by Jen Ponce
I turned to the woman. “Sorry. Just a minute.” I crossed the room to Vasili and put a hand on his shoulder. He tensed but didn’t shrug off my hand like I thought he would. It had to be bad, then. “Do you want me to—”
“No! You’ve done plenty.” I couldn’t help but be a little annoyed by that but before I could protest, he said, “I appreciate it. It’s just frustrating.”
I wanted to offer solutions. I wanted to say I’d straighten them out. Then I remembered my training from the Caring Shelter and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, that does sound frustrating.”
He nodded, prodding the leaves with the pestle. “I could look into her … problem. If you don’t mind me using the Rip.”
The Rip. I shuddered. It had been the place where Amara had hidden, the place where I’d accidentally gone back in time. “I thought it only took people back to a certain time …”
“I’m not sure until I mess with it. But I don’t think it only works that way because otherwise why would Amara guard it so carefully?”
I didn’t know. “You’re the expert.”
That made him almost smile—I saw the twitch of his lips.
“Do you attempt to make the Barrow Witch potion?”
We both turned, Vasili with a look of surprise on his face. “Oh. You.”
The woman—Elizabeta—joined us at the table and peered into the pot. “You’re doing it wrong.”
“I am not,” he said, sounding as though he protested almost out of reflex. “What do you mean? I have the barrow leaves and feenial seed, three fingers of toad’s gall and—”
Elizabeta lifted one of the leaves to her nose. “This isn’t barrow, it’s maddock. A costly mistake if you serve this to a Skriven. You’ll empty them of souls instead of giving them energy.” She looked about the ceiling, crossing the room to pluck a stem from a hairy looking plant. “This is barrow.”
“It isn’t. And what would a human know about Skriven flora anyway?”
I inched toward the door, unwilling to get caught in the middle of an argument about plants. “Gonna go, get back to work. Good luck you two.”
My words fell on deaf ears, though Vasili did wave me off with a supercilious flick of his wrist. Elizabeta had her hands on her hips and was gesturing wildly at the pot when I hooked away.
I was back in the Reach wondering if I should hunt down Tytan or let him have his space. I also wondered if I would find a counselor amidst Ravana’s prisoners—if it was one thing the Slip was sorely lacking, it was mental health services. I made my way down the floors by taking small jumps—making hooks to places I could see, going ever downward for reasons I couldn’t describe. I supposed I was curious about the Originator trapped at the bottom of the Reach like a child wanting to see a lion rush at the bars of its cage at the zoo. Cheap thrills? Maybe.
The bottom cell was sunk into the floor, a shimmering clear shield of magic separating me from whatever lurked in the depths. I thought I saw the black waters of the sea or lake or whatever it was surrounding the Reach. The cell opened into it, so what kept Gaius inside?
He rushed at the barrier before I had the chance to flinch back. “Ah. And who are you?”
He didn’t look crazy. He didn’t even look powerful. He wore the face of an old man, complete with white beard and mustache, expertly shaped. His eyes were piercing grey, his hair gelled into submission, his arms tattooed.
He was a hipster grandpa.
He spread his hands. “I plucked it from your mind, dear lady.”
Fuck. I went down into my control room and put up the barriers Neutria taught me to build to keep Ty out. When I surfaced, Gaius had a shit-eating grin on his face.
“You killed her,” he said, sounding like he was in the throes of passion. Ew.
“I killed Amara too.” And I could kill you if I had to, I thought.
He waved a hand, the knuckles tattooed with the word sexy. “She was of no import. But bravo for figuring out how to kill us. Not hard, is it?”
I ignored him and put on what I hoped was an utterly bored expression. “I just wanted to come down and see the big bad.”
“Impressed? No, of course not. You feel safe standing there with this barrier,” he flicked it and the whole thing shrieked in outrage loud enough to make my teeth ache, “between us. I assure you, if we were on the same side, I could make you scream.”
The creepy thing was, I didn’t know if he meant in a good way or a bad way or both. Probably both. “No thanks, Hipster Grandpa.”
