by Rob Cornell
I was taken to a Ministry black site, which meant they took my sight for the duration of the trip and didn’t give it back until they had me in a small room that probably didn’t look much different than the one the regular police would have put me in. No two-way mirror or anything like that in here. Oh, and the only light came from a quartet of bright glowing orbs floating in each corner of the room.
They must have given off some heat, because the room was stifling. My sweat mixed with the monster slime that had soaked through my sweater. I smelled like a trash heap. I would need at least three showers. The sooner the better. At least the waiting gave me time to heal the broken tendons the creature had given me.
An iron door was the only entryway in the room. The walls were concrete, which made me think we were probably underground. The whole setup intimidated me like it was supposed to. I’d never had a formal Ministry debrief after a public incident. Not even after having a dragon tear apart the MGM Grand downtown while it tried to eat me. I had gotten out of there before the Ministry had arrived.
At the moment, I sat in the room alone. I waited a good hour before someone finally came through the door. The woman who entered looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. She had a thin, stern face, and her dirty blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a sharply tailored, charcoal pantsuit. The white blouse she wore underneath practically shined. Either it was brand new or she had a line on one hell of a dry cleaner.
Unlike the standard interrogation rooms you saw on cop shows, this one had no table. I sat on a plain wooden chair made of thick, heavy wood that had a medieval feel—like I should have been gnawing on a big turkey leg. A matching chair faced me with about seven feet between them.
The woman took the empty seat, folded her hands in her lap, and looked at me with an utter lack of expression. She had three rings on the fingers of her left hand, and another on the thumb of her right. A couple had red stones. The others were plain metal bands—a gold one, an onyx one, and a silver one. Each one obviously magical.
I pegged her for a mage. They liked their magical trinkets.
“Hi,” I said. “Sorry about the mess, but that…thing didn’t give me much of a choice.”
She continued to stare at me without talking.
Some kind of interrogation technique? I didn’t know why it was necessary. The story was cut and dry. I was attacked by a demon or something, I fought back and won. Simple.
“Look, I’ve got a lot on my plate. I really hope this doesn’t take long.”
Her eyebrows went up. “What do you have on your plate?”
I would have loved to tell her. Having the Ministry swoop in and save the day with my witch problem would have made things a lot easier. But trafficking in souls—even your own—was against Ministry law. I could get Sly in a lot of trouble. What good would saving his life do if he ended up in a Ministry prison…or worse?
No. I’d save the Ministry for a last resort. Besides, after what I had just gone through three months ago with those high-ranking Ministry conspirators, I didn’t feel all that comfortable dealing with them. I was pretty certain, despite the house-cleaning going on by the Global Ministry Faction, that the Detroit Ministry still had a few bad apples among them, and those apples would not feel too friendly toward me.
“The man I was visiting at the hospital is a good friend, and he’s very ill.”
“The Ministry could assist. We have some of the best healers available.”
Oh, yeah. That’s all I needed. I had to appreciate the offer, though. Prefect St. James’s regime probably wouldn’t have bothered.
Thinking of St. James set off a light bulb.
“You’re the interim prefect,” I said. “From the GMF. Rachel Strand.”
She nodded. “And you are Sebastian Light. A rather famous fellow around Detroit.”
“What can I say? I had an interesting end of the year. My New Year’s resolution for this year is to do a whole lot of non-exciting stuff.” And, already, I was failing.
Ms. Strand must have thought the same thing. She smiled, not that it made her look any less stern. “How’s that going for you?”
I laughed. A fake laugh, but I think it sounded good. “Fine until my friend had an unwanted visitor in the hospital.”
“Do you think it was there for him?”
“No,” I said. “It specifically came after me.” It was always good to spread a little truth between lies, like a truth sandwich.
“What do you think it was after?”
“My death.”
“Why?”
“Haven’t a clue.” Another slice of lie. This sandwich could end up a triple-decker if I didn’t get out of there soon.
“Just a random attack,” Strand said slowly, as if taking notes. But she didn’t have a pen or paper, and her hands remained folded in her lap.
“Like you said. I’m a little famous. And there are people who don’t like me.”
“People within the Ministry, for example?”
She said it, not me. “Yeah.”
“Does that explain your reticence?”
Partially. So I had a chance to lay down another layer of truth. Go me. “Yes.”
She frowned. “The Detroit Ministry owes you thanks. So I’m not going to keep you. But if you need help, of any kind, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.” She drew a business card from a pocket in her blouse, handed it over to me.
She was sharp, no doubt about it.
“I will,” I said and took the card. Of course, I wouldn’t use it, but I knew how to be polite. “Thank you.”
Chapter Sixteen
I wanted to go right back into the hospital to check on Sly, but the Ministry guardians who dropped me off at my car insisted I leave the scene to avoid further “confusion.” They had a good point. Besides, I could better spend my time figuring out what to do with those damn Maidens. I didn’t care so much that they had tried to kill me. What pissed me off most was their blatant disregard for Sly’s welfare.
