Black Dog Short Stories II

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Well done,” said Keziah, her testy tone suggesting that she had to admit this but didn’t actually appreciate him working Pure magic without checking with her first.

  “If that guy’s still in there, whoever he is, I guess maybe his intent is good after all. So let’s see who it is.” Justin took the steps to the porch two at a time, and opened the door without knocking.

  The door wasn’t locked. Sometimes people in small towns didn’t lock their doors. Sometimes old people didn’t lock their doors, having grown up in a more trusting era and forgetting that times had changed. Justin couldn’t remember his grandmother being quite that trusting. But the door opened to his touch, with a little squeak of hinges.

  Justin didn’t step through the door, though. Because Keziah seized his arm and pulled him firmly back and out of the line of fire, if anyone had fired, which no one did. She gave him a withering look: Have the basic intelligence to stay behind me. Then she stalked into the house. Justin hurried after her, trying to see over her shoulder, which he couldn’t, very well, because Keziah was a tall girl.

  The short hallway was deserted. Keziah strode right down it, past the little alcove where a dozen small framed icons occupied space around and above the small table with its single candle. The candle wasn’t lit, a detail which immediately sent a chill down Justin’s spine, though he hadn’t realized how off and wrong such a small thing could seem.

  Keziah didn’t let him pause. She pivoted in a clean right-angled turn unhesitatingly to the left, straight into the kitchen.

  And there they were, the guy and the old woman that Keziah had known were in this house. Justin crowded into the kitchen after Keziah, stepping quickly to the right to get a clear view, then stared in consternation. “She’s not her!” He realized instantly how stupid that sounded, and amended it to, “Who are you?” He edited that down on the fly, barely, from Who the hell are you because he had no idea about the woman, but he thought he could guess, if not who, at least what the man was. He touched Keziah’s hand just with the tips of two fingers, suggesting restraint without being pushy about it, the way Natividad had shown him. Keziah slanted an ironic look his way, but crossed her arms over her chest and tipped her chin arrogantly in a way that demanded answers.

  The man, sitting at the small, square kitchen table, was a big guy, fifty-ish, with a short grizzled beard and the kind of face that suggested he might have once have been a brawler—crooked nose, one cheekbone unmistakably dented. But whatever his early life might have included, he didn’t look much like a thug now. He was wearing nice black slacks, a black button-up shirt, and an ornate Orthodox cross—Russian Orthodox, not a surprise in Grandmama Leushin’s house. It was definitely the kind of cross a priest would wear, exactly the kind that Orthodox priests did wear; it was identical to the one Grandmama Leushin kept in her room, that had once belonged to her father. This man had a priest’s air of authority, too. Justin was sure he was an OCA priest. Certainly the very last thing he looked like, as he leaned back in his chair and tilted his head, was a man who’d been caught somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.

  The woman was also obviously respectable. She was probably about Grandmama Leushin’s age, about twenty years older than the man. She wore a classy-looking ankle-length skirt, a tan blouse, and a tiny wooden three-barred cross, not quite seven-eighths of an inch long. Her silver-blonde hair was up in an old-fashioned knot on the back of her head—Grandmama Leushin wore her hair like that, too, though hers was pure white. Unlike Grandmama Leushin, this woman wore thin-rimmed glasses that gave her a severe, authoritative look. Justin instantly decided she was the kind of older lady who might not be officially in charge of some group or organization, but whom everyone knew actually ran things. She looked like she could organize everyone and everything within an inch of their lives without disarranging a hair of her head.

  The man—the priest, Justin was almost certain—had a stack of papers in front of him on the table and a pen in his hand. The kitchen was warm, fragrant with the scent of tea and lemon—there was a pot on the stove, and several of Grandmama Leushin’s delicate china cups on the table. Through the open doorway on the other side of the kitchen, Justin could see a lot more papers laid out in neat stacks on the dining room table. But the man certainly seemed to think he had a perfect right to be here in Grandmama Leushin’s house, going through her things. His expression as he studied Justin and Keziah was interested, but not hostile.

