Salt and Iron

by Tam MacNeil

  He steps past the blue and nods thanks but doesn’t say it because they’re real close and the guy might smell the bourbon on his breath. So he smiles and goes through and takes in the room.

  Interrogation rooms are all more or less the same. Bare. Table molded to the floor so it looks like a mushroom sprung up out of it. There’s a chair just like it on the far side of the table, and that’s where the witch is sitting. It’s the older one, the one James figured was the dad.

  Across from him there’s Gabe, standing with a woman in a suit who James knows from doing a lot of these. She’s Alexandra Ross, duty counsel for the district. He smiles at her and extends his hand. “Ms. Ross,” he says.

  She shakes his hand and smiles right back at him.

  “Mr. van Helsing.” She speaks sotto voce, hardly above a murmur. “I was just telling Mr. Marquez that I have advised Mr. Lennox to say nothing in this matter.”

  “Is that right?” James asks, not speaking quietly. “Mr. Lennox asks for a meeting and then isn’t going to talk?” He looks at Lennox. The guy is middle years, bad haircut, hair going a little thin, gingery in color, cheeks ruddy from the sun. He looks more like a farmer than a witch, but then James is still waiting to take down somebody who actually looks like a Hallowe’en witch. When he does, he’s taking a selfie and posting it on everything. “You wasting my time, Mr. Lennox?”

  “No, I want to talk,” Lennox says, lurching forward suddenly. Chains rattle. The blues are smart. They’ve dealt with a lot of supernatural stuff, and they keep their witches in iron, just in case. “I want to tell my side of the story. I can explain.”

  “Yeah?” James asks.

  “Yes!”

  He goes over to the table, and Lennox looks back at him, and his eyes open up a little bit more.

  “Holy shit,” Lennox whispers. Behind him, time ripples like water. It should freak James the fuck out, the way it suddenly appears, but the booze has steadied him. He’s so glad he had those drinks. “Holy shit,” Lennox whispers again, and he subsides as if someone let all the air out of him.

  “Don’t let me stop you,” James says.

  The man shakes his head. “No, I… I didn’t mean it. I got bad eyes. I….” He looks from James to Gabe and back to James again. “I’m taking my lawyer’s advice,” he says and shuts his mouth so hard his teeth go clack.

  Time rolls on like a river behind him and then settles out too, so James can’t see it anymore.

  He looks at Gabe, and Gabe looks back and shrugs. Then he sighs and goes to the table and sits opposite the witch. “Mr. Lennox, we arranged this meeting because you requested it.”

  “Didn’t have all the facts then,” Lennox says. He tries to cross his arms, but he can’t. The shackles don’t allow for a lot of movement, to prevent incantation. “Changed my mind.”

  Gabe looks at James a little helplessly. Sometimes James manages to be a smooth talker, but it’s hit-or-miss. He gives it a try.

  “Look,” James says, “you don’t have to talk, of course not. In fact, your lawyer’s advised you not to. We’re not going to ask you to talk, either. I’m just gonna tell you what I think and what I’m going to say in my statement, based on what we found at the scene, okay?”

  Lennox looks from face to face and squirms where he sits.

  “So, my name is James van Helsing. I’m an expert in divination—”

  Lennox laughs, scoffing and loud. “No kidding,” he shouts, and James goes cold. Cold like he hasn’t been since he was a kid and figured out what the hell was wrong with his eyes. Cold like he thinks he might die. “Anybody else know about your expertise?”

  James is so, so glad he had those drinks. He pushes himself away from the fear. Even if Lennox accuses him it won’t mean anything. Frantic prisoner, pointing fingers at anyone in reach. He summons up his courage and keeps going.

  “I did six years of training with Bill Ellis, and I’m certified, so yes, a number of people are aware I am an expert. Now, what we found at the site was a salt circle of the kind most often used for….” He glances at Gabe.

  “Time work. I’d say for fixing time to a destiny.”

  “Now, we know that salt circles are painful to the sidhe and diminish their magic, and we also know that the only reason to build a salt circle when there’s no sidhe around is to keep them from coming to feed on the magic you’re calling up.”

