Creatures of Charm and Hunger

by Molly Tanzer

  Nancy’s demon! Of course! In all of her planning, Miriam hadn’t even considered Nancy’s demon and how it might affect her plans. Foolish for her to fail to account for it—after all, it had betrayed Nancy. After swearing to do her no harm, as specified in the Pact, it had turned her into a puppet for the sake of another.

  It disagreed with that assessment in the strongest of terms, and once again Miriam felt the alarming sensation of experiencing meaning without understanding how it was being conveyed.

  If anyone was betrayed here, it was me, it told her. I was happy to be Nancy’s demon, helping her and receiving her help in turn. When the Lord Indigator arrived, it was not at my behest. But I could not refuse my king. That is against the way of my kind.

  Miriam felt it was something of a shame that honoring contracts was also not the way of its kind, but as soon as that thought came to her, the demon replied yet more urgently.

  It is the way of my kind to honor our Pact with your race. I do not wish to be in this position, but some things are beyond my control. Nancy has been my host and my friend for decades, we have learned so very much together, and now I fear greatly for her.

  A scream brought Miriam out of her reverie. Jane was backing away from Miriam—a shadow had emerged from behind a tree and was now loping its way toward her on legs long and spindly. It was horrifying to behold: a cat-shaped shadow walking upright in broad daylight, thin as paper, huge and long, as if stretched by the afternoon sun.

  Miriam didn’t know what to do next. There was no way she knew of to fight this creature. Miriam only knew she’d saved Nancy—at least, she thought she had.

  I can help you, said Nancy’s demon.

  Miriam noticed its phrasing. It could help her—but would it?

  We must make the Pact.

  Miriam couldn’t believe it was asking her to do this now. She wasn’t staying in this body. It was just her last stop before whatever came next.

  It doesn’t have to be. You could stay.

  That would mean the end of Nancy . . .

  It would mean the beginning of something new. A partnership.

  A partnership!

  You would be saving both your lives. You do not have to decide now—but if you want my help, you must enter into the Pact with me. Now.

  The shadow was closer now. To Miriam’s surprise, Jane stepped between them.

  Jane looked over her shoulder at Miriam.

  “Run,” she said.

  You cannot run from it, said the demon in Miriam’s mind. You cannot hide.

  Jane turned to her cat. “That which I call Smudge!” she intoned. “I bound you! You serve me! And I command you to stop this—”

  The shadow-cat leaped upon Jane, its long, spindly late-afternoon legs wrapping around her. Jane fell backwards with a shriek, and there they tussled.

  Smudge stood and stretched like any cat might, back arched, one foot out and then the other. He began to saunter toward the screaming Jane.

  She’s suffering. Don’t trust the cat to save her. He’s in this for himself, make no mistake. Enter into the Pact with me, and I will tell you the demon’s true name! Nancy’s chive distillate is in her apron pocket.

  Smudge paused to lick his paw a few frantic times before padding over to his mistress.

  Not choosing is also a choice!

  Miriam knew the words for the Pact by heart—every diabolist did, not just those who had achieved Mastery. Apprentices learned it as soon as they were able to memorize it. There was no prohibition, no need to redact the language—the words were only a part of the Pact, to be combined with the true name of a demon and their sacrament.

  Miriam put a few drops of chive essence on her tongue.

  It took this for consent, which it was, and when it spoke, it said, My true name is, and then something Miriam couldn’t quite get her mind around. She reeled, but before the name could leave her mind, she swallowed the chive distillate and recited the Pact.

  This was not the way she’d dreamed of summoning a demon, nor was it the demon she would have chosen, but things were what they were. And they were amazing. Miriam felt good for the first time in a very, very long time. She felt energized, healthy, confident, and, most of all, she no longer felt alone. The consciousness that had melded with hers was enormous and unexpectedly comforting.

  Miriam looked over at Jane. Her friend was wiping a lot of blood out of her eyes. Smudge and the shadow-cat were in something of a stand-off, both hunched down and growling in that musical, uncanny way of cats.

