Practical Boots (The Torn Book 1)

by C. E. Murphy

  "I found her. I'm sorry. I have to go."

  "You can't—you can't—!" The impotent protests followed her as she ran for the door, ran out the door, and before she was safely out of sight of security cameras or prying eyes, stepped.

  * * *

  The manor she'd grown up in seemed less friendly than ever before, close growing walls stretching for her, as if they could crush her through malevolent will. Cat ran through them, her boots thudding against the floors as she wished she'd dared step directly into her father's office. But if it had been hers, she would have warded it against just such an incursion, and she didn't want to find out what happened when somebody stepped from the Waste into an unforgiving shield. At best, they'd bounce back into the Waste. At worst…

  At worst would be very bad indeed.

  But his office wasn't warded against an ordinary entrance through its door. Not against her, at least; not now. She didn't find her father within its curved, living walls, but then, she hadn't expected to. What she needed was a compass. Something to lead her to her father, since she didn't know where Grace lived, and doubted her sibling's mother would think to use the baby rattle.

  The truth was, Grace almost certainly would never know she was even in danger, not until it was too late. Cat's father would come in, attractive and flirtatious, and Grace would be under his spell just long enough to give birth to their child. Then, if she was lucky, she would merely be discarded as Cat's own mother had been.

  A treacherous thought, one she didn't often let near the surface, crept up: assuming 'discarded' was all that had happened to her mother. Banished, sent away from the Torn, exiled; whatever word they wanted to use, Cat mostly had to hold on to the belief that nothing worse had happened.

  It got harder to hold on to that belief, with each passing year that she failed to find any hint of where her mother had gone.

  Whatever had happened to her mother, Cat wasn’t going to allow it to happen to Grace.

  A hair. A hair would do nicely, to find her father with. Deep red, stuck lightly to the back of the chair her father rarely used, it was difficult to see unless you were looking for it, as Cat had been. She coiled it in her palm, and then, about to step back into the Waste so she could fashion a compass, Cat went still.

  She had never in her entire life been alone in her father's inner sanctum. She'd rarely been in it at all, and he tended to absorb the vast majority of her attention when she was, as if she was a rabbit waiting for the snake to strike. The decor had always carried an eerie edge of life-likeness to it, but staring around the room now, she began to see that it told a story. His story: the moments of his life that he deemed important.

  Or that perhaps his subconscious did, unconsciously shaping the walls, because here and there in the shadows Cat thought she caught glimpses of herself. Not the whole of her, but a hint there and a curve here that made her think she'd almost seen her reflection in a mirror. They didn't exactly fade when she looked directly at them, but nor did they come any clearer. There were other moments, half-suggested, that made her think of stories people had told her about her father; a stretch that might have depicted a great battle, or a hollow that hid within it a tale of the World.

  And there, where it did disappear if she looked at it too closely, was a woman's profile. A profile Cat knew, a profile she had memorized as a child and that her Torn-born memory had never let her forget. A profile of a downward gaze, of upswept hair, of—unexpectedly—a fashionable hat from an era gone by. Cat stared at it from the corner of her eye, trying to memorize the whole of the look: a ruffled blouse, a puffed shoulder to the sleeve, all written in the dips and shadows of living wood. She burned that faint image into her mind, unable to place any of it save the profile itself, and, with that half-seen memory locked safely in her imagination, Cat returned to the Waste.

  * * *

  A coil of hair wound around the stuff of the Waste twisted and reformed until it became a compass, brass and heavy in Cat's hand. Beautiful and almost entirely useless: all it would ever find was her father. With more care and more time, she might have made one that would find anyone, but Cat preferred single-focus Artifacts. Not just because they were easier, but because they were much less dangerous.

  Not that the item her father wanted, the one that would allow him to lie, would be safe. But at least no one else would be able to use it. He’d only be able to because they already shared a bond of blood, and because she could shape the Artifact to draw on that bond. The other one he wanted, the object of disguise, would be harder to tie to him and him alone. It would take some thinking, but not now.

  For now, she only wanted to follow him back to the World and along whatever path he'd taken to find Grace Law. She breathed that desire into the compass, and light glittered through its clockwork parts, pulling her forward. She stepped, and stepped, and stepped again, then stood at the edge of a busy, near-shoulderless road. One step ahead of her lay rushing traffic; one horrifying step behind her lay a canyon, plummeting down plenty far to be terrifying. Cat, overwhelmed with the urge to lie down and whimper, didn't, because she couldn't see how to without getting flattened. A few hysterical heartbeats later, she convinced herself that there was, in fact, enough room behind her to take a cautious step backward without falling to her death. She edged back, letting traffic zoom by, and studied what lay across the road.

  Another road, honestly. Half-hidden in the greenery, with stone walls on either side of it, and a cast iron gate across its narrow mouth. It led higher into the hills, to a presumably magnificent Topanga Canyon house, but to Cat, the curious part was that the compass had brought her to this side of the gate. Unless her father was hiding in the shrubbery, she didn't understand why it hadn't led her directly to Grace's home.

  A thought struck her and she turned to peer down the side of the canyon, almost hoping she might see her father's body squished on the hairpin road below, or broken across the rocks.

