by G. D. Penman
Marie bit into the swollen lump over Sully’s eye with a single needle-sharp fang and then latched onto it like a suckling baby. There was an initial sting, but the easing of the pressure was such a relief that she clung to Marie gratefully while the vampire drank her fill. When Marie was feeding from her, the world was a much quieter place for Sully, without magic or rage buzzing away just below the surface of her skin. It was almost like Sully had found her true purpose in those few precious moments each month when Marie was draining her life away. When it was over and the crackle of magic had returned, she opened both of her eyes and caught a brief glimpse of Marie, blood-drunk and lustful, before dread reasserted itself on that perfect face.
In the kitchen Clementine was still tinkering away at the counter, doing something to sweet corn that Sully couldn’t understand. “Jeremiah said that you were having some problems with the fire runes, so I’m just going to cast a few diagnostics, if that’s all right, Clementine?”
“Oh please, you’re our guest. Shame on that man for trying to put you to work.”
Sully smiled. “I like to keep busy.”
“Well, if you insist.”
Sully started running through her repertoire of half-remembered forensic spells. A glamour as complex as a full-body disguise should have lit up her senses like she was on fire, but there wasn’t even a hint of magic hanging around Clementine. Frowning, Sully tried another spell.
“Momma, can you remember my first school play?”
Clementine chuckled, “The nativity? Oh darlin’, how could I forget? You were so darn angry that you had to be the angel. I still remember you hanging from those wires, face red as a cherry and ready to pop. When we got home you made us act out the whole thing with you again, but with you as Mary.”
Marie was smiling, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Which doll did we use for the baby?”
Clementine cast her a confused glance. “Now don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. That was the year that your daddy won that piglet at the Province Fair and you both insisted on keeping it in the house like a puppy. Curly! That was your baby Jesus, and our Christmas roast the next year.”
Sully snorted, earning her a scowl from Marie, but she kept on casting, wandering closer to the oven that she was meant to be studying. Marie didn’t miss a beat.
“Who was that cousin who always said they were coming to Christmas but never showed up?”
“Ulysses? He was on your father’s side of the family, of course. Every year we’d get word he was coming. Every year we’d set him a place at the table, and every single year we’d get a card three days later to say he was sorry. I am not entirely convinced that he exists, you know. I’ve never met him. After all these years I am starting to suspect that Ulysses Culpepper is some sort of practical joke that your father is playing on me. Or a plot to make sure there’s plenty of leftovers.”
Marie had the next question ready but Clementine cut her off. “Iona dear, since you are tinkering with the fire runes, could I trouble you to light up the back-right ring?”
With a flicker of attention, Sully lit the fire beneath a pan of oil, then returned to probing Clementine. As did Marie, in her own way. “Is that your famous fried chicken you’re making there?”
“I most certainly am, darlin’. I know that you can’t have any but . . . well, old habits die hard, I guess. Your Grandma always had to have something cooking when she had guests, even when they were stuffed to bursting. Tell me, will you be joining us for Christmas this year, Iona?”
Sully’s latest spell sputtered and died in her hands. “What?”
The oil had started to hiss.
“Well, the way that I hear it, you’re planning on making our Marie into an honest woman. And with your family being all the way across the sea, it only seems right to have you here.”
Sully looked at Marie. Frustration and confusion competed for real estate on Marie’s face as she said, “You ain’t got no right inviting people here.”
Clementine staggered against the sink. “I beg your pardon, darlin’?”
Marie lurched up out of the chair, abandoning all pretense. “Where’s my momma?!”
“Darlin’, I’m right here?”
“You ain’t my momma. I know my momma like the back of my hand and you ain’t her. Now you tell me where she is or so help me—”
Her last diagnostic spell had returned nothing and Sully was out of options. Something wasn’t right. Between Clementine’s nonchalance about Sully’s injuries and the way that she was hiding at the far side of the kitchen, the little niggling part of Sully’s brain that had made her a good investigator was screaming that something didn’t add up. Sully stalked over to Clementine’s side of the room to see what the response would be, but the old woman just gawked at her. There was no fear at all. “Iona, is something the matter with Marie?”
