by Molly Tanzer
“Jane, this war—it’s all about sacrifice. If we win, it will be because of what you, or I, or anyone else is willing to give for the cause.”
“But—”
“Do you understand that if I tell the Société what happened to my parents, I’ll have to tell them what I can do?” Miriam bit her lip. “I’ve had to do something that’s not exactly forbidden, but also not exactly encouraged. You’re not really supposed to . . . to take over other people’s bodies.” She said this all in a rush, as if worried Jane would judge her. But, of course, Jane had her own, far worse secrets to keep. “The Société would be in their rights to hand me over to your father when they find out, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Jane kept a straight face only through sheer force of will. She wanted to burst into tears, to tell Miriam her own worries in that regard, but caution stayed her tongue.
Jane’s reckoning, if there was to be one, would come later. This was about Miriam and her choices, and as Jane looked at her friend—the hollows beneath her eyes, the new silver threading through her once-dark mane, the rickety motions of her arms, she felt it was time to address them head-on. Miriam was hurting herself, maybe even killing herself. Jane didn’t know if she could stop her friend, but she knew she could at least call Miriam out and make her acknowledge that’s what she was doing.
“You told me your parents sacrificed everything so that you could come here and be safe with me and my mother. Right?” Miriam looked murderous, so Jane said what she had to say all in a rush. “All I mean is . . . getting expelled from the Société, hurting yourself as you’ve been . . . do you think that’s what they would have wanted for you?”
She didn’t realize the question was insensitive until she saw Miriam’s expression change from angry to wounded as she got unsteadily to her feet.
“I can’t know that, can I?” She loomed over Jane, imposing even in her unwholesome desiccation. “I can’t know because they’re dead!”
“I know, I’m sorry, Miriam, I—”
“You what? ”
“I just . . .” Jane took a moment to compose herself and make sure she was speaking as precisely as possible. She was genuinely afraid for Miriam’s life—more afraid than Miriam was, she suspected. “I know you’re willing to sacrifice everything for them, and for the war, but does that honor their sacrifice? I never knew them, but I’m sure their intention was for you to live.”
“I want to live too! Of course I do! But I won’t—not if they succeed in building some diabolic weapon powerful enough to turn the tide of this war! Because they’d use it—they’d use it on me, and they’d use it on you, too! They wouldn’t pin a little yellow star on your chest, but they’d say you were a degenerate, and that would be the end of you, Jane Blackwood!”
“But you stopped them.” Jane remained perfectly calm in the face of Miriam’s outburst. She wasn’t angry, and she couldn’t see how it would help if she matched Miriam’s tone—or volume, for that matter. This was too important a conversation for her to have any of it loudly, or in haste. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like you’re saying that any further investigation would just be you satisfying your curiosity . . . right?”
Miriam became strangely calm too, all of a sudden.
“And what about you, Jane?” she said. “Have your recent investigations been about saving the world—or were you just satisfying your curiosity?”
Jane’s patience began to slip.
“I haven’t been saving the world, it’s true,” she said coolly, for Miriam’s words had stung. “But I do know that a world without you in it would be less worth saving, to my mind. And I think your parents felt the same.”
“How dare you speak for them!”
“I’m not!”
“You can’t possibly understand what it’s like,” said Miriam. “I’ll never see them again, never hear their voices. They’ll never know anything of me or my life. Anything I achieve, the person I become, I’ll never know if I’ve made them proud, or if they’d have found me wanting. We can guess, but what’s a guess worth?”
“Look at yourself,” said Jane. “You can’t go back. I can’t let you!”
“How will you stop me?”
“I don’t know. Taking away your toys seems vulgar. And if I can’t do that, I suspect my father, when he arrives, will have somewhat more authority.”
“You’d tell him?” Miriam sounded so wounded, so absolutely betrayed. Jane wondered if she’d ever threatened Miriam before. She didn’t think so, but she held her ground. This was for Miriam’s own good.
