Arc 2

by RoAnna Sylver

  “Does anybody else know about this?” Eva asked with a half-deadpan, half-searching look. “You definitely left this whole possibility-of-sacrifice thing out of the explanation earlier.”

  “No. I haven’t told the others, not even Jasper. They’re good people, but they can be a bit… sentimental, I think, when it comes to the harder things that must be done.”

  “I can’t imagine them objecting to stopping an evil human sacrifice ritual,” Eva pointed out. “If anything, they’d probably fight even harder to stop it and save the poor shmucks.”

  “That is exactly my concern,” Letizia said, sounding thoughtful. “When, however awful, that isn’t the bigger point. We may not be able to save everyone involved, but I still need to stop Wicked Gold’s magic, and enact my own. Failing at that, even to save others, is unacceptable. Yes, I will if the chance arises, I promise. But the cost of failure here—of Wicked Gold obtaining the power he seeks—would be much too high. Which is why things like sentimentality have little place in a witch’s hard decisions. You seem to understand the practical, even if it is… unpleasant. You seem to understand me.” Letizia looked up at her, and now she just looked tired, and a little sad. “Which isn’t always a good thing. For some things, you’d be better off far away.”

  “Hey,” Eva said, trying to shake off her worries and slight queasiness, and project a braver front than she felt. Which wasn’t that brave at all, but much more a strange combination of feeling honored and terrified. “I meant it when I said I was here for the long haul. I’m not dropping and bolting now just because it’s getting real.”

  Letizia smiled at her, just a bit, and seemed about to say something else, but just then, another chime rang through the air—not the dreaded tones of her cell phone, but like the sound of a real tiny bell, though its source remained unseen.

  “Ah,” Letizia said, raising one hand into midair and mimed pinching something between her finger and thumb. “One moment, Eva.”

  She pulled her invisible cloth, and the air that followed in its wake shimmered, and then it was as if she’d pulled back a small curtain to reveal somebody from the chest up like a video call, just with no screen to go with it. Someone all in black, with long purple hair and artfully applied eyeliner. Eva stared at her young acquaintance with undisguised curiosity, and they gave her a friendly nod, the kind they gave her every morning when they passed by each other with coffee.

  “Hello, little one,” Letizia said with a genuinely fond-looking smile.

  “Yes, I’m here,” Milo said, looking a bit anxious, but earnest. “Do you need me to come over? I figured you may call on me to help, at some point. It’s a major spell.”

  “Witches gotta stick together,” Eva said, echoing the words that had started all this off. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by now.”

  “I do kind of look the part,” Milo said with a little smile.

  “And you’re just here because you want to help? That’s all?” Eva watched as their eyes flicked momentarily down and away.

  “Mostly,” Milo admitted. “Although I’d be lying if I said I had no personal interest in making sure Letizia’s spell is successful. But you don’t have to do anything extra for me, and I won’t cause any trouble. I just… needed to make sure everything goes off safely.”

  “If you won’t take their word for it, take mine,” Letizia said, giving Eva a steady look. “I’m glad they’re here.”

  “Really, what can I do to help?” Milo asked, looking eager and anxious at the same time.

  “Right now?” Letizia cast a glance back over the bones and mirror, pausing for a moment in which Eva could practically hear the gears turning in her head. “You can go find the girls.”

  “Oh,” Milo said with a surprised-looking blink. “And bring them back to you?”

  “No. Take them out to lunch. Or catching frogs, or riding skateboards indoors, or whatever your generation finds fun nowadays. I believe there was talk of some petty vandalism.”

  “Okay,” Milo said, understanding dawning over their face. “The rumor mill said they were Cruce’s thralls. If that’s true, they must be feeling a bit—”

  “Exactly,” Letizia said with a quick nod. “They need someone to answer their questions, fill them in on things that may have fallen out of their heads, let them know they’re not alone. Be their friend. I’d do it, but I’m afraid this ritual business has taken up all my attention.” She sounded bitter about that, and now Milo’s face showed understanding instead of confusion.

