by A. L. Tyler
He gingerly took a small bud of a branch from the sumac and clipped it free, bringing it back to me. But by the time it had arrived, he had encapsulated it in some sort of pale amber stone, and it hung from a chain, like a long necklace. He lifted it over my head and set it around my neck, and I picked up the pendant charm to examine it.
“Training wheels,” Charlie said, walking back over to the roses. “We’ll see if that helps you any.”
I followed him back to the table and we sat down. I didn’t know why, but the feel of the sumac hanging around my neck was just right. I loved that stunning pendant already, and I looked up at Charlie to find him staring at me with the calculating expression that usually meant he wanted something.
I frowned. “Okay… so you’re doing my fetching for me, you got my number into Vince’s cell phone, and now you’re buying me jewelry—”
“I didn’t buy anything,” he innocently proclaimed.
“—did you screw up, or else what do you want?”
He took a deep breath, looked down, and then grinned up at me from beneath his brow. “Too much. I should have known it was too much. I need something from you to complete my spell. The one to make me human.”
“Are you working on more than one spell right now, Charlie?” I raised an eyebrow. “That you needed to qualify that statement?”
“If you’re going to dissect me like that, maybe you should major in linguistics,” he leaned forward. “It’s a lot to ask, Thorn. I know it is, especially from you, but it has to come from a friend and I am very short on those.”
“Are we friends?” I asked loftily.
He leaned back, and sat upright. “Are we?”
I was still holding the pendant strung around my neck in the warm palm of my hand, protecting the precious thing. We were sitting in a greenhouse garden—albeit a twisted, demonic one—and sipping mint tea. Charlie had brought my father together with the first woman to make him happy since my mother died. He had also nearly killed a girl, but I kind of felt that was more my fault than his. He had turned Gates into a cat, but still…
“Yes,” I said warily, taking a deep breath. “I guess we are. In a very loose sense of the word.”
He nodded, echoing my frown. “I need a memory, Thorn. One of yours, and something that evokes emotion.”
A bitter taste rose in my throat, because the first thought that came to me was my mother. Maybe it was because I had just been thinking about my father and Janet, but she was the first to come to my mind. I subtly shook my head as I looked away, and I felt the pressure building in my chest.
My memories made me who I was, and they were the last thing I had of my mother, and countless other people and things I had cherished that had departed from my life for good. When it came down to it, memories and experiences were the only things we had that were ours forever and couldn’t be taken away from us. Charlie knew I prized mine; he had seen it in me from nearly our first meeting.
He wasn’t asking a lot. He was asking everything.
“Now, Thorn, don’t panic—”
“Why?” I asked suddenly. “You want a memory, which I assume I’m not ever getting back or this wouldn’t be a big deal. I want to know why.”
Charlie nodded. “Because thoughts are an abstraction, like all of the Other Side, except for those things of permanence I bring here from Earth. A memory is a thing of permanence, but also an abstraction. I need it to allow my crossing as a being from this plane to yours. It’s a key element in making me human.”
I chewed my lip, thinking. It couldn’t just be any memory; he had said it had to be something emotional.
I thought about giving him a bad memory, but I couldn’t think of a single one I really wanted to let go of. So many of them had taught me a valuable lesson. The bad ones were nearly more precious than the good, because they had taught me to be the person I was. If I gave up one of them, I was likely doomed to repeat my past mistakes.
And I didn’t want to give up a good one, either. It had to be something inconsequential, but emotional, and something that wouldn’t screw me up for having lost it.
I stood up, screeching my stool back across the stone floor. Charlie got up much more gracefully.
“I need to think,” I said quietly. “I need to go for a walk, but not here, not—”
Charlie held up a hand to stop me. “That’s fine, Thorn. You go. I’ll take care of the things that Lyssa needs.”
The light whipped up around me, like everything breaking into a sandstorm of color, and I was standing back on the street in front of my apartment.
Gates was sitting in the window, watching me with the same cat-faced expression she always had, but I saw her mouth open in a meow and she got up to pace pack and forth across the sill when she noticed me.
I lifted a hand to wave at her. Something in my expression must have told her I wasn’t coming in, because she settled back down.
I turned and started to walk.
I got to the corner, and considered going inside the sandwich place, but then remembered that it was still too early in the day, and they wouldn’t be open until lunch. I turned crossed the street and walked onto campus, down past the engineering building and all the way to the library. I stopped into the student center and took a bench, hoping my thoughts would sort themselves out.
I had just gotten up to get myself a soda from the vending machine, hoping the caffeine would shake loose a non-critical memory that fit Charlie’s criteria, when a man walked up to me.
He had long blond-white hair that was pulled back in a ponytail, a tall, thin frame, and piercing green eyes.
“Annie Hawthorn,” he said with a friendly smile. “How grateful I am to finally meet you.”
I smiled hesitantly. “I’m sorry… how do I know you?”
“You have something that belongs me,” he said with a sharp grin. He offered his hand, and I stared down at it. “My name is Stark.”
Chapter 8
My eyes shot straight up from his unanswered handshake to the look of smug satisfaction on his face.