  Tragically, it was not to be. Cat waited for traffic to clear, then darted across the street into Grace's secluded driveway, keeping an eye on the bushes to see if her father would pop out of them.

  He did not.

  A simulacrum, however, did.

  It was good. It was awfully fucking good, if her compass led her to it instead of him. It had her father's height and elegance, and a few-strands-wide braid of his deep copper hair wound around its earth-colored head. A hand print, stained reddish-brown with blood, spread where its face should be. It wore clothes of her father's cut, with new embroidery added by his own hand; nothing less than his own labor could make clothes cling to the thing. It carried a blade at its side, silver and marked with jewels. It heaved, as if for air, and its chest moved: he had imbued it with his own breath, and if he had not wept tears over its making, she had no doubt he had spat on it, imbuing it with more of his essence.

  If he had shed bone as well as breath and blood in the making of the thing, not even Cat would have known the difference between the simulacrum and her real father until it was too late. But he was too vain, too hurried, or too delicate to have made that decision; the shaving of bone hurt like a motherfucker, and the healing from it was not quick, even for an aelf lord.

  The fact that he'd gone even this far told Cat two things, one of which surprised her. He had expected her to track him using a physical link, such as his hair. He would have been stupid not to, and her father was a variety of things, but stupid wasn't one of them.

  But that he'd gone to this much trouble, created a simulacrum so good she would be led to it instead of him…that much effort implied that he respected her. Respected her talent, at least. Respected her ability to find him, even when he didn't want to be found. Respected the possibility that if she caught up to him, she could thwart his plans.

  For something less than a heartbeat, she took all of that in—the simulacrum, its makeup, the implications of its existence, reveling in the pleasure of knowing that her father fundamentally grasped that if she caught
him she was not only planning to, but able to fuck. him. up—and then the simulacrum did what it was made to do, which was try very hard to kill her.

  Its blade leapt from the sheath like a living thing, glittering bright and dangerous in the late afternoon sun. Greenery fell before its deadly edge, but Cat stepped out of its way, coming back to the World again with her cold iron knives in both hands. It ducked as one left her hand; the blade stuck in a tree, and Cat swore. The simulacrum came at her again, snicker-snack. This time she simply ducked and rolled, swearing again as prickly underbrush found the small of her unprotected spine when her jacket shifted. She came to her feet beside her knife, wrenched it from the tree, and flinched aside as the simulacrum thrust its sword toward her. She lunged inside its reach and shoved a knife into what would be its lungs, if it had any.

  It lacked the ability to exhale, which was almost worse than a sound. It couldn't stare, and neither could it stop, even as the cold iron began to unravel the magic that held it together. It slashed again, more wildly this time, now lacking all of her father's elegance. Cat rolled again and it spun a wobbling circle after her, each stab growing more frantic as, from the chest outward, it began to crumble into the earth it had been shaped from. Within seconds it dropped the sword, its falling-apart body no longer able to support the weapon's weight; a moment later, it was a pile of dirt wrapped in an aelf lord's clothes.

  Cat, beneath her breath, said, "Should've added the bone, Dad," and because she was half of the World and could, placed one hand on the cast iron gate and vaulted it.

  * * *

  Grace's goddamn driveway was two and a half miles long. Two and a half miles in the blazing sunshine while wearing leather and carrying no water. If Cat had known how damn long it was to begin with, she would have used the compass and stepped right away, but some vague movie-born sense of dramatic approach didn't even let her think of it until she'd sweated her way through most of a mile. Then she realized what she was doing, said, "Fuck," aloud, and stepped.

  She bounced back out of the Waste ten feet behind where she'd started, her head ringing and her vision blurry. It took a second try before she realized her father had done something—put up a shield, surrounded himself with a mirror-spell, something—that wouldn't allow her to magic her way any closer than the now-dead simulacrum. She yelled, "He's not supposed to be able to do that!" into the oppressively hot afternoon air, and felt how her words were muffled in it. Swearing, sweating, sunburning, she stomped along the driveway until she finally rounded a corner and let out a laugh like Elizabeth Bennet seeing Pemberly for the first time.

  Grace's home was an architectural dream, even by the standards of someone who'd grown up in a living manor of the Torn. All windows and soft edges that belied the 1960s concrete building material, it nestled down between fruit trees and local greenery. Bees buzzed audibly. Birds rendered their opinions on everything. A brook that Cat thought couldn't be natural babbled near a covered hot tub. The view, gazing out toward distant mountains, was to die for.

  Maybe being an involved big sister would be a good idea after all.

  Assuming Cat survived dealing with her damn father, anyway. Still sweating but now faintly awe-stricken, she walked the rest of the way up to the house, calling, "Grace? Ms. Law?"

  "I'm sorry," her father's voice drawled. "Grace Law can't come to the door right now." He stepped out from one of those floor-to-ceiling windows. Or doors, as they all proved to be: it looked like every single one of them rotated so the whole front of the house could be opened to the air. Cat felt another stab of envious desire. She didn't even like Los Angeles, but man, if she could live here….

  "What have you done with her?"

