THEN
We started this dark journey three years ago, me and Jermaine.
My mom, a librarian by trade, had been hired as the new Historian for this godforsaken town of Glen Creek, Virginia. She grew up here, told tough stories about lingering attitudes toward people with brown skin and the kind of hair you didn’t see in the shampoo ads. Stories that concluded with her running away to New York when she was eighteen.
There she stayed through her waitstaff-financed college years. A good relationship that changed when two became three. And then single motherhood.
When Glen Creek’s former Historian—the grandmother I never knew—got sick and broke the vow to never speak to my mother again, Mom became the prodigal daughter. She came home. And dragged me with her.
Enter freshman Tatiana. Shunned for my “weird” accent and “city attitude.” Unable to bite my tongue when I proved myself a better mathematician than the subpar Pre-Calc teacher and he called me “uppity,” I found myself in detention my very first day. Where I met the boy—there for defending some bullied kid, of course—who would change everything.
He wasn’t normal. Glen Creek wasn’t normal. These were facts everyone seemed privy to but me. Including my mom.
NOW
Jermaine’s body, I wanted to touch it, to feel him again. I wanted that now more than ever. Isn’t there some saying about that? We should show the ones we love how we feel while they’re still here. Before it’s too late.
I pressed the back of my hand to his forehead, the way my mother used to when I was feverish. He wasn’t cold, exactly. Cooler than a person should be. The pool of blood slowly seeping from beneath him, soaking my papers, oozing to the edge of my desk, reminded me of thawed hamburger meat on brown butcher paper. I snatched my hand away. There’s another saying: better late than never. That one’s wrong, though.
Around me, the lair shook. Plaster dust rained from the aged ceiling. I considered running and letting Niya bring this place down on her head alone. But let’s be honest, if I could leave here—him—I would’ve long ago.
“Stop it, dummy!” I said. “That’s a support column.”
Niya delivered another punch to the beam. A new set of cracks webbed out from beneath her bloody knuckles. It was Jermaine’s blood, from where she had carried his corpse, not hers. Physically, Niya’s kind had strength and durability that were more than a match for mere concrete. Emotionally . . . she broke well before the pillar did. And that was dangerous.
What had she seen out there?
With maximum will, I kept my gaze fixed on her, not letting my eyes dart to the half-dozen puncture wounds along Jermaine’s chest and abdomen. Or the shard of bone jutting from his right leg just below the knee. Or the agonized grimace etched on his still face.
Niya roared, whipping her black braids, flinging tears off her sloppy cheeks. When she punched the column that time, the vibrations opened a hole in the ceiling. A dusty display of DVDs fell through. It crashed onto the sparring mat, and low-budget horror/sci-fi movies spun in every direction. A faded yellow sheet of paper that I knew to be a 5 FOR $15 clearance flyer drifted down, arching back and forth like a leaf on the wind.
The punches stopped. Niya watched the flyer until it reunited with the broken display, then faced me. “I couldn’t stop it, Tat. I couldn’t save him.”
“What happened?” I said, noting how detached I sounded. I couldn’t help it, yet I wondered if I should make myself sound more emotional. More raw. Wasn’t that what I should be feeling, with him lying dead behind me? Was there a protocol for losing your kind-of-a-superhero best friend who you loved with every fiber of your being?
If there was someone to ask, it was Niya.
“I don’t know exactly,” she said. “It was a routine patrol. Cemetery, hospital, high school. Checking for ghoulies in all the usual spots. Not a damn thing popping all over town. We were planning to call it early, go back to his place, and . . .”
My shoulders slumped like a few of my bones had suddenly gone missing. I gazed into a dark corner, swallowing my hurt the same way I had the first time I saw him stare at her in a way I only dreamed about. Or like when I had a revelation on that Trickster God threat and ran to the lair, only to find them sweaty and kissing against the very column she now tried to destroy.
Niya, being as kind as she was capable of, rephrased. “We were done. Heading home. Then . . .”
She made spastic gestures with her hands; her mouth gaped. As if she was simultaneously trying to recall the unthinkable and describe the unspeakable. Maybe she was.
