by Chloe Garner
Anna nodded, hooking the fingers of one hand into the collar of her shirt and covering that hand with the other. Raul was already on his way into the house. They followed quickly, with Sam lagging behind. Raul seemed to need no additional direction. He found Larry sunning in the back yard.
“We’re leaving,” he said.
“I told you I don’t want to see you again. Get out,” Larry said, reaching for Jason’s jacket again. Raul stayed planted where he was. Larry’s eyes got wide.
“We’re leaving,” he said again, reaching up and wrapping his hands around Larry’s neck. Anna gasped, but Jason didn’t squeeze. He held firm as Larry squirmed then threw his head back and screamed. A cloud of gray mist formed over his head, then Jason dropped his head back, and the cloud of mist that was Raul pulled itself out of his body and swam up to mingle with the cloud of mist that was Maria. A moment later, a breath of wind stirred and they vanished on the breeze. Larry fell to his knees, and Jason bent over, coughing. Samantha nodded at Anna, and the woman ran over to Larry.
“I’m sorry, mi cielo,” he said as she helped him up. “Every time I tried to tell you, she choked the words out of me. I could only breathe as long as I went along.”
“It’s over,” Anna said. “No apologies for me.”
“I killed them,” Larry said, putting his hand to his forehead. “Our friends.”
“Not you, querido,” Anna said. “Her. It’s done now.”
Anna looked up at Samantha.
“Is there anything else?” she asked. Samantha shook her head and looked at Jason.
“No. Raul will take care of her. It really is over.”
Samantha smiled.
“Many happy years to you,” she said.
“And to you,” Anna answered, sitting Larry down on the bench. “Thank you.”
“We’ll see ourselves out,” Jason said. “Sorry about the door.”
Anna had her forehead on Larry’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” Larry said. Jason nodded at him and they made their way back through the house. Samantha saw Jason prop a card against a bowl of fruit on the table as they left.
“Chalk one up for the good guys,” he said as he started the Cruiser. “Good work, team.”
<><><>
Day fourteen. Fail.
<><><>
Day fifteen. Fail.
<><><>
Sam hadn’t spoken in eighteen hours. After dinner, Jason had left in a rage at both of them, and had returned sometime after dark with a skinny blond girl who had asked if Sam and Samantha wanted to join. Jason took her away before Samantha had put together the words of her answer. Her spell had failed, not that she had expected anything different, and then they had simply gone downstairs to the kitchen to stare at different walls. It was better than being alone.
Sam hadn’t slept in three days, best she could tell, unless she let herself believe that he was getting snatches while he sat there with his eyes open. Samantha had slept for an hour or two in the afternoons, simply falling down onto the couch in the living room and passing out until her own smell woke her again. Every time her skin found itself, it stuck and pulled free with a suction noise. Jason swore she was losing her wits. Sam hadn’t had anything to say about it.
By lunchtime, Jason still hadn’t emerged from his room. Samantha stood from the kitchen table and grabbed her crutches, walking out the front door. Janice’s home was maybe five or six miles away. She wanted the cast off, and she wanted it off now. She was willing to walk to make it happen. Turning a corner a block later, she noticed that Sam was following her. She waited until he caught up and they walked on in silence.
A few times, something occurred to her that she wanted to tell him, but looking at him, with his eyes half-closed and his shoulders hunched up to his ears, despite the heat of the afternoon, she knew that he wasn’t really going to be able to hear her. They walked.
By the time they got to Janice’s, Samantha was sweating, but she was glad she hadn’t just sat around the house. She knocked and Elspeth answered the door, taking one look at them then putting her hand to her mouth and turning her head away.
“Oh,” she said. “I’ll go get Janice.”
“Tell me, Elspeth,” Samantha said. Elspeth glanced at her and looked away again.
“Tomorrow,” Elspeth said, hurrying away. “You won’t live through tomorrow.”
