Salt and Silver

by Anna Katherine

  “So too many Doors is the same problem. No balance. The world will end in earth and air, our entire dimension eaten by Hell. And there aren’t enough hunters in the world to stop that.”

  I look out over the pretty impressive array of goods Roxie’s got laid out over the tables, and think about it being crushed into worthlessness under a horde of demons. “I think I see now why we’re skipping straight to going through a Door to find out how to fix this,” I say.

  “Exactly. Ryan tell you about the blood?” Roxie asks.

  “Blood?” Ryan was supposed to tell me about blood?

  Roxie looks at me for a long moment, and she puts down the lamia vest she’s holding up. “We talked it out while you were downstairs, went over the angles, Christian even called up Narnia when Ryan was off waking you up.” She goes back to picking out clothing, and now she’s not looking at me at all. “The only way to get to Hell is through a Door. The only way to travel through the Hell dimensions is through Doors. None of us has ever opened a Door before—none of us but you. You’re already tainted with that knowledge, and your blood is already on their tongues. The Doors, they’re like animals, yeah? They’ve smelled you. They know your taste. They’ll open for you.”

  She hands over a vest and a pair of pants, and then starts setting out the things that need to go in all the pockets of my coat: a leather flask filled with salt, sharp knives knapped out of obsidian and carefully wrapped in lamia skin.

  “If we open Doors, we’ll unleash untold demons and probably die in the attempt. You’ve already done that—the damage is done. No new Hells are going to grow from your sacrifice. So we need your blood, one way or the other, if we want to get in and get out alive.”

  I don’t know what to say to this. “Just me? I mean, I made the Door with Stan and—”

  “And Amanda. I know. We could get by with one, we think.” Roxie stares at me frankly. “More of you we have, though, the better. If one of you dies, then there’d be a backup.”

  Then there’d be a backup.

  So . . . so. Now I know. I’m not a hunter. No one thought I might be a hunter. I—I am right up there with a flask of salt and a chipped knife. A tool. And if I break, they want to make sure they have replacements. To save their own skins.

  “Where’s Ryan?” I ask.

  “Out,” says Roxie, and takes back the coat. She starts packing it with all the gear she’s laid out. Gear to keep me alive. Because I am so very valuable.

  I turn away and start wiping down tables.

  “I think I did something bad,” I say. My back is still to Roxie. “I think I did something to Stan’s mind earlier. I pushed him, I told him to go and to forget, and the next time I talked to him, he didn’t remember the hunters or the Door, or anything—”

  “Shit,” says Roxie.

  “Yeah, that about sums it up.” I turn around and look her square in the eye. “So maybe Ryan won’t have that easy a time finding Stan. Whoops.”

  “Found Stan,” Ryan calls out, coming through the front door of the diner. He’s practically frogmarching Stan, whose head is lolling. To complete the picture of Stan as a totally debauched young idiot, he’s even drooling. “He was outside, wandering around like he wasn’t sure where to go. I thought he wasn’t doing anything that hard, anymore.”

  “It’s not drugs. Not all of it, anyway,” I say. It’s hard to look at Ryan, but I can’t keep my eyes off Stan. “I told him to forget.” Aw, Stan, I am so sorry. I did not mean for this to happen. “I said it the way Doors do. I told him to forget.”

  “Great.” Ryan sounds really angry. Too bad. “Take him and hold him, because I still have to get out there and find us—”

  “Amanda?”

  He shoves Stan at me and I catch him, staggering a little under the weight; Ryan leaves. “Heeeey,” Stan says. His pupils are completely blown. “Aren’t you friends with Amanda?”

  “Shit,” breathes Roxie. At first I think it’s about me, and Ryan, and all of this. And then I see what she sees. On Stan’s arm, by his elbow, there looks like a mosquito bite that’s been infected, all red and white and puffy, with a little greenish pus oozing out of it.

  It’s a werewolf bite. There’s a demon in Stan. And very soon, it will take him over, and he’ll die, if he doesn’t take out some of us first.

  This is my fault, because I told him to forget, and he did—he forgot everything, including how to be safe. He’s not even wearing any silver or iron; I can’t feel it on him. And he’s stoned. Really incredibly stoned.

