Toil & Trouble Page 7

  Auggie gasps as the mark beneath their hands begins to burn, but she does not withdraw. Not until Bette pulls their hands away.

  Grayson’s words are no longer there.

  In their place, the words I like Hippo! are forming on her skin, in a clumsy, crayon-thick scrawl.

  They may not be the first actual words Auggie ever spoke to her, but they are the first she remembers, sitting on a blanket in the backyard as toddlers, a well-loved stuffed hippopotamus toy between them.

  A shrieking sound lances through the forest, sending needles and pinecones raining down from the trees as Lady Fate flees.

  This time, Castella is the one laughing.

  It makes Bette’s bones rattle.

  * * *

  Her hands clear fields of prickly grass now. They fell trees rotting from the inside, and send off beloved pets peacefully and painlessly. She rids ponds and lakes of harmful algae and orchards of blight. And she’s single-handedly responsible for taking care of the pine beetle epidemic in Colorado—not that she likes to brag or anything.

  The day she finally figures out how to kill disease is a good day. Flesh-eating bacteria, necrosis of the liver, kidney failure, even some forms of cancer. It is not like healing...it’s different.

  It is more. Her entire life is so much more.

  Her touch is light and sure. Her touch is deadly, but she has found many uses for it. She has found a way to hate it some and love it more and make good with all of it.

  Her touch is not a curse, as the Elders would think. But it is not a gift, either.

  It is simply who she is, in a way that nothing else has ever been.

  Some witches fear her and others shun her, but even more make the journey to the little house half hidden in the trees at the very top of Castella. Auggie serves them rosewater scones and Bette pours tea at their big wooden table and says, Tell me your troubles.

  Lady Fate never darkens their door again.

  She has learned Her lesson when it comes to Castella’s witches.

  * * * * *

  DEATH IN THE SAWTOOTHS

  by Lindsay Smith

  A PERSON CAN tell you anything, but bones—those tell the truth.

  I’ve seen warlocks swear on their mama’s graves that they found the secret to immortality, and they’ll sure behave that way, too. But when they get their heads blown off mixing glamour magic with curses, or goad the wrong foul-tempered War wizard into a knife fight, I’m the one left with their bones. People want to think they can outrun death, but she’s the surest patron there is. Success rate of 100 percent.

  I get it. Everyone fears my Lady, Xosia, the Lady of Slumber. When you’re all dolled up with glamours from Firenzi or getting your wounds mended by a Hypnos witch, you don’t want to be reminded about the Lady waiting for you.

  I didn’t ask for her to be my patron. It just worked out that way. Every time I was around a dead thing—when our dog got after a bird, or we drove by the slaughterhouse down Highway 11, or even when my ma dragged me to some other witch’s wake—I heard the whispers in their bones. Somebody’s gotta do something with those whispers; somebody’s got to settle their affairs. And the Lady, she picked me.

  Most the time, I don’t mind. I’ve made my peace with the Lady, for sure, and I feel like I work her magic well. It’s the rest of the folks out here in the Sawtooths I’ve gotta worry about. The ones that don’t like how I’m a living reminder of their imminent demise. Slashed tires, spray paint on my granny’s antique front door, death threats slipped under the door of the morgue (irony, I know), and I ain’t never once gotten the locals’ discount on pancakes at Jenny’s. But I lived through way worse when I was at the Conservatory of Advanced Magics. Most the time, I get by just fine.

  The night’s already thick when I reach the county morgue—my own personal workshop, tucked into the scrub pines at the end of State Route 5. Used to be situated in the basement of the State High Warlock’s offices, but folks complained. Buzzbugs saw away around me as I unlock the place—another nasty note’s taped to the door, but I crumple it up and pitch it the minute I see the angry, jagged handwriting. Once I’m inside, magicked lights humming overhead, I check the logs. Just one body to work over tonight.