  "Nothing permanent," her father promised. He wore a glamour, one that softened his least-human features into something less alien. His hair remained the same glorious deep shade of red, but his ears were no longer pointed, and his eyes were a more earthly green. His features were less fine, more masculine by Western human standards, and his overall build, a little broader.

  He was, Cat realized with dismay, smoking hot. She’d never seen him as a human before, and she couldn’t lie, it messed with her a little. No wonder her mother had thrown everything away to join him in the Torn.

  "You should not have betrayed me," he went on in the exact same cool, arrogant tone she'd heard all her life.

  Six words, Cat thought. It took six words to scale him down from a ten to something like a three. He was still hot, but if he'd spoken to her mother that way, never mind, it made no sense for Lilibeth to have gone anywhere with him. "I didn't freaking betray you. Somebody used one of my Artifacts to call me, which, honestly, I think you know perfectly well."

  Irritation sluiced through his eyes. "You swore me an oath."

  "I didn't swear you a goddamn timeline on delivery. You're looking for the slightest chance to have your cake and eat it too, but the oath goes both ways, Dad. Honestly, you've broken it just by being here. Which was stupid, because while I was in the World I got the materials I need for your damn lie projector."

  A flare of greedy anger shone in her father's face. "I've done nothing to the human woman."

  "Where is she?"

  He stepped aside, leaving the door open for Cat's entrance. She pushed through to find a big, cozy room done up in wood with round corners, thick rugs, and durable, textured cloth in comforting colors. It wasn't at all what she thought of as Hollywood fashionable, but it looked as though it had been decorated in mind of keeping a kid from bashing its head on hard corners or puking on the expensive leather couches. Cat, thinking of her own childhood, would possibly have also put baby gates or maybe just plywood in front of several built-in, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, but given that the child in question was still a solid nine months from even being born, she guessed Grace had time to deal with that kind of thing.

  Grace herself lay curled on a couch, sleeping at first glance and…something more, at another. From moment to moment she twitched as if suffering a bad dream, and drew ragged breaths as if trying to call for help. But when her agitation grew to the point that it would wake someone from a normal sleep, Grace only slept on, first crying out, then settling as if an unwelcome weight pressed on her.

  The baby rattle was in Grace's hand, as if she'd been trying its magic when the stasis struck. Cat's heart clenched. She hadn't thought Grace believed her, not really, and the truth was, Grace might not have. But she'd still decided to try it when she thought she needed help.

  Cat was going to put her father in the ground, one of these days. Maybe not today, because she didn't know that she could undo his magic and waken Grace safely on her own, but one day, and sooner rather than later. She turned on him, spitting fury. "What were you thinking?"

  "That I would not return to the Torn empty-handed after your betrayal."

  "I swear to gngngh.” Her anger devolved into growling noises and clenching hands, and it took several seconds to find words again. “Lift the spell, Dad, or forfeit the oaths we've taken. You don't get it both ways and I still promise you that if you try to interfere in this kid's life I'll spend the rest of mine getting in your way. Or the rest of yours," she spat through her teeth.

  It may have been a mistake. A sneer warped her father's handsome features, as if he couldn't imagine her having the ability to end his life, or, indeed, do him any real damage at all.

  On the other hand, he'd had enough imagination to decide the simulacrum was necessary, so maybe the sneer was a lie. Aelf-folk couldn't lie with their voices; nobody ever said anything about their faces. That cool arrogant aelfen note in his voice again, he said, "Show me the Artifact."

  "Man, you are not Jerry Maguire, and I haven't made the damn thing yet. You don't seem to get it: I'm not going to make it until you're out of this woman's life. That is the only way you get to control me."

  "You think so much of your power," her father hissed, "and so little of mine."

  She didn't even feel the blow building.
No sense of his will gathering, no murmur of spellwork to warn her. Just a sudden constriction that tried to push the air from her lungs, tried to crush the spirit from her soul, tried to bind her like she was a young horse in need of breaking. In all of their arguments, she had never felt anything like what he wrought now. She could almost see the glimmer of the spellwork, though, silver threads that wanted to sink into her skin and take away her ability to move and think as she saw fit. It locked her muscles, forbidding her the ability to step, and for a blinding, clarifying instant, Cat understood.

  Her father believed—correctly—that she had no magic to defend herself against this kind of attack. Her power was in the creation of Artifacts, and she required certain components, primarily the stuff of the Waste, to do that. With preparation she could no doubt mold something to protect herself from an attempt to take over her very will, but she had come to defend someone else, without really considering her personal danger.

  A part of her mind took note of that, tucked it away for later—bold of it to assume there would be a later—while the greater part of her marveled at her own shortsightedness, yes, but also at her father's.

  Cat relaxed, hoping her gaze filled with anguish as she made an effort to surrender. Smug delight glittered in her father's eyes as he felt her struggle against him falter, and his handsome, human smile had cold and cruel edges. "Gather the woman," he said. "We'll bring her back to the Torn with us."

  She could walk then, but not step. His will coursed through her, moving her feet, guiding her where he wanted her to go. Cat knelt at Grace's side, withdrew the boot blade she could now reach, and pressed the cold iron flat of it against her own belly.