by Kay Camden
Leave this house and don’t come back.
I go through the door into a wide room with a sofa and chairs but no people. A second set of doors opens as I will it. Coyotes trot through before me, surrounding a woman as she stands at the end of the bed as if prepared to meet me. She’s an older version of the woman in the photos at my dad’s cottage.
A voice inside me says, Kill her.
I’m not sure if it’s my real voice or something else’s. I’m not sure if I agree with it. But I’m looking down the sight of my pistol aimed straight at her heart.
Another voice says, Rex’s mother.
A second bat has landed on my shoulder to join the first. I see my name on the woman’s lips but my attention has been stolen by the coyotes beside her. By the trust in their eyes. They still see Sloane Bevan even though she’s been taken over by black magic. They see the good in me, the part of me that’s here to cure, not execute.
I holster my gun and flip out my straight razor. Stolen from this house, it’s been beside me through this whole journey, like Rex himself. I can’t kill his mother. Even though she’s smiling at me like she’s just gained some insight to hold over me.
You look like your daddy.
The words are only readable because it’s exactly what goes with that look. I don’t know why that would give her such creepy pleasure but whatever. I raise my pinky finger and wiggle it in the air. She loses the smile so fast I get a wave of secondhand fear. It’s sympathy and it needs to be squashed; it has no place here. Taunting people must come with being a black witch, and I don’t like it at all.
I love it.
Snatching the sash on her robe, I slip around her and cinch it tight around her wrists. She aims an elbow; a coyote lunges, teeth bared, and she rethinks that move. I kick the backs of her knees so she’s on my level. For what she’s done to my dad, she deserves pain. For her obvious neglect and abuse of Rex, she needs something worse.
Do it, the black magic says.
“No,” I say aloud. Because that’s not the girl my dad raised. The girl my mom nurtured. The girl they love. I won’t become that no matter how right it’s starting to feel.
She remains still when I slash her arm with my razor. I’m impressed by her level of chill. I draw the symbol on my forehead first so she can see what she’s getting. When it’s her turn she takes it stoically, a fearless mistress of evil. I’m sure she’s dished out worse. Her hate swarms hard into me, knocking her to her back, sending me stumbling into the coyotes. They nip at each other, riled by the static exchange of power in the room. And I leave her there, splayed on the floor, unconscious, carrying the mark of a black witch.
Outside her room I stagger again, my knees cracking against the floor, my hand bracing against coyote shoulder blades that remain solid and strong. My stomach crumples with the bloat of what I’ve taken. For once I’m too sick to vomit, too overcome to fight it. When my palms hit the floor, I think of Rex, of what encouragement he’d give if he saw me succumbing when the end of our work is so near. I convert sickness into stubborn will and push myself up, my head spinning, my vision going glittery.
Another room houses an old guy sleeping through it all. I take him easily and leave him on the floor. The next, a teenage girl. She begs. I’m gentle. My army finds a perfect method: bats seek victims, coyotes rush the room, I come in and do my work. We clear one hall and then the other, go down a flight and do the same. It can’t be this easy. I start to wonder why we haven’t met up with Rex. This house is big, but we’ve cleared about half. So where is he?
Down to the main level. The bats move ahead but return with bad news: a commotion ahead. Lots of people. Some kind of fighting. I command the coyotes to wait. I need a minute. My hands are shaking, and I can’t catch my breath. We’ve stopped in some kind of library, surrounded by another century’s furniture, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and tall windows displaying a wide expanse of grass lit by the dawn.
A huge oak stands alone, catching morning light in its deep green leaves. It’s the same oak I viewed through my window when I was captive here. The song of its magic weaves across the lawn, through the stone walls of the house, and along the floorboards. I place my cheek against the polished wood floor, drinking in the hum of its power. It’s a much-needed recharge, a thirst so desperately quenched. I feel my old self settle back in my bones like a ghost returning to its body. Exhaustion comes alive, along with a days-old hunger for a real meal—how long has it been since I’ve had appetite for more than a nibble?
