“Which, I suppose, is all by way of saying I’d better watch my ass,” I said.
“No.” Her tone was fierce enough to make me stop and straighten. She glared at me. “You’ve already failed to watch your ass. You didn’t watch it, and you didn’t let me watch it, and now you’re in up to your neck. Screw watching your ass. Now is when you start listening. Now is when you do as you’re told. Even if you don’t want to, now is when you listen, because otherwise—”
Mary stopped mid-sentence, mouth opening and closing soundlessly. No: not quite soundlessly. She raised a hand to her throat, clutching at it and making a faint choking noise. Then she burst like a smoke-filled balloon, leaving a thick mist hanging in the air for a single terrible moment before the wind carried it away.
“She really needs to learn when to stop talking,” said an unfamiliar voice.
I turned. A teenage girl was leaning against the porch rail, brown hair pulled high into a ponytail, eyes as cold and mercurial as midnight in the desert, as the road that runs past a deserted graveyard. She was wearing a red-and-gold letter jacket over a pleated red skirt and a gold sweater; matching ribbons were tied in her hair. Something about them looked wet and bloody in the porchlight.
I know a cheerleader when I see one; we recognize our own kind. And I know when we’re not cheering for the same team. I balled my hands into fists against my knees, swallowing the urge to jump to my feet and demand answers. That would be a bad idea just now. I could already tell.
“Where’s Mary?” I asked.
“Our mutual employers called her back to remind her who she works for, and who she works against,” said the girl. She pushed away from the railing, walking languidly toward me. “My name’s Bethany. I’m your new caseworker, for lack of a better term.”
There was something old-fashioned in the way Mary shaped her vowels, easily dismissed as a regional accent if you hadn’t spent time around people from her generation, all of whom seemed to have the same softness in their “a”s, the same roundness in their “o”s. Bethany didn’t have that accent. Bethany sounded like she was my age, or close enough to it as to make no real difference.
Bethany was also very, very dead. Her eyes alone were enough to tell me that.
“Give her back.” Now I did stand, and was gratified to find that I had a few inches on the dead girl. If all else failed, I could punch the ghost a few times to make myself feel better.
“Oh, she’ll be fine, once she remembers her place,” said Bethany. “Mary-Mary, quite contrary, has a longer leash than most of us are allowed. Loopholes. It’s always loopholes with you people. I say ‘you people,’ but I don’t mean you in specific, Antimony Timpani Price, sorcerer, debtor. The crossroads gave you everything you asked for, and all they asked in return was a favor to be performed later, when the time was right. I assume you remember?”
“I don’t think I could forget if I wanted to.”
“Good,” said Bethany, and she smiled—the sweet, serene smile of someone who actually enjoyed her job. “The crossroads are ready to call in your debt. Once your task has been performed, they’ll return the fire they borrowed from your fingers, and you’ll owe them nothing more. You’ll be free. You can make another bargain or never speak to them again, whatever you prefer. Won’t that be nice?”
“That’ll be swell, which means there’s a catch for sure,” I said warily. “What do the crossroads want me to do?”
“Nothing major. Just find out what the sorcerer James Smith knows—how much he’s been able to learn, and from what sources, and how—and then kill him.”
“What? I’m not going to kill someone! That wasn’t the deal.”
“That was precisely the deal. One favor. Whatever the crossroads need. And they need the boy dead. I don’t understand why this is a problem. You’re a Price. I know about you. Killing is basically why you exist.” Bethany smiled, cold but not cruel, like a single human life held literally no value to her.
And maybe it didn’t. Mary had always cautioned us against talking to other crossroads ghosts, although she’d never been willing to tell us exactly why it was a bad idea. I’d always sort of assumed she didn’t want to risk someone else figuring out the right combination of terrible suggestions that would convince us to make a crossroads bargain. But what if it was simpler than that? What if the fact that she had a living family to care for and look after had been enough to keep her from losing track of her own humanity? She’d been dead for a long time. She still loved the living. That was more than could be said for a lot of ghosts.