Sully smiled. “I’ll calm her down. You just cook that chicken and let me worry about her.”
Clementine’s eyes flicked from Sully to Marie and then across to the stove. “Could you put the chicken in the pan? My hands are shaking something dreadful.”
Sully’s smile twisted into a smirk. She conjured a flame into the palm of her hand and Clementine’s panicked expression was all the confirmation she needed. “Marie, get down!”
Everything happened in the same moment. The faux-Clementine made a break for the patio doors. Sully launched a dart of flame at her back. Jeremiah stepped into the room and dropped the paper bag of groceries. Marie leapt for her father.
When the fire hit Clementine, it was like she had been doused in gasoline. She exploded into a tower of flames, scorching the counters, charring the roof black, knocking Sully off her unstable feet and flooding the room with thick black smoke. Clementine didn’t scream. Sully expected some sound, but instead the flaming mass just stumbled outside. Without exchanging a word, the remaining Culpeppers and Sully gave chase. Clementine darted around the house and threw herself bodily into the fountain to douse the flames, but it was too late.
The water turned black and little hunks of sodden charcoal drifted up to the surface. Sully reached into the water and dragged what was left of her future mother-in-law out. The shape was still mostly intact, but there was no mistaking it for flesh now that the human veneer had burned away. Most of it was blackened with soot, and cracks ran along the grain all over it, but it was unmistakably the same white wood that had filled Raavi’s laboratory. Sully turned to Jeremiah and Marie with the burned husk in her arms and said, “It wasn’t her.”
October 31, 2005
The gold leaf script on the door was a nice touch. Sully wasn’t sure how Marie had managed to afford it, not with a waitress’s salary and an actress’s credit card bills. It wasn’t much, she supposed. Just the words Private Investigator, but it felt like a lot. Sully had bought the furniture herself. She didn’t get a pension from the Imperial British Navy any more, for fairly obvious reasons, but the Nova Europa Provisional Government seemed content to pay her a general’s pension even though she had only technically served for seven months—instead of the seven years you were meant to, according to Pratt’s never-ending guidelines and laws. She suspected she was going to be the exception to a lot of Pratt’s rules. He’d always been willing to lose his puffed-up airs and graces with her, and what had started as mutual admiration had gradually developed into the kind of friendship she’d never suspected that she could find in her life. An intellectual equal, Pratt saw her for what she was.
It was easy to be friends with somebody when you’d made all their wishes come true. Nobody had hated the Empire the way that Pratt did. He’d been the backbone of the revolution once it started, but he had needed one last push to get the ball rolling. Sully still couldn’t believe that push had been her. Her name, her face, they were going down in history books right now. When the redcoats had surrounded the protesters in Victoria Par
k, she had had no idea what the consequences of her actions would be. When she threw up that barrier and the spells had deflected back out at them, she had had no idea that she was starting a war. All that she knew was that Marie was in that park with all her idiot arty friends, waving badly spelled placards with mottos half of them didn’t understand blazoned across the front. “No Taxation Without Representation,” might have sounded catchy, but if a single one of the actors, dancers, singers, choreographers, costume designers or musicians out there had ever paid taxes in their life Sully would have been stunned into silence.
Her pension had to stretch to a bigger apartment up in Red Hook—closer to Marie’s new job in the cabaret bar—food, clothes, whatever new taxes Pratt invented next, and miscellaneous expenses, so Sully had bought the furniture second-hand. She preferred it that way if she was being honest. The smell of old leather, the scored surface of the wood, gave her office a patina of authenticity. Like she was a real private investigator and not just playing pretend so that she would have something to fill up the hours of the day. She didn’t have any cases yet, but technically she’d only been open twenty minutes, so she wasn’t too upset about it. By the end of the day, the local constabulary would have a half-dozen different crimes that they couldn’t understand, and they’d be looking for a witch to hire. Sully was going to be that witch, because the IBI was in tatters and crime didn’t stop just because a war swept through.
