by Allison Hurd
“I don’t see a problem.”
“Well, where are you gonna sit? And what about Gregor?”
“I’m going to go sit with Gregor, ‘til he or the ‘cubus are around to chat.”
My sister looks at me, dumbstruck. “You’re shitting me, right?”
“Oh no,” I manage to say through pain clenched teeth. “I’m serious as the grave.” I pull my hand away from my shoulder to show a fresh pool of blood in my palm.
CHAPTER 7
“I’m not fucking leaving you here!” Lia shouts at me.
“No, you’re not. You’ll come back for me. But right now, we have five kids to get safe, and we’re in an area where a freakin’ grenade going off doesn’t bring the cops. They need us more, right now.”
“You’re bleeding out, and you want me to worry about a few strung out college kids?”
“Lia, they’ve only had saltines in days—weeks, maybe. They’re on the brink of starvation, and they’re going to need a boat load of therapy, probably. And I can’t go to the hospital like this—you know they report all gunshots. Here. I’ll take a protein bar and some electrolyte juice, and I promise to shoot first, okay?”
“No. No! Not okay. I’ll call 9-1-1 and we can all go to the hospital together; let the police deal with the asshole inside.”
“And let a bunch of the guys in blue meet an angry, hungry incubus? Or let Gregor walk away from this when he knows our real names? Where our parents live? No. Not cool, Lia, not cool.”
She looks at me stubbornly, jutting her chin out. “Then I’ll just lock ‘em in the car and wait with you ‘til this is finished.” As if taking my side in the argument, one of the guys begins seizing.
“We’re wasting time, Lia. I’m not gonna die in the next hour. Do the job, and then come get me.”
She looks like she’s going to argue some more.
“Lia,” I say more gently. “We’ve already started rescuing them. It’s a little late to stop now. Have some faith, okay? Go ahead. I’ll try to save you some work.”
“You suck,” she caves. “Fine. Fine if you wanna do this Rambo-like, you get Clyde, then, and I hope he poops on you.”
We unload the goat and the other ritual items after we check on Mike, who seems to have stopped seizing, but his heart beat is fast and shallow. Ophelia quickly doffs her Motocross jacket and pants, now looking like a normal girl in a t-shirt and leggings, and gets into the car.
“Be careful!” she yells at me as she zooms off towards the nearest emergency room. I kind of wish I could be there to hear her story for the officials. Goat’s leash and related paraphernalia affixed to my person, I head back inside.
Back in the room with the betrayer called Gregor, I angle myself down to the ground and apply pressure to my shoulder. I keep my gun in my left hand, ready to go if anything happens, and take a second to compose myself. I even try to eat a bite of protein bar, but it feels more like chalk in my mouth than usual. I give the rest to Clyde.
It’s time to make a decision. Ideally, I’d like Gregor neutralized before the incubus shows up, but who knows when that will be. I look at my shoulder. It’s probably not that bad an injury, overall, but I’ve lost a goodly amount of blood, and stand to lose a little more before the day is over. My options appear to be limited. I can’t really let Gregor just walk out of this. For one thing, in some capacity he’s helped in the abduction and illness of seven innocent humans, and the death of one. He’s also broken our code: bros before lust eating monsters. We’ve all fought in this war long enough to know that. Crossing the streams is expressly forbidden—humans have no place in the pantheons, except as either play things or exterminators.
On a more personal level, he also knows how to get at my family now that he and the traffic cop have my real name and parents’ address. It’s hard work keeping up a secret identity, but I’m doing the best I can, given today’s privacy-phobic lifestyle. Also, I can’t quite forget that little thing where he shot me. Emotionally, I’m not super inclined to let bygones be fucking bygones.
So, I can kill him, I can leave him and let his wound kill him, or I can call the cops and have him locked up for a good long time. I weigh these options, and find them all lackluster. This is why we don’t tangle with human monsters. I don’t hesitate for a second before sending a werewolf back to its weirding; but Gregor, as shitty an example of humanity as I believe he is, is still in my weirding, and I am not its deity.
