by Rob Cornell
The puddle of hot bile and what remained of my last meal steamed in the snow.
I wiped my mouth with my coat sleeve and slowly cranked back to my feet. I looked back at the little girl’s house, maybe expecting to see her or her momma staring after me from the door or through a window. Only the shadows stared.
What had I done?
You killed Sly’s murderer, and he had damn well earned every last scream he managed before dying. Don’t ever forget that.
That angry voice in my mind sounded sure of itself, but I wasn’t so sure myself. As I made my way back to my car, the voice decided to argue.
How many monsters have you killed? Executed? The Ministry paid you to kill all of them. They should kiss your damn ass for getting rid of a monster like Plutskinst.
But Horton hadn’t been a demon, or vampire, or angry imp. He had been a mortal.
That doesn’t mean the Ministry wouldn’t have put a contract on him. They put one on you.
Only they had thought I was a vampire when they put a bounty on me. Humans didn’t get the same treatment as the supernatural races. The guardians dealt with them, not hunters. And the Ministry had no authority to sentence a human to death. It maybe didn’t sound fair, but, like it or not, the world belonged to the mortals, and the mortals ran the Ministry.
My angry voice couldn’t argue with that, so I made it to my car without any more internal debate.
I tilted the rearview mirror to look at my face. A crust of vomit clung to my chin. My eyes were bloodshot. I smelled like a hippo after sex by a campfire.
But how did I feel?
I didn’t feel anything.
Chapter Thirty
Mom’s new Jeep was parked in the driveway of the Ann Arbor house. I followed its tracks in the snow up to the house, cut the engine, and stared out the window at the far trees. The naked branches made me think of burnt bones. The dust of snow looked like ash.
With the engine off, the car quickly cooled. Before long I could see my breath as well as smell the vomit on it. I didn’t feel like getting out. Seemed like too much effort. The cold worked its way through my coat, numbed my hands, stung my cheeks. But I sat there. I stared at the ash and bones, and the internal image of Horton’s bubbling face as he screamed through a shroud of blue flame. Or I saw the little girl, her smile, the way she giggled into her hand, how proud she looked to catch me off guard by telling me about her momma’s special relationship with Horton.
I would have stayed in the car until I froze to the seat if Mom hadn’t come out of the house. She held her long, tan coat closed instead of bothering with the buttons. Her face pinched against the cold. A wind had picked up and it flung her hair in all directions.
I watched her approach the car, stared at her like an odd curiosity. Who is this woman coming toward me? How very strange.
She rapped her knuckles against my window. “Come inside,” she said, voice muffled by the glass and the wind.
I nodded slowly, unbuckled my belt, pulled the keys from the ignition. I moved as if I were caught in the slow motion of a nightmare where you’re trying to outrun the Thing coming after you.
The keys slipped from my fingers and clinked to the floorboard. I waved a hand—to hell with it—and left them there when I got out of the car.
Mom took my arm and we went inside together.
She had the fire going. The smell nearly wrung the last of the bile out of my stomach. The scent of flames had always comforted me. I had spent a number of days of my childhood in front of this very fireplace, watching the flames dance, casting shadows across the floor as my grandmother read to me.
That scent had never sickened me before. Sure, burning vamp flesh had a horrible stench, but it was the flesh, not the flame. Right then, though, I couldn’t even stand the look of its light.
I shuffled down the hall toward the guest bedroom. While the overcast sky deadened the sunlight outside, I didn’t expect to walk into perfect darkness. It took me a second to orient myself and remember Odi was sleeping in there. I immediately backed out and shut the door. I didn’t think I’d let any residual sunlight in through the door, and I didn’t hear a peep from Odi, so I didn’t worry about it.
I had wanted to crash out on the bed. But having Odi sleeping under the bed at the same time… Just, no.
So I couldn’t escape the fire.
I turned to head through the hall back to the living room.
