The Left-Hand Path

by Barnett, T. S.

  Nathan apparently disagreed.

  A door down the hall crashed off of its hinges as a screaming body flew through it, hitting the opposite wall legs-up and leaving a splatter of blood on the wallpaper as it crumpled to the floor. Nathan’s laughter rang down the corridor, and Elton sighed. He spotted Nathan poking his head through the doorway, a bright grin on his face as he caught sight of the blond.

  “Good exercise, isn’t it?” he called, and Elton waved him off.

  A shouted binding spell rocked Elton on his feet, pulling him down to the ground, but he slid one of his papers onto the floor and sent it toward his attacker with a sharp exhale. The talisman raced up the bodyguard’s leg and wrapped around his throat, squeezing until the man began to turn purple. Elton dusted off his knees as he stood, the spell’s hold broken as the guard lost consciousness. Nathan appeared beside him, his shirt somehow already stained with blood, and they turned the corner to the tall wooden doors that marked Winnick’s office. His secretary’s desk outside was empty, so Nathan leaned over the computer monitor to touch the intercom button. After a brief, muffled ring on the other side of the doors, a brusque voice crackled through the phone.

  “What is it? I thought you’d gone home.”

  “No such luck,” Nathan laughed, and Elton could almost feel the chill in the silence that followed. “May we come in?”

  No answer came, so Elton took the liberty of turning the handle on the office door and giving it a shove. Winnick stood behind his desk with a string of silver beads clutched tightly in his fist like a rosary, glaring at the two intruding men.

  “How?” he murmured in a low, furious growl. “You two are dead already.”

  “I have to say,” Nathan began as he crossed the room, pausing to hop up and sit on the surface of Winnick’s desk. “I’ve been killed a half-dozen times—and this wasn’t even one of the better attempts.”

  “Césad,” Winnick snarled, crushing his beads in his hand. Elton knew the spell—it was standard Magistrate-approved torture, used for extracting unlikely confessions. He stepped forward to intercede, and Nathan jumped as the spell touched him and tensed his grip on the edge of the desk, but then he paused, his eyes shutting and his head falling back as he took a slow, deep breath in. He let his head roll to his shoulder, and a predator’s smile spread across his lips as he gazed back at the Magister with cold, black eyes.

  “Is that the best you can do?”

  Winnick fumbled, and Nathan gave a taunting shudder as the spell slipped free of him.

  “Fè jan ou di,” he said firmly, and Winnick dropped instantly into his office chair, hands fastened tightly to the arms. “I hoped you’d at least be a challenge, but you’re just an old man hiding behind people who make less in a year than you pay for a suit, aren’t you? You think that’s the sort of council the Magistrate needs?”

  “The Magistrate needs order,” Winnick ground out with his head pressed forcefully against the back of his chair.

  “It’ll have to make do without your kind of order, fortunately.” Nathan circled the desk and opened a few drawers with casual slowness, finally letting out a soft sound of victory as he scooped up his stolen bracelet. He slipped it over his hand and ran his fingers over the tokens affectionately while he turned to Elton, who had moved backward toward the door to keep an eye out for any security they may have missed. “What do you think, darling? What does he deserve? A quick death, or a fun one?”

  “I think we’d better get on with it, if you’re done being dramatic.”

  “Never. But I suppose you’re right.” He tilted his head at Winnick, who had begun to sweat and go ruddy in his struggle against the spell keeping him still. “I think I’ll leave him in your hands, Mr. Willis.”

  “Mine? Why? Just kill him and let’s go.”

  Nathan stepped over to Elton and gave him a genial pat on the shoulder. “You are so much better at sending messages,” he purred, and he urged the blond farther inside with a gentle push and shut the office door with him inside, leaving him alone with the trapped Magister.

  Elton hesitated, watching the helpless man glaring at him from the leather seat, and he snorted softly. Fine. If they were going to send a message, they should send a clear one.

