That Ain't Witchcraft Read online

  Talk about “mutually assured destruction.” Maybe a Covenant soldier like Dominic had been, like my grandfather had been, could have handled the sudden revelation that he’d voluntarily teamed up with a pair of sorcerers and a bunch of cryptids to fight an eldritch horror, but Leo was supposed to be their next leader. He was the proverbial chosen one, meant to usher the Covenant of St. George into their bright and genocidal future, and if I could use this to undermine his authority, I would. In a heartbeat.

  Of course, so much was contingent on me having a heartbeat when all this was over. The air outside the car pressed in on us, until it was like we were driving through the deep, unseen sea, surrounded by creatures that had never seen the light of day. I knew it was my paranoia speaking—the crossroads had no need for that kind of fancy special effects, and if Bethany had been lucky enough to be paying attention during my brief field trip outside the wards, she would already have come to say howdy and remind me about all the homicide I was supposed to be committing. I hated to depend on luck. I hated knowing that one slip and I’d be burning again, with a fire that should have been my friend.

  “I am so much more like my grandfather than I want to be,” I muttered.

  “What’s that?” asked Leonard.

  “Nothing.” He could find out about my specific issues later. Or not at all. I liked option two better.

  No ghosts appeared to trouble us as we finished the drive to the house, and if I hustled for the front door a little faster than was seemly, whatever. Let Leonard think I was desperate to get to the bathroom after hanging out in a coffee shop for the last hour. Everybody pees.

  Fern and James were in the front room, Fern filing her nails with the careful nonchalance of someone who wanted to be just about anywhere else, James making notes in a small, leather-bound notebook that looked like it had seen better days. The couch had also seen better days. Books covered every square inch that wasn’t occupied by James, and he had enough books piled on his legs that I wasn’t sure he was making a difference in the overall burden.

  While the air no longer held the brutally frigid snap of artificial winter, it was still cooler than it should have been, like we’d been running the air conditioning. Sam was nowhere to be seen. I looked around, frowned, and returned my attention to Fern.

  “Is he in our room? Because I don’t have time to do another heart-to-heart right now.” Being in a relationship was hard. I still liked it—especially the parts where I got to have sex on a regular basis—but wow was it more work than I had ever realized it was going to be.

  Fern shook her head and pressed a finger to her lips, signaling me to be quiet. Oh. I turned, watching as Cylia and Leonard made their way toward the house.

  Cylia was in the lead, probably because he assumed she’d know where the traps were. That was why she made it over the threshold while he was still climbing the porch steps, and was safely inside when Sam dropped soundlessly, like something out of a horror movie, from the awning to land behind Leonard.

  I’ll give Leo this much: Sam might not have made a sound, but whatever small displacement of the air he’d caused had been enough to clue Leonard to the fact that he was in danger. He stopped walking, back going very straight as he considered his options.

  He didn’t have many. Unless he wanted to treat those of us in the house as the “safe” option, which hey, maybe we were. Or maybe this had all been a very complicated murder plan.

  “Mutually assured destruction, I thought,” he said.

  “Yup,” I agreed amiably. Sam was coming out of his crouch, unfurling behind Leo inch by inch in a manner that would have been unbelievably menacing if I hadn’t found it so ridiculously hot. There was something very wrong with me. I welcomed it.

  Cylia grinned. Fern continued filing her nails. James glanced up from his notes long enough to make a disapproving face—less “oh no, a threat to human life is happening where I can see,” more “if I get blood on my book, I’m going to be pissed”—and went back to writing.

  “I came in good faith.”

  “This time,” I said. “I don’t think I’m your problem, though.”

  Finally, slowly, Leonard turned and considered the fūri behind him. Sam was standing completely straight, lips drawn back to show teeth that were thicker and stronger-looking than the human norm, the hair-slash-fur atop his head bristling in a clear threat display. His tail was curved in the high angle that meant he was angry, rather than the relaxed curl of comfort. I took a moment to appreciate all the research I’d done into his semi-unique body language. This little scene would have been a lot less fun if I’d been guessing at whether my boyfriend was really ready to commit murder on my behalf.

  He was. He so, so was. All I had to do was say the word and Leonard would be one ex-Covenant member, mostly because they seem to require their members to have heads attached to their bodies.

  “Er,” said Leonard. “Hello. I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced.”

  I was impressed. Given how incredibly dedicated to the idea that all cryptids were monsters that needed to be destroyed most members of the Covenant were, I had expected a less civil response. Then again, maybe the fact that Sam looked willing to answer incivility with violence was doing something to temper Leo’s natural instincts.

  “No,” said Sam curtly. “We haven’t been.”

  “Leonard Cunningham.” Leo stuck his hand out like he fully expected Sam to shake it. “If you kill me, you’ll bring the wrath of the entire Covenant of St. George down upon your head, and the heads of your companions. As you seem reasonably fond of them, I assume you’re not intending to do anything foolish.”

  “Nah. Nothing foolish.” Sam’s hand engulfed Leonard’s, long fingers wrapping around it and overlapping onto themselves. Leonard’s back stiffened further as he realized how strong Sam’s grip was.

