by Nazri Noor
Gil finally remembered his empty flask, reaching for it and twisting the cap back on. “I mean, we do have this murder investigation going on right now.”
“I didn’t say now, did I? Just – sometime soon. Whenever you’re ready. Let’s have a big old bash and break shit. Chicks optional. Been down on my luck in that department, too. I’m permanently banned from the Twilight Tavern. Did you know that a valkyrie can carry you over her shoulder? I sure as hell didn’t.”
“Don’t tell me you tried to get handsy with them,” I said. “One of them could break your spine like a twig. Besides, it’s a bed and breakfast. How hard were you expecting to party?”
He rubbed at the curls of his hair irritably. “No no, it’s not that. Didn’t get handsy. I showed up for brunch one time and drank all their bellinis. Is it my fault, I ask you, that the All-father didn’t put a limit on how many watered-down bellinis a customer is allowed? I only had ninety-five.”
My jaw dropped in horror. “Jesus Christ.”
“Right,” Pan said. “Jesus Christ would have been so cool about it, and cool to party with, too. Water to wine? What a bro. Anyway. We’re gonna party. That’s my price. Take it or leave it.”
He held out his hand, thrusting it into the middle of the circle, waiting for someone to shake it. We must have all had the same idea, then, because we all reached for Pan’s hand, awkwardly clasping it. A jolt of warmth shot from his skin, pressing into mine. I jerked my hand away.
“What the hell was that?”
“Pinky promise,” Pan said. “No big deal. You break the bargain and your internal organs start flooding with wine. You drown from the inside.”
“Holy shit,” Gil said. “Okay, fine. We’ll party with you.”
Asher looked down at his hands mournfully. “I’m not even old enough to drink.”
Pan leapt to his feet, his hooves stomping the grass, along with the fruit basket. Totally not an accident. Pulp and juice sprayed everywhere. I grimaced, wiping off the sleeve of my jacket. No wonder Dionysus hated the guy.
“What horny goat man wants, horny goat man gets. We’re gonna party our faces off. It’s gonna be a fucking riot.” He pumped his fists in the air and whooped, literally a party of one. Then he squinted, looking off among the trees. “Wait. Who the fuck is that?”
Gil’s head whipped towards where Pan pointed. He snarled, then sprang to his feet, shoes thundering against fallen leaves as he sprinted into the darkness. Farther ahead of him, something yelped.
My instincts kicked in. I took off like a bolt, giving chase to whatever it was that Pan had spotted and Gil was now pursuing. Maybe it was my competitive nature, but far more likely, it was something coded into my cells, a vampiric appreciation for the thrill of the hunt. Behind me, Pan spoke again.
“Look at them go. What a pair of studs. Total jocks. Hey, necromancer. You seem like the nerd of the group.”
“I mean,” Asher said. “You’re not wrong.”
I would have laughed if I hadn’t already engaged every muscle in my body, dedicating all its resources towards capturing our elusive, unnamed prey. Full speed ahead for Starship Sterling. I caught up with Gil with some effort. We made the briefest glimmer of eye contact, then nodded, breaking apart so that we ran parallel, leaving our victim – I mean, our target – somewhere in between.
We had the advantage of speed, anyway. This was a familiar maneuver, specifically for me and Gil. The point was to flank the object of pursuit, make them the meat in a supernatural sandwich, then tackle the ever-loving hell out of them.
I could just make out the blur running ahead of us, two arms and two legs pumping in the darkness, and somewhere at its core, a heart thumping with fear and adrenaline. With blood. At least we knew it was human, or at the very least, humanoid. The scent of them was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. Wait. Did I know them?
Good thing we were about to find out.
My boot struck the ground one last time. I launched myself through the air, arms extended, fingers clawing for purchase. Across among the trees, I caught a glimpse of Gil doing the same. My blood sang with the joy of impending victory. Between us, the thing on two legs let out a fearful cry, then fell under our combined weight. We tumbled through grass and wet leaves, a tangle of limbs and hair and teeth.
