Empty Vessels

by Meredith Katz

  For a few long seconds, the horned boy didn't move, foot just pressing down on Keith heavily, and then he stumbled backward from them, turning away. "Sorry," he muttered.

  Keith swallowed, heart hammering in his throat. "Just, they could be active in there," he said, not picking himself up yet. "Or something else could. Whatever's making them act different. It being daytime is no guarantee."

  "It's our best bet," the horned boy said stubbornly.

  "I know, but let's… let's think it through," Keith said. He did pick himself up this time, wishing he could use Lucas for leverage, still winded. From the frustrated look on Lucas's face, he felt the same way. "We know where this is now. We can come back any time. But we need a plan. At least more of a plan than just… running in there."

  The horned boy hung his head, chin falling forward as though his antlers had become heavy. "Okay," he said, almost mumbling.

  "And we should… we should make the plan somewhere far from here," Keith said. "In case they catch our trail too. We don't want to be lingering around here."

  "Okay," the horned boy said again, and quietly led the way back, winding and doubling back and splashing through a small stream along the way. Keith followed, even though the cold water soaked through his running shoes and left him chilled and unhappy.

  The horned boy didn't say it was to obscure their own trail, but he didn't need to.

  ***

  The horned boy drove them to the antique shop, parking around back and letting them in through a door in the back as well. The lights were off, and the place, already uncanny to Keith's eyes, took on even more of an unnatural air, lost between past and present.

  The horned boy could certainly see it as well—at least parts of it, the parts that were Otherworldly auras rather than just memories—but he didn't seem bothered by it, so it must have been normal. He tossed the keys in a small wire bin near the door and pointed to a set of stairs. "My apartment's over the shop," he said in a tone of forced hospitality. "Come on up."

  Lucas and Keith shared a look. Neither of them knew what to say. Even if they could talk openly right now, they were both just sort of lost, the situation far bigger than either of them. They followed him up the old, creaking stairs.

  The floor above held a small bachelor apartment, though to Keith, used to dorm life, it felt almost roomy. It was certainly charming, full of the personality of its owner, the way the shop beneath was full of the presence of those long gone. A futon bed sat already spread out beneath a window. Across the room was a tiny kitchenette, just a sink and hot-plate stovetop with no oven, a tiny counter overcrowded with small appliances, a few shelves. A desk sat against the third wall, the one across from the stairs. On it was a small lamp with a rosy pink shade and a closed Chromebook.

  "Nice room," Keith said.

  "Not the circumstances I'd hoped to show it to you in," the horned boy said with no heat in the words for once. He wandered toward the kitchenette. "Can I get you anything?"

  Lucas cleared his throat. "Look, I don't mean anything by it, but you make me feel like a third wheel pretty much every time you open your mouth."

  "Don't need to feel that way," the horned boy said, still a little dull, tired. "You're obviously invited to anything like that too, lovely. Coffee or tea?"

  It took a moment for the meaning to dawn, and Keith felt himself go bright red. He stared at his feet entirely so he wouldn't have to look at Lucas's face and see whatever expression might be there. "W-we're not—that's not—we're not in a relationship."

  "Oh, my bad," the horned boy said, in a tone of strained patience. "Either way, you're both invited to my bed whenever you'd like to visit me there. Coffee or tea?"

  "Coffee," Keith blurted. Tea made him think of the bone girl again, and that was one too many things all clamoring for his attention at once.

  His shoes were covered with leaves that had stuck to them on the other side of the stream, and were still soaking wet. He thought of how the bone girl left her shoes by the door and wondered if that was a general hospitality thing for Others. Regardless, they were messy enough that he should have taken them off before coming into the apartment. He ducked down to do that.

  "Okay. Coffee it is. Lucas, can you drink?"

  "I can't," Lucas said. His voice sounded remarkably even. "Lots of things I can't do. But thanks for the invitation."

  "Too bad. I make a mean coffee. Feel free to take a seat—desk or bed."

