by A. L. Tyler
Charlie was frowning as he avoided my gaze. Gates was apparently ignoring our conversation, because she had made for the plate of bacon in the kitchen and was stuffing her face.
“Charlie?” I asked hesitantly.
“The curse he put on Gates isn’t something that can be broken,” Lyssa said in the face of his continued silence. “It’s permanent, and he knows it, and he’s been using it to bribe you all along.”
Gates stopped eating. Her eyes flashed to Charlie first, and then to me.
“Charlie?” I asked, this time quieter.
He looked up at me, wearing his guilt all over his face. “It was the first step in my spell, Thorn. I started as a witch’s familiar, and I’ve carried that form since the beginning. As much as I needed human things to bridge the gap back to humanity, I needed to shed my demonic skin. That skin.” He nodded at Gates. “Someone has to wear it for me to succeed. If I take it back, I will lose all of the work I’ve done so far.”
I was stunned. I leaned back against the wall to keep from falling over. “You were just going to leave her that way forever?”
“Yes,” Lyssa said in accusation.
“No,” Charlie said, shaking his head. He took a hard look from Lyssa, and back-pedaled a little. “I mean, yes, initially, when you were just the unwitting kid sister Hawthorn and she was the loud-mouthed punk. But I think we’ve all grown as people. I had decided to find a more deserving candidate, if I could…”
“If you could?” I asked.
“When I could,” he quickly amended. “All of the stuff about the spell work tiring me is true. It must look like I can move the universe effortlessly to you, but some spells, and this one in particular, takes a momentous amount of effort to pull off.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, stunned.
Lyssa gave me a pitying look. “You should, Anise. A demon becoming a human… it’s unnatural. It breaks the laws of nature, and science, and everything else, because such a creature shouldn’t exist. Demons belong on the Other Side. Not as some sort of former demon… thing, living amongst us.”
Charlie gave me a heavy look, and I swallowed. Right then, Lyssa was talking about me. And she had called me a thing, just for having passed through demonhood and back again.
But I didn’t hesitate when I answered, because even though I was livid with him right then, I never questioned if he was going to out me. He had given me a memory, and it had worked, because we were friends.
“I’m going to keep helping him,” I said resolutely. Gates gave a hiss that was followed by a growl, and I shook my head. “He’s suffering. He wants to end it. I’m going to help him.”
“And what about my suffering?” Gates said through a snarl.
I nodded, and Charlie’s exhausted eyes met my gaze.
“What can you do?” I asked quietly, almost begging.
He took a deep breath, and for a moment, I thought he was going to say nothing. When he spoke, my knees nearly gave out in gratitude.
“I can share it with her,” he said, giving Gates a guilty glance. “I can’t take it away completely with Stark out there. I can’t protect you while I’m a cat, but someone must wear that skin now that the process is started. I can share it with you. Until we find someone else to take that form, that’s what I can do.”
He snapped his fingers, and Gates was Gates again. Where Charlie had sat, there was a sleek, black cat staring at me as I ran to hug my friend. Somehow, his green cat eyes held more emotion than any other cat eyes I had ever seen, and he was devastated.
Gates was mumbling something too incoherent for me to understand, but I caught the last part about how she had been dying to take a shower for weeks, and so I let her go. She went to the bathroom, wiping tears from her face, and as my eyes followed her they passed over Lyssa. She was stunned.
Charlie turned to face her. “Well?”
“I didn’t think you’d do it,” Lyssa scoffed, wide-eyed and shaking her head.
“You owe me an explanation,” Charlie said. “A deal is a deal.”
“A deal?” I said, finally collapsing into a chair. “Didn’t you give me all that crap for making a deal with a demon?”
“She knew what I’d done,” Charlie accused. “She knew all along. It’s why she didn’t want to give up her hair, because she knew I was trying to become human. And I want to know how she knew.”
Lyssa glowered down at him. “I knew the signs to look for. Kendra wrote it in one of her books.”
“Kendra didn’t write it down,” he said, folding his ears back. “Witches don’t record dangerous knowledge like that, and a warlock wouldn’t be willing to share it. A freed slave is no use to them.”
Lyssa gave him another look, frowning deep, but this time she looked more sad than angry.
“You’ve known about me and her all along, haven’t you?” he asked. “She’s the only one I ever discussed it with. Not even Stark knew.”
Lyssa didn’t respond.
“She talked about me with you? And told you not to trust me? That can’t be, because you keep calling me a good man…”
Lyssa raised her eyebrows, shaking her head, and looked away. “Please, stop.”
Charlie suddenly raised his chin, tilting his head a little. The shower came on, and his eyes lit up.
“She told you not to tell me something,” he said finally. Lyssa took a deep breath, and refused to make eye contact. “She told you not to tell me anything, just to be sure.”
Lyssa didn’t say anything. She didn’t move a muscle, but Charlie seemed to have his answer. He got up from the table and padded to the window. I looked from Lyssa to Charlie, but neither of them spoke.
“Could someone please explain?” I asked, wishing I knew a little more about the use of magic than I did.
