Soul Hunt

by Margaret Ronald

  My fingers skated over what felt like the skin of a corpse. I steeled myself to look as I got a better grip on it—and saw, lit as if from a stray beam of light that had made it this deep, a greenish pouch, disintegrating from its time under water.

  With that, the walls of the house started to fade first into memory, then into the scraps of foundation that were all that remained. Meda’s voice continued, a low drone like a guiding thread. “And not one serpent by good chance awake,” she said, her voice drawing closer, almost in my ear. “Do what we could not, despite our names and our intent. This I cannot bind you to, this only I beg you—be not thief but murderer.”

  I turned, but something struck me hard on the right shoulder, digging into my skin. A puff of blood danced up, hovering in the water, and I yelled—but Meda was gone, and now the house was too, and I only had time for a fraction of a breath before the waters of the Quabbin slammed in around me.

  I’d say it was like being struck by a bat—the pressure was that strong—but it hit me on every side at once, and so it wasn’t so much a slap as a crush, all over me. Had I any room for it, I’d have collapsed. As it was, I didn’t even have space enough for any of these thoughts, pushing off the bottom and kicking toward what I hoped was the surface. Green water blurred over my eyes, the dim sky above doing nothing to indicate which direction was up or even if there was an end to this water.

  With every stroke, the sunstone got heavier and something jarred against my back. Very faintly, through the water, I caught the scent of my own blood, drifting through the Quabbin. There weren’t such things as freshwater sharks, right? Or snapping turtles … hell, in another ten seconds I wasn’t going to care about either of those, because I was going to drown. I fumbled with the sunstone, trying to keep it from sliding out of my grip and back down to the bottom of the reservoir (and this time I’d have no friendly advice telling me where to look), then gave up the last of my breath in a shout as whatever was stuck in my shoulder dug in deeper.

  I burst through the surface in mid-yell, choked, gargled water, and spat. The Quabbin was as it had been when I dove under: still, gray, unchangeable. I took deep, searing breaths, blessing air for its existence and water for its limits and earth for being there for me to swim to in time.

  The sunstone’s bag, slick and greasy in my hands, rotted away further as I lifted it. I tore the sack off, treading water frantically, letting it sink back to the foundations of the house where it had lain for so long, and raised the stone. “Yes!” I yelled, and a fresh flock of geese startled, honking in reply. “Got it! Hound of Hounds can even hunt under fucking water!”

  The stone didn’t respond, of course, and there was no celestial applause from deities who’d bet on my success or failure. But I knew I’d won, and that was enough. I held the stone up, looking through it at the sky, and sure enough, when I turned it toward the west, it brightened, showing where the fading sunlight was strongest. I drew the stone a little closer, still treading water, then hissed as the pain in my shoulder flared.

  It wasn’t until I had reached the shore, shivering so violently I could barely see straight, and staggered up onto the bank that I could reach back. Something was jammed between my suit and shoulder, digging in with every movement. I dropped the sunstone onto the grass, where it gleamed an unhealthy gray, and reached back, fumbling like someone trying to get that one itchy spot. My fingers brushed cold metal, cooling faster in this air, and a fresh flow of blood spilled down my back as I withdrew what Meda had used to attack me: a fisherman’s hook as long as my hand, cruel and curved, black iron unstained by rust. It was not meant as a weapon, but it settled easily into my hand, the hook emerging between my fingers, the haft cool against my palm.

  I turned it back and forth and looked down at the sunstone. “Well,” I said through chattering teeth. “Thank you.”

  Twelve

  The heater in Sarah’s car only had two settings: off and inferno. The second was just fine for me at the moment, though, and I spent a good twenty minutes huddling in front of the vents, trying to stop shivering. Venetia’s suit, still smelling of Quabbin water and leaking little pink bloody tendrils, went in a plastic bag that got tossed in the back; the sunstone went in my messenger bag. If anyone had noticed my quick change on the shore, at least they hadn’t called the cops for public indecency.

  The long slash down my shoulder blade was a pain, both in how it stung and how hard it was to reach, but Sarah kept a small first-aid kit in the glove compartment, and I managed to staunch the blood with a handful of napkins and slap about six Band-Aids on it. I’d need it looked at—I probably needed a tetanus shot—but it’d hold for a little while.

