Salt and Silver

by Anna Katherine

  As we drive, I can see the skylines and buildings give way to trees. The sun is setting, and the sky is pink and orange.

  Before we get to the diner, Narnia wakes up enough to explain a little about what she’s going to do when we get to Amanda’s. It has to do with magic, and hunters holding off demons so that we can get inside, and somehow we can make the Door move back to the diner, try to get it to spit out the wishes, or just get smaller, or take away its power—

  I spend most of her speechifying trying to nap, sunglasses perched precariously on my nose. I know I should be listening, because what she’s going to do is important to what I have to do, but . . . I don’t think there’s really any way to prepare for this.

  Before the van is even parked, I am jumping out. I have never been so happy to see my tiny storefront diner in my life. There are vamps standing outside it, and it’s full dark, but I snarl at them, and they don’t even bother me. I don’t bother them either; there’s enough time for hunting them down and killing them with all the iron I can find later.

  I stop when I get inside. The diner is full of hunters. The smell of lamia clothes makes me gag a little. I push my way through them, and let Ryan and Roxie and Narnia do the talking.

  Dawn is in the back. It’s nice to see her too. She has orange streaks in her hair today, and her eyeliner is mixed with glitter and smeared all around her eyes. She looks a little like a crazy raccoon, and I feel a pang in my heart. I like her a lot, and she’s awesome, and I am glad she’s not dead.

  “Shit, Allie, do you see those . . .” She trails off when she sees my clothes, my sweat-matted hair, my crooked sunglasses.

  “I can’t talk now, Dawn. I really can’t,” I tell her. My voice is hoarse. I don’t bother taking off the sunglasses.

  “O-okay,” she says, but stares at me expectantly.

  “I’m not even going to promise to explain this to you later, because I probably won’t,” I tell her. “I have to go.”

  I jog up the stairs into my apartment, without waiting for her to answer me. It’s stuffy and smells stale. I just take a deep breath and get what I need: my Seal of Solomon, and a new nail.

  Amanda was the one who gave me Betsy. After we met Ryan, she went online and bought me “coffin nails” off a Wiccan website. She laughed and laughed when they came, but Ryan said it only mattered that they were actual iron. I’ve wounded a lot of bad things with Betsy since then, even if she is a gimmick.

  But now Betsy’s gone, still stuck in Stan somewhere in a Hell dimension, and I need a new nail.

  “I’m going to call you Dan,” I tell the nail. “Steely Dan.” I giggle a little. I might be getting hysterical. I can’t tell. I tuck Steely Dan into one of my pockets, and reach under my pillow for the Seal of Solomon that Ryan gave me so long ago. I string it onto an old stainless steel chain necklace that I have, taking off its charm as I do it. It’s from when Amanda and I were really young, before we met Stan, when we promised to be best friends forever, and used our allowances to buy matching BFF necklaces. It’s not a coincidence that I picked that chain. It’s the oldest steel that I have, and the Seal of Solomon is my most important piece of silver.

  I don’t know if stuff like that really matters, but just in case it does, I want to be prepared.

  The Seal of Solomon hangs too heavy around my neck, and it’s going to give me a really bad headache. But not yet. Maybe not ‘til this is over. I keep my hand on the talisman for an extra second, and then take another deep breath and head back downstairs. It’s too bad I don’t have more weapons, like a sword or—

  I have a knife. That’s what I have. I run into the kitchen and grab my really good knife off the magnetic strip that runs across the wall. It’s full of knives—bread knives, chopping knives, slicing knives, sushi knives, every kind of knife you can think of. I am a collector. I am a connoisseur. But the knife I take is the one I love, the too-expensive one that Sally gave me before she left.

  I wrap it in a dishcloth, and tuck it into one of the inside pockets of the coat, under Dawn’s watchful and curious eyes.

  “Seriously, I am never going to tell you what’s going on,” I tell her. “If I don’t come back, though, I want you to run the diner.”

  “I have no clue how to run a diner, Allie. That is, like, way above my pay grade.”

