by Tim Pratt
“Wait a minute.” I started to get up, and when Trey hissed at me to stay down, I kept on rising. “Screw that. I’m a sorcerer. I’m wearing a bulletproof smoking jacket here. Somebody’s about to get fucked up. You stay here, and keep your head down.” I ran for the front door and out onto the porch, circling around the house toward the side the shots had come from. I was ready to summon up fire and storms, or at least get into some violent late-blooming poltergeist action…but I didn’t have to, because the monster living in the woods took care of it for me.
A big man dressed in camouflage came racing out of the trees, shrieking, and that bizarre fluting-trumpeting-screaming that had so freaked me out when I first arrived howled after him.
Something lashed out of the trees—it could have been an immense snake, or a scorpion’s tail—and smashed against the man, flinging him about ten feet sideways. He hit the dirt and rolled, and when he tried to struggle to his feet, the noise came again, and something moving so fast it blurred raced out of the trees.
The monster was the size of a small car, and I had an impression of red wetness regarding its physiology, but otherwise, details eluded me. The creature smashed the man down again, then reared up on…whatever anatomy it had to rear up on.
The thing was, even when the creature was standing still—even with my wizardly vision—I still couldn’t focus on it. The monster stayed blurry. Maybe it existed partly in other dimensions, like Hannah’s mother, or maybe it just had its own very weird and effective camouflage. Even so, I could sense it was going for the coup de grâce, so I shouted, “Stop!”
The thing went still, then tilted something that might have been a head toward me. The man on the ground was either playing dead, or actually dead, or merely unconscious, so I didn’t worry about him for the moment. Instead I walked forward, hands raised in what I hoped was a placating gesture.
When I lifted my hand, I saw a silver thread running from one of my fingers, to the monster. Just like the one that had bound Trey to me.
Oh.
“You’re…you belonged to my father?”
I saw images in my mind, and I felt things in my limbic system, and they made sense. They weren’t words, but if they had been words, they would have said, I am bound to defend Grace and his people.
Trust Archibald Grace to have a monster for a security system. “No offense, but I’ve almost been killed a couple of times here at the ranch, big guy. Why didn’t you help me out before?”
I cannot harm any of the Grace bloodline.
Ah. The Firstborn and the Belly had tried to hurt me, but they fell outside the monster’s remit. Good to know.
“Do you, ah…serve my family willingly?”
I got served a flurry of images then. A deep jungle. Stone ruins. A creature that was part serpent and part lion, catching its own reflection in a pool of water. Patterns scored into the ground, glowing runes of fire and power. Pain, and chains, and bindings. My dead father’s face, rendered cartoonish and demonically leering in this monster’s memory, wearing a pith helmet and carrying an elephant gun, laughing uproariously.
“So that’s a no, then. Would you, ah…like me to set you free? Assuming you promise not to kill me?”
Suspicion, confusion, rage…and a tiny flickering moment of hope. Yes.
“You can’t kill other people around here, either. I mean, you have to just leave, go back home…or maybe I could take you home, or—”
I can make my own way, daughter of Grace. I will harm no one if you set me free.
Maybe it was stupid to give up a lightning-fast monster security guard, but I didn’t like the idea of any intelligent creature being enslaved to my will. I was fairly sure it couldn’t lie to me, mind to mind, though who knows if that was wishful thinking or more magical sensibility?
In the end, it didn’t matter—I had to set it free. I pinched off the silver thread, and snapped it cleanly. The thread vanished, and the monster flitted, faster and vaster than a hummingbird, toward the trees and out of sight.
The man on the ground groaned. I took the candle from my pocket, and the Zippo from the other, and lit the first with the second. I nudged the man in the ribs with my foot, and when he rolled over and opened his eyes, I held the flame close to his face. He was more beard than man, had a scar across his forehead, and looked like an ex-military badass gone paranoid, straight out of a thriller about doomsday preppers.