  “I wish I had popcorn,” I muttered to Cylia.

  “You and me both,” she said.

  “See, you’re right: I like my friends. They’re pretty cool. Even the asshole on the couch isn’t as annoying as I thought he was going to be when I first met him. And you’re right that I don’t want to make trouble for them, since that’s not really friendly-like. But there’s something you’re wrong about.” Sam tugged. Leonard stumbled toward him, unable to break free of the stronger man’s grasp.

  I’ll give Leo this much, if nothing else: shaken as he clearly was, he maintained a scrap of dignity as he asked, “What’s that?”

  “Annie’s not my friend.” Sam’s smile widened, becoming even more threatening. “You shot her. You shot her with a crossbow, and she fell into the lake. She could have died. You get that, right? She could have died. You did that.”

  “I was aiming for you,” said Leo.

  “And maybe I could have forgiven you for that—I mean, probably not, but maybe—only you didn’t hit me. You hit her. She could have died.” Sam let go of Leo’s hand so abruptly that the other man stumbled backward, thrown off-balance. Sam looked at him dismissively. “If you ever threaten her again, I’m going to rip your spine out and beat you with it until you stop twitching. If you ever actually hurt her again, you’re going to wish I’d done something as friendly as removing pieces of your skeleton. Got it?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” said Leonard.

  “Great,” said Sam. “Welcome to the party.”

  Nineteen

  “Find out what people expect and then do as close to the opposite as your conscience and the laws of physics will allow. Gets ’em every time.”

  –Frances Brown

  The front room of a rented house in New Gravesend, Maine, getting ready to make some really impressive mistakes

  LEONARD LOOKED AT JAMES’ meticulously written and organized notes, a small frown on his patrician face. He’d been reviewing our work for the past twenty minutes, and I was starting to twitch. Who kn
ew I could get test anxiety from watching a member of the Covenant go over my plans to either change the world forever or get myself and everyone who trusted me utterly, irredeemably fucked? What a fun voyage of self-discovery I was on.

  If Leonard was aware that we’d arranged ourselves to box him in, he wasn’t saying anything. James was still in his original position on the couch, having moved a few books but otherwise not acknowledging that Leonard might like to be comfortable. That was part of the plan. If Leo tried to bolt, James could grab him and present him with a nice case of frostbite to slow him the hell down. Cylia was leaning against the front door, Fern was sitting cross-legged at the entry to the hallway, and Sam and I were sitting on the stairs, me with my back against his chest, him casually playing with my hair while shooting nasty looks in Leo’s direction. He was as tense as I’d ever felt him when not in human form, and his tail was wrapped around my left ankle tightly enough to hurt a little. I didn’t object.

  “There’s a flaw in your reasoning,” said Leonard finally, looking up and scanning the room until he met my eyes. “A fairly large one.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”

  “Your plan hinges on you having access to your original crossroads ghost, the one you say is well-inclined toward your family,” he said. “If you can’t leave the wards without risking exposure to the second ghost, the one that isn’t well-inclined, how are you planning to get the first ghost back?”

  I smiled slowly. Sam’s body was warm behind me, chasing the last of the lingering chill from the air. I felt like I was starting to thaw for the first time since Bethany had appeared to tell me what the crossroads wanted me to do.

  “I’m sure you must have asked yourself why we’d need another warm body when the party was already pretty full,” I said. “I mean, it’s not that we didn’t want to run around wondering if we were going to get stabbed in the back at any moment, it’s just that five is the usual sweet spot for any sort of superhero outing.”

  Leonard looked at me warily. “I’m sure you’re speaking English.”

  “All that snobbery and you don’t even read comic books. Man, I really dodged a bullet getting away from you people.”

  “You didn’t dodge the crossbow bolt,” said Sam.

  “Point,” I said. Looking at Leonard, I said, “We need you to go to the crossroads—not the main one, not the one by the hanging tree, we’re saving that to visit with Mary—and indicate that you’re ready to make a deal. We have summoning charms that should work to get Bethany’s attention. Then all you need to do is hem and haw enough that she stays focused on you while we get Mary back.”

  “And what, pray tell, am I to claim to want?” asked Leonard.

  “Simple.” I felt an echo of Sam’s smile in my own as I bared my teeth at the man in front of me. “Say you want me. Say you can’t go home without me. Say you can tell the crossroads have some sort of claim on me, and you’ve come to buy it back. All you have to do is avoid sealing an actual bargain while we get Mary out of wherever she’s been banished to. Once that’s done . . .”

  Once we had Mary, we’d be able to petition for a reassessment of Sally’s deal. We could get to the crossroads where they lived, if that was even the right term. And then things would really get interesting.

  Leonard looked at me levelly. “You’re trusting me a great deal.”

  I rolled one shoulder in a shrug. “You’re not going to make a crossroads bargain over me. You don’t want to win by cheating, and those bargains always have loopholes in them. Your control over the Covenant is going to depend on not having any of those loopholes in your past, waiting to strike. Also, you pretty much think the crossroads are literally the big-D Devil, and you’re probably not wrong. So yeah, I trust you, but only because I know I can. You fake it. You flirt and you fluster and you keep Bethany busy, and in exchange, we give you the world. Think you can manage?”

