The Left-Hand Path

by Barnett, T. S.

  “It’ll be a little while yet,” he said, not daring to turn his head to look at her. Her face would be entirely too near to his, and she would look up at him with a smile in her dark eyes. This was too close. People made things complicated—and a kind, vibrant witch whose only purpose seemed to be to insert herself into his affairs was even worse.

  “Anything I can help with?”

  “No thank you,” he said briskly, and she took his hint and retreated to the kitchen table. He finished his work and focused his attention on wiping down the counter rather than the woman who he knew was watching him.

  “Thomas,” she said when it became clear he’d wiped the same spot two or three times, and he stopped. He didn’t like the way his name sounded on her lips—it made his stomach hurt. “Can I...ask you a question? You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to.”

  “I don’t want to answer it,” he said immediately, earning himself a balled-up cloth napkin chucked at his face, which he managed to catch at his chest before it hit the floor.

  “At least listen to what it is first!”

  Thomas sighed lightly and sat down across from her at the table. “What is it?”

  She pulled her lips between her teeth for a moment as though hesitant to ask. “I just wondered about...what you said about the demon. About inevitability.”

  A frown twitched the corners of his mouth. “What about it?”

  “You said that you didn’t want to do the same thing your family had done. But you did it anyway.” Her brow furrowed, and she leaned onto the table to get just a little closer to him. “Because of the Magistrate? But why? Was...was it after Claire?”

  Thomas appreciated that she found Claire’s name difficult to say. He did, too.

  “It...was,” he answered, lacing his hands together on the table and looking down at them so that he didn’t have to see Cora’s pitying eyes. He took a slow breath and shook his head. He didn’t have to tell her anything. He didn’t have to answer her—she’d said it herself. But it might be nice to tell the truth to one other person on Earth. And then she would put her distance between them again.

  “I wasn’t...entirely honest with you back in Toronto. When I told you what happened to her.” He paused and glanced up at Cora, but she was only listening with a soft, pensive frown. “She did receive the ingnas, and she did respond badly. I found her at her aunt’s house, bedridden and blank. She didn’t know me. She didn’t know anyone. She couldn’t speak at all—she only stared, at the ceiling, or at the television. Her aunt was kind enough to let me visit her, but...there was no point. So I asked to take her home with me. I said that maybe I could fix what they’d done to her.”

  Cora stayed silent and waiting, giving him the time he needed to swallow the tension growing in his throat.

  “I gathered what I needed, and...I summoned Bathin for the first time. I bound myself to it, gave it everything I had and promised it more, if it would help me. It promised me the knowledge you’ve seen—the herbs and stones. But it also promised me that it would restore what the Magistrate had taken from Claire. So I signed the agreement in blood. And the demon kept its part of the bargain.”

  “But,” Cora started softly, confusion creasing the space between her brows, “I thought you said that she—”

  “She got everything back,” Thomas went on. He could hear the thickness in his own voice as the truth fell out of him at last. “But there was so much she’d lost—all of her memories, her thoughts, her dreams, her laughter, her...everything that made her what she was. When it all came back at once, she—she couldn’t take it. She was...screaming. She was sobbing, and when I tried to help her, she still didn’t know me. She shouted at me and threw things, and she attacked me. Nothing that I said or did—”

  Thomas’s hands clenched tighter on the table in front of him. He could still hear Claire’s screams as if she were in the room with him now. He felt the scratches on his face and arms as she clawed at him hard enough to draw blood, kicking and hitting him with the fury of a frightened wild animal. He didn’t have any of his supplies back then. He didn’t have the means to stop her by magic—he hadn’t thought he would need to. If he’d been more prepared—but he’d had to defend himself.

  “I...there wasn’t anything I could do to help her,” he said.

