Phantom Pains

by Mishell Baker

  Once her eyes adjusted to the comparatively dim interior, Naderi stopped in her tracks. “What’s with the dog?”

  Brand had been instructed, under pain of dismemberment, not to say a word until we specifically cleared him to do so, but at the sight of Naderi he seemed to lose control of his motor functions. He tried to wag his tail but ended up sort of scooting across the floor like a hydroplaning sedan, and then collapsed onto his side, tongue lolling.

  “That’s Brand,” I said. “He’s a very special dog, as you’re about to find out. This is Tjuan, and this is Clay.”

  “Hi,” said Claybriar. Tjuan just sized Naderi up suspiciously. Only when I saw him looking at her the way he used to look at me did I realize that we’d sort of become friends, somehow.

  “What’s so special about the dog?” said Naderi, smiling a little despite herself as Brand rolled over onto his back to show off his magnificent doggy bits. “Besides the fact that he clearly hasn’t been neutered yet.”

  “He’s magic!” I said.

  “Funny.”

  “No, seriously. Go pet him.”

  Naderi gave me some pretty epic side-eye, but with a shrug she moved toward the dog, wary.

  “Good boy,” she said. “Are you friendly?” With understandable caution, she squatted next to him and lowered a hand to his belly, giving it a little rub. As she made contact, she sucked in her breath.

  “Oh my God,” she said. She paused, breathless, her eyes misting, and then sat down hard. Brand wriggled his way into her lap, and she threw her arms around him, burying her face into his fur.

  “See?” I said to her.

  Naderi’s whole body was suddenly racked with joyous sobs. “What the hell?” she said, muffled by his luxurious coat. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  “I do,” I said. “You’re happy.” I may have gotten misty too, watching the two of them.

  After having a bit of a cry, Naderi pushed the dog back so she could look at him in wonder, caressing his ears. “I love him,” she said. “I want to keep him.”

  “He’s all yours,” I said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Well, it’s complicated—” I began.

  But then the dog blurted, “I’m actually much bigger than this!”

  Naderi screamed and leaped to her feet, backing up until she hit a wall.

  “Don’t be scared!” said Brand, cowering against the floor in a submissive posture and looking up at her. I didn’t even bother trying to shut him up; too late now. “I’d never hurt you!” he said. “But if you ever need me to hurt someone for you I will. I’ve got really sharp teeth. I’m not actually a dog at all.”

  Naderi was crying again, this time not entirely joyfully. “What the fuck?” she said. “What is happening right now?”

  “I wasn’t kidding about the magic,” I said. “Sorry. Brand is a sort of—mythical creature. A manticore. The whole dog thing is a disguise. But he does belong to you, in a manner of speaking.”

  “Oh my God,” Naderi said. She slid down the wall until she was sitting again. Brand hovered, concerned, pacing like a lion in a cage.

  “There’s a whole other world,” I said. “The hole in the soundstage floor leads to it. That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out how to deal with. All kinds of shit is hitting the fan right now. There’re these things, these wraiths on the loose, and Brand is here to help us stop them.”

  I’d thought the scenario couldn’t get any weirder, but as usual, I was wrong.

  Naderi’s face suddenly went slack, unnaturally so. I didn’t have quite enough time to process the eerie familiarity of that sudden shift before she lunged across the floor at Brand and wrapped her hands around his neck.

  “Traitor!” she snarled at him.

  Claybriar and Tjuan immediately pounced on her, prying her off the confused and terrified animal. Once they’d separated them, Brand slunk over to a corner, letting out a series of hacking dog coughs and telegraphing the deepest, most wounded betrayal.

  Tjuan wrestled with Naderi, pinning her arms. “Is there anyone left in the fucking universe who hasn’t been possessed?” he shouted.

  I buried my hands in my hair. “And I just told that thing that Brand is working for us now.”

  Claybriar looked Naderi up and down, strangely calm. “How long have you been in there?” he asked.

  “Not long,” said the wraith, twisting Naderi’s face into a chill smile. “But long enough.” It turned and spat in Brand’s direction. “Just wait until the others hear. You’re dead, monster. One of us will find you. We’ll make it slow.”

