Cunning Devil

by Chris Underwood

  The witch’s lip trembled. But she didn’t break down entirely. She nodded.

  “But,” Early said, turning to her, “it will cost you.”

  She raised her head. “What?”

  I was no stranger to the hardness in Early’s face. He could be a stern, grumpy bastard when it suited him.

  But as he stared at the witch, I saw something in his eyes I’d never seen there before. A touch of darkness.

  “You have tormented this community,” he said. “Your husband can’t stand judgment for his crimes, but you can. Lost Falls tradition holds that we turn you over to your victims. The goblins would find a suitable punishment, I’m sure.”

  Mills swallowed. Her hands trembled. The Blackheart still lay in her lap, but its beating was growing slower, weaker.

  “But the goblins were not the only victims here,” Early said, turning to me. “And perhaps Ozzy has a better use for you.”

  I met his eyes, suddenly understanding what he was suggesting. Maybe I wasn’t the only one with a little witch in him.

  I nodded slowly and looked around. There was a broken table leg sitting a few feet away. “Hand me that and help me up.”

  He passed me the table leg and I used it as a crutch as he hauled me to my feet. The old man’s herbal powder was doing its job, but I still grunted in pain as I rose, trying to keep my broken leg off the ground.

  “Take Rodetk and Alcaraz downstairs,” I said to Early, glancing over at the two of them. “The goblin looks like he could use some of that powder as well.”

  He cast the witch another look. “You’ll be all right by yourself?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  He nodded. “Free them,” he said to the witch.

  She hesitated.

  “They won’t harm you,” Early said, with a special look for Rodetk. “I swear it.”

  The witch licked her lips, but she touched her talisman again, and the bars snaked away from Rodetk and Alcaraz. Early went over and tore off the fetish hanging from Alcaraz’s neck, while Rodetk pulled himself uneasily to his feet, swearing all the while.

  I hobbled aside, nudging the little one along with me, and Early led Alcaraz and Rodetk from the room. Clutching his broken arm, the goblin caught my eye as he passed. He nodded.

  “That’s it?” I said. “A nod? I just saved your ass, goblin. Twice.”

  “What do you want? A big sloppy kiss?” He opened his mouth wide, waggling his tongue and showing off his sharp teeth.

  “On second thoughts, the nod’s fine.”

  Rodetk glanced back at the witch, then grabbed me by the shoulder and hissed in my ear. “You’d better make her pay, Turner.”

  “Don’t worry,” I muttered. “I intend to.”

  He gave me one last long look, then nodded again. He filed out of the room along with Early and Alcaraz. Early touched my shoulder as he left, then closed the door behind him.

  The little one cowered behind my leg. The witch stared at him, longing in her eyes. Flickers of emotion passed across her face: love, despair, revulsion. I didn’t know whether she was more disgusted at what Likho had done to her boy or what she’d nearly done to him.

  For a moment, I thought she was going to reach out, try to take him in her arms. But in the end she just bent over the side of her wheelchair and picked up the photograph I’d dropped. Her eyes grew wet as she dragged her thumb across the image of her son as he’d once been.

  She slammed her eyes closed, turning the photo face-down in her lap. When she looked at me again, her face was fixed in a look of cold anger. She glanced toward the wall, but I knew she was looking beyond it, toward the mountain.

  “The one who did this to my son is still out there, isn’t he?” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “He can’t be allowed to live. Not after what he did.”

  “No. He can’t.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a strip of black cloth. I tossed it to her.

  “What is this?” she said as she picked it up.

  “It belongs to the sorcerer.”

  She stared at it. “Why are you giving it to me?”

  “A show of good faith. I got my revenge. You should get yours. But it stops with the sorcerer. Understand?”

  She licked her lips, running the cloth between her fingers. With shaking hands, she tied it around the Blackheart.

  Bending over, she picked up the silver knife from where she’d dropped it. A thin line of the little one’s blood had dried on the blade.

