Salt and Iron

by Tam MacNeil

  “Come on, sweetie. I’ll fix us a drink. We’ll talk.”

  His stomach clenches. The way it did when he thought his dad was going to throw him over the rail, the way it did when he heard about Abe. When Rob stuck his fingers down his throat to puke up the blood. Time and destiny might as well be in a million pieces overhead. He knows the future he wants, and he knows how to make it.

  He drags his foot through the circle. His mother stops moving. Wailing Mary sighs.

  “Gabriel Marcus Antonio Marquez,” he whispers, and he feels the way Gabe jolts at the command of his name. “Tell Skinny Mary it’s done. She should come and get her sister.”

  Sixteen

  THERE’S NO reason to stay while the Marys get reacquainted; there’s no place for him in the midst of that. Instead, he goes looking for his dad. He can’t get to the stairs; they’re blocked by growing black thorns. He takes the elevator. Goes to the third floor. Goes to the office, but it’s empty. A vast stain on the carpet. A circle of dark fluid, dried on some papers. All that’s left of Abe van Helsing.

  And on the wall there are words written in huge letters.

  I shall make Jerusalem a heap of ruins and a den of jackals.

  I shall make the cities desolate, with no one left alive.

  Under the words, the wood-paneled walls flake wood stain and slivers, and the carpet is dark, rotten, sprouting mushrooms.

  He goes.

  If his father’s not here, he knows where he will be.

  There were three buildings that used to drive him nuts, boarded up and abandoned, sagging badly, exactly the kind of place that would be a perfect little nest. Three buildings he told his dad about, three buildings his dad said couldn’t be torn down.

  Two of them he’s been to, and they’ve purged, but the third one, the third one is where Benecio died, where Gabe was turned, where the evil was too big for them. The third one is left. So that’s where he goes.

  The plywood cover is still off the door, and there’s blood on the step going in, but the streets are empty. There’s plenty of parking now, not that he’s got a vehicle. He looks around. It’s like a set piece on a back lot at a movie studio or something. Empty street, sightless buildings. Even the garbage dumpsters that were near the buildings that are being renovated look kind of fake—they’re perfectly clean and totally empty. Nobody’s been down here since the last time he came. It’s been a few days, but word’s probably gotten around that the Firm got its ass kicked here, and even the punks and the goths aren’t coming down to look around. Everything’s still too fresh.

  He goes in. The offices are still full of swirling dust and broken plaster, and the glass of shattered mirrors lies in the bathrooms. He should probably feel some kind of anxiety, but he doesn’t. He’s tired. He wants a drink. He wants to go home. He wants this to be over. That’s all.

  He goes down, down the long stair to the coagulated stain where Benecio’s body had lain. The corpse is gone, but nobody bothered with the blood. He steps around it, more disgusted than sorrowful, though there’s a little bit of that in him too.

  He goes down to where he and Yuko found Gabe and Rob. It’s a big space, heavy with the dead and with magic and hidden away from daylight and from questions. His father is there. There with the cards. Cards spread out on the salted floor before him. When James sets foot on the metal stairs that go down, he looks up. He smiles. Sad but cold.

  “You should have stayed away, James Thomas van Helsing.”

  It’s like when Yuko commanded him. Hollow and empty, as if deeply drunk or retreating from terror.

  “Tell me why you came here,” Abraham says.

  “To get you back,” James answers.

  Abraham’s mouth twitches. “So you came alone, knowing I’d know your name, knowing everything your mother and I did for you, and you thought I’d let you, what, ‘get me back’?”

  It’s not really a question. He’s not commanded to answer. He waits. The part of his mind that is free starts looking for a toehold, a handhold, anything. Then his feet are moving. He’s going toward the altar, where there’s a bottle of whiskey standing open, a libation poured out.

  “Drink it,” Abraham says. “Drink the whole goddamned bottle.”

  It’s far too much even for him, even with all his practice.

  “You know what? They’ll call it the bad year, the year we lost our two boys. They’ll say Abe was depressed. They’ll say you got drunk.”

