The Left-Hand Path: Mentor

by T. S. Barnett

  “I’m sorry; how rude. We should speak English.”

  Nathan didn’t release her hands for a moment. “Mwen regrèt sa anpil, Adelina,” he said with a small frown. “If I’d known sooner, I would have come right away.”

  She smiled at him. “Maman told me we might never find you. She said you were like Bade, always moving with the wind. I see you’re just as she described you. “

  “Why did she wait so long to come for me? Did she tell you?”

  “She talked about you constantly, even when I was very small. She tried to go for many years, but money was hard to come by. We came as soon as we could afford it. She said you talked about New Orleans as the only place in the country you felt like Haiti, so we came here.”

  Nathan sighed, and Cora felt a little heartsick at the look on his face. She felt like she’d known a dozen different sides of Nathan since she met him a year ago, but sorrowful was never one she expected to see.

  “And your mother,” Nathan began quietly, “do you know what became of her?”

  “Wi,” Adelina answered with a nod. “The Chasers who took me came to me at school and told me what had happened. They explained the ingnas, but I didn’t understand until I was older what it was they had really done to her. They never told me where she was or let me speak to her again. Do you know if she’s well? Have you seen her?”

  “Adelina, I only found out about all this this morning, but...the Magistrate reports that she’s passed.”

  The woman crossed herself and whispered a prayer, then reached out to clutch Nathan’s hands again with a soft sigh. “Thank you for coming,” she said. “I gave up hope of meeting you long ago.” She tilted her head at him and reached up to brush her fingertips down his cheek. It was a strange sight, the aging woman and her younger father. “Maman said that you could do amazing things. Things I never heard of in school. She said you would be young forever, and I see she was right.”

  “Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” Nathan began, but Elton gave a quick tut to cut him off.

  “You’re not taking on any more apprentices, Nathan,” the Chaser warned.

  Adelina frowned at them. “You said you weren’t bringing me trouble,” she murmured, keeping one eye on Elton, “but are you in trouble yourself?”

  Nathan laughed. “I’m always in trouble. Don’t mind Elton. He’s actually part of the reason I came to see you. There’s a creature that he accidentally set free in Arizona, and it has a bit of a vengeful streak. I wanted to make sure you were well warded in case it came here.” Elton held in his scowl at being accused of being the cause of these problems.

  “Why would it come here?” Adelina asked with a frown. “You didn’t even know I was here.”

  “Someone did,” Nathan said with a pointed glance in Elton’s direction. “In any case, will you let me ward the house? Leave you some things?”

  “If you think it will help,” she answered with a smile.

  “I do.” He stood from the sofa and bent to pick up his bag from Elton’s feet, setting it on the coffee table and digging around inside with a soft clinking of jars. With ingredients in hand, he made his way around the house, leaving markings in doorways and pouches hidden under loose floorboards. He traveled noisily through each room, humming a quiet tune as he passed in and out of the hallway and catching Elton’s watchful eye every time.

  Adelina looked across the table at Elton and Cora, her smile seeming slightly forced. “I wouldn’t have expected a man like him to be in the company of a Chaser,” she said. “The Magister who took me from my mother…had a lot of things to say about him. Have you been friends long?”

  “We aren’t friends,” Elton corrected her immediately. “He’s under my supervision until we deal with the creature in Arizona, and then he’s being brought to the Magistrate for his crimes.”

  The woman’s smile dropped from her face. “I see. Not so much a friendly visit, then, is it?”

  “Nathan doesn’t seem worried about it,” Cora pointed out, hoping it was helpful. Elton glanced sidelong at her with a faint downward twitch of his lips. “He keeps telling me not to worry, anyway. I think he’s having fun chasing the lich.” Adelina only nodded and glanced over her shoulder as Nathan reappeared from her hallway.

  “It should be fine now,” he said, leaving a few empty vials on her table and tucking the remnants of liquid back into his bag. He turned to face her with a slow breath, then offered her a few small pouches. “You know what to do with these?” he asked as she turned them in her palms and smelled the herbs inside.