I still didn’t know what the protocols were here, but I was a trial-and-error girl. So I crossed the room and embraced the rage-grieving girl who could easily snap me in two with her bare hands. After a moment of stiff surprise, she hugged me back, and dissolved into hiccups that were really sobs. She lurched against me like her legs might buckle. I spun her toward a nearby chair and made sure she wasn’t facing the corpse she’d brought here in a fireman’s carry.
“Tell me.” I pushed my glasses higher on the bridge of my nose, insistent.
“It . . . it wasn’t like anything we’ve seen before. It cut us off on the way to the car. This big Jabba the Hutt–looking blob. I could barely make out details because it was like . . . like . . . the shadows moved with it.”
Normally, I’d be half listening, half indexing. Breaking down descriptions into categories and eliminating possibilities. Big—not a leprechaun, sprite, or dwarfish creature. A blob—so, not humanoid. Rule out vampires, zombies, werewolves, or our old nemesis Gentleman Gaunt. Cloaked in shad—
The top of Jermaine’s skull. I could see it from here. Saving Niya from the sight meant I was the martyr. God, someone would have to tell his mom.
“It don’t make sense, how it took him!” Niya said, drawing me back to her. “Jermaine’s almost as strong as me. A little faster. I held its attacks off fine, but it tore through him like paper.”
“I . . .” Think, Tatiana. He’s dead, but you have to focus on what’s next. “I never thought I’d say this, but you’re correct.”
She sneered, a good thing. Our old routine of barely there civility would help her focus.
I turned to a bookshelf, thankful to be looking at anything other than him. “Your power sets are similar. The strength and the speed. That you made it back, and he didn’t—”
Something collided with the back of my head. It pistoned my face forward so my nose and mouth smashed into the spine of my Saharan histories tome. Niya’s fingers palmed the back of my skull with uncomfortable firmness. “Are you blaming me? You think it’s my fault?”
“Listen to my actual words, Niya. I didn’t say anything like that.” A trickle of blood salt-slimed from my nostril.
“Tat, Tat, the reasonable gnat. Why the fuck are you so calm right now?”
I ripped away from her then. Left chunks of hair behind. I screamed into the face of the girl who once tore the head off a gill-man with no effort at all. “Because one of us has to be! One of us has to think, and lead, and do something now that he’s gone! You can’t, so it has to be me. Always me with the solutions, always me with the plan. I don’t want to plan, I want to mourn and scream and cry. I’m the rock! The one you both come to when you can’t punch your way out. So that’s why I’m calm. I’m not allowed to be anything else.”
Shame masked her, and she flicked loose strands of my hair to the floor. “You are, you know.”
“Are what?”
“Crying.”
“I—?” Dabbing my fingers at my eyes, I felt the moisture.
Her crazy-ass tantrum seemed at its end, and she handed me two tissues plucked from a box near my computers. I mopped the blood from my lips first.
“I’m sorry,” Niya said. “I know you loved him too.”
That startled me. Because I could tell she didn’t mean platonically.
She kept going. “I’m sorry if I harmed you, and I’m sorry for asking you to find the solution one more time.”
“I need to know more about that creature, and we may need to call in help. Maybe the Dusk Thrashers, or the Salem Knight. If that thing’s as powerful as you say—”
“I’m not talking about that thing. That thing can wait. I’m talking about Jermaine.”
“You mean telling his people?” In my gut, I knew that wasn’t on her mind.
“No, Tatiana. I mean resurrecting him.”
THEN
It took four times of Jermaine saving me from some unexplained, fantastical threat before he gave up his lame deception and confessed what I already knew. Monsters were real, they ran rampant in our town, and he fought them.
I’d actually deduced it after the first time he swooped in wearing that ridiculous modified football helmet and motorcycle leather (a costume I eventually convinced him to retire), calling himself the Garrison (we benched the name too).
He started in on his origin story. Ancient bloodline, strength and speed, our town built on a broken ley line that draws the Arcane, and so on. He seemed shocked when I cut him off.
“Got it,” I said. “I’ve had it for a while. That costume doesn’t change your height, your build, or the way you move. I’m sorry to tell you, but your Garrison voice sounds just like your read-aloud voice in English class. Only gruffer.”
