That Ain't Witchcraft (InCryptid #8)

by Seanan McGuire

  James was quiet for a moment. Finally, in a small voice, he asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because the crossroads didn’t even try to lie. They didn’t offer Sally back and dump a corpse at your feet, or anything fancy like that. They know what you’re trying to do, they’re scared enough of you to want me to kill you for them, and yet they’re not lying to you. Why not?”

  “They don’t lie,” said James. “They mislead. They distort. They misinterpret in the worst ways possible. But they don’t lie.”

  “So let’s assume they can’t, meaning anything in these books,” I waved a hand to indicate the piles around us, “that someone attributes as coming directly from the crossroads has about a fifty percent chance of being the absolute truth.”

  “Why only a fifty percent chance?” asked Sam.

  “Authors lie, even if the crossroads can’t,” said Cylia. “Someone says ‘the crossroads told me this,’ and the author thinks ‘that lacks a certain gravitas,’ and the next thing you know, the crossroads are talking like something out of Dante. If we ask the crossroads something directly, they have to tell the truth.”

  “That doesn’t hold for crossroads ghosts,” I said. “Mary lied to me all the time when I was a kid.”

  “And she’s still your friend?” asked Sam.

  “She was my babysitter, and my parents wanted me to have a few years where I thought Santa wasn’t real.”

  “You mean where you thought Santa was real,” said James.

  “I meant what I said,” I replied.

  Cylia shuddered. “Gift-giving asshole,” she said.

  Sam and James exchanged a look, united in their confusion. It was nice for them to have something to bond over. If Sam started getting squirrelly again, I’d be sure to drop something about the Easter Bunny into conversation. That would keep them busy for a while.

  “Maybe that’s why they have the crossroads ghosts,” I said, letting the topic of beloved holiday figures who were secretly terrifying slip to the side. “I mean, something had to control the crossroads before the change, but whatever it was would have been making the deals, not brokering them. On the other hand, having something with a friendly, nonthreatening face that can lie to people … that’s valuable if you’re some kind of nasty that feeds off human misery. Or whatever it is that the crossroads feed off of. I wish to hell Mary were still here. She might be able to answer some of these questions.”

  Or she might not. The crossroads had always kept a tight leash on what she could and couldn’t talk about, and she had tried so hard to be careful. Well, look where that got her.

  “I don’t like being the designated ignorant person, but I’m going to step up and take one for the team,” said Sam. “What does any of this matter? Why do we care whether or not the crossroads can lie?”

  “We care because if they could lie, they’d be offering James a way to get Sally back if he promised not to hurt them. Hell, maybe they’d be making him a new Sally. My maternal grandfather was dead for a while, and he got better, but he’s not the man he was before his murders.” Resurrect the shell of Sally and shove Bethany inside; trust James to ascribe any strangeness to the aftereffects of trauma. It wasn’t an elegant plan. It was a functional one if the crossroads could lie. “That also means when they told Mary—and then Bethany—that he scared them, they meant it. The answer is here.” I waved a hand, indicating the books around us.

  “Okay, but … where?” Sam scowled at the book in his hands. “We’ve been going over these for hours. There’s nothing here but a lot of desperate people making stupid deals and getting lectured about it by whoever wrote the thing down.”

  “Good question.” I sat up to get a better view of James. “Are you sure all the books are here? Your mom didn’t keep a private library at home?”

  “My parents were basically a redneck Bewitched,” said James grimly. “My father never wanted to hear a word about magic, not even when she was trying to warn him that it can be hereditary. There’s no way she would have kept things at home. He would have found them.”

  I frowned.

  My family is big into taking notes. We have the mice to recount what they see and experience, providing an absolutely invaluable service, especially when you’re on the road and it’s not safe to write things down. But nothing will ever replace the journal as a source of wisdom for future generations. My grandfather, like most sorcerers of his generation, even created his own grimoire, recording as much as he could about who he was and what he knew how to do.

  Of course, he did most of the writing while he was still working for the Covenant, which meant he was creating a written record of all the reasons they should really burn him at the stake. So he’d learned how to do things in code, and how to hide them.

  James’ mother had been a sorcerer.

  “Change of plans,” I said and stood. “Fern isn’t going to be the make-believe girlfriend.”

  “Oh?” said Cylia.

  “Oh, no,” said Sam.

  I flashed him a wry smile as I leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “At least it’s not Leonard?”

  Sam groaned.

  * * *

  Fern took the news of being released from her pretend relationship with relief, since pretending to date James would have involved leaving the house—something she wasn’t currently inclined to do. She also took her share of the research seriously, producing several pages of tightly-spaced notes that didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

  Sam leaned against the doorframe as I laced my skates, arms folded, scowling. He really was excellently suited to looming.

  “Is this a jealousy thing?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the knot I was attempting to tie. “Because if you’re going to be the kind of boyfriend who gets cranky every time I look at another guy, we may need to have a conversation that’s going to make us both really, really unhappy.”