Mom stood at the opposite end, arms folded, her cheeks rosy from the cold. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail that reached past her waist. I sometimes thought of her hair as steel threads, like a kind of protective garment that shielded her from the tides of unchecked emotion. I felt weak standing before this woman of great strength.
“What happened?” she asked.
“How’d it go at the hospital?” I asked, not ready to talk about Horton the Tree Man. (Though he hadn’t burned like a tree. A man has a special way of burning. Horton had burned like a man.)
“What happened?” Mom repeated.
I leaned against the wall and rested my head on its cool surface. I felt feverish again. My body temperature didn’t know which end of the spectrum to rest at. I wondered if I was getting sick. Maybe Momma had worked some magic on me after I left. Maybe I would end up in the morgue beside Sly.
Mom waited. She would wait, not letting me out of the hall, until I told her. So I told her.
I told her about the little girl. About her momma. About the ritual I had caught her momma and Horton in. By that point in the story, I saw the light of understanding dawn in Mom’s eyes. She knew what came next, but I still had to tell her.
Afterward, neither of us said anything for a while. We kept our places at opposite ends of the hall like a pair of indecisive gunslingers at high noon. Mom broke the silence first.
“That’s terrible,” she said. “Terrible. But, Sebastian, it’s done. And I’m glad it’s done.”
“Really?” My tongue felt like concrete after a light rain, made it hard to enunciate. Maybe I’d suffered a stroke. Maybe that’s how Momma would get back at me for traumatizing her daughter. “Glad?”
She set her jaw, nodded.
I swallowed the taste of ashes. “Now what?”
Mom uncrossed her arms and came over to me. She put her hands on my shoulders and gave me a gentle shake. “We make sure Sylvester has a memorial fit for a god.”
Sly had a lot of ties in the paranormal community, some of them morally questionable—he was the one who had first connected me with Toft Kitchens and the Maidens of Shadow. He had earned a level of respect that he more than deserved. He was a man so generous, he had offered up part of his soul to help friends in need.
Who did that?
Sly. That was who.
“That’s gonna be one hell of a party,” I said.
One corner of Mom’s mouth curled up, but sadness still owned her eyes. She started to say something…
…but the lights started flickering.
The electric scent of gathering magic rolled in from all sides. Mom and I shared a glance. She felt it, too. Then I heard—or more like felt—a series of pops, like a string of firecrackers going off, each one a sign of our surrounding wards breaking down in succession. I could feel the destruction of my fire rune like a wasp sting at the back of my brain. I winced.
It took a massive amount of magic to cut through so many wards like that so easily.
I had a good idea who had arrived. Somehow, the Maidens of Shadow had found us. With their mothers visiting, the coven was a good bit stronger than I had imagined.
Not good.
Mom and I hurried down the hall. As if on cue with our entrance into the living room, a gust of wind blew down from the chimney and extinguished the fire. Logs and ash exploded out of the fireplace, carried on the unnatural gust. One shard of wood sailed across the room and embedded itself in the far wall.
The gathering magical energy crackled with intense life.
; All at once, every window exploded inward. Bits of glass sprayed everywhere and ticked and rattled on the hardwood floors. Some pieces pelted against my coat. A couple small bits peppered my cheek, a warm wetness soon flowing from where they’d struck.
Adrenaline rushed through me, quickening my heartbeat, sharpening my senses. I pulled Mom close to me, tapped my power, and manipulated the air around us to form a hard shield like a glass dome. But after the windows blew in, the intruding magical crackle dissipated, leaving behind the smell of ozone.
I kept the shield up anyway.
From down in the guest room I heard Odi cry out. If the window in there had exploded, too, it was likely the quilts had ripped free as well. Good thing the kid had decided to sleep under the bed. But it meant he was trapped under there, too.
The natural wind howled through the destroyed windows, pulling in tiny crystals of ice off the snow that made the air sparkle. The cold came with it. I adjusted my shield to keep that bitter air out.
