by Molly Harper
Zed nodded. He doubted that Dani knew the half of it. The League took control of the magie population worldwide without that population having much of a say in it. Sometime in the Renaissance, they simply informed the shifters and fairy folk of the world that their organization was in charge and that any disagreement with their policies would be met with silver bullets. Not that the superstitions about silver bullets were true, but a bullet to the head would kill just about anybody. This explained why so many magique complied with the Pact of Secrecy in 1800, cornering them into an extensive list of behaviors meant to keep humans from finding out about the supernatural world. And when the League got all compulsive about keeping track of the magie populations in 1908, the magie agreed that filling out a census questionnaire was a reasonable alternative to silver bullets.
“So was the town built around the rift?” Dani asked.
“No, the original settlers were human and had no idea what they’d built their homes next to. The first shifters started straggling into this little swamp village called le Lieu Mystique early in the 1800s. All of the magique were called here like homing pigeons to the roost—shifters, fae folk, witches, any and all of them. We just feel better here, welcomed, wanted. Our shifts are easier. They take less out of us and we can change back to human faster. The fairy folks’ gifts are turned up to eleven. Witches whose powers have been out of balance for years? Perfectly at peace and in control. It’s the best place for us.”
“At first, our forefathers tried to tell their new neighbors that they were plain old humans. But the locals were already pretty suspicious of all the new people suddenly dying to live in the middle of a backwater swamp, and they noticed that there seemed to be a lot of weird creatures running around. It got real clear that the humans weren’t buying our excuses, so our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaddy, the guy who felt he would be able to best fight the humans off if they got pissy, met with the local town fathers to try to explain what was really happening. They didn’t believe him, of course, because despite all the odd happenings, who would actually believe that the supernatural circus had come to town? So my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaddy dropped his drawers, changed his skin. The town fathers collectively lost their shit, one of them literally, because there’s this big brown bear standing on his hind legs, offering to shake hands. Maman says this particular ancestor was known for being a smart ass. The humans are shouting prayers against hoodoo and witchcraft, calling down God and whoever else was listening to save them from the demon bear.”
Dani giggled, tilting her head against her palm like a child being told a story. “I actually feel sort of sorry for the guy who lost his shit.”
“Finally, the one elder who still had some sense in his head told everybody to shut the hell up, handed around glasses of homemade brew and they all sat down and chilled the hell out. Then my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaddy promised them that their new neighbors had no intentions of starting any problems.” Zed chuckled, charmed by her response. “They just wanted to live a quiet life in a quiet, safe place. And if the humans were willing to live in peace with them and keep their secrets, then the magique would share all of their knowledge and magic. I’m sure the town fathers probably didn’t feel like they had much of a choice, given that we had major apex predators on our side, but they agreed. Those that didn’t agree moved out of town or got into ill-advised arguments with the magique, taking care of themselves on their own.”
“My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandaddy became the unofficial leader of the magique, and eventually the Berends took over leadership of the town. The humans and magique have trusted us for generations to do what’s right for them. And we take the responsibility pretty seriously, even if it seems like we don’t take anything seriously. I think we’ve done a fair job of it so far. Over the next hundred plus years, the humans adjusted to having us around, especially when the fairy folk helped the crops grow and the healers kept the yellow fever at bay. Soon enough, we all started to intermarry, except for the Boones, but that’s a whole different story, narrated by assholes. The separation between the locals’ culture and magique culture blurred and Mystic Bayou just became ‘our culture.’ Everybody tries to cooperate, but we’re people just like anyone else. We try to get past our differences faster than other towns, because it’s more important here.”
“I noticed your accent is a little different than I expected. Less Swamp People and more Davy Crockett.”
Zed jerked his broad shoulders. “Well, we’re not a true Cajun community. There’s so many languages and accents floating around that they kind of fought each other until we have a sort of ‘general Southern’ sound. We kept some of the French sayings, and most of us have accents, to varyin’ degrees. We have some of the same food customs, but we’ve also mixed in our own traditions, our own flavors and our own languages from the places where we come from. It’s a big mess sometimes, but it works for us.”
“Do people ever leave?”
“Well, we’re not forbidden from leaving. We’re not like Children of the Corn or anything,” he said. “We just don’t leave very often. I mean, I’ve been to New Orleans and Shreveport when it was called for, but I never wanted to wander much farther. I don’t know if you know this, but bears are pretty territorial.”
“But what about going away to school or getting a job somewhere else?”
“Sure. We had Will Carmody, who left a few years ago to go to medical school. Nice guy, a selkie, but I doubt we’ll see him again, once he starts making big city doctor money. So why are you out here, giving this random tree CPR?”
She crossed her arms. “Well, I need to work up to dealing with the rift. I’m not ready for it yet. I have to get used to the local atmosphere. It can be dangerous to mess around with energy at those levels, especially if you’re not properly prepared.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can deplete yourself really quickly. Or, if you take too much in and don’t offload it somehow, that can be dangerous,” she said. “Any sort of energy work puts stress on your body—your cardiovascular system, your nervous system, your organs. Generally speaking, with the jobs I’m usually working? It’s pretty minor. A slight increase in heart rate and blood pressure that you can cancel out with the right teas and meditation. Or if that fails, chocolate usually does the trick for me.”