I try to think of things that would make his actions justifiable, but unless all seven of these people agreed to try incubus toxin as a cure for their life threatening diseases, I really can’t conjure a situation that would exonerate him—especially as I have evidence that this is not the case, and that Cody could have been saved if he’d been fed. The list of rules we banishers have is pretty simple. We don’t help monsters hang out on earth, and we don’t feed people to monsters. End of list. But while I’m quite happy to be either judge or jury, being both seems like more effort than I want to expend for the douche nozzle knocked out in front of me.
On the other hand, I’d really rather he not walk off with the cops. Obviously, he and the police are a dangerous combination, and his arrest still wouldn’t change the fact that he knows more than I want him to. So like I said, not many options, and all of them suck.
I stare miserably at the ground in front of me. There is one more option. It also sucks, but in a Summer-feels-guilty sort of way, not in a Mama-just-killed-a-man sort of way or in an A-psychopath-knows-where-I-live kind of way. I feel guilt for a lot of things. One more probably won’t kill me. Probably.
I start taking things for a Celtic summoning ritual from my spell pouch. I’ve never used it before, but I know the theory behind it—it was taught to me by the Dark Lady herself, so I’m pretty confident that it will work. A dead ember, to stand in for fire. A feather for air, a river stone for water. A skeleton leaf which Lia and I found in the Appalachians for earth. I arrange them in order at the cardinal points and in the center I place a crouton on a placemat made of a piece of paper cut from my favorite book, blotted with my blood.
The Fair Folk are notoriously against being summoned, and are actually pretty opposed to being compelled in general. They can perform mental gymnastics the likes of which you have not seen in this world to get out of their deals. It is partly for this reason that my colleagues and I stick to banishing. Each pantheon has its own hurdle for those who would like to ask a favor of them, and most of them can be tricky. Also, there’s a huge chance that summonings can go awry. The thing might get free, or you might accidentally call the wrong one or it might cost something you didn’t realize until you’re staring a hellhound in the teeth and need to do something fast or die.
I sit back and look at the beginnings of my ritual for a minute. I’m sorry it’s come to this. It’s the first step on a slippery path to nowhere good. I hope Lia will forgive me. Then I stand up, careful not to disturb my ritual circle. I’ll need it ready when it’s time. I take the smelling salts from my pocket, giving myself a dose to sharpen my focus before waving it under Gregor’s nose. I then collapse back against my wall.
He starts to come to, obviously trying to decide which hurts more: the leg we’ve hastily bandaged, or his head. I smirk a little at his discomfort. It’s really important to stop and enjoy the little things. I watch as his memory comes back, and the man goes still, testing to see just how very shackled he is. Then he notices me, and looks up from the ground where we’ve laid him.
“Welcome back,” I murmur.
“You shot me!”
“It seemed fair.”
“I’ll kill you!”
“No, Gregor. We danced that dance. I’m leading this one.” I pull the slide back on my gun, painfully. I should have switched it for a revolver. Ah well, lesson learned. Next time.
“You’re gonna start with what the hell you’re doing here.”
“I ain’t gonna do nothin’.”
“It’s true, I’ve
bound your limbs, not your will. But I could shoot a couple more of them ‘til you’re feeling cooperative.” I scrunch my face at my spell pouch. “Think I still got a little of that Colombian truth dust, too. I suppose I could bind your will….”
He doesn’t respond.
“You’re only here ‘cause I’m curious. If you’re not gonna dance with me, I don’t really need you to be here.”
Still nothing from the old ogre. It’s like talking to a wall. A hideous, murderous wall.
“Suit yourself.”
I take a deep breath, focusing the last of my dwindling supply of brain power. Then I grab my ritual dagger, and kneel facing the river stone situated to the east in my circle, dagger point against the floor.
