The Left-Hand Path: Mentor

by T. S. Barnett

  He kept to quiet side streets in an attempt to avoid curious looks, driving until he was well out of the city and back into the desert. The woman’s delicate white sundress fluttered in the wind, exposing tanned thighs as her head lolled back and forth from the rattling of the Jeep. She was pretty. She had only been trying to help—she didn’t deserve what Nathan had planned for her. But then, no one did, he supposed. He couldn’t bring himself to feel too guilty about the situation with the prospect of a worthy Chaser on his heels.

  In the growing darkness of the desert, Nathan pulled off of the highway and climbed down out of the Jeep, pausing to catch his breath and rub his sore hands before attempting to drag the unconscious girl from her perch. He was forced to acknowledge the fact that his chance of success in his current state was less than favorable, but he set his jaw and pulled her away from the car, staining her white dress with dusty orange clay.

  It had been a long time. He looked down at her still-breathing body and pulled the aspirator from his nose, dropping it into the dirt and breathing the desert air unassisted. He shut his eyes and held both hands over her, the familiar tightness in his chest as he whispered the words, “Arcela airet,” his breath leaving a puff of steam even in the warm, dry air.

  The girl’s body twisted, and she screamed, the sound echoing through the empty desert like the cry of a wounded animal. Her skin grew patchy black as the spell devoured her from within, her legs jerking stiffly in the dirt. The girl’s clawed hands dug into the dust, her back arching into an unnaturally deep angle.

  Nathan’s whole body grew hot, unbearably hot, and his knees gave out from under him as the girl’s cries became harsh and weak. He felt the pull in his heart the same as he had a dozen times before, a desperate, scratching force that threatened to draw his very essence out of him. He kept his hands outstretched, though they trembled, and fought the dragging grasp with a clenched jaw and tightly closed eyes. The heat coursed through his blood, making him waver and shake until a sharp crack sounded through the desert, silencing the girl’s screams. Nathan breathed deeply, the cold air entering his lungs and seeping into his skin, and then he collapsed completely into the dust.

  When he opened his eyes, he was faced with the young woman’s shrunken face, blackened and bloodless, her dark hair already falling from her scalp and drifting away in the breeze. Her dress billowed around her curled skeletal form, now much too large for her frame. Nathan pulled to his feet with a stretch and looked down at his hands, running his fingertips over the tanned, unwrinkled skin.

  “Sorry, my dear,” he murmured, savoring the smooth clarity of his new voice. “It was for a good cause.”

  He touched the bracelet on his wrist, brushing his fingers over the wooden bead bearing the word boule, and the woman’s body burst into flames. He stepped back to watch the blue and orange flames devour the remnants of his deadly indiscretion, touching the stone pendant through the thin fabric of his shirt to feel the single crack. It only took a few moments for the fire to swallow the body completely and disappear back into the singed earth.

  He left his abandoned oxygen tank next to the pile of sticky ashes and walked back to the Jeep with a strong step, feeling muscles move that he had almost forgotten he had. He sat in the driver’s seat and adjusted the rear view mirror to show his face. His skin was tanned, but smooth with youth, and he recognized his pleasantly high cheekbones, his sharp nose, and his full, handsome mouth. The lines around his dark eyes had disappeared, and he saw none on his forehead when he pushed back his shaggy brown hair. Early, maybe mid-thirties, overall. Not bad.

  He leaned back in the seat as he pulled out onto the highway and drove with one hand on the steering wheel, the other drifting up and down through the wind outside. Her purse was still on the floor. He reached down to dig through it while he went, tossing lipsticks, tampons, and receipts out the window as he found them. He checked her wallet and lifted his hips to pocket the ten dollars inside, then tossed her ID and credit cards out as well. He felt the familiar smooth cardboard of a cigarette pack and laughed.

