by Marjorie Liu
I smelled pie. I heard mumbling, the screech of the oven door opening. I heard Jack say, “Put down the knife,” and an older woman reply, “Bad lines, Wolf.”
I walked free of the maze into the kitchen. My grandfather stood at the table. He was, indeed, wearing an apron—white, with cherries and frills—tied over his khakis and dress shirt. Somehow, it looked entirely proper. Mary stood on the other side of the table, white hair wild and hanging loose over the shoulders of a navy housedress covered in embroidered shooting stars. Her large, sinewy hands clutched a knife that was digging point first into a pie, one of several on the table—which was otherwise barely visible beneath boards, rolling pins, mixing bowls, and about a ton of spilled flour.
“Got skills to cut,” Mary said to my grandfather, thumping her chest with her fist. “Go lick yourself.”
“Charming,” replied Jack. “I suggest you stick to growing marijuana, Marritine, and leave the pies to me.”
The old woman hissed at him. Byron was perched on encyclopedias, watching them, sipping calmly from a cup of what seemed to be hot chocolate. I didn’t miss the wariness of his gaze whenever it fell on Jack—an involuntary response, one that I doubted would ever go away.
The boy held up the cup to me, but I said no. Dek and Mal, however, poked their heads free of my hair, staring at his drink. Byron pretended not to notice. He was good at not noticing the boys.
Grant tapped his cane on the floor. Mary’s scowl melted into a sweet smile that almost made me forget she was a trained killer. She left the knife standing straight up in the pie and danced on the tips of her toes to Grant. He kissed her cheek. The old woman melted, just a little.
I joined Jack at the table. He was trying to yank the knife out of the pie and having no luck. I nudged him aside. Mary had stabbed the blade tip right through the pan into the table. Kooky broad.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” I said to my grandfather, jerking the knife loose with a grunt.
“How could I not?” Jack dipped his finger into the pie hole left by the knife and licked it. “Apple. And that one over there is peach. The pecan is self-evident. All of them fresh, I assure you. I walked down to Pike Place Market this morning for the ingredients, and battled zombies and young women with grabby hands—just for you.”
“My hero. I didn’t even know you could bake.”
“My dear,” he said, resting his hand on my shoulder, “before the Spanish Influenza killed me, I lived briefly as the son of a baker in New York City. Early twentieth century. I still have the knack.”
“And how many lives have you lived? I’m surprised you remember anything at all.”
“I don’t.” He rolled up his sleeve to show me his tattoos: words and symbols, even numbers. “Old men need help, sometimes.”
I smiled to myself and began slicing pie. “You’re trouble, Old Wolf.”
“Of course.” He leaned on the table, watching me, and it felt comfortable, easy. My grandfather. I had a grandfather. I could say that again and again, and never grow tired of hearing it.
“What was your name when you were a baker’s son?”
“Michael,” he said. “I found him in the womb when he was just a little ball of cells. Quite darling. And then I simply embedded myself and dreamed a little, and the next thing I knew, I was born. My mother was Hannah, my father was Robert, and they were good people. Stern, rather too serious for a couple who sold sweets to children, but I liked them well enough.”
“Why did you allow the flu to take your life? Couldn’t you have fought it off?”
“I was done in that body. Other adventures awaited. And, experiencing mortality in all its different forms can be . . . illuminating.” Jack’s smile faded. “Is something wrong?”
I thought about the zombie I had exorcised less than an hour earlier. “You make it sound so easy. But I still have trouble reconciling the idea that you possess humans. You’re not demon, but you and your kind still use human bodies. Some, more so than others. I suppose . . . I wondered what my mother thought about that.”
“I don’t know,” Jack said, and fumbled for a small box of candles. “We talked very little the few times we met.”
I was sorry I said anything. I patted his hand. “Thank you for the pies, and for . . . for all of the rest. It’s wonderful.”