“Oh…so he does talk about me, then,” he said, withdrawing his hand. He waved his hand, and in a flourish of gold demons’ dust, the soda I had been about to purchase appeared in his palm. He offered it to me.
My eyes were still as large as dinner plates. “I’m not drinking that. I’m not accepting any favors, either. And I have no job vacancies for demons—already overstaffed.”
Another flourish and the drink disappeared. “So he talks about me a lot, then. You should know he’s not the most loyal creature you’ll ever encounter. But then, you’re a smart young woman, so you probably already knew.”
He was smooth like Charlie. I instantly disliked him, and I didn’t play into his game by opening my mouth. Agreeing with a demon was only the first step down the path to much more dangerous folly.
“Shall we sit?” He gestured to a table.
“No, thanks,” I said, suddenly wishing that I wasn’t a person who auto-piloted to polite pleasantries so easily. “I’ll be leaving now.”
“No.”
A shift of his eyes, and a chair zipped up behind me so fast that I lost my footing and sat down. It continued to move forward until it hit the edge of a table, pinning me in.
The student center wasn’t crowded—it was summer, after all, and it was still very early in the day—but I would have thought someone would have noticed a chair moving of its own accord.
Glancing around, I gritted my teeth. No one had even looked up.
“We’re invisible, Annie,” Stark said, taking the seat opposite me. “They can’t hear us, either, so don’t bother trying to scream. It will only annoy me.”
I opened my mouth to tell him off, but he must have thought I was up to something much more sinister, because he waved his hand and the air stopped dead in my throat. I couldn’t breathe, and I instantly started to panic. Stark only leaned back and folded his hands on the table.
“Oh, don’t figh
t it,” he said, analyzing me. He seemed unimpressed with what he saw, but he must have been wise, because he wasn’t about to underestimate me. “I’ll keep you alive until you start breathing again, so try to forget you need to do it. I don’t need you using your words against me, whatever you’ve been taught by your sister witches or Charlie. Just sit and listen, and nod. And don’t lie, or I’ll see to it that you regret it. Do you understand me?”
I nodded. I had never really taken notice of the constant movement of my chest as I breathed all day, but now that it was gone, the stillness was incredibly disturbing.
“Good. Now, I never took much interest in you, but Kendra kept your pictures around. I think it was her way of screening for someone who liked kids…she might have done better to keep living specimens. It’s not terribly hard to fake enthusiasm for a picture. Are you the younger sister, or the elder?”
I blinked. Stark cracked a smile.
“Forgive me, Annie. Are you the elder sister?”
I shook my head.
Stark pursed his lips, looking disappointed, and waved his hand. Air rushed back into my lungs.
“You’ve stumbled into something you can’t handle, then,” he said with a dangerous grin. “Kendra liked your sister for an apprentice. She wasn’t sure you had inherited the gifts at all. But if you managed to summon Charlie…”
I felt something go taut behind my neck, and then snap free. The sumac pendant that Charlie had given me flew across the table and into Stark’s hand.
“…then this must be your magic feather.” He toyed with it idly. “What is Charlie trying to convince you to do?”
I swallowed. I wanted to believe him that the pendant did nothing for me, but I knew he was wrong. Maybe, eventually…Charlie had called it training wheels, and that was what it had felt like. All along, I had lacked balance in this whole thing, but the living sumac had fixed it. Someday I would balance on my own, but not yet.
“My sister is going to miss me. I’m supposed to be out gathering supplies for her.”
“Lisa?” Stark asked. “Linda…Lyssa! Alyssum, like the flower. Why your parents didn’t go the simple route and call her Alice for short is beyond me.”
If he only knew my parents had insisted on shortening my name, Anise, to Nissa, until I was nearly twelve. When I started middle school, I forced them to sit down with me and feel my pain, because the kids at school were starting to refer to me as Nessie, like the Loch Ness Monster. I had insisted on Annie ever since.
“You poor little thing…”
Stark didn’t sound the least bit sorry for me.
“…did you even have any warning of all this before…before what? I suppose you must have summoned him by accident, unless Kendra decided to kill him.”
“Kendra’s dead,” I said decisively. “And speaking of summoning, how did you get here?”
His eyes flashed at me, and another smile told me I wasn’t going to like what he said.
“I’m no common demon, Annie. I’ve been handling demons for thousands of years, and I know all of their strengths and weaknesses. I know all of their tricks. It doesn’t matter how I managed to get back, because I’m here now. And if Charlie is still at the teat of the Hawthorn family, then no, I very much doubt Kendra is dead.”
I shook my head. Everyone was convinced but me. I had been trying to find her with magic, and so had Lyssa, but she wasn’t out there. We were going to pay for her fugitive acts, and I was beginning to curse her for it in the few quiet moments of my life that remained.
This was one of them.
I cocked my head. “I don’t know where she is.”
“I believe you,” he said. “But finding your aunt is a simple matter for me, because I know how to summon her.”
“You do?” I raised my eyebrows. “Do it, then. It would solve a lot of the recent problems in my life.”
“Hmm…” For the first time, Stark gave a friendly smile, and I worried I was in trouble. He thought we were friends. “First, I’ll need you to give me back what’s mine, Annie. I need the book.”
