by Nalini Singh
“For the first three years with her all I did was covert work,” Jim said. “Pretend to be someone you’re not. Go to the right place at the right time, listen, talk to people, be likeable and be convincing. It wasn’t my favorite part of the job, but I’ve learned to be what people expect me to be. People expect the Chief of Security to be a scary hardass, so I give them that. Werecats expect their alpha to show teeth every time someone steps out of line, so I give them that, too.”
My heart sank. “Does this mean that if I expect caring boyfriend Jim, you’ll give me that?”
“No,” he said. “You just get me the way I am, which means you’re screwed. I’m mostly an asshole.”
I put my hand on the door handle of Eleventh Planet. “Can you do a comic geek?”
“What will I get if I do it?”
“What do you want?”
“Make me dinner tonight,” he said.
Dinner. Offering food was a special thing to the shapeshifters. Our animal counterparts showed affection with food. It said so many things without words. I care about you. I will share what I have with you. I will protect you. And sometimes it said I love you. I’d made him dinner before, but the way he said it now sent little shivers down my back. I forced my voice to sound casual. “You’ve got a deal.”
THE owners of the comic shop were college kids. We only met one, Brune Wayne, a short blond guy in his early twenties, who spent way too much time at the gym, waved his arms when he talked and immediately explained to us that he was named after his grandfather and lamented that he was only one letter away from being Batman. His partner in crime, Christian Leander, was helping his parents with some furniture today. The comic book shop was just like all the other comic book shops in Atlanta. With computers gone, paper books and comics once again became a viable form of entertainment, and the shop was doing good business.
Jim knew way more about comics than I had expected. He and Brune had clicked and Brune showed us around, talking nonstop. It was too bad about the nice old lady, and they did get a letter but they thought it was a prank, because nobody would pay crazy money like that, so they threw it in the trash. And these are hand-painted miniatures. A local guy makes them. Look, they are magic. The dragon’s eyes glow. Isn’t that like the coolest thing?
By the time we got out of there, my ears were ringing and I had so many comic book titles and superhero names stuck in my hair, I’d need to shampoo twice to get it all out. But one thing was clear. Brune didn’t have a mean bone in his body.
Frustration nagged at me. Anyone who could summon a whole swarm of jenglots was dangerous and wasn’t afraid to kill. So far all we had were possible victims. Pulling off that kind of magic took dedication and years of practice. None of them felt that powerful, magically, and none of them seemed to have the kind of money hiring someone of that power would require, not to mention dropping a million on buying up this property.
We had to make progress and soon, because he or she would try to finish what they started. I couldn’t face going back to the Indrayani family and telling them, “So sorry your beloved grandma is dead because I was too stupid to figure out who was responsible.”
“Look,” Jim said.
A car pulled up to Vasil’s Deli. A man got out. He was in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair. He walked up to the deli’s door, keys in hand. His fingers were shaking. His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot. He dropped the keys, crouched to pick them up, finally managing to get one in the lock, opened the door, and stepped inside.
Jim and I walked toward the deli. The CLOSED sign had been flipped to OPEN. The man was sitting in a chair, slumped over the counter, nodding off. Jim opened the door and I saw it, the dark furry cloud of magic, wrapped around the man, hanging off his back like a revolting liquid sack bristling with boar quills. Thin, slimy strands crossed his neck, garroting his throat, and stretched across his face, trying to worm their way to his nose and his eyes.
I jumped onto the counter and grabbed his hands. The magic hissed at me. The liquid sack on the man’s back broke and a nest of black furry snakes erupted, wriggling toward me, each armed with a dark beak where the mouth should’ve been. Jim cleared the counter and sliced through the phantom snakes with his knife. His blade passed through them. They didn’t even notice.
I pushed with my magic. The beaks struck at me, gouging bloody wounds in my arms. I pushed harder, trying to purge the awful darkness. It persisted, tightening around the man. I strained. The magic slithered back, retreating from his face but clenching to his back.