“You’re loved,” he said simply, then busied himself with setting candles into the pie, ignoring me as I leaned on the table, drawing circles in the spilled flour while suffering a peculiar weight in my chest that was hot and good, and heartbreaking.
I looked around the room. Byron had opened up one of the books and was reading—studiously ignoring Raw, who perched several stacks behind him, peering over his shoulder while picking slime from his nose with his claw. Mary was also seated on books, eating fresh marijuana leaves directly from a plastic bag—tapping her feet, humming to herself. Grant watched her, shaking his head—and then he looked away, at me.
I always felt a jolt when our eyes met. Always. My man. My good man. I was a mess, I was dangerous. I was the last living Warden of a failing prison that would one day release a demonic army on this world—and I had always expected to be alone, except for the boys. Never homebound, just road-bound, rootless, without a single person in the world knowing or caring whether I lived or died.
That had been the future. That was the way things were done in my family.
Except I’d made a different choice.
Claws touched my knee. Zee, beneath the table. I crouched and drew him into a brief hug. He didn’t let go.
“Bad dreams coming,” he whispered, for my ears only. “Can hear the whispers, singing in the storm.”
I got chills, followed by a sinking feeling in my gut. I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “And?”
“Won’t be the same.” Zee glanced over his shoulder at Aaz, who was sitting nearby; then Raw, who crawled from the shadows beneath the table to join his brothers. Dek and Mal slithered free of my hair, roping down my arms. “Will never be the same.”
A strong hand touched my shoulder. Grant, looking down at me with concern. I couldn’t pretend there was nothing wrong. Never mind I was a terrible liar. There wasn’t anything in a person that Grant couldn’t see—and what he could see, he could change—with nothing but his voice. Made him almost as dangerous as me. More so, maybe. I could kill. But I couldn’t alter souls.
“Later,” I mouthed to him, and he nodded faintly. I glanced at Jack, but the old man was still fussing with candles. Pretending, maybe. Hard to tell. Mary had stopped eating her marijuana leaves and held Byron by the hand, drawing him to the table while singing softly to herself.
I looked at them all. My family. My random, mismatched family. None of us was entirely human—not human like the rest of this world was human—but we belonged together. I’d found home.
The candles were lit. Twenty-seven, burning. Years, burning.
I blew them out in one breath, and made my wish.
I woke only minutes before dawn, on the edge of a nightmare.
Coiled in darkness, in my dream. Made of darkness, stitched from a vast oubliette of forgotten things, endless worlds of bone and blood and skins, stretched upon a canopy of stars. I felt the stars in my veins, glittering as my heart pumped light into the darkness, waiting, and in my dream I ate that light, every burning morsel, and swallowed it down a throat that curved, and twisted, and knotted itself into a mighty, unending circle. I was the circle, and the twist, and the knot, and there was no end to the hunger that filled me. No end, ever.
We tried to warn you, my mother’s voice echoed in the darkness, each word caught in the stars flowing inside that doomed river in my blood. Gave you signs and riddles, and scars. Fed you dreams. These dreams.
But you did not understand. And so it comes.
So you come.
Be strong, baby. Be strong.
I opened my eyes.
I was not in bed. I was curled in a ball on the floor, shivering.
It was cold. So cold, there was a moment I imagined myself lost in snow, ice, pinned to frozen ground. But there was no snowdrift or black sky. Just a room filled with books and soft chairs, a grand piano in the corner and a red motorcycle parked by the couch.
Home.
Sweet home, part of me thought, but I felt inexplicably uneasy at the idea. It didn’t feel right that I had a home. I was a nomad. I lived out of my car and hotel rooms. No roots.
But I recognized this place. I knew it was home. I belonged. I lay very still, soaking in that sensation, and felt small tongues lick my ears. Heavy bodies coiled through my hair, long as snakes. Twin purrs rumbled low, soft, against my scalp.
“Maxine,” rasped a low voice. “Sweet Maxine.”
I did not move. Remaining still seemed like the safest thing I could do—still and quiet, like a mouse.