  Those were, in fact, the only two options minus the floor. Keith looked between them. The bed would give him room to sit with Lucas, but was also, well, the bed. It seemed as if it'd be some kind of statement. He sat at the desk, gingerly. His socks had a hole in them and were also still wet. He took those off too, bunching them up together.

  Lucas perched on the edge of the desk, his arms crossed and his head bowed forward a little. There was something off about his strange, transparent coloring, and Keith's stomach clenched as he thought about Lucas's face going shadowed and vague again.

  It took him another few seconds to realize Lucas was biting his lower lip, flustered and blushing.

  Fortunately, the horned boy came over as the sound of the coffee brewing began to fill the room. He flopped down to sit cross-legged on the bed, and seemed to notice the leaves on his flannel shirt for the first time. He began to pick them off carefully with silvery fingernails.

  "So," he said. "A plan."

  Keith drew a deep breath in and let it out, shaky. His nerves felt completely wound tight, but there was no avoiding the issue. "Right," he said. "You know what I saw. Do you have any theories?"

  The horned boy closed his eyes as he considered, then slowly fell back against his futon, arms opening. His head hung over the edge just enough that his head wasn't forced entirely forward by his antlers. "For some reason, Terrors are harvesting Other essences."

  "It follows what little evidence we have," Lucas said, voice soft. "Even with only two visions, it's consistent that the Terrors are specifically targeting Others and attacking them with bottles. Bottles you said are probably used for containment, based on their shape."

  "Probably," the horned boy agreed, voice grim.

  Keith worried at his lower lip. "Humans have been dying too. Do you think the Terrors are targeting humans at all?"

  The horned boy snorted. "Wouldn't work," he said. "Human souls are different from Other essences—unless they end up like Lucas, anyway."

  "And exactly how did I end up like this…?" Lucas asked, brows furrowed.

  The horned boy opened his eyes again finally, but just stared up at the ceiling, not watching either of them. "Most of the time, human souls disperse to… wherever it is human souls go at the moment of death. Some situations can convert them into an Other-like state through energy. Ghosts aren't technically true Others, but they're of the Otherworld, so they count by pretty much every qualifier except origin. Traumatic death, or a death involving a lot of energy… all of that can add a weight to a human soul that keeps it from dispersing and transforms it into essentially Other. But it's because the human memories and attachments give a ghost its shape that ghosts are the only thing that becomes a Terror when those are lost."

  Keith glanced at Lucas, seeing that his features were clear despite his frown. More than anything, he seemed interested. Keith tried to take hope in that. "So," Keith said, "if those humans are dying, it's coincidence?"

  "Or they're witnesses. Terrors will eat a human as well as an Other if it gets in their way, though they don't go out of their way to hunt them," the horned boy said, drily. "They don't find it to their taste, but they're killers regardless."

  Not much to say to that. Keith shifted to try to rub the chill down his back away and said, "I still count as human even with these senses, don't I? Er, you've been saying 'Other' to me, but do you use it yourselves? I'd heard it, but I thought maybe that'd be weird…"

  "Sure. Athar, as we used to be called. One of the two peoples." The horned boy shrugged. "Maybe
it evolved linguistically because of how humans are. It's a fine term, though." The coffeemaker hissed as it finished, and he got up again, heading over to the kitchenette. "And yes. You're human regardless of how much you See. Your abilities waking up and calling to Otherworld energy might have helped keep your friend here, though."

  Keith swallowed the lump in his throat. He'd always thought it was likely to be the other way, that Lucas's death had woken his abilities. He looked at Lucas again, unable to keep himself from it, even while he feared that he'd see betrayal there, accusation—

  Lucas looked at him mildly, and gave him a smile when their eyes met, the expression tentative. Keith couldn't read it, couldn't understand it, opened his mouth to ask why it didn't bother Lucas, but Lucas looked away before he could find words.

