That Ain't Witchcraft (InCryptid #8)

by Seanan McGuire

  Oh, I was definitely taking him home with me. “I get it,” I said. “I don’t drive either.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “Never seemed like something I wanted to do. I mean, I know how—I passed Driver’s Ed, and I passed Driver’s Dead, which was my Aunt Rose and a big, empty parking lot and a whole bunch of screaming.” That had been a fun series of nights. Fun, and terrifying, and enough to firmly cement the idea that driving was something best left to people who didn’t want to be able to grip the dashboard with both hands. “I can usually get by on public transit, roller skates, and cadging rides from people. Plus no one suspects you of being a heavily armed survivalist when you’re taking the local light rail. It’s a sort of camouflage.”

  “Lots of weirdoes ride the bus,” said James approvingly.

  “And we are among the weirdoes.”

  He turned off the main road and onto the gravel drive that would take us to the house. I regretfully let go of the back of the bike.

  “Hang on a second, okay? I need to put my shoes on.” The thought of roller skating over gravel, whether or not I was being towed, was enough to make me want to sit down and refuse to move. I didn’t think my legs had ever been this tired. Pain is not the same as damage, but it exhausts the body all the same.

  James watched me with concern as I sat down in the gravel and went through the process of swapping skates for shoes. When I was finished, and stood, he asked, “Are you all right? Do you need … I mean, is there …”

  “There’s nothing medically wrong with me,” I said. “I’ll explain once we’re inside.”

  He didn’t like that answer—I could see it in his eyes—but he accepted it, and held his tongue as we walked the rest of the way along the driveway to the house.

  Leonard was on the porch.

  I stopped dead, my hands going to the knives at my waistband. “Get behind me, James,” I said, voice low and dangerous.

  James, to my surprise, did as he was told. It’s always nice to work with people who can take directions.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Cunningham?” It didn’t take much effort to pitch my voice loud enough for Leonard—and hopefully everyone inside the house—to hear. If anything, the effort was keeping myself from screaming. “We don’t want you.”

  Leonard turned from his study of the door, eyes widening with surprise and, yes, relief when he saw me. “Annie!” He started forward.

  I pulled the knives from under my clothes. He stopped, raising his empty hands.

  “I’m not here to fight, and I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I wanted to find out if you were all right. I swear on my honor as a Cunningham that this isn’t a trick.”

  “You’re a Covenant man,” I snarled. “You have no honor.” My shoulder ached and throbbed, reminding me of exactly what he was capable of.

  “I have more honor than you think I do. Annie, please. If you’d just hear me out …”

  A curtain twitched in one of the upstairs windows. My stomach unclenched a bit. The others were inside, and safe, although Cylia and Fern probably had their hands full trying to restrain Sam. Leaving Leo locked outside was a decent way of dealing with him, at least until some poor fool—like say, me—came walking up the drive.

  “I don’t want to hear you out, Leo,” I said. “I have things to do, and you shot me.”

  “In my defense, I was aiming for that beast you keep company with.”

  For the first time, James spoke. “I’ve only met the lady recently, and I admit I’m no expert, but it seems to me that shooting her boyfriend is not a good way to endear yourself to her. Maybe apologize, instead of insulting him?”

  “Thank you, James,” I said.

  Leo frowned. “I think you’ll find this doesn’t concern you.”

  “Fascinating.” James moved to stand next to me. “I always assumed the Covenant of St. George would be made up of smart people, from the way it was described in the old books. I never guessed it would be made up of pompous assholes.”

  “Now, now, be fair,” I said. “They can be smart pompous assholes.”

  Leo’s frown blossomed into a full-fledged glare, which he directed at the two of us without hesitation. “Who is this, Annie? Tell him to leave.”

  “This is James, he’s a friend of mine, and I won’t be telling him to leave, thanks, since I want somebody here to see if you decide to shoot me with another crossbow.” I kept my knives up, ready to throw. I wasn’t sure how good my aim would be, but hey. Sometimes you can only learn by doing. “I want you away from here, Leonard. Don’t come near me, or my people, ever again. And do not insult Sam.”

  “He’s not even human!” Leo took two steps forward, agitated. I raised my knives. He stopped. “What kind of future can you have with an animal? He’ll never understand you the way I would. He’ll never be able to give you the things you deserve. A home, a family—”

  “Oh, now you’re about family? Because last time I saw you, you were super okay with sedating your sister and lying to my cousin about who I really was. You’re not trying to make sure I’m okay. You’re trying to make sure I’m yours.”

  “Can you blame me?” He lowered his hands. “There’s a war coming, Annie, a war your sister started. You’re a valuable asset, and more importantly, I’m fond of you. I want you to survive when the Covenant takes back this continent. The only way that’s going to happen is if you’re on the right side.”

  “The right side being your side.”

  “Yes.” Leo looked me in the eye. “It is. We have the numbers. We have the training. We have every tactical advantage it’s possible to have in a situation like this one.”

  “Interesting,” said James. He turned to face me. “Are all Covenant operatives this dishonest, or did we get a good one?”

  “Be quiet,” snarled Leo.