“The costume didn’t fool you? Even a little bit?”
I patted his thigh, crusty with the green blood of the wood-skinned spriggans he’d slaughtered saving me. “You read the comics; it worked for Batman. I know. It’s okay.”
“Now I wish I had told you sooner. Your mom made it seem like—”
“My mom? What’s she got to do with any of this?”
Silence. No eye contact from a boy who’d just stared down a tree demon. I hadn’t been as observant as I thought.
The three of us had a long conversation that night in my mother’s study, a book-crammed room once reserved for my grandma. We talked about what the Historian of Glen Creek really did.
If Jermaine was Batman, Mom was Alfred. Dutiful assistant to the town’s protector. Jermaine’s bloodline wasn’t the only one with obligations. When Mom ran away from home as a teen, it wasn’t to escape an overbearing mother. She ran from destiny.
But Grandma barely formed sentences now and couldn’t tell me and Mom apart most days. The Historian must be whole and present.
The way Mom explained it, she made it seem like a burden. I guess, for one person, it could be. That’s when I said, “I can help.”
It made sense. Many hands make light work, and all. Two heads better than one.
My offer hung between us. Her answer took too long, so I knew it wouldn’t be the one I wanted.
“No,” Mom said. “Out of the question.”
“Why? It’s, like, genetic, right? I’m going to have to do it eventually no matter what.”
“We’re talking about forces beyond comprehension. Dangers to the body and soul. Get something wrong, and the consequences echo into eternity.”
“I’m not afraid.” I looked to Jermaine for backup. “You’ve seen me out there. You know.”
He sat silent. Forearms resting on his knees, hands clasped, counting cracks in the floor.
Mom said, “If you don’t feel fear over the horrors in this town, then I know you’re not ready.”
Jermaine stood. “I should go.”
“You don’t have to,” I said.
Mom immediately countered. “No. Get some rest. You’ve got school tomorrow, and I need to research what’s brought the spriggans here. I’ll be in touch.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He leaped nimbly to the windowsill. “Bye, Tat.” Then he dropped into the night. It occurred to me that he must’ve come and gone that way many times as he and Mom kept each other’s secrets.
“Mom—”
“You’ve got school too. Good night.”
She turned her attention to some dusty volume.
The next day in school, Jermaine did a clumsy job of avoiding me. Going as far as changing desks in English. Toward the end of the day he saw me coming, dipped into the boys’ bathroom. I followed him in.
“Oh, crap,” he said.
“This would be the place for it.” I sniffed, then decided mouth breathing was a slightly better option. “Why are you acting weird?”
“I was born weird.”
“Weirder?”
He threw up his hands, a frustrated surrender. “I gotta stay away from you. All right?”
No. That wasn’t all right. Pretty damn far from it. I didn’t bother asking why. “My mother doesn’t control you or me.”
“Except she kind of does. The Garrison needs the Historian. That’s time-tested. I don’t understand half the shit I end up fighting. Without her, I might mistake a vetehinen for a merman and get my arm ripped off. You know?”
My vision was pulsing; anger had me disregarding the nuances of monster anthropology. “Fuck her and her books. You’re my friend. The only one I have here. She can’t take you from me.”
“I’m sorry for making things tense between you two. Everything’s heated right now. It’ll have to get better. Like you said, the job’s coming to you eventually. Give it time.”
I tried. There just wasn’t much time left.
Spriggans murdered my mother in her study the very next week.
NOW
“Resurrection? No. Absolutely not!” I swept papers and a few flimsy notebooks into my satchel and retreated up the stairs. Niya bounded behind me. We emerged in the surface level of our lair, an abandoned video store once known as Movie Meridian. From the moment I arrived in Glen Creek, I had wondered how such an outdated store survived in the age of streaming and digital downloads.
Easy. Magic.
Run by two warlocks for over a century—first as a general store, then a record shop, finally movies—the Meridian was a safe haven for supernatural beings who fought on the side of good. The couple sacrificed their lives buying Jermaine a few critical moments to close a dimensional breach during last year’s Imp Siege. After, we found a will, gifting the store to us.