  “Thank God,” he chuckled, steering the Jeep with one knee while he lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. He let the smoke out with a satisfied groan and held the cigarette in his lips as he reached back to check the bottom of the purse. It was empty, so the whole thing went out the open top of the Jeep, left behind on the highway. He turned on the radio and tapped the steering wheel in time with the music the rest of the way into town. Every movement felt comfortable and powerful, and he could breathe easily for the first time in years despite the new smoke in his lungs.

  Why had he ever stopped?

  Back at the motel, Nathan parked the Jeep and easily blew away the red brick dust Cora had laid. The dust could keep out intruders, especially unsuspecting ones, but crossings were no challenge to him now. To a lesser witch, maybe. He slipped the flimsy keycard into the lock and opening the door.

  Cora sat impatiently on the bed, turning toward the door with a hopeful smile as it opened, but she hastily backed away and shouted at the sight of a stranger in the room.

  “Get out!” she cried as she tripped over the hanging blanket. “I don’t have anything to steal, and I’m—I’m a witch! I’ll curse you!”

  Nathan laughed out loud, holding up his hands in surrender. “That’s your defense? ‘I’m a witch?’ Cora, it’s me.”

  “Me who? What the hell’s going on?”

  “Don’t be thick. It’s Nathan.”

  Cora hesitated, but she didn’t take any more steps back. “Prove it.”

  “Prove it? Look at me.” He moved closer to her, keeping his hands in sight.

  Cora took in the sight of the man in front of her—his youthful, handsome face, his lean hips and ill-fitting clothes—he was too young to be the man she knew, but he had the same little crinkle at the bridge of his nose as he smiled. He was Nathan and not-Nathan. Her gaze focused on the familiar alligator tooth hung around his neck, and she narrowed her eyes up at him.

  “How? What did you do?”

  “I never explained it to you?” He was already moving by her, flicking on the light by the vanity and leaning in to inspect his face in the mirror. He touched his lips with his fingertips, stroking a line down his chin to the hollow of his neck.

  “I don’t even know what it is you think you explained to me! You were old and grey this morning, and now you’re…I mean, you’re an entirely different person!”

  He paused in his inspection and turned to face her with a slow grin. “I’m myself again for the first time in a long time, Cora. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “This is insane. Is this magic?”

  “Of course it’s magic, girl,” Nathan chuckled.

  “A glamour?”

  “Please,” he scoffed. He leaned down to bring his face closer to hers. “Touch me all you like if you need to make sure.”

  “Don’t be weird,” Cora snapped, but Nathan only laughed at her frown. “You promised to answer my questions. What have you done? Why did you say you needed to find a young woman?”

  Nathan sighed and fingered the frayed collar of his shirt as he returned his attention to the mirror. “The arcela airet,” he answered simply. “Forbidden magic, very dangerous, et cetera. It isn’t a youth spell, precisely. I’m stealing their remaining years.”

  “Stealing—Nathan, did you kill someone?”

  He paused and looked at her through the mirror, a smirk pulling at his lips. “A face this good doesn’t come for free. Don’t fuss. This is going to be a great adventure.”

  “God, what have I gotten myself into?” she breathed, and she dropped down onto the bed, but she couldn’t quite manage to take her eyes off him. It was too surreal. This was the man who had tutored her for a year, scolded her, encouraged her? The guy who watched General Hospital and Jeopardy and grouched if the air conditioning was too cold was standing in a motel room—now with no shirt on at all—smelling like cigarettes and talking very casual
ly about having just killed someone and stolen their youth.

  She watched him examine himself in the mirror, furrowing her brow as she took a step closer to him. As an old man, she had never seen him shirtless, thankfully, so the tattoos were a surprising sight. His entire back was covered in small skulls and bones hidden in delicate, symmetrical filigree spreading from his spine to the backs of his shoulders. At the center, just at the base of his neck, the ink formed a strange circular symbol quartered by hash marks and small stars. Mirrored bats with splayed wings and strange faces flew toward his spine just under his shoulder blades, moving with the muscles in his back as he leaned over the sink to look at himself. He didn’t notice—or at least didn’t care—when she reached out to touch his skin, letting her fingertips rest on one black ink bat. In the mirror, she could see the ship’s wheel tattooed over his heart, and the blurred, bled-out ink on his forearm had re-formed itself into the shape of a crisp hammerhead shark. She wouldn’t have thought of him as the kind of person to have so many tattoos, but she supposed it was the least surprising thing she’d found out about him that day.

