The Left-Hand Path: Runaway

by Barnett,T. S.

  “What?” He dropped his hands to look at her. “You know I don’t mean—you’re—” The Chaser gave a short sigh through his nose. “You’re a lovely young woman, Cora, but you’re—I was learning to drive when you were born. You weren’t even alive to know a time when the Canucks were still at Pacific Coliseum.”

  She let him stare apologetically for a moment or two before she nodded. “I don’t know what that last part means, but I get what you’re saying. I need to be more mature in order to attract your attention as a woman, right?” She looked up at him with a slight pout on her lips, her hand resting on his arm.

  “Please stop.”

  “You’re no fun,” she smiled. “Oh. By the way. Give me that note Nathan gave you. The address.” Elton reached into his coat pocket and handed it off to her without question, and she tucked it into her purse. “Jerkhole is going to still think we have to go to the museum, right? I’ll take care of it.”

  Elton paused, and the muscles in his shoulders relaxed just slightly. “You’ve really been a great help, Cora,” he said softly. “You’ve come into your own, and it isn’t all because of Nathan.”

  She shoved his arm and blew a mocking raspberry at him. “Don’t you get all mushy, now. I’m young and cute, I can do magic, and I’m free and out in the world. I don’t have time for your romance, old man.”

  He smiled despite himself. “Fair enough.”

  Chris pushed open Stark’s door with a sudden bang, and he stalked out to stand in front of Elton and Cora, looking only mostly steady on his feet. “All right,” he huffed. “You two aren’t going anywhere I can’t see you, understand? I don’t believe for a second that you weren’t pissed enough about Hubbard going free to have your boyfriend do something about it.”

  “Are you joking?” Elton stood to look down into Chris’s face. “You think I somehow contacted Nathaniel Moore without anyone knowing, and—even more impressive—that I commanded him to do something, and he did it?”

  “I think the alternative is that you used your first chance alone to fuck a girl half your age who you clearly have some kind of leverage over,” the other Chaser growled in response. “Neither one looks very good, Willis.”

  “Okay,” Cora cut in, “first of all, can we all stop acting like I don’t have any agency here? Like Elton just tripped and fell into my vagina, and I just laid there like ‘Well, I guess this is my life now?’”

  Chris looked thoroughly scandalized at the visual, but he set his jaw and seemed to decide against arguing the matter further. “Let’s just get to that museum before we waste any more of the day.”

  “You sure you’re up for it?” Elton frowned. “You still look a little green.”

  “You let me worry about what I’m up for,” Chris snapped, and he led the way out of the station without looking back. Cora gave Elton’s arm a reassuring squeeze before they walked out after him.

  14

  As soon as they climbed into the car, Cora gasped conspicuously and leaned forward to show Chris the slip of paper Elton had given her. “Look what was on the back seat!”

  Chris snatched the paper from her and peered down at it. “What the hell is this? ‘Bring the box?’”

  Elton looked back at Cora curiously, but she only spared him a brief glance. The note he had given her had only been an address. But if she was able to fool Chris with a glamor, he wasn’t about to bring it to the other man’s attention.

  “Well, the car was here all day,” she offered. “Maybe Nathan got pissed we were taking so long?”

  “What about the museum?”

  “He might be losing patience,” Elton suggested. “That’s clearly his handwriting. We should at least see what this is.”

  “Fine,” Chris agreed after a moment. “Better than running all over the damn city. Just keep that box away from me.”

  The address on the note led them to a small streetside shop that looked like any of a dozen new age stores catering to teenagers and aging neo-pagans. The front windows were full of hanging charms and carefully perched statuettes of variously-posed Buddhas. Elton was almost put off by how normal it looked.

  “Well this looks like some pretend mundane bullshit,” Chris muttered as he climbed out of the car, slamming the door shut behind him. Elton retrieved the chest from the trunk of the car and hesitated outside the shop. Someone inside would be able to open the curse box. What had Nathan wanted him to see? And why had he made him wait so long to see it? He sighed through his nose and pushed the front door open, holding the wooden chest under one arm, and he froze as he caught sight of the man sitting casually behind the front counter. Cora ran into his back at his sudden stop, but Elton barely swayed. The man looked up from his book, and as their eyes met, Elton’s blood went cold.