“You sound afraid,” I whispered. “Zee.”
The little demon shuffled into sight, dragging his claws against the hardwood floor. Graceful, even so—as though his muscles were water and wind, flowing beneath his taut skin. A silver vein pulsed against his throat, but the beat of his heart was not slow, or steady. Fluttering, instead. Shuddering.
He could not meet my gaze, and the unease I had felt since opening my eyes—that growing sense of wrong—bloomed hard and wide through my gut. Chased, too, by emptiness: a vast hole centered in my heart. It felt like it should be grief, but I didn’t know why.
I heard sniffling, and tried finally to sit up. I needed help. My muscles were inexplicably weak, joints rubbery, as though I had been running all night, swinging a baseball bat. Every inch of me felt used. My head hurt. Made me want to lie back down.
Slender clawed hands reached under my elbows. Raw and Aaz, spiked hair slicked tight against dark skulls, red eyes wide, glistening. Oversized baseball jerseys covered their bodies, the hems dragging, tangling in clawed feet as the two demons clung close, falling into my lap. I felt them tremble. Listened as they started sucking their claws, like babies. In my hair, Dek and Mal coiled even tighter against my scalp, their purrs ending in terrible silence.
I tried to speak, but my voice broke. I tried again, more slowly, feeling as though I were having a stroke as I struggled to say each small word.
“What is it?” I managed. “What happened?”
No one spoke. No one looked at me. Raw and Aaz pushed harder against my body, as though trying to burrow through my stomach. Zee stayed where he was, claws digging into the floor, cracking wood. I braced myself, trying to stay upright, and looked down.
Blood. Drying blood, glistening in spots.
Took me a moment to understand what I was looking at. I hadn’t seen that much blood in a long time. It covered the floor from me to the kitchen, dull and rusty as poison. My hands, I realized numbly, were soaked in it. Left hand, nothing but red. Right hand, also stained, except for the armor. I knew instantly what the armor was and wasn’t—magic, a key, growing in your body until you die—but it seemed as unreal as the blood, or the floor beneath me, or the breath in my lungs.
My right hand balled into a fist. I could smell the blood now, as though seeing it released its scent: metallic and warm, gushing through my nose and down my throat until I thought I would choke.
And I did choke, when I looked over my shoulder and saw who lay behind me.
“Jack.” I knocked aside demons, scrabbling on my hands and knees to reach the old man. I slipped in blood. His blood. So much blood, sticky and thick, surrounding him like some terrible red sea.
He faced away from me, clad in a light gray sweater, dark slacks. His white hair, wild. So proper. So eccentric. My grandfather was—
I touched him and knew.
I knew. Stared, unable to breathe. Watching, as though from a great distance as my fingers closed around his arm and shoulder, tugging gently, rolling him over. He was still warm, and it was difficult. I was weak. I was terrified.
But then it was done, he lay on his back—and I froze, staring. Punched in the heart so hard, everything stopped: my pulse, my blood, my life.
His throat had been cut. Ear to ear. Flesh gaped like an ugly smile.
Jack Meddle. My grandfather.
And the knife on the other side of him, in his blood, was mine.
CHAPTER 2
I did not scream, but only because I clapped a shaking hand over my mouth. I might have screamed a little, after that. I don’t know.
I turned boneless. I turned blind, except for Jack. I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. His body seemed obscene, a waxen shell made of clay and incantations, held together by threads of fingernails, hair. He horrified me.
Never mind it was impossible for Jack to die—not with any lasting permanence. I didn’t care about technicalities. My grandfather had been murdered. I was sitting in his blood—blood draining from a body that had loved my grandmother, that had made my mother. And, in a fashion, me.
It felt the same as losing him for real.
And I didn’t remember how any of it had happened.
I couldn’t move. My knees were warm, wet. I tasted the scent of death in my mouth—not just blood, but piss, shit. All the little humiliations. My mother had smelled the same after her murder.