  He felt her thrashing body underneath him, bloodied hands tearing and pulling at his arms in desperation as he held her by the throat, his own breath coming in heaving sobs, his tears not enough to blind him to the sight of her reddening, panicked face. Her pale eyes, once smiling and gentle, now looked empty and frenzied as she fought for her life against the man she’d intended to marry. Her fingertips held his sleeves until they no longer had the strength, and the last sound she’d made was the strained, breathless whisper of his name. Then her arms fell heavily to the floor as she went slack beneath him. He’d touched her face, looked into her staring eyes, and curled over her, clutching her head to his chest and burying his face in her hair to cry.

  “I had to kill her,” he said, barely able to breathe well enough to get the words out. “I wish I’d just given her a tincture, like I told you. It...it would have been kinder.”

  “Thomas,” Cora whispered, and she moved from her place to sit beside him and cover his hands with hers. “Thomas, you did more for her than anyone could have ever asked of you.”

  “It wasn’t enough.”

  “That isn’t your fault,” she assured him, her fingers gripping his hands tightly. “I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry I brought all this up.”

  “It’s fine,” he said, though he was sure he didn’t sound convincing. He stared down at their joined hands, Cora’s thumb gently brushing over his knuckles. “I’m actually...glad to tell someone else. I’ve never...said it out loud before.”

  She smiled faintly at him and moved one hand to give his wrist a comforting squeeze. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me.”

  “Well,” he said with a soft chuckle, “I don’t suppose you’re in much of a position to turn me in. But...thank you for listening.” He checked his watch as a pretense for removing his hands from hers and stood to check the food on the fire, but he could feel her eyes on his back as he crouched in front of the pot. She hadn’t put more distance between them at all—she’d closed the gap. She’d held his hand and tried to comfort him. The thought constricted his chest, but if he was honest, his burden felt a little lighter now that he’d shared some of the load.

  ***

  Cora’s heart ached while she helped set up the dinner table. She’d felt sorry for Thomas before, but what he’d described was far worse than she’d imagined. He’d been through so much, given up so much, and come out the other side still wanting to help people. She didn’t pity him now—it made her feel a little silly to admit, but she admired him. Cora couldn’t be sure she would have done anything but curl up in a ball and wait to die after something like that happening to her.

  She also hadn’t been able to shake the warm feeling that had formed in her stomach when she’d had her hands on his and he’d shown her a hint of a smile. She couldn’t deny enjoying the way he tensed up and stared at the slightest flirting—she guessed ten years without sexual contact was more than long enough to make someone a bit twitchy. While they ate, he asked her about what she’d seen in her mirror, if she needed any help with the incense, and if the weaving was getting any easier—he didn’t seem to want to linger on the subject of their earlier conversation, and she couldn’t blame him. She was happy to chat with him about the present before their present turned gruesome.

  Dessert was a large pile of fresh strawberries, cherries, melon, and blackberries, which Cora attacked in a very unladylike way. Thomas was only a little more restrained—it must have made a nice change from the bread and gruel he’d been mostly surviving on while they had a steady stream of house guests. He actually seemed close to something like content, which was a welcome change. If Thomas was about to have to go ba
ck to his fasting, bloody, no-impure-thoughts life, then Cora guessed now was as good a time as any to test her limits.

  “Are there any more cherries?” she asked, tilting her head to peer at the dwindling mound of fruit.

  “Here,” Thomas answered, and he picked one from the far side of the plate and offered it to her. She leaned over to him and took the cherry from his fingers with her mouth, drawing it past her lips with her tongue and smiling at him in thanks as she settled back into her seat. Thomas sat frozen, his hand still extended as if to offer the fruit that was already gone, for so long that Cora almost laughed. Then he cleared his throat and rose from the table, busying himself with cleaning up the remnants of their meal with his back pointedly toward her.

  “Sorry,” she offered, knowing she sounded as insincere as she felt.

  “It’s...fine.”

  Cora leaned her elbow on the table and put her chin in her hand to watch him. “Wanna see me tie the stem in a knot?”

