A Grim Situation

by Whit McClendon

  Avery sighed heavily. “I was just asking you! I had him there, right there!” She pointed at the spot on the pavement at her feet. “Where could he have gone?”

  Jim shook his head. “I don’t feel right,” he said, putting one hand up to his forehead. “Everything’s fuzzy.”

  Cursing, Avery scooped up her handcuffs, holding them daintily. “Hey, you have one of those evidence bags on you?”

  He patted himself down, a look of muddled concern still on his face. He reached into an inner pocket of his suit jacket and produced a plastic bag. He held it open and Avery dropped the cuffs inside.

  “With any luck, we might get something.” Even as she said it, Avery knew that would not be the case. Something strange had happened here.

  Jim carefully sealed the bag, wrote on it, and tucked it back into a pocket. “Well, we can ask around inside, at least. Someone should know that guy. He looked like a regular. At least, before he went all cuckoo on us. Did you hear him cackling at me as he ran?”

  “No, I missed that, sorry.” Avery shook her head. “This whole thing feels very weird, Jim.”

  “And you’re going to run it all the way down to the ground, aren’t you?” Jim said as he pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his face and neck. He was thoroughly unsurprised by her terse nod. “Thought so.” He glanced at her hands and added, “Let’s go get those scrapes cleaned up. I’d hate for them to get infected.” Suddenly, he looked over his shoulder for a moment before turning back to her. “Damn,” he muttered.

  “What?” Avery followed his gaze, but saw nothing.

  “A green Jeep pulled out in front of the guy. Fast, too.” Avery’s head snapped up. “He slammed into it. That’s what sent him your way, I think. I told them to stay put, but they’re gone now.”

  “A green Jeep?” Avery asked warily. Jim nodded. “Four door? Tough looking?” Jim nodded again.

  “Yeah, I guess. Looked like it was ready to go zombie hunting, if you like that sort of thing.”

  A shock of cold ran through Avery’s veins. Those kinds of vehicles were common enough in Texas, where folks either worked on a ranch and needed one or just wanted to be ready for the apocalypse. Something about the mention of that particular Jeep, though, pinged her deeply.

  “You got another one of them feelings, dontcha?”

  Avery looked down at the spot on the pavement where she had recently pinned a bad guy that had somehow vanished into thin air, and then in the direction of the Jeep Jim had seen.

  “Yep,” she declared. “I sure do.”

  Chapter 6

  The muffled thumping from the small cargo area of the Jeep had finally stopped, but only because I went back there and bounced the guy’s head off the floor hard enough to daze him. Then I used a bit of Faerie magick to ease him into dreamland. Trussing him up had been the easy part, thanks to the duffle bag full of what amounted to kidnapping supplies that Ariana kept in the back of the Jeep. She had it all: zip ties, handcuffs, rope, duct tape. You’d think she’d done this kind of thing before.

  The hard part had been snatching the guy from underneath the noses of the cops and a few nearby students back at the college. Ariana had enspelled some of them while I handled the others. While I eased into their minds, sending them into a sorcerous pause that stretched a single moment into several, Ariana threw one of her own spells. There had been a burst of chanting and gesturing from her, and I caught a few old German words meaning sleep, and wait. Whatever spell she threw had worked beautifully, allowing us to drag the weirdo out from under the lady cop and into the Jeep. He hadn’t been too thrilled about that, but neither of us really cared what he thought. He’d been casting his own spell as we approached, but a sharp kick to the head from Ariana had shut him up quite nicely.

  He had been easy enough to identify the moment he slammed into the side of the Jeep. The stink of dark magick was all over him, and it had the same feel as the pills; oily, slimy, and ill. He’d already drawn the attention of the police, judging by the gangly guy with the badge clipped to his belt that was struggling to catch him, so we figured the best plan was to grab him ourselves. If we were lucky, we could get some answers out of him, make him forget he’d seen us, then kick him back to the cops. I had the sense that he wasn’t the source of it all, but I couldn’t tell you what made me feel that way, aside from the fact that it had been too easy to catch the guy.