When he saw the candle flame, his pupils dilated hugely, and his breathing slowed.
“You’ll answer me truthfully.”
“Yes ma’am.”
I considered ordering him to address me as “sir” instead, but it seemed self-indulgent. “Who sent you?”
“A woman. I don’t know her name.”
“Describe her.” Not necessarily much good when I suspected it was my sister the shape-shifter, but you never know.
“Almost six feet fall, long white-blonde hair on the scraggly side, very pale skin, pointy features—”
“That’s enough. What did she send you to do?”
“To kill you. She showed me a photograph. Said I had to take a head shot, to be sure, that you might survive anything less. I had you in my sights. I don’t know how I missed.”
Someone had hired a hit man to kill me. That was a rare life experience to cross off my list. “What are you supposed to do after I’m dead?”
“Once I confirm you’re dead, I report back to my employer. In person. I’m not supposed to call. She says she doesn’t trust anything but face-to-face conversations.”
When you can make yourself look and sound like anyone else, you probably develop a suspicious worldview. “Where is she?”
“Waiting at an airport bar in Greensboro.”
Not close enough for me to go kick her ass in the next five minutes. “Why so far away?”
“I don’t like to hang around having meetings after I take someone out. I prefer to get on a plane and go far away, fast.”
“Huh,” I said. “So you go to the airport and she gives you a big sack of cash?”
He shook his head. “She paid me half up front. Once she confirms you’re really gone, I get the rest of my payment delivered.”
I could ambush her at the airport, but that was hardly the place to start a magical war, even one I hoped would end with no shots fired. Besides, I had preparations to make. I was pretty sure she’d come to confirm my death personally—I’d seen her dance around my butchered corpse in one of my visions, after all. She’d want to come to the house, to gloat over her victory, and to look for the vessel, since she didn’t know I’d found it. I could be waiting for her. “Okay, killer. Here’s what happened: you took the head shot, and I died. Understand?”
“You died.” That dull monotone made my skin crawl.
“You’ll proceed as planned, because your mission was a success.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Okay. Forget about the monster that attacked you, too. If you’ve got aches and pains, it’s because you tripped and fell down in the woods. All right? In fact, forget any memories that contradict the narrative of your mission going flawlessly. Got that?”
“Yes.”
“Wait. In the future, any time you try to take a human life, you’ll start to vomit uncontrollably instead, until you give up on the idea of murder.” There, I’d done a good deed. Look at me using my powers for the betterment of humankind. “On your way, then.”
He rose to his feet, a bit shakily, eyes still fixed on the candle. I blew out the flame, and he blinked, stared right through me, and then ran off toward the woods.
Say ninety minutes, maybe two hours for him to get to the airport, and…some fraction of that again for the Firstborn to return, with her short-hop teleporting mojo.
I needed to be ready.
I went back to the house. “Trey!” I called as I approached the kitchen. “We’re not getting that romantic weekend in Vermont after all. But how’d you like to join me for a totally unromantic half
hour in the woods?”
Trey rose up from the kitchen floor and brushed glass fragments from his shirt. He was all in black and white, along with everything else in my field of vision—residual magic hangover. And you know what? When he grinned, he did have kind of a classic movie actor thing going on. Put him in a suit and hat and he’d be all set to banter with a sharp-as-fangs leading lady in a ’40s screwball comedy. (So maybe casting me opposite Trey wasn’t totally historically accurate. Not a lot of interracial romantic banter back then. Never forget—the present is already the glorious future, in a lot of ways. The world is pretty terrible, but for most of human history it’s been a whole lot worse.)
“Wherever thou goest, I also go,” he said.
Okay, that wasn’t exactly screwball movie banter, but nobody’s perfect. “I love it when you get biblical on me. Come on, then. I’ll tell you about the hit man and the monster while we’re walking in the woods.”
