Mercury Retrograde

by Laura Bickle

  Gabe twisted away from the tree’s probing and headed down the tunnel to the Stella Camera. If he had more of it, he’d consider using Sal as a guinea pig. He’d steep it into a tea and feed it to him, see if he recovered or withered before proceeding. But Petra had no time. Sal and the Lunaria had more, whether it was weeks or months.

  And she was alive. That was worth preserving.

  The moon had sunk beyond the opening of the well, and the Star Chamber was soaked in darkness. With his preternatural vision, he could see Petra’s silhouette off in the center of the pool, like a leaf on a puddle.

  The coyote had fallen asleep on the shore. He didn’t open an eye as Gabe’s feet crunched in the salts on the edge of the water.

  Gabe stripped off his oilskin, gripped the piece of bark in his teeth, and waded in. He swam out to the dark shape on the water, letting the heavy salt support him as he reached her.

  He hoped that she was still alive, that he hadn’t been too late. Her flesh was the color of a dark bruise, and the skin on her throat had an alarming stickiness about it. But her chest rose and fell shallowly, the gold pendant on her collarbone shining softly in the dim.

  Gabe gently opened her mouth, slid the piece of bark under her tongue. He closed her jaw tenderly.

  And there was nothing left to do now, nothing but wait.

  Stroud was here.

  Petra reached for the sword. But the red-­hot metal scalded her hand, sizzling the black tar on her palm. She gasped and clutched her hand, stepping back. Sig flung himself between Petra and Stroud, barking furiously.

  “Hello, Petra,” Stroud said smoothly. A cold smile crackled over his craggy face. “You didn’t last long in the material world.”

  “It figures you’d be down here. In hell.”

  “And doing my damnedest to figure a way out.”

  Petra backed toward the opening of the tunnel. She reached down for Sig to pull him away. Stroud might be alive in the spirit world, but maybe she could outrun him.

  Stroud lunged for the sword. His hand glinted silver, like he was wearing an oven mitt. She’d seen that trick before. He snatched up the freshly-­forged sword and advanced on her.

  “Maybe I could trade you for a way out. Your spirit might be worth something to . . . something. Despite your current state of . . . well, disarray.” He looked her over head to toe, at the black gunk covering her.

  Sig was having none of it. He pounced on Stroud, flinging him to the floor. Metal hit the ground with a ring—­Petra couldn’t be certain if it was his fist or the sword that hit first. Unwilling to abandon Sig and flee, she rushed behind the stone slab to find Sig standing on Stroud’s chest and snarling. She stomped and kicked at the sword, succeeding in knocking it away from his fist . . .

  . . . but her boot got stuck in Stroud’s mercury hand.

  Stroud howled. Petra figured that anything that caused Stroud pain was a good thing. She ground down harder with her heel, and the slick metal smeared under her foot. Like dragging her foot out of a fresh cow patty, she struggled to free her boot. Stumbling back, she was shocked to see Stroud writhing around his hand, which was stuck to the stone floor like a smeared bug on a windshield.

  “Sig!” she shouted.

  Sig backed away from the melting Stroud. They retreated back down the corridor to the intersection point among the roads.

  Her father was still there, sitting at the center, tracing the symbols on the brick like a child doodling in a coloring book.

  “Dad,” she panted. “Stroud is . . .” She hooked a thumb back over her shoulder.

  “Yeah. He’s been around. You might want to avoid him.” He made a face, the same one he used to make when his in-­laws were in town.

  “Dad!”

  “He’s not going anywhere.” He looked up at the ceiling and squinted. “But you’re running out of time. Unless you want to spend an eternity trapped here with him and your dear old dad . . . you’d best get a move on.”

  She threw up her slimy hands in disgust and picked another tunnel.

  In this one, she could strongly hear the sound of water. Perhaps there was an underground river? She minced through ankle-­deep puddles to move forward, and was conscious of the sound of water ringing through the fissures in the rock above her. Water sluiced in sheets along the walls, and she was mindful not to touch them and wash away what remained of her oozy skin.