I have to contain this hate again, have to get its venom out of my blood. Black witches use darkness and negativity as fuel but it doesn’t come from the inside. It’s culled from the world, from the people around them. What I’m housing in me shouldn’t be contained. I don’t know how to neutralize it. It’s like a swollen, infected appendix. Only a matter of time before it bursts and kills me. I’ve let it grow and spread and take me over. If I add any more to it, my earth magic will be poisoned and so will I.
I reach for the oak. Its power is ready and pure. I let it pour in over the darkness, forcing it back. My fist against my chest where it first settled, I draw it there, piling it together, compacting it down.
There. I breathe. Yes, let it stay there. Just for a while. Just until I can figure out what to do. Just until I finish my work, until I can die.
I turn my other cheek against the cool floor. I imagine Marcas here with me, that I’ll sit up and find him. Jack-o’-lantern boy, missing both his canines. He signs in his sleep. I’m wrecked from missing him. I can’t bring what’s inside me back to him. If I can’t leave it here and walk away, I’ll leave it here safe inside my fallen body.
The sun has filled the oak now. It glows with orange morning light. I stand and breathe in the waxy wood of the room, the smell of old books. Grandma Sloane survived this house so I could return and end this war. I need to finish this now while I’m ready to die. Tomorrow I might not be.
My animals and I push ahead, into the main entrance I remember with the rounded double-tall ceilings painted like a church and a staircase from a Disney palace. Halfway through, the bats turn as one in the air, returning overhead. The coyotes halt, clustering around me. I back up when I spot people through the doorway at the opposite end of the room. One of them is Rex. He’s arguing with a muscular guy twice his size.
Their argument is so heated they don’t notice me at first. When they do, it only seems to add accelerant to their chemical fire. The big guy gestures toward me, and Rex meets my eyes across the wide room. This moment of distraction offers the guy a chance to pull a gun and aim at Rex’s face. What follows is a command, spat out, and a chin jerked my way. Rex laughs—half a second later that big guy’s gun arm is being twisted behind his back.
My coyote pack seeps into the room. Rex’s half of the pack must’ve joined mine from the rear. He unloads the other guy’s pistol into the ceiling and chucks it back at him, empty. Plaster snows down, dusting Rex’s shoulders and hair. My eyes don’t seem able to focus on the falling dust. I close them, pressing my knuckles against them. The reprieve of closed eyes is a moment I wish could last forever. They burn in the light when I open them. It draws my stomach upward; I hold a fist against my mouth to contain it. I can’t vomit here. It would show a weakness I’d like to stay secret.
Two men stroll down the stairs, one with hair combed fresh from the shower, straightening the collar of a polo shirt. The other on his phone, crisply dressed in oxford and slacks. I recognize them at once. This “just another day” act is a show of power, of fearlessness. Their house—their whole family, centuries of their brand of power—nearly dismantled and they’re still at ease. I don’t buy it. My eyes are on Rex to witness his reaction. He catches something tossed from the stairs to him, takes a long moment to study it before strapping it on his wrist. Crippling doom falls hard upon me. If that’s the watch he chucked into the woods he’
s just become more lost to me. I fingerspell his name. He looks at me blankly, uninterested.
Now the three of them stand together in the middle of the room. My memories of their faces prod a very dark, uncontrollable nerve. Dillon Moore, kidnapping me from my home. Jared Moore, dragging me up the stairs, grabbing my hair, locking me in that room. And Rex, attacking me in that bedroom in the middle of the night. He’s morphed back into that Rex in my memory. The cruel, sadistic soldier. Hateful because of the lies he’s been told. Ready and eager to use all his training to act on that hate, to hunt and kill what he believes is owed to him.
I can’t let them talk to him. If he’s not fully compromised, there’s a chance to bring him back. Coyotes shift around me, restless. I call the bats from their roost on the ceiling above. They come down like a curtain as Rex nods at his father and takes a step away from the two men to glance up at the descending bats. Fear strikes low and cold. I brought my friends into this place so carelessly. No animal can be as vicious as these people surrounding me. Rex has stopped under the fluttering bats. I come forward—too late. He’s already spoken a command to them I can’t hear. I brace myself for mass murder but they soar up the staircase instead, a black cloud headed to the broken windows and out into the night sky.