  “I don’t know what’s worse—the drugs or what I did,” I say out loud, and I hate that my voice is shaking, but I did this—or part of it—to one of my best friends. Sure, he’s not the greatest friend in the world, but he tried really hard, and this is no way to repay that.

  All this, and these fucking hunters wanted to use him as an escape hatch.

  Roxie helps me set him down gently in one of the booths. I wish she wouldn’t touch him. He drops right off to sleep, or falls into unconsciousness, and I’m jealous of that.

  “How long,” I ask.

  Roxie shrugs. “Long enough.”

  I suddenly hate her. As if she can hear me, Roxie rubs her face and pulls the cigarette out of her mouth. “Fuck,” she says. “How’d you do this to him, Allie?”

  “I don’t know,” I say quietly. I sit down at the booth where Roxie’s stacked the talismans. They’re all made of silver, I can tell by the weight of each one. Oh, the things I never knew that I needed to know to survive in the world. How to calculate sales tax and what pure silver feels like in my palm. “I can feel it, though.” I look up at Roxie. “There’s more of it in me. I could do it again. I don’t know if the Door gave it to me or what.”

  “Door’s gone, and you still have it,” says Roxie. She pulls a Zippo from a hidden pocket in her lamia-skin pants—ugh, that will never stop being gross—and lights the cigarette, puffs contemplatively. “Maybe the Door just brings out what you got naturally.”

  “After six years?” I glance over at Stan. “After six years, I just suddenly become psychic?”

  “After six years you just suddenly use it,” Roxie corrects. “You need another psychic to help you learn how to use it completely. But . . .” Roxie taps a long finger on the table. Her nails are short and unpainted, but in perfect condition. I notice these things, I can’t help it. “But maybe we can use you. Your blood will get us through the Door, but once we’re there, maybe we can make things go a bit faster using your new skills.”

  Great. So glad to help.

  Roxie goes back to putting together supplies. I sit next to Stan, pull out my phone, and dial Amanda. To tell her about Stan? To warn her about Ryan coming? To sit and whine about how she was right all along about these fucking hunters?

  None of it, it turns out. Just as I suspected, she does not answer.

  I shake my head. While I’ve still got the phone open, I check the time on the display. “We’ve got to get this junk out of here.” I wave my arm at Roxie’s stockpile of stuff. “Jake and Tiara are gonna be showing up to open the diner soon, and, you know, they take a lot of stuff in stride, but I don’t think they’ve ever actually seen stakes before, you know?”

  “Yeah.” Roxie takes another long pull on the cigarette, and drops it to the floor, crushes it out with her boot. Tiara is going to be pissed that she’s going to have to sweep before opening, but I am not telling this Amazon warrior of a demon hunter where to put out her cigarettes. Even if I really, really want to.

  Roxie has a big white Econoline van, the kind that people are always getting kidnapped into on cop shows. And it’s full of stuff. I really hope that we don’t get pulled over, because I am not sure how we’re supposed to explain the crossbows to cops. And Stan. Really not sure how to explain Stan.

  I sit down clumsily next to one of the crossbows. A moment later Ryan heaves Stan’s unconscious body next to mine—at least Stan’s head lands on my calf, and not on the floor. I hitch S
tan up and put his head in my lap. He looks asleep. Sort of. The werewolf bite on his arm is shrinking. I really hope he doesn’t wake up while we’re still driving.

  Ryan came back from wherever just as we were finished loading the van. He looks unhappy. Good. I don’t think he could’ve actually gone all the way out to Long Island to look for Amanda, but he could’ve checked out her usual clubs. He’s done it before, when we were worried about her. Or when I was worried about her, and he was just a gigantic faker.

  Bitter? You bet.

  But he’s back now, and I guess he’s noticed that I’m pissed, or he’s pissed because he doesn’t have a triple backed-up escape route out of Hell, or . . . I don’t even know.

  As soon as Ryan gets out of sight, I wiggle around uncomfortably. I’m still not used to the duster, or to the leather pants, which are too tight around my thighs and too loose around my waist. The pants look kind of stupid with my ugly white cooking shoes. They are the kind that nurses wear, and they are super-comfortable. And there is no way that I’m going to wear brand new leather boots that aren’t broken in to wander around Hell; I mean, come on, who wants to be dealing with blisters while fighting demons? Not me.