  The tunnel dead-­ended in a wall of water, a small cataract. A low pedestal hewn of basalt stood in a puddle, and on the pedestal perched a glass chalice. Within the glass chalice, a goldfish swam.

  “This is it,” she told herself. Her father had told her to follow her heart. “Water is all about the heart and emotions and that touchy-­feely stuff, right, Sig? This is all symbolic. I suck at this symbolism stuff, but this has to be it.”

  Sig cocked one ear, seeming to agree with her train of thought.

  She set the lantern down. Crouching, she reached out over the puddle to pick up the chalice. It felt cool and shone clear as crystal. She was careful not to spill any water or disturb the fish, holding the chalice in her filthy cupped hands. The fish swam in a clockwise direction, slowly. It was kind of hypnotic, really, the way the glass reflected light on its gold skin. It looked a lot like the fish she’d won at a carnival as a little girl. That fish had lived for over ten years in a bowl on her dresser, surviving three moves and numerous toys dropped in the water. What had she named that fish? Jaws? Remembering gave her a warm fuzzy feeling that she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

  A coyote face took up her field of vision. He pressed his muzzle into the chalice and devoured the fish.

  “Sig!”

  She jerked the chalice back, sloshing water. He just leaned in and began to slurp noisily out of the chalice.

  “Jesus, Sig.” Defeated, she set the chalice down on the floor of the cave. Sig grunted his approval and licked it clean.

  “Well, I hope that was awesome for you.” She sat down on her ass, dejected. She was certain that the chalice had been her key out of the underworld. “That was really an asshole move, my friend. You may not be stuck in the spirit world, but I don’t want to be.”

  Sig snorted and trotted from the cavern.

  “I sure hope eating that fish did something for your spiritual development.”

  After a few moments, she climbed to her feet to follow him, feeling more than a little pissed off by how the universe had been treating her, lately. The idea that she was personifying the universe as something that was singling her out for extra-­special negative treatment disturbed her, too. It showed her how truly out of touch her rational thought processes were becoming.

  Maybe there wouldn’t be something that wouldn’t kill her in the last tunnel. Maybe it wouldn’t be poisonous, or burning or . . . Stroud. Yeah, that would be good.

  The last road led to a drier chamber. On the bare floor sat a birdcage that contained a single black raven. The raven stared at her with black eyes.

  “Oh.”

  She looked down at Sig, who was looking all smug. “I’m sorry, dude.”

  Sig harrumphed. He wasn’t going to let her forget this.

  Gently, she picked up the birdcage. It was an old, chipped wire cage, the kind of thing you’d see in a catalog that sold shabby chic furniture and things covered in chalkboard paint. But the bird inside was very much alive, cocking its head and watching her as if she were something shiny.

  “Let’s give this a shot.”

  She carried the birdcage back out to her father, set it on the floor between them. She felt a bit proud at having successfully brought back something, and she stood over it with her arms crossed.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” he said, peering at the birdcage.

  “What’s interesting about it? Other than the fact that I managed not to break it, and Sig didn’t ea
t it?”

  “The raven’s symbolic of the fermentation stage of alchemy, the fifth stage. That’s the stage where everything rots.”

  “Okay. Is that good or bad, given our current predicament?”

  Petra’s dad wiggled his finger between the bars of the cage. The bird pecked at him. “Not sure. It’s a more advanced stage than where you are now. So, it could be good. Or it could mean that you’re well on your way to getting oozier. Come here.”

  She stood before him, expecting some kind of magical ritual or at least a knighting of some kind.

  “Stick out your tongue,” he ordered.

  She did as she was told.

  “Not like that. Say ‘ahhhh.’ ”

  “Ahhhhhhhh.”

  He peered into her mouth, at her tongue, and shook his head.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “There’s not enough. So little against so much poison.”

  “Awesome.” Petra made a face. “Well, I ran out of roads. This is it.”

