Alex would have told me this was a terrible plan. Uncle Mike would have insisted I needed so much more backup that it was better to just wait until he could get here from Chicago. Even Verity would have looked at this idea and written it off as flimsy and half-cocked. But it was what we had, and time was running out; if I didn’t want to add “mystically compelled shut-in” to the list of ways in which I took after my grandfather, we needed to move.
“I have no idea,” I said.
There was a pause. “I thought you’d lie,” said Sam.
“Yeah, well, if this doesn’t work, I don’t want you telling everyone how I lied to you right before the crossroads decided to make my head explode.” I squeezed his hand, eyes still closed. “I love you a lot, you know. I’m not going to be sorry about that, no matter what happens next. I got the chance to meet you, and that would never have happened without everything else. I’m grateful.”
“I’m not,” said Sam. “I’m pissed. I would never have missed you if I hadn’t met you. I could have been too ignorant to know that I wasn’t really happy up until the day I died.”
“Would that have been enough?”
“Maybe,” he said, and pulled his hand out of mine so he could put his arms around me, and he held me. Not for long; not for nearly long enough. But he held me, and I held him, and for a few more minutes, we were okay. We were together. We were going to win.
For a few more minutes, we were both liars, and that was all I wanted in the world.
Eighteen
“A parent’s greatest fear is the idea of burying their children. Everything else is a distant second, and worth forgetting in the face of that unbearable loss.”
–Evelyn Baker
Burial Grounds, about to do something very, very foolish
WE’D ALL AGREED, AFTER I managed to lure Sam out of the bedroom and back to the table, that speaking to Leonard was best done in a public place, since he was less likely to whip out a crossbow and start shooting people—aka, me—for ideological reasons when there were witnesses. I enjoyed not being shot. Any time I felt like I was in danger of forgetting how much I liked not being shot, all I had to do was move my arm and I remembered.
I did not like the feeling of impending panic that had been hovering over me since the moment I stepped outside the wards. My chest was tight, my jaw was tighter, and I had to keep fighting not to hyperventilate. I was going to need therapy when all this was over. Panic attacks whenever I went outside were not on my list of “useful souvenirs.”
But that would have to wait. I was tucked into the deepest, darkest corner of Burial Grounds with a coffee mug in my hand and my eyes on the window. I hadn’t been subtle about my approach: Cylia had dropped me two blocks from the shop and I’d taken my time walking to the door, waving to passing cars along the way, pretending everything was fine. Bethany couldn’t snatch me off the street without being seen, which sort of went against the whole idea of being secretive, and if Leonard had me under any kind of surveillance, there was no way he could have missed me making the trip. All I had to do now was wait.
And wait.
And wait.
I was starting to think my time would have been better spent staying safe at the house and helping James figure out what sort of summoning ritual would work for a crossroads ghost who’d been punted into some sort of spectral jail by her employers when the door swung open and Leonard Cunningham stepped cautiously inside. He was tense, looking from side to side like he expected to be attacked at any moment.
A hot jet of satisfaction scorched through me, forcing me to bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from grinning in a decidedly unfriendly manner. He was scared? Good. He had reason to be scared, starting with the fact that he was only still alive because I needed him that way. His death would summon way too much of the Covenant down on our heads, and that was one complication too many for an already complicated situation.
His scan failed to find any likely attackers and he approached the counter, ordering a mug of something and waiting for its delivery before collecting it and making his way down the length of the café to my table. He stopped just shy of the available chair.
“I’m assuming this was an invitation,” he said.
I pushed the chair a little farther out with my toe. “You’re not wrong.”
He settled warily, cup held between us like a highly inadequate shield. I gave it a disdainful look. Leonard shrugged.
“I have little means with which to defend myself in public without violating the traditions to which I am sworn,” he said. “Allow me the small comfort of knowing I could douse you in scalding liquid if you gave me sufficient cause.”
“After the McDonalds lawsuit, coffee shops don’t keep their water all that hot,” I said.
Leonard looked at me blankly.
I sighed. “What, do you not have greedy corporations and medical bills in England? Look it up. Yes, I’m here to talk, and no, you shouldn’t need to throw hot coffee on me. I’m here under the flag of truce.” I picked up a napkin and waved it back and forth. “Behold the flag. How whitely it waves.”
“You are a very strange woman,” he said, pursing his lips. “How you passed initial screening, I may never know.”
“I had someone changing my scores when everyone else’s backs were turned because he wanted to keep me,” I said.
Leonard flushed red and turned his face slightly away. Score one for the annoying American.
“Charming,” he said.
“I’m not here to make friends, I’m here to win,” I said, and waited a beat for his reaction. None came. I sighed. “You need to watch more reality television, or my tendency to talk entirely in pop culture references when stressed isn’t going to make this easier. Look, we need to have a serious conversation about what you’re doing here, and what you’re going to do to make up for shooting me.”
“I told you, I’m observing—”
“Observing me, right. I assume you have some sort of blood-based tracking charm, right? Something that lets you keep a solid lock on where I am? Well, first off, I’m going to need you to give that to me. And I want your word, on whatever it is that passes for your sense of honor, that you don’t have the materials to make another one.”
