Seraph of Sorrow

by MaryJanice Davidson

  “Hey!”

  “—but she has a Ford Mustang convertible and a driver’s license, so she is a goddess unto us. This is Eddie Blacktooth. He’s a beaststalker and his father would like to see all of us dead; but Eddie’s the best kid you could ever hope to grow up with. And this is Susan Elmsmith.” She turned and placed her hand on Susan’s arm. “She’s incredibly loyal, and the most special friend I have. I owe her so much.”

  Susan blushed, an adorable crimson shade. Skip felt a pang of guilt. Will Susan survive? And then let it go. Why not? Normal people like her should be fine. This isn’t about them.

  “We’re all going to hang,” Jennifer announced, looking at each of them in turn. “We’re going to get along. And we’re not going to keep secrets from each other anymore. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Right.”

  “Right.”

  He paused. It will be the last lie, he promised himself. You can lie one more time, can’t you? For her? “Right.”

  Jennifer had missed the hesitation, since she was shouting something back down the hall to her mother. He was wondering how he was going to find out from Jennifer what he needed to know, with all these other hangers-on, when the girl said the most remarkable thing.

  “We’re all going to Crescent Valley.”

  The sound of a glass shattering on the kitchen floor made Jennifer smile. Skip, meanwhile, thought of the crash of glass and porcelain he had heard through the basement door, while this woman and his half-sister were fighting.

  “We’ll be back soon,” Jennifer was promising.

  Soon? Skip thought. Did that mean a day trip, an overnight? He made a quick radius calculation in his head. If she’s promising to be back in a few hours, and we’re driving there and back, then Crescent Valley can’t be more than a hundred miles away. Probably less. He thought about it some more. The Scales farm? Is it at the farm, or near it?

  He willed patience upon himself. He would find out soon enough.

  “Love you, too.” Jennifer finished with her mom. She turned back to her friends, gray eyes shining and cherry lips curved in a beautiful grin. “I hope you all can swim!”

  Right then, Skip figured out exactly where Crescent Valley was and how to get there. He joined them anyway, because that smile was so captivating, so beautiful. Like his mother’s.

  CHAPTER 11

  Division

  “What the hell happened?”

  It was the following Tuesday morning. Skip stumbled down the stairs, disoriented. He thought at first he was still at the Scales farm or in Crescent Valley, since the unpleasant memories of those places were so fresh in his mind. Gradually, he recalled last night. Had he been with Jennifer out in the park? Yes, he thought so. He had gone to her house, ensured she had the necklace that would protect her, and brought her out in the open so the shift in worlds would not land her in an unfriendly domicile. Had he helped put her to sleep, so she could survive the journey? Probably. Then, had he . . .

  . . . had he slept?

  Impossible, he told himself.

  Then what had he just been doing, before he was on these stairs? How did he get back in this house? Was this the same house, or a new house? The predawn twilight washed the interior of Skip’s house with shades of gray, tainting the furniture, bookcases, and photos.

  Photos. He rushed into the downstairs hall and sought out the picture of his mother.

  The frame was an empty background. It was as if the image of his mother had walked out of the plain wooden rectangle. The photo to the right—one of the only existing pictures of Otto Saltin and Dianna Wilson together—had crashed to the floor. When he picked it up, he saw that it was unchanged, though the glass in front of his father’s face had splintered.

  Skip entered the dining room and saw his aunt and Edmund Slider. There, he saw the answer to the question he had asked on the stairs.

  Nothing happened, that’s what. Nothing at all.

  Slider was in his wheelchair, staring at his bare feet. He wore nothing except a white undershirt and black silk boxers. Tavia was sitting next to him, in a flannel nightgown, holding his hand and wiping away her own tears. Her full attention was on the despondency lacing her lover’s face. The vague smells of aftershave and singed hair lingered about his wheelchair.

  “Why didn’t the sorcery work?” Skip asked. “Did something go wrong?”