  “Thomas,” Elton said softly, strained disbelief in his voice.

  The man was on his feet instantly, his book forgotten, and he instinctively moved back until his shoulder touched the shelf behind the counter. “You,” he answered. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I was…sent here. I didn’t know this was your place. I didn’t even know you were in Toronto. When did you—”

  “Don’t make chit chat with me, Elton,” Thomas snapped. “Just…get the hell out, would you?”

  Elton paused, and he gripped the chest under his arm a little tighter. “I can’t,” he said firmly. “I was told to bring this to you.”

  Cora leaned around Elton’s side with a curious frown. “You guys…know each other?”

  “We used to,” Elton said without thinking, and Thomas snorted.

  “Listen to you,” he growled. “Don’t you just sound so full of remorse?”

  Elton took a step forward, but Thomas retreated, moving out from behind the counter to put more distance between them.

  “Thomas, I didn’t come here to—”

  “I don’t give a shit what you came here for. This is my place, and you aren’t welcome. If you won’t leave, I’ll call the reg cops.”

  Elton’s lips pressed into a fine line, and he dropped the wooden chest heavily onto the counter beside him. “This isn’t about you and me.”

  “What do you people want?” Thomas asked, doing his best to keep his voice steady. “I run a good business,” he said with his eyes on Chris. “I don’t want any trouble from Chasers here.”

  “Have you had any contact with Nathaniel Moore?” Chris asked.

  Thomas stopped short. “What—Nathaniel Moore? Are you serious? Why would I have—”

  “He gave us this box,” Elton said, “and he told me to bring it to you.”

  “You might have met him and not realized it,” Cora piped up. She moved closer to him and looked up into his face, though she didn’t have to look far. He was only half a head taller than her. “He’s kind of tall, and slim, handsome guy with brown hair and really dark brown eyes? He’d be wearing gold jewelry, like his earrings and bracelets and stuff, and he might have had a black woman with him?”

  Thomas hesitated, watching Cora with worry knitting his brow. “You mean that was…you’re kidding, right? Nathaniel fucking Moore was in my shop? And she was—” He clamped his mouth shut, apparently unwilling to say any more.

  “Oh my gosh, you did see him!” Cora reached out to grip Thomas’s sleeve. “He was here? Did he do anything? What did he say?”

  Thomas frowned at her and plucked her hand away from him. “He just…bought some herbs and left. He tried to pay with a glamor and I wouldn’t let him. He said a friend in Vancouver told him about me, and he asked if I did any work on the side. Did he…you said he asked to bring that here?”

  “We tried opening it ourselves, and had a bit of a backfire,” Elton said with a sidelong glance at Chris, who only scowled.

  Thomas looked warily at the box on the counter and then frowned up at Elton. “So you’re after Nathaniel Moore? After all this time,” he snorted. “You really don’t know when to quit, do you?”

  “We need your help, Th
omas,” Elton said. “You know Moore is dangerous.”

  Thomas hesitated a few moments longer, seeming to weigh the possibility of getting on the wrong side of Nathaniel Moore against having to say another word to Elton. “If I open that box, you can leave, and he won’t have anything else to do with me, right? So I’ll open it. But when it’s done, you all get the hell out. And if there’s any damage to my shop, I’m billing the fucking Magistrate,” he added with a harsh glare over at Chris.

  “Not my division,” the Chaser shrugged.

  Thomas approached the counter without looking back at Elton, and he bent down with his hands on his knees to peer closely at the little lock. Cora moved over to stand near him, hunching over in a mimicry of his pose. He glanced sidelong at her with an irritated frown but said nothing, just reached up to touch his fingertips to the lock and trace the faded carvings in the wood.

  “What did you do to try to open it?” he asked without looking up.

  “Fúaslaici,” of course,” Chris answered, and Thomas gave a derisive snort.

