Salt and Silver

by Anna Katherine

  If wishes were horses . . . I’m not going to wish for a horse, particularly from a Door like that. But I bet . . . I bet I could find something to ride on.

  I remember Ryan telling me that the big purple tentacle demon came because it felt some kind of affinity for me—or because something in me called to it. I remember him on the subway, saying we smelled like a demon already, the other demons wouldn’t harass us.

  I remember the lioness telling me I had experience loving things that do wrong without realizing it.

  And I remember how one time, when we were seventeen, Amanda locked herself in the bathroom and cried and cried and I never found out why. She sounded so lonely, even though I was right there. And all I wanted to do was to just reach through the bathroom door and hold her.

  Are you lonely? I call out to the house. I want to help all lonely things.

  I see something move in the house.

  Pretty soon, so does everybody else.

  A giant, rolling, bruise-colored monster oozes out of the house. It’s the size of two couches, one on top of the other. It has tentacles, dustings of fur at the tips, and it’s using them to drag itself on the ground toward me.

  This is a really, really big Door-hound. And I really, really hope I thought this out right.

  The imaginary rabbit I had when I was six? Its name was Turtle. It looked absolutely nothing like this globular mess. I reach out with my mind and say, Hi, Turtle. I’m so glad to see you.

  The tentacles move faster, the body swings closer. I will consider this a good sign, because the alternative is certain death. I stuff most of what I’m carrying by hand back into my pockets, and when the tentacle monster is within jumping-into-the-pool-to-escape distance, I say, Take me inside.

  It doesn’t even stop to think—I’m not sure it can think, really—just stops in front of me and lies down. If I don’t mind walking on something squishy, I could walk right up on top of it.

  Since that’s the general idea, I do. And it is gross, I cannot even stress that enough. My shoes sink, and the whole demon smells like rotting fish.

  Once I’m on, though, I’m golden. Go into the house, I think, and it gets up and starts to slither its way back. I sit down when the swaying gets too bad, and my butt sinks a little bit into Turtle’s skin. Everybody’s watching me make this attempt, but I can’t see Ryan, even though I look. Maybe he’s off getting killed, and is too busy to watch me make my move.

  I guess I could die in a really nasty way in about a minute, but by this point, so could anybody—if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

  Turtle slides over the patio, and we’re at the explosion. What a good boy. Go into the house, I say again, and then I squinch my eyes as tightly shut as possible, because if I die, I would like to die without having to see any of my mangled corpse bits first, okay? I have very few desires in life, and that is officially one of them.

  Turtle wasn’t planning on stopping. He just steam-rolls right in. And the house doesn’t snap shut on me.

  I’m in.

  21

  The inside of the house looks totally different from what we’re seeing on the outside, and it is not an improvement. My Door’s here, all right. It’s different to see how big the Door is in person; it dwarfs everything. I bet Turtle could walk right through with me standing up and neither of us would touch the sides of my Door.

  And we could just walk through, too, no trouble with this opening and closing bullshit. The iron gate is swung wide open, and the Door smells . . . okay, this is weird, but it smells bloated. It smells like it’s been eating for hours, and it’s stuffed to bursting but doesn’t want to stop.

  When I finally look away from my Door, I can see why.

  Everything’s a jumble, but I can see how it went down. There are some little things; sort of little, anyway. The kind of stuff I can see Amanda asking for just to test the Door out. Stacked on glass tabletops and strewn across the carpet are expensive shoes, expensive bags—really big cheesecakes, half-eaten, and heaps of boutique clothing. There’s jewelry too, knuckle-sized diamonds and thick ropes of gold tennis bracelets, and a really astonishing array of drugs.

  I recognize some of the clothes, some of the bags, from at least three weeks before the Door left the diner. I remember her jostling me into Ryan in the kitchen, giggling, saying she’d get the napkins for the holders, stepping over the line of salt and heading into the basement . . .

  It happened right in front of us. We—I—

  Shit.

