The Left-Hand Path: Prodigy

by T. S. Barnett

  “Easy, pet, or you’ll regret it,” he promised. His tone was silky, but the smile on his face was anything but friendly. She settled quickly, brow furrowed as a muffled, worried sound hummed behind the paper on her lips. Nathan seemed satisfied by this submission and carried her after Elton with an easy step.

  Cora stayed put with her arms outstretched, her muscles beginning to tingle by the time they returned. Thomas had approached the panicking Chasers and settled them into a trembling, troubled sleep with a single pass of his wand over their eyes. Elton lifted one of them to drag him into the bathroom with the others, and Nathan and Thomas took the remaining Chaser by the arms and legs and carried him together. There were a few echoing sounds of toilet seats and stall doors from the bathroom before the three men returned, and Cora could feel the pull of the barriers weakening her arms, but she refused to let them drop.

  “Keep still a moment longer, my love,” Nathan said. He passed a hand over her face, and she felt the same cool wash over her skin as the first time he had disguised her. She risked a glance down at herself and saw that she’d become a man again, though perhaps not as hunky as the one previous. Nathan cast the glamour on himself, Elton, and Thomas in turn, changing them into an entirely different family than before. When he was finished, he gave Cora’s head a gentle touch.

  “Let them go. Excellent work.”

  Cora heaved a deep exhale as the spell slipped, her hands finally slapping back to her sides. The muscles in her arms burned, but she grinned proudly up at Nathan. People began to file into the corridor again as if nothing unusual at all had happened, and soon the hall was filled with bustling travelers again.

  “Now,” Nathan said in the voice of the tall woman he appeared to be, his suitcase in one hand as he slipped the other arm through Elton’s, “let me hear it. ‘You were right, Nathan; we should have driven.’”

  Elton, now a lean and stern-looking black man, scowled down at his ‘wife.’ “I’m not missing our flight,” he grumbled, and he started walking without hesitation, half dragging Nathan along beside him. Cora smiled and picked up her fallen suitcase by the handle, and she and Thomas followed along behind the pair toward their terminal.

  From the end of the corridor, a pale young man with dark hair and cold eyes watched the small group round the corner toward him, his arms folded over his chest and a thin frown on his lips. His thin fingers slowly turned the silver ring on his right hand, but he didn’t speak. His partner shifted impatiently on his feet and looked at the younger man with disbelief written on his face.

  “How can we just let them go?” he snapped. “We should have helped. They could have killed those Chasers.”

  Nikita Korshunov flicked his eyes over to the other Chaser. “We weren’t going to catch them here,” he said flatly. “Too many people, and they knew to expect us. They were ready for it.” His gaze followed the disguised family until they disappeared into the crowd. “And I need to know how to deal with them when it’s time.”

  Chris leaned upward, straining to see the group even after they were gone, and then he sighed and glared down at his new partner. When he’d first met the boy in the Magister’s office, he’d gotten a bad feeling from him, and the few days they’d spent together since hadn’t made him any more at ease. The kid was too cold—and that was coming from someone who’d been literally dead. “That’s better than dealing with them now how?”

  “Nathaniel Moore isn’t a case you rush into,” Korshunov answered. “Unless you’d rather join the list of Chasers he’s killed—or rather, killed permanently,” he added with dry disdain in his voice.

  Chris’s fists tightened at his sides, but he bit his tongue to keep his retort from escaping. Even though Chris was the senior Chaser, Korshunov had been hand-picked by the Magister to hunt down Moore and Willis. It was the kid’s show, really, no matter how that grated on Chris’s nerves.

  “Then what do we do instead?” he asked, but the boy still didn’t look at him.

  “We go where they’re going,” Korshunov said. “And we wait until we have the upper hand.”

