Salt and Silver

by Anna Katherine

  Jackson nods gravely. “And not to call her anymore.”

  Christian steals Jackson’s Fedora and pops it out of shape. They grin at one another. Total bromance.

  “Something we need? We don’t know what we need. That’s why we’re going.” Roxie kicks the butter flavoring boxes, and then mutters darkly as she carefully restacks them.

  “Witches,” I say sagely. They all look at me. Shit, that means I have to say something smart. Um. “It’s an allegory?”

  Ryan rolls his eyes, but he looks at the Door and then back at me. “What do we need to find?”

  I know I’m angry, but . . . this is what we do. I raise my eyebrows. “An answer?”

  “To what question?”

  “Where my Door went.”

  He waves that aside. “We don’t even know if that’s related. We need to fix the symptoms before we can even start thinking about the problem.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Symptoms. Why there are more Doors?”

  He shakes his head. “I think we need to save the metaphysical for Narnia. Forget the ‘why.’ ”

  Roxie’s watching the both of us now, and she looks less frustrated. “We need action. How to stop them multiplying,” she suggests.

  I chew my lip. “Too simple. That’s just one thing. We want the whole shebang. Slow down the increase, slow down the activity—”

  “Control,” Ryan says.

  Christian gets into the swing of it too. It’s like they’ve never heard of group brainstorming. Where were they during the three AM leadership seminars on PBS? “Can’t,” he says. “The Doors are Chaos—they’re Hell. That’s god territory, the gods that know the true names, and I don’t think we’ll find a helpful one of those through the Door.”

  “True names?” I ask, because I am easily distracted.

  “You think Roxie’s my true name?” Roxie says with a quick smile.

  Ryan is now studying the Door with a lot of attention. A lot a lot.

  “I know you all have a name thing,” I say slowly. Oh, if Ryan is not his real name, I am going to kill him. Or call him Nigel.

  I will call him Nigel forever.

  Christian shrugs. “And your true name isn’t Allie, right?”

  “My name—”

  Ryan whips around and in seconds is by my side. His hand covers my mouth. He looks into my eyes. “Don’t tell anyone your true name. It’s you,” he says. “It’s stronger than salt.”

  His eyes are . . . I just. I just can’t. His eyes are searching mine, worried, young, old, scared. I nod, and because I can’t help but remember six years of wanting him, I touch my tongue to the palm of his hand.

  He closes his eyes and takes a ragged breath. So I know this: Whatever his name is, he likes that.

  “Come on, lovebirds,” Roxie says. “You’d think we weren’t standing at a dark abyss.”

  Ryan steps back. “Stronger than salt,” he says again, and then looks at Roxie. “That’s the leaving behind part. To find our way home again. Bind our blood to this dimension with salt, and we’ll find our way home.”

  Roxie thinks about it, and nods. “That’s good. I like that. But what do we bring with us?”

  If salt’s the answer to the second riddle, then . . . I bet I know the first. “Salt binds, silver heals. We want to heal the Doors—right now they’re out of whack. Everything’s out of balance. We want to heal everything.” And that’s when I think: including Stan. I don’t say it, though. He’s a lump on the floor from where Jackson dropped him, curled up and small. He looks like he did when I first met him, twelve years old, all tousled hair and freckles.

  And now he’s unconscious. And he’s forgotten. And he’s bitten.

  We’ll heal everything.

  “Silver,” I say now. “We bring silver with us.”

  Jackson looks uncertain. “Silver brings the Door-hounds. We’ll die.”

  Ryan says, “Only unpure silver, and we were screwed with that to begin with, unless you thought ahead to get all your silver cauters done with the pure stuff?” Everyone looks embarrassed. I just press my hand against my silver-scarred stomach. Ryan continues, “But maybe not all of us will die. And anyway, I think Allie’s right.”

  While I am gratified that as a poor silly mundane I still get to be right once in a while, I still want to know: “Door-hounds?”

  “Stop asking questions,” Roxie says. She narrows her eyes and looks at all of us. “We’re five. I’m thinking only one of us will die, not more.”

  “We’re six,” I say. “Stan’s coming too.”