“Only to save your life,” she said bluntly. “Only if you make me. It’s your choice.”
Miriam didn’t reply. After a moment, Jane left the room feeling as though she both owed and was owed an apology.
She was restless, unhappy; she wasn’t sure where she wanted to go. Her room felt confining; there she would find nothing beyond stacks of books full of the answers to many questions, just not to the ones she was asking.
It didn’t seem so long ago that Jane’s biggest worry was that she’d failed her Test and if anyone found out she might be asked to do secretarial work for the Société.
Oddly enough, to her own mind, Jane wanted her mother. Or at least, she wanted the idea of her mother. Jane knew she wouldn’t get what she needed from Nancy. She rarely ever had. Her mother’s opaqueness was not a recent phenomenon, though it was true that Nancy had been even less approachable of late.
As she mulled over asking her mother for comfort, if not for advice, it occurred to Jane that she had to go and talk to her regardless. She had to tell her about Edith . . . and Patrice’s impending visit.
Patrice . . . Jane wasn’t sure how to approach her mother about that. She’d just have to decide in the moment.
Nancy had made her way to the Library with her cup of tea, but it sat at her elbow, untouched, as Nancy sat at her desk. It was a familiar sight, but also not. While Jane had found her mother in such a pose many, many times before, Nancy had never before let her pile of work get so out of control. The stacks of requests were spilling onto the ground now. It was just so unlike her to leave so many things undone.
Miriam had been right: her mother was shirking her duties. If the Société had resorted to sending telegrams, that meant they’d tried to get in touch with Nancy through every diabolic means at their disposal, only to be ignored. Probably there were many messages in among the other unanswered missives piled everywhere.
Nancy still had not looked up. Jane cleared her throat—softly, so as not to startle her mother. But it was Jane who startled when Smudge stood up from where he’d been sitting on her mother’s lap, hidden under the edge of the desk.
It was the first time Jane had seen Smudge somewhere other than by her side since the night of the summoning, and it made her feel queer that he’d suddenly taken such an interest in her mother—first, this morning, during the incident with the weapon he’d snatched from Miriam, and now too. How long, Jane wondered, had Smudge been missing? Or rather, not missing—just not where he usually was.
“Oh, hello, Jane,” said her mother, finally looking up. Jane had to tear herself away from Smudge’s narrow yellow gaze, and when she did, she didn’t like what she saw at all. Her mother’s bland expression was like raw bread dough, unformed and unappetizing. “How are you? Did that boy enjoy his tea?”
“Mother.” Jane took the telegram out of her pocket. “We need to talk.”
“Right now? I’m so busy . . .”
Jane wanted to scream, Doing what? But instead she said, “Yes, right now. It’s about Edith. She’s . . . she . . .”
“She what?” But for all she prompted her daughter along, it didn’t seem like Nancy was especially concerned.
“I’m not sure,” said Jane, remembering what the telegram said versus what Miriam had reported. She didn’t want to distract from the conversation at hand. “I think something terrible has happened.”
; She handed the message to her mother. Nancy read it over, then folded it up again and tucked it back into the envelope.
“We’ll know more when Patrice arrives” was all she said. “Until then, we’ll just have to be patient.”
When Patrice arrives! Her mother’s woozy disconnect had been troubling, but the casual way in which Nancy mentioned the arrival of Jane’s estranged father was actually frightening. But perhaps Nancy, too, was concealing her sensations . . .
“Mother,” said Jane, hoping they could connect over Edith if not Patrice, “what if Edith is really unwell? Don’t you think it’s odd that someone’s coming here, rather than telling us directly?” Jane felt good and bad about her clever somersault around using her father’s name.
“No need to fear the worst,” said Nancy, turning back to her book. “That’s just borrowing trouble, my dear. Just try not to think about it. You have your studies to focus on, after all.”
Jane took a step back as if recoiling from some repellent scene, and turned on her heel.