  He sits back and spreads his hands.

  “So a circle like that, we figure you three were pulling some serious magic into those tarot cards you were building, enough to ring a dinner bell for all the sidhe in the district. So we think, and this is just an assessment based on evidence of course, that you were fixing destiny.”

  Lennox is shaking his head, a rapid, tiny movement, almost small enough to be a tremor.

  “Nothing to say?” he asks. “I thought you wanted to tell your side of the story.”

  Lennox says nothing.

  “The cards,” Gabe says softly. “Tell him what we’ll tell the judge about the cards.”

  James glances over at Gabe as if he’d forgotten. He nods.

  “You want to hear, Mr. Lennox?” James asks.

  Lennox’s tremor seems to grow into a headshake.

  “You probably should anyway, because this is where it’s going to get awkward for you, because those cards weren’t divination symbols. Those cards had real people’s faces on them. Faces of people who work closely with law enforcement. And you can ask your lawyer how the justice system feels about people who target those who work to uphold the law in this country.”

  “No,” Lennox says, pointing with his shaking finger as if it was a knife. “No, you can’t do this. You.” He stops, looking at Gabe and then at Ross. “You fucking know.”

  “Know what, Mr. Lennox?” Gabe asks quietly.

  “No. Ah-ah-ah,” Ross says suddenly, shaking her head. “Mr. Lennox is not obligated to answer you.”

  “But he does,” Lennox says, pointing again. “You and your family. Keeping the peace like that. You fucking know.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “You fucking know. Well, your people might make a living double-crossing, but I’m damned if I’m going back on my word, so you just put an iron bolt through my hand and send me off to a work camp. You tell your old man I’m not talking, and I never woulda talked. You tell him he’ll get what’s coming to him.”

  James turns back to Lennox. “Are you threatening my father, Mr. Lennox?”

  Lennox shakes his head, grins. “No. Just telling it like it is. He’ll get what’s coming to him. You can tell him I guarantee it.”

  “I think that’s enough,” Ross says, stepping forward. “Mr. Lennox is agitated. He’s been sleep deprived, and he’s being pressured to speak. This interview is over.”

  Gabe looks at James, then sighs and shrugs. “Good try,” he mouths.

  James gets to his feet, and Gabe comes over to him.

  “C’mon, fuck this guy,” Gabe whispers. They always do this after a bad interview, confer quietly while still in the room. Makes it look like the two of them maybe learned something important when really it was a total wash. “Asshole just wasted our time.”

  “Might have gone better if I hadn’t been here,” James says, testing a bit to see what Gabe got from what was said, to see if he noticed, if anything seemed weird to him.

  “He’s just jerking us around,” Gabe says, shrugging. He goes over to the door and buzzes the guard. James goes with him, the two of them still talking real soft. “I’m starving. Let’s get something to eat.”

  Relief washes over James like a wave. “Yeah,” he whispers. “The renos are done at the Gory Locks.” It’s just across the old hanging square, and Gabe knows it’s a favorite haunt of James’s. “Burger and beer?”

  Gabe nods. “Suits me.”

  GABE’S PROMISED to put in time at a family dinner, so he doesn’t stay. After he goes, James slides away from the table they’d occupied and moves on up to the bar. He nods at Brett, the
white bartender with the swirling tattoos and huge earplugs, grins at her, and when she says, “Usual?” he answers, “Yeah, and a double of the Birnam’s, neat.”

  “Celebrating?”

  “Sure,” he says and swaps his credit card for the glass of blood-warm whiskey, then the beer with the ice coming in flakes off the side of the glass. He didn’t mean to order two drinks off the bat like that, but if you can’t have whiskey when you thought your dirty little secret was going to come out, you can never have whiskey. When Brett gives him the raised eyebrow, he grins at her. “Been a long, dry day,” he says.

  “You gonna put anything unfermented into your belly?”

  “I had a burger.”

  “Like two hours ago.”

