Creatures of Charm and Hunger

by Molly Tanzer

  She had just pulled the velvet cloth off of the soft marble when she heard them behind her.

  “What’s that?”

  Miriam palmed the sphere before turning around. Once again, Mary had the pistol trained on her. Miriam’s armpits prickled with sweat and her knees got a little less solid-feeling inside her skin.

  “Just looking around,” she said, but she knew she didn’t sound convincing.

  “What did you find? You have something in your hand. I saw you take it.”

  “I didn’t take anything,” lied Miriam.

  “Show me your hand, then.”

  Miriam played for time. “Mary, this room suppresses diabolic energy. It’s hard for me to hang on to this body in here.” That, unfortunately, was true. “Do you mind if we step into the main room?”

  “I do mind, as a matter of fact,” said Mary. “You’re keeping something from us. I want to know what it is before anyone goes anywhere. Show me your hand.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you,” said Miriam. She was now dangerously close to losing her hold on Nurse Franzi. “Please, we can help each other, we’re on the same side, so let’s just step—”

  Mary cocked the pistol, and Miriam knew then she was done here, in this lab. She squished her tongue around the inside of her mouth to get as much saliva going as she could and then popped the marble-sized sphere there.

  It had seemed smaller when it wasn’t in her mouth. Hopefully its softness would save her from choking.

  “What did you—” shouted Mary, and to Miriam’s surprise she fired the gun, but it made a mere click instead of blasting Miriam in the face.

  Miriam swallowed as Mary cursed.

  “God damn Kraut-made Luger piece of—”

  But Miriam never heard the rest of it, as the moment she felt the soft marble of diabolic energy slide down her gullet, she let go of Franzi’s body.

  The mirror dropped from her hand and bounced; the knife, too, fell from her weak fingers and stuck into the floor dangerously close to her foot.

  Miriam woke some time in the night, still in her chair. As she stumbled toward bed, her foot struck something that went rolling across the floor to shatter against the wall.

  It was her father’s devil-trap, returned from wherever it went when Miriam used her mirror, but Miriam was too exhausted to care much about it.

  * * *

  WHEN A KNOCK AWAKENED HER the next morning, Miriam knew something was very wrong with her. She didn’t feel exhausted, as one might after a sleepless night; her body felt different, unfamiliar and unresponsive.

  Another knock made her wince. Miriam called out that she’d be there in a moment. She rolled onto her side to ease out of bed only to be greeted by the sight of her father’s devil-trap lying in big jagged pieces on her bedroom floor.

  “Miriam?”

  She’d worry about it later. For now, she had to get to the door, afraid as she was about what Jane would say when she saw her.

  Jane looked absolutely traumatized.

  “Is it bad?” croaked Miriam.

  “Awful,” she whispered.

  Miriam was surprised—not by her answer, but her phrasing. Usually Jane was diplomatic about such matters.

  Jane bit her lip. “Sam . . . Sam’s dead.”

  That was not at all what Miriam had expected to hear. “What?”

  “Last night.”

  Miriam felt a cold chill. “How did he die?”

  She didn’t know what “natural causes” a young man might die of, but she still hoped for that to be Jane’s answer.

  “They say it was some sort of wild animal. His neck was snapped, and he had been torn to pieces.” Jane’s eyes briefly found Miriam’s before she looked away again. She seemed curiously guilty. “It sounds like it might the same creature that got our ducks,” she said, in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper.

  24

  * * *

  A LONG MOMENT PASSED AFTER JANE told Miriam the news. Jane spent it trying not to stare at her friend.

  Miriam looked worse. A lot worse.

  “Mrs. Fielding came to tell us. She heard it from her sister in the village. Everyone’s upset because . . . because of how gruesome it was.”

  Miriam had a strange air about her. Jane wondered if her feelings about Sam’s death weren’t wholly regretful.