  Brand bristled and stared Naderi down. “And just how do you expect to get out of this place without me? How do you expect to do anything without me? You have no idea how much trouble you’re in. That’s my Echo you’ve taken over. And she just gave me my memory. I know your name.”

  A look of slow, creeping horror came over Naderi’s face. “I—”

  “Talk,” said Brand. “Tell us everything you’ve made Parisa do. Or I will make you wish you had a body that could die.”

  “Nothing, I swear!” said the wraith. “I’ve just been waiting inside her. Listening. Until now.”

  “How did you even get into her?” I interrupted.

  “She came to the soundstage,” said the wraith. “Alone, until you arrived. She was so afraid, so hopeless, it was easy. I helped her get just a little more afraid, and then she was mine.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You were here when she broke into the soundstage? That’s not possible. Both of the soundstage wraiths were elsewhere by then.”

  “There were three.”

  “No!” I said. “The first wraith I talked to here said that only Vivian and Teo’s deaths pulled wraiths over.”

  “Only the boy’s, in fact. Two of us were already here.”

  “We? There were already wraiths here that night? Why?”

  “Just the two of us. Remember that lovely ward Vivian used to hide the soundstage? And the curse hidden inside it, the one that almost killed your little friend?”

  I backed up a step as though punched. “Vivian—she—she bound living creatures into her spells?”

  Naderi laughed. “Stupid girl,” the wraith said. “What do you think spells are?”

  I turned slowly to look at Claybriar, who’d gone pale. Then I looked at Brand. “What is it talking about?” I said to them. “Spells are not creatures.”

  “They’re spirits,” said Claybriar dully, standing with his arms slack at his sides.

  Brand tipped his head at me. “You didn’t know that?” he said. “I always figured you guys knew and just didn’t care.”

  “Arcane energy,” said Claybriar. “It’s alive. All of it.”

  “Wait, so—spells are—wraiths?”

  Naderi scoffed. “Most are only spirits. Wraiths are the ones Vivian drew inside her. The ones she woke up.”

  “Woke up from what exactly?”

  Brand growled. “She taught some Unseelie spirits this possession trick,” he said. “It’s changed them somehow.”

  “Evolved us,” said the wraith. “We can think, now, like Vivian did. We have all your human intelligence, all your memory, but you still can’t see us or hurt us. We can go anywhere, do anything. We don’t die. We’ll never die. There’s nothing you can do. We’ll outlast you.”

  “Yeah, you’re tough,” growled Brand, “till someone binds you in a spell or strands you on the wrong side of the border.”

  “Always temporary. We can wait.”

  “I still don’t understand,” I cut in, noticing the acceleration of my pulse. It was as though my body understood before my brain did. “Every spell—Claybriar’s drawings, the ward in the hall at Residence Four—you’re saying there’s something alive inside there?”

  “Spirits,” Claybriar said again. He looked strangely patient now, and a little dazed.

  “But how did they get in there?”

  “The sidhe.” Nade
ri’s eyes burned with the wraith’s hatred. “You taught the sidhe how to remember. They learned our names, studied them, learned writing to lock them down. And they taught the language to you, your wizards, your warlocks. Sidhe and humans command us, and we can do nothing. Generations passed, and even the sidhe forgot why their magic is so powerful, so dependable. But it was revealed to Vivian, when she was young. They called her mad, and exiled her. And now she has used sidhe spellcraft, the masters’ very tools, to help set us free.”

  I stared at Naderi for a long time.

  “Claybriar,” I finally said. “I need to get to Caryl. Can you and Tjuan find some way to help Naderi?”

  “I can help!” said Brand. “I can bind this wraith; I know its name. I’ll get it out of her, turn it into a nice ward or something.”

  “No!” the wraith cried. “Please, not again.”

  “Cry me a fucking river,” said Brand.

  “Wards are against the old beliefs,” said Claybriar softly. “Prisons for our gods.”

