by Faith Hunter
“And I only loved you, darling. Now go.” He closed his eyes, placed a hand on her head, raised the other to heaven and chanted, “On behalf of this woman, who cannot speak, I beseech you clear her passage into heaven and allow her to ascend to sit beside her husband Ashley, who has waited patiently for many years. Glory, if you’re listening, please cut the red tape for this one. She’s a good lady and deserves a little help.” His hand flared with white light, and when he opened his eyes again, Audrey was gone.
The pale man turned to Spence, who lay bleeding out in the chair. Spence looked up at him and laughed. “You ain’t Ashley Reese. I killed that poor bastard.”
“You’re right, I’m not. I’m just a man who put on his wedding ring to do a job. And now his wife’s spirit is free. And you? You can go to hell.” With those words, the man’s right hand flared with a red glow and power streaked from him. Crimson energy flooded the room, and Spence was gone. The pale man looked around, nodded to Smilin’ Bill, and walked out the swinging doors into the sunrise.
~*~
“You okay, Harker?” The words jolted me the rest of the way back to my time, my reality, and my crappy little kitchen. The taste of the desert was still in my mouth, and the Charlotte humidity made it suddenly hard to breathe.
I jerked my hands off the table, and stared at the woman across from me. She was pretty, but not my type. I prefer them a little more broken, and with less baggage than me. Cassidy Kincaide missed on both fronts. Besides, she hung out with some unsavory characters. But she was cute, though…
Perv, came the accusatory thought from somewhere outside my head. I rolled my eyes and told Detective Rebecca Gail Flynn, member of Charlotte’s police department and sometimes hitchhiker in my head, So screw off. I blinked a couple times to get the last of the Old West out of my eyes, or my Sight at least, and pointed toward the fridge. Cassidy, a brilliant and talented woman, or at least a woman who’d spent more than five minutes with me, understood my universal signal for “beer” and grabbed a couple of Sam Adams seasonals out of the door. She popped the top on the edge of my counter, guaranteeing me another lecture from Ren when he came over to make sure I had food and toilet paper later, then she handed one beer to me and sat down across the table.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“I managed it. It wasn’t easy, but I got it done. They’re clean.” I waved my hand at my scarred Formica kitchen table, where an antique Colt Peacemaker and a wedding band rested on a velvet cloth. “How did you know they were haunted?”
“I don’t know that they were, until recently,” Cassidy replied. I cocked an eyebrow at her and she laughed and went on. “I’ve had that wedding band for years, and it never showed any signs of any possession or even a particularly interesting history. Until recently.”
“When the gun came in,” I supplied.
“Exactly. Once the two pieces came in proximity to each other, strange things started happening.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “The woman tied to that ring had a serious hate on for the man who carried that gun. He murdered her husband and basically made her his slave until she caught him with his guard down one night and killed him in his bed.”
“That sounds pretty justified to me,” Cassidy said.
“Me too, but her ghost didn’t see it that way. She felt like she’d betrayed her husband somehow, and only he could forgive her.”
“So how did you get her to move on?”
“I forgave her.”
“But you weren’t her husband. Or were you?” Cassidy asked.
“I’m not that old, Kincaide. So no, I was never her husband. But she didn’t know that.” I drained half my beer in one long swallow, trying to get my voice back to normal.
“So you lied to her.” I didn’t have to look at her face to see the disapproval I knew was there. I just stayed focused on my beer. I’m used to disapproving looks from women, regardless of species.
“I lied to her, and now she’s at peace. For me, that’s worth it.”
“I guess so. Anyway, thanks for this, I appreciate it.” She gathered up the ring and the gun and put them into an oversize purse.
“No worries,” I said, draining the last of my beer before I walked her to the door. “And Cassidy?” I asked as I opened the door.
“Yeah, Q?” She stopped at the top step and turned around.
“Tell that vampire buddy of yours he owes me one.”