  As for Jane, her feelings about his death were also mixed—she was horrified at the grisly scene reported to her by Mrs. Fielding and worried that it might have something to do with her familiar. But Smudge had been such a help to her. She didn’t believe he was capable of such a wicked act . . . and, anyway, he couldn’t have gone all the way to Hawkshead and back to do the killing. Jane had stayed up late spying on Miriam, and then fallen asleep with the light on. When she’d awakened several hours later, Smudge had been curled up on the pillow beside her head, his fluff gilded by the puddle of light. His gentle purring had lulled her back to sleep quickly in the darkened room after she turned off her lamp.

  She had no reason to suspect the cat, and yet suspect him Jane did. She didn’t know why, but her intuition told her that Smudge had something to do with Sam’s death, and with the ducks’ too. She didn’t like it, but she had to face facts, and the fact was that ever since she’d summoned her familiar, death had come oddly in the night to people and animals close to her. One incident she could have brushed off as a coincidence, but twice . . .

  She looked down the hallway and saw Smudge sitting in front of her bedroom door. The cat was perfectly still save for the tip of his tail, which beat softly upon the hall runner carpet.

  Jane puckered her lips and made a little kissing face at him, like she’d used to do before she’d summoned a demon into him, and then turned back to Miriam. She was trying to act normally around him, so that if she had to banish him, it would come as a surprise.

  This was assuming the cat couldn’t read her mind. That wasn’t supposed to be something the Ceaseless Connoisseur could do, but then again, neither was it supposed to have a penchant for disemboweling innocents.

  “It’s a shame,” said Jane, “but that doesn’t change how I feel about his mistreating you.”

  Miriam looked a little shocked by this, when she glanced up from her feet. “I suppose,” she said softly.

  Jane cleared her throat, as a way to change the subject. She hadn’t wished to conceal Sam’s demise, but she had other business to discuss.

  “Miriam . . .” Jane wasn’t sure how to approach the subject of Miriam’s spiritual activities, as she would have to admit she’d not respected her friend’s privacy, and come up with a plausible excuse for asking after Miriam’s soul, or astral body, or spirit—whatever she’d seen. She’d planned for this, though—she’d thought about it quite a bit.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry, but I peeked through your window.” They had a ladder; it was plausible without a flying broomstick. “What I saw . . . Miriam, I—”

  “You spied on me?”

  “I was worried about you! I mean, I didn’t try to stop you, did I?” Jane smiled hopefully. “You seemed to be in a deep meditative state.” She thought that was a good cover. “I’m guessing you were dabbling in some sort of astral projection. Did you . . . did you do the thing? That you needed to do?”

  Miriam looked conflicted, her expression equal parts grief and annoyance. “Sort of,” she said. “It’s hard to explain, but I—”

  Then Miriam’s hand went to her stomach. Jane stepped back on instinct. Her friend looked queasy—and sure enough, Miriam gagged twice and then coughed up something that seemed far too large to have emerged from her mouth. Something that shone with its own light.

  The force of Miriam’s expectoration sent the marble-like object slipping through her spittle-slick fingers. It bounced once and then rolled down the hall.

  Smudge wiggled his tail and then pounced on it, just as he ever would have done.

  “No!” cried Miriam, but Smudge had gotten his mouth around
the glowing sphere and, like any less exceptional cat would do, scarpered with his new trophy. Miriam darted past Jane, pelting after the cat only to stumble in her weakened state.

  Down the stairs he went. Jane followed him as quickly as she could, but it was only after she’d made it halfway down the staircase did she command the cat to halt. She couldn’t let Miriam see how Smudge actually obeyed her now.

  What Jane hadn’t seen was her mother idly drifting by the stairwell. Smudge stopped at her feet, looking up at her with a curious, almost playful expression, the item in question held as gently in his mouth as if it had been a kitten.

  “Hello, Smudge,” said Nancy, in a soppy, adoring manner totally unlike herself. “What do you have there, I wonder?”

  Smudge uttered a strangled cry, just like a normal cat pleased with his hunting. Nancy cooed at him as Jane ran down the rest of the stairs to try to remove the object from between Smudge’s jaws.

  It was surprisingly soft and squishy; she’d thought it would be hard.

  “Naughty,” she said lightly.

  “What is it?” asked Nancy.