  “I do. Thank you.”

  “Of course you do,” he smiled, tucking a ringlet behind her ear with unexpected gentleness. “I hope you’ll let me have your phone number, at least,” he said. “We can’t stay; I promised dear Elton I’d see to the lich before it kills too many people.”

  “You’re leaving now?” she asked. “It’s already almost evening.”

  “The lich is still active,” Elton pointed out, “and getting stronger every day.”

  “Wait, we’re not seriously getting back on a plane right now, are we?” Cora slumped back on the sofa. “Are you kidding me? It took forever to get here!”

  “I have space,” Adelina said, touching Nathan’s arm as she rose from the sofa. “There is a spare bedroom, and the sofa folds out. Please stay.” She looked over at Elton as though asking his permission.

  Elton paused, watching Nathan’s face for any signs of scheming, but the other man only smiled faintly at the daughter he hadn’t known he had that morning. “We would end up waiting around at the airport in any case,” he agreed reluctantly, and Adelina smiled.

  She cooked supper for them, and Elton had to keep reminding Nathan to speak English while they ate. He had allowed the Creole at first because of their clear excitement, but he didn’t trust what Nathan might be telling her outside of the Chaser’s understanding. Elton spoke some French, but even that was Quebecois, and the Haitian version was so far removed from what he knew that it may as well have been a different language altogether.

  Cora listened while Nathan and Adelina talked about Haiti, about her mother, and about where he had been all this time. He wanted to know about her life—how was her schooling, did she still speak to the loa, what she did for a living— he asked her every question a father should know the answer to, and Cora didn’t think it was appropriate to interrupt and ask him what a loa was. She smiled as she watched them, but she felt a small twinge of jealousy. Until now, she had been the only one Nathan showed any affection for at all, and even then, he had offered to take her back home to her family and leave her behind without a second thought. He might call her his apprentice, but the circle of people Nathan genuinely cared about was even smaller than she suspected.

  Elton cleared away the dishes from the table, and Adelina only offered a perfunctory argument. He rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and began to wash the dishes in the sink, and Cora lingered for a brief moment to watch his soapy, tattooed forearms. A colorful phoenix flew through swirling blue clouds and delicate pink flowers on his right arm, and a snarling dragon wrapped around his left, a coil of green scales and fire-red fur. She gave a start when Elton caught her looking and quickly followed Adelina to the guest bedroom.

  “This Chaser with you,” Adelina began softly, turning down the blanket and fluffing up the pillows, “what sort of man is he?” She stood with her hands held in front of her as she looked into the young woman’s face.

  Cora hesitated. “I think…he’s a good one, maybe. But hard. He put a curse on me to keep Nathan in line, and I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules, so maybe he’s not that good.”

  “A curse?”

  She shrugged. “It’s some kind of nightmare thing. Nathan tried to break it, but it didn’t work. So I just don’t think I’m getting much sleep until we get rid of this lich.”

  “You poor child,” Adelina murmured, her brow furrowing. “If there’s anything you need in t
he night, please ask.” She hesitated as Cora nodded. “Do you think Nathaniel is in danger from this man?”

  “Nathan certainly doesn’t seem to think so. I don’t know if any of it’s just bluster. I’ve seen him do some incredible things, but who knows what weird Chaser tricks Elton has up his sleeve, you know? Either way, I don’t think Nathan is going to try very hard to get away even after all this is done. He likes him. I don’t think Elton likes him back, but,” she trailed off with a shrug and a small laugh.

  “He told me that you helped him. Thank you. If you hadn’t, I probably never would have known him.” Cora gave an embarrassed grin and waved off the gratitude.

  “I’m glad we came. He seems really happy to have met you. But aren’t you…you know, worried about what he is? He’s killed a lot of people. Done a lot of bad things. I wondered if you might not be glad to see him.”