  “I think so,” Tavia finally said. She let go of Slider’s hand and began stroking his hair. “I woke up this morning and found him down here. He won’t talk to me, Skip. He won’t tell me what the plan was, much less what went wrong with it or who was involved.” She straightened and sniffed. “Oh, Edmund. Please talk to me. Whatever happened, let me help.”

  Skip walked up and knelt down in front of Slider. He grabbed the man’s forearm and squeezed until he finally got the man’s attention. “Why didn’t it work?”

  The faintest of smiles passed over Slider’s face. “It worked,” he said. “I’ve analyzed the residue in space and time. And I know that I leapt. We shifted, Skip. We succeeded.”

  “Then why are you still like this? Where’s my mother? What’s with the photo in the hall? Why isn’t anything else different?”

  “Your mother?” Tavia’s brows curved with the question. “Why would she—”

  “Since I have no clear memories of what happened, I can only deduce from the evidence I have,” Slider explained. “I know from the drain on my power that the universe changed. I also know from sitting here that we have not changed at all.” He bit his lip and kept his gaze locked on his feet. “Sitting here.”

  “You were trying to change what?”

  Skip waved off Tavia’s question. “So what does that mean?”

  “It means that after our change succeeded, someone changed everything back.”

  “Who?” Skip felt his stomach roll at the thought of someone with that kind of power. “Who would change it back?”

  “The only one who could. Dianna Wilson.”

  Tavia, who had been watching them talk back and forth, interrupted again. “Edmund, you’re not making sense. Otto told me before he died that Dianna was lost down in Mexico—”

  “Dianna was not completely lost, my love,” he told her with a weary smile. “And your brother was not dead. Not where we were going.”

  Her face reflected confusion, wonder, and disbelief. “You’re telling me this plan of the Quadrivium was to change the universe . . . and Dianna changed it back?” She took a deep breath. “Why would she do that?”

  Edmund looked meaningfully at his student, who put it together with a chill teasing his spine. “Because I brought Jennifer,” he deduced. “Somehow, she got Mom to undo everything.”

  Tavia’s jaw dropped. “Jennifer Scales?! What would she be doing there? Why would you bring her? How would she convince Dianna to do anything at all?”

  “She was there because Skip wanted her there,” Slider replied. “And so did Dianna. Skip’s reasons are obvious; Dianna’s are her own. As for how the girl convinced Dianna to undo it all . . .” He trailed off into uncertainty.

  “Jennifer must have ruined it,” Skip finally finished for him. Something unwound inside him, and he slammed his fist on the dining room table. “She screwed everything up and forced Mom’s hand!” How could she do that? After all I was willing to sacrifice for her!

  “It’s a possibility,” Slider admitted. “If what we created ended up being worse for us than what we see around us now, then Dianna would change it back. If Jennifer managed to do enough damage—”

  “How could she damage a universe?” Tavia wondered. “She’s one girl!”

  “That sort of underestimation,” Slider observed, “is probably what helped Jennifer Scales succeed. Your brother once made the same mistake, Tavia.”

  His girlfriend’s face began to show the strains of rage. “Then it was foolish to let her in the new universe! You put so much at risk! For what—Skip’s crush, and Dianna’s whims?”<
br />
  “For love,” he corrected her. “Yes. We took that risk. What sort of universe would we have been creating, if we hadn’t?”

  She removed her hand from his head. “One that would have lasted.”

  “Why are you getting on his case?” Skip snapped, failure weighing heavily on his shoulders. “At least he tried! At least we tried! It’s easy for you to criticize when all you had to do was sit and wait for the men in your life to do the work. What the hell have you ever done?”

  “Skip.” Slider shook his head gently. Skip noticed Tavia withdrawing as though bitten. Part of him realized that he sounded an awful lot like his father, and that this was probably not the first time this woman had heard that tone growing up.

  He forced himself to calm down. “When do we try again?”

  “We don’t. Without your mother’s cooperation, we can do nothing. Even if we had her help, Otto is dead in both universes now. The Quadrivium has failed.”