  I can’t see Amanda anywhere in here. After the obvious stuff, things get even more out of control. Demons have been living here with her, I think, and they are not very tidy houseguests. I wonder what her parents think about that, and—then I can see it, I can just tell what she did next, I just know she started to wish for things to happen to people.

  Amanda’s always bitching about her parents. I can see them coming into the house just after she wished for the Door to come with her, away from the diner and the hunters. She’d sit there, right there in front, wishing anything that came into her head just because she could. Her parents would come in, and she’d turn toward them, and she’d say, I wish—

  They were dicks, but I’m not sure they deserved whatever she might have wished on them. And it probably wasn’t just them, after she took that plunge. I will bet good money that there are some names in the news in the next couple of weeks that I am way too familiar with.

  And then after that . . . anything seems possible, doesn’t it? With a Door granting you anything you want, and nothing to stop you, no stupid rules, no consequences, no regrets.

  Except you asked her for things back, didn’t you? I ask the Door.

  Don’t come close, the Door says thickly. It still sounds like a little girl, which it’s never done before. I wonder if Amanda asked it to change, or if it’s changed because it’s been so close to Amanda. It does sound like her, a little bit.

  Gonna blow up something again? I am a taunter. Shocking. I climb down off Turtle and send him to block the hole in the building. Don’t want any hunters outside to get ideas about following me and getting their bodies torn into pieces. If anyone’s making a grand exit, it’s going to be me—and I’m not going anywhere.

  I straighten my coat and then cross my arms. So where’s Amanda, big guy? I ask. Did you finally get her to walk in? One last big sacrifice and then you can call your own Apocalypse in?

  The Door doesn’t say anything. But the iron gate, it starts to bleed. The blood smells like innocence. I don’t want to know what Amanda’s been feeding it, except I think I know anyway. She’s never really liked animals.

  Tell me where she is, Door, I say.

  The gate swings, just the slightest bit. It says, Behind you.

  “Hey, baby.” It sounds like Amanda, if Amanda was dead. Amanda probably is dead. I turn around. I see her.

  I carefully take off my sunglasses and hold them folded in my hand. It gives me a second to keep myself from throwing up. I’m not sure when it occurred to her to do it, before or after she killed her parents, before or after she splashed animal blood across the entrance to Hell, but at some point she decided that she could wish herself away. Perfect plastic surgery, that’s what she said once. Hair any color, any length, any type. Skin any tone. Tall or tiny, curves or athletic skinniness. And then why bother with just the simple stuff? Turn on the TV, and there are celebrities marching across the screen; let’s try them on too. And, Hell, get some of the men as well; I wonder how much sex she’s having. Or had, anyway. Before it all started to break down.

  Here is what I have learned about wishing things from Doors. After a while, it stops being a conscious decision. Me, I went one way with that. I stopped taking their garbage. I don’t wish things anymore; I demand them. Roxie said the Doors were like animals; well, I’m the pack leader now. Queen of the Hats, indeed.

  The other way you can go with wishing, I guess, is that if you can have everything, anything, a
ny time, without even thinking . . . then maybe instead of one thing at a time, you get them all. At once. Forever.

  Amanda is a monster.

  Her skin bubbles as fat and bone twist, shrink, grow, and patches of color bloom across her like mold. Her hair is thick and writhing, twining around her as she steps closer. Limps closer, anyway; her legs are short, long, male, female, melting in and out of shape as she comes closer. She smiles at me; I think it’s supposed to be a smile.

  “Look what I did,” she says. Her voice is getting all screwed up by all the shapes her throat is trying to be. “Isn’t it wild?”

  I nod. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

  “I’m telling you, those hunters are all lying shits,” she says. “ ‘Don’t talk to the Door, don’t ask the Door for things.’ ‘It’ll be your worst nightmare.’ Whatever. Oh my god, Allie, I have done the most amazing things.”

  Tears sting my eyes. “Yeah?”

  The thing that was Amanda nods. “Totally.” She giggles. “I tried to call you at the diner for some of the best stuff, but you were never around.”

  “I tried to call you, too. You never answered your phone.”

