That Ain't Witchcraft (InCryptid #8)

by Seanan McGuire

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” asked Megan.

  “You can still remember my name, so yes,” said Sarah. “I don’t know what I can do to prove to you that I’m not a monster, other than continuing to sit here without killing you or warping your mind. I’m doing my best. Can’t you please try to do the same?”

  “ … sure,” said Megan.

  I breathed slowly out, blinking as I realized that we were already through the barriers that should have slowed our approach. “Huh,” I said.

  “I noticed them,” said Sarah. “I just suggested that maybe they didn’t want to bother us, and they agreed. Compulsion charms are like tiny magical AIs. They’re pretty easy to talk into doing what I want them to do.”

  “That’s horrifying,” said Megan.

  “Welcome to my life,” said Sarah.

  The crowd of gorgons was still gathered outside the trailers. It had changed composition slightly, new faces replacing the old, the parents of the missing children standing out from the rest thanks to the looks of shattered horror that seemed permanently etched into their faces. Even if—even when—we got their children back, I wasn’t sure those looks would ever fully go away.

  Hannah was waiting when we got out of the car. She looked Sarah up and down, mouth twisting dismissively, and looked like she was about to say something cruel when she abruptly stopped dead and said, in a soft voice, “You’re looking at my eyes.”

  “Yes,” said Sarah. “People seem to prefer it when I look them in the eyes, and I try to be polite when I can. It balances the part where I’m always a little bit impolite, by human standards.”

  “You’re not turning to stone.”

  My eyes widened, and I swore softly. Sarah didn’t have goggles on. I should have realized before, but I’d been in a hurry, and she had managed never to look directly at Megan. Somehow, I had missed it.

  “No,” said Sarah. “I’m not quite a mammal, the way you think a mammal is, and I’m not a bird or a reptile or anything else that comes from around here. Your gaze doesn’t work on me.”

  “I have more than just eyes,” said Hannah, and bared her teeth, which were too sharp and too serrated to have any place in a human-seeming mouth.

  “Your venom might work,” said Sarah. “I don’t know. I don’t have blood, in the sense of platelets and hemoglobin and all those other sticky substances; it’s possible the biological chain reaction that causes petrifaction would do nothing. I’d rather not find out, if you don’t mind. I can’t look for your missing children if I’m a lawn statue.”

  “And I’d really rather you didn’t turn my cousin to stone,” I said hastily. “She hasn’t done anything to threaten you.”

  “Her existence is threat enough,” said Hannah, slumping slightly, so that she was no longer looming over the pair of us with quite so much intensity. “Your woman is with Dee, speaking to the fringe. They should return soon.”

  The fringe was the other side of the community, built with deep roots and sturdy walls and an absolute policy of isolation from the outside world. Walter, who led the place, was Dee’s brother. They didn’t have the warmest family relationship. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with Shelby going there without me, and I was absolutely aware that telling her so would be a good way to wind up getting yelled at for being a macho pig. She could take care of herself, sometimes better than I could.

  “All right,” I said. “I think Sarah and I are going to go meet them, if you don’t mind. I want Sarah to have both the approved human presences behind her before we start scanning the woods for humans who shouldn’t be present.”

  “And I am coming with you,” said Hannah.

  “No,” said Sarah.

  There was a long, dangerous pause. Finally, in a low voice, Hannah echoed, “No?”

  “No,” said Sarah. “You’re scared of me. You don’t want to be because you don’t want to be scared of anything, but you are, and all the snakes on your head are picking up on that. They see me as a threat. They don’t have a lot of room for thoughts, so they think the ones they have very, very loudly. You’ll distract me.”

  “Please stay here,” I said, before Hannah could start to argue in earnest. “If we find anything at all, I’ll have Dee call Megan. I know Dee has a phone. I assume Megan does, too.”

  “Don’t leave home without it,” said Megan.

