The Chase

by Virginia Boecker

  The Chase

  A Witch Hunter Novella

  By Virginia Boecker

  Little, Brown and Company

  New York Boston

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  Chapter 1

  Fifer

  It’s been said never to open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it. But when the evil at that door stands with swagger and speaks with seduction and you know it’s here just for you, that makes it all the harder to close it.

  I should have closed it.

  Schuyler leans against the frame, looking over my shoulder into the drawing room of the tiny cottage, presumably to see if I’m alone. Which is rubbish: He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t already know I was alone. A smirk walks up one side of his mouth and he says, “Are you going to let me in, or…?”

  “Or,” I want to snap; I almost do. Then I stop. If he knows I’m angry, then that’s one more thing he’ll know about me and I don’t want him to know anything at all. I shrug. “If you wish.”

  He scowls a bit but doesn’t move. Schuyler likes the hunt, the chase, the kill. But it’s only by giving him precisely what he doesn’t want that I will find out precisely what he does.

  Finally, he eases over the threshold, past me and into the slight front room, glancing around as if taking inventory. At the desk under the window, piled high with books and parchment and pens and clutter. At the chair beside it, draped with a short, black, and threadbare cloak. All John’s—he’s a complete slob—but I don’t bother to point this out. Then to my table, laid out with yet more books and parchment, candles, and herbs.

  “You studying?”

  I don’t reply; the answer is obvious enough. I only ever come to this cottage when I’m studying. It once belonged to Nicholas—he was born and raised here before he bought the surrounding land and built his own home, the nearby bricked manor I’ve lived in since I was six. But he gave the cottage to me when I turned sixteen, as a space to have to myself where I could develop my own magic within the rigors of study he laid out for me. Nicholas’s words, not mine. Also his words: The cottage is a space to maintain quiet friendships, not to entertain paramours.

  But then, Schuyler is not my paramour.

  He strips off his long black coat, places it deliberately over John’s, then moves to the settee in the corner and flops down on it. Rests one elbow against the back and crosses a foot over the other knee, as if he plans to stay longer than a few minutes.

  “When are your exams?”

  I turn to shut the door so he can’t see the begrudging surprise on my face. I told Schuyler about my level exams the last time I saw him, two weeks ago when he took me to a tavern in Harrow and plied me with drinks and words and smiles and charm. Half of it was complete bullshit, I knew that even then, but the other half had enough truth for me to invite him back here and allow him to ply me with more than words. I even agreed to see him again, which he said he wanted to, desperately, the very next day.

  He didn’t show.

  “Less than a month away,” I reply. “I have to pass them if I want to continue studying magic, and I intend to pass.”

  Schuyler nods. “I remember you said that.”

  “I didn’t.” I look directly at him then; I’d been avoiding it until now. Everything about him is wrong. His eyes are blue, unnaturally so, the color of butterfly wings. His hair, blond and overlong, almost touches his shoulders. He’s too tall, his face too sharp, all angles and corners except for those lips, his black coat too big and his black boots too scuffed. But the worst, the very worst, is his mouth. The way it sits in a constant half smile, half smirk, knowing and amused, as if he’s lazily picking through the recesses of your mind, turning over your thoughts and feelings and making them his, all for his entertainment.

  Without thinking, my hand flutters to the neck of my tunic, for the chain around my neck. Brass ampules filled with salt, quicksilver, ash. The one I created the day after I met him at last year’s Winter’s Night party, to keep him from hearing my thoughts, to keep him from knowing what he did to them, and to me. His eyes follow the movement, then settle back on mine, his face revealing nothing.

  “You’re angry,” he says.

  This is a guess, else he’s using his century-old powers of observation to note the stiffness in my shoulders or the set of my mouth, which is puckered up like a sour old cat. Even so, I let my eyes go wide and feign surprise. “Why would I be angry?”

  “With me,” he clarifies.

  “Why would I be angry with you?”

  Schuyler lifts a hand, idly tracing a fingertip against the white plaster walls, his pose as lazy as the words that come next.

  “I thought we got on nicely last we met. Had a nice chat. You made sheep eyes at me, I made cow eyes back. Then you invited me here.” His eyes flick to the narrow, framed doorway leading into the cottage’s small bedroom, then back to me, that damn knowing smirk on his face again.

  I grit my teeth against the bait; I will not be outplayed. “Right, right.” I nod slowly, as if it’s all just coming back to me. “I recall now. I had such a headache the next day.…” I trail off with a laugh and a grimace and a press of a palm to my forehead.

  Schuyler smiles, not to be outplayed, either. “When I received no word from you, I assumed that was the reason. You feeling unwell.” I seethe at this, at his pretending that he didn’t skip out on me, that I am the reason we haven’t seen each other since then. “Lark promised me you weren’t angry, but I told her I wouldn’t believe it until I heard directly from you.”

  I still my hand, keep it from fluttering to the chain around my neck again. But Schuyler won’t need to hear my thoughts to interpret the scowl working its way across my lips. After a few drinks, I made the mistake of telling Schuyler that Lark thought he was beautiful, that if I had no interest in him she did, that she would be—her words—a lot less challenging. And now he seems to be daring me to call him out on his truancy. He is firing at me from all sides, but I refuse to duck.