Sam went and sat in Jason’s normal seat in the waiting room and Samantha made her way back to the back room.
“Elspeth is upset,” Janice said as she came in. “I didn’t expect to see you until the day after tomorrow.”
“I want it off now,” Samantha said. “I can’t move in it, and I’m done with it.”
“You aren’t ready,” Janice said, sitting down on her stool. She put her hand on Samantha’s knee and frowned. “Or maybe you are.” She looked up at her and pointed a finger. “You walk carefully. No jumping, no falling. Understand?”
Samantha nodded. Janice left and came back with a saw-tool and began to cut her out of the cast. Elspeth came in and stood with her back against a wall.
“You two are just skeletons with skin on,” she said. “There’s no more holding on.”
Samantha looked at her, but said nothing. She had thought that this might be it. She took a deep breath and crossed, going to sit in a tree in the orchard, picking a peach and sitting with her head back against the back of the trunk as she ate it. There was no point. She was happy here, but she was just stalling. She threw the pit into the depths of the orchard and crossed back. Elspeth was watching her.
“What are you going to do, child?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. Elspeth shook her head.
“Fool,” she spat, then turned and left. Janice turned her head, then resumed cutting the cast off.
“Are you going to put my work to waste?” the woman asked. Samantha watched after Elspeth.
“I haven’t decided.”
Janice nodded.
“You are his caretaker. Many of my kind have sacrificed their lives to stay with their patients to the end.” She glanced up. “It’s an honorable end.”
“Life and death is simpler in the stories,” Samantha said. Janice nodded sagely, putting the cutting tool to the side and cracking the cast open. Fresh air hit the enclosed skin and Samantha gagged, both at the sound the cast made coming off and at the caged-in foul pungence of her own flesh.
“Whatever happens,” Janice said, rising, “let us know. Even if you have to send the other lout on his own.” She put her hand on Samantha’s shoulder and looked her in the eye. “You’ll do the right thing.”
Samantha tested her weight on the bare foot, finding no pain, then thanked Janice and let herself out, collecting Sam on the way. She hadn’t brought anything to wear instead of the cast, and the sidewalk baked the sole of her foot, but it was better than the cast and crutches. She bore it silently.
“Tonight?” Sam asked as they came in sight of the house.
“Tonight,” she confirmed.
He didn’t answer, and she watched his feet for a ways. He was shuffling, his feet barely clearing the ground. From time to time, a shoe would scuff and he would stumble and catch himself, then just continue on. Her heart broke.
They let themselves into the house and Samantha went to find the door to Jason’s room still closed. She yanked it open and went in, temper flaring.
“Out,” she yelled, waking the soundly-sleeping woman. Jason had been staring off into space, laying on his side in the bed. He didn’t turn his head when he looked at her. “Get out,” she yelled and pointed. The girl sat up in bed, clutching sheets, then dove off the side of the bed, trying to find clothes. Samantha’s eyes never left Jason’s, even as the girl brushed past her to run out of the house.
“That was rude,” he finally said.
“You have less than a day left with him. I’d guess less than twelve hours. You go downstairs and sit with him, and you do not leave his si
de. Do you understand?”
He rolled onto his back and dropped his head onto his pillow.
“Can I get dressed first, or do I have to do it naked?”
She stared at him until he picked his head up to look at her.
“You’re disgusting,” she said, turning and slamming the door behind her. Sam was standing against the wall in the hallway.
“I’m sorry,” she said to him, but he gave no indication of having heard her. She leaned against the opposite wall until Jason emerged from his room, then put her hand out.
“I need your cell,” she said. He muttered something that didn’t sound like English and pulled it out of his pocket and gave it to her. She waited until they made it downstairs and then went and sat on the bed in her room. She dialed the number and put the phone to her ear.
“Carter,” she said as it rang. He picked up.
“This is highly unusual,” he said.
“I figured this was important enough to forgo the normal psychic intermediary,” she said.
