by Ann Aguirre
“Thank you for that respite. You’d think after so long I would be eager to see people, but it is . . . more difficult than I expected.”
“What is?” I prompted gently.
“Making my deathbed confession.”
“You don’t mean that literally?” Shan asked.
“I’m afraid I do. And it is awful trying to find the words to explain how I came to this pass . . . and what I need from you now.”
If he suggested euthanasia, I was out of here. But I owed it to him to hear him out. So I said, “Don’t worry about framing it. Just tell us.”
“Very well. Long ago, longer than you can credit, I was a vain and foolish young man. I thought I could have anything I wanted . . . without consequence. My father was powerful, steeped in hermetic tradition.”
I nodded. “You mentioned the last part.”
“Did I? He encouraged me in this narcissism, until I became quite intolerable.” He paused, not so I would dispute his claim, but to reflect on some long-ago memory. For a few beats he stared into the fire, and then gathered himself visibly to continue the story. “Eventually, I came across a woman I wanted . . . who would have nothing to do with me.”
Shan eyed him worriedly. “Tell me you didn’t . . . ?”
“No, but that would have been cleaner. I wooed her with expensive presents and minor charms that lowered her resistance. Eventually, I had her.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“1939.”
Eight years before he vanished from the real world. I made a mental note, wondering if it had been shocking for a woman to take a lover during that era. “I don’t see the problem.”
“She was married to my father’s greatest rival.”
Okay, now I see the conflict.
Shan leaned forward, interested by the story. “How long did this go on?”
“Seven years. At first she was a conquest, but to my dismay, I fell in love with her. I tried to get her to leave her husband. I promised her all sorts of things . . . and I considered using magick to suborn her will.”
“Did you?” I asked through a tight throat.
That was one of the darkest sins a practitioner could commit, almost worse than trafficking with demons. If you used your gifts to enslave someone else . . . I shivered at the thought. If Booke had done that, I wasn’t sure I could help him, no matter how much assistance he’d rendered over the years.
He shook his head tiredly. “No. I couldn’t. It became an obsession with me—that I should win her heart fully or not at all.”
“What did she decide?” Shan wanted to know.
“To break with me and stay with her husband. She was with child, you see. And she thought it would be less scandal for a child than a divorce. At the time . . .” His voice trailed off, a helpless, wounded expression on his thin, pale face.
“The baby was yours?” I guessed.
“I suspect so, though in those days there was little way to be sure. The right spell might have told me, I suppose, but she wouldn’t consent to it. The child was her husband’s, she claimed, in the eyes of the law, and she couldn’t see me anymore.”
“I bet you didn’t take that well,” Shannon said.
A half smile quirked one corner of his mouth. “Rather the contrary. But I left her alone, as she asked, while I wallowed in wretchedness.”
“That doesn’t explain how you ended up stuck here.”
“It doesn’t. Ironically, after the child was born, she felt honor-bound to confess all to her husband. He forgave her . . . but he did not forgo vengeance.”
Aha. Now everything makes sense.
“So you’re stuck here because your former lover cleared her conscience at your expense,” Shannon summarized.
“Not as I would have put it, perhaps, but yes.”
“What are the specifics of the curse?” I turned my thoughts to practical matters, as I imagined he wanted help in destroying the spell. At this point, I wasn’t sure why that would bring about his death, but I needed information.
“Yeah, what is this place?” Shan added.
“It is the country cottage my father purchased just before the war, where I retreated to lick my wounds after Marlena refused me. It’s also where Donal Macleish confronted me for my sins against him. We . . . fought. I had some mad idea of making her a widow, claiming the child as my own.”
“You lost.” From the state of the house, that much was obvious.
“Yes. The result was the isolation you behold. He set the spell so I could never interfere in another marriage, never touch another woman.”
“But how?” Shannon demanded.
“This place is . . . between,” Booke explained. “Slightly out of step with the real world. Impossible for me to leave, impossible for anyone else to get in.”
“In time or space?” I asked, trying to understand the challenge we faced.
“Both,” he answered, “so far as I can tell. The spell does not respond well to any attempt to meddle with it. Or at least, it didn’t for many years. In the past six months, however, I’ve noticed a decay in its potency.”
I nodded. “No spell can remain intact forever.”
“Not unless it’s tied to a permanent power source.” Booke gestured. “But there are no ley lines here, no pocket of crystals in the earth. Macleish was a powerful practitioner, but he has been dead and buried these many years. His casting wanes.”
Shannon frowned. “But that’s good, right? I mean, you’ll get out soon.”
His expression twisted with melancholy. “Dear Shannon, I was thirty-six when Macleish confined me here. Do the math, my girl.”
I could tell Shan was crunching numbers by the way she looked upward and to the left, chewing on her lower lip. The truth dawned on her around the same time I worked it out. He looked sixty or sixty-five, tops. But he’d been trapped in this cottage, counting the solitary years until it was a wonder he hadn’t gone mad.
“You’re one hundred and two,” she breathed. “How is that possible?”
Booke explained, “Time passes at a one for two ratio here. I suspect that’s part of the curse, ensuring I live long enough to despise my own company.”