  “I know what you mean,” they said, nodding back. “And I’ll do my best. Thank you for trusting me with them.”

  “Of course. I told them not to go to the stones, so that’s where you’ll find them. Be careful, and make sure they are too. That circle is going to be a very unstable place for the next few days.”

  “Yes it is,” Milo said, and Eva wasn’t sure if she’d imagined the look of worry that flashed across their face. “I’ll make sure they stay safe.” They hesitated, and now the anxiety on their face was undeniable. “But… you’ll tell me, if you hear anything about…?”

  “You have my word.”

  Letizia kept her steady gaze on the younger witch until Milo’s image had faded, and the apartment was quiet.

  “Anything about what?” Eva had to ask. “They seemed pretty shaken up about something.”

  Letizia sighed and rubbed her temples as if she had an oncoming headache. “Nothing that should pose a danger to you or any of our other friends. Believe me, you’re happier not knowing. I would be too.”

  Although not remotely satisfied by that answer, Eva let the matter drop. For now. Between the bones, the sacrifice, and everything else going on right now, she had no trouble believing that there were some things she’d just rather not know.

  “Is this the place?” Jude asked, trying and failing to keep the incredulity out of his voice. “It’s… It kind of looks…”

  “Like a total dump,” Pixie supplied helpfully.

  “You said it, not me.”

  “Oh, it totally is.” Pixie gave the shabby-looking building a nod like the one you might give an old acquaintance after noticing them across the street. “Which isn’t all that big a change, really. It was always a dump when we lived here before. I still think this is the place to find rose-tinted happiness, though. Just check the sign.”

  Jude eyed the faded, cracked walls and sunken-looking ceiling. Even in the dark, the nearby streetlights were enough to illuminate the shiny edges of broken windows, the weed-overgrown parking lot, and the water-stained, burnt-out sign reading The Rose Dawn Motel. He thought of his own apartment complex, the Sunset Towers, and wondered if the same person had named them, someone with a penchant for wistful titles but not much of a flair for architecture. In any case, he’d never felt more fortunate to live in his own mediocre but functional and clean building.

  “And when you say ’we’ lived here, you mean…”

  “Me and Jeff,” Pixie said, voice only a little tight, as he headed toward the steps leading up to the second-floor wraparound balcony. “This was the first real place we stayed that wasn’t couch-hopping or crashing in an abandoned building. Which this wasn’t back then, at least. It’s—it was the first place that ever really felt like home. Never thought I’d miss it.” He gave a short, unhappy chuckle that didn’t sound like it should come from him. “Bet it didn’t miss me.”

  “Someone misses you,” Jude said, or more like blurted, as he followed Pixie.

  He hadn’t quite meant to say it, but from the way Pixie looked up at him in surprise, he was glad that he had. The accident might turn out to shake Pixie out of his reverie. Jude didn’t like the look on Pixie’s face, distant and sad and regretful. Maybe a little ashamed. It had no place on Pixie’s face, and those awful, heavy feelings had no place in his heart.

  “I found—actually Eva found something at the stone circle I wanted to tell you about,” Jude said. “A missing person poster, with you on it.
Your picture, and your name.”

  “What did it say, just ‘Pixie?’” he asked after a hesitation Jude just barely caught. “Did it say who’s looking?”

  “The poster said ‘Natalie,’ and I remembered the name from when we talked to Milo. There was a phone number, but I haven’t called it, I wanted to tell you and let you decide. I thought it might be a trap of some kind and didn’t want to risk it.”

  “It—it did?” Pixie repeated, eyes widening as they locked onto Jude’s.

  “Yeah. Are you ready to tell me about her now?” Jude asked, realizing not for the first time that he really knew nothing about Pixie’s old life. His first life, the one he’d actually been alive to live.

  “Well, uh, you know I was in a band, right?” Pixie said after just a moment’s hesitation, sounding a little faint, but the slightest smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.