  ***

  Elton wiped at the blood on his hands with a handkerchief from his pocket. The sounds of Winnick’s shouts and pleading had gone numb in his ears some time ago, so that the blond didn’t even look up as he crouched to run his damp handkerchief down the Magister’s bound arms to clear the seeping red away from the letters he had cut there. Elton stood and crossed the room, once more checking the security of the cord that ran from the antlers of Winnick’s mounted statue to his neck. Stepping over the man’s still legs, Elton spread one of his talismans onto the cool glass of the window, running his thumb slowly over the paper to smooth out any bubbles. Then he breathed softly on the black ink characters staining the yellow paper and took a step back as the glass began to crack. Spiderwebs spread quickly from the center of the talisman, creaking like the icy surface of a lake until the lines reached the metal frame and the glass shattered, forced into glittering pieces that fell onto the landscaped entry below. The wind from this high up howled as it ran past the open window, tousling Elton’s hair. He crouched behind Winnick and lifted him to his feet under his armpits, leaving him standing on the precipice of the open 40th floor.

  Elton touched one of his papers to the Magister’s forehead, the older man’s body slumping as he was finally released from Nathan’s binding, but he didn’t dare turn around. His frame trembled, and his hoarse voice still begged, but Elton ignored him. He gave the cord around Winnick’s neck one final testing tug.

  The Magister argued, babbled, and even offered forgiveness and exemption from punishment, but when he turned his head to look Elton in the eyes, he stopped.

  “Please,” he said simply.

  Elton stared at him, unmoved, and only tilted his chin toward the open window and the whipping wind. Winnick slowly went still, hands still trembling as he faced the outside air, and at Elton’s forceful push, he fell. The cord sang as it snapped taut, and Elton heard the dull thud of the Magister’s body on the glass a story below. He leaned forward to look down and caught a few moments of Winnick’s heels thrashing against the windows with ringing impacts before he went still, a few final droplets of blood falling from the deep marks Elton had made in his forearms.

  Subject to Repression.

  Elton took a deep breath and let it out in a slow sigh, but on his way to the door to fetch Nathan, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, pausing to wipe away the thumbprint of blood he left on the screen as he turned it on. There was a text from Cora waiting for him that was so long it trailed away into ellipses on the notification. With a frown, he opened the message, his furrowed brow slowly relaxing into disbelief the longer he read.

  Elton, first of all please don’t tell Nathan. He’ll never let me forget that he was right and he’ll say ‘I told you so’ and I just cannot handle hearing that right now. So I’ve been helping Thomas at the house, right? Like I said, right? And he’s so rude and aloof and he keeps telling me to leave him alone and not touch his stuff. But he’s also kind of weirdly nice sometimes? And I told him I wanted to help for real so he took me out and did this weird cleansing thing so I could go into his creepy cellar, which by the way HE TRIED TO KILL A BLACK CAT LIKE A REAL OLD-TIMEY SATANIC PANIC WITCH and the people he helped were so grateful and they seemed so happy, and he was actually nice to them. And I don’t know if Nathan told you that Korshunov was here but he was and Thomas did something really bad to him and he kind of rescued me? And then when we did the ritual to send away the couple you sent us he let me help and it was really weird but at the end he kissed me? But like it was totally part of the ritual I think because then he didn’t say anything and now I’m upstairs and it’s so WEIRD HERE NOW because I didn’t feel nothing when he did it. I think I might like him. Like maybe I’m in li
ke with him. And I need you not to tell Nathan because he’ll tease me and give Thomas shit and I also need you to tell me that this is a terrible idea and to confirm my decision to just go be a nun in the middle of Australia somewhere forever because I clearly cannot be trusted to have good timing or good taste in dudes. So please tell me I’m being a stupid kid and reading too much into things or I should just go be a nun. Please.

  Elton stared at his phone’s screen, scrolling back up to the top of the message more than once, incredulous that a single text message could be so long. The content was even worse. Nathan opened the office door to poke his head in, and Elton hastily stuffed his phone back into his pocket. He was going to need some more sleep before he attempted to squeeze a coherent thought out of his brain on the subject of Cora having a crush on his old demon-summoning roommate.

