by Faith Hunter
“Hope you don’t give her broccoli hair like yours,” Liz snarked.
Sally snarled and stared daggers at my sisters, but nothing happened. A look of surprise and then horror crossed Sally’s face. My lips twitched as she looked down into the mug she had drained. Looked back at my sisters. She snapped her fingers. Neither witch sister showed the slightest bit of fear. I felt my own lingering terror lift too, and my smile took on a measure of satisfaction. The scarlet-haired sidekick’s power had been neutered. Well, that’s what you get when you take a mug that was never offered you. The quick little happiness working from the silver spoon had been for me, Evan, my sisters, and Death, to negate our fears. That same working had stopped it at the source. Sally wasn’t used to being happy.
Fear-Fettered slammed her expensive bag on the back of the Subaru and pulled out a makeup kit, a brush, a mirror that was way too large to actually fit within the confines of the bag, and started to make herself presentable after all the wind. I got a good look inside and there were also three knives with crosshatched hilts and two semiautomatic handguns. The brush was spelled and the mirror was a scrying surface. Sally, the Fear of Death, was a fashionista killer. I hadn’t forgotten they were here after my children. I gave Evan a significant look, mimed putting a purse over my shoulder and mouthed, “Her bag.” He nodded.
“Boots,” I said to Sam holding out a hand.
Death of Magic sat on the ground and pulled off his boots, the smell of the sweat of Death strong on the air. As he was yanking off the expensive footwear, I took over his working and wove the threads of my own earth magics into it. And into my sisters’ lasso working. Death’s magics felt warm, slippery, unstable in my hands. Foreign. The power in the magics skidded up my hands and wrists to my arms, enveloping my own cursed gift. It was a yearning, a wooing, a siren song of desire to join my gift with his magics. To…to become a Death myself.
Not Death of Magic. But Death of All. All humans. All plants. All animals. To do to the entire world what I had done to the hillside nearby. My mouth went dry with fear. If I lost control…if I let it ride me…I’d kill. I’d be a Death and my own fear would have won.
Sally looked at me and then at Death. “Oh, Sam. It wasn’t the kids. It was her.”
I understood. This was what Sam had wanted. Death magics. Not my children. They had thought the kids were the carriers. They had intended to trick us into helping them trap the demon, allowing them in close, so they could get at the death magics.
But my daughter’s guardian angel had said I could trick Death. I shook my head, trying to force my earth magics to the forefront of my mind, to satisfy my magical needs. I accepted Death’s boots, the brimstone and darkness on his sole shining bright. Brighter than the moon. The brimstone picked up my own curse. Pulled on my curse. The boots glowed.
“Mol?” Cia asked. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing,” I lied, jerking my attention away from the evidence of darkness. I had to end this quickly. “Binding?”
“Blood of angels,” Liz said, naming the working. “Places, everyone.” Holding the temporary bindings, I moved to the north. Cia walked to a position sixty degrees to my left, close beneath the sickle moon, now high in the sky. Liz took the place between us. We spread the energies we were working into the full one hundred-eighty degrees of the equilateral triangle. Then we backed away, spinning the magics out until we touched the permanent circle of the outer trench, and sat—not so easy when a baby was in the way.
I pulled out the rosemary needle-leaf and placed it between my knees. Cia and Liz each placed their elemental focal between their knees. Cia invoked the circle, “Dùin.” It was Scottish Gaelic. The circle rose around us, enclosing the half-bound demon, Death and Fear, and three Everhart sisters, but excluding my home, husband, children. Everything I held dear was safe. Except my sisters. I mouthed my thanks to them and got a wink from Cia and a nod from Liz.
“Faoi dhraíocht,” Cia said. Bound by a spell. Her hands braided the energies, twisting, pulling, sliding them through her fingers.
“Hhí ceangal na gcúig gcaol air,” Liz said. He is bound hand and foot. She plaited the energies she held with her twin’s. They grew bright, a lovely blue and lavender tinted with paler pinks. The demon screamed, his howl full of anger and pathos and thwarted desire.
