by Jim C. Hines
“Uh-huh.” She packed whole paragraphs worth of skepticism into those two syllables, as only a teenager could.
“I’ll be right there with you,” I said.
“Will you be in my nightmares if the devourers come back?” she demanded.
“You can stay with—” My brain caught up with my mouth at the last second. My house had been attacked once today, and there was no guarantee it wouldn’t happen again. Not to mention the creepiness factor of a grown man inviting a fourteen-year-old girl to spend the night. “With Doctor Shah. If anything happens, she’ll be able to help.”
By the time we reached the house, Jeneta had donned a cloak of pure confidence. I all but dragged her through the house to show her the headless ladybug and the other melted insects. “This is what we’re dealing with.”
“Cool,” she said, studying the broken bug. She picked up the head and poked the mandibles with her fingertip. “Nasty, too.”
“Can you get them out of Lena’s tree?”
She tapped her reader on her palm. “I’ve got an Emily Dickinson poem I think should do the trick.”
I stopped to grab a few more books from the library.
“Whoa, what happened to your back door?”
“I’m remodeling.” I stepped carefully through the broken doorframe, then crossed the yard to the garden. The roses muted the light from the back porch. Within the garden, we found Lena and Nidhi resting on a hammock made of interwoven grapevines. Smudge’s portable cage hung from a higher loop of vine.
Nidhi’s hair was disheveled, and her clothes appeared rumpled. She was sweating, and her shoes and socks had been tossed in among the pumpkins. I stopped in the archway. Nidhi and Lena had been together for years, but I had never walked in on them during or immediately after the act.
I knew Lena’s nature. I knew she drew strength from her lovers. It made perfect sense for her to turn to Nidhi for comfort. It was a smart move. But it still felt like I’d been punched in the esophagus.
“When did you plant grapevines?” I asked, stammering slightly.
“Tuesday morning.” Lena climbed out of the hammock and grabbed my free hand, pulling me in for a quick kiss. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“You’re really a dryad?” Jeneta asked.
Lena smiled and picked up her bokken. At her touch, a single green bud sprouted from the wood. “The tree behind us is as much my body as this flesh. And right now, something’s trying very hard to kill it.”
“No problem.” Jeneta sat cross-legged on the ground and switched on her e-reader. “Do you have any clover growing around here? The flowers would be perfect, but even if it’s not in bloom, it will help.”
“Give me a minute.” Lena walked from the garden. Nidhi followed, leaving her shoes and socks behind.
Jeneta watched them go. “Were they just…?”
“Focus on your magic,” I said.
“But I thought you and Lena were—”
“We are.”
I waited for her to digest this, and wondered which reaction it would be. Jeff DeYoung’s werewolf-style acceptance of whatever steams your sauna, or the confused condemnation I had received from Pete Malki. Pete lived down the street, and had stopped by a couple of weeks ago to tell me he thought my girlfriend might be making time with that new Indian doctor in town. I guess, “Yeah. Want a drink?” hadn’t been the response he was expecting.
Jeneta landed somewhere in the middle. “That sounds really complicated.”
“It can be challenging,” I admitted.
“Does that mean you and Doctor Shah are together, too?”
“No.” How many times was I going to have to answer that question? I was half-tempted to make a brochure I could hand out.
“There’s this kid at camp, Terry, who’s always talking about sex. He’s been hitting on me and the other girls from day one. Like if he’s persistent enough, if he cracks enough jokes or gives me enough compliments about my hair, one of us will let him into our pants.” She pushed her braids back, then shook her head in annoyance. “If he keeps it up, I’m gonna make him fall in love with a groundhog.”
Lena and Nidhi returned before I could come up with a response to that. Nidhi carried a handful of purple clover.
“Perfect,” said Jeneta. “Clear a spot by the tree and spread them on the ground.”
Lena examined her garden, no doubt studying both the plants on the surface and the roots of her oak below. She finally uprooted four cornstalks and moved them to the side of the garden. The roots immediately began to burrow back into the earth. Nidhi arranged the clover in a small mound.