  “You can come right over and fuck up whoever dared to touch your kids,” I said. “But if there’s even a chance that your presence means they don’t get found, you can’t come.”

  Hannah visibly deflated. “Everything about this day tells me I’ve failed my duties as protector of this community,” she said. “For a daughter of Medusa, that burns.”

  The three known species of gorgon each claim descent from a different Gorgon of mythology. For the greater gorgons, like Hannah—half of Hannah, anyway, and as those genes seemed to have the dominant expression, it only made sense for her to think of herself as a greater gorgon—that progenitor is Medusa. They take their role as children of the most famous of the mythological Gorgons very seriously.

  “You haven’t failed,” I said. “You’re just standing back and letting people who are better equipped to deal with this specific problem do their jobs. Now, will you let us do our jobs?”

  She nodded silently. I turned to Sarah.

  “Follow me,” I said. “I know the way.”

  The gathered gorgons parted to let us through, and we made our way out of the circle of mobile homes, into the woods that separated the main community from the fringe. Sarah sighed heavily and allowed her shoulders to slump as soon as the gorgons were out of sight behind us.

  “There are so many of them,” she said, voice caught somewhere between agony and awe. “How did I ever stand the density of people in Manhattan? My head should have exploded.”

  “I think you were less fragile then,” I said.

  Sarah scowled at me. “I want to be less fragile now,” she said. “I want to be able to walk in the world and not worry that I’ll pass someone who’s thinking about doing a crossword puzzle and wind up stuck for hours wondering what three down was supposed to be. It isn’t fair.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “And you know who hasn’t called? Hasn’t texted, hasn’t even sent an email? Verity.” Sarah’s scowl deepened. “You, you moved into the house where I was recuperating, even knowing that I could be dangerous, that I wasn’t always going to understand how to be gentle with people. Artie kept IMing me and texting me and sending me cute pictures of wasps and kittens. Even Annie sent me a bunch of cards, even if she couldn’t come to Ohio. But Verity never did any of those things. She had time to go on television and start a war. She didn’t have time to tell me she was sorry I got hurt.”

  “I think … I think she tried, right after it happened. I don’t think you could hear her yet.” It sounded like the excuse it was. Verity has always been great at running away from her problems. She’s ashamed of failure in a way the rest of us aren’t. It doesn’t make her a bad person. It makes her a little inept when it comes to apologies.

  “I’d do it again—choosing to be good means choosing to do what needs to be done even when no one appreciates it or thanks you. But I wish she’d sent a card.”

  I silently resolved to have a word with my sister the next time we spoke. “Yeah,” I said aloud. “I get that.”

  We walked through the tangled trees, Sarah drifting almost aimlessly, yet always managing to wind up beside me when I paused to check on her. She might lack the intensive training that the rest of us got, but she still grew up in Ohio, and she knows her way around the forest. In a way, she’s even better in the woods than I am, since ticks and mosquitoes don’t bother her. She doesn’t read as a food source.

  Johrlac biology is weird. The more we learn about it, the more convinced we are that they aren’t originally from around here. Whether that means “another dimension” or “another planet in this dimension” doesn’t mat
ter nearly as much as the fact that they’re not going anywhere, and one day they might kill us all.

  Some people worry about the robot uprising. I’m much more concerned about the cuckoos.

  The trees began to thin, and we stepped out into the manicured, well-farmed land allotted to the fringe. Their small brick houses marched in tidy rows off into the distance, looking incredibly out of place in their agrarian setting. Farmhouses exist, yes, but they usually come with roads, and cars. These houses looked like they’d been swept straight out of some earlier time, predating even the Amish in their old-fashioned solidity.

  Dee was standing outside one of the nearby houses, deep in discussion with her brother. He lifted his head and pointed at us, snakes writhing wildly. Dee turned. I waved. It was a perfectly ordinary exchange, rendered strange only by the situation, and it seemed to put Walter marginally more at ease. We were never going to be friends—I was the wrong species, for a start—but I had helped to save the community he belonged to, and it had earned me a certain grudging respect.