  “Oh . . . just something Miriam’s been working on,” said Jane, knowing damn well that was the understatement of the century.

  “I’d like to see it,” said Nancy, extending her hand.

  Jane suppressed a sigh. Of course this was the thing her mother would take an interest in after being so distant about everything else!

  Jane didn’t know what to do. She glanced over her shoulder; Miriam was just now limping down the stairs.

  “Come now,” said Nancy. “Be a good girl.”

  As Jane turned back to her mother, she noticed Smudge. The cat watched this scene unfold with more than feline attention. His keen gaze sent a thrill of terror down Jane’s spine—why was he so invested in this interaction? They both knew he was no mere cat eager for the return of a toy. What was the nature of his interest?

  A flicker of motion caught Jane’s eye. It was Smudge’s shadow on the wall. Once again, it seemed to her as if the twitching of the shadow’s tail was not perfectly aligned with Smudge’s . . . and this time, she was certain two hollow eyes blinked, revealing the robin’s egg blue of the wallpaper.

  That seemed worrisome, but now was not the time to worry about it.

  “Please,” panted Miriam, as she limped up to them. “Give it back. It’s not meant to be handled.”

  “Not meant to be handled?” Nancy seemed so surprised by this, it gave Jane hope. Awkward as this situation might be, it was waking Nancy up.

  “No, it—”

  “But Smudge had it!”

  Jane felt both relief and unhappiness at this now-typical woozy comment from her mother.

  “Smudge took it when he shouldn’t have, the little thief,” said Jane, handing the soft and slippery ball over to Miriam. She was glad to be rid of it, even if she suspected it was not something Miriam ought to have, either. She smiled as brightly as she could. “You know Smudge!”

  “It’s fine,” said Miriam, in a passable imitation of her usual awkward self. “No harm done, but it’s best to get it back where it needs to be.”

  The clock chimed then, and Jane startled. She counted the bells; it was only eight o’clock in the morning.

  That didn’t seem possible . . .

  The silence that followed was so tense and heavy that Jane shrieked when the knock came at the door, urgent and loud.

  “What now?” exclaimed Jane, and moved to answer it when no one else did.

  It was Charlie, the boy employed by the postmaster to run telegrams, and run one he had—all the way from Hawkshead to their doorstep, judging from the shape he was in. Jane asked if he would like to come in and warm up before heading back; he said he would, so for the sake of the lad not catching pneumonia, she and Miriam endured making and drinking a cup of tea with him as he warmed his front and backside with great relish before the AGA.

  He left quickly after he’d finished, thank goodness. Jane was both eager and reluctant to open the telegram.

  “Do you think we should get Mother?” Nancy had wandered off with her cup of tea. Jane was unsure if it was ethical to proceed without her.

  Miriam stared at Jane for a moment, and then laughed. It was a truly horrible sound, like a can full of nails.

  “What has the world come to where you’re asking me if you should dive into something?” asked Miriam, with a shake of her head. Her hair had gone very gray, indeed.

  Jane conceded this point and opened up the telegram. She gasped at the first line, then began to read it aloud:

  MESSAGES GOING AWRY STOP HAVE BEEN FOR SOME TIME STOP MUCH NEWS STOP I SHALL BE WITH YOU IN THREE DAYS TIME TO EXPLAIN ALL STOP THE GOOD NEWS IS YOUR SISTER LIVES STOP

  “It’s from my father,” said Jane, in conclusion.

  The telegram contained more mysteries than it answered. What messages were “going awry,” making the Société resort to telegrams?

  What was so terrible that her father would come to Hawkshead? And in three days’ time . . .

  Jane was utterly at a loss of what to do. She was surprised to see Miriam’s expression was no more coherent. Her friend had looked strange and terrible to begin with, but now she seemed horrified. Maybe appalled.

  Appalled—but not shocked. Miriam was upset, but the idea of it being necessary to count Edith among the living or the dead was not news to her.

  “What’s happened?” said Jane. She kept her voice low.

