A Tree of Bones

by Gemma Files

  “Awful nippy out ’ere, though,” she observed. “Care to ’elp a girl out?”

  “You ain’t no girl.”

  Oona rolled her eyes, vivid as his own. “No more’n you’re a gentleman, given ’ow I raised you. But you’re still the one wiv the coat to spare, ain’t that so?”

  Nonplussed, Chess found she’d already slipped one of his purple sleeves half-free — so he gave up, letting her tug the whole rest of it off his shoulders, trusting she’d use it to wrap her off-putting nakedness away once more. Which she did, shivering delightedly.

  “Much better.” Looking up through lowered lashes, then, she winked, lasciviously throwing one hip out toward him like it was a magic trick . . . as though that swinging dick of his meant he was just one more john to hook, with every trick in her arsenal. “Fanks, ever so.”

  “Don’t do that, Goddamnit. Ain’t — ”

  “Right? Proper? Never knew you t’care too much over either of those.”

  “Jesus, Ma!”

  “Well, ’ave it yer own way, then. I’ll lay off the treacle, so long’s you agree to ’ear me through — wivout the beat-down, this time.”

  Chess paused and spat, mouth all of a sudden sour. For it was all so wrong, and horribly so. The unpersuasive croon he’d hitherto known only as a hundred shades of lying mockery gone suddenly playful, cheerful . . . real, and painfully so. The misremembered source of every saucy trick he’d practiced in his own turn, and rendered horrid for the comparison. For who had he been imitating, after all, each time he’d turned the flare of his attention on some hapless sap — the Rev, Ed and countless others — but her, apparently?

  At the very thought, his gorge rose up again, only to find itself crammed back down, with all the considerable will at his disposal.

  At the sight of his repulsion, Oona’s smirk took on a savage edge. “Takes some gettin’ used to, don’t it?” she murmured. “The very idea that I was ever young, like you — fast, like you — fresh and pretty, fit to ’ave any man fool enough t’meet my eye, I wanted ’im, ’fore cuttin’ ’is purse and movin’ on. Just like you.”

  “Fuck, no.” Chess made himself straighten, regained what little height he had on her and used it, staring haughtily down. “Ain’t no single part of me comes from you, save for the trappings.”

  “Oh no, ’course there ain’t — just the parts what like to ’ook a man deep and string him ’long for as far as you can, for the fun of it. Just the parts want what they want, and ’ooever gets ’tween them and their desire dead. Or aches t’frow ’emselves at men won’t do nothing for ’em but fuck ’em ’ard and walk away, smilin’ — ”

  “You’re talkin’ out your well-worn backside!”

  Oona raised a brow, gold-red as his own. “Never did tell you much ’bout your Pa, did I?”

  “Never asked you to. Then again, I misdoubt you know which he was, let alone who.”

  Her smile softened, making his stomach churn. “Ah, but there you’d be wrong, for ’e wasn’t the sort you forget — an educated man, wiv quite the ‘ead for hoity-toity God-botheration: Malcolm Devesstrin, what sailed from Dublin to New York City and took up with the gangs, standin’ mage for the Might of Eire ’gainst every roisterin’ jack in the Five Points. Said ’ow ’e’d been a monk once, which was why ’e called ’imself Columcille, after the saint.” It came out Collum-kill, and here Chess felt another odd twist in his gut, something turning, a keyhole creak. “And Christ knows, I didn’t ’ave no cause to doubt ’im. But that was all put paid to, when ’e stole some mouldy book and took off runnin’.” She glanced back over her shoulder, then, lashes lowering flirtatiously, to add: “A fine, tall man, big as a ’ouse and broad as a barn and ministerial in ’is declamation, wiv a powerful love to ’ear ’imself talk. Sound familiar?”

  “You’re a lyin’ whore.”

  “Oh yes, always, but not about this. Why bother? Bastard’s dead any’ow, from what I heard; struck out in the streets, five years after you was born. Was some Nativist battle-witch they calls the Widowmaker what laid ’im low, probably ’cause ’e tried to pull the same trick on ’er ’e did on me, but she was wilier. Or just luckier.”

  Chess shook his head, muzzily. “What . . . trick?”