I guess I should have known better than to think they would care. Despite the help they had given me, it had come at a price—a price higher than I’d first thought. These were black witches we were talking about.
Duh!
And if they could summon and bind something like that centipede-lizard thing, I wouldn’t stand a chance in a straight fight. Maybe I’d have a chance against a single one of them. After all, I didn’t need sacrifices, souls, or chicken droppings to throw down a whole lot of fire. As a group, though? They would see me coming, just like Angelica had. They would have something ready. Or they would send something else after me.
So not only did I have to approach them carefully (understatement), I had to keep moving, too. They had easily found me at the hospital. I had to be ready for another attack at any time.
I had to find a place I could hide from their magic. The new house sat too close to its neighbors to set up any heavy duty wards without frying Gladys and Casey in the process. And I worried more precise wards just wouldn’t do enough. Besides, the Maidens had to know where I lived by now.
Mom and I had to get out of there. I didn’t want to risk losing yet another house to a “paranormal event.” I’d never collect Ministry compensation a second time.
Luckily, I had an idea.
I dropped by the house to get Mom. We packed clothes, but I held off changing and taking my three showers until we got safely to our destination. I hated leaving Odi behind, but for the moment, I didn’t have a choice. I would have to come back for him after dark.
On the way to Ann Arbor, I brought Mom up to speed on the events of the day. She actually muttered like a grumpy old lady. I heard witches and demons and…the C-word!
“Ugh. Mom. Language.”
She grunted and looked out the passenger window.
Now I knew the Maidens of Shadow were a serious threat for sure. They had my mom mumbling sailor words.
The trip took us about an hour to reach th
e three wooded acres with the log cabin that had belonged to my grandfather, Eldred Light. It had been years since I had set foot inside, not since his funeral, which was barely two weeks after I first got my Ministry license to collect bounties on supernatural bad guys. Grandma had died two years before him. He had bequeathed the house to my parents, but other things had gotten in the way of them doing anything with it.
So it was no surprise to find some of the wood on the outside chewed up by carpenter ants and weather. A shutter on one of the front windows had vanished, probably blown into the woods during a storm. The porch creaked when Mom and I stepped onto it. I couldn’t remember if it had always done that. It felt sturdy enough, though.
Mom got the key out of a false rock mixed in with others that had once lined a flowerbed that had now gone to seed, brown, crinkled fingers that used to be stems sticking out of the frozen ground.
I expected the inside to smell musty and stale. It did a little, but even after all these years, the tiniest hint of cinnamon and ginger lingered in the air. Grandma could bake the pants off of anyone I ever knew, and she never used magic in the kitchen to help. If she had, she probably could have given Elaine a run for her money in the intoxicating foods department.
Despite the rustic cabin look on the outside, indoors the house had all the standard comforts of any home. New appliances (new seven years ago anyway), plenty of fixtures and outlets, heat and running water. A stone fireplace ruled the common area. A cold, blackened log remained within. Grandpa’s rocker was exactly where it had been the last time I was here. In fact, everything was exactly the same, untouched by anything but seven years of dust.
On the mantel sat a picture of Grandma standing on the back porch, squinting against the sun while smiling for the camera. A film of dust blurred the image. I took the photo off the mantle and wiped it clean with the sleeve of my sweater. “Your grandfather loved that picture,” Mom said behind me.
“I know.” I remembered how he would sit in his rocker and watch the picture with sad nostalgia in his moist eyes. I felt a little sad, but mostly content, relieved even. I didn’t pretend to know if there was an afterlife, but even if Grandpa hadn’t finally joined his wife in the next realm, at least he didn’t have to suffer her loss anymore. “He died with it in his hands on the back porch. You remember?”
“I do. I also remember wondering what you were doing here when you found him. You’ve still never told me.”
I laughed softly. “Asking for his advice.”
I set the picture back on the mantel and went out to grab our bags out of the back of my Jetta. While I showered and changed, Mom got to work on the wards. We were lucky. Some of the protective spells Grandpa had put on the house still hummed with power. And one of those worked as magical interference, meant to throw off tracking or vision spells. I felt confident it would keep us hidden from the Maidens.
Once we established what we already had, we went to work on setting up more spells. As usual, when it came to these kinds of things, Mom did most of the work. She had a knack for casting protective wards that I had never seen from her before. Along the way, she taught me a few things. Some of it went in one ear and out the other. Some things actually stuck. By the time she was done, I had devised a trick I couldn’t wait to test.
I ushered Mom outside and about ten yards away from the front porch. “Check this out.” I raised a hand and called on my fire. I focused hard, thinking of Sly in his hospital bed and that disgusting creature on the floor beside him. I gathered enough anger to turn my orange flame blue. Then I threw a bright blue orb of fire at the ground right in front of the steps up to the porch.
But instead of lighting the grass ablaze, the ground absorbed the flame. For an instant, a glowing blue rune marked the place where my fire had struck. Then the rune faded, and the ground looked just as it had.
