by Paula Guran
That was the plan, anyway.
As soon as I touched Kim, the room came alive.
It started with the flying fish leaping off the table and buzzing past us on Saran Wrap wings. The porcelain cat thumped down from the table and, far from breaking, twined itself around Kim’s ankles, purring hollowly. An iron plied itself over a pile of papers, smoothing out the creases. The teddy bear growled at it and ran to hide behind a toaster.
If that wasn’t enough, my jacket burst into bloom.
It’s kind of hard to describe what it’s like to wear a tropical forest. Damp, for one thing. Bright. Loud. Uncomfortable. Very, very uncomfortable. Overstimulating. There were flowers and parrots screeching (yes, the flowers, too—or maybe that was me). It seemed to go on for a long time, kind of like giving birth. At first, I was overwhelmed by the chaos of growth and sound, unsure whether I was the forest or the forest was me. Slowly I realized that it didn’t have to be chaos, and that if I just pulled myself together, I could make sense of it. That flower went there, for instance, and the teal one went there. That parrot belonged on that vine and everything needed to be smaller and stiller and less extravagantly colored. Like that.
Gradually, the forest receded. I was still holding Kim, who promptly bent over and threw up on the floor.
“There,” I said hoarsely, “I told you she was going to be sick.”
Ophelia picked up Rachel and carried her back to her wingchair. “You be quiet, you,” she said over her shoulder. “Heaven knows what you’ve done to Rachel. I told you not to touch them.”
Ignoring my own nausea, I supported Kim over to the rocker and deposited her in it. “You might have told me why,” I snapped. “I don’t know why people can’t just explain things instead of making me guess. It’s not like I can read minds, you know. Now, are you going to conjure us up a glass of water, or do I have to go find the kitchen?”
Rachel had recovered herself enough to give a shaky laugh. “Hell, you could conjure it yourself, with a little practice. Ophie, darling, calm down. I’m fine.”
Ophelia stopped fussing over her wife long enough to snatch a glass of cool mint tea from the air and hand it to me. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, and she was scowling. “I told you she was going to be difficult. Of all the damn-fool, pigheaded . . . ”
“Hush, love,” Rachel said. “There’s no harm done, and now we know just where we stand. I’d rather have a nice cup of tea than listen to you cursing out Mrs. Gordon for just trying to be a good mother.” She turned her head to look at me. “Very impressive, by the way. We knew you had to be like Ophie, because of the garden, but we didn’t know the half of it. You’ve got a kick like a mule, Mrs. Gordon.”
I must have been staring at her like one of the flying fish. Here I thought I’d half-killed her, and she was giving me a smile that looked perfectly genuine.
I smiled cautiously in return. “Thank you,” I said.
Kim pulled at the sleeve of my jacket. “Hey, Mom, that was awesome. I guess you’re a witch, huh?”
I wanted to deny it, but I couldn’t. The fact was that the pattern of flowers on my jacket was different and the colors were muted, the flowers more English garden than tropical paradise. There were only three buttons, and they were larks, not parrots. And I felt different. Clearer? More whole? I don’t know—different. Even though I didn’t know how the magic worked or how to control it, I couldn’t ignore the fact—the palpable, provable fact—it was there.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I am.”
“Me, too,” my daughter said. “What’s Dad going to say?”
I thought for a minute. “Nothing, honey. Because we’re not going to tell him.”
We didn’t, either. And we’re not going to. There’s no useful purpose served by telling people truths they aren’t equipped to accept. Geoff’s pretty oblivious, anyway. It’s true that in the hung-over aftermath of Ophelia’s blue punch, he announced that he thought the new neighbors might be a bad influence, but he couldn’t actually forbid Kim and me to hang out with them because it would look homophobic.
Kim’s over at Number 400 most Saturday afternoons, learning how to be a zoologist. She’s making good progress. There was an episode with zombie mice I don’t like to think about, and a crisis when the porcelain cat broke falling out of a tree. But she’s learning patience, control, and discipline, which are all excellent things for a girl of fourteen to learn. She and Rachel have reanimated a pair of passenger pigeons, but they haven’t had any luck in breeding them yet.