  “Fink a minute on it ’fore you dismiss anything I got to tell you out of ’and, just ’cause it’s me ’oo’s talkin’, Cheshire Pargeter — for that’s your full name, as it ’appens, and did I never tell you that, neither? Sorry.” Her voice dropped, sweet giving way to rough, as the rasp crept upward. “Named you for a county, one I fought my own Ma came from, once upon a time. But that don’t matter much now.”

  “Keep on talkin’, bitch, ’fore I paste you another, story or no story.”

  “All right. Say a man ’as hexation, powerful bad, and meets a woman ’e’s drawn to, on account of the power she’s got locked up inside; say she’s drawn to ’im the same, enough to let ’im ’ave ’is way and trust ’e’ll do right by ’er, for all every scrap of experience tells ’er that’s a load of old rope. And say one day she misses ’er courses, knows she’s taken short.”

  “Any of this got a point, beyond the obvious?”

  Display, that’s all it was — his only weapon left, used without compunction. But it made Oona’s eyes light up, same way he knew his own could, or had — shoot genuine sparks like tears from either corner, kill-flash bright, which scarred her cheeks on their way down before healing themselves anew, flesh knitting back together in their wake.

  “Point is, you berk,” she gritted, “that everyfing you ’ave you owe to ’im an’ me, more’n you ever knew. Fink I was conjured out of nothin’, wiv you already stuffed up inside? I ’ad fourteen ’ole years before you ever existed, and damn, if I didn’t make ’em count! I could’ve done anyfing, I’d only come into my own, wivout you to ’old me back.”

  She clapped her hands and whipped them apart, blue-white arcs of lightning writhing between her palms, their spitting light painting her face. “Anyfing,” she whispered, whites of her eyes gone sodium-bright.

  Chess shuddered, then shrugged.

  “Gonna need more than that to make a mark, Ma,” he ground out. “That little crackle wouldn’t set me back none even if it was real — Ash Rook was ten times any hex you might’ve been, and I’m ten times the hex he was. ’Sides which, you already told me — down here ain’t nothin’ but dreams. Shadow shows.” He thrust his hand straight into the lightning field, and saw it pass unscathed. “I’ll say it again: I ain’t you, and you ain’t me. Never were.”

  Oona closed her hands, making the lightning vanish, but didn’t lower her eyes from his. “No,” she agreed. “Glamour I ’ad, enough t’get me shed of this place, but I wasn’t no true ’ex, since my full power ’adn’t yet come to pass.” A pause. “Your preacher-man — ’e tell you what ’appens to witches carry witchlings?”

  “How the whelp comes out dead, or the mother dies, or they both die?”

  “That’s right.” No smile, now. “Could feel it movin’ inside me, right along with you. The craft I’d yet to grab ’old of, close as my own blood. I felt it pullin’, each and every day; felt you pullin’ on it, fightin’ me for it. “That was when ’e came back, your Pa. And when I saw ’im again, you jumped inside me like you was tryin’ to bust out right then . . . and I knew. Could see in ’is eyes that ’e knew, ’ad known all along, ’ow this would go.”

  Nothin’ worse in this whole world, darlin’, Ash Rook’s Hell-deep voice told Chess, mildly, than a bad man who knows his Bible.

  “’E laid it out for me,” Oona went on, “told me there was nought to be done about ’ow fings would end, unless . . . ’e tried something.”

  Chess’s brows contracted. “And you let him? Some ex-monk hex you didn’t know from Adam, savin’ he’d had his tackle up in your box, and left you like to die of it?”

  “’Adn’t much bleedin’ choice, did I?” Oona snapped. “And ’e . . .” Surprisingly, she flushed. “’Ad a way wit
h ’im, Columcille did. Made me fink it was — I was — important. That we’d learn something, if everyfing worked right; that if fings went wrong, there’d at least be no pain in it, far as I was concerned.”

  “Bet he lied about that one, though.”

  “Oh, ’e lied about all of it, from first to bloody last. That was just the topper.”

  She looked down, red hair falling curtain-long once more, wrapping her profile away. And as Chess’s gaze followed, instinct-driven, he saw her fold into a squat, balancing on those small bare feet, toes already black with mud. Watched her dip the fingers of one hand through a rut puddle, yet more light trailing in its five-fold wake while shadows bred inside the brightening water, a cloudy mirror full of images he struggled to decode.