  “As if anyone would bother to make a curse box that could be opened like that. What would be the point?”

  “We don’t really need the commentary, asshole,” Chris growled.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t lose a hand. This a heavy curse.”

  “We noticed,” Cora chuckled. “You can tell just by looking at it?”

  Without answering, Thomas took the girl’s hand and lifted it to the chest, resting her fingers lightly against the wood. She started slightly at being grabbed, but she let him move her and brush the pads of her fingers over the lock.

  “Can you feel it?” he asked softly. “That heat. Not real warmth, but a tingling, like your hand has gone to sleep.”

  Cora frowned at him, prepared to object, but then she paused. If she was very still, she thought she could feel the slight trembling in the wood.

  “That’s dorche,” Thomas said, and he straightened and put his hands on his hips as he stared down at the chest. He seemed to ponder for a moment, and then he looked up at Cora. “Hemlock oil,” he said. “Third shelf back. And camphor gum.”

  “Sure,” she answered right away, and she stepped across the room to fetch the small bottle. She had to bend down to spot the packet of white squares of camphor gum, but she quickly snatched it up and rushed back to Thomas to drop the items into his waiting hands.

  Thomas broke open the small packet and crushed one of the white squares in his palm with the ball of his hand, never taking his eyes off of the locked box in front of him. He poured a few drops of hemlock oil into the lumpy powder and ground the mixture in his hands until it became more of a gritty paste, and then he lifted his hand to his mouth and whispered, “Daig,” a word that Cora knew well by now. She still sometimes had trouble sleeping, haunted by the sight of the lich twisting in agony inside the fire. She watched with fascination as a wisp of flame slipped from Thomas’s lips, catching the paste on fire for just a moment before he snuffed it with his hand. He bent slightly to peer into the lock and carefully scooped a fingerful of paste from his palm into the tiny keyhole. Thomas dug in his pocket for a moment and retrieved a small, dull metallic stone covered in thin carvings. When he touched it to the edge of the box, the paste in the lock gave a soft sizzle, and a small trail of black smoke rose up from the box as it clicked and popped itself harmlessly open.

  Elton and Chris stepped closer to the counter as Thomas spun the box without lifting the lid, and Cora hastily made her way around to get a better view. Elton wasn’t certain at all that he was going to like anything that Nathan considered a gift, but he touched the box gingerly and pushed back the lid regardless. Instead of a dismembered hand, or a bloody talisman, or anything else Elton might have expected to find, there was a stack of photos, folded papers, and a few CDs in simple paper sleeves. With a furrowed brow, Elton picked up the packet to inspect it more closely, and then his blood ran cold. Everything inside was about Thomas—photos of him exchanging sealed packages with frightened-looking couples, copies of falsified travel and registration documents, notes. As Elton looked through the stack of evidence, it was easy to see why Nathan had led him here.

  “Thomas,” he said, lifting his eyes to look into the other man’s face. “You’ve been aiding fugitives.”

  Thomas seemed to falter slightly, and he opened his mouth to object, but Elton dropped the photos onto the counter between them with a grim frown.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked quietly. He didn’t move, but he watched the other man carefully, ready to act if Thomas tried to run.

  “Wait, what’s happening? Elton, what are these?” Cora asked. She felt like she ought to get between the two men, and she inched to the side of the counter to look into Elton’s eyes.

  “Fraternization is against the laws of the Concordat,” Elton said simply. “Witches and mundanes must not mix. Thomas has been helping couples avoid the Magistrate. Haven’t you?” he added in a softer voice.

  Cora turned back to Thomas, and the look on his face made her pause. He was afraid, but not of what was in the chest. He’d had the same tense look in his eyes since they walked in. He was afraid of Elton. Why? Elton was a lot of things, and he could be too serious, but she had never considered him scary.

  “How do you know?” she spoke up. “This stuff could be anything, right? It’s just pictures of people.”

  “I know what it is,” Elton answered. “Because I know him.”