Grasping Rainbows
Diana Pharaoh Francis
The woman known only as Gray neff gathered eggs from behind her weathered log house. The chickens showed her the way, their hard blue eyes glistening like marbles, talons scraping furrows in the soil. They gave some of their bounty, and they saved some. For their generosity, Gray bartered neels, the yellow seeds she gathered from the twisted trees across the wall where no one in the settlement went. No one but her.
She set another of the brown-striped eggs in her basket. Each was the size of two fists together, the shell nubby as an orange rind and just as thick. Her fingers lingered on it, delighting in the bright warmth.
Cold and fog dawdled in her little hollow at the back corner of the settlement. The hulking trees of what the elders called the Baneful Forest crowded close, scraping at the protective boundaries the Wardmen had drawn around the Pride. A stone fence of piled rock marked the line between civilization and the wilds beyond. Gray liked the moss-furred trees with their strong, spreading branches and snaky roots. Often she sneaked over the wall to walk beneath the canopy, taking solace in their majestic silence. She liked the soft bed of plants and leaf mulch under her feet and the twitters and calls of the world beneath the canopy.
Her presence at the edge of the settlement softened the protections. Soon the Wardmen would come and strengthen the boundary spells as they did every month, all the while glaring at her from beneath the stern black crowns of their hats. As if she were to blame for eroding their spells. As if they didn’t demand she live here, a bastion against magical attack. Did they discover her forays into the forest, they would chain her to her stoop. They would say this proved the madness they suspected. Already an unnatural woman and recalcitrant neff, they would say she must be kept like an animal.
Gray shuddered as she thought of Denniel Proctor. Young, talented, charismatic—all the women of Wallaceton Pride fawned over the handsome sorcerer. He made Gray’s skin crawl. His haughty arrogance was boundless, and he hated her. He hated that she did not lick his boots like the others; he hated that she didn’t offer her body to his lust, as neff were obligated to do. After all, the magic had stripped her of her womanhood. Her womb a useless husk, she had no virtue worth protecting. There weren’t enough women in the frontier, and single men had needs. It was an unwritten law of all the frontier settlements that neffs fulfill those needs. Gray had other ideas. She had no intention of becoming Proctor’s whore or anyone else’s. She no longer had a right to marry, nor could her womb catch seed, but that didn’t mean she would be any man’s pleasure doll.
Every day, Proctor grew more demanding. She did not think he would force her—his magic was useless against her, and the law protected her from rape. She was too valuable to the settlement. All the same, he was crafty as a snake. Thanks to him, fewer and fewer people of Wallaceton Pride came to her with their ailments. Fewer and fewer offered her food and goods that could be obtained only in town. She’d have gone and traded for herself, but she was bound to this place, to her job of protecting the settlement from hostile magic. Except for when the Pride sent trade wagons to the other settlements or to Boundary, she was tethered.
If not for her eggs, she might see no one but Proctor for weeks. Even Silla didn’t come often. Her sister’s husband, Elbi, had never liked Gray, but Proctor had stirred his dislike into hate. Now he kept his wife close, refusing to let her visit. Sometimes Silla sneaked away, but she didn’t like deceiving Elbi. She didn’t like having the lie on her conscience. It made her an unnatural woman. God might tak
e his revenge on her, as he had on Gray, and turn her womb to dust.
A noise caught Gray’s attention. At first she thought it was one of the jackdaws bringing treasures from the forest in exchange for a neel seed. They had a way of talking that she could almost understand. But no, this was a woman’s voice, low and frightened. Silla.
Gray frowned and returned to her back porch. She went inside, setting the basket of eggs beside the others in the kitchen. It took up most of the house, except for a cozy bedroom. Three smooth plank tables ran the length of the east wall beneath a wide window. Rocks, plants, bark, and a variety of bottles, tinctures, grind stones, bowls, knives, and spoons littered the sill. Beneath was chock full of buckets and basket, all mounded with her harvests. Along the south wall were cupboards and shelves, a sink, and her massive iron stove. In the center of the room was a massive table that might have sat fifteen people around it, had Gray chairs enough. She had only four.