Jeneta waved us back and began to read.
“There is a flower that Bees prefer—
And Butterflies—desire—
To gain the Purple Democrat
The Humming Bird—aspire.”
It was as if she had transformed into another person. Her voice was slower, more confident, and the cockiness that normally infused her words disappeared. When I looked at the clover, the flowers seemed brighter. The scent was stronger, overpowering the roses until my eyes watered.
“And Whatsoever Insect pass—
A Honey bear away
Proportioned to his several dearth
And her—capacity.”
“Whatever you’re doing, they’re reacting to it.” Lena swallowed, and I could see her skin twitching. Smudge’s cage turned into a miniature lantern as a ripple of flame spread across his back.
I double-checked my book, a novel by David Gerrold that featured a liquid nitrogen weapon. The gun itself was too large to pull through the pages, but I should be able to use the same trick I had tried with the microwave. I skimmed a scene which described the weapon in action. I didn’t need the gun, just the stream of liquid nitrogen. Hopefully I could do this without freezing my fingers off.
The first insect emerged from the tree in a puff of sawdust, about ten feet up. Lena raised her bokken. I took a deep breath and readied my book. This appeared to be a bee or wasp of some sort. It crawled down the tree, glassy wings twitching, then flew toward the clover.
“Her face be rounder than the Moon
And ruddier than the Gown.”
Lena’s own rounded features were tight with pain. A second bee flew out of the oak, following the first. Lena gripped her weapon by the blade and smashed the pommel down on the closest bee. She gave it a vicious twist, and when she pulled back, only broken scraps of metal remained.
Other insects were making their way out of the tree now. I stepped back, book ready, but they didn’t care about us. They were drawn to the clover, entranced by the power of Jeneta’s words.
“Thank you,” Lena whispered. She stepped closer to the oak and pressed her face against the wood. Her eyes closed, and her fingertips sank into the tree. Her hair wisped forward, clinging to the bark as if static held it in place.
I waited to make sure no more insects would emerge, then aimed the book at the flowers. I dared to hope this might be as simple as it appeared…thus proving that even after close to a decade with the Porters, I still hadn’t learned from experience.
The instant I touched the book’s magic, the bugs went berserk. They rose from the pile of clover as frigid air poured forth, and liquid nitrogen splashed into thick white fog. A brass-and-steel grasshopper leaped out of the cloud, wings a blur as it flew toward Jeneta. Lena spun from her oak and snatched up her bokken. She knocked the grasshopper back like a tiny baseball, but more were emerging from the fog, stunned but not yet dead.
Jeneta screamed. A metal earwig had landed on her e-reader. She flung it away. More insects clung to the screen, digging through glass and plastic as easily as clay. Nidhi grabbed Jeneta’s arm and hauled her out of the garden.
“Whatever works,” I muttered, aiming the book at Jeneta’s reader. Two more metal bugs had joined the earwig on the screen. When the next stream of nitrogen cleared, they looked like tiny frost sculptures. They shattered beneath my shoe, as di
d the e-reader.
I poured more liquid nitrogen onto the clover, then closed the book while Lena destroyed the rest of the insects. Plants and bugs alike crunched beneath her feet.
“Is that all of them?” I asked.
“Yes. Thank you.” Lena stepped back and sagged against her tree. “Do you think whoever did this will send more?”
“Probably.”
Jeneta was crying like a child half her age. Nidhi sat with her in the grass, whispering and running her hands through Jeneta’s hair while they rocked back and forth. Jeneta buried her head in Nidhi’s shoulder.
“What happened?” I asked. “Was she hurt?”
Before Nidhi could answer, Jeneta jumped to her feet and ran at me. “Why in the name of ever-loving God would you do that to me?” Her fists slammed into my chest, hard enough to bruise. “Was this some kind of messed-up test? Is this why you were asking about my nightmares?”
