The Left-Hand Path: Disciple

by T. S. Barnett

  “I—yes?” she said uncertainly, seeming a bit taken aback by his casual tone.

  “Wonderful. What were you going to say, Maya?”

  “I...don’t know,” she admitted, a nervous half-laugh escaping her. “You’re really not going to kill me?”

  “Cross my heart,” Nathan chuckled. “If you are who I think you are, then we’re on the same side. I only came to talk today. And to eat, obviously. The sashimi is good here?”

  The young woman’s shoulders relaxed slightly, and she allowed a small smile to show on her face. “It’s great.”

  Once they had ordered their food and Reyes had downed a third of her beer in two gulps, she wiped at the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, seemingly convinced that she wasn’t about to be murdered.

  “So what do you mean about us being on the same side?” she asked with both hands loosely circling her glass. “You’re...kind of public enemy number one; you know that, right? I can’t believe I’m even talking to you.”

  “I’m Magistrate enemy number one,” Nathan chuckled. “And they seem more than ever to be the real enemy of the public—not me.”

  “You’re not wrong,” she murmured with her eyes on the faintly foamy surface of her beer. “I don’t know how we got here, but I know it isn’t right. Those—those camps,” she went on under her breath, leaning forward slightly to keep the conversation private, “they’re disgusting. I have to process the paperwork, and the number of names I see pass through...but what can I do about it? Who would listen if I said anything? I’d end up on a bus myself.”

  “What you can do about it is tell me about it.” Nathan emptied his glass and set it aside. “They aren’t going to put me on a bus. But I need to know what I’m dealing with. I’ve seen the camp at Newell—do you know where the others are?”

  “Well, sure. How does that help?”

  “I need to know where they all are so that I make sure I don’t miss anyone.”

  A thoughtful frown creased her brow, but she waited until the server had laid their food down in front of them and left again before voicing her concern. “Miss anyone? ...What is it exactly you’re planning to do?”

  “Not sure yet,” Nathan shrugged, taking up his first piece of fish with his fingers rather than bothering with any utensils.

  “We want to get everyone out of there,” Elton clarified. “We’ve been trying to put a stop to this Order of Repression since we found out about it.”

  “Really?” Reyes looked between the frowning, stern blond with his arms folded and his jewelry-wearing companion tilting his head back to drop a chunk of raw tuna into his mouth, and the corner of her lips quirked into a faint smile. “You guys are the good guys?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Elton admitted.

  “We’re better than the ones keeping people in cages,” Nathan said once he’d swallowed his fish. “What do you say, Maya? Do you think you can help us?”

  “I guess you didn’t treat me to dinner instead of murdering me for nothing. And...if anyone can do something about all this, it’s someone like you, right?”

  “I can,” he promised, “and I intend to.” Nathan wiped his fingers on a napkin and edged his chair closer to her with a soft squeak of wood on tile, taking his phone from his pocket as he moved. He leaned quite close to her, letting his shoulder press against hers and tilting his head toward her so that she could see his screen. “If you’d let me know how to reach you, I can get hold of you whenever there’s something I want from you.”

  Reyes hesitated, glancing from Nathan’s face down to his phone, but she slowly took it in her hands, her shoulders hunching slightly as she typed in her number. As soon as she handed it back to him, Nathan sent her a short message and smiled at her as the soft vibration sounded from her pocket.

  “There,” he said. “Now you can tell me whatever you want from me, too.”

  A red tinge flooded the tan skin of the young woman’s cheeks, but Nathan simply moved away from her to return to his plate while Elton stared at him. Reyes finished her food quickly, sparing few glances at either man and leaving half her beer un-drunk as she scooted her chair back from the table.

  “I’ll...send you what I know,” she said. “And if there’s anything else I can do, you can ask,” she added with a small nod in Nathan’s direction. “I’ll help how I can.”

  Nathan stood as the Chaser did and offered her his hand, which she looked at uncertainly for a moment before accepting.

  “I’m sure I’ll have some ideas for you,” he said, releasing her when she retreated and watching her until she slipped out the front door before dropping back into his seat beside Elton.

