And Jo nodded along, knowing the truth of it—smelling it, heavy-hung in the shop’s close air, a stench like no other. For those possessed retained a stink forever, enough to set them apart in any company: that slick reek, not quite burnt sugar or burning rubber, quick or dead flesh of any description.
Only one case she knew of ever treated in Toronto’s diocese, though it went ahead on lies instead of permission, and the name came easy enough to her tongue: Judeta Kiss, called Judy. As good a playfellow as any half-Fae former priest might wish for.
“Nope,” Roke lied, eyes fixed on Simeon’s sweaty face. “I don’t smell anything.”
“No? Must just be me, then.”
“Must be.”
“You said three, I think?”
“Three-fifty, if you want it.”
“Yes, uh—that would be fine. Lovely, thank you, my boy.”
“Always glad to have your business, Sim,” Roke said. And rang the transaction through.
Moments later, door safely re-shut in the the old man’s wake, Judy Kiss stepped out from behind her curtain just as Roke turned to face Jo and her phantom entourage. Saying, as he did: “Well, ladies—now we’re alone together, I’ll start with the most obvious question: is at least one of you still alive? Because it’s kind of hard for me to tell.”
Judy rolled her eyes, now far more brown than yellow. “You think you’re funny,” she told him. “That’s the real problem.”
“I have my moments.”
“Not as often as you think you do.”
Cute, Davina mouthed at Jo, who found herself abruptly wanting to look elsewhere. But no matter which way she thought to turn, she knew Euwphaim would surely make it her business to be there first—so she sighed, instead, and introduced herself.
“Jodice Glouwer, Fa—Mister Roke. You might’ve heard of me . . . my name, at the very least.”
And: “Oh yes,” Maccabee Roke replied, face gone suddenly blank.
Jude’s file hadn’t been updated in five years, so Sylvester suggested checking in at the Empress Noodle—his only known hangout—to find out from Yau Yan-er if the address it listed was still current. Instead, Carra held out a hand for his phone, keyed the number next to Jude’s name, and listened until the rings clicked through to an automatic message service, before hanging up and giving it back. “It’s him,” she said.
“‘The number you have called is currently busy, so your call has been rerouted’?”
“If he wasn’t paying his phone bill, somebody would’ve deleted it by now. Besides which—”
“—you don’t want to get anywhere near Grandmother Yau, if you can help it.”
“Do you?”
By six, they were on what Carra could only assume was Jude’s front doorstep. It was a typical Chinatown side-street ugly-box left over from the late 1970s, one devolutionary phase away from being abandoned; the upper windows all wore flimsy grilles with no curtains, while the bottom-floor windows were all painted over from inside, perhaps to block out the view.
“You can stay in the van,” Carra told Sylvester and Kim. “I won’t be long—he’s coming or he isn’t. Either way, I should probably go up alone.”
Sylvester nodded as Kim gave the building a disapproving glance. “Fifteen minutes,” he told her. “I’m setting my phone. That place could be a crack house, for all you know.”
“It really isn’t.”
“Prove it.”
She nodded at another house, two doors down: “Watch over there for a while, you’ll see. Feel free to call the cops when it turns out I’m right.”
Now, peering at those blind panes above, Carra thought she caught a faint glimpse of somebody moving around inside, behind the bars: indistinct, fluid, fast. Something contorting to squint down at her, spine bent the wrong way, then leaving an almost visible blur in its wake as it rushed away: smoke-smudge of transit, eye-stinging corneal burn, a perceptual negative. Plus a sort of distant tone layered in, muffle-muted—the same slow-building sound/smell that’d once sent her drifting upwards in the Clarke’s cafeteria, ectoplasm pouring out to wreathe her in ragged snot-dun ribbons, as she gasped.
(you, it’s you, it’s YOU)
She chose a buzzer at random and leaned on it with her elbow, letting it ring long and loud. Eventually, a weary fuzz-filtered voice asked: “That really you, down there?”
“Yes. Can I come up?”
Another pause, followed by a click, lock popping just long enough to allow Carra to pull it open, thrust her knee between door and jamb.