“You’re Tytan’s little plaything, aren’t you? I helped Ravana make him, helped her shape him in that Wydling princess’ womb. We tried for years to make his mate but one after the other they rotted in their mothers’ bellies … until you.”
Why had I come down here? “I’m not his mate. We’re friends.”
Hipster Grandpa laughed way too long and too loudly, long enough for Kali to find me. “What are you doing down here?”
“I don’t know. Looking at the sad gorilla behind bars, I guess.”
She spat at the barrier and it sizzled, reminding me of my very first encounter with the Theleoni. Ivy had spit at me and then threatened to take my head. Fun times. “Do not talk with this one. He is dangerous.”
“Ah, Kali,” Hipster Grandpa said. “You do me a great disservice.”
“We have a problem on level twenty-five,” Kali said, ignoring Gaius. “There are a few dozen Theleoni refusing to leave.”
I glanced down at Gaius, tempted to flip him off. He was ridiculously good looking, which threw off my inner alarms, and I was more annoyed that I wanted to flip him off because he was stupidly cute rather than because he was a dick.
“Devany.”
“Sorry. What? Sorry. Let’s go.” I glanced at the monster in the hole—a better name for him than Hipster Grandpa or Gaius—and then hooked away with Kali. Level twenty-five was quiet except for a raucous crowd gathered around one of the cells. Three of my Skriven were there too, looking agitated. “Why don’t they want to leave?”
“Does it matter?”
“Well, yeah. If we know the reason why they don’t want to leave, maybe we can figure out how to fix it so we can get them to go.” I walked over to the group, wondering if it would be wrong to take them to the Swamp and give them to the fleshcrawlers. They were Theleoni, after all. I attempted to get their attention to no avail. They were too loud, too annoyed for me to be heard over them. It wasn’t until Kali shouted that they settled down into an uneasy silence. “Thank you, Kali.” To the crowd, I said, “I don’t suppose anyone can tell me why they don’t want to leave prison?”
An older woman stepped forward, her face drawn into an ugly frown. “Who are you to push us out of this place?”
I contemplated the question for a moment and then said, “I’m the new owner of this place. The Reach. I’m setting everyone free and Kali tells me you guys don’t want to leave. Why?”
“This is our home. Some of us have been here for decades. We don’t have people to go back to.”
I nodded, getting it. “I have one of my Skriven working on that as we speak.” I eyed her and then added, “There’s no more Omphalos, and there’s a new Council with witches, Theleoni, fleshcrawlers, chythraul, and Skriven. There’s also no more stealing humans and murdering them for power.”
The woman looked insulted, like I’d just told her she smelled bad. “We do not steal humans. We fight for representation and fair access to the … There’s no Omphalos, you say?”
I shook my head. “Nope. The Spider Queen took it back. Turns out the Witch King stole it from her—it was her egg sac. And I’d like to beg to differ. A group of Theleoni grabbed me, intent on using my parts to fuel their magic. They kidnapped my kids for the same reason.”
The woman paled and she rounded on a younger man who looked sick to his stomach. “You told me they had voted against this barbarity.”
“When I … left, they had voted against it. I swear.”
She looked furious
enough to start hitting the guy. I stepped in before she could decide it was a good idea. “Yarnell was in charge. Now it’s his wife.”
“Esmelda,” the old woman hissed. “I never did like that one. Figures she would marry a radical. Anyway,” she said, sniffing, “we cannot leave. Especially not now. Perhaps you can make use of us here.”
“Uh. I don’t know what you would do here. It isn’t exactly a family friendly place.”
The woman arched a sparse grey eyebrow. “You’re an Originator, are you not? One not inclined to torture us or dismember us?”
“Right,” I said, dragging out the vowel, unsure where she was going.
“Can’t you change all this? Make it more … family friendly?”
I hadn’t thought about shifting or changing the cells. I supposed I could, I was able to change the rest of the Reach. “Hey Reach? Can we change this floor? Make it look more like a village or something?” My head swirled and I went dizzy for a second, catching myself on Kali before I fell. “What was that?”
