Hex at a House Party

by Gretchen Galway

  I took it and began swiping through the images. Clothes strewn on a beach from the beginning of the path near the bluff to the surf. Trendy black sneakers above the high tide line in patchy grass. A close-up of tangled jewelry—chains, pins, earrings, bracelets, a watch, hair clips—inside one of the shoes, overflowing into the sand.

  I stared at the clothes, the jewelry, the shoes, trying to see something that explained suicide, murder, or accident.

  “Why take them off at all?” I asked. “If she was in such a hurry?”

  “That’s what I wanted to know,” he said. “The absence of fae supports the possibility of a demon being nearby.”

  A death by demon might look like suicide if the creature possessed her just long enough to compel her into the cold water and let a riptide sweep her away.

  “But the clothes?” I asked. “The possessing spirit wouldn’t care about the clothes.”

  He reclaimed his phone and took out his notebook. “Power of habit, maybe, built into her muscle memory. The possession would’ve been fresh, less powerful. Taking off the clothes could’ve been her last gasp for survival, knowing they would make it harder to stay afloat.”

  “But all that jewelry. She had tons of it,” I said. “She took that off first with her shoes.”

  “The demon wouldn’t want her to have access to it once she was in the water. She could’ve used it to save herself once he left her body. The demon spent his energy there.”

  I nodded. The demon would’ve worked to separate her from her power as quickly as possible. Crystal had probably depended upon metal and stone for her spells, even defensive ones.

  I thought of Seth. A possessing spirit, but one trapped in a human body he hadn’t asked for, who would’ve returned to his true fairy form if he hadn’t been forced to kill it.

  “But why?” I asked. “Why would a demon want to kill her? She has human enemies. Witch enemies.”

  “It’s in their nature,” he said. “Don’t make that face. You quit. You don’t know. They’re vicious, inhuman monsters. They enjoy pain. They hate us. They feed on our suffering.”

  It was difficult to look at the horror that came over his expression. “You’ve faced demons since I left the Protectorate?” I asked.

  “Of course. That’s my job.” He waved his notebook at me. “It was your job too, but it’s just as well you bailed when you did. Before you could compromise any more missions.”

  “How many?” I asked. “How many demons?”

  His scowl deepened. “Two.”

  “You killed them?”

  He nodded, his jaw tight.

  It hurt my pride to admit it, but if I opened up, he might too. “I’ve only seen the captives at the Protectorate. Never in the field. Never wild.”

  “You were there when one almost killed me.”

  “He was fae in human form,” I said. “Not a real demon.”

  “You didn’t know that at the time,” he said.

  I sighed. That was true. “He hadn’t done anything wrong.”

  “Human possession is a good thing? We should just let magical spirits wander in and out of our minds and bodies whenever they feel like it?”

  I’d never convince him, but I couldn’t stop myself from trying. “His mother put him in the baby, and he tried to change back but by then the fairy—er, human—didn’t want his body back.”

  “The boy’s psyche was destroyed! He’d never been a human child, a human being, a man. How could he ever live a normal life?” Darius took a moment to inhale deeply. He never liked losing his temper. “And after all that, the possessor killed him anyway.”

  “In his fairy body, that poor creature was murdering people. It was kind of a problem. Maybe Raynor could tell you about it.”

  “Given the circumstances of his life, I’m willing to cut him some slack,” Darius said.

  “He would’ve cut your throat. But never mind. We’re not going to agree on this topic.”

  “We are not.”

  I stared at him, realized my hands were shaking, and shoved them in my pockets. I released the stones. He was passionate and righteous and dedicated to protecting humanity. People of the world were lucky he was looking out for them.

  He was experienced now and probably had metal from the Protectorate to strengthen his senses. Adopting a neutral, businesslike tone, I asked, “Have you found any suggestion of demon sign?”

  His lips flattened, and I could see him weigh the merits of telling me anything. “Yes.” He looked toward the window, scratching his scalp above his left ear where a diamond and platinum stud reflected the afternoon light.