  "So, human and Other essences are different," Lucas said to the horned boy as he poured coffee. "Ignoring why they'd be gathering them in the first place, what could they be used for? And if we got her essence back, what would we do with it to get her back as… a person?"

  "A good question, friend," the horned boy said. He picked up both mugs and brought them over, putting one on the desk next to Keith's hand before sitting on the bed again with his own, more carefully. Keith picked up the mug. It had #1 Dad written on it, and he looked at the horned boy again a bit more dubiously.

  The horned boy continued. "As I said, our essences aren't like your souls. That's why a ghost behaves more like an Other does and sticks around when they die, instead of moving on like humans normally do. We're not immortal, despite your folk tales. But we're a lot closer to it than a human, because if we're not killed—that is to say, if our essence survives our body's death—we can inhabit things in this world and slowly create a new body around it. A mound of leaves can become a leaf-like other. A tree can become what you'd call a dryad. And so forth and so on.”

  Keith nodded. “That’s why you don’t think she’s dead-dead?”

  "Right. If an essence is let free, it will search to find a host that suits the type of Other it is, then continue on as the same person. So we live on, albeit with long breaks to build ourselves a proper body out of the vessel. We can still be killed—Terrors eat essences, for example, and that's the end of that Other. And if the new body is damaged while being broken in, it can do great damage to our essences. Likewise, having to take an inappropriate vessel can harm the person inside it." He leaned forward over his cup, exhaling slowly. "But if I can get that bottle back and break it to free her essence, my friend will return again, even if it takes time."

  They both stared at him, stunned.

  He smiled softly, gazing into the depths of his cup. "Well, she's a bone sort, and those don't take as long to grow as others because they're used to holding a life in them. She might even be able to return without interrupting her life too much."

  Keith took a long drink of coffee to give himself time to process that. It was good coffee, he thought distantly, even if he felt as if he should hardly be able to taste it with all this information filling up every space in his thoughts. "But if something happens to her essence while it's contained like that, she could be killed for real."

  "Yes."

  Put like that, it was easy to see why the horned boy had been ready to bust in there. Without letting himself examine the thought too closely, he said, "You shouldn't go. You're an Other. If they're collecting Others, you're at huge risk."

  "If not me, then who?"

  "I'm human," Keith said, heart in his throat. "I can go."

  The horned boy's gaze jerked up, and there was something odd in his surprised silver eyes. Keith couldn't name it, but it was a warmth—similar the flirtatiousness, but different. Among it, too, obvious fear and uncertainty and hope.

  He lifted his mug to sip his coffee, cupping it between his hands and watching Keith over the rim with that odd expression still on his face. "It's not your problem."

  Something about it spurred Keith on despite his fear. "It's my problem now," he said quickly. "As much as anyone's. I saw her… I saw what happened to her. If I can do anything to change that, I will."

  Despite his brave words, his mouth felt completely dry. He waited to hear them protest, waited to have to defend himself and wondered if he'd be able to. But neither of them did, not the horned boy, and not Lucas.

  "What are your abilities?" the horned boy asked finally. "You've got the sixth sense, but what else? Anything?"

  "I can… I can send electrical pulses into things," he said. "I can turn them on or off. Complex machinery sometimes fries, but…" he looked at the desk light and it clicked on. "Simpler things, I can work with."

  "Anything else?"

  "Minor… very minor empathy. I can sort of read the atmosphere. And I pick up memories from things I touch, sometimes, but it's kind of random."

  The horned boy nodded slowly. "The pulses may be able to help," he said. "The house is run-down, but it's not ancient. It'll be wired, even if the power isn't on. If you can flood it with light, Terrors will be less likely to be able to move around however they like. But I don't know that the rest of your powers will do much."

  Keith took another sip of coffee, though he wasn't sure he should, not with the way his heart was hammering. "They'll know we're there if we turn the light on."

  "They'll know you're there if they can move around in the darkness inside and smell you."

