That Ain't Witchcraft Read online

  “Veracity?” he echoed, in a strangled tone.

  “If we just met, we wouldn’t be making out on your lawn yet—and if we did, your father would probably decide I wasn’t the kind of girl you ought to be hanging out with. I’m not calling him sexist. My father would make the same call if he saw me making out with someone I barely knew.” Heaven only knew what he was going to make of Sam. At least, I wasn’t the first one to go out on an assignment and come home with a shiny new significant other. Hopefully, he was still annoyed enough about Verity bringing home an ex-Covenant operative not to mind that Sam wasn’t human.

  “Insufficient kissing wasn’t my objection!”

  “I’m sorry if I crossed a line, and I should have asked first—consent counts, even when you’re undercover. But if he was watching us, selling the bit was more important. I sold it.”

  “You must have been the pride of your Girl Scout troop,” said James scornfully.

  “Never joined. Something about them being nosy Nancies kept my parents from signing the paperwork. My cousins and I formed our own scouting organization. We called ourselves the Danger Scouts and went camping in the woods behind the house and annoyed the local Bigfoot population something awful.” I smiled fondly. “I’m pretty sure Mom threatened every cryptid within a hundred miles with the consequences of what would happen if we got hurt, because those were the nicest camping trips ever.”

  James looked at me blankly. “Your family sounds very strange.”

  “Oh, you have no idea. You’re going to love them.” I winced as one of the muscles in my right thigh objected to my moving. “I’ll explain why when we get back to the house, but do you think you could pull me for a while? I think my legs are about to give out.”

  James’ blank look morphed to one of genuine concern. “What’s wrong?”

  “Again, I’ll explain when we get there.”

  “All right.” He didn’t sound like he believed me. “Grab on.”

  There was a little metal grid at the base of his seat, designed for clipping on wagons or other accessories. I threaded my fingers through it as I fell in behind the bike, focusing on locking my knees rather than pushing myself forward. It helped. I closed my eyes in relief, letting my legs take a much-needed rest. James kept pedaling, more slowly now that he had my added weight to contend with.

  This wasn’t good. If the crossroads could catch me any time I set foot outside of the wards, I was going to wind up like my grandfather had been in the last years of his life: locked into a steadily narrowing space, unable to go outside or fight back. It was a chilling thought. More chilling was the question of whether the wards mattered. The crossroads had sent Bethany to collect me, but nothing said that was necessary. They weren’t ghosts. As far as I could tell, their only connection to the so-called “spirit world” was their habit of using ghosts as their messengers. The fact that they could pull me into their liminal space without killing me was another vote for the rules being different for them. Mary and Rose could move back and forth between the lands of the living and the dead, and could even carry things with them, but they couldn’t transport living beings—like me or the mice—without consequences.

  The only consequences I was experiencing came from being tortured, not from visiting the crossroads, at least as far as I could tell. If I was going to catch ghost tuberculosis and die on top of everything else, I was going to be pissed.

  James kept pedaling, and I kept holding on, letting the road roll by under my wheels, trying to put together a plan for what was going to happen next. Chief Smith might be a problem if he decided to start running background checks on us. Then again, he might not; Cylia was the only one who could be easily found in any official records, and so far as I knew, she’d never had so much as a parking ticket. Sure, we’d been pulled over a few times when her luck fizzled or snapped back on us, but she’d always been able to charm her way out of actually receiving a citation. If she and my cousin Elsie ever decided to start hanging out together, they could take over the world with a smile and a wink.

  Honestly, that might not be such a bad thing.

  “You okay back there?”

  “I’m fine.” I cracked an eye open. “Getting tired?”

  James scoffed. “Please. I’ve been riding my bike everywhere since I was nine.”

  “You don’t drive?”

  “No.” There was a long pause as he considered his next words. Finally, he said, “When I turned sixteen my father told me if I wanted a car I’d have to pay for it myself. But Sally had a car, and I was putting everything aside for college, so it didn’t seem important. After Sally disappeared, he said it was time to stop letting girls drive me around everywhere. He said it made me look like a—forgive me, this is his word, not mine—like a pansy who couldn’t take care of himself. So I decided my bike was more than good enough for me, thank you very much, and I swore not to learn how to drive until and unless it was time to watch this town getting smaller in my rearview mirror.”

  Oh, I was definitely taking him home with me. “I get it,” I said. “I don’t drive either.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “Never seemed like something I wanted to do. I mean, I know how—I passed Driver’s Ed, and I passed Driver’s Dead, which was my Aunt Rose and a big, empty parking lot and a whole bunch of screaming.” That had been a fun series of nights. Fun, and terrifying, and enough to firmly cement the idea that driving was something best left to people who didn’t want to be able to grip the dashboard with both hands. “I can usually get by on public transit, roller skates, and cadging rides from people. Plus no one suspects you of being a heavily armed survivalist when you’re taking the local light rail. It’s a sort of camouflage.”

  “Lots of weirdoes ride the bus,” said James approvingly.

  “And we are among the weirdoes.”