“Why not?” the voice—Jude, definitely—asked again, at last, of no one in particular.
Inside, she felt her ginger way up the dim stairwell, feeling the ache of executed spell-work prick at her thumbs. One flight more, and a Luminol-blue outline rimmed the top apartment’s door, a series of wards incised all about threshold, lintel, and knob: patterns of force, comprising a vacuum-sealed airlock against the supernatural. The symbols ranged from kanji to Enochian, runes to Cyrillic, backwards Latin run right to left instead of left to right, backwards Arabic the same.
Some parts of her didn’t like it much, but she’d been prepared for that. So she stepped through without sustaining much damage beyond a dentist-drill’s buzz in her third eye, a twinge of migraine, a brief twist of bilocation: oh look, here’s Carra Devize, hazed with hexation on every side, and here she (me) is again, floating just over her (my) shoulder, taking notes. Watching herself put a hand on the doorknob, only to hear Jude call from inside: “Hey, Little Miss Immune-to-Boundary Spells. You coming in or what?”
“I already said yes,” she snapped, and did.
Bad smell. Stale air. Thick gloom, unthreatened by toothless sockets of similarly debulbed lamps. Vague shapes of dimly seen furniture, shoved out of mutual alignment, as if to break up any kind of normal flow-line: nega-shui, for the psychically vulnerable.
She took another step in, looked around, seeing nothing. Waited yet one moment more, before calling out: “Well?”
“‘Well,’ indeed,” Jude replied, at her elbow.
Carra turned, abruptly discovering that shape slumped across that nearby armchair wasn’t a pile of pillows or a tangled bathrobe, after all, when it sat up, resolving into Jude himself.
The changes were striking, to put it mildly: usually close-cropped hair overgrown and jaw blurred with mould-soft beard, his Hong Kong version of a five-day shadow; feet bare and slightly dirty, toenails blue-rimmed with cold. The rest of him, meanwhile, came shoved into a pair of what might be track-pants, with a cordless burgundy bathrobe hanging open overtop. And sunglasses too, which he now slipped off as if for emphasis—that’s right, it’s as bad as you think, or maybe even worse.
Behind those blank lenses, each equally blank eye was dotted with purple flame: arcane fire, the sort used to mark circles. As though he’d started to summon something, years back, and just lost interest.
“So,” Jude said, at last. “You’re finally going to Overdeere.”
“How’d you—”
He struck a pose, one hand raised up mockingly, palm still black with protective tattooing: “Same way I knew it was you downstairs, obviously—maaaagic.”
“In other words, your friend told you.”
“Only damn friend I have, these days. Since you took your own good self away.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“I do, don’t I? Sorry.”
Another long, silent moment elapsed, only broken when Jude twisted away to throw himself back onto the same battered old divan he’d been sprawled on when she entered. He sat down, heavily, and cast his eyes up, studying at the ceiling.
“Any rate,” he said, finally. “You want me to come along, I guess.”
“That’s right.”
“Abbott already tried to warn you off?” As she nodded: “Hah. And he doesn’t even know the half of it.”
> Carra pried a dusty, too-tall barstool chair away from Jude’s marble-topped breakfast bar, then clambered up to perch on it, haphazardly. “Enlighten me,” she prompted.
Jude sighed. “Well, there’s this guy, probably another cousin of yours . . . met him a few years back at the Ursulines Studio. Wrob Barney. You know the name?”
“Nope.”
“Claims he’s some variety of Sidderstane, which I frankly doubt, but he definitely did grow up in Overdeere. And apparently, kids in the region like to check out the Dourvale shore as a rite of passage—mess around in the woods, lit. and fig. He drew me a map.”
“That sounds handy.”
“Well, it not like I had any intention of using it. But—you can have it if you want.”
“I’d rather have you and it. Both.”
Jude’s laugh was dry. “Can’t always get what you want,” he suggested, “not all the time, anyhow. Who, either.”
“So I’ve been told.”