A cheangal, I thought, calling on my daughter’s angel. I wove my death energies—no. I wove my earth energies and Death’s own energies in with my sisters’. You said I could cheat death, I thought to Hayyel.
I gathered Death’s magics, magic he had passed to me freely with his boots, into my own and tied them to the single rosemary leaf. I scraped the brimstone off Death’s boot; at the same time I wiped sweat from the inside, onto my fingertips. I rubbed the darkness and the sweat together and took up the weaving, letting the magics pull through the mixture. I wove the dark energies and the sweat of Death’s foot into the binding mix. Softly, I said the words, “Mallachd dha! Mallachd dha! Mallachd dha!” three times. Curse him, to hell with him in the language of my mother’s, mother’s people.
Death stood up fast. His eyes blazed with golden light. He glowed. Ravens began to call, the crowing of blackbirds out of place at this hour, screeching, screaming.
Fear reached into her Hermès bag and pulled two weapons, the slides schnicking into place as she chambered rounds. She aimed the weapons at me. Big Evan laughed, the sound all wrong, too deep, too heavy. The hedge of thorns on the house shivered and flashed a nearly black and sapphire blue. The weapons didn’t fire.
Sam stretched out his hand to me. To the death magics he had come for. The death magics he wanted to steal to rule. I said a final time, “Mallachd dha!”
Death screamed, his cry like that of the ravens. Sally, Fear of Death, screamed with him. Their wails rose, a crescendo that cracked across the air and made the boulders out back shift and slide in a grinding tumble. Fear and Death both vanished.
The demon wailed and screeched, writhing against the bindings. It began to stretch and twist and pull, the power of brimstone dragging the demon after them in a long twirling trail of dark energies. With it went all the power in the equilateral triangle, then in the outer circle. Our own magics snapped back painfully. Liz and Cia swore at the sting.
There was only the final echo of the ravens. Silence settled upon the night.
I slid sideways and lay on the chilled ground.
Cia stood. So did Liz. Big Evan dropped the house ward and was by my side faster than he should have been able to move. He picked me up as if I weighed no more than his daughter and carried me inside. Liz and Cia gathered up the Hermès bag, the weapons, and led the horses to the backyard and grass to eat.
* * *
My sisters and my husband fed me tea and microwaved soup while they drank Evan’s best single malt. The Everharts helped Evan unwind my babies from the sleepy time working and put them to bed. It was too late for the girls to make the trek back down the mountain, so they crashed on the oversized couches in Evan’s man cave. I curled up in my husband’s arms in the bed we shared.
“Your magic is different,” Big Evan said. “It’s cooler. Less barbed than before.”
“I think…I think I figured out that death magics belong in hell,” I said. “I think I channeled them, well, most of them, there.”
“Temptation to use them is gone?” he rumbled.
I let my mouth pull into a wide smile. “Yeah. Your turn. Your magics feel different too. Hotter. More barbed.”
Evan nodded, his beard tickling my shoulder. “I never wanted to kill anything before, not with my magic. But this time, with you and the baby and the kids…” He stopped, his breathing ragged. “This time I wanted to hurt them. I wanted them to be dead and gone forever. It’s still roiling under my skin.”
I nestled closer. “Part of that is the nature of Fear of Death. It’ll go away soon enough. But if you can’t sleep, the baby’s nursery needs another coat of paint.”
Evan c
huckled. “Later. Tonight, I just want to hold you.” He kissed the top of my head.
“Cia and Liz got Sally’s bag and everything in it.”
Evan sighed. “More trouble. But that’s a problem for another day.”
“We cheated Death,” I said.
“And Fear. Nothing wrong with cheating the bastards. It’s what life does every day.”
That’s my hubs. Full of wisdom. And strength. And all good things. “Night,” I whispered.
“Good health and happiness. From now on,” Evan whispered. I smiled into the dark. It was the Everhart blessing. And it was good.