  “Oh now you’re keen on the old beliefs?” said Throebrand. “You’re not going to tell me what an ignorant animal I am?”

  “Shut up,” I said. “Both of you. I have to go to Caryl. I have to tell her that Elliott really is alive.”

  33

  I couldn’t very well tell Caryl to summon Elliott before I broke the news. All things considered, she took it surprisingly well.

  I leaned against the basement wall watching her pace back and forth, fiddling with the cuff of one of her gloves.

  “This—explains many things about the way sidhe and human spell casting works.”

  “Such as?”

  “The vocabulary. The first word of an incantation is the most important; the rest can be ‘paraphrased,’ as it were. And one can’t cast two copies of the same spell. They’ve never explained why, but clearly each incantation begins with the name of an individual spirit. The sidhe have—assigned us slaves.”

  Finally she started to cry. I was almost relieved. I tucked my hands between my ass and the wall to remind me to keep them to myself.

  “There’s no way you could have known,” I told her.

  She wiped her eyes, then made a forestalling gesture. “I’m fine.”

  “It isn’t your fault.”

  “I—I doubt most of the sidhe even understand anymore.” Even without Elliott, even with tears streaming down her face, Caryl seemed to have an ingrained muscle memory of poise that kept her from collapsing completely. “They turn by rote to an ancient archive, their Words of Power—spirit names!—and don’t even remember what they mean anymore. This cannot continue.”

  “Maybe you can learn to do it the way Claybriar does,” I said softly. “I’ve seen him. He just—asks. Like a prayer. I think they come to him because they want to.”

  Caryl studied me, her teary eyes thoughtful. “I am going to try something,” she said.

  She closed her eyes, murmured three syllables in the Unseelie tongue, and then opened them again.

  “What was that?”

  “The first word of the spell I use to summon Elliott. Presumably his name. If so, I have summoned him but not told him what to do.”

  “Is he here? Can you tell?”

  “No,” she said. “If he’s not bound into a construct, I cannot see a spirit any more than you or the fey can.”

  “So what’s the point? All you’ve done is trap him.”

  “He was already trapped, don’t you see?” She began to wring her hands. “When I dismiss him, I have no way of sending him back to Arcadia. He will be trapped wherever I released him. Now I’ve at least made certain that he is nearby, can hear what we’re saying. That he knows I had no intention of—”

  She broke off as Elliott suddenly appeared on a nearby crate, rustling his wings and blinking his beady iguana eyes. Appeared. I wasn’t wearing fey glasses. If I hadn’t been leaning on the wall I might have fallen over.

  “Hello,” said Elliott. Said Elliott, in Caryl’s voice.

  Her own mouth hung agape. Elliott’s form seemed to shimmer in and out of existence as I watched, but from what I could see, he definitely looked the same as the construct had through fey glasses.

  “Uh . . . Elliott?” I said. “Why can we see you?”

  “You cannot,” said Elliott, his voice occasionally glitching even as his image did the same. “I have proj . . . llusion to facilitate communication. Unfortunat . . . quite skilled enough to make it clear . . . people at once.”

  “Elliott,” said Caryl, starting to cry again. “I didn’t know.”

  “Please don’t cry,” said Elliott back to her in that same familiar throaty rasp. He still couldn’t seem to hold his form steady. “Do you tru . . . would suspect malice of you? Who knows you better than I?”

  “So help us understand,” I said to him. “Every spell we cast has a person inside it?”

  Elliott scratched his scaly chin with a foreclaw. “While certainly dist . . . viduals capable of feeling and thinking, most spirits are decidedly less ‘personlike’ than I,” he said. “Caryl used me to . . . of her cognitive processes, and so they became a part of me.”

  I tried to piece together what he was saying. “She sort of . . . imprinted you?” I said. “So now you think like a human?”

  “A reverse possession,” said Caryl. “Instead of entering a human mind, a human mind entered him.”

  “It changed me,” said Elliott agreeably. “But I have helped Car . . . llingly as I would help myself. The distinction between the two of . . . fact a bit fuzzy, after all these years.”

  “It shouldn’t be,” said Caryl. “What I’ve done to you is wrong.”