The words hung between them in the dark like breath on cold air, shimmering slightly. A second later, however, Jude’s shadow came flowing up from behind Jude; fanned wide like a soft black peacock’s tail. As Carra squinted, it undulated to peer down at her, boneless, tidal. Its whole corona set trembling with the effort of resisting Carra’s spiritual pull, her forever-exposed soul’s innate barometric pressure-drop.
“There’s a woman, trapped almost a decade,” she told it, looking it straight where its eyes should be. “A child. If I don’t do anything, they’ll stay right there, forever.”
“It doesn’t want you hurt,” Jude murmured.
“That’s nice. But I’m going to be hurt, no matter what.” To the shadow: “Because I’m not not going to go up there, just because you don’t let Jude come along.”
No reply, not that she could hear. A ripple shook its surface, however—almost a shiver—and by the way Jude screwed his eyes shut, Carra suspected it might well be making some sort of internalized commentary.
“I’m gambling the Druirs won’t want to do me harm,” she continued, “which is stupid, I know—whatever kinship I share with them is only six of one, half-dozen of the other. Be worth it, though, to finally do something after all these years of doing nothing much beyond what I absolutely had to.”
Jude’s head dipped slightly, a gesture the shadow seemed to mimic: a nod? Regardless, Carra pressed on, explaining:
“Still, I am going to have to use magic, probably. Which I haven’t in years—twenty, give or take. And I was never very good at it, when I did.”
“No,” Jude agreed.
The shadow craned itself away from them both, peevishly, retracting until it barely rimmed Jude’s side. Carra could see why he’d taken the bulbs out, now—without anything to contrast against, the unnaturally fluid darkness Jude’s half-soul was made of became far easier to overlook, especially if you were already trying to.
Fifteen minutes since she’d climbed the stairs outside, by her internal clock: she could sense Sylvester and Kim approaching, rescue-minded, even now. So Carra leaned forward, laid her hand on Jude’s cheek, and opened herself up, wide.
“Look at it,” she ordered him.
His eyes snapped open, hands purple-sparking from nails to wrists with the shock, and cursed when he saw how close the shadow actually was. Snarling: “Ai-yaaah, tzao gao! Get the damn hell ass-fuck away from me, you ghost-faced piece of shit!”
That it you’re talking about, or me? she thought, reaching even further down inside him. Feeling around for something she could grab and twist.
Jude paled, tried to sit up, failed miserably. “Ugh, aaah!” he stammered, gasping. “I . . . not you, it’s just . . . diu nei lou mou, Carra, fuck your old mother, that fucking well hurts!”
Good, it should—and Gala’s dead, by the way. Now—
(stay still)
Another push, and she was all the way inside, seeing the shadow as Jude saw it: a younger, longer-haired doppelgänger, coiled and nude and slightly glowing, eyes wide with sympathy, not innocence. No scars, no sigils. She remembered looking up into those same, as yet unblemished eyes the first day Jude brushed past her in the Ryerson library, downcast and apologetic, barely able to speak without hiding his mouth in his hand.
That’d been first semester, beginning of October, and by Hallowe’en she’d shown him enough to set him on track for his first full invocation. Without knowing it, they were already set on the path to February 14th of the next year, when she’d handed Jude his black-handled knife, given herself over to the babbling storm, and watched him let ’er rip.
I did this to you, she told the shadow, sadly. Let him do it, anyhow. I’m sorry.
But: no, it said, shaking its head. Oh Carra, no. I don’t blame you or Jude, either. I don’t blame . . . anybody.
You do remember why he did it, though. Right?
Because he thought I made him weak.
But you didn’t, did you? The shadow shook its head once more, a bit slower. That’s right. Because he was stronger than he ever thought he was. Strong enough that the only thing he really has to be afraid of, if he ever stops to think about it . . . is himself.
Well . . . turns out, I’m stronger than you think I am, too. And even if I’m not, it’s my call. Not—either—of yours.
Anyhow, he’s always thought you’re the better half, though it’s not like he’ll admit it. So convince him what we want is best; tell him he can do it. Tell him he will.