AWAKE, AWAKE
Kendra Leigh Speedling
The basement repose-rooms of the temple of Rivni were drafty once the weather chilled. The dead occupants hardly minded; the living were generally too focused on their work to pay attention. Idenna Beravnis, junior priest, was no exception.
Her needle made a few final, deft strokes in the dead man’s chest. She tied off the thread and removed her jade priest-ring, pressing its signet briefly into his forehead as she whispered a prayer. The stitching across the knife wound slashed from sternum to collarbone was as delicate as an embroidery sampler. When it came time to display the body at services, no one would see anything amiss. His face was peaceful; had it not been for the stillness of his form, and the line of blood-red thread across his skin, he might have been asleep.
A draft wafted through the grate over the dust-coated window, sending a sudden chill through the room. The gaslamp on the wall flickered. Idenna replaced her ring, murmuring the final words of the incantation. Her fingers only trembled slightly as she set the needle aside. She carefully dipped her forefinger in the cup of white tea next to her and splashed one, two, three drops on each of his eyelids. With the ritual complete, the only sound in the room besides the whistling of the wind outside came from the steady ticking of the clock in the corner.
It was done. Acanthus Moreva would not walk again.
Poor soul, Tirya, one of the temple acolytes, had said when the body had arrived. Successful businessman, generous to charity, eligible Society bachelor—Moreva had been well-known and well-loved throughout the city. I wonder if they’ll ever find who did it.
Idenna certainly hoped not.
* * *
The temple was all but invisible once she had crossed the street, fading into the fog. Winter in Irdall was not cold so much as clammy. Sharp chills and bitter winds were for the northern islands; the feel of winter on an Irdalli street was that of a tendril of fog working its way under one’s skin, blotting out the gleam of the gas streetlamps and making the citizens on the sidewalks appear nothing more than sinister shadows. Those hurrying past Idenna paid the temple no mind. The evening was chilly, and growing dark, and it was not a festival day; piety has its limits, even for a god of something as omnipresent as death.
Idenna stopped at the fishmonger’s on her way home, as she did every Verday. One salmon fillet for her supper and one small sardine as a treat for her cat Palka.
Arden Vail, the fishmonger, made a quick gesture as she approached the counter. A piece of twine leaped up obligingly to wrap around her parcel. Vail was from the mainland, the southern portion like her father, and as such Idenna felt a sort of kinship with the man.
“Finally stitched up poor Moreva, have you?” he asked, offering her the wrapped parcel.
“How did you know?”
The words came out sharper than she had intended, but he didn’t take her tone amiss. “Tirya stopped by earlier. She said you were working late to finish things.”
“Well,” she said, “it wouldn’t do to have him get back up.”
“Indeed not,” he said, and clucked his tongue. “Are you doing all right? First your father, and now this.”
“I’m fine,” she said, and held out her coins.
He waved them away. “This one’s on me. You’ve had a rough enough time of it.”
Idenna’s throat tightened. She took a few quick breaths, hoping that Vail wouldn’t notice, or if he did, that he would attribute it to grief alone.
It was not enough; she had to turn away. Tightening her cloak around her, she waved a hand in thanks as she opened the door.
Outside, the fog had thickened. The carriages on the other side of the street were now eerie silhouettes. She held her skirt out of the half-frozen muck. It was the sort of day her father had always called adhak—bad atmosphere, in his native Elikan. Bad omen. Now that she was grown, Idenna was not a superstitious woman; she knew Rivni would take you when and where he wanted to and it would make no difference whether there was fog in the air or not.
But old superstitions die hard, and she found her steps quickening even so.
* * *
The night was quiet. Idenna cooked her dinner on the small gas hob in her kitchen, gifted Palka with her sardine, and settled down next to the fire with the latest R. Mairis pirate novel. The only sound in her snug townhome was the crackling of the fire and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner; the neighbors seemed to have resolved the familial quarrel that had been Idenna’s unwelcome companion for the past several nights.
When the clock struck eleven, she closed her book, deposited Palka from her lap to the floor, and headed to bed.
She did not expect to wake in the middle of the night.