  The woman, on the other hand, was ignoring Justin in favor of glaring at Keziah, and he didn’t think it was Keziah’s tight jeans or gauzy sapphire blouse that had offended her, nor even her aggressively lazy predator’s smile that showed her small white teeth in an expression that wasn’t exactly friendly. The lady’s spine was straight, her chin up, her eyes narrowed—she looked a lot like a dignified cat seriously offended by a trespassing dog. She’d raised one hand to the little handbag on the table, and Justin would have bet the entire contents of his college savings account that she had a weapon in it—and that she knew that Keziah was a black dog.

  “I think the woman is Pure,” Keziah told Justin, seeming unimpressed by the possibilities inherent in that handbag. “But she is not bright in the world, as you are—as those Pure I have seen always have been. Even in this room I cannot be entirely certain. This I do not understand. I would say she is half Pure if I had ever heard of such a thing.”

  Justin studied the old lady. He could see it himself, sort of, once Keziah had pointed it out. He could see the complicated Escherian curves of Pure magic folding around the lady, but none of it was nearly as complicated or—bright wasn’t exactly the right word—vivid, maybe. Not as clearly delineated, either. The magic around this lady was more like wisps of steam on a cloudy day; something you almost thought you might see except then you weren’t sure. Justin would have liked to compare what he saw around her to the magic that folded and curved around him, but of course he couldn’t. He had never been able to glimpse his own magic.

  The woman’s stern attitude had become tinged with uncertainty, but she still flicked open the clasp of her handbag.

  “Anna –” the priest began, making a movement as though he might restrain her.

  “That girl is certainly a werewolf,” declared the lady, and whipped a little tiny gun out of her handbag. And Amira slid sideways through the dining room door and took the gun neatly out of her hand without so much as brushing her fingers. The woman twitched back in startlement, saw that Amira was a child and straightened with what looked like both surprise and offended dignity—then flinched in sympathetic horror as she saw Amira’s scarred face. And then realized, visibly, that the she was a black dog. Justin saw the lady realize it, and her reaction was surprising considering she’d already pulled a gun: she went still. Not frozen like a rabbit before a fox, but watchfully still, like a woman who might yet have another kind of weapon. Pure, he was certain of it, no matter how faded and diffuse the magic around her might seem.

  “That little girl, too?” asked the priest, obviously interpreting the lady’s reaction exactly as Justin had. He sounded faintly shocked.

  “They’re born that way, you know,” Justin told him. “And learn to control their dark shadows practically before they can walk, if they’re raised right.”

  Amira ignored this exchange. Grimacing, she set the gun fastidiously aside on a cabinet. “Silver bullets,” she warned Keziah, shaking out her hand. Nicholas slouched in the doorway, backing up Amira and also blocking that way out of the kitchen, penning these people up between himself and Keziah. He told Keziah, “The whole house is empty except here, I’m almost sure. I didn’t search everywhere, but I walked from front to back and I couldn’t hear or feel anybody else.”

  Keziah nodded thoughtfully, acknowledging them both.

  “They are all werewolves!” said the lady. She sounded more offended than terrified, which Justin suspected meant she had probably never seen a black dog in the other form, at least not up close and person
al. Or else she had a much more impressive weapon stashed away somehow, which was possible, since she was Pure. Though in her place he’d have been pretty well terrified even if he’d had a bazooka or the equivalent tucked away in his back pocket.

  Or maybe she had just such a solid habit of gracious dignity that she couldn’t look panicked if she tried. Grandmama Leushin was like that. Justin could believe this lady might be his grandmother’s friend.

  He cleared his throat, pointedly.

  The lady peered at him over the tops of her glasses. “True, young man; you aren’t,” she conceded as though Justin had objected out loud. And then, in a different tone, for the first time seeming shaken, “Justin?”