  She makes a face. Even though it was her idea, to her, he’s already evil. “Six, then. Maybe we’ll be able to keep one of you two.” She’s talking about the blood. Thank you for the reminder.

  Ryan’s looking at me. And then he’s looking away. I guess he’s remembering too. Fine.

  I slide my sunglasses down over my eyes. I can’t see for shit, but who cares? I’m just here to party.

  “Let’s get this done,” I say.

  Jackson has a smaller knife than Roxie’s pigsticker, and he says it’s clean, so I don’t flinch too much when he cuts my finger. Blood wells up—I sprinkle some of my margarita salt on it (larger salt doesn’t sting as much—these are the things you learn), then swipe the theater wall. Uck. That stings.

  When he’s cut everybody else, and while they’re marking this dimension as home, I take Jackson’s knife and cut Stan. Someone has to. He needs to find his way home too.

  His blood is dark, and oily.

  I remember Stan’s fourteenth birthday party. We snuck away from the kids his parents made him invite, and the “friends of the family” his parents wanted to schmooze, and drank raspberry-flavored wine coolers in his room. He cried, and told me he thought he might like boys. Later, I stood support on the three-way call when he told Amanda. Amanda didn’t say anything for a second, and then she talked and laughed and started gossiping about all the boys in class she thought he should make out with.

  I don’t want Stan to die.

  “Do we have silver?” Ryan asks.

  Roxie nods, and pulls forward one of the duffle bags I helped her pack. She’d explained to me that she wanted to leave a store of silver outside the Door for when we came back out, to heal any of the wounds we might have gotten inside the Hells. I think it’s very forward-thinking of her to believe so firmly that we’re going to make it out of the Hells without dying. She doesn’t even call them Hells—she calls them “the underworld.”

  While she’s bent over the duffle bag, a larger tendril of blackness comes winding out from the base of the Door, and wraps itself gently around Roxie’s ankle. She reaches down to the tendril and I could swear that she pats it before she rips it off her leg.

  The Door whimpers. Their relationship is very, very odd.

  “Here,” Roxie says. “Silver for everyone.”

  The talisman on string—it feels like silk, to my practiced hand—that Roxie hands me is an ankh. I finger it for a moment. It’s portentous. The ankh stands for life everlasting, and I am a sucker for symbolism. So instead of putting it over my neck, I put it over Stan’s. I’m wearing silk underwear, anyway, I don’t need a silk necklace. And Stan needs life everlasting more than I do. He’s got maybe an hour in this dimension before he changes into a werewolf for good, maybe two, tops. The greenish pus that had been oozing from the bite is gone, and it is about as big as a pinprick, but glowing green. Not a good sign, not at all.

  Roxie shakes her head at me, but hands me another talisman. Ah, a Seal of Solomon. I wish I’d thought to bring the one Ryan gave me. This Seal is the most intricate one I’ve ever seen, and it has a bunch of lettering on it that I don’t recognize. Maybe Hebrew. The one still under my pillow is a simple set of lines and dots. Still powerful, less pretty, a lot heavier. This Seal’s necklace is leather. I slip it over my head.

  The silver is cool against my chest. I look totally badass in the lamia leather—no bra, but the vest is tight enough th
at my cleavage is to die for. If this were an action movie, I’d totally be the heroine. Or at least the heroine’s best friend.

  Except Amanda is my best friend, and she’s not coming to Hell. Thank god. I called her a bunch of times on the way over to the movie theater. No answer at all, just right to voice mail. And I’m glad. At least she has a chance of not dying, you know, right now.

  Ryan looks at me. “Are you ready?” Ryan pulls out his knife—I am the only person in the world without a knife at this point, I swear—and hands it over. “There’s strength in pain freely given,” he tells me. I grimace and prick the tip of my finger. I have to press really hard to get a drop, because, once again, I didn’t let it go deep enough, but I am not going to wuss out. I let my blood drip down, and then I sling it at the Door. Am I supposed to be doing anything else here?

  The Door laughs at me.

  It laughs, and it does nothing, and everyone’s staring at me, and this—this is not cool, Door. This is not right. If this is all I can do for these people, if this is all I’m worth, you will take this fucking blood and you will open for this goddamn crew of people, and—

  “Take it!” I finally scream. In my mind, I speak like Doors, and say, You know me. Open. Now.