#
The Book of Grace had no trouble taking me to the wooden church I’d seen in the vision, though it was abandoned now, its steeple missing entirely, with a hole gaping in the roof. The forest seemed denser, too, but that may have been the difference between the leafy autumnal present and the bare-branched wintry past rather than a genuine increase in vegetation.
How long ago had the Firstborn been that teenager in my vision? Her girlhood definitely postdated the invention of photography, but beyond that, I really had no clue about her actual age.
“So you just let the monster go?” Trey stayed close beside me as we crunched through fallen leaves, with me desperately trying to remember which way to go. It’s hard enough to navigate in the woods at the best of times, and this wasn’t those.
“I don’t like having anything enslaved to my will, Trey—you of all people should know that. Not even monsters. Hell, I’m even going to set your dad and grandfather free when I’ve got a spare moment.”
“In your case, Bekah, the apple fell awfully far from the tree. It’s almost like you’re not even an apple at all. Maybe you’re a pineapple.”
“I hope you mean I’m sweet and juicy, and not that I’m prickly and spiky.”
“A little of this, a little of that.” He bumped his shoulder into mine companionably. “Now that I’m a free man, can I take you out again sometime?”
“You have a one track mind…but sure, you can ask. Maybe I’ll say yes. Check with me after we’ve dealt with my sister.”
“Oh, sure. It’s always something. If we go out again, just so you know, you’re going to hate it. I’m going to talk back so much. I can’t wait to be contrary and argumentative. Doing the opposite of what you say all the time, just for the thrill of it.”
“It sounds like the foundation of a successful relationship. Really, you should keep doing what I say. Just do it because I’m right, and not because you have to.”
“I’m not sure that’ll be as much fun as spiteful disobedience, but I could give it a try.” He looked around. “So where’s this—”
“There.” I pointed. The long stone wall hadn’t weathered the years well. There were big gaps where parts of it had tumbled down and never been repaired. We walked along its length slowly, me pausing frequently to peer at stones that were always not quite the right width or color, until after half an hour of increasing frustration, I was pretty much just kicking the wall at random intervals.
Then I caught a sparkle in blackness and knelt: the right stone, in the right spot. I couldn’t work it loose, though. Either the Firstborn had wedged it in supertight, or the passage of years had caused the wall to shift and settle into a more stable configuration.
I took The Book of Grace back home—to the falling-down shed—and retrieved a crowbar, then used the book to pop me back to Trey’s side.
He gasped and fell back. “Shit, Bekah. You might want to warn a person next time you just pop out of existence, okay?”
Oh. Right. I shrugged. “I may be a pineapple, but you’re definitely turning into a crab apple.”
“See how you like having an amazing appearing-and-disappearing girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend, huh?”
“Hope springs eternal.” He held out his hand for the crowbar. “Allow me.”
“What, you think I can’t bash apart a stone wall? Girls can’t use wrecking bars?”
“It’s more that you get all the fun of teleporting, so I should at least get the fun of breaking stuff with metal tools.”
“Oh, fine.”
As he carefully shoved the edge of the bar into a crack beside the stone, he said, “Couldn’t you have, I don’t know, telekinesised the wall apart?”
“‘Telekinesis’ isn’t a verb, so no. But, that aside…yeah, probably. I didn’t think about it. I’m not used to having this whole toolbox at my disposal.”
“It’s just as well.” He leaned against the bar. “I bet using magic for everything is a good way to get fat and atrophied.”
“You’re saying you wouldn’t like me any more if I were fat and atrophied? You’re so shallow.”
“I walked into that one, didn’t I?” He grunted and wriggled the bar, and the stone popped loose and landed in the dirt.
I crouched and reached inside the hole, withdrawing the leather bag stuffed with tissue paper. I opened it and delicately pushed the disintegrating old paper aside until I caught a glimpse of something speckled, brown, and fragile. “I’ve got it. Now we go back home and ruin the carpets.”
#
Trey consulted the diagram I’d sketched out for him, and drew more blue paint lines on the living room rug. “This is never going to come out, you know.”
