by David Estes
I’m not scared of the Reaper—not anymore—especially after Xave returns with what’s left of the Necros. I count fourteen witches and warlocks, not including their leader and his son. They’re all wearing their usual dark, hooded cloaks.
From thousands to sixteen. New America’s missiles did their job efficiently. The thought of all those corpses bloody and singed makes me feel somewhat ill, even if I won’t shed any tears for them.
And I notice at least one missing face. Felix. Xave’s boyfriend. He’s a member of the Wardens, not the Necros, but it still seems strange that he wouldn’t be with them. Unless the alliance between the two witch gangs ended when Heinz Field was blown up. In which case they might’ve broken up. Another, darker thought enters my mind. Or what if Felix…
I let the thought drop into a growing pile of Things I Don’t Want To Think About, and return my focus to the activities of the Necros, who all seem to be ignoring me.
First, they build a fire. Well, build is probably the wrong word. More like create. One of the Necros snaps his fingers and a corner of the collapsed cabin flares up. The only benefit of my temporary shelter’s destruction is that we won’t have to traipse through the woods collecting kindling; we’ve got enough firewood to burn for days.
I sit on a log and watch the Necros organize their meager supplies into neat piles, wondering what the hell I’m doing. It’s only when I realize that I’m staying with them because I’m scared to be alone that I get really angry.
“Do you always camp during the day?” I ask, condescension heavy in my tone.
The Reaper glances at me and raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t respond, continuing to issue orders to his witches and warlocks.
Xave sits beside me on the log. “Necros don’t mind the dark the way humans and other magic-born do,” he says. “Our night vision is very good.”
“Freak,” I mutter, feeling somewhat bad when he winces. My tone softens. “Didn’t you ever notice you could see in the dark when you were growing up?” I ask, actually interested. Did Trish know she was different than the other kids? I wonder silently.
Xavier’s glum expression transforms into a smile. For a second, I understand why Rhett was drawn to him. His smile seems to carry the light of the world along its curves. “I couldn’t,” he says. “Magic doesn’t work like that. Even if you have it in your blood, you can’t do anything without practice and knowing how to use it.”
Except that Trish killed my parents using magic. Was it a fluke or is she even more special than anyone thinks?
Silence spreads between us as we both watch the others set up camp. A short, fat warlock builds what appears to be a spit over the fire. A few others construct makeshift teepees with sturdy branches and foliage. Everything they’re doing seems so normal that if they weren’t wearing their cultish cloaks and hoods they might almost appear human.
But I know better.
“You look pretty good for surviving a missile attack,” I say to Xave after a few minutes.
He doesn’t respond, just stares at his clasped hands. “Xave?” I say. I place a hand on his arm. “What the hell happened after we left? How are you still alive?”
“Why’d you leave Rhett?” he asks. A question for a question. A good avoidance strategy.
“If I tell you, will you tell me what happened?”
His eyes finally meet mine and I’m surprised to see that they’re already glistening with unshed tears. He nods once.
I take a deep breath. “Rhett is angry,” I say. “Not at me—at your kind. Necros, witches in general, anyone who’s made a mess of the world. Anyone who might have contributed to Beth’s death.” He asked for the truth so he’ll get it. “He hates that you brought her back to life. That he now has to remember how she looked at the end, instead of the girl he remembers loving. All he wants is revenge.”
A tear dribbles down Xave’s cheek, but he makes no move to wipe it away. “But you’re not angry? You don’t want revenge?” Xave’s questions feel like a cry for help, a hopeless plea for mercy and forgiveness.
I can’t give him any. “I’m every bit as pissed off as Rhett,” I say. “At you. At your father. At this damn broken world. But I’m tired of being scared and unhappy. Tired of being a mouse when I used to be a cat. Tired of being alone. I tried to convince Rhett to run away with us, to build a better life somewhere else, but his vendetta runs too deep. Not that I blame him, not at all. I understand what he has to do and why. I won’t stop him, but I won’t let my sister be a part of it.”
“Your sister?” It’s not Xave, but the Reaper who speaks. “Where is your sister?”
I look at the Reaper, whose eyebrows are raised sharply, and shake my head. “Nuh-uh. Xave and I had a deal. First I spill, then he does.” I glance back at Xave. “Your turn.”
Another tear has joined the first, on the opposite cheek, the two glistening tracks symmetrical, as if his face is a painting. I can see him framed and hung up in an art museum. It could be called The Sad Necromancer.
“He saved my life,” he says, his voice breaking. His eyes squeeze shut and more tears leak from the sides.
I know exactly who he means—the last warlock we saw Xave with. “Felix,” I say.
Hearing his boyfriend’s name makes his brown eyes flash open, swimming with emotion. “He was weak from maintaining his Wards for so long, protecting the stadium from the missiles.” He takes a deep swallow, but his eyes never leave mine. “But before the bulk of the rockets hit, he found the last of his strength, somewhere deep inside him. He told me he”—he chokes, coughs, continues—“loved me.”
God. “Then what?” Do I really care? I’m surprised to find myself feeling sorry for him.