The man opened his blue eyes and looked at me.
“Mr. Vasil?” I asked.
“It’s Mr. Dobrev,” he said quietly. “Vasil is my given name.” He looked at my hands holding his. “Don’t let go.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
“Dali, talk to me,” Jim said, his face grim.
“You see the magic?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Right now I’m holding it back, but this is all I can do. If I let go, it will swallow him again.”
“Why is this happening to me?” Mr. Dobrev asked.
“We don’t know,” I said. “When did it start?”
“Two nights ago. At first it was just a heaviness, then a headache. I went to bed early. I thought I had caught the flu. Then she came.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
He leaned to me. His voice shook. “The hag.”
“Tell me more,” I said. “Tell me about the hag.”
His face went slack. He had big, rough hands, the kind strong men who work with their hands a lot get, and his calloused fingers were trembling. He was terrified. “I opened my eyes. The bedroom was dark. I felt this oppressive weight on my chest, so heavy. Like a car. My bones should’ve cracked and I don’t know why they didn’t. And then I saw her. She was sitting on my chest. She was . . .” He gulped the air. “Thin . . . like a skeleton. Long, matted grey hair, black fur on her arms, and fingers with talons, like a bird. Long talons, just like in the painting.”
“What painting?”
“A painting I saw . . . long ago. She sat on top of me and stared. I couldn’t call out to my son. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even wriggle my toes. We stayed like this for hours. I finally fell asleep and woke up tired. So tired. Last night she came again. I could barely move this morning. I think she’s trying to kill me.”
Jim looked at me.
“The old hag syndrome,” I said. Most of my magical expertise was tied to what Westerners considered Far East, but I had some education about European myths. You can’t live in the U.S. and not be exposed to it. “Before the Shift, people thought it had to do with deep sleep paralysis, which occurs when the brain transitions from rapid eye movement phase to wakefulness. Sometimes mental wires get crossed and the brain partially wakes up but the body remains paralyzed, as if we are still asleep. It feels like a great weight is pinning you down and you are frozen. Before the scientific age, people thought it happened because of demons, incubi and succubi, or sometimes, old hags. If the legends are true, she’ll feed on him until he is dead and I don’t have the power to purge her like this.”
“We’re going to have to kill the hag,” Jim guessed.
That’s why I loved him. He was smart and quick.
“Mr. Dobrev,” I said. “I need you to fall asleep.”
He shuddered like a leaf. “No.”
“It’s the only way. We will be right here. When she comes, we’ll take care of her.”
“No.”
“You will wake up, Mr. Dobrev. You don’t know me, but trust me, you will wake up. Go to sleep now, while you still have some strength left.”
He looked into my eyes and let go of my fingers.
“Take a deep breath,” I told him, trying to sound confident. “It will be okay. It will be fine.”
The dark magic rolled over him. Mr. Dobrev took a long shuddering breath. He looked like he was drowning.
“It’s okay,”
I murmured. “It’s okay. I’m here. I won’t go anywhere.”
“Please,” he said. “Why me? Why . . .”
I felt so terrible for him. He was so scared. But it was the only way. “Let it happen,” I murmured.
Gradually his eyes lost their light and turned glassy. He blinked, then blinked again, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.
“If the myths are true, she has to become corporeal to kill him,” I said. “When that happens, we have to get her first.”
Jim pulled a second knife from the sheath on his hip.
We waited. The shop was quiet around us.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “It has to be connected to Eyang Ida. That’s just too big of a coincidence. But jenglots and the old hag are literally from opposite sides of the planet. No magic user should be able to summon both.”
“We need to look into that law firm,” Jim said.
“He did say he saw the hag in a painting before?” I asked.
“Yes.”
It meant something. We sat and waited.