There we were, in a fully stocked time capsule of VHS tapes and DVDs (not even Blu-rays) that looked like an empty, abandoned storefront to unknowing observers. I circled the Titanic cardboard display and skirted the hole that Niya’s earlier tantrum had produced. Not fast enough to escape her words.
“Fine. Don’t help me, Gnat. I’ll do it myself.”
I faced her, as irritated by that nickname as her ludicrous proposition. “Really? You needed a flowchart and a coloring book to understand Captain America: Civil War. Now, you’re going to do universe-altering magic on your own? Please.”
She was across the room. I blinked, and she was an inch from my nose. “That movie had a lot of characters. And for Jermaine, I’ll do whatever it takes. I’m surprised this is a hard sell for you.”
“You and I are irrelevant in this. It shouldn’t be done. By anyone.”
“Shouldn’t and can’t are two different things. Is it possible?”
I could’ve lied. Instead, I hesitated.
“I knew it!” Niya said. “Thank you, Tatiana. I’ll find out how myself. I’ll comb the earth. You can go back to your life. I’ll take care of this.”
My head tilted. “You think it’s that easy for me? I can feel his gravity pulling on me through the floor. Go back to my life. Him”—I motioned around us—“This has been my life longer than it’s been yours.”
Niya shrugged me off. As usual. “What then? Because I’m thirty seconds away from going on a quest. With or without—”
“I’ll help.”
She grinned, and her sharp canines seemed overly pronounced. “Dope! Brains and brawn, always a good combo. Now, we have to figure where to start.”
“I know where.” I made the first steps on our quest and pushed through the Meridian’s entrance, triggering the tinkling chimes. “My grandma’s house.”
THEN
“I don’t know how those things got to your mom, but they’ll never hurt anyone else like that again. Not if you help me. Just always know I’m here,” Jermaine said. “It’s me and you.”
We stood before my mother’s tombstone, rain pouring, drenching us. He wouldn’t leave until I was ready. He endured.
For the next two years it was as he said, me and him. Together we tracked the spriggans and eradicated them for what they did to my mother. Then it seemed like every week after, there was some new threat. Sorcerer, monster, god. Creatures from all of our world’s myths, and worlds beyond. Some good, some vile. All drawn to the power seeping from the town’s bedrock.
Most of the baddies we killed; some escaped, only to return with a new nefarious plan to take their revenge. As I got better at my inherited Historian role, nothing seemed a match for us. My knowledge, with his strength, was a no-lose combination.
Then, last year, the circus came to town.
The Ringmaster was an earth angel with designs on the Throne of Heaven. He’d taken his show all over the country, into different realities, anywhere he could potentially snatch a creature of the Arcane who might serve in his treachery. While he gathered his forces, he subdued his recruits with magic, and used them as attractions.
COME SEE THE TUMULTUOUS THUNDER LAD!
DO YOU DARE STAND EYE TO EYE
WITH THE GREEK GORGON?
YOU WON’T WANT TO PET THIS KITTY!
SHE’S THE CANTANKEROUS CAT WOMAN!
The Ringmaster wanted Jermaine for his collection. He actually succeeded in capturing him, and he was ready to hop to another reality when I brought in an old ally, Father Reagan. A priest who caged exorcised demons in his own soul, drawing on their powers to fight darkness.
Father Reagan and Jermaine defeated the Ringmaster and freed the exhibits. Most of them scattered. One stayed.
The Cantankerous Cat woman. Jermaine befriended her while he was the Ringmaster’s captive. Her real name was Niya.
He welcomed her with open arms, saying we could use her help. It was no longer just me and him. That was the first promise he broke.
It wouldn’t be the last.
NOW
My house was on the other side of town. Not a long drive, three or four miles through empty streets lined by old shops and older trees. While the scenery scrolled by quickly, tension in the car has a way of stretching time. I wrenched my hands on the steering wheel, willing our destination closer.
Niya couldn’t sit still, shifting restlessly the whole time. Part of it may have been her feline nature. Part of it had to be second thoughts. She was an idiot on so many things. Even she couldn’t feign ignorance when it came to the forces of life and death.