  I thought back to Meda’s words—a plea, but not a binding. I’d have been able to tell if she’d enspelled me, and she hadn’t. And a little blood in the reservoir wouldn’t kill anyone—they’d clean the water, or fluoridate it or something, before it made it to the taps.

  Night had fallen pretty solidly by the time I returned to Venetia’s house, and both the porch light and a light at the back of the house were on. Venetia leaned out into the hall when I rang the bell and waved me in impatiently, though not so impatiently that she didn’t glare until my shoes were off.

  She and Katie had staked out the kitchen. A huge, flaking pasteboard box sat at the far end of the table, and I’d barely noticed it before Katie peeked out from behind. “Evie!” she squeaked, and slid out from her chair just as I swung my bag off my shoulder, my fingers grazing the lump where the sunstone bulged out.

  For a moment—just a flicker, no more than the fragment of a thought—I saw a flash of silver in her eyes, silver marred by ink and water. I caught my breath, then let go of the bag as Katie reached me. “Good to see you, kiddo.” I sat down next to her and pulled her into a hug, ignoring how it strained my shoulder. “You’re okay?”

  “I’m okay,” she returned, or something like that; she’d mashed her face up against my shoulder and as a result wasn’t very clear. “Come take a look!” she added, pulling away and dragging the box over to her. “I found this box in the attic and Aunt Venice said I can keep whatever I like from it.”

  “One picture,” Venetia said. She didn’t turn her voice saccharine, the way some old ladies did when talking to kids. “Have you chosen yet?”

  “I haven’t even looked at them all yet!”

  “Then get looking.” She turned to me. “I’ve put you in the sewing room, with Nathaniel. Will you be staying the night?”

  “I—” Oh boy. What was the rule on telling proper New England spinsters that yes, you were sharing a bed with their nephew? Did Miss Manners even cover that? “I don’t know yet.”

  “Hm. Well, there’s a place for you, if you like.”

  “Evie, look.” Katie held up a flaking photograph in a gilt-stamped cardboard frame: two stiff-necked men in collars that practically came up to their noses. She imitated one of their expressions—the one on the left looked like he’d just been goosed—and I snickered, then tried to hide it as Venetia gave me the hairy eyeball. Katie giggled and resumed digging through the stack, then stopped. “Oh.”

  “What’ve you found, then?” Venetia paused as she put away the last of the dinner dishes. “Oh. Oh, my. How did that end up in … never mind. That one’s yours, girl.”

  “What is it?”

  Katie held up a round-edged photo of a grinning girl with her hair in pigtails. It could have been Katie herself, save for the carefree smile. “It’s my mom. When she was my age.”

  Venetia had a sad, faraway smile as she gazed down at it. “Angela must have left it with me when she moved out.” She set the dishes back in the cupboard and closed the door. “How Charlotte ever managed to raise a girl like that is, well, quite understandable really. Angela Hunter was a darling without the sense God gave a guppy.”

  I glanced up at that, startled, but Katie didn’t even seem to have heard.

  “And for all that, she could still charm anyone, includin
g us, when it came down to it. When Charlotte’s husband disowned Angela, Charlotte came to me for help. To me, and to Adele—” she gestured to the scrap of wall above the fridge, where several portraits crowded for space, “—and to Millie. We taught Angela enough that she was able to find good work and take care of the boy.”

  “So you were sort of like surrogate grandparents.” I’d had no idea. I’d always just thought that Nate’s mother was on her own, since she had been by the time I knew them.

  “Aunts, as I said. It was an amicable arrangement; Angela needed someone to act out against, and better us than the boy. And he managed, I think, and for the better. We may not have been his blood relatives, but we are, in many ways, still his family.”

  I thought of the desperate, uncomfortable kid in the picture, and then of Nate’s history. He’d learned repression from the pros; no wonder his father’s curse had taken so long to reach him. “It must have been quite a sacrifice for you.”