“I rooted around in your memories,” Reach said.
I blinked. The place looked like a museum Travis, Dad, and I had visited once when I was fourteen. There was one exhibit I’d loved, an entire 1800’s street recreated inside the building. There were cobblestones under my feet now, old fashioned gas lights at the corners, and a row of stores on my right and squished together houses on the left.
The old woman gave a good long look around. “I guess it will do. Thank you. I’m Vahine.”
“Devany. This is Kali.” I realized I didn’t know the names of the other Skriven that were present, but they didn’t seem inclined to introduce themselves and Vahine didn’t appear interested in them. “When Vasili figures out the time thing—if he figures it out—I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you.”
I nodded and then pulled Kali aside. “Anyone that doesn’t want to go can come to this level. Tell them they can get along or go, their choice.” I could just see some sort of civil war starting here between factions that didn’t like each other. “We’re not policing them, so they’ll have to figure out how to be nice to each other on their own.”
I helped with the next floor and the next, my Skriven hooking people home while I took others to level twenty-five. It wasn’t exciting work, but it was rewarding; one witch family offered me several dozen lodestones for my trouble, a Wydling family wanted me to come with them and become part of their village. The fleshcrawlers I liberated weren’t as friendly, but they didn’t try to eat me when I released them and so I counted that as a win. Tytan came back after while without comment and helped, strangely quiet. I worried that he was stuffing everything down deep instead of dealing with it, not that I blamed him. I just didn’t know who he’d ever talk to. He didn’t seem inclined to talk with me—every time something came up, he vanished.
I didn’t know if he had friends. Hell, when I thought about it, I didn’t know much about him at all. Okay, I knew what had happened to him, but I hadn’t really spent any time talking to him about him.
Probably it wasn’t my place.
“Just ask me instead of stewing at me, Devany.”
I glared at him.
He was lifting the body of a young chythraul out of a cage, the spider assassin dead, its carcass desiccated. “And before you shriek at me, no, I did not read your mind. I could tell by the fretting you were doing. That gives you wrinkles, you know.”
“Shut up. And fine, since you’re Mr. Observant, I wanted to know how you were doing.” I wrinkled my nose at the mummified corpse that had been hidden under the dead chythraul. I wasn’t even sure what he, she, or it had been. Either way, there was no way in hell I was going to touch it.
“How I’m doing?”
The amusement in his voice was there to hide the bitterness. I knew that about him. “Yeah. It’s been one nightmare after another, and we really haven’t had the chance to talk about it.” I curled my lip and squatted by the body, wishing there was a way I could figure out its identity.
“I don’t need to talk about it. Why would I? It happened. It’s over. End of story.” He squatted beside me, too close for comfort, but before I could say anything or panic at his proximity, he was lifting the body up and away.
I huffed out a breath. “What has happened to you is criminal and wrong and indecent. You didn’t deserve any of it.”
“I killed for her. Hell, Devany, I threatened to hurt your children to bring you in line. I did hurt your husband. I’ve taken the blood of murder victims, I’ve tortured for her. Are you so sure I didn’t deserve any of it?”
He was right. I’d be wishing he were in jail if he were one of my clients’ abusers. Because I knew him, because I knew that he was capable of doing good things, I wanted to believe that he could redeemed. If I wasn’t careful, I’d sound like the friends and family of abusers, pedophiles, or serial killers: ‘He was so nice. I can’t believe he’d do something like that.’ “Listen, shit like what happened to you has a way of eating you up inside. It’s important to acknowledge the pain, at least.”
He vanished—of course—leaving me in a cell that smelled like dry death. I left it and went to the next, carefully deactivating the time-belt breaker. This cell had a woman and her two children—witches, I saw when I dipped down into my Magic-Eye. I gave her my spiel then asked her where her home was.
“Banishwinds.”
“Oh. I know where that is.” I held out my hand. “I’ll have one of my Skriven take you there right now if you’d like.”