“What’s at your house? Spell books? Potions?” she asked, a tiny plastic shaving curling from the door handle where she nervously dug one claw.
“No,” I said, resisting the urge to bop her on the nose so she’d quit treating my car like a scratching post. “The Historian isn’t a sorcerer. I have reference books there that mention the sort of magic you’ll need. There are incantations in some of my books, but that’s not enough.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t just read a spell and make magic. Maybe someone can recite some”—I made air quotes with one hand—“‘cursed Latin’ or whatever in a movie and summon the dead, but in real life just having a spell is like just having bullets. You still need the actual weapon.”
“What kind of weapon?”
“Willpower. You have to have intention, and an elevated understanding of the forces you’re dealing with. Most of the time, that’s still not enough. Your most powerful magic—the kind that truly alters reality the way you want—needs a sponsor. Some being outside of our world.”
“A demon,” Niya said.
“More things live outside than we’ll ever know. But yeah, in some cases a demon. I know of some volumes that will point you in the right direction.”
“Me? Not us? I thought you were helping.”
“I’m still contemplating what constitutes as ‘help’ in a situation like this.”
“Let me clarify. Bringing back Earth’s protector is help. Our world needs the Garrison.”
That stupid name. “Even if he comes back wrong?”
Nothing to say. She’d been thinking about it too.
“Shit!” I said as Trenton Street sailed by. “That was my turn.”
“Sorry I distracted you with saving the life of our friend.”
More than a friend. For both of us. You know that, Mean Kitty.
The median on the street prevented me from popping a spontaneous U-turn, so I’d need to drive a couple of blocks before course correcting. Time I’d use to simplify this for the kindergartner in my passenger seat. “I’ve thought about this way more than you, Niya.”
“How? You didn’t know anything was wrong until I brought Jermaine to Meridian.”
“Because when I thought about it, it wasn’t for Jermaine.”
“So, who—?” She stopped short. Good. She got it.
“As you can probably tell, my mom’s not around. There are reasons.”
I waited for a reaction, prepared to deliver a stunning diatribe that I knew wouldn’t change anything. Niya’s attention was elsewhere.
“Stop the car,” she said.
We were passing a park. I peered through the passenger window into the inky night beyond its low border wall. “For what?”
“Stop the car! Someone’s in trouble!”
My brakes squealed when I mashed them. Niya ejected from her seat, hitting the sidewalk in a tight roll, then hopped the wall in a single bound before I came to a complete stop. She loped along on all fours for speed, and I lost her in the night.
Popping my trunk, I ran to the back of my car for the things I’d need. Armed, I sprinted into the park after her.
Screams and growls drew me toward the park’s center. I’d been working out some, but there’s not a ton of cardio in Historian work. I was huffing and puffing by the time I reached the melee.
Sprawled on the ground, pressing a hand to a sloppy gash on his leg and muttering incoherently, was a man I’d seen sleeping on various benches around town over the last couple of weeks. He scrambled away from the tornado of teeth and claws spinning in the center of a misshapen huddle. Niya was fully transformed, her dagger teeth protruding from her jaws, her fingers hooked, the tips rugged and sharp as serrated blades. She tore through a group of waxy-skinned beings with elongated limbs and stretched necks. When one whipped a tongue at Niya, slicing her at the shoulder, I recognized them as akanames. Filth lickers.
Their nickname was a misnomer. They didn’t lick filth. They licked flesh. Right off the bone.
The new wound amplified Niya’s fury. She flipped over a charging akaname, ripping through the back of its neck while she was in the air. A few vertebrae skittered across the lawn like tossed dice as the akaname collapsed and melted into bubbling rot. She landed and rammed a hand through the stomach of another. When she flung it off her arm, it dissolved before it hit the ground.
One of the two remaining monsters went for another tongue wound. Niya slipped an escrima stick from a loop on her belt and put it between her and the deadly sinew. The creature’s tongue coiled around the stick, snapped it in half. As it retracted, taking a chunk of the weapon with it, the akaname didn’t account for the wooden shard it had left in Niya’s hand. She raced the tongue back to the creature’s snarling mouth and jammed the makeshift stake right through its eye.
