Death And Darkness

by E. A. Copen

  “Because it’s a lie!” Curtis gestured to me. “Because little old ladies like my grandma throw their money away for scammers like you and leave their families with nothing.”

  I leveled my best glare at Curtis. “You saying Grammy shouldn’t be able to choose what she does with her own money?”

  If Curtis scowled any harder, his face would break.

  Grammy turned to Curtis, sticking out her bottom lip. “Well? Go on. Tell ’im whatcha think, Curt.”

  Curtis cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “I think sometimes bad people take advantage of good people, and the best people don’t see them coming.”

  “And sometimes well-intentioned assholes deprive others of their God-given right to make their own decisions,” I snapped back.

  Curtis jumped to his feet. “You calling me an asshole?”

  “If the shoe fits, put it on, Cinderella.”

  He leaned forward. I prepared to get beat up by my girlfriend’s older brother.

  Grammy leaned to one side, lifted her leg, and let out the longest, loudest fart I’d ever heard. “Whew,” she exclaimed, waving her hand and pinching her nose. “Something stanks in here. Must be all this testosterone. Laz, where’s that sweet child o’yours? I could use a little baby fix about now. What do you say?”

  Before I could object, she linked her arm in mine and pulled me to my feet. For a ninety-something, half-deaf old woman, she was surprisingly strong.

  Curtis glared at me all the way to the edge of the room while Grammy pulled me toward the hallway and back toward the guest bedroom where I’d put Remy down for her nap.

  “You don’t mind them none,” said the old woman, smiling. “Curtis got a stick up his rear end the size of the Louisiana Purchase. Big brothers is like that. Ain’t nobody good enough for his baby sister.”

  I sighed as she whisked me into the room, letting me go to creep up to the crib. “Maybe he’s not wrong. I do get Emma into a lot of trouble.”

  “Malik got me into my fair share too, just like I did for him.” She smiled, looking down at Remy while she slept. “Dat’s family. What Curtis needs to remember is well-behaved women are footnotes in history. Good girls, the quiet ones, they finish last. Emmy ain’t like that. You must know that by now.”

  I couldn’t help but smile to myself as I remembered Emma charging into a burning building once herself. She took everything in stride as if there wasn’t a thing that could faze her. Magic is real? No big deal, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone on her watch. Gods breaking the law? She’d rather cuff them, but she wouldn’t bat an eye at me taking them out when I needed to. She’d stood with me in the arena, facing down gods and monsters, things way out of her league. And she’d traded her soul for mine.

  Grammy smiled and put her hand on my arm. “My granddaughter’s always had a good sense of right and wrong. She’s with you for a reason. You’re a good person, and you make her happy.” She turned back to the crib, taking her arm away to grip the wooden railing. “Malik would’ve liked you.”

  My throat felt tight for no reason. I’d met Malik, or at least seen him from a distance haunting the precinct. I got a distinct feeling he was there to watch over Emma, but I’d never told anyone about seeing him. Emma least of all. She’d loved her grandfather fiercely.

  Grammy sank into the rocking chair in the corner, stretching out her legs. “Well, I think the young ’un has the right idea. I’m gonna check my eyelids for holes. You might want to go see what Emma and Joyce are up to. Let my dimwit son and grumpy grandson have their sports.” She shot me a toothless grin and closed her eyes. The old woman was snoring before I even left the room.

  I passed through the living room without drawing so much as a glance from Curtis, who actually looked like he was falling asleep, arms crossed. Perry glanced angrily at me before turning back to the screen. It looked like their team was losing. Served them right.

  At the kitchen doorway, I paused when I heard my name. Emma and Joyce were at the oven, their backs to me. Joyce had slipped on a white apron while Emma’s was a ruffled blue. Emma stirred something in a pot absently while her mother chatted at her.

  “All I’m saying,” Joyce went on, “is that this is New Orleans. If there’s a cultural center for young black women in the South, you’re in it. You’re young, successful, pretty… I just don’t get how you couldn’t find a nice, young, black man to date.”