I had no idea how much time had passed. It had to be close to an hour. Jim brought my cursing kit to me and I sat with it, my ink, brush, and papers ready, staring at the deli meat cuts behind the glass under the counter. I was hungry. The rest of the shop was filled with shelves crowded with canned goods, Slavic-themed snacks and every fruit and vegetable that could be pickled. I really wanted to try some, but taking without permission was stealing.
A few minutes after Mr. Dobrev’s breathing had evened out, the furry magic began to crawl ever so slowly, shifting from his back onto his chest, and finally now it sat right under his neck, a big ugly blob that took up all of him all the way to the waist.
The roar of a water engine came from the outside. I glanced through the glass storefront. A yellow school bus rolled down the street.
The sack on Mr. Dobrev’s chest trembled.
I leaned forward.
A ripple shifted the fur. Another. It looked like a tennis ball rolling under some revolting blanket.
I pulled a paper out and began writing a curse. The curse had to be fresh, so I would finish it the second before I actually slapped it on her. I paused with my brush in the air. One stroke left.
Outside a boy, about ten or eleven, turned the corner and walked toward the building. Must be Cole and Amanda’s son.
A thin black talon broke the surface of the fur. Something was about to come out.
The air in the middle of the street wavered, as if suddenly a cloud of vapor had escaped from underground and got caught in a dust devil. What in the world . . .
The air turned, twisted, and shaped itself into a car. What the hell? I’ve never heard of a magic car appearing out of thin air . . .
My brain blazed through the evidence, making a connection. My older brother died on his way from school, Amanda’s voice said in my head. He was run over . . . Oh my gods.
The car turned solid. Its engine revved. There was nobody behind the wheel.
“Jim!” I pointed at the boy. “Save him!”
He whipped around, saw the car, the boy, and leaped right through the window into the street, shards of glass flying everywhere.
A knobby elbow pushed its way out of the sack, followed by a bony hand, each finger armed with a two-inch, black talon. The hag was coming.
Jim dashed across the parking lot. The car, a huge ’69 Dodge Charger, snarled like a living thing, racing straight for the boy. Jim sprinted, so, so fast . . . Please make it, honey. Please!
The head of the hag emerged, one baleful pale eye then the other, a crooked long nose and wide slash of a mouth filled with shark teeth.
The muscle car was almost on the boy. Jim was ten feet away.
Please, please, please don’t get killed.
Jim swept the boy off his feet and the car rammed him and smashed into a pole.
It hit him. Oh gods, the Charger hit him. Something inside me broke. I froze in agonizing horror.
The hag crawled out of the magic and perched on Mr. Dobrev’s chest, clutching at him with her long, creepy toes. She was my size but emaciated, bony, her meager flesh stretched too tight over her frame, while her skin sagged in loose folds and wrinkles.
The car revved its engine. It was still there. It didn’t disappear and that meant its target was still alive.
Jim leaped over the Charger’s hood, the boy in his arms, landed, and sprinted to us.
The hag reached for Mr. Dobrev’s throat. I painted the last stroke on the curse and slapped it on her back. “Poisoned daggers!”
Three daggers pierced the hag, one after the other, sticking out of her back.
The Charger reversed and chased after Jim.
The hag screeched like a giant gull, spat at me, and kept going. It didn’t work.
I grabbed a new paper, wrote another curse, and threw it at her. The curse of twenty-seven binding scrolls had worked for me before. The hag clawed at the paper. It pulsed with green. Strips of paper shot out and fell harmlessly to the floor. They should’ve tied her in knots. Damn it!
The car was feet behind Jim. Please make it! Please!
The hag clawed at Mr. Dobrev’s neck.
I grabbed a pickle jar and hurled it at her head. It bounced off her skull with a meaty whack. She howled.
“Get off him!” I snarled.
Jim leaped through the broken window. The Charger rammed the opening, right behind him, and stopped, its engine roaring, wedged between the wall and the wooden frame. Stuck!
I grabbed another jar and jumped on the counter. The hag screeched in my face and I pounded her with the jar. “Get off him, you bitch!”