  “You’ll learn. I did.” I kiss her cheek, and head back out into the dining area, where the hunters have thinned out. They’re all clutching pieces of paper.

  “We gave them directions; yours were a little muddy,” says Ryan. He looks at me a long moment, like he’s going to say something else, but then he walks right out again.

  Roxie catches my arm. “Come on. We’re taking the van.”

  I look around the room one last time, the weird art on the walls that Dawn convinced me looked good. It was some local artist who painted trees, like Bob Ross. Happy little trees. The paintings don’t really go with the ’50s-style décor that Sally rocked, but they made people happy. They made me happy.

  This diner made me happy. I really hope that I get to see it again, that Amanda’s crazy hasn’t ruined my life, that it won’t kill me.

  I really really really do not want to die today.

  20

  Two hours later, and I can tell we’re getting close. I can smell the Atlantic, salt and fish and rot.

  Amanda’s driveway is long and winding, even though her family’s house isn’t set very far back off the road. It’s a classic McMansion, built for flash, not substance. They have to put in new windows and carpets every time there’s a hurricane and the house floods.

  Ryan pulls open the back doors of the van and the scent of chlorine pours in. A pool next to the ocean. It’s so damn decadent. And I am totally not the same person I was six years ago, because six years ago I thought the ocean was tacky, and pools were for rich people. Now I’d rather go in the ocean, touch the sand, than be in a giant tub of concrete and chlorine.

  Everything is quiet. I really do not want to say “too quiet,” but it is, it really is. I should hear the ocean. I should hear planes flying overhead. I should hear gulls, and a TV playing too loudly in the pool house, and stupid rich people’s boats skipping across the dark water, out of sight behind the pretty white fence surrounding us and the pool.

  There’s nothing.

  I’ve been through Hells today, and now I’m terrified.

  I don’t know what Ryan’s thinking. I guess I mean literally—I haven’t heard anything since I followed Narnia to call the hunters. Maybe I burnt myself out.

  Ryan’s not looking at me, and I bet he isn’t thinking about Amanda—Amanda who he’s known for six years and probably never slept with, Amanda I’ve known since I was two. I’m clutching my weapons and wondering if I’m ever going to see Amanda alive again.

  The pool house windows are kind of staring at me.

  A Baseball Cap carrying something under one arm holds up his hand, and we all stop. It’s Owen. He’s still in uniform. He points half of us toward the other side of the pool to make the approach; his group is apparently going to do something complicated that looks like waving their arms like propellers. I do not understand this crazy military gesturing. Everyone else does, though, because about half the hunters nod, and the rest are already moving.

  Behind me, I hear clicky clicky heels. For a moment I think it’s Amanda—but it’s only Narnia. Ryan hears her heels and winces. Narnia makes a face at me when she sees me watching; I can’t believe she’s still wearing Balenciaga.

  But she just pulls off her boots—she really is tiny when she’s not in the stilettos—and, of course, she’s wearing thigh-high stockings that she rolls down and tucks into the boots. Then she unbuttons her jacket, strips off her camisole, unzips her skirt, and she’s naked. Her body is gorgeous. She’s got none of the scars that I do.

  Some of the hunters are staring at her. Roxie is. Ryan isn’t. Ryan’s looking at the house, ignoring us all.

  I look back at Narnia, an
d watch as she lowers herself naked into the pool, and I have to say, that takes balls. I know what’s happened in that pool; I took the blackmail photos at those parties.

  I don’t care about the people who are staring at her. Ryan so clearly doesn’t care that I feel kind of petty. Jesus. Narnia’s naked in a pool filled with god-knows-what, here to do something weird and witchy to save my friend (and maybe the world, okay, whatever), and all I can think is Suck it, bitch, I got him and you didn’t.

  Maybe I am meaner than I ought to be.

  While Narnia’s dog-paddling to the center of the pool, half of Owen’s group has inched itself along the right-side fencing; the other half has already scaled the fence and is probably heading around the front of the house. I think about the front of the house, think like poking the roof of your mouth with your tongue to see if you’re ticklish there, and I get nothing. It’s not . . . bad, like the pool house. But it could be, I guess. It could become so.