“His last Ward surrounded me, like a fortress of glass, except it was created from magic. His magic. And then everything was fire and smoke and debris and I couldn’t see him—couldn’t find his eyes. He was gone. I could only hope that he died without pain, before the bombs hit. He saved my life.”
His eyes are red, his face sheened with a blanket of tears.
And despite how much I’ve hated Xave from the moment I met him and realized what he was, despite how much I wanted Rhett to see that his best friend was gone forever, I wrap my arm around his hunched shoulders and pull him into my neck as he sobs into my skin.
At the same time I have the urge to strangle him.
~~~
“My turn,” the Reaper says much later on, when the sun is well past its peak and the trees are casting late-afternoon shadows across our makeshift camp.
After Xave apologized for soaking my shirt with his tears, I lay down for some much needed sleep after my harrowing night. I didn’t even worry about whether the Necros would do anything; if they wanted to kill me, they’d have done it already. And anyway, I have nothing left to lose.
Even still, I couldn’t sleep for an hour. The pain of Xave’s story had left me shattered, which I hated. He didn’t deserve my compassion, not after everything he put Rhett through. And yet, it felt so wrong to say.
Eventually, however, I slept, my dreams filled with images of Trish, sometimes alone in the forest, sometimes screaming at the sky, sometimes transforming into the red-haired Changeling.
Now I’m sitting across from the Reaper and Xave. Father and son. Xave’s face is dry again, his eyes clear.
“Where’s your sister?” the Reaper asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
The Reaper stares at me for a few seconds before blinking, as if trying to decide whether to believe me. “Look at me that way again and I’ll fill you with cursed steel,” I say.
His eyebrows go up, practically all the way to the treetops. “I’ve forgotten how…abrasive you can be,” he says. Is that a grin that Xave just flashed me? If so, it’s gone even quicker than it appeared.
“Look, douchebag, I’m not going to lie to you—if I don’t want to tell you something, I’ll say I don’t want to tell you. But when it comes to my sister, I don’t h
ave the slightest freaking clue where the hell she is. What I do know is that the red Siren showed up in this cabin, only she’s not a Siren at all, she’s a Changeling, and my sister was gone and the freaking Siren/Changeling/Witch—whatever she is—said Trish left to meet up with her kind.” I realize I’ve been rambling and haven’t taken a breath for a while, so I stop and fill my lungs. The Reaper’s mouth is open slightly, as if he wants to say something. “Any questions?” I say. “Because if not I’m going to go find my sister.”
“Wait,” the Reaper says, just as I stand up. “Sit.”
I don’t like being told what to do, so I stay standing. “What now?” I say.
He scratches his chin, as if trying to figure out where to start. Just to piss him off, I put my hands on my hips and tap one toe impatiently. “I don’t have all day,” I say.
“You’re saying the Siren is a Changeling?” the Reaper says.
“Did I not speak English?” I say.
He nods, murmurs under his breath. “That explains a lot.”
“It did for me, too,” I admit.
“I’ve been such a fool,” he says.
“Can’t argue with that.”
“Let the fox right into the henhouse…”
“You said some…things about the Changelings,” I say. “Before. When you were keeping us prisoner.”
“For your own protection,” he says.
“So you say.”
“So I say,” he says. He raises a hand to cut off my retort, which is hot and bitter on the tip of my tongue. “I don’t want to fight,” he says.
I take a deep breath. Okay. He’s right. Arguing won’t solve anything at this point. If he has information, I need to get it out of him. “About the Changelings…” I say.
Xave chimes in. “We don’t know much about what they’ve been up to, only the rumors.”
“And what are the rumors?” I ask, finally sitting down, on my own terms.
“The other witch gangs say the Changelings are ruthless,” the Reaper says.
“Ruthless like raising an army of the dead or ruthless like putting out a blanket order for corpses?” I say.
The Reaper sighs, massages his chest. The truth hurts sometimes. “We made mistakes. I made mistakes. I shouldn’t have trusted the other witch gangs to gather only already dead corpses.”
“They murdered for you.”
“I know. I should’ve expected it, but we were desperate.”
“Desperate for…corpses,” I say, not hiding my disgust.
“I’m not asking you to understand,” he says. “Only to listen. The Necros are weak in all other forms of magic, but for some reason we have a talent for Reanimation.” He makes it sound like he works for Pixar, but I grit my teeth and manage to stay silent. “Our only defense against the other witch gangs is in the strength of our Reanimates.”
“Yeah. Dead people. I got it,” I say sarcastically.
The Reaper looks at the sky, as if praying for patience. I’m about to tell him that he’s the last person God would listen to, but Xave speaks first. “The Changelings are rumored to be leading all other witch gangs in the number of humans killed,” he says.
“What is it—a competition?” I say.
“Yes,” the Reaper says. “Not to us, of course, but to many of the other witch gangs it is just that. A competition. But not just humans. Each other, too. There are stories of the Changelings slaughtering entire witch gangs on their own. They’re able to infiltrate pockets of human survivors and witch gangs alike, by impersonating people. It’s an extremely deadly skill to have.”
“I don’t get what that has to do with my sister,” I say, ignoring the fact that the Reaper is still trying to separate the Necromancers from all the other witch gangs. As if.