This wasn’t right—of that, she was sure. Her mother might have let herself get too absorbed in a project to notice Miriam’s decline or her own daughter’s lack of focus, but to utterly dismiss the very real possibility that her sister might be grievously injured? That wasn’t Nancy.
It wasn’t until Jane got back to her room that she began to tremble. She was afraid, very afraid—and alone. She sat down and took a deep breath, but the resulting calm was undone when Smudge leaped into her lap.
He purred and gently butted his head against her chin, just as he’d always done. Jane petted him, just as she’d always done, and he settled down, his eyes half-shut in animal pleasure.
The pleasant weight of a purring cat on her lap ought to have been soothing, but it wasn’t.
Smudge, like her mother, wasn’t really himself these days.
And not only that, the cat had been able to sneak up on her because his collar bell had gone missing. Again.
25
* * *
THE STUPIDEST PART ABOUT HER fight with Jane was that Miriam wasn’t convinced she could go back at all. She was eager to know what had happened with the Hunter sisters, to the nurse, to the animals in the cages, to the results of Dr. Querner’s tests, but with her father’s devil-trap in pieces it might not be possible. And then there was the issue of her deeply wounded soul . . .
But even so, it wasn’t Jane’s place to tell her what she could and couldn’t do. And how dare Jane threaten her with exposure!
Miriam looked at the shards of her father’s bowl and felt tears in her eyes. Yet another precious thing destroyed by the war. Where would it end?
She tried to push away the anger, the pain. She entertained a wicked thought, wondering if it would be such a bad thing for the shadowed space within her to expand, fill in the gaps left by her spiritual adventures. It could contain more that way.
No. Badgerskin had been explicit that the shadow-soul was not a benign thing. It could develop its own hungers, its own will. Miriam still wasn’t sure if she believed that was possible, but she could not entirely dismiss the fear.
Regardless, it would be a disaster if Jane blabbed her suspicions to her father. Miriam would be found out, stopped, and likely expelled from the Société; additionally, they might start looking around at everything a lot more closely. Nancy’s suspicious neglect of the Library would be discovered—at this rate, her inattention would likely be grounds for an inquiry, if not her removal.
Probably Jane hadn’t thought about that. Hadn’t stopped to think about how she might bring an end to their little family.
Miriam would simply have to find a way to prevent all of this from happening in the first place. And for that, she’d need to know what Jane was up to. She needed information; something she could use as leverage.
Fortunately, there was a fairly easy solution at hand.
Smudge was always around Jane, these days more so than ever. Oh, he’d always been Jane’s cat, but recently Smudge and his mistress had been inseparable—and that was why Miriam was going to take possession of that cat to spy on her friend.
The last thing she needed was to shave off more of her spiritual body, but Miriam couldn’t think of a more effective way to spy beyond peering in at Jane’s keyhole. But of course Jane might be anywhere when she was doing whatever she did.
But Smudge would be there for it.
It irked Miriam that she had to waste a bit of what was left of her soul to try to blackmail her best friend, but she really had no choice in the matter. This was all Jane’s fault, the sanctimonious busybody. It would cost Miriam resources and time to thwart her, but thwart her she must.
How sad that it had come to this. Nancy had said she didn’t ever want her girls to compete against one another, but here they were, each doing her best to ruin the other.
A small voice in Miriam’s head objected, pointing out that Jane had no desire to ruin Miriam. Jane was quite obviously concerned for Miriam’s well-being—but there was a line, and Jane had just crossed it. Leaped over it, quite frankly, and was making herself at home on the other side.
Walking up the stairs was proving to be a bit of a challenge. Miriam was already very tired. Chasing Smudge had been too much for her in her weakened state.
Again, Jane wasn’t wrong—she just didn’t have the right to tell Miriam what to do.
Jane’s door down the hall was shut tight. Miriam tiptoed up to it and pressed her ear to the wood. She could hear nothing. Crude as it might be, Miriam did align her eye to the keyhole. Jane was sitting on her bed, back to the door. It looked like she was reading.
