Mortal Souls

by Amy Hoff

  “Why’s that?” asked Desdemona.

  Iain swallowed, nervous.

  “I can’t fall in love,” he said, and it was something of a relief to say it aloud, after all this time. “And I don’t want to.”

  “That’s unusual for one of your kind,” she said. She took out a long, slender white pipe and packed it with tobacco. Lighting it on fire, she took a long pull and breathed out a plume of smoke.

  “I don’t think it’s ever happened before,” said Iain. “Please, may I join you?”

  Desdemona smoked for a while, lost in thought. For some reason, Iain’s words seemed to weaken her resolve. She seemed to be thinking of something, a long-ago memory.

  She sighed.

  “All right,” she said. “Is your sealskin hidden well enough? I'm not having you drawn off by someone. And you stay behind me or beside me at all times. I'm not going searching for you.”

  Iain nodded his agreement.

  “What's your name?” she asked.

  “Iain Grey,” he replied.

  “Well, Iain,” she said, “much as it pains me, I think we need to get you some clothing.”

  ***

  The outcry when Iain disappeared was heartbreaking. The wailing shook the seabeds of Seal-Hame. It echoed in the seamounts, travelled via the whales and other voyagers across the oceans of the world.

  He is lost, mourned the seals. What a brief and dying spark is beauty. A star was extinguished tonight.

  The oceans wept, the creatures grieved for the sweet and innocent beauty captured or captivated, murdered by some crude and calloused hand.

  In the forest, miles away, Iain Grey shouldered his rifle and fell into step behind Desdemona, the only woman he would follow for the rest of his days.

  CALEDONIA INTERPOL

  At Caledonia Interpol, the mist had rolled in, and gave the library a hazy glow.

  Magnus was backed against a wall of books, Yoo Min advancing on him.

  “You see,” she said, “you're not a human man. So if I ate your liver, it would grow back, and I would never have to be hungry again, and you would never have to be –”

  Magnus felt around for the door handle and started to pull it open. Yoo Min slammed it shut.

  “– alone.”

  Magnus stared at her and swallowed. He did not remember ever being so terrified.

  “You do know...” he stuttered, “that I am – was – a murderer.”

  “Yes, oppa,” she said. “So was I! But this way we can be together, and our problems are solved.”

  Magnus was eyeing the room, looking for an escape route. Nobody else seemed inclined to help him out of his predicament.

  “Surely that would be cheating?” he asked.

  “Well, if it is, what's another hundred years?” said Yoo Min. “I'd give it all up for you.”

  She leaned in towards him for a long sniff.

  “I think that your liver would be very delicious.”

  Magnus coughed.

  “...Thank you?” he said.

  Yoo Min grinned up at him with her shark’s smile.

  “It’s quiet in here,” said Magnus. Quieter than it had been in some time, in fact.

  He then noticed there were no ghosts around. They did not seem to make an appearance when Yoo Min was present.

  Gears began to turn in his mind.

  “Are you busy right now, Yoo Min?” he asked.

  “Not really,” said Yoo Min.

  “Yes, you are,” called Chief Ben from his desk.

  Yoo Min glared at the stack of papers obscuring her boss from view.

  “I'll have her back in half an hour, Chief,” said Magnus.

  “So I am supposed to trust a serial killer with my new officer?” Ben said.

  “Don't worry!” Yoo Min sang. “I'll be fine.”

  She grabbed Magnus’s hand and yanked him out the door. Magnus scrabbled at the handle to no avail as she pulled him down the hallway while Benandonner grumbled to himself about the possibilities of early retirement.

  ***

  Yoo Min’s idea of a romantic date was apparently the Necropolis, Glasgow’s City of the Dead. The views were breathtaking, if the setting was morbid. She kept trying to take Magnus’s hand, and he kept dropping it. She smiled anyway, as if that was what was supposed to happen.

  “It's a beautiful day, isn't it?” said Yoo Min. “Look at the sky! The sun is out and it isn't very cold.”