  I hesitated, awkwardly wondering if I shouldn’t just bow out of the room. Maybe I could grab Remy and sneak out of the house before anyone noticed I was gone. I could always call Emma later with some excuse. Why that made me want to run away, I didn’t understand. Of all the crap we’d gone through, all the resistance I expected to face, I guess it just never occurred to me that racism would be part of that. I mean, I knew. Growing up, I was the only white kid on my street, and the only white kid I knew being raised by a black man. I got it from both sides, but not nearly as bad as Pony probably did. The situation was awkward.

  In a split second, that awkwardness shifted into something else. Anger. There were lots of reasons things shouldn’t work out between Emma and me. For anyone to assert that skin color should be one of them, it was downright wrong.

  “I’m sure there are plenty of nice black men,” Emma said calmly. “But I’m not interested. I don’t choose who I care about based on how they look.”

  “Well, that’s obvious.” Joyce chuckled. “Although he does clean up okay. You just be careful with him. This isn’t some kind of weird fetish thing, is it? Because I once dated this Samoan—”

  Deciding that was the best place to cut her off, I cleared my throat.

  Both women turned around, surprised to find me standing there. The wooden spoon dangled from between Emma’s fingers as if she might drop it.

  “I, uh…” Think of something to say, idiot. But nothing came to mind until I glanced at the pile of dishes in the sink. “Would it be okay if I washed some dishes?”

  Smooth. That’s me.

  Joyce frowned. “You don’t want to watch the game?”

  I rubbed the back of my head. “Yeah, I’m more into baseball.”

  Joyce exchanged a glance with her daughter before untying her apron. “I’ll go get the table set up. That turkey should be coming out in another half hour or so. I’ll be back. You two behave yourselves.” She passed by me, offering a million-dollar smile. It’d seemed genuine the night before, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  “How long were you standing there?” Emma asked once Joyce was gone.

  “Long enough.” I shrugged. “They don’t like me.”

  She deposited the spoon back in the pot. “For what it’s worth, they don’t like anyone I’ve ever dated. It’s why I don’t introduce them to my boyfriends.”

  “Boyfriends?” I feigned offense. “And just how many past iterations of me am I competing with here?”

  “Ha-ha. Hilarious. If you’re going to be in here, you’re going to work. Soap’s under the sink. Get washing, dish boy.”

  I went over to the sink and started the dishwater. “Sorry if I got you in trouble.”

  “Well, I haven’t heard from the captain yet, so maybe I dodged that bullet.” She glanced over at me. “Any progress on the case?”

  I shook my head. Other than the connections between the victims, I didn’t have much to report. For all my efforts, I still had no idea what I was chasing, still didn’t know how to stop it, and didn’t know why it would be bothering Emma.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can hold on without decent sleep,” I said, absently washing up a knife. “Yesterday, I woke up and unleashed a spell that could’ve killed someone. It’s not safe for me to be asleep around people. I’m worried this thing will get inside my head, make me do something. Hurt someone. Considering who and what I am, the danger is even greater than it was for a couple of hedge witches. This thing, it could make me hurt a lot of people.”

  “You haven’t slept at all?”

  �
�A little,” I admitted. “But I had to cuff myself to the bed to make sure I didn’t get up.”

  “Cuff yourself?” Emma gave me a dark, mischievous smile that was impossible not to appreciate. “How’d you get out of it in the morning?”

  “Well, I only cuffed my dominant hand. I tried to tie up the left with a necktie, one I was planning to wear here today, I might add. Just thought it was a bit much. Plus, it was all wadded up. I got loose. Guess I’m not that great at tying knots.”

  “Mm-hm. I could teach you a thing or two, but maybe the cuffs would be more fun. And I’ve got a real pair we can use.”

  I almost choked. The suggestion caught me off-guard, leaving me to entertain the idea in vivid detail. After a minute, I realized the sink was about to overflow and cut off the water. “Tease,” I grumbled.

  Emma turned back to whatever she was cooking, but I could practically feel her smug, victorious grin.