  “I—no,” he said without turning around. “I believe you.” He filled the coffee pot with water from the sink and took the can of coffee from the cabinet. “Do you want coffee? I think I want to...leave. To be in the study, I mean. There are—I need to study the incantations. In the...study,” he finished, and she could see the faint grimace on his face even in profile as he popped the lid of the can.

  “You know, I never thought of shy guys as my type, but you’re really cute when you’re flustered.”

  Thomas’s grip faltered, and the metal can hit the corner of the counter and spread a dramatic arc of coffee grounds through the air as it tumbled to the floor. Thomas scrambled after it and scooped it up before it could roll too far away, holding it tight in both hands and placing it firmly back on the counter. Cora bit back her laugh and stood to grab the broom from the corner of the kitchen, and she laid a gentle hand on his arm.

  “Why don’t you go ahead? I’ll bring some coffee when it’s done.”

  “Cora, I—you—”

  “Relax,” she chuckled. “You cooked, so I’ll clean. I’ll get down on all fours and scrub if I have to. You can stay and watch, if you want.”

  Thomas pressed his lips tightly together, hesitated just a moment with his gaze flicking to the spilled coffee grounds, and then he turned and exited the room in a few quick steps, leaving Cora to softly laugh as she swept.

  By the time she brought the pair of coffee cups to the study, Thomas was settled on the loveseat with a book open on his lap, one elbow leaned against the armrest and lips moving silently as he read the incantations he would need to know by heart for the coming ritual. He didn’t look up as Cora took a seat beside him and set down a mug for him, but she thought she saw his subtle frown deepen slightly.

  “Thank you,” he said. His fingers tightened on the edge of his book as she inched closer to him on the loveseat. She pulled her feet up onto the cushion and leaned over to rest her chin on his shoulder, arms looped around her knees.

  “That looks long. You have to memorize the whole thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to, like, read it dramatically at me or something? I’ve heard that helps.”

  “I’d rather not say these words out loud until I need them.”

  Cora looked up into his face, though he refused to meet her gaze. “Well, if you get tired of staring at it, we can think of something else to do. I told you it’s been a long few months here.”

  Thomas shut his eyes and exhaled a sigh through his nose. “Cora, please, I—can you—”

  She laughed and sat up straighter. “I’m sorry,” she said as he finally turned to face her. “I’m bad at this. But it really is cute how upset you get.”

  “Bad at what? Making me uncomfortable? Being so—” He stopped himself and ran a weary hand over his mouth before letting it drop back to the arm of the loveseat.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. She shifted on the seat to face him properly and glanced down at her hands in her lap. “What I’m bad at is...being honest? About real stuff. It’s easier to make jokes, you know? But what I want to say, I guess, is that...I like you. I worry about everything you’ve been through, and this ritual you’re going to do, and what it’s going to mean for everyone once it’s done. I’m here to help you, but I want you to know that...I’m here for you, too.”

  Thomas watched her for a few seconds without answering, and then he let out a soft sigh and leaned forward to set his book on the table. “Cora, my life is...what it is. I’m just doing what I can with the time I’ve got. I don’t want your sympathy, and I don’t want you to stay here because you think I’m too pathetic to be alone. I’ve been on my own for ten years, and—”

  “That’s not it at all,” she interrupted. Cora reached out to take his hands in hers and give them a gentle squeeze. “I know you’ve been doing it alone. I sure as hell couldn’t. And I don’t think you’re pathetic. I think you’re brave. What I’m trying to say is that I’m not just here because of the Magistrate anymore. I care about you, Thomas, and I guess...this stupid crap is the only way I know how to show it. I’m sorry if I’ve been irritating or made you uncomfortable. Well—too uncomfortable. A little is fine.”

  Thomas frowned down at their hands, his shoulders seeming to ease slightly. “Cora,” he sighed, the sound of her name so softly twisting a knot into her stomach. “I don’t know how to have people care about me,” he added with a faint, dry smile as he finally met her eyes. “I’m...glad that you’re here. I’d gotten so used to just being exhausted all the time, that having your help has been...a relief. I do care about you, too.”