  “You’d mentioned it a couple times. Was she…” Jude trailed off, catching a glimpse of the stylized pink text on the black T-shirt Pixie wore under his hoodie, and the obvious pride with which Pixie wore it. He remembered Pixie’s guitar and its sticker emblazoned with words in similar grungy font reading, somewhat ironically, THIS BASS KILLS FASCISTS. “Chaos Chainsaw?”

  “Hell yeah!” Pixie grinned despite the atmosphere of tension and gloom. “Me and Natalie and Jeff. Her on the drums, Jeff on the bass, me on the guitar. Trying to break into the indie punk scene, playing underground shows—sometimes literally underground. Working on a demo. It was rough, but fun, and we were… happy. Until Jeff—until he was gone. Like he just vanished into thin air. Natalie and I made all these posters when he disappeared, stuck them up everywhere, but nobody ever called. Including him. So I guess she did the same thing for me, and I guess the same thing happened: nothing. I should really find her, let her know I’m okay at least. But some people I just can’t… it’s not like telling Milo about me. She doesn’t know about vampires—I don’t think. I’d probably just scare her. And I already feel bad, not telling her or anyone else I’m still here, but it’s like, every day I stay gone, I feel worse about it, and that makes it harder to even think about talking to her again.”

  “She’d still probably like to know her friend’s all right,” Jude said, but noticed Pixie’s hesitation. “She might be upset for a while, but I have to think she’d be a lot more relieved and happy in the long run. But it’s obviously up to you. I can’t make you tell anyone, but at least someone cared enough to put them up. Maybe she could even give you a new T-shirt,” Jude suggested, only half-joking. “That one’s falling apart.”

  “The rips are intentional. It’s called distressed style, Jude.” Pixie’s little return-joke and half-smile were, like he’d been himself, short-lived. “So, anyway, we’re here for rose-tinted happiness, right?”

  “That’s right,” Jude said. “Though this seems like a strange place to find it.”

  Pixie stopped outside one of the motel room doors. Jude didn’t see a number, and he noticed that the door was slightly ajar and hanging off its hinges, maybe from disrepair and rough weather, or being forced open and broken. Or maybe both. “Yeah, I know. But it used to be a pretty happy place, believe it or not. Now… now, not so much.”

  With that, Pixie pushed the door open easily and stepped inside, footsteps crunching as he stepped on broken glass from the nearby shattered window. Jude followed him, carefully stepping around the worst of the glass and debris—old leaves and some paper trash that had blown in from outside, along with some questionable stains. The room was mostly empty, even if standard motel tables and chairs had obviously once been here. There was a bed frame, but it had been stripped of everything, mattress included. Even if nobody had thought this particular room was worth crashing in, it had been thoroughly cleaned out. ‘Clean’ being a very relative term, Jude thought, eyeballing the most questionable stain yet.

  “What are we looking for?” Jude asked grimly, with the unspoken implication that the sooner they found it, the sooner they could leave this awful place.

  “This really old metal lunchbox we found with KISS on it. You know, the really old band?” Pixie said, stepping further inside the room and kicking some debris out of the way.

  “Yes, I know who KISS is,” Jude said, proud that he finally could say something like this with confidence and prove that, despite his name, he wasn’t actually the patron saint of lost causes. KISS was—largely due to Jude’s general dislike—one of the only band names he actually knew (besides the Beatles; as always, screw the Beatles), and he almost made some weak joke about Pixie, an ageless vampire making him feel old. “I don’t see anything like that in here.”

  “Nah, you wouldn’t! We had a secret hiding place. Let’s see, if I’m remembering right—which I totally am, because there’s no way I could forget—there was like a little secret compartment in the closet wall, like maybe one of those motel-room safe things used to be there, but there never was one when we were here,” he said, heading over to the sliding doors and crouching down as he opened them. There were still hangers inside the closet, but the kind that were bolted to the bar. Pixie started to feel around inside, until he let out a triumphant “Aha! Yeah, here we go!”