“Well?” said Bethany. “Time’s wasting. Make your choice.”
If the crossroads wanted James Smith dead, that meant he was onto something. That meant he was probably at least a little bit right. And if he was at least a little bit right …
“I know what I have to do,” I said.
“Good girl.” Bethany smiled. “Remember, we need to know how he’s learned these things. Be his friend. Make him trust you. we’ll be watching.”
Then she was gone. I waited, counting slowly to one hundred. Mary didn’t come back. Dully, I realized she might not be coming back. Maybe that weird, rambling story about my grandfather had been the last warning I was ever going to get from her.
Until that moment, standing alone in the dark, I hadn’t really felt like I was doing this without my family. They were distant, yes. I couldn’t call them or ask them to support me. But if I’d died in Lowryland, or somewhere out there on the road, Mary would have made sure that they knew.
I could call for Rose. She’d come, if she could. It wouldn’t be the same. I was suddenly aware of the tears rolling down my cheeks. I swiped them fiercely away. No. I was a Price. I was a derby girl. I wasn’t going to cry over this.
I was going to kick its ass.
I turned and stalked back into the house, letting the door slam behind me. The others were still in the dining room. All of them turned at my arrival, James and Fern looking relieved, Sam and Cylia looking neutral. Well, that told me who the good cop-bad cop pairing had been.
“Sam.” He sat up a little straighter. I pointed to the kitchen door. “Lock it down.”
He blinked. “You mean—?”
I nodded, and he was gone, still human-form but moving at a speed that strained the bounds of credulity. I turned back to the table.
“Cylia, you got a piece of paper I can borrow?”
“In my purse,” she said, sounding bewildered. “It’s on the sideboard.”
“Got it.” Cylia’s purse was a big black leather monstrosity that could probably have been used to smuggle things up to the size of a live chicken. I dug into it, rummaging until I found a crumpled piece of paper and a Sharpie. Then I returned to the table, sitting down next to James, who looked like he wanted nothing more than to move his chair away from me. That was reasonable. I had, after all, disappeared outside for an extended period of time, only to come back furious and ready to spread that fury around.
It was almost a good thing the crossroads was keeping my fire away from me, because I would have burned the whole house down without even raising my voice.
Pushing the paper to where James could see it, I uncapped the Sharpie and wrote CAN YOU WARD AGAINST GHOSTS? Then I handed it to him, nodding toward the paper.
Give the man this much: he was smart enough to catch on immediately. He took the Sharpie and wrote, in neater, more conservative letters, ONLY IN THEORY. NEVER TRIED MYSELF. NO GHOSTS AROUND HERE.
Oh, I doubted that. There are ghosts everywhere. It’s just that most of them don’t give a damn about people unless we’re interfering with them in some way, and so they leave us alone. I took the Sharpie back. WHAT YOU NEED?
James hesitated before reaching for the pen. SALT, he wrote. ROSEMARY. CLEAN WATER. THREE IRON NAILS. GRAVE DIRT WOULD BE NICE, BUT CEMETERY IS A MILE AWAY.
“Don’t worry about it.” I stood. “Cylia will help you get the things you need to make the cookies. I have the special spices upstairs.”
When James realized I was saying I had grave dirt already on hand, his eyes widened, his general expression taking on the air of a man who had made very poor life choices. But all he did was nod and say, “I’m excited to find out why it’s so important I start baking.”
“Oh, believe me,” I said. “It’s a life changer.”
Seven
“Life is a death sentence. Get as many stays of execution as you possibly can.”
–Frances Brown
In the kitchen, waiting for the wards to come slamming down
SAM’S CHECK OF THE perimeter had come up as empty as Fern’s: we were alone. The windows were closed, the doors were locked, and other than the five of us, nothing bigger than a tailypo was currently engaged in going bump in the night. Except for the ghosts, of course, and they were the problem.