  He’s chugging the whiskey from the bottle as if it’s water. His eyes are streaming, his nose burning. His throat contracts as if his body knows this is too much alcohol for one person. He coughs and gags.

  “Keep drinking,” Abraham says.

  He does.

  “You got drunk, James, and you fell because you have no goddamned self-control. You fell. That’s what they’ll say. That’s the kind of thing that happens to fuck-ups like you. You took Abe from me,” he shouts, “You turned him against the family, and he had to die. You took the son I wanted.”

  The bottle’s empty. He sets it down on the altar.

  “Go up the stairs.”

  He goes to the stairs, tall and narrow. He remembers how he ran down them, when Gabe had the gun. It used to be the place where they’d saved Gabe and Rob, but now it’s going to be the place where James did that final stupid fucking thing. Where he drank too much and died.

  “God, I hope you break your neck. I hope you lie there paralyzed.”

  “Now, now,” someone says.

  He knows that voice, the casual calm of it and the scent of chocolate cigarillos that comes with it. Skinny Mary.

  “Now, now, Abraham. That’s no way to treat your kin.”

  He’d turn to see, but he can’t.

  “You let that boy go, Abraham. You hear me? What are you, one of the Baron’s bad Dogs? Am I gonna have to find a newspaper to smack your nose with? You let him go.”

  Abraham laughs. “You can’t. Can’t possibly,” he says. “None of you.”

  He wants to see. He wants to turn his head. James can guess what Abraham means. The salt on the ground. Abraham knew this might happen, that the sidhe would corner him, and James’s true name wouldn’t be quite enough. He knew it might happen the way James hoped it wouldn’t.

  In spite of himself, James inches closer to the edge of the stairs.

  “Make him take one more step and I swear to God, van Helsing, you’re going to be the one who ends up with a broken back.” And that voice, that belongs to Gabe.

  James hears a laugh. Abraham’s getting nervous. His control is slipping. James can move his eyes, turn his head a little. He looks.

  Gabe is standing beside Skinny Mary. He’s still half-dressed, and from this angle, James can see the white scars on his back where the mouths and the wings used to be. Gabe’s head is up, his arm extended. He’s got Rob’s revolver, the one he offered to James not all that long ago, in his hand.

  “Oh, you’d like to come after me, wouldn’t you?”

  Abraham laughs, but James can feel the fear in it.

  “Well I’d invite you to, but I hear you’re on a low-salt diet.”

  “Shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” Gabe says softly.

  “No, you can’t bluff out of this.” Abraham’s eyes are wide. He shakes his head, not an answer to a question but a man refusing to believe the apparition before him. The cards have fallen at his feet. “I saw you.”

  Gabe grins. “Yeah? Did you?”

  “You were in my office.” His control is coming to pieces. “I saw you! I saw you, and, and, and I’ve got nothing to fear from you,” he adds.

  A note of triumph, a wild surge that grips James again.

  Abraham grins, mouth twisted, lopsided, like a gash in his face. “Nothing to fear from any of you. You, you’ve been turned. Even if you do look human, nobody will believe a thing you say. And you, you want to cross this salt it’s going to cost you godhood. You think I don’t know what I’m talking about?”


  “Oh,” Skinny Mary says, “I’m pretty sure you do.”

  “And that.” He points up, to where James stands teetering on the edge of the stair. “My fuck-up of a son.” He turns, directing his comments at James. “Everybody knows you’re a drunk. You’re unstable. You can’t be trusted. Even if you do get out of here, no one is going to believe you about it, about any of it. Who would even believe it? Any of it?”

  A little trickle of anger slips through James, as if there’s a tap inside him somewhere and it’s just started to leak. He can move a little. Between the distraction of Gabe and Skinny Mary and the anger, he’s getting a foothold in his own mind again.

  Abraham’s fear breaks some of the hold. James’s anger breaks it more. His hands settle on the rail and gather up the rust.

  “I’ve got nothing to fear from you,” Abraham says. “Nothing. You know what Abe did before he came home? He went to the witches, and they told him, they gave him a prophecy on a piece of paper. I found it. It says ’til the sun goes out and fools rush in, death cannot harm you.’ You hear me?”