  Slowly, almost reluctantly, Leonard began to smile.

  “You only needed to ask,” he said.

  * * *

  Finding a local crossroads manifestation point was easy. Too easy: while every crossing potentially could be a breakthrough for a bargain, most municipalities don’t have more than one spot that has actually been used recently enough to have the necessary resonance. Maybe two. In New Gravesend, it seemed like every possible crossing point had been used. Several times.

  “It’s always been like this,” James said. “I tried to research it at the beginning, when I was trying to determine what mattered. In the end, I had to stop because it doesn’t matter why the crossroads pay so much attention to a little town like this one. They do. That’s enough.”

  I thought of how few sorcerers there were left in the world—fewer, even, than could be accounted for by the rabid way the Covenant hunted us, because sorcerers can hide. They’re masters of tucking themselves away, out of sight and hence out of mind. I thought of the way the crossroads had gone for my grandfather, and how eagerly they’d gone after me once the opportunity arose. They couldn’t be that hungry for every possible bargain, or there’d be no way to keep them a secret from the wider world. The fact that they’d pursued him, pursued me, and even pursued James . . . they didn’t like sorcerers. They didn’t like us at all.

  James’ mother had been a sorcerer. This had been her town. And the talent ran in families. It might be difficult to tell which had come first, but I was willing to bet if we really went digging, we’d find that the number of bargains began to climb right around when the first of James’ ancestors had moved to New Gravesend.

  I was right. I was sure that I was right. Looking at James’ face as he earnestly explained where Leonard was going to go to bait the crossroads—where the rest of us were going to go while Bethany was distracted, to get Mary back—I knew I could never tell him. He was a smart guy. If he’d wanted to consider the possibility that his family had brought this down on their hometown, he would already have done so. The fact that he hadn’t told me it didn’t matter and, more, that he needed to stay at least a little bit in denial.

  “What do I do if the crossroads decide to have done with me?”

  “Come back here,” said Cylia. “There’s a key under the mat at the back door. Let yourself in, have a cookie, and wait to see whether we survive.”

  “If you don’t?”

  “Run,” said Fern. She wrinkled her nose. “The crossroads will probably still be hungry after it eats us.”

  “How encouraging.” Leonard stood, looking at the window, where the sun was dipping ever lower. “What happens if you succeed at your task?”

  “Bethany probably freaks out and disappears,” I said. “You run. We’ll be at the hanging tree at midnight. You can help us destroy the crossroads if you show up before we go into the final battle against the eldritch terror.”

  Leonard turned to stare at me. Finally, he shook his head, and said, “You would have fit in so much better with our number than you believe is true. You could have been the best of us.”

  “Instead, I’m going to be the best of the opposition,” I said. “Good luck out there.”

  “I won’t need it,” he said, and walked to the front door, letting himself out.

  “That man is either very brave or very stupid,” said Sam. “Or both. Can I vote both? I’m going to vote both.”

  “Maybe he’ll die,” said Cylia hopefully. “I bet the crossroads could turn him inside out if they wanted to. There’s no way the Covenant could blame that on us.”

  “The Covenant doesn’t need a specific target when they start pointing fingers,” I said grimly. “If he gets turned inside out, that just makes it harder for us to hide the body. I’m sure he’ll be fine. He’s a snake, and snakes always slither out of trouble.” I turned to James. “How long would it take you to walk to the crossing you’ve directed him to?”

  “About twenty minutes, assu
ming I didn’t get lost,” he said. “Give him thirty minutes, just to be sure.”

  “Is that enough time to set up the ritual circles?”

  “I hope so.” He put his book aside and rose. “If you’d all come with me, we can get started. Not you, Annie. You need to stay inside until we’re ready to begin.”

  “I know.” I didn’t bother trying to keep the bitterness out of my tone. I wanted to help. I wanted to be there to check every line and analyze every curve, to squabble with James over the placement of candles and semiprecious stones. Summoning the dead can be very simple or very complex, depending on what kind of spirit you’re trying to call, and while we could normally snag Rose with a handful of dirt and a gas station hot dog, Mary was going to be harder. The fact that we needed to call her back without attracting the attention of the crossroads was just one more layer of difficulty on top of an already sticky situation.

  I stayed seated on the stairs as the others rose and followed James to the back door. Sam was the last to go, pausing long enough to bend over and press a kiss against my temple.

  “You going to be okay in here?” he asked.

  “I’ll watch from the kitchen window,” I said. The boathouse, which had seemed like the best place to set up a summoning circle without either violating the wards or attracting unwanted attention, wouldn’t be exactly in view, but if someone needed me, they could run back and wave until I opened the window. Summoning via semaphore.

  “It’ll be over soon,” he said as he stepped away, already back in human form, just in case someone saw them. He grabbed his jacket from the back of the couch, not bothering with any kind of shoes.

  It only took a few seconds for me to be left entirely alone. I stayed where I was, looking at the empty room, strewn with books and notes and nothingness, before I finally rose and started toward the couch, beginning to collect our research materials. Anything to keep myself moving, to keep myself busy while they got started setting things up.