by C. E. Murphy
That was what trolls were for.
"You still can't keep her," Cat said. "And if I thought there was a way to get you to let her go without threatening your entire existence, I would, but since you'd really prefer to burn and suffocate us for being here, I kind of think I'm taking the right tactic here. So which is it? Do I open this breach all the way, or are you going to let Savos go?"
The elemental, vibrating with anger, twisted to reach behind itself, seized something in the far distance, and flung it to the ground near Cat.
Savos bounced once, rolled to her feet, and threw herself safely into Davos's arms while Rick continued a constant, quiet litany of "what the fuck"s. Davos's sister was almost as tall as he was, and equally strong of build, but had an air of otherness about her, something more fey than Davos’s presence. She looked exhausted now, and ill-used, but she would, Cat thought, recover.
"She was mine," the elemental said petulantly. "She came into me without permission. I was not wrong to make her find the lovely stones."
"You were," Cat said. "Even if she could do it easily, you had no right to trap her here, to force her to do it. You might have asked, and seen where that got you."
The elemental shifted, its near-expressionless face somehow conveying inconceivable horror at the idea. Despite herself, Cat chuckled quietly, and carefully, with concentration, slid her foot back from the breach. The Waste shuddered and twitched, clinging to the Torn, but without Cat holding it open, it couldn't maintain the hole. Bit by bit it faded, until to her eyes, there seemed to be no breach at all. She glanced up at the elemental, which had gone so still that all the life might have left it. "Do you feel anything from it anymore? Are you in danger?"
She edged back, reaching for Rick's hand, as the elemental's avatar melted back into the cavern's surface, and a slow, rumbling answer shivered from the walls. No…
Cat, hoping like hell Rick had Davos and Davos had Savos, stepped just before the cavern roof came tumbling down on where they'd been.
* * *
They came out in the World, because Cat wasn't about to risk the Waste or any part of the Torn again, not if she could help it. Especially not with Savos, who could traverse the Waste herself, and might well decide to—
Cat didn't know what, really. Decide to do something stupid, basically. Cat had had enough of stupid for one day.
They landed in Cat's apartment, all four of them, two human-sized people and two who could be mistaken for small, angry mountains on a bad day. Kallie was there, and let out a god-awful scream at their arrival, which seemed fair enough. Her second scream was one of relief as she threw herself through the sudden crowd to hug Rick, who collapsed under her enthusiasm. So did the chair they fell into, with a shattering thud that begot another shriek from Kallie, then silence.
Cat said, "Everybody okay?" into that silence, and a few non-verbal sounds of agreement rose, as if no one was quite willing to speak.
Davos, though, clutched his sister in a hug and said, "What happened?" before Kallie could ask the same of anyone else.
Savos shrugged. "The passage to the Torn was blocked. I took another one, and ended up in the elemental's cave. It knew me for what I was, and refused to let me leave."
"What are you?" Rick demanded, not politely, but with heartfelt passion. "And what was that thing? If you say an elemental I'll—" He stopped, obviously unable to think of a threat he could actually enact.
The siblings exchanged a glance, clearly not planning to answer the first of his questions, and Cat answered the second. "Elementals are areas of land—or earth or air or almost anything, really—that are invested with a spirit. There are some houses in the Torn that are elementals, and, like, individual trees, or a pond, sometimes. That particular one was an earth elemental, and it wanted Savos's ability to find and extract stones it admired, so it could look at them."
"If it was made of the stone why couldn't it look at them?"
"For the same reason you can't look at your own bones, with the advantage that if they're extracted from an elemental's area, it doesn't hurt them the way it would hurt you to have a bone taken out. Especially if someone with a particular skill set does the extraction."
Rick's voice shot up. "What skill set?"
Savos ignored him. "How long was I gone?" Her voice sounded like honey over rock, smooth and rough all at once. She was dark, like Davos, but where his skin had—to Cat's eyes—that faintly bark-like texture, Savos's was more like deep brown quartz, almost translucent if the light caught it right, and her eyes had golden streaks in their depths, like tiger's eye. Cat wondered what part of her parentage let her travel between the World and the Torn, but doubted she would ever know.