  There are no seatbelts. Now I really hope that we don’t get pulled over, because no seatbelts in New York City equals trouble-with-a-capital-T, and that rhymes with P and that stands for points on your license. Is that more points or less than for monsters-in-the-making in the back? I wonder if demon hunters care about that kind of thing—losing your license, I mean—or if one of their psychic witches can magic the problem away.

  I bet there’s a Door in each DMV location. I bet the Doors in the DMV slow down time and that’s why it always takes so damn long, and why there are always such long lines. I bet demons love shit like that. If I were a demon that’s the kind of mischief I’d make, for sure.

  Something’s poking my leg. It’s one of the crossbow bolts, short and blunt and hopefully it can’t actually rip these pants. The bolt has a tiny Star of David carved into the end of it. That’s awesome. Mostly Ryan fights with Christian and pagan stuff; I think maybe once or twice I’ve seen him fight with things like the Star of David and the Seal of Solomon, but those demons don’t come through the Door very much. Not through my Door anyway—my Door gets a lot of vampires and werewolves. The boring stuff, except for the last couple of days (because seriously, a shedu? Come on).

  I kind of like that I’ve been doing this for so long that I am totally blasé about certain kinds of demons. Oh, a vampire, yawwwwn. I push the bolt away and try to settle in with a bunch of weaponry and a werewolf wannabe draped on me.

  Christian and Jackson climb in and sit across from me. Ryan and Roxie get in up front, because clearly, since Ryan and Roxie are vying to be in charge, they should get to sit in the seats with seatbelts.

  “You excited?” Christian asks me, pushing aside a bag full of wooden stakes. I’ve never used a wooden stake before; I wonder if they give you splinters.

  “I’m totally excited,” I reply. I am. I am still really angry, but I’m getting over it. Except for Ryan. Ryan is still on my shit list. “But I feel like I’m not supposed to be excited. You know?”

  “You shouldn’t be,” says Jackson. Thanks, Jackson. He’s sitting next to Christian, with a box of salt between them. Both he and Christian are rocking their leather look—their pants look like they fit properly. I wonder if there is a tailor I could bribe with pie. Jackson suddenly cracks a smile. “But I’m excited too.”

  “Yep.” Christian slides his baseball cap so that the brim is in the back. If he wasn’t wearing leather, if he was wearing, like, a tracksuit or something, he’d look just like all the guys I went to high school with on Long Island. Every time he opens his mouth and that drawl comes out, it’s a surprise.

  Jackson doesn’t really have an accent, which is also a surprise. With his high cheekbones and soft mouth, I want him to be French, and kind of slick, and maybe a little smarmy or flirtatious. But he’s not—he’s just a regular guy. Maybe he’s from California or something; he’s got that no-accent like people on television. And he has really dark skin, like a permanent tan.

  Christian pokes me with his boot. “You’re not bad for a mundane,” he says as Roxie starts the car. Christian has a nice smile for a jerk. I think he is the flirt.

  “You’re just saying that because I fed you,” I say.

  “Everyone ready?” Roxie calls, but doesn’t wait for an answer before she peels out. She’s got a lead foot, and we’re definitely going too fast.

  The car swings wildly around a corner. “Hey, do we need a cover story?” I ask quickly. “Because I’m wondering how we’re going to explain the crossbows to the cops when they pull us over to ticket Roxie.” I am only half joking, and Christian and Jackson both laugh.

  “We work for Medieval Times,” Ryan calls from up front. I wonder if he really does? Maybe that’s where he goes when he disappears. Sir Ryan of Pennythwaite. I would make fun of him until the end of time. “And if it comes up at all, Stan’s drunk.”

  “But don’t worry about it.” Jackson shakes his head. “Cops don’t ask. And when they do, they’re not mundane cops anyway, just other hunters giving us a hard time.”

  “There are hunters who are cops? Seriously?” I don’t know why I’m surprised; hunters seem to like jobs that come with uniforms.

  “Of course. Hunters do everything. We’re everywhere—or we try to be. It makes things a lot easier. A hunter who’s a cop can pull strings to hide evidence better than a hunter who works at Target.” Jackson grins, but Christian scowls. That must be a dig at the Baseball Cap hunters.