  2

  The four disguised travelers found their gate and sat down nearby, Cora feeling large and clumsy every time she looked down at her muscular pretend-body. She wondered if she should have been walking differently. The tall black teen she appeared to be probably wouldn’t have the same gait as the much smaller girl she actually was. She tilted her head at her reflection in the window in front of her, trying to stare at herself without seeming like she was staring at herself. It was a strange sensation to look at her own face—or at least the face that moved as she moved—and not be critiquing it. She couldn’t critique it at all. She actually really liked it. She liked it so much she almost felt like she was spying on herself—like peeking at a cute boy across a classroom, except she didn’t have to look away in embarrassment when their eyes happened to meet.

  Nathan leaned closer in the seat next to her, glancing between her real face and her reflected one. He looked a bit like Adelina’s older self. She wondered if it was on purpose. “Something amiss, my love? You look mildly vexed.”

  “I’m attracted to myself,” she answered, her own voice sounding deep and rumbling in her throat. She looked over at him. “Is this what you feel like all the time?”

  “Of course. As should you,” he added with a bemused lift of his eyebrows. “I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, I dunno; years of belittlement and judgment combined with our society’s apparent stance that a woman’s inherent worth is inextricably tied to men’s evaluation of her physical attractiveness?”

  Nathan laughed. “My little apprentice, all grown up and taking on the patriarchy.”

  “I’m just saying. It sucks.”

  “Well, my love, the best way to fight this sort of thing is, I believe, to simply ignore it. Every woman in the world may live by those rules, but the moment you decide that they don’t apply to you, then they don’t.”

  “Come to that conclusion after your years of experience, mom?”

  “Hush. I’m being encouraging.”

  Cora smiled at him and patted his hand. Elton was pointedly ignoring them, choosing instead to focus his attention on the file folder propped open on his knee. Cora knew that it was a list of people just like the Magister’s son—awful people who some high-ups had decided were above the law. People that Elton planned to track down and kill. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that part. Even Nathan wasn’t the type to hunt people down in cold blood. Sure, they were criminals, and the Magistrate was corrupt, but was it really the best solution for Elton to be a murderer? She almost thought “become a murderer,” but she suspected that had happened a long time ago in some dark part of Vancouver’s Chinatown. He’d been too calm after coming back to the hotel with blood staining his clothes. That wasn’t someone killing for the first time.

  She watched his unfamiliar face frown at the file in his lap and knew the furrow in his brow even in eyes that weren’t his. It was an even more serious look than he usually had, and she wasn’t the only one who had noticed. She caught Thomas staring across her at the former Chaser with concern written on his face, but when she opened her mouth to talk to him, the woman on the intercom started announcing boarding for their flight.

  They settled in their seats once they were on board, Nathan situating himself comfortably with his knees against the wall and his head on Elton’s shoulder, as promised. Cora and Thomas sat across the aisle from them, and once they were in the air and the other passengers had settled down, Cora looked over at the frowning man beside her.

  “So, this friend of yours in New York,” she began. “You think he’s okay?”

  “Probably not,” he answered with a somber scowl, and then he shifted slightly away from her on the pretense of looking out the window. She guessed it was going to be a quiet flight.

  As soon as they left through the sliding glass doors of the LaGuardia airport terminal and step
ped into the crisp city air, Cora caught sight of Nathan ahead of her—actually Nathan, not the woman who had been snoozing against Elton’s shoulder for the past hour. She looked down at herself and saw her own significantly smaller body, and she was a little relieved. It had been a bit too surreal to keep spotting glimpses of tanned, muscular forearms in her own lap. She glanced around at the travelers moving past them, but none of them seemed to have noticed the sudden transition of a normal-looking black family to—whatever kind of weird band they really were. Maybe it was part of the spell that the regs wouldn’t notice the change.

  Nathan piled them all into a waiting taxi SUV and turned in his seat to look back at Thomas.

  “It’s your show from here, Mr. Proctor. Where to?”

  “Matthew first.” He hesitated a moment, then he sat up, awkwardly leaning over the middle seats to give his directions to the driver. While they rode, he tried to call again and swore when he got no answer, dropping his phone into his lap with a soft huff.