  “So that’s it? We’re done?”

  “For now, we wait.”

  Skip stood and kicked a chair. It tumbled across the dining room. “We wait! For what?”

  “Have a seat, Skip.”

  “I’m not going to—”

  “Sit down.”

  Unwilling to obey, but too alarmed at this new tone to disobey completely, Skip leaned against the wall. Slider’s chair whirred over to him.

  “Back when Evangelina first appeared, your aunt made an excellent point. ‘Your song is impossible to deny,’ she said. Do you remember that?”

  “I remember.”

  “Our numbers are dwindling, Skip. We’re nearly extinct. The Crown’s long dead, and the Quadrivium has failed. Still, our greatest is imminent.” Grabbing Skip’s hand, Slider looked at the boy meaningfully. “It will only take a bit more time, and a bit more hope.”

  “I—I can’t save all of us,” Skip sputtered. “That’s too much.”

  “You won’t be alone,” the teacher assured him. “I’ll help you. So will your aunt.”

  “How can you help me?” He didn’t mean the question unkindly, but he didn’t see how a crippled man and a distressed musician were going to be any great support.

  “I’m hobbled,” Slider agreed, “but not helpless. And I won’t be in this chair forever. The sort of injury I suffered is usually permanent . . . but with therapy and time, I’ve found myself recovering. I got the Quadrivium started, after a long wait. And although that failed, I still have sorcery left within me.”

  Skip chewed his lip. “How did you get injured?”

  The man sighed and gave Tavia a sad smile. “Hubris, I’m afraid. In my twenties, I was quite powerful. Glorianna Seabright’s efforts were dwindling our numbers, and few of us could weave sorcery. Where Otto Saltin and I allied, our kind could find safety. Banding together was a novel concept for werachnids, who tend to be loners.”

  Skip thought of his mother raising him by herself, and how easy it was for her to leave him. Was her obsession with finding her first child little more than a self-deception, a means of getting rid of her second? Would she have ditched the first as easily, once she found her?

  “Sorcerers have been the only defense our kind has outside the crescent moon,” Slider went on. “To allies, we were heroes. To enemies, we were terrifying. What I could do . . .”

  The coming dawn outside lit the window near where they sat, and Slider’s face seemed to sparkle. Skip waited patiently for the story to continue.

  “Edmund was an expert in moving through dimensions,” Tavia cut in. Her hand was back on her lover’s head. “He could slip from one end of a building to the other, from the bottom floor to the top, as easily as you could jump through a doorway.”

  “I could pass through the ranks of my enemies easily, under a crescent or a full or any other moon. On one occasion, I stole Glorianna Seabright’s own sword. That was probably the incident that led to . . .” He motioned to the wheelchair. “To this.”

  “How did they get you to stand in one place long enough to hobble you?” Skip wondered.

  “They laid, of all things, a trap.” An ironic curl graced his lips. “Strange, that an arachnid could get outplotted. After displaying our archenemy’s sword to cheering crowds of followers, I thought I was invincible. So when our scouts learned of an invaluable artifact that was coming to Winoka, I decided to try to steal that, too.

  “Through my sources, I learned that an ancient octahedron had been unearthed from an ancient Maku civilization deep in the Amazon. Each of its eight stone faces contained secrets to unlocked sorceries of great power, and the core held a poison stronger than any on this earth.

  “Glorianna unveiled it before her entire city one day, with much fanfare. It was indeed an octahedron, and neither I nor Otto nor any of my friends had ever seen anything like it. The thought of what such an artifact could unlock inside of each of us was thrilling.

  “After reveling in the public’s awe over this unveiling, Glorianna quickly shrouded it again, and claimed that she was aware of a werachnid plot to seize this item. She announced that the safest place for a ‘terrorist weapon’ like this was in the confines of Winoka City Hall. She assured her people that security would be intense, and that no arachnid would ever lay a tarsus on it.