  I thought of the stone basin amid the flowers, the welcoming fairy habitat under the old rhododendron. “In the garden?”

  He shook his head. “No. Here in the house.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Maybe because he was still upset about losing his temper, Darius wasn’t able or willing to tell me any more. I left him alone in his room to cool down, committed to investigating for myself.

  I closed the door behind me, pausing in the hallway. Demon sign. In the house. He was convinced of it. But was it a recent occupation? Could one of Crystal’s former guests have been a demon who left a trace that Darius was detecting now?

  The fairies were missing today, but…

  The demon could’ve consumed them months ago, and the massacre had scared them from returning.

  I ran my fingers over the rocks in my pocket, wishing I’d paid more critical attention to the lessons at the Protectorate on demonology. Back then I’d assumed they were telling the truth—and it was so easy to believe them. Since my training, Seth had made me deeply skeptical, but was he any more trustworthy?

  I did know demons didn’t technically eat fairies, who were spirit creatures; they drew upon their energy, essentially killing them. Because the fae disappeared in visible chunks—a hand, an ear, a leg, a head—their death by demon had been nicknamed eating. As if the dwindling fairy was a chocolate rabbit in a child’s fist on Easter morning.

  As I walked down the hall to my room, I heard footsteps creaking above me on the third floor.

  Tierra had been with Warren all day after spending the night with him. How did Nathan feel about that? Was he alone up there, or had Tierra finally come back to the farmhouse?

  I went into my room, went through the connecting bathroom, and knocked on Birdie’s door. “It’s me.”

  “Say something else so I’m sure it’s you,” Birdie said.

  “I like canned coffee,” I said. “And I miss my dog.”

  The door cracked open, and Birdie’s face appeared, lighting up when she saw me. “I’m so glad you’re back. I’m afraid. I tried to set up a boundary spell, but I have no idea if it’ll work.”

  “Let’s see.” I pushed the door and stepped through. My right foot hit the floorboards and then froze. A tingling sensation spiraled up my leg, ending at my knee, which was still on my side of the bathroom doorway.

  I tested the strength of her spell’s grip, feeling the numbness of my toes, the stiffness of my calf muscle. Without magic of my own, I would’ve been stuck there for several minutes. Not indefinitely—I could see the sweat breaking out on her forehead, the tightness of skin around her eyes as she strained to hold the spell.

  “That’s fantastic!” I stopped struggling. “Now let go. For your own sake. You’re going to wear yourself out.”

  “I don’t know how. She didn’t tell me how to turn it off.”

  An icy dread ran through me. “Who didn’t tell you? Birdie, did you let somebody into the room?”

  “It was just Tierra,” she said. “She said exactly what you said, that I needed to protect myself and set up a boundary. She showed me how to make that one I just used on you. There’s no way I could’ve done that by myself.”

  With my foot still glued to the floorboards, I said, “I told you not to let anybody in, not even Darius.”

  “But I didn’t let Darius in,” she said. “
It was Tierra.”

  The trusting, affectionate tone in her voice made me suspicious. Touching my beaded necklace, I cut through the boundary spell, releasing my leg, and then scanned the room to find its source. There was a doll on the overstuffed chair near the window that hadn’t been there before. Without destroying its power, I sent out a muffling spell, like a blanket over a flashlight, before walking over to it.

  It reminded me of Warren’s work. Its head was papier-mâché, painted in a realistic style—full lips, rosy cheeks, brown eyes with long eyelashes. The hair was brown yarn, crocheted into shoulder-length ringlets. I touched my necklace with one hand and picked it up with the other, seeing the cloth body was actually hollow in the back. A puppet.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” Birdie stood next to me, admiring the thing. “Look at that hair. I knitted a scarf once, and it was so bad even my mother wouldn’t wear it. It was a lump. All those acrylics died for nothing.” She laughed.

  I wasn’t laughing. The doll had enormous power. I didn’t like the feel of it touching my skin, but I didn’t want to return it to the chair where it might exert some kind of power over Birdie. Or me. The dampening spell I’d put over it was tiring me and wouldn’t last forever.