  True to its word, the Patron of Curiosity spoke: The true name of the one you call Lord Indigator is—and another name was seared into Miriam’s mind, full of sounds she knew she could not make. To know a demon’s true name gives you some measure of power over it—not enough to send it away, but to make it afraid. So call it by its name. Yes, aloud, it said, answering her unasked question. Do not fear. Just begin to speak—if I am any judge, the three clicks alone will startle it.

  Miriam wondered if it was such a good idea to “startle” the shadow-cat, but she had to do something.

  “Hey!” she cried. “Yes, you!” And then she began to repeat the name her demon had said in her mind moments before. She clicked her tongue, and before she had a chance to do it a second time, the shadow-cat leaped away from its stand-off with Smudge to spring toward her.

  Miriam clicked Nancy’s tongue again. The shadow-cat flinched—but the third time she did it, it went berserk and jumped upon her.

  Don’t worry was what Miriam understood the Patron was saying to her, but that seemed a bit unrealistic as the shadow-cat collided with her. It had weight—and claws that dug into her clothes and flesh as she screamed. Even so, her hands passed through it when she tried to push it away, but more slowly than they would through empty air.

  It cannot get in, supplied the Patron, which was a strange and upsetting thing for it to say as the cat clawed its way up Miriam’s chest in spite of her best efforts to get it off her. But once it got to her face, the demon’s meaning became all too clear.

  It stuck its paw in her mouth when she gasped from another claw to the flesh. No longer could she speak its name—but neither could it force its toes much past her teeth. It realized this at the same moment, and hissed at her in fury as it sprang away onto the thawing earth.

  Smudge jumped upon it, pinning it.

  “Good Smudge!” said Jane. She was on her feet, but blood was still pouring down her face. “He saved us—he saved us both! Didn’t you see? And look, he’s caught the shadow! I bet he’ll help us bind it later, won’t you, Smudge?”

  Miriam didn’t agree with Jane’s version of events, but neither did she wish to argue. There were more important things to do, like see to the deep, jagged wounds running over Jane’s cheek and across her nose. At least it had missed her eye.

  “I’ll be all right,” said Jane, after Miriam dabbed away a lot of the blood with the handkerchief Nancy always kept in her pocket. “Let’s see about this shadow.”

  Nancy moved so differently than Miriam. She strode with confidence and grace as they rushed over to Smudge.

  The shadow was still pinned beneath his paws. It glared up at them with narrowed eyes, but otherwise was still.

  “Good job, Smudge,” said Jane.

  “Meow,” said Smudge.

  Miriam let out a yelp that startled them both; Smudge jumped in surprise, and the shadow-cat took the opportunity to wriggle free and flee from them, toward the farmhouse.

  Miriam had known to expect the awful eyes of the shadow-cat, but nothing could have prepared her for hearing Smudge make even more of a mockery of the form he wore by saying the word meow like a human would.

  Jane sighed. “Nothing’s ever easy.”

  The Patron agreed with that assessment wordlessly. Miriam pushed it aside.

  “I suppose we ought to get back,” said Jane, looking at the spilled groceries she and Nancy had acquired in Hawkshead. “Who knows what that thing will get
up to alone in the house.”

  “I agree,” said Miriam.

  They loaded the cart in silence. It was only after they’d started walking that Jane cleared her throat.

  “So . . . about my mother . . .”

  “She’s in here with me, but she’s not conscious right now.”

  Jane thoughtfully dabbed at her forehead with the handkerchief Miriam had given her. “I’m not sure how I feel about that answer.”

  “Neither am I,” confessed Miriam.

  Jane was quiet for a moment, and then asked, “What’s it like, being her?”

  “Powerful,” said Miriam.

  “And your body . . . is it still at the house?”

  Miriam nodded. She didn’t tell Jane that it would be sitting there, heartbeat slowing, skin drying, growing colder and colder as her flesh aged around her.

  The little hairs at the back of Miriam’s neck prickled. The shadow-cat had been unable to get inside Nancy’s body and Nancy’s soul because Miriam was there.