  Magnus let her chatter, paying little attention. He was tired, and paranoid; but there was no sign of the ghosts, so he began to relax.

  “...we could go on one of the ferries, down the Clyde!” Yoo Min was saying. “Wouldn't that be romantic?”

  “Stop!” said Magnus loudly, startling himself. Yoo Min looked at him anxiously. He hung his head, curls flowing over his shoulder and hiding his face.

  “You are unhappy with me?” asked Yoo Min.

  Magnus shook his head.

  “Then what is it, oppa?” she asked.

  “Stop calling me that,” he said. “I know what it means. Stop.”

  Yoo Min looked across the view over Glasgow, and nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “It means older brother. Yes, I see.”

  She knelt down in front of him and took his hands. She looked up into his eyes and was surprised to see him crying, tears falling to the earth at his feet.

  “You feel guilt,” she said. “You feel guilt, and we're monsters.”

  “Once, I took care of my brother,” Magnus said. “I was the responsible one. Dorian was a different man back then, and now…”

  He couldn’t speak further, as a sob rose in his throat demanding silence, and the tears threatened to consume him.

  Yoo Min looked out over Glasgow and down at the Cathedral for a while before she spoke.

  “Many years ago, my beautiful Magnus, I loved a man – a boy, he was. Just eighteen. He was one of the Hwarang – the servants of the queen – and he loved me. He would have denounced everything for me, and he believed there was more to me than the monster.”

  Yoo Min looked at Magnus’s hands in her own, and tears also formed in her eyes. She looked up.

  “There was not, Magnus,” she said. “There was not more to me than the monster.”

  Magnus stared at her in horror.

  “You...” he said, swallowing, his throat making an audible click.

  Yoo Min nodded.

  “I ate his liver,” she said. “And he died without a single sound, and he still loved me. That was centuries ago. It was him – the reason I chose this path, why I became a police officer, and why I am here now. So you see, oppa, why I call you older brother, and why I am not disgusted – even though you are very large and your face is too big, and you would never be a Hwarang, I love you anyway.”

  Magnus sighed.

  “Yes, Yoo Min, and I used to think I was in the right,” he said. “Somehow I now feel that what I have done – it was very wrong.”

  Yoo Min smiled up at him.

  “We can help each other,” she said. “I can keep your ghosts away.”

  She gripped his hands.

  “But you have missed something, oppa,” she said, and stood.

  She turned to look at him.

  “What?” asked Magnus.

  Yoo Min narrowed her eyes.

  “This isn't about you, Magnus Grey,” she said. “It never was. You are being very selfish.”

  Magnus was startled by the sudden change in her demeanour.

  “This is about the humans,” she said. “Your ghosts don't like this any more than you do. It's time we got involved in the investigation, and saved Leah Bishop.”

  Magnus shook his head and laughed.

  “Leah Bishop doesn't need saving,” he said. “Trust me, she's tough as nails.”

  Yoo Min looked at him like he was an idiot.

  “No?” she asked. “She's at Gregoire's now, Magnus. She didn't come back to Glasgow. She's very sick.”

  Magnus�
��s eyes widened. Leah had always seemed invincible.

  Like us. Like one of the Fae.

  But she’s human.

  “I thought the worst thing that could happen to Leah was a bad hangover,” he said.

  His pocket started buzzing, and he reached into it to take out his phone.

  “Magnus Grey,” said a cold voice in his ear.

  “Sebastian,” said Magnus. Yoo Min was suddenly alert, her bright, foxy eyes watching him.

  “I would not speak to you unless it were an emergency,” snarled Sebastian. “But I want you to know that this has nothing to do with me.”

  “The hauntings?” Magnus said. “This isn't your revenge?”

  “Hauntings?” asked Sebastian, surprised.

  “Yes!” he said. “Your wife is here – well, she was – along with everyone else I –”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. In the cavernous room where Sebastian stood, he put his hand on a silver frame set on a chest of drawers. The frame held a wedding photograph – happier days.

  “Hazel?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” said Magnus. “Everyone! I can barely sleep.”

