Witchmark

by C. L. Polk

  I scrambled backwards, my shoe coming down in Young Gerald’s blood. I couldn’t take a Laneeri in a knife fight. I needed reach. I needed a sword. Something. I spied a mop and grabbed it, swinging the head in Old Gerald’s face. Water-soaked strings knocked him off balance.

  My heart pounded. I had one chance.

  I rushed him, shoving him over the dining room table. I groped for his free hand, caught it, and flexed my power.

  He choked as I closed his airway, knife arm swinging wildly.

  I reached into his mind. “ Sleep.”

  The knife tumbled to the floor.

  I released his throat. Breath shuddered through Old Gerald’s mouth and nose while I peeled the dried blood soul out of his body, pulling it away. I had figured out the trick of divesting Gerald of his invader, but again the soul yanked out of my grasp as if it were sucked away. Eastward once more.

  I shifted my weight and stopped as my foot nudged into something. I looked down.

  I stood on Marie Grimes’s hair.

  I stumbled backward and half tripped on the mop. Gerald lay on the table, legs dangling, arms outspread. He snored softly. I couldn’t wake him yet. A soft touch on his hand pushed him deeper, and I crept past him and his wife’s body, climbing the stairs to the bedrooms above.

  Please be at school. Please be at school.

  Gerald and Marie’s bedroom was at the front, a knitted counterpane spread over the bed wide enough for two, more needlework decorating small pillows and the tops of the bureaus cramped in the space. One corner of the bedspread was turned up and all the drawers spilled open.

  He’d been in here searching. I backed out of the room, turning to the first closed door.

  My stomach roiled as I pushed down the door lever, opening to a tiny room with a narrow bed under the window.

  It was bare, but an army bag leaned on the wall next to the tidy dresser. Young Gerald’s room. I moved on.

  Old Gerald had two boys, Jamie and Sam. They must have shared the room at the back, the door shut tight. The floor creaked in front of the door, a bright sign painted with both their names.

  I closed my eyes and swung the door open.

  Please.

  Two beds on opposite walls. A braided rug in between, scattered with a boy’s toys. Balls and music crank boxes, high-tailed horses and soldier men, bright and wooden and clean.

  Clean.

  I landed on my knees.

  A crash sounded from downstairs, and a yelp of surprise turned into a horrified cry.

  “Marie?”

  Gerald was awake.

  I dashed down the stairs.

  Gerald held Marie in his arms. He rocked her dead body, sobbed in her hair, tried to smooth it out of her face, tried to keep her head from wobbling back and opening the slice at her throat.

  “Gerald.”

  “Go away.”

  “Gerald, it’s Dr. Singer.”

  “Go away.”

  “Do you remember anything?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  I moved closer. “Do you remember—”

  “I killed her. I killed her.”

  “ He killed her.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Old Gerald said. “She’s dead.”

  “I have to get the police.”

  “Get them. I don’t care.”

  “Gerald. Jamie and Sam weren’t here. Your children are alive.”

  He didn’t seem to hear me.

  I searched for a telephone. They were well-off enough to own one, and I picked up the receiver.

  “It says here in the paper!” a woman exclaimed. “That’s why all the columns have been a repeat. He was murdered! Oh, poor Mr. Greenthumbs.”

  “Excuse me, please,” I interrupted. “I need the line.”

  “Who’s there?” a different woman asked.

  “Miles Singer. I’m a doctor. I need to call the police.”

  “The police!” the first woman exclaimed. “Right away.”

  They hung up, freeing the line for me.

  I stood in the front parlor. I’d scuffed blood on the carpet. Blood stained my trousers, my coat. Gerald sobbed brokenly behind me. The telephone rang, rang again, and a voice answered.

  “Kingston police, Gray Mountain.”

  A click. Someone had picked up their phone. They’d get an earful.

  “We need officers at 3125 Trout Street East.” I gritted my teeth against the prickle of copper so close to my ear. “I’m afraid there have been two murders.”