  When they stopped, Nathan lit a cigarette immediately upon being released from the confines of the car. Thomas brushed by him with a focused look on his face, trotting up the steps to the apartment building and letting himself into the lobby. The front door didn’t need any sort of key to enter, which seemed about right for the neighborhood—Cora spotted two homeless-looking men and a stray dog just on the short trip across the sidewalk.

  “He’s number 204,” Thomas said, mostly to himself, and the others followed him as he rounded the stairway and hurried down the hall. He waited at the door as though he were listening for something, but then, apparently satisfied, he raised his hand and knocked.

  The man who answered the door was in his thirties, and had dark, curly hair and slightly narrow brown eyes. As recognition came over his face, his eyebrows lifted in shock, and he pulled Thomas inside the apartment by the front of his shirt, urging his companions in after him with a frantically waving arm. He shut the door behind them and kept his hands on it as though he was afraid something might break it open again.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked over his shoulder, his eyes moving to each of the faces of his uninvited guests. “I thought we said we’d never—” He stopped with his gaze on Nathan, and he slowly turned to press his back to the door. “Is that—you’re...him,” Matthew said, his voice suddenly soft. “You’re...Moore.”

  “Well, it’s about time I got a little recognition around here,” Nathan answered, laughing out a puff of smoke.

  “Thomas,” Matthew said without taking his eyes off of Nathan, who only smiled genially at him, “why...did you bring Nathaniel Moore to my house? You know his picture is up everywhere. Even on the reg news. A dangerous killer, they say. The Magistrate sent out special warnings by fis scél.”

  Every witch knew that a fis scél was never good. They were slipped under your front door when you weren’t looking, and they looked like a regular blank envelope, but that was just to keep the message secret from the mundanes. When a witch used the proper spell to activate them, they revealed the intended message printed under the ominous gold seal of the Magistrate. And since nobody ever really wanted to hear from the Magistrate, that plain white envelope was usually enough to settle a feeling of dread on your shoulders.

  “He’s helping me,” Thomas said. He spared an uncertain side glance at the taller witch as Nathan took a drag from his cigarette and tapped a bit of ash carelessly onto his host’s floor. “Sort of.” He moved a step closer to Matthew. “Why haven’t you been answering your phone?”

  “I’ve been sick for a few days,” the other man answered in confusion. “What’s going on? You’re worrying me.”

  “They caught me, Matthew. They know everything. You need to get out of here.”

  A deeper panic widened the man’s eyes and drained the remaining color from his face. “But...but nobody’s been here. Why did you come if you know they’re looking for you?” He stepped over to the window and peered out through the curtains. “You might have led them right here.”

  “Matthew,” Thomas said sternly. “Where are Lena and Michael?”

  “What?” The man seemed to hesitate, and he flattened his palms against the thighs of his jeans as he glanced at the others again. “They—you didn’t get my message?”

  “No, I didn’t. Where are they?” Thomas pressed.

  “They’re fine,” he answered, a little too quickly.

  Elton exchanged a brief look with Nathan. He knew they both saw the tremble in the man’s hands. The way he couldn’t quite match eyes with any of them. Nathan gave him a faint nod with his cigarette tucked between his lips, and Elton moved forward to catch Thomas’s attention.

  “He’s lying,” he said, startling the man by the window. “We need to leave. The Chasers are probably watching this place right now.”

  “What?” Matthew tried to retreat further, but his back hit the window. “N-No, they’re not! I’m not—”

  “I know a snitch when I see one,” Nathan interrupted. “You spilled everything the moment they showed up, didn’t you?”

  The confusion on Matthew’s face turned to fear. He began to stammer out what sounded like it was meant to be an excuse, but Thomas cut him off by lifting one hand.

  “What have you done, Matthew?” he said, sounding quiet and resigned.