  “It’s not a jealousy thing,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. “I’m not going to pretend to like it, but you took a crossbow bolt to the shoulder rather than let me get hurt. I think I’m an asshole if I ask for more proof that you’re sticking with me.”

  “So what is it?”

  “It’s a ‘some Covenant fucker is out there with a crossbow, and he might shoot you again, and when you’re pretending to be some other dude’s girlfriend, I can’t come with you to keep you safe’ thing.” Sam’s scowl deepened. “You can ask me to do a lot of things, and most of them I’ll probably go along with, because I know you do what you do for a reason. But you can’t ask me not to worry about you.”

  I tied off my skate with a tight knot and stood, testing my balance before gliding over to Sam and leaning up to press a kiss to his cheek. “I won’t ask you not to worry about me. I’ll ask you to spare a little worry for anyone who decides I’d make a good target. I’d hate to go to prison for murder.”

  “We’d break you out,” he said, a small smile working its way through the scowl.

  “My hero.” This time, when I leaned in to kiss him, he turned, making it into a proper kiss. He wrapped his arms around my waist, joining his hands at the small of my back, and so I slid my own hands around to loop around his neck, keeping myself stable.

  He kissed hard and hot and like he was afraid this might be the last time he got the chance. I responded in kind, and for a few seconds—not nearly long enough—everything else ceased to carry any real importance. We were together. We were going to figure out a way through this.

  Someone cleared their throat behind us.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but if we want a chance of beating my father to the house, we should go,” said James.

  I leaned back, hands still linked behind Sam’s neck, and twisted to look toward James. He was standing in the doorway, cheeks flaming red, looking like he wasn’t sure which of us he was allowed to be focusing on. Finally, he met my eyes.

  “You’re really going to roller skate all the way to my house?”
he asked.

  “I don’t drive, and even if I did, we only have the one car; this is better.” I let go of Sam’s neck. He reluctantly took his hands from my waist. “Do I look respectable enough?”

  Cylia had packed my injured shoulder with gauze and topical painkillers, creating a bulky distortion in my silhouette. I was compensating with a heavy cardigan that put an unfortunate amount of pressure on the wound, but also concealed it completely, and would hopefully slow any further crossbow bolts enough to give me time to react. Wool isn’t the best armor out there. It still has Old Navy polar fleece beat, hands down. My jeans were dark and crisp and new enough to be respectable, while also being unlikely to show any bloodstains that happened to arise from the day’s work. Really, the most disreputable thing about me was my bag, a battered leather thing Cylia had found for me in a thrift store in Oklahoma.

  “You look fine,” admitted James, after an overly-long pause for consideration. “My father will definitely believe you’re my type.”

  “Nerd?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Let’s go with that.”

  I smirked. Even while pretend dating, James was doing his level best to act like my breasts didn’t come into the room ahead of the rest of me. I respected that. It’s impolite to stab your allies.

  His bike was propped against the porch. I stepped down to ground level, using my toe stops liberally to keep myself from rolling, and started stomp-skating along the gravel driveway. Each step jarred the hole in my shoulder, making me question my life choices and the efficacy of the painkillers in my system at the same time. I knew I couldn’t take anything stronger if I wanted to be any use for the rest of the day, but oh, how I longed for a numbing agent free of all side effects.

  James walked down the driveway to join me, holding his bike by the handlebars, a twisted smile on his face. “I’m starting to feel like the lead in a teen detective story,” he said.

  “Neither of us has been a teen for a while,” I noted.

  “Yes, but if we were in a movie about adults, we’d have a car. And we’re in our mid-twenties, which is basically the same as being sixteen in Hollywood years.”

  The gravel twisted beneath my wheels as I trudged along and considered his depressing pronouncement. “I have way too much sex to be in a teen movie.”

  “CW show, then.”

  “And what, we’d be a modern-day Buffy spin-off? No, thanks. If someone popped up and told me they were the chosen one, destined to save the world from darkness, I’d ask them very nicely to get away from me, in case it was catching.”

  James laughed. We came around the final curve in the driveway, and there, blessedly, was the street in all its poorly-maintained glory. Sure, it was a typical Maine country road, meaning there were potholes as big as my torso every few hundred feet, but it was a hell of a lot better than gravel. Whooping, I skated on, feeling the tension drop from my shoulders as my wheels met pavement.

  Allowing myself a few seconds of peace, I skated a wide circle, feeling the muscles in my thighs tense and relax in the familiar dance of derby. James slung his leg over his bike and pedaled after me, catching up in short order.

  “You’re pretty good on those things,” he said. “Think you can keep up?”

  I didn’t have any protective gear, not even a helmet, which meant he could see my grin in all its feral glory. “Try me,” I suggested.

  He did.

  The average human, on the average, nonracing bicycle, can sustain a speed of twelve to fifteen miles an hour if not pedaling hard enough to be a danger to themselves and others. The average human, on the average, properly-fitted roller skates, can sustain something similar. James was someone who rode his bike for convenience and speed, not necessarily as part of an actual exercise program. Whereas I was someone who rode my skates for the sole purpose of being faster than everyone around me. I wasn’t passing blockers or scoring points, and I didn’t get too far ahead of him, since he was the one who knew where we were supposed to be going, but speed? Oh, I had speed on my side.