  The body before me is kind of like a piece of artwork I don’t understand—I respect it for what it is, but it doesn’t hold any special meaning to me. My system, though, that’s what I respect. Wash. Pray. Rest my shaking hands on the cool flesh, fingers laced through clammy fingers, until I go calm and still. The other witches at the Conservatory never really understood the need for all the ritual when it’s just a dead body and not some customer paying for the show, but I guess they don’t have to understand. Someday, we’ll all go through it. If we’re lucky, I suppose.

  Next comes the cutting—long slits along each limb, down the belly, down both cheeks, and across the brow. The cuts are narrow, but deep. I sink my ornamented blade in until it scrapes bone.

  “Xosia, Lady of Slumber.” I close my eyes, let my heart rate slow, and will the soul to rise. The air in the morgue is cold, but feels as dense as a held breath around me. The silence presses in. “Grant me this soul’s secrets, and I’ll commend the soul to you.”

  When I open my eyes, the cloud of energy is already forming above the body, thickening up like a roux. I reach out for it, fingers stretched wide. Carefully, like picking up a frightened rabbit, I curl my fingers around it—

  My son, the soul sings. My son. I never got to tell him what he meant to me. I forgive him—tell him I forgive him—show him everything I left behind—

  And my sister, I didn’t mean that stuff I said. She’s as good a witch as any. Please, tell her for me—

  Secret after secret, task after task, what’s left of this person’s soul cries and sobs with all the things they left undone. It’s not for me to judge them for it. I’m just the messenger, the medium, putting it all down on paper. And when I’ve written the last note—the soul is Xosia’s now.

  I take a moment to catch my breath and shake out all their secrets from my head. Then I begin to stitch up the cuts, mumbling the Lady’s prayers to myself while I work. The dead are safe now. No one else can steal their soul, or use their body against their will. Folks can hate me, shun me, fear me all they want, but I’ll lay their bones to rest. In the end, they come to me with their dead, because as much as they fear death, they fear the alternative so much more. Better to let their loved ones rest in peace, all their business tended to, than wonder what might have been left undone.

  Tires churn up gravel outside my door, and I catch myself cringing. Dealing with the living is my least favorite part of this work. “Mattie?” someone calls, banging against the rusty metal front door. “Mattie, are you in there?”

  I spread a drop cloth over the body, but don’t have time to shuttle it back into the freezer. “Yeah, I’m here.” I flip the switch on the front door’s lock, but realize too late I’m still gripping my ceremonial knife. Considering the threat I received earlier, maybe that’s not such a bad instinct.

  “Oh. Hi.” Savannah, the Priestess of Glamours, stands in my doorway, wearing strappy-heeled sandals and a sequined skintight evening gown that drapes to the floor. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” she drawls.

  I take a step back, folding my arms across my ratty T-shirt advertising Fred’s Funeral Home. “I was just finishing up.”

  She’s glamoured head to toe, from the glimmer on her lips to the gold-leaf highlights in her chignon. A bronzed leg peeks out of the dress’s slit. She looks like she’s come here straight from some High Warlock’s ball at the state capitol, and with a pang, I realize she probably did. Pretty much all the Priests I went to the Conservatory with are in the capital now, venturing deeper into the Sawtooths only on official business, when their magic is needed to keep things running smooth. I wonder what wrinkle has dragged h
er out here tonight.

  “Well. Looks just like your old workshop at the Conservatory.” Her gaze roams the scattered herbs and metal shavings spilled across one of my countertops, and the dirty instruments piled up in the basin, waiting to be washed. “Guess things haven’t changed much for you, huh?”

  My shoulders tighten. “Don’t fix what ain’t broke.” I reach out to right a jar of shells that’s fallen over, but then decide to leave it.

  “You don’t get lonely out here?” she asks. “You never come to any of the covens, the alumni rituals, none of it. It’s not healthy, you know. And the High Warlock would love to meet with you more. Make sure everything’s going well.”

  As if the other witches, warlocks, and wizards want anything to do with me and my patron. “I’m happy as I am. Where I am.” I position myself so the body on the slab is between us. “Is there something you need, Priestess?”

  She clucks her tongue. “Well, excuse me for making pleasantries.” She steps toward me, but then cuts her eyes toward the figure on the slab, and seems to think better of it. “I’m afraid the High Coven has need of your...services.”