  But that meant Miriam’s body had been left entirely undefended.

  The Patron of Curiosity had been quiet for a time, but now it answered the question Miriam didn’t dare to put into words.

  Oh, yes, it’s very possible.

  “We need to get back fast as we can,” said Miriam, picking up her pace a bit.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Jane.

  Miriam pursed her lips. “Remember how we discussed how that thing needed spiritual space in order to get inside and take control of a person?”

  Jane nodded, and then her friend’s eyes went wide as she understood.

  “We need to trap that demon, Jane,” said Miriam. “The good news is, I think I know how. But we don’t have much time.”

  29

  * * *

  THE FACT THAT MIRIAM HAD taken control of her mother’s body was the least of Jane’s problems, which was really saying something.

  More pressing concerns were her familiar’s shadow, the imminent arrival of her father, and the freely bleeding cuts that stung badly as she dabbed at them with her mother’s red-stained handkerchief. How a shadow could have claws, and strength enough to rake them across a face, Jane did not know, and her mind kept returning to the idea over again and again as they walked.

  Miriam was right. They needed to trap Smudge’s shadow.

  As to how they would, Jane was more than a little skeptical. As much as she wanted to believe Miriam, she thought this “devil-trap” seemed a bit old-fashioned and obscure. Then again, why would Smudge’s shadow painstakingly set up an alarm on the very scroll that explained how to trap a demon? That had to mean something.

  Even so, it was hard not to feel it was all a fool’s errand as she watched her mother—or, rather, her friend—pushing awkwardly through the tangled bushes beneath Miriam’s bedroom window. Jane looked on, bemused, as her mother’s body stood up and silently waved a scroll and a package over her head at Jane in just the way Miriam would. As she lurched her way back, Jane saw Miriam had acquired two dirt stains marring the front of Nancy’s skirt from where she’d been kneeling in the mud, and she didn’t even bother to dust them off before pelting over.

  “Here it is,” she said. Her affect and manners were so unsettlingly Miriam-like. “Let’s go see what we can learn.”

  Jane’s spirits sank yet further as she realized Miriam hadn’t so much as looked at this scroll yet. Smudge’s shadow may have gone after ducks, but now it was their goose that was cooked.

  “Scat!”

  Jane looked up from these glum musings to see Miriam standing at the back door of the kitchen, her path blocked by a fluffy gray cat who sat in the doorway, still as a statue, its tail curled neatly around its feet.

  “Go on, Smudge!” Miriam urged the cat with Nancy’s voice, but when she nudged at the beast with her shoe, he hissed and swiped at her foot.

  “Meow,” said Smudge.

  “Stop that!” Jane scolded the cat. To her alarm, he hissed at her. “Remember the Pact!”

  “Meow!” said Smudge again, but he yielded, standing with all the pomp and disdain of a displaced cat to slink off into the darkness of the house. Jane wasn’t sure whether it would be better to call him back or let him go, but Miriam distracted her by charging inside and demanding Jane sit down. Miriam wanted to look at the cuts on her face.

  “That thing really got you,” said Miriam, mothering her in a way that made Jane uncomfortable. “Hold still—this will sting.”

  “Bragging scars,” said Jane, wincing as Miriam applied iodine to her cuts. She wasn’t as resigned to it as she sounded, but it would have been inappropriate for her to mope. “Too bad Smudge won the duel on my behalf.”

  “If you feel self-conscious about it, wear a hat with a veil. It would look very dramatic.”

  That brought a wry smile to Jane’s lips. “Just right for Hawkshead.”

  “You’ll be leaving Hawkshead,” said Miriam, and there was none of the catch in her voice that Jane had ever heard from both Nancy and Miriam alike when the conversation turned to Jane’s future plans. “I know you’re the witch of the family, but I can see the future. I see you in Morocco. You’re wearing a black hat with a bit of veil coming down to cover your scars. You’re entering a party, everyone is sitting on cushions, smoking hookahs, and you shrug off your black fur coat, and you say—”

  “I say, it’s bloody hot in here—why am I wearing a fur coat in Morocco!”