  This same younger form she wore now stretched out in some foul tenement bed, held down, her mouth wide. A dark man crouched watching, one big hand cupping her jaw, the other stroking her sweaty brow. Gas hissing in the sconce, blue flames pin-pointed in her pupils; the beat of a heart, two hearts, a doubled pulse ebbing in and out.

  Give it t’me now, girl. My lovely Oona, my hunger’s bride. Just as you promised, as you want to, along with that brat of yours, poor little sweetmeat. Poor, puling little mage-bred sacrifice.

  Reminded him of nothing so much as Dame Ixchel, swimming in blood-drool and other hot juices. Suicide Moon Ixchel, taking his lip between her teeth and grinding ever so slightly, like she meant to tenderize him just a touch, ’fore throwing him on the grill. Or eddying alongside as Rook puppeted him stringless through Mictlan-Xibalba’s rainy corridors, telling him that dying for gods you didn’t even know, making ’em a raw meat meal, wasn’t so much dreadful as glorious, flowery, beautifulbeautifulbeautiful —

  So sons of bitches ran in his family, apparently. No great surprise, given.

  “Sly as the bloody Pope, that one,” Oona spat, one fingertip tracing the dark man’s regal profile, erasing it with a ripple. “So I’m turnin’ inside out from the pain of squeezin’ you clear, feelin’ the ’exation in every part of me ready to pop the exact same way you was, an’ I ’ear Columcille call out somefing . . . Jew cant and church-talk all mixed together, what ’urt the ear t’listen to. And it all just tore, ripped clean away, so fast I didn’t even feel you drop. Nothing left behind ’cept a hole, raw and sick and covered over in scab — ”

  Her voice broke, startling Chess, one thought crystal clear in every rigid line of her: No more man, no magic, no promises of love — just me, alone, like I’d fooled myself I wouldn’t be. Positionless and street-bound, with one skill only t’my name, ’less I wanted t’swing for thievery; all that, nothin’ more.

  Except, of course, for . . . you.

  Chess didn’t want to tell her he knew what that was like — to be took up and dropped, have the whole world pulled out from under you like a rug, by one you thought you’d gladly die for. Shouldn’t have to tell her, anyhow; could just go on ahead and read his damn thoughts like any other dead person, if she was really interested.

  Instead, he cleared his throat. “I never heard of anybody could do that — take a person’s hexation from ’em, without killin’.”

  “’Cause you know so much about it, eh?” Oona didn’t look up, staring grimly down at the puddle’s fading picture show. “But no, wasn’t like ’e took it, as . . . made it so’s I couldn’t catch ’old of it — so’s it just flowed in one way and out the other. Closed fings up inside me and fused ’em shut, like any back-alley angelmaker.”

  “What the hell’d be the point of that?”

  “’Oo knows? A give-and-take, maybe, for some bigger reward on ’is own end — ’e ’ad ambitions in that direction, though it wasn’t like ’e’d discuss their particulars wiv the likes of me.” Another shrug. “Or maybe ’e was just a bastard.”

  More’n likely, Chess thought.

  “Saved your life, though, not that ’e was finkin’ of it — ’cause by makin’ such a mess of me, ’e made sure I couldn’t feed off of you, even if I wanted. And believe you me, I wanted.”

  “What makes you think I don’t believe you?” Chess asked.

  A silence fell between them then, dull as any unhealed break. Chess let it pass without remark, being used to the sensation — pain run through him like a tide, out and in and out again once more. Though it did surprise him just a tad to see Oona wince slightly, for all the world as though she felt it, too.

  “So,” she continued. “There I was wiv you and not enough glamour to light a candle, after I’d been bankin’ half a year on the day it’d all change.” A ghastly smile. “Oh, sonny, you don’t know how many times I almost frew you overboard on our way down the coast, or drowned you in the bath like a kitten . . . not since you were cause of all my sorrows, so much, but just since you were close to ’and. And ’e wasn’t.”

  Now, that he could almost believe. Same way he’d ended men for not being the ones he really yearned to kill, or fucked ’em for much the same reason.

  “And I was the one set you to whore and smoke, too, I s’pose; neat damn trick, with me still on the tit. Next you’ll be sayin’ the Devil made you do it.”

  “Was Columcille I’d’ve blamed, like I said, if there was anything to gain by it. You I kept alive, much as it cost me . . . but ask yerself this: given ’ow much I wanted to get rid o’you, why d’you fink I never actually did?”