“There are curses, Thorn, that only take effect when the intended target learns of them,” Charlie said, still staring out the window. “And I will ask Lyssa not to share whatever she knows with anyone else, because this knowledge truly is a dangerous thing. It could get me killed. And if I’m right, that’s the reason Kendra banished me. She had a talent for laying protections on those who didn’t know any better, as long as they remained not knowing any better. She put one on her brother just after that car accident. We made plans to get as far away from all of you as possible so that Stark couldn’t use you as leverage. And then she banished me, and I could never figure out why. I assumed that she was done with me after I took Stark away.”
“We’re going to have to put a bell on you, Charlie,” Lyssa said distantly.
He turned around to stare at her. If he had been human, he probably would have flipped her the bird.
“Annie is going to have questions. Annie, tell him we need a bell.”
I cocked my head at her, unsure how to respond. “You don’t think that’s a little… I don’t even know what that is. You feel like you need to put a bell on him?”
But Charlie took her side. “She’s right, Thorn. She means I need to announce my presence so that I don’t accidentally overhear anything I shouldn’t. When I’m bound as a familiar, you must ask me directly. I can’t do anything unless you ask me to.”
I gave him a mournful look. He had gone out of his way and used his spell to save me from that demeaning fate. Now he was asking me to order him around, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.
“You need a bell, Charlie.”
The collar appeared around his neck in a shower of glowing sparks, and the little gold bell with it. And I wanted nothing more than to take it off of him.
“Charlie,” I said with a tight throat. “Please go somewhere where you can’t hear us until I call you back.”
He disappeared like a smudge rubbed off an image. I turned to Lyssa.
“I know you don’t like him—”
“I’ve been trying to save his life,” she said flatly. “You’re right that I don’t like him. I don’t like demons, but Kendra was convinced he was the exception to t
he rule. I’m not convinced. But I promised her that I would keep him safe, and that’s what I’ve done. I’ve been watching news reports for strange things ever since he left. That’s why the story about the girl at your school with the spontaneous peanut allergy caught my eye. I knew he would come back to the greenhouse looking for her if he ever made it back here. I’m not telling you what I know, because Charlie said it—the fewer people who know, the better.”
“Can she undo it?” I asked more forcefully than I intended.
Lyssa looked at me more evenly than I would have liked. She wasn’t even the slightest bit bothered by the idea of Charlie as a cat wearing a bell. “No. I don’t think she can. I’ve been trying to reach out to her since Charlie came back again, but she either can’t respond or she won’t. She didn’t tell me where she was going, Annie. She just packed up and said goodbye, and to get rid of Charlie if he ever came back. She said she had altered peoples’ memories to make them believe she was dead, and to go along with it. That’s what I did.”
I nodded, trying to think. The shower was still running, and I went to the door and was about to knock when I heard Gates sobbing inside, and I decided to leave it be. What she was going to tell her mother was another issue.
I was going to make Charlie fix that one, and I didn’t feel even slightly bad making him do it. That one was his fault.
“If he was human, would you feel bad for him that this, whatever it is, happened to him?” I asked.
I thought Lyssa would object to the question, but to my surprise, she was willing to play. “Yes, I would.”
Raising one hand to hold the pendant around my neck, I stared her down. “Then we need to help him. Teach me the spell, and I’ll do it. We’ll both do it in turns, nonstop, until she picks up the phone and answers. One of her exes is trying to kill me and the other is a parasite on my soul. She needs to come back now.”
Lyssa gave me a weak smile and nodded. She didn’t seem convinced that a constant summoning would help much, but if it made us both feel better, that was something.
We finished eating breakfast, and a long time later Gates came back out. She didn’t talk about the crying, and neither did I. I got her some of my clothes, and then she went to sleep while Lyssa described her scrying process to me, and then told me to change something about it that I thought was wrong. The whole thing seemed so different from the utilitarian spell that Charlie had made me do; I was pretty sure it wouldn’t work. It felt too much like a hippie meditation activity.
But then, I was trapped in my apartment by a crazed warlock, so I figured anything was worth a shot.
I called Charlie back and told him what I needed.
“And I want my human body back,” he said with a quick shake of his head. “I’m not going fetching as a cat. If Stark finds me—which is a likelihood, as we still don’t know how he found you—then I will be road kill.”
I hesitated, but Gates came out right at that moment, looking hung over and exhausted.
“It’s fine, Annie. I don’t know what to say to my mom anyway. I’m not saying anything until we figure out the crap with Stark, at least.”
“Are you sure?” I asked her.
She nodded, and took a deep breath. “It’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine, but Charlie did it anyway. He left and came back minutes later, sounding a bell before he arrived and toting the things I had asked for.
“Is that it?” he asked me, looking anxious.
I glanced over at the crate of supplies. New candles, new matches, a natural quartz, and a living yellow marigold. I had forgotten to tell him to bring yellow, but he must have seen it in my mind’s eye, because the one he brought was perfect.
“That’s it.” I shrugged. “Why? Somewhere you need to be?”
Both of us crouched down over the crate as I took things out. He met my gaze, and I saw the tick in his eye.
“It was Stark. He’s responsible for the curse.”
I put down the quartz to hold up my hands. “Whoa… she didn’t tell me anything.”