He turned enough to scowl at me. “What makes you think I’d tell you the truth?”
“Well, again, you want to recruit me. You let me live because you want to be the Covenant operative who brings the big, bad Price family back to the table.” I leaned forward, smiling my most feral smile. “You can’t lie to me and hope to bring me home with you at the same time. It’s one or the other, and I’m banking on your self-interest telling you the bird in the hand is going to peck the crap out of you if you don’t put it back in the bush.”
Leonard’s scowl deepened before he said, in a tightly controlled tone, “I was able to collect enough of your blood to make a single tracking charm. Margaret and Chloe have been persuaded to keep their silence.”
“How?”
No reply.
“How, Leonard?”
“Chloe … had no actual evidence of your malfeasance,” he said slowly. “I was able to convince her you’d been taken against your will. She believes, and is convincing our parents, that I’m trying to recover you from a kidnapping. I lack backup because retrieving one half-trained agent is less important than recovering from Robert’s death and bolstering our resources against the coming conflict.”
It was surprisingly easy to believe that. Chloe Cunningham was a smart woman, skilled enough to stay alive in a fight and canny enough to see which way the wind was blowing. She was also a Covenant girl, trained from birth to take orders and believe her superiors. Leonard was their grandfather’s heir apparent, and one day he was going to run the entire enterprise. Assuming he didn’t end up disappearing into a shallow grave first. Plus, Chloe and I had been roommates back in the training facility. If I was a double agent, that reflected poorly on her. If I’d been k
idnapped, on the other hand …
“What about Margaret?” I asked. “She knows damn well that I’m not a patsy.”
For the first time, Leonard looked uncomfortable. “Margaret has been … pliable since her first mission in the States. I wondered whether something might have happened to her there. Regardless, she’s been easy to convince, under any form of hypnosis, of almost anything I needed her to think.”
I stared at him. Finally, stiffly, I said, “Only the fact that you don’t look happy about this is keeping me from stabbing you right now. If I find out you’ve put a finger on her—”
“What? No!” Leonard recoiled, looking honestly appalled. “I would never abuse the trust of another Covenant soldier like that. What kind of monster do you take me for?”
“A murderer and a liar, mostly, but that’s another conversation.” I shook my head. “You’re willing to manipulate her mind for your own gain. Why should I believe you’re not willing to do the same to her body?” My words came out even sharper than I’d intended, powered by the strength of my guilt and dismay.
Margaret Healy was my cousin. Distant, yes, and from a branch of the family that hated mine and wanted to see us all dead, but still, she was blood. She’d been raised in the Covenant, told from birth that the Healys—now Prices—who’d left to go to America were traitors at best, and villains at worst. Sure, she was an adult and could technically make her own choices, but it can be hard to go against the dominant philosophy espoused by literally everyone in your life.
She had been on the Covenant strike team that tracked down Verity and Dominic in New York. They’d managed to capture Verity. They would have been able to use her to learn everything about the family. We would all have been lost … if my cousin Sarah hadn’t used her natural telepathic powers to basically melt Margaret’s memory and rewrite it into something more convenient.
Doing that, using her powers that way, had hurt Sarah badly enough that she’d spent more than a year unable to manage even simple arithmetic, wandering in a fugue state while her adoptive parents and my brother did their best to keep her from hurting herself. I’d been angry with Verity for a long time after that. No: that didn’t cover it. I’d been furious with Verity for a long time after that. I’d been angry and unforgiving, and I’d blamed her for the fact that one of our cousins might be lost inside her own head forever.
Then Sarah had started getting better. She still wasn’t what she’d been before, but she was well enough to have confirmed that she’d acted of her own free will, and that made a difference, at least to me.
I had never really considered what the long-term effects for Margaret might have been.
“I thought you’d be happy,” snapped Leonard. “If I hadn’t convinced her she’d seen you taken by that beast you continue to call a boyfriend, she’d be here with me—and she wouldn’t be aiming for recruitment. You’re playing a dangerous game, Annie Price. It’s going to end badly for you, one way or the other.”
“My freedom or my life, you mean?” I shook my head. “It’s going to end badly for one of us. I want you to stop fucking with Margaret’s head.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not seeing where you have the grounds to make that request.”
“How about she’s my family, and I owe her at least that much?” I leaned forward. “Also, how about someday I’m going to be coming back to England to tell your leadership where to stick it, and I bet they’d be real interested in hearing how much you’ve been messing with that poor woman. She deserves better than your bullshit. Leave her alone.”
Leonard leaned back in his chair. “I think I liked you better when you were playing at being Timpani.”
“And I think I liked you better when I thought you were a brainwashed foot soldier instead of a would-be mastermind, but here we are, and this is what we have to work with,” I said. “I came here because I wanted to sit down with you. I have a proposal.”