  I lean back against the slab, eyebrows high. I’m surprised the High Coven has any use for me and the Lady, and I’m none too thrilled they sent Savannah of all people to fetch me. We’re older now, but every time I see her, all those old feelings come rushing back, as sharp and bitter as they ever were. My skin feels too tight, like I’m squeezing back into the girl I was, angry, unbound. “Must be pretty urgent to send you out here in the middle of the night. What, did one of the High Priests die or something?”

  Savannah presses her lips together. She bobs toward the body, then away from it, like she wants to prove she’s not bothered. “Oh, I’m sure you’d love that. No, this isn’t so easy.”

  Her usual wry grin has vanished. In all our time at the Conservatory, I don’t think I ever saw her without the armor of that smirk, but with it gone, she looks impossibly young. Savannah was always the girl blazing a trail on sheer force of will and cold-bloodedness, and it served her well. At age sixteen, she became the youngest Priestess of Glamours in the state.

  Of course, if the state still handed out the title Priestess of Slumber to Xosia’s servants, I’d be there with her. But I should’ve known that was never gonna happen. The High Warlock himself told me so, sitting at his heavy oak desk with the portrait of the High Warlock who stopped the Pall glaring down at me from behind him. Just think it might send the wrong message, is all, he said. Folks still get a little jumpy about us treating Xosia like she’s got a seat at the table. And really, who can blame ’em, after what her followers did?

  “All right.” I shove off of the slab. “What do you need my help with?”

  “Well...it’s a bit difficult to explain,” Savannah says. “In fact, we were hoping that maybe you could explain it to us.”

  “Either someone’s dead and y’all need me to deliver them to Xosia—” Savannah winces when I say the Lady’s name out loud “—or they aren’t. Don’t see what’s so difficult about that.”

  Savannah shakes her head, knocking loose a few locks from her chignon. “I think you’re just gonna have to see for yourself.”

  * * *

  Savannah takes one look at me when I try to hop on my bike and sighs. “Put that damn thing in my truck bed, Mattie.” I make a fuss, but ultimately comply. As we crunch across the gravel, her heel spikes into the threatening note I’d crumpled up earlier, and she smooths it out against her truck window and starts to read.

  “We got no need for none of That Lady’s folk down here or anywhere else. Go spread your hateful magic somewhere else, you—” Savannah clucks her tongue. “Get this a lot, do you?”

  I stare at her in disbelief. “Do you not remember a damn thing about our time at the Conservatory? You—your friends—”

  She shrugs as she climbs into the driver’s seat, looking right at home as the massive engine growls to life. “Oh, we were just bein’ kids, you know? We didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  “You trapped me in the girls’ bathroom by erasing the door,” I say as I buckle my seat belt. Anger pulses, hot and jagged, under my breastbone. “For three days.”

  She titters to herself. “Was it really that long? My goodness.” She angles the rearview mirror to check her teeth, then points it back. “Well, we all turned out all right, didn’t we?”

  I stare at the window and don’t reply. There’s nothing I can say to erase the past, and it’s far too late to demand apologies. Maybe someday it’ll be her body on my slab, and in her last wishes she’ll tell me her regrets. There was a time I wanted that sooner than later. Being this close to her again, I remember it a little too well.

  The Sawtooths sprawl like an invasive vine across the southern half of the union. Swampland lows alternate with ridgeline highs, up and down, all of it magicked up to yield crops and fish and scenic vistas galore. We don’t want for much down in the Sawtooths, but like everywhere, we took a pretty bad hit during the Pall, and half a century of magic hasn’t been enough to heal up that wound. Roadside temples mix with bait shops, glamour stores mix with bars, and produce stands mix with Hypnos healers’ stalls.

  Twenty miles on, Savannah turns off the state road and heads for the town square that surrounds the Capitol. I don’t mean to, but I hold my breath; my whole body goes tight. Maybe she won’t look at it. Maybe she won’t say anything—

  “Huh.” Savannah glances toward the memorial in the center of the plaza, the granite stone pillar ensorcelled with swirling lights. “That’s gotta be weird for you, ain’t it, to go past that all the time?”