I considered. “So one day here is two out there?”
“Did Macleish send you to fairyland or something? This is like what happened to that Thomas the Rhymer guy.”
He mustered a smile for Shan’s wit. “It wouldn’t surprise me if a similar spell inspired the original tale.”
“So the curse is crumbling, which means you’ll die when you rejoin the normal time stream. All the years will catch up to you at once.” I thought I understood what he wanted of us now.
Booke shrugged. “It may not be instantaneous, but certainly my days are numbered once the magick fails.”
“You want us to fix the spell?” Shannon asked.
He shook his head, fingers lacing tightly around the bone handle of his teacup. His knuckles burned white. “I want you to crack it. I’ve had enough waiting. I’m beyond tired, and I’m ready for it to end. I am selfish enough, however, that I do not wish to die alone. I don’t want to be an undiscovered skeleton in an abandoned house. I want a proper burial . . . and I trust you to see to it.”
The request hit me like a brick upside the head. His timing couldn’t have been worse; I’d just lost Chance. I wasn’t strong enough to do this for him. My first instinct was to run for the door, but I couldn’t get out, unless I cracked the spell. He didn’t seem strong enough to tweak the parameters just yet, even if I thought he would be inclined to do so.
Shannon set a hand on my arm, soothing. “This sucks,” she said to him. “You’ve hardly lived at all, unless you count those thirty-odd years as a pleasure-seeking asshat.”
“My son died,” he said quietly. “He was only eighteen. His mother wasn’t strong after his birth, and she wasted away. Macleish was alone within a few years of wreaking his vengeance.”
I guessed he’d found out via Interne
t searches. At this point, I just had to ask. “How do you—”
“Acquire food and modern conveniences?”
Shan looked like she wanted to know too.
“I made a deal with a minor devil. He can’t cross the spell barrier, but he can deliver items inside the house itself. It is easier for me to tweak the spell in order to permit inanimate objects to cross over.”
That was rather elegant, actually.
Shan asked, “You couldn’t summon anything strong enough to break the curse?”
“I have no Solomon blood. Without that surety, it’s dangerous to deal with demonkind. Anything strong enough to smash the magick would also be powerful enough to destroy me or compel me to a situation more dire than this.”
Her face darkened as she remembered her experiences in Sheol; then she gave a jerky nod. Things could always get worse. I respected Booke’s forbearance, since I might well have summoned something just to see an end to the interminable waiting.
I wondered aloud, “Did Macleish think you would starve to death?”
“The magick is sufficient to keep me alive, but I was weak and emaciated when I stumbled over a tome that offered me the name of a bargaining devil.”
“The Birsael,” I supplied. “There are castes of demons.”
Interesting to realize he owed his relative health and safety to a demon like Maury. But my knowledge surprised him. Booke studied me, alert for the first time since our arrival.
“You went to Sheol.” Certainty rang in his plummy voice, no less beautiful for his age. “That’s why I couldn’t raise you in any fashion.”
I nodded. My eyes burned with tears, just from that reference. For a few precious moments, I’d forgotten, absorbed in his troubles, but mine came tumbling down on me like an avalanche. The fact that he wanted me to stand his death watch and handle the funeral arrangements? Inexpressibly painful.
“She went to save me,” Shan said soberly.
Booke’s astute gaze flickered between us, making educated deductions about why our faces already held a funereal cast. “Chance was with you in Mexico, last I heard. Where is he now?”
My throat hurt so badly; I sipped my tea, but it didn’t help. Still, anything to delay saying the words. In the end, Shan said them for me.
“Chance didn’t make it.”
No. He promised me. He said, Even death can’t keep me from you. It was madness to believe those words, but they were all I had.
“It’s late,” Booke said, seeming to recognize my inability to function. “Perhaps we can continue in the morning?”
That would be four days in the real world. I couldn’t bring myself to care.
He went on, “Things will look brighter then, I’m sure.”
Falling Action
Sleep came in the shape of familiar nightmares.
I couldn’t count the number of times I’d watched Chance die over the past week. To make matters worse, I had to live with the fact that my choices had led me to that dead-end road. I saw Chance’s face; in my sleep, the knife pierced his chest again and again. His blood spilled down the stone ledge, opening a gate for us.
All along, I intended to die, if that was necessary to save Shannon. But it didn’t work out that way. Sometimes no matter how hard you tried there was no good outcome. I would’ve paid any price to see Shannon safe . . . I just didn’t realize it would come down to a choice between my best friend and the man I loved. In all likelihood, I should’ve seen it coming. A trip to Sheol wasn’t a walk in the park—and you didn’t return without dire consequences.
It was still dark when I gave up on sleep. The ticking clock hanging on the wall in the kitchen read 4:45 a.m. Soon, the dawn colors would light the sky; or at least, in the real world, they would. I didn’t know how day and night worked in this tiny pocket universe Donal Macleish had created with a curse.
I wasn’t entirely surprised when I found Booke already awake. He didn’t bear the appearance of a well-rested man. “Are you feeling better, Corine?”