  “Don’t be quiet,” I said. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean if they had all the advantages he,” James flapped a hand at Leonard, “wants to claim they have, why is this happening? Why is any of this happening? You’re one woman. Granted, you’re faintly terrifying, and I’m not sure I’m going to survive knowing you, but you’re not worth delaying an invasion. He’s either exaggerating his position or downplaying yours.”

  “There’s a third option,” I said. “He’s doing both, and he doesn’t have the authority to be here.”

  Leo stiffened. I’d hit a nerve. Slowly, I smiled.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re the one who brought me into the recruiting center, even if you didn’t realize you were doing it, and once you realized who I was, you were so excited by the idea of bringing a Price back into the fold that you kept it a secret because you wanted all the credit. Only you lost me, and there were too many witnesses you didn’t want to kill—at least, I’m assuming you didn’t kill your own sister—for you to bury it completely. You’re supposed to be back in England getting punished for your hubris right now, aren’t you?”

  Leo didn’t say anything.

  I glanced at James. “See, what Leo here doesn’t like to remember is that he’s our age. He’s the new generation, still under supervision, and he’s not supposed to scheme and plot and try to do things without running them through the chain of command. I got away because he wanted to see how much rope I needed before I hung myself.”

  “That’s not entirely fair,” said Leo tightly.

  “None of this is entirely fair,” I said. “Why should my version of the story be any different? You don’t have any backup, Leo, and it’s pretty clear that while you’re willing to take potshots at innocent cryptids because … fuck, because you’re an asshole, because you’re jealous, whatever. It doesn’t matter why you’re doing this. You don’t have any authority. The Covenant isn’t coming to back you up or solve your problems. I want you out of here. I want you to leave me alone.”

  “That’s never going to happen,” he said, and smiled. “I own you. Whether or not you’ve admitted it to you
rself, you’re mine. One day, you’re going to see how foolish it is to resist the inevitable, and you’re going to come back to the fold.”

  He could do this all day: he’d prepared his supervillain speech, and all I was doing was giving him the material to play off of, allowing him to keep belching forth proclamations about his superiority and predestined victory and blah, blah, blah. Under other circumstances, I might have humored it. People who’ve already mapped out the conversation in their heads can frequently be tricked into giving things away if you let them keep talking long enough. But I was tired, and I was irritated, and I wanted to be safely behind the anti-ghost wards on the house as soon as humanly possible.

  I had one injured shoulder and two hands. I threw the knife in my good hand, enjoying the brief second of shocked realization in Leo’s eyes before the blade hit the porch support half a foot from his face with a satisfying thwock sound.

  “That could have been your throat,” I said calmly. “I have more knives, and you seem to have misplaced your crossbow. Leave.”

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  “You shot me.”

  “I wasn’t aiming for you.”

  “You keep saying that, and you keep not understanding why it doesn’t actually help your case.” I took a step forward, proud of the way my knees failed to knock. “Get out of here, or the next knife goes into your eye.”

  I could do it. Maybe not with my bad hand, but I always have more knives, and I could draw and throw again before Leo had the chance to do anything other than stand there and get impaled. He knew it, too; with a final frown, he finished descending the porch and started toward the small car parked behind Cylia’s.

  “This isn’t over,” he said. “You will understand why I’m the better choice than this menagerie of misfits and monsters before we leave this town.”

  “Maybe I’ll also bleach my hair and learn how to walk in heels,” I said. “Go.”

  He went. James and I stayed where we were, watching as he peeled out of the driveway and back to the street. Only when he was gone did James look at me.

  “Would you really have killed him?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” I made the knife in my hand disappear. “He’s set to inherit leadership of the Covenant. Killing him means this never ends. But unless I can find and confiscate whatever it is he’s using to track me, maybe this never ends no matter what I do. So I don’t know. Aren’t you glad we didn’t have to find out right now?”

  I started toward the house. After a moment’s stunned silence, James followed.

  Sixteen

  “There’s nothing like moonlight and monsters to remind a girl why she loves her job.”

  –Alice Healy

  The front room of a rented house in New Gravesend, Maine

  SAM WAS WAITING JUST inside the house. He wrapped his arms around me as soon as I was through the door, pulling me into a tight, borderline frantic embrace.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he said, voice muffled by my hair. “Cylia said it would be better if I didn’t go out, and I listened because I thought she might be right, but then you were there and I didn’t help, and I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He had my arms pinned against my sides. I squirmed until I could reach up enough to awkwardly pat his elbow. He didn’t let go. It wasn’t the most comfortable hug I’d ever experienced, but he was shaking and I couldn’t find it in myself to push him away.

  Sometimes I felt genuinely bad about what being close to me was doing to the people I cared about. Not enough to want them to leave me. Just enough to not complain when they hogged more than their fair share of the popcorn.

  The door closed behind James. Cylia locked it, glancing out the curtains one more time to be sure Leo was gone. I gave Sam’s elbow a final, awkward pat.

  “It’s really okay,” I said. “I’m a big girl. I’m used to taking care of myself. And if he’d tried anything, I would have put a throwing knife up his nose. Now can you let me go before I need new ribs? I don’t want to fight the crossroads in a body cast.”