  As Jude watched, Pixie swiped away some dust, which looked more like an actual layer of grime, and pulled at a small hidden latch. He pulled and the inner closet wall came open, revealing a small, dark space into which Pixie reached with much more eagerness than Jude would have.

  Pixie felt around inside and finally pulled something out: a metal lunchbox, color faded and starting to rust, but less dusty than Jude would have expected for being inside a wall for over two years.

  “Look! Look, here it is!” Pixie practically squealed, sounding delighted, holding it up so Jude could see KISS themselves, faded and smeared with grime. Jude might as well have been looking at aliens, but they were aliens he felt an immediate fondness for, simply because they made Pixie smile like that.

  He went to work at opening the lunchbox, whose lid seemed to stick a bit with age and maybe rust. Finally, the sticking point gave, and Pixie opened it eagerly. Jude knelt down to join him, peering into the lunchbox at—nothing. Only dust.

  Pixie leaned back but didn’t stand up, staring at the empty lunchbox with a perplexed, uncomprehending look on his face, as if there were no world in which it would make sense.

  “Everything’s gone,” he said, sounding confused.

  Jude waited, unsure what to say. Slowly, the confusion dropped off Pixie’s face, replaced by—nothing, really. His face went blank. Which would have been strange enough for him and all his animated expressiveness, even without the oddly hollow look in his eyes. For the first time since Jude had known him, he looked almost… dead.

  “I’m sorry,” Jude said at last. He knew saying that meant nothing, it didn’t help—but he didn’t know what would. Helplessness was the most frustrating and strangely lonely feeling. There was nothing he could do, Pixie was dealing with too many sources of pain Jude couldn’t reach or even understand, and all he felt for sure was that this raised a barrier between them, a distance he didn’t know how to cross. In these moments, it was like they were in the same room, but miles apart.

  “It’s fine,” Pixie mumbled, though it clearly wasn’t. “I guess I should’ve known someone would find it. Nothing’s really safe out here.”

  “What was inside?” Jude asked, peering into the small metal box as well, though it was unlikely Pixie would have missed something with his superior vampire night vision.

  “It was kind of a time capsule type thing,” Pixie mumbled, looking like he wanted to sink down to the floor and curl into a sad ball, but apparently this particular floor was too dirty even for him. “Jeff swore this thing had to be all vintage-collectible valuable, but we liked it too much to sell.”

  “It does look like it could be valuable,” Jude said. “That’s what’s odd to me here. Why would someone find it, take the stuff inside, but leave the box?”

&nbs
p; “I dunno,” Pixie said with a shrug, staring at the empty closet and even emptier hiding spot, but not seeming to really see it. Jude’s heart sank a little more with every passing moment.

  “What was inside?” he asked again. Maybe if he could keep Pixie talking, he could keep him from sinking into somewhere too deep for Jude to reach.

  “Flyers from our old Chaos Chainsaw shows. I think Jeff put his old harmonica in here too. And his favorite shirt, this dorky tie-die looking thing that said ‘Always Summer’ or ‘Summer Forever’ or something on it. I was gonna use that thing. Seemed perfect for the spell. I really thought this was going to be the thing that would help put Wicked Gold in his place.”

  He looked sadder than Jude could remember him seeing. Not scared, not anxious, just absolutely defeated and exhausted. Jude wondered how long he’d felt like this, with so much pain and weariness beneath his bright surface. Had Pixie ever not felt like this?

  “Sometimes I think I’m never getting away from him.”

  Jude paused, not entirely sure they were on the same page, but wanting to keep up with wherever Pixie needed to go. “You’re not talking about Wicked Gold, are you?”

  “No,” Pixie said quietly, almost a whisper. “Jeff. It always comes back to him, he’s on my mind so much, and I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, that’s not fair to you, but it does, I can’t stop thinking about him.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Jude said, and meant it, even as he felt a little cold inside. “I know how it feels to lose someone and not be able to get them out of your head, no matter what you do.”