"Ten days," Davos said.
"How long was I gone?" Cat asked Kallie, who had gotten out of the broken chair and who now threw her hands upward.
"Four days. Rick's been gone over a week. What the hell is going on?"
"Four days." Coldness bunched in Cat's belly and sank. Four days was enough for her father to decide she'd backed out of their deal. Not that she could, having sworn an oath, but he would lay it at the feet of her very human ability to lie. Four days was enough time for him to decide to take matters into his own hands.
"You two." She pointed at Davos and Savos. "You two, out. Davos, if you ever try to pull that kind of shit again, I will drop your punk ass in the Waste and let you rot. And before you say I'll never find you, remember I've got a syringe full of your essence and can use it to find you beyond the ends of the goddamn World."
"What kind of shit?" Savos breathed as Davos's face contracted with anger.
Cat didn't give him a chance to answer, though. "And remember if Rick gets sick I'll save enough of that essence to call you to me, and drain every drop of it from your leafy veins, if that's what it takes."
"Rick's sick?" Kallie's voice broke with worry. "What the hell happened? It's been a week!"
"He poisoned me!" Rick half-yelled in childish offense. Kallie's expression went dangerously dark, but Cat raised a palm, slowing her roll.
"I told you," Cat said to Davos, softly. "I told you I was a bad enemy to make. Now get the hell out of my sight."
He went, pulling Savos after him, although she paused, confused, at the door, to say, "Thank you," to Cat. "I don't know what happened, but thank you anyway. I owe you one."
Cat, gruffly, said, "You're welcome," and Savos left in Davos's wake.
Kallie, in clear, stentorian tones, said, "What the actual fuck?"
Rick, still lying in the wrecked remains of Cat's armchair, wailed, "What are they?"
"They're people," Cat snapped, then exhaled, trying to bring her temper under control. "They're people of the Torn," she said more softly. "Half-siblings, although I thought they were full until today. The parent they share is obviously a troll, though."
"Oh," Rick said in a high voice, "obviously."
"I've always thought Davos was part dryad," Cat said. "I thought Savos was too, but she's probably something else. Maybe even human. I don't know. Something that allows her to travel through the Waste, though."
"I thought you all could," Kallie said accusingly.
Cat shrugged. "Some more easily than others, to the degree that some people effectively can't. I'm partly of the World, so I can go back and forth through it pretty easily, since I survived getting dumped there in the first place. And some of us get taught to travel it," she said, losing her temper in a snarl again. "And if I don't go find my frickin’ father before he decides I've betrayed him, then my poor helpless frickin’ kid sibling is gonna be one of those!"
Rick, faintly, said, "Your what?" and Kallie pointed firmly at Cat.
"You go sort your family shit out. I'll catch Wonder Boy here up on the details."
"Take this." Cat tossed the syringe to Kallie. "If he gets sick, shoot him up with about a quarter of that. Whatever you do, don't use it all. I'll need at least a trace of it to drag Davos back here."
"Apparently I'm not the onl
y one who has to catch somebody up on the details!" Kallie swung toward Rick. "What happened? Where have you been? How'd he poison you? Are you okay? Did you know Trina is going out of her mind with worry?"
Rick's face fell. "Oh no. Trina. She's gonna kill me."
"She won't get a chance if you don't start talking!"
Cat went into her bedroom, leaving them to their mutual explanations. She needed something of the World; something that would last, something without an iron taint, something she could work into her stupid father's stupid Artifact to let him stupid lie.
Something that would let her keep an eye on him, just in case she had to.
"Wait a minute." She spoke out loud, momentarily silencing the conversation in the room beyond. It picked up again as she pulled her phone out and called Davos—she still had his number, even if he didn't have hers—and said, "I need to talk to Savos," when he picked up.
His rumble of irritation came across the line, but his sister came on a moment later. "Yeah?"
"I think you can pay me back right now. I need a scrying stone. Not tiger's eye, it's too obvious. Something green, if possible. Can you get that for me?"
