Splintered

by Jamie Schultz

  “Maybe if he promised he’d be real quiet, we could take him back to civilization.”

  “Jesus Christ, is she ever going to shut up?” Genevieve said. She hiked a thumb toward the wall, through which Karyn’s faint murmurings could be heard.

  Anna sat up. “What? If you got a problem—”

  Genevieve held up her hands in total surrender. “I’m—I’m sorry. That was uncalled-for, I know.” She rubbed her eyes. “I’m just fucking frustrated. Sometimes I want to burn the whole lot of this shit.” She picked the stack of papers off her lap, hefted them, then put them to the side.

  “What is it?”

  “This? This is a fragment of a late-seventeenth-century grimoire, written in Latin and what I’m guessing is some screwed-up dialect of French.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Did you take trig or anything like that in school?”

  “Algebra.”

  “Yeah, okay. Imagine trying to learn algebra, only you can only find a few pages of the book at a time, they’re not numbered or in any particular order, and they’re in goddamn French.”

  Anna chuckled. “Sounds tough.”

  “Oh, and one more thing: if you screw up your homework, it could kill you.”

  “Tommy never made it sound so dangerous,” Anna said. Tommy had treated the occult like a cool set of toys he’d found lying around, disassembled, and he could hardly wait to put them together and see what they did.

  “Tommy was lucky he didn’t blow his own balls off, or worse.”

  “He wasn’t that lucky.”

  Genevieve looked down and wiped something invisible off her pants. “No, I guess not.”

  The pause that followed was punctuated only by Karyn’s murmurings. These moments of connection were rare lately, and Anna found herself casting about for anything to continue the conversation. She pointed at the pages. “Why don’t you just get a translation? As much occult crap as we traffic in, there’s gotta be one available.”

  “That was one of Hector’s first lessons to me. You learn from original pages only.” She grinned. “I remember asking him about that. I was like, ‘Why, because copies lose the magic?’ And he looked at me and laughed and laughed, and he finally said, ‘No, you idiot. Because copies are dangerous.’ He said hand-drawn ones might have mistakes, and even with photocopies there was no telling what the original had actually been. Whether it had been tampered with or anything like that.

  “I thought that was so much windy bullshit, and I went straight to the Internet to see what I could trade with some friends. One of the guys I knew online swore he’d gotten hold of a legit scan of the last chapter of the Infernal Dominion, and he forwarded it to me.” Her forehead tightened, and she looked away from Anna. “I didn’t have time to dig into it right away, which turned out to be just as well, since poor stupid Wei made local news when he was found with his fucking head on backward and a gigantic bite taken out of his pelvis.”

  “Shit,” Anna said.

  “Yeah. That was the end of looking around online for that kind of thing. Some of those fuckers out there take trolling to a whole new level.

  “The only way to go is to find a good mentor, but even that’s risky. Lots of self-proclaimed mentors are parasites. Get somebody else to do as much of the easier stuff as possible and you burn down less of your own life, you know? And that’s if the acolyte is lucky. It can get a whole lot worse.”

  “Do I even want to know what could actually be worse?”

  “Blood’s important in magic,” Genevieve said. “Human blood especially. Human blood given willingly even more than that. It’s messy business. I got lucky with Hector.”

  “Before a demon ate him.”

  Genevieve nodded, and Anna thought she saw genuine sadness there. “Moved in for good, anyway. You know, I saw him? After he, uh, turned or whatever. He didn’t show up to meet me for, like, a week, so I went to his place. Three-room apartment, part of this old, creaky house. Sticky wood floors. I found him in the bedroom, hunched in the corner, bare-ass naked. Skinny, like gross skinny—ribs and vertebrae all sticking out. Looked like the fucking alien.”

  Anna fumbled for a reply to put in the pause, if only to keep Genevieve from drifting off into her head again. “Gross.”

  “No, the really gross thing was when he looked up. Beard all wet, dripping—I didn’t know it was blood until I saw the gutted rat corpse in his hands. He grinned at me. I will never forget it. Red teeth, shiny and dark. Goddamn horror show.”