  Her father nodded and placed the cage in the center of the crossroads, where the bricks had come together in a circle.

  “Good luck, my dear,” her father said, his eyes crinkling.

  “Wait.” She grabbed his wrist, trying to ignore the disconcertingly-­bony ulna under her fingers. “You’re not coming with me?”

  “I doubt there’s enough magical juice in that cage to get both you and your coyote back intact. Hitchhikers would reduce your chances of success.” He lifted his hand to touch her sticky cheek. “There will be another way for me. Another time.”

  The cage began to rattle, like a teakettle on a stove. The bird fluttered inside, agitated, as the cage turned in circles of its own accord. The door of the cage sprang open, and the bird flew out.

  “Oh, shit!” Petra cried, reaching out to catch it.

  But the raven had split into two birds, bleaching from inky-­black to white.

  She glanced back, saw her father smile.

  “Excellent, my dear. Most excellent.”

  She’d never seen him look this proud of her before, and she was confused. She hadn’t done anything, yet . . .

  Light filled the chamber, bright as sun on ice. And it all faded to white—­her father, the cage, the cavern—­it all disappeared.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  SACRIFICE

  When Petra opened her eyes, black sky stretched above her in a skylight cut in the earth. She could make out a handful of stars overhead, and a pale violet glow to the east.

  She was cold, cold and heavy, and there was something stuck to her tongue that tasted like pine sap. She gagged, spat it out, and took a deep breath. Water lapped up around her chin.

  A furious crashing and rain of water collapsed into her. Sig. He slathered her face with his tongue, dog-­paddling into her chest hard enough that her head nearly went under.

  Hands gripped her collar and she gasped, slapping the water with her arms to regain her equilibrium.

  And she found herself staring into familiar amber eyes, bright as coals.

  “Gabe?” she sputtered. “Where are we?”

  He smiled, scraping her wet hair back from her face. Jesus, it had been ages since she’d seen him smile. His arm supported her shoulders as they trod water, and he pointed up. “The Stella Camera.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “Why are we here? What happened to the snake?”

  “The basilisk is still free in Yellowstone.”

  “And Phil and Meg?” she dreaded the answer. “Are they okay?”

  Gabe shook his head. “They didn’t survive.”

  She shivered, hard enough to shake water from her hair into Sig’s face. Sig circled them in the black water, yipping and making low conversational mrrps.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “First, I need to see if the poison has worked through.”

  Gabe swam them to shore, towing Petra in the crook of his elbow, Sig in the lead like a happy little flagship. Petra felt leaden and puffy at the same time, as if she’d taken one hell of a beating, and the swelling had started to rise. She stumbled up on the bank, and Gabe picked her up and carried her to a semicircle of rocks at the edge of the cave. Fire sputtered inside a galvanized steel bucket. Sig shook himself off in a shower of salt water that fizzled against the flames.

  Petra gratefully extended her shaking hands to the warmth. She looked down at them as if they were a stranger’s hands. Underneath the freckles, her skin was pale as curdled milk, and the blue of her veins pulsed oddly beneath, as if they were trying to push something away.

  Gabe took her face in his hands. At first, she thought he meant to kiss her, and she lowered her eyes. But he turned her face right and left, tracing his fingers over the veins of her neck.

  “Look up.” She did, and he peered intently into her eyes. “Look down.”

  Her gaze fell to the salt crystal ground. He lifted each eyelid with his thumb.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Signs that the venom has been defeated.” He lifted her hair off the back of her neck, resting his fingers there while his thumb took her pulse. “The basilisk’s breath is legendary poison.”

  “That must have been what killed those campers at Pelican Creek.” She envisioned that violet mottled skin of the little girl, the red, bloodshot eyes of her father.

  “Yes.”

  He knew. He had been spying on her. “So that was you . . . your raven there?”

  “Yes. Open your mouth.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him. He was exasperating, and he deserved it. The gesture seemed lost on him, or else he was ignoring it, while he examined her as if she were a piece of horseflesh at auction. He nodded, and she closed her mouth.