  He turned off the main road and onto the gravel drive that would take us to the house. I regretfully let go of the back of the bike.

  “Hang on a second, okay? I need to put my shoes on.” The thought of roller skating over gravel, whether or not I was being towed, was enough to make me want to sit down and refuse to move. I didn’t think my legs had ever been this tired. Pain is not the same as damage, but it exhausts the body all the same.

  James watched me with concern as I sat down in the gravel and went through the process of swapping skates for shoes. When I was finished, and stood, he asked, “Are you all right? Do you need . . . I mean, is there . . .”

  “There’s nothing medically wrong with me,” I said. “I’ll explain once we’re inside.”

  He didn’t like that answer—I could see it in his eyes—but he accepted it, and held his tongue as we walked the rest of the way along the driveway to the house.

  Leonard was on the porch.

  I stopped dead, my hands going to the knives at my waistband. “Get behind me, James,” I said, voice low and dangerous.

  James, to my surprise, did as he was told. It’s always nice to work with people who can take directions.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Cunningham?” It didn’t take much effort to pitch my voice loud enough for Leonard—and hopefully everyone inside the house—to hear. If anything, the effort was keeping myself from screaming. “We don’t want you.”

  Leonard turned from his study of the door, eyes widening with surprise and, yes, relief when he saw me. “Annie!” He started forward.

  I pulled the knives from under my clothes. He stopped, raising his empty hands.

  “I’m not here to fight, and I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I wanted to find out if you were all right. I swear on my honor as a Cunningham that this isn’t a trick.”

  “You’re a Covenant man,” I snarled. “You have no honor.” My shoulder ached and throbbed, reminding me of exactly what he was capable of.

  “I have more honor than
you think I do. Annie, please. If you’d just hear me out . . .”

  A curtain twitched in one of the upstairs windows. My stomach unclenched a bit. The others were inside, and safe, although Cylia and Fern probably had their hands full trying to restrain Sam. Leaving Leo locked outside was a decent way of dealing with him, at least until some poor fool—like say, me—came walking up the drive.

  “I don’t want to hear you out, Leo,” I said. “I have things to do, and you shot me.”

  “In my defense, I was aiming for that beast you keep company with.”

  For the first time, James spoke. “I’ve only met the lady recently, and I admit I’m no expert, but it seems to me that shooting her boyfriend is not a good way to endear yourself to her. Maybe apologize, instead of insulting him?”

  “Thank you, James,” I said.

  Leo frowned. “I think you’ll find this doesn’t concern you.”

  “Fascinating.” James moved to stand next to me. “I always assumed the Covenant of St. George would be made up of smart people, from the way it was described in the old books. I never guessed it would be made up of pompous assholes.”

  “Now, now, be fair,” I said. “They can be smart pompous assholes.”

  Leo’s frown blossomed into a full-fledged glare, which he directed at the two of us without hesitation. “Who is this, Annie? Tell him to leave.”

  “This is James, he’s a friend of mine, and I won’t be telling him to leave, thanks, since I want somebody here to see if you decide to shoot me with another crossbow.” I kept my knives up, ready to throw. I wasn’t sure how good my aim would be, but hey. Sometimes you can only learn by doing. “I want you away from here, Leonard. Don’t come near me, or my people, ever again. And do not insult Sam.”

  “He’s not even human!” Leo took two steps forward, agitated. I raised my knives. He stopped. “What kind of future can you have with an animal? He’ll never understand you the way I would. He’ll never be able to give you the things you deserve. A home, a family—”

  “Oh, now you’re about family? Because last time I saw you, you were super okay with sedating your sister and lying to my cousin about who I really was. You’re not trying to make sure I’m okay. You’re trying to make sure I’m yours.”

  “Can you blame me?” He lowered his hands. “There’s a war coming, Annie, a war your sister started. You’re a valuable asset, and more importantly, I’m fond of you. I want you to survive when the Covenant takes back this continent. The only way that’s going to happen is if you’re on the right side.”

  “The right side being your side.”

  “Yes.” Leo looked me in the eye. “It is. We have the numbers. We have the training. We have every tactical advantage it’s possible to have in a situation like this one.”

  “Interesting,” said James. He turned to face me. “Are all Covenant operatives this dishonest, or did we get a good one?”

  “Be quiet,” snarled Leo.

  “Don’t be quiet,” I said. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean if they had all the advantages he,” James flapped a hand at Leonard, “wants to claim they have, why is this happening? Why is any of this happening? You’re one woman. Granted, you’re faintly terrifying, and I’m not sure I’m going to survive knowing you, but you’re not worth delaying an invasion. He’s either exaggerating his position or downplaying yours.”

  “There’s a third option,” I said. “He’s doing both, and he doesn’t have the authority to be here.”

  Leo stiffened. I’d hit a nerve. Slowly, I smiled.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re the one who brought me into the recruiting center, even if you didn’t realize you were doing it, and once you realized who I was, you were so excited by the idea of bringing a Price back into the fold that you kept it a secret because you wanted all the credit. Only you lost me, and there were too many witnesses you didn’t want to kill—at least, I’m assuming you didn’t kill your own sister—for you to bury it completely. You’re supposed to be back in England getting punished for your hubris right now, aren’t you?”