There was a knock on the glass and a dame with tanned legs for days sidled in wearing a floral print sundress and a pair of shades that hid half her face. Sully suppressed a smile. “Can I help you, Ma’am?”
“Ain’t you the private investigator?”—low and breathy. She tossed her head and her golden curls cascaded around a face that had been made for the silver screen. When Sully gave her an amused nod, Marie sauntered forward and sat in the scuffed leather chair. “You’ve got to help me. You see, my wife’s gone missing and I don’t know where to find her.”
“A missing person. Where was the last place that you saw her?”
“Well last night before I passed out I’m pretty sure that I saw her somewhere around here.” Marie tugged at the hem of her dress and slowly parted her legs.
Sully cast a pair of quick spells at the door. One to seal it shut. The other to soundproof it. “Well then, I suppose that I’d better start my investigation there.”
She rose up from her chair. Marie’s eyes were sparkling in the sunlight pouring through the window. Sully couldn’t believe that she deserved to be this happy. It made her chest ache, just looking at the beautiful woman that she got to call her wife.
The sparkle faded suddenly. The whole room dipped into shadow and the tantalizing smile on Marie’s face evaporated in fear. “Sully? What the hell is that?”
When Sully turned it was just in time to watch the row of buildings opposite them vanish beneath a wave of pure darkness. It rushed at the window and Sully threw every barrier that she knew in a shell around Marie and herself. When the darkness hit it, the shell cracked, but the moment that it held gave Sully enough time to wrap her arms around Marie and whisper, “I love you.” The void closed over them and they sank away into nothing.
November 8, 2015
The hysterics hadn’t been pretty, but at least Sully had an out. She had her job. She had lives to save and monsters to catch. Marie had nothing but a missing mother and a broken father who had never dreamed that one of the hidden horrors of the world might end up on his doorstep. Sully sequestered herself in the guest house and started making phone calls as soon as could be considered polite after incinerating your host.
Her first and most begrudging call was to Pratt’s office to update him on the many situations that were in play. Luckily, he was too petulant to take the call so Sully was able to relay things through a secretary. The next call was to her own offices. She reported the gryphon attack and the destruction of the train to a horrified aide, then got a report back from another one. The Hydra had stopped tracking her, it had waddled back toward the sea at about the moment when her train crashed, proving beyond any doubt that all these creatures were in cahoots, there was no update from Europe, and Mol Kalath and the much-diminished horde of demons were holding their position and waiting.
With those calls out of the way, Sully was able to get on with her damned job. She called Ceejay. “Hello, despicable traitor, do you care to tell me how you knew about the crop circles or do I have to torture it out of you?”
Sully didn’t have the energy to act surprised. “What?”
“The crop circles. Everywhere that they were reported we had had missing people. I don’t know how you knew, but now that the crop circles are on the map too, we have a pattern. A bigger circle. Drawn around the whole of America. Outside the circle, nothing. Inside the circle, missing people.”
Sully let out a breath. “Okay. You’re going to have places with crop circles and no missing people. That’s where we need to focus our efforts. The abductions didn’t stop, they just got more sophisticated. They are replacing the victims with simulacra. Some sort of golem carved out of that weird white wood. The disguise is perfect. The replacements have the same memories as the victims. The only way to detect them is that they’re extremely flammable.”
Ceejay let out a woof of laughter. “You want me to order the constables to go around burning everyone? I’m sure that’s going to be a popular decision.”
“Tell them you are just following my orders. Pratt is already trying to paint me as a psychopath, so I doubt this will make much difference to my reputation. I don’t know what these things are doing, or what they’re capable of, and frankly I could die happy never finding out, as long as we get rid of them.”