She wasn’t immediately sure of what had woken her. Squinting in the dark, she managed to make out what appeared to be a shadowy figure standing in her bedroom doorway.
She banished a silly thought of vengeful pirate ghosts and fumbled for the box of matches on her bedside table. Finagling one free, she struck it and lit the lamp.
Acanthus Moreva was standing in her bedroom, shirtless, her carefully stitched blood-red thread slashed across his chest.
A dream, she thought, but she could think of no reason why she would dream of him. She was no stranger to death and certainly did not find it disturbing, and she felt her conscience was clear. The only other alternative—that she had done the ritual incorrectly, that Moreva had awoken once more to walk the earth—was unthinkable. She had done that ritual a thousand times. No one stitched down by a Rivni-priest got back up again.
He smiled. “Good evening, dear Idenna.”
She did not bother pulling her bedsheets over her chest. Nightgown or no, there was no reason to dither with modesty in front of the dead.
“You’re dead,” she told him—foolishly; he knew that.
“Rather,” he agreed. “It hurt. Thank you for that. I was enjoying my life.”
“Too much,” she snapped. The fire in the other room must have burnt down to embers; a chill was working its way through the cracks around her window. She resisted the urge to wrap herself more tightly in her quilt. In the old tales, showing fear to the dead meant showing weakness. Especially for a priest of Rivni, this would not do. “You were meant to stay dead.”
“The dead don’t stay dead when they’re stitched down by their killer,” he said, teeth flashing in a grin. “Didn’t you pay attention to the nursery stories?”
“Superstition.”
He sat down on the edge of her bed. She was tempted to throw the lamp at him, but she didn’t want to risk burning down the entire building. Though if word got out that dead Moreva was still walking around, her reputation would be ruined. In more ways than one.
“Superstition, says the Rivni-priest of the walking dead.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” He eyed her for a moment, head tilted to one side just a bit too far to seem natural. His movements were abrupt, but still graceful, the quick dart of a bird snatching a fish from the river.
“What do you want?” she demanded, setting her lamp down on her bedside table. “Revenge?” You deserve no revenge, she wanted to say, but that was intemperate, far too uncontrolled. She had thought the feeling had all drained out of her, weeks ago, but the sight of Moreva—dead Moreva, violating Rivni’s Strictures as well as her
father’s memory—
Idenna took a deep breath, hoping that the sudden swirl of emotion hadn’t shown on her face.
“Well,” he said, tracing the line of thread on his chest with a finger, “you did kill me.”
“You killed my father.” Slowly, so he would not notice the movement, she edged a hand toward her nightstand, where she’d set her priest-ring when she’d taken it off for the evening. The marker of her position was mostly ceremonial—no priest in living memory had needed to bind the walking dead. But she trusted it would still serve.
“Your father put a small pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger.” The words were dispassionate, neutral. No sign of remorse for the fate of his onetime business partner—were the dead even capable of such things?
“Because you ruined him!” She took a deep breath, trying to wait out the white-hot flash of rage. Wasn’t killing the faithless bastard once enough; wasn’t stitching him down enough? Did he have to reappear to torment her?
“I have a job for you.”
“The dead have no jobs to offer. Especially not you.” Her hand closed around the ring. Before Moreva could react, she squeezed her eyes shut and uttered the traditional incantation, one she’d heard used a hundred times in ritual, but never for its original purpose. The stitchings had kept the Rivni-blessed dead down for thousands of years.
When she opened her eyes again, he was gone, leaving behind only the scent of white tea.
* * *
In the light of day, it was easy to convince herself that Moreva’s visit had been a dream after all, or if not, that she’d successfully bound the blasphemous aberration. Idenna went about her routine; she knew well enough how to keep up appearances. Her duties at the temple were uneventful—morning prayers, offering some words of comfort to those with departed loved ones, three more stitchings of the recently deceased. She was tempted to avoid these in favor of other tasks, let one of the other priests take her place, but rejected this as foolishness. If something had gone wrong, it hadn’t been with the ritual itself; besides, shirking her duties would be shameful. Her father would not have wanted it.