Rex sways, bends to brace hands on knees. Appealing to animals is something I taught him, something he’s not used to doing. He looks up at me. The sadist is gone. His eyes are haunted, lonely. He fingerspells, Leave, S. I can’t—
Jared claps a hand on Rex’s back, yanking him upright by a fistful of T-shirt.
I get a rush like I did when I killed that man who knifed Rex in the ribs. I hear the voice that’s not mine, feel the burden of hate trembling inside me. I close my eyes and find the oak, reaching, drawing its magic over me like a warm quilt. When I see the room again, I’ve lost a moment. I’m on my knees being held upright by coyotes. Rex has gone dead in the eyes, and the whole room has filled with Moores and their men aiming every kind of firearm at me and my coyotes.
The Moores won’t hurt the creatures of the forest. They’re afraid of the consequences; they can’t afford taking any hits to the little magic they still know. But they’re notorious for hiring people to do their dirty work. I can affect some approaching bullets but not this many at once. The coyotes and I should’ve stayed in the hallways, clearing one room at a time. They can’t help me against dozens of armed men who are under orders to shoot all threats.
I bid the double front doors to open. The dark carved panels burst inward, banging against the wall, knocking identical antique mirrors to the floor on each side. Broken glass floods the room. The coyotes know what I ask, but they won’t leave me. They skitter around, nipping at my clothes, nudging me with annoyance at the promised fight they’ll miss. But this isn’t their fight. So I take a deep pull of power from the condensed mass of darkness inside me and command them as a black witch.
As they flow out the door, I turn to face the Moores. It’s just me now. One against the rest; one against them all. This final battle was supposed to happen with Rex by my side. In my choice to split from my ally, I’ve lost him. They’ve sucked him back in, slapped their chains and their control back on.
I don’t just need him on my side. I want him. I can’t finish this without him. He’s my stepping stone in the river separating life from death. I’m afraid to cross over without him. No matter which side of the river he stays on, I don’t want to do it alone.
We swore in blood. That’s an oath of the heart. It trumps any magic assigned to that watch. It’s truer than the years of abuse and conditioning that molded him. How do I make him see that?
I focus on Rex, taking a tiny sip of magic to help me into his mind. Blueish-white electricity scatters up the walls around us, leaving ashy jagged lines in its wake. That’s my work, but not my plan or consent. It wasn’t at all what I wanted to do. What’s cycling down inside me isn’t me. I’m made of both black magic and its fuel. The ideal ecosystem for unguided sentient black magic is caged inside me, and it’s become powerful enough to no longer need a human practitioner. Any pull of magic will open a door to let it through. I need to lower a wedge against that door, and ready myself to shove it into place.
The muscular guy Rex disarmed earlier has more to say. He’s stabbing a finger in Rex’s chest, and Rex is just taking it. A woman lays a hand on the big guy’s arm; he flings it away, now mouthing off at her. While they argue I shuffle toward a fireplace and try to contain my joy to see a nice bed of ash lining the bottom. When I rise I’ve gained the attention of more loaded weapons. I lower the neck of my shirt, smear the ash on my skin where my amulet normally hangs, and draw my family’s symbol, identical to the one on my amulet. The connection rings across the room. Rex shoves the big guy away to gape at me, his hand against his shirt where my amulet hangs hidden.
Soldiers surround me. I refuse to raise my hands. This is not surrender.
Rex shakes his head as if to clear it, taking in the room like he just woke from a dream.
They’re shouting commands at him, but he’s locked eyes with me and won’t look away. When he steps toward me, I expect someone to stop him, but perhaps they’re as curious as I am. He’s under their control. He’s still on their side. This interest in me is nothing but an act. It can’t be this easy to awaken a blood oath.