  “Sorry.” Sam stepped back, tail curling anxiously around his ankles. He continued staring at me, surveying for imaginary injuries. “I’m going to kill that guy. I hope you’re cool with it because every time he messes with us, it gets a little more inevitable.”

  “Just wait until we can make it look like a non-cryptid-related accident, please,” I said. “The last thing we need is the entire Covenant descending on our heads because we killed their fearless leader-to-be.”

  “I swear joining you people has been like tuning in to a program already in progress,” muttered James.

  “I’m sorry reality doesn’t come with a recap at the top of every hour,” I said, and slid my arms out of the straps of my backpack. It made an impressively loud thump when it hit the floor. “Fern?”

  “Here.” The diminutive sylph appeared at my elbow as if by magic, although I knew it was much more likely to be connected to her fondness for lurking in corners and keeping out of the way when not actively involved in whatever was happening. “What do you need?”

  “Clear the dining room table. Get notepads for everybody. We’re about to do a speed transcription project.”

  Fern rushed off while Cylia turned to me, eyebrows raised. “I’m assuming there’s a reason for this, and we’re not just working on our handwriting?” she asked.

  “James’ mom did most of her serious research in witchletters, and right now, he’s the only one who can make them appear,” I said. “It’ll go faster if he activates multiple books at once, but that means the writing’s going to start fading almost as fast as it shows up.”

  “Meaning we transcribe as quickly as possible,” said Cylia. “All right, got it. Any additional complications?”

  I opened my mouth and hesitated, looking around the group. Things were already so bad. Did they really need the added burden of knowing the crossroads could hurt me whenever they wanted to, possibly to the point of incapacitating me?

  Hell, yeah, they did.

  “If I leave the ghost wards James set up on the house—say, to go to his place, or to deal with the crossroads, or to buy a cup of coffee—Bethany can find me,” I said. “She found me at James’. And once she finds me, the crossroads can find me. It turns out they have ways of making sure people don’t back out on their side of the bargain.”

  “Can they take back whatever you bargained for?” asked James.

  “Thankfully, no,” I said. “Aunt Mary made sure of that during the negotiation process. Since what I bargained for was not drowning, and Sam not drowning,” and I was still sure, deep down, that he’d already drowned when the crossroads answered my request; that I’d lost him, possibly forever, before I decided to barter myself against the tempo of his heart, “they can’t take that back. They’re not allowed to kill me over a debt. But they took my magic as collateral against my doing them a favor.”

  “Killing me,” said James.

  “Yes, killing you.” I looked at him levelly. “I didn’t know when I made the deal that it would be a commitment to play assassination games, and honestly, I would probably have done it regardless, because I wanted to live. Where there’s life, there’s hope. Where there’s death, there’s … well, there’s still hope, if my dead aunts are anything to go by, but it’s a different kind, and not one that would have given my parents any comfort.”

  “If I’d died in Lowryland, I’m pretty sure my grandmother would have gone into necromancy so she could bring me back and shout at me.” Sam paused. “Is necromancy real? Annie, is necromancy real?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t want to know, and if people are raising the dead for recreational reasons, they need to stay way the hell away from me.”

  Cylia put up her hands. “I feel like we’re getting away from the point again. Something we’re incredibly good at, especially when the point is unpleasant. What are you saying, Annie?”

  “I’m saying t
he crossroads can force people who owe them to go along with paying our debts. They … hurt me.” I paused, feeling suddenly awkward. Words weren’t enough, and this whole thing sounded ridiculous. A bodiless force of chaos and capitalism hurt me? Sure it did.

  Taking a sharp breath, I continued, “The crossroads used Bethany to pull me into the space they usually occupy, and they used my own magic to make every nerve in my body ignite at the same time. I can’t resist something that came from me in the first place. I don’t think there are any wards that could keep it from coming home—and once it does, it’s in someone else’s control, and it burns.”

  God, how it burned. Like acid, like fire, like every regret in the history of the world all rolled up into a single striking sword, slicing through me over and over again without leaving any marks behind. It was the kind of pain that broke people. It could easily have broken me. If I had to experience it again, I was direly afraid that it would break me.

  James stared at me, a stricken expression on his face. “Where did this happen?” he asked.

  “In the hidden stairwell. I think she was watching. Waiting for a moment when I wouldn’t have anyone around who might try to interfere.” I suppressed a shudder. Something brushed against my ankle. I looked down to see Sam’s tail wrapping itself loosely around the curve of my calf, holding on without holding too tight.

  It helped. Maybe I’m too weird to consider myself a part of polite society anymore, but it helped. I looked back up.

  “I threw up when the crossroads stopped hurting me,” I said. “It happened while I was still in the in- between space where they take you to make a bargain. There wasn’t any vomit on the stairs when they dropped me back into the real world. I think that’s the proof we’ve been waiting for that the crossroads really do exist in some other place.”

  “That is a terrible way of proving a point no one was contesting,” said Cylia flatly. “Do not prove any further points in this manner, all right? I don’t want to explain any of this shit to your cousin when we get back home.”