  The witch closed her eyes and muttered a few words, and the Blackheart began to beat with a panicked rhythm. The pressure in the room changed.

  Opening her eyes, the witch plunged the blade into the center of the heart. The Blackheart disintegrated, turning to ash in her hand. Only the knife remained.

  The witch let out a sob. Relief mixed with disgust. She buried her face in her hands, accidentally smearing her cheeks with black dust.

  Her shoulders shook. A few tears dripped from between her fingers, splashing in her lap. Finally, she lowered her hands and wiped the dust from her face. She’d aged another ten years. “He’s dead. He’s dead.”

  I exhaled, nodding. “Good,” I said. I meant it. I didn’t know what Likho’s death would mean for the Mines. But it needed to be done.

  “I have no strength left,” Holly Mills said. “Please. Change my son back.”

  I reached down and touched the top of the creature’s head. “We’ll do our best. He’ll be well cared for. Once you and I make a deal.”

  “Anything.” She closed her eyes. “Anything.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  In some distant corner of the house, a clock’s chime rang out. Midnight.

  There was a knock at the door to the sitting room. Before I could answer, it creaked open, and a misshapen figure entered the room.

  The Dealer took off his hat and closed the door behind him. He smiled his lopsided smile at the two of us, then bent his neck to the little one clinging to my leg. It hissed and quivered.

  “Thought I’d let myself in,” the Dealer said. “I hope you don’t mind. I’ve been keeping an eye on things. Very entertaining. Ah, here it is.”

  He stooped down and picked up the spirit bottle lying on the floor. He shook it in his hand, smiling cruelly at the shifting shadow within.

  “I have to admit,” he said as he tucked it into his pocket, “I still have no idea what this entity is. But I’m glad I got a chance to see it at work.”

  The witch stared at him. “Who…?”

  “Oh, where are my manners? You can just call me Dealer.” He eyed the stumps of her legs and smiled. “I believe you’ve dealt with one of my kind before.”

  With a flourish, the Dealer pulled up a chair, planted it between us, and sat down.

  “Now,” he said. “Your time is up, Osric. I’ve come to claim a body.” He grinned, then turned his eye on Holly Mills. “But I believe you’d like to activate a certain transfer clause.”

  40

  I stood before my brother’s grave.

  His real grave, that is. Not the one in the cemetery, with the white granite headstone and the freshly cut grass. The thing that was buried there was a doll, an impostor, nothing more.

  This grave was harder to find. All that marked it was a river-smoothed stone. It sat at the bottom of the waterfall that gave Lost Falls its name, near the bank of the river. Spray from the waterfall rained down lightly, catching in my beard.

  It had been a tough little trek to get here, what with a crutch and my leg in a cast and all. But it was worth it. I liked it here. I liked the way it smelled. I liked the sound of the water crashing down endlessly.

  “This was a good place to bury him,” Alice said as she knelt in the dirt by Teddy’s grave.

  “See? Occasionally I’m right about something.”

  “Very occasionally.” She touched the stone marker with her fingertips, then stood. “Thanks for bringing me here.”
>
  “Sorry I didn’t do it sooner.”

  She looped her arm through mine and pressed herself against me. We stood like that a few minutes, thinking about Teddy. Well, I was, at least. She could’ve been thinking about anything.

  For some reason, it didn’t hurt so bad thinking about him anymore. He was dead, and me, I was still alive. Strange to think. Sure as hell not fair.

  But it was the way things were. I’d finally begun to accept that.

  “Are you and Early still coming around for dinner tonight?” she asked after a while, breaking the silence.

  “Depends,” I said. “Are you cooking, or is your wife?”

  “Are you saying I’m a bad cook?”

  “I’m saying you’re both bad cooks. It’s just a lesser-of-two-evils situation.”

  That earned me a punch in the arm. It nearly knocked me right into the damn river.

  “All right, all right,” I said. “We’ll be there. The boys can sign my cast.”