  “Give me your feet.”

  She struggled to sling her soggy feet in his direction, but numbness made her clumsy, and her boot laces flapped against the fire bucket with a bell-­like ring that made her wince.

  Gabe took her feet and put them in his lap. He unlaced the boots and stripped off her socks. Petra stared at her feet. They looked like they’d gotten a good case of frostbite, black and bluish. She wiggled her toes, experimentally, just to see if she could. That much was a relief.

  She shrieked and nearly kicked Gabe in the face when he drew his thumbnail down the arch of each foot to check her nerve reflexes.

  “That’s an improvement over where you were,” he said dryly.

  She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him again, and pulled her legs back with her hands beneath her knees.

  “I brought you some clothes,” Gabe said. He reached behind the bucket and handed her a canvas pack.

  “Thank you.” She worked at the drawstring of the back with dead fingers, took two tries on the laces before he took it from her and opened it. She stared down at the glittering salt, embarrassed. She felt as helpless as a child.

  Gabe reached for her again, and she thought he meant to check her pulse again. Instead, his fingers worked the buttons of her shirt.

  “I can . . .” she began.

  “Hush.”

  She closed her eyes and let him pluck open the buttons of her shirt. He undressed her as tenderly as a lover would, his fingers hesitating over a broken vein or a bruise on her shoulder or calf. She was exhausted and tired of fighting. He dressed her in a soft flannel shirt that she guessed belonged to him, a pair of broken-­in jeans, and socks that felt like wool.

  He wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, tucking it under her chin. Sig snuggled up against her thigh and put his wet head in her lap.

  “Thank you,” she said, keeping her eyes shut.

  “You’re welcome.”

  His voice sounded more distant. She opened her eyes.

  He was dressing in the half-­darkness beyond the rocks. In glimmers of the fir
elight, she could make out the line of his shoulder and his thigh.

  She looked away, aching and confused. In her lap, Sig grinned and shook, as if laughing hysterically at God-­knew-­what. She frowned at the coyote. If he had any bit of Coyote, the one with a capital “C” within him, he was certainly no stranger to the confusion of human and inhuman flesh.

  Gabe returned to sit beside her at the fire, dressed in dry clothes. He offered her a canteen of water. She drank greedily, and it felt soothing on her swollen throat. It tasted vaguely of iron, not salt, and she was grateful for it. Water trickled down her chin, but she didn’t care.

  “So . . . what happened?” she asked softly, when she finally stopped for a breath, clumsily wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. “How did you happen to be right there, at that time?” She wanted to add: Did your spying raven find me? How long have you been following me? That’s completely creeper, especially for a guy who can’t acknowledge my presence on the street. But she bit it all off and waited for him to tell her.

  Gabe stared at the fire and put a chunk of wood in the bucket. “We were following the basilisk. I kept . . . I kept seeing you on the trail.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t remember who you were. I had the image in my head of you, you holding a gun on me. I kept seeing—­the Venificus Locus. And I had the feeling of it being pulled from me . . .” His fingers pressed his heart, where she had taken it from him.

  “Below the Lunaria. I thought you were dead. You were hanging there . . . in pieces.” She shuddered.

  He pulled away from her a few inches. “I wasn’t . . . completely reintegrated. And I wouldn’t have been able to, if you hadn’t pulled the Locus out. Still probably am not. The tree is dying. That’s why we’re pursuing the basilisk.”

  She wasn’t going to let him retreat back into himself. She grabbed his wrist, clumsily, with her hand. He seemed to hesitate, then covered it with his hand.

  “The basilisk has venom, but it also has the power of eternal life,” he continued. “Lascaris conjured it, back when his hold on Temperance was beginning to falter. He went to the spirit world, trapped it, and brought it back here to serve as his guardian. At that time, he had come under attack by some powerful interests of the town who suspected him of dabbling more in magic than business.”