  Remy’s sharp cry made me jerk back to reality. I put down the dish I’d been working on, dried my hands, and rushed out of the kitchen to go to her. Except when I got to the spare bedroom, I froze in the doorway. Curtis stood over Grammy, a pocketknife in his hand, the blade flipped open. He glanced back at me, eyes unfocused, tipped his head to the side and offered a terrifying grin before slashing the knife through the air.

  There was no time to think, only to act. I rushed into the room. No matter how fast I moved, I wouldn’t be fast enough to stop him from slashing Grammy’s face open. Metal flashed in the light. The blade barreled toward Grammy.

  And narrowly missed as she rocked back in the chair, still snoring.

  I tackled Curtis, smacking his head against the wall hard enough that it left a dent in the drywall. His knife fell to the ground as I worked to twist his hands behind him. He reared back with a curse and hit my nose, and I instantly tasted blood.

  Remy screamed louder. It was a good thing Grammy was mostly deaf, or she would’ve woken up with a lot of questions.

  Curtis stomped on my foot and got in two good elbows to the ribs, freeing himself. He whirled around on me, teeth bared, and shoved me into Remy’s crib. Wood shattered as my back slammed into the side rail. I tried to fall, so I didn’t hit her, but the whole bed collapsed. As we plummeted to the floor, splintering wood falling on top of us, Curtis dove for the knife.

  I snarled a curse, and not just a four-letter word. A real one from the shallow pool of black magic at my disposal. It washed over the room in a nauseating wave of oily, dark magic.

  A lot of things suddenly happened at once.

  I hit the floor, or rather the mattress did, and I bounced off of it an inch or two. Remy actually bounced into the air, narrowly avoiding being hit by the largest section of broken wooden rail. I snatched her by the collar of her dress and pulled her safely to my chest.

  Grammy’s eyes snapped open. Her rocking chair tipped forward, the runner coming down right on top of Curtis’ fingers, which had hooked onto the knife’s handle. The tiny bones crunched under her weight. He screamed and tried to jerk his hand free, but he was stuck. Grammy gasped and tried to get out of the chair, only to trip over him and tumble forward.

  I juggled Remy to my other hand and sent out another spell, a cushion of air to break her fall. She landed gently, or at least gentler than Remy and I had.

  Joyce and Perry burst into the room one after another while Curtis wailed about his broken fingers.

  Emma shoved her parents out of the way and surveyed the scene in shock. “What the hell is going on in here?”

  She barely got the words out before a fire alarm in another part of the house screeched. Glass shattered. The wet thump thump thump of tiny feet running around made me struggle to stand. I thrust Remy at Emma on my way through to the living room, ready to take on whatever monster was out there.

  When I got to the living room, however, I paused at the sight of the impossible. There, waddling across the room on its drumsticks, was the Knight family Thanksgiving turkey. It left a trail of wet stuffing in its wake as it waddled toward the door. The turkey bumped into the door and bounced back, but the barrier didn’t deter its grand escape. It got right back up and tried again.

  Oops. The minor entropy curse I’d cast wasn’t supposed to go through walls, and I hadn’t meant to hit the turkey in the oven with a blast of necromantic power behind it. This was why I needed a new focus. Zombie turkeys on Thanksgiving were no laughing matter.

  Joyce let out a terrified screech.

  “Do something!” Perry shouted.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Kill it!” Joyce answered.

  “It’s already dead!” And it was. The turkey didn’t even have a head. It was just a naked, mostly roasted turkey, wandering around. It wasn’t even self-aware, not really. Given enough time, the magic would wear off, and it’d fall over, but they might have a collective heart attack before that happened.

  “Move!” Emma shouted.

  We parted like the Red Sea before Moses for Emma, who stood just behind me, Remy tucked under one arm, her sidearm drawn and aimed at the turkey. Three shots tore through the living room, each bullet finding its mark in the turkey’s torso.

  The bird jerked once, then fell over, stuffing leaking through the hole Emma had blown in its chest.

  Emma lowered the gun. The crowd was silent.

  At least, until Grammy leaned forward. “I think the turkey’s done, Em.”