  “Oh no.” She folded a dish towel, hung it above the sink, then adjusted it slightly. “Charlotte was a friend. There is … hm. I don’t know if you’re quite old enough to understand this. Women did things like that for each other, back then. You take care of your own, as much as you can.” She smiled, faintly, looking off into the distance, then gave me an annoyed look. “What is it now?”

  “You remind me of someone,” I said without thinking.

  “Hm. I hardly think so.”

  I held my tongue, not wanting to tell her who she reminded me of: Meda, and her own magic, her own quiet skill in the face of the Dark Day and Colin’s lingering sickness, the determination that drove her magic to linger past death. The bones of New England ran in its old women, and what Venetia and her friends had done together was part of that solidarity. Meda had had something of that as well, despite the differences in time and race and magic.

  Maybe Sarah and Katie would have it too, in time. But I wouldn’t get a chance to see it unless I got the sunstone back to Dina. “Where’s Nate? I saw his car out front—he didn’t go looking for me, did he?”

  Katie bit her lip and glanced at Venetia, but the old woman frowned as she turned to face me.

  “You are bleeding, Genevieve.”

  “I—what?” I turned, and unfortunately, she was right: the patch-up job I’d done on my shoulder had given out. “Um. I had a bit of an accident earlier.”

  “Then come this way. I won’t have anyone bleeding on the kitchen table. That,” she added with a thin half smile, “is for the dining-room table, and only when an emergency appendectomy is called for.”

  “Are you going to tell the Uncle Tadworthy story again?” Katie called as we left the kitchen.

  “No, I am not. Pick out your picture, Katherine, and get to bed.”

  She herded me into the next room—her own room, apparently—and immediately I could see where Nate’s habit of having far too many medical supplies on hand had come from. “Shirt, off,” she ordered, taking down a large brown bottle that I could only hope was peroxide.

  “Um—”

  “Oh, don’t start getting embarrassed on me. I’ve seen three generations through more scrapes than you could possibly imagine, and I haven’t blinked at one.”

  Jesus. I was starting to think that no experience with meeting family could have prepared me for Venetia. “All right.” I yanked off my sweater and the shirt under it, aware that this was probably not what Nate had in mind when he’d given me her address. She poked at the edges of the scrape, made a disapproving noise, and then set it on fire. At least that’s what it felt like; after the first screaming shock of it I could recognize the scent as really strong rubbing alcohol.

  “Stop whining.” She did something else with what felt like hot irons (tweezers, I saw when I glanced back). “In all honesty, Genevieve,” she continued as she added a bandage, “you are not what I expected Nathaniel to bring by when he said he wanted me to meet someone important.”

  I nearly choked as she smeared what felt like a dollop of chili paste on the scratch. I couldn’t identify the actual product; the pain was dulling my senses, and there was a basic awful old-first-aid scent to all of it that eclipsed everything else. “And what did you expect?” I managed through gritted teeth.

  “Someone more like his mother, honestly. A flake, but an endearing flake.” She swatted the bandage in place, which hurt—actually, a good deal less now, but it still was a nasty thing to do—and handed me my shirt. “You, however, are neither blithe nor anything that could possibly be called a ‘free spirit,’ and you’re not in the least pretty.”

  I could feel the blood rushing to my face about as fast as the retort rushing to my lips. Don’t cuss her out, I thought, don’t cuss her out, and don’t deck this cranky old bitch—

  “You’ll do nicely,” she added, and shook out my sweater.

  I must have looked like a fish on the block, because Venetia gave another of those faint smiles. “There’s a reason Nathaniel doesn’t bring people to meet me often. Not even Angela liked me very much, and I don’t blame her for it. I’m not friendly. But I’m useful and—”

  “—And that’s enough for you.” I smiled, recognizing some of the philosophy that had gotten me through the last few years. Whatever changes I’d gone through since then, because of the Fiana or the Hunt or Nate himself, I still held on to some of that belief. “But it’s still nice to have one or two friends who understand that.”

  The lines around her eyes softened a moment. “Oh yes,” she said. “So you see my point,” she went on, packing away the medical supplies with a brisk efficiency. “Even if you’ve got the poor sense to go getting scratched up like that—I won’t ask how you managed it, I’ll just say that you must have some talent for self-injury—you’ve got the sense I recognize.”