  “I will come to you,” said Sebastian in a cold voice. “Now.”

  Click.

  ***

  Sebastian stood in front of Magnus and Yoo Min in silence.

  “Where –” he began.

  “I'm here, Sebastian,” said Hazel.

  Sebastian turned. She was standing there, her eyes filled with tears, still beautiful. She held out her arms, and he rushed to her, only to grasp nothingness and a puff of smoke.

  “Hazel!” he said, distraught.

  “I'm here, my love,” she said. “I'm here. You can't hold me, but I'm here.”

  And Sebastian, the greatest threat the supernatural world had ever known, knelt down and put his forehead to the ground in front of her. Silent tears fell. After a time, he looked up.

  “How can you ever – the man I have become, Hazel...” he said.

  She smiled.

  “It doesn't matter,” she said. “I’m here now. We can see each other again, and that was all I wanted. You can change, you know, Sebastian.”

  He stared at her, and the other people Magnus killed. They stood silent sentinel, watching.

  His expression set, his mouth in a hard line.

  “No, Hazel,” he said. “I love you, but it's too late. You can stop haunting Magnus now. He has already been punished and awaits execution by faerie tribunal.”

  “So it really isn’t you behind the hauntings?” asked Hazel, puzzled.

  “No,” he said. “I wouldn't have the faintest idea how. You were the witch, my love, not me. I know a few tricks, but mostly it's just psychology.”

  Everyone turned to look at Magnus.

  “Don't look at me!” he said. “I wouldn't do this to myself.”

  “So Sebastian isn't behind the plague or the haunting,” said Hazel, frowning.

  “Why would I start a plague?” asked Sebastian. “I'm human too.”

  “No, you aren't, sweetheart,” said Hazel.

  Sebastian stared at his wife. His blood ran cold.

  “Wh – what?” he asked.

  “Sebastian, you look no different today than you did the last time I saw you,” said Hazel. “You haven’t aged at all. You’re immortal, fae just like the rest of them.”

  Sebastian looked around as if to find some kind of denial in Magnus or Yoo Min’s faces. Magnus seemed to take a particular joy in confirming what Hazel said.

  “Yes,” said Magnus. “Milo tested your DNA. You’re supernatural, just like me.”

  He grinned in a way that was not altogether pleasant.

  Sebastian’s world was spinning. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “I – I'm not a selkie, am I?” Sebastian spat.

  “No, thank God,” said Magnus in horror. “Nobody knows what you are. You're something new.”

  Sebastian sat back on the ground, his head in his hands. Hazel looked at Magnus.

  “It looks like we’ll need to work together after all,” said Hazel.

  Sebastian looked up, disgust written across his features.

  “What? You’re not working with him, are you Hazel?!” he said. “He murdered you!”

  “Yes, and believe me, he's paying for it!” said Hazel.

  Magnus looked at Yoo Min, at Hazel, and finally Sebastian.

  “Is redemption possible?” Magnus murmured, almost to himself.

  Sebastian looked at him with all the deep-seated hatred he’d carried in his heart for decades.

  “Not for you,” he snarled.

  He glanced up at his wife. His expression softened.

  “And not for me, either. I am sorry, my love.”

  Sebastian stood up, a statue among the stones of the cemetery. He turned and walked away down the path, shaking his head as he went.

  Hazel stared at his retreating figure with tears in her eyes.

  “So he has become a monster,” she said. “I had always hoped –”

  Yoo Min looked up.

  “You knew?” she asked.

  Hazel nodded, biting her lip.

  “I thought he could have a normal life,” she said. “Normal enough, anyway.”

  Yoo Min stood and walked up to Hazel.

  “And what were you going to say, when fifty years had passed, and you had aged, and he hadn't?” she demanded. “I know we are monsters, but you had no right!”

  “I loved him, Yoo Min!” said Hazel. “And now I am shackled to the man who murdered me.”

  It was Magnus’s turn to stand. He joined them, as the sun sank beneath the horizon of the city and the sodium lights began to spread an orange glow across the darkness of Glasgow.