Sam leaned against the kitchen counter, a cup of coffee cupped between his long-fingered hands, his tail occasionally snaking over to wrap, ever so briefly, around the outside of my wrist. Then he would pull it back and look mistrustfully at the closed kitchen door, like he expected James to come bursting through at any moment.
“I wish you’d tell me what the hell is going on,” he said.
“I wish I felt like I could,” I replied. “Just give it another few minutes, and then we should be able to talk freely.”
Sam scowled but didn’t argue. He knew better than that, and he knew something was upsetting me. I was hoping he’d been able to make the logical jump from “James is studying the crossroads” to “Mary probably stopped by for a visit,” although asking him to continue onward to “I think the crossroads have done something terrible to her, they’ve assigned a new ghost to make sure I keep my side of the bargain, and—oh, by the way—they want me to murder James” was a bit much.
The next time his tail wrapped around my wrist, I caught the tip of it between my fingers, tugging lightly. He responded by wrapping it around my thumb, holding me where I was. I offered him a somewhat strained smile.
“This is how it’s always going to be, you know,” I said. “This is what normal looks like when you’re doing it with me. I hope that’s not a deal breaker. I mean, I’ll understand if it is. I’m not sure I’d want to be in a relationship with me, if I had a choice.”
Sam blinked. Then, to my surprise, he laughed. “Are you kidding? I figured that out the night I found you fighting a giant spider-woman in the boneyard. If I wanted to spend time with you, normal was never going to be on the table. I just don’t like that you can’t tell me what’s going on.”
“Soon,” I promised. “Really soon. I’m not keeping secrets because I want to, I swear.”
“I believe you.”
The smell of burning paper trickled under the kitchen door. Sam whisked his tail out of my fingers. I glanced at him. He was back in human form, still shirtless, and even crankier-looking.
“This is supposed to happen,” I said.
“Great. All this and your new friend happens to be a pyromaniac.”
“I asked him to set the fire, if that helps.”
“Okay, weirdly enough, it doesn’t. It doesn’t help at all.” Sam gave the door a venomous look. “I sort of like not being charcoal.”
“I love you, too,” I said.
A look of horrified realization washed over Sam’s face. “I didn’t mean—”
There was a light knock. “You two decent in there?” Cylia called, before opening the door and sticking her head inside. “James says he can’t be absolutely sure it worked without having a ghost to test the wards, but he’s about ninety percent sure. Ninety-five, maybe. Now do you want to come out and explain why you asked him to do that, and why you couldn’t help?”
“Sure.” I set my coffee mug on the counter. The last thing I needed right now was more caffeine. I was already more than wired enough.
In the dining room, James was using a hand towel to meticulously remove each scrap of ash from his fingers. He glanced up when he heard my footsteps, frowning at the sight of Sam trailing along behind me.
“Fun night, huh?” I asked. “Bet you didn’t think this would be the end result of your little adventure in breaking and entering.”
“It’s definitely put me off my life of crime,” he said dryly.
“Where’s Fern?”
“She took the casserole dish out back to hose the embers, so we don’t start a real fire,” said Cylia. “It was a stroke of luck that we found a cast iron casserole dish in the first place.”
“Good luck, so there’s that,” I said. “Look, James, I haven’t been exactly straight with you.”
He rolled his eyes extravagantly. “Really? The woman who punches robbers after accosting them in the woods, knows about ghost wards, and has a sorcerer for a grandfather, not being entirely straight with me? Forgive me while I die of shock.”
“Wait,” said Sam. “Not just general wards, but ghost wards? Why would you—aw, fuck, Mary. Was she here?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She came to talk to me when I went outside. That’s why I was gone so long.”
“Who’s Mary?” asked James. He turned to Cylia. “I feel as if I’m missing something rather important here. Could you please remind them that I can only help if I understand what’s going on?”
“Sorry, kiddo,” said Cylia. “Half the time I feel like I’m waiting for the movie.”
“Mary is my aunt,” I said. “She’s dead. She’s also a crossroads ghost.”