  Cora smiled at him, a touch of unwelcome heat rising in her cheeks as Thomas’s fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around hers. Without fully intending to, she closed the distance between them and kissed him. His stubble scraped her chin, and she moved one hand to touch the fabric of his sleeve. His usual tension softened against her, his hand fastening loosely around her wrist, and when she pulled back from him, she caught her bottom lip in her teeth and watched his dark blue eyes as they refocused on her. She wasn’t sure what reaction to expect from him, but there was a definite hitch in his breath as his fingers tightened on her wrist. He stared at her with lips parted as if to speak, a faint crease in his brow above eyes that seemed to suffer so much it made her own heart hurt. Before she even thought to say anything, he stood, releasing her and pulling back as though she might burn him, and then he turned and left the room without looking back. She heard his footsteps all the way up the stairs, ending with the sound of his bedroom door swinging shut and locking.

  She stared out at the empty hallway for a while, then down at Thomas’s abandoned coffee, bemused. That...had not gone at all the way she’d hoped.

  24

  Elton had made the executive decision to leave Sacramento the morning after their night out; the last thing he needed was Nathan deciding that they were on some kind of vacation together. He called Thomas first thing and asked for an estimate, but that was still no more certain than “two more weeks.” Elton didn’t want to sit around anymore. That was plenty of time to finish their visit to Elton’s target in Los Angeles, so he started up the RV and headed toward the interstate while Nathan still slept. Almost as soon as he got going, however, his phone rang again. He glanced down at the screen long enough to see Cora’s name before answering.

  “Hello?”

  “Elton, I need help,” she said. “About Thomas.” She sounded hushed and slightly muffled. Elton pictured her hiding underneath her blanket to keep from being heard. “Is Nathan there?”

  “He’s sleeping.”

  “Okay,” she said in a puffing exhale, “so here’s the thing. So Thomas has been really nice lately, right? We’ve been getting along, like, really well. And when I hit on him a little bit, he seemed nervous? But, you know, good nervous. He’s lonely and shy, right? So I thought it was fine. But then last night, we were sitting together and talking, and I told him that I cared about him and I th
ought he knew what I meant because he said he cared about me too but I guess not because then I kissed him and he just—he just left! Like straight up stood up and walked out of the room and didn’t say anything! I haven’t seen him yet this morning because I’m afraid to leave my room and make it weird but he’s the one who made it weird, right? I mean, who does that? Who just walks away from a kiss without a word? So what do I do?”

  Elton stared at the road ahead of him while the girl carried on, a deep frown on his face. This was not the sort of call he had ever hoped to receive. He waited so long to answer that she called his name in a demanding voice, so he cleared his throat and forced himself to speak. “Why...did you do that at all? I told you what a bad idea it was.”

  “I couldn’t help it! He was being so honest, and we were holding hands, and...it just seemed like the right time! But what if he starts avoiding me again now, and should I apologize even though I’m not really sorry I did it, and just why is he so weird?”

  She sighed into the receiver, and Elton shook his head.

  “I’m really not the person you should be asking about this kind of thing.”

  “I don’t have anyone else to ask, Elton!”

  “Then maybe if it’s going so poorly, you just shouldn’t do it?” he suggested, but she huffed at him in irritation.

  “You just think he’s too broken, and that’s not fair. He’s been through a lot, but he’s still a person. And when he actually forgets to be sad for a minute, and I can see the person that he was before you ruined his life—which you absolutely did, by the way—he’s so kind, and funny, and...I really like him, Elton. Like, really really.”

  Elton took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, his gaze falling to the rubber stress toy he’d tucked onto the dashboard months ago and still occasionally used when his close quarters with Nathan got to be too much. “I don’t know what advice to give you,” he said, more quietly. “Even when we were in school, Thomas was...skittish.” He hesitated to go on, but he didn’t want another earful. “If you really think this is the right thing to do, then just...be yourself. If he’s having cozy talks and holding hands with you, you’re doing something right.”