That Ain't Witchcraft (InCryptid #8)

by Seanan McGuire

  I had something else to take care of.

  Getting dressed had only taken a few minutes, even factoring in the time it took for me to get my weapons safely secured about my person. Taking an extra thirty seconds to check your holsters means never needing to say, “Hang on, I just accidentally stabbed myself.” Shelby would need about the same, once I went back downstairs to relieve her. We’re nothing if not efficient.

  Sarah’s bedroom door was closed. I knocked lightly.

  “Sarah? I need to talk to you.”

  “Closed doors mean I don’t want to talk.”

  “Not necessarily. Closed doors can mean a lot of things. Sarah, please, it’s important.”

  “There’s someone in the house.”

  “That’s not someone, it’s Dee. You know Dee.” At least, I hoped she knew Dee. If she had managed to forget my administrative assistant, what I was about to ask for was pointless.

  When I’d first shown up at the West Columbus Zoo, management had allowed me to bring an assistant. I had chosen Dee—Deanna Lynn Taylor de Rodriguez—both because she had excellent credentials, and because she was the only nonhuman applicant for the position. Since “species” isn’t a protected class, I had been pretty sure none of the other hopefuls were going to sue me, and I had genuinely needed someone who knew the ins and outs of the local cryptid community. I had gotten more than I had bargained for. I had gotten a friend, one I trusted implicitly. Sarah had met her on several occasions, and the two had gotten along reasonably well … I thought.

  I knocked again. “Come on, Sarah. You know I wouldn’t be up here if this weren’t important. Can you please open the door?”

  There was a long pause before it cracked open, just enough for me to see one wary blue eye through the gap.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “When Grandma gets home, I want you to please tell her that Shelby and I were called to an emergency with the local gorgon community, and that if we haven’t checked in by sunset, we probably need help. Tell her we left with Dee. Can you remember that?”

  The pause was even longer this time. Finally, in a small voice, Sarah asked, “What happens if I forget?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Can you try to remember?”

  She bit her lip and nodded. “I’ll try.”

  “Thank you. Will you be okay here by yourself?”

  To my relief, Sarah cracked a very small smile. “The mice will be here with me,” she said. “If I start forgetting who I am or anything like that, I’ll go ask them to remind me.”

  Aeslin mice never forget anything, and they’re always delighted to have the opportunity to recite their private and remarkably accurate catechism. Sarah’s life would never be completely forgotten, not as long as there were Aeslin mice around to remember it for her.

  Too bad we couldn’t bring them with us to the gorgon community. Sadly, mice are mice, whether or not they can talk, and it simply wasn’t safe to expose them to that many snakes. “Okay,” I said. “Call if you need anything.”

  “I will,” she said and closed the door. That was that: I was dismissed.

  I took the stairs two and three at a time in my rush to return to the ground floor. Shelby was leaning against the counter, sipping from a glass of orange juice, when I rushed back into the kitchen. Dee was sitting at the table, hands folded between her knees and wig discarded next to Sarah’s cereal bowl. The snakes that topped her head were twining anxiously around each other, still hissing almost constantly, their tongues flickering in and out as they tasted the air.

  It took years of human-gorgon interactions before anyone realized that gorgons instinctively view all humans as deceitful, because from their perspective, we have the best poker faces in the known universe. Our hair isn’t expressive, and to them, that’s as strange as having snakes growing out of our scalps would be to us.

  “Right, that’s me up, then,” said Shelby, and put her juice aside. “Give me five and we can roll, all right?”

  “All right,” I agreed, and watched her rush out of the room before returning my attention to Dee. “My cousin’s going to stay here, and let my grandparents know what’s going on. Are you safe to drive?”

  “Does it matter?” There was a dull note in her voice that I didn’t like at all. “I need to take you home with me. You have to find the children. You have to … how did this happen? We’ve always been so careful.”

  I refrained from pointing out that not that long ago, their version of “careful” had included a serial killer using a cockatrice to attack innocent bystanders. Even if I’d wanted to be the kind of asshole who blamed an entire community for the actions of one bad egg, I wouldn’t have been able to blame the children.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to do my best to find out,” I said. “Shelby and I both. You’re our friend, and we’re going to help you.”

  She looked at me solemnly, tears rolling down her cheeks to drip from her chin. “Megan is home from school this week. She’s supposed to be hanging out with her friends and discussing suitors with me and her father, not trying to calm a bunch of panicked parents. How are we supposed to convince her that our community is a safe place to raise a family when we can’t even believe it ourselves?”

  It took me a beat to catch up. Megan is Dee’s adult daughter: she had been away at medical school for the entire time I’d been in Ohio. Gorgons live in secluded communities all over the world; Pliny’s gorgons, like Dee and her family, like to settle near human cities, where they can get groceries and other staples without giving up their culture and traditions. Sort of like the Amish, if the Amish were therapsid cryptids capable of turning people to stone. When the kids grow up, they either settle permanently in the community where they were born or move to a new community, and probably never see their parents again. It isn’t safe. Even with all the new technological advancements linking the world, it just isn’t safe.