The Charger snarled. The metal of its doors bent under pressure. The car was forcing its way in.
The jar broke in my hand. The pickle juice washed over the hag. She clawed me, too fast to dodge. Her talons raked my arms, searing me like red-hot knives. I screamed. She let go and I saw the bones of my arms through the bloody gashes.
Jim released the boy. The child scrambled to the back of the store. Jim leaped to the Charger and hammered on the car’s hood, trying to knock the vehicle back. The Charger roared. Jim planted his feet, gripped the hood, and strained. The muscles on his arms bulged. I’d seen Jim lift a normal car before, but the Charger didn’t move.
I punched the hag in the head, putting all my shapeshifter strength into it. She wasn’t getting Mr. Dobrev as long as I breathed. The hag clawed at me again, screaming, slicing my shoulders, her hands like blades. I kept punching her, but it wasn’t doing me any good.
Jim’s feet slid back. A moment and the car would be through.
It was a car. I knew cars and Jim knew hand-to-hand combat. “Switch!” I screamed.
Jim glanced at me, let go of the car’s hood and leaped onto the counter. His knife flashed and the hag’s right hand fell off.
I dashed out of the store, jerked a mirror off Pooki’s driver side, and ran back in. The Charger was halfway in, its wheels spinning. I wrote the curse, slapped the paper onto the hood, and planted Pooki’s mirror on it.
Magic crackled like fireworks.
The car’s hood buckled, as if an invisible giant punched it with a fist. Its left front wheel fell off. Its hood bubbled up, as if another punch had landed. The windshield cracked. Something inside the car crunched with a sickening metallic snap. Water shot out through the hole in the hood. The roof of the car caved in. Both passenger and driver doors fell off. The headlights exploded. With another crunch, the entire vehicle shuddered and collapsed into a heap, looking like something with colossal teeth had chewed it for a while and spat it out.
Jim stopped next to me. He was carrying the hag’s head by her hair. We looked at each other, both bloody and cut up, and looked back at the car. Jim raised his eyebrows.
“The curse of transference,” I said. “This is everything I’ve ever done to Pooki. Except all at the same time.”
Jim looked at the ruined car. His eyes widened.
He struggled to say something.
“Jim?”
He unhinged his jaw. “No more racing.”
BEING a shapeshifter had its disadvantages. For one, smells ordinary to normal people drove you nuts. If you burned something in the kitchen, you didn’t just open the windows, you had to open the entire house and go outside. It meant the dynamics within the shapeshifter packs and clans were unlike those of a human society. And by the way, most of those dynamics were bullshit. Yes, we did take some of the traits of our animal counterparts: cats had a strong independent streak, bouda—the werehyena—females tended to be dominant, and wolves exhibited a strong OCD tendency, which helped them survive in the wild by tracking and then running game over long distances. But the entire pack hierarchy was actually much closer to the dominance hierarchy of wild primate groups, which made sense considering that the human part of us was in control. And of course, the most important disadvantage was loupism. In moments of extreme stress, Lyc-V, the virus responsible for our powers, “bloomed” within our bodies in great numbers. Sometimes the bloom triggered a catastrophic response and drove a shapeshifter into insanity. An insane shapeshifter was called loup and there was no coming back from that road. Loupism was a constant specter hanging over us.
But right now, as I poured water over my arms to wash away the blood, I was grateful for every single cell of Lyc-V in my body. My gashes were knitting themselves closed. If you watched close enough, you would see muscle fibers slide in the wounds. It was incredibly gross.
Amanda was sitting on the floor, holding her son and rocking back and forth. The boy looked like he wanted to escape, but he must’ve sensed that his mother was deeply upset and so he sat quietly and let her clench him to her. Cole hovered over them, holding a baseball bat and wearing that tense, keyed-up expression on his face men sometimes get when they are terrified for their families and not sure where the danger was coming from. Right now if a butterfly happened to float past Cole on fuzzy wings, he would probably pound it into dust with his bat.