“Maidens?” Mom asked.
“I’m guessing.”
As if in answer, the front door creaked slowly open. Standing in the doorway, the wind tugging at the tail of her black leather duster, was a woman with a familiar white pallor and dark hair. She looked like she was in her mid-fifties, with a bright shine in her eyes. Her hair was cropped in a choppy version of a pageboy cut. She wore a black scarf that covered her mouth, and leather pants under the duster.
I couldn’t decide why she looked familiar until she stepped inside and pulled her scarf down. Lengthen her hair and she looked like an older version of Angelica.
I tried on a cocky smile, not sure if I had it in me at the moment. It felt close enough. “You must be Angelica’s mom.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Angelica’s mom sniffed. “I had expected something more impressive from the Unturned.”
I shrugged. “Not so sorry to disappoint.” I made a show of looking around at the mess from the busted windows and scattered firewood and ash. “What the hell was with the dramatic entrance?”
“We wanted to make sure we had your attention.”
“You had it when you sent that hell beast after me.”
“Please.” She shook her head like I had said the dumbest thing in recorded history. “That pet was no hell beast. Simply a visitor from a more…complex plane.”
“I don’t care what you call it,” I snapped. “I’ve had a really bad couple of days, and you bitches have not helped.”
Her gaze ran up and down me, then moved to Mom. “I’d heard the Lights were made of sterner stuff. The apple, it appears, rolled far from the tree.”
“Shut up, you cu—”
“Mom! Not that word again.”
Mom narrowed her eyes. “She deserves it.”
Angelica’s mom crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised at the animosity. After all our daughters have done for you.”
“Let me go!” a girl screamed from outside. A second later, Angelica burst in, nearly knocking her mother off her feet. She had a duster on as well, same style as her mother’s, but brown instead of black. No scarf. Leggings instead of leather, and puffy snow boots trimmed with faux fur. A lock of her black hair formed a scythe across her pale face, which had healed perfectly from the burn she’d given herself with my fire.
Her lips peeled back from her teeth as she glared at me. “What have you done?”
Her mother turned her head to one side, addressing Angelica over her shoulder. “That’s enough.”
But Angelica ignored her and pointed a gloved finger at me. “Weeks of preparation,” she snarled. “Destroyed. How did you do it? Tell me!”
Her mother raised a hand and closed her fist.
Angelica’s eyes bugged and she clawed at her throat. Her lips worked, but she only uttered choking noises.
“Do not disrespect your mother.”
Angelica nodded quickly.
Her mother opened her fist, and Angelica drew in a deep gasp, followed by several quick, shallow breaths.
Had her mother seriously just Force-choked her own daughter? Not even Darth Vader had done that to his son. The woman had some sick ideas about appropriate disciplinary action.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” Angelica whispered.
Witch Mom turned her attention back to me. “My daughter is understandably upset by your betrayal.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything to you. And you’re lucky, too. Because if Sly’s sickness had been your doing, I would have melted you down like I did his real killer.”
Angelica gasped, but it wasn’t because of her mother’s magic. “Killer?”
Her mother closed her eyes and softly sighed. “Then we are done.” She turned and left without another word.
I snorted. “Your mom’s real sweet.”
Angelica’s gaze roved around the room. She licked her lips. “Are you sure he’s dead?” she asked while looking down at the broken glass at her feet. Then she looked up at me. “You let him die?”
“I didn’t let him anything,” I dropped the shield I was still holding around me and Mom and stepped toward Angelica. “A pissed off customer cast a curse on him, made him sick. I had a healer check him, and she told me it was a sickness of his soul.”
“And that’s why you came to us. You thought it was our doing.”
“A witch friend of mine seemed to think the same thing.” I narrowed my eyes. “Seemed you thought so, too, when I confronted you about it.”
“You had no right to question us. He gave us part of his soul fairly.”
“A piece of his soul, yes. Not his life.”