  “I don’t know,” said Miriam. “I thought . . . it doesn’t matter what I thought.” Jane was seething now, furious at her friend. Miriam noticed. “Jane, I’m sorry. It slipped my mind with everything else and, anyway, I was wrong about Edith being dead.”

  “For how long have you been wrong?”

  “Only a day, no—two.”

  “Two days!” Jane stood and hurled the telegram down onto the table; Miriam winced as the paper smacked on the wood. “And here I told you about Sam’s death not five minutes after I learned of it. Two days you’ve known my aunt was . . .” Jane stopped short. “What is she? Is she dead? Captured?”

  “I thought she was dead,” whispered Miriam. “He . . . the doctor . . . he said she was. But it seems he was wrong!”

  “That doesn’t make this any better!”

  Jane had never been so angry in her life. How dare Miriam keep this from her! It was absurd. Something like this didn’t just slip one’s mind.

  “Jane,” said Miriam. Something about her tone made Jane pay attention. “They said . . . what I heard at least . . . it was that everyone died. The rescue party, all of them.” She looked away. “I’m certain my mother’s dead, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Jane, almost automatically. What else could she say? She couldn’t continue to be angry in the face of hearing that. “Were you able to find out anything about—”

  Miriam shook her head. “But at least I know she wasn’t a traitor. Neither of my parents were.”

  “A traitor? Who in the world would think that?”

  “The Société.” Miriam’s expression hardened. “Some of their plans went awry, and they thought my parents might have been the reason. Edith didn’t think so. She went to find out the truth—that’s what she was doing. But it went wrong, like the telegram said. They—the Nazis—thought everyone had died, but apparently Edith got out.”

  Jane was too shocked by all of this to cry, or gasp, or feel anything at all. It had always been hard for her to comprehend the scope of the devastation wrought by this war—it was the small stories that always made her stop and reflect on the horror of it all.

  “Anyway,” said Miriam, after a moment, “I set out to prove their innocence, and now I can.”

  “With what Smudge grabbed?”

  “No. That’s . . .” Miriam hesitated. “They were trying to make a weapon, and that was going to be part of it. I took it back with me. The man who designed it, he’s . . . dead now too.”

  Jane was quite a
stonished. Miriam was a skilled diabolist, more powerful and knowledgeable than Jane had realized. Astral projection was one thing, but Jane had never heard of being able to take items across time and space. A lot of time and space, if Miriam had been visiting Germany.

  As for her killing a man . . . that was something else entirely.

  “What sort of weapon?” asked Jane, sidestepping the issue. “I just ask, as Smudge had it, you know . . . in his mouth.”

  “A bomb, powered by concentrated diabolic energy,” said Miriam. “That’s what it is. I need to investigate it further.”

  Jane wondered if Smudge knew he’d stolen such a dangerous and powerful thing. The answer was probably yes, but she could think about that later. She was still upset about Edith, and she was also extremely concerned for Miriam—more now that she knew her friend was coping with finding out her parents were both dead.

  It had been such a hectic few moments there, with hearing of Sam’s death, telling Miriam, Smudge’s theft, Nancy’s odd interest in the item in question, and then the arrival of the telegram-bearing boy, that Jane hadn’t really spent a lot of time looking at her friend. Frankly, she looked awful. Stunningly so. Jane once again marveled at how, at least when it came to her face, she had no visible signs of aging—there were no wrinkles around her eyes, no sag in her cheeks. It was something deeper that was wrong with her, something that defied explanation.

  She suspected this had to do with just how ghastly Miriam’s soul, or whatever she’d seen, had looked when it had been separated from her body the night before. But, of course, it was hard for Jane to express concern over Miriam’s spirit or soul when doing so would reveal that she’d managed to somehow see it.

  She tried to keep the focus on Miriam’s well-being. “You’re not going back, are you?” asked Jane. “When you say investigate this . . . thing . . . you mean down in the Library, right?”

  Miriam stiffened. “That’s my business.”

  “But, Miriam—look at yourself. You’re not well, you look sick, your hair . . . You just vomited up something that you say you brought back with you somehow. I don’t even understand how that’s possible!”