  After his initial surprise at how fast I could move had faded, James laughed and settled into coasting alongside me. When cars approached, I moved behind him, trusting him to understand the flow of local traffic better than I did. When the road was open, which was more often than not, we rode as a pair.

  My shoulder ached, but skating works a different set of muscles, and it wasn’t like I was actually playing roller derby, for all that if I let my eyelids drift to half-mast I could hear the rattle of wheels on the track and the distant cheering of the crowd. I missed my teammates more than I would ever have thought possible before this little adventure, and I couldn’t wait for the day when it was safe for me to go back to them. They’d give me hell for my long unannounced absence, but I was confident there was some loophole somewhere in the rules that would let me start skating again, once they saw I was sincere. There’s always a loophole. If you look long and hard enough, there’s always a loophole.

  The road, which had been briefly almost decent, became more pitted and cracked as we swung back into rural territory, having traveled less than two miles overall. We turned up a driveway as long and winding as the one back at the rental house, although this one was paved and better tended than the road. No gravel here.

  No smile on James’ face, either. The levity he’d displayed during our ride disappeared, replaced by a look of grim determination. He didn’t look like a man marching toward his own death, quite: more like someone heading for a dinner where they knew the menu wouldn’t include anything they could eat.

  Going home shouldn’t be the sort of thing that makes a person look like that. I glanced at him, sobering, and followed him up the driveway to the house.

  It was a larger, better-tended version of the house where I was staying. The windows were clean, the paint was fresh, and the shingles were in excellent repair. It could have been on the cover of a magazine about rural living in modern Maine.

  James slowed as we neared the house, hopping off his bike and walking it alongside him. “I have to leave it in the back,” he said. “It’s unsightly.”

  “It’s a bike.”

  “Yeah, well.” His laugh was small and tight. “I don’t make the rules. I forgot to ask before: did you bring any shoes? Because you can’t wear those skates in the house. If my father came home and found you tracking up his hardwood floors, I’d be moving in with you over at my cousin’s place after he threw us both out on our asses.”

  That might not have been such a bad thing. James needed something in his life to change. Being thrown out of his house wasn’t ideal, but it would be a start. “I always have shoes with me.”

  “Good. I mean, you can’t wear those in the house either, since they’d still track up the floors, but at least this way, they’ll be next to the door and my father won’t think you’re some weirdo who runs around the woods barefoot.”

  I couldn’t imagine anyone looking at their son’s new girlfriend and immediately starting to assess her footwear, at least not outside of some messed-up retelling of Cinderella. I didn’t say anything. James looked genuinely worried, and no matter how silly or overblown I thought that concern might be, he deserved better than to be teased about it.

  “Got it,” I said. “Any other house rules I need to know?”

  James stopped, looking me frankly up and down. I resisted the urge to squirm.

  “That kind of sweater isn’t quite a coat, so you don’t need to take it off. Your hair should be fine. If he comes home, try not to squirm, don’t swear, and don’t say anything that might make him suspect something’s up.”

  “What’s going to make him assume something’s up?”

  “Everything,” said James grimly, and propped his bike against the back porch. He waited long enough for me to remove my skates and place them in my bag before unlocking the door. Silent, I followed him inside.

  Some houses always feel like homes. Maybe they’re clean and maybe they’re not, b
ut they’re lived-in in a way that makes it clear their residents enjoy living there, or at least don’t mind it overly. Other houses feel more like waystations, a place to stop for a little while before continuing on to whatever comes next.

  This wasn’t either one of those. This was a house that felt like a museum if I was being charitable, and like a prison if I wasn’t. Oh, it was nice enough—nicer than the house where I’d grown up, which had always shown the signs of being home base for multiple cryptozoologists, their spouses and children, and whatever pets we’d all dragged home that week. The floors were polished mahogany, the walls were lined with beautiful, antique-looking shelves and small, decorative objects, and everything radiated class in that unique New England way. I could have filmed a period drama there and no one would have questioned my set design.

  But the air was cold, and the smell of floor polish and mothballs dogged our footsteps, clinging to the inside of my nostrils. Sorcery is hereditary. I still couldn’t shake the thought that if I’d grown up here, I would have manifested ice over fire as well. This was a place for freezing by inches, where nothing burned bright.

  There was only one picture on the hallway wall: a man who looked somewhat like an older, sterner James, albeit with broader shoulders and a handlebar mustache, standing next to a devastatingly lovely dark-haired woman in a white lace wedding gown. She was smiling for the camera, but I could see the etched-in lines of sadness around her eyes.

  James put his shoes on the rack next to the door. I followed his lead, and he followed my eyes to the portrait. “She really did want to marry him,” he said, voice soft. “Everyone agrees about that. No one’s ever been able to tell me why, but it’s not like I could go around quizzing relatives at her funeral. She loved him. She loved me. She left us anyway.”