He took a careful sip of his coffee, savoring it, before he said, “You are always welcome in the arms of the Covenant. You know that. I’m even willing to spare—”
“Okay, I’m going to stop you right there, because you can’t help us if I’m busy stabbing you,” I said. “I’m not coming back. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever. I am not your good little Covenant girl, and I’m never going to be. I hate you. I hate everything you stand for. All your ideals, all your ideas about what this world is supposed to be, everything. It’s vile. It’s disgusting. It’s archaic, and not in the fun Renaissance Faire kind of way.”
Leonard narrowed his eyes. “I see. Well, then. If I’m so revolting to you, why are you here?”
“I could say it was because I wanted a cup of coffee, but we both know I’d be lying.” As if the desire for caffeine could have lured me out into the open with Bethany still lurking around, ready to deliver another “reminder” of my duty to the crossroads. “Do you know what the crossroads are?”
His lip curled in clear disgust. “Witchcraft.”
“Not quite, and since you’re using a tracking charm to follow me, I’m not sure you get to complain about honest witchcraft right now.” I picked up my own coffee, turning the mug between my hands. The heat seeping through the ceramic was soothing, like it was slipping the fire back into my fingers a little bit at a time. “I’m guessing you know what they are, though.”
“Foul places, used for the making of the devil’s bargains.”
I didn’t bother to swallow my sigh. “If you’re going to be like this, we may as well call this finished right now. I need to talk to you, not feed you quarters so you can spit out excerpts from the Covenant training manual like some sort of fucked-up vending machine. Will you listen?”
There was a long, dangerous pause as Leonard considered his options. I stiffened, waiting to see which way he was going to go.
There was no way he’d managed to conceal a crossbow on himself. That was good. But there are a lot of weapons smaller than a crossbow, and he could be carrying any number of them. I, on the other hand, was not, for James’ safety: I’d have to improvise, which meant smashing a lot of innocent furniture. If he decided we were done talking and it was time for him to attack me, we could destroy this place. That would attract attention. Win, lose, or draw, I’d have a lot of problems if he turned this physical, and that would complicate getting James down to the crossroads to sort things out.
“All right,” he said finally. “I’m listening.”
“You have access to the Covenant library. Have you ever really looked at the history surrounding the crossroads?”
“I did a research project when I was in primary school.” He said it so calmly, so reasonably, that it made me want to laugh until I cried.
What would the world have been like if my ancestors had been able to make the Covenant see sense about changing their tactics, about learning to live with the cryptids and yōkai and ghosts instead of working to destroy them at every turn? I could have grown up doing school reports about things I actually cared about, rather than pretending I thought Christopher Columbus was a good man and not a colonialist bastard. I could have been so much more prepared.
We build our presents on the ruins of our pasts, and we hope the foundations we construct from the dust of bad ideas and painful choices will be strong enough to hold up our futures. They have to be.
“So you know the crossroads changed in the 1400s,” I said, like there was no question of his knowledge. It was out there to know: he’d done his research: of course he knew it. I wasn’t challenging his authority, not at all, only reminding him of something that anyone who’d bothered to open a book would have seen.
Leonard blinked. “Er,” he said. “Yes.”
Of course he hadn’t known. The Covenant wrote things down, but they didn’t care about the reasons those things happened, or what they’d been before they turned hostile. That was why the Covenant had been able to become such a force for destruction, and why they’d always been doomed to stagnate and fai
l. If you don’t understand what you’re trying to fight against, you’re inevitably going to be defeated.
“James—the local man you’ve seen me talking to—found a way to undo that change. The crossroads used to be a natural thing.”
“Nothing that encourages good men to make deals with devils can be natural.”
I rolled my eyes. “There we go again. Okay, look, no. Whatever the crossroads were when they started, they were created in this world, by this world, to be a part of this world. They’re supposed to be here. Maybe they’re the noosphere’s nervous system, or maybe they’re a pressure valve for all the little, unavoidable magic that builds up around living creatures, or maybe they’re a big cosmic zit. Whatever. They’re natural. The world would suffer if we destroyed them.” I wasn’t entirely confident about that last part—most people get by just fine without ever going down to the crossroads—but I didn’t want to give Leonard the idea that we could, or would, destroy the crossroads completely. Mary wouldn’t survive losing the source of her tether to this world.
Was I willing to risk actual, living people for the sake of saving my phantom babysitter?
Hell, yes, I was, and anyone with a heart would have done the same thing.
Leonard frowned. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the malicious ‘I want to kill your cattle and eat your firstborn because I’m an evil entity from beyond time and space’ crossroads we all know and hate aren’t natural. They’re some kind of parasite that’s managed to take over the space the real crossroads are supposed to occupy. If we can get to them without being stopped, we can hurt them. Maybe even kill them. The real crossroads, the one that doesn’t eat people, comes back. You look like a hero for being there when it went down. Hell, you go back to England and take all the credit. Now you’ve proven yourself. You went to America to recover an agent, and you fixed a problem that’s been plaguing people for centuries. Gold star you, pat yourself on the back, and never darken my door again.”
That Ain't Witchcraft (InCryptid #8) Page 26