  I lowered my hand as I realized what was missing from the scene. As I started to step forward, Sarah put a hand on my arm.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Shelby is inside the house. She needed to use the restroom. I guess the aversion to modern technology doesn’t apply to plumbing.”

  “Where’s her anti-telepathy charm?”

  “She gave it to Dee. She’s thinking about that now, along with what I think is an Australian variation on that song about monkeys jumping on the bed. It’s a pretty good way to keep me from digging deeper into her thoughts.” Sarah sounded grudgingly impressed. “Dee was afraid I’d start looking in her mind and judging her, so Shelby gave her the charm to help. And so that if you got separated, like you are right now, you wouldn’t be worried that something had happened to her.”

  “I love that woman,” I said.

  “Maybe you should finish planning the wedding,” said Sarah. “I bet I could attend now, as long as I was careful and had a private room that I could go back to when the people got to be too much.”

  “We still need to find a venue that works for both our families and doesn’t attract the attention of the Covenant,” I said. “We’re not in a hurry.”

  “I guess not,” said Sarah.

  I gave her a sidelong look. “Why? Do you think we should be in a hurry?”

  “I like cake,” said Sarah. “She’s coming out now.”

  Shelby appeared on the porch, waving vigorously when she spotted us. We started toward her, and she met us halfway across the open space, a smile on her face and worry in her eyes.

  “Only two kids missing here, both from the house nearest the wood,” she said, voice pitched low. “I think our kidnappers looked at the walls, looked at the security, and decided they had a big enough haul. But there’s no reason to have taken any kids from here unless it was on their way.”

  I nodded. The fringe was farther from the main road, which we already knew the kidnappers hadn’t used: it was virtually impossible to get a single car in or out of the basin without being seen, and they would have needed multiple cars to manage their victims. “Did Walter have any thoughts about the paths they might have taken?”

  “He swears the woods nearest the house where the kids were taken are impassable, and that if they weren’t, his people would have been able to track the intruders.” Shelby smiled mirthlessly, showing all her teeth. “That means we start there.”

  I nodded. Impassable woods almost never are; there’s always a way to fight through the brush. Walter’s people were farmers, not hunters, and when they did hunt, they did it by walking into the clearer woods on the far side of the fringe and stunning deer with a glance. They had no reason to understand the finer points of woodcraft.

  “Got it,” I said. “Dee coming with us?”

  “It’s her or an entire patrol of Walter’s men; he’s willing to send them to search in the opposite direction if his sister goes along with us. They’ve been beating the bushes all day, not finding anything, but that doesn’t mean he’s giving up.” Her feral smile dimmed. “Can’t say as I blame him. Kids deserve better than this.”

  “Yes,” I said. “They do.”

  “How’re you holding up, Sarah?” asked Shelby, focus shifting to my cousin. “We really appreciate you coming out and giving this a go. You just say the word if you can’t handle it, and we’ll make sure you’re taken straight home.”

  “I’m already here,” said Sarah. “Let’s find these kids.”

  “I’ll get Dee,” I said.

  “Good,” said Shelby, smile finally dying entirely. “Poachers don’t like to be the hunted ones. I don’t know how much time we have.”

  Neither did I. I kept that thought to myself as I hurried over to where Dee was waiting. It was time for us to move; it was past time for us to bring those children home.

  * * *

  The woods Walter had identified as impassable and Shelby had identified as our best starting point for finding the kidnappers were the sort of dense, tangled woodland that Ohio excels at. It was easy to look at them and understand why Walter wouldn’t think they were an option, although I was willing to bet he’d thought differently when he was a kid himself. Kids never look at a thorn briar or a hedge and think “I can’t go there.” They’re a lot more likely to think “adults can’t follow me,” and charge full speed ahead.

  Shelby and I exchanged a look. “Sixty seconds,” she said.