I’d seen her in action before. Always knew how lethal she was in a fight. There was something more in her now. A rage and determination. There were five stages to grief, and one was anger. I knew where she was in the process.
While anger could fuel strength, it also dulls senses. Niya wasn’t aware of the akaname behind her, about to strike a killing blow.
So I tackled it. Awkward.
It hissed and writhed. The bones beneath its loose skin seemed to realign as it attempted to twist off its belly into the position better suited to bite my face off. Best not to give it the chance.
Pulling the ceremonial dagger from my bag, I drove it into the beast three times. Lung, lung, head . . . assuming I’d remembered its anatomy correctly. It still writhed, but weaker. The hissing became moist. I kept driving that dagger into its skull. Over. And over. And over. And over. And . . .
“Tat.” Niya snagged my wrist, stopping another downward swipe. She yanked me off the thing as it dissolved into a black puddle.
My head whipped about. The homeless man who had drawn us here hobbled off in terror. The hospital was nearby. They’d help him.
Niya’s face shifted back to her human form; the claw looping my wrist transitioned from rough pad to soft palm again. She let me go, and I lowered my arm, still gripping the dagger’s hilt hard enough to make my hand ache.
She panted, wide-eyed, excited. It’s been said her kind gets aroused by battle. “Damn, Tat. You whaled on that frog creep. Jermaine told me he’d been training you.”
I stiffened. “You two talk about me a lot?”
“No.”
That stung. I tried not to let it show, though her freaky cat ass could probably hear my heartbeat change or smell my disappointment.
From my bag I drew a bottle of water, passed it to her. “Here. Hydrate.”
Snatching it, she just about tore off the top and lapped it greedily. When half the bottle was gone, she angled the open end toward me, but I waved her away. Never believed that “cat’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s” stuff. “That’s all you.”
More greedy gulping. Then, “What were those things?”
“Does it really matter?”
“I’ve never seen anything like them before. Where’d they come from?”
“This is Glen Creek. Where does anything come from?”
Her breathing returned to normal. Her shoulders slumped as the weight of the evening returned. “Guess you got a point.”
“Let’s get going.”
Returning the bloodstained dagger to my satchel, I led her back to the car. To get this over with.
My house was off a main road, at the end of a rutted driveway. The path was bordered by unkempt cotton fields, where dingy white puffs blanketed acres and acres.
“Is this a plantation?” Niya asked.
“Used to be.”
“Is there some spiritual significance to the Historian living here? Something to do with the blood of slaves? The darkness of centuries-long oppression?”
I shrugged. “I think my grandparents just got a good deal on it.”
“Oh.”
I parked before the massive wraparound porch, and we climbed the plankboard steps together, wood creaking beneath our weight. When I gripped the door handle, I hesitated. “My grandma’s in here. She gets confused sometimes. Okay?”
Niya nodded and flicked her hand in a hurry-up gesture.
Inside, the foyer was so brightly lit that the pastel-blue walls seemed to glow. I went for the stairs, but Grandma rolled from the den, her motorized wheelchair humming.
I said, “Hi, Grams.”
Her eyes fixed on me, bounced to Niya. Then, “Something’s wrong.”
“Everything’s fine, Grams. We’re just going to go upstairs and—”
She ignored me, maneuvered her chair closer to Niya, who said, “Ma’am.”
Grandma said, “Janet is in so much pain. I can tell.”
Niya’s eyebrows furrowed. I waved her along. “We’ll be in the study.”
I climbed the stairs, and Niya seemed to have an internal debate about leaving my grandma. I said, “It’s all right.”
Niya joined me, whispered, “Who’s Janet?”
“My mom. Told you, she gets confused.”
From the second-floor landing, we entered the study, and Niya got her first glimpse of the organized confusion that was the Historian’s library. Every shelf was crammed and bowed in the middle. Every horizontal surface was covered with dried-up pens, loose sheets, and legal pads. None of the visible paper was untouched by my careful, meticulous script.
The Cantankerous Cat Woman spun slowly in the center of the room, overwhelmed by it all. “You did all this? Why?”