  Ryan’s group heads along the left-side fencing, closer to the pool. We’re all positioning ourselves. I hang back near Narnia; I watch what’s happening.

  Ryan and Owen, leading their groups, look at each other for a long moment. They nod, and both move to open the front door of the beach house. On the ride over there was a lot of talk about magical protections, entrances that are traps, stuff like that. Everybody brought a little something to aid their way, but nothing as big as Ryan with his salt and iron–packed shotgun shells and Owen with, I kid you not, a bleached white horse’s skull with colored ribbons tied on. That is what he is carrying. How did he get that on the train? Maybe one of the other Baseball Caps said it was for a modern interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Maybe one of the Fedoras said it was because Owen was foreign. Maybe they all turned and whispered loudly, “You think that’s weird? That guy thinks he has a magic gun.”

  I wish Stan was still alive so I could tell him my theory, and hear him snicker about hunters and their bones and/or guns. I wish Amanda was safe somewhere on the other end of the cell phone, bitching and constant. I even wish Dawn was here, except not really, because she’s not really involved in this, and she would probably die.

  I wish my daydreams weren’t filled with death. It gives me cause to worry about my future state of sanity.

  I can’t hear anything from Ryan’s head, but from Owen I hear a whisper. He’s rocking the horse’s head in time to it. Agorwch y drysau, gadewch i ni chwarae, mae’n oer yn yr eira . . .

  That’s not British.

  Roxie’s humming lullabies in her mind. A sixteen-year-old punk hunter with metal caps on her teeth is wondering if she should have taken the time to write that fan letter to Neil Gaiman. An older guy, somewhere behind me, is wishing he’d called his mother. I guess everyone’s got a story.

  For my part, I shut it out, quiet my head. I slide my sunglasses down onto my nose. I’ve got Steely Dan in one hand, the Seal of Solomon talisman around my neck, and the iron chain around my waist. I’ve been to Hell. I’ve got silver in me. I am ready to roll.

  The front of the house explodes.

  Ryan and Owen, closest to the front door, are thrown the farthest—Owen’s horsie goes flying into the pool, and Ryan’s shotgun hits the ground and cracks a shot into the air, because, you know, walking into the presence of a Door means that maybe you should be able to fire things immediately and not worry about flipping the safety first. If we both survive this, I am going to make so much fucking fun of him. If.

  All the rest of us are either on the ground or on one knee—it wasn’t a fire explosion, but it was something. I reach out.

  You know me, I say to the Door.

  I know you, agrees the Door, its voice odd. Don’t come any closer.

  “Don’t go any closer!” I yell, but everybody’s a little deaf from the explosion, and all the hunters are talking, they can’t hear me.

  What do you want? I ask it desperately, but there’s no answer.

  Roxie recovers first, and, swearing, pulls out her knives and makes a run for the giant hole where the stucco used to be.

  A wave of blackness pours out of the hole, fog and bees and malevolence. Roxie jumps, and slides right through it—she screams, and I can’t see anything of her but the flash of her knives, slicing.

  Things start moving fast.

  Hunters run toward the house, some shouting things, some bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. I think there’s a berserker in there. I’m standing still, watching. The only other person not moving is Narnia. This is because she is sitting on a three-foot plume of water in the center of the pool. Her eye sockets are sunken, totally empty. When the black bee thing rears up, and a wisp of it swings out over the top of the fence, Narnia’s pool water snaps out and there’s a burning smell. I cannot remember if burning chlorine is actually healthy to inhale. If I live through this, then I’ll worry about it.

  I look for Ryan. He’s pulled himself up and gone to snatch his shotgun. His nose is bleeding. He doesn’t look at me. He hasn’t looked at me since we got here. I get the impression he thinks I’m going to die.

  I might die. There are more things coming out of the house now. A group of vampires, wings spread, meet the oncoming hunters in a tumbling mess—they die easy, though, since all the hunters are carrying iron. Behind them come the werewolves. Tall and mangy, with long claws between their fingers and black eyes with a thousand facets. They’re harder to kill, and I start seeing some of my hunters, my hunters, go down. The hunters need silver, not iron, for the werewolves; it takes a moment for them to switch pockets, pull out different weapons to match what’s going on. But they do, and—

  The Door, or whatever is inside, tries something different.