  “I can do it in thirty,” I said.

  “You’re on,” she replied, and we took off in opposite directions, both of us scanning the brush for signs of disturbance, or something we could use to make our entrance.

  I was starting to think Shelby was going to win when I saw a single half-concealed footprint poking out from under a veil of scrub. I bent, tugging gently on the bush. It came away in my hand, revealing the beginning of a tunnel. “Over here!” I called and began pulling more brush away.

  Someone had spent several days carefully cutting a tunnel through the wall of tangles that separated the fringe from the forest, making it as inconspicuous as possible. Walter and his people had probably walked past it repeatedly, never realizing how close the danger had come. Not for the first time, I wished Lloyd’s cockatrice hadn’t killed the lindworms that used to hunt around here. Gorgons don’t do well with dogs, and the lindworms had been the closest thing they had to an early warning system.

  Shelby crowded up behind me, Dee and Sarah following behind her at a slightly safer distance. “What’ve you got?” she asked.

  “A way in,” I said. “Sarah, you’re behind me; I want you scanning for human minds as soon as we go through the break. Dee, you walk after Sarah, and be ready to stun anyone who charges us.”

  “And I’ve got the rear,” said Shelby cheerfully. “Anyone who tries to sneak up on us is going to get a taste of old-fashioned Australian hospitality.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Dee.

  “Means I’m going to smash their teeth in,” said Shelby.

  Dee blinked. “You’re not this terrifying at work,” she said.

  “Eh, I try to follow the rules about not creating a hostile workplace,” said Shelby.

  “Come on,” I said, before the two could go any farther down the path of their digression. “Stay close, stay quiet, and do whatever Sarah says.”

  “That should be the rule for always,” said Sarah, sounding amused.

  I stepped into the woods, pausing only to hang my anti-telepathy charm on a nearby branch. The odds of encountering another cuckoo out here were minimal, and I needed any advantage I could get.

  The nice thing about tracking people through places where people don’t usually go: every little motion cuts a trail. Better still, when our kidnappers had gone back to their hideout, they’d been weighted down with panicked, probably squirming children. There were broken branches. There were smashed plants. Best of all, there were footprints in the muddy earth,
all of them scuffed and layered over each other, but still clearly made by human feet. There were two directions these people could have been going. We already knew they’d been to the gorgon settlement, and that they weren’t there anymore. That only left one reasonable direction.

  We were going the right way.

  It was a good thing, too, because Walter had been right about these woods being wild and difficult. The brush grabbed at our feet and legs, and I would have been worried about ticks if not for the fact that Shelby and I basically bathed in insect repellent, while Dee and Sarah weren’t tasty targets. The branches overhead shut out most of the ambient light, leaving us to move through a dim, dangerous world filled with inexplicable sounds and half-seen motions.

  We had pressed almost half a mile into the trees when Sarah stopped walking, putting a hand on my shoulder to signal me to do the same. I turned. Her head was cocked to the side. That was fine. Her eyes, always a blue so bright that it looked a little fake, were glowing white, bleaching the color almost entirely away. That was less fine.

  “Which way?” I mouthed, thinking the words as loudly as I could.

  Sarah pointed, not straight ahead, but off to the left. They’d been smart enough not to draw a direct line to their hideout. I didn’t know whether to be impressed by their forethought or disappointed that this was going to be harder than it had to be. Then she held up both hands, fingers spread wide. Ten kidnappers. It wasn’t an unreasonable number, considering how many children they’d snatched. I still winced.

  Okay. If we were doing this, we needed to do it. I motioned for Sarah to step in front of me, then waved the others closer. Shelby produced a handgun from somewhere inside her shirt, holding it low to her hip, so that she could quickly raise and shoot if necessary. The snakes on Dee’s head silently writhed into a strike position. They weren’t hissing. Rudimentary as their minds might be, they understood that now was a time for stealth.