by Chloe Garner
“Clever,” Carter said. “Kind of demon I’d like to ally with.”
“Too bad she’s on the wrong side,” Samantha said. “He is one of the protectables.”
He shrugged.
“Some days I wish I could pick interesting over innocent,” he said. “You’re going to have to kill her to clear the marks, and that’s only if she doesn’t get a shot at finishing them, first.”
“I guessed as much.”
“Won’t clear the spit, though,” Carter said. She hung her head.
“What does that mean? Demon spit?”
“You don’t know?” Carter asked. She looked up at him. “You bonded him,” he said, walking around the counter. “You’re beginning to feel it.”
She nodded.
“I am.”
“It means that she’s cast a net over him and was hauling him home. She put her scent all over him. He’s going to soulburn to death if you don’t get him loose.”
“How did she cast it?” Samantha asked. He was looking at her eyes with cool clinicality.
“There were about a million different ways before you young kids started creating all of the new symbolisms,” he said, pulling up one of her eyelids. She let him.
“How do you clear it?”
“Unique to the cast.” He stood back. “You know that.”
“I’m not going to let him go.”
“You have to.”
“I’m not going to.”
“Then you’ll die.”
She walked over to the front wall of the apartment, sitting on the floor and putting her head back against the wood.
“Aspen. I can’t do this again.”
He came and squatted in front of her.
“Samantha.”
She rolled her head to the side, staring up at the ceiling.
“Samantha, look at me.”
She rolled her head to look over her cheekbones at him.
“You are strong. I know that you’re going to try to save him, and you can feed him your strength through that bond and make him live longer. You may even be able to guess the right cure for him and save him. I’m not going to waste my breath telling you not to try. But you have to let him go, if you fail. Even he would say that, and you know it.”
“Aspen.”
He sighed, rolling over his foot to come and sit next to her.
“People die,” he said. “Sometimes people who should have died don’t. Life sucks.” He turned his head and looked at her. “But life is all there is. All the wins. All the losses. They’re here. On the other side, you’re just waiting for the game to finish tallying. We don’t see eye to eye on the motivation. You think that you’re fighting for God. I think that you’re just being important because you are important. Either way, you can’t give up just because it hurts. Losing doesn’t mean you should quit. It should mean that you want to win the next one more.”
“I don’t have another loss like that in me,” she said. “You’re getting your pants dirty.”
“You have more strength than you think. He would want you to let him go.” He tapped her sneaker with his high-polish shoe. “And it’s because I lost my housekeeper a couple of years ago to grief. I still think about her sometimes.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah. I wish she’d come home.”
“It wasn’t grief,” she said.
“Well, I know it couldn’t have been me. I’m delightful.”
“How long has he got?” Samantha asked. Carter rolled his head back to look at the ceiling with her. She rolled her head to look at him for a moment, then rolled back again.
“A week, maybe less, without you.”
“And with me?”
“Maybe a month.”
She sighed.
“Hey, Sam?” he asked.
“Yeah?”
“Will you go do the dishes?”
<><><>
When they got back from lunch, Samantha had red hair.
“What is this?” Jason asked, striding across the room to circle her. Sam glanced at Abby. She had known.
“I actually started to miss it, there at the end,” she said, running her fingers through the near-black waves. Carter looked up from a newspaper.
“That’s more like it,” he said.
“Sam,” Abby whispered. He looked down at her. “I can’t let you keep this, but hold on to it for right now,” she said, slipping a necklace into his hand. “You’ll know when to use it.” She nodded at him.
“I liked her with brown hair,” he said. She nodded, glancing over at Samantha.
“That’s how I always knew her,” she said. “Carter made her dye it from the beginning.”
“Why?”
“You should ask her that,” she said.
“You look great,” Jason said. He put his fingertips under Samantha’s chin and looked at her. “Suits your eyes.”
She dropped her eyes to his hand, then looked back up at him and lifted her head away. She looked at Sam. He pocketed the necklace and walked over to her.
“I liked your hair the way it was,” he said. She smiled.
“This makes me feel stronger,” she said.
“It’s hot,” Jason said.
“You’re leaving now, aren’t you?” Carter asked. “You promised.”
“Yes, we’re leaving,” Samantha said, motioning at the door. She went and got her duffel and her backpack out of her room. “As always, it’s been a pleasure.”
“Hey,” he called after her as Sam opened the door. “I changed my mind about you bringing your tag-alongs. Don’t bring them back until they’re house-broken.”
Samantha rolled her eyes.
“Don’t feed the bear. Let’s just go.”
They took the elevator down to Abby’s car and Abby drove them to the same section of town where Samantha had shopped the night before, but on this street, a colorful crowd of people thronged, chatting animatedly in English.
“This almost looks normal,” Jason said.
“Mostly human, here,” Samantha told him. “Most of the stuff they sell is worthless, but there are a few vendors who know their stuff.”