  “Damn.”

  “Then he said, ‘Genevieve.’ Just that. One word, his voice with this . . . this crazed edge to it, like everything was just perfectly delightful and he hated every last bit of it. I can’t even really describe it.” A shiver ran up through her shoulders.

  “What did you do?”

  “I ran. What else? I don’t even know if he got up to follow me. Went straight home, grabbed a few books and things, and abandoned my apartment.” The corners of her mouth pulled down in revulsion. “Because, you know. He recognized me. Whatever he’d become, he still knew me.”

  There was a moment of hesitation before Genevieve continued. “I guess I was lucky, in a way. I mean, that that all ended and I moved on. Sobell’s twice the teacher Hector was, and he’s got access to more and better stuff. I’ve learned more in the last six months than in the four years before.” She shook her head. “Bad for Hector, though. Fuck.”

  A question jumped to mind—the same one, from the same conversation, but Genevieve’s mood had softened, and it felt natural to ask now. “If it’s so dangerous, why keep doing it?” Genevieve cast a sharp glance at her, and she held up a hand. “I’m not accusing, really. I just want to understand.”

  Genevieve gave her a wry, weary smile. “Sometimes I wonder.”

  “Come on, I’m serious.”

  “All right. You remember the first time we went out? You said something like, ‘Either I steal arcane crap from rich occult wannabes, or I work the Home Depot checkout counter the rest of my life.’”

  “Did I say that?” Anna said, though she smiled. She remembered.

  “Something like it. Aside from Karyn, and the money, it’s pretty simple: you like your work, and you’re good at it. But come on—it’s not so different from the occult thing. One bad mistake, you end up in jail or dead.”

  It sounded so stupid when Genevieve said it, the parallel so obvious Anna couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it. She felt like a hypocrite. It simply felt good to do something she was good at, and that was all there was to it.

  “I—” Genevieve began, but Anna cut her off.

  “No, I get it. I totally get it. I’m sorry.” She scooted across the floor, over next to Genevieve, and put her hand on Gen’s knee, her head on her shoulder, both taking and giving what comfort she could.

  “I don’t know if a person really can be ‘made for’ something, but I feel like I was made for this,” Genevieve said, gesturing at the pile of papers by her side.

  “I told you, I get it,” Anna said, nodding her head against Genevieve’s shoulder. “I just . . . I’ve never had much, you know? And now—these days—I feel like I’m standing right on the edge of losing every little bit of it.”

  Genevieve put an arm around her and pulled her close. “It’s going to be a while before you lose me. It’s not today’s problem, I promise.”

  Anna nodded without speaking. Her eyes burned and she didn’t trust her voice.

  “Hey,” Genevieve said after a few moments, her voice deep and serious. “Sobell wants . . .”

  The words trailed off, and the silence stretched out to where it seemed she’d never pick them up again. “Yeah?” Anna prompted.

  “He wants me to learn this stuff,” Genevieve said. The sudden gravity had dropped from her voice, and the pitch of her voice went up. Anna wondered whether that meant she was trying to downplay the significance of her words or if something else was going on there. “He says it’s ‘crucial for my development,’ but all it’s r
eally doing is pissing me off. I need his help, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “I really can’t do this by myself.”

  Anna snuggled closer. “I know. I get it. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m worried. I mean, this isn’t a one-way street. He’s not helping me for free.” She glanced at Anna, and it seemed there was something wary in her eyes.

  “What’s he want?”

  Genevieve shrugged. “Same stuff.”

  “That doesn’t sound too hard.”

  “It’s . . . it’s like the other odd jobs. One day you’re dropping money off, and the next thing you know, somehow kidnapping made its way onto the agenda. I’m worried this is just going to get worse and worse.” Another one of those wary glances.

  “It probably will.” Anna laced her fingers through Genevieve’s, then put her other hand over both her hand and Genevieve’s and squeezed. She felt better, surprisingly. She wondered where her fear had hidden itself so suddenly, and who was supposed to be comforting whom here. “But I guess, you know . . . we’ll get through it.”