“Got you, you little bastard,” I said, chuckling, panting hard. Hold on. He wasn’t little. Not very little at all.
I pulled away first, once I was sure that Gil still had a hold of him. I brushed off my jacket and smoothed back my hair. Taking down prey was fun, sure, but I couldn’t be doing that at the expense of looking like a bedraggled mess. Good thing I fixed myself up, too. Gil was wrestling our target, keeping him pinned to the ground, but turning him around so we could see his face.
“Uncle,” the man said, sputtering as he blew away locks of his own damp blond hair that had become stuck to his mouth. “I yield. I give up. Whatever. Just stop twisting my arm off.”
My forehead wrinkled, and I bent closer, disbelieving.
“Roth? Is that you?”
22
Gil pulled Roth off the ground, grabbing him by the collar. They were about the same height, just barely, with Roth standing a couple of inches taller, but Gil’s ferocity made him ten feet tall. He bared his teeth, pressing his face intimidatingly close. Roth probably could have taken human Gil in a fistfight. Emphasis on probably. He flopped about nervously, transformed into a little boy under the laser-like intensity of Gil’s scrutiny.
“Who the fuck are you, and why were you spying on us?” he snarled.
Roth stammered out a series of phrases, his eyes searching Gil’s face, and then mine.
“Whoa, whoa. Sterling knows me. I’m the electrician. It’s me, the guy who restored the power in your cabin. You must be Gil. You called me about the job at the Everett House. Nice to meet you.”
I narrowed my eyes at Roth. It was weird seeing him so disarmed, so different from the day I met him. “He’s not lying about the electrician bit, Gil. But I don’t know why he was watching us. That part’s definitely fishy.”
Roth’s eyes flitted between us nervously. “I wasn’t spying. Honest.”
I sniffed at the air near him, exaggerating the inhalation. “You smell that, Gil? Guilt.”
Gil’s lips drew farther back. “I smell something, all right. A lying rat.”
Roth took a tentative step back, carefully disentangling his collar from Gil’s grip. He was wearing flannel this time, with sleeves. Good. Not quite as distracting. The smell of fear, sweat, and skin, though, those were still there. And under the skin –
“Listen,” he said, holding his hands up, like he wanted us to very clearly know he meant no harm. “I was walking through the woods, okay? Just a nice evening stroll, and then the wind picked up, and I heard these flutes playing in the distance. That’s something you never hear out in the woods. I mean, flutes?”
“Fucking Pan,” I grumbled. “Him and his phone.”
“Pan?” Roth blinked innocently. “As in Peter Pan?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Gil said. “Peter Pan doesn’t exist.”
“And neither do weird shirtless guys with goat legs and horns,” Roth said. “But here we are.”
Gil grabbed Roth’s collar again. Roth threw his hands up in surrender, shutting his eyes as a reflex.
“There were no goat legs and horns,” Gil said. “All you saw was a man with very, very hairy legs.”
I rubbed my forehead, tugging at the front of my hair in frustration. “This is a fucking mess. Also, we left our buddy back there with the man with the hairy legs. We should head back.”
“And I should get going,” Roth said.
Gil tugged on his collar. “Like hell you are. You’re coming back with us. We’re not done with you.”
Roth shook his head in defeat. “Fuck’s sake. Should’ve stayed in and watched a movie.”
We flanked him on the way back to the summoning circle, Gil makin
g the unconventional decision to hold onto him by the belt loops. It was unnecessary, really, given the fact that the two of us could easily hunt him down again if he tried to run, but the gesture was more a reinforcement of an unspoken warning than anything. So we frogmarched our prisoner, who was a very obedient prisoner, indeed. The problem was that he was really talkative, too.
“You guys are really fast,” Roth said, more relaxed, his mouth lifting into an easy grin as he tried to make conversation. “Like, inhumanly fast.”
“We ran track and field in college,” Gil said. “No more questions.”
“That wasn’t a question, though.”
“No more talking,” Gil said. “We’re here anyway.”