  The Door growls, a long, low growl like thunder, and then it’s open. There are no gates. There’s no purple bruising around its outside. It looks just like a Door that I’d walk through, if I were to walk into a cold basement, or a silent attic, or all the other human places that we just don’t feel right about.

  Roxie steps in front of me, takes a deep breath, and steps through the Door.

  She’s gone.

  There’s icy air blowing out of the open Door. Jackson and Christian are next, carrying Stan between them. It’s just me and Ryan now. He takes my hand.

  “When you get through, wait until I come out, and then spill another drop of blood and say whatever you said to the Door just now. That should do . . . something. Probably useful. You ready?” he says, looking down at me, his hand in mine, his eyes . . . I surge up and take his mouth with mine. If I’m gonna go out, I’m gonna do it with style. At the press of my lips, he pulls me in toward his body, his fingers threaded through the belt loops on my leather pants.

  I pull away first. I pull away, and twist to look through the Door. I’m so angry—it’s taken so much from me. It’s even made this kiss something different than it should have been.

  You bitch, I think at it. There’s no way you’re ever going to win.

  There’s something like laughter back at me, but fuck it. Fuck this.

  I take a deep breath of brimstone, lean back against Ryan, and then shove myself through the Door after Roxie, and Ryan is right behind me. He’s so warm, he’s radiating heat, and I’m burning up too, I’m burning from the inside out with all the fire, all the blue fire that never stops burning, all the blue fire that kills the demons, the blue fire that’s killing me.

  It’s suddenly very quiet.

  10

  I open my eyes when I feel Roxie’s hand on me. I know it’s her. I can smell her the way I can smell demons and Ryan. The way I can smell Amanda (vodka and a slowly rotting liver and the Dr. Pepper–flavored lip gloss she used for years because I gave it to her); the way I can smell Stan (stale makeup and stale sex that never quite washes off and the burned plastic smell of a perfectly executed wallride on a really top of the line skateboard); the way I can smell the diner (bleach, pancakes, pot roast, blood); the way I smelled the dead underneath Bath & Body Works (blood, blood, copper, iron, blood, and horrible horrible flowers).

  I never realized I could smell this before, but standing in this freezing cold valley of red sand, with ash, like snow, floating in the air, I can smell everything, and I can remember smells I never knew I had stored in me.

  Roxie smells warm like a snake, hot like scales in the sun, slithery. With all this cold, I kind of want to wrap her around me like an electric blanket. Except suddenly I can see her, really see her, when I open my eyes to her hot hand; snakes on her palm, snakes on her arm. Snakes all around her.

  Maybe I won’t wrap myself with her just yet.

  But those snakes . . . are they the avatars? The hunters said there would be avatars, but I was kind of expecting shimmering figures to come out of the sky or in our dreams or something, leading the way and talking mysteriously. Maybe they still will. Maybe Roxie is really just a snake deep down.

  I look down at myself. No snakes. Thank god. Just skin and blue fire . . . and maybe something moving quickly out of view. I will have to ask somebody what it is I can’t see. I don’t want to be something I’m not, particularly if it’s something gross. Who wants to be gross? Been there, lost the money, gone through the redemptive poverty stage.

  I look down at Stan. His breathing is getting easier, which is good? Bad? He doesn’t have anything different about him. Nothing new, extra. Except this: He smells like he belongs.

  I don’t like that he belongs in Hell, now.

  A popping sound comes from behind me; I turn and it’s Ryan stepping through the Door. When I look at him there is a woman, like a transparency, overlaid on him, moving as he moves. She looks like—okay, she looks like an ancient Egyptian, like all that Egyptian stuff we’ve all seen our whole lives. She’s beautiful, but she’s kind of scary at the same time. She carries a staff, and she’s wearing something red and tight and much too light for the current temperatures.

  Ryan steps closer to me, away from the Door, and the transparency moves with him, except a beat behind the Egyptian woman is another woman, with wings, and she’s surrounded by stars. When she moves, behind her, finally, the last ghost in the train, is an honest-to-God lioness, tawny fur and big gold eyes. Ryan is apparently complicated. Color me surprised.