Shelves of crockery and preserves lined the walls on either side of the west-facing window. A doorway just past led off to the lean-to on the north side where Gray stored her garden tools and root vegetables, and aged her cheeses. In one corner was her privy. Up at the front of the house in the northwest corner was her bedroom, and beside it in her kitchen was her front door.
“Silla?”
Her sister had not come inside. Gray went to the front door and raised the bar. Foreboding itched in her chest and she picked up one of the loaded flintlock pistols she kept on the shelves just within. Swinging open the door, she eyed the open area in her front yard.
When Wallaceton Pride first was settled, the townspeople had picked where the neffs would live, built their houses, and then cleared the trees and rocks to give them space to grow things. They’d each been given breeding goats and chickens. In time, those had changed, as did most things on the edge of the settlements. Her chickens laid all through the year, and her goats gave milk even when the blizzards turned the world white.
It was spring now, and green sprouts pricked the tops of her carefully hoed rows. Grape leaves unfurled from bare vines along the arbor wall. Gray caught sight of Silla. She stood beneath the apple tree, screened from the road by the line of blood berry thicket. She waved frantically at Gray to join her.
Gray crossed the broad porch and strode through the open garden gate. The animals knew better than to go after its bounty. At the other side, she stepped up onto the stile.
“Hurry!” Silla called in a whisper.
Gray’s sister had dressed in a brown poplin dress buttoned up under her chin. Her blonde hair was pinned firmly up on the back of her head and covered with a straw bonnet. She wrung her apron in her hands.
From her vantage point on the stile, Gray cast another look around her yard, and beyond to the road. The dirt was a pale scar through the greening of the land, disappearing over the brow of the hill. Pink-blooming plum trees ran along either side, blocking Gray’s view of the fields beyond. Silla lived a mile west on the other side Heppler Hill. Elbi had a pretty piece of land close by the river. He grew potatoes, corn, turnips, and beans, and kept an acre or two of grapes to make wine. He ran a few head of cows and pigs for the meat, and had started breeding horses.
“I don’t have much time,” Silla called. “I don’t want Elbi to miss me.”
Gray’s frown deepened, but she did as bid. Much as she resented Elbi’s hold on her sister, she wouldn’t risk anything that would keep Silla apart from her more than she already was.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I came as soon as I could,” Silla said. “Elbi only told me last night.”
Foreboding itched harder. “Told you what?”
“About the neffs they brought from Cromton Pride. They arrived last night.”
“New neffs? What for? The town already resents the five of us.” All told, Wallaceton had five neffs. Gray, Peach, Rose, White, and Red. The Elder board had assigned them names and homes, reminding the women they were a burden to be borne and only their immunity to magic made them valuable enough to keep on. They must now serve and be grateful for what they were given.
Of the five, Gray’s protective immunity from magic was greatest. She was called to ride with the trade wagons when they went out. It would take two other neffs to match her.
“It was Deniell Proctor’s doing,” Silla said, and though she was angry, her voice softened on his name. She was no more immune to his charms than the rest of Wallaceton Pride. “The Elder board says you’re more trouble than you’re worth. They plan to have a tribunal to prove you aren’t behaving proper. Elbi says they may banish you. Or bind you.”
Gray grasped hold of her fury before it could explode. She swallowed it. “When?”
“Soon as can be. They put out the elder summoning, and sent for Wardmen from Agleyton Pride and Biston Pride. They come today. Comton Pride sent Wardman Nevering along with the neffs. Elbi expects they’ll meet tonight and call a settlement meeting in the morning. He says you won’t even get to speak your piece. Gray, what’re you going to do?”
Gray. Like everyone else, her sister never used her given name. They’d grown up together, come to the frontier with their parents as budding young women, close as fingers on the same hand. Within a few weeks they caught the frontier sickness. Everybody did. It made sorcerers of some men, witches of a few women, and some it made neffs. Most it left alone, except sometimes for giving some people scales or moss for hair. Those were killed. Same as the witches. Neffs were suffered, but not welcomed. Their parents had died within a year of settling their homestead. Mamma caught wet lung and Pa had got carried away by a spring flood. A year after that, Elbi took Silla to wife and took her homestead rights, too.