  “How long does it last?” she asked after a moment. “Are we about to become serial killers now?”

  “Depends on the person,” Nathan answered with a shrug. He touched the flat skin of his stomach and let out a small laugh of satisfaction through his nose. “It isn’t really about lasting. I just age normally from wherever the spell leaves me. That’s why it needed to be a young person. It’s not worth it to kill someone old and only get five or six years.” He gave her a teasing glance through the mirror. “That’s how you become a serial killer.”

  “You’re for real right now aren’t you? How can you know how many years someone has left?”

  “It’s a risk.” He paused, twisting for a moment in front of the mirror, and then he sighed and pulled his shirt back over his shoulders. His young body felt sinuous and alive, but his clothes were still those of a lonely old man. “Come on. I need new clothes and a haircut—desperately. We can talk on the way.”

  There was no point to arguing. She was involved now, and more than a little bit curious, she admitted to herself. She followed him out of the room and climbed into the Jeep beside him, watching him with fascination as he lit another cigarette and turned the key.

  “If I’d chosen someone old, the effects might have been minimal,” he went on, leaning back in his seat and letting the cigarette hang from his lips. “If I’d chosen a child, I could have ended up looking like a teenager, and that would have been a problem. Or the woman I chose might have been fated to die in a car accident tomorrow, and I wouldn’t have gotten anything at all. But it seems she had a good long life ahead of her,” he finished with a chuckle that blew smoke out of his nose.

  “Fated? You believe in fate?”

  “It isn’t a matter of belief. Things progress. Our world is chaotic, but not random. Each living thing has its role to play; every decision it makes, every action it takes is inevitable because of its very nature. The tapestry is too large for us to see anything but a tangle of threads, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a bigger picture.” He turned to grin at her and plucked the cigarette from his lips with two fingers. “You were destined to come with me the moment I met you. Does that take some of the guilt out of it?”

  “Very philosophical,” she muttered, letting her head fall back against the hard seat. “I guess a normal evening was too much to expect.”

  “You’re a witch, Cora. A witch shouldn’t spend her time waiting tables. You were born with a gift; you shouldn’t squander it. It’s like if you were born with eleven fingers and no one ever made you learn to play the piano.”

  She chuckled. “You’re poetic tonight.”

  “You should feel sorry for the regs. Being one of them is like being born blind or deaf—there’s a whole aspect of the world that you have no way to experience. Sure, you can live your life just fine, but a reg will never know magic just as a blind man will never see a sunrise.”

  “That’s…kind of sad,” she admitted. Cora watched the buildings go by for a moment, then turned back to him. ”You haven’t explained why we’re doing all this, though. Who was that guy I hit? He was a good guy, wasn’t he?” she whispered, a sinking realization in her chest. “You’re the bad guy. You made me hit a good guy!” she finished, thumping him on the arm but only earning a laugh.

  “Debatable. He was a Chaser.”

  Even Cora knew what a Chaser was. Nathan had explained witch politics to her months ago, so that she didn’t get herself in trouble. Chasers were police—witch hunters. Nathan had called them lap dogs for the Magisters, who were the regional representatives for the witches. Every area in the country had one, and big cities sometimes had two. They made sure that everyone obeyed the laws of the Concordat, which Nathan described as a bunch of rules meant to keep magic a secret from normal people and make life less fun for witches themselves. Which of course meant not doing things like killing people for their youth. So, basically, Cora had hit a good guy, and Nathan was more than a little awful.