“Do you have any idea how these abductions are happening, when traveling spells and portals are blocked?”
Sully had run out of cigars and she was getting twitchy. “It’s a circle, right? A summoning circle?”
“You think that someone is calling up demons?”
“The demons are all on our side, remember? But the British have got something else. They’ve been making wishes without demons. They’ve found some new patrons.”
She had expected a groan or a quip, but Ceejay didn’t make a sound. She was almost startled when he spoke again. “We really have no idea what’s being called up?”
“Not a clue. But at least we know who’s doing the calling.”
There was some rustling on the other end of the line. “What I do not understand is how they could have drawn a circle around us without anyone noticing. A man cannot walk his dog without a constable getting a report, but somehow the British have built something the size of a continent under our noses? I’ve sent agents out to find the nearest edge of the circle, to break it if they can. But how could the British have laid down a solid circle without everyone being able to see it. How could they have closed the circle without everyone who uses magic feeling it? None of these things make any sense to me, Sully.”
She drummed her fingers on the breakfast bar. “We just need to work the parts of the case that we’ve got. We know that there are wood-people out there pretending to be citizens. We need to deal with them before they move on to whatever they’re meant to be doing next.”
“I know that I joke, but you must tell me; how did you find out about all of this?”
“They took Marie’s mother. I burned the fake.”
Ceejay whistled. “I’m betting that you’re not the most popular person right now.”
Quietly, Marie let herself into the guest house. Sully coughed. “I’ve had better days.”
She hung up on him so Marie wouldn’t hear the rumble of his laughter. It didn’t seem appropriate right now.
“Hey, darlin’.”
Marie slumped onto the stool beside her and rested her head on Sully’s shoulder. She murmured, “I thought I was going crazy, but you didn’t
even have to think twice. You believed me. You trusted me.”
Sully kissed Marie on the top of her head and was enveloped by the faint scent of apple-blossom in her hair. “What else was I going to do?”
Sully’s arms wrapped around Marie automatically as she leaned in closer. “I kinda wish I had been going crazy. That would’ve been easier. Daddy is . . . he ain’t all right. Don’t know that he ever will be again.”
“What about you?”
Marie’s voice broke. “I could have had her. All these years I was ashamed and hiding and I could have had her and now—now I’ll never see her again.”
“We don’t know anything yet. We don’t know where they’re being taken. She could be fine for all we know. On a beach somewhere, sipping cocktails.”
Marie laughed through her tears. “She’d hate that. Sitting around with nothing to fuss over? She’d lose her mind.”
“If she’s still out there, you know I’m going to bring her back for you. Don’t you?”
Marie turned and caught Sully’s lips in a salty kiss. “You ain’t God, Sully. You can’t fix everything yourself.”
Sully kissed her back. “I can try.”
There was a gentle knock outside and the women let their heads drop so that their foreheads were touching. It was just a coincidence that they both whispered “I love you” at the same time. Sully got up and walked over to the door. Marie had spent all evening with her father, Sully could at least take this hit for her. She pulled the door open gently because she didn’t want to startle Jeremiah after his already traumatic day. When she looked out, the courtyard was full of monsters.
The gryphon was still looking rough after the train wreck and the fire. It had a few new feathers sprouting out of its bald front half but it still looked distinctly like a roasted turkey. Its head was back to hanging limp and it seemed to be struggling to dunk it into the fountain for a drink. The other two monsters were new additions, but Sully assumed they made up the rest of the eternal pains in the ass that the demons of Europe had reported. One of them loitered by the front door to the main house. He was shaped like a man, coated in shaggy hair and standing so tall that his head was brushing the upstairs windowsills. Once upon a time he probably had an eye and a nose under the thick brow on his face, but now there was just a blackened hole above the slack jaw. He was clearly the muscle, and Sully had never been intimidated by the muscle in her entire life. Not since the first time a nun snapped a ruler on her ass.