“Charlie…” Lyssa said in warning.
“I’m going to kill him,” he said, standing up. “It’s what I should have done to begin with.”
Lyssa’s eyes narrowed as she stood. She was no match for Charlie’s height, but with her hands on her hips, she was intimidating.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she said coldly. She pointed toward the bedroom, where Gates had gone back to sleep. “You owe that girl a body, and that means giving up yours. If you go out and get yourself killed, where does that leave her?”
I saw the tick in his eye get dangerously faster, but he didn’t respond to her. Instead, he snapped his fingers, and he was a cat once more. I heard Gates give a yelp as she fell off the bed in surprise.
“Could you maybe give her some warning before you do that?” I asked timidly.
Charlie turned and stalked away slowly to the kitchen. I turned back to Lyssa.
“Okay, then. Here goes.”
I lit my candles in a row and set the quartz down in the soil with the marigolds. Somehow, crushing the flowers felt too aggressive, so I let mine be and focused on Kendra. After a while I went and got one of her diaries, one of my favorites where her handwriting flowed in long, smooth lines, and held it loose in my hand while I focused.
Lyssa got bored and went to make lunch some time later, and Gates eventually came out and I gave my permission for them to turn on the television while I continued to stare at a rock in the dirt. The afternoon passed by faster than average, and when the sun started to tuck away behind the mountains, I was just about ready to give up my shift to Lyssa.
She said she would take over, just as soon as we had eaten dinner. She fixed the meal and then we all sat down together. Even Charlie joined us, having materialized the steaks that Lyssa found in the refrigerator, and the conversation took a lighthearted turn when he offered to create an elaborate back story for Gates’ absence. The story he told involved being kidnapped and forced into slave labor making tiny coin purses that were sold on the cheap to tourists, and eventually making a convoluted escape that involved two llamas, a lighter, and paying a garbage man in candy bars.
Gates had cracked a smile, tossing her fork. “Well, at least I didn’t pay him by more lewd means.”
“The candy bars can be an innuendo if you want,” Lyssa suppressed a smile.
I grinned at Lyssa for having said it, and we both laughed. Gates waved a hand.
“Okay…” she started. “No, really. I’m thinking maybe I just entered a fugue state, like that writer…you know who I’m talking about?”
“Agatha Christie,” Charlie offered.
“Agatha Christie!” Gates smiled wider. “And I ended up in this East European sanitarium for a while, and then…”
Lyssa’s cell phone rang and she excused herself to the kitchen to answer it. Gates continued to concoct her story with Charlie, but I saw Lyssa’s face fall from a cheery smile to a frown when she pressed the phone to her ear. She saw me and turned away, and I immediately assumed the worst.
Something had happened to Rosie and Josh.
I got up from the table to console her, and Gates and Charlie fell silent. Just as I got close enough to give her a hug, however, Lyssa turned back around, looking confused.
“It’s for you…” She held the phone out to Charlie. “It’s Kendra.”
Chapter 11
Gates gave a yelp that turned into a feline screech as she dropped onto all fours. Charlie only glanced at her as she took a swipe at him.
“Oh, calm down!” he snapped. “I need thumbs to hold the phone—you can have your turn back as soon as I’m done!”
He took the phone from Lyssa and walked into the kitchen. As though it made any difference; we could still hear him.
“Long time, no…No, no! Now you are going to listen to me, Kendra! I want an answer!” He fell silent. I got up from the table and went to the kitchen to stare at him, and he turned away,
annoyed. “We have an audience. Your apprentice and her sister. Yes, the talentless one, which is one more bone I have to pick with you. No, I cannot. Because we’re under siege and I doubt this coverage plan extends to the Other Side. Why?”
He turned back to face me, and set the phone on the kitchen counter, turning on the speaker phone.
“Hello? Lyssa, can you hear me?”
Lyssa and Gates joined us in the kitchen, and Lyssa leaned down over the phone, propping herself on one elbow.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“I told you not to summon him, and get rid of him if he showed up!”
Lyssa raised her eyebrows and sighed. “I didn’t summon him, and I did get rid of him!”
“Well, then why—”
“Annie agreed to be his bridge, so there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it!”
A long pause followed. I thought I could hear wind, or traffic, or something else in the background. She must have been outside.
“Well that was dumb of her.”
I rolled my eyes. “He turned my best friend into a cat!”
I heard her scoff. “Damn it, Charlie…”
“You banished me and disappeared!” he said with a sneer. “I’ve been starving in the Other Side. I had to do something to—”
“Yeah, but that’s not you!” She talked over him, and to my great surprise, Charlie shut up and listened. “You promised me. You promised me that you would find someone deserving before you started, because you wouldn’t wish that curse on anyone. You cursed a little girl?”
“Hey!” Gates said indignantly. “Young woman, thank you very much!”
Kendra sighed. “Someone put the kids outside. There’s too many people talking.”
“Only if I want them dead…” Lyssa looked exasperated. “Stark found us too.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Annie summon him too?”
“No!” I said, insulted. “He snuck up on me while I was on campus and offered me a soda. I know better than to summon any more demons after Charlie!”