  “You’re unbelievable.”

  Nathan reached across the table to help himself to the rest of Reyes’ abandoned drink. “What?”

  “She’s a Chaser.”

  “So are you, darling.”

  “She’s...I don’t even know how to do the math to find out what percentage of your age she is.”

  “If I only dated in my age bracket, Elton, it would be pretty slim pickings, wouldn’t it?”

  Elton sighed and let the subject drop, just shaking his head and trying to pretend he was anywhere else while he finished his meal.

  ***

  Back in their parked RV, Nathan lounged on his twin mattress with one knee raised and the other leg dangling over the side of the bed, reading a book he’d stolen when he’d demanded they stop along the way. His phone chimed on the table beside him, and when he leaned to look at it, he smiled and called to Elton, who sat purposely away from him at the tiny dining table.

  “She’s sent me a list,” he said. He set his book down flat on the sheet and sat up to check the message. “Your man was right; there are six camps. I have addresses, delivery schedules, staff assignments, population—what a helpful young woman.”

  “Planning to thank her with more inappropriate flirting?”

  “If you’re not careful, darling, I’ll catch on that you’re jealous.”

  Elton only half-listened while Nathan called to give Cora an update, but when a long pause was followed by Nathan’s “What, really?” and then a low, mischievous laugh, he turned to look suspiciously over his shoulder.

  “Elton, you’re going to want to hear this.”

  The blond left his tea behind and sat on his own bed across from Nathan, whose grin he distrusted immediately. “What?”

  “Mr. Proctor wants us to bring him a sacrifice victim,” Nathan said with his hand covering the receiver. “Isn’t that neat?”

  “What?”

  “A live and wriggling one.”

  “Give me the phone.” Nathan handed it over, and Elton did his best to make his disapproval audible as he demanded, “Put Thomas on.”

  “Don’t yell at him,” Cora said, but Elton made no promises during the pause as the phone changed hands.

  “Yes?” Thomas answered.

  “What kind of sacrifice?”

  “The kind that doesn’t make anyone any deader than when you throw them out a window. But the kind that will free those people from their prisons.”

  “You mean a demon will do it. Thomas, that’s insane—bad enough that you use that thing for all the magic you do already, but—”

  “I know what I’m doing. Summoning is only dangerous when people don’t do it right. Demons like rules. If you follow the rules, so do they. You do remember rules, don’t you, Elton?”

  Elton scowled at the floor, turning his back to Nathan and lowering his voice. “This isn’t about you and me, Thomas.”

  “Then don’t make it about us. You do a lot of killing these days—when it’s time, just don’t kill someone, and send them to me, instead. I can do the rest.”

  “Just like that?”

  “As far as you’re concerned, yes. Just like that. I can do it, but I need time. A spell like this is going to take a lot of preparation. Weeks.”

  “Weeks? While those people just sit in those camp
s and die?”

  “They’ll be just as dead waiting for you to come up with a better plan,” Thomas snapped back. “I’ll do this no matter what. You get to choose to whom. Will you send someone or not?”

  Elton ran weary knuckles over the creases formed between his eyes, squeezing his eyes shut in a grimace. “Fine,” he said at last. “When it’s time, tell me what you need. We’ll do what we can here.”

  “Good,” Thomas said, and Elton heard some soft scraping through the speaker before Cora took over the call again.

  “Hey, nobody yelled, yay,” she said in mock excitement.

  “Cora,” Elton sighed without opening his eyes, “please don’t do anything stupid. And...try not to let Thomas do anything too stupid either, okay?”

  “Well, I’ll do my best, but stupid ideas seem to be kind of how all four of us operate, you know?”

  He gave a soft scoffing chuckle despite himself. “Yeah. I know.”

  21

  Thomas had spent the day hidden away either in his bedroom or the cellar, and when Cora had happened to spot him traveling from one to the other, he’d always had at least one book in his hand, sometimes a notebook and pen. Now that he’d spoken to Elton and confirmed that a victim would be coming his way, he sat on the study floor with papers and books spread out on the low table in front of the loveseat while Cora set down cups of coffee for both of them.