  “How the beaststalkers had gotten hold of something so potent, and of arachnid origin, none of us could figure out. In any case, Otto and I agreed we had to take it back for our people.

  “Our scouts learned the artifact had been taken to a specially designed stone chamber underneath city hall, sealed with no doors or windows. I should have been on my guard once I heard of these measures. But I wasn’t. After all, a room with no doors or windows was the construct of a mind trapped in three dimensions. Can a circle drawn in the dirt stop a frog from hopping in and out? Someone needed to take Glorianna Seabright down a notch, I told myself. Someone needed to take away her authority, her power.”

  “Someone needed to stand up for arachnids,” Tavia added.

  “Thank you, dear. But you barely knew me back then. I was arrogant and foolish. So I entered Winoka alone, in spider shape under a crescent moon, and used the darkness as cover. I got close enough to city hall for the jump to be a simple matter, and then I entered the room.

  “That was where they were waiting for me—four of them, each with a shining blade and ready lips. You see, they assumed I would show up that first night, but they had no idea exactly when. So they would take turns shouting, filling the room with a constant light and noise, so no matter when I entered the room, I would be stunned immediately.”

  “And then they hobbled you. How?” Skip asked.

  “A werachnid under a crescent moon, like any arachnid, is an invertebrate. There is no spine to destroy. There are, however, chains of paired ganglia, and in most species a particularly large ganglion above the esophagus. A well-placed strike below that point . . . gives you this . . .” He motioned to his wheelchair.

  Something occurred to Skip. “Wait. You couldn’t have known they were waiting for you? You couldn’t hear them?”

  “The room, as I pointed out, was lined in solid stone over two feet thick, not to mention underground in the first place. Jumping into the room from outside city hall was like walking down stairs into absolute darkness—I knew the next step was there, but I couldn’t see who might be waiting for me. And who would have thought beaststalkers would seal themselves in such a place? Glorianna was more committed, and her followers more fanatical, than I realized. Had I waited a month and then shown up, perhaps I would have easily entered the room and left again, seeing nothing more than some starved corpses.”

  “And the artifact,” Skip added. “You would have gotten the artifact.”

  Slider’s mouth curled again. “I would have gotten a clever fabrication. No such artifact existed. It was all a lie, begun by Glorianna herself and intentionally spread to our sources. What werachnid could resist rumors of such a thing, she figured—and she was right. And by
‘placing’ it in a room that no one but me could reach, she knew precisely who she would trap.

  “I fell for it, and once there, my senses were overwhelmed. I could barely think to stand, much less shift to anywhere else. Within two seconds, four blades were jammed into my body.”

  Tavia beamed with prideful tears running down her cheeks. “They took no chances with Edmund,” she explained. “And look at him—they still didn’t completely succeed.”

  He kissed her. “They did well enough, at the time. Once I was paralyzed and had reverted to my human form, they signaled to Glorianna that the deed was done, and she rewarded their success by unsealing the room so they could leave. As for me, she dragged me to Winoka Bridge, and balanced my helpless body on top of the guardrail. She then asked where she might find her sword. When I refused to answer, thinking myself brave, she laughed at me and told me one of her minions would return in a few minutes to push me over the edge, into the river. She claimed it not worth the effort to push me herself. It was a degrading moment.

  “Whether she actually meant to send someone or not, Otto was quicker. He had positioned himself outside city hall and had seen this aftermath, so he managed to extract me from my precarious position. Her scouts followed us home, and later on a police officer came to our door, politely asking for Her Honor’s sword back. We returned the sword and fled for our lives, before any more authorities could assemble. I vowed never to return to Winoka.”

  “Until my mother asked you to,” Skip finished for him.

  Slider nodded. “Until your mother asked me last year, for your sake. Otto didn’t think I would agree, but by then I was less bitter, and my powers were returning. Above all that, the most important reason was you, Skip. I came back for you.”

  Skip almost hugged him. You’re the only one who ever has, he thought.