“That’s okay. There’s nice hardwood under the floor. I saw it in a vision. If we survive this, I’m going to tear up the carpet anyway. The house needs a remodel to reflect the tastes of its new—and saner—owner.”
The Book of Grace had provided many options for protective circles, and squares, and triangles, and pentagrams, and all of the former superimposed over all of the latter. I could bind demons—Grace always wrote it as “demons,” in scare quotes, maybe implying they were actually something else, but he didn’t elaborate—or lycanthropes or “elves” (more scare quotes) or politicians (who apparently were separate from “demons”) or the possessed.
There was no binding specifically for “homicidal elder sisters” but there was one that “negates all forms of escape, magical or otherwise,” and I hoped that would keep the Firstborn from bouncing out of the house with her short-range teleportation abilities once she realized the game was up. Or afoot. Or whatever.
There was blue house paint in the shed, and the other ingredients—belladonna, dried sea horse flakes, lion shit—were all accessible via The Book of Grace. (A poisonous-plant garden in England; Chinatown in San Francisco; and the lion enclosure at a zoo, if you were curious.) I ground the ingredients up into a paste, said a nonsensical incantation that I’m pretty sure Grace included only to fill the time it took for some weird supernatural chemical reaction to take place among the ingredients, stirred the resulting concoction into the house paint, and put Trey to work. I suppose I should have been the one doing the painting, being an artist and all, but he wanted to help, and it gave me time to psych myself up for the ordeal to come.
He was careful to draw the final connecting symbol that closed the irregular polygon from the outside, because the next person who stepped inside those lines would be trapped until I decided they shouldn’t be.
“When do you think daddy’s little girl will show up?” Trey said. The paint was dry, so he covered up the sigil with some of the million throw rugs my father had kept around the place. No reason to make the trap too obvious.
“Assuming she comes straight from the airport after my killer tells her the job is done? Could be any minute now.”
“What if she doesn’t show up? Or she sends a bird to peek through the window or something?”
“I’m pretty sure she’ll want to dance around my corpse
personally, but if not, we’ll figure out some kind of plan B to lure her here. I doubt we’ll need it, though. I’d better get in place.”
I arranged myself in my best playing-dead pose, sprawled prone on the floor just on the far side of the sigil on the floor, in such a position that I could keep one eye on the door. Trey squeezed raw hamburger all around me, spattering the carpet with blood, and then—for verisimilitude, but ew—smeared some of the meat into my hair so it would look like a messy wound.
“What should I do? Hide?”
“Maybe go upstairs and watch from the balcony, in case things go totally wrong. The sword’s up there, right? I’m glad I gave it to you. I’m bulletproof, but you aren’t.”
“Feel free to remedy that, oh witch of my heart. I’d be happy to take on the burden of invincibility.”
“There’s probably some horrible price to making you invincible, though. Male-pattern baldness. Impotence. Who knows?”
“You wouldn’t like me anymore if I were bald and impotent? You’re so shallow.”
“Shoo. I’ve got raw meat in my hair and blood dripping into my ears. This is no time for flirting.”
Trey withdrew up above, and I settled in to wait. After not very long—ten minutes, fifteen—I began to wonder how much longer I should stay there, and how dumb I’d feel if the Firstborn never showed up at all, or, more likely, two minutes after I finally gave up and washed the hamburger out of my—
The front door creaked open. I’d instructed the house to act like any ordinary house, with no defenses, no early warnings, nothing to indicate that the lady of the manor was still around running the supernatural security systems.
The Firstborn came in dancing. She looked so happy—so genuinely joyful—that I felt a brief stab of guilt for not being dead. She spun in slow pirouettes, the skirt of her flowered dress swirling, as she drifted in my direction. Then she stopped—within the confines of the seal drawn on the floor—and gazed down at me. I could see only her shoes, which were knee-high, silver Doc Martens, of all things.