The woman’s expression was wary; I didn’t blame her for that one bit. I’d be wary too if I’d spent god only knew how long in one of Ravana’s cells. “I won’t let any of those monsters near my children.”
“I promise they won’t hurt you. I’m letting everyone free.”
Fear crept over her face. “Everyone? Even the—the monster down there?”
I figured she meant Hipster Grandpa. “No, not the Originator in the basement. He stays there forever.”
She sagged in relief. “I want to go home but I …” Her fearful eyes darted to Kali and away. “I can’t.”
I nibbled on my lip then decided a few minutes on Midia wouldn’t advance time too far for me. “I’ll take you.” I held out my hand and after a long, hesitant moment, she took it.
I took her to Midia and even though it wasn’t the time period she’d been taken from, she didn’t want to return to the Reach. I didn’t blame her, but I hated leaving her without any help or home or money. “I know a friend who may be able to help you,” I said, hoping Marantha wouldn’t kill me if I dropped off a woman and her two kids on her doorstep.
“We’ll be fine,” she said, tightening her grip on her little ones until one of them started crying. She shushed her and apologized, her eyes desperate.
“Please? At least let me ask her and take a moment to meet her. I can always bring you back here if it doesn’t work out, all right?”
Finally, she nodded, and I hooked them to Marantha’s house. Marantha wasn’t home but my dad was there, which made me both happy and a little sad. Not sad for him, but sad at the reminder that my mother was gone and he, of course, had to move on.
He caught me up in a bear hug and then grinned at the two little girls, who shyly smiled back. “Well, what’s going on, my dear?”
“I’m liberating all Ravana’s prisoners. These ladies are three of many and they don’t have any place to stay. Apparently, there are ways to cut the time belt that holds your place in your own universe. They can’t get back to the time they came from and so they don’t have anything or anyone who can help them. I was hoping maybe …”
“You are just like your mother,” Dad said. “Come in, come in. I’m sure Marantha won’t mind. She has extra rooms and we can work on getting you guys a place to live soon enough.” He ushered them in, got them settled on the couch and had the little girls laughing in minutes. The mother looked too shell-shocked to even try to smile and I h
oped that my dad could work his magic on her too.
“You can’t stay, honey?” he asked when I went back to the door.
“No. I have to get back, so time doesn’t get too far away from me. The kids are in Odd Silver with Krosh and the Meat Clan while I do my duty in the Slip.” I made a face, though honestly, except for the broken people Ravana had left behind, it wasn’t as terrible as I’d once thought it would be. “I love you, Dad. And thank you.” I got another hug before I left him to care for the mother and her children.
Ty was waiting for me when I got back, a scowl on his face. “I don’t need to talk about it.”
“Okay.” I sidestepped him and went to the next cell, releasing the time-belt breaker and opening the door. “Fine. Forget I said anything—”
“Devany, look out!”
Something came at me, hitting me in the stomach, knocking me backward. I hit the railing behind me and then my attacker carried me over the side, teeth sinking deep into my shoulder. We fell and fell, the pain so intense I didn’t immediately think to make a hook.
And then it was too late.
I plunged into black, oily water. Down, down, down I went, the thing that attacked me still clinging, still gnawing. I blasted him back with magic and then there were claws and teeth around us both. Fleshcrawlers. They tore into the man as I put up a protection bubble, my gills pulling in the gross water as I watched the … whatever it was … get consumed. I knew when they were done they would come for me, so I opened a hook and came out in Hipster Grandpa’s cell.
My heart sank to my toes. I hooked again—
—and again ended up in Hipster Grandpa’s cell.
I was trapped.
He smiled at me. “Well, well, well. Couldn’t stay away, could you?”
I flipped him off. “You wish.” I opened a hook again and he laughed. “What?”
“You aren’t getting out. Though I am surprised you’re able to access any of your magic in here.” He gestured upwards. “It was created to suppress the most powerful magic of an Originator. Me,” he added, in case I didn’t figure that out. Ass.