  Allie! I hear a sweet, almost girlish voice say. It’s the Door. Allie!

  That’s all it’s doing, saying my name. Whatever. But I look around, and some of the hunters . . . they’re not just looking puzzled and then going back to kicking ass. They’re stopping. I brush across the hunters’ minds, checking in, because this is not normal. And in every head, I hear a different name.

  Tommy!

  Reynard!

  Nox!

  Jessica!

  Most of the names are dumb sounding or just, you know, not quite right. They smell off. But not all. Like Jessica. She’s about thirty feet away, the length of the diner, and she was fighting a pair of vampires that had made it through the first rush. Now she’s standing still, looking in the direction of the house, and the vampires are pushed up against her, their mouth proboscis in her neck and their wings curled all around her.

  Jessica must be her true name. She said it in front of a Door once, and what one Door knows, they all know. My Door’s using all the names it has to try and take just one more of us out.

  It’s doing everything it can to keep us from getting inside.

  The fight’s about equal now, if equal means hunters are outnumbered five to one, but they’re at least holding their ground. I’m still standing back, parallel to Narnia in the pool. Her water whips are still flying around, keeping most of the malevolence in our tiny area. I don’t know what would happen if she couldn’t do it—I think the world really would die. But at least she’s doing something. I’m just standing here.

  It’s not that I’m a coward. And it’s not that I don’t think this is my fight. But here is a true thing: I am extremely pragmatic. I need to survive for as long as possible, because I am the only person still alive who knows anything about Amanda. And that’s what this is going to take. Hell is what you bring with you—the Door is what you need it to be.

  I bet I know the things Amanda needs.

  The black fog abruptly rears back and shrinks back into the pool house. I can’t see Roxie. It looks almost normal, the house I mean, except for the part where it has an explosion tearing the living room up from the inside out and blood drips from the walls. The werewolves and vampires keep fighting, but they’re dying, and now some hunters are binding up their wounds and looking at
the house. We all know we have to go in. It’s just a matter of how many of us are going to die to get in there.

  One of the older hunters—not Ryan, thank god not Ryan—swears abruptly and makes a run for the house.

  No no no no—I realize I’m chanting it, but not in his head, not with the voice that might save him. He pulls out a giant two-headed ax as he runs and ducks around hunters and demons and bodies, so many bodies. He runs until he hits the living room.

  The walls of the pool house aren’t real.

  I thought we were looking at the house, all blown up, but we weren’t. I’m not sure it’s even a house anymore. The roof abruptly drops down to accommodate the slicing bite the house takes out of the hunter. His body is split into half a dozen pieces, and when those fall, they start to rot on the ground.

  I am thinking that maybe getting into the house is going to be harder than it appears. Everyone else is having the same thought, because the survivors are getting together in small groups, still faction-based like idiots, but they are getting together. I can tell some stuff is happening, but I’m not a part of it.

  Hey, I think in Narnia’s direction. You in there?

  New party trick? her voice says in my head.

  You’re one to talk about party tricks, blindey, I say. Got anything I can do?

  Yes, she says. But then she doesn’t say anything, and I get impatient.

  And that would be . . . ?

  I can hear her chuckle in my head, and it’s almost not too bad. Kind of mellow, which is surprising. Are you a hunter, or aren’t you? Ride to the hounds, little hunter, she says. Hell is what you bring with you. Remember. I can almost hear her turn off her internal radio and go back to bitch-slapping the situation from her little plume of water.

  I wish I had Ryan here to bounce ideas off of and make sense of Narnia’s crazy witch advice. Then again, I remember when Amanda and Stan and I were all caught smoking by the freshman English teacher in the school bathroom and tried to weasel our way out of detentions, and he said, “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.” I thought about that a lot. The wishes I would wish if I could get horses out of the deal, never mind my complete lack of knowledge.