Mom turned slowly toward me, lifted her eyebrows, and clapped softly. “Huzzah. A fire rune. Well done.”
“Stuff you showed me gave me the idea. Once I could see it in my head, it clicked and I knew I could do it.”
“Yes, but are we going to set it off when he head back inside?”
I gaped at her, hurt. “I told you I was listening to you. Don’t you think…”
I stopped myself when I saw the smirk crop up on her face.
“You’re a mean mom.”
She laughed. “Have to keep my boy on his toes.”
We went back inside…without exploding.
Chapter Seventeen
I lay in the bed in the spare bedroom, the sheets from the closet smelling musty from sitting folded up in a closet for seven years. Could have been worse, though.
The ceiling had a single crack that went from the door to the opposite corner of the room. It looked like a long, jagged fault that might split the entire room with a firm bump. At least, that’s how it looked in my imagination.
This was me letting my mind wander. Letting my thoughts ping senselessly against each other while I tried to think of nothing at all. I wouldn’t call it meditation, exactly, but it came close. I needed the release. Focusing on what to do about the Maidens had only given me a headache.
The headache was finally passing. But I could still feel my pulse in my temples, steady but hard. Honing in on the crack in the ceiling helped steady me, though.
I could hear Mom snoring in the master bedroom across the hall. We both had our doors open. Hers was a soft snore, almost like a kitten’s purr with a wetter tone. I couldn’t remember hearing her snore before, and we lived together. Either I was grossly unobservant, or this was a new thing for her.
Could stress make a person snore?
If so, I’d probably wake Mom with some good honks if I finally dozed. I could have used the rest. I felt tired. My eyes had that crusty, blurry feel. But my thoughts wouldn’t quiet enough to let it happen.
The mattress had a crinkly cover, as if it had showered in starch. While the old person-smelling sheets were soft, all that crinkling underneath made me squidgy every time I shifted. So I stayed as still as possible.
Ping-pong, went my thoughts. There was Sly, mouth hanging open after the respirator was torn loose. There was Fiona, standing before me, naked, right before she shifted into a tiger in front of me for the first time. There was Mom, in her wheelchair at the nursing home, facing the window in the rec room, the sun turning the ends of her hair to shining silver threads, her eyes dull and unfocused.
And, to rival all the woe-is-me thinking I was running through, there was me, first getting bitten by a vampire, then drinking the blood of another, setting in motion a series of events that would win me the moniker “the Unturned.”
This had all happened in about a four month span, but it felt to me like years in the making.
Finally, I couldn’t lay there anymore. I had to move. To act. Even if I didn’t know what to do. I would trust my subconscious, let it work out a solution, or at least a single step. Then I could take the next step. Then the next. Eventually I would end up somewhere, right?
Where? No fucking clue.
But anywhere was better than a crinkly bed that smelled of old person.
I wandered out into the kitchen. The stainless steel refrigerator had a large dent in its door. The wall separating the kitchen and living room had a pretty good patch job from a hole about the size of a person. I could see the slight bubble around parts of the patched hole’s edges from the mesh and mudding underneath the fresh paint. But I knew to look for it. No one else would probably notice.
I smiled at the memory. I’d been there when the hole was made. But that was a another story in itself.
I opened and shut cupboards, and didn’t find anything, of course. My parents had the place cleaned out around the same time they had patched the wall. All the appliances were unplugged. They had kept the electricity going, and the water came from a well, which made it easy for us to set up a temporary home here. We would need things, though, if we planned on staying for long.
I wrote down a shopping list in a pocket-sized spiral notebook I’d brought from home. I probably didn’t need to. Wasn’t like I was making a big trip. Some cold cuts from the deli. Bread. Milk. Toilet paper. A set of new sheets for the guest bed.
Once I had that down, I clapped my hands, brushed them together, then looked around me as if expecting applause for my amazing progress.
“Now what?”
My headache wriggled its way up the back of my skull and threatened to wrap around to my temples again.
I added ibuprofen to the shopping list. After that, I started pacing in the living room. I was moving. That’s what I’d wanted, right? All sorts of movement. And look how productive I’d become.
Floorboards in the hallway creaked. Mom came out, sweater wrapped around her, shivering. “What’s the heat set at?”
She was cold. I had sweat on my brow and felt like I had a furnace in my chest, blowing hot air into every limb.
I turned up the thermostat a couple degrees.
Another thing I could do.
When I turned away from the thermostat, I caught Mom staring at me.
“What’s going on?”
“You have to ask?”
“What do you think revving yourself up will accomplish?”
“More than sitting idle.”
She strolled to the wing backed chair facing the fireplace next to Grandpa’s rocker, sat down, and gazed into the dead fireplace. The chair had been Grandma’s favorite, and it carried memories from all the way back to my childhood. I could still see the two of them sitting side-by-side, Grandpa rocking, Grandma working a needlepoint or reading a book.
Despite everything, I smiled. I took Grandpa’s chair and rocked gently. “You want me to start a fire? I think there’s still some wood out back.”