  Amanda frowns, and lifts her hand. A cell phone bubbles out of her skin. She looks at the phone for a moment, not even freaking out about the cell phone growing out of her hand, then she waves it in the air. “Huh,” she says. “Bad reception. I’m sorry,” she says, and she’s sorry, she’s actually fucking sorry. I could always tell when she was faking something. This . . . in the middle of all this, she’s sorry she didn’t check her fucking messages.

  I swallow. “It’s okay. It wasn’t—it wasn’t really important.”

  She brightens. “I’m really glad you came, actually. I think you should do this too. And, Stan, obviously. Could you call him? We should do something together, something really big.”

  “I can’t call Stan.” I settle for something like the truth. “He’s roaming.”

  “Figures,” Amanda says. “That’s okay, though. You’re here. Come on.”

  Come on, Allie, says the Door.

  I was right. It is mimicking her voice.

  Hurray for me.

  “No,” I say. “I think that’d be a bad idea.”

  Amanda’s eyes narrow. Her mood turns on a dime. “God, Allie, what the hell? You listen to Ryan too fucking much,” she spits out. She looks me up and down, actually seeing what I’m wearing, and her voice fills with disgust. “And you’re dressed like them.”

  I rock slightly on my feet, settling my hips, squaring my shoulders. My hands clench, and the rhinestones on my sunglasses bite—I forgot I was holding them. “It’s been a really busy couple of days,” I say.

  Come on, the Door says. It is sounding less bloated, more antsy.

  I am busy here, please wait your turn, I say back.

  Amanda flinches, and there’s the tiniest whimper. She could hear my Door voice. And whatever she says about it, somewhere in her—some part that’s still Amanda—she’s frightened.

  “Amanda,” I say quietly. “We can fix this. If we go outside, together, we can get you help. You don’t have to stay here with it. It can’t make you.”

  She wavers. Literally. For a moment, Amanda, the real Amanda, forms out of the mess, and she’s staring at me. Her eyes are the prettiest blue, I swear. I wanted eyes like hers when I was younger. And that soft mouth that she never appreciated, she’s biting it now, and I can see blood welling up.

  “I have to fix it first,” she whispers. “I can do it, I can totally do it, I just have to—”

  “No!” The sound tears itself from me, breaking out, and I reach for her, for my Amanda, but it’s too late. She melts into a dozen shapes, and I can hear her, in my head I hear I wish I wish one more thing—

  My Door laughs, and its gate swings out into the room, and when it swings back it has pulled Amanda against it, and through the Door, and then she’s gone, whatever she’s turned into, she’s gone.

  And that leaves me alone, in a house of dead wishes, with a suddenly very powerful and crowing Door.

  Allie, the Door laughs, I feel so good! And it starts to grow. And it’s not stopping. Could it grow big enough to eat the world? It’s starting to look it.

  I can’t win against something like that. Not me alone, not me with all the hunters we could ever get together. And it’s not listening to me anymore. Guess it thinks it’s the queen now.

  So . . . since I can’t win, I might as well cheat.

  Turtle, I say, go fetch.

  The purple tentacle monster squirms out the blown-out side of the house and comes back a minute later with Ryan crouching on its back. Half of Ryan’s face is covered in dried blood, and his lamia leather is shredded. The fun must have gotten more so after I came inside. Turtle dumps him down next to me and squirms back to the hole.

  “Hi,” I say to Ryan. “Do you hear anything weird?”

  He’s staring at me like I’m a ghost. I cough. “Yes,” he says.

  “Good,” I say. “Wish for something.”

  He stops looking like I’m from beyond the grave, and starts heading toward annoyed. Thank god.

  I finger my sunglasses; I suddenly remember that Amanda gave them to me. I put them on.

  “Trust me,” I say. “Ask me a wish.”

  Ryan says, “I trust you,” and then I can feel the heat of his wish roll over me. I can’t hear it, not precisely, but I can feel the power needed to fulfill it.

