go get a motel room?” I asked Alek, only half joking. I didn’t want to deal with anything else today.
“Want me to eat her?” he said, smiling.
“She’s probably a witch,” I muttered, wondering what stupid thing they were going to try now.
“If she’s a witch, you can turn her into a toad.” He squeezed my knee and climbed out of the truck, letting all the nice warm air out.
Sighing, I climbed out and summoned my magic, wondering if I could turn someone into a toad. The wards around my building weren’t going crazy, so she wasn’t actively working magic or anything, but they hummed slightly as I checked them.
I stayed at the bottom of the steps and let her come down to me, though the light here was worse. “Who are you?” I asked.
Her eyes were dark and big in her thin, heart-shaped face. She was strikingly beautiful despite her tired look, her face made up as though she’d walked off a magazine photoshoot and found herself on my stairs by accident. She wore a thin leather jacket that hung in a flattering way down to mid-thigh, jeans, and four-inch red heels, which would have identified her as an out-of-towner if nothing else had. Around her neck was a silver chain with a delicate heart-shaped lock hanging from it that seemed to catch the light and glint on its own.
I stopped breathing as I looked at the lock and power poured out around me in visible, purple sparks as I dragged my gaze up to her face.
“Where is he?” I asked.
I’d had a lock and chain like that once. I’d melted it off of myself over twenty-five years ago. Looking at hers, I could feel the blinding pain, the heat on my skin as I forced the magic lock to melt and come loose. As I broke the bond between Samir and myself for good.
“My name is Tess,” the woman said. “Please, you have to protect me.”
Wolf, my spirit guardian, appeared beside me, her dark hackles raised but otherwise calm as she stared at the woman. I let the moment stretch out and then sighed as Wolf looked toward me and cocked her head in a silent question.
I let the woman into my apartment. It was late, cold, and I was tired. I wanted to be inside my wards, on familiar ground where at least I wouldn’t have to worry about a sniper or some bullshit like that. Wouldn’t be the first time Samir had done something underhanded like that.
I pointed at a kitchen chair and said “Sit.”
She sat, her arms wrapping around her body as though inside were colder than out. Looking at her terrified, unhappy face, I almost felt pity for her, but I shoved it aside.
“Why are you still wearing his necklace if you want to get away from him?” I asked.
“I don’t know how to take it off,” she said, fingering the charm with a shaking hand.
Alek growled. We had taken up triangular positions, Wolf’s large form to my right and Alek to my left, both where I could see them without having to take my eyes off the woman.
“That’s strike one,” I said. “Lie to me again and I’ll let him serve me your heart for dinner.”
“All right,” she whispered. “He’ll know when I take it off.”
That was true. I didn’t even need Alek’s nod to confirm it. The charm tied her to Samir; it was a promise inside a delicate spell. He and I had worn matching ones, our love made into filigree metal and sealed with power and blood. I felt a twinge that I worried might be jealousy, and angrily shoved the feeling away.
“Where is Samir?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Alek gave a slight nod. Truth.
“Does he know you are here?”
“I am sure he has guessed,” she said. “He likes to keep an eye on you.”
“How?” I asked. It was something I’d been wondering for months now. He seemed to know so much about me that it made me wonder if I’d hidden as well as I’d hoped all these years, or if he’d been busy elsewhere and decided to finally to turn his attention to me.
“I don’t know that, either,” she said. She glanced at Alek as he narrowed his eyes and nodded. “He doesn’t like to tell me things. Knowledge is power, and he prefers all the power be his.”
I took a deep breath and forced my hand to unclench from my talisman. I had a d20 imprint on my palm that faded as I stared at it. I knew what she meant all too well. Every instinct in my body was screaming at me to fry her where she stood, that this was another trick. It probably was, but I could have been looking at myself twenty-five years ago. If I had known of a former lover of his, of someone who got away, would I have gone to me for help? I thought perhaps I would have.
“Why come to me?” I asked, pacing the short distance across my kitchen. I let my fingers trail through Wolf’s fur, her strength reassuring.
Tess gave me an odd look. She couldn’t see the giant black wolflike creature I was petting, so my gesture must have appeared odd. Most of the time I avoid interacting with Wolf in front of people for that reason, but tonight I really didn’t give a fuck.