I stepped back and did my best to fend off her punches. “Jeneta, I didn’t know they’d come after your e-reader.”
She wiped her sleeve over her eyes and stared at me. “You think I’m upset about my reader?”
I looked past her to Nidhi, but she appeared to be as confused as I was. Nidhi stepped closer, hands out like she was approaching a wild animal, and said, “Can you tell us what happened to you, Jeneta?”
“You said you needed me to help kill magic bugs. You never said they were devourers.”
It was like she had turned the liquid nitrogen on me, chilling my body from the inside out. “What do you mean?”
She swallowed. “You didn’t hear them?”
“What is it you heard, Jeneta?” Nidhi asked.
“They weren’t attacking my reader. They were trying to attack me, through the spell.” She started to shiver again. “Dragging me under. Climbing through my bones and chewing me up, and all the while she’s laughing—”
“She?” I asked sharply.
“I heard a girl laughing.” She stared at me. “It might have been me. I was losing my mind, Isaac. I could feel myself going mad, losing my grip and slipping away.”
“I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. I never would have asked you to fight them like that.” Devourers infesting Victor Harrison’s experiment. A butchered wendigo and a man who could hide from my magic. What the hell was going on?
Jeneta folded her arms, visibly working to stuff the fear back into its bravado-lined cell. “You owe me a new e-reader. Don’t even think about trying to pass off some secondhand clunker from last year. I want the newest model, and I want an orange case to go with it.”
“Fair enough.”
Jeneta looked at the fog rising off the crushed bugs and flowers. “What are they doing here?”
I didn’t have an answer. I didn’t even know what they were.
“Why do they hate us?” Jeneta asked. “Not just people in general. You and me. They know us, and they’re going to keep coming after us until we’re dead.”
“If they come after anyone, it should be me. I’m the one who pissed them off earlier this year.” With Lena’s help, I had destroyed their…host, for lack of a better word. If the devourers were capable of remembering, then they had good reason for coming after me or Lena, but why target a teenaged girl who knew next to nothing about magic? “Nidhi, could you take Jeneta to your place?”
“Of course.”
Jeneta said nothing, but her body sagged with relief. I doubted any of us would sleep well tonight, but she’d be somewhere safe, with a woman who knew how to deal with magic-induced trauma.
“I’ll watch over Lena’s tree,” I said. “Could you reschedule any appointments you have tomorrow? We need to take a road trip.”
Nidhi folded her arms. “Nobody has the energy for dramatic lead-ups tonight, Isaac. Get to the point.”
“Sorry. We’re going to check out Victor Harrison’s old house in Columbus, Ohio. I’ll need to call Deb DeGeorge down in Detroit first.”
Jeneta perked up slightly. “The vampire?”
“How did you know that?” Deb had been a libriomancer, and until recently, a good friend. Three months ago, the vampires in Detroit had turned her, hoping to use her as a spy within the Porters. When Gutenberg caught up with her, I had fully expected him to burn her to ash on the spot. Instead, he had begun using Deb as a liaison between Porters and vampires.
“The right poem can make people babble about all sorts of things,” Jeneta said sheepishly. “It was after the Porters found me. They sent a field agent to give me the Orientation to Magic lecture. I wanted the advanced course, and it’s possible I might have ‘encouraged’ her to talk about more than she was supposed to.”
I waved a hand. “Deb’s not technically a vampire, but yes. The important thing is that she’s scared of Gutenberg. Hopefully scared enough to cooperate with just about anything we ask for.”
“And you’re planning to ask for…?” Nidhi said impatiently.
“I’m hoping they’ll be able to help us talk to Victor.”
6
The glares began the day Frank brought me home. The whispered insults followed soon after. Tramp. Bitch. Slut. Freak. Over time, the whispers grew louder. Marion Dearing followed me into the woods one night, but I was faster. I vanished into my oak, laughing at our game as I left her wandering lost among the trees in the cold and the dark.