  We were making progress, which was all well and good, but what really had me preoccupied was the woman who had tackled our guy. She was…unusual. I had felt it the moment she had exploded out that door and into the perp, a tingling sensation deep inside me, a recognition of an energy that echoed something in my own. She was human for sure. But she was something more, besides. I thought about her grey-green eyes. Even unfocused as they had been under the influence of Ariana’s hastily thrown spell, there had been something in them that kept tugging at me. I’d been so distracted, both by her and by the bad guy, I hadn’t bothered to see what her aura looked like. I shook my head, disgusted with myself. Not like me to miss something like that.

  “You think he’ll tell us what we need to know?” Ariana’s voice interrupted my train of thought, and I flashed back to the present. We were only a few miles from her house, and then we’d get answers one way or another. I caught her eyeing me somewhat warily.

  “I can rip it from his mind if I have to,” I said evenly. “I just don’t care for that. Going that deeply into human minds, especially the ones who dabble in dark magick, isn’t my favorite thing to do.” There were dangers there, and she knew it. She turned her eyes back to the road but stayed silent. “What?” I asked.

  “What’s with that cop?” she replied, her voice flat. “You stared at her, like, forever.”

  “Barely a moment,” I corrected.

  “But you acknowledge that you were staring,” she replied quickly, as though she’d caught me. “Do you know her?”

  I turned my eyes to the road ahead as well. “I do not.”

  She waited for me to elaborate, which I of course refused to do. I didn’t know anything about the woman anyway, just that she was more than she seemed. Finally, Ariana sighed and flipped on the radio, filling the air with what she thought of as music. Some of it was kind of catchy, but I still found it tedious.

  We turned down the narrow road that led to her property. I always enjoyed that part, rolling down a tunnel of tall, sheltering trees. It reminded me of home. A few minutes later, we pulled into the repurposed barn that served as her garage. The huge farmhouse with a wraparound porch, barn, and a couple of smaller buildings sat in a clearing in the center of over a hundred acres of forest. That forest was an island in the middle of encroaching civilization. Houston had already swallowed up Katy and was heading west at a ravenous pace, chewing up all the green space as it went. It wouldn’t touch us here, though. The land had been in Ariana’s family for generations, since the 1800s, and although there had been many offers for the property, Ariana had no intention of leaving.

  The barn we pulled into had long ago been renovated, some of its stalls closed off and made into storage rooms, but it still retained the smell and feel of a barn. Old traces of horses and hay lingered, and the scent was comforting to me. Ariana keyed off the engine and slipped out the driver side door without a word to me. Fine. We had a job to do anyway. I followed suit and came around to the back of the Jeep.

  “Do you want to do the honors?” Ariana gestured to the Jeep with a little smirk, some of her good humor returning.

  “No, you open it,” I said. “I’ll grab him and take him into the house.”

  “Oh, hell no!” Ariana laughed. “I’m not letting this crazy into my house!” I must have looked confused, because she pointed at one of the stalls that had been closed off. “Just drag him in there. I’ve got a summoning circle on the floor that will keep him from causing too much trouble.” Then she shrugged and pulled a gun from somewhere. I had no idea where she had been keeping it, h
er shorts and tank top not exactly the best places to conceal a hand cannon, but she managed. She racked a shell into the chamber, flipped on the safety, and continued, “Of course, I have my gun, so I can just shoot him if he acts up.” With a deft movement, she replaced the gun in the small of her back so that her hands were free once more.

  I grinned before I could help myself. That was more like the Ariana I knew. “Good enough, then. I think between the two of us, we can handle this guy.” I nodded towards the tailgate of the Jeep. “If you please?”

  She took a step back and pulled her keys out of her pocket, and I heard the mechanism unlock as she pushed a button on the fob. She put the keys away before opening the back window of the Jeep, then she pulled the latch on the horizontal tailgate and opened it up. I half expected him to leap out at us because that’s just how my luck usually runs, but he stayed quiet. Honestly, I was almost disappointed to see him still lying there, unconscious.

  “He doesn’t look too dangerous, does he now?” Ariana muttered as she reached in and grabbed his ankles, while I grabbed him by the upper arms.