The shadow nodded yet once more, as Jude’s own stare narrowed, flaring: What you mean “we,” gweilo girl? Then turned sidelong, slipping back behind him—inside him. Those two ugly, little purple points dotting Jude’s pupils suddenly winked out: quenched, doused, gone, nothing left behind but a smoothed brow, a lifted mouth-corner, and an almost involuntary sense of peace.
Huh, Carra thought. That was . . . surprisingly easy.
“You are an asshole,” Jude told her with ridiculous dignity, which only made her snort—a genuine half-guffaw, plosive enough to surprise even her.
“Takes one to know one,” she replied. And saw his lips crimp like a cat’s, struggling not to puncture his own insulted pride further by laughing as well.
Footsteps in the hall, followed by a pounding at the door, which broke off when it sprang unexpectedly open. “Carra, you okay?” she heard Sylvester call out, taking a careful step inside, Kim following after. “It’s—just been kind of a while.”
“Fine, Sy,” she answered, letting her hand fall. “Sorry to worry you.”
“No problem,” he lied. “So, is he coming? Jude Hark?”
“Present,” Jude answered, tone surprisingly even; he sat up, shake-snapping all ten fingers at once to disperse the flames as he did. “You’re from the Freihoeven, as I recall. Mister Horse-Breaker.”
“Horse-Kicker.”
“Exactly.” Jude was on his feet now, a whole head shorter than either of his newest guests, though the charisma he was suddenly projecting made that hard to notice. “Carra and I were just catching up; she got distracted, lost track of time. You know how it is.”
Sylvester studied him. “I think so,” he said. “But you never did answer my question.”
Jude contemplated him a minute, Kim too, and seemed to like what he saw. “Depends on who’s doing the driving,” he said, at last.
“Not me,” Carra said.
“Oh, then I’m definitely in.”
Before he locked Curia’s doors and brought his car around, Mac Roke had wasted a few precious minutes trying to convince Judy Kiss it was better she not come along, only to get himself roundly laughed at. “Try and stop me,” the girl replied, eventually; he’d just shrugged and held the car door open.
As they drove, Jo tried to get in touch with Carraclough Devize with predictably little luck. Eventually, however, someone connected her to Janis Mol, who spun her a tale almost made Jo believe in de
stiny.
“Already on her way,” she told Roke and the others, clicking her phone off. “Bound North, headed for Overdeere, to petition the brugh. Something about a girl and her child, both stolen away. ”
Ah, Euwphaim crowed. See, now. Did I say so, or did I no’?
You did, Nan.
Ye’d do well tae listen, next time.
Now they sat in the car outside the Connaught Trust—back entrance, along with the trash—while Roke did whatever business needed to be done inside. Judy had the passenger seat while Jo took up the back, her two ghost-companions coiled in uncomfortably close beside her.
Quiz her what she is in truth, hen, while we’ve time, Euwphaim demanded.
No, Nan.
Whyever not? Ye long t’ know yuirself—dinna bother tae deny it.
Davina blew a plume of no-smoke out the rolled-down window, chuckling. Jesus Christ, Jo—she always like this or is it a gets-worse-after-death kinda thing? Leave well enough alone, that’s always been my fuckin’ motto.
Aye, as I ken well enow, ye burnt-out end of some true witch’s leavings, content tae steer yuirself through life by hunch and guess alone, so long as ’twould bring ye best advantage. Yet ye could’ve been so much more. . . .
Yap yap yap, not like I never heard that pitch before. Thanks for nothin’, Strega Nonna.
Bloody enough! Jo snapped. She’ll tell or she won’t, and that’s an end on it.
Ye’re a wicked, stubborn girl, Jodice Glouwer.
I’m a woman grown, Nan; sold my own soul, for all you told me where t’shop it. Long as you need my skill t’ ride safe, you’ll keep a civil tongue or be cast out.
Euwphaim hooted. Hear her rail! Yet there’s no threat can still my mouth, since an ye lose me, yuir leman goes likewise. And what was it all for, then?
“I can hear you, ’case you wondered,” Judy said, without turning. “All of you. If that helps make up your mind, or anything.”
“Fine,” Jo replied, wearily. “You were possessed, the rumour goes.” Judy didn’t bother to nod. “What by?”
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