  The magic was foreign to me. I’d never learned how to manipulate inanimate objects like that. My magic was more… natural. It relied on innate qualities, not imposed ones. My wood beads would focus the power of the user—they didn’t introduce new ones. I used herbs, fruit, liquid, and bone for their ancient, natural properties. I’d never tried to change one thing to become another. I didn’t trust that kind of magic.

  I rolled the puppet over in my hands, admiring the craft of the sewing, the subtle charm of the magic. There was even a tiny logo on the back pocket of the little jeans: Tierra.

  No, I had to admit to myself, it wasn’t true I never bent the innate nature of things. I could change shape. Only under extreme conditions and at high cost to myself, but I could do it. It wasn’t in my nature to be a cat. If it were, my autoimmune system wouldn’t attack my real body so violently, sending me into an allergic response that required nonmagical interventions like antihistamines, corticosteroids, and occasionally an emergency dose of epinephrine.

  “Impressive.” I set the doll on the chair and let it flop over on its side as if taking a nap. Somehow after handling it, I no longer felt threatened. It was strange but not dangerous. If Tierra had set the doll in the chair as a protective guardian, maybe touching me would’ve assured it of my benign intentions.

  Or maybe it simply had gone dormant and would strike again if I made any threatening moves.

  I picked it up again. “Just to be safe, I’m going to return the doll to Tierra. You need to develop your own spells, and this… impressive piece of work… will overwhelm yours at this point in your witch development.”

  “Did you notice the little eyelashes? It looks just like her.”

  “Like who?” I turned the head over to look at the face again.

  “It’s Tierra, of course. Don’t you see the resemblance? She told me she couldn’t stay here in person to protect me, so she would leave her little representative.” Birdie took the doll out of my hands. “She wove her own hair into the yarn. You can see it if you look closely. And some of the eyelashes are real. She glued them on.”

  Now I was relieved not to be touching the thing anymore. I didn’t trust puppets. It seemed like borderline Shadow to imbue an object with the qualities of a living human being. I would never intentionally separate part of myself to be used in magic in a way I couldn’t control.

  Or would I? Once again, I had to admit I wasn’t so perfect. I used hair in my beaded chains. And just recently I’d used my own urine as a floor wash to repel unwanted spirits, demons, and witches. It wasn’t as personal as hair, bone, or blood, but it was part of me and powerful because of it. I’d also used my hair as a rope to escape imprisonment in the Diamond Street office, although I’d been careful to withdraw the magic before I left.

  I was in no position to judge Tierra. The magic of puppets like her look-alike doll was traditionally protective, not harmful. Having my father being a notorious thief had made me a little high-and-mighty about my moral superiority sometimes.

  “Will you bring it upstairs to her? I think it’s better if I don’t touch it again.” I gave an involuntary shudder. “She spelled it to protect you, not me.”

  “Right now?” Birdie looked fearfully at the door. “Is it safe to leave the room?”

  Now that I knew Darius had found demon sign in the house, I was even more worried about her welfare. Her self-protective magic was still weak. “I’ll walk with you.”

  I was glad to have an excuse to visit the third floor, which I hadn’t seen yet. We left her room together, found a steep staircase at the end of the hall, and climbed up to the top. When we reached the landing, I thought of the hike Tierra and I had planned for earlier that afternoon. I wondered if she’d want to reschedule, if she had something important to talk to me about, or if it had only been a friendly impulse.

  The slope of the roof suggested the top floor had once been an attic. A narrow, carpeted hallway stretched between bedrooms, built-in drawers and shelving, closets, and a bathroom with a claw-foot tub. It was easy to imagine the farmhouse’s era as a bed-and-breakfast.