  Jane and Miriam both giggled at that.

  It was a moment as wonderful as it was brief. Jane hoped it was a sign that the rift between them was closing. But for now, there was work to be done.

  “Enough of that,” said Jane, admonishing herself as much as her friend. “We have devils to trap.”

  Miriam unfurled the scroll. “Best get to reading, then.”

  Jane could read a bit of Hebrew—not a lot of it, but enough to get by. They scanned the scroll side by side in companionable silence, another moment that felt precious and new and yet like something Jane had been missing. Then she saw what they needed, and forgot everything else.

  “Look here,” she said, pointing. “We’ll need—”

  Miriam’s scream erupted from Nancy’s throat. Jane leaped to her feet to steady her; then guided her into a chair. As Miriam sat, Jane saw the sweat beading her forehead.

  “It’s trying!” she gasped. “My body!”

  “Which body?”

  Jane hated to ask—it felt rude—but it was unclear and likely important to know.

  Miriam pointed upstairs. “Jane, it’s trying to pull me back . . .”

  “Hang in there,” said Jane.

  “I will. I have to,” said Miriam, through gritted teeth. “If I don’t, we’ve lost. The demon will take my place.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” asked Jane. Miriam looked wracked, miserable.

  “No, but there’s something I can do. I’m just afraid to do it.”

  Jane didn’t like the sound of this. “What is it?”

  Miriam looked up at her. “I knew whatever happened that this would be a one-way trip for me. I can’t go back. My body is too damaged.”

  “Too damaged for what?”

  “There’s a reason Indigator still wants Nancy. My body is . . . worthless. It’s dying. I’m dying.”

  Jane swallowed, then asked what felt like a terrible question. “You said there was something you could do, though.”

  “If I stay . . . from what I understand—not that there’s much written about this—we’d become one person,” said Miriam. “There would be no distinction between us. Neither of us would survive; we’d become someone new, the two of us, together.”

  Jane had often wondered if her mother wished Miriam had been her daughter and Jane, her ward. Now, Miriam was speaking out of her mother’s mouth about combining their souls. Jane couldn’t speak or nod or even think, but Miriam was looking at her expectantly, as if Jane could possibly grant her the permission she nee
ded for this act. Then Miriam cried out again, and as she clutched at her chest, she nearly knocked the all-important scroll off the kitchen table.

  “Do it.” The words escaped Jane’s mouth before she knew what she was saying. “If there’s no other way, there’s no other way.”

  “I’m afraid,” whispered Miriam. “I don’t know what will happen.”

  “Nobody ever does,” said Jane, as Miriam bent over in agony. “Remember, no shortcuts for diabolists. Only sacrifices!”

  Miriam smiled thinly at this reminder of her mentor’s favorite expression. Jane closed her eyes. She was weak with the enormity of what she’d just done. Just the act of giving Miriam permission made her complicit in whatever happened next.

  It occurred to her that Miriam would at least get something she wanted—if she could pass herself off as Nancy, she could stay here, at the Library, for as long as she liked.

  Jane cast about for a similar thought in regard to what Nancy might want, but Jane had never quite understood what it was her mother wanted. The only thing she could come up with was but a small, bitter perk: this way, she wouldn’t really be Nancy’s daughter anymore, and that would probably come as some relief to them both.

  She felt arms around her. They were arms she knew well—arms that had never held her as often as she might have liked. Jane let herself relax into the embrace, taking some pure animal comfort in the sensation of physical contact, even though she knew it wasn’t really her mother holding her.

  Eventually, Miriam whispered, “Thank you,” in Jane’s ear. She broke their embrace and stepped back as the wail of a cat echoed through the farmhouse.

  Jane waited for the other woman—whoever she was—to say something, and then waited another moment more. Nancy’s body remained silent, the expression on her familiar face shocked and yet strangely slack. Jane understood, but they didn’t have time for existential pondering. They needed to mend this devil-trap and bind Smudge’s shadow, so she prompted whoever it was who stood before her.