  “Hazel. I cannot take back what I have done,” he said. “I wish I could. I wish I could take all of it back. But here we are – now. I am sure that Yoo Min's young man would also forgive her. He loved her, even though she hurt him.”

  “But I never loved you, Magnus Grey,” said Hazel sharply. “You ask for forgiveness? I will never forgive the man who made a monster of Sebastian. My own death was not the end of me. There might be hope for Sebastian yet. But there isn’t any for you.”

  Magnus stood, fists clenched, as darkness crept across the cemetery and the two women stared him down.

  “Even if you will not forgive me, and even though I am a monster, I will change,” he said fiercely. “Even if I am executed by the faerie tribunal, I will be a different man when I step onto the gallows. And I will find out who is behind all this, which means we have to work together, Hazel.”

  Hazel pinned him with an imperious glare.

  “But you will not take your brother down with you,” said Hazel. “I won’t see Dorian punished because of your selfishness. I will work with you for the sake of Leah Bishop and the other humans, but afterwards I never want to see your face again. Remember this, Magnus: you are nothing more than a monster to me.”

  Yoo Min laid a hand on his arm, and gave him a look full of meaning.

  “And to me,” she said. “Do not forget.”

  ***

  The streets and alleyways of Glasgow are cast orange beneath the soft light of sodium bulbs at night. The orange light of the city gives off a disarming warmth, as of a fireplace in a pub after a long night’s traveling.

  Those who live there know that warmth is an unlikely outcome of the evening, but the light offers a sense of home all the same.

  The man walking down the alleyway, swinging a silver pocketwatch, was likewise something unexpected packaged into a delicate Victorian frame.

  Dorian walked down the alley, the light glinting off the silver as he swung the watch back and forth.

  There was a sound behind him. Dorian grinned to himself. Exactly as he expected, and right on schedule. He knew innately the kind of element his particular aesthetic tended to attract: those that felt he must be the kind of fool easily parted from his mon
ey.

  They were wrong.

  “Eh, pal, you lost?” said a voice.

  Dorian half-turned. The smile on his face was unsettling. The man following him took a step back, suddenly uncertain.

  “I've been waiting for you,” Dorian said softly.

  The man’s cruel and vindictive laughter was a cover for his terror.

  The suffering immediately thereafter, as Dorian let magic built over a century’s disuse burst from his fingertips, was pure, silent, and without remorse.

  Afterwards, Dorian stood, meticulously wiping the blood from his hands. His expression never changed.

  Someone else was in the alley with him now; someone new. Someone whose hulking presence was difficult to miss, no matter how stealthy he thought he was being.

  “How long have you been there?” Dorian asked, without turning around.

  Benandonner stepped from the shadows.

  “This is unacceptable, Dorian,” said Chief Ben. “Those days are long gone.”

  Dorian stared at him, empty.

  “So are the days of the Black Death, Ben,” he said. “And I am fighting now the way I fought it then. If they want to fight dirty, I am all too willing to accept.”

  “What's gotten into you, Dorian?” asked the chief. “We don’t even know who they are yet. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that was emotion in your voice.”

  Dorian stared at the man on the ground.

  “The humans,” said Dorian. “They are falling, Ben! You know the Fair Folk depend upon them, and always have. We are powerless to stop something that simply needs antibiotics! We are so weak against this! We are supposed to be the strongest creatures alive!”

  Benandonner nodded.

  “The humans,” he said. “By which you mean Leah Bishop.”

  Dorian stared at him, and shut his mouth with a snap.

  “Yes. It has been so long since I have had a friend. She is like a sister to me.”

  Ben regarded Dorian with a raised eyebrow.

  “A sister, to replace the brother you already have?” asked Chief Ben.

  “That murderer is not my brother,” said Dorian.

  “I rather think he is,” said the chief. “You’ve nearly just murdered a human yourself, and you’re a police officer, Dorian Grey!”

  “He was not the kind of man who deserved to live,” Dorian said. “Nevertheless, I spared his life.”