  That’s when my usual luck came back in full force. His eyes snapped open, wild and wide, and his high-pitched scream was muffled by the gag. He lurched forward with far more strength than he should have possessed and head-butted me squarely in the face. Everything went white for an instant, and I fell backwards as I struggled to regain my composure. Dammit, that hurt.

  I heard Ariana yelling next to me, and the scuffling sounds of combat followed by a grunt of impact as something hit her. I shook my head to clear it, and when my eyes focused again, I saw Ariana on the ground, unmoving. Our crazy had managed to get his arms free and gotten in a lucky shot to complement the one he’d laid on me a few seconds ago. He was frantically fighting the tape on his ankles, and I was glad we had taken time to bind them.

  I snarled in anger and leaped, grabbing him by shirt and belt. He slapped and scratched at me as I yanked him out of the vehicle, but I paid it no attention. I was ready for him. I pressed him up over my head, and then simply slammed his body down on the dirt floor of the barn. I didn’t want to kill him. Well, that’s not entirely true, but I knew it wasn’t a good idea, so I held back quite a bit. Even so, the impact stunned him again, and the crazed light went out of his eyes as unconsciousness reclaimed him. When I was sure he wasn’t going to jump up and attack me again, I sighed in frustration and snatched a roll of black duct tape from the back of the Jeep. By the time I was finished, I had our guy’s arms completely taped to his sides, and his legs similarly mummified for good measure. He was going nowhere.

  “Dammit,” Ariana mumbled from behind me. She was already sitting up, holding her head with one hand, her face crumpled up in pain. “That was embarrassing. He was faster than I expected, smacked me upside my head before I knew it.”

  “Sometimes that happens,” I said matter-of-factly. “He snuck a good one in on me too.” I felt the bones in my face arranging themselves back into position with subtle pops. I heal quickly. Being Faerie certainly has its advantages. Even so, it hurt. “You all right?”

  She had already pushed herself to her feet and began to brush the dirt from herself. “Yeah, yeah,” she replied, annoyance thick in her voice. “I’ll be fine. Let’s get this guy into the circle and get some answers. I’m thoroughly pissed off now.”

  “That makes two of us,” I mumbled as I grabbed one of the guy’s ankles and started dragging him towards the room she had indicated earlier.

  The room was small, only the size of the horse stall it had once been. Sheetrock walls had been added and the floor was wood instead of hard-packed earth, otherwise the room was empty. A summoning circle, somewhat less ornate than the one in Ariana’s conjuring room, had been inlaid into the floor. It consisted of a length of tightly braided copper wire, pressed into the floorboards in a perfect circle, a pentacle of the same metal carefully enclosed within. I had to hand it to her, Ariana was a girl who liked to be prepared. She brought in a chair and we propped our guy up in it in the center of the circle. After some consideration, we threw a few more loops of duct tape around his mummified body to secure him there. Our guard was up, but there was no sense in taking any chances. He had slowly recovered from his “fall”, and by the time we settled in our own chairs, he was glaring rather angrily at us. Ariana removed his gag, and though we expected him to start throwing crazy at us right away, this time, he remained silent.

  “Who are you?” I began. I figured we should start with the simple stuff. His mouth remained tightly shut. I sighed, then employed a simple bit of magick, a light glamour, in the hopes it would get him talking. I gestured, a simple flick of my fingers to help me focus my energy in the right direction, and cast the spell. The effect was immediate. His eyes flew even wider than they had been, and he began frantically looking left and right. I allowed myself a faint smile as his fear began to override his desire to frustrate us.

  What did you do? Ariana’s voice echoed in my mind, fascinated. Being able to communicate without speaking came in handy for us more often than one would think.

  Not much, I explained. I just made him think he’s gone blind. The man’s breathing became more frantic as his eyes darted around the room, unseeing. He started to panic, and began to whimper. I let him squirm a moment longer, then let the glamour fall away with a loud snap of my fingers so he would understand that I was in control. He blinked rapidly for a couple of seconds and then narrowed his eyes as he focused on me. Good. Now I had his attention.