  “’Cause baby killers get the gallows, they get caught? ’Cause I was worth more sold than thrown away?” Chess spread his hands. “Both or neither, don’t even matter, considering how little of a fuck I give.”

  Yet here another voice came back to him, this one light and clear, pleasantly absinthe-softened, betraying no hint of the steel he knew lurked behind it. Babies die, Mister Pargeter. Happens lamentably easily. . . . She’d really wanted you dead, you would be.

  “You really ’aven’t wondered, ’ave you, all this while?” Oona cocked her head, disbelief writ wide on every line of her too-young face. “Why I kept on at you, put you straight into ’arm’s path a thousand times over — consider what you know ’bout your father now, ’bout me. Then tell me you really can’t see the why of it all.”

  The why of it all: half his life, to this point. That same life had made his double purpose escape and vengeance, without even a hope of prosperity, after. Just hit the ground running and not look back, or fill any motherfucker got in his way with lead.

  But yeah, he finally did know what she’d wanted all along, now. So simple, from this side of things. So impossible to guess at, from the other.

  “You wanted me to turn hex,” he said, and coughed up a sick laugh. “Go up like a blow-stick, take the whole show with me when I did — that about the size of it? Christ, no wonder you got more and more pissed, every time I never turned the trick!”

  “Contrary to the last, you bastard. You really must be the toughest little shit alive.”

  “No thanks to you. But then again . . . how dumb are you, woman? In any of the stories I heard tell of, only thing makes a man-hex bloom is threat of death! Ash Rook swung, for Christ’s sake, and he had to take my damn heart out to make me what I am — what I always was. You telling me that for all the neck-stabbin’ and pimpery, there was never one time you thought of just slittin’ my throat in my sleep and seeing what might happen? Or . . .”

  He trailed off. She didn’t answer.

  Didn’t have to.

  Because — oh God, it was already creeping up like he’d been born saturated, a poison-knowledge tisane, waiting for the right hand to dunk him in boiling water and brew the truth right out of him. The bitter truth, too disgusting for anyone — even him — to swallow.

  ’Cause . . . if you’d done it wrong, all I’d’ve been was dead, and . . . no.

  “No,” he repeated, out loud. “You do not get to say that to me, Goddamnit.”

  Oona simply stood there, green stare level, now he was the one unable to meet it. Chess shied like a horse, swung away, stormed a few paces off,
spun back. “Bitch, no. You . . . you don’t get to . . . to even start to say . . .”

  Appalled, he felt a lump thicken in his throat, and fought the temptation to finish his thought, furiously as he’d ever fought anything. But though she herself showed not the faintest flicker of expression to confirm these traitor words in his head, it was too late — even unspoken, they hung between them, like the stink of powder after gunplay.

  You do not, not ever, get to tell me you really did love me, after all.

  Took near a minute of the silence that followed for Chess to realize that the everlasting “London” rain had finally stopped, along with the noise of that threadbare, cycling crowd. Hugging himself hard, he turned a slow circle, blinking. Down all seven streets, from here to their vanishing points, the Dials were empty but for him and Oona: every fellow phantom gone, every building hollow and silent, every laneway glinting slick. No rat-skitter or pigeons’ coo to break the stillness; no footfall over the grey rooftops, pavers dull as teeth below, shingles like scales above. The black sky held no stars.

  For a moment, the entire scene seemed to ripple, no more than a hastily sketched picture on threadbare black silk curtains, stirred in a cold breeze.

  “What’s it matter, any’ow?” Oona asked, finally. “Don’t know why I put myself out. You’re dead now, same as me.”

  “I am not. My body’s still up there, still alive — ”

  “Occupied, too. Which means you can’t do nothin’ wiv it, don’t it?”

  “Well, I ain’t about to stop tryin’!”

  She gave him a long look — and smiled again, finally, with far more warmth than last time. “That’s different, then. Now, you ready to get out of ’ere, or what? ’Cause I sure am, and I’m thinkin’ it’ll take the both of us.”

  “Be one fancy piece of work if it did, seein’ as how you ain’t even a hex no more.”

  “You neither, cully — not down ’ere. But I’m sure we can figure out somefing.”

  Chess’s lips drew back. “Fuck ‘we,’ Ma. Might’a slipped your mind how you ain’t ever been exactly reliable — for me, anyways.”