  “I hope you’re right. I just . . .” That distant look returned, giving Anna the strange feeling Genevieve wasn’t talking to her at all, but some other audience. “I just want everything to work out for everybody. You, me, Nail. Even Sobell.”

  “Is it ever even possible for everybody to get everything they want?”

  Genevieve closed her eyes and leaned against Anna. “God, I hope so.”

  * * *

  Nail’s phone rang. He checked the screen, swore under his breath, and flipped it open. “It’s about fuckin’ time,” he said.

  “Bro, that’s no way to answer the phone.”

  Nail gave himself a slow count of five. Sometime between high school and the end of his time with the marines, his hero worship of his older brother had tarnished and finally undergone some alchemical transition to a sort of constant anxiety combined with an intense, angry impatience. It didn’t take a trained psychologist to figure out what was going on there. Nail spent a huge portion of his time keeping DeWayne’s ass out of various fires, which was enough reason in itself, but even that was only part of the story. DeWayne was a fuckup, and it drove Nail crazy. He’d been a smart kid, and somehow all his talents had been turned to stupid ends. The waste pissed Nail off for its own sake, and it came with a sense of betrayal to turn up the voltage. Just talking to DeWayne, with the endless deflections and evasions and rationalizations and just pure bullshit, was enough to draw a red veil over Nail’s vision. The counting had become his coping mechanism, the only method he’d found to keep from losing his cool and saying something he’d regret. Sometimes it seemed the only way to keep from outright murdering DeWayne.

  ...three . . . four . . . five.

  “You don’t like the way I answer the phone, don’t call me.” See? That could have been worse.

  “You left me, like, six messages,” DeWayne said. “What was I supposed to do?”

  “You were supposed to call my ass back after the first one, dickhead.”

  “I had some troubles. All under control now, but you know how it is.” He cleared his throat. “I get the feeling you’re not happy to hear from me.”

  “I get the feeling you about to hit me up for some cash. Dodgers game this Saturday, isn’t there?”

  “Is there? I don’t know anything about that.”

  Nail let the obvious lie slide. Nowhere to go with that that wouldn’t just make him madder. “You been to see Clarence lately?”

  “Matter of fact, I have. Just saw him this evening, and holy shit, man. I thought I’d call you up and say thanks.” He laughed. “Another week, and I’d be walkin’ real funny, you know?”

  “Yeah. A man’ll walk real funny when he got no fuckin’ legs.”

  “But, damn, man. I thought you were going to pay off the month, not the whole damn thing. The whole thing! That’s kid brother Hall of Fame material right there.” He delivered that last line as though he was awfully proud of it. “I owe you one, bro. I really do.”

  Goddammit. It happened every time. Nail’s buddies in the service had thought he was one of the hardest motherfuckers they’d ever met. Anna and Karyn trusted him with their lives and thought he was damn near indestructible—it was Karyn who’d given him the nickname Nail six years back when he got shot after pulling a job. Six bullets, no less, and Karyn had visited him in the hospital, calling him Doornail, as in “You should be dead as a.” He was a hard motherfucker, and that wasn’t bragging—that was just fact. And still, every time DeWayne pulled this “Aw, man, you’re the best” bullshit, he’d be damned if he didn’t feel something loosen up in his heart, maybe a little softness around the eyes.

  Fuckin’ family, man.

  “Yeah, you do,” he said, but without any venom. Once again, his big brother had managed to pull his fangs.

  “So, uh, spot me five Gs for the ball game?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Just messing with you, bro.”

  “You’re square with Clarence, right? He didn’t give you a hard time?”

  “Yeah. Squared up. He didn’t look too happy about it, but he said we’re square.”

  “All right.” It was better than all right, actually. Clarence had followed through. That was the best news Nail had gotten since who the fuck knew when.

  “Hey, so I do have something you might wanna know about.”

  The anxiety, loosened by the good news, clamped down again. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t even make it a block down the street from Clarence’s before I got picked up by the feds.”