“That makes sense,” he agreed. “Everybody who tries to get too close to it ends up in a six-month coma while they heal from the internal trauma caused by . . . whatever the hell the rift is made of. The closest we magique can get to it is about three hundred yards. Humans? You can get five hundred or so.”
“You might be surprised how close I can get. But I will be careful, I promise. With a case like your rift, the physical side effects could be, well, fatal. Someone could stroke out pretty easily if they didn’t prepare themselves. Someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing could end up dead. I don’t mess around with that.”
Something in Dani’s pocket beeped. She pulled out a chunk of glass and plastic considerably thicker than the average smart phone, and seemed to be checking her text messages. “Sorry, it’s my aunt. Just some family business.”
“You’re getting texts? How do you get a phone signal all the way out here?”
Dani held the phone up for his inspection. It was an ugly, utilitarian thing, without any of the cute little touches women tended to pretty up their phones with, no decorative case, no apps, no photo background, nothing. “Satellite phone. You travel around the world long enough, you learn the tricks. I can make a call from the Amazon River basin and you’d think I was calling you from the next room.”
Zed cringed. “I’m suddenly afraid of what will happen if you and Jillian become friends. You know too much about too many things. If you organized, you’d be dangerous.”
“Reasonable response.”
“Well, good, now, how about I take you into town? Get som
e pie, recharge your witch-y cells?” Zed stood, offering her his hand to help her up. Even with assistance, her legs were pretty wobbly and she stumbled forward like a baby deer, face first into Zed’s T-shirt. Zed caught her arms but not before her full weight fell against his body. She was so soft. The last couple of girls he’d dated had been all sharp angles and bone. It was nice to pull a warm, soft shape against him. He wanted to burrow against her and press his face against the curve of her hip. But that would probably be considered forward, definitely not something you did before the first date.
He was definitely going to have to ask her out. Some other day, when she hadn’t woken up to him staring at her and ended up in a surprise liplock. Because that seemed like too much for one day.
“Thanks, Zed. Jillian asked me to come to her office today to get some League employment materials, plus sign about five more releases saying my estate won’t sue the League if I die.”
Zed slung his leg over the bike and offered her the spare helmet he kept for just such a purpose. “About that, I don’t think I want you going out to the rift by yourself.”
“That’s also probably reasonable, considering I don’t know where it is. And Jillian said something about alligator shifter creepers roaming the swamp?”
“Yeah, you’re gonna want to close your curtains when you change,” he said.
“Says the man who’s left me with an incomplete outdoor shower.”
“Hurtful,” he said before starting the engine and pointing the bike toward town.
4
Dani
Dani had expected Zed to offer her a ride into town. She had expected him to feel solid and warm between her thighs as she tucked herself against his back on the bike. She had not expected him to drive like her dear, deceased Gramma.
Seriously, the man drove like he was balancing a raw egg on his seat.
He took so much time driving into town that she had time to compose an extensive grocery list in her head. She saw quite a bit of Mystic Bayou, though. While there were plenty of houses, the woods were so thick that it was sometimes difficult to see them, or to even know how to get to them. They drove past creeks and marshes covered in thick floating carpets of algae. Most were occupied by alligators, so intent on sun-bathing that they didn’t move as Zed’s loud engine approached. But Dani spotted several large rat-like creatures scampering away from the roadside, chattering angrily.
“What in the hell was that?” Dani yelled over the wind. She leaned closer to Zed, the smell of leather and woods and good clean sweat drifting up from his t-shirt. She may or may not have rubbed her cheek against his shirt to get a little closer to that pleasant smell. And then immediately leaned back because sniffing someone without their permission had to be an etiquette violation of some sort.
“Nutria!” Zed yelled back. “It’s kind of a cross between a possum and a prairie dog. Louisiana’s damn near overrun with them!”
These sights, while different from what Dani was used to, were to be expected in the swamp. And now that Dani thought about it, she remembered seeing a nutria on the “Welcome to Mystic Bayou” sign. It had read, “Home of the Fighting Marsh Dogs” and showed a rat standing on its hind legs in a boxer’s stance, like the Fighting Irish Leprechaun.
But she nearly fell off the bike when they drove past an open expanse of brown water and she spotted an enormous blue-green horse’s head curved over the surface. The horse tossed its head, slinging a spray of water from its iridescent blue mane. Its long serpentine tail flicked over the water, propelling it forward, toward the road.
“Was that a sea horse monster?” Dani yelled.
“Yep! A hippocampus. They’re an old Phoenician creature, liked to swim alongside the boats to give the sailors protection. That one swam all the way to the Gulf of Mexico and then forged his way upriver. Determined little bastard.”
“He’s hardly little,” Dani shot back. “That thing is bigger than my car.”