  Listen: I have opened Doors. As of five minutes ago, I am the only person in hunter history—and Narnia knows the history—to open a Door, and survive the experience, and then learn from it. I’ve learned a lot of things in the last six years. Salt magic, contagion magic. I’ve got salt in my hand, now, and that salt touched all the Doors of the city, at least, when the Hand spread the waters of life. Add that to my blood, and whatever affects my blood in one place affects my blood in another.

  I take out my good knife and slice my palm. Blood freely given is powerful. Ryan told me that.

  My blood opened and closed nine Doors in Hell, and I created a tenth one.

  My blood is in Doors. Ergo, the Doors are in me. And I want to grant Ryan’s wish.

  In this way, in this moment, for this man, for this reason: I am a Door.

  I flare up, and I can feel Hells within me. I am bigger than this fucking wannabe Door in front of me. You, I say, and my voice is booming, were made by a couplet that didn’t even rhyme.

  Allie! it cries. It’s shaking, shrinking. I gave you so much, so much—don’t you remember all the things you asked for? I gave them all to you! I gave you Ryan!

  Low blow, Door. I open my gates. Sure, I say, and my voice is rock hard. But what have you done for me lately?

  My gates are iron. Iron kills. I learned that too. I learned it from Ryan. I learned everything from Ryan.

  I wonder what he wished for.

  Good-bye, I whisper, just for him, and I slam my gate against the Door.

  The world ends. Some world, anyway. Really.

  Good thing I’m just a girl who runs a diner, deep down. I may be a Door too, but I’ve got silver in me. Silver heals. Amanda couldn’t do it; she never fought, she never earned the scars. I did.

  Maybe it’s just an allegory, but I take the last of the power from Ryan’s wish, and I fix the world.

  22

  The kid guarding the Door is just that—a kid. He sleeps on the cot, eats the food I bring him, and reads a lot of comic books. When he fights the demons that come through the Door, he fights them quietly, without a lot of fuss. So he can’t be that young, or he’s been doing this for longer than I expect, because he’s technically better than I am.

  But he’s not Ryan. He’s not Ryan, and he’s not sarcastic or snide, and he doesn’t look at me with heat in his eyes. He doesn’t wear a Stetson—he’s a Baseball Cap. But he doesn’t even bother trying to flirt. I’m sure he’s heard the stories about me—how I opened the Door he guards. How I walked throu
gh a Door and came out the other side, how I rode a demon into a gutted house, how I used salt and silver to bring balance back into the world and keep more Doors from opening.

  But my heart is dead. Stan is dead, Amanda is dead—all I had left were the diner and Ryan, and Ryan’s gone. I never even found out his real name. And I got my period the second day back, so it’s not like there’s going to be a mini-Ryan running around. Which I am pretty happy about, don’t get me wrong; this isn’t a life for babies. But . . .

  I feel like all of it was for nothing—my life is emptier now, and saving the world, saving all those people . . . it wasn’t as fulfilling as I thought it would be. I’ve walked through blood and fire, literally, and it wasn’t enough—nothing I did was enough to keep Stan, to keep Amanda, to keep Ryan.

  The Door gave me a booming business, and it gave me Ryan. The Door’s quiet now, almost well-behaved—it opens like clockwork, like a normal Door, and it hardly talks at all.

  And Ryan’s gone.

  I don’t want to believe it was the Door, but the alternative is that I scared the living bejeezus out of him with my little “I’m a Door, FYI” revelation, and that’s almost worse. Whatever it was, he left. He left me. He didn’t even kiss me one last time; when I went back to just being Allie, when it was all over . . . the Door was back where it belonged, in the basement of the diner, and I was standing in front of it, and Ryan was gone.

  The next morning, I was freshly showered, no longer smelling of brimstone and blood and silver. I was chopping peppers and onions for homefries, expecting Ryan to stroll through at any moment with a complaint about the Fedoras, a pile of questions, and a bitching-out for leaving without helping clean up . . . But what I got was this kid, this kid who said, “You can call me California,” and I almost burst into tears right there.

  “You can call me Allie,” I replied. “Door’s in the basement. Breakfast and lunch are free, but you’ve gotta sing for your supper and wash the dishes.”