  IN MEMORIAM

  THE BRAVE WIZARDS WHO FOUGHT

  AGAINST THE WICKED FORCES

  OF THE DARK LADY

  MAY THE PALL NEVER CROSS US AGAIN

  “I don’t come to town often,” I say, and look the other way.

  Savannah has the good sense to stay quiet for the next few minutes as we wind our way through town. When she does talk again, it’s in a softer tone. “Things are different now. At the Conservatory, I mean.”

  “They aren’t different much anywhere else,” I say.

  “Your thesis, though—it did a lot. I know you don’t see it yet, but it’s true. There are even a few others studying your old research now. Nobody with your gifts, of course, but at least it’s happening.”

  I’m not sure if I feel comforted by that or not. She’s just buttering me up, most like, but I’m not some biscuit at Jenny’s.

  “It takes time. Took me a while to accept, and I’m sorry for that,” she says. “But your Xosia won’t be forgotten just yet.”

  She turns us on the access road that runs around the hulking Capitol. I expect her to pull into her VIP spot around the side entrance, but she continues on past the compound entirely and turns into the parking lot for the Starlight Club. Seriously? I’ve got nothing against the Starlight Club, if you’re the kind of person who likes to drink enchanted beer and rub elbows with Priests and maybe hop onto the dance floor for a tune or two, but I didn’t crawl out of the back roads for this.

  “You pullin’ my leg?” I ask as she kills the engine.

  “You got something against the Starlight?” She grins as she says it, but I’m always looking for the knife hidden under her pretty words.

  I shake my head and break eye contact. I feel it again, that dark itch, the one that always begged me to scratch it back in school. Xosia’s magic can get you all turned around, if you don’t care what Xosia thinks. I remember all the times I thought of ways to twist it just so. “Just remembering, is all.”

  One time at the Conservatory, Savannah’s pals told me the High Warlock wanted to meet me at the Starlight Club. They said he wanted to talk to me, real quiet-like, about making me a Priestess of Slumber, but he had to do it on the sly because folks wouldn’t understand. So I b
arged in, all bubbling over with hope, and sat myself right down at his private booth like I owned the damn place. The look on his face could’ve melted blessed glass.

  “Wait.” Savannah laughs. “Are you talkin’ about the time—”

  I whip my head around to glare at her. I’ve got some glass-melting glares up my sleeve, too.

  She flicks away the whole episode with a wave of her glamoured nails. “No prank this time, I promise.”

  My body is buzzing, a pinprick mixture of shame and rage. How can she write it off so easily? Again, I hear those old urges calling me back. The desire to reach out and take hold of my magic, my gift. Snatch someone’s energy—take it for myself—make it into something more.

  Instead, I take a deep breath and close my hand around Xosia’s pendant until the buzzing fades.

  I let Savannah lead me into the Starlight Club. Luz Alvado croons on the speakers overhead, asking if her lover will still love her when all the glamours fade. The dimly lit club is full, but not overwhelming; people keep their conversations at polite enough levels, and the dampening spells help. Worn-velvet booths cluster around parqueted wood tables under enchanted lights that dazzle like constellations, a classic but accessible look. The Starlight lets anyone believe that they deserve to live in the orbit of the Priests and the High Warlock; I certainly bought into it for a time. Conservatory students giggle and laugh at one table while a group of Mending wizards hold court at another booth. I trail behind Savannah as she waves and coos over them all, and do my best not to meet anyone’s eyes.

  Naveen, the Starlight’s manager, rushes up to us as soon as he spots us. He’s impeccably dressed and beautifully glamoured as always, gold linework painted across his dark arms, but I know his patron’s Vantissa, the Lady of Vengeance. I’ve seen him call on her a few times to pitch unruly patrons out of the club. A halo of galaxies swirls around his head, throwing strange shadows across his face as he scowls at me.

  “You didn’t say you were bringing her,” he snaps at Savannah. “She serves the Wicked Lady.”