The four of them made their way through the crowd and Samantha pulled out her list. Sam fingered strings of shells and baskets of herbs with curiosity. She seemed to know exactly what everything was and how much it was worth. Jason had told him the quantity she had spent last night; today her purchases didn’t exceed a thousand dollars.
“There’s one more thing I need up this street here,” Samantha said, turning.
“We’re going to head back to the car,” Abby said. “I don’t want to go up there.”
“What?” Samantha asked.
“Disagreement with one of the vendors,” Abby said. “Walk me, Jason.”
Samantha looked confused, but she shrugged and waved at them.
“We won’t be long.”
Jason fought her for a moment, Sam saw, but Abby had no intention of letting him follow Sam and Samantha up the narrow alley Samantha had indicated. Sam watched after Abby, but she didn’t give him any clues.
Samantha led the way. She found the stall she was looking for and bought a small bag of what looked exactly like beach sand for a hundred and fifty dollars, then looked back down the alley.
“I don’t feel like managing the crowds again. There’s another way back to the car,” she said. He nodded and followed, his hand on the necklace in his pocket.
“Why did Carter make you dye your hair red?” Sam asked. She looked over her shoulder at him and paused.
“Because he gets symbolic magic for women,” she said. “And it was either that or bleaching it blond.”
Sam raised an eyebrow, and she grinned, holding up the backs of her hands. Her fingernails were dark maroon.
“This makes me feel powerful,” she said. “Long fingernails, dark hair, sharp contrast makeup. And things that make me feel powerful make me act powerful, and things that make me act powerful supplement my symbolic magic and
make everything else that I do more powerful. None of it changes what I’m capable of. It changes how much of it I’m capable of. Same with the clothes. People stare. I make them do what I want. Power.”
She reached up to touch his hair, then her hand jerked away and she shook it, hard, at her side.
“What I missed most about normal life, with Carter, was touch. I hugged people all the time at school and at home, but when I came here, everything was so sterile. When someone touched my elbow, I’d jerk away. The only people who would touch me were demons, and almost all of them… I started carrying knives early. Then, out on my own…” She looked up at him and sighed. “I missed you guys a lot. I wish I could touch you. I just… I can’t.”
He pulled the necklace out of his pocket and slid it over his head.
The immediate shock of it was stunning. He had completely forgotten what it was like to know, like there was a spotlight on her, where Samantha was, and then recalibrating for the dizzying flurry of emotions that raced back and forth over the bond took him a moment. Her pinched sense of worry surprised him. Loneliness. Fear. Power. She threw her arms around his neck, pulling him forward in surprise for a moment, then he lifted her off the ground and held her.
“You are still in there,” she whispered.
He tried not to think of Carly, since Samantha had shown up. The things that they had done sickened him. For a moment, though, he couldn’t help but compare the whole-ness he felt with Samantha to the hunger and the chase with Carly. It was like suddenly understanding why Jason did what he did, and resoundingly rejecting it in the same moment. He sighed and put her back down.
“Where did you get that?” she asked.
“Abby gave it to me. She said I have to give it back.”
She gasped.
“Carter is going to kill her if he finds out she took it off. We need to get back to her now.”
“Why?” Sam asked.
“That’s her protection against possession. She doesn’t have native defenses against it, like Carter and I do.”
She led him quickly down the alley and then another, taking several turns to arrive back at the car. Abby was leaning against it casually. Sam handed Samantha the necklace, and Samantha stormed up to Abby, sliding the necklace over her head.
“You know better,” she said.
“I know what is, as well,” Abby told her. “And I know how you feel. You tell me. It was a small window, and I decided to risk it.”
“What are they talking about?” Jason asked.
“Abby just risked the destruction of the world so I could hug Sam,” Sam said.
“Oh,” Jason said. “That makes sense.”
Abby put her fingertips up to Samantha’s face, eyes searching.
“You have so much to come,” Abby said. “And I know it made you happy.”
Samantha opened her mouth to argue. There, far far away, Sam could feel the surge of worry, but she took a breath and closed her eyes.
“Thank you, my love. As always, you are better to me than I deserve.”
Abby clicked her tongue.
They drove back to the parking garage and Jason reached into his pocket.
“Where are my keys?” he asked. Samantha held them up in her hand.
“We’re going to chat for a bit. You guys aren’t invited.”
“We’re what?”
Samantha let Abby in the back seat and locked the door behind her. Jason put his hands on the window on either side of his face and stared in at them.
“Seriously?”
“Let them talk,” Sam said.
“Dude, they locked me out of my own car.”
“Let it go,” Sam said. He wished he could feel what was going on with Samantha; the moment reminding him of what they had been like before made him miss it badly. They heard high-pitched squealing and Jason peered into the car again.
“Did you know she made that noise?” Jason asked. Sam laughed.
“I didn’t.”
Jason tried the door handle again and Sam saw Samantha wave him off.
“Can’t believe she did that,” Jason said. Sam put an arm around his brother’s shoulders.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
<><><>
The first night on the road they spent with friends in Columbus. After dinner, Samantha begged off of staying up.