  “Let’s try something else, then. Tell me about the pills,” I asked. I kept my voice quiet, but let a lot of menace slip into the words. He felt it, and I saw him flinch, though he kept glaring at me. He clamped his lips shut and stayed silent.

  “I can shoot him in the knee,” Ariana proposed, somewhat loudly. She was pissed, but I knew she’d do no such thing until we figured out if the guy was a true villain or instead, just a hired gun of some kind. The guy’s eyes flicked towards her warily, then back to me. He seemed to be calculating whether or not she was kidding.

  “That won’t be necessary…if he talks.” I hoped he would make this easy for us and just tell us what we wanted to know. After so many centuries, you’d think I’d know better. Although he did start talking, it wasn’t anything I wanted to hear. He started mumbling under his breath, and a steely glint came into his eyes. He was casting a spell. “Ariana!” I warned.

  She was already on it. Casting a circle was a simple affair for someone like Ariana, who’d been training in the use of magick since she was a little girl. Magick is all around us. It’s like electricity, except it doesn’t need wires to move around. It’s in everything, the air, the earth, the water, us. It’s a natural thing, and it’s immensely, unimaginably powerful. It takes years of training and discipline to manipulate it even a little bit, though some beings have an easier time of it than others. Some humans have a greater aptitude for it, though not many are worth worrying about. Goosebumps, hunches, premonitions, they’re all part of it, and almost everyone can feel it to at least a tiny degree. For true witches like Ariana, people who combine natural ability with arduous training, magick becomes a potent tool. It’s still a lot of work to use well, but the effects can be impressive.

  Casting a circle is a way of focusing or containing energy. The circle is actually created from the caster’s will and doesn’t technically have to exist anywhere but their mind. However, it takes an enormous amount of discipline and focus to pull that off. I can do it, but I seldom resorted to casting circles, preferring more down and dirty endeavors. Ariana could do it too, but it’s always easier to have a physical circle to work from, even one as simple as something drawn in the dirt with a stick. Sending energy into the circle creates a boundary, a barrier, an invisible dome of energy that can keep bad things out, or as in this case, keep them in. The moment Mr. Crazytown started mumbling, she gathered her will and slapped a hand down on the floor, fingers touching the copper wire that surrou
nded him. She poured energy into the circle, and I felt the barrier spring to life around him, enclosing him within a buzzing field of power.

  He felt it too. He glanced around himself, realizing the futility of the spell he’d been about to cast, and fell silent again. He scowled at us for a moment, then grinned.

  “I can’t get you from in here,” he growled, “but you can’t get me either. Not without breaking the circle.”

  “Wanna bet?” Ariana held up her gun pointedly. “A bullet will break the circle, yes, but it’ll shut you up long before you can throw anything our way. I’m a damned good shot, I’ve got a headache, and my patience is wearing thin.”

  His smile slowly faded and he stared at her appraisingly. He rightly judged her as being serious, then looked to me as if for help. I smiled, letting my human disguise fall away just enough for him to see my fangs and my eyes. That finally did it. He shrank away from us in his chair, his eyes growing wide with fear. “You’re a Grim!” His voice was high-pitched and shaky.

  “I am.” I confirmed with a nod. “And you’re currently on my shit list.” I paused, then inclined my head towards Ariana and added, “You’re definitely on hers.”

  He almost looked pitiful just then. For all the trouble he’d given us, his fear made him look like the scrawny, aging professor that he probably was, rather than some dangerous, demon-mongering bad guy. Even so, the fact remained that he was exactly that. “Let’s try again. Tell me about the pills.” He looked away from me, obviously terrified. It was nice to be respected.

  “I can’t say,” he offered. Not helpful. Ariana snorted, and I rolled my eyes.

  “You might want to try. We’re not terribly patient just now.” Ariana ejected the magazine of her handgun and made a show of checking the number of rounds inside before reinserting it. “Who are you?”

  His eyes darted around a moment longer, then he sagged into the chair, defeated. In a thin, wavering voice, he said, “Raymond. Raymond Clark.”