“How long?” he asked.
“Unusual for you to have been overly optimistic. Fourteen hours at most,” she said. “He would die in his sleep, if either of us were sleeping.”
“What have you tried?” he asked. She pulled the list out and read it to him, pulling her racks of ingredients out as well, pulling two and putting them on the bed next to her.
“You could baptize him,” Carter said.
“You know I can’t,” she told him.
“If you say so.” He paused. “You’re calling to say goodbye.”
She swallowed.
“I might be. I don’t know yet.”
She could see him grit his teeth into the phone.
“I wouldn’t let you do that for me. He’s nobody. Samantha. Let him go. Come back. Grieve. But you have to go on.”
“I said I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Samantha said.
“Abby misses you,” he said. She nodded, her throat tightening.
“I miss her. Aspen, I miss you, too.”
He sighed.
“I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”
“You aren’t going to change my decision,” she said.
“You killed her?”
“I did.”
“That should have bought you more time.”
“I thought it would.”
“How did she manage to weave him so tight?” Carter asked.
“She was his girlfriend,” Samantha said. She heard the hiss of air through his teeth, then silence.
“Well,” he said. “Good luck, kid. I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah. Thanks. Tell Abby I love her.”
“Do it yourself.”
The line clicked dead. Samantha closed her eyes and pictured Abby standing at the window, looking out.
“I’m sorry, babe,” she said. “We never did get into a very good routine after I died, did we?” Abby smiled and pulled the curtain away from the window, watching the beginning of the sunset. I understand, she would have said. That’s life, right?
“But it isn’t fair. I wish it had been more fair.”
Abby rolled her head against the wall and looked at her with that mysterious smile.
You did your best. I did mine. Carter will kill something monstrous in your memory.
“I’m not dead yet.”
Abby crossed the room and sat down next to her.
You’ve made your decision. I won’t look beyond here, because I don’t want to watch, but we both know what you’ve decided. You love him, and you aren’t going to let him die alone.
“I don’t know what I feel. And I don’t know what I want. I’m so tired, Abby.”
You always know exactly what you want. You’re just lying to yourself. Did you know that you are the only person you’re willing to lie openly to?
“It doesn’t count.”
I know.
Samantha swallowed.
“I’m going to go back downstairs, now,” she said. “There isn’t much time left.”
I know. Sleep well, Sam.
Samantha dropped her head, then let the idea of Abby go. She leaned her elbows out on her knees and looked at the two vials in her hand. Abby had known, even when they were in New York, that this was what was coming. Her best friend had let her go the entire time she was in town without hardly speaking to her at all, because she was so busy. Because she was so sure she could fix it.
She held the vial of ash up to eye level, looking at the fine gray powder that Carly had turned into. No bits of bone or tissue, demons ashed to powdered calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, and carbon powder, with a few variants that allowed her to identify specific things about a demon’s associations from his ash. Carly’s was pretty generic. No subtle hues to indicate one of the cult sects. Heavy on carbon - darker gray - indicating some modest power. No surprise there, either. She shook the ashes, but they didn’t have any more to say. She put them aside and held up the other vial.
Demon blood was hard to get. They had it, sure enough, but most weapons weren’t severe enough to draw blood, on powerful demons, and most weapons that were powerful enough to draw would just as easily ash them by mistake. That and a demon that was injured but not ashed was still trying to kill you. If you ashed them, defending yourself, all of their blood ashed, too. There was a specific treatment to get it to stay as blood, after they ashed.
She felt guilty, even having it.
She tipped the vial slowly back and forth, watching the thick fluid roll from one end of the vial to the other. Deep burgundy, bordering on black, it was a lovely shade and consistency. She had known the moment she had said the words over Lahn to keep Carly alive why she had taken it, but she hadn’t yet admitted to herself that she was willing to use it. Demon blood was deep black magic, but her gift with dark magic was just as strong as with light, if less-used. She knew its properties and how to make it give up its power.