Lucille’s the biggest surprise. It turns out that all her nosy-parkerism was a case of ingrown witchiness. Now she’s studying with Silver, of all people, to be a psychologist. But that’s not the surprise. The surprise is that she left Burney and moved into Number 400, where she has a room draped with chintz and a gray cat named Jezebel and is as happy as a clam at high tide.
I’m over there a lot, too, learning to be a horticulturist. Ophelia says I’m a quick study, but I have to learn to trust my instincts. Who knew I had instincts? I thought I was just good at looking things up.
I’m working on my own garden now. I’m the only one who can find it without being invited in. It’s an English kind of garden, like the gardens in books I loved as a child. It has a stone wall with a low door in it, a little central lawn, and a perennial border full of foxgloves and Sweet William and Michelmas daisies. Veronica blooms in the cracks of the wall, and periwinkle carpets the beds where old-fashioned fragrant roses nod heavily to every passing breeze. There’s a small wilderness of rowan trees, and a neat shrubbery embracing a pond stocked with fish as bright as copper pennies. Among the dusty-smelling boxwood, I’ve put a statue of a woman holding a basket planted with stonecrop. She’s dressed in a jacket incised with flowers and vines and closed with three buttons shaped like parrots. The fourth button sits on her shoulder, clacking its beak companionably and preening its brazen feathers. I’m thinking of adding a duck pond next, or maybe a wilderness for Kim’s menagerie.
Witches don’t have to worry about zoning laws.
A woman with magical powers—skilled at martial arts and occult detection—who has a vampire as a lover with whom she fights the forces of evil in an urban setting where, unknown to most humans, there are many who are not human . . .
As familiar as that plotline may sound in 2012, this story was published in 1989 and introduced Diana Tregarde, an American witch whose witchcraft has a great deal in common with modern neopagan Wiccan beliefs. She is also a “Guardian”—charged with protecting the Earth and all its creatures—a designation that gives her access to more magical power than most witches. Protecting others isn’t a paying job, however, so Diana writes romance novels for a living. “Nightside” only hints at the characters and world Mercedes Lackey created for three novels—Burning Water (1989), Children of the Night (1990), Jinx High (1991)—a novella, and another short story. The novels were published by Tor as “horror” and, according to Lackey, did not sell well. She declined to write more.
Diana Tregarde can be viewed as yet another in a long line of fictional protectors of humanity with occult powers, but she was also one of the first modern “kick-ass” heroines who are now so popular.
Nightside
Mercedes Lackey
It was early spring, but the wind held no hint of verdancy, not even the promise of it—it was chill and odorless, and there were ghosts of dead leaves skittering before it. A few of them jittered into the pool of weak yellow light cast by the aging streetlamp—a converted gaslight that was a relic of the previous century. It was old and tired, its pea-green paint flaking away; as weary as this neighborhood, which was older still. Across the street loomed an ancient church, its congregation dwindled over the years to a handful of little old women and men who appeared like scrawny blackbirds every Sunday, and then scattered back to the shabby houses that stood to either side of it until Sunday should come again. On the side of the street that the lamp tried (and failed) to illuminate,
was the cemetery.
Like the neighborhood, it was very old—in this case, fifty years shy of being classified as “Colonial.” There were few empty gravesites now, and most of those belonged to the same little old ladies and men that had lived and would die here. It was protected from vandals by a thorny hedge as well as a ten-foot wrought-iron fence. Within its confines, as seen through the leafless branches of the hedge, granite cenotaphs and enormous Victorian monuments hulked shapelessly against the bare sliver of a waning moon.
The church across the street was dark and silent; the houses up and down the block showed few lights, if any. There was no reason for anyone of this neighborhood to be out in the night.
So the young woman waiting beneath the lamppost seemed that much more out-of-place.