Savos, after a moment's hesitation, said, "I need earth. Ideally earth without half a city's underpinnings built into it, but…I take it you're in a hurry."
"I think I am, yeah."
Another hesitation came over the line before Savos said, "Give me a few minutes. Can I call you back at this number?"
"Yeah." Cat would have to get a new phone, if she didn't want Davos to be able to reach her after this. Then again, him not having her number hadn't worked out brilliantly this time, so maybe it was better if he just did. She stood there a minute, staring around her room and trying to think.
She could fashion a needle from the Waste, but needed a few milliliters of her own blood, too. And a way to refill the vessel for it, never mind that she'd told her father an Artifact couldn't be tampered with after the fact. Tampering was one thing. Refilling an emptied vial was something else. Although she also needed to be quite certain her father wouldn't be able to drain her blood and use it as power over her, too. Maybe she'd just have to remake the damn thing when it ran dry.
Absolutely no good could come of him wanting to be able to hide his face and lie to the people of the Torn. Cat knew she'd said that to him once. She'd probably say it to herself hundreds of times over the next…the next however-long, before she was freed from the vow she'd taken.
Her kid sibling had better appreciate it.
Not that Cat had any plan to tell the kid what had happened, or even ever meet them, for that matter, but in the space between her own ears, muttering about appreciation felt justified.
Either way, she needed blood. Her blood, specifically. And as a child of the Torn, she wasn't exactly in the habit of visiting human doctors, but making another syringe out of the Waste seemed like overkill. Cat stomped back out of her bedroom and gave the two humans in her living room the most appealing, helpless look she could achieve. "Know anybody who can draw a teensy bit of my blood, no questions asked?"
Kallie and Rick's conversation dried up, silence lingering in the air until Rick said, "If you're asking do I know people who take drugs intravenously…"
Cat stared at him a moment. “Honestly, that didn’t occur to me. I was thinking more like a doctor or pharmacist friend who would look the other way.”
“Oh.” Rick looked shifty. “I knew that.”
Kallie snorted reached for her phone. "I've got a friend who works at the vet down the street. She can probably help for a cash donation to their rescue center."
Half an hour later, at the vet's back door, a judgmental-looking woman in her forties withdrew a small vial of Cat's blood, handed it to her, pocketed a considerable amount of cash in exchange, and went back inside without ever saying a single word. "I like that," Cat said, looking after her. "Nice, simple, uncomplicated customer service."
"Cat, nothing is ever simple with you. You good? I'm going back to the apartment to make sure Rick doesn't die of troll poisoning."
"Dryad poisoning, really," Cat said absently. "Trolls can't produce toxins. But yeah, I'm good."
Kallie's exasperation was delivered in an expression that did Kermit the Frog proud. Cat grinned and took her buzzing phone out as the other woman left. "Yeah?"
Savos said, "I think I have what you need. Where are you?"
"I can meet you where you are." Cat got her location, hung up the phone, and stepped. A moment later, she stood beside Savos in a small wooded area that made a pretense of being away from the city. Savos held a small chunk of blue-green stone, streaked with very thin bands of yellow, in one hand, and offered it to Cat.
Cat held it up to the light, admiring the rough tones and how the green was deeper at one end than the other, which held more blueish-grey in its depths. "This is perfect. What is it?"
"Same kind of quartz as tiger's eye, but with less iron. It's called hawk's eye, and it's not as well-known. Do you need me to polish or shape it?"
"I don't think so. Thank you." Cat tucked the chunk of rock into her coat pocket and met Savos's eyes. "We're even. You owe me nothing. My word as a daughter of the Torn."
Savos, dryly, said, "We all know what that's worth," but nodded and left Cat in the little copse of trees.
She had blood. She had an object of the World. There was nothing but her own reluctance keeping her from doing what her father wanted.
She stepped.