  “What,” Cora scoffed in an attempt to ease the pressure in the room, “he’s a dangerous mala bead salesman? Hardened black market incense peddler?” She reached out to put a hand on Elton’s arm when he didn’t look at her, but the Chaser only frowned. “What’s even going on right now?”

  Elton hesitated. He sighed, noting the way the other man tensed at his slightest movement. This wasn’t the way he’d hoped to see Thomas again. He’d hoped to never see him again at all, if he was being honest. Thomas probably had the same hope.

  “Thomas and I,” he began, but then he stopped. He knew the face that Cora would make. He knew it would make the weight in his stomach worse. He forced himself to look Thomas in the eyes. “We were friends once,” he said as gently as he could. “We had...a falling out.”

  “Are you joking?” Thomas snapped, his voice wavering for the first time. “That’s your explanation?”

  “I had an obligation,” Elton answered. “You knew what you were doing. Fraternization—”

  “Who were you protecting, Elton? That’s what all your big talk was for? Be a Chaser, turn things around, make a difference, do good—is that what that was?” He stared up at Elton with a broken look in his eyes, but he refused to retreat any further from the other man’s stern gaze. “You think it was good, what you did to her? What you did to me? You were my friend, and I loved her, and you just—”

  “You didn’t give me any choice, Thomas!”

  “You always have a choice!” He shouted, shaking the glass in the countertop with his fist.

  Cora flinched away from the sound, and she looked between the two men, waiting for one of them to move. Even Chris was giving them some space, though that may have only been because he still felt too sick to shout.

  “Elton,” she said softly, “what did you do?” She knew the answer already from the guilty look on the Chaser’s face, but she needed to hear it.

  “I did my job,” he answered, but his voice sounded hollow. “When Thomas came to me saying he was going to marry a mundane—I had a responsibility,” he finished. He didn’t even seem to believe himself.

  “You let them perform the ingnas,” Thomas whispered. “You knew what could happen. You knew she might react badly. You could have left us alone, or let us leave town, or...” He trailed off and shook his head, his anger slowly giving way to resignation. “You didn’t. You killed her.”

  Elton pressed his lips into a thin line and didn’t answer.

  “Elton, how could you?” Cora said. “Of all
the stupid laws to enforce—”

  “It’s my job to enforce every law,” Elton answered without looking at her.

  She shook her head. “It’s too cold,” she said. She took a small step back from him.

  “Cora—”

  “You know, back in Yuma, you made it seem like it was out of character for you to put that curse on me. To torture me, to use me as leverage, if that’s what it took to do your job. I’m starting to think it wasn’t.”

  Elton looked as though she’d slapped him, but she just hugged her elbows and wouldn’t look at him.

  “So?” Thomas asked with an empty chuckle as he gestured at the open chest between them. “What now, Elton? Turn me in again, have them all hunted down like animals? Ruin a hundred lives? This is ten years’ worth of work. Some of them have children. You know what will happen if the Magistrate finds any kids that can’t do magic. They only have to be old enough to tell what they’ve seen, and they’ll have the ingnas done to them, too.” He took a small step forward and put his hands on the counter to look up into the Chaser’s face. “If you want to arrest me, do it. I’m not afraid of the cuimne and I don’t regret what I’ve done. But don’t let them punish those people. Please,” he pressed.

  Elton looked down at the stack of photos on the counter and the paperwork still tucked into the wooden chest. It was his job to uphold the laws of the Concordat. When the laws were broken, it was his duty to bring the offenders to justice. He reached out to pick up the photos, running his thumb over the image of a woman with grateful arms thrown around Thomas’s neck. Elton had always done his job. He could bend the rules, he could get frustrated with red tape, but he had always done his job. What he had done to Thomas wasn’t the only time his job had made him feel sick, but seeing his old friend’s face again, hearing him pleading with him for the lives of people Elton would never meet, lives that the Magistrate would destroy without hesitation if only Elton would say the word—it made his chest truly ache. Was this why Nathan had led him here? To give him doubt, to make him question? To remind him of how far the Magistrate had made him go in the name of their laws?