I was surprised to find Asher sitting alone in the circle, the ground in front of him a messy pile of smashed fruit and scattered forest flowers. He got to his feet when he saw us coming, his eyes going wide when he noticed Roth.
“Holy crap. Isn’t that the electrician? Why are you here, dude? What did you see?”
Roth looked to either side of him, as if checking for our approval, then answered. “All I saw was a man with very, very hairy legs.” He beamed at Gil, his chest puffed out in pride. Gil rolled his eyes.
“This guy was snooping, wasn’t he?” Asher said. “Why were you even walking around the woods this late at night?”
“My question exactly,” I said. “Who the hell goes out for a walk alone in the woods?”
Roth groaned in exasperation. “I was bored at home, okay? I needed to stretch my legs. The forest calms me down. I take a nice, quiet hike to clear my head when work gets to be too much, then I go home and get to relax again.”
“You work as an electrician,” I said. “No offense, but how stressful can your job get, exactly? All those electrician papers you have to file? So many electrician meetings to attend.”
“You clearly have no idea, then,” Roth said, folding his arms, indignant. “And speaking of meetings, I might not know what the hell just happened here tonight, but I do know that you guys could use my help.”
Roth jerked when Gil tugged on his belt loop. I hadn’t even realized that he was still holding on. “You have no understanding of the forces at play here. How could you possibly be of any help to us?”
“Oh yeah?” Roth lifted his chin in defiance, his teeth practically sparkling as he smiled. “I heard you boys were looking for a witch.”
Asher closed in. I peered at Roth’s face, searching his eyes for traces of dishonesty. “And what would you know about any witches, exactly?”
“There’s rumors in town, that a witch makes her home right here in the Silveropolis woods. The Everett House isn’t the only freestanding structure out here. You know that, right?”
Asher folded his arms, mirroring Roth’s posture. “I didn’t know that, actually. Tell us more. It definitely sounds like you know the area better than we do, and we could certainly use the help.”
Oh, good cop, bad cop, then? Asher really was insidious under that facade of bumbling innocence, wheedling and weaseling his way under someone’s skin. Roth lit up, parting his hands like he was about to tell the scariest ghost story at a campfire.
“Legend says that a powerful witch lives right here in the woods, working right out of her own hut. Creepy stuff. This whole forest is like her home base. She’s the real power here, has her totems planted all over the place to defend it, to keep watch and keep guard.”
The boys and I exchanged cautious glances. I cocked an eyebrow at Roth. “Totems? Like fetishes? Do they look like bundles of twigs?”
Roth shrugged. “Dunno, honestly. I guess I’d recognize one if I saw it? I’ve only ever spotted them a couple of times. It’s like a scavenger hunt. They’re everywhere, but they’re hidden pretty well.”
“And what do you do when you find them?”
“Leave them alone, of course. If the witch stuff is true, then you don’t want to mess with her shit. And besides, when it comes to nature?” He pressed his palms together, breathing in slowly. “Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints.”
Gil bared his teeth. “I’m gonna fucking kill this guy.”
“No, don’t. I’m helpful. I promise.”
“The fetishes – sorry, the totems.” Asher nodded towards the far end of the clearing. “Do they look like that?”
Roth looked over, then perked up at the sight of the bundle of twigs. “That’s it, exactly. Sometimes they’re like this one, hiding down in the roots, but sometimes they’re up in the branches.” He approached it, squatting to get a closer look. “I wonder what it’s for.”
“That’s the question we’re trying to answer,” I said. “Well, one of several.”
Gil clapped him on the back, his expression no longer as somber. “You should head home now. Thanks again for the work on the cabin.”
“Oh, it’s no bother. Tell you what, it’s on the house. Least I could do for bothering you gents tonight.” He reached for his nape, scratching, looking around awkwardly. “But you don’t really expect me to just traipse off like a good boy now that you’ve planted this mystery thing in my head, do you?”
Gil cracked his knuckles. “I take it back, I really should kill you.”
“I know where she lives,” Roth blurted out.
I poked him in the chest. “What? You just happen to know where this all-powerful witch who guards these woods hangs out?”