  * * *

  The moment I hung up, the phone rang again. I let it shrill, dashing back to the kitchen to retrieve my bag and kneel next to Old Gerald. “The police are coming. Gerald. You don’t remember what happened. You understand me? You don’t remember.” I opened the water-stained bag and quested inside for a bottle and a dosing cup.

  “What does it matter?”

  “You weren’t yourself when you did this.” Did he wake from a terrible dream? Had he been a helpless passenger all through it, unable to stop his body from attacking his wife and his friend? It didn’t matter. Gerald Grimes had been shattered. The pieces of him still held Mrs. Grimes’s body, her limbs sprawling at immodest angles. He rocked her corpse, stroked her disarranged hair.

  He stirred himself when the bitter tang of laudanum bloomed under his nose. “I deserve to hang.”

  “No, you don’t. You aren’t responsible. Do you understand me? You weren’t in your right mind. I’ll tell them. I’ll say it in court. Because it’s true. Drink this.”

  He took the cup and swallowed. Old Gerald sighed. “Laudanum?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give me the rest,” he said. “So I sleep forever.”

  “I can’t do that, Gerald.”

  The hum of voices grew. I stood up and looked through the lace curtains. Women milled in the street, buttoning woolen coats and tying bright scarves over house dresses against the chill. Some smoked. All of them looked at the house, brows wrinkled with worry.

  They scattered like pigeons when the first police officer arrived, answered his questions with worried looks.

  Gerald’s head nodded, the tonic already taking effect. I eased my grip, and he stayed sitting up, though he wobbled. “Wait here.”

  I unlocked the front door.

  A chorus of gasps greeted me as I stepped out. A few women screamed, falling among the others in a faint.

  The police constable was white-lipped, knuckles tight over the handle of his truncheon.

  I blinked. “What’s the matter?”

  “Stay right where you are!”

  “Of course,” I said. “I was about to invite you in. What’s wr—”

  I looked down. Blood dried on my hands and cuffs.

  “Oh.”

  I put my hands up. “I called you. I came to call on my patient.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Dr. Miles Singer. I’m a physician at Beauregard Veterans’. Gerald Grimes was my patient there.”

  “He a soldier?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyebrows rose in the middle. “He in the war?”

  “Yes.”

  If anything, the constable looked even paler. “Is he dead?”

  “Sedated,” I said. “I’m lucky to be alive.”

  Cry-bells rang, coming closer.

  “That’ll be the body wagon,” the constable said.

  A woman gasped in horror.

  The arrival of backup bolstered the young man’s morale and he climbed the stairs. “You can put your hands down. Don’t go anywhere. We’ll have questions.”

  Other policemen followed him, including one bedecked in more brass than I usually saw on a patrolman. A sergeant—probably the supervisor of the men who gathered here recording the grim business of murder.

  “You’re the one who called?”

  “Miles Singer. I’m Gerald’s doctor.”

  He signaled to a constable and beckoned him over. “Tell me what happened.”

&n
bsp; “I was coming to call on Old Gerald as part of my conditions for releasing him from Mental Recovery at the hospital.”

  “Mental Recovery? So he’s mad?”

  I winced. “Mr. Grimes was suffering a full break from reality when I arrived. It was in this state of unreason that he killed his wife and his friend, Gerald Martin.”

  “And how did you survive?”

  “I talked him down once I subdued him.”

  He looked at me again, impressed. “By yourself.”

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  “Still. If he’s like the other one, you’re formidable.” His nod of approval was deep enough to be a bow. “Was he talking in Laneeri? When he was having this break from reality?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He was distraught when he realized what he’d done. I sedated him. He’s suicidal.”

  “What possessed him to do this, Doctor? Why do they—? Their wives. Their families. What happened over there?”

  “War,” I said.

  The sergeant shook his head.

  * * *

  There were more questions, and from them I learned Terrence Pigeon wouldn’t speak anything but Laneeri, and he was in a safe room in Kingston Asylum.