  “Do I know you, ma’am?” Justin didn’t recognize the lady, but it was perfectly possible he’d met her. No doubt Grandmama Leushin had plenty of friends. On the occasions he and his mother had come here to Roswell, he’d been just as self-absorbed as the next little kid and hadn’t paid any attention to any other adults that his grandmother might have chatted with on Sunday mornings.

  “So this is Natalie’s Justin?” the priest asked. “Keeping such company.”

  It was hard to blame him for disapproving. Keziah wasn’t merely a black dog: she was dangerous, ruthless, ambitious, and indifferent to practically everyone outside Dimilioc—nor was she very concerned about the well-being of most of the people in Dimilioc, either. And all that showed, pretty much, because that was the part of herself she wanted people to see.

  Justin nodded to him. “Father –?”

  “Stepan.” The priest rose to his feet at last, facing Keziah squarely. “I am Father Stepan Ivanovich, and I call upon the grace of God to dispel evil from this house.”

  “Yeah, I already did that,” Justin told him, deliberately casual. “And no one ran out screaming, so I guess that’s something. These aren’t werewolves, they’re black dogs, and they’re my friends.”

  “Your friends. Is that what they are?” Now Father Stepan looked Justin up and down. “Sometimes it’s all too easy to compromise with evil—”

  “It’s really not,” Justin told him. “It takes constant struggle, but black dogs from decent houses never give up.” He eyed the priest, whose frown had both deepened and become more thoughtful. “You might keep in mind that I’m the one who knows these people. Do you really think I’d deliberately bring werewolves along to eat my grandmother? That’d be a new twist on the fairy tale, I suppose.”

  “A red cape is okay, but it’s stupid to wear a hood,” commented Nicholas. “They block too much of your vision and hearing.”

  Father Stepan, somewhat surprisingly, snorted. He eyed Nicholas with penetrating interest.

  Nicholas straightened up, shoved his hands in his pockets, and demanded, “So where is she?” When the priest didn’t immediately answer, he went on in an aggrieved tone, “Justin finally gets permission to drive out here and see his grandmother, dragging all of us along for three whole days in Keziah’s little bitty car, which believe me does not make for a joyride, and something happens to his grandmother an hour before we get here? I don’t believe it. And then she says she’s too busy and he shouldn’t visit, when she knew he’d come thousands of miles and was less than an hour away? I don’t believe that, either. I wonder why, when she made up lies to tell Justin why he shouldn’t come, she said it was church business?”

  “Now, look,” Justin protested. “It has to be coincidence. I mean, us arriving just now. And I’m sure my grandmother didn’t mean Father Stepan was planning anything, um, nefarious.” He really was sure about that last, or nearly; the priest just didn’t seem to him like that sort of person. Whatever sort of person he was thinking of.

  “Yeah, you Pure are way too trusting,” Nicholas told him. “I’m sure I’ll never understand it. Your grandmother said it was church stuff –”

  “Maybe she meant us to find Father Stepan when we couldn’t find her.”

  The priest said quietly, “I hope she would have thought of me.”

  Nicholas rolled his eyes. “Sure.”

  “You actually spoke to Natalia Leushina?” the lady demanded of Justin. She used the Russian feminine Leushina, which as far as Justin knew his determinedly Americanized grandmother used only among her friends from her parish. Not only that, but this woman must be an intimate friend of his grandmother’s to call her Natalia. Justin relaxed a little, but the lady went on urgently without pausing, “An hour ago, you say?”

  “Not quite an hour,” Keziah said smoothly before he could answer. “And when did you last speak with her?”

  “You’re Justin’s friend, are you?” The lady inspected Keziah, then raised her eyebrows at Justin. “Your grandmother was so very relieved when you finally sent her a postcard, young man. Plainly she ought to have worried about what company you’d gotten into, but she always said her grandson had good sense. I hardly like to think what she’d have said about these friends of yours.”

  She picked up her handbag. Amira took it away from her and set it down next to the gun, and Justin tapped the table with one finger, framed the equations for a pentagram in his head, and said firmly, “Que haya paz en esta casa.” He’d learned magic mostly from Natividad and couldn’t help but think of Spanish as the right language for magic, but these people might not understand what he’d said, so he repeated it in English: “May there be peace in this house.”