  He shrugs. “How ’bout a grilled cheese?” he asks. Comfort food.

  “You want a deep-fried pickle with it? Stick with a theme?”

  He laughs. “I sure as hell do,” he says.

  LATE. NOT sure how much time has passed. Brett slides his credit card back to him, and he gets his greasy fingerprints all over the black plastic. “Thanks,” he tells her. She gives him a cockeyed grin.

  “You get home safe now, you hear?” she says.

  He didn’t realize he was going. Must be late.

  “Yeah. Will. Thanks, Brett.”

  He slides off the stool. It’s always harder to stand up than he thinks it’s going to be. They should make people stand when they drink so they know how drunk they’re getting. He tells her so. She tells him good night.

  HE HANGS around outside, wondering if he can work his phone enough to get a cab, and the answer, well, the answer is actually no. So he sits down on the curb and looks at the wind rustling the leaves of the trees in the old hanging square. It’s well past midnight now, and the air’s still hot and sticky. He’s already taken off his jacket. He’d take off his shirt if he thought he could get away with it. Take off his skin too, if he thought he could get away with it. He grins at the thought. Take off your skin and what’s underneath? Anything else going to keep that bag of blood together?

  “Hey,” someone says, and he looks over from the pirouetting trees. It’s Brett, the bartender. Short. Blonde. Tattooed all over the parts of her arms that are bare, and up her neck too. Tattoos probably everywhere. Swallows and trees and things. It occurs to him that he’s never seen her whole body, right down to the floor. She’s always just the top half of her, behind the bar.

  “Shift over?” he asks her.

  “Closing up early. Tornado warning,” she says. “You okay to get home?”

  She stands slightly to one side of him, like she’s a bit of a dog person and he’s a stray dog with a fifty-fifty chance of having rabies. He smiles at her.

  “Gotta sober up, then I’m gonna call a cab.”

  But the air does feel thick, like it’s the kind of thing you could spoon onto dry land to water it. And the trees that were sighing like someone in a bed, they’ve gone still. She frowns at him.

  “I don’t think you got time for that.”

  He shrugs. He’s far too drunk to care, really.

  She shakes her head. She glares at him. “You’re a bit of a mess, van Helsing,” she says. “C’mon, I’ll give you a lift.”

  He brightens. “Really?”

  “As long as you promise not to puke. Though God knows you don’t tip well enough.”

  She points to a little blue rust bucket of uncertain but considerable age and reliability, and James hears the clunk of the doors unlocking. He looks at her, at her hand. She doesn’t have a key fob. She has a key ring with a little metal spine dangling from it. No keys. He blinks and looks at her.

  “Get in,” she says.

  He makes an involuntary noise and lurches back a little. She smiles, showing teeth now.

  “You think you’re so sneaky,” she says.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Brett the bartender,” she answers. “Who are you, van Helsing?”

  He steps back. He left in a bit of a hurry. He didn’t bring anything to fight with, and he’s hardly steady on his feet. This is not going to end well.

  “You fuckin’ stay away.”

  She laughs. “Don’t be stupid. If I wanted to kill you I’d have kept serving you.”

  He blinks. “Thought it was closing time.”

  “I’m talking about killing somebody, and you think I’d be worried about liquor service legislation? You really are wasted.”

  He swallows. “What do you want?”

  “To get to shelter before the goddamned sky splits open. And Skinny Mary’ll kill me if I let you die. Now get in.”

  He hesitates, because Skinny Mary is the queen of the seelie court and none of what Brett just said makes any sense. But there’s a tornado coming and fuck it. He goes to the passenger side and pulls open the door. The car’s old, but it’s clean. A pair of sunglasses in the ashtray, a water bottle in the cup holder, another little spine dangling from the rearview mirror. He drops into the seat, a little less graceful than he’d like to be. He doesn’t say anything when she puts her hand on the steering column and starts the car. He doesn’t say anything when she loops out of the pub parking lot and down Shakespeare Street, but when she hits the highway, then he asks.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You think I’m going anywhere near the Firm’s buildings, you are fucking nuts.”