  “So most of the hunters who are cops wear Fedoras?” I guess.

  Christian scowls again. “Yeah, but they don’t guard Doors.”

  I am slowly learning about hunter hierarchy.

  “So . . . hunters who guard Doors are better than hunters who don’t?” I guess out loud.

  “Hunters who guard Doors just have standing positions. Hunters who don’t guard Doors do other things, like make sure that the demons who do escape get caught,” explains Jackson. Christian snorts.

  “The good hunters who guard the Doors don’t let anything escape,” says Christian. His accent is getting thicker so he must be pissed off.

  “I am not trying to start shit here,” I say too loudly. Ryan turns around from where he’s talking to Roxie, and glares at me.

  “Allie, just shut up,” he snaps.

  “You shut up,” I reply. Jackson and Christian look from Ryan to me and laugh; Christian laughs the loudest, and shakes his head.

  Jackson punches Christian in the arm. “So that’s how it is,” says Jackson. “She’s off-limits.”

  “I’m not anything.” I am in a crabby mood, and do not want to talk about this. “I just want to know—”

  “Can we have some quiet please?” asks Roxie. She sounds snippy too. Great, we’re all in terrible moods. It’s sure going to be fun to fight back to back with everyone. You know, if they let the blood bank fight. “Allie, put on your damn hat.”

  “I refuse to take part in the ridiculous partisan hat wearing,” I snipe. “You all can keep your hats to yourselves.”

  “You need something for when we go through the Door,” says Christian. He pats my leg. Apparently I am not so off-limits. “We won’t take it as you siding with one faction or another.”

  I pull my sunglasses out of one of the inside pockets of my duster. “I have sunglasses. I’m starting a new faction,” I declare.

  “I can get behind that,” nods Jackson. “We need some fresh blood.”

  “Allie will train up a bunch of badass sunglasses hunters.” Ryan sounds like he’s trying not to snicker. He also sounds his age, which is just weird. “They’ll fight the forces of bad fashion everywhere.”

  That’s harsh, even for Ryan. “Well, you never know.” I smile sweetly as I slide my sunglasses on. They’re from the drugstore, and have rhinestones on the s
ides. “My fashion sense could save your life.”

  “Sure,” replies Ryan. “And then—”

  “Y’all just shut up,” snaps Roxie, and we do. I guess she’s in charge after all.

  Roxie likes her Door, inasmuch as any hunter likes a Door. She justifies this by saying that it’s very defensible. We’re going to her Door because it’s big enough for us all to walk through, and there’s a parking lot that doesn’t charge for parking. Hunters are cheapskates.

  When we get to the Sheepshead Bay theater, Ryan goes back to being Dark Knight Hunter Guy and looks over the situation. The Door—wrought iron like mine and the mall’s, and it doesn’t talk to me, but I hear it hum something almost friendly to Roxie—is pressed into the far corner of the main screen’s balcony. To the left is carpeted wall, and to the right is a big pile of storage boxes labeled BUTTER FLAVORING, blocking that side’s stairs to the balcony seats. The pile’s a mess—I bet Roxie put it together, and has to keep making it every time the theater workers pull it down again.

  Ryan nods. “Good setup. Very Thermopylae.”

  I have no idea what that is, and I don’t think Roxie does either, because she scowls at him. She points at the Door with her knife, maybe only coincidentally cutting off a tendril of blackness I’ve just noticed inching out of it. Not so friendly, then. “Things come out,” she says. “They’ve got nowhere to go but toward me. I kill them.”

  Ryan blinks at her. “That’s what I said.”

  Christian and Jackson snicker. For crazy faction foes, they’re having a great time watching the Stetsons implode. Roxie scowls at them too, and then at me because I guess I am being left out. I smile brightly. She slices off another tendril, this time without looking. I think to myself, Someday I want to be that badass. Also, that scary.

  “Come on,” says Ryan. “We’ve got places to be. Any last information?”

  Christian raises his chin. “Me. I called Narnia again while you were . . .” He slides a look at me, then goes back to Ryan. “Out. She said she’s been looking at entrails. They said to bring something we need to find our way through the Doors, and to leave something of ourselves behind to find our way home.”