  Leo didn’t say anything.

  I glanced at James. “See, what Leo here doesn’t like to remember is that he’s our age. He’s the new generation, still under supervision, and he’s not supposed to scheme and plot and try to do things without running them through the chain of command. I got away because he wanted to see how much rope I needed before I hung myself.”

  “That’s not entirely fair,” said Leo tightly.

  “None of this is entirely fair,” I said. “Why should my version of the story be any different? You don’t have any backup, Leo, and it’s pretty clear that while you’re willing to take potshots at innocent cryptids because . . . fuck, because you’re an asshole, because you’re jealous, whatever. It doesn’t matter why you’re doing this. You don’t have any authority. The Covenant isn’t coming to back you up or solve your problems. I want you out of here. I want you to leave me alone.”

  “That’s never going to happen,” he said, and smiled. “I own you. Whether or not you’ve admitted it to yourself, you’re mine. One day, you’re going to see how foolish it is to resist the inevitable, and you’re going to come back to the fold.”

  He could do this all day: he’d prepared his supervillain speech, and all I was doing was giving him the material to play off of, allowing him to keep belching forth proclamations about his superiority and predestined victory and blah, blah, blah. Under other circumstances, I might have humored it. People who’ve already mapped out the conversation in their heads can frequently be tricked into giving things away if you let them keep talking long enough. But I was tired, and I was irritated, and I wanted to be safely behind the anti-ghost wards on the house as soon as humanly possible.

  I had one injured shoulder and two hands. I threw the knife in my good hand, enjoying the brief second of shocked realization in Leo’s eyes before the blade hit the porch support half a foot from his face with a satisfying thwock sound.

  “That could have been your throat,” I said calmly. “I have more knives, and you seem to have misplaced your crossbow. Leave.”

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  “You shot me.”

  “I wasn’t aiming for you.”

  “You keep saying that, and you keep not understanding why it doesn’t actually help your case.” I took a step forward, proud of the way my knees failed to knock. “Get out of here, or the next knife goes into your eye.”

  I could do it. Maybe not with my bad hand, but I always have more knives, and I could draw and throw again before Leo had the chance to do anything other than stand there and get impaled. He knew it, too; with a final frown, he finished descending the porch and started toward the small car parked behind Cylia’s.

  “This isn’t over,” he said. “You will understand why I’m the better choice than this menagerie of misfits and monsters before we leave this town.”

  “Maybe I’ll also bleach my hair and learn how to walk in heels,” I said. “Go.”

  He went. James and I stayed where we were, watching as he peeled out of the driveway and back to the street. Only when he was gone did James look at me.

  “Would you really have killed him?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” I made the knife in my hand disappear. “He’s set to inherit leadership of the Covenant. Killing him means this never ends. But unless I can find and confiscate whatever it is he’s using to track me, maybe this never ends no matter what I do. So I don’t know. Aren’t you glad we didn’t have to find out right now?”

  I started toward the house. After a moment’s stunned silence, James followed.

  Sixteen

  “There’s nothing like moonlight and monsters to remind a girl why she loves her job.”

  –Alice Healy

  The front room of a rented house in New
Gravesend, Maine

  SAM WAS WAITING JUST inside the house. He wrapped his arms around me as soon as I was through the door, pulling me into a tight, borderline frantic embrace.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he said, voice muffled by my hair. “Cylia said it would be better if I didn’t go out, and I listened because I thought she might be right, but then you were there and I didn’t help, and I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” He had my arms pinned against my sides. I squirmed until I could reach up enough to awkwardly pat his elbow. He didn’t let go. It wasn’t the most comfortable hug I’d ever experienced, but he was shaking and I couldn’t find it in myself to push him away.

  Sometimes I felt genuinely bad about what being close to me was doing to the people I cared about. Not enough to want them to leave me. Just enough to not complain when they hogged more than their fair share of the popcorn.

  The door closed behind James. Cylia locked it, glancing out the curtains one more time to be sure Leo was gone. I gave Sam’s elbow a final, awkward pat.

  “It’s really okay,” I said. “I’m a big girl. I’m used to taking care of myself. And if he’d tried anything, I would have put a throwing knife up his nose. Now can you let me go before I need new ribs? I don’t want to fight the crossroads in a body cast.”

  “Sorry.” Sam stepped back, tail curling anxiously around his ankles. He continued staring at me, surveying for imaginary injuries. “I’m going to kill that guy. I hope you’re cool with it because every time he messes with us, it gets a little more inevitable.”

  “Just wait until we can make it look like a non-cryptid-related accident, please,” I said. “The last thing we need is the entire Covenant descending on our heads because we killed their fearless leader-to-be.”

  “I swear joining you people has been like tuning in to a program already in progress,” muttered James.

  “I’m sorry reality doesn’t come with a recap at the top of every hour,” I said, and slid my arms out of the straps of my backpack. It made an impressively loud thump when it hit the floor. “Fern?”