  “She’ll be glad to hear it,” I say. “She does love to be right.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell her that,” he says, “when I see her tonight.”

  Bull’s-eye.

  “Make sure you’re not late.” I waggle my finger, mock stern. “Then it will be me you’re forced to see for reassurance that she’s not angry.”

  He leaps from the settee in a blur and then he’s back at the door, in front of me, where I still hover with my hand gripping the latch so hard my fingers hurt. I’m not prepared for it and it’s a lot easier to talk to him when those lips aren’t hovering an inch above my own.

  “Why do you play these games with me?” He reaches out and threads a strand of my hair around his finger, soft and slow. I force myself not to lean into him.

  “I play no more or less than you do.”

  “So you do admit it’s a game.” He continues with my hair and I can’t think of how to respond so I say nothing. “If you want to see me, all you have to do is ask.”

  “Why should I have to ask?”

  “As it turns out, you don’t. I’m here anyway, aren’t I?”

  His logic is maddening, ridiculous, nonsensical. But it’s hard to care about
that with his mouth now pressed against my ear, treacherous and soft, whispering lies on fragrant breath.

  “You’re not really studying, are you?”

  It’s less a question than an invitation. One I might answer differently were I not compromised by his nearness, by the feel of his hand now on my face, his thumb on my cheek, the smell of him, like the woods after a winter rainfall, his mouth moving closer, closer. Unwillingly, I close my eyes and reply, “No.”

  He pulls away from me so fast I feel the breeze of his absence against my face, and my eyes fly open. He’s staring down at me, his expression no longer cunning and amused but cold and assessing.

  “You don’t want to do this.”

  “What, kiss you?” I let out a little laugh; it’s almost genuine this time. “That’s generally what standing in front of someone with your eyes closed and lips next to theirs indicates.” I sound like John when I say this, which makes me laugh again.

  But Schuyler isn’t amused. “You’re allowing this to happen, yes, but you don’t want it to. You’re still angry with me.” Once more without thinking, my hand reaches for the chain around my neck. He waves it away.

  “I can’t hear you. Whatever magic you crafted, it worked, so you can rest easy. You’re still the best little witch in all of Harrow. But I didn’t need to hear you to know what you’re thinking. I can still see you. Your eyes said ‘kiss me,’ but your lips said something else. So did the rest of you. If you’re angry with me—”

  “I already told you I’m not—”

  “Just tell me.”

  Now it’s my turn to pull back. To assess him, as coldly as he assesses me. “Why?”

  “Why what?” He frowns, his turn to be surprised.

  “Why do you care if I’m angry?” I say. “What difference would it make? Would knowing this allow you to more easily manage the relatively simple task of showing up when you say you’re going to—”

  “So you do remember.”

  “Or waiting two weeks before contacting me—”

  “So that’s what this is about.”

  “Or throwing another girl in my face—”

  “That was a lie and you know it.”

  “I don’t know it,” I say, and that is the truth. “In any case, I don’t want to be lied to. So if you would prefer I not be mad at you, then perhaps you should stop doing maddening things. If you would prefer me not to play games with you, then perhaps you should stop laying down the board. And if you don’t like my rules, well, then I can certainly recommend a player who would be a lot less challenging.”

  His eyes go wide, that sharp jaw snaps shut, a muscle in it twitching. Then he turns around, takes a handful of steps away from me. Holds up a hand, now clenched into a fist, and taps it twice against the wall.

  “Children,” he says finally. Quietly, as if to himself. “You’re always so difficult. I forget that. I should really pass my time with the aged, only they’re so damned boring and not half as fetching—”

  “Child?” My voice comes out screechy. “Pass your time?”

  Schuyler turns around then, regards me carefully. His lips, they’re not smiling or smirking but doing something else entirely. Something angry and real and disappointed and human.

  “You don’t trust me,” he says. “And you don’t trust yourself with me. Not with your thoughts or with your words. Why is that?”

  Because you’re a revenant. Because you could kill me. Because you’re a hundred years old and you’re too experienced and I’m not yet seventeen and I’m not experienced at all, in anything, much less this. They’re all reasons but they’re not the reason and I know it and he does, too.

  “At least you should trust yourself with the answer to that,” Schuyler says. “Once you do, let me know. Maybe then we can get somewhere.”

  “Schuyler—” I start, but it’s too late: He flings open the door and then he’s gone.

  “You forgot—” I rush to the threshold and peer into the dark. Schuyler is nowhere to be seen, but that doesn’t mean he’s not around. “Your coat.” I try again. “You forgot your coat.”

  The only reply is silence.

  Chapter 2

  Schuyler

  I hear her voice calling after me, of course I do. But I continue down the front path and away from her anyway, the late-night moon at my back, through the woods and the darkened roads until I reach the center of Harrow. Past shuttered shops and bustling taverns that line the High Street, conversation spilling from the open doors and windows as loud as the one with Fifer that plays in my head, over and over.