  15

  Thomas knelt on the floor of his bedroom, his hands resting lightly on his knees and his eyes closed as he lowered his head to murmur the same prayer he’d recited thousands of times. The hard press of the wood on his knees hadn’t bothered him for years.

  “O Lord God, Who are seated upon the Heavens, and Who regardest the Abysses beneath, grant unto me Thy Grace I beseech Thee, so that what I conceive in my mind I may accomplish in my work, through Thee, O God, the Sovereign Ruler of all, Who livest and reignest unto the Ages of the Ages. Amen.”

  He took another slow breath before standing. Letting Cora join in on the ritual last night had been a mistake. He should have warned her about the kiss—he’d meant to warn her. But every time he’d opened his mouth to try, it had seemed too painfully uncomfortable. Somehow it had been better to just do it, then keep his back to her until she either left or the heat in his face had faded away. It didn’t mean anything, regardless—it was just awkward. Cora was young and excitable, and likely to read far too much into a simple ritual tradition. And now that she had seen the sort of magic he really did, she was just as likely to catch the first flight she could to wherever Elton and Moore had gone.

  Thomas hesitated just inside his bedroom door. It would be better if she left. Then things could go back to normal.

  Downstairs, he found Cora just as he did every morning—sitting at the kitchen table, chewing on a simple breakfast. The only thing missing was her usual impatient glare as he passed; today, she slammed her phone face down on the surface of the table and stared at him with her eyebrows raised as though he’d already accused her of something she was prepared to deny. The cat lay sprawled on the wood surface nearby, the tip of its tail twitching idly as it snoozed, apparently undisturbed by the sudden noise.

  “Good morning,” she said around a mouthful of bread that she hastily swallowed.

  “Good morning. Are you feeling all right? I got a fever the first few times I performed those rituals.”

  “I...didn’t sleep very well. But I’m fine. Thanks.”

  Thomas poured himself a cup of coffee from the steel kettle that sat near the fire, grateful for the gap in his fasting between rituals. He would have to start up again as soon as they had anyone else he needed to send away, but for now, he could at least enjoy a cup of coffee in the mornings.

  “Thomas,” Cora started in a soft voice, and he paused. Here it came. Now she’d be leaving. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Go ahead,” he answered, lingering near the fireplace with his mug rather than moving to sit beside her.

  “So you...all this stuff that you do, the preparation, the not eating...it helps you do your magic, right? Part of your deal with the demon?”

  “It’s necessary. Yes.”

  “And the praying?”

  “Yes.”

  “So do you believe? In capital-G God, I mean? You’re a Christian?”

  Thomas let a soft snort escape him. “Not exactly. The things that I do have very little to do with Christ. No; the prayers are the same incantations they’ve been for hundreds of years. Whether it matters to the demon that they’re said or whether some other being wants them said doesn’t really make any difference to me. The rituals work, the demon works for me, as long as I follow the rules. If I don’t, then it doesn’t have to follow them, either. And I want it to follow the rules.”

  Cora nodded, staring down at the remnant of buttered bread in her hand. “I’ve never been religious, either,” she said. “My mom and dad would go to church on Christmas and Easter, and they’d take me, but it never seemed to mean anything to them. Then once I found out about all this magic stuff, it kind of started to seem like everything is true at least a little bit, so religion was sort of out the window.”

  Thomas held his mug in both hands, letting the coffee warm his fingers. “Claire was religious,” he said quietly, and then he paused. He hadn’t really meant to talk about her—but when he looked over at Cora, she was watching him attentively with a faint smile on her face. “She...knew what I was, and she still believed. She said that if magic was real, it was more proof of the divine, not less. Never made me go to church, though—she probably thought I really would catch fire.”

  Cora smiled at him, but she still seemed slightly subdued. “Thanks for actually answering.”