  James smiles faintly. “Abe,” he says softly. He can move his mouth, but it’s not easy. “Abe was The Sun.”

  Abraham looks up at him.

  “I was The Fool.”

  He feels his father’s sudden panic, the way it breaks the hold on him.

  “Gabe was Death.”

  “And I’m Justice,” Skinny Mary says softly. “You think my sister’s never told me her son’s name?”

  Panic, terror.

  “Now listen to me, Abraham James Jephtha van Helsing. You’ve done enough harm. You let that poor boy go.”

  Abraham’s hold on James dissolves. The command falls off him like a coat.

  James rights himself, gasping, and pushes back from the rail. He’s drunk, really drunk, too drunk to be on his feet. He grips the stairs with both hands. He doesn’t want to fall.

  Gabe has moved. James hears him running up the stairs.

  “I got you, I got you,” he whispers, catching James, easing him down onto the stair. He nods.

  “Yeahgrea,” James slurs. “Thans.”

  He looks down at Abraham and Skinny Mary. She’s made him cross the salt and come to her, and now he’s standing docile, and she’s pulling apart the world so it opens like a curtain, and James can see the grand old Rogers place, whitewashed and bright in a sourceless kind of sunlight. There’s a woman standing at the portico. Tall, long-necked, draped in gold. She has no face, and the air around her is broken like ice.

  “What’s she going to do?” James whispers.

  Gabe makes a small noise. “Take him into Shadow, I guess.”

  “Oh Jesus.”

  “You wanna get between Wailing Mary and vengeance? For that guy? After what he did?”

  James knows what the answer ought to be, but he knows the truth too. “No,” he whispers. He shakes his head. He’s sick, the room spinning. “I gotta get down from here,” he says.

  Gabe helps him to his feet, and they make it down the ringing stairs before it becomes too much, vertiginous and sick-making.

  “Maybe don’t come over here,” he warns Gabe and then pushes away from him. He leans against the wall and then gives up and goes to his knees ’til most of the alcohol comes out and there’s nothing left in there. When he’s done, Gabe hands him a bottle of blood-warm water. Might even be the one from the vending machine earlier today.

  “Rinse,” he says, as if James needed the command. Gabe looks hard at him. “You okay?”

  “I don’t think I need my stomach pumped,” he says. He looks up at Gabe and has to work to focus on his face. “But I definitely shouldn’t drive.”

  Gabe laughs softly. “That’s not what I meant, you asshole,” he says and gets James to his feet.

  Epilogue

  “WHERE ARE we going?” James asks, because it’s a hot night, and sticky, and he’s leaning hard on Gabe, and they’re both sweating, and he feels sick from the alcohol.

  “Almost there,” Gabe promises.

  They’re on a nice tree-lined street with gray-and-white townhouses all up and down the block. He recognizes them, vaguely. Like he was in this kind of a state the last time he was here.

  “Rob and Yuko’s place?” he asks.

  “Can’t take you to the Firm,” Gabe says. “There’s been a murder.”

  “Oh Jesus,” he sighs. “Did it really have to go that way?”

  “I think it did,” Gabe answers. “You beat a dog long enough, sometimes you get bit.”

  James is trying to come up with something to say to that when he sees Yuko and Rob waiting for them, standing close together in front of one of the little places. It’s the closest James has ever seen the two of them in public before. Howls is hanging on to her father and looking around with a general sort of interest.

  “Thank God,” Yuko says, coming down the steps toward them. “You two okay?”

  “Yeah,” Gabe says quietly. “Skinny Mary’s looked after… everything.”

  She sighs and nods. “Two orphans,” she says. She touches Gabe on the shoulder and then draws them both up into a hug. “I’m sorry, you guys,” she says. Then she sniffs at James. “Ugh,” she says, stepping back. “Really?”

  James holds up one hand. “I’m sorry that every time I come to your place I’m drunk,” he says. “This time it really wasn’t up to me.”