  Adelina smiled at her. “My mother told me that when she was young, before I was born, she knew a man named Nathaniel, who did magic she had never seen. He was a white man, but he seemed to treat Haiti as his home, and the loa spoke to him like an old friend. He was hounsi kanzo—he had been through the kanzo and been initiated into vodou. He didn’t treat it like a strange black religion. He was close to it. The spirits came to him and took him whenever he called. He spoke Creole and laughed and told stories with the men in Jacmel, where we lived when I was small. He never acted like he was coming to save her, like a lot of white men do when they come to Haiti. We saw a lot of missionaries,” she added with a smile. “Like you, she told me that she saw him do incredible things. I grew up hearing how powerful he was, how close to the loa, and how much my mother loved him. A white man in a suit and tie cannot undo all that just by showing me a file.”

  Cora sat down on the bed and looked up at her. She could see Nathan in her, even if they didn’t look alike. She had the same smile.

  “It is strange that he’s still so young, and I look the way I do,” Adelina admitted with a small laugh. “But that’s a little thing. I’ve grown accustomed to stranger things.” She leaned down to turn on the lamp on the bedside table. “Do you want anything? Tea, or coffee?”

  “I’m good,” Cora said. “I’ll just play some Angry Birds or something to stay awake.”

  Adelina briefly touched her shoulder. “I’m next door if you need anything.”

  Elton stacked the wet dishes in the drying rack as Adelina returned, and he unfolded the sofa bed at her instruction and sat up against the provided pillows while she sat in the kitchen with Nathan and continued to talk over coffee. He held his phone in his lap and hesitated with his thumb over his wife’s number. He texted her instead to avoid being overheard—the hypocrisy of his desire for privacy while he called to Nathan to speak English instead of Creole not lost on him.

  I’m safe. Hope everything is all right at home. I’ll be there soon. I love you.

  He sent the message and waited, but he gave up and set the phone aside without receiving an answer. Eventually he gave in to the exhaustion of travel and undressed and went to bed, still listening distantly to Nathan’s conversation in the kitchen. If he was going to be hanged, Elton supposed he at least deserved to know his daughter first.

  In the morning, Elton woke up feeling trapped and hot, and he opened his eyes to find Nathan pressed against his side, an arm across his middle and one leg draped over Elton’s thigh. He started to push the other man away, but paused at the sight of the turquoise amulet pressed between his arm and Nathan’s chest. He moved slowly as he reached for it to avoid waking the other man, and he pried it from between them and held it in his fingers, careful to keep from pulling the cord around Nathan’s neck. It was a small, round stone without any markings, only the silver wire wrapping keeping it attached to the chain. Its only notable feature was the small crack that ran halfway through the center. There was a strange chill in it despite it being pressed between them moments before. Its simplicity and the fact that Nathan never took it off almost guaranteed that it was enchanted in some way, so that would explain the cold. The alligator tooth was less suspicious—even Elton knew they were a common good luck charm and nothing more. Was this turquoise stone perhaps the stolen trinket? What sort of talisman could be so precious that Nathan had risked his life by taking it from a lich?

  Elton looked back at Nathan’s face to find him staring at him from his shoulder, his dark eyes reflecting the slow grin on his lips. The Chaser immediately dropped the necklace and pulled away, but Nathan laughed and hugged him tightly around the waist.

  “Don’t go, darling; we were having such a lovely moment,” he chuckled.

  “Get off of me,” Elton growled. Nathan laughed, and he sat up as the Chaser got up from the lumpy sofa bed.

  “I only thought you might be getting lonely, darling.”

  “You just mind your hands,” Elton snapped, snatching his pants from where he’d laid them across a chair.

  “Take your own advice, Mr. Willis,” Nathan murmured, idly touching the amulet around his neck. Elton ignored him and dressed himself without looking back at the other man.

  Cora emerged from Adelina’s room, where she had spent most of the early morning. She had managed to get a bit of rest thanks to the older woman’s oils and quiet chants, but she still felt like death. The lack of sleep was beginning to wear on her. Not enough to keep her from smiling at the sight of Nathan and Elton bickering first thing in the morning, but a little. Under different circumstances, the two men might have been best friends, she thought. The kind of friend who drives you crazy but that you can’t imagine being without.