  “I hit a Chaser,” she murmured, shaking her head in disbelief that slowly dissolved into laughter. “I hit a Chaser! I’m going to go to witch-prison. Is there a witch-prison? There is, isn’t there? How awful is it? Are we talking Azkaban-levels of terrible or, like, white-collar, pick up trash on the side of the road bad?”

  “I didn’t ask you to come, Cora,” Nathan chuckled, taking the cigarette from his mouth and exhaling smoke as he turned to glance at her. “If it’s too much for you, I’ll give you some money, and you can catch a bus back home. Trust me; that man is after me and me alone. I’ve been out of the game some forty-odd years, and he found me. That, my love, is a man on a mission. He’s not worried about you. But yes, for the record, witch-prison is awful,” he added as an afterthought.

  “What game? Why is he after you? Because of the youth spell?”

  “Among other things.”

  “But you were old,” she pointed out again, and he nodded in agreement. “How did you get old? How long have you been doing this for?”

  “About two hundred and fifty years. Give or take,” he added in response to her open mouth. “When I didn’t want to anymore, I stopped,” he said simply. “It’s pretty boring at the top, kiddo. They sent Chasers aplenty after me through the years, and I killed them all. There was nobody fun left. Nobody challenging. Having someone who cared enough to find me, and who made me feel helpless for the first time since—God, who even knows? That’s priceless. I’m going to give him a chase, all right.”

  Cora fidgeted in her seat without returning his gaze. This was a crazy person. She was actually in the car with a crazy person. She picked at the peeling vinyl on the seat until Nathan sighed and spoke again.

  “Here. Let’s find the bus station and get you home. You have my endless thanks for what you did, but honestly—why did you come with me at all?”

  She paused, and she looked over at him with a frown. Why had she come? She came because Nathan was her friend, her teacher, her neighbor. She came because whatever he was involved in, it had to be a better time than waitressing all day and coming home to a disdainful family and a bleak future. She hadn’t even thought about it when he said he had to leave—she just came, like instinct. Even if witch-prison was awful, could it really be more awful than the life she was leaving behind? Here was a chance to learn about who she really was, about what the world was really like, and to be taught magic by someone who could actually cheat death.

  “No,” she said finally, and Nathan’s eyes went to her hand as it fastened firmly onto his arm. “I’m here for the adventure you promised me.”

  Nathan paused a moment and watched her as they sat at a stop light, taking a long, pensive drag from his cigarette. He shrugged one shoulder and flicked the burning end out the side of the Jeep. “Then let’s give Mr. Willis something to chase, shall we?”

  3

  It wasn’t easy to
find a barber shop that was open in the evening, but Nathan paid well enough to buy hospitality. At least, the mundanes he paid were too blind to notice his illusions, and would likely punish whatever underlings they first came upon in the morning when the numbers came up short. Cora eyed him curiously, but he only shushed her and chatted pleasantly with the woman who made his hair look presentable, even fashionable. He thanked her more than once on their way out and grinned at Cora as he hopped back into the Jeep.

  “How did she not realize you didn’t actually pay her?” she asked with a small laugh, glancing over her shoulder as though the woman might overhear.

  “The regs see that they want to see,” he shrugged. “Now I need to find some clothes, and we’ll be set. What color do you think would best bring out my eyes?”

  They drove until they found somewhere Nathan deemed suitable, and he passed out illusory money and charming smiles until he had a small collection of clothes that actually fit his new body. The boxers with the blown elastic and the frayed loafers simply weren’t an option anymore. He dressed himself in a pair of black slacks and a dark grey button-down and looked at himself in the full-length mirror at the back of the store. That was more like it.

  Cora let him pay for a new hat for her with his imaginary money, and together they rode down the streets of Yuma with the radio turned up loud enough to hear over the roar of the wind.

  “Where are we going?” she shouted across at him, and he leaned in to listen. “Is the Chaser going to find you by looking for shops with missing money?”