  Joyce fainted.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nobody plans on spending their Thanksgiving holiday in the emergency room, but there seemed to be a lot of folks in the waiting room. Aside from the run-of-the-mill old folks and the kids with ear infections and bad colds, there were a couple of people holding ice packs to various parts of their bodies. An ambulance pulled up shortly after we sat down and brought in three beds, but I didn’t see what was up with them. The ER was in a fuss, though, so it must’ve been serious.

  The Knight clan took up a whole row of seating in the waiting room. Emma and Perry took turns pacing, arms crossed. Occasionally, they’d stop and rub their foreheads. No one had much to say to me, so I sat away from them, holding a cold pack to Remy’s shoulder. On examination, it was red and swollen, so I brought her in just to make sure nothing was broken. The good news was, triage didn’t think she had a concussion or any head injuries, but they’d need to do x-rays to be sure. We were still waiting to be taken back while Curtis had been rushed back with multiple fractures.

  I pulled up Remy’s sleeve for a look at the red spot on her arm. It was still red, but it was hard to tell if that was from the ice pack or any underlying injury. She’d stopped fussing and complaining loudly every time I touched it, so I didn’t think there was a break, but I had to make sure. I sighed and dropped her sleeve. This visit would eat the last of my budget for the month.

  Emma stopped pacing, eyed a patron snoring in a seat nearby, and walked over to sit with me. She folded her arms across her chest and asked, “What happened?”

  It was the first time she’d spoken to me aside from giving general directions and barking short commands in the wake of the accident. She’d put on her detective persona to take charge of the situation, and I knew better than to try to and speak with her until that part was over. Emma needed time to calm down, so I gave it to her. That and I wasn’t looking forward to getting my ass chewed out again.

  I shrugged and shifted the cold pack against Remy’s arm. “You saw. I went back to check on Remy, and there was Curtis with his knife standing over Grammy. He wasn’t himself. He had that look on his face, the same look Tim had when I interrupted him. Lights on, no one home.” I paused to think. “When I saw him in the living room right before, he was dozing off. Maybe that thing got him.”

  That didn’t make any sense, not unless I still didn’t understand the pattern, or unless Curtis had magic.

  I turned to Emma. “Curtis isn’t a wizard or anything, is he?”

  She shook her head. “Not as f
ar as I know.”

  “He ever been up to Angola?”

  She frowned and tipped her head to the side to give me a quizzical look. “Curtis is a correctional officer, but not there.”

  That explained a lot. From the moment I met him, I knew he was in some sort of law career. He scrutinized my every move, watching me like a cat watching a mouse, just waiting for the opportunity to strike. Now that I knew what he did for a living, it made sense. That paranoid gaze was common among correctional officers.

  “Where’s he work?” I asked Emma.

  “Federal prison in Oakdale. It’s possible he was at Angola for something, though. Sometimes he oversees prisoner transfers. You’d have to ask him.”

  I wasn’t looking forward to that. He was pissed at me for breaking his fingers, even though that was technically Grammy. Curtis knew I had something to do with it and technically, he wasn’t wrong. The entropy curse I’d flung out meant he’d been hit with a sudden rush of bad luck.

  Curses weren’t something I usually worked with, but I’d reached for it on automatic. Same with the spell I’d flung across the room when I woke up from that nightmare. It wasn’t something in my normal repertoire of spells, not even a spell I considered myself good with. Yet it surfaced with barely a thought, and that concerned me. I couldn’t lose control of my magic.

  “Curtis isn’t a father either,” Emma pointed out. “He doesn’t fit the pattern.”

  “I might be wrong about how this thing is choosing its victims. So far, the only thing that’s been consistent is the victims’ connection to the prison. If Curtis was there recently, then that confirms it. Whatever this is, it’s leaked out of Angola, infecting people who came in contact with it like some sort of supernatural nightmarish magic-eating virus.”

  Emma frowned. “Is that a thing?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. For the first time, I have absolutely no idea what we’re up against or how to stop it.” I needed answers, and I needed them yesterday. Answers my father’s ghost might have.

  I couldn’t put it off any longer. Once I got out of the hospital, I’d have to talk to him.