  It is always the same, all of it: from the moon in the sky to the foibles in the pub to the anger in the voice of the girl who stands before you. It always changes, but it is always the same.

  Now, always is a long word. It presumes things will go on and on, indefinitely and forever, that things have been that way indefinitely and forever. Hardly the case for most people, for most humans. But in my case, because I am decidedly no longer human, it’s the truth.

  I’ve been on this earth—top side, mind—37,595 days, 22 hours, 12 minutes, 15 seconds. That’s 103 years, 22 hours, 12 minutes, 18 seconds, now. Again, that’s top side. If you want to count the time beneath the earth, well. That’s really where this story begins.

  And why it will never end.

  I twist down a side street and find myself in the empty alley that runs behind the main thoroughfare. I’ve got nowhere to go, and here seems as good a place as any to stay the night. Dark, quiet, no one to bother me or harass me or try and kiss me or turn away my advances.

  I slide to a sit, my back pressed against the wall. Laughter from a nearby tavern floats through the cool spring air, mingled with the sound of tambours and lutes and off-key singing. The odd splash in a nearby puddle, the scurrying of mice through refuse. They’re the sounds that haunted me for the first handful of those 103 years after I returned because they were the last sounds I heard on my last day on earth, my last day as a human.

  It all started in a tavern, as lurid tales are wont to do. There were cards, there were drinks, and there was a girl. I’d tell you about her only I don’t remember. What I do remember are sovereigns on a pitted table, an hour past midnight, a dark-haired beauty in my lap, a losing hand, and whatever sense I had turned to lees, alongside those in my cup. Then there was a fight, a knife, and then there was me, slumped against an alley wall just like this one, abandoned and alone.

  It is as they say: Inauspicious beginnings always lead to inauspicious ends.

  A man approached me then, hovering over me as tall and dark as a reaper in his long black coat. “Are you hurt?”

  “Are you fucking mad? What does it look like?” What it looked like was this: my coat, long gone, my tunic torn to shreds and half my gut along with it, blood and something purple and pulsing through my fingers—fuck, it was my intestines—then blood and blood and more blood.

  When the man didn’t reply I added, “I’m going to bleed to death. I’m going to fucking bleed to death.” My voice was high and it cracked at the end. I sounded like a pubescent child, when in reality I was eighteen. In the grand scheme of things, I suppose, I was a child.

  “It’s likely, yes.” The man rocked back on his heels. Bald, white, short beard, piercing eyes of indeterminate color. He looked down at me as if I were some specimen in a lab, some butterfly he’d pinned to wax by its wings to examine, as if my situation were nothing more than a curiosity.

  I waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t.

  “Don’t just stand there,” I finally managed. It was hard to speak by then, my mouth filled with the taste of copper, my own blood. “Do something! Do… anything.” But even as I said it I knew there was nothing he could do. Not unless he was a surgeon, a wizard, or some kind of demon, all of which would be exceedingly rare to find in some shithouse alley in Wealdstone, where there’s nothing but drunks and vagrants and gamblers—and idiots like me, all three.

  That’
s where, as it turned out, I was wrong.

  The man stepped toward me. I tried to shuffle away but as I did, the purple in my gut made another appearance and the world went black around the edges.

  “I’ve got no money, if that’s what you’re after.” I whispered it, choked it; the words drowned in a river of blood. “I lost it all back there. I lost it all.”

  I lost it all.

  He didn’t respond to that. Instead, he said, “I think you’ll do nicely.” Then he kneeled before me. His coat trailed along the ground and puddled into the wet and muddy cobblestone street. His short, battered black boots wore my blood. They weren’t the fashion of the time, the dandy Anglian 1400s, with our hose and breeches and thigh boots and brimless hats. Maybe that should have been my first clue he wasn’t an ordinary man. Either way, I knew soon enough when he smiled and pulled out from somewhere inside that black coat a ratty old bone, a bundle of what I would later know to be sweetgrass and sage, and a knife, another fucking knife, curved and sharp and as long as my arm.

  “Don’t.” This I barely got out; I was shaking and choking and freezing and dying. “Don’t—”

  “It will only hurt a moment.”

  Then: darkness.

  I thought it was death. It was death. It was a bit like sleep, in that there was nothing. At least, at first. Then there was something: a stirring. Wakefulness. Numbness that slowly gave way to sharpness, the way a limb feels when it’s fallen asleep, but all over. Sharpness accelerated to awareness, which degraded into fear.

  I was underground. No, I was buried.

  I began to thrash. Difficult to do, when you’re pinned on every side by earth, by darkness. I elbowed and kicked; I screamed once, a mistake. Dirt filled my mouth, my lungs, my stomach. I forced myself to stop, to think, to figure a way out. A way up. I reasoned I was lying on my back—I was fucking buried after all—so I started with my knees. Jerked them upward once, twice. There was an enormous rumble, a sound as if the world was shaking. Then a cleft appeared, a crack in the dirt just above my head, and through it, light. I lifted myself to my feet. Shouldered my way through it, pushing, pressing, climbing.