* * *
Bafflingly, she stepped back to Los Angeles, where she'd been only that morning, in her personal timeline. It was late afternoon there now, sun blazing in a sky lined at the horizons with thin brown smog, and heat wobbling off the skyscrapers. Cat scowled upward, bewildered. The boots should have taken her to her father, who should have been in the Torn. But she wasn’t just in Los Angeles; she was in the same location she’d stepped to earlier, the alley a block or so away from the fertility clinic. Already sweating, she hurried to the fertility clinic building and passed through security with her courier credentials. A few minutes and thirty-eight floors higher, she pushed the clinic door open, a rueful smile in place for the pleasant receptionist.
For the first few seconds, what she saw made no sense.
The gorgeous interior looked as if a storm had swept through it, upending and shattering chairs and coffee tables, breaking apart the big welcome desk, leaving all-too-identifiable smears on the windows. Some of those smears, backlit by the intense sunshine, were still dripping. Bodies lay beneath them. There was no other motion in the reception room, no voices, no quiet hum of power feeding machinery or even lights.
Cat took a dozen long strides to the room Grace Law had been staying in, and threw the door open.
Chaos hadn't been unleashed in there, nor—after a quick glance—in any of the other high-end waiting rooms. Cat stood frozen in the door of the last one, staring at blood sliding down a window, and tried to think.
Grace should have been there, and if she wasn't, then the signs of a struggle surely should have been.
Except—except—the penny dropped as slowly as the stuff sliding down the windows—except Cat had been there that morning in her personal timeline.
It had been at least seven days in the World's timeline. Days that Rick had spent missing, where he'd called for help, where Cat had traveled to the Torn to get Savos, and come back again. At least seven days.
She didn't know much about fertility clinics, but she bet most of them didn't keep people on site for weeks on end. Grace could have gone home days ago. Not that Cat had any idea where 'home' was for her.
Neither did her father.
He could travel the Waste; that much was evident by the fact that Cat herself existed, and that her half-sibling was on the way. But no one except those who shared blood of both the Torn and the World traveled it easily. What took Cat seconds could easily take him hours, or even days.
And despite the brilliant sunshine, the bl
ood was still wet on the windows.
A tiny, fractured groan caught her attention. She spun back toward the reception desk, seeing what she hadn't seen before: the receptionist she'd spoken with lay behind it, hidden by its size. Blood matted her hair, leaking on to the floor, and her color was bad, even at just a glimpse. Cat ran and knelt at her side, feeling the woman's too-cool skin. "Hey. I've got you now. You're gonna be okay." Practical boots, she thought, so distantly it seemed almost unattached from her at all. The boots had brought her where she needed to be, not where she thought she should go.
"Cat." The woman sounded surprised and confused. "He said he'd find you. That he'd find her."
"Grace?"
She gave a fragile nod and Cat grimaced. "I know you're not supposed to, but can you tell me where she lives?"
The woman shook her head, an effort that clearly cost her. Her eyes rolled back, and after a few, faint breaths, she whispered, "I think…bye…"
"No." Cat's heart clenched furiously and she lifted the woman in her arms, stood, and stepped.
* * *
Stepping into a busy space was dangerous for a lot of reasons. First, humans didn't like it when magic happened right in front of them. Second, and actually more important in terms of immediate danger, physics didn't like it if two objects suddenly decided to occupy the same space simultaneously. Cat used back alleys and remote parks to move in and out of the World, if she had any choice.
This time, though, she stepped directly into an emergency room, and yelled, "Help her!"
The thing happened, the one that always did. People blanched and flinched back, their gazes going every which way, searching for answers to how she'd gotten there. Confusion drew thick lines in their faces and made enemies of their gazes. Their shoulders hunched defensively as they crowded together, instinctively forming a mob to lash out against the sudden unnatural thing in their midst. If that reaction had a name, it was the phrase that came with it, down through all the long centuries: burn the witch!
This once, though, just this once, Cat's burden trumped the primitive fear that awakened in the base of human brains when they saw magic happen. After that first hideous moment, empathy triggered a stronger response than fear,, and there were suddenly voices calling for a gurney, for oxygen, for doctors, for whatever the hell they needed to save the receptionist's life. Someone said, "Excuse me, excuse me! Who is this? What happened to her?" to Cat, who shook her head.