Nor could she be considered a typical resident of this neighborhood by any stretch of the imagination—for one thing, she was young; perhaps in her mid-twenties, but no more. Her clothing was neat but casual, too casual for someone visiting an elderly relative. She wore dark, knee-high boots, old, soft jeans tucked into their tops, and a thin windbreaker open at the front to show a leotard beneath. Her attire was far too light to be any real protection against the bite of the wind, yet she seemed unaware of the cold. Her hair was long, down to her waist, and straight—in the uncertain light of the lamp it was an indeterminate shadow, and it fell down her back like a waterfall. Her eyes were large and oddly slanted, but not Oriental; catlike, rather. Even the way she held herself was feline; poised, expectant—a graceful tension like a dancer’s or a hunting predator’s. She was not watching for something—no, her eyes were unfocused with concentration. She was listening.
A soft whistle, barely audible, carried down the street on the chill wind. The tune was of a piece with the neighborhood—old and time-worn.
Many of the residents would have smiled in recollection to hear “Lili Marlene” again.
The tension left the girl as she swung around the lamppost by one hand to face the direction of the whistle. She waved, and a welcoming smile warmed her eyes.
The whistler stepped into the edge of the circle of light. He, too, was dusky of eye and hair—and heartbreakingly handsome. He wore only dark jeans and a black turtleneck, no coat at all—but like the young woman, he didn’t seem to notice the cold. There was an impish glint in his eyes as he finished the tune with a flourish.
“A flair for the dramatic, Diana, mon cherie?” he said mockingly. “Would that you were here for the same purpose as the lovely Lili! Alas, I fear my luck cannot be so good . . . ”
She laughed. His eyes warmed at the throaty chuckle. “Andre,” she chided, “don’t you ever think of anything else?”
“Am I not a son of the City of Light? I must uphold her reputation, mais non?” The young woman raised an ironic brow. He shrugged. “Ah well—since it is you who seek me, I fear I must be all business. A pity. Well, what lures you to my side this unseasonable night? What horror has Mademoiselle Tregarde unearthed this time?”
Diana Tregarde sobered instantly, the laughter fleeing her eyes. “I’m afraid you picked the right word this time, Andre. It is a horror. The trouble is, I don’t know what kind.”
“Say on. I wait in breathless anticipation.” His expression was mocking as he leaned against the lamppost, and he feigned a yawn.
Diana scowled at him and her eyes darkened with anger. He raised an eyebrow of his own. “If this weren’t so serious,” she threatened, “I’d be tempted to pop you one—Andre, people are dying out there. There’s a ‘Ripper’ loose in New York.”
He shrugged, and shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. “So? This is new? Tell me when there is not! That sort of criminal is as common to the city as a rat. Let your police earn their salaries and capture him.”
Her expression hardened. She folded her arms tightly across the thin nylon of her windbreaker; her lips tightened a little. “Use your head, Andre! If this was an ordinary slasher-killer, would I be involved?”
He examined his fingernails with care. “And what is it that makes it extraordinaire, eh?”
“The victims had no souls.”
“I was not aware,” he replied wryly, “that the dead possessed such things anymore.”
She growled under her breath, and tossed her head impatiently. The wind caught her hair and whipped it around her throat. “You are deliberately being difficult! I have half a mind—”
It finally seemed to penetrate the young man’s mind that she was truly angry—and truly frightened, though she was doing her best to conceal the fact; his expression became contrite. “Forgive me, cherie. I am being recalcitrant.”
“You’re being a pain in the ass,” she replied acidly. “Would I have come to you if I wasn’t already out of my depth?”
“Well—” he admitted. “No. But—this business of souls, cherie, how can you determine such a thing? I find it most difficult to believe.”
She shivered, and her eyes went brooding. “So did I. Trust me, my friend, I know what I’m talking about. There isn’t a shred of doubt in my mind. There are at least six victims who no longer exist in any fashion anymore.”
The young man finally evidenced alarm. “But—how?” he said, bewildered. “How is such a thing possible?”