  The pentagram had glimmered to life, no wider than his hand, the star bounded by the pentagon. Justin, watching carefully, was almost sure that Father Stepan didn’t see it, but that the older lady did. But they should both feel its effect. Justin certainly could: the tension in the room, despite everything, eased back a notch.

  “Hmm,” said Father Stepan, studying Justin with a different kind of interest.

  “Can you do that?” Justin asked the lady. And, when she didn’t answer, he asked the priest, “Could my grandmother?”

  “I have no idea,” admitted Father Stepan. “I can certainly think of occasions when she would have certainly wished to. But she is a righteous woman. You, on the other hand...I must admit to doubts about a young man who associates with werewolves.”

  Well, noncommittal was definitely better than ringing denunciations. Justin said patiently, “Black dogs. These particular black dogs, who are my friends. We’re all friends here, or I think we are, or at least I think we ought to be. Nicky, is there more tea? Ma’am, can you tell me when you last spoke with my grandmother, and what she said, and where she is now, and what you’re doing here going through her things?” He could see her thinking about whether to answer all these questions, and added, “You’re Pure, of course. Have you deliberately masked yourself somehow?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” declared the lady.

  “Of course not,” Keziah said drily. “Such a skill would be most useful, so probably it is not a skill at all, but something this woman does with instinct.”

  “Or else it’s something that was done to her,” Nicholas put in.

  Justin had to admit this wouldn’t surprise him a bit, but he couldn’t tell whether the lady meant she didn’t understand his question about masking herself or whether she also didn’t know what he’d meant by Pure. He started to try to frame that question better, but before he could, the lady added haughtily to Justin, “I cannot say I think much of your friends, young man.”

  Justin let out his breath, counted rapidly to approximately 3.16227766 by square roots, and said to Nicholas, “Tea?”

  Nicholas poured a cup of tea, set the cup on a saucer, and handed the tea to Justin with an ironic flourish that said plainly, Don’t get the idea you’re the boss of me. But what he said out loud was more to the point: “Maybe it’s all one thing, whatever’s going on with your grandmother and whatever’s muffling the Pure magic here. Except you’ve still got your knack, obviously, Justin.”

  Which instantly made Justin wonder if his own magic might suddenly dwindle and fade to the muted kind of half-present m
agic around his grandmother’s friend. This was not a comfortable idea. To distract himself from that thought, he sipped too-hot tea, pulled out a chair, sat down at the table, and picked up the top paper from the stack in front of Father Stepan. Letting all questions about the Pure go for the moment, he asked, “What are these? Letters? What are you looking for, evidence of . . .” he hesitated, not quite sure what to ask. Evidence of foul play, of kidnapping, of Grandmama Leushin’s involvement in...what? He folded his hands on the table and gazed at his mother’s friend, trying to look as expectant as possible.

  The lady looked at Father Stepan. Who, after a short pause, lowered himself back into his own chair, nodded at the woman, and told Justin, “This is your grandmother’s friend, Anna Farris. Anna, why don’t you tell Natalie’s grandson what you told me.”

  It took a moment, but eventually Mrs. Farris also took a seat at the table. She picked up her cup, sipped, put it down, and said, her tone guarded but precise, “Natalia called me last night. She told me she’d found out about something. Something like vampires and werewolves, she said, but different. She said, ‘It could be anyone, Anya, and we’d never be able to tell.’”

  “That isn’t very much like either vampires or werewolves,” observed Keziah.

  Justin considered this. “It’s like vampires before the miasma faded, isn’t it? It’s worse, in a way, if whatever this is still can’t be recognized for what they are even now the miasma’s gone.”

  “Nothing’s worse than vampires,” Nicholas said, his tone flattening on the last word.

  Father Stepan slapped the table, not hard, but everyone except Keziah jumped. Keziah raised her eyebrows, sardonically amused, but when Anna Farris went on, she didn’t interrupt.