  “That’s a lot of stuff you’ve got there,” she said as she settled into the chair nearby. “Looks intense.”

  “Some of the objects I’ll need are...hard to come by. When the book itself refers to them as ‘hideous and scarcely attainable,’ it suggests you can’t get them at the grocery store. I’ll have to see how many favors I have left with some people back home.”

  “Anything I can help with?”

  Thomas let out a dry chuckle. “Well, one of the things I need is the horns of a goat—cum quo puella conciibuerit,” he read from a heavy leatherbound book, and he looked up at her. “That means one that’s had sex with a woman.”

  “Uh, that’s a no from me. I’m more of a ‘let me grind up those herbs for you’ kind of gal.” She took a sip of her coffee as he bent back over the aging tome. “Where are you supposed to get something like that anyway? Is there a specialty shop for bestiality witchcraft somewhere?”

  “Not that I know of. When I’ve needed things of similar scarcity before, they’ve had to be specially prepared. Back in Vancouver, if it was just animals, I would sometimes have the means to do it myself, but sometimes...” He shook his head and turned a page in his notebook, which was now filled with diagrams and line after line of notes in his small handwriting. “I don’t know where to get the skull of someone who’s killed one of his parents without having to answer more questions than I’d like. So I ask brokers.”

  “Isn’t that kind of stuff illegal? Like, Magistrate prohibited black market items? You sure you want to get into all that?” She paused when he glanced at her with one eyebrow ticked, and she laughed. “I’m joking.”

  “I wondered.”

  “Is there anything normal that you need? That I can actually help with?”

  “There are a fair number of herbs I’ll need. Vervain, which is common enough. I’ll need to make some incense—you can do that if you like. Camphor, aloe, ambergris, and storax.” He narrowed his eyes at the list in his book. “Mm. Mixed with the blood of a few various animals. I’ll do that part.”

  “You’re so considerate.”

  “I’m surprised you’re willing to help at all. It’s going to be...messy.”

  “I don’t like violence,” she said softly. “But it’s not like I don’t know how the world is. If you doing this means that we can save those thousands of people and get them back to their families, and the person you’re killing for it is someone that Elton picked as deserving it, then...” She shrugged. “It’s not ideal. But I sure don’t have a peaceful solution, and I trust you both. It’s better than Nathan just blowing things up until he gets what he wants.”

  “Also not ideal.”

  Thomas returned his attention to his book, and they sat together in the quiet room. Cora watched him over her coffee mug with her feet tucked up under her in the chair. The longer they spent together, the more she found herself noticing things about him—the pleasant slenderness of his hands as he scratched notes onto his papers, or the way his hair would fall into his eyes while he was reading, so he would lean his elbow on the table and keep it pushed out of his face with his fingers, forehead resting on the ball of his hand. Just like now.

  She felt like a sap—or maybe just a dumb kid. But this warm feeling in her stomach wasn’t like the way she’d blushed and panicked when she’d first started this journey. Elton had been handsome and broad-shouldered and well-dressed and new, and he’d been one of the first people other than Nathan to actually have a kind word to say to her. To her mind, back then, that was enough. This was different. Thomas wasn’t bad looking, but she wouldn’t call him handsome—he was skinny, and he always had bags under his eyes and a little stubble on his jaw, and he wore the same thin, slouchy black cardigan just about every day. He was sullen and quiet, and he used a startling amount of animal blood for his magic, but she’d begun to see through him. Everything that he did came from a place of care and kindness; even when he occasionally snapped at her or scolded her, it was because he was trying to show her how to do something better, or because she was about to hurt herself. He was the sort of person who would work himself to death if it would help a single someone who needed him.

  Herman hopped lightly up onto the loveseat beside his head, and Thomas reached back automatically to scratch the small cat behind the ear, allowing him to rub his whiskered face over his knuckles without taking his eyes from the page. Cora smiled, and she set down her coffee and slid from her chair to take a seat on the floor beside Thomas, which finally distracted him enough that he looked over at her.