Slowly, James’ head swung back around, until he was staring at me with wide, disbelieving eyes. “A crossroads ghost,” he said, in a tone of exquisitely careful horror. “As in, a mortal spirit bound to serve the interests of the thing I’m planning to destroy.”
“Yup,” I said. “That would be her. Nice lady. You’d like her, except for the part where she came to try and warn me about what was going to happen now that we’ve met you, and the crossroads sort of punished her. I’m trying not to think about that too hard until I know our options. For right now, she’s missing, and a ghost named Bethany is filling in for her. Mary has always had my best interests at heart, even when they’ve conflicted with the interests of her employer. Can’t say the same about Bethany.”
“I … what?” James kept staring at me. “No. Crossroads ghosts don’t have mortal relationships. It’s part of what gets them chosen. They have no family, or minimal family, and when they die, the chance to continue interacting with the material world is tempting enough to let the crossroads convince them to become a very specific sort of haunt. They can’t be someone’s aunt.”
“I don’t know how you know more about the way this works than I do, but Mary’s an exception,” I said. The sad part was, I knew exactly how he knew more about the way the crossroads worked than I did. He’d made them his field of study, whereas my family had spent the last two generations living in the shadow of what happens when you let them get too close. Mary had asked us—begged us, even—to stay away, not to ask questions that might attract the wrong kind of attention, and we’d loved her enough and accepted them as enough of a natural phenomenon that we’d done as we were told.
I felt a little sick, to be honest. If the crossroads were something that could be fought—something that could even be destroyed—how many people had died while my family carried on treating them like they didn’t matter? Like they were something that only lured the weak or unsuspecting when we, out of everyone in the world, should have known better?
James opened his mouth to answer. Then he stopped, shut it, and simply looked at me for a very long moment before he said, “If you don’t explain right now why you have an ‘exception’ to every rule I know attached to your family, and why you knew enough to ask for wards when that ‘exception’ was replaced by someone you didn’t trust, I’m leaving.”
“Good luck with that,” said Sam.
James raised a hand. The air crackled around it, becoming crystalline, like the air on a winter morning during a hard freeze.
“I don’t think luck will have much to do with it,” he said.
“Luck always has something to do with it,” said Cylia. “We’re all dancing to Fortune’s tune, whether we believe it or not. Now you boys back down and play nice, or I’ll show you just how much luck can affect the outcome of a fight.”
“She’ll do it, too,” I said. “She fights mean.”
“No,” said James. He shook his head. “I refuse. You’re the only person here who’s bothered to give me a name, and all of you talk in riddles and act like it’s normal. Well, it’s not normal. Yes, I broke into your house, and yes, I’m sorry I did that, but it doesn’t give you the right to treat me like a fool. I want the books. Give them to me and I’ll be on my way. You never have to see me again. I refuse to stand here and be made fun of.”
“Everyone, chill,” I said, and winced immediately after. “Everyone, forgive me for accidental ice puns and calm down. James, no one is making fun of you. This is difficult for us, too. We didn’t … I mean, this isn’t what we were expecting.”
“It’s sort of what I was expecting,” said Fern, who had been quiet up until this point. To be honest, I’d almost forgotten she was there. I turned to look at her. She shrugged. “Things always get weird before they get bad. We’re in the weird phase. Bad is next. That’s why we have to trust each other and start working together. Annie, did Mary come to tell you the crossroads knew about what James was trying to do?”
I nodded.
“Okay.” Fern walked up to James and extended her hand. “My name is Fern. It’s nice to meet you. I wish I could have met you when things were better, but I guess this will do.”
“Um.” The brittle glitter disappeared from the air around James’ hand as he lowered it and clasped Fern’s fingers. “Thank you for telling me your name.”
“If Fern’s in, I’m in,” said Cylia. “I’m Cylia.”
“Sam,” said Sam. He didn’t sound happy about it. I still couldn’t blame him.
“You already know my name,” I said. “I’m Annie. Annie Price.”
That Ain't Witchcraft (InCryptid #8) Page 10