“The book?” I asked, surprised. I had thought he was after Charlie…But then, what use would a demon have for another demon?
“The book!” Stark snapped. “If you summoned Charlie, then you must have known about him, which means you read it in the book. Charlie’s book. You will give it to me!”
Now I remembered. “Charlie took it. He has it. I don’t know where he put it, but he won’t give it back. I’ve already asked. What’s so important about the book?”
Stark grinned sarcastically, and turned his head to the side. “And you didn’t even bind him. Bravo, Annie. A demon more clever than its master is a dangerous thing. I should just put you both out of your misery.”
“But why is the book so important?” I pressed. I had thought that Charlie had taken it because it held some information about how to control him. But now that Stark wanted it, I had to wonder if there was something more. “Is that how you’re going to find Kendra? With the book?”
“You stupid girl…” He lifted his lip in a snarl. “After I get the book, I’m going to kill Charlie, and when that happens, I’m sure Kendra will decide to show up.”
I looked down at the table, closing my eyes. The fact that Charlie openly want to die didn’t figure into my decision, because murder was murder. A willing victim didn’t make it any less of a murder, and I was pretty sure that Stark’s hatred of Hawthorns ran a little deeper than Charlie’s. Once he killed Charlie and Kendra, I was going to be the next thing on his radar. I had no clue who had summoned him, or become his bridge, as was more likely the case, because he seemed to be wandering free. He had made no offer of safety to me for helping him, and I had no intention of making a deal with him for it.
I wasn’t going to feed him Charlie. Charlie was probably the only person who knew how to fight him, having been in his service for so long.
And that was when I knew what I had to do, because it was the only move I had left to make. The only spell that I had ever managed completely on my own, without even a pair of training wheels.
“Why would Kendra show up for Charlie’s death?” I asked. Sometimes, all it took was speaking his name. If I talked about him long enough, it was bound to catch his ear.
I was his bridge. We were connected, and he would come. I had faith.
We were friends. And if he saved me, I was going to give him whatever memory he needed.
Stark’s eyes became rueful, and his lip curled in distaste. “He talks about me, but not about himself. Apparently his arrogance has finally found a limit. He was the one responsible for banishing me, Annie. He and Kendra both, for the same reason as any other man who has ever been betrayed by his best friend and his girl.”
I stared at him. I had stopped breathing again, but this time out of surprise. Charlie had admitted to me once that he had been the one to take Stark to the Other Side and leave him for his final sleep, but he had never fully explained why. I had always assumed that it had something to do with Kendra tricking him into taking her as a bridge instead; he went on and on about her trickery and deviousness.
“Wait… they were…?”
The cold in Stark’s eyes was nearly palpable. I actually felt the temperature around us drop, and wondered if the AC had just kicked on or if he was influencing the atmosphere without meaning to.
“Together,” he said. “Behind my back. I should have known, because witches are always bad news. I sought her out to steal her heart and burn it, and she outsmarted me the once. It should have been enough to teach me the only good witch is a dead one.”
The world went dark around me, and I felt a claw-like grip rip into the flesh of my side and take hold of my ribs.
It wasn’t like when Charlie took me to the Other Side. That was like a dimming of the lights, and a moment of disorientation, almost like waking up from a dream.
This was agony. Whatever had me was dragging me from reality, like I could feel bits of my
skin torn ragged as it ripped across the fabric of the universe and into a dark field illuminated by a blood red moon.
I was on my hands and knees, screaming in pain as wet dripped around me, and I kept my eyes shut, sure that I was going to see nothing but gore and horror when I opened them. My skin felt like raw hamburger, and I wanted to throw up, but I didn’t seem able.
“Thorn, get up!”
My eyes shot open, and I saw my hands beneath me. I was slicked with sweat and the cramp in my stomach refused to relent as Charlie dragged me to my feet.
I wanted to hug him, and then vomit down his back.
A bolt of lightning broke the sky into a million pieces, and the smell of a fog so thick it was practically viscous made it hard for me to suck air into my lungs. I looked across the field to see Stark, walking slowly toward us as the lightning boomed a deafening drum in my ears, striking repeatedly down from the sky and into his fingertips.
“Run, Thorn!” Charlie yelled over the cacophony. “Hide, and don’t lose consciousness! If you do—”
His last words were lost when a bolt of lightening struck him directly in the chest, hurling him backward across the landscape. But he didn’t need to finish, because I already knew what he was going to say.
Lose consciousness in the Other Side, whether from falling asleep or being knocked out, and you became a demon. Lose consciousness, and you never got to leave the Other Side again.
Charlie rolled to miss another bolt, and I saw Stark’s eyes turn to me.
I ran.
Toward no one and nothing, because Stark’s vision of the Other Side was a field so flat and featureless I may as well have been an ant running across a massive piece of paper.
I heard the lightning hit behind me, and I winced, the blood pounding in my ears nearly too much. I kept running, and I opened my eyes, and that was when I saw the trees and walls growing straight out of the ground.
Charlie was influencing the landscape, and a quick glance over my shoulder showed a toppled and smoking wall that would have been my final resting place if it hadn’t popped up just in time.