  There was a rustle of leaves behind us. I looked around to see Lilian emerging into the clearing from the narrow dirt trail. She stopped and looked awkward for a second, like she was intruding on a private moment.

  “Oh, sorry,” Lilian said. “Early said I’d find you here. I didn’t know you had company.”

  I shook my head. “No problem. This is my sister, Alice. Alice, this is Lilian. A friend of mine.”

  Alice raised her eyebrow a fraction of an inch, the corner of her lip quirking upward. It was a look that said: ‘Friend,’ huh?

  The two women shook hands and murmured hello. Alice looked about ready to start asking Lilian what her intentions toward me were, so I cut in quickly.

  “I’ll catch you tonight,” I said to Alice. “I’m sure Lilian can give me a ride home.”

  Alice’s eyebrow went up a little higher. She nodded. “Bring wine.”

  “Will do.”

  She pulled me into a hug and whispered into my ear. “Your girlfriend’s cute. Does she look as good from the back as she does from the front?”

  “Stop objectifying my friends,” I whispered back.

  She pulled away, grinning, and waved goodbye to Lilian. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You too,” Lilian said.

  As Alice passed Lilian on the way to the trail, she glanced back and gave Lilian’s ass an appraising look. She raised her eyebrows, nodded, and gave me a thumbs up over Lilian’s shoulder.

  I cleared my throat and turned away, hoping my embarrassment wasn’t showing on my face. Lilian came alongside me.

  “Is this where your brother’s buried?” she said.

  I nodded, pointing to the spot. “Here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.” I paused for a moment, then looked at her. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve just been to visit the hag,” she said. “She’s recovering well. Aside from the severed hand, of course. I think she’s a little upset you spoiled her prank.”

  “You mean the one where a bewitched child gets sacrificed by his mother to commit mass murder against a bunch of goblins?” I shook my head. “I don’t understand hag humor.”

  “At least she’s agreed to help with the changelings. However begrudgingly. I took her new unguent to Early before I came here. He seems confident the changes can be reversed.”

  I nodded. “He won’t talk about anything else at the moment. I’m his personal bouncing board for ideas. It’s going to get even worse now that Rodetk’s gone.”

  The goblin had left earlier this morning, disappearing upriver in a cloud of smoke from the dinghy’s outboard motor. He was still injured—join the club—but he didn’t want to wait any longer. Likho’s wards had fallen a few days ago, and news was trickling out of the Mines. Apparently, the sorcerer had vanished. He’d gone into his chamber alone late the other night, waiting for a report from a squad of redcaps he’d sent to the surface. But when one of his attendants came looking for him in the morning, Likho was nowhere to be seen. The only thing the attendant could find was a small pile of ash sitting in the sorcerer’s favorite chair.

  Naturally, rumors were flying. Some thought he’d been eaten whole by the roggenwolf that was said to still be roaming the endless tunnels beneath the mountain. Others thought he’d fled the Mines in disgrace after letting the witch in the shadows slip from his grasp.

  Things beneath the mountain were unstable at the moment. As soon as the Lord of the Deep had regained control of his faculties, he’d ordered his men to imprison the redcaps, who’d become weakened without Likho’s magic to fuel them. But confidence in Khataz had been eroded, and rival factions were vying for power.

  Which was why Rodetk was going back. He said he had an obligation to try to smooth things out, or some nonsense like that. And when things were more stable, he wanted to start building a stronger connection between the Mines and Lost Falls. The mountain had always stood apart from the rest of us. There was a lot of distrust there, on both sides. Not without cause.

  But that isolation could breed fear, hatred. Rodetk wanted to make sure nothing like this could ever happen again.

  It was worth a shot, anyway.

  Rodetk was also going to negotiate for the release of the remaining little ones from Likho’s chamber. There were other families out there whose children had become changelings. Other families who thought their kids were dead. I itched to go back there and bring the changelings home myself, but the last thing we needed was me stirring up more trouble in the Mines. Rodetk would bring the kids back, I was sure of it.