That was so like him. He was the one dying of a slow, evil spell . . . and yet he worried about my state of mind. I didn’t see how I could fail to do as he wished, provided I possessed the means. Afterward . . . well, I couldn’t consider the necessary civil responsibilities. How would I even explain his existence? As far as the authorities knew, Ian Booke vanished in 1947. It would be difficult to explain how he’d turned up seventy-some years later, looking fifty years younger than he was.
“Not really,” I admitted. “But we’re here to focus on your problems.”
My issues weren’t just emotional, however. That morning, it was all I could to do keep last night’s sandwich in my stomach. The nausea I’d blamed on the train stirred again, growing sharper with each movement. I tried to cover how bad I was feeling, but Booke had sharp eyes, despite his age. He leveled a direct stare on me.
“Mine will keep,” he returned quietly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Now I understood why he had been so enthralled by the idea of traveling the world via my dreams. If he hadn’t gone anywhere before the curse hit, then he’d never seen anything but the U.K. I couldn’t imagine being trapped in the same small house for so many years—and likely it had been at least fifty before he got on the Internet . . . and acquired a social life that way.
I covered my nausea with a question. “How long did it take you to figure out how to summon a lesser devil in order to get a few amenities?”
“Ten years.”
So ten years of solitary confinement; ten years of starvation. He must have been weak and desperate when he cast the spell. Whatever his sins of hubris, whatever he had done with Macleish’s wife, Booke didn’t deserve this. He’d long since served his time for his crimes.
“I’m not okay with this,” I said then. “There has to be a way to get you out of this spell without all those years hitting you like a truck.”
He shook his head. “If there is a way, Corine, I’ve not found it. And it isn’t as if I haven’t been looking.”
“Yeah, I imagine so.” Curious, I went to the window, peering out into amorphous darkness. It wasn’t full night, nor were there any stars. Instead it was more of a charcoal mist, swirling endlessly.
“Does this view ever change?”
Booke offered a grim, weary smile. “Unfortunately not.”
“I bet those were long years between the first time you made a deal with that lesser devil and when you discovered the Internet.”
“You can’t imagine. I read the same books a thousand times. I paced. I talked to myself . . . and went a little mad.”
“How did you discover . . .” I didn’t know quite how to put it. “Modern technology, a window to the outside world.”
“Anzu. That’s the devil who keeps me connected. In making our deal, he agreed to keep me apprised of any changes in the modern world that could improve my standard of living.”
“What did you promise him?” As I well knew, the Birsael were shrewd bargainers, ever alert for the opportunity to take advantage of a desperate human.
Booke glanced away, unwilling to disclose that information. Which meant whatever it was, it was bad. What bargaining chips did you have when you were locked away with nothing but your shadow for company?
But I let it go; there was no breaking a demon contract, once it was signed. “So he brought your first computer and you used that weakening spell to draw the gear over to your side?”
“Exactly so.” He indicated the door to his office, and I followed him down the hall, studying the sigils etched into the wooden floor. “The barrier is thinnest here, which is what permits data to slip through.”
“Which means emails and voice can penetrate, but not your physical form.”
Sorrow lined his pale face. “Yes. It was a lifeline, often more than you know.”
“I’m sorry. I had no idea.” Bile rose in my throat. I wished it was directly related to how he’d suffered. This had been coming on since yesterda
y, however. Trust me to come down with a stomach bug at the worst possible moment.
“Why would you? I didn’t want pity. Though I won’t pretend to have enjoyed my imprisonment, it wasn’t unjust.”
“I disagree,” I muttered. “It’s not illegal to sleep with somebody else’s wife. Immoral, yeah, bad judgment? Absolutely. But this is crazy.”
“That’s what happens when you piss off a sorcerer.” For the first time, he showed a hint of the wry humor that had characterized my interactions with him.
“Well, you outlived him,” I offered, like that could compensate for a lifetime trapped as he had been.
“Corine,” he said gently. “I’m at peace. I don’t need comfort, though I appreciate the thought. I just want an end to this. That’s why I asked you to come. I thought you could unravel the spell, now that your mother’s magick is functioning.”
Shit. “That might be a problem.”
A frown furrowed his brow. “Why?”
That was when I lost control of my stomach. Shame burned up my throat in a hot ball as I raced for the bathroom. I slammed the door behind me and hunched just in time, tears trickling from my eyes. What the hell is wrong with me? Comedians were always talking about how bad English food was, but this? Really? As I rose to try to patch myself together, the strange face in the mirror haunted me. This woman was thin and sickly, her skin nearly green in its pallor. By sharp contrast, my red hair seemed out of place, like a whore selling her wares on the cathedral steps.
“Corine!” Booke rapped sharply on the door.
“I’m all right,” I answered.
By the time I opened the door, he was pacing. “Is this some residual sickness from your trip to Sheol? I’ve never known anyone who went . . . and returned.”
“Gods, I never thought of that.” Maybe I’d caught some demonic plague while I was there.
“How long have you been ill?”
“A day or so. I’m sure it’ll pass. Touch of flu.” Waving a hand, I dismissed the concern in his eyes.
He didn’t like it but he let me change the subject. “You were about to tell me about your magick, I think.”