  They wanted me to tell them what was happening. They wanted me to tell them how to fix it. I couldn’t.

  A constable offered me a ride up the hill to Birdland, certain my bloodstained clothing would cause a disturbance if I took the train. I pedaled in his sidecar, bemused.

  “Do they help? The people you arrest. Do they help you pedal them back to jail?”

  “A lot of them do, Doctor. Even the ones who fought me. You’d be surprised. Sometimes it’s a relief to get caught.”

  I decided to concentrate on pedaling.

  He went to the door with me to explain to a horrified Mrs. Bass I had been assisting the police with a crime. I dashed upstairs to remove my gory clothing. I didn’t know if I could get the blood out of my Service coat. I had a spare, shabbier than this one. It would have to do.

  A change of clothes and shoes came with me on the cab ride back to Tristan’s. Children swarmed over the long black car in front of his door, hovering close but not quite daring to touch the curving wheel wells or the leaping stag ornament on the car’s nose.

  Tristan and Grace alone was trouble brewing.

  I ran up the steps and through the door, listening for raised voices or a sign they had come to blows.

  Grace set down her teacup and twisted in her seat, glaring at me. “Where have you been?”

  “There’s no time for interrogations.”

  “We both went to the hospital to find you,” Tristan said. “We heard about the imbroglio with that doctor accusing you of witchcraft.”

  “I worried you’d been arrested.” Grace’s voice shook. “You weren’t here, Mr. Hunter didn’t know where you’d gone—”

  “Stop,” I said. “Grace. Have you been paying attention to the Star?”

  “We don’t take the Star, as you know.”

  “The murders. Soldiers from the war murdering their entire family. Have you heard of them?”

  “You were talking about it yesterday,” Tristan said. “Was there another?”

  “One of my patients,” I said. “I’d been working on a problem some of my patients had. I thought it was a disease, but I was wrong. I was so wrong. …”

  “What is it?”

  “They’re possessed,” I said. “I’m not sure how. But what I saw inside them wasn’t an infection. They were right all along—there was someone else inside them bent on killing.”

  Grace looked confused. Tristan went pale. “Are you certain?”

  “I’ve seen two of my patients in this condition. I pulled the cloud from them, and they returned to normal.”

  “A cloud,” Tristan leaned closer. “Like a mass of insects?”

  “Yes.”

  The slap of Grace’s palms on her knees drew my attention back. “What are you two talking about?”

  “My patients—”

  “A spell,” Tristan said. “Necromancy.”

  The word froze me. “Necromancy?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “What are you two talking about? Miles, what’s this about a spell?”

  I swiped my hand through my hair. “Grace, can you see magic on people? Can you spot a witch?”

  “I can,” Grace said.

  “Come. Look out the window.”

  We gathered at the small panes of the parlor’s window. Halston Street carried plenty of traffic. Delivery wagons dotted the road, taking advantage of lightened bicycle traffic before the afternoon rush filled the street. Even more children surrounded Grace’s car, not quite daring to touch it. A man rode into the intersection, and I pointed. “Do you see?”

  “See what?” They said together. The man with a bicycle loaded with fresh vegetables rode out of sight.

  “Blast. There was one. There’s another!”

  “I don’t see—”

  Half his body was swathed in red-brown muck. “With the bowler hat and the green tweed jacket.”

  “The awful green tweed jacket,” Grace said. “I don’t see—”

  I grabbed her hand and pushed into her power. “Look.”

  “Miles. How—”

  “I learned it from Tristan.” I put my hand out, and Tristan took it. I eased out of Grace’s power, and Tristan let me in, let me show him what I saw.

  He felt warm in a way Grace didn’t, and anxiety dripped into his middle, tensing his stomach. Grace had only felt curious and frustrated until the leap of insight bolted through her.

  “Miles, I can still see it,” Grace said. “There’s another.”

  Tristan touched the window as he pointed east. “And a third, walking out of the haberdasher’s.”

  I withdrew and was only myself again, standing between my sister and my friend. “Do you still see it?”