  Besides, that was the easy part. Once we got them back, we had to reverse Likho’s spells and figure out how the hell we were going to return these children to their families. Not to mention finding a home for Michael Mills, now that one of his parents was missing a heart and the other had become the Dealer’s property.

  And we had to do all of that without drawing too much attention to ourselves. Sounded like a nightmare, if you asked me. I planned to let Early do most of the work, while I sat around milking my broken leg for all it was worth.

  “All right,” I said to Lilian. “Spit it out.”

  “Spit what out?”

  I gestured around us, to the falls and the river and the forest. “You didn’t come out here just to tell me the hag is pissed at me. What is it?”

  She hesitated, then reached into her bag and took out a small, thick book. No, not just any book. A grimoire. She held it out to me.

  “It’s the grimoire we found in the Mills’ basement,” Lilian said. “If it looks a little battered, it’s because you threw it at a wall.”

  “I remember.” I flicked open the book and was greeted again by the strange alphabet I didn’t recognize. “Why are you giving it to me? It belongs to the hag.”

  “No,” she said. “It doesn’t.”

  I looked up. “What?”

  “I tried to give it to her. She said it wasn’t hers. It’s not written in the hags’ language.”

  “Then what the hell is it?”

  “I don’t know. But when I first showed it to the hag, she looked…”

  “What?”

  “Scared.”

  I swallowed and closed the book. “Great. That’s just fantastic. So why are you giving me something that can scare a hag?”

  “Well, I don’t want to keep it,” she said. “The thing’s creepy as hell.”

  I considered tossing it in the river. Seemed like the smart thing to do. But something made me hang onto it. A feeling deep in my stomach.

  I looked down at Teddy’s grave, putting the book out of my thoughts. It was a mystery for another time.

  “So,” I said. “Where were you buried?”

  Lilian didn’t answer, but I could feel her eyes on me. A cloud shifted overhead, and the spray from the falls sparkled in a shaft of sunlight.

  “The baiter vamp,” I said. “Up at the estate. It couldn’t sense you. Couldn’t smell you. Didn’t even know you were there.” I poked at the ground wit
h my crutch. “I saw that redcap skewer you. That was no trick of the light. When you went down, I felt for your pulse. Couldn’t find it. You didn’t bleed, either. In fact, I’ve never seen you bleed.” I met her eyes. “Because you’re dead.”

  She was studying me silently, trying to maintain a mask over her emotions. She wasn’t doing a very good job of it. I saw nervousness there. Shame. And relief.

  “My guess,” I said, “is you’re a revenant. Returned to take revenge on whoever killed you.” I cocked my head to the side. “So? How’d I do?”

  She nodded slowly. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

  “It’s strange, though. You’re pretty rational for a vengeful spirit returned from the dead. I mean, I’ve never met a revenant before, but if I had to guess, I’d say most of them aren’t much like you.” I turned to her. “Who killed you?”

  “I…I don’t know.” She looked down at her hand, made a fist. “I can’t remember.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every now and then I get images from before, when I was alive. Flickers of thought. Shadows of memories. But nothing substantial. I came to Lost Falls seeking my killer. I know that much. I was a…a monster.” She licked her lips. “I got caught in one of the traps Alcaraz uses to catch wild Strangers. I nearly tore her face off. Alcaraz went to the hag, and the hag…did something to me. Gave me something. It drove the monster back inside me. Made me almost human again. For now, at least.”

  “That’s why you need the hag so badly,” I said.

  She nodded. “I’m afraid to lose myself again. I can feel it. The fury. Here.” She touched her chest. “Pushing me to seek. To kill the one who killed me. But to cage the monster, the hag had to dig around in my head. Wipe out the memories that were driving me. Now I’m…empty.”

  “And the things you can do. What you did to the hobgoblin. That’s part of it?”

  “I don’t think so. I think I learned those things a long time ago. When I was still alive.” She chewed her lip. “I don’t really know what I am.”

  “You’re a terrible driver. I know that much.”