  She looks at Gabe. He nods. “Abraham made him drink a ton of whiskey. Was going to throw him down the stairs. Make it look like an accident.”

  James nods. “Is H…,” he starts and stops. It’s not his business, and Rob and Yuko are private people, but the fact is, he wants to know. “Is Howls okay?”

  Yuko smiles faintly. “Yeah. Thanks. Come on,” she says.

  Rob gets the door open and props it with his foot. Howls, propped on Rob’s hip, looks at James with considerable skepticism.

  “Hey, kiddo,” James says. He goes to knuckle her chubby cheek and gets rewarded with a mouthful of teeth, sharp as a kitten’s. “Ow!”

  “She bite you?” Rob asks.

  “Yeah.” James laughs a little, even though it really did hurt. “It’s okay.”

  Yuko shakes her head. “No, no, with sidhe you have to start early. Here, let me take her.”

  Rob shifts Howls over to her.

  “Remember, little one?” she says to Howls, taking one of her small hands in hers and doing a kind of patty-cake thing and singing, “We don’t bite our friends, that’s how friendship ends….”

  Gabe watches with a sort of enraptured expression on his face. “She’s adorable. I want a hundred.”

  “You say that now,” Rob says, “but it’s less adorable at three in the morning. And then at five. And again at seven. Come on.”

  He gestures to them and follows Yuko inside.

  YUKO MAKES them coffee. Rob pulls out a box of cookies and starts cutting up some fruit. Gabe takes Howls and bumps her along on his knee. When she starts to fuss, both parents disappear to do whatever it is that sidhe babies need to have done. Probably something diaper-related.

  He and Gabe sit silently for a bit, Gabe munching on a piece of apple, James sipping his coffee.

  “I guess it’s yours now,” Gabe says after a pause. “The Firm, I mean.”

  “No,” James says softly. “No way.”

  Gabe turns his head toward him and frowns. “What do you mean?”

  “Never wanted it. Still don’t.”

  “You really going to walk away? After all this?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’m done with it. If I never step foot in there again it’ll be too soon.”

  Gabe frowns at him.

  “I know. Generations of tradition down the crapper. I always was the screwup.”

  Gabe laughs softly. “Who, then?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “Who’s going to run it? Who do you trust to take it on? You can’t just walk away. I mean, things have to be different now.
Of course they do. It’s not a war anymore. But it’s still important work. You can’t just walk away.”

  He laughs. “Sure I can,” he says, but he nods, because Gabe is right. It would be wrong to walk away. To leave the Firm in the hands of someone who maybe wouldn’t understand, who maybe would repeat the mistakes of the past, would fight the sidhe instead of work with them. Battles in the streets, blood, turnings. “Rob and Yuko,” he says. “Equal shares.”

  “That’d be nice, but they won’t,” Gabe says.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “They didn’t even want us to know they were dating, let alone had a kid together. No, they’re private people, Jamie. They won’t take it.”

  James smiles, watching Gabe speak. Gabe’s head is turned just a little, like a sparrow sussing out the breadcrumb situation at a cafe table.

  “What?” Gabe says, a little nervously.

  “You,” James says. “Maybe you’d like it.”

  Gabe laughs, and when James doesn’t, he sobers. “You’re serious.”

  “Think of what you’ve lost,” James says. “Nobody here is going to accuse you of not earning it.”

  “James, I’m… I’m sidhe now. Sort of.”

  “So were we. Maybe it’ll work better this time. Keep things honest.”

  Gabe swallows noisily. “But you said you never wanted to cross the threshold again.”

  “Doesn’t mean I won’t be around. I mean, I live there. I was being more, what d’you call it? Metaphorical. I’m done working for the Firm. I’m gonna go be a… a kids’ summer camp instructor or something.”

  Gabe laughs. “Sure you are.”

  “Maybe a… maybe I’ll be a music teacher or something.”

  “But… you’d stay.”

  James looks down at his feet. “Just need a reason,” he says.

  Gabe raises his head. He meets James’s eyes. “Any chance me having just got a promotion would be a good enough reason?” he asks.