  “Make sure you give me a list,” she said. “I’ll handle the herb gathering and incense-making.” She leaned a little closer to him, her knee and shoulder touching his as she peered down at his notes. “Is there anything else?”

  He tensed next to her but didn’t pull away. “I’ll need a small cloth, actually—woven by a woman. I don’t suppose you know how?”

  “Not even a little bit. But that’s what YouTube is for, right?”

  “There’s actually a small hand loom in the attic, I think, if you’re willing to try.”

  “I’ll give it a shot,” she said. “It would be pretty rude of me to be watching you wash things in goat blood or whatever and to say weaving some fabric is too much to ask.” She smiled up at him, hoping her face didn’t give away the little flutter it made in her chest to sit so close to him.

  “Thank you,” he answered softly, but she couldn’t read the look in his eyes.

  He seemed on the verge of fleeing from her, but when she focused back on the table spread with books, he did the same, incrementally relaxing beside her the longer they sat together. After a while, she decided to push her luck, and she exaggerated her yawn and laid her head against his shoulder, letting her eyes drift shut as she settled into the warm space he made in front of the loveseat. She waited for him to get up and let her fall, or to nudge her awake, but he didn’t. He stayed so still and turned his pages so quietly that she really did drift off, listening to the sound of his breathing under her cheek and Herman’s rumbling purr behind her.

  Cora woke up under a blanket on the loveseat with a pillow tucked under her head and Herman snoozing in the nook behind her knees, and she stayed there for a long while, pulling the blanket up tighter under her chin and watching the specks of dust floating in the strip of light coming through the curtains. Maybe she wasn’t imagining as much as she thought.

  ***

  For the next few days, Cora spent her time studying the list Nathan had sent her, closing herself in her bedroom and gazing into her mirror so that she could take d
own every detail she could about each camp. They were much easier to find now that she knew where to look, so she could take her time, examining the layouts and the state of the prisoners. She didn’t know how much it would help, but she passed everything new on to Nathan as she learned it, in case he decided to storm one of them before it was time despite all warnings to the contrary. Waiting around wasn’t exactly something he was known for.

  She watched videos about weaving, which very slowly began to make sense to her, and she climbed the ladder to the attic to pull the heavy cloth off of the promised loom, which instantly made all the information she’d learned seem useless. She went into Salem proper to find the herbs she would need to make the incense. The woman who owned the witch shop, whose name she had learned was Anne, was always friendly with her now; she was eager to help point her toward things she wasn’t familiar with and tell her the details and uses of items she’d never seen. Cora liked her a lot—she was exceptionally knowledgeable and seemed to enjoy sharing what she knew. She’d even been the one to give Cora the bread recipe she used regularly now and taught her the trick to kneading it properly.

  With a bag full of herbs, resins, gum arabic, and charcoal, as well as a set of bone and shell charms so that she could try out some osteomancy, she stopped on her way out the door and turned back to ask over her shoulder, “You don’t know anything about weaving, do you?”

  “Weaving cloth? A little.” Anne tilted her head at the younger woman, her eyes narrowing slightly, and she beckoned her back over to the counter so she could speak in a softer voice as she leaned her arms on it. “He’s having you weave cloth for him?”

  “He asked,” Cora shrugged. “He’s...planning something big, and he needs a lot of stuff.”

  “What kind of something big?”

  Cora hesitated, glancing down at her bag. “I think...probably better if I don’t say. But it’s to help everyone. Things are getting way worse,” she added softly. “My friends who are out traveling say it’s bad.” Cora had confided in the woman what she knew about the Magistrate’s Order but neglected to mention that the friends she occasionally talked about were actually the two most wanted men in the country right now. Anne hadn’t seemed overly concerned at hearing the details of the Order; she said that the Magister in Boston was notoriously lax, given the area’s history. It was to the city of Salem’s benefit for it to maintain its witchy reputation, so things were allowed to go on that may have been considered a breach of secrecy in other parts of the country. Cora just hoped that continued as far as protecting people like Anne, who kept demon-summoning equipment for sale upstairs, from being thrown on a bus and taken to a camp.