“Like the waters that flow ever to the sea, and return to the dark places of the world, I come back to you.” I move the dagger clockwise south, tracing a line over the skeleton leaf. “Like the seeds nourished in the bed of the earth, I grow with your blessing.” Next, the ember. “Like the light that casts shadows more fearsome than the night, I see this world and the other.” Finally, my dagger moves over the feather. “Like the wind that whispers of distant places, I wait for your voice to speak.” I close the circle, and wait for a moment until it seems that I am looking at each of my symbolic tokens as they are here, and also in their true state somewhere else. It’s a strange layering effect, like double exposure on a film. The river stone is a small black stone on worn floorboards, and also one of thousands soaking in a stream. The feather is a feather, and also a crow, staring at me with wild eyes.
That is how the veil, as this pantheon chooses to see it, is lifted between the Celtic world and ours.
“I honor the Dark Lady, and humbly seek audience with Maithe Dweubhal. I thank the Bright One, and beg he remembers his daughter in her trials.”
Gregor sits mute through all of this, but as I finish he whispers hoarsely. “What have you done?”
“Let’s wait and find out,” I reply, but I’m asking myself the same question. What have I done? As part of the...settlement, I suppose you could call it, when I first sent the fae that took my sister’s childhood back under the hill, I was given three boons in a decade to ask of the creature. We swore that we’d never do it. Even assuming the summoning ritual goes well, it’s dangerous. For one, though it must grant me the boon, if I’m not extremely careful it will find a way to tack on riders or read in ambiguities. The fae are sort of like super aggressive salesmen. Sure, there are very strict rules about the codes of conduct we anticipate from them, but in the space between every word of every law is a little wiggle room to be exploited. And the Fair Folk have had millennia to learn all of those loopholes. Our other reasoning is that no matter how generous the offer, no matter how convenient it might be, you don’t generally want to go asking the person who burned your house down for a cup of sugar. No. Once a door to something that traumatic is closed, you never want to see it open again. And here I am, putting out the good dishes and inviting the damn thing over for tea. Not a high moment in my life, but like I said; my options are limited, and I know it can do what I’m hoping.
The air stirs like a breeze is coming through the windows, except it is blowing the wrong way, emanating from the ritual circle.
“Last chance,” I tell Gregor. “You can tell me what the hell is going on, or….” Suspense is a wonderful tool in interrogations. What you imagine is always scarier than what you know.
The large man looks with increasing unease at the portal I’ve just opened. “It’s just business,” he says nervously.
“Go on.”
“Had a big to-do couple years back. Got into it with Hades. Wasn’t gonna make it back top side. Said he’d let me go—even help me out—if I handled a few things for him. Nothin’ big. So I agreed, dammit.”
“Deals with devils, Gregor, I’m disappointed.” The wind is picking up, and now the circle I’ve made is filled with darkness. “Explain this though,” I demand, eyeing the room we’re in. “Explain why Ophelia had a fucking piece pointed at her, and why I’m sweating red.”
“It was the job.” The room suddenly returns to stillness, and there’s now a small humanoid creature eyeing the crouton in the middle of the circle. Gregor sees it too, and his discomfort deepens.
“Don’t worry about that. Worry about me. Finish the story. What was the job?”
“Watch the incubus. Make sure it wasn’t interrupted. I was...I was sort of like the zookeeper. I guess the pantheon decided it deserved a little vacation.”
“So you fed it seven people? And tried to feed it Lia?” I’m getting angry now, but I don’t want to yell. Maithe Dweubhal is nibbling the offering and looking at us curiously as the human food solidifies her concept of this world.
“It was almost done. You were messin’ up the deal, and I’ve already gone too far. Would’ve solved my problems nicely if it got at you two.”
“Fuck you,” I state heatedly, trying to measure my tone. “You broke the rule. What would you do to me if I’d tried to kill you ‘cause a monster said so?”
He chuckles weakly. “I’d kill you right back. Go ahead. Do it.”
“Not really ready to let you off that easy, Gregor.” I turn my attention to the ritual circle.
“How you feeling, Maithe Dweubhal?”