  The man wavered slightly on his feet, and then he took a step closer to Thomas, all pretense lost as his eyes welled with tears. “It isn’t my fault,” he sobbed. “They came because you got caught!” He stopped to hiccup and tried to compose himself. “They put me under, Thomas. I spent two days there. I couldn’t...I couldn’t handle it. They said—they said they’d let me go if I told them where Lena and Michael were. Told them when they were coming.”

  Nathan blew a sigh of smoke through his nose. “And on the condition that you called them if you saw us, right?”

  Matthew looked up at him with defeat in his eyes. “Right,” he answered in a weak voice.

  Nathan flicked the butt of his cigarette at the whimpering man’s chest, causing him to flinch and step backward as the burning end singed his shirt. “Kill him,” he said. “He’s spineless and dangerous.”

  Matthew let out a sound like his objection got caught in his throat.

  “Hold on,” Cora cut in, tapping Nathan’s arm with her knuckles, “are we just murdering everyone we don’t like now?”

  “We need to know what he told them,” Elton argued. He turned his eyes on Matthew with a frown. “Where are the people Thomas sent to you?”

  “I...I told the Chasers they were coming. I never saw them. I swear,” he added, reaching out as though he meant to take Thomas by the sleeve and then thought better of it. “But I—I heard they were being moved. Taken back to Toronto for their sentence. They’re supposed to be traveling tomorrow, I think. Maybe you could—maybe you could catch them. Maybe you could help.”

  “How convenient,” Nathan muttered.

  “When tomorrow?” Thomas asked, refusing to look back at the others.

  “In the morning,” Matthew answered immediately. “It’s...it’s just what I heard.”

  “Not much to go on,” Elton sighed. “But at least we know the Magistrate has them.”

  Nathan scoffed. “Assuming any of it’s true at all. I say kill him and leave him on their step as a warning.”

  “We’re not going to kill him,” Thomas insisted, and Matthew visibly slumped with relief, but he paused when he looked up into Thomas’s staring eyes. “After everything we’ve done,” Thomas murmured, so softly the others almost couldn’t hear him. “How could you do this? You knew the risks. You knew what could happen. I thought you were prepared. I thought you wanted to help those people, and instead you betrayed them to save yourself.”

  “Thomas, I—”

  “You stay here. You stay here and live with what you’ve done. We’ll fix your mistake.”

  Without waiting for his companions, Thomas turned and flung open front door of
the apartment, then started back down the stairwell on his own. Nathan lingered for a few moments with his eyes on the cringing man in front of him, clearly weighing the wisdom of going along with Thomas’s merciful decision, but when Cora touched his arm, he gave a short sigh and let her lead him out of the apartment.

  Thomas was waiting for them in the lobby with his arms folded across his stomach.

  “You do know, of course,” Nathan began as soon as he approached, “that he’s going to call the Magistrate straight away. He’s probably calling them already.”

  “I know,” Thomas answered through a tight jaw.

  “So you must also know that what he said about your people being transported is a blatant trap.”

  “I know.”

  “Does it matter?” Cora asked. “We have to try to help them anyway, don’t we?”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Elton said. “But no matter what we try to do now, the Magistrate will know we’re coming.”

  Nathan tilted his head at them with a sly smile on his lips. “Then I suggest we preempt them. Anyone happen to know where the local office is?”

  3

  Thomas knew the address of the Magistrate building, at least, so Nathan hailed a taxi with a sharp whistle and had it drop them off half a block away. The four of them stood on the sidewalk and peered down toward the innocuous-looking office building.

  “How are we going to get them out?” Thomas asked, glancing up at Elton with a frown as though he had begrudgingly accepted him as the one in charge.

  “Sneaking in is too much trouble,” Nathan answered for him. “And exponentially more difficult if we’re expected. Why don’t we try it my way this time?”

  “Your way?” Elton echoed.

  “Of course. I’ll go inside and fetch them, and you lot wait here.”

  Elton stared at him with a flat frown. “And how many blocks away should we be for when you blow the building up?”