“Elevated understanding. The Historian has to know this stuff better than anyone, and it’s dense. I have to rewrite many things for my own interpretation. Notes and footnotes, all the time.”
Bouncing between a few specific shelves, I pulled select volumes and stacked them on a desk. Little pastel tabs protruded from marked pages, and when I opened the books some of my Sharpie-covered Post-it Notes unstuck and littered the floor.
“How can I help?” Niya asked.
“Do you read ancient Sanskrit?”
She blinked. “I’ll sit quietly in this corner.”
“Thanks.”
That’s how we were for the next hour. Me jotting down more notes, her awaiting my recommendations for doing the thing she shouldn’t do. When the silence got to be too much, she said, “I’m sorry about how things happened, Tat.”
“Things?” I stopped writing, though I kept my eyes on my work.
“I didn’t come here to get between you and him.”
“I know. He explained. We don’t have to talk about it.” Please, stop talking about it.
“We do, though. It’s been weeks, and we’re . . . I don’t know. Coworkers.”
“What we do isn’t the late shift at McDonald’s. With all that’s at stake, I know how to manage my personal feelings.”
“Except that’s not true.”
Slowly I rotated my chair to look into her stony amber eyes.
She kept going. “I think you want everyone to see this cool, unflinching genius—and you are a genius. But no one’s as cold as you try to make us believe. I know he—we—hurt you.”
Raising my palm, I said, “Stop.” I snatched sheets from my notebook. “Come to the attic. The rest of what you’ll need is there.”
“Great talk.”
I left my chair, making sure my satchel was still with me, and the ceremonial dagger inside it. Crossed the threshold into the hall. Grandma was there.
Her chair whined as she positioned it before the door.
Niya, quicker than I ever would’ve given her credit for, said, “How’d she get that chair up here? Is there a ramp or something?”
No. There’s no ramp.
Niya kept walking, surely thinking Grandma would move, but stopped short when she collided with an invisible barrier a foot shy of the study door. She rebounded off what seemed like thin air. Pushing her hands forward, she pressed her palms against the unseen wall.
“Tatiana!” She slammed a fist into the obstruction. “What is this?”
I said, “Me correcting a mistake.”
Kneeling, with my satchel between my feet, I removed the dagger stained with akaname blood and held it out to Grandma with two hands. “I present the arcane blood of then, and the mortal blood of now.” Gripping the hilt, I drew the blade across my left palm, raising a hot red line that quickly spilled onto the floor.
Grandma licked her lips, and her flesh began to meld with her chair, organics and mechanics blending into a shifting, bulbous mass.
“No,” Niya said, clearly recognizing the creature my grandmother was becoming as she swelled, filling the hall. Shadows leaped from corners and eaves, drawn to her—it—like a cloak.
I said, “I request an audience with the Pall Merchant.”
“Again?” The voice had the timbre of a rockslide and seemed to seep from the walls. It did not come from any human mouth.
My grandma, who hadn’t really been my grandma for some years, completed the transformation into the thing Niya had struggled to describe back at the lair. The collector that had killed our lover.
“You did it,” Niya said. She flicked her wrists in a manner I’d seen a hundred times, when she exposed her claws. Only her hands remained human. She flicked them again, with the same result. Then she stretched her mouth wide, searching for animal incisors with her tongue.
I retrieved the bottled water from my bag, the one she’d drunk from in the park. Explained, “It’s an old formula. Suppresses mystical abilities for up to a day. Added bonus for being odorless and tasteless.”
“You bitch!”
“Name-calling won’t do you any good now.” I felt the Pall Merchant’s presence all around me. The creature filling the hall was an emissary of sorts. A pack mule. The real power didn’t bother to manifest fully here. That was okay. It was sort of like doing business over the phone.
The Pall Merchant said, “What is it, Tatiana of Earth Realm?”
“Another deal.”
“I’m excited to hear what you offer now.”
“I want one of the lives I offered you back.”
Niya said, “I’m going to rip out your throat, Tatiana.”
“Hmmm,” said the Pall Merchant. “My kind isn’t in the business of refunds.”
“Not a refund. Even exchange. Take the theri instead.”