Roth shrugged. “Well, sure. I think everyone does. It’s just a rumor, remember? Her place isn’t hard to find. Nobody ever sees her, though.”
“So you know where she lives,” I droned. “But you’ve never seen her.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, man. Like I said, it’s a rumor. Or a legend. I guess it’s both.”
Gil backed down, pacified for the moment. “I suppose I can alway kill him later. Show us the way.”
Roth gulped.
23
We couldn’t have been walking more than twenty minutes. The night was bleeding into very early morning, the air in the forest icy and sharp. Through it all I could still sense the impatience from the members of our little witch-finding party. Asher had been grumbling under his breath. Gil was stormy and silent, his muscles tense. To be fair, though, that was his default setting. Roth was gamely marching in the lead.
And me? I was just happy to be following along in the back, safe from any skin contact, from the temptation to bite one of my friends in the throat. The guys, excepting Roth, weren’t very happy, though. All we’d seen were trees, trees, and you guessed it, more trees.
Gil cracked his knuckles. “Okay, electrician – ”
“It’s Roth, actually. Nice to meet you. Again.”
Gil continued, this time more irritably. “Okay, Roth. We’ve been trekking for a while now. If this is some kind of joke, I stopped finding it funny half a mile back.”
“My tiny little legs are burning,” Asher said, panting.
“Told you to work out more,” I said, sniffing at the air. There was something familiar here. Burning, but nothing dangerous. Wood. A campfire?
“Neither the time nor the place,” Asher said. “Look, just over there. Lights. Is that a house?”
Close. It was another cabin, smaller than Uriah Everett’s, but in far better condition. The outside was clean and maintained, with logs for firewood stacked neatly not far from the front door, an axe waiting on a nearby stump. Smoke piped merrily out of a chimney stack, the distinct fragrance of burning wood the very thing that had led us there. I squinted as we drew closer, trying to make anything out through the windows, but even from afar I could tell that they were smudged, as if from smoke residue. Strange.
“Well, this is a puzzle,” Gil said, peering in through the closest window. “Everything inside is as neat as it is out here. I can see throw pillows. There’s a rocking chair. I don’t get why the windows are so blurry.”
“Smoked glass, maybe?” Asher said. “For privacy. You hold some glass up to a f
lame, and the smoke or carbon darkens it or something.”
“Nerd,” I said, peering through the windows myself, the four of us looking in like the world’s worst peeping Toms.
“Proud to be one,” Asher said, sticking his chest out. “Navigators and astronomers used it to keep the sun out of their eyes. It’s like dark sunglasses, basically, or a tinted car window.”
“Part of it is probably because of the fireplace,” Roth said, his voice lowering as he once again switched into campfire story mode. “Legend has it that there’s always a fire burning in there. The same fire, too, for hundreds of years. It never goes out, if the stories are to be believed.”
I drew away from the window, letting the three of them huddle. “And if the fire does go out?”
Roth shrugged. “Nobody knows. You know what’s funny, though? You can’t break in. I mean, folks are polite in Silveropolis. Maybe some dumb kids tried it, which is how we know, but you can’t just kick the door down. I mean, you can try, but it simply doesn’t work.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “If we can’t kick the door in, then we smash the windows instead. Stand clear.”
“Sterling, what the fuck are you – ”
Carpe noctem. Gil’s eyes went huge as my foot shot straight past his head, missing his nose by a couple of inches. The heel of my boot connected with the window, but there was no satisfying crash, no breaking, no tinkling of shards. Instead my sole just kind of squeaked against the glass, leaving a smudgy print on the window. I tipped over, losing my balance and falling into the grass.
“That’s what you get,” Gil said.
“Little help here?”
Gil rolled his eyes. Asher was too busy covering his mouth and laughing at me. Roth offered me his hand, pulling me up easily to my feet.
“We could have knocked,” Roth said.
I brushed blades of grass and damp leaves off my jacket. “Nice, except that there’s no one to answer the door. The place is empty.”