She shook her head violently, clenching her hands on the sleeves of her jacket as if by doing so she could protect herself from an unseen—but not unfelt—danger. “I don’t know, I don’t know! It seems incredible even now—I keep thinking it’s a nightmare, but—Andre, it’s real, it’s not my imagination—” Her voice rose a little with each word, and Andre’s sharp eyes rested for a moment on her trembling hands.
“Eh bien,” he sighed, “I believe you. So there is something about that devours souls—and mutilates bodies as well, since you mentioned a ‘Ripper’ persona?”
She nodded.
“Was the devouring before or after the mutilation?”
“Before, I think—it’s not easy to judge.” She shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.
“And you came into this how?”
“Whatever it is, it took the friend of a friend; I—happened to be there to see the body afterwards, and I knew immediately there was something wrong. When I unshielded and used the Sight—”
“Bad.” He made it a statement.
“Worse. I—I can’t describe what it felt like. There were still residual emotions, things left behind when—” Her jaw clenched. “Then when I started checking further I found out about the other five victims—that what I had discovered was no fluke. Andre, whatever it is, it has to be stopped.” She laughed again, but this time there was no humor in it. “After all, you could say stopping it is in my job description.”
He nodded soberly. “And so you become involved. Well enough, if you must hunt this thing, so must I.” He became all business. “Tell me of the history. When, and where, and who does it take?”
She bit her lip. “ ‘Where’—there’s no pattern. ‘Who’ seems to be mostly a matter of opportunity; the only clue is that the victims were always out on the street and entirely alone, there were no witnesses whatsoever, so the thing needs total privacy and apparently can’t strike wherever at will. And ‘when’—is moon-dark.”
“Bad.” He shook his head. “I have no clue at the moment. The loup-garou I know, and others, but I know nothing that hunts beneath the dark moon.”
She grimaced. “You think I do? That’s why I need your help; you’re sensitive enough to feel something out of the ordinary, and you can watch and hunt undetected. I can’t. And I’m not sure I want to go trolling for this thing alone—without knowing what it is, I could end up as a late-night snack for it. But if that’s what I have to do, I will.”
Anger blazed up in his face like a cold fire. “You go hunting alone for this creature over my dead body!”
“That’s a little redundant, isn’t it?” Her smile was weak, but genuine again.
“Pah!” he dismissed h
er attempt at humor with a wave of his hand. “Tomorrow is the first night of moon-dark; I shall go a-hunting. You remain at home, else I shall be most wroth with you. I know where to find you, should I learn anything of note.”
“You ought to—” Diana began, but she spoke to the empty air.
The next night was warmer, and Diana had gone to bed with her windows open to drive out some of the stale odors the long winter had left in her apartment. Not that the air of New York City was exactly fresh, but it was better than what the heating system kept recycling through the building. She didn’t particularly like leaving her defenses open while she slept, but the lingering memory of Katy Rourk’s fish wafting through the halls as she came in from shopping had decided her. Better exhaust fumes than burned haddock.
She hadn’t had an easy time falling asleep, and when she finally managed to do so, tossed restlessly, her dreams uneasy and readily broken—
—as by the sound of someone in the room.
Before the intruder crossed even half the distance between the window and her bed, she was wide awake, and moving. She threw herself out of bed, somersaulted across her bedroom, and wound up crouched beside the door, one hand on the light switch, the other holding a polished dagger she’d taken from beneath her pillow. As the lights came on, she saw Andre standing in the center of the bedroom, blinking in surprise, wearing a sheepish grin.
Relief made her knees go weak. “Andre, you idiot!” She tried to control her tone, but her voice was shrill and cracked a little. “You could have been killed!”
He spread his hands wide in a placating gesture. “Now, Diana—”
“ ‘Now Diana’ my eye!” she growled. “Even you would have a hard time getting around a severed spine!” She stood up slowly, shaking from head to toe with released tension.
“I didn’t wish to wake you,” he said, crestfallen.