“I don’t trust the red Changeling,” the Reaper says.
“Why?” I ask, curious.
“There’s much you don’t know about witch history,” he says.
I know next to nothing, so I say, “So educate me.”
“I was on the Witch Council. Rhett’s father, too. There were ten others, the most powerful witches and warlocks in each magical specialty. When it came to the topic of Salem’s Revenge, the Council was split right down the middle. I was a quiet dissenter. Rhett’s father was not. That’s what got him in trouble.”
“Martin Carter,” I say, trying to picture the raggedy old beggar as a powerful warlock, standing up for the rights of humankind.
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
The Reaper strokes his chin, his eyes distant, as if reliving a vivid memory. “Secretly, the head of the Council had Rhett’s mother killed. It was as much to entice Martin to anger as to remove her from the picture. It worked. Martin flew into a rage, came to the next Council meeting looking for vengeance.”
Vengeance. The word makes my blood run cold. It’s what Rhett is now seeking, on behalf of Beth. Will it leave Rhett in a similar state to his father? “I’ve seen him,” I say. “He can’t speak. He has no tongue.”
A flash of pain seems to slide across his expression, touching every part of his face before disappearing. “They cut it out with a knife made from cursed steel. It will never grow back and he can’t use his own magic to regain the power of speech.”
Ugh. I don’t want to hear any more, so I stay silent.
But the Reaper isn’t done. “I knew exactly who my allies on the Council were,” he continues. “But that was many years ago and alliances change quickly in our world. The biggest enigma, however, was the Changeling on the Council.”
His revelation sucks me back into the conversation. “The red witch,” I say.
“Yes, although I’ve only just realized she’s the same witch. Her powers of deception are…advanced.”
“So you don’t know if she’s friend or foe?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Sometimes the line between the two is blurry as it is, and she’s been particularly vigilant in hiding her hand.”
I picture the red witch in the cabin, gloating about my sister. I remember the anger, curling through me. I remember the satisfaction I felt pulling the trigger.
“I don’t trust the red Changeling,” the Reaper repeats.
“Neither do I,” I say, before I can stop myself. If the Reaper realizes I just agreed with him on something for the first time, he doesn’t show it in his expression.
“She told you your sister left to be with her people, the Claires,” he says evenly.
“Yeah. So what?”
“What if she was really kidnapped?” the Reaper says.
I’m not stupid. I had thought of that. “She can protect herself,” I say. “She would’ve done her all-powerful Clairvoyant thing and screamed her head off, killing whoever was trying to abduct her.”
The Reaper frowns. “She’s that powerful?”
Maybe I’ve said too much. I close my lips.
“Okay, we can come back to that later,” he says. No we won’t, I think. “So if the Changeling didn’t kidnap your sister to try to use her powers, then it means the Changelings must have formed an alliance with the Claires.”
A logical statement, one I hadn’t thought of. I don’t say a word, mulling over what a Changeling/Claire alliance might mean.
“It makes no sense,” the Reaper says. “We had an agreement.”
“An agreement with whom?” I ask.
“The Claires,” the Reaper says. “Unknown to the Witch Council, the Claires and the Necros have been allies for a long time. Together we tried to stop Salem’s Revenge. Obviously we failed.”
“But you told us that the Claires were nearly extinct. That my sister was in danger because she might be the last one.”
“I lied,” the Reaper says.
“Shocking,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Which means you could be lying now. About everything.”
“I’m not.”
“I’d prefer to verify that with a polygraph,” I say. “Only I left my portable lie det
ector at home. Or I could torture you until the truth comes out. Your choice.”
“Look, Laney, I’m sorry I lied to you. I was willing to do anything to find your sister. My main contact within the Claires said she was important to them and that the other witch gangs would be trying to find her. I told her I’d find your sister first.”
“So the Claires really are still around?” I ask.
He nods. “Very much so.”
“But now they might’ve turned bad and allied with the Changelings, who are, by the way, the most ruthless human killers around?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” he says. This just keeps getting better and better.
“Look, you don’t have to worry about my sister,” I say. “She’s not evil. She won’t hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it.”
“Laney, I know she’s just a kid, but once she becomes one of the Claires, they might change her. They have their ways.”
It’s all too much. Too complicated. Too many players. Too many lies. Too much death and hate and violence. But amidst the swirling inferno of magic-born politics, there is one truth that will never change: I won’t give up on my sister. “Will you help me find her?” I ask. It’s a risk I have to take, even if it means I might have to find a way for both Trish and I to escape from the Necros later.
“Of course,” the Reaper says. “In fact, one of the main reasons we happened to be in this area when we stumbled on your battle with the Slammers was that we got a tip that the Changelings were nearby.”
“Good,” I say. “I’ll warm up my Glock.”
Chapter Twelve
Trish
The sight of her children all around her fills her with joy so deep and endless it’s like the water of the ocean. Each of them are so much like her, and yet so different at the same time. Black, brown, pale, tanned, freckled, unblemished. Big eyes, small eyes, blue eyes, gray eyes, brown eyes. Older, younger. But all her children. She doesn’t fully understand how, only that it is true.