  Thomas frowned into his cup. He’d been rude to her since she arrived; he knew it. He was used to being on his own. Cora’s energy level was frequently too high for him, and she’d seemed determined to pry herself a place in his life. Still—she had been trying to help. And her subdued manner this morning put a little weight of guilt in his belly.

  “It’s...part of the requirements,” he said, and she looked up at him. “In the time leading up to the ritual, I have a lot of restrictions. One of them is a bar on ‘useless discourse.’ So not talking more than is strictly necessary. It was easier to keep away from you than to ignore you outright. I also had a lot of preparation to do; this house has been abandoned for some time, and the cellar was in disrepair. It needed to be cleaned up and reconsecrated before the Walkers got here.”

  She brightened a little. “I think this is more than you’ve said to me the entire time I’ve been here. Does this mean you’re gonna be all chatty now?”

  “Not likely.”

  “Didn’t think so.” She stuffed the last of the bread in her mouth and watched him drink his coffee for a few passing moments, though he didn’t look back at her. Being in the room with her was a little like torture—he kept waiting for her to ask the question he knew must be on her mind. The kiss of peace wasn’t that strange a concept to him, but to someone uninitiated in this sort of tradition, it must have been a shock. He cursed himself again for not warning her and cutting off these awkward conversations before they had to happen.

  “So how come the house was empty for so long?” she asked instead, reaching out to scratch the cat’s black fur on its haunches. “Your dad must have left it to you, right? You said he was the one from here?”

  “You really don’t want to know my life story, Cora; trust me.”

  “I didn’t ask for your life story, man. Just how did you end up the heir to a creepy witch house with a built-in demon-summoning cellar?”

  Thomas took another drink of his coffee so that he didn’t have to answer right away. How was he supposed to answer? Tell her that his entire family had been making deals with the spirits that chose them for generations? That his legacy was one of ritual, sacrifice, and early death? She’d taunt him at best and pity him at worst.

  “I told you my parents are dead,” he said simply. “But they didn’t live here after my grandparents died, and neither did I. So no one’s been here since I was a kid.”

  “You don’t have any siblings or cousins or anything?”

  He shook his head. “It’s just me that’s left.”

  “Well that’s...sad,” she said quietly.

  “It is what it is.”

  “Did you come visit? Like, childhood summers at the witch house?”

  “A few times. I hated it. Too much...pressure.”

  “Pressure?”

 
Cora’s phone began to ring on the table beside her, making her jump, and she flipped it over to check the screen. A smile flashed across her face as she picked up the phone and put it to her ear. “You’re up early.” She looked up at Thomas and mouthed, “It’s Nathan.”

  Thomas almost walked out of the room to give her some privacy, but she waved frantically at him and pointed to the seat next to her, then looked down at her phone screen and tapped it to turn on the speaker as he approached.

  “...so we’ll be in touch with Señora Marquez shortly and see what she wants to do,” Moore’s voice said.

  “So you killed that guy?” Cora asked. “The one they wanted for the council?”

  “They’re not likely to want him anymore,” the man on the line laughed.

  “Are you guys coming back here?”

  “Mm. No, I don’t think so,” Moore answered, and Cora visibly deflated. “There’s a lot to do on the West coast. Elton’s found some nearby candidates for a firm talking-to from that list he pilfered in Toronto, so we’ll probably do that. He’s in a fiery mood, my love; you should see him.”

  “Not a word I would ever use to describe Elton.”

  “You haven’t seen him with some liquor in him.” Cora only laughed, so he went on. “In any case—do you want to come along? I’d be happy to give you a rescue from that dreary personage you’ve been cohabitating with.”

  “I can hear you,” Thomas pointed out.

  “Suppose your ears work, then. Good day, Mr. Proctor; have you been taking good care of my girl?”

  “He’s been great,” Cora cut in before Thomas could bite back.

  “I should hope so. How about it, my love? Want a plane ticket going West? We’re going to see Monterrey.”