  “Breathe, Dee. Just please, for me, breathe.”

  “Sorry about that.” Shelby came bounding back into the kitchen. She was dressed like we were heading to the zoo, in khaki shorts and a matching button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled past her elbows. It was incredibly hello, I am a stereotypical Australian of her, which made it incredibly clever at the same time. If we ran across any human hikers in the woods, she could just dial up her accent and start asking me to explain what a squirrel was. The fact that she looked like she’d just escaped from an Animal Planet documentary would do the rest.

  “It’s fine; we were just talking.” I flashed Shelby a quick, tight smile before returning my focus to Dee. “Well? Can you drive?”

  “I can.” She stood, grabbing her wig and jamming it back on her head with one hand. The snakes around the edges withdrew, voluntarily hiding themselves. They had minds of their own, but they were capable of responding to Dee’s emotional state. How that works, no one has ever been able to figure out, and until we get access to a lot of scanning equipment and a few neurologists who won’t ask awkward questions, we aren’t going to.

  “Great. We’ll be right behind you.”

  Dee nodded tightly before heading for the back door. Shelby followed, and I was close behind.

  Shelby paused at the threshold, giving me a concerned look. “How bad do you think this is going to be?” she asked.

  “On a scale of one to ten?”

  She nodded.

  “I honestly don’t know. But I think we should probably be braced for the worst.”

  Shelby nodded again and stepped outside.

  I locked the door behind me.

  * * *

  “You all right?” I glanced at Shelby as I drove. She was still too alert-looking for anyone who’d been awake as short a time as she had, and it wasn’t entirely adrenaline—she was actually conscious. I’ve always envied people who could go from sleep to functionality that quickly. “You didn’t have time for coffee before Dee came busting in.”

  “I wasn’t in the mood for coffee
anyway,” she said, waving a hand vaguely. “Not feeling like being wired today.”

  I opened my mouth, then paused, frowning. “I haven’t seen you drink coffee in a couple of days.”

  “I like to wean myself periodically. Remember what it’s like to live without a chemical dependency.”

  “Huh. Maybe I should try it.”

  The corner of Shelby’s mouth quirked upward in a smile. “You do that.” She sobered. “But seriously. How bad is this likely to be?”

  “Bad. There are three main scenarios to worry about here. The first—and honestly, the one I’m hoping for—is that another gorgon community is following some old-fashioned customs and raided them last night.”

  Shelby whipped around to stare at me. “You’re not serious.”

  “Unfortunately, I am. Look at it like this: you’re a member of a species that’s having trouble keeping your numbers above extinction levels. Too big to hide easily from the dominant predators, too dependent on certain resources to withdraw completely from their civilization, but too different to pass as one of them without a lot of work. Your family group is on the verge of dying out due to a lack of new blood and an inability to settle down long enough to meet fairly extensive breeding requirements. But there’s another family group that’s stable. Secure. They have the resources and the necessary space to breed. Which is more important? Respecting the fact that they love and want their children, or the survival of your species?”

  “You don’t mean that,” she said, still staring at me. Her expression had shifted to something akin to horror.

  “I don’t approve of it, no, and I don’t think it’s a good solution for anyone involved. It’s still the way some gorgon families did things for centuries after the Covenant of St. George burned their settlements and drove them from their homes. Survival of the species forgives a lot.” I shook my head. “Humans have done similar things, across history. Gorgons abandoned those traditions more than a hundred and fifty years ago, at least here in North America, but there are always people who think the old ways are the best ones.”

  “Bastards,” muttered Shelby.

  “No contest here. At the same time … that really would be the best-case scenario. It would mean the children were taken by people who want them and are prepared to care for them and could possibly be convinced to give them back if we’re able to provide them with other options. There are always other ways to do things.” Gorgons aren’t human. They’re still people, and they still grow up in the complex stew of cultural expectations that simmers all around us. I couldn’t imagine even the most traditional family group would feel good about becoming kidnappers just for the sake of their own survival.

  “All right. What’s next on the list?”

  “Covenant.” I shrugged. Dee’s car was the only one on the road ahead of us, but that didn’t mean I could take my eyes off her for long. As soon as we started hitting the protections intended to keep humans from stumbling into the local gorgon community, losing sight of her car had the potential to mean never reaching our destination. “This could be the start of a purge.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just go in and …” Shelby ran a finger across her throat, making a guttural slurping sound at the same time.

  “Classy,” I said.

  She beamed. “You adore me.”

  “No question there. But no, it wouldn’t have been easier. We’re talking about a whole community of Pliny’s gorgons—and remember that the fringe, at least, is really dug-in and defensible. The children are wary of strangers, with good reason; at the same time, because they have such good defenses on the approach road, they tend to assume that anyone who’s actually inside the community itself is a friend. So their guards would be down. If you want to start by killing the adults, you need a huge amount of manpower. You need to be absolutely sure that you can kill them all before anyone sounds the alarm. Kidnapping is easier, and now everyone’s out of their minds with worry for their kids. Even if they’re more alert and aware of the danger, they’re also off-balance and likely to slip up. Tactically, this isn’t a bad move.”