  “It cannot be undone,” said Elliott. “Do not waste en . . . regret. Let us deal with the situation at hand.”

  “Which is?” I said.

  “I have been trying to find a . . . municate with Caryl since she returned from soundstage 13.” He turned his reptilian head back in her direction, glitched out of sight for a particularly long moment, and then reappeared. “I tried to warn you that Tjuan was pos . . . bindings limited my ability to communicate. You also need to know . . . one possessing Stevie right now.”

  “Wait, what the hell?” I said, levering myself off the wall to approach him, as though it would help me hear his fractured speech. “Did you just say there’s a wraith in Stevie?”

  “Yes.”

  “How? When?”

  “When she disc . . . ka’s body. It is the same wraith . . . side Tamika when she arrived here.”

  This was like talking to ER staff over the worst phone connection ever. “Tamika was possessed?”

  “Yes. I overheard snatches of her wraith’s—‘conversation,’ I suppose you . . . with the wraith inside Tjuan, when the two humans were near enough . . . other for their ‘passengers’ to communicate.”

  “Tjuan’s did that same thing with Claybriar’s during an interrogation.”

  “I was unable to linger and listen, as Caryl . . . way elsewhere, but I heard enough to realize that they were planning . . . gether, and to understand that the wraith had influenced Tamika to accom . . . vin here. It was trying to reach Los Angeles to gath . . . ligence inside your organization.”

  “And once it got there it—disposed of its host. Jumped into Stevie.”

  “I am not cert . . . the initial plan,” said Elliott, “but I do know that the wraiths framed Caryl delib . . . to get her out of the way.”

  “Why was Caryl such a danger to them?”

  “She wasn’t.” Elliot blinked out for a full two seconds, then returned. “I was.”

  “Because you’re just like them, but you’re on our side. God bless you. Can you testify about this to Dame Belinda and Alvin? Especially the whole part about all arcane energy being sentient?”

  “That presents difficulty,” said Elliott. He was suddenly missing a tail. “I know of no way to prove that I am not . . . struct cast by Caryl herself.”

  “Ah,” I said. “
That would be a problem, since they’re already blaming everything on her. But we have enough pieces now that even if we can’t fit everything together into a perfect whole, it’s got to at least create reasonable doubt.”

  Caryl began to pace again. “Our first priority,” she said, “even before we decide the matter of my guilt, is to stop the use of the harp. In light of these revelations, Dame Belinda’s planned course of action is utterly unconscionable.”

  “Right,” I said. “We’re no longer just talking about bleeding Arcadia dry; we’re talking about mass torture.”

  “It will be worst for the most innocent ones,” said Elliott. His head floated bodiless for a moment, like the Cheshire cat. Then he winked out entirely. Eventually just his wings appeared, even as his voice carried on. “Those spir . . . never used possession. They . . . memories, and so after a few . . . torture will be all they know, everything . . . may never recover.” I guessed Elliott was distraught, judging by how haywire his spell casting had gone.

  “Settle down, Elliott,” I said as soothingly as I could. “We can’t understand you right now.”

  “Give me a few . . . compose mys . . .” He flickered out completely. How very Caryl.

  Caryl smoothed her hair and took a deep, shuddering breath. “The wraiths will act in two days,” she said, “which means the harp will be employed sooner than that.”

  “If we tell Dame Belinda, do you think she’ll call off the ritual? She seemed reasonable enough.”

  Caryl shook her head slowly. “Reasonable, yes, but calling her ‘conservative’ is putting it mildly, and she has already been asked to accept the existence of wraiths. A leap I don’t think she could have made without Winterglass to confirm it.”

  “Will he help us?”

  Caryl stiffened. “Even if he weren’t already furious with us for working with the manticore, think about what we would be asking him to accept. What we are asking them all to accept.”

  Somehow I’d been so fixated on preventing giant holes in Arcadia that it hadn’t occurred to me until just this moment that—best-case scenario—the Arcadia Project was going to have to make a decision whether or not to continue participating in the trafficking and enslavement of sentient beings.