Zed laughed and picked up his speed. She wondered whether she’d passed some sort of test to provoke him out of his granny-driving, proving that she wouldn’t flop off the bike when surprised. The increase in miles per hour was delightful, zooming down the surprisingly smooth blacktop past trees overgrown with Spanish moss and waterways haunted by the otherworldly. The air in Mystic Bayou was considerably more pleasant than the “Devil’s Armpit” area Dani had to drive through to get to Mystic Parish. The air she now inhaled was a mix of honeysuckle, pine and growth—the green, earthy scent of living. If Dani could burn a candle that smelled like that, she might never feel tired.
She was feeling more than a little tired at the moment. She often felt drained by calls from her mother, which was why she sought out a meditation spot al fresco. Susan’s number popped up on Dani’s satellite phone while she was making breakfast that morning, and for a moment, Dani considered ignoring the call. But considering that she hadn’t spoken to her mother in eight months, morbid curiosity had her hitting “accept.”
“Hello, mother,” Dani said, spreading strawberry jam on her toast while balancing her phone on her shoulder.
“Danica, hello. How are you?”
“Just fine, thank you. And you?”
“I’m well, thank you. My research is progressing at a satisfactory rate.”
It felt like the sort of conversation prisoners had when they knew the warden was listening in, stilted, cold, and uncomfortable. How had this careful, controlled woman managed to catch her wayward father’s attention, much less make the irresponsible choices that led to an unplanned pregnancy? Dani had long suspected there were pot brownies involved, but she was afraid to ask. There were some mental images that could never be unseen.
“I’m calling to wish you a happy birthday.”
Dani pressed her lips together to keep the annoyed grunt behind her teeth. “Thanks, mother. Only three months late this year.”
“There’s no need for that tone, Danica. You know how busy I am. You know how important my work is to me. You know how important my work is to the scientific community. Considering the hours I keep at the lab, it’s not surprising that I become distracted. Our relationship has never depended on emotional displays of sentimentality.”
“You’re right,” Dani muttered, though she wasn’t sure what their relationship did depend on. She hadn’t lived with her mother for any amount of time since she was ten years old. Her mother hadn’t given her the birds and the bees talk, Trudy had. Her mother hadn’t helped her pick out a prom dress, Gram had. Her mother hadn’t attended any of her piano recitals or graduations or birthday parties. They simply didn’t have that sort of relationship, and the sad thing was that Susan seemed to think they were somehow more evolved for it. Dani couldn’t come up with a reason to stop talking to her mother, who was distant, but never as problematic as her father.
“So where are you this week?” Susan asked.
“I’m in Louisiana. I should be here for some time.”
“Good. It’s not healthy for you, drifting about as you do. You need structure in your life, Danica. Routines. A real job. I’ve always said so. If you would only take a job with a publication or a studio, it would be much more convenient for all involved.”
Dani made a non-committal noise and took a bite of her toast. And she made four more pieces of toast while her mother droned on about the various things Dani was doing wrong with her life. Dani’s only consolation, beyond the excellent strawberry jam, was that her mother wouldn’t call again until she thought it might be Dani’s birthday. So Dani had at least six months before she had to have another achingly awkward prison conversation.
Dani had accepted that each of her parents was pathologically selfish in completely unique ways. And while she was a big believer in self-care and self-esteem and all the good things associated with the word “self” she was terrified of behaving like either of them—being so self-centered that she failed to realize other people actually had the nerve to exist. That was part of why she enjoye
d her work so much. Sure, she was getting paid, but she was helping people, protecting them from dangers they didn’t even realize were there. She was the anti-Journey.
Dani pressed her cheek against Zed’s back, enjoying the warmth seeping through his shirt. Eventually the houses became better kept and more organized, and suddenly they were approaching the improvised village of trailers that housed the League offices. The trailers, located right across the street from Parish Hall, were prefabricated to look like charming little Cape Cod style cottages, but it was very clear they didn’t match the town’s down-home aesthetic. Dani noted the location of the grocery store, the post office, and the library. She would definitely have to make a stop at Bathtilda Boone’s Pie Shop.
Zed slowed his bike to a (gentle, of course) stop in front of the Parish Hall and offered his hand to help Dani off the bike. Her legs had regained some of their steadiness, but she appreciated the gesture.
“Thank you for the ride, Zed.”
“You’re welcome. If you need help getting back to the house, ask me or Jillian—hell, come to the Parish Hall and ask Bael—for a ride. No going wandering around, got it?”
“Wouldn’t dream of trying,” she promised.
“Jillian’s office is in the biggest trailer, right there. Building One. So everybody knows she’s the one in charge.”
“Thanks. I think I’ll stop by the post office first. I need to set up a PO Box. It will be kind of nice to have a real address for a change. My grandpa will finally have a place to send letters. He hates email with a passion.”
Zed grinned down at her. She had no issues with her size, but being around Zed made her feel like a delicate little flower. And she was going to enjoy that feeling.
“You should know that our postmaster, Bonita De Los Santos, is a touch-know psychic, meaning she can tell what’s happened to an object, or around an object when she touches it. It makes her sorting the mail really easy, but you have to be careful what you hand her.”