“You got away from him,” she said. “He’s going to kill me, eat my heart and take my power. It’s what he does.”
“Yet you swore devotion to him,” I said, indicating the heart-shaped lock.
“As did you, once,” she said, her full lips pressing together and her chin coming up in a new show of will. In the better lighting inside my apartment, her irises appeared to have deep reddish-brown whorls in them, her eyes taking on the color of firelit brandy. She looked like a perfect damsel in distress, damp ringlets escaping her ponytail, her body not so thin that she didn’t have an obviously heaving bosom to complete the picture. She could have given Queen Amidala a lesson in distressed bosom heaving.
I gathered my scattering thoughts.
“Are you here to kill me?” I asked.
“I want free of Samir,” she said without hesitation. “I think you have the best chance of anyone of protecting me and killing him.”
Alek pressed his lips together and nodded with a grimace. I didn’t need him to tell me she spoke the truth, though the confirmation was nice. I could hear her desire in her voice, read it on her terrified but determined face.
I sank my fingers back into Wolf’s fur and closed my eyes. I was so damned tired of everything. The wild joy the unicorn’s magic had spawned inside me had shined a light into my exhausted heart. I didn’t want to run anymore, but the waiting was killing me, bit by bit.
Waiting for Samir to make a move. Waiting for someone else to try to hurt me or the people I loved. Waiting for the right moment, for some day in whatever future I had where I’d somehow trained enough, gotten strong enough, become someone who could stand up to him and say “no more.”
I felt like the characters in the second act of my favorite musical, Into the Woods. I wanted to belt out the lyrics to “No More” and crawl under the covers. There was no convenient orchestra for me here, however, and I was pretty sure my audience would ruin the drama of it. No more hiding for me. No more running. No more waiting.
Perhaps Tess was a gift, a tool placed in my hands by fate.
“Fine,” I said, opening my eyes to find Tess and Alek watching me, both of their expressions grim and guarded. “You know where Samir lives? Let’s go. Tomorrow, you and me. If he’s not there, we’ll wait for him.”
“But…” She stuttered, stopped, then started again, “I don’t know where he lives. I mean, I know he has a mansion in a valley, but I couldn’t tell you where it is.”
“Why not?” I asked. Samir and I had lived in a beautiful house in Detroit after he seduced me away from New York. He’d let me come and go as I please
d, though my freedom had been an illusion, and I hadn’t wanted to leave him anyway. Not until the end.
“He always flies me there in a private plane, then a helicopter. Everything is warded and I’m always blindfolded. If I want to leave, I have to go the same way. I don’t know if it is even in the States. The landscape is carefully groomed, too many differing plants for it all to be native.” She spread her hands. “You hurt him, and now he doesn’t trust anyone or anything.”
“I hurt him?” I choked down a bubble of irrational laughter, swallowing it like an unpleasant burp. “He nearly killed me. He…” I stopped, my eyes burning as I blinked back tears. This woman was a stranger; she didn’t need to know about my losses. She was dangerous, sincere or not. Having her here was a mistake, for both of us. Especially if she couldn’t help me.
“So you can’t tell me where he is or where he will be?” I reiterated.
“No,” she said. “Though I imagine he’ll come for you eventually. He’s reluctant to face you. That’s why I’m here. You are the only person he seems wary of.”
That was mildly comforting. Very mild. Like tepid bathwater mild.
“Take off your charm,” I said, forcing away any pity I felt for her. I’d melted mine off, not knowing the trick of opening it. I was curious how she would do it, and I didn’t care if Samir knew she had. Let her prove herself if she wanted my help. I wanted to feel her magic, to see it.
She lifted her hand to the necklace and her sleeve slipped back, revealing a silver charm bracelet. Only one charm dangled from it, a cross with a tiny crucified body on it. Her power, when she called it, was cool and crisp to my senses, tasting somewhat like sucking on an ice-cube. She closed her eyes and hummed a soft, clear note. The air around us grew thick and still, as though time itself hung for a moment on that note. With a quick tug, the necklace broke free, sliding through her neck as though the chain or her throat were merely illusion.
It was amazing, and terrifying. Not because she used a lot of magic, because she hadn’t. I felt only the merest breath of power, barely more than I had exercised earlier that night when lighting the candles now burned to nubs on my kitchen table. It was her control, her finesse, what she managed to do with so little magic.