She tried to kill me two days after I made love to her husband for the first time. I was working in the chicken coop, an oversized jar of Vaseline in one hand. There was supposed to be a snowstorm that night, and I was coating the combs, feet, and wattles of each bird to help prevent frostbite.
I had heard Marion and Frank yelling after dinner. I had never understood why she hated me. I don’t think I even realized she hated me, any more than I realized how much Frank and I had hurt her. We belonged to Frank, and we each worked to make him happy. I smiled, remembering the weight of his body atop mine.
“What are you?”
I jumped, dropping the Vaseline. I broke the jar’s fall with my foot before it hit the floor. “Hello, Marion. I didn’t hear you.”
Marion might have been pretty once, a long time ago. She was heavier than I was, with thin gray-brown hair and a perpetual frown. Wrinkles spread like cracks from her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Her skin was spotted from age, and she dressed in a way that hid her body, making her look like a misshapen sack. She was strong, though. Those thick hands could kill and dress a chicken or birth a calf.
Her eyes were red. She clutched a thick book in one hand, a Bible with a gold cross embossed on the cover. “You’re not human. Where the hell did you come from?”
“I don’t remember,” I said automatically.
She snorted and stepped closer. “Wandering naked and lost in the woods, with no memory where you’d been. Did the devil send you to us?”
I shook my head. “Why would you ask—”
“I know what you are. Sent to prey on the weakness of men. To seduce and corrupt them. I won’t let you have him.”
“But he wants me.” I was simply being honest. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but the truth of my words struck her harder than any physical blow.
She lunged forward, and her balled fist crashed into my jaw. I staggered against the cages. “Get out of my home, you whore!”
The blows didn’t hurt as much as I had expected. I raised my arms to protect my face. The next time she swung, I caught her by the wrist and tossed her away as easily as I flung bales of hay for the cows.
Marion bounced to her feet, the Bible forgotten on the wooden floor. Blood welled from scrapes on her face. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her jacket. Fear flickered past her anger: a quickening of her breath, a widening of her eyes.
I shivered with anticipation. I was enjoying this, almost as much as I had enjoyed making love to Frank. Her fist cracked against my jaw, and my heart pounded harder. I laughed and slapped her arm aside.
She stepped back. “What are you?”
She attacked again, more confident now. I allowed her to drive me back, then sidestepped, snatching the hoe with one hand. As my fingers curled around the old wood, I felt…a memory was the closest word I could find to describe it. An ash tree standing in the sun, roots gripping a grassy hillside. The ash that had been cut down and shaped into this tool.
The handle of the hoe reacted to my touch. Roots sprouted from the end, twining around Marion’s hand. She screamed and pulled away, but the roots bound her fingers.
I imagined Frank standing over us, watching us battle for his affection. Seeing proof of how much we loved him. Joy suffused my blood. My delighted laughter filled the barn, and I twisted the handle until the bones of Marion’s hand snapped like old sticks in winter.
ONCE NIDHI AND JENETA had left, I returned to the house long enough to change into warmer clothes and fetch my sleeping bag from the closet. Even in August, the U.P. could get chilly at night. I stopped in the kitchen and searched the refrigerator, but nothing looked appetizing. I settled for grabbing a handful of vitamins, which I washed down with a Sprite. Even that was enough to make me queasy, but I clenched my stomach until the surges of nausea passed.
I tacked a makeshift curtain over the broken door, then picked a handful of books from the library and a small reading light, slung my laptop case over my shoulder, and returned to the garden. Attempting more magic so soon would be madness—literally, if I wasn’t careful—but I couldn’t stop thinking. Our enemy knew Lena’s tree, and that meant she was vulnerable. She had survived the loss of her tree before, but while she had never spoken much about the experience, I got the sense it had come closer to killing her than she wanted to admit.
She had transferred herself into this oak. Perhaps it would be wise to do so again, to find a tree deep in the woods that nobody knew about. But would that be enough? The insects had found her here. If they could sniff out the magic of her tree, what was to stop them from tracking her down no matter where she went?