She grins too widely at me. “What does the wounded bird call us for?” she asks with a voice deeper than her diminutive stature would suggest.
I hold Gregor’s eye. “I want him to lose every memory he has of Ophelia, me, and this deal with Hades, so that he might never be able to use them again.” I’d carefully constructed this command so that she couldn’t find a way around the intent of my request.
Maithe Dweubhal’s grin widens, while Gregor’s face goes paler. “You’re about to make me cross Hades? That’s death!”
“It was your deal,” I respond coldly. “It won’t be my hands that end your pathetic life, it will be those of the god you serve.” He glowers. “Oh, please. Don’t act like you didn’t know when you made the deal that he was the one gonna come for you, one day.”
“You heartless c—”
“Is this the wingless one’s boon?” Maithe Dweubhal cuts in.
“It is.”
“Memory is a troublesome thing….” She says, her inhuman little face twisted. I can’t ever tell if faeries are actually a little on the evil side of things as a rule, or if their unnatural facial symmetry and penchant for chaos make it hard for me to tell the difference between their resting faces and their hell raiser faces.
“This is the boon I would ask of Maithe Dweubhal.”
“And so it shall be,” she finishes the agreement, turning her attention on the bound man.
She begins to steal his memories. I’m gripped by a panic attack as I watch, remembering the first time I saw this happening a dozen years ago. The horror, the helplessness of watching my sister’s youth leave her mind, and not knowing how to make it stop. And here I am, intentionally doing this to someone else.
It’s surreal, watching memories coalesce. It’s sort of like watching a television show in another language. The overarching emotion is almost always familiar, something we all can relate to. But it is meaningless. It’s lovely, and terrible, and sad. Afterwards, he will wake, shaky and confused. He’ll live the rest of his miserable life with frightening, inexplicable gaps in his memory. Depending on how deeply embedded some of these memories are, and how long he’s been working with Hades, he may lose whole swaths of things—people’s names, partners he’s loved, who knows. And it was my mouth that ordered this. I’d still say his crime is worse than mine, but then my hands aren’t tied by a god. There were no better solutions, though—not this time. I can cope with this guilt. I couldn’t cope with having my parents or Lia hurt because I messed up one time. I’ll just add it to my pile of nightmare fuel.
As the faerie extracts the memories, Gregor passes out. It must be exhausting, watching all of these things you suddenly
don’t recall slide from your body. I wonder if it hurts? Don’t borrow trouble, Summer.
The memories eventually stop streaming from Gregor’s inert form. “He no longer has the memories,” the small fae informs me.
“Great, thanks.”
“They must have a home.”
See what I mean? There’s always a catch with these guys. “Excuse me?”
“A memory is precious. It is spiritual matter. It must be put somewhere.”
“So take ‘em, isn’t that what you’re good at?”
“That I will not do. These memories belong to another god, and I will not burden my queen with the care of them.”
“But this is my boon.”
“The boon is performed. The bear man no longer has them. The boon did not specify what was to happen with them afterwards.”
I take a deep breath and clench my fists to keep from shaking her. “Don’t you get tired thinking of ways to break agreements?” I ask her.
Her face is emotionless. I look around me. I’ve got some rocks, a bottle from a sports drink, an unconscious man, and a goat.
“Is there anything in this room that I can use?”
She nods.
“This bottle okay?” She looks at it dubiously.
“It may hold some of the memories….” She says hesitantly, reaching for it. I hand it to her and she examines it, crawling in it herself. The temptation to close her in there like so many fireflies is great, but I think I’m pushing my luck as far as possible already.
“I think I can put the memories he had of Ophelia and her larger shadow in here,” she states, referencing me as the shadow. “At least temporarily. There are not many of them.”
“What do you mean, ‘temporarily’?”
She shrugs. “Many memories decay. In this porous container, I would expect faster decay.”
“And what happens when they decay?”
She grins again. “That depends on the memory.”
I am regretting my decision already. “What will happen when these decay?”