We’re face to face now, his eyes on mine. I want to sign but I’m afraid it will break the world. He holds up a hand to silence someone who must’ve spoken, and it stays in the air, hanging, forgotten.
It’s a perfect act. His eyes say nothing, when I’ve learned to read every thought from the million Rex Moore expressions I’ve catalogued. His mouth is a fixed, indistinct line, incapable of the shy grins, the smirks, the tight anger, the temptation drawing my lips in. His breath, controlled and even. The song of his magic has been muted, clamped off, unreachable. He could join me right now. He could kill me. There are no other options, no in-betweens, and not a thing about the Rex I’ve learned to love exists here anymore. He’s a statue, a shell. He’s not my Rex.
He grabs me—I don’t even counter because I have to know how far he’ll take this. An arm around my shoulders, his unsheathed knife flings a glint of light. A slight jerk in the base of my scalp, and then I’m released, going into a squat with the force, fingers against the floor. No blood. Nothing hurts. Shock may have kicked in first. I’m so exhausted maybe I won’t feel the pain, I’ll just lie down here and bleed out.
I reach for my long braid. It’s missing.
Not missing but unattached. In Rex’s hand, now being tossed to Jared who tucks it into his pocket.
I’ve been growing that braid since my dad told me who I am. It’s been cut away just like the girl I used to be. I’m a killer now—I killed that man who stabbed Rex, and right now I have a building terrible urge to kill more. To kill them all. I can pop this mass of collected hate. I can let it empower the black witch in me. Let it spin around and around in an endless cycle of centripetal force of hate powering black magic creating hate to power more black magic. No matter how much I control it or condense it or pack it into that spot in my chest, it will always be there, pushing against me, driving me to do terrible things. I should let it go. Let it spread again. Let it take me over.
Rex offers a hand to help me up. All the spells to set a person on fire evade me. The room has turned blood red. I can’t just kill him. I need to torture him first.
Since I haven’t accepted his hand, he lifts me by the shoulders. If I strike him now I’ll break his every bone. My teeth chatter with the effort to hold back. He’s digging around in his pocket. He’s leaning into my face. Do you trust me?
I sign, No. Shrieking, boiling anger keeps the tears away. Betrayal is a paralysis that keeps me still when he draws even nearer, now only inches away. His lips are so close I want him to close the distance, want him to kiss me one last time as I jam the knife I�
�ve slid from my pocket into his stomach. If I have to die, so does he. Without their next leader, the Moores will fade away. This war ends here. The Bevans will have their martyr, and the Moores will have their murdered king.
He raises his hand in the tight space between us, fingers the band of the Moores’ watch. Hidden from eyes, he unlatches it, slips it off. My knife hand tingles, adrenaline reminding me of my purpose even though I’ve become unsure. Rex presses the watch against my chest, and I take it with my free hand, its overpowered magic hot in my palm. Rex takes a breath so huge his chest presses against mine. He snapped his chains. He broke his conditioning. His free will has been secured, from his own choice, his own power.
And in front of his family, he leans in and kisses me.
Calling a shield against bullets seems unnecessary. This is how I want to die. The sweetness of his kiss both softens and empowers me. The lurch between murderous anger and truest love sends an earthquake up my spine. I slip; he catches me by the elbows. Our lips have broken, but he kisses me again, passing me something on his tongue. In my mouth it’s small, hard, slippery. One of his pills, but I’m not sure which one.
The chaos around us spills into our moment. It seems some Moores want their hands on us and others want to keep us safe for drawn-out torture later. And this is a fight about to divide them. Rex still has me by the shoulders, but he’s pulled away to say, You should trust me.
I do now. Now and forever. I swallow the pill because I do trust him so much it hurts. I have to get him out of here. Even if I can’t be saved, he needs to be free of this place so no one can ever chain him down again.
Someone’s on the ground. Rex turns to watch, one of the many catalogued expressions tweaking a corner of his mouth up, sending sinister joy into his eyes. Jared has fallen to the ground. Hornets pour out of his pants pocket, filling the air, scattering the crowd. Rex tugs my hair where my braid used to be. Smiles big.