More importantly, Smudge was on her chair, curled up into a little gray pillow. The tip of his tail struck the seat in an uneven tattoo as he slept.
Sneaking back to her room, Miriam prepared herself to cleave to Smudge. While using the mirror required an extra step, she thought it would be wiser than loitering outside Jane’s door. So, she plucked a few stray Smudge hairs off her sweater—they were always around—and set to training her scrying glass on the cat.
The sight of her spiritual body troubled her—the site of her amputated foot looked almost infected. The remaining spiritual flesh seemed to bubble before turning to steam and drifting off.
Miriam gritted her teeth and cut into the flesh of her thigh. She dug out a sizable chunk, figuring she’d better be prepared.
But as it turned out, she wasn’t prepared—not for what happened.
Smudge came into view in the mirror, still sound asleep, though he’d shifted slightly and was now belly-up with a paw over his eyes. Evening had fallen; the shadows in the room were long. Jane had turned on a lamp and looked tired from reading. She looked up to rub at her eyes.
Miriam had taken a hearty swallow of diabolic essence; she was feeling confident as she sent her spirit Smudge-ward—
—only to be bounced back. Her detached spiritual matter smacked back into herself, hard, like a ball that had been thrown at a wall with too much force.
* * *
SHE AWOKE PARCHED AND DIZZY. All she could think of was how much she needed a glass of water, so she made her way down to the kitchen through the gloom of the darkened house. Her throat was so very dry; once it was a bit more comfortable, her mind began to work.
Smudge. The cat—improbably—was a fortress. It hadn’t felt like she’d dashed herself against an animal’s will. In fact, it had felt the same as what she’d experienced when she’d tried to cleave to Dr. Querner.
She had meant to read up on what might have caused such a bounce or snapback; she just hadn’t had the time.
Now she did. Miriam went back up to her room and dug out Badgerskin—it had shifted to the bottom of her stack of books as she’d mastered its contents—and began to page through it again. Soon enough she found what she was looking for, but she couldn’t believe the words on the page.
There are, of course, creatures who will successfully resist the cleave. Those in
dividuals who have specifically practiced various defenses against co-occupation will be more difficult to possess; a fellow diabolist, impossible. The Pact makes a second possession all but impossible. Similarly, conjuring a demon into an animal would also result in spiritual impenetrability. Yet another reason diabolic familiars are so useful, and yet so very dangerous.
Conjuring a demon into an animal . . . Miriam couldn’t believe it. Would Jane have been so bold as to summon a familiar spirit into her own pet cat?
Of course she had. This explained so much—Smudge’s newfound fascination with his mistress; his interest in the sphere of diabolic essence. But why would Jane commit such an offense? It was the single most dangerous thing she could possibly do!
She must have a reason—she must be using him for something. If Jane had truly created a familiar, it must have been in the service of some other goal. She surely wouldn’t tell the Société that she had flaunted their most reasonable rule . . .
Miriam laughed to herself in the quiet of her room. “Astral projection,” as Jane had called Miriam’s accomplishment, might raise a few eyebrows and lead to unwanted questions. Creating a diabolic servant . . . that was truly grounds for expulsion. Or, Miriam suspected, worse.
The more she thought about it, the more shocked she was that Jane had done it—shocked, but also impressed. Doing something so dangerous, so absolutely forbidden . . . that took chutzpah, as her aunt Rivka would have said.
And a certain measure of stupidity, too. Knowing what Smudge was . . . it sent a chill through Miriam’s heart. A demon, free to roam the world and change it as it saw fit! Miriam just hoped Jane had had the sense to summon one with little interest in leaving its mark on the human world.
But even a gentle demon might change upon being offered true freedom to roam the world as it pleased. As far as Miriam understood it, summoning a familiar wasn’t like making the Pact in the usual way—the Pact was a specific contract, its language ossified, its terms boilerplate—and the resulting partnership was necessarily limited by the human capacity to endure diabolic energy.