Silla clutched her sister’s arm. “Gray? You’ve got to bend to them. You’ve got to show them you can be obedient. Dress in skirts instead of trousers. Speak softly. Be pliable like they want.” At her sister’s scowl, Silla pressed harder. “What if they send you out into the wild? Think what the savages would do to you.” She shuddered, tears running down her cheeks.
To Silla, there was nothing worse. But she was wrong. Binding was worse. Chained, Gray’s body would no longer her own. Men would paw her, driving their shafts into her, rutting like beasts. Whether Gray bent to the elders or not, she would have to spread her legs for any unmarried men who sought her out. Silla would prefer that to what the Elvim might do, should they capture Gray. Gray would rather risk the wild.
She blinked away the burn of tears. Denniel Proctor was behind this. Her teeth gritted together. She gave a nod, making a decision. “All right.”
“All right, what? What are you going to do?” Silla whispered. “Gray, please! I can’t lose you. You’ve got to bend.”
“Silla, you know what will happen if I do. And you know Elbi would never let you see me if I became the settlement whore.”
“He doesn’t let me see you now.” Silla slapped her hand over her mouth.
As if Gray didn’t already know. She embraced her sister. “Don’t worry. I can manage myself.” Neither the elders nor Proctor could keep her out of Wallaceton Pride. She’d visit Silla whenever she wanted.
Loosening her arms, Gray gently pushed her sister away. “Best get back before Elbi knows you went missing.”
Silla dashed at the tears running down her cheeks. “Marien—”
“No!” She said the word more sharply than she intended. She wasn’t Marien anymore. For Silla to remind her now—it was cruel. She gentled her voice. “I’m Gray. It’s all I’ll ever be. Best not forget it. Now go on with you.”
“But—”
“Before Elbi misses you,” Gray reminded her. Elbi had been known to use a switch or the flat of his hand to lesson his wife in proper womanly conduct.
Silla closed her eyes a moment, then nodded. She grasped Gray’s hand tightly. “Promise you’ll take care of yourself.”
Gray nodded, her throat knotting. If not for Silla, she’d have no one. Her sister pulled away
and dashed off, picking up her skirts to run faster.
Returning to the house, Gray considered. If Silla was right, she had perhaps the rest of the day, possibly until morning, before they came for her. That gave her time enough to move what she needed into the forest. They’d come hunting her, she knew, but that troubled her little. She knew the forest and she wasn’t afraid of it.
She started packing her things. She gathered clothing, bedding, and personal things. Not that she had many. When she almost had more than she could carry, she lifted the packs over her shoulders and headed through the back.
The stone wall marking the spell boundary dividing the settlement from the forest stood only five feet tall. Gray took the weathered wood ladder she kept hidden beneath a bush and leaned it against the wall. Stepping up, she dropped her packs over. She lifted the ladder to the other side. Best to hide her things out of easy sight.
A hundred yards or so into the forest was a ravine. A massive tree had fallen over within, leaving a shallow cave where its roots had been. Beneath the tree’s stem, animals had hollowed out a den, then abandoned it. Gray clambered down and hid her packs within.
She was scrabbling back up over the top of the ravine when someone grasped her collar and flung her into the air. Her breath exploded from her as she landed. Her left arm made an ominous cracking sound and pain streaked through her. She gave a whimpering cry, rolling onto her back and clutching her arm against her chest.
“What do you here?”
Above her a man towered. No, not a man. Elvim. Even in the dimness of the sun-dappled shade, she could tell he was not human. He stood as tall and broad as Proctor, but that’s where the sameness ended. His crow-wing hair was pulled up in a topknot and hung to his waist in thin braids. His pale skin was faintly blue like skimmed milk. He wore a scaled vest and close-fitting trousers that revealed every curve of his muscular body. Like his lips, his fingers were blue, fading to white as they met his palms. Beneath each pointed fingernail was a poison gland. Neffs were immune to it. Marring his austere looks were ugly purple-black boils that pocked his brow, scattered along his cheeks and chin, bunched around the corners of his lips, and fled down his neck.