More than a little frightened, she slid the vials into her pocket and walked downstairs to wait for dusk.
<><><>
She couldn’t make her foot stay still. Sitting in Halfway, watching her body die had been easier than this. They hadn’t spoken. Not a single word. Sam sat with his head resting on the palms of his hands, pushed away from the table. Jason watched him silently. Samantha willed him to say something, feeling more and more as the minutes ticked that Sam was slipping away. The smell off her own skin was transitioning rapidly from wet-rot to decay; she wasn’t far behind him. She glanced out the window. The sun had just finished falling below the horizon.
“It’s time,” she said.
<><><>
The three of them made their way upstairs, Sam and Samantha into Samantha’s room, Jason continuing on into his own. Samantha heard the door close. She put her hand in her pocket and withdrew the vials, going over to close the blinds as Sam lay on the floor. The darkness comforted her, though it didn’t dull the guilt or terror at what she was about to do.
“After this, you let me go,” he said.
“No,” she answered. It stunned her. It came without hesitation. Abby had been right. He closed his eyes and let his head roll away, either choosing to ignore her or actually not hearing.
She found a shallow pewter dish and emptied the vial of demon blood into it, then mixed in the ash until the consistency was right. This wasn’t sixteen. Or seventeen. She had never been willing to commit it to text. Her hand found the bag of gray dust that Elspeth had given her and she pulled it out and looked at it. Powerful natural magic, it was popular because it mixed well with light and dark ingredients, as well. It wouldn’t hurt anything, and there were no fatal interactions in the spells she had used in the last week. She pinched out the dust and powdered it across the surface of the muddy blood until it was coated, blowing it once to scatter any loose dust before she mixed it in.
She began the incantation to block memory. In hellspeak. The spell could be done in human languages, but the com
plexity of it would multiply the length of the incantation by a factor of ten, and Samantha was concerned that she didn’t have the focus for it. Beyond that, hellspeak was more powerful. Carly had put deep marks on him. She wasn’t leaving anything to regret, when this failed.
Other than doing it in the first place.
She tried not to think about that.
She added in the deer velvet, the turtle heart ash, the grave thread, and the mixture turned black.
The words came to an end, and she sat down next to Sam. He opened her eyes as she sat, and she handed him the bowl, telling herself that she was closing her eyes in order to focus on the second half of the spell - she had pushed him under, now she needed to pull him back out - but she knew it was because she couldn’t stand to watch him drink the potion. She felt his hand brush her knee as he set the bowl back down, and she worked through the long, slow process of knitting back together the things she had torn apart.
It was careful, detailed work, but here she was in her strengths. Her mind went numb, working over the ruts of routine practice. Here and there, angeltongue clashed up against hellspeak, but mostly she managed to keep them apart with human language. They tended to throw sparks, otherwise.
She became aware of Sam breathing, and wondered if he was asleep. Wondered if she needed him to be awake. Too late to worry about that. She worked her hands in the complex patterns, life, freedom, knowledge, sleep, truth, faith, strength. Words poured.
She was beginning to go hoarse by the time she finally finished. She worked the last symbol, finishing at the flourish of the shape, and studied Sam’s face. He opened his eyes.
<><><>
There was a soft knock on the door, and Jason’s stomach fell through the floor. Verdict time. He went and opened the door to find Samantha standing there in tears, Sam’s arms wrapped around her shoulders.
“We’re going for ice cream,” she said. “Thought you might like to come.”
Sam grinned, weakly, but enough for Jason. He went and grabbed his jacket off the endpost of his bed.
“Lead the way.”
He followed them down the hallway and frowned.
“Sam, is your shirt inside out?”
<><><>
The next morning - late the next morning; they had gone out drinking to celebrate after Samantha got her ice cream - someone knocked on Jason’s door. He grunted, stretching and sitting up in bed and Samantha peered around the door.