“I didn’t sleep much last night,” she said. “Mind if I turn in early?”
“Of course, Sam. Sleep well,” Cathy said. She smiled and grabbed her backpack, heading upstairs. She paused midway up to listen.
“She isn’t often without that backpack, is she?” she heard Darin ask.
“No, she pretty much keeps it with her all the time,” Jason answered. “Pass the peas?”
“I’m going to head up, too, actually, if that’s okay,” Sam said.
“Don’t wait up?” Darin asked with a grin in his voice. Samantha rolled her eyes. As if she would ever. He walked around the bottom of the staircase and looked up at her. She nodded and turned to go up the rest of the stairs, leading the way to the room that he and Jason shared, when they stayed here. She sat on Jason’s bed and pulled out the list she had made. The top sixty disenchantments, spell breaks, clears, blessings, disentrapments, and tie-cuts she could think of, in an order optimized to avoid toxicity and interactions as much as possible. She needed to get through as many of these as she could; waiting even a day between attempts diminished her odds of finding one that would work before she ran out of time. Mentally, there was a line between thirty and thirty-one that she didn’t like to look at. She pulled out a pen and switched numbers sixteen and seventeen.
Sam sat down in front of her and she shifted her knees away without thinking.
“So this is the list,” she said, showing it to him. She pulled it away apologetically when he reached for it, and looked at her feet.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s that bad?” he asked. She searched his face, his arms, looking for anything that her eyes could find to explain her reaction to him, but there was nothing. He just looked like Sam. Her nose couldn’t pick out anything that she could describe or explain as bad, and the truth was, when she touched his skin, all her fingertips felt was skin. And yet, his skin ran with decay, he stank of rank and rotting death, and he was sticky in a way that made her want to burn the clothes that she rubbed her hands off on. If she didn’t know he had touched something, it didn’t bother her, but as soon as she watched his hands leave a surface, she couldn’t actively touch it. Once at dinner, she had found herself holding a bowl, passing it to Jason, and realized that she was holding the side Sam had lifted off the table, and she nearly dropped it.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“What did Carter say?” he asked. He was avoiding talking to her in front of Jason, she knew, because he had realized she was afraid. He was trying to spare Jason. She was, too. She wanted more than anything to spare him, but couldn’t do it.
“He said you’re dying.”
“And one of those things is going to fix me?”
She looked at the list.
“These are my best guesses,” she said. “One a night until it’s over.”
“How long?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” It was true, and with the demon spit, he couldn’t tell that it was deceptive. He nodded.
“Okay.”
She rooted through her backpack for a moment, pulling out the pewter bowl that she wanted, and then the ingredients for attempt number one. Who knew? Maybe she was fated to save him; her one-in-a-million guess would be the right one. She mixed the elixir and spoke over it. Faith, she reminded herself. The fear she felt betrayed her, and she handed him the bowl.
“Eyes closed, deep breath, all one swallow,” she said. “Right handed.”
He watched her, then nodded and followed her instructions. Her stomach tightened as he put the bowl back down in his lap, but her first, best guess only lifted the heavy layer of
death on him slightly. She sighed and took the bowl, trying to keep her hands from shaking, and wiped it down with a towel she had found that had a different color on each side. Sam side. Samantha side. She put it away.
“I don’t feel any different,” he said. She nodded.
“I know. You’ll know immediately, I suspect. This wasn’t it.”
He nodded.
“You’ll find it.”
She nodded, but couldn’t agree out loud. She didn’t actually believe it. She zipped up her backpack and stood.
“I think I am going to go to bed,” she said. “Sleep well.”
He nodded, looking like he had more to say, but couldn’t find the right words. She didn’t want to hear them, so she left quickly, walking down the hallway to her room. She sat cross-legged on the bed, stunned. She had secretly believed, even in fear, that it could be that simple. She had the gift. She had the touch. If she thought it would work, it would work. She sat with her eyes closed, willing the answer to come to her, but there was nothing.
Someone knocked on her door. She glanced over at the clock. She had been sitting for more than an hour. She untangled her legs stiffly and went to open the door.
“Did I wake you?” Jason asked. She shook her head, standing aside to let him in.
“Sam was just sitting up,” he said. “Said you went to bed, but I wanted to check.”
“So you came and knocked on my door to see if I was asleep?” she asked.
“Whatever it was the two of you came up here to do, it didn’t work, did it?” he asked. She looked for the opportunity to mislead, but finally just shook her head.
“No.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I try again tomorrow.”
“Oh. Okay.” He scratched his face. “Can we talk for a minute?”
She looked around the room, but there weren’t any chairs. She went back to the bed and scooted across it to buy herself distance, and he came and sat down.
“I never said I was sorry,” he said. She frowned.
“For what?” she asked.
He took his shoes off and turned on the bed to face her.
“When Sam… did his thing and let you go. I just went along with it. It took me a couple of days to realize how dumb that was. He wasn’t the only one who left you there, and I shouldn’t have let him make that call for both of us. I’m sorry.”