“But we didn’t kill him.” She cocked her head. With the front door still open and all the windows broken, the wind whipped through the house like a loosed spirit, a trail of sparkling snow dust blowing in its wake. “Who did?”
I shivered. I could have kept the shield up to stay warm, but I didn’t like to waste any bit of magical energy these days. I didn’t have as much as I used to.
“His name was Horton Plutskinst. Small time practitioner with a knack for long distance curses, I guess. Sly stopped selling him a certain product when he discovered the asshole was using it for astral rape.”
Angelica curled her lip and shuddered. “Filthy amateurs.” She touched her chin with her fingertips as her focus shifted to some point in the space between us. “Why murder with sickness? Why not strike him down instantly?”
“It was a personal thing. He was sending a message. Besides, I didn’t get the sense that he was that good. I caught him in the middle of a ritual using sex and chicken blood to power it. Sloppy stuff.”
Her expression showed curiosity more than the disgust I expected.
“Angelica,” her mother shouted from outside.
“I’m coming,” Angelica called back. She looked from me to Mom. “I’m sorry. We would have never knowingly hurt Sly. After your visit, I made sure our ritual had nothing to do with his condition. It did not.”
She started to turn, but I had a couple more questions.
“Hey. What did you think I did to mess up your ritual?”
She glanced nervously toward the open door, but stayed put. “His soul weakened. I thought you had somehow interfered with its connection to him. Obviously, it was because of his death. Nothing you did.”
“You still have his soul?”
She hitched a shoulder. “What’s left of it.”
And the big question of the hour. “What were you using it for?”
She pressed her lips together and glanced out the door again. “I can’t say. Besides, you wouldn’t like it.”
“Were you summoning a demon?”
“Angelica!” Her mom again.
“I have to go. If you think I could help in any way…”
“Like what?”
She shrugged.
“How about you give me his soul back?”
“Our mothers would never allow it. Besides, what would
you do with it?”
Another huge gust blew through the house. I was glad I hadn’t taken my coat off yet. Ice crystals cooled my cheeks. One of my cheeks felt tacky, and I remembered the glass cutting me.
“What could I do with it?” I asked.
She gave a small smile. “I don’t think sorcerers are trained in necromancy.”
My stomach dropped. Necromancy?
She must have seen my shock. She laughed. “Necromancy isn’t all about raising corpses, Sebastian. It involves anything that comes after life. Including the release of the soul.”
“And Sly gave you a pre-release.”
“So to speak.”
Angelica suddenly jerked toward the door as if yanked by the arm. She nearly lost her balance, but shuffled quickly to stay on her feet.
Looked like mommy had lost her patience.
Angelica straightened her lips, and her nostrils flared. “I have to go.”
I didn’t want to see her mother magically rip Angelica’s arm out of her socket. I nodded.
She hesitated for a second, then left, gently closing the door on her way out.
Chapter Thirty-Two
While Mom swept up the glass, I went back to rescue Odi.
“What the screw is going on?” he cried from under the bed.
“Nothing now,” I said as I crunched through the glass on the floor. “A whole lot of nothing.”
I surveyed the damage. The quilts had ripped off the window, leaving the nails we’d used to hang them in place. One shredded corner of quilt remained pinned by one of the nails. With the wind blowing in, I doubted the quilts would stay very well even if I managed to hang them back up.
I checked my watch. Only an hour till dusk, thanks to early winter nights.
Instead of trying to rehang the quilts, I draped them over the bed so they hung to the floor like a blanket fort for Odi to hide in.
“We’ve only got a little bit till sundown. This work okay for you?”
“I guess.” He sounded put out, like I’d told him he needed to do his homework before hanging out with his friends.
If I hadn’t felt so cold, inside and out, I might have felt a little sympathy. I didn’t have any in me, though. I didn’t have much of anything. No more rage. No more guilt. I was as dark and empty as Odi’s coffin in the basement back home.