The beast formerly known as Grandma shifted, its sides rustling against the walls. It had no discernible face, but it was definitely examining Niya in whatever manner it was able, somehow transmitting an assessment to its master.
“And which life is it you want returned?”
“Jermaine’s.”
“Not your mother?”
“No. I want him.”
The Pall Merchant chuckled. The sound made my nose bleed. “You always have, haven’t you?”
Niya threw her whole body against the barrier. Infuriated madness.
“Stop it!” I told her. “You’re getting what you wanted. Jermaine’s coming back.” I directed my query to the Pall Merchant. “Right?”
“For a valued customer? Deal accepted.”
The shadow mass spoke then, in my grandma’s voice. “Janet is in such pain. Now Niya will be too.”
It spilled into the study, through the invisible barrier, like water through a broken dam. Niya screamed for a long time.
THEN
We sat in the lair, and he kept putting things between us. A desk, chairs. He was nervous in a way that was new. When he told me Niya would be staying in Glen Creek indefinitely, his apprehension made sense.
“I thought her being here was a charity thing. Aren’t we supposed to be finding her family or something?”
“We found them.”
That “we” was not all-inclusive. “I don’t understand. When?”
“You went to New York for that college visit. We got a lead.”
The discussion had always been that Niya would find her family. Reunite with them. Leave. “And?”
“They’d been murdered by Gentleman Gaunt. Tat, did you hear me?”
I was supposed to respond. This was a situation where I should empathize. Or sympathize. I always got them confused. “So, she should find him. Destroy him. We can put her on his trail.”
He wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I need to tell you something.”
“What?”
“You should sit down.”
“What is it?” I detected an echo. My shout bounced.
“I have feelings for her.”
Laughs. From me. Wild cackling. He looked startled. I stopped abruptly. “Feelings? I go away for a weekend and you have feelings? I’m back now.”
“That doesn’t really have anything to do with it.”
“I’m back now.” I crossed the room, slid onto his lap, cupped the back of his neck with one hand, then felt a stirring near my thigh. “Do you feel that?”
Jermaine stood, cradling me in his arms. I expected him to do what he’d done many times when we were alone and there was no immediate threat. I expected him to come back to his senses. I expected too much.
He set me gently on my feet. “We shouldn’t do that anymore. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“For who, Jermaine?”
“Any of us.”
He tried to leave, but he let me block his path. “You said it would be you and me. You said nothing would come between us. You said you would love me forever.”
“I know I did.”
“So . . . ?”
“Things change.”
That they do.
Weeks passed. We didn’t talk in school. In the lair, all we discussed were current supernatural threats. Somehow he arranged it so the three of us were never together in the Movie Meridian basement at the same time. And like a typical stupid boy, he thought that would be enough to make things right. Then I walked in on them, and nothing could ever be right.
He suited up to go on patrol—with her, though he tried to be slick and not say it flat out. Like I’m stupid. Me? Stupid?—I offered him a bottle of water. “Here,” I said. “Hydrate.”
He drank it all and thanked me. Part of me wanted to be there when his powers failed. To see him blindsided. Ruined. And maybe, before he took his last gasp of air, when he looked to the sky for answers, I’d lean over him and say, “Things. Change.”
But that would just be petty. Wouldn’t it?
NOW
My mouth, pressed to his. Jermaine’s lips were icy then. I didn’t flinch away, and soon the warmth bled back into them. Our bond, with the help of the Pall Merchant’s magic, pulled his essence back into his meat, knitting his wounds, refilling him. When he drew a ragged breath, taking some of the air from my lungs, I pulled away.
His eyes snapped open, and he sat bolt upright, as if waking from a nightmare. “What happened? That thing, where is it?”
He swung his legs to stand. Papers, tacky with his blood, plastered his back and knees. When his feet touched ground, his knees buckled. I caught him before he fell.
“You’re moving too fast. Sit. Rest,” I said.
He didn’t fight, but I felt his neck crane. Heard the recently dead tendons creak. “Where’s Niya? She was with me when I got attacked.”
“Jermaine, I have bad news.” I cradled his head to my chest. “But I want you to know, no matter what comes next, it’s going to be me and you. I promise.”