  “What? Feds?” A shiver of alarm went up Nail’s back. “What are you into?”

  “That’s the thing, bro. Wasn’t me they wanted to know about. They showed me some wack-ass video and asked me what I knew about that.”

  “What video?”

  “Three chicks and some skeevy white dude, hanging out in a parking garage. It got all weird, though, all these bugs and shit flyin’ everywhere—like that crazy shit from earlier. Anyway, I saw your friend in the vid.”

  Oh, shit. “Anna.”

  “Yeah. They wanted to know if I knew any of those people, and how, and if you know any of them, and how, and all this other shit.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Told ’em I never seen any of those people before in my short, beautiful life.”

  “You lied to them?”

  “Hell yeah, I did. I don’t even know what their angle is, but fuck those guys. I about shit myself when they took me in, you know?”

  Nail had to concede that, although lying to the feds was not normally a great idea, this time it was probably the right approach. It’d keep DeWayne out of shit he had no business being in and deflect a little heat from Nail and the crew for a little while, too. He felt a surprising bit of gratitude. “What else they ask about?”

  “Wanted to know if I knew where to find you. Told ’em the truth there, sort of. I mean, that I haven’t actually seen you in two years.”

  “Good.”

  “Don’t thank me or nothing, bro. All part of being family.”

  Nail let the silence spin out while he counted to five. Then: “Thanks, DeWayne. Do me a favor and keep your head down, huh?”

  “Don’t have to tell me twice. Keep it cool, bro.”

  “Yeah. Later.”

  He hung up the phone, thinking of the handful of times he thought he’d been followed over the last week or so. Maybe some of that had been paranoia, but no way all of it was. Not now.

  Feds. Not good.

  * * *

  “He’s dying,” Van Horn said as Anna sat down across from him. An abrupt conversation starter, and a hell of a jolt in her current frame of mind. In the new calm after she and Gen had talked, the talking had turned into kissing, the kissing into urgent, sound-stifled sex, and the afterglow into—well, back into insomnia, but an insomnia several degrees more pleasant than the one before. Gen
had gone back to her studies, and Anna had decided it was time to check on Van Horn.

  He looked pathetic, and for the fifth time, Anna wondered if they could take him to a motel somewhere, get him a shower, find him a hot meal. That wasn’t the kind of thing you were supposed to think about the people you kidnapped, was it? It was like some kind of upside-down Stockholm syndrome.

  “Yeah. Right. Dying,” she said, sure that no such thing was possible. During that last big job, Sobell had been shot in the head at point-blank range, and he’d survived. Somehow the bullet had merely grazed his skull, plowing a gruesome furrow in his scalp, and she didn’t think luck had anything to do with that. “If he’s dying, he’s got a funny way of showing it.”

  “No, he is. Did you see the way his hands shook? His skin, it’s become papery and translucent, like he’s had one too many face-lifts.”

  “We don’t exactly go way back, so I don’t have a ‘before’ picture.”

  “He’s nervous.”

  “I’d be nervous, too, if I had six million cops crawling up my ass.”

  Van Horn shook his head. “Cops don’t scare Enoch Sobell. He’s dying. He’s running out of time. That business with the locusts was pure desperation.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” God, if he’d just drop dead—what a load off her mind! “So?”

  “Just . . . don’t give me up to him. Please? Maybe you can wait him out.”

  Sure. No problem. When he calls, I’ll just tell him you’re out right now, and can he please call back later? “Yeah, well. We’ll see how it goes.” They sat in silence, the only light from Anna’s flashlight, while she mulled Van Horn’s words over and he awkwardly picked at his fingernails.

  “Dying, huh?” she said after a while.

  Van Horn nodded. “He’s too old to keep living naturally, and he’s too burned down to keep using magic to extend his life.”

  “Then what’s he desperate for? What’s with this tooth he needs so badly?”

  Van Horn made a peculiar face. In the low light from the flashlight, she thought it looked like a cruel, cynical sort of grin, odd on the old man’s soft face, but then it was gone.