  Point. He drew a shuddering breath. "We’ll be quick. In and out. It's not that big a place, and there's two of us. Lucas and I can go at least far enough from each other to search two rooms at once."

  "I can also—" the horned boy began.

  "They're less likely to want to go after me," Keith said. Lucas nodded at that, and Keith felt the cool brush of his hand on his arm. "And Lucas is a ghost. No body to scent, and he used to be human. That'll throw them off."

  "They might still be able to detect him."

  Lucas said, voice firm, "Our chances are still better than yours. I agree with Keith. If we're going to do this, we should do it just the two of us."

  "You can… you can stay nearby with the getaway car," Keith said. "In case we need to ditch and run. All three of us shouldn't go in anyway since we’ll need a driver. The car's scent will lose them if they chase us."

  The horned boy looked at them both evenly for a long few seconds, then sighed softly. "I'm going to go downstairs," he said. "I'm going to close out my till, because I didn't before I went to pick you up earlier. And I'm going to let you two talk about this without me here. If you change your mind, no hard feelings. She's my friend, not yours."

  "She could be ours too," Keith said, "someday."

  The horned boy smiled at that, clearly moved. He shook his heavy head and rose, leaving his half-finished coffee cup on the floor as he headed to the stairs. "Talk," he said, and left.

  Slowly, Keith turned to look at Lucas, trying to find something to say. He didn't need Lucas to tell him it was a bad idea—he knew it already. If we're going to do this, Lucas had said. He wasn't sold on it as being something they should be doing at all.

  "Lucas," he said. "I…"

  Lucas smiled at him. The expression was gentle, less his usual wide grin and just a soft, almost pained look, understanding and fond.

  "Nah," he said. He lifted a hand, pressed it to the top of Keith's head as best he could. It was just a sense of pressure and cold, but Keith leaned into it, raised his own hand to cover Lucas's. "It's fine. You're doing something good here. Anyway, they could have already got our scent. Better do something now than just wait around doing nothing."

  Of course Lucas would say that, Keith thought suddenly. He'd thought Lucas would be worrying more, pressing him to take care of himself, because that was always Lucas's biggest concern—in normal circumstances.

  But Lucas was also someone who would die to save a stranger.

  Keith swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to feel Lucas's hand properly between his head and his hand, tried to make out finger
s in that cold press. He wished he could touch Lucas properly.

  The horned boy's implications rose in his mind. They couldn't, they weren't.

  Now was one of the times he wished they could.

  "Okay," Keith said, his lungs refusing to work right, the words pretty much just a whisper. "Thanks."

  chapter six

  The horned boy gave them almost half an hour, a length of time that began to stretch out awkwardly after Keith and Lucas had run out of things to say. It was strange, Keith thought. They were so used to each other, and normally they never had trouble finding things to talk about. But the momentousness of the situation seemed to choke him.

  And then there was the unusual location, the unusual situation, the unusual mood: the two of them alone together in someone else's bedroom.

  But the horned boy did, finally, return, with an old-fashioned locket dangling from his hand. It had two chains and looked like one of those broken-heart lockets that Keith mostly associated with teenage couples, where one person would keep half and the other half would go to their partner. The horned boy held one half out to Keith.

  "Uh," Keith said.

  "It's from the shop downstairs," the horned boy said, grinning at him as if he understood exactly what Keith was thinking. "It's a little enchanted. Not very, but I thought we could make use of it."

  Slowly, Keith reached out and let the horned boy deposit the half-heart in his hand. "Enchanted how?" Now that he'd been told it and looked again, he could more or less make out a faint Otherly light twisting around it in his second layer of vision.

  "I think it was once some kind of binding, a good long while ago," the horned boy said. "One of them had control over the other, or something similar. Right now, though, it's just slightly aware of its other half. If you wear one and I wear the other, if something happens to you, I'd know. Or if you needed someone to come in for a rescue, you could rip it off and I'd feel its absence."