  I took my sweater and pulled it over my head, wincing a little less as the bandages stretched. She’d done a good job, even if she had used pure pain to do it. “Thanks,” I said, and turned around, fumbling in my bag to make sure I still had the stone (with so much riding on it, I sure as hell wasn’t losing track of it). “So,” I added, lowering my voice, “where is Nate?”

  My fingers brushed the greasy smooth surface of the sunstone, and for just a fraction of a second Venetia seemed to shrink, wizen in on herself. Stranger still, the photos on the wall behind her were blank. But when I blinked and looked again, she was herself again, the old matriarch with a soul of iron.

  “He’s gone out,” she said. “He went out a little while ago, for a walk around the back twenty. I thought he’d be back by now.”

  Oh, crap. “How long ago?”

  “Just after dinner.” She paused a moment, one hand on the door to the hall. “So some time ago, yes.”

  I ran my hand through my hair, tugging at the ends of it, and let out a long breath. “Do you want me to go look for him?”

  Venetia’s glasses flashed as she opened the door. “I raised that young man to be quite capable of handling himself on a simple walk in the woods,” she proclaimed. “But yes, I would like it if you did. Humor an old woman.”

  “I’ll humor us both.” I switched the stone into the pocket of my jacket and left my bag by the door.

  Outside, the air had turned crystalline and cold, with that tang that reminds you that winter isn’t even as far away as the next day; it’s already here, and lurking where you can’t see it. My feet crunched on the first gleamings of frost behind the house, past the fence that delineated the end of both the driveway and Venetia’s out-of-control herb garden (mint, mint everywhere, and you’d think that would be a reassuring scent, wouldn’t you? Not when it’s this cold). I shivered and sank a little deeper into my coat.

  The scrub behind Venetia’s house had once been a field, judging by the faint lines in the ground visible in the way the dead grass crumpled. Between the field and the herb garden stood a crumbling drystone wall and a cluster of trees, looking out disapprovingly.

  Nate’s clothes lay piled on th
e wall. His scent hung heavy and rank in the air, like the rumble of unsteady snow on a high hillside. I vaulted the wall and followed the scent into the scrub, past the pricker bushes and away from the open spaces. “Nate?”

  No answer. But the back of my neck prickled, and I didn’t need to look to know he was watching. I raised my hands to my mouth and blew on them, then lowered them and closed my eyes.

  The silence behind me grew deeper, and short, bristly hair brushed the tips of my fingers. Teeth nipped at the back of my leg, not even enough to do more than tug at the cloth. I’d have called it a love bite if it weren’t so damn creepy. “Cut the crap, Nate,” I snapped. “You know I can’t talk to you like this.”

  There was a long pause marked by only the rattle of wind in the branches above, then a slow sigh. I opened my eyes to see Nate in mid change, only—

  Only there was something different this time. A twist around his stomach, a distortion like the shimmer in a deformed mirror. Remembering the flash of silver in Katie’s eyes, and the blank photos behind Venetia, I reached into my pocket for the sunstone, and as my fingers touched its greasy surface the distortion became clearer, girding him like a belt. Even when the last of the change faded and Nate stood before me fully human, gaunt and haggard, that coarse, ugly line remained.

  “Evie,” he murmured, the name a caress, and despite the cold I was suddenly warm, too warm. He met my eyes, then looked away, moving to cover himself. “I’m sorry.”

  “Venetia was worried,” I said inanely.

  “She’s right to be. I thought … thought I could say goodbye to it. Only it’s difficult, so difficult to keep coming back to myself.” He shuddered all over, and I looked away, both to spare him and embarrassed by my own reaction. “I need your help.”

  “You have it,” I answered without pause. “Always.”

  He smiled, only a knifelike flicker in the pale light from above. “You may not say that in a moment.” Ignoring both the cold and his own nakedness—how was he not getting frostbite already?—he walked to the wall, bent, and drew something from between the stones. “I did some research,” he said, not yet looking at me. “Some back when this first happened, then after a while I stopped, and then when you … after you gave the Horn back, and I thought about what it would be like without you.”