  He’s the last one, so I nick a finger on my hand and let a drop fall on the ground. “You know me,” I say out loud, and feel really stupid doing it. But it worked before, and in the distance (a really long distance), I think I hear a Door say, Hello, Allie.

  It’s the only thing that happens after I drop the blood, so I shrug, and I point. We’re in a valley now—there are mountains, with fire, where the next Door is, through a blizzard of ash and below a reddish-black sky. That’s where we need to go. Allie, Amateur Psychic, now with extra Compass Feature. It looks a long way off, and there’s nothing to block that biting wind from hitting us the entire journey.

  “I think this is Kur,” says Ryan. He’s got at least two voices speaking through him, maybe three. “Which means we’re in the Sumerian Hell sequence. Get your kerchiefs on.”

  Sumerian? What? Apparently I say this out loud, because Roxie says quietly, “He doesn’t know, chère. Not really. Just go with it. I’ll let you know if we need to change plans.” She sounds like hisses. I am not sure I am comforted.

  I pull my bandanna off my head, and the wind whips my hair and stings my cheek, but I don’t want to breathe whatever is in the ash. My bandanna is pink; everyone else’s is black. I’m totally an individual. I bend over and pull up Stan’s kerchief too, not that anyone cares. I care. That’s what’s important. Only then do I take a band out of my pocket and pull my hair into a ponytail.

  Christian clicks a little underneath his voice. He’s like a giant spider, or he is a giant spider, or there are thousands of tiny spiders crawling all over him. I’m not sure; it shifts when I blink, and I can’t get a good look. “Jackson, where’s—”

  He’s not here. I finally notice. Did he chicken out? Did I do the recognition spell too soon? Didn’t he come through with Christian? He—

  Ryan looks at me, and lets out his breath, and turns away. Oh.

  Jackson must be dead. The first of us to die. I knew someone would, Roxie said one in six, if we were lucky, and I hoped it wouldn’t be me, and Jackson said the silver would kill us, and—This is my fault, I try to say, words pushing, everything is my fault lately, but all I say is, “Jackson—”

  “Let’s go,” orders Christian. H
e pulls down his baseball cap over his eyes and hoists Stan in a fireman’s carry. He heads in the direction I pointed at earlier, and he doesn’t look back.

  We walk through sand, the cold leaching up through my shoes and numbing my feet, and the sky is dark. I run my fingers over my chain-iron belt. I feel better with the iron. Iron kills, iron kills, ironkillsironkills.

  In front of me, Christian clicks and clicks. We’re on an incline now, heading closer to those mountains. Doors make everything slow, but in Hell itself, things move fast. Is that irony? Or just an ’80s power ballad?

  We’ve hit a path, now. Hell must have mountain goats. Around a corner—and there’s Jackson’s body. It’s been impaled on five spikes—head, heart, genitals, both palms. He’s surrounded by fluttering wings; tiny, tiny vampires. Or just butterflies. I don’t know. He’s dead. That’s all.

  Hell is cold, and it is mountainous, and I want to stop but I don’t think we can. We leave Jackson behind.

  Roxie reaches out and squeezes my hand. I feel the snakes slither over me, hot and dry. Every time I close my eyes, I see Jackson’s hand with a spike through it, his iron knife on the side, his lamia leather completely untouched except for the spike through his back.

  We can’t take him with us. Part of it is that we’re already dragging Stan’s dead weight, but part of it is that we always leave men behind. Hunters can’t come back.

  I’m scared and I’m shaking.

  The valley where we entered is a long way back now, and I can barely hear its Door. (Though what I do hear, softly, is a hum like lullabyes. Shudder.) The next Door, though, doesn’t sound any closer. I don’t know. We’ve been walking a long time, and Christian’s already handed Stan off to Ryan to carry. I offered to do it instead, but Ryan shook his head and Roxie said, “We can’t group you two together.”

  I guess that means if something jumps out and attacks, she’d rather one of us survives instead of both getting eaten at once. Glad to see that pragmatic approach still going strong.