  Birdie knocked on the only bedroom door that was closed, cradling the little doll against her shoulder like a baby. The full-sized, living Tierra opened the door, smiled at Birdie, then at me, and held her hand out for the puppet.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t like my leaving that with her,” Tierra said to me. “I hope you forgive me. She was alone, and I hated the idea of her being vulnerable.” She held the doll against her shoulder just like Birdie had. I kept expecting one of them to try burping the thing.

  “I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” I said.

  Tierra shot me an uneasy look. “I’ll put her to sleep,” she said, patting the doll’s back. “There, is that better?”

  The energy coming from the figure disappeared. Now the puppet was just a bundle of cloth and stuffing.

  “Much better,” I said.

  “I want to learn how to make puppets,” Birdie said. “I was thinking I could volunteer in schools and libraries and hospitals, help kids with anxieties. The library in Santa Rosa has a dog come in for kids to read to. It’s the cutest thing. The dog just sits there, listening patiently to this little kid reading a book. I get hella powerful cute aggression and want to reach out and squeeze everyone to death.”

  “Then you definitely don’t want to introduce magic into the situation,” I said.

  Birdie sucked in her breath. “Man, you’re right. I didn’t think of that. I might kill somebody.”

  “Don’t worry about that quite yet,” Tierra said. “It takes way more power than you’ve got to hurt anyone. Most witches never have to hold back, even when they’re totally furious.”

  “Still,” Birdie said. “I’d worry.”

  Nathan appeared behind Tierra in a charcoal-gray bathrobe. “It’s the witches who worry about hurting people who are the least likely to actually do it, even by accident.” He frowned at the doll in Tierra’s arms. “You gave Ty to her?”

  “Ty?” I asked.

  Nathan put his arm around her, continuing to frown.

  “Her name,” Tierra said, laughing lightly. She lowered the doll, holding it at her side, out of sight. “It’s kind of a joke. She looks a little like me.”

  More than looks, I thought. She’d woven pieces of her DNA into it. “How is Warren doing?”

  Tierra shook her head. “It’s hard. Very hard.” She moved out of Nathan’s embrace. “I’m going to do whatever I can for him. He’s so helpless. It’s going to take a long time for him to adjust.”

  Nathan turned away and disappeared into the room. Birdie and I offered to help any way we could before returning downstairs.

  I set up a boundary around both our rooms before go
ing to bed—relying on redwood and five jade coins instead of puppets.

  As I fell asleep, I remembered the concern on Nathan’s face when he’d seen the doll and the way he’d put a protective arm around Tierra.

  Most boyfriends wouldn’t want his partner to leave a baby version of herself with strange witches, even ones as sweet as Birdie. With so much of herself attached to the puppet, she could be vulnerable to an attack.

  It made me think well of Tierra to know she cared enough about Birdie to endanger herself. Although she might not adore Nathan at the moment, she seemed to have a good heart.

  But not as good as mine. I wasn’t going to let her leave Ty anywhere near me or my vulnerable apprentice.

  They found Crystal’s body three hours later on the rocks several miles south. A sheriff’s deputy came in and told the four of us—Birdie, Nathan, Darius, and me—while we were making an early evening meal of sandwiches for everyone. There were so many kinds of uniforms we didn’t know what to call them—officers, technicians, volunteers—but we figured everyone would get hungry. Each of us had already finished giving statements, and we’d needed something to do with our hands. I’d been afraid Darius was going to start emitting visible sparks.

  “You’ve told Warren?” I asked the deputy.

  “The husband?” The deputy looked at his notebook, reminding me of Darius. “Mr. Hawk. Yes.” He was young, broad-shouldered, and had short platinum-blond hair, pale as whipped cream.

  The way he stood, the way he held his notebook as if the urgency had passed, as if it was a tragedy not a crime, told me he too assumed it was suicide and that the work from now on would be routine. He expressed gratitude for the sandwich and promised to put out the word there was food in the house.

  We finished making the buffet in silence, wrapped the sandwiches in foil and paper, then set them out on the breakfast table with bottles of water, juice, and soda. The sun was going down, but the sky was clear of fog, giving the evening an inappropriately warm, cheerful glow.