  “Yes.” His voice was grim. “It’s as I learned of it from Cormac. Those people are all tethered to the soul of a dead person. The necromancers used it as a way to stay young.”

  I knew this story. “Trick a person into killing you by hand or blade, touch them as your body dies—”

  “And your soul attaches to them so you can take their body for your own. Miles. It’s the Revenge of Lucus.” Grace’s face was chalky.

  Tristan cursed under his breath. “How many soldiers are like this? I’ve already seen five.”

  “From what I saw at the Homecoming? I gave up and counted the ones who weren’t possessed.”

  “How many?”

  “Thousands. Tens of thousands,” I said. “They’re all going home. All over Aeland. If they rise up all at once—”

  It hurt to think of it. More families annihilated across the country, thousands of men who should have been trusted heroes suddenly monsters. Aeland would be devastated.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know.” But I knew. The Laneeri delegation sat in ceremonial imprisonment in the royal penitentiary for three more days. “The surrender. The sky-priests who came with the diplomats—some of their most senior members had a dozen or more stars around their heads. And if they cast the spell…”

  Grace went pale. “The Queen’s in danger.”

  “Unless she has protection.”

  “This is…” Grace covered her stomach with one hand, breathing too fast. “Excuse me. I’ll be—”

  “Upstairs, the door directly across from the landing,” Tristan said.

  She rose to her full height with a little sway. I moved to catch her, but she steadied and left the room. The door to the comfort room clicked shut, and water ran.

  Tristan pressed his lips together. “Why did the Laneeri cast this spell?”

  “Revenge,” I said. “One final attack to throw us off their backs. They can’t be happy to be conquered.”

  “All good reasons,” Tristan said, but he frowned at the ceiling.

  “Can you think of another?”


  “No,” Tristan admitted. “I’m trying to make it fit into my mission, but I’m not sure how the pieces go together. Maybe Aldis—that’s my counterpart in Laneer—maybe he succeeded and learned where the souls are going.”

  I remembered what I saw when I freed Bill and Gerald. “East. They’re going east. I don’t know why, but that’s where they’re going.”

  The door separating the kitchen from Tristan’s study slid open. Grace paused on her way through the room, peering at the books and objects stored inside a hutch meant to display the good china. “Is that a skull?”

  “I relieved a fraudulent witch of it when I first came here.”

  She nodded and turned away. “What…” She bent over the atlas, still open on Tristan’s blotter. “Why have you drawn a summoning pentacle on this map?”

  Tristan frowned. “A what?”

  Grace came into the parlor with Tristan’s atlas. “The north, the east, the southeast, the southwest, the west, and the Caller in the middle, to gather five into one. That’s how we stand in ritual when we sing in the seasons.”

  “Miles told me you used hundreds of people in the rituals.”

  Grace nodded. “Including the Secondaries on the borders, yes. A hundred and fifty-six Invisibles, an equal number of Secondaries. But the Stations and the Voice stand this way. The shape makes a difference.”

  “So could you go to these places and make a summoning pentacle of your whole country?”

  “With enough power, but it would take…” Grace looked up. “Thousands. Tens of thousands, and I’m not sure if it would be possible. Why?”

  Tristan and I looked at each other.

  Grace stood up straight. “What’s going on here? Why are you here, Mr. Hunter?”

  Tristan stood up. “It’s a long story, best told over drink. Wine or whiskey?”

  * * *

  We had whiskey, chill on the tongue and warm over our hearts. Grace lounged in the wingback chair, while I leaned against the sloped back of Tristan’s fainting couch. Tristan waited for us to settle, then explained about his fruitless search for the souls of the dead. Aeland had no ghosts, but the tradition of witches guiding the lost to the Solace was long faded. He told Grace about Nick Elliot, and meeting me.

  “So Nick Elliot was investigating asylums in these towns,” Grace said. “Asylums where witches are held. Why?”

  Tristan pressed his lips together. “I don’t know. But a summoning pentacle gathers power?”