  He frowns at her. “You offered to drive me.”

  “Yeah. So I’m driving you.”

  It trickles through. “You kidnapping me?” he asks. He probably ought to be nervous about that, but if she is the joke’s totally on her. “Because I’m a shitty hostage, and I’m going to be terrible for ransom. You want my brother. He’s the valuable one.”

  “Not kidnapping you.”

  “What then?”

  “Taking you somewhere safe.”

  He looks at her for a long time. Then he licks his lips with his dried-up tongue. “I think we maybe got differing opinions on what the word safe actually means.”

  She grins at him. “Actually, I think we probably have more in common with that than we have with anything else.”

  They pass the old Summer Court motel and the gas station/liquor store/diner that are all that remains of an old truck-stop complex and drive a little farther, out into the dark. Then she turns off the highway, down a narrow road that James recognizes. It’s the road that runs past the old Sweno house where the witches were. It’s the road that pools out in the driveway of the old church, so heavily garlanded with vines. That’s where they’re going.

  The church is all lit up, almost swallowing the car’s headlights. Lights all the way up to the belfry and spilling out the broken patches of the roof and out the sides of the building, as if it’s coming apart at the seams.

  “C’mon,” Brett says, shutting the car off just like she started it and pulling the parking brake. “Mary, the Skinny Lady, she loves surprises.”

  HE SHOULD probably be more afraid than he is, but nothing’s really getting through the thick rind of alcohol that’s on him. He gets out, bracing himself on the car door as he does. He follows her to the church door. It arches overhead, old Norman style, even though it’s a pretty modern building, neglected though it may be. James seemed to remember something about a high water table, something about bad land making the church unusable. Seems like a bad place to be taking shelter.

  “God gonna protect us from the tornado?” he asks at the door.

  She turns to him and smirks. “One, it’s been deconsecrated. Two, you think Skinny Mary is going to let some cranky sky god come and mess up her place?” She shakes her head. “You’re a bigger idiot than people say. And that’s saying something.”

  “Hey,” he says.

  So he’s not too drunk to be indignant. She gestures, and the door opens, and she passes inside. What the hell. He follows.

  IT’S STANDARD Baptist church layout. Entryway, double doors—in this case they’re standing open�
��and then the nave.

  It’s a beautiful little space, but it’s probably not how the builders envisioned it. The only thing that’s unchanged is the altar, still standing at the front of the church, and behind it, painted on the wall in only-just-visible black and peeling letters:

  The harvest is past

  the summer has ended

  and we are not saved.

  Everything else has been modified. The windows are boarded up and covered over with canvas. A heap of books, probably prayer books and hymnals, stand stacked in one corner, slowly growing ferns. If there ever were pews in here, they’re gone, and instead there’s a big red rug over the honey-colored floorboards, and a dining table, huge, almost as long as the entire length of the place, stands on top of it.

  He frowns at the table, heavy with lit candles standing free, or in a silver candelabra, or in wine bottles and on plates. The candles cast all the light in the place, making it glow golden, filling the air with the sweet scent of beeswax and perfumes, and in that sweetness there’s the smell of some kind of chocolate cigarillo, and dust and growing things. A pair of people sit together at the altar end of the huge dining table. For certain definitions of people. He stares.

  There’s a shape covered in a veil embroidered with red flames, with slim hands resting on the table, one holding a cup and the other a skinny little cigarillo. There’s a man with gold-ringed hands folded over a black wood stick topped with a skull, also gold, and smoking a cigar the size of a police baton. James doesn’t have to be introduced. He’d know the La Flaca and the Loa kingpin anywhere.

  Baron Samedi’s flanked by a pair of men, one of them smaller, slighter, and carrying a banjo, the other standing with his arms folded. James would bet good money these two are the Baron’s Dogs, Doorman and Strongarm, shape-changers who control the borders of things and keep order in his little dominion. Maybe it was Brett who got him in here, but if he’s allowed to go, it’ll be those two who let him out.