  Before anything else, Nathan and Adelina disappeared into a back room of the house, and when Elton asked what they were up to, all Nathan would say was “It’s Monday” before shutting the door in his face. Cora leaned against the wall nearby with all the curiosity she could muster after the night she’d had, and Elton listened at the door, his fingertips on the dark wood. He expected some sort of secret black magic, but he could sense none. The only sounds from inside were the voices of father and daughter, softly speaking repeated Creole phrases. When the door finally opened, Elton caught a glimpse of an altar similar to the one he’d found in Nathan’s apartment, lit with a pair of short white candles. This one seemed to be missing the depiction of the strange man on Nathan’s altar, but the table cluttered with trinkets was the same.

  “Mind your business, darling,” Nathan muttered at him as he passed, brushing him aside with a light touch to his chest.

  The four of them ate breakfast together, and Nathan insisted on a shower while Elton put away the sofa bed and gathered their bags.

  “You’re very helpful,” Cora said with a yawn, watching the Chaser from a nearby chair. “You do dishes, you clean up after yourself. You’d make a good househusband if you’d give up chasing after people.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he answered with a small chuckle. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, remembering Nathan’s earlier reference to love interests. He didn’t want to encourage the girl, but he wouldn’t be rude to her. “You didn’t leave anyone behind to follow Nathan halfway across the country?”

  “Are you kidding?” she snorted, pulling her feet up into the chair. “I didn’t have any friends, let alone anything, you know, better than that. Yuma’s not a huge town, and I’ve always been a bit of an outcast. Finding out I’m a witch hasn’t made it any easier.”

  “It will, I think you’ll find,” Elton said as he slipped on his jacket. “If you decide not to follow Nathan down his road of bullshit, you’ll meet plenty of people who understand what you’ve been through. We all have to grow up in the mundane world, after all; even those of us who knew the truth from the start.”

  “See? So helpful and encouraging,” she said. Her cheeks felt warm at his soft smile, so she folded her arms on her knees and hid her face in them on the pretense of sleepiness. It was a nice smile. Nathan had told her to take what she wanted when she wanted it, but she
couldn’t be that person. Being free and adventurous and going on crazy road trips was one thing—it was entirely another to openly flirt with a married older man. A married older man who was actually in the process of trying to have her mentor executed. If this was the way she picked them, she didn’t have high hopes for future romantic prospects.

  When they were ready to leave, Adelina moved to a short table near the kitchen, writing her phone number on a small pad of paper and offering Nathan the slip. “Pran swen tèt ou, Nathaniel,” she said softly. “I’ll try to be careful if this creature comes calling.” He carefully folded the paper and slid it into his pocket, giving her a grin as he bent to kiss her cheek.

  “I’m not worried about you. Pitit tig, se tig, hm?”

  Adelina laughed gently and nodded at him. “The tiger’s cub is still a tiger. Yes. I hope I hear from you soon. There’s still a lot more I want to know.”

  “And I have a lot more to tell you.” He looked past her at Elton and Cora. “Ready?”

  Elton approached Nathan and spared Adelina a brief glance as he whispered, “Make sure you’ve said what needs to be said. You know you may not have the opportunity to come back.”

  “I have faith that even the Magistrate will allow me one last phone call if and when you do manage to drag me to the frozen north, darling.” He tilted his head toward the front door. “Shall we?”

  Cora waved awkwardly at their host as she made her way to the door with the others, feeling as though the Nathan who had looked so forlorn and upset at the news of his daughter’s existence had now vanished. He barely seemed concerned at all. She was positive that meant he had something planned, but she wasn’t about to ask him about it with Elton within earshot.

  “Orevwa, Adelina,” Nathan said as they stood on her front step, and she held his hands one last time and squeezed them tight. “Dwe bon.”

  “I should be telling you to be good, I think,” she smiled.