“Zee,” I croaked, searching out the little demon, who crouched nearby, spiked hair drooping, red eyes nearly shut as though with pain.
I couldn’t say anything else. I watched him share a long look with Aaz and Raw, while in my hair, twin voices began humming the melody to “Highway to Hell.”
I was going to vomit. I managed to scrabble backward, smearing blood across the floor. Holding my breath, my mouth. My back hit the couch. Nothing changed with distance. Nothing got easier. No miraculous resurrection.
“Zee,” I whispered, again. “What happened?”
He would not look at me. He stared, instead, at his claws—as though he were seeing them for the first time: long, curved, black as pitch. Sharp enough to split hairs. Or cut a man’s throat.
Much like my knife, still resting in Jack’s blood.
I could see it from where I sat. My knife. My mother’s knife, part of a specially crafted set that had been passed down to me. No hilt. Just blade. Made for steel- laced gloves, and hands incapable of being cut. No one used them but me.
My hand, even now, felt the weight of the blade. But when I searched my memories, all I recalled was sharpening a knife on Zee’s round stomach. Sitting on the couch, near the bookcase—after the party, I had been at a party with pie, and laughter, and Sleeping Beauty—watching old episodes of Yogi Bear. Listening to the boys eat bags of iron nails, whole garlic cloves, broken glass, washing it all down with engine oil.
I remembered. I remembered, every sensation and sound: the nubby texture of the couch beneath my palm, scents of garlic and oil burning my nostrils: the giggles of the boys when Yogi tried to steal a picnic basket. I’m smarter than the average bear floated through my mind, again and again, along with other memories that would not fade: a silver flash of the blade, the blade on Zee’s stomach, its sharp edge turning tricks of sparks and light. Soft as light, sharp as light.
I recalled nothing after that. Just a hole where my memories should be. I could touch the edges, and it felt like the rim of a cup with no bottom and only darkness for water. No Jack. No violence. No clue as to who had left my grandfather dead—and me on the ground, unconscious.
Which should never have happened. The boys protected me. Their lives depended on it as much as mine. Ten thousand years bound to my bloodline, defending mothers and daughters. Keeping us alive until it was our turn to die.
But it was not my turn. Not yet.
“Zee,” I said.
“Maxine,” he rasped. His expression was terrifying in its emptiness. Blank, dull, as though part of the little demon was locked away from me—just as numb as I was.
He was in shock, I realized. All of them were. Raw and Aaz huddled together, rocking back and forth. Dek and Mal continued to hum the re
frain to “Highway to Hell,” an unusual tinny quality to their soft voices.
Then they stopped, entirely.
Zee looked at the apartment door. So did Raw and Aaz, their rocking motions slowing to perfect stillness. My skin crawled, watching them—but that was dawn, I told myself. Sunrise was coming, no matter how dark the windows appeared.
I heard a clicking sound. Heavy footsteps on the stairs.
I tried to stand. My legs wouldn’t work. I slammed my fist into the couch cushion, hissing at Zee. He ignored me. I snapped my fingers at Raw and Aaz; but except for troubled glances, they remained bolted to the floor, shoulders tense as though bracing themselves for a blow. The tears burning my throat rose into my eyes. This could not be happening. I needed time. I needed to be alone with Jack.
The door burst open. A man limped inside, leaning hard on a wooden cane. His hair was brown, thick, and tousled, and he wore a green flannel shirt that stretched across broad shoulders. His dark eyes were wild. He seemed out of breath, like he had been running. Or trying to run, given the leg that dragged behind him.
Not a demon. Not a zombie. No dark cloud in his aura. But I still froze when I saw him, and not just because his presence was unexpected. More like I suffered a boom inside my heart, a collision, like two mountains striking each other. An impossible sensation. I didn’t know what it meant, but it made me flinch.
So did the fact that the man ignored Zee and the boys—so completely they might not have been there at all. He sought me out first instead. Staring with an intensity that left me breathless, cold.
And then he tore his gaze from me and looked at Jack.