  “But you don’t think that’s what’s happening here.”

  “No, I don’t.” I shook my head. “We have people watching the major airports and border crossings. Even the ones who don’t like my family are working with us on this because no one wants the Covenant here. I honestly don’t think they could have gotten a strike force large enough for this kind of operation into the country without us hearing about it—and if they somehow managed it, I wouldn’t expect them to start with a gorgon community in the middle of Ohio.”

  “Even though that community has ties to your family?” The question was mild. The meaning behind it wasn’t.

  I took a deep breath. “The fact that we’ve had dealings with this community before could be a factor, but I think you’re assuming a level of intel that we’ve never known the Covenant to have. They rarely think of cryptids as having relationships, or histories, or anything other than the need to taste human flesh.”

  Shelby wrinkled her nose. “That’s graphic.”

  “That’s the Covenant. If they knew that my great-grandfather had been instrumental in the founding of this community, yes, it would be a massive target. Given that even I didn’t know until Hannah told me, I really don’t think they have that kind of detail on what’s going on around here.”

  My great-grandfather, Jonathan Healy, had been the one to help Hannah’s parents find a place where they could settle down without being judged for the fact that they belonged to two different, socially incompatible species of gorgons. Without him, this community would never have existed. Without him, Hannah would never have existed. Which also meant that without him, Lloyd would never have existed, and several people would still have been alive.

  Every deed, whether intended for good or for ill, has its repercussions. Forgetting that is never a wise idea.

  “All right,” said Shelby slowly. “What’s the third option?”

  “Poachers.”

  She scowled. “Oh, I was afraid you were going to say that. I bloody hate poachers. Cowardly, craven arseholes. But … you can’t poach people. Can you?”

  “No, you can’t. Normally, that’s called kidnapping or abduction, and it’s viewed very poorly. Unfortunately, you don’t have to belong to the Covenant to think that only humans count as people, and there are humans out there who will pay a lot for ‘exotics’ like young gorgons.”

  Shelby looked at me, utterly aghast. “How could you even … it’s not safe! There’s no way you could keep a young gorgon alive without endangering yourself!”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. There are ways. We’re just not going to discuss them when we’re this close to the parents.” Dee had guided us safely through every layer of illusion and dissuasion, easily enough that either I was becoming desensitized to the wards, or someone had managed to adjust them to let us pass. We were driving along the curving private road that led down into the valley where the gorgon community stood, temporary and permanent at the same time, as much of a contradiction as its occupants.

  What looked like a small trailer park waited at the bottom of the road, the trailers arrayed in a circle that would easily unwind if the residents ever needed to hook up their wagons and go looking for a new place to live. Not that some of those supposedly “mobile homes” were designed to be moved: as with any long-term trailer park, the residents had settled in, building porches and brick steps, installing aboveground pools and planting vegetable gardens. Most of the occupants, like Dee’s husband Frank, had been born in those trailers, and had every expectation of dying there.

  They had an apple orchard, corn fields, and enough planted, carefully plotted land to sustain a community almost twice their size—and that was without going into the fringe, the subcommunity of gorgons where Dee herself had been born. They had permanent homes, of brick and wood and drywall. They were planning to be in Ohio forever, even if it meant
eventually running out the human occupants.

  It wasn’t the worst plan ever. They had guns and venomous snakes growing out of their heads. They were probably going to be fine, assuming no one showed up with a tank. As gorgon communities went, this was one of the largest, healthiest ones I’d ever heard of.

  Which, unfortunately, made it all the more likely that we were dealing with poachers. A community of this size couldn’t avoid having contact with the outside world, and even if they were careful, rumors spread; people see things. The Internet added a whole new layer of possible gossip. All it would take was one bored teen posting a few supposedly harmless pictures on their Instagram. Let the wrong person see them, and—suddenly—we had a problem.

  And we definitely had a problem. There were gorgons everywhere, standing in front of the trailers and arguing, their body language tight and terrified. The few people whose children hadn’t disappeared were keeping them close, sometimes literally by holding onto their arms or shoulders. No one was wearing a wig. I parked a safe distance away and leaned over to open the glove compartment, pulling out two pairs of smoked goggles. I offered one wordlessly to Shelby.

  She smiled as she took it, fondness and frustration mixed together in equal measure. “How I thought you were a harmless nerd at first, the world may never know.”

  “To be fair, I am a nerd,” I said, fitting the goggles on over my glasses. “If I weren’t, I wouldn’t have goggles in my glove compartment.”

  “Point stands,” she said, and got out of the car.

  Pliny’s gorgons aren’t mammals, which means their growth patterns don’t follow mammalian norms. They don’t stop growing when they reach their twenties: they just slow down. Some of the people turning toward us were seven or eight feet tall, towering over their more human-height neighbors.

  Dee flung herself out of her car and raced toward one of the taller men, yanking her wig off as she ran. He leaned down and wrapped his arms around her, the snakes on their heads twining together in affectionate greeting. It was a sweet moment, made sweeter when a slightly shorter, slimmer version of Dee joined their embrace.